"At what point would that person no longer have the set of all possibilities that that person could have? In other words, whether that person wore pink shoes or is an accountant or what not, is necessarily/rigidly designated to something. At what point would that something be something else that one is ascribing a personal identity to.

Surely, we can agree that certain physical-spatial-causal events are not transposable. At some point that chair became a chair, and not just pieces of wood, plastic, whatever. At the point at which it is a chair, it becomes a new "possibilities" of what can happen to that chair. We can talk reasonably about that chair qua chair versus other chairs, or other objects.

When hydrogen and oxygen combine in a process to make water, when water forms, it is now that substance and not its antecedents we are discussing. We can pick it out (H20), and it has an instance in causal-space-history (hence why I say it is not just a natural kind, but an instance of a natural kind.. that instance of water. — schopenhauer1

Do each of these examples have to have the same criteria?

The first seems to be asking after the psychological, the second a kind of everyday understanding of medium-sized dry goods, and the third relies upon a notion of science and how that relates to our understanding of objects. At least that's how I'd put it, and so think that the criteria would differ since those three topics would be answered differently if we were to put it in question form.

Unsurprisingly, I am not in fact twenty years younger than I am, so you don't have to worry about covering your arses. — unenlightened

But you ought be.

I notice that it was possible that you might not have made the account, though I get the point that it is no longer possible. — Ludwig V

True.

As to the second, for me, what is important is not so much the dubbing ceremony as the consequences, which are that other people use the name and you respond to it. That's at least part of what your identity qua person consists in. That obviously isn't true of names for objects. — Ludwig V

That makes sense to me. Without the conventions of the internet then the dubbing wouldn't matter -- it's the communal enactment of personhood which makes at least a pretty clear difference between how we treat persons and how we treat objects, just as the pronouncement of Man and Wife isn't really a cause as much as the cap to a ceremony which is enacted by a community.

But let me point out again that the expected individual does not exist at the moment of conception; all that exists is a fertilized egg, which is an individual egg, if you like, but is not yet an individual person. (Unless you are following the unusual idea that is sometimes propounded in the context of the abortion argument. I don't think it has any currency or point outside that argument.) — Ludwig V

I agree with you. I don't believe that conception is a good time-point to choose for personhood.

I'd draw a distinction between personhood, personal identity, and the identity of an object. But I imagine at this point that all we're really talking about is the identity of an object rather than the other two things -- insofar that we're just describing the body at a certain point in time I can grant a posteriori necessity: this body at this or that point has some true sentences which can be said of it, and the negation of those sentences is also false, and what makes it so is the particular body under discussion.

But in contradistinction to this notion I like to use my internet handle because it demonstrates how much the name has little to do with the body -- Moliere didn't exist until I made an account on The Philosophy Forum, which was far after all of these events. There's even a distinct time-point we can point to that's still in the record but surely the name and who I am isn't exactly the same. The only thing that happened to give me this name is dubbing myself as Moliere on The Philosophy Forum rather than the physical facts of my body.

I can agree with even this, yet still insist that a well-known necessary aspect of what makes a person THIS person (and not something else) is the causal-temporal point at which the two gamete components combined. — schopenhauer1

I think that @Banno managed to split the difference here between us:

The upshot in Identity and Necessity seems to be that while this person could not have had a different genetics, schopenhauer1 might have. — Banno

Here is the individual, this individual has the name Moliere, and this individual with the name Moliere at the time of conception had this set of base pairs, and this set of base pairs was necessary for this individual as stipulated by the use of rigid designation. This person necessarily had such-and-such a base sequence at a particular time -- I can grant that, and don't think our imagined scenarios define what actually happened in the past.

But I'm wondering if it's side-stepping some real point of contention :D -- like causality and genes and personality, and how those combine, or some such. Perhaps we just have different notions of what's plausible here, for instance?

I know you’re trying to get some sort of rigid designation to work out here with your conception, but “what” object is the rigid designator rigidly designated with? You might be tempted to say that it can be anything or it’s functional, but there are certain physical substances that differentiate one object from all the other objects, there is a point at which am object could no longer be that object. There is a point when water is not water for example (it’s not H20). — schopenhauer1

I'd pick up the existential or phenomenological angle for identity. Somehow what's significant to us, what we care about, isn't the same as the list of facts of our past, though perhaps the facts one would consult in making a case for an existential identity is a subset of the entire set of every fact of our past. Existential identity comes from caring -- and insofar that the imagined scenario still results in a person caring in pretty much the same way then we can say they are the same even if some details differ.

Water is a bit different from identity because we can speak of a chemical's identity, but I don't think that's an existential identity like I allude to above. But I think I'd say that if water in Bizarro-world was primarily comprised of H3O and still was the stuff we drink when thirsty and more or less did all the same things which water does then I'd say it's the same stuff, even though in Bizarro-world the description differs -- but this wouldn't be on the basis of it caring. I think at a certain level "water" is such a clearly human interest that it's strange to think that this interest must have a corresponding descriptive correlate to it. Rather I think we're really interested in water because it's connected to our being alive, and so we investigate water and see what it is we can see about it. Here our name is much more in a functional space -- it's what it does for us rather than what we've come to describe it as which we're picking out.

I think my favourite complexity is the one about the non-coding bases, which are 98% of the molecule. What is all that stuff doing there? I don't believe it is doing nothing. The question is, what is it doing? Talk about terra incognita — Ludwig V

it would be a rather daunting task for most to come up to speed on what is understood about noncoding DNA these days. — wonderer1

Yup.

I think my beliefs about DNA still pretty much rule out necessity between the particular sequence and identity, though I recognize that there are possibly significant differences too. But my intuition is that reality is not so rigid.

In some sense my name rigidly picks me out, and it would be true that the particular me could not, under any circumstances, be made out of ice from the Thames. But that's the name, and not the unique and particular description of my genetic code at the time of my conception. And for that it seems that DNA doesn't behave in a necessary relationship to the name that picks me out: rigid designators aren't ruled by causal patterns, but rather are just how we use names.

