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What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceSo where is Quine going wrong? — Apustimelogist
Good question. Only paraphrases of Quine have been offered, based on the gavagai example (which Quine himself claims is not the ground of his doctrine).
Still, if we take the conclusion to be inscrutability of reference, then anyone who accepts (1) and (2) must admit that the argument fails, at least if (1) and (2) are more certain than the counter-premises in an argument for inscrutability. — Leontiskos
...but if someone thinks they can reconstruct an argument for the inscrutability of reference that overcomes the facts that we can communicate and learn new languages, they are certainly welcome to try. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference(i) x exists conceptually = df For some set C of constructs, ECx;
(ii) x exists really = df For some set Θ of things, EΘx. — Bunge (1977: 157)
I want to preempt an objection that I find quite tired, and it is related to the pre-critical story I told above. Someone will inevitably come along and object to conceptual existence on the grounds of parsimony, behaviorism, "reification," or something else like this. The point will be as follows:
- "I found a weakness in your theory, therefore your theory is wrong or unacceptable."
Granting for the sake of argument that a weakness was truly found, the conclusion simply does not follow. We are engaged in abductive reasoning: inference to the best explanation. Given this fact, "Imperfect, therefore untenable," is not a valid argument. Gyula Klima illustrates this idea by telling a story about someone who, sitting at the poker table with a straight flush, yells out, "Checkmate!"
Despite the latest fad in "the cool kids'" clothing, is conceptual existence really that bad, if there is indeed anything wrong with it at all? Given the choice between conceptual existence and a quantificational theory that brings with it very strange and unintuitive ontological concomitants, it would seem that conceptual existence is much to be favored. It also saves predicate logic from an unnecessary and awkward burden. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceShorter: I can distinguish Pegasus from a phoenix. They're not the same fictional creature. Neither of them exists, so how is it even possible for me to distinguish them? Most of the time, reference is far from being inscrutable. And even in those cases in which it is, it can cease to be inscrutable. Unknown references are not the same thing as unknowable references. — Arcane Sandwich
Yep, good points. :up:
It sounds as if one agrees with anything that Aquinas said, then one has magically converted to Catholicism. But this makes no sense to me. — Arcane Sandwich
Oddly enough, many years ago there was a group in the UK called something like, "Atheists for Aquinas." It was a bunch of philosophically-inclined atheists who really enjoyed reading Aquinas. There is a syllogistic density to his prose that some people find very attractive (and others abhor!).
But I think it's good for a philosophy forum to mix in thinkers like Harman, Bunge, or Aquinas. It helps resist an overly homogenous and narrow philosophical canon, and it helps move us towards thought-based assessments rather than authority-based assessments. And to be fair, there are a lot of members here who are open to other ways of thinking. This thread isn't a great representative of TPF on that score. Still, I would never casually drop the "E" word on TPF, as fascist Tim did earlier. :lol:
Edit: I also want to add that earlier, when I pointed out someone who is devoted to a very narrow tradition in a very narrow slice of history, I was accused of doing the same thing in terms of the medieval period. The difference is the difference between two decades of a narrow tradition and two millennia of a broad tradition. Medievals engaged and incorporated everyone, including Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and pagan thinkers. The continuity beginning with Plato and ending in the 15th century is quite remarkable. "Antiquated" was not a slur that had much power. Everything was fair game, and this led to an increasingly robust tradition. What we now find in the English-speaking world is the opposite: the yellow "do not cross" line is erected behind Descartes if not Russell, and you end up with a lot of relatively isolated thinkers who simply cannot cope with the perennial questions of philosophy, such as the perennial task of doing more than simply ignoring common language use. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
Thank you. Very interesting. Great quotes, and I especially liked the first one, but his points on the existential quantifier also seem very good. At some point you will have to write up a thread on your view of Scientism, because it is largely a pejorative term here. <This thread> was the closest thing we've had, of late.
Note: The "R" in "ERx" is meant to be a subscript, but this forum doesn't seem to have the option for subscripts. — Arcane Sandwich
That did confuse me a bit. ERx
E[sub]R[/sub]x
Surely most contemporary philosophers hold that ∃ formalizes both the logical concept "some" and the ontological concept of existence. I shall argue that this is a mistake. — Bunge (1977: 155)
Just for fun and on the topic of existential quantifiers, since Aquinas came up earlier:
...However, as I have argued in detail elsewhere,[3] Kenny’s objection fails on several counts.
In the first place, Aquinas simply does not have a notion equivalent to the Fregean notion of an existential quantifier. In fact, a notion that would come closest to this notion in Aquinas’s conceptual arsenal would be regarded by him not as a concept of existence, but as a signum quantitatis, namely, a signum particulare, the syncategorematic concept expressed by the Latin terms ‘quidam’, ‘aliquid’ or their equivalents, which render a proposition to which they are prefixed a particular, as opposed to a universal, singular or indefinite proposition (as in, ‘Quidam homo est animal’ = ‘Some man is an animal’, as opposed to ‘Every man is an animal’, ‘Socrates is an animal’ or ‘A man is an animal’, respectively). In any case, Kenny’s reason for holding that Aquinas would have to use in his argument the notion of specific existence, and, correspondingly, the notion of nominal as opposed to real essence,[4] is his unjustified assumption that Aquinas would take a phoenix by definition to be a fictitious bird as we do... — Gyula Klima, Aquinas' Real Distinction and Its Role in a Causal Proof of God's Existence -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceWe needed some kind of "foothold", — Moliere
Yes, I agree. This is what was talking about earlier with "empathy" (though I don't think that is the right word for it).
