Thoughts on Epistemology
Many of my thoughts on epistemology come from Wittgenstein's last work called On Certainty. They were developed from my understanding of On Certainty, in particular Wittgenstein's bedrock propositions. However, I don't want to give the impression that what I'm putting forth in this thread is necessarily what Wittgenstein was communicating in On Certainty. I developed my own theory based on some of his thinking, and how I interpreted some of his thinking. So much of my own thinking on this subject is going beyond what's presented in On Certainty. It's my expansion of some of the ideas in On Certainty, for better or worse.
First, it seems that there are beliefs that arise apart from language, and a belief, whether linguistic or not, is simply a state-of-mind. These mind states are clearly seen in our actions. This is not to say that all actions by living organisms reflect beliefs, but simply to say that all beliefs are reflections of mind states, which in turn are shown by the things we do.
Second, not only are there beliefs that arise non-linguistically, but our thoughts are also not dependent upon linguistics. This it seems, has to be case if one is to make sense of the development of linguistics. For if there are no beliefs and no thoughts prior to the formation of linguistics (language), what would be the springboard of language? How does one get from a mind of no thoughts and no beliefs, to a mind that is able to express one's thoughts linguistically? It also seems to be the case that language is simply a tool to communicate our thoughts to one another, which also seems to lend support for the idea that thinking is prior to language.
Third, the basis for beliefs in prelinguistic man is causal in nature, not based on reasoning, reasoning is a linguistic endeavor, at least as how it is defined here. How are beliefs causally formed? It seems to be the case that beliefs arise causally within the mind based on the interactions between our sensory experiences and the world around us. The interaction between our sensory experiences and the world do not necessitate the belief, but are simply sufficient to cause the belief. One acts upon the information given through sensory impressions, which in turn has a causal relationship with the belief.
Fourth, these three previous ideas form what is bedrock to all of epistemology. For epistemology arises out of language, it is a way of expressing what we know, or what we believe we know by using propositions. Justification come to an end with beliefs that are quite apart from those that arise through any method of linguistic justification. These bedrock beliefs are outside the purview of epistemology.
Fifth, bedrock beliefs can be expressed in language, as all beliefs can, but they are not dependent on language. For example, "I have hands," is such a belief, and it is expressed using linguistic concepts. However, the belief that we have hands is also shown by our actions, i.e., it is a state-of-mind that expresses itself in actions using our hands. Wittgenstein shows in On Certainty, as he reflects on Moore's claim that he has knowledge of his hands, that it is not a matter of knowing at all. There is something fundamental, something bedrock about this belief, and it is with such beliefs that justification ends. Thus, the idea or the conclusion that knowledge rests on beliefs outside the scope of epistemological concerns, something more fundamental, as expressed in the first three ideas of this thread.
Finally, the ideas expressed here solve two problems that have plagued some epistemological theories. First, the infinite regress problem, viz., that there is no end to justification, and the problem of circularity.
First, it seems that there are beliefs that arise apart from language, and a belief, whether linguistic or not, is simply a state-of-mind. These mind states are clearly seen in our actions. This is not to say that all actions by living organisms reflect beliefs, but simply to say that all beliefs are reflections of mind states, which in turn are shown by the things we do.
Second, not only are there beliefs that arise non-linguistically, but our thoughts are also not dependent upon linguistics. This it seems, has to be case if one is to make sense of the development of linguistics. For if there are no beliefs and no thoughts prior to the formation of linguistics (language), what would be the springboard of language? How does one get from a mind of no thoughts and no beliefs, to a mind that is able to express one's thoughts linguistically? It also seems to be the case that language is simply a tool to communicate our thoughts to one another, which also seems to lend support for the idea that thinking is prior to language.
Third, the basis for beliefs in prelinguistic man is causal in nature, not based on reasoning, reasoning is a linguistic endeavor, at least as how it is defined here. How are beliefs causally formed? It seems to be the case that beliefs arise causally within the mind based on the interactions between our sensory experiences and the world around us. The interaction between our sensory experiences and the world do not necessitate the belief, but are simply sufficient to cause the belief. One acts upon the information given through sensory impressions, which in turn has a causal relationship with the belief.
Fourth, these three previous ideas form what is bedrock to all of epistemology. For epistemology arises out of language, it is a way of expressing what we know, or what we believe we know by using propositions. Justification come to an end with beliefs that are quite apart from those that arise through any method of linguistic justification. These bedrock beliefs are outside the purview of epistemology.
Fifth, bedrock beliefs can be expressed in language, as all beliefs can, but they are not dependent on language. For example, "I have hands," is such a belief, and it is expressed using linguistic concepts. However, the belief that we have hands is also shown by our actions, i.e., it is a state-of-mind that expresses itself in actions using our hands. Wittgenstein shows in On Certainty, as he reflects on Moore's claim that he has knowledge of his hands, that it is not a matter of knowing at all. There is something fundamental, something bedrock about this belief, and it is with such beliefs that justification ends. Thus, the idea or the conclusion that knowledge rests on beliefs outside the scope of epistemological concerns, something more fundamental, as expressed in the first three ideas of this thread.
Finally, the ideas expressed here solve two problems that have plagued some epistemological theories. First, the infinite regress problem, viz., that there is no end to justification, and the problem of circularity.
Comments (1695)
This seems to point towards qualia and private content. Something I am not too sure about. I think there is merit in calling homo sapiens exclusive to this category as we seem to have issues with expressing our thoughts most of the time, which education and careful examination of facts remedies. There are specific cases, such as extreme forms of Asperger's syndrome or autism that seem to point towards this belief.
Quoting Sam26
I have my issues with the justification theory of truth and knowledge. It seems to impose an indirect realist interpretation on the mind and thus linguistics. Hence my above sentiments.
Quoting Sam26
The infinite regress problem just turns on its head and says (according to the justification theory of knowledge and truth) that what are misgivings in language simply corresponds to the fact that language is not mirroring reality, but then how does one go about ascertaining or verifying such a claim?
I pretty much agree with the rest of your post, but this step is suspect I would say.
Of course it all depends on how you define thinking. As you say, animals can reason in a causal fashion. Brains are evolved for that kind of Bayesian inference. Certain bodily actions will predict certain experienced outcomes.
But language is the enabler of what we really mean by thinking - cultural ideas giving a symbolic meta-structure to individual psychology. I can see a tree as a "tree", together with all that flows from that given a structure of cultural belief. And paying attention to a particular tree will result in at least the urge for some comment - a speech act that expresses that cultural belief as some syntactically organised proposition.
So an animal will see the same tree and - in attending to it - will start "thinking" in terms of relevant acts of orientation and motor response. That is just the way the brain is wired. Attention "loads up" the "output" side of the brain. It causes thoughts about what to do next, or what might come next. So the animal might start scanning the tree for ripe fruit, as it recognises the sight of a fig tree. It might start to cringe and be ready to run, recognising the tree to be the one likely to conceal a leopard sitting up on a branch.
This is the kind of bedrock epistemology you are talking about - inference based on embodied experience in a world.
But humans have added a third kind of automatic reaction to whatever falls into the spotlight of attention. We start to form some sentence. We get ready to speak about the thing. Focusing on the tree, we will already be having the same orientation and motor preparation thoughts - hmm, figs, whoah, leopards. But we then have the third unique motor act which is also now an informational or symbolic act. We get ready to make an utterance. And utterances have a grammatical or logical structure.
Of course, early human responses probably wouldn't have seemed particular rational or philosophical. The utterances that would have sprung their minds, or even been verbalised, would be judged rather matter of a fact, or perhaps a little mystical or customary. That just argues that modern human civilisation has developed a much more overtly logical and rationalising frame of mind. Speech acts are constrained by more careful rules - on the whole, depending on the company we keep.
So the point is that speech acts did from the start mark a departure point for Homo sap. On one level, it was just the addition of another kind of motor response. See tree, make a noise. Or even if you don't make that noise, automatically you start to think it - feel the urge tickling your throat - just as much as you feel your hands starting to shape so as potentially to climb it, or your taste buds start tingling in preparation for sweet figs.
But that nascent motor act is also a nascent symbolic act. The syntactical utterance could start to have a semantic meaning. In epistemically dual fashion, the mind of Homo sap was both a biological inference machine, living in a bedrock causal flow of embodied action, and also dwelling in this new realm of cultural belief. Social information was structuring the Homo sap mind. And that has now a different epistemic basis.
It depends on the bedrock of embodied causal being, but it is also - by design - increasingly detached from it. It wants to be separate, so as to now make possible a human realm of narrative, of fiction, of science, of art, of religion, etc. It wants to forget the bedrock roots of all thought and awareness - the embodied animal condition - so as to be free to invent whatever it finds useful at a cultural level of semiotics.
I think this makes a big problem for your desire to secure epistemology in bedrock causal knowledge. Yes, that is the bedrock of our mental being. But also, the other aspect of our nature is now the linguistic and informational one that has the aim of transcending this very groundedness. Cultural belief is always demanding to be cut free of what it sees as mundane reality, allowed to go wherever it likes.
Of course, this assertion of symbolic freedom is problematic. It does in fact still need an epistemology. There are reasons for rules of grammar, rules of thought, rules of reasoned inquiry. There is a best way to use our linguistic freedom - arguably. So we can't just use the epistemology of the bedrock causal view as the guide to how language should "rightfully" operate. There is a reason why "theories of truth" are of such philosophical concern.
Biology and evolution sorted out the epistemic rules for an animal level of cognition. The epistemic rules for linguistically-structured thought could be another whole ball-game. I would certainly argue that their bedrock seems "mathematico-logical" for a good reason.
It feels like that instead of looking downwards to our totally subjective biological embeddedness - holding up one hand, then another; or kicking at stones - we should be looking upwards to what it means that we could also be "completely free" within the bounds of some "objective rational attitude" to existence. Where does language - syntactically-encoded semantics - have its real ontic home?
There is much here to respond to, but I'll only point out some things that I did not say. First, I did not say that animals reason, but of course I'm using reason as something that takes place in language. Also, I'm not going to pretend that I know all of the nuanced things that go on in the brain of a prelinguistic human, because I just don't. The only conclusion that I want to make is that there are prelinguistic beliefs, and that much of our linguistic based epistemological system rests on these beliefs. You're going much further than my conclusions.
Quoting apokrisis
I also did not say anything about causal knowledge, in fact, I said just the opposite. Knowledge is based on certain causal beliefs. I do not even think there is such a thing as causal knowledge.
Quoting apokrisis
I do not understand this. I would not say that evolution sorted out epistemic rules, what does that mean? It sounds like you are giving evolution an intellectual basis. Maybe there are certain causal laws that dictate certain outcomes, but rules imply something else for me.
Thanks for the response Apokrisis, that took time to write out.
This is something important, and it is something that is crucial to understand in relation to bedrock beliefs (hinge-propositions). Why? Because some bedrock beliefs are formed prior to language, or along side of language; and as such, knowing or knowledge is quite a separate endeavor, which only occurs in language or in language-games. Prelinguistically there are only beliefs, so while beliefs do occur at this level (bedrock) as a state-of-mind, knowledge does not occur at the prelinguistic level. Knowledge is supported by the foundation, as well as a host of other concepts used in language-games.
Not only is, "This is my hand" - "I live on the earth" - "That is a tree" bedrock, but other states like "I am in pain" - "I am happy" - "I am sad," are also bedrock. This is not to say that there cannot be examples of these propositions not being bedrock, and in need of justification - it is only to say that for the most part, and in conjunction with the way Moore is using these propositions, they are bedrock and do not need a justification.
The problem is that when we use language to talk about bedrock beliefs, it makes it difficult to see them as separate and distinct from language. A belief does not need language (the concept belief does) it is merely a state, but knowledge and all it entails (truth and justification in particular) does require a language, and a language-game. We do not need a language to act, but we do need a language to convey thoughts. The way we act apart from language allows us to observe bedrock beliefs.
"People have killed animals since the earliest times, used the fur, bones etc. etc. for various purposes; they have counted definitely on finding similar parts in any similar beast.
"They have always learnt from experience ; and we can see from their actions that they believe certain things definitely, whether they express this belief or not... (OC 284)"
"If someone is looking for something and perhaps roots around in a certain place, he shows that he believes that what he is looking for is there (OC 285)."
These passages from On Certainty indicate to me that beliefs are not necessarily rooted in language. In fact, actions tell us more about one's beliefs than mere statements.
That's the value of On Certainty.
Would it have been as useful had he finished it? Perhaps not.
That's a quibble.
You can define reason as a linguistic act. But animals have been observed to reason in terms of working out how to solve some real-life problem. Even a jumping spider can scan a scene and work out how to creep around behind its prey so as to drop down on it. So broadly speaking, animals can "think things through" in a causally efficacious sense. The normal usage of "reasoning" is broad enough that you will in fact have a problem insisting on your narrower definition. And I was only trying to bring this out in describing your position as accepting "animals can reason in a causal fashion".
Quoting Sam26
That's another quibble so far as I'm concerned.
But then I don't believe in "knowledge" as justified true belief. I only believe in knowledge as justified belief. Truth is a rather redundant term for the pragmatist, as uncertainty can never be completely eradicated from any state of belief. (A separate argument perhaps.)
Quoting Sam26
I doubt I could put it more plainly.
Evolution produced nervous systems that were up to the task. They embodied epistemologies that worked.
You now seem hung up on the word "rules". Clearly I'm using it in a loose sense - one that imagines biology to be implementing some kind of "program" for understanding the world. It should be equally obvious - in that I'm taking an embodied/enactive/ecological stance on animal perception and cognition - that that is only then a metaphorical use of the term "rules".
In fact, given my whole bleeding point was that rules - syntactic structure - are a product of the informational realm of being, the underlying word-play should be clear. Actual rules are the last thing you will find in the biological organisation of the brain. Or in nature generally.
So my use of the word "rules" ought to have a usefully ironic ring to it in this context. Having just highlighted the actual rule bound nature of speech acts - the reliance on "unnatural" syntactic structure - I then said, so far as biological level cognition goes, evolution then sorts out its epistemic "rules".
But I didn't use scare quotes because I didn't expect your turn of mind to be so constantly literal.
Quoting Sam26
Maybe now you can address my actual point - that the epistemology of syntactic speech acts may have a very different bedrock than embodied cognition.
One is fundamentally subjective. The other, I'm saying, aspires to fundamental objectivity.
Much mischief is done in "theory of truth" circles because the dichotomous, or complementary, nature of this division is not properly recognised.
How could Turing have so impressed people with his theory of Universal Computation? Why did folk feel so convinced by Platonic idealism or logical atomism?
It just seems obvious that reason can grasp at some fundamental objective principles that are "beyond nature". And is the failure then to be able to completely secure them an actual failure?
These are the kinds of questions which are really bedrock to that other aspect of our being.
There are two ways of reading this.
In the first, I could read it as setting out in some absolute sense what belief is.
In the second, I could take it as setting out how you intend to make use of the word belief in the discussion.
Given your Wittgensteinian disposition, I'll take the second.
In which case I think it worth pointing out that we could make a distinction between a belief and, say, a disposition. In this account a belief would be a statement that is the subject of a statement of belief, and hence subject to whatever grammatical rules might be deemed appropriate. So in "Banno believes that Moore had two hands", the belief is that Moore had two hands.
And a disposition would be some preceding metal state.
And yet a disposition to act "causally in the world" is critically different from one to act "in the realm of truths and facts". So to call them both "mental" - or even metal - would be the matter in question.
Does one actually serve as bedrock to the other? Or does each have a different ultimate bedrock?
This makes me edgy.
There's something about beliefs arising non-linguisticaly that resembles beetles in boxes. You rescue yourself later in saying that any belief can be stated. But that leaves hanging the nature of non-linguistic beliefs. Are they more than beliefs that have not been stated? If so, don't they exemplify the sort of private mental furniture Wittgenstein cleared out?
An unstated belief is fine; an unstateable belief is nonsense.
The question at hand is, what does that mean?
I do believe, that beliefs acquired by humans and animals are all states-of-mind, and also this is how I intend to make use of the word belief throughout the discussion. However, the expression of beliefs, whether through one's actions, or those expressed linguistically, simply reflect a particular kind of state. So it's not either 1 or 2, but both reading are correct.
I think a disposition has a broader reach than simply a belief. A disposition may reflect various kinds of states, whereas, a belief state reflects a particular state, that of being Mary's belief; and if it is reflected in a proposition, of course it would involve the subject of the proposition as put forth by Mary.
I'm not sure of the purpose of pointing this out, maybe you could explain how it differs from what I'm proposing.
This is not a quibble. It goes to the heart of what I am saying. And I do hold to the definition of knowledge, that it is justified true belief.
Even Wittgenstein held to the idea that beliefs can be nonlinguistic, as in my earlier post in which I quoted him. Remember the belief is not dependent simply upon being something in the mind, it has to be shown within the context of life. Also there is no way to objectively verify what's in the box, they're referring to some thing, but that thing could be any X one wants it to be. If prelinguistic man has a belief, the only way to know if he has it, is by observation, what he does that reflects that belief. I'm not simply pointing to something in the mind, although it's that too.
I have a great respect for your understanding of Wittgenstein. What I find interesting here is how what you have said differs markedly from my own understanding of Wittgenstein.
I read him as clearing the room of invisible mental furniture; and I would include states-of-mind in that. My belief that Moore had two hands is not a thing in my mind. Indeed, I'm not at all sure it is a thing at all.
IF I were to follow on with the argument I started, I would have moved to show that dispositions, as defined, were either also such nonsense, or that they amounted to beliefs anyway. Here I would have taken myself as following Wittgenstein in getting rid of private objects.
Assume that your disposition constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you (PI, p. 207)
It seems that you might read that page in a quite different way to myself.
Quoting Sam26
Give me an example. ;)
Beliefs held prior to language would be stateable, but unstated. That's not unstateable.
Subtle, but I think worth noting.
Quoting Sam26
Hm. Better point the quote out to me. I say that he thought there could be beliefs that were neer stated, but also that any belief could be stated. In that sense, a belief is not nonlinguistic.
That is were we differ. Is it that, too? Is there something in the mind that is the belief, apart from the behaviour? Wouldn't that be a beetle?
But that does not render them unstateable; after all, there is language.
Curiously, and perhaps relevantly, such hypotheticals also require language.
My apologies. But the present discussion with @Sam26 is one I have anticipated for while, and I am rather enjoying it. I hope to learn something from it.
Hm. Not so fast. He did reject the notion of private objects.
No.
Then I am asking - what is that thing-in-the-mind? And I am suggesting, along the lines of the Beetle in the Box, that while we can talk about the behaviours, the thing-in-the-mind "drops out of consideration as irrelevant".
Can you see why I suspect saying a belief is "simply a state of mind" runs against Wittgenstein? Where have I gone wrong?
I must say, it is a great pleasure to talk to someone with a decent understanding of Wittgenstein.
I am understanding you as meaning what I would call an unstated belief.
This would seem to imply that the mind is a solipsistic universe where these prelinguistic and private ideas or concepts form, and from there, their meaning and content resides wrt. to the world. Is that something you would agree with?
Yes, but Wittgenstein did profess a solipsistic view of the self in the Tractatus. I never got the feeling that this was repudiated in his later works. Even the private language argument still allows for private content in the form of what you have been referring to about prelinguistic content. The fact that there's so much diversity among people, based on a personal trait like intelligence, which seems to be a measure of one's prelinguistic capability or versatility, seems to support this notion.
Yes, but:
The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. (5.62, TLP)
That has always sounded solipsist to me and can be considered a bedrock belief.
A belief is a statement upon which the believer is willing to act.
Such acts, of course, include asserting that statement.
But that the cat cannot state the belief does not imply he has no such belief.
Further, a statement is not a thing-in-the-head. The private object is avoided.
I don't have the idea in front of me, or at least I can't express it better than simply referring to proposition 5.62 in the TLP.
OK, I'll see what I can do. It'll be a clutter of confusion though, which I try and avoid by professing quietism, heh.
Wittgenstein makes some very strong claims about the self. For example:
5.631 There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas.
If I wrote a book called The World As I Found It, I should have to
include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were
subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this being a method
of isolating the subject, or rather showing that in an important sense
there is no subject . . .
Why does Wittgenstein think that in an important sense there is no such thing as the
self? This seems to be denying the one thing we can be most sure of.
To understand this, we have to return to Wittgenstein’s views about objects and states
of affairs. Suppose that the self were an object in the world. Then there would be an
object that pictures facts using propositional signs. But what is the connection between
the subject and the propositional sign on the one hand, and the fact which is represented,
on the other? It seems that this relationship is necessary, not contingent. Once we
have the projective relation supplied by the subject, it is a necessary truth that a given
propositional sign represents the fact that it does. But this would mean that, if the subject
were an object in the world, there would be a necessary truth about the relationship
between objects. But, as we know, Wittgenstein denies that there are any necessary facts
of this sort.
On this interpretation (defended by Fogelin), the denial of the subject’s being part of the
world is of a piece with the denial of the claim that there are facts about logical form,
and about representation.
2 The truth in solipsism
This can help us make some sense of Wittgenstein’s remarks about solipsism. On the face
of it, it is odd for someone who denies the existence of the self to say things like
5.63 I am my world.
However, a view about how this sort of thing can be combined with the foregoing is
suggested by the following remark:
5.64 Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed
out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism
shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality
co-ordinated with it.
In the light of this, §5.63 should not be read as suggesting that in the end there is no
world other than me and my mental states, but rather that there is no me other than the
world. The sense in which what solipsism means is correct is that these ultimately come
to the same thing: the existence of a world of states of affairs.
Available here.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2614/on-solipsism#Item_1
So I don't agree with this, because I do not think that beliefs are a state of mind.
Let's follow a variation of Moore's two hands, but using Jack, my cat, who has only a limited vocabulary.
Jack will come and collect me when his bowl is empty, herding me to the bowl and insisting I fill it.
So do we say Jack believes his bowl is empty?
I think so, since it is easy to explain his behaviour as the result of such a belief.
Do we say Jack knows his bowl is empty?
If we understand knowledge as inherently justified, then no. A justification is a statement, after all, and Jack cannot state anything.
Can Jack be certain that the bowl is empty?
For him to be certain must there be room for doubt? Could a cat doubt?
I do believe that animals can express beliefs, so I think we agree on this point. I also believe animals can express doubts. A doubt can be a state reflected in one's action.
So you don't think that a mind is in any particular belief state, and that that state is reflected in action? What about the mind reflecting a state of happiness, or the state of being in pain, all of these states have a public and a private side. Wittgenstein dealt mainly with the public side of this in terms of language.
It's as though you're removing the mind from the picture altogether. I don't follow your thinking. What do you think a state-of-mind is?
If it's utter crap, that's fine too.
Thanks! Looking forward to what you have to say.
Happy New Years!
But isn't it a thing-in-the-heart according to you? Don't pretend to doubt what you believe in your heart, etc.
Quoting Sam26
The issue here, as I see it, is that the mind side of the equation is the personal. The dichotomy of private vs public presumes a basic dualism - a strict divide between mind and world. But a dispositional and semiotic approach to knowledge would stress that even "access to the private self" is in fact a development of a personal stance. We form "ourselves" in a meta-representational sense by the very act of inquiring "what is going on inside me?".
So the mental is just as much part of the construct as the noumenal. The beetle in a box metaphor is seductive but badly wrong. Well, at least it rides roughshod over the fact that introspective self-awareness is a culturally-taught and linguistically-structured skill. The interior nature of consciousness - the idea that it is another "world" - is rather an illusion on this score. Its truths seem secure, but they too depend on habits of interpretance.
The self becomes what we have to produce to make the world real. And then saying there is a beetle in the box, a state of mind that "the self" privately perceives, is a recursive linguistic act. It is using the semiotic technology of language to isolate the "true self" from the public self.
We are public creatures first in being social creatures. And then within the reality of that public language game, we are meant to discover our psychologically individuated "real selves". The possibility of private truths at odds with the public truths becomes a live issue as we develop a "modern Western rational attitude" to the nature of "our" phenomenal existence.
So yes. There seem to be inward feelings and outward actions. And each appears to speak to its "other" in some crucial relational fashion.
But you have to be able to credit a society or culture with a "mind", a dispositional attitude embodied in its language games, to see what gives our public acts their semantic truth or facticity. Our actions can be judged.
And in counter fashion, we have to take the personal "mind" a whole lot less seriously. It is not some private reservoir of feelings or facts - the objects of a self-perception that then begs the question of, well, who now is this observing self?
The private~public dichotomy implies a hard division - a metaphysical-strength one - between the psychological self and the social self. But really, selfhood is always emergent - the bit that has to be produced to make its counterpart of "a world" real.
So language anchors social selfhood. And it anchors personal selfhood. On both levels, it is producing its beetles in their boxes.
We can see how this does then create a distinction between public truths and personal truths. As Peirce argued, our best truth is the communal one - ie: the beliefs that a community of rational inquirers will arrive at as being the least doubtable in the end. But there is also the possibility of our local personal truths. To the degree that we might fruitfully be possessed by some individual goal or disposition, then we get to see the world "in our way".
Well, something has to explain artists, poets and other entrepreneurs. There is a reason why now - as a society - a personal vision has become something to encourage. :)
I think it a philosophical construction.
The pain in my foot is not the same as the pain in my throat. The sensation in my back - is it a pain, or just a twinge?
These "states-of-mind" share little more than that we use much the same words for them.
Yu might consider the series of articles commended by Wayfarer:
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/12/27/consciousness-where-are-words/
Yup. Either that or the same ontic categorisation of reality into self and world.
My foot, my throat, my back ... and my pain.
Things only get confused when I see you slice open your foot and feel something of your pain.
I think a belief is conceptual and concepts are understood linguistically. Without the words there are no beliefs, there are actions, reactions and feelings - there are even motivations, but I think you have to stretch "belief" to extreme definitions to assert they exist non conceptually.
I say this as I watch chimps on the TV, refugees from the laboratory system, meeting for the first time and making friends. I call any of their feelings "beliefs" seems absurd.
There are no words - but there is plenty of communication going on.
But has it? Do you have a better notion of what a concept is that of what a belief is?
I don't think we do. Concepts are just more things-in-the-head.
Are you saying they do not have beliefs?
The dispositional view of Pragmatism emphasises the way that an adequate concept has to bring with it an adequate measurement. So a belief has this dichotomous structure. The idea is separate from its confirmation. However the idea also does itself tell us what kind of confirmation is suitable.
So truth-telling can't transcend its own grounding conceptions. Yet also, the business of truth-telling can improve over time as it becomes measurably less subjective by being measureably more generic and public.
From a nice review of that Misak book...
Truth by tautological similarity has all the familiar problems. But if similarity is defined in terms of the set of differences that an observer feels don't really matter, then you have the basis of a useful construct. Now the differences that make a difference pop right out.
That is the Batesonian paradigm that has more traction in psychology these days I would say.
The world is ripe with differences. Everything is different or individuated in some fashion. So the art of cognition is learning how much difference you can afford to ignore. That way, only the significant differences reach your attention.
That is the kind of "Helmholtzian" cognitive architecture that an anticipatory neural network or Bayesian brain seeks to implement.
I'm juxtaposing this to it being a thing-in-the-head plus a set of behaviours.
SO the question I have for the in-the-head theorists is, what is added by the stuff in the head that is not already in the statement? And the answer seems to me to be that the Beetle argument shows that in so far as a belief is private, it drops out of the discussion; and in so far as it is public, it is a statement and associated behaviours.
Further, reaching for concepts does not help, because what I have said for beliefs is much the same as what I would say for concepts: in so far as a concpet is private, it drops out of the discussion; and in so far as it is public, it is a statement and associated behaviours.
My apologies.
I don't see it as up to you to deliberately determine what is significant for you. That task has already been accomplished the moment you experience any event. You find yourself attending to something before you consciously will it. You attend to what grabs to, draws you out, pops out at you, as you said.
And what is relevant to you is that entitiy that is not so similar in relation to your construing history that it will not be noticed, and not so other that you will fail to assimilate it. The 'too other' is what is experienced via affectitites of fear, anger,etc. that paralyze our ability to go on.
Bateson shared some things with Kelly, but I prefer Kelly's phenomenological stance to Bateson's behaviroistic model of causation. '
Can I just check an assumption I am making.
There is a model of language that supposes a meaning in the private world of Anne, that is translated into the public language of English, spoken, heard by Beth, and translated into Beth's private world.
I understand Wittgenstein as rejecting this model.
What do you think?
Quoting Sam26
Sure.
So, since they can be talked about publicly, they are not private in the relevant sense.
Quoting Sam26
Yes!
Quoting Sam26
We have beliefs that have not been stated. We do no have beliefs that could not be stated.
SO I agree, with the proviso that what is spoken of in that last quote as happening privately is not ineffable. Nor are any other internal experiences ineffable.
ANd hence there is no part of a belief that is ineffable. No private mental furniture.
I now suspect I am labouring a point on which we agree.
The issue though, is that "the stuff in the head" is very real, just like the thing in the box is very real. We can call the thing in the head a Belief, and we can call the thing in the box a Beetle, but this doesn't tell us anything about those items.
You can argue that because for each of us, the others cannot see these items, then there is no point in talking about the items, because we will never understand them with any sort of certainty, but that's why we have descriptive terms. So we find ways to describe these things, just like we find ways to describe colours to the blind person. There is no reason why the blind person cannot understand the wavelengths of light, and how they interact with various substances to produce what we perceive as colours. But colour doesn't drop out of the discussion, it is still there, as what is being described.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Please justify this.
Yes. The "you" I have in mind is not some conscious being. This is about the cognitive architecture of brains. So what catches our attention is what fails to be dealt with at a habitual level of processing. A lifetime of experience serves as enough of a filter so that most of every moment can be left to automatic pilot. Attentional resources are reserved for the differences that make a difference at a habitual level of response - the ones that can't be assimilated to the similarity that is ... a habit.
Quoting Joshs
Yep. Things could be too outside of normal experience not to be assimilable even by attention-level processing. But even then, eventually we reach some kind of adjustment. We "conquer our fears" by forming some construct to which a class of events can be assimilated too.
So the general principle applies. The mind doesn't build constructs by focusing on what thing have in common. Concepts are constraints on variety. They are about learning the differences that can be ignored, so as then to highlight the differences that are then key.
Concepts are filters rather than collectors. They separate signal from noise.
Maybe this is the difference between hoarders and minimalists? One can't bear to throw away anything - it all matters. The other is selective and finds order in becoming disinterested in inessential variety. :)
Quoting Joshs
How do you mean Bateson's behaviourism? I would have thought his informational/hierarchical feedback approach was pretty anti-Behaviourism.
Behaviourism treated nerve networks as chains of physically triggered nodes. Sensory energy gives a network of poised physical connections a jolt, then that shot of energy just rattles around the circuit in mechanical fashion.
But cybernetics stressed the informational aspect of neural action. And seeing networks as hierarchies again completely changes the paradigm. Now a jolt of sensory energy can only disturb the state of the system to the degree the system lets it. Through top-down constraint, it can damp the "input" just as readily as it amplifies it.
Do you just mean that Bateson was overly physicalist by comparison to Kelly? That could be so. I only mention Bateson because he coined some good phrases, not because I find him totally reliable on all matters psychological. Clearly, as with schizophrenia, he could really screw up.
And I've only faint familiarity with Kelly. But checking Wiki, I see his approach is exactly the dichotomy-based approach to categories that I take....
So you find a person cruel to the degree that the person is not kind, and vice versa. That is, an individual or particular is located on the spectrum of possibility created by a complementary pair of generalities. This is that to the degree it is not the other.
So a construct would be the spectrum that allows the binary judgement - an assimilation of a particular instance to one or other generality. But still, generalities are constraints, in my book. They assimilate the particular by ignoring irrelevant differences rather than collecting together the sufficiently similar.
Is a three-legged rabbit still a rabbit? Why not if every rabbit has got some kind of difference and the loss of a leg doesn't make any essential difference. But maybe a race of three-legged rabbits exists. They are known as ribbits. Now it matters if our candidate was born one way or the other.
The point about a constraints-based approach is that it demands the least work. To pick out the sufficiently similar is a lot of work. Each individual has to be inspected according to some checklist. They will always be different and so it is going to be a judgement whether the difference matters anyway.
But it instead it is presumed that everything is the same until something critically different manifests, then that makes for efficient processing. And a dichotomous or bipolar construct spells out what "critically different" means at the level of absolute generality. It is the exact opposite of whatever pragmatically defines "sufficiently alike".
Every beautiful person is a little bit ugly. But rather than fuss about the classification problem that appears to cause, we just take a broad-brush approach of accepting every person as beautiful until - in binary fashion - a person seems to fit better the folk who are in the class of "every ugly person is a little bit beautiful".
We can of course add intermediate categories - the people who are just middling. But a constraints-based principle is still the low-effort approach. It doesn't demand every detail be judged for similarity. Only some general weight of "poor fit" has to be judged. Then the categorisation can flip over to its other pole.
You could very well have a look into your own head Banno, to find the truth about that. But that would not be justification, and that's why there is a difference between justification and truth. And it's also why what's in my head is not "knowledge" in the sense of JTB, and what's in your head is not "knowledge", these are just ideas. That they are not properly called "knowledge" does not mean that they are not real though.
If you do not allow for the reality of what's in the head, you'll never have any truth, because the meaning of any statement is dependent on context. And the true context is in the head of the author. Without the true context you have (as meaning) only a multitude of subjective interpretations. Wittgenstein demonstrated this quite well, in the sense that there is a multitude of interpretations of what he wrote. Unless there is a "what he meant" which is determined by what was in his head at the time (context), then there can be no truth or falsity to anything he said, just multiple subjective interpretations.
So, the claim "the stuff in the head is very real", is justified. The reality of the stuff in the head is demonstrated by a person's actions. The actions of the individual demonstrate that the person is thinking, and has real ideas within the head. To me, this qualifies as justification.
The first example Gettier comes up with has to do with Jones and Smith applying for a job. If Smith had strong evidence that Jones will get the job (for example if the boss said Jones will get the job) and also that Jones has ten coins in his pocket (for example, Smith counted the coins in Jones’s pocket), then he might assert the following proposition:
A) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.
This proposition entails that:
B) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.
If Smith sees this entailment and accepts proposition B on the grounds of proposition A, then with the given evidence, Smith is justified in believing proposition B. It turns out that Smith himself will unexpectedly be offered the job, and by random chance Smith also has ten coins in his pocket. Now B is true even though A is false. Thus, proposition B is true, Smith believes that B is true, and Smith is justified in believing B is true. However, Smith does not know that proposition B is true. He doesn’t even know how many coins he has in his own pocket. He bases his belief on the number of coins in Jones’ pocket. So, says Gettier, Smith has a justified true belief in proposition B, but he doesn’t know proposition B.
Even if we allow Gettier to make proposition B (a very broad statement) on the grounds of proposition A(a very specific statement); and even if we allow Smith’s evidence to be sufficient for true knowledge (basing his beliefs on what someone says without any further proof or evidence for that claim), other problems arise which cannot be overlooked.
Gettier makes a very specific statement (Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket), and from that he deduces a very generalized statement, (The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.) However, it is not clear who ‘the man’ refers to here. If ‘the man’ refers to Jones then the statement is false, because Jones is not the man who gets the job. If ‘the man’ refers to Smith, then Smith would be making a statement without any justification, since he believes that Jones will get the job. The first possibility violates the truth requirement for justified true belief, while the second case violates the justification requirement. Gettier has tried to use semantic obscurity to trick the reader into believing that justified true belief is not enough for knowledge. However, it can be seen that in this case the ‘knowledge’ was either not justified or false, and thus never constituted knowledge in the first place.
Gettier’s second example starts with Smith having strong evidence for the following proposition:
C) Jones owns a Ford.
Then we are told that Smith has a friend, Brown, whose whereabouts he does not know. Smith then selects three locations at random to construct the following propositions:
D) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Boston;
E) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona;
F) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk
Propositions D, E and F are all entailed by C. Smith realizes this entailment and accepts D, E and F on the basis of C. Smith is justified in believing all of these propositions because he’s justified in thinking that Jones owns a Ford, even though he has no idea where Brown is located.
It turns out that Jones no longer drives a Ford, and by coincidence Brown is in Barcelona. In this case Smith does not know that proposition E is true, even though proposition E is true, Smith believes E is true and Smith is justified in believing E is true by having strong evidence for Jones owning a Ford.
Again, ignoring the fact that we cannot be sure Smith has adequate evidence for Jones owning a Ford (in the original paper Gettier says Jones has owned a Ford his whole life – in my opinion not much evidence at all), a serious problem arises.
This second example cannot be accepted because it contains an inherent logical flaw. Gettier uses an example in the form of ‘either a or b, not a, therefore b’. However, this form of logic can ‘prove’ an infinite number of impossibilities. For example, I have reason to believe that Brown is in Barcelona, so I say “Either cows fly or Brown is in Barcelona.” It turns out Brown is now in Amsterdam, therefore, cows fly. This is obviously impossible, thus showing that the formula can’t be used to prove anything – or else it could be used to prove everything! You cannot claim here to know a proposition which randomly happened to be true just because its complementary proposition which you thought was true wasn’t. This is the wrong ‘justification’. Conclusions derived using this logical sleight-of-hand cannot be considered knowledge.
One problem that it isn’t necessary to look at in order to undermine Gettier’s paper still deserves to be considered; this problem being what constitutes adequate justification. In both cases, justification for Smith comes from empirical evidence. Now, if someone has 100% (irrefutable) evidence for X and believes X is true, then that person is justified in believing X and is considered to have knowledge of X. On the other hand, if the person has 25% evidence for X and the person believes that X is true, then the person is not (adequately) justified in believing X and does not have knowledge of X. Justification depends upon evidence, and where we draw the line of when something is adequately justified based upon sufficient evidence is unclear (would 51% evidence for X be sufficient justification?). Gettier makes the assumption that the evidence presented justified Smith’s beliefs. However, Gettier makes no attempt at saying how strong the evidence is, and if we can infer anything it is that the evidence is quite weak, and it could be argued that in both cases Smith was not justified in making the statements of knowledge he made.
The problem of reference-muddling in example one and the inherent logical flaw in example two show that Gettier problems are no threat to ‘knowledge as justified true belief’. The classical definition of knowledge as justified true belief doesn’t have to be changed, and no extra premises have to be added.
© Lukasz Lozanski 2007
This is found at the following link: https://philosophynow.org/issues/63/The_Gettier_Problem_No_Longer_a_Problem
I would not say that Smith is justified in believing B, because his reason for believing B is A, that Jones will get the job. And Jones is not getting the job so A is false. Therefore Smith's belief of B is not really justified because the supposed justification is based in a falsity.
Quoting Sam26
This is what I told Banno, truth depends on the meaning of the statement, and meaning requires interpretation. If there is to be a "true interpretation" it is the one which puts the statement into the proper context, and this is what is in the mind of the speaker. If Smith is the speaker of the statement, then "the man" refers to Jones, because Smith believes that Jones is the man who will get the job.
Quoting Sam26
That's exactly right, Gettier has produced ambiguity with respect to who "the man" refers to, and uses this ambiguity in his argument. The argument is really an argument from equivocation. A states univocally that Jones is "the man" who will get the job. Later, it is suggested that "the man" might be considered to refer to Smith. To allow this is to allow equivocation.
Quoting Sam26
But this cannot be the case in "Jones is the man who will get the job" because the job has not yet been rewarded so Smith cannot be justified by empirical evidence in this belief.
The obvious problem here is that when folk chop up heads, they find grey goo. The do not find beliefs and memories and such.
That's irrelevant, logic is what justifies.
Why don't you ask them?
If you cannot express a belief as a concept then you don't have a belief.
How could you have a belief you cannot conceive of, let alone express?
I have a Wittgenstein quote bubbling up...
Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.
The point is that there is a foundation for our experiences, and for our linguistic activity. One doesn't doubt the foundation of our world any more than one doubts the pieces in a chess game. Just as the game of chess is built around the pieces and the board, so too is our language built around the reality in which we have our life. There are certain fundamentals that are generally not doubted. For example, that I live on the Earth, or that I have hands, or that I am a humans amongst other humans. These things are fundamental, and allow our linguistics to thrive.
Just as the rules of chess are built on top of and around the pieces and board, so too is language built on top of our world, and the things in the world. Thus, my approach to language, and the language-game of epistemology, is that there is foundational support for any epistemology, and this foundational support is quite separate from epistemological language generally. This can be seen if we refer back to Moore's propositions, and what Wittgenstein says about these propositions. Wittgenstein attacks Moore's use of the word know in reference to Moore's claim that he knows he has hands. Wittgenstein points out that Moore's claim to know doesn't make sense in the context of Moore's claim, and Wittgenstein illustrates this by reflecting on what it would mean to doubt that one has hands in Moore's context. Wittgenstein points out that there is something fundamental, basic, or bedrock to Moore's claim that is generally outside epistemological language-games. However, the claim is that this is generally the case, because as Wittgenstein points out, there are cases where it would makes sense to doubt that this is my hand. Thus not every statement of the form "I know this is a hand," would fall into the category of being outside of our epistemological conversations.
Not especially relevant to to I was saying I think.
Such a person could vocalise what he believes to be there.
I see no reason to accept that.
I do not believe that one can justify a belief simply by referring to sensory experience. This is because "to justify" means to demonstrate or prove something. If I could justify a belief simply by saying I know that it's the case because I saw it, then many mistaken perceptions and lies would qualify as justification. To justify is to demonstrate that you really did see what you claim to have seen.
Quoting Sam26
I would not agree with this either. Just like we can ask the person to justify "I know it's the case because I saw it", we can ask for justification of the fundamentals. The fundamentals are mostly derived from our sense perceptions, and the descriptions of what we perceive all need to be justified. That is why science uses repetition and comparison in experimentation, rather than simple observation. If the reasons for maintaining the fundamentals cannot be justified then we have reason to dismiss them.
The very real problem here is that the most fundamental aspects of knowledge are the oldest, and knowledge evolves. So the time may come when the rapidly expanding body of knowledge with newly established principles, starts to be inconsistent with the foundations. That is why we need to revisit the foundations, and see if they remain strong in light of newly discovered principles. For instance, "the sun rises in the morning" could be such a fundamental principle. But if we revisit it, we can see that it isn't really correct to say "the sun rises". This is a relic left over from an ancient world view, which should really be replaced because it isn't conducive to proper thinking about the relationship between the earth and the sun. We turn toward the sun in the morning, and away from the sun in the afternoon.
Well, actually we justify beliefs in this way all the time. Do you mean to say that I can't claim to know that the orange juice is sweet because I tasted it? Or, I can't claim to know that a particular tree is in a specific spot in the woods because I saw it? That would be a bit bizarre.
I don't know where you come up with such a limited definition of justify. Moreover, this problem is something I see quite a bit. If you do a careful study of how we use the term justify, it doesn't just apply to logical arguments such as proofs.
There is a difference between the concept of justification, and actually being justified. One may think one is justified based on whatever method of justification one is using, but that doesn't mean you are justified. Obviously if it turns out that what you thought you saw wasn't in fact a tree for example, then you're not justified. Simply saying you're justified doesn't mean you are. Saying you're justified and being justified are quite different. That said, our sensory perceptions are generally correct, if this wasn't the case, then much of what we believe wouldn't be justified, which I assume you believe. Besides we often make claims based on strong inductive arguments that such-and-such is the case, and we are perfectly within our rights based on the rules of good inductive arguments; but that doesn't mean that we're necessarily correct.
So if you ask me how I know the orange juice is sweet, and I say I know it because I tasted it, what kind of claim am I making if it's not a knowledge claim? Is it a mere belief, an opinion?
As to your last sentence in that paragraph, "To justify is to demonstrate that you really did see what you claim to have seen." So if a botanist comes out of the woods, and makes a claim that they know they saw an oak tree, you would say to them - "You don't know it, you only believe it." That would really be strange. You're perfectly justified based on the general accuracy of your sensory perceptions.
I'm not making the claim that all sensory experiences are justified. I'm making the claim that we do generally trust our sensory experiences, and we are generally justified in believing a claim to knowledge based on sensory experiences.
It seems that our doubting only goes so far, and this seems to be the case with what we know too. For example, "If [such-and-such] deceives me, what does 'deceive' mean any more? What can I rely on? I really want to say that a language-game is only possible if one trusts something (I did not say "can trust something"). (OC 507-509)." There seems to be something basic that we rely on, that we trust, something fundamental.
Wittgenstein also said, "If my name is not L. W., how can I rely on what is mean by "true" and "false" (OC 515)?" Again the fundamental nature of some of our statements or beliefs. More fundamental than epistemological statements.
Well, no.
But what does this say? How is expressing a belief as a concept different to expressing a belief? How is expressing a belief different to making a sincere assertion?
Your concepts always reduce to speech acts.
@Metaphysician Undercover says "I do not believe that Moore has justified a his belief simply by referring to sensory experience"
What do we make of this? Does Meta not understand what a hand is? Does he not understand how to use the word "here"?
What place does doubt have here?
The problem with many theories, this includes many epistemological theories, is that we (many philosophers) are trying to be as precise as we can. Precision is important, but sometimes concepts don't lend themselves to such precision. Many concepts fit the family resemblance model as presented by Wittgenstein in the quotes above. Just as there is no one definition that can describe all games, so there is probably no one definition that will fit every use of our epistemological concepts. There are just various general definitions that fit a wide swath of uses.
The problem is that when we think we have described every possible use of a concept with a particular definition or theory, and we hear of something that doesn't fit our definition or theory, we have a tendency to think it's not an example of what we're trying to define. And indeed it may not be a counter-example, but one has to "look and see" if the example has a "family resemblance." Of course this is not as easy as it sounds because many philosophers spend their whole lives developing theories, and sometimes one counter-example will destroy much of their work. This is why it's important to not be so dogmatic about some of these ideas or theories.
Take a look at what you're saying with these examples. "The orange juice is sweet". You've tasted the orange juice, but you've given no indication that you know what "sweet" is, to back up your claim. So you've given no justification for your judgement that the juice is sweet, only a statement of judgement. A statement of judgement does not constitute justification for that judgement. How can you accept any such statement of judgement as justification for that judgement? I might taste the juice and claim that I know the juice is tart. Then we have two conflicting descriptions of the juice, each, according to your sense of justification is justified.
Look at your other statement, "a particular tree is in a specific spot in the woods". You haven't identified the tree or the spot. To do this you would have to produce a picture, drawing of the tree, or otherwise describe or identify the tree, and then a map of some sort, showing that the tree which you saw was in a particular relationship with other land marks. Or, you could say that you walked in the woods, and walked past this and that object in these relative locations, and came across a specific tree which looks like this, and describe the tree in its relationship with the other ojects.
Notice how justification of something which was sensed, requires a description. The claimed statement of fact "the orange juice is sweet" requires a description in order to justify it. For example, I tasted it and it was comparable to the honey which we agree is sweet.
Quoting Sam26
We are not talking about "justify" in its common use. We are talking about a very specific use of "justify" in a particular field of study, epistemology. Words such as this, which play a very specific role within a field of study have very restrictive definitions within that field of study, and these definitions must be upheld to maintain the principles of that field of study. I think it is very clear, that in epistemology, "justify" requires a demonstration, explanation, or description. You cannot justify a statement simply by saying "I've sensed it to be so".
Quoting Sam26
The point is that "to justify" is to demonstrate the correctness of. This means that the people who you demonstrate this to, must accept the demonstration, as a judgement of "correct" is required. So justification is an action, a procedure, which is not necessarily successful. You can attempt to justify something, and fail. Also, you can think that you have justified something when you have not.
In relation to our sense perceptions, the issue of justification is not necessarily a matter of whether or not our sense perceptions are correct, it may be a matter of how we put words to our sense perceptions, how we describe them. If a person does not have the capacity to adequately describe what was sensed, then the claimed sensation cannot be justified. This is where words fail us, in describing new things. Some might argue that this presents us with the limits to knowledge, where words cannot go, but that's not true. What we must do is figure out ways of expressing the new sensations, and new feelings, and that's how knowledge expands, language develops and evolves.
Quoting Sam26
Yes, that claim "I know it is sweet because I tasted it" is a mere statement belief or opinion. The use of "know" here only indicates your personal certitude, or conviction in your belief. It is not supported by evidence that you know what "sweet" means, and that you are qualified to make that judgement. The problem is that we, your auditors, take it for granted that you know what "sweet" is, and because of this assumption we are inclined in common vernacular to say that you are justified in your statement.
This points directly to your beliefs concerning foundational propositions. Remember in Wittgenstein's "On Certainty", if we keep asking for justification, we get to the bottom, where justification can go no further. This bottom consists of the things which we take for granted. We know what a "hand" is, we know what "the earth" is, we know what "sweet" is, etc.. But I do not agree with Wittgenstein, that we can go no further in our request for justification. I believe that even these fundamentals need to be justified. In some circumstances it is reasonable to ask individuals to demonstrate that they know what these words means, like Socrates asked for a demonstration of "just" from the participants in Plato's "Republic". How we each understand each word may need to be justified because if it comes about, through evolving practises, that "sweet" means something different for you than for me, or "hand", or "earth", or any other words, then our epistemology, the entire structure of knowledge starts to become compromised.
For example. Look at what "justify" means to you, in comparison with what it means to me. I have a much more restricted definition than you. Suppose we apply our competing definitions toward a scientist justifying a theory with reference to what occurred in the lab. Under your definition, the scientist says it's true because I saw it in the lab. Under my definition the scientist must account for exactly what was seen in the lab, such that we can properly judge what is being claimed.
Quoting Sam26
You are just making an appeal to authority here. And an appeal to authority, when the authority is verified, qualifies as justification. The person says "I saw an oak tree". You ask for justification. The person says "I am a botanist, I know what an oak tree is". You may ask for credentials, etc.. But as Wittgenstein indicates, there is no real bottom to justification, we get to the point where we just take things for granted.
Quoting Sam26
This point, which Wittgenstein suggests, "whether it makes sense to doubt the statement", is just an arbitrary line, a division which Wittgenstein seeks to impose. In reality, "whether it makes sense to doubt", is just a decision which we all must make, and a decision which is specifically formulated for each particular instance of usage. There is no general principle, of this or that statement ought not be doubted, as Wittgenstein might appear to imply. In reality any statement might be reasonably doubted under the right circumstances. So your claim that there are foundational statements which are outside the epistemological language-games cannot be supported. Otherwise we would have to admit that there are statements which are "necessarily correct". But the correctness of statements is contingent on how the statements relate to the world, and this contingency denies the possibility of "necessarily correct" statements. If you go that route, toward necessarily correct statements you validate Platonic Realism.