So in a way I could say that the genotype is a necessary but not sufficient condition for any identity to form. If you tried to gestate a whale zygote in a human the process would likely not end in life (though there are mules, too...) -- there's something necessary about having DNA at all, but I'm not so sure that the specific sequence that a person possess has a necessary relationship to the rigid designator which picks out who a person is.

Ok, fair. Yes, I think so, and I'm wandering too much there.

I'm willing to grant the premise you started with to see where it goes, though. I'm probably getting caught up in details that don't matter.

Or, now that I think of it -- organism. Or "unique"!

No I don't think so, though that might depend upon how we understand "genotype"

I wouldn't doubt that they are different, but it is not right to say they are so different that for Aristotle willpower suffices for happiness. He certainly does not think that. I don't know enough about Epicurus to say where the exact differences lie. — Leontiskos

Fair. I clearly don't either.

Thanks for pointing it out: now rather than just some random thought I have some questions and readings for figuring out the questions!

I'd say that to want change is to exercise willpower. — Leontiskos

I think that if willpower is anything it is an expression of agency, and to confuse agency with an inclination is not right. The agent and their will is what stands over inclinations. — Leontiskos

Interesting!

So clearly there are some differences in thought on willpower, at least if we take your reading of Aristotle and my reading of Epicurus as a starting point of comparison. At least this seems to me to be a clear point of disagreement in how we're thinking right now.

Perhaps, but in this case we are talking about a fundamentally different reality.

Let me put it this way. For Aristotle happiness is an activity. It is bound up with a person's agency. To say that a doctor could perform a brain surgery and make someone happy is to make happiness a passivity, a kind of imposable state. A contemporary objection to this idea comes in the form of the "experience machine," which would make one utterly "happy" and is nevertheless rejected. — Leontiskos

Hrrrm... I'm wondering to what extent that their theories of happiness are also at odds, or if it makes sense to say that Epicurus' theory of happiness is an activity -- but a different activity. Your assertions have caused doubt in my understanding of Aristotle, though, so I acknowledge that I'd have to do more homework to make an assertion either way here.

I'm wondering to what extent we could make the claim that ataraxia is a state of mind or an activity -- I know that the passive/active distinction was shared among philosophers at the time, but I'd have to go do homework to feel confident in making an assertion either way.

I think about my theory of mind from time to time, but I cannot say I have a firm position staked out. I think it's one of those questions that's incredibly difficult to answer. But hopefully I can at least take physicalism seriously enough that we can figure out some thoughts together -- and also thanks for pointing out that a physicalist theory of mind may be what's at stake. I'm a bit confused, now, as to what we're disagreeing upon because I thought I had said some fairly sensible things, but it seems not to be clicking.

There are physical differences which can account for differences in personal identity. I wouldn't go so far as to say that these are irrelevant. My question has more to do with when or what is relevant, and since there is a question of when or what I'd instinctively rule out a necessary relationship between the two. But here what you show I'd agree is a significant physical pattern that accounts for difference in personal identity. Sometimes the physical facts matter, and they matter significantly.

But if they only sometimes matter then I wonder what it is we mean by necessity.

And I don't have to make it easy for others to remain naive. :wink: — wonderer1

:D

I wouldn't have it any other way. Why else come to a philosophy forum unless you want to be disabused of your* ignorance?

*(EDIT: for clarity, "your" meaning mine or anyone's -- not *you*. Should have thought that through)

These are good observations. I think you're right to bring up how we think about counter-factuals. They are kind of funny in that they can seem real-ish in that we are judging them on the basis of what's plausible, and so they rely upon our notions about reality in some sense but then they are actually all false.

So part of the confusion may not even be in what's being said, but rather in our notions of what is plausible or how we should think about these false sentences -- when they are more or less relevant.

If I, in a counter-factual, was born with blonde hair but basically lived the same life as I've lived up until now then I'd say that my personal identity wasn't different -- the unique description of my life has a different fact in the counter-factual but I still lived my life basically as I do, except I was born with blonde hair so I'd say my personal identity is the same.

That is there has to be some difference in the counter-factual that makes sense as having an effect upon our personal identity, not just any difference at all. And DNA is certainly closer to the causes we'd consider in thinking about personal identity than, say, what color the nurses' eyes were who helped deliver me (though I think that this is just as much a fact of my history as the unique code). But claims to necessity are a bit hard for me to accept, at least.

Similarly our fingerprints may be unique to us, but if I was born with a different unique finger-print pattern I don't think my personal identity has shifted. The particulars of the finger-print pattern have not been a significant source of identity, even if they are a unique pattern inscribed upon my palm. And this is exactly the sort of thing that comes to mind with DNA for myself: the specific and unique pattern clearly can have effects, but I'm not so certain that those effects are related to personal identity in a necessary relationship.

But you've already admitted as much so my best guess at your claim now is that there is a unique description of who we are, and any change in that description in a counter-factual would yield a different unique description, and that unique description is one's personal identity. Is that right? Also, do you believe we're sharing the same notion of necessity, or the same notion of personal identity, or is there something else that I'm missing?

The argument is about necessity, not sufficiency. — schopenhauer1

Maybe our understanding of necessity differs? To my mind if you can switch a part of the code and have the same results then there is not a necessary relationship between code and an organism's identity. Since you can do that -- not in science fiction but in science -- it just doesn't strike me as something I'd call necessary for personal identity. That is I can see it plausible that if I had a different code I could still be the same person in a counter-factual scenario because I don't think identity is necessitated by code. It would depend upon which part of the code was switched -- I could also have a genetic disease due to this, for instance, and I'd say I'm a different person then. But if one base got switched out in an intron then that is a scenario that seems plausible to me to possibly make no difference in the course of my life, and in relation to the topic, for my personal identity.

Is our identity the same as our experiences? Either way, OK, identity here is a relationship between DNA and experience -- however, would that we could know something like differences in experience! How would we know something like this to be able to assert that DNA yields a difference in experience?

