Nothing here should be construed as suggesting that there are no such thing as beliefs. And I'd even go along with reifying them, when we use them as explanations for actions, for example, so long as we are aware that this is what we are doing. — Banno

This would be a happy place to leave the issue, except . . . isn't there a way of posing the question "What are beliefs?" that doesn't have to involve either reification or essence-talk? Do beliefs have an ontology? Is there any sort of noun-form, or are we saying that beliefs are simply acts of believing -- about which we can say a great deal?

I think this is a good candidate for Witt's observations about the bewitchment of language and all that, and I'm open to that perspective, but I'd like to look at it more closely.

In particular, I'm still troubled by background beliefs. If I say, "I [background] believe that the earth is round," what am I claiming?

It strikes me as an error to suppose that because there is a name there must be a thing named.
— Banno

If that's what you think, then you run directly into the following metaphysical problem, known in the literature as a Debunking Argument against Ordinary Objects:

(DK1) There is no explanatory connection between how we believe the world to be divided up into objects the how the world actually is divided up into objects.
(DK2) If so, then it would be a coincidence if our object beliefs turned out to be correct.
(DK3) If it would be a coincidence if our object beliefs turned out to be correct, then we shouldn’t believe that there are trees.
(DK4) So, we shouldn’t believe that there are trees.
— Daniel Z. Korman — Arcane Sandwich

I'm still stuck on this. What does this argument, valid or not, have to do with names and the alleged things they name? Do you mean that to "divide up" the world is to assign various names?

Let q be any thought…..
— J

Nahhhh….I ain’t doin’ that. Language use is tough enough without that nonsense. Sorry. — Mww

No problem, but sometime I'd love to hear why you think it's nonsense. Sounds as radical as Rodl!

To translate the mental event thinking-p into propositional form, you must include "I think". — hypericin

Having given this some thought (ha!), I'd say it captures one of Rodl's ideas about self-consciousness provided we're very careful about what "include" means. Rodl is clear that by "include" we can't mean "have a second thought along with p". The nature of the inclusion -- or "accompanying," to use Rodl's preferred term -- is a bone of contention on this thread. Would you like to say more about how you understand "include"?

Well, what exactly is a concept? You won't find one by dissecting a brain. — Banno

So is a belief a thing, or a series of interconnected activities and ways of thinking? — Banno

The comparison to "concept" is good. Neither one can be reduced to physical items. But don't we agree that there's more to existing than being physical? (Actually, let me interrupt myself here to say that I still think, as I've argued elsewhere, that we'd be better off dropping "exist" and "existence" entirely in metaphysical discussion. But let's go along with it for now.) So my question about how deeply our "denial of thingness" goes was meant to differentiate two positions. One would say that beliefs (and concepts too, perhaps) are valid terms to refer to in propositions, that they pick out important aspects of experience, that they are capable of being understood and related to other abstracta, etc. etc, but they aren't "things" in the sense that a tiger (or a neuron) is. The other position, which I called more radical, would say that beliefs aren't even that, that if we can't be more specific about their ontology, then there's no point in invoking them at all. They don't refer, except as describing a propositional attitude.

It sounds to me as if, by using the phrase "series of interconnected activities and ways of thinking," you lean more to the first construal. That is, there's nothing wrong with talking about beliefs as long as we don't reify them. Is that about right?

An interesting comparison with the word "darkness": I doubt if anyone wants to say that "darkness" is incoherent, or doesn't refer, or betrays a misunderstanding of some sort. At the same time, just about everyone wants to say that there is "no such thing" as darkness. I'm not saying this is a parallel with "belief", which presumably isn't the absence of something else, as darkness is. It's just another example of how we can insist on the existence (that word again) of a phenomenon that can't be understood as a physical item in the world's inventory.

@Mww

This is how it strikes me as well, though Mww has certainly brought out details in the Kantian scheme that are more, well, detailed, than what Rodl provides. (And I'm looking forward to Mww's response, if they have the time, to my question about whether "thought" should be understood as mental product or propositional content in Kant.) But your comparison of the two passages allows us to take a breath, and a step back, and ask, What is our target here? What are we aiming to understand?