But until you have that it's a nothing, right? If we don't even recognize something as a language, for instance... — Moliere
Yes, but if something is not linguistic then it does not constitute a reference of any kind, scrutable or inscrutable, no? Or rather, if we do not recognize something as a linguistic sign, then it cannot be inscrutable, for we would never say, "That non-reference is an inscrutable reference," or, "We will never figure out what that thing is referring to, namely that thing which we do not believe to be referring to anything."
In fact I want to say that in order to identify something as referential one must already have a foothold of one kind or another. Without such a foothold there is insufficient reason to posit a referential reality (i.e. an intentional sign). -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceEventually, through trial and error, you can learn it! Even if you knew nothing of it!
Which is kind of the puzzle.... in a way. — Moliere
Yes, thank you. You're the first "inscrutabilist" who has owned up to the "puzzle." :grin: :party:
1. If reference is inscrutable, then we cannot communicate (or learn new languages).
2. But we can communicate (and learn new languages).
3. Therefore, Reference is not inscrutable.
The "inscrutabilist" does not want to double-down on the modus ponens, as he knows it to be false:
4. If reference is inscrutable, then we cannot communicate (or learn new languages).
5. Reference is inscrutable
6. Therefore, We cannot communicate (or learn new languages).
Note that for someone like myself who does not think reference is inscrutable, there is no puzzle. In fact (3) proves that reference is not inscrutable. But again, one must take care to properly identify Quine's conclusion. I don't doubt that it was not sheer inscrutability of reference. Still, if we take the conclusion to be inscrutability of reference, then anyone who accepts (1) and (2) must admit that the argument fails, at least if (1) and (2) are more certain than the counter-premises in an argument for inscrutability.
First, the inscrutability of reference applies even to our own language. — Moliere
I agree.
Second: I'd take it that since we're talking to one another we can't ever deny that we're communicating, unless we're communicating about when we're not communicating to correct communication. So if we can connect a philosophical belief that we're not communicating that'd be damning for it -- not that'd it be false, but it'd indicate we're not communicating and thereby, in spite of all of our efforts, we're linguistically solipsistic. — Moliere
Right: you can affirm that reference is inscrutable and therefore we are not communicating, but then what are you doing here on TPF? Probably you would have to abandon the forum (among other things) if you believed that.
"Reference", as a philosophical concept, is the target of the "gavagai" criticism -- as well as various metaphysical theses people might have drawn from various notions of reference.
It's not so much that we can't communicate or learn. It's that there's no fact of the matter, in the sense of a true sentence which refers to the world in the same way that "gavagai' refers to the world, which will decide how "gavagai" refers. — Moliere
But isn't is possible to learn the Native's language? And if I do learn the language, then haven't I learned the "fact of the matter"--which is of course conventional--about how 'gavagai' refers?
Is there a particular bit you want me to discuss? — Moliere
Not necessarily. I was just trying to cross-reference some similar ideas.
(The problem with this thread is similar to the problem of 'gavagai'. There is no common, public text that we can all look at to figure out what we are talking about. There's only two sentences and a link to a Wikipedia article, which naturally makes for a widely diverging thread.) -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceMost people want to avoid the thesis that existence is a property, and that it can be represented with a first-order predicate, such as "E", instead of the existential quantifier, "∃".
And why do most people want to avoid that thesis? Because they somehow believe that to treat existence as a property is naive... — Arcane Sandwich
If we just step back and for a moment forget all of the philosophy we've read, how would we view existence? In a pre-critical sense it would seem that existence is a property or predicate of concepts. That's how we speak, after all: "Horses exist. Unicorns do not exist." "Johnson died: he no longer exists." The basic insight of this starting point is that the domain for existence predications must be existence-neutral in some sense. If it were not then existence predications would make no sense.
I don't think that's a bad starting point, and in fact it looks to be more reasonable than Quine's approach. Of course Quine's approach is motivated by different considerations, but if his considerations are more idiosyncratic than the motivations of a comprehensive theory, then his theory is eo ipso going to be less plausible. That's perhaps what is happening: Quine is talking about some specialized thing called "existence," which is different from existence. A kind of equivocation is occurring. Beyond that, existence is a difficult thing to reckon with, and therefore the way that Quine just hides it away under the quantificational rug is appealing to systematizers, who don't want to be bothered by the complexity of difficult realities. "When you bind variables you are involved in the assumption that they exist, and that's all we should say about it. Natural language is confused and refuge is found in our system which doesn't even try to reckon with natural language."
20th Century thinkers like Mario Bunge — Arcane Sandwich
What is the birds-eye account of Bunge's view, and what sort of philosophical considerations and background are informing such a view? -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Referencereference is inscrutable — Moliere
Do you believe that we are successfully communicating with each other right now? Because it seems to me that if reference were inscrutable, then this would be impossible. And if a foreign word were inscrutable, then we would never be able to learn foreign languages. But we are successfully communicating with each other, and it is not impossible to learn foreign languages, therefore reference is not inscrutable.
