What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inscrutability_of_reference#Overview
So my understanding, I guess, is that because we have different words that we use for the same thing that there is no one referent for a specific thing and that therefor translation in speech wouldnt be possible? Im also not sure how Putnam got anti realism from that.
So my understanding, I guess, is that because we have different words that we use for the same thing that there is no one referent for a specific thing and that therefor translation in speech wouldnt be possible? Im also not sure how Putnam got anti realism from that.
Comments (801)
There's a bit more to it, especially to do with interpreting formal systems using notions of satisfaction, and few sources that are written clearly.
Quoting Darkneos
You read the reference from the wiki yet?
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine/#IndeTran
That was sorta my other take on him, but I still don't really think he's right in his conclusions. I'm pretty sure I say a paper proving his theory wrong and himself mistaken.
I dunno about that one.
Still reads like he's mistaken IMO. I don't think a sentence can be translated in more than one way, but context does change that.
One phrase would be like "netflix and chill" which most take to me code for sex, unless you are on the spectrum or out of the culture and literally see it as just watching movies (I'll admit I've done this).
See, for example, https://medium.com/@ranjanrgia/thought-experiment-1-gavagai-70ae1bfc792a
What do you make of it?
Yes, it is clearly wrong. It's remarkable that there are people who find such nonsense "brilliant."
Eating a poison mushroom instead of a healthy mushroom will be wrong whether or not one is in communication with others. Pain and death do not ask permission of human language before visiting. Something I referenced earlier today:
Quoting What did Aristotle say about Meaning and Language?
Yes, it's not a very exciting result when applied to things like rabbits, because, as has been said, we can be pretty damn confident.
I think it gets interesting when we move to names for more ambiguous or abstract items. There is a strong tendency among some philosophers to attach a name to a thing or a concept with metaphysical Superglue, such that, if there is a question about translation or clarification, were told we can't suggest a name change without also changing the thing named. In the case of the rabbit, that seems wrong. If for some reason we decided we needed a new (better?) name for Leporidae, that could be effected with minimum difficulty, since we could always point to the creature itself if anyone had doubt, and say, No, the object remains the same. This is only a recommendation for a terminological change.
This is much harder with abstracta. If A says, "Let's change the name of Goodness to 'Rational Self-Interest'," it's unclear what B, who objects, can point to in protest. B can say, "That is not how Goodness has traditionally been used or perhaps even That is not what Goodness means but if As reason for wanting to make the change is because A believes the previous usage was mistaken, what are we to say? I think the best response is a straightforward, No, its you who are mistaken, and allow the argument to be a legitimate one that can sensibly continue. But the type of philosopher I referred to above (call them C) wants to disallow the argument, on the grounds that it isnt coherent to change the name of Goodness to something else. If you do that, C urges, youre no longer talking about Goodness. Name and concept are metaphysically wedded together.
I suggest that its this sort of intransigent approach that can benefit from considering Quines point about gavagai. There is no certainty (or necessity) about the connection of name and thing-named. Often enough perhaps usually were pretty damn sure. But not always, especially in philosophy. I dont know how general the inscrutability of reference is; whether it goes all the way down, so to speak. What if Quine had used truth instead of rabbit, e.g., as the thing being referenced as gavagai? The linguist visiting the tribe could be supposed to follow a simple if-then argument between speakers, using words she already knows, and then a native listener smiles, nods, and says Gavagai! Our linguist wants to ask Do you mean ?Thats true? but since thats impossible to ask, what should she do next?
The IEP has an article on The Indeterminacy of Translation and Radical Interpretation., with much more background, but which is perhaps a bit too sympathetic to Dennett. It has an explanation of Putnam's Model-Theoretic Argument, from Lewis' stance.
Sounds like overthinking it to me, no wonder people accused him of being a relativist or a scientific skeptic. The dude is more or less arguing against communication just because language isn't perfect and neither is translation.
Like...what exactly is the point of bringing that up and to what end? Like...I'm finding it hard to take him seriously because it just sounds dramatic. Yeah there is a chance we might not mean the same thing, but people do this all the time, they just ask what they mean when it's not clear. Apart from that we just trust, especially if we speak the same language. Otherwise what's the point of making and sharing a language if you're just gonna constantly doubt if they mean the same thing?
In all honesty I can see why people call his argument wrong.
This is a consequence of taking the philosophy of language as first philosophy, as pointed out. If philosophy of language is first philosophy, then the fact that different people use words in different ways is inscrutable. So it's a good thing that philosophy of language is not first philosophy! But given that so much of contemporary philosophy is built on this foundation of sand, what is needed is rebuilding from the ground up, and that would be painful.
Quine? No, he isn't arguing against communication. More that he's pointing out that communication takes place despite such issues.
He is arguing against it though. Especially in that thought experiment, I mean...he might as well quite writing philosophy at that point if that's his argument.
You're saying he's not when that's what the argument is pointing to, even why that's a common criticism of him. You're not really making a good case for the alternative.
I think Quine is just massively overthinking it. This is something most people engage in on a daily basis, if we're wrong in our assumptions we can just ask and work it out. If we can't speak the same language all there really is to do is figure it out.
But if his grand insight is that we'll never be able to truly understand someone else's perspective or worldview, that's got nothing to do with language. The reality is we aren't the other person. Even if the language is the same we cannot truly be them without some mind-link device. But that doesn't mean we can't try, I mean it's worked out pretty well so far.
Like I said above, the dude is unknowingly arguing against communication, the thought experiment doesn't help that case.
Though I will say this:
Isn't true. Maybe for a some words and maybe some languages (though not very many) but on a whole the words aren't really tied to their place in the language. You don't need to know the whole language to understand some words in say Spanish, and definitely not the culture. The only real thing is the vosotros which is in Spain.
I can see why people argued his theory is false.
Probably.
But perhaps overthinking it leads to insights.
"Overthinking it", in philosophy, is far from a bad thing ;)
I like the cut of your jib here. Good observation.
It seems to me that it will be harder to find agreement on things like truth and goodness because those are extremely general principles, on many accounts, the most general.
Maybe, if we use the example very loosely. IIRC Quine proceeds by essentially assuming something like behaviorism, and this is crucial to how he makes the argument. This is already a very particular view of signs/language and what sort of "evidence" one has to support translation. He also assumes physicalism, which IIRC for him is rather corpuscular and reductionist. Everything comes down to particle ensembles.
With such presuppositions in play, what would be shocking is if it was possible to give the sorts of "translations" he is disproving. Meaning, in the sense that is "disproved" seems to have already been eliminated from the outset, or at the very least rendered completely epistemically inaccessible. However, I think many thinkers would simply say that to take Quine as a starting point would be essentially to beg the question on the sorts of topic you're talking about.
In my experience it leads to more words but not really saying anything. Furthermore in my experience there are no insights in philosophy, just people with their own theories who can't agree on anything.
Yep. He was part of a general broadening of the philosophical understanding of language in the middle of the last century. Lots of good stuff followed from that, much of it stuff Quine would not have liked.
He's not going to get a sympathetic hearing from the present audience.
I don't think that's the problem. Rules of math and logic are also extremely general principles, but we don't have trouble finding agreement there.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sort of. Since the example concerns two linguistic communities who don't yet share a common translation for "gavagai", what else besides behavior would we have to go on? The whole problem is that the linguist can't ask the native, "What do you mean?" I think Quine is asking us to transport this problem into English-to-English exchanges, and ponder the question of how a term receives a meaning.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I read him rather as using the gavagai story to show why the word/meaning pair is problematic. I don't think he assumes that words don't mean anything; he's trying to push back harder on our common assumptions about it. The question of certainty is important, because what sorts of things can we have certain knowledge of? Quine didn't think the word/meaning pair was in any sense analytic.
I'll go a step further and suggest that we have overwhelming agreement as to what is true and what is good.
The stuff we focus on is the stuff about which we disagree. That misleads some to think that we disagree about stuff. But our agreement about what the world is like is overwhelming. And our agreement about what things folk ought and ought not do is pretty broad, too.
The relevance is the Principle of Charity, to do with understanding what someone is saying by assuming that they hold the same beliefs as you do.
Your own grasp of the intelligibility of things and understanding of what it is to be human. IIRC, Wittgenstein makes the point re the indeterminacy of rules that, when we point at something, we could just as well be indicating that others should look at whatever is behind the shoulder of our extended hand.
Except that wouldn't make any sense. Our eyes are not on our backs, and so we'd have no idea what we are identifying.
Let's assume for the sake of argument an older, realist perspective. Things have essences. Our senses grasp the quiddity of things. We all, as humans, share a nature and so share certain sorts of aims, desires, powers, faculties, etc. Given this, given we are already interacting with the same things, with the same abstractions, and simply dealing with them using different stipulated signs, translation doesn't seem like that much a problem. We might even allow that our concepts (intentions) and understandings of things might vary, but they are only going to vary so much.
The idea that "all we have to go on is behavior" seems like it could be taken as an implicit assumption of nominalism. Yet then the conclusion seems to be, in some sense, an affirmation of nominalism.
Anyhow, this scenario has come up, very many times. Yet in the age of discovery, people became translators between languages that were about as unrelated as you can get very rapidly. And children were soon born in contexts where they were native speakers of both languages, and as far as I am aware, this never led to reports by native bilingual individuals that "actually, all these translations are inadequate, they don't really understand each other!"
One of the weird things about many empiricist doctrines is that the quiddity of things, their intelligible whatness, and phenomenology as a whole, is considered "unobservable." It's always seemed to me that this is sort of strange, what could be more observable? In general, it seems that "unobservable" tends mean something more like "difficult to impossible to quantify or model, and thus something that must be excluded."
I don't even necessarily disagree with this, I just don't think it shows much of anything. From the IEP article on this:
There is a sort of parallel between this and what Rodl is saying about not removing the thinker from thoughts. What exactly is meant by "third person" here? We learn things like language by doing, so already this is potentially falling into the old empiricist mistake of seeing the knowing subject as largely passive. But moreover, to the extent that the goal is a "view from nowhere" or a "view from a blank slate" it also erases the real language learner, leaving behind a set of observations with no observer. The appeal to Cartesian "infallible a priori knowledge" also strikes me as an implied false dichotomy. Either we adopt a certain sort of empiricism, or we're with Descartes; but there is plenty of room for a via media here.
As general as "justice" or "beauty?" I don't think so.
:up:
Exactly. But the problem also comes up when people want to give a single, comprehensive, univocal definition to these terms, or if it is assumed that they can be decomposed.
Quoting Banno
Where to from here? Quine had little time for essences.
Nowhere, my only point is that the example, with the presuppositions attached to it, assumes what it sets out to demonstrate.
Also, leaving aside the idea that an essence is a "set of properties," (bundle theory), I don't see how your exercise demonstrates much of anything. The idea of essences is not that some "items" cannot lack certain attributes, it's that they cannot lack those attributes [I]and still be the sort of thing they are.[/I] The essence is the "what it is to be" of a certain kind of thing.
So, if Socrates is a man, and "being human" is his essence, the counter example would be a possible world where Socrates does not possess the attribute of being human [I]and is still a human,[/I] an oak tree that [I]is not a tree[/I], etc. On the view that a corpse is not a man (i.e., death as substantial change) it's obvious that "Socrates," as merely an item/body, can cease to have his essence. Socrates can be eaten by a tiger and his flesh and bones can become tiger flesh and bones, which can in turn become part of insects, fungus, plants, rocks, etc.
What, the fact that you don't seem to have even grasped the very basics of what you're talking about?
Tell you what, essences and essential properties are still very popular in philosophy. If your argument actually dispatches them in a few sentences, instead of failing to understand what an essence is, you should have absolutely no problem getting it published. It should quickly become one of the most cited articles in metaphysics. Go for it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think you're pointing to there being limit-cases in all of this, which is fine. Neither I nor (I believe) Quine is trying to say that translation is impossible or even, in most cases, especially problematic. Rather, we're trying to shake up a very common assumption among philosophers, which is that there is some sort of binding action (I called it "metaphysical Superglue" elsewhere) that makes a word inseparable from its object or meaning or concept -- take your pick of these imprecise terms. ("Cannot be grounded in any infallible a priori knowledge," in the words of the SEP article.) One of the pernicious effects of this belief is that, if someone wants to argue for a conceptual change, they're told they can't because "that's not what the word means."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
OK, for the sake of this argument, that would mean that a rabbit has an essence, a quiddity, that the linguist grasps, right? And on some version of charity, he's going to attribute that same grasping of essence to the native. To me, all this reveals is that "gavagai = rabbit" is a likely guess, because we do indeed associate "thingness" or quiddity with objects that are spatially distinct from their surroundings (and in the case of the rabbit, it can also move about, a further point of distinction). Does this help us understand the relation of word and object, which I believe is Quine's point with "gavagai"? Not a rhetorical question -- you may well be seeing something here that I'm not.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
There may well be. Rodl devotes an entire chapter to discussing Nagel's "view from nowhere," and one of his criticisms is this problem of the "loss of the viewer" -- what it does to 1st person propositions.
Who held such a position though? I find this whole area of philosophy to be filled with straw men and ghosts. It's obvious that different peoples use different words for different things and that anything can be said in many ways. Poetry as far back as Homer and the Bible makes use of this.
This was, if anything, likely more obvious in ancient and medieval times when dialects, language groups, and practices varied over relatively tiny geographic areas. Today we live in a globalized, and so homogenized world. Whereas Herodotus, Xenophon, or Marco Pollo seem acutely aware of the dramatic differences between their culture and the "barbarians." An understanding that meaning varies with context, or that use helps to determine meaning is also very old. One could not identify fallacies of equivocation or develop theories of analogous predication otherwise.
I take it that Quine is mostly responding to his own immediate tradition, to Russell, the early Wittgenstein, Carnap, etc., yet I find nothing so naive as this in their own understanding, even if I do agree that something like the translation of language into logic or falsification conditions is probably unprofitable.
Yet if the point is that translation doesn't involve one single string of syllables or characters, the point is trivial. However, the conclusions drawn, e.g. the inscuratabiliy of reference, tend to be much more radical than this. The point of inscrutability isn't that we can also call Rome "the Eternal City," "capital of Italy," or "the largest city on the Tiber," or New York "the Big Apple," but rather the (initially at least, bizarre) claim that one can never refer to exclusively to Rome or New York City, but that we alway refer just as much/just as plausibly to very many other things (on some views, an infinite number).
Sure. One doesn't even need to assume some sort of realism, we could just assume a sort of loose scientific realism and reject meteorological nihilism (i.e. there are true/proper part/whole relations). Organs are a great example of proper parts.
Let's say our linguist is trying to discover the word heart. He sees the natives butchering a rabbit and, since he is an active participant, picks up the heart (which has been separated because, being a different organ with a different function, it is made of tough muscle and requires prolonged cooking that would spoil a liver, etc.). He gets a word in reply. He moves around the cook fire and picks up a deer heart. He gets the same word. Then he points to his own chest, and gets an affirmative response.
I would conclude that it is pretty obvious what the word means now. Different cultures have different words for the same organs because organs are distinct parts. To assume that the word might as well apply to any number of assemblages of empirical observations seems to me to presume that there aren't proper parts for us to identify.
Now, against this someone might complain that the word could just as well mean blood, or tough (because heart meat is tough), or chest. This already doesn't seem plausible, but we can just consider here that the linguist is going to have a vast number of interactions where they can actively pursue such distinctions. You could reference a pot of blood sausage being prepared for instance, if the concern is that "blood" is what is meant.
An opponent might backtrack even further and say that there is no way to know when one has received an affirmative or negative gesture. This just seems implausible; one doesn't need a common language to signal assent or dissent. Indeed, we can even understand other animals on this front, because communication is important. Someone who has never seen a dog before doesn't stand in utter confusion as to the dog's attitude towards them when they see it growling, bearing it's teeth, and readying to pounce, just as a sheep doesn't need to be exposed to dozens of wolves to know it should flee from them. The first is enough.
Right. Hearts are the types of things people have words for. The idea that some "set of behaviors" referencing hearts could just as well be applied to any number of bizarre, counter intuitive assemblages of properties, needs to take the human out of the learning process and leave nothing but a "set of observations" to be mapped to other sets of observations.
But to assume that human language could be arbitrary in this way seems to me to have already implicitly presupposed the very thing in question.
Plato, for one. When Socrates questions Euthyphro about the meaning of "piety," they are both assuming that there is a word, eusebeia, that corresponds correctly with a certain content or concept. Since they can't look it up in a dictionary and get a definition, they try out various possible concepts that the word might correspond to. So what is this about? Is it about conceptual investigation? Or is it about the meaning of a word? Would Plato be open to the idea that eusebeia is not wedded to a particular concept?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But think about this re Socrates. I believe he'd dispute it vigorously. Or at best he'd say, "Yes, this is no doubt true about what people do, but they shouldn't. Words mean one thing and not another. Hence my quest to understand the meaning of troublesome words like piety and justice -- surely someone can tell me what they mean?"
(In other words, don't take Quine literally as writing about translation problems only between languages.
This is about the word/concept relation generally.)
I also take MacIntyre's idea that we've lost the meaning of classical terms to exemplify this. The assumption seems to be a kind of "one word, one meaning" theory, so that if A comes along and says,"I'd like to use 'virtue' and 'essence' in the following ways" (giving cogent reasons, we'll assume), B replies, "No, you can't, for that is not what 'virtue' and 'essence' mean."
But it's the general tendency I'm more concerned about, and I think Quine was concerned about too. We see it here on TPF. People will quote dictionary definitions or squibs from SEP as if these could lock down the connection between word and concept. There are of course many words you can do that with, but precious few, I'd argue, in philosophy. "Gavagai" means "rabbit"? Fine, but does "justice" mean dikaiosyne? Does "justice" pick out the same things for us that dikaiosyne picked out for Plato? How do we tell? And does it matter as much as we might think it does? Isn't the conceptual map itself more important than the shifting labels?
I want to respond to a couple more points you raised but I'm out of time right now . . . later!
To start, it might be helpful to recall that, pace modern practice, when Aristotle is talking about definitions he is talking about the definitions of things, not words. From what I understand, this was common practice, and this certainly seems to be what Socrates is involved in. A key idea here is that definitions can be more or less correct; a definition is not just "however a word is currently used." This is obviously not how dictionaries come up with their definitions. They add a sense when a word begins to be commonly used in an equivocal manner. It's closer to scientific classification, or questions like "are viruses a living organism?" (i.e. proper per se predication re viruses).
Anyhow, in the Euthyphro I think Plato is getting at knowing what piety is, not what the word piety means. I don't see how he is committed to the idea that some particular combination of syllables or characters uniquely maps to it. Indeed, a big thing he focuses on is that we often fail to reach such concepts in our words and propositional thought.
The notion of pros hen, analogical predication is his student Aristotle's, but the grounds for it in his own work is pretty clear.
Indeed, Plato denigrates words in a number of places. Words can only speak to relative good, not the Good. D.C. Schindler has a pretty good treatment of this in "Plato's Critique of Impure Reason," but it can be found most explicitly in Letter VII, where he explains why he has never and will never write something like a dissertation on metaphysics. Rather, such knowledge must be gained by "a long time and a life lived together, as one candle flame jumps to another."
But this would be to elevate the mutable, contingent sign to the level of what it is [I]a sign for[/I] (confusing the mutable and immutable/intelligible). IMO, St. Augustine, probably the most influential Platonist, stays pretty true to Plato in his semiotics, in which corporeal signs only direct our attention to what is intelligible. The triangle drawn in chalk that directs our attention in geometry class is not the triangle grasped by the intellect.
Now, in Augustinian semiotics these problems in translation could be overcome because one understands the intelligible by looking "inwards and upwards.," not by comparing sets of behaviors and conducting statistical analysis on them or something of that sort. Knowledge is a sort of self-knowledge. The relationships between mutable and corporeal (not to mention contingently stipulated) signs and mutable objects is decidedly not the sort of thing one "grasps noetically." To focus on them is to swan dive into multiplicity.
But we might suppose there is also a happy medium between the high flying "noesis-focused" approach of Augustine and limiting ourselves to a "third-person" view that requires us to consider how some sort of blank slate Bayesian AI would come to corelate words with phenomena based on a data feed of empirical measurements. As Gadamer points out, you can't begin any analysis without some prejudices, and so we need not attempt to flee from them, which wouldn't work anyhow.
It's probably helpful to take a look at MacIntyre's inspiration, A Canticle for Leibowitz. There, people have lost most scientific knowledge and are just aping the forms of science as a sort of a blind tradition.
On most views, all scientific knowledge claims are not equally correct. Hence, the problem here isn't supposed to simply be one of conceptual drift, with any and all concepts having equal standing and the only difficulty being translation. Rather, the problem is that the degenerated "science" is muddled and incorrect, misunderstanding its subject matter. In some sense, what is left is the form/signs and not the intelligible content.
But the assumption here isn't "one word, one meaning." It is "there are ways to be more or less correct about virtue." Thracymachus has his reasons for asserting that justice is whatever is to the advantage of the stronger. He is simply wrong about what justice is. Disputes over the "meaning of justice" are only going to appear totally irresolvable if one already starts off by assuming that there is no way to be more or less correct.
The essential idea isn't "the word justice ? justice" but rather that thereis such a thing as justice, it is not simply a bundle of mutable associations.
Lots of good stuff in your reply. Let me begin by focusing on this:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
How would we know when one was correct?
Well, suppose someone gave a definition of "tiger" as: "a large purple fish with green leaves, a tap root, and horns." Clearly, this is off the mark and we can do better or worse (although in this case, not much worse).
Anyhow, to return to the difference between words/signs and what they signify, we could consider "Samuel Clemens" and "Mark Twain," which would seem to extend to the same person, having the same referent, such that everything that is true of one is true of the other.
Yet:
"Samuel Clemens's pen name was Mark Twain"
Cannot be swapped with:
"Mark Twain's pen name is Samuel Clemens."
And remain true.
Likewise: "Mark Twain topped the best seller list for much of the late-19th century" is true. Swap in "Samuel Clemens" and we might still consider it true, but in another sense it isn't, since one could search the lists and find nary a mention of "Samuel Clemens."
It's obvious that people aren't their names. Samuel Clemens is 13 letters long, but the man is not composed of letters or syllables, nor is Mark Twain 13 letters long. And obviously we might replicate some of this with man and homo sapiens, etc.
Sense versus reference. But in natural language, reference is often ambiguous, and for abstractions like, say, "justice," some will claim that there either is no reference or that the reference and sense collapse. Whereas a realist would presumably claim that there is a referent, be it an "abstract object/form" or else a principle. I would argue Socrates generally wants to get to the reference of "piety," "justice," etc., and is dealing with something like muddled senses/intentions. Thracymachus wants to refer to justice, but what he means by "justice" isn't justice, or is a cloudy, inadequate sense of justice.
Or, to introduce other terms, neo-scholastics might grant Hegel and co. that something like "concepts" evolve. But they instead like to say our "intentions" evolve, hopefully becoming more clear. Or as Sokolowski puts it, we "more fully grasp the intelligibility of things through the course of the 'Human Conversation.'" But for them, the "concept" stays the same, because we're thinking about the same thing. For instance, when we say "water is H2O," we still are referring to the same water our cave man ancestors knew quite well.
With a principle, we might have it unequally realized in a diverse multitude, as with beauty, goodness, justice, etc. And we might want to predicate this term analogously of different things, and I guess that's where the use of modern terminology breaks down because analogy has proven difficult to formalize (but also began to be neglected on primarily theological grounds originally).
So, if the Good is "that to which all things aim," and what is "choiceworthy," it might still be the case that things are good in very different ways, as signs of goodness, symptoms of goodness, etc. And obviously goodness will be contextual. I think St. Thomas uses the example of "walking being healthy for man," (and so presumably good for man), but obviously not if you have a broken ankle. Yet it is good to walk on a broken ankle if you need to escape an artillery barrage.
Anyhow, confusingly, I think Plato (or at least Platonists) would often want to have it that there is one referent, a Good, referred to in all goodness, even as respects what merely appears good, yet also that there are many goods. There is "the human good," and "finite goods," plural, and these can also be referents in some sense. I don't think the idea of unequal "possession," "participation," or "virtual quantity," plays all that nice with a lot of modern terminology here. Plato's analogy of the sun might be best. Everything is light in virtue of the sun's light, but they all reflect light differently and in doing so reflect their own image, and they really do have their own image, but it's also only in virtue of the sun that they can possess and reflect this image.
Good. But putting the question in terms of "correct" rather than "incorrect" has a point, so if you wouldn't mind playing interlocutor with me, I'll ask again: How would we know the correct definition of "tiger"? This is going somewhere if you'll bear with me!
Presumably if it specifies the things in virtue of which all tigers are tigers, while not having anything that isn't a tiger fall under the definition. "Animal" for instance, seems essential. DNA, by contrast, won't work (or won't work alone) because a tiger liver or tiger blood has tiger DNA, but is not a tiger.
How this is accomplished might vary. Aristotle, for instance, allows for many types of definition. One way, given certain metaphysical assumptions, would be a substances genera and species-specific difference. Another way, provided one assumes that reality is adequately mathematically describable, might be to look at things as information-theoretic structures and identify all the morphisms shared by some type of thing. This is impossible in practice though. The other difficulty here is that the things that we might think most properly have essences are living things, and they have natures precisely in that they are goal directed, but how to get goal-directedness, let alone intentionality, from information is anyone's guess (if it can be done). So we might well be missing a key component. Likewise, any phenomenological aspect of something seems difficult to account for in this way.
I'd argue that a key part of what makes discrete things discrete is their resistance to divisibility (unity) and capacity for self-organization. And while this might be greatest in living things, it also shows up in atoms and molecules. These are divisible, but it normally isn't easy to divide them, which is part of why they are often offered up as the paradigmatic "natural kinds" outside the example of living things (although stars, planets, galaxies, etc. might be similar in this respect).
That furnishes a fine example, the periodic table. "Atom with 79 protons," seems to cover gold pretty well. It also seems possible to give a definition of stars such that it doesn't allow anything in that isn't a star, nor exclude any stars. But it's also important to note that a definition doesn't need to be something like a set or some sort of mathematical description. Whether such things would be appropriate depends, I suppose, on metaphysical assumptions. I'd argue that, at the very least given current tools, these methods fail because they cannot capture the quiddity of things and so are a poor match for defining the "what-it-is-to-be" (essence) of things.
Perhaps. I had in mind Fine's rejection of Quine's holism. Kripke's origin essentialism works well. One might make sense of essences by using Searle's status functions; something along the lines of Fine's argument but using "counts as..." to set up what Fine calls a definite.
That is, remaining on it's own colour might arguably be a part of the essence of being a bishop, since a piece that did not remain on it's own colour could not count as a bishop.
But that might not sit well with your suggestion that things have essences that are grasped rather than granted.
But leave it. Let's see where @J is going.
This looks like an invalid argument:
Quoting J
Like @Count Timothy von Icarus, I have never in my life heard of any philosopher falling into such a position. Socrates regularly recognizes that others are using words differently than he is. He could not spend so much time trying to refine and correct the meaning of words if he didn't think they could be used differently.
Socrates knew, for example, that people who speak languages other than Greek can also talk about the same things that Greeks talk about.
Quoting J
Why would we change the name? What would it mean to have a "better" name? What is characteristically happening here is that you are confusing naming with signification (and this is common among Analytics). The reason philosophers appeal to a "super glue" is because they want to talk to each other, and they can't talk to each other without using words in the same way. It isn't a metaphysical point, it is a dialogical point. Hence "immediate signification":
Quoting Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 3
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Quoting J
This is another example of confusing naming with signification. The retort you offer is significant, "That is not what Goodness means." Meaning and naming are two different things.
Quoting Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 2
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Quoting J
I think that if we reflect on this, we should be able to overcome the strawman which says that what is at stake is a name-concept pairing. What is really at stake is a conceptual matter: the disagreement is that both parties agree that, for example, 'good' = the desirable, and yet they are disagreeing on what is truly desirable (i.e. "Rational self-interest"). The substantive dispute is over the question of whether rational self-interest is foundationally desirable, not over the question of whether the token g-o-o-d must always be attached to a particular concept.
The reason confusion arises in these contexts is because we almost never think in terms of material tokens or phonemes (and so we are prone to misunderstand when someone is using a token differently). But because of this, disputes are not usually simply over material tokens or phonemes. When someone says, "That's not what goodness is," they are not saying, "That's not what the material token g-o-o-d-n-e-s-s metaphysically attaches to." They are arguing over a normative concept, such as desirability or proper conduct or somesuch thing.
Yep, and if we want to say that this is not a tiger then we are already appealing to the idea of an essence.
Folks like to say, "Well, unless you can give me the perfectly correct (real) definition of a tiger, I won't accept that essences exist," which looks like sophistry to me. It's like saying:
Do you disagree?
:up:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sounds reasonable. Now suppose there was a disagreement about the first part. A and B offer different specifications of what the essential tiger qualities are. How would they resolve this?
Again, I know this sounds a little baby-stepping, but if you'll indulge me? I just want to lay out the reasoning as simply as possible, with your help.
But they don't. That's the whole problem.
Potentially. In its original context and much philosophy since, a chess piece is not the sort of thing that has an essence though. Artifacts wouldn't have an essence. What is a chair? Well, you can use all sorts of things to sit on and you can also make tiny chairs no one can sit on.
Essences would belong to organisms most properly, maybe other natural kinds. Bundle theories are big in analytic philosophy so it has focused on essential properties instead of essences, and often on modal definitions. Aside from the problem of allowing for seemingly arbitrary essences and making random unrelated logical truths part of any essence, this has the difficulty of being completely unable to distinguish between per se accidents and what makes something what it is, e.g. all plants grow, but growing isn't what makes them plants, or all men have flesh and bones, but this doesn't specify them as men.
I think a crucial distinction missed in most analytical attempts to return to essences is that they aren't supposed to be something like a mathematical/logical entity. To assume this would be to presuppose that "what it is to be" something is reducible to such a thing.
What are you talking about?
Can you give examples of philosophers who don't think goodness has anything to do with desirability? Emotivists and nihilists tend to say something like "goodness is just personal preference," which is obviously talking about desirability. Kantians refer to desirability, as do utilitarians, as do advocates of rational self-interest. I can't think of anyone who claims goodness has nothing to do with choiceworthyness. And I can't think of any common language usage where "this is a good car," or "Chris is a good man," doesn't speak to choiceworthyness either.
By considering what tigers are.
You seem to be getting at "but people disagree, hence there can be no fact of the matter." But people disagree about the shape of the Earth, the germ theory of disease, the rules of chess, if the Holocaust happened, or whether one should be allowed to rape and pillage by "right of conquest" too. Does disagreement imply there is no fact of the matter?
Conversely, does agreement imply there is a fact of the matter? Because, in the case of tigers, toddlers from across the world can already pick them out as distinct animals and languages across the world identify them as a distinct species, as does zoology. But again, levels of agreement and disagreement, while perhaps rough evidence, would only be decisive is one has already assumed that there are no essences, no such beings as tigers, but merely bundles of properties and sense data that can be correlated with stipulated signs based on various morphisms.
Anyhow, if persistent disagreement were evidence that there is no fact of the matter then virtually nothing is true.
I will just repeat what I said above: "I think a crucial distinction missed in most analytical attempts to return to essences is that they aren't supposed to be something like a mathematical/logical entity. To assume this would be to presuppose that "what it is to be" something is reducible to such a thing." And we could say the same thing of substantial form, eidos, etc.
This is in some sense, to assume something like the "superglue" you mentioned, no? But that's how a lot of questionable philosophy is done. We take a bad assumption, like the "superglue," show it cannot be right, and then assume that we've dispatched some tangentially related notion on the grounds that "if not-A, then B." But essences don't presuppose that there is some unique formal entity that specifies what it is to be something, they presuppose that there are such things as ants and tigers.
Quine's inscrutability of reference. It's that there's no fact of the matter regarding a speaker's reference.
On my understanding, the Kantian deontological approach is not about goodness as desirability. It is about goodness as following the dictates of practical reason. A person who does this may be called good, though as you know Kant focused more on "right" as the key ethical term.
Now of course you can reply, "But isn't following the dictates of practical reason desirable?" or "Shouldn't we desire to be good in this way?" But that cannot represent the moral motive, as Kant sees it. To insist on desirability here is simply to misunderstand or disregard what Kant is arguing. For him, it's all about what is right, not what is desirable. Whether I find the good desirable is neither here nor there.
This is a huge topic. Do we really want to pursue it here?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure. But please be patient with me and describe the process a little bit. Let me show you where I'm heading: It's got nothing to do with disagreement = no fact of the matter. Only a skeptic or a sophist would say there's no way to decide what a tiger is. Rather, I'm working toward understanding what we need to refer to in order to resolve a disagreement about what I'll call "essentiality" (or perhaps you have a term you prefer). And this in turn will set up, I hope, the problem of how this transfers over to philosophical disagreement about words. It's all in aid of clarifying the very important distinction you brought up between defining a word and "defining" an object. (Though I will also argue that we should drop that latter usage on grounds of awkwardness and ambiguity.)
If you find this tedious, just say so. I like it very much as a philosophical process of inquiry, but I know it's not for everyone . . . very slow-moving.
You think they are just disagreeing over whether an arbitrary set of letters should be correlated to a concept? And that that is what Quine was worried about? Do you honestly think that when people argue over what goodness means, they are arguing over which concept we should correlate with the text-token g-o-o-d-n-e-s-s?! You are deflating these disagreements into vacuous, non-existent disputes. The point Quine is actually making is that communicating an "immediate signification" is never guaranteed or sure.
"Rational self-interest" is not a name, it is a concept. That's your basic error.
For Kant practical reason refers to the capacity of human beings to determine what they ought to do. On your view, does Kant not think it is choiceworthy for people to do what they ought to do?
This strikes me as bizarre. Kant absolutely does think that people should choose what they ought to do. Hence, he thinks it is desirable.
Your disagreement might make sense on the common modern definition that "desire absolutely only ever relates to appetites and passions" and that whatever is "desirable" is only ever what we currently have a passion or appetite for. In that case, sure, we might not have an appetite or passion to do what we ought. This is simply equivocation, though, desire as specifically "a (current) passion or appetite" versus desirability as "any aim actually worth pursuing." The word is used in both ways, so just take "choiceworthy."
Kant thinks doing what one ought is an aim actually worth pursuing, and utilitarians think happiness or pleasure is worth pursuing, and nihilists think there is no fact of the matter as to what is worth pursuing, but that people use "good" to signal their preferences on this matter, whereas the relativist thinks desirability is entirely relative to cultural preferences. But no one says that a culture that thinks courage is good is also a culture that doesn't think people should be courageous, or that "raping is bad" says nothing about the choiceworthyness of being a rapist. A nihilist might claim that others saying "raping is bad" says nothing about the choiceworthyness of rape, but they can hardly remain coherent and allow that an individual who thinks raping is bad also thinks that, all else equal, they should choose to rape.
Again, the meta-ethical dispute seems a long way off from Quine and reference, which was what piqued my interest.
Right, and some postmodernists are dogmatic skeptics even to the extent that their inner demon compels them in this way, "There can be no fact of the matter, therefore..." This is pluralism-as-first-principle, and it comes up in J's posts a lot. For example, "There can be no fact of the matter, therefore these people must be arguing for 'metaphysical super-glue', a sheer impossibility." One thus begins to look for ways to prop up intractable disagreement, in part by shifting attention towards grounds for intractability, however fictional. This isn't super common. Moral philosophy aside, I think the only other poster who moves in this direction of pluralism as a first principle is Moliere.
It can be. Like I said, if desirability is taken as just referring to feeling, desire as "whatever we currently have an appetite for" then it doesn't seem that it should be a synonym, since we can clearly have an appetite for something and not think we should choose to act on that appetite.
But then "desirability" and "desirable" are normally predicated of things, often in the third person, and so the association of desire with current personal sentiment alone, seems insufficient. The two only collapse if one assumes that nothing is actually more or less desirable, but that desirability is solely a function of what people currently desire, which seems to be saying something very similar to "nothing is truly good" but "good" is "a function of our current preferences." For, to say "x is truly most desirable," that this is fact and not opinion or mere feeling, seems equivalent with saying "x is truly best."
I suppose the equivocation shows up depending on if one assumes that there is an appearance/reality distinction in desirability. Not only "what we desire" but "what we ought to desire," or "what we would desire if we knew the truth."
To return:
Well, given we agree that there are such things as tigers, stars, and daffodils, it would be whatever makes those things the sort of thing they are and not anything else.
Here might be a helpful lens, even though I don't agree with it. Existential Thomists speak of a primary "act of existence." Everything, in existing, participates in this act. However, there are different sorts of things in the world. So they don't all participate in this act in the same exact way. The differences in how they participate are their essence. Essence is "what something is," existence is "that it is." And this is how you get to the idea that essence doesn't explain existence. What a tiger is doesn't imply that tigers should exist.
Now, of course this isn't quite right, because things have accidental properties. A tiger with green paint stuck on it, or a severed leg, doesn't stop being a tiger. So the "what it is" is restricted to the type of thing something is, what makes something a star, ant, etc. I don't know where you would look for this but "in" the things and our knowledge of them. Aristotle says essence isn't "in" things, but you might say it is "in" them in a trancedentalese sense. That is, essence isn't a component of things, a part, or spatially located in things, it's what they are.
Bundle theory suggest everything is just a bundle of properties. So to find essences, look for properties you cannot remove without changing what a thing is. Hylomorphism suggests that what something is is a function of its form/act, and that the type of thing a thing is is due to substantial form. The difference is that it is not clear that substantial form is decomposable into properties, atomic or otherwise. It's not reductionist in the way bundle theories are. We might suppose that being a man or ant is irreducible. To perhaps misleadingly mix areas of philosophy, we might say substantial form is emergent on any underlying matter substrate.
No. He was saying there is no fact of the matter regarding a speaker's reference. If you're interested in what I'm saying right now, you won't find anything in the world, any state of things, that tells you it must be this. He gives examples of why that is.
You can work to show why his argument is wrong. For instance, if it has logical problems, pick those out. If some fact clearly contradicts his conclusion, show that.
So would it be fair to say that, in the example of the tiger, we must refer to the tiger itself? And a disagreement about the tiger's "essentiality" (or definition, if you prefer) would be investigated by saying, in effect, "Let's return to the tiger. Let's examine him more closely in the relevant aspects so we can learn which of us is right"?
Is that about how you see it? (I do too.)
We've been over that a bit. Quine's starting premises are dubious, and in particular there have been a great many challenges to his holism, although the particular sort of "view from nowhere" behaviorism assumed strikes me as more obviously objectionable. Also the idea that our own sense of what we are referring to is "unobservable." I can observe it fine.
However, even in the argument itself there are questionable leaps. The second linguist thinks to himself: "ah, what if this culture only recognizes clouds of particulars and no wholes, maybe they only ever refer to parts of things like feet."
But a foot or ear does constitute a sort of whole. And anyhow, is there any culture on Earth that does this? No. Any language with no universals? No. Which might lead us to assume that the premises involved are wrong. Is such a culture plausible if wholes do exist?
Here is the thing: if an implicit premise is that there are no things to refer to, only arbitrary coorelations of sense data/observations and stipulated sounds, then it seems Quine has simply begged the question.
The important thing here is to set out what one believes Quine's intended conclusion was. I would suggest avoiding vague words like 'fact' in setting that out. My point was that it has nothing to do with J's theory about so-called "metaphysical super-glue," and it looks like we agree on at least that much.
I don't see how his holism is a premise for inscrutability of reference. Could you flesh that out? And I don't know what you mean by "view from nowhere" behaviorism. What work is that from?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The point was that nothing settles the issue of whether the speaker was referring to a whole, or referring to a part. Do you disagree with that? If so, what would tell the linguist what the speaker was referring to? What state of the world? What fact?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I kind of wanted you to stop guessing at what Quine's views are and zero in on what he actually thought.
Quoting Banno
Quoting J
If Quine is right, then how could we be confident? If we can be confident, then how could Quine be right?
If it doesn't have an exciting result when applied to rabbits, then why did Quine apply it to rabbits?
No one here is taking Quine seriously. It makes no sense to say, "Quine's argument is sound, but we can still communicate our references anyways."
I would submit that just as for Hume we cannot know causes, so for Quine we cannot know references. The presuppositions of the systems ensure the validity of these inferences, and if we want to deny the conclusions we must deny the presuppositions of the systems. We can't just say, "Oh well. We can be pretty damn confident." To do that is to beg the question. If we can be confident about causes or references, then Hume or Quine must be wrong.
@Count Timothy von Icarus is simply avoiding the question-begging. He sees that if "we can be pretty damn confident/justified" then Quine must be wrong. He also sees that if philosophy of language is first philosophy, then Quine is not wrong.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
yet
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So essence "specifies the things in virtue of which all tigers are tigers, while not having anything that isn't a tiger fall under the definition" but "isn't a component of things, a part, or spatially located in things, it's what they are"; the essence of gold is given by it's atomic number but it is not the essence of a bishop in a chess game to remain on its own colour, essence is not reducible to a logical entity, whatever that is, essence does not explain existence and is transcendental. When a child sees a tiger they recognise it as such by some sort of communion with it's essence.
Hm.
https://medium.com/@ranjanrgia/thought-experiment-1-gavagai-70ae1bfc792a
Does it show, as put it, that there's no fact of the matter regarding "Gavagai" referring to the rabbit?
And can folk see how this is quite different to Quoting Darkneos
Edit: And the funny thing here is that a pro-essence argument could exactly parallel the "confidence" argument. "Quine has an argument that reference is inscrutable. But reference isn't inscrutable so his argument must be wrong." "The anti-essentialist has an argument that we can't know what tigers are. But we do know what tigers are so his argument must be wrong." Of course we can argue about what Quine's argument does or is meant to do, but apparently we all agree that it does not undermine reference.
The atomic number is a good definition. It's not the essence. The only thing with the essence of a tiger would be a tiger, not a collection of symbols.
I don't see "essence is transcendental." What is that supposed to mean?
Logical entity is a data science term that seems to fit suppositions about what it would mean to define something in a lot of "everything can be quantified" thought.
Quine didn't say we aren't confident about agreement. He said there is no fact of the matter regarding a speaker's reference.
Quoting Leontiskos
No, it doesn't. You could say we understand one another through empathy, for instance.
Was he right?
So there is no "fact of the matter"* about reference, but we can still know reference through empathy? I'm not sure how that would work, despite the newfound powers that empathy is continually granted in our day and age.
* Again, "fact" being a weasel-word.
It's food for thought. :cool:
It sounds like you're saying I'm wrong because the world is going to hell. :razz:
So what the essence of tiger is, what makes it a tiger. Ok, what makes it a tiger?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
How do we make sense ofQuoting Count Timothy von Icarus You seemed to say there that essence is transcendental, but now you say it isn't. I don't know what it is supposed to mean.
I do not understand what an essence is, for you.
Can you show how Alex, in the story, can determine the referent of "gavagai"?
Suppose that understanding you requires that I put myself in your shoes. I must look at the world through your eyes. When I do that, the million things your speech could mean narrows down. Now I can test the waters to narrow it down even further. This would mean I understand you to the extent that our experiences are similar.
What we let go of in this scenario is that notion that words and sentences are little trollies carrying meaning as a payload. We're saying communication works because we're siblings with the same cultural birthright.
Quoting Banno
I agree that common ground underlies the scrutability of reference, but Quine would presumably ask how linguistic common ground could be established in the first place. (We are driving at the truth that philosophy of language is not first philosophy.)
Now either you have an answer about your claim that "we can be pretty damn confident" or you don't. If you do, answer. If not, stop playing games.
Yes. He'd need to live with the natives for a while to build empathy.
Again, here you go:
Quoting Leontiskos
(immediate signification)
Now your turn. If you would progress this thread, address the confidence problem.
And therefore in order to understand language we must study something other than language, no? He requires more than language.
Quine showed a problem with interpretation. Davidson showed how charity allowed us to be confident of our interpretations. @Darkneos misunderstood the discussion. Tim thinks it's about essences. Leon has not shown that he understands any of this. Frank has.
Then we'll leave it at that.
Where?
Address the Gavagai problem. It's the basis of this thread.
:lol:
You're a joke, man. You're straight up lying about things, such as the idea that I've said, "Yes, [Quine] is clearly wrong." Or when you just remove quotation marks from my words to claim that I am saying something I am quoting. Stop lying. Stop being dishonest.
Show us where Quine is wrong. Or agree with him. At the very least, show some recognition of the actual arguments involved.
My interlocutor keeps lying. Quite relevant.
Show that you understand the gavagai example.
(Oderberg would be another source that comes to mind.)
Interesting. One of mine refuses to engage in the topic at hand.
From my first post here:
Quoting Banno
Now, what do you make of the gavagai example?
Things have characteristics, not essences. So, what's the problem if one or a few characteristics are neglected? It would only be a problem if some other object possessed all the same characteristics, and the few that have been omitted by the list were the very ones the other object did not possess.
It's not a matter of listing every part that constitutes a car (or tiger), but of listing that set of attributes which only cars (or tigers) possess.
Quoting Leontiskos
What do I "make of it"? It seems clear to me that translation is underdetermined to some extent. What is Quine's intended conclusion? I don't think it is as radical as is being assumed. In a 1970 paper he says that the gavagai example is very limited, and demonstrates the inscrutability of terms rather than indeterminacy of translation of sentences.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting SEP
__________________
Quoting Leontiskos
Good. So will we agree that Quoting Darkneos
is a misapprehension of the argument Quine makes?
I have a laundry list of things I think are wrong with the presuppositions in play, but let's just start with a naive bit plausible, obvious rebuttal, which is that Quine is simply defining what it would take for words to have a reference wrong. Words refer to whatever we intend then to refer to. They are signs we produce in accordance with our ends and thoughts.
After all, when someone says "my head hurts," or "that car outside," (and there is only one car outside) they mean to specify something unique and every competent speaker of the English language can figure out what they are referring to.
Now, there is an obvious problem with that thesis, which is that sometimes people use the wrong word to refer to things. Someone says "the capital of Illinois," to refer to Chicago, or refers to your sister as your girlfriend, etc
Of course, it doesn't seem Quine can avail himself of this objection to "reference is intended reference" given his commitments, but that's ancillary.
Other thinkers have thought that, because of this, we should make a distinction. There is intended reference and then there is stipulated reference vis-a-vis what words refer to in a language. This is similar to "speaking truthfully" as saying what one believes to be true, as distinct from "speaking truthfully" in terms of saying what is true. Not unrelated, but not the same thing.
Anyhow, for the sake of argument, let's provisionally grant this thesis. There is at least reference as intended reference. Afterall, the rebuttal to this would need to claim that we never intend to reference things uniquely, which seems obviously false.
What does this do to Quine's conclusion? We might think it still mostly holds, only now it is a skeptical thesis. We can never know what other people intend to reference. (Essentially, we have thrown out the empiricist supposition that something must be "third person observable" to be said to exist, and granted first person intentions re reference existence.)
Now, we might look at this skeptical thesis and say: "wow this looks mighty familiar!" Because it's basically the same argument Wittgenstein has us consider about rule following. Whether any person is following a particular rule is always underdetermined. There are perhaps an infinite number of rules covering every previously observed pattern. But Wittgenstein is just making a special case of the more generalized arguments of undetermination. The problem with rules applies just as well for any thesis about regularities in nature. And unlike language and rule following, we cannot rely on empathy or a language community to help us out with nature.
But underdetemination applies to almost everything. It applies to the reliability of induction itself.
Crucially, it applies as much to all other mental states, qualia, etc. as to intended reference. Presumably, people actually do fall in love. Yet how do you ever know that someone is really in love? Just consider incel anthropology. They claim all "love" is just transactional; it has nothing to do with sentiment (or sometimes, "only men can love, never women, they just manipulate for material gain"). But love would seem to be an intention, like intended reference. People can and do successfully fake it. Show me the set of "stimuli," in Quine's behaviorist terms, that ever uniquely specify love?
But if we cannot verify love using third person empiricism, have we thus demonstrated that no fact of the matter exists? Love doesn't exist?
And obviously, this would apply to all sorts of things. It would also apply to clearly insane delusions. Chesterton gets at this:
Is this good reasoning? Hume, for his part, admits we should, and must, write of the Problem of Induction for all practical matters. Quine, for his part, has us denying the the existence of what we cannot uniquely specify. But are the conditions he sets on there being facts about reference appropriate? If we use the same conditions, it seems we must not only be skeptical about all manner of things, but confirm that they don't exist.
He couches his arguments in behaviorist terms from the very lines of Word and Object. "In acquiring [language] we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively available cues as to what to say and when."
That's a bold premise. People might claim we understand words, at least in part, through private sensations and our own phenomenological experiences. They might further argue that phenomenological awareness is full of discreet, distinct objects, proper parts and wholes, that are given to awareness, and that this helps us learn language. For example, toddlers pick up the names of animals easily because animals stand out as discrete wholes from the background.
Such premises seem eminently reasonable to me.
"One must know where one rabbit ends and another one begins - that does not work by pointing (ostension) - where does a Gavagai end and where does another one begin? "
I forget if he argues for mereological nihilism in Word and Object, but I am fairly certain he does elsewhere unless I am confusing him with a disciple.
Yes I disagree with it. As shown above, if you can only say things exist by specifying them in terms of unique stimuli then all sorts of things don't exist. This is exactly the sort of argument some eliminitivists give to claim consciousness and qualia don't exist. Show me the unique stimulus corresponding to any qualia using Quine's behaviorist presuppositions about what can count as evidence.
It's a bad criteria. The conclusion should be a warning of that.
"Only" is an interesting claim, but you're presumably espousing some form of modal essentialism, which is a characteristically contemporary form of essentialism. That is, "Characteristics, not essences," is a non-starter given that essentialism is now most often defined in terms of characteristics (properties). See, for example, the SEP entry on Essential vs. Accidental Properties.
Quoting Leontiskos
Here is the issue I spot. Tigers are animals, and being an animal seems essential to what a tiger is. But not only tigers are animals. Likewise, being a tree is essential to what an oak is, but not all trees are oaks.
What is unique to oaks (assuming there is something outside of being an oak) doesn't seem like it would necessarily be what makes oaks oaks.
For instance, if only rhinos had horns, that would be unique. However, it wouldn't be the case that only rhinos had horns in all possible worlds (if the idea is modal), nor that if anything else with a horn came into being it would be a rhino (nor that rhinos would cease being rhinos if other horned animals came into existence).
What's interesting is that:
Quoting Janus
...we could take the set as a whole as what is unique. So revise it to, "which all and only cars (or tigers) possess," and the inclusion of 'only' vis-a-vis the set is actually a shift in the direction of traditional essentialism, insofar as we are honing in on a reality that is uniquely differentiable from all other realities. That is, Janus is not merely casting a net to collect entities of a particular type, but is also concerned to affirm a unique and repeatable constellation of characteristics. In modal terms this would be saying that essences do not ever strictly overlap.
Ah, that would resolve my issue. I may have misread
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's true. I think the individual characteristics are all necessary but only the whole set is sufficient to identify an entity or a kind of entity. And if there are other entities or kinds of entities that have the same set of characteristics then it would seem there must be at least one extra characteristic which is not shared by that other entity. I'm not sure I've expressed that in a way that is not open to equivocation, but let's see.
:up:
That is very much my take as well. Quine is in many respects a lot like Hume. He is a great diagnostician, running down the dominant assumptions of his time to see what follows. If what follows is prima facie a conclusion that could be considered a reductio, we should have questions about the starting assumptions.
Hume does the same thing with causation. It should make us question Enlightenment era views if causes of they force his conclusions on us.
