I'm sorry for not making this clear: I'm withdrawing my argument, because I lost faith in my interpretation of your view. Any argument I make is necessarily against what I take to be your view, there is no point if I don't have some degree of confidence in my grasp of your position.

What I would like you to attend to are the questions I asked about the your view on the relationship between rationality and rational norms, because it's something I'm confused about right now. — goremand

Okay, well let me expand on my edit:

• Leontiskos: If you are acting in accordance with a norm then you must have an understanding of that norm at some level. If you have no understanding of a norm then you cannot act in accordance with it.
• Goremand: Ants act according to norms without understanding.
• Leontiskos: Ants do not act according to norms, given that they have no rationality (and therefore no understanding).
• Goremand: You must be committed to the claim that being rational means following rational norms.
• Leontiskos: Why?

We can go back in the conversation:

I have read the OP, but I can't promise I've absorbed it completely. What stood out to me is that you allow for acts to be judged as moral (or as you say now, rational) even if moral judgement doesn't feature in the decision of the act, which I think is true. The way I see it, we can judge whether an act is moral/rational/whatever simply by checking it against the appropriate framework, but strictly speaking there is no need for the agent of the act to be aware of that framework. — goremand

And:

Why can't I act in accordance with rational norms without understanding those norms? — goremand

This is apparently coming from the notion of susceptibility:

A moral act is an act that involves a moral judgment, or an act that is susceptible to moral judgment.

...

Admittedly, there is a difference between an act that involves a moral judgment and an act that is susceptible to moral judgment, especially on non-Aristotelian theories. This difference should be largely irrelevant, although I will tease out some of the implications as we go.⁴ — Leontiskos

What this all turns on is volition and negligence:

More precisely, the concept of susceptibility helps highlight the central moral notions of volition and negligence. — Leontiskos

Negligence is the idea that someone can be accountable to a norm that they are not currently following. Note that humans can be negligent and ants cannot, and this is because ants do not act self-consciously according to norms.

There's a difference between a standard and an end. — Banno

There is a difference between a standard and an end, and between a goal and an end, but all standards and all goals are ends. Therefore your eschewal of ends is entirely incoherent. This is yet another example of someone who tries to rebut something without understanding it, and another example of someone doing that with Aristotle.

- :up:

I was using the turnstile as a shorthand for Frege's judgement stroke, so read "⊢⊢the cat is on the mat" as "I think that I think..." or "I think that I judge..." or whatever. Not as "...is derivable from..." — Banno

A double judgment-stroke would make no sense for Frege. It is precisely a syncategorematic expression, and therefore cannot be nested in that way.

None of this is news, but what interested me is that science doesn't really begin by saying subject over here, object over there; it begins by deliberately submitting to being acted upon, in a controlled way, and separating its work into being-acted-upon and not-being-acted-upon. — Srap Tasmaner

Good posts. :up:

Part of the difficulty here is that "science" is poorly defined, as was shown in <this thread>. I think what you mean by "science" here is something like, "studying how something works."

Here's where I thought to start, with the self-image of a toy version of science: in order to study and theorize the laws of nature, science breaks itself into one part that is by design subject to those laws, and another that is not. (There's a problem with this we'll get to, but it's not where you start.)

What I mean by that is simply that the data a scientist wants is generated by the operation of the laws of nature in action. You can observe events where those laws are operative; you can also conduct experiments to try to isolate specific effects, which you then observe. But the whole point of an experiment is to submit some apparatus or material to the forces of nature so that you can see what happens. This part of the work of science deliberately submits itself to nature at work. — Srap Tasmaner

Does science want to see what happens? Or does it want to understand laws (or principles)? I would say that the scientist is only doing the experiment in order to understand the laws or principles at work. That's the endgame (and that is one way of cashing out the knowledge vs. wisdom distinction).

So let's come back to this:

it begins by deliberately submitting to being acted upon, in a controlled way, and separating its work into being-acted-upon and not-being-acted-upon. — Srap Tasmaner

Part of what you are saying is, "Science separates its work into being-acted-upon and not-being-acted-upon." I would say that such a claim requires clarification, given that you are sneaking in two entirely different subjects. What is being-acted-upon (i.e. what is the patient)? It is the thing being studied, such as the falling weight or else the law of gravity (i.e. the falling weight is being acted upon by gravity, and gravity is being acted upon by the mind of the scientist). What is not-being-acted-upon? It is the scientist. So here there is an equivocation of subject, which is precisely why your claim is not yet plausible, "science doesn't really begin by saying subject over here, object over there." Everything you say seems to presuppose, "subject over here, object over there."

The real kicker is that the nature of the rational subject is always a difficult subject (and we should think here about Frege's judgment stroke, Medieval debates over universals and whether intellect is universal or individual, the "view from nowhere," etc.). "Science" wishes to treat the rational subject in a precritical way, but that turns out to be impossible.

science breaks itself into one part that is by design subject to those laws, and another that is not. — Srap Tasmaner

I would agree in saying that science divides itself into two parts. This all has to do with act and potency. In one way the scientist views the falling weight as (patient) being acted upon by a law which he will eventually give the name "gravity." In another way the philosopher-scientist views the whole sequence as (patient) being acted upon by his own mind, which through the operation of abstraction recognizes the law of gravity. So the law of gravity "moves" the falling weight, and these "two" things "move" the scientist's mind to the formulation of the theory. But what is crucial for Aristotle is that the scientist's mind is not unmoved or unsubjected, as you claim. His mind is affected by the the experiment, but that is incidental given that he constructed the experiment and willingly subjected his mind to it. What is more interesting is that his mind, rather than being unmoved or unsubjected, is self-moving. The scientist is able to direct and move himself, and particularly his mind.

