I can say we agree, and I can say what we agree on, without attributing to "what we agree on" independent existence, but instead treating it hylomorphically as an abstract object that is immanent within our agreement. "Our agreement" is another such abstraction. Does it exist independently of our agreeing? — Srap Tasmaner

I think abstract objects are products of analysis. We dismantle mind and language use as if we're taking a cuckoo clock apart. We may become so engrossed in the pieces laid out in a table that we forget that.

As long as you're tuned into the fact that in this framework, propositions are content, not sentences, you're good to go.

Do we see from the above that mass and abstraction, like form and content*, are interwoven? — ucarr

Maybe we could pursue this in a different thread. It's sort of along the lines of Plato. I'll start one if you're interested.

I'd have to go with Schopenhauer and say that subject and object are two sides of the same coin.

The mass of an object, for instance, can be treated as an abstract object, — Srap Tasmaner

Abstract objects are things like numbers, sets, and propositions. Mass is a physical property.

as long as you're not saying that agreement is only consensual, then we're on the same page. — J

I'm happy exploring behaviorism and pondering whether there really is any such thing as agreement, but my home base is to imagine that I agree with billions of people I've never met on a mass of propositions, many of which I've never brought to mind consciously. :smile:

I like the clarity of this, but doesn't it beg the question? The "other side," so to speak, would say, "A proposition is supposed to be a thing with a truth-value, something we don't merely agree or disagree on, but claim objective reasons for doing so." — J

I didn't mean to say that propositions are limited to the things we agree or disagree on. We imagine there are true propositions that no one knows, for instance, the answer to whether there is life on other planets.

I was trying to show what's at stake if we decide that there are no propositions in the Fregean sense of the word. We'll have to give up the notion of agreement as we commonly understand it. I was thinking about this because I was quoting Soames and the first chapter of his book on truth explains why we can't use utterances or sentences as the basis of agreement. It has to be propositions, or the content of an uttered sentence. With regard to whether there's life on other planets, notice how we "smuggle in" an assertion as Kimhe puts it.

I start to think that frank might be working at the US Fed Res. — javi2541997

I'm the janitor.

You just can't do hummus without lemons. It's unthinkable.

Thanks for the info and sticking up for the little guy. — BitconnectCarlos

But you're right. Israel is the little guy. They wouldn't be there if it weren't for their strategic value to the US, which has been fading for several decades now.

Your contribution is appreciated. — BitconnectCarlos

Awesome.

Cool, thanks!

Maybe I misunderstand you but I don't see the distinction between a thought being merely entertained (or grasped) and it being asserted to line up with the distinction between (merely) formal and natural languages. — Pierre-Normand

I think that when you entertain a thought, you're imagining it as an assertion, even if there was no such event. For instance, if you contemplate "the cat is on the mat", in terms of thought, all you have is a sentence that could mean all sorts of things. It's not truth-apt. To the extent that meaning is truth conditions, it's meaningless. Am I wrong?

Ascriptions of semantic content to the responses of LLM-based AI agents, and interpreting them as having assertoric force, is a matter of taking a high-level intentional stance on their linguistic behavior with a view of rationalizing it. — Pierre-Normand

And I think that's what we do all the time when we communicate. We rationalize. I don't think you can really see any meaning in the output of an AI unless you take it as having assertoric force. It's a reflexive part of communication.

it also is liable to send us off into tangential directions regarding the specific nature of current LLM-based AI agents, the issue of their autonomy (or lack thereof), their lack of embodiment (and the issue of the empirical grounding of their symbols), how they are being individuated (as machines, algorithms or virtual agents in specific conversation instances), to what extend their assertions have deontic statuses (in the form of commitments and entitlements to claims), and so on. — Pierre-Normand

I'm not seeing that as tangential. I think it would highlight, especially for the naive, like me, the difference between a formal language where apparently there are propositions that aren't thought of as asserted in any way, and ordinary language, where the listener always thinks of what's being asserted in the light of who asserts it, or in what setting it's asserted. But I'll go with your judgment.

Would you say an AI can assert a proposition? Or are we just treating it as if it can?

In analyzing a situation or a historical comparison, power dynamics are important to me as are the fundamental nature of the parties involved & their aims. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't think comparing WW2 to the recent Gaza invasion helps me understand much. But as for the power dynamics, you know the Palestinians in Gaza originally went there and started lemon farms. The Israelis purposefully diverted the water supply away from the lemons because they didn't want the Palestinians to be there. They wanted them to move to Jordan, but they couldn't bring themselves to forcibly transport them because of what had happened in WW2.

So the Palestinians resorted to starting small businesses in Gaza to support themselves. The Israelis increased taxes until all the Palestinians went out of business. Gaza became a giant refugee camp because the Israelis intentionally undermined their efforts to survive there.

