If embodied (i.e. mine/yours), then "experience, or subjectivity" is physical (i.e. affected by my/your interactions with our respective local environments). — 180 Proof

This assumes that the only way to be "mine" or "yours" is to be embodied, doesn't it?

Moreover, a mind can be affected by our interactions with the local environment without itself being part of that environment, surely. This is what the supervenience concept is trying to get at, I think. We can postulate a one-for-one mapping between brain and mind/subjectivity without also postulating causality.

As you know, calling it the hard problem is misleading, because it suggests every other problem is easy. So free will is easy, brain science is easy, physics is easy, sociology is easy, but we know that's not true. — Manuel

Chalmers was contrasting his "hard problem of consciousness" with what he called "the easy problem of consciousness": finding the places in the brain that correspond to various subjective experiences. This, as we know, is indeed getting easier.

Yes, good summary. The question of how experience, or subjectivity, can be "in the world" if the world is understood physically is currently unanswerable. But if I had to bet on the next Copernican Revolution (let's check back in 200 years), it would consist of a completely different understanding of what terms like "physical," "mental," "subjective" et al. mean. The "hard problem," I think, has all the hallmarks of a question that has to have been stated incorrectly, though it's the best we can do at the moment . . . we shall see.

It's just difficult to understand how subjectively bounded subjects could perceive objects without their subjectivity filtering the perception. — philosch

It certainly is. I don't know what your philosophical background is, but this is one of most entrenched questions in philosophy. Often, it's not a question of mere "filtering" but a challenge to whether there could ever be contact with objective reality at all -- Idealism, very broadly. A good overview of this issue is The View from Nowhere by Thomas Nagel.

I like the concept of intersubjectivity for many reasons, but does it always fit? Do we want to say that when physicists describe the quantum world, they are working toward intersubjective agreement rather than truth? At the quantum level, with its notorious perplexities, perhaps we should say that. But since we know that any intersubjective agreement can be challenged, this still seems to leave room for asking, But is it true? Similarly, describing the Law of Non-Contradiction as "intersubjectively agreed upon" doesn't seem to do justice to what we mean when we assert that law. So, I don't think one can abandon objectivity in favor of intersubjectivity in all cases without explaining why the "is it true" question would be incoherent. Which many philosophers have tried to do, of course. But we can't simply assert it.

say you used X logic to get to a definition of a word... a word that had 8 ways to be used across the different parts of speach it could cover...

All 8 definitions would rest in row 3 of this pyramid we just constructed...

That doesn't mean each definition can be used as a reference for the word in the sentence. — DifferentiatingEgg

OK, except the last sentence? When you say "reference for the word" do you mean intension (in logic)? Some words presumably wouldn't have any extensions.

Yes, a diagram would surely help but I don't want to put you to any additional trouble.

I'm afraid this is over my head, but I appreciate your response.

I have admittedly been slow to reply to the topic as I am busy looking up pages and trying to not just give flippant replies without thought. — noAxioms

God bless you! (or substitute "the Universe" if you prefer). If only more posters did the same.

It is perhaps becoming clear how two somewhat different uses of "necessity" are at work here. One has necessity as opposed to analyticity, the other has necessity as opposed to possibility. — Banno

To which we can add a third wrinkle, as I referred to earlier: necessity as opposed to tautology. '9 is greater than 7' is presumably analytic and likely necessary, but is it a tautology?

Thank you, this is very clear. I think @Banno is right that the issue being raised in the Quine essay strongly resembles de re / de dicto. Referential opacity is the connecting link.

If something is a fact, then to report that it is the case is to report that it is necessarily true. If Socrates is sitting, "Socrates is currently sitting" is true by necessity, but this is necessitas per accidens. By contrast, "man is an animal" is necessitas per se, de re (assuming for the sake of the example that all men are necessarily animals.) — Count Timothy von Icarus

A question about this, though. "Necessity by accident" has an odd ring. Is the idea that, if "Socrates is currently sitting" is true, then as long as it remains true, it is necessarily the case that Socrates is sitting? The necessity would arise from the fact that there is only one way (allegedly) for a statement to be true, and that is by its stating something that is the case? I'm struggling to phrase the necessity in some understandable way -- maybe you can help.

