as a professional metaphysician (I think I've earned the right to call myself that, I have enough metaphysical publications in professional journals to qualify as such), — Arcane Sandwich

Now you've got me curious! Would you be willing to share a link to one of them with us?

OK. Rödl is dealing with some similar issues in Self-Consciousness and Objectivity. His "absolute idealism" leads him to very different conclusions, of course, but he and Rouse are both trying to supply an account of the given, what is present to consciousness.

Well, this is a pretty general formula. I was hoping you could use "a cat" as an example and describe what the "contingent discursive account" looks like, which allows us to use it to "specify the nature of the world."

It seems to me that it will be harder to find agreement on things like truth and goodness because those are extremely general principles — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think that's the problem. Rules of math and logic are also extremely general principles, but we don't have trouble finding agreement there.

Quine proceeds by essentially assuming something like behaviorism, and this is crucial to how he makes the argument — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sort of. Since the example concerns two linguistic communities who don't yet share a common translation for "gavagai", what else besides behavior would we have to go on? The whole problem is that the linguist can't ask the native, "What do you mean?" I think Quine is asking us to transport this problem into English-to-English exchanges, and ponder the question of how a term receives a meaning.

Meaning, in the sense that is "disproved" seems to have already been eliminated from the outset, — Count Timothy von Icarus

I read him rather as using the gavagai story to show why the word/meaning pair is problematic. I don't think he assumes that words don't mean anything; he's trying to push back harder on our common assumptions about it. The question of certainty is important, because what sorts of things can we have certain knowledge of? Quine didn't think the word/meaning pair was in any sense analytic.

Rouse is helpful here in showing this connection among the five philosophers. Whether all their accounts fail, I couldn't say. When he writes, "The underlying dif­ficulty is their effort to separate rational, normative relations among semantic contents from their realization by humans as living organisms who evolved and developed in discursively articulated environments," is this a somewhat awkward equivalent to "There are no propositions that aren't 1st person singular or plural"?

. . . to specify the nature of that world (two birds, or a cat and a dog) on the basis of our contingent discursive accounts of it. — Joshs

Just to keep the argument clear here, what should we say the description "a cat" is contingent upon? Obviously I'm not looking for a reply along the lines of "It's contingent upon language" -- that goes without saying. But what else? What are the factors that suggest that particular bit of language?

"The soul" is proposed as an actuality in the sense of substantive form. And, that "form" itself, is substantive is supported by his "Metaphysics". This allows for the proposition "the soul is our subject of study". — Metaphysician Undercover

I see how this all hangs together, thanks.

IDK how closely Rodl follows Aristotle (or Hegel), but in their case this has to do with the identity of thought and being (something Plotinus brings out in Aristotle in his rebuttals of the Empiricists and Stoics). This ends up being, in some key respects, almost the opposite of Wittgenstein, although I do think there is some interesting overlap in that they tend to resolve epistemic issues in ways that are isomorphic. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, everyone finds their own Wittgenstein! Kimhi, in Thinking and Being, claimed Witt as a fellow exponent of the monistic unity of thinking and being, which in turn he (Kimhi) derives from Aristotle. And this is very much Rödl's view as well.

Again, it's not that someone can play various major chord, record and read them, and recognise them when they hear them, and yet not have, or not understand, what a major chord is, because they are missing something more... the concept. — Banno

OK, that's clearer to me.

All language stops with showing and doing.

But again, I don't think I've quite understood your point. — Banno

My point -- somewhat off the point, perhaps -- is that we never arrive at something we can simply take as what it is, as opposed to "counts as." Or do we? This is reminiscent of that Wang essay about Davidson, a while back.

To make his argument go through, I think Wang has to show not only that common-sense experience is possible, but that the other kind – raw, unmediated perceptions, "thin experience" – is impossible. — J

Should we say that, at some given level of demonstration, we have "raw, unmediated perception"? Something we can point to and say, "This," sans interpretation?

So the Major is the root, third and fifth. It's that string, that string, and that string - and usually the root, again. That's a doing. Then you slide it up and down the fretboard, and set it out in tab or notation. More doing.

if someone blithely says that the major is the root, third and fifth, but doesn't play or listen, do they understand the concept of a major chord? Does an AI have the concept, becasue it can form the words?

On the other hand, if someone can form the shape and slide it up and down the fretboard, but can not tell us about thirds and fifths, do they "have" the concept? — Banno

This is tricky. I want to say that a major chord is not "that string, that string, and that string." If I'd given such an answer back in school, I would have flunked, at any rate. We both know that the term describes three notes, sounded simultaneously, that stand in a certain relation to each other. That's what I'm calling "the concept."

