If it cannot, then my argument that only humans and other living organisms can change their normative motives, goals and purposes would seem to fail. — Joshs

We live in the Dark Ages of philosophy, where we cannot discern the difference between a human and an animal, much less the difference between a human and a machine. But with that said, it is true that AI is sub-animal.

I think the difficulty with your position here is that when one says, "AI is designed and humans are designed," or, "AI has an architecture and humans have an architecture," the words 'designed' and 'architecture' are being used equivocally. AI is literally a human artifact. It literally has a design and an architecture. Humans do not. So:

What A.I. lacks is the ability to set its own norms. — Joshs

This seems uncontroversial. One might argue that humans also lack the ability to set their own norms, but that claim would be at least controversial. I take it that the difference between human beings and artifacts human beings build to mimic themselves is not a small one. I don't see this as a trivial prejudicial critique.

More simply:

• I can think 'p' without thinking 'I think p'
• Judging 'a is F' is different than judging 'I judge a is F'

Rodl says that these are both false, but commonsense would say that they are true, and this was borne out in your other thread, at least regarding the first claim.

Regarding the second claim:

• a is F
• I judge that a is F
• I judge that I judge that a is F
• I judge that I judge that I judge that a is F

Rodl seems to be claiming that these are all the exact same judgment. Or more precisely, that "what is judged" in each is exactly the same. That strikes me as understandable but also implausible. Odd as it may seem, we can make judgments (and predications) about our judgments. For example, when one conscientiously "doubles down" in the midst of an argument, this is what they have done. They have examined their judgment and judged it correct (and in the midst of that process they indeed "judge that they judge," especially in confirming the interlocutor's interpretation of their claim).

If it makes you feel better, Rodl would be correct when it comes to angels. Self-judging judgments require temporal-discursive reason. That might be my response to Kimhi and Rodl: I see your dissatisfaction with excessively compositional reasoning schemes, but it is true that we are not angels. There is a strongly compositional aspect to the way we reason. Reducing our reasoning to ratio makes no sense, but it is also wrong to reduce it to intellectus. We are involved in both.

It is clear that, if “I judge a is F” is of this form, specifically, if it represents someone to adopt an attitude, then what it judges is not the same as what is judged in “a is F”: the latter refers to a and predicates of it being F; the former refers not to a, but to a different object and predicates of it not being F, but a different determination. — Rödl, The Force and the Content of Judgment, 506

That seems right to me. In fact I was recently quoting Aquinas saying something very similar in 's thread:

But the intellect can know its own conformity with the intelligible thing; yet it does not apprehend it by knowing of a thing "what a thing is." When, however, it judges that a thing corresponds to the form which it apprehends about that thing, then first it knows and expresses truth. — Aquinas, ST I.16 Article 2. Whether truth resides only in the intellect composing and dividing?

1. a is F
2. I know that a is F

Aquinas is saying that, supposing (1) is true, to judge (1) is to have an intellect which is true in relation to proposition (1). But to know the truth (per se) one must see (2) and its basis. This is easier if you have the student judge (1) and his teacher judge a variant of (2), namely, "He knows that a is F." When the intellect rightly corresponds to reality it is true; and when the intellect sees that it rightly corresponds it sees that it (the intellect - itself) is true.

The only difference seems to be that Rodl wants to talk about judgment rather than knowledge:

1. a is F
3. I judge a is F

Following Aquinas, what is judged in (1) is different than what is judged in (3), and therefore the conclusion that Rodl wants to avoid is simply true. But the trick is that this is comparing, "I judge (1)" to "I judge (3)," where the latter evaluates to, "I judge that I judge a is F." Nevertheless, it really is possible to predicate judgment in a way that is different from merely judging. The intellect possesses that power of recursivity.

I don't know whether it should be called a "propositional attitude." And depending on what Rodl means by a "predicative determination," one could dispute whether it is a proper predication. The recursive case is certainly an odd and rare kind of predication (and judgment).

