"What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
I open with a quote: "Is truth a property of sentences (which are linguistic entities in some language or other), or is truth a property of propositions (nonlinguistic, abstract and timeless entities)? The principal issue is: What is truth?"
https://iep.utm.edu/truth/#H7
Of all the theories featured in the linked source, I find the simplest one most plausible. P is true is just fancy talk for P. This is the 'redundancy' theory.
[quote = link]
It is worthy of notice that the sentence “I smell the scent of violets” has the same content as the sentence “It is true that I smell the scent of violets.” So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. (Frege, 1918)
[/quote]
Why else is this approach attractive ? If true claims can be unwarranted and unwarranted claims can be true, then defining truth in terms of warrant seems unwarranted.
Correspondence, a popular and maybe even default choice, also seems problematic. "The theory says that a proposition is true provided there exists a fact corresponding to it. In other words, for any proposition p, p is true if and only if p corresponds to a fact." But is it not cleaner to just understand p as a fact, iff it is true ?
This is a thorny issue, and I hope I've set it up just enough to get a conversation going. Personally I'd especially like to learn more about deflationary approaches, which some posters here seem to know about, and which I haven't studied closely yet.
https://iep.utm.edu/truth/#H7
Of all the theories featured in the linked source, I find the simplest one most plausible. P is true is just fancy talk for P. This is the 'redundancy' theory.
[quote = link]
It is worthy of notice that the sentence “I smell the scent of violets” has the same content as the sentence “It is true that I smell the scent of violets.” So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. (Frege, 1918)
[/quote]
Why else is this approach attractive ? If true claims can be unwarranted and unwarranted claims can be true, then defining truth in terms of warrant seems unwarranted.
Correspondence, a popular and maybe even default choice, also seems problematic. "The theory says that a proposition is true provided there exists a fact corresponding to it. In other words, for any proposition p, p is true if and only if p corresponds to a fact." But is it not cleaner to just understand p as a fact, iff it is true ?
This is a thorny issue, and I hope I've set it up just enough to get a conversation going. Personally I'd especially like to learn more about deflationary approaches, which some posters here seem to know about, and which I haven't studied closely yet.
Comments (2779)
I wonder if this is inconsistent with the redundancy theory.
Doesn't that just beg the question a little? Ramsey's concern about propositions is exactly that we just can't do that.
Quoting Michael
But the meaning only didn't change because you said it didn't. Again, this misses the main objections (Ramsey's propositions and Wittgenstein's private rules). If you declare that the meaning of an expression is just exactly what you say it is, then I think you might possibly be able to make the move you want to make. But then you'd have a private rule concerning the meaning.
This is a mistaken supposition, explained well by Kant. The name "snow" does not refer to some sort of object which preexisted the appearance within the mind, as you seem to think scientists claim. The name refers directly to what appears within the mind, the phenomenon, as does the description of it, etc.. That is what is named, the phenomenon, not the assumed noumenon, which we assume as necessary for the existence of the phenomenon. We do not have the premises required to conclude that the phenomenon (what appears within the mind) is an accurate representation of the noumenon (the supposed thing itself).
What I think Michael is insisting, is that the truth of one's description of the phenomenon requires that the phenomenon accurately represents the noumenon.
Quoting Isaac
This is a problem, your attempt to reduce mental activity, to "states". As I explained earlier in the thread, Aristotle demonstrated long ago, that there is an unresolvable incompatibility between a state of "being", and the activity which constitutes change, known as "becoming".
The issue seems to be that we need a source for the stability which constitutes a "belief", used as a noun. So you posit a stable neural network, or some such thing, as a stable "thing", which would support repetition of the same, or similar mental activity, constituting the thing which others might call a "belief".
You agreed above that we can decide what words mean. So, for the sake of this example, we decide that the screw in the drawer is not part of the kettle, and to use a spectrophotometer to measure the kettle's colour, agreeing which range of results indicates the kettle being black or not-black.
Otherwise I don't understand the point that you are trying to make. That the sentence "the kettle is black" is neither true nor false? Or both true and false? Or true for some and false for others?
Not at all. Just like a 'race' is any kind of activity which has a start, a finish, and some competitive element, a 'belief that the pub is at the end of the road' is any mental arrangement which results in a tendency to go to the end of the road when wanting to get to the pub.
Yep. Look at the bolded bits. The activities described are those of a living language.
We agree to fix the meaning of the sentence "the kettle is red" such that it is unambiguously false at T[sub]1[/sub]. I paint the kettle red at T[sub]2[/sub]. The sentence "the kettle is red" is unambiguously true at T[sub]2[/sub]. The meaning of the sentence "the kettle is red" didn't change at T[sub]2[/sub] but its truth value did. Therefore, its truth value depends on more than just its meaning. It also depends on the kettle and its properties.
Well, I didn't agree to that. I counted the screw at T1 and T2 -- I wouldn't want you saying false things, after all.
...because we stipulated it wouldn't.
So...
Quoting Michael
...us stipulating the meanings of the expressions under consideration.
The expression at T2 could be either true or false depending entirely on our stipulation. So you can't conclude that it (as a fact about what is the case) depends on you painting the kettle red. It's immaterial whether you paint the kettle red.
After T1, there are two possible scenarios.
Scenario 1 - you paint the kettle red (in this world-outside-language) and we stipulate the meaning of "the kettle is black" such that it's false.
Scenario 2 - you paint the kettle red (in this world-outside-language) and we stipulate the meaning of "the kettle is black" such that it's true.
Either scenario is possible. So painting the kettle red (in this world-outside-language) has no determining relevance.
If you artificially constrain the situation to only allow scenario 1, then all you're doing is determining the truth value of the statement at T2 by eliminating the other option. You've made it true because truth is binomial and you've excluded one option.
Are you saying that me painting the kettle red changes the meaning of the sentence "the kettle is black"? That's an absurd claim.
No. I don't see how you're getting that.
Because you're rejecting my claim that the sentence "the kettle is black" means the same thing at T[sub]1[/sub] and at T[sub]2[/sub]. If it's not me painting the kettle red that changes the meaning then what does change the meaning?
No, I agreed to that. You stipulated that it does for the sake of your thought experiment.
Quoting Michael
Nothing, we chose not to, according to the rules you stipulated. You stipulating such rules is what determined the truth value at T2
...
T1 - we decide the meaning of "the kettle is black" is such that it is true.
T1.5 - You paint a kettle.
T2 - we decide we decide the meaning of "the kettle is black" is such that it is false (for the newly painted kettle).
Our action at T2 is completely unconstrained by your action at T1.5.
Our action at T2 is, of course, constrained by you constraining it for the sake of argument. That's just tautologous and doesn't tell us anything about what is necessarily the case.
Then it is exactly as I said:
1. The meaning of the sentence didn't change at T[sub]2[/sub] but its truth value did.
2. If the truth value of a sentence can change without the meaning of that sentence changing then the truth value of that sentence depends on more than just its meaning.
3. In this specific case the truth value changed because a material object changed, and so the truth of that sentence depends on that material object.
Which of these three claims do you disagree with?
2.
Your argument seems the equivalent of...
If the {on/off state of a light} can change without {switch for that light} changing then the {on/off state of a light} depends on more than just the {switch for that light}.
Yet in the above scenario I'm not prevented in any way from still using the switch to entirely determine whether the light is on or off, right? It's not like it requires {switch} plus {other factor} to be on. The switch still turns the light on or off. It's just that something else does too.
We could end up in a kind of war of attrition between me constantly flicking the switch to turn the light on, and this other factor constantly turning it back off again. As I said to @Srap Tasmaner above...
Quoting Isaac
If we have to agree to the meaning of "the kettle is black ", then we have to also agree that your actions at T1.5 constitute "painting the kettle red". Thus it turns out this {other factor} is linguistically determined too.
Did you paint the kettle red? Only if we agree about 'kettles' and 'painting' and 'red'.
Then why did the truth value change if the meaning didn’t? It seems to me to be a contradiction to argue both that a) the truth of a sentence is determined entirely by its meaning and that b) the truth of the sentence changed but its meaning didn’t.
The truth value changed because I painted the kettle red. The material object changed. Therefore the truth of that sentence depends on that material object.
Yes, good point, for whole sentences. Not, though, for nouns or adjectives, where the distinction is perfectly clear: use a word or phrase to mention a thing, and use a name of the word or phrase to mention the word or phrase. Mention means refer to. Albeit with a hint of 'in passing'.
For whole sentences, the distinction is clear enough if clarity is desired. Either
Use a sentence to mention an alleged entity corresponding to the whole sentence. And whether or not you commit to the existence of the entity thus alleged, try not to equivocate between that and the sentence itself (mentioned by use of its name). (Picture 1.)
Or
Use a sentence to use one or more of its component parts to mention actual things or classes. (Picture 2.) Or to perform your preferred speech act to which the picture does no justice.
Either way, drop "fact" and "proposition" and "state", if clarity is your aim. Choose "sentence" or "abstract truth-maker" or "situation" or "thing". For as long as these remain somewhat less easily confused.
And how does this account for the truth value of a sentence changing? Truth values don’t change apropos of nothing. The truth value of some sentences change because a particular physical event happens. So why is it that physical event that changes the sentence’s truth value and not a different one? Because the sentence refers to that physical event and not a different one.
I think either the slingshot arguments are mistaken or they’re not addressing the same kind of extension that I’m addressing. See here and here.
Agree.
Quoting Michael
Agree, but want to know if "a kettle being black" refers to any combination of these
... which might elaborate picture 2. Or whether you allege, rather, an entity corresponding to the whole sentence "the kettle is black", as per picture 1.
The truth of Tarski's T-Sentence depends on how snow and white have been named
Today, we have Tarski's T-Sentence "snow is white" is true IFF snow is white. The left hand side is the object language, the right hand side is the metalanguage.
In the metalanguage, snow is white, meaning that, in the domain of the metalanguage, snow is white, ie, in the world of the metalanguage, snow is white. The world of the metalanguage may or may not correspond with our world.
I agree that in our world snow is white. However, in the world of the metalanguage, snow may or may not be white.
Possibility One - in the world of the metalanguage, snow has the property white and apples have the property green
1) Let "snow" name snow, "white" name white
Then "snow is white" is true
2) Let "snow" name snow, let "white" name green
Then "snow is white" is false
1) Let "snow" name apple, "white" name white
Then "snow is white" is false
2) Let "snow" name apple, let "white" name green
Then "snow is white" is true
Possibility Two - in the world of the metalanguage, snow has the property green and apples have the property purple.
1) Let "snow" name snow, "white" name white
Then "snow is white" is false
2) Let "snow" name snow, let "white" name green
Then "snow is white" is true
3) Let "snow" name snow, let "white" name purple
Then "snow is white" is false
1) Let "snow" name apple, "white" name white
Then "snow is white" is false
2) Let "snow" name apple, let "white" name green
Then "snow is white" is false
3) Let "snow" name apple, let "white" name purple
Then "snow is white" is true
Summary
If snow is white in a metalanguage, "snow is white" may or may not be true dependant upon how snow and white have been named. Therefore, it is not necessarily true that "snow is white" is true IFF snow is white.
IE, the truth of Tarski's T-Sentence depends on how snow and white have been named, or as Kripke said, "baptised".
But if I were to take a shot at it, I would say that the “Great Fact” that true sentences refer to is the world.
Just as “the kettle is black” and “the kettle is metal” refer to the same kettle, “the kettle is black” and “snow is white” refer to the same world. In a sense the sentences are “the world is such that the kettle is black” and “the world is such that snow is white”.
But even though in one sense “the kettle is black” and “the kettle is metal” refer to the same thing (the kettle), there’s another sense in which they don’t refer to the same thing: one refers to the kettle being black and the other to it being metal.
I think the slingshot arguments address the first sense of reference, whereas correspondence-like theories address the second.
But I admit that I can’t quite grasp the logic of the slingshot arguments. This is just my intuitive understanding.
Yup! This is what I love about the screw in the drawer example -- it gave an intuitive example of the slingshot.
So when you say "The kettle is black" is true because it corresponds to the world, I'd say "The kettle is red" is true because it corresponds to the world -- there's only one world, so there's no "part" that counts as corresponding to any one sentence. When I say it's true, I'm referring to the screw in the drawer which is a part of the kettle -- but that's all the same fact.
Hence why substitution is attacked.
Oliver Sacks tells a story -- his father, he said, was the sort of man who would say to him, "Bring me that glass there on the table," and when young Oliver returned with the glass, his father would say, "Why did you bring me this? I asked for the one on the table." I don't know if that means his father had an odd sense of humor, or his father was abusive and enjoyed putting little Oliver in a double-bind...
Now in our case, you know about the screw in the drawer. Do I? Do you know whether I know?
I think we are forced to ask because what you know about the kettle will inform your intent, and it's your intent I am supposed to grasp, and you and I will both be relying on my knowledge of the kettle for me to grasp your intent.
If, for instance, that screw holds one end of the handle in place, you know whether and how the handle can be used. It will be important for me to have that knowledge too in order to put the kettle on. (I have a dozen or so possible scenarios in my head now, but I assume you don't need any of those spelled out.)
If, on the other hand, that screw was just one of six holding the base on, and the base is perfectly secure with the remaining five, then you could count your knowledge of the missing screw irrelevant. The kettle with five screws is sufficiently intact for making tea, and it is this technically partial kettle, in its current state, that you intend me to put on. You might even be annoyed if I somehow notice the missing screw and go rummaging around for it, since me repairing the kettle was not part of your intent. Or you might be pleased I'm fixing your kettle, but that still wasn't part of your intent.
I'm not saying we can't have vague intentions like "Stand roughly there," but the fact that there are multiple options doesn't mean you didn't have something specific in mind -- which might even be an impossible thing, as with Oliver's dad. Your intention likely includes a 'picture' of 'what success looks like', and that picture can be taken as a paradigm that allows a certain amount of deviation, but not an infinite amount. ("Stand roughly there" doesn't mean stand anywhere at all.)
And vagueness is itself a very specific sort of issue (!), and it's not clear it arises here. Maybe, but not automatically, not in every case.
Quoting Isaac
I don't think there's anything wrong with relying on features of the occasion of utterance. I think it's perfectly routine that we do so. If I ask for the black screwdriver from my toolbox, you might complain that you wouldn't really call that handle 'black', but more of a 'charcoal grey'. But evidently in doing so you know which one I meant. (I might even agree with you.) Again, we're dealing with vagueness in the extension of 'black' at large, but not in these specific circumstances. My intent concerns a quite specific object, and my language is specific enough, given the circumstances, to allow you to determine the object my expression referred to. Of course such a description can refer to other objects, or even fail to pick out this one, given other circumstances, but that's a feature not a bug of language.
(And here I'll add that objections that you might have meant something else, or that we could have chosen a different interpretation, and so on, don't change the fact you didn't and we didn't. You cannot force on us a standard of necessary, eternal meaning that we must admit failing to meet.)
Quoting Isaac
But I hope you can see how each conversation is successful at getting outside itself, in this sense: it is those concrete objects, the kettle and the screwdriver, we were interested in, and which our intentions concerned; the conversation needs only to fix those as the objects to which we are referring. If every object we were concerned with carried a UUID, and we could keep track of those, we could use those to end up in the same place.
That's an interesting way of seeing it. There may be two different presentations of "the world" going on. Under one interpretation, a collective agreement that "the kettle is boiling", when it is in fact boiling, is actually a fact of the world, and in that regard there is not disagreement in the majority of circumstances. If you did an experiment of 100 people in adequate lighting conditions and showed them boiling and non-boiling kettles, asked them whether a given kettle was boiling or not, you'd get a 100% accuracy rate for the label ascribed to the boiling states by the experimenter. In that regard, while individual and novel items of language (protolanguage?) are suspicious from a factual perspective; because they can't easily be generalised without already being expressible in a general way; commonly agreed upon and publicly accessible declarative statements don't have the same property.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I agree with all of those, I share Isaac's quibble with ( 2 ), but claim that whether it's appropriate to even think of the kettle as a collection of molecules depends upon the practical context. The referring expression "the kettle" I believe has a meaning close to an equivalence class of denoting expressions, you might say "the kettle on the table" and refer to the same concrete object.
I think perhaps the crux of the matter regards the nature of the linguistic dependence of familiar objects. I take it that Isaac has a strong position that they're linguistic all the way down and what they count as publicly is what they are, and the reference mechanism actually references an entity conjured up by collective agreement rather than some concrete fact. The referent of "the kettle" is a collectively enacted categorisation of the environment, rather than some environmental object.
I take it that @Banno has a similar position, but complicates the matter by saying that regardless of the saturation of such interpretations by the categories of language, those expressions nevertheless refer to the kettle because they refer to the kettle in the pragmatic context of the phrase. The environment itself is part of the pragmatic context, and so is the appropriate court of evaluation for statements. You don't have to care about adding molecules to the kettle and severing the reference mechanism of "the kettle" to the kettle, because the necessary enmeshment of world and language is part of how reference works. You can see the expression "the kettle is boiling" both as a string and as what it is used to denote in context. A match between what is referred to, and the properties ascribed to it, and what it denotes in context is a truth, and it says no more to say something is true than this match actually occurring.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I like where that is going Srap, I think a lot of the present disagreement is related to different intuitions about the nature of the dependence of environmental categories, like what we're (at least allegedly) denoting with "the kettle". There are strong and weak forms of this.
( 1 ) A total determination of the referent of "the kettle" by the underlying collective standards of interpretation.
( 2 ) A partial determination of the referent of "the kettle" by those same standards.
( 3 ) No dependence of the referent of "the kettle" by those same standards.
By the looks of it, no one here is arguing that ( 3 ) is true and no one here is arguing that ( 1 ) is true. (@Michael, correct me if I'm wrong).
Maybe some information regarding the contrast of positions in thread could be gained by considering the different senses of partial determination at work. Let's say that the kettle is boiling is true, what would the proximate cause of that expression's truth be? My intuition for that is that the kettle really did boil. I think @Banno, @Srap Tasmaner and @Michael would agree (though possibly for different reasons), though I suspect @Isaac would have a strong quibble.
From the argument here:
a. The meaning of the sentence at T[sub]1[/sub] is the meaning of the sentence at T[sub]2[/sub]
b. The truth value of the sentence at T[sub]1[/sub] is the not the truth value of the sentence at T[sub]2[/sub]
c. Therefore, the truth value of the sentence is determined by something other than (even if in addition to) the meaning of the sentence
d. The only other thing that differs at T[sub]2[/sub] is a material object
e. Therefore, the truth value of the sentence is determined by (even if only in part) that material object
I think the argument is valid and that the conclusion refutes (3) and is consistent with (1) and (2). It might not be clear which material object(s) determine (even if only in part) the truth of the sentence, but it is still the case that it is some material object(s) which determine (even if only in part) the truth of the sentence.
This is a criticism of Davidson's version. Supposedly Godel's is the best, but I haven't looked at it.
Quoting Banno
I would just add that if there is only ‘one thing, pragmatically useful belief, that one thing can’t be split up into a meaning of a belief on the one hand , and its actual contextual application on the other. There is only the one thing, the actual contextual sense.
Belief is not a rule or conceptual configuration that is taken intact from individual and cultural memory and which is subsequently ‘applied’, imported into a context of use. It is ONLY in the circumstances in which it is ‘actually used’ that the belief has sense, and those circumstances change constantly.
As Rouse writes:
“Understanding of conceptually articulated practices as subpatterns within the human lineage belongs to the Davidsonian-Sellarsian tradition that emphasizes the "objectivity" of conceptual understanding. Yet the "objects" to which our performances must be held accountable are not something outside discursive practice itself. Discursive practice cannot be understood as an intralinguistic structure or activity that then somehow "reaches out" to incorporate or accord to objects. The relevant "objects" are the ends at issue and at stake within the practice itself.“
Nice try, but there is a whole lot more going on here than just reference. Truth is about meaning, and meaning is best thought of as how language is used. So truth is about how language is used, and far wider than just reference.
It is worth pointing out, again, that the examples being used are far too limited to give us a feel for the way truth is used. I noticed as well that @Michael, and perhaps others, have returned to talk fo the colour of the kettle, rather than that it is boiling. This permits him to place undue emphasis on issues of perception. It's far easier to agree that the kettle is boiling than that the kettle is red. The examples chosen speak whole fora about the biases of the speaker.
A theory of truth that only works for material objects is insufficient. A theory of truth need to work for "The kettle is boiling", "The kettle is red", "The kettle is ugly", and "The kettle is symbolic of the role of women in a patriarchal system". It needs to explain why it is true that you stop at the red lights and why it is true that blue goes with red but not so much with brown. It needs to work for "It's true Banno is a bit of a bastard" as well as for "It's true that one ought to give to those less fortunate than oneself".
So there is the poverty of the correspondence theory. It only works in a limited number of cases.
I'll bold that, so those flicking past those post will at lease read it. I've made that point several times, and it hasn't been acknowledged, or was dismissed as too extreme.
In contrast, Tarski sets out in the first part of his 1933 article, a minimal criteria for an adequate theory of truth. It must set out, for every sentence S, some X such that "S" is true IFF X.
The task before us is to find X.
So, Srap, it's not just about reference.
The error I see in what @Michael proposes is that he thinks we can talk about the kettle outside of language. He needs a "non-linguistic kettle" to make his account work. It should be clear, to revert to Wittgenstein's terminology, that even pointing is engaging in a language game. Since the world is all that is the case, there is no escape from our language games.
It's also pretty clear that @Luke has a deep misunderstanding of what deflation consists in, since he conflates it with antirealism, supposing that it somehow denies that there are kettles. There's not much that can be said about such a view until he remedies himself.
For what it is worth, which I suspect is not much, I'll agree with your (1), (2) and (3), Srap, but my kettle is steel, not concretes, and metallic silver, not black nor red.
The interesting topic here is how @Isaac might fill out the hidden states he mentions in order to reach the intentional language of truth. My suspicion is that there is a gap brought about by there being a difference in kind between neural networks and truth statements. But you comments, Srap, about knowledge might point to a link, such that knowledge is about what we are able do in the world, and truth derives from our doing things with words.
But unfortunately we are stuck in this mire.
I disagree.
Try instead thinking in terms of which acts are parts of a language game and which, if any, are not. The act of naming is clearly a language game. But so is any act involving the thing named. Putting the kettle on involves separating kettles from flames from water from cold from boiling. It is public, shared, even objective, to use a term that I disdain. To say that it is "not linguistic" is to miss the way in which all these things come together in the form of life that is boiling the kettle.
To engage with the kettle is to engage with what is the case and so with language.
Less prosaically, in order for there to be a kettle we undertake to treat the stuff around us - @Isaac's "hidden states" - as kettles and water and flames. This counts as a kettle; that counts as a flame, and that as water. Even those without language undertake in this fashion; but it is language that captures what is happening here. Seare has the better account of this.
In more Wittgensteinian terms, there is an active intent that makes the kettle a kettle. The kettle exists as a result of our treating it as such; which is not to deny that our intent is constrained, Isaac's hidden states. But it is constrained by the kettle; that seems to be what we have decided to call some of the hidden states.
So, @Isaac, perhaps those states are hidden from our neural nets, but not from us... :wink:
Quoting fdrake
Yep.
Quoting fdrake
Certainly that's the discussion that's been going on here, but it's not necessarily the right discussion.
Why language? I mean, yes, we are talking about how to understand using a phrase like "the kettle" or a sentence like "The kettle is boiling," yes. But think about this example. A kettle is an artifact, one of the oldest sorts of human artifacts, a vessel for cooking. What goes into the design and fashioning of a kettle is dependent on the needs and wishes of creatures like us, our specific, limited capacity for making things out of stuff, what stuff is available to us for making things, and so on.
I don't intend that list to be taken as endorsing a "forms of life" account. Rather, I want to say that the artifact here, the kettle, in some sense embeds an awful lot of referential understandings and gestures, almost none of which are linguistic. We wish to handle water in a certain way and craft vessels for doing so. There's reference there. How we fashion those vessels reflects, embeds, our understanding of the available materials in our environment -- more reference -- and our ability to work those materials into artifacts, and so on. The point being that in perceiving the kettle, we perceive a certain amount of the human history embedded in it, because by its nature it presents several ways in which creatures like us interact with the sorts of things we find, or choose to find, in the sorts of environments we live in. There is, in the kettle itself, evidence of reference to objects and materials in our environment.
On our side, to perceive a kettle also has a referential aspect to it. To see that the kettle is on the kitchen table involves content in a propositional form, content that I have here expressed in English, but that young Wittgenstein might say is also expressed by the arrangement of the kettle and the table. I perceive the kettle and the table, objects, but I also perceive how they are arranged and that they are so arranged without putting that into language.
My complaint then would be that language is far from the only medium in which human beings express intentionality, and to chase our interaction with objects in our environment back to language alone is a mistake. Perception matters, knowledge matters, manipulation matters, and so on, and all of these bear on issues of reference because they are all inherently referential activities. The idea that a kettle is only a way we talk is patently ridiculous; to think that it is not entirely but primarily, or even largely a matter of how we talk is scarcely less so.
Again, the idea here is not to smear everything together as "our forms of life," but to note that there are different modalities of reference and there is reason to think they are not entirely independent. We do not agree on how to carve up the world with words arbitrarily, but in, shall we say, consultation with how we perceive the objects and materials in our environment, how we manipulate them, what we know about them from our individual and collective histories. Language is only one of a battery of intentional behaviors that make reference to our environment or are dependent upon such reference. To understand how reference works in language specifically, we probably ought to give some thought to the other modalities as well.
@fdrake, if you meant 'interpretation' somewhat broadly, there you go.
Seems about right. Thank you.
Quoting fdrake
I'd quibble as to the word "cause" here. But I might go so far as to say that the exact circumstance in which it is correct to deem that "the kettle is boiling" is true are that the kettle is boiling...
Belief just is actual contextual application. Language is an actual contextual application.
Lovely.
Exactly.
I don’t. Both “the kettle is black” and “the kettle is metal” refer to the same kettle but it doesn’t follow from this that the kettle is black because the kettle is metal.
You like the substitution issues of T-sentences. Apply that here.
I don't see your point. You weren't talking about a race, or any other form of activity, in the passage where I took the quote. You were talking about "states", specifically "hidden states". A state is not an activity, like a race is, and that's the point I made. What constitutes a state is incompatible with what constitutes an activity. So I don't see why you'd be trying to change the subject from "states" to "activities". Saying a state is like an activity is comparing apples to oranges.
Quoting Banno
We're getting closer and closer to agreement. All you need to do now is to acknowledge that truth is about nothing other than the honest use of language, and we'd be in agreement.
Quoting Banno
Sure, there is no escape from our language games, but there is such a thing as cheating. Why is cheating a reality in this world which only consists of what is the case? A dishonest statement, eg. a lie, has a real place in the world, just like cheating has a real place in a game.
Quoting Banno
You say, truth is about meaning, but here you demonstrate otherwise. You are not saying anything about meaning here. You are saying that "the kettle is boiling", if true, means that the kettle is boiling. Can't you see that this says absolutely nothing about the meaning of "the kettle is boiling".
If you would make the slight adjustment, and say, that the exact circumstances in which it is correct to deem that "the kettle is boiling" is true, are when you honestly belief that the kettle is boiling, then you'd actually be saying something reasonable, and realistic about "truth", and consequently, about meaning as well. The correct circumstances in which to deem "the kettle is boiling" is true. is when you honestly believe that the kettle is boiling.
That’s my understanding of the slingshot. All it says is that all true sentences refer to the same world, just as all true sentences about the kettle refer to the same kettle. It doesn’t follow from the latter that the kettle is black iff the kettle is metal and so it doesn’t follow from the former that the kettle is black iff snow is white.
But if my understanding of the slingshot is incorrect then I think Tate’s link is a good response. “Clark Kent” refers to Superman but it doesn’t follow from this that if Lois Lane knows that Clark Kent is Clark Kent that she knows that Clark Kent is Superman. Davidson is wrong in asserting that co-referring terms are logically equivalent.
Whether one co-referring term can be substituted for another is the canonical way of distinguishing extensional from intensional contexts. You can substitute salva veritate in extensional contexts but not in intensional ones.
Does this have anything at all to do with the slingshot? (Been a while since I thought about it.)
Given that most of my posts in this discussion have been spent trying to get deflationists to admit to the distinction between the expression and the concrete object, I obviously agree.
Nice post. However, a "match" sounds a lot like a correspondence to my ears.
An argument I have been considering lately is the following. If the statements "S is true" and "S" are equivalent in meaning according to deflationists, then this equivalence should be maintained when these statements are converted into the questions "Is S true?" and "Is S?" With a minor grammatical adjustment, the deflationary meaning equivalence in the kettle example becomes:
(1) Is the kettle boiling?
(2) Is "the kettle is boiling" true?
Converting the statements into an interrogative form serves to highlight that there is something that prompts us to answer either affirmatively or negatively, and that is more than mere definition. That is, there is something that makes (2) true - a truthmaker - which is our perception or agreement that the relevant part of the world really is some way; that the statement accords with, or corresponds to, the state of the relevant part of the world.
I am willing to agree that:
Quoting fdrake
And we understand the meaning of "the kettle is boiling" in the abstract without regard for its truth value. But, importantly, why we would say that the proposition is true is that it meets the truth conditions in terms of the collectively enacted meaning of "the kettle is boiling". It is not our language that decides whether the proposition is true or false; our language allows for either option. What decides (or what leads us to decide/agree) that it is true or false is how the world is, or how we find it. Are there plums in the icebox? Let's look and find out.
So let's use the SEP article.
Read ?x as "the thing that is x..."
Michael seems to want to reject assumption (C) - is that so?
I'd go with rejecting (A), and vacillate between rejecting it because there are no facts and because if there are facts they are opaque.
What about you, Srap?
I vote not to get into the slingshot unless we really have to, but if we do I'll take the opportunity to wade into it and see if I like it any more this time.
Are we at a point now that it's the most important thing on the table?
No, the most important thing on the table remains how meaning and truth fit together.
I said that snow was white 200,000 years ago, as scientists would tell us. That's common knowledge - if you disagree, perhaps you could provide a scientific source.
Quoting RussellA
The T-sentence is in the metalanguage, while the quotes name a sentence in the object language.
Quoting RussellA
Cool.
Quoting RussellA
Certainly if the word "white" were used to denote the color green then the sentence, "snow is white" would be false (since snow is not green).
It's like if you call a tail a leg, then how many legs does a horse have? We can be in agreement as long as we avoid ambiguity.
I'm always glad to find when things make sense together. :)
Quoting Banno
I like this notion. From my current thinking: the T-sentence allows for some substantive theories, if we wish.
Quoting Banno
This is a fun idea. I don't even know what it would look like developed.
it seems to me that it'd go along with my notion on facts -- there's a communal aspect. Not that I think we'd disagree on that, from all I've gathered. Just noting the obvious wig-wammy fact/value distinction.
Well, from where I sit fact-value reduces to direction of fit. Doubtless that's an oversimplification.
I've little problem with values being true or false. Surely it's true that mercy is a virtue IFF mercy is a virtue. T-sentences seem to work fine here.
The issue remains as to when we ought be convinced that the kettle is boiling or mercy is a virtue. But these are obviously very different questions than the nature of truth.
Sure, I agree.
The error theory would just say they're all false.
I agree with the overall thrust here though. Thinking on it I believe [s]the above[/s] what i posted above is a quibble, in the grand scope of the conversation. A thread for another day.
"Meaning" and "mean" are really extraordinary words.
There's
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](1) What do you think it means?
That is, what does it indicate, point at metaphorically?
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](2) What does that mean?
Said of a bit of language, generally a request for different words amounting to the same thing, but more readily understood by the audience. Sometimes an alternative to
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](3) What is that supposed to mean?
What are you implying?
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](4) What is the meaning of this?
Astonishment. As if to suggest that a situation is senseless, inexplicable, absurd.
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](5) I mean it.
I am resolved, and what I said was said in all seriousness. Closely related to
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](6a) He didn't mean it.
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](6b) You don't mean that.
Speech that should not be taken at face-value, as serious and honest, and suggesting it was said with some other purpose than honest expression. Also a wish that this is the case.
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](7) That's not what I meant.
(i) I spoke with one meaning in mind, but you interpreted my words as having another. (ii) I spoke with a particular intention, but you took me to have another. Occasionally part of an acknowledgement that my speech was ambiguous.
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](8a) I meant to ...
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](8b) I didn't mean to.
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](8c) I meant to do that.
(a) I intended to ..., but I haven't.
(b) I didn't intend to. Very close to claiming exemption from blame.
(c) Said of something done unintentionally, a claim to have done it intentionally often to escape embarrassment or take credit for an accidental achievement. Never convincing.
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](9) We had the experience but missed the meaning.
Hmmmmmm. Perhaps related to
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](10) What does it all mean?
What is the purpose or the point of it all? Possibly provides an alternative reading of (4): what is the point or the purpose of what I am witnessing (suggesting that it has none, or none readily apparent)?
Related to
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \ [/math](11) What is the meaning of life?
Always look on the bright side of it.
:up:
You are channeling Austin, The Meaning Of A Word...
Is that true?
I can't see how it's coherent to escape the way meaning determines truth by claiming some intervening statement is true anyways.
If you're going to do that, you might as well say "the kettle is black" is true because you painted it black.
"I painted it red" isn't an un-interpreted, raw fact of this world-outside-language. It's just another already interpreted fact of the world, just like the kettle's blackness. In order to agree that you did, indeed, paint the kettle red, we need to agree what the kettle is and what 'red' is (and what 'painting' is, but we can leave that for now).
You're introducing it to the argument as if it were a purely material fact, but it's a fact of exactly the same kind as the one we're troubling over.
I love the fact that I always get a free anecdote along with the philosophy in your posts. I immediately tried the trick on my son, who was visiting. We were most amused.
But to the meat of it...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, that makes sense. In my model, I would see that as an expectation I have, a belief about what using the word "kettle" will do in the context. A belief about your beliefs, if you like. Given that the target of all this is 'truth', though, and 'truth' being traditionally a component of knowledge. I might say, for clarity, that neither I not you need to 'know' any of this. It's sufficient that we believe it.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Indeed. But never specific enough, is Ramsey's point, to make propositions about which can then be objects of the sort of analyticity that questions of Truth put them under. We might, this way, end up with a kind of private correspondence theory of truth "the kettle is black" is true for my kettle (the one I had in mind). I suspect most purveyors of truth-theories, would be dissatisfied with that.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think that's right, but not in a concrete world-outside-language sense. The object that I'm referring to when I say "put the kettle on" may or may not have the errant screw. I may not care. my picture of it may simply not be in sufficient detail to even decide if it has the screw or not. And I think this is because the "kettle" bit of the sentence doesn't refer to an object by material composition, it refers to an object by function. What I'm referring to with "kettle" there is 'whatever it is that boils the water', not 'that collection of fundamental particles there'.
...but then, that referent is awfully hard to use as an object of correspondence, since lots of potential states answer to it.
That's pretty close, but I've maybe clarified a bit in my reply to Srap above. That categorisation is about function, not spatio-temporal locations. We're not collectively declaring that that collection of matter-soup there is a 'kettle', so much as declaring that whatever collection of matter-soup is boiling the water is a 'kettle' (plus a boatload of other functional requirements adding specificity - so 'my kettle' is 'whatever aspect of the environment boils water and I can determine where it goes without any counterclaim... 'the black kettle' is 'whatever aspect of the environment boils water and which would be difficult to see against my stove in the dark'... and so on)
Quoting fdrake
You'd be right. I couldn't see it as a cause, so much as a repetition of the sentence you're analysing. If the expression in question is "the kettle is boiling", then looking at what 'causes' it to be true seems a little disconnected. I could understand the question of what cases us to say it's true, but not of some state of the world causing an expression to have some property...
...unless maybe utility. Which (much to many people's distaste, no doubt) is the other route I'm tempted by in discussions about truth. I think the hidden states of the world constrain what we can collectively enact, which is where I diverge from the more radical idealist interpretations of model-dependence. So we might say that "the kettle is boiling" would be a useless expression unless the world were in some state.
Yep, mine too. Basically, the gap is 'black-boxed' out. I have one model where hidden states are inferred by neural networks and then acted upon (to reduce surprise), then another where in real life we name those hidden states by their collective function (by how we together act on them). So 'kettle' refers to the hidden state we treat as a kettle. Whether our treatment will be successful is between us and our models. But where 'truth' might fit is opaque. Obviously it can't reference the hidden states, that would be futile, nor the model (we don't even have access to those ourselves, only their output in terms of action). so I can't see anything in the model of how we interact with the world that 'truth' could possibly refer to... hence my preference for redundancy.
Quoting Banno
I should have read on, I could have just agreed rather than write it all out longhand...
I think 'hidden states' is a confusing term. I would prefer it weren't the one used, but it's become a technical term now, so we're stuck with it, but too many think it means hidden as if the states were just behind that rock, or round the corner. all it means is that they are in connection with nodes at a Markov boundary of a network and thereby, in some sense, 'hidden' from the nodes within that network (ones that are obviously only connected to the boundary nodes). so yes. There's no reason to think they're hidden from us in the common sense. We name them, and we make tea with them.
Admiration for the screw example. It makes it so clear that what counts as a part of the kettle is up to us.
When I say that kettles are non-linguistic I mean that they are not words or sentences or any other feature of language. I’m addressing those who say that the truth of a sentence is determined by some other sentence, like some kind of coherency theory, which is false in the case of a sentence like “the kettle is boiling”. The truth of the sentence is determined instead by a material object and its properties.
Once we fix the meaning of a sentence such that it refers to that material object and its properties, changes to that material object and its properties change the truth value of that sentence without changing the meaning of that sentence, and so the truth of that sentence depends on more than just its meaning.
Sometimes “it is raining” is true and sometimes “it is not raining” is true. This isn’t explained by us continually revising the terms in our language: it’s explained by events in the material world; events which occur irrespective of language.
The screw example does make clear that what counts as a kettle is up to us. Does it make clear that the truth is up to us?
But not in all cases.
I was referring to the sentence "the kettle is boiling".
I have mentioned before that I'm not talking about every sentence. Obviously the truth of a sentence like "1 + 1 = 2" does not depend on a material object and its properties. A coherency theory would be more fitting for formal system like maths.
So the truth of different sentences is determined by different things.
Is there some pattern we might use to find what it is that determines the truth of a given sentence?
Quoting Banno
IS there a way to determine X?
Well, is there a way to determine which metaphysics is correct? If materialism is correct then the truth of "the kettle is boiling" depends on the existence of a material object; if idealism is correct then the truth of "the kettle is boiling" depends on the existence of a mental phenomenon.
This is why, as I have said many times, that the T-schema doesn't say much. It doesn't answer a question like the above, which is important. We need to cash out the consequent of the biconditional. I made a start at that here:
Quoting Michael
But it says what can be said.
Try each of these with "the kettle is boiling". Again, I think you are considering too limited a set of examples.
But not what only can be said. We're not required to just stop at "snow is white" is true iff snow is white. A rigorous account should cash out the consequent of that biconditional.
Quoting Banno
I don't. I need a metaphysics to understand that a boiling kettle is a mind-independent material object, or that it's a mental phenomenon, etc.
Quoting Banno
None of these work. They say too much.
Not sure what more you want. I think I covered it when I said that a) a rigorous account of truth should cash out the consequent of the T-schema, and that b) the truth of a sentence often depends on more than just its meaning; it often depends on a material object, or on a mental phenomenon, etc.
Does that sound right to you?
So if the same thing decides that two sentences are true, then they are the same sentence - they mean the same thing.
This is ambiguous.
John being a bachelor determines that "John is not married to Jane" is true and that "John is not married to Jake" is true.
"John is not married to Jane" and "John is not married to Jake" are not the same sentence; they do not mean the same thing.
Yes, but this discussion is about truth, not meaning. Does the screw example make clear that the truth is up to us?
The way we carve up the world is probably a reflection of our make-up, physically, psychologically, culturally, etc.
To understand our language, an alien would have to put herself in our shoes and understand how our senses work. Then she could translate our statements into her language if that's possible. There's no guarantee than an alien would see us as distinct from the Earth's crust. You never know.
Since we can't see beyond our make-up, all we can do is work with the content of our interactions with our environment.
Thanks.
Quoting Michael
I'll reanimate a previous example. Those of us with an upstairs will perhaps have a landing light which has a switch upstairs and one downstairs. The landing light can be switched on or off by either switch.
We can't say, though, that whether it's on or off depends on either the upstairs or the downstairs switch. The downstairs switch could be either in the up position, or the down position and the landing light still be on. Same for the upstairs switch.
Obviously, what I disagree with is what you say "science" tells us. So clearly I will not be producing a "scientific" source to back up my disagreement. The "science" is what I disagree with. So, I produced a philosophical source, this being a philosophy forum. I don't think we should be moving toward "scientific" sources..
You and Banno, are both, slowly coming around to see that the important and significant factor in relating truth to meaning is "honesty".
The problem for Banno is a preconceived notion of "truth" expressed by the T-sentence, and the insistence on the faulty principle that there is some sort of meaning expressed by repetition of the same phrase. But that is not consistent with any of your descriptions of meaning. It is even contrary to this:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
From Banno's refusal to reject the notion that the same phrase stated twice expresses some sort of meaning, or something about meaning, and insistence that truth is just this, stating the same phrase twice, we cannot get a bridge from "truth" to "meaning". The faulty representation of "meaning" prevents the possibility of such a relation.
However, if we turn things around, and start from a serious representation of meaning, we see that there are numerous ways to create a relationship between meaning and truth, such as the following:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
But of course, Banno's steadfast refusal to dismiss this idea that the T-schema says something about a relationship between between truth and meaning, despite having been advised of this from just about everyone here, stymies any progress on this matter.
Quoting Andrew M
Considering Tarski's T-Sentence "snow is white" is true IFF snow is white, you are right that the T-sentence is the metalanguage, not the right-hand side of the biconditional.
Quoting Andrew M
Quoting Andrew M
We agree that snow is white, and we agree that "white" could have been used to denote the colour green.
Assume that "green" was used to denote the colour white.
Given that snow is white, "snow" denotes snow, "white" denotes green and "green" denotes white, then "snow is white" denotes snow is green.
Also, "snow is green" denotes snow is white.
If snow is white, then "snow is green" is true.
IE, "snow is green" is true IFF snow is white.
In that event, doesn't this mean that Tarski's T-sentence would be false ?
Quoting Banno
Maybe another way to put it is that the truthmaker, whatever it is, is decided by the people in a conversation. So rather than there being an eternal truth-maker which secures our true sentences, we are the ones who get to decide what counts as a truthmaker.
We must be making progress because I have something to say in response to almost every sentence here.
Quoting Isaac
There is too much to say here, so this is a placeholder for an entire discussion, which doesn't really belong in this thread, despite its wanderings.
I'll say this much: this is exactly what you should say because despite being an externalist about semantics ((I think, kinda)), you're still an internalist about propositional attitudes and thus mental states; of course you have no use for knowledge as a category, because for you knowledge has parts and the only part that matters -- that drives action -- is belief. But all that's wrong: knowledge doesn't have parts, not truth, not belief, despite entailing both truth and belief; and the explanation of action solely in terms of narrow conditions, as the internalist would have it, is weaker than the explanation of action in terms of wide conditions, as the externalist would.
Quoting Isaac
Show me that with the given example. You know about the missing screw; does it matter enough that you consider it when referring to the kettle? ((Never mind, I'm just about to do it for you.))
Quoting Isaac
Of course your picture doesn't have every physical detail of the kettle; that's the nature of pictures.
Suppose it doesn't matter whether the screw is restored, and your picture (here a stand-in for your intention) doesn't show that it has or hasn't been. Then your picture is indeed specific enough, contra your general claim above.
Suppose it does matter whether the screw is restored, and your picture shows the kettle with the screw it lacks. Your picture is inaccurate in a salient way, and that will make a difference in actions you or I undertake relying on it.
Suppose it does matter whether the screw is restored, and your picture correctly shows the kettle missing that screw, then your action will be more effective, as will mine if you tell me there's a screw missing, if you share this crucial knowledge with me.
The most interesting case -- because it looks like it's the hardest for me -- is this one: suppose it doesn't matter whether the screw is restored, and your picture shows (correctly) that it hasn't or (incorrectly) that it has. It seems that actions taken under the false belief will come off just as well as actions taken under the true one,** because the belief concerns a detail that is irrelevant. This is not much different from making tea thinking it's Tuesday when it's actually Wednesday, but different for us because we might be tempted to say that in one case that you have an intention toward the actual (unrepaired) object in the kitchen, while in the other you have an intention toward an object, the kettle repaired, that doesn't exist. You might even use the kettle for weeks thinking you had fixed it at some point, only to discover that you never did and it made no difference.
But this is a known, and settled, issue: descriptivist accounts of names are just wrong. (You can successfully refer to George Washington even if everything you think you know about him is false.) The upshot here is that you successfully refer to the kettle in the kitchen despite possibly holding a false belief about it, perhaps many (what brand is it? when did you get it? didn't you have to replace it and this is the new one, or was that a different kettle?) and your intention should be taken, in proper externalist fashion, to be toward the actual object, not toward your possibly mistaken idea of the object.
(I probably have some cleaning up to do, but I only owe an account of the efficaciousness of knowledge in intentional action, not of the non-efficaciousness of non-knowledge in intentional action, if you see what I mean. And that's a side issue here.)
Quoting Isaac
I've never found any of this sort of thing -- reducing objects to collections of fundamental particles -- at all attractive, but your alternative here is a non-starter isn't it? The kettle is not just any vessel for boiling water, but the one in the kitchen, the one you mean, the one you have an intention toward. This is easy peasy if you allow the object to be partially constitutive of your mental state, instead of assuming you need this go-between that is your idea of the object. You don't have intentions toward any such idea -- that's the lesson above -- but toward what you have ideas about.
** Note added:
This is poorly worded because knowledge is not just true belief. The assumption here is that the kettle is just fine without the screw. Suppose I believe that the kettle has been fixed because I believe I finally remembered to fix it last week -- and I nearly did, but then didn't; and suppose you, unknown to me, did actually fix the kettle. I don't know the kettle has been fixed, though I have a true belief that it has been fixed. That's epistemic luck. I handle the kettle as if it's been fixed and have no trouble; I might even attribute my successful endeavors with the kettle to my having fixed it, even though our assumption here is that it would have made no difference if the kettle had still been unfixed. There's another kind of luck there.
Would you also agree that we are deciding not just what is the case but how it is the case, how it is relevant? Asking a language community if it is true that the kettle is boiling and assuming that a unanimous ‘yes’ means all participants are sharing a fact of the matter ( whether a fact of the ‘real’ world or a fact of linguistic use) imposes a certain presupposition on the situation. If we believe that an agreed upon truth is a shared sense of meaning , it will steer us away from investigating individual differences in interpretation of the ‘true’ situation. For our purposes, the discrepancies either do not exist or are ignored.
If on the other hand, we understand the agreed upon truth that the kettle is boiling to amount to distinguishable individual positions of interpretive sense , of what is at stake, within a loosely interconnected community of participants( what the kettle is, what boiling means, how truth operates for us, what it is about the kettle boiling that matters to us), what we wil do with our ‘truth’ may be different than in the first case. Our interest will be focused not on the use within the community of a unitary sense of meaning (the truth of the boiling kettle), but the responsive positioning and repositioning of each participant’s role within a partially shared discursive situation. From this vantage, the dialogic back and forth of judging the ‘truth’ of a matter within a community doesnt secure what is at issue as a single selfsame object of sense. (the truth of the boiling kettle).
Rather ,the responsive engagement of mutual adjudication is a shifting reciprocal adjustment of significance of claims and their justification.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The thing is there are probably many facts I have learned which I cannot remember, and continue to be unable to remember, let's say even for many years. But one day the memory may surface and I know a long forgotten fact again. Could I be said to have known it all along? Does it depend on how long I forget something, or how often?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Sure, I'm not committed to it; it just occurred to me as an alternative usage, and I thought I'd give it a run to see whether it causes more or less confusion, sharpens anything up and so on. Perhaps it's an example of something that comes from knowing myself (in the Biblical sense). :wink:
Yes.
The main thing is to recognize when propositional attitude verbs are factive. If I remember that today is Joe's birthday, then today is Joe's birthday. When I see that a package has been delivered, a package has in fact been delivered. If I regret leaving my car window down, it's down.
What about all the times you end up being wrong? I remember that today is Joe's birthday, but that turns out to be wrong. The thing I though was a package turns out to just be a piece of trash. It starts raining, and I regret that I left the car window down, yet it turns out that I actually didn't leave it down.
Then you didn't. Nobody's talking about infallibility here. You thought you did, you could've sworn it was today, whatever. But "I remember that I put my keys on the table," if true, entails that I did. No more than any other sort of statement, propositional attitude reports cannot vouch for their own truth.
Right, so the example was remembering after a long time something I have forgotten. Is my remembering it the criterion for saying that I knew it all along? What if I never remember something I once knew, but have forgotten, is it then the case that I nonetheless know it? If so would the criterion for saying that I know it be that I once knew it? Once known, always known, then?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
So, you seem to be saying that if I remember or regret something, then that something is a fact, and that even though it seems like I might remember or regret something, if that thing is not a fact, then I am not remembering or regretting it, but merely think I am remembering or regretting?
Yes.
Quoting Janus
Who can say? We do of course lose knowledge.
And look none of this is transparent to us. You can rack your brains trying to remember something, conclude that you've well and truly forgotten, and then an hour and half later it pops into your head. So it goes.
Quoting Janus
Yes, and I think obviously so, if you just think about what you're saying.
"Steve can see that Mark is uncomfortable," if true, entails that Mark is uncomfortable. If it's false, we've got nothing: maybe Mark is uncomfortable, maybe not. But it can't be true without Mark in fact being uncomfortable.
If it can truly be said of me that I remembered that you don't like strawberries, then it must be the case that you don't like strawberries, There are multiple ways for this to go wrong. I could be thinking of someone else, so it's false that I'm remembering something about you; I could be lying, claiming to remember this when I'm just guessing, so false again; and of course if you do like strawberries then there's no way I could remember that you don't -- I can only be under the mistaken impression that you don't, so again no true memory.
Go on...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'm with you so far, but all this seems to make our vague picture sufficient to get the job done. I'm not seeing the link to it being sufficient for the analysis of truth.
In order to get you to make tea, my picture of the kettle can be vague (not even deciding if it includes the screw or not), it can be mistaken (I could think al along that it's a mine when it belongs to you)...it doesn't matter one jot to get the job done since you can infer my intent sufficiently.
But in order to check the truth of "the kettle is boiling", it's insufficient. Unless all you want to be true is "the kettle {the picture I have of it at the time I'm speaking this sentence} is boiling {the idea of 'boiling'' that I have at the time of speaking this sentence}". That, I suppose, could be true by correspondence, but only the speaker would know and only at the time of speaking, so I can't see that being the story of 'truth' the correspondence theorists are looking for here.
The point I was making was that if we cannot collectively and permanently agree on what a kettle is, the we cannot asses the truth value of any statement about it by correspondence. Correspondence to what?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't even agree here, but ready to be schooled. In what way 'successful'? If I think GW is cow an what her to be brought to me for milking and say "fetch me George Washington". When I'm brought a US president, I'm certainly not going to think my reference was successful.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes. I used 'the one which boils the water' as shorthand. we could add 'the one which boils the water, the one which I get to take home without conflict, the one which I can reach when I sat on the rocking chair...' We can still make a functional account. It just takes imagination, because writing it all down longhand is tiresomely time-consuming.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I agree. I'm not sure if you're think I don't, but, for clarity, I do.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think this just shows the problems with attributing the idea of 'knowledge' to truth. Fraught with such problems. Knowledge as justified true belief doesn't really make any sense. But that's definitely another thread, one that I think already exists even...
Wasn't meant to be. This round of the conversation was my attempt to clarify the merry-go-round several of you were on that seemed to me to come down to a problem about reference rather than a problem about truth. I still think that. The endless back and forth was about whether the kettle is a linguistic object.
Speaking of truth:
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
I suppose I could be wrong, but this is not how I understand things.
A substantive theory of truth would be a metaphysical theory that explains why true statements are true and false statements are not true. It's an account of what constitutes the truth of a proposition. Or maybe what makes a proposition true. Or in virtue of what a proposition is true. And so on.
It doesn't tell you how to check whether a statement is true; it doesn't tell you how to assess the truth-value of a statement, so perforce not even a correspondence theory, if anyone has one of those, would tell you that you assess the truth-value of a statement by checking to see if it corresponds to something or other. What a correspondence theory would say is that if a proposition is true, it is true because it corresponds to 'the facts' or whatever.
It's poor philosophy to reject well-established facts about the world.
Quoting RussellA
Not at all. The object language is in quotes (let's call it Greenglish), while the metalanguage is conventional English. If the object language were instead German, it would be:
"Schnee ist weiß" is true IFF snow is white.
The RHS is an English translation of the German sentence in quotes on the LHS. If snow is white, both sentences are true. If not, both sentences are false.
Similarly, in your example, the RHS is a conventional English translation of Greenglish. If snow is white, both sentences are true. If not, both sentences are false.
Ok, I just wanted that clarification the qualifier, "if true". If we have no way of knowing for sure whether what we honestly believe "is true" or not, then what good is the "propositional attitude"? It cannot be an acceptable logical principle, to allow us to draw any valid conclusions.
Quoting Andrew M
No, it's called skepticism, and that is by no means "poor philosophy". Only uninformed philosophers would call it that.
Well, you've raised it to a fine art!
The issue, as I see it, is that observational data and evidence should inform our philosophy. When there's a conflict, that's a signal that we need to check our premises.
Well, I mean, it's exactly that, and nothing else.
The inference rule
[math]\ \ \ \ \ Kp\ \vdash\ p[/math]
Allows you to conclude p from Kp, but doesn't tell you whether Kp is true. It is indeed just a logical principle along the lines of modus ponens, which also can't tell you that your premises are true. Does that make modus ponens useless?
I don't think this thread can or should accommodate a digression on names (though maybe we're going to end up there anyway).
I will, though, point you back to Oliver Sacks's dad and the glass on the table. The essence of that joke is the conflict between dad's descriptivist theory of his reference to the glass,** and little Oliver's more causal, externalist theory of his dad's reference. That should clarify the difference at least. Is it a coincidence that Oliver is capable of retrieving the intended glass but not even Zeus could act on Oliver's dad's theory?
(I'm cheating a little, but in a way warranted by our examples, because definite descriptions are ambiguous between picking out an unknown object that uniquely answers to the description, and picking out a known object by what amounts to the construction of a nonce name. Here, I'm relying on the latter in treating "the kettle" and "the glass on the table" as essentially names. It may well be I have forgotten too much about this and am passing over some important distinction there.)
** Or, I should probably say, his pretense of holding such a view.
Upon re-reading you and I, my thoughts keep getting stuck on "deciding" -- we decide, yes, but I'm less certain that I decide. However, I'd agree with your picture in your second paragraph -- I don't deny individuality, only de-emphasize it. I'd say that the communal meaning supersedes individual meaning insofar that the community decides what counts as "significant": we and not I, as much, decide upon significance, and what counts as significant is what binds together communities (significance is that layer of interpretation that allows us to have conflicting beliefs and see one another as belonging still).
Now, as an individual member of a community, yes -- this here:
Quoting Joshs
is a good description. I'd say this is a "closer" view from where I've been sitting, which is assuming some amount of "fixidness" from the history of English itself. But I think I agree with you in saying that the history is changeable, that it morphs with our usage. It's just got an incredible amount of momentum at this point. It's not a fresh abstraction that we get to define. Rather, we trace with the tools we've inherited.
So I'm hesitant to use "decision" when it comes to "how to" -- "decision" might give the impression that we have libertarian freedom with respect to our beliefs. I'm not sure I'd say my beliefs are like that. I'd say they are partially inherited, though certainly I've changed them too with time (and mis-use). Perhaps what I'd say is that an individual has their way of doing things, and "how to" or "significance" can change by presenting one's viewpoint to the group, but the signification only changes if enough people within a group adopt the belief about significance that an individual offers.
Quoting Michael
I think that's a pretty strong argument against a position, though I'm not sure that that your opposition would have to accept that it's aimed correctly. I think it highlights the necessary role non-linguistic stuff plays in the language using activities we do. Though I imagine that quibbles are very possible since the argument doesn't contain the phrase "linguistic", so the opportunity to put non-linguistic stuff into semantic content still seems available to an opponent. I believe this was the strategy @Banno gestured towards later; that it's a category error to think that the non-linguistic stuff is "really" non-linguistic since arbitrary environmental objects can be brought into language practice as semantic content.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Glad we see eye to eye. I don't know if we can have the discussion that we'd like to have without clearing the ground, I take it this is what you've been doing.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Nothing more to add. And yes, I was trying to smuggle in more phenomenological accounts of interpretation with how I was using it!
Quoting Luke
I think correspondence is one way of looking at it; it really can be that a statement is true because it corresponds to the facts. But I think that for a deflationist this simultaneously says too much and too little. Too much because it doesn't necessarily reflect the T-sentence (can you have a correspondence without a truth? A representational relationships truth preserving? That kind of thing) and too little because it confines the enmeshment of world and declarative language to a particular mode (correspondence).
Though I really appreciate the broader thrust towards truth-makers:
Quoting Luke
:up:
Quoting Isaac
Thank you for the clarification. I agree that with the functional equivalence angle; namely two expressions will mean the same thing if they function in the same way. As a sub-case, two denotations will denote the same thing if those denotation practices function in the same way. I think where we differ is that I interpret the pragmatic context as part of the function, and the function itself isn't situated within a body, it's situated between bodies, in the environment, and within bodies - like with @Srap Tasmaner 's comment about externalism vs internalism of semantic content. I don't think "the science" sides with either side on that, at least not yet, so it remains a site of substantive philosophical disagreement.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I also want to "yes, and" Srap in the context of functionalism + externalism, you don't necessarily need to have language tied to definite mental states with their folk psychology categories to be an externalist on this issue, you just need the functions to involve and sufficiently incorporate stuff in the environment. Like saying "the kettle is boiling" when it is indeed boiling.
That "sufficient incorporation" I believe is where the truth and like concepts come in; accuracy, fidelity, relevance and so on.
Even if you put non-linguistic stuff/environmental objects into semantic content it is still the case that this non-linguistic stuff/environmental object is a determinant for truth. "The kettle is boiling" being true depends on the existence of the material object referred to by the phrase "the kettle".
I really didn't think that this would be such a controversial point. The world isn't just a conversation we have with each other. The materialist will say that there are material objects that exist and have properties, irrespective of what we say; the idealist will say that there is mental phenomena that occurs and has qualities, irrespective of what we say. That our language "carves up" this stuff isn't that this stuff isn't there, or doesn't factor into a sentence being true.
It's not the case that we just define every sentence in our language and the truth of every sentence follows from those definitions, so it must be that something which isn't our language plays an essential role. That is what my argument tries to show.
Yes. I agree it's strange that it's controversial. But I don't find it surprising any more. Philosophy in both analytic and continental traditions has spent a lot of time in recent years subtly correlating "mind independent" with "mind dependent" reality. I don't think we're a particularly hardline materialist forum, definitely more a correlationist one!
A side note, possibly off track.
One way I've seen Davidson's program described is that he aims at explaining not what a given sentence means or what makes it true, but more fundamentally at speaker's competence; hence the claim that if you understand all the T-sentences of a language, then you understand that language. (That set of T-sentences is a theory of meaning for that language. Wittgenstein makes similarly holistic noises, but the point here is vaguely against compositionality, I think.)
But here's a question people might be inclined to answer very differently: if you understand all the T-sentences of a language, do you also understand a world? Or maybe even the world? Either answer is interesting.
Maybe Davidson alludes to this somewhere, I wouldn't know.
Then, suppose we were in the same room -- me picking up the kettle is also already linguistic. Language is embedded in the body; gesture is often as important as the written word in determining the meaning of a sentence. And by picking up the kettle I'm showing we've already individuated it, named it, have a handful of predicates we might use -- I can't not see the kettle as a kettle, for the most part. It's always-already linguistic, as an individuated thing that I'm thinking about and predicating things of.
Basically the same problem I've been criticizing correspondence: every instance of explaining something non-linguistic will be done linguistically, even if we include gestures and kettles and such into our language. So "fact" starts to take on a place-holder position more than being an actual thing, a placeholder to mean "the real" or "true sentences" or something like that -- all understood by us being able to speak.
I agree that the world is not a conversation. But I believe our activity in the world is linguistic, in the bigger sense of language: to include kettles and gestures and such.
I'd say no. My first instinct is to deny the scenario because it's impossible :D But that's no fun.
I mean, at the least, you'd have to understand all the T-sentences of all languages, it seems to me. "a world" appears different depending on the natural language I use. At the very minimal way, the phonic substance differs, which creates different relationships between concepts through phonic relationships.
It’s not just how we use language. I say “the kettle is boiling”, you say “the kettle is not boiling”. One of us is right and one of us is wrong, and the thing that determines that isn’t me saying one thing and you saying the other (else which of us is right?).
It’s the existence of a material object (or set of material objects if you prefer, or mental phenomena if idealism is correct) and its behaviour that determines which of us is speaking the truth.
Only because we care about truth in relation to the material world, though. English is set up like that: Here we have a language with a truth predicate and a false predicate. We're able of expressing opposition. We already agree that there are kettles, that boiling is something they can or cannot do, that negation of a proposition indicates that both cannot be true at the same time. There's a lot of conceptual work that comes "along with" understanding a language, and evaluating whether a propositions is true or false. So much so that we're not really sure how much language is doing and how much the world is doing. Individuation, in particular, is something I'm really not sure about being a mental or material phenomena. if it's a mental phenomena, then quite literally it's not the material world -- which could be just one big fact -- that makes the sentence true. It's that we have minds that can individuate parts of a world that is, in fact, wholly connected and not individuated at all.
Yes, and I’m trying to describe how truth works in the English (or other natural) language. So I don’t understand this response.
I’d say no. Understanding that “snow is green” iff snow is green and that “snow is white” iff snow is white isn’t understanding that snow is white. For that you have to actually look at the material world/experience it.
"7 + 5 = 12" is true
My suggestion is that "the kettle" works in a similar manner as "7" -- they are both abstract names. It's not like I go about saying "kettle00110292910" or some other unique identifier. And in fact it'd be confusing if I did do that. In a particular conversation we understand that we're using the abstract name as a particular name. The only difference is what we decide to use the names for, and which predicates link said name to the set of "true propositions" and which predicates link said name to the set of "false propositions"
Most of the sentences, should we choose to go through it, about the kettle I bet we'd say we'd agree upon. In this scenario the only one we disagree upon is the predicate "...is boiling"
So what makes it true or false is, in fact, its boiling. But "...is boiling" is also linguistic. It's understood in a wider sense. After all "...is boiling" as applied to a kettle really just means whatever is inside it is in the state of boiling, transitioning from a liquid to a gas. The kettle itself isn't boiling at all, if we choose to use the general name "kettle" to only refer to the metallic kettle, and not the water inside. It's only because we agree upon what "the kettle" picks out that we can even check the material world in the first place.
But we still have to check the material world because it is the material world that determines whether or not the sentence is true. All you’re saying is that we decide what the sentence means. The meaning of a sentence isn’t the truth of the sentence. The truth depends on the meaning, but it also depends on the material world.
Unless something is true by definition, “S means p, therefore S is true” is an obvious non sequitur.
That just strikes me as clearly false. I understand the point you're making, but lately on this forum people making that point use the phrase "forms of life" more often than they use "language-games" to try to mitigate its implausibility.
Quoting Moliere
Language, in obvious ways, supervenes on the body and on gesture. No fine motor control, no speech, no writing. Can you say the same thing the other way? Obviously not.
"In the beginning was the word" is false.
Would you say that significance is equivalent to what matters to me, what is relevant and how it is relevant to me ( or to us)? And arent these terms equivalent to the sense of a meaning? In Wittgenstein’s example of workers establishing the sense of meaning of their work-related interchanges( requests , corrections, instructions, questions, etc) , the words they send back and forth to each other get their sense in the immediate context of how each participant responds to the other. It seems to me the ‘we’ of larger groups must be based, as an abstractive idealization, on this second-person structure of responsive dialogic interaction. The particular sense of meaning of a consensus-based notion can never simply refer back to the dictates of an amorphous plurality we call a community. A community realizes itself in action that , as Jean-Luc Nancy says, singularizes itself as from
one to the next to the next.
It does seem to me that people have been taken so completely by Wittgenstein and those like him that they’re being bewitched by language in the opposite direction. Now apparently everything is language.
"Forms of life" is a phrase I try not to use because I don't feel like I really understand it too well -- "language-games" I feel comfortable with, though.
Would it help if I called gesture linguistic in a broad sense, whereas "kettle" is linguistic in a narrow sense? Or does that just seem obviously wrong-headed, to you? Better to keep "language" to refer to the written word?
I should have replied to this too -- ah well.
I agree with this entirely.
Do you have nonlinguistic experiences? I don't think everyone does.
Maybe. I've been taking "meaning" as primary for this thread -- so rather than having a theory of meaning, I've been attempting to use the semantics of English to get at truth. So I'd probably do the same here -- assume meaning to spell out significance.
I definitely had the slab-brothers in mind in saying what I've said about including gesture in language. And I think I agree that a community realizes itself in action. And I agree that no one in a community could say "well the community says" or something along those lines -- I'm not sure communal meaning fits within dictates, or even entirely fits within beliefs (aren't there communal stories, myths, feelings, or relationships at least in addition to communal belief?)