It sounds like you've moved to talking about what it would take to have that concept, and here we're in agreement. Someone who doesn't listen, someone who only goes up and down the fretboard, and "someone" who is an AI do not have the concept, quite right. But I thought you were saying that "concept" itself is doing no useful work here, and I'm still not seeing that.

"Wouldn't it have to follow that 'being a piece of wood' is a way of treating Object A"
— J
Yep. This counts as a piece of wood.

But here I am relying on the grammar of the demonstrative, with all that this implies. This is shown. — Banno

So the "counts as" locution stops with the demonstrative? If I could give a sufficiently accurate set of coordinates for the location of the object we "count as" a piece of wood, along with a chemical description, wouldn't we have to pursue the matter further? "'Being at [coordinates] and consisting of [chemical analysis]' is a way of treating Object A-prime"? And you can see where this is going . . . right into the realm where you can't use demonstratives at all, or at least not in any ordinary-language way.

I'm not trying to refute this way of talking, I just want to understand what it commits me to.

What remains is that being a bishop is a way of treating that piece of wood, — Banno

OK, but the annoying question is, "Wouldn't it have to follow that 'being a piece of wood' is a way of treating Object A [specify space-time coordinates here]?"

But I'm not clear as to what you are getting at. If you understand that the major is the root, third and fifth, while the seventh chord is the root, third, fifth and seventh note of the scale, is there again something more that is needed in order to have the concept of major and seventh? — Banno

No, exactly that. I think that is (with a couple of technical tweaks) the concept of a major chord. But I thought you were saying that we didn't have such a concept, only the various things we can do with said chord.

@Banno I just came across this, which speaks to the Wittgensteinian theme being discussed over in the "Mathematical platonism" thread:

There is nothing I may encounter, encountering which will equip me with the idea of it as real, or a fact. If I lack this idea, nothing -- nothing real, no fact -- can give it to me. The concept of things' being as they are is possible only as it is at work -- not in thinking this or that, but -- in thinking anything at all. — Rödl, 61

"Only as it is at work" . . . I think he means that we can't find the concept of reality or facticity as the object of thought; rather, it's contained or implied in the act, the "work", of thinking that anything is so. No doubt Witt would approve.

Hence concepts are no more than being able to work with whatever is in question, and thinking of them as mental items in one's head is fraught with complications. — Banno

I can definitely do without "mental items in one's head," though in fairness that's a somewhat tendentious way of putting it. But I'm wondering whether, by choosing "seven" as our example concept, we haven't picked an outlier. Thinking about "seven", it does seem as if there's nothing left once we enumerate all the things we do with it. Are all concepts like this, though? Don't most concepts include structural parts, often definitionally so? Consider a major chord. I can list all the things we do with such chords, but beyond that I can describe what it is that makes this group of three notes a major chord. Why wouldn't we want to call that description the "concept" of a major chord? You see the difference with "seven" -- there isn't a similar description of what comprises "seven" or makes it what it is.

This is something h.sapiens can do that no other creature can do. — Wayfarer

Don't be too sure. Our ignorance about what other species can do is astonishing. It wasn't so long ago that scientists questioned whether other animals could even think or be conscious. Anyway, would it really affect your point very much if it turned out that some other animals could do it a little bit?

a real hard slog to maintain focus — Wayfarer

I do a section a day, after coffee, when if I'm lucky I can concentrate for 30 minutes. :halo:

But please don't slog on my account . . .

Nozick's politics — Banno

Yeah, I know, unfortunate. But he's a good meta-philosopher for all that.

if we are going to take philosophical pluralism seriously, shouldn't we avoid the sort of over-arching story found in Philosophical Explanations? Shouldn't we avoid saying that philosophical explanations are thus-and-so? — Banno

Pretty sure Nozick would agree with that. The tone of the book is discursive and investigative, not didactic. It contains one of my favorite passages about doing philosophy:

Philosophical argument, trying to get someone to believe something whether he wants to believe it or not, is not, I have held, a nice way to behave toward someone; also, it does not fit the original motivation for studying or entering philosophy. That motivation is puzzlement, curiosity, a desire to understand, not a desire to produce uniformity of belief. Most people do not want to become thought-police. — Nozick, 13

Roughly, post-PI the "sense of the world" remains unstated, but can be either enacted and shown, or left in silence. In neither case is the sense of the world said. — Banno

True, but evidently it can be referred to. That may be all we need.

