p and "I think p"
This follows up on some issues in recent threads about Descartes, Sartre, Kimhi, and the nature of philosophical thought.
The I think accompanies all our thoughts, says Kant. Sebastian Rödl, in Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, agrees with this but points out that this cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p. He calls this a confusion arising from our notation, and suggests, not entirely seriously, that we could devise a more accurate notation that makes I think internal to p: we may form the letter p by writing, in the shape of a p, the words I think. He interprets Kant as saying the same thing: for Kant, the I think is not something thought alongside the thought that it accompanies, but internal to what is thought as such.
This has some obvious relevance to the debate about the force/content distinction in Frege, which we discussed at length in an earlier thread, inspired by Kimhi. But for now . . .
Suppose my friend Pat replied as follows:
Sorry, but I dont have this experience. When I look out the window and say to myself, ?That oak tree is shedding its leaves, I am not aware of also, and simultaneously, thinking anything along the lines of ?I think that the oak tree is shedding its leaves. Please dont misunderstand me as saying that Ive never had such a thought, or wouldnt know what it was to experience such a thought. There are indeed circumstances under which I may additionally reflect ?And I am thinking thought p at this moment or ?Thought p is my thought or ?I judge that p. But I disagree that this characterizes my experience of thinking in general.
Which of these responses do you think would be appropriate to make to Pat?:
1. You've misunderstood. The thesis of the ubiquity of the I think is not based on empirical observation. Its not about what you experience; whether you are aware of having such an experience is not decisive either way. Some people are aware of it, some are not. But were not relying on personal reports when we claim that the I think must accompany all our thoughts.
2. The I think is an experience of self-consciousness, and requires self-consciousness. When you say you are not aware of it, you are mistaken. But you can learn to identify the experience, and thus understand that you have been aware of it all along.
3. The I think is not experienced at all. It is a condition of thought, a form of thought, in the same way that space and time are conditions of cognition. Self-consciousness, in Rödls sense, is built in to every thought, but not as a content that must be experienced.
4. If your report is accurate, then the thesis that the ?I think accompanies all our thoughts has been proven wrong.
Or is there another response that seems better? I mean these four responses to be mutually exclusive, but if you think they need sharpening in order to achieve that, go for it. (And I suppose if your response tends toward "5. WTF?" then this isn't the thread for you. :wink: )
Depending on what sorts of posts people make about this, I hope to explore the question of how objectivity (p) relates to subjectivity (It is I who thinks p). This can lead us into some considerations of Rödls book, but I dont want to narrow it down to that.
The I think accompanies all our thoughts, says Kant. Sebastian Rödl, in Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, agrees with this but points out that this cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p. He calls this a confusion arising from our notation, and suggests, not entirely seriously, that we could devise a more accurate notation that makes I think internal to p: we may form the letter p by writing, in the shape of a p, the words I think. He interprets Kant as saying the same thing: for Kant, the I think is not something thought alongside the thought that it accompanies, but internal to what is thought as such.
This has some obvious relevance to the debate about the force/content distinction in Frege, which we discussed at length in an earlier thread, inspired by Kimhi. But for now . . .
Suppose my friend Pat replied as follows:
Sorry, but I dont have this experience. When I look out the window and say to myself, ?That oak tree is shedding its leaves, I am not aware of also, and simultaneously, thinking anything along the lines of ?I think that the oak tree is shedding its leaves. Please dont misunderstand me as saying that Ive never had such a thought, or wouldnt know what it was to experience such a thought. There are indeed circumstances under which I may additionally reflect ?And I am thinking thought p at this moment or ?Thought p is my thought or ?I judge that p. But I disagree that this characterizes my experience of thinking in general.
Which of these responses do you think would be appropriate to make to Pat?:
1. You've misunderstood. The thesis of the ubiquity of the I think is not based on empirical observation. Its not about what you experience; whether you are aware of having such an experience is not decisive either way. Some people are aware of it, some are not. But were not relying on personal reports when we claim that the I think must accompany all our thoughts.
2. The I think is an experience of self-consciousness, and requires self-consciousness. When you say you are not aware of it, you are mistaken. But you can learn to identify the experience, and thus understand that you have been aware of it all along.
3. The I think is not experienced at all. It is a condition of thought, a form of thought, in the same way that space and time are conditions of cognition. Self-consciousness, in Rödls sense, is built in to every thought, but not as a content that must be experienced.
4. If your report is accurate, then the thesis that the ?I think accompanies all our thoughts has been proven wrong.
Or is there another response that seems better? I mean these four responses to be mutually exclusive, but if you think they need sharpening in order to achieve that, go for it. (And I suppose if your response tends toward "5. WTF?" then this isn't the thread for you. :wink: )
Depending on what sorts of posts people make about this, I hope to explore the question of how objectivity (p) relates to subjectivity (It is I who thinks p). This can lead us into some considerations of Rödls book, but I dont want to narrow it down to that.
Comments (624)
Yep - that Pat is right.
Is this in part a response to Davidson's argument against conceptual schema?
So, if Pat is right, #4 is a good response?
Another one of those rare occasions when you and I agree.
I'm not sure.
Quoting J
To be sure, there are no thoughts that could not be prefixed by "I think..."; but that is a very different point to the suggestion that all our thoughts are already prefixed by "I think...". That just looks muddled.
That there is a difference between a proposition and one's attitude towards that proposition - thinking it, believing it, asserting it, doubting it - is so ingrained that I have difficulty making sense of the alternatives.
Quoting J
Those who are, possess a finer sense of self-awareness than those who don't. It's called 'discriminative wisdom'.
Quoting J
[quote=Wayfarer]...whatever judgements are made about the world, the mind provides the framework within which such judgements are meaningful. So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective.[/quote]
That 'implicit perspective' is the same as what Rödl argues for, I suspect, although I'm still taking it in.
Hmm. I can think that I am thinking the Oak is dropping its leaves. Or I can think that the oak is dropping its leaves. Surely being able to either at will shows a higher degree of discrimination than those who are stuck only on "I think..." :wink:
Right. And for Rödl (and I think Kant and Sartre) it isn't even a matter of "prefixed"; the "I think" is supposed to be structural or internal. That's why the question of whether this "I think" is experienced comes to the fore.
Quoting Banno
Me too. It's almost like a phase shift, a new way of conceiving something that had always seemed obvious. Both Kimhi and Rödl are asking us to rethink what we thought we knew. The issue is difficult enough (and technical enough) to preclude just waving it away, though I wanted to when I started reading Kimhi.
What is the relationship of "p" and "I judge that [think/believe/propose etc.] p"? That's the most bare-bones way of posing the question.
Yes, #1 has its attractions, but notice that, in its entirety, it commits us to the belief that the "I think" can be experienced. This may be hair-splitting, but the kind of self-awareness you're describing sounds less like an experience and more like an understanding, an enlightenment about what thought is. That would be closer to the spirit of #3, as I intended it. I wanted #3 to be the thoroughgoing transcendentalist position.
New?
It's just (illocutionary force(predicate(subject)), what is done with the proposition, or Frege's judgement stroke.
But it remains that we can consider the propositional content apart from the judgement stroke.
3. seems to be a post hoc judgement. Of course every thought is thought by me, because they are my thoughts, right? But what am I? It's like the cogito: I think therefore I existand further I exist in every thought. But 'I' is really just another thought, even if some would like to paint it as the transcendental master thought if not as some substantive entity.
4. is right because there is no clear sense in which the so-called "I think" could be present in or inherent in every thought.
I probably should not leap into this breech, but I think I understand the meta-philosophical reason for this. I think it's linked to something which John Vervaeke calls 'participatory knowing':
With the advent of liberal individualism, the individual becomes 'atomised' and knowledge becomes increasingly propositional and procedural. The participatory nature of 'know-how' (Kant's 'practical reason?' Aristotle's 'phronesis'?) becomes occluded or reduced to the propositional. The existential dimension is obscured, an insight which is associated more with continental than analytic philosophy.
I offer only that 3 is the least wrong.
The reason for my choice is that Kant says I think must accompany all my representations (B133, in three separate translations), not my thoughts. Some representations are not thought but merely products of sensibility, re: phenomena.
Thought is .cognition by means of the synthesis of conceptions , conceptions are the representations of understanding. I think is not part of, nor is it necessary for, the synthesis by which thought is possible, but merely represents the consciousness that there can be one.
Theres a reason why I think is written that way when considering the systemic modus operandi, but not written that way when considered within a post hoc linguistic array.
But I know nothing of those other guys, so, there is that
This is a good clarification. Do I think a representation? German-to-English may be an issue here. Kant uses the "I think" to structure all mental representations; Rödl probably means only propositions -- I say "probably" because I'm still in the middle of reading the book so there may be further discussion about that. (Note: Although Rödl is German, he appears to have written S-C & O in English. Anyone know if that's true?)
The usual response to 1 is p and I think p and I think that I think p.
Well, the new way, if Kimhi and Rödl are on target, would deny the force/content distinction, as we know from that earlier thread about Thinking and Being. Another way of putting it: There is no way of stating p without stating p. Someone has to be doing the stating. Even reserving any judgment of p doesn't get you off the hook from having thought it, in some sense, to begin with.
In what sense, is the question. Are all propositions first-person propositions? Does it make a difference that a proposition can only occur as someone's thought? According to Kimhi, that makes a big difference in what "propositional content" means. Rödl looks to be going about the argument in a different way to get to the same place, but more of that later. For right now, let's just say that this possible "new way" is either genuinely new and useful, or a somewhat perverse misunderstanding about how logical language works. I am not sure, yet, which view is correct. Like you, like all of us, I'm super-trained in the "old way" -- which is enough to make me wonder if there's more to it.
Yes, that was my point. I don't get from the discussion where this "I think p" resides.
Im pretty sure the thesis says, not that we think them, but we think by means of them. Personally, I hold with the notion humans think in images, which are called representations, merely as a way to talk about whats happening. I mean we cant express ourselves in image format, hence, we invent words in order to represent their fundamental composition or constituency objectively.
Anyway .thats all I got.
Sebastian Rödl is Professor of Practical Philosophy at Leipzig University and an advocate of absolute idealism, associated with G W Hegel:
According to Hegel, being is ultimately comprehensible only as an all-inclusive whole (das Absolute). Hegel asserted that in order for the thinking subject (human reason or consciousness) to be able to know its object (the world) at all, there must be in some sense an identity of thought and being.
Perhaps Rödl could be seen as resuscitating German idealism.
This would be incorrect, as there are thinking things that do not have a sense of self. Kant really means, "I think, therefore I am." If one realizes they have a sense of self through thought, that is the very definition of self. Kant is not saying, "I think p, therefore p". He is stating "I think, therefore I am".
Any examples come to mind?
I'd be reluctant to call this self-consciousness, but maybe ...
Imagine a slightly more schematic version: there's the tree, leaves falling from it, a great light on the far side of it. Until that light strikes another surface, there is no shadow. When it does strike another surface, the shadow is formed not just by the tree and the leaves falling; it also takes on the shape of the surface that hosts the shadow. If that surface is angled or curved or bumpy or fractured, so will the shadow be.
In this case, the thought that the oak tree is shedding its leaves is me-shaped. There was no thought until something passed from the tree to me, and if it had not found me, it would not be thought. Thoughts have such shapes, as shadows do. If you consider a shadow, and imaginatively remove it from its host, in the shape of the shadow there would be an impression of that host, just as there is an impression of the scene projecting the shadow. Since you are similar to me, a thought that fits me would come pretty close to fitting you.
But at the moment, it's me. So I would say I am implicated in the thought; it has my shape, after all. But is Rödl saying I am implicitly "aware" of this? Or is he only saying something like I've said, that besides the "content" of the thought ? like the projected shadow ? there is something like a form of the thought, and that form is of me?
I'm not responding to your exact words, I'm responding to what I see as the construal of consciousness in it.
The construal of "I think" as a universal mental surveyor is an odd one. The mental image of it is that there's a bunch of sentential content bubbling up from/in the mind, some surveyor partitions it into A-OK and "dump it" - the latter of which is discarded somehow. The A-OK stuff gets labelled/willed as "I think", associated with the selfhood/subjectivity of that person, and that stuff can get asserted by that person. Call that account A.
Alternatively the "I think" is what takes mental/bodily gubbins and puts it in sentence form and filters it into A-OK and "dump it". Then the remainder of the first account holds of the sentence forms. Call that account B.
A and B have different qualitative characters, the A would be an experience similar to finding clarity in an encapsulation of an idea, B would be similar to having an idea or having a particularly arresting idea and discarding preformed bollocks at the same time.
The B would have an intentional object different from a sentence though, it's even hard to say the quale is affiliated with an intentional object [hide=*]{well it probably has one, just it's directed toward an awareness of one's forming mental states, it's some noematic thingybob}[/hide], as it's an experience of generating/forming a distinct sentence which could be thought and discarding others. The qualia associated with it are thus at best awareness of sentence fragments and fleeting perceptual impressions, being combined together into a more definite and unitary state.
So I think the latter form doesn't behave like the "I think" seems to, since "I think" has an implicit sentence placeholder which it would be directed toward, but the quale is associated with the genesis of what a state may be directed towards as part of the sentential content/sentence's emerging mental landscape.
I'm not sure the former construal makes much sense phenomenologically either, it's purportedly a state of universal meta-awareness of every part of one's state which has been flagged as assertible. I, personally, am just not aware of a cloud of sentences associated with environmental objects and my own thoughts. The majority of my meta-awareness is perceptual rather than sentential, and the parts of it which are linguistic are more broadly narrative than declarative. The thing which makes "I think" as a form of self consciousness implausible to me is its scope, and the image of awareness it has - I'm just not constantly experiencing sentences.
Though when I'm writing, like this post, there might be a quale similar to the fragments stitching themselves together. But I wouldn't call the state of awareness in it exclusively directed toward a sentence like "I think" construes, the overall directedness of the state is toward the expression of an idea rather than a particular sentence, the sentences are more like a vehicle for it [hide=**]{I say "it" like I know what it is before I write it, and that I've been expressing the same ideas throughout the post, and not getting off track or changing my conception under the hood through the whole post}[/hide]
Moreover, if "I think" was required for self consciousness, it would be odd, right? Because some animals are definitely aware of themselves but don't have language. And not all aspects of one's self awareness are sentence-y and intention-y to begin with. Like sensations, I'm aware of them but I'm not typically directing my consciousness toward them.
The easiest solution is that I am what I think, in that "I" am my thoughts. None of 1 to 4 apply.
I am neither external nor internal to my thoughts, nor accompany my thoughts, in that I am my thoughts. If I had no thoughts, "I" would not exist. "I" could not exist if I had no thoughts.
"I" am the thought that the oak tree is shedding its leaves.
Our subjective thoughts "I think p" cannot be about objective facts "p", as objective facts are unknowable, and are in Kant's terms, unknowable things-in-themselves. P, that an oak tree is shedding its leaves, exists in the mind as a thought, where "I" am the thought p.
This idea goes back to at least Aristotle's Material Cause, where, for example, if a table is made of wood, the wood is the Material cause of the table. The wood is neither internal nor external nor accompanies the table, but rather the table is wood.
Similarly, what is being thought about is the Material Cause of the thought. A thought is neither external nor internal nor accompanies what is being thought about, but rather the thought is what is being thought about.
I am what I think.
So then is the question "Can you think A and B at the same time?" rather than "Can you be A and B at the same time?"?
Quoting JA cat is thinking about the leaves falling off the tree as it playfully leaps up to attack them as they're falling. But I do not believe a cat is capable of thinking about thinking about the leaves falling off the tree. That's a different level of thought, of which cats are not capable. (I don't know terminology. Levels? Kinds? Types?)
Is this an example of nested thoughts? Is it possible to think ?I think that the oak tree is shedding its leaves. without thinking ?The oak tree is shedding its leaves.? The words are actually in the sentence, after all. The higher level thought cannot exist without the lower level thought. How would I know the difference between ?I think that the oak tree is shedding its leaves. and ?I think that the chair is broken. if I wasn't thinking the lower level thought within the higher level thought?
However, i also understand the difference. And i agree with Pat. Even if I can't think the higher level thought without the lower level though, I can think the lower level thought without the higher.
Schelling,1795, was right, in saying thinking is not my thinking , insofar as thinking, in and of itself, is the systemic modus operandi of human intelligence, whereas my thinking is merely to represent that system in some specific metaphysical form. Kant, on the other hand, left all that as a unbespoken superfluous necessity with respect to his brand new paradigm-shifting metaphysical doctrine incorporating pinpoint focus on abstract subjective conditions.
At the time, of course, there being no proper science regarding the matter, the natural philosophical progression centered around the relative emptiness of the Kantian transcendental subject, simply referenced as I, and upon which is constructed an arguably unjustified theoretical system, itself centered around the related Cartesian cogito.
. Now to these conceptions relate four paralogisms of a transcendental psychology, which is falsely held to be a science of pure reason, touching the nature of our thinking being. We can, however, lay at the foundation of this science nothing but the simple and in itself perfectly contentless representation I which cannot even be called a conception, but merely a consciousness which accompanies all conceptions. By this I, or He, or It, who or which thinks, nothing more is represented than a transcendental subject of thought = x, which is cognized only by means of the thoughts that are its predicates, and of which, apart from these, we cannot form the least conception . (A346/B404)
From there its an easy jump to absolute idealism as a logical consequence, insofar as the concept-which-isnt-a-concept, transcendental subject, doesnt help us with what we really want to know.
But then, its reallyreallyREALLY hard to substitute an allegedly phantasmic transcendental subject, with a (gaspsputterchoke) ..phenomenological spirit.
Anyway, typically me, Ive said more than the simple thanks for the info obliged.
As you say:
Quoting Patterner
The lower level thought is "the oak tree is shedding its leaves". Let A be "the oak tree" and let B be "is shedding its leaves"
Then yes, one can think A and B at the same time.
Because if you only thought A, "the oak tree", then you couldn't have the thought "the oak tree is shedding its leaves", and if you only thought B, "is shedding its leaves", then also you couldn't have the thought "the oak tree is shedding its leaves".
To have the thought "the oak tree is shedding its leaves" requires thinking about not only "the oak tree" but also "is shedding its leaves" at the same time.
And then there's the added "I think..." Which raises it to a different (what I'm calling) level. Whereas "the oak tree is shedding its leaves" is a combination of two lower level thoughts.
But you have said that "the oak tree is shedding its leaves" is the lower level thought.
Quoting Patterner
Sure, insects like an ant. They can think, but I'm pretty sure one has never realized its an 'I'. Thinking does not presume one has ever thought of the self. The phrase is not "think, therefore attempt X for goal" The phrase is "I think, therefore I am". It is the proof of the self which can only be done by the self if that self exists.
Quoting T Clark
Right, I'd say that was the very question up for discussion, or one of them, at any rate. I was trying to lay out some possibilities about the "I think" -- is it meant to be an experience? a thought in addition to whatever I'm thinking about p? an unexperienced structure? another way of naming or describing self-consciousness? etc. And one of the problems of conceiving the "I think" as a new thought is precisely the one of infinite regress.
See @fdrake's post.
Quoting Philosophim
Quoting Patterner
Quoting fdrake
This is a question that I doubt would even have occurred to Kant, given his era's primitive understanding of animals. I'm not sure what we should say about non-human "thinking things." Certainly it could represent a limit case about self-consciousness. For now, I want to resist the temptation to divvy up "think" in terms of whether only humans can do it. If we need that discrimination later on, we can double back to it.
Quoting Patterner
Yes, if "I think p" is indeed meant to be present to consciousness at all times that "p" is thought.
Quoting fdrake
Good, that's clear. These are different accounts of when thought becomes propositional, if I understand you. And yes, the respective qualia would be different.
Quoting fdrake
This is one of the points that has come up quite quickly in this discussion. Is that what Kant meant? When Rödl considers "I think p", does he understand the thinking to begin with the sentential formation of p? How plausible is that?
Quoting fdrake
That's my experience as well, especially if you add in "memories". This could point us toward deciding that whole "'I think' is ubiquitous" thing is misguided. Or, we could accept B as the best account of when the "I think" emerges.
Quoting fdrake
Another way of forming the same question. Some philosophers will object that ideas don't occur separated from sentences. I think they can.
Quoting RussellA
Do the quotes around "I" mean that there is literally no self without thoughts, or only that the "I" of philosophy, so to speak -- the self-conscious cogito -- is constructed from our thoughts? And same issue here, of course: "thoughts" as sentential, or more broadly as images, perceptions, etc.?
Quoting Mww
I bolded Kant's phrase, above, because it focuses on what we'd like to understand better -- just what the heck does it mean for consciousness to "accompany" something? Would we know it when it happened? As a thesis, can it be falsified by experience?
As I see it, there could be no self without thoughts. The self doesn't have thoughts, the self is the thoughts that the self has.
If you had no thoughts, would it be possible for you to have a self?
How could you express your self without thoughts?
As regards the word "constructed", in the same way that a wooden table is constructed of wood, the self is constructed of thoughts. The self is neither external to, internal to or accompanies thoughts, but rather the self is the thoughts that the self has.
The question was whether it is possible to think about two things at the same time.
Quoting Patterner
The compound lower level thought "the oak tree is shedding its leaves" shows that it is possible to think about two things at the same time, "the oak tree" and "is shedding its leaves"
Up to quibbling on the concept of separateness I agree.
I agree.
And I disagree with myself. :rofl: To wit:Quoting PatternerI've literally never thought about these things before, so I don't have a solid position. I came to a new conclusion while posting, then didn't proofread very well. I had just said (what I called) nested thoughts means I am thinking ?The oak tree is shedding its leaves. as I am thinking ?I think that the oak tree is shedding its leaves. Else I wouldn't know what I was thinking. (Can't think about nothing. [Well, not in this sense.])
I recently said (Janus and/or Meta?) something along the lines of all this. Maybe compound thoughts of the same level, and nested thoughts of different levels, can exist if one is built upon the other, but not if there is no connection. But is even that correct? Am I thinking about leaves falling from the tree and the height of the Empire State Building when I say, 'The leaves are falling from the tree, and, when you include the antenna, the Empire State Building is 1,454 feet (443.2 m) tall"?
Depends on what you want consciousness to represent. Simply put, I suppose, given that consciousness is a relative state of being conscious, and given it is necessary to be fully conscious to conceive anything at all, we just say one accompanies the other, insofar as the latter would be impossible without the former.
Im guessing here, but I nevertheless doubt any decent PhD would admit to employing a mere figure of speech on its own, without first having given a sufficient exposition of the terms used, and their relation to each other. After having done that .all 700-odd pages of it ..Kant might have figured the average academic, the target of record for his thesis after all, would just accept the nomenclature.
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Quoting J
As a thesis, speculative metaphysics cant be falsified at all, without altering the parameters upon which it rests. Course, neither can it be proved from experience.
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Quoting J
Oh, I did, but Im far under that level, so .
Possibly yes.
When thinking about "The leaves are falling from the tree" you are thinking about two things connected by the common thought of leaves, allowing you to think about them both at the same time.
When thinking about "the leaves are falling from the tree and the Empire States Building is 443.2 m tall", you are thinking about two things connected by the common thought of height, also allowing you to think about them both at the same time.
There are many different things we can think about at the same time, such as the speed of my car and how many pedestrians are on the road, the price of a restaurant meal and when I was last paid, writing a post knowing that dinner is waiting on the table, etc.
So what's the relationship between thought and language? I've often found myself confused on that topic when reading philosophy, as if there's a basic assumption of thought being inherently linguistic? I can't find a good approach to this thread because of this confusion.
To my mind, there's this "stream of consciousness". When we think of "thought", I think we think abstract from this stream of consciousness and we structure and order it in some way. And language helps with this because sentences are artifacts that spring from this and have a fixed form, as opposed to the flow. But language (as in sentence-forming) isn't the only thing that's fixed in a way to help us structure our stream of consciousness, as is apparent to me when I build a lego model or solve a sudoku (as no words accompany this kind of activity; my stream of consciousness is "silent").
To me, language is an extra that may or may not accompany thought - this is my experience. But to "pin down" a thought I need language. Language fixes a thought with a sentence, and then you can think the sentence and think more complex thoughts, because you can store the bundle (by repetition) while bypassing the sentence. Maybe. So some thoughts we have may well be impossible without language, while still not being associated with a particular sentence.
But with self consciousness being rather basic, I have no problem with ascribing non-linguistic thought to animals without language. But I'm unsure if we disagree about anything, or if I just have a broader intuitive concept of what makes a thought.
I get even more of a head ache when I remember that "p" in "I think p" is likely for "proposition"... I've left that aside for now, deliberately. Because, when I make a post like this, I'm always insecure about my sentences representing my thoughts (or my thoughts being stable to begin with).
Ok, my example wasn't good enough to make my point.
"The leaves are falling from the tree, and the temperature of the surface of the Earth's core is estimated to be around 9,800°F/5,430°C."
Am I able to think of these two entirely unrelated things at the same time? I would think so, or anything might come out of my mouth. If so, then any thoughts can be thought at the same time. They don't have to be related, or one built upon the other
Quoting J
There's a word I've only become aware of recently 'ipseity'. It means 'having a sense of self'. It seems pretty straightforward that as far as self-aware beings are concerned, ipseity in the sense of the differentiation between self and other, me and not-me, is fundamental, as noted. In simple organisms, I think it operates without any conscious sense or self-awareness as such. Perhaps higher animals, and certainly in humans, the self becomes self-aware. But whether that sense constitutes an 'experience' is moot - I would say not. I would say it signifies the capacity for experience. Unconscious, anaesthetized or asleep, that sense of self falls into abeyance - there is no self-awareness, although in sleep the parasympathetic nervous system maintains a low level of self-awareness sufficient to rouse the subject if needed. In any case, when anaesthetised, (and leaving aside the perplexing cases of near death experience where subjects report seeing their body from the outside) there is no experience nor the capacity for it. But the conscious state is not so much an experience, as the medium of experience. //As per your #3//
Pat is correct. I know this isn't what you're after, but...
The underlying issue is an historical failure to draw and maintain the distinction between thought and thinking about thought.
If one thinks about the leaves falling from the trees, then they're thinking about leaves and trees. If one thinks about the fact that they're thinking about the leaves falling from the trees, then they're thinking about their own thoughts. Those two examples are directed at very different things. The former is of the sort of thought that does not require a language user for it's formation. The latter is the sort of thought that does, for it is thinking about thought, and thinking about one's own thoughts is something that can only be done after they are picked out of the world to the exclusion of all else, via naming and descriptive practices(language use).
"I think" is always metacognitive. The thought to which "I think" is prefixed is not always.
Sure it is, or could be. If I thought this had a cut-and-dried answer, I wouldn't be bothering y'all with it. All opinions are welcome. So, same question to you as to @Banno, earlier: If Pat is correct, does that mean that my #4 is the right response?
I know these terms from Husserl. I'll read it and get back to you, thanks.
OK, but we don't want to beg the question that it is speculative metaphysics. On one construal, we're supposed to be able to actually experience the "I think" as an accompaniment or component of our thoughts. In that case, I would say that's an empirical question that could be falsified. Especially if the construal claims that we must experience it.
I didn't realize the intent of this thread was to discuss the topic only in relation to Rödl's book.
It's pretty unclear what this would amount to.
The distinction is easy to display. "The grass is green" can be an assertion, a command or a question, depending on context. The name given to the distinction between these three utterances is illocutionary force. Three utterances can have the same propositional content and yet have different illocutionary forces.
Seems odd to deny this.
In the Frege thread some folk seemed to have a different sort of force in mind, going by the name "assertoric force", but it remained very unclear whether, and how, this was different from illocutionary force. It was as if folk were under the misapprehension that assertoric force was somehow prior to the other illocutionary forces, such that they were dependent on or derived from some sort of truth value.
But there seems no reason to give precedence to one of the illocutionary forces over the others, and good reason not to. In the end, force just classifies what we are doing with an utterance, and prioritising assertion appears to be mere chauvinism.
Quoting J
But one can question P without stating P. Kinda that point of asking a question.
Quoting J
No. That's why we have the distinction between first person and second person and third person.
Quoting J
"p" sets out a state of affairs, and "I judge that [think/believe/propose etc.] p"sets out an attitude towards that state of affairs. What's the issue?
Something here bothers you, but it remains unclear what. So I'm taking this thread as your articulating what it is you find troublesome. If you can see some error or lack of clarity in what I've said, it might help.
But it seems to me that Kimhi and Rödl are yet another instance of misleading phenomenological analysis.
For my part, this issue boils down to what one interprets by the term thought.
If one holds that cognizance (a fancier way of saying awareness) is in itself a form of thought, then there can be no apprehension of p in the absence of thinking p. For one must cognize p in order to in any way apprehend it. And, since cognizance is here taken to be one form of thought, one must then think p in order to apprehend it.
And, in this interpretation, it is possible that one simultaneously has a meta-cognizance of cognizing that which one immediately apprehends, say, though ones physiological senses. In other words, it is possible that one can hold an awareness of being aware. Conversely, some might at least at times be aware without being aware of so being.
Apropos, this first interpretation can be in harmony with the more ancient understanding of intellect (one in keeping with the original Latin): namely, that of the intellect being the faculty of first-person understanding via which one understands anything which is other (be this other a concept or a concrete reality). Ones understanding of a concept (say, the concept of biological evolution) will always be necessarily but insufficiently contingent on the depth, or else nonquantitative magnitude, of ones ready occurring body of first-person understanding. Otherwise exemplified, an adult human holds the potential to thereby understand what (the concept of) a mathematical variable is, but neither can a human infant nor an adult dog ever understand what a mathematical variable is, and this irrespective of how much they come to experience. This, in short, due to their own intellect being far smaller as both faculty and body of content by comparison to that of a typical adult humans. Hence, if understanding too is deemed to be an aspect of thought, then here too there can be no apprehension of p in the complete absence of an understanding of pand, thereby, in the absence of thought of p. (Interesting to me, in ancient interpretations, there also at times seems to be an equivalency between understanding and knowing. One cannot know that which one does not understand, nor can one understand something without knowing that which is understood. This being a knowledge other than that of JTB.)
Yet, in stark difference to all the aforementioned, wherever thought is interpreted to be the representation created in the mind without the use of one's faculties of vision, sound, smell, touch, or taste then there certainly will be times when one apprehends p without in any way thinking p. For instance, at any given time, one will always apprehend things in ones peripheral vision which one in no way thinks about (this when thought is interpreted as being representations created in the mind which one can then in any way manipulate at will).
In this latter interpretation of thought, (4) will be valid.
But when considering the former interpretation of thought, a hybrid between (1) and (3) might likely be upheld. Maybe as follows: You misunderstand. Thoughtwhen understood to necessarily consist of both cognizance, i.e. awareness, and understandingis a precondition for any thought in the sense of representation created in the mind. Hence, the I think when interpreted to mean I am aware (of) is a condition for anything one might think of in the latter sense.
But then, so construing would endow even bacteria with the reality of being a first-person thinking creaturethis IFF bacteria happen to be in any way aware (such as of what is and is not food, and how these differentiate from predators)for then they too will hold some form of, acknowledgedly miniscule, cognizance and understanding.
Again, the issue is contingent on what one interprets the term thought to signify.
No chance of that; you asked about a statement made from a thesis concerning pure speculative reason, which couldnt be anything other than metaphysical, and I answered from the same thesis.
If youd asked something similar, mere accompaniment in general, but without specifying Kantian authorship by the bolding of it, Id agree.
Good way of putting it. This is a quintessentially philosophical experience: something is bothering me, for all the evident clarity, and I'm trying to put my finger on it. Maybe I can construct some Rodelian replies to your laying out of the "standard model." Something to do during the massive snowstorm we're about to have . . .
Again, I'm not sure this is right. Is the thesis "The 'I think' accompanies all our thoughts"? I was trying to include, in my possible replies to Pat, the possibility that this is meant as a report about experience, not a metaphysical position. We may not find that very promising, but we should at least be able to say why. In other words, let's be completely clear that the thesis of the ubiquity of the "I think" is metaphysical, that no one's experience can discredit it.
Ahhhh .now I understand you better.
Another reason I chose #3: thought is not an experience, its a function, represented by I think.
I tend to agree, based on the interesting responses to the OP. The key cleavage seems to be whether thought is meant to be essentially sentential or propositional, as opposed to "representational". As usual with philosophical terms, there's no dictionary we can consult about this, and usage differs, so we have to make our best choices for clarity as we go along.
Some thoughts in considering this:
Were thought essentially propositional, a person who for example ponders and arrives at conclusions solely via use of mental images (and, hence, not via use of any internal monologue) would then not be engaging in any thought. Which seems quite odd to affirm as far as commonsense understandings of thinking go. Or are propositions meant to be understood as sometimes being languageless? (Sentences certainly cant be). If so, then plenty of non-human animals give all indications of using propositions all the time. But this doesnt seem right either.
On the other hand, were thought to be essentially representational, then the faculty of understanding could not be an integral aspect of the faculty of thoughtthis even if understanding will always accompany thought. This will be so because, while one can of course understand representations, understandings will not of themselves be representations of anything. And, hence, will not of themselves then be thoughts.
But in either of these two scenarios regarding what thought is taken to essentially be, many if not most will at least at times be able to hold an awareness of some thought p without thinking I think p (without either forming a proposition regarding p or else forming a mental representation of p that is thereby other than p).
As one example: Suppose a person is daydreaming of p, and thereby holds an awareness of thought p. Doing so neither requires that the person forms a proposition regarding p nor that the person forms a representation of the p they are aware of.
Because of all this, Ill yet maintain that for I think to be interpreted as accompanying all thoughts, the thinking which the I think addresses must be other than either propositional or representational.
:100:
Let p = the thought that "the oak tree is shedding its leaves".
When I think, it must be about something, as all thoughts must be about something.
"I think" necessitates a self that is conscious of thinking. "I" is synonymous with the self.
Possibility one = p is external to the self, internal to the self but not a part of the self or accompanies the self. If this were the case, the self would have no way of knowing about p.
Possibility two = p is part of the self. If this were the case, the self is the thoughts it has.
In other words, I am my thoughts. This solution avoids the infinite regress of the Homunculus problem.
It aint easy, is it. The thing everyone does, what is impossible that they not do .and nobody knows what it is theyre doing.
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Quoting J
Disclaimer: none of the following is meant to be taken as truth, none meant to be taken as proven or even provable. It is meant as an aid to your exploration from the satisfaction of my own.
Why not just a simple cause/effect relation? To think of something presupposes its possibility; to be affected by something, to perceive it, presupposes its necessity.
Why isnt the p/p dualism backwards? Objectivity is the thing given to sensibility, whatever it is, it is that thing, so should be denominated as p. What I think about is nothing more than the affect that thing has on my senses, the affect cannot possibly be identical to the (p) thing itself, so can justifiably be denominated p, which in turn is referred to as representation of p. Shouldnt it be the case that objectivity is p, subjectivity being how I am affected by p, which would be thought by me, post hoc ergo propter hoc, as p.
How does the p/p signification account for my mistakes? Given p objectively, but I think the affect of p as something completely unrelated to p, how can I say I thought p? While it must be the case I thought something, it is not the case the something I thought held a relation to the objectively given p, and the p/p dualism fails.
P stands for some undetermined something. What I think, any thought of mine, must necessarily be determined, otherwise I wouldnt have that thought. There is no such thing as an empty thought, a thought having no object of its own, but that is not sufficient in itself, to posit that all thoughts correspond to given things. Therefore, objectively given p does not necessarily belong to subjectively thought p.
If the p/p dualism is invalid by thought, it may still be valid for that which is not thought. For any objectively given p to be represented, such p must undergo that by which representation is possible, yet outside that faculty by which I think, and, it must occur with immediacy, for otherwise there is no justification for having been affected by the objectively given p in the first place.
For any objectively given p, there is an intuition which represents the affect of p on the sensory apparatuses, such affect called sensation, the mode of which accords with particular intrinsic physiologies, and can be denominated as p. Herein the objectively given p is directly related, by intuition, to its representation, called phenomenon, and the p/p dualism holds without the possibility of contradiction, and simultaneously without having thought anything.
The question of how objectivity (p) relates to subjectivity (It is I who thinks p), is invalid, for two reasons. First, objectivity (p) is in fact objectivity p, and secondly, (it is I who thinks p) is reducible to (it is I who thinks), insofar as there is no necessity whatsoever for the objectively given p to be found in that which I think about, for as it is just as possible that I think of that which can never be objectively given.
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What of the notion that the objectivity p is just meant to indicate the object of my thinking? Therein is mere redundancy, in that the objectivity p is just the same as the thought p, there is no objectivity p of my thoughts, unless I think p. Herein the relation between the objectivity p and the subjectivity (it is I who thinks p), is subsumed under the principle of identity, whereas the above, objectivity therein being empirically conditioned, is subsumed under the principle of cause and effect.
Identity being the legitimate principle, because it is necessarily the case no thought is in error. It is impossible to think something then determine there was not that thought of that very something. Error related to thought, and cognition in general, falls under the auspices of judgement.
Or not. Either way .Happy exploring!!!
For instance, "if an oak tree is shedding its leaves, then the ground underneath will be covered with leaves" is a form of P -> Q. I believe that P -> Q even if I'm not aware of the tree. It's not like the leaves materialize in front of me (or at least, that's not how I impinge it to work) when I look out the window. But I'm unable to formulate this idea in my mind without thinking about it.
There are logic puzzles where you have to have knowledge of what other actors know in order to solve the puzzle. In this case, knowledge of thoughts is necessary in order to solve the puzzle, so I think the "I think" is actually sort of its own entity. I suppose in the case where I am working through an abstract proof on my own, then there really is no functional difference between "P" and "I think P", since there is nothing going on in this proof outside my own mind. But the distinction becomes important if I believe that there are true propositions that I am unaware of.
This is one of Rödl's key points.
Quoting RussellA
I don't follow this. Can you say more? Why couldn't the self have knowledge of something external to it?
Lets start with an important disambiguation, which is going to affect everything from Rödls self-consciousness to the standard Fregean model of force and content.
I think p can be understood and used in two distinct ways:
1. I think ?p.
2. I think that p is the case.
Filling it in:
1. I think, ?Youve left your book in my car.
2. I think that youve left your book in my car.
1 is about an act or occurrence of thinking. Its a report about something that has happened in my mind. It carries no commitment to the truth or affirmation of the content of the thought in question. Similar constructions would be: I had the thought that Cindy was tired, Right now Im thinking, ?The dog is on the log. This version of I think foregrounds the thought, the act of thinking. The person addressed isnt being asked to agree with whether Cindy was tired, or the location of the dog. Rather, an appropriate response would be something like, Oh, so thats what youre thinking.
2 is an affirmation in the Fregean sense. We can go so far as to say that, taken in this sense, its synonymous with I judge p or I affirm p. By reporting my thought that Cindy was tired, I mean to additionally report that I believed this thought to be true. Similar constructions would be: Q. Did Washington cross the Delaware? A. I think so.; I think you lost this; I think that I see a wren. We can note that, in ordinary usage, I think so can be a somewhat diluted form of affirmation, but its an affirmation nonetheless; it expresses the speakers agreement with p.
Now we can ask, when philosophers contrast p with I think p, which usage do they mean, 1 or 2? This will vary case by case. But for idealists/monists like Kimhi and Rödl, I believe that they mean to dissolve the distinction between 1 and 2. They want to say that the very act of thinking always affirms something (though neither likes to use that language). And this is a major reason why they question Frege: There is no such thing, for them, as a thought of p that is only a report of a mental event which in turn contains a propositional content.
This sounds outrageous and wrong. But before I go any further, I invite comment on the above. Is it reasonably clear?
Quoting Mww
Are you suggesting we call "the thing given to sensibility" -- that is, the object we encounter -- p? So p doesn't stand for a proposition any more, on this usage, but names an object? And then "p" would be the representation (or thought) of that object p? If I've got this right, it seems reasonable enough except that traditionally p is used to refer to a proposition, not an object. Also, if "p" is any sort of representation, don't we still need a 3rd term to use for actual propositions? When you say, "What I think about is nothing more than the effect that thing has on my senses," you close the door on the idea of propositional content, it seems to me. Which may be what you intended, but it's an unusual construal, unless you're limiting the discussion to objects of perception.