The deeper problem I see here is exactly what came up in the Kimhi threads. The discussion inevitably turns into an academic exegesis of Frege, and to what end? Rodl seems to have a better grasp of Frege than Kimhi, but even if Rodl emerges victorious from the contest for Deutungshoheit, the thesis becomes tied in a precarious way to abstruse Fregian interpretation. If the thesis is significant, then it must be significant beyond Frege, in which case Rodl should be willing to say, "Even if I've got Frege wrong, my work is still important because _____." The fact that Banno thinks Frege is largely obsolete is another way into this conundrum. There is a danger of hyper-focusing on Frege without first showing that Frege matters, and this is particularly true on TPF where the relevance of the thesis is to the front of everyone's mind.

The idea of a mean between extremes is interesting. I need to sit with that for a bit in order to avoid saying something off the cuff. — Paine

Sounds good. The idea is a little bit off the cuff itself. I'm just trying it on for size. Whether or not it holds up to rigor, that basic model of "a mean between extremes" is the heart of the constructive criticism I would offer to @Wayfarer. If he can demonstrate a thesis that involves some kind of triangulation I would find it more persuasive.

That’s fair, but those individuals would be sanctioned by the government—if not public servants themselves. My dilemma here is not about public servants nor people who volunteer (and thusly bind themselves) to raise orphans. The question is whether or not Aristotle can justify any sort of duty or obligation for a standard citizen—which is not actively in the course of their public duties which may relate—to take care of a child that is dropped off at their porch. Maybe, just maybe, there is a duty in the sense that a citizen must call the appropriate authorities and take care of the baby until they arrive; but most people would go beyond that say that even if there were no authorities coming that the person has a duty to take care of that child. What do you think? In terms of justice, can Aristotle rightly claim that it would unjust for the citizen, in the above example, to turn the other way? I see how it would potentially be inbeneficient and malevolent; but not unjust. — Bob Ross

Like the way "we might pick up litter for the sake of the community"? The community is the people as a whole, not the government apparatus. In a democracy the government exists and operates at the behest of the community. It's important to distinguish the community from the government.

The natural way that an orphan is cared for is by next-of-kin, which is a communal consideration (albeit the smaller community of the extended family). But the logic of this is a logic of distributive justice, and insofar as the large community mimics this case of the extended family, it will also be a matter of distributive justice.

The problem I have with that quote, which I read as well in the Eudemian and Nichomachean Ethics, is that Aristotle is being too vague. All he is saying there is that a part of justice is giving people proportionate goods to their merits. Ok, I don’t think anyone disagrees with that. The question is: how does one determine merit and demerit in this kind of manner where everyone gets a proportionate amount? — Bob Ross

I think you need to re-read it. He is not saying that justice is giving people goods proportionate to their merits. In fact he is explicitly addressing the latter question. So for example, look at the way he compares democracies to oligarchies to blood-aristocracies, to true aristocracies. There he is giving an example of different measures of worth, and distribution will depend on the measure used. The real meat of this comes in book two: The Politics.

That’s true, and I agree to an extent; but it gets finicky real quick. E.g., if Jimmy can support himself working 60 hours a week and Bob is not supporting himself at all, why would Bob have merit for the welfare but not Jimmy? On your elaboration here, it seems like Jimmy would have no merited grounds; but at the same time we would recognize that the sheer work he is putting in might make it fair to give him it as well. — Bob Ross

You are mixing two different measures of worth: labor vs. need. I surmised that the UBI is based on need, and if it is based on need then the one in need is the one who receives the payment (but of course this does not occur with the UBI). You want to switch out need in favor of recompense, which actually looks like commutative justice, not distributive justice.

- Okay, thanks. No worries and I will try to get to this soon. :up:

These are some of the papers from Rödl's Academia.edu page that popped out at me. Some of them are extremely closely related to @J's interest in Frege. All of them are written by Rödl himself:

• Logic and Self-Consciousness (2022)
• Self-Consciousness, Negation, and Disagreement (2017)
• I think – Mrs. Smith thinks (2020)
• Self-Consciousness and Knowledge (2013)
• The force and the content of judgment (2020)
• Logical Form as a Relation to the Object (2006)
• Judgment as Synthesis (2009 - Book Review)
• Joint action and recursive consciousness of consciousness (2015)

And the book review that J pointed out:

• Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism (2018 - Peter Hanks)

- It looks like Rödl has an AcademiaEdu page where he makes some of his papers available. Maybe there is some article there that would be able to make the relevant arguments freely and publicly accessible.

then I will [in]effectively engage you — Arcane Sandwich

Fixed. Ciao.

