I created it myself — Bob Ross

Sorry, I thought you were just copying and pasting something you found elsewhere. I will look at it more closely given that you wrote it yourself. :blush:
(I thought you were pulling from elsewhere mainly because you said, "I am not entirely following the argument that God is all-loving...")

It's actually pretty creative, and I can see some of the things you are drawing from. I have never seen an argument phrased in quite this way. Interesting thread. I will respond again to the OP eventually.

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Edit:

So, in the OP, I am referring to the composition of a being and not a temporal succession of causes — Bob Ross

So:

5. An infinite series of composed beings (viz., of parts which are also, in turn, composed) would not have the power to exist on their own. — Bob Ross

I am reading "infinite series of composed beings" as individual composed beings ordered in a series. That is, we can't just be referring to the composition of a being because we are talking about the way that multiple beings are related to one another in a series.

Going back to my suggestion that the premise requires defense, why should we accept it? What is the rationale?

For one, there are just too many steps for them all to have any hope of withstanding scrutiny. — hypericin

But this is not a real argument. In fact an argument with many steps is a good argument insofar as it is transparent and does not try to oversimplify things. The problem here is not that there are many steps, but that the conclusion is a 12-part conjunction. Which means that there are only about 3 steps per divine conjunct (i.e. too few steps).

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5. An infinite series of composed beings (viz., of parts which are also, in turn, composed) would not have the power to exist on their own. — Bob Ross

This probably requires defense. It looks like the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which Aristotle and Aquinas disagreed with (but others, such as Bonaventure or now William Lane Craig, uphold). I forget the common scholarly name, but it is the question of an infinite series of contingent beings ordered per accidens. In a modal paradigm it usually comes down to the question of whether an infinite amount of time will realize all possibilities (and in this case we are concerned with the possibility of a collection of contingents ceasing to exist).

I am not entirely following the argument that God is all-loving, so if anyone understands the Thomistic argument for that part I would much appreciate an explanation; but, besides that, everything else checks out in my head. What are your guys’ thoughts? — Bob Ross

The conclusion is too ambitious in my opinion:

38. A being which is absolutely simple, absolutely actual, eternal, immutable, all-loving, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, all-good, one, unique, and necessary just is God. — Bob Ross

"There is a single being which is all of these things."

The argument is reminiscent of classical theism, but to prove 12 predicates [of God] in a single proof is excessive. Where did you find this?

Are you familiar with a term I've only recently acquired, 'ipseity'? It means precisely 'a sense of self' or of being a subject. And indeed only living beings, so far as we know, can conceivably have that sense (leaving aside the possibility of angelic intelligences). — Wayfarer

I think the question is whether sense of self is direct or indirect. If it were direct, then it would seem that there is nothing I would not know about myself. I would be fully transparent to myself. If it is indirect, then self-consciousness is not always present.

For example, for Kant:

Thought is an activity, in the synthesis of conceptions into a possible cognition; “I think” represents the consciousness of the occurrence of the activity, but not the activity itself. — Mww

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- :up:

Sure, it can be said that things have essential properties in the sense that they would not qualify as whatever those essential properties would qualify them as if they did not possess those qualities. To say this is very different than saying there is some essence we might refer to as "tigerness' or 'carness". — Janus

"Tigerness" (if you like) for a modal essentialist would just be the essential properties of a tiger. If you think a tiger is defined by its essential properties then you're proposing some form of essentialism. I don't actually think that anyone is truly a non-essentialist, so it's not surprising that your intuitions lead you here.

To say this is very different than saying there is some essence we might refer to as "tigerness' or 'carness". — Janus

When people start bringing out ideas like this I would say they have to try to justify their sine qua non historically. "If [insert absurdity] is not true, essentialism fails." The response, "Show where you are getting the idea that [absurdity] comes with essentialism." Objections to essentialism tend to be strawmen through and through.

What's interesting is that:

listing that set of attributes which only cars (or tigers) possess. — Janus

...we could take the set as a whole as what is unique. So revise it to, "which all and only cars (or tigers) possess," and the inclusion of 'only' vis-a-vis the set is actually a shift in the direction of traditional essentialism, insofar as we are honing in on a reality that is uniquely differentiable from all other realities. That is, Janus is not merely casting a net to collect entities of a particular type, but is also concerned to affirm a unique and repeatable constellation of characteristics. In modal terms this would be saying that essences do not ever strictly overlap.

