I still think that issues of gender are interesting to think about and worth discussing, and so I may give it another go in a bit, from a different angle, and with some better research / sources, if that's okay. — tomatohorse

Sure, and that's perfectly fine- its certainly not the case that any discussion about gender is out of bounds. But it is a sensitive topic, and often attracts outright transphobes (and outright transphobic posts/threads are prohibited by the site guidelines and will not be tolerated, same as with any other form of bigotry) so it has to be handled with a bit of care.

So, just to summarize what you and busycuttingcrap are saying is that conventions dictate how language use is utilized in writing or speech? — Shawn

I suppose; if meaning is use, and use is a matter of social convention, then meaning is a matter of social convention. So, sure. — busycuttingcrap

One thing to keep in mind is that language use is highly fluid and diverse, and so these sorts of definitions or analyses always get you into trouble because there will always be exceptions: as Banno pointed out, language use can also deviate from or violate social convention (this is often how linguistic change occurs, and there absolutely is such a thing as creativity in language use: people are constantly coming up with novel ways to use familiar terms/phrases/etc, some of which catch on, and some of which do not).

And so thinking or talking about these things in terms of "isms" can lead you astray, and are especially inadvisable when dealing with unique thinkers like Wittgenstein: categorization may conceal or obscure more than it clarifies.

Some language use is a direct breach of convention, so I'd say that social convention is also a matter of use.... — Banno

Absolutely... And of course this is why, as you already pointed out, its not especially useful to invoke "isms" in such discussions, and especially when it comes to someone like W.

This should help dissipate the nonsense of "meaning never breaches the skull" and so on; no mysterious private mental substance that can't leak out of your ears - just what we do with words. — Banno

:up: Mysterious, magical, and invisible mental substances or entities: talk about a philosophical dead-end if there ever was one...

As per Banno and yourself, is it right to infer that to treat this as a bona fide case for conventionalism? I know Wittgenstein advocated that to even the formal languages of mathematics immutable to the effects of culture, society, history and time(?) — Shawn

I suppose; if meaning is use, and use is a matter of social convention, then meaning is a matter of social convention. So, sure.

:fire: :100: :up:



As Banno pointed out (i.e. remembering his Wittgenstein), meaning is use: its a simple principle, but it is really useful to remember when tackling questions like this.

So to ask whether meaning persists over time is to ask whether particular usages persist over time: do people use the term the same way. And although I'm not a linguist, I think its pretty safe to say that they do- there are usages which have persisted over relatively long periods of time (i.e. on the scale of human history), which is to say that there are linguistic communities that have maintained a particular usage for a given term/phrase/etc over a (occasionally quite long) period of time.

(on the other hand, at the risk of pointing out the obvious; meaning/use very often does change over time: different linguistic communities use similar terms/phrases/etc in different ways at different times at different places and for different purposes)

Hey, I'm all for godless communism, so they're right about that part I guess :grin:

I think this misconception/misrepresentation has to be deliberate in at least many cases, because it does seem to persist no matter how many times people point out and explain this particular error.

:up:

Well and who also seem to think that atheism is synonymous with or entails things like materialism, moral nihilism/anti-realism, and so on. It does not. Obviously there are many atheists who are also materialists or moral nihilists/anti-realists/etc, but this is not a logical consequence of atheism: atheism is logically independent of most positive philosophical positions, and doesn't commit one to any particular position or view on most topics.

Sure. The point is only that atheism has a fairly narrow scope (a point on which I expect we largely agree), and doesn't make (or imply) any positive truth-claims about e.g. the origin of the universe, the nature of reality, whether moral judgments are cognitive or propositional, or any other topic in philosophy or the sciences... only a very specific negative claim: i.e. the denial of theism.

So atheism doesn't dictate any particular position on e.g. the origin of the universe, it only excludes the proposition that theism has anything to do with it (and similarly with any other topic or proposition).

Thanks for the reasonable reply. I still think deleting the thread was unnecessary.

And welcome to the forum. — T Clark

No problem, and thank you- happy to be here!