That's fair, I take that back then. I apologize. Will you accept my apology, yes or no? — Arcane Sandwich

Sure, I will accept your apology, but know that I am not planning to engage you on the forum.

- I don't believe @Bob Ross counseled you to go into threads that are not about Thomas Aquinas, complain that not enough is being said about Thomas Aquinas, and tell people there to "kindly fuck off" for doing things that haven't been done.

So, back to the main point: "mate" is a British English word, not an "Australian" word, mate. — Arcane Sandwich

It's well known that the word is most commonly and strongly associated with Australia, but that is helpful to know that it flows out of British English.

I've put you on ignore given that you're a dumbass. Good luck with that.

From a different thread:

But we must also distinguish certain senses of potentiality and actuality; for so far we have been using these terms quite generally. One sense of “instructed” is that in which we might call a man instructed because he is one of a class of instructed persons who have knowledge; but there is another sense in which we call instructed a person who knows (say) grammar. Each of these two has capacity, but in a different sense: the former, because the class (genos) to which he belongs, i.e., his matter (hyle), is of a certain kind, the latter, because he is capable of exercising his knowledge whenever he likes, provided that external causes do not prevent him. But there is a third kind of instructed person—the man who is already exercising his knowledge; he is in actuality instructed and in the strict sense knows (e.g.) this particular A. — De Anima, 417a 22, translated by W.S Hett

The actual existence of thinking in both passages is a confluence of circumstances. A living person must come from a particular kind of matter and become capable of actually knowing and thinking. I agree with Wang that the "activity" is not outside of the creature but think he is looking at it from wrong end of the telescope. All coming-to-be is from agency beyond the particular organism. That particular kinds of material are required is a rebuke to the Pythagorean view that Forms shape purely undetermined goo. — Paine

Yes, and this is what I was trying to point out <here>. "Forms shaping purely undetermined goo" is similar to the idea of the OP where there are just bundles of behavior (or forms). 'Behavior' is basically an instance of the "third kind" that Aristotle gives (first actuality).

True enough, and the closest I've gotten so far to "what that is" would be: propositions seem to have to be uttered by someone; they aren't "in Nature"; and yet the Fregean treatment of them wants to point us the other way, to something called "p" which has an independent existence in some intriguing but unspecified way; they can be separated from their assertions. — J

Fair enough. That is helpful. This is such an age-old question and puzzle of philosophy (the problem of universals) that I think many people have despaired of a perfect answer. So Frege's imperfect answer is sort of par for the course.

There was a long tangent in the recent thread, "Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong." Originally it wasn't about the ontological status of propositions, but rather the ontological status of true propositions.

It started:

For me the strangeness of Banno's position is the claim that truth can exist where no minds do. Classically, truth pertains to minds/knowers, and if there are no knowers then there is no truth. — Leontiskos

It moved explicitly into considerations of truth-Platonism and sentence-Platonism (with Michael taking the lead):

It is interesting that Banno looks like a Platonist, with self-subsistent truths floating independently of any minds. There is something about this that is resonant with analytic philosophy, and in particular its pre-critically scientistic metaphysics. This is curiously on-point for your project. — Leontiskos

Folks in this thread see mind as accidental to truth. They seem to think that the world is a database of Platonic truths, and when a mind comes on the scene it can begin to download those truths. — Leontiskos

And it spawned Michael's thread, "Mathematical Platonism," as well as Srap's thread, which had to do with fdrake's approach rather than Michael's.

---

False. I was born in Argentina, not Australia. — Arcane Sandwich

Okay, my mistake. I thought you were from Australia given the way you call everyone your 'mate' and given the fact that you only recently filled in your biographical information.