I'm not sure Rödl spends sufficient time developing his notion of "first-person thinking." He says it is "thought whose expression in language requires the use of a first-person pronoun" (1), but he seems to be assuming that this sort of thought is qualitatively different from other thought. Rödl seems to think that we have some kind of direct access to the self; that we are transparent to ourselves; and first-person thinking exemplifies this as a qualitatively unique mode of thought. (But presumably he is going to try to abolish the divide, not so that modern "objectivity" flows into "first-person thinking," but so that first-person self-consciousness flows into "objectivity.")

is a misapprehension of the argument Quine makes? — Banno

Sure, — Leontiskos

Things have characteristics, not essences.

...

It's not a matter of listing every part that constitutes a car (or tiger), but of listing that set of attributes which only cars (or tigers) possess. — Janus

"Only" is an interesting claim, but you're presumably espousing some form of modal essentialism, which is a characteristically contemporary form of essentialism. That is, "Characteristics, not essences," is a non-starter given that essentialism is now most often defined in terms of characteristics (properties). See, for example, the SEP entry on Essential vs. Accidental Properties.

The important thing here is to set out what one believes Quine's intended conclusion was. I would suggest avoiding vague words like 'fact' in setting that out. — Leontiskos

What do I "make of it"? It seems clear to me that translation is underdetermined to some extent. What is Quine's intended conclusion? I don't think it is as radical as is being assumed. In a 1970 paper he says that the gavagai example is very limited, and demonstrates the inscrutability of terms rather than indeterminacy of translation of sentences.

"has not shown that he understands any of this." Why don't you, "Show that you have understood the argument that Quine presented."

@Count Timothy von Icarus, This is a lecture that is very good in setting out the stakes of essentialism, especially vis-a-vis 20th century logic. You would probably enjoy it. Gyula Klima is great when it comes to these sorts of issues, and I might try to find a paper of his for a thread. Indeed, this whole conference was supposed to be quite good.



(Oderberg would be another source that comes to mind.)

- Jesus is praying Psalm 22, invoking it by its first lines.

You are attacking me instead of addressing the topic. — Banno

My interlocutor keeps lying. Quite relevant.

Show that you understand the gavagai example.

Davidson was talking about Quine, so yes. — Banno

:lol:

You're a joke, man. You're straight up lying about things, such as the idea that I've said, "Yes, [Quine] is clearly wrong." Or when you just remove quotation marks from my words to claim that I am saying something I am quoting. Stop lying. Stop being dishonest.

- Was I talking about Quine? Go have a look. :roll:

You entered this conversation with "Yes, it is clearly wrong". — Banno

Where?

- It's remarkable how habituated you are to burying your head in the sand.

Yes. He'd need to live with the natives for a while to build empathy. — frank

And therefore in order to understand language we must study something other than language, no? He requires more than language.

If you would progress this thread, address the gavagai example. — Banno

Again, here you go:

The point Quine is actually making is that communicating an "immediate signification" is never guaranteed or sure. — Leontiskos

(immediate signification)

Now your turn. If you would progress this thread, address the confidence problem.

- Banno, I literally placed an interpretation of your view in quotation marks, a view which I have been critiquing from the start of this conversation. You removed the quotation marks and acted as if I were asserting it myself. You tried to put your confused position in my mouth and make me answer for it. The dishonesty is unfortunate.

Now either you have an answer about your claim that "we can be pretty damn confident" or you don't. If you do, answer. If not, stop playing games.

- So presumably if Alex had possessed more empathy he would have understood what "gavagai" meant?

I agree that common ground underlies the scrutability of reference, but Quine would presumably ask how linguistic common ground could be established in the first place. (We are driving at the truth that philosophy of language is not first philosophy.)

- Be serious. Stand behind your words.

- You are the one who thinks "we can be pretty damn confident." That was the <whole point>. Are you saying that we can be confident about something that is inscrutable?

- Then you either failed to read or understand the post. Why don't you explain how empathy solves the problem of reference?

So there is no "fact of the matter"* about reference, but we can still know reference through empathy? I'm not sure how that would work, despite the newfound powers that empathy is continually granted in our day and age.

* Again, "fact" being a weasel-word.

- Sure, but my point is that confidence and the plausibility of Quine's argument are indirectly related. Affirming confidence requires attacking Quine's argument, at least in a thread on Quine's argument.

