I find this particularly unconvincing as respects "afterlife" beliefs because many ancient visions (and the dominant modern vision) of the afterlife seem significantly more unpleasant than just ceasing to exist. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think it's that hard to define at all. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Their argument is roughly that the intuitive/informal notion of logical consequence is multiply-realizable (granted it is more technical in its details). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Were debating whether to call certain formulations "modus ponens." — Hanover
The basic idea is "formally correct but misleading". Akin to sophistry. Or to non-cooperative implicature, like saying "Everyone on the boat is okay" when it's only true because no one is left on the boat and all the dead and injured are in the water. — Srap Tasmaner
Nor do I. What about stimming? — fdrake
The intentionality associated with stimming is not toward the stim source, it's a means of the body coordinating to produce a regulated and focussed state. — fdrake
I suppose where the above gets complicated is that being able to stim like that allows a form of stimming play, which is what Baggs is doing. — fdrake
The structuralist approach is to see the signifiers as forming a system, the whole group of them, and what's important is just that they can be and are distinguished from each other, a "system of differences" . — Srap Tasmaner
On the typical road maps I look at, towns and cities are indicated by circles, filled circles of different sizes and stars (for capitals). — Srap Tasmaner
If you look at formal approaches to language -- Frege, Tarski, Montague, that sort of thing -- language is a system for representing your environment. That could, conceivably, be just for you. A language of thought.
And it is only because you can put the world, or some part of it, into language, that it is useful for communication. When you communicate, you put part of the world into words (or claim to) and pass those words to someone else. Language as descriptor of the world underlies language as means of communication. — Srap Tasmaner
One way of telling the story of Western philosophy over the last few centuries is to present it as the rise and fall of a particular view of language. Gradually, piecemeal, the idea of language as primarily a matter of accurate naming and information-sharing has yielded to a recognition of language as what we could call a matter of orienting ourselves in our world—developing a range of diverse strategies for collaboration in finding our way around. The more complex the world we encounter (in introspection as well as observation), the more diverse and sophisticated will be those strategies, and the less they will have to do with carving up our environment into bite-sized pieces with definitive labels. Whatever a still over-con dent popular scientism claims, coping adequately and sustainably with our environment requires more than a catalog of isolated substances with fixed attributes. — Rowan Williams, Romantic Agenda
Reality is what's interesting here -- what I don't want to do is define reality within my logic, though. And I don't think that logic needs to restrict itself to objects since reality is not composed of objects and objects only -- it also contains sentences. — Moliere
As I see it right now the objection is — Moliere
I've asked you if you'd accept a defense of dialetheism, the belief that there are true contradictions, as a basis for making the inferences that there is more than one logic. — Moliere
Marx and Hegel are philosophers which, like the liar's, utilizes contradiction in their reasoning. — Moliere
Which was a counterpoint to the idea that one cannot hope to recognise whether something is a language unless one already speaks it. — fdrake
Calling it a language with a spoken component (the humming) when it's produced by someone who as a premise of the video cannot communicate in spoken language is hopelessly reductive and easily refutable. And for the purpose of normalising autism no less. — fdrake
Is it not language unless the meaning relation is conventional rather than natural? The traditional answer is obviously "yes" but I'm not so sure. Especially if you wonder how language could get started in the first place. — Srap Tasmaner
If it's not absolutely essential, then what's the relation here? Is it the other way? That is, conventional meanings as a subset of linguistic meaning? That looks to be the story with writing. (Or with the use of natural gestures, like folding your arms, to indicate an attitude.) Are there counterexamples? Any cases of conventional but non-linguistic meaning? — Srap Tasmaner
The obvious example was right in front of me: cartographic symbols. While there is obviously structure in the way these are placed on the map, that structure is not grammatical. — Srap Tasmaner
One way of "problematizing" the concept of language would be to step back and ask, "What am I/we trying to do by offering the Wikipedia page definition of language?" — J
I understand why you might think that, but sign language just is language. Children who are deaf will, if put together in groups, develop sign language just as they would regular language, in the same way, along the same developmental axis, and with the same resulting richness of potential expression. Body language is nothing like sign language or spoken language. It doesn't fulfil the basic criteria I provided earlier, but sign language does (including e.g. distinct linguistic units that can be recombined to produce new meanings, and indicate grammatical categories, such as case, tense, voice, mood etc). — Baden
Is that the kind of answer you were looking for? — Srap Tasmaner
Whether the picture is being used as a picture or a sign. — Srap Tasmaner
Further reply with example.