I should have started with this but didn't think of it until this morning, but something that throws a wrench in this idea is the existence of introns and exons. DNA is the stable chemical but RNA is the chemical which codes for proteins. The organism is more than their DNA, and because of introns you can switch out whole parts of some organisms DNA and have it be the same organism: That is, sometimes you can switch out an A for a T or a G and have nothing happen other than this replacement, but the organism will continue to function even though the code is slightly different.

But this is to speak functionally. It's the motives of a court which give DNA priority, but surely our identity is more than what the law sees?

This is the argument from queerness. I googled "argument from queerness" and found only responses and an old archived SEP article.

I think that "queerness" is not easy to establish -- or, at least, is as hard to establish as "not-queer". I don't know how we get to a place where we know, or are even able to judge, what queerness is.

Just to make sure I read over your OP again. I think the disconnect is between:

And then, that body or mind is subject to changing experiences that could alter the course of their outlook, life, personality, etc. At that point, you can argue identity. But in no way, a person born of different gametes, even given the same set of experiences, would be "you". — schopenhauer1

these two sentences. In a way this reminds me of the free will debate: determinism vs. free will and so forth.

I think that what differs between these two sentences is the notion that if, at the time I was conceived, a different set of DNA, like the sperm nearby, would have started the process of birth then I'd be a different person. But in the second part you're acknowledging that there are processes after conception that can change twins to explain the initial idea that our gametes are necessary parts of our identity.

What I'm saying is that twin studies suggest that gametes aren't up to the level of necessity. So the scenario you're positing is if in the past when I was conceived I was conceived with different gametes, and you're saying that's absurd and I'm saying "Why?"

I am making a claim that if the gametes are different than the one that was your set of gametes, whatever the case may be (whether they are similar to you or not), THAT person who was conceived a second before or after with different gametes is NOT you. I really want to establish THIS point, at the least. That THIS point is not a matter of debate or interpretation, but just a fact that that person born from a different set of gametes is not you. — schopenhauer1

That may be the claim -- but why believe it?

I think far too much emphasis is put upon DNA when it comes to identity. DNA doesn't relate to who you are in some kind of easily explicable relationship. Just imagine that your own DNA has been mapped, as can be done, and you look at the map: a series of letters consisting of A G T and C. Which part of them causes you to type what you type here? None, of course. But if you cannot establish a relationship between the genetic code of an individual and what they do then I'd say you're mistaken that the genetic code is a necessary identifier. At least existentially what we do is who we are. And @unenlightened has already pointed out how identical twins have identical DNA, but not identical identities. (though it's worth noting here that DNA morphs, too -- so just how identical the DNA is is up for dispute -- 99.99% matching between code is very similar, but not identical identical, and biological processes have a way of finding difference)

I think the real reason DNA is highlighted is because it helped courts. Finally, a marker of identity to prove beyond reasonable doubt that this blood was theirs!

But surely we are more than our legal identities, and that those are certainly up for interpretation.

There are many apologies for Abraham's behaviour. Seen at face value, he was morally culpable. — Banno

Yup, I agree. I also do not agree with the apologies -- when I say that Fear and Trembling doesn't end in aporia for me, I side with the conclusion that Abraham was a moral monster.

(↪Moliere, hence "faith", especially in some authority, is morally questionable.) — Banno

I agree that faith in an authority is questionable. The Euthyphro demonstrates the difficulty there -- faith in an authority can serve as a kind of way of passing the moral buck to someone else when you're always responsible for how you act regardless of the faith you place: faith soothes, but does it justify?

The Binding of Isaac is such a good moral story to me because I grew up with it. Johannes de silentio's doubt doesn't end in aporia for me but it's still a very popular story with enough valances of meaning to keep it alive and contemplate. I suppose it comes to mind because I'd say that the commitment to non-violence strikes me as something of a heavenly belief, whereas the acceptance of violence in this world, when necessary, strikes me as an earthly belief. In metaphor The Binding of Isaac can be read as this tension between heavenly and earthly commitments: the first born son inherits the wealth and guarantees that you have a legacy, so to sacrifice your first-born is to put faith back in God that your legacy is greater because of him and that he will keep his promise to you -- that is, the ethics of today, which Kierkegaard clearly felt, were so alien then that killing your son wasn't even something morally worth considering. Instead: There are the goods of this world and then the goods of the higher world that God knows, and only he knows, and it's only through faith that you can reach them even when you do not understand him.

I reach for faith because it seems right, and rhetorically at least it seems to imply anti-realism. So it fits how I feel, at least. Further I wonder if there may be points of consonance here between what are usually competing worldviews or ethical considerations -- if it's all faith then perhaps this is a path to talking.

These are the considerations that lead to virtue ethics, to working on oneself rather than grand moral schemes. — Banno

That makes sense -- it's a sort of literature for this purpose of working on myself, and surely all this is real.

But you have your foundational principles - that is, you take them to be true. Hence you are a moral realist. — Banno

I've rewritten this several times, just to say that up front. Pick away.

This could be a way of introducing what's important rather than what is true. It's that we have foundational principles at all that makes us count as a moral realist -- but note how this is different from whether or not they are true foundational principles. I'm fine with moral realism as a kind of default position so that one must raise doubts, especially in philosophy (and especially given the unpopularity of ethics). But doubts can be raised, and I hope I've done enough to show that my doubts are not based in a scientism, but rather are what I'd call a rather old fashioned moral doubt: the kind that people refer to when they speak in terms of faith. If Jesus is coming back, then shouldn't he have come here by now? If moral realism is true, then shouldn't we know something about what's good?

I think your division between truth and justification holds with respect to claims on knowledge. So insofar that ethics is a knowledge my doubt would deflate. It's that claim to knowledge which I doubt anyone possesses: if no one knows then we are all ignorant, which would mean that we're all functionally nihilists. In that case morality may sound reasonable, but that doesn't mean it's rational or known.

Maybe someday. But now, while we kill each other for all the various reasons printed in our newspapers? Faith is the only response I can think of as reasonable in such a world as this. The other is that killing is good (sometimes) which is the very claim that causes my doubt. If killing is good (sometimes) then I am the one who knows nothing about goodness, and what I want is to know how it is that killing is good (sometimes). I want a moral justification for violence, given that our entire way of life is based upon violence.

