Trade unions organize the workers at a place not owned by the workers, whereas a workers collective owns the place and runs it in accord with whatever decision-making process they set up.

Though you could also have a union-collective -- a union run in accord with those same principles, rather than the usual method of organization.

I would be terrified if the lowest common denominator were making decisions. Look at the Trump situation.

Then again maybe if it was on a smaller scale it would not be like that? For example like decision making in small towns rather than the lumbering hive mind you might see on a place like reddit. — unimportant

Yeah, think of it like a municipality -- but rather than voting on representatives to vote for what to do everyone represents themselves and can speak on what to do. I've heard this described as the "spokes and wheel" model of organization: where working groups are organized in accord with a central working group which deals with communications between working groups.

Or, if you'd like, think of it as a team at your workplace -- but rather than having a boss all the workers set the rules for the workplace. This would be a workers collective.

But, really, I'd emphasize doing some of the readings rather than listening to me. You'll get ideas of your own that way and the theorists explain themselves in better detail than these little maps I'm trying to make :)

Maybe in an anarchist state you would not longer have such idiots which is just a product of the diseased capitalist system. Not that I am proposing an old boy's club either but how does one ward against the least qualified person having as much say as the most qualified?

You don't. The premise is that everyone has not just the opportunity to grow, but everyone is fundamentally equal in a political manner.

Example an anti-science climate change denier having as much say on policy as a career climate scientist?

Isn't this the case in our present day democracies?

What keeps them in check there is that there are representatives which do the voting for them, and there's a decision-making process in place that is democratic.

The anarchist wouldn't want to deprive the idiot of their rights -- generally speaking anarchists have a generally optimistic view of human nature, and given time the idiot will either prove the collective wrong or will come around to seeing that it was right or will move onto another collective.

Heh, yeah we don't need to simplify to that point. I think we basically agree -- I was just peeved you'd say that no one would ever say such and such, and so asked you to provide something similar that might be better. But it's no worries now, and it doesn't really matter.

how do anarchists propose to manage things like law enforcement, healthcare and the like if there is no government or is there government just only local government so it would be just all grass roots, cottage industry type of companies locally for all human public services? — unimportant

Different ways, depending on the particular anarchist you're talking to. Some general themes that emerge are an emphasis on horizontal decision making and a minimization of hierarchies in our day-to-day decisions. The basic unit of society for an anarchist is the collective, in terms of the day-to-day(individuals are just as important in this notion of collective -- there's a unity between the two such that the individual is respected within the collective). One joins a collective and shares the benefits of cooperation with its members while negotaiting with other collectives. Some collectives proposed are industrial-wide unions ran on syndicalist lines, some collectives are worker or housing coops, some are political working groups, some are bikeshares, some are childcare shares....

A major difference between how our world operates and that world operates is that there's not really a person in charge which takes on the responsibility for a task. It's the collective's responsibility, which includes every individual within the collective. Horizontal decision-making usually involves consensus-building among the group until agreement is reached by the collective, and its this willing agreement which is meant to keep things running smoothly -- since everyone genuinely agreed to such-and-such they act in concert together for the benefits of collective activity.

This demonstrates the difference I was alluding to, and you've already pinpointed as a difference -- the way anarchists speak about nature differs dramatically from the way Marxists speak about nature. I'm not speaking here in terms of which is better than what, but only trying to lay out conceptual distinctions to differentiate, and do so in a manner that's user-friendly, though accurate.

For Marx "the economy" is very much in the human realm of things, to the point that our very being is defined by the process of production.

But anarchists tend to see it in a wider sense, as embedded within an ecology, and tend to have more respect for nature than Marxists do, who are certainly part of the industrial revolution. This is because of their universal stance against hierarchies, be they socially constructed or imposed on other living creatures.

Nature is something to be exploited for human ends, in a Marxist philosophy. It's part of the Enlightenment inheritance. Further, hierarchy is a useful means to an end which the Marxist will not shun.

Yup. That's Marx/Proudhon(EDIT:Bakunin) are also a great place for getting an understanding of the distinction.

I can think of nitpicks, but I can't see how what I said is at odds with this.

Also, is that the shortest version you got? :D

OK, this demonstrates a good theoretical difference -- something for philosophy.

I'm gathering that you're speaking from the anarchists perspective in this. In which case "the economic system" does not mean the same as it does in Marx -- whose goals are also clear in a desire to change the means of production in order to change society.

Yes to who owns what -- but the idea really is that the state would wither away once classes were abolished. And so we'll get later adaptations of Marxism which are more nationalist in character, which justify hierarchies, and so forth, on the basis that it's overthrowing the capitalist mode of production, the real Big Bad.

So, yes, there will be differences along the way. And they will be important at times.