(See my post <here> or Arcane Sandwich's posts) -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceSorry for diverting the thread too much, tho — Moliere
Threads with a two-sentence OP are usually a runaway train after the first dozen posts. Nothing to divert. ;) -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceWe need the mean, but disagree upon what the mean is. — Moliere
The first point about the mean is that if you think you are identifying it then you must be able to point to both extremes. Many people can only point to one. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference"But how can you include something in the domain if you haven't even conceived of it?" Well, we just did. — Banno
All you did was pretend to do something. I could do the same thing, "There is an x such that x is the king of France. Clearly a quantification." There is no work being done here.
We could examine Quine's statement as if it is a definition of existence, but I take it that it is uncontroversial that it will fail as a definition (hence the "joke").
...that an entity can figure as a value of a bound variable in his theory is, according to Quine, equivalent to the assumption that such an entity exists; it is impossible to quantify over entities of which existence is not, eo ipso, assumed. Put more precisely: according to Quine the notion of existence just means the capability of featuring as a value of a bound variable. To assume that something exists is to assume nothing less, and nothing more... — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 159
But a simple problem here is that we do not understand existence to be parasitic upon our language or our accounting. Accepting for the sake of argument, <If I quantify over X, then I am taking X to exist>, no actual relation to existence is at stake. Quantification does not entail existence, because we often quantify over things that do not exist (intentionally and unintentionally).
The only truth in Quine's claim is this: when someone uses variables within a sentence which presupposes the existence of its variables, they are presupposing the existence of these variables. This is little more than, "If you think something exists, then you think it exists." It has no traction on real existence.
Other problems:
Thus theories that allow their variables to take non-existent individuals as their values are automatically understood as possibilist, to the effect that those who share Quine’s dislike towards the overpopulated Meinongian slum feel under pressure to construe their theories so that they enable reference to actual entities only. That results in various technical problems (the Barcan Formula[50] and the like) requiring sophisticated workarounds, which however tend to introduce various ersatz-entities into the actualist systems like individual essences (Plantinga) or bare individuals “in limbo” (Transparent Intensional Logic), in effect barely distinguishable from the abhorred possibilia.
[50] If it is possible that there is an F, then (actually) there is something that is possibly an F: ◇∃x(Fx) → ∃x◇(Fx). — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 159 -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceAnd why do most people want to avoid that thesis? Because they somehow believe that to treat existence as a property is naive, if not outright scholastic. After all, didn't Kant refute the ontological argument by pointing out that existence is not a predicate? — Arcane Sandwich
To add to this: folks on this forum don't know how to argue. Many of them don't even properly understand what an argument is, and therefore to get them to give real arguments is like pulling teeth. What stands in the place of argument? Appeals to "the cool kids." In order to prove a point, one simply cites a well-known philosopher they have never read and tacks a label onto their opponent: "naive/direct realist," "idealist," "communist," "essentialist," "Analytic," "Continental." Take your pick.
That is what popular/online philosophy has become, "Appeal to popular authorities and never accept the burden of proof."
(This is why I resisted your criticism of Bob Ross' long argument. Ross is one of the rare members who gives arguments, so I don't mind if they are a bit unwieldy.)
In many places today, for example, no one bothers any longer to ask what a person thinks. The verdict on someone's thinking is ready at hand as long as you can assign it to its corresponding, formal category: conservative, reactionary, fundamentalist, progressive, revolutionary. Assignment to a formal scheme suffices to render unnecessary coming to terms with the content — Joseph Ratzinger, Conscience and Truth -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceHow about we start by analyzing these completely irrational themes that underlie these sorts of discussions, instead of digging our heals and just blurting out nonsensical accusations such as "You don't really understand Quine's point." — Arcane Sandwich
Agreed, and I think the "cool kids" point is spot-on.
Here's another of the irrational themes:
...I think it is worth noticing in the second [criticism] the smooth transition from “the description has/does not have a referent” to “the referent of the description does/does not exist” [...] What is interesting in the smoothness of this transition is how easy it is nowadays to have an unreflected, and accordingly deep conviction that whatever more restricted meanings existence may have, the full scope of being is that of the possible range of reference of the expressions of our language.[7] — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof: A Problem of Reference, Intentional Identity and Mutual Understanding, 2
Why does Analytic philosophy think that if a description has a referent, then that referent must exist? Why does it tie up reference with existence? I realize the idea goes back through Russell, but I don't see much merit to it. We handle references all the time without assuming that reference and existence go hand in hand, whether with opinion-claims, theory-claims, fiction-claims, goal-claims, history-claims, imagination-claims, etc. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceSo if we insist on using "existence" and asking what it means for something to exhibit this feature, all we can do is point to the one characteristic they have in common, "being the value of a bound variable." — J
But this is clearly wrong. Consider, "There are things that exist which we have never conceived." To be is not to be the value of a bound variable. There are things that exist which are not attached to any variable. Existence is not bound by our minds. The vista of reality is not nearly so narrow as that.