But what I doubt is that our way of life is actually good. Any way of life that depends upon killing others to perpetuate itself seems to have missed the moral lesson, to misunderstand, to be ignorant -- and all presently lived ways of life are ignorant in this exact way.

So, as I said, I'm the one that's the odd-ball out. It's an odd case to think killing is bad, simpliciter. I can make way for necessary evils or some such, but I can never really understand how killing is good, actually or really. I'm no pacifist because that's an unrealistic standard -- but I cannot deny that the pacifist has a handle on moral goodness better than most, if anything true about goodness can be said at all. Most would make excuses, and understandably so given how much we rely upon violence since we live in nation-states, a most violent social-organism -- and note how the instinct to point out how the past is bad kicks up here, as if that would excuse us rather than point out how we're all still the same as we've always been: excusing violence with the language of goodness. And if that's all we do with morality, in its actual effects rather than in the philosophy room, then what worth is there in speaking this way? Why is it important?

The Aristotelian tradition is not at all will-centered in my opinion. Of course that doesn't mean that it might not involve a greater emphasis on the will than Epicureanism. — Leontiskos

Well, which is it, do you think? Are they the same or are they different?

I am saying that the person who doesn't go to the doctor will never be cured, and no one who sees a doctor has a total inability. In the general case I think there needs to be some baseline of willpower in order to seek the cure in the first place. I want to say that the doctor-patient relation is synergistic. — Leontiskos

And I am saying I don't believe there must be willpower in place for someone to desire change. I'd go so far as to say a person has to want change, but that there are those without willpower and those are the cases in the most need of help.

Willpower is an odd concept -- what is it to act against an inclination other than to be inclined this way? And I'd say some people are so abled, so inclined, and some are not. But the doctor doesn't just say "Well, that guy was born to be sick", but acknowledges difference and gets to work. If they don't go see the doctor, for instance, the doctor can go see them.

Does it have to be one characteristic?

One could be honest because telling the truth gives you blessings in the afterlife. It's not that that honesty, right now, is what matters but because there is a judge after death who will look at your life and be able to tell that you lied or not that you tell the truth.

But I have to say that I think this is one of the worst ways to be honest: it works, but that person is saddled with so many bad feelings just to ensure something that is more easily recognized as worthwhile without anxiety or guilt -- I am committed to honesty, but honestly, the only reason I am so committed is I've come to see how stupid I am. It's because I trust others that I think honesty is a good policy, and in so doing it seems to mostly work out even though there are times where I've been betrayed.

So I'd say there is no one thing that characterized the mindset of honesty. It could be anxious, it could be self-interest, and it could be out of a simple desire to be good.

Or, if we are like Kant, it could be due to an obsession with universality :D -- but I don't think that's usual.

I think you are describing Aristotelian continence. The value of continence does not reside in the idea that willpower suffices for happiness. — Leontiskos

Fair enough -- if what I'm describing is, in fact, Aristotelian then the distinction between the thinkers isn't as important to me as the line of thought itself.

Let's say that this emphasis on willpower is a common belief, that I have heard it attributed it Aristotle's psychology (in the sense of having authority due to Aristotelian roots), and that I believe this is a bad way of thinking about how human beings change their behaviors. It seems what you're saying is that this is an incorrect way of understanding Aristotle, so fair enough -- then I misunderstand Aristotle.

The overemphasis on willpower is presumably a descendant of Puritanism. — Leontiskos

Now that's very plausible to me. A misreading of Aristotle through a popular ethic is probably what I'm contending with in my little mental games in thinking the difference between them. But here I still think there's a point to be made, in spite of all this.

The only thing I disagree with is "total inability." They must be able and willing to undergo the painful cure, and this requires willpower. More than willpower is needed, but without willpower they cannot be cured. Those with a total inability would not commit to the cure, attend the AA meetings, etc. Again, temperance is the goal, not continence, and temperance is not a matter of willpower. For Aristotle continence is not even a virtue, because it is not good in itself. — Leontiskos

Why would you disagree with "total inability"? Isn't that the actual problem case that I'm talking about? From the perspective of the doctor, at least, the one who gets themselves to the AA meetings and undergoes change because they realize they have a problem and they need help -- that's the case that's already solved itself. From the perspective of the Epicurean doctor the person who doesn't attend the meetings, that cannot stop themselves from pursuing anxious desire -- those are the cases that need the most help.

To be fair to you and anyone who has a more charitable read on astrology: I don't find astrology very significant, so my rendition of it is inadequate. While I agree with Feyerabend that my judgment of astrology isn't based in science, for instance, I'm OK with having beliefs that are not-scientific. In fact I think most of my beliefs are not-scientific, really. With astrology the entire enterprise was just so "out there" that I didn't feel the need to explore it at a scientific or philosophic level, to get at the best rendition of the belief and see how I could make it work. It, along with so many other beliefs, is a collection of thoughts I've come across that I don't believe for no real specific reason other than it just sounds incorrect, though I understand that such justification is weak and so I'm not deeply committed to its falsity either. (think here of just how many religions exist, and how many of their beliefs exist -- well maybe you have, but I certainly haven't bothered to go through *all* of them, or even a majority of them, at the most rigorous level)

But among rationalists, at least, astrology is generally viewed as not-scientific. And even those who practice will make caveats with respect to science or some such if pressed, that it's "just fun" or they don't take it that seriously -- so it's not as much a true magical incantation but the words are still worth engaging in for them. (Not for me. I'm on team disappointment, or at least disenchantment if we have to like how the world is going)

And even among non-rationalists they'll understand what I mean when I say "OK, but compare astrology to astronomy. There's a difference there, yes?" -- the important part is that we agree that there are at least some times that when we speak the literal, referential truth isn't what's important -- something else is. That's enough for the worry of error theory to at least get off the ground as a possibility worth considering: since we sometimes believe everything we say is false, so it could be that we've done it again.