One of them here being even an understanding of what constitutes "the economy", since it seems you're in favor of some kind of anarcho-primitivism, given your comment that hunger will teach people to garden

****
But just for a moment try to crystalize what you understand of both philosophies into a single sentence. What would you say rather than what I've said? Try to simplify it, rather than cover every nuance through several paragraphs.

What would you say the difference is, when you keep it simple?

Yeah. Especially not my map, which isn't meant to go into details. If it needs to be said, yes, you'll find a lot of differences along the way -- including once backed by material struggle.

"Takes care of itself" would be a kind of doe-eyed utopianism, which I can see wanting to reject, but the gist of what they care about in your summation is a good starting point, IMO. One focuses on economic exploitation and overcoming that, the other focuses on hierarchical exploitation and overcoming that, and sometimes their endgoals look really similar and you wonder why it is we're fighting, but then that's the nature of politics. And as it turns out the differences are substantive, i.e. difference between building a union vs. building a party, or what-have-you.

Literally no Marxist or anarchist would ever say either of these idiocies. — boethius

There's a thing called "simplification" that we do to get the gist of an idea across. If someone doesn't know what a representative democracy is we don't rush into make sure that someone understands the nuances between a federal or a confederate or a singular state, whether one utilizes a first-past-the-post or other electoral mechanism, etc. You start with Locke, the state of nature, and so forth, and attempt to simplify the complex so that people can branch out on their own.

So marxism the revolution is economic and the rest sorts itself out and anarchism is social structure and the rest sorts itself out? — unimportant

Yup -- that'd be the utopian version of both, but in terms of differentiating them and trying to wrap your mind around it that's a good simplification.

My only comment is the glib observation that in my experince Marxists are less interesting than anarchists. — Tom Storm

Oh, for sure. At least my experience says the same of the modern tendencies, though I've been out of the game so I couldn't say what things are like now now.

But, on the other hand, Marxists did build longer lasting institutions, or at least more of them that had an impact in national affairs. From the anarchist's standpoint that may be a demerit, depending on how idealistic the anarchist is.

I am not someone who believes in utopias or the perfectibility of human beings and I usually find people who see the world as a rigid expression of theory to be dull monomaniacs. But in the current world of plutocracy, I hear my Marxist voices calling.

For myself I just see capitalism as a problem which Marx describes well -- I don't think that politics will end if we manage to create a new socioeconomic way of life, but perhaps the problems of capitalism will wane if done correctly. Similarly so with anarchy -- if we manage to find a way to organize ourselves sans hierarchy I'm certain that politics will continue, that we will continue to have to decide things together and confront challenges and that people will continue to be people for all that. But we may still be better off if we overcome the challenges of hierarchy.

I tend to think of these as central problems that cause a lot of suffering rather than fixalls that bring about a utopia.

Where I think utopian thinking makes sense is in imagining a world we might want to live in. But I don't think it makes sense to base a political philosophy entirely on that world, which is why I like Marxism -- it has a more practical edge to it which allows one to enact the political mechanisms that exist today rather than inventing them wholesale as a counter to the hierarchical systems. The latter are far more like what I'd prefer to live in, but the former tend to fair better against hierarchically organized states since they have no qualms in utilizing hierarchy, which is good at orchestrating people towards winning, if not towards making them happy.

So I feel an attraction to both, and often try to think of blending the two into a coherent political philosophy.

You're not crazy. Many have tried, and you're welcome to too.

What in particular could someone say to you, other than to say "keep going, I'm listening"?

The "correct in its domain of validity, profoundly innovative, immensely influential and has introduced structures of thinking on which we are still building" bit might have less of a rhetorical influence with respect to chemists though.

Roughly, yes.

I love that paper so much.

This is the testament of a man who has lived the sailor’s cycle as it was for centuries: — Ian James Hillyard

Good luck with your memoir. I hope your experience of dying right now isn't you dying right now.

But if so I'd much rather have companions to talk to in that situation, rather than not.

Your emphasis on the sailors life makes me think of Moby Dick. Especially as here you are talking of your memoir.

it's probably important to see that the differences between these two traditions of political thought are about both means and ends. That is, Marxists and anarchists disagree not only about the end goal (although quite often they agree about that, and call it communism), but also, I'd say primarily, about how to get there: can we overthrow the rulers and transition to a communistic society by taking control of the state, using the institutions, hierarchies, and powers of government, police, education, the legal system, etc.—as Marxists usually believe—or does it have to be a ground-up, grassroots revolution, as the anarchists believe. — Jamal

:up:

Means/Ends reasoning definitely differs between the two. I like your notion that communism is the theoretical they aspire towards, but maybe that's just the only idea they relate on, given the differences in material struggle.

A question to keep in mind for myself, then -- I thought of Sartre and Camus, but would defend them as "good" examples of blending the disciplines while keeping them separate too.

Good questions. One's I still reflect upon.

For Marxism I recommend www.marxists.org as a resource. For anarchy I recommend An Anarchist FAQ.