Edit: And the funny thing here is that a pro-essence argument could exactly parallel the "confidence" argument. "Quine has an argument that reference is inscrutable. But reference isn't inscrutable so his argument must be wrong." "The anti-essentialist has an argument that we can't know what tigers are. But we do know what tigers are so his argument must be wrong." Of course we can argue about what Quine's argument does or is meant to do, but apparently we all agree that it does not undermine reference.

- You might think that @Count Timothy von Icarus is not taking Quine seriously, but is anyone taking Quine seriously? Is anyone exegeting Quine? Consider:

Davidson bypasses downplays indeterminism using charity – despite not being certain, we can be pretty damn confident. — Banno

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

If Quine is right, then how could we be confident? If we can be confident, then how could Quine be right?

If it doesn't have an exciting result when applied to rabbits, then why did Quine apply it to rabbits?

No one here is taking Quine seriously. It makes no sense to say, "Quine's argument is sound, but we can still communicate our references anyways."

I would submit that just as for Hume we cannot know causes, so for Quine we cannot know references. The presuppositions of the systems ensure the validity of these inferences, and if we want to deny the conclusions we must deny the presuppositions of the systems. We can't just say, "Oh well. We can be pretty damn confident." To do that is to beg the question. If we can be confident about causes or references, then Hume or Quine must be wrong.

@Count Timothy von Icarus is simply avoiding the question-begging. He sees that if "we can be pretty damn confident/justified" then Quine must be wrong. He also sees that if philosophy of language is first philosophy, then Quine is not wrong.

- Your quote is misattributed. You are quoting me, not Count.

The important thing here is to set out what one believes Quine's intended conclusion was. I would suggest avoiding vague words like 'fact' in setting that out. My point was that it has nothing to do with J's theory about so-called "metaphysical super-glue," and it looks like we agree on at least that much.

You seem to be getting at "but people disagree, hence there can be no fact of the matter." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, and some postmodernists are dogmatic skeptics even to the extent that their inner demon compels them in this way, "There can be no fact of the matter, therefore..." This is pluralism-as-first-principle, and it comes up in J's posts a lot. For example, "There can be no fact of the matter, therefore these people must be arguing for 'metaphysical super-glue', a sheer impossibility." One thus begins to look for ways to prop up intractable disagreement, in part by shifting attention towards grounds for intractability, however fictional. This isn't super common. Moral philosophy aside, I think the only other poster who moves in this direction of pluralism as a first principle is Moliere.

- :up: :fire:

One of them was the matter of putting logical formulas into natural language (English in our case) — that matter was essential for the purpose of correctly interpreting some statements. — Lionino

A paper that shows how Medieval Aristotelian logic was in some ways more robust than current logic is Gyula Klima's, "Existence and Reference in Medieval Logic." He uses Russell's King of France example rather than conditionals.

But they don't. That's the whole problem. — J

You think they are just disagreeing over whether an arbitrary set of letters should be correlated to a concept? And that that is what Quine was worried about? Do you honestly think that when people argue over what goodness means, they are arguing over which concept we should correlate with the text-token g-o-o-d-n-e-s-s?! You are deflating these disagreements into vacuous, non-existent disputes. The point Quine is actually making is that communicating an "immediate signification" is never guaranteed or sure.

"Rational self-interest" is not a name, it is a concept. That's your basic error.

Well, suppose someone gave a definition of "tiger" as: "a large purple fish with green leaves, a tap root, and horns." Clearly, this is off the mark and we can do better or worse (although in this case, not much worse). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep, and if we want to say that this is not a tiger then we are already appealing to the idea of an essence.

Folks like to say, "Well, unless you can give me the perfectly correct (real) definition of a tiger, I won't accept that essences exist," which looks like sophistry to me. It's like saying:

• Do you have a car?
• Yes.
• Prove it. List every part that constitutes your car.
• *Gives a list of tens of thousands of parts.*
• This list omits a rear-left brake pad. Therefore you don't have a car.

- Let me try to clear up some of this confusion by quoting from a paper by Gyula Klima, which we could perhaps have a thread on.