But I have to admit that this is a bit afar from incommensurability. Still, I use the example of astrology enough I felt I ought say something.

Thank you for expressing so much more adroitly the view I had attempted to set out previously. — Banno

It always pleases me that I manage to set out something which actually manages to capture some sort of agreement, so thanks for letting me know.

I've re-read Feyerabend - Against Method and Science in a Free Society - with a view to tying down his notion of commensurable and incommensurable, and decided that his view changed over time. I think he started with something like Wittgenstein's language games in mind - he had gone to England with the intent of studying with Wittgenstein, but the latter's illness and death led him to Popper. I think he carried something of "language games", or perhaps a "forms of life", into his dealings with Lakatos. In Against Method Feyerabend emphasises incommensurability, but plays it down in later writings, even I racal, denying that incommensurability meant that there could be no comparison. — Banno

I honestly should do the same. My reading on Feyerabend, and Kuhn too for that matter, is old and probably missed some points he made. No promises here yet, because projects are too easy to want to take on relative to how hard they are to actually complete while maintaining employment :D

Seems to me that, that we understand dolphins to be social and communicative shows us that they inhabit the same world we do. If their songs are showing rather then saying, then they are not subject to Davidson's considerations of sentential language. — Banno

Here we might be talking past a bit -- speaks of worlds as language games or forms of life, for instance. But I take your point; same world, due to showing.

And I think it correct, too. I think that if the lion could speak English to us, for instance, I'd simply accept that speech while feeling it's a bit strange rather than saying "Oh, they're a lion, they don't know what they are saying"

Contrary to ↪Joshs, if we commence by assuming that there is no possibility of communication on important issues, then we are throwing out the possibility of "ameliorating" the "violent breakdown in communication".

Again, we can come to understand that the rabbit is a duck-rabbit, and hence to see the point of view of those who only see the duck. Only where there is some potential for agreement is there also potential to avoid violence.

On the other hand I think there is something to be said for an insistence upon an answer as being a problem in finding ways of communicating. At least some of the time. Sometimes, though it is hard to set out when in words (for that is the very problem, so it seems), it's the insistence upon finding out who is wrong and who is right, what is true and what is not -- if we'd just concede this or that or give up on this or that then perhaps we could find ways to talk again. If we're particularly committed to consistency, which I share that fault, then we might make note upon realizing this new way of talking how I was wrong and they were wrong in certain respects, but then we'd be talking about meaningful disagreement instead of... whatever the yes/no assertion disagreement is.

But the metaphor I'd reach for here is...well, Hegel I guess. There's the duck, the rabbit, the duck-rabbit, and whatever that comes after which actually manages to make us click. No guarantees on how that works at present -- Hegel already tried, and was forced, even as a rationalist philosopher, to accept contradiction as the engine, which surely already shows how difficult it is to understand, from a rational perspective, when we create something new that happens to work.

For what evidence is there empirically for "conceptual schema" to be a "thing" as applied to language use itself (not necessarily as a meta-theory of differences in scientific frameworks aka "incommensurability"). — schopenhauer1

That question reads a bit convoluted to me. Can you rephrase the question?

I am tempted to say that any notion of conceptual scheme would claim that putting empirical evidence prior to determining the scheme is the wrong way about: in the strong version the scheme determines evidence, in the weak version the scheme is part-and-parcel to the evidence. At the very least there are beliefs around empirical evidence which can be questioned from a non-evidential standpoint -- there's a certain sense in which we have to delimit what evidence even is.

For example: there are beliefs about how temperature is measured, but those beliefs are different from empirical evidence of temperature, which is just the measurement itself. But in order to be able to measure we already understand temperature conceptually to be a measure of heat, that heat transfers to the thermometer and equilibrates at the same temperature as the object it's surrounded by, and that this effects the density of mercury such that if we put regular marks on the thermometer we can see just how hot or cold it is in accord with some standards, like the boiling and freezing point of water, and because it's equal in temperature to what's being measured after such and such a time, how hot or cold some other object is is the same as what the thermometer's temperature is. These beliefs coincide with but aren't identical to evidence.

At least this is what seems to be meant by the notion of conceptual schemes. The Underdetermination of a theory by evidence is frequently cited in favor of conceptual schema, for instance. They are what's posited as an explanation for our understanding a theory at all. Given this underdetermination schema or the conceptual frame is that which evidence is situated within and made intelligible by. The "raw, unmediated empirical" is sort of the very thing being questioned: concepts, though unarticulated, are there from the first observation, rather than something we come to construct from non-conceptual empirical reals separate from conceptual articulation.

So, given that, I'm wondering what would even be in the domain of possible evidence? Either people talking to one another is support for the idea, or it's not. We're sort of at a level of generality where appeals to evidence aren't going to be easy to even understand as being in favor of or against schemata, much less be persuasive.
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EDIT: Question 2 seems a bit too off the beaten path to me -- I think the question between science and philosophy and their merits deserves at least a thread of its own, unless I can see how it'd relate to incommensurability.

There are lots of degrees and levels of agreement within science, and just as many degrees and levels of incommensurability. Among participants in a scientific paradigmatic community, there need mot be unanimous agreement on conceptual definitions in order to work
productively together. I do think it can be helpful to conceive of normative discursive communities in terms of shared worlds, as long as we treat the idea of world as something like form of life or language game. In a shared world, my behaviors and your responses are mutually intelligible enough to allow for each of us to anticipate the other’s next moves in the game. Now let us say my scientific community undergoes a paradigm shift. Is our new shared world incommensurable with our old one, and if so, how are we then able to go back and forth between the old and new paradigm? I suggest what happens here is that in formulating the new way of thinking, at the same time we subtly reconstrue the sense of meaning of the old concepts such that we now see that old vocabulary in a different light. It is not as if we are able to make the old theory and the new one logically commensurable, but our redefining of the old terms in themselves makes it possible to form a bridge between the old and the new concepts. The old scheme becomes an inadequate or incomplete version of the new one as we retrospectively look back at it. Much the same thing happens in religious conversion. When look back at our old thinking, we implicitly reshape what the old notions were through the filter of the new ones.