The wikipedia entries are good fodder for names and dates and historical events. Some of the "differences" between the two are more historical than conceptual, but still articulatable. There are times I think it comes down to almost nothing, though the popular conception is that they are opposite, so things become confusing as we rely upon our common notions.

Which is why I like the texts to begin getting at a difference.

But a rough-and-ready differentiation I could provide would be -- both are radical political philosophies. By "radical" I mean that they posit some underlying mechanism that is the result of many problems within current society. For Marx that radical center to society is the mode of production of a given society, which in turn is defined by ownership relationships to wealth production through labor-time, and so changing this mode of production is its goal for a classless society. For anarchy the radical center to society are hierarchical social relationships, so in order to develop an anarchist society we change our social relations such that we no longer hold hierarchical positions towards others.

The end-goal is where they look similar, but a lot of the things they care about along the way shows they have relevant differences to them too -- and I think those differences are best found by reading the thinkers of each.

Cool. And, OK, good examples.

Good summary, and noting how this lecture is conceptually dense in that it's using more original terms than the first 8 lectures have.

So throughout I was thinking about his take on "intuition", and how it gets at something right in terms of practice, but perhaps we could still "hold onto" intuition through a modification in theoretical thinking.

For Adorno, what you noted, is that the limits of "intuition" were beyond "the facts", but simultaneously he's committed to the notion that philosophy is a conceptual activity, whereas art can get away with this because it's not even trying to speak in the conceptual way but reveal truth in the non-conceptual in the artwork.

Obviously this goes back to Kant, and like you said this means "experience" and "beyond experience", where intuition is within experience but justifies our intellectual wonderings. For Adorno it seems it's mostly just that sense of an insight, but ultimately he's not interested in defending a hard distinction but rather trying to salvage the good parts of intuition while maintaining a difference between philosophy and art.

I can tell he's very interested in differentiating art from philosophy, but aside from that being an interesting question I think him speaking plainly about what he roughly means works as well as a precise definition -- there are philosophers which present their philosophy artistically, and artists who create philosophical works of art, and these activities are both human but different in some capacity. But we can adhere to Adorno's warnings on the two bad ways of treating intuition -- positivistically or idealistically -- without having to have a theory of what differentiates philosophy from art, even while we reflect on the nature of art and borrow those concepts for understanding philosophy.

I wonder to what extent he means the bad kinds of philosophy and art that try to do what the other is doing -- does he have particular examples?

***

Marx as speculative philosopher: when he talks about the two unifying speculative concepts Marx must maintain I was inclined to read his interpretation along similar lines as the notion that theories are always underdetermined, and yet the guide the research. Marx couldn't appeal to the obvious facts -- a pile of government economic records and newspapers -- but had to utilize them and order them in a speculative (good-kind) manner.

As an aside I think it's this noticing how theoretical constructs serve as a kind of order for our facts/intuitions/what-have-you is where people get an idealist impression. But here Adorno utilizes Marx as an example of a materialist who is at the same time speculative.

The reason I mention the above is while I get the sense that Adorno is hounded, I also get the sense that the positivists are wrong about science too :D -- science is a speculative endeavor. It doesn't just give you a list of facts, but explains the facts, orders them, predicts them and so forth.

This post by way of pointing out how our own conceptions on what constitutes philosophy are different, so we are talking past one another.

Okay, sure. Water cannot be divisible and indivisible. This is a true contradiction. Yet this is the first time I've seen you presenting Aristotle as a proponent of indivisibility. Earlier you were talking about teleology. — Leontiskos

The purpose of using names isn't to demonstrate what I've read and understood, but to refer to a shared body of knowledge between speakers. So when I say "Aristotle", I presume you understand Aristotle well enough and modern science well enough to be able to put together the dots that teleology and modern science, especially of the enlightenment era, are in conflict.

I switched to divisibility because the example is as good as the teleological one -- namely, I don't know if Lavosier, on a personal level, might have believed there was some kind of teleology behind water, but the whole enlightenment project basically rejects teleology in favor of efficient causation for its mode of explanation -- this is one of the primary reasons people reject Enlightenment era materialism and go in various ways.

There is no strict division between philosophy and science. Aristotle is generally referred to as a scientist, perhaps the first, and yet this does not disqualify him as a philosopher. — Leontiskos

I agree. My inclination to using examples is to overcome this -- we don't have to define things in terms of their necessary and sufficient conditions, but can instead use paradigmatic examples to show what we mean: definition by ostension.

So there are three names that we've been using, and with those names I'll draw some differences:

Aristotle is an ancient scientist and philosopher
Lavoisier is a modern scientist
Kripke is a modern philosopher.

Because I'd draw a distinction between ancient and modern science -- they don't operate the same. And Kripke counting as modern because of the scope of the question which utilizes Aristotle.