There is a strong tendency among some philosophers to attach a name to a thing or a concept with metaphysical Superglue, such that, if there is a question about translation or clarification, we’re told we can't suggest a name change without also changing the thing named. In the case of the rabbit, that seems wrong. If for some reason we decided we needed a new (better?) name for Leporidae, that could be effected with minimum difficulty, since we could always point to the creature itself if anyone had doubt, and say, “No, the object remains the same. This is only a recommendation for a terminological change.” — J

Why would we change the name? What would it mean to have a "better" name? What is characteristically happening here is that you are confusing naming with signification (and this is common among Analytics). The reason philosophers appeal to a "super glue" is because they want to talk to each other, and they can't talk to each other without using words in the same way. It isn't a metaphysical point, it is a dialogical point. Hence "immediate signification":

In fact, Buridan would distinguish not only between meaning and naming, or in his terminology, between signification and supposition, but even between two different sorts of signification, namely, immediate and ultimate signification, and, correspondingly, between two different sorts of supposition, namely, material and personal supposition.

What a term immediately signifies is the mental act on account of which we recognize the term as a significative utterance or inscription, as opposed to some articulate sound or discernible scribble that makes no sense to us at all. If I utter the sound ‘biltrix’, it might sound like a word of an articulate human language, and in fact there may be a human language in which it is meaningful (I don’t know), but as far as I can tell, it is only Boethius’ example of a meaningless utterance in his commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation to illustrate the difference between articulate sounds that do and those that don’t make any sense to us.

The latter sort of utterances lack signification precisely because they do not generate any understanding in the mind of the listener. That is to say, upon hearing such an utterance we literally have no idea what the speaker intends by it, if anything at all, because such an utterance simply gives rise to no act of understanding in our mind. Thus, those utterances that do have signification are meaningful precisely because they are associated with some act of understanding, or, in late-scholastic terminology, because they are subordinated to some concept of the human mind, whatever such a concept is, namely, whether it is some spiritual modification of an immaterial mind or it is just a firing pattern of neurons in the brain. The point is that without a subordinated concept an utterance makes no sense, since for it to make sense is nothing but to evoke the concept to which it is subordinated.

But this is not to say that what we mean by our categorematic terms are our concepts... — Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 3

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This is much harder with abstracta. If A says, "Let's change the name of Goodness to 'Rational Self-Interest'," it's unclear what B, who objects, can point to in protest. B can say, "That is not how Goodness has traditionally been used” or perhaps even “That is not what Goodness means” but if A’s reason for wanting to make the change is because A believes the previous usage was mistaken, what are we to say? — J

This is another example of confusing naming with signification. The retort you offer is significant, "That is not what Goodness means." Meaning and naming are two different things.

Buridan would briefly reply that the objection mixes up two distinct functions of terms, namely, meaning and naming, or in his terminology, signifying and suppositing. — Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 2

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But the type of philosopher I referred to above (call them C) wants to disallow the argument, on the grounds that it isn’t coherent to change the name of Goodness to something else. If you do that, C urges, you’re no longer talking about Goodness. Name and concept are metaphysically wedded together. — J

I think that if we reflect on this, we should be able to overcome the strawman which says that what is at stake is a name-concept pairing. What is really at stake is a conceptual matter: the disagreement is that both parties agree that, for example, 'good' = the desirable, and yet they are disagreeing on what is truly desirable (i.e. "Rational self-interest"). The substantive dispute is over the question of whether rational self-interest is foundationally desirable, not over the question of whether the token g-o-o-d must always be attached to a particular concept.

The reason confusion arises in these contexts is because we almost never think in terms of material tokens or phonemes (and so we are prone to misunderstand when someone is using a token differently). But because of this, disputes are not usually simply over material tokens or phonemes. When someone says, "That's not what goodness is," they are not saying, "That's not what the material token g-o-o-d-n-e-s-s metaphysically attaches to." They are arguing over a normative concept, such as desirability or proper conduct or somesuch thing.

I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts as you read the book, . :up:

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Thanks too for your summaries, @Wayfarer. :up:

Plato, for one. When Socrates questions Euthyphro about the meaning of "piety," they are both assuming that there is a word, eusebeia, that corresponds correctly with a certain content or concept. — J

This looks like an invalid argument:

• Socrates and Euthyphro assume there is a word that corresponds correctly with "piety."
• Therefore, for these men there is "a binding action that makes a word inseparable from its object or meaning or concept"

Rather, we're trying to shake up a very common assumption among philosophers, which is that there is some sort of binding action (I called it "metaphysical Superglue" elsewhere) that makes a word inseparable from its object or meaning or concept -- take your pick of these imprecise terms. — J

Like @Count Timothy von Icarus, I have never in my life heard of any philosopher falling into such a position. Socrates regularly recognizes that others are using words differently than he is. He could not spend so much time trying to refine and correct the meaning of words if he didn't think they could be used differently.