Yes, provided we accept his definition of what counts as properly "empirical." This is what I mean by the assumptions being something like the "view from nowhere." It's a certain sort of restricted empiricism. That we intend to refer to things is something we experience, not something born of a priori knowledge. That we experience [I] things [/I]wholesthrough the senses, is known through sense experience. Wholes are known empirically in that sense. So the question is, should we accept the premises that lead to the restricted form of empiricism?
The larger problem though is that if concerns over underdetemination are valid, then induction is also radically questionable (Hume). If we take the more radical position that, "either something is empirically verifiable (given Quine's version of empiricism), or there is no fact of the matter about its existence," then it seems there cannot be facts about all sorts of things, including regularities in nature. This strikes me as straightforwardly self-refuting, in that it undermines the support for empiricism of this sort in the first place, since presumably we're supposed to accept it because of its successes (or the successes of the natural sciences it claims for itself).
However, I do agree with Quine that reference and meaning are, in some sense, ambiguous. Heisenberg had a neat theory of meaning based on his work in quantum mechanics where as you try to specify something more and more you lose meaning as you gain percision. I think you could also refer here to cognitive limits on how much of a description we can consider at once.
But I also think unconscious process do a lot of lifting in understanding. For example, if we know chaos theory well, we need not "unpack" complex principles in conscious awareness in order to grasp them and make judgements about them, even if slow, self-conscious discursive reasoning was originally required to understand them.
I think a lot of modern theories of mind would merely have this as "data compression," but this seems to necessarily leave out the phenomenal side of understanding and the phenomenal/intelligible "whatness" of things. Hence, the prior turn in the discussion to essences. Do we face an unintelligible noumena, some sort of soup of "constraints" and atomic bits, from which we must construct all intelligibility, or do things like tigers, people, and trees exist, with us equipped for knowing them?
Skepticism is the first principle of much modern thought (rather than sense wonder, which was the old popular candidate). So the idea is that we must withhold judgment on such questions until they are demonstrated (perhaps "with certainty." Likewise, we must withhold any judgement on first philosophy or any ordering to philosophy until it is demonstrated. This implies that one can start on language without needing to address if distinct things to refer to even exist, in either phenomenal awareness or the world. But obviously, skepticism can come close to begging the question here if arguments are to proceed with the idea that "we must reach our conclusions about language without essences because they are not proven," which simply cuts the legs out of many philosophies of perception and language.
Nor does it seem we can begin from nothing and decide what constitutes valid demonstrations, and yet all knowledge is assumed to be demonstrative in a lot of skepticism. For more radical empiricism, either something can be demonstrated or there is no fact about it at all.
Yet can anyone demonstrate that all knowledge is demonstrative or that knowledge is merely justified opinion? Since ancient times, people have observed the problem that, if all knowledge requires justification then one has to traverse an infinite chain of syllogisms to know anything. But here is a syllogism from another thread:
P1: If all knowledge was demonstrative we would need an infinite chain of justifications to know anything and one cannot consider an infinite number of syllogisms in a finite lifespan, making knowledge impossible. (This could be its own syllogism).
P2: But we do know things.
C: Therefore, not all knowledge is demonstrative.
If one rejects P1, they have rejected the grounds for complaining about "justification stopping somewhere." Either they affirm that we can consider an infinite chain of syllogisms or that we don't need to.
If they reject P2, then they are committed to the claim that they do not know if either P1 or P2 are true.
Popular interpretations of On Certainty, where Wittgenstein is essentially retreading Aristotle on this issue hit P1. "All knowledge is demonstrative, but it is ultimately demonstrated from what is not itself known." I am not sure if this is very helpful, as the extremely diverse interpretations of the consequences of this show, some of which are truly bizarre and essentially recreate the radical skepticism Wittgenstein wanted to avoid. And at any rate, it falls afoul of the, IMHO reasonable assumption in the Posterior Analytics that for proper demonstrations the premises should be better known than the conclusion. Whereas here, all demonstrations flow from what is not known at all.
"Tigerness" (if you like) for a modal essentialist would just be the essential properties of a tiger. If you think a tiger is defined by its essential properties then you're proposing some form of essentialism. I don't actually think that anyone is truly a non-essentialist, so it's not surprising that your intuitions lead you here.
Quoting Janus
When people start bringing out ideas like this I would say they have to try to justify their sine qua non historically. "If [insert absurdity] is not true, essentialism fails." The response, "Show where you are getting the idea that [absurdity] comes with essentialism." Objections to essentialism tend to be strawmen through and through.
This notion of a perfect form, eidos or essence is the traditional understanding of essentialism. You admit that essentialism is not monolithic, and yet you call criticism of the traditional thesis a strawman on account of its failure to be a cogent critique of, and even though it does not purport to be critiquing, what you call "modal essentialism". It seems that any strawmanning here is on you.
Not "perfect," just a substantial (type-of-thingal) form (actuality), which could be rendered "actual type of thing" or "what-it-is-to-be of certain types of thing."
The straightforward translation of essence is just "what-it-is-to-be" and form is what anything is, any whatness it has, and so to be anything at all, instead of sheer indeterminate potency (nothing) involves form.
I think what you've suggested is largely in line with that view, although there would be the further question of if what-a-thing-is is properly decomposable into properties. If it is, and say we have a set of properties like "animal" are these further decomposable? Is animal then a set of "living," "sensible," etc.? And if so, are these all decomposable? Certainly we can define and identify things in this way, so it makes sense that this might be "what makes them what they are," but there are issues.
For instance, if we answer affirmatively for all of the prior questions, it seems we face either an infinite regress of decomposition or else bottom out in some sort of atomic properties that are not decomposable (and thus all properties are made up of some combination of these basic properties). But I think it's fair to question either of those. Whereas, if various high level properties like "living" are not decomposable, why not "tiger" as well? Maybe a judgement call on each?
There is a phenomenological side to what things are, which is captured by eidos's original meaning, that seems particularly hard to reduce as well.
Where your definition would also differ from the traditional view is that the traditional essence is not simply definitive but rather constitutive due to a notion of formal causality. Being a tiger explains why tigers do what they do. And this is why artifacts don't have essences, and organisms are more proper beings with natures/essences than rocks, which are largely heaps of external causes. Proper beings exhibit more resistance to division, more self-determination, self-government, and self-organization, and so exhibit more of a principle of unity. And the nature/essence is that principle of unity in a particular sort of thing (substance). It's called in, in the Physics, to explain change. Why do things change like they do? Presumably not for no reason at all. The nature answer is, to some extent "because of what they are," although obviously nothing is fully self-determining nor self-organizing ex nihilo, and different natures interact in "chance" encounters.
What makes organisms most paradigmaticly possessing of essences is that they are ends-directed and seek aims. That could be considered just a property. It depends on the role such a principle would play in a full metaphysics.
So after all that wind, you agree with what was said.
If arguments from undetermination show there is no "fact of the matter" about something, how does this not also apply to the inverse square law, the theory of evolution, that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, that anyone is truly "in love" with anyone else, or the existence consciousness and qualia?
If only reference is uniquely ruled out by undetermination, why? Why not social rule following? But if rule following is undetermined for men, then surely it is for any "law-like or mathematical regularities" in nature. Historical anti-realists use this same sort of argument, "no set of sources and artifacts uniquely specifies that an event occured, there are no facts of the matter." The reliability of induction itself suffers from undetermination, while consciousness, qualia, love, pain, etc. all are going to fail to be uniquely specified by stimuli given the radical constraints on what is allowed to constitute "empirical" evidence.
Either the conclusion can somehow be quarantined to reference, or it implies an extremely radical sort of skepticism. Yet if you epistemic criteria imply radical skepticism, then that's the obvious place to look for your problem. Whereas, if the conclusion is only saved by radically redefining what is meant by "fact" and "truth of the matter"gross equivocationthan it isn't saying much, it starts to look like sophistry.
To be clear I mean
If I were to say something after you might be able to guess what I'm referring to. But there'd be no fact of the matter with respect to the reference -- your words will not change because I'm referring to them, and we can only decide which bits, or if all bits all the bits, not by referring to what is referred to but by talking.
Yes, I understand the underdetemination argument. As noted above, one can apply it to any manner of things other than reference. So is there no fact of the matter about any of these things either? Say, historical facts? Every historical narrative is underdetermined by the evidence. What about the laws of physics? These are also underdetermined.
Induction is deductively invalid. That the sun has risen every day for eons simply does not imply that it will rise tomorrow.
But our understanding of the sun rising is based on far more than just this simple inductive inference. It is also based on our understanding of the shape of the Earth, the movement of objects in the solar system and physics and astronomy generally.
For the sun not to come up tomorrow, the number of our beliefs that would have to be incorrect is quite large.
So while induction is not deductively valid, for Quine an inductive inference would be worth considering as true on the basis of it's place within our web of belief.
Similarly, our supposition that "gavagai" means rabbit might be worth considering on the basis of our other beliefs about the community we are interpreting.
We need to take care here. There need be no truth to the matter of what it is that "gavagai" refers to, but there might well be. If the men go off hunting gavagai and return with rabbits, and if they offer you gavagai and hand you rabbit stew, that may well suffice.
What's novel here is that Quine noticed how a fixed referent was not needed for "gavagai" to have a place in the doings of the community.
And, as for essences, one does not need to have at hand an "essence of gavagai" in order to make a comprehensive use of the term. The essence of gavagai is irrelevant.
This is a very different approach to that being taken by some folk hereabouts.
Notice also how Quine's view meshes with the idea of looking to use rather that fixing meaning. There is much overlap here with Wittgenstein. Neither give much credence to the need for deterministic, essentialist or intrinsic meaning.
That's not really addressing the question though. The skeptical thesis is one thing, the claim that there "is no fact of the matter" is another. But you both seemed to affirm that, for reference, underdetemination means there is no fact of the matter.
Yet if underdetemination (given what Quine allows as evidence) means there is no fact of the matter, then there is no fact of the matter about a vast number of things: historical events, whether anyone else has subjective experiences, etc.
Unless reference is somehow unique in "having no fact of the matter" because it is underdetermined. But I don't see why that would be. That was my question.
Now, it also seems strange to me to speak about "knowing" things of which there is no truth of the matter. Knowing certainly can't depend on truth if we can know things for which there is no truth of the matter/fact.
To say that there is "no fact of the matter" about something seems to suggest that claims about that thing aren't truth apt. But again, if underdetemination means there is no truth of the matter, then the claims of natural science wouldn't be truth apt either.
I am pretty sure Quine speaks of discarding beliefs at the center of our web of belief and developing "new webs of knowledge" and "exchanging systems of knowledge." But on any conventional view of truth and knowledge, one cannot drop some "knowledge" and adopt different, incommensurate and contradictory "knowledge" and have both be knowledge. These are two very different notions of knowledge, which makes sense, if you accept holism, but also seems like a case of equivocation.
:rofl:
(sorry... had to post that. I'll read the rest of your response now).
So, you are not talking about Platonic essentialism?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
OK, but what it is to be a particular tiger is not what it is to be any other tiger, because their forms are not identical. Leaving aside Plato's conception of transcendent forms, my limited familiarity with Aristotles idea of immanent forms does not think those forms in terms of sets or bundles of attributes or characteristics, as far as I know. I could be wrong about that, admittedly.
And you seem to be alluding to just this here:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Are the forms of things not constituted by their characteristics (leaving aside the further question of behavior)? And saying that being a tiger explains why tigers do what they do seems like a non-explanation which could be fleshed out by saying that how tigers are constituted enables them to do what they do, and if you included the brain in that constitution it would also explain (up to a point) why they do what they do. I say up to a point because individual tigers probably do not act exactly the same as other tigersthat is their behaviors may vary in small ways, since presumably no two tigers are exactly formally the same, and also the contingencies of experience may modify their behaviors somewhat.
Quoting Banno
Yes, indeed!
Absolutely true, given Quine's assumptions. However, if we take Quine seriously then we never need any particular belief to make sense of anything. There are always alternative explanations open to us to make any belief work.
Well, it would be more accurate to say that it doesn't matter if there is a fact of the matter... provided you get your rabbit stew.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes. There would still however be beliefs with differing strengths.
That is not to say that rabbit=gavagai is not truth-apt; but that the truth value is inferred and allocated as a part of our web of belief.
For Quine, any of our beliefs can be modified, but not all of them. Not unlike Wittgenstein's view on doubt form On Certainty.
Now there are all sorts of problems with Quine's view. But it is useful to have a better idea of what he was saying than just "because we have different words that we use for the same thing that there is no one referent for a specific thing".
Yep.
That's part of what makes Quine interesting. It's the whole web of belief that provides the explanation, not any individual belief.
I'm puzzled as to what a liger is. Is it a tiger? Is it a lion? Is it neither, or is it both?
Seems to me that this is not asking something about ligers, but about how we might best use the words "liger", "tiger" and "lion".
But if that's so, then asking if a liger is a tiger is not asking about essences of tigerness, but about word use.
Any thoughts?
Yes, I was thinking of the Aristotelian tradition, he coins the term essence. Plato's participation is fairly different.
We face the same infinite regress or atomism choice here that we did with properties, no? How do you explain the brain? Its parts. How do you explain those parts? Smaller parts. Etc.
Either we bottom out, and have to explain why some fundamental parts do what they do, or we have an infinite regress. But if we choose atomism, then we still seem to need a "because of what they are," type explanation of the fundamental parts, unless their actions are simply inscrutable brute facts.
But I feel like an added assumption of smallism needs to be tacked on here. "All facts about large things are reducible to facts about smaller parts." Prima facie, there is no reason to prefer this over bigism, "all facts about parts are only explainable in terms of the whole of which they are a part." The empirical track record of reductionism is not particularly strong, successful reductions are quite rare (unifications more common, maybe a point for bigism), so I am not sure about this assumption.
Anyhow, the bigism vs smallism debate is as old as philosophy and the entire idea of natures is to chart a via media between having nothing but clouds of inscuratble particles and just "one thing" the entire cosmos. It seems to me that philosophy of physics still has this problem. We either have atomism (less popular today it seems) or just a few (potentially unifiable) universal fields, with part(icle)s are only definable in terms of the whole field.
How to get minds from either also seems to be a vexing question, but more so for atomism. Either the fundamental building blocks are conscious, which seems bizarre at first glance, or you somehow get consciousness by stacking mindless atoms together.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
A very remarkable weakness of modern theories of reference is that they do not manage to account in any way for speakers' intentions, such as the Medieval theory of "immediate signification" does. This is why I think modern philosophers talk themselves in circles when it comes to reference, and all of this is related to philosophy of language as first philosophy. And it is certainly true that we cannot pretend that this bad theory of reference does not bleed into all sorts of other areas, such as belief, knowledge, doubt, etc.
The Humpty Dumpty theory of meaning? No, it's not very popular.
So this is a good example of the very post you were responding to. Here is my response:
Quoting Leontiskos
What source do you use to come to this idea about "this notion of a perfect form"?
It seems uncontroversial that Plato considered the forms to be perfect and their physical manifestations imperfect. Do you deny this?
Even Plato never claimed that we have perfect knowledge of the Forms, or that we can give a perfect account of the Forms.
That's not the point though. The point is that he conceived of the forms as perfectthe perfect circle (which does not exist in nature) being the archetypal example. Does the idea of an imperfect essence (in the traditional sense) make any sense?
We have from Plato for example ideas of The Good, Justice, Beauty, Truth. Does the idea of the essence of any of those being imperfect makes any sense?
It is the point, though, because you are giving the tired argument, "Show me a perfect essence if you want to justify essentialism," and I am saying, "What essentialist has ever claimed to have access to perfect essences?"
What essentialism says is that we have an imperfect grasp of essences. Someone who studies tigers or triangles has a better grasp of their nature than someone who does not study them.
Maybe if you wouldn't go around lying, trolling, and making up shit we would all save a bit of time. You still haven't managed to address the central issue raised <here>, but that's no surprise.
"If Quine is right, then how could we be confident"? See
This is just you having your cake and eating it, too. If reference is inscrutable then we cannot be confident. If we are justified in our confidence then reference is not inscrutable.
Quoting Banno
The chorus throughout this thread has been, "There is no fact of the matter. There is no fact of the matter. There is no fact of the matter." Now you have switched direction, "There need be no truth to the matter, but there might be." Your self-contradiction hasn't gone unnoticed.
I would say that:
Quoting Leontiskos
We are always in via, growing in knowledge, whether it be with essences or references or logic, etc. A robust epistemology of what is being referred to would note not only that 'gavagai' is underdetermined, but also that it is not indeterminate. "Gavagai" has something to do with rabbits. Even someone with a poor theory of language will understand that much. And the fact that signification can be narrowed down makes all the difference between underdetermination and indetermination. The experiences of the linguist constitute a narrowing of the meaning of "gavagai" to something that has to do with rabbits. Further narrowing can then take place, which is what actually happens in reality when folks learn new languages, even through pure immersion.
Quine's complexification of the situation fails if he thinks it shows that there is no starting point; that there is pure indetermination.
(And because substance metaphysics is true and widespread, most people will begin with the thesis that 'gavagai' names the rabbit rather than, say, its ear, and they will usually be right.)
But maybe we can get some content here. Let's go back to the bit you raised today - Humpty Dumpty. You used the phrase "immediate signification", which is from Lock, the notion being that the meaning of a word is the idea it represents in the mind of the speaker - is that something you might defend?
I was responding to Count, not exegeting Quine.
Quoting Banno
You are <the one who can't address the issue for the life of you>.
Quoting Banno
Trolls will troll. The ignorant will demonstrate their ignorance.
Quoting Banno
Wrong again.
I will make a thread that includes the topic of intentional reference/identity sometime in at least the next month. It will be a reading group, so trolling will not be tolerated.
Ok.
Is believing in essences from Plato? Is that how we're supposed to be sorting out reference? We're contacting the ideal?
Banno is not a good person to ask about this. He considered himself to have dispatched any notion of essence, still a quite active topic in contemporary philosophy, in a few sentences where he claimed he could imagine that Socrates was an alien.
Let me explain how essences even came up. Quine's conclusion is at odds with a great deal of contemporary and historical thought. If Quine is right, many others are wrong. Quine is a good logician, and so are many of the people he is disagreeing with, so if there is a seeming chasm of disagreement then the first place we should look is at the premises and terms.
I think it's fairly easy to show that other thinkers come to different conclusions about reference because they have different premises. In particular, what they take to count as proper epistemic evidence differs radically, whereas when it comes to "fact of the matter," I think there is a problem of equivocation. What Quine takes to be necessary for there to be some fact about something is radically different from many other notions of what constitutes "facts" (e.g. in mainstream analytic metaphysics.)
Essence came up because I was just throwing out examples of different starting premises that lead to different conclusions. For Quine, there are no discrete wholes out in the world to refer to. And what we have as evidence from the senses is based on the behaviorist notion of stimuli. We have energy interacting with nerves in a reductive physicalism.
For other thinkers, these are not going to be starting premises. There are discrete wholes, such as rabbits and tigers, and our senses directly communicate their existence to us. And because all humans are sensing the same discrete wholes (e.g. no culture lacks a notion of animals as wholes, or speaks only of "rabbit-like time slices"), the process of specifying reference is actually going to be much simpler (and what will constitute as evidence will also differ). In particular, people will intend to refer to discrete wholes they are aware of in many cases, the intended reference, and others will often be able to understand which discrete whole they are referring to. How many interpreters of Wittgenstein's "form of life" use it to help with communication, for instance, differs from Quine's assumptions in trying to specify observation sentences.
That said, "essence" is from Aristotle, it's just the Greek for "what it is to be," or simply "what it is" of a thing. Plato obviously has some notion of essence as well in that things are different sorts of things, although many Plato scholars will denigrate the sort of "two worlds " Platonism that often gets taught in introductory survey courses as terribly naive.
Essences, in a very loose sense, just commit us to the idea that there is something that makes different types of things different types of things. An opposing view would be that there are, strictly speaking, no "tigers, rabbits, trees, etc." in the world (or "outside language") in any sort of physical or metaphysical sense. Rather, there are stimuli humans experience and they group acceptable responses to stimuli socially, and this is how we get a words that seemingly refer to unique sorts of things.
Another sort of anti-essentialism is a mereological nihilism grounded in corpuscular physicalism. There are only fundamental particles. Anything like a rabbit is actually just a cloud of particles with no unique/distinct ensemble making up the rabbit (the Problem of the Many on SEP is a fine place to start here). When we have words for something like a rabbit, it is not because there are rabbits with proper parts, such as legs and hearts, but rather because we have correlated bundles of stimuli, sense data, with stipulated terms, and our sense data correlates with particular configurations of fundamental particles ensemble. But note that this sort of anti-essentialism normally does maintain that fundamental particles have essential natures, whereas other forms say there is no more or less correct way to group any sense data with any notion of wholes and parts.
Essence is often represented as some sort of magical spirit power inside things, which is unfortunate. It's unfortunate that explicit parody is sometimes taken to be a paradigmatic example of a philosophy. For instance, Molière's joke about realism in Le Malade Imaginaire has been used on this forum many as an actual example of realism.
But, supposing that Aristotle is talking about magical properties inside things is like assuming that Quine is talking about how there are many synonyms you could use in any translation, i.e. totally misunderstanding the concept. Just like people who dismiss early analytic thought because abstract proposition must be "magical spirit entities in Plato's realm" (i.e., "two worlds Platonism).
I think Eric Perl's "Thinking Being" is a pretty decent introductions in eidos and essences, but the actual function of the essence/nature, how it "cashes out," really requires going through the Physics (which Joe Sachs has a very good translation and commentary on).
Ok, that makes sense. Yes, how Quine defines "fact" here is at odds with most philosophy.
You'd have to define perfect I suppose. If it is the older usage of "having no privation" then yes, circleness cannot be deprived of any aspect of circleness.
A liger is a hybrid, like a mule.
Let me ask, when we read a book about botany do we only learn about word use, theories, and models, or do we learn about plants?
Here is my thesis: words are not, at least primarily, "what we know," but a "means of knowing and communicating."
Right, and that's been my point, as you say "there are all sorts of problems with Quine's view." For instance, consider where some people have taken this. If is truth is just conformity to existing belief, as judged against it, then when a conspiracy theorist "discovers" that the COVID vaccine is a ploy to inject the populace with microchips, or that Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide but the CCP reversed it, they are discovering truth and they know these things.
Now, certainly elements of Quine's holism might usefully explain why people who accept one conspiracy theory are much more likely to accept others, but it seems easy to allow for this insight without accepting much that comes along with it. I think it would be rare to find anyone who didn't think beliefs influence other beliefs, or that gaining knowledge didn't involve refining and reformulating past beliefs.
@Banno is correct about that. Being human isn't essential to Socrates because he could have been an alien. He could have been an android who time travelled to ancient Athens.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Who are you thinking of?
No, this is profoundly misunderstanding what an essence is supposed to be, even vis-a-vis contemporary analytic essential properties. It's on a level with claiming that Quine is talking about how we can say "triangle" and "three-sided 2D shape."
Are you saying that it's necessarily true that Socrates is human?
Have you guys read Kripke? This might help clear it up. Or check out "Rigid Designators" here.
Yes, but Kripke's essential properties are stipulated. Do you think that's what Count means?
No, the idea is that if Socrates is a man he is a particular sort of thing. So if Socrates is a chimpanzee, then he is not a man. Essences are contingent vis-a-vis corporeal beings underlying material substrate. If Socrates is eaten by a tiger and his body is turned into tiger muscle and organs, then that substrate is:
A. No longer man.
B. No longer Socrates.
So you aren't saying essential properties are necessary properties. I don't know what you mean then.
We hadn't brought up Kripke. It works like this:
I could make it clear that the Socrates I'm talking about is the human one. I'm only looking at possible worlds in which he is, so we have a necessary property known a posteriori. It's a case of this Socrates. This particular one.
That kind of essential property doesn't travel outside discussions where that Socrates was identified, though. Everywhere else, Socrates could be anything. He could have been a talking fish because there's a possible world where he was.
I'm not sure if Quine uses "fact" in that way, but Banno and frank certainly are.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
:up:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
An understatement. Banno reduces all of philosophy to a few idiosyncratic decades in the 20th century and reads everything through that narrow, parochial lens.
-
Quoting J
Kripke flirts with essentialism:
Quoting Rigid Designators | SEP
Medieval theories of signification and ampliation addressed much of this in greater detail than contemporary philosophy manages, and it's no wonder that the perennial problems of metaphysics began to return as soon as Logical Positivism died its own strange death:
Quoting Gyula Klima: What can a scholastic do in the 21st century?
They're essential as respects the idea that all men are necessarily a certain sort of thing, man, and not anything else. But the idea isn't that you apply some name "Socrates" and whatever has the name applied to it is Socrates; that sort of counter example simply begs the question. The idea is that, while there may be a possible world where people mistook a robot for a man named "Socrates", there isn't a possible world where a robot named Socrates is a man, or where a man named Socrates is also a tree, etc. Socrates's body might later decompose and become a part of a tree, but then it is no longer the man Socrates.
As Fine has it, essential properties are necessary because they are essential, they aren't essential because they are necessary.
Looking at possible worlds is fine. Suppose we have one where Socrates is a man and one where Socrates is a robot disguised as a man. The essentialist says that these two aren't identical to each other in the sense that they aren't the same sort of thing, even if they both bug the Greeks and get forced to drink hemlock.
Essences and essential properties are different on some views, but looking at properties is helpful. If one denies essential/accidental properties distinction then it seems to me that either all properties must be essential or all accidental.
So, in the first case, where everything is essential, it is simply equivocation to talk about different Socrateses in different worlds having different properties. If they have any properties that are different, they are different things. In which case, no, there is no possible world where our Socrates has different attributes. If something varies between the worlds, you have a different Socrates.
The other view would say that Socrates is whatever we call Socrates. All properties are accidents, and so there are, strictly speaking, no things at all. So Socrates can have any properties we'd like. Socrates after dying, decomposing, and turning into soil and plants? Still Socrates, if we choose to call it that. Socrates after getting his hair cut? Potentially not Socrates; we decide. It's just a name we choose to apply.
A radical empiricist might add conditions of verification to being. So, Socrates being a man versus a robot only makes him a different sort of thing if we can specify the difference based on available sense data. Because much of history is lost to us, and the evidence we have is consistent with both the man and the robot hypotheses, there is no fact about Socrates being a man or a robot. A less radical empiricist would allow a difference if anyone could potentially observe a difference. E.g., if the Greeks had cracked open Socrates's chest in one case they would find organs, in the other circuits, and this (provided they agree there are certain sorts of things and wholes at all) is enough to declare a difference.
SEP is correct here:
Quoting Rigid Designators | SEP
Ok. But how does this help you fix a reference? Or is this completely divorced from the OP?
Also, not everyone agrees that essences are decomposable into discrete properties. So, one way to still use the idea is to say that Socrates's essence is "the property of being human."
The counter example to this would be to say that Socrates can lack the property of being human and still be human (seemingly a non-starter) or to show that there is no such thing as a "property of being human," which I would assume would also entail rejecting the claim that there are such things as humans. Something like "there are no humans, there are only assemblages of sense data with certain morphisms that are referred to as "human" due to social conventions, and these social conventions and the sense data involved in them are (best) explained without any reference to humans existing as a type of thing."
.
Why? Why not say, "Being Socrates isn't essential to Socrates because he could have been Patrocles"?
If there is any rhyme or reason to these claims; if possible worlds are to do any work at all; then there must be some necessary property or properties of Socrates, and once we admit that we're already into modal essentialism.
Cheers! :nerd:
When I first encountered the Logical Positivist thinking in Banno's thread on Kit Fine, it was very strange. It was strange to encounter folks who think of reference and essence as, "Either we have an infallible pre-packaged reference/essence, or else it does not exist at all." I am still working out how someone can get to such a confused position in the first place. And perhaps that was Quine's motive, "Reference doesn't work that way, kids. You're barking up the wrong tree." The adamant resolution to sever reference from speaker's intention is obviously at the heart of the problem, and this has to do with reifying language as an unchanging something that exists apart from speaker's intentions and extramental objects, and can therefore be studied in isolation from these things.
* Banno is a living example of these problems. For example, even the thought of taking speaker's intention into consideration makes Banno start shrieking, "Humpty Dumptyism! Humpty Dumptyism!" The propaganda campaign is well established by now.
I think Kripke saw the point I am making and instantiated it in his rigid designators. It's not that hard to progress the thought. Someone using a rigid designator is thinking of something which has continuity across possible worlds, and which therefore has at least one essential modal property.
Indeed, if you and I are arguing about Socrates, then we are both thinking of something which has at least one essential modal property. Then we navigate that difference and close the distance between our two conceptions by reflecting on the other person's essence-conception, or as you said, by "putting ourselves in their shoes." If at the end of the day we end up agreeing (which sometimes happens in the real world), then our two essence-conceptions of Socrates will have become aligned. That alignment is the first step toward better understanding Socrates in a dialogical context. For example, if two scholars of Socrates sit down and talk for a few hours, they may well come away with a more unified historical theory of Socrates, and that unified theory will in turn represent progress towards the goal of understanding the real Socrates.
Although essences are not of individuals, I think this helps to show how we get at the real, whether of individual (objective referent) or species (essence). The operative concepts (referent or essence) are operative throughout the entire dialogical process in tightly nested spirals. We are constantly switching between thinking about our subjective/intentional referents, our interlocutor's subjective/intentional referents, the objective referent that we are both aiming at, and then the various recursive mental acts, such as how our interlocutor is conceiving of our own subjective/intentional referents. In doing this, in allowing reference to be analogical in that it involves a complex intersubjective dance of different shades and colors of reference, we eventually arrive at knowledge of the referent that we are both ultimately aiming at. But if we make "referent" a flat, objective reality independent of our thinking, intentions, and personal understandings, then we are doomed from the start.
(I am obviously appealing to modal essentialism here.)
You and Count are both materialists.
I don't see how that could be made to work. it would be up to others to present such an argument.
Okay, Frank. Thank you for letting us know. :ok:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Hmm.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's not so. What I said was
Quoting Banno
And clearly it is.
And later I offered
Quoting Banno
by way of showing a path for making sense of essences.
I starter and ran a thread about FIne's view of essences, and several threads on Kripke, whom I studied while at Uni; a long time ago, and no doubt things have moved on.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Often the mark of a good piece of thinking is found in the conversation about how it might be wrong. Quine made a deep impression in philosophy, but I do not agree with all that he said. The criticisms of Quine here somewhat misrepresent his view. I'd like to clear a few of those errors up.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is roughly correct. Quine adopted a naturalist approach. He certainly is not alone in treating wholes as conceptual constructions, his rejection of what Sellers would call "the myth of the given". He does make use of behaviour; so in the Gavagai fable he is asking how we might translate "gavagai" based only on the behaviour of the community. But it is an error to say he relies on stimuli. We are, after all, talking about a philosopher who was most central involved in the dethroning of logical empiricism. He very much uses linguistic and behavioural responses to emphasis the wholistic nature of our briefs. That's kinda his thing. Quine would have outright rejected any association with "mereological nihilism grounded in corpuscular physicalism". Associating him with such a notion is a symptom of not having grasped his approach.
I addressed the place of language in categorising discreet individuals earlier. (I'll drop "discreet wholes" since it is liable to cause confusion with Quine's holism) Is a liger a tiger? Is it a lion? Is it neither, or is it both? Seems to me that this is not asking something about ligers, but about how we might best use the words "liger", "tiger" and "lion". But if that's so, then asking if a liger is a tiger is not asking about essences of "tigerness", but about word use. What counts as a rabbit or a lion is as much about the community of language users, or if Tim prefers, the "form of life", as it is about rabbits and lions. Quine was a part of the discussion that brought this idea to the fore.
Saying that an essence is "what it is" must strike one as incomplete. A tiger is "what it is" a tiger? But that tells us next to nothing. As with "the idea that there is something that makes different types of things different types of things" well, ok, but what? a different set of properties? a difference in definition? Or a difference in word use?
Sometimes it appears that there is not a "something that makes it what it is", famously in the cases of games and families set out by Wittgenstein.
And the point made by both Quine and Wittgenstein is that even if we cannot set out "what it is that makes it what it is" (a phrasing surely only to be found in the mouth of a philosopher), we can nevertheless make use of the words, and good, competent use as well.
If essence is sometimes taken to be a "magical spirit power inside things" it might be becasue those who advocate essentialism do not set out what it is...
Quoting Banno
So if your aim is to preserve your essentialism, then yes, Banno is not a good person to ask about this. He is, after all, just a troll. And proud of it.
Why not both?
Rather famously, Quine rejected the idea that we could not question analytic propositions. So for him perhaps even that a triangle has three sides might be subject to revision. Certainly that the angles of a triangle add to 180º has been questioned.
But if it is a misunderstanding, show how, and set out for us what an essence is. So fat all we seem to have is that an essence of a thing is what it is...
And while we are here, the idea that Socrates might have not been human is played out in the writings of Donnellan and Kripke, in their rejection of the description theory of meaning. Basic stuff that follows from Kripke's account of an individual being the same in other possible worlds, the basis of the possible world semantics that underpins modal logic.
Socrates might have been an alien. That individual, Socrates, might have had all manor of different properties.
@frank
There are those amongst us who do much the same thing, but from a mediaeval perspective. Which to prefer?
1. There are no Humandroids.
2. There is no evidence that Socrates was one, and a lot of evidence that he wasn't.
3. It is logically (analytically) impossible that Socrates was a Humandroid.
The first two refutations are empirical, and defeasible. The third, of course, is not, should it be true. So, is that what Count T is saying, when he says that Socrates is a man, not a chimpanzee? The question you asked about essential properties vs. necessary properties is the same question, perhaps.
Kripke addresses the point specifically in Naming and Necessity, using his pet example "Nixon":
The moral, I think, is that questions about necessary and sufficient conditions are modal, and hence not about what we know to be true in our world. Can we refer to "Nixon" without knowing he is a human being, in the same way that (to use another of Kripke's examples) we can refer to a table without knowing that it is made of molecules? As it happens, we do know both things, but if we knew as little about Socrates as Socrates himself knew about tables, we presumably could still refer to him, and be unconfused about him in possible worlds. So, in doing so, we don't have in mind some necessary and sufficient (or essential) qualities about him. We're not denying them, but we just need to be able to point to him, as it were.
But . . . "Anything coming from a different origin would not be this object." This is the lesson Kripke draws from his discussion about whether Queen Elizabeth could have been born of different parents. We should probably say the same thing about Socrates being engendered by robotics. Again, nothing to do with necessary and sufficient conditions.
Quite odd. One does not have to be an essentialist to agree that these aren't the same sort of thing. In one possible world, Socrates - that very individual - is a man, while in another he may be a robot. These sentences are both about Socrates. That is, they are both about the very same individual.
The alternative would be to reject transworld identification, which I supose is what you are doing. But I hadn't taken you as a friend of David Lewis and counterpart theory. Certainly his views on God would not suit you.
Quoting frank
Yep. I think this the least problematic way to understand possible worlds.
That's how it clicked for me -- stipulation is what makes the rigid designator true, and while maybe it could work in general i tended to think that the stipulation was always about a particular individual we've already referred to.
Indeed, and you might take a look at the associated sub-article, which addresses this issue in detail and concludes
Quoting Stipulating Identity Trans-world, Without Qualitative Criteria for a Designatum to Satisfy
Which is not very far at all from Quine's claim.
It's what we do,
It's been pointed out previously and by others that you tend to misrepresent folk and then critique what you want to see rather than what has been said. You are doing it again.
I was wrong about that. We all lean toward materialism, so I don't know what's meant by "essence.".
I don't think we have much chance of progressing that, given the rejection of formal logic amongst some contributors.
I can't really speak for Count. I don't quite understand what he means.
It's metaphysically possible for Socrates to have been a chimp. Where I think confusion might be arising is if we're limiting possibility to that possible world we call the actual world. This would be a type of actualism. If we embrace that, then Socrates would necessarily be a human. This view is also hard determinism.
Me too, but with a big dose of skepticism about metaphysics. That bias thing again. :grin:
One wouldn't need to believe in essences to believe there are distinct sorts of things? That's all an essence is.
Maybe I can clear this up. It seems possible that our historical Socrates was an android sent down to Earth by aliens. It also seems possible, and far more likely, that he was just a man. Same historical Socrates, different things, different essences. That is, both are named "Socrates" and both are what produced the historical memory of Socrates.
However, it isn't possible that the same concrete particular is both man and not-man in different possible worlds. The claim that the same concrete particular can be man and not-man in different worlds while remaining the same particular isn't a counter example to essences, it's simply assuming that essences don't exist and that all properties are accidental. If all properties are accidental, then in virtue of what is any individual "the same individual" across any possible worlds?
That's not showing essences to be problematic, it's simple question begging.
But is it metaphysically possible for him to have been born of different parents? I don't think Kripke would agree (not that he's the boss).
No. One would not have to be an essentialist to agree that a robot is not a man. Socrates may have been a man. Socrates may have been a robot. Both those sentences are about Socrates. That very individual.
It is indeed possible for the very same individual to have different properties in different possible worlds. That's how modal talk is usually understood. We can consider a possible world in which Socrates - that very individual - was a robot.
What is not possible is that Socrates be both man and not-man in the very same possible world.
If all properties are accidental, then we may still refer to "the same individual" across any possible world by stipulation. What if Socrates, that very individual, were a robot?
Probably not. Kripke would presumably say something like that the name "Socrates" is joined by a causal chain to that individual, and part of that chain was his being born to a certain woman. On that account there may indeed be a contradiction in supposing that Socrates may have been a robot, since he was born of a woman.
Such considerations are apart from the logic of modality, in which the domain is stipulated.
There's a subtle point here, around whether when we say "Socrates", we are just stipulating that individual, or whether we are thereby participating in a broader, communal exercise. For me, either is possible, and they are of equal standing, and perhaps not problematic so long as we track which of these two games we are playing.
So if Socrates - that very individual - were a robot, then we would have to change a whole lot of other things we had assumed about him - including, presumably, that he was born of woman.
It's interesting how this parallels Quine's holism. If Socrates turned out to be a robot, then a large number of other entries in out web of belief would have to be changed.
@frank
Yes, sure, that's what I said to Frank earlier. I am not sure what the point is supposed to be though. "If you assume all properties are accidental then no properties are essential." Well, of course.
I was trying to explain a particular notion of essences that comes up in Aristotle and which has been refined and applied until today. Obviously, if you assume that nothing is essential, nothing will be essential. How is that a problem for essences?
I'm not getting it. It seems to be a "problem" in the same sense that anyone can say to anything "no it isn't" by assuming the opposite of the thing in question.
Of course, different individuals can have different properties in different possible worlds or even different times in the same world. When Socrates gets a haircut, he doesn't cease being Socrates. But the claim about Socrates being anything at all seems to require the more permissive: "the very same individuals can have any different properties in different possible worlds while remaining the very same individual."
That's only problematic for essential properties in that it simply assumes they don't exist.
Well, it makes sense. We can get by without essences. Hence, as it were, essences are not essential...
And recall that my conclusion was not, as you reported, to "dispatched any notion of essence" but to show that they are problematic. :brow:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
What it shows is that we can make reference to Socrates without relying on some set of properties that fix the referent. We can reject the descriptivist theory of reference.
We do not need essences in order to fix the referent of a name.
Yes, nice observation. "Large number" hardly does it justice!
There's a fine essay by J. L. Mackie called "Locke's Anticipation of Kripke." It appears in his Problems from Locke but I can't find a link online. I'm thinking that @Count Timothy von Icarus might particularly appreciate it because it's all about Locke's views of essences. One highlight: Mackie gives Locke's view that "while it would be advantageous to use [substance-terms] to refer to real essences if we knew them, if we had clear and adequate ideas of them in our minds, it is a mistake, an abuse of words, to try to do this when we lack those ideas: we cannot 'remove that imperfection' [Locke] by merely intending to refer to a unknown real essence." Mackie believes this closely anticipates what Kripke will say about how reference actually works -- that we refer to designatable features rather than essences.
I think Kripke's concern would be about someone asking about an alternative Socrates who had different parents. To my mind, whether that question would make any sense depends on the context. Since it is metaphysically possible for Socrates to have had different parents, I would say there are contexts where it would make sense. And of course others where it wouldn't.
@Banno do you disagree with that?
I'd like to express my admiration for your even-handedness.
So, on the "no privation" view the perfect form of a tiger would be 100% tigerness, just as the form of the perfect circle would be 100% circularity. Same for the Good, Justice, and Beauty. 'No deviation' might be a better term than 'no privation'.
I think it also pays to remember than when these terms were originally translated into English (which was not way back in the day) the English words chosen would reflect the presuppositions of the translators. So, it is translations we are working with, not the original texts.
:grin:
It's complicated.
I had a go at addressing J. . I inadvertently did not add your name until after the post, so you would not have received notification.
The upshot is that you and @J are both right, but somewhat at cross-purposes.
In possible world semantics, "Socrates" just refers to Socrates, and how it refers is not part of the discussion. To that way of thinking, it is indeed possible that Socrates was a robot. That's your point.
But Kripke has an additional theory, not part of possible world semantics but a supplement to it, which holds that a name refers in virtue of a causal chain from speaker to referent. On that account, Kripke might well argue that since the name "Socrates" is causally linked to Socrates, if the thing we now call "Socrates" turned out to be a robot, that would not be a fact about Socrates, but about something else - the robot. This I take it is what J has in mind.
It's parallel to asking "What if Socrates had different parents?". On the one hand we may be asking what the world would be like if the chap Plato wrote about had had different parents - perhaps he would have been a painter instead of a sculptor, and not learned to be such an arse. Or we might be asking if that chap, who was indeed a philosopher, may have been mistaken as to who his parents were. We can ask either, but need to keep in mind that they are different questions.
Hope that clarifies it. It's pretty similar to what you said .
Quoting Banno
Oh, I'm just conflict-averse. :wink: Actually, it's a carry-over from a couple of teachers who stressed that understanding a position is far more important, and far more difficult, than taking sides. One of them (RJ Bernstein, in fact), used to caution about viewing argument as a winner-take-all affair in which one person is shown to be right, the other wrong. Which was interesting, coming from him, who could argue the pants off anyone. I think his idea was not that you couldn't do it, but you wouldn't learn anything.
Yes.
Yes, Locke's real essences are at least arguably defined in terms of his nominal essences, so they are just "whatever really underlies whatever we use to identify something a certain sort of thing."
Locke's position is, of course, based on the early modern empiricist notion that we only experience mental representations, not things. If one removes this constraints, I am not sure if the distinction makes sense.
I don't see how you've shown that either. Philosophers do a lot of things with essential properties and essences. You've shown that given there are no essential properties, then there are no essential properties, and you can refer to the "very same" "Socrates" who is variously a skid mark on a road in Alabama in 2088, George Bush Sr., or a coconut.
Absolutely. Many of the common terms come from Latin translations of the Greek, but then words in English get used because they come from the Latin and yet their standard usage has changed dramatically. With Aristotle, there is the added problem of the same Greek word often being translated into different English words based on context, or different Greek words being translated into the same English word. "Essence" is just such a case, since ousia is also sometimes rendered as "essence," "actuality" is another, or dunamis as either potency or power. The choices aren't without their reasons (e.g. it may make sense to say Plotinus' One has "power" but not "potentiality") but they are confusing.
You always conflate your own opinions with the common opinion.
But pretty much everyone recognizes how silly and vain conversations with you are (or become). For example, from a moderator, "Treat this as an invitation to engage with the thread topic on its own terms... If you want to use this style of analysis, and see the thread through its terms entirely, you're going to remain confused." Many of the posters just ignore you, which I take to be the correct route.
It seems to me that folks take a machination like "possible worlds" or "metaphysically possible" and then start throwing it around without any real sense of what they are doing. "There is a possible world in which Socrates is an alien." "It is metaphysically possible for Socrates to have been a chimp." Does the speaker have any sense of what he is saying with these sentences, uttered in isolation?
We can just pretend/stipulate that we can refer to Socrates without knowing anything about Socrates, but that is merely a promissory note. It begs the question in a discussion about reference.
That is not a real argument against modal essentialism. I don't think anyone talks about Socrates without involving their own essential and accidental properties of what constitutes Socrates. That is why in conversation some of the interlocutor's predications about Socrates will make one question whether the interlocutor is talking about Socrates, and some will not. Some claims about "Socrates" are thought to be incompatible with Socrates, and some are not.
"Possible worlds" is a necessity/possibility contrast. There is no such thing as making a possibility claim without also making necessity claims, at least in the background. And one cannot stipulate that their possibility claim involves no necessity premise.
(For a short defense of modal essentialism vis-a-vis Quine, see the first few pages of Paul Vincent Spade's, "The Warp and Woof of Metaphysics.")
-
Analytic philosophy characteristically caps off explanations of perennial topics with ad hoc appeals, in this case an appeal to stipulation. What is denied at the front door is snuck in the back door.
"Privation" is necessary because you are employing a Platonic version. Note that for Plato there is no "undeviated circle" among the realm of singulars, here below. The perfect Form is never found in a singular.
Quoting The Emergence of the Problem | Medieval Universals | SEP (italics omitted)
On an Aristotelian conception the form of a triangle is a matter of abstraction:
Quoting Boethius Aristotelian Solution | Medieval Universals | SEP
Amusing, since this is a thread about Quine, yet you have tried your dammdest to make it a thread about Aristotle. And me.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, the concepts of substance, being, essence seem to be all closely associated. We could say that the essence of something is the archetypal idea of that thing, but then that could come down to recognition of form or pattern. We can all recognize a tiger when we see one, even though we cannot say what the essence of being a tiger is. Perhaps the essence of something, if we are thinking of essence as a kind of defining quality, is more like the 'feeling' of that thing, rather than anything determinate.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, that accords with my understanding.
Then what need have we for essence? What do they do?
It seems that we like thinking about trying to discover just what it is we recognize when we recognize something. We don't have any need for the idea of essence, unless it might be in the form of an attachment to thinking about such things.
In that way essences are another example of the sort of garden path down which philosophers are so prone to wandering.
Ah, well, this would have been a much shorter thread if it had stuck to discussing Quine. Essence might be a neat way to keep philosophers away from considering more substantive issues.
Quoting Janus
This was the direction I was interested in following with @Count Timothy von Icarus here, but I think he didn't want to pursue it:
Quoting J
This isn't meant to be some sort of trick question that implies there's no such thing as "being a tiger."
Of course there is. Nor am I suggesting that "how to recognize a tiger" is the same problem as "what constitutes a tiger." But we should think carefully about how we determine both these things, because when we move to abstracta, the problems increase by an order of magnitude.
Edit: that is, more broadly, how these two questions are asking for more than what we might do about tigers. If you can spot the tiger in the grass, and pick it out from the liger, what more do you need - what help is an essence? We would still know that once we escape the tiger's cage we ought not go back for our hat.
:100: :up:
This suggests one of the reasons why I think there's more to philosophy than "the linguistic turn." If you ask "What more do you need?" and I counter, "Need in order for what to happen?" or "In order to do what?" wouldn't you want to say that there is something called understanding a phenomenon/item/object which is different from doing anything with it or about it? (This is weirdly reminiscent of the force/content issue!) Can't we consider the tiger in his various aspects, learn more about what makes him unique, etc., without calling this "doing something with words"? And without invoking an "essence," which I agree is not helpful here.
And a prior question which @Count Timothy von Icarus raised earlier also is relevant. Is learning what a tiger is exactly the same as defining the word "tiger"? They are close cousins, surely, and Count T likes to use "define" for both processes (though I do not) but we can point to aspects that are dissimilar, I think. For example, to study a tiger requires a tiger; to study the word "tiger" does not.
Isn't learning about tigers doing something? Dragging this thread again back to Quine, it's building a common web of belief.
I gather this is some blindness on my part. Help me see the duck when I can only see the rabbit.
Quoting J
Well, how do they differ? And here it will be worth pointing out that "using the word" is a sort of shorthand for any sort of action - following on from the admonition not to look to meaning but to use, it's what we do that counts, not our understanding of various garden paths.
Quoting J
I'm not sure about that. Can you be said to understand wth word "tiger" and yet not understand what a tiger is?
He rejected Aristotelian metaphysics. In general, he rejected the idea that objects have an intrinsic nature, independent of our web of belief. This follows pretty readily from naturalism, with our understanding of the world embedded in science and language. What we might think of as intrinsic to the stuff around us is dependent on the other beliefs we bring with us, and not to some presumed but cryptic intrinsic nature.
Further than that, for Quine notions of necessity do not concern the way things are in the world but how we talk about the world. For Quine necessity is not a feature of the world but an aspect of the language and beliefs we hold. Essentialism wrongly attributes linguistic or conceptual distinctions to the structure of reality itself. If you don't like the use of "language" here, use "conceptual" instead.
He rather famously pointed out that there are no objective boundaries between properties that are said to be necessary and those that are not. So what is essential to our ubiquitous tiger is not something about tigers, but the beliefs we bring to the table in dealing with tigers. The arguments will be familiar from his Two Dogmas paper.
Quine objected to aspects of modal logic, too, mainly on the grounds of the referential opacity of assigning necessity to individuals rather than proposition (de re necessity). Modal logic after Kripke avoids much of that critique.
What followed was that it didn't much matter what "gavagai" refers to, what the essence of "gavagai" might be, what it is to be a gavagai, so long as you got the stew. It's a pragmatic approach. One cannot be certain as to which name refers to which thing, yet it doesn't make much difference.
Quoting Banno
Fair enough. But when we start talking about a web of belief, I think we are moving quite far away from a focus on use rather than meaning. Certainly Quine meant the "web" part metaphorically, but what about the "belief" part? Are beliefs about words, or about the propositions expressed by words?
Quoting Banno
Thats a somewhat different point. If understanding is binary, with the only two options being understand and not understand then I agree: If I understand the word tiger, Id probably describe myself as also understanding what a tiger is. But if we allow shades of understanding, then I can lack several degrees of understanding, while still being quite clear about what a tiger is. The definition or meaning of tiger, for instance, might not mention that the creature has a musky odor, or include a description of his paws. I believe I better understand what a tiger is, the more I know about him. Such understanding goes well beyond understanding the word.
But my point was more simpleminded: If we need more info about the tiger perhaps in pursuit of a new evolutionary theory about the big cats we have to study the animal himself. We cant examine the word, or the way the word is used. Whereas if we want to better understand how tiger is used, we can consult the linguistic community indeed, we could do that if tigers were extinct.
(And having just glanced at your subsequent post -- bedtime here in Maryland -- I concur again that essences or intrinsic natures aren't needed to move beyond language. The troublesome passage in what you wrote is Quoting Banno Essentialism is misguided, but that doesn't mean there aren't conceptual distinctions and privileged metaphysical structure. They just aren't best understood as essences or whatever. But that's for another day...)
Back to this. Cool.
For Quine, a belief was a propositional attitude. So for Quine, yes, beliefs are attitudes towards propositions. And any propositions is (at least truth functional equivalent to) some statement.
For my part, I don't see how something might count as a belief if it could not be expressed as a proposition. If it cannot be expressed as "I believe that...", followed by some proposition, then it might be a sensation, emotion, impression or some such, but not a belief.
Quoting J
But we might also ask a Ranger, in order to learn that "tiger" is used in discussing that paw, or that smell. We would thereby be broadening both our understanding of tigers, and of the use of "tiger".
Good night.
I didn't see the question. If one wants to consider what makes a tiger a tiger, an organic whole, then one looks at tigers, of course, but also what makes all organic wholes organic wholes. One cannot look at a tiger in isolation. Why is a tiger a proper whole but not a volume of space encompassing half a tiger and a bush? Or are they equally appropriate, and calling a tiger a whole versus half a tiger, some dirt, air, and a bush a single whole arbitrary distinctions?