Im of course on board in upholding that language is extremely important (crucial in this sense) to the uniqueness of human intelligence. But I dont deem it necessary (essential in this sense). I wasnt there when it happened, but Einsteins reported epiphany about the speed of light was reputedly non-verbal, instead being strictly imaginative. Another renowned example is that of Archimedes eureka moment. I interpret these, and many other, examples to be instances of non-verbal thought - with a great deal of intelligence to boot. For those who uphold the possibility of a perennial philosophy or some such, the same might be said for at least some peoples epiphanies regarding the nature of being: these being non-verbal insights (which might provide profound understandings that are difficult, if at all possible, to put into propositional format in any cogent, or else non-poetic, way). These examples of non-verbal thought then entail the occurrence of non-propositional thought (unless one wants to affirm such a thing as languageless propositions). Hence, while I deem language vastly important to intellect, I dont deem intellect (or thoughts for that matter) to necessarily be dependent on language use.
And yes, though a bit off topic, Im in full agreement with the Cosmos consisting of Heraclitean or else Stoic Logos - which we are embedded in. Unlike Aristotles dichotomy of humans as the rational animal versus non-human animals all being non-rational, however, I instead interpret humans as being the current zenith of comprehension regarding the Cosmos, and hence of the Cosmoss rational order. Such that there is a quite significant partition, or else chasm, between the human intellect and the intellects of all other known life forms. Yet this I appraise as nevertheless being an aspect of a gradated and ever evolving spectrum, or cline, in regard to comprehension-ability (an ability which, again, language tremendously benefits) - this rather than any kind of metaphysical divide between humans and all other life forms. Otherwise expressed, they too are aware subjects that are part and parcel of the Cosmoss Logos and which likewise behave via its properties, but they lack our human ability to comprehend it (imperfect as our human comprehension nevertheless is).
I understand that, but I reject that we think in propositions, which makes explicit subjectivity in the form (it is I who thinks p), is absurd. If such is the case, then p suffers the same end.
I think about things; I dont think p.
Not sure I got any more to contribute.
Thought could be any of the three, depending upon the sort/kind/type/species of thought under consideration. So, the 'cleavage' is not so much 'oppositional' in nature so much as comparative. They all consist entirely of correlations drawn between different things. Although, I find notions of thought being essentially 'representational' a bit more muddled than sentential or propositional thought. Thought is not 'essentially' any of those though, and that is the point here. It is 'essentially' correlational. That is, it all consists of correlations drawn between different things. All of it, not just some of it. Some is propositional(propositions are part of the content). Some is sentential(though the difference escapes me - sentences are part of the content). Some, I suppose, may be described well enough as "representational", although I'm not privy to any such notion.
Quoting J
Cool.
Well, if it is the case than not all human thought can be accurately characterized as being two thoughts, p and "I think p" - whether the "I think" is spoken or unspoken - then yes, it cannot be the case that all human thought is both(or two thoughts) p and I think p. So, #4 is 'right' in some way/sense of being right.
Pat is right to deny that that is always the case. However, some of the other answers are also correct, depending upon the specific candidate of thought under consideration.
However, this whole thread just glosses over the underlying issue. Kant did not draw the distinction between thought/thinking and thinking about thought/thinking. Rödi just assumes and further reinforces that error.
There is more than one relationship between p and I think p. It is rather obvious that the "I think" portion is superfluous in nearly the same sense that "I believe" is. It adds nothing meaningful to stating/asserting "P". I would further question your recent addition that truth is not presupposed in each and every use of "I think". In other words 'p', 'I think p', and "I think 'p'" all presuppose truth. The alternative is to deny one's own utterance. That would be to state "P but P is not true", or 'I think P, but P is not true', or "I think 'p', but I'm not thinking 'p'. Of course, there is also yet another sense of "I think" that expresses a significant amount of uncertainty regarding p. So, there's that as well.
:smile:
Sometimes we're thinking about propositions, utterances, statements, assertions, etc. Those are things too!
:wink:
Hi M!
Pat is correct.
Quoting J
Sometimes people make self-conscious judgments and sometimes they make un-self-conscious judgments. If you want to call that a proof, then sure, it has been "proved" wrong. But note well that, unlike every other option, #4 is hypothetical.
Quoting J
And what is that supposed to mean? "I think" is a self-conscious, intentional act. Does Rödl think people engage in self-conscious, intentional acts un-self-consciously and unintentionally? Do they think "I think" without realizing that they think "I think"?
I think developmental considerations often give the lie to these theories. When a child runs up to a puppy to pet it, upon recognizing a puppy they are not saying to themselves excitedly, "I think puppy! I think puppy!" This seems fairly uncontroversial.
The error that Kimhi and apparently Rödl make is both serious and uncommon, and I don't really see why anyone would fall into this pit. Is there some boogeyman they are trying to avoid that gets them into the pit where all thinking is self-conscious thinking? It seems like you were leaning heavily on Kant's authority saying that thinking is always self-conscious. Now that we know Rödl misled you regarding Kant, the premise of your thread is undercut. The bizarre claim that all thinking is self-conscious is in desperate need of support.
Quoting J
I take it that you are Pat. Maybe you should try writing to Rödl. :grin:
It is, though I wouldn't lean too heavily on the niceties of phrasing. There are just too many possibilities and too many shades of meaning.
Also, I'm not sure the first-person is all that important to the distinction being drawn. We talk about other people's mental events, just as we talk about other people's affirmations and claims and all that. "Judy thought you had gone home." "Judy thinks you should go home."
I guess the biggest question is how you intend to handle the mental events side. Space of reasons or space of causes?
"Judy thought you had left because she heard the front door" as causal: "If Judy had not heard the front door, she wouldn't have thought you had left"; or as not: "If Judy had not heard the front door, she would have had no reason to think you'd left." ? The trouble with the second is that it should really have "and so she didn't" at the end, but it's pretty hard to justify. People think all kinds of stuff, or fail to.
Does any of that matter for the theory?
p and "I think p"
An interesting post, but I am getting unclear about the meaning of p.
Suppose p = "the oak tree is shedding its leaves".
From page 1, Pat said "I think p and am not aware of thinking "I think p""
Therefore, the relation must be between "I think p" and "I think "I think p"", not the relation between "I think p" and p.
The relation between "I think p" and p is the relation between "I think the oak tree is shedding its leaves" and "the oak tree is shedding its leaves", which is not what the OP is about.
Am I right in thinking that p = "the oak tree is shedding its leaves"?
Am I oversimplifying your conundrum? Is it not because the human processes of reflection and perception are structured and conditioned by language, and therefore grammatic? That is, the thinking cannot be isolated from the subject thinking, without evoking the uneasiness of the bad logic. If there were no grammar conditioning how we think in the first place, we would look at oak tree shedding leaves without separation of oak tree and perceiver. It would just be--without the words or concepts--oak tree shedding. There would be no subject/object distinction, therefore no I superimposed into the event.
I agree that we cannot think without the I think at the very least subtly implied or lurking in the shadows of thought, but I do not think that reflects the ultimate reality. It is like a virtually permanent glitch we must endure with the advantages of having a Mind beyond our animal consciousness or, the pure untainted aware-ing of our senses and drives within nature.
Isn't it a tautology? When you say P, it already implies you think P.
If so, why ask the question?
Hey you!!! As always, good to read your opinions. Respect, sincerely, and lots.
Quoting creativesoul
Ahhh, see? We agree on that, among other things. Objective linguistic assemblages are objects as much as dump trucks and phosporus ions. While its true enough we do think about propositions, and we do necessarily express ourselves by means of them, it remains they are not the content of our thoughts as such.
(All I just wrote never did exist in my head as it appears on this page; all I just wrote explaining what didn't happen, didnt happen)
For those ps not mine, but are mere perceptions of mine, those expressions of other subjects, it is the proposition that appears to me, but it is only the relation of the content of that proposition, in juxtaposition to my comprehension, that I call my thinking.
If I am informed the oak tree is loosing its leaves, my thinking is entirely concerned with whether or not it is comprehensible that this (leaves), can happen (fall off), to that (oak tree).
Try it: image youre told the needles are falling off the pine tree.
What never happens, given this, and any congruent occassion, not once and not even in part, is the manifold of conceptions assembled into the very same proposition, however abstract a form it must have, that appeared to my senses. I never think the leaves are falling from the oak tree, even while I express my agreement with the originating information, with an utterance of my own.
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Quoting creativesoul
For years now, since our mutual dialectical Day One, this has been the major point of total agreement, as far as Im concerned. And while there remains a disparity between what we each think those correlations are, it is very good that we agree on the necessity of them, as the ground of all else which follows.
Good. It only becomes a cleavage if we find that some philosopher, in putting forward the theory that the "I think" is ubiquitous, is depending on one or the other of these construals of "think."
Quoting creativesoul
Say more about that? Can you give an example of a thought-candidate that would make one of the other answers also correct?
Quoting creativesoul
No, it's the opposite. Here's what I wrote in the OP, with relevant passages bolded:
Quoting J
Both Rödl and Kant agree with you that these do not represent two thoughts.
Quoting creativesoul
See my attempt to disambiguate these. To report that I have a thought p is not to claim truth for it, at least according to the "standard model."
Right. The disambiguation between the senses of "I think" applies equally well to "you think" and "she thinks."
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Good question. My allegiance, apart from this particular theory, is usually with reasons rather than causes. I haven't worked it out here yet at all. Put a pin in it!
p = "The oak tree is shedding its leaves."
q = "I think, 'The oak tree is shedding its leaves' = "I think p"
So Pat is saying, "I think p but I am not aware of thinking q."
Now, you're wanting to add a new relation -- a new reflexivity:
r = "I think 'I think p'" = "I think q"
That's the move I don't understand. Can you say why this next level of reflexivity is needed to make the situation clear? When does r arise for Pat?
Sure. I believe someone who agreed that the "I think" is ubiquitous could go either way on whether there was more to reality than this relation -- whether the "I think" constitutes reality or only reflects or discovers it in some way.
Nearly.
Let "p" = "I think that the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall"
When I say p, when I say "I think that the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall", this means that "I think that the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall."
When I think p, when I think "I think that the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall", this has two different meanings.
Meaning one = "I think that the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall". A tautology, as you say.
Meaning two = "I think about my thought that the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall."
In ordinary language, "I think about my thought that the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall" means "I think that the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall, but I am not sure"
In metaphysics, "I think about my thought leads to an infinite regress, so cannot be valid.
It becomes difficult to separate metaphysics from ordinary language.
If language is expression of thought, then every statement and proposition you make must be based on "I think" even if you didn't say it out loud.
As you say, when I say "Paris is crowded", this infers that I must think that Paris is crowded.
The problem arises with the word "think".
When I say "I think", does this also infer that I must think that I think?
And if so, what does this metaphysically mean?
I would put my money on:
p = Pat thinks that the oak tree is shedding its leaves
I think p = Pat thinks about her thought that the oak tree is shedding its leaves
Pat thinks about her thought has two meanings:
Meaning one = linguistic, which makes sense.
Meaning two = metaphysical, which gets philosophical. How can one thought think about another thought?
I don't think you can think about your thinking. Thinking has objects and it is about something. When you say when you think about your thinking, which is already thinking, it sounds vague and meaningless, why one would think about thinking, when one is already thinking. But most of all, I am not sure if thought can think about thinking itself.
Reason can reason about itself because reason has capability of reflection. But does thinking has ability to reflect into itself? The only example of thought thinks about itself could be asking why one is thinking about something. But then at the state, thought becomes reasoning looking for ground for the reason why one was thinking something.
Yes, when you are thinking about your think about something, at that stage, your thinking becomes reasoning, not thinking anymore. I am not sure if this makes sense. Perhaps you could comment on the point?
Quoting RussellA
What do you mean by metaphysically here?
However, when you say "I think Paris is crowded," you can be saying either of two things. You can be saying, "I find myself thinking the thought, 'Paris is crowded'. Hmm, wonder if that's true." (In which case we'd be more likely to punctuate your statement as "I think, 'Paris is crowded'."). Or you can be saying, "I do in fact think (believe) Paris is crowded." The first instance foregrounds the thought, the fact of thinking; the second focuses on the content of the thought. Both are pretty common usages, I would say. We often report a thought qua thought, as an interesting mental event.
The first could be an Illocutionary Act, perhaps "expressive of doubt" (Wikipedia - Illocutionary Act)
The second could be an Illocutionary Force, with the intention that the listener doesn't take their next holiday in Paris.
Both these are linguistic aspects.
Indeed! He goes on to list the benefits that are generally agreed to accrue if we think in terms of force and content:
But:
So if this is true, Rödl has got to show not merely that the force/content distinction is an incorrect analysis of how propositions work. He also has to make the case that the distinction is literally nonsensical, that there is a deep basic confusion on Frege's part in the way he divides up the conceptual territory involved here.
Why in the world would Rödl think this? He believes that Fregean logic can't make sense of self-conscious thought -- that we need a clearer way to describe what is actually happening when a person thinks.
And by "Fregean thought," he of course means a proposition. A real cliff-hanger, more to follow . . . I'll let you cool down ! :smile:
But no one in this thread has any real idea why one would hold that thought is necessarily self-conscious, including yourself. :grimace:
It's like if I started a thread which simply assumed that 2+2=5, and then everyone in the thread keeps diving out of the way as the elephant in the room shifts about.
See how crazy that thread is? What makes it crazy? The absence of some argument in favor of the idea that 2+2=5. Outlandish theses must be argued, not indoctrinated.
So we could be talking about the mental event "thought that Paris is crowded" or the proposition "Paris is crowded". We can assert things about a mental event that we couldn't assert about a proposition, including something like, "I had Thought X come into my mind but I don't understand the proposition it states." We couldn't say (and mean it), "I'm asserting X (the proposition) but I don't understand it."
Thinking p requires thinking p. No one disputes this. The question of the OP is whether thinking p requires self-consciously thinking p; whether it requires thinking "I think p."
It is fairly clear that it doesn't, and @J has yet to offer arguments for why it would. The only argument I have seen is an argument from authority from Kant, and yet the Kantians on TPF don't find the thesis in Kant.
Typically Kantian, and perhaps not an exact iteration, the so-called thesis is in B407-413, concluded as yielding nothing, which is tantamount in Kant-speak to representing that which reason is inclined to ask when it doesnt control itself.
Just sayin .
He seems to think that the second sentence follows from the first. It's not obvious how.
A thought can be understood as a force and a content. That is demonstrably so.
And what is thought may be isolated from the act of thinking it. Quentin said that Pat thought the Oak was shedding, but it was actually the Elm next to it that was dropping leaves. But if the thought cannot be isolated from the act of thinking, then in thinking that Pat thought the Oak was shedding Quentin would be thinking that the Oak was shedding. But here Quentin thinks the elm is shedding, not the oak.
It might be supposed that one can object that what Quentin thought was not that the oak was shedding, but that Pat thought the oak was shedding. But if we cannot isolate the thought from the act of thinking it, then in thinking that pat thought the oak was shading, Quentin thought the oak was shedding.
Torrid prose. The simple truth behind it is that we can entertain a proposition without thereby accepting, believing, or assenting to it.
Also left open is what is meant by "Fregean logic". I'll go over my own view one more time. Frege might write:
Here, in the Begriffsschrift, "?" is an explicit judgement; what follows is known, and the scope of the "?" is the whole argument. It would be written now as ??A?B(A?(B?A)). But since Frege, the "?" has taken on a somewhat different use, as meaning roughly that the formula in question is derivable. Being derivable is not the very same as being known. "?" is not commonly read in the Fregean sense of "I know this to be true".
But more worrying for Rödl is that much of logic does not make use of "?", but instead uses "?" and hence modelling and satisfaction rather that truth.
The danger here for Rödl is that in critiquing Frege he may be critiquing an approach that has been outmoded since Tarski. Satisfaction, not truth, and not assertion, are used in more recent logics.
I take most of this thread to be about the befuddlement of language in attempting to articulate that which ontically is or else occurs in regard to at least human cognition.
Going back to the OP:
Quoting J
@J can correct me on this, but from my own reading of the OP, the primary question was: is the (Cogito-style) actuality of I think requisite for all instances of I think (proposition) p without exception? And the only way I can find this to apply is if the concept of thinking is expanded to include all cognitive processes, very much including cognizance. Otherwise, the stipulation that I think as a proposition always accompanies the proposition I think (proposition) p is, for my part, utterly absurd: it would entail that for each and every explicitly stated I think that [ ] there would necessarily be implicitly expressed I think that I think that [ ], which is absurdityin part because it would allow for if not imply an infinite regress of I think.
The semantics of words we use in modern times do not always hold a one-to-one correlation to the semantics of words that were used in the pasteven when not translated from other languages. This especially when it comes to the more nuanced interpretation of terms which past philosophers on occasion made use of. This being something that, though maybe obvious, often eludes discussions of what others in the distant past meant to express by the words used.
As to modern semantics, in adding to this :
To answer I did and I think I did to some question is in no way and at no time equivalent: the first expresses a fact one is confident about regarding what one did, this while the second expresses something along the lines of a best presumption based on ones best reasoning (i.e., thinking) regarding what one in fact did (presumably about a past deed one does not hold a clear recollection of). The second does not however require doubt of what one thinks is the case, but only allows for certain degrees of uncertainty.
To say, "I'm thinking (i.e., pondering) this is the case" is likewise not equivalent to, "this is the case".
Hence, to say, "I think (i.e., I best judge as a subject that) Paris is crowded" is not equivalent to saying, "Paris is crowded," with the latter, unlike the first, affirming what is to be taken as an objective fact (something that does or else should hold equal weight to all subjects irrespective of their biases).
... All of which would make "I think I think p" translate into "I best reason that I best reason (with a possibly infinite extension of this) that [...]". This being something that arguably is never done by anyone.
Agreed. I resisted including a specifically propositional understanding of the "I think" as one of my suggested retorts to Pat because it seems like a non-starter. I don't believe anyone, from Descartes on, ever meant that.
A more plausible option is that the "I think" is in fact a thought of some kind, even if not a proposition. We're seeing some good reasons on this thread to question even that, though.
Quoting javra
And notice what happens when we ask whether the doubt being expressed is about the thought or what the thought is about. I can be absolutely certain that, right this minute, I am having the thought "I think I did" concerning some previous action I'm not too sure about. Again, the ambiguity of "thought" as mental event (yep, definitely happening) and "thought" as that thought's intensional content (not too sure).
Okay, so we have the outlandish thesis of the OP,
Now outlandish theses need to be interpreted and argued for. If @J is not going to argue for the outlandish thesis, then we need to know either why Rödl thinks such a thing or else where he believes Kant claims such a thing.
You give two options:
Quoting Mww
and:
Quoting Mww
Now apparently you are pointing to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, no? Is this edition available online somewhere? Or can we get a quote? And is Rödl thinking of B133 or B407-13?
The OP is treating its outlandish thesis as if it isn't outlandish, and that creates pretty significant problems in an OP. If this were a book club where everyone had already read Rödl's book the OP would presumably make sense to us, but as is it takes far too much for granted.
(The Kimhi thread was very similar, except after a number of us finally looked at the book the outlandish thesis was not helped.)
Yes, very much agree. Though I wouldnt use the word doubt to express this but (psychological) uncertainty instead:
I find doubt to necessarily be an uncertainty regarding an already affirmed, or else held, certainty - be it affirmed or else held by oneself in the past or else by someone other. As one example, this can become very transparent in the two propositions: the future is uncertain and the future is doubtful/dubious. The first merely and strictly stipulates that future events are not yet determined. The second proposition, however, stipulates either a) that the heretofore upheld reality of the future as a whole might in fact not occur or b) that some heretofore upheld specific set of realities which are to occur in the future might in fact not occur.
So one can be uncertain about the object of ones thought - e.g., I'm thinking that I left my wallet in the room (this while being fully certain that ones current thought as process is occurring). And this uncertainty can be maintained without necessarily doubting the given object of ones thought. As can again be exemplified by some future even one is uncertain about but does not doubt. For example, a person is uncertain of whether they will see a movie latter on in the day but - because they have not previously held the psychological certainty that they would see a movie later on - the person does not come to doubt this future event, even as they are uncertain about it.
To say I think that [ ] is to then express some degree of psychological uncertainty about that which one thinks is the case, but rarely if ever is it to affirm that one doubts that that given which one thinks is the case is in fact actually so.
The semantics of uncertainty and doubt being an utterly different issue to that of the thread, granted, but I do find interest in it. (A pet peeve of mine: unlike Cartesian skepticism - which is about doubting everything - ancient skepticism was about ubiquitous, and hence radical, (psychological degrees of) uncertainty with no doubt of this position or of anything else required. This being what in modern parlance can be termed the stance of fallibilism. This doubt-independent ancient skepticism being something which the ancient skeptic Cicero for example nicely exemplifies. All this as an apropos regarding the difference between uncertainties and doubts.)
Basically, Pat is telling us that she hasnt had the experience that she believes she would have to have if it were true that the I think accompanies all our thoughts. She believes that experience would be something like an additional thought that says, I think p, and that occurs simultaneously or in close proximity to her thought of p. She tells us that this does not characterize her usual experience of thinking.
So, is Pat right about her experience of thinking? Theres certainly no reason to doubt it. Full disclosure: It was quite easy to write Pats lines for her because I pretty much share that experience. So I think we ought to say that Pat is right about this.
But I dont think thats what some people mean when they say that Pat is right. I think they mean that, because Pat has disconfirmed a particular version of what the I think would entail, therefore she is right that the I think does not accompany all our thoughts. That was response #4, back in the OP. But note that Pat never actually says this. She starts with a particular interpretation of what the I think would be, and (rightly, were saying) reports that she hasnt experienced it. But unless shes unusually dogmatic (or possibly unversed in philosophy), she wouldnt go on to say that no other understandings of the I think are possible.
Heres where I think this leaves us. We can accept that Pats (putatively accurate*) report rules out the possibility that the ubiquity of the I think consists in its being some kind of affirmative, conscious thought that accompanies every one of our mental representations or even our propositions. But that leaves quite a bit still to explore. Response #4 states, If your report is accurate, then the thesis that ?the I think accompanies all our thoughts has been proven wrong. But we see that isnt so. What has been proven wrong is the notion that the I think is a subject of experience.
Now lets compare this to the Kantian perspective. Imagine that a different experimental subject Ive created :wink: tells us, Kant claims that time and space are constitutive concepts of the understanding, and form the basis of any possible experience. Well, sorry, but when I experience something, I dont also have an experience of ?time and an experience of ?space. I just experience whatever it is that happens.
We could reply, Quite right, time and space are not themselves experiences, they are constitutive of experience. They are the without-which-nothing. When Kant says that they are ubiquitous throughout all possibilities of experience, he doesnt mean you can discover them as some additional ur-experience.
I hope the parallel with the I think question is clear. Referring back to my original four responses, it looks like #3, which argues basically what I just wrote, is the one we should choose if we want to explain to someone who believes that Pats experience justifies #4, why that isn't so.
But I dont see the issue as settled yet. Are there good reasons for claiming that this transcendental I think has any reality at all? Were not there yet. Maybe, if it isnt an experience, its just a hoax. But I think weve made some progress by showing the alleged role of experience in all this a little more clearly.
*And response #2 is available as well, if we want to try to make a case that Pat is mistaken, or misguided, about her experience.
Me too, thanks for clarifying. On your interpretation, "uncertainty" is definitely the better term for what I was trying to get across.
:grin: :up:
That's a good counterargument.
For myself, I don't see the philosophical point of these threads on Kimhi or Rödl where we play this game, "Here is an obscure and unlikely claim. Let's try to defend it. Oh? You don't know what it means? Well, neither do I. Let's also guess at what it means."
On a philosophy forum obscure and unlikely claims need to be elucidated by the author of the OP, usually through primary or secondary texts. It is the responsibility of the author of the OP to elucidate what they mean by their claim, and why the claim has plausibility.
This, I think:
Quoting J
Yep:
Quoting Leontiskos
It's sort of like the teacher gave you a homework assignment, "It seems like Rödl is wrong. Why isn't he?," and now you're asking TPF to help you with your homework assignment. Which is tricky given that no one has read Rödl.
www.gutenberg.org, J. M. D. Meiklejohn, ca1856, searchable but w/o pagination;
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/25851/files/2017/09/kant-first-critique-cambridge-1m89prv.pdf, Guyer/Wood, 1998, with pagination, but not searchable.
It is beyond the scope of the thread .not to mention the participants interest ..to quote that long B section. Besides, some interpretive liberty may be required, in that the idea contained in the thread OP isnt given verbatim in the quote, but I think could be dug out of it.
Also, the small one-liner at B133 is only a correction to the initial premise in the OP, having little to do with the p/p discussion. Although, and the reason I presented it in the first place, is that if I think accompanies all my representations is true, it makes the argument predicated on threads major I think accompanies all my thoughts critically false, insofar as the author is misrepresented.
Of course, is within his dialectical rights to argue from the major as he stated it, but he shouldnt have attributed it to the specified author that didnt actually say it.
Anyway .not that big a deal.
I'm sure it isn't, but I hate to get anything wrong. Let me fill out what Rödl says. His footnote for the claim "Kant said: The I think accompanies all my thoughts" reads: "CPR, B 131. More precisely, he [Kant] says that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations, for all my representations must be capable of being thought. This presupposes (what is the starting point of Kant's philosophy and not the kind of thing for which he would undertake to give an argument) that the I think accompanies all my thoughts."
Hmm. Does this respond to your point? I'm not completely clear what's at stake with the distinction between "thought" and "representation" here, but Rödl does seem to be interpreting, rather than innocently paraphrasing. Granted, the difference is blurry when it comes to reading Kant.
Okay, great. That is very helpful. :up:
Quoting Mww
@J is probably taking Rödl at his word when Rödl tells @J that Kant holds the position.
Quoting Mww
Seems highly relevant to me. If the only argument in favor of the OP's thesis is found in Kant, then to Kant we must go.
Quoting J
And here is Kant:
Quoting Kant, CPR, B131-133 (pp. 246-7)
(It looks to me that Kant is saying that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations. I don't see Rödl's interpretation that
That "must be able" component played a big part in Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego. His arguments are interesting even if one is not sold on swapping "existence" for "essence."
Quoting J
:worry:
The assumption of Kant's error has nothing to do with the parts you bolded. The mistake was agreeing with an error, and that agreement preceded the portions you drew attention to.
If Kant says that "I think" accompanies all our thoughts, and Sebastian Rödl, in Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, agrees with this but points out that this cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p, then he's still agreeing that "I think" accompanies all our thoughts. He does not disagree with Kant's failure to draw and maintain the distinction between thought and thinking about thought. <----That is to assume Kant's error. Rather, it's only how to best put this that he's disagreeing with Kant about. <-----That is to reinforce the error. Neglecting to acknowledge, let alone directly address, the problem with the agreement between Kant and Rödi is a textbook case of glossing it over.
I've read at least three other valid objections/refutations of the claim at the heart of this thread. I'll leave mine here for now.
I dont consider myself qualified to make footnotes with respect to verbatim text. Im more inclined to attempt the understanding the text itself. I mean, the dude himself said, Kant said, more precisely at the expense of his own statements accuracy.
But hes got letters after his name and I dont, so .there ya go.
-
Good stuff. Thanks.
I second that!
Hey Banno!
I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Are you assuming that all thoughts could be sensibly prefixed with "I think"?
Is the contention from both Kant and Rödl simply that any thought that
is necessarily entertained by a conscious subject? Meaning that the subject is implicit in any thought? Which is aimed at Freges contention that the object of thought can be entirely independent of any subject.
Wouldn't an example of a thought that cannot be appended to "I think..." be a thought that could not be thought?
The play here is on the lack of a clear idea of what a thought is.
) can be entirely objective and independent of any particular subject. Freges emphasis is on the idea that thoughts exist as abstract, objective entities in a third realm, independent of whether anyone thinks them. According to Frege, thoughts are, in principle, accessible to any rational being, and their validity does not depend on any individual subjects act of thinking. Frege lays this out in a famous essay called The Thought (in translation).
Without that background none of this makes a lot of sense.
So was he right? I think not. Nor, I suspect, are the ideas he expresses a commonplace.
http://www.thatmarcusfamily.org/philosophy/Course_Websites/Readings/Frege%20-%20The%20Thought%20a%20Logical%20Inquiry.pdf
:razz:
I see. I wondered where you were headed. I didn't realize you were frolicking. Your example already showed a kind/species of thought that doesn't seem to sensibly accept such an appendage.
Nice clarification. That helped me to understand quite a bit better how narrowly focused the scope of the claim at the heart of the OP really is. I appreciatchya!
I read Kant to be saying at minimum that representations are unified in relation to the subject which has them. For a more detailed exegesis than that I would defer to @Mww, who is much more accustomed to Kant's language than I am. Surely there are a lot of different things going on in that passage.
I don't have any reason to believe that Kant is responding to Frege. In the thread on Kimhi's critique of Frege, the general takeaway seemed to be, "Well, Frege's distinction may be imperfect, but it is also very important and useful, and Kimhi doesn't seem to have any clear alternative on offer." I think Frege's distinction is probably more relevant to contemporary philosophy than @Banno would like to believe, but that is a separate question.
Quoting Wayfarer
Do you take Rödl to be criticizing a position that Frege lays out in that paper?
No, Frege was much later than Kant and was critiquing Kant. And Frege is indeed mentioned right at the outset of Rödls book. Remember the title of the book is an introduction to absolute idealism. Were not up to that yet - the quote in question is from p 55 - but the title is significant.
Again google preview https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VERMDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1&redir_esc=y
Always.
Didnt follow your reply though.
Another thing, from your quote: if there is representation given before all thought, re: phenomenon from the faculty of intuition, and representation which arises spontaneously, re: conception from the faculty of understanding, which is the same as arising without being thought, then it follows that whatever must accompany all representation does not necessarily accompanying all thought. If such is the case, Rödls footnote exposé, is misconceived.
Thought is an activity, in the synthesis of conceptions into a possible cognition; I think represents the consciousness of the occurrence of the activity, but not the activity itself.
Unsurprising. I'm tired, and I may not have understood your objection in its entirety. I'm sure I do not grasp the depth of it. Nonetheless, I was referring to this...
Quoting Banno
Roughly, I took this approach to indicate that we do other stuff with words besides state our thoughts/beliefs, to which attaching "I think" is relatively unproblematic. Questions/interrogatives being just one of those other speech acts. Seems odd to attempt to prefix some of those acts with "I think".
Indeed. I prefer "process", but probably because I'm trying to eliminate/avoid/exhaust "mental" without using it.
:wink:
Yes, good point. :nerd:
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Quoting Mww
I suppose what is tripping me up here is the question of whether thought is a form of representation. Thought is, "the synthesis of conceptions into a possible cognition," and conceptions are the representations of understanding, and therefore thought synthesizes one kind of representation without itself being a representation. Is that right?
Quoting Mww
Okay, that makes sense. I think Aquinas would agree with this. Then is the "I think" a sui generis kind of representation?
Is the tree dropping leaves? Is that a thought? I think the tree is dropping leaves against I think "Is the tree dropping leaves?". Should it be that I think "The tree is dropping leaves".
Seems to me again that 's OP is dependent on the ascendency of assertions. That looks unjustified to my eye.
That sounds reasonable, yes. It is said to be representation, it is said the representation I think .in all acts of consciousness is one and the same ..
You cant have a 700-page treatise on the bare-bones purity of human cognition without accounting for it, but you cant account for it with any of the faculties by which human cognition is possible. It isnt even present to immediate awareness in fully half of the total of human intellectual activity, the empirical half concerned with perception.
(Sensation being physiological, hence we are physically aware but not cognitively)
And you most certainly cannot ignore its pervasiveness in human interaction.
If you cant account for it with the faculties of human cognition, and you cant ignore it, you are left with accounting for it by the essence of humanity in general. From there, you escape the requirement that I think actually do anything within the cognitive system, thus doesnt need to belong to any of the relevant method-specific faculties.
Because it doesnt belong to any relevant faculty, it is not the case I think can ever be a cognition of its own, and insofar as .thought is cognition by means of the synthesis of conceptions , it is clear I think is no conception, which immediately relieves it from belonging to understanding, the faculty responsible for the spontaneity of conceptions as its representations, and it follows necessarily that we never ever think I think in the formulation of immediate cognitions.
The p/p simultaneity, the dualism implied, cannot stand. At least, according to the originating speculative metaphysics referenced herein. But not all are the same, so theres room for others with sufficient affirmative explanatory power.
...and what an "I" is.
Think about when you are watching a really good movie or TV show, or reading a good book. You might be so engrossed in the story that you lose your sense of self. You become part of the story. It is only when someone calls your name while in the middle of that story does your awareness loop back upon itself creating that sense of self-awareness.
Say you're reading a good book and someone says, "Hey Banno, what do you want for lunch?" Your awareness changes from the story to yourself and your wants, in particular what you want for lunch. Are thoughts like, "I want..." or "I like..." the same as thinking, "I think..."?
What about other animals? Do they have a sense of "I think..." that accompanies their thoughts? If not, then what is required for self-awareness, and is self-awareness necessary for thinking?
Quoting J
Linguistically
Linguistically, I can think about my thinking. For example, I can think about my thought that Paris is always crowded. A thought must be about something, even if that something is my thought that Paris is always crowded.
The problem
Pat says that when she has the thought that the oak tree is shedding its leaves, she is not simultaneously thinking that she has the thought that the oak tree is shedding its leaves. IE, when I think, am I simultaneously thinking that I think?
Metaphysically, what are thoughts
The act of thinking is inseparable to what is being thought about. As we cannot have an act of thinking without an object of thought, we cannot have an object of thought without the act of thinking. The act of thinking is the object of thought.
In the same way, the subjective act of thinking about the colour red cannot be seperated from the objective red that is being thought about
When stung by a bee, I am immediately conscious of pain. Subsequently, I can have the thought "bees sting". A thought may be regarded as a proposition that is potentially shareable as an objective fact, such as "bees sting", rather than a subjective feeling that is unshareable, such as pain (Britannica - Thoughts and Propositions).
The relation between "I" and thoughts
"The oak tree is shedding its leaves" is a valid proposition but not a thought. "Think the oak tree is shedding it leaves" is not a valid proposition, as it doesn't indicate who is having the thought. "I think the oak tree is shedding its leaves", "they think the oak tree is shedding its leaves" and "he thinks the oak tree is shedding its leaves" are valid propositions expressing thoughts.
A thought cannot be had without someone having that thought.
It is the case that "I am my thoughts", rather than I have thoughts. If it were the case that "I have thoughts", not only would lead into the infinite regress homuncules problem but also would lead into the problem of how the "I" could have a thought that was external to it.
The relation between thoughts and consciousness
If I were not conscious I would have no thoughts, and if I had no thoughts I would not be conscious.
The relation between "I" and consciousness
If I was not conscious there would be no "I", and if there was no "I" there would be no consciousness.
The relation between "I", consciousness and thoughts
Therefore, "I", being conscious and thoughts are all aspects of the same thing. "I" cannot exist without being conscious or having thoughts. Being conscious wouldn't be possible without an "I" and thoughts. Having thoughts would not be possible without an "I" and being conscious.
Conscious beings are able to think, and self-conscious beings are able to think that they think
When stung by a bee, I am my immediate consciousness of pain, such that I am the pain. When subsequently I have a propositional thought, such as "bees sting", I am the propositional thought "bees sting".
As I am both conscious of pains and thoughts, but at the same time I am these pains and thoughts, I am a self-conscious being.
As a conscious being I think, but as a self-conscious being I think I think.
Yes, these reflections are in the spirit of the problem Rödl is considering. You're right to connect it with the ambiguity of "thought" as "event of thinking," which requires a thinker, and "thought" as "proposition" (this is how Frege used it), which is supposed to be available to us objectively, without needing to indicate a thinker.
Truly, I wasn't aware there was a problem here. Can you say more about Kant's failure? I know you feel you've said what needs to be said already, but I'd be grateful for a little more explication.
Heck, I don't care about anybody's letters -- if it's wrong, it's wrong. I think you know Kant very well; would you say that Rödl's qualification here ("more precisely") does affect the accuracy of the statement "The I think accompanies all my thoughts"? And I'm still struggling to understand what's at stake in contrasting "representation" with "thought" in this context. Any help with that?
Kant, on my best reading, is asking for a structural interpretation of the term "accompany". For him, it isn't a matter of the self-consciousness of the thinker, a la Rödl. Rather, I read him as saying that for me to have a thought at all, there must be something he calls the I think that makes the thought possible for me -- the same way space and time structure perceptual experience. Once again, we're talking "thought" as mental event, not propositional content.
When I think, I am thinking in either sentences or images. I cannot think without either of these two elements. When I make statements or propositions, I express the contents of my thoughts in language.
But if I try to think about my thoughts, I don't have any content but the thought is my object of thought. Because the contents of the thought is either shielded by the thought, or is empty.
I am supposed to think about my thinking, but I am not sure what it is about. You may say well I am thinking that I am thinking about the oak tree.
But that is absurd, because I don't need to think that I think about the oak tree. I just think about the oak tree. So, when I say the oak tree is shedding the leaves, I already have thought about the oak tree shedding the leaves. Why do I have to say I think the oak tree is shedding the leaves? I just say the oak tree is shedding the leaves.
If you asked me, why did I say that the oak tree is shedding the leaves, then I would say, well I think that the oak tree is shedding the leaves to make clear that my statement was based on my thinking. But before that I don't need to make clear on that fact, because it is already implied in my statement that I think the oak tree is shedding the leaves.
When I think about I am thinking the oak tree shedding the leaves, I am not thinking anymore. At that moment, I am reasoning or reflecting on my thought that the oak tree was shedding the leaves, or why was I thinking that I was thinking the oak tree was shedding the leaves.
I want to make a bit of a tangential, Off-Topic comment about that. We usually have no problems in visually imagining something. For example, I can close my eyes, and I can imagine a wooden table. People usually don't have problems remembering sounds either. For example, when I'm walking down the street, I can remember the lyrics of a song that I like. So, the senses of sight and sound are quite memorable, in a literal sense. But with the other three senses (aroma, taste, tactile sensations) it is much more difficult, at least in my case. I can remember aromas, for example how a rose smells. I can also remember what a lemon tastes like. And I can remember what the sensation of cold water feels like. But these three senses are somehow "less memorable" than the senses of sight and sound, it is easier for me to remember the latter instead of the former.
I suppose smell, touch and taste are more difficult to think about than sounds or images. We can remember and think about them, but it would be difficult to express them in linguistic form accurately. Could it be due to their abstract nature of the entities? i.e. they tend to be temporally passing ephemeral fleeting transit sensations with no physical forms.
Or are the sensations inbuilt in our senses rather than in the objects? When you feel cold, the coldness is not in the air, but your body is feeling cold. When you smell perfume, the sensation of feminine richness is in your nose rather than in the perfume .. etc? Could this be the case? I am guessing here.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
I agree. :up:
It may not be wrong; it just isnt what Kant said. If anything, its wrong that he said Kant said it. Kant never once that Im aware .said I think accompanies all my thoughts, but it must be conceivable to finagle that notion out of I think must accompany all my representations, because Rödls apparently constructed a metaphysic based in its validity.
Quoting J
Maybe not, in that the only context for which I suppose for myself enough understanding to address, is Kantian. I cant speak to Rödls philosophy. Or Frege, for that matter. And now that I think about it the word representation isnt even used anywhere in the OP, which kinda implies there is no context to which it belongs with respect to this particular domain of discourse. Its almost as if I put words in your mouth.
That being said, representation is absolutely necessary for any and all Kantian speculative metaphysics, but that only appears in this particular domain of discourse, as the initial major premise, re: Kant says .. I suppose the struggle might manifest in the disparity between the major premise requiring a representational context insofar as it is Kantian, and the body of the discussion, the context of which is Rödls, which doesnt.
Apples and oranges? Mountains and molehills? I accept responsibility for the dialectical misdirect.
Quoting Mww
And that's my understanding too, but until now I would have said that substituting "thought" for "representation" (again, within Kant-world) isn't a major misunderstanding. Could you say more about what hinges on this for him? Many thanks.
The equivalence of thinking and being consciously aware
When I think of an oak tree, I am consciously aware of an oak tree.
Rather than say "I am thinking of an oak tree", I can equally say "I am consciously aware of an oak tree".
I don't say "consciously aware of an oak tree", which would be ungrammatical, because I am consciously aware that it is "I" that is looking at an oak tree.
Therefore, I am consciously aware of two things, consciously aware not only of the oak tree but also it is "I" that is consciously aware of the oak tree.
But thinking is equivalent to being consciously aware
So I can also say, I am thinking of two things, thinking not only of the oak tree but also thinking about the "I" that is thinking about the oak tree.
This is why the "I" is included in the proposition "I am thinking of an oak tree", rather than just "thinking of an oak tree".
In other words, not only thinking about the oak tree but also thinking about the "I" that is thinking about the oak tree.
IE, not only thinking but also thinking about thinking.