Quoting Banno
If Moore says "this is a hand", or "here is a hand", and holds up a hand, he is performing a demonstration. If I agree, that what he holds up is a hand, then he has demonstrated to my satisfaction, that he knows what a hand is, and I conclude that he is justified in saying that. He might then proceed to say "I have two hands", and I'd be inclined to say that he is justified in saying this because he has demonstrated that he knows what a hand is.
If, on the other hand, he makes the statement "I have two hands", without demonstrating that he knows what a hand is, then this is a simple statement of claim. This statement needs to be justified unless I am prepared to take it for granted that he knows what a hand is.
In the former case, he is making a demonstration, I except the demonstration as successful, therefore he is justified. In the latter case he is making a statement of claim and unless I am ready to accept his claim on faith and trust, a request for justification is warranted. Sam26, following Wittgenstein, would say that such a request for justification is not warranted, it is unreasonable because I ought to accept on faith the foundations of our knowledge. .
So there's no confusion, let me suggest that there are sensory statements (like Moore's claims to knowledge about having hands in response to the skeptic) that lie outside of epistemological language-games. However, much of this is driven by context, but not all of it, since one can use statements like "I know..." in context, and still use the words incorrectly (Moore's case). The point is that we need to be able to distinguish between the two, viz., those that are understood in terms of justification, and those that fall outside any need for justification. Wittgenstein makes this distinction in On Certainty again and again. Thus, the question arises, what separates the kind of sensory statements that are perfectly normal in terms of being justified, from those that need no justification (again Moore's statements/propositions)? The answer to this question lies in another question, "Does it make sense to doubt the claim?" One must not forget the language-game of doubting when trying to understand the difference between these two kinds of sensory claims.
Moore is standing before an audience raising his hand and makes the statement that this is a hand, i.e., that he knows it's a hand. But what would a doubt here look like? Did Moore double-check to make sure those were his hands? Moreover, what would making sure look like? We can juxtapose this with a statement that does make sense to doubt, and Wittgenstein gives just such an example in the following: "And if he says he knows it, that can only signify to me that he has been able to make sure, and hence that his arms are e.g. not still covered in bandages, etc. etc. My believing the trustworthy man stems from my admitting that it is possible for him to make sure (OC 23)." In this case one may awaken from an operation in which it was in doubt about whether the infection was so severe that one might lose a hand. I wake up, my hand is still bandaged and numb from the operation, so I'm still in doubt about whether I have a hand, i.e., I don't know that I have my left hand. The bandages are removed, and I see (sensory observation) that my hand was not removed during the operation. I now know, based on what? How did I make sure? What is the justification? Lo and behold, I still have a hand!
Science also makes use of sensory observations in terms of what they claim to know. They observe experiments, and write down their observations. They make discoveries of new planets based on what they SAW through their telescopes. How do you know there is a planet in such-and-such a place? I observed it, and you can observe it too, look and see. These are not subjective observations. They can be objectively verified. The same is true in my orange juice is sweet example. How do I know the orange juice is sweet? I tasted it. Here, you can taste it too. Ahh, yes it's sweet, or no, it's not sweet. Obviously if others taste the orange juice and it's not sweet, then the person wasn't justified in making the claim that it was sweet. Just like scientists can verify a claim that such-and-such is planet, i.e., others can observe (see) whether the claim is true (objective verification) - making sure. Many claims are justified in just this way.
It would be ludicrous to claim that sensory experiences are not acceptable methods of justification. Obviously this doesn't mean that we accept every sensory observation, but generally it's true that we can rely on sensory observations as a perfectly acceptable method of knowledge.
Don't you see this as a big problem for any epistemology? What "justify" means for me is completely different from what it means for you. Isn't it absolutely necessary to have some form of agreement on word usage in order to have any success in epistemology?
It appears to me like you want to take such agreement for granted, "here is a hand", "I live on the earth", etc.. That we agree on these things, you want to take for granted. My argument is that we ought not take such agreement for granted, that in reality this agreement must be created, established, maintained, and this is not a simple thing. The Catholic Inquisition (as misguided as it was) was begun as a direct attempt to restrict language usage; belief and word usage are closely tied. Sure, the epistemologist might be inclined to take some fundamental principles of word usage for granted, as you are, but my argument is that this "taking for granted" creates an illusion of necessity, and behind this illusion hides the true nature of language use and knowledge, as contingent. The claim that some things cannot be doubted creates the illusion that they are necessary, when they are not.
It is natural that the epistemologist will seek something "necessary" as the foundation of knowledge, which would ground and support all the conceptual structures of the human mind, but that necessity is not to be found in language use, by the very nature of language use.. So we must push deeper into the habits of the human mind in order to locate this fundamental necessity.
Quoting Sam26
I'm sorry for any unnecessary stress. From my perspective though, I see that sometimes people get very stuck in their own way of seeing things, and you need to hit them over the head with a brick or something to make them see that there are other ways, completely different ways, of seeing the very same thing. Each of the different ways may be true and valid, though they appear inconsistent at the fringes. But that they are different, yet true, indicates that no one single perspective is complete. So we must approach the different perspectives of the different human beings, as if each perspective is as valid as our own, despite the inconsistencies at the fringes.
Quoting Sam26
So this is my problem right here. Why ought we assume that some statements fall outside the need for justification? We are talking epistemology here, and knowledge is assumed to be justified true belief. So if a statement falls outside justification, then what that statement says cannot, by definition, be considered to be knowledge.
Quoting Sam26
Since these statements fall outside the need for justification, and therefore are not knowledge, then it clearly makes sense, to doubt them.
If you follow my argument, then you ought to see that Wittgenstein has gone wrong at this point. The statements which are "outside the need for justification" cannot be knowledge because knowledge requires justification, and since they are not knowledge, doubt concerning them is warranted. If we do doubt them, then they may in fact become justified, and be admitted as knowledge. But we cannot allow that something unjustified, or unjustifiable, is the foundation of knowledge, when knowledge specifically requires justification. If those things are outside justification, then they are outside of epistemology as well, and cannot be allowed within until they are justified.
So no statement is beyond doubt. And if in common usage we allow such things, and we allow people to say "I know this", or "I know that", without proper justification, then they are using "know" in a less restrictive way than the epistemologist would use "know" as defined by justified true belief.
Quoting Sam26
It appears like you haven't really considered what I said about justification. To say "I observed it" does not justify the claim. To explain where and how it was observed, such that another person can observe it as well, is to justify the claim. The statement "I observed it" adds nothing more to the claim, and therefore cannot possibly justify it. To justify it requires a demonstration, explanation, or description of exactly what you observed, which is used to support your statement of claim.
Quoting Sam26
Now consider this example again. Moore stands before the audience, holds up his hand, and says "this is a hand". He is not making a statement of claim, "I know that this is a hand", he is making a proposition, and supporting it with a demonstration. This thing I am holding up is what I call a "hand". If the audience accepts this proposition, without objection, then he is justified in calling that thing a hand. If he was holding up a foot, the audience would probably reject the proposition.
However, it is not necessary that the audience accepts Moore's proposition, "this is a hand". They may, for one reason or another reject this proposition, and that's the point I'm trying to make. You would say, following Wittgenstein, that there is no reason to reject, or doubt this, but I disagree. We might for instance ask Moore to be more specific. He is holding up his entire arm, and saying this is a hand. Is his arm a hand? His wrist? His fingers? What exactly is he referring to with "hand"? We don't ask these things because in this example it is unimportant, we take it for granted that there is a hand there somewhere, exactly where it begins and ends, we might not really know, but we do not care. If he is to proceed forward with this knowledge though, of what a hand is, and apply it toward logical proceedings, to gain further knowledge, he may need to address these questions.
Suppose he starts talking about the bones in his wrist, as if they are part of his hand, and some people are confused because they are trying to locate these bones in the palm. That is why I argue that as a principle of epistemology, the usage of the terminology must be justified for each application according to the circumstances of the application. We cannot just assume that there are some words whose meaning we take for granted, and therefore the meaning of these words does not need to be justified, because this will result in ambiguity and very sloppy epistemology.
Thanks for the reassurance. I was pretty sure that it was meant solely as a joke, but it would have been very poor etiquette for me to have laughed if it wasn't completely a joke.
I agree, but we generally all take what we say seriously, though we tend to lighten things up now and then with jokes. For some reason though, if someone's joke is taken seriously, we brush it off as a mistake of misunderstanding, but if someone's seriousness is taken as a joke, it turns out to be an insult.
Not that this refers to you, but some people like to hover along the division between being serious and being joking. If they are always joking then they should never get offended, but they are never always joking, so they always end up getting offended.
Very similar to my own views, although I find that our ontology regarding belief is remarkably different, particularly with regard to the role that language has in thought and belief.
Forums are like that sometimes.
So true. I hope you take your own advice...
Think I will sit back and watch.
I see these other different ways, and I accept them. Sam's way of seeing things is not incompatible with mine they are actually very similar. The problem I have is that Sam wants to draw an absolutely arbitrary line between what is and is not reasonable to doubt. And since this line is arbitrary I see no reason to respect it. In fact, the line seems more hypothetical than anything else, and I see it as hindering rather than enhancing understanding.
The way I see it is that we have to decide with each instance of usage, whether or not it is reasonable to doubt what has been said. This requires that we start with the assumption that any statement is potentially doubted. If we start with the assumption that some statements are not doubtable then we approach with a prejudice, and will not be inclined to decide with each instance of usage, whether or not the statement ought to be doubted.
Yes, it's important to understand what it means to justify a belief, and I'm not sure we can come to any agreement on a general definition. I'm with Wittgenstein when it comes to understanding the meanings of words, viz., that how we use words tells us much more about correct usage than looking at a definition. I look at definitions simply as guides, but not the be all and end all of meaning. So my examples of justification point to the many uses of the word in various language-games. That said, a very simple definition is that a belief is justified if there are good reasons or good evidence to support the belief.
Getting back to sensory experiences, do our sensory experiences give us reasons or evidence to believe, for example that the desk is hard by touching it. If someone asks me how I know the desk is hard, my evidence for the claim is that I touched it. You can either accept the claim, based on the knowledge that most people don't make false claims about the hardness of desks, and most people know the difference between a hard surface and one that's not hard.
I think we should try to address the justification problem first, and we should also try to keep the posts limited to a couple of paragraphs if possible. It's much easier for people to follow.
The problem with this is that you're not following closely what I'm saying, and that's part of the problem. I answered this a few posts back. Wittgenstein points out, and I believe correctly so, that Moore statements are outside the purview of epistemological concerns. And of course, if a statement is outside of epistemology, then it doesn't concern itself with JTB, and that's the point. Moore's propositions are nonsensical, it's not about knowing, it's about something that's bedrock or basic, which is why Wittgenstein refers to them as hinge-propositions. Think of the door as the language-game of epistemology, and the hinge allows it to swing. Without such basic beliefs there would be no epistemology. The door wouldn't swing, so to speak.
I didn't say that you ought to doubt every statement. I said that every statement is inherently doubtable, that is the nature of statements in general. Whether you ought or ought not doubt any particular statement is a decision which must be made according to the circumstances of the situation. But since every statement is inherently doubtable, then we ought to make that decision as to whether or not to doubt the statement, with respect to every instance statement.
Quoting Sam26
I find it very interesting that the word "justify" is quite similar to the word "just", and "just" is the word which Plato had extreme difficulty in finding any consensus of meaning in The Republic. They are both very difficult words because what they refer to is a very important social relation, correctness. That this relation is important, produces the inclination within individuals to ensure that they have it their way. When something is important to me, I want to make sure that I make it go my way.
I think we might agree that "justify" relates to "the correctness, or rightness of", in a general sense. Whereas "just" refers to correctness in a more restricted sense, a moral sense. Do we agree, that both "just" and "justify" refer to human actions? The former, "just" refers to morally correct actions, but a human being who is prone to carrying out just actions might also be called a just person. So we'd also use "just" to refer to a person who would likely make just actions. The latter, "justify" refers to an action which is carried out in order to show the correctness of something, in our case, a belief. So "justified" refers to a belief which has been shown, and therefore judged to be correct.
Where we seem to disagree is with respect to what qualifies as justification. I believe that a demonstration, a "showing" must be carried out in order that a belief may be justified. You seem to think that a person may be justified in one's belief without any such demonstration. So to take your example, the person drinks some orange juice, judges it as sweet, and is justified in this belief, without any "showing" of the correctness of this belief. The person is justified simply by judging it according to one's senses.
I would say that this person has a true belief, truth being dependent one's own sincerity, such that the person truly believes that the juice tastes sweet. That the juice is sweet is a true belief. And so I would differentiate between true and justified in this way. Justification requires the social aspect, the confirmation that what I truly believe, based on my sense observations is consistent with what others truly believe. This confirmation can only be produced from the "showing", the demonstration, which I call justification.
Quoting Sam26
These propositions cannot be bedrock, or basic at all. They must be considered to be completely outside epistemology, a completely different language-game. Describing them as bedrock implies that epistemology is structured on them as if they were a foundation, but we cannot consider them in that way. They are simply figures of speech, implements of communication, and unrelated to the epistemological structure. If I taste the orange juice and say "I know that the orange juice is sweet because I tasted it", this is simply know-how (knowing how to judge the taste of the object), and is not related to knowledge as epistemology is concerned with, knowing-that, because the "I know that it is sweet" has not been justified. So it is not a true case of knowing-that. The use of "know" here is no different from its use if we were to say that the dog knows how to bark. "Know" is not used in the epistemological sense, which requires justification. Justification is required in order to prove that what I perceive with my senses is consistent with what you perceive with your senses. So simply perceiving something with my senses doesn't provide justification, corroboration is required.
So I would not even relate these so-called "hinge-propositions" to epistemology at all, they are in a completely different game. Since they are not justified we should not allow ourselves to fall for the illusion that they are actually related to epistemic knowledge. We must create a separation between them and epistemic knowledge, such that real knowledge can only be based in properly justified principles.
You're more than welcome, my 'friend'...
I would actually like to get into that part, if you'd like. I mean, I was offline when this thread was first posted, but I find your and Banno's conversation regarding pre-linguistic beliefs quite interesting. He and I have had several conversations skirting around such things, but I've always been disappointed in the end. I'm always left wondering if I've said something wrong, or offensive, or somehow otherwise unacceptable to him. Usually it's about truth though, so...
Anyway, I like the suggestion you gave to Meta about keeping it short and simple... easy to follow. Could we perhaps get into the ontology aspect of belief, particularly regarding the existential role that language has?
If a prelinguistic belief cannot be argued for, which by definition it cannot, does that mean that it cannot be well-grounded?
Banno's cat Jack. Jack can believe his bowl is empty. Does his inability to argue for that render his belief unjustifiable, and hence he cannot know that his bowl is empty simply by virtue of looking?
So "every statement is inherently doubtable" is doubtable?
A non and/or pre-linguistic creature can learn that touching fire hurts. That is not to say that it can learn how to say "touching fire hurts". It most certainly cannot. Is Witt on the right track when demanding that a belief be stateable?
If a belief is a statement, as suggested earlier, then a non-linguistic creature which learns that touching fire hurts would have to be learning a statement. That can't be right.
So it seems that the content of such a creature's belief is not linguistic, nor could it be. Yet it clearly learns that touching fire causes pain. How can that be the case?
There is a difference between a belief being unstated and its being unstateable.
That Jack cannot say that his bowl is empty does not prevent him from believing that his bowl is empty.
You are puzzled because you think a belief is mind-furniture.
I agree with the difference between a belief being unstated and it's being unstateable.
I agree that Jack's failure to say that his bowl is empty does not prevent him from believing that his bowl is empty.
Jack cannot say that. We can. Are we to conclude that we have the same belief?
Why is Jack meowing and rolling on the floor? Because he thinks his bowl is empty.
Why is Jack meowing and rolling on the floor? Because he believes his bowl is empty.
Of course. Absolute certainty is impossible, and the request for absolute certainty becomes circular as it revolves around a requirement for the impossible. Doubt on the other hand may become an infinite regress, and that's why Wittgenstein insists on putting an end to doubt at hinge-propositions. My argument is that whether or not it is reasonable to doubt a particular proposition is not a function of the proposition itself, it is a judgement made by the rational human being, a judgement based in the particularities of the circumstances.
I think I see more clearly now, what you mean by "hinge-propositions", and why you assume that they are bedrock, or foundational. Is it correct to say that hinge-propositions would demonstrate, or show the use of the individual words, such that the hinge propositions act as fundamental justifications in themselves? Moore's "here is a hand" acts to demonstrate the meaning of "hand". If this is the case, then the hinge-proposition would take the place that definitions hold in formal logic, or axioms in mathematics.
What remains is our difference as to whether or not it is reasonable to doubt such things. In philosophy it is often said that a proposition is beyond doubt if it is self-evident. But self-evidence requires that the meaning of the terms be already known, and therefore taken for granted. If hinge-propositions are beneath this, demonstrating the meaning of terms, then they cannot be self-evident.
The reason why I claim that hinge-propositions are not beyond doubt, is the issue of ambiguity. If the hinge-proposition acts to define the term, then if there is ambiguity in the hinge-proposition, doubt is called for, just like if there is ambiguity in a definition. So the issue I see with hinge-propositions is ambiguity, and ambiguity calls for doubt.
Does Jack know his bowl is empty?
I think there is a difference between being well-grounded and being justified, at least as Wittgenstein seems to use the terms. Hinge-propositions are grounded, but not justified. Justification takes place in epistemology, as in JTB. However, hinge-propositions, don't need to be justified, at least generally. We can always think of an example where one could justify Moore's propositions, i.e., where it would make sense to doubt that this is my hand, as in the examples I gave in other posts.
Consider the rules of chess, i.e., we can state the rules, but there is no need to justify the rules. They are simply the ground of the game, and in this case quite arbitrary. But to ask how you justify that the bishop moves diagonally is simply nonsense, and it seems that this is why Wittgenstein referred to such propositions as bedrock or hinge. There seem to be certain things that we just accept as part of reality, things that we trust, things that make it possible to have, for example, the language-game of epistemology.
The cat cannot know in the sense that it can use the language-game of epistemology. It's obvious, at least to me, though, that animals show beliefs, i.e., they act in ways that demonstrate their beliefs.
Moore is trying to answer the skeptic, who in this case seem to deny the existence of physical objects. Moore points out that there are certain things he knows, things that seem indubitable. These things, like Moore's assertion that has knowledge of his hands, are beyond doubt. Wittgenstein who is sympathetic to Moore's cause, because it seems that in Moore's quest to answer the skeptic has pointed out something special about these kinds of statements, something bedrock. Moore just didn't seem to understand the fundamental nature of these statements. Therefore, we get Wittgenstein's more nuanced view of just what kind of statements, Moore's statements are.
Moore's justification, as far as I know, isn't about the "meaning of hand," which would be a linguistic justification. I don't believe the skeptic is doubting the meaning of the word hand, although in a sense if the skeptics are able to doubt Moore's propositions, then certainly they couldn't be certain of the meanings of their words. However, it's important to keep in mind what Moore is responding to, and it doesn't seem to be about linguistic justification. It's about the knowledge of whether one knows that we have hands, i.e., the object hand. In a practical sense the skeptic probably wouldn't doubt such things, but there seems to be a doubt beyond what's practical, Wittgenstein points this out. So Moore doesn't seem to be "demonstrating the meaning of 'hand.'"
All statements including hinge-propositions show the use of individual words. Here we must be careful what we mean by justification, and we can see this is Creative's question about being grounded as opposed to being justified. These statements are grounded, but not justified in an epistemological sense. Just as the rules of chess are the ground of the game, so to speak.
The issue is linguistic right from the start. The skeptic's point is that we do not know what the word "existence" means, to the extent that we can justify the claim that there is such a thing as existence. This, having no clear and concise knowledge of what it means "to exist", is what supports the skeptic's position that there may not be such a thing as existence. Until we can say precisely what existence is, then the skeptic has reason to doubt that things exist.
What Moore does is simply transfer the doubt concerning this generality, "existence", to a particular object, which he identifies as a "hand". He says look, this particular object which we call a hand, clearly has existence, therefore it is unreasonable to doubt, in a general, overall sense, that things exist. It is similar to Descartes' I think therefore I exist, but it says, a hand exists therefore there is existence. But now we have the question of what does it mean to be a "hand". Only if we can show what it means to be a hand, have we demonstrated that hands exist, and therefore refuted the skeptics concerns.
So the issue is linguistic through and through. The skeptic has a concern with the meaning of "existence". Moore transfers the skeptic's doubt from "existence" to "hand". Wittgenstein picks up on the linguistic issue implying that what it means to be a hand, is to be the thing referred to by "hand". This assumes that there is a thing referred to by "hand". The skeptic would be refuted if we ought not doubt whether the thing referred to by "hand" really is a hand, because this would confirm that there really is an existing thing called a "hand".
As I stated, my concern is with ambiguity.
Does it make sense to say Jack thought he knew the bowl was empty?
But what about certainty, without the obtuse adjective?
You have to know what 'existence' means in order to be able to coherently ask the question as to whether any thing exists.
When Moore shows his hands as an answer to skepticism; I take him to be pointing out that our idea of existence comes from perception. For an object to exist is to be perceptible; so when Moore shows his hands he is showing that they exist, and there can be no coherent skepticism about that. The answer to "How do I know my hands exist?" is " You can see that they are parts of your body".
On the language game involved?
That a prelinguistic belief is stateable is not that the prelinguistic believer can state it, When you say the cat believes X you are stating her prelinguistic belief for her.
@Metaphysician Undercover, it seems you have committed yourself to doubting that the bishop only moved diagonally.
That depends on how you define "certainty". As I said I associate doubt with ambiguity. Do you distinguish "certainty" from "certitude"? If so, then when someone states "this is a certainty", how would you know that it is not just a case of certitude?
Quoting Janus
That's not true. If we learn the meaning of words through demonstration, then to know what "existence" means requires an example or demonstration of existence. If one has not been provided with any examples of what existence looks, sounds or feels like in any way, yet people talk about existence as if it were a property which things have, then that person can coherently ask whether anything really exists.
Quoting Janus
The problem with this is that we perceive objects as particular things, and we are sometimes wrong in our perceptions. This is what validates the skeptics position, the fact that we are sometimes wrong in the judgements concerning our perceptions. For this reason we cannot say that to be perceptible is to exist, because hallucinations and other wrong judgements are things perceived. So as I said, when Moore shows his hands, it only serves as proof of existence if they really are "hands". If they are not hands, then our perceptions have failed us, because we have perceived them as hands. And if our perceptions may fail us in this way then we can't rely on them to determine existence. Therefore in order for Moore's argument to work, it is required that there is necessity that what he holds up actually are hands. Language, due to ambiguity doesn't give us that necessity.
Quoting Banno
Yes, that would be a part of the judgement, a judgement as to what is the language game involved. For instance, earlier in the thread I had to judge whether Sam26 was joking or not. Because I didn't have certitude, I had doubt as to what Sam meant.
Quoting Banno
Why would you say that? I've made it very clear that whether or not one ought to doubt, is dependent on a rational decision of the individual involved, according to the circumstances. I have no reason to doubt that the bishop only moves diagonally, I've played the game before.. But a person not at all familiar with the game of chess would not know what you meant by "the bishop", and "only moved diagonally", so this person would have no certitude with respect to your claim, and it would not be unreasonable for this person to doubt that the bishop only moved diagonally. Doubt is directly related to a person's certitude, and just because one person might doubt what you think ought not be doubted, doesn't mean that the person is unreasonable.
If the person were unwilling to accept your authority, you might have to show them a copy of the rules. But if the person didn't know you at all, why would it be more reasonable for the person to have faith in your authority, than to not trust you, and therefore doubt you? If you met someone on the street whom you had never met before, and this person made a statement about something you knew nothing about, wouldn't it be reasonable to doubt that person, even if to that person, what was being said was an obvious truth.
Obfuscation. Is there any sort of certainty you are happy with?
Certainty is an ideal, just like justified true belief is an ideal. There is nothing wrong with assuming ideals though, they can be very useful, like the numbers.
So you are certain of it?
Here is an odd contradiction, since previously you said
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
SO, it seemed to me that each time you moved a piece, it was incumbent on you to first whether or not it is reasonable to doubt that the bishop moved only diagonally.
There is an issue here that we ought sort through. For if, as you say, we must start with the assumption that every statement can be potentially doubted, then we must also suppose that any justification offered in the form of a sentence must also be doubted. So if we doubt that the bishop moves diagonally, we must also doubt that the my authority on the issue, as well as the authority of such Chess Federations as one might choose.
Indeed, it would be incumbent on us to doubt that there were any rules of chess at all.
And further, doubt is appropriate towards any rules, chess or otherwise.
And finally, we doubt that we doubt.
It does not aid your case to simply assert: Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
For you must doubt any such decision.
Following your system, rationality does not just fail; it never gets started in the first place.
I decided to quote this in full, since it shows not only the inoperability of Meta's position, but also the misunderstanding of Wittgenstein that underpins his criticism of Sam.
That the bishop moves only diagonally is, in the context, arbitrary. And it makes no sense to doubt it in that context - the playing of chess.
Nor is the movement of the bishop a decision that we all make. I never made that decision. But I did learn the rule. That rule is the general principle that underpins the absurdity of doubting that the bishop only moves diagonally!
And... saying that the bishop moves only diagonally is not playing chess. Similarly, saying "here is a hand" is not doing epistemology. It is a foundational statement that is outside of epistemology. It's not a necessary statement - necessary being a term that Meta uses in his own curious way - it is a foundational statement, in the same way that "the bishop moves only diagonally" is not necessary, but foundational.
I don't see the contradiction. I have no reason to doubt that the bishop moves only diagonally because I know the rules. But this does not mean that the statement cannot be doubted. And doubt is an attitude of the individual, such that every individual must decide for oneself whether or not to doubt this. As in my example, for the person who does not know the game, nor knows whether to trust your authority on this matter, it is reasonable for that person to doubt this.
Quoting Banno
No' that's not what I said, nor implied. I was talking about considering statements. In the consideration of statements it is incumbent on me to decide whether or not I ought to doubt the statement. If I were playing chess, I would be considering which moves to make, not considering statements, so the example is not relevant. Though there would still be doubt involved as to which move I ought to make, there would be no doubt in my mind concerning the rules. Any such doubt would have been dealt with when I first encountered, and learned the rules.
Quoting Banno
You seem to be refusing my distinction between "may be doubted", and "ought to be doubted". So you represent my position as claiming that any justification in the form of a sentence "must" be doubted. But that is not what I am claiming, what I claim is that it may be doubted. Do you recognize the difference between what one may do, because it is possible to do that, and what one ought to do because it is the rational decision?
Further, it is my claim that statements which would be unreasonable for me to doubt, could be reasonably doubted by someone else, and vise versa. So I think it would be very difficult to support a position like Wittgenstein's, which seeks to cast a net on certain statements, saying that it is unreasonable to doubt these particular statements, in a generalized way, because for some people, uder certain circumstances it would be reasonable to doubt them.
Quoting Banno
Why must you doubt something just because it is possible to doubt that thing? This does not make sense. Do you think that you must do everything which is possible for you to do?
And I am left nonplussed.
Yes, it is apparent you do not see the contradiction, but there it is!
Could he be thinking that Wittgenstein is claiming that, that the bishop only moves diagonally must be necessarily true in all situations, and can never be brought into doubt?
But it is clear that Wittgenstein is saying that the doubt is inappropriate given the rules...
Could we reach agreement if Wittgenstein were to say "That the bishop only moves diagonally cannot be reasonably doubted"?
Yes. That seems right. I mean, if justification is either equivalent to or necessary for being justified.
Did Witt ever come up with an example of a hinge proposition?
Quoting Sam26
While I understand that this is a very common understanding of Witt, and that he used the bishop movement as an example, I suppose that I struggle with the analogy itself. I mean, the rules of a language construct such as chess aren't to be questioned. Justify the rules of a game? Nonsense! That's how it's played. There is no other reason necessary. They provide the very foundational structure by which we play the game. Remove and/or change them and it's no longer chess. Thus, doubting them makes no sense for it would be like doubting the game itself.
However, reality doesn't seem to be the same sort of thing with regard to epistemology. When I attempt to make good sense of this parallel between the rules of chess and reality, I can only surmise the following...
It seems to me that one could hold that ipropositions are a part of external reality, iithought and belief have propositional content, and [b]iiithought and belief are accrued. That would make more sense regarding the analogy, at least it seems that way to me at this moment. Unless my understanding is mistaken, I think that Witt held all three of those. In that sort of foundational sense, thought and belief would begin simply and gain in complexity. This kind of process would not only allow for some bedrock, indubitable propositions that others would rest their laurels upon, but it would require it... Would it not? The justification of the more complex would hinge upon these bedrock propositions(well-grounded, indubitable belief(s)). It also meshes quite nicely with Witt's insistence that a belief be stateable(it must if it has propositional content).
That's my understanding of Witt's thoughts/ponderings on the matter. I'm wondering Sam, do you find this problematic according to your own?
Quoting Sam26
What follows here is a rough synopsis of my own position. I do not wish to derail the thread, which is more about your extrapolations based upon Witt's writings. That said, you may find it worthwhile. I certainly hope you do...
I agree that animals certainly hold beliefs. While Jack cannot believe that "the bowl is empty", he most certainly can look at the bowl and see that there is no food in it and hence believe that the bowl is empty. If that is not well-grounded and true belief(assuming it's empty) then nothing can be. Moreover, on my view, a justified belief does not necessarily require justification(providing one's grounds to another). So, with that in mind, Jack has formed and holds justified true belief. Jack knows that his bowl is empty, despite his not being able to justify his belief. That is a metacognitive endeavor. It requires thinking about one's own thought and belief. Metacognition requires language. Thus, Jack cannot justify his own belief to us, nor can he even be aware that he has such belief.
No. That would be to say that Jack thought about his own belief. That requires written language. Jack has no such thing.
Does knowing the bowl is empty require being able to think about one's own belief?
It is what you implied. Before making your move, you have to sit and ponder whether you are presently in such circumstances as to doubt that bishops move diagonally.
It does you no good to say "But I am already playing chess" because then you must ponder if you are indeed playing chess.
And then there is the doubt surrounding whether you correctly remember the rules of chess...
And so on.
If you complaint is that this situation is absurd, then I agree; but it is indeed the consequence of your approach. If every statement can be doubted, you cannot play chess.
That makes no nevermind here. If every statement may be doubted, then every justification may be doubted. You have no grounds for certainty.
Where are we going here? What was the question?
Quoting Banno
I answered yours and asked my own. Is there a problem?
We agreed that Jack thought his bowl was empty. We agreed that Jack believed his bowl was empty. I then asked if Jack knew his bowl was empty.
You answered with a question. I answered that question and asked another, hoping you would respond in kind. You did not.
The point of our discussion? Making sense of Jack's belief. Making sense of your questions. Making sense of your failure to answer mine...
Does Jack need to think he knew the bowl was empty, or need to be able to think he knew the bowl was empty in order to be able to know the bowl is empty?
Not the same old, same old... my 'friend'.
;)
So, does Jack have a justified true belief? The bowl is indeed empty. He believes it to be empty.
What is his justification?
I agree that 'justification' seems to have different meanings between participating users, namely you and Sam(I think) on the one side and I on the other. That is of no consequence though, at least not all by itself. We ought see them through.
Do return the favor...
(Y)
Your chess game comparison is not a good analogy. We are discussing knowledge here, and knowledge is a changing, evolving, progressive object. Contrary to the game of chess, it is fundamental and essential to knowledge that the rules change. This means that doubting the rules is a very important aspect of knowledge. It is evidenced by things such as the Copernican revolution, and Einstein's revolution. Einstein for instance doubted the idea that "time" is absolute, and replaced it with the notion that "time" is relative. That's an obvious instance of doubting a "hinge-proposition".
Quoting Banno
That is exactly what the inquiry concerns here, what are the grounds for certainty? According to what I've argued it is impossible that hinge-propositions give us the grounds for certainty because these are just ancient relics, phrases from days gone by, when knowledge was far less developed; phrases like "the sun rises in the morning", which really don't give us any cause to be certain about the way things actually are.
This is why I turn instead toward "certitude" as the grounds for certainty. Certitude is an attitude of confidence which instills the feeling of being certain. Certitude, as the grounds for certainty, is often rejected for being subjective (of the subject), because many have the attitude that certainty must be objective (of the object, i.e. "it is certain that..."), but it really doesn't make sense to say that anything other than a subject is certain.
Quoting creativesoul
Hi creativesoul! It's been a while, I missed you. It appears like we may be on the same side of the coin (so far) this time around.
The justified true belief notion comes from Theaetetus, of course. Two things are well worth understanding about that dialogue.
The first is that Plato does not use the idea of justification. Towards the conclusion, he starts, but does not finish, a conversation about the relation between objects and words, and the analysis of complex statements into their components. SEP translates the result as "True Judgement with an Account". Judgement is in many ways a better word than belief here, since it brings in the volition of the believer. This is perhaps were I differ from @Sam26, who I think has a notion of beliefs being caused.
But it is the account that concerns us here. Jack cannot give an account, and hence he cannot know that his bowl is empty.
The second is that Theaetetus ends inconclusively. The argument itself is described by Socrates as a long painful labour giving birth to wind. Socrates does not pretend to give a final account of knowledge. Nor, I think, should we. As we analyse and cajole our words into order we lose some of their flexibility. There is a sense in which Jack demonstrates his belief that the bowl is empty by herding me into the laundry. He is sharing his knowledge, perhaps in the only way available to him, even giving an account of the situation.
And so I, too, have brought forth nothing but wind.
Such revolutions might be interesting and grab our attention, but they do so because they are extraordinary. Should you base your understanding of knowledge on the extremes rather than the mundane?
The very point of knowing things is that we can take them as read, take them as shared, and use them to move on. Doubting what we know must remain an unusual occurrence. lest we turn into a bunch of navel-gazing esoteric philosophers - and no body wants that...
Further, the account you gave of the development of relativity is incorrect in a certain vital way. The hinge proposition was not that time is absolute, but that the laws of physics must be the same for all observers. Relativity follows from Einstein applying this hinge proposition to the previous observations of the speed of light, and making the whole consistent.
And the Copernican revolution came from the hinge proposition that the simples explanation of the orbits of the planets was to be preferred.
But just to be sure, you do understand that a hinge proposition is taken as certain in order to start the language game in which it is involved? They do not apply universally or absolutely?
Are you saying that the hands you perceive every day doing all the kinds of things that hands do; preparing food, washing the dishes, swinging a hammer, typing on the key board, and so on, might not be hands at all but actually might be something else? Are you saying that they might be, for example, oranges, dogs, cars, feet, tennis racquets, pumpkins, snakes, rivers, boiled eggs, pin cushions...?
You can call it "Fred" for all I care. What counts is that in order to get on with life we take some things as given.
Well said. Belief can't be belief without the possibility of doubt. Why would he treat waving his hands about as a demonstration of anything unless it was not just a factual assertion but a counterfactual one.
Belief and doubt go together. We can't talk about the presence of the one in the absence of the other.
So to say a cat believes X is to say a cat could doubt X at the same intellectual level. Pre-linguistically, there is no problem with that kind of belief matched with that kind of doubt. Cats can learn to be sceptical of their owner's actions just as much as trust them.
But then language is another level of belief~doubt semiosis. And formal logic yet another.
The real complaint boils down to a crossing of levels. At a pre-linguistic or biological level, we don't doubt those are our hands that wave about in front of our eyes exactly as we will and expect. There just isn't a chance of counterfactuality on that score - unless Moore was surprised to discover he was waving flippers or blocks of cheese.
So to claim intellectual doubt about the existence of your hands is to claim a higher-order counterfactuality about something which at its "proper level" just isn't lending itself to such counterfactuality.
I just said Moore's hands might be flippers or blocks of cheese. He might be dreaming or hallucinating. So linguistically, counterfactuals come thick and fast.
But pragmatically, we can recognise a basic illegitimacy of this kind of semiotic level crossing. We are importing the counterfactuality of a higher order where the counterfactuality is just not there at the level being thus challenged.
So the Wittgenstein-flavoured pragmatism is right for the wrong reasons. Or reasons that are poorly articulated.
The "theory of truth" issue is that all belief is secured against its own counterfactuality - but properly speaking, by counterfactuality of the appropriate order or semiotic level.
What do you each make of this?
I've never said otherwise. However, it must be the case that the content of a non-linguistic or pre-linguistic creature's belief is not propositional. Unless it is the case that propositions are not existentially contingent upon language; if one can think in propositions despite having no language. I see no reason to believe that.
Aww. Thanks Meta. That's a nice thing to say.
I'm not so sure that we are in agreement. I mean, I am currently unpacking Banno's notion of justification to see exactly what he holds is necessary for a belief to be justified. If I remember correctly, you and I had a very similar discussion about 3 years ago. Unless you've changed your position, I suspect that your view regarding what it takes for a belief to be justified includes justification in the sense of offering one's grounds for said belief to another. If that is still the case, then you're actually in agreement with Banno and Sam(I think) and not I.
;)
Aw Sam...
Have I misattributed meaning to your words?
I haven't actually addressed your words yet, I don't think. Did you see my earlier reply, where I asked if my understanding of Witt was aligned with your own, or words to that affect?
The only way I can understand you is by correcting any misunderstandings. I need your help in order to successfully do that.
You've lost me on this one; you seem to be conflating knowledge with belief. I know that my hands exist because I can see them.
For my part, I'm happy to agree that there are some propositions that are certain within a given situation; you call these hinge propositions, I would call them bedrock statements, but I don;t think the difference significant.
You appear to hold that beliefs are a pattern or some such in one's mind. I can go half way and say that they are a pattern in someone's behaviour, but only in so far as they are public. (I would keep beliefs as simply statements that explain an act by setting out a relationship between the actor and another statement: Banno baked cake because he believed that Sam was coming for tea. This connection with action is paramount).
I agree that there can be non-linguistic thoughts. I'm intrigued by your suggestion (if I have you right...) that such thoughts are somehow part of a causal chain such that some sensory input or other brings it about such-and-such a belief. I could quite happily accept a causal chain from some sensory input to some act, because the chain would be replete with neutrons and muscles and proteins and things that we can find by doing an autopsy. No autopsy will find a belief. (I wonder if this is @apokrisis' point, when he talks in such a constipated way about "importing the counterfactuality of a higher order where the counterfactuality is just not there at the level being thus challenged").
So I can't quite agree that there are bedrock statements that one is somehow caused to believe.
I rather see bedrock statements as those that must be taken as true in order for the conversation to take place.
For reasons I gave elsewhere I'm not perturbed by the Gettier problems. SO I admit not having paid much attention to your post on that issue.
Otherwise, I've not read anything I disagree with in your posts.
Hm...
Plato. I have a collection of his work. Volition is problematic. Quite, on my view. However, I want to keep going in the right direction here, so rather than wearing my typical analytic critical with no apologies 'hat' and arguing the volitional aspect, I want to grant the notions you're putting forth as the first step in seeing them through to their conclusions. That's what I suggested earlier, and I think it's a path well worth pursuing. And... as you say, it is the account that concerns us here...
That's the longest reply I've seen you write in quite some time. ;) I appreciate it. Let's make something of this.
Quoting Banno
So indeed...
If the criterion for JTB includes that the believer offer an account, then knowledge requires language. The difficulty we have with Jack, I'm fairly certain that you'll agree here, is knowing what his belief is. I mean, all we have to go on is his behaviour. There is no more evidence to suggest that he believes his bowl is empty than some alternative belief, such as he believes that you will feed him, or another equally plausible possibility. Furthermore, without Jack telling us in no uncertain terms(pardon the pun) it's hard for us to say that Jack is telling us anything at all. So, the requirement of a believer offering an account of it's own belief is quite problematic here. Seems that that criterion does not admit of pre-linguistic or non-linguistic belief... cannot if coherency(lack of self-contradiction) matters.
Procrastination is a powerful motivator.
"If...", as the Spartans replied to the Macedonians.
Yes, I agree that in such circumstances Jack knows very little. But I don't see that this is problematic; all that is happening is that one sense of know differs from another.
X-)
I thought we were unpacking that already.
:s
Just acquired a copy. Gotta love used bookstores.
X-)
An important thing to note, I think, is that Socrates ends the Theaetetus with an explanation that they've actually been looking for the wrong thing. They went into the inquiry with the preconceived notion that to be knowledge, it must be true. But then when they looked at examples of how knowledge could actually exist, they found no way to exclude the possibility of falsity, and "must be true" could not be supported by actually existing instances of knowledge.
So they appeared to approach a paradox which would deny the possibility of knowledge. Knowledge must exclude falsity, but there is no way to actually exclude the possibility of falsity. At the end, Socrates suggests that their notion of what knowledge is, and therefore their description of what they were looking for in the first place, was probably wrong. It turned out to be a case of looking for something (knowledge) but having the wrong description of what they were looking for.
Quoting Banno
Here is the question then. What do you consider is the most important aspect of knowledge, that we continually progress toward a better and better understanding of reality, and therefore better our ways of being, or that we stay fixed in our understanding, and way of being, forever? If you believe that we ought not doubt the rules, then you opt for the latter. I opt for the former.
Quoting Banno
Have you read Einstein's special theory of relativity? He specifically states that he is providing a new way of understanding "time", that until this point "time" has been understood as absolute. He explains that in order to provide compatibility between the relativity theory which existed before him, and the postulate that the speed of light remains constant, all we need to do is to understand "time' as relative rather than absolute.
Quoting Banno
Sure, but the introduction of this hinge-proposition required doubting the prior hinge proposition, that the planets and sun orbited the earth. Introduction of a new hinge proposition, to describe a specific phenomenon, can only follow after doubting the hinge proposition which presently describes that phenomenon. Proceeding with the attitude that our eyes see the sun rise up in the east and go down in the west, and therefore this must be what is the case, because we ought not doubt what our senses show us, is not conducive to progress.
Quoting Janus
Yes, I am saying that it might actually be a person who is doing these things, for example, rather than hands which are doing these things, and the person is just using the hands to do these things. If an individual lost both hands, that person would probably still find a way to get those things done, so I don't think it's really the hands which are doing these things. And if you want to insist that it really is the hands doing these things, why not give recognition to how much of this is actually being done by the fingers, rather than the hands?
Quoting creativesoul
OK, I've been reading back over some of your posts. I see your still stuck in the same rut which you were in when we last discussed justification.
Quoting creativesoul
How can you not see that this position is untenable? "Justified" is past tense, implying necessarily that an act of justification has occurred.
The thing is, you can give examples, of another person's beliefs as justified, but you are another person passing judgement on the other's belief. If you give an example of your own belief as justified, then you are simply trying to justify your belief. If you sit there by yourself, thinking about your own belief, telling yourself this belief is justified because I think it is justified, then you have nothing more than a simple belief. So a belief must be expressed to another person in order to obtain the status of being justified. If it is not, it can't be anything more than a true belief.
Well, no. That's just a bit of a side issue you have added to suit yourself - as if the choice were between doubting everything or doubting nothing.
Once or twice. If you did not recognise the Principle of Relativity, then that's not my problem.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If you are going to reduce what has been said here to such childish nonsense, then where are we to go? How do we proceed?
I feel quite disrespected by such a trivial response.
I've nothing further.
Why must Jack be required to be able to think about his own belief in order for him to be able to know that his bowl is empty?
Does Jack need to be able to think about his own belief in order for him to know that touching fire causes pain?
The difference here is one of existential contingency. The fire belief is not existentially contingent upon language. Fire exists and it does so independently of language. Touching exists and it does so independently of language. The agent exists and it does so independently of language. The agent connects themselves to reality by virtue of drawing correlations between the act and the pain that followed. None of this is existentially contingent upon language aside from my report itself.
The same cannot be said about the bowl belief.
Jack knows how to get fed.
In order to be able to reasonably doubt, belief must already be had. All reasonable doubt is belief based. To doubt 'X' is to believe 'Y' whereas 'Y' somehow places 'X' under suspicion. So, those who mistakenly hold that the ability to believe requires the ability to doubt...
Something to seriously consider... what else would it take to show otherwise?
I am using the word "know" to mean that the knower has formed well-grounded true belief. If that doesn't count as a justified true belief, then the notion of justification is utterly useless.
An act of justification argues that belief is well-grounded(and/or true). The fire belief is well-grounded and true.
I was talking to ????????????? but I'd be interested to hear why you think it's more nuanced than that.
I thought I would respond to both of these points. First, MU's comments...
My contention from reading Wittgenstein isn't that Wittgenstein is drawing an arbitrary line as to whether it makes sense to doubt a particular statement/proposition. As I read you MU, you seem to suggest that whether we can doubt a particular statement is purely subjective, i.e., dependent on a "decision we all must make." You seem to suggest that each person must decide for him or herself, whether say, Moore's proposition is doubtable. I'm suggesting based on my understanding of Wittgenstein, that it's senseless for anyone to doubt Moore's proposition, and that it's not an arbitrary decision, but one that's rooted in the nature of Moore's proposition. What is this nature? Certain propositions have at their core something basic, foundational, or bedrock, which makes doubting them nonsensical. This is rooted in the language-game of doubting. There is a kind of logic built into a language-game that dictates how words are used. And although context plays an important part, context does not drive correct usage. Correct usage can be seen in particular contexts, but it's not the context itself driving correct usage. If this were true (and I'm not necessarily suggesting that you think this), then any word would have an arbitrary meaning based on whatever context I choose to use it in. So if I use the word car to refer to the moon, then it would be correct, because meaning is driven by a context. However, this is not the case, it's the implicit rules of usage within a wide range of cultural driven language-games, that provides the logic behind correct usage. Sure these correct uses of words do take place within a range of contexts, but that's not the driving force behind correct usage. Think of contexts as having importance in terms of the rules of language within a context.
So is there a general principle that dictates whether some statement is doubtable? One cannot tell this by looking at a written statement alone, apart from how that statement or word is used within a wide array of language-games and contexts. How could all statements be doubtable? If that were the case, then doubting would lose it's meaning. Doubting only makes sense against a backdrop of non-doubt. We learn what to doubt, and what to not doubt. There have to be good reasons to doubt.
There are statements that are necessarily correct. For example, triangles have three sides, or bachelors are unmarried. There are many necessarily correct statements. And I would disagree that this would validate Platonic Realism. There are also statements that are contingently correct, for example, the Earth has one moon.
I agree with your response Banno.
Well said, I definitely agree with this. The knowing and the doubting in Moore's context are incoherent, which is why Moore's answer doesn't work. It's important to understand the connection between knowledge and doubt.
Before I respond to this let me get a little more familiar with what you contending.
I think there is a sense where one can be grounded in one's belief apart from epistemological ideas. One's experience as one acts in the world provides a kind of grounding. Jack's belief has a grounding to it, but it's not an epistemological grounding, i.e., the epistemological grounding that occurs within the language-game of knowing. So knowledge, in terms of how I'm using it (JTB), is something that necessarily occurs within language. Justification is something we do with others, i.e., it gets it's meaning within a rule-based language. If it's something one can simply do on one's own, then whatever seems justified to you, is justified. It would seem to lose it's meaning if we separate the idea of justification from a linguistic format. Not only can't Jack justify his belief to us, but he can't justify it period. He just HAS the belief - the state of mind reflected in his actions.
Fine, I'd offer an apology if you could demonstrate the disrespect. I'm very accustomed to your tact at avoidance of the issues, and that's all I see here.
If you want to belief that knowledge is solely involved with following the principles which work to get the job done, and not at all involved in the seeking of better ways of doing things, then I think that's your problem.
Quoting Sam26
I think I've satisfactorily demonstrated that this is not the case. It is reasonable to doubt any proposition when the circumstances make doubt reasonable. I've identified three important factors which play a role in whether or not any proposition ought to be doubted, One's understanding of the language, one's trust or faith in the speaker, and the appearance of ambiguity
What is unreasonable is the assumption that a proposition could be removed from all context, and claimed to have a meaning which cannot be doubted.
Quoting Sam26
Yes, this is pretty much what I argue is the case. We are free, by the nature of free will, to use words however we please. I see adolescents showing this off, quite often taking random words and giving them whatever meaning they want. The problem is that this is generally not conducive to good communication which is what we mostly want. So unless our intent is to show off, or deceive, then we mostly attempt to use words in consistent ways.
Whether or not any particular usage is "correct" is another issue altogether, because this requires a judgement. So anyone making a judgement as to whether particular instances of usage were "correct" or not, would have to refer to some principles in order to justify this judgement.
Quoting Sam26
Referring to "implicit rules" does not qualify as justification. To justify you need to make those rules explicit. If I want to use "car" to refer to the moon, there is no rule that says that I cannot do this, and this is what the kids demonstrate. There is no such thing as "implicit rules", you're making that up, it's all in your mind, all imaginary. Each person decides, on the spot, which words to use for the situation at hand, and we do not refer to any rules in making those decisions.
If you really believe that there is such a thing as "correct usage", and that the judgement of whether a particular instance of usage is correct or not is not just a figment of your imagination, then you need to demonstrate this, set out some standards which we could agree on, as to what distinguishes an instance of correct usage from an instance of incorrect usage.
Quoting Sam26
Try this Sam26. For the sake of argument, let's assume that if it is possible that the person making the statement did not follow the rules of correct usage, then the statement is doubtable. Does this sound reasonable to you? How are we supposed to know whether the person making the statement followed the rules of correct usage?
Quoting Sam26
How is this not Platonic Realism? If it is necessary that triangles have three sides, then this is an eternal truth, it cannot in any way be otherwise, and that is the very thing which Platonic Realism refers to. These Ideas exist eternally whether or not they are described by human beings.
There are two principal uses of "necessary" which need to be distinguished. One is a logical necessity which states that by the principles of logic, things cannot be otherwise. If we hold fast to this definition, then things which cannot be otherwise are necessarily eternal truths, Platonic Forms. However, there is another use of "necessary", and this is that it is needed for some purpose.