OK, I understand what you are saying here. Now the problem is that when someone like Banno says that X,Y, or Z refers to "an individual" this is an ontological claim. So you can have your X, Y, and Z referring to nothing if you like, or even refer to a type, and claim logical consistency, but as soon as you say that one of these refers to an individual then you need to account for the existence of that individual because you have made an ontological claim. — Metaphysician Undercover

The claims in question aren't ontological claims; that's the entire point. They sound or look like ontological claims, but they are not. So when I say that "there is a possible world such that X", for instance if I say "there is a possible world such that MU is president of the United States of America", I am not making an ontological claim, I am not asserting the existence of anything: the phrase "there is a possible world such that X" is synonymous and interchangeable with the phrase "X is logically possible/self-consistent/non-contradictory". So I'm not asserting that there exists any such world, I'm just saying that the proposition of MU being the president of the USA is logically possible/does not entail a contradiction.

This does not solve the problem, because Banno's claim was that the designated individual exists in numerous possible worlds. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure it does: "existing in a possible world" means not entailing a contradiction. And there are numerous claims we can make about a given individual that do not entail contradictions (remember, "there exists a possible world" is synonymous with "does not entail a contradiction").

And so this suffices to address your concern about "the existence of the individual": as far as modality goes, the existence of an individual in different possible worlds is the same thing as having multiple logically possible/self-consistent propositions or predicates we can assert of that individual. MU "exists" in multiple possible words... because there are multiple propositions or predicates we can assert of MU that do not entail contradictions.

That's literally all that's going on here, "possible worlds" talk is just a different way of talking about contradiction and logical possibility. Which is admittedly confusing, since talking about the existence of possible worlds sounds like an ontological/existential claim... but its not.

You're brand new on the forum and you've already been made a moderator. You don't know much about our history or way of doing things. Your decision seems precipitous and unnecessary to me. I assume you ran this past other moderators before you deleted the thread. — T Clark

I'm brand new... sort of: I was a long-time member and moderator at the original Philosophy Forums, and was asked to join the moderation team here. And I am familiar with the posting guidelines and rules (which are very similar to those of the old forum).

And you'll notice that I said that I had recommended the thread to be deleted- I did not delete it myself- precisely because I'm trying to have a light touch as a moderator until I get a better feel for how the mod team here does things. The thread was deleted because my concerns were shared by other mods/admins.

In no way I'm aware of, ucarr, does atheism entail anything about existence as such (e.g. "the origin of the universe"). — 180 Proof

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but it seems to me that the only logical consequences of atheism wrt e.g. ontology, metaphysics, cosmology, etc, are negative; i.e. the exclusion of theistic propositions: in other words, atheism doesn't dictate any particular position on how (or whether) the universe began... only that whatever it is, God had nothing to do with it.

And same for positions on traditional philosophical disputes like materialism/idealism, Platonism/nominalism, and so on: atheism is logically independent of both positions (so atheists can be materialists or idealists, they can be realists or anti-realists wrt truth, value, abstract objects, etc), except for the one thing atheism necessarily excludes: i.e. anything involving the existence of God/gods

Hi tomatohorse-

I recommended that your thread be deleted, and not entirely due to your OP: your OP wasn't great, it wasn't well-researched and didn't really propose any philosophically interesting questions or thesis, but I was especially concerned that it was going to be extremely attractive for posters just looking to post philosophically-vacuous transphobic rants... which is exactly what had already begun to happen, leading to the thread's deletion.

Moving forward, it might be useful for you to read the site guidelines and/or TPF's guide to writing a good OP to get a better sense of what we're looking for in a thread or OP, and what sorts of things will get a thread deleted or otherwise moderated:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/480/site-guidelines
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7110/how-to-write-an-op

Given the abundant distribution of organic compounds observed in this galaxy alone, I'm confident bio-signatures in the atmospheres of exo-planets will be detected within decades by space-based telescopes, etc Detecting extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), on the other hand, I suspect is far less likely, if ever, to happen for reasons pointed out in the post excerpted below — 180 Proof

Yeah I agree. And not only organic compounds, but also the discovery of liquid water on many objects in our own solar system (Europa, Enceladus, etc). Not to mention our study of extreme-o-philes here on Earth. Its entirely possible that life is ubiquitous throughout the universe... just not intelligent/technological civilizations, which I agree are probably extremely rare and very well may never be conclusively shown to exist.