Right... I guess I would need you to set out the thesis that you believe to be at stake. I wrote that post with your emphasis on falsehood in mind. You have this idea that Lavoisier must have falsified something in Aristotle. The whole notion that we can grow in knowledge presupposes that we have something which is true and yet incomplete, and which can be built upon. — Leontiskos

I think all it takes to grow in knowledge is to plant seeds and see what happens. And what had been can die, and what is will stop being.

But noting here: even our notions of "falsification" are at odds. So perhaps we cannot appeal to falsification in our back-and-forth, because even this is being equivocated in our dialogue.

I assure you that by my understanding of falsification that Lavasioer does not falsify Aristotle, and that this is pretty much just another rabbit whole to jump down before getting to the topic "What is real?"

To say what's at stake: I don't think science delineates what is real. I also think that the project towards finding essences using the sciences is doomed to fail -- the big difference between Aristotle's and our day is the sheer amount of knowledge that there is. In Aristotle's day it probably seemed like a reasonable project to begin with the sciences and slowly climb up to a great metaphysical picture of the whole.

But any one scientist today simply can't have that perspective. Looking at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ their tagline on the front page states "PubMed® comprises more than 38 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books."

Aristotle could review all the literature that was in his day and respond to all his critics and lay out a potential whole. But he didn't have so many millions of papers or forebears to deal with. And I'd be more apt to look to the Gutenberg Press to explain this difference.

But this is only if we treat metaphysics as exactly the same as science, too. That was Aristotle's goal, but it need not be metaphysics goal. I'm more inclined to think that these metaphysical ways of thinking are ways of dealing with the sheer amount, the multiplicity, that one must consider to make a universal generalization. The generalizations, rather than capturing a higher truth, is a way of organizing the chaos for ourselves.

So what's at stake -- the usual stuff. The relationship between science, philosophy, and whether science can or ought to have or how much they ought to have a say in "What is real?"

It is odd to say that it is false. If it is "good enough" to begin understanding, then it simply cannot be wholly false. If it is wholly false then it is not good enough to begin understanding. — Leontiskos

Another terminological difference. I tend to think attributions of "not wholly false" or "not wholly true" can be reduced to a set of sentences in which the name is sometimes the predicate and sometimes not the predicate, and so we need only refer to the conditions for each. "False" doesn't admit of degrees in a strict sense, I don't think, though it's a common way of parsing the world in our everyday reasonings.

If I know something about water, and then I study and learn more about water, then what I first knew was true and yet incomplete. It need not have been false (although it could have been). Note, though, that if everything I originally believed about water was false, then my new knowledge of water is not building on anything at all, and a strong equivocation occurs between what I originally conceived as 'water' and what I now understand to be 'water'.

For Aristotle learning must build on previous knowledge. To learn something is to use what we already know (and also possibly new inputs alongside).

I agree that Aristotle would accept and expect this -- but I don't think he'd predict what's different.
— Moliere

Right. He knows that there is more to be learned about water even though he does not know that part of that is H2O.

So what I see is that skepticism, rather than security, is the basis of knowledge. Jumping out into the unknown and making guesses and trying to make sense of what we do not know is how new knowledge gets generated -- if we happen to find some connections to what we thought we knew down the line that's a happy accident.

The emphasis on security, I think, leads one to complacency. Rather than testing where we are wrong we defend when we are right.

Right, good. Let's just employ set theory with a set of predications about water:

Aristotle: Water: {wet, heavy unlike fire}
[Call this AW]
Lavoisier: Water: {wet, heavy unlike fire, H2O}
[Call this LW]

On this construal Lavoisier's understanding of water agrees with Aristotle in saying that water is wet and heavy unlike fire, but it adds a third predication that Aristotle does not include, namely that water is composed of H2O.

What is the relation between AW and LW? In a material sense there is overlap but inequality. Do Aristotle and Lavoisier mean the same thing by "water"? Yes and no. They are pointing to the same substance, but their understanding of that substance is not identical. At the same time, neither one takes their understanding to be exhaustive (and therefore AW and LW do not, and are not intended to, contradict one another).

Now the univocity of the analytic will tend to say that either water is AW or else water is LW (or else it is neither), and therefore Aristotle and Lavoisier must be contradicting one another. One of them understands water and one does not. There is no middle ground. There is no way in which Aristotle could understand water and yet Lavoisier could understand it better.

If one wants to escape the problematic univocity of analytical philosophy they must posit the human ability to talk about the same thing without having a perfectly identical understanding of that thing. That is part of what the Aristotelian notion of essence provides. It provides leeway such that two people can hit the same target even without firing the exact same shot, and then compare notes with one another to reach a fuller understanding. — Leontiskos

I think your construal of AW and LW is such that they look like they agree more than they do not agree. Maybe, but note this is why the historical method is more interesting than stipulated definitions.

I'd go back to the distinction in this post I made between Aristotle, Lavoisier, and Kripke.