"Man is an animal," in contrast, would be a good example of a Kripkean synthetic necessity. There is nothing analytic about the notion; it so happens, though, that we have discovered it to be true. And Kripke would go on to point out that we don't need this necessary truth in order to designate "man" -- we were able to do this quite well before we knew any science. Had it turned out that humans were not in fact animals, we would not have said, "Oh, we we were wrong in our identification of what a human is. We'd better call them doomans instead" Rather, we would have said, "We thought humans might be angelic or unique, but that is not so. They're still humans, just different from what we thought." (This is Kripke's "gold" example in a slightly different wording.)

Didn't mean to scare you, lol. :wink: — philosch

No problem, I scare easily! Had to go to urgent care after reading Derrida.

We are 100% subjective beings. No part of any human knowledge or understanding or experience can be a part of or close to an "absolute objective reality". Our experience of the universe around us is subjective by definition. — philosch

Let's grant, ex hypothesi, the first and the last sentences. Why would the second sentence follow?: that objective reality is unreachable by subjective knowledge? That seems to import a lot of preconceptions about how objectivity and subjectivity relate, preconceptions which to say the least are controversial.

What we call objective reality can be considered true in the context of human experience but it's not true in an absolute sense. — philosch

And that may be good enough. Intersubjectivity often makes more sense than "absolute objectivity." Certainly the idea is good enough to establish the distinction I want to make between ambiguous, controversial terms like "existence" and every-day words for things we can verify. We don't need to engage in a debate about whether a table is "objectively a table," as long as we can agree that, unlike "reality" or "being", we know how to verify whether object X is a table or not. And also, we shouldn't be distracted by the fact that any noun can be subject to bizarre exceptions or quibbles. Again, the point is that the problem with "existence" is not bizarre exceptions to an otherwise clear concept; the baseline concept itself is unclear. So while I agree that there is a sort of continuum of imprecision involving language, as you suggest, it doesn't amount to saying that everything is imprecise (or "subjective") in the same way.

I'm not too up on the de dicto/de re distinction, ↪J but it should be one of those that is amenable to formal description. — Banno

OK. I quickly read through the SEP article and remembered why I'd never completely understood it in the first place. :smile: Glad to have some help from @Count Timothy von Icarus or anyone else.

It occurred to me after I wrote this, that a bit of Rödl might have seeped in. — Wayfarer

Definitely! For me, that's one of the marks of an interesting philosopher -- their insights hang around, and show up in other contexts, and you realize your thinking has been expanded. (Note to those who think philosophy has to be either right or wrong: This phenomenon I'm describing can happen regardless of whether you agree with the philosopher's solutions. What you get is insight into the questions.)

Yes we are essentially agreeing that there is no objective reality that makes any sense with regard to human consciousness. — philosch

Yikes, no! I'm speaking about a particularly troublesome term -- "existence" or "being" -- that has no clearly correct usage. But the vast majority of our terms do, and it is objective reality that makes this so. For that matter, there is probably something objectively real about whatever it is that philosophers want to call "existence," it's just that the language we use is so imprecise and contentious that it would be better to describe it another way -- structurally or mathematically, perhaps.

If I understand what you are asking my answer would be no, there is no "correct" way, there is no truth of the matter, there would be different ways, each with more or less utility depending on the context of each. — philosch

That's about how I see it. The term "existence" simply doesn't lend itself to being identified with some particular thing/event/item, which could be checked in the case of disagreement, in the way that, say, "table" does.

Any of the above, really. And, clearly, I'm doubtful if my wish can be granted.

Joe offers a particular doctrine about existence, Mary offers a different one. Is there anything either can appeal to, in order to determine whether one is correct? Let's just pick "conceptual definition" from your list. Would Joe and Mary be able to consult such a definition in order to resolve a disagreement between them?

As you're demonstrating, it's possible to make a sensible recommendation about how to talk about existence, and make some further distinctions based upon it, concerning e.g. the kinds of existence and how they might connect, structurally.

But the question is, Is there anything further to be said in favor of some particular recommendation? That is, apart from usefulness in laying out a metaphysics, is there a truth of the matter? If there was -- if there was a correct way to conceive of existence, and/or talk about it -- how would we show this?