ETIs probably went "dark and silent" many many millennia ago just like Earth is now gradually transitioning from broadcast radio to fiber optic transmission barely a century after Bell, Edison & Marconi. (Assuming they started with EM broadcasting and then improved their IT like we are doing now.) — 180 Proof

Exactly. We're talking about VERY narrow windows in both time and space for communication to be possible, and even if intelligent technological civilizations are somewhat common, its still entirely possible that either they or we have gone extinct before that window opens. In terms of cosmic time-scales, humans have only been around for a minute (and we've been producing detectable bio/technological signatures for only a miniscule fraction of that). I suspect that the solution to Fermi's Paradox is rather depressing and mundane (but still interesting for all that).

I mean, creation myths are extremely common in human history- the Wikipedia page for "a list of creation myths" includes over 100 creation myths from various religions, cultures, and/or geographical regions (and is almost certainly not an exhaustive list)- most religious traditions and ancient cultures had creation myths among their earliest oral/literary traditions.

And so far as I'm aware, these traditions generally prefigure robust philosophical or theological traditions, so the answer to why people posit or believe creation myths will come more from sociology/anthropology or psychology than from philosophy or theology: most philosophical/theological justifications or defenses of creation myths being generally post-hoc and somewhat arbitrary.

Yes, if it does, then it will be carried-out via fleets of self-replicating Bracewell probes. — 180 Proof

My crystal ball agrees. Interstellar space travel and terraforming are going to be too difficult, too resource-intensive, even assuming vastly superior far-future technology. I expect we will (sooner or later) put astronauts on Mars, and probably develop a variety of space stations and research stations throughout the solar system, but we will not terraform Mars or Venus, we will not have permanent human settlements on either, and we will not be sending potential colonists to any other star systems. If interstellar exploration happens- and I believe it eventually will- it will be via remote probes and starsails and so forth. Which is still plenty exciting, imo. It just means the future won't look like most sci-fi movies you've ever seen.

I also believe, and this may be a bit of a hot take, that we will find compelling/persuasive evidence of the existence of extra-terrestrial life within the next several decades, probably from spectrographic analysis from Webb, or other future space telescopes.

Some Mars Volta for breakfast this morning- "Eriatarka"

A fair point.

Don't be so modest, reading the entire CPR (let alone doing so more than once!!!) and doing so with your sanity intact is no small feat- plenty of bright philosophical minds that have been defeated by Kant's prose... So maybe something like "the medal of surviving the CPR... multiple times" :grin:

Yes, that's exactly the point, "an individual" speaks of something in a completely different ontological category from what a "logical hypothesis" speaks of. So Banno's attempt to bring the individual into the logical hypothesis was a category mistake.

We see this same mistake quite often when people speak of "possible worlds". They will say for instance, that one of the possible worlds is the actual world. But the possible worlds are just representations, logical hypotheses, and although one of the possible worlds might be judged as the correct representation, or some feature might be common to a whole set of possible worlds, it is still not the actual world, as this is a distinct category from the representation. — Metaphysician Undercover

It seems like you didn't hear me the first time. Every time you read "there is/exists a possible world such that X, Y, or Z", mentally substitute "it is not contradictory/inconsistent that X, Y, or Z". Possible-world semantics isn't actually making an ontological claim (at least, not if you're not David Lewis), its making a claim about logical consistency. And so obviously, the actual world is a possible world, since "being a possible worlds" means "not being contradictory/logically inconsistent". And the actual world is not self-contradictory or logically inconsistent, so, it is a possible world. I mean, obviously, how could the actual world be actual, if it wasn't possible?