In the context of your theme of a reality lost in history, the conditions for it are closer to the claims of this realism than to any method of behaviorism. — Paine

Nice post, Paine. :up:

-

@Wayfarer, In some ways I want to see a spectrum:

In dialogue with a strongly idealistic thinker Thomas is going to emphasize the autonomy of creation, and I think this is something you underestimate a bit. He is going to tell the Hindu that creation is more autonomous than they think, and he is going to tell Hume that creation is less autonomous (or less alien) than he thinks. For Hume the external world is too alien to really be known; whereas for a strong idealist (say, a pantheist), it is too immanent to really have its own separate existence. Thomas is going to say that it has its own separate existence and yet can really be known. — Leontiskos

On the far left of the spectrum we have a conception where mind and reality are alien to one another and reality is largely inscrutable. This is "mind-independence" in the extreme, where reality is so independent of the mind that it can hardly be known at all. On the far right of the spectrum we have a conception where reality is perfectly intelligible to mind, even to the extent that it is not other than mind. When mind knows "reality" mind is just knowing mind. This is "mind-dependence" in the extreme, where reality is so dependent on the mind that it is not anything other than mind.

Now first notice that pretty much everyone wants to steer a middle course. Aquinas would be one example of a middle course, and one which is more moderate (in my opinion) than either Scientism or Berkeley's idealism. For Thomism matter is inscrutable and form is intelligible, and reality is a combination of the two.

The difficulty for me is that when you hammer on "mind-dependence" you are pointing to the right. But I don't think we can just point in a direction. I think we need to find a mean between left and right.

- Yes, but what I am saying is that this did not cause the early Christian to stop abstaining from animal blood. So the theology of blood-abstention remained, except for the Eucharist. In certain parts of Christianity it still does, like Eastern Orthodoxy.

he headlined his response 'the sense of being glared at'. I know how he feels. — Wayfarer

:lol:

I like Rowan Williams, will give that a listen. — Wayfarer

Sounds good. Those questions of the Q&A reminded me of you.

---

Edit:

I have noticed a lot of secularism from the Australians, both on this forum and others. Here is the newest recruit from your country:

My premises, the premises of my personal philosophy, [...] are the following five terms.

1) Realism
2) Materialism
3) Atheism
4) Scientism
5) Literalism — Arcane Sandwich

Maybe you are a cultural outlier?

'Metaphysical realism' is really just philosophy-speak for direct or naive realism, which phenomenology criticizes as 'the natural attitude' - the world just is as it seems, and if we can learn more about it, it can only be through science. — Wayfarer

Okay, and that would be a good starting point for a discussion. :up:

In all of this, there is an underlying theme, but I agree it is hard to see all the connections. But then, one thread running at the moment has provoked many pages of argument on the meaning of a five-word sentence. I'm a 'meaning of it all' type, not someone interested in hair-splitting minutae. — Wayfarer

When I arrived here I had given up for the moment on starting my own philosophy forum. Part of the difficulty is that philosophy forums have a tendency to become analytic, and it's fairly hard to inculcate a deeper and more contemplative culture. So I share your concern about "wisdom," and I'm not even convinced that anything I do here will have much effect in that regard. Similarly, I am not sure if arguing with proponents of scientism creates wisdom. It might, but it might also just be the wrong modus operandi. Like teaching someone how to stop arguing by winning an argument. Sometimes I go off script, but am only met with blank stares.

Tonight I finished a lecture by Rowan Williams. There were three consecutive questions in the Q&A that you might enjoy listening to, beginning <here>.

I think this is the attitude of a sizeable majority of contributors. — Wayfarer

Well, this is the point at which you tend to lose me. I don't have any real problem with that SEP quote, and I don't really understand the critique you have of that quote. Aquinas would probably have said, "Yeah, that seems right, but I would never have thought to phrase it in that way."

The easiest way to set out a disagreement is to say, "Patrick says X is true, but I say it is false." The methodological difficulty I have seen with your approach is that the clear distinction never gets made. Usually X is said to be something like "mind-independence," but then we have to ask what mind-independence means, and the meaning of that term seems to slide around as if on ice.

One motive I have identified is your desire to rebut scientism; another is your preference for wisdom over superficial knowledge. But then when we get down to concrete propositions it becomes more difficult. The critique of scientism seems to cash out in a predilection for idealism, but then once again we run into the difficulty of the ambiguity of 'idealism'.

That's not to say a critique of a cultural current is easy. I have deep reservations about Analytic philosophy, but it's difficult for me to put my finger on a precise critique. @J seems to take issue with something or another in Frege, but he is still working out exactly what that is.

