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 . . . )

The more I work with this, the more I'm realizing that the idea of "accompanying" a thought can be given so many interpretations that I wonder if it's even helpful.
— J

Perhaps you're over-thinking it. Rödl's point is that the truth of propositions can't be 'mind-independent' in the way that Frege's objectivism insists it must be. — Wayfarer

This is true. But he's also laying out a thesis about self-consciousness, and about why objectivity must be self-conscious, aware of itself as objective. This is where an innocent verb like "accompany" can become complicated. I'm still working to understand the nature of the accompaniment Rodl has in mind. Is it structural or experiential? Is it a thought like any other thought? etc.

I can't help but think that book you once mentioned, Bernstein's 'Beyond Objectivism and Relativism', might also be relevant to this argument. — Wayfarer

It is, but somewhat at a tangent. Bernstein's approach, through Gadamer, is hermeneutic. He's not focused on the logical/psychological structure of thought, a la Rodl and Kimhi, but more on the challenges to objectivity posed by the thesis that we have to draw a line between what is "out there" and our own ability to know it -- "Cartesian anxiety" is his term for this. There's a PhD dissertation for you -- connect Rodl and Gadamer!

What?? Not ready to declare total understanding of all things yet?!?

:rofl: — Patterner

Fortunately not a requirement! Although to listen to some people on TPF, you'd think it was a requirement, and anyone who isn't quite sure what they think, and pursues possible lines of inquiry, is perceived as "refusing to take a position" or "arguing sophistically" or something like that.

That would have been my answer as well. "Convey," of course, is equivocal, but I took Wayfarer to be referring to an actual "feel," not merely the report that one was experienced. The latter can be conveyed, in a sense, without remainder, but not the former. In any case, I'm not sure Rodl is limiting himself to such cases.

This means that while we can refer to, or quote, a first-person statement like “my hand hurts,” we cannot adequately convey the subjective experience it conveys in a third-person proposition. — Wayfarer

This is a generous, sense-making interpretation, but I'm not sure Rodl is really talking about subjective experiences like pain, for instance. I think he's saying, more radically, that any 1st person statement resists translation in the ways we're used to, such as quoting. And his reasons for thinking this -- one of which you gave -- are still unclear to me. More on this another time . . .

So "The tree is dropping leaves" is a thought, but what about that the tree is dropping leaves? I gather that, being an idealist, Rödl wants that to be a thought too. That strikes me as somewhat odd. — Banno

Just to be clear, would the full thought you're referring to, which I bolded, be "I think that the tree is dropping leaves"?

Did you mean a type of evidence of self-awareness or self-consciousness? Or did you really mean a type of self-awareness or self-consciousness? — Patterner

I think either interpretation could make sense, but the "hardcore proponents" a la Rodl probably mean the latter: Some actual self-consciousness is meant to accompany the thought of p. As opposed to a "soft proponent" like Descartes, who would presumably say merely that thinking p provides evidence that I must be conscious, and aware of being so.

I don't yet know what I believe about all this myself -- still locating the pieces on the board. (My own model might as well be, "I think p ...but slowly." :smile: ) So, sorry if I sound like I'm waffling.

Makes sense. The more I work with this, the more I'm realizing that the idea of "accompanying" a thought can be given so many interpretations that I wonder if it's even helpful.

Frege believes that force is outside content, such that "I think" is outside "p". This means that "p" doesn't require "I think".

Rodl believes that force is inside content, such that "I think" is inside "p", meaning that "p" is "I think". — RussellA

This is what a lot of the controversy on TPF has been about -- whether it's proper to consider merely thinking p as giving it some kind of force. Frege did indeed believe that force is separable from content, but he probably wouldn't agree that therefore you have to separate "I think" from "p" -- because he didn't believe "I think" gives "p" any force at all. Unless we're using "think" in that ambiguous way that can also mean "aver" or "believe".

Rather, I'm working toward understanding what we need to refer to in order to resolve a disagreement about what I'll call "essentiality" (or perhaps you have a term you prefer).

Well, given we agree that there are such things as tigers, stars, and daffodils, it would be whatever makes those things the sort of thing they are and not anything else. — Count Timothy von Icarus

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"?

Is that about how you see it? (I do too.)

Not really familiar with "choiceworthy." Is that a synonym for "desirable"?

Again, the meta-ethical dispute seems a long way off from Quine and reference, which was what piqued my interest.

OK, thanks for explaining.

Can you give examples of philosophers who don't think goodness has anything to do with desirability? — Count Timothy von Icarus

On my understanding, the Kantian deontological approach is not about goodness as desirability. It is about goodness as following the dictates of practical reason. A person who does this may be called good, though as you know Kant focused more on "right" as the key ethical term.

Now of course you can reply, "But isn't following the dictates of practical reason desirable?" or "Shouldn't we desire to be good in this way?" But that cannot represent the moral motive, as Kant sees it. To insist on desirability here is simply to misunderstand or disregard what Kant is arguing. For him, it's all about what is right, not what is desirable. Whether I find the good desirable is neither here nor there.

This is a huge topic. Do we really want to pursue it here?

How would they resolve this?