Sometimes maps for children will have little pictures. At Paris, a little Eiffel Tower; at South Dakota, a little Mount Rushmore. Here the picture is a straightforward representation of a thing, but used by a sort of metonymy to mean the whole place where that thing is. So in such a case, both. — Srap Tasmaner
I mean, it depends, right? — Srap Tasmaner
For instance, semiotics has been brought up here. But on the wider Augustinian/Peircrean view of semiotics, all sorts of things are semiotic, so that isn't all that informative on as to language. — Count Timothy von Icarus
It's the same type of mistake that would claim body language is language by the way. It's not. It's just communication. — Baden
Suppose, I am in an interview and I fold my arms to communicate my nervousness. That is an expression that communicates something, "discomfort", which is publicly interpretable and which is often described as "body language". But it is not language. Folding one's arms could conceivably be linguistic as part of a system of sign language, but in that case it could mean anything. — Baden
Same question. Why not just say not all communication is linguistic? — Srap Tasmaner
You really don't need fluency, or even much understanding. to detect the presence of units of meaning. — fdrake
"Салам, куыдтæ дæ?"
What are the distinct symbol groups in that? Clearly, "Салам", "куыдтæ" and "дæ". It has a question mark at the end, so presumably it is a question. — fdrake
Even if we make mistakes, it's still clear what trying to split this stuff up would mean in terms of a language. I doubt you can say the same form Baggs' stimming. — fdrake
I wanted to avoid semiotic language since, taking Baggs at her word, her language is nonsignyfing. — fdrake
They might be. I inferred that Baggs' were since she spoke of a dialogue with her environment. — fdrake
They might be. I inferred that Baggs' were since she spoke of a dialogue with her environment. — fdrake
Common solutions: we introduce other toys so that everyone gets something (not an option in our example); no one gets it (not allowed in our example); they each get the whole thing because they will play with it together (not helpful for consumables, as in our example, which is why we split them); we divvy up not the toy but the time playing with it, take turns, and we can even measure the duration of those and make them equal-ish. — Srap Tasmaner
If physicalism is a metaphysical position, as you (and most everyone else) characterize it, then its only obligation to science is to be consistent with it and to not give it a priori constraints. — SophistiCat
But the strengthened liar's sentence persuaded me that there is at least an interesting formal concern. — Moliere
An afterthought -- in a way the pluralist is actually more anti-nihilist than the monist. The monist has to hold that contradictory statements cannot be logically comprehended which is, in a way, a baby nihilism: Here is the field of inquiry where no logical rules hold. — Moliere
I disagree that that is what is going on. — fdrake
When someone stipulates a definition, they are committed to that definition insofar as it relates to the intended concept. — fdrake
Which could equally mean "mind", "minds", "people"... — fdrake
Yes. I thought it went without saying. Some things people think of are more appropriate than others in some contexts, and strictly better by some metrics. Some fiction is more valuable than others. If a thingy works better than another thingy on every relevant facet, the first thingy is better than the second thingy.
How would you judge that for a given context? Well I suppose you'd look for examples, see what pans out, provide definitions of things to see if they capture the relevant phenomena... Maybe you'd refine your criteria for what counts as a good thing in a given context based on the what you've seen and what's been created, too. — fdrake
I still have the impression that you think of this is as an Objectively Correct vs Subjective-Relativist sense, and I don't want to accept the Subjective-Relativist role in the discussion since the proofs and refutations inspired epistemology of mathematics isn't relativist in the slightest, because its emphasis is on communities of people agreeing on what follows from what by following coordinating norms and demarcating those norms' contexts of application. Minimally then, it's intersubjective, and communities create knowledge about collectively understood subject matters. — fdrake
In an artificially bounded task like this — Srap Tasmaner
Life is not like that. — Srap Tasmaner
Either we find a creative way to complete this subtask (making do with rough equality ― 7 or 8 each, cutting the strawberries, if that's an option, or switching measures, say from units to weight, and so on) or we mark this path off in the search and backtrack until we find a path. — Srap Tasmaner
Reality, sure, but mathematics is how we conceptualize our situation and can inform both our choice of action and our method. Mathematics is adverbial. — Srap Tasmaner
Anywhere you want to look, it is plain as can be that thinking and acting mathematically is empowering for humans, not some implacable constraint. — Srap Tasmaner
But for the general distinction in approaches, which this little problem illustrates, the entire business world disagrees with you, the natural sciences disagree with you, the various branches of engineering disagree with you. — Srap Tasmaner
Well, I know it's all off-topic for this thread, but that passage you quoted resonated with me. — Wayfarer
I think what's strange about this problem is that the setup makes human beings helpless before the implacable necessity of mathematics, and that's the wrong story to tell. — Srap Tasmaner
In real life, a case like this is more likely to play out this way: you've got these 23 thingamabobs, and there's talk of splitting them three ways. You say, "Won't work," and someone less numerate than you says, "Well, let's just try." As they fail, with a puzzled look, they say, "Wait, I messed up somewhere. Let me start over." You will want to explain to them that it's impossible, because 23 is not only not a multiple of 3, it's a frickin' prime.