If I were to critique scientism I would more or less follow Edward Feser's critique of mechanistic philosophy. I think Hume creates a stark division between mind and reality which alienates mind from reality and leads to a worldview that is mechanistic and quantitative. This leads to a diminished, superficial, and fragmented intellectual culture. What you like about Aristotle and Aquinas responds well to this alienation of the mind from reality, but I don't see Hume's form of empiricism in the SEP quote you presented.

That's what I'm getting at. It's often said that he was a realist philosopher, but scholastic realism is worlds away from today's scientific realism. But I'm trying to analyse it from the perspective of the history of ideas, rather than philosophy as such. — Wayfarer

Well what is the opposite of scholastic realism? It is nominalism. What is the opposite of modern realism? It it usually either idealism, subjectivism, or eliminativism. So they are somewhat different forms of realism.

I also think many forms of Indian thought tend in the direction of a non-Thomistic idealism. Buddhism and Hinduism are allies of Thomism (and Christianity) in some ways, and opponents in other ways. In dialogue with a strongly idealistic thinker Thomas is going to emphasize the autonomy of creation, and I think this is something you underestimate a bit. He is going to tell the Hindu that creation is more autonomous than they think, and he is going to tell Hume that creation is less autonomous (or less alien) than he thinks. For Hume the external world is too alien to really be known; whereas for a strong idealist (say, a pantheist), it is too immanent to really have its own separate existence. Thomas is going to say that it has its own separate existence and yet can really be known (and this is in line with Christian theology, where God is wholly other and yet is not remote or unknowable - it is the precondition for authentic revelation).

Joshua Hochschild — Wayfarer

Yeah, I should look at that again. The reason I prefer Feser is because he is more accessible and his thesis is less contentious. In comparison with at least that article of Hochschild's, Feser is less subtle, and this relative lack of complexity aids the cogency and staying power of Feser's argument. But at least in the early part of that article, where Hochschild lays out the big picture, I think it is good and useful. Towards the end he ends up in subtle internecine disputes of scholasticism, if I remember correctly.

(This makes sense as Hochschild's has been at a Catholic university and seminary his whole career, whereas Feser has taught at a city college. Hochschild doesn't focus on that topic in many other places, and he probably doesn't encounter secular thought in the same way that Feser does. The paper you reference was a web essay for Anamnesis that grew out of Hochschild's opening address for the 4th Annual Ciceronian Society Conference (CV) (link). Incidentally, Feser canvassed it when it came out).

Set theory is closely tied to logic, and lies in an area overlapping mathematics and philosophy. So one might ask whether Philosophy of Mathematics is a part of philosophy. I say it is, but others might disagree. — jgill

I would argue that there are metaphysical considerations that are bound up with mathematics, such that mathematics does have a very broad reach. For example, the reason set theory is so useful in a general sense is because we encounter a world of unitary objects, and set theory provides a basic way to categorize unitary objects. Every kind of thing that we collect into sets has a unitary nature that allows it to be collected in that manner, and this unitary organization is basic to our experience.

Another example might be time. We are temporal beings who move. Indeed, even the rational movement spoken about implies time, where time is itself a way of sequencing this temporal movement according to number. Thus every kind of rational movement will involve progress, this progress can be measured and sequenced, and this will involve mathematics insofar as it involves division and number.

but I do struggle to see how logic can be grouped with epistemology, ontology, metaphysics, morality, ethics, etc. when it is just so distinct from them and uses a completely separate methodology. — Dorrian

On a broadly Aristotelian understanding, disciplined thinking involves rational movement. For example, when we think in a disciplined and structured way, our mind moves from point A to point B. Because every formal domain of study involves this sort of disciplined thinking (e.g. physics, chemistry, history, ethics, metaphysics, et al.), therefore every formal domain of study involves this sort of mental movement from point A to point B.