@Mww explained the difference between thought and representation in some detail, but the basic logic here is straightforward:
Quoting Kant, CPR, B131-133 (pp. 246-7)
vs.
Quoting Leontiskos
(Or else,
Rödl is misrepresenting Kant whether or not we (mistakenly) allow "thought" and "representation" to be interchangeable.
Kant says, "All hamburgers are able to be accompanied by ketchup." Rödl says, "Kant thinks every hamburger has ketchup on it."
A. "The oak tree is shedding its leaves."
B. "I see the oak tree."
C. "I think* 'The oak tree is shedding its leaves'."
D. "I think** 'The oak tree is shedding its leaves'."
*Popper's World 2 sense of "think" = a mental event
**World 3 sense of "think" = results in Frege's "proposition"
Am I right that all four of these sentences are propositions in good standing, according to Frege? The fact that A is from no particular point of view, whereas B - D are, doesn't matter, correct? Also, the fact that C & D quote another proposition is likewise kosher?
Cool. Alls well .yaddayaddayadda.
-
Quoting Leontiskos
Brilliant!!!!
Being conscious and having the concept of "I" is the precondition of all mental activities i.e. they are already there as base of your thinking.
When you are saying, the oak tree is standing there, you already have "I", and you already have thought about it, so you could have made up the statement and uttered it or wrote it.
You are only saying that you think about your thinking that the oak tree is standing there, because you are reflecting your thoughts, which had already taken place, not because you are thinking about your thoughts.
You can write about anything linguistically of course, without thinking or knowing, some gibberish such as the oak tree is 100 pages long, and you could say you think the oak tree is 100 pages long , and you think you think you think you think ... the oak tree is 100 pages long . But it doesn't sound intelligible.
When you say, the oak tree is standing there, the other party will know that you think the oak tree is standing there, and you are conscious of what you said, also you are claiming that you exist as a perceiver who apprehended the existence of the oak tree standing there across from you with the other party both witnessing and perceiving the existence of the oak tree standing.
Adding that you are conscious of the oak tree is standing there, and also you as a being exists, on the statement that the oak tree is standing there would be unnecessary information for the communication in logical and linguistic point of view.
There doesn't seem to be difference between saying,
1) The oak tree is standing there. and
2) You think that the oak tree is standing there.
You would only say 2), when you are asked why you said 1).
I don't think so. Firstly Frege presented two logics, which are somewhat different. Secondly he was not concerned with sentences as such, so much as with truths about the world; that is, his emphasis is very different to that of modern logic.
Quoting J
I think otherwise. The judgement stroke "?" turns a proposition into a judgement. "The oak is shedding it's leaves" would be bound together as a whole by the horizontal stroke:
And become a judgement with the addition of the vertical stroke
For Frege the operator "?" transforms expressions into judgements. This is quite different to recent usage.
So I'd suggest that Frege might parse (A) as ?. He could not have differentiated (C) and (D), not having Popper's language, but I suggest that he would parse both as ??. Whether "See" is a judgement or not is moot, so (B) is undecidable.
This is simply how I read the SEP article on Frege's Begriffsschrift
https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PHS180/davidson_on_saying_that.pdf
I may not have asked what I meant to ask here. I was wanting to affirm that all 4 statements are well-formed propositions -- that is, they are candidates for having all the things done to them that we do with propositions, including asserting, questioning, etc. In that sense, "I see the oak tree" may not be a judgment, but can't it be asserted?
Or, leaving Frege out of it, I'm trying to home in on whether 1st-person statements that quote a proposition internally, as it were (such as C and D), are in any way logically problematic.
I'd add that this is not a problem for logic, but for English, in that "I think..." is unclear, and even ambiguous, outside of a context, and hence first order logic has multiple options as to how to pars it.
In particular, is "Pat thinks the Oak is shedding its leaves" something Pat experiences, as your OP implies, or something Pat does?
So yes, C and D are logical problematic, in that there are multiple ways to set out their structure.
Quoting J
Again I'd point out hat this is a misappraisal. The problem is not with propositional logic, but with interpretation. The conceptual puzzles are us working out wha the structure of such sentences might be.
Speech act theory is much more useful than talk of world 2 and world 3. "Thought" is a group terms for a range of activities, "I wonder...", "I assert...". "I suggest..." and so on. These are each slightly different in ways that clumping them together hide. And declaratives explain how the structures thought of as part of world 3 come about.
Quoting Corvus
OK. How about Pat's problem, which presumably is a metaphysical rather than linguistic problem.
Quoting J
1) Pat says "the oak tree is standing there"
2) Pat says "I think that the oak tree is standing there"
Linguistically these are different, but metaphysically the same.
What about the metaphysical problem?
3) Pat is thinking about her thinking that the oak tree is standing there.
I am not quite sure what you mean by a metaphysical problem. I asked you about it already, but didn't get replies on that point. What is a metaphysical problem, and why is it a metaphysical problem?
I am assuming that Pat's problem is metaphysical rather than linguistic. Pat said:
1) I think that the oak tree is shedding its leaves
2) I am thinking the thought that the oak tree is shedding its leaves
Consider "I think x", where x = the oak tree is shedding its leaves. All three words are important within the sentence.
The sentence cannot be "I think"
A thought must be about something. For Frege a thought has a content, in this case that the oak tree is shedding its leaves.
The sentence cannot be "I x"
There must be a relation between "I" and x. For Frege there must be an act, whether I am standing next to x or I am thinking about x.
The sentence cannot be "think x"
There must be a subject, whether "Patachon thinks x" or "I think x".
I can only say "I think x", if I am aware that the "I" refers to me, and it is me that is doing the thinking, rather than someone else, such as Patachon.
When I say "I think the oak tree is shedding its leaves", I am aware that I am thinking the thought rather than Patachon, for example.
Pat and her belief
Pat is mistaken in her belief.
In order for Pat to say to herself "that oak tree is shedding its leaves", Pat must be aware that she is thinking the thought, rather than someone else, such as Patachon.
The reply to Pat should be response 1, "I think must accompany all our thoughts"
If we didn't know who was thinking our thoughts, our identity as a person would no longer exist.
It seems to me that 1 is talking about (pointing to) the oak tree while 2 is talking about (pointing to) thoughts. What our present goal is determines what we try to point to with language. Why would I be interested in you thinking the oak tree is shedding its leaves when I can see the oak tree is shedding its leaves for myself? Even if I were not there with you, why would I want to know what you are thinking instead of what is happening independent of your thoughts - like the oak shedding its leaves? The basis of this thread seems to me a useless endeavor of trying to parse some use of language that is never used in normal circumstances, but only on a philosophy forum.
Given the sentence "I think I think the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall"
Linguistically it could mean "I think the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall, but I'm not sure"
Metaphysically, what does "I think I think" mean. Can a thought think about itself. If it can, does this infer free-will, where a thought causes itself to come into existence, an example of spontaneous self-causation. Or what about the infinite regress homuncules problem used against Direct Realism. Where do thoughts exist in the physical brain. Do thoughts exist, or are they just illusions. Things like that.
I've been assuming that this thread is about the philosophical implications of "thought", rather than how "thought" is used in language, though it is true that ambiguities in language make the task of philosophy more difficult.
Quoting Harry Hindu
True, but it would be difficult to know Kant's and Frege's insights about thoughts without language.
The philosophical implications of the scribble, "thought", or actual thoughts? Seems to me that to understand some philosophical implication of something, that something needs to be defined, keeping in mind that using language to define something is not to point to more scribbles, but to the actual thing that isn't just more scribbles. We only need language to relay information, not to create reality. Only language that relays relevant information is useful, else it's the ramblings of a madman or philosophy gone wild.
Does that include the realities created by To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1984 by Orwell, The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein, The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, etc.
Calling them "realities" would be a misuse of words. They are fictional stories, and we do not normally use the words, "fiction" and "reality" in ways that are synonymous.
One could say that the use in reading a fictional story is to escape reality, at least temporarily. Is the goal of philosophy to escape reality?
It's also going from certainty to uncertainty
Wolfgang Iser in The Reality of Fiction: A Functionalist Approach to Literature makes the point that fiction and reality are often very difficult to separate, as we can see in today's mainstream media.
Fair enough. I could quibble about whether there would be propositional logic without interpretation, but I take your point.
I think this is right if we interpret the phenomenology generously. The point of response #1 was supposed to be that, strictly speaking, "I think" isn't something we have to experience. Nor need we be aware of it, though sometimes we are. So even if Pat is not aware that she is thinking the thought, the "I think" is nonetheless present. Thus, I would question whether we need to stipulate Pat's awareness of thinking the thought. If we bring the awareness to mind, and question her about it, she will probably answer as you suggest: "Yes, it is I and no one else who thinks my thought." Is this good enough to earn the description "The 'I think' must accompany all our thoughts"? At this point we're really fine-tuning (in a way that can be all too annoying in a lot of phenomenology). I think a case could be made either way -- that "being aware that X [me] is thinking the thought" is an inseparable aspect of thinking, or that this awareness is always available to me but not always experienced.
If you were to think about your thoughts from Metaphysical point of view, then you wouldn't need "P". You would just think about the thought itself i.e. how thought works, what is the relationship between thought and the other mental activities such as feeling, sensing, reasoning, inferring, guessing etc.
To my way of thinking these are very different things. #2 implies that the speaker is not certain. I.e., there is an implied "But I could be wrong" that follows #2.
[Edit] Now that I've thought about this some more, it seems to me that the sentences are even more different.
#1 is not expressing a thought, it is a proposition that is either true or false via the Correspondence Theory of Truth.
#2 is a speaker expressing a proposition which they have (at least some) confidence that it is true.
Sure. In that case, you would add the clarifying sentence "But I could be wrong" immediately after the main sentence.
Another difference, which gets close to the issues that concern Rödl, is that "1) The oak tree is standing there" is asserted from an implied or absent point of view, whereas "2) I think that the oak tree is standing there" is as much about what I think as it is about the oak tree; it is incorrigibly 1st-person. This can be readily seen by constructing denials of the two statements.
What does The Lord of the Rings tell us about reality? Do fictional stories mirror some aspects of reality? Of course, how else would a reader identify and understand aspects of the story if it didn't share some aspect of reality? The difference between reality and fiction is their relative locations. Fictions are located WITHIN reality. The form fictional stories take are made up entirely of scribbles on paper, or actors on sets playing out a role, or your dreams while asleep. How do you get from this reality to some fictional reality? What path do you take to get there?
Quoting J
If the only thing Pat can be certain of is that they have thoughts, then what use is communicating those thoughts if what she thinks she experiences might not be the case, which would be just as true for other human beings as it is for shedding oak trees? Pat could just as well say "I think J and RussellA are human beings that I met on a philosophy forum." Why learn language at all if all you have access to is your thoughts?
Isn't you learning a language and then using it to communicate with others exhibiting a degree of certainty that there are things that exist (like other human beings) independent of your thoughts?
Again, words are just scribbles and sounds that we experience - no different than oak trees shedding and humans typing on a keyboard. Perceiving and understanding an oak tree and what it is doing based on prior observations of oak trees, not from some use of language, and understanding the use of some scribbles or sounds based on prior observations of how those scribbles and sounds are used isn't much of a difference.
You can only learn to use scribbles and sounds by observing its use and that requires a hefty degree of certainty that those scribbles exist independent of you thinking them, or why would you believe that the scribbles you typed on the screen would be here for me to read later?
Your thoughts are not made up of scribbles and sounds. They are made up of visuals and auditory experiences of which language is a part of.
Quoting J
A view is inherently 1st person. To say that an oak tree is standing THERE is to say it is standing relative to some point of view.
The problem with the certainty vs uncertainty argument is that you would have to apply the same level of uncertainty to language itself which is made up of scribbles and sounds that you experience. How do you know that the scribbles, or sounds you hear in your head, "I think" refer to the act of thinking? How did you come to that conclusion?
This quote is from Rödl's response to the Hanks review. It presents an unusually succinct (for Rödl) explication of one of his basic positions:
The Force and the Content of Judgment
Now this strikes me as correct. Or, backing up just a little, I think the distinction he is drawing is meaningful, and correct to draw. I wish he had filled out "a different determination" at the end -- what exactly is the structure of "I judge a is F" if it is not understood as predication? But his larger point, I believe, is that the two statements -- "I judge a is F" and "a is F" -- have two different subjects. Rödl uses the term "object" rather than "subject," in the sense that Frege would use "object" or "argument" rather than "subject," but if my reading is correct, he's referring in each case to what we would loosely call the subject of the proposition. In the first instance, if it is a genuine predication (which Rödl denies), "judging that a is F" would be predicated of "I". In the second instance, F would be predicated of a.
This is only the first hill in Rödl's campaign to convince us of where and how Fregean logic fails, but I thought it was worth laying out as a preliminary and interesting thought.
Scribbles.
Now explain how scribbles become words.
Are scribbles necessary to make judgements, interpretations or understanding?
This, in a simple sentence, is the bone of contention. Our language, our choice of a metaphor like "view," certainly suggests that someone or ones must be doing the "viewing." But there is a correspondingly robust tradition that says differently. Nagel's The View from Nowhere gives the best account I know of what such a view would entail. Nagel's position is also discussed at some length in Rodl's Self-Consciousness and Objectivity.
A view from nowhere is an imaginary view that only exists within the mind, and a mind has a 1st person view.
A view is information structured in a way to inform an organism of the state of the environment relative to the state of its body. A view is always relative and the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity lies in trying to separate the body from the environment - an impossible feat. How does one imagine a view from nowhere using a view from somewhere?
Did Nagel ever address or mention the Observer effect in QM?
I don't recall that in Nagel, though I'm not sure.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Indeed. If you're willing to regard that as an open, rather than rhetorical, question, then the Nagel book is for you. If you're already certain it's impossible, then not.
I don't need to read Nagel. Tell me what it is like for you to imagine a view from nowhere. How would you know when you are imagining a view from nowhere?
How would a view from nowhere differ from a view from everywhere? I wonder if what Nagel actually meant is a view from everywhere rather than a view from nowhere as a view from nowhere is non-sensical.
Well, this probably won't get anywhere -- you sound like your mind is made up -- but OK.
When I think "Water is H2O," I am imagining myself speaking objectively. Water would be H2O regardless of whether I think it, and regardless of whether anyone else does.
Don't take "view from nowhere" too literally. Any talk of "views" is metaphorical. All I mean, and all Nagel means, is that there appears to be an entire class of statements that remain true regardless of who says them, and in many cases regardless of whether anyone says them. But how can this be? We are, as you point out, individual knowers with limited consciousness. What could entitle us to claim a truth that is apart from point of view?
If your next question is, "Right, tell me how," I'll demur. It's just too big a subject to deal with on this thread, and we'd have to set it up with a lot of reading. Reams and reams have been written about it. For what it's worth, my current opinion is that we lack a good account of how to reach a so-called view from nowhere, but our entire philosophical enterprise rests on the need for one. Living in this tension seems to characterize the very core of doing philosophy as I see it.
Circling back to this . . . Yes, I agree this is a way to state some of the problem in a different vocabulary. I know Husserl from the outside, so to speak -- he's never engaged my imagination very much. I'll tap @Joshs and see if he wants to respond; I think he may have a better perspective.
The article Ralph Waldo Emerson: Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures explains it better than I could:
I agree when you say that trying to separate the body from the environment is an impossible feat, in that trying to separate the subjective from the objective is a fundamental problem within philosophy.
Quoting Harry Hindu
For example, I have the subjective experience of perceiving the colour red. But does the colour red have an objective existence in the world independent of any observer? Is the colour red part of a subjective fiction or part of an objective reality?
Of what use is it for Pat to say "I think the oak tree is shedding its leaves" if she thinks that there is a possibility that it may not be the case that the oak tree is shedding its leaves.
Even if the oak tree is not shedding its leaves, Pat is nevertheless still communicating a lot of worthwhile information
i) Pat thinks
ii) Oak trees have leaves
iii) Oak trees may or may not shed their leaves
iv) There are things such as oak trees
v) Pat is asking a question she is hoping will be answered
vi) Pat is an English speaker
vii) Pat probably lives in the UK, Canada, Australia or the USA
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Quoting Harry Hindu
Suppose all that existed was my mind. Would I still learn a language. Probably I would, as language enables me to have more complex thoughts than I could otherwise have without language. The ability to have more complex thoughts would be an end in itself.
Perhaps this is perhaps why people learn unusual languages such as Latin, even though they are not able to use it in everyday life. It is an personal intellectual exercise rather than being of practical use.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
I am pretty certain that a world exists independent of my mind, but am not certain beyond a shadow of a doubt. As Kant argued, what knowledge can we ever have of things-in-themselves. However, my working hypothesis is that there is a mind independent world out there, and I may as well continue under my hypothesis unless it is shown to be wrong.
It sounds like your mind is already made up that anything Nagel says about views is true. My experience is that people say, "read
Quoting J
Again, when thinking that water is H2O, are you thinking in scribbles or sounds, or a visual of the molecular structure of water? If the latter, what side of the molecule are you viewing? If not the latter, are you saying that the fact that water is H2O is a string of scribbles or sounds? If "water is H2O" is independent of any language use, then saying to yourself "water is H2O" is only representative of some state of affairs and not an actual view of water as H2O. So again, how does one go from simply invoking scribbles and sounds in the mind, "water is H2O", to a view of water as it really is, or a view from nowhere? You seem to be confusing the scribbles, "water is H2O" with some relationship between two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, which are not scribbles.
Quoting J
Integrating multiple views over time and space, which is more akin to trying to achieve a view from everywhere, not from nowhere.
How can a statement that is never made be true or false? It seems to me that a statement has to exist to then judge it as true or false. Only people can make statements. Reality does not make statements independent of some person. It simply exists in a certain way. Statements do not exist independent of some mind. But statements (strings of scribbles and sounds) are not what the statement is about (molecules and oak trees). They are representative of what they are about, so thinking about an oak tree is a separate thought than thinking in scribbles that refer to an oak tree. One is about an oak tree, and the other is about scribbles. One takes the form of a visual of an oak tree shedding its leaves, and the other takes the form of scribbles, or sounds in your head.
From Wikipedia - propositional Attitude
From the Merriam Webster, the word "judge" includes: to hold as an opinion : guess, think
"I judge she knew what she was doing"
From this it seems that the word "judge" can be a mental state towards a proposition, and could be a propositional attitude.
But is Rodl using the word "judge" in a particular way?
It makes no sense to say that "fiction" is representative of some truth in reality. If it did, it wouldn't qualify as "fiction". Ralph seems to like to play games with words.
In what ways does some work of fiction shed light on reality that some work of non-fiction does not? What does the relationship between Frodo and Gandalf, and Frodo's struggles with the ring, shed light on that some book on sociobiology and psychology would not?
Right, so Pat is making a statement about their uncertainty, not about the actual state of some oak tree.
Quoting RussellA
It is only useful if I'm not there looking at the same tree Pat is, or if I'm interested in what Pat is thinking, not what the oak tree is doing.
Quoting RussellA
But, as I have said numerous times, language is just scribbles and sounds. You need to have a mind that already is capable of categorizing and interpreting visual and auditory experiences to be able to learn a language in the first place - to learn how to use the scribbles in meaningful ways. Therefore, language is simply a way for the mind to do what it already does in a more efficient way - reflect on the world visually. You can only think in visuals and sounds, of which language is part of. Which thought bears more truth, a visual of an oak tree shedding its leaves, or scribbles of your own voice in your head saying, "I think the oak tree shedding its leaves."
If thinking something is equivalent to expressing some uncertainty, then why would I use your thoughts, or your statement to get at some state-of-affairs, instead of just looking at the oak tree for myself?
How do you determine if some string of scribbles bears truth?
It seems to be an obscure sentence on its own. From the sentence only, we don't know whether,
1) you are saying that you are not sure on what you are saying, or
2) you mean that you are sure on what you are saying, or
3) you mean you are reporting the fact based on your direct observation and apprehension, or
4) you mean you have seen the object in your dream, and you are trying to recall the image
etc etc.
You would usually add supporting sentence(s) to clarify what your exact sentence means after a sentence starting with "I think" . Therefore adding "I think" to a statement seems to contribute in making the statement obscure in its exact meaning.
Oh gosh, no. I just think his book does the best job I know of laying out the problem. That's the thing . . . he isn't trying to settle the issue at all, one way or another. He's trying to show why we should worry about it!Quoting Harry Hindu
I know what you mean, but hopefully that's not what I'm doing. (And besides, any number of "famous philosophers" disagree completely with Nagel, so I'd need a better reason to agree with him than because he was famous and wrote something!). It's just really hard to summarize what an excellent book-length piece of philosophy says, or hard for me, at least.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Harry Hindu
etc.
I can see that "scribbles" is doing the work of a technical term for you, but I'm honestly not sure what you mean to be contrasting "scribbles" with. Possibly that's why I'm having trouble understanding your argument.
No! -- or at least that's how I read him. He's really saying judgment shouldn't be called a propositional attitude, despite what all the traditional sources maintain. The entire separation of force (judgment, attitude) and content is off base, according to him. That's why it's kind of an outrageous viewpoint on the face of it.
I agree. In the context of this thread, the relevant rephrasings are probably:
a) I think: "The Eiffel Tower is 400m tall".
b) I think: "I think the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall".
a) is now clear, if we take it as a report about a mental event, a particular thought the speaker is having. b) remains ambiguous. The first "I think" can also be taken as a report about a thought, but then we don't know whether that thought -- the thought that "I think the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall:" -- is expressing meanings 1, 2, 3, or 4, above.
I thought one way of interpreting his central argument is that it's an argument against abstraction. What do I mean by that? Well, according to Frege, who is the main foil for many of his arguments, propositions have meaning irrespective of whether anyone grasps them or thinks them. The Tyler Burge essay on Frege quotes him thus:
[quote=Tyler Burge, Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, p639]The picture of grasping is very well suited to elucidate the matter. If I grasp a pencil, many different events take place in my body... but the pencil exists independently of them. And it is essential for grasping that something be there which is grasped... In the same way, that which we grasp with the mind also exists independently of this activity... and it is neither identical with the totality of these events nor created by it as a part of our own mental life.[/quote]
So here Frege is presenting something like absolute objectivity - that what he calls metaphysical primitives such as real numbers, logical laws and the like, are real irrespective of whether anyone is thinking them, or what we think about them.
Why I say that is an abstraction, is because all such facts are, at least, expressed in symbolic form (3>2, A=A, etc). So Frege is claiming such facts have a kind of mind-independent validity. But what has always seemed fairly clear to me, is that they can only be grasped by a mind. I mean, you're not going to find any 'metaphysical primitives' in the phenomenal world - they all rely on the ability of a rational observer to discern them.
So isn't Rödl arguing, on this basis, that you can't really show the mind-independent nature of metaphysical primitives in the absence of a mind, which can only be that of the knower of the proposition?
I'm laboriously drafting an essay on the distinction between scientific objectivity and philosophical detachment. It mentions Nagel. I'll PM you the link if you'd like to see it.
Oh stop! We're snowed in where I live.
Quoting Wayfarer
Im not sure. Do you mean that, because it would take a mind to demonstrate the mind-independent nature of metaphysical primitives, this represents a sort of contradiction? Or more like, Abstractions can't exist in the phenomenal world, and therefore anything we discover about them is a discovery about our world, the subjective and/or World 3 world? Or neither . . . Everything else you and Burge say about Frege seems correct, and definitely the focus of Rödl's challenge.
Something along those lines. Ill keep at it.
Yes, fair enough. It looks clear if it were written in a message, diary or report of some sort. However I am not sure if it would be correct under the view of logical statement form.
I have never seen statements or propositions in colons and quotes in logical WFF. So, if you meant to just communicate what you thought to other folks, maybe it would be ok. But if you were trying to make up philosophical statements for analysis and debates, then those writings wouldn't be accepted as logical statements.
They don't look WFF to start with, and you cannot use them in the proofs or axiomatization. Hence they wouldn't fit into P and I think P of the OP title. So, I wouldn't use them as philosophical statements or propositions for logical analysis or reasoning.
As you indicated the 2) seems still ambiguous in what it is trying to suggest or mean.
Let's try with different example statements.
a) The Earth is round.
b) I think the Earth is round.
Both a) and b) are not much different in the meanings they deliver. So why add "I think"? That was my point.
c) I think the Earth is round, because the scientists say so. This seems to deliver clearer meaning, if "I think" is used.
Schopenhauer would say the confusion arises from believing that physical objects are mind-independent, when in reality, they invariably occur to us as ideas.
As The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold, more people have learnt about the nature of friendship and struggle from the Lord of the Rings than the relatively small number of people who read books on sociobiology and psychology.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
No, She is making a statement about her uncertainty about a fact.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
Most of what we hear and read is about things we were never present, whether about Caesar or events in Alaska.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
Truth is about the relationship between language and the world, such that language in the absence of a world can be neither true nor false, and the world in the absence of language can be neither true nor false.
We can think about the meaning of words such as "the oak tree is shedding its leaves", and we can think about what we see, such as the oak tree is shedding its leaves.
Language is useful in that most of language refers to things and events we could never be present for, such as Kant's thoughts, the moon landing or Caesar's march into Rome
There is no truth or falsity in my seeing an oak tree shedding its leaves. There is no truth or falsity in the sentence "I think the oak tree is shedding its leaves".
There is only truth if the sentence is "the oak tree is shedding its leaves" and I see the oak tree shedding its leaves.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
"The oak tree is shedding its leaves" is true IFF the oak tree is shedding its leaves.
"x" in language is true IFF x in the world
The problem is in knowing what exists in the world.
For Kant, what exists in the world are things-in-themselves which are unknowable, meaning that truth as a correspondence between language and the world is unknowable.
For Wittgenstein, there is language and the world, but he never specifies where this world exists, inside or outside the mind. Wittgenstein can be read both as an Idealist and a Realist. Therefore, for Wittgenstein truth is a vague concept.
Consider "the postbox is red" is true IFF the postbox is red. For the Indirect Realist, the objective colour red in the world is no more than a projection of the subjective colour red onto the world. The colour red only exists in the mind and not the world, meaning that truth becomes a relation between a language that exists in the mind and a thought that also exists in the mind.
If truth is a relation between language in the mind and a mind-independent world, the fundamental problem is how a mind can know about something that is mind-independent.
Yes, which is the problem when Pat says:
Quoting J
Would you say that the sentence "I think P", is actually two sentences?
I think.
P
Could it be modified to,
1) I think, and P
2) I think therefore P
3) I think, or P
4) If I think, then P
to any of the above sentences?
As an Indirect Realist, I would probably agree with Rodl.
Consider the sentence "I believe that the postbox is red". This illustrates a propositional attitude, a mental state towards a proposition, namely, my mental state of believing that the postbox is red.
Frege distinguishes the force of the judgement, I believe, from the content judged, the postbox is red.
However, for Bertrand Russell, it is not the case that redness is predicated of the postbox, but rather there is something that is both a postbox and red, where the postbox is predicated of something and redness is predicated of the same something.
For Russell, existence is a second order concept, such that the existence of being a postbox and the existence of being red are concepts that exist in the mind rather than the world.
For Kant, the something in the world is an unknown thing-in-itself that we only know through the phenomenological predicates "being a postbox" and being red", which are concepts which exist in the mind.
Speaking as an Indirect Realist, the content of the sentence "I believe that the postbox is red" is "the postbox is red". However, "the postbox is red", as Russell shows, means that there is something that is a postbox and is red, where the predicates "is a postbox" and "is" red are second order concepts that exist in the mind. As Kant showed, the something is an unknowable thing-in-itself.
Therefore, the content of the sentence "I believe that the postbox is red" is an unknowable something in the world that can only be known as predicated concepts that exist in the mind as phenomenological experiences.
The content of the sentence is not knowable in the world but is only knowable in the mind as a belief.
In other words, the content of the sentence "is" the force of judgement by the thinker, where "is" is used to signify identity.
As Rodl says, for me as an Indirect Realist, there is no separation of force from content.
When you are thinking, "water is H2O", or "the oak tree is shedding its leaves", what is it like for you? What form do these thoughts take in your mind? How do you know you are thinking these things? What exactly is present in your mind, and that you are pointing at when telling me what you are thinking, when thinking these things?
Is it a visual of the scribbles, "water is H2O" in your head, or the sound of your voice saying , "water H2O", in your head, or is it the visual of the molecular structure of water, or something else?
Is it a visual of the scribbles, "I think the oak tree is shedding its leaves", the sound of your voice saying those words in your head, or actual visual of an oak tree shedding leaves, or something else?
or a measurer to measure them? The observer effect?
Yes, "I think p" has several different meanings.
For Frege, "I think" is the force of judgement and "p" is the content judged.
Sebastian Rodl rejects Frege's distinction between force and content.
My personal belief is that rather than it being the case that "I have the thought p", it is more the case that "I am the thought p".
The problem with "I have the thought p" is that this leads into the infinite regress homuncules problem.
If it is the case that "I am the thought p", then this agrees with Rodl's rejection of Frege's distinction between force and content.
I would add 5) I think and I am p.
Probably because the former is a much easier read and provides some escapism. Are you not more capable of learning about friendship by having friends in reality?
Quoting RussellA
That's what I said. Pat is referring to their state of mind of being uncertain, not referring to the state of an oak tree.
Quoting RussellA
Yes, but you are saying that thinking is expressing uncertainty. So why would I read about things that other people thought if they were uncertain? When reading books about Caesar and events in Alaska, the writer does not seem to be uncertain to me. You don't seem to be uncertain that thoughts express uncertainty. You seem to be certain about some thoughts but not others. Why? Is every thought uncertain?
Quoting RussellA
Agreed.
Quoting RussellA
This part is confusing. Are not your thoughts part of the world? As such, is not some language that points to your thoughts either true or false? If I were to say, "RussellA is thinking about skinny dipping at the lake", wouldn't that be either true or false? I need to understand why you think that thoughts are not part of the world when they are about the world like language is.
If you thinking something is exhibiting some form of uncertainty doesn't that mean that you have a sense that your thoughts might be false?
Language can only ever point at your thoughts and feelings and observations. The question is does your thoughts, feelings and observations ever point to states of the world that is external to them?
Quoting RussellA
That is the same conclusion I came to above, but you have now moved the goal posts to where the relationship between the world and truth exists as knowledge. The question now is, what form does knowledge take in your mind? Does everything you know take the form of scribbles and the sound of your voice making truth statements, or do you have other types of visual and auditory experiences that are not words, but the actual things themselves? For instance, when reading the Lord of the Rings and reading a description of the characters, does the visual of Frodo and Gandalf take the shape of more scribbles and sounds, or a visual of what these characters look like? When a movie was made, was the movie all in scribbles and a voice narrating the story, or was it moving pictures and sounds of swords clashing against armor and other sound effects?
These are excellent questions. I believe it was Keynes who, when asked whether he thought in words or images, replied, "I think in thoughts." Is there such a thing? And what accounts for the (apparently) self-validating quality of the experience -- this ties to your question "How do you know you are thinking these things?"
For myself, I can only say that my experience of thinking is an inchoate mish-mash of words, images, sounds, and "thoughts" (which seem to go much faster than any of the others but which I find almost impossible to describe, other than to say they have "content," which isn't much help). Probably there are other modalities in the mix too.
Not to harp on "scribbles," but I think you mean the equivalent of what a piece of written-down language would look like to someone who didn't know that language? Is that about right?
Yes, but they may have have the same sophistication of thought about friendship as Tolkein.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
If someone told me that they knew without doubt that something was true, I would be very doubtful about their opinion.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
I hear a sound and immediately think that the sound came from a motor car, but in fact it actually came from a motor bike.
I have the sense that my thought may be false, so am uncertain about it
Being a thought that was false, my thought was not about the world. It was not a part of the world.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
As an Indirect Realist, I only have knowledge of what I perceive in my five senses. If I hear a sound, I have the knowledge that I have heard a sound. I may believe that the sound was caused by a motor bike, and I can find reasons to justify my belief that the sound was caused by a motor bike, but I can never know that the sound was not caused by a motor car.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
When I read the word "Gandalf", I picture in my mind "Gandalf" from the movie.
But surely you are more than "the thought p", aren't you? I am guessing that you have a physical body, feelings, emotions, consciousness as well as the thoughts too with very high probability. Would you agree?
Right, it's a puzzle knowing what to do with them. Rödl calls 1st person statements like these "a thorn in the flesh of the friends of propositions." Leontiskos and I posted about something similar in the "Question for Aristotelians" thread: et seq.
Quoting Corvus
Quoting Corvus
Agreed. That was what I intended with my statement a), which I said was unproblematic. If I'm just mentioning a thought as something "I had" -- an event -- then its content doesn't affect the logical status of the report.
Just to note that "in the same way" could use a little work, even if physical objects are independent, pace Schopenhauer. Does Burge mean the "same way" in terms of the origins of this independence -- neither thoughts nor objects are mind-created -- or does he mean the "same way" that we relate to them in the world, regardless of the question of their origin?
So "I believe" wouldn't be a separate fact that could appear in a predication? Just asking . . . I think this is pretty close to Rödl, yes.
A thought of a tree
There is the physical body of which the physical brain is a part. The mind is somehow part of the physical brain.
One aspect is what the mind is, such as the self, consciousness, the "I". Another aspect is what the mind does, such as has thoughts, ideas, feelings and emotions.
How are these two aspects connected?
A photograph of a tree
What is the connection between a photograph representing a tree and the representation of a tree.
Take away the photograph that represents a tree, and there will be no representation of a tree. Take away the representation of a tree and there will be no photograph that represents the tree.
Rather than the photograph representing a tree, perhaps the photograph IS the representation of a tree.
Rather than "I" thinking of a tree, perhaps the "I" IS the thought of a tree.
:ok: But how do you verify the "I think: P" for truth or falsity in formal logic?
The mind is part of the physical brain? Exactly which part in the brain?
Quoting RussellA
So when you say that you are the thought of p, you seem to be reducing yourself to only one aspect of the mind leaving out the rest of the mind and physical body.
Quoting RussellA
I understand mind as a function of the brain and sensory organs of the body. You sound like a dualist i.e. mind and body as separate entities - mind residing in the brain somewhere. Would it be the case?
As an Indirect Realist, I believe that both "I believe" and "the postbox is red" only exist in the mind.
For someone who believes that "I have thought x", where "I" and "thought x" are separate, then "thought x" is predicated of "I". For example, a table may be made of wood, meaning that "wood" can be predicated of "a table".
For someone who believes that "I am thought x", where "I" is "thought x", then "thought x" cannot be predicated of "I". For example, a wooden table is made of wood, meaning that "wood" cannot be predicated of "a wooden table".
If your brain moves from the living room to the kitchen, does your mind remain in the living room?
A tree has the form of a tree. What is the content of a tree? It can only be the tree itself.
As with the tree example, the brain as form and mind as content cannot be separated.
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Quoting Corvus
If "I" was not thought p, how could "I" ever know about thought p?
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Quoting Corvus
No. As I think of "I" as my thoughts, I think of my mind as my brain.
The conversation you are currently having with Russell as well as the last few days' worth of discussion in this thread ought to make you aware. To be clear, neglecting the distinction between thought and thinking about thought is not just and only a problem in Kant's view. The scope of that neglect spreads across the conventional board. It manifests in all sorts of ways within all sorts of very different philosophers' views from the Greeks through postmodernism and everything in between.
"I think" is always metacognitive. The thought/belief(p) that it prefixes is not.
Think about children's thought prior to their ability to think about other minds as well as their own. Their thought is most certainly not prefixable with "I think". When they say "That is a tree" it is not accompanied by any sort of unspoken or implied "I think". It is their thought nonetheless. It is only after we begin to realize that other people have minds that we can begin to think about minds/thoughts as a subject matter in its own right. Last I checked there is an age range spanning a few years when that begins happening. If memory serves me, it's between 3 and 7 years of age. There are several experiments showing that some children in the age range have yet to have drawn a distinction between their own minds and others. Until that happens, there is no "I think" accompanying that mind.
Yep. :up:
Quoting Leontiskos
What's interesting is that, even for adults, the "I think" is quite difficult. Most people have difficulty understanding how others could think differently than they do precisely because there is no recognition of their own act of thinking.
Yes. I deal with a number of people on a daily basis that do not seem to understand how worldviews form, grow, and evolve over time and/or how they work.
One reason I opted out of further explanation earlier was based on the succinct manner in which you drew the distinction between self-conscious thought and conscious thought. That was enough to make the basic case against the claim at the heart of the OP.
Right. And we didn't really have developed theories on that score until the 19th and 20th centuries.
Quoting creativesoul
Thanks. :smile:
My brain never moves alone from the livingroom to the kitchen. The brain moves with the body located in the head physically altogether. So your premise "If your brain moves" is not accepted, hence your argument is invalid.
Quoting RussellA
Tree has water and wood fibre in the content. Tree itself dies without water and the nutrients fed from the root.
Quoting RussellA
Mind as content sounds vacuous. Mind is a function of the brain and body. It feels, senses, perceives, believes, reasons, remembers and thinks. Mind itself is not content. Mind has contents.
Quoting RussellA
It sounds like unnecessary over reduction of "I" into a physical organ.
I hadnt responded to this and similar points earlier because it seemed to be based on a misunderstanding and I wasn't sure how to clarify it. The "I think" is not supposed be some simultaneous, conscious "thinking about thought" or "thinking that I am now having thought X." (Maybe the term "the I think" is ill-chosen, since it can suggest that misapprehension.)
But now this occurs to me: Is it possible that you dont countenance the idea of any thoughts that are not conscious? So therefore the I think, on that understanding, would be either present to consciousness or nonexistent? Or another possibility: You countenance the idea of various un- or subconscious processes that accompany thinking, but want to reserve the word thought for what happens consciously?
Is any of this close to how you see it?
I am wondering what it is supposed to be.
Quoting J
Again, as I understand it what is at stake is self-conscious thought, not conscious thought:
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting J
See:
Quoting Leontiskos
So the claim of the OP by Rodl is
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, no. Rodl specifically says, "This cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p."
Quoting Leontiskos
Sure, but again, Rodl is asking us not to assume that being self-conscious means having two simultaneous thoughts, as above. I raise the issue of un- or sub-conscious thoughts because understanding their role in mentation, if you countenance their existence, may help us understand what Rodl has in mind when he describes an item -- the "I think" -- which is clearly mental but just as clearly isn't present to consciousness.
I hate to say it, but a great deal of this comes down to how we want to use very ordinary words like "thought" and "accompany."
Quoting Leontiskos
See my comment in the previous post about the possibly unfortunate choice of this term by phenomenologists. Most of our uses of "I think" are indeed conscious and intentional. (Not sure if they're also self-conscious, but often enough, I suppose.) But "the I think" is, or may be, different. It's a highly technical usage that points to structure and transcendental conditions for thought, not just "some thought that comes along when we think anything."
We can say this, though: If "thought" is by (someone's) definition a phenomenon necessarily present to consciousness, then there is no "I think" that is also a thought. We've agreed that Pat is right about that -- no mysterious "thought of thinking" that accompanies our thoughts.
PS -- As the writer of the OP, I officially declare that we no longer have to use the umlaut when referring to Rodl. What a pain in the ass :wink: .
Mac users - if you go to Control Panel>Keyboard>Text Replacements, you can enter Rödl with the umlaut to replace every instance of the name typed without it. (And it will also work on your other iOS devices should you have any e.g. iPad, iPhone using same Apple ID.)
For Windows 10/11 - Go to Settings > Devices > Typing > Text Replacement.
Useful for diacriticals of all kinds, other examples being agap?, epoch?, and sa?s?ra.
Or just hold the "o" down and press 4. ö.
Miraculous.
Quoting J
But I have nowhere said that there are two thoughts. That is not the issue. I wonder if you are conflating the issue of simultaneity from the other thread with the issue of self-conscious thinking of this thread? The proposition I have been attributing to Rodl comes from the OP.
We saw that for Kant the I think is not a thought, it is a kind of representation, it does not always accompany representations (or thoughts) and, when it does accompany them, it therefore represents a true form of self-consciousness.
Quoting J
That's right, and I think it's just a matter of using words wrongly. When we are not conscious of thinking a thought, we are not self-conscious of our thinking of that thought. It doesn't make sense to say, "He is self-consciously thinking a thought without being conscious of his thinking the thought." If he is not conscious of thinking then he is not thinking the I think.
Quoting J
We could omit "intentional" if we like, but I don't see how we can omit "conscious." Once we say "I think" has nothing to do with consciousness of thinking we have departed much too far from the meaning of words.
:lol:
I was using copy-paste, but as others stopped using the umlaut it became harder to find.