Of course you are correct that if we merely consider gravity as the agent, then within the imaginary of the experiment the scientist takes the weight to be moved by gravity, but not his own mind. This is closely related to Bob Ross' recent thread on the immateriality of the intellect, and specifically the idea that there is a sense in which the intellect moves all corporeal things without being moved itself in the same manner. More simply, the scientist's presumption is that gravity affects the weight but it does not affect his own mind, and therefore his mind can act upon and understand the law of gravity without being self-recursively entangled in the explanation.

Finally onto logic:

Now what about philosophy?

Can it achieve this sort of self-division? Must it do so to achieve the same rigor as science? (Or can it be just as rigorous without doing so?)

--- I spent a few pages trying to answer these questions, but it was a mess, so here's just a couple obvious points:

1. If you think philosophy (or logic) studies the laws of thought or of reason, you're unlikely to think any of your work needs to separate itself from those laws

2. If you think philosophy studies norms of thought and behavior, neither making your work subject to the specific norms you're studying nor making it subject to different norms seems obviously satisfactory. Both present problems. — Srap Tasmaner

Aristotle would argue that nothing can be both agent and patient simultaneously and in the same way (i.e. both mover and moved - acting-upon and being-acted-upon). For example, this would mean that (1) is incoherent insofar as it takes itself to be studying what at the same time it takes for granted. To study the laws of logic with the laws of logic looks to be a form of petitio principii.

Rather than belabor this post, I will just nod to @Count Timothy von Icarus who has written recently on intellection and ratiocination. I would take all of this in the direction of Plato's divided line. In a univocal sense, logic cannot study logic. What is needed is nested hierarchy. Logic cannot study logic, but intellectus can study ratiocination. Other thinkers will posit higher levels within the hierarchy, and say, for example, that nous can study intellection (although the word "study" is at this point becoming strained, given that it connotes ratiocination). This is why Platonism unifies in a sort of static fullness, which many of us have experienced in deep states of recollection, and from which flows a remarkable amount of intellectual fecundity. This is also why Aristotle places contemplation at the highest place.

(More simply, what Banno can only take as an axiom, others believe can be grasped as true. This is also why Frege eludes Banno with his syncategorematic judgment stroke. The univocal logician cannot even recognize Frege's motive for such a thing, much less the thing itself.)

I'll just observe that we know more or less exactly why this happens at quantum scale — Srap Tasmaner

That seems unlikely to me. The recent discussions on quantum foam are on point.

I don't think it presupposes any robust sense of final causality to ask: "what is the purpose of philosophy?" or more specifically "what is the purpose of this particular area of philosophy?" How could we ever agree on methods if we do not consider what we want to accomplish (i.e. our end)?

Imagine you are giving an introductory lecture on metaphysics. You tell your class: "Metaphysics is not discovering the deep structure of the world per se, but proposing better ways to conceptualize and systematize our thought and language.”

And then a hand shoots up, and you decide to take a question and it's:

"Professor Banno, can you please explain what makes some conceptualizations and systemizations of our language better than others?"

It hardly seems adequate to say simply: "if you can't choose I'll decide" without offering an explanation. And if the next question is: "but what is the aim of even doing this?" I am not sure if it's fair to dismiss that question as "loaded" or somehow commiting us to "Aristotlianism."

To say: "'[some]thing speaks for [or] against it...' presupposes a principle of speaking for and against. That is, [we] must be able to say what would speak for it." That's Wittgenstein, On Certainty 117, not Ol' Slick Ari. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. :up:

Darwin replaced natural teleology with natural selection. — Banno

Likewise, I hardly think one can invoke Darwin as eliminating the explanatory function of aims within the context of intentional human practices. Darwin didn't think he had shown that human science is without aims. — Count Timothy von Icarus

More than that, Darwin's theory is itself teleological, as he himself acknowledged (see recent thread).

Anti-Aristotelian and anti-religious prejudice is in fact not philosophy, and it places one into an irrational straightjacket of their own making. Can the so-called "dissector" allow his own claims to be dissected, or not?

I've asked what your argument is, and I've even tried to represent it:

1. If someone transitions from defying rational norms to following them, then they have transitioned from irrationality to rationality.
2. Some people do transition from defying rational norms to following them.
3. Therefore, some people do transition from irrationality to rationality.
4. But that transition can't be compelled by the rational norms themselves.
5. Leontiskos does not allow that one can be rational for irrational reasons.
6. Therefore, under Leontiskos' definition the transition would be impossible. — Leontiskos

Again:

Then please re-write the argument I provided, correcting any mistakes I made. I want to see your actual argument. — Leontiskos

If you are unwilling to state your position clearly and without ambiguity, then I see no reason to continue.

---

Edit:

I'm really surprised to see you object to this ("being rational means following rational norms"), I thought this was at the core of what you wanted to say. — goremand

I've said that one who follows norms is rational (i.e. If X is following a norm, then X is rational). I'm not sure how you managed to get a definition of rationality out of that. But again, you have to set out your argument clearly if I am to know what you are saying.

Ok. If meaning is use, then use must have an end. Otherwise, there cannot be any use in replying.

Or… I can just say meaning is use and that is enough; that "ends" bring baggage unnecessary to make use of language. But then, when language has been used, would we notice if the use actually occurred, would we notice it was language at all, if we did not notice some purpose or some end connected to that usage, or some effect by using the language?

Or in other words, what is the “use” of speaking becomes the same question as what is the “purpose” of speaking?

What is the use "Aristotelian framing" makes of Leon's idea, if not to relegate it and flesh out how "ends" are "figments"? "Aristotelian framing" does not merely have a use, but serves a purpose, an end, of clarifying a specific "figment".