I'm recommending we drop the word entirely — J
but I am not seeing how this "solution" resolves any of them — Count Timothy von Icarus
The constant problem with Analytical philosophy is that it wants to throw out language and substitute something far inferior: an artificial and brittle system. "We're going to throw out the word 'existence' from the language and replace it with stuff that is more suited to my idiosyncratic philosophy." Nevermind that within a decade or two it always turns out that the newfangled philosophy had surprisingly little to offer. The arrogance of someone who decides to revise language itself in favor of their "systems" is really quite breathtaking.
quantifier variance — J
Quantifier variance is itself proof that existence goes beyond quantification. The domain of the real differs from person to person, and therefore if we are not to be solipsists then we must engage an understanding of existence that goes beyond our own narrows ideas (i.e. we must involve ourselves in ampliation).
This comes back to the point on page 12:
From this Buridanian perspective, one cannot make claims about the relationships between language and reality from some external, God-like position, from the position of the user of a meta-language, who has a certain “context-free” or “context-neutral” access to the object-language and “the world”, both as it is in itself and as it is conceived by users of the object-language, that is to say, the totality of semantic values of items in that language. — Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 10
Quine's idea that we have independent access to the meta-language and the object-language is absurd, and it underlies all of this. There is no objective-quantification apart from subjective-quantification. We do not possess the language of God, which would overcome all individual disagreements and force existence into our personal, solipsistic horizon. -
p and "I think p"Not really, since "I think" as a attributer/weakener dominates English usage, any other use is very unusual and requires clarification. Far from being learned in either philosopher's work, I nonetheless see two possibilities for a "philosophical" "I think". — hypericin
My take: If Jones says “I think p,” Jones is conscious of his own thinking of p, and is therefore self-conscious. Maybe he says that he thinks without realizing that he thinks, but that is what would be unusual. Generally if I say that I am doing something I realize that I am doing it, and this form of self-narration constitutes a form of self-consciousness. See also my post <here>.
You are effectively pointing to a kind of slang that has become very common, where someone who is very unsure of p and is therefore wary of saying, “I know p,” will instead resort to saying, “I think p,” which means, “I have a mere opinion that p is true, but my opinion may well be wrong.” If you want, you can take my word that the OP is not about that sort of weak opinion. I don’t know that I will say more, as I don’t want to belabor the point. -
A Thomistic Argument For God's Existence From CompositionWhat I am really doing, by my lights, is making an argument from contingency and necessity as it relates to composition; basically by way of arguing that an infinite series of composition is impossible because it would be an infinite series of contingent things of which each lacks the power to exist themselves. — Bob Ross
Yes, I can see how your OP could be read that way.
Yes and no. If you were to take a dead frog and “sew it back to together”, then yes you are right; but if you configure the frog’s pieces to be exactly as it were when it was alive; then it must now be alive again….no? — Bob Ross
I don’t think so. Consider: when someone dies we can transplant their organs into other bodies, but we cannot give them an organ transplant to resuscitate them. For example, a heart transplant requires a living body, and will not work on a body that has only recently died.
What’s the problem with that? Are you saying that it doesn’t account for a soul? — Bob Ross
Well it’s not Aristotelian (or Thomistic). It misses what Oderberg calls reverse mereological essentialism. Or: yes, it doesn’t “account for” a soul.
That’s true, but I say that because Aristotle’s proof only works if we think of a thing having the potential to remain the same through time and that potential being actualized through time. Otherwise, the argument fails to produce a being that would fit classical theism which is the perpetual sustainer of everything; instead, we just get a kind of ‘kalam cosmological argument’ where this being starts everything off moving.
By ‘motion’, Aristotle is not just talking about, e.g., an apple flying in the air: he is talking about the change which an apple that is just sitting there is undergoing by merely remaining the same. That’s the only reason, e.g., Ed Feser’s “Aristotelian Proof” gets off the ground in the first place. — Bob Ross
Do you have references to the places in Aristotle and Feser you are thinking of?
What I would say is that the argument from motion begins with the premise, “Things are in motion,” and it concludes with an Unmoved Mover. What is unmoved would apparently “remain the same through time.” -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceTo be is to be the value of a bound variable. Which is Quine's approach. — Banno
My preferred solution, as many of you know. I've seen you refer to this as Quine's "joke" about being, but it's about time we took him seriously. — J
We know it's a joke because we know it's wrong. But if you don't have anything better, I guess you just assert it while laughing.
isn't there a way of posing the question "What are beliefs?" — J
That's one of the reasons why we know Quine's approach is wrong. We know that when Quine proposes a logical sentence a thought or belief of Quine's is involved in that proposal, and we know that that thought is not nothing, but we also know that on Quine's theory it cannot be anything. We know that even for Quine the I think is able to accompany his representations.