At least for this thread,
Rödl = Rodl = Roooooooo4dl
ô ö ò ó ø ? õ
Honestly, I don't know what you folks are saying half the time. I've never read Frege, Rödl, or most others being mentioned. (I read most of Nagel's Mind and Cosmos. Absolutely loved what I could follow.) So I don't know how relevant these thoughts are.
I want to get away from the oak. Let's take baseball.
"Who is batting next for the Dodgers?" Some possible answers:
1) "I think Freddie Freeman."
2) "Freddie Freeman"
3) "I think Freddie Freeman is scheduled."
4) "Freddie Freeman is scheduled."
1) It's a fact that I think Freeman is batting next. Freeman may or may not bat next.
2) This is presented as a fact. It may or may not be. Difficult to see is the future. Always in motion it is. It may be that he's not even scheduled to bat next. Even if he is, any number of things might prevent his from batting next, right down to stepping in a hole and twisting his ankle one second from the plate. We'll have to wait and see.
3) It's a fact that I think Freeman is scheduled to bat next. It may or may not be a fact that Freeman is scheduled to bat next.
4) It's a fact that Freeman is scheduled to bat next. The lineup is written down, so you can read it. Doesn't mean he'll bat next, but he's scheduled.
The familiar Cartesian statement is "I think therefore I am."
"I think I am" sounds like I am guessing I exist. "I think therefore I am." indicates "I think" is the precondition or necessary foundation for "I exist".
So how can the same "I think" imply guessing, and also the solid reasoned precondition for the existence? Or are they different "I think"?
Quoting Corvus
Photograph of a tree
I see a photograph. I see particular shapes and colours which I recognise as a tree. There is the form of a particular tree that exists in the photograph and there is the content of the form, which exists in my mind as the concept of a tree.
For Frege there is a separation between force and content, where the assertoric force is a propositional attitude towards a content. In this instance, that I judge that the particular shapes and colours represent a tree.
Rodl rejects Frege's separation between force and content. For Rodl the original form of judgment is the opposition of p and non-p, and it is not possible to make any judgment whether particular shapes and colours represent p or non-p in the absence of any content p. In other words, I cannot judge whether these particular shapes represent a tree or not without having prior knowledge of a tree.
Thinking of the tree
I see a photograph of an oak tree, which is a representation of an oak tree. When I think of an oak tree, I am not thinking about a representation of an oak tree, as this would lead into the infinite regress homunculus problem. It would mean that I was thinking of a representation of a representation.
As Kant wrote in CPR B132
As Kant wrote, in order for me to think about an oak tree, accompanying my thought must be a representation of an oak tree, otherwise there would be nothing for me to think about. The "I think that there is an oak tree" cannot be external to the representation of an oak tree, otherwise the oak tree could not be thought about at all. The representation of the oak tree must be internal to the "I think that there is an oak tree".
Rodl, for a similar reason, in The Force and the content of judgement, rejected Frege's distinction between force and content. If content was external to force, any propositional attitude towards the content would be impossible, and there could be no judgement that the oak tree is shedding its leaves. Content must be internal to the force, where the judgement that the oak tree is shedding its leaves is no more than the articulation that the oak tree is shedding its leaves.
Knowing is not thinking
When I think of an oak tree, as a 1st person experience, I know that the thought is mine, rather than Pat's for example. I don't need to think about my thought in order to know that it is my thought. Therefore in every act of thinking there are two aspects, I think about the oak tree and I know that it is me who is thinking about the oak tree.
However, perhaps later, as a 3rd person experience, I may consciously think about my thought of an oak tree.
Knowing is not the same as thinking, in that I can know a pain in my hand without needing to think that I have a pain in my hand. For Frege a thought is either true or false. That I know a pain in my hand is not truth apt.
Rodl said "This cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p."
Therefore, in every act of thinking there are two aspects, I think p and I know I think p.
Partly. I'm saying that words are fundamentally scribbles and it is what we do with them that makes them into what we call words. Scribbles are "physical" things - ink on paper, the contrast of white and black light on your computer screen, etc. As such, they can cause things to happen, like changing someone's behavior, a computer perform certain functions, etc.
What I am trying to get you to explain is the fundamental parts of your thoughts. Scribbles appear as black scribbles on a white background, or as sounds that you hear. You can only ever know the world, including scribbles, as a visual or auditory experience. You can only think in visuals as well. Words are images, so you effectively think only in a mish-mash of images, sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells, of which scribbles are part of. So to say that your thoughts have content is to say that thoughts contain, colors, shapes, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings and our mind categorizes these things over time to produce meaningful behaviors.
For some reason, people seem to categorize words as having this special power or needing a special explanation that makes them separate from all the other visual experiences we have. I'm saying that is not the case. They are no different than any other visual experience you might have. The difference is what you do with them, no different than what you do with your car, or playing a computer game, or watching a movie. Words refer to other visuals, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells. The scribble, "sun" refers that bright, glowing disk you see in the sky during a clear day. The scribble, "sun" does not refer to more scribbles, unless you are looking in a dictionary, but even then all those scribbles must refer to other things that are not more scribbles for the scribbles to actually mean something.
Well, if it was their opinion, sure. There is some inherent uncertainty when it comes to expressing one's opinion, but not expressing observable facts. But then it would be odd for someone to express an opinion with the prefix, "I know without a doubt...", as that would mean they are not expressing an opinion, but a fact. We were not talking about opinions though. Is someone expressing an opinion or fact when stating, "The oak tree is shedding its leaves"?
Quoting RussellA
Just because it wasn't about the world doesn't mean it isn't part of the world. Does the Lord of the Rings book not exist in the world even though it isn't about the world? You misinterpreting a sound causes you to behave a certain way in the world. How can there be a causal relation between some thought you have and an action in the world if those thoughts are not in the world? If you are uncertain about the certainty of your thoughts, how can you ever say when some thought is part of the world or not? It would better to say that thoughts are part of the world like everything else is, as thoughts are information like everything else is. Even false thoughts and hallucinations have causal power and relations with everything else in the world.
Quoting RussellA
This seems contradictory. First you say you have knowledge of what you perceive in your five senses, but then conclude that you can never know what you perceive with one of your five senses (sound). What is the difference between a "belief", "think", and "knowledge" for you? What levels of uncertainty would you give each and why?
Quoting RussellA
Ok, would you say that the structure of your thoughts is more like watching the movie or reading the book? If scribbles in the book invoke the images from the movie, would you say that the scribbles in the book refer to the actions and things in the movie? Could it ever be the other way around? If so, provide an example.
Isn't that what you meant here (on Rodl's behalf, not your own)?:
Quoting Leontiskos
Sorry if I got you wrong. Maybe you thought I was attributing the thesis to you, rather than referring to your explication of Rodl.
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm about to post something that may clarify this.
I meant to construe that not as a separate thought, but as a part of the thought p. But maybe that is not a very clear way of expressing Rodl's claim.
I've realized how much of the difficulties with the "I think" hinge on the two senses of think (and thought) I discussed above (and elaborated upon by @Patterner in interesting ways).
To recap: a thought may be a mental event, which occurs to a particular person at a particular time. I had the thought that . . . Right now Im thinking whether . . . Hold that thought! But a thought can also be construed as the content of said mental event, what the thought is about this is Freges use of thought as proposition.
It would be very useful to have two different words for each of these two senses of think/thought but I dont think coining a new terminology is the best way to go. Instead, we could indicate them by their syntax. The mental event sense of think could be shown as I think: ?p . The propositional sense could be shown as I think that p or just I think p. Or we can just attach numbers to discriminate them: thought1 vs. thought2, think1 vs. think2.
The important insight is that, when someone argues that the I think accompanies all our thoughts, they are using both senses in the same sentence. We should translate this sentence as When I think p (thought2), I must also think: ?p (thought1). Put this way, it shouldnt even be controversial. You cant propose or entertain or contemplate a proposition without also thinking1 it.
This makes sense of several things Rodl talks about, though of course he is hardly the first to argue for the I think. He expresses the wish that we had a more accurate notation "that makes I think internal to p: we may form the letter p by writing, in the shape of a p, the words I think."
In other words, p (thought2) can be pictorialized as being constituted or given expression by a thought1. You need the thought1 to even be able to form a thought2. Or . . . the I think accompanies all our thoughts2.
The also elucidates the Rodelian theme of p as seemingly mysterious or unexamined. He says:
.
Hes being a little sarcastic, in my reading, but his meaning is clear: If we continue to allow p to float somewhere in the World 3 of abstracta, without acknowledging its dependence on thought1, we are going to get a lot of things wrong.
One clarification: Its tempting to say that thought2 must be equivalent to I judge p and indeed I believe Rodl jumps to this too often and too quickly. But if I judge means I believe to be the case, then this is a further move, one that is not necessitated by either think1 or think2 -- at least if the force/content distinction is kept in place. I can think the propositional content p without judging that it is the case.
Another clarification: This discrimination between the senses of think/thought is similar but not quite identical to what Popper would say about his World 2 and World 3, as I suggested above. Popper seems to me to be unclear about whether a World 2 thought can have a propositional content, or whether it must be regarded strictly as a brain event. Whereas I want to say that thought1 is not only something that happens with neurons, but also with what Im calling a mental event: it happens not just in the brain but also in the mind. My main distinction here (which I do think Popper would uphold) is between an event in time and the idea of a propositions being timeless, unspecific, the same no matter who thinks it, or when.
If the I think accompanies all our thoughts has been rendered uncontroversial, is it now also uninteresting, unimportant? This is a further question, which Im continuing to reflect on. Another further question is, How to understand all this in terms of self-consciousness?
Ah, I think I'm understanding you better. So my question would be, Isn't language available to pre-literate people? Surely the words come first, and then, in most cases, a written language develops. Isn't your account reversing this to make the scribbles primary? We can't do anything with them unless they already represent words; it's not the doing that "makes them into what we call words."
Am I making too much of this? Maybe you just mean "sounds and/or scribbles".
I don't follow the fundamental distinction here. It looks like when a thought occurs as a mental event it will always have a content, and that this content will be inseparable from the mental event. So what are the two different senses of "thought"?
The primary distinction that appears is thinking (as pointing to someone's opinion) vs. asserting (claiming that something is true). "The Earth is round {assertion} but he thinks it is flat {pointing to an opinion or judgment}."
Edit:
Quoting J
Okay, but is this a real distinction or a mental distinction? Doesn't the event involve leveraging a proposition? We think thoughts and propose propositions, right? So the theory here is that there are timeless Platonic propositions that we can do stuff with in time, like doubt, entertain, assert, etc.
And again, not all thoughts have the form of a statement. One can think of a question. So what is the mental content of "What sort of tree is that?"
There it is! -- "the I think accompanies all our thoughts2".
Quoting Leontiskos
Fregean thought as "propositional content" versus thought as a current event, so to speak, something my mind thinks at time T1.
Giving examples still seems the best way for me to get it across:
Are you having a thought? Yes.
What is the thought of? p
Are you having a new thought (time has changed)? Yes.
What is the thought of? p
The content remains the same (the proposition, the Fregean thought) but these are clearly two distinct mental events. They could equally well happen to two separate people.
I hope they're discovered! Do they fit your own experience? I only mean to stipulate the terminology, or rather bemoan that we haven't got a better one.
Quoting Banno
Good. I'll work on that. Makes me wonder if Rodl is also limiting "all our thoughts" to propositional thoughts.
He seems to be. Considering too few alternatives is a common failing in such situations.
If you want to discover the use of "thinking", it pays to be wary that you are not stipulating it. So "A thought is a mental event"... is it? Are there other mental events that are not thoughts? If so, how do they differ? Are there mental phenomena that are not events? If not, what is the word "event" doing - would we be better off thinking of mental phenomena? Is a toothache a mental phenomenon, a mental event or a thought? All this by way of showing that the surrounds may not be the neat garden Rödl seems to be seeing. It may be a bit of a jungle.
Is that saying something profound, along the lines that any thought must include some notion of the self... or is it merely the grammatical observation that to think is to have a thought? Because the latter is pretty analytic, while the former is at best dubious.
Is Rödl just confusing these two reading, and thinking that he has made a discovery when all he has done is make a stipulation?
Okay, so here is an edit I added:
Quoting J
Okay, but is this a real distinction or a mental distinction? Doesn't the event involve leveraging a proposition? We think thoughts and propose propositions, right? So the theory here is that there are timeless Platonic propositions that we can do stuff with in time, like doubt, entertain, assert, etc.
...Which I think tracks what you've said...?
Quoting J
This seems to go back to <what I said to javra>. It looks like you are turning "I think p" into "p was thought."
Quoting J
So the I think = thought1? Such that Rodl's claim is, "The temporal event of thinking accompanies all our [Fregian propositions]."
If the I think means only a temporal event of thinking, then what does it have to do with self-consciousness? What does it have to do with the self-reflective "I think"?
And it is also strange to try to make that term "thoughts" = [Fregian propositions]. Remember, this would mean that they are non-temporal, such that "thoughts" are not temporally distinct acts of thinking, but rather notionally distinct Fregian propositions. That is, the plural "thoughts" would capture two distinct Fregian propositions, but not the same Fregian proposition thought on two different days.
For clarity
So with I would say that this looks rather stipulative. But I agree that a temporal event of thinking accompanies every Fregian proposition. Like you say, that is uncontroversial (for non-Platonists).
The doings of the parasympathetic nervous system are regulated by the hypothalamus but are largely unconscious. Nevertheless they provide the foundation within which conscious thought gets its bearings.
The parasympathetic nervous system controls salivation. Is salivation then to be thought of as a mental event?
Yeah, it's magic saliva. And maybe you have no brain, have you ever seen your own brain with your own two eyes? Nope, you can't, that's by definition, so maybe you don't have a brain, maybe there is a clockwork, Steampunk machine inside your skull that makes you imagine that you have an organic brain. Right?
(I'm being ironic).
Of course. Often triggered by sensory stimuli.
I would refine what I said and say that colors, shapes, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings are primary and all thoughts and perceptions are composed of these things, which would include scribbles/words.
To be able to conceive of language use one must first understand the concept of representation. This idea possibly developed in our ancestors as a by-product of the idea of other minds - understanding that there is a first-person experience in other's heads that can explain some of the behaviors observed, as if the behaviors represent one's mental states. Observing the behaviors of other species and how they communicate with each other (take for instance the display of a white-tailed dear's tail), one would develop a theory of other minds and representation. Scribbles on paper are essentially like the tail of the deer - a visual marker that represents something else. Human intelligence allowed us to develop a highly sophisticated system of representation and an educational system to instruct the people how to use it, as in what string of scribbles represents what.
Representation comes first from understanding natural symbols (white-tailed deer's tail), then arbitrary symbol use (agreed-upon scribbles and sounds and what they represent) follows.
What events are not mental events?
Rödl explicitly states that his book does not operate in the usual manner of advancing theses, defending positions, or engaging in debates with competing views. He says he seeks to articulate something already implicit in our everyday practice of judgmenta foundational understanding of judgment that is always already present in the capacity to judge. 'What is thought first-personally contains its being thought' - p2.
Judgment is a fundamental activity of thoughtwhen we make a judgment, we assert something about the world, such as "the sky is blue." Rödl is interested in the self-consciousness inherent in judgment: the way in which, whenever we make a judgment, we implicitly understand what it means to judge. This self-consciousness isn't an explicit, theoretical knowledge but an implicit, practical understanding embedded in the act of judging itself. 'Thinking that something is so is being conscious of the validity of thinking this. We may put this by saying that a judgment is self-consciously valid, indicating that a judgment is a consciousness of itself as valid. The validity of judgment, then, not only is objective; it is also self-conscious' - p4
In this way, Rödl is not offering a new theory of judgment but rather bringing to explicit consciousness what we already know whenever we judge. His task is not to discover something new but to clarify and express the implicit understanding that makes judgment possible - P12-13
In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant sought to articulate the conditions that make experience and knowledge possiblenot by adding new empirical knowledge, but by analyzing the structures of thought that underlie any experience. This is the basis of Kant's famous transcendental method. Rödl says 'As [the method] aims to express the comprehension of judgment that is contained in any judgment, the present essay can say only what anyone always already knows, knows in any judgment, knows insofar as she judges at all. It cannot say anything that is novel, it can make no discovery, it cannot advance our knowledge in the least. Echoing Kant, we can say that its work is not that universal knowledge, but a formula of it' in other words an enquiry into the terms and scope of judgement itself.
So Rödls project is not about increasing knowledge but clarifying its form. By "formula," he means a linguistic articulation that makes explicit what is always already known implicitly. This is a profound task because confusion about such fundamental structuressuch as misunderstanding what it means to judgecan (and does, he claims) lead to widespread philosophical error.
The reason Frege is important, is because of his contention that the content of thought (
) can be entirely objective and independent of any particular subject. Freges emphasis is on the idea that thoughts exist as abstract, objective entities in a "third realm," independent of whether anyone thinks them. Fregean thoughts are, in principle, accessible to any rational being, and their validity does not depend on any individual subject's act of thinking. This is laid out in the famous article that has already been mentioned, The Thought: A Logical Enquiry, published in English in 1954.
Rödl's book is titled 'an introduction to absolute idealism', whilst Frege's essay is explicitly critical of idealism, in insisting on that true propositions are just so, independently of anyone thinking them. That seems oxymoronic to me, as I have argued at length in many debates on idealism.
Quoting Banno
If one's hypothalamus stops controlling the parasympathetic nervous system for any length of time, you can be sure there will be no ensuing 'mental events' for that subject. Furthermore, the 'implicit' nature of judgement that Rödl refers to is, I'm sure, a consequence of the un- and sub-conscious bases of judgements. What we're consciously aware of thinking is only the tip of a proverbial iceberg. But then, much moden philosophy is (as Keating once famously said of a political opponent) 'all tip and no iceberg'.
Makes sense, for Big Heg, "the truth is the whole," and the process of knowing and the knower is not excluded from the Hegelian circle.
I seem to recall from past Rödel exposure that one of the crucial points he makes is that an understanding of action and actors is essential to understanding the world. We are involved in the world (a point going back to Aristotle), not passive recipients, as in many empiricist views. A notion of ends and aims, terminating ultimately in the Good and the True (unified in the Absolute Idea) is required to fully explain this. "All men by nature desire to know," and the first principle of science is wonder.
It's like Plotinus says, thinking and being are two sides of the same coin and, at the limit, in the One/Absolute, they are not two things.
But we can slide away from this into confusion and multiplicity, which is what excising any thinker from thoughts does.
It seems very important in a context where propositions are often thought to stand in for or "represent" states of affairs (say, as physical ensembles) that bear nothing more than a contingent relation to thought.
One might think this should be more normative though: "P" [I]should[/I] include "I think P." It seems clear that it fails to for some people (or is at least heavily obscured). Rödl might be in danger of, as Big Heg puts it, arguing that the "flower refutes the bud."
Then it seems I was right; he only thinks in terms of assertions. He doesn't think of questions.
In asking what sort of tree that is, one is already supposing that there are trees of different sorts... is that the idea?
If so, where does the "I" come from? It's not just I who thinks there are different sorts of trees...
Quoting J
Quoting J
To be continued.
It is unanticipated, but perhaps not unimportant. I have often critiqued that same tendency to reify propositions here on TPF. Aristotle's critique of Plato seems very similar to this critique of Frege.
[quote=Arthur Schopenhauer]All that is objective, extended, activethat is to say, all that is materialis regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But ...all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and active in time.[/quote]
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, that's my hypothesis.
Quoting Leontiskos
Right, that's the natural next question. This is where Rodl's idealism comes in. He believes there's a great deal more to be said about the structure of thought1, the "I think". I'm still working on finding a clear and concise way of articulating his ideas here. The key, I'm pretty sure, is the connection he wants to draw between self-consciousness and how thought can be also objective. But since that's the very title of the book, it's big, and I'm not going to pretend I've grasped it yet. To be continued.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't think I understand this question. Could you say more?
Quoting Leontiskos
which was:
Quoting Leontiskos
I believe we can now see that there are subtleties and distinctions we need to make here. On the hypothesis of there being these two construals of "think/thought," the first quoted statement would be "Thinking2 p requires thinking1 p." But was your statement "No one disputes this" based on the observation that this is a pointless tautology, or were you aware of the different senses of "thinking p"? It reads to me like you were indeed making that distinction, and going on to raise the question of self-consciousness. But now what we must ask is, How would you divvy up the "thinks" in the next statement? The relevant bit is "whether thinking p requires self-consciously thinking p; whether it requires thinking "I think p". Rather than guessing, I'll just toss it to you. How would you disambiguate the various "thinking/thinks" here?
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, that's right. Can you say more about why (with the necessary disambiguations) this is problematic? I may not be seeing your point.
"Fregian proposition". What's that?
Quoting J
Yep. , thanks.
In line with the comments on The Thought: a Logical Analysis, and also another paper I've mentioned, Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge. The basic drift is that formal ideas - arithmetical proofs for instance - are true regardless of being judged so by anybody. They are in the 'third realm' of timeless truths which exist just so, awaiting discovery. It is at the nub of the argument.
Now that I am reading Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, it would help if you cited where you are quoting from.
I read the Schopenhauer passage as not confirming the Rödl statement. Was that your understanding as well?
I did add page references in those notes.
Quoting Paine
Not at all. The key phrase of the Schopenhauer passage is the reference to 'the machinery and manufactory of the brain', and the way that this enables an object to be 'presented to us in space and time'. As is well known, Schopenhauer's philosophy is that the world appears to us as Idea. And that is at least suggestive of:
You may disagree and I'm not going to die on a hill for it, but I thought it worth mentioning. Rödl at least has in common with Schopenhauer that he is a German idealist philosopher (although there are no references to him in the book, whilst there are numerous to Kant and Hegel.)
I was just reading the post as it appeared. Did not realize that you were drawing from your notes.
Taken at face value, that is a description of things-in-themselves per Kant. Schopenhauer seems to repeat the same idea of thought and representation being displaced from what is objective. Perhaps Rödl is proposing an alternative.
Okay.
Quoting J
Okay.
Quoting J
An example of a real distinction would be the Platonic model where there are real "Fregian" propositions and there are real temporal acts in which we leverage those propositions, such that there is a real distinction between thought1 and thought2 (i.e. a distinction in reality). An example of a mental distinction would be a model where there is only one (temporal) thought under two different guises; thought1 and thought2 can be distinguished mentally but these notions do not correspond to separate realities.
The oddity is that Rodl sounds a lot like Frege, given the way we are utilizing Fregian propositions. That is, there is a strong way in which thought1 resembles force and thought2 resembles content.
Quoting J
What I am suggesting is that no matter how we rearrange the various senses of thought1/thought2, we won't get an answer to the self-consciousness question. This is because thought1 (event) and thought2 (Fregian proposition) do not possess the qualities necessary to generate conclusions about self-consciousness. It seems that we have stepped away from the basic thesis of self-consciousness (of being conscious of my own thinking).
Quoting J
It just feels very odd that this is what we mean by "thoughts" in that second sense. Note that for Kant:
Quoting Kant, CPR, B131-133 (pp. 246-7)
..There is a possessive ("my"). A Fregian proposition is not possessed, being "timeless, unspecific, 'the same' no matter who thinks it, or when." When we talk about "my representations" or "my thoughts" we seem to be talking about things that are temporal, specific, appropriated by a subject, etc. This makes a lot of sense given that Kant is apparently saying that the I think (which involves self-consciousness) accompanies some thoughts1 but not others.
If I hear someone saying "the oak tree is shedding its leaves", as it is impossible to know what is in someone else's mind, I cannot know whether they believe in what they are saying, are lying, are certain in what they say or uncertain in what they say.
Even if they said "I am certain that the oak tree is shedding its leaves", they could be lying.
===============================================================================
Quoting Harry Hindu
As an Indirect Realist, I believe that the Lord of the Rings exists in the world, but this world exist in my mind. What exist in a mind-independent world is, as Kant said, unknowable things-in-themselves.
A Direct Realist would have a different opinion to mine.
I believe that there is something in this mind-independent world that caused me to perceive a sound, caused me to have a thought, but I can never know what that something outside my mind is.
I hear a sound that I perceive as thundering, but I cannot know what in the a mind-independent world caused me to hear this sound. For convenience, I name the unknown cause "thundering". I name the unknown cause after the known effect, such that when I perceive something as thundering I imagine the cause as thundering.
I can imagine a mind-independent world, but such a world has derived from the world inside my mind.
===============================================================================
Quoting Harry Hindu
For me, knowledge is justified true belief.
Truth is the relation between the mind and a mind-independent world.
As a 1st person experience, I hear a thundering sound. As a 3rd person experience, I can think about this thundering sound.
My belief is that it was caused by a motor bike and I can justify my belief.
However, as I can never know whether my belief is true, because as Kant said, in a mind-independent world are unknowable things-in-themselves.
===============================================================================
Quoting Harry Hindu
If I recognise a word, I imagine an image. Some images I recognise as words. In Hume's terms, there is a constant conjunction between some words and some images.
You had a previous question about meaning.
The pictogram of a plough has no meaning in itself. It must refer to something else to have meaning, such as a plough. The plough has no meaning in itself. It must must refer to something else in order to have meaning, such as the ability to grow food. Even the physical plough is a symbol for something else.
If you know p, then you must be able to prove or verify you know p. How do you prove and verify that you know you think p?
[i]The door
Hid the gore
Perpetrated by the boar[/i]
I'm sure there are things other than rhyming and poetry that can't wouldn't and couldn't be thought without words. Much of math and science must surely depend on them.
I know my hand hurts. In the absence of telepathy, it is impossible for me to either prove or verify to you that my hand hurts.
I know my hand hurts regardless of whether I can prove or verify it to someone else.
I know that I think the moon exists regardless of whether I can prove or verify that I know that I think the moon exists.
That would be a self knowledge with no possibilities of proof. Would it be correct?
Quoting RussellA
That would be a simple task in proof. You go out to the garden at night when the Moon is shining, you point to the Moon and say, I know the Moon exists. There is the Moon.
Problem is, your proof is true when the Moon shines, but it is false, when the Moon is not visible.
When you say, "I know", it raises a case for verification and proof, which judges your claim "I know" as sound and true, or unfounded and false.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, that's what I meant. I phrased it that way, in the context of disambiguating "thought," because of this from "Sense and Reference":
Julian Roberts points out that "thought," therefore, is directly congruent with "sense," in Frege's usage.
All of this just goes to further indicate what a terrible time the word "thought" gives us, when we try to understand how it gets used. I'm hoping my thought1 and thought2 will be helpful; they don't by any means exhaust the field.
It is an error. From a speculative metaphysical point of view, which is all we have for reference.
Thought. Not a thought, not the thought. Thought in general. Cannot be of anything but itself.
thought is cognition by means of the synthesis of conceptions , cognition in general being the object of thought in general, synthesis being the activity of thought, by which thought is represented as itself.
Hence ..wait foooorrr ittttt ..I think.
A thought, the thought, the cognition, is the objective to which active synthesis ascends, the conceptions conjoined therein judged according to the rules by which they do or do not belong to each other.
None of which even remotely presents, when I say I think the Yankees are a better baseball team than the Red Sox.
Hmm. I don't know how to answer this without pulling in a lot of metaphysical commitments -- which I'd rather not do because I think the thought1/thought2 distinction is important and relevant no matter whether one thinks it's "real" or "mental," in your terminology. Sorry to lob this back to you again, but if you could say a little more about what might hinge on the choice of "real" vs. "mental," I might have a better sense of what we ought to say about that.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, there is, and unless we want to go back to Kimhi's arguments, we should probably resist this. Where we stand in the discussion right now ("we" meaning all on this thread), let's go ahead and let thought1 be understood as unasserted, without force, "merely thought". We may have to change our minds at some future point.
Quoting Leontiskos
That may be true, but I was suggesting earlier that we don't have to understand "self-consciousness" as a new thought. You may be right that tinkering with the targeted sentence won't produce any insight, but I think it might. I can take a shot at it if you'd rather not.
Quoting Leontiskos
Good questions. I know I often blame translation for difficulties with Kant, and here again I'm tempted to say, "How would a German speaker of Kant's era understand 'my representations' or 'my thoughts'?" Would that possessive be taken to refer to a mental event Kant is undergoing, or would it be understood as pointing to the content? I'm not clear how the kinds of distinctions we're discussing here would have been conceptualized by Kant and his readers. Honestly not sure.
I could prove "the moon exists", as the moon exists external to me, but I couldn't prove that "I know I think the moon exists", as my knowing that I think exists internal to me.
Quoting Corvus
I would put it a bit differently, but this is fine.
Quoting Corvus
Because context matters. The same word or phrase can have wildly different meanings depnding on the full context on which they appear.
Quoting Corvus
They are different. The additional word "therefore" changes the meaning of the full sentence exactly as you just described.
"I think" and "p"
If we want to distinguish between the mental event and the propositional sense, between the act of thinking and the something being thought about, perhaps what is being distinguished is "I think" and "p".
In which case thought1 = "I think" and thought2 = "p".
Let p = the oak tree is shedding its leaves.
Frege and Rodl agree that thought1 cannot exist in the absence of thought2
Frege argues that thought2 can exist in the absence of thought1. The content of a thought can be objective, independent and accessible to any rational being.
Rodl argues that thought2 cannot exist in the absence of thought1. In opposition to Frege's anti-psychologism, this leaves no space for the psychological concept of judgement.
"I think "p"" and "I think p"
I think "p" = I think "the oak tree is shedding its leaves". I am not making any judgement about p. I have no propositional attitude towards p.
I think p = I think the oak tree is shedding its leaves. I am making a judgement about p. I have a propositional attitude towards p.
Mental events
For Frege, a thought is truth apt, which seems sensible. (The force and content of judgement by Rodl)
I know my hand hurts is not truth apt, therefore a mental event need not be a thought.
Knowing and consciousness
When I know that my hand hurts, I am conscious that my hand hurts.
When I think that the oak tree is shedding its leaves, I know that this is my thought rather than Pat's thought, for example. I am conscious that this is my thought.
To know something means consciously knowing something
1st person and 3rd person
In the 1st person, I think that the oak tree is shedding its leaves
In the 3rd person, I think about my thought that the oak tree is shedding its leaves.
See The force and content of judgement by Sebastian Rodl 2020 referring to van der Schaar.
In the 1st person, I am conscious that my hand hurts
In the 3rd person, I am conscious that I am conscious that my hand hurts.
In the 1st person, I think about something external to me.
In the 3rd person, I think about myself as if I was external to myself.
Being conscious about myself as if I were external to myself is easier to understand than self-consciousness.
Quoting Wayfarer
Two important points here: First, as @Banno and others have noted, Rodl is clearly using "thought" in a way that excludes many perfectly ordinary examples of thoughts: memories, questions, musings, etc. Second, we mustn't understand "self-consciousness" as explicit, a "further thought."
Quoting Wayfarer
This is where he winds up, but the argument is complicated. I read him as saying that we couldn't have a conception of "objective" that was not self-conscious. He brings in Nagel here to support this idea. Nagel says that "we can't understand thought from the outside." For Nagel, the very concepts of objectivity and validity can only be maintained within thought (or within the bounds of reason); any attempt to understand them (or refute them) from a 3rd person view will fail. I'm not totally comfortable with whether Rodl can use Nagel's point here, but it's interesting to consider.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. We should resist all impulses to read Rodl as talking about "layers of thought" or "thoughts about thoughts." Implicit understanding is key. This is oddly transcendental -- a point about what is constitutive of thought -- another link he has with Kant.
"I think I am."
I know that's not what you meant. I just couldn't resist. :grin:
Good.
Quoting RussellA
This is tricky. Using my terms, "When I think1 that 'the oak tree is shedding its leaves', I know that this is my thought1 rather than Pat's thought1, for example. I am conscious that this is my thought1."
So far, so good. But what do we do about "To know something means consciously knowing something"? Which sense(s) of "thought" is being appealed to here?
So in this whole thread, you think everyone is either lying or uncertain of what they say? Should I also consider that everything you have said is either a lie or that you are uncertain in what you are saying? What is the point of using language to communicate then?
Are we to maintain the same level of skepticism when talking about anything? Is there anything that anyone can say that is more or less fact/opinion, or does every statement carry the same level of uncertainty as every other statement? For instance, do the statements, "Santa Claus exists." and "Barak Obama exists." hold the same level of uncertainty? If not, then what determines which one is more fact than opinion?
Quoting RussellA
A world does not exist inside your mind. Ideas exist inside your mind. The world is all there is, included the ideas in your mind, and the book on the table that represent those ideas in Tolkien's mind that you can have knowledge of by reading the scribbles therein.
I don't know what Kant means by unknowable things-in-themselves. What is knowledge then if not something independent of the thing itself? You're assuming that there is more to know about something, when it could be possible that a finite number of sensory organs can access everything there is to know about other things. In fact, there are many characteristics of objects that overlap the senses. You can both see, hear and feel the direction and distance of objects relative to yourself. All three senses confirm what the other two are telling you. Having multiple senses isn't just a way of getting at all the propertied of other objects but also provide a level of fault tolerance that increases the level of certainty one has about what they are perceiving.
You can also depend on the process of causation in a deterministic universe as providing another level of certainty. Effects carry information about their causes. You can get at the cause by making multiple observations over time and finding the patterns. This allows you to predict with a higher certainty the cause of some effect you experienced. When billions of people use smart phones everyday, almost all day, and 99% of them work as intended, does that not give you a certain level of certainty that your smartphone will work today? Can we be 100% certain? No. Are we more than 0% certain? Yes, depending on the case. You seem to be maintaining that we can only every be 0% certain of anything.
Quoting RussellA
You're contradicting yourself again. First you define knowledge as "justified true belief". You then say that you can justify your belief, but then say you cannot know things-in-themselves. What does that even mean - things-in-themselves. What part of you is a thing-in-itself? What part of you is you and the rest an unknowable thing-in-itself? Is your brain an unknowable thing-in-itself?
If you don't mind, I'll take a stab at defining these terms. All knowledge stems from both observation and reason. Both are means of justifying our beliefs. If you only have one, then it remains a belief. Only by incorporating both do you acquire knowledge. One must continually justify one's knowledge by making new observations and integrating it with stored knowledge. Knowledge is supported (justified) both by observation and logic.
Galileo once said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." The same can be said of natural selection. I do not feel obliged to believe that natural selection that has endowed us with sense and reason has intended us to forgo their use. Are our senses and reason useful? If so, useful for what?
Quoting RussellA
Yes, meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. What caused these scribbles to be on your screen? You observe the effect - the scribbles on the screen. Now how is it that you can get to the thing-in-itself - other people's ideas - by seeing scribbles on your computer screen if not by taking what you know from prior experiences and using that to predict how the scribbles appeared on your screen and what they refer to? What level of certainty do you have that you are correct in understanding that the scribbles appeared on your screen through a complex causal process where some humans sitting half way around the world are sitting at their computer typing in scribbles to represent their thoughts and submitting them to the internet that your computer has access to and can then read?
My point is that we could use anything to symbolize other things. Any visual could represent some other visual, sound, feeling, taste or smell. Our ancestors used natural objects to symbolize complex ideas like status within the group, or one's role in the group. It is merely the efficiency of symbol use that has increased exponentially with writing scribbles is more efficient than hanging a bears head above entrance to your tent. Increasing the number of symbols and their relationships allows one to represent more complex ideas and probably does improve the efficiency of conceiving of new ones. Can a society without a written language evolve? The Incans did not have a written language but were able to pull of some very sophisticated feats of engineering.
The fact that we can use hand movements (sign language) or braille to symbolize things is evidence that words can take any form that we can perceive and can be used to represent almost anything.
Rhyming is simply making similar noises in succession.
I always end up posting a link to this video in discussions like this: A Man Without Words
This man is deaf and never learned a language, or even understood that there was such a thing as language) until he was an adult, yet he was able to survive within society. I doubt a bear or lion would have trouble opening a wooden barrier in a hole in a wall to find a dead pig without language.
Probably the recalling of the visual experiences of similar looking trees which then creates the doubt of which tree it is, or if it is one that you haven't seen before even though it appears similar to other trees you've observed. Only making more observations (a closer look) can you determine what is different and therefore which tree it is. If you have never seen a tree before you'd think all trees look like this one.
I'd say that things like toothaches, red, body odor, sweet, etc. are sensory impressions, imposed on us without any work by our consciousness and thinking is work done with these impressions either by remembering them, categorizing them, or planning a response to them. The sensory impressions are like the data entered into the computer and the computer thinks, or processes the data to produce meaningful output.
Fair point. When you say, "I know I think the Moon exists." sounds like just a monologue to yourself, which cannot make objective proof or verification. Or it could be a psychological statement telling yourself, that you believe that the Moon exists.
So it seems clear that "I think p" can be proved as true or false statement. But you could just have said "p", instead of "I think p". Because "p" sounds clear enough with no strings attached to its implications.
Whereas "I think p" sounds less clearer than "p", and has some points to clarify.
When you say "I think I think p", it sounds something is wrong and deeply wrong in the grammar and its meaning, and will be rejected for its dubious clarity.
When you say, "I know p", you will be expected to prove that you know p.
"I know I think p" is a psychological statement with no objective meaning to deliver apart from to yourself.
Ok, sounds reasonable. Does it mean "therefore" has some logical significance in the statement and all statements?
When you say, "I think therefore the Moon exists. ", doesn't sound quite logical or convincingly meaningful or true, than "I think therefore I am.". What do you make of this?
On the one hand I saw Santa Claus in person at Hamley's Regent Street store when I was very young, yet have never seen Barak Obama. On the other hand, many people have told me that Santa Claus is not real.
Do I believe what I have seen with my own eyes, or what people tell me?
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Quoting Harry Hindu
The Direct Realist believes that there is a book on the table. However, the Indirect Realist would disagree.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
The problem is, how is it possible to know about something that exists in a mind-independent world when all we have is our minds.
From Wikipedia Thing-in-itself
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Quoting Harry Hindu
The same effect can have many different possible causes. I see a broken window, and even if I know that something caused the window to break, one particular effect can have many different causes. There is no certain means of knowing what the cause was, a stone the previous day, a rock the previous week, a seagull the previous week, a crow within the hour, a window cleaner, etc.
The cause may determine the effect, but the affect could have been determined by many different possible causes.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
From SEP The analysis of knowledge
From Wikipedia Thing-in-itself
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Quoting Harry Hindu
A Direct Realist believes that they directly observe things in a mind-independent world. The Indirect Realist disagrees.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
That is my point. What is important are our senses and our reason. What exists the other side of our sense is open to debate.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
How to get from what we experience in our senses to what exists the other side of our senses, and whether it is even possible, has no agreed solution.
From Wikipedia Phenomenology (philosophy)
Indeed, whatever properties something has when it is interacting with nothing else and no parts of itself are not only epistemically inaccessible, but causally inert and can make no difference to anyone, ever. Hence, we might think that knowledge of "things-in-themselves," far from being the "gold standard," is rather worthless. Things participate in the world by interacting, as the old scholastic adage goes actio sequitur esse, "act follows on being."
Now, its obviously true that what we are affects how we interact with things. This is the ol' quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur, "everything is received in the manner of the receiver." But this is true of all interactions. Salt dissolving in water only occurs because of what both salt and water are, and just as a ball only "appears red" in the presence of a seer," salt only ever dissolves when placed in an appropriate solvent.
Direct realism need not be naive. Aristotle, for instance, combines some of the precepts of enactivism with the idea that what we experience is the interaction between our sense organs and things, as mediated through the ambient environment, and that knowledge involves universals that are not, strictly speaking "in" things. Yet he also doesn't have everything taking place in the imagination, through phantasms/representations, as many moderns would have it.
:up:
"...every effect is the sign of its cause, the exemplification of the exemplar, and the way to the end to which it leads." St. Bonaventure - Itinerarium Mentis in Deum.
You can explain this in terms of modern supervenience theories as well. As you pile up more and more observations the set of possible P-regions (spatio-temporal regions capable of producing some interval of experience) consistent with our experiences gets smaller and smaller.
Yes. If I said "I think the oak tree is shedding its leaves" I would sound more uncertain than if I had said "the oak tree is shedding its leaves".
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Quoting Corvus
In ordinary language when chatting at the bus stop, I agree. But perhaps not on a philosophy forum.
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Quoting Corvus
Agree
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Quoting Corvus
And hopefully to others on this thread about "p and "I think p""
I know my thoughts, as my thoughts are inside my mind.
I have the thought that the moon exists.
Therefore, I know my thought that the moon exists
I believe that the moon exists.
I can justify my belief that the moon exists.
A belief is true if it corresponds with what exists in a mind-independent world.