Obviously, I'd suggest a tiger is a whole, and any random grouping of continuous (or discontinuous) space is not likely to be a proper organic whole.
So, one looks at the difference between men, with their rational, unifying intentional aims, beasts, with their unifying goal direct behavior, plants, with their unifying goal directed behavior, etc. And one compares this with other self-organizing systems, the sorts of systems that have "life cycles" and are in some sense self-sustaining, e.g. stars, galaxies, storms (storms can be incredibly long lived on other planets), etc. And then one looks at plausible "natural kinds," such as atoms, molecules, etc., versus what appear to be mere heaps or entirely arbitrary spatio-temporal ensembles. What makes some things particular sorts of things? Are some things more properly things than others?
Aristotelianism has remained popular throughout the centuries, but it's particularly popular in the philosophy of (or philosophy inspired by) self-organizing systems, complexity studies, etc., because it seems to offer an elucidating and promising explanation of why anything is any thing at all.
The idea of essences primarily plays a role in metaphysics and philosophy of nature. It can and does play a role in much philosophy of perception and through that, philosophy of language. It will not make sense if one insists on understanding it through the lens of philosophy of language as first philosophy, where the immediate question is "how does it work in a logical system, or inserted into a standing theory of language with alien presuppositions."
Earlier you said "I don't think anyone denies the existence of tigers or rabbits." I don't think that is true. People say they "exist" in ways that are equivocal, while maintaining that they do not exist in the way that I would imagine most people suppose they do, as individual, discrete biological organisms, organic wholes, that exist outside the context of human perception, language, or culture, and which existed in this same way prior to man, and may go on existing in this same way even if man goes extinct. Likewise, individual men are individual men, regardless of what any culture or language communities' norms might indicate. And indeed these factsthat there are individual men and tigers, and that there are distinct biological species such as man and daffodilhelp to explain why human language and culture develops the way they do.
That is: "we have a word for tigers because there are tigers," as opposed to "there are tigers because we have a word for tigers." I am aware that people do reverse this. I disagree.
I was just discussing this with Joshs. Did the coastline of North America exist before it was mapped? Is there a coastline, a place where the ocean meets the land, independent of the concepts and experiences of men? His answer is, not so much. No doubt we both claim the coastline "exists," but we clearly don't mean this in the same way. I would say a coastline exists in a stronger sense, regardless of any human language community existing, although a coastline is still very much a "heap." It is not a being in the way a man, or even a plant is. It has no principle of unity.
What I mean by "principle of unity" is probably ambiguous, because the particular idea of "principles" in Aristotle, Neoplatonism, Thomism, and much contemporary philosophy taking inspiration from these, is rather nuanced and complex. Suffice to say, I do not think rabbits or men are arbitrary heaps in the way a rock might be said to be. They are unified by their ends. And man can, of course, be more or less psychologically unified.
So can explain what he means by a tiger being largely what "we decide to count as a tiger." This to me suggests that what a tiger is gets determined by us. Is the idea that the language community is prior to the tiger or the cockroach, that these are not organic wholes until we decide to speak of them as such?
Some people do answer in the affirmative here. I find this problematic for many reasons, not least because, from any sort of broadly naturalistic perspective, it seems that the cockroach existed first and that the most obvious causal explanation for why different cultures all recognize roaches as both a distinct species, and recognize distinct individual roaches, is because that's what they are.
To Banno's point:
This strikes me as an odd framing of "naturalism," as if naturalism is defined by a commitment to the linguistic turn. Darwin, for his part, did not think he was developing a theory for how linguistic entities emerge. When I was studying biology, ambiguities in the classification system came up, or in definitions of life itself, but nowhere in my classes, in journals I read, or popular science texts did the idea come up that biology was primarily about a world "embedded" or "as embedded" in human scientific practice and language, or that the objects of biological study were primarily linguistic, or defined in terms of linguistic norms. Language, theories, models, and even classifications were means of understanding natural phenomena, but in no way constitutive of them (except accidentally). For example, a biologist might argue that there are no species, some do, but outside more philosophical spaces, this is generally justified on the grounds that our classifications are failing to match up to real distinctions that are independent of them, with the assumption being that good classifications capture important differences that are prior to the classification.
I am aware of contrary philosophies. I am aware of some scientists who embrace them. I am not sure they can be said to be paradigmatic examples of "naturalism" because they are hardly very popular, but "naturalism" is incredibly popular as a self-description.
Rather, in my experience, that something was living was assumed to be a physical reality, ambiguous perhaps, but not defined in terms of our language. Rather, our scientific language had to be perfected to capture the pre-existing fact of living things, species, etc.
Last example of equivocation: "to exist is just existential quantification." Obviously extremely different. If one is already committed to this, or something like it, it is obviously going to affect how one goes about trying to figure out perception and language.
I think saying have creates the issue for people who try to deny essence. I agree things have essences, but at this rarefied level of universality, it may be better to try to see the unity, the identity, that is the essence of the same unified things thereby identified. The what it is to be is a what whether it has anything else or not, so to speak; we dont need to distinguish it from what it has to understand essence; we just need to break it all apart to speak about it, so has becomes efficient for speaking, but not to those who dont admit of identity.
Quoting Banno
Your quote above points to the fact that it is really hard to drill down to the essence of anything. We divide unified things into many parts in order to simply speak about one, distinct thing as it essentially is. What a mess. I agree with that. But so be it. We need unity (essence of identity) to speak at all. Your quote doesnt mean there is no, or can be no, essence. In fact, because it refers to item and properties (to which I can ask if there is a difference between this property and that property, requiring reference again to essence as much as this from that), it relies on essences as much as it relies on words or other things.
There is no possible world that can be distinguished from any other possible world without each such world referring to itself as distinct and referring to all other worlds as not itself.
Distinction reveals something of the essence of two things (or more) distinguished; without distinctions, without difference, there is no way to speak about anything. Without essence, without distinction, there is nothing to say nor means of thinking of a reply (or means to reply or ply, at all).
There is nothing to disagree with nor two items to bring into agreement, where there is no essence to speak of.
Could there be a possible world, much like ours, but the only difference is that in that world, there are no other possible worlds possible? Seems like this has to be possible if we allow for possible worlds to be spoken of. Or maybe such a world is not possible..?
Well, that's a fair point, but I am not totally sure what other language to use. Aside from "have," possession and participation are the two most common terms, but I'd agree that one has to still flesh these out.
Right, if we didn't use universals and only used completely unique terms for unique things, there would be no way to ever be in error about predication.
As Chesterton puts it:
However, there is the rebuttal: "why can't predication and stipulation be arbitrary so long as we agree?"
I guess my thoughts are: "if it was arbitrary, we wouldn't be able to agree."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's understandable. This thread is like Grand Central Station! (US reference to a very populated place with people coming and going.)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This may be so, but my question was meant to focus us on a simple example of how we go about deciding things about the objective world around us. Sure, we need a number of concepts in play to even pose the question, "What is a tiger?" -- I think that's your point? But armed with those concepts, and discovering a disagreement, the two scientists would naturally look at the tiger to resolve the question.
(A word about your suggested concept of "organic whole": We don't generally have scientific disputes about this, at least not at the level of mammals. If we disagree about what a tiger is, we're going to be looking at issues in evolutionary and molecular biology, I would assume.)
Anyway, it sounds like you agree with this, along with the caveat about requiring other concepts in our tiger-study. We're both saying that "consulting the tiger" is a necessary --"one looks at tigers, of course" -- (if not sufficient) condition for resolving a disagreement about tigers.
Now in order to do this, we don't, strictly speaking, need the word "tiger" at all. But even in the unlikely possible world in which nouns aren't used, we'd still need an indexical of some sort. We'd have to be able to point at what we, in our world, call a tiger, and say "That!" So let's ignore that unlikely world and stipulate that we need the word "tiger" (in English, obviously) to label the being under investigation.
So my next question is, Can you imagine a situation in which resolving the disagreement between the two scientists would result in changing the meaning of the word "tiger"?
For purposes of comparison: Is Pluto still a planet?
Chess
The rules of chess are stipulated, not arbitrary. They did not pop out of the aether uncaused. How much fun is it going to be to play a game with totally arbitrary rules and victory conditions (or perhaps no victory conditions, you just move pieces around according to some random ruleset until you get bored or expire)?
Anyhow, chess comes after language. The question is how to make a language with nothing to refer to, not "if we start with a language already in hand can we make arbitrary stipulations?"
Yes. But that proposition, as we know, can stand in a certain relation to the world, to what is the case. At some point the web has got to include statements -- beliefs -- about how propositions connect with that world. This is where I'm suggesting that there's more to the story than inter-linguistic connections.
Quoting Banno
There's no denying that the two learnings -- of tigers, and of "tiger" -- can go hand in hand. I'm just holding out for there being a difference. When I say, "We have to study the animal himself," I mean that smell-knowledge or paw-knowledge can't be derived from linguistic knowledge. Once we acquire these tiger-necessary bits of knowledge, we can of course go on to express them in words, usually,
Did our ancestors centuries ago experience and refer to tigers? Did they refer to and experience water and wetness? I'd say so.
But surely they didn't think of tigers as "mammals with 38 chromosomes" or "far-from equilibrium, self-organizing thermodynamic systems." Nor did our ancestors think of water as H2O or have a similar understanding of wetness, although surely they got wet and referred to getting wet.
Did tigers themselves change when we discovered that they had 38 chromosomes? It seems to me that to assume they did is to have already assumed that either all properties are accidents or none are, and hence there can be no essences, no things, etc. (or an ever expanding sea of them). This would also imply that one can have a proper Aryan physics, Jewish physics, capitalist genetics, socialist genetics, etc., since the relation of knower to known makes a thing what it is.
Is the idea that we need some sort of metaphysical super glue between discrete signs and things, so if Pluto can stop being considered a planet then planets don't exist independently of language?
Again, I think trying to cram the idea into the frame of philosophy of language as first philosophy is decidedly unhelpful, because it leads to continually conflating and collapsing the sign vehicle by which something is known, the interpretant (i.e. the knowing), and the referent (what is known). Planets are more or less heaps, but they are such large heaps that they exhibit some form of self-organization due to their sheer size and the influence of gravity. For instance, they reform when broken apart due to collisions.
The insight that there could be edge cases on what counts as planet as per some rigid classification, or that it can be hard to determine where space begins and planet's atmosphere ends, is not, IMO, indictive of there being no planets outside of some sign convention. This is even more obvious if one switches from planets to men. If people began to think that Leonardo da Vinci really was really an extra terrestrial would he thereby become one? Would there be no fact of the matter external to social practice?
Being a whole isn't a binary either, so ambiguity shouldn't be surprising. A rock is a heap. You can break it and have two rocks (whereas if you do this to a cat you will have a corpse). But it also isn't totally without unity.
Maybe it will help if I offer my own answers. No, I can't imagine a case where further knowledge about what a tiger is -- even knowledge about its essence, if any -- would change what we mean when we use the word "tiger." And no, Pluto is no longer a planet, because the scientific community has changed the reference of that term, and provided good reasons for doing so. We should ask, What is the difference between the tiger case and the Pluto case?
The idea is that we don't passively engage our world like blank slates upon which the world faithfully writes. It's more that we deal with one another in activities which feature linguistic rules we've agreed upon, much like we've agreed upon the rules of chess.
In other words, language doesn't come from isolated individuals treating the world out on the range like Teddy Roosevelt. Language arises from interaction with one another, much like a community of birds squawking at one another.
But "either the world faithfully writes on us a blank slates or tigers and ants did not exist as discrete organic wholes until a language community decided to count them as such," is not a true dichotomy.
Agreed. I don't think this implies that there is no fact about any distinct things existing in the world prior to the act of some language community. For one, this would entail that man, individual men, and language communities themselves did not exist until until after some language community came to count them as such.
Anyhow, I would just appeal to an abductive explanation. Disparate isolated cultures recognize individual animals and different species in similar ways, and toddlers easily pick up the idea of animals as wholes, because they exist in some sense as wholes. If you make up some arbitrary collection of things and try to force a child to recall it, they're going to have trouble. Half a tiger, plus some air and dirt, is not a thing in the way a whole tiger is. This is why phenomenal awareness is full of things, not indistinct sense data. When we walk around we experience trees and ants.
Even the metaphysical skeptic should be able to allow the last point. But then language is not unrelated to how things are phenomenologically present to us. An analysis that forces us to chop of the phenomenological (e.g. removing intended reference, our experiencing discrete things, etc.) is only "empiricism" in an extremely restrictive sense.
If what things are is primarily a question of language than agnosia would be a sort of aphasia, and the uncannyness of AI imagery that lacks any things should simply be an inability to put words to combinations of sense data.
Suppose I tell you that you have a heart inside you that allows you to move and to live. You respond, "Watch. I will move my arm. See? We can all move, even without hearts." Or perhaps I would say that you need firing neurons to think and you say, "We can all think. What need is there for firing neurons?"
In general, if you don't know what something is then you should not criticize it. And if you want to criticize something, then you should be able to say what it is. But folks like Banno are going to criticize things like essence with complete ignorance of what it is, and a refusal to say what they are criticizing. It is prejudice on stilts.
Essence is part of an account of knowledge and cognition. No one who understands what an essence is would merely assert that we can recognize a tiger without knowing something of its essence. Essence = quiddity = "whatness." If you know what a tiger is, then you know its essence (or something of its essence - recall the strawman of claiming that essences are known perfectly and a priori).
Another good principle for those who don't want to be dumb is to ask what question a philosophical concept is answering. Instead of saying, "It's fashionable to say essences are dumb, so I'm going to say essences are dumb, even though I don't know what essences are," one should say, "Hey, the concept of essence was developed continually by hundreds of different philosophers for 2,000 years. Maybe I should give it a fair shake. Maybe I should try to figure out what it is and what questions it was attempting to answer, and whether I have better answers to those questions." Someone like Banno characteristically says, "The solution is stupid; I refuse to say what I mean by the solution; and I refuse to answer the question; we just stipulate; it's just what we do." This is prejudice, not philosophy.
Rather than essences, a better entry point into these issues is universals, and The Medieval Problem of Universals is one of the better SEP articles out there. It is historical and pedagogical rather than simply taxonomical.
I don't either. I don't think anyone thinks that.
It's not hard to find this idea on this very forum. Sometimes it isn't the language community, sometimes things don't exist prior to the mind judging them as such. Or sometimes it's just skepticism as to whether things like animals exist outside our judgements.
People say all sorts of weird things. Which philosopher thinks that affirming language games means that nothing existed before humans?
[s]A crazy one[/s]. [s]A deluded one[/s]. An uneducated one.
Few I'd imagine. But that also is not what we were discussing, which is not "nothing existed prior to humans" but "no discrete, proper wholes exist outside of either human conventions or the mind" These are very distinct theses, and the latter are much more popular than the former.
And you can subdivide these into positive and skeptical theses. So, mereological nihilism is not a super uncommon position. This is the position that, at the metaphysical or physical level, there are no proper wholes, no substances/things. Certainly "something exists" prior to humans, but it isn't inclusive of organic wholes that one can be right or wrong about delimiting.
Second, there is the skeptical theses. "Maybe there are organic wholes out there in the noumena, but since the mind and/or language shapes everything we experience, we cannot be sure."
And there are many forms of mereological nihilism that don't run through language at all. E.g. "there are only fundamental particles, which might be arranged cat-wise or tree-wise, but those aren't discrete things, they are heaps," or "there are only universal fields and activity in them." This is in line with the idea that all sciences are reducible to physics.
Yes, but there are two other options, for answering van Inwagen's Special Composition Question: mereological particularism, and mereological universalism.
The former says that composition occurs sometimes, and sometimes it does not.
The latter says that composition always occurs. This view is far crazier than mereological nihilism, because it leads straight to the related metaphysical view on ordinary objects, which says that in addition to ordinary objects, there are extra-ordinary objects, such as a trog (a mereological fusion of a tree and a dog), an incar (a car that ceases to exist when it leaves a garage), a curltpillar (a caterpillar-like object that begins to exist when an ordinary caterpillar rolls up into a ball), etc. It gets really crazy. (EDIT: the view in question is called "metaphysical permissivism". It's not identical to mereological universalism, but the two are closely related, and it's an open question whether or not universalism in the mereological sense entails permissivism in the metaphysical sense).
In case anyone is interested, you can find more information about these ideas in the SEP entry on Ordinary Objects.
Yes, or the idea that whenever there is one cat on a mat there are actually trillions of cats on a mat (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/problem-of-many/). To me, many of these conclusions seem like the conclusions of a reductio argument.
The section in the link provided on eliminativism and permissivism covers some of the theories I am talking about. One way to solve these issues is to say that apparent proper wholes are just the result of either the mind or language.
That could well be the case. (BTW the Problem of the Many is absolutely brutal form a purely intellectual standpoint, it's like the problem of material constitution, i.e. the case of the clay statue and the piece of clay that it co-incides with).
Do you think I hold that view, Tim?
Edit: Or that such a view is implied by linguistic philosophy generally?
Right, but eliminativism in this sense is a metaphysical thesis, while mereological nihilism is a thesis about the part-whole relation (hence, van Inwagen's SCQ: when do two objects A and B compose a third object C? The nihilist answer is "never", hence there are no cats, no mats, no trees no dogs, etc. So, nihilism in the mereological sense arguably entails eliminativism in the metaphysical sense, though some nihilists have attempted to resist this entailment).
Van Inwagen himself was an eliminativist in the metaphysical sense, but he was a particularist in a mereological sense. He believe that the only case in which composition occurs is when there is a plurality of objects (a plurality of "x"s, he called them) such that their activities constitute a life (understood as the composition of an event, rather than the composition of an object), in which that life, as an event (it would be more like a process, really) imposes sufficient unity on the parts that compose it as an event, and in such a sense, that life as an event constitutes a new object, a whole, which would be an organism (a living being).
So, according to van Inwagen, only two kinds of objects exist, in a metaphysical, ontological sense: fundamental particles, and organisms. Stones don't exist, neither do tables. It's just "quarks and animals" to use a metonymy.
Personally, I don't agree with such metaphysical views, nor with such a restricted answer to the Special Composition Question. I'm a particularist about composition, but I think that it occurs in far more cases than just organisms. I think that stones and tables exist just as much as quarks and animals do.
I very much doubt you'd find any of my thoughts about this interesting, but I'll say it anyway.
When we think about a world, the whole thing is supposed to hang together spatially and temporally. A single moment in a world implies the rest of it. So we always use the same epistemological principles for pre and post human sections of a world. It's just crazy nonsense to say that there were no divisions before humans, but divisions existed afterwards.
So in order to avoid turning the topic into something only a lobotomy patient would understand, we will jettison talk of how the world was before humans. Instead, we'll talk about what we know of the world beyond our own conceptions of it. And many a great mind has decided that the answer to that is: diddly.
An odd interpretation of what I said:
Quoting Banno
Quine accepted naturalism, but is not much considered not part of the "linguistic turn" - although Semantic Ascent is included in Rorty's book. Semantic ascent is the move from talk about things to talk about the language of those things. The aim is to attempt to reframe metaphysical issues as linguistic issues, at least to achieve some confidence in the language we are using, and potentially to dissipate some metaphysical issues entirely. The Gavagai fable is an example, where the ontology of rabbits and rabbit parts is considered by examining the referent of "gavagai".
Nothing in that implies what you suggest.
It's a simple courtesy to use the quote and mention functions in order to let someone know you have been discussing their ideas. You've missed doing so a few times. I'm sure you would not want people to think you were avoiding my replying to your comments on my suggestions.
Yup, I agree. But some philosophers would still argue with you, for theoretical reasons (i.e., mereological universalists, who also happen to be metaphysical permissivists).
Another ambiguously attributed post - did I say that? I do make use of Quine's joke, "To be is to be the value of a bound variable". It's another useful example of semantic ascent, were ontological issues can be understood in an informative way by treating them as issues of semantics. Do you need an explanation as to how it works?
I quite agree! But what will these be like?
One solution is that they will involve some sort of stipulation; that this counts as an "a".
That's the point of ' example, chess. Yes, a meaning may be stipulated, perhaps explicitly, sometimes more by acceptance or convention.
And yes, language games - things we do with words - do involve the stuff that makes up the world around us. That much of what we do is linguistic just does not imply that it is not embedded in the world - although @Count Timothy von Icarus seems to think otherwise.
Quoting J
Sure. Not in contention, for me.
:blush: You say that like it was a bad thing...
But this is a mischaracterisation. There is a problem with utterances such as
Since philosophy is done almost exclusively by making use of language, words are the tools of philosophers. Shouldn't the philosopher, like all honest tradesmen, have a care for his tools?
So the interesting question, if we wanted to pursue it, is whether there are grounds for a given stipulation that are justified by the world itself, as opposed to what we want to do with the terms we stipulate. "Justified" may not be quite the right word, but I'm trying to keep it as neutral as possible. Typical annoying example: Do we have any reason besides linguistic pragmatism to say that "tiger" corresponds to a metaphysically noteworthy feature of the world, whereas "tiger + my left thumb" does not? I absolutely believe that "tiger + thumb" can be an item in good existential standing, should a use for this mereological monstrosity ever occur and get quantified. But there's something desperately wrong, it seems to me, about saying that the only reason this item is rarely mentioned (and will never be again, if I have anything to do with it!) is that we don't have a use for it. We want to say -- I do, at any rate -- that (paraphrasing Sider) the person who believes this item is as perspicuous about the world as "tiger" is, is making a mistake.
A big subject, no need to continue here unless it helps with Quine and reference.
Quoting Banno
So that means we ought to agree that studying the tiger's paw can tell us more about tigers, whereas studying the word "tiger" likely will not. There's a "connection with the world" that is presupposed by any language-based approach to philosophy. Gadamer has some good things to say about this if I can find it ... will look tomorrow
And then...
Quoting J
But...
Quoting J
Well, yes, interesting. So what is the mistake here? Not grasping the essence, if grasping the essence is just using the word; not intending, since one can as much intend tiger-and-thumb as tiger.
Maybe have another look at the rejection of atomism in PI, around §48. How far can the argument there be taken?
Are they, though? From the POV of ordinary language, a word is not a tool. A hammer is a tool. A word isn't.
You use tools, and you use words. It's a metaphor, maybe, pointing out that philosophers perhaps should take a bit of care with their language. Or will any words do? Dog up the pillow and oligarchic trench, then.
I use fire to cook my food. Doesn't mean that fire is a tool, or a word.
Oh, so I didn't get it before, but now I do? It's not possible that I got it, and I just happened to disagree with some of the premises that lead to the conclusion of the argument in question? Ok. Sure, you can believe that. You can believe whatever you want, everyone has the basic human right to have mistaken beliefs.
: I quite agree! But what will these be like? One solution is that they will involve some sort of stipulation; that this counts as an "a".
: So the interesting question, if we wanted to pursue it, is whether there are grounds for a given stipulation that are justified by the world itself...
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Or in other words: stipulation is no solution at all. J is quite right: what is at stake are propositions, not terms. This is also the manner in which one dispenses with considerations of "metaphysical superglue." From SEP:
Quoting The Medieval Problem of Universals | SEP
Klima's conclusion is salutary (my bolding):
Quoting The Medieval Problem of Universals | SEP
Note that the perennial question of how mind relates to reality through language can in no way be solved by mere stipulation. Which term-token gets associated with which concept makes no difference at all. What makes a difference is, as J said, propositions, namely the combination of terms through a copula.
Similarly, stipulative reference presupposes the ability to recognize linguistic/conceptual terms in reality; it presupposes a knowable mapping between language and reality. But that relation between mind, language, and reality is the whole problem in the first place. No one was ever confused about our ability to stipulate what a term means, and this ability to stipulate in no way solves any of the substantial issues at stake.
(@Janus)
Connecting propositions to the world is one of the things we do with words, when we use them to talk about stuff. I don't see that as especially problematic.
Telling, it seems to me, that the problem of universals does not have an entry in the SEP - except for the historical article. Blame Austin, especially Are There A Priori Concepts?
I liked that equated statements and beliefs. We'll make a Davidsonian out of them yet.
The whole question is about unpacking the word "that." You are begging the question. The word "that" does not solve the age-old philosophical question of how the mind knows reality. It presupposes the limb that you think you have successfully chopped away.
Cheers, Leon.
([I]Edited for clarity[/i])
:smile: No, at best a small-d davidsonian. There are problems with background beliefs and even unconscious beliefs. "I believe that p" is only one way in which our beliefs surface. Can they surface non-linguistically? A tricky question, off topic here.
Of course they can. That's one of the things they do - explaining our actions. An example from my Bio
But if some posited "belief" cannot be put into the form "x believes that P", then I think that is good grounds for discounting it as a belief. That goes for background and unconscious beliefs, too. Unstated is not unstatable.
Small 'd' will do.
Quoting J
See, I disagree. But let's distinguish the term in your conclusion, namely "the meaning of the word 'tiger'."
I bought my nephew a National Geographic book filled with photographs of animals. He can't read yet, but he loves animals. Let's suppose that the picture in the book is his first encounter with the animal and his first encounter with the word "tiger." We say to him, "That is a tiger." So "tiger" is for him the animal pictured in the book (and if he were younger it might be the picture itself). Suppose we then take him to the zoo, and he spends 10 minutes watching real tigers through the glass. Has the meaning of the word "tiger" changed for him? Of course it has. Now when you say "tiger" he thinks of something quite a bit different (and more accurate) than what he thought of before he visited the zoo.
But if your term is meant to be abstract, such that "the meaning of the word" means the denotation of the word "tiger" for all 1.5 billion English speakers, and in all of the literature since the middle 12th century when tigre is first documented in Old English, then no, "the meaning of the word" has remained unchanged, or at least my nephew has not altered it in any noticeable way. Nevertheless, a linguistic community develops its language in the same way that my nephew develops his understanding of the essence of tigers. Zoologists, for example, advance the meaning of words like 'tiger', particularly in the early stages of development.
Quoting J
Quoting J
I don't think your explanation is an explanation. "No, because the scientific community has changed the reference of that term." Does that tell us anything? Ironically, it sounds like a claim about metaphysical superglue, namely that a metaphysical superglue operation was conducted to change the meaning of "planet," and voila!, Pluto is no longer a planet. (And I assume you are talking about the reference of the term 'planet'.)
The question you ask is loaded, "Is Pluto still a planet?" It implies that the definition of "planet" has remained stable. We might similarly ask, "Is Jupiter still a planet?," and the answer is not obvious. Hopefully we both understand that our solar system has nine planet1s and eight planet2s, and that in 2006 there was a push to redefine "planet" from planet1 to planet2.
What arguably happened in 2006 is that the nature of a planet was better grasped, and this improved understanding changed Pluto's status (although I don't know much about the details of the case). But talking about inanimate astronomical bodies is not a great way to get into the topic of essences. Tigers are much better.
Similarly, my nephew might consistently mistake a Savannah cat for a tiger, but then at some point grow in personal knowledge and learn to distinguish them. Reality, concept, and word are all interrelated, and therefore by coming to understand that the reality of a Savannah cat is different from the reality of a tiger he is utilizing different concepts to understand each reality, and he in turn learns that we have a different word for the Savannah cat. He will be proud, and will say, "That's not a tiger, it's a Savannah cat!" And well he should be, for he grew in knowledge. His understanding of the essence of a tiger was improved, and his understanding of the essence of a Savannah cat was birthed. If the Savannah cats he saw did not have a different nature than the tigers he saw, and Savannah cats did not have a different essence than tigers, then he could never have come to his new knowledge. That is, if Savannah cats are not different from tigers then we cannot know them as two separate kinds. The idea of an essence is really not much more complicated than that, which is why @Count Timothy von Icarus and I find it so odd to see people hell-bent on impugning it. It is the abstracted common nature of a natural kind, which is signified by a common noun. Those who do the most work with essences are biological scientists, not purple-haired, crystal-wielding "metaphysicians."
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My suspicion is that you think that a referent remains fixed even as meaning changes or grows. I think that commits us to the very strange view of bare particulars that <Spade speaks to>, one which closely mimics the incoherencies of accurately referring to possible-world entities which have no necessary properties. It is the strange idea that referent and meaning are clearly separated, an idea that naturally follows upon the weird way that modern logic conceives of bare property-bearing entities. But I wonder why we would want to let modern logicians set the standard for how language works, given that their logic wasn't much interested in language at all? In fact often castigating it?
That is very close to what Rödl thinks. McDowell uses Aristotle and Anscombe to show why it is wrong.
Anscombe's discussion of intentionality is excellent, both agreeing and disagreeing with Davidson in details. Now while Anscombe did think the reasons for our actions could not always be reduced to a causal relation between beliefs or desires and intentions, and would likely say the "x believes that P" oversimplifies the issue, would she reject it outright? Well, I'd have to be convinced.
Anscombe differed from Davidson, and here I am agreeing more with Davidson. But it is not a simple issue, and without the details (the transcript is shite)...?
You are welcome to set out what you think McDowell is saying that Anscombe says.
But the problem is that we're now invoking an unstated something that is supposed to be identical to a statement. Or should I say, it would be a statement if it were stated? Maybe you can say more about how this works. I assume you're not saying that the belief only becomes a belief when it is stated.
Quoting Banno
Yes, Witt's question is very similar. He asks, concerning the color-figure, "Does it matter which we say [concerning number and type of elements] so long as we avoid misunderstandings in any particular case?"
Probably the best thing to do here is abandon my thumb and let Sider speak for himself. If you're willing, go here and read pp. 16-20. This is introductory material to Writing the Book of the World, and Sider is asserting his views, not arguing much for them. But it gives a good sense of what the "mistake" would consist of, and why it might be important to hold out for privileged structure.
Quine collaborated on a short textbook intended for phil students, called The Web of Belief. He says something at the beginning that I remember being puzzled by, and looking at it again, I still am. He gives a fair account of the argument in favor of a "belief" being different from its statement, ending with, "Therefore, one tends to conclude that the things believed are not the sentences themselves. What, then, are they?" But then he says:
Retreat? Deflect? And what does he mean by "waive that claim"? To waive a claim to something usually means, to give up one's right to it -- but that can't be his meaning here. Alternatively, to waive a rule means to declare the rule inapplicable in a given case Is this closer to Quine's meaning? -- the claim about "believed things are sentences" is inapplicable in this case? That doesn't sound right either. To me, it reads like he's saying, "We're just going to declare that issue out of bounds, and talk about 'believing true' instead." Very peremptory, without a justification. Or should we say that the justification is the final sentence about "our factual interest"? But the question about the ontology of a belief never was about any given fact about what is believed.
Maybe someone else can make sense of the whole passage.
You'd have to do a lot of unpacking there. It's an operationalization. It's not unlike how entropy is a very deep concept, but we certainly have useful ways to operationalize it. Is it a good move?
English uses "know" in many senses, and then knowing is historically formulated as a type of believing in Anglo-American philosophy. Other languages have many words to cover what English does with two. It seems easy to argue that not all knowledge is propositional, but what about belief?
For instance, an experienced CEO and a business student might both "know what it is like to be a CEO" in terms of affirming similar sentences, but there is a sense of "know" in which only the experienced CEO really knows. Likewise, everyone knows what it is like to lose a parent young or to fast in terms of affirming sentences about one's parents' deaths or eschewing food and drink, but many are not orphans and have never gone a day without eating, and so in another sense, they do not know what they are like.
The gap becomes more obvious in the realm of practical truths. A social sciences student who has never been in any romantic relationship might affirm that "stable marriages are good," but we might take this belief to be quite different than that of the woman who has been in a happy, fulfilling marriage for 25 years, or even the priest who has never married, but has acted as spiritual guide for many couples, both happy and unhappy.
There is a wealth of interesting findings on how affirmation of belief is "squishy," for lack of a better term. Experts panicked that so many US citizens were affirming beliefs like "Trump won the popular vote in 2016 and 2020 in a landslide and the CCP helped overthrow our government," or "COVID-19 is a hoax." One might think that if the type of people who claimed to believe the former "really" believed it, they would take up arms.
But it certainly isn't that they are just lying, at least not as best researchers can tell. And they have their justifications and appeal to them. There is a question of "conviction" around belief, and this does not reduce neatly to mere assumed probability that the belief is true. Journalists might well have believed with near 100% certainty things like: "Stalin is carrying out an industrial scale genocide of Ukrainians," but it was not until they directly experienced it that they began to be willing to risk absolutely everything to bring it to the world's attention.
Which might suggest that even in Quine's own terms of what constitutes valid evidence vis-a-vis "our factual interest in what some speaker of English believes," while it might be "fully satisfied by finding out what sentences he believes to be true," it will not be sufficient to merely observe which sentences he sincerely affirms. We might need to look at all their behaviors to gauge this, and assigned truth values might be inadequate to fully capture belief. And we might suppose that we also might need to appeal to their experiences to explain how they believe this.
A lot of philosophy has a special role for sense knowledge and understanding, and this is captured in analytic philosophy by arguments such as Jackson's "Mary's Room," Searl's "Chinese Room," etc. The web of belief gets at this too. It's one of the places where holism is attacked. If two people disagree about dogs, do they both "have different dogs?"
But surely the web gets something right, beliefs, like things, are not self-subsistent. This is an issue later synthesizers of Aristotle and Plato grappled with. It's impossible to describe what a horse is without appeal to other things. For the scholastics, everything existed in a "web of relations." Yet here, some sort of qualification is required, even if it isn't a formal operationalization, because we will be in a pickle if we "must know everything to know anything" in any context, including "what people believe."
What kind of benefit do you think they would get from not impugning it? If it is just saying that there are statistical structures and regularities in reality, then fine. But why do I need to use the word "essence"? Seems to connote something more than is required so I don't need to use the word.
You are welcome to listen to McDowell's lecture.
:up:
It seems like he is making the 'factual' in "factual interest" do a heck of a lot of work.
Quoting J
Sider is an interesting figure for the discussion, and it's unfortunate that he was ignored in your thread on Ontological Pluralism. He is willing to consider forms of modal essentialism, and he doesn't see problems with bare particulars. He therefore fills an important gap between Aristotle and Quine.
Here is Sider:
Quoting Theodore Sider, Ontological Realism, 18
He is doing a good job of digging into an issue that Peter Abelard originally opened:
Quoting Abelard via Paul Vincent Spade | Medieval Universals | SEP
And:
Quoting Abelard via Paul Vincent Spade | Medieval Universals | SEP
The issue becomes protracted when nominalists like Ockham come on the scene.
The problem for Abelard and Sider is this: Suppose we try to say that something "counts as" a tiger, without there being any common cause residing within each real tiger. That is, suppose that our common noun "tiger" merely indicates a collection of individuals. On this view, what holds the collection together as a non-arbitrary collection? What undergirds the "counts as" relation itself?
Very little of this thread has been about Quine, but at some point a new thread should be created or else we should move this into the Sider thread.
(CC: @Srap Tasmaner and @fdrake)
Everyone after Wittgenstein was deranged. Just a sad turn of events. :fear:
"A believes that P" is not a restriction on what one might do, think or feel. It is a stipulations as to which of those things might be best called a belief. "A believes that P" says that a belief is had by someone, which I hope is not controversial, and also that the content of a belief can be true or false. It's by way of setting out what it is we are discussing.
I'll ask again for an example of a belief that cannot be put in this form - not because I'n certain there are none, but because an example might show us more about he nature of belief. "I believe in Trump" might be considered a counterexample, with a proper name rather than a proposition as its content. Here a dictionary is useful, setting out differing senses of "belief", The first being to accept something as true, the second being more akin to "having faith".
There's gold in those hills even if no one says so. That gold isn't identical to the statement about it. The belief need not be identical to the statement about it.
Thanks for the read. Keeping to PI§48 for the sake of continuity, Sider is making the point that we might consider a monochrome square as consisting of two rectangles, as Wittgenstein suggests, but we cannot arbitrarily consider it to consist of two circles - these would not be congruent with the picture. And this is quite right; not just any proposition will do, there is a further restriction that the proposition be true. Two rectangles would make a square, but two circles would not.
Let me know if I have miscomprehended Sider.
And I think this fundamentally correct. Not just any proposition will do; it's the true ones that are to be preferred if our task is to set out how things are. And here Davidson is again of use. If we have two communities, one of which talks of squares, and the other of rectangles which are sometimes paired, then we might construct a translation from one language into the other, such that statements about squares in the first can be translated as statements about paired rectangles in the other. Using such a translation we might reach some agreement as to what is the case with the item at §48. Here the Principle of Charity comes in to play, since the translation is based on treating the beliefs of both communities as essentially the same, just expressed somewhat differently.
What's salient here is that charity does not rely on a notion of objectivity, apart from shared belief.
So in answer to Sider's question "what else beyond my use of words must the interpreter consult?" the answer provided by Davidson is, the interpreter's beliefs together with the assumption that those he is translating have the same beliefs.
This avoids Lewis's use of the "the facts of naturalness". But I don't think it disagrees with Sider's view that the world is structured.
I'll have to come back to this paper when I have some time. I would like to get a handle on the more formal aspects of Sider's account.
This discussion is in many ways very similar to an ongoing discussion between @Joshs and I, but with Joshs in my lace and myself in yours. It sometimes seems to me that Joshs allows the mooted divisions in the world to be too arbitrary, as you seem to think I am proposing.
Thanks again for taking this discussion seriously and engaging with it fully.
Quoting J
When we recognize an individual tiger we recognize the tiger, and we don't even need to recognize it as a tiger. So, it seems to me that the question is 'when we recognize something as a tiger what is it that we are recognizing?'.
The answer that comes to me initially is that we recognize a unique example of a kind of pattern or form that we have come to associate with the concept 'tiger'. Not sure if that is an adequate answer.
My approach to answering this is quite different to , but that should not be taken as implying that he is mistaken.
Would that I had the text, so I could see the context.
Quine appears to be invoking what he elsewhere called semantic ascent, moving from talk about objects to talk about the language used to talk about those objects. But here he is reversing the process. To put this in an example, the move described is from "Pat believes the tree is an oak" to "Pat believes-true that the tree is an oak'". "We can retreat to this without claiming that believed things are sentences" becasue now what is believed true is the state of affairs that the tree is an oak. What is believed is not the sentence, so much as the way things supposedly are. So in "Pat believes the tree is an oak" is abut the belief. But in "Pat believes that 'the tree is an oak' is true" the subject is what is true. What's believed by pat is not the sentence "the tree is an oak" but the truth that the tree is an oak.
Quoting J
They are, speaking more roughly than one should, states of affairs or ways things are in the world.
Again, I don't think Tim's more discursive reply is mistaken, belief is indeed complex and nuanced, and the whole of a belief might not be captured by a single proposition. Yet treating beliefs as beliefs in the way things are is at least a start, and at least not wrong. As Anscombe might argue, it's an oversimplification, but Davidson might reply that it works.
Of course, I am once again able to speak, but I shall have to pen the further cantos to discuss how I made it back to this state of speech. :nerd:
Presumably the process of recognising a tiger takes place in the neural web in one's head, and recognising patterns is what neural webs do. Attaching the word "tiger" presumably involves an extra layer of that web. I understand that recognition occurs in the Medial temporal lobe while the words are found in Wernickes area.
It was one of the central pieces of the OP in "Quantifier Variance, Ontological Pluralism, and Other Fun Stuff," a thread in which you posted 69 times without once referring to Sider. :meh:
Quoting Banno
The reason this discussion has been so wily is because the OP is insubstantial.
It pleases me that you have taken such a keen interest in my writing. Tell us more about me.
I'll take that bet. You believe that words are the philosopher's tools, because you believe that anything that can be used is a tool (I disagree, but that's beside the point). You believe that the craftsman must take care of his tools, hence the philosopher should take care of his words. In that sense, you have some reservations on Quine as a philosopher. You see him as a good technician or an engineer, but you don't really consider him to be a philosopher. More like a person that studies grammar.
Good, but then what is it?
If I have a background belief that the earth goes around the sun, and you ask me at this moment whether I believe it, I'll say yes, of course. What has happened? We agree that there wasn't some statement lurking around, unstated; a belief needn't be identical with a statement about it. Nor does it seem very likely that a proposition was there, being believed, awaiting statement. I can understand why some philosophers speak of beliefs as propensities for affirming this or that: This does rather feel like what happens. But, sadly, "propensity" is no more help than "statement" or "proposition." What's a propensity when it's at home? And to make it all that much worse, I don't want to have to settle for an answer that is psychological. I don't want to be told that a "belief" involves some gathering of neurons, that it's a mental event in that sense.
I have no solution to this, just laying out why I think the problem is so intractable.
Quoting Banno
With respect, I think you have. Sider is saying that all the "bleen and grue" propositions are true. The bleen people aren't claiming that their world is pellow and yurple. Everything they say checks out, just as I could say true things about "tiger & thumb" if I had a mind to. So Sider wants an additional criterion for perspicuity: not just true but also "carving reality at the joints" or, very broadly, a good fit with a reality that really is out there, in terms of metaphysical structure. It's a bold claim. He won't be satisfied with anything resembling "Well, green and blue fit better because they're more useful" or "We're the sort of creature that sees properties which have duration in time." He really wants it to be baked into the structure of the world.
Quoting Banno
Yes, I'd like to hear from you about that, and this essay is pretty non-technical compared to most of the book, which is a deep dive into contemporary logic and meta-philosophy.
Quoting Banno
But of course.
That's a plausible reading of "retreat." You're suggesting that Quine doesn't mean "retreat" in the sense of "withdraw his philosophical forces in the face of a powerful opponent," but rather "retreat" as in "descend a level." I'll buy it.
Quoting Banno
That would be my answer too. It seems reasonable, doesn't it? So why does Quine then reject that way of putting it entirely? The passage I quoted, which begins "This, like various other philosophical questions, is better deflected than met head on," is the next sentence after "What, then, are they?" (yeah, sorry we can't all look at an extended segment together). He's definitely saying that he doesn't want to give the answer you and I think is reasonable.
Maybe the clue lies in the parenthetical "like various other philosophical questions". Could he be reacting to the ontologically brusque question, What are they? We know he doesn't care to reify what doesn't need reifying, on his view, and perhaps he thinks that, once again, a philosophical question is being posed that demands a description of a metaphysical object.
Just found this: Sider has the opening chapter of Writing the Book available online. It's an even better introduction to his ideas about structure than the standalone essay.
There's a presumption that it has to be a something. After all, it has a noun; and nouns name things, so there must be a thing that "belief" names.
What do you think of that argument? It strikes me as an error to suppose that becasue there is a name there must be a thing named.
Quoting J
I agree this doesn't help. And here Anscombe's response comes more in to play, in that beliefs are more than just inclinations. We might also include the neural net pattern recognition mentioned in my reply to , but also the state of the world in "Pat believes the tree is an oak"...
Intelligence, for one.
Quoting Apustimelogist
I agree you don't need to use the word. Essences aren't exactly about objective structure, as that's more universals, but that is the core issue this thread floats around. That is, essences are about the objective structure of species, but we are more interested in objective structure per se.
Note the way essences entered the thread:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's pretty mild. It's pretty close to what Sider is saying (although a bit more expansive).
But note that Banno then immediately starts in with his polemical trolling campaign against "essences," as he is so wont to do. The confusion around the term comes from this sort of polemical and ignorant propaganda, and this thread is no exception.
Quoting Apustimelogist
Yes, and that should be commonly accepted, right? The problem is that it's not. Sider knows he is being controversial when he says that reality itself has a structure, as lots of people on this forum and elsewhere are committed to denying that idea. In fact the thread on Sider never even got off the ground due to the fact that Sider was so effectively sidelined by those who are opposed to this sort of thinking.
Rorty says that a screwdriver can be used for scratching your ear or something along those lines.
Similar to what I was suggesting might be Quine's position on "belief," above.
Quoting Banno
This usually comes up in the context of fictions, with "thing" meaning a physical bit of reality. Thus, the name "Pegasus" doesn't name anything that actually exists in that sense, and this is important because if you're in a pinch and call for your winged horse, he's not going to come.
Do we want to transfer this name/thing-named conception to "belief"? Are we saying that "belief" might name something that can be talked about, used in meaningful sentences, etc., but doesn't actually correspond to anything in mental reality?
Or -- and this is the more radical construal -- would we be saying that there is absolutely nothing named by "belief"? no equivalent of "the horse that isn't physical but has some other reality"? This would make belief-talk much more incoherent.
Thus, I'm not sure what I think of the argument that a name implies a thing named, because I don't know how deeply the denial of thingness goes, if you follow me. What's your thought?
So is a belief a thing, or a series of interconnected activities and ways of thinking?
And now we might be approaching something interesting on this topic. But it must be past your bed time.
Yes, and we say that someone has the concept of a triangle when they can draw, identify, and work with triangles. But it does not follow that the concept of a triangle is the drawing of a triangle, or that the concept of five is the counting to five. Someone who counts to five is doing something with five, and thus this cannot itself be five.
"Triangle" is a concept which encompasses all sorts of different images, both mental and real. It is universal - it spans many particulars. To understand triangularity or have the concept of a triangle is not a particular, whether that be a particular thought, action, image, etc.
Is there a thread on medieval universals where we can discuss this? It interests me, but I don't want to start a new thread if no one cares.
I was thinking of starting a reading group on the SEP article, but I don't currently have time to field it. Feel free to start it yourself. A lot of current discussions are swirling around this issue, and I think that SEP article is very readable and easy to understand. Granted, you wouldn't need to utilize the SEP article if you don't want to, and it wouldn't need to be a reading group. The key in my opinion would be getting folks to understand the problem that the attempted solution presupposes.
No, it's too much responsibility right now, I've a few other Threads that I've started that need my attention, I wouldn't be able to concentrate enough for the Medieval discussion on universals. It's a subject matter that I'm genuinely interested in, but I don't want to take the lead, here.
Not everyone. Some, certainly. Some (mis)readings of Wittgenstein, or other appeals to underdetermination, seem to result in very wild theses.
Just for one example of a thesis derived from Wittgenstein that seems troubling (from A.C. Grayling's book on him):
Now, few [I]want[/I] to tread down these paths. However, some do it quite eagerly, in part because "there is no truth," islike "there is no truth about what is good or bad"seen as "liberating" (a "freedom from reality" perhaps). This is hardly unique to Wittgenstein, some embrace the critique of holism, which most holists want to fix, that it implies that no one who doesn't already share the same beliefs ever truly communicates. Or there are related paths to the resurrection of Latin Averroism and the idea that the truths of each "field" can contradict each other because they are each "hermetically sealed magisterium." (Of course, this very doctrine implies that it itself may only be true in some fields, and that what constitutes a proper hermetically sealed field will also itself vary by field).
Crucially, on that last one, there often seems to be nothing other than bare stipulated fiat that stops the hermetically sealed magisterium from shrinking down to just each individual's beliefs, such that we reach a Protagotean relativism of "whatever one thinks is true is true (for that person)."
What claim could be more straightforwardly self-refuting than "nothing is really true or false?" Yet people make it. And if I recall, you were of the opinion that this is in fact the overwhelming consensus amongst all current logicians. Sad it would be if it were truly so.
But most people don't want to reach these sorts of conclusions. They try to work their way back. Fair enough. Can they? Wanting to fix your own philosophical problems is not the same thing as fixing them. Kant surely didn't want his system to imply dualism, but plenty of Kant scholars think it essentially does. Likewise, the trick is in avoiding a slide into a sort of extreme relativism and deflationism in a coherent manner. Which is where people can be more or less successful. Less successful, I would say, are solutions that just involve invoking "pragmatism! It is not helpful to me to believe this level of relativism" But of course the radicals do think it is helpful, and the so this is hardly much of a philosophical answer.
Whereas, when people do "work their way back" to common sense, they often end up saying things that sound very similar, about rabbits and such existing as a certain sort of actuality in the world that cannot be collapsed with that actuality of their being known by the human mind, and so on. Terms will vary because the detours through skepticism create a vast jungle of terms.
Do you believe it's true that the earth orbits the sun? Did you know that this "truth" is relative to choices that we little people make? If there's no one to choose a frame of reference, there is no truth of the matter. This is not philosophy. It's physics.
Hi, excuse me. In my personal ontology, truth is a feature of Reality itself. It has nothing to do with humans. Not all frames of reference are human. The fact that the Earth orbits the Sun would be the same fact if humanity went extinct, or if it never existed to begin with. It is true that the Earth orbits the Sun, because that truth is related to a fact. It would have been related to that fact even in the absence of human beings. And in fact, it was, it still is, and will be, for as long as it is a fact that the Earth orbits around the Sun (if, in the extremely distant future, the Sun ceases to exist, then such matters of fact will have changed).
There is an actuality which is the Earth orbiting the Sun. We model that actuality using physics. And some silly philosophers say that because 'the Earth orbits the Sun' is a sentence which is, in this case, true, and because truth only pertains to sentences, judgements and beliefs, without language and linguistically competent beings there is not truth.
It's a lame and misguided argument in my opinion. The problem is that when it comes to arguments like that there doesn't seem to be a determinable fact of the matter as to whether they are true or falseand the result is that such arguments are interminable.
It's true that the earth orbits the sun if we say the sun is stationary relative to the earth. We could instead pick the earth as the stationary point and then it wouldn't be true that the earth orbits the sun. This is not rocket science guys.
Also energy and mass are constructs. They aren't observable. The list goes on.
Maybe now is a good time to tell you that a fitting subtitle for the forum would be as follows:
[math]The\,Philosophy\,Forum:\,Where\,Conversations\,Go\,Terribly\,Wrong[/math]
:sweat:
Physics, not philosophy, suggests nothing is really true?
I gave you an example of a truth that's relative to the choices we make.
The description is relative to choices we make, not truth. No one says that the expression of truth isn't relative in this way, and people don't tend to use SR/GR as an example of deflationism or all-embracing relativism because it isn't. One can describe things more or less accurately in different ways, and different languages. The Ptolemaic model is not entirely inaccurate, but it is certainly wrong in many key respects. And in the Newtonian model we are already focused on a center of mass, not "the sun," although the sun is so much more massive that a statement of heliocentrism is not wholly false either.
Einstein famously regretted the moniker precisely because of this sort of confusion, and thought "theory of invariants," would be a better name. The whole edifice aims at clarifying invariance and constancy.
Hold up. Let's go over it a little more slowly. We just start with the realization that when we say the earth orbits the sun, we have chosen a frame of reference. Doing so requires that we choose a point and call it stationary relative to the rest of the points in the system. Are you with me so far?
To my understanding, relativism actually presupposes non-contextualism, because it must assumed by relativism that debating communicators are at least talking about the same referents if those referents are to be assigned conflicting properties or truth values by the debaters. On the other hand, if we do not assume that the debaters are referring to the same thing, then we have no basis for inferring that the debate is a disagreement about reality. In fact, I consider relativism to be self-inconsistent (for how can the truth be considered to be relative, either from an individual or collective perspective?). I think relativism is mainly motivated by a lack of appreciation for, or misunderstanding of, the logic of contextualism.
E.g suppose Bob insists that "The Earth is Flat". Then it is natural to also suppose that at the very least, there exists external physical causes and internal psychological causes for Bob's assertion, but the chances are the topology of the Earth is a negligible causal factor with regards to Bob's assertion, especially if it is assumed that the Earth is Round. So an objective semantic analysis of Bob's assertion cannot use the topology of the Earth as the referent of Bob's assertion.
Essentially, there is a conflict between
1) Interpreting a proposition as referring to a given state of affairs, and
2) Interpreting the proposition as being wrong about that state of affairs.
For this reason, I suspect that the concept of belief states is inconsistent and that beliefs don't exist in the sense of mental states, such as propositional attitudes.
You're absolutely right. Quine's insight was touched on earlier, but lately the thread has centered on global skepticism.