The reason "ordinary speakers" balk at these theories is because they are bad theories:
What is interesting in the smoothness of this transition is how easy it is nowadays to have an unreflected, and accordingly deep conviction that whatever more restricted meanings existence may have, the full scope of being is that of the possible range of reference of the expressions of our language.[7]
In medieval thought, this certainly was not the prevailing idea. According to the medieval view, inspired originally by Aristotle’s Perihermeneias, reference, following meaning, is a property of linguistic expressions only insofar as they express thoughts, i.e., mental acts of users of the language. Accordingly, linguistic expressions refer to what their users intend by them to refer to in a given context, that is, what they think of while using the expression either properly, or improperly.[8] So referring was held to be a context-dependent property of terms: according to this view, the same expression in different propositional contexts may refer to different things, or refer to something in one context, while refer to nothing in another. As it was spelled out systematically already in the freshly booming logical literature of the 12th century in the theory of ampliation[9], terms that are actually not true of anything may have referents, or in the current terminology, supposita, in the context of intentional verbs, such as “think”, “want”, “imagine” and the like. But, to be sure, these referents are not to be construed as beings (entia), or objects, simpliciter, but as objects of thought — according to 13th century terminology, beings of reason, entia rationis.[10] — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof: A Problem of Reference, Intentional Identity and Mutual Understanding, 2
See also:
So, it might seem that Buridan’s semantics, represented by this semantic system, is equally committed to mere possiblia, that is to say, Quine’s possible charges are justified. But the tricky thing about Buridan’s semantics is that it makes no distinction comparable to the modern distinction between object-language and meta-language, so it has no meta-language comparable to the meta-language in which we see Quine’s charges justified.
Buridan has only one language to talk about the world as well as about the language and its semantic relations to the world. And in that one language we cannot truly say that there are mere possibilia, or that something that is merely possible exists. Accordingly, from this Buridanian perspective, the issue of ontological commitment in terms of a meta-linguistic description of the relationship between language and the world is radically ill-conceived.
From this Buridanian perspective, one cannot make claims about the relationships between language and reality from some external, God-like position, from the position of the user of a meta-language, who has a certain “context-free” or “context-neutral” access to the object-language and “the world”, both as it is in itself and as it is conceived by users of the object-language, that is to say, the totality of semantic values of items in that language. We only have this one language we actually speak (where, of course, it doesn’t matter which particular human language we take this one language to be), and we can speak about those semantic values only by means of the context-dependent ways of referring that are afforded to us by this language. — Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 10 -
p and "I think p"For one, self-consciously thinking p would be rendered as something like "I'm thinking about thinking p", not "I think p". — hypericin
If someone says "I think p" they are thinking p self-consciously. This seems pretty basic, but perhaps you are thinking in extraordinarily mundane terms instead of philosophical terms. For example, perhaps you think that someone who says, "I think Putin is a nut," is not thinking self-consciously. That may be, but the I think of Kant or Rodl is not based in that sort of off-the-cuff, half-conscious utterance. In that half-conscious sense, thinking p and saying "I think p" would be exactly the same. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceA good rule of thumb for everyone is to keep in mind that, during a conversation, if it just so happens that good common sense needs to be praised, then something about the conversation has gone terribly wrong. — Arcane Sandwich
Maybe now is a good time to tell you that a fitting subtitle for the forum would be as follows:
:sweat: -
p and "I think p"I have in mind speaking in a language you don't understand. Speaking on a subject you don't understand. Lying. — hypericin
Let's revisit your original claim (my bolding):
accurately notating that you are indeed thinking-p, and reflecting on your own thought, can both be represented as "I think p" in English. — hypericin
If someone lies or says something they do not understand then we cannot "accurately notate that they are indeed thinking-p." My "utterance" was meant to track that idea of yours wherein we accurately notate. Whether one can inaccurately notate "I think p" without self-consciously thinking p is sort of an interesting question, but it looks to be beside the point.
So if the three cases you gave are all inaccurate notations of "I think p," then it looks like they won't function as counterexamples. -
p and "I think p"- Okay, but then what would be a case where one utters "I think p" without thinking about thinking p? Or where one utters "p" without thinking p? I can't think of any such cases.
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What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
I was thinking of starting a reading group on the SEP article, but I don't currently have time to field it. Feel free to start it yourself. A lot of current discussions are swirling around this issue, and I think that SEP article is very readable and easy to understand. Granted, you wouldn't need to utilize the SEP article if you don't want to, and it wouldn't need to be a reading group. The key in my opinion would be getting folks to understand the problem that the attempted solution presupposes. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceWe say someone has the concept "five" when they can add to five, count five, divide by five and so on. — Banno
Yes, and we say that someone has the concept of a triangle when they can draw, identify, and work with triangles. But it does not follow that the concept of a triangle is the drawing of a triangle, or that the concept of five is the counting to five. Someone who counts to five is doing something with five, and thus this cannot itself be five.
"Triangle" is a concept which encompasses all sorts of different images, both mental and real. It is universal - it spans many particulars. To understand triangularity or have the concept of a triangle is not a particular, whether that be a particular thought, action, image, etc. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceWhat kind of benefit do you think they would get from not impugning it? — Apustimelogist
Intelligence, for one.
If it is just saying that there are statistical structures and regularities in reality, then fine. But why do I need to use the word "essence"? Seems to connote something more than is required so I don't need to use the word. — Apustimelogist
I agree you don't need to use the word. Essences aren't exactly about objective structure, as that's more universals, but that is the core issue this thread floats around. That is, essences are about the objective structure of species, but we are more interested in objective structure per se.