I agree. I suppose what's still got me is the abstracta -- if we have any sentences in English which do not refer to material conditions, and that sentence is true, and correspondence is true, then the abstract sentences must correspond to some fact that is not-material. I don't think there is such a fact, so I'd reject correspondence theory as a universal theory of truth -- since 7 + 5 is 12, and "7 + 5 = 12" is true.
So do I. I think coherence is a better fit for formal systems like maths.
As a rough analogy to explain the difference, speech depends on a speaker, but it doesn’t correspond to a speaker.
Probably a bad idea. Language is a real thing, a specific thing. Not every form of communication, for instance, is language. Neither is every form of intentional or referential action linguistic.
Gesture, for instance may in some cases be propositional without being linguistic. That's messy, but I don't have anything riding on it. What does matter is that there is a well-known linguistic use of gesture in sign language. If you just define all gesture up front as linguistic, you miss what distinguishes sign language from pointing or waving.
Quoting Michael
I think that sentences depending on material objects is close enough to count for my purposes. For me I'm getting caught up in the notion that it's us who decide what counts as "material object" -- "us" historically, at least, since "Kettle" is a word with that kind of history. Yes, the material object matters to truth, but that's because we're using "truth" just like that.
Maybe this is just something we'd go back and forth on though :D -- maybe it's nothing.
You can hardly be faulted for that. It's a linguistic gesture that seems to have no propositional content.
Everything is text, even if in the beginning there was no word. I'm thinking this is more a transcendental condition of understanding rather than a metaphysical thesis -- language is how we come to understand the world. Before we were linguistically adept we had very little in the way of understanding. And as we develop our linguistic powers we're able to see more of the world than we were before. Even on an individual level, that can be experienced.
However, unlike Kant, I don't think I'd say this "cuts us off" from the really real -- rather, what's really real is just right there before us always-already changing. To understand is to grasp the world with language. But the world changes and we have to go back out into it, dip into the elementality constituted by my own desire to build again my edifice of understanding-grasping the world.
Language as a specific thing is English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, sign language . . . the natural languages each have their names, and they have specific traits as you say. And in the broad sense they all count as writing.
Language in the broad sense includes gesture as outside of even sign-language. Sign-language, after all, is just writing with a medium other than ink or sound, and the person speaking-writing in sign-language can also point and wave and jump for joy and clap and smile and so on. And we are even able to distinguish between sign-language and gesture when someone is signing to us!
BUT -- as you say:Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'm just writing the above to get at where I was coming from. I'm fine with not using this way of talking, and keeping "language" for the narrow sense to keep things clear, especially as I am uncertain how to be super specific in the broad sense. It just seemed relevant to truth is all.
The T-schema doesn’t say much and is compatible with more substantial theories of truth, e.g:
“7 + 5 = 12” is true iff 7 + 5 = 12, and
7 + 5 = 12 iff “7 + 5 = 12” follows from the axioms of maths, therefore
“7 + 5 = 12” is true iff “7 + 5 = 12” follows from the axioms of maths
Sure. I mean, I said exactly that earlier in the thread :D
The problem is that they aren't universal. And, in order to evaluate "better fit" for any given theory of truth, you'd have to understand truth already. So the very act of being able to evaluate correspondence/coherence in particular circumstances means we must already have some understanding of truth that is neither correspondence or coherence, at least if by "better fit" we mean "seems to be about the right description"
Your wording is ambiguous and leaves it open to equivocation. We decide that the word "water" refers to this stuff, that the symbol "2" refers to this number, that the letters "H" and "O" in chemistry refer to these elements, but we don't decide that water is H[sub]2[/sub]O.
The T-schema suffers from the same problem, as I mentioned before.
1. "p" is foo iff p
This is not a theory, or definition, of "foo".
If we want an actual definition of truth then we need some q such that “[is] true” means q, or “‘p’ is true” means q.
And what would those be?
"p" is T iff p
Using English to provide an interpretation to the schema:
p is any statement in English
" " is the mention operator, where a statement is converted into a name for that same statement.
is T is "... is true", as understood by us as speakers of English.
iff is the familiar logical connective from baby logic.
In general, I'd accept any natural language though. I'm using English because we are. I imagine some natural languages which don't have this structure which this doesn't work for. Also, note, that there isn't some concept securing truth here -- it's really just the history of the predicate "... is true".
The dialogical game I posited with this, when it comes to natural languages, has basically already taken place. There's a few hundred years worth of English usage which gives "... is true" its sense.
This is all I meant by a natural language semantics -- the meaning one gets by understanding a language. If you grant that English sentences have meaning, at least.
If [s]so[/s] not... eh... I guess it's just squeeks and squawks all the way down? I'm not really sure there. It's an intriguing notion, but one that doesn't make a lick of sense to me really.
Supposing the search is for an account of what makes any sentence true, holism in some form enters into the discussion from the beginning.
Holism in some form follows if one accepts the Tarski's idea that a theory of truth must generate a sentence of the form "S" is true IFF X for every sentence of the object language.
Davidson's holism links truth, meaning, attitudes, beliefs and the contents of each.
Wittgenstein talks of a form of life, a bringing together of language games, hinge propositions, and common intentions in a just so story.
Yes, it's hand- waving; but so is pointing to where we are going. If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.
We learn the vocabulary and formation rules, and iteratively generate innumerable sentences.
So not
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
but that if you understand how to construct a T-sentences of any sentence in the language, then you understand that language.
Similarly,
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
is not the question; it's rather if you can construct a T-sentence for any sentence in the language, what is it that you have not understood?
I think I agree, though I'm slightly unclear on what the first part of your post is saying. (The explanation of T-sentences in English.)
I think there are three possible answers:
(1) Semantics in terms of truth conditions, and no analysis of "is true" is possible because of circularity.
(2) Semantics in terms of truth conditions, and the T-schema is the semantics of "is true". That's it; that's all it can be.
(3) Something besides truth conditions.
I'm not following this. I think of holism as indicating that the members of the set are not independent in some respect, in this case truth. Isn't the construction of T-sentences a one-by-one affair?
Quoting Banno
Gotcha. I can never remember quite how he puts this. But this is quite mechanical isn't it? I could construct T-sentences for any collection of sentences of whatever language, whether I understand it or them or not. What am I missing?
Yes, I agree.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It's not like modus ponens though, because unlike modus ponens, the premises do not necessitate the conclusion. The proposition "I remember that today is Joe's birthday", does not necessitate the conclusion that today is Joe's birthday, without the added premise that my memory is infallible. But that proposition is not stated, nor would it be acceptable as a premise if it was stated. So it's like modus ponens with a hidden premise, which if it were stated, would be rejected as false. Therefore conclusions drawn in this way are unsound.
Yes it does. No claim that someone's memory is infallible is needed to support the claim that, in this case, it is accurate. Neither does modus ponens require p to be a necessary truth. (Which would just make the exercise pointless.)
In modus ponens, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. The conclusion, that today is Joe's birthday does not follow necessarily from the premise "I remember that today is Joe's birthday", because there is no premise to relate "I remember", to what "is".
But the connection is right there: the conclusion is the object of the propositional attitude.
You cannot know what is not so. You cannot see what is not there. You cannot remember what did not happen. You cannot regret doing what you did not do.
Every failure you imagine of claims like these are cases where you are simply wrong -- you think it's so but it isn't, you think it's there but it isn't, you think it happened but it didn't, you think you did but you didn't. When you're right, what you are right about is a fact.
My saying that I know, or that you know, or that someone else knows, is of course no guarantee. So what? Logic doesn't guarantee the truth of what you say, but connects one truth to another.
That's all we're doing here. There's nothing particularly subtle about it.
I lean toward (2), but I just don't know enough to say.
I keep thinking there's something of interest there in truth as a sort of identity function. Have you noticed that it works for anything you might count as a truth-value? It works for "unknown," it works for "likely" or "probably," even for numerical probabilities. Whatever you plug in for the truth-value of p, that's the truth-value of p is true. If you think of logic as a sort of algebra, that makes the is-true operator (rather than predicate) kind of interesting.
I'm not clear where this is going. I don't think there's anything about saying that "the kettle" is defined functionally which renders it victim to Oliver's dad's joke position.
If I say "Pass me the kettle", I'm just using an expression which I've learned is a tool to get something done. In my terminology, I have an expectation that the world be such that I can fill something with water and I'm interacting with the world via language to make it match my expectation. It's a prediction of what action will make it that way. As Wittgenstein has it at the beginning of the PI, I could have just said "kettle!", or simply pointed to it and clicked my fingers.
Nothing here defines what "the Kettle" means in any specific way. It's a tool I reach for as part of a strategy to get some change in the world enacted, and it's non-specific. So long as it gets the job done. It's sufficient, it seems to keep these expressions vague, relying on compound ones to be more specific "that kettle over there, the red on, not the black one..."
The point of all this was to say that there's no eternal, external, definition of what constitutes "the kettle" that anyone could use to determine the truth (by correspondence) of "'the kettle is black' is true". There's no corresponding external world object to "the kettle"
"The kettle" is a linguistic act. Saying that something corresponded to it would be like saying that something corresponds to my extended finger when I'm pointing at the kettle. If I point and say "pass me the kettle", nothing different has happened than if I point and click my fingers, motion with my had that you're to pass me the object I'm pointing to. But we don't say that my action with my hands 'corresponds' to the object in question, so why should my actions with my voice box do so?
With the pointing and gesturing, I rely on the fact that you share sufficient aspects of my expectations, and that my goals are sufficiently part of yours, that you'll see my actions as evidence for your policies. The same seems the case with language acts.
Bring this back to 'Truth', the notion that "X is true" can be checked by examining the properties of X relies on 'X' referring to some fixed set of properties. But 'X' doesn't refer to a fixed set of properties. 'X' doesn't refer at all, it's a type of action that gets a job done, it doesn't refer any more than lifting my arm does.
As I said above to Srap, The idea that I can change the external world by some vocalisation (same for doing so by some gesture) to others does indeed rely on the notion that those other sufficiently share my models, and that co-operation is sufficiently part of their policy, for those gestures to work. But I don't agree that it requires a set of shared 'meanings' which are then reified to some objective status with sufficient specificity to be amenable to truth analysis. We can invent gestures on the hoof and still be understood. If there's a language barrier, certain words are quickly learned (and what is learned, is what the word does). Communicating with someone who doesn't share my language is less efficient, but still very possible and we can carry out many basic co-operative tasks, we don't seem to need an already prepared external system of word and reference.
So I think, yes, this is all about our shared would, but I don't think the co-operation this is all here to allow requires an actual set of word>reference facts that are external to our intentions. It simply requires that we're similar enough in intentions and co-operative enough in policy that we can see evidence, in another's behaviour, of what we need to do to bring about the state of the world which includes helping the other.
Eh, I'm just feeling around here too. One thing I'm leery of with (2) is that I've been saying I assume meaning -- so really I'm asking my interlocutor if they agree that we understand English sentences. Insofar that we agree upon that then the rest follows. But if you ask me to specify a semantics, then I can no longer specify truth. Here we'd be taking the tactic of assuming truth to spell out meaning.
But I think I'm still thinking (3) since I'm assuming meaning to spell out truth with English. (2) because of the actual history of semantics, though, has weight. And starting at something so specific as the English predicate ". . . is true" is much more at my level of being able to conceptualize. (L1? L2? What? :D)
Hah, no I had not noticed. I think what keeps what I've been trying to say from collapsing into an algebra, where is-true is an operator on propositions, is the actual history. I like the relationship that's spelled out by the T-sentence which shows how truth is embedded within used language. When using a statement -- that's what has a truth-value. That's what's truth-apt. When naming a statement, that's what we assign truth-value. It's a judgment. But the used statement is what counts as the truth-apt statement.
Quoting Isaac
Is this typically what the word "truth" (or "is true") does?
Quoting Isaac
I thought we were discussing what "is true" does, not what "X" (or "the kettle" or "the kettle is boiling") does.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I find the part in bold problematic. Is "p" is foo iff p the semantics of "is foo"?
As I said at the start of this discussion, I think a distinction needs to be made between these two claims:
a. "p" is true iff p
b. "'p' is true" means "p"
I would say that (b) would count as an explanation of the semantics of "is true" but that (a) doesn't.
All of these examples, "know", "see", "remember", and "regret", require another premise establishing a relationship between each one of them, and "what is", in order to produce a valid conclusion.
There is no premise which states that if you "know" it, it is. No premise which states that if you "see" it, it is, nor for "remember", or "regret".
I could just as easily say, "if I feel like it's going to rain this afternoon, then it is going to rain", or, "intuition tells me so". What makes "regret", "remember", "see", or "know" produce a more valid conclusion than "feel" or "intuit"? Or, we could take the example from . If I say "pass me the kettle" does this imply that there actually is a kettle? Validity requirements do not allow us to make such conclusions. That's why a definition of sorts is a required part of the premises.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Logic guarantees that properly derived conclusions are valid. Your conclusions for the attitudinal propositions are not valid, because they depend on unstated definitions for terms like "know", "see", etc.. Valid logic uses premises which state something necessary, or essential about a term ('man is mortal' for example), and then it proceeds to utilize that necessity stated, to produce a valid conclusion.
You have not stated the necessary premises concerning the terms, "know", "see", etc;, to produce a valid conclusion. And, if you did state those premises, "if you know it then it is true", "if you see it then it is true", they would just be rejected as false propositions. So it's as if you believe that by not stating the required premises you can avoid having them rejected as false, and simply proceed to produce a valid conclusion without the required premises through some sort of sophistry. But you cannot, because the premises are required to produce a valid conclusion.
You mean if I wrote something like this?
[math]\ \ \ \ \ Kp\ \vdash\ p[/math]
Like stating that kind of premise? Or would you prefer something like this?
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \forall p(\exists x Kxp\ \to\ p)[/math]
But then, honestly, I'm not sure what there is to talk about if your position is that one can know things that are not so, see things that are not there, remember things that did not happen, and regret doing things you did not do.
I'll let you have the last word.
You just read the Tarski, right? I haven't done that in years, so you're better placed than I.
I think, yes, that is the semantics of "is foo." It says, in plain English, that whatever the truth conditions of p are, those are the truth conditions of 'p' is foo, and vice versa. And it's also obvious that any such predicate "is foo" is equivalent to "is true," that there is a unique identity function on truth-values, and thus a unique identity function on truth conditions.
Honestly, though, I'm out of my depth here. I know little formal semantics.
So you're saying that these are equivalent?
1. "p" is true iff p
2. "'p' is true" means "p"
Tarski's T-schema is Ramsey's redundancy theory?
[s]I'm not sure about this. Are these equivalent?
1. "p" is true iff p
2. "p" is a true sentence iff p
3. "p" is a sentence iff p
(1) might be equivalent to (2), but neither (1) nor (2) are equivalent to (3), and (3) follows from (2).
So does "is foo" mean "is true" or "is a true sentence" or "is a sentence" or something else?[/s]
If you take take means as has the same extension as, then yes. Otherwise, no, or depends.
Quoting Michael
They can't all be true at the same time, because the use of "sentence" in (2) conflicts with its use in (3), doesn't it?
My point was that any function that assigns to every sentence the same truth-value it has already, is equivalent to what we've been writing as "is true," and there can only be one such function. Am I missing something?
Yes, good point. Not sure what I was thinking there. Obviously (3) is false.
So "p" and "'p' is true" have the same extension but might have a different intension?
I suppose the same could be said of "'p' is true" and "'p' is foo", and so of "is true" and "is foo". Same extension, possibly different intension?
I think a definition of "is true" (and "is foo") should explain its intension.
Well, something like that has always been the complaint about purely extensional semantics. From "The Meaning of 'Meaning'," which just happens to be on another tab in my browser:
If we know that p is false then we know that not-p is true.
:blush: Missed that ... in my haste. However ... if p is known to be false, ~p is true isn't enough in all cases. For example if the theory of relativity is falsified (proven false via some hypothetical observation), what exactly is not Theory of Relativity? :chin:
That said, In the case of propositions like god exists, knowing that it is false indeed means the contradictory, god doesn't exist is true.
So we now have a method of determining truth, oui monsieur?
For any proposition p, assume p and check if it entails a contradiction. If it does, p is false i.e. ~p is true. Interesting to say the least.
We now have a definition of what true means: if ~p entails a contradiction, p is true.
Muchas gracias. is there anything else you wanna add to this?
Here's a link to a post of mine about this. If you clink on that link, it takes you right to what I said. In this context, we could say it refers to what I said. Following that link is how you get the job done of finding out what I said.
A fitting quote from Haack's Philosophy of logics:
[quote]Tarski emphasises that the (T) schema is not a definition of truth – though in spite of his insistence he has been misunderstood on this point. It is a material adequacy condition: all instances of it must be entailed by any definition of truth which is to count as 'materially adequate'. The point of the (T) schema is that, if it is accepted, it fixes not the intension or meaning but the extension of the term 'true' [my emphasis].
Yes, that's how I'm looking at it. And not only does it fix the extension of true, there is no other conceivable way to do so. That's why it must be a consequence of any substantive theory of truth.
For us, a lot of the interesting stuff is on the intensional side, modal contexts, propositional attitudes, all that business.
And there is still plenty of room for a metaphysical theory of what makes true sentences true, because this is not such a theory but only a semantics of true -- and the semantics of true is, for model-theoretic truth-conditional Montague-style semantics, trivial.
This is from page 4 of a classic textbook on formal semantics:
And that's the difference between doing philosophy and doing linguistics, I guess.
Haack has an interesting comment on this point from that same book.
I really expected something like this:
'Warsaw was bombed in World War II' is true iff 'Warsaw was bombed in World War II' is asserted in the Bible.
Now I feel like I've misunderstood something.
I'm also no longer sure what I had mind when I wrote this:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
What she is saying is that these positions are consistent:
1. 'Warsaw was bombed in World War II' is true iff Warsaw was bombed in World War II
2. 'Warsaw was bombed in World War II' is true iff the Bible asserts this
One just then has to accept that:
3. Warsaw was bombed in World War II iff the Bible asserts this
The T-schema is silent on the truth of (3), and so the T-schema isn’t always the right tool to refute a substantial theory of truth. Some bizarre theories can be consistent with the T-schema.
Right, right. I forgot she added a step.
This is still on the denotation side of things, it gestures toward what truth might mean with a successful denotation and explores some issues regarding denotation and function.
Yeah I getcha. I'd agree with that. I think that's part of what makes semantic content work through; it holds environmental objects equivalent through how we access them, how they function, and how we expect them to respond to manipulation. It's informational. The object plays an active role in all of these; by having a location + weight + geometry, by having its own propensities that enable developmental trajectories (eg, the speed the kettle boils a cup at), and by how our actions interact with those developmental trajectories. In that regard, the objects themselves and their properties take part in our comportment toward them. For semantic content be informative about an object's state, there must be an association between that object's state and the language about the object.
This includes how we categorise, refer, and carve up the world. In broad strokes, speech acts symbolise or engender these developmental trajectories, properties which imbue these propensities for development and so on. When you say "I will boil the kettle" or "Can you boil the kettle?" or "The kettle is boiling"... I view what's going on there as pattern of linguistic behaviour tracking developmental capacities of the kettle which are individuated into functional roles. Understanding those functional roles is accurate when it mirrors the developmental trajectories of the kettle, so when someone says "the kettle is boiling", it's true to say that when the kettle is boiling... Because the switch was flipped and the water was boiling etc... Something happened to make it true in context, and the pattern of language tracks the properties through shared expectations of environmental development. The association becomes a causal history of interacting environmental events and language.
Rather than the semantic content of the phrase "The kettle is boiling" being embedded in the phrase through the words and sentence parts mapping directly onto developmental trajectory properties - like a descriptive theory - sentence properties and environmental properties are enmeshed through causal relationships of succession; when someone says "the kettle is boiling", it will occur in a context in which the kettle is individuated from its environment as a distinct site of developmental trajectories, and "boiling" will be inferred from the kettle's current state and developmental trajectory. The former individuation resembles denotation, the latter individuation resembles predication ("... is boiling"). Coupling the association of words with perceptually+pragmatically individuated or demarcated environmental trajectories allows environmental events to be a truth maker for sentences without the former being wholly determined by the latter. The causal history; making event-patterns of language co-occur with event-patterns of environments; means both reciprocally inform, and in many use cases reciprocally co-determine - we make our environments navigable and manipulable.
Word structure is sensitised to environmental structure because we've collectively made it so; and the environment is gonna do what it do whether we've perceptually demarcated its objects and developmental trajectories or not. Semantic content is then a historically informed behavioural expectation of the environment, whose developmental trajectories are demarcated through current and prior expectations of development. The causes in the present in both language and the world resemble the causes in the past - the former is a criterion of iterability (like the private language argument against privation), the latter is a criterion of publicisability (like the private language argument against the beetle's wiggling being determinative of sense).
Expectations of development also tend to become shared, as environmental patterns become embedded in a language which is sensitised to environmental development. The causal patterns of language use grow to resemble the environment modulo perceptual individuation. Feedback lets the former and the latter have reciprocal impact; so much so that in many circumstances we can append "I think" to to a phrase, like "I think the kettle is boiling" and convey the same behavioural expectation of the environment but indexed to an agent. But the distinction between the two is precisely useful because the environment's patterns are shared. The causal histories differ, so the behavioural expectations in the environment and in language differ, so the meanings differ. One is true when you think it, one is true when the kettle boils.
The mirroring+coupling of causal patterns of language use and environmental comportment/expectations of development is what sets up the remarkable agreement obtained on whether the kettle is boiling... When it is in fact boiling or not. The causal history of language and environment over time, through constant work and tailoring, becomes discriminative on both environment and language.
As a reference for something similar, I think Evans in "Varieties of Reference" takes up the task of such a causal approach to denotation; there's a causal history of reference which sets up relations between properties of what is referred to and the object itself. The causal history of language use carries with it discriminative information regarding the environments ("forms of life") it constrains and develops within.
Sorry, I don't understand the language. Try English, please.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It's very common, I claim to know, see, remember, or regret something, which turns out not to be so. Remember, logic deals with propositions, and a proposition is what is claimed, it is not what is so. And you agreed that human beings are fallible. So the proposition "I know X" does not mean that X is the case. "Jack knows X. Therefore X is what is the case." Wait, something is missing. Can't you see that we are missing a premise, the one which says "if someone knows something then it is what is the case"? And as I said, you might state such, as a proposition, or premise, but it would be rejected as false, because of that fallibility; especially with the other terms, see, remember, and regret.
It's only sophistry, your claim that knowing something, seeing something, remembering something, or regretting something, implies that what is known, seen, remembered, or regretted is what is the case. Just like in my examples of feeling something, or intuiting something, these do not imply that what is intuited or felt, is the case. Since you still don't seem to get it, let me add "imagining something". Does "imagining something" imply that the imagined thing is what is the case? How does "knowing something" elevate itself to a higher level than "imagining something", without the required premise, or definition?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Srap is talking about knowing something that is not the case.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are talking about not knowing something that is the case.
You are attacking a straw man.
The argument is that the predicate '...is true' cannot be analytical of X by correspondence if X has no fixed extension. Hence the discussion about X's extension.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Very nice. But you didn't construct the link in order to get me to find out what you said. You don't care if I know what you said. You care what I do next. The expression was designed to convince me of an argument. I'm not going to go into the psychological theories about why we do such things, suffice to say the end goal isn't just that I know what you said. So the link may refer, but the words don't, they effect. It's the effect you're interested in, the effect which is the reason you choose them.
If words worked like your computer links, then I think you could claims that they have the effect they do because they refer. But that's the very argument Ramsey is making. That words (or propositions, rather) don't refer like computer links. there's no UUID, they're never specific enough to meet Russell's criteria for meaning 'there is such a thing X and it has property Y'.
Quoting fdrake
Roughly. By which I mean that the importance of recognising the functional role of this semantics is that it only need identify a similar enough environmental object to get the job done. we don't need to know if we're including the errant screw to get the expression "put the kettle on!" to work. It'll do it's job even if I'm not sure if 'the kettle' even exists. Even if I've never seen 'the kettle', but merely assume there is one in the kitchen. In this latter case, by 'the kettle' I simply mean 'whatever it is in your kitchen you use to boil water'. I'm not (yet) seeing how such vague and ephemeral environmental objects can be amenable to analysis of their properties to make "the kettle is black" something which can be eternally, objectively 'true', outside of the language game in which it was used. Something like a pragmatic view of truth is the closest here, I think, I can see a possible route to such an approach.
Quoting fdrake
As with "put the kettle on" above, semantic content doesn't seem to always need to be informative about an object's state. I might not even know of the existence of an object in that expression, so I can't see how my use of the term 'the kettle' could carry information about it's state?
Quoting fdrake
This makes a lot of sense. It does point, though, to something more of a pragmatic view of truth, rather than a correspondence view. True here being contextual, being about a model of events which works as an explanation. I have some sympathy for that position, but my quibble is that we simply don't always use the word that way.
Quoting fdrake
Again, I think this approach is attractive in that it gives some explanation of why an expression might work, why that particular collection of words might get a job done that some other collection would not have. Because it's tracked the shared pattern of events. I can communicate remarkably effectively with someone whom I've never met an share no common language with. The can 'see' what I'm trying to get them to do, and vice versa. I could get a villager in Morocco to put the kettle on despite having no shared language and never having met. I can do this because that villager can make good predictions about what my behaviour indicates simply by virtue of their brain having made similar predictions about their own body (but this is all an aside). The point being that our shared history of interacting with the environment creates similar models of it which we can then use to infer intent in others. Language merely expediting that process.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, I really like this. Linguistic acts used to denote, and keep consistent, shared expectations, and do so by repeated successful use. Definitely moving toward pragmatism though, if we're wanting this to end up with a definition of 'truth'. We spoke before, I think, about the idea of my wanting my model of what a kettle is to be similar to yours in order to reduce surprise when interacting with you. The way I can use things like ostension and language. I think what you're saying here ties into that nicely. The barrier still in place against correspondence, though, is the lack of specificity. I only need 'the kettle' to be sufficiently similar in our shared expectations about it to maximally reduce surprise. Too specific a object won't do that, it actually needs to be vague to have a chance of my having unsurprising expectations of it.
Quoting fdrake
If I've understood you correctly here, this is similar to what I was saying earlier about the environment constraining what can be said. It sets limits on what will work because regardless of out models of it, it is set out in such and such a way and it's not a homogenous soup which we can make of what we will. There may be a wide range of values which will make "the kettle is boiling" true (in that sense), but they will not be infinite. "the kettle is boiling" won't work given certain environmental constraints. Again, pointing to a rough correspondence, but one insufficiently specific to be amenable to the sorts of truth analysis direct correspondence would seem to need.
I think some of them carry behavioural expectations as norms (prosaically "I expect this to be done") and some of them carry them as predictions ("If I flip the switch, the kettle will boil")
Quoting Isaac
I guess I'm not trying to say it needs to be "eternally" true. Though I think it may be "eternally" true to say "I boiled the kettle on the 3rd of March 2022", since I did indeed boil the kettle on that day. That happened, if people forget it doesn't change it. A more striking example may be "my shower broke on October 3rd 2021" - that event had an enduring presence, and it would not have fixed itself.
Declarative statements about past events which contain an indexical of occurrence time maybe do behave like that. They at least seem to behave like that in the "language game" of recording events.
Quoting Isaac
I think that is an issue with the account, but I don't think it's irresolvable. Functions also summarise processes. Like when you flip the switch on a kettle, that will impact the inner circuitry, the plug, the atoms in the element, your electricity bill etc, but that's a set of ambiguously but sometimes required entailments (expectations!) around flipping the switch to boil the kettle. When you flip the switch to boil the kettle, it's expected to set up a relatively complicated environmental process - which is engendered by the semantic content of statements about it.
EG it's really weird to make statements like "The kettle boiled and I poured cold water from it immediately"/ "The kettle boiled and the water stayed still". You convey an expectation of behaviour and then negate it; the meaning of the sentence part "the kettle boiled" is in conflict with the second bit precisely because the first bit doesn't necessarily fix all the events around it, or which can be embedded in relevant descriptions of causal chains involving it, but nevertheless constrains expectations of other sentence parts. The overall sentence "The kettle boiled and I poured cold water from it immediately" doesn't make much sense, despite being grammatical, because the expected behaviour of the environment (the truthmakers of each conjunct) are in a conflict of behavioural expectation.
I think that illustrates the functional roles are also "modulo" perceptual demarcation or other environmental parsing, just like the words about them. Nevertheless, they are in something like a representational relationship with environmental subprocesses - like what is entailed by successfully flipping the switch on a kettle to boil it.
So when someone says "the kettle is boiling", its semantic content reaches out into the world as it's parsed, and its truth presents an match between the parsing of environmental objects and what (parsed) subprocesses those objects bear. It's nevertheless an expectation of the real kettle's behaviour, a parsing of its subprocesses into boiling, which we state with "the kettle is boiling".
I do agree that how a relatively un-detailed statement like "the kettle is boiling" can be made true by the behaviour of a concrete particular is something that needs an account though. I've tried to gesture towards how I think about that account with subprocesses and perceptual demarcation of environmental flows into functional summaries.
As a rough summary by example, ""the kettle is boiling" is true" makes sense at its level of descriptive granularity because: ( 1 ) the definite article "the" picks out a specific kettle in the environment ( 2 ) that kettle is individuated from its environment by parsing it into salient objects with distinct patterns of behaviour ( 3 ) "is boiling" states a type of environmental pattern the kettle partakes in ( 4 ) under our level of demarcation, it's "only" the kettle that could boil, not the electrical currents or the plug socket despite both partaking in the boiling process ( 5 ) the kettle exhibits the parsed expectations which constitute (somewhat fuzzily!) boiling ( 6 ) that makes "the kettle is boiling" true.
As for how that sentence works in the context of a philosophical discussion, it seems to implicitly quantify over environments in which to evaluate kettle boiling - a summary of scenarios in which someone would evaluate the claim. If you zoom in on a context I claim it behaves as above.
Though someone would rarely need to state ""the kettle is boiling" is true", they'd simply say "the kettle is boiling".
I think that's true, and there's a need to account for how general descriptive terms are in declarative statements vs how specific the behaviour of the concrete particulars denoted in those declarative statements are. There's got to be some means of summary and parsing that contextualises the generality of "boiling" into the context of the kettle.
I also want to stress that behavioural expectations conveyed in a phrase also have positive content even if they don't fully specify the behaviour of some concrete particular. If you say "the kettle is boiling" you expect bubbles of some sort and hot water, even if bubbles and hot water are being treated more like placeholders for fuzzy but satisfiable classes of environmental states rather than as stand ins for the specific behaviour of that kettle at the time. Bubbles, not "these bubbles", hot water, not "these water molecules". If statements needed to do the latter to be true, they'd lose their iterability - you can never boil the same kettle twice.
I agree. My effort to try and argue for a deficiency in deflationism's account of truth may have made it seem as though I was arguing wholly in favour of correspondence, but I am aware that correspondence has its own problems. The deficiency of deflationism - that I only had a vague sense of - is probably best captured by the appreciably more articulate account you gave here:
Quoting fdrake
The deflationary equivalence of environmental events to sentences omits something from the account of truth, or the common use of "is true", in at least some cases. I take this omission to be our evidence-based consent/satisfaction that the sentences are true because they accurately describe the environmental events (where empirical matters are concerned). This is where truthmakers and/or truth conditions are relevant. In many case we can satisfy ourselves that a sentence is true or not by seeing the environmental events for ourselves directly. And I think that some other uses of "is true" may be parasitic on this one, where we say "is true" because we believe that if we could have seen it for ourselves (e.g. historical events), then we would be satisfied in the same way - because the environmental events really were as described. Of course, this is all constrained by the deflationary "collectively enacted meaning"(s) of our language - as you put it earlier.
I also find the deflationary account of truth lacking in a more basic sense. It may be so that "p is true" means no more than "p", but that's only if "p" is true. I find this account of truth lacking because it doesn't tell us what makes "p" true, why we might say "p" is true, or why we use "is true" in the way(s) we do.
No, Srap is claiming that if someone "knows" something, "remembers" something, "sees" something, or "regrets" something, then without a formal definition of these words, it is logically implied that what the person knows, remembers, sees, or regrets, is necessarily the case. Of course this is clearly invalid logic. We cannot produce any deductive conclusions from a word or symbol without any defining propositions.
What does it really mean to "assume meaning"? In the broadest sense, a poem has meaning. And really I'd want to include that sort of thing in any understanding of meaning, which has nothing to do with truth. "assuming meaning" gives us more powers than truth-telling. Natural languages are absurdly powerful in terms of what they can do with meaning, to the point of creating new words wholesale, it can be tooled into scientific disciplines or epic poems or rarified philosophical thoughts or recipes or the fleeting thoughts of our everyday life.
But, really, that's just asking my conversation partner if they'd like to beg the question on truth with me without specifying that we're begging the question on truth to see if there's some other way to put the matter.
EDIT: More or less I think I'm starting to see my own dead-end, but I'm not sure which turn along the way got me here. The opposite of aporia -- constipated confusion :D
First: utmost respect; interesting and informative dialectic.
Second: how, in the answer to “what is truth”, should that general dialectic by conditioned by at least an unstated presupposition, or at most, a particular falsehood?
Case in point: the conclusion you can never boil the same kettle twice is justified, but only insofar as to state a kettle boils even once, while not impossible, is nonetheless contrary to experience and diminishes the power of the affirmation for what truth is. Kettles don’t boil, even though that is the linguistic and therefore logical construct presented in the dialectic, which necessitates the unstated presupposition in order to validate the argument. In effect, what is true is being conditioned by a mere presupposition, such that an example of what is a truth, but absolutely nothing is accomplished by it, with respect to what truth is.
As states, in an apparently Hume-ian fashion, re: “constant conjunction”, if you say the kettle is boiling, you expect bubbles, which would be the case, for this is at root an analytic judgement. But the tacit understanding the bubbles expected are given by the content of the kettle and not the boiling kettle, immediately makes the statement itself no longer analytic, and thus becomes the source of an illogical inference, and....as we all know....needs awaken one from his “dogmatic slumber”.
Now I’ll rejoin that rather minuscule human demographic of the overly-critical, or, if preferred, the more general group of those hopelessly under-informed, but perhaps you’d agree with me that the initial metaphysical question cannot be answered with empirical examples.
First, do the words have a meaning in the first place, and if they do, who or what determined their meaning ? And if their meaning has been determined, where is this meaning to be found ?
IE, the truth value of a synthetic proposition cannot be known empirically until the meaning of the words within it are known analytically.
I'm trying not to come at this from a Humean "mere custom and habit" angle of causal succession, I'm trying to come at it from the perspective that patterns of association in language mirror patterns of association in environments; the histories of the two get intertwined through the mirroring relationship. I take this to be closer to Dennett - some sort of realist by my reading - rather than Hume - some sort of anti-realist by my reading. The passage in this paper beginning "To the Left" with the black and white pixillated pictures of elephants.
I realise there's a lot of work left to be done in fleshing out my perspective.
This is a thing.
Quoting fdrake
And I almost asked if you felt a little queasy when you reached for words like "tracking" and "mirroring," but it turns out you had something quite specific in mind.
I found your post really interesting but couldn't help feeling -- sorry -- that it was old wine in a new bottle. That is, same problem in new language that doesn't have the apparent baggage of the old, but must if it's to do what we want -- so if universally accepted among philosophers, would lead to sixty years of debate about what mirroring is and whether it's a real thing, as a sequel to the debate over reference. That's not a substantive reply so I didn't -- though now I have!
I think @Mww had a gut reaction near mine, that this is just not what a solution to the question at hand must look like, and that's why I felt it must be a restatement of the problem instead of a solution.
Issues I am alive to in what I'm writing:
(1) Not all questions get answers. Some questions are ill-conceived and attempts to answer them, no matter how circumspect, are doomed to fail. (So, above, "what we want" might be something we shouldn't want, or we only think that's what we want but it isn't, etc.)
(2) There is a difference between a problem-and-proposed-solutions approach, and a model-building approach. Model-builders claim, in part, that the problem can only be a problem within a given -- which may mean, presumed -- model.
(3) One can claim, not quite to the converse, that a model is a framework for presenting and clarifying a problem; problem first, then model. That's one, more or less happy, way of taking "within." [hide="note that maybe shouldn't be parenthetical"](This may mean acknowledging that the "original" presentation of the problem was within another framework -- everyday informal reasoning, the manifest image, folk psychology, all popular candidates -- but that offering a solution is at least a reshuffling or recasting of that originating model, and maybe a lot more than that. Normal people, not us, don't worry about reference, but they worry quite a bit about truth, and about the aboutness of what they say, though only rarely in the quite general way we do. All of which is to say that problem-first might or might not actually agree with what model-first is about to say, might be a specific version of model-first.)[/hide]
But there are two sides here, and while they agree that a problem can only be presented within a framework, the other side -- model first -- has the option of claiming that a problem "within" a model (or framework) can also be taken as a problem for the model, an indication there is something wrong with it. In that case, the solution is always a new model, even if that model is merely an extension or outgrowth of the old one. Correct models -- Zeus's models -- do not have problems.
This is kinda what the progress of science looks like sometimes, this iterative (and cumulative, ratcheting) re-modeling structured around eliminating each generation's problems in the next generation. (Eliminating in a way consistent with the evidence, not just defining away. Why are these variable related but not those? --- Oh my god! If you rotate the axes, you can see that ..., and that must mean we were actually measuring ..., and so on.)
(4) And that question, of the fidelity and effectiveness of a model, looks shockingly like the substantive issue under discussion. Enter @Mww with his (?) reminder that there are metaphysical stakes here.
(5) Minor issue. There are differences in intellectual temperament that make your posts difficult for me sometimes. ("You" = @fdrake.) You're more "synthetical" and speculative; I'm more "analytical" and -- what's an opposite for "speculative"? Evidence-focused rather than theory-focused? Even with a post like this, I can't help including a folksy example. (Thought maybe I hadn't, but nope, it's right there, end of (3).) Apo said once that I was "too concrete." Analytical me can't ever use words like "enmeshed" or "intertwined" without feeling like I'm cheating. "Enmeshed," to me, is a weasel word -- but it's a perfectly legitimate placeholder when you're model-building! ("These are intimately related, I just can't specify how yet.")
*
That's enough. I really want to start all over with this reference and truth stuff, but we'll see. Nothing I've posted so far has gone anywhere.
Quoting fdrake
Would you say something similar about the relation between perception and an environment? Something like the following?
‘perception is fundamentally the truthful reconstruction of a portion of the physical world through a registering of existing environmental information.’
Understood, and agreed, in principle. My language would be......errrr, shall I say, older?.....different, but the idea behind it would be congruent. My reluctant quibble would be, then, from whence comes the mirror, and what form does the mirror require in order for the associations to work.
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Quoting Srap Tasmaner
....and from this well-worn and exceedingly comfortable armchair, a very big thing it is. The solution seems to have become the disregard of metaphysical questions, or at the very least turn them into anthropological/psychological questions. Which is, I must say, “...beneath the dignity of philosophy...”.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
HA!!! My post on pg 45 didn’t even get a response, even though it contained a distinct and irreducible answer to the question. Might not be correct, and is certainly open to disagreement, but at least it was there.
The Revision theory has an interesting take on this, giving an analysis of circular definitions that shows their pathology, where it is present. The conclusion is that T-sentences are definitions that are not pathological.
I still do, even though I had something specific in mind. What I'm gesturing towards is quite mechanical sounding but there isn't a specified mechanism. I have in mind something like "custom and habit" of language use (word successions and contextual dependences) coming to summarise, mirror and enact what the language is used for because of a shared causal history and informational links. Both those notions need a lot of fleshing out, and I don't have the chops for it honestly.
Regardless, I think the central issues are: how does semantic content relate to the world and if it does, does it relate proximally to the world or to people or both (in the right ways)?. Those two things are still Kant flavour questions. So I think I get where you and @Mww are coming from. I think @Isaac's criticisms are also of the same flavour (from my perspective), since the "hidden states" which nevertheless have informational impact on "internal states" through content forming constraint seems like another way of having a debate about schemes and content (content informed by scheme = content is proximally scheme flavour, not world flavour) intersecting with the externalism vs internalism (and compromises) of semantic content debate.
In some respect I'm definitely astroturfing old ground.Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Quoting Joshs
Not exactly! I don't think it's right (even scientifically) to say that perception always and only aims at accurate representation. That's part of what it does, it has other goals. It is also difficult to distinguish what is accurate from what is useful I think. It'd be a bit shit if we couldn't accurately discern how stuff in the environment behaved - doubt we'd be able to do much, but I don't think that's what perception's "for".
Quoting Mww
Probably not surprising @Srap Tasmaner, I agree with you that it's a metaphysical issue, I'd just frame it that anthropology and psychology are already metaphysical. They're both ways of understanding our understanding of the world and the world itself, they posit entities, have ontological commitments, people quibble over which entities exist, which framework should the entities be interpreted in and so on.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I do feel uncomfortable with using them, yeah. I'd feel more uncomfortable if I felt I'd done more than gesture towards a mechanism, or a space in which one might be conceptualised at least. I do feel however that terms in philosophy tend to be vague on the mechanisms of how they might work (like how do categories constraint perceptions, tell me in terms of my body plx - how does a denoting expression come to stably denote, give me the history of the word and a theory of language propagation please).
I disagree! I think we've come to a better understanding of the discussants' perspectives. Wouldn't've happened without you facilitating it.
I second this! You were a great aid in spurring on thoughts which I hadn't had before this! And while I didn't reply to everything, I did actually read everything -- and really enjoyed picking through people's thoughts and references (Got to page 4 of A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs today -- it just takes me time to read things)
I got that quote from Francisco Varela’s ‘Ethical Knowhow’. He is contrasting the old representational rationalist realist model of perception with the enactivist approach, in which perceiving is not representing but acting.
“According to the enactive approach, however,
the point of departure for understanding perception is the study of how the perceiver guides his actions in local situations. Since these local situations
constantly change as a result of the perceiver’s activity, the reference point for understanding perception is no longer a pre-given, perceiver-independent world,
but rather the sensorimotor structure of the cognitive agent, the way in which the nervous system links sensory and motor surfaces. It is this structure – the
manner in which the perceiver is embodied – and not some pre-given world, that determines how the perceiver can act and be modulated by environmental events. Thus
the overall concern of an enactive approach to perception is not to determine how some perceiver-independent world is to be recovered; it is, rather, to determine
the common principles or lawful linkages between sensory and motor systems that explain how action can be perceptually guided in a perceiver-dependent world.
In the enactive approach reality is not a given: it is perceiver dependent, not because the perceiver “constructs” it as he or she pleases, but because what counts as a relevant world is inseparable from the structure of the perceiver.”
The enactivist rejection of representationalism applies to conceptualization as well as perception , sine the latter is built from the former. Thinking of linguistic conceptualization as acting upon a responsively changing environment rather than mirroring a pre-existing environment impacts on the understanding of truth.
Quoting fdrake
These are not mutually incompatible...
For my part I remain at the point of departure, where truth is not definable beyond the functionality found in T-sentences. A combination of @"Srap's (1) and (2), but without truth conditions...
Did 'boiling' involve getting all the water to 100C, a rolling boil, the first bubbles, too hot to touch ("that's boiling!")... I don't see how we can establish the truth of such a vague and contextualised notion as 'boiling', even if we pin the event right down to the millisecond.
We could say that it's true that you did something which matches the description. But that just gets us back to where I started (or was it another thread?), where the truth of "I boiled the kettle" amounts to little more than whether you've used the words correctly in your language. "I boiled the kettle" is true because the thing you did is one of the things the expression could rightly be used to describe.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, I think this is right, it's (for me) an example of the way that hidden states constrain our models of them. We can have a range if modelled expectations for the entailments of 'boiling a kettle', but none of them can have cold water come out. None of them can result in ice. The hidden states we're trying to reduce surprise in are real and so have constraints. What I'm arguing here (though mostly paraphrasing Ramsey) is that because hidden states are not themselves models, nor bounded in any way, no 'natural kinds', there's no right model. There's only wrong ones. Truth (as correspondence) seems to need a right model.
Quoting fdrake
This is a good framework from which to progress, it gives us something to work with. The quibbles...
In (1) the definite article acts as an agreement that we will treat a part of the environment as a kettle it doesn't need us to treat exactly the same part of the environment that way, only similar enough that I'm not going to surprise you and vice versa, which constrains the choices to one which is going to respond roughly the same way. So (2) I have little trouble with except to add that we enact those objects, we can create as well as curate, but that still probably gets us to the same place. (3)and (4) I have no issue with. At (5) I think we miss a step. So at (1) we agree to treat a part of the environment as a kettle, at (3) we do the same for 'boiling', but the theory that the kettle at (1) is exhibiting the pattern at (3) is still, like any theory, subject to underdetermination. Something as simple as 'the kettle is boiling' admits of very little wiggle room for such, but still an important point with regards to 'truth' because it means that even the process-derived truth at (6) remains somewhat agreed on. We don't escape the need for us to socially agree in order for something the have a truth value by this means, it's just that we're constrained in what we could ever possibly socially agree to and still function.
Ha! I hadn't even noticed. Which makes your comment all the more pertinent, I think. In my view, it goes back to what I was saying earlier about expectation and the use of language as a tool. I can communicate relatively well with someone who doesn't even share my language. I could say "the kettle is boiling", add a few gestures and, if I was in the right context, I could probably get the message across even if the other person had no idea what the words meant before our meeting. So what's happening here is not really to do with the semantic content of each word, or the order we put them in. It's to do with another person sharing my model, my expectations. Watching my behaviour, and using their own explanatory model of their own behaviour to predict what I'm thinking. The words are just me helping to facilitate that, but the process is happening anyway, facilitated or not.
Is Kant's definition of truth, "the accordance of the cognition with its object”, much different to Aristotle's definition "To say of what is that it is ... is true"?
As @Srap Tasmaner has pointed out, know is a factive [*] term while imagine is not. One can imagine that Trump is still the president of the US but one can't know that he is, since he isn't. The required premise (Kp ? p) comes from observing how the term know is ordinarily used in language.
--
[*] factive
adjective
1. (of a verb, adjective, or noun phrase) presupposing the truth of an embedded sentence that serves as complement, as realize in I didn't realize that he had left, which presupposes that it is true that he had left.
The point is, that for the logic to be valid :"know" must be defined as a "factive" term as a premise. Other wise, this notion that knowing something logically implies the existence of the thing known is an unstated premise which is required for the claimed conclusion. Conclusions which require additional premises other than those stated are not valid conclusions.
Quoting Andrew M
That's not a premise in Srap's proposal, because it's not stated as a premise. If it were stated then we could judge the truth or falsity of it. This is the problem, relying on unstated premises denies us the capacity to judge the soundness of the premise. Then the unsoundness of the unstated premise is allowed to contaminate the validity of the logic.
Also, there is very much ambiguity in the normal use of the term "know", so that premise, if stated ought to be judged as false (dishonest sophistry). Much more often than not, |know" is used in a fallible way, as I said much earlier. When people say "I know that X is the case", they are most often not claiming absolute certainty, that it is impossible for things to be otherwise
Regarding Aristotle, for those interested, and for context, see Metaphysics, 4, 1011b.
I think much different, yes. “...This will be plain if we first define truth and falsehood....”, which immediately precedes the passage in question, so it appears by defining both, he is merely pointing out what he calls “contraries”, and subsequently, to eliminate what he calls “intermediaries”. In effect, whatever is said about anything at all, that is to say, anything that exists....his words...., must be either entirely true or false, not both under the same conditions, and not part of one and part of the other under the same conditions. So we have statements concerning that which is true or false, but....again....not what true or false is.
As well, it is logically inconsistent to contain the word being defined within its own definition, which Aristotle does, but Kant does not. From that alone, it may be said Aristotle is not defining what truth is, but simply relating truth to that which is not false.
To relate Aristotle’s passage to Kant, it is probably better to use Kant’s, “the mark of truth is that for which the negation is a contradiction”. Not to be confused with, “ the mark of necessity is that for which the negation is impossible”.
Besides, a cognition qua procedural mental event, is far antecedent to its representation in language form in the saying of it. To say a thing is true presupposes, albeit perhaps only metaphysically, the cognition from which the language representing that truth, is assembled in the form of a particular judgement.
Yes? No? Maybe?
D’accord. This notion holds even for rote instruction, such that those youngsters in their first years of schooling, by merely perceiving the objects of instruction, still have to relate those objects to an self-contained, internal, system of their own, consistently, with whichever arbitrary source they come from.
Taking the notion a step further, while it is your expectation, it is another’s anticipation. You expect me to understand; I anticipate I will. And vice versa.
"Little more" is a bit of a covering word there right? It's also true because an event occurred which was parsed as the kettle boiling. You can go down the "argument from illusion" route to contest that claim though. It's another of these things that @Srap Tasmaner and @Mww have highlighted are easy to interpret in terms of old philosophical debates.
This one's a lot like Kant's distinction between phenomenon and noumenon (though please correct me if I'm wrong @Mww) in the context of sensible (proximally environmentally caused) and non-sensible intuition (not proximally caused by environment). [hide=*] (though I don't believe Kant thinks of the environmental dependence as strictly causal?)[/hide]
Quoting from SEP
We could rehash the old ground of sensible vs non-sensible intuition in the context of the semantic content of "the kettle is boiling" necessarily having a causal relationship with the state of the kettle, vs claiming it does not have one (and instead proximally depends upon the correct use of words). More SEP on the matter:
Effectively we're arguing about whether semantic content relates to appearance or phenomenon!
Quoting Isaac
I can understand the claim that the causal relationships we have with the environment place a constraint on the semantic content of phrases, rather than totally determining them. I would like to ask you though, what do you see as causing phrases to have semantic content that we can collectively relate to and are approximately constant between people in many circumstances? To me the simplest explanation is that the causal constraints are so tight that they are also strongly discriminatory about the environmental properties which generate them; like with @Michael's examples about the colour red and its intervals of light wavelength. We might not fix the edge cases of content between orange, yellow and red with that, but we fix it enough for semantic content to iterate over phrases (be learned and propagate) and be coupled to environmental dynamics so hard we can make demonstrative examples and often correctly infer how to use words.
Quoting fdrake
Semantic content: having to do with meaning of linguistic or logic symbols.
A.) neither phenomena nor noumena, as such, have to do with symbols of any kind, with the acknowledgement that representation is itself not a symbol, but an integral member of a particular intelligence system, and......
B.) phenomena arise from sensibility as the faculty of intuition, but noumena arise from understanding as the faculty of thought, and while for human cognition they must work in conjunction with each other, they are entirely different faculties, and in and of themselves, do not relate to each other.
Regarding the kettle is boiling statement, the kettle is a phenomenon, insofar as there is a general, undetermined object of perception susceptible to being represented by a particular conception, or a manifold of related conceptions. (Kettles are metal of a shape, but also this metal or that metal of a shape). So it’s hard to see anything in the present discussion having to do with the distinction between phenomena and noumena. Perfect example of this, in relation to Kant anyway, is that there are a veritable plethora of representations of phenomena, the kettle being one of course, but not a single one, ever, anywhere, representing a noumenon. We can think noumenon, but we can never represent to ourselves, a noumenon. If we cannot represent to ourselves a noumenon, we cannot affirm semantic content for it.
If it be acknowledged that words represent conceptions, and conceptions arise from the faculty of understanding alone, then semantic content has nothing to do with phenomena nor appearance, insofar as those arise from sensibility. Semantic content, then, relates to what we think about phenomena, but does not relate to phenomena themselves. And what we think about phenomena, manifests in the conceptions attached to them. (Correctly....synthesized with them via imagination, but I suspect eyebrows reaching for the heavens here, so.....never mind)
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Hell...I’ve come this far, might as well continue, right?
In Kemp Smith 1929 and Guyer/Wood 1989 this is correct, but in Meiklejohn 1856-7 it reads “...The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called phenomenon...”. Why does this matter, you ask, and I know you are. Well, taking the standard pagination as gospel, in conjunction with the index of terminology, phenomena isn’t even mentioned, except in Meiklejohn, clean up to A249/B306. If phenomena are a condition of sensibility, why did he wait so long to present an exposition as to what they are, and when he did, it was in the section devoted to the faculty of understanding. An explanation for this can be found in the text, but sorta requires a certain interpretive inclination.
Ahhhh....now the nifty stuff, in which has made a great point: appearance with respect to sensibility is presence, the presence of an undetermined object of sensation, the schema of our intuitions; appearance with respect to understanding is image, the schema of our conceptions. We are not conscious of our phenomena, but we are conscious of our images. Kant was an admitted dualist, so does not contradict himself in using appearance in two senses, and the reader must satisfy himself as to the separation logically mandated by their respective use.
When appearance is in the sense of image, it must have been given a semantic content, re: a logical composition, re: a synthesis of related conceptions. Otherwise, there would be nothing comprehensible on which to form a rational judgement, and therefore knowledge of that object we initially sensed, would be false at best hence possibly correctable, or altogether impossible at worst, hence not correctable at all.
Kinda like....the image we construct is what the presence is judged to look like. I mean...we can really envision an object we know, without it being present.
Quoting Isaac
A particular bacterium’s niche involves its normative interactions with sugar molecules, its sensitivity to sugar gradients . Would I be correct in stating that what can surprise this creature, as a hidden state, belongs to this normative functioning? Are hidden states thus bounded in this sense by the the aims of the organism in its niche?
And if this is the case, can we not consider language use as also normative practices of interaction with an environment that is itself ‘bounded’ by the purposes of the language user, even when they are surprised?
Quoting Isaac
Do the words merely hook onto and describe an action, or are the words themselves actions , normatively guided forms of doing that aim to change an environment in anticipated ways that can be disappointed or invalidated as well as affirmed by the feedback from the environment they alter?
Quoting Isaac
In keeping with the idea of words as normatively guided actions on the world, intersubjective agreement on truth wouldnt merely be a conceptual normatively divided off from the natural objects that act as causes of our conceptual schemes. Agreement would be equally about material practices that are intrinsic to word use. Our words are not just accountable to the linguistic conventions of the group , but are directly accountable to the feedback from the modifications of material circumstances our words enact.
That is how knowledge is ordinarily defined. As the following sources show:
1. Socrates: knowledge as true opinion that stays with us (Plato, Meno 97)
2. Knowledge as justified, true belief (SEP - The Analysis of Knowledge)
3. '... one cannot have "knowledge that" of something that is not true. A necessary condition of "A knows that p," therefore, is p.' (Britannica - epistemology)
4. factive: denoting a verb that assigns the status of an established fact to its object (normally a clausal object), e.g. know, regret, resent. (Oxford Languages)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So let's state it:
[math]\ \ \ \ \ Kp\ \vdash\ p[/math]
Which is to say, if it is known that p is true then p is true. And from which follows, by modus tollens:
[math]\ \ \ \ \ \neg p\ \vdash\ \neg Kp[/math]
Which is to say, if p is false then it is not known that p is true
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Whether people are claiming absolute certainty or not isn't relevant. That knowledge entails truth means only that if someone does know X then X is the case.
First, Aristotle says that he is defining truth and falsehood. Second, the word is not defined within its own definition. Truth is defined as "to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not". Falsity is defined as "to say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is".
For example, to say of white snow that it is white snow, is true.
Quoting Mww
Maybe? For Aristotle, to say something is a cognitive act. Kant says that “The nominal definition of truth, that it is the agreement of [a cognition] with its object, is assumed as granted” (1787, B82) (SEP) Which to me implies that Kant isn't intending to differ from the classical account.
Yes, that is how "knowledge", as the subject of epistemology, is normally defined. But we were not talking about "knowledge", the epistemological subject, we were talking about normal use of "know" as an attitude. And the fact is that people often claim to know things, which turn out to be not the case. So the definitions which epistemologists prescribe as to what "knowledge" ought to mean, do not accurately reflect how "know" is truly used.
But this is all irrelevant, because the point was that without the premise being stated, the logic is invalid.
Quoting Andrew M
So here you have the premise stated. But in Srap's rendition of the propositional attitude, this is not stated as a premise, it is presented as a valid conclusion. Srap also extended this invalid logic to other attitudes, to conclude if it is remembered it is what is the case, if it is seen it is what is the case, and if it is regretted it is what is the case. The point is that one might state these as premises, as you have, to be judged for truth or falsity, but to present them as logically valid conclusions without providing the premises required to make the conclusion, is a mistake.
Quoting Andrew M
You can state this as a premise, in which case I would reject the premise as unsound, because much knowledge ends up not properly representing what is the case, and therefore requiring revision, but you have not yet shown the premises required to make this ("if someone does know X then X is the case") a logically valid conclusion. That is the point I've been making.
The problem I believe is in how you relate "true" to "is the case". If "true" means what is the case, and if knowledge entails truth, then knowing X means that X is the case. However, as I explained above, in common usage knowing X does not mean X is the case. So there is a problem here. But if we conceive of "true" as I proposed earlier in the thread, to be a representation of one's honest belief, then knowing entails truth, as commonly said by epistemologists, but truth does not necessarily mean what is the case.
You are repeating the same error that I pointed out to you before.
Does it turn out that the person does not know that the proposition, p, is true (i.e. ~Kp), or does it turn out that the person knows that the proposition, p, is not true (i.e. K~p)?
That is, does it turn out that they don’t know p, or that they know not-p?
If the former, then it’s irrelevant to what Srap said. If the latter, then what does it mean that they claim to know p but it turns out they know not-p? How is that possible?
I think so. I'd been using expectation as if it were synonymous with anticipation. I'm used to talking as if our brains are surprised by what our bodies do. Bayesian models and all that...
Quoting fdrake
"Also"? It seems to be saying the same thing. After all if a different event had occurred, or no event at all, you wouldn't have used the words correctly...?
Quoting fdrake
I see it a third way (if that's allowed). Our phenomena are private, so we can't have a public language referring to them. But appearances (hidden states) are inaccessible except via our models, so we can't have a language that's in a one to one correspondence with them either. So to what does the semantic content of expressions refer? My answer is that they refer to a collective fiction. an agreed on, shared model. Just like the fact that we all 'know' Aragorn was king of Gondor. We can talk about Aragorn and his goings on and be right/wrong about them. Kettles are like that. A collective story about the causes of the sensations we all experience, kept consistent by repeated joint activity and repeated joint language use. Which leads directly to...
Quoting fdrake
I don't think we do. I think that the success of a expression is a post hoc story. I think we're very good a modelling other people's intentions based on their behaviour and the environment they're in. So when they say "Put the kettle on" we almost know already what it was they wanted done. That's why, if someone with some form of aphasia accidentally said "Put the cat on" in those same circumstances we'd pause only a breath before carrying out exactly the same instruction as if they'd said "put the kettle on". We already seemed to have a good prediction of what it was they meant by the expression before they even said it.
Quoting Joshs
In a sense, yes, but I don't think 'bounded' is quite right, more fuzzy edged than that. A creature (bacterium in this case) has to cohere to survive, it has to resist entropy, forces which would cause it to disintegrate. In order to do that, it has to be able to make changes to its environment (and I'm including it's body here, anything outside of the system's Markov blanket). In order to do that it has to reduce surprise (surprise here is just inconsistency, randomness, entropy).
So yes, this activity will take place within it's niche and so in that sense you're right, but the main driver of this activity is the need to reduce entropy in order to remain a bounded organism (rather than just soup) and that is not bounded by it's particular aims, it's common to any self-organising system.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, I think we can here because language use is a social tool, it only works if other people in our community go along with it. It's a surprise minimisation tool, like any other, it's job is to reduce the surprise other people's behaviour might otherwise exhibit, but it works by us all agreeing, to an extent, on the functions of each expression, the means by which the surprise is reduced. In that sense, language is absolutely going to be bounded by the purposes of the users because we're only going to be able to share models we ourselves have some version of and we don't develop those models in isolation, we often 'pick them off the shelf' of models our society has available for us, most of which are stored and disseminated in the medium of language.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, I think it's both. Words (expressions) are definitely actions aimed at making an environment match more closely our expectation of it (the enaction side of active inference). But they only succeed in doing that (when they do succeed) because of the hook they have to other people's models, and this hook is only possible because we quite good at modelling (ie our models are quite accurate predictors of hidden states). If this latter weren't the case, then we'd find it very difficult to share terms, we'd have no common ground over which to share them (unless by complete coincidence!). Which, if I've understood you correctly, is almost exactly what you're saying with...
Quoting Joshs
...is that right?
My guess is you would say that what makes one theory better than another is that it produces less surprises?
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
If the semantic content of expressions refers to a collective fiction, then how is surprise possible?
It is not possible that Aragorn was not king of Gondor, but it is possible that the kettle is not boiling.
That is, it is not possible that "Aragorn was not king of Gondor" is true, but it is possible that "the kettle is not boiling" is true.
Assuming one is fluent with the language/model, it is no surprise that Aragorn is king of Gondor, but it can be a surprise to find the kettle is not boiling.
If truth is no more than semantic content (i.e. if "p is true" is no more than "p"), then there should be no surprises. Otherwise, it could imply that "p is true" is something more substantive than "p".
Just to play devil's advocate: The Myth of Factive Verbs.
The SEP article on knowledge summarises Hazlett's view as:
This is almost exactly what @Metaphysician Undercover is saying:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Your two options do not contain the correct choice. What is correct, is that what is at one time called "knowledge", is at another time not allowed to be called knowledge. So the same ideas at one point in time qualify to be called "knowledge", yet at a later time are said not to be knowledge. The person knew proposition p as true, then later decided proposition p is not true.
This implies that "knowledge" is a product of judgement, not a product of "what is the case". And, when we recognize the following two premises, knowledge is a product of human judgement, and that human judgement is fallible, we can conclude logically that knowledge may consist of some faulty judgements.
Knowledge is a feature of one's attitude. There is nothing unusual or strange here, just a recognition of the fact that people can change their minds. At one time the person knows "p", and at a later time the person knows "not-p". This demonstrates the need for skepticism. We must always revisit our knowledge, and keep abreast of the need for change.
That is why we ought to define "true" in the way that I proposed, as related to honesty rather than "what is the case". Then we can accurately represent Knowledge as justified true belief, because "true" would then signify the position of the ideas which comprise "knowledge" as relative to an honest attitude, rather than some pie in the sky absolute, referred to as "what is the case".
So there is no need for us to enquire as to what does "what is the case" signify, just a need to enquire as to what does "honesty" signify. The modern trend is to completely ignore the importance of honesty in knowledge, and replace it with something which no one can understand, "what is the case". Then we can endless discuss the meaning of "what is the case" thereby avoiding the true issue which is honesty.
So, what does the paper say about factive verbs?
I’ll have to leave that alone; I don’t see how classical can be derived from nominal, but that’s ok. Also....once again.....translator’s preference. The SEP quote is right, but mine on pg 45 herein, is also right, and different. In addition, the SEP quote, after “is assumed as granted”, leaves out “...and is presupposed”, which offers a clue as to what exactly definitions are supposed to do.
Nevertheless, there is rather apparently an intended difference between Kant and Aristotle, insofar as the former’s definition contains cognition, while the latter’s does not. They would have been much less different if Aristotle had said, “to think that what is is......”.
———
Quoting Andrew M
Granted, on a technicality.
“....This will be plain if we first define truth and falsehood. To say that what is is not, or that what is not is, is false; but to say that what is is, and what is not is not, is true....”
Still, it appears he writes that truth as such shall be defined, but really only exemplifies what form a true statement would have.
Anyway.....good enough for me. Thanks.
That a verb like "know" isn't factive.
Basically, yes.
Quoting Luke
I don't follow your argument here. I'm saying that the function of the collective fiction is to reduce surprise about each other's behaviour. Firstly one can still be surprised by that very behaviour if, for example, the fiction fails in its task. Second, one can still be surprised by one's environment. The actual response and the act of naming it are two different things. You seem to be conflating the two.
Nice find, reading it now.
We'll see how it goes. I've been using "factive" as a shorthand for this:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I would rather take the inference rule as primary and say that our usage of "know" mostly, though imperfectly, follows that -- that this is the nature of knowledge -- rather than saying the inference rule rests on an analysis of how we use the word "knows." (But there's a whole mess there on the relation of logic to the ordinary words we use for reasoning.)
Hazlett says
And I might be okay with that. Still reading.
That was one of my two options: At one time the person claimed to know p, but it turns out later that they did not know p. That is ~Kp.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Did they "decide" ~Kp or did they "decide" K~p? And how did they "decide" this?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm skeptical. You said at the start of your post that it's ~Kp, but now you are saying it's K~p.
My understanding on the factivity of "know" is that you cannot know ~p where p is true. For example, you cannot know that "the sky is green" where "the sky is blue" is true, you cannot know that "2+2=5" where "2+2=4" is true, etc. It is simply impossible to know ~p without contradiction.
This is why negative knowledge claims (i.e. ~Kp) are irrelevant. It's about positive knowledge of a falsehood.
But you remain ambiguous on whether you are talking about ~Kp or K~p.
There are responses to the paper; I have three queued up that aren't buying it.
Should probably be pushed off to another thread if people want to get into this.
Yeah, the SEP article does say that "Hazlett’s diagnosis is deeply controversial".
I'm taking this "collective fiction" to be equivalent with our language, which I also take to be roughly equivalent to the view of redundancy/deflationism. If the world is the model, then there should be no surprises. I used your example of '"Aragorn was king of Gondor" is true' to demonstrate this. That proposition is part of the "collective fiction" model and it's not possible that it could be false. But it is possibile that our model could be false in at least some respects, and that we could be surprised, because you speak of the possibility of a better model. Since it is possible that our model could be false in at least some respects, and that we could be surprised, it follows that there is more to truth than a mere "collective fiction".