If we allow that logical necessity is reduced to this second form of "necessary", such that logical necessity is just produced because it is needed for some purpose, then we can dismiss Platonic Realism. However, now when you say that triangles necessarily have three sides, "necessary" here means needed for some purpose. So this is what you imply when you say that you can make this statement without implying Platonic Realism. But now it is a matter of free choice, human beings choose that triangles must have three sides, because they apprehend this as necessary for some purpose.
So, we have a proposition, "triangles necessarily have three sides". I have demonstrated ambiguity with respect to "necessarily". The ambiguity has far reaching consequences in relation to ontology. Since I have demonstrated this problem, do you not believe that I am justified in doubting this proposition?
.
Ok Sam. Seems we're not so far apart. I mean, that's how I took Wittgenstein, and what I thought you were holding as well. The bit about Jack not being able to justify his own beliefs.
Must a belief be argued for in order for it to be well-grounded? Isn't a well-grounded belief exactly what justification shows?
When I use the term justification it has a specific application, and in particular to the uses of JTB across a wide spectrum of language-games. It means being justified not only in terms of arguments, but also in terms of the other uses that I mentioned early on in this thread.
The term well-grounded can also be used as a synonym for justification in the JTB sense, but it also has an application quite apart from epistemological applications. Thus, well-grounded also applies to those applications that are not epistemological, like Wittgenstein's bedrock propositions. So Jack's belief is grounded, but not justified in the JTB sense (language-games of epistemology). Jack's beliefs are grounded in reality, but not linguistically grounded, i.e., they're not dependent on a statements.
Of course someone could ask what it means for a belief to be grounded in reality.
Sam, just to mention that although I'm not participating in this thread, I'm finding your contributions really interesting and useful to my own thinking. I wouldn't want you to feel you were just whistling into the wind :)
Sure, 'propositional' suggests abstractive capability; I would say a linguistic belief (or proto-belief, or whatever you want to call it) is better thought of as dis-positional rather than pro-positional.
This is not to the point. If the person is using hands then the person has hands, no?
I can't see why you think that we must be playing the skeptic's game If we think someone is playing at doubting rather than really doubting. Why can we not simply, without buying into the idea of the coherence of the kind of doubt the skeptic is playing at entertaining, demonstratively show, as Moore does, how this so-called doubt is without substance, is not genuine?
There is a distinction between knowing and believing. You know something if there is no reason to doubt it. Does anyone really believe there is reason to doubt they have hands? They have been with you your whole life, and within this shared reality that we refer to as "the external world", which has also been with you your whole life there can be no reason to doubt that you have hands. Sure, we can imagine absurd logically possible scenarios such as that we might be in the matrix or whatever; but they don't change the fact that we have hands and share an external world. We are not talking about the conditions that give rise to this shared external world; those conditions could be God, the matrix, the quantum foam, the noumenal world, or whatever, and of course in relation to those conditions, whatever they might be, we might not *really* have hands, because the very idea might be a nonsense. We know that as well as we know that in the reality we share day to day we do have hands (well not all of us do).
So, in short, the skeptic is incoherent because his doubt jumps illegitimately across different worlds of discourse.
See my response to ?????????????.
Thanks Mcdoodle.
is hardly a mark of good will.
Actually this is the point. Existence is given to the object, it is what we assume individual, particular objects have, existence. We describe objects by naming the object (subject) and assigning properties to the objects (predication). The attributes, properties, are universal, such that we predicate the same properties to numerous individuals. Since numerous individuals are said to have the very same property, then the property cannot actually be a part of the individual itself. That is why we have a categorical difference between particulars and universals, such that if universals have existence, it is a completely different type of existence from the existence of particulars, individuals.
When you say that a person has hands, then "person" is the subject, and "hands" is predicated of the subject. We could assume that the "person" as an object may have existence. But "hands" referring to the property being predicated, signifies a universal. Unless we assign independent existence to universals, then "hands" cannot refer to anything with independent existence. And if "hands" has existence as a universal, this is a concept, not the active part of the person doing the work. So the identified object is assumed to have existence, but there is no principle whereby "what the object has" might have a similar type of existence.
Particular objects are existents; if we can reliably identify something then it exists. We say it exists in virtue of the fact that we can identify it. That is what 'existence' means.
This is exactly what I pointed out to you, that if you insist that we must follow the rules, in the case of language and knowledge, instead of freely doubting the rules, you apprehend knowledge as "following the principles which work to get the job done". Only if you respect the need to doubt the rules will you apprehend the aspect of knowledge which is "the seeking of better ways of doing things"
To which you replied "I feel quite disrespected by such a trivial response."
So I'll just repeat myself. If you want to keep on representing knowledge and language as a set of rules which must be followed, as if we were playing a game of chess, then I think you're wrong, for the reason stated. And if you think that it's trivial that I think you're wrong, then no one cares. But if you would like to demonstrate why you think I am wrong, then that's your problem so get on with solving it.
Yes, now the identified object is the person, the person exists. The hands are not identifiable as distinct particular objects, they are identified as property of the person, so why do you think that they exist?
The hands are identifiable objects, though. If you are worried about the fact that they attached to a body, then you can cut them off. Of course, they will no longer function, but they will remain as hands.
Will you say there are no leaves because they attached to trees? Do they only come into existence when they fall?
Or in fact neither, but - pragmatically - somewhere in between. ;)
These thread never get anywhere because they leave out the further issue of optimisation. If it is any kind of "self" that is being defined in contrast to "the world", this very separation itself has to develop and be reinforced by the "truth telling".
So there is a further optimality constraint on the whole business. Truth has to be effective at driving a wedge between self and the world, between the phenomenal and the noumenal. This is the epistemic cut argument. You don't want the truth dissolving the very division on which a self~world relationship is formed.
That is why semioticians stress the fact that minds are focused on understanding the world in terms of signs. The fact that we don't have transcendent access to the thing-in-itself is the feature, not the bug, of truth-telling. It wouldn't work if we didn't see the world through an utterly self-interested lens - as it is "seeing" in this fashion that does give rise to "the self". There would be no witness to "the truth" if truth-telling did not play the part of creating this witness.
So - because these threads always get stuck on idealism vs realism, the absoluteness of solipsistic isolation vs direct access - they don't really get into the meat of the issue.
Pragmatism picks up the story where it is accepted that truth-telling is a practice with a purpose. And then we can start to appreciate how a somewhat counter-intuitive optimisation principle must apply.
To form "a self" requires not directly "knowing the world".
If the body just responded directly to the "sensory facts" of world, that would be useless. Light, soundwaves, physical knocks and scrapes, would just register as energetic deformations. Some kind of heating or damage.
The nervous system exists to transcribe physics into information. The energy that composes the world becomes an interpreted set of symbols - an umwelt. As much as possible, the reality is made something simple and imagined. Organised in terms of the image of "a self" in its "world".
So pragmatism is better epistemology as it is a theory that accounts for observers along with the observables. They are two sides of the one (semiotic) coin.
If your epistemology fails to speak about what constitutes the observer, and just argues about what is observable, then of course it won't get anywhere. Frustrated with itself, it can only wind up in the angry silence of quietism. One liners that say nothing in their ambiguity.
We know that language captures the truth of the world as we experience it or all our discourse would simply be nonsense. The notion that language could, or could fail to, absolutely capture the truth of the world is itself nonsense, if the 'absolutely' signals an intention to indicate something beyond simply capturing the truth of the world as we experience it.
That notion of the absolute bother me as well. Assuming an "absolute cut" between "self and the world, between the phenomenal and the noumenal", perhaps leads directly to "idealism vs realism, the absoluteness of solipsistic isolation vs direct access".
Assuming dualism from the start does not seem a good way to explain the relation between word and world.
So when "you" believe something, is it true in some self-transcending sense, or just true for you?
Answers on a postcard as usual.
No, it's somewhere in between.
Again, what I was pointing out is that of course it will do this. Language, being semiotic, is producing the very self for whom such an experienced world would be the true one.
This seems straightforward. Is something getting lost in translation?
I'm not denying there is "a world". We couldn't form a notion of self-hood unless there was a physical reality to kick against. Moore's hands speak to the discovery of that fundamental counterfactuality.
But to be a self requires that we form a "selfish" image of the world. And that changes the game so far as theories of truth are concerned.
As I argued earlier, a big part of the epistemic tension arises because humans operate both as biological animals and social creatures. We are "grounded" in the truth of the biological animal claim Sam and perhaps Banno. But even that grounding is a self-interested umwelt. It is the self-interested view that a living organism needs to form to be a self with useful levels of autonomy.
That's just not what I have been saying.
Bah. I guess I was a bit tired and grumpy last night, and my back has the gip; perhaps we can reach some basic agreement using this:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So in one situation I tell little Jimmie to be home before the sun goes down.
Should I instead tell little Jimmie to be home before the earth rotates to such a point that the sun appears to be below the horizon?
I suggest that in the circumstances we can take it for granted that the sun will go down, and also ignore all the physical errors in that presumption.
It's different when we are teaching little Jimmie some basic astronomy.
And that's rather the point' what we take for granted depends on the situation. I gather @Metaphysician Undercover will agree, since he has talked about situations before; perhaps even @apokrisis will see something in this about accepting such stuff for practical purposes. @Sam26 might not think of "The sun goes down each day" as a hinge proposition, but he might bear with me for a bit. @????????????? might encourage us not to accept Jimmie's challenge.
We can either say to Jimmie that it is certain that the sun will go down; or we can change the conversation from when he should be home to one of astronomy or induction. The spade is turned when we hit the bedrock that the sun goes down each day.
which bedrock will turn the spade depends on where you dig; which propositions are to go unchallenged depends on the language game, depends on the conversation, depends on situation, depends on the practicalities.
Are we so far apart in our ideas?
Did I say something different? I just continued on to point out that that involvement in turn involves "a self".
Which is where things get slippery again. Who does language speak for? The communal self? The biological individual?
That is the further issue I am interested in clarifying. If you want to leave it unsaid, that's a cop-out.
Why?
Don't start trolling if you don't want to be "disrespected". :)
It seems to me that language use involves a world that includes a community of some sort for the language to be used by; but a self - that's potentially a whole other thing.
Perhaps I have misunderstood you, and if you don't care to help me understand, that's fine. I meant no offence.
Quoting apokrisis
Is that your explanation? So because language involves signs and symbols, it must involve a self?
I don't follow that. But it is off the topic of this thread anyway.
So you've prepared your excuses already? Coitus interruptus signalled in advance?
Quoting Banno
The usual vague response from you.
I made a specific argument. There is a community level self that is instantiated through "being linguistic". And semiotics makes the case that this kind of self-making is also taking place at the level of individual felt experience. So we are dealing with social and biological levels of the same general process.
This is a problem when folk like yourself go on about epistemology without speaking to this distinction. The "self" is critical to there being "a world". And to pass over the nature of this self in silence, not offering a full account, is a cop-out.
Quoting Banno
Is that really the best summary you can make? Try again.
Ever the sulky child, hey? Beats me what you think you have to lose.
Quoting Sam26
Epistemology is a language-game. It arose via the need to establish what counts as knowledge(what it takes for S to know P). Folk made and still make knowledge claims all the time. Some of these claims contradict one another, and always have. Epistemology aims to sort these out. Justification is part of the standard for JTB. S knows that P if, and only iff, iS believes P, iiS is justified in believing P, and iiiP is true.
I understand, and grant that words like justified have more than one accepted usage. I don't find that flippantly denying/dismissing another's usage is acceptable, although many hereabouts do exactly that. There are many discussions on this forum and elsewhere that are based solely upon one participant using A to mean X and another using A to mean Y. Sometimes the two people do not, or perhaps cannot, recognize that this is happening. Other times it is taken note of, but neither participant is willing to budge. Situations like these do not have to end in impasse. Rather, much can be gleaned by virtue of granting anothers terms as the first step in seeing them through. Moreover, one cannot possibly understand another in the best way possible unless the key terms are granted. So, with all this in mind, I'm granting your terms and in doing so I'm fairly certain that I'm also granting Witt's, Banno's, and many others hereabouts.
I'm attempting to point out that the only ground I see for holding that Jack cannot know that touching fire caused his pain is maintaining coherency. Admitting that Jack's belief is justified is to admit of self-contradiction. So, that's an ass-backwards way I suppose, for me to grant the consistency of what you've been reporting heretofore. I want to take it quite a bit further, though...
Witt held that belief has propositional content. Thus, he insisted that a belief must be stateable.
Now, when we think about the consequences that the above has regarding non-linguistic and/or pre-linguistic belief, we find ourselves at a crossroads of mutually exclusive beliefs.
If belief has propositional content, then there can be no such thing as pre-linguistic and/or non-linguistic belief, unless it is also the case that propositions are not existentially contingent upon language.
Do you believe that propositions are not existentially contingent upon language?
Just curious, where did W. say this? And how do you reconcile this with OC 284?
Posthumous publications can include things that would have otherwise been edited out by the deceased.
Could you post that passage though, I'm now curious?
284. People have killed animals since the earliest times, used the fur, bones etc.etc. for various
purposes; they have counted definitely on finding similar parts in any similar beast.
They have always learnt from experience; and we can see from their actions that they believe
certain things definitely, whether they express this belief or not. By this I naturally do not want to
say that men should behave like this, but only that they do behave like this.
285. If someone is looking for something and perhaps roots around in a certain place, he shows that
he believes that what he is looking for is there.
I'm saying that leaves have no existence independent from the tree. The fact that they fall to the ground does not negate their dependency on the tree for their existence. So any proper explanation of their existence would attribute their existence to the existence of the tree.
Quoting Banno
This is a false description though, the sun does not go down each day. That description involves the sun as the active subject and going down as the predicate. The true description involves the earth as the active subject and spinning as the predicate. The earth turns such that where we're at on the earth spins toward the sun each morning and away from it each afternoon. That is what Jimmy learns in astronomy.
If everyone always accepted as bedrock, and undoubaible "the sun goes down each day", then no one would have ever discovered that this is a false description. The phenomenon cannot be properly described with the sun as the active subject, going down each day, it must be described with the earth as the active subject, spinning. It is only by doubting the fundamental descriptions of what we sense, that we discover the true reality.
Quoting Banno
We are still far apart, because you, as well as Sam, believe that there are certain fundamental propositions which it would be unreasonable to doubt under any circumstances. I believe that it is circumstances which make it reasonable to doubt propositions, and no proposition is beyond doubt in all possible circumstances. Therefore I think it is unreasonable to assume any proposition will go unchallenged
Did Sam say that? I'm pretty sure I did not.
I think Sam and I said that there are propositions that are taken as certain within a given language game.
The argument has been that it is unreasonable to doubt specific fundamental propositions. This implies that these propositions cannot be reasonably doubted under any circumstances. That is what is supposed to form the foundation of justification. It prevents the infinite regress of asking for justification of a proposition, then asking for justification of the justification, etc..
Yeah. That's the one I found too, but online, so wasn't sure of it's authenticity.
What's to be reconciled?
Perhaps it would help if I set out what I think is going on.
There's this word, "know", that is used like other words, confidently and productively by the speakers of English. Folk said they know what tine it is, they know that it is raining. All good innocent fun.
Then along come some of those speakers come along and write a dictionary in which they try to set out the meanings for words, including know. Of course, they never got it quite finished, because the way we use words keeps changing. Others came along, perhaps folk who did not like the uncertainty of continual change, and claimed it was wrong to use words in some ways; these apparently included folk who thought it wrong to use "know" except when one had a "true belief with an account".
So whereas it perhaps once was OK to say that the cat knew it was hungry, some of these new fangled ideas seemed to rule it out. Whereas our common folk talk said it was OK for a cat to know things, it seemed this new fangled stuff said that cats could not give an account of their belief, and so know nothing.
So it depends on which side you choose; in common folk language the cat does not have to be able to think about his own belief in order for him to know the bowl is empty. But in sophisticated greek-inpoered philosophy, it seems the cat can know no such thing.
SO in all that time we were talking about how bishops can only move diagonally, you missed the bit that said within the game of chess. No wonder you were confused, thinking Sam and I believed that a bishop stuck to the diagonals under any circumstances.
So I apologise for misleading you; and assure you that when you are not playing chess, you can do what you please with the bishop.
My only excuse is that it had until now not occurred to me that someone might miss the part about rules being part of a game-like activity.
Frame of reference?
In some, it most certainly does.
Yup. I'm with you there. It's the 'rules' of each game that I'm busy unpacking in order to show the consequences...
Common folk don't typically navel gaze!
;)
If we 'connect' this to Plato, S's being justified in believing P would be that S has an account. Accounts are existentially contingent upon language.
I want to say that a belief is justified or not prior to the believer offering the account. The justification is the offering. The account is of the ground that the belief rests upon. A well-grounded belief is justified prior to the account being offered. Some belief is justified despite the agent not being able to offer an account. The fire example.
I think that one underlying problem here is privileging language over belief. The former is always existentially contingent upon the latter, but some examples of the latter are existentially contingent upon the former.
Depends upon the belief. Epistemology(JTB) doesn't take this into account. The notions of justified and belief suffer the consequences.
Is their belief that touching the fire caused the pain unjustified until they tell someone? Of course not. It is knowledge. It is true. It is well-grounded. It needs no account be given to another. Justification is for proving to another that one's belief is well-grounded and true. The act doesn't ground the belief.
I think that Witt was skirting around these same kinds of considerations in OC.
You said that a belief must be stateable. However, OC 284 and 285 implies that beliefs can simply be shown in the actions of people. Why does a belief have to be stateable? It's true that within language beliefs do get stated, but that doesn't mean they have to be stateable or stated, which seems to further imply that beliefs aren't beliefs unless they're linguistic. Also, does this mean that if the actions of "rooting around," as W. puts it, never get stated, that it doesn't imply a belief. It doesn't seem to me that W. held that beliefs (necessarily (my words))have propositional content, some do, but others do not.
Anyway Creative, that's my take on it. I understand though that you seemed to leave open the possibility that beliefs are not necessarily propositional.
Banno was correct in saying that there are certain proposition that cannot be doubted within a given language-game, or within a particular context. W. demonstrated that while Moore's proposition, as stated before the audience was senseless, viz., could not be known or doubted. He also demonstrated that Moore's proposition could be doubted under the right conditions or context. So it's the phrase "under any circumstances" that I take issue with. I think that we can safely say that Moore's propositions cannot generally be doubted. I think this is more accurate. Moreover, it's true as you say, that these propositions when acting as bedrock, I believe, solve the infinite regress problem.
I went through this Banno, I told you your "game of chess" analogy is not applicable. That's when you accused me of being disrespectful. The game of chess does not allow that the players change the rules, but language and knowledge allow for this. Our subject is "knowledge", and if you insist on comparing it to a "game", then consider it a game with evolving rules, where the players decide the rules as they go. But then it's not really like playing a game at all. However, because this really is the nature of knowledge, then it's unreasonable to insist that any of the rules are beyond doubt.
Quoting Banno
Do you agree with me then, that to describe things like "knowledge" and "language" as "game-like" activities, is not an acceptable description? It is not acceptable because "game-like" implies that there are pre-existing rules which one must follow, and this would lead to an ontology of Platonic Realism, where the rules pre-exist the players. This description misses a large and very important part of the activities which are knowledge and language, and that is the creation and evolution of the rules.
So the game-like description is really false, it misses the mark because it implies that one ought to follow the rules, to be properly engaged in the activities, when in reality a large part of that activity involves doubting, questioning, and changing the rules.
It is this, describing language and knowledge as game-like, which leads Wittgenstein astray in the end, as demonstrated in On Certainty. The analogy is only good so far as it compares to the part of following rules. But in metaphysics we have to give credence to "the rules". What kind of existence do the rules have? If they always existed, then they are eternal platonic Forms. If they are not eternal Forms, then we have to allow for them to come into existence. If they come into existence, then they are most likely created by the human beings playing the game. But then the game analogy gets lost because the players really do not have to follow the rules, they use their free will to decide, and create the rules as they go.
So I think that Wittgenstein saw the problem of infinite regress in justification. This problem occurs if we refer to the rules for justification. This problem normally would normally be resolved by assuming eternal platonic Forms, necessary rules. Wittgenstein didn't want to go that way, but he also didn't want to admit to the claims of the skeptic that everything is doubtable. If you take my position (the skeptic's) that the rules are simply created by the human beings as they go, then nothing is certain and everything is doubtable. So he proposes the hinge-props as bedrock, to form a kind of compromise solution. But in my mind, this is just a vague, ambiguous proposal which doesn't resolve anything. If the hinge-props are not completely certain, necessary and undoubtable, then we must give in to the skeptic's position that all is doubtable. If they are necessary, they are nothing other than platonic Forms. So he just leaves vagueness and ambiguity as to what the hinge-props really are, such that we can go either way with them.
So I think that Wittgenstein has taken two world views which are completely incompatible and attempted to establish compatibility between them with the proposal of hinge-props. In my opinion it fails because the two world views are incompatible, and so the attempt is misguided.
Quoting creativesoul
If you believe in that frame of reference bull shit, then take your geocentricity, and make yourself the centre of your universe. (Hmm, my spell check changed "geocentricity" to "egocentricity")
Quoting creativesoul
Yeah, you want to say that the belief is justified (past tense) prior to the act of justification. You ought to give that up. Why don't you just say that the belief is true? Then you have a proper distinction between true and justified, and you follow more closely to traditional philosophical principles. A well-grounded belief is one which corresponds, it is true.
Quoting creativesoul
See, you are describing the belief as "well-ground", "true", but now you want to hand to it "justification" as well, without an act to justify it. The act of putting words to what you have experienced, and expressing it in a way which is comprehensible, and acceptable to others, is very important to epistemological knowledge because this provides the means for temporal persistence of the belief. Your memory, my memory, and especially Banno's memory, are each very limited (just kidding Banno). We get old, forget things, die and forget everything. So, what you and I "know" (in that sense of the word of personal memory), what we remember, our true beliefs cannot enter into the communal "body of knowledge", which is what epistemology deals with, without that act of justification. This act of justification gives your true belief, and knowledge in general, its temporal extension, instead of just being a flash in the pan.
Sure, and the existence of the tree is dependent on the seed, the sunlight, the rain and the nutrients within the ground in which it is anchored and growing and so on. I don't see the relevance to the point, though, which was concerned with the discernibility of entities.
You know MU, I read your responses not only in this thread, but your responses to Micheal in another thread, and the only one misguided is you. What you write isn't even coherent at times. You talk about Wittgenstein, but you don't even understand much of what he is saying. So don't give me this crap about being misguided, or that Wittgenstein's proposals fail, because it's clear that you're the one who doesn't understand what you're criticizing. Reading your posts reminds me of reading Ron L. Hubbard, most of it is gibberish.
Consider board games that usually come with a written set of rules. These games are man-made, but this doesn't mean that anyone can use their "free will to decide" what the rules of this game are. You have to follow the rules to play the game, otherwise you aren't playing that game.
If two (or more) players agree to play by a different set of rules then they are no longer playing the same game. In order to play the game named on the box, you can't make up the rules as you go. Even if two or more players agree to play a different game with a different set of rules, one person can't simply decide that those rules don't apply to her (and still be playing the same game).
The point is, as I stated earlier, that we in general, do not have a good clear idea of what it means to exist. Therefore doubt concerning claims of existence is warranted.
Quoting Sam26
Thanks for your opinion Sam26, though this post is not at all helpful. Hubbard is an extremely accomplished author so you honour me with this comparison, despite your idiosyncratic designation of "gibberish".
Quoting Luke
Right, I agree with this.
Quoting Luke
The point I was trying to make is that in the case of language and knowledge, unlike games of chess and such, we actually do make up the rules as we go. This is very evident from history. So that is where the "game" analogy falls short. When we reach the limits of an analogy we ought to drop it and move on, rather than trying to clutch for straws and apply the analogy where it is not suited.
That's different to what I responded to before where you said that if the rules of the game are man-made instead of existing in eternal Platonic Forms, then the players don't have to follow the rules and basically anything goes.
Right, if the rules are created by human beings, then human beings do not have to follow any existing rules because they create the rules which they follow, as they go..
But you also agreed with the following..?
Quoting Luke
I don't see your point. I agree that to play such games you must follow the existing rules. My point is that in language and knowledge we do not need to follow existing rules, we make up the rules as we go. Therefore, in this respect, the game analogy fails.
Okay, then I'm confused by you making a distinction between the existence of rules as man-made vs the existence of rules as Platonic Forms. Why make this distinction when games, language and knowledge all have man-made rules?
So I set up that game again, in which we do make up the rules as we go.
Now Meta can't mean this as it stands; because obviously if we are making our language up as we go along, and there are no rules, then language would be unlearnable.
There must be bits of language that we hold reasonably stable, so that others can learn them and use them.
Now, we could name these bits; let's see, they have simple rules to hold them together, like games, so let's call them language games...
Now, in such games, we can hold some bits constant while we are playing; but outside of such games, we could muck around with words as much as we like.
What would then be important would be working out which games we re playing, and which rules we ought be following. Because when we mix the rules of different games, all sorts of weird things might happen. We could invent a sort of therapy that looked carefully at the game we were playing and sorted out what rule goes were, so that we don't get confused... Let's call it "Analytic Philosophy".
This goes back to Sam26's claim that hinge-propositions (I'll just refer to them as "some rules") ought not be doubted, because they are necessary. If these rules are "necessary" in the sense of determined, necessarily existing, such that they cannot be doubted, rather than "necessary" in the sense of needed for some purpose (in which case it could be reasonable to doubt them) then they are nothing other than platonic Forms. In other words, these rules would require the status of "eternal truth", which is equivalent with platonic Form, in order that it would be unreasonable to doubt them.
The point being that the game analogy is good, until we get to the point where the rules need to be justified. To say that you ought to follow this rule requires justification because someone might doubt the correctness of this rule. But justification heads toward an infinite regress when this rule is justified by that rue which is justified by another rule, etc. So Wittgenstein and Sam26 propose that some rules, hinge-props have a special status as "unreasonable to doubt", which makes them necessary. But unless they are claimed to be necessary in the sense of "eternally true" platonic Forms (therefore cannot be doubted), then any claim of special status and "unreasonable to doubt" is just arbitrary, as they are really no different from any other propositions.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
This is not necessarily true, because the learning of language could be grounded in something other than rules. It could be grounded in the desire to learn, and the desire to learn could inspire one to create rules which enable learning. Just because you are unable to conceive of learning language in any way other than learning rules, doesn't mean that this is the case. It may just be that your model of learning is inaccurate.
I submit to you, that the inaccuracy of your model is produced from a misunderstanding of what it means for a person to follow a rule. When a person follows a rule, that person establishes a principle within the mind, and adheres to that principle. This is what following a rule is, like a New Year's resolution, you adopt a principle, hold it in your mind, and adhere to it in your actions. So the "rule" only has real existence within the mind of the individual who is following that rule. You, on the other hand, think that a rule is something existing externally to the individual's mind, and this external rule is what the individual follows. So you have an odd model of learning where a person comes to obey rules which are external to that person's mind, instead of the more accurate representation in which the person creates rules within one's own mind, to follow.
You model "learning" as the person coming to follow certain rules which exist outside the mind. In reality, learning is the process whereby a person creates principles and rules to follow within one's own mind. Once you apprehend learning as a creating of rules within one's own mind, which to an extent mimic the rules of others, then you will see that your objection here is meaningless, because learning just requires the capacity to create rules to follow, and this is something other than actually having rules to follow.
Quoting Banno
I don't see your point. You appear to be suggesting that we could take a language, and use that language to get outside of language. That's simple contradiction.
MU I never made any such claim, that rules shouldn't be doubted because they are necessary. This is what I mean by not understanding what's written, or at the very least misinterpreting what people are saying.
This is what you said:
Quoting Sam26
To which I replied that to avoid Platonic Realism you would have to be using "necessarily" in the sense of "needed for some purpose". And if you are using necessary in the sense of needed for some purpose, then the statement is doubtable depending on whether or not the purpose of the person considering the statement is consistent with the purpose for which the statement is needed.
If you are using "necessarily" in the sense of predetermined existence, "impossible to be otherwise", then you have eternal truths, which are nothing other than platonic Forms.
If you think that I misunderstood you, then you should have clarified your position after I made my post explaining this interpretation. But to keep saying the same thing over and over again, insisting that I misinterpret you, without explaining how you could possibly be interpreted in any other way, does not help.
I never said those propositions were examples of hinge-propositions. We've been talking about this stuff for years. You'd think by now you will know my position.
Again, this is not to the point. While it is true that there are difficulties in precisely working out the complete scope of applicability of the idea of existence, we know that it refers in a self-evident way to concrete existents; the objects of the senses that we encounter ceaselessly throughout our lives. It makes no sense to question the existence of something which is a paradigm example of the very concept of existence. We only know what 'existence' means insofar as we understand that the term refers first and foremost to those paradigm examples, identifiable concrete entities.
Deleted
Let me explain this a bit further. It's an old argument, but probably most familiar from Davidson. A language learner combines a large but limited vocabulary to develop novel utterances using a large but limited grammar. If the language had an unlimited vocabulary, a new word for each situation, it wold be unlearnable. If it had an unlimited grammar, such that words could be arranged in any way, it would be unusable.
I'm suggesting that you would not advocate anything so obviously impossible as a language in which anything goes. It's not bout the desire to learn, but the capacity to learn.
This rather fits in with Sam's suggestion that you have not understood Wittgenstein. This is exactly the account that Wittgenstein shows to be faulty; here you do no more than blandly assert its truth. But I ma not going to rehash Wittgenstein's arguments against your view of rule-following; I'll just sugest you re-read some sources on private language.
It's your model of rule following that has been shown to be inept.
But that is exactly what we do when we talk about the rules of chess. we step outside of those rules.
We can't step outside of language as a whole, but we might be able to step outside any part of it.
Are you serious Sam26? Must I reprint your entire post?
Quoting Sam26
So you produce all this talk about "basic, foundational, or bedrock" propositions, which it would be nonsensical to doubt. Then you give a couple examples, "triangles have three sides", and "bachelors are unmarried" which are "necessarily correct". Now you say that these examples are not examples of hinge-propositions.
Earlier you said:
Quoting Sam26
So I assume that "I know this is a hand" cannot be a hinge proposition because it makes sense to doubt such propositions in some cases.
What I see is "the category of being outside of our epistemological conversations" as a defining feature of a hinge-proposition. But how does it make sense to say that such a statement is beyond doubt? Often we doubt statements if we have no faith or trust in the speaker of the statement, and this is not an epistemological matter, it is a matter of faith.
This is how I understand the situation here. You have given me examples of statements which it would be unreasonable to doubt, but since these statements are of epistemological concerns, they do not qualify as hinge-propositions. Now can you explain how there could be a statement which has no epistemological bearing, yet it would be unreasonable to doubt it. Are these statements of faith? But how could it be, that it is unreasonable to doubt a statement of faith?
But in this thread I am having some fun in explaining and tightening the argument. It is getting to the point were I might give it a miss, though, based on diminishing returns.
X-) Yep. It's not just you. Borderline crackpot. Still has some use, though.
I suggest we go back to working out exactly where you and I differ on the nature of hinge propositions?
Where was that...
I posted a paper earlier in the thread about states of mind. Did you have a chance to read it? It's on page 11, the very first post. I provided a link.
As I said, we have very distinct models, and I think yours is deficient. How could a person learn the first word?
Quoting Banno
The capacity to learn is useless without the desire to learn.
Quoting Banno
Yes, I clearly disagree with Wittgenstein on this matter. But Wittgenstein doesn't show my account as faulty or inept, he just proposes his as more simple, easier, less complex. I can go forward producing endless examples and evidence as to how my position is a more accurate description of what really occurs in rule following, such as the example I just gave, the New Year's resolution. But you do not want examples.
I can explain to you why Wittgenstein's perspective on this matter is insufficient though. He defines "correct" as acting according to the rule. This leaves no principle by which to judge rules as correct or incorrect. Therefore when different groups of people have different conflicting, or contradicting rules, each group is correct so long as they are following their rules. Following Wittgenstein's principles, such conflicts are, in principle, unresolvable because each of the conflicting sides is correct. This would require referring to something outside of correct or incorrect, to resolve the issue, like good and bad. But that would be nonsense because it renders correct and incorrect totally impotent and meaningless. Correct and incorrect would have no real value because correct might still be bad.
That is the problem with defining correct and incorrect in relation to the rules, instead of producing rules in relation to a determination of correct and incorrect., where 'correct" is determined in relation to some further principles, other than rules. In the end, we have to refer to the further principle anyway to establish which rules are more acceptable when there is conflict.
Quoting Banno
If you think that you can step outside of any part of the language that you're already using, then you are delusional. What do you propose, that one forget the words which one already knows?
Quoting Sam26
If this is the case, then you haven't expressed your thoughts very well, because I still don't know what you were trying to say..
It's quite evident that using language is not a matter of following rules, isn't it? There is the matter of trying to best represent what you are thinking, in words, and the matter of having those words interpreted in the way that you were thinking that they would be. There's no rules to consult. Using language is not the simple matter which you, Banno, or Wittgenstein present it as.
Rubbish. The first 250 paragraphs in PI are a series of arguments against your position.
Here again is that odd refusal you have to read what was actually written.
Bah. Time to give it a rest, Meta. Thanks for the discussion; despite what I have said, I do usually enjoy your posts. But responding is eventually too much like beating my head on the table.
I take it that the idea is a certain belief will in some way correspond to a measurable "synchronised neuronal activity in a specific frequency". Is that correct?
Well, it might be true. But I suspect that there is some misunderstanding here about the nature of belief.
Taking Moore's example, how does my belief that I have a hand manifest? Occasionally, in waving my hands in front of a group of philosophers, or writing about them. More often, in picking up a glass or a pen, or in scratching my nose, or the myriad other activities that depend on that belief.
It seems to me a long stretch to suggest that behind all such cases, there is one "synchronised neuronal activity in a specific frequency" that in some sense corresponds to the belief.
BA Hons, plus some post grad courses, and lots of reading. I may have idiosyncratic interpretations of the work I read, but I don't think you can say that my interpretations are wrong. I did pass my courses, and some with quite good marks. My mind tends to focus on different aspects of the work from what other people tend to focus on. With respect to Wittgenstein I did an undergraduate course dedicated solely to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and I've read thoroughly Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty.
Quoting Sam26
Ever consider that your capacity to distinguish between "good philosophy" and "blowing smoke" isn't as objective as you think? Perhaps you are swayed more by what "agrees" with you, than you think you are. Consider your reference to LR Hubbard. Clearly what he has written is not as you say, gibberish, because he has millions of followers. I suggest that you simply do not agree with him, like you do not agree with me. And, since I need to repeatedly point to the same weakness in your belief, over and over again, because you refuse to acknowledge this weakness, this irritates you.
Quoting Banno
I've read all PI. most of it numerous times. Remember when we did that debate, all the direct references I made. There is no coherent argument against my position, just a demonstration that the true reality concerning this issue is within the mind, and because of that it is veiled, inaccessible to observation. So an alternative was proposed, that we ignore all of this in the mind stuff and focus on what is accessible to observation. As I said, it's just a proposal for an easier way. But of course, it skirts the real issue.
I'm nonplussed by this; so I will say no more about it.
None of us are probably as objective as we think; and we are all probably swayed more by arguments we tend to agree with, so nothing new there. Now just consider the statement you just made, viz., "Clearly what he has written is not as you say, gibberish, because he has millions of followers." I would not associate good thinking or good arguments in terms of having millions of followers. There are millions of followers of astrology, but I surely don't think there is any logic to astrology, or any way one can coherently justify such a belief. So having millions of followers doesn't do anything to lend support to your criticism of my remark. This is an example of the kind of basic mistake that a beginner would make.
What irritates me is not that you supposedly point out some weakness in my argument. It's your constant misunderstanding of basic things; and it's not just what your saying to me, but this is a hallmark of many of your posts with others. Your remarks with Michael in another thread show an inability to understand basic things. People have to continuously correct what your saying, and you seem to change the meanings of words based on private interpretations.
Ahhh, I feel much better now that I got that off my chest.
If it is gibberish, this means that it is unintelligible, meaningless, nonsense. If it is meaningless, unintelligible, nonsense, then people would not be able to follow it. Therefore if the person has millions of followers, it is extremely unlikely that what the person wrote is gibberish, because these people would not be able to follow it if it were. They might be following for other reasons, but that is not likely.
So the issue is that you are seeing what the person wrote as gibberish (meaningless), while millions of others are seeing it as meaningful, and good. You are in no position to judge it as good or bad until you see it first as meaningful, and then take the time to understand it.
You can take the time to understand arguments, judging premises and conclusions for soundness and validity, but to simply dismiss something offhandedly as gibberish, indicates that you have not done that. I have no problem with you dismissing what I write as gibberish in this way, because there is no reason for you to believe that anything I would write would be meaningful. So you might dismiss it as gibberish, not being inclined to take the time to try to understand it, and having no reason to make the effort. But when you dismiss someone like Hubbard in this same way, or something like astrology in this way, as some atheists dismiss religion in this same way, when the evidence is clear that these things are meaningful because they have millions of followers, then I think that this is a problem for you. And this leads me to think that you dismissing me as gibberish is probably an extension of this problem which you have.
Quoting Sam26
Look, I asked you to justify your claim that there are hinge-props which are outside of knowledge, which it is unreasonable to doubt. I explained that if they are outside of knowledge, then it is clearly reasonable to doubt them. Now, I reposted a large part of your reply just above. You started to talk about bedrock propositions, and how they are correct, and not doubtable, then you ended with some example like "triangles have three sides". Then you came right back and said that you never meant this as an example of a hinge-prop.
Sure, I've misunderstood you, but this is not to be blamed on me. You gave me an example of a hinge-prop, then came right back to say "I never said" that was an example of a hinge-prop. In order for me to understand what you are trying to say, you must state it and explain it clearly, and stick by your examples. Double-talk is not conducive to understanding. And the fact that there are numerous others around this sight who employ double-talk and various other forms of sophistry does not justify your mistakes.
The problem seems to be that you think you can use terms like "hinge-proposition", which have no real referent because there is no such thing as a hinge-proposition in the real world, only some vague definition or description of what one would be like, and expect to have people understand what you are talking about.
Being stateable doesn't require that the believer do the stating. If the content of belief is propositional, then it only follows that it can be stated. Earlier I address the linguistic aspect when talking about the coherency aspect of JTB(epistemologists). If propositions are not existentially contingent upon language, then belief can be propositional in it's content, stateable, and not linguistic.
I do not hold such a view. However, it is consistent with the notion that belief content is propositional. I say that Witt worked from that tenet because ihe talked about hinge "propositions" as beliefs that need no justification. I've read nothing of his, early or late, that would suggest that he did not hold that the content of belief is propositional. The limits of my language is the limit of my world. Whereof one cannot speak. All doubt is belief based. When one doubts a proposition, let's call it 'X', upon what grounds does the doubter of 'X' rest their disbelief upon? Doubting 'X' is to doubt that 'X' is true; is the case; is the way things are/were, etc.
Belief that this or that places the truth of the proposition into question.
Quoting Sam26
Well, it is clear that Witt was working through some things in OC. On a whole, it seems to me that he offered alternative explanations for all sorts of metaphysical notions including meaning, intention, and everything else. However, he doesn't balk at the notion of belief. Why would that be the case? I put it to you that his acceptance of the notion of belief followed from his epistemological stance(s). Belief has propositional content is what nearly all of his contemporaries held as well. Stating one's beliefs is what one does when making assertions/statements... assuming sincerity, of course.
Thus, his struggle was with how to come up with a notion of belief which was stateable, but did not require being justified, because of it's being the foundational bedrock for all sorts of other beliefs which hinged upon it/them(followed from it/them).
That's all good Sam. We're working through some difficult and quite nuanced veins of thought. You're spot on with the bit about what I leave open. On my view, all belief content is correlation. That's not for this thread though.
It may be worth getting into how doubt, certainty, and justification play into all this... particularly with regard to Moore's proof of an external world and how Witt just could not allow himself to call it knowledge.
P.S.
Ah, nice... just saw that Banno has suggested something along those lines as well.
P.S.S.
Nevermind an interlocutor who refuses to follow the first rule of critical analysis... granting the terms. It's waste of time and emotion.
How can one doubt that another has hands given that...
1. All doubt is belief based
2. We acquire language
3. Language acquisition is existentially upon shared meaning
4. At conception we are utterly void of all thought and belief?
I do not think that Witt doubted that Moore was external to him and had hands. I'm confident we all agree there.
Witt was doubting whether or not it made sense for us to say that Moore knew what he was talking about when he claimed "Here is one hand, and here is yet another", or words to that effect/affect.
Why would it be the case that we cannot have justified true belief that we have hands?
Upon what ground does one doubt our ability to know that "we have hands" is a true statement, given the above?
I know 'X' is true, if first I believe 'X', and 'X' is also both, well-grounded and true.
I know that these are(called) "hands".
If one talks in any sensible fashion whatsoever, s/he has no basis for denying an external world except ignorance regarding what language acquisition is - itself - existentially contingent upon(what their own doubt requires).
Is that taking things too far, or would Witt agree?
Do you? If not, please explain...
Moore was certain he had hands.
If what is required for him to know that he has hands is some account that uses language, then we must conclude, counterintuitively, that despite his certainty he did not know he had hands.
So why was he certain? Here, here are the hands - he showed them.
What do we make of someone who holds up their hands in front of their own face, and yet sincerely claims they have no hands?
What more than that theydo not understand how we use words about hands?
I think we agree, but I'd take it farther...
What belief grounds such a denial?
He gave the only ground necessary. He showed that he knew how to use the language.
If an account is required then knowledge of one's hands is knowledge that these are called "hands". Moore satisfied that requirement as well, because he displayed exactly that.
I can know that these things I'm shaking in front of you are called "hands". You know it too. Any competent English speaker knows it as well. Moore showed that he knew how to speak, and by virtue of knowing how to speak he knew that he had hands.
Certainty?
Sure, but what does that matter? I mean, he's not wrong. Certainty doesn't necessarily require being grounded upon some complex language construct. I see no reason to hold that certainty be denied, because I find no reason to deny that Moore has knowledge of his hands.
A justification happens when a speaker offers grounds for a belief statement. If the belief is well-grounded, it is justified.
A justification is a method of convincing another. The strongest ones have the strongest grounds. What moore convincing is required?(pun intended)
Moore's knowledge that he has hands is indubitable.
So...
His inability to grant Moore's knowledge was nothing more than his being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Cognitive dissonance.
As far as I can tell, nobody here - including you - believes that the rules of language, knowledge and/or games exist as Platonic Forms. How does the analogy break down if those rules are all man-made?
As I understand it, If it's indubitable then it can't be knowledge. For a statement to be classified as a piece of knowledge, then it must be open to doubt.
I don't know that I am now speaking English, but only because it doesn't make any sense to doubt it. However, there might be circumstances where it would make sense for me to doubt that I was speaking English (although I can't think of any off the top of my head), and then it may be sensible to make a knowledge claim about it.
In my uni work on metaphysics of mind last year I read and thought a lot about Feigl. Contrary to what the paper you cite says, Sam, he did in his appendix to 'The Mental and the Physical' (1957/67) write something about 'brain states'. (You can read the whole paper online here) I hope it's of use to quote here extensively from his Appendix B. I think he is saying something close to what you're saying, Sam, but correct me if I'm wrong. Excuse me jumping into the debate on page 16!
Schopenhauer (who the early Wittgenstein at least, admired) put it in a really neat way. There's understanding and reason. Understanding, which we share with animals, is the inbuilt expectations we have about how the world is that we bring to our experience as a result of us being evolved creatures. So that's roughly the general idea of the world as 3-dimensional, comprised of "middle sized furniture," and things like solidity, figure, texture, colour, etc. But it needn't be consciously represented (though it would probably have to be "represented" in some sense in the brain's machinery) - it's just how we proceed, it's pre-verbal, unconscious expectation taking-for-granted about how the world is. We proceed as if the world is a certain way.
And this pre-verbal expectation or mindset is usually correct because whatever may exist beyond these features, these features at least exist and are the kinds of features that our ancestors (going right back to primitive life forms) evolved to cope with.
Reason, on the other hand, is our own neat trick that other animals don't have (or have only to a much more primitive degree) - it's the ability to have either mental contents or items in the world symbolize other things. This probably evolved out of the capacity mammals (and some other social animals, like corvids, etc.) have, to represent inner states to their conspecifics (e.g. "I'm hurting"), which facilitates social co-ordination. As soon as the possibility of symbolizing inner states "honestly" arises, though, the possibility of lying about inner states for advantage also arises, and that opens up the possibility of counterfactuality, the possibility of imagining and symbolizing alternative possibilities, etc. And then we're off to the races, because we can then explain the known by means of the unknown (i.e. we can project possible causal explanations, that go beyond present experience, for what we presently experience).
I think "hinge propositions" and the like are elements (words, concepts, sentences, propositions) from reason that are tied closely to elements of understanding (pre-verbal expectations). The former express in symbolism what we take for granted at the level of pre-verbally just going about our business in the world.
I understand that "being stateable" doesn't imply that someone actually state the belief. Yes, it seems quite obvious that if a belief is in the form of a proposition, then necessarily it can be stated.
Contingency, being a subset of possibility, implies that things could happen differently, but how is it that propositions are only contingent upon language? Can propositions arise apart from language? I think not, unless you can provide an example. I would say that propositions are necessarily a feature of language. Thus, propositions, in terms of existence, are necessarily dependent upon language, not contingently dependent on language.
Your final statement "...then belief can be propositional in it's content, stateable, and not linguistic," seems strange, since if it is linguistic (definition - relating to language), then a proposition is necessarily linguistic. To say that a proposition is stateable, is also to say that a proposition is linguistic. Stating something is a linguistic endeavor, is it not? It seems to me that being stateable is a subset of linguistics.
Quoting creativesoul
For me it's quite clear that beliefs can be shown in what we do apart from what is sayable. I can't make any sense out of the idea that pre-linguistic man did not have beliefs apart from language. If pre-linguistic man was observed building something, then necessarily his actions of gathering material shows his belief that the materials are in a certain spot, and that the materials are used for a specific purpose. Thus, he shows his beliefs quite apart from any statements or propositions. Moreover, it seems to me that one of the functions of language is to convey my thoughts and/or beliefs to someone else.
I also can't make sense of animals having beliefs, if beliefs are necessary to language. Animals also show what they believe apart from saying something. For example, a dog may express its belief that its master is home by jumping up and down and barking - thus, the dog also shows what it believes based on its actions.
Thoughts/beliefs are pre-existent necessarily, if not then language would develop in a vacuum.
"William James, in order to show that thought is possible without speech, quotes the reminiscences of a deaf-mute, Mr Ballard, who wrote that in his early youth, even before he could speak, he had had thoughts about God and the world. -What could that mean!- Ballard writes: 'It was during those delightful rides, some two or three years before my initiation into the rudiments of written language, that I began to ask myself the question: how came the world into being?" - Are you sure - one would like to ask - that this is the correct translation of your wordless thoughts into words?...... (PI 342)."
Also you can't just dismiss OC 284 and 285 by saying that Wittgenstein just didn't have time to edit his remarks, as though he would have edited this out of the final draft. If this is your position, then any of Wittgenstein's remarks could be dismissed based on this criteria.
I'm not sure this could even work for a computer, let alone a human brain. We can, as a matter of fact, identify all possible states of a computer, yet dong so helps us in no way to understand what it is computing. In fact the same computer-states will be used in different computations for different purposes.
Assuming isomorphism is a mistake.
I don't think so, I think that this is how we resolve issues, by going over them again and again and again. Most of the things you have said make sense to me, but then you stick in this hinge-proposition notion, and it doesn't make sense to me, it's out of place. You seem to whole-heartedly believe this idea, but you are unable to explain it to me, or give examples, in a way which I can understand. I am very interested to understand why this is. So I see this as an instance where I am unable to understand what someone else strongly believes, and I'm not so quick to give up on it.
I think we agree that in instances of justification we reach bottom, or fundamental statements, which we agree are unreasonable to doubt in those instances. These could be self-evident truths, axioms, premises for deductive arguments, etc.. You seem to proceed from this fact to make some sort of inductive conclusion, a generalization about statements themselves, which says that there are propositions (hinge-propositions) which are unreasonable to doubt. I apprehend this as faulty logic.
You seem to proceed from a description of how people behave, that they accept certain propositions as beyond a doubt, to make a general conclusion about propositions themselves, that some of them are beyond a doubt. I think that this is a faulty procedure. Consider this analogy. We state as a fact, that all people find that some foods taste good. Then we proceed to the conclusion that therefore some foods taste good. That is the type of faulty logical procedure I believe is supporting your belief in hinge-propositions.
Quoting Luke
The game analogy breaks down at the point where we have to account for the creation of the rules. If we allow that the rules are man-made, then we ought to also allow that they change and evolve according to how human beings decide they should be. This is contrary to the principal point of the game analogy, which implies that we must follow the rules in order to play the game. We as human beings do not only follow the rules of the game, we create the rules as much as we follow them. Therefore if a "game" consists of a stated set of rules which must be followed, there is no game because there is no such set of rules.
As I explained to Banno, the game analogy assumes a faulty description of what it means for a human being to follow a rule. It assumes that there is a set of rules, which are part of an external object, a game, which the human being follows. In reality, when a human being follows a rule, that individual holds within one's mind, a principle which is adhered to. The principle, or "rule" which is followed, is within the individual's mind. It is not part of an external object such as a game.
If you apprehend the rule, or principle, which the individual adheres to when following a rule, as existing within the individual's mind, then you may understand that the process of learning is a process whereby such rules are created within one's mind. This perspective allows us to understand the fact that rules are created by human beings, because it respects the fact that each human being creates one's own rules to follow in the process of learning.
It's a mid-20th century scientistic fantasy. I do think it's an interesting way of putting it, in that it spells out some of the ground that a lot of people evade: just what sort of factors would need to be aligned to make an ultra-physicalist view work.
One problem anyway is 'state' versus ' process'. A still picture, if that is the equivalent of 'state', can be very deceptive about what 'process' is going on in the course of movement, taken in isolation.