It is difficult to maintain a distinction between what is conceptual and what is terminological, between the structure we accept of how things are and the labels we apply to that structure. This because using a term just is using a concept. — Banno

Yes, everything you say is a nice concise view of the problematic territory here. I'm more comfortable with Davidson than Witt on this topic but that's just me.

As I wrote earlier, I need to rethink what I want to say in a way that would be a reply to Davidson, which ain't easy. Maybe the place to start is "Using a term just is using a concept". What if we reply, "Yes, but is using a concept just using a term?" So the question is still, "How, and to what extent, can we dissolve that metaphysical Superglue that seems to bind term to concept?" but reverses the grounding. The Davidson/Witt position would, I think, be that there can't be any grounding because "concept" is parasitic on our terms.

Now you may want to say, "It's not metaphysical Superglue at all, it's the opposite of what metaphysics proposes" and/or "If there is no conceptual scheme, no appeal to shared meanings, but merely a congruence of beliefs, acts, and worlds . . . then what's left for 'concept' to be about?" Those would be meta-challenges, for sure. I need to think more about how I in fact use concepts, and find a couple of paradigm cases of terminological changes that really do hold a concept steady. Then I might be in a better position to restate my case. Should take about a year . . . :smile:

the primness of small numbers — Janus

I'm sorry, I can't resist a good typo. Yes, I too find small numbers to be prim, even reticent. But then there's π, which is small but goes on and on forever . . .

Right, I wasn't asking the second question. I don't think in terms of superior ways of existence—I am not a fan of hierarchical notions of being. — Janus

I realize that, sorry if I implied otherwise. I was just using your question to compare with a type of question that I think others have been asking.

The irony in all this is that I sort of am a fan of hierarchical notions of "being," if by hierarchy we just mean structure or grounding. My idea, not to belabor it to death, is that we'll do a better job by dropping the word "being" to the extent that we can.

A mysterious doctrine called 'the unity of knower and known'. . . I believe Rödl is articulating a similar theme. — Wayfarer

Yes, though as I wrote above, I'm still locating all the pieces on the board with Rödl. It's a dense book. You're reading it, right? His arguments about why objectivity is necessarily self-conscious -- odd as that sounds -- are covering the same ground as Kimhi's arguments about the unity of thinking and being. Once again, poor Frege comes in for a kicking. I'll definitely write more about the book as I go along, and I hope others will read it too.

Yes, the ref is I 1, 641a10ff. Also: "C.f. De Anima, Book III, 429a."

I haven't gotten to pp. 118 - 123 yet. Good to know he's on target with Aristotle. The book is challenging in much the same way as Kimhi's Thinking and Being is (and covers some very similar ground) but I'm finding it well worth a slow, careful read.

Interesting, and thanks for replying to my OP. I'm not sure where Rödl is going to take this, but I'll be better informed now.

Well, there's a quibble here about what it is to express something. I don't think we've said something that is ineffable. We might have waved at something ineffable. That was the reservation I wanted to capture, when I said:
If something is inexpressible, then by that very fact one cannot say why... Doing so would be to give expression to the inexpressible.
— Banno
In that spirit, we haven't explained its inexpressibility as much as exhibited it. — Banno

This subthread shouldn't get left behind. Some of this was sounding familiar to me, and I thought it might have jogged a memory from Nozick's Philosophical Explanations. So I spent a little time searching (it's a big effing book) but couldn't find anything that specifically addressed explanation versus exhibition/illustration/waving-at a la Wittgenstein. But Nozick's idea of what an explanation is in general might be relevant. He thinks a good philosophical explanation addresses the question of modality, of how some given X is either possible, or necessary, or would be the case if, etc. He contrasts this with proof, which is non-modal (given the premises). And he points out that transcendental arguments are an admixture of both approaches. He's in favor of what he calls philosophical pluralism, because he thinks that while explanations can be ranked in order of plausibility (hence not relativistic), they usually can't settle a given question.

That's an interesting OP in itself, but the relevance here might be: Nozick seems to draw a clear distinction between explanans and explanandum. He doesn't think that p is necessarily going to be explained in terms that derive from or relate to p. So -- and again, he doesn't say this directly -- if p is "Why is q ineffable?", we can talk about p without needing to talk about q.

I still want a good example of this. Was my "meaning of life" example any help? I feel like there's some obvious way we handle this in ordinary life that I'm not thinking of . . .

