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Hmm. Let q be any thought (not necessarily a proposition). It isn't clear whether q is 1) the product of thinking, that is, an event that occurs at ti...

Similar to what I was suggesting might be Quine's position on "belief," above. This usually comes up in the context of fictions, with "thing" meaning ...

@"Banno" Just found this: Sider has the opening chapter of Writing the Book available online. It's an even better introduction to his ideas about stru...

This, and other related puzzles about the use of "think", generated a lot of back and forth in the thread. I want to think more about your post. You s...

That's a plausible reading of "retreat." You're suggesting that Quine doesn't mean "retreat" in the sense of "withdraw his philosophical forces in the...

Good, but then what is it? If I have a background belief that the earth goes around the sun, and you ask me at this moment whether I believe it, I'll ...

Not at all, very helpful indeed. I've read the entire CPR exactly once, and that was decades ago, so I appreciate the elucidation. So, to put it crude...

Interesting. I actually think Kant may be more important to Rodl than you're saying. So I do want to understand any Kantian subtleties here. I may hav...

@"Count Timothy von Icarus" Quine collaborated on a short textbook intended for phil students, called The Web of Belief. He says something at the begi...

But the problem is that we're now invoking an unstated something that is supposed to be identical to a statement. Or should I say, it would be a state...

And I by But I appreciate your take on it.

:smile: No, at best a small-d davidsonian. There are problems with background beliefs and even unconscious beliefs. "I believe that p" is only one way...

So the interesting question, if we wanted to pursue it, is whether there are grounds for a given stipulation that are justified by the world itself, a...

So the idea is supposed to be that Rodl lies in the text, and then quotes the source in the endnote that demonstrates it was a lie? Please. It doesn't...

You've said many interesting things here, but would it be OK to utilize them to address the questions directly? I'm still not clear how you would answ...

Yes. But that proposition, as we know, can stand in a certain relation to the world, to what is the case. At some point the web has got to include sta...

That's understandable. This thread is like Grand Central Station! (US reference to a very populated place with people coming and going.) This may be s...

Fair enough. But when we start talking about a web of belief, I think we are moving quite far away from a focus on use rather than meaning. Certainly ...

This suggests one of the reasons why I think there's more to philosophy than "the linguistic turn." If you ask "What more do you need?" and I counter,...

This was the direction I was interested in following with @"Count Timothy von Icarus" here, but I think he didn't want to pursue it: This isn't meant ...

They have been for me, and evidently for others. I guess not for you, though you've seemed pretty engaged! :wink: Just a basic difference about what t...

Interesting post. Let me see if I understand you. You want to say: I judge p is true = refers to a proposition that can be judged true I judge "p" is ...

Yes.

. It is indeed, thanks for tracking it down. The whole book is very good. Oh, I'm just conflict-averse. :wink: Actually, it's a carry-over from a coup...

Yes, nice observation. "Large number" hardly does it justice! There's a fine essay by J. L. Mackie called "Locke's Anticipation of Kripke." It appears...

Yes, and there are those fortunate few who aren't sure!

But is it metaphysically possible for him to have been born of different parents? I don't think Kripke would agree (not that he's the boss).

I appreciate everything you've contributed.

I was thinking along these lines: Let's say someone wants to assert that Socrates is a Humandroid, defined as an android good enough to imitate someon...

Possibly not, but would it matter to what we wanted to say about Socrates' humanity? I'm not exactly sure what you two are disputing. Is it whether So...

Have you guys read Kripke? This might help clear it up. Or check out "Rigid Designators" here.

I don't want to dispute terminology, especially when it comes to a time-honored Thorny Problem such as realism, but the "content" that Frege is uphold...

No question. My thought1 and thought2 discrimination was trying to make some progress there, because even if we say, "OK, we're clear about thought2, ...

This is true. But he's also laying out a thesis about self-consciousness, and about why objectivity must be self-conscious, aware of itself as objecti...

Fortunately not a requirement! Although to listen to some people on TPF, you'd think it was a requirement, and anyone who isn't quite sure what they t...

That would have been my answer as well. "Convey," of course, is equivocal, but I took Wayfarer to be referring to an actual "feel," not merely the rep...

This is a generous, sense-making interpretation, but I'm not sure Rodl is really talking about subjective experiences like pain, for instance. I think...

Just to be clear, would the full thought you're referring to, which I bolded, be "I think that the tree is dropping leaves"?

I think either interpretation could make sense, but the "hardcore proponents" a la Rodl probably mean the latter: Some actual self-consciousness is me...

Makes sense. The more I work with this, the more I'm realizing that the idea of "accompanying" a thought can be given so many interpretations that I w...

This is what a lot of the controversy on TPF has been about -- whether it's proper to consider merely thinking p as giving it some kind of force. Freg...

So would it be fair to say that, in the example of the tiger, we must refer to the tiger itself? And a disagreement about the tiger's "essentiality" (...

Not really familiar with "choiceworthy." Is that a synonym for "desirable"? Again, the meta-ethical dispute seems a long way off from Quine and refere...

OK, thanks for explaining.

On my understanding, the Kantian deontological approach is not about goodness as desirability. It is about goodness as following the dictates of pract...

Hopefully. The OP was examining a common but still controversial claim -- that when we think, there is some accompanying "I think" that characterizes ...

And cheers to you. I certainly like it when a thread's tone is inquisitive rather than dismissive or dogmatic. I'll watch for an OP from you . . .

But they don't. That's the whole problem.

Sounds reasonable. Now suppose there was a disagreement about the first part. A and B offer different specifications of what the essential tiger quali...

Yes, I'm trying to develop a sort of checklist of what has to constitute an utterance and a "thought utterance" (thought1). For a (spoken) utterance, ...