Quoting Banno
The comparison to "concept" is good. Neither one can be reduced to physical items. But don't we agree that there's more to existing than being physical? (Actually, let me interrupt myself here to say that I still think, as I've argued elsewhere, that we'd be better off dropping "exist" and "existence" entirely in metaphysical discussion. But let's go along with it for now.) So my question about how deeply our "denial of thingness" goes was meant to differentiate two positions. One would say that beliefs (and concepts too, perhaps) are valid terms to refer to in propositions, that they pick out important aspects of experience, that they are capable of being understood and related to other abstracta, etc. etc, but they aren't "things" in the sense that a tiger (or a neuron) is. The other position, which I called more radical, would say that beliefs aren't even that, that if we can't be more specific about their ontology, then there's no point in invoking them at all. They don't refer, except as describing a propositional attitude.
It sounds to me as if, by using the phrase "series of interconnected activities and ways of thinking," you lean more to the first construal. That is, there's nothing wrong with talking about beliefs as long as we don't reify them. Is that about right?
An interesting comparison with the word "darkness": I doubt if anyone wants to say that "darkness" is incoherent, or doesn't refer, or betrays a misunderstanding of some sort. At the same time, just about everyone wants to say that there is "no such thing" as darkness. I'm not saying this is a parallel with "belief", which presumably isn't the absence of something else, as darkness is. It's just another example of how we can insist on the existence (that word again) of a phenomenon that can't be understood as a physical item in the world's inventory.
:roll:
The speed of light is the only thing in the Universe that is constant, in the sense of being frame invariant. Is that what you want to argue? :roll: There's other stuff that is also frame invariant, "c" is not the only one. And it's possible to argue from there (after a somewhat lengthy series of steps) that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Quoting frank
No, it isn't. So why are we even talking about it? Just for the sake of arguing?
Quoting frank
No, they're not. They're real properties that physical things have. We refer to them with "E" and "m", those are the constructs, not the referents themselves. The territory is not the map.
Quoting frank
So? Just because something is not observable, it doesn't mean that it's not real. I can't observe a living Triceratops. That doesn't mean that there weren't living Triceratopses in the past (and yes "Triceratopses" is indeed the plural of "Triceratops").
Quoting frank
The list of what? Things are not words, and words are not things. The map is not the territory. The map successfully refers to the territory. Is it a perfect 1-to-1 match? Of course not. But why would anyone say that the territory that the map refers to is inscrutable? It isn't.
Oh, very much so. Nothing here should be construed as suggesting that there are no such thing as beliefs. And I'd even go along with reifying them, when we use them as explanations for actions, for example, so long as we are aware that this is what we are doing.
Beliefs are curiously foundational in regard to actions. That I went to the tap to get a glass of water is explained by my belief that the tap was a suitable place to obtain water together with my desire for water. That I believe the tap a source of water is sufficient, regardless of of whether the tap works or not. While it makes sense to ask why I believe the tap a source of water, it is somehow incoherent to ask if I believe the tap to be such a source, given my actions and assertions.
I think what this shows is the directionality of beliefs of this sort. So in coming to believe that the tap is a good source of water I am changing my belief to match the way things are. But in going to the tap to fetch water I am changing the way things are (my location) to match my belief (that there is water in the tap). This I take to be bringing out the intentionality involved in beliefs as well as explaining why they are foundational in explaining actions.
I'd also ask folk to note the part played by the propositional content of the belief in explaining behaviour. Without "taps are a source of water", the belief would have no explanatory value. Those who would deny propositional content will at some stage need to contend with this problem.
The comparison with darkness is helpful, although as you say belief is not an absence.
How did we get to this from Quine? We were talking about essences, and moved to beliefs. We were discussing beliefs in part becasue of the place they have for Quine in the Web of Belief.
We moved to essences when made the suggestion that to "grasp the intelligibility of things" - gavagai, perhaps - we needed first intelligible essences... or something like that. There was an odd circularity here, in that we need essences to understand what something is, but when pressed it seems Tim thinks an essence is exactly what it is to understand what something is... we understand what something is by understanding what it is. Now circularity is not strictly invalid, but it is far from convincing. And there's the rejection of logical atoms, together with the analysis around family resemblance, amongst other things, for advocates of essence to deal with.
seems now to be ascribing some form of cognitive relativism to someone - not sure if it's Quine, or @frank, or me, or all of us. I don't see anything like that in Quine, who was strongly enamoured of science and empirical evidence, rejecting radical pluralism. Quine sought coherence and utility within a single scientific worldview. For my part I've long advocated the rejection of cognitive relativism found in Davidson's On the very idea...".
Anyway, we are each not responsible for the way others misunderstand us - and there has been plenty of that in this thread. The way to overcome this is by continuing the conversation. But even then there may be a point at which we might not be able to progress, and all we can do is laugh and walk away. Perhaps charity has limits.
The upshot of this is that it would be a mistake to expect an express some "essence of belief", and that expecting such a thing might be a philosophical foible. It doesn't matter.
I suppose Quine's approach to dealing with Bob would be to draw upon his web of belief to show him a few inconsistencies, and ask him which of his beliefs he would modify in order to remove those inconsistencies. The recent thread does this sort of thing.
I also agree that a belief is not well represented as a mental state. However I do think there is some use in treating beliefs as an attitude towards a proposition. Perhaps my last post above to J will explain some of this.
There's a kind of absolutism that belongs to a theistic outlook. It's the kind of absolutism that would have a person deny something as simple as Galilean transformation. Meh.
I have no idea how you came to this take. Essence has to do with what something is, it is not dependent on a human's understanding it. If it was, then what things are would fundamentally change when we came to understand them, or came to understand them more fully. I am not sure of any thinker who puts forth an idea of essences as "what it is to understand something." Rather, essences would be what is understood.
The pattern is "rabbits exist as a distinct whole outside and prior to human understanding" followed by "the senses communicate such wholes to us," followed by "through sense experience, imagination, and reason, we can gain a grasp on what things are" (the last of course, is not a binary, one can understand something better or worse).
No clue where you're getting that either. I brought up Grayling's quote because it is an example of problematic theses that [I]can[/I] follow from linguistic turn era philosophy. This is very obvious in how the quotation is introduced. I point out specifically that few want to be led to these conclusions, but then the question becomes "how exactly shall they be avoided?"
:up: Right, words as a means of knowing versus what is (primarily) known.
Plus, the claim that mass and energy are "unobservable" needs to be qualified. On the view that all that exists is physical, and that what is physical consists entirely of these two (some add information as a third, or even as a more ontologically basic prior of course), to claim that matter and energy are unobservable would be to claim that nothing is observable. Although, I'm sure there is someone who, via IIT or computational theory of mind, has come to the conclusion that only information is observable.
You'd have to qualify it. There is a sense in which anytime you see something fall to the ground you are observing mass, and whenever you see anything (which of course involves light rather directly) you are obviously observing energy.
At any rate, what constitutes the center of a star system or galaxy is not arbitrary.
Quoting frank
Banno and Timothy are correct, it's not a matter of "absolutism' and it's not arbitrary. The Solar System as a whole has a centre of mass known as a barycenter around which everything in the system orbits. It is constantly changing its position depending on the positions of all the planets. The position of the barycenter is relative to the whole system, so it is not absolute but is also not a matter of perspective.
By trying to make sense of your post. For instance,
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I didn't say that you said that essences is "what it is to understand something", rather that understanding what something is, involves understanding its essence. So ok, you think that "essences would be what is understood" but when asked what an essence is there is a gap; not properties, not definitions, but quiddity; and I have nothing left with which to understand quiddity except as "the inherent nature or essence of something". The circularity remains. As I said, not vicious, but not helpful in terms of explaining stuff.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, your posts are erudite and expansive, but perhaps not so pertinent as they might be. Passive aggressive writing as an art form? Almost making an argument, but not quite, so as to maintain plausible deniability...
I dunno. It seems we each misapprehend the other. But it pleases me that you have seen fit to bud two threads off from this one, at the least it has had you doing some reconsidering.
Cheers.
Harking back to General Semantics, again? It's "The map is not the territory", and reminds us that any map is incomplete. Sound advice.
The map may be an excellent example of how Quine's web of belief works. That dot - it is the Church? In order to work that out, you will need to orient the map and interpret the other dots and lines in terms of the territory. You cannot decide that the dot is the church without giving due consideration to the whole; or perhaps to the context, as put it.
So yes, that dot on the map is indeed inscrutable, until the surrounds are taken into account. Much like "gavagai".
I don't read @frank as suggesting that mass is not real. Quite the opposite.
Yes. Mass and energy are real. They're both scientific constructs.
Quoting Wikipedia
Quoting Matt O'Dowd
Quoting Bunge (2012: 137)
Im still stuck on how one can speak to another about anything, and uses more than one word to form a sentence, without reference to, without invocation of, without admitting, without assuming, essence.
Arguing that essences arent knowable is like using words to argue that there are no such things as letters.
Essential distinctions are present in every move we make, be it a movement of speech, or a lump of magma distinguishing itself from the earths core and the volcano that tossed it.
Movement and essence - or simply distinction - undeniable. Unless one stops speaking. And breathing.
Whether we ever know the essence of anything correctly, that is another matter; but we know something of the essence of knowledge when we admit motion (being, becoming) and quiddity (distinctions measured) are what can be known.
Again, there's a presumption that if there is a name then there has to be a something named. After all, it has a noun; and nouns name things, so there must be a thing that any name names.
It strikes me as an error to suppose that becasue there is a name there must be a thing named.
So "Neil Armstrong" succeeds in referring to Neil Armstrong, but what of "Pegasus"?
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
What's your criterion for "success" here? That you understand what it is you are referring to? That seems inadequate. That someone else understands what you are referring to? That how will you be confident that they understood you completely? Perhaps they think "rabbit" is the name of the creature you saw, or the word for an attached rabbit foot. How will you find out?
By continuing the conversation and checking for understanding.
And on Quine's account, you can never be quite certain that they have understood you.
How familiar are you with the notion of a family resemblance?
Is there an "essence", common to all and only the members of a family, that makes it what it is?
What is assumed, in "assuming essence"?
What do all games have in common, in virtue of which they are properly the referent of "game"?
What is a things essence?
(Edit: But this is not Quine's criticism of essence. That's described elsewhere. )
If that's what you think, then you run directly into the following metaphysical problem, known in the literature as a Debunking Argument against Ordinary Objects:
Quoting Daniel Z. Korman
And the best strategy here is to deny the first premise. There is indeed an explanatory connection between how we believe the world to be divided up into objects, and how the world actually is divided up into objects.
Quoting Banno
You have two options here: to trace a distinction between conceptual existence and real existence, or to only recognize one type of existence (real existence). Bunge prefers the former. I prefer the latter. I would say that the word "Pegasus" successfully refers to the winged horse of Greek mythology (that would be the Russellian definite description here), and that such a creature, is just a fiction while it does not exist as a fiction (it exists, instead, as a mere brain process). In other words, I don't need to make any ontological commitment to fictional entities here, for the purpose of defending a non-Quinean account of how reference works. But, for all intents and purposes, I will say that "Pegasus" successfully refers to Pegasus (and that Pegasus does not really exist).
Quoting Banno
By speaking the same language. If someone points at something and says something in another language, I don't know what they're referring to. But that's not because those words have inscrutable references. It's just because I don't speak the language of that person. And I don't even need to learn the entire language. I can learn just those few words that the other person just used. For example, if both of us speak English, and the other person points to a small piece of paper with some pictures, and says Briefmarke, and I don't know German, I can ask him: "What does that mean in German?", the other person says "it means stamp". The reference has ceased to be "inscrutable", if by "inscrutable" we simply mean, at the end of the day, that I didn't know what the reference was, instead of saying that it's unknowable.
Quoting Banno
Why is this such a big deal in the first place? Why do I need my interlocutors to fully understand everything that I'm saying, 100% of the time? Ordinary language contains vague expressions. So? That doesn't mean that references are inscrutable.
Do you think Quine somehow posited this?
In simple terms, there is an "explanatory connection between how we believe the world to be divided up into objects the how the world actually is divided up into objects", given by holism. We use names so as to achieve the best fit to all our beliefs. We can't just divide the world up willy nilly - it has to be self- consistent.
[s]But moreover, the presumption that there is a "way the world is divided up" that is distinct from our conventions concerning rabbits and legs looks very much like "the myth of the given".[/s]
So Quine would perhaps join you in rejecting DK1.
There's also perhaps a presumption here that either the way the world divides up is entirely independent of our language, or it is entirely and arbitrarily dependent on it. Why not a middle ground, where we divide the world up using language in accord with how things are?
Or drop "existence" altogether in favour of quantification. To be is to be the value of a bound variable. Which is Quine's approach.
Philosophers have the moral obligation to vindicate ordinary speakers when they say that tables exist and that Pegasus doesn't.
And how will you be able to tell that you and your companion are indeed "speaking the same language"? Indeed, what is "speaking the same language" apart from the sort of agreement Quine is using?
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Quine's point is that we don't.. All we need to do is get on.
Sure. And they can do this by pointing to the difference between being made of wood and being a myth. That is, by quantifying over wood and mythology.
You and I are speaking the same language right now. It's the English language.
Quoting Banno
Something far more complex than the deluded beliefs of a philosophical Tax Lawyer.
Quoting Banno
What a laudable, important point. Almost as important as finding the cure for cancer.
That's not good enough. Quarks are not made of anything.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
How do you know? Take the question literally - what information do you have tat hand that shows that you and I are speaking the same language?
The suggestion is that what this amounts to is our ongoing agreement as to the overall topic - that we are not here talking in German or about V8 engines is shown by our overwhelming agreement - that we are discussing philosophical issues concerning reference in a forum for that sort of thing. That is, we can be confident we are speaking the same language becasue of the holistic context.
What's the alternative?
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Quantification is not about what something is made of. That table exists because it is made of wood; and therefore something is made of wood. And that something is now the value of the variable bound by "something is...". The table is the value of a bound variable. And Pegasus is a greek myth, therefore something is a greek myth, and so Pegasus is the value of a bound variable.
Putting this in your common sense terms, when we say Pegasus does not exist, but the table does, we meant that Pegasus is not the sort of thing that is made of wood, but it is the sort of thing found in a greek myth.
:roll:
Quoting Banno
:roll:
Quoting Banno
The alternative to what? To Quine's nonsense? Science in its entirety.
Quoting Banno
Existence is a property, not a quantity. You represent it with a predicate, not with a quantifier.
Quoting Banno
Then what you're saying to the common person is mediocre at best. They deserve better from philosophers.
Sellar's myth of the given argument, even if one accepts it, respects epistemology. It doesn't imply that the existence of a rabbit as a whole/organism cannot be distinct from our conventions.
Quine would not have rejected DKI. He would have rejected DK2 instead. Why? Because of this:
Quoting Banno
There is no middle ground. If you reject DK1, as I do, then you are effectively saying that we, human beings, apprehend objects and/or facts directly, the way they are, instead of merely "how they appear to us". Is it a perfect access to the things themselves? No, it's slightly distorted, in the manner of a map-territory correlation. And I mean that in a Meillassouxian way.
If you reject DK2, you have (at least) two very, very different options. One is to embrace deflationism. This is Quine's position. The other one is metaphysical permissivism: you concede that it's a triviality that ordinary objects exist, and you claim (by parity of reasoning) that extraordinary objects such as trogs and incars exist. This seems to be your own position.
Sellars might well caution that access to or articulation of this division is mediated by our frameworks, this doesnt necessarily entail rejecting the claim of independence itself.
I would ask Is there (in the same form as you said above) an experience you call makes it without making a what it is? There is the motion that undoes all family resemblance on the fringes, and there is the family, the essence, that is undone.
So simply put, there is is to be and there is what is to be; never can these be separated, except in words, as I have referred to the motion of is to be as if it was a separate moment from what it is to be.
Quoting Banno
Simply put. No. The essence doesnt come first from over there and then make some member over here one who has this essence. There is the thing. And there is the essence, the form, the distinction, that is this same thing, now spoken, or known for what it is.
There is.
So there is it.
It.
So it is.
Quoting Banno
Because we are asking about things as we simultaneously talk about talking about things, the words of your question are the answer to the question:
What is assumed in assuming essence.
Ok @Banno, this is to your Quinenean point, actually. What you just said there about Sellars is an example of what I personally call "Alien-like Language". That's what it sounds like, to my ear at least. It sounds more alien-ish than Ordinary English.
If that's all the proof that you have for Quine's theory of reference, then it graves me to say that Quine does not have much to tell us, about any substantial worldly matters. Sounds about fair?
Simply put. No.
You place the essence of a thing apart from the thing in order to form your question. The thing is its essence; it is what it is to be it.
You asked is there a X common to all and only the Ys of a family that makes it (presumably one of the Ys) what it is?
(Aside, what do you mean by what it is? as you just said that?)
No. The essence doesnt come first from over there and then make some member over here one who has this essence and shares its own essence with the other members. Thats too many ontological/ metaphysical pieces.
There is the thing.
One thing.
We can categorize the thing as a member of a family if you want but that can be a separate question (about universalizing a particular..). Thats advanced identification of a thing, its identification of many things as a family so they all can be distinguished at the same time as if they were one thing.
One thing is the question in the first place, so I dont think adding family resemblance helps sort this out.
There is the thing.
And like any thing, while it remains a thing, it makes some form, is being some essence, that words alone can recapture in reference to what it is.
Forms/essences come and go, just as things are all moving. Things and the essence spoken of those things do not make two kinds of things. There are just things. Things distinguished as this from that other one reveal what come to spoken of as their essences, the distinguishing lines that form the thing like they inform our words and thoughts of the things.
But none of this conversation has even happened without all of us fixing essences and putting them in motion. Its too late for us to avoid the punch in the face of an essential difference between even this sentence and my next.
Essence happens where happenings happen. It is not simply motion that is happening.
There can not be relations without relata, be they identified particular unique individual relatives, or familiar resembling relatives.
Motion is only found where fixed things are moving and fixed things only rest long enough to be carved out as things as they are moving into place.
Heraclitus said it best: It rests from change. There is peaceful harmony in warring tension.
Part of the tension here is knowing we are talking about actual things, experiencing phenomenal appearances hiding things in themselves, knowing the epistemological impossibilities involved, positing a thing such as tiger as if an objective, mind independent thing, and then speaking about speaking and language using essence as if we are not referring to a real tiger, sinking its teeth into your leg, because we arent
Its a precarious conversation at best. Going on for thousands of years now.
But its only a conversation, a communication, if there is some essentially common ground, apart from us we are sharing.
(This is why we all fall into referencing universals - because where two agree about a thing, they have created a universal common ground. So many simultaneous topics at this moment in philosophical thinking.)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes.
This conversation is at once one of physics, metaphysics, and epistemology. And if we do not address all three at once, and focus only on one of these aspects, the others unaddressed undo whatever we say.
This is physics in that we are referring to access to tigers. (Positing content).
Metaphysics in that we are referring to distinctions among multiple, distinct things (using language such as same and different to draw tigers distinctly from the things tigers are not. And metaphysics in that we have to speak about language itself as if it is a metaphysical object.
And epistemology in that there is no certainty our physics and our metaphysics have merely been constructed to align despite possibly having nothing to do with things in themselves (a metaphysics of illusions based on a physics of appearances in motion).
Bottom line for me, each word we utter refers internally to its essential meaning, as it refers externally to all of the forces that make it impossible to define absolutely.
Snow and sleet may demonstrate the confusion of knowing essences (is sleet really just snow depending on what snow is like rain or a wintry mix ??); but the differences between snow and fire demonstrate the confusion of not knowing essences (snow is never burning and fire never freezes still).
There either are differences, be they phenomenally constructed or mind independent objectivities, or there is no difference between snow and fire and no distinctions to speak of.
Essence, like decay causing motion, is undeniable.
In computer science, the problem of inverse reinforcement learning can be thought of as the problem of determining what an agent believes on the basis of the regularity of its actions. It is for example used by retail store websites for predicting what consumers want on the basis of their browsing behavior.
There is a chicken-and-egg problem; for any hypothesis as to what an agent believes is relative to a hypothesis as to what the agent is trying to achieve. And any hypothesis as to what an agent is trying to achieve is relative to a hypothesis as to what the agent believes. But in the end, the notions of beliefs and goal-states are only used for determining a causal model for predicting or controlling agent behavior that only employs the concepts of causation and behavioral conditioning; for once the causal model has been determined, beliefs and goals can be dispensed with entirely, along with the teleological illusion of future-directed behavior.
So at least according to the algorithmics of machine learning, beliefs and goals aren't foundational when it comes to explaining behavior, rather they are concepts concerning model-fitting strategies for determining behavioural causes and behavioural conditioning.
Maybe belief is a psychological construct. It's something unobservable, but we use it to explain and predict behavior. I think the more complex the behavior is, the more likely it is that we'll explain it in terms of belief. Simple behavior could be instinct, but something like plotting revenge needs propositions for the explanation.
I'm still stuck on this. What does this argument, valid or not, have to do with names and the alleged things they name? Do you mean that to "divide up" the world is to assign various names?
This would be a happy place to leave the issue, except . . . isn't there a way of posing the question "What are beliefs?" that doesn't have to involve either reification or essence-talk? Do beliefs have an ontology? Is there any sort of noun-form, or are we saying that beliefs are simply acts of believing -- about which we can say a great deal?
I think this is a good candidate for Witt's observations about the bewitchment of language and all that, and I'm open to that perspective, but I'd like to look at it more closely.
In particular, I'm still troubled by background beliefs. If I say, "I [background] believe that the earth is round," what am I claiming?
There's a thought that your body responds to speech without any intellectual filtering, so if you're coaching someone, it's better to tell them what to do rather than what not to do. The body's only response to "no" is to stop. The body can't understand "not." The intellect has to handle the issue of being wrong or mistaken because it involves imagining something and then negating it.
So maybe there's the intellect's version of belief, which is an attitude toward a proposition, and the body's version which involves unconscious testing and responding.
The intertwining of physics, metaphysics, and epistemology can be seen as a result of this interplay. The long argument between idealism and realism is a symptom of the false dichotomy of world and word.
Quoting J
We know it's a joke because we know it's wrong. But if you don't have anything better, I guess you just assert it while laughing.
Quoting J
That's one of the reasons why we know Quine's approach is wrong. We know that when Quine proposes a logical sentence a thought or belief of Quine's is involved in that proposal, and we know that that thought is not nothing, but we also know that on Quine's theory it cannot be anything. We know that even for Quine the I think is able to accompany his representations.
The reason "ordinary speakers" balk at these theories is because they are bad theories:
Quoting Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof: A Problem of Reference, Intentional Identity and Mutual Understanding, 2
See also:
Quoting Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 10
I think you are getting at something important, however I might quibble with the use of the term "essence" in these cases because it will lead to confusion as respects the employment of essences in metaphysics and the philosophy of nature (your sleet/snow example being a fine one). If everything has an essence/nature, then there can be nothing like Aristotle's distinction early in the Physics of:
A. "Those things that exist by causes," (e.g. a rock or volume of water, a bundle of external causes with a very weak principle of unity as compared to water molecules themselves, hydrogen and oxygen atoms, or especially living organisms), and;
B. "Those things that exist by nature," which are those things that possess an essence and are (more) self-determining, self-organizing, self-governing wholes, that are (more) intelligible in themselves; and we might add,
C. The random stipulated "wholes" dreamed up by later philosophers, such as the pairing of non-continuous different halves of foxes and halves of trout, or the "whole" made up by a person's feet and the ground they are standing on extending in a 8 foot cube beneath.
I add "more" to B because no finite being is wholly intelligible in itself. For instance, one cannot explain what a horse is without reference to any other thing. But one can also avoid the slide in multiplicity/smallism/reductionism or absolute unity/bigism so common in both ancient and contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of physics. We avoid either an infinite regress of smaller parts or atomism, on the one hand, and a bigism where things are only intelligible in terms of their role in the entire universe. A via media is needed, and essence/natures help here.
Holism, in many forms, is itself a sort of bigism as applied to epistemology. Perhaps no knowledge of any thing is entirely intelligible in isolation from other knowledge, but neither must we call in all belief and knowledge to explain any individual instance of knowing or believing.
This is why stipulated games like chess are not great examples for essences. They are by no means arbitrary (i.e., if you create a game with random rules, it will likely suck and lack strategic depth and never catch on) but neither are they akin to carbon, stars, or cats.
But, to your point, language absolutely requires [I] universals[/I] which are closely related. Likewise, the things we speak of have a certain quiddity, whatness, in phenomenological awareness, that is essential to language.
It seems to me that the concern that the things of phenomenological awareness might have nothing to do with "real things," only creeps in with the presupposition that what we experience and sense are mental representations, not thingsthat the "mental" consists in accidental representations of the physical. There is a sort of iron clad dualism at the heart of most modern philosophy in this form, and it leads to the objects of all knowledge being either out own ideas, or in later forms, language.
But then these skeptical explanations are often wildly counter intuitive. I tend to agree with Domingo Soto that, while nominalism is easier to understand, it is much harder to believe.
Well, I'll reuse a prior post on this issue. Consider:
Brutus: Wow Cassius. I saw your results to my survey. I had always thought you were an atheist and a materialist, but I see here that you marked down that you think that both God and ghosts exist.
Cassius: Well of course they do Brutus. Both can be the subjects of existential quantification! But no, I am an atheist and I don't believe in ghosts.
Well, does Brutus have a right to be miffed over what seems to be sophistic equivocation here?
A different approach! In the most direct behaviourist account, a behaviour is rewarded and so reinforced. Am I correct that in IRL the reward is used to predict the behaviour? Very interesting. The reward function is the hidden variable, the "belief" that is used to predict future behaviour, while remaining hidden.
I'm struck by how similar this is to the discussion here with @J...Quoting J Both the reward function an the belief are understood and inferred from behaviour and outcomes. The reward function might indeed be an analogue, model or metaphor for belief. I'm not sure I would call them equivalent, but I might be convinced.
It's those damn Markov blankets again. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
Again, the parallel between a belief and a reward function is striking.
Perhaps they are a folk=psychology term for a reward function being processed in our neural nets...
(this is only half facetious)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No. If Brutus insists on misunderstanding what Cassius is saying, we can't help him, but he doesn't have to. And in fairness, Cassius is obviously trying to get Brutus' goat. He ought to be clearer, and explain that the word "exists" can be used in several different ways . . . which is why I dislike it so much as a keystone philosophical term. But I guess you think it should only be used one way?
At the risk of being repetitive, my complaint is with the term "existence", not the various concepts associated with its use.
Quoting Banno
Quine's student, Davidson, supplemented Quine's holism by introducing charity, while moving form a descriptive to a normative position. Charity deals with the indeterminacy of meaning by assuming a shared background of congruent beliefs.
I'm reasonably happy with two sorts of background beliefs. First, those that are constitutive, Searle's status functions - the "counts as". Second, and less securely, certain first-person beliefs, such as that you have a pain in your foot or a love of Vegemite. These appear indubitable.
There may well be others. But I'm not sure "the earth is round" is amongst them.
And having said that, I have also previously argued that being a background belief is a role taken on by a proposition in a language game rather than a property of some beliefs. So for certain purposes - navigation, perhaps - that the world is round is taken as indubitable.
This would be worth exploring further, particularly in this context in relation to Quine's rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction - a similar argument might be found against certain propositions always being foundational.
Yes, we have many different concepts surrounding existence. Ens vs esse, various uses of "is," "being is said many ways," ens rationis vs ens reale, existence vs subsistence, relationes secundum dici vs relationes secundum esse, real versus virtual, appearance vs reality, abstract vs physical, the inclusion of possibilia, impossibilia for Meinongians and in Hindu thought, "existence is not a predicte," etc., etc.
It would be nice to have an easy catch all solution that deals with them, but I am not seeing how this "solution" resolves any of them. None of those difficulties surrounding existence involve people being confused over whether or not it is possible for someone to say "there is at least one of...(insert anything utterable)." But there does seem to be an issue in kicking existence out to predication in that a diverse group of thinkers from Kant to St. Thomas have rejected being as a predicate.
I think where the solution may have value is vis-á-vis metaontology and mapping ontological commitments. But these are not the contexts where it is being introduced.
On topic, this reminds me of one of the most infamous and consequential strawmen of all time, Ockham's claim that the via antiqua claims that:
But this solution seems like it will be of little help here in this, one of the most famous and long running debates on ontological commitments (one you'll still find in contemporary surveys of metaphysics), because it is about disagreements over [I]implicit[/I] commitments. E.g., does quantifying over employers commit us to employees? Does "I have at least one wife," imply "there is at least one marriage?" Should predicates not include an ontological commitment, and if not aren't we biased against realism (for the realist often wants to show that opponents [I]are[/I] ontologically committed to universals)?
Likewise, "if you claim 2 and 3 are prime then you are committed to numbers," is only informative in a conversation about platonism vs immanent realism vs ens rationis, etc. if there is someone actually claiming that numbers don't exist tout court (which I imagine is exceedingly rare).
Arcane Sandwich's point re permissivism and eliminativism is about what we ought to be ontologically committed to more than what we are committed to.
And IIRC, Quine himself was willing to grant that his metaontological approach wouldn't cover "existence" and punted on that whole aspect.
I appreciate your thoughtful response to this.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The point I'm making about the word "existence" necessitates a kind of viewpoint shift that may not come easily. Let me rephrase it a little: The only thing that all the various uses of "existence" have in common is that they introduce the term as referring to something we can talk about, something we can quantify over. So if we insist on using "existence" and asking what it means for something to exhibit this feature, all we can do is point to the one characteristic they have in common, "being the value of a bound variable." Now I completely agree that this tells us next to nothing. (In particular, it is neutral about some of the uses of "exist" that traditional metaphysics wants to privilege as "real existence" or "what being means" or some such.). But nor should it be controversial. As some like to say on TPF, it's just common sense.
When you say that my modest proposal entails "kicking existence out to predication," that doesn't capture the emphasis I'm placing on language. I'm not saying that the word "existence" be used to cover one sense of existence but not another; I'm recommending we drop the word entirely. (And as I've probably said before, I know this will never happen; but a fellow can dream!). The various grounding and entailment relations that legitimately exist among the various types of being will remain unchanged. A traditional, metaphysically conservative philosopher has nothing to fear here.
The question of existence as a predicate, and Kant's opposition to it, has, I believe, been settled, or at least stabilized, in modern logic. See @Banno's response, above, for a short version. Quantification and predication are two different things. The hot issue here is quantifier variance, but that is (and was) another thread.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The terminological problem raises its head again, in different guise. Let's say we answer, Yes, they should include such a commitment. What, then, are we committed to? How are we using "being" in a way that clarifies, rather than merely reveals our preferred usage?
Aargh! Let's keep it completely facetious! No psychologism :razz:
These are good descriptions of how background beliefs might function, and indeed, I don't think there's a problem with understanding what we mean by them, and how they show up in ordinary life. My worries begin when we try to put them under the same umbrella as "belief" understood as a propositional attitude. Maybe I should just stop there and ask, If I say of Joe, 'He believes that water is H20', when "believes" is understood to refer to background belief of Joe's that he is not currently entertaining, am I ascribing a propositional attitude to him?
Incidentally, I think switching to 3rd person makes the issue clearer, because when we say "I believe such and such .... " it's tempting to say that I couldn't both make the statement and be unaware of the belief. In 3rd person, the believer is not the one doing the stating.
But this is clearly wrong. Consider, "There are things that exist which we have never conceived." To be is not to be the value of a bound variable. There are things that exist which are not attached to any variable. Existence is not bound by our minds. The vista of reality is not nearly so narrow as that.
Quoting J
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The constant problem with Analytical philosophy is that it wants to throw out language and substitute something far inferior: an artificial and brittle system. "We're going to throw out the word 'existence' from the language and replace it with stuff that is more suited to my idiosyncratic philosophy." Nevermind that within a decade or two it always turns out that the newfangled philosophy had surprisingly little to offer. The arrogance of someone who decides to revise language itself in favor of their "systems" is really quite breathtaking.
Quoting J
Quantifier variance is itself proof that existence goes beyond quantification. The domain of the real differs from person to person, and therefore if we are not to be solipsists then we must engage an understanding of existence that goes beyond our own narrows ideas (i.e. we must involve ourselves in ampliation).
This comes back to the point on page 12:
Quoting Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 10
Quine's idea that we have independent access to the meta-language and the object-language is absurd, and it underlies all of this. There is no objective-quantification apart from subjective-quantification. We do not possess the language of God, which would overcome all individual disagreements and force existence into our personal, solipsistic horizon.
Most people want to avoid the thesis that existence is a property, and that it can be represented with a first-order predicate, such as "E", instead of the existential quantifier, "?".
And why do most people want to avoid that thesis? Because they somehow believe that to treat existence as a property is naive, if not outright scholastic. After all, didn't Kant refute the ontological argument by pointing out that existence is not a predicate?
But to say that is to make a conceptual mistake, because it is not the case that properties are identical to predicates. Even if Kant succeeded in demonstrating that existence is not a predicate, it does not follow from there that existence is not a property, nor does it follow that existence has anything to do with quantification.
In simpler terms: no one wants to be accused of being a naive, scholastic, pre-critical philosopher, in the manner of Anselm, Aquinas, or even Descartes. We all want to be "the cool kids", and it seems that the only way to be "the cool kids" is to nod approvingly towards Kant's confused identification of properties and predicates, and to declare that matters of existence are matters of quantification.
Such views are nonsensical, if only because there are 20th Century thinkers like Mario Bunge, who conceptualize existence more or less like Aquinas did (as a property, not as a quantity) without being religious. Bunge was an atheist. So what's the big deal here? To imply, between the lines, that one is a Thomist if one conceptualizes existence as a property, is like saying that one is a Cartesian if one believes that a physical thing such as this table is a res extensa.
How about we start by analyzing these completely irrational themes that underlie these sorts of discussions, instead of digging our heels and just blurting out nonsensical accusations such as "You don't really understand Quine's point."
Agreed, and I think the "cool kids" point is spot-on.
Here's another of the irrational themes:
Quoting Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof: A Problem of Reference, Intentional Identity and Mutual Understanding, 2
Why does Analytic philosophy think that if a description has a referent, then that referent must exist? Why does it tie up reference with existence? I realize the idea goes back through Russell, but I don't see much merit to it. We handle references all the time without assuming that reference and existence go hand in hand, whether with opinion-claims, theory-claims, fiction-claims, goal-claims, history-claims, imagination-claims, etc.
To add to this: folks on this forum don't know how to argue. Many of them don't even properly understand what an argument is, and therefore to get them to give real arguments is like pulling teeth. What stands in the place of argument? Appeals to "the cool kids." In order to prove a point, one simply cites a well-known philosopher they have never read and tacks a label onto their opponent: "naive/direct realist," "idealist," "communist," "essentialist," "Analytic," "Continental." Take your pick.
That is what popular/online philosophy has become, "Appeal to popular authorities and never accept the burden of proof."
(This is why I resisted your criticism of Bob Ross' long argument. Ross is one of the rare members who gives arguments, so I don't mind if they are a bit unwieldy.)
Quoting Joseph Ratzinger, Conscience and Truth
There is an x such that x has not been conceived. Clearly a quantification.
Quoting Leontiskos
There is no need to presume that in order to be "attached" to a variable, a thing must first be "conceived of". To "conceive of" things that have not been conceived of is to make them available for "attachment".
Scare quotes, because these are your words, used in order to track your argument. In more logical terms terms we might say that we can include in our domain of discourse things of which we have not yet conceived; or in "common sense" terms, we can talk about things we might not have yet though of, if only in the most general sort of way.
"But how can you include something in the domain if you haven't even conceived of it?" Well, we just did. Notice that we haven't predicated anything else to such "unconceived" entities, nor do we need to in order to say that they are "unconceived".
Analytic procedures give us formal structures that set out how our language hanges together consistently. I just gave an example of how this works.
Quoting Leontiskos
Which Quine builds in to his account, using Holism, and which Davidson extends with Charity.
Quantifier variance is an issue within the scope of quantification. To enter into that discussion is to already accept that existence can usefully be thought of as quantification. At issue is how we might think about differing domains, in particular if they are commensurable, as Carnap might argue, or incommensurate, as Hirsch posits. Ontological commitment becomes a discussion of what is and isn't included in the domain - of what we are talking about. And the discussion is ongoing. The recent discussion is not so much about whether domains are commensurable as what are the consequences if they are or are not. And again, this is an example of analytical procedures give us formal structures that enable us to understand our natural languages better.
Form the last few post, it's too late.
Well, if Joe is consistent, he will agree that water is H2O. Perhaps he will say something like "I know water is dihydrogen monoxide, but it's not H2O"? In which case the issue is not with his belief about water but his belief about the equivalence of "dihydrogen monoxide"and H2O. And we are back to the extensional opacity of beliefs.
What Joe believes is not the proposition, but the fact. So "ascribing a propositional attitude" is problematic.
My thought is that a belief can manifest in various ways, but that in order to count as a belief, one should be able to set out what it is that is believed - some truth, and hence some proposition. So, at the risk of opening yet another can of worms, the cat cannot hold some proposition to be true, and yet believes the mouse is behind the cupboard. We can put its belief in a propositional form.
I'm interested in working out the implications of this.
A agree with your point as to the third person.
I think propositions are part of the human form of life. Language is so central to what we are that we interact with the world using a linguistic format. When we ask the world questions, we anticipate true propositions, as if the world has a narrator. That's why propositions are generally in third person.
In analyzing the way a cat interacts with the world, we translate it into human.
Yep.
It seems a simple point, but quite a few folk have misunderstood it in various contexts in these forums.
This is a little cryptic, taken out of context, but what he means is that there are many things we experience that aren't candidates for understanding -- not everything conveys truth or meaning or even comprehension. But what can be understood is language. Nor does this mean that there's nothing but language, or that in understanding language we are only understanding words and symbols. He means, I believe, that we "do understanding" using language, it is our human mode of interpreting the world.
Quite similar, really, to the end of the Tractatus. I know opinions differ about this but I always took Witt to be saying only what is obvious: There are plenty of things we can't talk about -- entire worlds -- but therefore we have to hold our peace and not try to force what can't be articulated into words that we've stipulated can't express it.
This is most philosophy. I think the opposite can be true, to a risible degree though (see: Searle, Austin). We need the mean (thanks, 'Stotle).
All you did was pretend to do something. I could do the same thing, "There is an x such that x is the king of France. Clearly a quantification." There is no work being done here.
We could examine Quine's statement as if it is a definition of existence, but I take it that it is uncontroversial that it will fail as a definition (hence the "joke").
Quoting Luká Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 159
But a simple problem here is that we do not understand existence to be parasitic upon our language or our accounting. Accepting for the sake of argument,
The only truth in Quine's claim is this: when someone uses variables within a sentence which presupposes the existence of its variables, they are presupposing the existence of these variables. This is little more than, "If you think something exists, then you think it exists." It has no traction on real existence.
Other problems:
Quoting Luká Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 159
Ari's "golden mean" is something of a fallacy when taken out of context -- the middle between extremes isn't going to be true or false just cuz it's in the middle.
For instance, if one were to take the mean between eating shellfish and not-eating shellfish -- where some shellfish are ok to eat some of the time -- that does not thereby make it true. It makes it reasonable-ish sounding to the two extremes, but reasonable-ish sounding isn't a condition of truth, or even good inference.
EDIT: Ought say this is super off-topic; just sparked a thought.
The first point about the mean is that if you think you are identifying it then you must be able to point to both extremes. Many people can only point to one.
True. At least, the way I'd put it, many people identify a Big Bad without identifying the opposite; and also for the Good, when I think about it.
Still, I stand by what I said -- the golden mean sounds good a lot of the time, but that does not thereby make it true, or false.
Sorry for diverting the thread too much, tho -- this has nothing to do with reference.
Threads with a two-sentence OP are usually a runaway train after the first dozen posts. Nothing to divert. ;)
I believe I'm mostly on the side of what @Banno and @frank have been saying, though -- reference is inscrutable.
So with "gavagai", to use the example -- I can't tell if "gavagai" references this post, my memory of my bike when 9, the rabbits foot that I'm looking at right now, or some cultural practice.
"gavagai" ought be understood with respect to translating a totally unknown language, at least by the story. If I don't know how the natives speak and yet I know that "gavagai" is a noun, I will not thereby be able to point to something in the world -- what we might be tempted to call a fact -- to say that this noun in a foreign language refers to this or that.
Do you believe that we are successfully communicating with each other right now? Because it seems to me that if reference were inscrutable, then this would be impossible. And if a foreign word were inscrutable, then we would never be able to learn foreign languages. But we are successfully communicating with each other, and it is not impossible to learn foreign languages, therefore reference is not inscrutable.
(See my post <here> or Arcane Sandwich's posts)
In quick response to the yes/no question, yes.
Will follow up w/ your link tho
With respect to @Arcane Sandwich, I see lots of cool places to talk.
Is there a particular bit you want me to discuss?
I erased a lot of thinking-out-loud in forming that question :D -- decided it was better to just ask.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
Lots of thick thoughts....
here are 2 of them I'm thinking now: First, the inscrutability of reference applies even to our own language. "Reference", as a philosophical concept, is the target, though -- the example draws from the experience of trying to learn a foreign language when you have no knowledge.
Eventually, through trial and error, you can learn it! Even if you knew nothing of it!
Which is kind of the puzzle.... in a way.
EDIT: Heh, with thick thoughts comes lots of confusion. I want to clarify my expression above.
"Reference", as a philosophical concept, is the target of the "gavagai" criticism -- as well as various metaphysical theses people might have drawn from various notions of reference.
It's not so much that we can't communicate or learn. It's that there's no fact of the matter, in the sense of a true sentence which refers to the world in the same way that "gavagai' refers to the world, which will decide how "gavagai" refers.
Therefore, you cannot draw metaphysical or ontological conclusions from philosophical beliefs about reference.
The end.
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added a breaker to notate where I put my edit. The following was part of the original post:
Second: I'd take it that since we're talking to one another we can't ever deny that we're communicating, unless we're communicating about when we're not communicating to correct communication. So if we can connect a philosophical belief that we're not communicating that'd be damning for it -- not that'd it be false, but it'd indicate we're not communicating and thereby, in spite of all of our efforts, we're linguistically solipsistic.
If we just step back and for a moment forget all of the philosophy we've read, how would we view existence? In a pre-critical sense it would seem that existence is a property or predicate of concepts. That's how we speak, after all: "Horses exist. Unicorns do not exist." "Johnson died: he no longer exists." The basic insight of this starting point is that the domain for existence predications must be existence-neutral in some sense. If it were not then existence predications would make no sense.
I don't think that's a bad starting point, and in fact it looks to be more reasonable than Quine's approach. Of course Quine's approach is motivated by different considerations, but if his considerations are more idiosyncratic than the motivations of a comprehensive theory, then his theory is eo ipso going to be less plausible. That's perhaps what is happening: Quine is talking about some specialized thing called "existence," which is different from existence. A kind of equivocation is occurring. Beyond that, existence is a difficult thing to reckon with, and therefore the way that Quine just hides it away under the quantificational rug is appealing to systematizers, who don't want to be bothered by the complexity of difficult realities. "When you bind variables you are involved in the assumption that they exist, and that's all we should say about it. Natural language is confused and refuge is found in our system which doesn't even try to reckon with natural language."
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
What is the birds-eye account of Bunge's view, and what sort of philosophical considerations and background are informing such a view?
It's scientism at the end of the day, and Bunge uses that word in a positive sense, despite the fact that most people use it as a negative or pejorative term. For example, in an article of his, tiled In Defense of Realism and Scientism.
The four pillars of Bunge's philosophy are: Semantics, Ontology, Epistemology, and Ethics. This reflected in his magnum opus, the eight volumes of his Treatise on Basic Philosophy. For people that don't have the time to read those eight volumes, I would recommend his book Matter and Mind, or perhaps his autobiography, Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist.
His fame has nothing to do with his own philosophy, though. He became relatively famous for being critical of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, existentialism, and Analytic philosophy in general, among other schools and traditions. He criticizes all of the aformentioned for not being scientific enough, or for being pseudoscientific, which is even worse (that is precisely the case of psychoanalysis, in his view). Quine himself thought very highly of Bunge:
Quoting Wikipedia
I'll post some of his thoughts on existence and quantification in a moment.
Yes, thank you. You're the first "inscrutabilist" who has owned up to the "puzzle." :grin: :party:
1. If reference is inscrutable, then we cannot communicate (or learn new languages).
2. But we can communicate (and learn new languages).
3. Therefore, Reference is not inscrutable.
The "inscrutabilist" does not want to double-down on the modus ponens, as he knows it to be false:
4. If reference is inscrutable, then we cannot communicate (or learn new languages).
5. Reference is inscrutable
6. Therefore, We cannot communicate (or learn new languages).
Note that for someone like myself who does not think reference is inscrutable, there is no puzzle. In fact (3) proves that reference is not inscrutable. But again, one must take care to properly identify Quine's conclusion. I don't doubt that it was not sheer inscrutability of reference. Still, if we take the conclusion to be inscrutability of reference, then anyone who accepts (1) and (2) must admit that the argument fails, at least if (1) and (2) are more certain than the counter-premises in an argument for inscrutability.
Quoting Moliere
I agree.
Quoting Moliere
Right: you can affirm that reference is inscrutable and therefore we are not communicating, but then what are you doing here on TPF? Probably you would have to abandon the forum (among other things) if you believed that.
Quoting Moliere
But isn't is possible to learn the Native's language? And if I do learn the language, then haven't I learned the "fact of the matter"--which is of course conventional--about how 'gavagai' refers?
Quoting Moliere
Not necessarily. I was just trying to cross-reference some similar ideas.
(The problem with this thread is similar to the problem of 'gavagai'. There is no common, public text that we can all look at to figure out what we are talking about. There's only two sentences and a link to a Wikipedia article, which naturally makes for a widely diverging thread.)
Note: The "R" in "ERx" is meant to be a subscript, but this forum doesn't seem to have the option for subscripts.
EDIT: I have fixed the subscripts thanks to
It is -- though I'd rather take the example towards the Rossetta stone than the natives:
With natives it's easy because we can communicate in other ways that are not linguistic, in the sense that we usually mean "linguistic" at least.
But that was the key which enabled us to understand a truly foreign language. We needed some kind of "foothold", which I'm now tempted to call "reference" -- and then we could work from there.
But until you have that it's a nothing, right? If we don't even recognize something as a language, for instance...
Yes, I agree. This is what was talking about earlier with "empathy" (though I don't think that is the right word for it).
Quoting Moliere
Yes, but if something is not linguistic then it does not constitute a reference of any kind, scrutable or inscrutable, no? Or rather, if we do not recognize something as a linguistic sign, then it cannot be inscrutable, for we would never say, "That non-reference is an inscrutable reference," or, "We will never figure out what that thing is referring to, namely that thing which we do not believe to be referring to anything."
In fact I want to say that in order to identify something as referential one must already have a foothold of one kind or another. Without such a foothold there is insufficient reason to posit a referential reality (i.e. an intentional sign).
Thank you. Very interesting. Great quotes, and I especially liked the first one, but his points on the existential quantifier also seem very good. At some point you will have to write up a thread on your view of Scientism, because it is largely a pejorative term here. <This thread> was the closest thing we've had, of late.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
That did confuse me a bit. E[sub]R[/sub]x
Just for fun and on the topic of existential quantifiers, since Aquinas came up earlier:
Quoting Gyula Klima, Aquinas' Real Distinction and Its Role in a Causal Proof of God's Existence
Thanks! I fixed all of the subscripts in my post.
On Aquinas: he's right about the example of the phoenix. Ever since Kant, philosophers in general have been reluctant to grant Aquinas that point. But why wouldn't one grant him that point? My suspicion is that modern philosophers just don't want to agree with Aquinas on anything. There is this sort of unstated aversion to anything that has to do with Medieval philosophy in general, and with Aquinas in particular. It sounds as if one agrees with anything that Aquinas said, then one has magically converted to Catholicism. But this makes no sense to me. If Aquinas says "2 + 2 = 4", are we going to deny that basic mathematical statement, just because Aquinas said it? No, of course not. So why can't we say that he's right when he says that existence is a property? That doesn't necessarily commit one to every other thing that Aquinas said.
Shorter: I can distinguish Pegasus from a phoenix. They're not the same fictional creature. Neither of them exists, so how is it even possible for me to distinguish them? Most of the time, reference is far from being inscrutable. And even in those cases in which it is, it can cease to be inscrutable. Unknown references are not the same thing as unknowable references.
No, of course. BUt Ari's mean is to do with extremes of behaviour, for the most part. Not the truth or falsity of something. The whole "your story, my story, and then the truth" is clearly bogus for your reasons though!
Yep, good points. :up:
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Oddly enough, many years ago there was a group in the UK called something like, "Atheists for Aquinas." It was a bunch of philosophically-inclined atheists who really enjoyed reading Aquinas. There is a syllogistic density to his prose that some people find very attractive (and others abhor!).
But I think it's good for a philosophy forum to mix in thinkers like Harman, Bunge, or Aquinas. It helps resist an overly homogenous and narrow philosophical canon, and it helps move us towards thought-based assessments rather than authority-based assessments. And to be fair, there are a lot of members here who are open to other ways of thinking. This thread isn't a great representative of TPF on that score. Still, I would never casually drop the "E" word on TPF, as fascist Tim did earlier. :lol:
Edit: I also want to add that earlier, when I pointed out someone who is devoted to a very narrow tradition in a very narrow slice of history, I was accused of doing the same thing in terms of the medieval period. The difference is the difference between two decades of a narrow tradition and two millennia of a broad tradition. Medievals engaged and incorporated everyone, including Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and pagan thinkers. The continuity beginning with Plato and ending in the 15th century is quite remarkable. "Antiquated" was not a slur that had much power. Everything was fair game, and this led to an increasingly robust tradition. What we now find in the English-speaking world is the opposite: the yellow "do not cross" line is erected behind Descartes if not Russell, and you end up with a lot of relatively isolated thinkers who simply cannot cope with the perennial questions of philosophy, such as the perennial task of doing more than simply ignoring common language use.
I want to preempt an objection that I find quite tired, and it is related to the pre-critical story I told above. Someone will inevitably come along and object to conceptual existence on the grounds of parsimony, behaviorism, "reification," or something else like this. The point will be as follows:
Granting for the sake of argument that a weakness was truly found, the conclusion simply does not follow. We are engaged in abductive reasoning: inference to the best explanation. Given this fact, "Imperfect, therefore untenable," is not a valid argument. Gyula Klima illustrates this idea by telling a story about someone who, sitting at the poker table with a straight flush, yells out, "Checkmate!"
Despite the latest fad in "the cool kids'" clothing, is conceptual existence really that bad, if there is indeed anything wrong with it at all? Given the choice between conceptual existence and a quantificational theory that brings with it very strange and unintuitive ontological concomitants, it would seem that conceptual existence is much to be favored. It also saves predicate logic from an unnecessary and awkward burden.
So where is Quine going wrong?
Thought Experiment 1: Gavagai
Those wanting more might look to the SEP section on the topic in the Quine biography.
Cheers.
Good question. Only paraphrases of Quine have been offered, based on the gavagai example (which Quine himself claims is not the ground of his doctrine).
Quoting Leontiskos
...but if someone thinks they can reconstruct an argument for the inscrutability of reference that overcomes the facts that we can communicate and learn new languages, they are certainly welcome to try.
They don't? This sounds like the anti-metaphysical movement redux.
Unless the notion is that existence/being should just mean "every possible thing that has or can ever be quantified, for all philosophers, everywhere," which now looking back seems to be how you are both using this?
But I think that is decidedly not how Quine intended it or how the idea has been used at all. It's not: "all thinkers should be uncontroversially committed to the idea that 'existence' is just 'whatever anyone [I]can[/I] quantify over.'"