Quoting Isaac
No, I'm saying that redundancy conflates the two. If "p is true" means no more than "p" and there is nothing "outside" language, then I don't see how it is possible for the fiction to fail in its task.
I don't understand how it's not possible to be false. "Aragorn is the king of Mordor" is false.
Quoting Luke
Why? You're connecting 'truth' to surprise but that's the very connection in question - the degree to which the truth of "the kettle is boiling" is connected to the hidden states that might surprise me. I'm not denying that hidden states can cause surprise I'm denying the link (or the strength of it) between them and the semantic content of a speech act such as "the kettle is boiling".
I might have a model of my environment that I interact with and could be surprised by (if I get my predictions wrong, or fail to control it). Correspondence theory seems to want have it that our words somehow try to match that environment. I'm arguing that that's not what our words do. Truth is a property of statements, so the extent to which our words don't match an external world, is the extent to which the truth is unrelated to the external world.
None of which is related to the question of whether that external world can surprise us.
Here's some chitchat about one of his cases, since I can't help it. There are lots of big problems with Hazlett's account, not least his use of Grice.
(1) Alice knew that stealing is a crime.
(2) Alice knew that stealing isn't a crime.
(3) Alice didn't know that stealing is a crime.
(4) Alice wasn't aware that stealing is a crime.
Hazlett points out that both (1) and (3) implicate (either imply or entail) that stealing is a crime, supporting, he thinks, the case that "stealing is a crime" is a (conversational, i.e., non-conventional?) implicature of (1). But what it supports, if anything, is that "stealing is a crime" is a presupposition of (1) and (3). Presupposition is not the same thing as conversational implicature. (On Strawson's account, roughly, where "The present king of France is bald" and "The present king of France is not bald" both presuppose that there is a present king of France.)
Every philosophy neophyte learns to distinguish (2) from (3), and that (2) is not the negation of (1), but at the same time learns that (3) is ambiguous between (2) and (4). The version of (3) that aligns with (2) could be expanded to
(3') Alice didn't know that stealing is a crime because it is isn't.
Now we're in the territory of something else that might look like conversational (rather than conventional) implicature, because this looks like cancellation, just as one might say
(5) I haven't stopped beating my spouse, because I never started beating my spouse.
But similarly, we might say
(6) The present king of France is not bald, because there is no present king of France.
And that's Russell's account, which disambiguates the scope as
(7) It is not the case that the present king of France is bald, because there is no present king of France.
But Russell's account is not based on conversational, non-conventional implicature, but simply entailment. On Russell's account,
(8) The present king of France is bald.
has the logical form
(9) There is a unique entity such that it is the present king of France, and that entity is bald.
Can we apply a similar analysis to Alice's knowledge of the criminality of theft? On the one hand, (3) could have the form:
(10) Stealing is a crime but Alice didn't know that.
or
(11) Stealing is not a crime, so Alice could not know that it is, and therefore did not know that it is.
((Or, "what's more, she didn't know," etc. There are options here.))
(10) makes a simple claim about Alice's epistemic state. (11) makes a claim about what Alice's epistemic state could or could not possibly be, and then infers what it was. Both make simple claims about the criminality of theft, which allow us to negate them by negating that claim, without reference to Alice, as with Russell's analysis.
(10) is noncommittal on whether knowledge entails truth, as it simply states two facts, one about stealing and one about Alice; (11) is not only consistent with a claim that knowledge entails truth, but relies on it.
Where does that leave the question of conversational implicature?
Grice claims that conversational implicature is "triggered" by an apparent violation of a maxim of conversation, which suggests that what you mean by uttering p must be different from the plain meaning of p, in order to preserve the assumption that you are cooperative (and not after all violating a maxim).
It does seem that the most natural reading of
(3) Alice didn't know that stealing is a crime.
is
(10) Stealing is a crime but Alice didn't know that.
rather than (11), and if you mean (11), you need to say so explicitly. Why should that be? And is this indication of how you expect (3) to be understood a case of implicature?
One reason (10) might be the more natural reading is because we expect the clause governed by "know" to be true or to be asserted to be true, so it is surprising bordering on misuse to place after "know" a proposition you assert to be false, just because you intend also to deny that this is a case of knowledge, precisely because its object is false. To speak in such a way would be a rhetorical flourish. ("I know no such thing, because it is not so!")
There may be other points in favor of (10): it is simpler, and more to the point, suggesting compliance with other maxims to be relevant and concise. But what we're looking for, as evidence of implicature, is apparent maxim violation, not compliance.
I'm also tempted to wonder whether (10) is more natural because it is "common knowledge" that stealing is a crime, but that's not (to my memory) part of Grice's account.
I haven't resolved the implicature issue but I still see nothing to support "knows" not being factive.
+++
To clarify: the presupposition analysis relies on a pair of entailments, not implicature; neither of those entails that Alice knows something that is not the case.
(10) says stealing is wrong and she doesn't know it; (11) is perhaps most simply taken as the negation of (2):
(12) Alice did not know that stealing is not a crime.
But then we have ambiguity again, so that's no help, hence (11).
******
Actually there's no need to stress over (11) and its relation to (10). (Or about implicature, since his usage has other issues anyway.)
What Hazlett is interested in is the straightforward (10), because then we have both Kp ? p and ~Kp ? p. That's the point of his argument. That's supposed to undercut the unique entailment from Kp to p. But that's because he gets there by (10), rather than (11), which doesn't even lead there.
And (10) interprets "Alice didn't know that stealing is a crime" as "Stealing is a crime, and Alice didn't know that," which of course entails that stealing is a crime.
The issue here is how we justify the (10) interpretation of (3). We would not treat all content this way; we would not, for instance, render
(B1) Harry thinks today is Sunday.
as
(B2) Today is Sunday and Harry thinks that.
Why not?
The simplest answer is that "believes" is not factive, but "knows" is. It allows us to rewrite
(K1) S knows that p
as
(K2) p and S knows that.
Another Russellian move would be to look at the scope: we're taking
(3) Alice didn't know that stealing is a crime.
as
(3') It is not the case that: Alice knew that stealing is a crime.
That means we have all of (1) embedded, and it's form should come out that same as before, without negation in front of it. If that's as above, we have a negated conjunction, and our ambiguity is a matter of which conjunct is negated.
(3'') Not both (i) stealing is a crime, and (ii) Alice knew that.
And, again, that analysis only comes off if we have the rewrite rule (K2).
:up:
It may be that the history of research in artificial intelligence refutes that suggestion -- I'm in no position to say -- but it is a pregnant thought as we imagine modeling our mental lives, or at least a reminder to give some thought to the source of its evident complexity.
Because that's not how the story (or model) goes. As you said, it's a fact we all know.
Quoting Isaac
Because that's not how the story (or model) goes.
Quoting Isaac
What do you mean by "hidden states" exactly? Are hidden states a feature of deflationism? Because I was attempting to poke a hole in deflationism, not in your personal theory of truth.
Quoting Isaac
Isn't the view of deflationism that the model is the environment? You call this model/environment a "collective fiction".
Quoting Isaac
You're arguing that this is not what our words do?
Quoting Isaac
You're arguing that this is what our words do? Sounds a lot like correspondence theory with its matching that you describe above.
The other way to go is to allow that if S knows p then p is true, but define "true" differently. As I propose, "true" would mean a statement of what S honestly believes, i.e. p would be an expression of what S honestly believes. Of course this definition of "true" has its problems, but I think it's much better than what some here propose, which is to reduce "true" to a special form of justified, like justified in an infallible way. Then "knowledge" simply becomes justified belief regardless of whether the justification is done in honesty or not, because infallible justification is impossible unless we invoke an omniscient God who holds real knowledge.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The problem is that this is not the nature of knowledge. This is the way that some epistemologists think knowledge ought to be. In reality, knowledge changes and evolves, and things accepted as knowledge at one time (geocentricity for example), are later rejected, becoming no longer justified. Knowledge naturally contains much which is not consistent with the reality of things, therefore not "true" by common definition.
Quoting Luke
That's not what I said. I said the person did know p, then later came to know not-p. I thought I made that clear. At one time the person knew p. At a later time the person knows not-p. This is not a case of it turning out that the person did not know p at that time. Nor does the person know not-p at that time, because the person knew p at that time.
What I am saying is that p was a part of the person's knowledge at one time, and not-p was a part of the person's knowledge at another time, because knowledge changes. The person clearly knew p, as p may have played a significant role in the person's body of knowledge. So we clearly cannot change this to say that the person did not know p, because this would involve the contradictory conclusion that the knowledge possessed at the time was not really knowledge.
Quoting Luke
The person decides not to believe p any more for a number of possible reasons, but most likely because other evidence is brought to the person's attention, which the person did not have access to before.
Quoting Luke
You are using "true" in a deceptive way here. That p is true is a judgement. And of course, if one judges that p is true, then this person obviously does not know not-p. So, who is making the judgement that p is true in your example? Obviously it's not the person who knows not-p. This example is just deceptive sophistry.
The problem, as I've explained, is that your statements do not give an accurate representation of what knowledge really is. In reality, knowledge consists of many mistakes. That's why the knowledge of yesterday is always being replaced by the knowledge of today. Things which were accepted as fact, and which were a part of our knowledge are later demonstrated to be not accurate. That's the nature of justification.
This is the issue Plato faced in "The Theaetetus". They sought to determine the true nature of knowledge. But they set out with the prerequisite condition that knowledge could not contain any mistakes. Then they found out that of all the possible descriptions of knowledge that they examined, none of them had the capacity to exclude mistakes. So they ended up concluding that this prerequisite condition, to exclude falsity. was itself a mistake, therefore not really a defining feature of knowledge.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Here lies the problem. Intentional violation of the maxim is dishonesty. But if you mean something different from p than what others take from it ("the plain meaning of p"), this could be either dishonesty (intentional violation of the maxim) or an honest mistake. Now we need principles to distinguish one from the other, to determine whether the person practises deception.
No.
That's exactly what you said. I quoted you as saying that the person does not know p. Here it is again:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You clearly refer to negative knowledge of p (i.e. ~Kp); not to positive knowledge of not-p (i.e. K~p). You say that it is not knowledge: "not allowed to be called knowledge", "said not to be knowledge". It is unreasonable to deny this; it is there in black and white.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are effectively saying that p was true at one time and is false at another time. I am saying that this attacks a straw man and does not address the factive claim. It cannot be known that not-p is true if p is true, due to non-contradiction. This applies at any given time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The same person or people making the judgment that p is true in your example. It makes no difference.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Obviously not. Nobody can know that not-p is true if p is true.
You clearly misunderstood what I said. Or, as is often the case with you Luke, you intentionally misrepresented what I wrote. Whatever, I will repeat myself as usual. The same ideas which are knowledge at one time are not knowledge at another time.
Quoting Luke
Again, you are using "true" in a deceptive, sophistic way, as I explained in my last post. That a statement is "true" or "not-true" is a human judgement. The same person can judge the same statement as true at one time, and not-true at another time, yet a person cannot judge the same statement as true and not true at the same time (contradiction). The same idea is judged as "true" at one time and "not-true" at another time, and there is no contradiction.
This is completely consistent with my definition of truth, as an expression of what one honestly believes. You however, seem to be assuming some sort of "truth" which is independent of human judgement, as an unstated premise. Your use of this unstated proposition is simply an attempt to deceive. Who would make such a judgement of truth, God?
Quoting Luke
The question is, in your statement "Nobody can know that not-p is true if p is true", who is making the judgement that "p is true". A person can know that not-p is true, when that person is not making the judgement that p is true. Therefore you need to disclose who is judging p as true, in your statement. If it is not the person who knows not-p, then there is no problem.
Your use of "true" here is deceptive, because you do not disclose the person who is making the judgement that p is true. Clearly it's not the person who knows that not-p is true, so who is it making the judgement that p is true? I honestly believe that you are simply employing a counterfactual here, for the purpose of deception. When the person knows that not-p is true, then "p is true" is proposed as a counterfactual unless justified, in which case it would be an attempt to change the person's mind. You have made no attempt to justify "p is true", so I conclude the counterfactual is proposed for the sake of deception.
There is no judgement. It just either is or isn't true.
A man who lives alone, perhaps the last living man in the universe, can die even if he believes that he is immortal.
If two men disagree on whether or not something is the case, the laws of noncontradiction and excluded middle entail that one of them is right and one of them is wrong.
The sensibility of these scenarios proves the distinction between truth and judgement.
But there will be no one to judge him to be dead, therefore he will not be dead,
Oh, and there will be no one to judge him to be alive, therefore he will not be alive.
No matter, because there will neither be nor not be a universe that includes or does not include him either not alive or not dead.
Your turn. Philosophy is fun!
This cannot be correct. A proposition requires an interpretation and a comparison with what is the case, to be determined as either true or not true. That is a judgement. With no such comparison or relation, between the words of the proposition, and the reality of the situation, there is no truth to the words.
This is where Banno ran into trouble with the claim that a proposition is always already interpreted, and I accused him of dishonesty with that claim. We cannot ignore the simple fact that symbols symbolize, and therefore need to be read. Apokrisis has a unique way of dealing with this, claiming that the interpretation, (or rules for interpretation, or something like that), are actually encoded within the symbol itself, so the symbol actually reads itself. This, it is claimed, is derived from biological foundations.
As I said to another poster a few days ago, all this says is that we determine the meaning of a proposition. It doesn't follow from this that we determine the truth of a proposition.
Our language use determines the meaning of the proposition "water is H[sub]2[/sub]O". John believes that this proposition is true and Jane believes that this proposition is false. The laws of excluded middle and non-contradiction entail that one of them is right and one of them is wrong, irrespective of what they or I or anyone else judges to be the case.
I still don't see how you're getting here. Why should there be no surprises if the world is the model?
Quoting Luke
Yes.
Quoting Luke
Only if you already beg the very question we're debating by assuming 'truth' refers to the hidden states that the model is of.
Quoting Luke
No one is saying anything about there being 'nothing' outside of language, I don't know where you're getting this from.
Ahhhh....the sheer joy of it!!! I’m about to indulge, so....here goes.
Quoting Michael
Is this to say common sense is sufficient criterion for proof?
———-
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
That one agrees or disagrees with another is nothing more than one’s judgement relative to the other’s. That a third party invokes the logical laws to justify the differences between the first two, is no less a judgment.
———
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
.....which reduces to we are our language use, which presupposes we of particular abilities. Better to understand what we are, such that our abilities are then possible, before making claims about things we do with them. If, given sufficient examination, it is discovered every initial thought or consequential speech-act, by each and every individual otherwise rationally adept human, is a determined judgement, then it follows necessarily that truth is a judgement, a judgement of relative certainty. Relative with respect to the conditions for its ground, certain in accordance with experience.
Thing about having fun with philosophy, is that it just might be at someone else’s expense, for which I offer a sort of apology.
Sorry, Micheal, if my fun costs your dismay, but I couldn’t let this go by transcendentally unmolested. Feel free to.....you know.....judge the comprehensibility of my comment, or not, as you wish. But just by reading it, haven’t you already?
There should be no surprises if the world is the model because you claim that the model is a collective fiction. I already answered the question of why there should be no surprises using your analogy with "Aragorn was king of Gondor". You did not address it.
Why should there be any surprises if the world is the model and the model is a collective fiction?
Quoting Isaac
By that logic, you are also begging the question by assuming 'truth' does not refer to such hidden states.
However, I'm criticising your claim that the semantic content of expressions refer to a collective fiction. My argument is that this collective fiction cannot possibly be false, for the same reason that "Aragorn was king of Gondor" cannot possibly be false. The reason this collective fiction cannot possibly be false is simply because it is a collective fiction. I fail to understand how a collective fiction could possibly be false, and you have yet to provide any explanation. Since it cannot be false, then there should be no surprises, as the collective fiction is always true. Surprisingly, however, you admit that our collective fiction could be false. This leads me to question your claim that the semantic content of expressions refer to a collective fiction.
Pointing out such inconsistencies is hardly begging the question.
Quoting Isaac
You seem to have forgotten the current discussion from a week or two (and longer) ago, where several participants were arguing for a world independent of and outside of language. The discussion included my argument with Banno that sentences are not kettles, as well as these exchanges that you and I had:
Quoting Luke
Quoting Isaac
That's where I'm "getting this from". You were one of those saying something "about there being 'nothing' outside of language".
You claim I've misunderstood or misrepresented, yet you re-state what I said, exactly as I understood it and represented it.
You are talking about knowledge of p (i.e. Kp) at one time and not-knowledge of p (i.e. ~Kp) at another time. Once again, this is irrelevant to the factive claim regarding positive knowledge of not-p (i.e. K~p).
I won't bother wasting any further keystrokes.
Why would that lead to a lack of surprise though? You're not joining the dots.
Quoting Luke
You didn't say why there should be no surprises using my analogy with "Aragorn was king of Gondor". You just declared that there should be none.
Quoting Luke
Because the hidden states the world is a collective model of may be modelled imperfectly.
Quoting Luke
I'm not assuming though. That conclusion doesn't itself form part of my argument for it.
Quoting Luke
Come on, at least the bare minimum of effort to fairly represent your interlocutors. It's literally written in the very quote you cited...
Quoting Isaac
...so not 'nothing' then...
Because we could never be surprised to find that Aragorn was not king of Gondor, or that "Aragorn was king of Gondor" is false. Surely we know our collective fiction (which is the model, which is the world) in exactly the same way, and with the same level of surety, that we know Aragorn was king of Gondor. So, whence surprise?
Quoting Isaac
Then the model is not equivalent to the world; there is a distinction between them. The world is not the model or a collective fiction, because the world can surprise us.
Quoting Isaac
My point was that I'm not assuming, either. How am I begging the question by pointing out your inconsistency?
Quoting Isaac
I quoted you fairly, didn't I? I could have cut it short and quoted you like this instead:
Quoting Isaac
You also said:
Quoting Isaac
Anyway, I take the position of redundancy to be that there are no matters outside of language, and that the model is equivalent to the world, whether that is your personal view or not.
I
If we have modeled imperfectly some detail of the hidden states, but we never encounter evidence that would encourage us to update our model, were we wrong?
Another question: can our model be properly said to supervene upon the hidden states? That is, can there be a change in our model without a change in the ("underlying") hidden states?
If the answer is "no," if our model is not so tightly coupled to the hidden states as that, what is the source of that relative freedom? And if our model is then, to some undetermined degree, independent of the hidden states, what entitles us to describe changes to our model as updates rather than just changes, which could, for all we know, be arbitrary, or, if not arbitrary, free?
There is nothing, it seems, that we can point to as "evidence" that is outside the model, not even surprise; surprise is not a fact, but part of our model of ourselves.
II
There's an impressive set of studies showing just how constructed our visual perception of the world is, the ones with the flashing lights. Put some people in a dark room facing a screen or a wall and flash a sequence of lights in just the right way and people will report seeing a single light moving, say, left to right. Even better, if you arrange the lights as you would to go around a small obstacle, people will report actually seeing the obstacle -- or at least report that there was "something" there that the light had to go around. That latter result shows just how much "filling in" we do from our priors, as you might say, about how the world works.
But this study requires carefully controlled circumstances. To determine the speed at which to flash the lights and how far apart to space them, no doubt experiments were needed. I doubt they nailed it the very first time, and there's a range -- I don't know how big -- outside of which the illusion of a single moving light would not hold. Similarly, there must be no other sensible information about the space where the light "detours," else people would report that the light behaved as if something were there but there wasn't.
Outside the lab, none of those restrictions apply. The simulacrum we are said to inhabit is so detailed that we can test it however we like. We can prove to our satisfaction that a tree before us is not a plastic model by cutting into it and seeing the rings, the xylem and phloem, all that. We can study a bit of the wood under a microscope and see more, even under an electron microscope if we choose, we can "touch" individual molecules of water in the tree sample. And we can do this sort of thing anywhere to any degree we are capable.
If a map reproduces every last detail of the territory, and does so not with ink on paper, but using the same materials, for all we know, as the territory, then the map is in fact a perfect duplicate of the territory, not a map at all, and to find your way around the so-called "map" is exactly the same process as finding your way around the territory.
What becomes questionable is the claim that the "map" is not the territory but only a map, and the positing of a "genuine" territory out there, somewhere, that the "map" we wander around in is a copy of. That will surely strike most residents of the "map" as an article of faith. Anything can count as evidence for it, and nothing can count as evidence for it.
III
I don't think it will quite do to answer that "data underdetermines theory." What "data" there is, is not just theory-laden; it is crushed under the weight of the theory it's carrying on its back. It could, for all we know, be 100% theory.
You want to call your view a sort of realism because you maintain there is "something" outside our Markov blanket. Is that "something" similar to the non-existent "something" that the non-moving light did not actually detour around?
If this is realism, it is indistinguishable from idealism, if only in some suitably circumspect Kantian sense of idealism.
IV
We seem to have a sort of antinomy here. On the one hand, we claim to know only our conception of the world, loosely enough coupled to it that it can deviate from the world's supposed true state. But (1) nothing entitles us to make any claim that there is such a true state, or to make any claim about how close our conception is to it, and (2) our conception is so complete that it qualifies as itself a world of the sort we claim only to have a conception of.
We have a model that is, for all we know, 100% mistaken, and at the same time, for all we know, all there is and no model at all.
Before you post "pragmatism" and count that as a job well done, plan on explaining exactly how pragmatism answers any of the questions I asked, or shows the questions to be ill-conceived. Jobs to be done, purposes, free-energy gradients, surprise minimization -- all part of the model, after all. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too, not even by saying that pragmatism entitles you to the impossible.
I prefer to say that the world is a collective representation... which is constantly changing. The ways of representation are manifold.
The events surrounding fictional characters are forever fixed...unless further is written about them such as to change, perhaps even contradict, what was previously told in some way. Who but the original author could have the authority to do such a thing?
The situation with history is a little different because it is not simply an arbitrary tale: rather histories purport to, or at least strive to, present past events veraciously. Historical research is based on studying and comparing the accounts of past historians and archived documents. New documents may come to light, so there can be surprises even regarding what happened, or what is thought to have happened, in the past.
When it comes to the collective understanding of the world, this is ever-changing in line with new experience, so of course there may be surprises.
Quoting Isaac
I wouldn't have chosen to make the comparison with fiction, since although there is some sense to it, it will inevitably lead to misunderstanding. The boiling kettle before us is not a fiction. It is indeed a boiling kettle. that it is a boiling kettle is a result of the way it interacts with us and we with it and we with each other. The world is such that we, collectively, make sense of it.
The kettle is not a model of a kettle. Nor is one individual's neurological modelled Markov blanket any substitute for a kettle. The analogy of a collective fiction captures one aspect of reality, but errs in that the things in our world are not fictions, despite our part in evoking them, for want of a better word).
It looks to me that 's misunderstanding of your posts is based on that problem Isaac and I spoke of earlier, of confusing the non-symbolic modelling done by neural nets with the symbolic presentation in "The kettle is boiling".
Since the world is all that is the case, it is also a collective story. That does not meant hat just anything goes. You will still burn your hand if you touch the boiling kettle.
The result is that some statements are true, some false.
Quoting Banno
So then Davidsonian non-reductive physicalism rather than Putnam’s conceptual relativism? And the moral implications are perhaps that , like the boiling kettle, there is a fact of the matter in social affairs preventing ethical debates from getting lost in interminable relativity?
Yes.
Quoting Joshs
An incautious leap, don't you think, Joshs?
@Isaac - would you actually agree that "you burn your hand if you touch the kettle" would be the same as ""you burn your hand if you touch the kettle" is true" though? I think in @Isaac's world even saying that there is a kettle is problematic. Or whether there "really" is a kettle
Those are scare quotes around "really".
Really? What is it about reality that you are scared of? :wink:
@Isaac has previously expressed acceptance of realism. I think a generous interpretation is in order.
It's the word "really" I'm scared of in this context. Austin derived methodological worries (what the word "really" does to statements and its ambiguous senses) with Kant inspired metaphysical ones at the same time (thing-in-itself = "really", what is the kettle really? Do we need to know what the kettle really is for "the kettle is boiling" to be true? That sort of thing).
At you made use of the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena, comparing it to the distinction between neural models and kettles. I don't think that works. It would be an easy, yet baleful mistake if philosophers were to take the developments of neural science and simply interpret tham in Kantian terms. I suspect that this is what is happening here.
What do you see as being a significant difference between the "hidden states" that give rise to our models or collective representations, and the noumena that are represented as phenomena? Or perhaps @Isaac, if he agrees with you, can answer that question in a more informed way than you can.
Yeah. I think there is a distinction between the two; the neural models interact with the kettle, the noumenon is either a limit on possible thought or a cognitive grasp of an object. I imagine our suspicions are the same!
This doesn't seem to be saying anything cogent; can you explain further?
Seems my diagnosis is correct, at least for Janus.
The "hidden state" has nothing to do with noumena. But that confusion is where this thread has wandered.
Easy to assert: can you explain the difference?
By the way; you're jumping to conclusions as usual: I haven't claimed they are the same; I'm asking about the difference.
One is a mathematical simplification, the other a philosophical confusion.
Yeah, I didn't think you could explain it; just a tendentious characterization, which is the sort of thing I've come to expect from you. It's a shame; you could probably do so much better.
It's the difference between a representational relationship ("the kettle" symbols and perceptions of the kettle <-> the kettle), exemplified by a neural model, and the kettle as treated as an experiential object ("imagination", "appearance", "fiction") in a conceptual scheme ("environmental story telling device"). The former is a practical and representational relationship with the states of the environment, in which environment states' content historically+reciprocally determines word semantic content and perceptual content (without necessarily being one to one), the latter is an experiential relationship of what is produce in/by a model to an agent. Is a lens's image in the lens or of what it pictures?
The "hidden state" being "hidden" doesn't necessarily make the claim that the hidden state's "content", whatever it is, is "hidden" from perception or symbolisation since it's used in those processes AFAIK (that needs to be demonstrated or interpreted out of it). That's like placing a semantic or perceptual veil over reality.
From my perspective, what makes @Banno and @Isaac able to agree on a surface level is that they're able to agree that there is a semantic or perceptual veil of some sort; just for Banno it's transparent to the point of non-existence (see sub discussion of the world being English shaped or events taking propositional form) vs for @Isaac the veil is totally opaque, if constraining, to hidden state content in both cases - negative tight constraints ('can't be this...) rather than transmission of content (red approximately equals (these wavelengths for us in this context)).
In my one liner, the cognitive grasp of an object is the interior of a model's state, rather than an environmental one interacting with an internal one (it's the bit in your head), and thus it's not the kettle as it is in the environment (that's the bit in the world). And the limit on possible thought bit corresponds to the claim that neural models place tight constraints on what environmental behaviours are like rather than transmitting a summary of their content.
How we model whatever we are sensorially affected by is hidden, since there is no way to definitively link our conceptualizations with what is pre-conceptual. There would only be a "veil" if we assumed that our models are somehow distorting what they are modeling; which would be an entirely unwarranted conclusion, since we have no way of comparing our models with what is being modeled.
Edited the post a bit to be more explicit, if you're got anything further to add, please do.
As to whether or not the hidden states are hidden from perception, I would say that depends on how you define perception. If we are affected pre-cognitively would those affects count as perception? If you say yes, then surely you would have to then draw distinction between those pre-cognitive "perceptions" and conscious concept-mediated perception, no?
To be sure, neural models are not representational... So that doesn't look right.
Quoting fdrake
So for me there is a veil that doesn't exist...? Again, that doesn't look right.
Hidden states are inputs in recurrent neural networks, not things-in-themselves or some other philosophical notion. Confusing the two seems to be the source of the present impasse.
Quoting Janus
See?
I do, but I'll do it when I'm less tired because it's finicky. I could default to my usual 900 page essays on trivial bollocks, but I'll try and make it briefer than usual.
Ooh. What are they for you then?
Quoting Banno
I don't think you think there is a veil. What I intended to convey (but failed) was the sub discussion we had about "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" - that having one shared one is very much the same as there being none at all, so the idea of a conceptual scheme turns out to be too confused to use. Why I think of it as a veil still is because the world ends up "English shaped" due to that shared relation and how it relates to shared environments; whereas I claim we know it isn't "English shaped" and even speak as if isn't. But we can get into that entirely different sub discussion at a later date.
"language shaped" would be better, since firstly a corollary of the argument On the very idea... is that all languages are inter-translatable, hence in effect the same; and secondly whatever we choose to talk about will be, by the fact that we talk about it, shaped by the language we use.
So your claim to know that "it" isn't "English shaped" is either wrong or I've misunderstood it.
If your use here of "hidden states" is supposed to be the same as @Isaac's, then is seems you have made a category error.
I find it amusing to supplement passive insult with active?
Quoting Banno
With no explanation of what you take Isaac's conception of "hidden states" to be...see the problem? I'm trying to draw you into examining your ideas...
Can we please postpone that discussion for now? I don't think our quibble there is too much related to the semantic content and denotation quibbles we're having. We both seem to agree "the kettle" denotes, and that we can say ""the kettle is boiling" is true" asserts the same thing as "the kettle is boiling".
Quoting Banno
My worries for that are kinda orthogonal to the current discussion. I've got two flavours of worries; over reliance on an implicit ontology we create through how we use language. The second flavour of worry is here, (make the interpretation discussed linguistic or linguistically mediated). The first one is maybe related to the discussion; there's perhaps relevance in talking about "the kettle" as a construct of folk psychology vs "the kettle is boiling" being an accurate statement when the kettle boils (I agree that it's accurate because the appropriate court of evaluation for it is the pragmatic context it's in). The second one would take us much farther afield.
My exegesis here for the second quibble is more detailed.
Fair enough; you've so little else to work with.
Quoting Janus
See Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
...and the conversation with @Isaac back a few pages. That you did not recognise the answer is perhaps indicative of not understanding your own question.
Of course that will never happen, but by all means have your rest. I'm off to lunch soon anyway, but first have to repot a passionfruit blown over by a gale.
Quoting fdrake
Both look very interesting. But on to more mundane things for us both, for a while.
But I said more than that. I said that whatever the proposition means must be related to what is actually the reality of the situation, and through this comparison, it is judged for truth. That's how we determine the truth of a proposition, through judgement. How could the truth of a proposition be determined, except by a judgement?
Quoting Michael
Actually, what you've just stated, that one must be right and the other wrong, is just a judgement itself, made by you, as Mww has already pointed out.
True or not true can be nothing other than a judgement. The question of the thread, I believe, is what exactly constitutes a true judgement. But we cannot remove the judgement aspect without leaving "true' as completely meaningless. That would be like asking what is "red" while insisting it's not a colour.
That's an artificial distinction. Knowledge, and thus epistemology, is grounded in ordinary life and we use ordinary (and, if need be, specialized) language to talk about it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's correct, and no-one disagrees. A flat-earther can claim to know that the world is flat. He nonetheless doesn't know that. So there's a distinction between knowledge and knowledge claims.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Actually, it does. For example, people once said that they knew that Hilary Clinton was going to win the 2016 election. But since she didn't win, they didn't know that at all, they only thought they did. The term knew is retracted because of the implied truth condition.
This is somewhat analogous to Alice saying that "Trump won the 2020 US election". Is Alice misusing the word "won"? Does she need to consult a dictionary so she can correct her mistake? Presumably, the problem is not with her use of the word "won", it's that her perfectly well understood claim is false.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I see that Oxford Languages lists that as an archaic usage, as in "we appeal to all good men and true to rally to us". But that context isn't propositional truth.
Quoting Michael
Yes. I will have to take a look at the paper. Note that SEP put knew in scare quotes with the above Clinton example, which I think also says something about the ordinary use of the term.
I take nominal to mean that the definition can't be employed to establish which statements are true (see Kant's comments here). That's the case with Aristotle's (classical) definition as with Kant's.
Quoting Mww
As I mentioned earlier, for Aristotle, to say something presupposes cognition. Keeping in mind, of course, that people sometimes do speak without thinking...
That's what you say. He says he knows it, you say he does not know it. It's your word against his. We can move to analyze the justification, and show that your belief is better justified than his, but this still doesn't tell us whether one or the other is true. And if you argue that his is not knowledge, it's not because his belief is not true that it's not knowledge, it's because it's not justified. So we cannot establish the relationship between knowledge and true, in this way.
Quoting Andrew M
If anything which may turn out to be false in the future cannot be correctly called knowledge, then there is no such thing as knowledge, because we cannot exclude the possibility of mistake. This is what Plato demonstrated in The Theaetetus. So, it's much better to allow that what people claim to know right now, is "knowledge", regardless of the fact that it may later turn out to be wrong. It was still knowledge, at that time, before it was proven wrong.. So, if at a later time they decide against it, it is no longer knowledge, but it still was knowledge back when it formed the principles upon which they based their decisions.
It's more accurate to define "knowledge" as the principles that one holds and believes, which they apply in making decisions. That is a person's knowledge, regardless of the fact that it may later turn out to be wrong. This way, we don't have to decide at a later date that the knowledge we held before wasn't really knowledge. And the knowledge we hold now will later turn out to be not knowledge, onward and onward so that there is no such thing as something we can truly call "knowledge" because we can never exclude the possibility of mistake..
Quoting Andrew M
It isn't archaic usage. It is the principal meaning of "truth", employed in courts of law etc., and any time or place where people are asked to "tell the truth".
What are we to conclude here? Modal Realism?
From hidden states.
Quoting Luke
Who said anything about the world surprising us?
Quoting Luke
You said...
Quoting Luke
This is only true if the terms are interchangeable (that truth is about the model being surprising), otherwise your conclusion doesn't follow, hence you begged the question by assuming that relation in your argument for it.
Quoting Luke
I really don't know where you're getting that idea from.
There's a muddle of temporal terms here that I can't make sense of, You say that we "never encounter evidence...", but then ask "were we...". 'Were' from what temporal vantage point? Your first 'never' seems to disallow any point of reflection from which we can look back and ask the question.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Interesting question. Change and chaos. Or, less prosaically - (1) our models are based on priors and priors are necessarily based on historical inferences which will be constrained by previous states of the environment, not the current one, hence a source of de-coupling, our environment changes, our models run behind that change; and (2) there's a lot of noise in the system, neuron firing can be random, so a lot of what neural modelling does, one of the main reasons for backward acting suppression, is to make sure that noise is not mistaken for data, but this system isn't perfect, so sometimes it is. Obviously, there are then magnifying effects of both of these since we do not passively receive data from the external states, but rather we actively harvest data (and even manipulate those states) to match our models, so we're going to act in such ways as to re-affirm the model predictions insofar as that it possible, even if those model predictions have been affected by nothing but noise.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, that's right. We could model our 'surprise' as errors in our models, or as part of the narrative, as evil demons, as the tweaking of the matrix by our cruel AI overlords... The whole of active inference is a scientific model, an activity we undertake to help explain phenomena, just like philosophy. Some explanations seem better than others, but the reason why they do so can only ever itself be just another such explanation.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You're focussing on material construction, which is not that the model of active inference is about. The model is about data. It simply says that given a self-organising network of data nodes that is greater than a mere ring of nodes, there will inevitably be nodes which are inside a Markov blanket relative to the nodes which don't constitute the system. That has nothing to do with the material constituents of the nodes, only their informational relationship with one another. Thus, as a self-organising system, we must, by definition, have internal states, and boundary states (and there must exist external states). Without these three states we cannot say that there is a system at all, we cannot define it from 'not-system' without defining a boundary and (as far as data is concerned) that boundary must be Markov boundary if the internal network is any more complex than a single ring of nodes.
So the only way we could be informationally connected to 'the world' without a Markov boundary is if we say that we are the world, one integrated system. I don't think anyone is going there...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That data underdetermines theory is implied by defining a system, as is raw data. As above, the mere definition of an informational system implies a boundary and external states. Complexity beyond a mere ring implies boundary nodes. Once you have those two elements, it is a necessary fact of the model that external states must be inferred by internal states from the states of the boundary nodes. If you introduce any variable whatsoever (active harvesting, ergodic feedback mechanisms, noise...) then it is a necessary part of the model that this inference will be prone to error - underdetermined by the external states.
So...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't think that's true. I've outline above how the very act of defining a system leads us to the conclusion that there are external, internal and boundary states and that external states can only be inferred by internal states from boundary states.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yep. I'm not sure what improvement in certainty you're looking for beyond that which we can rationally argue for.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Hopefully avoided pragmatism in my answer... but do check.
Quoting Banno
Yes, this is what I've been trying elucidate, but perhaps you're right and my use of 'fiction' here has only confused matters. There's perhaps a better way to explain.
The idea here (for me) is that despite having to posit hidden states as part of our informational meta-thoery (see my post to Srap above), these states can still be proper objects of reference. "the kettle" doesn't refer to my model of a kettle, it refers to (in the informational model) the hidden state itself. It's like us all speculating what's in the room next door. the subject of our speculations isn't our speculations, the subject of our speculations is what's actually in the room next door. As such, the best way I can find of 'translating' an active inference model to talk of "kettles" is to say that "kettle" refers (when it refers at all, that is - not all uses are referenential, of course) to the hidden state we're modelling, the contents of the room we're speculating about.
The difference is that we have data which more or less coheres with certain speculations (still on the 'room' analogy here) such that the speculation "nothing is in the room" would be difficult to cohere with a lot of noise and shouting coming from it - ie you still burn your hand when you touch the kettle.
So, perhaps more to @Luke than yourself (I may otherwise be preaching to the choir...)...
Kettles and water and boiling might be describable as collective fictions, but the part that needs emphasising (that I ought perhaps to have emphasised) is that they're purposeful fictions. They're not fantasies like the Lord of the Rings, where anything goes, they've a job to do - that of unifying, to an extent, our individual (neural) models so that we can co-operate, and not constantly surprise one another. This hooks them in to the actual external states we exist within in a way that actual fiction need not worry itself with.
(if that's cleared anything up @Luke then you can thank Banno)
Well, yes, to a point. Although the topic here is 'truth' I think the reason we've diverged so much is that the simple redundancy that there's nothing more to "P is true" than "P" tends to lead to an assumption that that's all there is to say on the matter of truth. Whereas, to quote Ramsey "there are interesting problems in the vicinity".
The issue of the degree to which (and implications thereof) external states constrain our use of language that tries to refer to them is just such a 'problem in the vicinity', in my opinion.
I see language as a tool, part of our suite of 'active states', which themselves from part of the Markov boundary, but (by necessity) active states are influenced only by internal states (if they weren't they wouldn't be active states, they'd be sensory states), so we have a chain [hide="Reveal"](actually a cycle since the last link in the chain is external states which is also the first link)[/hide] of external states>sensory states>internal states>active states(language use).
If we accept that model, then the extent to which language mirrors external states is, it seems, not entirely dependant on sensory states, but rather on the intent of active states. To use an analogy with perception, I see language more like saccades than V1 modelling, part of the active state response, not the passive state reception.
I don't feel qualified to comment on the potential differences because I wouldn't claim to know very much about Kant's noumena. From a complete layman perspective though, Kant's noumena are often referred to as the thing-in-itself, yes? Taking that literally (perhaps erroneously, though) I think the difference would be in that hidden states do not posit any 'thing' at all, they are an informational construct, about data, not material composition. As such they can be an implication of a data model, whereas any thing-in-itself would be ontological? But as I say, I'm not sure as I don't have a deep understanding of noumena.
It's quite difficult for me to tell precisely how this limits your agreement with ""P" is true iff P". I can think of two possibilities, but I doubt they are exhaustive.
( 1 ) The first is that because our engagement with the world is simultaneously pragmatic and representational; passive states feed to active states feed to environmental interventions feed to passive states...; representational accuracy is not the only criterion by which the environment is parsed, so the environmental objects and processes which are referred to in "the kettle is boiling" aren't really environmental since what is referred to is part of the internal states of someone's body/brain/mind.
Your difficulty then comes with the interpretation of equating the kettle boiling with a state of the environment. The equation itself could have two subcases:
( 1 a ) Strict identity; this is undermined by the fact that the process is representational rather than presenting a numerical identity between brain-states/body-states. In other words, there is no one-one correspondence between "brain-stuff" (activation patterns, mind states) and "environmental stuff" (water molecules heating up etc) because modelling provides an inferential summary rather than an unfiltered presentation of environmental stimuli.
(1 b) Representational equivalence; by this I term I mean that the aggregate of brain and body states in the inferential summary in ( 1 a ) counts as an environmental object sortally, even though one is a brain-body state and one is an environmental state. You could "count" the kettle and the class of brain-states regarding it as "the same thing", just one is represented (environmental object) and one is the product of representation (internal state). This is undermined because the inferential summary is pragmatic.
( 2 ) It doesn't matter that the modelling relationship is inferential and pragmatic rather than presentational, what matters is that the states identified as perceptual ones are internal (of the brain, body) rather than external (of the environment).
In both of these cases, the content of language is treated as constrained by the how the content of perception is generated, since the semantic content of any expression is a historically informed inferential summary of internal states which is also an internal state. The distinction representation (models) and symbolisation (expression) doesn't matter for your analysis of truth, since they're both either not the appropriate sort of equivalence as in ( 1 ) or merely internal as in ( 2 ).
The distinction between ( 1 ) and ( 2 ) is that ( 1 ) cares about the properties of the internal state (which block statement truth somehow), and ( 2 ) just cares about the property that they are internal (which blocks statement truth by itself).
A proposition being true and a proposition being determined to be true are two different things. There is a correct answer to "how many coins are in the jar?" before we actually count them.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's not just a judgement. See above.
That's exactly what I don't agree with obviously.
Quoting Michael
If you think so, explain to me who has counted the coins in the jar and stated the answer. An "answer" is something stated as a reply to a question. If no one has counted the coins, and it was not determined at the time of placing the coins in the jar, and the jar has been watched, then no one knows how many there are, and no one has stated the "correct answer". The "correct answer" will be determined when the coins are counted. Therefore, there is not a correct answer to that question before the coins are counted. The number of coins is undetermined, no "correct answer".
This, I propose to you, is where we cross the line between honesty and dishonesty in our philosophy. We honestly know that unless the number has been determined, there is no correct answer. The correct answer is undetermined, it does not exist. However, we assume that since the coins could be counted, there is potentially a correct answer, and we allow that this potential answer has actual existence, and we say as you do, "there is a correct answer". This, I tell you, is a dishonesty, because we know very well that there is a difference between what actually exists and what potentially exists, yet we allow this division to be nullified, because it simplifies our use of mathematical language. We do not have to account for the process of counting, (See the difference between actually and potentially infinite for example). The abundant consequences of this sort of dishonesty are very evident in the issues of quantum mechanics.
Quoting Michael
That's right, it's not just a judgement, it's a special type of judgement, a dishonest judgement made for the sake of facilitating our language use, especially mathematical languages (See above). When we are well convinced that "the truth" could be determined, we jump to the dishonest conclusion that the truth already is determined, for the sake of avoiding philosophical discussion about the required process of determination. The fact that this is a mistake is fully exposed in quantum mechanics. The particle's location really is not determined before the process of determination, and it is obviously mistaken to think that it is. Therefore it is only the process of determination (the act of measurement) which can determine "the correct answer". And the character of that assumption, that there is a correct measurement, prior to the measurement being made, is fully exposed for the lazy, and dishonest, attitude that it truly is.
I can say "there are 66 coins in the jar" and that claim can be true even if I haven't counted the coins in the jar and even if nobody knows how many coins are in the jar.
It's not the case that my claim retroactively becomes either true or false after someone has counted them. And it's not the case that if two people count the coins in the jar and come to a different conclusion that both of them are right.
We're not talking about quantum states though. It's not the case that the number of coins in the jar is in a superposition of all possible numbers until they're counted.
Your account of truth appears inconsistent with the (meta)physics of the world.
So you say, but as I explained, I think you are being dishonest in your statement. You are using "can be true" which honestly implies possibility, to make it appear as if "66" actually is true. It is not.
To "be true" is very clearly a judgement. And if no one has counted the coins, who do you propose has made that judgement, God? Obviously, you are not even proposing that the judgement has been made, you only say "can be true", meaning it is possibly true. Yes, just like 65, 64, etc., are all potentially true answers. But that does not justify the claim that there is a true answer.
Quoting Michael
This does not address the issue. Prior to being counted your answer, 66, "can be true", meaning it has the potential to be true, just like other numbers. When the coins are counted, there is a correct answer. There is no retroactivity involved. Prior to being counted, all the answers had the potential to be true, and after counting, the judgement is made.
Retroactivity is the mistaken route which the others proposed. After determining that what was accepted as "knowledge" is determined to be incorrect, they propose that we retroactively declare that it was really not knowledge. But then everything which we commonly call "knowledge", may at any moment, be shown to be not knowledge. Retroactive judgements is a mistaken venture.
This issue was very well discussed by Aristotle thousands of years ago. His solution was an exception to the law of excluded middle, to account for the reality of potential. So things which require a judgement, like the famous sea battle example, are neither true nor false, prior to the judgement being made. "There will be a sea battle tomorrow" is neither true nor false. And, after tomorrow passes, we do not retroactively say that there was a truth or falsity to that statement yesterday. We simply must face the fact that there neither is a truth nor a falsity to these statements which require a judgement, prior to the judgement being made.
Quoting Michael
I used quantum mechanics as an example of how that type of dishonest thinking, which you display, causes problems in application. The particle "can" (potentially) have a location, but that does not justify the claim that it does actually have a location.
Ahhhh....now I see how you related classical to nominal. My go-to reference doesn’t use nominal to qualify the definition, so thanks for that.
Actually, we end up with...the nominal definition, the one used by classical logicians including Aristotle, ad recounted in Kant, re: truth is that cognition which conforms to its object, can’t be employed to establish which statements are true. But “what is truth?” isn’t asking about statements, it is asking after the conditio sine qua non with respect to the truth of our empirical cognitions in general, and insofar as the nominal definition involves a circularity, according to Kant and as stated in last part of the pg 45 comment...there isn’t any by means of the use of it.
Hence, the implication of what definitions are supposed to do, re: “...the criterion of the possibility of a conception is the definition of it...”, and because truth is a valid conception, hence its possibility is given, it must meet the criterion of being defined. Which is what the “...assumed as granted and thereby presupposed” is meant to indicate. What do you think....is there a definition other than the nominal, that defines what truth is?
Perhaps, with our powers combined, we could come up with something that works for us. Obviously to make these comparisons one has to have an interpretation of Kant, so there's going to be some controversy with respect to which interpretation we're favoring. But if we don't mind stirring that pot and wanting to have some kind of rough idea, I'd claim I have some knowledge of the noumena. (EDIT: heh, well... as a philosophical concept, at least! :D I'd be contradicting myself the other way...)
In my understanding of the distinction we have to step back and look at the philosophical landscape of the time to see what sorts of debates were being taken seriously by philosophers: Is space relative, or absolute? Are we free, or are we determined by the laws of physics? Does God exist? Is the soul immortal?
From the particular examples that Kant works through we can see that his target is metaphysical theories. Further, these metaphysical theories are demonstrated to be undecidable since the only way we settle whether some statement is true is by referring to what we collectively experience, and these particular theories and judgments attempt to get "outside" of our experience and assert the truth of things we have no connection to.
By "no connection", I always harp on the fact that one of the categories is "causation", and the noumena is outside of the categories, and so no we cannot make sense of the noumena by applying the category of causation to it -- it does not cause phenomena. With respect to our scientific knowledge, at least, it's a purely negative category (with respect to the other two powers of the mind, practical reason and aesthetic/teleological judgment, the noumena plays a different role -- but with respect to scientific knowledge, it's purely negative)
So given that, from your description of "hidden states" -- I'd say these things are absolutely not connected. First we don't even have concepts with your neural model, that's sort of just "assumed" to ride along with the firing of neurons. And then with all the causal language being used "noumena" seems wholly innappropriate as a boundary condition for this discussion. I'd say this falls under "empirical psychology", so the transcendental conditions of knowledge won't effect what we have to say here even if we are Kantians.
Quoting Isaac
I like this notion of purposeful fictions.
I suppose the error theorist's task, then, is to lay out what discriminates a fantasy from a purposeful story -- "story" in the sense of our ability to parse the world into story form, ala "purposeful fiction". That might go some way to making this notion more appealing.
There is some number n where n >= 0 such that “there are n coins in the jar” is true even if nobody has counted them.
Your account of truth depends on a (meta)physics that isn’t the case. The number of coins in the jar isn’t in a superposition of all possibilities until someone has made a judgement.
And how do you account for two people making contradictory judgements, much like you and I here? Is it just the case that we disagree or is it also the case that one of us is right and one of us is wrong?
Thanks for the input. From what I understand of the discussion with @Isaac and @Janus though, a state (or collection of states) being modelled is a precondition of being able to count as knowledge, experience, representation, an object etc. It can be construed to be inappropriate to even say that something is a kettle because, allegedly (if I've read it right), what is related to is not an environmental object but inferential summary of the model's current state. It's something the modelling process is doing, not a direct relationship between mind and world. And we can't 'get behind' the modelling process to "sneak up to the noumenon" so to speak.
I agree with you that it's actually an inappropriate comparison with the noumenon, but my claim is that @Isaac and @Janus seem to be operating under the assumption that such an inferential summary has broadly Kantian import. By that I mean the process of modelling plays the role of the categories+schematism, and the internal+receptive states play the roles of appearance, phenomenon and the modelling process itself plays the role of the faculty of sensible intuition. In total this renders us unable to reach "beyond" experience into the object since experience is equivalent to the modelled state, just as an object is always and only given through/into sensible intuition.
I agree with you that you don't have to interpret the hidden state/internal state/external state/sensory state account with the internal/external split detailed above, but if you do treat it like that internal and external look a lot like phenomenon/noumenon (even when it doesn't have to be interpreted that way). I believe this misalignment is fundamental in keeping this discussion unresolved.
You seem to be missing the point that @Metaphysician Undercover is an anti-realist, and his account of truth is some version of verificationism. (For meaning, it is sufficient that the coins can be counted, but for truth, it must actually have been done.)
Quoting Isaac
I can't imagine disagreeing with any of this.
But it is also evident, to me at least, that our language and how we conceive mentality does not match up, in any simple way, with this description. Now what?
One option is to say, well, we've moved on. Our languages are the ossification of a folk psychology that we know better than now. Of course we'll have trouble expressing this new view of things in the terms of the old paradigm. You can even soften the pitch a little by claiming only that the new view is different, rather than less wrong, but the hope is still that it is a more fruitful paradigm for inquiry. There must be reason to switch, and problems with the old paradigm provide plenty of motivation there.
But I think it's not that simple. There is an almost irresistible temptation to identify mentality with the internal states of such a system -- a sort of "what else could it be?" But much of the last fifty years of philosophy in the English-speaking world has been devoted to showing that this identification is mistaken. This cluster of issues became important precisely because of the promise of early work in artificial intelligence, generative linguistics, and brain science -- everything that would become cognitive science -- and the realization of some philosophers that we might be able to say we had finally found the mind, and it is the brain. [hide="For instance."](I had forgotten that Putnam's "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" opens with a breathless encomium to the wonders of Chomsky's linguistics. Soon we will actually know something!)[/hide] Endless debate ensued, some of which continues, and some of which seems very old-fashioned now. But in the meantime, other philosophers noticed that our mental concepts and all of our language, in fact, seem not to respect this apparently natural identification of the mental with the internal. I find those arguments pretty persuasive.
There's no problem for science here. If you tell a scientist that what he's investigating turns out not to be X, he can shrug and go on investigating whatever it is he is investigating. Whether it's X is not really his concern. He may have been considering writing a popular piece for Scientific American explaining how his work changes our understanding of X, and now he can just not do that and spend his time in the lab instead. (Occasionally a scientist will decide that showing up philosophers is part of the job.)
But there's still plenty for philosophy to worry about. Science, so far, may have failed to straight up solve issues of mentality for us, but it has perhaps sharpened (at least indirectly) what those issues are.
What I think we need to be careful about, is thinking the mismatch between a particular scientific model, on the one hand, and a philosophical one, on the other, indicates that one has not sufficiently slurped up the other yet, but it will. It's that "if all you have is a hammer" thing.
All of which is to say that knowledge, for instance, is not a relation that holds or fails to hold between the internal and inferred external data nodes of a self-organizing system. Apples and oranges.
Will be reading back through this latest run of posts and maybe commenting. Threw in something else in the meantime.
Do you want to keep truth functions?
I'm even more confused by this! Can the hidden state denoted by "the kettle" boil? Even though boiling is a collective fiction? The first predicates boiling of the hidden state, the second predicates boiling of the collective or an agent or a modelling system (the kettle boils vs the collective fiction has the kettle boiling).
One can see why @Joshs mistakes this for the thing-in-itself, or some such.
"purposeful fictions" still contains the problematic "fiction"; I wonder if "narrative" would be better, leaping from non-symbolic to symbolic representation. Or perhaps "invention", we invent the kettle from the hidden state; but that loses something of the cooperative aspect.
I recall a month or so back a conversation in which it was said (possibly Joshs, again) that the mind creates reality, and we asked the obvious question, if mind creates reality, what does it create it from? Here you are answering that question, showing how the kettle is created by a neural net that interacts with stuff outside it.
Thanks for your reply. We must at some stage look for a bone of contention between us; It'll be something to do with the move from a neural net to a narrative. To my eye, building on Searle, at some stage there is a move from a hidden state to a narrative about a kettle, that has a logical form something like "This hidden state counts as a kettle"...
Quoting Banno
If one interprets this in Davidsonian terms, then the ‘thing in itself’ equates to real physical properties. I agree with Rorty and Putnam that description-dependence goes all the way down.
“The difference between a Davidsonian non reductive physicalist and a Rortyan naturalistic pragmatist is that the former does not deny that there really are physical properties at the micro-structural level, because the efficiency of a physical vocabulary is a sufficient reason to extend its claims to ontology. In contrast, the latter thinks that Davidsonian "physical properties" and "the micro-structural level" are just theoretical suppositions that are meaningful only within a description or vocabulary. They think that it is sufficient for a denial of the existence of physical properties at the level of ontology, precisely because they are still description-dependent.”(ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM ELIMINATED:
RORTY AND DAVIDSON ON THE MIND-WORLD RELATION, Istvan Danka)
Quoting Banno
And I would add that if the net is the description, then the outside stuff the neural net interacts with cannot be assumed to harbor any features, properties, substance in themselves that are description-independent.
Yes, you have given so little to work with when it comes to just what you are wanting to say, beyond bare assertion and aspersion, Remember I've claimed no expertise regarding what the idea of "hidden states" entails. That's what I'm trying to find out in order to compare it with what I know the idea of noumena entails; which is basically that we are pre-cognitively affected, and that we have no conceptual purchase on what constitutes that pre-cognitive affect. The "hidden" in 'hidden states' seems to be suggesting a similar idea.
Quoting Isaac @Mww
I believe there is a Kantian distinction between the "thing in itself" and noumena; the former is a purely formal or logical requirement to the effect that if there is something as perceived there must be a corresponding thing as it is in itself. .'Noumena' I take to signify the general hidden or invisible nature of what is affecting us pre-cognitively such as to manifest as perceptual phenomena.
I can't speak for Isaac, but I think you have my position pretty much right, except that I would say that we cannot help in ordinary discourse having the hidden state count as a, for example, kettle. Whether we call it a kettle, a hidden state or a noumenon, though, is a matter of what "language game"; we happen to be playing and is a matter of stipulation, not of fact.
What does seem to be a fact is that we are pre-cognitively affected and that we have, and can have, no conceptual grasp of that process. This is where I lose patience with Banno; as he seems to be simply asserting, ad nauseum, that it is a matter of fact that it is a kettle. But then I'm not sure what is behind his apparent position, since he offers no detailed reasoning.
Neural networks do not use propositions. Hence, some explanation will be needed if they are "description-dependent".
Now this is in agreement with the idea of noumena, which are understood to be affecting us, but not in any way dependent on descriptions (conceptualization), nor in any way amenable to being described.
Neural networks instantiate patterns of normatively oriented practical engagement with a world. One can also think of these patterns in terms of forms of description, accounts, schemes , values. Propositions are one peculiar, culturally contingent linguistic product of such normative patterns.
No, it isn't.
Yes it is. See I can play that stupid game too.
Hey, you win.
One may describe what a neural net does in propositional terms, post hoc. But there are no propositions present in neural nets. Neural networks do not function by making use of propositions.
There is somewhere that propositions are present?
Yes, sometimes we use propositions.
No, they function by instituting normative patterns. This they have in common with our propositional terms, because their organizational basis is the condition of possibility of propositional grammar. You would have to eliminate the ‘net’ aspect of neural nets, removing the ascription of patterned organization to one’s neural model, in order to sever the normative equivalence between neurological and propositional.
I just don't see the point of being gnomic when doing philosophy, but you do you.
For instance, as you note,
Quoting Banno
and you yourself intend someday to tell a story that begins "Once upon a time there was an entity with a neural network,..." and ends "And they used propositions happily ever after."
If you don't know the middle bit yet, that's understandable. I suppose people waiting for the next installment would like some reassurance that there will be a middle bit. "Blah blah blah, the end" is not a good story.
What's that mean?
Neural networks are not von neumann machines. They do not manipulate symbols, they modify weightings.
We agree on that, at least?
You are just begging the question Michael. Sure it is true that someone could count the coins, and determine how many there are. But until someone does, there is no such thing as the number of coins in the jar. This requires that someone draws (judges) a relation between a particular number, and the quantity which the jar contains. Until then, the number of coins in the jar is undetermined.
All you are doing here is mentioning every possible number, and saying that one of them will be the number of coins in the jar, if counted. So you are assuming that it is possible that the coins can be counted and you say that one of the infinite possibilities will match. I would assume the same thing. But I think it's quite obvious that until they are counted, there is no such thing as the number of coins in the jar. No specific number has been assigned to that assumed quantity. Therefore there is no number to that quantity. And what you are saying above, is that out of all the possible numbers, you are quite sure that one will prove to be the correct number. So you apply some logic to justify your claim that the coins can be counted and one number will prove to be the correct number. However, this does not produce the conclusion that there already is a correct number, as you seem to think it does.
Quoting Michael
This is a good question. If the two people honestly believe what they are saying, and are stating it to the best of their capacity, they are both making true statements, regardless of the fact that they disagree with each other. This is why knowledge requires justification as well as truth. We move to resolve these disagreements through justification. Right and wrong are judgements based in justification, whereas "true" is a judgement based in what one honestly believes. You can see a lot of overlap here, and that is "knowledge" as justified true belief.
Quoting Banno
Ok, I’ll go with that , even though there are other ways of describing their functioning. Getting away from a computational approach to neural modelling is a good start. Next step would be dumping representationalism.
Absolutely.
Quoting Janus
Ok. I would rather think the ding an sich as merely an ontological necessity; if there is an affect on us by a thing, the thing-in-itself is given immediately by it. The only difference between a thing and a thing-in-itself.....is us. So your notion of formal and logical requirement is too strong, methinks.
Quoting Janus
It doesn’t hurt anything to think noumena as you say, but that wouldn’t the Kantian distinction. Simply put, phenomena arise legitimately according to rules. Noumena arise illegitimately by overstepping the rules. Noumena are possible iff what we consider as rules by which our intelligence works, are themselves unfounded, which is of course, quite impossible to prove. Which leaves them as entirely possible to another kind of intelligence altogether. Who knows....maybe that stupid lion thinks in terms of non-sensuous intuition, such that for his kind noumena are the standard. Too bad we can’t just ask him, huh?
Noumena are not complicated; assembling and comprehending the antecedents against them, are.
That's kicking the can down the road. The flat earther will say he is justified in making his claim, you say he is not justified. It's your word against his.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Infallibility isn't a condition of knowledge, as ordinarily defined and used.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If it is later decided that your "knowledge" was wrong, then that just is to decide that you didn't have knowledge, as ordinarily understood. Thus we have a translation between ordinary usage and your way of speaking.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
By that argument, there is also no such thing as something we can truly call a "kettle" because we can never exclude the possibility of mistake.
I seem to remember reading Kant where he says that if there are representations, then there must be something that is represented. I had interpreted this as being seen by Kant as a logical entailment. You seem to be saying it is an ontological entailment, so I'm wondering if there is a difference.
Quoting Mww
This is quite a novel way (for me at least) to think of noumena, If the ding an sich is an "unknowable X", unknowable in the sense that what it is in itself cannot be known, then I had thought of noumena as simply the general unknowable. This because the thing in itself is still thought as a thing, but a thing considered not as it is for us, but in itself, whereas I took noumena to signify what is unknowable, beyond even being thought of as thing or things. However, I am no Kant scholar, merely someone who has read some of his CPR and secondary sources about it; and it's also been a while. I'm more trying to tease out what are the implications of Kant's ideas, what we might think is implicit in them rather than explicit.
So, I am struggling to understand what you mean by this: "Noumena arise illegitimately by overstepping the rules. Noumena are possible iff what we consider as rules by which our intelligence works, are themselves unfounded, which is of course, quite impossible to prove."
It is too bad we can't ask him!
Quoting Andrew M
Quoting Andrew M
There seems to be a contradiction here. The second quoted passage seems to be saying that if what we thought was knowledge turns out not to be true, then it was never knowledge in the first place. Doesn't it follow that knowledge (as distinct from what we might think is knowledge) cannot be false; and thus that it is infallible?
I don't think so. Suppose Alice says that it is raining outside. There is no general criterion that we can use to determine the truth of her statement (i.e., independent of its specific context). Instead, we need to look at what the statement is about, in this case, the weather outside.
Regarding your question, what do you think?
Yes, knowledge cannot be false. But human beings, being fallible, are always capable of making mistakes or being wrong.
For example, Alice claims it's raining outside as a result of looking out the window. We can conceive of ways that her claim can be false (say, Bob is hosing the window), and thus not knowledge. But if it is raining outside, then she has knowledge.
So infallibility is not a condition of knowledge, whereas truth is. Another way of putting it is that Cartesian certainty isn't a condition of knowledge.
But isn't truth infallible in the sense of its being incapable of being false? Your reference to Cartesian certainty suggests to me that we may be talking at cross proposes, so I'm not proposing that possessing knowledge means that one knows one is infallibly correct, but that the knowledge we possess, if it is to be knowledge, must be infallible.
I have wondered whether it ought to be said that we possess knowledge in cases where we cannot be certain, that is when we do not know that we know, but that is a whole other can of worms.
I was referring specifically to human fallibility. I prefer to say that a true statement cannot be false, just as it cannot be raining outside and not raining outside. But word choice aside, we agree.
Quoting Janus
I think it sometimes can (@Srap Tasmaner gives some examples earlier in the thread), even if they often are found together. There's an interesting quote by philosopher Timothy Williamson on that subject here.
Quoting Janus
If S's knowledge that p is infallible, then S "cannot be wrong" that p. If that's just to say it is not possible that S knows that p and yet ~p, sure, that's impossible.
If S knows that p, and if we consider only possible worlds consistent with S's total knowledge, then p is true at all of those. p is, for S, epistemically necessary. But that's not to say that p is metaphysically necessary, which means there's a sort of odd gap. Any ~p-worlds that might exist are just epistemically inaccessible to S.
And that strikes me as curious. My knowledge that p creates in me an incapacity -- I become unable to know that ~p. Which is as it should be, but imagine reversing the analysis: suppose I do not know that p, and suppose further that I am, for whatever reason, utterly incapable of knowing that ~p. Then p-worlds are, ceteris paribus, consistent with my total knowledge, and only ~p-worlds at which I do not know that ~p. (At none of those will I know p either, because ~p.) This inability to be epistemically committed to ~p seems to greatly increase the likelihood of my landing at a p-world and knowing it. An inability to be wrong doesn't guarantee that you will be right -- you may never come even to hold a belief regarding p either way, much less know the truth -- but it surely helps.
(It's also curious that because we're interested in the complement, the weaker the commitment to ~p you are unable to make, the better for your chances of knowing that p: excluding worlds at which you only believe that ~p would be better; excluding worlds at which you take seriously ~p but are undecided, better still; excluding worlds at which you merely entertain the notion that ~p, better still.)
David Lewis has a paper that addresses infallibility. I've not read it yet.
++++
Dots I forgot to connect.
There's nothing particularly interesting about being right when you're right. Being right means really, really not being wrong.
But when Roman Catholics say that the pope is infallible with regard to certain, though not all, matters, what they mean is not only that whatever he has said is right, but that whatever he will say is right. He is unable to be wrong in these matters.
So the point I was making above is that when you're right, you pick up -- for free -- that inability to be wrong on this matter, and that feels like it's in the neighborhood of infallibility, though it's really just what being right is.
And that's why the reverse is interesting. An inability to speak ungrammatically doesn't mean you produce every grammatical sentence, but that every sentence you produce is grammatical. If you were unable to make faulty inferences, you wouldn't have every reasonable belief, but every belief you had would be reasonable, given your total evidence.
Maybe that's not much to get excited about though. Sounds a bit like playing not to lose, which is a notoriously bad strategy.
Quoting Joshs
Good. So we agree to moving away from a computational, representational approach to neural networking.
Then in what way does Quoting Joshs
Yes, broadly it's (2). What I'm really saying is that language doesn't seem to me to be very much in the business of 'representing' anything at all so much as the business of manipulating hidden states. It obviously derives from a model of how those hidden states will respond (otherwise the action on them would be random), but I wouldn't, myself, expect to see very much by way of reflection in the language of those motivating models.