For myself, I am always curious to improve my understanding of Kant, and in general to understand any interesting philosophical position at the level of detail. But the larger issue has to do with consciousness and thinking -- how our thoughts connect the world (objectivity) and ourselves (self-consciousness). I want to say that Kant and Rodl are in agreement here -- details of terminology aside, they both present the same picture. “I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unite them,” says Kant of the representations given in intuition. Why does he not say "in one consciousness"? Why "self-consciousness"? I suggest this is because he would endorse Rodl's view: "Being self-conscious, thought is thought in the first person: I think." Put Kant and Rodl in an ideal room together and I have no doubt they'd argue the details for hours, but also recognize the common conception that unites them.

We can worry about the best ways to use terms like "representation", "conception," "thought", "judgment" et al. -- and these are perfectly good worries, especially if we were all as erudite as Mww in Kantian matters. I'm just trying to pull our focus toward what this entire issue opposes, namely a philosophical view that claims that objectivity is strictly a matter of what is "out there," and that there is a clear separation between what I judge and the act of judging it. It is in this context that the entire fraught issue of "I think" can most usefully be considered.

Sure is. You Aussies sleep during the day, I see. (US-centric gag.) To be continued.

Even to say I think something is to say I have a thought that refers to that something, so again, that thought stands as an object of my thinking, hence a noun. — Mww

Hmm. Let q be any thought (not necessarily a proposition). It isn't clear whether q is 1) the product of thinking, that is, an event that occurs at time T1 to a particular person, or 2) the "something" (content, to use a non-Kantian term) which is thought, and might equally well be thought by someone else.

Tell me if that makes any sense, and then I'll try to address the question of the "I think" accompanying all our thoughts.

There's a presumption that it has to be a something. After all, it has a noun; and nouns name things, so there must be a thing that "belief" names. — Banno

Similar to what I was suggesting might be Quine's position on "belief," above.

What do you think of that argument? It strikes me as an error to suppose that because there is a name there must be a thing named — Banno

This usually comes up in the context of fictions, with "thing" meaning a physical bit of reality. Thus, the name "Pegasus" doesn't name anything that actually exists in that sense, and this is important because if you're in a pinch and call for your winged horse, he's not going to come.

Do we want to transfer this name/thing-named conception to "belief"? Are we saying that "belief" might name something that can be talked about, used in meaningful sentences, etc., but doesn't actually correspond to anything in mental reality?

Or -- and this is the more radical construal -- would we be saying that there is absolutely nothing named by "belief"? no equivalent of "the horse that isn't physical but has some other reality"? This would make belief-talk much more incoherent.

Thus, I'm not sure what I think of the argument that a name implies a thing named, because I don't know how deeply the denial of thingness goes, if you follow me. What's your thought?

@Banno
Just found this: Sider has the opening chapter of Writing the Book available online. It's an even better introduction to his ideas about structure than the standalone essay.

accurately notating that you are indeed thinking-p, and reflecting on your own thought, can both be represented as "I think p" in English. — hypericin

This, and other related puzzles about the use of "think", generated a lot of back and forth in the thread.

I want to think more about your post. You say:

To translate the mental event thinking-p into propositional form, you must include "I think" — hypericin

I need to check back in Rodl to see if I think it's a good paraphrase, but leaving aside Rodl-world, it's a good test case to help us understand what job the "I think" is supposed to be doing in all this.

Semantic ascent . . . but here he is reversing the process. — Banno

That's a plausible reading of "retreat." You're suggesting that Quine doesn't mean "retreat" in the sense of "withdraw his philosophical forces in the face of a powerful opponent," but rather "retreat" as in "descend a level." I'll buy it.

"Therefore, one tends to conclude that the things believed are not the sentences themselves. What, then, are they?"
— J
They are, speaking more roughly than one should, states of affairs or ways things are in the world. — Banno

That would be my answer too. It seems reasonable, doesn't it? So why does Quine then reject that way of putting it entirely? The passage I quoted, which begins "This, like various other philosophical questions, is better deflected than met head on," is the next sentence after "What, then, are they?" (yeah, sorry we can't all look at an extended segment together). He's definitely saying that he doesn't want to give the answer you and I think is reasonable.