If meaning is informed by use, then use is informed by purpose. — Fire Ologist

Well said. :up:

I don't see any coherence in fleeing from aims and purposes, as if one is acting with no aim when they use language.

And deeply misrepresentative. Your standard practice, when you don't like an argument, is to misreport it. — Banno

More evasion from the person who cannot provide a clear answer.

@Srap Tasmaner spoke of the aim of philosophy . You claimed that to speak of "aims" is Aristotelian, and you resorted to your flat-footed anti-Aristotelian polemic. I pointed out, again, that you apparently prefer aimlessness. And then you tried for the ad hominem, as usual.

Clarity is the last thing in the world you are interested in. You refuse to answer the simplest questions. Here is another one: If you reject the notion that philosophy has aims, then how do you avoid the implication that philosophy is aimless?

More likely we would express it like "a blender should be able to purée fruit", in particular we might be quite disappointed if a blender failed to do so. I don't think this is a metaphor at all, I think we have expectations about how machines should behave. — goremand

So you think we should put it on the blender that it has failed to follow a "norm"?

It think that depends on our willingness to ascribe beliefs to non-humans, I am open to reasonably intelligent animals and maybe computers behaving irrationally. Plants not so much, I guess you could even say that plants are always rational, but only in the same sense in which they never lose at football. — goremand

Whereas I would not say any of that.

My idea of "norm-following" is conforming to a set of norms. Your idea seems to be the same, but with the added requirement that you have to be rational. — goremand

Well, you have to be able to "attend" to the norm in a non-metaphorical way, and for that you need rationality. We can say that the blender "attends" to the purée-norm, but this is just whimsical or metaphorical speech. The blender is not attending to anything. It is just being forced to move in certain ways.

Since being rational means following rational norms — goremand

That's your strange definition, not mine. So the circularity seems to be coming from your own definitions.

Maybe I overinterpreted what you wrote — goremand

Then please re-write the argument I provided, correcting any mistakes I made. I want to see your actual argument.

If I had to put it into a sentence, it would be: We are so used to working with the nailed-down logical uses of natural language that we forget that those uses are agreements, often hard won. I think "assert" and "judge" are cases in point, but clearly I need to make a stronger argument for why they seem problematic to me. So I'll work on that. — J

I mean that we have to agree on what an assertion is, what counts as an assertion — J

The difficulty is that you seem to be the only person in the room who doesn't understand what an assertion is. Not all speech acts are assertions, but all assertions have to do with judgment and truth-claims.

P1: "X is quite likely to be true"

Is P1 an assertion? In natural language it need not be. In a natural context it could mean nothing more than, "Go your way. I am not going to contest your point." But if you know what you mean when you utter those words, and you also know what an assertion is, then you will know whether P1 is an assertion when you utter it.

My point right here will be that, once again, clarity is a means, not the goal. — Srap Tasmaner

Right. Means and ends are being confused. :up:

When we clean a dirty window we do it to make the window clear, but this is not an end in itself. The end/goal is to see. To allow light to pass through. The blind man has no need to clean his windows.

Even aesthetically, clarity is not an end in itself (except when it is used as a synonym for beauty). What is beautiful has a certain clarity, but it is beauty that is desired, not clarity per se. If there were nothing beautiful or interesting to look at, one also would have no need to clean their windows.

So there's all sorts of clarity we might want. First, we'll want to be able to tell when we have an answer, and it should be clear. Second, we want to know how to proceed toward finding an answer. For some sorts of problems, this is clear ― maybe you just need to do a calculation. But for a whole lot of questions, and I think the ones Williamson is valorizing here, we absolutely are not clear how to proceed, what procedure will, if carried out, produce an answer. — Srap Tasmaner

The uses of "clarity" in this paragraph seem highly metaphorical. I'm not really sure what the concept is supposed to mean in a substantive sense. For instance, we could say <If we are able to tell when we have an answer, then we have clarity; we want the former and therefore we want the latter; therefore we want clarity (it is good - it is an aim)>. That seems like a rather vacuous sense of "clarity," namely being able to tell when we have an answer.

Even so, let's run with it. The irony here is that @Banno is being consistently unclear each time he answers the question, "What are you seeking?," with the answer, "Clarity and nothing else." Does Banno know what he means by "clarity"? Is he able to tell when he has it and when he doesn't?

Great. They have enough clarity to get on with what exactly? Making other parts of mathematics clear? And in the meantime of what? Of making set theory even clearer? — Srap Tasmaner

:grin:

The reason "dissection based on clarity" is problematic is because it is aimless or purposeless, insofar as it confuses a means for an end. Such a person is like someone who goes around tightening things with a wrench and screwdriver. He wanders around randomly finding screws, nuts, and bolts to tighten. "What are you doing?" "Tightening." "Why?" "Because tight is good."

Who are we to argue with him? After all, isn't it true that, "Tight is good?" The only difficulty is that it is ridiculous to set an end of tightening simpliciter. The question, "Why?," cannot be reasonably answered, "Because it is good in itself. It is an end in itself." Or in this case, it cannot be reasonably answered, "Because it is an end of [mathematics] in itself. It is not a means qua [mathematics]."

The claim would be that philosophy does not aim at knowledge, as science does, but at understanding. — Srap Tasmaner

where the verb is "understand" not "know". — Srap Tasmaner

What's the difference?

(Aquinas will contrast wisdom with knowledge, but it's not a hard-and-fast division.)

Adding teleology here is making presumptions of Aristotelian metaphysics. It's already loaded. — Banno

The aim of philosophy... — Srap Tasmaner

Teleology.