The thesis is summed up in the last sentence:
What is important is to appreciate that the contexts ‘Necessarily . . .’ and ‘Possibly . . .’ are, like quotation and ‘is unaware that . . .’ and ‘believes that . . . referentially opaque. — Banno

Yes. And this is amplified as follows:

If to [any] referentially opaque context of a variable we apply a quantifier, with the intention that it govern that variable from outside the referentially opaque context, then what we commonly end up with is unintended sense or nonsense . . . — Quine, 148

I added "any" to Quine's statement because we can now appreciate that referential opacity characterizes (at least) three different situations: quotation, "belief"-type statements, and modality; as you say, they are three distinct issues.

Staying with modality for the moment, I'm curious how we should handle this idea from Kripke concerning what he calls "strongly rigid designators":

A rigid designator of a necessary existent can be called strongly rigid. — Naming & Necessity, 48

We know that a rigid designator has to designate the same object in every possible world. Thus, no one other than Nixon can be "Nixon". But Kripke is clear that Nixon, as such, did not have to exist. "Nixon" is not a strongly rigid designator.

Is a number strongly rigid? Kripke uses Quine's example from "Reference and Modality":

What's the difference between asking whether it's necessary that 9 is greater than 7 or whether it's necessary that the number of planets is greater than 7? — N&N, 48

Kripke suggests that the answer, "intuitively," would be:

Well, look, the number of planets might have been different from what it in fact is. It doesn't make any sense, though, to say that nine might have been different from what it in fact is. — N&N, 48

So, does "9" rigidly and strongly designate nine? That is, is there something about the number nine which makes us want to say that it must necessarily exist? We could do without Nixon, but not nine. This type of necessity seems problematic. Can it ever be anything other than stipulative? If there are insights from modal logic that would help here, please share.

To a large extent this is a modern version of the de re/de dicto distinction — Banno

Can you say more about this?

Lots to ponder in this essay. Just as a place to start:

Quine contrasts two statements (pp. 147-8):

(1) (∃x)(x is necessarily greater than 7)

and

(2) Necessarily (∃x)(x is greater than 7)

(1) is an existential generalization of a modal statement, and is either incoherent or false. (2) is unproblematic. To explain the difference, Quine makes the analogy with a game that must have a winner and a loser: “It is necessary that some one of the players will win, but there is no one player of whom it may be said to be necessary that he win.” Likewise, there must certainly be a number greater than 7, but we cannot say that any given number is necessarily that number. As Quine puts it,

Necessary greaterness than 7 makes no sense as applied to a number x; necessity attaches only to the connection between ‛x > 7’ and the particular method . . . of specifying x. — Quine, 148

Let’s rephrase (2) in ordinary English: “It has to be the case that some number is greater than 7” or perhaps “It has to be the case that 7 is not the highest number”. Why is it true? In what does the necessity lie? As Quine points out, the necessity here does not concern any attribute of the number 7. It is nothing like “A bachelor is an unmarried male”, where synonymy is supposed to result in analyticity or tautology. Synonymy is not the issue here. But we want to say that (2) is analytically true – that is, true by virtue of its logical form – since it doesn’t matter what number we plug in; it has to come out true. If Quine allows (2) to be an example of a logical principle, then he would agree.

But have we really freed ourselves from any (questionable) definitional analyticity? Don’t we need the concept/definition of “number” in order to know that there is no greatest number?

I believe we ought to say that Quine’s (2) is really shorthand for:

(3) Necessarily (∃x)(x is a number) & (x is greater than 7)

Or does this commit us to the existence of some number? We could rephrase it, then (and I’ll use English for simplicity):

(4) Necessarily, if some number exists, there’s another one that is greater.

This preserves the analyticity we desire: Granted a number – and what “number” means – we know it can’t be the greatest number.

But coming back now to tautology, if I write “x is a number” and then write “There is a number greater than x”, have I written a tautology? Are the logical constants alone what make the statements tautologous, regardless of what we plug in? I don’t think so. We need “number” to have attributes, one of which is “always exceeded” or “cannot be highest” or some such. The logical form alone can’t give us this. So “greaterness” is not about “7”, as Quine says, but it is about “number”. You can’t understand “number” without knowing what to do with “greaterness”. Is this analytic/definitional necessity?

Notice that this is not at all the same thing as saying, "You can't understand 'water' without knowing that water is composed of H20". Necessity, as Kripke shows us, may be a feature of either analytic or synthetic statements. So what gives "number" its peculiar type of analyticity? If statements like (3) are not true by tautology, but nor is math empirical . . . what's the best account? Would we be better off, for instance, with an argument that shows that any number x can't be the greatest number because there is no such thing?