No, that's the category mistake described above. An individual does not exist in any possible worlds.

Sure it does, because "existing in a possible world" isn't an existence claim about other worlds, despite appearances to the contrary. Replace "existing in a possible world" with "being logically possible/self-consistent", and your objection disappears.

You're just misunderstanding what possible world semantics means, for which you don't deserve blame: it can be highly misleading to say that "there exists a possible world" when all you mean is that something is logically possible or self-consistent. But it is a useful way to conceptualize possibility and modality, in certain contexts. Its far from the weirdest thing philosophers are prone to talk about.

Carry on with your terribly misguided philosophy (if one can call it that) then. — Metaphysician Undercover

Understanding how certain technical terms are actually used in the relevant sub-field is actually just about the opposite of misguided philosophy: its trying to understand what philosophers mean, on their own terms. So its sort of necessary for a proper understanding of any philosopher. But I was admittedly tentative about engaging with you on this, because you are, frankly, sort of known for being stubborn about these things and not amenable to correction. But I assure you, as someone who spent most of their undergrad philosophy degree focusing on contemporary analytic philosophy and philosophy of language (so, for instance, folks like Saul Kripke), you're simply misunderstanding what these terms usually mean, in the context of contemporary philosophy/modal logic.

Yeah it occurred to me that engaging with MU on matters involving AP/philosophy of language/modal logic/etc might not be the brightest idea I've ever had, but I've been out of the mix for so long I think my tolerance for philosophical shenanigans is fairly high at the moment (something I expect will change/fade rather quickly).

An individual cannot exist in numerous possible worlds. If the designator picks out something which is common to numerous possible worlds, it is clearly not an individual. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you're missing the point/meaning of possible-world semantics, MU. Aside from people like Lewis (who is a realist wrt possible worlds), "existing in a possible world" is (essentially) just a different way of saying that something isn't contradictory, that it does not entail a contradiction. That's it. So saying an individual exists in a possible world is only to say that some particular description, predicate, or state of affairs involving that individual is logically possible- it doesn't involve any contradiction or inconsistency.

So yes, an individual "exists" in numerous, maybe even uncountable, possible worlds, because there are numerous, maybe even uncountable, logically-possible propositions, predicates, etc that we can say of a given individual.

Chon- Rosewood

Oh absolutely. And its technical density is actually quite elegant. And the views it espouses are also super interesting, and significant for the history of philosophy.

But its not exactly the type of writing you think of or expect when you think of great writing (because it is incredibly obscure, even for people with some background familiarity with philosophy). But you can't miss the writing skill, which we then saw even more of in his later works- the PI in particular is a marvel of philosophical clarity and simplicity (despite dealing with some heavy/highly technical philosophical problems and concepts).

So Witt is definitely on the short list of great philosophers who could actually write well.

I understand what you mean, but I actually love reading Kant. It's not literary at all, so that's why I say I understand. But I sort of enjoy the rhythms of a mind expressing itself in the most explicit manner. — Moliere

Don't get me wrong, I definitely respect the hell out of Kant, and recognize his influence/significance in the history of philosophy (and cosmology/astronomy, surprisingly!)... but I definitely don't enjoy reading much of his writing (the CPR in particular is especially impenetrable- I took a course that was an entire semester focused exclusively on the CPR, and I still don't think I understood more than half of it). A brilliant mind, but not the greatest or clearest writer there ever was.

But, you know, different strokes for different folks and all. I'm actually somewhat jealous of people who can read stuff like Kant's CPR, and get some enjoyment out of it (because for me its pure toil).

To answer your question directly, and humble-brag, I've read the CPR 2 times :D -- first translation by Norman Kemp Smith, the latter read on Pluhar's — Moliere

Wow... You deserve a medal or something, that's no small feat. :grin: :strong:

.

The Tractatus is about as obscure and technically dense as you'll find, but the PI (and to a lesser extent On Certainty and Culture and Value and so on) is definitely on the list of well-written + legitimately insightful/significant philosophical treatises. Love Wittgenstein.