People get bogged down in terminological problems: 'mental' and 'physical', 'monist' and 'dualist' for instance. Feigl identifies that there would need to be some common language, and he can only imagine a scientific one replacing a 'natural' one, a bit like the Churchlands. It's interesting then how hard it is to imagine 'I believe' being represented by 'I am in state 44: 34: 22: 67 :98'. I suggest that one issue is that 'belief' has an emotional, or at the very least a commitment component to it that natural language gives us.
(Personally I think 'belief' is overdone and 'thought' is a good old-fashioned Fregean word that might be better. When I think of a musical note, as I often do, in relation to musical notes before and after, for instance, I feel the vocabulary needs to encompass that)
Indeed. I'm not denying that that is what Witt held. I'm denying that it should, and I've offered more than one reason for that.
Physicalist or not, you can't tell what a computer is doing from its state.
Quoting mcdoodle
I'm not sure "process" helps you either. Why would a sequence of states tell you what is going on? The only way to tell what's going on, is to run the program.
Quoting mcdoodle
What makes anyone think brain and mental states are correlated, when computer and computational states aren't?
I agree that this is a problem. A brain is always active. To say that there is such a thing as a "brain state" is a misleading claim because "state" implies a condition of inactivity. So to say that a belief is a "brain state" is only to give an unrealistic description of the brain which is understood as active.
Quoting tom
Aristotle demonstrated an inherent incompatibility between "being" (state) and 'becoming" (process). He claimed one could not be resolved, or reduced to a form of the other, such that the two must be considered as distinct categories. He proposed exceptions to the law of excluded middle to account for the reality of "becoming" with the concepts of "potential", and "matter".
Hegel in his dialectics of being implies that being is subsumed within the category of becoming, through a process of negation; being, negated by not-being, then the negation of the negation, etc.. That is how becoming is explained, such that becoming is a sort of synthesis of being and not being. This is fundamental to dialectical materialism, many of whom call for exceptions to the law of non-contradiction, which is called dialetheism.
I like this too, but only as an object of criticism.
So that we can be scientific, let's apply falsification to the situation we describe.
The child grows up and becomes a neuroscientists. One day, she is in state "17-9-6-53-12"; but just to be sure, she checks on her Neuroscope.
She finds she is in state "84-9-6-53-12".
Was she wrong about the state of her own mind? How could that make sense?
So would this count as a falsification of the theory?
Yet if "The world is everything that is the case" then it must be statable.
But this gives primacy to statements over other meanings.
When one shows something that cannot be said, is one breaking Searle's rule? Or is what is shown not meant?
Critiquing my own thinking.
This is patently false. Board games don't exist?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You speak about an individual person but games are more often played with/against other people, who teach us the rules of (i.e. how to play) the game and who ensure that we don't break the agreed upon rules of the game (i.e. cheat).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Why do we have written rules, sports referees, teachers, driving instructors, ombudsmen, judges, police, etc. if "each human being creates one's own rules to follow in the process of learning"? And what does it mean to break a rule in that case?
What you seem to want to say is that 'each human being creates one's own rules to follow in the process of learning the rules', but 'one's own rules' is redundant here. Following rules is a normative practice, rather than something mentally private.
I think you misunderstood what I said. I didn't mean to say that board games do not exist. I meant, that if "game" refers to something which consists of a set of rules which must be followed, then in the case of language, there is no game.
Quoting Luke
What is the case, is that written rules are physical symbols on paper, or whatever medium, which must be interpreted. When the symbols are perceived (read), they are interpreted. If the individual desires to play the game, then the person will create principles within one's mind, and adhere to these principles in the act of playing the game.
If you and I are playing a game, and you carry out an action which is discordant with my interpretation, I will claim that you have not followed the rules. If you insist that you have, we may have to consult the written symbols, and each of our own interpretations, to try and decide who is right.
In the case of the various authorities which you have named, we trust them as authorities due to their training, such that we grant to them different degrees of power, to provide an official interpretation in the relevant situations. The statement "break the rule" is based on the authoritative interpretation. So for instance, we assign to the police the power to make arrests based on their interpretations. But what the police do is charge the person, whom according to their interpretation has broken the law. This still does not mean that the person has necessarily "broken the law" though, because the person has the right to go in front of a judge, or jury, to provide a more authoritative interpretation. So in the case of "law", in which breaking the rule is taken very seriously, we employ multiple levels of interpretation to ensure fairness.
Quoting Luke
Yes, each one creates one's own principles within one's mind, and adheres to these principles. It is something mentally private. This is very evident, all you need to do is take at look at how you personally follow a rule. You have your own interpretation of what you ought to do to follow that rule, you hold some principles within your mind, and you adhere to them. Consider Banno's chess example, the bishop must move diagonally. You hold this interpretation within your mind, and adhere to it when you play chess. That is how you follow a rule, you hold a principle within your mind, and adhere to it in your actions, you do not consult some externally existing rules each time you are going to act. The actual rules, or principles, which one follows when playing chess go far beyond one's interpretation of the written rules, to include principles of strategy. They must be mentally private or else one could not proceed with a strategy.
When you say that "following rules is a normative practise", what you refer to is a judgement as to whether or not a specified set of rules has been followed. That specified set of rules constitutes "the norm". This is determined by some authorities. Falling outside the norm does not mean that one has not followed rules, it means that one has not followed that specific set of rules which are designated by the authorities as the norm. So I may have principles within my mind, which I adhere to, and I firmly follow those rules, but if my actions are eccentric, or in some other way odd, I may be judged as being outside the norm. We might commonly say that I do not follow "the rules". But "the rules" here refers to that specific set of rules which is determined as constituting the norm, it in no way means that I do not follow any rules in the general sense. So "normative" refers to a judgement as to whether specific rules have been followed, not a judgement as to whether rules have been followed in general.
Well, I said, this is a mid-20th century fantasy, and at that time it was the view of a group of people including Feigl, named in the paper Sam referenced. For a time it was the leading 'physicalist' view. Then the notion of the mental supervening on the physical gradually superseded it. I don't really understand the accusatory tone of 'What makes anyone think...?' It's not something I think. But I'm exploring that some other intelligent people have thought that, and that it's got affinities with what Sam is arguing for. One obvious rejoinder to your analogy is that it's a poor one: 'computer and computational' don't easily map on to 'brain and mental' without remainder.
Quoting Banno
Me too. But I think Feigl could answer your question. If beliefs based on the evidence of personal experience are primitive science - which I think he's saying - then one could certainly discover that in adulthood one's coordinates for what one's child-self used to call 'belief in God' are not about 'belief in God' at all, they're about the mathematical equivalent of 'loving father-figure'.
Hm. Now I've written it down, not clear how that can be right although it seemed right when I thought it. Perhaps she could discover it's associated with delusional state 45-36-23-90-10, which she wasn't even monitoring.
You were talking about where the game analogy breaks down, but I still don't see how language is any different. The rules of both games and language are man-made and we can make up new rules for both.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You stated in your previous post:
"The principle, or "rule" which is followed, is within the individual's mind. It is not part of an external object such as a game."
Why would you consult the written rules of the game when you claim that the rules are not external to you?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, why defer to these external authorities if the rules are not external to you?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Has a person "necessarily" broken the law if a judge and jury then decide it? Or can people never actually break the law?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Maybe I interpret the rule differently because I've always viewed the chess board at the wrong angle, so I believe that the bishop can only move vertically or horizontally. However, in practice, this is not how we learn or teach the game. This shows that our normative behaviours inform our uses of language, rather than the kind of interpretations in the abstract that you are advocating.
.Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is confused. The strategy you employ in any given game is not a part of the rules of the game. Otherwise, where can I find this in the rules?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Uhh, those are the rules, as you say.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What are these other ("in general") rules, besides the rules, that you are attempting to make an allowance for here? You mean thinking, or something? What rules does thinking follow? And what relevance does it have to the rules of games and language that we are discussing here?
We've known that all Turing machines are equivalent since 1930s and that all physical universal computers are equivalent since 1980s and that they are capable of emulating any physical system.
It's not an analogy, it's known physics. Once you have achieved computational universality, there is nowhere else to go.
What sort of mind-bendingly ridiculous statement is this?
Computers shall never fully emulate any physical system. It is logically impossible.
But since you think its already been done; please give us an example of such a machine from the 1930s??
LOL
Maybe you should re-read my post.
I explicitly made the distinction between Turing machines and physical universal computers; one being a mathematical abstraction, the other a real physical system. There were no universal computers in the 1930s.
The paper that proves that any finite physical system may be emulated on a universal computer by finite means is this one:
http://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/wp-content/deutsch85.pdf
It also happens to be the paper in which the quantum computer was invented. Don't let that worry you because the brain does not rely on quantum coherence, so a classical computer will suffice for a perfect emulation.
Now, you mentioned something about logical impossibility. Would you care to explain? LOLS
Then what did you mean by this?
"We've known that all Turing machines are equivalent since 1930s"
The last time I tried to make up my own rules in a game I got kicked out of the game. No one yet has denied me the right to use language, though Sam26 might like to kick me out of the thread. Games have explicitly defined parameters, boundaries of in and out, and this makes the game a definite object. Language is not like that, it is a method of communication with no definite boundaries. Banno seems to believe that specific bounded language-games may be identified within language as a whole, such that one might step outside of a particular language-game, but all the overlap and vagueness of any proposed boundaries make this assumption unrealistic. Therefore we ought to just face the fact that the game analogy, while it may give us an approach, can only take us so far in any understanding of language.
Quoting Luke
I went through this, I interpret the symbols.
Quoting Luke
Right, that's another reason why the game analogy fails. Not only do we follow "the rules of the game", we make up our own strategies, private rules, which are part of the play, but not part of "the game" itself. So the rule-following employed in actually playing the game goes far beyond the actual rules of "the game". We could not even understand playing a game, by studying the game itself, because how one plays a game goes far beyond the game itself. To understand how different people play a particular game, we must refer to something other than "the game". If studying a game cannot even provide us with an understanding of how different people play that game, and we must turn to something else to obtain that understanding, then clearly the game analogy can only go so far, and it must be dropped at this point. If we cling to it, it will mislead us.
Quoting Luke
I told you, the principles we hold in our minds, which we adhere to in activity. When I get up in the morning I put the coffee pot on, that's a rule I follow.
Quoting Luke
It's clearly relevant to the principles or "rules" of language use, because I choose my words in a similar habitual way. It's not very relevant to "rules" of games though, and that's the point. We use "rules" in numerous ways and we ought not to equivocate when doing philosophy.
Since the 1930s, we have known that all Turing-complete architectures are EQUIVALENT. i.e. they can all perfectly emulate each other. Because you seem to be struggling with this, perhaps I need to point out that equivalence does not mean the SAME.
Architectures can be different, and because of that we know that computational states cannot be determined by the state of the computer, even if the computer is itself an abstraction. The identical computational state may be implemented in an infinite number of ways.
Now, you asserted it was logically impossible for computers to emulate any physical system. Please explain.
Finite might be an important qualification don't you think?
Deutsch certainly believes so....
Of course I realise that you take as unarguable that the MWI interpretation (your so-called non-interpretation interpretation :) ) is proven and quantum computation tapping unlimited resources is as good as a done thing. But I wonder what Popper would have said about such unqualified conviction?
Quoting Sam26
I look forward to your return. I guess I will have to stop procrastinating in the interim.
The entire observable universe is finite.
Quoting apokrisis
Quantum computation has nothing to do with interpretation. I merely asks new questions that are unanswerable in interpretations other than MW. A bit like the old questions, only more pressing.
Popper wrote a book on the subject, "Realism and th Aim of Science".
And continuous? That was the issue.
The observable universe is finite due to the constraint of there being a lightcone limited observer. So its a special kind of boundedness. And again a reminder of the lack of a definition of an observer in QM ontology of course.
Quoting tom
Maybe it will answer the question whether reality is either fundamentally continuous or discrete then? :)
Of course I argue for the third option - that it is fundamentally vague. The continuous and the discrete are then both mutually emergent.
And that is remarkably compatible with a quantum interpretation that sees indeterminism as fundamental, and a classically structured Cosmos as emergent.
I mention that just because you post as if it is already case closed when it comes to anything His Holyness, Pope Deutsch, has said on the issue.
That's not a fair comparison. If you were to speak nothing but gibberish (e.g. Forest the upon warmly eight marshmallow Lebanon it unicycle), then you might get kicked out of a conversation. But denying you the right to use language is like denying you the right to play any and all games. Has anyone denied you the right to play all games? I doubt it. And surely you and your friends/family have made up your own games or made up your own variation of the rules of an existing game before? Maybe to finish up a game quickly, you invent the rule that the person who wins the next point wins the game, or something similar. Similar variations to the rules of language get made all the time, either by a small subset of the community or by the entire community.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's a huge dodge. You claim that the rules are not part of any external object such as a game, yet you refer to the written rules of the game to help settle disputes? Clearly the written rules of the game are external to you. If the rules are entirely "within the individual's mind" (which individual, btw?) then why do you need to consult the external written rules? Are they not the rules?
Either the rules are entirely "within the individual's mind", as you claim, or else the external written rules printed in the game's instructions are not rules at all. But if they aren't the rules of the game, then why do we call them that? Is everybody but you using the word "rules" incorrectly?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Strategies aren't rules of the game. The rules set the boundaries of permissible moves; strategies are employed within these boundaries.
Also, you make no reference to language here and speak only of games, yet you claim to demonstrate how the game analogy fails.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Okay, but you aren't the only one using the language, and if language is a "method of communication", as you say, then you might want to adopt the habit of using language in mostly the same ways that everyone else does if you want your communication to be effective.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Right, don't conflate actual rules, such as the written rules of a board game, with some imaginary private mental "rules" that only apply to you.
Post #1
First, since my theory starts at states of mind or mind states, whichever you prefer, let me say something briefly about what's meant by this phrase. A state of mind is only meant to point out that there is something going on in the mind that is prelinguistic. This, it seems, is undeniable; you may want to call it something else, you may say that states of mind is not an accurate way of portraying what's happening in the mind, but that something is occurring is undeniable. Moreover, that something is happening in the mind, is also a precursor to linguistics or to language development. This subjective reality is indubitable, i.e., it cannot be doubted sensibly. So this is the first presupposition to this theory.
Second, how do we know that anyone else has a private thought life, we know it by what they do, i.e., it's reflected in their actions. How can it be otherwise? We know, because we are familiar with how we act, and how our actions are associated with our own thought lives. Thus, when we see others acting in similar ways, therefore, we reasonably infer their private thought life too. In fact, this is how we can reasonable say that there are other minds. If there were no acts associated with a thing, how in the world could we say that that thing has a mind, or that the thing can think or have thoughts associated with thoughts/beliefs. After all, how do we know that rocks don't have minds? We know because there is nothing associated with rocks (no acts, as it were) that can be reasonably said to point to the rocks mind or thinking. Thus, there is a kind of correspondence between a mind and the products of minds. This correspondence is a necessary ingredient to the inference that something has a mind/brain. This is not to say that all acts of living things reflect the same level of consciousness, or that all actions are associated with beliefs. Some actions are instinctual. So the second presupposition to this theory is that acts are reflections of mind states, thoughts, beliefs, self-awareness, consciousness, etc.
I don't see what speaking gibberish has to do with anything. I don't think you have a point here at all. It seems totally irrelevant. If one judges what another says as gibberish then so be it. Sam26 judges what SR Hubbard says as gibberish. So what? Claiming that what another says is gibberish, to me, is just another way of saying that you are uninterested in trying to understand the person. Intentionally saying something that others will not understand, as you have just done, is done for a reason as well.
Quoting Luke
I don't mind saying that rules exist externally to me, in the form of symbols on paper, just like I don't mind saying that concepts exist in that way. Someone might hand me a paper and say "here is my concept". But I do respect the fact that in order to follow such a rule, I must interpret the symbols, and accept the meaning which I derive, as a principle to adhere to. So if I am "following a rule", I am adhering to this principle in my mind which I have derived from my interpretation. You seem to have no respect for this fact.
Quoting Luke
As I said, we us the word "rules" in different ways, and we must be careful not to equivocate. I have words in my mind, and there are also spoken words. You seem to be implying that I ought only refer to one or the other as "words". You say either the "rules" exist in my mind or the "rules" exist on the paper, in ignorance of the fact that we use "rules" in both ways. But that's just you being completely unreasonable.
Quoting Luke
Right, now you're starting to understand. When we play games, we use strategies, and strategies are private rules, which are not part of "the game", they are part of the player. This is where we reach the limits of the game analogy. We cannot understand the act of playing the game, by referring to the game. We need to look directly at the player, instead of the game, to understand the phenomenon which is the player creating one's private rules (strategies) for winning the game. Then "the game" becomes irrelevant, because these strategies, private rules, are similar to what the person employs for all of life's endeavours, and we might get a better understanding of this phenomenon by looking at something other than game playing.
Quoting Luke
Sure, we agree on this.
Quoting Luke
As I said, we use "rules' in different ways. To say that one usage refers to "actual rules", as if they are more real than what another usage of 'rules" refers to is just arbitrary without an ontology to support that designation.
No such thing surely?
You are just bullshitting.
I asked you to show such a thing from the 1930s and you have failed.
Hi Luke,
Can you just confirm for me that I properly understand what you arguing with respect to the "actual rules". Let's start with the assumption that there are symbols on the paper. I would say that the symbols must be interpreted, and it is the particular interpretation which each of us makes which constitutes the "actual rules". Some would argue that there is a real, objective, or true interpretation of the symbols, independent of how any individual would interpret the symbols, and this constitutes the "actual rules", which would be Platonic Realism. Since I know you reject Platonic Realism, are you arguing that the symbols on the paper are themselves the "actual rules", and that calling them symbols is a false description?
Post #2
Third, it's the contention of this theory that not only are actions reflections of a thought life, but that language is also a reflection of a thought life. Therefore, it's a twofold reflection of what's happening in our mind. However, there is a difference in these two reflections. Actions are a necessary feature of minds (thought life), but language isn't. Prelinguistic man can be said to have a mind similar to our own because their actions reflect these similarities. But note that although actions are a necessary byproduct of a mind, language isn't. In fact, it's easy to imagine the existence of only one person (one mind), and the actions that reflect the kind of mind states we see in ourselves, and this is imagined quite easily apart from any language.
Language is primarily used to communicate with other minds, and the rules of usage are developed within a community of language users. The rules of correct usage are not dependent upon any one person, but are dependent on how the users use the words, statements, or propositions. And when one speaks of the logic of correct usage, one is speaking of the agreed upon (implicit or explicit rules) rules of language within a community.
It's also important to point out that words, statements, or propositions, get their meaning from how the community uses them, i.e., meaning is not a reflection of things in our mind. Our actions, though, are reflections of what's happening in our minds; again, linguistic meaning is derived from a community of language users, quite apart from what's happening in the mind. Note that our actions are completely private (actions as reflected in OC 284 and 285), they reflect private thoughts, and can be directly traced to private thoughts. There is a one-to-one correspondence between these actions and one's thoughts.
Statements can and do reflect beliefs (what's happening in our minds, viz., private thoughts), but statements themselves are not private things, and moreover, statements are completely dependent upon something that's not private, viz., language. So unlike actions, statements serve a duel purpose. However, where actions are used to communicate, then these actions would be similar in kind to statements, so not all actions have the requisite privacy I'm referring to, i.e., they too can serve a duel purpose.
So the third presupposition of this theory is noting the difference between statements and actions and their corresponding differences in demonstrating or showing a belief.
Quoting Sam26
What you appear to do here is to separate statements and propositions from their contexts, and that is the mind which creates them. So actions, you leave in the context of the mind which creates the action, but a statement or proposition is not placed in the category of an action because you separate it from that context. Now I believe that meaning is inherently related to context in a way such that to take something outside of its context is to take something away from its meaning. This will leave whatever meaning that the statement or proposition is claimed to have, somewhat incomplete or deficient.
Quoting Sam26
I agree that statements are not private, just like meaning is not private, and statements are dependent on something not private, and that's language. But wouldn't you agree that statements and meaning are also dependent on something which is private, and that's the thinking which goes on in our minds when we create propositions and statements? How then, is a statement or proposition any different from any other action? Each of these seems to have an aspect which is private and an aspect which is public.
Keep in mind here that all I am doing is putting forth what it would take(as far as I can tell) for one to hold both, that belief content is propositional and that pre-linguistic belief is possible.
I am fairly certain that Witt held both. It is common for analytics and others arguing for JTB.
Quoting Sam26
We agree here Sam, particularly regarding whether or not propositions are existentially contingent upon language. We both hold that propositions are existentially contingent upon language.
What I'm having difficulty having you understand is the bit about the content of belief. Epistemologists arguing for JTB typically hold, as well as many others, that belief has propositional content. Otherwise, how could we talk about and/or report upon it?
I believe 'X' means I believe that 'X' is true. 'X' is always in propositional(statement) form.
So, this poses an issue for the notion that pre-linguistic belief exists, unless it is also the case that propositions are not existentially contingent upon language. That isn't so difficult to accept if we also accept that belief is prior to language. Of course, I accept that belief is prior to language, but I do not accept that the content of belief is always propositional. It is always correlational, and all propositions, statements, and predication consists entirely of correlation.
Quoting Sam26
Again, I'm simply arguing the other side(which I'm fairly certain Witt held) that if it is the case that propositions are not existentially contingent upon language, then it can also be the case that belief can have propositional content, be pre-linguistic, unstated, and also stateable.
To say that a proposition is stateable is only to say that it can be stated, not that it has been.
So, sure stating something is a linguistic endeavor. However, being stateable requires only that the belief have propositional content. Following this logic, a pre-linguistic creature could have belief and the belief could be stateable. It does not follow that such belief has linguistic content unless propositions are existentially contingent upon language.
We both hold that they are.
Did Witt? Did his contemporaries? Did anyone prior to Witt? I think not. Witt struggled to ascertain what specific sorts of belief could be foundational to all others because he failed to draw the crucial distinction between belief and thinking about belief, and he was most certainly not alone. The former does not require language. The latter most certainly does. The former does not have propositional content. The latter does. The latter is built upon the former. Both have correlational content. All proposition, all statements, all assertions, and all predication consists entirely of correlations.
Quoting Sam26
No argument from me here.
Quoting Sam26
Again, we agree. It is of no issue for either of us as a result of neither one of us holding that the content of belief is propositional.
While I can understand how one would think that I flippantly dismissed OC 284 and 285, I didn't.
I asked you earlier to explain what needs reconciled? Witt simply offered examples of belief that was not being stated. He did not claim that it could not be.
Whereof one cannot speak...
The reminder that Witt did not finish his work is germane. Quite. For me, it ensures a more charitable reading of him, particularly when something he says doesn't quite fit with the thrust of his other work(s).
In summary...
You and I agree regarding whether or not the content of belief is propositional. Where we seem to not see eye to eye is regarding whether or not Witt agrees with us on that matter. I put it to you that he held that the content of belief is propositional, that propositions are not necessarily contingent upon language, and that pre-linguistic creatures could therefore have belief that they could not possibly justify, but we could report upon(state it).
That is precisely what I think that he was attempted to take an account of with the notion of hinge propositions...
P.S.
This was written prior to your latest post...
First we have a picture of things happening in minds and brains, such that some particular states of the brain and states of mind are effectively the same thing; so for example some particular state of mind just is a certain state of mind. And further, language is a result of, and hence secondary to, these mental and brain states.
Second, these states of mind and brain are in some sense private, yet can be shown by various actions and utterances. In effect we infer from the actions and utterances that the other has a mind similar to our own that reflect the otherwise private mind states.
Third, the subset of actions that are linguistic differ from other actions in that they have a meaning that is given them by the community of speakers.
How close is that?
A state of mind is a picture in time, so to speak, of an otherwise ongoing process. There are mental ongoings prior to language acquisition and/or invention.
I agree.
Quoting Sam26
Some acts are reflections of mental ongoings.
I agree.
Quoting Sam26
Language is not necessary for all mental ongoings(brain states).
Again. I agree.
The difficulty, as far as I can tell, is properly taking account of what sorts of thought and belief are existentially contingent upon language and what sorts are not. Hence...
The importance of getting thought and belief right, in terms of it's content. Pre-linguistic thought and belief cannot consist of that which is existentially contingent upon language, but rather, if thought and belief begins non-linguistically, and thought and belief is accrued, then pre-linguistic thought and belief must consist of that which language is existentially contingent upon.
That's not what I said, I was arguing that propositions are necessarily a feature of language, not arguing that propositions are a contingent feature of language. Why would you say this, when I explicitly said, "...propositions, in terms of existence, are necessarily dependent upon language, not contingently dependent on language." Are you following the difference between propositions being existentially contingent on language, as opposed to their existence being necessarily dependent on language?
Calm down Sam. Just a simple misunderstanding.
I am not using the term "contingent" in the manner of contingency/necessity.
Rather, when I say that propositions are existentially contingent upon language, it means that propositions require language, depend upon language... for their very existence. No language. No propositions.
I think we agree here, right?
:(
Good. Glad you're calm. Did I clear up the misunderstanding?
I know what it means, and this is a disagreement still. Contingent means that something could be otherwise, correct? But propositions cannot not be part of language, they're a necessary feature of language. So this is not a misunderstanding, since you have just reiterated the very thing I was arguing against. Do you follow? By the way, I'm not angry, just so you know.
No. When something is existentially contingent upon X, it cannot exist without X.
Quoting Sam26
I'd rather not bicker over this. You haven't granted my terms, which is fine for what we're doing. I'll gladly switch to your way in order to move on.
Replace all my uses of the term "contingent" with "dependent" and you'll see that we are saying the same thing in two different ways. I'll make sure to follow this switch henceforth.
This is a point about modal logic, and it's important. When something is contingent upon X, it means that it's possible for it to be otherwise. Thus, it's a subset of possibilities. If you say that X cannot exist apart from Y, then it's necessarily dependent on Y, i.e., there is no possible way for it to exist apart from Y. For example, contingent truths are truths that can be otherwise. It's true that the glass is sitting on the table is a contingent truth, but not a necessary truth. Contingent truths can be otherwise, necessary truths cannot be other than what they are "Triangles have three sides."
Sorry I made a typo.
Do we agree that propositions cannot exist without language?
I think we do, despite the misunderstanding regarding my use of the term "contingent".
Not really, because what you mean by contingent and dependent is a bit different, especially if you reject modal logic. If you reject modal logic why didn't you say that several posts ago? We'll just move on like you say.
I've just acknowledged your usage. I've already explained mine and the difference. I've already said that I've no problem setting my own aside for our purposes here. So, I'm honoring your usage.
What is so difficult about agreeing that propositions cannot exist without language? I'm granting that propositions are necessarily dependent upon language(without exception). That is where I thought that you and I agreed(despite this misunderstanding regarding my terms).
:(
I was simply saying that I do not believe that Witt agreed.
What about my summary regarding your posts? Again, I'll gladly replace "mental ongoings" with "brain states"... if you like.
In philosophy, contingent does tend to be used for things true but not necessarily true. While it might be true that a language might not contain any statements, it would not be possible to have a statement without a language.
A side issue, I hope.
Indeed.
A bit on modality...
Talking terms of necessary and contingent 'truth', where the term truth refers to a statement that is said to be true does little to impress me, because it is true by definition alone. It is tautological in the only sense I care about here. A tautological truth is a modal one, and it's truth is established by definition alone. These are Kant's a priori, whereas a posteriori are the contingent truths. On my view a priori and a posteriori are methods of justification, and the latter always verifies/falsifies the former.
I'm partial to my own understanding of Quine's Ontological Relativity here, despite my increased effort to put that part to bed. I differ from Quine on the following...
We can define certain kinds of things incorrectly. Things that exist in and of themselves prior to our discovery of them. Rudimentary(pre-linguistic) thought and belief are such things. These are the sorts of things that do not require language in order for them to emerge. Some of these things are what are commonly called "thought", "belief", "thinking", "believing", "remembering", "statements", "belief statements", "pondering", "envisioning", "picturing", etc. On my view they are all mental ongoings. Some are dependent upon language for their existence and others are not. That all depends upon the complexity of the candidate we're discussing.
Witt never drew and maintained the crucially meaningful distinction between thought, belief, and thinking about thought and belief. That is a fatal flaw. A self-imposed inadequacy.
Drawing and maintaining the distinction between thought, belief and thinking about thought and belief is the only thing that allows us to further discriminate between the sorts of belief that do not have linguistic content and the sorts that do.
Only beliefs that do not consist of linguistic content can be held by a non-linguistic agent. Those are the aim. Those need properly accounted for. Those are what an agent later learns to think about via written language. The basics of the first language cannot consist of that which is existentially dependent upon language.
Thinking about thought and belief requires pre-existing thought and belief. It requires something to think about. Thought and belief come first. It also requires an agent's ability to become aware of and isolate it's own mental ongoings in order to talk about them. We use the aforementioned terms and more to do this. Language facilitates this. Thought and belief that comes prior to thinking about thought and belief(pre-linguistic thought and belief) cannot consist of that which owes it's very existence to language. Statements and propositions are dependent upon language. They are a feature thereof. They owe their very existence to language.
Thinking about thought and belief requires thinking about something other than statements and propositions. These are the considerations that facilitate better understanding.
Except one of these is the rules, and the other is your claimed interpretation of the rules, yet you wish to call them both "the rules". On your view, you always remain one step removed from the rules since you need to interpret them, and everyone has their own interpretation, and nobody can ever really know what "the symbols" truly mean. But that's just rubbish. We (English-speakers) all know how to speak English, and misunderstandings or ambiguous meanings are the exception rather than the norm.
I also note that you never answered my question about whether it is possible to break a rule, which I consider to be a related problem for your position.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If the words in your mind are identical to the words you speak, then I have no problem calling them both words, but I do think you are equivocating when you refer to both the written rules of a game, and everybody's alleged differing mental interpretation of those rules, as "the rules".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is simply you again misusing the word "rules". Strategies employed within the game are not rules of the game. Your attempt to call them "private rules" just adds to the confusion and equivocation. You seem to agree to the distinction between the written rules of a game and your interpretation of those rules, so stop conflating the two. Until then, I see no merit in discussing the game analogy.
Quoting creativesoul
This is the sort of error that creeps in when beliefs are treated as mental furniture. Beliefs are explanations for actions; they are all statements. They are all of them linguistic.
So then how do you reconcile this with your earlier claim that Jack had belief? Jack certainly does not have explanations for actions; nor does he have statements. Are you claiming that Jack used language to explain to his actions to you?
I find the charge you've levied here to be unfounded. The creeping error is your nearing self-contradiction or reductio.
Have to wonder why the substance of what I've offered has been left neglected.
Do you deny the distinction between cognition and metacognition; between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief?
If all of the above is true, then Jack has no belief and you've arrived at self-contradiction.
You're conflating Jacks's belief with your report. That's what happens when you do not correct certain historical mistakes, namely the mistaken belief that the content of belief is propositional. Followers...
Pfft...
Draw and maintain the crucial distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief.
Yes, it is possible to break rules. I don't see the problem. One can hold in one's mind a rule to follow, yet still not follow it. Some other conflicting rule might overrule it.
Quoting Luke
The words in my mind are not identical to the words I speak. The words I speak have a physical presence, as sound, and are public. The words in my mind have no such physical presence, and are private. There is only equivocation if we say that our use of "words" to refer to these two distinct types of words, is the same usage of "words".. That's why I am trying to differentiate these distinct usages, such that we do not equivocate.
When an associate comes to me, and says "I have a concept", then later hands me a paper with symbols on it, and says "this is my concept", these are two distinct ways of using "concept". The former refers to what is in a mind, while the latter refers to symbols on the paper. This is despite the fact that we would say that "concept" in each of these instances refers to "the same concept". I believe that this indicates that the same concept can exist in two distinct forms, in the mind (private), and on the paper (public). There are clearly significant differences between these two instances of 'the concept", despite the fact that they are called the same concept.
We have the same two distinct ways of using many words, "rules" being one of them. "Rules", just like "words", and "concept" may refer to what's on the paper, or it may refer to what's in the mind. After I read and understand the rules, I would say that the same rules are in my mind as are on the paper, despite the fact that the use of "same" here is not in strict accordance with the law of identity. The "rules" in my mind are not really the same as the "rules" on the paper. The word "rules" refers to two distinct things here, regardless of the fact that we call them the same rules. This must be the case to account for the fact that I might interpret the rules in a way slightly different from you.
Quoting Luke
Well, the confusion and equivocation is on your part, because you seem to be in denial of the distinction which I have explained above. When someone is using the same word in two distinct ways, and clearly indicates these two distinct ways (as I indicate with 'private' rules), yet the reader fails to acknowledge these two distinct ways, then the reader equivocates.
So, you have made a mention of "actual rules" in the last post, and I asked you in one post to clarify what you mean by this. I'll repost below, so you can address this.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Do you understand what I am asking? Suppose we take the numeral "2". I would say that this symbol represents the number two, and the actual number two is the interpretation of that symbol which exists in my mind. A Platonic Realist would say that there is an ideal interpretation of this symbol "2", which exists independently of all human minds, and this is the actual number two. Are you arguing that the numeral "2" is the actual number two? Are you saying that there is no difference between the symbol, and what it represents, that since we commonly call the numeral "2" the "number 2", it actually is the number two
Quoting Banno
Quoting creativesoul
Sam26 seems to imply that any language would necessarily have propositions, though this may not be what is meant by sam26.
Now consider this:
Quoting Sam26
Sam26 has produced a division between language and meaning. Language is a reflection of a thought life, while meaning is a reflection of a community. But since Sam26 then goes on to describe language as public, communal, what Sam26 should really have said is that language as well as meaning is a reflection of a community, not a reflection of thought life.
So Sam26 then makes the further claim "statements are completely dependent upon something that's not private, viz., language", to confirm that what is really meant is that language is not a reflection of thought life, but a reflection of the community.. This is what I disagree with, especially since Sam26 began with the premise that just like other human actions, "language is also a reflection of a thought life". This seems to acknowledge a relation between language and the private. If by making language a reflection of the community rather than a reflection of the thought life, the problem can be avoided, this would disassociate language from action, such that language is no longer a human action, but a passive thing, as a property of the community.
Therefore Sam26 has exposed two distinct ways of looking at language. One is as a reflection of the community (public), and this according to sam26 is where language relates to meaning, and the other is a reflection of thought life (private), and this is where language relates to thought and human actions. I would think that unless these two ways of looking at language, (1)in relation to meaning and the community, and (2)in relation to thought and human actions, are completely distinct, there should be some degree of compatibility between the two.
Only if you continue to believe that a belief is a think inside Jack's head.
Ah,yes, the alluring scent of reification in the morning! Or, as Whitehead liked to call it, the 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness'.
>:O The Wagner seems to the the point, although, curiously I cannot say in what way. ;)
"Much ado about nothing" and "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" come to mind.
Tomatoes make good food.
SO I seek out and buy tomatoes, I store them in a certain way, I plant seeds or buy seedlings and water them and pick off the bugs and watch for the reddening fruit. I say things like "We need some tomatoes" and I write "Tomatoes" on the shopping list and say "this tomato is not ripe" and so on.
Sometimes folk might say that Banno believes tomatoes are good food.
Is that any more than shorthand for the set of behaviours described above?
In particular, does it follow from the use of this shorthand that there must be a brain state that corresponds to Banno's belief that tomatoes are good; and further that this brain sate is distinct from and yet somehow responsible for all of those behaviours?
Or does that belief amount to nothing more than the collection of tomato-related behaviours? Including that internal soliloquy that just came up with this post...
You claimed...
1.) Beliefs are explanations for action.
2.) Beliefs are all statements.
3.) All belief(s) is(are) linguistic.
I noted that if all three are true, then Jack has no belief and you've arrived at self-contradiction(at worst) and/or equivocation(at best). Instead of directly addressing what is clearly an issue with your position here, you've offered the following...
Imaginary opponents are easily defeated. Bad form Banno. You know better.
The purported reification fallacy mentioned by Janus doesn't hold water either, and you know it. It dubiously presupposes an untenable and purely imaginary distinction between abstraction and being real. Chock full of irony as well...
If you do not - or will not - recognize/acknowledge the self-contradiction regarding what your saying about belief, then I do not know what else to say. It's there. Your belief isn't required. It's clear that you will not or cannot address the underlying issues here.
Yes, we can infer that non-linguistic agents/creatures display belief by virtue of behaving certain ways. They do not display statements.
...but you can't make him think.
Jack's beliefs are not something that is inside his head.
Jack's beliefs are ascribed to him by language users in order to explain his behaviour.
Jack does not, so far as I can tell, ascribe beliefs to himself.
Are you, or are you not, imputing a mental state of 'having a belief' to the animal?
The only coherent way that it could be said that I am having a belief is if I am internally reciting a statement or proposition that expresses the belief, and even that does not consist in a state but in an activity.
'Being disposed to believe X' is not coterminous with 'having a belief that X' and there does not seem to be any coherent meaning of the former which is not coterminous with 'being disposed to act as if X'.
Also, are you claiming there is no coherent distinction between the abstract and the concrete?
Jack thinks there is a mouse under the bed.
For Jack, there is a mouse under the bed.
For Jack, it is true that there is a mouse under the bed.
Jack believes there is a mouse under the bed.
Gratuitous assertions Banno.
Where's the argument?
Ooops. Posted without refreshing. I'll address the last...
If we first hold that i the content of belief is propositional, or ii we do not draw and maintain the pivotal distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief - which in turn - allows us to draw the distinction between thought and belief that is existentially dependent upon language and that which is not. I do not hold that belief content is propositional. I do draw and maintain the crucial distinction between cognition and metacognition(between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief), and thus I also draw and maintain the distinction between thought and belief that is existentially dependent upon language and that which is not.
Try again...
The namesake for your avatar is a bit ironic here isn't it?
Couldn't it be any other way?
Here we need to draw and maintain the crucial distinction between our talking about Jack's belief and Jack's belief. The two are not one in the same thing. So...
Agree?
But I am much more interested in what @Sam26 has to say on the issue, since he has a demonstrably strong grasp of the issues with regard to Wittgenstein.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/144648
Enjoi...
He was wrong in one fundamental way.
Enjoi Banno. It's always thought provoking to interact with you.
X-)
Quoting Banno
And I'm the one being accused of mistaking abstraction(our meaningfully taking account of Jack's behaviour) with concreteness(Jack's behaviour)???
;)
Quoting Banno
I think the issue here is whether the belief is the behaviour itself, or the description of the behaviour. Remember Sam26's categorization is to place meaning, language, propositions, and statements as communal. If "belief" falls into this category, as communal, then it would not refer to the behaviour but the description of the behaviour.
I think the issue is thinking that the belief is either...
Is that any more than a metacognitive endeavor?
No, it doesn't. I concur.
Why the either/or here?
Those aren't the only two logical possibilities.
Not on your life, my friend... nor my own.
Surely not. Eh?
Nah. If that were the case, there would be no reason to attribute anything at all to Jack aside from his behaviour. What's driving the behaviour?
Statements?
Please...
Our account of Jack's belief can be wrong in terms of what we attribute to it's content. Jack is non-linguistic. His belief cannot consist of elementary constituents that are existentially dependent upon language. That is as common sense as logic can get.
Jack's belief cannot require language. Our report on Jack's belief not only can but they always do. Conflating the two is a grave error.
Interesting conversation, by the way. Kudos.
8-)
Jack makes meaningful connections between 'objects 'of physiological sensory perception and/or itself. Jack can attribute causality, and does. This can be verified/falsified regardless of Jack's inability to talk about this attribution/recognition. If the attribution/recognition of causality doesn't count as thought and belief, then your notion of belief is an abuse of an otherwise completely intelligible notion.
Jack acts in order to make the world be different. He has expectation. He attributes causality by making a meaningful connection between his behaviour and what followed. Jack believes that his behaviour will be followed by getting fed.
Does Jack believe that his bowl is empty? He certainly knows how to get fed.
Jack has no conception of "bowl". Jack has no language. Jack's belief is not propositional. Jack's belief cannot be a statement. His behaviour can. Our belief and our behaviour can be either and/or both. His behaviour does not necessarily show that he believes his bowl is empty.
It shows his expectation. He expects to be fed.
Jack knows that he does not like what happens after touching fire. Again, his behaviour shows his expectation. More attribution/recognition of causality.
That's how it works my friend.
That is an unassailable account of prelinguistic thought and belief. It does not require language. Our knowledge of it does.
There is no need to conflate our reports with Jack's mental ongoings(belief). The former is existentially dependent upon language(consists of language constructs) and the latter is not(does not).
You're conflating the written rules with your interpretation of the rules again. Just answer me this: are the written rules the rules, or not? Or do they not become rules until you have interpreted them?
If it's the latter, then how can you break a rule? Because then it seems that each of us can only act contrary to our individual interpretation of the rule [rather than contrary to the rule itself], and nobody can ever be certain of what the rule actually is, or whether we each have the correct interpretation of it. Who the hell knows what "checkmate" really means, right?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, I already distinguished between them as "words in your mind" and "words you speak". As I said, I have no problem calling both of these "words".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If I interpret the chess rules such that rooks can only move diagonally and you don't, how do we resolve this? All we have is a bunch of different interpretations, right?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, you equivocate. How are 'private' rules different from written rules? That you have interpreted the former? Then they are not rules, but an interpretation of them.
Stop pussyfooting around and just admit you think that the written rules are not rules, just some uninterpreted symbols and God knows what they really mean. Furthermore, admit that the actual rules are those that you interpret. Or I interpret. Or someone else interprets. But we can never really know what those mysterious "symbols" (i.e. English words) ever really mean. That is your position, right?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'll make it simple: the actual rules are the rules (that have been written down or agreed upon or whatever). The rules are not some individual's private interpretation of the rules.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Is there any difference between them (besides that fact that one's a number and the other's your so-called interpretation of it)? Well, is there?
Self-reported beliefs bear greatly on issues pertaining to the problems of private language, since in many cases a person's self-reported beliefs are misleading and are at best weakly correlated to their behavioural dispositions, especially if their self-reported beliefs fail to mention crucially relevant external correlates that might be unknown even to them.
For example, a manic-depressive who suffers Seasonal-Affective-Disorder might at one minute report that they hate their job and see no future for themselves when the sun is in, yet the next minute when the sun comes out they might report that they like their job and foresee a glorious future for themselves.
If somebody does not know of the real causes of the suffer's mood instability they might say that they do not understand the suffer's constant changes in opinion, i.e. that the sufferer is largely speaking a "private language". Of course, the main challenge of therapy is to convince the sufferer not to rigidly interpret their own mental state without further investigation of the external correlates of their moods.
I told you, we can use "rules" to refer to the written rules. I have no problem with that. And, they do not need to be interpreted by me to become rules, because they were written as rules.
Quoting Luke
Despite the fact that that I didn't say it was the latter, what you claim is not logical at all. There is the possibility of cheating in games. One can have a principle within one's mind, to follow as a rule, and still break that rule. Plato demonstrated this thousands of years ago, and Augustine discussed it at length. Plato discussed the sophist's position that virtue was a type of knowledge, knowing the correct action, and being a type of knowledge, they insisted it could be taught. But then there was still the issue of the person who knows the correct action but chooses to do wrong. So it turned out that virtue, doing what is right (or what you call following the rule) requires more than just knowing the what is right, it requires the will to do it.
Quoting Luke
I gave you the examples of how we use "rule" in different ways. If you insist that a principle in my head, which I follow as a rule, like a New Year's resolution, is an interpretation of a written rule, then so be it. There's not much point in carrying on this discussion if you can't see beyond that.
Quoting Luke
I told you, and demonstrated very clearly to you, that we use "rules" in different ways. I accept that all of these instances refer to rules, but I claim that we need to respect the differences. If I said there is two dogs in front of me would you insist that I must think one is not the real dog?
Quoting Luke
"Or whatever"? So you think that answers my question?
Quoting Luke
Of course there is a difference. It is the difference between the symbol and the thing symbolized. Do you not apprehend the difference between a symbol, and the thing represented, or symbolized by the symbol? Do you understand the difference between a numeral and a number? Or does "number" have no more meaning to you than as a numeral?
Actually I'm with you here, I don't agree with either either. That's why I'm pointing to the inconsistencies. Banno's stated arguments can direct us in two very distinct ways. One being that belief is nothing more than behaviour, the other that belief is a description of behaviour.
The latter requires someone to make the description, so the belief represented by the description is really nothing more than the belief of the author of that description. Sam26 has proposed separating the statement from the author, such that the statement with its meaning, is communal, and not proper to the author. To me, this just points toward Platonic Realism. The other direction leaves us with the need to account for the animal's observed behaviour. If it is not belief, then what is it?
This is where we get to the relation between belief and things like habit, and conditioned response. If belief is a type of habit, or a conditioned response, then what distinguish it from other conditioned responses. If we do not adopt any principles of distinction, then all animals and even plants might be said to have beliefs.
I do not think that it is absurd to propose language as the distinguishing feature of belief. If the individual who is active, can express the reasons for the action in terms of language, then we might say that the reasons for the action are beliefs. But if one cannot express the reasons for one's action in terms of language, then we cannot say that the reason for the action is belief. To adopt principles like this is to place defining limits on "belief" making the term more useful. But this particular definition would exclude other animals from having beliefs. We'd have to refer to other elements to explain those animals' behaviour.
There is a distinction between 'belief' that is pre-linguistic and belief that is linguistically mediated.
Then there is a distinction between thinking about pre-linguistic 'belief' and thinking about linguistically mediated belief. There is a tendency to impute the characteristics of the latter; propositionality, the ability to be "held" or "had" , and so on, to the former.
These are the relevant distinctions as I see it; and not the distinction between belief and thinking about belief, per se. This is because linguistically mediated beliefs may be either implicit or explicit, that is more or less conscious, all without actually being thought about.
Curiously, but not surprisingly, this is not my argument.
My argument is that beliefs are explanations for behaviour, such that they set out what would be true in order for the behaviour to make sense.
But that's why I gave up; there is no point in entering into a discussion with someone who constantly misrepresents what has been said.
What's even worse, is having discussion with someone who denies saying what was said, and replaces it with something else, as if the something else is what was said.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
Do you recognize, that it makes a substantial difference to change what you say from "nothing more than the collection of tomato related behaviours", to "explanations for behaviour, such that they set out what would be true in order for the behaviour to make sense"?
As I really do not want to misrepresent what you say, care to explain what you mean by "set out what would be true in order for the behaviour to make sense"? As far as I can tell, "what would be true in order for the behaviour to make sense" refers to a capacity of the one trying to make sense of the behaviour, rather than a capacity of the one who is performing the behaviour.
Are you, as I suggested, saying that belief is a property of the person explaining the behaviour, and not a property of the one performing the behaviour? Or, do you take the position which I ascribe to Sam26, that belief is attributable to the explanation itself, that the statements, along with the meaning and belief, exist independently of the person making the statement?
However...
Offering an account of one's own belief is to report upon it. Offering an account of another's belief is to report upon another's belief. This is a metacognitive endeavor, and as such it is existentially dependent upon language. It is to explain belief to another. Non-linguistic animals cannot do such a thing. We know this. If belief is an explanation for behaviour, then the only creatures capable of belief are those with complex written language.
I'm putting it to you, the reader, that there are inherent inadequacies in the historical account. It does not follow from the fact that we use language to explain 'X' that the content of 'X' is linguistic. Let X be a rock. Rocks do not consist of statements/language. Some beliefs, like rocks, exist as they are prior to our awareness of them; prior to our discovery of them. These beliefs are pre-linguistic, and they are the sorts of things that help get language(shared meaning) off the ground, along with other things. They cannot possibly consist of statements/language.
The historical error that Witt never quite grasped, but rather skirted around, is and always has been the failure to draw and maintain the crucial distinction between thought, belief and thinking about thought and belief. Neglecting to do this renders one's position completely incapable of distinguishing between belief that is not existentially dependent upon language and belief that is.
The subject matter(what thought and belief consist in/of) is far more nuanced than this particular thread has shown. Unfortunately, it is all about belief...
I'm not sure I follow you though...
What's 'wrong' with saying that non-linguistic creatures form and hold belief?
:-|
There's one significant problem here. This conclusion requires that the speaker is sincere, and speakers are not always sincere. As we see when someone is on trial, one's explanations for one's actions are not necessarily one's beliefs.
Because "forming" and "holding" are hallmarks of propositionality.
Well yes, assuming sincerity...
This person does have beliefs however... despite his/her deliberately misrepresenting them.
Quoting Janus
Explain what being a hallmark of 'propositionality' entails
Really? That's a change from your earlier position, where you said:
"In reality, when a human being follows a rule, that individual holds within one's mind, a principle which is adhered to. The principle, or "rule" which is followed, is within the individual's mind. It is not part of an external object such as a game."
And:
"Therefore if a "game" consists of a stated set of rules which must be followed, there is no game because there is no such set of rules."
And:
"What is the case, is that written rules are physical symbols on paper, or whatever medium, which must be interpreted. When the symbols are perceived (read), they are interpreted. If the individual desires to play the game, then the person will create principles within one's mind, and adhere to these principles in the act of playing the game."
Please clarify which view you hold.
There is a consequence here. The explanation can only be directly related to the action, as the reason for the action, and therefore the belief, as Banno proposes, if the explanation is a true explanation. This produces a somewhat odd definition of truth. True belief would have to mean the true explanation for one's actions. If the person has an odd understanding of reality, like a schizophrenic for example, one's beliefs would be true beliefs if they were true explanations for the behaviour, but they would be incorrect in relation to reality, when judged by others. Then we could not say that such a belief is a "false belief", its an incorrect belief. We would judge the belief (explanation) as wrong or right (justified in relation to the communal understanding of reality), but we could not say whether it is true or not unless we knew whether it was an accurate explanation.
Quoting creativesoul
If, as Banno proposes, belief is an explanation for behaviour, then I can only assume that "true belief" signifies an accurate explanation. This gives "true belief a different meaning from what you're used to. If an explanation is a misrepresentation, that's a false belief. We ought not to say that there are any real, or in any way "true" beliefs which are hidden behind the misrepresentation of an inaccurate explanation. So whatever it is, that is hidden, private, secret, behind the misrepresentation which is deception, ought not even be called a belief. To grant existence to what has been willfully suppressed is a mistake. And if we mistakenly explain another's behaviour, then we cannot insist that this mistaken explanation refers to anything real either. Therefore there is no reason to grant existence to anything behind the inaccurate explanation.