What's of primary interest here is that you, because of your relative expertise in mathematics, understand the situation better than the person who, even after trying and failing several times, still believes it might be possible. — Srap Tasmaner
But I am not sure it is a useful standard in this context since it seems to allow for refuting the dominant position(s) in terms in which its advocates wouldn't recognize it. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This is what Sider refers to as a "hostile translation" on page 14. It is interpreting or translating someone's utterance in a way that they themselves reject. — Leontiskos
I have to say, I love the cheekiness of the cover. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This is the principle that animates all living beings, from the most simple up to and including humans. it is why, for instance, all of the cells in a living body develop so as to serve the overall purpose of the organism. So the 'one-ness' of individual beings is like a microcosmic instantiation of 'the One'. — Wayfarer
a stipulated logical monist of a certain sort, that there is only one entailment relation which all of these logics ape. — fdrake
No True Scotsman doesn't admit of an easy formalisation in terms of predicate logic — fdrake
I imagine monists are generally going to just deny this, because monism is about logical consequence relative to some non-arbitrary context — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'd also want to liken the relationship of formalisms to their intended objects, or intended conceptual content — fdrake
My intuition is also that there are other principles that set up relations between the practice of mathematics and logic and how stuff (including mathematics) works, which is where the metaphysics and epistemology comes in. But I would be very suspicious if someone started from a basis of metaphysics in order to inform the conceptual content of their formalisms, and then started deciding which logics are good or bad on that basis. That seems like losing your keys in a dark street and only looking for them under street lamps. — fdrake
Unum in the same sense as in non-dualism, advaita, non divided. — Wayfarer
In your other thread we touched on the Scholastic transcendentals or convertibles. Another transcendental besides being and truth is oneness (unum). — Leontiskos
There was consensus among the scholastics on both the convertibility of being and unity, and on the meaning of this ‘unity’—in all cases, it was taken to mean an entity’s intrinsic indivision or undividedness. [19] In this, the tradition was continuing and affirming a definition first proposed by Aristotle in the Metaphysics. [20] This undividedness, in the words of Aquinas in his Commentary on the Sentences, is said to lie “closest to being.”[21] For the most part, ens and unum were distinguished by these thinkers only logically or conceptually—unum adding nothing real to being, or more properly, adding only negation, only a privation of actual division.[22] It was common practice in medieval philosophy to distinguish the transcendental sense of unum, running through all of the categories, from the mathematical sense of unum, restricted to the category of quantity. These two ‘ones’ are each in their own way opposed to ‘multiplicity.’[23] Aquinas offers a succinct account of this in his Summa Theologiae (Ia. q. 11, art. 2).[24] The ‘one’ of quantity is the principle of number; it is that which, by being repeated, comprises the sum (the multiple).[25] Aquinas says that there is a direct opposition between ‘one’ and ‘many’ arithmetically, because they stand as measure to thing measured, as just-one to many-ones. Likewise, transcendental unity is opposed to multiplicity, but in this case not directly. Its opposition is not to the many-ones per se, but rather to the division essentially presupposed in and formal with respect to the multiplication of actual multiplicity. This tracks with a consistent distinction in Aquinas between division and plurality in which division is seen as ontologically and logically prior.[26] Transcendental unity then, has a certain priority to its predicamental counterpart.
We will return below to the consequences for contemporary ontology that follow upon this fact that, in its developed form, it was division, not plurality, that was taken by the classical tradition to be the precise contrary to transcendental unity. . . — Being without One, by Lucas Carroll, 121-2
If your prayers are answered you assume it was God who did the answering. — Metaphysician Undercover