Now let’s say we encounter someone who remains within the old way of thinking. We can share their world with them, maybe even consciously taking into account that we no longer conceive of the particulars of that old
world exactly in the way that we used to and the other still
does. But the bridge we created between the old and new doesnt exist for the other. Our new world is mostly invisible to them, at least as evidenced by the impossibility of sharing practices based on that new thinking.

But there are many other ‘worlds’ of practices that we CAN share with the other. We can participate with them in shared recreational activities, for instance. We can do the same with ‘alien’ species like dogs, when we play fetch with them. Whether we are ‘really’ understanding each other is not a question that need be asked as long as the game is flowing smoothly. Given that astrology makes use of concepts that are loose enough to be amenable to a wide variety of interpretations producing different practices among disparate communities, one can find those who consider themselves to have undergone a ‘conversion’ form astrological belief to astronomy, where for others astrology and astronomy can happily co-exist as distinct but not incommensurable worlds. — Joshs

I like this exposition. I think it surprisingly gets along better than I would have predicted with the Davidsonian picture -- perhaps we could treat Davidson's notion of incommensurability as a kind of high-standard, truly alien incommensurability, but that this is a bit off from the sort of incommensurability which Kuhn and Feyerabend are talking about, or what we ourselves may distinguish.

In a way we could read Davidson as providing some hurdles to the notion of incommensurability such that we have to be able to understand how it is we come to understand designating a scheme as such, and in so doing how it is it's not just something mundane, like disagreement or ignorance, when we do come to understand that.

It seems you and I have some agreement that it comes down to how people interact together, their practices and such , and I can get along with conceiving of normative discursive communities as participating in differing worlds when we understand these worlds as language games or forms of life, since I try to understand incommensurability in terms of what people are doing and noting how sometimes they are acting at cross-purposes.

And I think your description of changing beliefs makes a good deal of sense -- how the bridge beliefs between beliefs are mostly invisible to someone who still believes such and such makes a lot of sense. Isn't it this difference in beliefs, and the ability to understand someone else's beliefs, that gives rise to the notion that we have the ability to distinguish between concepts, or at least competing beliefs, such that we'd be able to make the claim to a schematism?

But also I think you're on point to say that as we move from a previous belief to a new one the old belief "morphs" to some extent. It's no longer the same belief, but a new one as defined by the web within which it sits. One thing here, then, might be that while there's a schematism it can never be articulated because the very act of articulation changes it. We come to understand that there's a scheme behind our belief formation, but in so understanding we also cut ourselves off from its constancy such that we can call it a scheme -- it becomes a bundle of beliefs that are ever-changing instead.

I think it’s important to take seriously the reality of radically incommensurable conceptual schemes, worlds, forms of life. The often violent breakdown in communication that incommensurability between ethico-political communities produces cannot be adequately ameliorated by consultation of a presumed single real world, even Davidson’s indirect one One needs to recognize that these multiple worlds of practices cannot be reduced to a single correct one., even if we believe such reduction is only an asymptotic goal never to be reached. — Joshs

I agree! But also note that this is why it's important that we get it correctly -- breakdown in communication and incommensurability can have some of the worst consequences for us. I agree that the temptation to reduce everything to a single way of speaking, My Way Which is Right, gets in the way of finding real strategies for understanding one another and coming to live together.

I think that we could be tempted to use Davidson to skip over what was ever meant by "incommensurable" -- but I think that it's better for understanding when we might go "off the rails" with the idea and become either incoherent or dogmatic.

What, then, do we want to say is the relationship between astrology and astronomy? “Asymmetrical” doesn’t seem to cover it. Any ideas? — J

Some thinking out loud:

Incommensurable is the word I'm tempted by :D

But then it seems to be too convenient, in a way. It depends upon just how radical is radical incommensurability, I think -- taking Kuhn's book sometimes it seems a matter of harsh disagreement, and sometimes it seems they inhabit different experiential worlds which in turn give the theories meaning which in turn explains their radical incommensurability.

Feyerabend made the claim that astrology could be a kind of research program, and it's for this reason that I often think through it as an example. It seems to me that one could, if they wanted, perform a scientific examination of astrology, but that this is not how we relate to astrology at present, be we believers or skeptics in its truth. They are at cross-purposes, and so rather than being incommensurable due to experiential difference they are simply trying to do different things entirely while having a superficial resemblance to one another. Astronomy, as practiced by science, is trying to do science with respect to the stars and planets and such, while astrology is trying to soothe people's fears about the future or their place within the world or what it is they ought to do with their life today: one is descriptive of the universe, and the other is therapeutic. And what Feyerabend would point out is that when astronomer's attempt to debunk astrology they end up looking like one another rather than looking like a proper scientific enterprise; appeals to authority and a general belief in progress from the primitive to the modern frequently substitute for a proper scientific or philosophical analysis of the concepts, where you can find some cases of the stars influencing life -- Feyerabend points to plants responding to solar flares, and oysters responding to the waves which in turn is the result of the moon. It's not what the astrologists say, but that's no excuse for the philosophical examination of astrology.

So minimally I think I'd say they are at cross-purposes, and so this gives a kind of incommensurability that's not conceptual, exactly -- if someone is trying to dance on a floor and another person is trying to tile that floor at the same time then they are incommensurable in the sense that they are working at cross-purposes within the same space.

If we have people working at cross-purposes does that then give us a reason to believe they are conceptually incommensurable? In a way it makes sense of Davidsonian charity as a requisite for intertranslatability --if we want different things then we have less of a reason to extend charity and then speech becomes interpreted in a manner which it's not being employed for, and if we aren't even aware that we're speaking at cross-purposes then we are in a kind of defunct communicative relationship. That at least gives some grounds for judging whether or not our respective "camps" are incommensurable. But it's not exactly conceptual anymore -- it's practical, in the sense of praxis, which seems to me to be a bit more mundane.

But perhaps this is just the result of finding an explanation: when we understand things they seem a bit more mundane. Wasn't that the point of explaining, to make it less surprising? To make it more understandable? So there's a sense in which this explanation dispells the belief in in principle incommensurability.

