Thanks for that. I am short on time and I actually don't know that much about assemblage theory, so let's look at your example:

An indicative phenomenon for that perspective might be a kidney transplant, which takes two entities {damaged kidney to be replaced, replacement kidney} with material differences {they're not the same kidney} but equivalent functions {what kidneys do} on the level of the body's self regulation. No material substratum is needed to reconcile, or render compatible, that manipulation, only a check of functional equivalence - or really, functional substitutability. Does the new kidney work in the old one's place.

Which is probably very unintuitive if you're not used to thinking of it in that way - the new kidney is clearly not identical to the old kidney, but it's equivalent to the old kidney's old function as part of the body as an assemblage, even if there are material differences involved in all the constituent parts and those differences might even make a real difference in the real functioning of the process. Like the new kidney might be rejected. — fdrake

This strikes me as an odd example, because if a duck is not a substance then I don't think organ transplants make sense. Organ transplants exemplify the part/whole relation of organisms, which is different from the part-whole relation of aggregates.

Regarding the bolded, the material substratum that is needed seems to be the living body that the kidney is regulating. This is the thing that it "might be rejected" by. Without that substratum an organ transplant is a non-starter.

Another big departure from Aristotle's view of the world - at least on assemblage theory's own terms - is Aristotle's habit of hierarchically organising categories into genus, species and differentia through conceptual distinctions. The equivalent of categories in assemblage theory are fungible, and the hierarchical organisation principles aren't strictly based on type-subtype relations {or they don't have to be}, it's more based around functional parts arranged in a modular fashion. — fdrake

I think genus/species is plenty fungible, but the key for Aristotle is that without the form of intermediation represented by such a thing, one would be incapable of identification or categorization. So if Aristotle is right then the assemblage theorist will be as indebted to genus/species orderings as anyone else.

As demonstrates, Aristotle can be quite flexible. Hearkening back to the OP, I think we are asking whether behavior-modeling is sufficient to account for things like ducks. And the foil of the OP is "questions of being," the meaning of which we haven't tried to mete out. How do we reorient the discussion back to that original topic? It sounds like you want to say that the difference between a noun and a verb is accidental or a matter of degree. Everything is in a state of irretrievable change, it's just that some things are decaying/corrupting more quickly than other things? Substance-identity is ephemeral?

(If so, I think the particular part of Aristotle you're concerned with is the distinction between organic wholes and accidental wholes, or the idea that the most proper substances are biological organisms.)

---

A key difference would be that Peirce makes formal cause clearly immanent rather than leaving it sounding transcendent. You don't need an outside mind imposing a design that is "good". The design develops from within due to the way Being has to grow into a realm that can lawfully persist. There is an optimising principle at work. But it is self-grounding. It is whatever is left after all else has got cancelled away because it didn't really work. — apokrisis

Thanks for this and for the generous post. I hope to come back to some of these points.

- Intellection isn't fast thinking. I thought we already addressed this in the past?

C.S. Lewis - The Discarded Image — Count Timothy von Icarus

I went back and read this section in its entirety. It is an excellent summary of the difference between intellection and ratiocination, as well as the decline of intellection since the modern period. :up:

This is good: you are making me think about this more. — Bob Ross

:up:

I agree, this isn’t true; because justice would be relative to the community, and the nation would be the highest community. — Bob Ross

This isn’t true as well if we are talking about how citizens should treat each other and not what goods the government should be providing. More on that later. — Bob Ross

Okay. :up:

Here’s the interesting part: distributive justice seems to require the community to take care of that child—if the resources are available in a sustainable and reasonable sense: do you agree? — Bob Ross

Sure, I think so.

This gets interesting though, as most people would disagree with this, prima facie, because most people would say one has a duty to keep an orphan baby, which was dropped off anonymously at their house, as long as required until the authorities arrive or despite any authority ever being on their way. — Bob Ross

How do you understand the relationship between the individual and the community? I would say that if the community is taking care of the child, then some individual(s) is taking care of the child.

Agreed; but how do we decipher what distributive justice entails? I started re-reading Aristotle to try and get some clues. — Bob Ross

Here is Aristotle:

That which is just, then, implies four terms at least: two persons to whom justice is done, and two things.

And there must be the same “equality” [i.e. the same ratio] between the persons and the things: as the things are to one another, so must the persons be. For if the persons be not equal, their shares will not be equal; and this is the source of disputes and accusations, when persons who are equal do not receive equal shares, or when persons who are not equal receive equal shares.

This is also plainly indicated by the common phrase “according to merit.” For in distribution all men allow that what is just must be according to merit or worth of some kind, but they do not all adopt the same standard of worth; in democratic states they take free birth as the standard,
*
in oligarchic states they take wealth, in others noble birth, and in the true aristocratic state virtue or personal merit. — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V.3

-

It seems like the community’s distribution of goods based off of trying to promote the human good (e.g., institutionalized marriage [in the sense of giving tax breaks and incentives], foster care system, CPD, etc.); so why wouldn’t it be obligated to give a base income, e.g., for each citizen if that were feasible (given the abundance of resources)?

It seems like why you and I wouldn’t go for universal base income, is because it, in fact, doesn’t work and is not sustainable; but what if it were? In principle, would that be distributatively just? — Bob Ross

The UBI is an interesting example. For Aristotle the standard of distributive justice is the measure of equality set out above. I'm not sure how Aristotle would view a welfare state, but it would probably be considered qua democratic rule.

The basic question is whether the UBI provides an equal distribution, and it's fairly clear that it doesn't, especially because it is meant as a form of welfare. Welfare is "merited" (on this conception) in light of need; and therefore to give everyone money when not everyone is in need is unjust and unfair. But the UBI crowd is full of strange ideas. To this they might say, "It is unjust, but it is less unjust and wasteful than other means" (which I believe is false).

I forgot to mention another thing: although it is not unjust to choose to not help a person who is not of your nation; I do still find it potentially lacking in beneficence, which could result in it being immoral albeit not unjust. — Bob Ross

Sure, I agree.

One of the points Aristotle makes is that belief and knowledge cannot be reduced to mechanistic (efficient) cause and effect. If belief is just the rearrangement of atoms, then it is hard to see how it can be "false." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, and a key premise here is that the intellect/nous has the formal capacity to know everything, and that which knows all things is not itself one of the things known. Usually this is phrased in terms of materiality: the intellect can know all material things and must therefore be immaterial. Rödl may be up against some variety of materialism, which limits the power of the intellect.

For the materialist the intellect is different and lesser, and therefore knowledge is different and lesser, and I think we see this play out in a lot of discussions on TPF. For the materialist the object of the intellect is determinate and limited in a way that Aristotle and Rödl do not accept.

being's arbitrary propensity for interaction makes the ontology flat — fdrake

Okay, thanks for the clarifications.

An event is something which happens.
A process is a sequence of interrelated events.
A behaviour is a type in a process, or a type of process.
An assemblage is a network of events, processes and behaviours.