Maybe the clue lies in the parenthetical "like various other philosophical questions". Could he be reacting to the ontologically brusque question, What are they? We know he doesn't care to reify what doesn't need reifying, on his view, and perhaps he thinks that, once again, a philosophical question is being posed that demands a description of a metaphysical object.

The belief need not be identical to the statement about it. — Banno

Good, but then what is it?

If I have a background belief that the earth goes around the sun, and you ask me at this moment whether I believe it, I'll say yes, of course. What has happened? We agree that there wasn't some statement lurking around, unstated; a belief needn't be identical with a statement about it. Nor does it seem very likely that a proposition was there, being believed, awaiting statement. I can understand why some philosophers speak of beliefs as propensities for affirming this or that: This does rather feel like what happens. But, sadly, "propensity" is no more help than "statement" or "proposition." What's a propensity when it's at home? And to make it all that much worse, I don't want to have to settle for an answer that is psychological. I don't want to be told that a "belief" involves some gathering of neurons, that it's a mental event in that sense.

I have no solution to this, just laying out why I think the problem is so intractable.

Let me know if I have miscomprehended Sider — Banno

With respect, I think you have. Sider is saying that all the "bleen and grue" propositions are true. The bleen people aren't claiming that their world is pellow and yurple. Everything they say checks out, just as I could say true things about "tiger & thumb" if I had a mind to. So Sider wants an additional criterion for perspicuity: not just true but also "carving reality at the joints" or, very broadly, a good fit with a reality that really is out there, in terms of metaphysical structure. It's a bold claim. He won't be satisfied with anything resembling "Well, green and blue fit better because they're more useful" or "We're the sort of creature that sees properties which have duration in time." He really wants it to be baked into the structure of the world.

I would like to get a handle on the more formal aspects of Sider's account. — Banno

Yes, I'd like to hear from you about that, and this essay is pretty non-technical compared to most of the book, which is a deep dive into contemporary logic and meta-philosophy.

Thanks again for taking this discussion seriously and engaging with it fully. — Banno

But of course.

Probably not much help, I know. — Mww

Not at all, very helpful indeed. I've read the entire CPR exactly once, and that was decades ago, so I appreciate the elucidation.

So, to put it crudely, representations would be the stuff of thought via conceptions. In particular, they are those representations of the faculty of understanding, not those of the faculty of intuition, which we call phenomena rather than conceptions. Representations are unexplained, a sort of axiom of epistemology. All we know is, we have them.

I think, based on this, that I see where some of the questions via Rodl arise. Again, forgive me if a simple question prompts a long answer, but if I may: You say that "thought is an activity," something done by means of concepts. But does Kant have anything to say about what the noun "thought" refers to? I always assumed we could harmlessly substitute "conception" or "representation," but how does he in fact understand this?

Interesting. I actually think Kant may be more important to Rodl than you're saying. So I do want to understand any Kantian subtleties here. I may have asked this before, but is it possible to give a simple discrimination between "representation" and "thought," in Kantian terms, if that is indeed the issue that warrants the weight?

@Count Timothy von Icarus

Quine collaborated on a short textbook intended for phil students, called The Web of Belief. He says something at the beginning that I remember being puzzled by, and looking at it again, I still am. He gives a fair account of the argument in favor of a "belief" being different from its statement, ending with, "Therefore, one tends to conclude that the things believed are not the sentences themselves. What, then, are they?" But then he says:

This, like various other philosophical questions, is better deflected than met head on. Instead of worrying about the simple verb "believes" as relating men to some manner of believed things, we can retreat to the word-pair "believes true" as relating men directly to sentences. We can retreat to this without claiming that believed things are sentences; we can simply waive that claim, and the philosophical question behind it. After all, our factual interest in what some speaker of English believes is fully satisfied by finding out what sentences he believes to be true. — Quine & Ullian, 5

Retreat? Deflect? And what does he mean by "waive that claim"? To waive a claim to something usually means, to give up one's right to it -- but that can't be his meaning here. Alternatively, to waive a rule means to declare the rule inapplicable in a given case Is this closer to Quine's meaning? -- the claim about "believed things are sentences" is inapplicable in this case? That doesn't sound right either. To me, it reads like he's saying, "We're just going to declare that issue out of bounds, and talk about 'believing true' instead." Very peremptory, without a justification. Or should we say that the justification is the final sentence about "our factual interest"? But the question about the ontology of a belief never was about any given fact about what is believed.