The Israelis have been persecuting the Palestinians for decades. It's just a fact, man.

If, for example, propositional thinking is said to be part of the human animal, that needs to be explained. — schopenhauer1

I think there are two approaches to the OP, and maybe in philosophy in general:

1. You can start with ontological biases and let those views form the limits of investigation.
2. You can start by trying to map out where you are, and let the borders remain foggy.

Both approaches have virtues. What's at stake with the concept of propositions is the communing part of communication. It's all about agreement. If we ever really do arrive at agreement, then we would say we're thinking the same thoughts. That's what a proposition is supposed to be: that thing we can agree or disagree on.

If you start with a strongly materialistic bias, you're likely to lean toward behaviorism, which says that we never really agree on anything. All agreement is really just a certain kind of behavior. If we follow this approach, we're never even going to arrive at the OP, because it's about thinking.

Frank is just trying to uphold his idea that in "real life" we don't talk about unasserted declarative sentences, without actually going through the work of defending it. — Leontiskos

I talked about that a lot. I don't think you saw it.

:up:

Why would that not be ontological? You are literally discussing someone's understanding of what an object is. — schopenhauer1

I get that. It's just that when I've tried to pin down the ontological significance of "abstract object", the answer seems to be that this question doesn't need to be answered. We're more in the realm of just identifying what we can't do without.

Thank you!

Now you are getting into metaphysics, I was told that this shan't be done for this discussion. — schopenhauer1

I don't think abstract object implies any ontological commitment. It just means it's not a physical thing, but it's not a mental object like if you're picturing a flower in your mind. An abstract object is something I could be wrong about, for example if I say that 2 squared is 5.

@Pierre-Normand
Hi! I was hoping to get some clarification from a professional. Did Frege think propositions were thoughts? Abstract objects, but basically thoughts?

I'll leave you to it. — Leontiskos

Uh, ok. Thanks.

@Leontiskos

Again, Soames explains Frege this way:

"In general, when we want to refer to the thought expressed by a particular sentence, we use an expression such as "that S" or "the proposition that S". The use of the expression indicates that something is being said about a thought (proposition)." ibid pg. 22

Your quote nowhere says that for Frege a proposition is a thought. Do you realize that? — Leontiskos

I think pretty clearly says that. What did you think a proposition is for Frege?

As opposed to what? — schopenhauer1

Exactly. I think Leontiskos and I are talking about different Freges. :grin:

I will simply note that, yet again in misrepresenting Frege, you provide no source for your claims. — Leontiskos

"The first point I want to call attention to is that according to Frege, truth is a property of thoughts or propositions in the sense discussed in chapter 1. For Frege, sentences are vehicles for expressing information. The thought expressed by a sentence on a given occasion is the information content carried by the sentence on that occasion. When one assertively utters a sentence, typically one says or asserts the thought expressed by the sentence on that occasion. Thus for Frege, assertion is a relation between an agent and a thought." --Understanding Truth, Scott Soames

When he mentions the first chapter, Soames is talking about an examination of the relationship between utterances, sentences, and propositions, with the goal of explaining why the concept of a proposition is indispensable. Did you have some source that conflicts with that?

When Frege talked about propositions, he was talking about thoughts. Those who find that language distasteful probably shouldn't be discussing Frege at all.

You appear to be agreeing that we can't have unasserted propositions in real life, even if the assertion is only hypothetical or potential.

"Does a strong formalism such as Frege's invalidate whatever can be said or thought about p in ordinary language?" By "invalidate" I mean "render meaningless/useless/incoherent" or, for short, unthinkable, despite what we may believe at the time about our alleged thought? — J

I think the most fruitful framework for discussing that question would be one that starts without ontological commitments, with something like ontological antirealism.

But whether p is T or F is another story; context won't tell you. — J

Right. Context is just part of discerning what proposition is in play.

I still don't see that this follows. Can't you have a mistaken or in-part inaccurate understanding of what truth is, and discover in the course of my lecture what the "truth about truth" is? You seem to be saying that you wouldn't be able to recognize the "truth about truth" unless you already had the correct understanding of what that is. But couldn't the lecture process itself provide the necessary enlightenment? i.e., in the course of listening to me, couldn't you find yourself agreeing with me and simultaneously realizing "Ah, of course, I now see why I believe this to be true"? — J

I'll post Frege's words, and the way Soames formulates it:

"But could we not maintain that there is truth when there is correspondence in a certain respect? But which respect? For in that case what ought we to do so as to decide whether something is true? We should have to inquire whether it is true that an idea and a reality, say, correspond in the specified respect. And then we should be confronted by a question of the same kind, and the game could begin again. So the attempted definition of truth as correspondence breaks down. For in a definition certain characteristics would have to be specified. And in application to any particular case the question would always arise whether it were true that the characteristics were present. So we should be going round in a circle. It therefore seems likely that the content of the word ‘true’ is sui generis and indefinable." — Gottlob Frege, “Der Gedanke. Eine logische Untersuchung,” in Beitrage zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 1 (1918): 58–77, translated into English as “Thoughts” by P. Geach and R. H. Stoothoff in Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy ed. B. McGuinness (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 351–72, reprinted in Propositions and Attitudes, ed. N. Salmon and S. Soames (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 33–55, at 36.