This would either be a barely supported sort of question begging on an extremely broad notion of existence, one with a scope to match Meinongians (who were instead critics of Quine), or it would be merely saying: "whatever anyone can or does quantify over can be quantified over," which makes the thesis look trivial and vacuous. Of course we can speak of whatever we have spoken of or will potentially speak of.
The idea of existence as quantification is rather, wherever I have seen it presented, that people come with their ontologies, and we can now examine them in terms of quantification (rather than say entailment) in order to determine what their ontological commitments arenot "all philosophers should accept the same set of universal ontological commitments, which include anything we can possibly speak of (but don't worry about this being too broad because ontological commitments now carry no weight at all)". This makes the whole notion of Quine's approach as a "test" between theories meaningless.
And this is why I was baffled about how this could be a response to Arcane Sandwich's post on Korman's argument:
Quantification [I]might[/I] do some work here (all the standing criticisms of it versus entailment notwithstanding) if one comes with their ontology and shows how one is not committed to some sort of bizarre pleroma of arbitrary objects, or the idea that there are no objects at all. But on the idea that what is meant by "existence" is just "whatever anyone can ever quantify," I don't see how it answers such questions except as a sort of confused equivocation or dodge.
This goes back to "no one denies tigers exist." But they do, or they make them ens rationis, somehow the creations of language, or their being tigers is "co-constituted" by language. Coastlines do not exist before they are mapped, etc.
This seems like a counterintuitive thesis or implication, but counterintuitive doesn't mean wrong. However, it's unclear to me how existence as quantification responds to this at all, unless the intent is to dismiss "did ants exist before humans knew them" as some sort of pseudoproblem.
I think this difference/critique is not much of a mystery if the context is the way quantification is usually employed in metaontology. Not all philosophers have the same ontological commitments. The approach locates and defines such commitments in a manner that seems biased in favor of nominalism, in such a way that using it to adjudicate claims of commitment "impartially" is compromised (or so the critique says).
Well, at least for Quine there is only one logic (justifying that is another thing.) "When a pluralist challenges the law of noncontradiction they simply change the subject" (or something like that). It's even less clear how this idea is supposed to work given commitments to an extremely permissive sort of logical pluralism or logical nihilism. "Existence is quantification, and quantification varies according to an innumerable number of different logics which we should select based on 'what is useful.''
I think the approach makes more sense within the context of a narrow sort of philosophy, particularly given the view of scientific theories dominant at the time, and ideas about how their commitments could be tested. Of course, that view of theories has since been essentially abandoned.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think I understand exactly what you mean here. If we link the word "existence" with some particular feature of metaphysics, and then deny that this feature has an application, we would indeed be banishing a central point of metaphysics, at least of the traditional variety. But that's not what I'm suggesting. Again, it comes down to the difficulty I think you're having with severing the link between word and concept.
Try to imagine your metaphysics, whatever they may be, laid out as a series of groundings. Some level grounds another, is thus more essential than another; there may be a level that can be shown by transcendental argument to be necessary for human cognition; etc. etc. Now -- and this is the hard part -- go ahead and put words to it, but don't use the terms "existence" or "being". It can be done, and the doing is quite revealing, I believe. What it shows is that structure -- which is what we care about, you and me*, what we want to understand about the world -- remains intact no matter what words we use for our labels. And that is all I'm saying. It's not the least bit anti-metaphysical. In fact, the whole reason I urge this way of looking at it is to help metaphysics, to get us free from a terminology that, however time-honored, hinders us talking about the important things.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes and no. What I would rather is that "existence/being" should be declared meaningless, dead by the thousand cuts of equivocation and ambiguity. (And remember, I'm talking about the word, not any of the various metaphysical carvings of the world that have been given the name "existence.") But if we must use the term, it has a pretty good use within quantificational logic. You're wanting to say that this reduces the idea of existence to something trivial. It would if I were linking word and concept. But I'm not. It's the word "existence" which is trivial in this context, though important for doing logic. This is what I meant when I wrote:
"Now I completely agree that this [Quine's motto] tells us next to nothing. [i.e. it is trivial.] (In particular, it is neutral about some of the uses of "exist" that traditional metaphysics wants to privilege as "real existence" or "what being means" or some such.). But nor should it be controversial."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So, just to say it one more time, my idea is most decidedly not this. Maybe by using scare-quotes for "existence" you're leaving it open whether you're referring to the word, or to one of the many concepts of what it means to exist that metaphysicians have proposed. But I think you're saying -- and tell me if I've got this wrong -- that the problem for you here is that existence itself is being reduced to something about quantification, and that doesn't remotely do it justice. And thus would begin the endless wrangles about existence itself. It's those wrangles that I'm proposing (vainly, I know; it's too entrenched) that we stop.
*Reading this over, I see I've assumed that structure is indeed central to your concerns as a metaphysician. But even if you want to understand the world in some other way -- perhaps more phenomenologically, by focusing on individual items of experience rather than the way they relate together -- I think the "existence" terminology is a hindrance. We can find a paraphrase for all questions about being, from Aristotle to Husserl. Same point here: What counts is the thing itself, not how we label it.
Quine clearly thinks that inscrutability of reference is not a barrier to communication, so I am just curious as to what you think Quine was saying in his ideas, considering that he believes communication is possible in spite of indeterminacy. Or do you think Quine was just completely obtuse or in denial regarding this very simple argument you give?
Why do you think that?
This is a key point in my opinion. If a logical system is to be able to accommodate various different ontologies, which can then be compared to one another, then it cannot have existence- or ontology-commitments. And of course there is an important sense in which Quine's system aspires to have this character, but a system which has this character cannot define existence into its implicit formal semantics. One cannot test two competing theories if one cannot recognize that one of the theories is quantifying over non-existents. And if one cannot test two competing theories then one cannot argue, and if one cannot argue then one cannot do what logic was invented to do.
More simply, when Quine says that "to be is to be the value of a bound variable," he is not talking about existence, but rather about putative existence. "When you bind a variable you take the referent(s) to exist," not, "When you bind a variable the referent(s) exist(s)."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, the idea is that when Quine runs up against an interlocutor who is quantifying over what Quine holds to not exist, Quine will appeal to the meta-language (instead of running the risk of begging the question by appealing to his own domain). In doing this Quine is inevitably "quantifying over" possibilia in the meta language. That's how you talk to another human being you disagree with, after all.
Then the deeper point is that whether you appeal to the meta language or an object language (that can handle the disagreement), what you've got to do is give arguments for your position. The only reason Quine would appeal to the meta language is because his object language lacks the resources to adjudicate the dispute. If Quine stuck to his guns and refused to quantify over possibilia then he would not be allowed the move of telling his opponents that entities in their domain do not exist. That is, a logically consistent Quine cannot argue with anyone, because argument involves showing your interlocutor that something they believe to exist, does not.
In other words:
Quoting Ontological Commitment | SEP
If one cannot refer to an entity that one is not ontologically committed to, then one cannot engage an interlocutor who believes differently than oneself. The pluralists should be especially wary of such a scheme.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It is, but at least in this case, "They know not what they do."
---
Quoting J
Then what are Sider and his opponent disagreeing on when they posit two different ontological structures? Existence is what people argue over, @J. Get rid of 'existence' and you've gotten rid of every possible disagreement. For example, when we disagree over an interpretation of Quine we are disagreeing over the existence of evidence for an interpretation. Then we can go to his texts (which is something we have not at all done in this thread) and adjudicate the question of what exists in those texts. Get rid of existence and you've gotten rid of every disagreement. I don't know that you have the slightest conception of what you are talking about.
Quoting J
The possibilism debate isn't resolved with a quip. Seriously, go read a paper on the possibilism debate. Inform yourself a bit before you offer an opinion. You don't even seem to understand the stakes or the motivation behind Quine's quip.
Quoting J
Clearly you are the one who struggles with metaphysical superglue. No one is fretting over the token e-x-i-s-t-e-n-c-e.
Quoting J
"Is what" =>
Although I have only skimmed it, I think Klima's, "St. Anselm's Proof," (formal citation) (original chapter) would be an excellent paper for a reading group. It covers most everything we are talking about here (intentional identity, reference, interlocutors' possibilia, Quine, systemic impasse...). It would also be engaging given how interested people are in Anselm's proof.
Eventually I want to either do a reading group on this, essences, or else universals. Universals would be the most accessible, but any of them would contribute to mitigating the ignorance and prejudice surrounding these topics.
Or the inscrutable meaning of philosophy.
The object of thought here that prompts us to communicate with words such as essence and thing and existence and universal and referent, to balance carving up the world against the lines the world has despite any carving (if any), all in the context of language and meaning and use and logic itself, as well as phenomenological experience itself - it is my position that we are standing on a precipice in this conversation (with everyone from Heraclitus and Parmenides to Aristotle and Kant and Russell and Wittgenstein and Quine standing next to us) attempting to explain, at once: the ground we stand on, the plateau of ground we walked to get here, the abyss in front of us, we the explainers of these things, and the language we all are subject too (by subjecting ourselves to it) standing here explaining.
We need to do too much at once to make the smallest move with any validity.
All philosophers have failed to lock this down in any kind of linear argument that impresses the rest of us.
So this conversation is difficult.
And for those coming from opposite sides (perhaps focused on the metaphysical or physical ground, or instead abandoning metaphysics and focused on our language use/meanings/logic, or focused on the abyss that separates all these concepts) this difficult conversation is very difficult. It is difficult for two people who fervently agree with Aristotle to say what a substance, a thing, an essence, knowledge of these and the act of knowing is. It is likely they will face significant disagreement on what is best to say next, or say first.
I have come to the conclusion that until we figure out a language that allows us to address the physical, metaphysical, ontological, epistemological and logical/linguistic aspects of this topic all at once, interlocutors will forever undercut any ground any philosopher attempts to cover in one of these areas. Epistemological issues will always undercut physics; metaphysics will always undercut ontology or vice versa; linguistics will always undercut metaphysics or vice versa, etc.
My solution is to rule out any conclusions that shrug off metaphysics - I know what not to say.
But what can be said?
I think the best language to speak standing on this precipice is mystical, sort of pre-logical. We both know and dont know the object of inquiry. This object is both most immediate to us as it is utterly cut off from us. We can speak about it clearly, but never say enough to capture it.
What is so simple and easy about there is a tiger and here is not a tiger is also so deeply complex and puzzling.
The solution will not be one that saves the complex but ignores the simple, nor one that keeps it simple while ignoring the complex. Each, and both together, must be addressed at once. If there is a tiger.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
There views are very, very similar. Quine was also critical of "psychoanalysis, phenomenology, existentialism", and was overtly scientistic.
There's obvious and well-known problems with the set of all sets, so presumably Bung had a way to deal with this. He says the set of all things, so does he explicitly disallow sets of sets?
And here he sensible removes empty sets. Can I point out that this is very close (perhaps identical?) to a set-theoretical version of Quine's "to be is to be the value of a bound variable"?
((P) ? ?) ? ?(x) (Px)
This is excellent. The trouble Bunge draws attention to starts when "Some sirens are beautiful" is treated as a non-empty set; and the conclusion is reached that there are beautiful sirens". A good example for us to work with. And the answer given is much the same as that offered by first-order logic. If our domain is the set of physical things, there are not sirens. But if our domain is Greek myths, we are welcome to say that "There are beautiful sirens", on the condition that we do not thereby expect them to be physical - we won't mee them on the street.
Bung and Quine have a lot in common.
(How is "Bunge" pronounced? )
's post anticipates this objection if you continue reading the quotes in sequential order, eventually arriving at:
-
Quoting Banno
If we want to depart from Quine then we are welcome to say that. And we should depart from Quine, so I agree that we are welcome to say that.
One could retort that in "quantifying over" myth-concepts we are rightly committing to their existence, but for Quine there are no existing myth-concepts, and therefore it is incorrect to "quantify over" them. The disagreement itself is a substantial existence-dispute over the existence of myth-concepts like Pegasus, and if one cannot "quantify over" myth-concepts then one cannot have the disagreement over their existence.
It wasn't an objection. Minutes after I posted I re-wrote that as:
Quoting Banno
I am agreeing with what Bunge says here, becasue it seems to me to be much the same as what Quine says, but in set-theoretical language. That would explain why Quine was so impressed.
Then I'm not sure you appreciate what a living, breathing position opposed to Quine's would look like. If that is right then it makes sense that you couldn't conceive of anyone objecting to Quine.
Bunge offers an existence predicate where Quine refuses the very idea of an existence predicate. That's the central difference with regard to the issue we have been discussing.
Quoting Banno
If we want to compare Quine and Bunge on existence, shouldn't we compare what Quine says on existence to what Bunge says on existence? You are comparing what Bunge says on the reality of a property to what Quine says on the the existence of individuals. That seems misdirected.
But even here, Bunge says that a property is real when there is at least one individual that possesses it; whereas Quine says that quantification brings with it ontological commitment (which Bunge in fact explicitly rejects).
Still, what to think about your "removal of empty sets"? Note that for Quine an empty domain is disallowed simpliciter. There is no formal stricture because there is no existence predicate that would need to incorporate it. Contrariwise, Bunge is giving a definition of a property's being real. For any property, if there is at least one individual that possess it, then it is real, and if there is not at least one individual possessing it, then it is not real. So even if we compare properties to individuals and "real" to "exists," even then there remains the fundamental difference, namely that Bunge provides for himself the ability to say, "Property P is not real," whereas Quine refuses to provide for himself the ability to say, "X does not exist."
(The standard move of appealing to the empty set in order to characterize existence is precisely what Quine objected to, because that appeal inevitably presupposes some kind of existence predication.)
Quoting Banno
If this is true, then it's only because first-order logic has abandoned Quine's understanding of quantification. For Quine nothing "Pegasizes."
(Hopefully @Arcane Sandwich will clarify the issue as well as any mistakes I've made.)
That just seems to be implied when you read him or about him. We generally don't have huge problems communicating either, so it would be strange for him to uphold this inscrutability if he thought it affected our abilities to communicate.
From Word and Object, page 26, he says:
If all of their dispositions to verbal behavior under all possible sensory stimulations were the same, then what would happen if they started talking to each other? If you looked at their behavior, surely it would just look like they understood each other perfectly well despite the possibility of different meanings. Because, if they have identical dispositions, then the behaviors each one expects of the other based on their own dispositions would be fulfilled in general. It would be quite difficult for them to misunderstand each other since I think misunderstanding generally happens when people use words in ways you don't expect, or you have no experience (and therefore [no] expectations [or ability to predict]) of how certain words should be used. Its hard to envision that in the example passage assuming that each man is cognizant of their own dispositions for using words.
Edited: additions in [ ]
Doesn't the quote you provide imply that, if they started talking to each other, they may talk past each other entirely? If, "the meanings or ideas expressed in their identically triggered and identically sounded utterances could diverge radically," then they could simply talk past each other. Are you saying that even if they do talk past each other, they won't tend to register each other's speech as inscrutable?
Quoting Apustimelogist
What definition of "inscrutable" would you offer, such that inscrutable reference poses no barrier to communication?
Yes, close to it.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This is close to the sort of mystical view attributed to Wittgenstein, especially after the Tractatus, where he developed a precise logical language and then concluded that what is most important is what remains unsaid.
He later expressed the view that the important stuff was expressed in our actions more than in our words.
This is a part of the reason he is sometimes misunderstood as not having said much about ethics and aesthetics.
No clear way of showing just how words refer to what we take them to refer to? And no clear way of showing that they refer to exactly and exclusively what we take them to refer to.
There is an irony in the general analytic tendency to ignore medieval thought (continentals do too, but less). No other period reflects the rigor and professionalization that analytic thought praises, nor the emphasis on logic, semantics, and signification, more than (particularly late) medieval thought. The early modern period has an explosion of creativity in part because philosophy was radically democratized and deprofessionalized (leading to both creativity of a good sort and some of a very stupid sort).
It's unfortunate because so many debates are just rehashes that could benefit from past work, whereas contemporary thought also has a strong nominalist bias that even effects how realism might be envisaged or advocated for, and the earlier period does not have these same blinders.
True, in a sense. In another though, if there is no fact of the matter as to reference, and one takes another's "that rake right there," to be definitive, one has misunderstood, no? If not the persons intent, then at least the reference.
Ah, but therein lies the counterintuitive part. If one takes themselves to be making definitive references, or, through one's understanding of one's own sense of making definitive references, takes others to be doing the same, one is mistaken about what is truly going on.
I mentioned earlier in the thread that we could always reject Quine's perhaps overly constricted epistemic standards and particular notion of what is "observable," but if we stick with them this will be strange outcome. That people "get on" does not negate the fact that "rabbit" and "New York City," or "Donald Trump" are not determinant references referring to a particular species, municipality, or person. Our once and current Augustus is never present without his trademark hair, benevolent orange glow, etc. after all, so we might be referring to them, or Trumpian time-like slices, etc.
Take out determinate and I don't think Quine would disagree. Sometimes we may be mistaken as to what someone is referring to, but the gavagai fable shows that we might still get our rabbit stew.
(The recently crowned orange man may be Pompey rather than Augustus - he's showing how popular support may be used to bypass the traditional power structure, but it may be those who come after him who take full advantage of this).
The OP asks what Quine means by inscrutability of reference. If someone (@Banno, for example) steps in and says "What Quine means is (fill in the blank)", then great. I have no quarrel with that. I'm not here to dispute people's knowledge of Quine's philosophy.
However, matters are different IMHO if the discussion turns into something along the lines of "Is Quine right when he says references are inscrutable?" I believe he's wrong, and I'm not alone in thinking that he's wrong. That's why I brought up the stuff about Mario Bunge. I'm not trying to appeal to authority here, all I'm trying to say is that Bunge is far more articulate than I am, so I defer to his prose, which is obviously better than mine.
But I'm not Bunge's lawyer. I'm not here to defend Bunge against every possible objection against his philosophy, because I honestly don't think that Bunge is right about everything. There are many key points that I disagree with him, for example I don't accept his dichotomy of conceptual existence and real existence (there's only real existence as far as I'm concerned). In more general terms, I don't believe in defending any philosopher against every conceivable objection. Why not? Because if you do that, then you run the risk of causing what Harman calls "The Puerto Rico Effect". I'll let him explain it:
[quote="Graham Harman, "Prince of Networks", p. 139"]It is said that in Puerto Rico, red and green traffic lights display a curious reversal of roles. Drivers have flouted red lights to such a degree that the practice is now contagious, so that cars approaching a green light must stop from fear of those ignoring the red. Since my travels have never taken me to Puerto Rico, I cannot verify these reports. But I will take the liberty of coining the phrase The Puerto Rico Effect to describe a similar phenomenon in readings of past philosophies. Since every great thinker is approached through an initial aura of widespread clichés, the critical scholar is always in a mood to reverse them. Good reasons should be given whenever this is done, since we must always respect the rights of the obvious. But of course there is nothing automatically false about such reversals.
As suggested earlier, it is typical of the greatest thinkers that they support opposite interpretations, just as Aristotelian substance can be both hot and cold or happy and sad at different times or in different respects. Now, it seems to me that conventional wisdom is falsely reversed when Nietzsche is read as a democratic theorist, Spinoza as a thinker of plurality, Leibniz as a thinker of monism, Aristotle as reducing substance to the human logos, or Husserl as a realist, yet I have heard actual examples of all of these reversals.[/quote]
With that in mind, I'll say that I don't want to distort Bunge's (or anyone's) views. As far as I'm concerned, Bunge is right about a lot of things, and he's wrong about a few other things (some of which are key philosophical issues, such as the topic of existence). I'm not interested in creating a Puerto Rico Effect of Bunge's philosophy.
So, I ask: is it possible that the trenchant defense of Quine's philosophy runs the risk of causing a Puerto Rico Effect here? If yes, then we should just be able to say that we disagree with Quine regarding his ideas on reference. That doesn't mean that we should throw his entire philosophy in the trash bin. Granted, sometimes my impatience gets the best of me, and I end up saying that Quine's views are nonsense. Despite that acknowledgement, I still disagree with Quine's ideas on reference. His mental experiment involving the word "gavagai" doesn't convince me. Is it an interesting philosophical experiment? Sure. But so is Descartes' hyperbolic doubt. But just because they're interesting thought experiments, that doesn't mean that I can't disagree with the ideas that are being entertained in those thought experiments, and others like them. The way I see it, Descartes is simply wrong to suppose that we can doubt everything except for the cogito ergo sum thesis. And Quine is simply wrong to suppose that what holds for gavagai holds for language in general. We can then have a discussion, and I of course recognize that I could be wrong. But if what it takes for me to be wrong here is a sort of Puerto Rico Effect reading of Quine, then it's reasonable for me to remain skeptical on such matters.
At the end of the day, it's not about Quine vs Bunge. It's about whether or not we ourselves agree or disagree with what they're saying. Who knows? Maybe they're both wrong.
I hope that clarifies my position.
Good points.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
For the sake of simplicity I removed from a recent post the comment, "The trick for anyone opposing Quinian Actualism is drawing out the relation between conceptual and real existence."
The reason I like the incorporation of Bunge into the thread has to do with what I called the precritical view, which is what I see as the proper starting point. If we start with the view that existence is not a predicate we are likely doing little more than parroting some popular philosophical idea. I mean, if everyone on the forum had a degree in (the exact same area) of philosophy, then sure, we could pick up a controversy at the most complex and developed juncture. But it is far from the truth that everyone has a degree in philosophy, much less the exact same area of philosophy. On such a forum the precritical view cannot be wholly ignored. Bunge provides confidence to the one who thinks it might be a dumb question to ask why existence can't be a predicate.
I'm stealing The Puerto Rico Effect for my own use.
I'm not here to be Quine's lawyer (neat expression), either, having mainly a secondary interest in his ideas as a precursor to Davidson. I entered in to this thread because the Op expressed a misunderstanding of Quine's argument.
seems to have left the thread to us now. I don't say I blame them.
One approach might be to look for a minimalist understanding of the Inscrutability of Reference. Something along the lines I have expressed a few times, most recently ; that Quine has pointed out that we might get our stew even if our references misfire. A pragmatic approach. We might thereby avoid the somewhat absurd view that Quine argued communicating is impossible.
Yes, yes, yes! The reason I find Aquinas so useful on forums like this is because he is so close to analytic methodology. There is literally a school of thought called, "Analytic Thomism." But there are those who recognize this, such as Peirce, Deely, and Klima. A big part of Klima's project is demonstrating how medieval logic was more advanced than modern logic, and solves the modern problems better (such as, say, Russell's King of France).
And as I pointed out earlier, both approaches achieve a systematic quality that can make them opaque to outsiders, and that when developed too far will lead to a revolt from laymen.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure, although it is worth remembering that the late medieval period became very "nominalist," and therefore at that point you get very precise debates on so many of these issues. The fact that the nominalists had so simplified the landscape was a big factor in what survived. The Via Antiqua was harder to transmit than the simple nominalist framework.
I think that's a good candidate. Quine may be saying little more than that terms are inscrutable apart from context ("holism").
Quoting Leontiskos
The notation used is ?!t for "t exists". Considerations of extensionality give us the definition ?!t = ?x(x=t).
The result is Free Logic, forms of which may be axiomatised and shown to be consistent but usually incomplete. Nonexistent things can nevertheless have properties in a free logic. It's a cut-down version of possible world semantics.
There's issues as to how to understand and interpret Free Logic. It is a good example of how a formal structure can help us understand what it is we are claiming when we say things like "Pegasus does not exist".
In "Pegasus does not exist", Pegasus fails the quantification in ?x(x=t), and therefore cannot accept the predication " ?!".
and again, it's about quantification.
The dawn of a new day.
That's pretty close to what is going on here. Reference takes place within a holistic context. Certainly Quine should not be understood as arguing that communication is impossible.
1) ?x(Sx ? Bx) - All sirens are beautiful.
2) ?x(Sx ? Bx) - Therefore, some sirens are beautiful.
Does the statement "All sirens are beautiful" have ontological import, in your view?
Rather, the rejection of Quine's "to be" usually involves the idea that existence is not a predetermined category or domain. So, fiction aside, the crucial point is that you can posit an idea while prescinding from the question of whether or not it exists.
How Bunge does this would be interesting to know, but note that he does not separate existent things from non-existent things. Instead he separates existing concepts/constructs from existing things. My guess is that he would say that an existing concept may or may not attach to an existing thing. Presumably Quine's point would hold with concepts, namely that there are no non-existing concepts. The intuition behind Quine's point is upheld throughout all of historical philosophy,* but what usually happens is that mental existence is second-tier, such that we can usefully talk about thoughts, intentions, beliefs, hopes, etc., without according them the status of things (entia). Nevertheless, there are no non-existent thoughts - at least identifiable thoughts.
* The intuition being what Novak calls the principle of reference, "(PR) It is impossible to refer to that which is not."
Not just I; free logic is a respectable part of logic. But I am no expert.
If Ux(Sx?Bx) then ?x(Sx?Bx) follows, in prop logic, and so presumably also in free logic, but it does not follow that ?!x Sx - that Sirens exist; so the idea is that free logic allows Sirens to be beautiful and yet not exist.
https://www.umsu.de/trees/#~6x(Sx~5Bx)~5~7x(Sx~5Bx)
Quoting Banno
He seems to be asking whether the ontological import of existential quantification implies the ontological import of universal quantification. I think the point you are making has to do with what is called "inclusive logic" (or rather, inclusive logic is what fiddles with the ontological import of the universal quantifier):
Quoting Inclusive Logic/Free Logic | Ontological Commitment | SEP
I think free logic has to do with the ontological commitments accompanying singular terms or unbound variables. Instead of rejecting them like Quine did, free logic retains singular terms but deprives them of any accompanying ontological commitment (cf. the same SEP section).
Thus for free logic this does not follow: If (Sy ? By) then ?x(Sx ? Bx)
(Because the singular term y is not ontologically committing, whereas the existential quantifier is ontologically committing. Hence you could talk about beautiful sirens without committing to their existence.)
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Quine certainly thought so, but I don't know the arguments for that claim. That is, to say that if the existential quantifier has ontological import then the universal quantifier must also have ontological import is to reject inclusive logic.
Note that for the medievals affirmative categoricals are "ontologically committing":
Quoting Gyula Klima, Existence and Reference in Medieval Logic, 3
---
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Quoting Banno
Note too how Banno's rewriting of the conjunction as an implication adds an additional layer of complexity. He rewrote it because Arcane's (1) actually means, "Everything is a beautiful siren," but the reason Arcane wanted a conjunction is because he was interested in ontological commitment, and a conditional obscures the idea of ontological commitment. This is what we should probably assess, even though (3) is farcical:
3) ?x(Sx ? Bx) - Everything is a beautiful siren.
4) ?x(Sx ? Bx) - Therefore, some siren is beautiful.
i.e. "If this is valid, then the universal quantifier must have ontological import."
Quoting Banno
In Free Logic or Inclusive Logic, the existential quantifier explicitly asserts existence when paired with a predicate like ?x(x=t), and existence becomes a property rather than a background assumption tied to the quantifiers. However, the universal quantifier can still range over both existent and nonexistent objects, depending on the framework.
This is the point at issue, and according to SEP it is at best a controversial claim:
Quoting 5.5 Meinongian Logics | Free Logic | SEP
So free logic is not free of Quinian intuitions, even though there is a push to abandon Quine's formula and make the logics more purely semantic, at least in some quarters. But I don't want to obscure the original question:
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Well I guess if they have the same verbal dispositions then there would be no possibility of some event which would lead them to think they are talking past each other. There would be no reason to say they are talking past each other in any radical sense because their verbal dispositions are the same so they communicate perfectly.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, all this means is being able to anticipate the correct and incorrect times to use certain words.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Leontiskos
Well I think them misunderstanding each other depends on if the other person agrees and corroborates or rejects their sentences when they have a conversation about it, after which they find out they have misunderstood and have the experience of having misunderstood.
I think you can talk about the idea of an objective world that exists out there that you can engage with, without requiring a single determinate way to parcel [or carve] that world up. I think the same equally applies to parceling up or interpret[ing] how people use words.
Edit: []
Not SEP, no.
He means a) the relation of reference not happening to be a physical relation, but instead mere convention, or pretence; and b) the possibility of determining a non-physical relation, from observation of physical behaviours, not happening to be as straightforward as we might think.
Why b? Who ever thought the possibility of determining a convention from observation of behaviours would be straightforward, and anyway why should that make it impossible?
Well... people who thought that theories based on observation of the same behaviours should naturally converge towards a unique theory of what the behaviours meant. That's who. And those people being wrong about that would rule out a unique determination, at least.
Why do people think a unique determination is a reasonable expectation? Quine talks about the consequences, not so much causes, of failure to perceive the indeterminacy. But it seems reasonable to blame this failure on the success of language in talking about real, physical relations. Its unreasonable effectiveness, if you will.
My point being, it almost seems as though meaning is physical after all?
(Music to the ears of the bio-semioticians?)
It's true that ?x(Sx ? Bx) is not the same as ?x(Sx ? Bx). And as Leontiskos keenly observed, I wanted to avoid the "?" symbol. Certainly, the statement "Everything is a beautiful siren" is false, so from (1) to (2) can be safely rejected. That being said, consider this other case:
1) ?x(Sx ? Bx) - Some sirens are beautiful
2) ¬?x¬(Sx ? Bx) - Therefore, some sirens are beautiful (or some other more sophisticated parse)
To my mind, as far as ontological commitments go, this case is even worse than the preceding one, because those two formulas are interchangeable:
https://www.umsu.de/trees/#(~7x(Sx~1Bx))~4(~3~6x~3(Sx~1Bx))
So you could switch their places:
2) ¬?x¬(Sx ? Bx) - Some sirens are beautiful (or some other more sophisticated parse)
1) ?x(Sx ? Bx) - Therefore, some sirens are beautiful
But notice that ¬?x¬(Sx ? Bx) has no existential quantifier, it only has a negated universal quantifier. So, my question is the following: does ¬? have ontological import? How could it not, if it's equivalent to ?? And if that's so, then does ? have ontological import, since it's equivalent to ¬?? Of course, "all" is not identical to "none", but there are cases in which it's possible to switch one of these symbols for the other. Consider:
3) ¬?x(Sx ? Bx) - No siren is beautiful (alternatively, there are no beautiful sirens)
4) ?x¬(Sx ? Bx) - Therefore, no siren is beautiful (or some other more sophisticated parse)
In this case, the two formulas are also interchangeable:
https://www.umsu.de/trees/#~3~7x(Sx~1Bx)~4~6x~3(Sx~1Bx)
Maybe it's just me, but I fail to understand how and why someone would treat ? and ? differently, as far as the discussion about ontological commitment goes. To my mind, either both of them have import, or neither of them does. I say that neither of them does. The existential quantifier should be called the "particularizing" quantifier instead (I didn't come up with that proposal, Bunge and some other folks have suggested that. I think that G. Priest says something along those lines as well, IIRC).
I can definitely see the merits of free logic. But it just seems like overkill to me. What's nice about Bunge's ideas regarding the existence predicate is that we don't need to step outside the realm of classical, first order logic, so there is no need to adopt free logic in the first place, which means that there is no need to say that E!t can be defined as ?x(x=t), for example. Besides, Bunge's approach also manages to accommodate the idea that proper nouns can be treated as individual constants. For example, instead of saying ¬?x(Px) (Nothing pegasizes), it's possible to say instead ?x(x=p ? ¬E[sub]R[/sub]x) (there is an x, such that x is identical to Pegasus, and Pegasus does not really exist).
Thoughts?
EDIT: And, speaking for myself, if I don't accept Bunge's dichotomy between conceptual existence and real existence, then there is no need for me to use subscripts, as in ?x(x=p ? ¬E[sub]R[/sub]x). I can say instead: ?x(x=p ? ¬Ex).
I would say that the first thing to note is that what is equivalent is not ¬?x(Fx) and ?x(Fx), but rather ¬?¬(Fx) and ?x(Fx) (as well as ¬?x(Fx) and ?x¬(Fx)).
Second, all of these puzzles tend to revolve around different senses of negation. In this case, whether ?x(Fx) is ontologically committing is an interesting question, but ¬?x(Fx) seems rather different with regard to ontological commitment. This is because ¬?x(Fx) will be uncontroversially true whether the domain is empty or whether there is merely nothing that falls under the predicate F. Ergo: it is not controversial whether ¬?x(Fx) involves ontological commitment (because it is consistent with an empty domain), whereas it is at least somewhat controversial whether ?x(Fx) is ontologically committing (because it is arguably inconsistent with an empty domain). Put slightly differently: a non-empty domain does not foreclose the question of ontological commitment (with respect to that domain), whereas an empty domain does not bear on the question of ontological commitment, because there are no entities in question at all.
It is also worth noting that appeals to the Tree Proof Generator (originally linked by Banno) are a form of begging the question. We are asking whether the ontological-commitment relation between the universal and existential quantifier should be different from the classical conception. The Tree Proof Generator just tells us what the classical conception is. It says nothing about whether it should be the way it is. For example, on inclusive logic your (2) does not follow. (Banno often begs the question with the Tree Proof Generator in these metalogical discussions.)
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Note that I proposed this, as it avoids the negation puzzles:
Quoting Leontiskos
...but the difficulty may be unavoidable, given that no one would actually accept (3) were it ontologically committing. That is, someone who holds that universal quantification is ontologically committing would almost never use the universal quantifier to make unconditional claims, such as Sx ? Bx.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
I agree. More precisely, logic should be semantic in the first place, not ontological.* This is that difference between immediate signification and ultimate signification. When we proffer a logical sentence or argument, we are engaged in a form of ampliation. We are saying, at least in the first place, "How does this look to you? I am not committing to it. Let's first consider it as a thesis before committing to anything ontologically." Nevertheless, this "consideration" involves ontology secundum quid, precisely because part of our consideration is a consideration of the ontological question. Of course Quine might claim that we are never really arguing over existence, but that seems wrong on its face. With that said, the radical difference that arises by shifting to a "particularizing" quantifier is often underestimated.
(This is similar to Kimhi's quest to find force in Frege's content.)
* Note that this is precisely why essentialism is frowned upon in modern circles: because the modern form of logic is prejudiced against it. The closest predicate logic can get is modal essentialism, which is at best a problematic, second-rate form of essentialism. This is why Klima reworks the logical landscape before arguing for traditional essentialism. He provides a semantic logic that is neutral to the ontological question of essentialism before setting out the sense of traditional essentialism. He takes away the modern logician's hammer and replaces it with a more flexible tool before offering them something other than a nail.
Except Quine literally says, "the meanings or ideas expressed in their identically triggered and identically sounded utterances could diverge radically." If the meanings and ideas expressed by our identical utterances diverge radically, then I would say we are talking past each other by definition.
This is what I think it comes down to:
Quoting Leontiskos
The thesis you offer is that they would be objectively talking past each other without even knowing it. But that becomes more implausible the longer we draw out their conversation (say, from 15 seconds to 2 minutes to 5 minutes to 30 minutes...). The longer we talk the more likely we will realize that we are using words in radically different ways.
I would say that these meanings and ideas are imposed on the patterns of verbal behavior by an observer. You don't need these extraneous interpretations for people to communicate or use words, and the idea that you can coherently assign divergent meanings is something like a reductio to the thought that verbal behavior, language and understanding is anything above the physical events responsible for word-use. The idea of the two men in this idealized example talking past each other then would not really make much sense if their communication is perfectly fine. And if you think about it, each man's meanings would be indeterminate too, so what exactly are they talking past each other about in that regard? Rather, the fact that they can communicate fine is indicative that they are not talking past each other. If what you say in the following quote happens:
Quoting Leontiskos
Then it is because their verbal dispositions are clearly not the same as had been thought. But Quine is saying that you can conceive of different meanings for the same verbal dispositions - that is the example.
Interesting observation. So it is that becasue the word "gavagai" is so effective that folk have developed something like and expectation that it has a fixed referent?
Well, yes. It hadn't occurred to me that folk might think otherwise. Ux(fx) is just fa ^ fb ^ fc... for every item in the domain. And ?x(fx) is just fa v fb v fc...
There's a presumption that we are not dealing with an empty domain. I don't see that as a problem.
A seperate issue. That ?!t is defined as ?(x)(t=x) is a result of the need to maintain extensionality. The SEP article explains how. And extensionality is just the idea that we can swap one name for another that refers to the same thing, presumably becasue it is the thing we are talking about and not the name.
To say that ?!t is to say that there is at least one thing in the Domain D - let's call that "x" - which is the very same as t. Which is to say that t exists.
We could move to non-extensional free logics, but I think we'd be overthinking it. And we would need to rework what it would mean to be consistent in such a logic; and tracking the semantics would be difficult. But go ahead, if you think it would help.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Bunge's dichotomy looks to be much the same as that used in free logic, with conceptual existence taking the place of empty terms. I'm presuming that Bunge would suppose t=t to be true, even if t does not exist - Pegasus is Pegasus. So I'm understanding his idea as an interpretation of positive free logic. So yes we can drop the subscripts. But then "Pegasus does not exist" would be ~?!(Pegasus); that is, ~?x(x=Pegasus). This has the advantage of dropping the idea of treating proper names as pretend predicates - dropping parsing "Pegasus exists" as "Something pegasises". This directly gives us
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
And seems to me to be an improvement over Quine's idea of simply dropping proper nouns and individual constants.
Bunge seems to have been anticipating free logic.
It might be worth adding "... and get the same result". The same behaviours might be seen with very different interpretations - we get a rabbit stew even if "gavagai" means undetached rabbit leg.
Just to emphasize that inscrutability falls within common sense uses.
But that is precisely where my disagreement with Bunge is to be found, because I think that Quine is actually right in treating the word "Pegasus" in a predicative way. I don't have the space here to explain why I prefer Quine's approach on this exact point, but it has to do with a (hopefully) novel solution to the problem of Material Constitution. Essentially, I agree with Quine's syntax (which is identical to Russellian syntax), but I disagree with Quine's parsing: "something Pegasizes". I also disagree with Russell's parsing, which is based on his theory of definite descriptions (but not because referents are inscrutable). I would just parse the following syntax:
?x(Px)
like so: "Some particular x is Pegasus".
Notice that I do not say that some "x" exists. I parse it strictly as "Some particular x". And then, Px is to be read: is Pegasus. In this way, I (hopefully) manage to preserve what is intuitive in the idea that proper nouns successfully refer; that is, they function more or less like Kripkean rigid designators, but I avoid Kripke's (and Bunge's) idea that proper nouns should be treated as individual constants. Instead, I preserve (hopefully) what is intuitive in the Russellian and Quinean approaches, that is, of treating the expression "is Pegasus" as a predicate, because the "is" here is not the "is" of identity, it is the "is" of predication.
At least this is one of the projects that I'm currently working on, in my day job (professional philosophy is far less glamorous than it sounds to outsiders).
You tempt me into the quagmire of the sign! Back, foul demon! :D
What I'd commit to is the idea that though reference is inscrutable we can still communicate. If we somehow connected "reference" as a necessary condition of communication then that's pretty damning for the notion of reference always being inscrutable, or whatever.
What this leads me to is the notion that proper names function differently, at least in English, than nouns. There's no description which "picks out" a reference, yet we are able to refer. I can't tell if it's the nose or the drink or the carpet, at least when talking about the facts before me, but I can tell by "Robert" you're referring to the man on the carpet with a drink. I remember his name and everything!
So I think the target is more various philosophical notions of reference rather than the whole ability to communicate.
At least, that's a more interesting thing to think about.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
So "P" is much the same as "Pegasus=" in "Pesasus=x"?
No, because x is a free variable. Like Quine, I believe that in some cases, we should avoid using individual constants, and we should treat proper nouns (i.e., names) as predicates of some free variable instead. Why? Because it has to do with a hopefully novel solution to the problem of Material Constitution that I mentioned in my previous comment.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
I'm not sure how to reconcile these.
I agree that this added dimension is what Searle addresses in terms of intention. I grok the "extensionalism" (and nominalism) of Quine and Goodman as trying to bypass the internal psychology. Hence Word and Object rather than Person and Object (as Chisholm had it).
But no, no one is denying the importance of semantics. (Intentionality if you prefer.)
Quoting Moliere
"How we manage to refer is mysterious, but what is being referred to is not indeterminate."
Yes?
Or:
"How we manage to refer is inscrutable, but what is being referred to is not inscrutable."
Syntax as pattern, semantics as what we do with the pattern?
It seems to me that there is a more effective reductio pointing in the opposite direction. For what could be more obvious then that we [I]do[/I] refer to things with our words and mean things by them? And if the reductio is not so obvious, one need only consider that the same sort of arguments are leveled against the existence of qualia and first-person experience. "What need have we for your 'experiencing' pain? Stimuli and response covers all the observations just as well."
Yet what is said to constitute "all the observations," is doing all the lifting here, since clearly the person in pain observes this fact easily enough. Of course it is true that if one disallows all the evidence for something one will not be able to point to any evidence for it.
But I don't say "Pegasus=x", because the phrase "is Pegasus", in the case of Px, is not the "is" of identity, it is the "is" of predication. Like when you say: Some lemons are yellow. You're not saying "Lemon = yellow", you're not saying that a fruit is identical to one of its colors. You're saying that some fruit has that color. When I say that some "x" is Pegasus, I mean it like that: some x is Pegasus, in the sense of predication, not in the sense of identity. It's something that I'm working on, so I understand your confusion.
Yes. I guess. Not sure.
Sure. And "Pegasus =" is also a predicate, not an equivalence.
So we have two ways of parsing "x is Pegasus". As an equivalence, x=p, which is a two-place prediction "=(pegasus, x)"; or as a single-placed predication, "=pegasus(x)".
But you said that these were not the same "becasue x is a free variable". I just wasn't able to follow that. Not a big point in the context. Leave it if you like.
Maybe I meant to say "bound" variable instead of "free" variable, but the notions of free and bound variables is also something that I'm currently working on.
I'm aware that none of this makes sense to you.
Hmm.
From Open Logic, 15.8:
You can change that definition for your own purposes, if you like, but why?
Because it seems to be a necessary requirement of the hopefully novel solution that I'm working on in response to the problem of Material Constitution that I was telling you about. If it just so happens that there's no need for a re-definition, even better.
Wouldn't that just mean that any non-constant was free, and so free variables would just be variables? That'd just be dropping the distinction between bound and free variables.
I gather its a work in progress, so no need to reply until you have it worked out.
It would seem that way. So far, I see no reason for not doing exactly what you just said: to drop the distinction between free and bound variables in favor of the (arguably simpler) distinction between variables and constants. In other words, it seems to me that we can do just fine with constants and variables, there is no work do be done with the tripartite distinction between free variables, bound variables, and individual constants.
EDIT: But I could be wrong.
Except that f(x) says nothing, while ?(x)fx says that something has the property f.
So if we drop the distinction between free and bound variables, we no longer have any sentences. Or any formulae is a sentence.
Sure, but in saying ?(x)fx, you're saying two things, you're making two declararions (or declarative speech acts):
1) you're saying that some particular x (fill in the blanks)
2) you're saying that (fill in the blanks) x is F.
There's a sort of synthetic operation here, in a formula like ?(x)fx. You're not saying "just one thing", you're saying two different things that only make sense when said together, but they're still two different declarations, even though neither can be declared independently of the other.
Not following that. Unless you are saying that ?(x)fx says there is at least one thing and one thing is f - ie, that the domain is not empty. That might make sense.
More or less, except that I have no use for the notion of a domain either in this proposal that I'm working on. But that would be more or less the correct parse: 1) there is at least one thing, and 2) that thing is F, in the manner of a variable (not an individual constant) having something predicated of it (instead of predicating that the variable in question is identical to an individual constant).
Seems to me the answer to the SEP article you pointed to was that
was wrong. The very same thing can have different properties. Kinda the point of modality.
Is it a necessary presumption?
Quoting Banno
Doesn't matter, for this is a point in which I'm willing to part ways with Bunge.
Quoting Banno
Not if the properties in question contradict each other. Athena can't survive flattening. Piece can. Therefore, by Leibniz Law, you're dealing with two different objects. And this is a problem for anyone like me, who wishes to find a working monist solution.
BTW this is the language that I personally call "Basic Alien". This is not Philosophy, this is Basic Alien.
Sure we do. When you try to understand what it is that someone is referring to in using a name, how confident can you be that you have it right? Or, a better question, how confident do you need to be in order to get on with the conversation?
That that it is possible to "talk past one another" relies on it not being the case that we always, or even mostly, talk past one another. It seems obviously possible to understand one another very well and yet disagree, nonetheless.
If the quote <here> were true then we would talk past one another much more often than we do.
?x(Px)
For Quine, that means "something Pegasizes". What people asked him in the 50's is if, by the same lights, President Truman exists because "something Trumanizes". Here's what I would say. Let's agree to use the following formula, if only for the sake of argument:
?x(Tx)
Should that be read as if it were saying "something Trumanizes"? No. It should be read instead: "someone is Truman", or better yet, "it is the case that someone is President Truman", just as it is also the case that something is Pegasus. In saying "something is Pegasus", I make no commitments, because I deny that Pegasus exists (on the other hand, I obviously believe that someone in the past was President Truman).
A convention. This happens to be a conversation about challenging conventions.
Well, if not then A statement like ?xP(x) would trivially be true, because there are no x to contradict it. And ¬?x?P(x) would be equivalent to ?x?¬P(x). So you can do a sort of first order logic with empty sets, which is more or less what free logic is.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Ok. It might be a path to madness, but on your head be it.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Then aren't you dealing with non-extensional contexts? For my money, the answer to "what was flattened?" is "Athena" as much as "Piece", since Athena = Piece. One can drop that, but at the cost of even more "alien language".
I never made the promise that my proposed solution actually works. It might be nonsense. I'm aware of that possibility. But the problem of Material Constitution is so impossibly hard to tackle, that I'm willing to think outside the box here.
Quoting Banno
Yes, both of them were flattened, at the same time, but only one of them survived: Piece. On the other hand, Athena was destroyed when the process of flattening occurred: it has ceased to exist, and now only Piece remains.
EDIT: So, if Athena was destroyed but Piece wasn't, it follows that they were different objects to begin with.
The reasons that Quine had for dropping individual constants and proper names were pretty much smashed by Possible World Semantics, along with the description theory of proper names.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
But since Athena = Piece, Athena survived, too.
See how you have to drop extensionality? That is, you can't maintain that Athena = Piece and still say only one of them survived.
I find that counter-intuitive. The flat piece of clay that I'm looking at is clearly not a human-shaped statue, so how could it still be Athena?
Quoting Banno
You can (I believe), if you symbolize "Athena" and "Piece" using the predicate letters (or predicate constants, in the case of second-order logic), "A" and "P", instead of the individual constants "a" and "p". That way, you can say that some "x" is both Athena and Piece in a predicative sense, and you're able to say that "x" is both Athena and Piece on Monday, while it is only Piece but not Athena on Tuesday, after flattening. That's more or less the "gist" of my proposed solution to the problem of Material Constitution.
Sure. Hopefully you see my objections as they are intended, as helping you think through the consequences of your idea. I'm enjoying this.
Well, then ~(Athena = Piece).
I see your solution as rejecting this, since for you there is no individual Athena or Piece, but only descriptions of them - predicates. You seem to be going back to the solution suggested by Russell and Quine. How that would work with modality would remain to be seen.
Let's leave it for now.
Why did it come up? Because we were talking about ontological commitment and SEP utilizes the empty domain as a useful way to talk about ontological commitment. See my post <here> for the genesis.
Essentially, yes, as far as the syntax goes. I disagree with Russell's and Quine's parsing of the corresponding formulas, though.
Quoting Banno
Indeed, it remains to be seen. I make no promises in that sense. This could all be just one giant failed experiment in Philosophy of Logic.
Quoting Banno
Ok. Let me say this, though, in relation to Truman / Pegasus. Since people asked Quine if Truman exists because "something Trumanizes", by parity of reasoning the same sort of question can be asked in relation to the statement "someone is Truman": does President Truman exist because someone is Truman?
And my answer there would be yes, indeed: President Truman exists because someone is president Truman (i.e., in Quine-speak, "someone Trumanizes"). But how can that be? Isn't it the case that President Truman exists because he has two parents? Well, that's what Aristotle would say is Truman's efficient cause. Truman's formal cause, on the other hand, is not his two parents, it is instead his form. When I say that Truman exists because someone is Truman, I am not referring to Truman's parents, I am referring to Truman's form.
Does that make sense?
Quine's thesis is not merely skeptical, that we "cannot be certain." It's that there is no reference going on. That's a big difference.
But in any case, we can be quite certain. Said in a room where there is but one rabbit, the English phrase "the rabbit in this room," refers to the one rabbit. If someone intends to refer to a rake instead, they have misspoken (hence, the distinction of intended reference/intentions is important). Reference can be ambiguous and indeterminate, and it can be more or less so.
BTW, one can make something like Quine's argument from inverted/jumbled qualia as well. "Every mind constructs reality differently, thus we don't refer to the same things." Or one could make it from cognitive relativism. But if you accept the limits of evidence in play and arguments from underdetermination, then you can just as well argue to solipsism or being the lone conscious human in an advanced alien zoo filled with androids.
Well, yes, but I don't think it the best way that this stuff could be said. When I say that Truman exists because someone is Truman, I'm not refering to Truman's form, but to Truman. It's easier to work with individuals.
How does your idea fit with what in Australia is called the "pub test"? The common sense comparison you made elsewhere? Isn't "Truman exists" about Truman, rather than the-form-of-Truman?
But then you run directly into the problem of Material Constitution, that's my point.
Quoting Banno
I have no idea what that is, I don't live in Australia.
Quoting Banno
Is it? When dealing with a problem as difficult as the one involving Athena and Piece, perhaps it's best to abandon common sense, but just in relation to that problem, just as physicists abandon common sense when dealing with complicated scientific phenomena that are not part of our everyday, ordinary lives.
EDIT: Think of it like this, Banno. Why is the idea that Truman can have an essence so repugnant to our analytic sensibilities?
Well, I don't agree. Rather, for Quine, reference does work, but holistically, not in individual cases.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I doubt Quine would disagree. The context is so limited that it is relatively easy to see the whole. Of course, "certain" here is about confidence, a psychological rather than a logical state.
I think qualia cause more problems than they solve.
Perhaps what is happening here is that you want the referent for 'Truman' to be more than the bare particular of predicate logic, i.e. you want for Truman what is for species an essence. That is, you want to reference a primary substance rather than a bare particular.
If that is right, you may be interested in Gyula Klima's "Contemporary 'Essentialism' vs. Aristotelian Essentialism," where he compares a Kripkean formulation of essentialism to an Aristotelian formulation of essentialism, and includes formal semantics for signification and supposition, which involves the notion of inherence. Paul Vincent Spade also has an informal piece digging into the metaphysical differences between the two conceptions, "The Warp and Woof of Metaphysics: How to Get Started on Some Big Themes."
Note that Banno's whole logical horizon is bound up with the bare particulars of predicate logic, so I'm not sure it is possible to easily convey an alternative semantics to someone who who has never been exposed to an alternative paradigm.
Quoting Leontiskos
Do you think Quine intends this to be read as indicating a common occurrence or merely an outlying possibility?
Given charitability and good will I see little reason to think that divergences of intended meaning could not be discovered quickly enough and taken into account.
Sure thing. But it will work better for substances than for artifacts a la material constitution. Granted, a similar problem would occur if the real Athena were flattened (as least if she were mortal). You would have a clump of matter that was Athena a moment ago, but no longer is (i.e. you would have substantial change).