Aristotle's concern is philosophical and scientific, and he lives in an era where his project is feasibly both philosophical and scientific. He has a much wider theory of water that conflicts with the enlightenment, mechanistic picture of H2O which Lavoisier is credited with determining. I think of hisLavoisier's work primarily as a scientist because his work as a scientist was in improving analytic methods, and it was due to his care towards precision that he was able to demonstrate to the wider scientific community the ratio of Hydrogen to Oxygen you get with electrolysis. So maybe there's some philosophical work of his I do not know, but I'd say this work fits squarely within the scientific column, even if we don't have strict definitions to delineate when is what.

And, likewise, Kripke is making a point about whether essences can be made viable in the 20th century after they had been largely abandoned by contemporary philosophy (even if there are other traditions which keep them). So he's a philosopher, but if science turns out to be wrong about the whole H2O thing his points will still stand(EDIT:or fall) regardless. So he's not a scientist, in this particular instance.

Excellent response.

Good laying out of positions and replies -- I just finished it so nothing to substantive to say, but wanted to give kudos for a well thought out response on the topic.

My conclusion is that all three uses of the symbol "=" have different meanings in the aforementioned scientific equations. Additionally, these uses do not seem to reflect the logician's use in an expression such as "a = a". While I can see the application in Kripkes' examples of "table = table" or "Nixon = Nixon", its application to these so called "identity statements" discovered by scientist, well that is a bridge too far. — Richard B

I agree here -- which is why I began to think that the lecturn lectern example might be better because it gets us out of thinking about how the science relates to the metaphysics, which is a whole ball of wax, and starts to focus on an object which we take as real, and then Kripke demonstrates how we might still be able to have necessary relationships after the fact and so a kind of "essence" might still hold good.

The level of abstraction in what I’m saying here produces the suspicion that it’s lacking in substance. I don’t think it is, but maybe there’s a need to bring it down to earth with concrete examples, more concrete than talk of rationality and irrationality. Maybe later. — Jamal

I don't think it's lacking in substance.

(Btw, Tuesday is when I'm catching up on 9)

Ableist, becasue it minimises the intelligence and perceptiveness of pre-linguistic or non-verbal individuals, and misses the real problem, which is isolation from language, not failure to understand the world. — Banno

:up:

Rather than the object or referrent serving as a ground for meaning I rather think it's the linguistic community that's more important in determining "What is real?" specifically because that's the "home" of meaning. It's how terms come to refer in the first place, to be able to name and predicate in the first place depends upon how those around us name and predicate.

Right. This happened right in this thread, when Moliere claimed that because Aristotle views water "teleologically" and Lavoisier views it as H2O, therefore Lavoisier has falsified Aristotle. — Leontiskos

I don't believe that Aristotle was falsified by Lavoisier.

Falsification is a much more complicated maneuver than disagreement on fundamentals. Disagreement on fundamentals -- such as whether water is an element or not, or whether water is composed of atoms or not -- don't so much falsify each other as much as they both make claims that cannot both be true at the same time. This is because they mean different things, but are referring to the same object.

I would say with respect to reasoning about reality -- deciding "What is real?" -- the PNC is not violated, of course, but they can't both be true either. Water is either a fundamental element which does not divide further into more fundamental atoms, or it is a composition of other more fundamental elements and so does divide further, or something else entirely (in which case both thinkers are false when making the universal claim -- there's an implicit universal claim in both, namely that All water is such and such. This is how I read them anyways, which is where the conflict arises. They can't both be true such that All water is such and such ((and not the other thing)))

The thinkers are very far apart from one another in terms of time, who they are talking to, the problems they're trying to address, and so forth, and yet are talking about the same thing -- at least I think so. So the variance between the two can only be accounted for by looking to the meanings of the terms, which in turn is how we can come to understand how people have made inferences about fundamental matter in the past, and thereby can serve as a kind of model for our own inferences.

For my part I don't believe in essences or even that water must be H2O. The lectern example of Kripke's makes more sense to me, but even then I'm hesitant to make necessary claims with respect to the object -- hence why I'm speaking about meanings, inferences, and all the rest.

What water is seems to me more of scientific than philosophical question, but then I know that barrier is another bit where we're likely not in agreement, since for Aristotle the question of science and philosophy isn't as separate. His whole philosophy has large parts dedicated to ancient science and he's making use of philosophical arguments.

My guess is that the various empirical "methods" -- which really just amount to norms of collective argument -- probably handle claims about reality better than universal claims about what something is or is not. But then the picture of nature that arises isn't exactly one of a harmonious whole.
 
EDIT: Also, to head off something I see-- just because science is good at one thing doesn't mean philosophy is overturned or useless or anything like that. I think it stands on its own without the need for the sciences, but that its methods are good for the reflective practice of science, which is where we begin to clarify what it is we mean.