If you refer all the way back to Parmenides and Plato, you'll find that it is impossible to support any claim of existence of a false belief, with logic. So the assumption that a false belief has some type of existence as a belief which is other than a true belief, is best dismissed. The only real belief is a true belief. We ought to discard the idea that any belief could be false, for the assumption that only true beliefs have any type of real existence, because "false beliefs exist" only presents us with paradox and logical contradiction.
As I said, numerous times, I use "rules" in different ways.
Notice, that in your quoted passages, I am referring to "following rules". In order for a person to follow a rule, one must hold a principle within one mind, which is adhered to. So, when I follow a rule, I am following this principle which I hold in my mind. This is despite the fact, that there may be a written rule, and I might call this written rule, the rule which I am following. In this case, "rule" refers to two distinct things. The writing on the paper is called the rule, and the principle in my mind which is my interpretation of what's on the paper, is also called the rule which I am following. We could say that this is "the same rule".
Remember the example I gave, of "the concept". My associate says "I have concept". Here, "concept" refers to something in the mind. Later, the associate puts it on paper, hands me the paper, and says "here is my concept". Here, "concept" refers to what is on the paper. In each case, we would say that "concept" refers to the same concept. But that same concept is in different forms. In one case, it's in the mind, in another it's on the paper. It is the same situation with "rule".
So there is no problem for me to refer to the thing in the mind as the rule, and the thing on the paper as the rule, this is consistent with accepted usage. As I said, words are in my mind, and they are on the paper, and it is completely acceptable to call these the same words, despite the fact that they have a different form in my mind from what they have on the paper. It is nonsense for you to insist that I must choose one or the other.
If belief is an explanation, and one offers an explanation that they do not believe, then not all explanations are belief.
There is no issue.
That's the issue.
You can't really say that there is no issue, because you've just used "believe" in the common way. Rather than maintaining consistency with "belief" as an explanation, you go and use "believe" the old way.
If you maintain consistency with Banno's definition, then what the explanation describes, what it refers to, cannot be a belief, it must be something else.
Consider that the explanation is a description, and the thing being described is what you would normally call the belief. Instead, the explanation itself is the belief. If there is not correspondence between the thing being described, and the explanation, then the explanation is false, a false belief. A true belief therefore requires the two components, the explanation, and the thing being described, with correspondence. If there is no correspondence, then there is no truth, and therefore no real belief. A false belief cannot be called a real belief. Likewise, the content without the explanation cannot be called a belief either.
Quoting creativesoul
I think, that if the explanation is accurate, then it is supposed to be an objective statement, which is a true belief, regardless of who may have made the statement. The explanation, why jack behaved in this way, corresponds with the reality, so it represents the content of no particular individual's mind, it just represents the truth. And if it doesn't represent the content of any particular person's mind, yet it is true, then it is simply a true belief.
You have equivocated by referring to a rule as both a rule and your interpretation of a rule.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Bullshit. You said previously that a rule is not part of an external object such as a game, that "there is no such set of [written/stated] rules", and that the written rules are physical symbols which "must be interpreted". More recently you said "they do not need to be interpreted by me to become rules, because they were written as rules." This is not about different usages. You have clearly contradicted yourself.
To hold a belief is to insist that some proposition is true; I don't think animals hold their beliefs; if anything they are held by them (by their expectations). You can use terminology however you like; I am just expressing my opinion about your usage; which does not seem sensible to me.
Well, I've learned to take Banno at his word. Something tells me that if he wanted to claim that all explanations are belief, he would've said so. He didn't. His logical prowess bears witness to this. He is more than capable of proper quantification. Thus, I have to take what he wrote for what it says. He did not say "all"...
So, not only can I say that there is no issue, I can justify my saying so as well.
I'll ignore all the bits about truth, and 'real' belief. Belief is belief. Prefixing "belief" with the term "real" adds only unnecessary confusion. Again...
There is no issue. I did not call an insincere speech act a belief statement. I'm certain that Banno wouldn't either. I know he didn't.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I've no idea what you're trying to say here.
Banno has claimed that Jack has true belief. He has also claimed that all belief is linguistic(statements). The issue is that Jack has no language.
It cannot be the case that Jack has no language, belief is linguistic, and Jack has belief.
That's the issue. Banno's statements are not Jack's belief.
Well yeah...
What you've said here pretty much follows what the whole of epistemology(JTB) has held for centuries. When one holds such, s/he cannot admit of non-linguistic creatures believing anything at all. Your position works from the dubious presupposition that all belief require metacognition...
That's clearly wrong. Witt knew it. We all do. Not all belief requires thinking about thought and belief. There is a pivotal difference between thought, belief and thinking about thought and belief. The latter requires language. The former does not. The latter is existentially dependent upon the former, but not the other way around. So...
Our observations clearly show us that animals attribute causality. That requires thought and belief. To think that fire caused tremendous discomfort is to believe that touching fire causes pain. It is to draw mental correlations between one's own actions and what followed. It does not require, nor can it, propositional content(unless you want to argue that propositions aren't dependent upon language). I would argue against that idea, of course.
So, how do we solve a problem with a linguistic framework(conceptual scheme) if and when it logically leads to conclusions that conflict with everyday fact(s)?
We carefully critique the framework...
A fatal mistake of epistemology(JTB) is one of neglecting to draw and maintain the crucial distinction between thought, belief and thinking about thought and belief.
Not all belief is propositional. The mistake is holding that the content of all belief is propositional. It's not. All belief consists entirely of mental correlations... propositional notwithstanding. All predication consists of mental correlations. All meaning does as well...
That's how it works. All of it. Everything ever thought, believed, written and/or spoken. All mental ongoings, regardless of what we name them("imaginings", "remembering", "dreaming", "thinking", "thought", "belief", etc.) - all of them consist entirely of mental correlations.
A belief is formed, on my view, at the moment the correlation is first drawn.
But why bother? It's much ado about nothing. Remember?
You're distorting what I have been saying. I'm not saying animals don't believe, I'm saying that they don't form or hold beliefs. if you can't see the distinction and that it has nothing to do with metacognition, then I can't help you any further.
Sure, we say we hold to this or that belief. So pull out your belief and hold it up high, apart from your behaviour.
You are confused by ordinary language.
Fair enough.
Yeah, I dunno...
I like ordinary language. Sometimes it doesn't quite have what it takes though. I don't think I'm confused.
Folk don't mean that we hold belief in the same way that we hold up a placard. Nor do I.
What sort of thing is Jack's belief? Is it your statement? That doesn't seem right, does it?
Again, it's not a thing. That's the point. Reification.
Yep. They don’t act on a belief. Their actions simply show they believe. Where we - linguistically, hence metacognitively - can also speak of the belief upon which we might, or might not, act.
Quoting creativesoul
Thought is even more equivocal than belief here.
Sure, animals can think in some non-linguistically structured fashion. They can be smart and adaptive in their planning and responding.
But to call this thought, with no further attempt at distinction, is to perpetuate a confusion.
I would agree that ordinary language doesn’t give us a lot to work with here though. Folk psychology terms do not handle the difference that language makes to cognition very well.
It's not likely that I equivocated, when what I was doing was explaining to you the difference between these two ways which the same word is used. To equivocate is to disrespect the different uses, or meanings of a word, in order to produce a false conclusion, as you were doing.
Reification? You're saying that my talk of "holding a belief" conflates the two sides of the abstraction/concrete dichotomy, and you do this while talking in terms of holding belief up in the air for everyone to see?
How does your misuse of language count as my fallacy?
- open to more than one interpretation; ambiguous.
"the equivocal nature of her remarks"
- (of a person) using ambiguous or evasive language.
"he has always been equivocal about the meaning of his lyrics"
Quoting apokrisis
Ok.
So, what are you doing here?
This came from @Sam26 musing about beliefs as both mental states and states of the brain.
Quoting creativesoul
Again with the dichotomies.
He doesn't form and hold belief.
People places and things...
Belief as an entity. A noun. Something to be named.
Why not?
Quoting creativesoul
Whatever we use to reasonably explain his behaviour.
You seem to think that this somehow makes it my belief, not Jack's...
That is, I do not understand what it is that you do not understand.
Language does not count as Jack's belief.
The historical account is inherently inadequate in it's ability to explain Jack's belief.
You use the notion of "statements" instead of propositions. Both suffer the same fatal flaw.
JTB is an account of knowledge, not belief.
We do this all the time, even when describing computers that crash. "It believes the library object is in the wrong folder".
Unless one is a platonist, explanations of behaviour are no different to descriptions of potential behaviour. Nobody defines beliefs and other mental states in terms of the processing of neurological tokens but purely in terms of the overt potential behaviour that agents display that could be physically instantiated in an infinite number of ways.
Remember, neuroscientists can only be said to identify brain-states as constituting belief-states if such brain-states directly manifest the behaviour satisfying the definition of the belief. So functionalist [I]ascriptions[/I] of [I]belief-states[/I] are not in contradiction with logical-behaviourist [I]definitions[/I] of [I]belief[/I], and in fact are dependent on them.
States of the brain, mental states, cannot reasonably explain behaviour, because the former is passive and the latter is active. So this belief is lacking in truth.
Quoting creativesoul
The JTB account of belief requires that the belief be true. I suggest that if you take a good look at the criteria for "true", you will find that it requires what you call "thinking about thought and belief". In its primitive form, truth refers to an internal process, a process of thinking about thought and belief, requiring sincerity and honesty.
Memory for example is based in repetition, and honesty is imperative to accurate memory. In this process of thinking about thought and belief, we establish an association between the symbol and what is symbolized, which must remain true (not permitting variance). In the case of memory, repetition without variance constitutes "true". Repetition without variance may in some cases be referred to as a state.
It is very doubtful that Jack has the capacity to hold a true belief, memory without variance. The fact that memories change over time calls into question Jack's ability to "hold" a belief. And holding is essential to maintaining truth. Written language, and other physical markings such as monuments have always served to aid human beings in the endeavours of truth.
S knows that P if S is justified in believing P and P is true.
P is a proposition. S believes a proposition. Statement in your case...
Attributing a belief to an agent is not necessary for the agent to form and/or hold belief...
We can be wrong in our attribution.
A non-linguistic agent cannot have belief that is propositional in content.
That's part of the problem, although I do not use 'tokens'...
What is a neurological token?
Yeah, all good; except that I am not convinced that brain state and mental states correspond, nor are brain states passive.
How could a state be anything other than static?
"The fluid was in a turbulent state".
:-|
Mental atoms, eh?
Are all thoughts beliefs, or do all thoughts entail (some) belief(s)?
Are all beliefs thoughts, or do all beliefs entail (some) thoughts(s)?
Does all thinking consist in/of thoughts? Does all believing consist in/of beliefs?
Gibberish.
You've yet to have answered a germane question that shed light on the inherent shortcoming of your account...
It all boils down to drawing mental correlations. There are no exceptions. Belief is accrued. Thus, it begins simply. Hence, the distinction between thought, belief and thinking about thought and belief.
:-|
"State" here, signifies unchanging, static, passive. You have designated a static turbulence, like in my post I said that repetition without change could be called a state. But without change, and therefore passivity is essential to "state". A turbulence without change is passive.
Ever consider the possibility that Jack is not capable of believing? Perhaps your description of what is going on with Jack is wrong. You describe jack as holding a belief, but maybe there is really something else, other than believing, which is going on within Jack.
And don't ask me for an alternative explanation, because this is not necessary, in order to suggest that another explanation is wrong. If an explanation has logical problems it is likely wrong, but it doesn't require an alternative explanation to demonstrate this. In other words, we can dismiss a belief concerning a certain phenomenon, as unacceptable, without necessarily producing an acceptable one.
Witt talked about belief being shown via behaviour. Banno, Sam, and others have also talked in such terms as well as directly attributing belief statements to Jack and saying that Jack believes.
What a pathetic attempt at evasion! On the strength (or should I say weakness?) of this I have no remaining faith in your good will or desire to learn the truth. Have a nice life, dude...
Brilliant.
There is no "static turbulence". A state of turbulence is a state of change. So, contrary to your previous claim states may indeed, even arguably must be, active. In fact there is probably no such thing as a state of total inactivity.
It would be quite odd to say that nonlinguistic animals aren't capable of believing... unless one is forced to say so as a means of maintaining coherency(avoiding equivocation and/or self-contradiction). If one defines "belief" by describing thinking about thought and belief, then one would be forced to conclude just such a thing...
Hence, my earlier explanations regarding that several pages back...
What would a denial of the distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief look like?
Certainly no one here would deny the latter. Seeing how in order to think about one's own belief(or others') there must first be something to think about... how could one deny this pivotal distinction?
Let 'X' equal "the bowl is empty".
Jack cannot possibly believe that the bowl is empty unless statements are not existentially dependent upon language. But they are. He cannot think in statements.
Contrary to earlier...
I'm torn, for I want to say that believing his bowl is empty doesn't require language. I mean he need not know the name of the object that we call a "bowl" in order for it to be significant to him... apart from other bowls. He knows where to find food. In the food bowl. If he goes there looking and there is no food to be found, he also knows how to get fed. He seeks Banno and behaves like earlier times when getting fed followed his purring, rubbing up against Banno's leg, and looking up while vocalizing(or whatever he does).
Deliberately seeking out Banno in order to get fed presupposes believing that Banno will feed him. However...
My own cats want me to pour food in the bowl, regardless of whether or not it is empty. One of the two leads me to her bowl, meowing the whole time, even though there is already food in it. The interesting thing is the amount of food I pour into her bowl doesn't matter. As soon as she hears the kibbles hitting the sides of the bowl, she's satisfied and begins to eat. It could be six kibbles or half a cup.
That tells me that she has no conception of quantity. "Empty" is precisely such a conception. It also proved to my better half that she didn't care about the food being 'old'.
;)
Are you charging my explanations here with having logical problems?
Gratuitous assertions won't do here Meta. I'm in agreement regarding whether or not valid refutation requires an alternative explanation. It does not. It does however, require a valid objection. So, if you mean to charge my arguments with having logical problems, then you need to justify that claim.
Belief is definitely shown by behaviour, I think that's beyond question. I can't think of any other way to show anything other than through behaviour. The question would be if there is a special type of behaviour which shows believe, so that we can separate behaviours which are demonstrating beliefs from behaviours which are not. The defining feature, of "showing a belief", might be the expression of propositions, statements, claims, and assertions. These are expressions of language.
The problem being, that if we don't define "belief" in some precise way, so as to draw the line between what behaviour does and does not show belief, then the argument will be made that all animals, and even plants show belief. The panpsychos will even argue that rocks show belief. But there seems to be a natural division in types of behaviour, between language use, and behaviour which is not language use, which serves as a good basis for the definition of belief. Belief is the type of thing which we express with statements and propositions, so why not define belief in this way, as the thing which is expressed by the proposition? Then those types of behaviours, that you mention, like Jack's, which appear to show belief, don't really show belief under this strict definition, they show something else. The something else we would have to explain with other words, such as "habit", "instinct", or other mental capacities which aren't quite as specialized as "belief".
Quoting creativesoul
I am saying that there are logical problems involved with not producing a clear and precise definition of "belief", which distinguishes behaviour which demonstrates a belief, from behaviour which does not. Otherwise, it may be argued that any behaviour which demonstrates consistency demonstrates belief.
Quoting Janus
Since my OED defines "state" as the existing condition of a person or thing, and "change" as the act or instance of making or becoming different, I think that you ought to recognize that you have just stated a contradiction. There is no such thing as "state of change", it's no less contradictory than the square circle.
In the sense you are using it 'state' refers merely to an abstract conception. if you want to say that inactive states exist, or are real, beyond our representations, then you are committing the same kind of error of hypostatization as Creative.
It can be summarized as follows:When there are two or more competing theories about the same thing, how do we discriminate between them? What is the standard for judging/valuing the differences?
Evidence?
That is measured in terms of it's adequacy and it's relevancy. But first...
Are our theories talking about the same thing?
I'm talking about not only Jack's behaviour(the evidence) but also Jack's mental ongoings... Banno rejects all things mental(I think).
Well...
Surely by now you've seen my definition for "belief", "thought", and any/all other terms referring to mental ongoings? It is as precise as they come and has the broadest possible scope of application. There are no exceptions.
You're working from the presupposition that behaviour alone is adequate for establishing belief demonstration...
It's not.
There's a bit of critical thinking involved as well, particularly when the beasties in question do not or cannot tell us what's going on 'in their heads'...
The bowl on the right isn't empty. The bowl on the left isn't full.
Cats do not find themselves in the position of attempting to make sense of their own thinking. They do not arrive at piles of sand...
It seems that it is the human ability to think symbolically that allows for "holding beliefs"; where holding a belief is conceived of as being in an unchanging state of assent towards an absolutely fixed content. That's why I said earlier that I think holding a belief could only consist in reciting one's belief as a stable formula while maintaining an unchanging attitude of of assent to it, or something along those lines. It seems that even in the human case the idea of holding a belief is an abstract idealization.
If people are conceived of as being able to hold beliefs in this kind of static sense, it would seem that they routinely do it without 'thinking about thinking', though, and that is why I said it has nothing to do, necessarily, with metacognition. Holding a belief, if the idea is sensible at all, would seem to be possible simply by virtue of the ability to think symbolically, but not otherwise.
Yes, I'm concerned with mental ongoings as well. The position I'm taking is that we need to distinguish what type of mental ongings constitute belief, from those which are something other than belief. As I was saying in another post, we talk about "holding" a belief, so it is implied that belief is a static thing, which remains unchanged. If a belief changes, it is no longer the same belief, so a changing belief is not a belief. This I compared to our ability to maintain a memory. If one's memory of some incident changes over time, it is no longer a true memory. And though the person might insist, I remember this, if it is inaccurate, it cannot qualify as a memory. When the person's memory is wrong, we can't truly say that it is a memory which the person recollects, it's a sort of fabrication.
Quoting creativesoul
Actually, what I'm thinking is that behaviour is an indication of the mental ongoings. What I want, is to be able to say what type of behaviour indicates the existence of mental ongoings which would qualify as belief. And so I say that making statements and proposition is a natural choice as that type of behaviour. When mental ongoings are put into words, there is a type of stability which is provided by this. Words are much easier to remember in a precise way, than observed images and other sounds, and things like that. So when we memorize something, we put it in words in our minds, then we remember the words, telling us what happened. So the use of words, as static, unchanging symbols, provides that stability which I am looking for as the qualifying feature of "belief".
I think that's a really important point. Language shifts belief into a timeless register. It makes a truth claim transcendent of the usual continuous active engagement of the world. And then the truth-making is also turned into a search for "the facts", the "states of affairs".
Which is where Banno and Sam go astray in trying to treat the truth-makers as some uninterpreted ground of experience. It could also be where Creative goes wrong, but after many years, I still have no clue what thesis he is trying to promote. He can't seem to answer a single straight question about it.
So anyway, that is what is important - what I keep referring to as Pattee's epistemic cut (which was also von Neumann's deal with self-reproducing automata and Peirce's triadic metaphysics). The animal mind is embedded in the flow of the moment. It is responding directly to the here and now in terms of some adaptive system of conception and exploration. There is just no mechanism to transcend that flow. So an animal doesn't "hold beliefs" in that it could objectify a thought and wonder whether it is actually true or not. It just expresses a belief in interpreting the world a certain way. And the "truth" is then discovered in terms of the pragmatic consequences. The animal prospers or suffers.
But language gives humans a mechanism to objectify their own "states of belief" and compare them to "states of the world". And as I stress - or as Peirce and other modelling relations guys like Robert Rosen stress - The states of the world are understood as acts of measurement. They too have to be translated into the transcendent register. We don't check the world directly to see if a belief is true. We check our conception of what the world would look like if such a belief were the explanation of some particular set of measurements.
We are looking not for the thing-in-itself, but the signs we conceive as speaking the truth of the thing-in-itself. The umwelt. And that is conceived of in the same timeless and placeless fashion - despite being a conception about some "physical state that exists at a time and place".
Take Banno's confusion over mountain heights or Sam's attempts to tie mental states to brain states.
Banno is imagining that if he got out a ruler - a measurement in terms of some transcendent co-ordinate system - he could tell you how high a mountain "really was". Well he can tell you the results of a measurement act in terms of some world transcending viewpoint. But already he is imagining a measurement act in an ideal Platonia where mountains aren't eroding or still growing, or where he never makes an error as he lays his ruler end over end several thousand times, while trying to keep count.
Likewise Sam is imagining that the brain has "states". At some instant in time, you can take that instantaneous snapshot view which gives you a timeless representation of how the brain was, in a way that will forever after be recorded as such. But the causality of neural activity is spread over multiple timescales. There's habits that take decades to form. There's attentional action that spans seconds. There's working memory action that spans minutes. There's neural level processes anywhere between 5 and 100 milliseconds. You have the biological pace of activity inside the cells that is just a frantic blur.
So any neurobiologist knows that no timeless snapshot could capture the temporally-complex structure of what the brain is doing. The best we can hope for is to figure out what collection of measurements might best match the predictive needs of some theory. We can't just measure "the reality". We already have to have formed a mental picture of what signs or observables can meaningfully stand for our concept of "a brain state".
So the measurables - the truthmakers - are not grounded in "the world", or even "our direct experience of the world". The truthmakers are grounded in our conception of how the world should look in terms of some set of signs, some set of measurements, that usefully converts a running temporal reality into the kind of timeless representation of reality that our theories of the world can deal with.
Yet in post after post, you just get folk claiming that minds perceive the state of the world in untroublesome fashion. The beliefs might be conceptual things, but the perceptions are veridical things. But what are qualia except our efforts to imagine a timeless and placeless version of the experience we would otherwise just live? And in objectifying qualia, we might get to say something useful, yet we also leave behind so much that we haven't manage to say anything about.
So truth is a pragmatic choice about how much of reality we can afford to ignore. We gain something by objectifying and creating a set of signs - a set of "timeless facts" that serve as truthmakers. But it is an art, a skill. And good epistemology is about bringing out the tricky nature of what we claim to do.
Quoting Janus
Creative has some special private understanding of metacognition. He certainly hasn't managed to explain it to me, or relate it to the literature.
I think it is a bad term in fact. It is normally used by psychologists who don't take a linguistic or discursive view of the human mental difference. The construct of metacognition presumes that the human ability to recollect, or be self-aware, or to have voluntary control over attention and imagination, are all aspects of some higher genetically-evolve cognitive faculty. So the thesis is not that the structure of language gets internalised to structure individual minds, but that the minds evolved that structure, therefore that's why they knew how to speak. In evolutionary history, the thoughts were there before the means of the expression.
So metacognition is how a cognitivist would think about things. And a social-constructionist would see metacognition as merely the kinds of things you can learn to do once you live in a community where speech is a shared thought-structuring skill.
But as you say, most people "hold beliefs" in the sense that they don't think you are crazy when you ask them to give explanations for why they just did whatever they just did. They accept the rules of that particular language game and will play along. They will come up with a reason that seems reasonable, according to whatever cultural context is in play.
Psychologists can then argue over what this "metacognitive" discourse tells us about the structure of human cognition.
He isn't trying to promote a particular thesis; rather he listens and comments on what is being said. That's what makes Creative worth talking to.
X-)
I mean, that's what it boils down to...
Care to explain this charge of misplaced concreteness; hypostatization; reification; or conflation of abstract entities with physical ones?
I know what the fallacy is. I want to know how you've arrived at mistakenly believing that I've committed it. Especially seeing how you've never asked me my ontological viewpoint regarding what counts as "real"...
:-|
S/he has charged me with not answering simple questions. S/he is mistaken about that. S/he has claimed that over the five or so years that s/he and I have been debating on these forums that s/he still cannot understand what theory I'm attempting to put forth. Unfortunately, for whatever reason apo cannot take the steps necessary for understanding another... setting aside one's own preconceptions, granting another's terms simply for the sake of being able to understand the argument, and listening...
I work from the notion of thinking about one's own thought and belief. This is not difficult to grasp. If I tell you here and now that I believe that methodological naturalism is philosophy, then that is a belief statement about and/or of my own mental ongoings. Because methodological naturalism is the name for a method of philosophical approach which values 'natural' explanations and de-values supernatural ones, being able to believe that that is the best approach requires a rudimentary understanding of what it entails. That, in turn, clearly requires language use. So... in such a case, Banno's cat Jack cannot possibly believe that methodological naturalism is philosophy, for it requires thinking about one's own thought and belief, which in turn requires complex language replete with the ability to isolate and further consider one's own mental ongoings, and Jack has no such language, thus no such ability.
So... We think about our own thought and belief. That requires language. Thinking about thought and belief first requires that we form and/or hold thought and belief. Thus, we form and hold thought and belief prior to language.
That's basic common sense.
In closing, I'd only suggest that the reader steer clear of the likes of Charles Sanders Peirce. It seems that being able to understand and follow his line of thinking requires that which cannot be understood after doing so...
X-)
Thinking about Peirce's position seems to have rendered one utterly unable to understand what "thinking about thought and belief" is... the irony.
What are you doing here apo?
Do we though?
Wouldn't it be much wiser to establish what all mental ongoings are existentially dependent upon? Wouldn't it serve our interests here more if we were to 'look' at every example imaginable, from imagining to dreaming to doubting to...
All of them. What do they all have in common in terms of their elemental constituency?
That's one way to frame it. There's more than one framework.
Of course. You're maintaining consistency in your terminological usage. Coherency is a good thing even if it is not concrete.
;)
Reciting one's belief requires thinking about what one already believes and then using language to report upon it.
Oddly enough, I almost agree with this. Almost. You've mentioned the nuanced bits in between rudimentary thought and belief formation and thinking about one's own thought and belief. These haven't been properly taken account of.
Again, this is not an accurate account. I am convinced by Davidson's account, from On the very idea... That is, I reject the dualism between scheme and world.
Everything is always interpreted. So it makes no sense to talk about interpretation.
It is much easier for Apo to critique my view if he makes it up as he goes along.
I am still open to having this discussion with you. I find it fascinating that someone as thoughtful and erudite as you might think that one could not tell how high Everest is.
If you wish to continue that discussion, I will start a thread; or if you prefer, contact me using the message system.
The here and now is always gone and past, by the time you say it's here and now. And when we reflect on the past, how would one really know whether it's the truth or not? It appears to me, like defining truth "in the terms of pragmatic consequences" is just an escape from real truth. It's like saying that we can't know real truth, because as soon as anything happens it's in the past, and we can't be absolutety certain about what we've sensed, and our memories, so let's just define truth in terms of pragmatic consequences.
Quoting apokrisis
All this is very questionable to me. First, why would you say that measurables are truthmakers? Wouldn't it be more precise to say that the act of measuring is the truthmaker? And so we would produce our signs such that they will best enable us to make our measurements. Then truth must be related to how we produce our signs, not to how we apply them.
Quoting creativesoul
If Jack cannot tell you what he believes, then what would lead you to think that Jack believes anything? You refer to Jack's behaviour, and claim that Jack displays signs of belief. But is this really true? What are the real signs of belief? The real signs of belief are statements of belief. But you seem to look for actions in Jack which would be consistent with specific statements of belief, and claim that because these statements are consistent with these behaviours which Jack demonstrates, then Jack must have these stated beliefs. But is it so simple? We know that a person demonstrating behaviour which is consistent with a specific belief, does not necessitate the conclusion that the person holds that belief. So why make such a faulty conclusion with respect to other animals?
If we restrict "belief" to what is stated, we avoid the problem of trying to determine what one believes through the analysis of one's other actions. A belief is what is represented by a statement. This allows us to focus strictly on the statement. Only if there is reason to think that the individual is not sincere in the statement, do we need to turn to other actions to prove that the statement is not a real belief.. In this sincerity is where we find the elements of truth.
So to think doesn’t require language, but to think about thinking does require language?
Doesn’t really work, does it. If thinking is thinking, it either does or doesn’t require language. So the usual equivocation at work here.
If you want to say something, I outlined a position just a couple of posts back. Have a go at that.
Quoting creativesoul
;)
What waffle. The proof that we understood the past is the degree to which we can use it to predict our future.
As before...
Quoting creativesoul
Indeed. So you don't know any other songs?
We just go straight to the pissing competition, yet again. It's just sad, Apo. You could do so much better.
First, it seems that there are beliefs that arise apart from language, and a belief, whether linguistic or not, is simply a state-of-mind. These mind states are clearly seen in our actions. This is not to say that all actions by living organisms reflect beliefs, but simply to say that all beliefs are reflections of mind states, which in turn are shown by the things we do.
Second, not only are there beliefs that arise non-linguistically, but our thoughts are also not dependent upon linguistics. This it seems, has to be case if one is to make sense of the development of linguistics. For if there are no beliefs and no thoughts prior to the formation of linguistics (language), what would be the springboard of language? How does one get from a mind of no thoughts and no beliefs, to a mind that is able to express one's thoughts linguistically? It also seems to be the case that language is simply a tool to communicate our thoughts to one another, which also seems to lend support for the idea that thinking is prior to language.
Third, the basis for beliefs in prelinguistic man is causal in nature, not based on reasoning, reasoning is a linguistic endeavor, at least as how it is defined here. How are beliefs causally formed? It seems to be the case that beliefs arise causally within the mind based on the interactions between our sensory experiences and the world around us. The interaction between our sensory experiences and the world do not necessitate the belief, but are simply sufficient to cause the belief. One acts upon the information given through sensory impressions, which in turn has a causal relationship with the belief.
Fourth, these three previous ideas form what is bedrock to all of epistemology. For epistemology arises out of language, it is a way of expressing what we know, or what we believe we know by using ply="Sam26;d2612"]
One may be certain but still be entirely mistaken. One can be certain that which is actually is, but not should a notion for that which is exist only as a perception, such as the case with certainty.
Only primitive instinctive beliefs can arise apart from language. Beliefs are concepts, and beyond language only emotion based concepts have a construct, but having said this even wonderment is an emotion.
Beliefs are not, so to speak, a state of mind, it is only the object of one`s belief which can be reasonably said.to be the state of mind.
Beliefs may not necessarily convert to actions for the first priority for the vast majority of us is to conform.
The springboard to communication was wonderment, and I consider a state of wonderment to be one of emotion, the emotion which is wonderment. In my view many emotional states go unrecognized.
Language both communicates our thoughts and possesses them, beyond our emotions this is. Do n`t underestimate how far reaching may be emotions though.
Beliefs do n`t form casually in the mind, they either develop as consequence to experience, one`s own or others, or are planted there, by others..
Whether there is this interaction with one`s belief, refer back, would depend upon whether that belief is held as an active belief or a non active one.
How would you argue, should you be so asked, that your reasoning has taken you on a journey? .In my view it is only representative of the average surface perception for non philosophers. It is the way at first visit the vast majority of us would already think, and in effect you are going out of your way in trying to convince of arguments for not thinking..
This interpretation is just wrong. It shows that you haven't read the posts carefully.
Quoting apokrisis
This just isn't the case, where did I ever define brain states in such a way? This is simply your interpretation of what I said, not what I actually said. As I said in another post, the term brain states is simply a term used to refer to whatever is happening in the brain prior to a particular action. I don't think there is any way one can point to activity X (some one-to-one correspondence) in the brain that is associated with a state, which is then correlated with a belief. There is a multitude of overlapping activity (frequencies and chemical reactions) that take place in the brain. I'm using the term brain states in a very generalized way to point to mental activity. I'm sure that most of you agree that there is mental activity taking place that is associated with our actions. I'm also saying that these actions show our beliefs, regardless of the existence of language.
Much of what I said is getting distorted. These are just a couple of distortions, but there are many, and I don't have time to address each and every one. The problem seems to be that people aren't reading all the posts I've written, or they're reading it quickly and simply responding with their take, and that's fine, but unfortunately it's not accurate.
I never meant for the term brain states to be defined in a very precise manner (not that you're necessarily doing this). It's simply a term that refers to mental activity that precedes our actions, and I don't think that when philosophers and others use the term, that they had in mind some one-to-one correspondence between one's belief and a particular brain state. And as you know from other posts of mine, I tend to be careful about giving some precise definition to a particular word, especially a word like brain states. I think that words like brain states, reality, knowing, etc., refer to a wide range of uses, and don't lend themselves to very precise definitions, like the word game that Wittgenstein discusses in the PI.
So if we think of brain states as generalized brain activity that precedes one's actions, and by extension one's beliefs, then we get a picture that these actions/beliefs don't arise in a vacuum. I think you would agree with this. So when you say, "...there must be a brain state that corresponds [with] Banno's belief that tomatoes are good;" I say, yes and no, which means, it depends on what you mean by corresponds with. If you mean some one-to-one correspondence, then no, I don't think that. If you mean that there is brain activity happening prior to your actions/beliefs then yes, but there is no brain state X that one can point to that says, ahhh, Banno believes Y.
Another point about brain states, is that I'm simply pointing out that prior to the rise of language, beliefs are reflections of what's happening in the brain. The evidence is in one's behavior, and the evidence is in what we know about our own private experiences. Actions in themselves don't necessarily tell us anything about these private experiences, because even computers can be programmed to perform certain actions. Moreover, we know that computers don't have the kind of private experiences (generalized brain activity or states) that humans do. So the point, again, is that there is something private happening when we form beliefs, some brain activity (brain states as I referred to them earlier) that precede or coincide with actions, and/or coincide with statements or propositions.
I do think that brain states, as I'm using the term, are responsible for our actions or behaviors, but I'm not prepared to say all actions or behaviors. I just don't know enough about the brain to make such a claim.
The subject is epistemology. So our goal ought to be to limit the object of inquiry to that which is relevant to the subject. If we were discussing metaphysics or ontology here, we would be looking to broaden the object, as you suggest, to consider what all thinking has in common, and consider what all activity has in common, but since this is epistemology, we want to limit our field of observation, to focus directly on what we call "knowing".
There is a classical division made by some epistemologists, which separates knowing-that, from knowing-how. We do not deny that animals without language know how to do many things, but epistemologist make this division in order to focus specifically on knowing-that, as the type of knowing which is important to epistemology. Even though it is a well-argued point, that knowing-that is just a special type of knowing-how, making this classification allows the epistemologist to limit the field of inquiry and focus on a more specialized object.
Is it your argument, that the epistemologist ought not give value or respect to this division, and broaden the field of inquiry to include all instances of knowing?
Quoting Sam26
The separation between one's actions, and the mental activity which precedes one's actions, may not really be called for. One's brain activity is a part of one's actions. To position the mental activity, or brain activity as prior in time to one's actions, seems to express some form of prejudice which hasn't been justified. In reality, one's brain activity, and the rest of one's actions, all coincide in time. So even if you think about what you are going to say, prior to saying it, you are still thinking about it as you are speaking, and readjusting what you are saying, as you are speaking. The situation is such that one's brain activity is extremely complex, and far reaching, constantly extending far toward things past and future, near and far, such that the activity is involved with much more than just one's actions which may be observed as outward expressions.
Quoting Sam26
Belief becomes a very difficult subject to understand under the terms of brain activity. One could demonstrate brain activity which corresponds with, or more precisely, coincides with, Banno stating "tomatoes are good", but this brain activity would not correspond with Banno's belief that tomatoes are good.
The belief itself, must be classed as some sort of memory. The brain activity, which is the act of recollection, and Banno making the statement, "tomatoes are good", is completely different from whatever activity it is which supports that memory in a state of belief, which is more properly the referent of Banno's "belief" that tomatoes are good
Sure, actions reflect beliefs, and no need to prove it for you are a philosopher, not a scientist. Remember though, we possess thousands of beliefs all interconnected, such it is unlikely that one particular belief would fire very often in total isolation. Particular beliefs are not necessarily singular either, one may partly believe something on some levels, scarcely believe that same something on other levels, and at the same time wholly believe it on yet another level again, and not every one of those separate areas of believing may be firing, or indeed firing at the same strength.at any one time, additionally, with every variance in psychoenvironmental background when reflecting upon ones belief there would necessarily be a shift here.. What appears on the surface in terms of the response is far less straight forward than this.
Sorry but I’m more familiar with the language games of neuroscientists than your private language. So “brain states” is a phrase expressing a commitment to a particular physicalist ontology - one where a particular state of conscious experience would be uniquely specified by a particular state of neural affairs.
If you had said “brain activity” or “neural goings on”, then the hand waving generality would have been clear. But you chose the words you chose.
Furthermore, a hand waving notion of “whatever activity was the case to stand as a belief” simply says that however a belief was caused, then that was how it was caused. You have not grounded anything really, just said effects must have a cause. A “state” can be presumed, whatever the heck a state is.
And unless you said something further to make it clear, the very framing of this - as a correlation between a state of physical activity and a state of mind - is dangerously representational. It sounds like you are committing to a general ontology that treats the mind as some kind of passive display rather than a meaningful semiotic interaction with a world.
Well, it's not my private language, many philosophers have talked about brain states or states-of-mind in reference to beliefs. What a particular neuroscientist means by brains states may be quite different based on their particular theory. So I chose the words I chose based on the language some philosophers have used.
You can say "whatever the heck a state is" in reference to my talk about states, but one could also say the same things about "brain activity" or "neural goings on." You act as though those phrases are somehow more accurate, and not as vague. Much of this is vague because much of it is not understood precisely. Besides it wasn't meant to refer to something very precise.
The distinction might be critical for distinguishing between an identity theorist and a functionalist, for example.
I generally find myself agreeing with Banno and Sam, in what seems to me to be their different approaches to what can sensibly be said. This is all in line with commonsense inter-subjective usage, but if substantive metaphysical claims are being posited on the basis of commonsense perceptions and linguistic usage, then I would not be following along. I have pretty much given up on trying to make complete sense of Creative's position also (as well as Meta's), although they both seem to have interesting and insightful things to say from time to time.
I have long been drawn to more 'process', 'phenomenological' and 'enactive' philosophies; and I am becoming increasingly interested in semiotics. which I understand as being allied with, and supplementary to, the other three approaches. I'm really more of a dabbler than a specialist when it comes to philosophy, my primary interest is in the arts, in doing rather than thinking. The value of what I think, for me, consists primarily in how it influences what I do.
How about a "proper account " of them then?
I can see that it makes no sense to think of the scheme on one side and the world on the other. This would create an unbridgeable gulf. On the other hand we cannot sensibly say that the scheme just is the world, surely...?
What, you don't think that identity theory and functionalism are positions in philosophy of mind?
You accused me of misinterpretation. I am replying that I understood you in terms of a mainstream community understanding of your jargon.
Quoting Sam26
And I've explained why I think that is inadequate. Any theory of truth needs to distinguish between the different levels of "thought" or "belief" involved. As I said earlier, discussions such as these trip up on the difference between linguistic semiosis and neural semiosis.
It is not easy to disentangle the two in humans, as we are soaked in a linguistic enculturing from birth. Even the physical world we grow up in is structured with paths, walls, doors and other linguistically-derived constraints.
Yet to make a correct connection between our propositional-style rational thinking and our bare sensory experience of the world requires taking account of this complex layering of semiotics.
That is why I object to the ontic commitment implicit in talk about "states of affairs" - physical or mental. It is a dualistic and representational framing of the situation. It is not an embodied, semiotic and triadic framing of the situation.
So it is a philosophy of mind that remains mired in Kantian cognitivism and has yet to move on to Peircean pragmatism, the modern semiotic view.
It is clear to me that your critique of brain states does not apply to @Sam26. He earlier cited this article that is quite explicit on the topic.
Well Peircean semiosis is about placing value there at the heart of things. Of course Pragmatism has been misunderstood as being simply about the value of "usefulness" - some kind of reductive utility. But really, it is broader than that. Certainly Peirce himself got rather mystic and carried away when he started to talk about evolutionary love or agapism. However a triadic sign relation does say we see the view of the world that is useful to us ... the view that indeed defines "us".
So semiosis says belief or truth-telling is rightfully self-centred. It has to be as a sign relation is how a self - an interpretant - can arise at the centre of its world, or unwelt.
And that fact - that any proposition rightfully also speaks to an interest - is clearly what is missing from the usual reductive AP or philosophy of language approach.
AP tries to make true the reductive ontology that got science off to its flying start. Reality could be reduced to logical atoms. Formal and final cause could be neglected as what counts as foundational is material and efficient cause.
And so questions of the self, or value, etc, just fell out of the AP picture. Of course, that way of thinking never produced the great final rationalist theory that folk like Russell and Whitehead were expecting. But the aspiration still leaves its clear mark.
It is the reason Banno goes stum whenever pressed to account for the knower along with the knowledge. To even admit that such a question hangs over the business of truth or belief is to confess that AP simply doesn't have a story on formal and final cause. It has built its house on nominalism, atomism, materialism, mechanicalism and the rest. So Banno's tactic is to fight the strawman of Kantian representationalism and pretend the solution is some kind of monism - we just are at one with the world in some mystical, yet apparently metaphysics-eschewing, fashion. :)
I of course argue that Peirce set things right before AP even really got going. Though circumstances meant Peirce was not widely understood in his own time. Ironically, the second acclaimed phase of Wittgenstein can now be traced to a mumbled, unattributed acceptance of what Peirce was saying, as heard via Ramsey in particular.
Quoting Janus
You got it. Kantian representationalism was a step towards working it out. But it is too dualistic. We need to take the next Peircean step that is triadic. We need to speak about the holistic interaction in which both world and self emerge via a sign relation.
What would be silly is to then collapse any distinction by pretending there just is no epistemic issue to discuss. To reduce knowledge to "meaning is use" is a trite slogan. Even if Peircean semiotics was also saying that meaning is about embodied usage - the interaction that is the "self" in "its world".
I remember reading this far...
Quoting Sam26
...and switching off.
But thanks. The paper nicely places the metaphysics in the space of identity theories as I suggested. And it fetishes neural synchrony in exactly the way that was in vogue in philosophy of mind in the early 1990s.
So it is precisely the kind of supervenience-based reductive nonsense I was criticising back then, and still doing today.
Well, it seems that it is in fact a specific supervenient/identity theory story about neural synchrony and not some generalised notion of "brain activity". So I was spot on correct in my understanding from the first.
But yes, plough on. You have shown that you don't want to engage with informed criticism of a brain states approach.
This is the point I took up with creativesoul. I don't believe that the claim that any actions other than those such as statements of claim and propositions, "are expressions of beliefs" could ever be properly justified. There is far too much involved in an action, other than a belief.
There is a very complex relationship between many beliefs and many actions, and numerous other aspects of the human psyche which are related to beliefs and actions, that no single belief will ever be adequately correlated to any single action, except in the case of statements. Simply put, there is a lot more to actions than belief, so actions cannot be considered to be expressions of belief, unless the expression of belief is explicit.
It’s not so much what you say as how you present that is gauling. We can all do this passive-aggressive stuff.
How so? If you want to say something Banno, you should learn to just spit it out.
What have I been asked to explain?
In what way is situating my position in a relevant context of academic research being a fanatic?
If we reject the juxtaposition of world and word, then we reject segregation of the word from the world.
That doesn’t mean that “Uluru “ is Uluru. Words and things remain distinct.
But it does mean that When we talk about Uluru, we are talking about that very thing, and not about some concept-of-Uluru that is distinct from the rock.
This view will be mischaracterised as a defunct version of realism. It will be asserted that I am somehow talking about a mystical Uluru-in-itself. That critique fails to recognise that the the thing-in-itself can only persist as a reasonable idea if one maintains the distinction between thing and scheme.
The view I am here advocating is my understanding ofDavidson, and so distinct from, but for me compatible with, Wittgenstein. I think it also fits in well with Kripke’sapproach to modality.
I now think we do not differ by much in our understanding of the relation between brain states and mental states. Indeed I don’t think we differ by much from @apokrisis’a actual position, were he able to present it rather than simply atack his own straw construct.
That leaves private concepts and notions and languages and so on. Which is an odd but interesting way for us to differ.
Because I reject the very notion of such things, and suppose myself to be following Wittgenstein in so doing. Yet you also understand Wittgenstein but apparently leave room for private mental furnishings.
How can this be?
How do you define private mental furnishings? Are you talking about the origins of the mental furnishings which is a combination of self and interaction with others through social or are you talking about the phenomenon of mental furnishings itself- in other words of personal mental imagery/self-talk/introspection/qualia etc.
So what this summary misses is that our talk about Uluru is also talk that defines "the person speaking".
This is obvious just in that the correct term was Ayers Rock when I was a kid. That spoke to the identity of a particular linguistic culture. Just as saying "Uluru" is identity-defining for Aussies today.
So that is why you need a larger semiotic framework. The self doing the speaking has to be included as part of what the act of speaking must produce. An attitude of mind has to take responsibility for the words which construct "its" world.
This "idealist" correction to the naive realist story applies all the way down. If I pick up a stone while climbing Uluru, is that part of Uluru or not? The fact of the matter becomes a social construct. Sure, the legal view will attempt to cash out in the physical facts. But essentially the view will be based on cultural identity values.
Am I going to be penalised for picking up a souvenir grain of sand, or get fined for the Uluru dust that gathers on my clothes? Chipping of a chunk is an obvious no-no. But where is the proper borderline? It can't be in the material facts as rock is rock whether it is rock dust or rock grain or rock lump or rock mountain. So it has to be in the cultural facts - how much rock is enough for people to want to care?
The principle of indifference applies. A semiotic relation with the world is based in interpretance. And interpretation takes acts of measurement as its appropriate signs. Uluru as a qualitative concept in our minds must be pragmatically quantified in terms of some perceptual judgement. We care about tourists chipping away. We don't care about the dust on their clothes - even though we could care if there was a reason, a value, for doing so in our minds.
So yeah. Banno's theory of truth is lacking the distinctions needed to be an actual theory.
A triadic semiotic theory says we do construct our understanding of the thing-in-itself as a "scheme". But this scheme has its own two parts - the interpretant and the sign. There is the "self" - the individuated habit of interpretation that we call "us" - and then the system of signs that are the "evidence" of the kind of world this self could have in mind.
It is the same structure as science itself - the whole point. There is a theory of the world, and the acts of measurement what confirm that theory. The world is still out there beyond.
And this disconnect - this epistemic cut - is the necessary basis of knowledge. It allows the model to be separate from the world so that it can continue to learn from the world, continue to adapt.
And needless to say, the "I" at the apparent centre of knowing things, is also able to develop and become individuated as part of that virtuous cycle of adaptation.
So a theory of truth that justifies the scientific method and is psychologically realistic in a way that Kantian cognitivism never was. Who could want better? ;)
Is this what you mean by passive-aggressive?
Time and again I give a full account of my position. And then you pretend I'm "refusing to explain".
I'm calling you out Banno! (Heh, heh, remember those fun old days?)
How would you interpret a situation when a word is being used to refer to a private concept, a mental furnishing? You might say that the word is being used to refer to something imaginary, something which doesn't exist, but wouldn't that just be validating the existence of such things, by saying that there is something imaginary which is the thing that the word refers to? You could insist that the word is just being used to refer to nothing, but how would that work, that we could use words which are referring to nothing?
I don't.
Qualia are a nice example, though. If a qual is a private thing then following the private language argument there is no point in talking about them. But if they are a shared part of our world and language, they are nothing different to ordinary things like the smell of coffee or the colour red.
Either way, nothing is gained by their inclusion.
Hmm, I think then that you may not be making the distinction between the origins of the qualia and the phenomenon of qualia itself. The origins may be socially constructed as you seem to agree with here:
Quoting Banno
However, this does not mean that once constructed, the person is not having a private mental phenomenon of red. The origins are shared, but each individual instance is private for the individual perhaps. So red would not be there perhaps without the social construction, but once there, the person is indeed having an experience of red.
Actually now that I look at it, we probably agree on this. I don't think that a private language exists. I do think that people have mental experiences though, which is pretty common sense.
Perhaps I've misunderstood you, but I am not seeing a difference, in principle, between contending that words are not the things they reference, and saying that schemes are not the world they represent.
What your opinion of the height of Everest is, perhaps? Never did quite work that one out, and since you brought it up again...
But perhaps not here. The thread I started for that discussion attracted the ire of the Gods.
I had a physio do some work on my back today. She was asking for descriptions of pain here and there, and how deep, what sort - quite precise. And she appeared to use this information to fathom where to push and prod, because my spine is now much straighter and less painful.
So those pains were not private.
But I already sketched the argument in this very thread and have just elaborated it in terms of your latest mountain obsession, Uluru,
Others have been rifling through the archives for you.
So it is BAU. You asking a question and ignoring the answer.
I realise that your preferred tactic is to frame questions which it might sound silly to deny. Are these my hands I see before me? This may dazzle the epistemologically unworldly. But it ain’t going to wash here.
I don't that it does miss the first person perspective. Nor is what I said dismissive of the role in culture in discussions of Uluru. Indeed, if anything, highlighting the roll of language use within a community, as Wittgenstein does, gives greater emphasis to this cultural perspective than would an emphasis on the person speaking. Uluru isn't what {b]I[/b] say it is; it is what we say it is.
Quoting apokrisis
Perhaps this cuts to the core of the difference between us. You seem to have built your view as a series of deductions from inside your self, or something like that; but Wittgenstein is suggesting that one stop and look first, at what happens when language is used.
The self doing the speaking is as much a social construct as the language that self is using. Removing the Self from where Descartes had placed it in the middle of philosophy is one of the net things about Philosophical Investigations.
Quoting apokrisis I'll pick up on this, on the suspicion that the way we answer this question might be revealing.
From what you have said it would seem that the speaker can decide in one way or the other if the stone is part of Uluru or not. But that's not what I would say. It's not the speaker who makes such decisions, but the community being addressed. And what is being asked is not about the ontology of Uluru so much as the way we use parts of that sacred rock.
Now I am not sure that this is so far from your own view.
But then I don't have a clear idea of what this "cut" is - apparently between me and it, as if an individual could have a private language.
I know this is misrepresenting you, Apo, but it's the best I can do in trying to reflect my understanding of your view back to you for comment.
How will you reply? What attitude will you adopt?
Let's see what it is we agree on rather than emphasising our disagreements.
Uluru is a rock; while "Uluru" is a word - I'm sure we agree so far.
But there are those who would claim that to understand the sentence "Uluru is a rock" we have first to differentiate between Uluru-as-schema and Uluru-in-itself, and then to point out that we can never actually talk about Uluru-in-itself. Or some variation of this story.
I commend On the very idea of a conceptual scheme, Donald Davidson.