We need not assume that meaningful discourse requires a teleological structure. - that we must have an aim. — Banno

So if we use the word "aim" then we're Aristotelians? How utterly strange. You even contradict yourself:

A goal, at least. — Banno

If "clarity" is a goal, then it is an aim. You must be an Aristotelian! Arg! :wink:

As I said:

At this point I think Aquinas is helpful insofar as he moves us out of the metaphorical space. It is much harder to respond to Aquinas with, "But what about the guy who wants to aim at something he is not aiming at?" Or, "But what about the guy who wants to do philosophy purposelessly?" — Leontiskos

Apparently @Banno's answer is, "I want to do philosophy purposelessly. I want to do philosophy aimlessly!" This is deeply confused.

So if I merely assert the sentence, without you and I stipulating what an assertion is going to mean, are you able to come to a conclusion about whether I think it's true, or only quite likely to be true? — J

In a general sense if you φ and we don't know what it is to φ then we don't know what you have done. In fact if someone doesn't know what it means to φ then it makes no sense for them to claim that someone has φ'ed.

Assuming I am more on-point in this assessment than before — Bob Ross

I think it's definitely good progress. :up:
The general point is that a substance and an aggregate are two different kinds of things, and therefore it is hard to apply any single word to both of them. The mechanical zebra mimics the zebra, but for Aristotle at bottom they are two very different kinds of things.

For the problem of interaction, I would say that Aquinas doesn't have the hard problem (since the soul and body are one substance); however, it does have the soft problem of how something immaterial can interact with something material. I'm not sure if he ever addresses that problem or not. — Bob Ross

Yes, I don't think the question occurred to him, much like the question of how two corporeal substances interact perhaps never occurred to Descartes. Aquinas is very explicitly beginning with and discovering the whole before he discovers its parts. If he thought he discovered the parts before he discovered the whole, then he might have asked that question.

However, for Aquinas, since the rational soul is immaterial and subsistent and thusly has to be infused by God instead of being educed from a natural process, there is a further soft problem of how organisms which clearly did not have a rational soul could have evolved to have a rational soul (such as is the case with our transitionary species'). What do you think about that? — Bob Ross

Yes, I see that as another mysterious and common problem. It is the question of whether Evolution is sufficient to account for rationality.

Here is something I have noticed in my time on TPF. You referenced the Meno and the question of whether knowledge is possible. It is, and in every kind of argument or explanation one travels towards knowledge. During the travel there is a stride length, and this stride length maps to the inferential distance one is willing to travel in any given step. Given that every inference requires a kind of “jump,” let’s call people with larger stride lengths “leapers,” and people with smaller stride lengths “hoppers.” Depending on the kind and quality of knowledge desired, one will require a different stride length.

Continentals tend to be leapers and Analytics tend to be hoppers. This doesn’t mean that Continentals are bad logicians. The well-known Continentals are not bad logicians; they simply have a larger stride length (although the students of Continentals do tend to diminish as logicians much more quickly than the students of Analytics). Yet the “hoppiness” of Analytics is more reactionary than principled. Instead of choosing a small stride length based on the object of knowledge in question, they choose a small stride length because they see errors in the work of the leapers. At the limit the Analytic becomes so hoppy that they decide that there are only zero-distance hops (tautologies) and impermissible hops (non sequitur), and they despair of the possibility of knowledge, as represented in the Meno. There is a fair bit of this on TPF, where the “dissectors” have no restraint and can therefore destroy any and every argument for so-called “knowledge.”

Aristotle is interesting because he studied so many different forms of knowledge, and he also studied the logic which allows one to arrive at the different forms. This means that Aristotle was deeply conscious of how to adjust his stride length for different situations. He knew that if one was going to build a house then they would have to take the lumber supplier’s word that the planks are eight feet long. The dissecting Analytic would come along with their micrometer and criticize the house-builder because his planks weren’t exactly eight feet, but Aristotle consistently criticized that move, where one measures or criticizes without having any clear sense of the purpose of the measurement. Taken by itself, stride length is infinitely divisible, much like the infinite divisibility of a line. The Analytic brags that he has a small stride length, but in fact stride length is always relative, and the proper stride length depends primarily on the object of knowledge or artifice, as well as on the constraints of the knower.

Seen from this vantage point, Analytic philosophy is a very specialized discipline. It is the group of hammer-wielders who only ever see nails, except instead of a hammer they have a micrometer (or else a scalpel). So I want to return to this:

I don't think any other discipline has asked for philosophy's help or wants it.

That's not to say that some kind of interdisciplinary business isn't possible and sometimes interesting, but no astronomer (or even social psychologist) has ever said, "Whoa, have you seen the new data? We're gonna need a philosopher." — Srap Tasmaner

No house-builder ever says, “We’re going to need an Analytic Philosopher with his micrometer.” But that doesn’t mean that no one ever wants philosophers. They do, it’s just that they don’t tend to import or consult external philosophers. Everyone is constantly doing philosophy, just like my nephew with his spider.

I guess the point here is that the smaller stride length of Analytic Philosophy is not a qualitative difference. If there is a qualitative difference to be had, it might have to do with the strong focus on methodology, but even then the methodology is not restricted to Analytic Philosophy. The Analytic Philosopher tends to see himself as the professional logician. I would say he’s not, at least if by “logic” we mean the art of reasoning well in order to attain new knowledge. He is the professional hopper and perhaps the professional dissector, but most people need logic with a larger stride length. They need something fit to a larger scale than the micrometer can achieve, and they need something that is synthetic and constructive rather than something that is only analytic or only capable of dissection. They need a logic like Aristotle’s, which was developed with a very large multitude of disciplines and knowledge-objects in mind. They need something that was built for real life and not for mere abstraction and meta-logic. I want to say that Aristotelianism and Scholasticism provide the rigor that Analytic Philosophy is looking for, but in a more balanced and historically adaptable way. Perhaps this is why we have seen so much recent growth in these areas.