I, for one, am in favor of there being true sentences.

Yes, in a way, but I think reality comes first. I think we have to have some familiarity with water before we have any sensible familiarity with "water." Familiarity with water is a precondition for familiarity with the English sign "water." — Leontiskos

Heh -- well as long as it's the reality I understand then I'm OK with that ;)

Much of this is right, but again, the crucial point you are failing to recognize is that neither Aristotle nor Lavoisier mean that anyone who does not mean what they mean must therefore be wrong. That is a very strange reading. No one is claiming to have a complete and exclusive understanding of water. — Leontiskos

I'm starting to think this is just something of a misunderstanding that I haven't figured out yet. I'm not saying either believed they had the complete or exclusive reading, even in what they meant.

I am referencing what they meant and relating it to what we know about reality, though, to make a point about "How do we know what is real?"

I think the key here is that when Lavoisier says, "Water is H2O," he could be saying two different things:

M: "Water is H2O, and if anyone, past or future, says anything else about water, they are wrong."
N: "Water is H2O, and there are all sorts of other true things that can be said about water."

You seem to take Aristotle to have said something like (M), but that's not generally what a scientist means when they say, "Water is such-and-such." If all scientists are saying things like (M) then there can be no growth in knowledge and therefore Aristotle's approach is wrong. But given that scientists are usually saying things like ( N) there is no true barrier to growth in knowledge - either individually or communally. — Leontiskos

I'm taking the "M" translation to demonstrate a point -- these are both very intelligent persons who have done scholarly work on water, one philosophical and the other scientific -- though with the added qualification that Aristotle's scholarly work has a kind of proto-scientific thing going on in his philosophy.

The "N" translation I take for granted, in a sense. Yes, we can figure out ways to reconcile them.

Because learning occurred and knowledge grew. Lavoisier knows more about water than Aristotle did. Aristotle would expect this to be the case for later scientists. — Leontiskos

I agree that Aristotle would accept and expect this -- but I don't think he'd predict what's different. Namely that the atomic theory is correct, that water does not act in accord with any teleology, and it's not a fundamental element.

But then, in comparing the meanings between the two, it doesn't seem they mean the same thing after all... even if they refer to the same thing, roughly.

There seems to be an assumption amongst some folk here that we have to understand what water is before we can begin to make use of the word "water". That either we understand what water is, and then learn to use the word, or we have the word, and learn to apply it.

But is that right? That "Water before word" or "Word before water" exhausts all the possibilities? — Banno

To put my cards on the table I don't think that's right. I wouldn't put such a hard distinction between meaning and the thing talked about, though perhaps that's fuel for another thread?

Does that help? — Banno

It may eventually. Still dully mulling. I'm thankful for the reply either way.

I would say that things don't have inherent meanings (at least for philosophy). I think you are still conflating metaphysics with linguistics. Throughout this post you talk a lot about "meanings," but essentialism is not about what words mean, it is about what things are. — Leontiskos

In order to talk about what is real we need to know what it is we mean by "What is real?" -- this would be before any question on essentialism. In order to talk about what water is we have to be able to talk about "What does it mean when we say "Water is real", or "Water has an essence"? or "The essence of water is that it is H2O"?"

We can't really deal with any dead philosopher without dealing with meanings -- the words have to mean something, rather than be the thing they are about.

I've already pointed out that Lavoisier's discovery did not necessarily falsify what came before: — Leontiskos

Whether they falsify one another or not is different from whether they mean the same thing. I don't think they do, but are probably talking about the same thing in nature. I do, however, think you have to pick one or the other if we presume that Lavoisier and Aristotle are talking about the same thing because the meanings are not the same. The lack of falsification is because the meanings are disparate and they aren't in conversation with one another, and they aren't even doing the same thing.

It's the difference in meaning that raises the question -- if the thing is the same why does the meaning differ? If stating "What the thing is" in a metaphysical way can be done without knowing what it is we mean by claims on reality then maybe you'd have a point. But I don't think we can just begin with the things as they are in the abstract -- we begin with things as they are around us.

@Leontiskos Then we've likely been talking past and working out and all the rest that we do here.

There is a possibility that I think isn't taken seriously enough that marks a difference between how I'm thinking on "What is real?" and how it seems Leon is.

And I think this would include our conversation too @Count Timothy von Icarus

There's the sense in which, if pressed, I'll say that I think the water which we drink today is H2O, and that the water which Aristotle refers to has at least a similar enough reference for comparison, if not the same meaning.

But this is a best guess, and not a philosophical demonstration.