Logic is the art of this disciplined thinking. The one who possesses the art of logic is able to move from point A to point B securely. Namely, they are able to use their current knowledge in order to produce new knowledge without falling into error. Finally, because every formal domain of study involves rational movement and disciplined thinking, therefore every formal domain of study uses logic to guide that rational movement. This is logic's job. It is not limited to mathematics because mathematics is only one of the many formal domains of study, and the way that mathematicians progress in knowledge will not be identical to the way that other specialists progress in knowledge within their own field.

until now I would have said that substituting "thought" for "representation" (again, within Kant-world) isn't a major misunderstanding — J

@Mww explained the difference between thought and representation in some detail, but the basic logic here is straightforward:

The I think must be able to accompany all my representations — Kant, CPR, B131-133 (pp. 246-7)

vs.

<Every time p is thought, I think p is thought> [Rödl] — Leontiskos

(Or else, <The I think accompanies all my representations>.)

Rödl is misrepresenting Kant whether or not we (mistakenly) allow "thought" and "representation" to be interchangeable.

• Kant: "The I think must be able to accompany all my representations"
• Pseudo Rödl: "The I think accompanies all my representations"
• ...
• Pseudo Kant: "Every time p is thought, I think p could be thought"
• Rödl: "Every time p is thought, I think p is thought"

Kant says, "All hamburgers are able to be accompanied by ketchup." Rödl says, "Kant thinks every hamburger has ketchup on it."

- Great, thanks. That is helpful. :up:

My own knowledge of Aquinas is fairly rudimentary, but I find this line of analysis intriguing and wonder if you see its merit. — Wayfarer

In my opinion it seems correct in large part. When we talk about "realism" and "idealism" and such things, we really need to set out what exactly we are talking about, because such terms mean different things to different people. Depending on how you define idealism, Aquinas could be an idealist.

Despite this difference, both philosophers share a commitment to explaining how the mind and world are fundamentally related—a link that modern empiricism, with its emphasis on mind-independence, tends to deprecate. — Wayfarer

I suppose I would want to understand the nemesis here a bit more clearly. What does this "mind-independence" mean, and who are its proponents?

Could you recommend any work or scholars who explore this intersection? — Wayfarer

A short piece that might be helpful is Gyula Klima's, "Intentional Transfer in Averroes, Indifference of Nature in Avicenna, and the Representationalism of Aquinas," which begins on page 33 of volume 5 of the journal, Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics (my post <here> has some background information).

The other thing that comes to mind is what I pointed to here, although it is longer and more difficult:

A good introductory resource for classical realism is the first issue of Reality, especially the introduction and initial essays (link). — Leontiskos

I haven't looked at this issue in some time. There are probably better resources that I am either not thinking of or unaware of.

This is preserved in Aquinas' epistemology, as I understand it. And behind that, is a mysterious doctrine called 'the unity of knower and known'. If you search on that phrase, you will find many recondite scholarly papers mostly about either Thomism or medieval Islamic scholasticism. And I believe Rödl is articulating a similar theme. The underlying rationale is that of 'participatory knowing' and 'divine union' which have long since fallen out of favour in Western culture. — Wayfarer

Yep. Good post. :up:

- Good posts. :up:

No, Frege was much later than Kant... — Wayfarer

Yes, good point. :nerd:

-

...then it follows that whatever must accompany all representation does not necessarily accompanying all thought... — Mww

I suppose what is tripping me up here is the question of whether thought is a form of representation. Thought is, "the synthesis of conceptions into a possible cognition," and conceptions are the representations of understanding, and therefore thought synthesizes one kind of representation without itself being a representation. Is that right?

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

Okay, that makes sense. I think Aquinas would agree with this. Then is the "I think" a sui generis kind of representation?

What would you like out of a theory of truth telling? — fdrake

I think the problem is that there is no truth-telling occurring. You are allergic to the word: — Leontiskos

Why is it that our culture is so often allergic to the idea of truth? I think it's because it can't be bought. It doesn't fit neatly in a model. And if we are the masters with our hammers, then if truth doesn't want to play ball and act like a nail, so much the worse for truth! Truth is a pain in the ass. Let it be banished!

Truth is what judges the Model Builder's model. In this case, to the model builder who wants to model only behavior, truth says, "This isn't up to grade. Your model handles quacks but it doesn't handle ducks. Back to the drawing board." The model builder might appeal to norms, or social constructions, or all sorts of other things, but all these courts of appeal defer to the Court of Truth, whether they like it or not.