The insurmountable problem is how can the mind know about a world that is independent of the mind.
Therefore, truth about a mind-independent world is unknowable
Therefore, knowledge about a mind-independent world is impossible.
However, this is why we have axioms in logic, science and mathematics and hypotheses in general life.
We don't have to go into this too far. The point is just to think about the manner in which Fregian propositions are being countenanced. The thought1/thought2 distinction puts us in the territory of heavy Platonism, at least prima facie. Given what Wayfarer has said I thought this sort of thing was being resisted.
My time is short this week, so I am going to try not to get too entangled here.
Quoting J
Well, I can't imagine how a temporal thought-event would lack force, given that a "mere thought" (without force) is something very like a Fregian proposition (thought2). But this does get into Kimhi's question of what exactly it means to be forceless.
Quoting J
Well again, I have never claimed that self-consciousness is a thought. The crucial point for this thread is that self-consciousness is something. It is not nothing. And what it is is self-consciousness.
In other words, various people have said that Rodl doesn't look to be dealing with self-consciousness, and the response is always, "Oh, but self-consciousness isn't w, x, y, or z." Well, what is it? And once we have a sense of what it is, is Rodl dealing with it?
(My claim has been that self-consciousness of something we do is consciousness of our doing that thing. Thought is something we do. Therefore self-consciousness is consciousness of our act/doing of thinking. Nowhere here is the idea that self-consciousness is a thought.)
Quoting J
Feel free to give it a shot. We have, "[X] accompanies all our [Y]," where the possible values for X and Y are thought1 and thought2. I don't see how any substitution will yield a conclusion about self-consciousness. And note that Kant's I think, which is not thought1, is about self-consciousness and therefore can yield a conclusion about self-consciousness.
Quoting J
Well, that looks like saying, "Maybe the translator mistranslated 'my'. Maybe it's not possessive after all." But this looks very ad hoc. It's logically possible that there is some sort of mistranslation or lossy translation, but until we have independent reasons to believe such a thing, it can't function as a plausible claim.
More bluntly, we shouldn't be saying, "My theory conflicts with Kant. But that's probably just a translation problem. Also, I don't speak German." Mww tried to preempt that sort of thing earlier when he consulted three different translations.
Just quickly on this one, heading out the door. I didn't mean it was a mistranslation of the possessive. I meant that different languages (and different eras) have different senses of what connotes "possession," what sorts of things can be mine. I think this is relevant in a case like this, where the issue of the subjectivity (the my-ness) of thought is the very question. Sorry if I confused you.
He says, rather, there are thoughts we can't understand 'from the outside'. His essay Evolutionary Naturalism and Fear of Religion provides an example, speaking of the attempt to justify reason in terms of evolutionary adaptation:
[quote=Thomas Nagel]The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. [/quote]
But there are times when you can 'step outside thought'. If I ask of you, 'why do you think that?' in respect of
, you will give reasons. But
[quote=Thomas Nagel]If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions.[/quote]
I think this very close to the thrust of Rödl's arguments, which I presume explains Rödl's focus on Nagel.
//
Quoting J
We're trying to understand the ontological status of intelligible truths: are they merely constructs of human cognition, or do they have an independent, universal existence that reason can apprehend?
Something that has occurred to me, is the sense in which the substance of 'Fregean propositions' (e.g. elementary arithmetical truths) are, on the one hand, independent of your or my mind, but at the same time, facts that can only be grasped by reason. I think this is an extremely salient point in all these discussions. So they are 'mind-independent' in one sense, not being dependent on the individual mind, but not in another, as they can only be grasped by a mind.
It seems to me that Frege (great a philosopher as he was) overlooks this fact. When he says that arithmetical proofs possess the same kind of mind-independent reality as pencils or stars he is overlooking this fundamental metaphysical and epistemological point.
Recall the passage I provided about Augustine and intelligible objects in the discussion on Platonic Realism:
[quote=Cambridge Companion to Augustine]Intelligible objects must be independent of particular minds because they are common to all who think. In coming to grasp them, an individual mind does not alter them in any way, it cannot convert them into its exclusive possessions or transform them into parts of itself. Moreover, the mind discovers them rather than forming or constructing them, and its grasp of them can be more or less adequate. Augustine concludes from these observations that intelligible objects must exist independently of individual human minds.[/quote]
So, they're independent of particular minds, but they're not empirical objects. At the end of the quoted section, we read:
'Certain things that clearly exist'. But whether these are, indeed, 'existing things' would be contested by almost any modern philosopher, and certainly by empiricism, for whom the 'epistemological buck' stops with what is materially existent, and what can be inferred on the basis of mathematical abstractions from such existents (as discussed in the Platonic realism thread.)
To tie this back to Rödl - the act of judgment itself (I think that
) presupposes the intelligibility of its object. After all, if the object were not intelligible, then you couldn't say anything about it - I think that is meaningless! This suggests that intelligibility is not imposed by the act of judgment but is a prior condition of the object that judgment recognizes and articulates. (And note the link again to Kant's transcendental arguments.)
Quoting Wayfarer
My citation was actually a direct quote from The Last Word, an earlier work than the "Evolutionary Naturalism" essay, I'm pretty sure. I suspect that when Nagel wrote "thought" in that earlier citation, he had in mind something more like "reason" or "justification." So his subsequent descriptions, which you quote, are a little more precise. In any event, yes, this is the territory Rodl wants us to consider and, to a significant degree, amend.
Quoting Wayfarer
I like your whole discussion of this -- very clear and insightful. I'm not entirely sure that your first alternative, above, is what @Leontiskos had in mind when he wrote:
Quoting Leontiskos
I suppose it depends on what more you want to say about the nature of the "independent, universal existence." For instance, could this existence inhere in what L calls "one (temporal) thought under two different guises"? Is a guise close enough to an existence? Or do you want to hold out for "separate realities"? Talk at this level of abstraction can plunge us into huge terminological problems, as you know.
Quoting J
It's all to do with universals. There's another good discussion of them in Russell's Problems of Philosophy: The World of Universals. For the pre-scientific revolution worldview, the problem didn't present itself, because of the correspondence between ideas, universals, and the Divine intelligence. But, back to Rödl - I'm working towards Chapter 4, The Science without Contrary. Let's stick to Rödl for now (my digression, I know.)
So I asked what a "Fregian proposition" is and received in reply explanations about what a thought is.
Now I've also been told that for Frege the sense of an expression is the thought it expresses. And that for Frege a proposition denoted a truth value. And that Russell showed something of how Frege was mistaken in On Denoting - a far more influential paper, set aside only with the advent of possible world semantics. Russell's paper is the one that includes the following gem:
That's besides the point of this thread, of course. I'm left with the impression that Rödl, and perhaps others, are going to an extreme in order not to agree that a name has a referent, and that the things we refer to can be grouped - on order, that is, to avoid a bit of formal logic.
Rödl, especially chapter 9, seems to have noticed the intentionality involved in referring to that with the name "oak tree", and to have mistaken it for making a judgement. So he offers:
(We are it seems to return to the obtuse philosophical style that was rejected by Frege, Russell, Moore and a few others. A retrograde step) Extensional logic, and hence rational discourse, is indeed grounded in "picking out" individuals. In so far as that is Rödel's argument, he has my agreement.
When Pat looks out the window and wonders if that tree is an oak or an elm, they are wondering about that tree. That it is a tree is not peculiar nor private to Pat alone, but something on which we all might agree. In this way it is not an "I think" that accompanies Pat's wondering, but a "we think". Pat is not making an individual judgement so much as participating in a group activity. Whether the tree out the window is to be placed with the oaks or the elms is not just an arbitrary judgement to be made by Pat, but a step in a broader activity in which others participate.
In answer to the OP, "p" and "I think that p" at the very least can be distinguished on these grounds.
Neither coincidental nor misplaced. The seminal article of Frege's is called 'The Thought: A Logical Investigation' which explicitly identifies propositions and thoughts.
Quoting Banno
But that begs a question. As Rödl is claiming to represent absolute idealism, and a re-statement of Hegelian logic, that is not surprising, but whether it is 'retrograde' depends on whether we agree that the 'linguistic turn' against idealism was an improvement in the first place. Which is one of the major points at issue.
Quoting Banno
[quote=Lecture Notes, Hegel]Whereas Kant seems to imply that an individuals mind controls thought, Hegel argues that a collective component to knowledge also exists. In fact, according to Hegel, tension always exists between an individuals unique knowledge of things and the need for universal conceptstwo movements that represent the first and second of the three so-called modes of consciousness. The first mode of consciousnessmeaning, or "sense certainty"is the minds initial attempt to grasp the nature of a thing. This primary impulse runs up against the requirement that concepts have a "universal" quality, which means that different people must also be able to comprehend these concepts. This requirement leads to the second mode of consciousness, perception. With perception, consciousness, in its search for certainty, appeals to categories of thought worked out between individuals through some kind of communicative process at the level of common language. Expressed more simply, the ideas we have of the world around us are shaped by the language we speak, so that the names and meanings that other people have worked out before us (throughout the history of language) shape our perceptions.[/quote]
So the present topic is Hegel catching up with the logic of the turn of the last century. Fine.
I'm up to 5.6, Nagel's Dream. Much more familiar territory for me.
Quoting Harry HinduIt seems that you start off disagreeing with me, and end up agreeing. Certainly, our ancestors used things other than words to symbolize other things. We still do. But words and language is a huge step above anything else when it comes to communicating specifics, and let's us think about things I doubt think we could think about without it.
Quoting Harry HinduI guess that depends on what we mean by "evolve". if we mean ethically or artistically, I don't see why not.
Musically would take longer, unless you have musical notation but not written language. Which I guess is possible, but no culture in human history is known to have done so. A society's literature would also take much longer to evolved. I mean things like story-telling and poetry, which don't have to be written down. Anyone listening to the Aboriginal "Dreamtime" stories in Australia hundreds of years ago might have thought it would be good to create a huge, complex story. But very difficult to do that, as opposed to Shakespeare getting the idea. So the Aboriginies concentrated on stories that were important to their culture.
Technologically? No. The ability to store, and easily access, information, rather than being limited to what was able to be memorized, is a gigantic advantage. If they never started using written language, Incans were not going to the moon.
Quoting Harry HinduI agree. But if you don't find a way to store sign language outside of memory, like in writing, you won't get as far in some ways.
Quoting Harry HinduIt's making similar sounding words in succession.
Quoting Harry HinduWatching it now. Sounds fascinating!
I wish Rodl had devoted more consideration to this. Or perhaps he does, as I've not finished the book yet. Certainly such a "group activity" could be equally constitutive of thought as an "I think" -- doesn't Cassirer talk about this somewhere in Symbolic Forms? It's been years . . .
:grin: Well, you don't have to. . . . As a short cut, forget about "thought1" -- this is just me trying to specify some terminology -- and focus on the idea of a thought as being merely entertained qua thought, as something to ponder or question. Are you familiar with the force/content distinction? The OP of "A challenge to Frege on Assertion" gives an overview. Take a look and then I'm happy to try to clarify.
The essay is about indirect discourse and quotation. It discusses the logical structure of a sentence such as Mary says x. One of the issues is that, if were meant to be quoting Mary here, you cant just substitute logical equivalents and have it come out right.
Mary says, The evening star is out tonight.
Mary says, Venus is out tonight.
The evening star and Venus have the same extension but different meanings. So its quite possible that Mary said the 1st sentence but did not mean the 2nd (if she didnt happen to know that the evening star was Venus).
What I realized was: This structure parallels I think p using says as the verb instead of thinks.
(Ive switched to I rather than Mary to remind us that this is not an issue that depends on the noun or pronoun.)
A. I think1: A wolf is a carnivore. (think1 = have this thought at a particular moment)
This pretty clearly cant be translated to:
B. I think1: Canis lupus is a carnivore.
Not only might I not know that a wolf is Canis lupus, but more importantly that was not actually what I thought, according to statement A. Statement A uses think1 to provide a quotation of my thought.
C. I think2 a wolf is a carnivore (think2 = entertain or propose this propositional content)
The question is, is this translation OK?:
D. I think2 Canis lupus is a carnivore.
Has the meaning changed? Or am I more likely to respond, No, its the same thought. I meant the same thing in both cases.
Quoting J
Yep. The use of "says" rather than "thinks" removes a large part of the ambiguity that plagues this thread. So many unkempt posts.
Your think1 and think2 seem to parallel the difference between an utterance and a proposition.
A. I said "A wolf is a carnivore."
B. I said "Canis lupus is a carnivore."
C. A wolf is a carnivore.
D. Canis lupus is a carnivore.
A and B are opaque (non extensional). If what you said was "A wolf is a carnivore" then you did not say "Canis lupus is a carnivore." C and D are transparent (extensional). If a wolf is a carnivore then Canis lupus is a carnivore.
And keep in mind here that extensionality is just being able to substitute without changing truth value.
So making an utterance is different to making a proposition in that the former is not extensional, while the latter is. Is that what you have in mind on your think1 and think2? Becasue if so, then think1 is different to think2, and it seems Pat is correct.
Yes I know that anything that existed before 10 minutes ago is now obsolete.
I think there's a larger issue. I'm not alone in seeing at least some elements of German idealism to be essential to larger questions of philosophy, and its rejection by the 'plain language' analytical philosophers (famously initiated by Moore and Russell) as basically sidestepping or deprecating many of those important questions. Everything is reduced to interminable arguments about terminology or valid propositions or what can be validly stated. The same can't be said of Continental philosophy
- Nagel starts another of his essays 'Analytic philosophy as a historical movement has not done much to provide an alternative to the consolations of religion. This is sometimes made a cause for reproach, and it has led to unfavorable comparisons with the continental tradition of the twentieth century, which did not shirk that task. I believe this is one of the reasons why continental philosophy has been better received by the general public: it is at least trying to provide nourishment for the soul, the job by which philosophy is supposed to earn its keep.' (Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament.)
But then, I do understand that any mention of 'nourishment for the soul' will be tarred with the same brush as disdain for anything deemed religious. There's a kind of subterranean barrier which declares what is and is not deemed 'acceptable philosophical discourse' according to that criterion. (I notice John Vervaeke, the philosophically-informed cognitive scientist that I'm listening to, manages to navigate these issues without being so constrained. Anyway, another digression. I'll try and get back to the actual text.....)
There are likely an infinite number of sentences (or certainly a very large number) that could contain the word "therefore", so I can't comment on how it would work in all sentences. But I would agree that typically the word "therefore" is used to indicate that there is a linkage between the other components of the sentence (or perhaps a previous sentence). I googled synonyms for "therefore" - "accordingly", "hence", "thus" "consequently" & "ergo" all seem to have similar usages (with some subtleties in emphasis and style.)
Quoting Corvus We can construct an infinite number of sentences (or certainly a very large number) that are grammatically correct/sound but which have no semantic meaning. "The capital of France is Paris therefore zebras have purple hexagons for camouflage". "Quadruplicity drinks procrastination" "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" etc
Whatever. I was pointing to the prose style in my two quotes.
This must come up for translators of epics all the time as a more practical concern. They all make a habit of referring to people, places, etc. by circuitous names. "Son of..." "he who was last upon the battlements err the Achaeans breached the gates of fair Ilium," "that long bearded warrior, fiercest among the Franks," etc., where the phrase is primarily serving as a name.
Virgil identifies himself initially with this whopper:
[I]
Sub Julio was I born, though it was late,
And lived at Rome under the good Augustus,
During the time of false and lying gods.
A poet was I, and I sang that just
Son of Anchises, who came forth from Troy,
After that Ilion the superb was burned.[/I]
Is the last tercet equivalent with: "I am the poet who wrote the Aeneid?" (which would be equivalent with "I am Virgil?") Can we consult the truth tables?
It would be fun to see the Iliad or Beowulf rendered in logical form.
-
I listened to a talk by John McDowell on Rödl's book. It was helpful in understanding a bit of what Rödl is doing, but it was also useful to me because McDowell uses Anscombe's interpretation of Aristotle to critique a central piece of Rödl's project. The critique is basically that Rödl turns practical reasoning into speculative reasoning, and I would say that this is a very common and understandable Aristotelian mistake. The talk is exceptionally clear.
The foundational claim McDowell makes is that, for Rödl,
Given that he starts with Anscombe and brings in Davidson, it may be more accessible to the folks interested in contemporary philosophy. If in one way or another Rödl casts thinking as practical reasoning (which it arguably is), then on McDowell's thesis it is easy for me to understand why Rödl would want to say thinking is self-conscious.
(Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a copy of the pdf that McDowell used for his talk.)
---
- Good thoughts
- It would be the real vs. logical distinction catalogued <here>.
I asked our digital friend to oblige. They came back with:
I've posted their rendering in symbolic logic in image format as it is difficult to render it in plain text:
(Incidentally, they also said 'That's a delightful challenge'.)
///
Quoting Leontiskos
Very good, but I note that he says it's a wonderful book and 'almost' perfect. I will try and find time to listen.
Read my edit above before you do. :nerd:
Quoting JAs opposed to what??
Quoting JNever heard the phrase.
Quoting JI wondered what that was about when you started it. I'd never seen the name Frege before. And a book named Thinking and Being sounds fantastic! But I couldn't make head nor tail of the op. I'll try again.
Thank you for your time.
Ok, all seems a lot better making sense now. But formal logic cannot tell you truth about the world. Formal logic can only tell you if the axiomatic formulas are valid or not.
For analysing truth of the world, you need to use material logic i.e. the logic which studies on the contents of the statement, propositions and terms rather than the movements of the inferences which formal logic is about.
Remember validity is not truth. Validity just means the connected formulas (statements) are derived from the premises. Many folks here seem to misunderstand validity as truth, and go on about the formal logic for finding truth of the reality. It is always failure and misunderstanding in the results. Some of them also seem to think formal logic is the only logic there is to use. No, there are 100s of different alternative logics in use.
Formal logic is made for mathematical problems, not the world problems.
Rödl treats Nagel as the last exit from the highway of absolute idealism:
This seems to be where Rödl also moves beyond Kant (as referred to here). The need to oppose solipsism in the Critique of Pure Reason has been dissolved.
Quoting Banno
I think it's very close. "Think1" is meant to refer to the "utterance" of a thought, if you will -- the specific time and place when the thought occurs in a brain. "Think2" is meant to be, quite simply, a proposition, same as in Davidson's discussion of "said." If you or anyone else is interested in really exploring these parallels, it's fascinating to read through "On Saying That" and substitute, as you read, "think" for "say" or "said" (and all the other various cognates). You get things like:
"We are indeed asked to make sense of a judgment of synonymy between thoughts . . . as an unanalyzed part of the content of the familiar idiom of indirect quotation of a thought. The idea that underlies [this] is samethinking: When I say that Galileo thought that the earth moves, [and so do I], I represent us as samethinkers."
and
"[Quine] now suggests that instead of interpreting the thought-content of indirect discourse as occurring in a language, we interpret it as thought by a thinker at a time."
This is indeed what I'm trying to clarify with thought1 and thought2.
Why, then, do I say "very close" rather than "exact"? I do see a difference between thought and speech, as follows:
We all know what it means to quote a sentence, an utterance, but it is not so clear what we mean when we talk about "quoting a thought." To quote an utterance is surely to quote the language used; but must that be true of what we report about a thought? Intuitively, it seems wrong. My thought in English is going to be the same as your thought in Spanish, even at the level of quotation. To put it another way, what makes a thought "thought1" rather than "thought2" is not a matter of holding the language steady, but of occurrence in time: "thought1" specifies my thought or your thought at times T1 and 2; "thought 2" specifies what we are both thinking about.
This difference (if it is one) between saying and thinking is illuminated by the last idea Davidson offers us in "On Saying That":
In other words, the Fregean separation of utterance and proposition does create a certain artificiality in our analysis of what words do. What might this suggest about thinking? Is it "plainly incredible" that we should even make a separation between thought1 and thought2 if that separation is supposed to treat thought1 as a "quoted" item with no semantic content? Undoubtedly that is what some reductionist psychologists might prefer to do. But I'm suggesting that treating thought1 as "extensionally equivalent" (cut me some slack here!) to "neurons 4545d + 2234v doing XYZ at Time T1" is going too far.
You're welcome. I don't at all mind trying to explain this stuff -- if I can't do it, there's something wrong with either the ideas or my understanding of them!
Quoting Patterner
This introduces the force/content distinction. When I say, "I think X," in ordinary language it can mean two things (and probably more). It can mean, "Right now I'm considering the thought X, just as an idea. [content]. I don't know whether it's true or false, and I'm certainly not prepared to say I believe it. I'm just formulating the thought." Or, it can mean, "Yes, I think X, I believe X is true. [force]" This is giving an assertoric force to the thought of X: not only are you thinking X in the first sense (which you would have to do in order to have any opinion about it), but you are judging it to be true.
Compare:
"I think, 'E=MC2' -- hmm, interesting idea, wonder if it's true."
and
q. Do you think that E=MC2"
a. I certainly do.
Quoting Patterner
Yeah, see if it's any clearer. And not too far into that thread, @Banno gives a good overview of how Frege (a late 19th century logician) first formulated all this.
No sense of thought is being appealed to.
I can only have knowledge of things inside my mind, such as pain. Everything outside my mind can only be a belief.
If my hand hurts, then I know my hand hurts. If I know my hand hurts, then I consciously know that my hand hurts. To know something means to consciously know something.
Present time
Let Think1 = I think "my hand hurts"
Let Think2 = I think my hand hurts
Think1 means that I am thinking about the proposition "my hand hurts". I can think about the proposition regardless of whether my hand is hurting or not. I can know that my hand hurts and think about the proposition "my hand hurts" at the same time, but my hand hurting does not require Think1. I have no propositional attitude towards the proposition.
In Think2, "I think" means "I believe". Therefore Think2 means "I believe my hand hurts". But this is not a valid expression, in that if my hand hurts, this is not a belief, it is knowledge.
If I know my hand hurts, no sense of thought is being appealed to.
Future time
At a future time, I can reflect on my past experience.
Let Think1 = I think "my hand hurt"
Let Think2 = I think my hand hurt
Think1 means that I am thinking about the proposition "my hand hurt". I can think about the proposition regardless of whether my hand hurt or not. I can know that my hand hurt and think about the proposition "my hand hurt" at the same time, but my hand hurting does not require Think1. I have no propositional attitude towards the proposition.
In Think2, "I think" means "I believe". Therefore Think2 means "I believe my hand hurt". But this is not a valid expression, in that if my hand hurt, this is not a belief, it is knowledge.
If I know my hand hurt, no sense of thought is being appealed to.
Isn't that the question? If "I think...." is inherent in every thought including the perception and recognition of an oak tree and its behavior of shedding leaves, and "I think..." also inherently expresses uncertainty, then which sensory impression can you have a higher degree of certainty of?
Do you still believe that the person you saw when you were young is Santa Claus? Why or why not? It seems that you can only ever change your knowledge is by making more observations that you seem to be saying that you cannot trust, so how can you ever say that you learn anything? What does it mean to you to learn something, or to learn from a mistake?
Quoting RussellA
Why? What does the "Realist" mean in "Indirect Realist"? It seems to me that the only difference between a direct and indirect realist is the complexity of the causal path from between object and percept, but they both still get at what the object is - a book.
I think the direct vs. indirect debate is a false dichotomy. If I am neither a direct or indirect realist (I'm just a deterministic realist monist) then how is it that we have been able to agree on our use of scribbles on this screen to the point where we have been able to carry on a meaningful conversation? You must agree that there are scribbles on the screen, or else please explain what it is you are doing when reading this page and formulating a response and submitting it.
Quoting RussellA
That's a problem of dualism. The mind is not independent of the world. It is firmly implanted in the world. This is not to say that the world is mind-like (idealism). It is to say that the nature of the mind is no different than the nature of everything else. The world is not physical or mental. It is relational, informational, processual.
Quoting RussellA
Then I'm sure you are living in fear of the authorities arriving at your door to arrest you for a crime you claim you did not commit (as your uncertainty cannot explain how it is you arrived where you are in the present and cannot account for where you were earlier) and the authorities may have been wrong in determining the causes of a crime (the identity of the criminal, etc.). You keep talking about uncertainty but you don't seem uncertain in what you are saying, in your perception of scribbles on this screen and what they mean, how to use a computer, etc. You keep asserting that you can only ever be uncertain of what your senses are telling you yet you exhibit certainty in what they are telling you. There must be some set of rules you are using to determine what you can be more certain about than uncertain. What are those rules?
Quoting RussellA
You have also said that truth is a relation between the state of the world and the mental representation in ones mind. If knowledge is justified TRUE belief, then how is it that you are not getting at the thing-in-itself via one's justified true belief?
Given the level of uncertainty you have expressed, you must even be uncertain that you actually are not getting at the thing-in-itself. When pouring a glass of water, do you make a mess and any water that actually makes it into the glass is accidental? Are you not aware of the dimensions of the glass and its relation to the pitcher you are pouring from? If I were to observer you interact with your environment would it seem to me that you are perceiving the environment as it is, or would I think you to be blind, deaf and dumb? I think you are assuming to much that things are more complex than they are, or that there is more to things that what you can represent in your mind, when there isn't. You are assuming that there are things that exist that you cannot prove either way. Your version of indirect realism seems to be more like solipsism, as your level of skepticism shows that you have no ground to stand on to support your idea that there is even a mind-independent world.
Quoting RussellAThis makes no sense because you have done nothing but question your senses and reason. All you do when you question your senses and reason to such an unhealthy degree is that you end up pulling the rug out from under your own positions you have established using your senses and reason.
Quoting RussellA
Yet we have agreed on the use of scribbles on this screen. You're just contradicting yourself at this point.
Haven't you proven that you know that you think the moon exists by expressing as much here on this forum? I mean, you just wrote, "I know that I think the moon exists". How did those scribbles get on this screen in the correct order for other English speakers to read and understand as such, if you don't not only know what you think, but also know how to use a computer?
You might say that you could be an AI bot submitting these posts, but then I would simply ask, what does it mean to know that you think something and be able to provide proof for? Again, what is it like for you to prove to yourself that you know you think some things? Your thoughts are just as "external" to me as the moon is and you said, "I could prove "the moon exists", as the moon exists external to me," yet make some unwarranted special case for your thoughts that are external to me. How can we prove the moon exists when it is external to us, but not your thoughts if both are part of the same shared world?
The problem is that Material Logic is an inductive logic, where the conclusion may be likely but not certain
Premise 1: The sun has risen every day for the past thousand years.
Conclusion: The sun will rise tomorrow.
Even Material Logic cannot tell us the truth about the world.
:up: When science describes "physical" objects as being the interaction of ever smaller objects, we never get to anything actually physical - only interactions or relations. It's all relational.
You've got the "think1/think2" distinction down perfectly. If I understand the issue you're raising, it's whether an experience such as "my hand hurts" can be said to have a thought2 version, in the same way that "The oak tree sheds its leaves" can. I'd have to give this more reflection, but I see the point you're making. I'm inclined to agree that our beliefs about private sensations don't add force to a proposition such as "My hand hurts."
What I'm wondering is, do you think this challenges the thought1/thought2 distinction as such, or is this a special case involving what used to be called "incorrigible knowledge"?
Sure, because of the sheer number of scribbles and rules for putting them together in strings, not because of some special power of the scribbles have apart from representing things that are not scribbles. When communicating specifics, do the scribbles invoke more scribbles in your mind, or things that are not just more scribbles, but things the scribbles represent? To represent specifics you must already be able to discern the specifics the scribbles represent. Do the names of new colors for crayons create those colors, or do they refer to colors that we can already discern?
Quoting Patterner
Sure, but we could use anything to store information, not just scribbles on paper, which is arguably perishable. We could hammer marks in a rock and come up with arbitrary rules for interpreting the marks on the rock.
Quoting Patterner
And words are just scribbles and sounds. What does a language you don't know look and sound like?
I don't think it challenges the think1/think2 distinction, but only extends it.
As I see it, I have knowledge about things inside my mind, and have beliefs about things outside my mind.
Inside my mind
Think1 = I know "my hand hurts" means I know the proposition "my hand hurts". This seems reasonable because the proposition is inside my mind.
Think2 = I know my hand hurts. This is valid.
Think1 = I think "my hand hurts" means I am thinking about the proposition "my hand hurts". This is not a propositional attitude. This seems reasonable as I do think about things.
Think2 = I think my hand hurts. This is invalid.
Outside my mind
Think1 = I know "the oak tree is shedding its leaves" means that I know the proposition "the oak tree is shedding its leaves". This seems reasonable as propositions exist in my mind.
Think2 = I know the oak tree is shedding its leaves. This is invalid, as I cannot know things that exist outside my mind.
Think1 = I believe "the oak tree is shedding its leaves" means I believe the proposition "the oak tree is shedding its leaves". This is invalid, because it is not a propositional attitude, and I can only have a belief in a propositional attitude.
Think2 = I believe the oak tree is shedding its leaves. This is valid, as I can have a belief in things that exist outside my mind.
An utterance does occur at at a time and place. Indeed, you seem here to run two ideas together - the first, rejecting the notion that a thought occurs in a particular language, the second, accepting that a thought occurs at a particular time.
And you seem to fluctuate between though2 as "I think that the tree is an oak" and "The tree is an oak". From what Pat said, don't you need it to be the latter? But on that account, Rödl is on the face of it mistaken, since these two sentences are about quite different things.
Quoting J
See the problem? Is Think2 "I know my hand hurts" or is it "My hand hurts"?
Is pain a suitable subject for the analysis of propositional content? I searched Rödl's book for an instance of 'pain' and the only return was from p37:
where it's obvious that pain is being used metaphorically. The apodictic nature of first-person knowledge or feeling of sensation is not, so far as I can tell, discussed elsewhere in this text.
Chapter 2>2.1 Force and Content Distinction
In Freges terminology, the act of assent refers to the force of a judgment, which is the act of agreeing or accepting a proposition. This act is distinct from the content of the judgment, which is the proposition itself, or what is being assented to. The distinction between force and content is meant to underline the objectivity of thought, locating objectivity in the content rather than in the act of judgment. In other words, the content is understood to be just so, irrespective of the act of assent on anyone's part. The force, on the other hand, refers to the act of assenting to or affirming the content.
Implicitly, this distinction is used to 'prize apart' the act of thinking and the subject of thought so as to defend the objectivity of the content. The force-content distinction is used to separate the act of thinking (force) from the subject of thought (content) in order to defend the objectivity of the content. This distinction aims to ensure that the validity and objectivity of thought depend on the content itself, rather than on the subjective act of assenting to it. By doing so, the objectivity and universality of thought are located in the content, independent of any individuals act of judgment.
The discussion then distinguishes between first-person thought and examining first-person thought from an external perspective. First-person thought inherently involves self-consciousness, where the act of thinking is internal to what is thought. When viewed from an external perspective, the focus shifts to understanding the objectivity of thought, which is seen as independent of the subjects characteristics. This distinction highlights the tension between the subjective nature of first-person thought and the objective validity sought in philosophical inquiry.
Furthermore, we constantly shift between third- and first-person perspectives without being consciously aware of so doing. This transition is significant in understanding how objective validity and self-consciousness interplay in judgment. The first-person perspective involves self-conscious thought, where the act of thinking is internal to what is thought. In contrast, the third-person perspective treats judgment as an observable act, external to the self-awareness of the thinker. Rödl suggests that while judgment can be analyzed from both perspectives, the self-consciousness inherent in first-person thought is not a separate viewpoint but is integral to the act of judgment itself. It's very important to notice this perspectival shift, it is very much what Rödl means when he says that he's not advancing a novel argument, so much as calling attention to ingrained habits of thought.
Thanks again for your notes.
Separating force and content is to do with extensionality, not with objectivity.
And again, it may be worth explaining what extensionality is. It's simply that {a,b,c} and {c,b,a} and {a,a,b,,c} are the very same - that the order of the elements and number of times they are listed is discounted. It is about avoiding equivocation.
This is mentioned in the page you cited earlier.
But this is muddled. "...the same must be thought in the first and in the second premise, if the inference is not to rest on an equivocation" is ambiguous - the same what? p and p?q are clearly not the same thought. What extensionality demands is that the "p" in the first and the "p" in the second refer to the very same thing; it does not demand, as Rödl implies here, that the "p" and the "p?q", are "the same".
Perhaps this is again an issue of style. It does not aid in taking Rödl seriously.
I'm realising that I have to take Rödl's book in a few sections at a time. Today I've read 2.1-2.3 and made some notes on those sections. I might have skipped ahead to p37, but I'm not up to it yet.
This has been an interesting read for me. Expressing how I see it would involve undermining the entire project. In order to do it effectively, the distinction between thought and thinking about thought would first need to be clearly explained. Then, only after it is obvious that that distinction has been neglected, could the consequences of that error begin to have light shed upon them. The scope is dauntingly broad and exceedingly pervasive. I'm not sure that that is an appropriate path. It's a subject matter in its own right.
I appreciate this thread as well as the general tone within it. Well done! I would not want to dampen it, and so I will not. Better to keep my piece for another time.
Cheers!
Rödl is more specific about where Nagel and Moore miss the mark:
Put that way, "non-duality" sounds like a bridge between the terms as opposites where I read the text to say that objectivity, as such, is accepted as a dynamic that distinguishes the first person and her thought as a first person from objective judgement.
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Thanks too for your summaries, @Wayfarer. :up:
Thanks to you and to Wayfarer. Whatever else comes from the book, it is a different way to approach what has often been discussed on the forum before.
I can understand what you're saying. I differentiated different kinds of thoughts, in regards to baseball. What is the significance of it all? Is this a first step toward something?
How about this sentence, spoken by someone who lost a leg in an accident, but is in traction, can't see it, and hasn't yet been told:
"My foot hurts."
This seems to be a common issue. A conflation of sign vehicles and signified, and of sense/interpretant and referent.
My hunch is that the dominance of computational theory of mind and computational theories of reason/rationality are sort of the culprit here, since they can be taken to imply that everything, all of consciousness, is [I]really[/I] just symbols and rules for shuffling them. Logic gets demoted to computation in this way too, and on some views the whole of physics as well.
I'm not saying these theories don't get [I] something[/I] right, but they seem inadequate, and might be misleading when it comes to language, meaning, perception, etc. It doesn't seem they can all be right, for if pancomputationalism in physics is right, the saying the brain works by being a computer as CTM does explains nothing, because everything "is a computer."
Of course, when stream engines were the hot new technology the universe and the body was said to work like a great engine, and while this wasn't entirely wrong, it also doesn't seem to have been particularly accurate.
I am not sure if that web site's articles are all high quality in its contents. I have very little faith on most of the internet sites (not all !!) information supplied via the links. Because anyone can go and set up internet sites like that, and write up whatever they feel like claiming what they imagine is true.
For material logic, they are not all 100% inductive logic. I will need to consult my logic book on the details, and will get back on that.
For telling about the world, inductive logic is good enough. It is not about the absolute truth, but it is about the probability of the truth, and you can see what is high probabilities and what are low probabilities of the truth, and they are good guidance for our knowledge.
At the end of the day, there is no one in this world who can see the world 100%. Most of them may see the world perhaps less than 1 or 2% in their life or even less than that. Hence why worry about inductive logic cannot tell everything about the world?
It's a term I'm using to refer to your idea that scribbles can somehow do more than what is logically possible. You are free to use a different term to refer to this idea of yours.
Yes, I'm trying to develop a sort of checklist of what has to constitute an utterance and a "thought utterance" (thought1). For a (spoken) utterance, we want to say that it consists of a particular piece of language, spoken at a particular time and place. But do we want to say this for a thought1? I was proposing that the "time and place" criterion is necessary, but found myself uneasy about the "particular piece of language" one.
Possibly I wasn't clear about the reasons for my unease. It's mostly about common usage -- with the caveat that there isn't much common usage to call upon here, as "quoting thoughts" doesn't come up too often. My own experience of thinking suggests that language is supererogatory to thought. Countless times I've had a fully formed thought, and even a response to said thought, occur much more quickly than it could be "said" or comprehended in language. So would we want to allow that a thought1 -- the "utterance" of a thought -- could transcend a particular piece of language? Or is such a transcendence the very thing that makes it a thought2 -- a piece of content that can be the same from mind to mind, time to time?
I'm going to leave that alone for now, as I'm not sure how much depends on a decision.
Quoting Banno
My concept of a thought2 is of a proposition -- "The tree is an oak." So yes, Pat and I are talking about the latter.
Quoting Banno
That would be true if the two sentences are meant to occur in two thoughts, two thought1s. But Rodl tells us this is not what he means: This cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p. If that is the case, it must also be the case that there aren't two thoughts. At least that's how I read Rodl. I suppose one could argue that "one act of thinking" could be imagined as including "two things" being thought, and that this is what Rodl denies. But I think he's saying something simpler: His claim about the "I think" is that it "accompanies" all thoughts in the sense of structuring them or constituting the conditions for their occurrence. I believe I mentioned somewhere earlier that the very term "the I think" may be unfortunate, as it suggests an activity on a par with regular thinking*. A lot of the back-and-forth on this thread is trying to understand what the nature of this "I think" could be . . . or is it just neo-Kantian wordplay?
*And a reminder here that we've noticed how Rodl probably has only propositional, discursive thinking in mind in this essay.
If this reality is a simulation, then it is possible that everything is a computer.
Steven Pinker addresses this:
It's not that everything is a computer. It's that everything is logical, and there are patterns anywhere you care to look, some of which might be to small, to big, to fast or to slow for us to perceive. But only brains that think logically and can discern patterns would be the types of brains selected to survive and procreate.
And cheers to you. I certainly like it when a thread's tone is inquisitive rather than dismissive or dogmatic. I'll watch for an OP from you . . .
Hopefully. The OP was examining a common but still controversial claim -- that when we think, there is some accompanying "I think" that characterizes the act of thinking, and which according to some is also a type of self-awareness or self-consciousness. In order to give this proper consideration, it seems we have to do a lot of discriminating and disambiguating around "think" and "thought." I thought your post about baseball was very useful in that regard.
I for one would like to understand this issue better. I guess that's the "something" toward which I'm heading. Its significance might be to give me a better self-understanding, a clearer feel for what being me in the world actually is, thought I don't mind admitting that I find the topic interesting in its own right, regardless of any further insights.
Why not?
A propositional attitude is a mental state towards a proposition (Wikipedia - Propositional attitude). I know is a mental state towards the proposition "my hand hurts".
:up:
Zero-knowledge proof
In general, the more observations the better one's conclusion ought to be. However, in practice, most people are entrenched in their positions, regardless of how many new observations they make.
Even so, this does not take away from the fact that observations cannot be guaranteed to be trustworthy, as anyone reading mainstream media would testify.
However, this doesn't mean that certainty cannot be discovered from uncertainty. Zero-knowledge proof is an interesting concept, and not only in computer sciences.
Wikipedia - Zero-knowledge proof
The YouTube video Zero Knowledge Proofs I found interesting.
Santa Claus
I see an oak tree in France shedding its leaves, and someone else sees an oak tree in Brazil shedding its leaves.
An oak tree can exist in different locations at the same time because the oak tree is a concept that can be instantiated in different locations at the same time.
Santa Claus as a concept can also be instantiated in different locations, and can exist in Regent Street, Times Square and Greenland at the same time.
It depends what you mean by Santa Claus.
As I see it:
Every act of thinking requires an object being thought about and a subject doing the thinking.
In every act of thinking, the "think" is accompanied by both "I" and "p".
Frege and Rodl
Frege and Rodl would agree that i) "I" requires "think" and "p" - ii) "think" requires "I" and "p".
Frege believes that force is outside content, such that "I think" is outside "p". This means that "p" doesn't require "I think".
Rodl believes that force is inside content, such that "I think" is inside "p", meaning that "p" is "I think".
Self-awareness
In every act of thinking, I am aware that it is "I" that is doing the thinking, not someone else, such as Pat
This self-awareness precedes the act of thinking
It could equally be the case that "I run", "I eat", "I laugh" or "I think"
The expression is "I think p", not "I "I think p"", which would lead into the infinite regress homunculus problem.
Re-wording
When I think p, accompanying "think" are both "I" and "p", where the "I" is self-aware.
Humans created systems using scribbles in order to make lasting records of ideas that can be expressed in those languages. Presumably, the motivation for creating such systems was the desire to communicate those utterances, both to distant people and to future generations. The squiggles can record and communicate relatively simple things that can be communicated in non-human languages, and also things, and kinds of things, that cannot be discussed in any non-human language.
The result being, when we look at the scribbles, we can, and very often must, think things, and kinds of things, that cannot be discussed in any non-human language, and which are not thought by any non-human. Also, they are often things the one looking at the scribbles has never thought before.