Yes. For my teachers an artifact has a form, but not a substantial form. Yet a substantial form would not need to be soul/life, for there are inorganic compounds with a substantial form. Nevertheless, I agree that this last part is more controversial.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Right, so the question has to do with how the "property" of life relates to Truman, namely whether it is something he needs in order to be himself. Or put differently, whether it is nonsensical to talk about Truman apart from his life.
It doesn't strike my ear as nonsensical, at least not necessarily. For example, suppose that Truman's form is his soul. If so, then it's not evident to me that Truman's soul immediately leaves his body after he has died. Maybe it remains in his body for a few minutes, or even a few hours. So, in such circumstances, it makes sense to talk about Truman apart from his life.
Well for Aristotle the soul is the principle of life, so if Truman's body still has a principle of life, then he is not fully dead. But of course if we hold to a view where the soul perdures apart from the body after death then there arises the tendency to identify Truman with his perduring, separated soul.
More about me. Cool.
Ummm, what?
Well, no offense Banno, but I think that alcohol might be more culturally significant to Australians than to Argentines. I'm not in the habit of explaining things to drunkards.
Perhaps. Robots might make better citizens.
Unless you mean their inclusion? In which case, excluding qualia from your philosophy to "avoid problems" is a bit like removing the possibility of false statements or false beliefs from your theory of language or epistemology in order to make things easier. Sure, it makes an explanation easier, but then it isn't an explanation of what actually exists. And indeed, some physicalist theories seem to go as far as attempting just this.
Yes, this would be the case in that Quine 'two men' passage I think.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure, but I am not sure I need an account of this which appeals above and beyond what I find a plausible view of how the objective world works. Nor, from my own introspective experience, can I seem to point to some kind of specific, definitive sense of what it means to "refer"; nonetheless, I can use the word reasonably well. I don't see an issue with embracing vagueness, fuzzyness, indeterminacy in regards to how we engage with the world. If one believes in an objective world then the men in the Quine quote are a part of that, behaving in an objective way where they tend to say and use words in certain kinds of contexts in reaction to certain stimuli. But, if an observer were to describe what those men were doing, they may plausibly be able to do it in different ways.
Nothing to do with Dennett's quining qualia
Not a short thread.
Not a topic to treat in a couple of words.
So it doesn't pass the Australian pub Test?
Quoting Banno
But I will not try explaining it to a drunk.
EDIT: You'd also have to explain to him that "qualia" is plural, and that the singular is "quale".
People think: reference must be determinate because language can talk physics.
There is a lot of strong support for the view that organisms and the ordered cosmos as a whole are most properly beings. However, this distinction respects which things have an essence, their being "a being," or possessing a substantial form. It's important to recall that anything that is anything at all has some form/act. Even accidents have to be act/form in order to be at all. The terminology gets confusing because terms like "Aristotelian form" might refer to form/actuality in general, substantial form (the form by which something is a certain type of thing), or even essence (the "what it is to be" of a certain type of thing). .
Aristotle distinguishes between things that exist "by nature" (i.e. possessing a nature), those that exist "by causes" (heaps of external causes), and those that exist "by craft" in the Physics, Metaphysics, and Ethics. In the Metaphysics he explicitly calls into question the idea that a cloak might have an essence. "Substance" (i.e. thinghood) is indeed said of things that are more or less heaps (e.g. rocks) or artifacts, but they do not have the same unity one finds in self-determining wholes. I think Aristotle does in fact refer to a wheel as potentially an example of secondary substance in the Categories but this is: A. thought to be an earlier work, B. just a passing example where the simpleness of a wheel is useful.
One misses what Aristotle is really getting at, the way in which aims unify things, if one sticks to rigid categorization however.
From my notes on the Physics:
The form involved in Truman's life is the soul. Klima has a pretty good article on this, although IRCC I didn't agree with all of it (https://faculty.fordham.edu/klima/bodysoul.htm).
Well, for Aristotle death is a substantial change. A corpse is not a man. Yet death does not involve instantly transforming into an ooze of prime matter. There are levels of form/matter, and sometimes the flesh, bones, wood, rock, etc. that some thing is made of is referred to as its matter because it is its substrate, the substrate on which the substantial form is actualized. So, the underlying wood of a table, or flesh of a man while being the material substrate of either, nonetheless involves some actual form, since it isn't just sheer potency.
Contemporary Aristotelians and Thomists don't really shy away from looking at how hylomorphism can be applied to contemporary natural science because it tends to layer on quite well. Previously, the big difference was in the claim that there were fundamental subsistent building blocks that made up matter, but that isn't even popular in physics any more.
How so? A corpse doesn't consist of "a living brain in a body," so it need not be Truman, although surely it is Truman's body.
"gavagai" is a word without context -- I have no knowledge of the language. When someone says "gavagai" it could mean the rabbit, the time of the year, the soup we're going to make, the teacher's authority over the kitchen, etc. etc.
That is, there's no fact of the matter that I can point to to fix the reference of gavagai: it's inscrutable from the perspective of a person without knowledge of the language.
But if we know the language we can refer with it -- I just don't think that this is somehow a feature of language, necessarily, but one of the many things we can do -- emphasis on it taking two or more -- once we know a language.
But the facts of the world in the moment aren't what affixes the reference -- that is, there are no definite descriptions which pick out a name, and much less an understanding that reference is even what's happening at all when we have no knowledge of the language "gavagai" is spoken in.
My take-away here is that since there's no fact of the matter that affixes reference, but we are able to refer, there must be something other than the facts which makes us able to refer. As is often the case in my thinking where this leads me to is the necessity of us sharing a language -- the things language does is present to more than my own cogito. So there's no theory I can hold to in evaluating whether you have referred separate from our collective interpretation of the language being spoken. It takes two to refer.
Yes, but Aristotle's Prime Mover, which is pure form, is arguably not alive, at least not in the sense that trees, dogs, and people are. If, on the other hand, "form" is to be understood as some kind of activity (i.e., as energeia, as distinct from potentiality), then I can see how organisms and the Prime Mover would both have "form" in the same sense.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Contra Aristotle, I might argue that it is. A corpse is a man that happens to be dead. It's a man that no longer has the property of being alive. Though some philosophers, like Eric T. Olson would disagree with me. Are you familiar with his distinction between "corpse concurrentism" and "corpse creationism"? He discusses this topic in his article The Person and The Corpse.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Indeed, a corpse doesn't consist of a living brain in a body. Since I claim that a human being (or perhaps even a person) is identical to a living brain in a body (and not identical to a Christian soul, for example), it follows (if I want my system of beliefs to be coherent) that a human corpse is not a human being (and perhaps not even a person). But this strikes me as an unwanted consequence of my premises, so it seems to me that one of my premises is dubious. I want to be able to say, at the same time, that a person just is a living brain in a body, and at the same time I want to say that a recently deceased human being is still a human being, not merely a corpse. When a deceased person "rests" in a coffin, and the person's loved ones attend the corresponding funeral, it seems to me that the deceased person is still there, right where the corpse is. So, I haven't found a way to reconcile these claims, yet. Shorter: Truman is just his living embodied brain, and when Truman dies, he's still Truman, even though he's no longer alive, and yes, I acknowledge that this is contradictory.
Maybe in some limited sense of "alive" as in necessarily mobile/mutable biological life. But per Book XII of the Metaphysics:
Vaguely. Or there is a similar typology for the question of "do persons cease to exist at their death?" (e.g. "the terminators," etc.)
Perhaps personal identity outlasts biological life? After terrorist attacks we still speak of dead Christians, dead communists, etc. One can still refer to "George Washington" or to "medieval Muslims," yet surely they are not still around. Perhaps in some cases, properly prepared, parts of the deceaseds' bodies still remain somewhat intact, but in many cases their body has ceased to exist as anything remotely distinct. It has already decomposed and become parts of many other fungi, plant, and animal bodies, perhaps even human bodies. Yet where is the dividing line where the corpse ceases to be? Or are there corpses of man and beast scattered throughout all of our bodies, and dinosaur corpses in my soup and in the tree outside?
Hence, I find good reason to identify the person with the soul, i.e., with a certain actuality (as process), since, for instance, 98% of the atoms in the human body are replaced each year. What you identify is just one of the difficulties of identifying people and personal identity with bodies. The fact that the decay of the body, and when it ceases to exist is ambiguous is no real problem once one accepts that the dead body is essentially just a heap. It no longer has any unifying aims through which it is made an organic whole.
Yes, indeed. It's a particularly difficult philosophical problem to solve, especially for atheists such as myself.
Yep.
So we can talk sensibly of Truman's body as still being Truman, and we know what that means, and how the corpse is different to the living man. There's not a problem here. I don't see any contradiction, rather a mistaken notion of reference.
But that's a mundane claim, isn't it? Almost tautologous? The stronger and more interesting claim is that something is inscrutable in that it cannot be fixed. I hope Quine is doing more than uttering a tautology.
Quoting Moliere
From the early pages of this thread I have objected to this vague use of the word "fact." What is it supposed to mean? Does it mean anything to say there is no fact of the matter? If it did, then what would it look like if there were a fact of the matter?
Quoting Moliere
Will someone raised apart from language and people be able to identify food, such as berries? And will this be a cognitive identification, such that they might find they are hungry for berries and decide to go out looking for them? Because if so, then it looks like they can refer to berries without two.
Let me rephrase because I believe that the inscrutability applies to one's own language as well, so this is a hard point to express-- to get the concept across we have the fable of a made up language we have no knowledge of, and "gavagai" somehow counts as a locution in that language.
The reason for the fable is we are misled by being able to refer in our language into thinking that there is some fixed reference. So we have the fable -- where you say it's almost tautologous -- which is meant to elucidate even our home tongue.
So, yes, reference is inscrutable in our own tongue, as I understand what's going on here.
Inscrutable being defined as I've said about facts here, but I see there's something of a dispute with facts so I'll go to that next:
Quoting Leontiskos
A fact is a set of true sentences.
So when I say Truman is dead that is a true sentence about Truman. That Truman is dead, however, does not affix the reference of "Truman" -- nor do any other true sentences.
Quoting Leontiskos
You ever read about feral and dramatically maltreated children?
If so, sure. But I am not so sure that it is so.
So, yes, I think it takes two. But that's just my theory in response to the puzzle: if we refer and yet it can't be scrutinized, I.E., there isn't a fact that makes the reference refer, that just leaves the puzzle open. My solution is that if I check in with you and ask "Oh, do you mean this Truman or that Truman" we can refer in a given conversation, rather than that "Truman" always refers to Truman because of this or that theory of reference.
Okay, so now you are saying that reference is inscrutable even to fellow language-speakers. Or more precisely, that there are no fixed referents amongst fellow language-speakers.
But that doesn't seem right. If you and I are sitting in a room together there will be any number of fixed referents available, e.g. "table," "chair," "dog," "television," "photograph," etc. So how does that work? Do you mean something very specialized by "fixed reference"?
Quoting Moliere
"Moliere understands 'chair' to signify
"Leontiskos understands 'chair' to signify
"Therefore, Moliere and Leontiskos understand 'chair' to refer to the same kind of object."
Those are three propositions, and if they are a set of three true sentences then on your view they would be called a "fact." If this is a fact, then it looks like there are facts of the matter with respect to reference.
Quoting Moliere
Right: the (conventional) association between Truman and 'Truman' is already "affixed" before the true sentence is uttered. If it were not then the true sentence would not be true.
Quoting Moliere
I've read some, and I agree that it seems to substantiate my thesis.
Quoting Moliere
I definitely agree that there is more than one person named "Truman."
I think what you and some others are trying to say is this: "Reference cannot be fully and exhaustively explained." I would say that it depends what tools we have to hand and what we mean by "fully and exhaustively explained."
Nothing specialized on my end -- I'm only attempting to formulate my thoughts.
I want to say that there's a difference in meaning between your opening sentences --
"Reference is inscrutable even to fellow language-speakers" does not mean the same thing as "There are no fixed referents amongst fellow language-speakers"
So if you and I are sitting in a room together there won't be fixed referents due to the facts alone, such as any given set of true sentences at a given time. There are too many facts to contend with in thinking that this will affix reference --[s]it's[/s] reference is a social act whereby we make a judgment call that could be wrong, some of the time, but if we are willing to listen to one another we are able to refer.
The main thing I'm getting at is the lack of some philosophical criteria which a philosopher can use to tell if something has successfully referred -- no such criteria exist, because reference isn't something done from the armchair.
I'm not convinced that
It took me a minute to get here but I think I agree with Derrida's critique of the sign in Husserl and Saussure.
But in Quinean terms -- I don't think there are such things as
But that there's a fact to the matter doesn't affix the reference, is what I'm contending.
And, yes! This is much more to my thinking with respect to "reference" at least -- at least, if it is not so affixed, if we listen to one another we can probably figure out what we mean.
It's just not a metaphysical or ontological connection -- only a collective effort, or social dance.
I think this is close -- but there's one thing added. Not only can it not be fully and exhaustively explained, it most certainly cannot be explained by the facts.
"There are no fixed referents," vs, "We could be wrong some of the time." Do you see how the latter does not justify the former?
If you and I are sitting in an empty room with a dog, and I say, "The dog," there is a fixed referent. You know exactly what I am referring to. So it looks like there are fixed referents (i.e. referents that are fixed between at least two individuals).
Quoting Moliere
Well you just used the word 'chair'. What chair are you referring to? And do I know what you are referring to?
In fact there is no chair, and yet you used the word successfully. That is, I know what you are referring you despite the fact that there is no individual chair being referred to. That is what it means to say that we both have the same concept of a chair. Back to the original point, if we do not mean the same things by the words we use, then we cannot now be communicating.
Quoting Moliere
And I just showed how it does. You and I mean the same abstract thing by 'chair', therefore the reference is fixed.
Quoting Moliere
Sure, but conventions are factual.
(1) and (2) are either true or false, and if they are true then on your definition they represent a fact. No one is saying that there are chair-concepts floating about in the Platonic ether. The point is that we both have an abstract notion of a chair such that the word signifies equivalently for each of us.
(Perhaps I should clarify that "same kind of object" != chair-concept. The idea was rather that a chair is a kind, namely a kind of object. The concept is what connects different chairs to that same kind. If you are a descendent of Frege then you can explicate this in terms of sets and extension. The point is only that "chair" is a reference common to us both, i.e. it is fixed between the two of us.)
Perhaps your landlord? The police officer you met on your drive home last night? The best in show of last year's Crufts?
But I would say that the chair concept is in itself fuzzy, vague, indeterminate. If I bring a specific chair to mind then that is only an exemplar. There is no fixed definition of what a chair is. It seems to be a kind of know it when you see it kind of thing.
Sure, I can bring up specific words to say a what a chair is but usually you can probably define a chair in many different ways and the words you use are probably as fuzzy and vague and indeterminate as the original concept you wanted to define. When you bring up a definition it usually helps you in your kind of know it when I see it cognition by prompting things in your brain. But imo, I don't know if it ever specifies something.
When I say a chair refers to something it is almost better said that it refers to a shared ability to make certain kinds of distinctions in the world, and we don't necessarily need to specify this uniquely because we all know that everyone in the room is going to be equally good at agreeing on the distinctions from the same kind of stimuli and predicting the kinds of things they do, using them appropriately, etc.
And its in this sense that the need to give strict definitions or translations of words becomes redundant - learning how to translate words in a foreign language isn't the aim; the aim is learning how to use words in another language. This is why I have thought recently that the translation example can be misleading in appearing to say that "well gavagai could plausible really mean undetatched rabbit appendage", but really I would like to view these kinds of examples (like the kripke one as well) as a kind of reductio in which to say - what is fundamental is the underlying use.
If we want to use the concept of reference it is going to be filtered through how we use words and how we recognize things which can seem indeterminate, fuzzy and vague. Sometimes you can even recognize objects and you aren't even sure how you did it. Sometimes there is something inarticulable about our ability to pick out certain patterns and use words in complicated ways. And in that I would hope we can still use the concept of reference but in this context of fuzzyness, indeterminacy, vagueness. Reference isn't about look-up table or translation manual in your head. And maybe this is obvious to some people who want to talk about reference in a strongly realistic sense.
In some ways, I think the difference between people on different poles of this debate are about whether you are sensitive to the details and in doing so possibly kind of de-emphasize the coarser picture. Or on the other hand, think the details don't really matter because our ability to talk about and engage with things like chairs is so damn good, why worry about them!
Presumably we all agree that words signify by convention ("nomina significant ad placitum").
So then a token like J-o-h-n will be indeterminate if there is more than one person named John (or if our interlocutor knows more than one person named John).
If that is all that is meant by inscrutability of reference then it strikes me as trivial.
I will say that Moliere and I are referring to the same thing with 'chair' or 'rabbit'. Someone else will come along and tell me that there is a 0.1% chance that we might disagree on what is a chair or a rabbit. And then we can argue about whether that 0.1% chance secures some particular thesis of "inscrutability of reference." To me it seems like this is really stretching the meaning of that word "inscrutability."
Perhaps the modern focus on quantity makes it hard to understand reference. If reference has to do with the extension of sets then there is nothing arbitrary about a 0.1% offset. If that is right then it's back to the old question of nominalist collections vs. universals and genera.
Yes, you could say that, but I think upon deeper examination it is more complicated. Its your perogative I guess to just say that we don't need to worry about messy details - we both know that we will know it when we see it.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think this misses the point partially though in the sense that under the thought experiment there may never be a [dis]agreement, but plausibly one could interpret how words map to each other in different ways whilst preserving the same verbal behavior. The consequence of the indeterminacy I think is not that we may sometimes disagree but that there is nothing intrinsic to words. We just use them in certain ways as allowed by our brains. Those are the physical facts. We use words, and interpreting words or debating about reference is also just word-use, albeit in a more meta-cognitive manner. I don't think you need to do away with reference. But all we are are physical beings that say stuff because neurons do stuff because physics allows us to. Thats obviously very blunt and simplified but I think its fine. We believe in an objective world, right?
Edit: [ ] mistype
Are you now suggesting that there is a convention that if you and I are sitting in an empty room with a dog, and I say, "The dog," there is a fixed referent?
Quoting Apustimelogist
Yep.
The only way that "the dog" refers in this conversation is if it one of the two sly dogs talking to one another right now -- and "the room" would have to be a metaphor for the internet forum known as TPF.
Though I believe I know what you mean when you say "The dog refers to
My thinking is that since there is no dog, and no room, there is no true sentence which affixes "the dog" to "
Though supposing we were in this room and there were three dogs, the bon motte above would still apply -- we'd have to make a choice, in the conversation, as to which of the three dogs in the room we are referring to.
If we make a mistake, given that we speak the same language, we can probably figure out reference in a given conversation -- I'll believe you if you believe me when I say what I'm thinking or referring to. (but it's not like conventions make reference factual -- there are facts about reference after we make a reference, but we have to refer to the reference to get there)
But you've changed the scenario. There is one dog, not three. Or do you think it is not possible to have a room with one dog? So you've reiterated the problem that elicited my question to you:
Quoting Leontiskos
You claim that there are no fixed referents, then you say that we could be wrong some of the time (which doesn't justify your claim); and then you repeat the whole thing by refusing to talk about a room with one dog and insisting on talking about a room with three dogs. As I said:
Quoting Leontiskos
The three dogs are you, me, and the pooch. I'd call you a sly dog in order to demonstrate that "dog"'s referrent isn't fixed by convention, but by our conversation.
Yes, I think this is correct. It's similar to how the eliminitivist claims that when we claim that we are "conscious," "selves," or "taste, smell, hear, etc." we are simply confusing ourselves with "folk terms" that have no more place in proper scientific/philosophical discussion than do references to "the astrological effects of Mercury being in transit," in political economy or demons in medicine. Like I said earlier, I think there is a tendency to undersell the radical nature of the theses that get generated from underdetermination in general. For instance, I think Russell had something right when he said Hume's similar argument against induction collapsed any distinction between sanity and insanity.
Unfortunately, I think equivocation sometimes plays a role here. For instance, following other arguments from underdetermination, what is meant by "truth" and "knowledge," etc. is radically redefined. In these cases, I think it would be more fair to the average reader to say: "my argument shows that knowledge (and knowing truth) are impossible, therefore we must settle for this [I]other thing[/I]." A denial of reference seems less radical, but it is still fairly radical. It would disallow any notion of the sciences as involving per se predication, which I think would force one quite far from common perceptions of the scientific endeavour and scientific knowledge.
As I noted before, if someone says "the rabbit in this room," in a room with one rabbit, and they mean to refer to anything but that rabbit, they have misspoken (barring of course, some sort of complex work around, like "the rabbit in this room" being the WiFi password, etc.).
People do misspeak. I am not sure why this has generally be counted as any more mysterious than the fact that someone can fail to pay attention to another's words and mishear them.
On a standard semiotic analysis, we would say the words "the rabbit in this room," are the sign vehicle linking the rabbit (object) and the person spoken to (interpreter). But of course, you could also analyze this as the object being the intentions of the speaker. If the full sentence is: "I want to eat the rabbit in this room," the motivation for such a shift becomes more clear.
However, in that example the rabbit is still referred to. But do we refer to such things directly, or only through referring to our own intentions? The latter is not fatally problematic if we both experience the same rabbit (particularly given some sort of sense realism). We can triangulate the external reference. Notably, this ambiguity does not come up for all signs, for instance, smoke as a sign for fire, or even an angry badger's aggressive behavior as a sign of their internal state.
From an information theoretic perspective, the same sort of ambiguity remains. The issue of what constitutes the proper object/sign vehicle/interpretant is very similar to trying to determine what the proper information source/transmitter/receiver/destination is when applying the Shannon-Weaver model to natural phenomena. For instance, the rabbit could be seen as the information source, with the speaking man serving as the transmitter, although no doubt one could decompose this into very many instances of communications (or instances of semiosis). We could also have the speaker as the information source. Either way, whatever message is received, it will contain information about all the preceding parts and any source of noise (e.g. a garbled message can tell you something about your receiver or transmitter).
What I take from this is that it doesn't need to be one or the other, verbal communication can contain information about and reference both things and the speaker's intentions about things. "This rabbit right here, the only one in this room, the black and white one," spoken in the context of a room with one black and white rabbit, has a very determinant reference as per the English language. Any competent speaker will know what is referred to.
Nonetheless, there may still be ambiguity. If the receiver of the message has agnosia and cannot make out the rabbit from the background clutter of the room, we have a problem with the alignment of the two speakers' intentions. This isn't really that different from the case where the receiver is hard of hearing and doesn't know what was said. Likewise, sometimes people use the wrong words; they say "baseball" when meaning to say "rabbit," etc. Some disorders make this sort of slip very common. Nonetheless, people often understand quite determinant references even when this sort of mixup occurs, and we still get our intentions to line up. Hell, even poorly trained dogs can communicate well enough to direct our attention to what they view as a threat.
But if the alignment of determinate intentions is possible, then I think there is a strong sense in which reference must be. To even make the inscrutability argument, one has to assume that determinate intentions exist, so that one is given, but then it obviously seems possible to communicate them as well.
Can you please expand on this? I am not sure what the critique is supposed to be. It's an "incipient reification" to disagree with Quine re first philosophy? I am not even sure what in that post could constitute reification. Can one not disagree on this (or his criteria for what constitutes as evidence, which is what I find most problematic) without having misunderstood the argument?
However, if reference wasn't fixed by convention at all there would be no need for languages in the first place. The sound of "dog" could be arbitrarily assigned to some referent in each instance.
Borges has two interesting short stories on this:
One is "Funes the Memorious," about a guy who has an accident and then is cursed by an absolutely perfect memory. Because of this, he gets annoyed with language. Why have so few words? Why not a specific word for the specific cloud I saw on the afternoon of 11/7/1932? Hell, why not unique words for different moments where he saw that cloud? In pursuit of this, he begins assigning unique numbers to proper names.
I think this gets at a few things. One is Aristotle's idea that we must use universals to have the possibility of our claims being false. If we just predicate unique terms of unique things, terms that only apply to those things, we can never be wrong. Second, language and reference must always be more general and less determinate than perception to be useful.
The second is "The Library of Babel," about an incomprehensibly large library of all possible 500 page books (every possible arrangement of characters). This gets at how it doesn't make sense to look at language as having any meaning at all in isolation from speakers, or at least [I]some[/I] information source. Librarians in the story go seeking for passages that will tell them their future (of course, mostly they only find gibberish or at most a few words). Yet it's a simple fact that [i]every[/I] possible description of one's future that can be written exists [I]somewhere[/I] in the library with a probability of 100%. But finding such a story would tell someone nothing about if it was a true prediction or not. The same is true of the messages of a truly random text generator. All information is ultimately information about an information source. Signal alone gets us nowhere at all, and so it cannot be analyzed in isolation.
Yes, I think this is a key point.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Right, and when we teach someone a new language we are teaching them about the intentional relations that attach to words (namely, the intentional relations of a language community via convention). I think a big part of the problem is that this tradition flowing from Russell can't understand or incorporate intention. It is as easy to talk about reference apart from intention as it is to talk about cars apart from engines.
See Klima's, "Three Myths of Intentionality vs. Some Medieval Philosophers."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Definitely. :up:
This whole thread has largely been a bouncing between the two poles of "obvious/tautological" and "absurd/incoherent." What this indicates is that, on a natural reading, Quine was simply wrong. Or else, he said some strange things because he was reacting to and critiquing a very strange idea about reference. But since the thread is not interested in that context, we are left with the idea that Quine was either saying something obvious or something incorrect.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
:lol:
Does "pooch" refer to the three of us equally? Do you see how if I adopt your methodology we will be unable to communicate?
Quoting Moliere
I've only said that reference is fixed by convention about a dozen times now. Even within our conversation I have said it a number of times. Here is one example:
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting Moliere
If I can know your intention then I can know the "fact" of what you are referring to. And to say that we can never know someone's intention seems a bit crazy.
The focus on reference as a gateway to meaning or communication is kind of the target that I have in mind here -- if reference is affixed in a particular conversation, meaning by each of us agreeing that this is what we mean and having nothing to bring up then we've referred successfully.
What this doesn't rely upon is a fact about what we are referring to, or whether or not "dog", or any other sign, has some pre-assigned meaning wrapped up in it.
The focus on convention is because we live in a society which prizes being able to say who does something better than another person, and with language that indicates the need for standards to judge others' in order to give a grade.
But language will always slip away from the conventions recorded in the books. New meanings will pop up, even with old words. Entirely new forms of grammar within the same language will emerge. Shakespeare's English, while readable, doesn't sound like our English on the fora.
Basically what you say I'm doing the "on its head" move -- there are conventions, but we already have to understand how to use language in order to establish them. "Reference" must already be understood.
Quoting Leontiskos
You haven't given it enough time yet. That we cannot ascertain, as an individual, what "pooch" refers to before asking our conversation partner doesn't stop us from continuing to ask questions.
So sure -- "pooch" could refer to the three of us equally. It would certainly be a point in favor of there being more than one referent :D.
Which is really the argument I've been making all along against convention: sometimes convention doesn't decide the referent. But we can still successfully refer. So there must be more to reference than convention.
I'm not so sure we must have universals for a claim to be false. If Truman's hair were black then "Truman's hair is blonde" would be false, for instance, even though we're only talking about that Truman right there and not any other Truman.
I'm not sure I'd separate language from perception, either. Seems to me that language has too much of an effect on perception to think that language even could be more general than perception.
Rather than a sign over here and a world over there, the world is always-already interpreted and the sign folds into reality.
I'd say it does. If it didn't rely on this at all, then communicating with someone with whom you do not share a common language (a common set of pre-assigned stipulated meanings and a grammar for form) should be just as easy and successful as communicating with someone with whom you do share a language. Indeed, if it didn't rely on this fact, it's hard to see why languages should exist at all.
Obviously, it doesn't rely exclusively on this fact. Most mammals can understand each other well enough (e.g. aggression) for certain functions. The reason "reptilian" or "insectoid" is a sort of slur is because these species don't tend to have relatable communicative behaviors in the same way. Snakes are deceivers because they lash out following unintuitive (to us) threat displays.
So for this:
[Quote]
The focus on convention is because we live in a society which prizes being able to say who does something better than another person, and with language that indicates the need for standards to judge others' in order to give a grade.
[/quote]
No, I think we focus on convention because it aids with communication. Part of good grammar is reducing ambiguity. The reason rhetoric and dialectical (and public speaking) were the cornerstone of education for so long is because fostering agreement and persuasion was the key tool of political life in pre-literate societies.
Changes in conventions have accelerated because memorization is far less important in an era of both high literacy and, as important, cheap access to data storage (digital or analog, paper, etc.). Back when huge amounts of information had to be memorized, when prize libraries were smaller than your average professor's office collection, you couldn't have conventions moving wildly around at the same rate. I've seen the hypothesis that this is also why almost everything was put into metered, rhyming verse, it helps with memorization, but then metered verse requires stable conventions.
There's a bootstrap problem involved in the sense that we can definitely tell when something does not speak (a stone) and obviously tell when something does speak (you and I), and we believe that somehow the speaking-thing came out of the not-speaking-thing.
Fostering agreement I can certainly get behind -- but I'm not sure convention answers that call. I'd think shared purpose does that more than convention. If you had to survive in a society in which you did not speak the language you could figure out some of what they mean through trial-and-error, where the error is measured by your purposes or by feedback from the other language speakers.
It's because, when we are learning a language, that we want to be able to speak to other language users that we adhere to the conventions. The conventions certainly help[s]s[/s] us learn, as well as making it so we are able to grade who is a better speaker.
But those poetic rhythms -- which I tend to think of as the earliest form of writing recognized as writing (though speech is always writing) -- came about as conventions because there was already a meaning.
So, yeah, the old "on its head" move.
And sometimes even common purpose doesn't help in assigning reference because the reason I want to know what my enemy is saying is in order to thwart them -- so related purposes, in that they are opposed, but not common.
The one thing I'm fairly certain about is that there is no public shelf of meaning from which we can judge others', and that we cannot ascertain how a particular individual is referring by reference to the language spoken and the circumstances they are in alone. Now that we live in an era where it seems writing is more permanent than speaking, where we can look things up that others' have done, I think it's easy to get lost in thinking that language behaves like other things in the world.
So easy even someone as smart as Aristotle has been caught up in that way of thinking ;)
Is this and identity in general not simply a matter of the way we speak about things. Take the 'Ship of Theseus' example. Replaced bit by bit, is it the same ship as it was when originally built? The question becomes 'What do we mean by "same ship?". There is a sense in which the ship is never the same from one moment to the next. And once parts that have worn out are replaced...how much less so? And then when all parts are replaced...?
Of course, ships are not alive, but I don't think the question regarding whether a corpse is the same person as the living being, only now dead, is any different. It would depend on what we mean by "person'. The point I want to make is that there is no fact of the matter in these kinds of questions, but rather merely different ways of thinking and talking.
"Blonde" and "black" are universals. If either we're unique terms that are only predicable of Truman's hair then they certainly couldn't fail to apply.
But don't babies without language and people with aphasia who cannot produce or understand language (or both) still perceive?
I'm skeptical of such a fusion, not least because the Sapir-Worf hypothesis is supported by very weak evidence, normally very small effect sizes and failures to replicate, despite a great deal of people having a strong interest in providing support for it. For instance, different cultures do indeed divide up the visible color spectrum differently, but the differences are not extreme. Nor does growing up with a different division seem to make you any better and spotting camouflaged objects. But moreover , aside from disparate divisions remaining fairly similar, no culture has a name for any of the colors that insects experience through being able to see in the ultraviolet range, and for an obvious reason.
Likewise, disparate cultures have names for colors, shapes, animal species, etc. They don't pick any of the vast range of options that would be available to a species that largely creates their own perceptual "concepts." I know of no cultures that mix shape and color for some parts of the spectrum, and then shape and smell for another part, etc. or any of the innumerable possible combinations for descriptions.
J mentioned Gadamer earlier, and I like Gadamer, but the idea that all understanding is done through language seems suspect. It seems like the sort of judgement a philosopher focused on language would have. But does an MLB pitcher finally have it all click and understand how to throw a knuckleball through language? Does a mechanic understand how to fix a motorcycle engine primarily through language? Or what of demonstrations in mathematics based on visualization?
My thoughts are that language is a late evolutionary arrival that taps into a whole array of powers. It enables us in a great many ways. But thought also isn't "language all the way down." Nor do I think we need to suppose that non-verbal individuals lack understanding (or else that we have to suppose that they have "private languages" for them to understand anything) or any noetic grasp of reality.
To my mind, part of the problem here is the ol' reduction of reason to ratio (which is maybe enabled by computational theory of mind). But my take is that reason is broader than language and that the [I] Logos[/I] is broader than human reason.
This isn't in response to the rest of your post, just the first question that popped to mind -- I had that thought, but suppose we allow negation. Then even "Truman's hair is Truman-blond", if true, the negation would have to be false. So even if we aren't speaking in universal terms we can use true/false.
I must be missing something, since it seems clear enough that the sound of "dog" could be arbitrarily assigned to some different referent in each instance.
We work out that it is - or isn't - as the conversation progresses. Sense making is a process, not a given, not fixed by divine providence or some such nonsense.
I would disagree. The way we talk about such things is not arbitrary. When we appeal to "our ways of talking about things," we just push the explanation back one step. The question then becomes: "why do we talk about things in this way?" After all, we have an essentially infinite possibility space open to us in how we might use sounds or symbols to represent such things, yet we settle on some, and moreover if someone offers counterproposals on how we [I]should[/I] do our speaking, some seem plausible and others ridiculous or arbitrary.
In general, I think there is far too much of a tendency to jump from: "one cannot give a rigid, mathematical definition of a distinction," to "thus there is no fact of the matter." One cannot give such a definition for life, either from the perspective of medicine or biology. Yet surely there is a fact of the matter as to if anything is alive, or if some individual is alive or dead. And surely organisms were alive or dead, and died, prior to the advent of human language (that is, the distinction is not dependent on human language). Hence, the difference between life and death exists, and thus we make the distinction, not "we make the distinction, thus things are living or dead."
The vagueness problem is still acute for any philosophy that insists on substance being founded on contradictory opposition as opposed to contrariety (e.g. something is either man or not-man, not somewhere in between). However, I think the problem seems more acute than it really is if one insists on presupposing a bundle theory whereby to "be man" must involve checking the box on some set of (observable) properties that are distinct from "humanity" and essentially "add up to it."
I think you have misunderstood me; I haven't said that the ways we talk about things are arbitrary. Of course they are constrained, if the talk be sensible, by the things talked about. My point was only that, in relation to the notion of identity we might say that a corpse is a dead person or that a corpse is no longer a person, and that would depend on whether we define "person" as exclusively a living entity or not.
Yes, we [I]could[/I] arbitrary use the sound "dog." You could even use it to refer to something different in each instance. You could render "fixed by divine providence or some such nonsense," as "dog dog dog dog dog dog dog." Yet no one would understand each other if they were always making different sounds to refer to different things in each instance, so we "cannot" have a human language that works like that.
:up:
That makes sense. And it is very easy to equivocate in this way with some terms, "person" being a prime example.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
I was actually thinking of that as I wrote that. Clear evidence that English is a barbarian tongue. :rofl:
Bang on!
And yet we do understand one another, at least enough to have invented social media.
So what is your answer? How is it that "dog" refers only to the canine, and not the police officer? In virtue of what does this occur? What fixes the referent?
The answer given previously was the Humpty Dumpty account, but that cannot explain mutual agreement any more than does "dog dog dog dog dog dog dog."
Hmmm... Well, maybe. I'd say that English grammar is particularly strange in some ways. But it's a great language. I don't like reading Shakespeare in Spanish, for example. It's not the same thing as reading his works in English.
Yes, I agree that you could render a proposition like that. However, Aristotle's point was about judgement. So if we judge Truman's hair to be "Truman-blonde," and "Truman-blonde" is just whatever Truman's hair is, then we cannot be wrong in our judgement. Supposing we don't call it "hair" but "Truman-hair,' we also cannot be wrong that it is "Truman-hair" that is Truman-blonde.
So, Aristotle would also say that we cannot simultaneously judge that Truman's hair is both Truman-blond and not-Truman-blond, at the same time, in the same way, without qualification. Indeed, if Truman-blond is just whatever Truman-hair is, and nothing else, no evidence can ever suggest to us that Truman-hair is anything other than Truman-blond.
As respects the negation, we can speak such things in the discourse of spoken words, but not in the discourse of the soul (i.e., it does not make sense to say that someone earnestly believes and doesn't believe the same exact thing at the same exact time).
Yes, and yes!
I don't think perception necessitates language -- I do think language effects perception such that a linguistic separation is suspect, at least, though.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think of becoming enlanguaged as a process which changes how one thinks and perceives the world. That we can refer at all is linguistic. The conventions come out of [s]his[/s]this ability to mean.
I don't believe this would necessitate a belief in Sapir-Worf. That's not the sort of thing I have in mind here. Rather it seems to me that we can't treat the phenomena of language as we do other things in the world. That we can refer to language already requires us to be able to refer or mean things.
I'm reminded of Wittgenstein's section 1 of the PI:
I'd say we'd already have to use language to be able to ask "What is the meaning of the word?"
Now I agree that language isn't everything, and that creatures not-enlanguaged can have a kind of understanding. I'm not confident that that understanding is based in reference, though, since that seems to me a linguistic act. At least a human-linguistic act, insofar that we understand it ourselves.
I think it changes the way we perceive, though. So while a not-enlanguaged being can perceive once enlanguaged the perception changes. Here I think more about how if I learn new words, if I read a book, this changes how I see the world -- what was once "car" is now "motor-burning-gas-turning..." etc. and all the various distinctions I know about the car that I did not know before, and a mechanic will have an even wider perception of that same vehicle because of their ability to make distinctions.
I think it's wrapped up in how we live, however, so certainly it's not language all the way down in the small-l sense -- but maybe the big-L sense, which is the thing that is the mystery in the first place. (or, in a slogan: "Names are weird")
I think I can follow along with this, though I'd add a temporal dimension -- so that every word ever said is always different from moment to moment.
In some ways that's true, though the process' rate of change is such that we need to reference texts hundreds of years old to see the change. In some ways names can become predicates and vice-versa, and we can be as specific as every moment.
What I'd say is that since here we are talking about it, and understanding it together, why would this undermine communication at all?
When a question is particular enough I need the pluperfect tense to specify time-dates-names-tools, etc.
When it's a family event the pluperfect can be a remembrance of good times.
Though I remember the same time with my family at each event -- that memory we re-remember last Christmas won't be the same next Christmas when we revisit it again.
And yet, despite all these rapid changes, we are able to communicate. Language remains useful. That's the mystery**. (not in principle, in my opinion, but just right now)
Would it surprise you that I disagree with Aristotle on this? :D
Sartre's Being and Nothingness is pretty much about this ability to earnestly believe contradictory things -- to lie to oneself you have to both believe the lie as truth and that the lie is a lie.
I think the human soul is contradictory, generally, and its only the rationalists who manage (or lucked out to be born with?*) souls which let go of contradiction. (Well, and the saints, etc.)
*EDIT: Or, really, cursed to be born with when I think about saints, martyrs, and the ends of some of our favorite philosophers.
**EDIT2: In lots of ways this mirrors the arguments for the problem of consciousness. That does not mean they are related, but I do think it's harder to deny that we mean things than it is to deny we are conscious.
"The difference between taking a sentence holophrastically as a seamless whole or by taking a sentence analytically term by term proved crucial in value matters. It is crucial also to translation. Taken analytically, the indeterminancy of translation is trivial and indisputable. It was factually illustrated in ontological relativity by the Japanese classifiers and more abstractly above by the proxy functions. It is the unsurprising reflection that the divergent interpretation of the words in the sentence can so offset one another to sustain an identical translation of the sentence as a whole it is what I call inscrutability of reference."
Basically meaning isn't tied to words, but the interplay of terms within the whole structure of the sentence. Hence there can be multiple valid translations all with the same final meaning (because the way the words reference each on in the structure of their translations equate to the same)...hence reference is inscrutable... because it's always changing.
Thanks for posting this -- I was beginning to wonder if I'm entirely wrong and I believe that this is basically what I've been arguing for.
This came up earlier, but you seemed to be arguing something rather different. For example:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
I have some radical conclusions that I'm exploring, but I don't believe Quine is there as much as serves as an entryway into what I'm thinking.
Else, I've not attended to the differences and have been (and continue to be) engaging in dialogue and self-expression, while attempting to express why "the inscrutability of reference" can't be dismissed, from a philosophical perspective at least.
It might be more that I have not properly communicated the claim properly. Pace Plato, Aristotle allows that weakness of will can occur, so he wouldn't necessarily be at odds with Sartre here. The point is more about predication. So, for instance, if you go outside and see a car, and it's blue, you cannot also judge that it is not-blue, in the same way, without qualification (so a car that is blue and another color isn't a counter example here).
So, once on this forum someone brought up the old duck/rabbit optical illusion as a counter example. But that wouldn't be one. That would be an example where we qualify our judgement.
By who? Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass is a joke, like Molière's Imaginary Invalid. "Language is used for communicating intentions" does not entail "words mean whatever a speaker wants them to mean."
That someone can point to a picture and say "that's a picture of the greatest general in history," and not realize that their Napoleon portrait has been replaced with a picture of David Bowie is not any more mysterious than the fact that, while smoke is a sign of fire, there can be smoke without fire, or that people can misspeak, or that listeners can mishear. The same is true for sarcasm. Sarcasm works because the information used in understanding language isn't limited to words, but includes tone, surrounding context, memory, etc.
Language involves stipulated/conventional signs that signify things, giving us a relation akin to smoke ? fire or dark clouds ? rain. Signs aren't univocal. A person's words are signs of things, by convention, context, etc., but they also signs of the speaker's intentions. Likewise, when someone conveys knowledge, their words are a sign of truth in their intellect. When they speak truthfully (as in, not lying) their words are a sign of their beliefs. Lying involves words that are not signs of a person's beliefs, and yet they still can be signs of their intentions (e.g. when someone lies about being wealthy, being able to bench press 300lbs, etc., they reveal that they think these are desirable).
There is a lot of information exchanged in speech, and a lot of parallel signification. One cannot reduce this to the words or sentences themselves. I would argue that it is better to start with simpler questions, e.g., "how does smoke signify fire?" or "how does an angry badger succeed at signifying its internal state to other mammals," before jumping into human language. Nor can one reduce all such communications straightforwardly to use, since use follows from intentions, and a key use of language is to communicate intentions (one might consider here all the, IMO quite good, arguments that chimps and other primates do not learn to use human language as language, whereas a simple view of use would end up concluding that not only chimps, but dogs can use human language).
Not all statements are first-person declaratives. We speak in the passive voice, we try to deny assertoric force, etc. either supposing an abstract speaker or abstracting away the speaker. And this might be useful in some cases, but it is perhaps where confusion arises as philosophers try to explain how conventional signs signify outside the contexts in which they are actually used.
This is indeed an important point. However, it is not unique to Quine, nor does it entail Quine's particular approach to reference. See the rest of the post above. From an information theoretic or semiotic perspective, there is a ton of information relevant to communication that is related to context (linguistic and otherwise), tone, body language, the identity of the speaker, the identity of the intended recipient, past conversation/stipulation, etc., in addition to convention. There is also a lot of signification going on in conversations.
However, signs clearly [I]do[/I] signify according to convention, else language (and any communications convention) would not be useful for communications. Such signification, when analyzed from the perspective of convention in the abstract, can be [I]more or less[/I] ambiguous or determinant. For instance, it is possible to specify signification such that any competent speaker of a language will know exactly what object you're referring to in some cases.
That signification is not uniquely specified by a simple correspondence analysis does not entail that it is wholly undetermined. The communication of intentions clearly does occur (to deny this is to deny meaningful communications). An analysis of conventional signs need not exclude any reference to context, tone, etc. either. It is, at least sometimes, by convention that sentences will have different meanings in different contexts. Tone is involved in signaling sarcasm, questions, commands, etc. in ways specified by convention, but has nothing to do with the exact words used.
The mistake is to do something like "look for the meanings of words in isolation." But then it also seems mistaken to assert that "fish" does not signify fish by convention. Like so:
No one would admit to such a thing openly, of course.
Well, almost no one.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Language is more about constructing, rather than exchanging, information. This choice of words may mark a pretty fundamental difference between those who agree with Quine and those who do not.
My thought is that we don't know how signs signify, or even if "signs" is the correct signification for understanding reference, or language.
"Sign", obviously, being a linguistic expression -- the sign that says "CAUTION" literally "stands for" the meaning "Be careful".
But the linguistic sign is not the literal sign.
I mostly think that meaning is something we don't know why it works, at this point. (hence, philosophy)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree that the rabbit/duck illusion is not a counter-example. I think the belief would have to be of the form of a contradiction, rather than a contrary -- "P ^ ~P"
I believe that the literal notion that we lie to ourselves -- so I am telling me a lie -- that we end up believing something contradictory, at least if its something we actually do psychologically.
I don't think we're rational beings by nature, though, so this doesn't seem hard for me to accept. Beliefs are formed not on the basis of rationality as much as... whatever they are formed by.
And language follows suit because it's useful even if it's contradictory.
I recognize how odd my conclusions are, and so sometimes wonder if I'm just barmy .... :D
Yup.
It isn't. Language is about getting things done as a group. Reference is incidental to that purpose.
Added: that, in a nutshell, is the difference between the Tractatus and the Investigations.
My thinking here is that after we get things done in a group we continue to be able to speak.
And also -- yeah, the treatment of language as a noun is why I quoted Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations section 1.
It even references a great medieval thinker, so I was thinking it might be more appreciated by our interlocutors.
Or we can go down the Quine to Davidson path... all roads lead to Rome, as they say.
Does it? It seems neutral to me. Consider a stop sign, traffic lights, etc. Many of the most obvious conventional signs are about processes or behavior. Musical notation is about things (notes) but is also an instruction on a process, etc.
Perhaps. Depending on how one frames information I am not sure if these are mutually exclusive. What is helpful about the information theoretic perspective, aside from its tremendous success in communications technology, cognitive science, and linguistics, is that it highlights the very many sources of information in verbal or written communications that are not limited to words themselves and that information content depends on assumptions that are prior to the receipt of a message.
Yes, but unfortunately not in a particularly helpful way. St. Augustine has a very nuanced view of language and his own formulation of meaning as use, but he mostly shows up in PI to present a very naive picture of language.
Fair.
Would you at least go so far as to say that PI 1 highlights a common error, or do you think it's erroneous entirely?
The "meaning coming with sign" thing is what I have in mind here. Like Saussure. Say/write/do sign indicates meaning in head and communication happens when two heads mean the same thing.
That's the sort of thing I'm thinking is an illusion.
I'd agree that Saussure's semiotics have not had a particularly helpful influence (in part because they led to Derrida :rofl: ). I was thinking more of the tripartite semiotics that tends to get employed vis-a-vis the natural science, e.g. John Deely, C.S. Peirce, and back on to the Latins. Having the interpretant in the process seems essential to me. Things don't signify to "nothing in particular." A dark cloud signifies rain to a goat or a bear as well as a man, but it doesn't signify anything to a rock.
Edit: I should note that in the broader application, signification is happening everywhere, not just in language. For instance, in an analysis of the sensory system we might speak of light interacting with photoreceptors in the eye as the object, the pattern of action potentials traveling down the optic nerve as the sign vehicle, and then some particular resultant activity in the occipital lobe as the interpretant, or we might apply it to DNA and ribosomes, etc.
Versus
Oooff!! :D
It took me a long time, but I think I'm pretty much on team-Derrida.
****
I can accept the first picture over the latter. "The signified", at least in my understanding of Saussure, was always ambiguous in the sense that sometimes it referred to the idea people had and sometimes it referred to the physical object.
I don't think Derrida exploits that confusion, though. He calls into question "the sign" even here:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The words we use to describe these causal patterns aren't the linguistic sign. That's the mystery -- how does a bundle of quarks become able to speak and communicate and do language?
Seems kinda suss, right? :D
I supose it would.
One problem with the pictures is that there is only one signification/meaning/interpretant/dicible. Perhaps they are addressing a different issue to Davidson and Quine?
Okay, right. We are on the same page then. :up:
Ding ding. :100:
Glad at least one line of flight in the thread was resolved :D
It's the basic framework from which the same issues could be considered. One key thing to note here is that the interpretant is not always an "interpreter," a whole person. It can be a thought. So sometimes we equivocate, and sometimes we do so intentionally. A joke might hang on signifying two different objects by the same sign vehicle, perhaps using a homonym. The most common way to approach this would be suppose two different signification relations, with two different objects, two different interpretants, utilizing the same sign vehicle.
So, from the perspective of convention, "cats are fish" has a quite determinant meaning (barring some unusual context), and "cat" is a sign vehicle signifying cats and "fish" a sign vehicle signifying fish. But supposing the Joker has told his vile henchmen that "cats are fish" is his codeword for taking hostages at Bruce Wayne's party (a poorly chosen venue), obviously there is a parallel act of signification achieved. Nor are the henchmen incapable of simultaneously understanding both meanings, hence more than one interpretant.
Side note: now if "cats" or "fish" might refer to areas directly adjacent to cats or fish, such that "cat" and "fish" are always present when cats and fish are, then "cats are fish" is at least sometimes true (it is true whenever a cat and a fish are immediately adjacent, since the spaces adjacent to each are the same spaces). But by convention, cats are not fish, and they cannot become so based on their spacial proximity to one another.
Yes, I think the tripartite structure helps to clear this up. You can, of course, signify an idea, or even a complex collection of them (e.g. "the theory of special relativity") as the "object." You can likewise signify incorporeal "objects," such as an economic recession, or hypothetical ones. However, what is signified is different from the thought that interprets it, the interpretant.
Thinking and "talking to oneself" involves signs, but clearly what is signified and the interpretant are not thereby collapsed. So that's a common difficulty, an interpretant need not be conscious, nor need they be a whole person (an interpreter).
Quoting Banno
Hmm... I'm more familiar with linguistics than philosophy, but I'd say both syntax and semantics are patterns and how we use them. I think the actual real life interpretation can't complete until we add the third level of analysis: pragmatics. That's the huge contribution of mid-twentieth-century language philosophy: notably Austin, Searle and Grice.
I'll get to my take on Quine through all this; I've never read him, only about him, so there's that.
In linguistics, syntax and semantics are different ways words relate to other words. In syntax, we look at how words work together to make a sentence, regardless of what they say. Meanwhile, semantics is about what the words used typically mean ("lexical semantics"). Which words can you replace in this or this slot. Note that it's not about sign bodies. Ambiguity can be both semantic or syntactic. The textbook example is:
We saw her duck.
Syntax:
a) We [personal pronoun, first person plural] saw [verb, past tense, indictative] her [possessive pronoun] duck [noun].
b) We [personal pronoun, first person plural] saw [verb, past tense, indictative] her [personal pronoun, accusative case] duck [verb, bare infinitive].
c) We [personal pronoun, first person plural] saw [verb, present tense, indicative] her [possessive pronoun] duck [noun].
Lexical Semantics:
Two different words with the same sign body:
"to see" vs. "to saw". And "duck (n.)" vs. "to duck (v.)"
Syntax can change the meaining of a sentence, without touching lexical semantics:
1. The cat sat on the mat.
2. The cats sat on the mat.
The suffix -s indicates plural. Thus "cat" evokes one cat, and "cats" evokes more than one cat. That's a difference in meaning, but it's not expressed over different word choice ("lexical semantics"), but over syntax (plural suffix "-s"). You'll probably see how this is one pivot point for different theories to conceptualise the study of meaning. (Not all theories go this route.)
So I have one major problem with understanding this quote of yours:
Quoting Banno
It's a problem with the lexical semantics of the word "noun": I do not know what you're referring to. I suspect that it has something to do with "nouns are words for things" and reification, but I can't construct a coherent meaning.