Is the contention from both Kant and Rödl simply that any thought that <p> is necessarily entertained by a conscious subject? Meaning that the subject is implicit in any thought? Which is aimed at Frege’s contention that the object of thought can be entirely independent of any subject. — Wayfarer

I read Kant to be saying at minimum that representations are unified in relation to the subject which has them. For a more detailed exegesis than that I would defer to @Mww, who is much more accustomed to Kant's language than I am. Surely there are a lot of different things going on in that passage.

I don't have any reason to believe that Kant is responding to Frege. In the thread on Kimhi's critique of Frege, the general takeaway seemed to be, "Well, Frege's distinction may be imperfect, but it is also very important and useful, and Kimhi doesn't seem to have any clear alternative on offer." I think Frege's distinction is probably more relevant to contemporary philosophy than @Banno would like to believe, but that is a separate question.

Frege lays this out in a famous essay called ‘The Thought’ (in translation). — Wayfarer

Do you take Rödl to be criticizing a position that Frege lays out in that paper?

The prohibition against drinking blood is a big one for me. — BitconnectCarlos

Also interesting on this point is that many Christians maintain this prohibition, for it is reiterated in Acts 15:29. That is, John 6 is not seen as a reversal of the Hebrew law against consuming blood.

- The OP is about two related approaches to philosophical issues, the "Model Building Style" and the "Deflationary Style." It says nothing at all about perception or cognition.

www.gutenberg.org, J. M. D. Meiklejohn, ca1856, searchable but w/o pagination; — Mww

Okay, great. That is very helpful. :up:

Of course, ↪J is within his dialectical rights to argue from the major as he stated it, but he shouldn’t have attributed it to the specified author that didn’t actually say it. — Mww

@J is probably taking Rödl at his word when Rödl tells @J that Kant holds the position.

Anyway….not that big a deal. — Mww

Seems highly relevant to me. If the only argument in favor of the OP's thesis is found in Kant, then to Kant we must go.

"CPR, B 131. More precisely, he [Kant] says that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations, for all my representations must be capable of being thought. This presupposes (what is the starting point of Kant's philosophy and not the kind of thing for which he would undertake to give an argument) that the I think accompanies all my thoughts." — J

And here is Kant:

§ 16
On the original-synthetic unity of apperception.

The I think must be able to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me that could not be thought at all, which is as much as to say that the representation would either be impossible or else at least would be nothing for me. That representation that can be given prior to all thinking is called intuition. Thus all manifold of intuition has a necessary relation to the I think in the same subject in which this manifold is to be encountered. But this representation is an act of spontaneity, i.e., it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility. I call it the pure apperception, in order to distinguish it from the empirical one, or also the original apperception, since it is that self-consciousness which, because it produces the representation I think, which must be able to accompany all others and which in all consciousness is one and the same, cannot be accompanied by any further representation. I also call its unity the transcendental unity of self-consciousness in order to designate the possibility of a priori cognition from it. For the manifold representations that are given in a certain intuition would not all together be my representations if they did not all together belong to a self-consciousness; i.e., as my representations (even if I am not conscious of them as such) they must yet necessarily be in accord with the condition under which alone they can stand together in a universal self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not throughout belong to me. From this original combination much may be inferred. — Kant, CPR, B131-133 (pp. 246-7)

(It looks to me that Kant is saying that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations. I don't see Rödl's interpretation that <Every time p is thought, I think p is thought>.)

what exactly it is that [Pat] is right about — J

This, I think:

• Pat: "If I interpret your claim at face value, it is false [for these very good reasons]. So the onus is on you to give the words some non-standard meaning in which they are not false. Go for it."

Full disclosure: It was quite easy to write Pat’s lines for her because I pretty much share that experience. So I think we ought to say that Pat is right about this. — J

Yep:

I take it that you are Pat. Maybe you should try writing to Rödl. :grin: — Leontiskos

It's sort of like the teacher gave you a homework assignment, "It seems like Rödl is wrong. Why isn't he?," and now you're asking TPF to help you with your homework assignment. Which is tricky given that no one has read Rödl.