I don't know what's not logically possible in any of that. And I don't know how any power can be read into any of it. At least not in the magical/fantasy sense that I believe you mean it.
But these scribbles are signs that can pass extremely complex ideas, in great detail, from the mind of one person into the mind of a person living thousands of years later, who never had any inking of those particular ideas, or kinds of ideas. That's pretty darned special.
Quoting JIt seems somewhat akin to a sentence like "Throw the ball." The subject of the sentence is [I]You[/I]. That's not in question, or ambiguous, despite not being spoken. I think it might not even be thought, and omitted from the spoken command because, being certain and clear, it's not necessary. I'm not literally thinking "You/J throw the ball" when I say "Throw the ball." Still, it seems it must be part of my thought.
Maybe Frege's idea is a bit more involved than that, but it came to mind.
This is what a lot of the controversy on TPF has been about -- whether it's proper to consider merely thinking p as giving it some kind of force. Frege did indeed believe that force is separable from content, but he probably wouldn't agree that therefore you have to separate "I think" from "p" -- because he didn't believe "I think" gives "p" any force at all. Unless we're using "think" in that ambiguous way that can also mean "aver" or "believe".
There is a logical error that consists in treating something as being firm and clear when it isn't.
"Thought" may not be the sort of word that has a firm and clear use. Certainly, not all thoughts are assertions. I jus thad a thought - what if it's not an oak tree?
Quoting J
So "The tree is dropping leaves" is a thought, but what about that the tree is dropping leaves? I gather that, being an idealist, Rödl wants that to be a thought too. That strikes me as somewhat odd.
If the conclusion is that "what if it's not an oak?" is not a thought, but that it is dropping leaves is a thought, then something has gone quite amiss.
Most of it, yeah. From which implies discursive judgements. When he talks like this, however,
. In these cases, the validity of my judgment depends on something that characterizes me as the subject of the judgment: the time when I judge, the visual system whose deliverances my judgment expresses, the values that inform my judgment
(5.3)
.the notion behind it, is aesthetic judgements, re: necessary subjective quality thereof.
While youre more to the point than not, I think the aesthetic kind of judgement has more to say than hes giving it space. Meaning, I think it hard to deny that all judgement is conditioned by the quality of how the subject feels about it.
Maybe if or when he gets into moral judgements later on in the essay, that kind makes its appearance.
Quoting JDid you mean a type of evidence of self-awareness or self-consciousness? Or did you really mean a type of self-awareness or self-consciousness?
Because pain is intrinsically first-person in nature. John can report that 'my hand hurts' but absent any visible injury or determinable cause, this can only ever be something known to a third party such as Bob, in a different way to the subject (or not at all, in the event of no visible condition). Pp 23-24, the text discusses first-person propositions which are specific to a subject, which by nature are private and inaccessible to others. These propositions are objective in that their validity depends solely on their truth - John really does have a pain in his hand - not simply on the subject making the claim. However, their objectivity lacks the usual feature of being affirmable by other subjects. The text suggests that while only the referent of a first-person thought can affirm its content, others can only affirm correlated contents. For example, if John thinks my hand hurts, only he can affirm this, but Bob can affirm a related proposition like John has cut his hand, understanding the correlation. This framework allows private facts to be apprehended as common truths through correlated propositions. Rödl then goes on to argue against the possibility of first-person propositions as such, suggesting instead that the first-person pronoun is not a form of reference but an expression of self-consciousness. He criticizes Frege's account, which views the pronoun as a way of singling out an object (i.e. a specific person), and instead proposes that understanding the first-person pronoun requires understanding the implications of self-consciousness, which undermines the force-content distinction. Remember, that distinction suggests that thought can be objective only if it is detached from the subject who thinks it. However, first-person thought (I have pain) challenges this by showing that the act of judgment is self-conscious and cannot be isolated from what is judged.
Perhaps you're over-thinking it. Rödl's point is that the truth of propositions can't be 'mind-independent' in the way that Frege's objectivism insists it must be. (I can't help but think that book you once mentioned, Bernstein's 'Beyond Objectivism and Relativism', might also be relevant to this argument.)
Something un-known???
(It's very difficult to cherry-pick Rödl's arguments so as to convey the overall gist. The section I quoted is at the end of 2.2.)
'Undisquotable' stopped me, I had to look it up, but essentially, we can only ever refer to first-person statements, e.g. 'my hand hurts', as if in quotes - quoting what John is saying. In the Fregean framework, first-person thoughts are problematical because they involve a self-referential aspect that cannot be disquoted or fully expressed from a third-person perspective. This means that while we can refer to, or quote, a first-person statement like my hand hurts, we cannot adequately convey the subjective experience it conveys in a third-person proposition. The term undisquotable highlights the idea that first-person thoughts maintain an intrinsic self-reference that eludes complete external articulation or understanding. ('Facing up to the problem of consciousness' comes to mind!)
I think either interpretation could make sense, but the "hardcore proponents" a la Rodl probably mean the latter: Some actual self-consciousness is meant to accompany the thought of p. As opposed to a "soft proponent" like Descartes, who would presumably say merely that thinking p provides evidence that I must be conscious, and aware of being so.
I don't yet know what I believe about all this myself -- still locating the pieces on the board. (My own model might as well be, "I think p ...but slowly." :smile: ) So, sorry if I sound like I'm waffling.
Just to be clear, would the full thought you're referring to, which I bolded, be "I think that the tree is dropping leaves"?
Interestingly enough, I agree with that. However, my reasons may differ from Rödl's, or I suppose the biggest difference may be methodological. Part of the interest I find here has to do with some of the notions/ideas being talked about and the interplay between them within evidently incommensurate, but coherent views. However, I'm relatively certain that the notion of "mind independence" I'm working from is significantly different from convention. For me, it's a matter of existential dependency/independency.
Riding the coattails of , it seems that some things we say/think are accompanied by what is commonly called a/the subject of the sentence, even when not consciously considered at the time of utterance/thought. In that sense, "I think" certainly accompanies positive assertions(assuming sincere speech), despite it not needing to be articulated silently. If and others are correct and Rödl's target is assertion, and/or propositions, there may be other unexamined problems underwriting the project, such as the accompanying(pardon the expression) common view regarding what counts as the content of the thought/proposition.
This is a generous, sense-making interpretation, but I'm not sure Rodl is really talking about subjective experiences like pain, for instance. I think he's saying, more radically, that any 1st person statement resists translation in the ways we're used to, such as quoting. And his reasons for thinking this -- one of which you gave -- are still unclear to me. More on this another time . . .
:grin: That's close to what I just asked you, I believe, concerning think2: Quoting Banno
Is the thought "The tree is dropping leaves" or is it "I think the tree is dropping leaves"?
Well, one might well think either! But Rödl, on the account give here, says that one cannot think "The tree is dropping it's leaves". That looks very odd.
But this is a bit different, since that the tree is dropping leaves is not a thought. It's a tree, dropping leaves.
Now it seems to me pretty apparent that, that the tree is dropping leaves can be called the"content" of a thought, and that what being "the content of a thought" is, is worthy of some consideration. However, since what a thought is, is not all that clear, there are compound issues with being clear as to the content of a though. Perhaps this explains much of the puzzlement hereabouts.
Once we step beyond non-dualism, as all our thought does, and have identified such things as mind and world, then logical dependence relations may become apparent. For example, we transgress non-duality when we identify fish and water, and if we inquire as to whether there is a dependence relation between them it immediately becomes obvious that fish depend on water whereas water does not depend on fish.
I think the same can be said for the relation between mind and world (although this may depend on what we mean by 'world)the mind depends on the world whereas the world does not depend on the mind. Of course, we could stipulate that 'world' means 'world as experienced by humans' which would of course make the world dependent on (the human) mind, but I don't think that is the common usage or intended meaning of the term 'world'.
According to absolute idealism the world just is the world as experienced by humans"the rational is the real", so it doesn't seem clear that Rödl is moving beyond absolute idealism. I haven't read his work so maybe that is not his intentiondo you read him as claiming that it was Nagel's intention? It's a very long time since I read The View From Nowhere.
Perhaps the problem is I'm not sure what you mean "last exit from the highway of absolute idealism".
A report about the way things are: "The tree is dropping its leaves".
A report of a thought: I think that the tree is dropping its leaves. Another: I thought "The tree is dropping its leave".
A few more thoughts. Is the tree dropping its leaves? Is the thing dropping leaves a tree? I wish the tree would not drop it's leaves. Let's call that thing that is dropping leaves, a "tree".
A report about a thought: I wonder if the tree will drop its leaves.
There's quite a lot going on in each of these.
Is it? Can we "adequately convey the subjective experience" of a hand that hurts in the first person, with "my hand hurts", more effectively than in the third, "@RussellA's hand hurts"?
Is that what @Wayfarer was claiming? What more is in the first person account than in the third person account?
Quoting Wayfarer
But it is "adequately conveyed" in the first person?
Or is it just had?
Quoting Wayfarer
So can we "adequately convey the subjective experience" in the first person but not in the third? Or is it also that we cannot adequately convey the subjective experience it conveys in a first-person proposition? Is the problem with first and third person, or is it with putting pain into a proposition?
If the problem is not like Nagel put it, then it is another problem. Röd proposes an alternative response after honoring Nagel for making it a problem.
Both. I believe it was you who first first introduced 'my hand hurts' (here). I've provided a précis of the some of the discussuion in this post.
Quoting Banno
I can tell you 'my hand hurts' but I can't convey the actual feeling - which is the point! You will only know what I mean because you too know what it means to have a sore hand. ChatGPT will know what the words mean, but it will never know what it is like to have a sore hand.
Will you, ChatGPT?
[quote=ChatGPT] No, I will never know what it is like to have a sore hand. I can analyze and convey the meaning of "my hand hurts" based on linguistic and logical structures, but I lack subjective experience and the capacity for first-person awareness, which are necessary to truly feel or know pain. This distinction underscores the unique nature of first-person experience, as discussed in your thread.[/quote]
Here's the problem with that: How do you know that ChatGPT is not lying to you when it says something like that? Are you sure that it doesn't have first-person awareness, or something equivalent to it? That it lacks subjective experience, granted. It does not follow from there that it does not have first-person awareness, or that it can't lie to you.
But
Quoting RussellA
precedes mine. Never mind. It seems that the problem is not first person/third person but puting pain into an expression - "conveying" a pain as you put it.
This?
Quoting Wayfarer
So the claim is that we can refer to, or quote, a first-person statement: He said "my hand hurts". And we can turn this into a disquotation: He said that his hand hurts. Or, in Davidson's account: His hand hurts. He said that. Or if you want it in the third person, RussellA said that his hand hurts. And for Davidson, "my hand hurts" might be parsed as RussellA's hand hurts. RussellA said that.
What is it that is in the first person but not in the second or third? What does "first-person thoughts are problematical because they involve a self-referential aspect that cannot be disquoted or fully expressed from a third-person perspective" say except that first person accounts are in the first person, while third person accounts are in the third person?
All very obtuse.
<"My hand hurts", uttered by RussellA, will be true if and only if RussellA said that he his hand hurts>, appears to give a third person account of what was said that has the same truth functionality. Perhaps it does not "covey the pain", but neither does "my hand hurts".
:rofl:
Ok, I'll let it slide this time.
Are you familiar with a term I've only recently acquired, 'ipseity'? It means precisely 'a sense of self' or of being a subject. And indeed only living beings, so far as we know, can conceivably have that sense (leaving aside the possibility of angelic intelligences). I know that I am, in quite a different sense than I know that the things around me are - as pointed out by Descartes, of course. I can't really understand how that can be called into question. (I read once an aphorism that I can't find a source for, 'a soul is whatever can say "I am"', which struck me as extremely profound.)
Quoting Patterner
Of course. Why this seems puzzling or obtuse to anyone beats me.
To my understanding:
For Frege, perhaps it is more the case that force is separate to content, rather than force is separable from content.
As I see it, for Frege, force is always separate to content. For Rodl, force is always part of content.
For Frege, given that force is separate to content, doesn't this mean that "I think" must be separate to "p"?
I am using "p" as "the oak tree is shedding its leaves", for example.
What is a force of judgement? = "I think that _ is true", "I judge that _ is true", "I believe that _ is true", "I doubt that _ is true", "I am certain that _ is true", "I hope that _ is true", etc.
What is the content? = "p", "the oak tree is shedding its leaves", "Pat is reading a book", etc.
Frege believed that the content can exist independently of any judgement about it. For example, he might believe that an oak tree shedding its leaves can exist independently of anyone observing it.
What does "I think p" mean. It does not mean "I think "p"". It means "I judge that p is true". For example, "I judge that the oak tree is shedding its leaves is true", which means that in my judgment, in the world is an oak tree that is shedding its leaves.
For Frege, the content is separate to the force. The content "p" is separate to the force "I judge that _ "
Therefore, for Frege, one has to separate "I think" from "p" as "I think" is separate to "p"
I didnt read far enough: you said known in a different way (or not at all). I would have said not at all, re: unknown, and nothing more. As you are wont to say, to which I agree the inaccessibility of first person experience to any subject other than the holder of it.
Still, I will treat your statement that your hand hurts very differently than if I were Bob, with respect to the conditions set forth in 2.2, re: John and his muddy face.
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Quoting Leontiskos
Agreed, albeit perhaps for different reasons. In the very beginning, we are beset with contradiction:
. independent of any character .;
.. whether it is right to think something depends ( ) not on any character of the subject thinking it ..
His notion of first-person thinking is purely mechanical, which is fine for methodology, thought is objective and all that. But the character of the subject himself is inescapable, in the determination of the conceptions he relates to each other in the manifestations of his thoughts.
It certainly seems subjectively character-laden, to represent an existence by thinking up the name Slinky. Quark. Ooooo .even a purely abstract nonsense thought .supercalifragilisticexpialidoesous!!!
But he has to be allowed his ideas, especially considering the peer group to whom he is responding; its up to the reader the satisfaction found in them.
Fortunately not a requirement! Although to listen to some people on TPF, you'd think it was a requirement, and anyone who isn't quite sure what they think, and pursues possible lines of inquiry, is perceived as "refusing to take a position" or "arguing sophistically" or something like that.
This is true. But he's also laying out a thesis about self-consciousness, and about why objectivity must be self-conscious, aware of itself as objective. This is where an innocent verb like "accompany" can become complicated. I'm still working to understand the nature of the accompaniment Rodl has in mind. Is it structural or experiential? Is it a thought like any other thought? etc.
Quoting Wayfarer
It is, but somewhat at a tangent. Bernstein's approach, through Gadamer, is hermeneutic. He's not focused on the logical/psychological structure of thought, a la Rodl and Kimhi, but more on the challenges to objectivity posed by the thesis that we have to draw a line between what is "out there" and our own ability to know it -- "Cartesian anxiety" is his term for this. There's a PhD dissertation for you -- connect Rodl and Gadamer!
Self-consciousness is inside the "I" not the "I think"
Consider "I think p". Where exactly is the self-conscious part?
It is the "I" that is self-conscious, the subject that is self-conscious. Neither the act of judgement nor the "I think" are self-conscious.
"I think" is no more self-conscious than "I run" is self-conscious, or "I talk" is self-conscious.
As running and talking are outside the subject's self-consciousness, thinking is outside the subject's self-consciousness.
It is not the act of judgement "I think" that is self-conscious, it is the subject, the "I", that is self-conscious.
Therefore, this particular argument that a thought cannot be objective because it is inside the subject's self-consciousness is not a valid argument, because a subject's thoughts are outside the subject's self-consciousness.
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Quoting Wayfarer
First and third-person propositions both refer to something outside the subject's self-consciousness
I agree that the first-person pronoun "I" is an expression of self-consciousness, because it is the "I" that is self-conscious.
In the first person "I know my hand hurts" and in the third person "I believe the oak tree is shedding its leaves"
As my thoughts are outside my self-consciousness, my knowing is also outside my self-consciousness.
In the expression "I know my hand hurts", "knowing my hand hurts" is outside the subject's self-consciousness.
Therefore, the first-person proposition "my hand hurts" is not an expression of self-consciousness, but refers to a hand that is hurting. In the same way, "the oak tree is shedding its leaves" refers to an oak tree that is shedding its leaves.
As I have already pointed out, it is simply the sheer number of symbols being used, along with the sheer number of relations between the scribbles (letters to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, etc.) that makes language complex. But you must already be able to think in multiple layers of representation, and the memory to store the number of scribbles and their associated rules to be able to understand language use and how to use it yourself.
Pictures say a thousand words. So if I can substitute words with pictures, would that make a difference?
Our ancestors drew cave art. When our ancestors drew a mammoth on the cave wall, did they attempt to throw their spears at the picture, cook and eat it? No. They understood that the picture represents the mammoth they successfully hunted during the day. Instead of a picture of the mammoth, they could have drawn scribbles representing the mammoth and the hunt, but isn't it that the scribbles really point to the visual of the mammoth and the memories of the hunt? Language merely provides another layer of representation for the purpose of communicating ideas that a listener or speaker does not have access to the picture or the experience. Language does not make us think in ways that we already could not. Language use is itself a representation of the structure of our thoughts, not the other way around. For instance, the pictures on the cave will inform the women that did not participate in the hunt what happened during the hunt.
You also don't have hands, ChatGPT. I think that is the more important qualifier here because there is still a question what a subjective experience is and why a solid hunk of neurons can have subjective experiences but computers cannot.
If scribble/utterance-use is conveying first-person experiences in the third person, then what does it mean to use scribbles/utterances in your mind to refer to the experience of pain which is in inherently first-person? If thoughts consist of scribbles/utterances then thoughts are inherently third-person not first-person.
Does using representation inherently put one in the third-person stance relative to what is being represented?
As I have already explained, observation alone does not constitute knowledge. It is observations coupled with reasoning that constitutes knowledge. It was not just multiple observations that led you to be more certain in your beliefs. It is both multiple observations and the logical categorization and interpretation of those observations that constitutes knowledge.
I agree, observations and reasoning are important.
Platos explanation of knowledge as justified true belief has stood for thousands of years.
The question is, which justified beliefs are true.
Problem one is that there is no one definition of truth, and problem two is that, even if there was, how would we know what the truth was.
Pardon me, that was a lame response. I will try giving a better one soon. I need to work for a bit.
I think the question is whether sense of self is direct or indirect. If it were direct, then it would seem that there is nothing I would not know about myself. I would be fully transparent to myself. If it is indirect, then self-consciousness is not always present.
For example, for Kant:
Quoting Mww
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- :up:
If we link the truth to our goals does that resolve the problem? The information we use to accomplish some goal is true. The information we use that causes us to fail in our goals is false.
What I am may be a mystery, but that I am can only be denied on pain of contradiction.
No question. My thought1 and thought2 discrimination was trying to make some progress there, because even if we say, "OK, we're clear about thought2, it's the 'content' of a thought," we still are left with the uncertainty you describe about the nature of thought1. I would be fascinated to know if there is any psychological/scientific consensus on what a thought is, understood as a mental phenomenon. I would bet they're even more confused than the philosophers are. I suppose in good conscience they'd have to leave out any talk of thought2?!
Quoting Banno
It's interesting how the first two stick out. The first one, if I'm understanding you, isn't a thought at all; it's meant to be something in the world. Probably a photo of the tree would be the best way to represent it. The second is supposed to be thought2, the "propositional content" of someone or other's thought1. That you invoke "the way things are" for both speaks to Rodl's perplexity about how this can be. All the other formulations are 1st-personal, even the 1st "report of a thought," because although it asserts the proposition, it's phrased as someone's assertion. (And the 2nd "report" is clearly referring to a thought1 thought, quoted.)
I know I've never really laid out a case, if there is one, for why Rodl's perplexity about "content" makes sense. Any case I make has to account for the usages you list. God knows, the force/content distinction allows us to say things we want to say about both logic and thinking. Which Rodl doesn't deny, he just thinks we shouldn't want to say those things, as they're based on a misunderstanding. I'm still wrestling with it. (And barely halfway through his book . . . )
But even if language did not make him think in ways that he already [I]could[/I] not, it certainly made him think in ways he had not. One day, I saw a book called [I]Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid[/I]. I'm a Bach freak, and Escher is great, so, despite never having heard of Gödel, I thought I'd see what it was about. I had never heard of Zeno's or Russell's paradoxes before I found GEB. We know everything we know because, at some point in our lives, we're exposed to them for the first time. My first exposure to these paradoxes came from reading a book. Because of the scribbles. One guy scribbled on paper, and, decades later, by looking at those scribbles, someone else is thinking in ways he never had before.
It is worrisome that after reading so much Rödl you're still not sure what he is objecting to in Frege. Is the same true of Kimhi?
I would try visiting Geach to find out, as he is the basis of the criticism for both Kimhi and Klima (and note that Rödl is indebted to Kimhi on this score). Geach is the first domino that I know of who critiques Frege in this way.
"Assertion," by Peter Geach
"The Frege-Geach Problem 60 Years Later: A Tribute to an Enduring Semantic Puzzle"
Are you saying that if we start with a preconceived notion of the truth, and this is supported by observations, then this shows that our preconceived notion of the truth was correct.
The problem becomes when we only use those observations that agree with our preconceived notion of the truth and reject any observation that doesn't.
To my understanding:
In my terms, Frege is a Direct Realist in that he believes that force is separate to content. For example, in the world apples exist independent of any observer.
In my terms, Rodl is an Indirect Realist in that he believes that force is inside content. For example, when we see a red object, as the colour red only exists in the mind and not the world, not only our thought about the colour red but also the content of the thought, the colour red, exist in the mind. However, it may not be the case as Rodl says that force is internal to content, but rather force is content
In my opinion, Rodl's argument that self-awareness can be used to show that force must be inside content is a non-starter, as the self-consciousness of the "I" is separate to not only to any thought but also to what is being thought about. This means that self-consciousness has nothing to say about the relation between a thought and what is being thought about, in other words between the force and content.
However, there are other arguments that may be made to show that force cannot be separate to content.
Separate in what sense? You would at least have to agree that they are both held by the one mind.
Quoting RussellA
His book is titled an introduction to absolute idealism. If he was an indirect realist perhaps he wouldnt have used that description.
I agree that all these exist in the mind "I", "think" and "p".
But I can hold in my mind two separate thoughts, "I need to buy some bread" and "Paris is in France". Just because these two thoughts are in my mind doesn't mean that they aren't separate thoughts.
In my mind is the thought "I like apples", where "I" is separate to "like apples". If "I" wasn't separate to its predicate "like apples" then "I" would be no more than any contingent predicate. In other words, if "I" wasn't separate to its predicate, then for example, "I" would be "like apples", "I" would be "visited the Eiffel Tower", etc.
The "I" is self-conscious regardless of any contingent predicate.
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Quoting Wayfarer
Absolute Idealism and Indirect Realism are not incompatible.
Kant was a Realist even though his theory was called Transcendental Idealism.
I have read that 80% of phd philosophers are Realists. In fact, I challenge you to find a quote by Rodl in his book An Introduction to Absolute Idealism where he says that a mind-independent world does not exist. This would of course lead to the situation that the Universe began when Humans first appeared, which I am sure even Rodl does not believe.
Rodl's main influence was Hegel, and he sees himself re-introducing Hegel's Absolute Idealism. (Wikipedia - Sebastain Rodl)
According to Hegel, in order for the thinking subject to be able to know its object, there must be in some sense an identity of thought and being (Wikipedia - Absolute Idealism)
Hegel is not an Idealist in the sense of Berkeley, for whom the world does not exist outside the mind.
For example, I am both an Absolute Idealist and an Indirect Realist.
At first, I was ok with Rödls initial premises; each published philosopher has his own. But later on, came to object to the development of them.
I mean
. What is thought first-personally contains its being thought . (Pg 2)
.what does that say except thought is what is thought; IS thought and BEING thought are exactly the same thing; was there ever a thought that wasnt first-personal? Watahells a guy supposed to do with any of that?
Ehhhh probably just me, too dense to unpack whats being said.
Sure he thinks in ways he could not before. He now understands that there are ideas can be shared. Can't it be said that you change when you learn anything new? Again, you seem to be trying to make a special, unwarranted case for scribbles.
Quoting Patterner
Exactly. It wasn't language that made you think differently. It was the ideas in a book expressed in language that changed your thinking. The ideas could have been expressed in any form as long as there were rules that we agreed upon for interpreting the forms, and as long as you had a mind capable of already understanding multiple levels of representation.
Quoting Harry HinduYes. I still don't know where I'm suggesting any power, or something that isn't logically possible.
You said,
Quoting RussellA
...which I understand to mean that the word, "truth" is meaningless if we could never know when we know the truth and when we don't.
I'm trying to redefine "truth" in a way that is meaningful in that maybe truth is not a relation between some state of the world and our ideas of the world. Instead "truth" can be thought of as a relation between some idea and the success or failure of some goal.
As I have said, learning anything can play a role in your ability to think in ways you did not before. Language is not special in this regard. After you learned a language, did you stop learning anything? Have you not learned new things since you learned a language that changed your ability to think in ways you did not before?
I am not saying that language does not change the way you think. I'm saying that there is nothing special about language in this regard. Making any observation, whether it be watching the behavior of birds, or reading about the behavior of birds, changes the way you think about birds, and I would argue that directly observing birds is better than than reading about them in a book.
At this point I think you should provide examples of how language changed the way you think in ways you did not before. What ways of thinking do you need to be able to learn a language in the first place?
What is the difference between first and third person anyway? It seems to me that you are always stuck in one view and the other view is simply changing what it is you are attending to in your mind - the world or yourself? What does it mean to be self-conscious - the act of talking to yourself in your head?
What forms do your thoughts take? If you hear your own voice talking to yourself, is that a first or third person view - hearing the sound of your voice in your mind? Is the sound of your voice all there is to your thoughts?
Quoting RussellA
But what forms do they take in your mind? How do you know they exist in your mind? Are "I", "think" and "p" just scribbles and that is the form they take in your mind, or do the scribbles refer to other things that are not scribbles and those are what exist in your mind? In seeing these scribbles on the screen, are the same as what is in your mind?
Yet you say things like this:Quoting Harry Hindu
How are these things not contradictory?
Pretty open-ended question, isnt it? Within the context I was talking about, though, there isnt any third-person to be found, the very notion is absurd.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The view belonging to the subject, yet without the pitiful nonsense of Cartesian theater, right?
My focus has been on things and types of things we think about, not the way we think. Thinking about an object, say, a boulder on a hill, and thinking about what that boulder might do in the future, say, roll down the hill, are different kinds of thoughts. Thinking about that boulder landing on me leads to thinking about my mortality, which is yet another kind of thought. Thinking about these different kinds of thoughts Is a fourth kind of thought. At least it seems this way to me.
But I don't know that I'm not thinking these different kinds of thoughts in the same way. If they are different ways of thinking, I guess they are the thingd that might answer your question? But what are those ways?
There are many definitions of "truth" (SEP - Truth)
My favourite is a correspondence between something that exists in the mind and something that exists in the world, such that "the oak tree is shedding its leaves" is true IFF the oak tree is shedding its leaves.
Unfortunately, being an Indirect Realist, I don't think we can ever know what exists in the world, meaning that we can never know "the truth".
What you want seems to be similar to the Anti-Realist approach to truth, such as Dummett's, where truth is not a fully objective matter independent of us, but is something that can be verified or asserted by us. (SEP - Truth - 4.2).
"Think" exists in my mind as an imagined sound.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
When I hear the sound "think", real or imagined, I know that the sound must exist somewhere. If I know the sound hasn't come from outside my mind, then I know that it must have come from inside my mind.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
"Think" exists in my mind in its own right, and doesn't refer to anything else.
If "think" in my mind didn't exist in its own right, and referred to something else, such as "A", then this "A" must refer to something else, such as "B", ending up as the infinite regress homunculus problem. As I see it, I am my thoughts rather than I have thoughts.
Therefore things in my mind must exist in the own right without referring to anything else.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
When I see the word "think" on the screen I hear the sound "think" in my mind. After many repetitions, in Hume's terms, this sets up a constant conjunction between seeing the word "think" and hearing the word "think". Thereafter, when I see the word "think" I instinctively hear the word "think", and when I hear the word "think" I instinctively see the word "think".
The sound "think" doesn't refer to the image "think", but corresponds with it.
I don't want to dispute terminology, especially when it comes to a time-honored Thorny Problem such as realism, but the "content" that Frege is upholding isn't the apples, it's the proposition "There are apples in that tree". Frege probably did think the apples would be there even if you or I were not. But his concern was more about the truths of logic and math, which he insisted were "there" just as much as the apples.
As for Rodl, if force is "inside" or "accompanies" content, that might lead to a sort of indirect realism. But Rodl is clear that the entire picture is wrong, according to him.
Hence "absolute idealism."
It does look tautologous, whether we construe it that way or whether we construe it as saying that a self-reflective thought contains its being thought.
My initial objection was slightly different. A first-personal thought for Rodl is something like thinking "I think 2+2=4." Does that contain its own thought? Even supposing it does for the sake of argument, not all thought is "first-personal," and therefore not all thought contains its own thought in this way (self-consciously). Maybe Rodl develops this later on.
But the other question is, "In what sense is it contained?" When you say that for Kant, "I think represents the consciousness of the occurrence of the activity, but not the activity itself," we are distinguishing two different ways in which one can be conscious of their own thought, That strikes me as an important distinction.
And wouldn't "[I]reflexively[/I] hear/see the word" be better? But how is it different after many repetitions from the initial time, when, upon seeing the word, you heard it in your mind? What has changed after the many repetitions?
Which one isnt?
Quoting Leontiskos
Yeah, I kinda got that from him, too. But thing is .nobody does that. Or, to be fair, I question whether anybody does. Using your example, first personal thought with that content is 2 + 2 = 4. Thats it. No need for superfluous redundancies, no add-ons that make no modification.
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Quoting Leontiskos
Care to say more? What do you consider as two ways?
Using your explanation of Kant, "Consciousness of the occurrence of the activity," and, "Consciousness of the activity itself" ().
(I should have said "could" rather than "can." There are here two different ways of conceiving consciousness of one's own thought.)
Berkeley denies the existence of matter as an independently real substance, but he does not deny the reality of the external world. For him, the world consists of ideas that exist either in finite minds (like ours) or in the infinite mind of God. Berkeleys famous dictum, esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived), means that objects exist as ideas in minds. However, he maintains that the continuity and stability of the world are underwritten by Gods beholding of the Universe. He was not a solipsist; he does not claim that the world exists only in your or my mind or that it would come into existence only with humans. Instead, he holds that the world exists as a shared reality, grounded in Gods infinite perception.
The statement that the world does not exist outside the mind conflates Berkeleys denial of material substance with a denial of external reality altogether. For Berkeley, the world is real, but its reality is mental or spiritual, not material. It exists as a collection of ideas dependent on being perceived by finite minds or God. It is the nature of the world that is at issue, not the contention that it is merely a phantasm of the mind.
Hegel was idealist, but his philosophy was focused on the dialectical development of Geist (spirit) and the unfolding of reason in history. For Hegel, reality is the expression of rational structures, not reducible to subjective or finite minds.
But I said consciousness of the one but not of the other.
The activity belongs to understanding; consciousness of the occurence of the activity, is merely a condition of being human.
You may still posit the two ways in which one can conceive consciousness of his own thoughts; just not this way. At least I dont see it. Open to correction, of course.
I dont think Rödls Self-Consciousness and Objectivity is a direct argument for absolute idealism, despite the title. Rödl meticulously analyses foundational questions about self-consciousness, judgment, and objectivity in ways that challenge implicit assumptions within analytic philosophy. His goal is not to advocate idealism but to build a case that shows how idealist principles resolve issues that other frameworks cannot. In doing this, Rödl reframes concepts like the nature of judgment and the role of self-consciousness, implicitly demonstrating how idealism underpins intelligibility, rationality, and objectivity.
It is very much written for the philosophical professoriate, particularly those trained in analytic methods, who dominate the discourse in the modern academy. Its style and structure reflect this intent, and as such it operates at a high level of abstraction. By embedding idealist principles in dense, systematic arguments, Rödl avoids presenting idealism as a speculative doctrine. His strategy is to show how it emerges necessarily from a deeper analysis of thought and reality.
Myself, I don't think I'm going to persist with it. I'm not well-equipped for this kind of technical philosophy and it really doesn't interest me that much. I'm already a convinced philosophical idealist, which I'll continue to explore and advocate for through other means. What with the abundance of information available in the Information Economy and the availability of time, I'm going to take leave of this topic and concentrate efforts elsewhere.
Im not sure. When he says
. And I use consciousness to designate a genus of which thought, judgment, knowledge are species . (1.4, pg 4)
.it appears hes grouping things under a heading, the soundness of which escapes me, just yet. For me, all that which he calls species, thought and judgement belong to understanding, and knowledge, not being a faculty at all, doesnt belong to any of them. And consciousness isnt a genus iff its merely a condition. Consciousness isnt how thought is possible; it only represents that to which thought belongs, re: I think.
On the other hand, if there is sufficient justification contained in the text as a whole, for the genus/species thing hes got going on, then maybe he can affirm what Kant had denied.
Like I said .hard to unpack.
And that aint philosophy - thats human nature :wink:
I was thinking about how we learn the meaning of a word. When we see something that is named "apple", this has to be repeated several times before we are able to associate the name "apple" with our concept of "apple".
Frege's "content" surely does not mean any possible proposition, but only those propositions that are capable of being judged true, which means only those propositions that are able to correspond with the world.
Frege said force is separate to content.
Frege's position is that there can be propositions having content independent of being judged or asserted. Such that "p" is independent of "I judge p is true" or "I assert p is true".
There is a difference between "I judge p is true" and "I judge "p" is true". The thread is titled p and "I think p" not p and "I think "p"",
Suppose Frege means by content the proposition, such that "I judge "p" is true""
Then "p" can be anything. For example, "p" could be "five legged blue creatures that breathe fire freely roam in Cyprus", in which case "I judge "five legged blue creatures that breathe fire freely roam in Cyprus" is true".
But "p" can be any one of an almost infinite number of possibilities, an almost infinite number of possible propositions, an almost infinite number of possible contents.
But Frege wrote in 1915 - My basic logical insights: When something is judged to be the case we can always cull out the thought that is recognized as true; the act of judgment forms no part of this
The thought must be recognized as true, and the thought "five legged blue creatures that breathe fire freely roam in Cyprus" can never be recognized as true.
It makes more sense that what is being discussed is "I judge p is true", where p is not just any possible proposition but only those propositions that can be judged to be true.
This is why Frege himself gave the example of "the accused was in Rome" rather than "the accused dressed only in a hat flew over the rooftops of Rome" and why this thread gives the example of "the oak tree is shedding its leaves" rather than "five legged blue creatures that breathe fire freely roam in Cyprus".
Frege says that the content is separate to the force, where p in "I judge p is true" is separate to "I judge_is true"
The content cannot be any possible proposition, but only those propositions that are capable of being judged true.
And those propositions that are capable of being true correspond with the world. Hence a foundation of Realism.
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Quoting J
As a cat is an animal, an Absolute Idealist is an Indirect Realist. Absolute Idealism is a type of Indirect Realism.
True, and he also believed in the existence of an external world.
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Quoting Wayfarer
As you say, Berkeley believed in the existence of an external world.
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Quoting Wayfarer
I presume that you haven't found a quote by Rodl in his book An Introduction to Absolute Idealism where he says that a mind-independent world doesn't exist.
I gotcha.
I judge p is true = refers to a proposition that can be judged true
I judge "p" is true = refers to any proposition whatsoever
You're saying that only the former can be "recognized as true." What I don't understand is how this recognition differs from judging that it is true. Do you mean "recognition" to refer to a pre-linguistic or pre-propositional experience?
Quoting RussellA
There seems to be a misunderstanding about "capable of being judged true." The statement about the blue creatures is capable of being judged true, but as it happens, the correct judgment is "false." When Frege and Fregeans talk about truth-aptness, they're not referring to facts on the ground about what is the case. They're talking about the kinds of propositions to which assent could be given.
That said, it's true that Fregean "content" can't be "any possible proposition" if you agree with Rodl and others that there's a deep problem involving 1st person propositions and whether we can indeed separate the 1st personal from assertion.
Could we say that one can simulate one view within another? Can we simulate a third person view from the first person?
Quoting Mww
I'm not sure. It seems that the very idea of a "view" is what invokes the nonsense of a Cartesian theater and homunculus.
What about when we talk to ourselves in our head? Who are we talking to? If language is representation and we think in language, what does that say about which view we are participating in when thinking in a language rather thinking in images, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells? In thinking in representations are we not relegating ourselves to the third person?
I don't know either. You were the one that used the phrase "the way we think" and I was just going with the flow. I assumed you knew what you were talking about when using those words.
What did you mean when you said that language changes the way we think?
I assumed that "ways we think" include things like problem-solving, reason, logic, representation, categorizing, interpreting, recalling, etc.
It seems to me that we must already possess these ways of thinking to be able to learn a language in the first place and learning a language is like learning to ride a bike. When you master the skill, you outsource some of the work to unconscious processes. You no longer need to focus on balance and the movement of your legs. It is all done unconsciously. Mastering language is the same. Once you master the skill you outsource some of the processes to your non-conscious parts of your brain, so it makes you more efficient in riding your bike and using your language. While language does not change the way we think. It represents the way we think and improves the efficiency in our thinking.
Quoting Patterner
Do you need language to think those things, or is language merely representative of your thinking in images, sounds, feelings, etc.? When thinking about a boulder on a hill and the possibility that it might roll down the hill, are you experiencing that thought as the visual of scribbles, "That boulder might roll down the hill.", the sound of your voice saying "That boulder might roll down the hill.", or visuals of the boulder and it rolling down the hill? If you say you experience hearing the sound of your voice saying that, then does the sound of your voice refer to the visual of the boulder rolling down the hill, or is the boulder rolling down the hill just sounds in your head?
You say that your favorite version of "truth" is one where you can never know what the "truth" is. :meh:
How is your version independent of us if it is a correspondence between something that exist in the world and something that exists in the mind? :roll:
Then you are talking to yourself when thinking? What are you talking to yourself ABOUT? Do the imagined sounds in your mind represent other things that are not sounds in your mind? If so, couldn't you just think in those things instead of thinking only sounds in your mind?
Quoting RussellASo the act of thinking is only the act of hearing the sound "think" in your mind?
Quoting RussellA
Then I don't understand how you can be an indirect realist that asserts that your thoughts are not the world, but about the world. You are describing solipsist stance, not an indirect realist one.
Quoting RussellA
You're saying that the act, or process, of thinking is simply seeing those scribbles and hearing that sound in your head. For you, the scribble and the sound do not refer to anything, like the act of thinking.
Thankyou for the fun thread, but several days of sunshine abroad beckon.
Recognition and Judgement
Frege says force is separate to content. I take this to mean that the content p in "I judge p is true" is separate to the force "I judge _is true".
My belief is that proposition p must be truth apt prior to being able to be judged. A proposition is truth apt if it corresponds with the world. This means that a proposition must be recognized to be truth apt before being able to be judged.
Therefore, before judging a proposition, we must recognize that the proposition ""The oak tree is shedding its leaves" is truth apt and the proposition "five legged blue creatures that breathe fire freely roam in Cyprus" isn't.
The problem with Frege's belief that force is separate to content
However, we can only recognize a proposition such as "a b c d e" as being truth apt if we know the meaning of a,b, c , d and e. IE, we know the content of the proposition.
This begins to support Rodl's point that the content cannot be separate to the force, as we are already making a judgment that the proposition is truth apt even before we start to judge whether the contents of the proposition are true or not.
It is interesting that all the examples of propositions I have come across have been truth apt, whether on this thread, such as "That oak tree is shedding its leaves", "the grass is green", "the Earth is round" or Frege's "the accused was in Rome".
IE, the content cannot be separate to force, as the content must be known prior to judging that the content is suitable to be judged.
The problem if the proposition is not truth apt
But suppose proposition p does not need to be truth apt before we can try to judge it.
Consider an example of a proposition that is not truth apt, such as "five legged blue creatures that breathe fire freely roam in Cyprus". On what grounds can we judge the content when the content is meaningless.
A judgment about a content can only be made when the content has meaning, and as content cannot give itself meaning, any meaning must be external to the content itself, such as the world.
For Rodl, force is inside content
If force is inside the content, and the content doesn't correspond with the world, then what is the content to be judged against. It can only be judged against itself, which leads into an infinite regress.
If force is inside the content, and the content corresponds with a world external to it, then any judgment is founded within the world, and there is something for the judgment to be made against
Therefore, for Rodl also, where force is inside content, judgment is only possible if the content has a meaning external to itself, such as the world.