And this is seen as a good thing to do by the analytic community because you ward off this sort of thing: "Your analysis is correct (or incorrect) because you share (or don't share) my values." That's a hellscape analytic philosophers want no part of, but it is embraced elsewhere, with suitable obfuscations. — Srap Tasmaner

In the last thread @J kept appealing to the community of "serious people" or "professional philosophers," and I kept pointing out that if one restricts the domain of participants to those who agree with you, then of course no one will disagree with you.

I think something similar is happening here. It's not that Analytic Philosophy is not value-laden. It's that the things we (arbitrarily?) tend to label "values" are not things that Analytic Philosophers disagree about. If you want to play the game of Analytic Philosophy before you begin you have to sign a contract that says things like, "I promise to value logical consequence." Then when you neglect to value logical consequence, rather than arguing over values the Analytic Philosopher will just point you back to your contract (or else claim that you have ceased to do Analytic Philosophy). But it looks like the violation is at one and the same time a contractual violation and a value-based violation.

Or is this mistaken, and do you think that the standards and norms of Analytic Philosophy are not correctly called values?


(I of course agree that it is mistaken to make "aesthetic" mean anything at all. An engineer has values, and they are not primarily aesthetic. Part of the problem here is that "value" is a rather ambiguous word. Values are taken to be debatable, and Analytic Philosophers take themselves to be doing non-debatable things. This is all why I prefer a clearer term, such as "end.")

I take this to mean you stipulatively define norm-following as necessarily rational. — goremand

I think norm-following requires rationality. No stipulation required.

Leaving aside how I think it's pretty common to apply norms to animals, machines etc. that clearly aren't rational, — goremand

How so? How is it at all common? We could say, "The blender is abiding by the norm of blending up fruit. He hasn't deviated from that norm yet." But that is metaphorical language. We don't actually think the blender is abiding by norms.

given that rationality is a set of norms, haven't you now made being rational a necessary condition for becoming rational? — goremand

You would have to spell that argument out in more detail.

To me, if you transition from from defying rational norms into following them, you've transitioned from irrationality to rationality. But that transition obviously can't be compelled by the rational norms themselves, so under your definition it appears simply impossible, because you don't allow that one can be rational for irrational reasons. — goremand

First, do plants, animals, and machines "defy (rational) norms"? I don't see that they do, or can.

Let me try to sketch your argument. I'm still not quite sure what you are saying.

1. If someone transitions from defying rational norms to following them, then they have transitioned from irrationality to rationality.
2. Some people do transition from defying rational norms to following them.
3. Therefore, some people do transition from irrationality to rationality.
4. But that transition can't be compelled by the rational norms themselves.
5. Leontiskos does not allow that one can be rational for irrational reasons.
6. Therefore, under Leontiskos' definition the transition would be impossible.

(4) and (5) are especially opaque to me.

I'm sorry if our discussion is a weed in this beautiful garden of a thread. — goremand

:wink:

The algorithm is hardcoded, but it only dictates the structure for the being to will towards its ends. — Bob Ross

I don't think that is true. I think the algorithm dictates, deterministically, the movements of the mechanical zebra. That's how computer code works.

Notwithstanding persons, organisms blindly follow how its soul is programmed to will towards in the sense you described: the soul moves towards the ends it is supposed to have relative to its nature. There's nothing absolutely free about it: wouldn't you agree? — Bob Ross

A plant has no will, that's true. But your claim that a plant is "programmed" in the same sense that a mechanical zebra is "programmed" is not at all evident.

Again, my point is that a human artifact such as a mechanical zebra is merely following the instructions provided by its human creator. It has no substantial form. A plant is not merely following the instructions provided by its human creator. It has an intrinsic essence apart from human will.

and so it does also abide by whatever natural algorithm is in place — Bob Ross

This is another metaphor. A living, breathing zebra does not abide by an algorithm. To say that the zebra and the mechanical zebra are both "algorithmic" is an equivocation.

This is always the crux of the matter with mechanistic philosophy, by the way. Mechanistic philosophers think that natural phenomena are identical to machines. They think there is no qualitative difference between a zebra and a mechanical zebra. That seems to be the working thesis of much of your thought, especially when it comes to the way you give parts priority over wholes. With machines parts really do have priority over wholes, and so if nature is just a machine then reverse mereological essentialism is false.

This doesn't mean the zebra cannot will against its nature whatsoever: it might will against avoiding an injury to preserve itself from a predator. — Bob Ross

Would you say that a reckless and injurious flight from a predator is contrary to a zebra's nature? I wouldn't.

A zebra does have a nature, and a mechanical zebra does have an algorithm. The question is whether the nature and the algorithm are the same thing, and whether we can swap the two terms without loss of truth.

I agree with you, but I do see the form of an alive being as analogous to how a form is baked into the chair. — Bob Ross

A substantial form is analogous to an artificial form in one sense, just as a car tire is analogous to an airplane wing in one sense. What remains to be seen is whether that sparse analogy is sufficient for the argument at hand.

Imagine you made a robot that was not hardcoded to move in certain ways, but was comprised of an elastic algorithm — Bob Ross

Is the elastic algorithm hardcoded or not? Given that it is, the robot is hardcoded to move in certain ways. It's just that the "ways" are a bit more subtle than someone doing a robot dance.

This isn't like a hardcoded machine program. It is programmed to be self-unified towards its ends and to will towards it. — Bob Ross

It has no intrinsic ends. It has no will. It is just blindly following the hardcoded algorithm. There is no extra-algorithmic aspect to its principles of motion.