In lexical semantics we're basically creating a dictionary, a list of words we must know so we can use them. That is they're all, at this stage, decontextualised. Reference is not a reference to things, on this level, but a reference to abstractions: content words refer, function words (such as "the") don't. [Again, this is conroversial.]
For example, if I modify 1. above to read:
3. The dog sat on the mat.
then I haven't changed the syntax at all, but I've certainly introduced a new word. Since I just mention the sentence as an example, and I don't actually say anything about animals and mats, I'm not referring to real life set of affairs. I am, though, referring to certain common cultural abstractions: "cat", "dog".
If I were referring to a real life situation but couldn't quite remember who sat on the mat, I could say:
4. The mammal sat on the mat.
or
5. The furry animal sat on the mat.
Or any other combination.
And if I quite clearly remembered the cat, I could say:
6. The feline sat on the mat.
4./6. are purely semantic changes (though "feline" is morphologically different from "cat", being derived from an adjective, but we're not talking morphology...), and 5. also includes semantic changes.
When you want to know how people refer to things using words, you're not using that model, though it might be part of your methodology if you so choose. You also need to know what people do with words.
For example, you'd know that "What circumstances do you have in mind?" is not among the expected reactions to "Could you open that window over there?" even though the inventory-level interpretation would allow for the response. Language occurs in context.
So, on to the "gavagai" example:
The anthropologist would have two problems here:
1. the Lexical level: Am I making the same abstractions as the native?
and
2. the situational level: When I'm pointing towards the rabbit, am I paying attention to the same thing that the native is paying attention to when he sees me pointing?
And I think what Quine is trying to illustrate with that example is that we can't ever answer either of the two questions with certainty, because any clarification attempt runs into the same problem.
Not sure where Quine goes from there, but I think that real-life interactions lead to satisfaction among the participants, and when everyone's satisfied (actually, when everyone assumes of each other that they're satisfied while being themselves satisfied) people make working assumptions about what the words mean which they maintain until they have reason to modify it. And it's this sort of process, repeated over and over again by lots of people that lets people approach, assymptotically, some sort of ideal abstraction: people are constantly bringing into being and modifying what they assume is already there - as a concerted effort. So, yes, I'm a constructivist on that matter.
As for the triangles: I like the first one @Count Timothy von Icarus posted best, as the dotted line an the bottom makes sure to emphasise that relation between signifyer and signified is an imputed one. And I also like that the "thought" sits on top. I think the source is Ogden/Richards The meaning of meaning, but I'd have to check to make sure [it doesn't say]. I like that, because I tend to think of thought as a process: not one thought, one clear-cut piece of mental content, but a stream of consiousness, classified and edited by analysis, so we can think about that.
Quoting Dawnstorm
I quite agree.
The diagram shows a relation between symbol and referent, linked by thought. Quine, Austin, Searle Grice and others showed this to be a somewhat keyhole version of what is going on. There is more to language than just reference, so a diagram that explains only reference will explain only a small part of language.
Language is not the only case of signification in the world. Nor is it entirely sui generis. For example, most mammals come fairly well equipped to make threat displays and signal aggression to one another. This is a communication of intentions accomplished without social conventions. Likewise, smoke signifies fire without any intentions involved.
So the basic signification relation shouldn't include reference to social conventions. It would be inadequate if it did (or we would have to suppose that human language does not signify in the way that all other animal communications does, which doesn't seem plausible for many reasons). Nor is conventional or stipulated signification sufficient for language. If it was, then we would have to allow that dogs and chimps are language users, since they can clearly learn to respond to stipulated signs and conventions.
The advantage of the semiotic and information theoretic frameworks is that they can explain disparate forms of signification, both natural and conventional.
An excellent post. I would ask though:
are cats and dogs best thought of as "cultural abstractions?" Or are they just abstractions of a certain type of organism.
I ask because some of the things we can reference certainly seem to be "nothing but" cultural creations. Something like "communism," "neoplatonism," or "French" might be a good example here. And with these sorts of things, it is common to run into "no true Scotsman" type disagreements, e.g. "how should true liberalism be defined?" But you don't tend to get the same sort of disagreements re lions, oaks, or carbon. You know: "no true carbon binds to just one oxygen ion!"
I think the distinction is important in considering how language might have emerged (and also acquisition in children). It seems that understanding abstractions of real things should comes irst (it certainly does in children, and quite early) and then the tools used/developed for this task are eventually employed to comprehend and communicate about other, more complex sorts of purely conventional/mental entities.
So, for instance, from a very early age, kids have no problem identifying different species of animal from pictures. But identifying labels like "Islamic," "French" or "impressionist" will be difficult to impossible, even in cases where any competent adult will have absolutely no problem making the identification. Likewise, identifying firefighters, or doctors, will probably come pretty easily, because, while a cultural role, it can be represented with clear, concrete characteristics.
Yep.
Notice Quine is concerned with language?
What work does the "just" do in this sentence? They're cultural abstractions of a certain type of organism. If you're living in a society it's culture (or subculture) will influence how you abstract. (It will also influence how those organisms will act, which is another, more indirect, source of influence on how you abstract.) They're not abstractions of instituional facts, but the abstractions themselves are institutional facts. (That's something that's often left unacknowledged in current discourse on gender, for example - where we're talking about organisms.)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I would also argue the possibility though that "concrete characteristics" are contingent on how the world happens to be, but if you look at how the world could be otherwise, then it doesn't seem so clear. And it seems to me that the way we extract structure from the world depends on a kind of reference frame to which that structure is optimal, but may not be so in another (similar to how different descriptions become inappropriate when we move to different scales of observation). I think its very difficult to do anything with the carbon example without kind of going into silly speculative metaphysics and notions of unconceived alternatives, which may be meaninglessly intangible. But with regard to things like lions and oaks, when you just e pand the temporal horizons of the world we consider, the concrete characterization may no longer exists as you have to consider the gradual changes populations due to evolution over a long period. And here, the biological ambiguities of defining things like species may become more relevant. I think animals is a very good example since it clearly shows our ability to recognize different animals in an easy fashion is contingent on the fact that a lot of the diversity, variety, continuity between different animals is not observable to us, even though it clearly did exist if we consider out entire evolutionary history. Someone more radical might then want to argue that this kind of example should be seen as a general thing that applies to all things that exist when you consider the great diversity, variety, continuity in possible worlds. Things always could have been otherwise so that the boundaries or transition structures we tend to use to identify, distinguish or label things no longer seem to be as optimal or informative.
Well, "cultural" would tend to imply a diffuse, collective project, right? But surely a man stranded on a desert island can come to recognize new species of flora and fauna there, and abstract their properties from concrete particulars, or even come to name them, all in isolation.
To some degree, yes. Yet disparate cultures only vary so much, which makes sense because the neurological and environmental underpinnings of our power of abstraction do not vary much by cultural context. For example, there are potentially infinite "objects" to identify in the world, but even cultures quite isolated from one another synch up pretty well in which they choose to identify, particularly when it comes to concrete entities (e.g. animal and plant species).
The direction of influence will be bi-directional, yes, but not all facts are institutional facts. So, if cats are worshipped, and not driven off when they try to get into buildings, then the cats will learn to act differently. Domestication is an extreme example. Yet this seems like it will tend to be a fairly distal influence. The way a cockroach or a tulip behaves is only going to be influenced by the surrounding human culture so much, and at any rate, the cockroach and the tulip existed prior to any human culture and their preexisting properties have shaped how any culture comes to interact with them in the first place.
Domestication, for instance, has much to do with the pre-existing properties of domesticated animals' ancestors, and those animals' behaviors upon encountering humanity. So, bidirectional yes, but you can have bidirectional influence where one direction is primary. A dog will never learn to talk or drive a car, no matter how we treat him. Is this fact merely institutional? People don't mate pigs to goats, regardless of culture, because it doesn't work; whereas they will mate horses to donkeys to get mules. But the fact that a pig and a goat cannot produce offspring is not an institutional fact, it is not a product of collective recognition. Rather, there is collective recognition of this fact because it is true that one cannot breed pigs to goats.
For another example, take hypotheses for why gold became a valuable medium of exchange in disparate cultures. It is scarce enough to be such a medium, while its properties are also very hard to counterfeit, giving it the cryptological features necessary for any good medium of exchange. Whereas pine needles, at least in much of the world, would make a terrible medium of exchange because they are everywhere, whereas something too rare also will not do, since there won't be enough around to trade in. Institutional facts are parasitic on facts that do not obtain due to collective recognition.
Indeed, my cat surely could have been eaten by dog, and maybe by now it would compose parts of a dog, dog feces, my lawn, etc. But if it did, it would certainly no longer be a cat.
:up: You raise an excellent point. There is a tremendous multiplicity and diversity, and I'd add that a lot of it is quite observable. Every dog is different, and every personeach snowflake as well as each fingerprint. My copy of the Metaphysics has different dog ears than my professors, different coffee stains, different places where the ink didn't quite come off the press correctly. And the same person or dog is also different from moment to moment, year to year, sometimes dramatically so.
However, words generally try to focus on the actual, not the potential. The act of being a dog is what stays the same in all dogs. We could well imagine some sort of dog, bee, elephant fusion (horrific) and ask: "when does it stop being a dog and become a monster?" Yet no such animal actually exists, it is ens rationis, a being of thought. Language evolves through our interactions with actual beings, so we should only expect that our words will tend to indicate the beings we actually find around us. Language evolution isn't arbitrary after all.
As G.K. Chesterton puts it:
But if the point is that nominalism and the expulsion of quiddities (of any consideration of phenomenology or the phenomenological presence and whatness of things) seem to lead towards an incoherent (and ultimately arbitrary) account of language and the world, I won't object. As Joshua Hochschild puts it:
I don't think you have quite got my example.
If you consider every single mammalian individual that ever existed, you will not be able to identify discrete boundaries between the concept of dog and not-dog. You may not even be able to agree on the criteria. Again, I am not considering potential, possible, counterfactual examples. I am considering all individuals that have ever existed in earth. I can't refer to most of these specific individuals, but I know for a fact that they existed. Sure, they don't exist now... and that is like a frame of reference on which the statistical structure of what is being talked about is different o if we change the reference frame, change the scale, change the inclusion of individuals, genetic structures that have actually existed.
All organisms on earth share a common ancestor; it is surely the case that if you trace the changes of all of your ancestors, generation by generation, the changes in genetics will be tiny every time in the context of all of the genetic variation that has ever existed. If, from your earliest ancestor to you now, your lineage has gone through all of the different stereotypical biological kinds - we at least know apes, mammal, reptile, fis, I believe - there is absolutely going to be no dicrete boundaries along the way. Its more-or-less a continuous path of infinitesimal change.
Your ability to identify dogs as a kind of concretization depends on the context of what kind of biological structures just happen to exist right now and happen to be rasily distinguishable. But importantly, the bits inbetween have existed.
Sure. New words crop up all the time. Someone (or a group of people) would have named the computer mouse "mouse", for example. I maybe wouldn't call it a "project", though. It's less directed, more just a process of people living together - an iterative process to be precise. When you use a word you both reaffirm it and change it ever so slightly.
I'll pick out a line from your response to Apustimelogist, because it struck me as interesting:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I have a hard time formulating my thoughts. On the one hand, it's clear that we can only name what's there (or what we thought of, see science fiction/fantasy for example, but that doesn't impact your point I think). But on the other hand, a word needs to be general enough to accommodate the unforseen, or we'd have far more neologisms than we actually have. That is: a certain openness must be baked into language for it to be useful.
Take a look at Apustimelogist's latest post about evolution. That's basically the old paradox: if you remove a grain of sand from a heap and keep going, when does the heap stop being a heap? In other words, when do you need a new word? Chesterton, in your quote, doesn't seem to like considering grains of sand in a heap, if that makes sense.
Well, the underlined part is pretty important there. It depends on what you mean by "discrete boundaries." If this amounts to a demand for "metaphysical superglue" between word (or concept) and thing, discussed pages earlier, then this demand cannot be met. Yet it doesn't need to be met to imply that a dog is a distinct type of thing, that dogs are not men, or cats, or trees, or that the distinction between dogs and men is not just a cultural contrivance, or even ambiguous.
I am also not sure about the factual claim you're making. Numerous different species that are so similar we could not distinguish them exist for every existent species? But that is not what the fossil record suggests for man, for just one example. There have not been "very many species indistinguishable from man" existing throughout the Earth's history. There have been, on contemporary accounts, just the one. And this certainly wouldn't be true for domestic animals either. Cows and chickens didn't exist prior to man, "back in the mists of history," or if they did, there is no evidence of them remains.
Unless you are merely speaking of the transition from wolf to dog, in which case what of it? Yes, domestication is not a binary. Yet the aurochs is extinct, the cow is not. More to the point, a stegosaurus is not a dog, an oak is not a dog, a rock is not a dog. These are quite discrete distinctions between dog and not-dog. They just aren't based on the "metaphysical superglue" discussed earlier.
Yes, and this is indeed a problem for what I like to call "Excel spreadsheet metaphysics." On this view, what makes something what it is has to be defined in terms of something akin to a string an Xlookup function could match. Maybe this is some "bundle of properties," or perhaps it is some sequence of genes. And so, for biological species to exist at all, there must be some sort of code (properties, genes, etc.) that uniquely species it, such that we fill in "dog" in one cell and, through a series of lookups, bring back an array with all the dogs (past, present, and future) identified. Each dog is no doubt different, so the abstraction then has to function as some sort of search term.
As I think we both agree, such a "lookup" variable cannot exist. But if the argument is something like:
P1: For any discrete class/category of things to exist (e.g. dogs), a unique identifying "code" must exist to uniquely specify it.
P2: Such a code cannot exist.
C: Therefore, there are no different types (dog, oak, etc.) of things.
Then the absurd conclusion should lead us to question our premises. You could make the same sort of argument re life, both vis-á-vis "when life began on Earth" and "when any individual organism dies." Where is the exact, discrete moment where any individual dog dies? If we cannot find it, shall we conclude that either no dogs ever die, or that none have ever lived? Or perhaps that "life" and "being a dog" are mere cultural or mental constructs, ens rationis and not ens reale?
My take is that these problems are the result of inappropriate analysis. Change cannot occur "in no time at all." Change occurs over some interval, as does all experience of change (or of anything). And we can indeed distinguish intervals over which any individual dog clearly and unambiguously changes from living to dead. Likewise, there are intervals over which some biological species clearly and unambiguously emerge from others.
Chesterton is a gifted rhetorician, but he is a far better critic than positive theorist. I think his point is this:
If the sorties paradox, problem of the many, problems of ordinary objects, etc. lead us to think that there are neither grains of sand nor heaps, but just one heapa heap composed of nothing in particularthen our reasoning has gone off the rails. Indeed, arguably it has become self-refuting. If there are no such things as cows or pines, then it also seems there can be no such things as words or meaning, but then claims along the lines of: "there are no such things as cows," are completely vacuous. So, one has to settle somewhere above the horizon of an all-encompassing eliminitivism. Otherwise, we are rewinding the tape back to Parmenides or Heraclitus.
But, per my post above, I think we can do a bit better than that. I think, for instance, that one can resolve the difficulties of feeling one needs to specify "the exact moment the first man existed" in order to distinguish men as a species, by realizing that change does not occur in "exact moments" but across a temporal series. And the same is true of physical being. Beings are always changing, so one does not differentiate them through a universal that acts a sort of static database filter, a metaphysical SQL query or something of that nature.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Quoting Banno
I find myself surprised -- in many ways.
I think the main thing I'd like to be able to distinguish is between when a person is talking about an object we are perceiving and when a person is talking about all the things we perceive when perceiving an object** -- I suspect that we do not need the notion of "the sign" to do this, but if we are speaking in terms of signs then I want to distinguish between the two references because I'm contending that language is not an object in the world like the other objects.
Which I think -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- @Dawnstorm and @Banno agree with me on only because I've been agreeing with what they've been saying.
So I'm left wondering where I'm losing the plot :sweat:
**EDIT: The confusing wording is because I'm trying to avoid "thought-objects" in the expression.
Others, perhaps you and I and maybe @Dawnstorm, think that there may be multiple ways to divvy up stuff, each of them capable of being coherent if not complete.
Does that help?
So I was thinking we'd all want to adopt the tripartite diagram -- not as a rule, just as a distinction in trying to understand the beast that is reference.
Though going back over a bit ...
Quoting Dawnstorm
That I agree with. It's imputed. There needs to be a speaker and an interpreter for meaning to be/happen/whatever.
I like this description of multiplicity. That's what it feels like when I think about every fact, rather than every relevant fact.
That's a very interesting question. Are the two different? Clearly, on a common sense view, our vision of a tree is not identical with it, but in some philosophies there is [I]just[/I] sense data and we are just naming similar bundles of sense data as suits our needs.
Or even on a realist view: "are things anything other than the sum total of their (fundamental) observable properties?" i.e. "bundle theories." Most bundle theorists argue "yes," there is a substratum or haecceity to things to which properties "attach." If this seems odd (I think it does), it's because a great deal of difficult problems result if one denies any substratum, and makes things nothing but bundles of universals or tropes.
I feel like this is an area where metaphysics and philosophy of perception has to come prior to philosophy of language. How can you solve "how do we refer to things?" if we are not sure if there are things to refer to, or if we can perceive them?
Tripartite semiotics were developed on the assumption that the senses are the means by which we know things. On a representationalist view, the senses are instead what we know, i.e. "mental representations." I don't think tripartite semiotics has to imply a rejection of representationalism, but they often go together. The sign relation is said to be irreducibly triadic; the sign is what joins the object and the interpretant (in a "nuptial union" of sorts). The senses (imperfectly to be sure) communicate the actuality of things. The type of causation specific to signs is their capacity to make us think one thing instead of any other, so there is a sort of "in-forming" caused by the transfer of information in perception.
Hence, on this view, we would _normally_ be referring to _the things_ we perceive. I think it's fair to say this is normally how linguistic convention is popularly understood. "Dog" is taken to mean dog, not "our perceptions associated with 'dog.'" However, it is certainly possible to refer to our perceptions instead of the object of perception. It just requires extra specification because it isn't the way people normally communicate. So, the clause: "my perception of dogs," would work fine for signifying this difference (for most interpretants, viz. competent English speakers).
I am aware of philosophies that would deny this though. They would say "dog" really just means "our perceptions associated with dog," and that popular understandings to the contrary are just confusion. Likewise, there are those who would argue that any dog is just a heap of properties (or perceptions), and we could further subdivide this into those who think the properties are universals (realists) and those who think they are tropes (trope nominalists), or those who think they are just "useful fictions," etc. etc.
I would put it this way: "not all ways are equally correct." For example, I claim that dogs and trout exist as discrete things, organic wholes, in the world. Their existence is not a merely linguistic fact; it is not dependent on linguistic conventions. By contrast, non-continuous trout halves and fox halves combined into "fouts" can certainly be named as "objects," but they do not have the same ontological status as proper wholes, such as trout and foxes. Do you disagree with that?
One can allow that there might be many ways to be right without having to agree that all ways must be equally correct. If all ways to "divvy up the world" are equally correct, then "all ways of divvying up language," something in the world, must also be equally correct. But then there would be no point in doing philosophy of language, for one could never be wrong.
Likewise, I don't think propositions about the physical world can be both true and false, at least not without equivocation or qualification. However, I don't think rejecting contradictions is a sort of fundamentalism. For one thing, people can certainly be fundamentalists in the opposite direction.
As you already know (but perhaps other forum members don't), metaphysical permissivists do indeed disagree with that. They claim that fouts exist, just as dogs and trouts do. And objectively so, they exist independently of language and thought. If there were no human beings, fouts would still exist. The only difference between them and ordinary objects is that they're extraordinary objects. The permissivist answer to the Debunking Argument is simply that there's nothing particularly impressive about our ways of dividing up the world into objects: we simply pick up on the ordinary ones while we usually ignore the extraordinary ones. Shorter: there is an object answering to every conceivable way of dividing the world into objects, no matter how capricious or bizarre such divisions are. There is an object composed of the trout's left eye and the dog's right paw. There is an object composed of the trout's stomach and the dog's nose. There is an object composed of the trout's brain and the dog's tongue. And so forth. It sounds insane, and it is (to my mind, at least). So why do they uphold such crazy views? Because if there's good arguments against metaphysical conservatism (and permissivists believe that there are), then the only serious rival to permissivism is metaphysical eliminativism. And, by permissivist lights, if we need to embrace the idea that extraordinary objects exist, in order to secure the existence of ordinary objects (contra the eliminativists), then it's an idea well worth embracing. Shorter: it's better to have both trouts and fouts, instead of not having either.
(slightly edited)
I prefer "names are weird"
:D
Isn't it as weird as accepting that the vinyl scratches record meaning?
We can juxtapose two views, that either the dog is an whole regardless of language, or it is a whole in virtue of language. Then we can pretend that the one must be true, at the expense of the other.
But perhaps the juxtaposition is fraught with problems. We might treat the trout as a whole while catching it, becasue that's what works. Then we filet it, treating it as a compound, then serve it along with spuds, greens and a béchamel as a part of a meal. What counts as whole or part is a result of what we are doing.
And language is a part of the stuff we do.
Meaning is not found, it's made. Or better, drop meaning and reference altogether and talk instead about use.
It's more explosive than I had imagined, then.
Relating this back to Quine, it reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_beard
***
I'm tempted to say this is along the lines of Wittgenstein's PI 1 that I linked earlier -- that just because you have something to say that it must indicate or refer to something seems wrong to me.
Yeah, but I want to talk about meaning and reference :D
Here's an example of a permissivist argument against metaphysical conservatism:
Quoting Fairchild & Hawthorne
Well, there's your problem, right there... :wink:
I can stop anytime I want!
My thinking was that the medium-independence of meaning is weird, from a metaphysical perspective, whether we accept that meaning is real or not-real. It's unexpected from the perspective of an ontology of objects, at least if we believe there is a difference between speaking and writing.
I'd much prefer to save discussions on reality for after discussions on how we think about reality. There are currently a handful of traditions in philosophy which allow us to do that.
One thing I take seriously is that if we can, in fact, have thoughts sans-metaphysics then it must be due to language. Or something along those lines. We can communicate about whether or not Daniel Dennett was conscious and understand that perfectly, but in scenarios where we start to question the meaning of meaning -- and all the baggage that comes with self-reference -- I at least don't know how to tell y'all (not including me) that what I'm saying means nothing other than to demonstrate a contradiction**.
And, at least usually, we don't think of objects like that.
**EDIT: And to turn the confusion up to 11 -- even then, sometimes contradictions are meaningful. "Meaning is a mystery" makes lots of sense to me.
;)
Eliminativism: none of them (neither ordinary nor extraordinary). Or at least almost none of them.
Conservatism: some of them (only the ordinary ones). Or at least most of the ordinary ones and almost none of the extraordinary ones.
Permissivism: all of them (both ordinary and extraordinary). Or at least almost all of them.
"Some" in a logical sense, at least. "Ordinary" seems sus
Must we pretend? Do dogs do not exist outside human linguistic frameworks?
We can appeal to use, but this won't get us very far from the initial question. What is a key use of language? To refer to and describe things and processes!
Plus, if we find some language more useful than other sorts, presumably this is not for "no reason at all," an uncaused brute fact, or else unanalyzable. There are reasons that different ways of "divvying up the world" are useful. There are causes that shape how language evolved and continues to evolve. One wouldn't explain the evolution of mammalian hearts by simply by pointing out that hearts must be useful and then leaving it at that, why should language be any different?
What is the most obvious reason that it might be useful to think of sheep as a thing, as an organic whole? Because they are such! If you're a farmer and you cut your sheep in half to have dinner, the rest of the sheep isn't going to fare too well. A sheep isn't like a rock where you break it in half and have two rocks, a sheep broken in half is a corpse.
Presumably, it would also be useful to understand how language works. If language works, at least in part, by referring to entities whose existence is not dependent on language, then the two views you offered up aren't equal. One is wrong. And as with anything else in science, starting from premises that are false is unlikely to lead to useful theories.
It's actually the hardest position to maintain. Eliminativists and permissivists seem to think that their positions are far more consistent, which is why they mostly duke it out between themselves.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, from a mereological point of view, conservatives tend to be particularists. Eliminativists are usually nihilists about composition (or exceptionalists, like van Inwagen and Merricks), while permissivists are usually universalists about composition.
Quoting Moliere
Then you have two options: eliminativism or permissivism.
What about "not-ordinary, and conservative"?
Some objects are real. Check. Some objects are not-real. Check.
Or "Names are weird" -- I think they really are weird and not understood.
If you're asking if there could be a fourth position, "only extraordinary objects, none of the ordinary ones", then I would say two things:
1) Yes, it's logically possible to defend such a view.
2) No one actually defends such a view.
Why not? Because you would be saying that there are fouts, but no dogs or trouts. There are incars, but no cars. There are snowdiscalls, but no snowballs.
It would be the most insane position of all, even crazier than permissivism, and that's saying a lot.
Heh, cool. Then I don't think I'm going down that path, and have more to learn.
I mean, you could, if you wanted to. It's not like philosophers haven't been saying crazy things for the past two or three millennia. What is Parmenides saying, when he says that nothing changes, if not something outrageous and crazy? What is Heraclitus saying, when he says that no one can step twice in the same river, if not something outrageous and crazy?
I gotta know that it's true first. So I keep coming back to these various odd beliefs.
I know I explore odd things, but I hope to maintain the notion that there's a reason -- even if only philosophical -- I pursue them.
It's not that interesting when you figure out the game is "say the weirdest thing you possibly can get away with"
Welcome to professional philosophy. The next step is to use first-order logic to give more credibility to whatever nonsense you feel like saying, such as "the existential quantifier has ontological import."
Is it still a sheep, though? Are there such things as scattered objects? If there are, then this is the slippery slope towards affirming that there are indeed such things as fouts. Unless the inference from split sheep to fouts can be blocked in some way.
I'm tempted to agree with Korman when he says that some artifacts, at least, can exist as scattered objects. What is a bikini if not a scattered object, composed of two disconnected parts?
I think it is ambiguous if you're willing to consider all animals that have ever existed.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Fossil record doesn't say much. Whatever fossils we have of anything are a miniscule fraction of individuals that have existed.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Again, you just have to think about yourself or chickens tracing their lineage back generation-by-generation - perhaps to the same common ancestor of yourself and that chicken, maybe some kind of fish - and ask if there are sudden jumps between one kind and another. There cannot be, it would be absurd. The changes are gradual and slow.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure, there are objective distinctions between animals, but the kind of criteria that we use to concretely identify dogs as a species start to become fuzzy if you consider all individuals that ever existence and the graded differences in genetic make-up. That allows scope for disagreement or ambiguity about where exactly mammals start and stop being dogs. Even if you use criteria like reproducibility there will be gradation since plausibly there may be two dogs from different times that cannot breed with each other but plausibly there may be an intermediate dig that can breed with both. You then end up with this kind of moving window of different dog species, possibly many many many which are all legitimate and overlapping.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Not necessarily, but classifying species is not a trivial endeavour just because the average person can idenitify a dog on the street and everyone else agrees with them. The mass of all individuals who have ever existed whos genetics have drifted and changed slowly and gradually over time is kind of independent of the ways we choose to classify them, which we do in a way that that our current context allows. Clearly dog genes are some kind of objective marker that separates them from other species, but this objective marker would become less informative were we to consider all the biological animals that ever existed. Thats not to say that it isnt an objective marker shared by those individuals - but it becomes less salient compared to a world where the overwhelming majority of organisms lineages die out or change leaving pockets that are easy for us to discriminate. I think reality is generally more complicated than the everyday way we make classifications.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Who knows, there maybe some possible scenario where the structure of the world renders these distinctions useful to us.
I think ultimately we have to consider that the world is intractibly more complicated than we actually immediately perceive and it is part of the brains imperative to simplify the structure of what we see so it is most informative. But clearly, what exactly is informative depends on the context. Seemingly arbitrary combinations like "fouts" are not interesting and don't connect to the world in interesting, regular ways. Like how if we consider all organisms that ever existed, the dogs on earth now as a species would seem less interesting and stand out less. Certain kinds of sticks on trees bent at specific angles may be completely arbotrary and mean nothing, but imagine if it was the sign that a certain animal had been in the area doing something. It gains information and you end up giving this arbitrary bent stick a name because it helps you find and eat this animal. Classification is holistic. Statistical structures only mean something when they stand out from or relate to a background, and exactly how that statistical structuring is being achieved. Things then can look different in various contexts and different scales even though the information is coming from the same objective world. There is nothing wrong with a plurality in the use of concepts in this respect I think and I think in actuality hardly any of the things or concepts we talk about are strictly independent and mutually exclusive. I think the concepts we tend to use are probably not arbitrary in relation to the world because they reflect the most efficient, informative way of making or pointing out distinctions in our perceptions. But then I think what is most efficient and informative may still depend on the context somewhat, and obviously we only ever get a limited purview of the world. If the context had been different, different structures in the world may become more salient - and thats not to say some things magically disappear or come into existence. We just change the way we attend to what is in perception.
What does your forum name mean, by the way? I googled "Apustimelogy" but there were no search results for that term.
Pretending isn't such a bad thing. This counts as a 'dog' - let's pretend. It gets us by.
Use is pretty ubiquitous - not just a "key use"; we don't just refer with word, we question, demand, command, name, promise.
Sheep are an "organic whole" only until they reach the abattoir. What counts as a whole depends on what you are doing.
Your essentialism is showing.
Anti-essentialism can only get one up to a certain point. "Essence" might be an ugly word for an analytic ear, yet Kripke argued that the essence of a gold atom is the property of having an atomic number of 79, which is the number of protons in the nucleus of a gold atom. Kinda hard to argue with that, even if one isn't an essentialist.
If your philosophy of language forces you to ho and hum and deflect away from questions like "did cockroaches not exist until humans decided to 'count' them as such?" then yes, that seems like a rather major defect. For one thing, when it comes to the discovery of new species or phenomena causation seems to move in demonstrably the opposite direction. First the phenomena is observed, then it is named. Presumably, it must exist before it can be observed as well.
Essentialism isn't a problem, it's what prevents having to affirm things like: "North America didn't have a coastline until it was mapped," or: "insects didn't exist until they were named," or else having to deflect away from what should be fairly easy questions, or having to settle for "pretending" in questions of physical and biological science.
Sure. When it comes to a consideration of the origins and evolution of language, and of animal communications more generally, it will not do to suppose/pretend that it is "equally true" that animals both did and didn't exist until people decided what would count as an animal.
Either animals of different sorts existed prior to any human language community or they didn't, or the proposition that they did is somehow (bizarrely) not truth apt. That, or things can be both true and not true, depending on what is useful. Take your pick.
I personally think "what is useful determines what is true," is a fairly disastrous way to do science and philosophy.
Yep.
Tim seems to be advocating some form of species essentialism, in which species are static groups with inherent essences. See the conversation with @Apustimelogist.
Kripke advocates a modal essentialism, such that certain properties of object and kinds are essential. The properties he has in mind are those that the object or kind has in every possible world. So Gold has the property of having 79 protons in its nucleus, because that's what the word "gold" refers to. See the thread Kripke: Identity and Necessity. There's a fair bit involved.
Yeah, it sure would be., Who says that?
So you do think insects existed prior to anyone deciding what counts as an insect? You seemed to be just objecting to that.
If insects existed prior to humans deciding what counts as an insect, in virtue of what were they insects?
Sure. I've argued similar points at length, elsewhere. There is gold in those hills, even if no one knows about it.
"What counts as an insect" is much the same question as "How should we use the word insect". There's books about that, if you are interested.
I'm not necessarily trying to promote some kind of metaphysical permissivism (first time I have heard this phrase today actually) or any particular metaphysics about objects, I just think its plausible that people could have found bizarre combinations of things in the world commensensical as things to pick out if the statistical structure of the world afforded them some particular relevance. It just doesn't, so why pick them out. But then that means what we find intuitive as objects probably depends on the context. I mean some flint tools you see just look like literal rocks to my eyes but clearly the subtlety of what makes them not just rocks is not about them as objects in themselves.
The name? Just nonsense.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Its a thought provoking example but it hasn't compelled me to essentialism yet, at least not in a way that doesn't seem trivial.
Imagine a butterfly on a flower. Draw an imaginary globe such that part of the butterfly (and the flower and whatever else) is inside the globe and part outside. Watch the butterfly fly away. Now figure out some maths that allows you to run a exact simulation of the universe, except that you have to follow one rule: what's inside the circle will stay together. You can break time and space if you have to. If this is possible you have a universe that's materially the same as the one we live in, except it's also entirely incomprehensible. That does sound pretty permissivist, doesn't it? The fun thing is this actually helps me make sense of the world (intuitively; I can't explain how).
***
As for those semantic triangles:
My thoughts tend towards the idea that what we have in our minds is "knowledge about the world", which is a web of concepts, a world view. Seeing, for example, tree activates the tree node. Hearing the word "tree" (or reading it) also activates the tree node. But hearing the word "tree" also activates the word-node, while seeing a tree only activates the tree node. And when we add new information, there are two possibilities: we construct word-first concepts or we construct experience-first concepts. All concepts are ultimately experience-first concepts ("ultimately" here simply meaning that at one time there were no words). If you're born into a language community, though, when faced with a "new" experience, you'll likely at first try to express it with the words at hand. Maybe there's a so far ill-understood word that applies? If not, we can always ask a what's-that-called question. If presented with a "new" word, we can ask a what-is-a-[word] question, to which the answer will either consist of other words or experiences (a picture, a demonstration etc.).
I've always thought of the Sausseurian model as zeroing in on the thought-signbody (signified-signifier) angle and ignoring the object, not because it's not important, but because it's not part of the discipline of linguistics. Under the structuralist model, we look at the nodes. Take away one node, and we have to distribute the content among the neighbouring ones. It's a valid if limited way of looking at language.
Now, if you want to bring back the object into discussion under the Sausseurian model, the only real opportunity is to treat the object as an alternate sign (which it isn't if you expand linguistics to include pragmatics - Austin, Grice et. al). And that's how you basically get Derrida. There's no ultimate signifier, it's all differance, and we cling to our binary oppisitions so we don't get carried away by the current. (I think Derrida still has something to say, but I'm losing that sense with people like Lacan...).
Quines inscrutable reference as illustrated by gavagai is fairly intuitive to me. Makes sense. People don't need to know what they're talking about; they need to get things done. So:
Quoting Banno
Yes, that's pretty much me, too.
So insects existed prior to humans and what makes them insects is whatever answers the question "how should we use the word insect?" Yet, there is also nothing essential to insects? Is there anything else we can point to outside of contemporary language use, in virtue of which insects are actually insects and not just called so?
Because if what makes something an insect is exhausted by "how the word insect is used," it seems that this explanation will either be vacuously circular, or unable to explain how insects were insects before language existed.
Melville famously spends a lot of Moby Dick arguing that whales are fish. And "fish" was used to describe whales for a long time. But clearly, while whales were whales before man, whales were not both fish and not-fish during this period. To word use seems inadequate to explain being.
Sticking to the example, which isn't a great one, insects have six legs. Now will we count that as a bit of ontology, in that having six legs is a special feature of insects, or will we count it as a bit of language use, as in it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect?
How are these questions distinct? Extensionally, they are identical.
And there is no such thing as a fish.
Ironically, there are actually some fish that are more closely related to whales than they are to any other fish, genetically speaking.
This seems like an argument from ignorance. I know of no reputable biologist who claims that there have actually been very many hominid-like families throughout the history of Earth, just "lost to time." There are just the fairly recent hominids. And the same are true for many families.
What's the idea here. "A man like species [I]could[/I] have walked the Earth with the dinosaurs, or any time since, but we just don't know about it." But not only this, but it's "very likely." I don't think so.
The idea that very many families of hominid-like animals have evolved many times is highly unlikely for a number of reasons.
I'm curious about it, since it sounds like a real word. That's why I looked it up, it sounds like a real word that I've never read or heard. Is it a combination of other words? Or is it something that just occurred to you?
Well, that's morphology that you're talking about there, as in, the phenotype. It's not the most reliable way of classifying living beings. It used to be, in the past, before genetics and molecular biology.
[Quote] Sticking to the example, which isn't a great one, insects have six legs. Now will we count that as a bit of ontology, in that having six legs is a special feature of insects, or will we count it as a bit of language use, as in it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect? [/I]
It's not correct for insects at all times. Consider the caterpillar. Which is not to say that I don't think that we can unambiguously delineate insects, we clearly can (although there might be ambiguities in classification in edge cases). However, the basic rules for word application known to all competent speakers of a language often do not accomplish this delineation particularly well. That's why science has specialized terminology.
Which makes sense. Entomologists do not study insects and refine their intentions towards them by studying how the word "insect" is used in normal language. Physicists do not primarily study physics by observing how that fields terms are used by the average English language speaker. To say "you can identify what an insect is by looking at everyday language," is getting things backwards. Often, a term is created in the sciences and only later enters everyday usage, and often everyday usage diverges from proper scientific usage.
[Quote]
How are these questions distinct?[/quote]
One is about what makes a certain type of being what it is. The other is about word use. They only collapse if one supposes a sort of metaphysical super glue that binds term and thing, or supposes that the objects of our knowledge are words and not natural phenomena.
[Quote]
Extensionally, they are identical.[/quote]
No they aren't. Didn't you just agree that signification must be contextual, holophrastic, etc.?
If someone says "get this insect away from me," while pointing at their ex-spouse, they are clearly referring to their spouse. In the sentence, "I can't wait to watch the Insects play their set tonight," the word probably refers to a band. If you're an employee at a garden store and your boss tells you to "sweep all the insects out of the storage shed," they do not mean for you to carefully sort through the animals in there and spare the arachnids and centipedes.
I'd maintain that words are primarily a means of knowing, not what we know. So we don't find out what an insect is primarily by looking at word usage. Yet even if we took that approach, we would do well to focus on the usage of biologists whilst doing biology. But how is the usage of scientific terms developed? Not primarily by investigating how a term is already used, but by investigating the phenomena the word is being used to signify.
But it's the thing signified by the scientific term that existed before man existed, not "whatever the term can apply to." I hope you can see the problem here. Insects can't have existed before man and be defined by however "insect" is used in normal language, because the term is used in various ways in different contexts in normal language. This would mean that some things would be both insect and not-insect. Nor can they be defined by "however science currently defines 'insect,'" since this would imply that whenever a scientific term is refined the being of past entities is also thereby changed.
Aside from being convoluted, and implying that propositions about the past flip their truth values, it also gets the direction of causality completely backwards. Scientific terms are developed as a means of knowing and mastering natural phenomena. The natural phenomena exist first. The observation of them determines word use. They do not become what they are in virtue of being spoken of in a certain way.
If you have to affirm nonsense like "fish don't exist," it's a knock against your philosophy. Fish would have existed in Melville's day as both a commonly recognized type of animal and a scientific designation. So were there fish then, but then when the technical way of speaking changed fish vanished from existence, not even just in the present and future, but even from the past? This is akin to claims that "fire changed" when phlogiston theory was abandoned.
This is what happens when you collapse the distinction between sign and referent, and make words the primary object of knowledge (philosophy of language as essentially first philosophy).
Take yourself and look at the genetic differences between you and your parents. Then their parents, then their parents, then their parents. Miniscule genetic change. Then see what happens when you just trace this lineage back in time. You will get very gradual genetic change and very gradual phenotype change between yourself going back to some other kind of ape in the past to some mammal before that to some reptile and eventually some fish and something before that. All life on earth shares a common ancestor. So what I am saying is a fact. And therefore it is a fact that there is a gradual and continuous change between all of the individuals that ever existed, not just in your lineage but any lineage. The boundaries between your reptiluan ancestors and your mammalian ancestors and your primate ancestors will be continuous, ambiguous, graded, fuzzy.
Nothing to do with the fossil record and fossil record only sees a miniscule of these individuals in various separate branches and times.
So how is it defined?
Yet morphology can be a useful way to classify species. Biological species are very complex, and they are always changing at the individual, community, and species level, so we should not be surprised if there are many useful, correct ways to classify them. But what they are, their existence, does not seem like it should depend on our classifications. Otherwise, they would undergo a fundamental change whenever we reclassified them (although note that, if all predication is per accidens, then what something is does change when we speak of it differently; mapping the coastline changes what it is, reclassifying animals might cause fish to vanish from history, etc.)
:up: Ok, that sounds way more plausible. Although it does not seem that evolution is always very gradual (e.g. proposed cases of observed speciation). There is evidence for rapid evolution due to bottlenecks, fertile hybrid offspring reproducing in the wild, etc., and the whole EES controversy. It's an open question how larger shifts in anatomy (e.g. hands to wings, hands to fins, fins to hands, etc.) evolve, because the intermediary stages do not seem like they should be particularly adaptive, which would suggest, if not genetic "jumps" (obviously still perhaps over many generations), then at least phenotypical ones. One way this has been proposed to work is through "inactive" DNA functioning as a sort of "search for solutions" without the penalties of altering phenotype. Such changes can then be "activated" by a mutation (or epigenetically), allowing for a shift that is actually immediately adaptive.
But either way, I don't see how this is particularly problematic for species unless we are committed to some sort of rigid definition of species, viz. the "metaphysical superglue" approach or "Excel spreadsheet metaphysics." Individual organisms are always changing, and species populations are in constant flux. So, biological species are not the type of thing for which a "spreadsheet metaphysics" is appropriate (neither is life/living). Yet neither is the argument: "Either species are defined rigidly in this way, or they don't exist," a good one. It's a false dichotomy.
Consider an analogy from motion. A ball cannot roll from one room to another without at some point being partway in-between each room. We can divide this motion an infinite number of times (at least potentially), and so we will never find the "exact moment" when the ball crosses the threshold, when it starts to be in the doorway, or when it passes halfway into the other room. Yet there is also absolutely no difficulty in predicating "in the room" or "out of the room" of the ball most of the time. Motion and change occur over intervals. That we don't have "the one moment" where the ball crosses between rooms does not entail that it is not in either room, or that there can be no rooms, just as gradual evolution need not entail that there are no biological species.
Processes can be more or less stable. We can think of an entire ancestral line as a process. For some species, such as the cockroach, the process has been in a fairly stable equilibrium for an extremely long time, perhaps 100-300 million years.
Note too that if one does not exclude a phenomenological element from the consideration of what things are, a cat can simply never become a dog, a hippo, a dinosaur, etc. Even if evolution took a genetic lineage upon such a path of convergent evolution, the phenomenological experience of seeing, feeling, hearing, etc. a cat will remain distinct for all species that are not indistinguishably similar to cats. Yet if two species are indistinguishable, even upon close inspection with instruments, then in virtue of what could they even be said to be "two species?"
Through the study of insects. Just as "fish" was refined by a study of aquatic lifeforms. As we come to know things better, we might change our scientific classifications. This doesn't change what the things are. Our ancestors obviously experienced fish. The sign vehicle is not identical with the thing signified.
Sure. Morphological classifications tend to be more useful in botany, for example, or in microbiology. They're not that useful in zoology nowadays. But I agree that insects, fish and whales existed prior to the emergence of human beings. In that sense, it doesn't matter if we call a whale a fish. Its existence, and what it is, are independent of our conceptual schemes, language, thoughts, etc. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Good stuff. :up:
The absurdity of nominalism can hardly be overestimated. It's high time we stop letting people pass off absurd theories as normal.
I'm suggesting that this is as much a question of word use as it is of entomology.
Good question. I've no idea. I can see arguments for, as well as against.
Quoting Banno
Could be.
A metaphorical use is different to a literal use. Calling your ex an insect works becasue of the literal use. We could have a discussion of the best way to define 'literal', but that'd be yet another step away from Quine.
The extension of a predicate is the list of individuals to whom it applies. In your example, the set of animals having six legs is an insect, and it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect. That is, the set of animals that have six legs and the set of animals to which the word "insect" applies are the vey same. they are extensionally equivalent. (Part fo the problem here is the one mentioned much earlier, where it remains unclear what you think an essence is, especially in extensional terms).
We do not find out what an insect is by looking only at the use of the word, but finding out what an insect is, is the same as finding out how to use the word "insect" coherently. The example of "fish" is informative here. Whales were once called fish, but as we refined the use of that word it became clear that there were considerable differences between, say, teleosts and Cetacea; too great to justify the use of the common name. The word "fish" dropped out of use for Cetacea. More recently it has been suggested that there is nothing that is common to all and only fish; that there is no essence of "fishness". That's what prompted Stephen Jay Gould to joke that there was no such thing as a fish. If you insist that there must be an essence of fish in order to justify our use of the word "fish" you will be defying the science. Of course there are fish, which is to say nothing more than that it is useful to have that word at hand to talk about some of the animals that live in water and cook up nicely. It does nto imply, as you seem to think, that there must be an essence of fishness for us to be able to use the word at all.
I am not suggesting that word use determines what something is. Nor is it true that what something is determines word use. I said previously that such a juxtaposition is fraught. I am pointing to the interplay between word use and our interactions with the world. We divide the world up not on the basis of some prelinguistic ontology, but on the basis of what works for us.
This is not to "collapse the distinction between sign and referent" but as Davidson phrased it "In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false."
And we might well chose to go either way. There is no fact of the matter, only how useful it is for us to talk one way or the other. I'd be inclined to suggest that a ten-legged fruit fly would still be a fruit fly, and so choose to count it as an insect. That'd be to remove having six legs as a necessary attribute of insects. Some other fact might replace it, perhaps a genetic marker or a different morphological characteristic. But whatever is chosen, at some stage that too might come into question.
What's salient is that over time we might well change what we regard as the essence of insect, but that each time we do this we are changing something about the use of the word, not about the beasts. That is, essence is about word use, rather than ontology. We are not discovering that characteristic that determines what is an insect and what is not, but deciding which characteristic determines our use of the word "insect".
I think this is in line with Kripke's discussion of essences.
Compare the discussion of simples around Philosophical Investigations, §48.
There need not be some property understood to apply to and only to Gavagai in order for the word to be understood and used effectively. More broadly, there need not be some fixed, agreed and understood referent in order for the word to be used in the community being examined, and the anthropologist need not have such a fixed referent at hand in order to set out the use of "gavagai" in that community.
I mean, any of the timescales regarding these kinds of debates are still going to be very long in general / will be long enough.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think anyones saying animals don't exist, but the intractable complexity, variety makes various different classifcatory schemes or ways of talking about animals or referring to groups or population plausible. All there really is are individuals that reproduce other individuals. They are all different but there are also similarities, but this is all graded.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, sure but I don't think that changes what I say. Those cockroaches still got there from the original ancestor and that still took a long gradual change. At the same time, its not entirely clear what it means when biologists say that cockroaches have stayed stable for millions of years. It might be in a different sense to some other kind of population genetics. Similar to how someone might get confused if they take one of those genetic tests that tell you you're 60% German and then compare it to how biologiata also say you share 60% of your DNA with a banana. Clearly what they mean by these percentages is different, referring to different things.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes but distinguishability can become apparent over longer and longer times. Like how pople visibly age rather slowly.
I think at the end of the day we all agree animals exist and we try to classify them non-arbitrarily in ways that are most informative regarding the world and other facts we interact with.
Well said :up:
This is to make language into first philosophy. Here is why I would disagree with such a move. It is easier to see with the example something like an ant rather than some hypothetical creature born of sci-fi technology, so let's take the ant.
1. Being is causally prior to being known. An ant can neither be known nor observed unless it exists (granted a hypothetical entity might be known before it is generated through its principles).
2. What we choose to call things is not essential to them. That the token "insect" is applied to ant is accidental; it does not make an ant what it is.
3. Things' existence is causally related to the development and evolution of language. Why does every language refer to different species? Because they are an obvious and important facet of the world. A good explanation accounts for and goes in the direction of causation, it explains why something is the case, not just that it is the case.
Consider seasons. If the Earth didn't experience seasons, names for seasons wouldn't be ubiquitous. Perhaps, if our languages evolved on a planet without discernible seasons we might eventually identify a planet that had them and develop a technical term, but it wouldn't be the sort of thing every language needs.
Yes, this is what I refered to earlier as "Excel spreadsheet metaphysics." A term "retrieves" a set or table; something like a SQL query. I don't think it will do. For one, that definition would exclude caterpillars, larva, etc. Likewise, if we tear the leg off an ant, does it cease to be an insect? Clearly not. The problem here is that animals are constantly changing all the time, at both the individual and species level, and such a rigid definition seems doomed to leave out important distinctions.
It seems like the demand for "metaphysical super glue" mentioned before. "This term glues on to this specific set."
Definitions solely in terms of genetics are likewise insufficient. A flout would always be an equal pair of fox and trout, so if would have an identifiable enough genome associated with it, but a flout isn't a real organism. Test tube meat exists, and it is, genetically, "cow," but a slab of meat is not a cow. I think has brought up some of the other relevant difficulties in such an approach.
"Essences," as employed for most of history, are not lookup variables in this way. Organisms are quintessentially [I]beings[/I] instead of mere heaps (existing according to a nature, not solely as a bundle of external causes) because they are self-organizing, self-governing, and most of all, goal-directed. The parts of an organism are proper parts of a proper whole because they are unified in terms of a goal that is intrinsic to the organism. This is the idea of "function" and teleonomy in biology. The parts of a flout or rock are not organized in this way.
And perhaps, , this is also a way of finding a via media between permissivism and eliminativism. The most obvious discrete wholes we experience are ourselves and other people. We have our own thoughts and sensations, not other peoples. There is a clear plurality of experiencers, but also a unity to our own individual consciousness (although obviously we can be psychologically more or less unified).
So this is one obvious difference. A human being is a locus of sensation, purposes, thought, etc. A houta discontinuous half-human, half-trout compositeis not. A human (or fox, or trout) has parts with specific functions that are oriented towards the whole in a goal-directed manner. The flout does not. The flout does not act to sustain itself, reproduce itself, aid its community, etc. in a unified manner.
If organisms are beings (plural) then it is also quite obvious that there are different types of such beings, and that these types can be more or less unified and self-determining in their pursuit of goals, and more or less self-aware as respects their goals (which in turn allows them to become more unified in pursuing a goal by mobilizing all possible resources vis-á-vis their ends). A cockroach, for instance, is only so self-determining. It pursues ends, but it cannot learn in the manner of a dog, or reflect on its ends like a man.
Essences are called in first and foremost to explain change, and how it is that things can be more or less self-determining and a source of changes/cause.
From the biological example, you can work backwards towards things that are more or less unified/divisible. A volume of gas or water is very easily divided. A water molecule less so. But they're all subject to flux. Process philosophy gets that right. Even subatomic particles appear to have a begining and end, and we might conceive of them as being primarily stabilities in process, not things.
However, you cannot have a good ontology that has just one thing, a universal process, and that's why the delineation of proper beings is so important, it's a via media between the extreme multiplicity of atomism (viz. everything is just clouds of particles) and an all encompassing bigism (viz. "there is just one thing). Grounding beings is also what allows for per se predication. Whereas if all predication is accidental, then things [I]do[/I] fundamentally change when they are called something else, thought of differently, etc., because they are just bundles of relations. This is why I think a lot of the more extreme nominalist, co-constitutionalists, etc. are in fact correct, given we accept their premises, when they say things like "the Moon didn't exist until someone was there to speak of it," or that sort of thing.
The permissive response in the case of fouts is the following parity argument:
1) There is no ontologically significant difference between bikinis and fouts.
2) If so, then: if bikinis exist, then fouts exist.
3) Bikinis exist.
4) So, fouts exist.