Best wishes to you, @fdrake! Your support and interest meant a lot to me.

Relating this to the OP, accepting (3) rather than (4) seems to be claiming that Pat is mistaken as to her account of her own mental life. I doubt such a move can be justified. — Banno

I don't want to keep this going unnecessarily, but it's worth pointing out that, in other contexts, it's perfectly ordinary to question someone's account of their mental life. We question motivations, refer to unconscious processes, interrogate "forgotten" memories, etc., all in the belief that we are frequently mistaken in our account of our mental life.

Good thoughts from all, thanks.

I guess he thinks <p>. — Wayfarer

:lol: And I do it self-consciously!

What have you decided concerning the OP? — Banno

Looking back at the OP, I'm struck by how modest its scope was intended to be. I was, and am, quite unequipped to teach anything about Rodl, and am still working my way through his remarkable book. My interest in the OP was about the "I think" in general, and whether a "common sense" report such as Pat's has to be accepted at face value. My responses 1 - 3 were intended to be possible disagreements with an empirical or experience-based understanding of what the "I think" is supposed to represent.

So on reflection, I have two main conclusions. First, that the time spent on the thread in attempts to clarify terminology were essential, and barely touched some of what is needed when we use words like "think" or "accompany" or "self-conscious". (Does the "I think" accompany thought the way a nanny accompanies a pram?). Second, that response #3 comes closest to my own view. Speaking to Pat, I would agree with her about her experience, and say something like, "So we see that either the 'I think' is a conspiracy of Kantians and phenomenologists, or it has to be an unexperienced condition of thought. You may well decide that the former is true, and there is no purpose to positing an 'I think'. But if you're willing to entertain the idea that there's something to it, then it must function for us similarly to space and time in other types of cognition."

OK, and one further semi-conclusion. Rodl wants to argue for some significant aspects of self-consciousness that he believes are built in to the "I think". I'm not (yet) convinced this is necessary. I believe thought is necessarily first-personal, but to say, as in response #2, that "the 'I think' is an experience of self-consciousness" seems wrong on two counts: the "I think" is not an experience at all (Rodl would agree), and self-consciousness is being asked to stretch itself into something constitutive of objectivity. Let me quote @Wayfarer's astute summary on this:

To make a judgement is implicitly to state 'I think that <p>' or 'I believe that <p>' In this sense, judgement is itself not one perspective among many but the condition for the possibility of any perspective.

To deny that judgment is self-conscious would involve making a judgment—and thus reaffirming what you are trying to deny. This makes the self-consciousness of judgment something that cannot be opposed or rejected. — Wayfarer

This seems to me a bridge too far. I can accept the first paragraph: In an important sense, judgment is not like other "possible perspectives." But the second paragraph is question-begging: It only describes a contradiction if you already posit that a judgment must be self-conscious. Perhaps more importantly, we want self-consciousness to be interesting, to be about something that is worth pondering and exploring. This isn't it. But again, the debates re Rodl can go on and on, while the OP was aiming at much smaller fry.

Do you have the actual hard copy? — Banno

Well, a paperback reprint. But it is signed by WV Quine as well.

This not by way of an argument but an outline. — Banno

Understood. It'll be fun to look it over and then read some Kripke, as you suggest. I never took Kripke to be talking about essences per se; if I use the rigid designator 'that apple' I am certainly not claiming to reveal anything ontologically important about it. But it does get complicated with names, and it's fair to ask whether Kripke isn't backing into a doctrine about essences when it comes to possible-world semantics. Anyway, I'll review.

OK. (My copy has an inscription from WVQ's son to his teacher which reads, "Miss Ellis -- These essays are of a kind I never had to write for you and in fact they are by a different Quine. The author is my father. Douglas B. Quine, '64". Wonder what Miss Ellis made of it . . . )

It might be worth taking a close look at Reference and Modality — Banno

Do you mean the essay in From a Logical Point of View?

Sorry, just catching up with this. Re Quine: That suggests a possible difference between the structure of definitional and logical truths. For as we know, Quine's issue about synonymy doesn't apply to logical truths. People tend to forget this and think that Quine denied any analyticity at all, but he explicitly makes this distinction.