So to answer your second post (or just make my position even more confusing!) there's a difference between "there's a a kettle" and "the kettle is boiling" that is not found in the grammatical structure of predication. I see them as two different expressions for two different jobs, rather than see one as reflecting a hidden state and the second a predicating something of it (that same hidden state reflected by the former). Hidden states are whole and dynamic, linguistic entities are discrete and static. So linguistic entities can't really reflect hidden states, but I don't think that prevents them from being about hidden states, just that the 'aboutness' might be two-way (not just reflection but aspirational). "there's a kettle" might mean something like the intention that other's should use the word kettle for that which I model as such, whereas "the kettle is boiling" might be more intended to get people to stand away from the object and it wouldn't have really mattered if I'd said "the pot is boiling" instead.
As such, it's difficult to see any analysis of the truth of "the kettle is boiling" as being based on anything other than a post hoc assumption that the expression predicates something of the same "kettle" we have in mind when conducting this analysis.
Quoting Moliere
Great, thanks for the insight. I think my conversations with @Mww have moved along similar lines (the lack of overlap), but I can also see where there might be space for such a notion in our meta-theories. Hidden states themselves suffer from the same problem in that simply by positing them as causal, we have identified them (and so they're not really hidden). They can't really play a direct role in perception as such, but only in a meta-theory about perception. I can't look inside someone's brain and then look at my hidden-state-o-meter and see the connection, I can only put 'hidden states' as a place holder in my meta-model of how models are made.
Quoting Moliere
Yes. This kind of work (on social narratives and their function) is what I used to do my research on. It's a fascinating field - but then I would say that wouldn't I?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Well... that's a massive question that deserves more time than I currently have for it. But... I think it leads us back to where I first interjected. If we're not conducting any kind of empirical investigation (nor constraining our models by the results of any such) then we're perhaps constructing an entity more like maths where axiomatic choices are made and consequences follow, but without any hooks in reality (as far as my limited understanding of maths goes). That's certainly as entertaining a pastime as any other, but it leaves us, much like maths, with judgements like 'elegance' or 'coherence' as our targets for a good model, rather than the more boring 'pragmatic utility' of the empirical investigation. All still fine so far, until... I aesthetically prefer my models to be pragmatic. My desire for a system to have pragmatic hooks into empirical sciences isn't dogmatic, it's aesthetic. I just like my theories that way. so any contribution I might make to the purely 'philosophical' constructions of how the world might be is going to end up that way whichever route we take to judging a theory's merit.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I agree. I think where we might differ is that I'd be more tempted to see the rogue philosophical position as a narrative, where you might have it more as an analytical truth?
Quoting Banno
I like 'narrative', but I've been told I use the word too often. I feel a renewed permission to revert to it now, though!
Quoting Banno
Even here though... I like '...counts as'. It covers a lot of what I was trying to get across to @fdrake in answering his questions above. The idea that speech is doing a job, in this case declarative - 'we'll treat this as a kettle'. It's declaring that any discrepancies we might have in resulting from whatever behaviours our neural networks are currently resulting in toward that hidden state, we should put them aside in favour of the more collaborative 'kettle'.
Quoting Janus
Thanks. So 'noumena' might be closer to hidden states in that respect, but I'd be interested to hear what you think of what @Moliere says about the problem of causality. Hidden states are definitely considered causal.
So are you saying that the number of coins in the jar is in some sort of superposition of all possible numbers until someone counts them?
Forget the word "true" for the moment: what kind of (meta)physics are you suggesting describes the nature of the world?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am asserting what our best understanding of the world entails. You brought up quantum mechanics earlier to support your argument, so you appear to accept the findings of scientific enquiry, and the findings of scientific enquiry are that the number of coins in the jar isn't in a superposition of all possible numbers until counted.
I would say that you are begging the question, saying that "there is no such thing as the number of coins in the jar [until counted]" without any evidence or reasoning.
Right, but saying "I'm justified" is not acceptable justification. Nor is an appeal to authority, or to the norms of our society.
Quoting Andrew M
Infallibility is a condition of "truth" as you use it, and "truth" is a condition of knowledge. So infallibility is a condition of knowledge, under those terms.
Quoting Andrew M
No, I don't think that's right. People just change their minds about things, and sometimes if encouraged to, they will admit to having previously been wrong. But they are more inclined to say that their information (knowledge), was incorrect when the mistake was made, than that they didn't have knowledge at the time. This is because having incorrect knowledge allows them to pass blame elsewhere, toward the source of that incorrect knowledge.
If we look back, in retrospect, we see two possible principal causes of mistaken action, one being a lack of knowledge, the other being incorrect knowledge. The two are not the same, and we must maintain a distinction between them to be able to understand and prevent the causes of mistake in the future. You seem to be claiming that there is no difference between these two in ordinary usage of "knowledge", as if people don't distinguish between lack of knowledge and incorrect knowledge when assigning blame, and in other situations.
Quoting Andrew M
No, this is an incorrect conclusion as well. I define "true" with honesty. So if one honestly believes the item is "a kettle" then the person will truly call it a kettle, despite the fact that someone else might truly call it "une bouilloire". Excluding the possibility of mistake is not required for a human being to speak truthfully. That is supposed to be a feature of God, but not human beings.
Quoting Michael
No, not really. I used the example of quantum mechanics to elucidate the type of problems which adhering to your principles brings about. We look at an electron as a particle, and we think, a particle has a determinate location, therefore the electron has a determinate location. The issue at hand is that "determinate" is not the same thing as "determinable".
Now, if you and I look at the jar of coins, you would say that there is a determinate number of coins in the jar, and I would say that there is a determinable number of coins in the jar. I differ from you, because I insist that an act of determination (measurement) is required to determine the number of coins, before we can truthfully say that the number is determinate. You seem to take this act of determination for granted, as if there is already a number assigned to the coins without an act of measurement. That, I say is a mistake. There is no number already assigned to the coins prior to being counted, just like there is no location already assigned to the electron prior to being determined.
Taking things like this for granted is a pragmatic principle which is extremely useful. If we want to know the quantity of coins, we assume that there is such a thing as the quantity of coins, therefore it is determinable, and we are motivated to count them. Further, we can use this assumption to state premises for logical procedures, like you did, which I said was begging the question. However, that there is a determinate quantity is just an assumption, which is not completely justified until after the count. So in the case of the electron, we might assume it is a particle, therefore it has a location which is determinate, and then we could proceed to determine it. In the end though, the original assumption, that the electron is a particle with a determinate location, is never justified. What is justified is that it has a determinable location
What this demonstrates, is that we must be very wary of these pragmatic principles, which we accept without proper justification, for the sake of facilitating our logical procedures. The principles are extremely useful, and even appearing to be infallible in the circumstances where they are heavily used, and so they appear to be universal. But then, when we expand the use of them, because of that appearance of universality, outside their range of applicability, this misleads us. Because the principle is so extremely useful, and infallible in its original application (there is a determinate number of coins in the jar), we are not inclined to use the tool of skepticism, to question that premise and see where it is faulty.
Quoting Michael
Come on Michael, if I knew the answer to that, I'd have reality all figured out. And of course, so would everyone else because when one person gets it right everyone else jumps on board. I think metaphysics is an inquiry into the best way to describe the nature of the world. If one already knew the best way there would be no need for inquiry.
Quoting Michael
Look at it this way, it's very simple really. The truth of the phrase "the number of coins in the jar" implies that there is one specific number attached to, associated with, or related to, the quantity of coins in the jar. Can you agree with that? Now do you honestly believe that a particular number has already been singled out, and related to the quantity of coins in the jar, prior to them being counted? How is that possible?
I think the real problem here is that we've come from a tradition of religious beliefs. We have a religious history. So there are many old principles that we now take for granted, which are only properly supported by the concept of God. Isaac Newton for example, stated that his first law of motion (which we tend to take for granted), relies on the Will of God. This is similar to what I think about your belief, that there is a specific number already associated with the coins in the jar. It is a belief which was developed under the assumption that God has already counted them, and assigned that number to the quantity of coins in the jar.
Hidden states are the world, right? (However, you also say that the model is the world?)
Quoting Isaac
I have been trying to.
Quoting Isaac
That's not at all what I've been attempting to say. I reject this reading that "truth is about the model being surprising".
What I have been saying is that if the model is the world which is a collective fiction, then there should be no surprises. This "collective fiction" view is your account of redunancy, yes? Do you agree that there are no surprises with the truth of the collective fiction that "Aragorn was king of Gondor"? If so, then I don't see why the same should not extend to all (other) truths. According to redundancy, therefore, there should be no surprises. What I mean by a "surprise" is that our expectations are not met. But if it is our collective fiction, then why would our expectations not be met? We should always expect that "Aragorn was king of Gondor" is true, right?
However, in opposition to this, you also state that "the hidden states the world is a collective model of may be modelled imperfectly". This imperfect modelling indicates that occasionally our expectations may not be met. And that indicates a problem for the "collective fiction" view of redundancy. If it is the view of redundancy that there are no surprises and our expectations are always met because of our collective fiction, then there should be no "imperfect modelling".
Quoting Isaac
I'm getting it from my understanding of redundancy. If "p is true" is no more than "p", then the model and the "hidden states" are one and the same. In other words, there are no hidden states, only the model; only the collective fiction. Hence my charge of relativism. There should be no place for a "better model" according to redundancy. I see this as being the reason @Srap Tasmaner asks what makes it a "better" model, instead of merely a free or random change to the existing/previous model.
A better model indicates that what makes "p" true (or "more" true) is having/getting our model of the world perfect, or closer to perfection. It means that "p is true" is not just whatever we call "p" at a given time; but is instead the best version of "p" of all time - the "p" that perfectly models the world.
Once the world and model come apart, then it is no longer redundancy/deflationism (at least, as I understand it).
But as I said, the findings of science are that the position of an electron isn't like the number of coins in the jar. The former is in a superposition, the latter is not. If you want to use science to support your position then you cannot pick and choose which bits you like.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not even sure what you're asking. If you're asking if somebody has determined the number of coins before somebody has determined the number of coins, then of course not. If you're asking if there is some number of coins before somebody has determined the number of coins, then yes.
Your argument seems to commit a fallacy of equivocation.
Yes. The text is rife with affirmations.
“....I cannot rest in the mere intuitions, but—if they are to become cognitions—must refer them, as representations, to something, as object, and must determine the latter by means of the former...”
Quoting Janus
Again, no interpretive harm done, even if there is a great contextual and methodological difference. I would still hesitate to agree Kant sees it that way, for the very first paragraph of the text.....
“.....For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations...”
.....indicates an ontological necessity, while the logical entailment, re: the possibility of awakening, resides in the system itself. But we see the awakening of the system constantly, and its negation is impossible, both entirely logical entailments, but irrelevant to its theoretical operation.
—————
Quoting Janus
Noumena do represent what is unknowable, but for different reason than the ding an sich is unknowable. The latter merely from lack of immediate access by us, its objective reality being given, the former from the impossibility of its objective reality being given, to which the access is then moot.
Regarding beyond even being thought of as things....
“....The understanding, when it terms an object in a certain relation phenomenon, at the same time forms out of this relation a representation or notion of an object in itself, and hence believes that it can form also conceptions of such objects....”
....it is clear noumena are thought as things, insofar as thought is the origin of conceptions of things. Briefly, understanding treats phenomena, which are mere representations of objects, as objects themselves, which it has no warrant to do, for the arrangement of the matter of objects into a form is the purview of intuition alone.
Another thing: representation formed out of relation, is not the same as representation formed out of sensation. In effect, when understanding thinks a representation as object in itself, the entire sensory apparatus is bypassed, which means the faculty of sensuous intuition, the kind we actually possess, is idle. For us, then, this has two consequences negating the possibility of experience itself. First, going forward in the methodology, if cognition of objects requires sensuous intuition, and it is idle, no empirical cognition is at all possible. Hence, noumena as un-sensible objects in themselves, are necessarily uncognizable, which is the same as unknowable. And second, when going backward in the methodology, if sensuous intuition is idle, and it is the case that the awakening of our cognitive system depends exclusively on the appearance in sensation of real objects, the objective reality of such non-sensuous objects in themselves can never be given, which is also the same as such objects being unknowable.
“....But I can think what I please, provided only I do not contradict myself...”, and we can see, thinking noumena is not contradictory, but to attribute substance, reality or even adjoin concepts to them, is a contradiction of the systemic methodology itself.
Quoting Janus
Personally, my opinion is, first and foremost, that a priori conditions are not only possible, but necessary, and second, given from the first, that the human intellectual system has a natural, intrinsic, thus inescapable, duality.
Quoting Janus
Same here. Anything anybody says, even the relation of textual citations, with respect to Kantian metaphysics is no more than his own opinion.
I think I’m going to backtrack, unapologetically I might add. While you did get me to think above and beyond my cognitive prejudices, I found support for my original claim, truth is that in which a cognition conforms to its object (A58/B82), here.....
“...But although these rules of the understanding are not only à priori true, but the very source of all truth, that is, of the accordance of our cognition with objects...”
......found at A237/B296, quite obviously further along in the methodological thesis, so shouldn’t it be taken for granted he means an answer to “what is truth?”, which must be a definition of it, to be just that? To repeat what he doesn’t mean would be disastrous.
On the other hand, perhaps one could reject that “truth is.....”, is technically sufficient as a definition, but is rather merely an exposition of the conditions which make all truths possible. But the rejoinder to that would be that’s precisely what a definition does, serves as the criterion for the validity of any conception.
Personal choice, then?
A jar of coins either has no coins in it, or some coins in it. For the moment only, assume there is no other possible state for a jar. (We need neither claim nor stipulate that the number of coins in an empty jar is 0.) If a jar has no coins in it, we cannot remove a coin from it; if a jar has some coins in it, we can remove a coin from it, and If we were to remove one coin, then again the jar would have in it either no coins or some coins. This we know because a jar must have no coins in it or some coins in it. We count, from 1, as we remove coins from the jar, stopping when there are no coins in the jar; if the procedure does not terminate, then there is no number of coins in the jar. If the procedure terminates, then the number we have reached is the number of coins that were in the jar before we started counting.
The only difficulty we face is determining what it means for a coin to be in the jar. If the jar is quite full, so that some coins rest on other coins but above the lip of the jar -- that is, outside the space we think of as bounded by the jar -- shall we count those as in the jar or not? If a coin is partially within the space bounded by the jar and partially outside that space, shall we say the coin is in the jar or not? If our jar of coins is in such a problematic state, then our counting procedure is of no use until we agree which coins will be considered to be in the jar. If we cannot agree which coins to count, there is no point in counting them. Similar considerations apply to what is a coin.
But if we do agree what to count as a coin and which coins to count, we know there is a procedure available, and that we will be able to determine the number of coins currently in the jar, even if we have not yet made that determination.
Proof that such a procedure, if it yields an answer, must yield a unique answer, is left to the reader.
....and I can only put noumena as a placeholder in a meta-theory of how other intelligences function.
Risky business, indeed.
I am linking description (space of reasons, account, value system) , to scheme , scheme to pattern and pattern to reciprocal network of relations. Tying all of these together within an enactivist approach are a connected set of concepts characteristic of autonomous living systems: organizational and operation closure and sensory-motor structural coupling between organism and environment.
“ Organizational closure refers to the self-referential (circular and recursive) network of relations that defines the system as a unity, and operational closure to the reentrant and recurrent dynamics of such a system.
…autonomous systems do not operate on the basis of internal representations in the sub-jectivist/objectivist sense. Instead of internally representing an external world in some Cartesian sense, they enact an environment inseparable from their own structure and actions . In phenomenological language, they constitute (disclose) a world that bears the stamp of their own structure.”(Thompson , Mind in Life)
It is not as though any particular description or account is split off from the environment it interacts
with and organizes. This is a two-way street. A network of relations defining a space of reasons or the pattern of a neural net is in a relation of reciprocal
causality with the world of material processes.
Can you explain the difference?
So what you were saying is that it is patterns all the way down, but miscalling them descriptions.
Sure, neural networks make use of patterns. They do not make use of names or propositions.
Quoting Isaac
One supposes that this counting as is the result of neural processes yet need not be located in any particular process. There need be nothing in common, perhaps, in the neural patterns that enable one to make a cup of tea and the neural process that enables one to order quality Russian Caravan from an online supplier. Yet both are to do with tea.
Hence, anomalous monism.
And
Quoting Joshs
would be to claim that neural science is imaginary...
Nor I. But I agree with Lewis that the standards of knowledge depend on the context:
Quoting David Lewis - SEP
The flat-earther is not claiming it is. He will point to what he regards as evidence for a flat earth. Is his claim thereby justified?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Let me put it differently: Cartesian certainty is not a condition of knowledge, as ordinarily defined and used.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The issue is not about what language one uses to refer to a kettle. It's that someone can conceivably, and honestly, mistake something for being a kettle that is not, or for not being a kettle when it is.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's exactly the point. Someone might be mistaken about whether the object before them is a kettle. Similarly someone might be mistaken about whether they have knowledge. People can make honest mistakes. They thought it was a kettle when it wasn't. They thought they knew something when they didn't.
Yes, agreed.
Quoting Mww
Yes, or an open question (which we can investigate the truth of). ;-)
You seem to be missing the point. In each case, there is no measure until the measurement is made. There is no number assigned to the supposed quantity within the jar, until the coins are counted, and there is no location of the electron until the measurement is made. "Superposition" is irrelevant, and something you just brought up as a distraction from the real issue, as if it had some relevance. It's really just a fancy word meaning that the position is undetermined, just like the number of coins is undetermined.
Quoting Michael
I think you are using dishonest language Michael, to avoid the question. "Some number" is a general reference, and it does not mean a particular number. When the coins are counted there is a particular number, a specific number, which is assigned to the quantity of coins in the jar, as "the number" of coins in the jar. That is what I have been arguing is a matter of judgement, the decision as to which specific number gets assigned to that quantity. If you really think that there is a particular number assigned to the quantity before it is counted, I'd like to hear your explanation as to how this occurs.
We are not discussing whether there is a quantity of coins in the jar, in that most general sense, we can see that there is a quantity without counting them. We are discussing whether there is a particular number assigned to that quantity, prior to being counted, whether or not the coins in the jar have a specific number. Do the coins in the jar have a number? So the question is, do you honestly believe that there is a particular number which has already been assigned to the quantity of coins in the jar, prior to them being counted?
Quoting Michael
No, I think it is you who is equivocating, now saying that "the number" of coins in the jar is "some number". See, you have moved from your assertion that the coins in the jar have "a number" to the claim of "some number", where "some number" now means any one of an infinite number of possibilities. Do you see the difference in predication? The quantity has a number, or, the quantity has many possible numbers. The latter is the reality, because the number is determinable, not determined.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, that is a logical conclusion, which validates the act of counting. Counting the coins in the jar justifies the claim that the number of coins in the jar is determinable. Retroactively, after counting, we can now employ a premise about temporal continuity, to conclude that this was the number before counting. But notice, that this number is not produced until after counting, and is applied retroactively. So we still cannot truthfully say that we could have said, that before counting, the coins had that number. The number is produced from the counting and applied retroactively.
This would be the same sort of faulty temporal argument that some determinists try to employ against free will. After a person acts in a specific way, it is claimed that the person acted this way, so it is impossible that the person could have acted otherwise. But it's really just a faulty application of retroactive logic. Yes, after the fact, it is impossible that the fact can be otherwise, but prior to the fact there is a multitude of possibilities. The same sort of thing is the case with the coins. After counting, it is impossible that the count could be otherwise. But prior to counting, we have to admit numerous possibilities. The retroactive application of logic, after the act of counting, to say that there was X number of coins before the counting, does not negate the fact that prior to the counting there was no such thing as the number of coins, only a multitude of possibilities.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I agree, that prior to counting, we can truthfully say that we might count the coins, apply logic, and say how many coins are in the jar now. But that does not mean that the coins in the jar have a number now. The coins in the jar now, prior to being counted have no number, and even though we might apply logic at a later time to say how many coins were in the jar at this earlier time, that still doesn't change the fact that the coins in the jar at this earlier time have no number, because the count, and the logic haven't been applied yet.
It's a very simple principle. After the fact, we can make all sorts of conclusions about what happened, and why it happened, causation etc.. But this does not imply that we could have made the same conclusion before the occurrence of the event. So, after counting, we can make conclusions concerning the quantity of coins in the jar, which we could not make before counting.
I cannot answer this. I cannot judge a justification without seeing the specifics of the justification.
Quoting Andrew M
Sorry, I'm not familiar with "Cartesian certainty". Maybe you could explain how it's relevant.
Quoting Andrew M
I don't see how such an honest mistake is an issue. The person is simply wrong, by the norms of word use. Therefore calling the thing a kettle will create disagreement requiring justification.
Quoting Andrew M
I don't agree with this at all. First, knowledge is not the same type of thing that a kettle is. A person has knowledge prior to knowing that one has knowledge. And, a person may learn how to use the word "kettle" prior to knowing what a kettle is. That's simply the way we learn as children. We learn things before we learn how to describe what it is that we have learned. We learn how before we learn that. Therefore by the time that a person learns that oneself has knowledge, it is impossible that the person does not have knowledge.
So such a mistake, as thinking oneself to have knowledge when one does not, is impossible. And so it is also impossible that the person thought they knew something when they didn't. It seems like it would be more of a case that the knowledge which one had was not quite what the person thought it was. They really did know something, it just wasn't exactly what they thought they knew.
Priming experiments show that there is a great deal
of overlap among neural patterns that are involved in semantically related items. If shown a word to ‘prime’ one’s memory for semantically related meanings, the reaction time to recognize the primed for meanings is much quicker than without the priming. If no such overlap exist between the pattens that are involved in the meanings associated with making a cup
of tea and the ordering of Russian Caravan, then this suggests that we are dealing with only distantly related categories of meaning. If we are actively thinking of both examples as to do with tea, then there will
likely be certain words that act as primings from the one situation to the other, and certain words that will not.
Quoting Banno
not that neural science is imaginary, but that if it is claiming to offer an account that includes the organization of semantic meaning, then it will reveal in its patterning such effects as the ability to prime for overlapping senses of meaning. It doesn’t have to , of course. Older neural models couldn’t account for priming results because they were the wrong sorts of descriptions. Similarly , a molecular or sun-atomic description of neural nets would fail to make sense of priming , since they are the wrong vocabulary for the task. The most adequate sort of neural description of
linguistic behavior should ENRICH the vocabulary of propositional structures, not make it disappear. This is precisely what the Husserlian bracketing of the naively experienced everyday world via the phenomenological reduction achieves.
Let's return to the beginning of this exchange:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That we "exclude the possibility of mistake" is not a condition of knowledge, as ordinarily defined and used.
For example, Alice claims it's raining outside as a result of looking out the window. We can conceive of ways that her claim can be false (say, Bob is hosing the window), and thus not knowledge. But if it is raining outside, then she has knowledge.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If they were wrong that the object was a kettle, then they didn't know that the object was a kettle, by the norms of word use.
The temporal continuity of what? I don't understand the point you're making here.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The procedure I described, if it terminates at all, yields a unique value. It cannot do otherwise unless the procedure is undermined by other premises. Did you have such a premise in mind?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Suppose a jar contains some coins, but for no natural number n is it the case that the jar contains n coins. Then for no natural number n is it the case that removing exactly n coins from the jar would leave the jar empty. If the number of coins in the jar could be determined by counting to be some natural number k, then removing exactly k coins from the jar would leave the jar empty; therefore the number of coins in the jar cannot be determined by counting to be any natural number k.
What do you mean by a number being assigned?
If you're saying that nobody has said that there are 66 coins in the jar then my responses are that a) someone can say that there are 66 coins in the jar without counting, b) there cannot be both 66 and 67 coins in the jar, and so two different assignments cannot both be true, and c) there can be 66 coins in the jar even if nobody says so.
The reasoning for (c) is that it is a parsimonious explanation for why we count the number of coins that we do. Your reasoning appears to be that there are 66 coins in the jar because we have counted 66 coins, whereas my reasoning is that we have counted 66 coins because there are 66 coins in the jar. The problem with your reasoning is that it doesn't explain why it is that we counted 66 coins (and not, say, 666), and also that it can lead to the contradiction which I reject in (b).
That's not the beginning. Prior to this, you were insisting that if something which is thought to be "known" turns out to be incorrect, then we must conclude that at the time when it was thought to be known, it really was not known.
Quoting Andrew M
I know that excluding the possibility of mistake is not a condition of "knowledge", as commonly used. But according to your assertions, excluding the possibility of mistake is very clearly a condition of "knowledge". That's why I am saying you are wrong.
You say that when something which is thought to be known, turns out to be mistaken, then it is not "knowledge". So anything mistaken cannot be called "knowledge". Therefore anything which we can truthfully call "knowledge" must exclude the possibility of mistake, according to what you are asserting.
Quoting Andrew M
I don't see how this is an example of anything relevant.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
We must premise a temporal continuity of the quantity in order to conclude that the quantity at the time prior to being counted was the same as the quantity at the later time of being counted
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, I agree that the procedure if carried out according to standards of what qualifies to be counted, as you described, will turn out a unique value. The point though is that the unique value does not exist prior to the procedure being carried out. The issue is not whether the coins can be counted, I have no problem with that. The issue is whether or not there is "a count", "a measure", 'a number", which corresponds with the quantity, prior to being counted.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I can't understand this example. I agree that when we say that there is a quantity of coins in the jar, we assume that they can be counted. And, this assumption implies that there is necessarily one of an infinite number of possible numbers which will be the unique value. But to say that there will be one number, after being counted, out of a present infinite number of possibilities, is not the same as saying that there is one number presently.
Yes, that's how I see it. The outcomes are 'put together' by an entirely different process ('social construction' in old money), so we'd have no reason at all to think they'd be the same neural networks associating all 'tea-related' things as would be the ones involved in carrying out tea-related interventions to their environment. The curation of 'tea-related' things after-the-facts, tends to be much more stable (even to the point of some researchers showing indications of specific neurons), whereas the the tea-related interventions are less discretely distributed. A classic example is snipping the dorsal and ventral perception streams. Subjects (baboons usually) will be able to manipulate objects functionally without problems, but may well have trouble in identification tasks. To use your example, they'd know how to make tea, but wouldn't be able to say such an activity might take place in tea-shop. The latter being something of a post hoc story, but stored quite discretely in specialised neural clusters, the former being more an 'anything that gets the job done' sort of system.
Gotta love a 3500yo tradition, huh?
I see. No, we needn't take that as a premise. We can argue for it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Suppose a jar containing some coins at a time t[sub]0[/sub]. We agree that we can count the coins by removing them one at a time, and that doing so would result in a unique natural number m, at some time t[sub]m[/sub], after t[sub]0[/sub].
If we remove a coin from the jar, then there is some time t[sub]1[/sub], after t[sub]0[/sub] and after we have removed one coin but before we have removed another. If the jar is empty at t[sub]1[/sub], then the initial state of the jar at t[sub]0[/sub] was that it contained 1 coin, and 1 is a natural number. If the jar is not empty at t[sub]1[/sub], we go again. If we remove another coin, then there is a time t[sub]2[/sub], after t[sub]1[/sub] and after we have removed another coin but before removing any others (if there are any). If the jar is empty at t[sub]2[/sub], then it contained 1 coin at t[sub]1[/sub], and 2 coins at t[sub]0[/sub], and 2 is a natural number. If the jar is not empty at t[sub]2[/sub], we go again.
For any step of the counting process, there is a time t[sub]k[/sub], after we have removed k coins from the jar but before we have removed another (if we can), and at t[sub]k[/sub] the jar is empty or the jar still has some coins in it. If the jar is empty, then the initial state of the jar at t[sub]0[/sub] was that it had k coins in it, k a natural number. (If the jar is empty at t[sub]k[/sub], then at t[sub]1[/sub], the jar had k - 1 coins in it; at t[sub]2[/sub], it had k - 2 coins in it; and so on, up to time t[sub]k[/sub].)
If there is no natural number n such that the jar is empty at time t[sub]n[/sub], then the process never terminates and the coins in the jar cannot be counted (except by Zeus).
I think this is just too vague.
If S knows that p, then S is incapable of knowing that ~p. But S is still capable of mistakenly believing that ~p in various ways: S may have forgotten for the moment that they know that p and have reason at the time to believe that ~p; there may be some subtlety they have failed to reason through, may believe some q that would support ~p without realizing that p excludes q, and so on. Our knowledge must be consistent, but our beliefs show no such discipline. I think.
The trouble is not our knowledge, but our beliefs, and around here it's our beliefs that we know that p, which clearly can be mistaken even though our knowledge cannot.
And I think there are at least two senses of "fallibility." One is when you hold only partial belief, so you can consistently say "I think he's in the office, but he could be elsewhere." The other is when you are willing to endorse your individual beliefs taken singly, in sensu diviso, but hold something like partial belief with regard to your total beliefs, taken altogether, in sensu composito, that is, when you hold that some subset of your beliefs may be mistaken -- which you are also willing to say of many individual beliefs -- or that some subset of your beliefs is mistaken.
That latter is a little paradoxical, but defensible. (Your belief in sensu composito doesn't entail the corresponding set of beliefs in sensu diviso. You can fall to make an inference, be lacking some connective knowledge, etc.)
It's also possible that generally people only believe that they're probably wrong about something, and that's as much "fallibility" as they're committed to.
++++
One more note: I think people sometimes reason *from* what they take to be reasonable doubt that they're right about *everything*, *to* the conclusion that they should treat each of their beliefs with a certain amount of suspicion. The thinking is, if I'm probably wrong in at least one of my beliefs, some small part of that probability should attach to each and every one of my beliefs. Even though the original claim was that my beliefs are overwhelmingly right, I have the epistemic problem of not knowing which are the good ones and which the bad. (But attaching a modicum of doubt to all your beliefs is so ham-fisted, I don't think anyone actually does it or can do it.)
Yes! This, I believe is the situation. And I think that to coming up with this is a very good example of philosophizing on your part. The use of the term "because" signifies that you recognize that this is a matter of a difference in opinion concerning causation.
What is the cause of this specific numeral, "66" being related to the coins in the jar. I say that it is an act of human will, the act of counting, which causes "66" to be related to the coins in the jar. You seem to be saying that the numeral "66" is already related to the coins, prior to being counted, and this causes the person to count "66". So, I say that the freely willed act of counting causes the person to say "66", and establish this relation between "66" and the quantity, while you say that the relation between "66" and the quantity is already established, and this established relation causes the person to say "66".
Notice that I say the act is freely willed. This is because the difference between your perspective and mine, as a matter of causation, manifests in the difference between determinism and free will. The issue is that I believe we freely choose "66" to represent the quantity of coins in the jar, and we are not caused by the coins in the jar to represent them with "66", as you seem to believe.
Quoting Michael
You never asked me to explain this, but I will say that it is simply a matter of how we as human beings created the numbering system. That we count the coins as "66" is a feature of the system we have devised for measuring quantities.
Quoting Michael
Assignment in this case is a matter of judgement, and it must be an honest or true judgement, or it's not a true assignment.
If, as in the example of (a), a person randomly guesses "66", this would not produce a true statement, because "true" as I've defined it requires the person to state what one honestly believes, to the best of their ability. "There are 66 coins in the jar" would not be a statement of one's honest belief, if the person is just guessing, and therefore is not true under those circumstances.
In the case of (b), it is very common to have contradiction in true statements, "true" meaning a statement of one's honest belief. If one counts "66" and another counts "67", then they both make true statements which conflict, and require justification. In this case, another counting is required. It is also possible that two different people could use two different systems. That's why knowledge requires both, truth and justification. Truth alone cannot resolve contradictions, because two people will both insist on knowing "the truth", even though they contradict each other.
And (c) is simply wrong. For there to be "66 coins in the jar", it is necessary that "66" is the symbol which has been associated with the quantity of coins in the jar. You seem to think that the symbol "66" is somehow magically associated with the coins in the jar, without anyone making that association. How do you believe that this comes about, that the symbol "66" is related to the coins in the jar, without someone making that relation? Doesn't meaning require intent in your understanding of the use of symbols?
Suppose we say that the meaning of "66" is already related to the coins in the jar, prior to them being counted. How could we interpret this? What is that meaning, and where is it if independent from human minds?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The point was that to make the logical conclusion that there was the same number of coins at an earlier time, as there is at the later time, when counted, we need some sort of premise of temporal continuity. You can argue for it, saying that the jar was watched for the entire time and no coins disappeared out of it, etc., but in the end all possibilities for change must be covered. If there is no temporal continuity of existence, then the quantity can change randomly from one moment to the next. If the quantity can change randomly, then we cannot say that it was necessarily the same at the earlier time as the later time. Therefore we need a premise of temporal continuity.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
As I said, I do not deny that we can make these logical conclusions, so long as we recognize the required premise of temporal continuity. And the problem with the premise of temporal continuity is that we really do not understand temporal continuity, it's just something we take for granted. Newton's first law of motion is an example of a law concerning a temporal continuity which we take for granted.
That's correct.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As a result of looking out the window, Alice justifiably believes that it is raining outside. For Alice to know that it is raining outside, her justifiable belief also has to be true. Those are the conditions for knowledge. Let's look at two different scenarios:
(1) If it is raining outside, then Alice knows that it is raining outside. She knows that even though she didn't exclude the possibility that it was not raining and that Bob was hosing the window. She knows it is raining because her belief is both justifiable and true. Alice has satisfied the conditions for knowledge.
(2) If it is not raining outside (say, Bob was hosing the window which Alice mistakenly thought was rain), then Alice's belief is false. Thus she doesn't know that it is raining, she only thinks that it is. Alice has not satisfied the conditions for knowledge.
:-)
OK, but someone has to judge "if it is raining outside", in order for us to call what Alice has "knowledge". We need to know the answer to this. And if we know the answer to this, then we have excluded the possibility of mistake. So we cannot say whether Alice has "knowledge", unless we determine that it is raining and there is no possibility that it is not raining, thereby excluding the possibility of mistake.
Just trying to capture the essential idea here! Apparently not successfully...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Indeed.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, I think it's a bit abstract otherwise. I think the other issue is that standards can vary according to context. For example, Alice might know that it's raining outside, having looked. But when challenged with the possibility of Bob hosing the window, making that possibility salient, she might doubt it and go and look more carefully. Or when challenged by a philosophical skeptic, conclude that she doesn't know very much at all.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, I think the reality is that we're pragmatic about it. If a problem arises, then we investigate further.
In the first scenario it is raining, in the second scenario it is not. According to knowledge as justified, true belief, do you judge that Alice has knowledge in either or both of those scenarios?
I addressed in my posts a single issue you raised: must the coins in a jar actually be counted, by you, me, God, or anyone, to know that there is a specific number of coins in such a jar?
That question I answered as clearly as I could, and even provided informal proofs to support my position.
If you have no rebuttal besides "maybe coins spontaneously appear and disappear," then we're done here.
Wasn't trying to lay that at your feet!
Quoting Andrew M
I'll have to read the rest of Lewis paper to see what he was getting up to. I think I get the intent of this example, but it feels like we're screwing around with justification and I don't know why anyone would think that road leads to knowledge. It leads to high-quality beliefs, that's it. Maybe Lewis has something up his sleeve...
Physicist Asher Peres once said, "unperformed experiments have no results". Which is to say, he rejected counterfactual definiteness.
Quoting Counterfactual definiteness - Wikipedia
Consider also Aristotle's future sea battle scenario. Regarding whether there would or would not be a future sea battle, he says:
Quoting On Interpretation, §9 - Aristotle (Problem of future contingents - Wikipedia)
If these ideas applied to regular coin jars then prior to the coins being counted, their number would not merely be unknown, but also not able to be meaningfully talked about. So, for the agent, there would be a potential (but not actual) number of coins in the jar that is only actualized in the counting of the coins.
In the sense that the numeral refers to a number and that number is the number of coins prior to being counted.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's not magic. We agree to use the word "triangle" to refer to the shape of some object that we have seen. Now every object with that shape -- even objects we haven't seen -- are triangles, even though we haven't explicitly used the word "triangle" to refer to each of those objects individually. They are triangles by virtue of having the same shape as an object that we have referred to as having a shape named "triangle".
The same is true for the numeral "66". We've already agreed that the numeral "66" refers to a specific number, and so any jar containing that number of coins, even jars of coins we've never counted, have 66 coins.
You make the mistake of saying that because we need to explicitly assign a particular word or numeral to a particular kind that we need to explicitly assign that particular word or numeral to every individual of that kind. This is false. We need to do the former to establish meaning, but we don't need to do the latter.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
They can insist anything they like. They'd just be wrong. At least one of them doesn't know the truth. It's really quite simple.
The T-schema is useful here. There are 66 coins iff "there are 66 coins" is true, there are 67 coins iff "there are 67 coins" is true, there cannot be both 66 and 67 coins, therefore "there are 66 coins" and "there are 67 coins" cannot both be true.
This is consistent with how we actually understand the meaning of the word "true". I don't know why you're trying to make it mean "honest belief". What evidence or reasoning is there for that?
I think the mathematical vocabulary is clearer: if they can be counted, then the cardinality of the set of coins in the jar exists and is unique, though we do not know its value until we count.
If that's what's meant by "potential but not actual," then cool. MU's position is that there is no number "associated with" the cardinality of the set of coins in the jar until they have been counted, because no one has made a judgment assigning a number to the set; my position is that if they can be counted, then there must be a specific number of them, though we do not know that number. If the counting procedure can be followed, but will not yield a result, that can only be because it will not terminate, and that can only be because there is an infinite number of coins in the jar, and then indeed there is no natural number equal to the cardinality of the set of coins in the jar. Whether we call aleph-null a number I did not address. Whether a jar can hold an infinite number of coins, I did not address.
There's modal language all over this, and I'm fine with that. In part, that's simply because MU agreed that they can be counted, and if they were to be counted, then we would know how many coins are in the jar. I was simply working within a counterfactual framework already accepted. A possible world in which coins appear and disappear at random is not a world in which coins can be counted, so it is not, as we might say, salient for this case. A possible world in which coins sometimes disappear after I've touched them is a world in which I can count coins, but my count cannot be verified, and in such a world my count applies only to the past, to the coins that were in the jar in its initial state.
Quoting Same wiki article on counterfactuals in QM
A person who has no lap has nothing in their lap. Russell's analysis of definite descriptions works just fine here, but physicists don't read Bertrand Russell. It's also tempting here to give a counterfactual analysis: if a standing person holding nothing were to sit, they would have an empty lap; if a standing person holding a child on their back and nothing else were to sit, they would have an empty lap, until another child scrambled onto it; if a standing person holding a child against their chest were to sit and loosen their grip upon the child even a little, they would have a child in their lap, and they would sigh with relief.
Quantum mechanics may have some specific prohibitions on the use of counterfactual values in calculations, but it is, for me anyway, inconceivable (!) that we could get along without counterfactuals. They're hiding absolutely everywhere.
On the one hand we have the view that there are either 64 coins in the jar, or there are not; that either "There are 64 coins in the jar" is true, or that it is false, but that we do not know which.
On the other, you would be claiming that "there are 64 coins in the jar" is neither true nor false. That is, you are rejecting bivalence, the view that all statements are either true or they are false.
The former is realism, the latter is antirealism.
The former uses traditional logic, the latter must move to more obtuse variations.
To be sure, the choice is simply one of how you would choose to talk about the physical world, what logic you would apply, how you treat words such as "true", "believe", "know" and so on. Bivalent logic works, it will be up to you to choose some other logic and show that it is as functional. You might go with Kripke's definition of truth and a paraconsistent logic in an attempt to avoid exploding. You will have difficulty in maintaining that there is one true logic, once you open those doors. But perhaps you will decide that being consistent is overrated...
It works for @Metaphysician Undercover, who has previously claimed that [math]0. \dot9 \neq 1[/math], that objects cannot have a velocity at a given point in time, and various other eccentric notions. You can decide how much attention to pay such thinking.
This is the point made several times already in this thread, that statements of truth are univalent, while statements of belief or knowledge are bivalent. That is, being true is about a statements while being believed is about the relation between a statement and the believer.
There's no need, of course, for sophistic potential-but-not-actual logics nor for quantum machinations. Their mention should indicate to all that one has already ventured down a rabbit hole.
Keep it simple.
And for all of this there already are exceptions, or we can choose to construct them if we like, some to do with hinges, some to do with counting as, some to do with deranged epitaphs. We construct our language using the shared material around us, and we do it in the plural, as a communal exercise. Others might constructed things differently, but if they do we would still be able to understand most of what they had done, because they used the same stuff.
We might look for the barest minimal point of agreement concerning true sentences, and here we find Tarski's work invaluable. What ever else one might suppose about truth, the kettle will be boiling only if "the kettle is boiling" is true, the coin will be worth a dollar only if "the coin is worth a dollar" is true, and modesty is a virtue only if "modesty is a virtue" is true. Vacillate as you will, the logic of truth favours redundancy.
None of which counts against talk of truth being used as a play for power, as a way to silence disagreement.
@Isaac @Moliere
Quoting Isaac
I think it is an inescapable entailment in Kant's philosophy that the noumenal gives rise to the phenomenal. or it could be said that phenomena are supervenient on noumena. Can we avoid thinking of this supervenience as some kind of being-caused? Even in relation to phenomenal experience, causation is postulated, not ever directly experienced except perhaps in the case of our own bodies acting upon and being acted upon, and even that seems arguable.
As I understand it Kant believes the idea of causation is essential to making sense of what we experience, and since that is the proper ambit of its applicability, he sees it as being incoherent to seek to apply it to what we cannot experience.
Thanks, I'm not sure I'm following everything you're saying about the difference between a noumenon and a ding an sich, but you do appear to be saying that intuition of the objects of the senses (considered as wholes) is impossible, which would seem to suggest equating the empirical object with the ding an sich, if not the noumenon?
The issue is, who determines whether or not it is raining. Here, you are asserting "In the first scenario it is raining, in the second scenario it is not". Do you know whether or not it is raining in each scenario, in an absolute way? If so, I can give you an answer. If not, I cannot. This is because I cannot say whether Alice has knowledge or not unless I know infallibly whether or not it is raining. You have provided no justification for your assertions, therefore I cannot honestly give you an answer. So I do not believe that you know infallibly whether or not it is raining in each of those scenarios
That is, according to your representation of "knowledge", which requires infallibility. I do not represent knowledge like that though. I think Alice has knowledge whether or not you assert that it is raining. These third party assertions, "it is raining", "it is not raining", or "if it is raining", are actually completely irrelevant to whether or not the person has knowledge, because as mere assertions they do nothing to justify one's belief.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
What I said, is that your logic is not valid without a premise of temporal continuity. That a coin might disappear without one noticing, is just a simple example as to why such a premise is necessary. If you do not agree, and think that your logic which concludes that the number of coins in the jar at a later time will necessarily be the same as the number at an earlier time will be valid, without such a premise, then so be it. But I think your refusal to continue is just a recognition that you are wrong. The premise of temporal continuity is a requirement for a valid conclusion.
Quoting Michael
Well, here we have an ontological difficulty. What is "a number"? Are you taking a position of Platonic realism here? If not, maybe you can explain what you mean by "a number". I tend to think that a numeral refers to the situation in application, through the medium of some mental ideas, rather than through the medium of "a number", just like other words do.
We can however, use mathematical symbols, like numerals, in practise, without any particular situation of application. This is like when we practise other forms of logic, using symbols without any referent. The symbols have meaning, but they effectively refer to nothing. So in mathematics when we do practise exercises like "2+2=?", the symbols have meaning, but they effectively refer to nothing. And it is a mistaken notion, that "2" refers to a number in this sort of exercise. In reality "2" has a complex meaning of order and quantity, which cannot be represented as a simple object, the number two.
Quoting Michael
I don't understand how you can truly believe this. How do you honestly believe that there are objects called "triangles" which have never been called by that name? This is blatant contradiction. There is an object called a triangle which has not been called a triangle.
It appears to be a simple confusion of what is potentially the case, with what is actually the case. I might agree to the possibility that there are objects which if seen, and named, would be called triangles. That's a type of potential, a possibility. Obviously, I cannot say that any such potential is actually a triangle, because no one has apprehended these things and designated which of them are triangles. You clearly conflate the potential for triangles with actual triangles.
Quoting Michael
No, we haven't yet discussed this premise of Platonic realism. The problem, as I said above, is that numerals have multiple uses and therefore complex meaning. I learned from fishfry on this forum, that modern mathematics assumes order as the primary defining feature. Then, to establish consistency between order and quantity, quantity is assumed to be a sub-type of order. The problem which I see is that order is a concept based in continuity, while quantity requires discrete entities. So there is a fundamental incommensurability between order and quantity which makes it so that one numeral, "66" for example, cannot refer to one coherent intelligible object, the number. There is a dual meaning and the two are not consistent with each other.
Quoting Michael
The issue is, that the thing must be judged to be of that kind. because a "kind" is something artificial, created by human minds, a category. A natural object isn't just automatically of this kind or that kind, because it must fulfill a set list of criteria in order to be of any specific kind. And, whether or not something fulfills a list of criteria is a judgment. So a natural object really does not exist as any specific kind until it is judged to fulfil the criteria. We cannot claim that a thing is judged to be of a specific type, without it actually having been judged to be of that type.
That this is truly the case is evident from the fact that there is continuous disagreement as to whether some objects are of this or that kind, disagreements which sometimes cannot be resolved. And the fact that all people might agree on some things, doesn't prove that kinds are naturally occurring. However, the fact that some people do not agree on some things demonstrates that kinds are artificial, and things just aren't naturally of this kind or that, they are judged. Things are classiified, and placed into categories, through judgement. They do not just naturally exist in categories.
Quoting Michael
This does not tell us whether "there are 66 coins" is the product of a judgement, or whether it's something independent from judgement. Nor does it tell us if there is 66, or 67 coins. It really tells us nothing. It is a useless statement. And, since it is possible that the person who counts 67 is using a different numbering system, in which "67" is equivalent to "66" in the other system, it is actually your claim, that there cannot be both 66 and 67 coins, which is incorrect. That is why my proposal, that when both 66, and 67 are both claimed as true assertions, we must move to justify and understand, rather than simply asserting that one person must be wrong.
Quoting Michael
This is how "truth" is most commonly used. When someone is asked to tell the truth, the person is asked to state what they honestly believe. Epistemologists have attempted to give "true" a meaning which is independent from this, signifying what is the case, in some absolute sense, independent from human judgement. But it really makes no sense at all to argue that there is some type of true correspondence, or true relation between a group of symbols, and the reality of the situation, without a judgement in relation to some criteria for "true". So this proposed form of "true" is really nonsense.
Quoting Banno
That's right, in cases where a human judgement is required, we ought to reject bivalence. This was argued extensively by Aristotle, in order that we can account for the reality of potential, and the nature of the human will. He proposed that we reject the law of excluded middle in these situations, while some modern philosophers propose we reject non-contradiction. Aristotle's famous example is the sea battle tomorrow. There may or may not be a sea battle tomorrow. It has not yet been decided, so there is no truth or falsity to "there will be a sea battle tomorrow". And, we cannot turn retroactively, after tomorrow, and say that one or the other was true the day before, because there simply was no truth or falsity to this matter at that time, due to the nature of the human will.
His argument, was that since we all deliberate on our decisions, we act as if there really is not truth or falsity concerning those questions we deliberate on. And if it really was ture that there was already a truth or falsity to the questions which we deliiberate on, we would have no need to deliberate, we would just let the event occur the way it is predestined to.
You'd be a terrible weatherman.
Weather forecaster is a good example. Does the weather forecaster actually know something, or just pretend to know what is actually not known?
Does anyone actually know anything, according to you?
By Andrew's definition, we can't honestly call anything knowledge, because we can't really know whether it actually is knowledge or not. I don't agree, that's why I argued against that.
There's your problem. No one determines whether or not it is raining. :roll:
Then, how do, or could, we know that something is knowledge, according to you? (A concise, short-winded answer will do just fine).
If you mean that my argument is only valid in a world very much like ours, I agree. If you wanted to discuss jars of coins in a hypothetical world in which coins randomly appear and disappear, that's rather different from the discussion I believed we were having. I understood you to be making a point about the necessity of a free human judgment that assigns a number to the coins, but it appears I was mistaken.
To return to the issue at hand: I consider my arguments valid in worlds very much like this one. In worlds like this, if the number of coins in a jar can be determined by counting them, then you can know, without counting, that there is a specific number of coins in the jar.
Do you agree?
No. A number is a value. It is the "propositional content" of one or more mathematical symbols. For example, [math]0.25[/math], [math]1\over4[/math], and [math]2\over8[/math] are different mathematical symbols that refer to the same mathematical value/number.
Being called a triangle and being a triangle are two different things. Something can be a triangle even if it isn't called a triangle. The word "triangle" has a meaning, and objects can satisfy that meaning even if we do not talk about them. Something that satisfies the meaning of the word "triangle" is a triangle even if we do not call it a triangle.
Decapitation is going to kill me even if I call it a non-fatal injury. Saying something doesn't make it so, and not saying something doesn't make it not so.
This is where we disagree. Objects exist and have properties even if we are not aware of them. We define the word "triangle" such that an object is a triangle if it has such-and-such a property. If some object exists and has such-and-such a property then it is a triangle, even if we are not aware of this object and/or it having this property.
I think the relevant metaphysical dispute is regarding the claim that objects exist and have properties even if we are not aware of them. Your argument depends on this claim being false. Are you, then, assuming something like idealism?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's not a useless statement. It's a sound argument.
1. There are only 66 coins iff "there are only 66 coins" is true
2. There are only 67 coins iff "there are only 67 coins" is true
3. There cannot be both only 66 and only 67 coins
4. Therefore, "there are only 66 coins" and "there are only 67 coins" cannot both be true
Do you disagree with one of the three premises, or do you disagree that the conclusion follows?
Lots of people do. I do it every day before I go outside. Don't you? I do not see how you could be using "determine" in any way other than this here. So let's not regress back to the dishonesty.
Quoting Janus
Your question is misleading. We do not judge if something is knowledge or not, because we do not see, or sense things which might be judged as knowledge. What I think is that "knowledge" is something which we infer the existence of, through people's actions.
As I said earlier. "knowledge" consists of principles used for willed actions. If a person acts intentionally then the person has knowledge. What is required is to judge actions, and if they are judged as intentional, then the person has knowledge.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
No, that's not what I mean. I mean your logic is only valid if you state that premise of temporal continuity. You seem to have a habit of thinking that valid logic can rely on unstated premises. That is not acceptable. The premises required for inference must be stated.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You don't seem to understand the reality of "a world very much like ours". In our world, time passes, and things change as time passes. Change is primary, and change is what we take for granted, as we take for granted that time passes. Since time passing, and the associated "change", are what we take for granted in "a world very much like ours", the proposition that something stays the same as time passes, cannot be accepted without justification.
Because of the reality of change, we cannot count the coins in a jar at one time, and logically conclude that the number of coins in the jar was the same at an earlier time, unless we premise that there was no change in the quantity over that period of time.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Obviously not, your argument is not valid because it is missing a very significant premise which is required to make the conclusion that you do.
Quoting Michael
OK, I'll agree with "a number is a value", but I think that "propositional content" is somewhat vague or ambiguous, so I'll leave that for now. I understand "a value" as a principle which a human being holds within one's mind, concerning the desirability or utility of different types of things. Values often serve as principles by which we make judgements. So a value, as I understand "value", very clearly cannot exist independently of a human mind.
Quoting Michael
This is something which needs to be justified. If "a number" is a value, then "a triangle" is also a value. So "triangle", as a concept is a simplified version (a representation) of an underlying complex concept, just like 2, as a number. is a simplified version (a representation) of an underlying complex concept.
So we have multiple layers of representation here. We have the word "triangle". We have the value 'triangle' (which is other than the word, like the number is other than the numeral). Then we have the underlying complex concept, three sided, straight lines, 180 degrees, different types, and all the associated mathematical principles.
Further, we now have the application of the value (the principle of action), which is the naming of a thing "a triangle". You seem to be asserting that a thing which a person might name as a triangle, has an independent property, which you call "being a triangle", which is separate from being named a triangle. How could you justify such a claim?
What you are saying, in effect, is that when you name something as a triangle, you are correct in an absolute sense, because the thing already has the property of "being a triangle" before you name it as such, therefore you cannot be wrong in your naming. And if you accept the reality, that you might be wrong in your naming, then if the thing does have that independent property, how would you ever know this? And if you cannot ever really know if the thing has this independent property or not, how is your assertion that it does, ever justified?
Quoting Michael
Yes, we disagree here. A "property" is a concept, usually quite complex, like the mathematical concept of "triangle" referred to above. We simplify the complex concept by naming it with one word, like "triangle", "large", "hot", "red", etc.. The word is supposed to represent "a concept" which in Platonist words is an intelligible object. The intelligible object represents the underlying complex concept. So a property is a complex concept. Objects do not have properties, as properties are concepts, and in application we assign the concept to the thing. It's called predication.
The independent property is having three edges and vertices.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Properties are something that objects have. Objects don't just exist as some property-less simple. They have a nature, including a mass, an extended position (i.e. a shape), and often a certain kind of movement.
That we decide which words refer to which properties isn't that the object only has these properties if we refer to it using these words. This is the fundamental mistake you keep making. If something has three edges and vertices then it is a triangle even if we do not call it a triangle.
Do you just not understand/disagree with how reference works, or the use-mention distinction?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If I ask someone to tell me the truth of where my kidnapped wife has been hidden I'm not interested in where the person believes my wife has been hidden; I'm interested in where she's actually been hidden. The request to "tell the truth" is premised on the notion that things actually are as this person believes them to be. I have no interest in an honest belief if it's erroneous.
Yes, but it still assumes counterfactual definiteness. Which makes total sense for coins in jars (I'm not disagreeing with your argument with MU).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think Strawson's presuppositional analysis is a closer fit. To make a different analogy, if a pointer is measured to be pointing North along the North-South axis, then what direction is it pointing along the West-East axis? A counterfactually-definite East or West direction presupposes that the pointer is also aligned along the West-East axis, but it isn't. Yet a measurement along that axis will give a definite result (in QM, West or East with equal probability).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." But, yes, it's difficult to imagine a world without counterfactuals.
They are hypothetical scenarios, and you know up front whether or not it is raining in each scenario. In the first scenario, it is raining (that's a given premise of the hypothetical). In the second scenario, it is not raining.
In the first scenario, Alice has a justified, true belief that it is raining, i.e., she knows that it is raining. In the second, Alice's belief is false, so she does not know that it is raining.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, as demonstrated by the first scenario, Alice knows that it is raining not because she is infallible (or because she had ruled out all other possibilities such as Bob hosing the window), but because she had a justified, true belief.
Close enough. To get closer, change “if not” to “but not”.
I feel like I'm doing something wrong because I keep wanting to refute the examples. (Also, it reminds of my first my earliest experiences in philosophy, when I kept thinking that old-timey philosophers just didn't know enough math.) I'll try to think of an example after I do this one.
In this example, since you're only interested in direction from a point, defining that relative to a pair of orthogonal axes is at best an intermediate step (if you defined a location first and then converted it). What you ought to be saying is that the pointer is 0° off North. For jollies, you can throw in that it's 270° off East and 90° off West, but why bother? The extra axis adds nothing.
You didn't even have to align your direction right on the North-South axis to get here: if it were pointing exactly Northeast (45° off North), or, you know, almost anywhere, it's not aligned on either of your canonical axes! Oh my god! Its direction is undefined!
The only measurement always available is how far off a given axis it is. So just start there, and only use the half-axis from origin to North. Or take that direction as the default, define it as 0° and do other directions relative to that, whatever, but why would you define more than one axis in the first place? (Put this way, East-West is, to begin with, defined as passing through 90° off North and 270° off North, or 90° off South, defined as 180° from North.)
I think it's presented as pointing exactly North to support the illusion than some measurements could be made and some couldn't. But that's not what's happening here. We have a system that is useless for measuring anything but one or maybe two directions, which means we're not measuring at all, we're classifying directions as "North" (and maybe as "South") and "not North". That's not measuring.
I'm doing all this because it looks like this was a purely verbal conundrum. It seems to present a genuine problem (like the lap) but does not, and one way you know it doesn't is that it doesn't even do properly what it was pretending to do. The suggestion seems to be that directions generally have a North-South component and an East-West component, except for the degenerate case where you're actually on one of the axes, and then the other value doesn't go to zero but is suddenly undefined and maybe can have any value at all! Horrors! But the system supposedly breaking down only works for the case of pointing exactly North or, I guess, exactly South. This wasn't a genuine question but an intuition pump.
Isn't this like asking for the z coordinate of a point plotted on a plane?
For instance, if there were so many coins in the jar that I would die before I could finish counting them, then I would have to pass this sacred duty on to my son, and no doubt him to his daughter, and now we're writing a Kafka short story, not doing philosophy.
The issue here is not all of metaphysics but a simple conditional: if they can be counted -- if -- then there must be a specific number of coins in the jar right now. All of these other issues are different ways of saying that as a matter of fact they can't be counted. (And that doesn't tell us whether the jar has a specific number of coins or not.)
I say the conditional is true. Do you say it is false?
But didn't a human being have to design the machine, so isn't it just an embodiment of human judgment? Since we designed the coins and what values they represent, we have to design the machine to, you might say, take that into account; but you could also say that we design the machine to factor out (not in) complications we have added to the process of counting, to keep them from interfering. We tell the machine that objects of roughly the same size and weight are to be counted as the same thing so that it can count without the need for it to make such a judgment. (The machine, for instance, tallies only the nominal value of the coins, and won't notice if a rare coin worth a thousand dollars was mixed in with the dimes.)
I count money using a machine every day I go to work; the machine is easily fooled, and its mistakes are sometimes interesting. (A roll of nickels that is a little over, IIRC, is very close in weight to a roll of dollar coins, but a $23 difference in value. This has caused some head-scratching in the cash room now and then.) But it is easily fooled because all it does is count, and counting doesn't require -- so the machine doesn't offer -- judgment.
When I wrote "something" I did not have sense objects in mind; I think that should have been obvious. So your objection that "we do not see, or sense things which might be judged as knowledge" is irrelevant.
My question was concerning how to distinguish between belief and knowledge. Beliefs can be understood to be "principles used for willed actions". So "being intentional" cannot be a sufficient criterion for saying that someone has knowledge as opposed to merely having belief.
Bear in mind I am not concerned with "know-how" but with 'knowing-that' (knowing how to do anything does not seem to have anything to do with justified true belief). So, do you have a way to distinguish between knowledge and belief, or do you reject the distinction?
Quoting Mww
OK, if I understand you correctly, then you would say the ding an sich, being the empirical object, is empirically real? The usual interpretation seems to be that it, like the noumenon, is thought by Kant to be transcendentally ideal.
It has occurred to me in the past that there seems to be a sense in which the empirical object, from our point of view, understood to be a whole and unified entity, and since it is not known as such by us, but is known only as sensorially acquired images and impressions (themselves empirically real), is transcendentally ideal. The flip side being that the noumenon would be transcendentally real (in itself, but not to us, obviously).
Yes, it is an ontological given, real in the sense of being necessary for our perceptions. But to say it is empirically real is to say we can know something about it, contradicting the predicates of the philosophy to which it belongs. Space and time are attributed empirical reality because we can say something is known about them, to wit: we can know how and why they relate to the possibility of experience.
Ooooo....transcendental ideality. If noumena are tough, this one is damn near incomprehensible. Transcendental anything is the mode of pure reason from which synthetic a priori cognitions are given necessarily. Transcendental this or that simply means a priori conditions are necessary for judgements on them. A concept is transcendental merely from the very restrictive mode of how we think about it.
Given all that, we cannot arrive at a priori cognitions with respect to the ding an sich, insofar as any knowledge whatsoever about them is itself impossible. Therefore, they cannot be attributed transcendental ideality. Same with noumena, which can be thought a priori, so are knowable merely as a transcendental conception, as are all the categories, but still cannot be considered as have the attribute of transcendental ideality.
In keeping with the text, there are only two transcendental idealities, our ol’ pals, space and time. Some, in particular Schopenhauer, say causality too, but Kant does not.
Anyway....this is far too complex to get into here, because the concept is spread out over so much stuff. And sorry this doesn’t help much.
Thanks, grist for the mill; and I don't expect anything to be cut and dried when it comes to Kant. It seems to me the transcendental/ empirical dichotomy opens up paths for whole suites of different ways of traversing the territory. What more could we ask of good philosophy than such fertile ambiguity? Unless we are one of those seeking a sterile clarity.
That something has "three edges and vertices" is a judgement. Who makes that judgement?
Quoting Michael
As I said, these are all things which we say about objects. And all you are doing is confirming this by saying it. How are you going to justify your assertions? What makes you think that mass, extended position, and movement, are anything other than concepts?
Quoting Michael
All these shapes and things which you say are the real properties of objects, are just products of our perceptual apparatus. These images, like edges and vertices, are created within the mind, There is no reason to believe that they are part of the objects themselves. The images created in the mind are just representations, like symbols, and there is no reason to believe that the symbol bears a likeness to the thing it represents. We can learn this from language. Words generally are not similar to whatever they represent. So whenever the mind creates an image, like a taste, a sound, or a visual image, we ought to believe that the image is a representation, like a symbol, and there is no reason to believe that the thing represented is anything at all like the symbol.
Science has been very good to demonstrate the reality of this to us. A taste, or smell, consists of molecules, which have no similarity to the smell or taste. Sound consists of waves, which is nothing like the image we hear. And, since the light which reflects to our eyes is the result of an interaction between electrons and photons, the boundaries between objects are nothing like the edges of a triangle (these are presumed to be straight lines).
Quoting Michael
Sure, you are interested in where your wife is hidden. That's obvious. But you are asking the person to provide you with what they honestly believe when you ask them for the truth. Remember, the person honestly might not know where your wife is. This is the way communication works, you cannot demand of others, to give you what you want. Such demands get you nowhere. So you must ask them to give you what they are capable of giving you, rather than demanding that they give you what you want. You want to know where your wife is hidden. The best that the other person can provide you with, is their honest belief, whether or not they know where she is. That's a simple fact. Therefore it is a mistaken approach for you to demand that the person give you the information you want, when their honesty provides you with the best that they can give you anyway. This way you respect the fact that the person might not be capable of giving you what you want. So the proper approach is to encourage them to give you their honesty. And that is to encourage them to tell the truth (honesty), rather than demanding The Truth (absolute, what is the case).
Quoting Michael
This is incorrect. The request to "tell the truth" is clearly a request for honesty. This is evident because it is most commonly used to determine whether or not the person knows the information which is wanted. You do not necessarily know whether the person has correct information concerning the whereabouts of your wife, so you need honesty to determine this. In relation to the subject you are interested in, your wife's location, you must get people to speak honestly, before you can even determine who has the beliefs which you are interested in. And that is what "tell the truth" is premised on, the attempt to determine whether the person has beliefs which are relevant to your interest.
Quoting Andrew M
You're missing the point. Unless you explain how one could "know up front" whether or not it's raining (someone might be hosing the window), you are just begging the question.
Quoting Andrew M
It's only justified by your begging the question, which is not justification at all.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I've agreed to this already. We see a quantity of coins and we assume that they can be counted. If they can be counted, there is a specific number, as you say. So we are inspired to count them, assuming that there is a specific number, and therefore they can be counted. Then we do count them. And after we do, we need to rely on a premise of temporal continuity to say that there was the same number at the earlier time as there was at the time of the count.
Do you still have trouble with this?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Your counting machine does make judgement. That's what an algorithm is, instructions for making judgement. As human beings, we have created machines designed to make these simple judgements for us. But machines are now making more and more complex judgements for us. The AI is designed to be adaptable in its judgement capacity.
Quoting Janus
I follow the traditional formula, knowledge is a particular type of belief, justified and true. Justified is having been proven, and true is honest (that's my difference, how I define "true). Generally, being intentional shows knowledge, because we do things in set ways (justified beliefs), and we honestly believe in what we are doing.
Quoting Janus
Knowing -that is a type of knowing-how, just like knowledge is a type of belief.
That's almost exactly the point. Suppose that you live in a grid world where you can only move and measure things along the North-South or West-East axes. Now an unobserved arrow might be mathematically represented as North-East in grid world (i.e., a linear combination of North and East arrows). But an arrow is only ever observed pointing along one of the grid lines. Thus raising the question of which direction the arrow is actually pointing (if it has a definite direction at all) when not observed.
I'll give a real-world example now. Suppose that you have an interferometer (see Figure 3) and a photon travelling East hits the first beam splitter. The photon could reflect and travel North, or continue East. Since we don't know which way the photon went, let's represent it with a North-East arrow. But, assuming counterfactual-definiteness, it's definitely travelling the North path or definitely travelling the East path. In fact, if we place detectors on those two paths, we will indeed measure the photon on one or the other of those paths.
So far so good. Now suppose we don't measure which path the photon takes. In this case, the photon will arrive at a second beam splitter where it will again either reflect or continue in the same direction. The classical prediction is that the photon will end up at either detector 1 or detector 2 with equal probability (i.e., a North path photon will either reflect or continue in the same direction; same with the East path photon). But what actually happens is that the photon is only ever measured at detector 1, as predicted by QM.
QM represents the photon as being in a linear combination of travelling both paths which results in interference at the beam splitter. One could say that the linear combination (the North-East arrow) is just a mathematical representation, and that the photon took one and only one definite path (a hidden variable that is definitely North or definitely East). But there are various no-go theorems that say, in effect, that that purported solution creates more problems than it solves.
Quoting Michael
Not quite, since one can conceive of a z coordinate even if it is not plotted. For example, a bird (at z altitude) that casts a shadow (point) on the ground (plane). Or if there is no z-dimension, z is always 0.
Whereas in the analogy, there is only one arrow pointing North. So there is no sense in which that arrow points definitely either West or East.
You and I know up front because I created the hypotheticals that way. The question is not about what you and I know, which is a given, but about what Alice knows.