Something that's operating in the background of my thoughts that hasn't been clear is the reason and use for historical examples, such as using Aristotle to talk about essentialism when a modern essentialist would not make the claims Aristotle did about water in marking out its essence. The reason I use Aristotle is because he is likely talking about the same thing, and yet he gets a different meaning. Further, his view was taken as the truth for a long time, and then it wasn't (and now it is, by some! :D) -- so there's a tangible conversation through history that we can reference in thinking through how the terms were developed. There's a tradition in which the terms meanings can come to make sense and we can make comparisons between the meanings of the terms. Further, when we accept meaning we get rid of the need for being as a kind of "ground" or "explanation" for why we're saying the things in the first place -- the historical method is what keeps the arguments from devolving into circularity and arbitrary stipulation.

Enough on meta-philosophical method -- I just wanted to make it clear why I've been using Aristotle and the rest rather than laying out propositions and definitions within logical form. And the reflection on the changing of meanings over time leads into the point I wanted to make in noting how the best guess is not a philosophical demonstration: when I look at how meaning has changed over time, and I presume that the thing referred to has not changed, and the meanings contradict, then it seems that either the thing has both meanings, contradictory though they be, or we invent meanings to make sense of the thing. Supposing the LNC holds in a metaphysically possible way, to use 's nesting of possibilities, and we change meanings then which meaning should be the one which is "true", and when will it be true? If we were wrong before then it's possible for us to be wrong again. And science cannot get us out of this conundrum because it is finite -- it deals with the "real' world, we'll say, so as to avoid poisoning the well in favor of physicalism, and the patterns we assign today can be seen as superseded tomorrow because of that. All scientific theories, no matter how certain we can come to see them as, are subject to change and subsumption by future discoveries, future subsumptions and corrections. Then, perhaps, water isn't really H2O, though the locals saw it that way, but from way up here we see....


This all by way of pointing out why I'm going over various meanings of "Water" through thinking on the question about "What is real?" -- let's say we have three contenders for what is real about water. @Banno's is that, in a particular example, we find out that the water was an oasis and not a mirage. In Kripke we find that if water is H2O, then water is necessarily H2O: there is no possible world in which water could be something else, without going into the metaphysics of what water is -- perhaps, to use the diagram again, "What is water?" is a question that can only be sensibly answered in the "Real Possible World" rather than the "Metaphysically possible world" (And, for what it's worth, even if it happens to be wrong, I couldn't make sense of Kripke without thinking of possible worlds as plausible worlds; i.e. what would I assent to as a genuine possibility in such-and-such a circumstance, and what objections might hold?)

For myself it seems that if we accept a realist metaphysics, and our meanings change, then we have to accept the very real possibility that most of what we know is false -- that it's "good enough" to begin with setting out a problem or understanding something, but the particular circumstance is where we'll find the thing rather than in the definition of what makes the thing what the thing is. This supposing the world does not change -- if the world changes, we could still accept a realist metaphysic, and this would make a great deal of sense out of why what seems simple is what smart people disagree about.

But then that just seems to stretch credibility too.

In both cases I'm sort of just setting out what makes reality what it is in relation to meaning -- the question to me is very much on the epistemic side, as I said. In a way what I'd pose is "What does this change in the meaning of water, something which actually seems quite mundane to us without much further ado, indicate about how we decide what is real?"

MacIntyre's philosophy is great, and his death is a shame to me.

His notion of tradition is probably what is still the most influential on my own thinking. The whole notion that traditions are what give philosophy a non-arbitrary grounding is something I use in thinking through philosophy historically -- the tradition is what gives context for understanding why a philosopher is responding how they are and whom, and this in turn is what begins to reveal the concepts within said tradition.

May his rest be peaceful.

Well, you can ask folk to burn there books, which would make your life more interesting. — Banno

Heh. I wouldn't do such a thing, I just couldn't resist the dumb joke.

Not sure about that last part? :smile: But yes, this is a huge problem with the veil of ignorance, for Nussbaum and many others. Rawls assumed a lot when he imagined what we could know and not know, accept and not accept, conceptualize and not conceptualize, from behind that veil. The idea is resilient, though, because you can correct and stretch it without breaking it and making it useless. — J

I began to think that I was saying something not worth saying.

Not entirely fair. Rawls has all kinds of things to say about this, most famously his "Difference Principle": — J

Fair. I am not a Rawls reader, though I've done selections from A Theory of Justice.

From my perspective, though I haven't read what you recommended so this is off the cuff, is that it's very easy to accept economic differences when you're higher up, and not so easy when you're lower down. So even if we go with the veil of ignorance I suspect the people who roll snake-eyes will still feel bitter and want more out of life.

Another attempt after re-reading -- pick which is best to reply to, or ignore it all if it's just bad:

But this is, at most, an epistemic issue. The step further, that claims that essences themselves change, has to say that the water that carved out the Grand Canyon isn't the same water we see causing erosion today. I think there are a host of problems with that though, not least of which is "why should our ideas about things evolve in one way instead of any other if there is no actuality that is prior to our speech about things?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

"at most"? As if that were the lesser question? :D

I admit I'm more on the epistemic than metaphysical side of thinking.