Maybe someone else can make sense of the whole passage.

That goes for background and unconscious beliefs, too. Unstated is not unstatable. — Banno

But the problem is that we're now invoking an unstated something that is supposed to be identical to a statement. Or should I say, it would be a statement if it were stated? Maybe you can say more about how this works. I assume you're not saying that the belief only becomes a belief when it is stated.

the person who believes this [that "tiger" is no more perspicuous about the world than "tiger + my left thumb"] ... is making a mistake.
— J

Well, yes, interesting. So what is the mistake here? Not grasping the essence, if grasping the essence is just using the word; not intending, since one can as much intend tiger-and-thumb as tiger.

Maybe have another look at the rejection of atomism in PI, around §48. How far can the argument there be taken? — Banno

Yes, Witt's question is very similar. He asks, concerning the color-figure, "Does it matter which we say [concerning number and type of elements] so long as we avoid misunderstandings in any particular case?"

Probably the best thing to do here is abandon my thumb and let Sider speak for himself. If you're willing, go here and read pp. 16-20. This is introductory material to Writing the Book of the World, and Sider is asserting his views, not arguing much for them. But it gives a good sense of what the "mistake" would consist of, and why it might be important to hold out for privileged structure.

Which is what I meant by:
Anyway….not that big a deal.
— Mww — Mww

And I by

The whole issue is putting an enormous amount of weight on a very minor difference of wording — J

But I appreciate your take on it.

I liked that ↪J equated statements and beliefs. We'll make a Davidsonian out of them yet. — Banno

:smile: No, at best a small-d davidsonian. There are problems with background beliefs and even unconscious beliefs. "I believe that p" is only one way in which our beliefs surface. Can they surface non-linguistically? A tricky question, off topic here.

One solution is that they [statements about how propositions connect with the world] will involve some sort of stipulation; that this counts as an "a".

That's the point of ↪frank' example, chess. Yes, a meaning may be stipulated, perhaps explicitly, sometimes more by acceptance or convention. — Banno

So the interesting question, if we wanted to pursue it, is whether there are grounds for a given stipulation that are justified by the world itself, as opposed to what we want to do with the terms we stipulate. "Justified" may not be quite the right word, but I'm trying to keep it as neutral as possible. Typical annoying example: Do we have any reason besides linguistic pragmatism to say that "tiger" corresponds to a metaphysically noteworthy feature of the world, whereas "tiger + my left thumb" does not? I absolutely believe that "tiger + thumb" can be an item in good existential standing, should a use for this mereological monstrosity ever occur and get quantified. But there's something desperately wrong, it seems to me, about saying that the only reason this item is rarely mentioned (and will never be again, if I have anything to do with it!) is that we don't have a use for it. We want to say -- I do, at any rate -- that (paraphrasing Sider) the person who believes this item is as perspicuous about the world as "tiger" is, is making a mistake.

A big subject, no need to continue here unless it helps with Quine and reference.

There's no denying that the two learnings -- of tigers, and of "tiger" -- can go hand in hand. I'm just holding out for there being a difference.
— J
Sure. Not in contention, for me. — Banno

So that means we ought to agree that studying the tiger's paw can tell us more about tigers, whereas studying the word "tiger" likely will not. There's a "connection with the world" that is presupposed by any language-based approach to philosophy. Gadamer has some good things to say about this if I can find it ... will look tomorrow

To say that Kant says something that one knows he does not say is lying, and this is what Rodl does. He demonstrates that in the endnote. — Leontiskos

So the idea is supposed to be that Rodl lies in the text, and then quotes the source in the endnote that demonstrates it was a lie? Please. It doesn't pass the laugh test. Possibly Rodl is wrong in his interpretation of Kant, though I don't think he is; see Wayfarer's explanation.