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Quoting J
But this means that a judgement must be made about what kind of proposition can be assented to even before a judgment can be made about the content of that proposition.
A judgement about what kind of proposition can be assented to can only be made if the contents are known. For example, a judgment cannot be made giving assent to the proposition "a b c d e" without knowing what a, b, c, d and e mean. But what a, b, c, d and e mean is the content of the proposition.
The contents of the proposition must be known before being judged. This means that the contents of the proposition are already known before being judged. If the contents are known in order for a judgment to be made, the contents cannot be separate to the judgment
Thank you for your replies, but am now off on holiday.
Perhaps deflationary towards truth. As the SEP article on Truth writes
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Quoting Harry Hindu
In my vision there is a postbox, which I know because it exists in my mind. I believe that there is something outside my mind that caused me to see a postbox in my mind, but I don't know what that something is.
The correspondence theory of truth doesn't apply, as there is no correspondence between a known thing in my mind and an unknown thing in the world.
Yeah, I suppose, when I think about what another person thinks iff he speaks of it.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I dont think its the view that invokes the nonsense, in that a view presupposes a viewer, or that which represents agency, which is a necessary condition for philosophical theory in general, and metaphysics in particular. Otherwise, whats the point? Multiple instances of either, is the problem, and that occurs when all thats left for affirmation is .recourse to pitiful sophisms , from which follows the conclusion that I am as many-colored and various a self as there are representations of which I am conscious ..
But I see your point: there isnt a view, in the proper sense of seeing; there is only the modus operandi of an intellect, the same intellect that allows the construction of pitiful sophisms, such that an irreconcilable mess is made in attempting to explain itself.
(As in .what follows below *grin*)
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Quoting Harry Hindu
Thats not what were doing. Ok, fine. I reject thats what Im doing. Im processing an extent understanding given from experience, subsequently the possibility of expressing it coherently.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I agree language is representation, but reject thinking in language. Thinking, as such, in and of itself, is cognition by means of conceptions, conceptions are the representation of extant images, again, from experience. The mental act of composing an expression, is nonetheless a thought, albeit perhaps moreso a complex arrangement of them, even a succession of arrangements into a whole.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It says there must be a difference in the view in which the subject participates, and the view the subject represents. No matter the many things I think, it is still only me thinking.
(Not sure what youre trying to elucidate here, but thats my understanding of it)
Quoting Harry Hindu
We dont think in representations, but by means of them in their relation to each other. Im not getting a third-person out of that.
Anyway .for what all thats worth.
Would you say you are simulating expressing it coherently, essentially thinking what you are going to say before saying it?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expression
Expressing is the act of representing or symbolizing something else.
In expressing something are you not using some form of representation? Are the sounds coming from your mouth representing, or referring to your simulation (thinking it before saying it), or to some other thought that is neither the thought of you expressing it nor the sound you are making. When expressing something to me, what exactly are you trying to express - more words, or some other type of sensory experience?
Quoting Mww
So when you think of the image of a cat, that is not a representation of all possible cats? Isn't the primary purpose of thinking to simulate the world as accurately as possible? What type of relation exists between your mind and the world?
The OP left a bad taste in my mouth given the way it handles Kant. And after an excessive amount of digging we learned that Rodl contradicts himself in the endnote, which to me constitutes a lie:
Maybe it was just an unfortunate coincidence that the thread began on such shaky ground, but after the Kimhi threads took a very long time to go nowhere, this sort of equivocation deters.
Quoting J
But as the thread on Kimhi demonstrated, you are sure. You are sure that Kimhi and Rodl are important and worth reading. But you don't seem able to give any reasons for that rather dogmatic position. You insist it's worth it and you don't know why:
Quoting J
That's fine, but I don't see a neutral or objective reader. I see more of that from Paine, and that is why I am so interested to hear his thoughts.
The only thing that worries me is captured by Srap's response. If anti-Analytic lunges all miss their mark badly, then a real problem is being created. That is, if Kimhi and Rodl don't make any sense, then touting them--explicitly or implicitly--as the champions against Analytic Fregianism only aids the cause of Analytic Fregianism. Honestly, after reading Kimhi I think more of Frege, not less. It's not great when arguments against [Frege] have the effect of improving the general opinion of [Frege].
Additionally, philosophy forums are usually filled with people pretending to do calculus, who do not know how to do algebra. With Kimhi everyone came to the same conclusion, including you, "We don't really know what he is talking about, or where he is going with any of this." The problem created by this can't just be deferred ad infinitum. At some point you have to face the music. But of course Rodl could be different than Kimhi.
Quoting Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
So something is true simply by saying it? What happens when someone else says, "Snow White isn't white"? Can contradictory statements be true? If every statement is true simply by saying it that seems to deflate the meaning of truth to meaninglessness.
How is defining truth as a correspondence between some proposition and its usefulness in achieving some goal any different?
If one were to say, "Snow White is white", and another say the opposite, we verify the truth of the statements by using them to achieve some goal. If we succeed, the statement is true, if we fail, the statement is false.
Quoting RussellA
But you just said that something outside your mind caused you to see a postbox in your mind, how is that not a correspondence - a link of causation?
The paragraph preceeding the endnote is as follows:
[quote=SCAO, P3]As thinking that things are so is thinking it valid to think this, the I think is thought in every act of thinking: an act of thinking is the first person thought of itself. As being conscious of thinking that things are so is not a diferent act from thinking this, the act of the mind expressed by So it is is the same as the one expressed by I think it is so. As the act of thinking is one, so is what it thinks; as the I think is thought in every act of thinking, the I think is contained in every thing thought. This cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p. On the contrary. Since thinking p is thinking oneself to think it, there is no such thing as thinking, in addition to thinking p, that one thinks this. If our notation confuses us, suggesting as it does that I think is added to a p that is free from it, we may devise one that makes I think internal to p: we may form the letter p by writing, in the shape of a p, the words I think.
This bears repeating: there is no meaning in saying that, in an act of thinking, two things are thought, p and I think p. Kant said: the I think accompanies all my thoughts.[sup]3[/sup][/quote]
[quote=Footnote][sup]3.[/sup] Critique of Pure Reason, B 131. More precisely, he says that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations, for all my representations must be capable of being thought. This presupposes (what is the starting point of Kants philosophy and not the kind of thing for which he would undertake to give an argument) that the I think accompanies all my thoughts.[/quote]
Norman Kemp Smith translation of the Critique of Pure Reason p153:
(I take it that Rödl's comment that this is 'not the kind of thing for which he would give an argument' is tantamount to 'it goes without saying' or 'it is assumed'.)
So - what about this constitutes a lie or a contradiction?
//
A little further along in the same section from the CPR, further argument which lends weight to Rödl's interpretation
[quote=Critique of Pure Reason, Sythetic Unity of Apperception]The thought that the representations given in intuition one and all belong to me is therefore precisely the same as the thought that I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unite them; and although this thought is not itself the consciousness of the synthesis of the representations, it presupposes the possibility of that synthesis. In other words, only in so far as I can grasp the manifold of the representations in one consciousness, do I call them one and all mine. For other wise I should have as many-coloured and diverse a self as I have representations of which I am conscious to myself. Synthetic unity of the manifold of intuitions, as generated a priori, is thus the ground of the identity of apperception itself, which precedes a priori all my determinate thought. Combination does not, however, lie in the objects, and cannot be borrowed from them, and so, through perception, first taken up into the understanding. On the contrary, it is an affair of the understanding alone, which itself is nothing but the faculty of combining a priori, and of bringing the manifold of given representations under the unity of apperception. The principle of apperception is the highest principle in the whole sphere of human knowledge.[/quote]
//Quoting J
Looks like I'm not done yet, after all ;-)
Close enough.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Everything my form of intelligence does, is predicated on representation, despite what the materialists or spiritualists would have me think.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No. Representations are not for universals, which are objects of reason, concepts without representation. We dont think all possible cats; we think either the one right in front of us, or the one that might be.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Nothing wrong with that, but specifically I rather think the primary empirical purpose of thinking is to understand the worlds relation to us, the way we are affected by it. Bu empirical thinking is not the limit of thought, so technically, the primary purpose depends on the domain in which object thought about, is found.
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Quoting Leontiskos
Me too, but I laid it off to my seriously entrenched predispositions. But I like to think I gave it a good ol fashion continental examination, donchaknow.
They have been for me, and evidently for others. I guess not for you, though you've seemed pretty engaged! :wink:
Just a basic difference about what the point of it all is. I prefer understanding to being right, or deeming a philosopher right or wrong, and it takes me a long time to understand difficult things.
Given two (or more) positions on a basic, entrenched problem in philosophy, I assume that, if there was an obviously correct resolution, it would have been discovered long ago, and recognized as such. So the task is hermeneutic -- we need an interpretation, an understanding, of why this is so, why certain problems continue to provoke and stimulate. If you've gotten nothing from reading what you have of Kimhi and Rodl, that's OK, then they aren't stimulating thought for you, they aren't helping you understand or helping you articulate questions. No reason to pursue them.
One that might be is the same as a possible cat. If you can only think of the cat in front of you or one that might be, how would you recognize a cat that is different than the one in front of you and the one you imagine might be, if the universal does not represent all possible cats?
What purpose is a universal? How are they used in our thinking, if not to stand for the characteristics of a cat?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Mww
Sounds like we're saying the same thing. To simulate the world as accurately as possible includes the world's relation to us and how we are affected by it, as we are part of the world. The mind is a relation between body and world so one might even say that all we can never get at the world as it is independent of us, only at the relation itself.
Rödl proposes "absolute idealism" as the way forward from where Nagel and Moore stopped:
Quoting Janus
As your reference to the Hegel formula suggests, the goal is not to move beyond but to learn how to accept absolute idealism. The matter of duality is not dissolved but framed in way outside of contending dependencies:
The tension between the first person and objective judgement is maintained but approached through understanding knowledge as a power. To that end, Rödl introduces Aristotle, who figures largely in Chapter 4:
This is sort of nit-picking, but I consider this sentence to be truth apt. After all, I can envision some evil super genius genetically engineering such creatures and setting them loose on Cyprus. Of course it's false.
"The non-existent apple threw the square root of the Eiffel Tower"
Now that is most definitely not truth apt.
Yes, what some term a priori cognition under empirical conditions. Nevertheless I cant think a possible cat a priori without having the antecedent experience, in order to reduce the possibility to a particular object. Otherwise, I have no warrant for representing the conception with the word cat.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Isnt that just another possible cat? As far as my cognitive operation is concerned, it is.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Doesnt matter that an in abstracto object in general is represented by a universal idea, it isnt a cat until I cognize that thing as such.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
Close enough, but given relations alone is insufficient for knowledge.
To say that Kant says something that one knows he does not say is lying, and this is what Rodl does. He demonstrates that in the endnote. And even if we grant for the sake of argument that Kant presupposes Rodl's position (and it seems that he doesn't), it remains false that Kant affirms that position.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, after listening to McDowell's lecture on Rodl I was able to understand that this is what Rodl is doing, but it still doesn't justify his claim. Unity in a single consciousness is not self-consciousness, even for Kant.
McDowell chastises Rodl for misreading Davidson in a way that helps Rodl justify his own position, and I think that is also what is happening with Kant. The OP itself is premised on that false attribution in the same way: depending on Kant saying something he did not say.
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Quoting J
And yet you can't say what you have gained or even answer the question, "What are they saying?" The danger of obscure thinkers is that they are very easy to read one's own ideas into, thus approving one's preconceptions. The opaque Other is not Other at all, and becomes only one's reflection in the water.
But I can't see how he does that. Rödl says:
[quote= Rödl, Endnote]More precisely, he (Kant) says that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations, for all my representations must be capable of being thought.[/quote]
Which I checked against the Norman Kemp Smith translation of the Critique:
So, again, how is it a lie? I just can't see it.
So the idea is supposed to be that Rodl lies in the text, and then quotes the source in the endnote that demonstrates it was a lie? Please. It doesn't pass the laugh test. Possibly Rodl is wrong in his interpretation of Kant, though I don't think he is; see Wayfarer's explanation.
The whole issue is putting an enormous amount of weight on a very minor difference of wording: "the I think must be able to accompany all my representations" versus "the I think accompanies all my thoughts". Should we hold out for the possibility that, in some cases, we have a representation which the I think, though able to accompany this representation, does not so accompany? Is this what Kant has in mind when uses the term "able to accompany"? -- able but not willing, so to speak? Surely not. He's trying to make it plain that, since the I think does in fact accompany all our representations, it has to be the sort of thing which is able to do so.
Or is it a distinction between thoughts and representations? I'm open to hearing what this distinction would be, and the difference it would make, in this context.
Rodl says, "Kant said: the I think accompanies all my thoughts." Did Kant say that or not?
Quoting J
You're twisting yourself in knots to read the text contrary to what it says. Does "X must be able to accompany Y" mean that "X always accompanies Y"? Yes or no?
Quoting J
Except he doesn't say that at all. Kant gives a reason for his claim, but it is not the reason you supply. In fact Kant seems to contradict you. He says of the manifold representations given in a certain intuition, "(even if I am not conscious of them as such)." I.e. There are representations which we need not be conscious of.
Quoting Leontiskos
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Related:
Quoting J
But that's worse, not better.
It is post hoc rationalization to blindly appeal to things like this in favor of one's position. My issue here is that the texts are being ignored in favor of some ideology. The example is, "Rodl is worth reading, therefore he couldn't be lying, therefore 'X must be able to accompany Y' means (or at least entails) 'X always accompanies Y'." The a priori judgment is so strong (and biased) that it overpowers the fact that there is a difference between possibility and necessity.
What puzzles me in your charge of dishonesty is that it dissolves Rödl's efforts to separate first person thinking from objective judgment. Whatever unity the two modes may have in a larger notion of consciousness such as Hegel presented, Rödl maintains they have two distinct, even mutually exclusive "characters" in our experience.
That distinction disappears if: "every hamburger has ketchup on it."
Could you explain that a little further? A passage that I highlighted, adjacent to the one you quoted, is:
[quote=p16] The aim of this essay, as an introduction to absolute idealism, is to make plain that it is impossible to think judgment through this opposition: mind here, world there, two things in relation or not. To dismantle this opposition is not to propose that the world is mind dependent. Nor is it to propose that the mind is world-dependent. These ways of speaking solidify the opposition; they are an impediment to comprehension.[/quote]
That seems to at least suggest the non-duality of mind and world, saying that construal of 'two things' is an 'impediment to comprehension'.
Note on sources:
[hide="Reveal"](Sources: the Adrian Moore book that Rödl brings in is Points of View, A W Moore. The Nagel book is The Last Word.)[/hide]
Notes on Self Consciousness in Rödl.
Rödl's uses 'self-consciousness' in a way completely different to normal usage ('I felt very self-conscious entering the room with all of those famous people.')
For Rödl, self-consciousness is the implicit awareness that accompanies any act of thought or judgment. When you think
, you are not just aware of
as an object but also of yourself as the thinker of
. Thought is self-conscious because it contains within it a reflexive awareness of its own activity (which is what Rödl means by it being 'internal to thought'.) This inseparability of thought and self-awareness is what Rödl highlights as essential to understanding judgment.
Self-consciousness involves the first-person perspective, which is irreducible to a third-person description. This perspective is not simply a way of referring to oneself (e.g., with the pronoun "I") bu foundational to thinking it is the form in which all thought occurs. This is where he criticizes Frege, as summarised in an earlier post:
Summary of main points of Frege "The Thought":
[hide="Reveal"][/hide]
Rödls self-consciousness aligns with Kants transcendental apperception: the 'I think' that must be able to accompany all representations. It is not a contingent property of individuals but a universal structure that makes thought and knowledge possible.
Comparison from CPR:
[hide="Reveal"][quote=Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Summary Representation of the Correctness of this Deduction, A129]If the objects with which our knowledge has to deal were things in themselves, we could have no a priori concepts of them. For from what source could we obtain the concepts? If we derived them from the object (leaving aside the question how the object could become known to us), our concepts would be merely empirical, not a priori. And if we derived them from the self, that which is merely in us could not determine the character of an object distinct from our representations, that is, could not be a ground why a thing should exist characterised by that which we have in our thought, and why such a representation should not, rather, be altogether empty. But if, on the other hand, we have to deal only with appearances, it is not merely possible, but necessary, that certain a priori concepts should precede empirical knowledge of objects. For since a mere modification of our sensibility can never be met with outside us, the objects, as appearances, constitute an object which is merely in us. Now to assert in this manner, that all these appearances, and consequently all objects with which we can occupy ourselves, are one and all in me, that is, are determinations of my identical self, is only another way of saying that there must be a complete unity of them in one and the same apperception.[/quote][/hide]
Quoting Wayfarer
This says to me that the problem is not an unnecessary division. Rödl objects to Nagel and Moore in this way:
The proposed solution is not to find a register where the two terms are one but to preserve the dynamic of 'first person thinking' over against 'objectivity' that does not have them jockeying against one another as possible grounds of experience. Rödl is saying we have valid reasons for thinking the former differences exist that we have projected into the idea of the latter.
I am saying that Rodl lies about what Kant says (and this issue was a theme throughout the early parts of this thread). Why think that if Rodl had not misrepresented Kant then he wouldn't have been able to separate first person thinking from objective judgment?
It's sort of like if Rodl had written an open letter and forged Kant's signature at the bottom of it. Not a huge deal, but the OP depends heavily on that signature.
Edit: Or perhaps you are claiming that Rodl mildly disagrees with the idea that he attributes to Kant? The issue here has primarily to do with the early effort of trying to address the OP at a time when no one had Rodl's book (except J).
And I for one am not persuaded by your claim. I spelled out the exact passage in which you said he does this, and compared it to the passage in Kant, and could discern no difference between them, nor have you explained how they differ.
But that was already done on page 6 and even earlier than that. This began when our resident Kantian, Mww, kept telling us that Kant does not say what Rodl says he does in the OP. So we finally tracked it down, back on page 3, and it looks like Mww was (unsurprisingly) correct.
Here is what Rodl claims Kant says on page 6:
And here is what Rodl admits Kant actually says in the endnote:
As noted earlier in the thread, there are two issues here: thought vs. representation, and "accompanies" vs. "must be able to accompany." Rodl misrepresents on both accounts, but the latter is more egregious.
Quoting Wayfarer
I find that hard to believe.
---
Of course Rodl hides behind the strange words, "More precisely..." But that's like saying, "Kant told me that he lives in Virginia. More precisely, he told me that he lives in the United States." That makes no sense. It would have only made sense for Rodl to go in the other direction, "Kant told me he lives in the United States. More precisely, he told me that he lives in Virginia." Rodl is trying to make his interpretation of Kant more than an interpretation, by claiming that Kant himself affirms that interpretation.
Rödls interpretation may emphasize aspects of Kant that others downplay or read differently, but this is part of philosophical engagement, not dishonesty. I see it as a plausible and defensible reading of Kants argument.
To claim that Rödl is "lying" presupposes not just a disagreement but an intentional misrepresentation, which is a serious charge requiring compelling evidence. I don't think it's justified on the basis of the discussion.
Quoting Leontiskos
also said
Quoting Mww
No, he doesn't. He says that the unity of the pure apperception is the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, and that the pure apperception produces the representation I think, which must be able to accompany all other representations. Indeed, the I think is not an activity at all, as Mww has pointed out for us.
That's the thing: if we want to use a text we have to read it. We can't just make it mean whatever we want it to mean, to suit our purposes. That is the big sweep of my complaint here. (It's also why I would defer to Mww on Kant or Paine on many thinkers - because they are careful in handling texts and do not warp them.)
On my limited view, if Kant thought the I think accompanied all thoughts (or even representations), he would have said so! It would be a bit wild to deftly say all the things he does about self-consciousness, the I think, and accompaniment, without stating that much more straightforward claim. He seems to actually be going out of his way to avoid saying that the I think accompanies all our representations. I mean, why would someone continually say, "X is able to accompany Y," if they hold that X always accompanies Y? That makes no sense at all.
Quoting Wayfarer
Of course it does. If someone claims that Kant has said things that they know Kant has not said, then they are lying. And if we are averse to that word, then at the very least he mislead, misrepresented, deceived, or spoke in a knowingly inaccurate way.
Quoting Wayfarer
If someone with an expertise in Kantian scholarship told me such a thing I would probably believe them, but I think we both agree that you are not that person, don't we? Else, if you do have the requisite knowledge for such claims, then give me a handful of other individuals who belong to this same school and would affirm Rodl's interpretation of Kant.
Indeed, I am familiar with thinkers who are considered transcendental Kantians, but I have never heard them claim that the I think accompanies all our thoughts.
Quoting Wayfarer
And the evidence is present in the endnote.
This is a line from the early part of the thread: "Kant said that?" "I don't think he did." "Where is he supposed to have said it?" "Maybe here... or here?" "But neither matches up." *More digging* "Oh, there's an endnote here where Rodl is clear that Kant doesn't say what he said he did." "Wtf?"
Quoting Wayfarer
The point being, "This isn't a thread on Kant, so we don't need to belabor the point." Relevant here too, I think.
The point to cash out is this: if Rodl (or J) wants to argue for the strange thesis, he is going to have to do more than make a false allusion to Kant. This has more to do with the OP than Rodl, because I would presume that Rodl does make arguments for his central thesis.
Im saying its an arguable implication of Kants intent, and that youre making a polemical mountain out of an interpretive molehill.
If Rodl had said that Kant arguably implies it there would be no problem at all. What he was doing was name-dropping Kant in favor of his theory.
The weird thing here is that you and J seem unable to admit that Rodl has done something which is strongly misrepresentative of Kant in at least a prima facie way.
Idealism writ large generally grants the validity of cognitive faculties, assigns them their respective functions, unites them into a system, toward a certain goal. Absolute idealism, by way of introduction, grants those faculties as that which, as Rödl says, we already and always know, but turns them back into themselves, rather than uniting them into a system. Judgement just is the consciousness of judging; knowledge just is the consciousness of knowing. It follows necessarily that thinking just is the consciousness of thought, the end result being the absoluteness of the idealism of each of those faculties. All of which is fine for an introduction to a doctrine, even if such introduction itself is not intended to account for what is to be done with those faculties after the exposition for how the author requires them to be understood.
I found no internal contradictions or inconsistencies in the introduction to absolute idealism, even though there are a veritable plethora of contradictions to other metaphysics. I also didnt immediately find any use for it, insofar as the possibility that e.g., judgment just is the consciousness of judging, doesnt tell me a damn thing about what judging does, and thereby its function in a system. If my primary concern is the comprehension of my relation to the external domain, for which of course, a system of some nature is requisite, I must have precious little need for absolute idealism, and lose nothing by dismissing the entire doctrine.
I am in agreement with with respect to an important initial premise attributed to Kant, and the intentional misappropriation of it in the furtherance of a doctrine in which that very same initial premise is invalid. In addition, Im somewhat dismayed to read Rödl claims Kants position presupposes his own, and would have been demonstrated if Kant had seen fit to elaborate. It is my comprehension, that Kant didnt elaborate for the simple reason to do so, such that Rödls position is justified, would be to falsify the very thing he just stated as the case, re: I think must be able to accompany all my representations.
It is not the case that I think must be able to accompany all my thoughts, if the origin of thought is the faculty of understanding, and the origin of I think is transcendental pure reason, the objects of which are principles. Understanding is that faculty by which thought is possible, in the synthesis of conceptions, the object of which is cognition. I think is not of a cognitive faculty as such, but of a mere human condition, and represents nothing more than the highest Principle of all exercise of the Understanding ., which is nothing more than the consciousness of having conjoined conceptions regardless of whatever the cognition following from it. From which, at least in this respect, it may even be said Kant was more absolute than Rödl.
(Sidebar: the implication of intuition serves as proof we as humans, actually do unite all our representations, in this case empirical ones only, and while not necessarily conscious of doing it, must possess the consciousness of having done it. For otherwise, it is impossible that all the perceived parts of objects, each represented in us by its sensation, can be understood as the unity of conceptions, from which cognition of a whole in a single experience follows as a methodological necessity. The I think is nothing more than representing that the system recognizes the understanding as having fulfilled its function, which we simplify into the term consciousness.)
The explanatory conditions for why representation is not the same as thought, and therefore why I think must be capable of accompanying one but not the other, are legion in Kant, but of no use whatsoever in Rödl, insofar as absolute idealism is not concerned with representations as much as is speculative metaphysics regarding human cognition.
Which is what I meant by: Quoting Mww
And I by Quoting J
But I appreciate your take on it.
I wasn't talking about terms or words (scribbles). I was talking about the visual of a cat in your mind - the cat that you think of when thinking of cats. Maybe when thinking of cats you might think of different types of cats if you had the experience viewing various cats, but then what was it about those different cats that allowed you to place them all under the umbrella of cat (not the term, but the image)? Your imagined visuals of cats somehow allows you to recognize actual cats by the way they appear in your mind compared to how they appear in the world. Language (scribbles) is not needed to recognize similar objects to predict their behavior. It seems to me that you have to be able to categorize similar visuals and sounds together prior to learning a language as you have to be able to discern the differences and similarities between scribbles and sounds to learn a language in the first place.
Quoting Mww
That wasn't my question. How would you categorize an animal you have not seen before but looks like an animal you have seen before? What key characteristics do they share to then place them in the same visual category?
Quoting Mww
What is that process like? What goes on in your mind to cognize some thing if it does not include an abstract object?
It seems to me that your mental object of cat is the very cat you first experienced until you've experienced other cats in which your mental object changes to leave out certain characteristics and retain others. For instance, cats can have long or short hair. If your first cat you observed had short hair and you saw a similar looking animal but it had long hair, why or why would you not cognize that thing as a cat?
Quoting Mww
Knowledge is itself a relation. If everything is a relation then it would it be fair to say that getting at relations is getting at the world?
Personally, I think it warrants the weight, and a perfect example for why I wholeheartedly detest OLP, but simply dismiss analytic philosophy. More than mere words, its a matter of conceptual meaning what can this word mean, what does it indicate and thereby what can it do, that the another word cannot. If that is all given beforehand in a certain context, but consequently disavowed within that same context, that upon which the disavowal rests, must be considered undeserving.
But youre quite correct, in that Rödls philosophy would stand if he hadnt mentioned Kant, insofar as his targets were specifically members of his own peer group, Nagel and Moore. Nevertheless, the reality that he did, requires accounting, which we know because he did it himself.
I think Rödl is greatly influenced by Hegel's criticism of Kant. The expression of common ground can be found here:
Where Rödl diverges from Kant relates to Hegel's objections to the role of 'intuition' giving us objects to understand or not:
I read Rödl's rejection of the mind/world opposition to include the unknowable "things in themselves". That is more than a mild disagreement.
Oh man. One but not the other. Possible but not simple. Very little in Kant is simple.
thought is cognition by means of conceptions . (A69/B94), from which can be inferred thought is an activity. Conceptions are representations of the faculty of understanding in the same way phenomena are the representations of the faculty of intuition. So if thought is by means of conceptions, and conceptions are representations, then it follows representations are antecedent to that activity which cognizes by means of them.
Kant does not define representation (vorstellung), thus consideration of his time is paramount, insofar as the Scholastic tradition, in which properties of things belonged to them and were transferred to the mind when thought about, had been overturned by Descartes with thinking substance. Subsequently, because thinking substance contradicts the categories, Kant replaced the ontology of things as having properties belonging to them, with the ontology of having the properties of objects already in us, and we transfer them to the objects, from which arises the proverbial Copernican. Revolution.
All that we have in us that can be transferred to a thing as properties, which we call judgement, and expanded to relations of those properties to each other, which we call logic, Kant denoted as representation. How we come by them, by what means to they arise, he does not expound, but its pretty obvious, whatever they really are we got em.
Probably not much help, I know. But its a simple as I can make it without saying nothing. Sorry.
Quoting Mww
I agree. I don't see principled reasons for why it wouldn't.
- :up:
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- Okay, thanks. So is the idea that he follows Hegel in disagreeing with Kant about noumena but he does not disagree with respect to his interpretation that, "The I think accompanies all my thoughts"?
This is contradictory. If I havent seen a thing before, I cant say it looks like one I have. If Ive not seen this cat, but Ive seen those cats, Im justified in characterizing the unseen as the same kind as the seen. The difference is, in the first the thing is undetermined, in the second the thing is determined as cat.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The quantity of conceptions that sufficiently correspond with the original experience. Those conceptions that do not sufficiently correspond are those which tell me Im justified in cognizing a different version of the original experience; those that do not correspond at all tells me Im not justified in cognizing a cat at all.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That condition belongs to sensation, not cognition. For different things be placed in the same visual category is for each to have congruent visual representation.
Quoting Harry Hindu
All my cognition includes abstract objects; they are representations. The objects represented in my cognitions are particulars, not universals.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, so the metaphysical story goes. As such, it is entered into consciousness, and serves as that by which all other similar perceptions are judged.
Quoting Harry Hindu
There isnt a definitive cut-off for similar or different characteristics. There was already a whole boatload of representations in order to cognize cat in the first place, so altering some relatively minor number of them wouldnt be sufficient to cause an entirely different experience. Although, I suppose given one or two glaring differences, one could only cognize what a thing is not, relative to his experience, but not what it is.
Thanks for that, but we all know stuff expressed in here is mere opinion, however well-supported.
And we all know theres no substitute for first-hand exposure to the original, for then the exposure and the opinion at least belong to the same subject.
I need to read and think more about it but perhaps Rödl may not want to accept all of Hegel either. Mww's account of the 'thinking substance' underscores some of the problems with distinguishing first person thought and objective judgement. The way Rödl separates them is that first person thoughts do not raise the problem of validation that objective judgements do. That preserves some of the isolation expressed in Kant's version of given objects. I think Rödl is inept in getting rid of Kant's "can accompany each thought". The region of "self-consciousness" is neither expanded nor reduced by the formulation.
Another element that makes me wonder about Rödl's relationship with Hegel is the impending chapters that incorporate Aristotle's' view of the thinker coming into being. I haven't gotten that far.
Not at all, very helpful indeed. I've read the entire CPR exactly once, and that was decades ago, so I appreciate the elucidation.
So, to put it crudely, representations would be the stuff of thought via conceptions. In particular, they are those representations of the faculty of understanding, not those of the faculty of intuition, which we call phenomena rather than conceptions. Representations are unexplained, a sort of axiom of epistemology. All we know is, we have them.
I think, based on this, that I see where some of the questions via Rodl arise. Again, forgive me if a simple question prompts a long answer, but if I may: You say that "thought is an activity," something done by means of concepts. But does Kant have anything to say about what the noun "thought" refers to? I always assumed we could harmlessly substitute "conception" or "representation," but how does he in fact understand this?
My response to the op, without reading though the whole thread:
Rodl is correct (leaving aside whether Kant supports him). I would answer Pat with something like 3.
To translate the mental event thinking-p into propositional form, you must include "I think". Because, the declaration "p" alone does not do this job. You can claim p without understanding it. You can mouth the words, with no internal representation accompanying your recitation. You can say p without believing it, by lying about it, or merely disagreeing internally.
The claim p alone is not the same as the event thinking-p, and so to convey this event accurately, "I think" must be included. But this is not at all the same as actually thinking, or experiencing, "I think p". This is reflecting on your own thought, which you do sometimes, but certainly not always, as Pat points out.
And so, there is a confusion caused by language: accurately notating that you are indeed thinking-p, and reflecting on your own thought, can both be represented as "I think p" in English.
I agree.
Quoting hypericin
Are they, though? The issue I see is that you cannot notate that you are thinking p without self-consciously thinking p. If the words "I think p" are uttered, then the self-reflection on thought is already present. And so it seems that the "notation" cannot be first-personal if it is to properly prescind from this self-reflection. It must be, "He thinks p," or, "p is thought." For this reason I don't find the I think to be ambiguous in this manner.
This, and other related puzzles about the use of "think", generated a lot of back and forth in the thread.
I want to think more about your post. You say:
Quoting hypericin
I need to check back in Rodl to see if I think it's a good paraphrase, but leaving aside Rodl-world, it's a good test case to help us understand what job the "I think" is supposed to be doing in all this.
Yes, an activity of the faculty of understanding, which makes thought an object, or product of the activity, hence, a noun. Even to say I think something is to say I have a thought that refers to that something, so again, that thought stands as an object of my thinking, hence a noun.
Cognition is what is done, synthesis is how cognition is done, conceptions are what synthesis is done with. Thought, then, is cognition by means of the synthesis of conceptions.
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. But the conjunction of representations into a conception is not to be found in objects themselves, nor can it be, as it were, borrowed from them and taken up into the understanding by perception, but it is on the contrary an operation of the understanding itself, which is nothing more than the faculty of conjoining à priori and of bringing the variety of given representations under the unity of apperception. This principle is the highest in all human cognition .
By this is shown the difference between uniting representations into a conception, re: apperception, and uniting conceptions into a cognition, re: thought. It also supports the argument that I think must not always be able to accompanying all my thoughts, insofar as self-consciousness is that by which alone conjunction is possible which is not thought, whereas understanding is that by which synthesis is possible, which is.
It is a process after all, right? Getting to knowledge from mere appearances?
Again ..dunno if this helps or hopelessly occludes.
[quote= Rödl, p7] Kant said: the I think accompanies all my thoughts. Hegel calls this way of putting it inept. However, in defense of Kant, we note that he hastened to add that the "I think" cannot in turn be accompanied by any representation. Thus he sought to make it plain that the I think is not something thought alongside the thought that it accompanies, but internal to what is thought as such.
When I say, the I think is contained in what is thought, this may with equal justice be called inept. It suggests that there are two things, one containing the other. Perhaps we should say, what is thought is suffused with the I think. But here, too, if we undertake to think through the metaphor, we come to grief before long. People have tried saying that the I think is in the background, while what is thought is in the foreground, or that what is thought is thematic, while the I think is unthematic. These metaphors are apt to solidify the notion that there are two things represented, the object and my thinking of it: in a visual scene, what is in the foreground and what is in the background are distinct things seen (the house in the foreground, say, the trees in the background); in a piece of music, the theme is heard alongside its accompaniment. But we must not take issue with these figurative ways of speaking; it is not through metaphors and images that we understand self-consciousness. We will continue to talk of containment, not to provide illumination, but to have a convenient way of speaking.[/quote]
Quoting Kant, On the Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception
Doesn't this lend support to Rödl's contention that 'As thinking that things are so is thinking it valid to think this, the 'I think' is thought in every act of thinking.' It seems a perfectly reasonable interpretation of Kant's 'original synthetic unity of apperception' to me.
Hmm. Let q be any thought (not necessarily a proposition). It isn't clear whether q is 1) the product of thinking, that is, an event that occurs at time T1 to a particular person, or 2) the "something" (content, to use a non-Kantian term) which is thought, and might equally well be thought by someone else.
Tell me if that makes any sense, and then I'll try to address the question of the "I think" accompanying all our thoughts.
Interesting. I would say this is usually, but not necessarily the case, that uttering "I think p" entails thinking about thinking p. In the same way, uttering "p" usually, but not always, entails thinking p. But this does not change the meaning of the utterances. "p" means "p", not "I think p", even if uttering "p" usually entails thinking p. We need to keep the meaning of utterances and their side-effects distinct.
Also, you might include cases such as LLM speech.
Let's revisit your original claim (my bolding):
Quoting hypericin
If someone lies or says something they do not understand then we cannot "accurately notate that they are indeed thinking-p." My "utterance" was meant to track that idea of yours wherein we accurately notate. Whether one can inaccurately notate "I think p" without self-consciously thinking p is sort of an interesting question, but it looks to be beside the point.
So if the three cases you gave are all inaccurate notations of "I think p," then it looks like they won't function as counterexamples.
That's fine. I don't want to overfocus on natural language, and I think the sentence of mine you quoted was mistaken. For one, self-consciously thinking p would be rendered as something like "I'm thinking about thinking p", not "I think p". So, I don't think there is necessarily ambiguity there.
The confusion is a philosophical one, not a linguistic one. There are three distinct propositions under consideration:
1. p
2. I think P
3. I think about thinking about P
Rodl says, afaict, only 2 and 3 can occur in thought. Pat's confusion is conflating 2 with 3.
This is how it strikes me as well, though Mww has certainly brought out details in the Kantian scheme that are more, well, detailed, than what Rodl provides. (And I'm looking forward to Mww's response, if they have the time, to my question about whether "thought" should be understood as mental product or propositional content in Kant.) But your comparison of the two passages allows us to take a breath, and a step back, and ask, What is our target here? What are we aiming to understand?
For myself, I am always curious to improve my understanding of Kant, and in general to understand any interesting philosophical position at the level of detail. But the larger issue has to do with consciousness and thinking -- how our thoughts connect the world (objectivity) and ourselves (self-consciousness). I want to say that Kant and Rodl are in agreement here -- details of terminology aside, they both present the same picture. I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unite them, says Kant of the representations given in intuition. Why does he not say "in one consciousness"? Why "self-consciousness"? I suggest this is because he would endorse Rodl's view: "Being self-conscious, thought is thought in the first person: I think." Put Kant and Rodl in an ideal room together and I have no doubt they'd argue the details for hours, but also recognize the common conception that unites them.
We can worry about the best ways to use terms like "representation", "conception," "thought", "judgment" et al. -- and these are perfectly good worries, especially if we were all as erudite as Mww in Kantian matters. I'm just trying to pull our focus toward what this entire issue opposes, namely a philosophical view that claims that objectivity is strictly a matter of what is "out there," and that there is a clear separation between what I judge and the act of judging it. It is in this context that the entire fraught issue of "I think" can most usefully be considered.
Strange. I posed the same question in the exact same way to ChatGPT and it did not think it was a contradiction. It understood the question as I intended on the first try. Either you are intentionally being obtuse or you're less intelligent than artificial intelligence.
What I don't see here is any use of language being necessary (like, "I think...") in the perceiving and the interpreting of our experiences.
Quoting Mww
Yet you just described the visual representations as conceptions and the act of categorizing as cognizing here:
Quoting Mww
Categorization is a type of cognition. ChatGPT called it "analogical reasoning".
Quoting Mww
So when we simulate others' thoughts we are representing universals with universals? Are you not having particular thoughts that I am trying to represent in my mind to get at your particular state of mind? Or maybe everything is both a particular and a universal depending on what (simulated) view you are taking at a given moment.
Having given this some thought (ha!), I'd say it captures one of Rodl's ideas about self-consciousness provided we're very careful about what "include" means. Rodl is clear that by "include" we can't mean "have a second thought along with p". The nature of the inclusion -- or "accompanying," to use Rodl's preferred term -- is a bone of contention on this thread. Would you like to say more about how you understand "include"?
Nahhhh .I aint doin that. Language use is tough enough without that nonsense. Sorry.
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Sorry for the delay; I changed my mind regarding the type and depth of reply.
Quoting Wayfarer
..thinking that things are so .
(is a judgement relative to those things; thinking things, is thought as such)
.as thinking that things are so is thinking it valid to think things are so .
(Judgement, with respect to its form, cannot be self-contradictory; if I judge this plate is round it is necessarily valid that Ive already conceived a thing as conjoined with its shape)
. for where the understanding has not previously conjoined, it cannot dissect B129)
.the I think is thought in every act of thinking.
(As thinking that things are so, this thinking, this unity of conceptions, only relates to things judged to be so. I think is not to be found in thinking of things, for such act belongs to understanding, but merely represents the consciousness that the unity of conceptions for things which understanding thinks, is given)
If all that Kantian counterargument is the case, and Rödl mandates his metaphysics to be absent the character** of the subject in order to be absolute idealism, he must eliminate the transcendental unity of apperception, which JUST IS the character of the subject in his empirical nature, and in keeping with strict Kantian dualism, his moral disposition being his rational nature.
If I think is self-consciousness, and I think is thought in every act of thinking, and I am conscious of my act of thinking, which quite obviously is the case, then very idea of self-consciousness as underlaying the subjective character has lost its validity, the character of the subject disappears, and that particular condition for absolute idealism is true.
**ibid, 1.2, pg 4, and others
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The unity of apperception, represented by I think, makes explicit the presence of representations, insofar as I think, by assertion, must be able to accompany all of them. In the proposition, As thinking that things are so is thinking it valid to think this, the 'I think' is thought in every act of thinking, there doesnt appear to be any representations. That was a general statement, having nothing given as cognized, so ..what is contained therein for I think to accompany?
I dont fathom a connection between accompanying all my representations and accompanying all my thoughts, with an identical self-consciousness.