All language games involve ends, but of course which ends aren't always obvious. I've had many a person tell me that "good arguments" are just those arguments that lead to people seeing things your way, or which convince them to do what you want. I find it curious when people who embrace such a view fault arguments for being merely rhetorical or aesthetic. Presumably, arguments can be as vacuous or invalid as we please, so long as they work, so long as they are "useful" (to us). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm increasingly unconvinced that @Banno is willing to provide his ends at all. He doesn't seem to even know what he is doing when he does "philosophy." Even his "dissection" requires ends and standards if it is to be at all disciplined.

So before we address the so-called "monism" question, we have to know whether there must be any ends at all; whether there must be any discipline at all.

This is related to the idea of "standards" from the previous thread. Note that we do not even have to talk about overarching standards. Any standard will do. As long as we are adhering to some standard(s), then we are being disciplined in some way, shape, or form. As Williamson notes, we don't even need to agree with one another on the importance of a standard, so long as we can see that it is being adhered to. Mere adherence achieves the minimum criterion, even if it is adherence to an absurd standard. (Incidentally, this was a huge part of the problem of the last thread, namely the opposing of so-called "monism" with the implicit position which says that standardless philosophy is legitimate.) — Leontiskos

- You've been asking a lot of good questions, even if no answers are forthcoming. :up:

There honestly isn't much point in "taking his side" here or not because the paper itself, as he acknowledges, is pretty handwavy. As philosophy, it's pretty weak tea, but it might be strong medicine for philosophers. — Srap Tasmaner

Very true. Still, we can find things to agree or disagree with, and @J has disagreed with a few things:

I know what you mean, and the mathematical analogy makes clear what "actual philosophical work" might look like, on this view. But I think -- and don't you? -- that this view is wrong. Two reasons... — J

Yes, and this comes too close for my liking to "flaw-based" resolution of a difficult issue. The anti-realists "refuse to get in the game" -- hmmm. — J

I think that even if we can attribute to Williamson the simple claim that <Philosophy must be disciplined by something>, then @J (and also @Banno to a lesser extent) will disagree.

@J's disagreement could be phrased in different ways, but this would be one of them:

1. If we place a necessary condition on philosophy, then we run the risk of disqualifying some would-be philosophers.
2. We should not run the risk of disqualifying some would-be philosophers.
3. Therefore, we should not place any necessary conditions on philosophy.

This theme underlies @J's thinking from his very first threads, and perhaps you can see how from that form of exclusion or disqualification we get the label, "authoritarian." It's the very same issue, and it comes up every time someone proscribes a philosophical move or approach. It is the position which says that philosophical proscription is per se inadmissible, and the natural effect is 's "Anything goes."

But wouldn't a robot that could mechanistically grow, heal, etc. be self-unified towards certain ends? — Bob Ross

If I write a computer program that starts with an integer and adds 1 every second, is it self-unified towards the end of larger sums? The crucial point here is that the program or the robot is not self-moving, given that it is a human artifact which is being moved by the instructions given to it by a human.

What I wondering is how would a material soul ever be begotton by another material soul if the soul is a unity which is not merely received by the matter in the same way a chair's matter receives unity from the form bestowed onto it by its creator. — Bob Ross

Put differently, you seem to be saying, <If the soul is a unity which is not merely received by the matter in the same way a chair's matter receives unity from the form bestowed onto it by its creator, then it is hard to see how a (non-human) substance could ever beget another substance>.

I don't follow. I don't understand why that would make the possibility of begetting "hard to see."

I was envisioning that all Aristotle meant by a material soul (viz., non-subsisting soul), like a vegetative soul, is that it is analogous to how a chair receives its form but that it is a form when received that self-actualizes. — Bob Ross

I suspect not. Aristotle would see quite a difference between an artifact and a substance. The generation of a new substance is a rather mysterious thing, I grant you that. But I think it is mysterious on any account, not just Aristotle's.

I was thinking the material soul is baked into the matter like the form of a chair is baked into a chair; but it sounds like in your view that is not true. The material soul is not merely baked into the matter as a way materials are arranged to self-actualize: instead, there's a quasi-subsistent unity that directs its self-actualization. — Bob Ross

Yes, I think that's right. First I don't want to deny that a plant is subsistent. It is. Substances are precisely subsistent, and a plant is a substance. By "subsistent" you apparently mean, "subsistent apart from matter," and it is true that this does not occur with plants. Second, I'm not sure I would want to call a plant's substantial form "material." Forms in general are not material. Presumably this again comes back to the fact that the plant's form does not subsist apart from matter.

The more general difficulty here is the question of whether and how the human soul exists apart from the body. For Aquinas this gets rather complicated. He would basically say that the human soul can exist apart from the body, but only unnaturally and imperfectly. The eventual resurrection of the body remedies the imperfect situation for him.

To clarify, are you saying that a robot that has an inward self-actualizing principle towards specific ends (which provide its whatness) does not thereby have a soul? — Bob Ross

I would say that a robot has no inward self-actualizing principle towards specific ends. It has no substantial form because it is not a substance. It is a mere aggregate of parts and instructions.

Do you believe, then, that the soul, even in material souls (viz., non-subsistent souls), is a unity that directs the organism (and this unity is not merely how the parts behave in unison together)? — Bob Ross

Yes, I think so.

If so, then how does, e.g., an oak tree produce another oak tree with an oak tree soul? I was thinking it would just provide it with the intial spark to get it's parts self-actualizing towards the natural ends of an oak tree. — Bob Ross

Let's call the act of procreating "begetting." I don't know precisely how an oak tree begets an acorn. Does it bear on your point about whether the soul is a unity?

I think you are going to deny this on grounds that I am implicitly thinking in terms of reverse mereology again; — Bob Ross

Right.

but if an unsubstantial form, like that of a chair, is reducible to way the material and organization of parts suit the natural end(s) of 'chairness', then a substantial form is the same but the addition that it is organized to self-organize: this doesn't seem to entail some sort of subsistent unity that directs the self-movement. Let me know what you think. — Bob Ross

Without trying to parse your argument too closely, what I would say is that "chairness" is not a natural end. It is an artificial end, imposed by humans. On the other hand, the acorn's end of oakness is a natural end, given that acorns are ordered to oak trees whether or not humans decide that they are.