I don't think you can claim to follow the traditional formulation, because your understanding of what constitutes justification and truth is not in accord with the usual understanding. The usual understanding does not demand "proof" to underpin justification, and does not consider truth to be dependent on human intentions, honest or dishonest.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
JTB is a definition of propositional knowledge, not know-how. Even if propositional knowledge could be, at a stretch, considered to be a kind of know-how; there are many other kinds of know-how which have nothing to do with truth or justification.
Preamble
Well, this is humbling. I wrote a rambling, exploratory post last night that I thought ended in a pretty good place, a really interesting place, but with a problem, one I've been interested in for a long time. Then this morning it occurred to me that there might be a sort of solution suggested by how I arrived at the problem, so I wrote an addendum to last night's post. And not until I was actually writing the words this morning did it occur to me what I've been talking about for days.
TL;DR
What I have been claiming about the number of coins in a jar is simply that we can know a priori that if they can be counted then there is already a specific number of coins in the jar; we can only know a posteriori what that number is.
I do not think I have ever had occasion to make a claim to knowledge that so clearly fits the definition of a priori. Whaddya know.
[hide="Archive"]Quoting Andrew M
Does it? Your QM example gets there, I guess, but I've got nothing to say about that.
What isn't clear in your grid world example is what would motivate this question. If you sometimes observe an arrow pointing North and never observe anything else, what would make you think that it exists the whole time but the rest of the time it's pointing somewhere you can't observe? As you say, we don't seem to be able to distinguish pointing somewhere else from not pointing at all, or, as I put it before, we're really talking not about measuring but about two classes, North and not-North, which would also include just not pointing at all.
You must have some reason for positing that the arrow is pointing non-northwards when unobserved, right? But by stipulation, you don't. So I'm still at a loss. If the point is just exactly this, that if you, in essence, only imagine a situation, then you can't make measurements, that seems indisputable. You had a pithy quote to that effect.
---- Enough of that. I think I have better answers below, toward the end, or part of an answer anyway. ----
My claim, as you know, was not that I could figure out how many coins are in a jar by imagining counting them. That's clearly false. It was a claim about the nature of counting, that it does not "create" the cardinality of the set, that the cardinality of a set does not fail to exist until its members are counted, but that counting (to borrow a phrase from the wiki you linked) reveals a pre-existing unknown value.
What I have imagined happening here is, roughly, the mathematization of a physical problem: counting in the real world is a physical process, taking time, consuming energy and so on, but the result -- well, I suppose I can't really finish that sentence the way I want, because clearly what we're talking about now is information. I want to say that there is an aspect of what's going on that it is mathematical, and thus non-physical and non-temporal, but information is after all physical. Yuck. But there is also a mathematics of information, so maybe I come out okay. Gonna leave that alone for the moment.
What I'm trying to say is that if the math didn't work the way it does, then the physical process of counting could not work the way it does. It's not that the mathematics constrains your actions, but it does constrain the results. Performing a physical task such as counting or measuring or dividing, all this business and much more, in a way that doesn't respect the mathematics won't reliably produce the right result. (Hence engineering.) And therefore the mathematics can give you some insight into what the right procedure must be.
And that seems right. Philosophy and mathematics are old friends. Plato will refer to this cluster of disciplines -- philosophy, mathematics, music, astronomy -- as if it's perfectly obvious why they go together, and indeed it is, if you think this way. The impulse to mathematize a problem is sound. It's what we do.
To come back to our issue -- I suppose I think of the physical counting of the coins as counterfactual, but mathematics, after all, is what it is at all possible worlds, and is never counterfactual. That's why it seems so clear to me that I am entitled before counting to make only the claims about an unperformed count that mathematics would entitle me to make, that the result I will get exists and is unique, though I do not know its value. If I follow an incorrect procedure, that's not true. If I cannot follow the correct procedure, that's not true. But I can know what a correct procedure is and what result it must produce if it can be followed. And that claim is based on the mathematics, so not counterfactual.
What remains -- and it's too big for me -- is some explanation of how mathematics (non-physical, non-temporal) is implicated in the performance of a physical task in the actual world.
Does this make any sense? I could go back and edit, but maybe it's clearer if you can watch me stumbling toward figuring out what I want to say...
+++
The last problem mentioned --- roughly, idealization, the function of ideals in our thinking, and so on --- does have a possible solution here, of a sort.
I suggested that I can know some things about counting a set of objects without counting them because there is mathematics that constrains how counting works, and I can know the mathematics because, unlike the counting itself, it is never counterfactual.
The little puzzle here, of what this mathematics is and how it connects to physical processes like counting coins, could be dissolved by reversing my description above: suppose instead we say first that there are things I can know about counting objects, without doing any counting, because they must be so (and thus are not counterfactual). And this sort of knowledge --- of just those aspects of a situation or process that must be so --- is more or less what we call mathematics.
If that's defensible, then we may be able to find our way back around to questions about truth, because truth appears to come in varieties, which is slightly disconcerting, and I've been presenting an analysis that relies precisely on a distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge, and have offered a half-baked suggestion for how you might get the former out of the latter (thus perhaps re-linking some sorts of truth, if not quite re-unifying them).[/hide]
What type of knowledge do you assume that a "hypothetical" gives someone? It's not true knowledge. When you assume hypothetically that it is raining, this does not mean that you have knowledge that it is raining.
Quoting Janus
I don't see that you have a point. Justified, in general does mean proven. To justify means to demonstrate the correctness of, and that is to prove. And the meaning of "true" is very problematic, as demonstrated by this thread. Some posting here want to reduce truth to a special form of justification, but that leaves knowledge as simply justified belief. And others want to consult common usage. That's what I did, and common usage of "truth" is grounded in honesty. If we tell the truth when making a proposition, we propose what we honestly believe. A proposition which does not present what the person honestly believes is not a truthful one.
Quoting Janus
As I said, I do not respect this separation. Knowing-that, or propositional knowledge is just a special form of knowing-how. Using language and logic is a type of acting, so this is a type of know-how.
Quoting Janus
In categorization, if there is a category with sub-groups, then all the sub-groups have something in common which makes them all members of the broader category. So if all types of know-how are all types of "knowledge", then they all have something in common. To say what "knowledge" is, we need to determine what they have in common. I think that JTB, if understood in the right way, is a good proposal. It has been around for a long time, and stood the test of time. The most difficult issue is to determine what "true" means. As the title of the op suggests, we often ask, "what is truth?", without sticking around to determine the answer. And so JTB is rather useless if we do not understand what T means.
The way I'd put it is that the thing-in-itself is a noumenon, i.e. something that can be thought but cannot be empirically encountered, but noumena is the general category while thing-in-itself is one particular noumenon.
I believe it was mostly invented to make a distinction between transcendental idealism and the pure idealism that Kant is concerned with criticizing -- it's absurd to think that the moon stops existing when no one looks at it, but we'll never encounter the moon-in-itself either. So thing-in-itself is more like a place-holder concept to guard against treating metaphysical (non-empirical, and unbounded by the categories) judgments about objects as knowledge -- such as objects are material/ideal, which cannot be determined through collective empirical judgment.
This isn't to disagree with anything you've written, which I've agreed with, but to complement it.
Funny, innit? Dude spends 700-odd pages telling us how there is but one way to traverse the territory toward knowledge, but his one way requires an abundance of cautions about what we’re not supposed to do in order to get there. Which makes sense in its own way, for what we’re not supposed to do is what the philosophers before him told us to do.
Try this on, see how it fits, as to why neither the ding an sich nor noumena can be transcendental idealities.
Just take as accepted we cannot know anything of noumena because they require a non-sensuous intuition, yet ours is always and only possible from perception, which makes our intuition necessarily sensuous. So....regarding the path to knowledge, scratch noumena.
Now, objects of perception are given, so no need to look at those. But those objects are said to affect us, but they really only affect our sensing apparatus. Sounds objects make affects our ears, odor of objects affects our nose and so on, and we call these sensations. Each one of us has his own sensing apparatus; I can’t see with your eyes, so we can say that which affects the senses changes only the condition of the subject to whom the apparatus belongs. I hear something you don’t, my subjective condition is changed relative to yours.
But you could hear what I heard, everything is in place to make it possible, except the occasion for it. All this is physically determinable in its entirety, as any medical doctor will tell you, so this part ends here. Nonetheless, your subjective condition is changeable, even if it doesn’t change, so there is that which makes changes in your subjective condition possible, whether or not there is an occasion for it, and therefore this cannot be counted in the physical part.
Just take as accepted, anything not counted as physical is not counted as empirical, and anything not counted as empirical in some way is counted as a priori, and anything not counted as empirical in any way whatsoever is counted as pure a priori. It follows that whatever is there that makes changes in one’s subjective condition merely possible, is pure a priori. But it must be something, and thus is established and justified, a precursory condition.
The sound a lead ball makes is different than the sound a rubber ball makes, and the sound a ball makes is different than the sound a trash compactor makes. That all these make a sound is determined by the the matter of each, but the matter of these, while affecting the senses with sound, do not carry the information of what form the matter has. It is impossible for us to get “ball” out of the sound an object makes when it hits something solid. Without antecedent experience, you cannot get “telephone” out of some arbitrary ringing/clanking/buzzing sound.
Just take as accepted, there is now what we call phenomenon, which is only a representation of a change in subjective condition caused by the affect of an object on sensory apparatus. OK, so...eventually we get to know what these objects are, but there still needs be the matter arranged in a certain form such that the present phenomenon subsequently becomes a specific experienced, known....named....object. But don’t forget...we’re still in the early stages, just past having been affected by an object of perception. In Platonic fashion, we know that there is a sensation, but we do not know how the sensation is to be represented because as yet It hasn’t been. It happens that just as your subjective condition can be changed, so too can the matter of objects be arranged into a certain form, which must be the case, otherwise we’d never be able to distinguish one from another. Thus, all matter is arrangeable, which makes explicit there is that which makes the matter of an object arrangeable in its particular form, again, even if there no object present to affect the senses, which makes whatever that is, a pure a priori whatever. And this whatever must cover everything perceived, from the matter of the object of the moon arranged as a mere simple circle, all the way to, e.g. a pine cone, the matter of which is arranged in the form of a complex Fibonacci sequence.
But there are virtually innumerable objects, any one of them distinguishable from any other and any one of them possibly an experience, which suggests there is something common to the arrangement of matter, common to all objects without exception. So it is that the pure a priori whatever can be given a certain name, can be thought as a certain conception, can pertain to nothing else at all, and has no other purpose, except the possibility of arranging the matter of every single object of a possible experience in accordance with the manner in which we are affected by them.
Because we have constructed this entire scenario in a speculative, or intellectual, fashion, it is pure a priori. Because we have constructed it with absolutely singular purpose, that is with respect to our subjective condition alone, it is ideal. And due to the mode of its construction, from pure reason alone, it is transcendental.
That conception which meets these criteria is space; space, therefore is a transcendental ideality. And at the same time, because it has to do with empirical conditions of real physical objects, logically space has empirical validity. But there’s still something further along to consider, because all that’s been accomplished so far, is the exposition of the relation of an object to us, which says nothing of the relation of objects to each other, for which account must be made insofar as we actually can be simultaneously conscious of more than one object. And, while we always sense an object as it is in one space, we can also sense the same object in a different space. Something lurks in the shadows of the mind.....
Neither the thing-in-itself nor noumena, while being transcendental conceptions a priori, never affect our subjective condition sufficient to change it, their matter is never subjected to the ideality of space such that representation as phenomena are given necessarily, hence neither can ever be a possible experience, which thereby makes them unknowable in its most exact sense.
Cut and dried. Obvious to even the most casual observer. Yeah, right.
Now....about that rational part of the system. No? Maybe in another life, then. With an endless supply of gin and tonic. Or maybe some serious Matanuska Thunderfuck ganja maan. Play Black Sabbath at 78, talk to Lord Immanuel Himself. (Sigh)
This....
Quoting Moliere
.....complements rather well, I must say.
Quoting Moliere
While I can’t refute that, as people are certainly entitled to think whatever they wish, but I’m reluctant to agree with it. Standing prejudices, doncha know.
Justified cannot mean proven. When it comes to empirical beliefs, nothing we consider ourselves justified in believing can be proven. The provenance of proof is in logic and mathematics, not in inductive reasoning.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I haven't disputed that, but it does not follow that all kinds of know-how are forms of knowing-that, which is why I have been trying to point out to you that there are kinds of know-how that have nothing to do with justification, truth or even belief.
I cannot find anything to disagree with there, but I still cannot say that I'm entirely clear on your view of just what the distinction is, according to Kant, between noumenon and ding an sich. Maybe I'll have to go back to reading the CPR again (when I can find the time).
Regarding the rejection of the idea of intellectual intuition, would you say that is on account of the impossibility of inter-subjective and cross-sensory corroboration?
It seems you have a misunderstanding of justification. Empirical evidence, along with logic comprise justification. All logic requires premises, and most are grounded in empirical evidence. Justification is not limited to empirical evidence alone. I don't even know how empirical evidence without some form of inference would work as justification for a belief. You just observe evidence with no inference?
Quoting Janus
I fully understand that, but I don't see the relevance. As I said what I was looking for is what is common to all knowledge. Depending on how one defines "justified", justification may be conceived of as what sets knowing-that apart from other forms of knowing how.
That's a very clear explanation.
Quoting Mww
This points directly to what I said to Janus above. Empirical evidence in itself does not justify a belief, what is required is empirical evidence plus logic.
Of course evidence is such on account of inference; inductive or abductive inferences are not certain, and hence do not constitute proof. Deductive inferences if valid are certain, so they do constitute proof.
You meant “don‘t constitute evidence” right?
Right, they don't constitute evidence for anything, if the premises are not certain to be true, but they do constitute proof within the context of the premises or provided the premises are true, although they don't prove anything beyond what the premises do in any case, but merely unpack what might at first not be obvious..
Cool! Yes, I think that crystallizes the discussion.
Perhaps this also says something about how the word "count" is used. For example, if Bob was randomly adding and removing coins from the jar while Alice was endeavoring to count the coins, would we be willing to say that Alice was actually counting the coins in the jar?
The way I'm thinking about this is that we have a conceptual scheme for how things work (a priori), but this is continually informed by our experience (a posteriori), such that it is possible for our conceptual scheme to change. As part of that, our mathematics can also change. Not necessarily in the sense of x being wrong and y right, but instead that we find that y is a more natural fit than x in particular situations.
I'm reminded of Rovelli's paper that argues for the contingency of mathematics:
Quoting Michelangelo's Stone: an Argument against Platonism in Mathematics - Carlo Rovelli
So to apply this to counterfactual-definiteness, here's a hopefully simple example of what might motivate the questioning of it based on experience (at least for some scenarios).
Suppose that we have a coin, a measuring device (or just observing is OK) and one or more black boxes. When we measure the coin, it is always heads or tails. When we send the coin through the black box and then measure it, it has the orientation it started with only half the time (and not with any discernable pattern). We put this down to the black box having a randomizing element that sometimes flips the coin, sometimes not. Regardless, there's no need to question counterfactual-definiteness.
One day, someone decides to link two black boxes together, send a coin through them both, and then measure it. To their surprise, they find that the coin is always measured with the same orientation that it started with.
As evidenced by their surprise, this is a case of experience potentially bringing their conceptual scheme into question. So the challenge is to come up with a natural explanation for all the above measurements (which may either preserve their conceptual scheme or require a change to it).
A hypothetical (or thought experiment) shows the consequences of particular premises.
Quoting Thought experiment - Wikipedia
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. But the hypothetical shows the consequences that follow when it is raining. Namely that Alice knows that it is raining when, in addition to it raining, she has a justified belief that it is raining.
That's not what we were discussing though. The issue was, if it must be raining in order for Alice to know that it is raining (i.e. true in your sense), then knowledge is infallible. How does this example show that knowledge is fallible?
It doesn't. The example shows that human fallibility doesn't preclude Alice from knowing that it is raining.
Of course, and this is what I was trying to show in a roundabout away. It was moderately fun to do, and counterfactuals are interesting, but we don’t need any of that, all we need is this:
(Card) If and only if there is a one-to-one correspondence between the coins in a jar and the set of natural numbers less than or equal to k, for some natural number k, then the number of coins in the jar is k and there is a definite number of coins in the jar.
That’s just the definition of cardinality for finite sets plus existential generalization. We don’t need counterfactuals for that, and we don’t need them for this:
(Count) If and only if a jar contains k coins, then counting the coins in the jar yields the value k.
This definition of cardinality for finite sets might as well be a description of counting; there’s almost nothing else to say.
*
I’ll check out the Rovelli. My path suggested that the necessity of mathematical truth is the tipoff; if you go backwards and collect the sorts of things you can know a priori and that are true across any set of possible worlds, the first things you’d find would be what we’ve been calling mathematics, and the rest would be disciplines that aspire to be like mathematics. That’s why math is special, that’s why math is what you can count on, that’s why problems and theories should be formalized mathematically. (If it’s not math, it’s just stamp collecting.)
*
I see how your coins and boxes are analogous to photons and interferometers, but I’m still not getting the point here.
But! I think I have thought of the perfect example, because it also involves making calculations based on values that you should not be using: the two envelopes problem.
Refresher: The only right way to do this is to treat the envelopes as X and 2X; you don’t know which one you got, so you stand to gain X or to lose X by switching, and the expected value of switching is 0. But if instead, you call whatever you got Y, and then reason that if it’s the bigger the other is Y/2, and if it’s the smaller then the other is 2Y, then the expected value of switching is Y/4.
It could be that exactly what’s wrong with this analysis is that it relies on counterfactual definiteness. (Oddly, like the black boxes and the interferometers, there are points in the defense of this analysis that rely on the principle of indifference giving equal chances to events, and then relying on those chances as if they were real values. Among many many other issues.)
I’m still not sure it hooks up with the sort of counterfactuals I’m used to thinking about.
Talk of switching in either the X or the Y analysis is counterfactual. Why does one of them work and the other not?
Looks good to me!
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Assuming the coin always has a definite heads or tails state, even when not measured, what definite state could it have had when it was between the two black boxes? It seems that the coin couldn't have had a definite state, contrary to assumption. (Which is why it is modeled with a wave function, or a linear combination of definite states, or a sum over histories, etc.)
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Definitely interesting to think about.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Because the Y analysis solves a subtly different problem. Namely, when you choose an envelope, suppose the unchosen envelope is emptied and then randomly filled with half or twice the amount of your chosen envelope. So you should switch in that case.
In terms of counterfactual definiteness, in the original scenario the envelopes have a definite and unchanging state throughout the experiment. Whereas the in latter scenario, the state of the envelopes can change, depending on your choice, so in a sense is indefinite. Though, of course, at each point in time the envelopes have a definite state.
If you didn't know which scenario was in play then you would have to collect data, compare the switching strategies and come up with a model of how the envelopes were filled.
The example cannot serve this purpose, because it premises that we can know up front, infallibly whether or not it is raining. You claim to be disproving what is given. Read what you said:
Quoting Andrew M
See the deception? You claim the argument is about "what Alice knows", but you assert a conclusion about "human fallibility". However, your argument has already excluded human fallibility in its premise, as "a given". (That's why my first response was that you begged the question, becauseI thought you were trying to use the argument to prove the infallibility of knowledge). So when you use the example for the purpose you claim. the argument defeats itself, because contrary to begging the question, you ask the person to premise exactly what you are arguing against.
Easy part first....cross-sensory collaboration is a physiological impossibility, and inter-subjective collaboration is impossible within the reference frame of its occurrence. We do inter-subjectively collaborate, which is at that point merely a euphemism for post hoc relative agreement.
The denial of intellectual intuition I don’t think involves either of those. The objects we know about are external to us, but the knowledge we have is of representations of those external objects, and we are not conscious of the transition from one kind to the other. All we know is that it happens and happens necessarily, that is, it is impossible that it doesn’t happen. If we are not conscious of what happens, we are permitted to speculate about it, legislated by the LNC alone. From that, in the speculative construction of a system.....
(Overlooking the fact the system under construction in speculation, is concurrently in use for the construction)
......when this does this and that does that, it is necessary that this cannot be allowed to do that. When the system for knowing things is constructed, and a part of it is of this type, it is self-defeating to then say that part is of a different type, because it then becomes possible that this can do that in violation of the LNC. The idea of an intellectual intuition is reject-able simply because the system has already been constructed in which intuition is governed by the senses.
Technically speaking, with respect to Kant, that which is intelligible is that which is presented to understanding of a non-material nature, which simply means presented to understanding by itself, absent sensibility, which makes explicit, absent phenomena. In other words, we can think it, which is exactly what noumenon are, re: objects of the intellect. But intelligible, intellectual, does not necessarily imply conceivable schema, that is, representations, subsumed under the thought, which are necessary in order to for a judgement to be forthcoming regarding such intellectual object. We can judge the concept of noumena, because it is a valid conception, but we have nothing by which to judge a noumenal object, because there is nothing by which it is represented.
Going back to the development of phenomena, the arrangement of matter into a specific form, in conjunction with object of the intellect in which there is no matter to arrange, it is clear that for a representation to become schema for an intellectual object, requires that which does not consider matter, making the arrangement of it moot. This, then, would be an intellectual type of intuition, the type, in accordance with the method of the constructed theory, we do not have.
All it amounts to in the end, is that we cannot have an intellectual intuition because if we did, the theory itself is logically self-contradictory and internally inconsistent....the very cause of its own destruction. So saying, intellectual intuition, intellectual representation, and therefore a particular noumenon derivable from that, cannot be considered impossible, insofar as the entire speculative system as it belongs to us could very well be wrong, and furthermore, it cannot be said our type of intelligence is the only intelligence there is, which implies noumena are possible conceptions with their own empirical representations, in some other kind of intelligent being.
One thing I wish I’d accomplished here.....is that over the years of our communications, I had convinced you, or at least persuaded, to disassociate noumena from the ding an sich. In all honesty, on the other hand, I almost wish you’d have convinced me why you haven’t.
Absolutely, and shouldn’t be contentious. Empirical evidence is contingent, therefore any empirical belief legislated by it, is also contingent. But each empirical belief, in and of itself, in its own time, is nothing but a logical conclusion regarding relative certainty, determinable only by empirically given premises antecedent to the conclusion but concurrent with the evidence.
But it’s more than just that. The premises themselves, being of the subject/object propositional construct, must have had their subject/object relation already determined logically. If I believe X about Y, I must have already concluded something under logical conditions about X, such that the relation of it to Y, makes my belief coherent. The premises X and Y must logically relate to each other, or I end up with what’s called “...pitiful dogmatic sophistries”.
Empirical evidence is what there is presented to me; justification is the manner by which the evidence is treated, belief is one of three possible results of the treatment, the other two being opinion and knowledge.
We can describe a situation in which someone knows that the guess was correct, just not the person guessing, and so we presume that even if no one knew whether the guess was correct, there would be a “fact of the matter” about the quantity of coins, that some sentences about the quantity of coins would be true and some would be false, even if no one knew that, even if no one ever knew that, even if no one ever could know that.
There was, I believe, a definite number of living spiders on my porch last night at 11 pm, but no one can ever know what that number was, because they weren’t counted and the opportunity to count them is gone forever. If I simply listed all the numbers between 0 and some implausibly high upper bound like 10[sup]9[/sup], one of those numbers would be right, and all of the others wrong.
Besides the intuitive plausibility of the distinction between truth and knowledge, there is the Church-Fitch argument, which shows that there must be truths (like the spiders on my porch) that are not only unknown by me, but unknowable by anyone, unless you're willing to say that everything that is the case is known. Which is just to say that there is no comfortable resting place partway between identifying truth with knowledge and not doing so.
Quoting Andrew M
Still not getting it, so I'll just ask.
Is this the claim? If each coin left box 1 with a definite state, then it would enter box 2 with a definite state, and if all of the coins entered box 2 with a definite state, then we should see some coins not in their initial orientation? Since we don't, it must not be true that coins leave box 1 and enter box 2 with a definite state.
What I don't get is that the behavior of the boxes is defined only for coins entering with a definite state, and as emitting coins only in a definite state. What are the boxes doing if not that? Isn't this a way of saying that the behavior of the boxes is not entirely definite?
I think I can see your reasoning in the rest of your post not quoted above. If I understand you aright, you are saying that since our very notion of intuition (intuition in the Kantian sense, of course) is constructed from reflection on sensory experience, it would thus be contradictory to attempt to apply the notion of intuiton in a context, pure thought, where it would lose its sense. Something like that?
Regarding what is quoted above, I was talking about inter-subjective and cross sensory corroboration, not collaboration. So, my idea is that our sensory intuitions can be corroborated by others, and it is on the basis of that corroboration, that we posit the existence of external objects, and are able to distinguish between perceptions of real objects and hallucinations. Cross sensory corroboration also allows us to confirm our sensory intuitions. Say, for example I think I see a tree; I can walk up to it and touch it, put my arms around it, tap it and hear its dull resonance, climb it, cut a limb off and so on, none of which would be possible if the tree were an illusion.
Neither of these procedures would be possible with so-called intellectual intuitions; they would thus have the same status, epistemologically speaking, as hallucinations. So, to get back to the OP, truth seems to be an essentially inter-subjective idea involving common experience of what is external to us. Even our a priori understandings come only from reflection on, and only have their sense in, our culturally mediated experience of a common world.
As to the distinction between the ding an sich and the noumenon, I see a distinction in that the ding an sich is the empirical object, which is known only by images and impressions, and thus never wholly, but only in glimpses, so to speak. In that sense I understand the ding an sich to be a kind of formal or logical collective representation. That is we think that the external object, which we know only through sensory contacts, and thus only partially and as it appears to us, must also have its own existence; an existence of which we cannot form any substantive conception. I think it is in this sense of the external object as being, in its own existence, wholly alien to our experience, that we think of noumena.
So, it's not a matter of my not being convinced by your explanations, but of my failure to understand clearly where your explanation differs from mine, as outlined above. I think you understand Kant much more thoroughly than I do, so there must be something I'm not getting. I also acknowledge that what I outlined above is more my own thoughts than it is an attempt to correctly interpret Kant (a task which, judging from the disagreements among Kant scholars I have encountered in my fairly limited reading, is not so easy).
Yep, just like that.
Quoting Janus
Oh damn. I never once noticed that, until you just brought it up. What a dumbass.
(Note to self: make more effort to distance braincase from anal cavity)
The rest...all good.
:lol:
Quoting Mww
:cool:
No, not infallibly. One can possibly be mistaken about what the premises of the hypotheticals are. But since they are clearly stated, there's no good reason why anyone should be mistaken.
:up: I agree with all you said there.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Correct (given plausible assumptions, namely locality and no-conspiracy).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Not quite. What is defined is what happens when a coin in an initially definite state goes through one or more black boxes and then is finally measured to be in a definite state.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Not necessarily. The boxes may operate in a well-defined (definite) way, but are instead able to input and output coins in an indefinite state. But that can't be directly confirmed since a coin is always measured to be in a definite state.
You seem to have lost track of the point (if you ever followed it). The point was that we cannot say whether or not "Alice has knowledge" under your description of "knowledge", unless we infallibly know whether or not it is raining. Otherwise we could find out later that it was not knowledge. A hypothetical doesn't provide us with the required knowledge. Therefore, in your example, we cannot truthfully say "Alice has knowledge", or "not knowledge", in either instance.
Quoting Andrew M
See, in neither case can we say "Alice has Knowledge", nor "Alice does not have knowledge", because we do not know whether or not it is raining. Even if you assert "it is raining, therefore Alice has knowledge", your assertion does not make it the case that it is raining.
So the reliance on counterfactual definiteness is here? That perhaps a coin was emitted in an indefinite state but we can’t observe indefinite states, only definite ones. This is like your grid-world example with the direction of the unobserved arrow.
So the issue is that in some cases there might be no fact of the matter, no definite state, but if we take a measurement, we’ll always find that there is. And then counterfactual definiteness is specifically the claim that since our measurements always show definite states, then what we measure — or, more specifically, what we intend to measure or consider or imagine measuring, must always be in a definite state because indeed that’s what measuring it would show.
A hypothetical is a conditional, isn’t it? “Suppose I give you a million dollars” is not me giving you squat.
When I point out that a premise of the hypothetical is that it is raining, I'm not claiming that it's actually raining outside, here in the real world.
Yes, exactly.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, and this is a reason why some physicists and philosophers are not so happy with the term "measurement" here, because it seems to imply that the coin (or particle) is in a definite state prior to measurement.
Here's physicist Asher Peres on this:
Quoting Quantum Information and Relativity Theory - Peres, Terno
Then your hypothetical does squat, as Srap says, toward justifying your claim. We still cannot ever correctly judge that what Alice has is "knowledge", in the real world, because any such judgements could always turn out to be incorrect. Your example only applies to a hypothetical world, in which it actually is raining. What good is it, if it doesn't apply to the real world?
Your argument seems to be that if we cannot be certain that it is raining then it is not actually raining and that if we cannot be certain that it isn't raining then it is not actually not raining. This doesn't follow and is even a contradiction.
Sometimes, in the real world, it is actually raining, and sometimes, in the real world, it actually isn't raining, irrespective of our certainty and judgements and justifications.
This is an assumption. You can invite people to share your assumptions, but you can't really bang them over the head with them. Assumptions have no weight.
It's also true.
If it were false then it's negation would be true, irrespective of our certainty and judgements and justifications. Which would be a contradiction.
Antirealism is about the world, not metaphysics.
Read through the whole discussion. It is the same discussion as this one. Every (philosophical) discussion on TPF becomes the same discussion, if it has enough time to get there. It’s kinda depressing, to be honest.
That's not depressing, it's brilliant. You've discovered the attractor of philosophical discourse.
It's been done before, many, many times. (And whether I discovered it or invented it is exactly the debate.)
I suspect it's really selection bias. Out of the entire population that might post here, the vast majority keep on walking, a small number are interested in academic philosophy, a tiny number of those become academic philosophers, an unknown number create an account here, a fraction of those read some of the site, and a fraction of those post. Certain interests, and certain sorts of arguments, seem to be over-represented in those who post, relative even to the population of those with an interest in academic philosophy.
Yes. It is comfy though. The best thing to happen is for a thread to burn bright and die early, before the assumptions underlying the assumptions get doubted, and fundamental points of reference of our discussants don't come into conflict. I think we often get to the same thing, whereas academic discourse maybe doesn't, because we get the luxury of doubting arbitrary assumptions while remaining in the same discourse.
Also yes to selection bias.
Back when I was a tournament chess player, it seemed to me that the style of play of serious players -- that is, who studied, practiced, and played a lot, regardless of talent -- was a generation or so behind what the world's top players were doing. This shows up in opening repertoire too: things current GMs aren't playing are still common in weekend tournaments among amateurs. Some of that is really a matter of knowledge and technique: GMs might avoid an opening as black because the current state-of-the-art for white forces a very favorable endgame. That's not the kind of advantage amateurs can reliably convert, and so it's not the kind of advantage they think about much or know much about.
I think something similar happens with us. We advocate positions professionals consider to have nearly fatal flaws because we don't know that -- don't even know what counts as that sort of flaw -- and because the people we talk to don't know it either, don't know that there is such a case to be made or how to make it. Thus even when a discussion here lands right on such a point -- about as close to dispositive as philosophy gets -- no one knows this is enough to call the bout and move on.
Philosophy and chess are similar in this sense, that they are driven by fashion, but fashion that is shaped by an arms race. Obviously not an infallible procedure for approaching truth, but also one that is easily misunderstood. Grandmasters will abandon a line in an opening because of one specific move (initiating a variation) available to their opponent. The technical details matter, and they are what drive the shifts in fashion. New ideas in old openings have surprise value (the Theoretical Novelty), but it also has to be a good idea. Sometimes a great player will refute a TN over the board, in real time.
So I see professional philosophers in part as engaged in rather technical issues because it's how you push alternatives toward the possibility of decision. Absent such technical knowledge and expertise, our choices of fashion are somewhat arbitrary, and there are never any decisive encounters of one view with another.
You are right, of course. But there are takeaways that make the discussion not entirely useless. I came across a novel approach to the logic of truth - revision theory; although the material is difficult and I was unable to garner much interest from anyone else. I also enjoyed the rare agreement with @Pie early in the thread and with @Isaac later on, including some surprise that Isaac found the discussion of "counts as" useful. There's something of the neurological basis for language hiding in there.
The discussion with you was intriguing for a while, although disappointingly it petered out without issue. @Michael drew attention to a few issues with T-sentences that are well worth keeping in mind.
Other views, summarised here, were predictable.
The last few banal, meandering pages are down to folk trying to take an absurd view seriously. They are not a typical of the thread.
Think I was otherwise occupied when you mentioned that. I'll take a look.
The hypothetical shows the logical consequences that follow when it is actually raining in the real world.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
:up:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Also :up:. In which case she mistakenly thinks that it's raining when it isn't.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We can know the answer to this by doing just what Alice did, namely, by looking and seeing that it's raining outside.
:up:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
As is the option that they are false alternatives, thus giving rise to the strange attractor. I'm reminded of the Greg Egan short story "Unstable Orbits in the Space Of Lies". Maybe that's the philosopher's fate...
It does not actually show the logical consequences which follow when it is actually raining in the real world, and the problem is that your assertions that it does, and attempts show that it does, are nothing less than deception. The hypothetical shows the logical consequences which follow from the assumption that it is actually raining in the real world. And, there is a very big difference in meaning between "it is actually raining in the real world", and "I assume it is actually raining in the real world". The latter recognizes the possibility that it is not raining in the real world.
Quoting Michael
No, I'm not saying anything like that. What is at issue here is the nature of possibility, and particularly the possibility that it is not raining, when it appears like Alice knows that it is raining. This is because Andrew claims that if people appear to have knowledge, then it turns out later that what they knew at the time (or thought they knew) was incorrect, we ought to retroactively say that what they had at that time was not knowledge. This means that unless we are absolutely certain, we ought not call something "knowledge", because it could turn out not to be knowledge. This assumption forces upon epistemologists the necessity of considering fallibility (the possibility of incorrectness), when discussing what qualifies as "knowledge". Do you not agree that as epistemologists, if there is a possibility that the thing which appears to be knowledge is not actually knowledge, then we ought not call it "knowledge"?
So my argument is that if it has to be actually raining out for us to correctly call what Alice has "knowledge", (as Andrew asserts), then we ought not label what Alice has as "knowledge" unless we are certain that it is raining out.
It looked to me like it fell to the same problem as any other theory of truth, but with more interesting results. The "interesting results" were definitely beyond me, so no noise from me. But that you landed on "false" just meant it had the same problem as any theory of truth, as I understand the liars.
Why? I don't need to be certain that something is true to assert that it is true. I will have Weetabix for breakfast tomorrow. I'm not certain that I will, but I'm still going to say that I will.
We don't require certainty to assert things. If that were true then we ought stay silent on everything except anything that is necessarily true. It would make for a very quiet, impractical world.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. I'm happy with fallibilist knowledge. It's consistent with ordinary use. The list of things we claim to know is greater than the list of things we claim to be certain about, and so clearly what we mean by "know" isn't what we mean by "certain".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And this doesn't follow.
You start by saying that it has to actually be raining for Alice to know that it is raining. You then conclude by saying that we have to be certain that it is raining for Alice to know that it is raining. So as I said in my previous post, you are asserting that if we are not certain that it is raining then it is not actually raining. What evidence or reasoning is there for this? Most of us accept that sometimes we are not certain but it is actually raining.
Not necessarily. From the fact that it‘s raining, you can’t conclude that it might not be; for all you know, it might necessarily be raining.
I don’t think any of that affects how a hypothetical works. It can be quite natural to construct a hypothetical with an assumption that is at least counterfactual, for explanatory purposes: if this thingy weren’t here, this other thingy would blah-blah-blah; if squirrels couldn’t climb trees so quickly, then cats would catch them easily.
You can even do this with an assumption that is necessarily false, and that’s roughly how proof by reductio ad absurdum works. Must it be the case that a space with properties A, B, and C has property D? Assume A, B, C, and ~D and then derive a clear contradiction. That means the entire set of premises, taken as the conjunction A & B & C & ~D, is necessarily false.
But in all these examples, the important thing about a hypothetical is that you must discharge your assumption. So the conclusion of a hypothetical is always, at least implicitly, a conditional. “Suppose I have a dollar bill and 2 quarters. Then I have $1.50 total,” is to be understood as “If I have a dollar bill and 2 quarters, then I have $1.50.”
That’s the whole point of hypotheticals, to see what follows from the assumption, to see whether something in particular does, not to make a claim about whether the assumption holds or not, or even whether it’s possible or not. Sometimes in informal reasoning, people miss the step of discharging their assumptions, so they’ll end up claiming something like “But I just proved that I have $1.50!!!“ when all they‘ve proven is that if they had $1.50 then they’d have $1.50.
Since I’ve cited Margaret Wise Brown, I’ll cite another of my favorite works of philosophy, Open House for Butterflies:
[quote=Ruth Kraus]If you’re pretending you’re a lion, it’s good to know if you’re pretending you’re really a lion.[/quote]
I for one would appreciate it if you stopped saying things like this. Andrew and Michael are clearly not trying to deceive you. If they are mistaken, then they are mistaken, but there’s no deception here.
To me, certainty sounds like a psychological state, something like “maximal confidence,” and it’s irrelevant. It could turn out I was wrong even if I was certain. Would you like here to do the same thing you don’t like with the word “knowledge” and say that if that were to happen, then it must be that you weren’t really certain, but only thought you were?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Knowledge is just actual knowledge, and knowledge of the actual. It doesn’t have to be necessary, and neither does the proposition known. What is cannot not be, but in many cases it might not have been. There are different sorts of necessity at work here. We can say that it is possible for something that is not to have been without denying that it is. “I know that it’s raining but maybe it isn’t” is incoherent; “I know that it’s raining but it might not have been” isn’t.
The rewrite rules make this really clear. If you have a propositional attitude ? toward a proposition P, ? is factive just in case you can, with no change in truth-value, rewrite “S ?s P” as “P and S ?s that.”
I know that it is raining = It’s raining and I know that
Steve thinks that it is raining ? It’s raining and Steve thinks that
The interesting thing people keep saying is that it might “turn out” that P isn’t or wasn’t the case, that I was right or wrong. No worries when we’re just dealing with belief, because that suggests that there is newly acquired evidence. No one bats an eye at “I thought she was at the store but it turns out she wasn’t.” For all I knew, she was at the store, but now I know more and my knowledge now includes that she wasn’t.
No one seems to bring up, “I thought she was at the store and it turns out I was right.” Here the speaker is still not claiming to have known she was at the store, but to have had the belief, a belief which was true, without his knowing that.
But “I knew that water freezes at 32°C but it turns out it doesn’t” is incoherent. Why? Because knowledge is factive, so something is entailed about the state of the world by what you know; water either freezes at 32°C or it doesn’t. If you know that water doesn’t freeze above 0°C, then it’s not your knowledge that rules out the possibility of water freezing at 32°C, but what is entailed by your knowledge.
But that would run counter to things like understanding the meaning of a poem, wouldn't it? Perhaps the whole approach of specifying rules of interpretation is what's wrongheaded? We get by without explicit reference to rules quite frequently. It's just not some kind of universal rule or something.
Which is a perfectly good prior. What do you do next?
Quoting Moliere
That would be one thing to do next. If the theory has entailments that are false, it's toast. But arguments for and against at this level of abstraction tend to be question-begging, so this is tricky. (I know I didn't find Derangement at all convincing, even though my sympathies then were different from what they are at the moment.)
Quoting Moliere
This would be the other thing to do next. Try specifying some rules and see how it goes.
If it can't be done, that ought to become pretty clear at some point. Linguistics is littered with failed theories, even failed research programs, like any other science, but not all of them.
My first response was "No idea" :D -- but that's no fun:
To get back at truth, it seems to me that if there's no ur-Language, or at least rules for all languages which count as Language in general, then we'd have to put aside any semantic theory of truth (if we hoped that theory was universal, at least). There'd be nothing of truth as much as we're talking about the English predicate "...is true", which does have a history and all, but clearly we'd be picking out the "good cases" in that history and so we rely upon -- even if indistinct -- some notion of truth that is bigger than the English predicate "...is true"
But then you say here:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
And I have a great respect for the sciences (as well as philosophy, for that matter).
So I'll lay out my suspicions --
It seems to me that in order to generalize about language you'd have to have a representative sample. But no one person knows enough languages to even come close to that (think about how many languages have already perished up to now, and how the kinds of societies which don't prioritize capital and conquest might have very different dialects than us), so you kind of just have to assume that the languages you do know are at least related to this general picture of language -- that real language use instantiates the general features of language, and it does so so strongly that the specifics of any one language don't obscure it.
And when it comes to even the small number of languages I'm familiar with I'm having a hard time picking out much similarity when it comes to meaning such that we'd have a rule which translates the meaning of one language to another. Really you just have to know both languages in order to perform a translation. Knowledge of a particular language is about as "deep" as knowledge of language goes -- and translation is an art of understanding two languages, rather than a rule.
But that's all just based on my mere experience with language learning and such. I have a hard time conceptualizing what Language, in general, could possibly mean other than "whatever it is we mean when meaning with means" -- so my suspicions are likely just based on my small impression of things, and there's much more to the story that I'm unaware of.
Proof is in the pudding. There are lots of linguists doing lots of fieldwork. Maybe they'll find something, maybe they won't. Arguments that they must, or that they cannot, hang in the air exactly the way a brick doesn't.
I don't think it would be the end of linguistics if there were no universal grammar but several kinds of language, but we all came from the same place and probably had language before we left, so it's a reasonable expectation that there is some unique capacity for language (since evolution *usually* but not always solves problems once).
Is that a proposed formulation somewhere?
It doesn't work in ordinary mathematics. A sentence is either true or false but not both. And a sentence is true if and only if its negation is false. But with our ordinary mathematical axiomatizations, there are sentences such that neither the sentence nor its negation are derivable.
Yeah, that makes sense to me. I certainly don't want to be read as saying either that they cannot or must -- if anything I've been pushing against notions like that. I certainly don't expect the meandering thoughts I have to in some way impinge on a project people have dedicated their lives to. I'm sure these thoughts have been thought by people better educated on the matter than I :D
I guess, for us -- .or really, for me, since I think you're still pretty much on board with correspondence theory -- I have to think on your question and get at another approach that does utilize something that I'm more confident in.
(EDIT: "Homebase" for me is Kant, but I'm also confident that he's wrong :D -- so who knows)
Is 7 + 5 = 12 derivable?
Of course it is.
But in any "adequate" system, there are statements such that neither the statement nor its negation is derivable. So derivability doesn't work for defining 'is true'.
I wasn't defining "is true", only stating that "7 + 5 = 12" being derivable is the necessary and sufficient condition for "7 + 5 = 12" to be true.
'7+5=12' is true iff '7+5' is a theorem
is the case because both sides of the biconditional are true.
But that is not an instance of a substantial theory of truth.
Quoting Michael
When I say something like "snow is white" is true iff snow reflects all wavelengths of light I'm not also implying that "it is raining" is true iff snow reflects all wavelengths of light. I'm simply trying to provide more substance to the truth of "snow is white" than what the trivial T-schema offers.
The example of "7 + 5 = 12" was just a hypothetical, like the three examples of "snow is white" above. I'm not committing to any one of them as a matter of fact.
Meaning is not governed by conventions.
And yet we do make sense of what folk say.
Hence our error was to suppose that we make sense by using conventions.
I'm curious as to how this matches with pattern recognition in neural networks. Attempts to explain language use by listing conventions to show the patterns of the symbols. are fraught. But neural networks work with patterns without making use of symbols. A neural net can make sense of language without making use of conventions. Our wetware allows us to transcend any supposed algorithm, to make sense of nonsense, hitting the nail right on the thumb.
We are not limited to algorithms.
@Isaac?
To risk resurrecting our previous discussion, can we have knowledge but not have maximal confidence? "I know that p but I am not certain" could be seen to be something of a Moorean sentence.
We are aren't talking about whether we should call it true or not. We are talking about whether epistemologists should call it knowledge or not. If they do not know that it is knowledge, why would they call it "knowledge"? You would think that an epistemologist should know what qualifies as knowledge.
Quoting Michael
You are in agreement with me here. It was Andrew M who said that if what we currently know (or seem to know) later turns out not to be true, then we have to say that it wasn't really knowledge at that earlier time. I argued against this, saying it isn't consistent with fallibilist knowledge, because under this presumption, what seems like knowledge cannot be real knowledge unless it cannot later turn out to be wrong. Andrew was trying to argue that his position is consistent with fallibilist knowledge, with an example which did not work.
Quoting Michael
That it has to be raining for Alice to know that it is raining, is Andrew's argument, not mine.
Quoting Michael
No, this is not what I concluded. I clearly said "we ought not label what Alice has as 'knowledge' unless we are certain", under Andrew's conditions. This is because truth is a criterion for knowledge, and if we do not know that this criterion is fulfilled we ought not make that judgement, that what Alice has is knowledge.
Quoting Michael
No, this is completely incorrect.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
But we do not have "the fact that it is raining" we have the premise, or proposition that it is raining, which is just the assumption that it is raining, not the fact that it is raining.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You discharge one assumption, for the sake of another, the assumption of the hypothetical. You do not move from assumption to fact.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
But Andrew was saying that the hypothetical shows what follows "when it is actually raining in the real world". And that's what I argued against, because it really only shows what follows from the assumption that it is raining, as you agree with me here.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
But I'm arguing the other side. I say we ought not say retroactively, that I really wasn't certain, just like we ought not say retroactively that we really didn't know. I say that we ought to allow that when I know, or when I am certain, it may turn ought later that I am wrong. This is more representative of what knowledge really is. And we should allow that I really did know, and that I really was certain, despite the fact that things changed, and what I was certain of, and knew, later became incorrect.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The subject we were discussing is the issue with the use of "true", in the formulation of "knowledge" as justified true belief. If "true" here means what is actually the case, then when it turns out that what appeared to be known is actually not the case, then we must say that it was not knowledge. So, I suggested that "true" is better defined in relation to honesty, what one honestly believes. Then there is no requirement for what is actually the case, in "knowledge" as justified true belief.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Knowledge is not factive, it is pragmatic, that's why I said it's the principles we employ in our actions. This is derived from Plato's "the good".
See Bulverism.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, the hypothetical shows the logical consequences which follow from the condition that it is actually raining in the real world. People make assumptions. But whether it is raining or not is a condition that is independent of people's assumptions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The former statement doesn't exclude the possibility. None of your statements to me are prefixed with "I assume". Should I conclude that you do not recognize the possibility that any of your statements could be mistaken?
Thanks!
I really don’t think so, but I wouldn’t base that entirely on what people say, their reports. We can say of the shy schoolboy or the forgetful grandfather that he does know something, even though we would not classify them as highly confident that they know. If, with a little goosing and a little encouragement, they can come up with the right bit of info, then they did know, but thought maybe they didn’t. And indeed there’s nothing so unusual about people expressing doubts about whether they know something, rather than what they know. “I think I remember locking the door” can be said in a case where you do remember locking the door, but you’ve done it so many times, you’re not sure you’re recalling the right event. Especially under emotional stress people may flatly deny, in all honesty, that they know something they do: “I swear, I have no idea where your book is, I never touched it!” “But it would have been in your way when you were putting the groceries away.” “Oh. Right. I put it on your nightstand.”
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I’m sure I don’t agree with you.
There are ambiguities here we could try to clear up:
(1) If I, in the course of my daily life, assume that it’s raining, that’s to say I honestly hold the belief that it is raining, without having gone to a great deal of trouble to find out.
(2) If, for the sake of a hypothetical bit of reasoning, and with some concern about the weather but no access at the moment to a weather report, suggest that if it is raining, we won’t be able to go for a walk, I hold no belief either way about whether it is raining; I only mean to suggest how we should act if it turns out (that is, if at a later time we actually know) that it’s raining. Quite different from (1), in which the “assumption” is what I honestly believe. That’s simply not the case here. NB: these are the sort of assumptions that must be discharged; it’s just the terminology of natural deduction.
(3) If I make an assumption of any kind, the word “assumption” does multiple duty: (a) it can describe my mental action, somewhat like “assuming”, of taking an attitude toward a proposition; (b) it can denote the object of my mental attitude, the proposition itself, what I assumed; (c) it can be used just to mark the status of the proposition and my relation to it — “But that’s just an assumption!“
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Which I for one have not defended, and would not defend, but @Andrew M has said some things along those lines. I claim only that knowledge entails truth, not that truth is a component of knowledge. Make of that what you will.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You may of course do as you like, but the rest of us have not invented some special usage for “know” or for “true”; I’m using them exactly the way everyone I know uses them, this being the population that is also perfectly comfortable saying “I could have sworn I knew where I left it, but it’s not there, so I guess I was wrong.”
Here, I’ll give you a good one. When I was a kid, I was taught, and I learned, that there are nine planets. That is no longer true, but it was true at the time, because there is a specific body of astronomers who make the “official” determination of whether a solar object is a planet. In such a case, I might be able to say I used to know that there were 9 planets, but now I know that there are 8. Note that I have made no mistake and have no reason to retract my knowledge claim. But suppose it was a couple weeks before I heard that Pluto had been demoted; during that time I might get into a heated argument with someone I think a fool because he says there are only 8 planets. At this point I will be wrong; I will be in the position of thinking that I know how many planets there are, and I will be wrong about that. Once he points out to me that there was a change in Pluto’s status, I will readily admit that I thought I knew, but that he was right.
I'm curious about the distinction you're making here. Isn't the above just saying that knowledge entails those conditions (i.e., JTB)?
The claim is that knowledge is a first-class mental state, distinct from belief, not a particular variety of belief. If S knows that p, that also entails that S believes that p, and entails that p, but for all that, believing that p is not a component of knowing that p and neither is p being true. It’s Timothy Williamson’s “knowledge first” program, and I find it pretty persuasive, though I haven’t gotten through all the technical stuff yet. On his account, knowledge has no such components, and cannot be analyzed into, say, justified true belief.
It’s a position also associated with Oxford dons of yore like Cook Wilson and H. A. Prichard. For Williamson, it’s largely a straightforward extension of an externalist approach to mental content.
OK.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I see that there's a lot of literature on the subject. At first glance, a knowledge-first view looks OK to me, but I'm not really clear how it differs (at least operationally) from JTB, since it still seems to hold that knowledge entails those conditions.
Do you have any good links that would clarify the differences?
Given a general principle, after PI §48, that what counts as a simple depends on what one is doing, One must be open to such a reorientation. It's not so much which ir right as which works.
So, on Williamson’s account, is truth defined in terms of knowledge?
So how do we make sense of "I know that p but I'm not certain"? If we take knowledge to be justified true belief then surely it is one/some/all of these?
1. I know that p but I have some doubt that p
2. I know that p but I have some doubt that I am justified
3. I know that p but I have some doubt that I believe that p
If we take (1) as an example, how do we make sense of doubting that p?
Or is it the case that even though I can be correct in saying "John knows that p but he is not certain" it would be irrational for John to say "I know that p but I am not certain"? That would seem to make it a Moorean sentence.
“.....Methodologically, Williamson (....) defends instead the use of ‘armchair’ methods to answer substantive questions....”
(https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/williamson-timothy-1955/v-1/sections/knowledge-first-epistemology)
I like this guy.
Yes, and the hypothetical consists of statements which someone makes, therefore, assumptions. Do you understand that there is a separation between the hypothetical, which states the condition "it is actually raining", or "if it is raining", and the real world? You put these together as "the condition that it is actually raining in the real world". But they don't belong together, and in producing the illusion that they do belong together is where the deception lies. The real condition of the hypothetical is the assumption that it is raining, while what is actually happening in the real world is completely independent from this assumption, unless we account for a person's act of judgement.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
As far as I know, meaning involves intent, what was meant. So in the use of statements such as the above from Andrew M, where the speaker blatantly refuses to recognize the separation between what is said (the hypothetical in this case), and a real world situation represented by what is said, when this separation is pointed out to that person, I cannot conclude anything other than intent to deceive. I suppose the person might simply misunderstand, but why would a person keep insisting on something they have no understanding of?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Do you recognize that #2, the hypothetical itself "if it is raining, we won't be able to go for a walk", is an assumption, just like #1 consisted of an assumption. It's just more complex. This says nothing about the real life consequences of it actually raining in the real world, it says something about your attitude toward your assumption stated in #1 if you assume that it is raining you will not take a walk.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Neither am I inventing any special usage, "tell the true" is common usage, meaning speak honestly. The problem is in the ambiguity of the terms, not in an individual inventing idiom.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
OK, so you say at one time it was true that Pluto is a planet, and at a later time it is not true that Pluto is a planet, though nothing significant changed in the object itself, there was a change in attitude toward the object. This allows that "Pluto is a planet" was true knowledge, and at the later time, "Pluto is not a planet" is true knowledge.
I go further, and ask the question, what is it about this use of "true", which allows that something which is true at one time, later ends up being not true, without any change to the object itself. And I answer this with, it is the subjective nature of "true", that "true" represents the attitude of the subject, more than anything else, which allows that what is true can change to being what is not true, in this manner. This attitude expressed by "true" is an attitude of honesty.
I think this is right, but there might be limits. There's nothing algorithmic about the phrase "put the kettle on" which somehow forces my brain to understand the request. Someone standing next to the hob at around 4 o'clock and saying "put the cat on" would do the same job, or if they Yoda-like decided to say "the kettle put you on". Id' still get it, despite the weird grammar. But if they said "the sun is bright", I might not think they mean for me to put the kettle on no matter what the contextual clues.
So the question (I think) is whether the language provides certainty or uncertainty in that scenario. Does some expression like "put the kettle on" clue me in to what's going on, or did I know what was going on anyway but an expression like "the sun's bright" would throw me off, make me doubt. My feeling is generally the latter, not the former. It's difficult to see how we could enter a perceptual environment without expectations (perception doesn't really work without expectations, including aural perception - it's a mess without it). So, given we have expectations about what's going to be said, what's expected of us, how all the components of a scene are going to behave, we're simply then in the business of harvesting data from the most pertinent sources to confirm the hypothesis. With speech, we're going to be listening for key words and vocal tones, we're not going to even be taking in the rest of the sentence, it's wasted processing power.
As such, I don't see much of a role for externally specific patterns governing the meaning of speech, it seems a completely superfluous layer of specificity, it's just not required for the job.
No, sorry. I’m reading his book, Knowledge and Its Limits.
There’s a whole lot I don’t know yet, but my understanding is that a number of problems in epistemology present somewhat differently if you take knowledge seriously. One of the best-known claims of the book is known as “E = K,” that is, your total evidence is your total knowledge. When it comes to rational belief formation, for instance, it is your knowledge you rely on in deciding what to believe. There’s a similar transformation with assertibility, because we can specify the maxim as “Do not assert what you do not know,” rather than something about honest belief, evidence, justification, warrant, all that business.
Quoting Banno
Not to my knowledge. I have no idea what Williamson’s views on truth are.
Quoting Michael
The cases I was talking about were ones where a subject who does know is unwilling to assert that they know because of their uncertainty; your case starts with “I know that p.” It is so common as to be unremarkable for people to say, “I think I know ...” so people evidently do recognize that knowledge and uncertainty about their own state are compatible. People also recognize that the bald claim to know implicates something about their knowledge of their own state of knowing, and can cancel that implication: “I know how to fix this — at least, I think I do.” Your case is a little odd to my ear, but not substantially different from these, I think.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not sure where you’re going with this. As a bit of reasoning, it’s a little compressed — there are a lot of steps between antecedent and consequent, mostly background knowledge, which you could certainly characterize as assumptions. (That if it rains people get wet, that people don’t want to get wet, and a dozen others).
Still not sure what point you’re making though.
I understand that, but my point is that if one can know that p but not be certain then it should be acceptable to say "I know that p but I am not certain", although prima facie it isn't.
This is much like Moorean sentences. Even though it is possible for it to be raining and for me to believe that it is not raining it isn't acceptable to say "it is raining and I believe that it is not raining."
Perhaps the assertion "I know that p" is implicitly the assertion "I know that p and I am certain" and so the assertion "I know that p but I am not certain" is implicitly the contradictory assertion "I know that p and I am certain but I am not certain"?
I’ve written and deleted screens of analysis of your problematic sentence. I doubt you (or anyone else) are all that interested.
Let me ask you this: are you interested in this sentence because you think it tells us something important about knowledge? If so, I doubt it, but you’ll have to provide more analysis than “This sounds wrong.” Do you, for instance, think that such a sentence is necessarily false?
Or are you interested in this sentence because it strikes you as a bit peculiar, and you’re curious what makes it strike you as peculiar. I think there is no simple answer to that, but I’ll point out that saying either “I know that 7 x 9 is 63” or “I am uncertain that Topeka is the capital of Kansas” is already peculiar. Its peculiarity may not bear on its truth-value.
Addendum:
Quoting Michael
The upshot of which was all about assertion. There’s nothing to learn about the nature of belief from Moore’s paradox.
Just demonstrating the faultiness of Andrew's example.
Quoting Michael
I think this is a sort of self-doubt, a form of skepticism related to one's own beliefs. Sometimes it is acceptable to say, I know that such and such is the case, but I'm not quite ready to accept it. Or something like that. For example, after something really bad happens, and you wake up in the morning and have to remind yourself that it really happened. It's a sudden change in your life, and you know that it's true, but it takes a while to permeate your entire mental capacity, so your old self in its usual habits, is still pushing you to doubt it, though you know it ought not be doubted.
Obviously it is an assumption of the hypothetical that it is raining. But Alice makes no such assumption. She instead forms the justified belief that it is raining because she looked out the window and saw what looked to her to be rain. (Or, for @Srap Tasmaner: in knowledge-first terms, Alice knew that it was raining because she looked out the window and saw that it was raining.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, of course. What the hypothetical shows is that knowledge is possible on a JTB view. Alice's belief was justifiable in both hypotheticals even though there was the possibility (from her point of view) that she could be mistaken (as she was in the second hypothetical).
BTW, as a general observation, you and I are, in effect, speaking in two different languages. What makes it especially difficult to translate is that we use the same words to convey very different ideas, such as "know" (which is ordinarily used in a factive sense), "true", "assumption" and I suspect a few others.
And we do not know whether it is raining or not, if knowing requires truth in your sense, despite the assumption of the hypothetical. The hypothetical gives us an assumption, not something about the actual world. So it does not give us truth. My belief is that if we pretend that something said, which says nothing about the real world, actually does say something about the real world, this is deception. Lying is the common form.
Quoting Andrew M
There is no truth though, in the hypothetical, because the hypothetical gives us assumptions, not truth. So there is no truth to Alice's supposed knowledge, just a hypothetical truth.
Quoting Andrew M
There is a lot of ambiguity in these words, and I agree it is a problem.
What I tend to say when I’m uncertain is “I don’t know” or “I don’t know for sure”, rather than “I do know but I’m uncertain”.
In my searching around, I found this helpful:
In my view, it has a very Rylean feel to it (e.g., "success" and "try" verbs).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It would be interesting to compare that maxim with Grice's maxim of quality (truth).
This has occurred to me. It might be simpler to call a spade a spade here.
An assumption H for the purposes of hypothetical reasoning picks out a set of possible worlds at which H is true. That set may or may not include the actual world. We may or may not know whether it does.
The goal then would be to discharge the hypothetical assumption in a true counterfactual conditional, which may be degenerate in the sense of having an antecedent that is true at the actual world. I understand those are tricky to deal with, but oh well.
For example, the hypothetical assumption “Suppose I have lost my copy of Lewis 1973” picks out a set of possible worlds at which I have indeed lost my copy of Lewis 1973. If I determine that in any such world (or only in nearby worlds, or in sufficiently similar worlds, etc., whatever the appropriate restriction is) I would be a miserable cuss, and I would prefer not to be, then I can discharge the assumption by concluding, for example, “If I were to lose my copy of Lewis 1973, I would have to replace it.”
Pretending is a very interesting subject, but the sorts of hypotheticals we’re interested in around here are probably best analyzed in the obvious way, as counterfactuals.
(IIRC, Frank Ramsey scratched his head over hypotheticals in a footnote somewhere, suggesting that entertaining a hypothetical was like “temporarily” adding it to your set of beliefs — I always wondered how he imagined we did such a thing.)
Well, if one were to take a Wittgensteinian approach to language then surely the use of the assertion "I know that p but I am not certain" has something to do with the meaning of the proposition "I know that p but I am not certain", and so if there's something problematic about the former then there's something problematic about the latter, and so the claim that one can have knowledge without being certain is problematic.
You accept that we sometimes wrongly attribute knowledge to ourselves and others. Perhaps it's wrong to attribute knowledge when the subject lacks certainty. Getting something right obviously isn't sufficient for knowledge, else any true belief (e.g. a lucky guess) would count as knowledge. Maybe justification isn't a sufficient addition. A justified true belief that lacks certainty might just be a justified guess.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
For example this. Perhaps they didn't know; perhaps they just made a successful justified guess.
In knowledge-first terms, I know it is raining because I already know what it is to be raining.
A precise reduction to the thread’s original question. I know what is true because I already know what it is to be true. I know what is true because I already know what truth is.
The problem I see with the possible worlds scenario, is that if we assume possible worlds, and we want to assign "actual world" to one of them, then we need some principles to support the "actual world" as distinct from the others. Then, the actual world is a special world, and cannot be one of the possible worlds, because it has that special status which sets it apart as distinct. So if hypotheticals assume "possible worlds", we must maintain that none of these possible worlds is the actual world, because the actual world would necessarily require a separate category, as having the distinction of being unique and different from the set of possible worlds.
So in conclusion, if we are applying "possible worlds", we must maintain that we necessarily do not know whether the set of possible worlds contains a world which accurately describes the actual world, because this would make it distinct from the others, and therefore not one of the others. If we allow that we know one of the possibilities to be actual, this would be a prejudice, and it would support a disguised sort of begging the question, a dishonesty.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
According to the principle described above, the "counterfactual" is completely wrong, in principle. It proposes a possible world in which the actual world is already assumed to be distinct and known as distinct, hence counter to fact. So unless we describe all the details which distinguish the proposed possible world from the actual world, and account for each one of the relevant differences, the proposed counterfactual provides us with nothing valid toward our assumed actual world, and is likely more misleading than anything else. In other words, the usefulness and reliability of the counterfactual is completely dependent on the principles whereby the actual world is related to the counterfactual world.
The "true" option would be to relate the counterfactual only to other possible worlds, and produce conclusion completely in the realm of possibilities, with no reference to anything actual, as explained above. But this removes any usefulness. And to produce usefulness, we'd have to assume an actual world, and then relate each counterfactual world to the actual world. And that's where the problem lies, the prejudice which constitutes any proposed "the actual world".
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Taking this example, in order for it to be useful, you need principles to relate the possible world to an actual world. Otherwise nothing grounds "my copy of Lewis 1973", and "I would be a miserable cuss", etc.. The "true" way to proceed with the hypothetical would be to relate the possible world to an endless number of other possible worlds, you don't have a copy, you have one and you hate it, etc.. Then each aspect of any proposed "actual world" which might be introduced, to narrow the field of possible worlds, would have to be assessed, and valued for 'probability of accuracy', through the application of standards, before any aspects are accepted as true aspects of the actual world. Now, in this scenario, we still fall back on the basic principle of judging the truth and falsity of the propositions. However, the truth of the proposition is judged as a 'probability', rather than bivalence. The whole structure hinges on maintaining the separation between possible worlds and actual world, and enforcing the principle that any aspect of a possible world has only a probability of accurately representing the assumed actual world.
Your argument is that if there’s something odd about saying “I know that p but I am not certain,” then (“perhaps”) knowledge requires certainty.
Except that’s not an argument. From S asserting “I know that p,” it does not follow that S knows that p; from S asserting “I am uncertain,” it does not follow that S is uncertain; we can’t infer that if S were to assert the problematic sentence then S would have to be in a problematic mental state.
But we can argue directly.
You suspect that S knows that P entails S is certain that P. (No one is claiming the converse.) That’s not implausible; I just don’t think there’s been any argument for it yet. And I find the contrapositive dubious.
Here’s another example, A and B fighting about a book of A’s that she can’t find:
B: I swear, I don’t know where it is, I never touched your book!!!
A: I might have left it in the kitchen.
B: We’re in the kitchen, and I don’t see it, so you left it somewhere else.
A: It would have been in the way when you were bringing in the groceries.
B: Oh. Right. Yes. I put it on your nightstand.
In this case, B flatly denies knowing where the book is. (Note this construction: it’s knowing-what rather than knowing-that.) As it turns out, B does know where the book is, because B herself put it there. What do we say about B’s certainty in such a case?
B is certain that her mental state is not that of knowing where the book is — and she’s wrong — but we’re not interested in that. What is B’s certainty with respect to “where the book is”? B is certain that that location, whatever it is, is not a member of “in the kitchen”! Still not what we want. (B is probably also convinced that A knows — but can’t recall — or should know where the book is, because she is responsible for its current location, not B.)
We want B’s attitude toward the proposition “The book is on A’s nightstand.” This is a proposition that B knows, as it turns out, but cannot at the moment produce. If asked, that might be enough to jog B’s memory, so she might assent to the proposition. Might not. But certainty? Would you say B is certain that the book is on A’s nightstand?
I suspect certainty that the book is on A’s nightstand attaches the moment B remembers putting it there. Before that? I don’t know.
Maybe your conception of certainty is different from mine, but I always think of it as a more or less fleeting psychological state, so it’s only in evidence when what you’re certain about is present to mind. That’s clearly not the case with knowledge.
Maybe you have a better or a different conception of certainty.