The whole issue is putting an enormous amount of weight on a very minor difference of wording: "the I think must be able to accompany all my representations" versus "the I think accompanies all my thoughts". Should we hold out for the possibility that, in some cases, we have a representation which the I think, though able to accompany this representation, does not so accompany? Is this what Kant has in mind when uses the term "able to accompany"? -- able but not willing, so to speak? Surely not. He's trying to make it plain that, since the I think does in fact accompany all our representations, it has to be the sort of thing which is able to do so.

Or is it a distinction between thoughts and representations? I'm open to hearing what this distinction would be, and the difference it would make, in this context.

You've said many interesting things here, but would it be OK to utilize them to address the questions directly? I'm still not clear how you would answer either one. They're not trick questions, there's no "gotcha." I'm trying to explore how our ordinary practices with things in the world, and our words about them, might get transferred over into more philosophical talk. Just taking it step by step.

Maybe it will help if I offer my own answers. No, I can't imagine a case where further knowledge about what a tiger is -- even knowledge about its essence, if any -- would change what we mean when we use the word "tiger." And no, Pluto is no longer a planet, because the scientific community has changed the reference of that term, and provided good reasons for doing so. We should ask, What is the difference between the tiger case and the Pluto case?

For my part, I don't see how something might count as a belief if it could not be expressed as a proposition. If it cannot be expressed as "I believe that...", followed by some proposition, then it might be a sensation, emotion, impression or some such, but not a belief. — Banno

Yes. But that proposition, as we know, can stand in a certain relation to the world, to what is the case. At some point the web has got to include statements -- beliefs -- about how propositions connect with that world. This is where I'm suggesting that there's more to the story than inter-linguistic connections.

But we might also ask a Ranger, in order to learn that "tiger" is used in discussing that paw, or that smell. We would thereby be broadening both our understanding of tigers, and of the use of "tiger". — Banno

There's no denying that the two learnings -- of tigers, and of "tiger" -- can go hand in hand. I'm just holding out for there being a difference. When I say, "We have to study the animal himself," I mean that smell-knowledge or paw-knowledge can't be derived from linguistic knowledge. Once we acquire these tiger-necessary bits of knowledge, we can of course go on to express them in words, usually,

So would it be fair to say that, in the example of the tiger, we must refer to the tiger itself? And a disagreement about the tiger's "essentiality" (or definition, if you prefer) would be investigated by saying, in effect, "Let's return to the tiger. Let's examine him more closely in the relevant aspects so we can learn which of us is right"? — J

I didn't see the question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's understandable. This thread is like Grand Central Station! (US reference to a very populated place with people coming and going.)

If one wants to consider what makes a tiger a tiger, an organic whole, then one looks at tigers, of course, but also what makes all organic wholes organic wholes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This may be so, but my question was meant to focus us on a simple example of how we go about deciding things about the objective world around us. Sure, we need a number of concepts in play to even pose the question, "What is a tiger?" -- I think that's your point? But armed with those concepts, and discovering a disagreement, the two scientists would naturally look at the tiger to resolve the question.

(A word about your suggested concept of "organic whole": We don't generally have scientific disputes about this, at least not at the level of mammals. If we disagree about what a tiger is, we're going to be looking at issues in evolutionary and molecular biology, I would assume.)

Anyway, it sounds like you agree with this, along with the caveat about requiring other concepts in our tiger-study. We're both saying that "consulting the tiger" is a necessary --"one looks at tigers, of course" -- (if not sufficient) condition for resolving a disagreement about tigers.

Now in order to do this, we don't, strictly speaking, need the word "tiger" at all. But even in the unlikely possible world in which nouns aren't used, we'd still need an indexical of some sort. We'd have to be able to point at what we, in our world, call a tiger, and say "That!" So let's ignore that unlikely world and stipulate that we need the word "tiger" (in English, obviously) to label the being under investigation.

So my next question is, Can you imagine a situation in which resolving the disagreement between the two scientists would result in changing the meaning of the word "tiger"?

For purposes of comparison: Is Pluto still a planet?

Isn't learning about tigers doing something? Dragging this thread again back to Quine, it's building a common web of belief. — Banno

Fair enough. But when we start talking about a web of belief, I think we are moving quite far away from a focus on use rather than meaning. Certainly Quine meant the "web" part metaphorically, but what about the "belief" part? Are beliefs about words, or about the propositions expressed by words?