Regarding premise 5:

5. A material thing and an immaterial thing cannot interact. — Bob Ross

Feser's point seems appropriate:

in fact Descartes’ account of matter as pure extension makes causal interaction even between corporeal substances themselves problematic — Edward Feser, Mind-body interaction: What’s the problem?

On Cartesian thinking it is no more obvious how corporeal things could interact with one another, than how corporeal things could interact with incorporeal things.

I think Williamson here says, this is how it's done. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that is a good example.

I'm going to let the thread simmer a bit before adding anything. You and I seem to agree with large portions of Williamson. I want to give those who disagree a chance to speak, given that many of us have been trying to argue this point for months and the naysayers always get quiet whenever the subject is broached directly.

That's right. In the previous thread I even focused a bit on the concept of goodness. "Why did you act in that way?" "Because it was a good way to act." Or, "Why did you act in that way rather than the other way?" "Because it was the better way to act." In philosophy one needs to actually explain why some course is good or better. The chess analogy would be, "It was the best move available," but then in order to substantiate that claim one would have to canvass the other possibilities, along with their inferiority.

So I definitely agree that "theories that produce something concrete" is a good metaphor. But @J is going to say, "But what about the guy who thinks it is better to produce something that isn't concrete? What about the possibility that someone might not prefer concreteness?" At this point I think Aquinas is helpful insofar as he moves us out of the metaphorical space. It is much harder to respond to Aquinas with, "But what about the guy who wants to aim at something he is not aiming at?" Or, "But what about the guy who wants to do philosophy purposelessly?"

And to be fair, "actual variations leading to a specific advantage," is not metaphorical, so we already have a non-metaphorical standard for the chess game.

- I agree. My only concern with Williamson is that he at times seems to conflate standards. He seems to say that any discipline is better than no discipline, and then moves on too quickly into a sort of discipline-hierarchy. I don't have any problem with that distinction, so long as we do not forget that a weak discipline is still better than nothing. I think it is important to single out that lowest common denominator standard of having some discipline, however insubstantial.

My memory is that that's how this whole things started: Dummett pointed out that some philosophers seemed to be playing a game that they did not realize was rigged against them, so they tended to flounder.

The solution he proposed was to recognize when you were inclined to deny that a specific type of statement within a given domain was bivalent. — Srap Tasmaner

Interesting.

(Dummett also had no truck with more than two truth values, so for him (and I believe Williamson agrees with him about this) intuitionistic logic becomes especially attractive: the sentential operator "not" is understood as "it has not been demonstrated that ..." Hence the double negative is merely "it has not been demonstrated that it has not been demonstrated that ..." ) — Srap Tasmaner

That sounds fine to me, though I don't see "undemonstrated" or "unjustified" as a truth value. I was trying to explain something similar <recently>, to little avail.

And you do all this so that the choice between theories or approaches is not "merely aesthetic". (@Moliere) — Srap Tasmaner

Right, and "disciplined" seems like a plausible way to do that. Or else @Count Timothy von Icarus' "determinate," specifically in the teleological sense.

This is why I think Aquinas' approach provides the universal condition:

Every agent, of necessity, acts for an end... — Aquinas, ST I-II.1.2.c - Whether it is proper to the rational nature to act for an end?

If a philosopher who is thinking about something is acting for a (determinate) end, then the discipline is already implicitly to hand. Those who claim not to be acting for any end when doing philosophy are just confused or lacking in self-knowledge. Williamson's "discipline" is one kind of end, and it is a rather foundational kind of end. So instead of asking, "What disciplines your thoughts/claims?," Aquinas might ask, "What end(s) are you acting for when you philosophize in this way?"

---

This also solves things such as this:

My first reaction is that of course there need be nothing in common between the various language games. My second, that not all language games involve justification. — Banno

All "language games" involve acting for ends.

Good posts all around. I sympathize with Williamson. :up:

To switch to another sorts metaphor, anti-realists won't step up to the plate, but hang around off to the side claiming they could easily get a hit if they wanted to. — Srap Tasmaner

Another way to phrase this would be to say that anti-realists claim to be playing a different game—they claim to be at a kind of intentional cross-purpose with the realist—but they won't lay out the game that they are playing. If they laid out their own game, then perhaps the realist could play that game for a stretch, or else compare the two different games. If they showed that they are engaged in a disciplined activity, then they would fulfill Williamson's most fundamental criterion.

The most common usage of "subjective/ objective" means "matter of opinion/ not matter of opinion" and that was, of course the usage I had in mind. So whether one feels cold or not is not a matter of opinion, and hence there is an objective fact of the matter. — Janus

So if you say "I feel cold" is not a subjective statement, then what is an example of a subjective statement?

In any case, I don't think the common usage of "subjective" means "matter of opinion." If someone gives their opinion they are not necessarily making a subjective claim. "In my opinion the U.S. should stay out of foreign wars," would not be seen as a subjective statement, for example. Usually, "In my opinion...," just means, "I assert this to be true, but with diminished certitude..."

It makes no sense to make this about "rational norm-following" — goremand

I simply do not think that non-rational norm following is coherent. So to talk about norm-following is to talk about rational norm-following. Because they are not rational, the ants are not following a norm. End of story.

I don't really see why it is much different. I believe human beings are rational by "mere instinct". — goremand

Even if humans are naturally rational, it remains true that a rational decision is different from an instinctual reaction.