So if I have a stack of boxes and put an X on one of them with a Sharpie, it’s no longer a box. Cool. Nice job.
Or maybe your argument is that if I have a stack of boxes and a toaster, then the toaster is not a box. That is certainly a stronger argument.
I'm aware that I haven't presented an argument as such. I'm just looking at a potential line of enquiry that may lead us somewhere interesting (or maybe nowhere at all). If you're interested in considering it then I'll repeat and add to something I said earlier.
"I know that p but I'm not certain" presumably means one/some/all of these:
1. I know that p but I have some doubt that I believe that p
2. I know that p but I have some doubt that my belief is justified
3. I know that p but I have some doubt that p
These in turn can be simplified to:
1. I believe that p but I have some doubt that I believe that p
2. My belief that p is justified but I have some doubt that my belief that p is justified
3. p but I have some doubt that p
I'd like to address (3) first. How do we make sense of a claim such as "p but I have some doubt that p"? What does it mean to doubt that p? I suppose we could define it circularly as not being certain that p, but that seems lazy.
In the previous discussion on the matter, I interpreted it as accepting the possibility that not p, and not just in the "there is a possible world where not p" sense. I couldn't really explain it any further than that, although you interpreted it as not knowing that p.
But if "p but I have some doubt that p" means "p but I do not know p" and if "I know that p but I'm not certain" means (sometimes) "I know that p but I have some doubt that p" then "I know that p but I have some doubt that p" means "I know that p but I don't know that p", which is of course a contradiction.
Now, it might very well be that there is a distinction between the assertion "I know that p but I'm not certain" and the proposition "I know that p but I'm not certain" such that the former is the aforementioned contradiction but the latter is not, although I wonder if a Wittgensteinian approach would allow for this distinction. He does spend three pages addressing Moore's paradox (which this seems to be a variation of) in the Philosophical Investigations, but I can't really glean much of an answer to it.
But even if we were to accept a distinction between the assertion and the proposition, it still needs to be explained what "I'm not certain" actually means, as it may very well lead to the same conclusion above; that "I'm not certain" means "I don't know".
And In fact the third-person claim "John knows that p but he is not certain" presumably avoids having to draw a distinction between an assertion and a proposition. Does "John knows that p but is not certain" mean "John knows that p but has some doubt that p", and does this mean "John knows that p but does not know that p"?
And even if it is used, on some occasion, with that intention, what does that tell you?
I’ve already presented a case in which someone flatly denies having knowledge that they do in fact have. It’s not so odd. (And it’s another reminder that from someone asserting P, you can’t deduce P.) I gave my intuitions about whether and when we should say they are certain. Unless we intend to define certainty or knowledge, that’s about all we’ve got so far. Can we improve that situation? Does certainty at least entail something else we could check for?
I’ll give another example: people sometimes downgrade their claims to knowledge for non-epistemic reasons. (Women on this forum are no doubt familiar with this maneuver.) “I know the answer! — At least, I think I do. I could be wrong.” That could be a genuine expression of uncertainty, or a political move. It can’t help us explain the connection between knowledge and certainty.
That might be begging the question. They were right, but does it then follow that they knew? It might have simply been a successful guess.
"Oh, I know where the keys are, they're in the cupboard! Wait, they're not here. Oh, I know where they are, they're in the drawer! Here they are!"
We might say that they knew all along, but maybe they didn't. They just happened to be right in the end.
And in fact we could introduce something like a Gettier case here. They were actually in another room, but moments before Jane checked the drawer John found them and put them in the drawer without Jane knowing.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I know but I could be wrong? I was the one saying that last time and you spent days telling me that was nonsense.
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
Well, yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. What does "but I'm not certain" actually mean? It might be that when we tease this out we are confronted with the conclusion that "I'm not certain" actually means "I don't know", in which case our initial assumption that we can have knowledge without being certain is mistaken, and that such cases were simply successful guesses (with or without some degree of justification).
It doesn’t follow, but it was implicitly stipulated in my scenario. That was the point of having B suddenly remember that she moved the book; A suggested that her book would have been in the way, and B then remembered that it was in the way and she moved it.
Quoting Michael
But here I’m talking about what someone might say, not about the fact of their knowing that P being consistent with ~P.
Quoting Michael
But we’re not just interested in what people mean by what they say.
From “I’m certain that Trump won,” we can’t infer that Trump won. We can’t infer that you know that Trump won. We can’t even infer that you are certain that Trump won. It’s a thing you are saying. What it means, what you mean by it, what you mean by saying it, all that might be interesting, but is not the same as addressing the question of whether knowing that P is equivalent to being certain that P, or if there’s some other relation or what.
Here’s an example, a sort of cartoon version of Hume:
Hume argued directly that reasoning about matters of fact is merely probable. He didn’t argue that what people mean when they say “I know that ...” is “I think it highly probable that ...” As far as I can tell, he assumed people meant that they know, and he believed that in all such cases they are actually wrong, that what they do know is only that something is probable, not that it’s fact.
Why not? If "I'm not certain" means "I don't know" then "I know but I'm not certain" means "I know but I don't know" which is, of course, a contradiction. So it doesn't make sense to say "I know but I'm not certain".
And if it doesn't make sense to say "I know but I'm not certain" then it shouldn't make sense to say "I can know without being certain".
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Well, I was never arguing that knowing that p is consistent with ¬p, only that "I know but I might be wrong" can be true, which you appear to have now accepted. I think you just misunderstood what I was saying. But then let's not rehash that old argument.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I wasn't trying to suggest that knowing that p is equivalent to being certain that p. Rather I was trying to see if certainty is a necessary condition, such that if I'm not certain then I don't know (much like if I'm wrong then I don't know).
My reasoning for this is based on my translation of "I know but I'm not certain" which I don't think you've addressed. To repeat:
1. I know that p but I'm not certain, which is:
2. I know that p but I have some doubt that p, which is in part:
3. p but I have some doubt that p, which is:
4. p but I don't know that p, and so (1) is:
5. I know that p but I don't know that p
What's strange here is that I accept that "I am certain" doesn't mean "I know" but it does seem to me that "I am not certain" does mean "I don't know". I suppose ordinary language just isn't always consistent.
She didn’t know where it was before being reminded, and after being reminded she had certainty, so I’m not sure what the relevance of that argument is.
Unless you want to say that she knew all along, despite not have the relevant justified true belief all along? Where exactly do you stand on the JTB definition?
Yes. I am saying exactly that.
Are you claiming she *discovered* that she herself put A's book on A's nightstand? That she *inferred* it from the evidence of her memory?
I’m saying it’s strange to suggest that she knew that it was on the nightstand at a time that she didn’t believe that it was on the nightstand.
“Jane knows p but doesn’t believe p” and “Jane knows p but believes ~p” strike me as wrong.
What exactly do you think forgetting is? I would say something like the loss of knowledge. I once knew the first 100 decimals places of pi. I don’t anymore. I forgot. Jane forgot where she put the book. That she later remembered doesn’t change this, does it?
Nevertheless. B knew where the book was, but that knowledge was unavailable to her for the moment. It seems clear that the belief was unavailable as well. In my scenario, I didn't suggest B formed the belief that it was not on A's nightstand, but she might have. She seems to have formed the *incorrect* belief that she never touched the book. Our total knowledge must be consistent, but our total beliefs needn't.
So she believed that it was on the nightstand, but that belief wasn’t available to her? That just seems very farfetched.
I think it far more sensible to say that, at the time, she didn’t believe that it was on the nightstand, and so didn’t know that it was on the nightstand. Further prompting then elicited the memory, and from that spawned the belief and the knowledge.
Jane: “Is this my pint or yours?”
Michael: “Mine”
Jane: “Are you sure? Pretty sure you’re drinking faster than me.”
Michael: “Yes, you’re right, my mistake”
You’re saying that at the time that I believed that the pint was mine I knew that the pint was Jane’s? I knew something that I believed was false?
I should clarify that it wasn't the case that I inferred from her comment that the pint with less beer must be mine; rather her comment prompted me to reconsider and in doing so I explicitly remembered which glass I had been drinking from.
Is every belief you hold present to mind all the time? No. Are all of your beliefs available to you on demand? I don't think so. There's plenty of reason to think we have beliefs that are strictly unavailable to us, that are unconscious. Even for beliefs that are in principle available to us, we sometimes cannot call them to mind. I see nothing farfetched about any of this.
Quoting Michael
"Spawned"?
So B went from (1) a state of knowing that she herself put the book on A's nightstand, to (2) a state of not knowing that, and then, by *remembering* that she did, to (3) a state of knowing again.
So what's up with the memory? Did she, between (1) and (3), have a memory that she put the book on the nightstand while somehow not knowing that she did? Or did she not have the memory while it wasn't present to mind? But she has to have the memory or she can't get from (2) to (3). How do you propose she did that? And what was going on with her between (1) and (3)?
Quoting Michael
Yes. You held, for a moment, a belief that was false and inconsistent with your knowledge. It happens.
From the SEP article on belief:
Maybe we need to make a similar kind of distinction for knowledge; dispositional and occurrent knowledge. I've only been considering occurrent knowledge, whereas you also appear to consider dispositional knowledge.
Yeah there you go.
That is not what I implied at all. The point being that "possible" must be taken ais a value judgement. So to make your analogy accurate, we'd take a bunch of boxes, and assign the same value to each of them, "possible". Then we take one, mark it with an X, and assign to it a special value, "actual". We cannot say that the one with the special value still has the same value as the others.
The difference, which makes your analogy unacceptable, is that the X is not just an X, being a property of the box, as you propose. The X signifies something. And what the X signifies is that the thing has a value unique from the others which all have the same value, therefore it cannot be categorized with the others as having the same value.
Not *only* the same, because it's the one with the x on it, but it's still a box. You forgot to give an argument that putting an x on a box makes it not a box, or that you have to erase "possible" in order to write "actual".
What's odd here is that the complement of possible is impossible. Me, I assumed actuality implied possibility. I'm puzzled why you think actuality implies impossibility.
Meant to reply to this.
The obvious explanation is that S knows that P entails that S is certain that P, in which case S is not certain that P entails that S does not know that P.
You know, there are other things we could say here. I think it's plausible that if and only if S knows that P, then S is entitled to be certain that P. It's like saying that certainty ought to be backed by knowledge. (It's also a way of acknowledging that there is a factive use of "I'm certain" right next door to "I know for certain." Other factive uses pull in knowledge with them, so some uses of "certain" ought to as well.)
I can even imagine there being particular circumstances or situations in which we would say you *ought* to be certain, to be without doubt or reservation. Not sure though. But if we're going to give certainty an epistemic, rather than merely psychological, role, we'll have to consider the sorts of norms that attach to knowledge at some point.
:100:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We don't know with deductive certainty. But that's not the relevant or appropriate standard. The relevant standard is to look out the window and see whether it's raining.
As Gilbert Ryle puts it:
Much earlier in this thread (I think it was this thread) I purported to draw a distinction between being certain and feeling certain, My thinking was that if knowledge is thought of as being JTB, then if I am justified in my belief, then my belief must be certain, and I said this because a justification must be true (that is truly a justification) or else how could we say that it counts as a justification? But then how can we know that a belief is justified, or on this view the same thing, certain?
In answer to that we might say that justification is a matter of feeling certain because I have ticked the conventional boxes when it comes to "having no good reason to doubt" or something like that, But then I could not be justified without feeling certain that I am justified, which doesn't see to allow for cases where I am justified in that sense of "having no good reason to doubt" but nonetheless do not feel justified. There doesn't seem to be any way to arrive at a clear conception of just what it is that constitutes justification.
Since all of this seems unsatisfactory, then perhaps that invokes the possibility that JTB is not a good formulation of what constitutes knowledge after all.
Quoting Mww
I should probably say something here. Williamson argues that there are several factive verbs (see, remember, regret, and so on) and that know is the most general factive verb, so every instance of one the others also “entails“ knowing. “Entails” is not quite right though; it’s that any factive instance of one of the others is necessarily also an instance of knowing.
The gist of which is that if I see that it is raining, I also thereby know that it is raining. If I remember that I have an appointment, then I thereby also know that I have an appointment.
You could nearly say that remembering, perceiving, regretting, and so on, are particular ways of knowing.
— Insofar as the point being made by @Mww is about our conceptual apparatus and its role in our mental acts, I’ve got nothing helpful to say about that. —
Quoting Mww
On this sort of thing, I could say that the old argument, from Cook Wilson, against any analysis of knowledge, was that there is no non-circular way to carry out such an analysis. Insofar as think about things, we’re stuck with relying on what we know and that we know it. Williamson takes a rather different route.
Btw, I believe I read somewhere that Ryle once described himself as an old-fashioned “Cook-Wilsonian.”
The problem is that you have no argument for me to address, your analogy does not relate. Look at it this way. I'm not saying the actual world is no longer a world. It's still a world just like the box with the X is still a box. The X signifies that the box is not in the same category as the unmarked boxes, just like "actual" signifies that the world is not in the same category as the possible worlds. In other words, putting an X on the box separates it from all the rest, in a way which gives it a unique status so that it is no longer an unmarked box, like the others. Likewise, designating one world as "actual" gives it a unique status so that it is not one of the others, the possible worlds.
You cannot have your cake and eat it too, unless you employ ambiguity and equivocation. Try this way of looking at it. Suppose "possible world" means that if we identify all the possible worlds, one of the possible worlds must be the actual world. That is, we assume such a thing as the actual world, and we assume we've identified all the possible worlds, so necessarily one of the possible worlds is the actual world. Then we proceed to identify one of the possibilities as the actual world, the real world. As soon as we do this, we negate the defined status of "possible" from all the other worlds. They can no longer be the actual world, because we've identified the actual world and it's something else. Since we've named one as "actual", the others can no longer be classed as "possible", without changing the original definition of "possible".
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I never used "impossible", you are putting words in my mouth;
But actuality does not imply possibility. Check your categories. Actual and possible are distinct categories. What is actual is what is, and opposed to this is is not. "Is" and "is not" are of the same category, being. What is possible is what may or may not be, and that is a distinct category from being. Because possibility, by this definition, violates the law of excluded middle, it has no opposite. So the common use of "impossible" places it as outside the category of "possible", as not within the realm of what is possible. This is not to say that it is the opposite to possible, because there is no opposite to may or may not be.
It is a common misunderstanding to think that impossible is the opposite of possible. Consider the example above. When the actual world is identified, all the other proposed worlds must be removed from the category of possible (by that definition), because now it is impossible that any of them is the actual world. But this is not the opposite, of possible, as possibility has been removed by designating an actual. Impossible therefore, is the opposite of actual.
Quoting Andrew M
But this is just going around in a vicious circle. The example says that someone might be hosing the window. So according to the example, looking out the window doesn't give us the certainty required to know whether it is raining.
Jolly, then it’s “just semantics.”
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Fine. It’s not my usual usage, but if you want to reserve possible for non-actual, it makes no real difference. It makes world carry a little more of the burden, but that’s also fine.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, I was. But I can adapt to your usage. All I need to say, using your terminology, is that the actual world is a world. Done. In my usage, if the actual world is not a member of the class of possible worlds, it’s a member of the complement, which would be the class of impossible worlds — if there are any such things, depending on the accessibility relation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have no need for impossible worlds, so that’s that.
*
I can now rephrase my account of hypotheticals for you.
An assumption H, for the purposes of hypothetical reasoning, picks out a set of worlds at which H is true. The actual world may be such a world. (The set of all worlds at which the Allies won World War II includes this world and quite a few others where the course of history was slightly or largely different, but the good guys still won.)
The goal of hypothetical reasoning is to discharge the initiating assumption by means of a true counterfactual conditional, meaning that at all accessible H-worlds, the consequent of the counterfactual conditional is also true, with the usual fudging of the accessibility relation. Standard stuff. (It’s just no P without Q with a necessity operator that acts as a restricted universal quantifier over worlds, and the terms of the restriction depend very much on what you’re doing. For our purposes, it’s usually going to be more restrictive than logical or physical necessity but not so restrictive that we shrink our set to the actual world.)
All good?
"Possible" is not defined as non-actual, it is defined as what may or may not be. And, since actual is defined as what is, it is a logical conclusion that the possible is non-actual. it is impossible that something which is said to be possible, could also be said to be actual, without logical incoherency, inconsistency. The proposition that X may or may not be (is possible), is inconsistent with the proposition that X is (is actual).
This is the issue discussed earlier in the thread, with the number of coins, prior to the count. Prior to the count, the true proposition is "it is possible that there is 66 coins in the jar". After the count, the true proposition is "there is actually 66 coins in the jar", because they've been counted. But we cannot turn around and say that there was actually 66 coins in the jar, prior to counting, because the true proposition at this time was that it is possible that there is 66 coins in the jar. And to say of what may or may not be, that it is also at the same time, what is the case, is incoherent. And this is, at the same time, the time prior to the count, but just from different temporal perspectives.
In modal logic "possible" is defined as "not necessarily not": ?p ? ¬?¬p. Therefore if something is true then it is possibly true: p ? ?p.
I don't understand your use of "complement". You need to explain how there is a "complement" to "possible". As I said, there is no opposite to "possible". And to use "impossible" as the opposite to "possible" is to stray from the definition "what may or may not be". What "impossible" means is outside this category, not a member of "what may or may not be", and this is completely distinct from opposite to, and what I believe is your meaning of "complement."
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You have a double layer of actuality here which needs to be clarified. First, H is true, or actual, in a set of worlds. Then, "the actual world" is one of these worlds. If we assume that the set of worlds is possible worlds, then we cannot say that H is true in these worlds, because "possible world", as "may or may not be" excludes truth. Since you say H is true in these worlds, then I conclude they are all actual worlds, and you have given no possible worlds.
Perhaps you need to define "true".
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
No, very bad.
Quoting Michael
Obviously, this is the problem, we are working on a different definitions of "possible". I define it as what may or may not be, consistent with common use. You define it as "not necessary". Your definition is a problem, because not only is modal logic working with a sense of "possibility" which is completely inconsistent with common use, but your definition is completely circular, leaving modal logic irrelevant to the real world.
You defined "possible" relative to "necessary", and "necessary" relative to "possible worlds". Therefore you have no real grounding to either of these terms, they simply exist and are used relative to each other, having no real meaning. This is why, as I explained earlier, we always need to establish a relationship between the possible worlds, and the actual world in any such application.
This relationship restricts the set of possible worlds, through the determination of "what may or may not be", which is derived from a determination of what is necessary, according to a judgement of the real world. In application, we determine what is necessary through judgement of what is assumed to be the actual world, and from this is created a set of possible worlds. So "possible" then is grounded in what may or may not be, in relation to an assumed real world.
When I say "the book is possibly in my room" I'm not saying "the book isn't actually in my room".
Otherwise telling you where something might be is telling you where not to look.
Your position doesn't appear consistent with common use.
Cool part about watching these discussions is the pleasure of finding finding things out (tip of the pointy hat to Feynman). To wit: I never heard of fractive verbs. Is there any verb that isn’t fractive? How would One become apparent to me? And.....what benefit in them is there for me?
———-
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Then don’t analyze it. Rather, call it an end, and analyze the means. Nevertheless, circularity is a given, recognized as such, like....forever. At the end of the day, though, it is reducible to the very nature of the investigating beast, and therefore inescapable when the investigative program (the finding out of things) undertaken by him, exceeds its warrant.
I use a different definition, but the ends are the same. Possibility is merely one of the ways to think about things; a thing is possible or that thing is impossible, but that does not make the conceptions themselves opposites. All they do is condition the thought of the thing. Just as cause is not the opposite of effect; just as necessary is not the opposite of contingent.
On the other hand, I would agree they are complimentary, in that if one is given, the other follows immediately from it.
My two cents .....which I had to borrow, by the way.
Sorry — couldn’t resist the opportunity to sic you. It’s “factive”. “Fractive” sounds cool though. I wonder what it will turn out to mean. Maybe something related to “fractious”.
Yes of course there are non-factive verbs, and verbs used in both ways. Earlier I gave a rewrite rule that I think captures the difference. For a proposition P and an attitude ?, if
(A) S ?s P
can be rewritten, without changing its truth-value, as
(F) P, and S ?s that
then ? is factive.
Obvious example is believes vs knows:
(1) Joe knows 7 x 6 is 42 ? 7 x 6 is 42, and Joe knows that
(2) Joe believes 7 x 6 is 44 ? 7 x 6 is 44, and Joe believes that
(1) is true and (2) is false.
+++ Correction +++
This is just wrong, for a couple reasons.
The right way to say this is the usual way:
? is factive if and only if S ?s P entails that P.
++++++
It’s related to the de dicto/de re distinction, and the two sorts of readings of “Joe is looking for a spy” (I think the example is Quine’s):
(3) There is a spy, and Joe is looking for it. ?x(x is a spy & Joe seeks x)
(4) Joe is looking for something that is a spy. ?x(x is a spy ? Joe seeks x)
It matters that ? doesn’t have existential import: there may be no spy for Joe to find.
I think the upshot here is that a propositional attitude report is factive if it has the same truth-value as its de re reading.
+++ Correction +++
This is also questionable. Not sure what got into me this morning. Maybe I'll take some time and figure out how this stuff does relate.
++++++
Quoting Mww
If I know that P, then it follows that P. That’s helpful for you, because it means you can learn about the state of the world from my reports of what I know, without having to go see for yourself. If you don’t know, your only option is reasonable belief. But whose testimony is more valuable to you: someone you believe knows whether the dam has broken; or someone you believe thinks it has or hasn’t?
Quoting Mww
So if I have a stack of boxes, and I'm going to mark one of them with an X, then it is true of each of the boxes that it may or may not be the one I'm going to mark. Once I have marked a box, it is no longer true of any of the boxes that it may or not be the one that I'm going to mark: it is true of one that I have marked it and of the others that I have not, and that's it.
As a temporal sort of modality, that seems fine. Once I have marked a box, would either of you say that it is true of each of the other boxes that, though it is not the box I marked, it might have been the one that I marked? If actuality is the closing off possible futures, can we not imaginatively consider an early time at which the actual present was only a possible future, one among many?
Above I spoke hypothetically of having a stack of boxes one of which I intended to mark. How do you conceptualize what we are doing when we reason in this way? Am I talking about a possible future in which I do have a stack of boxes?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Helpful, I suppose. If your P is the bridge is out, and the bridge is out....might be helpful fo me to know that iff I’m on the road the bridge is out of. If I’m not even driving....your P tells me about a state of the world for which I have no interest, hence is not helpful.
But I get the point.
————
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Intention alone cannot afford an determined end, that isn’t a potential post hoc ergo proper hoc logical subterfuge, yet herein we’re providing an exercise for imagination, which can. What we should be doing, so says this armchair (which after all these years has earned the right to speak for itself).......mark a box or don’t, leaving intention out of it, or on the other......intend to mark a box, leaving a marked box out of it.
As stated, I can’t conceptualize what we doing, insofar as it appears we’re operating under two separate and distinct conditions forced somehow into relating to each other.
Not deductive certainty, certainly. In the window hosing scenario, Alice would need to look again, or more carefully. But that doesn't preclude her from having knowledge when it is raining, as long as she does look.
From the earlier Gilbert Ryle quote: "All it requires is what familiar facts provide, namely that observational mistakes, like any others, are detectable and corrigible; so no empirical fact which has in fact been missed by a lapse, need be missed by an endless series of lapses."
On factive verbs, or, ordinary language use gone irredeemably haywire:
“we believe every foot deserves a comfortable pair of shoes”
....says so, right on the door into the self-proclaimed oldest shoe store in America, opening in 1832 in Belfast Maine.
What can ya do, huh?
Yes, that's right.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
@Mww's comment reminded me of your earlier comment on a priori and a posteriori.
That is, we already know what it is to be raining. When we look outside and see that it's raining, we are identifying what we see with our idea of what it is to be raining, and labelling it accordingly.
Similarly, we already know what it is to know something, the rain scenario being a typical example.
From there, we can think of ways that someone can fail to know something, say, because they haven't looked out the window. In that case, we suppose it's nonetheless raining or not (just as to count the coins in the jar entails a prior number), so we use the terms "true" and "false" to register that idea ("to say of what is that it is ..."). They may then go on to discover the truth of the matter ... by looking out the window. [*]
So knowledge is the intended target, with truth defined in terms of it. (@Banno) From Williamson:
--
[*] Where discover is yet another factive verb. It's easy to see how the acceptance or rejection of factivity leads people in philosophical threads to literally talk past each other.
Factive, fractive, fictive ... ;-)
factive
/?fakt?v/
adjective LINGUISTICS
denoting a verb that assigns the status of an established fact to its object (normally a clausal object), e.g. know, regret, resent.
Spellchecker. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
As I said, the two (possible and actual) are not opposed to each other. But obviously, saying "the book is possibly in my room", is to say something completely different from saying "the book is actually in my room". I think you'll agree that these two each say something distinct. And what I am saying is that the two beliefs expressed with these sayings are not consistent with one another. If you believe the book is possibly in your room, you do not believe that it is actually in your room. And if you believe that it is actually in your room you do not believe that it is possibly there.
To assert that the book is possibly in your room when you beilieve that it is actually in your room is to be dishonest. And, to assert that it is actually in your room when you think that it is possibly in your room, is to be dishonest. That these are instances of dishonesty indicates that the two are incompatible with each other.
I admit that there is a way to formulate things, so that we say that one of the possibilities is what is actually the case (one of the possible numbers is the actual number of coins in the jar). But as I explained earlier, this is just based in the assumption that one might be determined to be the actual. It doesn't mean that one already is the actual, because that would be deceptive. They must all be equally possible, and when one is determined as the actual, then all the rest lose their status of "possible", and therefore become impossible. So no matter how you look at it, one cannot be the actual while the rest are possible. They must be all possible without an actual, or one actual and the rest impossible.
Quoting Michael
In common use, telling me where something might be, is completely different from telling me where it is. And if you know where it is, and I ask you, and you tell me "I don't know where it is, but I know where it might be", you are being dishonest. Likewise, if you don't know where it is, but know where it might be, and you tell me you know where it is, you are being dishonest. Clearly, it is your position which is not consistent with normal usage. Common usage demonstrates a healthy respect for the difference between what is actually the case, and what is possibly the case. And we do not mix these two up, to say that we think something is possibly the case, when we believe that it is actually the case, or vice versa.
Quoting Mww
But the issue is the relationship between what is possible and what is actual, and the fact that one is not a special case of the other, such that the actual would be one of the possible. What we believe as "actual", is what is, of necessity, and therefore not one of the possible. But being not one of the possible in no way implies that the actual, or necessary, is impossible.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think this is the common misconception of free will, which leads to all sorts of problems. After you have marked the box, engaged in the free will act, we cannot, from that temporal perspective, say that you might have marked a different box. From that temporal perspective, after the fact, it is impossible that you might have done otherwise. You did what you did, and at this time it is impossible that it might be otherwise. And this misconception (straw man), that if you had free will, you might have done otherwise, when you really can't because what's done is done. gives fodder to the determinist argument, . However, this does not change the fact that prior to the act you have many choices, and there are many possibilities for boxes which you might mark. So free will is very real from this perspective, despite the fact that you cannot have dome other than what you did. What this indicates, is that the two distinct temporal perspectives, prior to an act, and posterior to an act, are very different perspectives.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I would say that this is simply imagination. However, I would also say that imagination is closely related to the way that we anticipate the future. The principal difference being that we anticipate the future in a way which is grounded in the reality of the past, so it is a disciplined imagination, but we may allow our free imaginations to escape this grounding in an undisciplined sense.
What you said was:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is false. That the book is possibly in my room isn't that the book is not actually in my room.
You are not adhering to the definitions Michael. "Possible" refers to what may or may not be. "Actual" refers to what is and is not. If you say that the book is possibly in your room, then you are saying that it may or may not be in your room. This is logically distinct from saying that it actually is in your room, or actually is not, according to the definitions. Therefore the conclusion I stated is sound.
I have no doubt that there is much common usage which is represented by your examples. People say that if there is a multitude of possibilities as to how many coins are in the jar, one of these possibilities is the actual number. And, people also say that if the book is actually in your room, then that it may or may not be in your room is true. But the issue is, whether speaking like this is correct. And I use "correct" here in the sense of what we ought to do, rather than in the sense of what is common practise. Sometimes habits of common practise are not what we ought to be doing.
As I explained above, this habit you describe is the manifestation of a sort of dishonesty. When you say "the book is possibly in my room", this would be a dishonest statement if you believed that the book is actually in your room. Therefore the belief represented as "the book is possibly in my room" excludes as inconsistent with, the belief represented as "the book is actually in my room", in an honest discussion of whether or not the book is in the room. What "the book is possibly in my room" means is distinct from, and excludes as inconsistent with, what "the book is actually in my room" means.
Furthermore, if in the instance of the coins in the jar, we allow that one of the possibilities is the actual (what is actually the case), then all the others must be designated as impossible. Therefore, it should be very clear to you, that if we allow that one of the possibilities is what is actual, this would negate the status of "possible" from all the others. So to correctly maintain the status of "possible", in an honest way, we must not allow the idea that any one of the possibilities is the actual, thereby maintaining the categorical separation between possible and actual. Allowing the separation to be closed contaminates the idea or concept of "possible", in the minds of each of us, rendering us susceptible to deception through that type of usage which has a dishonest base. (I'm trying to appease Srap by not calling your particular use dishonest, rather saying that this type of usage has a dishonest base).
Not it isn't.
There's a difference between saying "possible" doesn't mean "actual" and saying "possible" means "not actual".
You asserted the latter, which is false.
You misquoted me. I said "non-actual". I suggest you read my post before replying. Your rapid response indicates a strong probability that you did not allow yourself to understand it.
So what's the difference between "not actual" and "non-actual"? What's the difference between "not human" and "non-human"?
That aside, either if something is possible then it isn't actual or something can be both possible and actual. So which is it?
1.) considering real objects, and 2.) confining the possible to what may be, and 3.) what may not be and belief both being utterly irrelevant.....
Aristotle says so...that which exists, exists necessarily. That which exists cannot not exist.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Kant says no....That which exists is in the sum of the possible. The sum of the real, the actual, cannot exceed the sum of the possible, therefore is contained by it.
You’re correct in a way...the actual ascends from the sum of the possible, therefore is contained in the sum of the real. Even if the particular real is no longer listed in the merely possible, it remains a member of the modal class of logical categories. It just switches over to the necessary.
The schema of necessity is existence in all time, the schema of possibility is existence in any time, the schema of the real is existence in a determined time.
You know....for clarity.
That is explained in the post. Iif you will take the time to read it, you can ask me what you do not understand. Depending on what you mean by "not actual", "possible" does mean "not actual". This is because the two concepts are mutually exclusive, inconsistent with one another, such that if something is truthfully said to be possible, it cannot at the same time be truthfully said to be actual. That's what I explained to say one when you believe the other, is to be dishonest.
Quoting Michael
The former, as I explained, and described how this is a logical conclusion derived from the definitions. You can go back and read the posts if you want to understand why this is necessarily the case.
Quoting Mww
The idea that the possible can be summed can be shown to be incoherent, because the possible can be assumed to be infinite. So it is also incoherent to say "that which exists is the sum of the possible", or to speak about "the sum of the possible" in any way.
Having said that, the actual, as we know it, is definitely contained, and it may be the case that it is contained by the possible. But if there is a limit to the possible (a sum of the possible), then the limiting thing must be some sort of actuality. This is a sort of version of Aristotle's cosmological argument, where he demonstrates that in an absolute sense, the actual must be prior in time to the possible. It just isn't the same sort of actuality which is known to us, as this sort is contingent actualities, and these are preceded in time by the necessary possibility. It's a special type of actuality known by theologians.
This says {x: x is possible} is a subset of {x: x is not actual}. What's in the rest? What is neither possible nor actual? (Asking for a friend.)
I don't know, to be honest. We always describe things through terms of actuality, what a thing is. So possibility, being not actual, must be something other than this, something which does not submit to description. I believe this makes it impossible to say what "possible" is a subset of, because that would be assigning it some sort of actuality. Therefore, I believe that "possible" must be understood in ways other than descriptive ways. The best way, I think, is with reference to time. Like I said before, prior to the free will act, the act is a possibility. After the act it is an actuality. So possibility is likely some sort of feature of time. And, since the concept of "time" in the way I spoke of it here, encompasses both possible and actual, then we can say that it is neither possible nor actual, but both.
What’s incoherent in the successive accumulation of the real? When the accumulation is the content of the possible, the quantity is irrelevant. It is whatever it is.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Agreed. That in quotation marks and taken from my comment, indicates I said it. But I didn’t. I said that which exists is in the sum of the possible.
————
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Agreed. The entire human system of experience is predicated on perception, which makes the real temporally antecedent to the experience of it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Agreed. The real of perception isn’t known at all, insofar as that real thing, whatever it may be, has yet to be subjected to the system that determines how it is to be known.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, it is merely a given real something, and is contingent on the system for its identity.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Aristotle restricted it to theologians, but since then, it’s been opened up to every human subject, in accordance with a specific metaphysical theory. On the other hand....what was a theologian for Aristotle, compared to a theologian for us? If the concept changed over time, then probably the applicability changed along with it. Dunno......
When you are talking about "the sum", quantity is not irrelevant. And, a successive accumulation without end, does not produce a sum.
Quoting Mww
Sorry, my mistake. Regardless, it is "the sum of the possible" which is incoherent.
A lot of what we want to say using the alethic modalities clearly does have to do with time, and we do readily make these identifications, future = possible, present = actual, past = necessary. But to say that the future is as yet undetermined, for instance, or that we cannot change the past, if those are to be substantive claims, have to mean something besides the future is future and the past is past. What underwrites that understanding of the temporal modalities?
I think we can say more, and the way to say more is to turn to mathematics, from which time has been deliberately excluded. See what you still have without time. What we find is that there are ways to make issues we are familiar with most often in temporal terms tractable for reason in non-temporal terms.
I would have thought the opposite to "may or may not be" was "must or must not be".
If what is actual is not (also) what is possible, then what is actual is (also) what is necessary.
If what is actual is (also) what is necessary, then this precludes free will.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So you're saying that if the book is possibly in my room then it isn't actually in my room, and so if I tell you that the book is possibly in my room then you know to not look in my room.
Clearly this is opposed to common use.
I think what underwrites these modalities is experience. But it isn't direct experience, like we tend to say that sensation is experience, it's more like an analysis of what constitutes experience. This is a philosophical approach to experience. So it is a philosophical activity of the human being, which reflects on its own living experience, recognizing that experience is complex rather than simple, and seeing the need to break it down into its constituent parts.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
To simplify the complex by ignoring the difference between the distinct parts which make it complex, is to produce misunderstanding.
Quoting Luke
I don't' think this would be a proper expression. I believe it is very similar to the mistake which Michael was making, when you try to oppose possible with necessary. The problem is that when we turn to the temporal nature of reality, what is, is what is necessary. And what is, is in the same category as what is not, as its opposite. Now we would have two very distinct opposites of "necessary", what is possible, and what is not.
So if we accept your proposition, "necessary" becomes very ambiguous. There is the "necessary" which is opposed to "what is not", related to empirical description, and there is the "necessary" which is opposed to "possible", related by your definition, as a proposition for logical proceedings. These two senses of "necessary" are very different, yet very difficult to distinguish.
The issue is that opposites are members of the same category, hot and cold, big and small, positive and negative, etc.. But in a philosophical examination of reality, we find that we need to allow for the reality of things which have no opposite. These are the categories themselves, heat, and size, for example. They have no opposite. And, we've come to know, through experience, that the categories provide the potential (possibility) for actual description. They've been given this name.
But even in the description I just provided, "possible" might be understood as a further category, the category of categories. But this type of description is how the problem of sophistry which Socrates and Plato exposed arises. If we understand this as a category of categories, then this category of categories must be the same as the other categories, being a itself category. Then we want to make sure it is like the other categories, for the purpose of deductive logic, and we represent it as consisting of opposing extremes for the purpose of description. The category of categories is then a category. But it's unsound.
So you would propose that we oppose "what may or may not be" with "what must or must not be", thereby opposing "possible" with "necessary", so that we have an unsound category of "the possible" allowing the possible to be described for the purpose of deductive logic. But all this does is defeat the purpose of putting "possible" outside the categories of logic, thus rendering the reality of possibility impossible to understand through this faulty definition. At the same time, you produce a fictitious, or completely imaginary conception of "the possible", which is totally misleading.
Quoting Luke
Yes, this is exactly the problem with defining "possible" like you propose, which I explain above. It renders "necessary" as extremely ambiguous and misleading.
Quoting Michael
To the contrary, it is exactly consistent with honest use. When you say that the book is possibly in your room, you imply that the book may be elsewhere. When you say that the book is actually in your room, you imply that it is not elsewhere. So when you say that it is possibly in your room I must decide whether to look there or elsewhere. or how long I should spend searching your room, etc.. But when you say it is actually in your room, no such decisions are required.
This is why it would be deception for you to say that the book is possibly in your room when you believed that it is actually in your room. These two beliefs are inconsistent with each other. So you would be misleading me by telling me something inconsistent with what you honestly believed. Therefore if you continue to insist that this is common usage, I will insist that you commonly deceive.
Said Pilate who wouldn't stay for the answer. Come on, jump in! Or is it a little too frigid for you?
But I'm not implying that the book isn't actually in my room.
Ehhhhh.....I don’t have a problem with it. The notion of adding to the totality of the possible is quite absurd, from which I can deduce the sum of the possible is given.
Right. That's the problem I'm pointing out to you, which results from your claim that what is actual is not also what is possible.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I never claimed that "necessary" is the opposite of what is not.
I could equally say that we have two very distinct opposites of "possible" with your claim: what is impossible and what is. However, if I recall correctly, you made the absurd claim earlier that "possible" is not the opposite of "impossible".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Then you have likewise rendered "possible" as extremely ambiguous and misleading.
What you don't seem to understand MIchael, is that whether or not the book is actually in your room is completely irrelevant here. These statements have nothing to do with whether or not the book is actually in your room, because you could be lying, mistaken, creating a fiction, whatever. The statement refers to what you think, what you believe. And, by stating that the book is possibly in your room, you are implying that you do not believe that the book is actually in your room. "The book is possibly in my room" represents a belief distinct from that represented by "the book is actually in my room. And the one is inconsistent with the other.
If you honestly state that the book is possibly in your room, you imply that you do not honestly believe that it is actually in your room. Therefore your statement "the book is possibly in my room", implies that you do not think that the book is actually in your room. If you belief that the book is actually in your room, and you state that it is possibly in your room, you are being dishonest in your statement. Whether or not the book is actually in the room, or possibly in the room (whatever that might mean independent of belief), is completely irrelevant, so there is no point for you to keep bringing this up. It's just a distraction. We need to focus on the beliefs represented by the statements.
Quoting Luke
That's right, imposible ought not be considered as opposite to possible, because it leads to the ambiguity of "necessary" which I described and you don't seem to understand.
Quoting Luke
Yes, "possible" is extremely ambiguous and misleading. But it has been this way for a long time, so it is not I who has rendered it thus.
It's a conversational implicature, that's all. To say "It might be in my room" suggests that you don't know where it is. A good paraphrase is "The book is, for all I know, in my room." This is an epistemic modality, and all it says is that the book being in your room is consistent with your total knowledge. Obviously if you know it's in your room, its being there is consistent with what you know! And that's the thing about the implicature: it suggests that you don't know, but your knowing doesn't make what you said false.
But we don't have to be talking about what people know, what they say, what's implied by what they say, and all that. None of that is implied or relevant if the modality is alethic. Considering only physics and geometry, for example, we might say truly that it is possible for any normal-sized book to be in your room, including this one, and impossible for any normal-sized (non-toy) semi-truck to be in your room. There's reliance here on what we know about physics and geometry, but no one's knowledge of the location any book or truck is in play.
It wouldn't hurt to distinguish the epistemic and alethic modalities now and then.
That's a pretty good explanation. Put simply "the book is in my room" implies that I know where the book is. "The book is possibly in my room" implies that I do not know where the book is. That's why the two are inconsistent with each other.
You just have to be careful about this. Given
(1) The book is possibly in my room.
(2) I do not know where the book is.
It is not the case that (1) entails (2). It just doesn't. But conversationally, we take an utterance of (1) to implicate a commitment to (2). And that commitment is purely conversational; you do not contradict yourself if you say, "Well, it might be in my room — as a matter of fact I know that it is."
There's no more a contradiction here than there is in Mitch Hedberg's joke, "I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to too." Implicature is not entailment; that's the whole point. (To belabor the point: "used to" suggests that you've stopped, but it doesn't mean that or entail that; it's just an inference we tend to make when someone says it, and an inference we're expected to make. If any of this were different, Mitch would not have a joke here.)
And that's another reason that approaching all philosophical problems in terms of what people say or can't say is so misleading; there are other rules than logic at work in what people say to each other and what it will be taken to mean.
"Possible" is the opposite of "impossible". It is absurd to deny it. Whatever ambiguous meaning of "necessary" you think results from this makes no difference to the fact. You do not get to personally decide the meanings of these words.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So if I consider "possible" as the opposite of "impossible", then I have gone awry in my thinking because it leads to ambiguous consequences for the meaning of the word "necessary", but the word "possible" was always ambiguous and not because you've gone awry in your thinking? This is just nonsense.
If you think that what is actual is not also what is possible, then what is actual must also be what is necessary. Consequently, free will is an illusion.
Seems to me that we're perfectly capable of understanding what sorts of thoughts are exclusive to humans and what sorts are not.
It would make no sense to say that a parrot danced as a way of showing its appreciation for the aesthetic beauty of a particular song unless it had personal taste regarding music. It would make no sense to say that my cat is jealous of the way my other cat looks unless she had a beauty standard for her to even be bitter about because it is one that she feels she has failed to meet whereas she feels her roommate has succeeded.
The gecko on my outdoor table was not thankful to me for leaving bits of butter mochi and juice for it - and could not possibly be - without having a meaningful sense of gratitude. The pheasants in my yard cannot respect the individuality of each other simply for the sake of doing so unless they have some socially derived moral/ethical sense of respecting the individuality of others simply for the sake of doing so. The male peacock does not have all his hopes and dreams wrapped up in successfully 'courting' females unless he has thought and belief(hopes and dreams) about what has yet to have happened(the future).
In principle, thoughts exclusive to humans would be(consist of) correlations including written language use. In practice, we do not attribute such thought to non human creatures.
You seem to think I have disagreed with this. The only thing I have any issue with is the "humans". I think it should be "language capable beings". Yes, of course we can say that only language capable beings can have linguistically mediated thoughts. It's analytically and trivially (insofar as it doesn't really tell us anything) true.
No it isn't. It's the only thing that's relevant. We're concenred with truth, not belief.
Whether or not the book is actually in my room has nothing to do with what I believe. I don't know where the book is so I say "the book is possibly in my room", but as a matter of fact, distinct from my belief, the book is actually in my room.
The book doesn't just cease to exist, or fail to have a location, simply because I don't know where it is.
Not sure if it matters in this instance. Whether we're considering epistemic or alethic modality, if something is true then it is possible.
Interesting. What other rules might those be?
Exactly, and this exemplifies how commonly accepted principles of logic fail us, and can easily be used to deceive. Honestly, (1) does entail (2), as I've explained. If I honestly say the book is possibly in my room, this implies that I do not know where the book is. And if I use that statement when I know where the book is, I would be most likely engaged in deception (or possibly a guessing game).
So, if we define truth with honesty, then we can see that logic strays from truth in this example. Commonly accepted principles of logic allow that "the book is actually in my room", and "the book is possibly in my room", might both be true at the same time, when in reality this represents a sort of dishonesty.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
But I didn't say the problem is contradiction. That's the point it's not contradiction, which involves opposition, I said it was an inconsistency because opposition is not involved, incompatibility is involved. Contradiction is to affirm is and is not of the same predicate. In this case, the issue is that "possibility" as what may or may not be, naturally violates the law of excluded middle, that's how it is defined. Then, in MIchael's examples, a relationship between what actually is (what is consistent with the law of excluded middle), and what possibly is (what is not consistent with the law of excluded middle) is proposed. This proposal creates the inconsistency which is evident from the dishonesty exemplified.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Again, this is exactly the issue here. General rules for communication are based in honesty. Honesty is a requirement for communion. However, logic is not based in communion, being more like strategy, so it does not have this requirement. As evident from forms like mathematics, logic is fundamentally imaginary and the rules which become conventional are the ones which prove to be useful. Usefulness and honesty are sometimes inconsistent with each other, as demonstrated by the reality of deception, and so the rules of logic may become inconsistent with the rules of communication.
The inconsistency we've exposed demonstrates two very distinct ways of conceiving the relationship between possible and actual. One way is based in the rules of honest communication, what I call truth, the other way is based in the logical rules of usefulness.
Quoting Luke
You obviously have not given any thought to what you are saying here. You just take it for granted that possible opposes impossible, as you claimed, "may or may not be" opposes "must or must not be", and you keep asserting this. I suggest you go back and read the post I made in reply to this proposition, exposing the problem with this assumption, and if you have any specific issue with what I said, you can bring it up with me. To reiterate what I said very succinctly, what is "possible" (as what may or may not be), must be outside the category of what is "necessary" (as what must or must not be) rather than opposed to it because if "possible" is opposed with "necessary" this places them in the same category. Placing "possible" in the same category as "necessary", or "impossible" (as a special form of necessary), leaves the true nature of "possible" as impossible to understand. In other words, it is a misrepresentation of "possible" which is not consistent with the truth about "possible".
Quoting Luke
Why not? This is how we proceed with logic, define the terms (personally decide the meanings of the words) then proceed with our propositions. The question is rhetorical though. I know we disagree on what constitutes meaning, so there's no point in you replying to that.
Quoting Michael
Exactly! And, we are not talking about whether or not the book is actually in your room. We are talking about the proposition "the book is actually in my room", along with the proposition "the book is possibly in my room", and what these two propositions mean. Since the meaning concerns what you believe, rather than what is actually the case, then whether or not the book is actually in your room is completely irrelevant.
Quoting Michael
"True" is a predicate of "belief", in the sense of knowledge, "justified true belief". When we talk about propositions like "the book is actually in my room", and "the book is possibly in my room", what is being represented here is beliefs, not real world situations. If you think that real world situations are being represented by these propositions, explain to me what real world situation could possibly be represented by "the book is possibly in my room".
Since "the book is possibly in my room" cannot possibly represent any actual real world situation, we must conclude the obvious, that it represents a belief. And, since this proposition represents a belief, then to maintain consistency we must also affirm that "the book is actually in my room" represents a belief as well, or else we are comparing apples and oranges and your assertions just are a big category mistake.
Quoting Michael
Right, and this is why the proposition "the book is possibly in my room" must refer to what you believe, not some real world situation. And so, to correctly establish a relation between this proposition and "the book is actually in my room", without a category mistake, we must assume that the latter refers to a belief as well. Then we see that the two beliefs are inconsistent with each other.
Quoting Mww
I addressed this above. The rules of communion are based in moral principles, which are quite distinct from the rules of logic.
Given that "I believe that the book is in my room, therefore the book is in my room" is invalid, "I believe that the book is in my room" doesn't mean "the book is in my room".
The meaning of "the book is in my room" doesn't concern what I believe.
I'm very distressed to hear that. Since it is very obvious that you could state "the book is in my room" when the book is not in your room, then it is also very obvious that "the book is in my room" means something other than that the book is in your room. Do you not agree with this?
No, I don't. It's a nonsensical inference.
That I can assert a falsehood isn't that it doesn't mean precisely what it says.
The fact that you understand the notion of dishonety proves that you understand the difference between the meaning of an assertion and the beliefs of the person making the assertion.
Look at the T-schema discussed earlier by Banno. "The book is in my room" is true iff the book is in my room. In this example, "the book is in my room" only means that the book is in my room, if the statement is true. In other instances "the book is in my room" means something else.
Why do you believe that this is nonsensical?
That a statement could "mean precisely what it says" is what is nonsensical. The statement consists of words, symbols. What it means is an interpretation of the symbols. The interpretation is not a restatement of the same symbols. The meaning of the statement cannot be "precisely what it says". That makes no sense at all.
You appear to be equivocating on the meaning of "means". We're using it in the sense of a definition, not in the sense of entailment.
The T-schema doesn't say that asserting the proposition "the book is in my room" entails that the book is in my room. It only says that the book being in my room is the truth-condition of the proposition "the book is in my room", and according to Davidson the definition of a proposition is given by its truth-conditions.
OK.
"The book is in my room" is true iff the book is in my room.
Notice that it isn't:
"The book is in my room" is true iff I believe that the book is in my room.
Therefore, your claims that the meaning of "the book is in my room" has something to do with what I believe, or that truth is honesty, are false.
I can honestly claim "the book is in my room" if I believe that the book is in my room, but if the book isn't in my room then my claim is false.
This is how almost everyone understands truth. It's the common use. Your use is uncommon. You have presented no adequate evidence or reasoning to support your use.
What you mean by "possible" is that the future holds more than one possibility; that there are several possible worlds and one of those becomes the actual world. I don't disagree with this. What opposes this view of "possible", and what I mean by "necessary", is that the future holds only one possibility; that there is only one possible world and only that world can become the actual world. What also opposes this view of "possible", and what I mean by "impossible", are those worlds that could never become the actual world because, e.g., they are physically impossible.
If there is more than one possible world at t0 and one of those becomes the actual world at t1, then the actual world at t1 is still one of those possible worlds that was at t0; one of the possibilities that could have been. Otherwise, for you to say that what is actual is what is necessary means that there were no other possibilities at t0; that no other world at t1 was possible at t0. This eliminates free will.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If you had many possibilities prior to the act, then the one that became actual remains one of those possibilities. It is only if you had no other possibilities prior to the act that what is actual would be necessary. Describing a situation as "necessary" because we have no other possibilities during the act (at the present time, in the actual world) leads to bizarre consequences and makes no sense of free will, or of freely choosing to make actual one of several possibilities. You are then describing as "necessary" something that you freely chose to make actual. What does "necessary" mean in that case? The word loses its familiar meaning.
I mean, there's the Church-Fitch argument; if there's no way around that, then there must be truths that cannot be known.
Quoting Michael
Here's the problem, as I see it:
(1) If you want to convey your honest belief that the book is in Michael's room, the words you choose to express that belief are "The book is in Michael's room."
(2) You choose those words because the literal (or conventional) meaning of that sentence represents your belief accurately.
(3) But that sentence represents your belief accurately precisely because it's what anyone who held the same belief as you would say if they wished honestly to express that belief.
The claim is that there is no more to a word's being appropriate for the purpose of expressing what you want to express than it being the word people use honestly to express that belief.
But your using that sentence honestly to express that belief is itself an element of the common practice that underwrites the use of that sentence to express that belief. That's not a paradox; it means that the words you are using are a solution (a stable equilibrium) to a problem in (cooperative) game theory, in which what you do is dependent on what others do, and what they do is dependent on what you do. This is the substance of the idea of the arbitrariness of the sign: any solution to such a problem is as good as any other.
But that's all about meaning.
You can take a further step and claim that there is nothing more to the book being in Michael's room than people who hold the belief that it is honestly expressing that belief by saying, or being disposed to say, "The book is in Michael's room."
Now what does this mean, that there is "nothing more to it"? That suggests there is a biconditional that looks like this:
P ? People who believe that P and wish honestly to express that belief assert, or are disposed to assert, that P.
Maybe here we give an account of belief, maybe we posit a language of thought and all of this is a way of saying that P is the canonical translation into our language from the LoT, maybe a lot of things, but some people are also going to be tempted to say (by a parallel argument) that there is nothing more to belief than what we assert or are disposed to assert, in which case the biconditional becomes
P ? People believe that P ? People assert, or are disposed to assert, that P.
That's the "nothing more" account, I believe. There are stops along the way where you might opt out, but this is its final destination.
The question of this thread has always been whether there is something more, whether there is, for instance, something more to the book being in Michael's room than the appropriateness of the sentence "The book is in Michael's room" for honestly conveying your belief that it is.
I think most people's pre-theoretical intuition is that of course there is, but the apparent difficulty of specifying what the something more is convinces some to give it up, or to give up in a slightly different way, something like this: if there is something more, it's not the sort of thing we can say, since all we can say is stuff like "The book is Michael's room," and that's already within the scope of the "nothing more" analysis.
So there's a summary of the what this thread is about. I'm not convinced the nothing more account is right, but the challenge is to offer an alternative as comprehensive, to say exactly where it goes wrong, or to show that it isn't actually what it seems to be.
Ok. What is communion as you’re using the word?
It should not be overlooked that he reformulated that to this (I'm using 'P' for 'possibly' and 'N' for necessarily'):
""possible" is defined as "not necessarily not": Pq <-> ~N~q". Therefore if something is true then it is possibly true: q -> Pq."
The definition there is correct. And "q -> Pq" is correct, but not merely from the definition but from axioms.
/
Another poster claimed that defining "possibly P" as "not necessarily not P" is circular because "necessarily" is defined in terms of possible worlds. No, "necessarily" is not defined at all; it is primitive. Moreover, "possible worlds" is semantic and is not involved in syntactical definitions. Moreover, while words such as "possible worlds" suggest intuitive motivations, mention of "possible worlds" is not needed for the semantics, as the semantics can be given in full formality without nicknames such as "possible worlds".
/
I don't know any person who would say this:
"Possibly the book is in the room. So the book is not in the room."
If someone told me that, then I would consider them incapable of coherent conversation and incapable of shedding any light on where the book is or might be.
/
Semantically (a simplified chart):
q is true or not true (but not both) in any given model ("world")
q is necessary iff q is true in every model
q is possible iff q is true in at least one model
q is contingent iff (q is true in at least one model and false in at least one model)
q is actually true iff (there is a certain model designated as the "actual model" and q is true in that model)
("the actual model" may refer to the world of observable facts or whatever explanation one would like to give for a notion of the "real world", "actual world", etc. When context is clear, we just say 'q is true'.)
Quoting Janus
That's how to avoid anthropomorphism.
The notions of 'linguistically mediated thought' and 'language capable beings' don't - ahem - can't.
You are talking with a poster not capable of making sense.
That just seems way too convoluted and theory laden...
Seems to me like there's nothing more to the book being in Michael's room than the book, the room, and the spatial relation between the two.
Which ought tell you something. That's not something I would or have said, nor does it follow from anything I would or have said.
I think this is ambiguous. The meaning of the sentence is what you believe, but it isn't that you believe it. The sentence that expresses that you believe it is "I believe that the book is in my room".
And, of course, it can be true that I believe something even if what I believe is false. @Metaphysician Undercover appears to conflate these.
Or an assertoric utterance of "The book is in Michael's room."
At any rate, the content is where the action is.
Quoting Michael
But you have no way of saying this as a report of your beliefs. And if someone else says it, of you, then it can be taken as report of their beliefs.
I think the trouble comes earlier and runs deeper.
Quoting creativesoul
I have no idea what you are trying to say.
Again, I think this is ambiguous. I think you're conflating two different senses of "meaning". I'm concerned with meaning in the sense of definition. "I believe that the book is in my room" and "the book is in my room" do not share a definition.
Otherwise how do you make sense of the "the book is in my room" part of "I believe that the book is in my room"? The latter isn't to be interpreted as "I believe that I believe that the book is in my room".
I think you're just taking meaning-as-use to an irrational extreme.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I thought I just did? "It can be true that I believe something even if what I believe is false" is something I believe. Or, more succinctly, "I am fallible".
The sad thing is that your clear explanation will not correct the confusion here. That confusion is wilful.
Sometimes, as a discussion unfolds, the only thing to do is to laugh and walk away.
But that's no fun unless you come back occasionally and make snide comments from the ivory tower.
I'm really not. If I candidly assert an indicative sentence, I imply that the content of my belief is represented by that sentence. It's simply false that I have to preface everything I say with "I believe."
Quoting Michael
I get that. But I'm not sure invoking the word "definition" is going to get you very far.
Quoting Michael
Neither one of them has a definition; they have semantic content. Which I think is the right thing to be talking about.
Quoting Michael
Well that's a question. The biconditionals I offered look circular, don't they? What are we to do about that?
Quoting Michael
You're confusing me with what I want to argue against, but we can't ignore that there is insight underlying the doctrine of meaning as use.
Quoting Michael
Now try it with a specific belief. You can't assert that the book is in your room, or that you believe the book is in your room, and that it is not true that the book is in your room. Someone else, let's say "George", can say it of you, and then there's nothing to stop a third party from saying that you believe the book is in your room and George doesn't, full-stop.
I think the right strategy is to block the supposed dependence of semantic content on beliefs.
It's not that simple.
For instance, I had a look at the SEP article about revision theory, and I was puzzled that we're treated to what amounts to a wholesale reconstruction of model theory to allow the proposed extension, complete with new versions of interpretation and everything else, and then I realized that you have to do this if you accept that Tarski's machinery is not up to the task.
I don't think we even have a complete syntax for any natural language; lacking that, there's no hope for a complete semantics.
So while I'm deeply sympathetic to the formal approach, and in particular with model-theoretic truth-conditional semantics, we can't claim to have managed more than some fragments of some natural languages. And formal semantics takes lexical semantics as just given, somehow, which means it is never going to address issues of reference; that's a non-issue for mathematics, where reference is essentially stipulative all the way down, but it's a big damn deal with natural languages.
I obviously don't have any problem with the specifics of what you posted, but I'm not clear on what you expect to achieve by posting it. The box and diamond operators are defined as they are because of our pre-existing intuitions about alethic modality. And similarly for the axioms of various modal logics. You're surely not arguing that someone's intuitions can be refuted by the definitions and axioms we've chosen... If those definitions and axioms don't match our intuitions, so much the worse for them.
I'm also not clear what kind of mileage you hope to get out of talking about models. What models? How do you construct them? Again, I'm all for this, but I don't think we get to assume this is all settled for natural languages.
If the point you wanted to make was "quit doing that, because you can do this instead," I'd endorse that!
I don't expect to achieve anything other than giving a simple starting point, since there had been confusion in the thread.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Of course not.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Whatever models one likes.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Most formally in the usual methods of mathematical logic and/or formal modal logic. Less formally, in whatever informal way one likes.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Of course not.
It's simple that the poster is nuts to think that "Possibly P" implies "Not P".
That'll do.
The task at hand is choosing between different grammars. If a grammar leads to a confusion, such as Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
...then best reject it. Quit doing that, and do this instead.
It is that simple.
Just to be clear, I don't propose that.
Unless someone provides a definition, "meaning" is not being used in the sense of a definition. So in common usage, which is what we seemed to be talking about with the example "the book is in my room", people do not provide definitions for the words they use, therefore the meaning of those words is not "meaning" in the sense of a definition. It is meaning in the sense of how they are used.
Quoting Michael
Yes, but don't you see that when someone says "the book is in my room", this can only imply that the book is in that room, if we add the premise that the statement is true (in that sense of "true"). And, the statement only "means" (as in what is meant by the speaker) that the book is in my room, if the person speaks truthfully (honestly). So if you are not talking about what is implied logically through definition, nor what is meant by the language in its use, what other sense of "meaning" are you appealing to?
Quoting Luke
What was meant in the quoted passage, was that "possible worlds" referred to logical possibilities for what is the case. If we do not know precisely what is the case in a specific situation, we allow for many different possibilities. So it's not really about future possibilities here, but logical possibilities. That was the reason for the use of "possible worlds". Srap introduced that, to try and get a handle on the meaning of "possible".
Quoting Luke
The particular possibilities at 10, are no longer possibilities at 11. That's the nature of passing time, things change as time passes
Quoting Luke
No, none of them are possibilities after the act, not even the one you chose, that's the point. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Once you eat the cake, eating it is no longer a possibility.
Quoting Mww
Communion would be all forms of participating in and sharing of thoughts, and activities, like communication and working together. What I explained is that logic has a foundation in imagination and is supported by usefulness. So it is, in its foundation, a private activity, like strategy. Since usefulness is defined relative to particular goals, which are personal, and this is what supports these rules, the rules of logic are fundamentally inconsistent with the rules of communion (human interaction), which are moral rules.
Those different possibilities are regarding a future situation, not the current situation. We do not know whether there will be a sea battle tomorrow, and it is possible today that there will be a sea battle tomorrow or there won't be a sea battle tomorrow. But. come tomorrow, there will be no other possibilities regarding the sea battle except for the one that becomes the actual situation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Exactly. The particular possibilities at t0 are possibilities regarding the future situation at t1; they are not possibilities regarding the present situation at t0. There are no other possibilities (for t0) at t0 other than the actual situation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You either had other possibilities (prior to eating the cake) at t0 besides eating the cake at t1, or you didn't have other possibilities at t0 besides eating the cake at t1. If you had other possibilities at t0, then eating the cake at t1 was possible. If you didn't have other possibilities at t0, then eating the cake at t1 was necessary. I don't agree that eating the cake at t1 was necessary if you had other possibilities at t0. This a misuse of the term "necessary".
That's really not how Srap was using "possible worlds". We were talking about hypotheticals, counterfactuals, and whether or not it is raining out. Here is where Srap Used "possible worlds" in an example.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Quoting Luke
I will follow this example though, if you like.
Quoting Luke
No, the possibilities are the ones which are present, at the current time. Yes, they are derived from our view toward the future, but they are stated as the possibilities which are present. They are an aspect of one's knowledge. So, "that there will be a sea battle tomorrow", is a possibiltiy present right now in my mind, if I believe this. That's why the action involved in this possibility which exists now, is stated as "tomorrow", because the possibility exists prior in time to the act, i.e. today. At the current time, there are many possibilities for the future, within my mind, and yours too I assume.
Quoting Luke
I'm saying that after the act is carried out it is no longer a possibility in my mind, it is necessary, as what has been carried out, what is actual. Example: Yesterday there was a sea battle. I believe that this actually occurred, therefore there are no other possibilities in my mind. In my mind, by my knowledge, it is a fact, something necessary, impossible to be otherwise, not a possibility.
Do you not understand that understanding what sorts of thoughts are exclusive to humans and what sorts are not is how to avoid anthropomorphism?
What that poster says makes sense. But some who are taught that something contrary to what the poster says makes sense, refuse to allow the possibility that what the poster says also makes sense. Those are the closed minded.
Quoting Banno
See, even Banno recognizes that it makes sense, to the poster at least, as it is said to be willful. It is the others, who see things differently from the poster, and see them as clear, who are closed minded to the views of others. The poster in question sees the ambiguity and therefore does not see the things as clear. Yet ambiguity makes sense to that poster because ambiguity is as much a part of reality as the people who see ambiguous propositions as something clear are a part of reality.
As I said, the possibilities which are present, at the current time (at t0), are possibilities regarding the future situation (at t1). You acknowledge this with the example about today's possibility of tomorrow's sea battle - the possibilities are regarding the future situation, not the present situation. The possibilities are not about themselves; they are about the future potential sea battle.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And I am saying that if there were other genuine possibilities prior to the act being carried out, then it was not necessary, because one of those alternative possibilities could actually have been carried out instead. It is only if there had been no other genuine possibilities that could actually have been carried out instead, that the act being carried out would be necessary.
Your assertion that all actual situations are necessary negates that there are ever any genuinely alternative possibilities, and thus precludes free will.
Certainly it is not the case that ?P ? ~P.
But it is also the case that "It might be in the car" implicates (but does not entail) "I don't know for sure where it is" — and, to connect the dots, if I don't know where it is I am not in a position to assert something like "It is in the car," some simple declarative statement P, but only a weaker ?P — and it is a locution people resort to precisely to avoid admitting that they know exactly where it is and how it got there.
For all that, I will still say that P ? ?P is a solid axiom (or however you arrive at it) that captures some of what we have in mind when we reason about what's possible.
Side note: I recently had occasion to read this page about the Wason selection task, which I had forgotten all about. It seems often to have been counted as evidence against the everyday conception of logical consequence being captured by the material conditional, but there's further work that makes this less clear, and more interestingly there's this report:
[quote=same wiki page]A psychologist, not very well disposed toward logic, once confessed to me that despite all problems in short-term inferences like the Wason Card Task, there was also the undeniable fact that he had never met an experimental subject who did not understand the logical solution when it was explained to him, and then agreed that it was correct.[/quote]
Now that's really curious, and leaves considerable room for the likes of logic, set theory, arithmetic, geometry, modal logic, and the rest to continue in the effort to axiomatize our intuitions, with the expectation that, even though ordinary folks don't think in precisely these terms, when explained to them, such systems will make sense and they will agree this is a good way to go about things.
This, @Banno, is how I would justify what we're up to. If this counts as "choosing a grammar that doesn't lead to confusion," okay. But I'm never going to put it that way because I think that way of putting it leads to confusion.
Earlier I asked how you/we avoided anthropomorphism. You basically questioned whether or not we could. I claimed that we can in both principle and practice. You then said you did not share my optimism. Then...
I expressed that we understand the difference between thought and belief that is exclusive to humans and thought and belief that is not.
You then acted as if you had not disagreed with that, but you had, evidently unbeknownst to yourself, because you disagreed that we could avoid anthropomorphism. The problem(for you) is that if we can understand that much, then we can avoid anthropomorphism, for that is the key for doing so. That's how. If you agree with that then it ought be easy enough for you to realize that we can avoid anthropomorphism in both principle and practice. That's one of the things I am getting at.
Secondly, you invoked the notions of 'language capable beings' and 'linguistically mediated thoughts' in order to make a claim that you later judged as trivial/uninformative. You were arguing with yourself, because I never invoked those notions. In fact, neither can draw and maintain the distinction necessary to avoid anthropomorphism because some animals have language.