..to study a tiger requires a tiger; to study the word "tiger" does not.
— J
I'm not sure about that. Can you be said to understand the word "tiger" and yet not understand what a tiger is? — Banno

That’s a somewhat different point. If understanding is binary, with the only two options being “understand” and “not understand” then I agree: If I understand the word “tiger,” I’d probably describe myself as also understanding what a tiger is. But if we allow shades of understanding, then I can lack several degrees of understanding, while still being quite clear about what a tiger is. The definition or meaning of “tiger,” for instance, might not mention that the creature has a musky odor, or include a description of his paws. I believe I better understand what a tiger is, the more I know about him. Such understanding goes well beyond “understanding the word.”

But my point was more simpleminded: If we need more info about the tiger – perhaps in pursuit of a new evolutionary theory about the big cats – we have to study the animal himself. We can’t examine the word, or the way the word is used. Whereas if we want to better understand how “tiger” is used, we can consult the linguistic community – indeed, we could do that if tigers were extinct.

(And having just glanced at your subsequent post -- bedtime here in Maryland -- I concur again that essences or intrinsic natures aren't needed to move beyond language. The troublesome passage in what you wrote is

Essentialism wrongly attributes linguistic or conceptual distinctions to the structure of reality itself. — Banno

Essentialism is misguided, but that doesn't mean there aren't conceptual distinctions and privileged metaphysical structure. They just aren't best understood as essences or whatever. But that's for another day...)

If you can spot the tiger in the grass, and pick it out from the liger, what more do you need - what help is an essence? — Banno

This suggests one of the reasons why I think there's more to philosophy than "the linguistic turn." If you ask "What more do you need?" and I counter, "Need in order for what to happen?" or "In order to do what?" wouldn't you want to say that there is something called understanding a phenomenon/item/object which is different from doing anything with it or about it? (This is weirdly reminiscent of the force/content issue!) Can't we consider the tiger in his various aspects, learn more about what makes him unique, etc., without calling this "doing something with words"? And without invoking an "essence," which I agree is not helpful here.

And a prior question which @Count Timothy von Icarus raised earlier also is relevant. Is learning what a tiger is exactly the same as defining the word "tiger"? They are close cousins, surely, and Count T likes to use "define" for both processes (though I do not) but we can point to aspects that are dissimilar, I think. For example, to study a tiger requires a tiger; to study the word "tiger" does not.

We can all recognize a tiger when we see one, even though we cannot say what the essence of being a tiger is. — Janus

This was the direction I was interested in following with @Count Timothy von Icarus here, but I think he didn't want to pursue it:

So would it be fair to say that, in the example of the tiger, we must refer to the tiger itself? And a disagreement about the tiger's "essentiality" (or definition, if you prefer) would be investigated by saying, in effect, "Let's return to the tiger. Let's examine him more closely in the relevant aspects so we can learn which of us is right"? — J

This isn't meant to be some sort of trick question that implies there's no such thing as "being a tiger."
Of course there is. Nor am I suggesting that "how to recognize a tiger" is the same problem as "what constitutes a tiger." But we should think carefully about how we determine both these things, because when we move to abstracta, the problems increase by an order of magnitude.

You are sure that Kimhi and Rodl are important and worth reading — Leontiskos

They have been for me, and evidently for others. I guess not for you, though you've seemed pretty engaged! :wink:

Just a basic difference about what the point of it all is. I prefer understanding to being right, or deeming a philosopher right or wrong, and it takes me a long time to understand difficult things.

Given two (or more) positions on a basic, entrenched problem in philosophy, I assume that, if there was an obviously correct resolution, it would have been discovered long ago, and recognized as such. So the task is hermeneutic -- we need an interpretation, an understanding, of why this is so, why certain problems continue to provoke and stimulate. If you've gotten nothing from reading what you have of Kimhi and Rodl, that's OK, then they aren't stimulating thought for you, they aren't helping you understand or helping you articulate questions. No reason to pursue them.