I think it's both interesting and significant that there are things we can know a priori. Obviously not so much in such jejune cases as John's marital status. — Wayfarer

What is it exactly that we are supposed to know a priori, in this case? That “bachelor” means “unmarried male”? But that is not a priori at all – it’s a fact about language and the world that we have to learn. In John’s case, we’re using “a priori” as a rather confusing substitute for “known ahead of time” or “known as a background belief” or something similar. Perhaps that’s why it looks jejune: It doesn’t really touch the issue of what genuine a priori knowledge might consist of.

Is it a tautology, though? If Wittgenstein (via @Banno) is right, then no, it’s not even a tautology. It doesn’t follow the form of “Either p or ~p”. It isn’t “self-evident.” It does “tell us something about the world,” both the world of language and the world of logic, of what can now be extensionally substituted.

An interesting question is, what makes logical truths (appear to be) self-evident, whereas definitional truths must be learned? And the perennial favorite: Self-evident to whom?

The notion that there are final answers to some central issues is in and of itself a central issue. — Arne

This is very well put, and a good response to some of your thoughts, @LaymanThinker. Note that @Arne isn't scoffing at the idea of "final answers," but nor is he/she claiming to know any. Whether they exist, and how we might know them, is one of the very questions to which we don't have a final answer. Welcome to philosophy as self-reflexivity!

Good, and let's remind ourselves what Rodl means by "validity": He's not saying that "I judge p to be true" means that it must be true. We can certainly be mistaken in our judgments. He means, "If it is true, then it is valid to so judge."

"Judgment is self-consciously and objectively valid." [This] locution is not meant to convey -- absurdly -- that judgment as such is valid. It describes the form of validity that belongs to a judgment. . . . And its validity is objective: the measure of its validity does not involve the subject of the judgment. — Rodl, 5

Now take it a step further and substitute "Pat" for "Quentin" in "Quentin judges that 'Pat thinks the oak is shedding its leaves.'" This would give us "Pat judges that he himself thinks the oak is shedding its leaves." So, is it still the case that the truth or falsity of the content ("the oak is shedding its leaves") is immaterial to the form of judgment? I believe so. It's a sort of ugly recursion, but the form does seem the same. Pat could in theory keep himself neutral on the accuracy of his own thought about the tree.

That is, putting "I think..." in front of each proposition buggers extensionality. — Banno

Yes! And well explained. I think I understand the Fregean fix as well -- "the scope of the "⊢" is the whole argument." If you don't mind, could you fit the terms "I think 'grass is green'" into the Fregean a/b/a schematic you gave us? I want to be sure.

We can entertain a proposition without thereby accepting, believing, or assenting to it. — banno

OK, don't hate me, but Rodl would ask, "What is this activity you are calling 'to entertain'? Is it the same thing as 'to think'? Not 'to think' in the sense of 'judge', presumably; that's the very point you want to deny. So it must be 'to think' in the sense of 'to have a thought' -- but what is that? Everyone believes it must be obvious what 'to have a thought' means, but I find myself perplexed when I try to say more about it."

Both the "I" and the "it" do not refer to anything in particular. — Janus

Could you say more? The "I" refers to the thinker/speaker, and I'm not sure which "it" you mean. Sorry, I'm probably missing your point.

q = "Grass is green"
p = "I think q" = "I think 'grass is green'"

This is the problematic structure I was referring to. How should we talk about the force and the content of p? Is "I" the subject (or "argument," in Frege's terms) of p? We need a workaround, and (at least) one is available, but before we consider how this problem is usually resolved, I was trying to get clear about what's wrong.

@Banno @Janus Have to leave now -- rats. I'll look forward to seeing where y'all take this.

What is the logical status of a judgement or proposition apart from its being made or beleived by anyone? If anything, it would be merely content, no? — Janus

That's a great way of putting one of Rodl's puzzles. He challenges us, "What is 'merely content'? What can that mean?"

I would have thought that the force/ content distinction reinforces the role of the "first person" — Janus

Yes, in the way you describe, but look what happens when the proposition itself -- p is "I think q". How do we accommodate this?

Well, I was trying to go a little slower. Ignore Rodl's possible solution. Is there something that needs solving about the 1st person in order to keep propositional logic workable?

I am missing something here, but what? — Banno

I'm not sure, but following along in this thread, I believe what separates the Rodl-deniers from the Rodl-curious (I don't think we have any committed Rodelians, certainly not me) is whether or not they can see a problem about p. I do see the problem Rodl (and Kimhi) see. How can there be objective content that is also thought? This is not a problem in logic, it's an ancient epistemological puzzle. It's the "view from nowhere" problem, which is why Rodl spends so much time on Nagel. Rodl's concerns about p are a relatively new and often infuriating way of going at this, but I don't think we can just say he's confused.