I suppose I could make the broader point now. Perhaps the reason you do not share my optimism regarding avoiding anthropomorphism is because you have difficulty yourself in understanding what sorts of thought and belief are exclusive to humans and what sorts are not. The notions of 'language capable beings' and 'linguistically mediated thought' only discriminate between language users and language less creatures, so, they are unhelpful for avoiding misattributing some of our thought and belief to other language using creatures. We see this often in nature shows.
Yes, for any rational being it is not plausible that for all q we have Pq -> ~q.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
And that 'but' is not going refute that it is not the case that for all q we have Pq -> ~q.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
No, the speaker might know that the book is in the car but choose to be coy, though literally honest and correct, in saying "The book might be in the car". If I was looking for the book, then I would not appreciate my friend being coy that way, but he would not be logically incorrect.
Or, let 'Kq' stand for 'q is known'. Let 'L' stand for '~K~q'.
For any rational being it is not plausible that for all q we have Lq -> ~q.
Or, let 'Bq' stand for 'q is believed'. Let 'Cq' stand for '~B~q'.
For any rational being it is not plausible that for all q we have Cq -> ~q.
Anyway, the point stands, only a nutcase says that "Possibly the book is in the car" implies that the book is not in the car.
Let's make it a life and death situation:
A young boy is lost in treacherous terrain. The county sheriff's search and rescue expert tells the parents, "Possibly he's in the canyon. So he's not in the canyon." I don't think there is any parent in the world who would say, "Okay, I understand your logic perfectly. Let's not waste time looking in the canyon."
/
Unrelated but poignant is Sartre's "The Wall". SPOILER ALERT. In the Spanish Civil war, Pablo is a prisoner of the fascists. His imprisoners will execute him if he doesn't give up the hiding place of his comrade Ramon. Pablo believes Ramon is not hiding in the nearby graveyard. As a joke on his imprisoners, Pablo lies to them that Ramon is hiding in the graveyard. But Ramon is hiding in the graveyard. And later Pablo learns that Ramon was caught in the graveyard and killed.
Yes, you imply it. But that asserting a sentence implies something isn't that that sentence (or assertion) means that thing. The sentence (even as an assertion) "I am going to vote in the next election, and I believe that Joe Biden is the best candidate" implies that I am going to vote for Joe Biden in the next election, but that's not what the sentence means.
This is where I think you're conflating different senses of "meaning" or "expression". I can assert something that expresses my anger or my love or my disapproval, but that's not the same thing as the assertion meaning "I am angry" or "I love you" or "I disapprove of this".
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Sure I can: I believe that the book is in my room but the book isn't in my room. I can assert anything I like.
But I don't really see the relevance of this. If we accept that we are fallible then what left is there to discuss? We accept the distinction between truth and belief; between the book being in my room and believing that the book is in my room.
Consider this exchange:
John: The book is in my room
Jane: What you say is wrong because the book is not in your room
Should this be interpreted as the below?
John: I believe that the book is in my room
Jane: I believe that what you say is wrong because the book is not in your room
So Jane believes that John doesn't believe that the book is in his room because the book isn't in his room? That doesn't seem right.
Even if John's assertion that the book is in his room implies that he believes that the book is in his room, his assertion being true or false has nothing to do with what he believes (or what Jane believes), and everything to do with whether or not the book is in his room.
This level of analysis doesn't work. You start from an assumption that the meaning of a proposition can be questioned "X exists", but then you analyse the felicity of that meaning by assuming that another proposition " X is wrong" stands with a priori clarity.
If the meaning of "X exists" is in question, then the question cannot be resolved by assuming the meaning of "X is wrong" is not similarly in question.
Yes, those possibilities are how we think "about" the future, just like we can say something "about" the future.
Quoting Luke
Sure, but at this time, after the act, one of the other "genuine possibilities" (whatever that means) was not actually carried out instead. And, it no longer is a possibility because the act chosen was carried out instead. And, this cannot be changed, there is no possibility of going back in time to alter it, therefore it is necessary.
You do not seem to be properly accounting for the temporal perspective. Prior to the act it is a possibility which can be chosen. Posterior to the act it is an actuality which has already occurred, and therefore necessary rather than possible. This is obvious in our day to day experience. We know that we cannot change the past so we describe it as what has actually occurred, and we also believe that we can describe the future as possibilities. To deny this difference is to deny the reality of time.
So, prior to the act we describe it as a possibility. The possibility is "about the future", as you say. After the act we describe it as an actuality, something which has actually occurred. It is now a fact, not a possibility, and is therefore treated as a necessity in the logical proceeding. Therefore the same act has a different type of description depending on one's temporal perspective, before or after it.
We can apply this to the act of counting the coins in the jar. Prior to counting the coins, the number of coins in the jar is described as a possibility. Posterior to counting the coins, the number of coins in the jar is described as an actuality. This is a true representation of what we believe about the number of coins in the jar. Prior to counting we do not know the number, and we understand it as a possibility. Posterior to counting, we know the number and understand it as an actuality.
Quoting Luke
Obviously this is not true. It is a simple aspect of our experience, as human beings, that we view events of the past differently from events of the future. So the very same event is spoken about differently when it is in the future than when it is in the past. This is the result of the difference in temporal perspective. Clearly understanding this aspect of our experience does not negate genuine possibilities. It just provides a healthy respect for the reality of time and its role in relation to "genuine possibilities".
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Of course you would not appreciate your friend behaving like this, because unless you are engaged in some sort of guessing game, it is dishonesty. And, your claim that it is "literally honest and correct" is very much refuted by your own admission that you would not appreciate it, even though you would assert that the friend is not logically incorrect.
What is at issue here is the inconsistency between what is logically correct, and what is morally correct, honest. Since you accept that this type of behaviour, which is asserted to be logically correct, is in general not appreciated (because it is clearly dishonest I would say), you seem to recognize this inconsistency.
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
But it has everything to do with agreement about the reference of words in the discourse, as well as the things thereby referred to. No truth without language.
Oh. Social anthropology. Not interested.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes. Sort of.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Is it the same to say logical rules are useful in support of the attainment of personal goals?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If the most personal one can be, is demonstrated by his moral convictions, and if logical rules are the ground for particular personal goals, then it follows that logical rules are not so much merely consistent with, as in fact necessary for, the dispensation of him toward his moral activities.
All rules developed and used by us, in private, rational decision-making, re: judgment, without exception, are reducible to logical rules.
Indeed. That would be why I said "does not entail." This being coy, it's a violation of Grice's maxims — quantity I think, because you are sharing less information than you have.
Look, I'm only talking about this because I want to wall off these sorts of considerations: it is a fact that if you know that something is the case, then there are circumstances in which saying only that it is possible is misleading. I'm pointing at that phenomenon so that I can block it from undermining our claim that actuality entails possibility. If it's only a conversational implicature, it has no bearing on the relevant entailments.
Quoting Michael
Except for the part where I'm clearly not, because I've been at pains to say that we're only talking about implication not literal meaning. It's right there. What what you say means is one thing, sentence meaning, and what you mean by it is something else, speaker's meaning. I'm not conflating them at all; I am acknowledging that there is more to our utterances than the literal meaning of what we say so that it doesn't interfere with the logical analysis.
Quoting Michael
Sorry, yes, I should have said "without falling into Moore's paradox," and so on.
Both @Isaac and @Metaphysician Undercover are going to consistently deny that there is anything at all to your asserting P than that you believe (using various accounts and locutions for this) that P, in every instance. Notably, that includes any hypothetical. If you say "Suppose the book is in my room, but I believe it is not ..." they will ask who holds the belief that it is in your room, whose judgment that is, and so on. translates claims of fact into predictions about the agreeability of our discourse. (Is that Lewis's scorekeeping, or Goodman's worldmaking?)
We proceed on the assumption that we can analyze "naked" propositions with no speaker; they do not. Every proposition is an utterance of someone, for a purpose, even if that someone is only virtual or something. Think of it as a sort of Nietzschean perspectivism. The kicker, of course, is that the "naked" view is linguistically indefensible. You have to invoke a generalized competent speaker of English. The right question is whether you can "factor out" linguistic competence through your analysis of semantic content...
We don't have to take this position into account; we can just go about our business. But if you want to engage with the loyal opposition here, you have to find some way of making the point that is not simply question-begging. I'm working on it. ;)
Then I'm not sure what relevance it has to the discussion. Are you saying that the truth of an assertion is concerned with its implication and not its literal meaning? Such that "I am going to vote in the next election, and I believe that Joe Biden is the best candidate" is false if I'm not going to vote for Joe Biden in the next election?
Quoting Michael
Consider:
Quoting Michael
Here you are, trying to decide whether an agent S can simultaneously be in a state of knowledge and in a state of uncertainty, but you choose to test this possibility by figuring out whether it would "make sense" for an individual to say, of themselves, that they are in both these states.
Not a great plan.
The case is perfectly clear when it's a third party saying it: you and a friend are watching your daughter at a spelling bee, she's floundering, looking overwhelmed; you can straightforwardly say, "She knows this one — we reviewed it last night and she had it cold — she's just flustered and second-guessing herself." There is no general problem attributing both knowledge and uncertainty to someone; there seems to be some weirdness when that someone is yourself. If I talk about implicatures and such, it is only to block mistaken reliance on "what it makes sense to say."
As did Gettier when invoking entailment to go from "I have ten coins in my pocket" to "the man with ten coins in his pocket".
Gettier is hard. It seems clear there is no general way to block Gettier cases, because whatever you come up with will generate a revenge case purpose built to block your solution. What we should conclude from that pattern is hard to say, but most take it as bad news for the analysis of knowledge.
The other issue raised by this particular case (and @Michael this might be relevant to the difference between first- and third-person accounts) is whether the actual reasoning relied on de se modality, since there's reason to think this is often the case with epistemic questions. That is, the question of whether I would or could know something is sometimes irreducibly about me, so the first level of analysis isn't really about whether there are possible worlds in which I know or don't, but whether my epistemic alternatives know or don't, whatever world they reside in.
Are they real possibilities which each have a genuine chance of being the actual outcome, or are they merely a function of our knowledge/ignorance and there is only ever one real possibility?
If the former, then what is actual is/was not necessary. If the latter, then we have no free will.
I disagree with this assessment. Animals without linguistic capabilities obviously do not think in linguistic terms, so presumably they think in sensorimotor ways; whereas we think in both sensorimotor and linguistic ways. All our understandings are, strictly speaking, anthropomorphic, or human-shaped, because we are human; so, leaving aside any imputation of what should be understood to be exclusively human qualities and capacities to animals, I think the question of anthropomorphism is beside the point. Do you have anything substantive to add to that or disagreement to express?
Not quite the same, because what I am saying is that the particular rules which become accepted by people, and therefore form the conventional rules of logic, obtain that status of being the conventional rules, because they are useful. The issue being a question of what a particular set of rules is useful for.
So here is the difference between what I suggest and what you suggest. What you suggest is that anyone could take any set of logical rules, and use them toward personal gain. What I suggest is that particular logical rules could actually be shaped such that their principal purpose is personal gain. So, if the specific type of personal gain is somewhat immoral, then what you would suggest is an immoral person using rational logic in an immoral way. What I suggest is immorality which inheres within the logical principles. This would be irrational logic.
Quoting Mww
Yes, but this assumes that there is no immorality inherent within the logical principles.
Quoting Mww
I disagree, I think that all rules, including logical rules are reducible to moral rules. This is because the role of intention and purpose. Logical necessity is reducible to a form of need. We need to follow the rules of logic to understand, or for any other purpose we might use logic for. And the rules which dictate how we relate to our needs are moral rules. Therefore the necessity whereby we draw logical conclusions is a form of need, and how we treat our needs is governed by moral rules, so the rules of logic must conform to moral rules.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The issue is the implications for sophistry. "Sophistry" I would define as the misuse, or abuse of logic. If certain accepted principles of logic are designed such that they may facilitate sophistry, through a form of deception which inheres within the principles themselves, then this is an implication which ought to be addressed.
Quoting Luke
As I said, they are a feature of one's knowledge. However, this does not mean that they are not real or genuine. Knowledge is real and genuine. The realness, or genuineness of the possibilities which one considers is dependent on the scope of one's knowledge of the situation. Sometimes a person will fail in an effort to do something, and sometimes a person might not grasp a possibility which is obvious to someone else. That the possibilities are in one's mind, and are features of how one understands one's current situation, does not mean that they are not real. Nor does it mean that the person has no real choice.
Quoting Luke
Sorry, I don't understand the basis of these conclusions at all.
Is it hard? Seems straight forward to me.
Gettier is attempting to take account of another's belief(granted, the other is a fiction borne of Gettier's own imagination, but nevertheless). Gettier invokes the rules of entailment in order for Smith to go from "I have ten coins in my pocket, and I will get the job" to "the man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job".
The point is that Gettier is talking about Smith's belief, not a naked proposition. With that in mind, because it is Smith's belief, "the man with ten coins in his pocket" refers to Smith and Smith alone. So, when someone else gets the job regardless of how many coins they have in their pocket, Smith's belief is false, because he did not get the job. Smith does not believe anyone other than himself will get the job.
The second case neglects the fact that Smith's belief is a complex one, and again fails to take that complexity into consideration due to treating the disjunction as a naked one. Smith only believes that either Jones own a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona, because he believes Jones owns a Ford. The disjunction is true because Brown is in Barcelona. Smith believes it's true because Jones owns a Ford. Smith's belief is false.
We need only to take notice that there is an accounting malpractice going on.
I do not share your pessimism. It's not fait accompli, regardless of whether or not you poison the well. It does not follow from the fact that we are human that all our understandings are anthropomorphic. I sense a bit of chippiness from you. I added quite a bit of substantive examples to discuss earlier. You quoted the first statement of the post and ignored the rest. We can agree to disagree, but it would be far better for us to at least come to clear understanding of what the disagreement is about, and/or where it lies.
Quoting Janus
Well, that's a fine place to start. I agree. Although, the "think in sensorimotor ways" would be best fleshed out.
Some other animals - beside humans - do have language though, so drawing the line at language is not going to serve the purpose of drawing and maintaining the distinctions between thought and belief that is exclusively human in kind, thought and belief that could be had by other animals with language, and thought and belief that can be had by language less creatures.
Maybe you should discuss it with @Metaphysician Undercover.
Did you read the rest of that post? I generally do not align with Meta.
Then you will have much to discuss.
Not interested. Was curious to get your take on that quick down and dirty summary, but evidently you're not interested.
So be it. Be well.
I don't doubt that one's knowledge is real and genuine, but I am more interested in this idea of a "real choice". For example, if I had a real choice of whether to have toast or cereal for breakfast this morning, then it was not necessary that I had toast (as I did) because I could have had cereal instead.
You refuse to acknowledge this argument against the necessity of actuality. You simply repeat - without argument - that actual situations are necessary. Given that you refuse to even acknowledge this argument against inevitability, and since you seemingly contradict yourself by claiming that people have a "real choice", then it is unclear to me what you mean when you assert that actual situations are "necessary".
If every situation is necessary and had to turn out the way it did, then how does any situation allow for a "real choice" from among several possibilities? The implication is that I could never have really chosen to have cereal instead of toast; that toast was always the only real possibility.
Right, at that prior time it was not necessary. However, at this posterior time it is necessary. Human beings have a completely different attitude toward acts in the past, in comparison to their attitude toward acts in the future. You seem to be refusing to account for the reality of time in the human attitude, and the difference between prior and posterior. Here is an explicit example from your earlier post.
Quoting Luke
See, you explicitly conflate "is" and "was". There is a reason why we have different tenses for verbs, if you insist on ignoring this, then this discussion is pointless.
Quoting Luke
How so? I've responded to your supposed argument. It is simply based in a failure to recognize the difference in temporal perspectives. Looking ahead in time at future acts, is not the same as looking backward in time at past acts. Therefore, within the minds of human beings, future acts have a different status from past acts.
If you are ready to accept this difference then we might be able to proceed by applying some names to describe the difference. I propose that we look at future acts as "possible", and past acts as "necessary". You are resisting this. Can you explain why? Your argument so far seems to be that if we name past acts as "necessary", then future acts must also be called "necessary". But as I've explained, that is to ignore the difference between how we look at the past and how we look at the future.
I'm not conflating them; I'm arguing against your claim that present and past situations are necessary. Hence, the "is/was".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That does not explain why present/past situations are necessary; or why it is necessary that I had to have toast instead of cereal for breakfast this morning. You are doing nothing more than stipulating that present/past situations are necessary, which does not explain how you are using the term.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am resisting your "proposal" because if we have a real choice in the matter, like you say we do, then it was not necessary that I had toast instead of cereal for breakfast this morning. I had a real choice to have had cereal instead of toast. That is, the past situation of me having toast for breakfast this morning was not necessary. I am using "necessary" here in the sense of "inevitable" or "predetermined", as opposed to having a "real choice" in the matter. How are you using "necessary"?
Ok, insofar as these kinds of rules are taped to the wall in high school, assembled in a code of conduct in the office. The reason for stop signs and traffic lights. Tax tables. Sales contracts. The manifold of objects conforming to....
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
—————
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Absolutely. Conventional rules are for private use by a subject in a communal domain, compliance with them being judicially motivated, their usefulness predicated on merely staying out of trouble relative to those rules, as judged by his peers. Moral rules, on the other hand, are for private use by a subject in a personal domain, compliance with them being obligatory, their usefulness predicated solely on staying out of trouble with himself, as judged by himself.
That being said, I agree moral rules are much more important than conventional rules, but that alone says nothing with respect to their logical ground.....
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
....which does, and quite well at that.
If it should be the case that the human intellectual system, in whichever metaphysical form deemed sufficient for it, is entirely predicated on relations, it should then be tacitly understands that system is a logically grounded system, insofar as logic itself is the fundamental procedure for the determination of relations. Hence it follows, it being given that all rules are schemata of the human intellectual system, and the human intellect is relational, then all rules are relational constructs. From there, it’s a short hop to the truth that, if all rules are relational, and all relations are logically constructed, and all logical constructs themselves are determinations of a fundamental procedure, then all rules are logical rules.
Under those conditions, there is no procedural difference between rules determined by committee for the administration of a community and rules determined by each individual for himself, insofar as a committee is nothing more than a plurality of individuals, each one operating within the confines of an intellectual system common to all.
—————-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Logical principles are neither moral nor immoral. Morality is an innate human condition, determinable by logical principles which relate a purely subjective desire to an equally subjective inclination. In other words, this feels right, therefore it is the right thing to do and I shall will an act in accordance with it.
Immorality only manifests when an act is willed, even if that willed act never becomes an empirical event, that conflicts with that subjective relation. In other words, this volition feels right, but I’m going to will an act in non-compliance to it, or, this volition feels wrong but I’m going to will an act in compliance with it anyway. If I act, you may judge my morality with respect to yours. If I do not act, you will have nothing to judge, but I am left to judge myself
And so it goes....opinions galore.
At time A, my coffee is precariously perched on my car.
At time B, after A, the coffee falls off the car.
At time A, it is true of the coffee that it may or may not fall at some future time. At time B, it is no longer true of the coffee that it may fall, because it has already fallen.
No one is confused by an event having happened or not. What keep us up at night, is wondering whether things might have been different. No one can do anything, at times B and after, about my coffee having fallen; the question is specifically whether it was inevitable that it would fall. We believe we can make a distinction between events that were bound to happen, and events that were not; in which case, there must be a difference between (1) saying, at a time B or later, that nothing can happen that will make it so that the coffee has not fallen, and (2) saying at a time A or earlier, nothing can happen that will make it so that the coffee does not fall. To say that an event in the past was not inevitable, is to say that (1) is true of it but (2) false.
We assume, in fact, that (1) is true of all events — since we're not doing quantum mechanics or something here. Suppose (1) is false. Then there is a time C, after B, at which an event occurs such that my coffee did not fall off the car. The aftermath of my coffee falling lasts from B to C, at which it is undone; before B, and after C, the coffee has not fallen. Of course, that's not "possible," given thermodynamics and whatnot, but is it logically impossible? My coffee falling is not in the past for any time before B, of course, because B is still in the future; it is in the past for all times between B and C; and it is no longer in the past of any time after C. The time B is in the past for times after C; it's just that what happened at time B, for times C and after, is not the same as what happened at time B, for times between B and C.
Is there any non-question-begging way to deny this is possible? We cannot, ex hypothesi, object that an event in the past at time X is in the past for any time after X; the hypothesis is exactly that this is not so. In what, then, does the immutability of the past consist? Is it brute fact? Could it conceivably not be?
So the coffee does fall at B, and then “unfalls” at (the later time) C? As though, as soon as the coffee hits the ground and spills, time then seemingly reverses, gathering up all the spilled coffee back into the cup and back on to the car? Except that time did not reverse from B to C, and this is what miraculously happened in “normal” time.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think that the immutability of the past consists in the fact that events occur in time sequentially from A to B to C, and that once they have occurred they are in the past. Your example does not appear to indicate otherwise; the cup falls and then “unfalls”.
I just don't see this the way you do. In one sense anthropomorphism is inevitable because our understandings will always be human-shaped. In another sense anthropomorphism denotes "excessive" projection of human characteristics onto animals, or the world, or reality. Anthropomorphism is, like many other human characteristics, on a spectrum from the inescapable to the egregious.
So, I think that not all human inquiries suffer from anthropomorphism in the egregious sense. I don't know where we disagree, other than perhaps about what I have said about anthropomorphism. If you believed that you had come to some understanding which you believed was completely free from any anthropomorphism whatever, how would you demonstrate that to be so? Would there be a fact of the matter, or does it just come down to definitions or personal opinion?
I don't know what you mean by "poisoning the well" or "chippiness"; I think they are your own projections,it's not what I felt.
Quoting creativesoul
Thinking in terms of images, sounds, tactile sensations, smells, tastes or movements as opposed to thinking in symbolic language. What other possibilities can you think of?
I don't know of any other animals that have symbolic language; what did you have in mind?
I mean, it's not possible. You're substituting another impossibility for the one I was entertaining: your question (if you were inclined to ask) would be, why don't cups unfall? My question was, why doesn't the past change? I pitched it as if some sort of backwards causation were possible, but trying desperately to avoid the word "cause".
Of course the past doesn't change. My question was whether this immutability is logical or merely, as one might say, thermodynamics, or even just the brute fact of time's arrow.
All in hopes, if it wasn't clear, of understanding how temporality relates to alethic modality. Is one logically prior to the other? Which one?
+++
Here's a dead obvious example of what I mean, with no cups unfailing: It's a Wonderful Life. In the film, the erasure of George from history is frankly miraculous: does that mean it violates the canons of logic or only the laws of nature?
In the scenario you described, you said:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I answered “yes” to this. Barring thermodynamic impossibility, your hypothetical situation is logically possible.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I personally consider them to be somewhat independent, in that I do not consider necessity or possibility to be dependent on temporality. If it was ever possible to prevent the cup of coffee from falling off the car, then at no time is it, was it, or will it be necessary or inevitable that it did fall. Otherwise, it was, is, and will always be necessary or inevitable that it did fall, but in that case it’s hard to see how we could have free will or any real choice about it.
I’m sure MU will have a different response.
Well, see that's the thing. We might define the past relative to some time as all the times before that, just the times. But what about the events that have happened in the past? Is it inherent to the past that an event which occurs at a past time cannot change? Or is that something *else* we know about the past only a posteriori?
You are simply misrepresenting what I said (as is your usual habit) to continue with a strawman argument. I didn't say that it was necessary that you had to have toast instead of cereal. To the contrary, I said that was a choice you made from real possibilities. What I say, is that now, after you've had toast, it is impossible to change that fact, so it is necessary. So I'll repeat, though I doubt it will affect your strawman, before the act, it is possible, after the act, it is necessary.
Quoting Luke
I agree with all this. You had real choice in that act. What I am saying is that after the act, after you had toast for breakfast, you no longer have that choice. It is impossible, at this time, after you had toast, to decide not to eat the toast you already ate. Since it is impossible for you to change this, it is a necessity, i.e. it is necessary.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Right, this would be my position, (1) is true but not (2).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The immutability of the past is just a brute fact, which is upheld by empirical evidence, like gravity, the freezing point of water, etc.. Sure we can say that it is logically possible to change the past, just like we can say that it is logically possible to defy gravity, and we simply ignore all empirical evidence when proposing such "logical possibilities". These might even have purpose like hypotheticals or counterfactuals. But that's why there is potentially an infinite number of possible worlds, we can propose any sort of logically possible world, so long as it's not inconsistent or contradictory. Where this might become a problem is if we give priority of importance to what is logical possible over what is physical possible. Then a person might be inclined to say that because something is logically possible it must be true, without regard to whether it is physically possible.
Quoting Luke
As I've explained, this response indicates that you do not respect the reality of time. You say, what was once a possibility will always be a possibility. But that ignores the fact that things change as time passes, including possibilities. So it is very often the case that an event which was a possibility at time A, is not a possibility at time B. I think it is really inconsistent with our lived temporal experience to insist as you do, that an event which is truthfully described as "possible" at one time cannot be truthfully described as "necessary" at another time. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to know that possibilities have a window of opportunity.
Quoting Mww
Right, now the issue is how are logical rules grounded.
Quoting Mww
As I said in the last post, I think you have this backward. Logic is a highly specialized, formal way of thinking. So using rules is the more general category, and logic is a specific type of this broader category of activity. Therefore I think not all rules are logical. There are many rules which are not logical at all.
The question now is, if we break rule behaviour into subgroups, like the categories you did, conventional rules and moral rules, which does logic fall into? Or is it a distinct group on its own?
Quoting Mww
I don't at all agree with this. What would be the point of moral training if morality is innate? I agree that the capacity to be moral is innate, but this must be cultured to produce a moral character. I believe it is very clear that morality is not based in what feels right. I suppose these opinions are outside the scope of this thread.
Well, there's an answer.
(This thought experiment isn't important to me in itself, but if it were, I wondered how knowledge would work if the world were like this: would we, after the past had changed, have our knowledge become false beliefs — oh! this is the Mandela effect — or would all knowledge just vanish along with the other effects of an event that now has not occurred? If the latter, then of course we'd simply not know that the past had ever changed, and never could know...)
So the immutability of past events is a property we come to know a posteriori, good. But even if our knowledge is a posteriori, it could still be an essential property of a past event — and therefore necessary — that it be immutable. But you say it is not logically necessary that the past be immutable, so if it is, it is only in virtue of natural law, that sort of thing, physical rather than logical necessity.
Now you also agree that it's only events of the past that are immutable in this way, right? Events in the future are not only not immutable, they're not even fully determined; and the present, well, the present is presumably the moment of an event being fully determined and thereby becoming immutable.
It's easy to see how we could come to believe the future is not fixed, because we can experience making decisions, exercising our will, in ways that seem to determine how the future becomes concrete in the present. Even if we're completely wrong about that, it's clear how we would come to believe it. How would we come to know that this is not the case with the past? We cannot act upon the past, but maybe if we could, it could be changed. We have no experience of attempting to change the past and failing. So is the past immutable only in the sense that we cannot act upon it?
Or, consider this: we don't actually act upon the future directly either; that too, we are incapable of doing. We can only act in the present to select which possible future is realized. But every time we do that, we are also, immediately, filling the past with events of our choosing. The past is what we have some say-so in, never the future.
My goal was to see if we rely upon some independent conception of ideas like possibility and necessity in characterizing some portion of time as past and some other portion as future, rather than our ideas of possibility and necessity being derivative of our ideas of past and future. I think that in a great many cases when we say, things might have been different, the clearest meaning to attach to that is that at some earlier time, when certain events we know to have happened were still in the future, a different future might have come to pass, so that our past would now be different from what it is. If that sort of analysis is always available, then temporal modality would be logically prior to alethic. And that's not implausible.
But it also seems to me that to characterize the future as undetermined, the realm of possibility, and the past as fixed and incapable of change, is to rely on those ideas as given, so they are logically prior to our substantive understanding of the past and the future. That's my conundrum.
Only it turns out to be harder than I expected even to characterize the immutability of the past clearly, and we've barely talked about what challenges the future might pose.
And all of this is still circling around the problem of truth, because the past is the paradigmatic realm of truth, eternal and unchanging, while there is no truth about the future and for that reason no knowledge but only belief.
Infallibility is unnecessary.
The belief you've attributed to me directly above is something I do not believe. Red herring. The belief you've attributed to me above does not follow from anything I've said. Non sequitur. The belief you've attributed to me above represents your misinterpretation of what I've written thus far. You'll just have to trust me when I say that somewhere along the line you've misattributed meaning to my parts of this exchange. I'm under no burden to demonstrate something I've not claimed.
It's worth mentioning to say that we need not be mistake free in order to know that anthropomorphism is a mistake. In fact, we had to have already been engaging in the personification of things that are not persons(anthropomorphism) in order to even become aware of the fact that we were.
Well... none of the above are adequate and all of the above are necessary in order for us to acquire knowledge of how thought and belief first emerges into the universe and later evolves into the rich and complex variety that we like to say that humans have. The evolutionary origen of thought and/or belief is not inaccessible to us. We need not know everything in order to know some things about that.
It's not as if knowledge of the differences between human thought and belief, non-human language users' thought and belief, and language-less creatures' thought and belief is something that it is impossible for us to understand. We have the tools, the knowledge base, and the potential to acquire such knowledge. I have seen no valid argument to the contrary.
Sometimes the best thing to do is to take a deep breath and go about figuring out exactly what it would take in order for humans to think in the ways that we do. We have to understand our own thought and belief in terms of its evolutionary progression prior to being able successfully discern between our own and other animals'.
Do you agree with all of the following?
1.)Anthropomorphism is when we attribute uniquely human kinds of thought and belief(those that are exclusively human) to things that are not.
2.)Some human thought and/or belief are exclusive to humans.
3.)Some human thought and/or belief are shared by other language using creatures.
4.)Some human thought and/or belief are shared by other language using creatures and language less ones alike.
I agree that - in the overall bigger evolutionary picture - anthropomorphism was inescapable. I disagree that it remains so to this day.
Strangely enough, I'm in complete agreement with you here. Belief about the future goes from prediction to knowledge when it becomes true, and from prediction to falsehood when it becomes false.
If the human intellect is itself a logical system, there’s no reason to ask and invites infinite regress when it is. Rules are grounded by the nature of their originating system, affirmed or denied by experience a posteriori or reason a priori. Simple as that.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Seems an awful lot like the same thing, doesn’t it?
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Same point as just the innate capacity for empirical knowledge doesn’t contain any.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That’s fine; it isn’t a law that it should be so. But there is nevertheless a philosophy that does. Wants/needs, desires/interests, aesthetic/discursive judgement and such.
Besides....what sense does it make to get angry that, e.g. the Earth is third from the sun? By the same token, what sense does it make that, e.g. the women in Iran, by wanting to be free of headwear, are thereby violating natural law? The human being has feelings, which should be accounted for in a metaphysical exposition of the complete beast.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not when considering or stating one’s position for what truth is. Truth, as such, is every bit as subjective as one’s moral disposition and experiences.
I believe this is the most accurate description you've provided. We don't act on the future, nor do we act on the past, we act at the present. The past is filled with events which we've 'had some say in'. Notice the difference between this and what you said, "the past is what we have some say-so in". This is the main contention with Luke. Once it's in the past, we can no longer have an influence on it, so we cannot truthfully say we have some say in it, it's necessary. And, since as you say "We can only act in the present to select which possible future is realized", the present is the most significant aspect of time for us.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
So we have this issue, the present, which you call "the moment of an event being fully determined and thereby becoming immutable". At this supposed "moment" of the present, events are neither possible (future), nor are they necessary (past), they are "becoming". And this is where logical categories tend to fail us. If we are categorizing past as necessary, and future as possible, then we have to name the intermediate. We could for example use "actual" here, meaning "of the act". But how do we deal logically with things which are of the act itself? If, as you say, the act is when things are being "fully determined",
The glaring problem is that acts always require time, and some parts of the same act are determined prior to other parts of that act. And the length of an act depends on how we identify the particular act. We might divide it in two for example, saying the beginning is the cause, and the end is the effect. So the result is that any identified act consists of aspects which are necessary, and aspects which are possible, and we might find that there is always at the fringes, at the boundaries of what is necessary, always some possibilities which are not "fully determined", such that an act can never be properly said to be "fully determined" in the absolute sense. Conversely, we have the similar argument against free will, that since the human being's capacity to act is very restricted, we do not have "free" will in any absolute sense. This would be because any act identified as a possibility, already has some necessary features. Now events which are occurring at the present contain both necessity and possibility.
Since there is always some degree of possibility intermingled with what we want to say is fully determined, and some degree of necessity intermingled with what we want to say is possible, this implies that the present, what is "actual", really exists as an intermingling of the future and the past. We might call this an overlap. At any precise time in which we make an observation, some aspects of reality are already in the past, necessary, and some are in the future, possible. So the difficulty we have in understanding the nature of reality, is in establishing that relationship between what is necessary, and what is possible. And if some logical axioms deal with possibilities, and others deal with necessities, how could we truthfully relate these two?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I do not think that this is a correct representation of "truth". That is what Aristotle proposed, there is not truth concerning things not yet decided, like the sea battle tomorrow, and we ought not attempt to apply truth here, applying it only to things of the past. But we can see that this proposal was firmly rejected by the monotheist community, who associate Truth with God. And God in the Old Testament was associated with the present, "I am that I am".
So it may be more productive to associate truth with the present, what is now, at the current time. And here we have the much more difficult and complex issue of understanding how the past is related to the future.
Quoting Mww
It's not really the same thing, because you describe all decision making as based in some sort of "logic". But I describe "logic" as a specialized form of decision making, which shares in something which all forms of decision making have, but we do not really know what it is. So instead of claiming that all decision making uses logic, I say it uses something else, which logic also uses, but we do not really understand what it is.
Quoting Mww
But then you are not saying that empirical knowledge is innate, you are saying that the capacity for empirical knowledge is innate. But in the case of morality, you seem to think that moral knowledge is itself innate, what one feels is right, is right. Which do you really believe, is the capacity for moral knowledge innate, or is moral knowledge itself innate?
Quoting Mww
That's what I've been trying to get at since the binging of the thread. The idea that truth is some sort of objective independent thing is really just a ruse. That idea leads us down the garden path, you might say, leaving us lost, and with nowhere to turn for guidance concerning what truth really is. So to understand truth we must proceed in the other direction, into the subject, and I see the starting point as honesty, because this is a common use of "truth". And this begins with ridding oneself of self-deception concerning faulty notions of truth.
As is your prerogative. Still, under the auspices of “if/then” theoretical constructs, just seems the more instructive to choose that “if” which lends itself to being understood enough to permit whatever “then” may follow from it.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I do not need to know a feeling is right, if rightness is already given by the feeling of it. What it is possible to know, is that thing which justifies the feeling.
Best to recognize that I cannot reject that this is a bus when I already have experience of busses, which manifests as a blatant self-contradiction, in just the same way I cannot reject the feeling of moral reprehensibility, but without ever having the experience of an object by which a self-contradiction would arise. This is sufficient to prove feelings are not cognitions, from which follows that moral knowledge is a misnomer. Further support resides in the fact that I may know this is true now yet find later this is no longer known as true, a function of experience in which I must cognize something, but that for which I feel as moral will always be what I feel is moral, as a function of personality, for which no cognitions are necessary.
————
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I’ll grant half of that, re: honesty, but, if we go back to the subject himself as the starting point, which is the both necessary and sufficient ground, we should find that it is impossible to be dishonest with oneself. It is certainly the case we can be wrong in our judgements regarding a thing, but the means for obtaining them are determinable by logical law, re: “if this, then that”, and of course, law, under the assumption of predication by the principles of universality and absolute necessity, does not abide dishonesty.
Now it should be clear, that truth is that in which a cognition conforms to its object, and it is the case truth is reducible to the subject in which the cognition resides, and, dishonesty from such cognition is impossible.
While we may be intentionally dishonest in our representation of judgements, that will manifest naturally as a.....yeah, that’s right.....a feeling.
Not to mention, a common use of truth doesn’t give proper representation of what it is.
My answer would probably be the same as MU's on this point.
You are using "necessary" as a synonym for "has happened", "in the past", or "no longer possible". Nobody but you uses "necessary" to mean "no longer possible". Even if I freely chose to have toast instead of cereal for breakfast and nothing about having toast was inevitable, you would call this event "necessary" only because it is no longer possible to replay the event and to choose again. This fails to answer whether the original event was necessary or merely possible in the first place.
No. Very, very no.
Quoting Luke
Whoa! Do I get some sort of prize for bringing this about?
Quoting Luke
I agree with all of this, at least in spirit, but you have to be careful about the position from which such a claim is made. We have to be able to say that what is cannot not be without falling into a modal fallacy of treating all truths as necessary. (Sometimes it's trickier than it looks, and I said things to @Janus way back in this thread (or maybe the omniscience thread) that were dangerously close to fallacious.)
MU's point is, I think, a little different: from our position in time, we can only "really" think of the past as fixed, so claims about what was or was not possible in the past, at a time before some event occurred or didn't, are inherently somewhat suspicious. And that's not crazy: counterfactual reasoning is famously dicey; but it is just as famously indispensable.
Well at least we agree that belief about the future cannot be true...
:nerd:
I think, most of the time, I've just been asking of a theory of truth that it be true of truth (self consistent), without begging the question. Further, that it not depend upon metaphysics, since as I understand metaphysics at least the theory would then beg the question on truth: we might be able to say, after having settled what is the case "oh, and here's the truth" after the fact, but that's not satisfactory -- we might as well just say the forms are behind the veil of appearances and be done with it if we're going to assume what is the case in order to understand truth.
Not sure what else to add to the list.
Nothing there is controversial except "other language using creatures"; I already asked you to identify which other animals you think use language.
Quoting creativesoul
Again I both agree and disagree depending on your definition of 'anthropomorphism'. That our understandings are human-shaped is inescapable, but egregious uncritical projection of human attributes onto the non-human is avoidable.
For finding a point of agreement between MU and me? You probably should.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I’m pretty sure I’m not committing that fallacy, but I can see how MU most likely is.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think you’re being quite generous there because that’s not how I’m reading him. He doesn’t mention such suspicion about what was possible in the past when he says that we can make free choices.
We're too far apart on this issue to even start discussion. There's too much I disagree with here. To begin with, I believe that morality consists of judgements of good and bad, not feelings, as you seem to think. There is some merit to your position though, because some feelings are naturally desirable and others we naturally desire to avoid. So it appears at first glance like morality might just be based in whether a feeling is desirable or not. But on a closer look at what morality really consists of, we can see that it involves knowing when and where to seek desirable feelings, and knowing when and where to put up with undesirable feelings. Therefore morality cannot be based solely in feelings, it must also involve knowing when and where specific feelings are appropriate. The problem is that morality is not one or the other, feelings or knowledge, it's complex, and both.
[quote="Mww;745333"...]we should find that it is impossible to be dishonest with oneself.[/quote]
I do not agree with this. There are many forms of dishonesty, and some of them are applicable to oneself. The common example, lying might appear to be impossible to do to oneself, but there are many subtle forms of dishonesty, like withholding information. And we do this to ourselves often. I might tell myself that I can proceed with a project without proper research first. That's a type of laziness, and laziness is often a case of being dishonest with oneself. Sometimes we know what needs to be done, safety precautions, or something like that, but we dishonestly tell ourselves that it's not required this time. The desire for simplicity, in what is a complex situation, can produce dishonesty. We are dishonest with ourselves in many subtle ways when we follow our feelings and proceed into doing what we know is morally wrong. Sometimes this amounts to what is called rationalizing. But you probably won't agree to these examples because you don't think morality involves knowledge anyway.
Quoting Luke
It is actually the common philosophical definition of "necessary", the opposite of impossible. This is why I strongly objected to your proposal to oppose necessary with possible. It is completely inconsistent with conventional philosophy which opposes necessary to impossible. When necessary is opposed to impossible, then possible is completely outside this category. So I said, whatever is necessary or impossible, as dictated by past time, can no longer be considered possible.
Quoting Luke
Well of course it does not answer that question. No one was trying to answer that question, it's an assumption we make, as part of a world view. What I was doing was attempting to define terms, and under those definitions, it makes no sense to speak about a future event as "necessary".
There is however another use of "necessary" a completely distinct meaning, which we do apply to future events. This is "necessary" in the sense of what is judged as needed as a necessity, for the sake of fulfilling a goal. These necessities are the means to the end. The means are determined as necessary in relation to the end, then the act is carried out. So we judge the possibilities, determine which possibilities are required for our goals, and we say that these things are "necessary". We then act on these possibilities which have been designated as "necessary", and the acts come into existence and become "necessary" in the other sense, as the opposite of impossible.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'll hand it to you. What do you want for a trophy?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think the reason why counterfactual reasoning has become so successful is that we have a very good capacity to control and replicate precise circumstances in scientific experimentation. When we replicate an experiment, it's very similar to going back in time to the same situation over again. Then we can change one particular thing and look at the difference in outcome. And we can repeat, changing something else. After we get familiar with how the particular changes affect the outcome, we can simply apply the counterfactual logic instead, without actually redoing the experiment.
Quoting Luke
We start by opposing necessary with impossible. Fine, no problem. But then we need to give "possible" a position, because "possible" provides a truthful description. It appears like "possible" ought to be opposed to "impossible". But it also appears like "possible" ought to be opposed to "necessary". And those two are already opposed to each other, so the real problem begins.
Well, some species of primates use specific vocalizations as alarms for specific predators sighted in the immediate vicinity. It's also my understanding that not all communities of some species do this, or have the same vocalizations for the same predators.
That certainly seems like a case of naturally emerging language use to me.
The thought and belief shared between them and humans would be the sounding of the alarm and believing a predator was nearby upon hearing it. Humans also sound alarms in the face of danger. Humans do it more deliberately, for the sake of sounding the alarm. That's the difference. Language less creatures have no ability to sound an alarm, so sounding an alarm is not the sort of thought and belief that can be shared by language less creatures.
Quoting Janus
It's defined above. You agreed at that point.
This looks far too abstract, poetic, and flowery to be of much use for analysis. Human understanding has no shape at all. I cannot wrap my head around what you're trying to say by using such terms. I ignored it earlier, but it seems pivotal to your position, and given I'm attempting to understand your position, could you rephrase the following...
...understandings are human-shaped...
I agree.
Modal logics define necessary and possible as a pair of operators that apply to propositions; either can be taken as primitive and the other defined in terms of that one, or you can just allow that you're defining the pair together; the interaction of the operators maps naturally to a number of ways of talking about modality (alethic, epistemic, physical, temporal, etc.), but can be defined purely syntactically without specifying a particular interpretation of the operators; a particular modal logic will usually be defined by axioms intended to capture the particular sort of modality desired, and those axioms will vary.
In particular, if we take the necessary operator ? ("box") as primitive, then the possible operator ? ("diamond") is defined as ~?~, that is, not necessarily not. Similarly, the necessary operator is defined as ~?~, that is, not possibly not. This pairing has been very fruitful in clarifying modal issues, and is at this point in the history of logic no more controversial than the standard quantifiers ? and ?. (And in fact, it turns out that one very useful way to think of ? and ? is as a kind of restricted quantifier over possible worlds, which ought to be obvious because ? is ~?~ and ? is ~?~.)
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If it isn't clear, the interdefinability of such operators means you only need one of them, but using the pair is way more convenient, and foregrounds how common and important two particular ways of using such an operator are. In other words, we could get by with just ? for a modal operator, and we would find ourselves writing formulas with ?~, and ~?, as well as unadorned ?, but we would also find that we were writing one particular little phrase all the time: ~?~. Same is true for ? and ?: if we just used ?, we'd have to write ~?~ all the time.
(There are no doubt deep reasons for this neg sandwich pattern, but I don't know what they are. Interested, though.)
If A is existentially dependent upon B, then B is necessary for the existence/emergence of A.
Possible world semantics is fraught.
I know we've discussed this before. You believe self-deception is a nonsense concept.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
What I see here, is that if we start with "necessary" under the definition provided by Luke, as "must be", then we need an opposing term which would be "not necessary", and this would provide a rendition of "possible" by Luke's reckoning. However, we also have "necessarily not", and this is a rendition of "impossible". And, we can oppose "impossible" (as necessarily not) with "not necessarily not", and we now have an alternative rendition of "possible", which is opposed to "impossible". So we have here two very distinct renditions of "possible", Luke's is opposed to necessary, as not necessary, and the other is opposed to necessarily not (impossible) as not impossible.
Notice though, that "necessary" and "necessarily not" (impossible), are both forms of necessity. That's why I class them together (like hot and cold), as the two extremes of necessity, under the category "necessary". In the terms of ancient logic, these opposing terms are being and not being, is and is not. Then I propose another name, "possible" which we use to refer to all things outside this category. We can say that the things within the category are things known with certainty, what is and is not, while the things outside this category are the unknowns. Possibilities, whether logical possibilities (could be), or ontological possibilities (may be, as becoming), are the unknowns.
In my representation, the negative sandwich is exposed as a sort of misnomer. The first "not" in "not necessarily not", and "not possibly not", is not used in the same senses as the last "not". This is because the second "not" has been given an elusive referent. What does "necessarily not" or "possibly not" really mean? They are both predications, requiring a subject to give them real meaning. And when we allow for the subject we see that "necessarily not" is just a form of "necessary", and "possibly not" is just a form of "possible". So the negative sandwich is just an unnecessary obfuscation which distracts from the reality that what we are talking about has lost the assurance of certainty, because we have removed ourselves from the realm of the necessary, to talk about the possible. The form of "necessary" employed, now called "necessarily not", is opposed to "possible", as "possibly not", just like Luke's rendition, and is no longer opposed to "necessarily so".
This is done by taking the opposite of necessary, necessarily not (impossible), and proposing it as an independent form of necessary independent from its opposite. So the question is whether this is a valid move, to take the opposite of necessary, i.e. what is not (necessarily not, or impossible), and separate it from what is (necessary), and place it into the category of "possible", as a valid form of certainty. Can we import certainty into the category of the unknown in this way? So let me ask you this, can we determine what is not, without reference to what is? We can in principle describe what is, without reference to what is not, but can we describe what is not, without reference to what is? That I think is what is required to separate "necessarily not" from its true opposite, "necessary", and produce a new category in which it is opposed to "not necessarily not".
I write to express an understanding, not to convince of its truth, so disagreement is to be expected, especially considering the non-scientific nature of the subject matter. Actually, I appreciate intelligible disagreement for its complementarity.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Then all is not lost. Might’ve been a significant step forward if the respective causality had been unpacked from my Earth/Iranian women comment the other day.
There are only two feelings, pain and pleasure, each with varying degree. The causality of some pain/pleasure is beyond our control, an instance of that which is done to us, the causal objects or circumstances of which are possibly avoidable. The causality of some pain/pleasure is ourselves, given from our own control, an instance of that which we do to ourselves, therefore are impossible to avoid. These alone are reflections of our moral constitution, which presupposes we are moral agents by our very nature. Which in turn makes morality a valid conception a priori, representing the irreducible and absolutely necessary condition for the being of a moral agent.
There is no knowledge involved herein. None whatsoever. There is pure speculative reason alone. Knowledge has no warrant in its attempts at reification of an abstract a priori conception; reason, on the other hand, has perfect warrant for the providing of it.
————-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Conventionally speaking, that’s fine; most people would agree. As a metaphysician, on the other hand, you should know better, insofar as a mere condition has no constituency. That which makes something else possible, is just that. Just as causality, possibility, necessity, community, and so on, is each a singular representation unto itself, that is to say, has no other representation subsumed under it, so too is morality. Whether or not all that is granted, it nonetheless authorizes us to say judgements are limited as constituents of our moral disposition, in that because we are this kind of moral agent we will judge good and bad in this way.
Now, again, best to keep in mind this kind of judgement is aesthetic, representing a feeling, as opposed to discursive, which represents a cognition. We often do good things that feel bad, as well as do bad things that feel good. From that it follows that the judgement of how it feels subjectively to do something, is very different than the judgement for what objectively is to be done.
————-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
All that shows is dishonestly relative to another person, which happens all the time. To withhold information from oneself, presupposes it in that same self. Can’t withhold what was never there. That which is presupposed is impossible to deny, which is the same as the impossibility of withholding.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
True enough, but is the purview of empirical psychology. The subject matter we’re discussing properly resides in the doctrine of metaphysics. Which is probably why we disagree so much. You have not reduced the concepts far enough for metaphysical issues; I have reduced them too far for psychological issues. Meeting in the middle doesn’t appear likely.
Good.
Quoting creativesoul
Better.
Quoting creativesoul
Best.
Simple example of how we do this, instead of all this concept juggling:
(1) It is necessary that the book falls if and only if it is not possible that the book does not fall.
(2) It is possible that the book falls if and only if it is not necessary that the book does not fall.
"Not" seems to be used in two ways, but it really isn't; under this scheme it is always a proposition-level operator, just like "possibly" and "necessarily". You build necessary this way:
(1) The book is falling.
(2) It is not the case that (1), the book is falling.
(3) It is possible that (2), that it is not the case that (1), the book is falling.
(4) It is not the case that (3), that it is possible that (2), that it is not the case that (1), the book is falling.
(5) It is necessary that (1), the book is falling.
(5) is here just shorthand for (4). There is a single complete proposition (1), and three operators applied to that proposition, which we can abbreviate as a single operator.
This simplified usage of "not" avoids many confusions: you never predicate "not falling" of an object, you deny that it is falling; you never predicate "not possible" of a proposition, you deny that it is possible. By maintaining discipline in the treatment of "not", you avoid any possibility of confusing, say, "I know it's not Tuesday" and "I don't know it's Tuesday". We can be clear about the scope of the operators we apply to sentences, and we can be clear about the order in which we apply them, and we need not abide ambiguity. This is how we win.
I can't see the relevance of what you are saying here. There are many examples and kinds of animal signalling. Only humans, as far as is known, are capable of symbolic language and linguistically mediated thought. I certainly haven't said we have nothing in common with animals, if that is what you were thinking. There are many analogies between animal and human behavior; the difficulties arise when we want to posit analogies between human and animal experience.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes. symbolic language enables abstraction, which enables self-reflection and deliberation; in other words it inaugurates linguistically mediated thought.
Quoting creativesoul
Many uniquely (as far as we know) human understandings are linguistically mediated, that is they are in symbolic form. There may also be human understandings which are not linguistically mediated, and some of these also may be unique to humans. We don't really know what animal understandings are like, as to that we can only surmise in our human ways. Our interpretations and speculations are always human interpretations and speculations, couched in the forms that are possible for humans; that is to say our understandings are "human-shaped". That doesn't seem hard to understand.
Quoting creativesoul
I think it is well established that humans are capable of deceiving themselves. I've certainly seen self-deception at work in my own case. Perhaps it is impossible to be deliberately dishonest with oneself; self-deception doesn't seem to be intentional (in the psychological, not phenomenological, sense). That said it does seem humanly possible to be willfully blind to things that one really does not want to admit or confront, but still that willfulness does not seem to operate with fully conscious awareness.
I agree with Joseph Rouse’s take on the homologies between humans and other animals with respect to language.
“Elisabeth Lloyd (2004) shows that the fortuitous success of the bonobo Kanzi in acquiring a rudimentary linguistic capacity has changed the terms in which these issues should be addressed (Savage-Rumbaugh, Shanker, and Taylor 1998). Kanzi inadvertently participated in experiments on language acquisition because his mother was a research subject, and he was too young to be separated from her. While his mother struggled with the experimental protocol, Kanzi did much better despite not being initially targeted for instruction. Eventually, Kanzi acquired not only a substantial vocabulary of symbols but also the ability to produce novel, intelligible syntactic recombinations. The experimenters plausibly characterized his eventual linguistic capacities as in some respects comparable to those of a thirty-month-old normal human child. The interpretation of these data is controversial (see Pinker 1994,Savage-Rumbaugh, Shanker, and Taylor 1998; Lloyd 2004; Bickerton 2009), but I follow Lloyd in her insistence that Kanzi’s achievement shows that the neurological capacity for linguistic understanding is homologous between humans and bonobos and probably extends further to common ancestors.
…the capacity for producing and consuming linguistic expressions is not uniquely human and did not emerge as a novel capacity in the Homo lineage. Other species in the primate lineage who share this capacity have nevertheless not developed language on their own, even in rudimentary forms, despite having the neurological basis for producing and understanding symbolic expressions with syntactic structure.
This capacity for linguistic expression and understanding has only been expressed in experimental settings that bring other apes into contact with an analogue to human language adapted to their perceptual and expressive abilities. This fact strongly suggests either a lack of selection pressure in other lineages for linguistic communication or substantial barriers to the realization of this latent capacity.”
Animals don't do the "...counts as..." thing that we do as a matter of course.
Right, but dogs do ask to go outside, which is interesting because it means they are not purely responsive to their environment. It's not like the sight of the door to the backyard triggers the desire; they go to the door. The natural thing to say here is there is some kind of idea of backyard even when they're not immediately experiencing backyard, so that's at least some kind of displacement.
Quoting Banno
Don't they? Doesn't just about every living organism? Counts as food. Counts as protection. Counts as scary predator. Counts as my territory. Counts as invader.
Then again, there are those beetles that mistakenly "mate" with brown beer bottles. Maybe a lot of organisms skip the class step and only have the criterion of class membership. But then you're right back to counts-as-the-criterion.
Of course, evolution is a cheapskate, so it gave the beetles a really crappy mate selector that was just good enough until it was foiled by the arrival of brown beer bottles
They don't get to decide what is or is not food. It's food or it isn't, it's a mate or it isn't. So no.
We get to say that this counts as Tuesday, that counts as money, and so on.
Quoting Banno
I see. That's rather a different claim than I was addressing.
And judging by the quote next, your idea is that other organisms lack institutional facts.
Quoting Banno
This doesn't seem right to me: I would have said that declarations set out how things shall be; things which may or may not already be as declared.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
This reminds me of the phenomenological notion of "seeing as" and Gibson's "affordances". It seems plausible to think that animals and humans alike see things as affording possibilities for action. Different animals, for example, will see different things as food; as "to be eaten". But, lacking symbolic language, this would not be potentially self-reflexive; such that the animal could think "I can eat this, therefore it counts as food".
A shame, since it is right. it's just that we get to decide what counts as a simple.
Donald Hoffman has a lot to answer for.
I wasn't talking about what counts as a simple or what counts as anything else, so I don't know what you are referring to with that. I think it is more correct to say that declarations set out how things shall be, which allows that things may already be or not be as the declaration sets out. I'm thinking more of declarations in the political sense, though, which is what I thought you had in mind. I wasn't thinking of things like:
She declared, "Look, the sun is rising and the clouds are clearing".
I don't think such locutions count so much as declarations, despite the use of "declared", as they count as statements. The 'declared" there seems to me to indicate that the sun rising and the clouds clearing is of some more than usual import. Do you count all statements as declarations, and if not how do you distinguish them?
Quoting Tom Storm
I didn't know he was the creator of beetles.
But I was, in the part you quoted... so you are not addressing that?
"The cat is on the mat" supposes cats and mats.
The relevance is that such stuff is already an interpretation.
"Decide" seems an unusually cognitive word for you to lean on.
I don't see what cats being on mats has to do with declarations. Declaratives maybe, I suppose. In any case you should know from many previous posts that I am in agreement with Husserl and Heidegger, (they being, as far as I know, the first philosophers to point it out) that all seeing is "seeing as" or in other words that all perceptions are always already interpretations.
So, nothing controversial there in what you say.
Well, it's early days, and if these beetles survive it stands to reason that the individuals that did not try to impregnate beer bottles will be represented in coming generations at substantially higher rates than those that did. That might be luck. Or it might be that some beetles have a slightly more elaborate criterion for mate identification that excludes beer bottles. So the beetle population should gradually steer away from this particular dead end.
I can't take Hoffman seriously, so I haven't looked to see whether his model allows this sort of refinement. I don't think evolutionary biologists were committed to a view that species jump to knowing everything all at once.
You start off with a false premise. "Feelings" are sensations and there is many different sorts of them, often involving neither pleasure nor pain. Consider sight, sound, or even taste which is a tactile sensation. Many tastes, like spices for example are neither pleasant nor painful. The same is the case for all the different senses, there are many different sensations which are neither pleasurable nor painful. The sense of touch for example, you can feel around, looking for something with your hand, or feeling your way in the dark, and these feelings are neither pleasurable nor painful, though they are informative. That a particular feeling is peasant, or painful, is a judgement.
Quoting Mww
Sure one's judgements are based on one's disposition, but generally speaking we judge good and bad according to how we were taught, not according to what we feel. That is what constitutes our moral disposition, how we've been trained, not how we feel. I don't know why you deny this. And this is how our moral judgements extend far beyond our personal feelings. We make moral judgements concerning principles which have no feeling about at all.
Quoting Mww
I don't understand this. It seems to be completely inconsistent with what you've been saying. Perhaps you could explain. If "good" and "bad" are solely determined by what feels good, and what feels bad, how is it possible that one could do a good thing which feels bad, or a bad thing that feels good? And what do you mean by "the judgement for what objectively is to be done"? How does objectivity enter morality in your mind?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You are just stating the same thing as the last post, in a different way, so the result is the same question i brought up at the end of the last post.
But "not" is definitely used in two different ways. When you say in (1), "not possible", "not" negates "possible" in the sense of proposing an opposite to "necessary". But when you say "does not fall", here "not" does not negate "fall" as an opposite to "fall" it simply says that the action does not happen. To say in particular, "a fall does not happen", and to say in general, "a fall is not possible", is to use "not" in two distinct ways. "Fall" is a verb, "possible" is an adjective. But the use of "not" is beside the point.
All you have here is the meaningless, circular definition, which I objected to earlier. "Necessary" is defined as "not possible", and "possible" is defined as "not necessary". But this is not truthful for the reasons I've given. "Necessary" is properly opposed to "impossible", as I've explained. And "impossible" cannot be opposed to "possible" because this would make "necessary" and "possible" the same. So we need to put "possible" in a place distinct from the category which contains those opposites, necessary and impossible.
I'll address this, since it's clear enough.
You are making what I would consider a scope error.
The opposite of "The car is blue" is "It is not the case that the car is blue," which we can also express as "The car is not blue" because there is only a single level here. (And note this doesn't imply that there is a color we call in English "not blue".)
But suppose our sentence is embedded in another:
(a) "Sheila knows that the car is blue."
What's the opposite of that? Is it
(b) "Sheila knows that the car is not blue"
or is it
(c) "Sheila does not know that the car is blue"
It's (c). To find the opposite we must negate the outermost, enclosing scope "Sheila knows that ...", not the inner scope "The car is blue". The opposite of knowing something is not knowing it, not knowing the opposite. Everyone knows that.
So it is with modal operators. If I say
(1) It is possible the car is blue
the opposite of that is
(2) It is not possible that the car is blue
negating the outermost scope. We do not push the "not" into the scope of "It is possible that ..." producing
(*3) It is possible that the car is not blue
anymore than we do with "Sheila knows that ..." That's a scope error.
The opposite of
(4) Troy believes that Sheila said that it's possible that Dave knows today is my birthday
is simply
(5) Troy doesn't believe that Sheila said that it's possible that Dave knows today is my birthday
We're spoiled for choice as to where else to stick in our "not", but all the others are wrong. You negate the outermost scope and there's your opposite. Here are all the others, they all mean something different, and none is the opposite of (4):
(*6) Troy believes that Sheila didn't say that it's possible that Dave knows today is my birthday
(*7) Troy believes that Sheila said that it's not possible that Dave knows today is my birthday
(*8) Troy believes that Sheila said that it's possible that Dave doesn't know today is my birthday
(*9) Troy believes that Sheila said that it's possible that Dave knows today is not my birthday
You asked about other animals using language. I offered an example. I do not believe that you do not see the relevance.
It's certainly not the only one. As others have mentioned, dogs will ask for food. My ducks do the same. There are specific behaviours to support all this. Reasoning to boot. Logical argument to bolster.
Are you denying that these are examples of language use?
I take it that you're saying that the primates mentioned heretofore are not language users, but merely signaling, and that signaling does not count as language use.
This presupposes a criterion for what counts as language use.
I'd like to see the one you're putting to use.
Unhelpful nonsense. Speaking of anthropomorphism.
Language does not have agency. All things that are capable of mediation do. Mediation is done for the sake of mediating. Language does not mediate. There are no linguistically mediated human thought.
Language creation and subsequent use influences and enable the richness and depth of human thought.
We are not the only language users living on the face of the earth.
Whatever you are calling "linguistically mediated thought" is neither the only nor the simplest kind of thought humans have. Likely it is one of the most complex.
Metaphysically speaking, I take these terms to mean:
1. Impossible = cannot occur
2. Possible = can occur
3. Necessary = must occur
This does not make "necessary" and "possible" the same. It opposes the concepts of 1 and 2 to each other, and the concepts of 2 and 3 to each other. This does not require "possible" to be in a distinct category.
I was referring specifically to symbolic language, to linguistic competency.
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
There is no point making bare assertions such as "unhelpful nonsense" without explaining why you think so. That is truly unhelpful.Same with the accusation of anthropomorphism; quote what I have said and explain why you think it is anthropomorphic if want an actual discussion.
Yes, what I am calling linguistically mediated thought is neither the only or the simplest kind of thought, on the contrary it is the most complex: in that it is rich in symbols which allow us the think counterfactually, reflexively and self-referentially; what on Earth led you to think I was claiming otherwise? You seem to be making my argument for me.
That's not true.
I know when my cat wants treats. She behaves in certain ways. She will even lead me to the food bowl. She will sometimes sit in silence for ten minutes or more right beside the treat dispenser on the floor waiting for the moment I make eye contact with her. Then she meows and rubs her side around and across my leg and often purrs while I dispense the kibbles into the bowl. The sound of kibbles hitting the sides of her bowl is important to her too. The quantity of kibbles, not so much. Most times, she will not eat until after I gently stroke her from head to tail. Her tail almost always does this little shimmy thing at the end as she steps out of the stroke and into her feeding position.
I suggest you reread the post. What you ask for was already given.
So, any and all attribution of such thought to non humans is anthropomorphism at work. I agree there. Not all language use involves using meaningful marks.
The alarm screech symbolizes danger. The creatures using the screech connect the two and become language users as a result. The screech becomes meaningful with use.
All 'linguistically mediated thought' involves language use. Some non human animals have language. Thought they have that involve language use are 'linguistically mediated thought'. The sounding of the alarm is a 'linguistically mediated thought' because it is a thought consisting of correlations drawn between the vocalization and danger. Becoming aware of danger by virtue of knowing what an alarm sound means is linguistically mediated thought.
We cannot draw and maintain the distinction between the sorts of thoughts that we have and the sorts of thought that other language using animals have with the notion of 'linguistically mediated thought'.
Yes, that's exactly the problem. If (1) is defined as opposed to (2), and (3) is defined as opposed to (2), then (1) and (3) must have the very same meaning, by definition. Obviously though, "impossible" and "necessary" do not have the same meaning. Therefore we need a fix for this problem. My proposal was to put "possible" in a different category from "necessary" and "impossible" which are properly opposed, because "possible" I believe cannot be properly opposed to "necessary" due to our conception of "impossible"
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I really do not think that this explains the issue. Allow me to describe the problem more clearly if you will. The issue is with the definition of "necessary". If we propose to define "necessary" in relation to possible, as you did in the last post, then we also have to allow that it has a relation to impossible. The same sense of "necessary", in common usage has a relation with possible and also a relation with impossible (not possible). So if we simply define "necessary" as opposed to possible then we do not provide an accurate (truthful) representation of "necessary" because we do not provide a position for impossible. "Impossible" has been excluded from having a position in the schema because necessary has been opposed to possible.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
So, look at this rendition of "possible", produced from your (1) where necessary was defined as opposed to possible. We can pinpoint the inaccuracy here. The phrase "it is not necessary that the book falls" is actually ambiguous because it implies (a) it is impossible that the book falls, and (b) it is possible that the book falls. I think you'll agree that (a) is very different from (b). However, your proposal excludes (b) by saying that we must allow (a) only, through definition.
What this proposal does is that it removes "impossible" from the schema through a faulty definition of "possible", induced by the prior definition of "necessary". Everything is either necessary or possible. There is no such thing as impossible. And this is very evident in what we refer to as "logical possibility", anything is possible. So "logical possibility", produced by this means, provides no real defined sense of "impossible", and this is why it does not provide us with a truthful or accurate representation of reality.
Now, we might account for this by saying that impossible is a form of necessary. This appears to be the most accurate way to go. But then we need to distinguish within our definition of "necessary", the difference between what necessarily is, and what necessarily is not. And, the real issue is that when we proceed from here to establish a relationship between each of these two and possibility, we have to respect the fact that one is the inverse of the other, so they cannot have the exact same relation. This inversion becomes very evident in probabilities. The more precise, or particular, the individual specific identified thing is, i.e. that which we want to relate to "necessary" (in its two senses of is and is not), the more certain we can be in the sense of is not, and the less certain we can be in the sense of is. This is why philosophical skepticism concerning claims about "what is", cannot be eradicated, while we can readily dismiss claims about "what is not", nothingness.
Why? I've already defined them above and you can see that they don't have the very same meaning. If 1 and 3 must have the same meaning, then my definitions must be incorrect. So, how are they incorrect?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Or else your assumption that they must have the very same meaning is faulty.
This is not a happy use of "opposes"; see below.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Unless by "opposed to" you mean something different from "is the opposite of," or by "is the opposite of" you mean something besides "is the negative of," then this is another scope error. We have
[math]\ \ \ \ \ [/math]Possible (?)