At a certain point we can realize that we now have a pretty adequate conceptual map...
— J
There it is again. I have to go with Davidson here and deny that a map sits between us and the territory. — Banno

I hadn't thought about a conceptual scheme of the sort that Davidson denies when I articulated this idea. But you raise a good point. Let me think on it.

I could respond to some of your specific points (I could say, Well, in a way we do speak about instances of Rock showing up, categorically), but what matters in this overall discussion is the kind of thing you're doing, which is exactly what I think we should do. You're looking at what we say, comparing it to what we experience, considering various ways of thinking about it. Does it make more sense -- is it more conducive to good thinking -- to speak of "justice" or "instances of justice"? A good question! "Do rocks exist in a superior way to justice?" Not a good question!

Apology accepted.

My friend, there's nothing here to be angry about. We all use the forum to question and debate each other's ideas. I think you haven't gotten my point, but that's OK, and please feel free to move on.

But notice that nowadays even reason is relativised; it is social convention, it is a useful tool, it has nothing to do with the way the world is. To even appeal to reason is nowadays covertly regarded as an appeal to authority — Wayfarer

Granted, there are many versions of an appeal to authority, including the argumentum ad baculum (check your Thomas)! Those who regard an appeal to reason as illegitimate on that ground are wrong, I think, but so are those who want to say that the ancients nailed down the meaning of all our key philosophical terms.

I didn't want to neglect this, in the flurry of posts here.

Call these your axioms:

Existence is a property.

All material objects have this property.

To exist is to have a spatio-temporal location.

All material objects have the potential to change their spatio-temporal location.


So my question is, Is this further statement:

Only material objects have the property of existence.

a conclusion drawn from some subset of the above axiomatic statements, or is it a separate axiomatic statement itself? If the latter, it’s what I was referring to as a coincidence. It seems to demand further explanation.

↪J Nice work. I'll go along with that.

I baulk at your distinguishing "conceptual" from "terminological". Our terminology sets out our "conceptual framework" as it were. — Banno

Thanks -- but if we can't distinguish "conceptual" from "terminological," then what I'm saying wouldn't make sense. How about this? We likely construct our conceptual maps using language, the language we're taught as children and the further technical language, if any, that we acquire as philosophers. At a certain point we can realize that we now have a pretty adequate conceptual map -- we see where the pieces ought to go, more or less -- but there's a problem with the words we were taught. So we can abandon some of the terms, while retaining the map. This is what I mean by "conceptual" versus "terminological." Another way to describe it would be "structural" versus "labeling". We all know what it's like to view a structure, note the various pieces, but find the names (if any) for the pieces to be confusing or silly.

The contrary view -- that language goes all the way down, that thinking or conceptualizing is irreducibly linguistic -- I think is wrong. The path may depend on language, but what we find there has got to be independent, because otherwise the problem will metamorphose into Everything Is Language -- cats and so forth. I'm too much of a realist for that.

You've happened on the forums at a time when the fashion is towards mediaeval thinking. — Banno

I know what you're getting at, but discussing the Divided Line is a different matter, no? Surely we can adapt the ideas of pistis and dianoia into our modern debates. And very interesting contemporary philosophers like Kimhi and Rödl are using Aristotle in new ways.

What is "medieval" to me -- and this has nothing to do with Thomism as such -- is the appeals to authority. It's not so much "X is correct because Plato said so" but rather "X is incomprehensible to modern thought unless we agree with how Plato viewed X."

Thanks, and you've put your finger on what I'm wondering about too. Can Rödl go on to say that nous cannot be included in any domain? It gets finicky, because I'm not clear on what either philosopher means by "included," exactly. Are your suggestions -- "contained," "exhausted" -- synonyms for inclusion? Couldn't "included" simply mean "studied" or even "taken into account"?

He is not arguing from the premise, "There is no science which includes everything in its province." — Leontiskos

No, that seems clear. I rather see him, in the passage you quote, arriving at this as a conclusion about natural science, which strikes him as a reductio -- but that may be because natural science isn't the right science to do this, not because no science does so.

I don't quite follow your argument. Again, I don't see what I'm arguing as exceptionally obtuse or difficult. — Wayfarer

I think we're in agreement, actually, and if you don't follow, the fault is likely mine. We're both saying that there is a conceptual division that we want to acknowledge; in your words, it's "'Platonic' in that it mirrors the division between sensory (pistis, doxa) and mathematical (dianoia) knowledge in Plato's thought." I think that's exactly right, as far as this particular debate about "existence" goes.