Note the way essences entered the thread:
Let's assume for the sake of argument an older, realist perspective. Things have essences. Our senses grasp the quiddity of things. We all, as humans, share a nature and so share certain sorts of aims, desires, powers, faculties, etc. Given this, given we are already interacting with the same things, with the same abstractions, and simply dealing with them using different stipulated signs, translation doesn't seem like that much a problem. We might even allow that our concepts (intentions) and understandings of things might vary, but they are only going to vary so much.
The idea that "all we have to go on is behavior" seems like it could be taken as an implicit assumption of nominalism. Yet then the conclusion seems to be, in some sense, an affirmation of nominalism. — Count Timothy von Icarus
That's pretty mild. It's pretty close to what Sider is saying (although a bit more expansive).
But note that Banno then immediately starts in with his polemical trolling campaign against "essences," as he is so wont to do. The confusion around the term comes from this sort of polemical and ignorant propaganda, and this thread is no exception.
If it is just saying that there are statistical structures and regularities in reality, then fine. — Apustimelogist
Yes, and that should be commonly accepted, right? The problem is that it's not. Sider knows he is being controversial when he says that reality itself has a structure, as lots of people on this forum and elsewhere are committed to denying that idea. In fact the thread on Sider never even got off the ground due to the fact that Sider was so effectively sidelined by those who are opposed to this sort of thinking. -
p and "I think p"But this is not at all the same as actually thinking, or experiencing, "I think p". This is reflecting on your own thought, which you do sometimes, but certainly not always. — hypericin
I agree.
And so, there is a confusion caused by language: accurately notating that you ate indeed thinking-p, and reflecting on your thought, are both notated as "I think p". — hypericin
Are they, though? The issue I see is that you cannot notate that you are thinking p without self-consciously thinking p. If the words "I think p" are uttered, then the self-reflection on thought is already present. And so it seems that the "notation" cannot be first-personal if it is to properly prescind from this self-reflection. It must be, "He thinks p," or, "p is thought." For this reason I don't find the I think to be ambiguous in this manner. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceI'll have to come back to this paper when I have some time. I would like to get a handle on the more formal aspects of Sider's account. — Banno
It was one of the central pieces of the OP in "Quantifier Variance, Ontological Pluralism, and Other Fun Stuff," a thread in which you posted 69 times without once referring to Sider. :meh:
Thanks again for taking this discussion seriously and engaging with it fully. — Banno
The reason this discussion has been so wily is because the OP is insubstantial. -
Skepticism as the first principle of philosophyPeople pile up citations and technical terminology as if by sheer weight these will prove the point in question. — Count Timothy von Icarus
For sure. That's a whole new level of what I was talking about, where a mountain of sources are adduced in favor of one's position without any real argument ever occurring. -
p and "I think p"Thanks , that is helpful, especially insofar as you shine a light on the role that Hegel is playing here. I am pretty ignorant when it comes to Hegel.
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What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceRetreat? Deflect? And what does he mean by "waive that claim"? — J
:up:
It seems like he is making the 'factual' in "factual interest" do a heck of a lot of work.
If you're willing, go here and read pp. 16-20. — J
Sider is an interesting figure for the discussion, and it's unfortunate that he was ignored in your thread on Ontological Pluralism. He is willing to consider forms of modal essentialism, and he doesn't see problems with bare particulars. He therefore fills an important gap between Aristotle and Quine.
Here is Sider:
A certain core realism is, as much as anything, the shared dogma of analytic
philosophers, and rightly so. The world is out there, waiting to be discovered,
it’s not constituted by us—all that good stuff. Everyone agrees that this realist
picture prohibits truth from being generally mind-dependent in the crudest
counterfactual sense, but surely it requires more. After all, the grue things
would all have turned bleen at the appointed hour even if humans had never
existed; under one of Reichenbach’s coordinative definitions one can truly say
that “spacetime would still have been Euclidean even if humans had never
existed”. The realist picture requires the “ready-made world” that Goodman
(1978) ridiculed; there must be structure that is mandatory for inquirers to
discover. To be wholly egalitarian about all carvings of the world would give
away far too much to those who view inquiry as the investigation of our own
minds. — Theodore Sider, Ontological Realism, 18
He is doing a good job of digging into an issue that Peter Abelard originally opened:
Is a word called “common” on account of the common cause things agree in, or on account of the common conception, or on account of both together? — Abelard via Paul Vincent Spade | Medieval Universals | SEP
And:
The main thrust of [Abelard's] arguments against the collection-theory is that collections are arbitrary integral wholes of the individuals that make them up, so they simply do not fill the bill of the Porphyrian characterizations of the essential predicables such as genera and species.[29]
29. No wonder that in modern philosophies of language, mostly inspired by the “collection-theorist” view of quantification theory, we have the persistent problem of providing a principled distinction between essential and non-essential predicates. — Abelard via Paul Vincent Spade | Medieval Universals | SEP
The issue becomes protracted when nominalists like Ockham come on the scene.
The problem for Abelard and Sider is this: Suppose we try to say that something "counts as" a tiger, without there being any common cause residing within each real tiger. That is, suppose that our common noun "tiger" merely indicates a collection of individuals. On this view, what holds the collection together as a non-arbitrary collection? What undergirds the "counts as" relation itself?
Very little of this thread has been about Quine, but at some point a new thread should be created or else we should move this into the Sider thread.