If you want entity too:

An entity is an process with a slow rate of progression relative to a background. — fdrake

"Interrelated" and "type" are doing heavy lifting here, to put it mildly. You can try to shift the ground to "arbitrary propensity for interaction," but once those two terms get cashed out I think the propensities for interaction will be anything but arbitrary.* To bring it back to that simple point, the differences between nouns and verbs do not seem to be arbitrary, and if being's propensity for interaction were truly arbitrary, then there would not be verbs and nouns. Once we agree that being's propensity for interaction isn't altogether arbitrary or undifferentiated, then we must ask how non-arbitrary it really is. ...Of course one could detach from the universe in the same way that one detaches from the street level when one takes off in an airplane. From that perspective cars and people look like ants, and from that vantage point everything is plausibly arbitrary. But if we want to understand the street level we don't want to hold it at a 3,000 foot distance. It might look like arbitrary relations from that altitude, but only because we've obscured our view.

Or to put it differently, it seems like you want to emphasize relations. That's fine up to a point, but I don't see how an emphasis on relations can so thoroughly ignore relata, and this seems particularly true when it comes to assemblage theory.


* What you say sounds in some sense Peircian, but Peirce of course ends up with Aristotle (or very close). He ends up using different language to say the same essential thing.

The assemblage theory helps to emphasize a social entity's contingent and constructivist nature. It allows us to conceive of it not as a unified whole governed by a single determinative principle. — Number2018

Isn't it commonly agreed that a social entity is not governed in this way, namely that it isn't a substance?

but that may be because natural science isn't the right science to do this, not because no science does so. — J

Right, and Aristotle is clearly happy to study the intellect in De Anima. It would also be within the province of metaphysics. But I hesitate to say what science or sciences Aristotle sees as proper to the study of the intellect. Rödl could be right that there is no science of judgment (as distinct from logic).

Couldn't "included" simply mean "studied" or even "taken into account"? — J

I think Rödl is using it correctly when he says that the science of perception must include the object of perception. So for example, the science of sight must include the object of color. So yes, something mild like "taken into account" would count as inclusion. To use Aristotle's word, sight and color are "correlated."

Note though that to study sight one does not need to study every individual object of sight or even every individual color. It's therefore unclear why an "illimitable object" precludes study. It seems to me that it only precludes an exhaustive study, and perhaps a science.

- :up:

- This strikes me as somewhat standard, depending on what precisely you are asking about.

Now it is in the latter of these two senses that either the whole soul or some part of it constitutes the nature of an animal; and inasmuch as it is the presence of the soul that enables matter to constitute the animal nature, much more than it is the presence of matter which so enables the soul, the inquirer into nature is bound to treat of the soul rather than of the matter. For though the wood of which they are made constitutes the couch and the tripod, it only does so because it is potentially such and such a form.

What has been said suggests the question, whether it is the whole soul or only some part of it, the consideration of which comes within the province of natural science. Now if it be of the whole soul that this should treat, then there is no place for any other philosophy beside it. For as it belongs in all cases to one and the same science to deal with correlated subjects—one and the same science, for instance, deals with sensation and with the objects of sense—and as therefore the intelligent soul and the objects of intellect, being correlated, must belong to one and the same science, it follows that natural science will have to include everything in its province. But perhaps it is not the whole soul, nor all its parts collectively, that constitutes the source of motion; but there may be one part, identical with that in plants, which is the source of growth, another, namely the sensory part, which is the source of change of quality, while still another, and this not the intellectual part, is the source of locomotion. For other animals than man have the power of locomotion, but in none but him is there intellect. Thus then it is plain that it is not of the whole soul that we have to treat. For it is not the whole soul that constitutes the animal nature, but only some part or parts of it. — Aristotle, Parts of Animals, Book I, 641a27..., tr. W. Ogle

Aristotle is basically saying that the study of animals requires a study of the vegetative part of the soul and the motion-causing part of the soul, but not the intellectual part of the soul, because a study of the intellectual part of the soul would implicate the objects of intellect, which would include everything.

But is Rödl correct in saying that the intellect (nous) cannot be included in any domain? I don't actually see Aristotle saying this. Aristotle is rather arguing from premises such as, "Natural science does not include everything in its province," or, "Animal nature is not intellectual." He is not arguing from the premise, "There is no science which includes everything in its province."

Can the intellect be "included in any domain"? I would say that it can be included but not contained or exhausted, but I'm not sure where Rödl is going with this.

Though I am biased, I absolutely love the filth of things. — fdrake

a flat ontology and its bizarre tangled networks starts to make more sense — fdrake

Cry havoc. — fdrake

Huh!? Flat ontologies are squeaky-clean. Diversity is what creates tangles. If there is only one thing "all the way down" then there are no tangles at all. Metaphysics is the science of the fully tangled realm, and it only makes sense for someone who admits a large variety of different kinds of entities. Bad metaphysics happens when specialists in sub-disciplines conflate their partial territory with the whole, thus oversimplifying the whole in the direction of their familiarity. For the flat ontologist the tangles are entirely illusory. For example, substance metaphysics is much more complex and tangled than Atomism, and Aristotle's moral theory is much more complex and interactional than the sorts of things that are in vogue today. The point of flat ontologies is simplicity and unification. A flat ontology "makes sense" of the tangled appearances by reducing them all to one or two simples.

I think the point of it is to promote some styles of description and disincentivise others. — fdrake

But to what end?

for a set of problems — fdrake

...it is to the end of solving problems. It is, I think, a form of pragmatism. It's a bit like saying that we should develop lots of tools, even if we don't currently know what they are for, so that we will have more tools to draw on in confronting future problems. Sort of how the defenders of the moon landing will point to all the inventions that were harvested from that endeavor.

---

if we stretch the word "behavior" quite far — Leontiskos

Oh yeah, really far. — Srap Tasmaner

How should ontological concepts work? Presumably given the complexity of reality, top-level concepts should be wide and general, and yet because of this there will be significant limitations on their explanatory power. So for Aristotle you "begin" with the concepts of act and potency (and already you have a tension between two principles rather than a unitary atom). Being broad, they explain everything and nothing. Or taken individually, half of everything and half of nothing. But then the diverse kinds of act and potency flower within each concept; the appearances do not force us outside of the basic, broad concepts (unless one wants to see the interaction of act and potency as a third sort of thing, which @apokrisis may be able to speak to). If not everything is a nail, then the top-level explanations must be able to generically accommodate a large variety of diverse phenomena.

If this is right then it helps highlight the problems with "behavior" and the resultant need to stretch it. In a sense behavior is too explanatorily potent to function as a top-level ontological concept. It is explanatorily potent in the sense that it is so useful in describing the class of organisms. If such an explanatorily potent concept could ground all of reality, that would make for an astoundingly unified theory. But because it can't do that, we have to go outside of behavior, either by artificially stretching its meaning, or else by introducing new concepts and pretending they are no different than behavior (function, process, etc.).

What does it mean for two processes to together constitute a function? Versus what does it mean for two simples to constitute a whole? — fdrake

few people have gone down an assemblage theory rabbit hole — fdrake

Near as I can tell, the point of all of this is to be able to say that everything is an assemblage; that is, to flatten the ontology of the world. Why do that? — Srap Tasmaner

Depending on what fdrake means by “assemblage,” there are those who have explored this in great depth and in a programmatic way, namely the dialectical materialists. This in turn gave the Aristotelians a very clear target to develop their own views. One example of this is Richard Connell’s Matter and Becoming, which I have profited from. The Aristotelians cast this as what I called the “issue of accidental wholes vs. organic wholes.” An accidental whole is something like an accidental collection of substances, or as Connell states, “an accidental whole results from the composition of a substance or substances with an accident” (66). For example, a bronze statue is a bunch of bronze arranged spatially, and spatial arrangement is an accident of bronze. Bronze cares not whether it is spatially arranged in one way rather than another. “Accidental whole,” “Aggregate,” “Collection,” and, “Composite,” would be other names for the same sort of thing. Fdrake’s “two simples to make a whole” is an example of this.