And such a good writer! A lot of philosophy is downright miserable to read- have you ever tried to read Kan't CPR, for instance? As in, reading it cover to cover? Pure torture! :vomit:

I mean, how many works of philosophy do you enjoy going back and re-reading periodically? Has anyone read Being and Time or On Sense and Reference multiple times, for purely entertainment purposes? I doubt it.

Its frankly sort of embarrassing how short the list of notable philosophers who managed to combine a bright philosophical mind with competent communication/writing skills is.. but Nietzsche probably belongs at or near the top of the list. And not just because its usually clear and understandable, but because it occasionally even achieves poetic beauty, which is a very rare thing to find in your usual philosophical tomes.

I've never found an adequate way to describe it, but a lot of Nietzsche's work seems to me to amount to some form of philosophical experimentation: he's not always truly advocating or committed to something he says, so much as he's often just trying it on to see how it fits.

And so this process was, predictably, very hit or miss... but when it hits, its deeply satisfying.

:up:

(This is one of the questions that keeps Nietzsche scholars arguing in circles, i.e. whether these tensions and contradictions are deliberate or not- we probably will never know the true answer)

More Primus: "To Defy the Laws of Tradition" (awesome live radio jam from like 25 years ago)

I see Nietzsche's critique of Christianity highlighting its incipient nihilism: by imposing values it undermines the ability to find/ create one's own, so I don't see that as presupposing realism. — Janus

Nietzsche's critique of Christianity (specifically The Antichrist) amounts to the charges that Christianity is both false and pernicious. Specifically, Nietzsche identifies and critiques what he believed to be the foundational presuppositions of Christianity: the existence of God, the existence of an afterlife or other world, the existence of a moral world order, and free will. He ultimately claims that these presuppositions are false, and that the values they promote are internally inconsistent, and that their falsity/inconsistency makes them morally wrong or harmful in some way.

This is all highly realist, at least implicitly: critiquing a religion/its system of values on the grounds that their foundational truth-claims are false and their values morally bad/harmful (which, of course, seems to imply that there is such a thing as truth/falsity, and some fact of the matter as to whether a given set of values is bad or harmful in some meaningful way).

And there are many other passages where Nietzsche says things about e.g. truth, perception, science, and so on that are also highly amenable to realist/cognitivist interpretation (e.g. the beginning of Human All-Too-Human where he talks about the "knowledge" and "truths" the historical sense has achieved, and contrasts that with the "error" and "mistakes" made by theology and metaphysics): He praises the sciences (especially in Human All-Too-Human) and the senses (e.g. Beyond G&E 134, Twilight of the Idols III 1-2), and often waxes poetic about "knowledge" (e.g."With Knowledge, the body purifies itself; making experiments with knowledge it elevates itself; in the lover of knowledge all instincts become holy"- Zarathustra) and "truth" (e.g. "How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? More and more that become for me the real measure of value... Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker.."- Ecce Homo).

But then, on the other hand, there are many other passages where he seems to be advancing an anti-realist critique of these things, often in the same work (i.e. elsewhere in Human All-Too-Human he says, "A man may stretch himself out ever so far with his knowledge; he may seem to himself ever so objective but eventually realizes nothing therefrom but his own biography", and elsewhere in Beyond G&E he says "science at its best seeks most to keep us in this simplified thoroughly artificial suitably constructed and falsified world").

So this is a deep tension running through much of Nietzsche's philosophy (which keeps Nietzsche scholars endlessly arguing in circles) which is not possible (imo) to completely resolve or reconcile, because this was simply how Nietzsche's mind and method of philosophy worked (for better and for worse).

But so this is also just part of what makes Nietzsche so interesting (imo): he was (explicitly) opposed to philosophical systems, and his views are often very difficult to square with one another or to try to construct some coherent system out of. And sometimes he says things that are in tension with (at a minimum), or even outright contradict things he's said elsewhere. Much of the time he seems less concerned with what is true or self-consistent in some technical or straightforward sense, or amenable to some systematic treatment or analysis, and much more interested in some deeper penetrating insight about how some things work. Which he occasionally achieved, imo.