(CC: @Srap Tasmaner and @fdrake) -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceYou are welcome to set out what you think McDowell is saying that Anscombe says. — Banno
You are welcome to listen to McDowell's lecture. -
p and "I think p"Thanks for that, . Your posts in this thread have helped me understand Kant.
Personally, I think it warrants the weight — Mww
I agree. I don't see principled reasons for why it wouldn't.
- :up:
---
- Okay, thanks. So is the idea that he follows Hegel in disagreeing with Kant about noumena but he does not disagree with respect to his interpretation that, "The I think accompanies all my thoughts"? -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceBut if some posited "belief" cannot be put into the form "x believes that P", then I think that is good grounds for discounting it as a belief. — Banno
That is very close to what Rödl thinks. McDowell uses Aristotle and Anscombe to show why it is wrong. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of ReferenceSo my next question is, Can you imagine a situation in which resolving the disagreement between the two scientists would result in changing the meaning of the word "tiger"? — J
Maybe it will help if I offer my own answers. No, I can't imagine a case where further knowledge about what a tiger is -- even knowledge about its essence, if any -- would change what we mean when we use the word "tiger." — J
See, I disagree. But let's distinguish the term in your conclusion, namely "the meaning of the word 'tiger'."
I bought my nephew a National Geographic book filled with photographs of animals. He can't read yet, but he loves animals. Let's suppose that the picture in the book is his first encounter with the animal and his first encounter with the word "tiger." We say to him, "That is a tiger." So "tiger" is for him the animal pictured in the book (and if he were younger it might be the picture itself). Suppose we then take him to the zoo, and he spends 10 minutes watching real tigers through the glass. Has the meaning of the word "tiger" changed for him? Of course it has. Now when you say "tiger" he thinks of something quite a bit different (and more accurate) than what he thought of before he visited the zoo.
But if your term is meant to be abstract, such that "the meaning of the word" means the denotation of the word "tiger" for all 1.5 billion English speakers, and in all of the literature since the middle 12th century when tigre is first documented in Old English, then no, "the meaning of the word" has remained unchanged, or at least my nephew has not altered it in any noticeable way. Nevertheless, a linguistic community develops its language in the same way that my nephew develops his understanding of the essence of tigers. Zoologists, for example, advance the meaning of words like 'tiger', particularly in the early stages of development.
For purposes of comparison: Is Pluto still a planet? — J
And no, Pluto is no longer a planet, because the scientific community has changed the reference of that term, and provided good reasons for doing so. We should ask, What is the difference between the tiger case and the Pluto case? — J
I don't think your explanation is an explanation. "No, because the scientific community has changed the reference of that term." Does that tell us anything? Ironically, it sounds like a claim about metaphysical superglue, namely that a metaphysical superglue operation was conducted to change the meaning of "planet," and voila!, Pluto is no longer a planet. (And I assume you are talking about the reference of the term 'planet'.)
The question you ask is loaded, "Is Pluto still a planet?" It implies that the definition of "planet" has remained stable. We might similarly ask, "Is Jupiter still a planet?," and the answer is not obvious. Hopefully we both understand that our solar system has nine planet1s and eight planet2s, and that in 2006 there was a push to redefine "planet" from planet1 to planet2.
What arguably happened in 2006 is that the nature of a planet was better grasped, and this improved understanding changed Pluto's status (although I don't know much about the details of the case). But talking about inanimate astronomical bodies is not a great way to get into the topic of essences. Tigers are much better.
Similarly, my nephew might consistently mistake a Savannah cat for a tiger, but then at some point grow in personal knowledge and learn to distinguish them. Reality, concept, and word are all interrelated, and therefore by coming to understand that the reality of a Savannah cat is different from the reality of a tiger he is utilizing different concepts to understand each reality, and he in turn learns that we have a different word for the Savannah cat. He will be proud, and will say, "That's not a tiger, it's a Savannah cat!" And well he should be, for he grew in knowledge. His understanding of the essence of a tiger was improved, and his understanding of the essence of a Savannah cat was birthed. If the Savannah cats he saw did not have a different nature than the tigers he saw, and Savannah cats did not have a different essence than tigers, then he could never have come to his new knowledge. That is, if Savannah cats are not different from tigers then we cannot know them as two separate kinds. The idea of an essence is really not much more complicated than that, which is why @Count Timothy von Icarus and I find it so odd to see people hell-bent on impugning it. It is the abstracted common nature of a natural kind, which is signified by a common noun. Those who do the most work with essences are biological scientists, not purple-haired, crystal-wielding "metaphysicians."
-
My suspicion is that you think that a referent remains fixed even as meaning changes or grows. I think that commits us to the very strange view of bare particulars that <Spade speaks to>, one which closely mimics the incoherencies of accurately referring to possible-world entities which have no necessary properties. It is the strange idea that referent and meaning are clearly separated, an idea that naturally follows upon the weird way that modern logic conceives of bare property-bearing entities. But I wonder why we would want to let modern logicians set the standard for how language works, given that their logic wasn't much interested in language at all? In fact often castigating it? -
p and "I think p"
If Rodl had said that Kant arguably implies it there would be no problem at all. What he was doing was name-dropping Kant in favor of his theory.