J can correct me on this, but from my own reading of the OP, the primary question was: is the (Cogito-style) actuality of “I think” requisite for all instances of “I think (proposition) p” without exception? And the only way I can find this to apply is if the concept of “thinking” is expanded to include all cognitive processes, very much including cognizance. Otherwise, the stipulation that “I think” as a proposition always accompanies the proposition “I think (proposition) p” is, for my part, utterly absurd: it would entail that for each and every explicitly stated “I think that […]” there would necessarily be implicitly expressed “I think that I think that […]”, which is absurdity—in part because it would allow for if not imply an infinite regress of “I think”. — javra

That's a good counterargument.

For myself, I don't see the philosophical point of these threads on Kimhi or Rödl where we play this game, "Here is an obscure and unlikely claim. Let's try to defend it. Oh? You don't know what it means? Well, neither do I. Let's also guess at what it means."

On a philosophy forum obscure and unlikely claims need to be elucidated by the author of the OP, usually through primary or secondary texts. It is the responsibility of the author of the OP to elucidate what they mean by their claim, and why the claim has plausibility.

Typically Kantian, and perhaps not an exact iteration, the so-called thesis is in B407-413, concluded as “yielding nothing”, which is tantamount in Kant-speak to representing that which reason is inclined to ask when it doesn’t control itself. — Mww

Okay, so we have the outlandish thesis of the OP, <Every time p is thought, I think p is thought> (). This thesis is attributed to Kant, but no source or quote in Kant is provided for such a claim (!).

Now outlandish theses need to be interpreted and argued for. If @J is not going to argue for the outlandish thesis, then we need to know either why Rödl thinks such a thing or else where he believes Kant claims such a thing.

You give two options:

the so-called thesis is in B407-413 — Mww

and:

B133, in three separate translations — Mww

Now apparently you are pointing to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, no? Is this edition available online somewhere? Or can we get a quote? And is Rödl thinking of B133 or B407-13?

The OP is treating its outlandish thesis as if it isn't outlandish, and that creates pretty significant problems in an OP. If this were a book club where everyone had already read Rödl's book the OP would presumably make sense to us, but as is it takes far too much for granted.

(The Kimhi thread was very similar, except after a number of us finally looked at the book the outlandish thesis was not helped.)

For my part, this issue boils down to what one interprets by the term “thought”.

If one holds that cognizance (a fancier way of saying “awareness”) is in itself a form of thought, then there can be no apprehension of p in the absence of thinking p. — javra

Thinking p requires thinking p. No one disputes this. The question of the OP is whether thinking p requires self-consciously thinking p; whether it requires thinking "I think p."

It is fairly clear that it doesn't, and @J has yet to offer arguments for why it would. The only argument I have seen is an argument from authority from Kant, and yet the Kantians on TPF don't find the thesis in Kant.

- Not every thread is about perception. For example, this thread is not about perception.

- Yeah, you rolled in your schtick. Model/norm != perception.

Why in the world would Rödl think this? He believes that Fregean logic can't make sense of self-conscious thought — J

But no one in this thread has any real idea why one would hold that thought is necessarily self-conscious, including yourself. :grimace:

It's like if I started a thread which simply assumed that 2+2=5, and then everyone in the thread keeps diving out of the way as the elephant in the room shifts about.

2+2=5, says Kant. Sebastian Rödl agrees with this...

Suppose my friend Pat replied as follows:

“Sorry, but I don’t think 2+2=5.”

Which of these responses do you think would be appropriate to make to Pat?:

1. You've misunderstood. The thesis is not based on empirical observation. It’s not about what you experience; whether you are aware of having such an experience is not decisive either way. Some people are aware of it, some are not. But we’re not relying on personal reports when we claim that 2+2=5.

2. The “2+2” is an experience of 5, and requires 5. When you say you are “not aware of it,” you are mistaken. But you can learn to identify the experience, and thus understand that you have been aware of it all along.

3. The "5" is not experienced at all. It is a condition of thought, a form of thought, in the same way that space and time are conditions of cognition. "5", in Rödl’s sense, is built in to every 2+2, but not as a content that must be experienced.

4. If your report is accurate, then the thesis that "2+2=5" has been proven wrong.

See how crazy that thread is? What makes it crazy? The absence of some argument in favor of the idea that 2+2=5. Outlandish theses must be argued, not indoctrinated.