Now if you also hand the guy a blanket, we really don't know what you're asserting. Is it more like the general version I was suggesting?: "You look cold to me." Or might you be claiming something stronger, like sime?: "You are cold" or "I judge you to be cold." Or some third thing, perhaps, "If I were you, I'd be feeling cold"? — J

You are doing the exact same thing you did here:

What happens if we change the designation to "The man over there who I think has champagne in his glass is happy"? That's where Kripke himself winds up: "The speaker intended to refer . . . to the man he thought had the champagne in his glass." Has the speaker still made a mistake in reference? I think we have to say no. — J

The answer is the . Switching from "You are cold" to "You look cold" makes no difference, especially given that the second-person claim was already sign-based from the first (and therefore fallible). Every such second-person claim will be fallible, namely an inference from a fallible sign. Lowering one's certitude does not produce a qualitatively different judgment.

I don't think that the question of determinism vs indeterminism is relevant to teleology. — SophistiCat

I agree. :up:

Right. Can they both frame assertions? I would say so. Then is "the proposition we're asserting," in the blanket example, really the same? How would we state that proposition? — J

compared two people—call them Jane and Sue—who both hand Joe a blanket, judging that Joe is cold. Jane and Sue are involved in the same judgment or assertion. You are asking about the difference between Jane's (or Sue's) judgment and Joe's judgment. Those judgments are different, insofar as the Jane's judgment is made indirectly via a sign (such as, for example, Joe's shivering), whereas Joe's judgment that he is cold is made directly.

She feels cold, you feel hot. Not merely subjective, but a fact of the matter about how different bodies feel. — Janus

It merely depends on what we mean by "subjective." If we mean by it "subject-relative," then such things are subjective. Note too that someone could distinguish between, "I am cold," and, "I feel cold." For example, someone may have a neurological disorder that makes them feel cold when their body is not cold, and if they are aware of the disorder they could easily say, "I feel cold but I am not cold." Note too that in this case it is simply false to deny the possibility of, "You feel cold but you are not cold."

Judgements about other minds should always be made relative to the person who is judging. — sime

I would say it depends, given that "judgments about other minds" is an ambiguous phrase. Subject-relative claims should be made relative to the subject. Non-subject-relative claims should not.

So if we take "Joe is hot" to mean "Joe feels hot," then our judgment must take into account what Joe feels. But if we take "Joe is hot" to mean "Joe's body is hot," then we would use some kind of thermometer to measure Joe's body temperature, and we would not need to take into account what Joe feels. Usually the two senses are interrelated, and therefore we don't get precise about which one we mean.

True, but my point is that the mind is not a form and it is immaterial and it is infused with the body that is material; so the question arises: "how does the mind interact with the body in this sort of fusion?". It may not be a hard problem like descartes', but it is still a problem. — Bob Ross

For Aquinas the intellect is a power of the soul. So it's not a separate "thing" from the body. It's not like we have three separate "things": a body, a soul, an intellect (and also a will), and then we have to figure out how to weld them all together.

(This is another instance where you are running up against reverse mereological essentialism, and want to place parts before wholes.)

Yes, I meant it in the way the OP problematized the issue: "no particular outcome is necessary." A species may experience selective pressures, but its successful adaptation is not guaranteed - it may just die out instead. Some individuals carry favorable variations, others don't, and even those who do will not necessarily leave more and more successful progeny. — SophistiCat

Fair enough. I would say that this is how all teleology works, namely that it is a final cause and not an efficient cause. The end-directedness produces no guarantee that the end will be reached.

In response to this, Darwin wrote to Gray: "What you say about Teleology pleases me especially and I do not think anyone else has ever noted that. I have always said you were the man to hit the nail on the head." (June 5, 1874) — Pierre-Normand

Very interesting.

- :up:

Evolution by natural selection is a good example of a teleological explanation that is indeterministic at every scale. It is teleological because evolution is directed towards a future state of greater fitness. However, success is not guaranteed, and many do fail, at species, population, and individual level. — SophistiCat

I added a few things to that post, but what do you mean when you say that it is "indeterministic at every scale"? Is it just that it is defeasible or fallible?

Put simply: Teleological explanation requires a fixed end or final cause. — tom111

To simplify what others have said: final causes are not ordered ad unum (to just one thing). For example, a cow will eat vegetation, but it is not "deterministically" ordered to eat just one kind of vegetation, and therefore it is probabilistically ordered towards many different kinds of vegetation.

Natural selection isn't a mechanism that renders teleological explanations otiose. — Pierre-Normand

I would go further and say that natural selection is itself a teleological explanation. It is a teleological explanation that covers all species instead of just one (i.e. it is a generic final cause). I would even venture that if an ur-cause like natural selection were not teleological, then the subordinate causal accounts could not be teleological, and perhaps this is the principle that some are grabbing onto (i.e. "Natural selection is not teleological, therefore the subordinate causal accounts cannot be teleological.").

The common objection would be, "But natural selection is not consciously seeking anything." The response is, "It doesn't have to. Such a thing is not required for teleology."

-

But then the question arises:

So shake any bag of degrees of freedom and they will arrive at some equilibrium value where continued change ceases to be meaningful change. You can describe the system simply in terms of its macrostate – its pressure and temperature, for example. — apokrisis

If natural selection were reducible to non-teleological parts—such as "random mutations," for example—then how is it that "the bag shakes out" into a teleological phenomenon? If one wishes to opt for random mutations, then one simple answer would be that once the "life" or "survival" criterion is introduced, the "random" mutations actually end up "favoring" life, even if only by "accident."

More simply, a god could create species by means of random mutations + a distinction between death and life, where the death/life criterion is the sieve through which the random mutations are filtered. From the vantage point of the isolated mutations, they are random. From the vantage point of the sieve, they are not.