Can I ask, if a bright child asked you, "What do philosophers mean when they talk about p?" how you would answer? In the simplest terms, what do you think p is meant to signify?

Sorry, which bit? There are so many "I thinks" here!

Let me ask you both, then, what you make of this:

The [force-content] distinction is introduced as a matter of course; the student is trained not to be tricked by the act-object ambiguity. But there is an awareness that the force-content distinction and the doctrine of propositions have difficulty accommodating 1st-person thought: I ____. — Rodl, 22

Rodl goes on to argue that the 1st person must be understood as self-conscious, but let's not worry about that right now. @Banno, I think you've noted before that we need to do some tinkering within Fregean logic to accommodate the 1st person. Would you agree with Rodl that, without such tinkering, there is indeed a difficulty presented for the "doctrine of propositions"?

What I said should be read as a general critique of some forms of phenomenological method. — Banno

OK.

In so far as Rödl is dependent on such a method his argument doesn't hold unless one is willing to insist that Pat is wrong in her account of her own mental life. Which is what Rödl appears to be insisting on in the section referred to by ↪Wayfarer. — Banno

I'd need to see what @Wayfarer comes up with here. I don't recall Rodl saying this. But way back in the OP, that was my possible response #2 to Pat:

"The “I think” is an experience of self-consciousness, and requires self-consciousness. When you say you are “not aware of it,” you are mistaken. But you can learn to identify the experience, and thus understand that you have been aware of it all along."

I don't think it's a good response, but not because it would be impossible for a person to be wrong about their mental life. I think it's misguided because Rodl's thesis about the "I think" doesn't describe a mental event at all. Thus, response #3:

"The “I think” is not experienced. It is a condition of thought, a form of thought, in the same way that space and time are conditions of cognition. Self-consciousness, in Rödl’s sense, is built in to every thought, but not as a content that must be experienced."

This is correct according to Rodl, I believe. What we've been chasing up and down the yard these 20-odd pages is whether this is a coherent thing to say.

An ingenious idea for "translating away" the 1st person. I think I know what Rodl might say, though: Pat is still performing an act of judging, regardless of whether the object-language sentence concerns herself or a sentence-token. "A declarative sentence" can't refer to anything at all, or judge anything; only a person (or thought) can do that, he would maintain. It's a variation on his skepticism about p -- "It stands ready quietly, unobtrusively, to assure us that we know what we are talking about. . . . If only we understood the letter p, the whole world would open up to us." (55)

But I disagree about redundancy. — bongo fury

Me too.

If someone disagrees with this, if they perhaps insist that their thought of judging that things are so just is judging that things are so...

What are we to do? How are we to settle such an issue? Are we to say they are mistaken? Wrong? Misunderstanding the issue? — Banno

Why presume there is even some fact of the matter? — Banno

First, note that Rodl does disagree with this. The quote is his version of what an opponent of his views might say. His own view is much closer to your "judging that things are so just is judging that things are so."

But your question about how to settle a disagreement here is one of my favorite meta-philosophical problems. Philosophy always seeks to understand itself, to know its own nature, to comprehend what it is capable of. The question of resolving a philosophical issue is central to one's conception of how philosophy can proceed. What sorts of resolutions can philosophy accomplish, in a case like this? Is somebody right? If we trace the disagreement back to a divergence in some fundamental premises, what do we do next?

Sorry for the mini-essay, but it's a prologue to replying that it's a lot easier to say what wouldn't settle the issue. I don't think an appeal to differing personal experiences will do it; Rodl wants to say something about all thought. More broadly, I don't think there's any empirical resolution; the issue is metaphysical. Whether there is, then, no "fact of the matter" will depend on how you feel about metaphysics.

To conclude with something optimistic: You know how, when something goes wrong with some electrical or digital set-up, 9 times out of 10 the problem is something silly and hardware-related, like forgetting to attach a cable? And you've been sitting there trying to understand the software and figure out what you're doing wrong? Similarly, I find that more often than not a philosophical disagreement can be, if not resolved, at least better understood by assuming the problem is a terminological dispute. That's part of why I've been going at this thought1/thought2 business so heavily.