You don't agree that there is a valid logical distinction between what Uluru is, and has been, for human experience and thought and what it is in itself? In other words, isn't there more to Uluru than we can tell? I mean, for a start, what it is to non-human percipients? Uluru is not any conceptual schema of it, surely?
I'm not convinced that "there is a valid logical distinction between what Uluru is, and has been, for human experience and thought and what it is in itself" is another way of saying "there is more to Uluru than we can tell".
There is more to Uluru than can be told - I can show you that.
And the notion of an Uluru-in-itself is a philosophical construct of the most misleading sort.
I agree that the idea of an Uluru-in-itself is misleading if it is taken to be a different entity than the Uluru that appears to us. But Uluru-as-entity is a formal notion in any case. No one perceives Uluru-as-entity. Each perception of Uluru involves aspects of Uluru, the light, environmental conditions, and the senses of the percipient. It is only for the sake of the intelligibility of experience that we refer to entities as 'the same' from one experience to the next, from one moment to the next. Entities are events, be-ings, becomings, more verb than noun; really never the same from one instant to the next.
So, Uluru is not exhausted by, or identical with, any idea or schema.
I don't think that Uluru-as-entity is at all defensible, since it relies on a distinction between Uluru and Uluru-as-entity...
It's Uluru all the way down...
Same general semiotic principle. Language embeds the notion of the self that speaks with meaning. So cultures do form vocabularies to serve their pragmatic interests. And we become socially constructed as selves by participating correctly in that language game.
You could check out GH Mead of symbolic interactionism fame here. He applied Peirce to early sociology. Or Lev Vygotsky for the Russian version.
Quoting Banno
I haven't built anything. It just pragmatist philosophy and social psychology as far as I'm concerned.
So it is a position built from scientific observation of human society, human development and human psycholinguistics. So induction not deduction.
Quoting Banno
Strewth. How revolutionary. You mean like social psychology? Like symbolic interactionism or social constructionism?
Quoting Banno
Did you say that or are you quoting me there? Honestly, I can't tell.
Quoting Banno
Well we've already been though how Ramsey whispered the secrets of pragmatism in Wittgenstein's lughole.
As I say, Peirce was fixing Kant who was fixing Descartes. Wittgenstein is pretty irrelevant.
There's this really nice old paper of how Kant's cognitivism was fixed by Peirce's semiotics - http://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1905&context=luc_theses
Quoting Banno
The speaker could take a view. The community could take a view. All that matters so far as a pragmatic view of truth goes is that each party would be forming some general theory about "sacred Uluru" and would see the stone in evidential terms. Either the stone will be ruled by identity-justified constraints, or the party in question would feel a justified indifference.
So the threshold might be determined by something physical - like the size or the degree of attachment. Or the criteria could be anything. The person wanting to souvenir the stone might be a tribal magic man or a state authorised geologist with a permit in his pocket. All that matters is that there is a theory that covers the issue and there is a way to "tell the truth of the matter" as some act of measurement. Some attribute of the stone has to become a sign of whether it is imbued with this quality of sacredness or not.
The key here is that there is a habit of interpretance in play. There is a belief. And then the world is understood in terms of the belief. The belief knows what kind of signs or acts of measurement fall within its scope.
The stone is stony enough, or sacred enough, or whatever enough, to count as such. Or not, as the case may be.
The radical psychological claim is then that all experience is like this. Semiosis doesn't just apply to language use, it applies to the basic neurobiology of experience, and even of course to biology in general.
Quoting Banno
You could look it up. Just google Pattee and epistemic cut. Or von Neuman and self reproducing automata. Or Rosen and modelling relation. Or....
You get the picture. Stop being such a lazy sod and make an effort. You might finally learn something. Imagine poor fated Ramsey whispering in your lughole too.
Quoting Banno
Well why not pull your finger out and do your research.
Quoting Banno
Always the psychodrama, Banno. You want to play the game of "pretend to respect me and I'll pretend to respect you." And worried you won't get that, you try to play the authority figure. You set yourself up as the judge of whether someone's behaviour conforms to some proper standard.
Well bollocks to that as you know. If you want respect, make an argument that works. Stop pretending that you are somehow in control of how this goes.
Yes, I was trying to show you some respect. I should know better, but am a slow learner.
Wouldn't it be sad, if @apokrisis have a decent point to make, but could not explain it. He's far too clever for me.
You forget I've seen every play in your book many times now. So just get on with your reply. Stop pretending to worry - while turning your head and throwing mournful looks to the cheap seats - about what attitude I will adopt.
Respect, genuine respect can be difficult to conjure up in this environment where nobody wholly exists, just words on a page. Respect has to take on board an element of person, thus respect would come more naturally should persons be revealed alongside merely intellects. The onlookers are not imagined tell him,, many are following this thread, and shall do into the future. Yes, that does perhaps sound a little like a line plucked from a play. It is wishful thinking to imagine that one person can know another on this basis of no more than around perhaps thirty or forty percent of full in person communication, and when not even on the topic of each other.
But don't you think that those pains were private prior to you describing them to the physio? And, that it was your capacity to refer to these private things, when they were private, which enabled you to make them public?
I think that the way in which we make public, those things which are private, is an important aspect of epistemology. This is how beliefs are justified. If you deny that things like beliefs are ever private, you ignore the reality of deception, and the need for justification.
Absolutism is always the wrong move. Relativism is the way to go.
If you stick to relativism, then you can actually have limits that behave as limits - absolute in being the "place" that reality can approach with arbitrary closeness, but never actually arrive.
So all language use exists in the space between the limits of the absolutely private and the absolutely public.
Some kinds of experience - like the smell of a rose - seem ineffably private. Yet wine and coffee tasting professionals have a vast vocabulary by which they can analyse what they experience and share it in reasonably reliable fashion with a community.
Indeed, making the "umwelt" point about semiotics again, once you can think of hints of cat piss or whatever, then you become equipped with the language that allows you to look for these particular analytic signs. Your raw experience becomes linguistically structured so that you experience the wine as a collection of particular references. You can measure how close the wine gets to some ideal in terms of a type.
Anyway, there is no experience so private that we can't create a language that shares it. Indeed, the very idea that there could be a "private language" is already saying that is so.
And likewise, there is no language so public that we can be sure every member of a linguistic community will experience the words the same way.
If you say "cat", then I could have some very different mental image spring to mind. Yours might be a brindle tom. Mine might be a white persian.
So the private vs public dichotomy speaks to two opposed ideal limits. And the reality is then all that takes place within the bounds of these limits. All speech acts are relatively private or relatively public to the degree that either the speech acts translates freely or awkwardly.
Translation can never be ruled out even if achieving commensurability in points of view is always going to be a work in progress.
Well, I would not say it like that, but yes, I agree.
Quoting Banno
So you now disagree with yourself?
As usual, you chose to be gnomic in your response, leaving others to guess at what you could really mean.
The only time you get more fulsome in your replies is when you complain about my "bad attitude". You can see why I might regard that as hypocritical given that I find your "terseness" rude and unhelpful. It doesn't fit the usual definition of a discussion - a free give and take of ideas - does it?
What?
A private language would be one that cannot be made public, even in principle; and there can be no such thing.
Where is the contradiction? Why be so obtuse and fractious?
So when you said you agreed with this statement - "So the private vs public dichotomy speaks to two opposed ideal limits." - what did you mean by saying you agreed?
I said your absolutism was unwarranted. Language could be only relatively private or relatively public. So it is all a matter of degree.
Now you say you agree with that and yet disagree with that. And then you have the gaul (sic) to complain about my testy response.
If your sole intent is to waste my time, let me know.
But you could share it with yourself?
Private language speaks to the notion that I have private thoughts in my head that I translate into English and put "out there", that you read and then translate into your private language. Rejecting a private language amounts to rejecting this model, and hence accepting that language is intrinsically a public enterprise.
Musing a bit, that is part of the problem I have with @apokrisis's epistemic "cut"; the cut could not be a private thing.
So you do agree that there is private mental furnishing though, private things which will remain private unless made public? Whether there are any private things which cannot be made public even in principle, I do not see as really relevant. What is relevant is that there is private mental furnishing which will remain private if not made public.
Quoting Banno
Do you recognize that each person has one's own peculiarities, and idiosyncracies, which make one's own interpretation of any statement particular to that individual? If it is impossible for me to communicate to you, exactly, and precisely what I mean, how is that not an indication of private language? In other words, if the public part is always missing something from ideal completion, and perfection in translation, then isn't this the part which is private (cannot even in principle be made public)?
It might be private, but how can it be a language, especially if the private aspect is what is not, or what is unable to be, communicated (per your depiction above)?
I would avoid such talk. Too close to reification; too much.
The time wasting is apparently mutual. IF it is all a matter of degree, then there can be no absolutely private language...
I think we agree, but you do not realise it. Odd.
Quoting Banno
The cut is another relative thing, never absolute. And it creates the "private" realm from which either communities or individuals would construct meaning in terms of a sign relation.
So the entirety of you problem is that you haven't understood the concept. That tends to happen when you are lazy about reading the literature.
Quoting Banno
As I've said, speaking creates the speaker. A linguistic identity, a psychological construct of self, develops by mastering the habits of language use.
Being a self is a particular kind of language game. One that is baked into the general communal game. It is right there in the grammar - me, you and them - as Mead pointed out.
So if I have a beetle in my box, I can talk about it to myself. I can construct the view which says there is this "me" and there is this "other".
But this is not of course a whole private language. It is some private vocab. It refers to the world that only I see because only "I" could have such a point of view. It is that tightly tied to any claims to identity that "I" might have. Hence why qualia are treated as the height of the private and ineffable.
In general, our "I" is socially and culturally constructed. It encodes the communal "I" as the point of view from which a generalised and linguistically sharable selfhood arises. So most of our speaking remains speech from a collective cultural identity. As I said about wine-tasters, this becomes true even of talk about ineffable qualia.
Thus again, this is about degrees of the private or public. In the end, the speaking "I" is still largely a cultural self. But every person lives in a different body. We all have some unique point of view as well. So there is scope for private language to construct that as the private experience of some solipsistic notion of "myself".
Tiresome bullshit. The corollary was that public language is equally a matter of degree.
Are you wanting to say there can be no absolutely public language?
So still the same old games from you, Banno. The less you say, the safer you feel. It's a life I guess.
In what language?
You do not have to be here. You are welcome to go and spend your time more productively.
But you enjoy this.
Isn't there a puzzle here, if one is able to eff what is ineffable?
This is all rather a puzzle.
Quoting apokrisis
Ride yourself of private items thus: imagine that it changes over time, but you do not notice. In this case, presumably one would imagine that your ineffable self changes between one instance of your talking to yourself and the next, but you didn't notice. Not an unlikely scenario.
Given that, what grounds could you have for concluding that you are the very same as you were previously?
And what is more germane to my original argument - which was about the advantage of a pragmatic theory of truth - is that I am focused on the issue of the speaker doing the speaking. Who is this person really? Is s/he a social construct or is s/he a neurobiological individual?
There is both a division and a division that is not clearcut - relative and dichotomous rather than dualistic and absolute.
So I am focused on what it could even mean to be private - in any sense. Or public, in any sense. I am highlighting the fact that language - as semiosis or a triadic sign relation - has to make the I-ness that both speaks and appears to understand the speaking in right fashion. The production of actual language speaks to the successful production of the I-ness that we associate with "being a speaker expressing meanings".
Banno wants to talk about Davidson and that whole edifice of flanneling built on the possibility/impossibility of translation. This is somehow vitally important to put Cartesian dualism to the sword, not to mention Kantian representationalism.
Well good luck to all that AP still playing its philosophy of language long past its intellectual sell-by date.
Meanwhile over here - particularly at the intersection of science and metaphysics - Peircean semiotics is going strong. The essential issues have been framed in far more fruitful fashion.
Rather than trying to kill metaphysics, science is cashing it out as irreducibly complex triadic relations. Systems science, cybernetics, hierarchy theory, complex adaptive systems, and all the other ways of speaking about a holistic or organic understanding of existence.
So the issue is not "in what language", but "for what reason".
A systems perspective recognises the reality of final cause. And for there to be "a purpose" there has to be "a self" in some proper sense.
Hence the private does make no sense. That is the mistake of Cartesian dualism and Kantian representationalism.
But the public also makes no sense as that is a reification of the collective.
You need an actual theory of wholes which makes sense of the forming of the parts. Which is the issue I am focused on.
Still hoping to be in control of the discursive boundaries? Make this a safe space for that guy Banno? Remove the possibility of his authority being challenged?
Quoting Banno
Of course. I love the immense variety of life. And without the irritation, it is easy to get lazy.
The corollary was that public language is equally a matter of degree. Are you wanting to say there can be no absolutely public language?
I agree that it wouldn't be properly called language, but that makes it no less real. Banno doesn't like "mental furnishing", or any suggestion that the private aspect is real. In reference to the game analogy which we discussed earlier, I argued that the analogy falls short because there are things like personal strategies which are completely outside of the game itself, but nevertheless have significant influence over the way that the game is played. So here, if language is compared to a game, the private aspect goes far beyond language itself (as strategy goes far beyond the game), and has significant influence over the use of language. And that is most evident in my example of the extreme, strategies of deception.
Quoting Banno
Reification is what is needed though. There is a need to take seriously, as real, the private aspect. This is because things like misunderstanding, misleading, and deception, are very real, though they are of the private aspect. If we do not consider these as real possibilities, we will not consider the need for justification as real either.
I would like to see a good clear explanation of exactly what "epistemic cut" refers to in your usage apokrisis?
What I really want is an account of how you use this.
My professors taught me that to demonstrate how I understand another's writing, I should put it in my own words. That's what I got marked on. Can you demonstrate an understanding of what Pattee means by "epistemic cut"?
Or this search gives you 130 hits to explore.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/search?Search=epistemic+cut&expand=yes&child=&forums=&or=Relevance&mem=&tag=&date=All&Checkboxes%5B0%5D=titles&Checkboxes%5B1%5D=WithReplies&Checkboxes%5B2%5D=child&user=apokrisis&pg=p2
I'm working on a reply to your last request to me. It may be a bit. Real life and all...
;)
This is a bit ridiculous.
Is belief irrelevant to epistemology? I think not.
The JTB notion of belief conflates between a report of belief and belief. I've already argued for all this... in this thread. I've no reason to bear the burden twice. Revisit it, if you like, and ask questions.
...or is it that you are still hoping to be in control of the discursive boundaries? Make this a safe space for that guy Apo? Remove the possibility of his authority being challenged?
X-)
That's it.
I've got no idea what an absolutely public language might be.
Again, you are far too tricksy for me, Apo.
This is very revealing. It shows that Meta does not take the idea of a public language quite far enough.
The supposition in the quote above is that there is a meaning that is to be communicated, and that even when this is made public there might be a piece of the meaning that is left out.
That is, there is a meaning that is seperate from the public utterance.
That is what is being denied.
So what is happening when you can't quite find the words?
The folk view would be that you have a meaning in your head that you cannot quite translate into English.
But perhaps instead what is happening is that the thought is incomplete, the meaning unfinished, until the right words are found.
That is, the words make the thought as much as the thought makes the words.
One where everyone shares the exact same interpretations with no personal nuance.
But even if you shout "fire", there's always going to be a few wondering what that could mean.
Interpretations of what? Interpretation is moving from one language to another, yes? How does interpretation work when we are both speaking English? Are we talking radical interpretation?
Huh? That would be interpreting two different languages. And that could well involve the construction of a different sense of being a speaker to speak like a native.
Quoting Banno
We would both share some point of view - enough of one so that the personal differences or personal quirks did not feel like they make an important difference. We would share the cultural identity involved. We would be the kinds of selves that entails.
And now can you address the questions I've asked of you repeatedly. It is boring dealing with these trivialities you post as replies.
Sorry - which was it again?
I have one, thanks. Just boiling up some spuds fresh out of the ground, part of my first crop. Plenty more to come. They will be served with fresh herbs and a local olive oil.
Spent most of the morning helping Laotian friends with a legal issue. Quite satisfactory.
Oh, and spent some time puzzling over a bit of epistemology. Cream.
Assuming we all confront the same world, then reality is all we can say about what is manifest in it. If so then epistemology's locus of truth then lies in the manifest and not in judgments about a reality behind it. We observe the world and presume conditions that make its manifestations possible which is the work of epistemology.
I think of interpretation as value based. So when I say my interpretation is not exactly the same as you, I am not claiming a meaning which is separate from the public utterance, I am claiming that we value, or evaluate that meaning differently.
Do you recognize a distinction between value and meaning? Meaning only obtains purpose when it is related to something else, and in such a relationship it has value. So the meaning which is in a public utterance only becomes purposeful when it is related to something else, given value. The way that each of us relates that utterance to other things varies, and so the way that each of us values that utterance varies.
Quoting Banno
I don't see the point of this, but I do not see how your conclusion follows from what you present. It is the act of thinking which puts the words together. If one cannot find the required words, this does not mean that there was no act of thinking. So you cannot conclude that just because one could not find the appropriate words to say, that there was no thought there, because there still was thought there. Nor can you say that the words make the thought.
Quoting Cavacava
So what is, is what can be said?
Perhaps. The thought was there, but incomplete.
What do you think would constitute the completion of a thought? We think with words, so we scramble them around, swap them out in trial and error, so having words for the act of thinking is not what completes the act of thinking. It may be that making the statement is what completes the thought, but then finding the proper words to say is not what completes the thought because this is something other than that. What do you thinking completes the thought, finding the proper words to say, or saying the words? I think it's neither of these two, it's something else which we call judgement.
Put so, I'm not sure a thought is ever complete. I'm increasingly intrigued by externalist ideas - the notion that thinking occurs outside of heads. Counterintuitive, but interesting.
Have you created any private words? What purpose do they serve? How do you know that you are using them the same way (i.e. correctly) each time? Why can't your left hand pay your right hand money?
Quoting apokrisis
That probably depends on the context/aims of the discussion when talking about the person. I don't believe there is a universal, context-free (metaphysical) answer.
Quoting apokrisis
I think the sense of privacy that Wittgenstein had in mind was the traditional philosophical sense, such as that presupposed by St Augustine in the opening quote of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, or such as that presupposed in Cartesian dualism and in many other philosophical theories.
Otherwise, "public" and "private" have well-established usages in the English language.
Quoting apokrisis
I hope you are able to resolve that issue.
I agree - it wouldn't be properly called language. As Wittgenstein responded to his own question of whether he was really just a "behaviourist in disguise" and whether, for him, "everything except human behaviour is a fiction", he said, "If I do speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction." And "grammar" for Wittgenstein was used in the wider sense of his philosophical treatment, where language is embedded in social customs, institutions and use.
The issue is not whether belief is irrelevant to epistemology, it is a question of how an epistemologist ought to define "belief". One could define it as "what is expressed by a statement or proposition". That is what I suggested. But you go on to demonstrate that animals without linguistic capacity demonstrate behaviour which indicates the existence of something belief-like. So you want a definition of "belief" which includes this as belief.
If we proceed in this direction, then we must dismiss the notion that a statement or proposition expresses a belief. We would have to define belief as something deeper within the mind, than what is expressed by the statement. Making a statement, might demonstrate the existence of belief, like the cat "makes a statement", but we cannot say that the statement is an expression of the belief, as the belief is something deeper than the meaning of the statement. We could say that what the statement expresses is "a meaning", or something like that, but the meaning of the statement is not a belief. This would allow us to get beyond the problem of deception, which I was concerned with, because the meaning of the statement would not necessarily be consistent with the belief.
Now there's two problems which need to be resolved. First, the obvious, is that we need some sort of definition of belief. What exactly is a belief if it is not what is expressed as the meaning of the words? The second problem is a little more complicated. We have now driven a wedge between meaning and belief, creating a bifurcation. Assuming that we can come up with a definition of belief which would suit our needs, we now have to account for meaning. The words of a proposition or statement do not represent any particular belief, they simply have meaning. Surely there is a relationship between belief and meaning, but how would we describe this relationship?
I don't know if such a notion is interesting, as I have no approach to it, never heard that before. I think, and it seems like my thinking is going on in my head, and I have seen no reason to believe otherwise. I must admit that dreams are a bit odd though, seeming to occur somewhere other than in my head. Perhaps you could outline some principles whereby I could consider that my thinking is going on outside my head.
Look at the rubber glove illusion, which, I think suggests that your perception that thought it is going on in your head is part of the multi-sensory unity of your body has created, and your mind's dependence on that unity for its sense of self ownership. If so then you as a multi-sensory being who's locus is your body, your body in this limited sense thinks.
A source mentioned before.
http://www.nybooks.com/topics/on-consciousness/
Again, the complaint I have here is that it fails to distinguish grades of semiosis or "grammatical" structure.
So yes, you can look to behaviour as speaking to what is truly believed. That is the turn from Kantian cognitivism to a Pragmatic enactivism or embodied cognition - a Peircean sign relation with the world. We betray our beliefs in our actions.
However the human mind has a double structure. It is structured both at a basic animal/neural level, and then that is elaborated on by a social/linguistic level of semiosis. So there is a neural code and speech code in play.
Semiosis is then about how codes in general are about constructing useful "fictions". Both our neurology and our sociology want to reduce reality - the noumenal - to the phenomenal, an umwelt. We want a reality that is a play of interpreted signs. We want a view of the world that is not of the world in itself, but a view of our selves in a world that has an intelligible structure.
So there is a general semiotic logic at work which founds any notion of what counts as truth. And the component that is generally neglected is indeed - where Wittgenstein is correct - that the truth is the truth that is this view of a world within which we exist.
The rub is that this "we" is a construct. And not just a social/verbal construct, but also a biological/neural construct. And so there is a double "grammatical fiction", a layered "grammatical fiction", at the centre of any theory of truth debate.
That is what I have consistently argued. But most folk seem attracted to Wittgenstein because he seems to promise an end to exactly that kind of complex analysis.
Peirce is "too difficult", "too tricksy". Give us quietism and an end to metaphysics. Let us just slay Descartes and Kant and not worry about what more sophisticated epistemology has to replace them. Let us just return to our dogmatic slumbers and dreams of naive realism.
I agree to some extent with the article you referenced, as I stated to MU,
but then let me quote your question.
If there is truth it can only be said of what is manifest, which is reality as we know it, and is not located in the brain, or in objects outside ourselves. The epistemic move, I think has to be aside from any ontological assertion, at least in regards to the reality, that which is manifest.
The ontology of cats and chairs is presupposed by the statement that the cat is on the chair.
I want to apologise for becoming carried away in @apokrisis discussion at the expense of the theme of this thread.
When you have time, i would be very interested in discussing the differences in our understanding of private language and private mental states.
The phenomenology of the 'cat is on the chair' presupposes that we can say the cat is on the chair, but not that the cat is ontically on the chair, since we could be wrong.
I believe it is not possible to make a wholly novel vocabulary intelligible to myself without translating it into English. I know I can't do it, and I know this introspectively. Is there any other way to know it, I wonder? Is it possible I could gradually learn to do it? Could a person who had never acquired a public language do it, in however rudimentary a fashion?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words
The statement "the cat is on the chair" will be true in exactly the case that the cat is on the chair.
Anything more is superfluous.
I don't see how the referred articles describes thinking as going on anywhere other than within the person who is thinking. It just appears to be a unique way of explaining what thought (within a person) is. I don't think it is counter-intuitive to say that the person is thinking, rather than that the person's head is thinking. This seems like the way we normally speak. I thought you were trying to say that thinking goes on somewhere right outside of the person.
Quoting Cavacava
I have no problem with this idea, that it is more accurate to say that your body is thinking, rather than to say that your brain (or head) is thinking. The brain is just a part of the whole, which is the self that is thinking, by itself the brain would not be thinking. But this is no different from saying that it is more appropriate to say "I am thinking", rather than to say "my brain is thinking", and this is the normal way of speaking. I thought Banno was suggesting that thinking is going on somewhere outside of the person.
Except that one is a spatiotemporal occurrence and the other is a timeless assertion. Janus tried to point that out.
There is a gap - or epistemic cut - that epistemology still needs to account for. The fact of a displacement in terms of our ontic commitments is the epistemic feature and not the metaphysical bug.
So trying to collapse that - as in attacking the Kantian dualism of scheme and content - is philosophically obtuse.
I think that should be attributed to Cavacava, unless you are referring to something further back in the discussion. :)
Ildefonso is interesting.
Well, that's the thesis of the series, so that leaves us nowhere to go.
DO you want to set out some details?
SO add a time and place, if you like.
I don't understand this sentence. Can you clarify?
Are you claiming that the thesis of the series is that thinking is going on somewhere other than within the person thinking? Did you read any of the articles?
Yes. You can keep adding displacement. As much as you want. But that doesn't absolve you of the need to account for that machinery of displacement. Your anti-Cartesianism still misses the point.
Here:
See?
It is not a flaw but the reason why it works.
Could you please clarify?
But yes, I see Cavacava is too. That's encouraging.
Err. Pattee's epistemic cut. Rosen's MR systems. Von Neumann's self-reproducing automata. :)
If you want the technicalities, look them up.
All I see is mention of thought being objects "active within our bodies", like this:
"All the objects we encounter, the objects we call experience, continue to be active in our bodies and brains, continue to be our experience. It is the nature of our fantastically complex brains that they allow these encounters to go on, and to go on going on. The encounters are not “stored” and are certainly not static. They are continuing to happen. They are us."
What makes you think that the thesis is that thinking is outside of our bodies?
Would someone else here tell me how displacement is being used?
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/11/26/the-pizza-thought-experiment/
Might be worth a thread on its own.
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/pattee/
(my emphasis)
So displacement is where one talks about something in a different place to where it is happening?
A modelling relation with the world is based on the displacement that is the separation of the model from the world it seeks to regulate.
The idea is terribly simple and familiar. The map is not the territory, etc. I get tired of all the pretence that this is something esoteric and not merely a precision description of the ontology involved.
If you want a more technical framing, Pattee's slogan is that life is based on the dichotomy of rate independent information and rate dependent dynamics.
But let's cut out all the feigned shock and horror. The epistemic cut is perfectly straight-forward.
Nope. ;)
AH! Cheers.
"The map is not the territory" was a favourite term of mine asa child. I was into General Semantics and all that.
And in a way it is true. "Jack" is not Jack. The word is not the thing.
In another sense, "the map is not the territory" is quite problematic. In order to use a map one must understand the little crosses and lines as being buildings and roads and stuff.
Of course. Hence why you are already wandering off down a familiar and reassuring seeming path - semiotics as Sausserean dualism. Displacement as what Derrida meant.
You are going to find semiotics "problematic" while you continue to attempt to assimilate it to good old Kantian representationalism.
If you don't get the irreducibly triadic structure of a sign relation, you haven't yet got it at all.
As I said, our model of the world is really the model of us in that world. The displacement is not dyadic but another rung up from that. The world becomes the place we also discover ourselves. And you need an epistemology that has that structural recursion.
Again, google some real writers on the issue - Pattee's epistemic cut, Rosen's modelling relation, Von Neumann's self-reproducing automata.
Might be true. Peirce had a strange affection for triads. Yet another thing that irks. So I am not convinced I want it all. Or any of it.
Despite your protestations Peirce remains sidelined in philosophy. There are good reasons for that, triadic fetishes perhaps being one. Pattee is just about unreadable. The SEP article on Peirce reads like a fan magazine. And you are such a rude bugger. It's all just not very attractive.
Rather than trolling, just deal with the arguments for a change.
Hint. Telling me "you have a feeling" is not an argument. It is a confession you just lost the argument.
It's just more of the same. What Manzotti is arguing is that we have no need for the word "thoughts". "Thoughts" is a fictional word, it really refers to nothing. But if we must say that it refers to something, then what it refers to is nothing other than the external things which are the objects of thinking. However, he clearly maintains that thinking is an activity which is going on within the human body. Here's a telling quote:
"What we call thinking is a form of action, a way our body organizes our behavior in response to those external causes that our so-called thoughts are about."
Quoting apokrisis
Thanks apokrisis, I read the referred article by Pattee. I disagree that the epistemic cut as described, is perfectly straight forward, because Pattee's categories are confused. He starts out by describing it as the division between subject and object, observer and observed. Then he proceeds to compare this to the symbol and what is symbolized, but this is where he looses track of his own categories. Both the symbol, and the thing symbolized are objects, and neither qualifies to be placed in the category of subject, or observer. He tries to represent this as the proper division by allowing that the symbol actively changes, as if it were an aspect of the active subject, but it is not an aspect of the subject, it is an object which is changing. Thus he proceeds to discuss the symbols as if they were active constraints (on the subject side of the epistemic cut), claiming to have bridged the epistemic cut in this way, but all he has done is made a category mistake.
Super interesting interview. I do wish these people would drop the outdated 'inside/outside' / 'internalist/externalist' vocabulary though. The distinction - when taken in the absolute - is not helpful, and the more philosophically astute move would be to show how they are largely misleading when thinking about thought. As tends to be the case, these people are rehashing - in a more neuroscientific key - findings that phenomenologists have established for half a century or more now. *sigh*
Yet you just said:
Quoting apokrisis
What is very straight forward is Pattee's category mistakes. Take the map/territory example. These two are both objects, so there is no epistemic cut between these two. They are both things to be observed, and not of the subject, or observer. The epistemic cut is defined by Pattee as the division between subject and object, observer and observed, so there is no epistemic cut between the map and the territory.
Pattee claims an epistemic cut between "initial conditions" and "laws", but these are both of the subject. Then he claims an epistemic cut between "system being measured" and "measuring device", when these are both of the object. The article is just one category mistake after the other, as if Pattee's intent is to create so much confusion surrounding the epistemic cut, that it disappears into vagueness, where he can then claim that it has been bridged. Not at all surprising if he's following Piercean principles.
"
Thank you, succinct summary of the vagueness of apokrisis/Pattee's references to the almighty "epistemic cut". Apokrisis has to actually address this issue if he is to move anyone on this forum, yet he continually just hand-waves this off and tries to deflect real explanation of the problems you bring up. If he puts onus on you, then he can never be responsible for the burden of explanation- it is your fault with your interpretation. Also, you cannot repeat definitions of dodgy concepts with more dodgy concepts and think that it will come out square. You cannot get blood from a stone.
The set of measurements is part of the world, and that's why there is no "epistemic cut", as defined, between the measurements and the thing measured. There is perhaps an epistemic cut between the thing measured and the principles employed in measurement, and between the measurements and the principles employed, such that the act of measurement provides us with a separation, an epistemic cut, between the principles employed and the thing measured, along with the measurements. But this only begs the question of the existence of a "principle", just like "epistemic cut" begs the question of the existence of the subject. If we ignore this question altogether, concerning the existence of the principles, then the division between the measurements and the thing measured, is obscured in vagueness.
Quoting Banno
Banno gets this, but refuses to address the issue of what is a principle. Sam26 proposes hinge-props which are somehow different from principles, perhaps a special sort of principle. But Sam26 doesn't seem to be able to explain how to differentiate a hinge-prop from an axiom, or a self-evident truth.
Yeah. I've said many times now that a dualistic ontology can't cut it. It has to be a triadic relation. So someone has to interpret the map to navigate the territory.
Thus the further thing of the interpreter must either be addressed by the metaphysics, or else it sets up the familiar homuncular regress.
A further obvious problem with a map is that it is representational. It is passive. It can't physically do anything to constrain the physics of the world.
Well it does if you are reading it and saving your legs by not getting lost. But the epistemic cut is about the need for some actual hinge point, or transduction step, where information and physics truly make contact.
Hence we have Pattee's focus on how a molecule can function as a message - how DNA can code for a protein that is then an enzymatic signal to switch on or off a metabolic process.
So Peirce gives us the general triadic need to include the notion of interpretance in any modelling relation with the world. And Pattee focuses on the practicality of the machinery that connects the interpretance and the world.
The usual dualistic bind that plagues representationalism is resolved by this modelling relation where the informational aspect of nature is tied in an interactive feedback loop with the material aspect of nature.
It's true I have previously highlighted in different ways what seems to be an issue with thinking about spatiotemporal occurrences as timeless truths. I recall reading in Russell the assertion that once something has happened it remains forever true that it has happened, and even that it is true now and forever that whatever will happen in the future will happen in the future.
All this seems logical enough; but the troubling question is as to what such timeless truths really consist in beyond our thinking of them. If they consist in nothing beyond our thinking of them then they are not really timeless at all, because our thinking is a temporal event. If they consist in something beyond our thinking of them, then what could that be but some eternal logical 'substance', universal mind, or God?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not sure many maps are crosses and lines. Was Banno thinking of pirate maps? Normally those also have a palm tree and an instruction of how many paces to the west. :)
But seriously, to get the point of Korzybski, he was saying that the map you find so useful as a model of the world is not the world. In fact, it functions by abstracting away as much of the physics of the real world as it possibly can.
So the argument is against representationalism - the idea that the mind puts reality on display in some direct naive realist fashion.
This is the essential problem with Banno's thinking. He wants to have a direct and veridical relation with the world. He wants nothing to intervene between his beliefs and the real facts. He is a good old fashioned Cartesian, but wants to deal with that by refusing to acknowledge his dualism of self and world. He pretends that because the relation feels direct and unmediated, that warrants an epistemology that just takes the relation to be direct and unmediated.
However Korzybski got the fact that the modelling relation is not about veridical representation. The interpreter doesn't want to have to think about the whole of reality. S/he just wants simple signs telling him/her exactly how to react on any given occasion. The interpreter wants to function as a set of habits triggered by repeatable acts of measurement. The world - as represented in the interpreter's world model - should be reduced to a simple set of stop/go signs.
This is anti-representational. The signs that constitute the map - or state of perceptual awareness - should be whatever can serve to get rid of the most unnecessary detail possible.
It flips our usual intuitions on their head. But psychological science is perfectly familiar with the story. How else could the complex energy of the world get turned into some neural traffic of digitised spikes?
So yes, a map might be just the barest thing of lines and crosses. Or a few named landmarks and named roads.
In recursive fashion, this is even simpler than the world as we model it neurobiologically. Our eyes see buildings, roads and stuff. That is the level of modelling at which we navigate using the biology of perception. And it is impressively direct and veridical - if you don't know the first thing about the actual psychophysics of our neural-level models.
But then, at a cultural and linguistic level, we can construct paper maps that abstract the essentials of our experiential maps. We can operate as interpreters seeking useful habits at this secondary level of semiosis. We can transcend our animal state by becoming creatures of even greater symbolic abstraction.
The map and the territory story was meant to draw attention to this - the way that cognition is anti-representational. Modelling works by reducing a complex reality to the sparsest acts of measurements that can reliably do the job of getting us about the world.
And yet Banno can't help himself. He has to jump to the representational veracity that he believes warrants his naive realism. Look everyone, there is the buried treasure, right where the map said it was!
The past may be certain, but the future is full of possibilities.
So if Russell said this, he was surely just giving voice to the widespread confusion over how deterministic physics is in fact .... the map and not the territory.
Our models of physics generally have the property of being time reversible. The equations encode a symmetrical relation with no preferred direction. They have to so as to fit a cause/effect model of reality. The past state that maps to the future state must commute. That future state must map back to the past for the simplistic maths to work and preserve the efficient causal relation being claimed.
So this is what mechanics is about. Reducing reality to models of causal entailment. Mapping a prior state onto a future state in a timeless fashion. Going forwards in time has to look the same as if we were instead travelling back.
It's not a problem as we know how to break the symmetry of these symmetric equations. We know that the variable we plug into them are the initial conditions. They are the information that comes from the past.
But to the degree the world is mechanical and deterministic, we can also do the reverse. We can start with the final state and work back to predict what must have - retrocausally - been the initial conditions.
Of course, we also know that such physical situations are rare rather than generic. After all, there is an even more fundamental law in the laws of thermodynamics where time now has a preferred direction due to entropification. Every actual physical process is frictional or heat wasting. That is information lost irrecoverably to an environment (Maxwell's demon argument).
So you can't actually measure the full final state needed to run your deterministic equations in reverse. The critical details are almost sure to have escaped. And the more complex the system - the more realistic it actually is - the faster the information gets dispersed as statistical entropy.
Quoting Janus
It's not the truths that are timeless. It is the information recorded in a memory.
So a model exists "outside" of the time of the physical process it models. It is displaced. There is an epistemic cut.
And a model is only "the truth" in a semiotic sense. It is a model of the world with us in it. So it is the world as it is the most convenient and purpose-serving for us to imagine it.
The model thus constructs "the interpreter" along with "the interpreted". The self becomes this timeless set of "truths" - or semiotic habits - that stands apart from the world it is in the habit of regulating according to its desires.
The "truths" captured by this interpretive relation are not really truths at all. They are not the mind-independent facts of the world. But nor are they just idealist mental constructs. They are what is "true" about some self-interested system of interpretance - like an organism with an interest in autonomy.
So an interpretive relation is true to itself! It is capturing the facts of how to be in a pragmatic or functional relation with the world ... as an organism.
Now if you then extend semiosis to the Cosmos or Existence in general - make the leap to pan-semiosis - then you would be getting at the truly timeless and mathematical-strength habits of nature. You would be treating reality as a mind-full organism, or at least a purpose-driven dissipative structure.
However I always agree that pan-semiosis is speculative metaphysics. Science hasn't quite got there, even if it is knocking on the door with its information theoretic turn, its new ontic structuralism.
The information recorded in a memory is not a temporal event?
I can get the notion of temporal displacement, how it enables freedom from the constraints of particular times, but I can't see how that translates into timelessness or eternity. Perhaps this could be related to Whitehead's notion of eternality which he understood to be distinct from the idea of eternity.
BTW I couln't find the link to Pattee's paper.
The dualist solution to this apparent regress is very simple. The interpreter, the subject, the mind, is designated as substantially different from the physical world being interpreted. That separation, a true epistemic cut, negates any possibility of such a regress. If this separation is denied as unreal, then there is an appearance of homuncular regress because any designation of "epistemic cut' becomes arbitrary and subject to further and further divisions. The regress problem is the result of denying dualist principles while attempting to maintain an epistemic cut. So the epistemic cut must be real (dualist), or else any designation of "epistemic cut" would face the problem of infinite regress.
Quoting apokrisis
Pattee's method is to get rid of the epistemic cut, by making it into an illusion, a fiction. He does this by introducing concepts like self-constraining, and self-organizing, and by describing symbols which interpret themselves. But these speculative notions appear to be without any real principles of support.
It was an event when it happened. But even then, there was the displacement - the transduction step - which was its recording. The physical event became an informational event - a sign of the thing. And yes of course, that requires a whole physics of information recording.
Minds need a body to be embodied models. Let's not pretend it is confusing. The whole point of semiotics or the epistemic cut is that signs are physical acts - acts of measurement. But, Janus-like, symbols have two faces. They are both physical marks (essentially meaningless, like a scratch on a rock) and they are informational (essentially meaningful to a system of interpretance).
Quoting Janus
Maybe that is just the reification. There might be a difference - a big one - between timeless and eternal for all practical purposes, and timeless and eternal in some dualistically absolute and non-pragmatic sense.
Again, this is where physics itself has got to. The Comos is organised by its own informational limits - the famous holographic principle that accounts for blackhole entropy and the possibility of an actually future-eternal heat death geometry for the Universe.
Yeah. Bring on the soul-stuff. That'll work.
I'm puzzled by your puzzlement.
Moore holds up his hand. "Here is a hand".
What does the "timeless truth really consist in beyond our thinking of it"? Moore's hand. What is problematic here? What do we make of someone who denies Moor's claim? Only that they do not understand his words.
Moore's hand is temporal, though, not timeless.
As I've acknowledged before; I accept the commonsense truth expressed by Moore's gesture. It might be understood as a timeless truth in the sense that it does not depend on any particular time. But Moore's having of hands is nonetheless, it would seem, a temporal truth; it is difficult to see in what sense it could be a truth if there were no one around to think it. I mean, we can think it as being, in a sense, always and forever true that Moore had hands, but that is a purely logical timelessness. What would that truth inhere in if there were no logical beings? Would it still be able to 'hang around' somehow?
Of course we can. Just wait.
Next stop, the quantum multiverse and modal realism.
A broader answer - that we don't know if some statement about the future is true or false does not make it neither true nor false.
If you accept the metaphysical extravagance of an SR block universe, then you have no grounds for rejecting those further metaphysical extravagances.
So you have to show what could place a realistic constraint on the models you choose to treat realistically.
Oh, the irony.
I don't see how that follows.
But either way, that we don't know if some statement about the future is true or false does not make it neither true nor false.
Correct. It makes it vague. The PNC fails to apply. At this particular point in time and space.
Again, you are simply trying to talk around the difficulty that others can so plainly see with your position.
To talk timelessly of the world and it states does not make the world itself a timeless place.
That's not right. That we don't know if some statement about the future is true or false does not make it neither true nor false.
Of course in a block SR, modally realistic, quantum multiverse, the timeless realm of propositions becomes one with a timeless world. Time falls out of your metaphysics. The frozeness of a statement matches a frozen view of reality.
But still, that feels a little extravagant as your metaphysics, no? Do you really want to have that as your position?
But as explained above, it's not essential. That we do not know the truth of some statement does not render it neither true nor false. That's the case for a wide range of statements, including statements about the future.
Mmm, yeah. You mean that statements are essentially timeless, while the world itself has temporal structure.
That is what your critics have been telling you for some time, Banno.
Quoting Banno
People like to believe all kinds of weird stuff. So your preferences are irrelevant.
That's a bit convolute. Again, this does not apply only to statements about the future; there are plenty of other sorts of statements which are true and yet unknown. It's more just pointing out the difference between belief and truth.
This is a better line of enquiry. If no one were around, it would be true and yet unstated; perhaps this might be described as true but not a truth.
Again, it's not time that makes this case special. There are plenty of other instances of unstated truths.
Sweet. Was it you who pointed it out to me?
Such juxtapositions are best rejected.
There's a real problem here, and that is that as much as you scoff, the soul works as a much more logical principle than vagueness, or any of the other alternatives proposed by modern process philosophers. It neatly fulfills the conditions which need to be fulfilled, and that's why it's been maintained. The fact that we cannot come up with a principle better than this thousands of years old notion of "soul", I think is a real problem. Perhaps it's a hinge-proposition and unreasonable to doubt it.
It's a bit sad that you think this, when both Sam and I have explained the nature of hinge propositions at length. They are the propositions that set up the game. They are things like "Bishops move diagonally" in chess, or "here is a hand" for Moore. They are not like axioms; they are more like formation rules.
So, doesn't a dualist proposition like "the human being consists of body and soul" set up the game?
The point being, that the propositions which set up your game vary with your metaphysical worldview.
Shy away from the conclusion, but that’s what you are faced with.
Your statement concerns a possibility of which there is as yet no fact of the matter. The PNC fails.
So the statement is a timeless assertion. And yes it is framed in terms of the laws of thought. But it relies on the inductive evidence - some temporal act of measurement - to determine whether it is justifiably believed as either true or false.
As usual, you want to revert to naive realism. Truth doesn’t require a locus of enquiry - the interpretant for whom the answer serves a meaningful reply. It doesn’t require some actual act of measurement as inductive evidence. You want the “true facts” to transcend the whole business of reasoned inquiry.
So you caught yourself out in using a concrete case - claims about the future where it is an impossibility for the necessary act of measurement to have been made. You are trying to backtrack with speed and talk more vaguely about all the truths that must be simply unknown facts - safely either current or in the past.
But you already exposed the basic flaw in your position. No getting out of it I’m afraid.
Edit: Argh. Wrong answer.
No, it doesn't. There is a fact of the mater, it is just that the fact is unknown.
Quoting apokrisis
Being true is not the same as having been determined to be true. Truth is not the same as belief.
So back to my problem from the beginning of the thread then. How is it that it is unreasonable to doubt the hinge-proposition? That's what I don't understand.
If I flip a coin and cover the result before we see it, it must be either heads or tails, even before I lift my hand.
So have you sidetracked sufficiently from the original issue which was about the truth or falsity of events either yet to happen or yet to fail to happen?
Yeah, good point. The Bishop example I have been using is not from On Certainty, but from Searle in The construction of social reality. It's the distinction between constitutive and regulative rules.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, because it is not a constitutive rule.
I haven't claimed otherwise.
So you're suggesting that we ought posit eternalism just because it makes it easier to address issues regarding truth?
Quoting Banno
Others, perhaps @Janus, don't. If presentism or a growing block universe is the case then there are legitimate issues with claims about the past and/or future having a (realist) truth value, so it may be that you're all just talking past each other. It doesn't matter if your theory on truth is unproblematic given your background assumptions if you can't agree on those background assumptions.
And contrary to your suggestion above, I don't think it reasonable for those background assumptions to be decided by which best accounts for your theory on truth. Seems like putting the cart before the horse.
Finally, after thirty some pages, I get some indication as to the criteria for a hinge-proposition. You know that Searle's distinction has been highly criticized don't you?
Regardless, let's consider the proposition I mentioned, "the human being consists of body and soul". This is a statement of what it means to be a human being, and in particular it gives an indication of what a "soul" is. It says that the soul is a part of the human being which is other than the human being's body. Without acceptance and institutionalization of this proposition, the word "soul" has no referent or meaning at all, and it would be nonsense to speak about a soul. The proposition may have been better stated to form a proper rule, but it is clearly constitutive in the sense that it gives an indication of what a soul is, so that we can proceed to speak about a soul. Without such propositions we couldn't reasonably speak about souls because there would be nothing to indicate what a soul is.
Now, the point I made earlier in the thread. If the truth or falsity of hinge-propositions lies outside the game of epistemology, as a constitutive rule of that game, (their "truth" is dependent only on acceptance and institutionalization), then they are actually the most dubious.
I am not really responding to the thread, but rather to your thought.
I don't believe there is a separation between body & soul they are not parts of a whole. I agree with social construction of these notions, but on an epistemic level but not as ontically given. I am not sure how it works ontically, however I am of the opinion that matter can assume many states of existence, including that of life.
The statement was just an example, of a dualist proposition. I brought it up because I told apokrisis that dualism provides the best way for dealing with the epistemic cut. The way apokrisis proposed is that we accept that there is such a thing as the epistemic cut, then proceed to adopt principles which make the epistemic cut go away (bridge it). I find this self-contradicting, to assume the existence of a division, then hide that division behind vague principles, so that it appears that there is no such division.
Quoting Cavacava
I don't quite see what you are saying here. Are you saying that you agree with the division between body and soul, to the extent that it is useful for social institutions, and epistemology, but you do not agree that this division is a true, or real one. Isn't that a form of hypocrisy, to allow that a principle which you do not believe to be true, should be fundamental to epistemology and social institutions?
Your position seems to be the opposite of Pattee's. He seems to propose that the division is real, that is his premise. But he thinks the way to deal with it, is to make it vanish behind vague principles.
So, your opinion is that the division is not real, but it should be maintained in principle. Pattee's and I assume apokrisis' position is that the division is real but we should adopt principles which close it.
Dualism allows that the division is real, and assumes principles which support the reality of the division. This is why dualism is the only existing metaphysics which deals with the epistemic cut in a logically consistent way. The alternative would be a position like Banno's, and perhaps StreetlightX's, which would be to deny the division altogether, making this "epistemic cut" something completely meaningless. However, since the foundations of our language (the hinge-propositions) are based in the dualist metaphysics, Banno's course is extremely difficult. We haven't a way to say what Banno wants to say, because our language is firmly rooted in dualist ontology.
I've always found the idea of hinge-propositions difficult. I share some of 's doubts but let me ask some different questions.
Supposedly, hinge propositions do not need to be supported by any non-question begging reasons because they 'operate outside of the game'. They are something like the rules of the game, and you make the analogy with the rules of a game of chess. You include G.E Moore's 'here is a hand' as a hinge-proposition and you deny that Dualism is a hinge-proposition. What is the game that 'here is a hand' is a rule for?
Further, you say Dualism can't be a hinge-proposition because it isn't a 'constitutive rule'. Well, doesn't it depend which game you are playing what the constitutive rules are? 'Knights move in L shapes' is a constitutive rule of chess, but it isn't constitutive of Sid Meier's Civilization, where knights can move in any shape within a fixed range of tiles, and then there's Monopoly, which doesn't have knights. Why can't Dualism be a constitutive rule for some game or other? I suppose this is related to the fact that I'm not sure what game 'Here is a hand' is a rule for, or what is meant by 'constitutive rule'.
Best,
PA.
"...but you do not agree that this division is a true, or real one."
This assumes that what is real or true is out there, and I don't agree . Reality is what we make of it, a construction...which is manifest to us which enables our understanding of the world. We don't have any independent access to what is in the great outdoors because it must be thought and we are habituated to think in certain ways based on the social constructions which comprise the context where we find our self.
I think purpose of ontology is to explain why what appears, appears as it appears, and that what appears is a body, not a soul, but I don't think that this description, in itself is sufficient to explain the vitality of life or human thought. I think the indivisibility of the body/soul must be posited to explain human reality.
Your challenge to set out criteria of hinge propositions had me go back to OC; and what I found was unsatisfactory. Several details have me re-thinking the argument.
I guess that's why your damned niggling is valuable, so thanks!
The basic insight of OC remains: doubt only makes sense agains a background of certainty. But OC is incomplete, and muddled. It's clear that within that text there are superficially contradictory threads. These can be made to cohere, I believe, by reference to the private language argument, which was oddly left out of OC, together with Searle's discussion of constitutive rules and Davidson's thoughts on conceptual schemes. Feyerabend fits int here somewhere, too.
So I have two tasks: exegesis, in re-reading OC to see what is Wittgenstein's and what is Banno's; and expounding on what Sam has called hinge propositions.
For the sake of staying on the topic of the thread, I still remain unconvinced by @Sam26's account of hinge propositions as somehow caused; but remain open to it.
Constitutive rules can be written as "X counts as Y"
So "a diagonal move of any length counts as a move for a bishop in chess".
"Here is a hand" can be read as constitutive in that it is setting out what counts as a hand.
How would "the human being consists of body and soul" be written as a constitutive rule?
"A human being counts as a body and a soul" or "A body and a soul counts as a human being"?
DO they work? Perhaps.
That's not what Moore was doing though. "Here is a hand" was one of the premises he tried to use to prove that there is an external world.