Then there's "impossible," which is just
[math]\ \ \ \ \ [/math]Not Possible (~?)
The opposite of impossible is
[math]\ \ \ \ \ [/math]Not Not Possible (~~?)
which is of course just Possible (?), unless we're contemplating an intuitionistic logic, and we're not. That just leaves necessity, which we get by putting a negative inside:
[math]\ \ \ \ \ [/math]Not Possibly Not (~?~)
To complete the set of possibilities, we could mention
[math]\ \ \ \ \ [/math]Possibly Not (?~)
which obviously tends to run alongside Possible (?), without being it's opposite. (It's the opposite of Necessary.)
Evidently, you agree with the use of negation to produce opposites, or you wouldn't have said that two opposites of one thing must be the same thing. But you're not paying attention to what you negate to produce the opposites; you're not paying attention to scope.
Impossible
Possible = Not Impossible
Necessary = Impossibly Not
since the necessity of P is just the impossibility of P's opposite.
Possible is opposed to Not Possible. Isn't Possible also opposed to Not Possibly Not?
Meaning what? What does "opposed to" mean? Does it mean distinguished from, or actually is the negative of? I take opposite to indicate the negative, and anything else is ambiguity we can do without.
So, no, Possible (?) is the opposite of Not Possible (~?), and nothing else.
The opposite of Necessary (~?~) is Not Necessary (?~).
While we're here, we can do "necessarily not," which MU mentions now and again: that's ~?~~, which reduces to Not Possible (~?), or impossible, which, duh. So we can also say that the opposite of Possible is Necessarily Not — and it isn't anything else.
Not Necessary (?~) is equivalent to Possibly Not (?~).
It is unclear to me why Not Necessary (?~) is not also equivalent to Possible (?).
Your “feelings” related to sensation are not my feelings related to emotional status.
————
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Objectivity doesn’t enter morality itself, but only manifests as a determined physical act occurring in response to a subjectively determinable moral situation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What is to be objectively done, is performance of some physical act. In the same way that we judge what an object is, that which is given to perception from the world, for which it is the cause, so too do we judge what we put in the world, for which we are its cause. In the former we are affected by the world, in the latter our acts are effects on the world. In both circumstances are found congruent empirical conditions, insofar as both are directly related to the world, which makes explicit....logically explicit, that is.....they both follow from the same kind of judgement, which is called discursive.
Do you see the classic “is-ought” moral dilemma here?
Yes, and I should add I think that matches our intuitions: if something isn't necessarily the case, then it's possibly not the case.
Quoting Luke
The problem is necessity.
Saying something is true might seem to entail that it could be false, but it doesn't, because what you're saying might be necessarily true. 3 + 4 is 7 doesn't entail that 3 + 4 might not be 7.
So it is with possibility: to say that P is possible might seem to entail that ~P is also possible, but we can't do that because it may be that P is necessary, and that's why it's possible. Same as above: it is possible that 3 + 4 is 7, because it is, and it is necessarily.
Does that make sense?
It is absolutely true that we tend to reach for "possible" in epistemic situations that have a kind of constructivist flavor to them, that we say possible when it's all we know, and we don't have actuality or necessity in hand. (That's what I mean by "constructivist" there, that we use possible when we have not demonstrated actual or necessary.) So in a lot of cases where we want to say "possible" we really want to say "possibly not" too as a way of covering our bets; but that's a mistake: we need to demonstrate possibly not, because for all we know it will turn out possibly not isn't actually an option.
Of course that only matters if you're working in a domain where necessary makes sense, and for a lot of the everyday matters of fact we deal with, we often assume we can rule out necessity. "He might be on time," in everyday reasoning, does seem to entail that he might not. Whether we should make those assumptions, I dunno.
Quoting Janus
Did you mean something different than this?
“Evidence that an animal is capable of some degree of symbolic, human language processing supports the argument that the animal's consciousness is to some degree human-like.”
One can , of course, distinguish between ‘capacity for’ and natural use of symbolic language. Bonobos have been shown to have this capacity, but only demonstrate it in artificially induced situations prompted by humans.
Not really. I asked about non-necessity - why it's not equivalent to possible/possibly - and you've responded that we need to beware of necessity...? But I'm assuming non-necessity.
Ah, okay, I see what went wrong now.
My point was that we don't derive Possibly ~P from Possibly P, because for all we know Necessarily P.
Here you have Not Necessarily P
and you want to know why it's not equivalent to Possibly P
We could try proving that, but we don't have any axioms, so let's try an example.
I've got my usual urn of marbles, and I tell you that the marbles in the urn are not necessarily red. You can conclude, given that the urn is not empty, that there is at least one marble in the urn that is not red. Good so far? By restricting our domain to an urn of marbles, we get to cash out the modal claims as quantifiers. Can you conclude that at least one of the marbles is red, that the urn contains a mix of red and not red? No, you cannot. "There is at least one non-red marble in the urn" is the entirety of what you know; it is a complete translation of "The marbles in the urn are not necessarily red."
Of each marble in the urn, it is false that it must be red. Clearly, that condition can be satisfied by it being false of every marble in the urn that it is red. (That is, it being true of no marble in the urn that it is red.) If this turns out to be the case, we would have that it is necessarily false of each marble that it is red. That's consistent with it not being necessarily true of any marble that it is red.
Since Not Necessarily P is consistent with Necessarily Not P, it's not equivalent to Not Necessarily Not P, else we'd have a contradiction. Or we can say: Possibly Not P is consistent with Not Possibly P, so it's not equivalent to Possibly P.
Sorry this is so repetitive. I'm never sure which may of putting things will be clearest.
Isn't Possibly P also ~?P?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I wouldn't think it follows from "the marbles in the urn are not necessarily red" that there must be at least one marble that's not red. I would think it follows from "the marbles in the urn are not necessarily red" that it is possible that all marbles in the urn are red, that some marbles in the urn are red, or that no marbles in the urn are red.
No, it isn't. ?P ? ~?~P and ?P ? ~?~P. That's the standard, and it maps onto quantifiers in an obvious way.
Quoting Luke
Dang. I'll try again.
We have a set of marbles you're going to pick from. We're going to look at claims about what necessarily results when you pick and what possibly results when you pick.
If when you pick a marble, you get a red one, without exception, that's necessity. Necessity is like a universal quantifier with a restricted domain. Necessity means all the marbles are red. There's only the one result possible when you pick.
If when you pick a marble, you at least once get a red one, that's possibility. Possibility is like an existential quantifier with a restricted domain. Possibility means at least one of the marbles is red.
That might be hard to see at first, even with the analogy to ?, but suppose you pick all the marbles and not one of them is red. Then we would say it was not possible to pick a red marble from that set. I think that fits our intuitions perfectly. To say it is possible to pick a red marble from that set must mean that there is at least one red marble to be picked.
Not Necessarily is Possibly Not, so that's our existential quantifier. It says you can pick a non-red marble from the set because there is at least one non-red marble to be picked. If you can't pick a non-red marble, that's because all the marbles are red; that's the situation we say we are not in.
And it should be clear that there being at least one non-red marble in the set is consistent with there being only non-red marbles in the set. That is, Possibly Not Red is consistent with Necessarily Not Red.
From this we conclude that Possibly Not Red is not the same as Possibly Red, because if it were, we would have to say that Possibly Red is consistent with Necessarily Not Red; we would have to have a set of marbles at least one of which was red and all of which were not red. No go.
Better?
Should probably add that ?P is consistent both with ?P and with ~?P.
With marbles, that's to say that there being at least one red marble in the set is consistent with all the marbles in the set being red, and with not all the marbles in the set being red (but at least one is).
~?P by itself just says 'not all', P is not true of everything in the domain. Might not be true of anything.
Quoting creativesoul
True, langauge use also involves using meaningful sounds or gestures (sign language). I don't know what point you are making with that, though.
Quoting creativesoul
I don't think that's right; I think the alarm screech signals danger. Symbolization is more abstract, and this is just where our use of language distinguishes us from the other animals.
Quoting creativesoul
I disagree. Just because it is a sound, because it is, so to speak, "of the tongue" does not qualify it as linguistic, on account of the etymology. What about bodily gestures that animals use to signal responses; do they qualify as "linguistic", according to you?
Quoting creativesoul
Again I disagree; it is precisely our linguistic competencies, which animals do not possess, which enables human culture, history and literature and self-reflective thought and all kinds of disciplines couched in generalization and abstraction and which distinguishes us from the other animals.
Quoting Joshs
See my replies to creativesoul above. I don't deny that animals' consciousness is more or less human-like, although I think they cannot experience the kinds of self-reflective consciousness that humans do just because they are not competent users of symbolic language. I don't doubt we still have the pre-linguistic "animal" layer of consciousness, although I think it is more or less overshadowed by our self-reflective, symbolic consciousness; and on account of that I would rather say that human consciousness is to some degree animal-like than to say that animal consciousness is to some degree human-like, and also precisely because it is the animal consciousness that is the more general and the human that is the more specific.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
My question was why Not Necessary (?~) is not also equivalent to Possible (?).
In the section quoted above, you start out referring to Not Necessarily (red), which means that "there is at least one non-red marble to be picked". But you then make the subtle switch to talking about Necessarily Not (red),
If Not Necessarily (red) means "there is at least one non-red marble to be picked", then I still don't see how that differs from Possibly (red), which means that "at least one of the marbles is red" and that not "all the marbles are red" (otherwise red would be necessary).
Recall, this was the original exchange:
Quoting Janus
I was merely pointing out that declarations do not necessarily set out how things are, but more commonly set out how things shall or should be; which of course as I acknowledged there, does not rule out that what is declared may set out how things already are,
So, are we actually arguing about anything? Are you wanting to claim that declarations only, or even more commonly, set out how things are, and not how they shall be?
What?
Quoting Janus
I'm not. You appear to think you are. Odd.
There was no "subtle switch."
Not Necessarily Red is equivalent to Possibly Not Red.
Not Necessarily Red is consistent with Necessarily Not Red, which ought to be obvious because Possibly Not Red is clearly consistent with Necessarily Not Red.
If Not Necessarily Red (Possibly Not Red) is equivalent to Possibly Red, then Possibly Red is consistent with Necessarily Not Red. But it's not, therefore, Not Necessarily Red is not equivalent to Possibly Red.
Quoting Luke
What you're missing is that we only have Not Necessarily Red — so we know at least one marble is non-red — but we don't have Not Necessarily Not Red (i.e., Possibly Red), so it is entirely consistent for the set of marbles to be all non-red.
Quoting Banno
Below is what I quoted from you and responded to:
Quoting Janus
So, it seemed you were claiming that declarations do set out how things are, perhaps you meant not do, but can, in which case it should have been obvious that I was not disagreeing.
Okay. Replace "symbolizes" with "signals" and the argument that that bit was excised from still stands strong. You need to address it along with all the earlier arguments that have went sorely neglected since being made.
Either it's irony or deliberate deception. Neither is acceptable.
Ok. Whatever.
Quoting creativesoul
The proof for that is demonstrated by the way you attribute agency to language. Again that's been proven. You've yet to have squared those circles despite repeated attempts at redefinition.
You cannot avoid anthropomorphism because "linguistically mediated thought" is a prima facie example of anthropomorphism. All this and then some has been more than adequately argued for without subsequent due attention.
I haven't been addressing, or even attempting to address the question of whether animals and humans alike are conscious in ways enabled by the capacity to signal; I'd say yes to that of course.
It's incredible that you impute irony or deliberate deception on my part, when it should have clear to you that I have all along only been addressing the question of the kind of consciousness enabled by symbolic language.
Quoting creativesoul
I have never imputed agency to language. If, in your confusion, you think I have, then quote the relevant passage(s).
Quoting creativesoul
Is this a joke? Explain how ""linguistically mediated thought" is a prima facie example of anthropomorphism" or if you think you already have, then cite or quote the relevant passages. Keep in mind my two definitions of anthropomorphism, and be mindful that I only have the "egregious imputation of human characteristics onto the non-human" in mind here, which should be obvious given what I have said I think about the other definition.
Does language mediate human thought?
Of course it does.
mediate
vb
1. (intr; usually foll by between or in) to intervene (between parties or in a dispute) in order to bring about agreement
2. to bring about (an agreement)
3. to bring about (an agreement) between parties in a dispute
4. to resolve (differences) by mediation
5. (intr) to be in a middle or intermediate position
6. (tr) to serve as a medium for causing (a result) or transferring (objects, information, etc)
Look at '6.' From here
Language does those things?
No agency required?
Open admission of an equivocation of terms fallacy?
Mediation is not performed by language. Language is incapable of mediating. We mediate. Mediation is performed by us. We are creatures with agency. Language is the tool we use to do so. It serves as the medium. Mediating is what's being performed/enacted/done by a mediator. Mediators use language as a medium for successful mediation.
Language does not mediate. Language is not a mediator. Mediators mediate.
Such a denial requires some sort of justification for the denial. If that does not count as one of the simplest sorts of language use emerging into the universe, then what does? Where do you draw the line at a bare minimum over there on the left side of your spectrum?
It can't be me making the scope error, because it's your examples only, not mine. Am I making an interpretive scope error? Here's the example again:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Can you give me a simple explanation as to why you switch from talking about whether or not "the book falls" (future, or perhaps tenseless)), to "the book is falling" (present)?
The issue I pointed out with the dual use of "not" is that "it is not necessary that the book does not fall", the first (2), uses two senses of "not". "Does not fall" does not negate "fall", like "not necessary" negates "necessary". What "not" does in this case is stipulate that there is no real world activity of falling.
You assign a scope error to me, saying the following: "This simplified usage of "not" avoids many confusions: you never predicate "not falling" of an object, you deny that it is falling; you never predicate "not possible" of a proposition, you deny that it is possible." But it was you yourself who predicated "not" of "fall" in your statement: " (2) It is possible that the book falls if and only if it is not necessary that the book does not fall."
It appears to me, like you have created an illusion, by changing the temporal scope of the example. In the explanation you've switched from whether or not the book falls (indefinite temporal scope), to whether or not the book is falling (present time). This allows you to talk about the book not falling without directly predicating "not falling" of the object. But in the other case, there is no temporal scope, so what is at issue is never falling, the possibility that it is impossible for the book to fall, and this requires the denied predication.
Notice that with the restricted scope (present only) it is possible to talk about whether or not the book is falling, without predicating "not falling" of the object. But in the original example we cannot get to the possibility that "the book does not fall" without predicating "not falling" of the object.
This is the meaning of "impossible" which I am trying to bring to your attention, which your schema excludes. "It is impossible that the book is falling", or more properly said, "it is necessary that the book is not falling".
What happens in your explanation, is that by refusing to predicate "not falling" of the object, you put "not falling" outside the scope of what you are talking about, so that you are only talking about the book falling. By doing this you exclude the possibility of "it is necessary that the book is not falling". In other words, you exclude the impossible from your schema. Then "not falling" becomes something completely distinct from "falling", rather than the opposite of it.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Thanks for taking the time to clarify. I understand now. I wrote this down to help get my head around it:
1. Necessary (?): Necessarily Red = All are red
2. Possible Not (~?): Not Necessarily Red = At least one is not red (not all are red)
3. Possible (~?~): Not Necessarily Not Red = At least one is red (not none are red)
4. Impossible (?~): Necessarily Not Red = None are red
I wasn't aware of the distinction between Possible Not and Possible when I asked my question earlier. It's more logically pedantic than what I had in mind. Possible Not and Possible both denote possibility, referring to "some" as opposed to "all" or "none". However, while I accept that Possible Not and Possible are technically different to each other, I think they can still be viewed as "opposed to" or distinct from Necessary and Impossible, respectively, each in the same (but inverse) way. Does logical negation constitute an opposite? Because, in the table above, 2 is the negation of 1 and 3 is the negation of 4.
I think so, yes, at least for the simplest cases. There may be some subtleties to the linguistics I can't call to mind at the moment.
Yes, because I was — perhaps inadvisedly — using an example of a temporal event but trying not to prejudice the interpretation of the modality, so talking about this temporal event tenselessly.
I never even checked to see if there are problems if you read the example with tense in mind. If that comes out badly, I apologize for the confusion. It's just an artifact.
The example I went through with @Luke ended up being much easier to write.
You say a lot of things I agree with, but apparently thinking that I don't, because there's still some confusion about the handling of "not." One point I think I clarified somewhere else is that in something like "The book is not red," we place the "not" before "red" purely as a matter of English convention, and because, with no other scope in play, there's no ambiguity. But that's still a proposition-level "not" and a more verbose way to say the same thing is "It is not the case that ball is red." It's sometimes convenient to pretend that "not red" is something we might predicate of an object, but it isn't really. "Not red" is not a syntactical element of the proposition at all, and therefore not a semantic unit either. "Red" is, as a predicate, and "not" is, as an operator on the entire proposition. "Not" doesn't apply to predicates or objects. As long as we keep in mind the logical form of what we're saying, I see no harm in using ordinary English, but I'll switch to "philosophical English" when there's ambiguity to be avoided.
I do think it's because they do often go together for the sorts of things we reason about. ("He might be on time, or he might not.")
Quoting Luke
That's quite reasonable, but relying on "opposite" to mean different things will just lead to trouble. In the old square of opposition different sorts of pairwise contrasts get different names.
How have I used "opposite" to mean different things?
Yes. It really is.
We need not pretend that it is not convention for all of us to say of a book that it is not red, even if it is convenient to admit the convention and then act like it's not something we 'really' do as a means for rationalizing or handwaving away our inability to take proper account of the fact that we do it.
Rhetorical drivel.
Right, I think I follow this. Now let me tell you the issue I'm talking about, taking this simple example of "the book is not red". As it stands "not" is an operator which negates "the book is red". There is one necessity implied, i.e. it is impossible that the book is red. It is necessary that the book is not red.
Now, we want to move into a logical mode of possibility, and allow for a possibility that the book is red. So we relate "it is possible that the book is red", with "it is necessary that the book is red" in the ways that you describe. But what happens to the original, "the book is not red", or |
" it is impossible that the book is red" with this move? Because the new mode is the possibility that the book is red, we must exclude this option (it is impossible that the book is red), as not a possibility.
The question is whether it is a valid move to exclude the possibility that it is impossible that the book is red. Isn't this a real possibility which ought to be allowed for in discussing the possibility that the book is red? It is possible that it is impossible that the book is red. According to what you describe, it appears to me like the logical schema denies this possibility by saying that it opens a new category, the category of "not-red", and then we'd have to discuss the possibility of this. In this case "the book is not red" would mean "it is necessary that the book is not red", which would be an instance of predicating "not-red" of the book.
So the issue as I see it, is that I want to allow "it is impossible that the book is red" as a valid possibility, when we are talking about the possibility of whether or not the book is red. But the logical schema disallows this possibility. And, it is the logical schema which makes "not-red" into a distinct category of predication, thereby blocking this possibility. Therefore you cannot use that as an argument for why we ought to accept the logical schema, that if we allow "it is impossible that the book is red" as a valid possibility, it makes "not-red" into a category of its own, distinct from "red", rather than the negation of red, because that's just begging the question. From my perspective, that's just evidence that the logical schema is flawed. Instead of having "red" and "not-red" as the two extremes of one category, with all the possibilities lying between, it treats "red" and "not-red" as distinct categories of possibility, with no proper way of establishing a relationship between the possibility of each of these two.
One predicate is distinct from another if they don't have identical extensions, even if they overlap (as various cases of possibility and necessity do). One predicate is the opposite of another, usually, if one is the complement of the other, includes everything it doesn't and nothing it does. I'm not sure we have an everyday word for only being disjoint, that is, being a subset of the complement.
Quoting bongo furyQuoting bongo fury
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting bongo fury
This way of looking at necessity seems wrong to me. When I think of necessity, I think of something like "all visible objects are spatiotemporal" which makes sense since it is impossible to imagine a non-spatiotemporal visual object.
It is not impossible to imagine any object being red or not being red. So even if all examples of a certain kind of object were red, it does not follow that a non-red object of that kind could not turn up. Even if (although we could never know it) all objects of a certain kind have been, are and will be red it does not seem to follow that it would be necessary that they were, are or will be red. That they were, are and will be all red could be a contingent matter, that is it just so happens that all of those kinds of objects have been, are and will be red.
Let's look at another example, so we have a comparison. (There are features of the first example that may be confusing.)
Consider playground balls, the ones kids play dodgeball and four-square with. Those are (classically) all red. Why? Because they're made from red rubber. We would say, it is impossible to make a non-red ball out of red rubber. That seems straightforward.
Do we mean something similar when we ask if this red ball 'might have been' a different color, or if it 'can be' a different color? Or if we ask, of some ball, the color of which we do not know, if it 'must be' red?
Is this ball *this ball* if it is a different color? Is redness essential to it? For comparison, if this ball is flat, we can inflate it, and we will not usually say that being flat is essential to what the ball is, just its temporary state.
But it is nevertheless true that if it is flat, it is not fully inflated, and that's just the law of noncontradiction. When we say this red ball cannot not be red, are we even saying anything about the ball? Or are we only saying that at this world, as at all others, the law of noncontradiction holds?
To say that there are no worlds at which this ball is both red and not red is to say almost nothing at all. There simply are no such worlds, no worlds at which any ball, this one or another, is both red and not red. If we deem the redness of this ball essential to it, there are no worlds at which this ball is not red, on pain of simply being a different object. If it is inessential that it is red, like being flat, then there are worlds at which it is blue, is green, is white, and so on. And that's what we mean when we say this ball 'might have been' some other color.
When talking about particulars, like this specific ball, we can't make modal claims, I think, without considering what is essential and what accidental about that particular.
We're in very different territory if there's a bin of red playground balls and you're grabbing one of those. In such a case, it's perfectly clear what we mean when we say you cannot pick a ball that is not red: there is no such a ball to pick. To say that you might get the one with "Zeppelin rules" scrawled on it in Sharpie, is to say there is a ball in the bin so adorned, and this inscription makes it unique; to say you might get one bearing those words, is to say this is a thing someone might have done, that it is possible someone has done it.
But how do we get necessity out of the law of noncontradiction? That if something is red, it cannot not be red? Since the law of noncontradiction holds at each world, restricting to worlds at which "The ball is red" is true automatically embodies the necessity we were looking for: for any world w in that set, the ball is red at every world accessible (under this restriction) from w. That's our definition of necessity. No world at which it is not red, or also not red, can sneak in.
It's because the domain of the quantifier is explicitly restricted to the marbles in this set.
OK, perhaps I missed something since I haven't closely read every post. So the four alternatives are specifying the characters of different sets of objects? The first the set of all red objects, the second with at least one non-red object, the third with at least one red object and the last with no red objects; and the four permutations of possibility and necessity are related to whether or not an object, either red or not red, must belong, or could not belong, to the four different sets?
That's close.
The idea is just to show how what is a possible or a necessary result of you picking from a set can be cashed out in terms of what *is* or *is not* there to be picked.
(This is, to my understanding, the motivation behind possible world semantics: you get to trade in intensions for extensions, and then standard truth functions are available again.)
Just that classical logic can't deal with propositions of the form "It is possible that you pick a red marble," but can happily deal with propositions like "There is a red marble in the set."
Sounds reasonable. Does that imply "possible" is not the opposite of "impossible"?
Right, but if it were necessarily red, then it follows that a non-red object could not turn up. Otherwise, it would be not necessarily red and it follows that a non-red object could turn up.
Quoting Janus
True, but if it were necessary, then they must always be red.
Quoting Janus
I agree, and I think that regarding temporal events it is a contingent (non-necessary) matter. We were only discussing what's logically necessary, possible and impossible.
I would say these are not an example of "opposition" but "negation". A dynamic between the "necessary" and "possibile" would be more of an oppositional relation.
I think this is where things get sticky. In the case of a particular object, such as "this ball", each and every property is an essential property, that's what makes it the unique thing which it is, by the law of identity. That is the identity of the ball itself. But when we move to question "what the ball is", as " a ball", or "a red ball", we are assigning an identity to the object, which is distinct from the identity which the ball has, in and of itself, by the law of identity.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think it is important to note that there is no such distinction in the case of a particular. Each and every property of a particular must be understood as essential to that particular, that's what makes a particular a unique individual, distinct from every other particular. This is what the law of identity recognizes.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
So, let's maintain this distinction, between the identity the ball has, by the law of identity, and the identity which we assign to the ball, through a differentiation between essential and accidental properties. We've assigned essential properties, and have named the ball "red ball", with very good reasons, and we maintain that the ball cannot not be red, for those reasons. However, we need to maintain that the ball in itself might still turn out to be not red, if our reasoning turns out to be wrong. We can't just conclude that the ball cannot not be red because it would be contradictory, because we just have some reasons why the ball must be red, and those reasons might end up being wrong. We cannot impose on the ball that it cannot not be red, just because our reasoning says so, because our reasoning might be wrong.
So it's not even a case of asking whether the law of non-contradiction holds in this world, it's a case of asking do the reasons for calling the ball "a red ball" hold in this world. Then the question is whether the world described in which the ball must be red, corresponds correctly with the real world. But I would say that we must maintain always, the possibility that it does not. Therefore we ought to allow that the thing itself, with the identity it has within itself, could always be other than the identity we give it. So this would not be a case of violating the law of non-contradiction, it would be a case of us having a misunderstanding of the world.
Where this becomes difficult is with the assumption that everything must have an identity within itself. That is what Aristotle proposed, but Hegel for instance saw no necessity even for this principle. But if we relinquish the law of identity, then contradiction could inhere right within the world. It would not be necessary that the object has an identity within itself, and it could actually consist of opposing properties.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
If we let go of the law of identity, then we allow for the possibility of a world in which the ball is both red and not red. Our logic dictates "there simply are no such worlds", but the real world does not conform to our logic, our logic must conform to the world. Therefore we must allow for the possibility that the law of identity is incorrect, and consequently the law of non-contradiction is irrelevant in some circumstances, and it is not accurate to say "there simply are no such worlds".
See, you say that if this were the case, it would be "a different object". But without the law of identity, there is no reason to believe that the real world even consists of objects. The real world might be 'a different world', outside all of the logically possible worlds, which rely on the law of identity. That's what the law of identity tells us, that the world consists of objects. But if the law of identity is wrong, and the world doesn't consist of objects, then we need a new principle by which we name things as objects, and insist that the law of non-contradiction must hold for these supposed objects.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The point for you to recognize, I think, is that when we accept the law of identity, then we accept that any ball might be other than the way we name it. In fact, the object is designated as necessarily other than how we name it. That's what the law of identity recognizes, that we name it by essentials, not by accidentals, while accidentals are what gives identity to the individual. So any particular object, by the law identity, is necessarily inconsistent with how we identify it.
Now I have moved from the claim that we must accept the possibility that the world is other from how we describe it (above), to the claim that it is necessarily other than how we describe it. We do not identify the accidentals, but the accidentals are what are essential to the particulars. And since we do not acknowledge the accidentals, we cannot even name them as possibilities. They are unknown possibilities. And once we see the reality of unknown possibilities, then we must allow for possible worlds which are outside the realm of "logically possible", such as a world with no objects and no law of identity. "Possible worlds" is a restriction imposed by logic which is necessarily inconsistent with reality.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The law of non-contradiction, in this sense, is just an artificial restriction imposed on possibility, by us. It only applies to produce a set of possible worlds which is created by our minds. But what the law of identity indicates to us, is that the real world is a world which is necessarily outside this set of possible worlds. The true identity of the particular is within the aspects (accidentals) which we ignore when we assign an identity to the object. Therefore the real world is necessarily inconsistent with the "possible worlds".
I take it you meant to say that a dynamic between the "necessary" and "impossible" would be more of an oppositional relation?
If the entire linguistic community agrees that this ball is "red", then how might our "reasoning" be wrong? What "reasoning" is involved when we teach someone how to use the word "red"?
There is actually many examples if you look for them. Someone, I believe it was Srap, earlier gave the example of Pluto being a planet. The linguistic community agreed to this, but it turned out to be wrong. We can also say for example that "the sun rises", and "sunrise" are misleading usage, and wrong, because the sun doesn't rise, the earth spins. There is clearly "reasoning" involved in teaching how to use words. One must decide how to approach the task. And the required technique differs depending on whether the student is beginner or advanced. Learning how to use "red" would generally be more toward the beginner level, prior to the complex logical concepts required for science and mathematics. I've never really taught language use, but I think the reasoning involved in teaching the use of "red", might involve deciding how to demonstrate the concept of colour, and deciding how to properly demonstrate a specific colour, "red". There are judgements which must be made.
So now we're back to @Isaac's teapot and the missing screw. In that discussion, the question was only about successfully referring to a particular that (might or) might not possess a property you believe (or don't believe) it does. I think it's plain that you can; for some cases, I'm leaning on the causal theory of names, and for others on how demonstratives work: you can clearly demand someone get "that" off your kitchen table even when you know very little about what "that" is. Exactly how that works may be unclear; that it works, I believe, is not. (We may come back to the double-bind theory of reference eventually.)
Here, we might start with the question of whether "being on my kitchen table" is a property of the object in question. It can be expressed as a predicate, as I've just done, but we could just as well express the situation as my kitchen table having the property of "having that on it," assuming again that "that" will manage to refer to the object. Or we could define a two-place predicate "on" such that "on" is true of an ordered pair
There are a couple ways to take that: I described "on" as a relation not just of two objects but of two objects in a particular order, so that on(table, thing) was already false, but on(thing, table) was true and I want it to be false. on(table, thing) and on(thing, table) describe different states of the world; in this case, the demand to make whichever is true false needn't concern itself with the order, because context will take care of that. But if I asked you to put that thing on the table, my demand would not be satisfied by you putting the table on that thing. So if we want on/2 to carry the same meaning across different uses, we can't rely on context in that way, and have to build in the required order. How do we do that?
Do we say that "on" takes three objects, the two from before and a third that specifies the order? If so, the third would look something like this: "1 = thing, 2 = table". Such a list can be presented in any order, so we don't have a regress, only a rule about each natural number up to the arity of the predicate being used, so this is a genuine option. But our new on/3 takes two concrete objects and a third which, whatever it is, is not like that. I say "whatever it is," because the semantics of the ordering list are unclear at this point: are those objects in the list, or expressions referring to objects? I guess either would do, but we're still building in a lot of other stuff, some of which looks suspiciously abstract, so we could just give in and have "on" take a single abstract object which is the ordered pair
If we do that, my asking you to get that thing off my kitchen table would be asking you to make "on" false of the ordered pair
Can we do something similar with other cases? For instance, if my bike tire is flat, is it a different object once it's inflated, or is it just a different arrangement of tire and air, the tire itself never changing? (In this case, we may or may not have any specific batch of air in mind.) But then what would we say about the shape of the tire, that surely changes when it's inflated? If anything is a property of an object, surely its shape is. But I make different shapes when I sit and when I stand — does that make me a different person? What all of these examples have in common is that there are at least two different times considered: the tire is never flat and inflated at the same time, I am never sitting and standing at the same time, and so on. So a first attempt at distinguishing what is essential to an object from what is accidental is, naturally, distinguishing what is constant or invariant about it, what does not change from one time to another, and what does or can change from one time to another. Essential is what is time-less, and accidental is what is time-dependent. The same dog barks at one time and not at another.
But Isaac's screw-missing teapot raises a batch of familiar problems: evidently material constitution is not a great candidate for the timeless identity of an object. If we replace the missing screw with another of the same size, we have the Teapot of Theseus: is it the same teapot after as before the installation of the new screw? (It's considerations like this, if memory serves, that drove Peter van Inwagen to conclude that inanimate objects lack identity altogether, and thus do not, strictly speaking, exist.) One solution offered, in a sort of conventionalist spirit, is that this is all a collective fiction: there are no things with identities that we come along afterward and refer to; rather, our various acts of reference, intended and accepted by us as such, and our deeming these acts successful, is all there really is here. Thus, the slight oddity of Russell's account of definite descriptions — that they involves implicit existence claims — is vindicated, because indeed we are asking others to accept , at least for the duration of this exchange, what amounts to a stipulation that there is a dog when we say "the dog is barking."
The conventionalist account doesn't automatically undermine a distinction between essential and accidental properties, of course; you could take it as simply falsifying all claims of essence, or you could conversely take essence as whatever we tacitly agree it is. We generally count me as being the same person sitting or standing, and since that's all there is, that's enough.
But there's an odd wrinkle to all this. If I, like Isaac's teapot, do have an identity, then a proper semantics of me would require everyone to speak of me as if I do, and we would expect the corpus of attempted references to me to roughly, and only roughly, follow this requirement. That means the conventionalist will argue that our broad agreement in how to talk is just that, and nothing more; while the identitarian will argue that our broad agreement is a consequence of there being objects with identities. The conventionalist would seem to have parsimony on their side, and can allow or disallow the hypothesis of concrete self-identical objects as their mood dictates; but the base position is that it is more perspicuous to venture only that we say what we say. The object-identitarian offers a theory that explains why we talk the way we do, and the conventionalist can just say he doesn't need one.
That means there are two overlapping arguments here: on the one hand, the conventionalist can keep poking holes in whatever theory of object identity the other side comes up, because he needs no such theory anyway, and may even think no such theory is possible; on the other hand, the object-identitarian has to come up with a theory that works and show that it is needed, which means he also has to find some flaw in the conventionalist account of our referential speech acts — not for the sake of his theory but to show that some theory is even needed. What's not clear in any of this is how the evidence is to be handled: I'll venture that most people's pre-theoretical intuition is that we talk the way we do because things are the way they are, and that our talking the way we do is in fact evidence that things are the way we say they are.
But we have those pesky scientific refutations of how we talk: sunrise, solidity, and so on. That doesn't show that how we talk is never evidence of how things are, but it does show that it isn't always such evidence. On the other hand, the conventionalist can shift from the claim that how we talk is only evidence of how we talk, and nothing more only for methodological reasons, to a claim that how we talk is only we how talk — now meaning our agreement is precisely evidence that there is nothing more.
If that were true, it would not only deny the object-identitarian what was counted pre-theoretically as evidence but change the character of what's to be explained by any such theory. If the mean girls call you a loser, that's just a thing they say: the truth-value of their statement matters to you, but not to them; what matters to them is producing some effect, of hurting your feelings. That's the sense in which it is "just something they say." But not only can you not conclude from someone saying something that it must not have a truth-value, in this case the effect is only produced if you assume that it does, and they assume that you will assume that it does. If they know you will discount what they say as being just mean-girl noise, or just noise period, there's no reason for them to say it. The conventionalist can retreat again and say that the hurt feelings are known inductively to follow utterances of "loser," and that's all the mean girls need. That might actually be true! But you have to show that such an account really will extend to cover all language use. This situation is so simple that I think what we're really seeing is not exactly language at all but something more like dominance signaling that happens to use language because, well, there it is; we tend to use words even when what we're doing is really nothing more than growling articulately.
Nice post!
A good survey of the options in there. As I see it, in the end we're doing things with words. The relevant context reveals what we're doing, not just the words or sentences themselves.
Which, in turn, would seem to relate identity and convention to purpose. Keeping in mind Ryle's regress - we don't necessarily need to have articulated a purpose in order to have one.
I have no problem with referring to particular things, and this is because I accept the law of identity. The real problem is with change to a thing. How can the same thing at one time have a property which it does not have at a later time? Shouldn't this make it not the same thing? So Aristotle proposed the law of identity to say that a thing has an identity proper to itself, regardless of changes to it. It's just an assumption which we must make to allow for the observed temporal continuity of existence. There is said to be a relationship between what a thing actually is (provided for by form) and what it potentially is (provided for by matter). The thing itself is understood as a temporal continuity of this relationship. So issues like Theseus' ship become irrelevant because they propose a problem which is created by failing to properly respect the difference.
Also, I think that we need to respect the difference between an object and a subject. Predication is of a subject, not an object. So when you speak of an object for the purpose of predication, like "my kitchen table", you represent a perceived object as a subject "my kitchen table", and you proceed in predication. We talk as if we are referring directly to the object, but for the purpose of logical clarity it is best to maintain a separation between the subject with predications, and the object which is supposed to be represented. Then if problems arise, with temporal continuity for example, we can always inquire as to how well the name (subject) represents the object.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I would say that logically, you have two subjects, "my kitchen table", and "that", each assumed to be representing an object. And, you are not predicating anything of either of these two, but describing a relationship between them. The relationship you call "an order".
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I would say that the "order", or relationship is definitely not a type of object, being completely different from an object, as something inferred through logic and definiions rather than perceived through sensation. "On" is not used to refer to an object, so if we make a subject called "on", this subject does not represent an object, it represents a relationship between objects. And that relationship is defined in spatial terms, or mathematics, or something like that.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
i think you've touched on a completely different issue here, a more complex issue. This is the relation of parts to a whole. When we name an object it is composed of parts, and the object is considered to be a whole, consisting of parts. However, as Aristotle described, we speak of privations, and perfection in respect to the whole. So this is a sort of ideal which we impose, on the object. Your bike is more perfect when the tire is filled with air, even though it is still the same object, as having the same identity, regardless.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, I think I see this in the same way. The law of identity is a useful fiction, like mathematical axioms are. It allows us to talk about a thing's temporal extension, as a thing, thus making it into a subject. We could say that everything changes from one moment to the next, as time passes, therefore there is no such thing as an object with temporal extension. However, we notice that certain aspects appear to remain unchanged for durations, so we want to be able to talk about these things with duration as existent things. So we posit a law of identity which allows that there is something real which remains unchanged as time passes, this provides us with the basis for accounting for the reality of consistency, which is what scientific laws are built on.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The way we talk is really not reflective of the way things are, that should be obvious. Talking is purpose driven, like a tool which conforms itself to what we are doing, so it's really more reflective of our intentions. That's why "meaning" might commonly be defined as "what is meant". But intention stands before us as a dark philosophical unknown, so people are often not inclined to look that way. This is why it takes a special way of talking, the scientific method, based in a special intention, to move toward an understanding of the way things really are, rather than simply following where natural language leads us. In other words, language needs to be disciplined if we desire to develop an understanding of reality.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Now, it should become clear that the concept of "truth" needs to be based in honesty, the use of language to honestly reflect one's intentions, rather than the notion of an objective truth value. There is no objective truth value, just like there is no thing with its own identity, even though I believe in that law of identity. I believe in it because it has proved very useful in helping us to communicate, and ultimately to help us understand the nature of reality, but I do not believe that it is very accurate, or a perfect representation, or 'true' in the sense of correspondence.
I just can't get around the idea that in most, but not all, cases we use the words we do because they're the right ones. I don't think a linguistics that is all pragmatics with no syntax or semantics is a real option.
Quoting Andrew M
I wouldn't deny that there are choices we make, sometimes implicitly, which enable us to enact our purpose; I just don't think that makes our purpose constitutive of the objects we interact with. I think they have to be there, as they are, for us to have the options we do, among which we select the one that aligns with our purpose. If you can sometimes sort papers by author and sometimes by keyword, depending on your purpose at the moment, it's because they have authors and keywords. If they didn't, these wouldn't be options for you.
I agree. But which are the right words also depends on context (which seems apropos a thread on truth).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
All good. But I don't think we can successfully take a view from nowhere on this. We perceive the world in a particular way that is, in part, dependent on the kind of creature that we are.
I was talking about the reasons why we say that the ball is a "red ball", and we assume that it cannot not be red. because it is a red ball I think this is analogous to the reasons why we used to say that Pluto is a planet, and we would have been inclined, at that time, to say that it cannot not be a planet.
Quoting Luke
I don't see the relevance.
Quoting Luke
I don't see the relevance.
Quoting Luke
That's not what the issue was though. The issue was whether this particular ball which we classified as "red ball", because we thought it was that type of ball which could not be other than red, would still be the same object, this ball, if somehow it became apprehended as not red. We called it "red ball" because we thought it is necessarily red. But if it is demonstrated not to be a red ball, like Pluto was demonstrated not to be a planet, then we ought to accept that the reasoning by which we identified it that way was wrong, and not try to impose on the ball that it must be a red ball.
Teachers, and other English speakers called Pluto a planet, because that's what we called it. When the reasoning was demonstrated as faulty, these English speakers had to adjust. They did not insist that Pluto must be a planet because that's what we call it.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It might be useful for you to reconsider this to some degree. We, as living human beings, have sensory systems which have evolved from nothing. That means that over the millions or billions of years of evolution which have produced our sensory systems, the sensory systems have been shaped and formed by what has proven to be useful. So the way that we perceive things, as objects, is a product of that usefulness. The important thing to note, is that unlike your example, alternative options for how we perceive things, are not there for us.
We have been forced into this mode of perceiving because it served some evolutionary purpose, and now it is a fixed part of our being, which we cannot opt out of. And as you mentioned in the other post, we just keep getting pesky scientific refutations. Science has provided us the means to get beyond the limitations of our sensory equipment. Plato's principal message was that the senses deceive us in our quest for truth, follow the intellect not the senses. And I suppose, through the presupposition of free will, we've managed to develop the intellect as an alternative option, under the notion that it can operate independently from the senses. In Aristotle's ethics, contemplation is the highest virtue.
The crank replied to that I refute myself by admitting that I would not appreciate the coyness and that the issue is a moral one.
That's the kind of reply made by someone who doesn't know how to discuss philosophy.
(1) The bit about coyness was merely for flavor. We can leave it off:
The speaker might know that the book is in the car but still be literally honest and correct, in saying "The book might be in the car".
If your friend asks, "Where is the book?" and you don't know and answer, "I don't know, but it might be in the car", or if you don't know and answer just, "It might be in the car", then you don't think your friend is a liar for that!
That is tremendously obvious not just philosophically but in everyday communication.
Not knowing whether proposition Q is true does not preclude that Q might be true.
I can't believe this even needs to be belabored.
(2) Consider another example even including the coyness bit:
Your birthday is soon. You ask your friend whether there will be a party. He says, "There might be, and I'm not saying more". Then there is a party, and you find out that your friend knew about it all along, and you do appreciate his coyness because it preserved a welcome suspense and surprise. And, by the way, what he said is true in both instances, and in both instances, he did not lie.
It's ridiculous that one should even have to explain such things to the crank, but I do in the interest of an abundance of refuting his utterly wrongheaded thinking.
(3) And, obviously, we don't refute a basic understanding of the mere modality of 'possibly' with regard to epistemic considerations by going completely out of the ballpark by saying the modal notion is refuted on ethical grounds!
/
One more time:
"I don't know Q" is not inconsistent with "Possibly Q".
No rational person thinks otherwise.
and
"Necessarily Q" is not inconsistent with "Possibily Q"
No rational person thinks otherwise. Or at least, no rational person informed about modal logic thinks otherwise.
/
Somehow, contrary to both basic philosophy and everyday language, some people have jumped to the conclusion that 'Possibly' is the negation of 'Necessary'. There is no rational reason to jump to that conclusion. Jumping to that conclusion seems to me to be a function of people not stopping to think that negation is not the only differing relation between concepts. The relation here is not negation but rather of duals.
Let q, Q, R be any sentences:
(1) 'necessary' ('N') is primitive, not defined. 'possibly' ('P') is defined, not primitive.
* The modal operators are duals, not negations, of each other.
df. Pq <-> ~N~q
thm. Nq <-> ~P~q
That is NOT equivalent with:
Pq <->~Nq
That is NOT a definition used in basic modal logic.
And NOT equivalent with:
Nq <-> ~Pq
That is NOT a theorem of basic modal logic.
The relation is not of negation but of duals.
P is the dual of N. And N is the dual of P.
* Just as the the quantifiers are duals, not negations, of each other:
df. ExQ <-> ~Ax~Q
thm. AxQ <-> ~Ex~Q
That is NOT equivalent with:
ExQ <-> ~AxQ
That is NOT a definition used in quantifier logic.
And NOT equivalent with:
AxQ <-> ~ExQ
That is NOT a theorem of quantifier logic.
The relation is not of negation but of duals.
The existential quantifier is the dual of the universal quantifier. And the universal quantifier is the dual of the existential quantifier.
* And note how 'all' and 'some' correspond with 'necessary' and 'possible'. Roughly stated:
"for all x, Q" is true if and only if Q is true for all x
"for some x, Q" is true if and only if Q is true for at least one x
and
q is necessary if and only if q is true in all worlds
q is possible if and only if q is true in at least one world
* Just as 'and' and 'or' are duals, not negations, of each other:
df. (Q or R ) <-> ~(~Q & ~R)
thm. (Q & R) <-> ~(~Q or ~R)
That is NOT equivalent with:
(Q or R ) <-> ~(Q & R)
That is NOT a definitions used in sentential logic.
And NOT equivalent with:
(Q & R) <-> ~(Q or R)
That is NOT a theorem of sentential logic.
The relation is not of negation but of duals.
Disjunction is the dual of conjunction. And conjunction is the dual of disjunction.
/
And to refute a confusion of the crank:
The crank mentions that we use the phrase 'possible worlds' in "q is necessary if and only if q is true in all possible worlds" and then we define 'possible' in terms of 'necessary'.
But 'possible' in 'possible worlds' is merely for intuition and is not at all needed formally. The semantics for modal logics need only mention 'worlds' (for that matter, not even 'worlds' needs to be mentioned as indeed "worlds" are merely members of a certain set that is part of a structure).
Moreover, we do not define 'necessary'. It is primitive. But we do go on to adopt semantics and axioms so that it is a theorem (not a definition) that, roughly put, Nq if and only if q is true in all worlds.
Also, as mentioned, we define 'possible' in terms of the primitive 'necessary'. But we recognize that we could do it in reverse: we could take 'possible' as primitive and define 'necessary' in terms of 'possible':
df. Nq <-> ~P~q
But that is not circularity. In any given treatment of the subject, we commit to one or the other but not both: 'necessary' is primitive or 'possible' is primitive.
No one who knows anything writes:
p is true iff p.
The formulation is:
'p' is true iff p.
Yes, 'impossible' is the negation of 'possible'.
df. Pq <-> ~N~q
df. q is impossible <-> ~Pq
/
q is is necessary if and only if q is true in all worlds
q is possible if and only if q is true in at least one world
q is impossible if and only if q is is true in no worlds
q is contingent if and only if q is true in at least one world and false in at least one world
So, we would not expect to find this as an axiom:
Nq -> ~Pq
But what about?:
Nq -> Pq
It is an axiom or theorem of just about all of the working systems of modal logic. (I think perhaps it is left off the initial "starter kit" axioms because whether it is needed as an axiom depends on whether it is derivable anyway from the other axioms, which may be formulated in various ways.)
* negation of necessary: "not necessary". the negation of Nq is ~Nq.
* negation of possible ("impossible"): "not possible". the negation of Pq is ~Pq.
* inconsistent (contradictories): "imply a statement and its negation". Q and R are contradictories iff together they imply a statement S and also ~S. Most starkly: Q and ~Q are contradictories, and R and ~R are contradictories. Also these are some contradictories:
Nq and P~q
Pq and N~q
* consistent ("compatible"): "not contradictory". In particular, saliently, in this thread:
Nq and Pq are consistent!
The crank is just hard cold plain wrong about it.
Why do I harp on that? Because:
Don't Normalize The Cranks!
:cool:
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
I stand corrected!
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
If that's what you call "honest" communication, and "well said", then it's no wonder that I have an aversion toward communion with you two. Your principles for sharing with me are not up to the level of my principles for sharing with you. Sad but true. What a shame.
Plato's principal message amounts to setting an unattainable criterion. The intellect follows from the senses. The senses are primary. The intellect is secondary.
Since you're speaking in evolutionary terms.
Science has enabled us to increase our innate sensory capacities. One has no choice but to follow their senses even when it is the case that they're using tools.
Logical possibility is a measure of consistency/coherency/validity. It is only by thinking about and discussing our own lives that we can arrive at a sensible discussion about logical possibility. Long before talking about how things could have been different, how things are different, how things could be different, long before all such discussions, we are humans living the set of experiences that all humans share... each set unique to one's own life. All those experiences are chock full of human thought and belief. Those thought and belief - that worldview - contained all sorts of thoughts and beliefs that are true and all sorts that were not.
Some of those were not even able to be true or not. None of them were based upon making everything possible. Not everything is possible. Some things are impossible. No amount of argumentation will change events of the past. Yet we can easily stipulate a possible world in which we disregard that which is known to have happened, essentially replacing history(what happened and/or is happening) with falsehood. We can then further discuss what may or may not have been the case according to our stipulations. We can measure the consistency, coherence, and/or the validity against the current norms thereof.
If it follows the conventional rules of logical inference, then it is deemed logical, reasonable, rational.
A story can be perfectly meaningful, easy to read and understand, and otherwise intelligible to not only those with some mastery of language like us, but also to those still early on in the language use game. It could also follow all the rules of logical inference and still be false on its face... absurd even.
This shows us that we we ought not place too much value upon those standards, particularly when the topic is truth.
For Plato it is not an unattainable criterion, it is a description of reality, what is the case. The soul necessarily precedes the body as the cause of order in the material parts which is what constitutes a living body, organized parts. So in Plato the mind is prior to the body, and must rule over it to maintain the order of the parts. That's a fundamental tenet of Plato's dualism, repeated many times. And he posits a third thing, passion or spirit, as intermediate between body and mind, and the means by which the mind rules the body. This third thing accounts for the supposed "problem of interaction" commonly charged against dualism. If the fundamental order gets reversed, and passion or spirit is allowed to ally itself with the body instead of the mind, and the intellect is allowed to follow the senses the result is irrational acts.
Your claim, that the senses are primary, and intellect follows from the senses needs to be supported, justified. The problem is that sensation requires ordered material parts. And nothing but a mind or intellect is known to be capable of ordering parts.
So, you separate the intellect from the senses by virtue of positing a mind(presumably of God) and then tell me that my claim that senses precede intellect needs justification?
Which tool do we use without requiring us to trust and use our senses? Which thought can we have without using our senses?
Morality.
Quoting creativesoul
All of them.
I have not presumed God, I just gave you the logic. A sensing body is an organized body. This means that it requires ordered parts. The only thing which is capable of ordering parts, is an intellect. Therefore intellect must precede sense. Thus my claim is justified. Yours, that senses precede intellect, has not been justified.
From the Platonic perspective, which is what I am giving you, the immaterial mind as "soul", precedes the material body and causes the parts which constitute the organized body to be ordered in the necessary way. There is no need to assume God at this point, only the need to assume an immaterial soul, as prior to the material body. This is because a material body can only exist as an organized body, and that requires something to order the parts.
It is only when we consider the belief that material bodies preexisted life forms, that we see a need to assume God. This is because these material existents also exist only as ordered parts, and some sort of intellect is required as that which orders the parts.
Quoting creativesoul
I don't see how these questions are relevant. Questions do not justify your claim, nor do they address the logic I've presented you with.
You claimed that we ought not trust our senses but rather our intellect. I claimed it was impossible.
Actually, I claimed that was Plato's message, and I explained why. You still haven't justified your claim.
My claim is supported by the evidence. That's what the questions were about. Plato's is supported by logical possibility alone. There are no examples.
Since "evidence" is empirical, this statement is a fallacious argument called "begging the question", which does not qualify as valid justification. You need to demonstrate logically, why the evidence shows that it is impossible to give priority to the intellect, over the senses. Simply insisting, that this is the way it is, and that the evidence supports this, does not justify your claim. Justification requires a logical demonstration.
Quoting creativesoul
I provided you with the logical demonstration. This is not "logical possibility", it is a logical necessity. A conclusion produced by valid logic, is a necessary conclusion, not a logical possibility. Since the logic is valid, and the conclusion is necessary, you need to address the premises, if you do not believe that the conclusion is sound.
Which premise do you believe to be unsound, that a living body is an organized body, consisting of ordered parts, or, that an organized body consisting of ordered parts requires an intellect as the cause of the ordering? And, how does "the evidence" support your belief of unsoundness?
The irony.
I've not given any argument. Answer the questions.
So all valid conclusions are necessary in your view? Seems our notions of "necessary" differ.
I didn't bother because I thought Mww gave a satisfactory answer. But I really didn't understand your use of "tool". Why do you think that the intellect has to use tools? Wouldn't the intellect be best represented as a tool itself? And as a tool, it is distinct from the senses, which might also be represented as tools. So the intellect would be a tool which we use without the requirement of trusting the senses.
In fact, in the Platonic tradition, we use the intellect to question, doubt what appears to us through sensation. That's how people figured out that the earth orbits the sun. So we have established a relation of non-trust between the intellect and the senses, and that's why the scientific method is so strict in relation to observation, such that multiple observations are always compared. This is because sensation is not trusted. So science, through the use of intellect and distrust of the senses, has led us to understand the reality of all sorts of things which we cannot directly sense, like molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, photons, and waves.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, that's what constitutes a valid conclusion. The conclusion is necessitated by the premises. Some people call it entailment or "logical consequence". [quote=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_consequence]Logical consequence is necessary and formal, by way of examples that explain with formal proof and models of interpretation.[/quote]
It followed from the rationale you employed to arrive at not trusting the senses. You mentioned how we have exceeded our innate capabilities, or words to that effect. We use tools to do that. We 'use' our senses to use tools.
The intellect is existentially dependent upon physiological sensory perception(biological 'machinery').
The dispute between us amounts to you holding that the senses are existentially dependent upon an intellect, whereas I'm stating the opposite.
If you think that morality is a tool that we use and that we can do so completely independent of physiological sensory perception, then I'm not sure I've much interest in continuing. Notice how I didn't answer Mww. If you think that the intellect can somehow exist and/or emerge in the complete absence of physiological sensory perception then I've not much else to say. I find it odd that you're asking me to argue for my view, and even odder that you've accused me of begging the question when I've not even offered an argument. That's especially odd given that you're presupposing precisely what's in dispute within one of your premisses.
So, the intellect orders the parts that it later doubts?
When A is existentially dependent upon B then B is necessary for the emergence of A. When something(A) is existentially dependent upon something else(B), the former(B) cannot precede the latter(A).
You're claiming that the intellect is what orders the individual parts of the senses(physiological sensory perception). That would require that the intellect exist in its entirety prior to the parts that it arranges into order. This would further require a complete severance of the intellect from all biological machinery(physiological sensory perception) such that the intellect could put those biological structures in order.
I have no reason at all to believe that the capacity you call the intellect is anything aside from what is afforded to us by certain biological structures. I've no reason whatsoever to believe that the intellect is even capable of remaining intact(in it's entirety) in the complete absence of those structures. Evidence shows otherwise. From this, we can be sure enough that intellects are existentially dependent upon certain biological structures. Whereas there is no evidence to the contrary. We've yet to have discovered a case of intellect when and where there have never been biological structures.
All things begin simply and grow in their complexity. Thought, belief, and thinking about thought and belief are no exception. The intellect you speak of is capable of doubting the veracity of the senses. As such it is a practice that is itself existentially dependent upon being able to think about one's own thought and belief. That requires picking one's own thoughts and beliefs out to the exclusion of all else. The intellect is existentially dependent upon a worldview. All worldviews consist entirely of thought and belief. All thought and belief results, in part, of certain biological structures(physiological sensory perception) doing their job. The intellect cannot precede that which it is existentially dependent upon.
Yes, every person exceeds one's innate capabilities, that's what learning is. We learn how to do more, and to know more than what we are born with.
Quoting creativesoul
This is what you insist, but you have not justified it. And it really depends on how one defines "intellect". A materialist will define it such that the thing described in the description depends on sensory perception. A dualist sees as I do, the need to allow for some sort of intelligence as the cause of order in the living body, therefore existing prior to the "biological machinery", and "intellect" gets defined in a way to allow that it is not dependent on physiological sensory perception.
There is really no correct or incorrect definition of "intellect" here, one's preferred definition is a reflection of one's world view. However, how one proceeds from the definition makes a difference to the way that one would understand the reality of the living person.
So, I can accept your proposal, that "The intellect is existentially dependent upon physiological sensory perception(biological 'machinery')", and we could define "intellect" in this way, as a function of the brain or something like that, but we still need to account for the cause of organization, and order in the living being which constitutes the material body, the cause of existence of what you call "biological machinery".
This is what I believe Aristotle proposed, a separation between "mind" (intellect), and "soul". Prior to him, "mind" and "soul" were used interchangeably, so there was much ambiguity and confusion between those who insisted as you do, that the mind is a product of the biological machinery, and those who insisted like I do, that the immaterial soul must precede the biological machinery as cause of its existence. So Aristotle separated the concept of "soul" as the immaterial cause of the material body, from the concept of "intellect", as an attribute of the soul, which is dependent on the material body.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, that would be the case. And there is really no problem with that idea, because we always proceed in our activities without absolute certainty. So we order things, move them around, with healthy doubt and skepticism, then look back at the consequences with the same skepticism, to see where we have had successes and failures. In its basic form this is trial and error, and in a more complex and structured form it is the scientific method of experimentation.
But now I've proposed a distinction between the mind (intellect) and the soul, to help you to understand this matter. Let's say that the immaterial soul is prior to the material body, as the cause of that order, and the intellect is posterior to the material body, as dependent on it, like you say. In this way, we have also a direction, or guidance toward sorting out the difference between innate knowledge, and leaned knowledge. We can attribute some sort of "knowledge" to the soul, which inheres within the living body, in its capacity to act, and which must have preexisted the living body, as the cause of it coming into existence as the very body which it is, and we can also attribute a different sort of "knowledge" to the intellect, as knowledge which is learned by the living being.
Quoting creativesoul
This is what I say is begging the question. Your claim was that A cannot precede B. You attempt to justify this by defining A as "existentially dependent" on B. But that's just using different words to state your conclusion as your premise, begging the question. What you needed to do was to show, give a demonstration to prove, that A is existentially dependent on B.
Quoting creativesoul
How do you get this conclusion of "in its entirety"? There is nothing to necessitate your conclusion that the named thing "intellect" cannot be changed as a consequence of its own actions. In fact, that's exactly what learning is, changes being made to that thing "intellect", changes being made by the actions of itself and of others. It makes no sense to insist that the intellect must exist "in its entirety", prior to learning. And, the process of trial and error, and the scientific method mentioned above, are changes which the intellect makes to itself. Why insist that the intellect must exist "in its entirety" both prior to and after such changes? How could these even be changes to the intellect, if the intellect must exist in its entirety both before and after the change?
Quoting creativesoul
I really have no idea what you could possibly mean by "in its entirety" when you refer to the intellect. The intellect is something constantly changing, learning, bettering itself. It could never be complete except possibly in omniscience, but then it wouldn't even be an "intellect" which always has the objective of learning.
Therefore your argument along these lines really is not useful. You observe an intellect using specific biological structures, and you call this an intellect "in its entirety", so as to exclude other forms of "intellect" which are using other biological structures, or even no biological structure at all, from being an intellect "in its entirety".
To use your word "tool", the biological structure is a tool of the intellect. It shapes that tool in its learning process (neurological patterns), so the intellect is actually conforming the tool to suit its purpose. Why would you not consider the possibility that it created the tool altogether?
Or, do you think that when living creatures were evolving on earth, there was a specific point in their evolutionary advancements which constituted "having an intellect" in its entirety? All creature without this definable attribute had no intellect, and those with it have an intellect. How would you propose to draw this boundary?
Quoting creativesoul
I don't see where you derive this idea from. All the evidence points exactly in the opposite direction of what you claim. First, there is no such thing as the intellect in its entirety. Next, it is exceedingly clear, that the intellect uses the biological structures as a tool. Neurological patterns are shaped in the learning process, for various purposes. And, it is only the particular purpose, the specific end, which is dependent on the tool. The existence of the thing using the tool is not dependent on the tool. Only the particular end desired by that thing is dependent on the tool.
So you seem to see a biological structure, which has been shaped and formed toward some particular ends, and you conclude that the thing using this tool, (the biological structure), depends on it for existence. But you are not respecting the proper relationship between the user of the tool, and the tool. The user of the tool is only dependent on that particular set of tools, for obtaining that particular set of ends. You are not respecting the reality that if the thing which is using that set of tools (the intellect in this case), was inclined toward completely different ends, it would be using a completely different set of tools.
In other words, you observe in the world, human intelligence inclined in a specific way, depending on its tools (biological structure), to achieve its desired ends. And you conclude that the evidence indicates that the intellect is "existentially dependent" on that biological structure. This is fallacious logic. The intellect is not existentially dependent on that biological structure. Only the fulfillment of those specific ends is dependent on that biological structure. So now, you will move to define "intellect in its entirety", as the capacity to fulfill some specific set of ends, and insist that "intellect in its entirety" is dependent on that biological structure.
Quoting creativesoul
This is obviously a false premise which seems to be misleading you. The second law of thermodynamics indicates that the natural process is for the complexity of things to break down over time. So the starting premise needs to be the reverse of what you propose here. All complex structures naturally break down, and lose their complexity as time passes.
So, if things are observed to grow in complexity, we need to assume a cause of this. So I proposed "intellect" as the cause of this order and organization. You prefer that we define "intellect" in another way, which makes the intellect dependent on, as emergent from this organized complexity. I will consent to this, but will you consent to my proposal now, that "the soul" is the cause of this growth in complexity? Then we can have a proper separation between the soul and the intellect.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A tool is just some means that facilitates an end. Morality is, then, merely that tool in a human such that an act he actually performs is in accordance with the means for determining what that act should be. I need no sensibility, and indeed sometimes it’s even better....more comfortable for me.....if there is none, for the accomplishment of my moral ends. We may, or indeed even may not, witness our own acts through sensibility, but the witnessing of them is very far removed from the tool employed for the determination of what they should be, from which it follows that not witnessing at all, removes sensibility from consideration entirely, while the determining tool remains in full force.
I didn’t get from your comments, that you hold the senses are existentially dependent upon an intellect, or that the intellect orders the individual parts, that is to say, the biological structures, of the senses. What is done with the product of the sense’s biological structures, which is nothing more than mere mental/cognitive stimuli, considered as initially ordering the parts of that which is sensed, is nonetheless the dedicated purview of the intellect. In which case, it does hold that the intellect is antecedent to that which stimulates it. That senses don’t think and intellects don’t perceive, should be perfectly obvious to those examining the human condition, from any justifiable point of view.
I don’t see it as unreasonable that the intellect can exist in the complete absence of physiological sensory perception. In the first place, sensory perception is redundant, insofar as all sensation is from perception and all perception is sensory, the reciprocity of them being impossible, and that which affects the brain is physiological, re: cognitive neuroscience, but that which affects the intellect is not, re: pure speculative metaphysics. It is possible for the intellect to operate on that which is impossible to perceive, but it is absurd to suppose there is that perception upon which the intellect cannot operate. We all think in our sleep, or, more accurately perhaps, there is precedent for the justification that any human can think in his sleep, which is the same as saying the intellect is functioning in the complete absence of the physiological senses and perception.
That there is no intellect without the physiological structures sufficient for it, is given, but that structure is the brain and ancilliary connectivity, not mechanistic sensory devices.
I now return you to your local......ehhhhh, you know.
I've nothing else to say. Be well.
Creative and I seem to be on completely different planes of understanding. So I really don't understand why Creative engaged me after the thread had gone dormant for a number of days. We could have both foreseen that any attempt at discourse would not get far, based on past experience. Maybe it was a matter of boredom.
Quoting Mww
I think this is the position I was arguing. The biological structures, which include the senses, must be ordered in such a way so as to fulfill each one's purpose. In this case the structures which constitute the various forms of sensation must be ordered in the way required for the senses to sense. The argument is that it can only be an intellect which creates this biological order, the order which is necessary for these parts to serve their various purposes.
Quoting Mww
So "the brain" presents an interesting problem. If we equate intellect with brain, or say that intellect is dependent on brain, (as produced by it or something like that), then when I present my argument that the physiological structures which are responsible for sensation require an intellect, we could just reduce this to say that they require a brain. But the problem is that the brain itself is an organized biological structure. And the argument is that any such order in material bodies requires a cause of that type of order. And, the cause must be an intellect of some sort. So this places an intellect as prior to the brain, and impossible that the intellect is a product of, or dependent on, the brain.
True enough, but couldn’t that be conditioned by natural evolution?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, true enough, but that kind of intelligence isn’t human, nor could it be, and human intelligence is the only one we have non-contradictory grounds to discuss.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yeah, that’s been a logical inconsistency for eons. Hence....epiphenomenalism and such like. But whatcha gonna do when there’s no answer that doesn’t ask its own question. Speculate, of course, also been done for eons and with just as much logical inconsistencies between them.
Pick an explanation, I guess, run with it ‘til you trip over it. Metaphysical reductionism can only go so far before it defeats itself, right?
We could say that natural selection is a process whereby different structures of order are selected for, but it doesn't account for the cause of the ordered structures which are selected for.
Quoting Mww
I agree that this type of intelligence isn't the same as human intelligence, but neither is the intelligence of dogs and other animals, the same as human intelligence. This is why I said to Creative, that the way one defines "intelligence" makes a difference. But why would we define "intelligence" in such a way so as to exclude the possibility of intelligence which is not human intelligence? It makes much more sense to look at what it is which is referred to as "intelligence", and define the term accordingly. This would clearly allow for the possibility that there is intelligence which is not human intelligence. Then the argument I provided necessitates that there is intelligence other than human intelligence, if we use that open definition.
Or, we could go the other route, which I proposed above. We can maintain that definition of "intelligence" which limits it to human intelligence, as a product of the human brain, and look for another name to account for that other source, or cause of order. This name has been proposed as "soul", which is intelligence-like, but not quite the same.
Quoting Mww
I don't think it's a matter of picking an idea and running with it, it's more like back and forth, back and forth, like the trial and error process I referred to above. Take a set of premises, and produce a conclusion. The conclusion is never completely satisfactory so we go back and make some changes to the premises. The conclusion is still not completely satisfactory so we revisit the premises again, and so on.