I don't think matter changes with our ideas, at least not so far with what I know.

"The step further" is the one I wouldn't take -- it's possible, but not something we really know or can claim to know.

As the epicycles were once thought universal, so can our theory of water be thought universal, but mistaken in terms of meaning.

IDK, perhaps some of these can be ironed out but it certainly seems more intuitive to me that fire and water are, and remain, what they are. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree there.

Nuh. Instead of worrying about meaning, worry about what folk do. I'm not asking folk to burn their book, just that they not to use it as an excuse for abominations. — Banno

BOOORRRRRINNNNNNNG! :D

Though I'm sympathetic here:

Do I discard the wisdom extracted over the millenia because you can show me it's not the perfect book? — Hanover

Reason can only go so far, after all. And I don't think @Hanover is using the book as an excuse for abominations, though I know many do.

pretty sure there's no discussion of that in either Theory of Justice or Political Liberalism. I'd have to reread both him and Nussbaum to have an educated opinion one way or the other. — J

Rawls is modern liberalism par excellence, if we take Keynes as his economic counter-part. The idea of justice includes classes of various kinds such that all the people, in the veil of ignorance, would agree to those classes before rolling the dice to find out which class they are in.

The big difficulty there is... well, whatever. I know i'm not a liberal. I agree with you that there's no discussion upon "just how low can the lower class go?", because he was not a member of the lower class.

Not exactly.

That is, we could use Kripke's lectern instead, and have the same discussion. — Banno

It might be better to use the lectern example than water example just to show what "necessity" and "essence" mean.

Where is that thread we talked about this in.... @Banno

IDK, perhaps some of these can be ironed out but it certainly seems more intuitive to me that fire and water are, and remain, what they are. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree that's intuitive.

It's what I assume in my thinking about matter from the past to now.

I also agree that if we had a fully worked out philosophy we could make the analogy between historical events and matter, but I'll admit I think the former claims on matter are a little more secure than claims about particular events.

The other question is, how could we be wrong in these sorts of cases if what a thing is depends on what we currently think of it? How can we discover that "fire is not phlogiston" if there is no such thing as fire outside of ideas like phlogiston theory? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Because some scientist or researcher became obstinate about their theory and did what they could through the social structure to persuade others they were right after all.

Thinking through this question now -- Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions is what I have in mind, but with a more materialist mindset which doesn't give into the notion that nature itself changes with the sciences.

I think if phlogiston had won the day then we'd be talking about how the caloric theory was wrong -- once we collectively accept a theory we can begin to discard thoughts that seem irrelevant and get to the work "at hand"

If all the scientists then had decided phlogiston is better they could have worked out the various difficulties with accepting that theory, in my mind. But this is a historical counter-factual.

But then in virtue of what do we speak of some enduring thing, "water," that changes over time as theories change — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think it's in virtue of the things our species relies upon water for -- drinking, cooking, bathing, etc.

"Water" is not a scientific term exactly.

But this is, at most, an epistemic issue. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, yes.

I tend to favor the epistemic side over the ontology side -- I understand it's basically a "player's choice", but it's my preference. On the reverse of "How do you know unless you start with what is?" is "How do you know what is unless you start with what you know?"

Another thing I'm tempted to say is a dialectical of some kind...

Yes, well that would be an interesting topic. Aristotle thinks that any piece of new knowledge that someone arrives at must be generated from things that they then knew better and still know better. That they then knew them better is vacuous, so the more interesting claim is that they still know them better. — Leontiskos

I'm beginning to think this is a dialectical point.

In a lot of ways I think of knowledge as the things I know are false -- don't do this, don't do that, this is false because, this is wrong cuz that...

Might be off topic to the original question, though.

Good to find some camaraderie though.

I think he is adamantly agreeing with you. — Banno

Whom?

Okay, great. And for Aristotelian essentialism this is taken for granted, namely that we can know water without knowing water fully, and that therefore future generations can improve on our understanding of water. None of that invalidates Aristotelian essentialism. It's actually baked in - crucially important for Aristotle who was emphatic in affirming the possibility of knowledge-growth. — Leontiskos

I agree, sir. :)

He's attractive for a reason. His ideas are amazing in their explicitness for the time he expressed them in. He attempts to move philosophy into the scientific realm by being an empiricist who prefers biology first and foremost, and observes the world around him in making generalizations according to his categories and causes. These are the things I'd like to emulate again in some sense, but maybe with less slavery.

Aristotle's a move which respects Plato, because the ideas are still important, but diverges from him -- at least in the sense of the schools -- because matter is part of the essence of a thing, rather thingthan the forms defining the essence of things.

***

My thoughts come from a place of loving reading Aristotle while thinking about what it all means today.

I'm not certain how to distinguish how I think yet, but one thing I've noticed is how Aristotle's move from the more certain to the less certain might not be the way I generate knowledge.