So what Peirce said over 50 years before. :)
Or to be more precise, we must begin where we first find ourselves - thrust into the middle of rational inquiry with some presumed background of understanding.
Certainty about those background beliefs then achieves the status of truth at the limit of rational inquiry. Truth is about opinion becoming fixed because doubt proves not to make a difference to what we feel most inclined to believe.
This is true anti-foundationalism. Instead of truth being what a mind knows about a world, it is the world as it must, in the limit, become known to the mind by "scientific reason" - a method of abduction, deduction and inductive confirmation. And not just some individual mind, but a collective or communal mind.
The linguistic mind is defined at a socio-cultural level.
Truth is not a type of belief.
Amusing.
To continue, the difference between a Peircean and Wittgensteinian epistemology - or at least Banno's understanding of one - looks to hinge on two key issues.
First, Banno is concerned to make truth a property of propositions. So this is the philosophy of language view that reality is some totality of statements. For all practical purposes - ie: the pragmatism that eschews mysticism and unwarranted skepticism - existence or experience reduces to a collection of all that is stateable or sayable.
This stance in itself conflates all forms of language, confusing the difference between the strict and explicit grammars that constitute "logical speech" with the much looser and socially-oriented language that we use in ordinary, not explicitly metaphysical, everyday speech.
Peirce then makes truth a property of semiosis. This is a general method of reasoning that goes even beyond language. Animal brains and animal bodies reason semiotically - they are in a pragmatic sign relation with their world. Human language - both social and logical - are then merely the same semiotic game being played out at higher levels of development.
So Banno wants to deal with a reality imagined as some totality of true statements. And this seems to be what hinge propositions is about. For the door to swing, it must be anchored to something background that doesn't. To keep the linguistic turn going, that background also needs to be understood as some collection of propositions. It becomes propositions all the way down - even if we understand the practical impossibility of cashing out all that background supposition as confirmed true fact.
Peirce, on the other hand, takes the evolutionary approach as revealed by biological and psychological science. He sees the continuity of semiosis that underlies the development of the mind. If there is a hinge that gets swung on, it is the way that logical claims get hung on the bedrock certainty of our general perceptual living in a world. It is the animal level of cognition, the modelling of a biological self in pragmatic interaction with an environment, that is the anchor of our epistemology. We start from that as our primal facts.
So Banno's Wittgenstein has a problem that there is no proper cut-off. If it is propositions all the way down, then any kind of primal certainty has no starting point. But the Peircean view distinguishes grades of semiosis. So a lower grade can be the bedrock for a higher grade. There is an underlying continuity of course, but also a natural cut-off point. And waving his mitts about, that was what Moore would have been hoping to demonstrate.
Then a second key point of difference is that Peirce introduces a further category of epistemology - the vague.
Banno's Wittgenstein is committed to an epistemology of the statable or sayable. And especially when formulated in the language of logic, this is a presumption that only the crisp or definite - the counterfactual - gains admittance to the party.
Now the demand that statements be crisp is an excellent pragmatic maxim. It is the right goal. It is really useful - if you want to analyse reality into some set of answerable facts - for the laws of thought to apply.
However, it is the ideal. And vagueness is then the more primal or foundational condition. Peircean semiotics recognises and builds on that fact. Banno's Wittgenstein can't admit to it as otherwise the whole pretence of a philosophy of language derived theory of truth falls flat like a house of cards.
So again, with hinge propositions, the actual backdrop of belief to which particular propositions are hinged, is usually unanalysed. It is just a congealed mass of ecologically-valid belief or habit so far as our language use is concerned. It is our biological self - the animal self that knows and believes the ecological truth of its world.
Now we can get stuck into that congealed mass and analyse it propositionally. We can break it down linguistically. But it isn't already a collection of facts just waiting to be found. And being knowledge of a constitutionally vaguer kind, much of what it might have to say is going to elude any saying in being ... essentially vaguer. It will just resist full analysis. Although, again, there is no harm in doing our best.
So we can have truth as a property of logical propositions - certain formulas of words.
We can have truth as the report of commonsense experience - the beliefs that seem rooted in our ecologically-validated perceptions.
Or we can have truth in the Peircean sense as the common limit on a process of rational inquiry. We can have truth as the pragmatic fruit of semiosis - an understanding of epistemic mechanism that spans all the natural levels of "knowing", and also distinguishes these levels in terms of their being rooted in a foundational vagueness, and aspiring to an ideal of generality and counterfactual definiteness.
Here's the grammar I am using, just to be clear.
Truth is fundamental; "There is a hand" is true just in the case that there is a hand.
Statements are the sort of thing that can be true or false.
Belief is an attitude towards statements. We can believe things that are true, or things that are false. We can disbelieve things that are true, or things that are false.
Certainty is the subject of inquiry in this thread. As a first point, certainty is an attitude towards statements such that that they are indubitable.
Sam has apparently posited that they are indubitable because our belief in them is caused by the interaction of our mind, brain and the world. My objection is that it is not at all apparent how a causal chain moves from what is the case to an attitude of certainty.
The exemplar I have provided for a certainty is the constitutive rule. It makes no sense to doubt a constitutive rule within the context of the game it helps create.
The puzzle I have at the moment is: are there other examples of certainties? OC is not much help here as Wittgenstein's examples shift around.
I think the Moon example he uses, one that we would no longer accept, must serve as an exemplar.
Again, you play with straw.
Quoting apokrisis
Truth as belief.
How does it seem like this? Care to offer an example? Perhaps this is nitpicking, but in the feeble examples I can imagine, it usually seems more suitable to say "he/it thinks..." rather than "he/it believes..." That is, the "belief" seems short-term or fleeting.
Instead of there being non-linguistic beliefs, could it just be that we apply statements of belief to the non-linguistic behaviours of others in an attempt to explain those behaviours?
Quoting Sam26
Perhaps language just evolved from scratch, like life. It's similar to asking how did we get from the absence of life to the presence of life unless there was some mystical dormant life force (where the dormant life force is analogous to your non-linguistic belief).
Quoting Sam26
This seems to apply equally to linguistic beliefs, including those beliefs that we learn in school and which are taught to us by others. What about instincts and natural physical/bodily reflexes - do you consider these to be a kind of non-linguistic belief? Is there a way to distinguish these just by observing behaviour?
To be fair though, Wittgenstein presents his view of belief, similar to yours, in Part II of his Investigations:
Although I still maintain my suspicions about your non-linguistic beliefs and causal theory.
"3 times 4 is 12"
When could it make sense to doubt either? Only when "forgetfulness, oversight or illusion" play a part. (OC 265, OC 455) "Here is a hand" is as certain as arithmetic.
You might need to brush up on your reading skills. Demonstrating that your bedrock is your perceptual experience is demonstrating exactly that. Which becomes the problem for your position in which the world is some totality of propositional facts.
Especially once your transcendent world of truths are talked of as if reality were not temporal but an eternal block of events that have “already been actualised”.
You keep going on about truth being cashed out in meaningful actions. Well Peirce made the point that the act of measurement is the primal definition of a meaningful action.
Moore proposes he has hands? Well look. Flap, flap. There’s your inductive confirmation. We can all agree on that as evidence. That sure looks like a meaningful act of measurement.
OC is muddled and incomplete, because the basic premise, that "doubt only makes sense against a background of certainty", is the opposite of reality, and therefore untenable. What is really the case is that certainty only makes sense against a background of doubt.
Certainty only follows justification, which follows doubt. It is only when we doubt, that we seek justification. And certainty is only derived from justification. So doubt is necessarily prior to certainty in all cases. This is very evident from the evolution of knowledge, we proceed from unknowing (doubt and uncertainty) toward knowing (certainty). Our lives are full of uncertainties and we only get a glimpse of what certainty is really like. The background is doubt and uncertainty, as when we are children, and from this emerges knowledge and certainty, but only in relation to specific things. To me, this is very intuitive, and I don't see why so many people insist on the very counter-intuitive stance, that doubt only makes sense from a background of certainty.
Quoting Banno
"Certainty" does not make any sense in this context. "Certainty" refers to things which cannot be doubted, because it is known beyond any doubt, that they must be true. This is the case with a self-evident truth.
Sure, it makes no sense to doubt the rules of a game, when one consents to play that game, but the unreasonableness of doubt here is due to one's commitment to the game, it is not due to any form of certainty. If I make a social commitment, whether it is a business deal with you, or any other social agreement, then it is unreasonable for me to doubt the rules that I have committed to, after the fact of having consented to the agreement. To renege is to be unreasonable. But this form of "unreasonable to doubt" does not constitute a certainty that the rules I've committed to are the best, correct, true, or any such thing. This form of "unreasonable to doubt" is not a form of certainty at all, it refers to commitment, or obligation..
That's another misunderstanding on your part, Apo. It's not based on perceptual experience per se. It's the participation in the shared language game that is pivotal. It's not an induction.
Really? Not over here. For Alice, maybe.
LOL. That would be why Moore on an LSD trip, shrieking here is one flipper, now here is another, is simply failing to share in a language game with his audience. It wouldn’t be a failure of a perceptual experience game.
Interesting reply. So a constitutive rule is a proposition which takes a certain form. You would read 'here is a hand' as 'this counts as a hand'. Well, what is meant by 'hand' in this phrase? If all that is meant by 'hand' is this (where I am pointing to my hand), then the proposition reads 'this counts as this', which is just an uninteresting tautology. It might be right that that proposition is exempt from any request for evidence because it is already self-evident, but what is the significance of this seeming triviality?
Alternatively, is "this counts as a hand" just an ostensive definition of "hand"? If so, I agree that it is exempt from a request for evidence. But what I don't see, is how this solves the regress problem (I assume this is what it is meant to do, since that was the problem mentioned in the OP. Forgive my not having read the entire thread). Or rather, I don't see how it can solve that problem in a way that is different to what Descartes did - and I assume it is meant to be different. If we are trying to put an end to the regress of justification by saying "this counts as a hand", won't a sceptic simply say "what is the justification for believing that there is anything there at all? Why do you think there is a this?". A Cartesian will say that he is immediately acquainted with this; that it is given to him in consciousness in such a way that he cannot be mistaken that there is a this before him. We could then add 'this counts as a hand' as an ostensive definition, but this is clearly parasitic on the Cartesian answer, and inherits all of the problems of that answer. Perhaps I am putting Cartesian words in a mouth that doesn't want them, but how else can we answer "Why do you think there is a this?"?
Best
PA
This statement expresses the attitude called "certitude". And such an attitude doesn't justify any claim of certainty. "Certainty" requires justification. Otherwise "it is certain" is nothing more than "I am certain of it", and that's just the manifestation of one's attitude.
So until you actually address the argument which I've produced, such statements are merely meaningless personal opinions, with no bearing in relation to what is known as "certainty".
Quoting PossibleAaran
Yes, I think that's exactly the issue which Sam26 brings up, the infinite regress of justification. One proposition justifies another, which justifies another, so on and so forth. Hinge-props are proposed as a means to put an end to this infinite regress, by being beyond reasonable doubt without needing to be justified. This is supposed to ground certainty.
My argument is that because hinge-props are outside "the game" of epistemology, and are therefore not subject to justification, they are actually the most dubious.
Thanks for the clarification. It depends what is meant by saying "this counts as a hand". As I said, if it is an ostensive definition of "hand" then I don't find it problematic at all. One can simply stipulate that by "hand", one means, this. Is such an ostensive definition a dubious proposition? In one sense I don't think a definition can be dubious. If I choose, for my purposes, to use the word 'hand' as a name for this, what is there to doubt? One might ask, 'why call this a hand and not some other name?', but this is a semantic, and not a substantive, question. The simple answer is 'I've decided on this name. You can use another name if you like. It doesn't really matter'.
But, as I said in my last post, even if acceptable, this is largely useless, since the sceptic will want to know why you believe that there is a this to be called 'hand' at all, which means the regress hasn't been halted.
Best,
PA
In "On Certainty" Wittgenstein sets out to determine what is meant by "certainty", in the sense of "it is certain that ...". He provides a preliminary definition of "certainty", as the possibility of mistake has been logically excluded. The attitude of certitude (I am certain that...), as expressed by Banno, does not qualify as meeting the criteria of this definition, due to the fallibility of the human mind.
What possible criterion is there for judging whether something is really "there" or not other than that we can all see it?
It's only a partial failure, which any erudite audience would recognize as such. Mistaking a hand for a flipper is not so bad; I could think of much worse perceptual failures or visual agnosias ("wife for hat").
I think I agree with this pretty much. I went through this earlier in the thread, and didn't get too much agreement because the other participants in the thread did not think that Moore's proposition "this is a hand" was meant as a demonstration. If it is meant as an ostensive definition, then it justifies the further statement "I have two hands". As an ostensive definition, it does not need to be justified, it is a proposition in the sense of a proposal, which the audience can either accept or reject. The point being that he could have said "this is a foot", or something else, and the audience is in a position to either agree or disagree.
There are many reasons (of doubt) for the audience to reject such a proposal as "this is a hand". Principally, the boundaries of exactly what is and is not part of the hand, are not defined. Moore would hold up an entire arm, saying "this is a hand", not indicating whether things like the wrist and the fingers are part of the hand or not. So even ostensive definitions need to be justified, clarified by further descriptions.
This is where I see the foundation of justification, rather than in hinge-propositions, or ostensive demonstrations, I see descriptions as fundamental. So rather than naming things such as "this is a P", and "that is a Q", I see descriptions of what is a P, and what is a Q, as the basis for justification. Fundamental descriptions are where we find self-evident truths.
Pedantry is not philosophy.
So what does that say? If failure can be partial - and indeed would always be partial under your view, as what would total look like? - then success would also only be partial.
Or in other words, belief and doubt are relative, never absolute. They are opposed limits on certainty.
Which is what I pragmatically argue. As also does Wittgenstein in making certainty the result of a system - events in contexts, acts of measurement within background theories.
It is only Banno who wants facts to be facts regardless of any system of measurement.
LOL. Pedantry, (adhering to strictly defined terms), for the purpose of logical proceeding, is one of the fundamental principles of scientific understanding. And that, is also philosophy. Disciplined description is another fundamental principle of scientific understanding which itself requires adherence to strictly defined terms.
No argument from me on that! I would agree that there is no absolute certainty (on analysis the very idea is revealed to be meaningless, I would say), but only relative certainty within given contexts that it makes no sense to question. :)
Also, logically, there must be correct perception in order for failure to be possible, just as there must be beliefs in order that doubt be possible.
There is adhering to strict definitions, and then there is pointless pedantry.
Yep. Words can only function as constraints on interpretance. They are irreducibly open ended and thus uncertain. Nothing could be defined exactly, as reality is a continuous whole and words are attempts to name its discrete parts.
So the language game when it comes to ostensive definition has a second aspect. We must learn the communal practice when it comes to the point where we cease to sweat the detail. There will always be fine grain differences that could be used as the seed of doubt. But language use involves knowing when a difference ceases to make a difference.
A hand may include a bit of wrist or not. Where one leaves off and the other begins is vague. Or in other words, it is not a big enough contradiction to get fussed over. To speak, to be certain of what another is saying, we only need to agree on the gist. And that involves both understanding the general ostensive reference and sharing a close enough degree of unconcern about the differences that don’t make a difference.
So pragmatically, there is always doubt as words want to break the thing in itself into a collection of signs, a collection of named parts. But part of the game is then learning when differences don’t matter.
When we point at a part of the world, there is this double pointing. We are saying x is that thing, and also not all those other things. We are thus in fact pointing at our idea of the thing, not the actual thing - as there is no “actual thing” in a continuous world.
There is a way of understanding "This is a hand" that is not explained in yet more propositions - "this is this". Understanding is shown by behaving in a way that agrees that this is a hand. The sceptic has not understood how to use the word "hand".
Yep. What is ostensively demonstrated is is a customary and pragmatic degree of unconcern. Folks, this is where the doubting stops ... so far as this language game about "reality" goes. This is what looks like a "grounding fact" in the world we are collectively imagining.
So a pragmatic approach to truth accepts that there is this kind of semiotic game, this triadic modelling relation, which is itself basic. It stands against Cartesian dualism and Kantian representationalism by speaking to the Peircean triadicism of a sign relation.
Facts are always facts in terms of some language game, some pragmatic modelling relation. They are the acceptable acts of measurement for some game, not some semiosis-independent truth.
In practice, the line between belief and doubt, similarity and difference, generality and particularity, is always fuzzy. Language over-claims when it comes to the supposed atomism, the supposed counterfactual definiteness, of the world it attempts to describe. But pragmatically, it works. And it works because it is always open-ended and imprecise.
That is why language is inherently creative as well as usefully definite. Every interpretation has suppressed freedoms. Talk about a hand can include or exclude flippers or phalanges, depending on the intentional context. So the leash on meaning can be loosened or tightened. If facts were just facts and not states of interpretation bounded by a notion of differences that don't make a difference, then language use would be as uncreative as a computer programme. It would not be the fluid instrument of thought that it is.
Yes. The next step is of course that it is always a language game. It makes no sense to talk about it being just language and not abut the world-in-itself; they are the very same.
This is what is key. There is no solid ground. But we can construct a ground based on the agreement that there is a generality - a constraint that defines similarity - and then also a limit on the capacity for the particulars or individual differences to make a difference.
This is why truth-telling is considered "a system". The true facts are sandwiched between our pragmatic notions of essence and indifference. They are what arise via this pincer movement. To refer to "a hand" is to bound a state of conception in terms the idea of a hand's essence - whatever it is that makes hands similar - and the idea of what then doesn't matter, or is inessential, to that ideal. Between those two complementary bounds, we find our particular interpretant of the sign.
Why does it make no sense exactly? You keep making the assertion. But the argument is missing.
Pragmatically it might be no use - especially in everyday settings where there is nothing philosophical at stake.
But epistemology is a philosophical language game. It talks of stuff like truth, certainty, belief and doubt. It gets silly to pretend that there is nothing being spoken of in terms of that culturally-foundational inquiry.
Since meaning is use, sense is found by using a language. A language that was not about the world could not have a use. Consider propositional logic. Like an engine with the clutch in, it would grind away without engaging.
If epistemology is no more than an engine spinning away without making contact with the world, then why bother.
Again, your response founders on a failure to recognise that language games must create their speakers along with their worlds. So they are always about more than just the world. And also less about the world in that the "speaking self" is defined in terms of a grounding indifference to "the world".
This is the central cognitive trick that your Kantian representationalism just overlooks time and again.
It is telling that you even use a mechanical metaphor to make your point. You just take the driver for granted. There is a driver wanting to mesh with the world in some way. And so all your attention goes to the linguistic device used to make that connection. A clutch that switches a connection off and on.
This is naive realism. You take the fact of the self and the world for granted where really they are emergent from the linguistic mechanism - the epistemic cut - themselves.
As I say, speakers define themselves in terms of the aspects of the world they can afford to deem themselves indifferent towards. I am me - an autonomous being able to do my own thing - to the degree that I don't need to care about the physical details of the world. To the degree that the world fails to act as a constraint on my intentions.
So Wittgenstein was trying to articulate this ecological or embodied or pragmatic understanding of epistemology. The world is what it is. But the world for us is the world defined in terms of the limit of what we need to care about. And it is that very capacity for a practical indifference that is the making of "us". It is the definition of selfhood as interpretance. We arise along with the umwelt we construct. Our understanding of the world is really our understanding of a world with "us" in it.
So as I say, it is both less and more than your naive realism supposes. There is less of the actual thing in itself. But there is more of this us.
I sense your frustration at being pushed towards this critical realisation. But for too long you have simply wanted some simple theory of truth to come out right.
Epistemology's central problem is how to understand the relation between a thinker and a world. You want to just dismiss the problem as something not in need of an explanation. Which is naive. Pragmatism by contrast solves the riddle left by Descartes and Kant by showing how both self and world are co-constructions. Each arises as a reflection of the other. So it is the relation which creates the "reality".
Now again, you will howl - look around. There is a mind-independent reality exactly as physicalism asserts! I kick this stone, I wave this hand, I measure this mountain, I name this bump in the landscape the sacred rock, Uluru.
But that is a realism which leaves the mind undefined and unexplained. How can you claim this "mind-independence" if your epistemology has stepped all around the issue of what is a mind?
And it is a realism that relies on the objectivity of scientific method, when our best theory of scientific method is ... Peirce's pragmatism.
So at every turn, you are finding you run into the same answer.
Sure, commonsense says we are just a mind, and there just is a world. But this is the commonsense of the naive realist. And here we are talking about the foundations of epistemology. You can't just wish all the problems away.
You think this a problem because you split the speaker from the world. I don't.
But you do. You are a representationalist in saying there is "a world". It's right there in your language.
Hmm. What is it that you don't get about the the cut which is the separation that founds the connection? :)
A Peircean epistemology explains how a self is formed via a capacity to be indifferent to the world. As yet, you have made zero counter-argument. You just make these gurgling drowning noises.
It's a dichotomy. So it is anti-dualistic in being fundamentally triadic.
And I presented an argument. So you are just finding excuses to avoid making a counter-argument.
It is you who have claimed a dogmatism in doctrinal fashion. You are telling me you don't need to change your position as no argument is going to change it. You believe what you want to believe.
Seems really philosophical. Or religious. ;)
We are not obligated to refute every single argument that comes along. While a few things in what you have said are interesting, quite a few other things leave me cold. There include the blurring of belief and truth and the weird obsession with trinities.
So after a series of evasive one-liner deflections, the confession of the lack of any reasonable counter.
After the prolonged gurgling, the slow disappearance beneath the waves.
What makes a theory of truth true? Well, the theory has to tell us what is true, so it also tells us if the theory itself is true. That is, any consistent theory of truth will suffice. Coherentism is true if it is coherent; falsificationism is true if it is falsifiable; pragmatism is true if it is useful (or measurable or whatever). But if each says it is true, then we have not made any progress.
The substantive theories of truth all fail. Pragmatism included.
But pragmatism claims truth is only relative. How could that view fail?
LOL. Some half-arsed AP notion of it?
Rather the confession that I'm here to talk about Wittgenstein, not Peirce. Your posts are pretty much of topic. IN any case, when I have attempted any sort of analysis of your claims, you avoid them.
But if you like, you could explain the belief-truth thing, and explain to people how we do not know how high Mount Everest is.
Well I was quite happy to talk about the example you raised in this post - the social construction of Uluru as sacred. And that is a good example. There is the phenomenon of people returning sorry stones and a system of fines. Even souveniring sand is verbotten. Taking away the dust on your clothes could be problematic.
So there we had a fair test of truth theories. One that spans the mental and material realms pretty evenly in its truth claims.
You saw where that example of yours had to go and so now want to revert to what feels like safer ground - the height of Mt Everest. You want to argue from an example in which the presumptions are suppressed as a matter of ordinary everyday education. You would be laughed out of class for not assenting to some factual reply from a suitable expert in terms of some number of metres.
Your problem Banno is your rhetorical manoeuvres are transparent. And you simply walk away as fast as your argument starts to burn.
Quoting Banno
LOL. Sometimes you must even amaze yourself at your bare faced cheek.
A string of your one-liners have been knocked on their arse just as fast. Every attempt to deflect has failed. Nothing has been avoided, just sent over the boundary for six.
Here's a straight question; let's see if you can answer it. Is belief distinct from truth?
No, words cannot function as constraints, the interpreter is free to interpret words in any way one desires, at the risk of misunderstanding what was meant. The constraints on interpretance are property of the interpreter. The learned habits of interpretation are what serve as constraints on interpretation. Such constraints are not property of the words themselves.
Quoting apokrisis
This as well is incorrect. Language does not create speakers, speakers create language.
You are assigning agency to words and to language, where none is warranted. Agency ought to be attributed to those who use words and language, not to the words and language themselves.
According to dualism.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The causality is mutual according to my systems account.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If interpretation is all there really is - there is no dualistic interpreter that is the soul exerting it’s further point of view - then my account describes the situation.
If you believe in souls, then you insist on a dualistic ontology.
If you are going to pretend it is a mystery, you will have to tell me in what sense. It’s not as if I haven’t repeated myself on the subject a million times now. So this is simply further evasion.
A clue. In multiple posts I’ve said that truth is the limit of rational inquiry. So it is belief exhausted in that regard for all practical purposes. And the limit is thus defined by the principle of indifference. We have no good reason to worry about the possible remaining differences or exceptions.
So on to your next deflection I guess. Anything to avoid having to make some actual counter argument of any kind.
So, is it true that this thread is in English?
I say yes.
You say...?
There is no such thing as interpretation without something which is doing the interpreting. This is where Peirce and Pattee have lead you into nonsense.
Simple really.
Let's see the master's answer.
Sounds legit.
No, you gave me a clue:Quoting apokrisis
My bolding.
So, is this post in English? You see, I don't think you can say "yes" consistently here. You have to say something about approximating to being in English and so on. If I am correct, it might serve to show how pragmatism as a theory of truth leaves something to be desired.
It's the elephant in the corner.
OK, if you prefer, I say it is true that Paris is the capital of France.
Again, from your answer, you can't say that. You can only approximate it in some way - and I'm not going to guess how.
That looks to be a rather large pachyderm.
As I said, in multiple posts I’ve given the answer - truth is the limit of rational inquiry.
So where is the problem with that position exactly?
The problem is - is it true that Paris is the capital of France?
It cuts to the core of our differences. You see, Paris is the capital of France. And I understand truth as follows: "P" is true just in the case that P. So I can conclude that it is true that "Paris is the Capital of France".
Now, as I understood you, I don't think you can say the same. You will need something a bit longer; though hopefully a bit clearer than @StreetlightX's suggestion.
Tell me again how I am being evasive. Or tell me if it is true that this post is in English. Or if it is true that Paris is the Capital of France.
There's a distinction between a definition of truth and whether some particular statement is true. Apo can say it is true. But (hypothetically) if the final consensus says that it isn't, then he just would have been wrong about that (on Peirce's definition).
The Peircean idea is that exhaustive inquiry by a community would lead to a single agreed conclusion which, by definition, would be true.
Thanks - I am aware it is something like that. The trouble is, even after the extensive process proposed, the community might be wrong.
So that is not what we mean by "....is true".
But you won’t now explain how proper names are truths of reality and hence something that pragmatism might expect to arrive at as the limit of rational inquiry into the facts of the world.
Well I’m sure you believe you have an argument in there somewhere. Now if only we could flush it out.
Just something?
Quoting Banno
In what sense is that “trouble”?
Especially given that in the limit, they would have no reason to care? If it makes no odds, it makes no odds.
So, is it true that Paris is the capital of France?
Again, I apologise for being so evasive by bringing in the issue of names and such; or by not setting out what the trouble might be. :-}
Yes the community might be wrong. But consider how that could be possible on the Peircean view. It implies there is further information that the community hasn't uncovered in their investigation. The true conclusion is the agreed result of the investigation in the limit (i.e., exhaustive), not necessarily when an investigation plateaus or reaches earlier consensus.
For me the issue is that it does not bother to explain or elucidate truth, but instead ignores it, to the extent of changing our language n order to avoid talking about it.
In other words pragmatism is not about truth but justifying belief.
That's the elephant in the room.
I agree, but to say this is to say something very different to saying that propositions like "this is a hand" are constitutive rules which need no justification.
Quoting Banno
I am not sure how to assess this, since you didn't answer any of my questions. You say that if someone doubts that 'this is a hand', they have not understood how we are using the word hand. What if someone doubts that there is anything there at all? What if someone doubts that there is a 'this' to which you are referring? Doesn't your constitutive rule suggestion then fail to stop the regress?
Best,
PA
Then what would we conclude?
What reasons could they give for this doubt? And if their doubt is unreasonable, we can reject it.
Quoting PossibleAaran
Then what do we conclude? That they do not understand how "this" works in English?
Belief needs justification. So does doubt.
Quoting Banno
What do you mean doubt needs 'justification'? What counts as a 'justification' for doubting something? Could you give an example?
Mind independently true?
LOL.
On a Peircean pragmatism, truth can be explained as an abstraction that represents justified belief in the limit (i.e., when all the evidence is in). That conforms with ordinary usage.
That is in contrast to justified belief within a limited evidential context which can sometimes be false (or Gettiered).
Let's see if we agree on what is required to justify doubt. Doubt is an attitude toward belief, just like certitude, but the two are opposed to each other such that one necessarily excludes the other. The important thing, from my perspective, which you may or may not agree with, is that doubt is defined in relation to certitude as a lack of certitude. This means that anytime when certitude cannot be justified, then doubt is justified. In other words, an inability to justify certitude with respect to a belief, justifies doubt with respect to that belief.
Certitude is justified by demonstrating certainty. So if we take Wittgenstein's definition, certainty is to logically exclude the possibility of mistake, then certitude is justified when we logically exclude the possibility of mistake. Accordingly, doubt is justified anytime the possibility of mistake cannot be logically excluded. Agree?
No, simply recognizing our fallibility--i.e., the fact that certitude can never truly be justified, since the mere possibility of mistake cannot be logically excluded for any of our current beliefs--does not warrant genuine doubt. It is only justified when one has a positive reason to question a currently held belief, regardless of whether one has certitude toward it; e.g., because of a surprising experience or disappointed expectation.
So we have Descartes. The mind bit of the equation got boiled down to some cognitivising soul. Everything about perception could be doubted. But there was the irreducible fact of the thinker thinking the thoughts, having at least the ideas.
Then Kant came out with a more cognitively elaborate story. The soul constructs a representation that corresponds, more or less, to the world. There was no absolute access to the facts of reality. Indeed, the issue seemed to be that in being mere representation, the goal of actually knowing reality was forever doomed to failure.
Descartes left the mind radically disconnected by doubt. Kant left it radically disconnected by the falsity of a representation. Then of course pragmatism turned things around by creating a more general theory of the mind in terms of a set of developed habits in fruitful interaction with the instabilities or contingencies of the world.
The world is no longer itself viewed as some stable realm of fixed objects or certain facts. It is not even there - present - to be “re-presented”. It is a dynamic flux, a sea of possibility, that can become organised by the imposition of constraints.
So the material world itself is re-imagined as lacking in counterfactual definiteness. It is at base vague or indeterminate. It requires the mind-like thing of developed functional habits to give it definite shape and direction.
This is a metaphysics. It is a new view of how reality is. It is a process philosophy, a self-organising and probabilistic view of nature. And a view conceived before quantum physics and dissipative structure theory arrived to show how true it was.
Anyway. A process ontology justifies a process epistemology. And so the mind’s job becomes not merely to know the world, to be certain of its facts. The mind is now that part of the world that is the source of its stability or regularity. The mind is the part that speaks to its formal and final cause. The mind’s role is not just to sit back in distant fashion and represent. It exists to use that displacement in order to act in a functional fashion. It exists to bring organisation to a world founded in material contingency.
Now the difficulty here is that the mind of which we speak is no longer the consciousness of a human soul. That is an image of mind that comes from a materialist ontology. It is the passive observer without an active role in the creation of “the facts”.
The pragmatist mind is instead the generalisation of reality’s own ontic need for an organisational potential that follows from spatiotemporal displacement - the epistemic cut. So the pragmatist mind is the more general thing of the interpretant, the habits; the information that provides the constraints, that provide the functional structure or limitations on material instability.
We can see the impact this re-conception has on epistemology. The idea of a re-presenting of a fixed world of facts to a perceiving mind just goes right out the window. A notion of truth, belief, knowledge, or whatever, in those terms, is simply redundant.
We are now talking about an interactive modelling relation. And this is an ontic-strength story. It is not merely about how a human mind understands the facts of the world. It is a pan-semiotic story of how a world is even created. Reality itself is some version of this process of instability become regulated by some system of displaced intentionality. Or as Pattee put it, rate independent information acting as the constraint on rate dependent dynamics.
So now this is why Wittgenstein and others would feel so convinced that our certainty, our truths, are expressed in our physical interactions with the world. What counts as true is a demonstration that we can regulate the instability of our environments. If asked, we know how to make the acts of measurement to produce the evidence. The evidence which is now a sign - the timeless information - speaking to our power over a temporal or dynamically unstable material world.
So epistemology is fundamentally entwined with our ontology, our view of nature. And pragmatism is not merely just another epistemology. It is a fundamental revision of ontology. It is the switch from a belief in a world that just statically exists as some mind-independent state of affairs, or collection of facts, or set of atomistic propositions, and the adoption of a process or systems metaphysics where material being is fundamentally contingent or unstable, and thus is in need of a regulating guiding hand.
Moore might have been right to believe that here is one of his hands, now here is the other. But what is being challenged by pragmatism is the whole idea that there is a world that can be known without our having something crucial to do with its making.
And this would be a mystical state of affairs unless we can revise our foundational notions about reality all the way down to a pansemiotic quantum level.
We don’t want to be left with a definition of mind that is still essentially dualistic and spiritual. We want one that cashes out in more psychological, then biological and eventually physical notions, such as habits, limits, information, laws and constraints.
That our hands are there (when they are) would seem to be, or more aptly, would seem to be an exemplification of, a "constitutive rule", in the sense of being part of the 'background' of implicit understanding without which no belief or doubt would be possible.
I must not understand what is meant here, because if I take the words in the way I find natural, what you say is obviously not true. "No belief or doubt would be possible" without these things you call constitutive rules. So unless I believe that this is a hand, then it isn't possible for me to believe anything at all? That sounds obviously false, since I might believe that this is a hallucination of a hand, generated by an evil demon. Or even more clearly, I might just not believe that this is a hand, whilst I do believe that this other thing is a foot. The other claim is that unless I believe that this is a hand, it isn't possible for me to doubt anything. But again, it seems plain that I might not believe that this is a hand, and I might also doubt that God exists, or doubt that man walked on the moon, or doubt that Smith killed Jones, or what have you.
So I am not sure what you could mean by 'no belief or doubt would be possible', unless you mean this obviously false thesis.
Best,
PA
You’re still talking engineering.
If the possibility of mistake cannot be ruled out with respect to any particular belief, then this
is a positive reason to question that particular belief, i.e. doubt is warranted.
Quoting apokrisis
We are still questioning the assumption that there is some understanding which can't be wrong. You are jumping the gun, wanting to proceed as if it has already been demonstrated that there is some understanding which can't be wrong. If you think that you have such a demonstration, then please be my guest and put it forward.
Quoting apokrisis
If you maintain a principle like this, that the world is lacking in definiteness, that it is fundamental vague and indeterminate, then how can you produce consistency between this and your prior assumption that there is some understanding which can't be wrong? Even the fact that the world is vague and indeterminate (if it is a fact), could change at any moment if the world is vague and indeterminate..
My point was that the possibility of mistake cannot be ruled out with respect to any of our beliefs, but this is not a positive reason to question all of our beliefs; such universal doubt is never warranted. We only have a positive reason to doubt a particular belief when it is actually confounded by experience, not simply because it might possibly be confounded by experience.
What you say doesn't make sense. You are claiming that the possibility of mistake is not grounds for questioning a belief.
If we wait until a belief actually confounds our experience then it is an actual mistake, and the belief has already been proven wrong at this point.
Doubt is justified prior to the confounding experience, in order to avoid that mistake. Your position could only be correct if you didn't think it was reasonable to attempt to avoid mistake. But that's nonsense.
Always better than mystical bollocks.
You misunderstand the nature of constraints. The free actions of the world are only limited to some threshold variety of differences that don’t make a difference. So it is the probabilistic view built into science. No two events are the same. But the question is whether they are similar enough? Is the variety essentially random rather than significant, that is due to some further undiagnosed cause?
So our beliefs are generalities that predict an acceptable range of outcomes. A mistake would be when instead we find evidence of some further causal mechanism that says something more that normal levels of chance are at play and we need a generalisation that makes better predictions.
It means that all beliefs and doubts presuppose the background understanding. They only get their meaning in virtue of that general context.
Suppose then that I suspend judgement about whether this is a hand. More exactly, I doubt that there is a this at all. I suspend judgement on whether or not there is anything that I am looking at. What is wrong with this doubt? I think in some sense you want to say that I can't do what I say that I am doing. But why can't I?
None of this makes any sense. First of all, I was talking about the relationship between certainty, certitude, doubt, and mistake. I don't see how "constraints" is relevant. Secondly, to say that a free choice decision by a human being is limited to a difference which doesn't make a difference, is clearly wrong, because then we wouldn't have to think about any of our decisions, because they wouldn't make a significant difference.
You say, all that needs to be answered is "whether they are similar enough", but you've denied the means by which one could answer this question. You are saying that anything which the human mind decides is a difference, is necessarily a difference which doesn't make a difference, because free acts are constrained to differences which don't make a difference. So your conclusion about the nature of mistake is completely wrong. According to your premise, a mistake couldn't be a difference which makes a difference anyway.
I believe the point is that whatever is going on right now, the correct thing to say is "this is a hand", in the same way that whatever the animal we call a "sheep" is, the correct thing to call it is a "sheep".
The trouble with the account you propose is that Constitutive Rules are supposed to be regress stoppers. Suppose I say "whatever is going on right now, the correct thing to say is 'this is a hand', and anyone who doubts this must be not understanding how I use the word 'hand'". Now note that it isn't accurate to say that, no matter what is going on, the correct thing to say is 'this is a hand'. Rather, there is a very specific set of circumstances in which it is correct to say 'this is a hand'. Anyone who takes the regress seriously is going to ask why you believe that those specific circumstances have actually obtained. We can grant that if certain circumstances obtain, the correct thing to say is 'this is a hand', but we can still question whether those circumstances have in fact obtained. The idea that 'this is a hand' is a constitutive rule of the 'game' does nothing to prevent this question and so doesn't stop the regress.
Another way to put the point which is a little quicker is this. The idea that in this particular circumstance the correct thing to say is 'this is a hand', blatantly presupposes knowledge that I am in some particular circumstance and not another, and this needs justification.
Best,
PA
How do we determine in which circumstances it is correct to use certain words and phrases? It's not that the meaning comes first, and we then try to determine whether or not these circumstances are correct, but that the circumstances come first, and we then stipulate which words and phrases are to be used.
Finding a sheep comes before the word "sheep". It would be strange to find a new animal, to decide to refer to it using the word "sheep", and then wonder if what we've found is really a sheep.
(a) There are certain circumstances, A, in which we stipulate that it is correct to say 'this is a hand'.
This is perfectly unproblematic, and I agree that we first undergo the circumstance and then stipulate the words that go with it. But, whenever I say 'this is a hand', I am blatantly assuming that I am in circumstance A (the circumstance in which we stipulated 'this is a hand' correctly applies). What justification is there for believing that I am in circumstance A?
You know the kind of circumstance A is: the kind in which I apparently see a hand, or have a sensory experience as of a hand, or however you want to put it. But why believe that I am in circumstance A?
Perhaps it is simpler to focus on the following question:
What justification is there for believing that I am in any particular circumstance whatsoever, as opposed to any other?
Best,
PA
Presumably you're in a particular circumstance. So what, exactly, are you asking when you ask "am I in circumstance A or circumstance B"? Are you asking which of "A" or "B" refers to the circumstance you're in? Well, what determines which of "A" and "B" refers to the circumstance you're in? You seem to be suggesting that the meaning of "A" and "B" is separate to the circumstance, and we have to try to match the circumstance with the meaning. But the argument being put forth is that the circumstance is the meaning. We're in circumstance A because "circumstance A" is the name we have chosen to refer to the circumstance we're in.
To repeat my example of the sheep; we find a new animal and decide to refer to it using the new term "sheep". It doesn't make sense to then ask what justification I have for believing that the animal is a sheep and not something else.
The obvious answer is that we have sense perception. I can see that there is something there to be named. But if this has to be offered in answer to the sceptic, then constitutive rules don't stop the regress.
What you say doesn't make sense. You are claiming that the mere possibility of mistake is grounds for questioning a belief--and therefore that we have grounds for questioning all of our beliefs, which is absurd.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Why should we seriously doubt any of our present beliefs that have never previously been confounded by our experience? Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the expression, "learn from your mistakes."
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
None of us is infallible; i.e., it is impossible for any of us to avoid mistake. Therefore, it is indeed unreasonable to doubt any particular belief, simply because it might be mistaken. After all, doubting that belief could turn out to be the mistake, rather than maintaining it.
Belief is a constraint on doubt. Doubts are always possible to manufacture on some grounds. So belief simply aims to constrain doubt to a reasonable degree.
You are taking some absolutist position. The only position that works is a relativist one.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I was talking about the freedoms of the world, not human freewill.
So a cat may have a chewed ear and yet still function as a cat. The chewed ear is a difference that doesn't make a difference.
I then enter that cat in the cat show. Now the chewed ear is a difference that makes a difference.
So as you have previously argued, everything in the world is individual. Even two identical things are located at individual points of spacetime. But categorical beliefs are about generalities - what things have in common that make them "the same". And so such beliefs have to also know how much actual difference can be ignored as being differences that are insignificant or unsurprising.
When is a mistake a mistake? When it is a significant difference to what was predicted.
You cannot genuinely (coherently and consistently) doubt that there are any 'thises' at all because to do so would undermine the coherence of all and any discourse.
Yep. It is on the whole that it rings true. We believe in the world as a generality.
I don't believe one can have private concepts, can they? Wouldn't that be akin to having a private language? Your use of the term "mental furnishings" isn't clear to me. All I'm saying is that there are things going on in the brain that coincide with actions quite apart from language, and that some of these actions demonstrate that primitive (prelinguistic) man had beliefs. I also think that Wittgenstein believed this to be the case, which was the reason I quoted him. These mental things (thoughts, states, etc.) are not concepts, because remember I think of them prior to language.
Even when we bring language into the picture, when I say, "I believe X," am I not referring to something that's unique to my mental thinking? It's not as though "my beliefs" only get their existence from language. The fact that it's mine shows that there is something that's unique to me, to my thinking. Don't confuse this with the idea that words get their meaning from how a community of language users, use certain words. There is nothing in me that gives concepts their meaning, no mental furnishings, if you will.
When you say, "I reject the very notion of such things," are you saying you don't believe there are mental states or thoughts going on in the brain prior to or along with one's actions? Again, I do believe these mental phenomena do reflect beliefs; and these beliefs, at least for me and my understanding of how beliefs can be shown, are a reflection of something internal.
I have given examples in my writing, and I also have quoted Wittgenstein to you before about this very thing (OC 284, 285). Well, it's true that we can say that primitive man thinks, but thinks what? If we see primitive man building something, we can say that he thinks something, but can't we also say that he believes something. Doesn't the thinking reflect the beliefs? Isn't thinking a general term that we apply to many different ideas, whereas one's belief seems to be a subset of thinking.
It is true that we are applying statements of belief to non-linguistic man, just as I apply statements of belief about my dog. These statements do explain the behaviors, but they also tell us something about the nature of a belief. How do you explain people who have been deaf all their lives, who haven't had a language as part of their lives, who once being introduced to language talk about having a quite active thought life, and belief system apart from language? Language, it seems to me, is just a way for us to communicate what going on in the brain already. Language doesn't give life to this activity, the activity is there quite apart from language.
Sticking with our sheep example, I need not doubt that there are any things at all in order to make my point. I need only ask, in the specific case in which you are saying "this is a sheep", why you believe there is anything there at all. I needn't ask why you believe there are any 'thises' period. I can simply ask why, in this specific case, you believe that there is something there for you to name? If I can even raise that question, the regress goes on.
Best
PA
I do believe that language evolved from scratch, but not without very active and sophisticated brain phenomena. Even if you want to say they evolved together from one primitive state to another, I don't see how this hurts my position. I also don't think it's the same thing as going from the absence of life to the presence of life. I'm not saying we're going from the absence of something to the presence of something. I'm saying we're going from the presence of brain activity, to then, linguistic activity, which occurred very slowly and deliberately. Unless I'm misunderstanding you.
Causal beliefs can arise in the following manner: Mary was bitten by a snake, and as a result of the bite she now believes snakes are dangerous. This is a causal explanation of Mary's belief, namely, it shows the relationship between the bite and her belief. The bite is sufficient to cause her belief. This kind of explanation is different from beliefs that arise based on evidence, or what we deem to be evidence.
"Instincts and natural physical/bodily reflexes..." aren't beliefs, and no, I don't consider these to be non-linguistic beliefs. If these things show beliefs, then we could say that amoebas have beliefs, couldn't we?
Assumption is a general term. Prediction is more specific and that's the reason I don't use it. It refers only to those assumptions that represent events that will happen in the future. Retrodiction is the opposite term.
Assumptions can be thought of as imaginations that represent some aspect of reality.
Thinking = the process by which we generate assumptions.
It can be any process. This would be the general form of the concept of thinking. But some people don't like general terms so if we want to talk to them we need to specify these terms further. I am personally very fond of general terms. Anyways, thinking can also be defined narrowly, as a particular mechanism by which assumptions are generated. Which one? Let's ignore that for now.
Language = events that represent some other events. You can also add "for the purpose of communication between organisms" if you don't like general terms. But again, I like to start with general terms first.
Events that represent (or symbolize) other events are usually words and speech. But they can also be pictures.
Language is not dependent on thinking. You can write and speak and draw about things that have nothing to do with thinking. For example, the things you are representing could be imaginations or things that took place in the past. None of these involve thinking and thoughts.
Similarly, thinking is not dependent on language. You can think, i.e. make assumptions, without writing, talking or drawing. Your assumptions can manifest in your actions. This is the more natural way of thinking and it is known by the name "intuition". What we call "reason" is merely thinking that can be and is, often at the same time, expressed using language.
Which one came first?
I don't know. That's an empirical question.
It could be thinking. That's what my intuition suggests. But it could also be language. Or it could be both at the same time.
In order for any (any that I'm aware of) epistemological theory to gain a foothold there must be some beliefs/propositions that are immune from reasonable doubt, at least generally. Even in science there must be things that are not doubted, things that are part of the nature of reality that are immune to reasonable doubt. For example, that we are humans, that we have legs and arms, that there are mountains and valleys, that the Earth has one moon, etc. - if this were not the case, then how could one conduct experiments with any assurance of gaining knowledge?
Note that I said "reasonable doubt," there are cases, although not many, where it would be reasonable to doubt foundational beliefs. Wittgenstein points these out when discussing Moore's propositions. However, we're talking about cases in which such beliefs cannot be reasonably doubted. In fact, it seems to be nonsensical to doubt them.
Mental furnishing would indeed be private concepts; so we agree that they do not enter into the conversation. So while a belief is uniquely yours, it is not private. What makes it yours is not something happening inside your mind, but that the actions explained by the belief are your actions.
Further, what is going on when one acts includes what is going on in the brain. The act of flicking on the light includes the hand moving, the electricity flowing and the light illuminating the room and alerting the burglar; and it also included the neural activity that caused the hand movement.
I wanted to be able to see where I was, so I flicked the light switch. I believed that flicking the switch would allow me to see the room. But I did not know the burglar was there, and so did not believe that flicking the switch would alert the burglar.
The only thing that I would question is this statement. Why can't my belief be private? The language which states a belief is not private, but my belief, it would seem to me, starts out at being private before there is any showing or stating.
This is challenging for my suggestion that beliefs are explanations for actions. To take it a step further, does the air conditioner believe it is too hot when it turns itself on?
Justification is merely about explaining why we think what we think. We already decided what to think and now what we're doing is describing our reasoning process to others.
Thinking is prior to justification.
?293, misquoted:
Why not: and when we do doubt, it is because we decided to do so? Why give precedence to doubt, and not certainty?
From watching you, I can list innumerable things that you take as indubitable. That you responded in English shows that you think this thread is in English. Are you saying that you doubt that the thread is in English? Not when you are writing. Only when you are engaging in philosophical frivolity.
And yes, we doubt because we choose to do so. We choose when we're going to doubt and when we're not going to doubt and we can do so using any kind of logic.
Would that be rational? Would it be useful? Would it make sense?
Or would it indicate a failure to grasp what was going on here?
You left out two key words that I use in conjunction with doubt, reasonable and generally. Is it reasonable for me to doubt that I have two hands generally? Is it reasonable for me to doubt whether I'm currently sitting at my computer typing? Is it reasonable for me to doubt my own existence? These things are generally immune from ANY reasonable doubt, generally.
Also I don't think of what's reasonable as relative either, that is, it's not a matter of opinion.
The analogy that I drew between non-linguistic beliefs and a dormant life force was made in response to your question/assertion that without non-linguistic beliefs, "what would be the springboard of language? How does one get from a mind of no thoughts and no beliefs, to a mind that is able to express one's thoughts linguistically?" This appears to indicate that language could not have evolved from scratch, without some assistance from non-linguistic beliefs. I tend to agree with Banno's complaint that this smacks too much of a private language.
Quoting Sam26
This example relies entirely on the shared meanings/concepts of words like "snake" and "dangerous". I really don't believe that Wittgenstein had much interest in what causes our beliefs or how our language developed, which is much more theory than description. I mention this only because you claim this to be your view based on your reading of Wittgenstein.
Quoting Sam26
How is it any different? Aren't the snake bite and its subsequent effects evidence that snakes can be dangerous?
When I say that language evolved from scratch that doesn't mean there wasn't anything there as a basis for language. It's like saying I baked a cake from scratch, that doesn't mean there wasn't anything used to bake the cake. Yes, and I do believe there was assistance from non-linguistic beliefs. That there are non-linguistic beliefs is self-evident for me.
How can it be similar to a private language, especially if there is no language present. If we can have beliefs apart from language, and beliefs can arise apart from language, then how is this even remotely similar to having a private language?
Quoting Luke
Much of my theory relies on some of Wittgenstein's thinking, but not all of it. I'm not attributing causal beliefs to Wittgenstein.
There is clearly a distinction, at least for me and others, between causal beliefs and reasons for a belief. Roughly, a reasoned or rational explanation is something that involves a choice, in that I could have done or thought otherwise. However, a causal explanation is something that occurs apart from rationality, and many of our beliefs are like this. Also, a cause for a belief is an explanation of why an event occurred, like the turning on of a switch, which allows the electricity to flow to the light bulb, thereby, causing the light to come on. The same can happen with a belief. The cause of Mary's belief is the bite of the snake. The effect is Mary's belief that snakes are dangerous. Mary didn't reason her way to this belief.
Quoting Luke
A reason speaks to the truth of some conclusion, but a cause is not concerned with truth.