It provides a conceptual framework for distinguishing the phenomenal (the domain of existents) from the noumenal (the intelligible domain). These two are intertwined in our thought, yet the distinction is discernible — Wayfarer

The difference in what we want to say about this division, however, is this: You want to use the term "existents" for the phenomenal domain, and I'm recommending we stop doing that, as the word is so fraught and unsatisfactory. I'm simply urging us to notice that "the distinction is discernible" no matter what terms we use, and that is what counts. On the important point -- pistis and dianoia as picking out two different areas on the conceptual map -- we agree. And when we examine the various relations between the objects of pistis and dianoia, we may find yet further agreement. So we shouldn't let logomachy get in the way!

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the three first-order translations, taken together, describe the conceptual territory covered by "exist" in loose talk. We can of course recommend drawing a line under this and saying, "Please use these three disambiguated terms. While there's nothing pre-ordained about them, they attach easily to three important conceptual areas that cover the field, we can use them to refer to and describe those areas, and they're reasonably familiar from previous usage."

Now on this understanding, the question is not "Is there something that is not covered by these but is available in being or existing?" We've stipulated that the conceptual ground is indeed covered. Rather, the question is "Will it ever be helpful to use the words 'being' and 'existing' to talk about this ground?" Again, notice how much depends on separating term from concept. We want maximum fidelity as to concept and maximum flexibility as to term. So, to my amended version of your question, I would reply, "Sure, it's quite possible. Let's find out. Let's read Heidegger. But what we mustn't do is mistake the question as being about additional conceptual territory. If we do that, we fall once again into the endless battle about what counts as Existence. No, we are asking a terminological question."

Final thought: This is all based on: "for the sake of argument, the three first-order translations, taken together, describe the conceptual territory covered by 'exist' in loose talk." They may not, in which case an entirely different conversation will occur. Here the friends of Existence and Being have the task of convincing us that the issue is conceptual, not terminological.

Existence, in my philosophy, is what has a spatiotemporal location. It has nothing to do with the concept of "being made of material stuff". — Arcane Sandwich

OK.

existence and matter are not the same thing. — Arcane Sandwich

OK.

I hold that material objects, and only they, are the ones that exist. — Arcane Sandwich

But now you've lost me. Is this a coincidence? You've said there's no definitional relation, so how and why does this relation obtain?

I used this as a kind of wedge to distinguish 'being' from 'existence', which I think is a fundamental but generally forgotten or neglected distinction — Wayfarer

This, to me, is starting to step in the right direction, because with this distinction we're at least no longer asking "existence" to do more work than it can handle.

Cool.

As a materialist, I can confidently say the existence of rights, truth and justice is not incompatible with the materialist premises and conclusions of my philosophy. — Arcane Sandwich

Good! But that must mean that "existence" is being given a much broader interpretation than "made of material stuff." So here we go again . . .

Yes, if I thought there was a hope of ever settling it. But using the "existence" terminology to do so just doesn't seem to get anywhere. Instead, let's talk about the ways that rocks show up in our lives, and what we can say about them -- also the ways that justice shows up in our lives, and what we can say about that -- and whether there might be various grounding relations obtaining between physical things and values -- but do it all without trying to award the Grand Prize of Existence to anything.

That's one of the better defenses of continuing "existence"-talk that I've heard. I woudn't want to cut all ties with one common usage (and I'll come back that) if it's genuinely helpful to folks. The ethical obligation to remain in communication with as many interested parties as possible is a real one.

That said . . . is it genuinely helpful? A great deal of damaging nonsense on this subject is spoken in the name of "good common sense," which too often means "ways of thinking that are common to me and the people who share my views." People who think only physical stuff exists -- materialists, in other words -- are the same people who often want to say that "rights" and "truth" and "justice" also don't exist. What they believe exists may influence them on issues from abortion to contract law. I know, it looks very unproblematic to point to Pegasus vs. rocks, and if that's all one ever needs the concept for, I guess no sweat. But if we really have an obligation to help clarify thought when it gets difficult, then we can't stop there.

My other response also refers back to what's "good common sense." I dunno, is it really your experience that the average non-philosopher you know is quite settled in the opinion that rocks exist but numbers don't? I get into a fair number of semi-philosophical discussions with friends and acquaintances, for obvious reasons, and when they're not ordering me a cup of hemlock, they seem to be very alive to why this question of what exists is not cut and dried. They also seem to move quite quickly to noticing that it looks like a terminological dispute. So again, I think we should be really wary of invoking a notion of common sense that may not stand up under inspection.