So Nietzsche wasn't right much of the time, but he was always interesting, and often deeply insightful. And so I agree completely with what you said about being concerned with whether a given philosopher is interesting or insightful as much if not more than whether they are right or correct or perfectly self-consistent, which is why Nietzsche is (and probably always will be) one of my personal favorite philosophers.

Primus- John the Fisherman :grin:

Np. I'd recommend taking a look at the links, if you're interested in psychology/the history of psychology (and/or checking out the Kaufmann book, or any of the other works I mentioned for that matter, if any spark your interest).

Just an exceedingly interesting character, with some very interesting ideas that ended up anticipating developments in other fields (esp psychology) that would not come to pass for decades.

I read stuff to the contrary. Would you care to provide sources on this claim? — Shawn

To be clear, I was calling Freud a Nietszche "fan" in a sort of tongue-in-cheek/non-literal way: what I meant is that Niezsche had a notably significant influence on Freud's views and psychological theories, and so Freud owed Nietzsche a great deal professionally and intellectually.

(Do you remember where you read to the contrary, specifically, btw?)

In any case, this is something Kaufmann talks about in Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (mentioned above), and I see from a Google search that its a fairly popular topic:

"The Influence of Nietzsche on Freud's Ideas"

"Explaining Freud with Nietzsche"

"Freud's Burden of Debt to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer"

There's also a bunch of scholarly/peer-reviewed articles on the topic on e.g. JSTOR, which are extremely expensive (unless you have a subscription or access via your job or university), so I won't bother posting them here, but hopefully the above links suffice to capture the general idea.

Anthromorphizing compositional fallacy at the very least. And, without a clear conception of "consciousness" either in philosophy or science, the phrase "consciousness-bearing" is uninformative. The rest of your post, trafficking as it does in pseudo-science / misinterpreting QM's 'observer effect', doesn't make much sense either except maybe as wishful thinking (i.e. "theology"). Lastly, I don't recognize the theisms of Abrahamic, Vedic, or any other pagan faiths in your account, ucarr, so on that point, again, I don't know what you mean by "theism" or, for that matter, "atheism". — 180 Proof

Well said, 180. :fire: :100:

I'd be interested to hear which of his views you think were wrong and why — Janus

How much time do you have? This could take all day. How about some notable examples: Nietzsche's views on realism wrt truth-value and value judgments/normativity were internally inconsistent- in some of his works, he espouses a form of nominalism/anti-realism wrt truth-value and normativity, but in others he is presupposing a realist position, for instance in his critique of Christianity (as, seemingly, objectively false and evil/harmful). This inconsistency severely undermines many of his arguments and positions, imo.

As for being fascinated by someone whose views you mostly disagree with: Nietzsche is, imo, the most interesting character in the entire history of philosophy. He was a very weird dude, but also was (legitimately) brilliant and highly creative/unique, and was easily the most talented/most literary writer in the history of philosophy (at least, of those philosophers I've ever come across), with a unique and distinctive style and voice. So his writing is just satisfying to read, because its well-written and highly original.

And many of his philosophical ideas and proposals were fascinating to me; even if they weren't true or accurate, they still provoked thought and discussion, and were quite unique and just fun to think about- for instance, the idea of the re-evaluation of all values, of the will to power, of the eternal return of the same. Nietzsche also anticipated an impressive amount of 19th-20th century psychology (the concept of sublimation, for instance- Freud was a big Nietzsche fan), theology, and literature/the arts. He is probably the philosopher who has had the most influence outside of philosophy.

So he's an interesting character/personality, is fun to read (and often very clever and/or insightful), and has a lot of fun and unique ideas... even if I think most of his ideas were wrong/incomplete/etc.

Also a little bit of Fantomas ("Experiment in Terror") :naughty:

Jammin' out to some Animals as Leaders:

"Physical Education"-



"Woven Web"-