Interesting post. Let me see if I understand you. You want to say:

I judge p is true = refers to a proposition that can be judged true
I judge "p" is true = refers to any proposition whatsoever

You're saying that only the former can be "recognized as true." What I don't understand is how this recognition differs from judging that it is true. Do you mean "recognition" to refer to a pre-linguistic or pre-propositional experience?

Frege says that the content is separate to the force, where p in "I judge p is true" is separate to "I judge_is true"

The content cannot be any possible proposition, but only those propositions that are capable of being judged true. — RussellA

There seems to be a misunderstanding about "capable of being judged true." The statement about the blue creatures is capable of being judged true, but as it happens, the correct judgment is "false." When Frege and Fregeans talk about truth-aptness, they're not referring to facts on the ground about what is the case. They're talking about the kinds of propositions to which assent could be given.

That said, it's true that Fregean "content" can't be "any possible proposition" if you agree with Rodl and others that there's a deep problem involving 1st person propositions and whether we can indeed separate the 1st personal from assertion.

This I take it is what J has in mind. — Banno

Yes.

It may be at p.93 here. — Banno

. It is indeed, thanks for tracking it down. The whole book is very good.

I'd like to express my admiration for your even-handedness. — Banno

Oh, I'm just conflict-averse. :wink: Actually, it's a carry-over from a couple of teachers who stressed that understanding a position is far more important, and far more difficult, than taking sides. One of them (RJ Bernstein, in fact), used to caution about viewing argument as a winner-take-all affair in which one person is shown to be right, the other wrong. Which was interesting, coming from him, who could argue the pants off anyone. I think his idea was not that you couldn't do it, but you wouldn't learn anything.

It's interesting how this parallels Quine's holism. If Socrates turned out to be a robot, then a large number of other entries in our web of belief would have to be changed. — Banno

Yes, nice observation. "Large number" hardly does it justice!

There's a fine essay by J. L. Mackie called "Locke's Anticipation of Kripke." It appears in his Problems from Locke but I can't find a link online. I'm thinking that @Count Timothy von Icarus might particularly appreciate it because it's all about Locke's views of essences. One highlight: Mackie gives Locke's view that "while it would be advantageous to use [substance-terms] to refer to real essences if we knew them, if we had clear and adequate ideas of them in our minds, it is a mistake, an abuse of words, to try to do this when we lack those ideas: we cannot 'remove that imperfection' [Locke] by merely intending to refer to a unknown real essence." Mackie believes this closely anticipates what Kripke will say about how reference actually works -- that we refer to designatable features rather than essences.

Yes, and there are those fortunate few who aren't sure!

It's metaphysically possible for Socrates to have been a chimp. — frank

But is it metaphysically possible for him to have been born of different parents? I don't think Kripke would agree (not that he's the boss).

I appreciate everything you've contributed.

I was thinking along these lines: Let's say someone wants to assert that Socrates is a Humandroid, defined as an android good enough to imitate someone like the historical Socrates. We could deny on this three distinct bases:

1. There are no Humandroids.
2. There is no evidence that Socrates was one, and a lot of evidence that he wasn't.
3. It is logically (analytically) impossible that Socrates was a Humandroid.

The first two refutations are empirical, and defeasible. The third, of course, is not, should it be true. So, is that what Count T is saying, when he says that Socrates is a man, not a chimpanzee? The question you asked about essential properties vs. necessary properties is the same question, perhaps.

Kripke addresses the point specifically in Naming and Necessity, using his pet example "Nixon":

If we can't imagine a possible world in which Nixon doesn't have a certain property, then it's a necessary condition of someone being Nixon. . . Supposing Nixon is in fact a human being, it would seem that we cannot think of a possible counterfactual situation in which he was, say, an inanimate object; perhaps it is not even possible for him not to have been a human being. Then it will be a necessary fact about Nixon that in all possible worlds where he exists at all, he is human, or anyway he is not an inanimate object. This has nothing to do with any requirement that there be purely qualitative sufficient conditions for Nixonhood which we can spell out.

. . . .