Eliminativists can resist this argument by denying the third premise: bikinis do not exist. Conservatives would reject the first premise: there is indeed an ontologically significant difference between bikinis and fouts. But that difference can't have anything to do with the question about scattered objects, because bikinis are scattered objects just as much as fouts are. Instead, the difference must be that bikinis are artifacts while fouts are presumably natural objects. In that sense, there were creative intentions involved in the making of the bikini, but no creative intentions were involved in the creation of fouts.
Of course, theistic permissivists (and yes, they exist) can simply reject the preceding claim by arguing that creative intentions were indeed involved in the creation of fouts: just as God creatively intended to bring foxes and trouts into existence, He also creatively intended to bring fouts into existence.
Well, no it isn't, but if it were, then that might be a good thing.
Each of the three points you list is fraught with complexity. As such, they will not be of much help in showing any problems with the contention at hand. And each takes us further from Quine. Remember Quine? This is a thread about Quine. But also, you have neglected to explain how these three count against the suggestion.
Something has to exist in order to be a cause. Even if this is accepted, how does it count against meaning as use? Names are pretty arbitrary. So what? Why does every language refer to different species? Becasue it is useful to us to do so. Again, so what.
Some first Australia tribes had names for a half dozen seasons. Are you saying that they were wrong? What are you saying?
All this by way of pointing out that it is very unclear how the first part of your post even addresses the ideas of the last few pages.
Isn't that a bit petty? Ok, adult insects have six legs. I've already pointed to this short coming, and how it doesn't seem to help those who think in terms of essence.
You still haven't made clear what an essence is. Are you now saying that they are "discreet wholes"?
How can an essence be called upon to explain change unless we are clear about what an essence is? Is it what stays the same when all the other properties of something change? Then in modal terms it is the name of the thing that changes... If you refuse to set out what you think an essence is, then there is nothing here to which others might respond.
I find it very difficult to make anything much of what you are trying to argue.
Sorry. If I'm to be candid, the post looks to be hand-waving.
If that's all you got from that long post then you're either debating in bad faith or it simply is beyond your ability to grasp or my ability to explain. If I wanted to be "hand-waving" I would simply say that species essences share a "family resemblance," and refused to elaborate.
I haven't. I pointed to what makes organisms and life distinct. If you have an objection to the idea that life is goal directed and that life forms can be more or less self-organizing, or self-determing, feel free to make it. Some people do deny these things, they claim they are entirely illusory. If you have an objection to the idea that lifeforms come in different types, feel free to make it.
You seem to be hung up on: "if the word 'essence' or 'nature' is employed anywhere it must mean something like rigid metaphysical superglue."
How is it petty? Yes, you did point out these problems vis-á-vis your misunderstanding of essences. Now you are ignoring them when you try to explain extension. You seem to think referring to extension this way is unproblematic, but that it would be problematic for whatever you suppose and "essence" must be." Why? If we can grab distinct sets with discrete members with our words, what's the problem with what you seem to think "essence" refers to in the first place?
Anyhow, you're still leaving out the ant missing a leg and letting in non-insects. The ant with a birth defect is out, the rare human born with extra limbs is in. Etc. This method of defining extension won't do, not least because word's referents change with context.
Your own attempt to explain extension is just the old "metaphysical superglue."
Right, it works something like:
P1: If things exist, they must be properly defined/delineated in exactly this sort of way (insert rigid, unworkable definition, often made in terms of "unique particle ensembles" or bundle metaphysics).
P2: This sort of definition/delineation doesn't work.
C: Therefore, we don't exist.
If the conclusion is absurd and clearly false, and an argument is valid, then the obvious conclusion is that at least one premise is wrong. P2 can be shown pretty convincingly. P1 seems immediately dubious. Yet so much philosophy doesn't work this way. Perhaps this is due to the incentives for novelty and provocation in order to drive citations. Instead, the absurd conclusion gets affirmed.
The whole "things are not but clouds of atoms" and "particles are fundamental" line has become far less popular in physics and philosophy of physics, yet I have not seen this shake down to philosophy yet. It would be more in line with popular trends in physics to say something like: "the universal fields are in flux cat-wise." But then, the recognition that things cannot be defined in terms of a supervenience relation, in terms of "particle ensembles," etc., would seem to suggest a move towards process metaphysics, not "no things exist." The problems the eliminitivst points out are noteworthy, but they reach the absurd conclusion because they are unwilling to challenge their presuppositions about what an adequate solution must look like.
The artifact/natural object distinction seems like it might act as a kind of red herring here. I do agree that it is a relevant distinction, but is it relevant in virtue of something more fundamental?
Consider that some diffuse, incorporeal things do seem to exist. Are hurricanes real? Weather systems? Economies? States? Economic recessions? I think information theory gives us some good tools for thinking about how something like a market, a meme, or a recession might exist.
My take is that the difficulty arises from an inability to question presuppositions about what an adequate response can even look like. This is aided by a tendency for people to only look for solutions that they have prexisting tools to formalize. But this is not how formalism often advances. Often, we develop the concepts first, then look for a way to formalize it.
Artifacts are (for the most part) not self-organizing. A bikini isn't. A bikini is a lot like a rock. It isn't even like a star or storm, which at least have "life cycles" and act to sustain themselves. A rock is fairly arbitrary. It isn't entirely arbitrary, but obviously we can blast a cliff with dynamite and form very many rocks, pretty much at random. This is not how storms work, or stars, or life.
Hence, I would point to the research on dissipative systems, complexity studies, systems biology, etc., since these explain how we get self-organizing, self-determining systems that are arranged into wholes with proper parts. In living things, parts are unified in goal-directed pursuits. What makes a cat a cat then is primarily its being alive, and its being a specific sort of living thing, not its being comprised of some unique particle ensemble or fitting the rigid criteria of some bundle of properties.
I'd like to think about this for a while. When you were talking about tigers a few pages back, you suggested there were two things that were important:
Divisibility/Unity and Self-Organistion.
Now you're saying that a bikini isn't self-organizing. I find this obvious at first glance, but it becomes less obvious when I look at divisibility: A bikini is already divided to begin with, in a physical sense, and is only a whole on a social background. Other clothes follow this pattern: shoes, socks, gloves... the bikini stands out by not being symmetric. So we sell pantys and bras seperately, but we sell bikinis as a unit?
I'm thinking it might be useful to think in terms of system-integration, here, too: while we may be self-organising in terms of being an organism, we're not self-organising in terms of society, so we're not necessarily self-organising in the subsystem that includes bikinis. But that we're self-organising as organisms is part of the way society self-organises. So a bikini is only a bikini within the context of a self-organising system (such as society) that also includes us.
How does this lead us back to Quine's inscrutability of reference? If society self-organises, and we're agentially involved with this, but also "self-centered", and if what a bikini is emerges from that self-organising process, then what we, each of us, think that a bikini is does not necessarily exhaust what a bikini is on the higher system level, so that no two people in concrete situations will ever topicalise the totality of it, and the difference in attention/meaning attribution is one of the mechanisms that give rise to inner-system dynamics.
In other words, reference needs to be inscrutable on the organism level, as organisms aren't made to operate on higher organisational levels.
I'm not going to defend any of this. This was mostly an exercise in brainstorming. I'm playing around, if you will. But that's not meant as a sign of disrespect; it's how I best think through abstract topics that don't really come intuitively to me. It's a way not to reject them outright.
While I'm just putting stuff out there:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
While I was googling terms in order to better understand this thread, I came across Karen Barad's agential realism. Sounds like a variation on this, maybe? Basically, if I understood this correctly, the relata in a relation don't pre-exist, but emerge from an "intra-action" of... not sure what.
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=7909771384315425233&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 (Elan Vital section)
I don't think a flout would "fail the FEP" if a rock does, but it would be interesting whether a kind of statistical approach could be used to analyse how or why we might have different intuitions for something having thingness. As noted earlier, the Bikini case is also a scattered object - why do we tend to endow it with more thingness than a flout (while at the same time lacking the kind of "autonomy" of a more complex or living thing)? And there maybe some kind of analysis for this regarding how systems or things nest within each other in a statistically meaningful way, like the human use of bikinis as opposed to sme other properties / lack of properties in a flout. Ofcourse this is all just complete speculation whether this kind of analysis can even coherently be done in this kind of framework at all. I also suspect you could probably get some unintuitive results, but I guess it just reflects how my attitudes and inclinations would want to approach this kind of issue ideally.
Rather than asking "what makes this a a thing", it makes more sense from my own outlook to ask why we have certain intuitions about thingness, since all my perceptions about things in the world come through my brain which is processing all the statistics of perception and leading me to say "that ia obviously a fish", even in different contexts where I refer to say a living animal or just a slab of meat in the fridge.
I guess this attitude is also analogous to the kind of research programme some have proposed regarding the meta-problem of consciousness - "what causes our intuitions and understandings of our own consciousness and experiences?". But I don't think you necessarily have to do this kind of research programme and go so far as the statement: "consciousness doesn't exist!". I would rather just clarify the limits on what I can and cannot coherently say, the caveats, about what I am identifying as consciousness rather than completely eliminating the intuitively useful uses of words or perhaps being too permissive and pushing some kind of panpsychism or idealism. I think thats preferable to trying to resolve the hars problem - I do not think it is resolvable and I think metaphysics always has to be from the purview of what we perceive, so notions independent of that don't mean much. I think the most generic, fundamental way we can talk about the universe is that it has structure - we just want tomake our organization if these structures coherent from our perspectives in a way that is informative to us, while acknowledging all the caveats.
I'd say that the antecedent is true ("things exist"), while the consequent (everything else after "things exist") is false. The burden of proof is then on the eliminativists to defend P1 by means of a secondary argument. They might do so in the following way:
P3) Ockham's razor favors eliminativism over conservatism and permissivism.
P4) If so, then: If things exist, they must be properly defined/delineated in exactly this sort of way (insert etc.)
P1) So, If things exist, they must be properly defined/delineated in exactly this sort of way (insert etc.)
The idea behind P3 is that eliminativism is more parsimonious than its metaphysical rivals (conservatism and permissivism). Its ontology has fewer elements. I think this is impossible to argue against. So, if we wish to resist this secondary argument, it seems that the only option is to deny P4. But then the burden of proof is on us to explain why we believe that eliminativism is indeed more parsimonious while saying at the same time that things (if they exist) should be defined in some other way. Leibniz's Law arguments might do the trick here. We would need to find, for each thing, a property that the thing in question has, that its collection of atoms arranged thing-wise don't, and/or vice-versa.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Could be.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
By permissivist lights, fouts (and troutkeys, trogs, and other strange mereological fusions) are not alive. In other words, a permissivist wouldn't say that the scattered object composed of a fox and a trout is a living creature. It's more like a mathematical set, "fout = {fox, trout}". This is similar to how the Axiom of Pairing works in Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory:
Quoting Wikipedia
With that in mind, the permissivist can make one simple, humble philosophical move: she can declare that metaphysics, while not being identical to set theory, is nonetheless similar, to the extent that any two things "a" and "b" always compose a third thing "c", just as any two sets "x" and "y" are always elements of a third set "z". Therefore, if foxes exist, and if trouts exist, then fouts exist as well.
She might go on to say that if a bikini is like a rock (as you say), and if a fout is like a bikini, then it follows (by modus ponens) that a fout is like a rock (assuming that the relation of "likeness" is transitive). Arguably, none of these three objects are self-organizing, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. Shorter: a fout is not like a cat, it's like a rock. And by permissivist lights, it exists just as much as rocks do.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Why are we now talking about life? Is your position now that essence is something only living things have?
Or this:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The piece you quote is your phrasing, not mine. I think a proper name is best treated as a rigid designator, since doing so allows us to deal coherently with modal contexts, int he way Kripke and others have shown.That is, a proper name can be used to refer to the same individual even if the attributes of that individual change. Your phrase "metaphysical superglue" is both pedjorative and misguided.
Or this:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That paragraph rambles. I've repeatedly asked for you to set out what it is your think an essence amounts to. Your answer is something like "what makes a thing what it is", which is pretty useless. If I am to understand what an essence is for you, then you will need to explain how this is supposed to be of any use. Extension is a pretty simple idea - two sets that contain the same items are the
same sets. If you see it as problematic, set out how it is problematic. If you want it to be compatible with essences, set out what an essence is so that we can see how it is compatible.
Or this: Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I quite specifically dealt with this here.
It would be nice if we could step back from this mere acrimony, and try to get a handle on what the difference is between our positions. So, yes, there is a problem with communication here. So let's try to set out what it is you are claiming.
Am I right in understanding that you think essences are necessary to fix the referent of a proper name?
Can you explain why or how?
And what does any of this have to do with whether things are self-organising or not?
Artifacts are an interesting case because they are organized around a purpose, it's just that their purpose is extrinsic to them. The goals and purposes attached to them is not essential to what they are, rather their form is a function of their intended use. They can be very complex (e.g. a self-driving car), and could conceivably be designed so as to try to maintain or replicate their own form in the ways organisms do (although this goes into the realm of sci-fiction), but they lack the intrinsic goal-directedness of organisms.
Now, something like a synthetic lifeform would be an interesting case here, since it would be the product of goals and intentions, but also have its own intrinsic goals and intentions. However, I don't think such a thing is actually all that novel. We have bred domesticated organisms in this manner for millennia and people are obviously (more or less) intentional about who they chose to have children with. Eugenics wasn't a wholly sui generis innovation either.
:up:
Somewhere, St. Thomas says "all the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly." Things are not only always changing, but they can always come to exist in new contexts. This is as true of things as words. Robert Sokolowski says something similar about never being able to "fully grasp" the intelligibility of things, but of course we can grasp them more or less well. So, the establishment of substances (things) in metaphysics isn't, in my view, about offering something like an exhaustive account (impossible) or some sort of unique lookup variable or set, but avoiding the slide into "everything is context all the way down," viz. "either there are no things, or else an infinite number of different things superimposed over any thing."
Societies and other human organizations are self-organizing to some degree. They can also become more intentional about how they develop themselves. Data collection, analytic departments, etc. are in some sense the "sense organs" of a state or corporation. Yet states and corporations presumably don't have experiences, goals, their own desires, etc. So they are an important sort of thing in the world, but their being is parasitic on people.
I don't think it's any surprise that we see a slide towards "there are no things," in the modern period. The successes of mathematical physics have led to attempts to do philosophy without taking any account of the phenomenological aspects of being, essentially pumping all the subjectivity out of an account of the world. This occludes the obvious existence of individuals in terms of ourselves.
I wasn't sure exactly how to take this. My position given earlier in the thread is that elimination arguments from underdetermination are not good arguments. Showing that something is underdetermined doesn't demonstrate that there is "no fact of the matter." Such arguments don't just affect reference, they work just as well vis-á-vis the validity of induction, all scientific knowledge, all historical knowledge, etc. Are we to also maintain that there are "no facts of the matter" because these are underdetermined? That seems like an absurd conclusion to me. For example, that there is not "no fact of the matter" about who won the last World Series simply because all of my (or anyone else's) observations might be consistent with there not having really been a World Series last year. The focus on reference obscures how widely virtually the same argument can apply.
I don't think even merely skeptical arguments from underdetermination account for much. They amount to "you cannot know whatever you can imagine yourself to be wrong about." But we can imagine that we are wrong about anything.
:up:
The "nesting" is indeed interesting. You have subatomic particles in atoms, atoms in molecules, molecules in organelles, organelles in cells, cells in organs, organs is bodies, bodies in communities, communities in ecosystems, etc. From an information theoretic perspective, you can see this in the way you can measure a message but also measure the substrate it is encoded in. Terrance Deacon has some interesting stuff on the relationship between physical entropy and Shannon entropy.
Indeed, and presumably there is a causal explanation that can be had for the phenomenological experiences of beings (plural), even if it is imperfect. Sometimes explanations of these sorts seem to err by only looking "inside the brain," though. However, no perceptions (or consciousness) occurs in a vacuum and all the evidence suggests the properties of the objects we perceive is constitutive of perception (e.g. leaves look green because of their composition, not just because of how our eyes work, but the interaction of the two, which is how Aristotle saw things).
So, to return to signs, C.S. Peirce and John of St. Thomas had it that the causality proper to signs was to make us have one thought rather than any other. "Fish," makes us think of fish, dark clouds and low pressure cause us to think of rain. This could probably be explained in other frameworks though. Obviously, it is dependent on learning, although I don't think it can be reduced to just correlation, since there is a phenomenological component.
An ontology with just one thing (or nothing!) would be more parsimonious. But this seems to me to be in the vein of the eliminitivist who wants to get rid of consciousness because it messes with their models. If you're ontology doesn't describe what there actually is, what good is it for it to be parsimonious?
So "insect" unproblematically refers to the set of all insects? But then "gavagai" can just refer to the set of all rabbits. And "the rake in this room" just defines a set with one element. Hardly inscrutable.
At least until we get to the solution of defining the set where: "insects are just whatever we want to call insects." "We" collectively of course, because if meaning has anything to do with a speaker's intentions we will have Humpty Dumptyism, yet if we multiply the problem it vanishes.
And also "insects existed before anyone was around to want to call anything by any name," even though what an insect is remains entirely dependent on how humans use the token "insect" at present.
I think this might also be problematic. If "what a thing is" depends on what we decide to count it as, then at one point in the past, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide were the same thing, being indistinguishable. Then we distinguished them, and they became two different things, but in a sort of retro causal action, it also became the case that they were always two distinct substances. Or perhaps the same words just refer to different sets depending on current usage?
If that's the case though, then even "what counts as a set" is always subject to revision. If mathematics changes, then what will have been a "set" will also change, since what things are is what we decide to count them as. And in this case, I don't see how it won't be the case that every proposition isn't subject to having its truth value change. After all, the "things are what we want to count them as" solution implies that when the use of "insect" changes, what insects are changes. But this entails that what is actually true of insects, sets, extension, reference, etc. is also subject to change. Not only will it be subject to change, but the change in truth values will reach backwards in time. For instance, if we decide to count giraffes as insects, they will have always been insects.
That seems problematic to me. It's Humpty Dumpty just scaled up. Now, you might say "but we wouldn't ever call giraffes insects." And I'd agree, because language admits of causal explanations, which you've tended to denigrate in the past. But, IMO, that's what is at the heart of all scientific explanations, a grasp of causes and principles.
Of course. This is why some eliminativists are monists. They claim that there exists a single, giant thing, and nothing else. They differ as to what that giant thing should be called. Some call it "The Universe", in the hopes of making eliminativism compatible with ordinary speech. Some call it "The blobject", a portmanteau of "blob" and "object". Or maybe it's just one gigantic quantum field, or "quantum froth". Or even a sort of colossal, cosmic "soup".
The question then is if this giant thing changes, as Heraclitus would have it, of if it doesn't change, as Parmenides suggests.
An even more extreme position would be the one favored by Gorgias: nothing exists, not even the single giant thing that eliminative monists postulate.
No, "gavagai" refers to the set of all gavagai. Quine was asking whether that set is the very same as the set of rabbits. That's the bit that is inscrutable.
You think Quine thought only foreign languages were inscrutable?
Have another look at https://medium.com/@ranjanrgia/thought-experiment-1-gavagai-70ae1bfc792a
Extensionality was introduced in this discussion because the theory that a name refers to whatever it's speaker intends it to refer to is not extensional.
Extensionality is not a theory of reference.
I am familiar with the argument. I wasn't sure if you were given that remark, since the idea seems to be that the word "rabbit" corresponds to a unique set of all (and only) rabbits.
What wouls you call it if you thought only one type of thing existed but there were innumerable number of them?
If I were to phrase it in more technical terms, I would say two things:
1 The thesis that there is only one type of thing can be called "qualitative monism".
2) The thesis that there is an innumerable number of such things can be called "quantitative pluralism".
So, both ancient atomism and the sort of spiritualism mentioned above would be qualitatively monist as well as quantitatively pluralist.
Just the kind of pragmatism that Peirce wished to distance himself from!
Quoting Banno
How we should use the word "insect" is not constrained by what seems to count as being an insect?
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
It always seemed obvious to me that it is a play on "epistemologist". I also wondered whether the "pus" bit was of any significance.
Nor Banno, for that matter.
To me it sounds like Apus, the southern constellation that represents a bird of paradise. The "ti" part, I've no idea. The "melogist" part, could have something to do with "melody".
Isn't what seems to count as an insect part of what we do with the word "insect"? So yes, what seems to count as an insect can inform how we use the word. An interplay between world and word, neither determining the other.
They had a use, yes.
To my eye the arguments about animals, such as as those in the recent Davidson thread, somewhat misfire. Doing stuff comes first, and language is a way of doing stuff. So there is a continuity from prelinguistic to linguistic behaviour. but I think it a one way path. Once the divide is crossed, once language occurs, it is very difficult to go back.
If I understand Putnam correctly, he says that a mind-independent world would explain the being of an external entity. But our language does not have that property, it only possesses words and signs that explain the being to the reference. So access to such a mind-independent world is problematic and rather illusory. Putnam believes that reference does not escape language and is trapped in it.
It is similar to saying that the thing we perceive does not escape perception, all the references we perceive are always being perceived.
For me antirealism is an almost irrefutable point of view. The only way out of idealist enclosure is a theory of the sign that can include the Non-perceivable, that can be extrapolated beyond language and that can be applied to experience itself.
The antirealism of the linguistic turn is a reflection of subjective idealism. What is present continues to dominate the notion of language that you see in the development of this topic.
If it's possible to go back, it's certainly not possible to express that going-back in language.
No, but they aren't unrelated. The inscrutability of reference implies that extension is equally inscrutable. There is no "fact of the matter." But on the view that "what an insect is," is just how the token "insect" is used, this also means there is no fact of the matter about what an insect is. And this wouldn't just apply to universals either, but concrete particulars.
That is unless you want to say that "the rake in this room" can uniquely specify a set with one element via extension, and we can know this, but we also cannot uniquely specify what "the rake in this room refers to." Or "insects" uniquely specifies a set with discrete elements, but the same word cannot refer uniquely to insects as a group or to individual insects.
This is strange and is going to have a host of bizarre consequences, especially if what defines extension in the first place is just how we use a word (particularly because different people understand and use the same terms in different ways, and the same people understand and use the same words in different ways in different contexts). For one, the unique set specified by a term will be unknowable, so it will be a set that exists in virtue of what? As an abstract object detached from human knowledge, but which is defined by aggregate human word usage?
At least not while being aware of it.
However, you did spend an entire thread arguing that "truth" didn't make sense outside of satisfaction, while also arguing that there is no correct logic, but that logics should be selected for based on usefulness.
That truth depends on what is useful is a consequence of such a position (although perhaps only if it is useful :rofl: ). If truth is always truth in terms of satisfaction vis-á-vis some system (indeed you ridiculed the notion of anything being "actually true") and the criteria by which a system is selected is usefulness, then truth depends on usefulness. Actually, you were quite incredulous at the idea of a correct logic, that truth wouldn't be defined in terms of useful ways of speaking.
For example, if truth is just satisfaction, and if one selects between holding to or not holding to the principle of noncontradiction based on usefulness, then what is true or false depends on a selection grounded in usefulness. How could it be otherwise?
I think we are always already back thereand that's the ineffable part of our experience our words cannot capture. Poetry, literature, perhaps come closest.
Anytime I bang on a wall in my house my dogs go crazy. They take it as a sign that someone is at my front door. Maybe this is how communication works. My speech is an event. You take it as a sign, not just my words, but the whole scene involving me and my noises. You make inferences. There are no magic cords connecting my words to the world. As you say, reference matters to the extent that you get your dinner.
I'm less certain of ineffability (at least, in principle ineffability), though I can see how inscrutability could dove-tail into that.
I think of becoming-enlanguaged in analogy to a baptism: before language there is experience, after language the experience becomes effable, but also changes entirely such that most of the time our perceptions will be guided by our linguistic abilities. And I think of this is an enhancement of experience, where we are able to do more than follow our biological imperatives and wonder about things that no one wondered about before -- and be correct.
I don't think ants are curious like this, though they have their own ways of communicating -- and "ant-language" if we want to call it that. And closer to home it doesn't seem that Bonobos and orangutangs wonder about what reality is fundamentally made of.
There are clearly some examples of animals acting human-like, but my suspicion is that our language is kind of what forged an evolutionary niche for us, but that it's capable of doing much more than aiding the species' reproduction.
It seems to me that language enables much more than mere "species' reproduction"language is not even really needed for that, although of course humans use it for that purpose.
The major survival boon, and curse, of language, most potently in its written form, is that it enables collective learning, which in turn makes us the most adaptable of species. With the accumulated knowledge enabled by writing we have become able to inhabit virtually every environmental niche.
When we have exhausted the resources in one niche, we can go somewhere else, and our population is thus not automatically trimmed by famine when we have been feasting too hard for our habitats to sustain. This will work for us until we have nowhere left to go, when we have exhausted all resources everywhere and undermined the viability of every habitat.
Anyway, I'm veering into another topic, so I'll leave it there.
Sometimes I feel like I do know what other people mean and feel, though -- it takes a long-term relationship of care, and we'll never be one another, but we're able to communicate our experiences just fine.
Now, if there is no relationship there or something then I'd say my experience is ineffable -- language doesn't magically give the ability to communicate.
But I do think there are conditions in which we can describe our experiences to one another and that language enables us to do that (not all by itself, but it enables).
O I agree with you here. I think it's our niche, but much "came along with" basically -- things unrelated to what language does for us in terms of our biological niche.
To be clear, these are two different things. extensionality is the logical decision to count two sets that contain the very same items as the very same set. So (a,b) = (b,a)=(a,a,b) and so on. The inscrutability of reference is about whether "a" refers to a, "b" refers to b, and so on. Quine's argument shows that when someone else uses a name, say "c", there is no fact of the matter as to what that might refer to. There are two aspects of this, the first that it need not be necessary to fix the referent perfectly in order to get your rabbit stew. The second, that this is one aspect of confirmation holism, that no statement is true or false only as it stands, but that they are true or false as a part of the whole web of belief. Extensionally, to supose "gavagai" refers to the same thing as "rabbit" is to suppose that each element of the set "rabbit" is an element of the set "gavagai" - that's setting out what it would be for "gavaga" to mean "rabbit" in a way that does not rely on the intentionality of speaker meaning or web of belief. But that some individual is a member of the set "gavagai" or "rabbit" is of course open to referential opacity.
Again, extensionality is not a solution for the problem of reference. It was apparently introduced here:
Quoting Banno
This was in response to a question concerning propositional attitudes, by way of explaining an aspect of Possible World Semantics. It is not being offered as a solution to the issues raised in the gavagai fable.
So no, we do not "uniquely specify a set with one element via extension". That's not it's place. What extensionality might tell us is that if there is a rake in the room, and if we accept that a rake is a tool, then it follows that there is a tool in the room. Extensionality is not so much about reference as about grouping individuals, once reference has been settled.
Now Quine expelled individual variables from his logic. The individuals in his logic are no more than the objects that serve as the values of bound variables. The domain consists in the objects over which the bound variables range. Quine does not assume any metaphysical essence to these objects; they are whatever the theory quantifies over. The individuals in the domain are not specified independently of the properties that belong to them. The approach is holistic.
A primary problem with this, and the reason is it no longer a popular view, is that it is incompatible with possible world semantics.
For Davidson there are no conceptual schemes against which the individuals may be specified. However he makes use of Tarski's approach to truth, which is extensional and makes use of individuals. For Davidson reference is a function of how a truth- theoretical approach explains language. It's pretty much just what we do with nouns.
I want to be clear that there are tensions here, between Quine and Davidson and Kripke, and that there is not a standard, accepted solution to these issues. I am not here offering a complete and coherent account of reference, but attempting to articulate the problems seen by these three great philosophers.
But by refusing to work with the Gavagai fable and recognise it's import, whatever view you are offering - and it remains for me quite unclear what that might be - is outside of this discussion. You have not understood the argument. This is evident in your "the unique set specified by a term will be unknowable". One can stipulate whatever membership one desires. That's what is involved in setting up a domain.
There's a difference between being able to explain truth in terms of satisfaction, and truth not making sense outside of satisfaction. You accuse me of the latter, but what I did was the former.
If you wish to take issue with Tarski's extensional definition of truth, then do so. What that might look like, given the place of Tarski's approach in model theory, is difficult to imagine.
If you wish to take issue with the applicability of Tarski's theory of truth to our use in natural languages, set out your case.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think so. I've argued, elsewhere and at great length, that there are fairly plain facts that are quite true - such as that you are now reading my post.
So if you would stand by this claim, which at best could only be a misunderstanding, point to the post in which I supposedly argued such a nonsense.
Or stop making false accusations. Isn't there something about that in your Bible?
(EDIT: Silly joke that popped to mind immediately and I had to say it)
Yep. Hence Quine's holism, rather than pragmatism.
That they accept and move on with life doesn't mean that they are not awed by thunder or enraptured by a sunrise.
But problems happen when folk think they can prove that their sky daddy exists using the ontological argument, and so that anyone who says otherwise is anathema.
I agree with you here. I often struggle in making a distinction between human beings and our close cousins, but it really still seems to me that language is what differentiates us from those species.
Quoting Banno
Yeah.
And before that, really. "This land is my land, not your land..."
Or does the problem occur when atheist trolls can't manage to refute an argument, so anyone who uses it is anathema? They resort to slurs like "sky daddy" because they are too dumb to mount a coherent argument.
But Dawkins and his ilk are in their 80's and the irrational fad has passed. Once the hangers-on die out completely it will be back to inter-religious dialogue, particularly with the burgeoning forms of neo-paganism.
I want to say -- while "sky daddy" is something which any philosophically inclined person would think of as false, it's not hard to see that people really do believe in a sky daddy. Or something along those lines.
It's not a slur because there are people who literally believe in that. Demons walk earth, God floats above, Hell is underneath the earth -- the whole bit. I know this because I've had people claim things to me like "Dark magic exists" or "I've seen a demon, I know they are real" or "The Bible says giants existed, therefore they exist" or, or or or or -- so many claims. We need not say "sky daddy", but we could say "wrestling warrior", since Israel gained his name by wrestling God down. In the literal sense.
It's not trolling so much as pointing out that many people really do believe these things.
No, it's a slur. Get real, Moliere. :roll:
It's a public board, but he was responding to me -- I get the slogan. "Sky Daddy" need not be the word, and I wouldn't use it towards a believer because anyone who bothers talking about this stuff probably doesn't believe in a sky daddy at all -- it's more sophisticated than that.
I think it's important to note how many people believe in literal interpretations of scripture, though.
And yes, of course atheists at the bar will use slurs to speak of religion. That's not strange at all.
Do you literally believe the words coming out of your mouth when you claim that "sky daddy" is not a pejorative slur?
It's pejorative, though I didn't think of it as a slur -- not in the way people use racial terms, for instance.
But pejorative in the sense that it's meant to indicate we don't believe that's the case, yes.
And insulting -- I can see that. Better words can be chosen if we want open communication, that's for sure.
How do you feel about 's term?
:up:
Quoting Moliere
Sure, particularly if you're speaking of a religion that uses that phrase.
But yes, I did intend it as a pejorative. Your triggers are not my responsibility?
Ah, I see you made the same point.
Of course you did. Because it's a slur.
And again to my original point: you resort to that sort of thing because you're too dumb to square off with rationality and argument.
Yes, and I am heartened to know that even someone who speaks Spanish as their first language sees this. Of course, Banno's "Google AI" is not a source at all for this sort of matter.
If someone like Banno is willing to put in the time to understand and then critique an argument in fairness, then they should do that. If they are not willing to put in that time, then they should hold their tongue rather than try to "win" with slurs and aspersions. Time and again we have seen Banno unwilling to put in the time and effort for a fair assessment, but nevertheless running his tongue with slurs and aspersions.
(This is my, "This is why I'm putting Banno back on ignore" speech.)
The forums periodically suffer a rash of god bothering. We are in the middle of one at the moment.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sky_daddy, if preferred.
Thank Christ!
A troll trolling.
Quoting Banno
The troll's emotional needs require excising the forum of any talk of God, and his tools are misrepresentation and slurs. Argument and philosophy are beyond his pay grade.
Maybe we need more plumbers:
Quoting apokrisis
So let's make this thread about me, too. What fun.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Well no, becasue the Rainbow Serpent is guardian of waterholes and community, a far more earthy deity, worthy of respect.
And Lawson was a city boy.
Too far off topic. I've flagged this conversation for mod consideration.
A City Daddy then. Maybe Banjo Paterson would be the Bush Daddy then. I'm not trying to be offensive, nor am I trying to go off topic, I'm just curious to understand how your mind works.
Fun indeed. You derail all the threads you participate in to be about you, because you can't engage OPs and topics on their own terms. This has been going on for some time.
Quoting Banno
Slurs against an entire class of people in order to "cleanse" the forum of their participation and ethos? Nope, I haven't. Digital eugenics isn't my thing. And I'm not seeing what digital eugenicists like yourself add to the forum (apart from the ongoing suppression of philosophical discourse).
Well, no. I've no need to, since you do it for me. You are the one who is posting about me.
Didn't you put me on your "ignore" list?
Enough.
Many others point out the same sorts of problems:
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Quoting Paine
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Quoting fdrake
Quoting Lionino
Quoting cherryorchard
Another failure to read, for your own source testifies against you:
Do you believe in God?
Quoting Moliere
Davidson took language perhaps too seriously, holding that a dog for example could not believe that there was food in its bowl becasue it could not form the sentence "There is food in my bowl".
For my part, I have argued that the dog does not need to form the sentence, but that we can form the sentence may be sufficient for us to ascribe the belief to the dog.
And further, the belief is not a thing in the mind of the dog, but is attributed to the dog by those with language. And in the case of human belief, one is able to attribute belief to oneself. Attributing a belief to itself is not something a dog can do.
Now most of what I say hereabouts is by way of interpreting and explaining others, and this has been the case especially in this thread. But this line of thinking, ill formed and incomplete as it is, I will claim for my own. This by way of displaying a bit of vulnerability for the benefit of my detractors.
This is i think the interesting part of the line of thinking in this and other threads.
My post:
Adding later:
It's debatable if deflationary theories of truth "do not say there are no truths." They say that truth is just how we use the token "true" in speech and thought, as the post you quoted points out, so it was clear what was being discussed. And if one affirms that one selects logics and "ways of speaking" based on what is useful, it follows that truth will determined by usefulness.
Particularly, if we follow your stated approach, that there are no correct or incorrect logics, but rather they are selected for by usefulness alone. I asked in virtue of what would a logic be "useful." Your response was "whenever it had a use" and that anyone setting out a logic has a use for it. But this is obviously extremely permissive.
Now, I suppose that if one is committed to such a view "follows from" doesn't really carry much weight, but it does follow from this that truth depends on usefulness.
Hence, in your own words:
[Quote]
Now what this shows is that truth-preservation is a function of the interpretation. So yes, in your rough terms, truth and validity do depend on the system being used, since that system includes the interpretation...
[/quote]
If you generalize this to natural language scenarios then yes, I agree, there is no fact of the matter as to whether individual animals exist outside the context of human language. Like you say:
This is your basic Latin Averroism redux: different fields have different, perhaps contradictory truths, or what is true (or affirmed true by "pretending") depends on what you are doing and what your goals are.
But you're not even consistent on this. If we are narrow-minded fundamentalists, we can at best "pretend" that individual insects exist as a fact of nature/biology, as opposed to being the result of what humans choose to "count" as an insect, yet we can also advance this position and claim "of course it is true that insects existed before humans." Well, is the contrary also equally true depending on what you are doing? It seems so.
Apparently, multiple contradictory statements can be affirmed as true, it just depends on what is useful. However, "truth does not depend on what is useful, who would argue that?" I suppose such a claim is also true whenever it is useful to affirm it.
Questions of mereology, mereological nihilism, ordinary/extraordinary objects, etc. are difficult. I suppose, "we can assert or deny any part/whole relation as true of false, or contradict ourselves, based on what is useful," is an approach, but it's hardly a serious one.
It's also pretty obvious how disastrous this is for moral reasoning.
The comparison to the term "Sky Father," for example as used to describe Indo-Aryan religions, is facile. This is like claiming that "tranny" is not a slur because it is based on, and morphologically similar to "trans person." Likewise for calling people "homos." It's obvious any of these terms would not be appropriate for even a high school level paper (precisely because they are slurs).
I disagree with this. We're all adults here. Let's learn to roll with the punches.
Should this forum allow the use of the N-word then, in your view?
I think it's determined by the individual's whim more than even usefulness.
The thing is, we like truth. It's something we seek for its own sake. But a theory of truth cannot tell us what is true, except perhaps for what is true about truth.
I prefer deflationary theories of truth if we have to say anything about truth at all, but usually I think it's best to understand truth as something very simple, which is part of why it escapes our theorizing. The deflationary theory is there to try and escape some of the criticisms of the substantive theories of truth, but for the most part I take it that truth is embedded in language -- it's a meta-lingual predicate which talks about sentences and the properties we attribute to sentences. Our changing a theory of truth won't change truth, but it's really only because we like truth -- attribute truth to sentences -- that we wonder about and theorize about truth.
But the theory of truth is not the phenomena, truth.
And I think we can separate out theories of truth from theories of reference -- one does not decide the other.
Quoting Banno
That's pretty close to how I think of language -- the dog has a kind of animla-belief, but doesn't believe the English sentence "The kibble is in my bowl"
A dog will mark its territory and defend it, but it won't appeal to a bigger dog to enforce some agreed upon social rules. It may try to get friends, but it won't make an appeal to a law.
We can't tell what is actually happening in another person's head, or our own head, when we are believing or are knowing. Why would we think invoking dog-beliefs would help clarify anything?
The dog senses food. The dog may not believe or know or think anything at all. It might be carried by circumstances to sense food just as it is carried by circumstances to find it and eat it. Does the dog who steps on a hot coal, yelps and leaps away, have to think at all to yelp and leap? Maybe, or maybe not (we are not dogs, so who knows, and dogs aren't talking about their inner lives). But if you can imagine a dog does not need to think to yelp and leap from being burnt, why can't we imagine the dog is behaving according to the exact same impulses in everything the dog does? Like a plant cell photosynthesizing - wherefore belief as a component of these motions?
For my part, humans personify everything we touch. We even personify ourselves. We alone use words to refer to other words and concepts - no animals bother to do so. Because, for my part, animals don't believe, or know, or think. They are better than all of that (or less than all that, if you want to feel special about the act of personification).
Truth is determined by whims? Am I reading that right? But surely someone can decide that it is "true" that their flying machine will work, "on a whim," and then be corrected when it slams into the ground. Truth asserts itself. People can claim that pigs and goats are the same species all they like, "on a whim," but if they try to feed their family by mating the two they will starve. They will be forced to assent to the truth.
I would disagree. For one, animals don't use language, but they certainly seem to have beliefs and to get flustered when what they believed to be the case turns out not to be. Likewise, human who are non-verbal do not seem incapable of being perturbed by illusions, knowing they have been deceived, etc.
I would put it this way: "truth is the adequacy of thought to being." That sentences can be true or false is parasitic on the fact that language is a product of the intellect. Language thus functions as a sign of truth in the intellect. "True" is predicated of speech acts and text analogically, they are signs of truth in the same way that a healthy complexion is a sign of health (but complexions do not possess truth fully themselves). The focus on formal logic to the exclusion of material logic (form in the absence of content) occludes this fact. Yet a non-verbal person, or the victim of aphasia, clearly seems capable of having beliefs that are either true or false, even if they are not expressed in language.
Many philosophers also admit of a distinction between ontological truth, the truth of things, and truth as the conformity of language to things. We can also see how this works in terms of lying. When we lie, our words are not signs of our beliefs (although a lie may be, by coincidence, a true statement, and it may reveal something about our true beliefs).
I think part of the motivation for deflation arises from the position that truth applies only to sentences. Such a position seems to lead down that path. Perhaps the idea that knowledge is just belief that happens to be justified and true also leads down this way. Earlier eras distinguished between many types of knowledge. Continental philosophy also tends to be more likely to differentiate many types of knowledge. Plato had four, Aristotle five (and arguably more). "Knowing how to ride a bike," sense knowledge, noeisis, etc. However, if knowledge, the grasp of truth, is always propositional, then it makes more sense for sentences to be the primary bearers of truth, and also for what is "known" or "true" to vary by language game.
Anyhow, an interesting consequence of sentences being true "of themselves" without relation to the intellect is that a random text generator "contains" all truths. There is some interesting stuff to unpack there. From an information theoretic perspective, a random text generator only provides information about its randomization process, the semantic meaning of any output being accidental (and highly unlikely).
Pretty much.
We desire to know the truth for -- what reason?
Some people desire to know the truth so that they might be able to predict the future.
Some people desire to know the truth so that they know where they came from.
Sometimes it's out of curiosity. Sometimes out of wonder. Sometimes out of love. Sometimes out of hate.
The number of desires which lead a person to desire truth is myriad. And desires are what drive us to seek out truth. We want to be able to say "Thought conforms to being" -- but couldn't say that without language, or even think it without language.
But sometimes we want to be able to say "My perception corresponds to an object" -- here pointing out that we can us "...is true" for more than sentences, albeit still being a meta-lingual predicate. Why would we do such a thing?
Because we like truth. We want to be certain. We want the airplane to fly or to know what is good.
What doesn't matter is how we theorize truth -- we'll still want it to do pretty much what it's been doing the entire time. It's just gets complicated when we try to theorize it, and generally it's easier to say "I know you know what truth is, and we don't need to define it at all if we want to seek it out"
Note how the T-Sentence has a similar form to your notion of truth, it's just using a smaller vocabulary.
"P" is true if and only if P. So we have language, or thought, on the left hand side and the sentence which is being used in a context on the right-hand side -- or Being.
The same form as you have is there, it's just trying to assume less about truth.
And it's worth noting that truth and reference are separate topics. At least to my mind -- I don't see the relationship between truth and reference until we're talking about whole sentences, at least.
And, us being animals, we really have some things in common with them -- like what mentions in this post: Frustration, confusion, error, correction all seem to happen.
But since they're not doing math or using money or making laws we can tell they're different.
Why does it have to be so black and white? If you look at brains of animals you will see a continuum of complexity from insects up to humans, and the core structure of the brain in these cases (at least down to fish) is largely preserved. Dogs will be somewhere in the middle - comparing it to photosynthesis given this then just seems hugely exaggerated.
I see attraction to deflationary theories because I don't like to decide metaphysical questions on the epistemic side -- there's going to be implications no matter what, but the epistemic side is attempting to minimize the number of implications a given theory of truth will have. A correspondence theory will require a mind, a world, objects in the world, and something the mind does that's related to the world such that "correspondence" is real. A pragmatic theory of truth will imply that truth is something that arises from human activity and so we came up with this word "true" in order to help us do things in the world.
The deflationary account says there's nothing much to say about truth -- and can, in a way, accommodate both substantive theories by referring to a context -- this is the context of correspondence which is determined by the conversation we're participating in, and this is hte context of "I don't care what the real explanation is I just want to get the job done" so we adopt the pragmatic theory.
It allows us to choose a substantive theory of truth for the context we're in -- but that suggests that there's nothing really to truth.
I don't think that the LLM's we presently have contains truth in them because they're not people with desires and relationships but a toy. While I don't think there's much to the metaphysics of truth I do think that truth is a very human concern. Or, at least, something which we become concerned about because we're able to think about why I was wrong that one time and how can I make it better in the future.
I think its more the fact that we cannot talk about truth without using sentences and words. The deflationary account then becomes a sufficient way of talking about truth. Sure , you can say organisms without words have an understanding of the world and 'what is the case' in some sense - which arguably is nothing more than our fallible ability to predict things and have those predictions fulfilled in our experience. But you obviously still cannot talk about that without words - the intellectual activity of truthing is then asserting 'what is the case' with words.
It doesn't. I am saying I have no idea how I have ideas, and discussing this as the inscrutability of reference. Why would the actions of a dog, or anything else, inform this discussion?
And I am asking this question of myself as much as anyone else. We all do it - personify and analogize in order to explain. But we are trying to explain the act of explanation, and so I am trying to point out that data observed from anything other than the behavior of explainers (ie, people), could be way off the mark and we wouldn't know it (because we are trying to explain "knowing" in the first place and instead talking about some other animals behavior as if it were "knowing").
My point isn't so much that dogs don't think. It's that it can't help us understanding the objects of thought or thinking that we do, by inferring something from a dog that could have other explanations.
I'm just saying that, in a conversation where we are trying to make sense of a person's behavior, trying to make some sense of using language to explain reality in a communicable, logical way, as if reality needed explanation or was amenable to it, or oppositely as if explanation was a wrong turn, observations about a dog's behavior are not going to clarify anything. And we should admit our observations about a dog's behavior may be utterly irreflective of what the dog is doing in reality (which reality is the original question).
I think what animals are doing is offer a contrast to what we're doing in order to understand language. The way I'm thinking about language the dog doesn't have the capacity to refer, though I suspect they can individuate -- food is different from bowl.
The animal is serving as a kind of "substitute" for our animal side in trying to separate out what makes human language different.
Or, on the other hand, it's a counter-example if we believe that the dog can refer or have true beliefs.
That inquiry would be instructive, because we are animals. Contrast our own impulsive responses with our own deliberated, reasoned, chosen responses.
Quoting Moliere
I am just saying I can't tell how or why I refer or have true beliefs, so finding something instructive in a dog's behavior is unlikely, other than to highlight that thinking/knowing/believing may all be tied up in language (in all its complexity), and therefore, we are able to rule out that anything other than a person will help us figure out what is going on in this conversation.
What about mathematical modeling? Or drawings, diagrams, sculpture, and other forms of artistic depiction? Can't lies be carried off with more than words?
These all seem like they can be more or less truthful depictions of their subject matter. We speak of "truthful depictions," in drama, and paintings as "true to life," and the same is true for historical replicas or scale models (the latter of which once played a major role in engineering). Likewise, artifacts, words, etc. can be more or less true to our intentions, a different sort of truth. Hence, true can be predicated in many ways.
I also think the focus on language might be massively underselling the role of the unconscious/subconscious processes involved in cognition, something we've discussed earlier.
Words are also not a perfect representation of what is in the intellect (truth to intentions). A perfect example of this is the Stroop Test.
It is much more difficult for people to properly report the correct names of the color of text font rapidly if they are given the names of colors spelled out in a font that is a different color. People go much slower and make more mistakes. If you just do colored squares, instead of text, this effect disappears.
A view that looked only at words and behavioral outputs might conclude that this somehow shows a difficulty in our ability to [I]know[/I] colors in such cases. However, this is not how it is interpreted because it is obvious, from a phenomenological perspective, that the colors still appear to us as obviously as they always do. The difficulty lies in word recall, in overriding a strong habit of reading text irrespective of color (and likely due to neuroanatomy as well). Yet the truth of what color things appear to us as is about as surface level as one can get. The truth is certainly not absent from the intellect until the correct words are found, and this is shown by the fact that unfocusing one's eyes so that one cannot read the text makes the task extremely easy again. Similarly, someone with aphasia who cannot produce speech can still know a great many truths and communicate this in other ways.
I see. From my point of view, "nothing is really true tout court, but this varies by context," seems like a very consequential metaphysical position. It claims that most metaphysical outlooks (certainly historically, but also likely in contemporary thought) are crucially mistaken.
Likewise, what is the status of moral realism when the truth values of moral facts are allowed to vary based on "whim," as you put it?
One can bracket the question of "what is truth," and investigate how the term is used in language, mathematics, etc. without having to commit to deflation however. I do not agree that it is a position that comes with fewer commitments. Agnosticism would be a position that comes with fewer commitments.
Deflation is at least a position though, and I respect it for that. The only approach that really irks me is the methodology of trying to present every significant philosophical problem as a "pseudoproblem." Some problems are pseudoproblems of course, but these folks are like someone who thinks every problem must be a nail because they have discovered a hammer.
When one quotes, it is a common courtesy not to remove the automatic link that is created. That enables readers to check on context.
Removing it makes it look as if you are hiding something, that you are not willing to have your work checked.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The deflationary account is based on the observation that "P is true" is truth- functionally equivalent to "P".
That's pretty much it. To assert that P is true does nothing more than to assert that P. (There's the pragmatics to consider, the emphasis seen in adding "it's true that...").
It is usually mentioned in opposition to the so-called substantive accounts such as correspondence, coherence and pragmatism. I don't think any one of these can provide a complete account of the many uses of "true".
Deflation is different from Tarski's definition of truth in terms of satisfaction, despite the similarity in their use of T-sentences: "Snow is white" is true iff snow is white; here "Snow is white" is in the object language and is true if, in the metalanguage, snow satisfies the predicate "...is white". This is extensional becasue satisfaction would just be that snow is one of the items in the list of things that are white.
None of these accounts say that there are no truths.
So your accusation
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
remains unjustified.
It's pretty much the approach adopted by Quine and the later Wittgenstein, although somewhat bowdlerised by your pejorative take.
You don't have to take it seriously, of cores, but that is more about you than about doing philosophy. It might provide others with a reason not to take you seriously.
The appropriate path would be for you to mark the offending posts for consideration by the mods.
But I doubt that they will much care.
Quoting Moliere
Yep. One of the advantages of Davidson's approach is that it takes truth as fundamental. That's a pretty cool move, since any theorising or ratiocination is a seeking for truth, and so presupposes that we might recognise it if we saw it.
Quoting Moliere
Cool. And yes, the next step is the iterative and constructive aspect of language, allowing the construction of our social world.
If an agent acts in some way then there is a belief and a desire that together are sufficient to explain the agent's action. Banno wants water; he believes he can pour a glass from the tap; so he goes to the tap to pour a glass of water.
We attribute belief in order to explain behaviour. We attribute belief tot he dog based on its behaviour.
Whether the dog really has a belief in mind is moot.
That's bang on.
But here we are heading towards anomalous monism, perhaps too far from the topic.
True! That's pretty much what I suspect -- I don't know if I believe it yet or not because I remain uncertain about how one justifies metaphysical beliefs.
These days I tend to think of the real as absurd -- "atoms and void" swerving about without any meaning. And the atoms need not be how we understand atoms today, though they can be. But it's an explicitly metaphysical belief rather than the science of chemistry. Chemistry will survive even if a metaphysics of the absurd -- atoms and void -- turns out false.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Now I could turn you off entirely by admitting what I believe :D -- I'm still a moral nihilist in the sense that I don't think there are true "ought" statements. There's more to this based on what I see in the world and how human beings behave, but that's way off course.
But moral realism can work with what I'm proposing. Suppose we have a sentence like:
"Everyone ought take care of their parents in their old age because they took care of you in your young age"
We can say this is true. If it's true then it's a fact. (My belief on facts is that they are true sentences)
Now, as I think of facts that does not thereby mean there's a moral reality which secures our moral propositions or makes them true. But a moral realist would assert that just as we have objects in the world to which we're referring to there are also morals -- of some kind or other, that are hard to specify -- which "ought" statements can refer to. And they can be true or false on the basis of that reference (which, I take it, would be to possible acts we can take)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think the idea is to minimize, rather than eliminate, commitments. Else we run into problems of begging the question when we come to arguments about what is real. (though if we're truly agnostic, sure, that's fewer commitments -- but it doesn't say anything either)
Oh, yes. I'm not one to reduce philosophical questions to pseudoproblems, except to say that they need not be solved to live a good life: I don't think people need to do philosophy to live fulfilling and happy lives.
But that doesn't mean they're pseudo-problems, from my perspective. And even if they were I don't mind investigating them for fun.
Quoting Banno
@Count Timothy von Icarus's account looks to me to be a correspondence theory.
The dog thinks, I think, and we can conform our thoughts to the world in our own way and when we do so we have some kind of truth.
I'm wondering if some of the conflict here is due to our preferences on whether we ought start on the side of metaphysics or whether we ought start on the side of epistemics.
Quoting Moliere
Looking again, you may be correct. Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Really not sure what this says.