Non-linguistic beliefs are similar to a private language in that Wittgenstein's arguments against a private language apply equally to non-linguistic beliefs. There is "no language present" in a private language either, which Wittgenstein assumes only to demonstrate the absurdity or impossibility of the assumption. How can beliefs be held or expressed except in language? If they cannot be expressed or shared with others, because they are intelligible only to one solitary believer, then how is this any different to a private language?
Yes, it's easy to imagine. But what sort of properties are you inventing? Can't say? I guess we'll just have to disagree then.
Or let's say that I'm able to look inside another person's box, and what I see is nothing like what I see in mine. I would probably say that what's in their box isn't a beetle, but something else, because when I use the term "beetle" I'm talking about the particular kind of thing that's in my box, not about the variety of things that are in each of our boxes, whatever they are.
So even if there's a public meaning of "beetle", there's also a private meaning.
Let's say that the thing inside my box is blue, and nothing else in the world is blue. I coin the term "blue" to refer to the unique colour of the thing inside my box.
Note though that he's talking about the public use of the word pain, which is associated with the public expression of our sensations. What Wittgenstein seems to be saying in the private language argument, is, that a word cannot refer to something that's totally private, like the beetle in the box. The word pain has to get a foothold in something public for us to have a shared meaning.
None of this denies that there are private sensations, or that there are private beliefs. Wittgenstein is saying that for us to share in language what these are, we must be able to associate the concept with something that's not private, something that's communal. And by the way, there is language present in the private language game, but the language is meaningless in terms of what we mean by the beetle in the box. So again, I don't see how my view is anything like the private language argument.
I'm simply saying, again, that the beliefs, the private beliefs apart from language, are similar to the private sensations we have. And these private sensations are also prelinguistic. They have an existence quite apart from any statement about them. Their existence is not dependent upon language.
I'm sure almost all of us will say that the word "pain" refers to the sensation, not to the public expression.
That's why we can talk about people faking pain.
My point is that the meaning of the word pain gets a foothold in public expressions. The meaning isn't solely tied to my private sensation, which would be the beetle in the box scenario.
This seems like saying that the meaning of "Aristotle" gets a foothold in textbooks, given that none of us have ever met the man. The word refers to the philosopher, not the writings.
I don't quite follow the analogy. How is what I'm saying, like saying the meaning of Aristotle gets a foothold in textbooks?
That there are middle-men in learning a word doesn't then mean that these middle-men have anything to do with the meaning of the word.
But all this seems by-the-by. I know that what I mean by "pain" is the sensation, not the public expression. Wittegenstein can argue all he likes that I'm actually talking about the expression, but my own reflexive understanding of what I mean when I use the word is far more compelling than his arguments.
The point is that we learn correct usage in a public forum, and that forum can take a variety of forms, including texts. There is a difference though between words that refer to things, as opposed to words that refer to an abstraction, which Aristotle is presently for us. We learn them by using them in a variety of contexts in conjunction with implicit and explicit rules, but we don't learn them in isolation. The difference then would be that pain is referring to public behavior that reflects my private sensations, but the way we learn to use Aristotle is also public, but not in the sense that there is something to point to, that is, there is no longer the thing we call Aristotle. There are just a variety of language-games that arise in various public venues.
Quoting Michael
How did you learn to use the word pain? You didn't learn it by associating it with your sensation. You learned it by using it publicly in association with your own sensation, and the pain behavior of others. I agree that your experience of pain is much more compelling than any meaning associated with the word, but that's quite a different thing. The point, I believe, is how we learn the use of a word in a linguistic setting. What you mean by pain is quite irrelevant in terms of meaning.
I hope I answered the question, but maybe not completely.
Then let's use a different example. I've never met Trump; only ever seen him on TV and in photos. I've learned to use the term "Donald Trump" by associating it with certain digital images. But do those digital images have anything to do with the meaning of "Donald Trump". Of course not. The name refers to the man himself.
I don't see why this is any different in the case of "pain". The public expression is just a middle-man; a "hook" with which I can connect the word and the sensation.
When I talk of others being in pain, I'm not talking about them behaving as I do when I have that sensation; I'm talking about them feeling as I do when I have that sensation. The behaviour may be an inevitable consequence, but that's it.
You just keep asserting, but I have justification. The possibility of mistake indicates that the belief may be wrong, and if the belief may be wrong, we are justified in doubting it. You simply assert that's absurd, but clearly it's not.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't agree that belief is a constraint on doubt. Doubt, like its opposite, certitude, is an attitude which we have toward beliefs. Having beliefs does not free up one's certitude, nor does it constrain one's doubts.
Quoting Sam26
An important aspect, not to lose sight of, is the difference between "I know" and "you know". Usually, our attitude toward what another claims to know, is of less certitude than what oneself claims to know. So if someone else claims to know something, I might doubt this, but if I claim to know something, I wouldn't be doubting it, or else I wouldn't be claiming to know it.
In general then, certitude relates directly to "I know", and doubt relates directly to "you know". When you justify to me, what you claim to know, then I can claim that I know it as well, therefore the doubt which was related to what you know has been replaced with certitude relating to what I know. I now know what I previously doubted that you knew. The certitude is always related to what I know, and the doubt is always related to what you know.
Quoting Sam26
The problem with this is that there may be nothing which we both know, until we discuss it and rule out the inconsistencies. Even if we both observe the very same event, we know it in our different ways, with our different words, and discussing it produces consistency. So we probablycannot say that there is anything which we both know, unless we've discussed with each other, and confirmed, that this is what we both know.
Quoting Sam26
To assume these foundational beliefs, hinge-propositions, is to assume that there are certain things which we both know, without having discussed them. If we discuss them to confirm that we both know them, we bring them into the realm of epistemology. To assume that we both know them, without having discussed them is a faulty assumption.
Quoting Sam26
See, this is the point Sam26. As soon as you recognize that "my belief" starts out as private, and not public, then every belief must be justified. There can be no such thing as hinge-propositions, because "hinge-propositions" implies that there are beliefs which start out as public beliefs, beliefs which we all have in common, which need not be justified. If you allow that beliefs start out as "my beliefs", i.e. as private, then this is inconsistent with "hinge-propositions".
If you deny private beliefs, as Banno does, then hinge-propositions make sense. Beliefs start out as public. We all start out with the very same fundamental beliefs, hinge-propositions, which do not need to be justified because they are the very same, in agreement, right from the start. Consider that these are beliefs given to us by instinct, or something like that. They just come to us naturally, and they come to us all the same, common, shared, so they are public. However, if these instinctual beliefs come to us as something private, uniquely individual to each of us, then there can be no hinge-propositions, as each one of these needs to be justified.
It's possible that I will win the lottery tomorrow, but I'm not justified in doubting that I won't. Doubt requires more than just possibility.
The possibility of mistake pertains to all of our beliefs; does this mean that we are justified in doubting all of our beliefs? In any case, what you state here is a belief, and it may be wrong; therefore, by its own criterion, I am justified in doubting it.
1) this is a hand
2) it is possible that 1) is false
Is it possible that 2) is false? If not then we can doubt 1) but not 2) (according to MU).
I suppose it's similar in kind to Socrates' "I know that I know nothing". It's not really supposed to be taken as self-defeating.
This would exclude anyone from buying a lottery ticket. And that's why Wittgenstein's argument, that doubt can be excluded if it is unreasonable, is itself an unreasonable argument. Many would agree that it is unreasonable to buy a lottery ticket, yet they still do it.
As I said, if you cannot demonstrate certainty, then doubt is justified. If you cannot demonstrate with certainty, that I will not win the lottery, then my buying a ticket is justified.
Quoting aletheist
Yes, it extends to all beliefs. But it is personal, private, as an attitude. You decide which beliefs you will and will not doubt, and I decide which beliefs I will and will not doubt.
Quoting aletheist
Right, that's exactly what I am trying to demonstrate. I don't doubt this, because I have an attitude of certitude toward it. But my attitude of certitude does not make it a certainty. I haven't been able to demonstrate to you that it ought to be accepted, therefore you have an attitude of doubt toward it. So it is clearly not a certainty. However, unless you demonstrate to me that I ought to release my attitude of certitude, I will not doubt it.
Each person has certitude toward some beliefs which are held by that person. Each person has doubt toward some beliefs held by others. The beliefs which one has certitude toward, and doubt toward vary from one person to another. Therefore, when I take into account the attitudes of all human beings, I cannot say with certitude that there is any belief which will not be doubted by someone. So I cannot accept the claim that there are some beliefs which it is unreasonable for anyone to doubt.
If by doubt you just mean "not certain". But it can also mean "not likely".
Will I have a job tomorrow? I'm not certain, but I'm not doubtful either. I'm pretty sure I will.
Are you saying that we learn meaning only by understanding that there is "the real Donald Trump?" (as opposed to the digital image) - or that there is some referent X that is required? It would seem that we can not only use the word correctly by referring to his image, but that we understand the meaning by using the word to refer to the image. What more do we need? What more would we understand if we saw the real referent as opposed to the image of the referent? We understand that it's not the real thing when looking at the image, but how does that take away from the meaning of the word? The important thing is that we use the word correctly, and in doing so we show that we understand what the word means.
Yes, the name does refer to the man himself, but can we derive correct usage, and as such, meaning, by only referring to the digital image? Yes. The "middle-man" works just as well for the term Donald Trump. The digital images themselves, or the text on a page, are not what gives meaning to the word, but how we use the word in reference to those images, or for that matter how we use the word to refer to the actual person. The object conveys no meaning in itself. It's only as we use concepts within a language that meaning is conferred. If the object conveyed the meaning, then how is it that we understand the meaning of Aristotle? The referent is gone, it no longer exists, so how is it that we understand what the word means?
Quoting Michael
Yes, again I agree, that in the case of the concept pain, it is just a middle-man, the "hook" as you put it, but it is very important in this case, more so than in the other example. More so because of the beetle-in-the box example, that is, without the pain behavior we wouldn't know if we were referring to the same sensation (the same referent). The pain behavior is essential to understanding correct usage and meaning. My private experience, although important, is not what gives meaning to the words we use, that is, meaning happens as we use words in a rule governed activity (language).
There is another aspect to this that's important, and I think it goes along with what your saying, if I understand you correctly. Without the existence of the pain (the private sensation) there would be no pain behavior, and thus no meaning to convey. This is true, but the existence of the private sensation although necessary for pain behavior, is not necessary for the correct use (meaning) of the word in a language setting. It is a kind of backdrop, a necessary backdrop, as in the case of my prelinguistic beliefs, to the development of language.
It is true that when we talk about the pain of others, we are talking about how they feel. However, how is it that we learn how someone feels? How is it that we learn how to associate the word pain with that feeling? Is it not by observing pain behavior? If there were no pain behavior what feeling would we be referring to (again the beetle-in-the-box)? What would it mean to say that I am in pain without pain behavior in a linguistic context? The pain behavior, although an outgrowth of our private sensations, is a necessary outgrowth in terms of our understanding of the concept. In some cases the middle-man is necessary for meaning and understanding to take place (within language). It is not necessary for my private understanding, but it is necessary for a public understanding.
Right, that's what sensation terms refer to and how we learn their meanings.
Quoting Sam26
A belief is about something: "I believe that..." What follows the ellipsis can only be a linguistic statement. Unless by "private" you mean something like "unformulated", where the person is unaware that they hold a particular belief. If that's the case, then I don't think they should be called "private", given the Wittgensteinian connotations (i.e. that they are unable to be made public).
A belief is about something, true, but it doesn't necessarily have to take the form "I believe that..." one's actions can express one's beliefs. And yes the belief is unformulated in terms of language, but as I pointed out in earlier posts which people seem to skip over, is the fact that we know that people who have had no language think in terms of beliefs. People who have been deaf and blind can have quite a sophisticated belief system, quite apart from language.
Obviously I would believe something is there because I can see it. If I had reason to doubt one specific case it would only be on the unlikely basis that I might be hallucinating, but this doubt would soon be cleared up by corroboration with others, or by feeling the object, checking that it persists, and so on.
The sharing of a "public" world does not require linguistic ability. Look at the higher social animals for example.
Yeah, that's how we've been discussing doubt, in relation to certainty, in the sense of "it is certain". "It is likely" has a different meaning from "it is certain". If we can exclude doubt with "it is likely", then "it is certain" and "it is likely" end up meaning the same thing, as without a doubt. Wittgenstein's proposal was to base certainty in something which is unreasonable to doubt, but then "it is certain" is reduced to "it is likely", i.e. that which it is unreasonable to doubt.
And this means that constitutive rules don't stop the regress. Sense perception does.
That's not right at all. To put in some semi-arbitrary percentages, it's certain if the probability is 100%, likely if the probability is >=75%, unlikely if the probability is <= 25%, and impossible if the probability is 0%.
We often use the term "doubt" to refer to something with a low probability, not just to anything that isn't certain. If the likelihood that I will win the game is 95%, then I'm not certain that I will win, but neither am I doubtful. I'm pretty sure that I will win.
"Pretty sure" isn't "certain", but neither is it "doubtful". You're setting up a false dichotomy.
I am not following. You have a guy describing the rules of chess to you and you are doubting . . . exactly what? You say "everything he says". What does that mean?
When someone says "tomorrow it will rain" you can doubt that. It makes sense. You can say "well, maybe it won't rain". But when someone says "these are the rules of the chess" and you doubt that what does that mean? I can interpret it in a positive manner but I am not sure this is the way you are interpreting it. For example, maybe you are saying to this guy "well, these are not the standard rules of chess" where "the standard rules of chess" means "what most people understand to be the rules of chess". This makes perfect sense. You can make such objections. I don't see how such a doubt is something other than perfectly sensible. It might turn out that most people think that the rules of chess are something other than what this person is telling you the standard rules of chess are.
Your numbers are totally arbitrary. If you use "doubt" in this way, you have no clear division as to what probability ought to be doubted, and what probability ought not be doubted. Therefore you have just deferred the doubt, such that we must now doubt whether or not to doubt any particular probability. Do we doubt a 60% probability, 80%, 90%? If we make a determination that we ought to doubt 90%, but not 91%, then we can still doubt that judgement, and also doubt the judgement of the judgement. All you have done is inverted the infinite regress of justification so that it now appears as an infinite regress of doubt. .
Quoting Michael
But 95% probability does not remove doubt. Nor does 99%. I've been explaining doubt as an attitude. It is dichotomize with certitude, not certainty (in the sense of "it is certain"), so let me straighten out my categories.
If, when it is 95% certain that you will win the game, you do not proceed with the attitude that it is possible for you to lose (doubt), then you probably will lose. It's like a work place accident, if your attitude is that statistics show it's highly unlikely for me to be injured on my job, therefore I do not need to be careful in my actions, then you will be the one to get hurt. So doubt is the attitude which encourages us to avoid the possibility of mistake. It is to be respectful of the possibility of mistake. Even when that possibility is very low, we must respect it, and this reflects in our actions, as an effort to avoid mistakes wherever they are apprehended as possible. Doubt must coexist with confidence, in order that we will proceed, but certitude is a type of extreme confidence, like arrogance, which negates doubt, making us lose respect for the possibility of mistake.
Quoting Michael
As I said, the dichotomy is between certitude and doubt, as these are both attitudes which negate each other. The dichotomy is not between "doubt" and "certain". "Pretty sure" is not certitude. It inspires the confidence required to proceed, while allowing the doubt which inspires the effort to avoid mistake. Certitude inspires the confidence to proceed but without any respect for the possibility of mistake. "Pretty sure" indicates some degree of doubt.
And this is the dichotomy that I'm criticising. When I say that I doubt something, I'm not just saying that I don't have certitude; I'm saying that I think it unlikely.
Contrast with thinking that something is likely, which is neither certitude nor doubt.
These all mean different things:
I'm certain that I will win
I'm pretty sure that I will win
I doubt that I will win
Quoting Magnus Anderson
Remember, you said we can doubt anything we want, so I gave you an example of someone teaching the rules of chess, and the person to whom they are teaching the game is doubting the rules, doubting everything the teacher says. Does it make sense to doubt in this situation? One doesn't doubt simply because one wants to doubt, one doubts because there are good reasons to doubt. Think about how the word doubt is taught, doubt arises in very specific ways, you're not taught to doubt everything, and you're not taught to doubt based on a whim. All words are taught in specific ways, that is, they are taught to be used in a specific kind of language-game. So there is a kind of logic of use when it comes to word usage, one doesn't simple apply one's own rules arbitrarily.
Constitutive rules just are what a culture, a way of life, takes to be inherently given in perception, in life. Obviously this is mediated, but not totally determined by, individual cultures. Hands are the example in question. Since the hand is indispensable, in fact absolutely foundational, to all forms of human life and culture, whether prime-itive, ancient, medieval, modern, post-modern, creative or scientific; the fact that we have hands could not be more constitutive.
Sure; but a belief does have to be such that it could be placed in the form: X believes that B.
Someone with no language can show their belief. Someone else with language can put it in the canonical form.
Jack the cat can show his belief. I put it in the canonical form.
In neither case is the belief private. It is shown. Similarly, it must be possible to format any supposedly private belief in the canonical form X believes B.
Oh, I see that you insist on using "doubt" differently than me. You want to restrict "doubt" such that it would only be used if you thought something unlikely. For the purpose of epistemology, I do not think that this is a good definition. I think that knowledge ought to held to a higher standard.
It makes sense to doubt in such a situation. I gave you an example.
Quoting Sam26
Not necessarily. For example, it is possible to doubt for no reason at all.
Well, if you're sitting with an expert chess player, and they're teaching you the game of chess, and you start doubting everything he's says, without good reason, what sense could we make of your doubts? It would seem that you don't have a good grasp on reality, or you just haven't learn to use the English words correctly, or you have a mental illness.
Eventually there is a point where your doubt is pointless. It does not serve any purpose. At that point we are quite entitled to ignore your doubt.
We might not be able to convince you but we can tell you to get lost.
Quoting Sam26
You can question his expertise for a start. You can also question whether his words truly reflect his thoughts. And so on. There are many things that you can question in such a scenario. So your claim that it makes no sense to doubt in such a scenario is what truly makes no sense.
Don't give me a reason to doubt, then say, look it makes sense to doubt. Of course it makes sense if you have a good reason, but that's not what you claimed. You claimed that we can doubt whenever we want. I'm saying no, doubt requires good reasons. If you don't know if the chess instructor really is an expert, then of course you can express a doubt, that's what having a good reason means.
My statements are:
1) Nothing is immune to doubt
2) The logic of doubt, i.e. when we decide to doubt and when we decide not to doubt, is relative
Do you agree with the first? I guess you do.
Do you agree with the second? I guess you don't. If so, why?
@Banno's value judgments -- yes, they are value judgments -- are of no relevance. Calling certain patterns of doubting "irrational" changes nothing.
So it’s not “given this evidence one does believe....”; it’s “given this evidence one ought believe...”.
That's a good way of stating the issue with doubt. Because of #2, the fact that doubt is relative to the particular individual, in the particular situation, therefore #1 is true.
For every individual there are many things which are and are not subject to doubt. But these things vary from one individual to another, such that nothing is beyond doubt in relation to everyone in every situation.
There are many things which I doubt, which Banno finds unreasonable to doubt, and there are completely different things that I doubt which Sam26 finds unreasonable to doubt. And there are also things which Banno and Sam26 doubt, that I do not doubt. There is not a whole lot of consistency between one person and another with respect to what we doubt, and this is what makes it unreasonable to claim that there are some things which are beyond doubt. But of course Banno and Sam26 doubt this, just like I doubt that there is anything which is unreasonable to doubt.
Or we can say, a point where one's doubt is baseless.
Doubt has to hinge on something we know. We just could not haphazardly doubt anything and everything. The foundationalist would just dismiss us as irritating. And then, of course, what would we say when someone calls our attention to the fact that doubting itself is certitude.
Certainty is indestructible.
If @Magnus Anderson wants to say repeatedly that they are not bitter, that tells us something about Magnus, not something about lemons.
If he insists that it is worth doubting that two and two is four, that tells us again about Magnus, not about arithmetic.
If he insists on doubting that the bishop only moves diagonally in chess, again, that is about him, not chess.
And if he insists on doubting the hand flapping before him...
If you repeatedly say that lemons are bitter, does that tell us something about you or about lemons?
What if he tells me that bishops move horizontally and vertically. Does it make sense to doubt him?
I assumed you were working with the definition of 'Constitutive Rule' given earlier in the thread, according to which a Constitutive Rule is an ostensive definition of a word. But here you say that a constitutive rule is 'what a culture takes to be inherently given in perception'. Is it what is actually given in perception, or merely what some people 'take' to be given?
Best,
PA
What does it tell you about him?
Best,
PA
Surely it's "real" taste (although what purpose does the term "real" serve here?) just is whatever it tastes like to us?
It doesn't make much sense to me to say that we taste it as bitter but it's "really" sweet.
Actually no, if you believe he is an expert, and all the information you have about him points to him as an expert, you would still have no reason to doubt him. Especially if you know nothing about chess. Later as you learn more you might think it weird that a chess expert would have told you such a thing. Or later you may find out that he is a practical joker, then you may reason to doubt what he says.
So the unreasonableness of doubt depends on there being reasonable evidence in favour (in this case, reasonable evidence that he's an expert)?
So unless I have good reasons, I shouldn't doubt that you're an expert chess player, or that Banno is an expert tennis player? That doesn't seem right. Surely I need good reasons to believe that you are?
It seems to me that you're only saying that if we believe we have evidence that X is the case then we need good reasons to doubt it, whereas others are doubting whether or not we even have evidence that X is the case. I don't think the default position is that we do have evidence, and that additional reasons are required to doubt that we do.
This is what I believe Magnus is talking about here. Whether or not to trust them is just a matter of choice.
If I remember correctly, my example is that the teacher is an expert, and the information or evidence you have gives you reasons to believe he is an expert. So given such information, it would be unreasonable to doubt what he's telling you about the game of chess.
You've changed the example, of course if someone simply tells me that he's an expert, that in itself doesn't mean that he is. Especially since there are so few experts in a field, so that in itself my make you question the person.
So what evidence is this? What reasons do I have to trust this evidence over doubt it? As I said above, you only seem to be saying that if we believe that we have evidence that X is true then it is unreasonable to doubt that X is true, whereas others are questioning the antecedent.
I doubt that Y is evidence that the teacher is an expert. Do I need reasons? Do we simply assume that Y is evidence?
Now are there good reasons to sometimes doubt the experts, of course.
I know that. But him being an expert isn't the same as me having evidence that he's an expert. Any random person who talks to me in the street might be an expert. Are you suggesting that in those occasions where, unknown to me, the person I'm talking to is an expert it would be unreasonable to doubt what he tells me? That doesn't strike me as right.
I need reasons to believe that the person I'm talking to is an expert. So given suggested evidence X (say, him telling me that he's an expert), am I to just assume that X is evidence that he's an expert? Or am I free to doubt that it's evidence, despite not having any evidence that he's lying?
Agreed.
Quoting Michael
Of course not, and I've already addressed this, at least I thought I did.
Quoting Michael
Someone simply telling you they're an expert isn't good evidence that they are, so no, that wouldn't be enough. Here's the evidence you have: You saw him play in tournaments, you've read his expertise in articles and books, you know his rating according to FIDE is 2700, he owns a chess club where he teaches chess, etc., etc. Is that enough?
So how do we determine what is or isn't evidence? How do we determine when it is or isn't reasonable to doubt that something is evidence?
At some point, as Magnus has suggested, it just comes down to choice. You either trust that something is evidence or you doubt it. I don't think it right to say that doubt always requires evidence against, as if trust is the rational default.
Wow, that's going to take a while to answer. You tell me. :D
Yes, if I was reading an official print out of FIDE ratings, I would make an assumption that it's accurate. At some point doubting just comes to an end, that is, I decide that I have enough evidence to support the idea that the man is a chess expert.
You can always create a scenario where it might be reasonable to doubt something, there's no denying that, but at some point your doubting just doesn't make sense. Let's say I have an inductive argument that's only 80% probable, is it reasonable to doubt the conclusion? I would say no. Why? Because most of the evidence is in favor of the conclusion.
Most of what we believe comes through the testimony of others, are we to doubt most of it? I think not. It's not about attitude, otherwise any doubt would be reasonable depending on your attitude. That doesn't seem rational to me.
And what evidence do you have that it's official? Do I need reasons to doubt it, or do I need reasons to trust it? I shouldn't just believe it because it says "official" in the text, as anyone could write that.
My point is that the default position isn't that something is true, or that something is evidence. I don't need reasons to doubt that you're being honest with me, as if I should just assume that you're trustworthy.
If I tell you that I have a brother named John, should you just accept that? Would it be unreasonable to doubt that I'm telling you the truth, even though you likely don't have reason to believe that I'm lying?
Doubting that someone is telling the truth isn't the same as assuming that they're lying.
>> If I remember correctly, my example is that the teacher is an expert, and the information or evidence you have gives you reasons to believe he is an expert. So given such information, it would be unreasonable to doubt what he's telling you about the game of chess.
In other words, if you decide not to question his expertise it makes no sense to question his expertise. Great stuff.
So by the "real" taste you mean what we would taste were we to eat a lemon without foreign interference? That makes more sense.
Bedlam is ful of such reasonable folk.
These are reasonable questions. What would be unreasonable would be to explain his odd behaviour by searching the sky for flying saucers.
Choose Flying Saucers or malevolent daemons if you wish.
You have this problem of not being able to respond to what I am saying with something that is in some way relevant.
My point is that there is nothing that is immune to doubt. That's my point. And in order to demonstrate this, I had to show that there is always a possibility that we are wrong no matter how certain of our beliefs we are. Beliefs such as "lemons are bitter" are not necessarily true. There is always a possibility that they are wrong. I gave you an example of how such a belief can turn out to be wrong. I am not saying that such a belief is necessarily wrong. I am not saying that "lemons are bitter" is wrong. I am simply saying that such a belief MIGHT be wrong.
You preoccupy yourself with REASONS for questioning our beliefs. There can be any set of reasons for why we choose to question our beliefs. In fact, there might be no reasons at all -- we might question our beliefs for no reason at all. None of that is relevant. You give me the impression that you feel that you are under attack for the manner in which you maintain your beliefs. Again, I am not giving any instructions on how others should live their lives. What I am doing is I am simply saying that any belief can turn out to be wrong and that questioning your beliefs can turn out to be useful in one important sense: it can help you discover weaknesses in your position which can then motivate you to change your position in such a way so that it becomes a stronger position.
The ostensive definitions of words just are what people in general take to be given in perception. What do you mean by "actually given in perception"? How could this be different than what people in general consider to be given in perception?
I really can't understand this claim. Suppose that a person is overcome with a severe illness causing delusion, and hallucinations, with the appearance of all sorts of phantasms, paranoia and suspicion of everyone and everything. This person would be completely unsure of what was real. Wouldn't this person doubt everything and know nothing?
Why do you think that doubt must hinge on something known? What about a baby just born? Isn't this baby lacking in knowledge, but full of doubt? Isn't the fundamental learning process of trial and error based in doubt? And doesn't trial and error precede knowing?
Why do you think doubt must hinge on something known?
Interesting locution. What is this immunity here?
2+2=4 is not immune to doubt? But doubt here could only mean that the doubter did not know what "2", "+", "=" or "4" meant...
So what is it they are doubting? Not that 2+2=4, because they do not understand what that means, and so could not doubt it.
Consider my answers a bit more charitably, because I am confident I am responding to your argument.
Those who follow Wittgenstein hereabouts, myself included, have been a little bit disingenuous in their reporting of OC, as those who have actually read it will know. Time to come clean.
The indubitable can indeed be doubted, albeit only under specific circumstances.
The argument is, roughly, that in a given language game (and it is all language games), there are certain things that cannot sensibly be doubted. So in geometry the three angles of a triangle add to a straight angle and in Chess the bishop moves only diagonally.
However, language games themselves are subject to change. So in some geometries the angles of a triangle add to more than a straight angle, in others to less; once the pawn could only move one square, but to speed the game this was changed to two squares for its initial move.
In such cases it is very important to understand which game is being played.
MU, and I assume also Magnus, are using "doubt" to mean "lack of certainty", and it seems reasonable to lack certainty if something isn't certain.
If I know that something could be false then I know that it being true isn't certain, and if it being true isn't certain then it would be unreasonable to be certain that it is true.
It seems to me (although correct me if I'm wrong) that you're misinterpreting them as saying that they have a reason to believe that it is false (as opposed to just could be false), or at least that the evidence that it's true isn't compelling. But that doesn't seem to me to be what they're saying at all. They're just saying that because it isn't certain, they're not certain. What's wrong with that?
Or just 100% probability, if that's different.
Necessary implies it is true in every possible world.
100% probable implies it is true.
Being certain implies that it is indubitable.
Three distinct things, unless someone can show that they are the same.
Indeed; even Descartes thought so.
There must be a distinction between what I think is given in perception and what is actually given in perception, just as there is a distinction between what I think is on the menu at Sizzler and what is on the menu at Sizzler. What is actually given in perception is what you actually see. What is 'there' before your conscious awareness. What I think is given may be utterly different.
Still, I think we might agree. I say that perceiving a hand is sufficient to end a regress of sceptical questions. You say that the ostensive definition 'this is a hand' is sufficient. I am not sure the two views are really different.
Quoting StreetlightX
Descartes' announces the aim of his doubts in the opening lines of the Meditations, and so I find it incredible that people have so often failed to understand his purposes. To me, he is perfectly clear. He was trying to find something 'stable and lasting'. He wanted to give an argument for some of his opinions - an argument so strong that it couldn't later be over turned. It isn't clear to me that this necessarily meant solving the regress problem or engaging in some sort of false drama. If you want to give a great advantage to your own philosophical theories over others, and you have just seen the fall of the most respected system so far (from Descartes' perspective) - the Aristotelean one - then what he tries to do makes perfect sense.
Best,
PA
Why would you say that doubting the meaning of something is not a sensible form of doubt?. I think not understanding the meaning is the basis of all doubt. As I described earlier in the thread, those who doubt the existence of the external world do so because they doubt the meaning of "existence". Since it has not been demonstrated to them what it means to exist, such that "existence" could be applied to external things, they doubt whether "existence" can properly refer to external things. So they are completely unsure (doubtful) as to whether the external world has any existence, because "existence" has been assigned to it, but what it means to exist has not been explained, demonstrated, or justified.
Quoting Banno
Why do you think that one could not doubt what they do not understand? Isn't "not understanding" the very cause of doubt, just like understanding is the cause of certitude? Someone sees these symbols "2+2=4'", and recognizes that they are symbols, but has doubt, because the meaning is not known
Quoting Banno
If a person does not understand the rules of a particular game, then the person looks at those rules with doubt. This is completely sensible. What doesn't make sense is to assert that those rules cannot sensibly be doubted.
So the tyrant dictates: "these are the rules and you cannot sensibly doubt them, because you are my subjects, and you have no choice but to play my game". Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Mathematical equations such as 2+2=4 are not immune to doubt. They can turn out to be wrong. One only has to understand how.
How do we determine whether any given mathematical equation is true or false? This is the question we must answer.
Any given mathematical equation is true if it belongs to the set of all valid mathematical equations. We can narrow this down by saying: any given mathematical equation of the form a + b = c is true if it belongs to the set of all valid mathematical equations of the form a + b = c. This is still complex. We need something simpler. Let's focus on the logical operation of negation. Any logical expression of the form not p = q is true if it belongs to the set of all valid logical expression of the form not p = q. Still, this is somewhat complex. To make it simpler, I'll generalize it. Instead of speaking of a specific logical expression that is negation I'll speak of a unary operation on a set of bits. Thus, any given unary operation on a set of bits, op x = y, is true if it belongs to the set of all valid unary operations a on set of bits. This will allow me to escape social conventions and use language any way I want. It will allow me to demonstrate that 2 + 2 = 4 is true not because of social conventions but because of what the individual decides to be the set of all valid mathematical equations.
So what is the set of all valid unary operations on a set of two bits? You choose. It's a personal choice. It can be anything you want. For example, it can be {(1,0), (0,1)}. This would be what most call negation. But you don't have to call it that. You can call it anything you want. You can call it "fuck your mother bastard" if you are badass enough. What is important is that the individual himself chooses the set against which he's going to be comparing mathematical expressions for their validity.
My orientation is extensional rather than intensional. I focus on actions first and words second. I have a negative opinion of philosophies that put way too much emphasis on language and other social conventions.
The set of all unary operations on the set of bits {0, 1} is {(0,0), (0,1), (1,0), (1,1)}. Now we have to choose the set of all valid unary operations on a set of bits. Let this be {(0,1), (1,0)}. This means that unary operations such as (0,0) and (1,1) are invalid (a.k.a. false) and unary operations such as (0,1) and (1,0) are valid (a.k.a. true.)
The only thing left to do right now is to explain how it is possible to be wrong about these sorts of statements. How is it possible to be wrong that 2 + 2 = 4?
There are three things we must focus on:
1. the set of all valid mathematical equations
2. the mathematical equation under consideration
3. our judgment as to whether the mathematical equation under our consideration (2) belongs to the set of all valid mathematical equations (1) expressed as either true or false
It looks sort of like a deductive argument, doesn't it? Let's give an example.
1. the set of all valid ordered pairs of bits is {(1,0), (0,1)}
2. the order pair of bits under our consideration is (0,0)
3. the statement that the order pair of bits under our consideration (2) belongs to the set of all valid ordered pairs of bits (1) is true
But this is wrong, isn't it? It is not true that (0,0) belongs to the set {(1,0), (0,1)}. We made a mistake and this mistake has nothing to with language i.e. we did not make it because we failed to understand the concepts.
That was a simple example. In reality, we rarely make mistakes with simple calculations such as "not F = q". But when a calculation is sufficiently complex, mistakes of this kind are very common.
For example, a mathematical equation such as (235110 * 2 - 65261 + 81) * 163 - 1684 = 66019836 is more difficult to verify. If an average person was asked to calculate the result of (235110 * 2 - 65261 + 81) * 163 - 1684 it wouldn't be surprising if they made a mistake. And such a mistake, you will agree, has nothing to do with an inability to understand concepts. Most people who make such mistakes understand the concepts very well. More often than not, the cause of such mistakes is a weak concentration.
I am not saying "doubt everything". What I am saying is that "everything can turn out to be wrong". There is no statement that is indubitable. Rather, there are simply statements that we choose not to doubt for one reason or another. A man who doubts everything cannot act for action requires that he settles on what's going to happen. If I can't decide whether it is raining outside or not I can neither take an umbrella and go outside nor go outside without taking an umbrella with me. Most of us don't want to be stuck in a limbo, so we are more than happy to put an end to doubt. But that does not mean we stop doubting when we reach absolute truth. If I decide that it is raining and that I should take an umbrella with me that does not mean it is raining outside. It simply means I got tired of doubting which forced me to go with my best guess. I am not a fan of extreme skepticism but at the same time I am not a fan of dogmatism according to which there are indubitable statements. There is no such a thing as indubitable statements. Everything can turn out to be wrong including 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4 will turn out to be wrong when we realize, if we ever realize, that the set of valid mathematical equations that is of interest to us does not contain this expression.
Including this one?
Wittgenstein might have said the very same thing. He was a senior engineer in the Austrian army during the war, and had a famous "negative opinion" of philosophy. The premise of the Investigations is that philosophers pay way too much emphasis on language, detaching it from the actions in which they gain their meaning; hence "the meaning of a word is it's use in a language game".
What do others think of this?
As for certainty and necessity, I suppose that depends on how liberal we're being with the term "necessity". If I'm a man and all men are mortal, is it necessary that I'm mortal? It necessarily follows from the premises, but there could a possible world where I'm not mortal (either because I'm not a man or because not all men are mortal).
Although I'm not really sure how this addresses the key claims that 1) if something is possibly false then it isn't certain, that 2) if something isn't certain then it is unreasonable to be certain of it, and that 3) to doubt is to lack certainty.
You verify that a mathematical equation is true by checking whether it belongs to some set of mathematical equations. You verify that "not T = F" is true by checking whether it belongs to some set of mathematical equations. If this set is {"not T = F", "not F = T"} then it is true; otherwise, it might be not. This set has a location. This means you have to properly locate it. If you don't then your conclusions might not be true. If instead of locating {"not T = F", "not F = T"} you locate a set such as {"not T = T", "not F = F"} then you will conclude, erroneously, that "not T = F" is not true. And it is possible that it is aliens who are responsible for your failure to properly locate the set you want to locate.
You can think of this set in more concrete terms. Think of a drawer that contains balls that are equal in all respects except in color. They can be equal in color but not necessarily. Say you're holding a red ball in your hand and you want to know whether there is such a ball in the drawer. What do you have to do in order to find your answer? You have to open the drawer and look for a ball that is of the same color. But you might end up opening the wrong drawer . . . and this could be because of the aliens. Through some action at a distance, each time you try to open the drawer, these evil aliens replace the original drawer with a different one.
Do you get my point?
I don't. I verify that twice two is four... well, I don't understand how it needs verification. In understanding what is being said, I am certain of it's truth.
It's like when someone says "truth is there is no truth" and then some moron comes along and objects with a statement such as "but that would be a truth, no? you said it yourself . . . it's a truth which states there are no truths . . . . so your statement is self-defeating" which indicates nothing but autism on their part.
So in your view only necessary statements can be certain?
Well, I don't think necessary and certain mean the very same thing. Because while I am certain that I am writing this sentence in English, in some possible world I am writing it in French.
No, certainty is a propositional attitude; necessity isn't.
It's not just a propositional attitude. If I remove 13 hearts from an ordinary deck of cards then it is certain that I won't find another, even if I believe otherwise. Or if I believe that there are only 12 hearts and so after removing 12 of them am certain that I won't find another than my certainty is misplaced, given that there certainly will be another.
Michael is certain that there are no hearts in the pack.
Looks like it sets out your attitude to a proposition...?
It seems that you are talking about individual instances of perception; where mistakes can be made, to be sure. I'm talking about perception in general where mistakes get ironed out, and constitutive rules concerning what is given in everyday perception, i.e. the world of objects and things in general, become the implicit background against which all beliefs and doubts find their sense.
So, perception of a hand as a hand is only possible once this background is in place.
I am certain that I will win the lottery tomorrow. That's about my attitude. But is it certain that I will win tomorrow? That has nothing to do with my attitude.
I dunno, mate. You said it. You tell me.
So you assert that no statement is indubitable (except that one?), then question what indubitable means, then claim a distraction? No, it's not important.
You said it!
You are one describing this -- not the person you are referring to. How would he know he is hallucinating? Oh, I see. Because he would have an idea of what's not a hallucination. Just like you can't claim you're only dreaming if you have no idea of a not-dream world.
If a million out of a million observed swans are white the statement "all swans are white" is dubitable to a very low degree because it would take quite a lot of new observations to reject this proposition. Forget Popper, he was a moron. A single black swan does not refute the claim. It makes it weaker, that is true, but if a million swans are white the impact is almost non-existent. Popper was an absolutist who lost faith in absolute positivity (verificationism) and sought a new one in absolute negativity (falsificationism.)
Curious.
How is "It is certain that..." different from "It is true that..."?
Hereabouts, it is hard to come by a white swan, but the black ones are plentiful.
That's not what I argued, Meta.
Do you doubt that twice two is four? Could you? And if you came across someone who could, what would you make of them?
Because it isn't certain that it landed heads up then it would be unreasonable for you to be certain that it landed heads up. It would be reasonable to doubt (in the sense of "not certain") that it landed heads up.
I'm interested in the first one. That seems to me to be what the thread is about.
This line of enquiry is apparently up a garden path. I'm going back to the playground.
Sure. The issue is whether or not certainty as a propositional attitude is justified. If there's a 10% chance that something will happen, is it reasonable to be certain that it will happen? What if it's 99%? What if it's 100%? The claim MU and others are making is that if something isn't certain to be true then it is reasonable to be uncertain (doubt). Of course that's not to say that it's reasonable to believe that it's false, which is where I think there's been a misunderstanding between you and them.
I can strongly believe that something is the case and still have doubt. The skeptic can still believe all the same things you do; that this is a hand and that there's a cat on the mat.
Words are our tools. We can't just assume that the word means the same in both uses.
If something could be false then it is reasonable to lack a full conviction that it is true.
So do we agree that it's got nothing to do with the main topic, which is belief as a propositional attitude?
I think you have helpedset out a nice distinction. Cheers.
That must be an intentional misread. The meaning of "could" in that sentence has nothing to do with our propositional attitude, but whether or not something could be false does have something to do with whether or not our propositional attitude is justified.
So take the sentence either way:
If something is possibly (modal) false then it is reasonable to lack a full conviction that it is true.
If something has a non-zero probability of being false then it is reasonable to lack a full conviction that it is true.
He wouldn't, but that's exactly what doubt is, being unsure.
Quoting Banno
In general practise, I do not doubt "2+2=4", I use these mathematical principles all the time, without doubt that they help me achieve what I use them for.
However, I have doubted the truth of this statement in the past, and I have found it curiously contradictory. There is a problem with the meaning of "=", equivalence, which is inconsistent with the meaning of "unit" . Units are what the numerals represent to me, "2" signifying a unit of two, "4" signifying a unit of four.
On the left side of the equivalence signifier, we have two units of two, with a sign for addition. On the right side we have one unit of four. What is signified is that the two units on the left side are equivalent to the one unit on the right side. Initially, this appears as an impossibility, to say that two distinct units are the same, or equivalent, to one. It would require either a very odd definition of "equivalent", or some further standard, such as size, or weight, to say that the two units are equivalent to the one unit.
But I haven't yet taken into account the "+", and it is by means of the "+" that the two are said to be equivalent. The "+" signifies an action, addition. And it is by means of this action, adding, that the two are said to be equivalent. So the two units on the left are not equivalent to the one on the right, until the action of addition is performed. They become equivalent through this activity.
Now here's the problem. Before the action of addition is carried out, there are two separate units of two. After the action of addition is carried out there is one unit of four. So the equivalence which is signified by "=" is dependent on this action. Therefore "=" does not signify that "2+2" coexists with "4" as two equivalent things, it signifies that "4" negates "2+2" by means of that action. Because "two units" and "one unit" is inherently contradictory, they cannot coexist as equivalent things, the action negates one to bring about the existence of the other.
Quoting Banno
Doubting this was very useful two me. It helped me to justify the belief that Platonic Realism is not a good ontology. So I think that anyone who doubts this is a good, diligent philosopher. Anyone philosopher who does not doubt these fundamental rules is probably stuck within the confines of a Platonic Realism ontology.
In short, to doubt the rules is the only way that we're going to get through, toward an understanding of what type of existence these rules have. We can assume, take for granted, the existence of the rules, and follow them without doubt, but this will not give us an ontology. That would be a case of accepting the existing ontology. Ontology being the game which provides the rules for epistemology. So we must take the rules, doubt them, rip them apart in analysis, in order to see what supports their existence if we want a good ontology. Then the epistemology is built on the ontology. If you're happy with the belief that the rules are necessary then keep your Platonic Realism. if you do not believe that they are necessary then why not doubt them? Doubting them will only increase your understanding of fundamental ontological principles.
I I I I
I can imagine that "4", in my language, means this many distinct units:
I I I
And I can imagine that, if that were true, 2+2 = 4, assuming that "2", in my language, means this many distinct units:
I I
I can also doubt that "2" means that many distinct units. But, holding the meaning of the symbols fixed, I cannot imagine that 2+2 is not 4. I cannot imagine that putting these units:
I I
with these units:
I I
would give me anything other than these units:
I I I I
Thus, there is a sense in which I couldn't really doubt that 2+2=4.
Best,
PA
That's exactly the same as saying "but, assuming that the future mimics the past, I cannot imagine the existence of zombies". You can't do something if you resist doing it.
Not really, since the meaning of "2" and "4" is something I can stipulate. I can stipulate that by "2" I mean:
I I
and by "4" I mean:
I I I I
What about this is dubitable? Can I doubt that "2" means what I think it does? Surely not, since I have decided what "2" means. What about this can I doubt then?
If you want to decide whether something is true or false, and you don't want this to be an arbitrary decision, there must be a standard. There must be something that is fixed.
Is 2 + 2 = 4 true or is it false? If it is an arbitrary decision, you can choose any of the two. But if it is not an arbitrary decision, then there must be something else, something other than your momentary will, that decides. It could be, for example, your earlier decision. For example, you might have said at some point in the past that 2 + 2 = 4 is true. This might have been an arbitrary decision. You could have said 2 + 2 = 4 is false but you didn't. You chose to say that 2 + 2 = 4 is true. It does not matter. You chose what you chose and now you want to remain consistent with that decision. You can't say 2 + 2 = 4 is false because that's not what you said in the past. And this is why doubt makes perfect sense: you want to verify that you are consistent. You want to make sure that what you say in the present corresponds to what you said in the past. You can never be sure that you are consistent due to the fact that memory is fallible. It's easy to forget. And that's how analytic propositions can be doubted. When people say that analytic propositions cannot be doubted what they mean is that they cannot be doubted in the same way that synthetic propositions can be doubted.
If you go down that path all discourse becomes meaningless. How could we discusses anything, or make sense of anything, if we radically doubted the veracity of our memories?
One's attitude, may or may not be justified, it depends on the reasonableness of the doubt, which is part of what you seem to be getting at. The attitude itself doesn't justify anything, not that you're making this claim, at least you don't seem to be. If there is a 10% chance that something will happen, then generally it would be unreasonable to claim that it will happen, and one's doubt that it won't happen seems reasonable enough. Would it be reasonable to doubt whether you will survive a fall if there is a 10% chance of survival? Most people would probably say no. Though the lines can get a bit blurry between what's reasonable and not reasonable to doubt when we're talking about a 50, 60, or 70% chance. So let's say your 70% sure that X will happen, would it be reasonable to express an attitude of doubt in such a situation, sure, even though you're reasonably sure that X will happen.
Whether someone can strongly believe something, and still express a doubt, depends on the situation or context. I can understand a doubt if one is only 70% certain that X will happen, so an expression of an attitude of doubt in such a situation is reasonable, as already mentioned. However, my belief that I'm sitting at my computer typing these words is beyond doubt. Doubt in such a situation seems senseless. Moreover, if you could doubt such a thing, then maybe you could even doubt that you're having the doubt. The fact that you doubt, shows your existence, so there are some doubts that are senseless or meaningless.
Whether one can strongly believe X, and still reasonably express one's attitude of doubt, depends on what we're talking about. My earlier example of someone doubting the expert chess player as they teach chess, is just such an example. The point isn't that you can't find reason to doubt the chess expert in some situations. We can always create a scenario in which it would be reasonable to doubt the chess expert. Most people, especially if we have good reasons to believe that the person is a chess expert, wouldn't doubt that the chess expert knows the basic rules of chess. Thus, to doubt the expert's explanation that bishop's move diagonally, and that bishops always remain on the same color in any given game, is an unreasonable doubt.
There are some propositions, in some contexts, that are not only immune to doubt, but also immune to knowledge claims. Such propositions, as Wittgenstein pointed out, are bedrock, i.e., they provide a backdrop which enables us to talk about knowledge and doubt. They are in a way, required, if we are to have meaningful discussions on epistemology, and by extension, meaningful discussions of what it means to doubt.
I'm not sure if you're using the term "doubt" the same way that MU and others are. What they mean by it is "not certain". Are you saying that "you can't find reason to [not be certain of] the chess expert in some situations"? I don't think that's right. If it is possible that what they're telling you isn't true then there is a reason to not be certain that what they're telling you is true (even if you nonetheless strongly believe them). Being certain of something that isn't certain seems unreasonable.
The majority of the posts appear aimed at arguing for either one or the other as somehow foundational, indubitable, primary, or whatever. The usual monistic response when faced with a dialectical choice.
But they are simply the opposing limits of the process of inquiry. And what matters is the way that they are balanced against each other.
A systems science or organicist understanding of balance says a dichotomy is a symmetry breaking, and a metaphysically complete symmetry-breaking is an asymmetry. An asymmetry, in turn, is a hierarchical organisation - a breaking that is local~global in its organisation.
So doubt and belief must be balanced in this fashion. Belief is the global or backdrop scale or epistemology - the broad and general ground of things not in doubt. While doubt is the local and particular scale - the various individual things which could be considered as failing to fit this background in some significant fashion.
A well-organised mind would have this well-developed hierarchical arrangement. There would be a robust backdrop of habitual or ingrained belief. And against that, doubts would arise in highly focused and meaningful fashion. Doubt could not be a general activity. But it would be a useful localised activity.
And again, belief and doubt would be just ideal limits, never absolute. A well-organised mind would simply approach those ideal limits by the end of its process of inquiry.
And also, a further important pragmatic principle is that this "truth seeking" behaviour has to have a purpose if it is indeed going to be optimised by a complementary principle of unconcern.
Again, a duality or dichotomy.
To have knowledge that is meaningful - that speaks to some purpose - means that the knower also has to be able to discard noise. The mind has to be able to filter out all the possible facts, doubts, uncertainties or unknowns that are the differences which make no difference ... to "it".
So meaningful knowledge is self-centred. The autonomous self arises - in contrast to the world in which it exists - to the degree it can effectively ignore that world in pursuit of its wishes.
It is fundamental to a pragmatic epistemology - the one that recognises selfhood to be a further epistemic constraint on knowledge - that this self gets to determine where to draw its own boundary of indifference. It is not a bug but the feature that this self can be indifferent to localised doubting - whether that is seemingly justified or unjustified.
The mistake is to think that the world is the ultimate arbiter. Out there, the actual truth of the matter lies.
That may be so, but first there has to be a genuine reason to care. Doubt only comes into play if a difference would make a difference. To some purpose. And hence the "self" that such intentionality would represent.
Quoting Michael
Not relevant to the thread. Really, this thread ought be about the classification of certainties, as set out in the OP; but instead it is overrun by folk who want to argue something else.
So in some possible world my foot would not be on the arm of this chair as i write this; and yet it is, and it would be quite unreasonable to doubt that it is.
Same sort of counterexample can be set for a probabilistic interpretation of certain.
This is why I could not join middle management in this forum; I would have blocked you and Magnus long ago for being off-topic.
Perhaps that is one mistake. Another would be to suppose that there is an ultimate arbiter. The world is complex. There's something odd about thinking that one epistemological approach, perhaps one that looks good for science, will work in geometry; and organisational management; and ethics.
One thing that I worth doubting is any theory that claims to provide an ultimate answer.