Suppose Nixon actually turned out to be an automaton. That might happen. We might need evidence whether Nixon is a human being or an automaton. But that is a question about our knowledge. The question of whether Nixon might not have been a human being, given that he is one, is not a question about knowledge [my emphases], a posteriori or a priori. It's a question about, even though such and such things are the case, what might have been the case otherwise. — Kripke, 46-47

The moral, I think, is that questions about necessary and sufficient conditions are modal, and hence not about what we know to be true in our world. Can we refer to "Nixon" without knowing he is a human being, in the same way that (to use another of Kripke's examples) we can refer to a table without knowing that it is made of molecules? As it happens, we do know both things, but if we knew as little about Socrates as Socrates himself knew about tables, we presumably could still refer to him, and be unconfused about him in possible worlds. So, in doing so, we don't have in mind some necessary and sufficient (or essential) qualities about him. We're not denying them, but we just need to be able to point to him, as it were.

But . . . "Anything coming from a different origin would not be this object." This is the lesson Kripke draws from his discussion about whether Queen Elizabeth could have been born of different parents. We should probably say the same thing about Socrates being engendered by robotics. Again, nothing to do with necessary and sufficient conditions.

Possibly not, but would it matter to what we wanted to say about Socrates' humanity? I'm not exactly sure what you two are disputing. Is it whether Socrates is necessarily a man, or whether, in referring to him, we are adopting a Kripkean understanding of proper names?

Have you guys read Kripke? This might help clear it up. Or check out "Rigid Designators" here.

In my terms, Frege is a Direct Realist in that he believes that force is separate to content. For example, in the world apples exist independent of any observer.

In my terms, Rodl is an Indirect Realist in that he believes that force is inside content. — RussellA

I don't want to dispute terminology, especially when it comes to a time-honored Thorny Problem such as realism, but the "content" that Frege is upholding isn't the apples, it's the proposition "There are apples in that tree". Frege probably did think the apples would be there even if you or I were not. But his concern was more about the truths of logic and math, which he insisted were "there" just as much as the apples.

As for Rodl, if force is "inside" or "accompanies" content, that might lead to a sort of indirect realism. But Rodl is clear that the entire picture is wrong, according to him.

As the force-content distinction makes no sense, it has no explanatory power. . . . What is thought cannot be isolated from the act of thinking it; it cannot be understood as the attachment of a force to a content. — Rodl, 36-7

Hence "absolute idealism."

However, since what a thought is, is not all that clear, there are compound issues with being clear as to the content of a thought. Perhaps this explains much of the puzzlement hereabouts. — Banno

No question. My thought1 and thought2 discrimination was trying to make some progress there, because even if we say, "OK, we're clear about thought2, it's the 'content' of a thought," we still are left with the uncertainty you describe about the nature of thought1. I would be fascinated to know if there is any psychological/scientific consensus on what a thought is, understood as a mental phenomenon. I would bet they're even more confused than the philosophers are. I suppose in good conscience they'd have to leave out any talk of thought2?!

The way things are: the tree is dropping its leaves.

A report about the way things are: "The tree is dropping its leaves".

A report of a thought: I think that the tree is dropping its leaves. Another: I thought "The tree is dropping its leaves".

A few more thoughts. Is the tree dropping its leaves? Is the thing dropping leaves a tree? I wish the tree would not drop it's leaves. Let's call that thing that is dropping leaves, a "tree".

A report about a thought: I wonder if the tree will drop its leaves.

There's quite a lot going on in each of these. — Banno

It's interesting how the first two stick out. The first one, if I'm understanding you, isn't a thought at all; it's meant to be something in the world. Probably a photo of the tree would be the best way to represent it. The second is supposed to be thought2, the "propositional content" of someone or other's thought1. That you invoke "the way things are" for both speaks to Rodl's perplexity about how this can be. All the other formulations are 1st-personal, even the 1st "report of a thought," because although it asserts the proposition, it's phrased as someone's assertion. (And the 2nd "report" is clearly referring to a thought1 thought, quoted.)

I know I've never really laid out a case, if there is one, for why Rodl's perplexity about "content" makes sense. Any case I make has to account for the usages you list. God knows, the force/content distinction allows us to say things we want to say about both logic and thinking. Which Rodl doesn't deny, he just thinks we shouldn't want to say those things, as they're based on a misunderstanding. I'm still wrestling with it. (And barely halfway through his book . . . )