. Understanding is, to speak generally, the faculty of cognitions. These consist in the determined relation of given representation to an object. But an object is that, in the conception of which the manifold in a given intuition is united. Now all union of representations requires unity of consciousness in the synthesis of them. Consequently, it is the unity of consciousness alone that constitutes the possibility of representations relating to an object, and therefore of their objective validity, and of their becoming cognitions, and consequently, the possibility of the existence of the understanding itself. ( )
The first pure cognition of understanding, then, upon which is founded all its other exercise, and which is at the same time perfectly independent of all conditions of mere sensuous intuition, is the principle of the original synthetical unity of apperception. ( )
The synthetical unity of consciousness is, therefore, an objective condition of all cognition, which I do not merely require in order to cognize an object, but to which every intuition must necessarily be subject, in order to become an object for me; because in any other way, and without this synthesis, the manifold in intuition could not be united in one consciousness. This proposition is, as already said, itself analytical, although it constitutes the synthetical unity, the condition of all thought; for it states nothing more than that all my representations in any given intuition must be subject to the condition which alone enables me to connect them, as my representation with the identical self, and so to unite them synthetically in one apperception, by means of the general expression, I think. B137-139
Condition of all cognition, of all thought, if an analytical principle, explicates necessity; must be able to accompany is because necessity has already been given. As well, condition for, as analytical principle, is systemically antecedent to that which is conditioned by it.
Ya know .the deeper we go the cloudier it gets. Not sure there are any A-HA!!! moments here.
..and with that, Im out.
I mean include in a textual proposition describing my mental state .
If I think p, in response to "what is going on in your head", I must include "I think" in my response, if I am to be strictly accurate: "I think p". "p" alone will not suffice.
In this sense, "I think" is always bound to any proposition that is thought.
I don't think this is vacuous or tautological either. "P" strictly speaking cannot occur in a brain. What can occur is a mental perspective on p. Given any proposition p, each of us considering it will mentality instantiate it in our own way. Rather than p, thinking p, the thought of p, is what is going on. This all happens without necessarily self consciously considering the thought of p itself.
No problem, but sometime I'd love to hear why you think it's nonsense. Sounds as radical as Rodl!
Oh, no real reason. Its just thats not the way humans normally do things.
Agree.
Thanks for your input, as always. I think I will continue with this book now, having previously been having second thoughts about it.
Redundant information. I already knew you weren't in it to begin with, which was the point I was making.
If someone says "I think p" they are thinking p self-consciously. This seems pretty basic, but perhaps you are thinking in extraordinarily mundane terms instead of philosophical terms. For example, perhaps you think that someone who says, "I think Putin is a nut," is not thinking self-consciously. That may be, but the I think of Kant or Rodl is not based in that sort of off-the-cuff, half-conscious utterance. In that half-conscious sense, thinking p and saying "I think p" would be exactly the same.
Clearly not, the "I think" of common speech self-attributes or weakens a claim, it doesn't reference consciousness in any way. What I'm pointing out is that language itself isn't the source of this confusion, since "I'm thinking about thinking p" is available if we ever need to point out we are self-consciously reflecting on our thought.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not really, since "I think" as a attributer/weakener dominates English usage, any other use is very unusual and requires clarification. Far from being learned in either philosopher's work, I nonetheless see two possibilities for a "philosophical" "I think".
1: Thinking p.
2: Self consciously thinking p.
Given what was posted in the op, I favor 1, at least for Rodl.
Claiming that stating 1 immediately leads to 2 muddies the water. Even if this were so, this doesn't change the meaning of 1. Especially since we are speaking philosophically, not over the dinner table.
My take: If Jones says I think p, Jones is conscious of his own thinking of p, and is therefore self-conscious. Maybe he says that he thinks without realizing that he thinks, but that is what would be unusual. Generally if I say that I am doing something I realize that I am doing it, and this form of self-narration constitutes a form of self-consciousness. See also my post <here>.
You are effectively pointing to a kind of slang that has become very common, where someone who is very unsure of p and is therefore wary of saying, I know p, will instead resort to saying, I think p, which means, I have a mere opinion that p is true, but my opinion may well be wrong. If you want, you can take my word that the OP is not about that sort of weak opinion. I dont know that I will say more, as I dont want to belabor the point.
The chapter re-states that judgment is inherently self-conscious, meaning that when one judges, they are aware of their own act of judging. 'This is so because judgment is self-conscious: in judging what I do, I think myself judging it. The I judge is inside what I judge' (p38).This self-consciousness implies that judgment cannot be separated into force and content, as doing so leads to confusion.
He anticipates a critic, who says that judgment is a propositional attitude where the act of assenting a proposition is separate from the proposition itself. This objection assumes that self-consciousness is a secondary, reflective act (e.g., I am judging that p) rather than something inherent in judgment.
Rödl begins his counterargument by rejecting the demand for further arguments or proofs of his claim. He argues: If judgment is self-conscious, then this is something already known in every act of judgment. It is not a hypothesis or assumption that needs external validation. (And besides, what could be external to that act of judgement? This is elaborated more fully in later comments on Nagel's 'thoughts we can't get outside of'.)
The act of judgment inherently involves stating its validity. This is not a separate thought but part of the judgment itself.
So - ask a critic who is defending the separation of force and content: 'Do you really think so?' If the opponent continues to insist on the force-content distinction, they are still engaging in an act of judgment, which inherently involves self-consciousness by replying 'Yes, I really think so'thus affirming Rödls claim that self-consciousness is intrinsic to judgment,
Bottom of page 39 he introduces the 'science without contrary' which will be elaborated in Chap 4:
The question might be asked, what of incorrect judgement? Rödl does not imply that every judgment is infallible or correct. Instead, the self-consciousness of judgment means that in the act of judging, we take it to be right to judge as we do, and this act itself contains an awareness of its validity. When a judgment is incorrect, it does not negate the self-conscious aspect of judgment; rather, it indicates that the grounds or reasons upon which the judgment was based were flawed or incomplete. In cases of incorrect judgments, the self-consciousness is still present in the sense that the individual believes their judgment to be valid at the time of making it. The error arises from a misalignment between the judgment and the reality it seeks to represent, not from a lack of self-consciousness in the act of judging itself.
On p. 38, in laying out the objection of his critic, he says (speaking for the critic):
Now combine this with what Rodl tells us about his terminology:
(Whether this is the only ordinary usage is debatable, but let that go. We're trying to understand Rodl's scheme.)
So Rodl believes that the force/content distinction is a discrimination between a "psychic act" or "mental event" and a "mind-independent reality" that does not involve "my mind, my psyche." It is this that he denies.
Earlier, I suggested distinguishing two uses of "thought". Thought1 is meant to refer to what Rodl is calling a mental event. Thought2 refers to the (somewhat mysterious) propositional content that is the subject of a thought1, and, as Rodl says, is understood to be independent in some important sense from any particular mental event.
What Rodl is claiming, using the synonymy of "thought" and "judgment," is that thinking that things are so is not different from being conscious or aware of so thinking. So the million-dollar question is, When I think about my judgment, which we know is a thought1 (a mental event), is my new thought about that judgment also a thought1? I think much of Rodl's thesis rests on denying this. Self-consciousness has got to be a thought2 item, something "accompanying" any thought1, not an additional simultaneous thought1 (mental event).
One important qualification: As Pat noted in the original OP, one can "think about one's thought" in a perfectly ordinary reflective way, pondering its occurrence, wondering if it's true, etc. Sometimes we do that, sometimes we don't. In doing this, we are engaging in a mental event, a new thought1. That is not the kind of "thinking about thought" that Rodl means, and I certainly wish he had made this clearer from the outset. Or maybe he thought he did, simply by asserting that the "I think" is not a new thought. In any case, we mustn't get confused and say either that we never have a separate, self-reflective thought about thought, or that the ubiquitous "I think" is that kind of thought.
Quoting Wayfarer
Your explication here is clear, and we ought to agree with Rodl, regardless of whether we endorse all of his views. Incorrect judgments are not made so by virtue of anything within the act of judging itself, but rather because of the facts on the ground. As you put it, Quoting Wayfarer
Is all this consistent with your understanding of Rodl so far?
I think the problem of talking about what is a new 'thought' has to first pass through the issue of the first person being the one making the judgement:
The problem of one thought and then another is a product of the view of propositions Rödl is militating against.
The isolation of the "private thinker" on page 23 culminates in this rejection of the "affirming subject":
The discussion at this point reminds me of a passage in the Theaetetus where true and false opinions are compared:
Rödl is speaking more strictly about what Plato also recognizes as a limit to description.
I think you're being caught in a kind of recursion which is central to this whole argument and in so doing trying to reinstate the very distinction which Rödl is criticizing. The force-content distinction is a close parallel to the distinction you're trying to draw between thought1 (the act) and thought2 (the content). For Rödl, these are not separable aspects of judgment. When I judge that p (e.g., "the sky is blue"), the act of judging (I think) is not external to the content (p) but is inherently part of it ('internal' to it). Judgment is a unified act that includes both the self-conscious activity of thinking and the propositional content. So I think you're wanting to maintain the division between the subjective act and the objective content.
I think the error lies in the attempt to objectify thought (although that is not Rödl's terminology or method.) But it relates to his later point from Thomas Nagel about 'thoughts we can't get outside of'. Nagel emphasizes that there are perspectiveslike the validity of reason or the unity of thoughtthat we cannot evaluate "from the outside" because they form the very framework within which all thinking and evaluation occur.
This is what ties into the 'science without contrary' that is subject of the next chapter.
So, what do you make of Rödl's statement that Nagel is making a similar mistake? (as pointed to previously}.
I've yet to absorb his criticism of Nagel. But the reason he brings Nagel in, is that they start from a similar ground, is it not? But, we'll get to that in Chapter 5.
Hmm.
If someone disagrees with this, if they perhaps insist that their thought of judging that things are so just is judging that things are so...
What are we to do? How are we to settle such an issue? Are we to say they are mistaken? Wrong? Misunderstanding the issue?
Is it not at all possible that one person be correct in holding to the first view for their mind, while another is correct tin holding to the second view, for their own mind? Why presume that all minds function in the same way in this regard?
Why presume there is even some fact of the matter?
Are you saying this in response to actually reading the book or stating an opinion in general about such attempts?
Note the passage you quote was given as an objection to Rödl.
Quoting Banno
Banno goes PoMo.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure.
Quoting Wayfarer
:wink: Never gonna happen.
I had in mind the revelation that some folk do not have an inner monologue, and the lesson that it is not safe to assume that other folk have a similar mental world to oneself. That Ródl has a certain mental life does not imply that everyone else has the same, nor that they ought.
The point is methodological, and perhaps cut to the phenomenological basis of this thread.
I dare say not - isnt it rather an example of psychologism, the contention that logical functions can be reduced to psychological factors?
It's rather that given a conflict of evidence concerning mental life, whaat process can we employ in order to settle our differences?
Not unlike The Dress, it's not that those who saw it as blue/black were wrong - that is indeed what they see. And the colour of the actual dress.
Relating this back to the OP, what grounds is there for insisting that Pat is wrong in how she understands her own experience?
It's a good question, and is addressed in the sections of Chapter 3 I'm now reading, specifically 3.2 Removal of Obstacles.
It is, with a key difference which is obscured by Rodl's insistence on using "think that" as synonymous (or at least interchangeable) with "judge that".
The idea of "content" is more or less the same, but my "thought1" is not the same as Frege's "force" or Rodl's "judgment". I intend thought1 to be much more neutral, a simple label we can apply to any mental event. Such a thought doesn't assert anything, nor judge anything to be the case.
Now, do you read Rodl as denying that there can be any such thought? I don't. I read him as denying that we can think, in the sense of "judge", any proposition without an accompanying "I think".
Is this "I think" a thought2? -- that is, some piece of propositional content? Clearly not. But nor is it a thought1, a new mental event; Rodl rejects this. I hate to multiply entities, but it seems as if the "I think", as an act of self-consciousness, must be yet a third term we require in order to understand what it means to think. It is not, properly speaking, a thought at all, but rather constitutive of a certain kind of thinking, much as space and time function in Kantian metaphysics. "The very framework within which all thinking and evaluation occur," in your words, though I'm not yet ready to say "all thinking."
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. But to say they cannot be separated at all, or do not successfully refer, is a further step. If Rodl is indeed trying to take that step, then I'm tentatively saying he's wrong to do so.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'll wait till you get to the Nagel/Moore material before offering any responses about that. As to objectifying thought in general, I believe Rodl is saying that there is no such thing as a thought which hasn't been thought. The whole idea of a "p" which resides somewhere in the ether, waiting to be thought, makes no sense to him. And we know that he affirms objectivity, in his own way: thought can be objective precisely because it is self-conscious, and vice versa. It knows itself to be judging what is the case. What I'm still working to understand, as you can tell from my other comments, is whether this way of seeing objectivity forces us back into some version of the force/content distinction -- which was the point you began your post with, and it's a good one.
Yes. For Pat to think, "Hey, I'm thinking about a tree" would be an example of a second thought being simultaneous (or nearly so) to a first thought. Rodl, as I read him, is fine with this; it's of no interest to him. What he denies is that the "I think" works like this.
So when I followed his lead in making the distinction between "my thought of judging p" and "judging p", I was well aware that this is a terminology he's putting in the mouth of his opponent. But we can still ask, If the "I think" is not "my thought of judging p", what is it? And what I'm suggesting is that we have a problem no matter which horn of the dilemma we choose -- see my response to @Wayfarer
Quoting Paine
Yes. One of the central issues of S-C&O is whether 1st-person thought is "a thorn in the flesh of the friends of propositions," or merely "a local problem" concerning a type of reference. What I've read so far, in terms of argument for this, seems equivocal, but there is much more I haven't yet gotten to.
Quoting Paine
. . . understood as a subject who is always affirming in a context. So any other subject could theoretically be plugged into that context, leading to "objectivity." Being true for one means being true for all. Rodl rightly calls this trivial:
. . . but so what? The problem is not rooted in this obvious fact. This is not the "thorn in the flesh."
Quoting Banno
First, note that Rodl does disagree with this. The quote is his version of what an opponent of his views might say. His own view is much closer to your "judging that things are so just is judging that things are so."
But your question about how to settle a disagreement here is one of my favorite meta-philosophical problems. Philosophy always seeks to understand itself, to know its own nature, to comprehend what it is capable of. The question of resolving a philosophical issue is central to one's conception of how philosophy can proceed. What sorts of resolutions can philosophy accomplish, in a case like this? Is somebody right? If we trace the disagreement back to a divergence in some fundamental premises, what do we do next?
Sorry for the mini-essay, but it's a prologue to replying that it's a lot easier to say what wouldn't settle the issue. I don't think an appeal to differing personal experiences will do it; Rodl wants to say something about all thought. More broadly, I don't think there's any empirical resolution; the issue is metaphysical. Whether there is, then, no "fact of the matter" will depend on how you feel about metaphysics.
To conclude with something optimistic: You know how, when something goes wrong with some electrical or digital set-up, 9 times out of 10 the problem is something silly and hardware-related, like forgetting to attach a cable? And you've been sitting there trying to understand the software and figure out what you're doing wrong? Similarly, I find that more often than not a philosophical disagreement can be, if not resolved, at least better understood by assuming the problem is a terminological dispute. That's part of why I've been going at this thought1/thought2 business so heavily.
I would say look for the conflict in temperament, the hidden emotion on the scene. What's really being attacked? defended?
A splendid proposal, I say, but improvable. In a spirit of extensionalism, we may remove the thinker from the analysis, and instead form a suitable word shape from the words "this sentence token hereby asserts that".
Pat's objection is likewise less psychological. He says
I think he has a point, about assertion and declaring true. But I disagree about redundancy. Thinking you can speak (utter or inscribe) as though completely in an object language, without referring implicitly to the convention of reference between word and object, albeit the convention of a make-believe and non-physical relation, is magical thinking. Not in the good way of playing the game of pretend, but in the bad way of pretending not to be.
This seems obviously wrong. There is clearly a valid distinction between the content of judgements and the force of judgements. When I believe a judgement there will always be a force, the force of my belief. On the other hand I can consider some judgement, wonder whether it is true, or just analyze its content without believing anything.
The other thing that seems obviously wrong is that the self-conscious awareness of making a judgement is always present whenever a judgement is made. It seems an obvious fact about human life that we can make judgements without even being aware of doing so.
It is only in a kind of tendentious analysis-after-the-fact formal sense that the "I think" accompanies all judgements. And obviously, the "I think" is not synonymous with self-conscious awareness if it is considered merely formally.
Judging from Rödl's work as it is presented here by those who are reading him, he seems seriously confused. And I am self-consciously aware of making that judgement.
Quoting bongo fury
Me too.
OK.
Quoting Banno
I'd need to see what @Wayfarer comes up with here. I don't recall Rodl saying this. But way back in the OP, that was my possible response #2 to Pat:
"The I think is an experience of self-consciousness, and requires self-consciousness. When you say you are not aware of it, you are mistaken. But you can learn to identify the experience, and thus understand that you have been aware of it all along."
I don't think it's a good response, but not because it would be impossible for a person to be wrong about their mental life. I think it's misguided because Rodl's thesis about the "I think" doesn't describe a mental event at all. Thus, response #3:
"The I think is not experienced. It is a condition of thought, a form of thought, in the same way that space and time are conditions of cognition. Self-consciousness, in Rödls sense, is built in to every thought, but not as a content that must be experienced."
This is correct according to Rodl, I believe. What we've been chasing up and down the yard these 20-odd pages is whether this is a coherent thing to say.
While I appreciate many of your observations, the arrogance of this remark is not a benefit.
Yeh. A thread like this really needs to provide a clear account of the motivations behind the strange thesis.
"Why in the world would he do/say that!?"
"Because he was being chased by killer bees."
"Oh, okay. I get it now. Thanks for explaining."
Rodl goes on to argue that the 1st person must be understood as self-conscious, but let's not worry about that right now. @Banno, I think you've noted before that we need to do some tinkering within Fregean logic to accommodate the 1st person. Would you agree with Rodl that, without such tinkering, there is indeed a difficulty presented for the "doctrine of propositions"?
Have you not settled all possible readings to be useless?
Just to be sure, this is an excellent thread, in that, that he is taken seriously is itself the puzzle. I am missing something here, but what?
I'm not sure, but following along in this thread, I believe what separates the Rodl-deniers from the Rodl-curious (I don't think we have any committed Rodelians, certainly not me) is whether or not they can see a problem about p. I do see the problem Rodl (and Kimhi) see. How can there be objective content that is also thought? This is not a problem in logic, it's an ancient epistemological puzzle. It's the "view from nowhere" problem, which is why Rodl spends so much time on Nagel. Rodl's concerns about p are a relatively new and often infuriating way of going at this, but I don't think we can just say he's confused.
Can I ask, if a bright child asked you, "What do philosophers mean when they talk about p?" how you would answer? In the simplest terms, what do you think p is meant to signify?
Is it any less pressing to ask, "How can there be non-objective content that is also thought?"
Quoting J
Where do you find it before Descartes?
Either way, what is the teaser for how self-consciousness solves the problem of the objectivity of thought?
A range of things from utterances through to propositions.
What's important here is that we pull those out of their intensional context so that they can be treated extensional. Not "I think that Superman can fly" but "Superman can fly". Then we can substitute Clark Kent for Superman without losing truth values.
That's the point of the Begriffsschrift, "?".
That's a great way of putting one of Rodl's puzzles. He challenges us, "What is 'merely content'? What can that mean?"
Quoting Janus
Yes, in the way you describe, but look what happens when the proposition itself -- p is "I think q". How do we accommodate this?
Think about it this way: if we zoom out then force represents subject/subjectivity and content represents object/objectivity. Now with Kimhi you were searching for "Monism," and I assume that the same sort of thing is at play with Rodl?
Because if the critique of the force/content distinction is ultimately that it is dualistic, then I'm not sure where else there is to go. "Monism"? I would have to know what that means, but if there is more than one thinking subject in the world, and there is at least one common object of thought, then the dualism of subject and object is both inevitable and true.
That is, if we don't know what it is about the force/content distinction that is disagreeable but we just keep shooting at it anyway, then what is it we are aiming at? The duality of subject and object? Because as long as that duality exists I don't see how force/content will go away.
Could we not think of that as just the general form of a particular kind of proposition, really no different than 'it is q'. Both the "I" and the "it" do not refer to anything in particular.
Could you say more? The "I" refers to the thinker/speaker, and I'm not sure which "it" you mean. Sorry, I'm probably missing your point.
q = "Grass is green"
p = "I think q" = "I think 'grass is green'"
This is the problematic structure I was referring to. How should we talk about the force and the content of p? Is "I" the subject (or "argument," in Frege's terms) of p? We need a workaround, and (at least) one is available, but before we consider how this problem is usually resolved, I was trying to get clear about what's wrong.
If taken as merely general examples of sentences that could refer to actual states of affairs, but in merely being considered as such do not refer to any state of affairs, then in "I believe q" and "it is raining" both the "I" and the "it" has no particular referent.
Supose the grass is the lawn. The it follows from q by substituting lawn/grass that the lawn is green. And this is correct. But if we substitute lawn/grass into "I think 'grass is green'" we get "I think 'lawn is green'". But this may not be so, since the individual concerned may have no such belief.
That is, putting "I think..." in front of each proposition buggers extensionality.
So, to display a small part of what is at stake, one may proceed by deduction from "Grass is green" to "Something is green". But one cannot by deduction proceed from "I think 'Grass is green'" to "Something is green.
Frege's response is set out . It was, speaking crudely, to keep the whole argument within the one Begriffsschrift, "?".
' or 'I believe that
' In this sense, judgement is itself not one perspective among many but the condition for the possibility any perspective.
To deny that judgment is self-conscious would involve making a judgmentand thus reaffirming what you are trying to deny. This makes the self-consciousness of judgment something that cannot be opposed or rejected. To put it another way, to say judgement is not self-conscious, would be to agree, when challenged, no, I really dont believe that judgement. So its self-refuting. To claim that judgment is not self-conscious would involve a self-conscious act of judgment, thereby refuting the claim itself. This is because the very act of making such a claim requires one to be aware of the validity of their judgment, which is a form of self-consciousness.
Below, a recapitulation of the summary of Frege's essay The Thought, for those interested.
[hide="Reveal"]Objectivity: Frege argues that thoughts are objective, meaning they exist independently of any individual thinker. They belong to a third realm, distinct from the physical world and the subjective mental states of individuals. For example, the thought expressed by the sentence 2 + 2 = 4 is the same for everyone and does not depend on any particular person thinking it; it would be true even if nobody ever grasped it.
Truth: For Frege, thoughts are bearers of truth or falsity. A thought is true iff it corresponds to reality, and false if it does not. Importantly, the truth of a thought is independent of whether anyone believes it or thinks itit remains true or false regardless of subjective opinion.
Language: Frege emphasizes the role of language in expressing thoughts. He distinguishes between the sense (Sinn) of an expression (the thought it conveys) and its reference (Bedeutung) (the object it refers to). Sentences are crucial because they express complete thoughts that can be evaluated as true or false. This is where the distinction between force and content is made.
Thinking: While thoughts exist objectively, Frege acknowledges that they can only be grasped by a thinker. Thinking is the act by which a subject apprehends a thought, but this act does not create the thought. Instead, the thought is something that exists independently of the thinker.
Why Rödl singles out Frege and this essay, in particular, is because of the significance of Frege's logic in analytic philosophy.[/hide]
Quoting Banno
When Quentin judges that "Pat thinks the oak is shedding its leaves," the content of Quentins judgment is not the trees state (e.g., "the oak is shedding its leaves") but rather the fact that Pat believes this to be true. Quentin does not need to believe "the oak is shedding its leaves" to make this judgment, because his act of judgment is about Pats thought, not about the tree.
This makes it unnecessary to isolate the act of judgment (force) from its content. In Rödls framework, judgment is unified: the act of judging and the content judged are inseparable. When Quentin judges that "Pat thinks the oak is shedding its leaves," his act of judgment includes the "I think"his self-conscious affirmation of the validity of his own judgment about Pats belief. There is no division between the act of judgment and the content; they form a single, self-conscious whole.
For Pat, the object of judgment is the tree shedding its leaves: Pat believes "the oak is shedding its leaves." For Quentin, however, the object of judgment is Pats belief: Quentin judges "Pat thinks the oak is shedding its leaves." By recognizing this shift, it becomes clear that there is no need to posit a force-content distinction. Each judgment is self-conscious and unified, with its own distinct object.
Even if Pat is wrong about the oak, and Quentin is right about the elm, the form of their judgments remains the same: each involves the self-conscious affirmation of a proposition directed toward its specific object. The truth or falsity of the content doesnt alter the fact that judgment is always a unified, self-conscious act. The point at issue is not the truth or falsehood of the judgement but the self-conscious nature of judgement.
Yes! And well explained. I think I understand the Fregean fix as well -- "the scope of the "?" is the whole argument." If you don't mind, could you fit the terms "I think 'grass is green'" into the Fregean a/b/a schematic you gave us? I want to be sure.
OK, don't hate me, but Rodl would ask, "What is this activity you are calling 'to entertain'? Is it the same thing as 'to think'? Not 'to think' in the sense of 'judge', presumably; that's the very point you want to deny. So it must be 'to think' in the sense of 'to have a thought' -- but what is that? Everyone believes it must be obvious what 'to have a thought' means, but I find myself perplexed when I try to say more about it."
If the thought cannot be isolated from the act of thinking, then
Quentin thinks that Pat thought the Oak was shedding. But the thought cannot be isolated from the content. Therefore we cannot write:
And even if we did, the thought cannot be isolated from the content and so we could not then write:
The very argument that is dependent on our being able to look at the content apart from the force. Wayfarer is making use of the extensionality that Rödl would remove.
What is a self in the thesis is not a given. The critique of the Fregean sets of references moves away from the self who affirms stuff (or not) in all situations. Rödl's beginning point of rejecting mind versus not-mind as the ground of possible experience in the Kant fashion is either a benefit or not. I am trying to hear him out on that basis.
I decided to follow this question at least as far as of how Aristotle is read by Rödl.
As I understand it,
? grass is green
Quoting J
I think this is the mouth of your rabbit hole. You do entertain propositions without judging them. You can think about what might be true without deciding if it is true. You do not really need to go further.
"To have a thought" does not have one meaning. And to have thought is not always to make a judgement. Sometimes it is to have a suspicion, to have a doubt, to consider a possibility, to fancy that it is so.
No. If I had, I would not be participating.
Fair enough.
Perhaps the most useful way to see it is Davidson's,
Pat believes the tree is an oak. Quintin believes that.
But of course this is not without its own difficulties.
But I won't be defending this at any length as an alternative. I don't need to present a detailed alternative in order to address the issues with the account from Rödle. That there are alternatives will suffice.
Odd to continually bring up things that you aren't willing to support or defend. It's almost like you're just a bored old man who wants to stir up controversy and is uninterested in doing actual philosophy. You just snipe from the bushes and then flee into the woods.
From what I have gathered so far, that is not Rödl's interest. It is in 2.7 that the objection to the force/content distinction comes to a head:
Whether one follows this reasoning or not, the argument is not collapsing a duality but asking for a different kind of distinction unobserved by the force/content advocates:
The question becomes, on what basis does that "structure of thought" involve verification from what is presumed to exist outside of it. At that point, I do not see it as a matter of how "Pat" or "Quenton" choose what is happening.
Quoting Banno
If you want to start a thread on Davidson's "On Saying that", go ahead. I might join in.
Rödl starts this section by examining the idea that when we judge "things are so," additional reflection on the judgments validity (e.g., "it is right to judge that things are so") is a second-order acta separate judgment added to the first-order judgment. But this again relies on the force-content distinction: that the act of affirming a judgment (its "force") is separable from the content of the judgment.
If accept that the thought of validity is a separate, second-order judgment, then the first-order judgment ("things are so") becomes unmoored from any inherent awareness of its own validity. In this case, nothing within the act of first-order judgment prevents it from being conjoined with its contrary (e.g., simultaneously judging "things are so" and "things are not so").
Suppose we add a second-order judgment, such as "it is wrong to judge that things are not so." Rödl argues that this second-order judgment itself would require its own validity judgment (a third-order judgment) to avoid contradiction.
The problem cascades: each judgment would require a higher-order judgment to affirm its validity, creating an infinite regress or an endless chain of 'second guessing'.
Rödl shows that treating the validity of a judgement as a separate, reflective act is basically incoherent. If the recognition of validity isnt assumed in the original judgment, theres no way to prevent judgments from contradicting each other. ('I thought I thought that, but did I'?)
Possible Quentin thoughts:
"Pat thinks the oak is shedding."
"I think Pat thinks the oak is shedding."
"Pat said that Pat thinks the oak is shedding."
"I think Pat said that Pat thinks the oak is shedding."
Some overlap here:
Quoting Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof
-
Quoting Paine
Yes, I think I am just barely understanding what you are saying here. Is it something like the idea that c-propositions, if true, demonstrate that there is significant bleed between force and content? Or does the new distinction's newness simply conceptualize the territory differently without in any way reordering that which force/content takes for granted? Is there any continuity between the force/content distinction and the new distinction?
The Klima quote does demonstrate that he and Rödl are both addressing a shared understanding
of force/content propositions. 's description of second order judgement also bears that out. Perhaps the impending discussion of Aristotle will touch upon some of the distinctions between ancient and modern concepts that concern Klima. But those distinctions do not directly concern Rödl's effort here to completely defeat the force/content explanation for all time.
Rödl does not treat his opposition as an equal in a dispute such as Anselm or Aquinas would argue against. Rödl uses the term "reflection" in a consistent way in the book. An early example:
To lose this immunity is to become exposed in a way that causes distress to the thinker. The isolation of immunity interferes with reflection. The question of epistemic agency is treated as an illusion:
.
The coup de grâce given to his proposed interlocutors:
All of this is interesting in its own way, but it reminds me of the adage, "Hard cases make for bad law." If Rodl is to subtly critique the various conceptions of thought on the basis of not properly capturing self-consciousness, and if he is going to do his darndest to capture this notion of self-consciousness with perfect exactitude, will this hyper-focus on self-consciousness produce a reliable anchor for thought? Or is it a hard case that makes for bad law? Because it seems that the response of any of his interlocutors could simply be, "Our approach may not be able to handle the minutiae of self-consciousness, but it provides a much firmer foundation than an approach that is hyper-focused on, or hyper-accommodating to, the subtleties of self-consciousness." So perhaps Rodl thinks that his approach will improve on these other approaches even apart from questions of self-consciousness, or that properly understanding self-consciousness and fitting our theories to that understanding will be the key that unlocks the box containing what has previously remained hidden. And of course Rodl does not say, "I think I am Pandora," but would his interlocutors agree?
---
Quoting J
"p is valid, and by that I mean that if p is true then it is valid to judge it true." Or, "I judge p to be true, and by that I mean that if p is true then it is valid to judge it true."
It surely must be more than that. Presumably Rodl is saying that what some separate into a second-order act is already contained in the first-order act, and validity cannot be merely a non-committal conditional, "If it is true..." (because the second-order act was more than a non-committal conditional). Presumably validity involves the notion that it is in fact true, even if this is not infallible.
What is being opposed by Rödl is the ground for thinking:
Quoting Leontiskos
By speaking of how "objectivity and self-consciousness can be conjoined", Rödl is sounding a retreat from where "various conceptions of thought" are possible contenders of a true condition. His argument is the antithesis to a prolegomenon of any future metaphysics:
At the end of 3.1, a footnote compares the "the science without contrary" with a passage from Wittgenstein:
In regard to Rödl militating against the mind/not mind opposition, perhaps a closer example of concordance with Wittgenstein is in the Blue Book where solipsism is said not to be an opinion.
Hmm, okay. So Rodl is just telling us "what anyone always already knows." He need not jockey among "possible contenders of a true condition." He is above that, no? He wants to eclipse that whole debate.
Perhaps it's matter of recollection ;-)
The scope of the book, of which I am less than halfway through, is said by Rödl to address the validity of empirical judgements by the end of it. That suggests that more is required than the claim about what "anyone already knows".
But it is fair to say he claims his view is less deluded than others. I am not sure what I think about it, but that element was missing from the discussion here so far.
Rödl acknowledges that many resist the idea that we are conscious of our own judgments only through second-order judgments. However, he points out that rejecting second-order judgement while still maintaining the force-content distinction is incoherent. The two positions are intimately linked: if judgment is structured into force (assent) and content (the thought), then self-awareness of judgment must be a separate act meaning it entails second-order judgement, and that, If we reject second-order, we must also reject the force-content distinction.
If we accept the force-content distinction, then self-awareness of judgment is always a second-order act, which means the first-order judgment itself lacks inherent validity. This renders judgment passive or dead, lacking logical tractionit is just an attitude toward a thought rather than an act of understanding. (It means we have 'no dog in the fight' as the saying has it.)
Rödl reconstructs how the force-content distinction conceptualizes judgment: judging means assigning the value true to a thought. This is separate from thinking that it is correct to judge it is true, which is treated as a distinct second-order judgment. However, Rödl notes that recognizing that "it is right to hold p true if and only if p is true" already blurs this distinction because the act of judging and the act of thinking its correctness are intertwined.
Someone who possesses the concept of judgment can expand a judgment by adding, "and so it is right to assent to p." However, Rödl argues that this is only a superficial return to judgmentit does not reintegrate the act of judging with its validity but merely layers a second thought on top of it. The structure remains bifurcated.
Rödl then presents a scenario where someone affirms both p and ¬p, while also knowing that one must be false. This awareness does not necessarily mean they recognize that they themselves are making a contradictory judgment. The logic of the situation is understood, but it is not integrated into self-conscious awareness of ones own act of judgment.
Where someone holds contradictory judgments:
*She judges that p is true.
*She judges that ¬p (not-p) is true.
*She also holds the meta-level belief that "it is correct to hold a thought true if and only if it is true."
From this, she can logically infer that someone (which might include her!) must be making an error.
At first glance, this seems unproblematicshe recognizes that something must be wrong with holding both p and ¬p as true. However, Rödl points out that if we separate force (the act of judging) from content (the thought being judged), nothing necessitates that she is aware that she herself is the one making the contradictory judgments.
This is the key flaw: if judgment is treated merely as assigning truth values to thoughts, rather than as an inherently self-conscious act (e.g. she knows she is thinking p), then contradictions can be recognized in an abstract way but without self-awareness. She can see that someone is in error, but theres no necessity that she realizes she herself is the one making the mistake.
In other words, if the force-content distinction were correct, then logical contradiction would not necessarily lead to self-awareness of error, because judgment would not be inherently self-conscious.
Now, Rödl shifts the focus to inference. Suppose someone judges:
*A is true.
*B is true.
*She knows that if A and B are true, then C must be true.
Based on this, she judges that C is true.
So far, everything seems fine: she makes a logical inference. However, Rödl points out a crucial gap: nothing in this description implies that she is aware of having inferred C from A and B:
[quote=p47]We cannot say that she knows that she holds a given thought true because judging something is understanding oneself to judge it. For then assigning the value true to a thought would be thinking it valid to assign this value to that thought. The act of holding true a content would be inside that content and the distinction of force and content would collapse.[/quote]
The problem, again, stems from treating judgment as merely assigning truth values to thoughts. If judgment were just about saying A is true and B is true, and then mechanically following a rule to conclude C is true, then there is no necessary awareness that she has performed an inference. In other words, she might have judged correctly but without knowing why she holds C true.
At this point, I was reminded of John Searles Chinese Room argument. As is well-known, this thought-experiment is meant to challenge the idea that syntactic processing (mere symbol manipulation) is sufficient for understanding. Rödls critique of the force-content distinction exposes a similar issue: if judgment is just assigning truth values (a kind of syntactic operation), then the person making the judgment could go through all the correct logical steps without actually understanding what they meanjust like Searles man in the Chinese Room follows rules for manipulating Chinese symbols without understanding Chinese.
In both cases, the key problem is lack of intrinsic self-consciousness:
* The man in the Chinese Room manipulates symbols but does not understand them.
* The thinker who assigns truth values to thoughts (under the force-content distinction) can make inferences or recognize contradictions but does not necessarily recognize themselves as making these judgments.
Rödls position could be seen as a deep challenge to the very idea that cognition (or at least judgment) could ever be modeled in purely mechanistic, syntactic terms. Just as Searle insists that syntax is not sufficient for semantics (understanding), Rödl insists that judgment is not just assigning truth values but is an act of self-conscious understanding.
That's all for now.
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:lol: And I do it self-consciously!
Quoting Banno
Looking back at the OP, I'm struck by how modest its scope was intended to be. I was, and am, quite unequipped to teach anything about Rodl, and am still working my way through his remarkable book. My interest in the OP was about the "I think" in general, and whether a "common sense" report such as Pat's has to be accepted at face value. My responses 1 - 3 were intended to be possible disagreements with an empirical or experience-based understanding of what the "I think" is supposed to represent.
So on reflection, I have two main conclusions. First, that the time spent on the thread in attempts to clarify terminology were essential, and barely touched some of what is needed when we use words like "think" or "accompany" or "self-conscious". (Does the "I think" accompany thought the way a nanny accompanies a pram?). Second, that response #3 comes closest to my own view. Speaking to Pat, I would agree with her about her experience, and say something like, "So we see that either the 'I think' is a conspiracy of Kantians and phenomenologists, or it has to be an unexperienced condition of thought. You may well decide that the former is true, and there is no purpose to positing an 'I think'. But if you're willing to entertain the idea that there's something to it, then it must function for us similarly to space and time in other types of cognition."
OK, and one further semi-conclusion. Rodl wants to argue for some significant aspects of self-consciousness that he believes are built in to the "I think". I'm not (yet) convinced this is necessary. I believe thought is necessarily first-personal, but to say, as in response #2, that "the 'I think' is an experience of self-consciousness" seems wrong on two counts: the "I think" is not an experience at all (Rodl would agree), and self-consciousness is being asked to stretch itself into something constitutive of objectivity. Let me quote @Wayfarer's astute summary on this:
Quoting Wayfarer
This seems to me a bridge too far. I can accept the first paragraph: In an important sense, judgment is not like other "possible perspectives." But the second paragraph is question-begging: It only describes a contradiction if you already posit that a judgment must be self-conscious. Perhaps more importantly, we want self-consciousness to be interesting, to be about something that is worth pondering and exploring. This isn't it. But again, the debates re Rodl can go on and on, while the OP was aiming at much smaller fry.
First, for my part I "think" is too broad a word to bear the sort of analysis attempted here. In addition, since the context "I think..." is extensionally opaque, I doubt the wisdom of supposing that there is a general case to be made.
Relating this to the OP, accepting (3) rather than (4) seems to be claiming that Pat is mistaken as to her account of her own metal life. I doubt such a move can be justified.
Second, even if we supose that such a critique of Pat might be valid, Way's account still looks at odds with the OP.
Quoting Wayfarer
Arguably, to make a judgement is to think that some state of affairs is so, for some account of "think". But one can think of some state of affairs without judging it to be so. Hence even if to make a judgement is to think, to think may not always to make a judgement.
This is perhaps what is asked in the OP - not does every judgement involve thinking, but does every thought involve judgement.
The simple truth behind this is that we can entertain a proposition without thereby accepting, believing, or assenting to it.
And third, Frege's approach bypass such discussions by placing the whole argument within the scope of the Begriffsschrift, "?". The Begriffsschrift might be "I think..."; or "I judge...", "I believe...", "I wonder if...", "I doubt...". That is irrelevant to the content. Hence, demonstrably, the content can be considered separately from the intent and the intentionality.
So I'll still opt for (4). The grain of truth in Rödl's thinking might be that when Pat thinks "The oak tree is shedding its leaves" Pat is supposing there to be oak trees and leaves. It would be a stretch to call this a judgement, as if there were an alternative here.
I don't want to keep this going unnecessarily, but it's worth pointing out that, in other contexts, it's perfectly ordinary to question someone's account of their mental life. We question motivations, refer to unconscious processes, interrogate "forgotten" memories, etc., all in the belief that we are frequently mistaken in our account of our mental life.
Good thoughts from all, thanks.
I am going to hang on until at least the chapters involving Aristotle.
I have been distracted by an invasion from nowhere, if the descriptions are to be believed.
Quoting Wayfarer
It occured to me after I wrote this, that a bit of Rödl might have seeped in.
A bit of Selley's sealant will fix that.
Definitely! For me, that's one of the marks of an interesting philosopher -- their insights hang around, and show up in other contexts, and you realize your thinking has been expanded. (Note to those who think philosophy has to be either right or wrong: This phenomenon I'm describing can happen regardless of whether you agree with the philosopher's solutions. What you get is insight into the questions.)