Though there's still @Banno's example of Dolphins, which I think it is a good example to think through with respect to intertranslatability too. Rather than martians we can just look to our large-brained ocean mammals as a kind of alien which is clearly social and communicating, but seemingly we are unable to translate theirs into our language.

The part that I'd still be uncertain about, at least, is whether or not they inhabit a different world or not. In fact it seems that we could set this as an aside entirely: insofar that we're able to tell that other humans inhabit different worlds so we'd be able to do the same if we are able to communicate with dolphins. But the Davidsonian argument against conceptual schemes -- insofar that conceptual schemes are what lead to different experiential worlds -- presents a difficulty in that by understanding incommensurable worlds we make them no longer incommensurable: what appeared to be radical difference was no more than simple human ignorance. But that does not then mean the Dolphins are in an entirely different world from us as much as it means they experience the world differently, just as you'd expect for any creature which has different capacities but is also social and needing to collectively understand in order to accomplish species-level goals. So in a way, due to this, here we are understanding the Dolphins even if we cannot talk to the dolphins (since we are not dolphins) in the sense that we see they are a species which relies upon other members, like ourselves, and so we interpret their songs and movements as a kind of language -- that is, we're already crossing the in principle level of incommensurability which Davidson speaks against as impossible.

The question sort of becomes: is this what was ever meant by incommensurable theories? Probably not, given how little dolphins feature in Kuhn's or Feyerabend's work ,at least to my knowledge. But, all the same, it's a good point to bring up about truly alien conceptual thinking: if it were, then we don't understand it, by the very notion of "alien"; however, this might be a bit of a bulldozer in the face of the seemingly incommensurable between human beings, which requires a bit more nuance to see in what way it's not incommensurable.

But aren't cures almost always painful? And won't patients need to accept and tolerate pain if they want to be cured? I don't track your idea that the cure will be painless, or that a doctor treats a patient without any cooperation on the part of the patient. I mostly think that Epicurus will require Aristotle's continence, unless perhaps he has a cure the likes of which the world has never seen! — Leontiskos

Hrmm, not painless, I agree with that -- Lucretius' poem talks about how the cure is painful, and the reason to put it into poetry was to sweeten it in the same way that you sweeten medicine for children when they don't want to take it; so the literature supports that the cure is painful, but is more pleasurable in the long term given that the anxious mind is what is being cured. And I think one has to want a cure in order for it to work its magic -- you have to agree that the pain you feel now is worth getting rid of, and it's this point that I think most would pass over an Epicurean ethic: "you mean that this exciting life is painful? Sign me up for more pain!" would be a common refrain.

But such a person isn't expected to just act on themselves, for instance -- Alcoholics Anonymous is similar in this regard. The community is what provides support for people to change their behavior for the better, after having acknowledged that there is a problem. And here this is important because it's not an individual's willpower which is at fault for alcoholism, as if they could only conjure more willpower then they'd be able to resist the urge; if anything that image is exactly what's in the way of finding a realistic path to changing one's behavior, by all accounts!

Rather there must be some way that a community can help an individual who is lacking in this capacity, and the failure of the individual is a failure on the part of the community to provide enough support. The question becomes: How do we help this person become happy, given that they are unable?

This gets along with the notion that ought implies can, but while acknowledging psychological or behavioral limits of individuals; it's not a lack of willpower, though a presence of willpower would surely make the doctor's task easier, it's that this person requires something more than willpower (given their total inability in that regard).

Okay, so in our culture we would think a lot about consent. So if you are an Epicurean doctor and I submit myself to your care then you can work your magic on me, but as soon as I withdraw my consent then it is no longer permissible for you to operate on me. If the "medicine" is onerous then I will be liable to withdraw consent, and thus continence will be necessary, no? — Leontiskos

Hrmm, not if the cure is making you happier, I'd imagine.

Or here we are -- if you withdraw consent then this is just a failure on the part of the doctor to administer the cure. "Fault" here not in an ethical sense, but rather in an exploratory sense -- if we find a person who is resistant to the cure then we have more to overcome.

What have the Epicurean doctors been doing for these millennia? Have they found ways to operate on and transform souls without any effort or difficulty on the part of the soul? This is where my skepticism swells. — Leontiskos

Well, first I'd say that there no longer exist Epicureans in this manner where there were schools and such. This way of life is a dead way of life, and so asking after their practices is something of an academic exercise already. At most today we have people who are inspired by the writings, but nothing so organized as it was.

It seems to me that they operated on similar principles that other churches do: forming communities which reinforce and teaches norms and sets the people who are within that community outside of the social milieu to which they originally belonged such that the social organism comes to influence the person to adopt the way of life. It's a church, more or less, and they were like priests.

But then we're left with an ancient record to piece these things together, and I'm certain that just like any church there were people who did not get along with the cure. That is I share your skepticism that they had such a cure. But the philosophy around how to treat a sick soul is still quite different: it's not their lack of willpower, but a lack of knowledge on the part of the administrator of the cure. In a way the person who is not cured is morally ignorant -- you cannot expect them to behave in accord with right living because they're still attached to wrong living.

I don’t see it: can you elaborate? That’s just a hypothetical imperative being used to with modus ponens to derive the consequent. Or are you saying it is world-to-word direction of fit because it is hypothetical, since it is subjective? I could get on board with that, but I don’t see how there’s such a thing as a fact which has a world-to-word direction of fit. ‘You ought to bring an umbrella’ (P2) is non-factual (to me). — Bob Ross

Hrmm, not sure. Sometimes I use the boards to think out loud and sometimes it's more piffle than substance. I'm going with that now. I was thinking how the verb shouldn't matter when translating sentences into a logic, and so it would also go with facts. But in that spirit I was just using silly examples that follow the form, in the same way that we use silly examples to demonstrate validity (like "if the moon was made of green cheese" etc.)

In another logic, though, you would track the predicates. So... meh. Just some fluff in trying to lay out a way of thinking.