By considering what tigers are. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure. But please be patient with me and describe the process a little bit. Let me show you where I'm heading: It's got nothing to do with disagreement = no fact of the matter. Only a skeptic or a sophist would say there's no way to decide what a tiger is. Rather, I'm working toward understanding what we need to refer to in order to resolve a disagreement about what I'll call "essentiality" (or perhaps you have a term you prefer). And this in turn will set up, I hope, the problem of how this transfers over to philosophical disagreement about words. It's all in aid of clarifying the very important distinction you brought up between defining a word and "defining" an object. (Though I will also argue that we should drop that latter usage on grounds of awkwardness and ambiguity.)

If you find this tedious, just say so. I like it very much as a philosophical process of inquiry, but I know it's not for everyone . . . very slow-moving.

I differentiated different kinds of thoughts, in regards to baseball. What is the significance of it all? Is this a first step toward something? — Patterner

Hopefully. The OP was examining a common but still controversial claim -- that when we think, there is some accompanying "I think" that characterizes the act of thinking, and which according to some is also a type of self-awareness or self-consciousness. In order to give this proper consideration, it seems we have to do a lot of discriminating and disambiguating around "think" and "thought." I thought your post about baseball was very useful in that regard.

I for one would like to understand this issue better. I guess that's the "something" toward which I'm heading. Its significance might be to give me a better self-understanding, a clearer feel for what being me in the world actually is, thought I don't mind admitting that I find the topic interesting in its own right, regardless of any further insights.

I appreciate this thread as well as the general tone within it. Well done! I would not want to dampen it, and so I will not. Better to keep my piece for another time.

Cheers! — creativesoul

And cheers to you. I certainly like it when a thread's tone is inquisitive rather than dismissive or dogmatic. I'll watch for an OP from you . . .

the disagreement is that both parties agree that, for example, 'good' = the desirable, — Leontiskos

But they don't. That's the whole problem.

How would we know the correct definition of "tiger"? — J

Presumably if it specifies the things in virtue of which all tigers are tigers, while not having anything that isn't a tiger fall under the definition. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sounds reasonable. Now suppose there was a disagreement about the first part. A and B offer different specifications of what the essential tiger qualities are. How would they resolve this?

Again, I know this sounds a little baby-stepping, but if you'll indulge me? I just want to lay out the reasoning as simply as possible, with your help.

An utterance does occur at at a time and place. Indeed, you seem here to run two ideas together - the first, rejecting the notion that a thought occurs in a particular language, the second, accepting that a thought occurs at a particular time. — Banno

Yes, I'm trying to develop a sort of checklist of what has to constitute an utterance and a "thought utterance" (thought1). For a (spoken) utterance, we want to say that it consists of a particular piece of language, spoken at a particular time and place. But do we want to say this for a thought1? I was proposing that the "time and place" criterion is necessary, but found myself uneasy about the "particular piece of language" one.

Possibly I wasn't clear about the reasons for my unease. It's mostly about common usage -- with the caveat that there isn't much common usage to call upon here, as "quoting thoughts" doesn't come up too often. My own experience of thinking suggests that language is supererogatory to thought. Countless times I've had a fully formed thought, and even a response to said thought, occur much more quickly than it could be "said" or comprehended in language. So would we want to allow that a thought1 -- the "utterance" of a thought -- could transcend a particular piece of language? Or is such a transcendence the very thing that makes it a thought2 -- a piece of content that can be the same from mind to mind, time to time?

I'm going to leave that alone for now, as I'm not sure how much depends on a decision.

And you seem to fluctuate between thought2 as "I think that the tree is an oak" and "The tree is an oak". From what Pat said, don't you need it to be the latter? — Banno

My concept of a thought2 is of a proposition -- "The tree is an oak." So yes, Pat and I are talking about the latter.

But on that account, Rödl is on the face of it mistaken, since these two sentences are about quite different things. — Banno

That would be true if the two sentences are meant to occur in two thoughts, two thought1s. But Rodl tells us this is not what he means: “This cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p.” If that is the case, it must also be the case that there aren't two thoughts. At least that's how I read Rodl. I suppose one could argue that "one act of thinking" could be imagined as including "two things" being thought, and that this is what Rodl denies. But I think he's saying something simpler: His claim about the "I think" is that it "accompanies" all thoughts in the sense of structuring them or constituting the conditions for their occurrence. I believe I mentioned somewhere earlier that the very term "the I think" may be unfortunate, as it suggests an activity on a par with regular thinking*. A lot of the back-and-forth on this thread is trying to understand what the nature of this "I think" could be . . . or is it just neo-Kantian wordplay?

*And a reminder here that we've noticed how Rodl probably has only propositional, discursive thinking in mind in this essay.

To your last point: yes, I think it is just a question of style. Rodl expressed himself sloppily, and your interpretation is correct. I think that’s what he would have wanted to say.

↪J

How would we know when one was correct?

Well, suppose someone gave a definition of "tiger" as: "a large purple fish with green leaves, a tap root, and horns." Clearly, this is off the mark and we can do better or worse (although in this case, not much worse). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good. But putting the question in terms of "correct" rather than "incorrect" has a point, so if you wouldn't mind playing interlocutor with me, I'll ask again: How would we know the correct definition of "tiger"? This is going somewhere if you'll bear with me!