Socrates knew, for example, that people who speak languages other than Greek can also talk about the same things that Greeks talk about.

I will try and find time to listen. — Wayfarer

Read my edit above before you do. :nerd:

Edit: I just realized that McDowell's lecture is on a different book by Rödl with a slightly different title: Self-Consciousness and Objectivity (2007). Doh!

-

I listened to a talk by John McDowell on Rödl's book. It was helpful in understanding a bit of what Rödl is doing, but it was also useful to me because McDowell uses Anscombe's interpretation of Aristotle to critique a central piece of Rödl's project. The critique is basically that Rödl turns practical reasoning into speculative reasoning, and I would say that this is a very common and understandable Aristotelian mistake. The talk is exceptionally clear.

The foundational claim McDowell makes is that, for Rödl, <Practical reasoning has as its conclusions thoughts of the form "I * [should] do A">, and that this is also what Anscombe rejects.

Given that he starts with Anscombe and brings in Davidson, it may be more accessible to the folks interested in contemporary philosophy. If in one way or another Rödl casts thinking as practical reasoning (which it arguably is), then on McDowell's thesis it is easy for me to understand why Rödl would want to say thinking is self-conscious.



(Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a copy of the pdf that McDowell used for his talk.)

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- Good thoughts

- It would be the real vs. logical distinction catalogued <here>.

Hmm. I don't know how to answer this without pulling in a lot of metaphysical commitments -- which I'd rather not do because I think the thought1/thought2 distinction is important and relevant no matter whether one thinks it's "real" or "mental," in your terminology. Sorry to lob this back to you again, but if you could say a little more about what might hinge on the choice of "real" vs. "mental," I might have a better sense of what we ought to say about that. — J

We don't have to go into this too far. The point is just to think about the manner in which Fregian propositions are being countenanced. The thought1/thought2 distinction puts us in the territory of heavy Platonism, at least prima facie. Given what Wayfarer has said I thought this sort of thing was being resisted.

My time is short this week, so I am going to try not to get too entangled here.

Yes, there is, and unless we want to go back to Kimhi's arguments, we should probably resist this. Where we stand in the discussion right now ("we" meaning all on this thread), let's go ahead and let thought1 be understood as unasserted, without force, "merely thought". We may have to change our minds at some future point. — J

Well, I can't imagine how a temporal thought-event would lack force, given that a "mere thought" (without force) is something very like a Fregian proposition (thought2). But this does get into Kimhi's question of what exactly it means to be forceless.

That may be true, but I was suggesting earlier that we don't have to understand "self-consciousness" as a new thought. — J

Well again, I have never claimed that self-consciousness is a thought. The crucial point for this thread is that self-consciousness is something. It is not nothing. And what it is is self-consciousness.

In other words, various people have said that Rodl doesn't look to be dealing with self-consciousness, and the response is always, "Oh, but self-consciousness isn't w, x, y, or z." Well, what is it? And once we have a sense of what it is, is Rodl dealing with it?

(My claim has been that self-consciousness of something we do is consciousness of our doing that thing. Thought is something we do. Therefore self-consciousness is consciousness of our act/doing of thinking. Nowhere here is the idea that self-consciousness is a thought.)

You may be right that tinkering with the targeted sentence won't produce any insight, but I think it might. I can take a shot at it if you'd rather not. — J

Feel free to give it a shot. We have, "[X] accompanies all our [Y]," where the possible values for X and Y are thought1 and thought2. I don't see how any substitution will yield a conclusion about self-consciousness. And note that Kant's I think, which is not thought1, is about self-consciousness and therefore can yield a conclusion about self-consciousness.

Good questions. I know I often blame translation for difficulties with Kant, and here again I'm tempted to say, "How would a German speaker of Kant's era understand 'my representations' or 'my thoughts'?" — J

Well, that looks like saying, "Maybe the translator mistranslated 'my'. Maybe it's not possessive after all." But this looks very ad hoc. It's logically possible that there is some sort of mistranslation or lossy translation, but until we have independent reasons to believe such a thing, it can't function as a plausible claim.

More bluntly, we shouldn't be saying, "My theory conflicts with Kant. But that's probably just a translation problem. Also, I don't speak German." Mww tried to preempt that sort of thing earlier when he consulted three different translations.

- I am tired of repeating myself as well; tired of asking for arguments rather than dismissals with vague allegations such as "truisms." We can leave it there.