The weird thing here is that you and J seem unable to admit that Rodl has done something which is strongly misrepresentative of Kant in at least a prima facie way. -
p and "I think p"he underscores that this "I think" is the unifying activity of consciousness — Wayfarer
No, he doesn't. He says that the unity of the pure apperception is the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, and that the pure apperception produces the representation I think, which must be able to accompany all other representations. Indeed, the I think is not an activity at all, as Mww has pointed out for us.
That's the thing: if we want to use a text we have to read it. We can't just make it mean whatever we want it to mean, to suit our purposes. That is the big sweep of my complaint here. (It's also why I would defer to Mww on Kant or Paine on many thinkers - because they are careful in handling texts and do not warp them.)
On my limited view, if Kant thought the I think accompanied all thoughts (or even representations), he would have said so! It would be a bit wild to deftly say all the things he does about self-consciousness, the I think, and accompaniment, without stating that much more straightforward claim. He seems to actually be going out of his way to avoid saying that the I think accompanies all our representations. I mean, why would someone continually say, "X is able to accompany Y," if they hold that X always accompanies Y? That makes no sense at all.
but that does not amount to lying. — Wayfarer
Of course it does. If someone claims that Kant has said things that they know Kant has not said, then they are lying. And if we are averse to that word, then at the very least he mislead, misrepresented, deceived, or spoke in a knowingly inaccurate way.
Kant’s texts are notoriously dense and subject to varying interpretations. Rödl is working within the tradition of Kantian scholarship that sees self-consciousness as central to Kant’s project. — Wayfarer
If someone with an expertise in Kantian scholarship told me such a thing I would probably believe them, but I think we both agree that you are not that person, don't we? Else, if you do have the requisite knowledge for such claims, then give me a handful of other individuals who belong to this same school and would affirm Rodl's interpretation of Kant.
Indeed, I am familiar with thinkers who are considered transcendental Kantians, but I have never heard them claim that the I think accompanies all our thoughts.
To claim that Rödl is "lying" presupposes not just a disagreement but an intentional misrepresentation, which is a serious charge requiring compelling evidence. — Wayfarer
And the evidence is present in the endnote.
This is a line from the early part of the thread: "Kant said that?" "I don't think he did." "Where is he supposed to have said it?" "Maybe here... or here?" "But neither matches up." *More digging* "Oh, there's an endnote here where Rodl is clear that Kant doesn't say what he said he did." "Wtf?"
also said — Wayfarer
The point being, "This isn't a thread on Kant, so we don't need to belabor the point." Relevant here too, I think.
The point to cash out is this: if Rodl (or J) wants to argue for the strange thesis, he is going to have to do more than make a false allusion to Kant. This has more to do with the OP than Rodl, because I would presume that Rodl does make arguments for his central thesis. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference"That counts as a tree for the purposes of horticulture" — Banno
The whole question is about unpacking the word "that." You are begging the question. The word "that" does not solve the age-old philosophical question of how the mind knows reality. It presupposes the limb that you think you have successfully chopped away. -
What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference: At some point the web has got to include statements -- beliefs -- about how propositions connect with that world.
: I quite agree! But what will these be like? One solution is that they will involve some sort of stipulation; that this counts as an "a".
: So the interesting question, if we wanted to pursue it, is whether there are grounds for a given stipulation that are justified by the world itself...
-
Or in other words: stipulation is no solution at all. J is quite right: what is at stake are propositions, not terms. This is also the manner in which one dispenses with considerations of "metaphysical superglue." From SEP:
That is to say, properly speaking, it is only an act of judgment that can be false, by which we think something to be somehow. But a simple act of understanding, by which we simply understand something without thinking it to be somehow, that is, without attributing anything to it, cannot be false. For example, I can be mistaken if I form in my mind the judgment that a man is running, whereby I conceive a man to be somehow, but if I simply think of a man without attributing either running or not running to him, I certainly cannot make a mistake as to how he is.[12] — The Medieval Problem of Universals | SEP
Klima's conclusion is salutary (my bolding):
These developments, therefore, also put an end to the specifically medieval problem of universals. However, the increasingly rarified late-medieval problem eventually vanished only to give way to several modern variants of recognizably the same problem, which keeps recurring in one form or another in contemporary philosophy as well. Indeed, one may safely assert that as long as there is interest in the questions of how a human language obviously abounding in universal terms can be meaningfully mapped onto a world of singulars, there is a problem of universals, regardless of the details of the particular conceptual framework in which the relevant questions are articulated. Clearly, in this sense, the problem of universals is itself a universal, the universal problem of accounting for the relationships between mind, language, and reality. — The Medieval Problem of Universals | SEP
Note that the perennial question of how mind relates to reality through language can in no way be solved by mere stipulation. Which term-token gets associated with which concept makes no difference at all. What makes a difference is, as J said, propositions, namely the combination of terms through a copula.
Similarly, stipulative reference presupposes the ability to recognize linguistic/conceptual terms in reality; it presupposes a knowable mapping between language and reality. But that relation between mind, language, and reality is the whole problem in the first place. No one was ever confused about our ability to stipulate what a term means, and this ability to stipulate in no way solves any of the substantial issues at stake.
(@Janus)
Leontiskos
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