The only potential way out of it is to deny word-to-world direction of fit, but I as of yet to hear a fully fleshed out concept of a fact with world-to-word direction of fit. — Bob Ross

One truth that is no fact are the logical truths, I think. There's no fact that makes "A = A" true. It's not a state of affairs, and I'm not using this "is" statement to set out how the world is as much as I'm setting out how we're going to talk about the world at all.

That is, here is a truth without a direction of fit at all, and since we have to accommodate truth to at least allow for logical truth we must accept that sometimes there are true sentences which do not set out how the world is, that are true regardless of the states of affairs.

I think this is largely in line with the analogy to mathematical reasoning for moral thinking.

Now we note that in a logic the verb is limited to "is", and it's noted that we need some kind of implicature to connect one to the other, such as "if it is raining then you ought bring an umbrella"

Consider "If you ought bring an umbrella you ought to sing a song; You ought to bring an umbrella, and therefore..." : if we render this into a sentential logic then "ought" disappears and you have modus ponens with sentences which at least appear to have a world-to-word direction of fit (since these are actually just examples in a reflection on the question, though, they do not -- that is, I think I'd tie the pragmatics to determining direction of fit)

Which is to note that we need not even derive an ought from an is or an is from an ought; that in terms of our logic or language, at least, that these are metaphysical theses. Consider the verb "to have" in relation here -- if facts are statements with a word-to-world direction of fit then "to have" is, logically speaking, a modification of the copula and fits just fine within sentential logic. So it would go with "ought" -- this is a modification of the One Big Logical Copula, you could say, which includes variations of useage between people, be it setting out a definition, setting out states of affairs, or setting out what we ought to do.


I think that this account is relying upon a deflationary view of truth, as opposed to a correspondence theory of truth, though. So it could very well be considered an anti-realism on that account, if the target is a belief in moral facts to which moral statements correspond.

In trying to relate the logical, propositional view with a psychological perspective, I start from the thought that ‘ought’ and ‘should’ arise where there is an indeterminate situation, with at least two outcomes being possible. In science, when we say a certain outcome ought to ensue, we mean that it is statistically likely given our knowledge of the facts involved. When we say a moral outcome ought to ensue, we dont mean one outcome is more likely than the alternatives, but that we prefer one outcome over the others. Where things get tricky from a psychological perspective is when we compare the grounds for our moral preference with the grounds for considering one empirical outcome more likely than another. Even if we believe that moral preferences can be justified on the basis of something more than whim, the social realities we might argue bind our moral preferences ( people shouldn’t happily torture dogs) would seem to be a different category than the empirical realities binding our scientific oughts. But is this distinction justified? If we say the direction of fit for empirical oughts is from the word to the world, aren’t we forgetting that the world we are relying on is already defined on the basis of the social reality of a discursive paradigmatic scheme? So it seems in both the case of the empirical ‘is’ and the moral ‘ought’ , we are relying on a grounding in a social reality that is itself the product of a pragmatic, contingent coordination of values. — Joshs

That's interesting.

I'm with you that we rely upon the social, and that we're embedded in a world with others. But is the social a product, when considered ethically? I think a product is a relation between entities and how they interact, a kind of description of process from one entity to another. Descriptively our empirical "is" and our moral "ought" come from the same space -- and this would be true if we emphasize the social in our description of a psychology or some kind of description of its structure -- but does this explain why we differ in our judgments on particular ethical problems that seem intractable and without answer? Is it simply that we are part of a different tribe which presently enacting values at odds?

That would seem to follow along with there not exactly being an answer here as much as a preference, no? It's like the values we're coordinating with others are the basis upon which we can make a distinction between empirical 'is' and moral 'ought', but does that recognition give us an entry into understanding a path out of seemingly intractable ethical problems?

Whether or not it’s persuasive is a separate matter. Flat Earthers often aren’t persuaded.

I’m only trying to explain moral realism, not argue that it’s correct. — Michael

Oh. Well... I think I understand the explanation of moral realism you've supplied. I can understand that it can be defended, which is why I noted I'm not going for necessity. That's too high a bar, and it's not even interesting to the problem that I see because maybe we could, at some point, find agreement on intractable questions in which case my entire argument would evaporate.

OK, now it's fixed. :D Oof. Thanks :) True.

And why can’t it be that one such state of affairs is that we ought not harm another? — Michael

You can, it's just not persuasive to the person who believes we ought to harm another, so our differences remain even as you call it a state of affairs.

That someone assigned the property of truth to an uttered sentence is detectable. What does that mean, though? Is there supposed to be come correspondence between the so called true statement and the world? Or does truth just have a social function, as a deflationist might say? — frank

I'd say that it means the speaker believes it ought to be true, in the case of moral propositions. So "One ought not kick puppies for fun" is true means that I believe one ought not kick puppies for fun.

But in terms of the metaphysics of morals... well, yeah, there'd be some disagreements there. And we could appeal to taste in making a case for one or another metaphysic. Though that doesn't preclude a kind of real ethic in the sense that actions are real, and metaphysics can be seen as kind of literature rather than our real actions, that it is about our actions, and so taste comes about because we're evaluating literature rather than actions, and in the case of action we might make the case that there's more to it than taste, that goodness -- and not just beauty -- is important too.

The only difference is that some sentences use "is" and some use "ought", and that this verb indicates how we are using the word: the statements which use "is" have a direction of fit from the words to the world. What we say is made true or false because of the states of affairs of the world. It doesn't get much more specific than "states of affairs", I believe, unless we want a metaphysical exposition of facts. Here the reliance is upon language-use as opposed to metaphysics: we use the words in a manner where we want them to set out states of affairs, and this is the whole of it.

With an ought-statement, however, we use it in the reverse: We want the states of affairs to fit with our words rather than our words to set out states of affairs. So "You ought not eat the baby" is about what you ought-not do rather than what you are doing: One describes, the other proscribes, and this difference in use seems to cause some problems in thinking through ethics.

We can call it a fact, being this is a free world and we're setting out how it's best to talk, but the ethical differences seem to remain.