And why does Aristotle think that not everything is an aggregate? Because he thinks there are organisms (organic wholes), such as ducks, and organisms are not aggregates. In organisms the relation between part and whole is not accidental. Bronze does not care how it is spatially arranged. You can break the statue in two and the two parts will still be bronze. But a duck does care about, say, the way that its internal organs are ordered. If you cut the duck in two it will no longer be a duck. This idea of dialectical materialism that there are only aggregates is also found in the mechanistic philosophical paradigm flowing from Descartes, which sees everything as a kind of machine (with accidental relations between parts and whole).

This means that for Aristotle ducks exist and statues don’t, at least qua whole. “Duck” names a real whole and “statue” names an accidental or artificial whole. Unlike the duck, the statue is an arbitrary collection of bronze, a true social construction. Thus the two nouns refer to very different realities, and so @fdrake is right to be suspicious of “treating all nouns as substantive.” Indeed, this is precisely correct, for the statue is not a substance given that it lacks a substantial form, i.e. a soul which integrates it as a single organism and whole. Yet the question is not whether all nouns are substantive, but whether some nouns are substantive. ...It’s been awhile since I’ve looked at this topic, but a substantial form is something like an internal principle of motion and change, which Aristotle attributes to vegetation and animals (in the sub-lunar sphere).

To bring this back to “behaviorism,” if fdrake (or his “deflationist”) is a behavior-atomist such that behaviors are the only real things and everything else can be reductively explained in terms of behavior, then for such a person there are no ducks in just the same way that there are no statues. If a dog barks and a duck quacks, then we have two behaviors or verbs that are not explainable in terms of substances or nouns. We say “The duck quacks” in the same way that we say “The foot belongs to the statue.” In both cases the attribution of part to whole is pure imagination, for the “whole” is nothing more than the sum of its arbitrary parts (which do not even belong to it in any real sense).

Why do that? — Srap Tasmaner

Why do that? For the dialectical materialists, it is ultimately because Marx wanted to change the world rather than simply understand it (not unlike Bacon). So you focus on matter, which is malleable and changeable. (And, going back to my last post, even among the dialectical materialists one will find speculative thinkers (non-pragmatists), because for Aristotle wonder and simply understanding are characteristically human activities which will occur wherever you find humans. But that speculative inclination will in this case be hamstrung by an environmental pragmatism.)

-

Everyone knows roughly what a process is — fdrake

Do we, though? I haven't adopted your term 'functionalism'. Why? Because you kept talking about behavior instead of function, and they are not the same thing. Now you are talking about processes.

A basic characteristic of the OP is that it tries to paint the whole world in one color "all the way down," and this approach has trouble saving the appearances. But when you uncritically introduce new tools, such as behavior, function, process, assemblage, etc., you look to be introducing new colors without admitting that you are introducing new colors. If new words and concepts are really needed, then behavior-atomism has already been abandoned. In that case what is really going on is this, "Yes - I admit that behavior is insufficient to capture reality, but I think that behavior+process will be enough to get the job done."

(Note that I haven't yet read fdrake's three most recent posts. Maybe some of this is addressed there.)

(I wrote this last night, and although it pushes things a bit far, I am going to post it. That is, it may be more appropriate for later in the thread, and maybe I will come back to it then, but if we have no anchor for speculative knowledge then I'm not sure there will be room for things like science, scientific explanation, and understanding, to breathe. That is, I think scientific understanding precisely in the classical, "useless" sense is at the bottom of much of this.)

Nah. I see myself in the functionalist camp, and see the modelling thing I mentioned as how I approach metaphysical stuff. Being able to talk about whether it's up to the task of metaphysics, I think, is something that distinguishes the thread's deflationist stereotype from non-deflationists.

It could very well be that there are ways of asking questions about being, or finding things out about it, or structures of knowledge, which don't resemble anything like the structure I've outlined. There might be questions which that schema can't handle even in principle. I suspect that there are, even. — fdrake

Well if you think your behavioral model is incomplete then it would seem that you are not modeling a duck; you are modeling a duck’s behavior. It looks like your deflationist is the one who uses behavior to (completely) model ducks. You part ways with this deflationist because you think there is more to ducks than their behavior. (Apparently your model would be a bit like an x-ray that captures a duck’s bone structure but does not pretend to do more than that.)

I think that’s right. I think there is more to ducks than their behavior.

The natural scientist or philosopher wants to understand ducks. They want to know what a duck is. Others are different insofar as they have only a limited and practical interest in ducks. They may want to know how to cook a duck, or how to hunt a duck, or how to get a cute photograph of ducklings. The one who wants to understand a duck’s behavior is somewhere in between. They seem to seek speculative knowledge of the duck, but only of one part of the duck (unless they are the sort of deflationist who sees behavior as the whole). But the difficulty for this person is that the boundary of their interest is a bit arbitrary. Why be interested in the duck’s behavior and not the duck beyond the behavior? If they are a descendant of Francis Bacon then the answer lies in a value judgment, and in that case their interest in nature really is practical rather than speculative. Hence “functionalism.”

I see that as the inflection point: the Baconian lens of something like utility or gaining power over nature. After all, models are the tools of engineers, and engineers make things happen. The goal is pragmatic. Granted, there are rare cases in which a “behaviorist” (like perhaps fdrake’s deflationist) would not be a pragmatist. And although the way that the modern mechanistic paradigm feeds into Bacon is important, a speculative-mechanistic motivation nevertheless looks to be quite rare. So I would expect the lion’s share of “behaviorists” (and functionalists) to be pragmatists in the lineage of Bacon.

If this is right then it might account for why the behavior-modeling approach continues to haunt those who see it as insufficient. They are left with a question like, “What else is there to do with ducks beyond modeling their behavior?” To say just a bit more, I think that if one is able to weaken that pragmatist-Baconian lens then it will be easier to relativize behavior and use a wider palette to paint the duck, and it should also become easier to access a speculative (or what in Aristotle often gets translated as “contemplative”) mode. For Aristotle contemplating the duck in its wholeness is the highest stage of philosophy, and this act is “useless” and certainly not pragmatic. It may be easier to grasp the idea if you think of a lover rather than a duck. It would be absurd to constantly construct models of a lover or her behavior without ever simply appreciating her, just as it would be absurd to constantly take pictures of her without ever seeing her or gazing on the pictures. It is a bit like, after spending a semester studying the technical and discursive details of impressionism, then simply sitting and gazing on a piece by Cézanne for long hours, where the wholeness and splendor of the piece impresses itself on you and is finally allowed to shine through. Such contemplation can only occur when the pragmatic mindset has been quieted, and it answers the “What else…?” question in a way that is unanticipated and yet meet, in much the same way that at the end of a chain you don’t find yet another link, but you also don’t find something that is unrelated to the links you have been following. ...And the paradoxical irony is that Cézanne often repays the contemplative even with the sorts of wages that the laborer seeks.

* Many of these discussions over the last couple weeks have reminded me of Joseph Pieper’s Leisure: the Basis of Culture (link). His thesis is basically that useful things are for useless things, and we have become hamsters on a wheel after forgetting the properly useless ends. There is a way of understanding merely to understand, and also of allowing that understanding to simmer, develop, and unfold of its own accord. But such understanding is not self-conscious. It rests in the other and forgets itself – a kind of intellectual wu wei. Receptivity of the knower calls forth receptivity of the known.

- Farewell and good luck!

I think we live in legitimately strange times. I doubt anyone in history has seen more change than someone who was born in the West in the 1930's and dies when they are 95.

I don’t have a problem with this view, but I am surprised you don’t...

Also, Aristotle’s description, like mine, has an interdependency on the community and the individual such that there is a need for “redress in private transactions” and “the distribution of honor, wealth, etc.” — Bob Ross

I have been following Aristotle (or Aquinas, who follows Aristotle) from the very beginning of this discussion. The problem then as now is that your conception is not Aristotelian, so I am wondering what it is. Is it Christian? Marxist? Rawlsian?

For example you want to say:

• It is unjust not to help someone on the other side of the world.
• It is unjust when the rich do not help the poor.
• It is unjust for the community not to fulfill members' needs when it can.

None of this is true for Aristotle. Distributive/communal justice does not entail any of this.

...which was my point before: — Bob Ross

Here's what I am thinking. Justice is about, fundamentally, respecting other members of the community (or social structure in which one is a member, such as a family for example) such that each member is getting what they rightly deserve and not getting what they do not deserve. — Bob Ross

I think this is too vague to do any work. "Justice is about respecting other members of the community with respect to desert." Fine, but what questions does that answer? You think the guy on the other side of the world deserves $100 and I don't. We haven't gotten anywhere.

This definition is also not found in the Webster dictionary, which you used as a critique of mine. — Bob Ross

Finding no philosophical or political antecedent, I looked to the dictionary. In my case the philosophical antecedent is clear: Aristotle.

However, in terms of what you would call “distributive justice”, it seems like if the community, e.g., has an abundance of water then they shouldn’t hoard it for the ruling elite—that would be unjust.

Moreover, this “distributive justice” seems connected still to what one is ‘owed’. Viz., it is only unjust for the community to hoard the abundance of water because they have duties, as the community, which include properly distributing resources—so that is owed to the individual in a sense. — Bob Ross

Sure, so for example, the community has a duty to properly distribute the revenue it receives via taxation, and the individual is owed a proper distribution. But he is not owed water qua water, but rather water insofar as it comes under the heading of proper distribution of communal resources. And the community is not something over and against the individual; but rather the whole of which he is a part.

But from this we do not get your ideas about duties to people on the other side of the world, or duties of the wealthy to the poor, etc.

That’s fair: negative rights a lot easier to uphold than positive ones; but I think we both agree we have positive rights. Take the water example: if you were denied any water simply because the government didn’t want to give it to you (perhaps they want to use that water for a water slide party for the ruling elites) even though you are doing your duly fair share of work in society—which we could think of it in terms of you having the money to pay for the water bill—then that is unjust because you have a positive right to the water. — Bob Ross

Well I would say we do not have a positive right to water insofar as it is an "absolute positive quantity" or insofar as it is a good or service simpliciter. We only have a right to water insofar as we have a right to proper distribution and proper distribution happens to include water in our governmental setup. Think of it this way: the only reason I have a right to half a pizza is because you and I bought it together. If we hadn't bought it together I wouldn't have a right to half of it.

I think the trouble comes in, as you rightly pointed out, when we think of positive rights just like negative ones. E.g., when we think of our right life like our right to have water when it isn’t being distributed fairly. This ends up conflating the right which can never be breached with a straw man version of the “water right” such that one thinks that the government is required to give them water simpliciter. That’s not what we are saying here. — Bob Ross

That's right, but when you say that the poor have a right to the wealthy's wealth, it looks like you are saying they have a right simpliciter. I see no private-commutative right between the wealthy person and the poor person. In fact I don't really think there are positive commutative rights at all, although everything I am saying is simplified a bit. Aristotle's "redress in private transactions" obviously does not function apart from redress (and this does not include cosmic redress!). Probably the only (positive) right to goods and services that one has is a qualified right to goods and services, insofar as those goods and services come under distributive justice. The right to half a pizza only exists insofar as the purchase or production of pizza is a joint venture.

Yes, it's not a very exciting result when applied to things like rabbits, because, as has been said, we can be pretty damn confident. — J

This is a consequence of taking the philosophy of language as first philosophy, as pointed out. If philosophy of language is first philosophy, then the fact that different people use words in different ways is inscrutable. So it's a good thing that philosophy of language is not first philosophy! But given that so much of contemporary philosophy is built on this foundation of sand, what is needed is rebuilding from the ground up, and that would be painful.

- Yep, good connection.

-

Well, this is the old problem of the One and the Many — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep, and I think the entry point into one of the deeper issues at play here is the modern concept of "sortals" that mentioned.

You are probably correct here. I thought of process metaphysics because I like it much more. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, although the bundle theorist who wants to beef up or thicken their approach could always move in the process direction. The difficulty is that the modern mechanistic paradigm is the hurdle that must be leapt over, and I think it is a rather large hurdle.

I don't mean to derail the thread, but there are lots of interesting theological parallels and antecedents. The Thomistic resistance to what is now called "existential inertia," and its contention that esse is the participatory act of existence can easily be taken in a process or bundle-esque direction (although Catholicism has always tried to maintain a balance).

Further, the <simplicity and unification> approach finds its antecedent in Occasionalism, and I think there are good arguments that Hume—who is often seen as the father of bundle-theoretic paradigms—is deeply indebted to Occasionalists.

I think where a deflationist who also enjoys the functionalist paradigm above would disagree with a functionalist simpliciter is whether metaphysical {and maybe even epistemological} questions can only concern specific instances of the mapping between true behaviours and our descriptions. In effect, they disagree on whether the only salient questions about objects and concepts are of the modelling form. Which is roughly describing how things work, or describing {how describing things work} works. — fdrake

You seem to be saying that the deflationist and the functionalist (or "behaviorist") occupy the same position, but the former occupies it dogmatically and the latter occupies it tentatively. That is an interesting idea, but if someone looks like a deflationist, quacks like a deflationist, and waddles like a deflationist, is he then a deflationist? :razz:

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And sortals were my logico-linguistic way of getting at [being/essence]. — Srap Tasmaner

Okay, interesting. There is here the closely related issue of accidental wholes vs. organic wholes (organisms), i.e. whether organisms can be modeled as machines.

We don't talk this way much anymore. There was a time when "essence" was tidied up as "necessary and sufficient conditions" for ― for what? For truthfully applying a predicate, mostly. Being is scrunched down into the copula, and all that's left is being a value of a bound variable. — Srap Tasmaner

The thread, "Essence and Modality: Kit Fine," comes to mind.

If your model quantifies over ducks, you're committed to ducks as entities, no cheating. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep, and was recently overseeing this rule.

But the anti-metaphysics comes by flipping that around: ducks are entities just means you have a model in which you quantify over them. That implies "duck" has what amounts to a functionalist definition: what role ducks play in the model, how the duck nodes behave, interact with other nodes, and so on. — Srap Tasmaner

This is where 's shift from "behavior" to "function" becomes a bit precarious, especially given that he never actually drops the "behavior" language. I'm not sure that the jump to functionalism or "behaviorism" is justified. Is there a petitio principii which allows 'ducks' to be entities in the first place, as claims? This is the question of what an entity is, of what a duck is, and this is presumably related to your "sortals."

And if that's the case, it provides a kind of justification for functionalist philosophy: we know this will work because we're just doing the same sort of thing the world is already doing. — Srap Tasmaner

My basic counterargument here is that what the world is already doing in a prima facie sense is represented by our language, which includes verbs and nouns. If the behaviorist needs to rewrite that to exclude nouns (i.e. if models require only behavior and not bearers of behavior), then behaviorism is not ready-made. It requires a revision of our prima facie interpretation of the world.

Oh yeah, really far. Most ordinary people aren't going to notice that the only consistent way to do this is, like Isaac, to treat the universe as behavior all the way down, never bottoming out at some thing it's the behavior of. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, exactly.

Ralph and Sam, striding through philosophy with their functionalist hammers for years, and one day Ralph says, "Hey Sam. You ever notice that the world is full of nails? That there's nothing but nails? That's funny, isn't it?"

That's the sentiment behind this thread. — Srap Tasmaner

Okay, haha.

But I don't necessarily buy the idea that functionalism or "behaviorism" are unfalsifiable. Regardless, you are right that in order to assess it one must step outside of its frame. In many discussions with @fdrake I have the suspicion that he is not ready to step outside of its frame. For example, in the thread about triangles I kept trying to push the discussion away from merely stipulated definitions and into metaphysics, and I felt that he kept saying, "I am not opposed to metaphysics," all the while resisting the shift into the explicitly metaphysical register.

(There may be a meta-mentality about the limitations of the powers of human knowing at play, such that “metaphysics” is necessarily limited to a model-theoretic framework. On my view this is related to Enlightenment motives and the quiet significance of behavior vs. function, but more on that later.)

Also nothing more than a quick intervention...

Oh yeah, really far. Most ordinary people aren't going to notice that the only consistent way to do this is, like Isaac, to treat the universe as behavior all the way down, never bottoming out at some thing it's the behavior of. Which is why you might be right, @Count Timothy von Icarus, that this falls into the tradition of process philosophy. — Srap Tasmaner

Supposing we want to play the game of finding the "next of kin" to the OP, I would look to metaphysical or mereological bundle theory, not process philosophy. Process thought does provide an alternative to substance metaphysics, but it is historically and metaphysically thick in a way that the modeling approach is not, and I don't think it has received much attention in the Anglophone world apart from religious philosophers.

When I studied metaphysics we focused on Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, and the competition was bundle theory, not process philosophy. The main ideas are often traced to Hume, and permeate the Anglophone horizon. The OP strikes me as some variety of bundle theory. See:

A second important issue in contemporary discussions of substance is whether substances are in some sense reducible to their properties, or whether there exists some further component, such as Locke’s notion of a substratum discussed in section 2.5. Both views have been defended in recent discussions. — Bundle theories versus substrata and “thin particulars” | SEP

For another entry from SEP, see <the subsection on objects>.

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In speaking to Parmenides and Heraclitus Aristotle says something like this, "You fellows have theories that possess admirable simplicity and unification, but they turn out to be too simple to save the appearances. What we find in nature is motion, and this entails both perdurance and change."

Our age has this same tendency towards simplicity and unification, whether in the form of determinism, string theory, monism, or bundle theory. The question is whether the notion of a bundle or the notion of behavior is sufficient to save the appearances that we actually encounter in reality. Aristotle says that it is not sufficient, and that substance/substratum is also necessary. The idea is that, contrary to "behaviorism," nouns are not dispensable.

- That's fair, I guess I didn't realize how much pressure the media was bringing to bear. But I remember that even amidst all the hubbub, the average Americans that I knew were not very concerned about it. Again, his approval rating tells that tale. It's possible I was in a Democrat echo chamber, but I think that even the simple fact that Clinton managed to balance the budget put him in the good graces of middle-class Americans.

And note that the impeachment charge was of lying under oath, not being unfaithful in marriage. — ssu

Right: lying about having sex with Lewinsky. With both Trump and Clinton, when the impeachment charge finally comes up and it turns out the opposition is playing for pennies, I think the average person loses interest along with faith in the system. Clinton's approval rating and Trump's reelection show that, for better or for worse, the electorate didn't take such proceedings seriously.

I dunno about that one. — Darkneos

Yes, it is clearly wrong. It's remarkable that there are people who find such nonsense "brilliant."
Eating a poison mushroom instead of a healthy mushroom will be wrong whether or not one is in communication with others. Pain and death do not ask permission of human language before visiting. Something I referenced earlier today:

One of the differences is the very fact that the philosophy of language does not represent the first philosophy of Aristotle. In fact, it doesn’t even come close. Language is, first and foremost, a tool for understanding. Our philosophy of language is always going to be secondary to the metaphysical, logical, and epistemological perspectives that underlie it. The philosophy of language will presuppose the purpose of language itself. Rather than constituting the raw material of thought, language is both separable from thought and separable from corresponding entities. The proper use of language consists of using it to get things right about the world as it exists independently of us and our attempts to describe it. — What did Aristotle say about Meaning and Language?

A small nitpick; individualism inherently is about the relation between states and citizens. In my view, the type of problems in the OP have more to do with a cultural trend of extreme liberalism, perhaps even nihilism, and the resulting atomization. — Tzeentch

I would say that individualism is related to liberalism and nihilism, and is also not merely about the relation between states and citizens. In fact the individualism flowing from liberalism originally had to do with religion, not states, and the state then was made to soak up the social capital abandoned by religion.

People will tend to see themselves as individuals vis-a-vis the state, but also vis-a-vis religion, race, class, sex, geographic locale, and even sexual preference/orientation. In fact when people in the West speak metaphorically and pejoratively about an identity being "religious" or "cultish," what they mean is that it is oppressive to individualism. There is much value placed in the uniqueness and originality of the individual, and yet this comes up short against the fact that we are mere numbers or statistics in a sociological and programmatic world. So there is an attempt to "unionize" the uniqueness in the form of minority lobbying, especially if the minority can be construed as oppressed. The desired recognition is more attainable in this collective/unionized form.

While individualism seduces us with promises of freedom and self-definition, it often breeds insecurity in a world stripped of clear anchors. — Benkei

Yep, there is a feedback loop between individualism and isolation. I think you are right that gender is at the core of it, but things like class and race are also highly relevant, and religion is also at play in the background. In my opinion democracy itself is a great leveler that tends to drive envy and self-assertion as well as group-assertion, and this is exacerbated in a faceless internet age where all news is national or global news, and therefore the possibility of being recognized has largely disappeared (because local communities and local spotlights have disappeared). This shift towards globalism and virtual realities creates lacunae of natural communities at smaller, more realistic locales.

Good OP. :up:

I got those from After Virtue by MacIntyre — Bob Ross

Okay, so Nozick vs. Rawls (and probably capitalism vs. communism in MacIntyre's thought - property rights vs. redistribution of wealth).

I find it plausible that justice requires a balance between A and B types of justice because they are the two extremes in a community: the one, to wit, the proper assessment of individual merit and the other, to wit, the proper assessment of natures (of members). One focuses only on the individual in terms of agency, and the other solely on the needs of each member. — Bob Ross

MacIntyre's point of departure is that the two conceptions are incompatible, no? Even if there is some common ground between them?

How would you define justice, then? — Bob Ross

I would follow Aristotle, Cicero, or Aquinas. As quoted above:

But of justice as a part of virtue, and of that which is just in the corresponding sense, one kind is that which has to do with the distribution of honour, wealth, and the other things that are divided among the members of the body politic (for in these circumstances it is possible for one man’s share to be unfair or fair as compared with another’s); and another kind is that which has to give redress in private transactions. — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V.2

if the community has the resources to suffice the basic needs of each member than it should — Bob Ross

This is probably the kernel of the strangeness in your thought. This conception of justice finds no basis anywhere in the Merriam Webster definitions above. "If you can do X then you are required to do so in justice." That is a very strange claim to my ears. — Leontiskos

My first objection is to this, "If you can provide the basic needs of X then you are required to do so in justice." (Where in this case X = members of the community.) I'm not sure what legitimate conception of justice could ever support such a claim.

The second objection, to Rawls, is that cosmic justice is not justice. There is no duty to enforce cosmic justice. If someone on the other side of the world needs $100 from me, I have no duty to provide it, because cosmic justice isn't real. That someone is born shorter and therefore is not as good at basketball is not "unfair" in any realistic sense. There is no cosmic court of redress to which that person can bring their suit of unfairness. Distributive justice pertains to communities, and the cosmos is not a community. What Rawls and post-Christians want is a court of cosmic justice that we are in charge of running.

Of course, there are theological possibilities that could introduce cosmic duties, but I don't see this coming from natural reason.

Do you deny any circumstantial aspects to justice? — Bob Ross

I'm not sure. Consider your drought example. Does the community owe the members water or not? If the community owes the members water, then the drought is immaterial to this fact, and the community which has made itself an arm of cosmic justice has a duty to sort out the cosmic factors (and perhaps get water from elsewhere).

The confusion lies in the idea that distributive justice functions in the same way that commutative justice does. Distributive justice has to do with an impartial and fair distribution of things among the community ("honour, wealth, etc."). The only legitimate claim is therefore something like, "I did not get a fair share in relation to the rest of the community." Absolute claims are excluded, such as, "I did not get healthcare, and you have a duty to provide me with healthcare."

...and this is why justice was classically concerned primarily with "negative rights." — Leontiskos

So compare a negative right, "You have a right not to be stolen from," to a positive right, "You have a right to a free ice cream cone every day." The first right is not so difficult to create - it only requires us to prosecute thieves. So we need to maintain a justice system that prosecutes thieves. What about the second right? It is a bit more difficult to create, as we need to manufacture 330 million ice cream cones every day. This should be taken as a kind of reductio ad absurdum. Something which requires a promise is not a right, and we do not have a distributive right to any absolute positive quantity whatsoever, be it ice cream cones or healthcare or social security (Social Security is on point given that the U.S. fund will be insolvent by 2033, at which point we will literally have people claiming a right to non-existent money. Hopefully cosmic Santa Claus refills that fund!).

(MacIntyre's A and B are both precritical notions of justice or fairness. They need to be submitted to criticism before they pass muster.)

If you were too young to remember, the Clinton administration looked to go from scandal to scandal, had even an impeachment, and had dedicated Clinton-haters in the GOP (just as people in the dems really don't like Trump). Only on a broader perspective what the actions, policies and achievements of the Clinton administration can be seen, apart from sperm on Monica's dress. — ssu

This doesn't strike me as accurate. Just look at his approval ratings. They were generally high, and never higher than during the impeachment. In the U.S. Clinton is remembered as a good president who did his job, was well-spoken, balanced the budget, was willing to shift the historical Democrat line when necessary, and was guilty of sexual misconduct. The comparison to Trump is a stretch, although it is true that the American people have a tendency to ignore the tabloids and the superficial political machinations, as well as sexual misconduct of leaders. In both cases it was recognized by the people that the impeachment proceedings were political stunts against sitting presidents, which is not to deny that it was wrong for Clinton to have oral sex with his intern.

According to Laclau, collective political identities are forged through particular discursive articulation. Under normal conditions, social demands take the form of rational, contextually situated requests, implicitly assuming the legitimacy of governing institutions and their capacity to address them. However, when a plurality of isolated demands goes unmet, they can coalesce into a unified opposition to power, rejecting its authority. — Number2018

I appreciate this because I've never been able to figure out what the elusive term "populism" is supposed to mean. Usually it is functioning as little more than a pejorative. I think this is a reasonable account.

For Aristotle populism is probably just democracy, or more precisely, the shift from oligarchy to democracy. For Aristotle Western nations are controlled by the wealthy, not the demos, and are therefore oligarchies.

Before 2016 you had oligarchy on both sides of the U.S. aisle. In 2016 we had democracy/populism rising up from both left and right (Sanders and Trump). Trump toppled the oligarchic GOP primaries; Sanders was not able to do so, although he came close in 2020. Biden was the DNC oligarchy's answer to Sanders, for the DNC used its oligarchic resources to dramatically reshape the race after Sanders began winning in 2020. Harris was the DNC oligarchy's answer to Biden's poor debate performance. Harris' candidacy was expressly oligarchic rather than democratic, as she was an unelected candidate.

There are lots of things Trump voters were voting against, but I think much of it was tied up with the unabashed oligarchy of the DNC (which is now also bound up with progressive theories which are out of step with the demos). It sounds like Laclau sees populism as a quasi-revolutionary movement borne out of frustration with the status quo. That makes sense and I think it is reflected in the 2024 U.S. elections (as well as recent elections in Germany, Canada, France, and elsewhere).

(But with that said, it isn't necessarily revolutionary to elect the elected candidate over the unelected candidate in a democracy. Populism and democracy seem to very much go hand in hand in this case.)

What do models model exactly? It's not a hard question; the answer is behavior. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, what is the standard "model duck"? A duck decoy. And a decoy does not model behavior, it models form. The form then mediates expected behaviors, which is why the decoy is successful. In real life the metonymy of the decoy functions in virtue of the relation between the outward form/characteristics and the internal principles of action and passion. So if I see a decoy tiger I will become fearful because tigers have the power to kill me, and the thing before me looks like a tiger. If there were no difference between a tiger and its fearful behavior I would already be dead upon encountering one.

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Edit:

Much as I've enjoyed building models over the years, I'm a little uncomfortable that the approach I'm describing has a sort of blindness. Whenever a question is raised about what something is, it is immediately rewritten as a question about how that thing behaves, so that we can get started modelling that bundle of behavior.

Maybe that's genuinely the best way to go, and good riddance to questions of being, as the deflationist would have it. — Srap Tasmaner

I suppose if we stretch the word "behavior" quite far, such that it includes everything about a duck, then there can be no difference between behavior and being - no 'being' of the duck that is not captured by its behavior. And of course we may need to hone in on exactly what the OP means by 'being', or where that distinction is coming from. But I am in general wary of stretching the meaning of words in this way (whether with fdrake we stretch "social construction" to include the findings of the hard sciences, or with the behaviorist we stretch "behavior" to include potentialities such as passions, powers, and organism-unity). Usually that kind of stretching warps our thinking even where it doesn't lead us altogether astray.

Maybe this would be a useful way to think about it... Suppose a god like Aulë attempts to create a perfect replica of a living duck. What is the test of his success? We give him two "ducks," but he lacks knowledge of which one he created. We impose no limits on his investigation: he has as much time as he wants, and he can explore as he pleases, including vivisection and dissection. If he truly cannot tell the difference, then he has succeeded in creating a duck. And then we should ask: supposing he does succeed in creating an indiscernible replica, are all the criteria he ended up using in order to try to discern which duck is his, criteria which limit themselves to purely behavioral considerations? I would have an extremely hard time believing that they would be.

(So in order to reject the "behaviorism" of the OP I don't think we need to say that there are realities of substances that in no way manifest empirically, but I think it is right to reject it on the basis that there are realities of substances which manifest empirically—in "behavior," say,—but yet are not themselves properly called behaviors. A simple example would be the form/characteristics of the wings, which allow for flight. This form is not a behavior, but it is an intrinsic property of ducks and a prerequisite for the flying-behavior of ducks.)

This is a spin-off from the anti-realism thread — Srap Tasmaner

<This one>, for those who are interested.

For the deflationary style, this is the point. In the model-building style, being just disappears, and whenever you reach for it you find more behavior to incorporate into the model. But for the deflationist, ruling out the issue of being is the first move. Model-builders lose track of being; deflationists flee it and end up with behavior. — Srap Tasmaner

Much as I've enjoyed building models over the years, I'm a little uncomfortable that the approach I'm describing has a sort of blindness. Whenever a question is raised about what something is, it is immediately rewritten as a question about how that thing behaves, so that we can get started modelling that bundle of behavior. — Srap Tasmaner

Supposing Aristotle is a primary source of being/essence considerations, we should ask why he disagrees with the "behaviorist." Let me give some ideas off the top of my head.

First, going back to what I said to , "But activity is only half the picture. The other half is receptivity..." In the first place, "behavior" is a bit loose. If we model grass with artificial turf, are we modeling behavior? Does grass behave? Only metaphorically. For Aristotle the proper term is not behavior, but act/actuality (energeia or entelecheia). And the first Aristotelian objection to "behaviorism" and @fdrake is that there is not only act; there is also potency/potentiality (dunamis) (cf. SEP). For example, humans can die and female ducks can become pregnant. These are potentialities, not behaviors or acts.

For Aristotle, with natural entities we begin by observing their motion/change, both the way they move/change themselves and they way they are moved/changed by other things (and this pertains loosely to act and potency). From these observations we move to infer powers and then essence/whatness. Apparently your behaviorist thinks it is otiose to go beyond a consideration of motion/change. Why does Aristotle disagree?

He disagrees because powers explain motion/change, and essence/whatness explains powers. Truly explanatory principles are at play. To give an example, suppose we observe a human infant. As it grows it begins to speak English. Why does it speak at one time and not at another? Because it has a power to speak English. We then note that some children speak Spanish, and others other languages, and others multiple languages. We deduce that the English-speaking child not only has a power to speak English, but it also has the power to speak, or rather learn, Spanish. It has the power of language acquisition. And what can we conclude from the fact that humans can speak and learn languages, including formal mathematical and computational languages, as well as cultural languages? We can conclude that they are rational, i.e. they have the ability to compose and divide with their mind in a way that produces knowledge. For Aristotle this is a deeper explanatory level, namely that the essence/whatness of human beings is "rational animal."

Now suppose a god is going to recreate the duck, perhaps as Aulë created the dwarves. Will it be sufficient to know how ducks behave? I don't think so. I think one will also need to know how ducks respond to the behavior of other things, such as the fox that eats duck (including how it responds to having its neck broken and being digested). And one will also need to understand not only the internal proportion of duck "behaviors," but also the principles, causes, and explanations of the behaviors, which dictate the manner in which different kinds of behaviors interact (as well as the proportions and interactions between these powers). For example, ducks have a desire and power to mate, eat, survive, migrate, etc. These are more generalized than particular, isolated behaviors. Finally, when we say "duck" we are thinking of a coherent totality of properties, behaviors, environmental interactions, and potentialities that make up a unified whole, and this is the essence/whatness of a duck. It underscores the fact that there is one thing/substance to which all of these different facts are attributable, and that this substance has a determinate nature that differs from other substances, such as foxes or fish.

Interesting thread. :up:

P.S. To contrast "being" with "behavior" is a bit odd, given that behaviors have being (and also truth in relation to @fdrake's context). The reason Aristotle talks about substance, essence, and nature is because he thinks the being of the duck is different from the being of the quack, and both underlies and precedes it in an important way. 'Quack' is a verb, a behavior. 'Duck' is a noun, a substance that produces behavior. Can the behaviorist account for nouns?

Yes, truth in the intellect is most properly truth. How does it follow then that truth in arrangements of stipulated signs or formal systems, which are artifacts is also primarily truth? Aquinas speaks specifically of truth in the sense that people's words (or products of the productive arts) are adequate to their intellect for instance. This is not the same thing as truth-as-adequacy-of-intellect-to-being. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Here you go:

Whence I say that “true” is said primarily of the truth of the intellect, and of the statement insofar as it is a sign of that truth, whereas it is said of the real thing insofar as it is the cause of truth. — Aquinas, I Sent. d. 19, q. 5, a. 1

I don't. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Then give an example of univocal predication that is not analogical predication.

Truth is predicated analogously when we are moving in and out of the intellect, from the intellect to things — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes.

...from the intellect to stipulated sign systems, etc. The ambiguity surrounding the truth value propositions such as: "the room is dark" is a result of the fact that the truth of a utterance is not the same as the truth of the intellect.

...

our words are merely signs of truth in the intellect — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think so. The word/statement/utterance is not accidentally related to the soul:

Spoken words then are symbols of affections of the soul, and written words are symbols of spoken words. And just as written letters are not the same for all humans, neither are spoken words. But what these primarily are, are signs of the affections of the soul, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our affections are likenesses. — Aristotle, Beginning of De Interpretatione

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I've said that one might predicate "health" of different species univocally. I said the relationship is analogical. If it weren't, then there must be a single measure by which all healthy things are healthy. Yet the measure of a healthy flower is a healthy flower, and the measure of a healthy tiger a healthy tiger, not a sort of Platonic health participated in by all healthy things. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, if you don't think "healthy" can be univocally said of different species, then it looks like you are falling into nominalism and denying the possibility of univocal predication altogether.

Is your contention that beauty is said univocally of Beethoven and horses? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps. Beauty is a controversial topic. You keep focusing on controversial cases, such as beauty, privations (darkness), and genus differences (animals/flowers).

Univocal predication is not analogical predication. Do you think univocal predication exists? If so, where does it exist? Can we predicate 'animal' or 'health' of both cats and dogs univocally? Good philosophy does not begin with controversial cases.

Analogy isn't only involved in theology, except in later deflations of the notion. But I think the larger issue is that truth is predicated primarily of the divine intellect, not of all intellects. The proper measure of the human intellect is things. Thomas explains what it would mean to deny this; we end up with Protagoras, the human intellect becomes the measure of truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We've already been over this. Aquinas literally says that, "If therefore we speak of truth, as it exists in the intellect, according to its proper nature, then are there many truths in many created intellects..."

Now you can say that "truth is predicated primarily of the divine intellect," but you would be doing theology and making a controversial statement. Aquinas would agree that the divine intellect is the exemplar of truth, but I don't think you would find him claiming that "truth is predicated primarily of the divine intellect."

See also I Sent. d. 19, q. 5, a. 2.

IMO, if one cuts out the divine intellect it would be better to describe truth as existing first in things virtually, as time exists in nature fundamentally but not actually for Aristotle and St. Thomas. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Aquinas is clear that truth in the intellect is caused by the thing. We already looked at this in ST I.16.1.ad3. See also:

I answer that, of the things that are signified by names, one finds three differences. For there are some that are outside the soul according to their whole complete existence; and things of this sort are complete beings, like a man and a stone. But there are some that have nothing outside the soul, like dreams and the imagining of a chimera. However, there are some that have a foundation in a real thing outside the soul, but the completion of their account, as regards that which is formal, is through the activity of the soul, as is clear in the universal. For humanity is something in reality, yet there it does not have the account of the universal, since there is not any humanity common to many outside the soul. Rather, insofar as it is received in the intellect, there is joined to it, through the activity of the intellect, an intention according to which it is called a “species.” And the like is so for time, which has a foundation in motion—that is, the prior and the posterior of the motion itself—but as regards what is formal in time—that is, the numbering—it is completed through the activity of the intellect numbering it. — Aquinas, I Sent. d. 19, q. 5, a. 1

Indeed, it moves towards knowledge (and so truth) by moving from the multiplicity in the senses towards unity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And for Aquinas the unity is always a composition or correlation between what the intellect conceives and what is.

No it does not, since my table is arguable a rigid designator in the Kripean sense. I don't think it is, but you could in principle argue... — Arcane Sandwich

A rule of thumb for you: don't argue for things you don't believe are true.

These are all options, mate. — Arcane Sandwich

Here is your claim:

And the Merriam Webster Dictionary definition of the common noun "table" makes no reference to my table, the one in my living room, so how could it describe it? — Arcane Sandwich

The word "table" presumably describes the object in your living room, given the fact that you used the predication. Most of the definitions of 'definition' will suffice to show that the word 'table' describes the object in your living room.

Or you can just quote the definition of the word "indescribable", as the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines that word. — Arcane Sandwich

I could keep quoting the dictionary for you. You keep asking me to. But better that you learn to fish. Use the dictionary yourself. Before writing a post claiming that "indescribable" means something like, "unable to be described forever," go check your claim against a dictionary. Too much of this exchange has been you giving highly inaccurate definitions and me correcting these inaccuracies. If you use words in an accurate way people will be much more keen to engage your thought.

Let's revisit both A and B conceptions of Justice — Bob Ross

I don't see much merit in either of these conceptions. Are you pulling them out of thin air? Or is there some thinker or tradition that you are getting these from?

Here's what I am thinking. Justice is about, fundamentally, respecting other members of the community (or social structure in which one is a member, such as a family for example) such that each member is getting what they rightly deserve and not getting what they do not deserve. — Bob Ross

I would have the same concern about this. Where is it coming from? If we look at <a dictionary> I don't really see your conception. Or if we do, it is only there in a vague way.

We need a better starting point for a definition.

if the community has the resources to suffice the basic needs of each member than it should — Bob Ross

This is probably the kernel of the strangeness in your thought. This conception of justice finds no basis anywhere in the Merriam Webster definitions above. "If you can do X then you are required to do so in justice." That is a very strange claim to my ears.

In terms of my example of the self-sufficient man, I think you are right: it would be a matter of beneficence and benevolence and not justice. — Bob Ross

Yes, I agree.

Same thing, I think, with things like animal cruelty. Beyond the injustice which would arise from violating a person's property by torturing or killing their pet, it is not something, even outside the purview of justice, that a virtuous person would do because they need to be benevolent and beneficent. — Bob Ross

Sure, but commissions tend to be more unjust than omissions, and this is why justice was classically concerned primarily with "negative rights."

My table is in some way indescribable or inexpressible, because I cannot describe it forever. At some point, I will die. The table will still exist. At some point, humanity will become extinct. Tables will still exist, at least for some time. No one will be alive to describe them. — Arcane Sandwich

"Indescribable" does not mean "unable to be described forever." If that's what it meant then, by your own criteria, everything would be indescribable, and at that point the word would mean nothing at all.

And the noun "table" does not literally describe my table — Arcane Sandwich

Sure it does. That's why you used the word "table" to represent the object in your living room. If you had said "chair" we would have known that we are talking about a different object.

And the Merriam Webster Dictionary definition of the common noun "table" makes no reference to my table, the one in my living room, so how could it describe it? — Arcane Sandwich

When you say, "This object in my living room is a table," you are appealing to the definition of 'table'. The definition of a table describes tables. That's what a definition does.

It can't, therefore my table, the one that's in my living room, is indescribable by definition — Arcane Sandwich

Of course it's not. You already described the object: it's a table. You could further describe it by giving its color or its material or its height. In no way is your table indescribable or inexpressible.

"Indescribable". I claim that my table is "indescribable", and by that I mean, whatever the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines as "indescribable".

The example of my table still stands, Leontiskos — Arcane Sandwich

"Table" is a common noun, so when you talk about your table you have already given a description. When you talk about your table we all know what sort of thing you are describing.

If you disagree with me on these two points, then I kindly ask you to define, for the purpose of this conversation, what the word "inexpressible" literally means, and I would like a credible source for the definition of that word. — Arcane Sandwich

See:

not capable of being expressed : indescribable — Inexpressible Definition | Merriam Webster

Note how erroneous your definition is:

my table is not expressible. It's literally inexpressible. It cannot express anything by itself (because it's an inorganic object), and I cannot express it (because I cannot speak for it, since it's an inorganic object). — Arcane Sandwich

...."Unable to express itself; unable to be spoken for." You won't find your definition in any dictionary. "X is inexpressible" does not mean "X is unable to speak."

OK, the challenge is to come up with something that is both a) inexpressible, and b) whose inexpressibility can be explained. — J

If Wittgenstein or anyone else claims that X is inexpressible, then they have already expressed the inexpressible. If X were truly inexpressible then it could not be identified and deemed inexpressible.

And if Wittgenstein or anyone else claims that X is inexpressible, then they have reasons why they think it is inexpressible, and thus the putative grounds for its inexpressibility are already contained within the claim that it is inexpressible. After all, we don't claim that X is Y for no reason at all.

- :up:

But if something can't be said, it might be important to say why and surely philosophy has a role to play there. — Wayfarer

Yep.

If something is inexpressible, then by that very fact one cannot say why... Doing so would be to give expression to the inexpressible. — Banno

If someone believes something to be inexpressible, then they have a reason why. The ones who are willing to say why are the philosophers.

(And if the object of inexpressibility cannot be referenced in any way whatsoever, then there is nothing which is inexpressible in the first place.)

What can't be said can't be said, and it can't be whistled either. — Frank Ramsey as quoted in Nagel's The Last Word