The argument suggested by this passage can be reconstructed as a reductio ad absurdum:

A. Suppose that truth is definable and that the definition is as follows: For any proposition p, p is true iff p is T.

B. If (A), then to inquire (establish) in any particular case whether a proposition p is true, one must inquire (establish) whether p is T.

C. Therefore, to inquire (establish) whether p is true, one must inquire (establish) whether p is T.

D. To inquire (establish) whether S is to inquire (establish) whether it is true that S, which is to inquire (establish) whether the proposition that S is true.

E. Therefore to inquire (establish) whether a proposition p is true, one must inquire (establish) whether the proposition that p is T is true, which in turn requires one to inquire (establish) whether the proposition that the proposition that p is T is itself T is true, and so on ad infinitum.

The argument can be continued in two different ways, one emphasizing circularity and the other emphasizing regress.

Circularity

F. Since deciding whether a proposition p is true involves deciding whether the proposition that p is T is true, the definition (A) of truth is circular.

G. Since adequate definitions cannot be circular, truth is indefinable.

Regress

F*. So if truth is definable, then deciding whether a proposition p is true requires completing the impossible task of deciding the truth values of infinitely many distinct propositions.

G*. Since we sometimes can decide whether a proposition is true, truth is indefinable. — Understanding Truth, p. 21

There's a fair amount of discussion after this this passage. This source may require a university IP.
I'm not sure: here

I think the upshot of the argument is that the concept of truth has to be innate, or that it's an aspect of communication. We can analyze it out and contemplate it, but the longer we do that, the less sense it will make.

Stephen King said that fiction is a way of expressing truths that couldn't be conveyed in any other way.

Seems to me that "The cat is on the mat" is about a cat and a mat. — Banno

In a raw sort of way. Maybe that's enough.

So the human mind finally gets a part to play in the speculations? That is pretty exciting.

Then we agree that there is a difference between what a sentence is about and what is done with it? — Banno

I might not be understanding what you're asking, but I believe that in order for a sentence to be about something, it has to be used. Meaning is found in use.

o it'd be neat to set up a system where we seperate out the judgement about our expressions from what they are about, so we could work through any inconsistencies in their content apart from their force. — Banno

If you're talking about an artificial environment that's pimped out with a foundation of axioms, then yes, you probably could do that. If we subsequently want to bridge that to ordinary language we'll probably end up with Chomsky and an innate human language which can be identified by analysis of the world's languages (to see what words they all contain.) I figured that wouldn't be your cup of tea.

Folk seem too keen on claiming that one cannot understand what a statement is about without deciding if it is true or false. — Banno

I don't think anyone has made that claim. You probably need to understand the truth conditions, but not whether it's true or false.

But philosophers have been regularly thinking outside the box for millennia. That's not what Wittgenstein was talking about, is it? Wasn't he talking about speculating where nothing can be known?

What's perhaps salient here is that we can understand what a statement is about, and indeed, what it would take to make it true or false, while not knowing if it is true or if it is false, and certainly without having to make a judgement as to it's truth. There have been plenty of examples hereabouts - "the grass is green", "the cat is on the mat". — Banno

If you understand what "the cat is on the mat" is about, it's because you're providing a phantom context for it. The OP alludes to this. There just is no proposition where there is no context of utterance. You can easily invent that context though, and voila: you have a proposition.

There's a famous incident where an English colony in North America disappeared without a trace. They're called the "lost colony." The people who came back looking for them found a tree that was supposed to be used for emergency communication (in case they were attacked by the natives.) But the previously agreed upon code hadn't been used. Instead there was one word carved into it: "Croatan." Ever since then, people have tried to understand what the lost colony meant by it. Croatan was an Algonquin chieftain. Did they mean that Croatan killed them all? Or did the crops fail and they had to go live with Croatan? You see, to sort out any meaning in the communication, you have to imagine the context in which it was uttered, in other words, you have to imagine it being asserted, whether it actually was or not.

But one can utter a sentence without expressing a proposition. And without making a judgement as to the sentence's truth. — Banno

Definitely. :up: