Well, that looks like saying, "Maybe the translator mistranslated 'my'. Maybe it's not possessive after all." But this looks very ad hoc. It's logically possible that there is some sort of mistranslation or lossy translation, but until we have independent reasons to believe such a thing, it can't function as a plausible claim. — Leontiskos

Just quickly on this one, heading out the door. I didn't mean it was a mistranslation of the possessive. I meant that different languages (and different eras) have different senses of what connotes "possession," what sorts of things can be mine. I think this is relevant in a case like this, where the issue of the subjectivity (the my-ness) of thought is the very question. Sorry if I confused you.

Who held such a position though? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Plato, for one. When Socrates questions Euthyphro about the meaning of "piety," they are both assuming that there is a word, eusebeia, that corresponds correctly with a certain content or concept. Since they can't look it up in a dictionary and get a definition, they try out various possible concepts that the word might correspond to. So what is this about? Is it about conceptual investigation? Or is it about the meaning of a word? Would Plato be open to the idea that eusebeia is not wedded to a particular concept?

It's obvious that different peoples use different words for different things and that anything can be said in many ways. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But think about this re Socrates. I believe he'd dispute it vigorously. Or at best he'd say, "Yes, this is no doubt true about what people do, but they shouldn't. Words mean one thing and not another. Hence my quest to understand the meaning of troublesome words like piety and justice -- surely someone can tell me what they mean?"

(In other words, don't take Quine literally as writing about translation problems only between languages.
This is about the word/concept relation generally.)

I also take MacIntyre's idea that we've lost the meaning of classical terms to exemplify this. The assumption seems to be a kind of "one word, one meaning" theory, so that if A comes along and says,"I'd like to use 'virtue' and 'essence' in the following ways" (giving cogent reasons, we'll assume), B replies, "No, you can't, for that is not what 'virtue' and 'essence' mean."

But it's the general tendency I'm more concerned about, and I think Quine was concerned about too. We see it here on TPF. People will quote dictionary definitions or squibs from SEP as if these could lock down the connection between word and concept. There are of course many words you can do that with, but precious few, I'd argue, in philosophy. "Gavagai" means "rabbit"? Fine, but does "justice" mean dikaiosyne? Does "justice" pick out the same things for us that dikaiosyne picked out for Plato? How do we tell? And does it matter as much as we might think it does? Isn't the conceptual map itself more important than the shifting labels?

I want to respond to a couple more points you raised but I'm out of time right now . . . later!

I haven't gotten to 9.3 yet! (I read philosophy really slowly.). I'll try to remember to come back to your post when I have.

Ah, ambiguity!

Frege argues that thought2 can exist in the absence of thought1. The content of a thought can be objective, independent and accessible to any rational being.

Rodl argues that thought2 cannot exist in the absence of thought1. In opposition to Frege's anti-psychologism, this leaves no space for the psychological concept of judgement. — RussellA

Good.

When I think that the oak tree is shedding its leaves, I know that this is my thought rather than Pat's thought, for example. I am conscious that this is my thought.

To know something means consciously knowing something — RussellA

This is tricky. Using my terms, "When I think1 that 'the oak tree is shedding its leaves', I know that this is my thought1 rather than Pat's thought1, for example. I am conscious that this is my thought1."

So far, so good. But what do we do about "To know something means consciously knowing something"? Which sense(s) of "thought" is being appealed to here?

Again, really appreciate your précis. A few thoughts:

Judgment is a fundamental activity of thought—when we make a judgment, we assert something about the world, such as "the sky is blue." Rödl is interested in the self-consciousness inherent in judgment: the way in which, whenever we make a judgment, we implicitly understand what it means to judge. This self-consciousness isn't an explicit, theoretical knowledge but an implicit, practical understanding embedded in the act of judging itself — Wayfarer

Two important points here: First, as @Banno and others have noted, Rodl is clearly using "thought" in a way that excludes many perfectly ordinary examples of thoughts: memories, questions, musings, etc. Second, we mustn't understand "self-consciousness" as explicit, a "further thought."

The validity of judgment, then, not only is objective; it is also self-conscious' — Wayfarer

This is where he winds up, but the argument is complicated. I read him as saying that we couldn't have a conception of "objective" that was not self-conscious. He brings in Nagel here to support this idea. Nagel says that "we can't understand thought from the outside." For Nagel, the very concepts of objectivity and validity can only be maintained within thought (or within the bounds of reason); any attempt to understand them (or refute them) from a 3rd person view will fail. I'm not totally comfortable with whether Rodl can use Nagel's point here, but it's interesting to consider.

His task is not to discover something new but to clarify and express the implicit understanding that makes judgment possible — Wayfarer

Yes. We should resist all impulses to read Rodl as talking about "layers of thought" or "thoughts about thoughts." Implicit understanding is key. This is oddly transcendental -- a point about what is constitutive of thought -- another link he has with Kant.

Rödl attempts to show this, by saying we’re not being told anything we don’t “always already know”, but of course, we don’t always already know that, e.g., “I think” must accompany all my thoughts — Mww

Yeah, I'm not happy with that either. But I don't like that move in general -- too gnostic for my tastes.

An example of a real distinction would be the Platonic model where there are real "Fregian" propositions and there are real temporal acts in which we leverage those propositions, such that there is a real distinction between thought1 and thought2 (i.e. a distinction in reality). An example of a mental distinction would be a model where there is only one (temporal) thought under two different guises; thought1 and thought2 can be distinguished mentally but these notions do not correspond to separate realities. — Leontiskos

Hmm. I don't know how to answer this without pulling in a lot of metaphysical commitments -- which I'd rather not do because I think the thought1/thought2 distinction is important and relevant no matter whether one thinks it's "real" or "mental," in your terminology. Sorry to lob this back to you again, but if you could say a little more about what might hinge on the choice of "real" vs. "mental," I might have a better sense of what we ought to say about that.

there is a strong way in which thought1 resembles force and thought2 resembles content. — Leontiskos

Yes, there is, and unless we want to go back to Kimhi's arguments, we should probably resist this. Where we stand in the discussion right now ("we" meaning all on this thread), let's go ahead and let thought1 be understood as unasserted, without force, "merely thought". We may have to change our minds at some future point.

What I am suggesting is that no matter how we rearrange the various senses of thought1/thought2, we won't get an answer to the self-consciousness question. This is because thought1 (event) and thought2 (Fregian proposition) do not possess the qualities necessary to generate conclusions about self-consciousness. — Leontiskos

That may be true, but I was suggesting earlier that we don't have to understand "self-consciousness" as a new thought. You may be right that tinkering with the targeted sentence won't produce any insight, but I think it might. I can take a shot at it if you'd rather not.

It just feels very odd that this is what we mean by "thoughts" in that second sense. Note that for Kant:

The I think must be able to accompany all my representations;
— Kant, CPR, B131-133 (pp. 246-7)

..There is a possessive ("my"). A Fregian proposition is not possessed, being "timeless, unspecific, 'the same' no matter who thinks it, or when." When we talk about "my representations" or "my thoughts" we seem to be talking about things that are temporal, specific, appropriated by a subject, etc. This makes a lot of sense given that Kant is apparently saying that the I think (which involves self-consciousness) accompanies some thoughts1 but not others. — Leontiskos

Good questions. I know I often blame translation for difficulties with Kant, and here again I'm tempted to say, "How would a German speaker of Kant's era understand 'my representations' or 'my thoughts'?" Would that possessive be taken to refer to a mental event Kant is undergoing, or would it be understood as pointing to the content? I'm not clear how the kinds of distinctions we're discussing here would have been conceptualized by Kant and his readers. Honestly not sure.

Your own grasp of the intelligibility of things and understanding of what it is to be human. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Our eyes are not on our backs, and so we'd have no idea what we are identifying. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you're pointing to there being limit-cases in all of this, which is fine. Neither I nor (I believe) Quine is trying to say that translation is impossible or even, in most cases, especially problematic. Rather, we're trying to shake up a very common assumption among philosophers, which is that there is some sort of binding action (I called it "metaphysical Superglue" elsewhere) that makes a word inseparable from its object or meaning or concept -- take your pick of these imprecise terms. ("Cannot be grounded in any infallible a priori knowledge," in the words of the SEP article.) One of the pernicious effects of this belief is that, if someone wants to argue for a conceptual change, they're told they can't because "that's not what the word means."

Let's assume for the sake of argument an older, realist perspective. Things have essences. Our senses grasp the quiddity of things. — Count Timothy von Icarus

OK, for the sake of this argument, that would mean that a rabbit has an essence, a quiddity, that the linguist grasps, right? And on some version of charity, he's going to attribute that same grasping of essence to the native. To me, all this reveals is that "gavagai = rabbit" is a likely guess, because we do indeed associate "thingness" or quiddity with objects that are spatially distinct from their surroundings (and in the case of the rabbit, it can also move about, a further point of distinction). Does this help us understand the relation of word and object, which I believe is Quine's point with "gavagai"? Not a rhetorical question -- you may well be seeing something here that I'm not.

There is a sort of parallel between this and what Rodl is saying about not removing the thinker from thoughts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There may well be. Rodl devotes an entire chapter to discussing Nagel's "view from nowhere," and one of his criticisms is this problem of the "loss of the viewer" -- what it does to 1st person propositions.

"Fregian proposition". What's that? — Banno

The basic drift is that formal ideas - arithmetical proofs for instance - are true regardless of being judged so by anybody. They are in the 'third realm' of timeless truths which exist just so, awaiting discovery. It is at the nub of the argument. — Wayfarer

Yes, that's what I meant. I phrased it that way, in the context of disambiguating "thought," because of this from "Sense and Reference":

[Thought is] objective content that is capable of being the shared property of many. — Frege, 32n

Julian Roberts points out that "thought," therefore, is directly congruent with "sense," in Frege's usage.

All of this just goes to further indicate what a terrible time the word "thought" gives us, when we try to understand how it gets used. I'm hoping my thought1 and thought2 will be helpful; they don't by any means exhaust the field.

Anyhow, I tend to agree with Kierkegaard that the more common risk in Hegelianism (if not present for Hegel himself, properly understood) is not the elevation of the self and of human particularity/authenticity, but of washing it out and ignoring it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, especially if Hegelianism is reduced (as it apparently was when Kierkegaard was writing) to a weird version of scientism, and a complete collapse of the subject/object distinction.

These notes are terrific, thank you. I'm going to read them more carefully and see if I can anything to supplement. But it's great to have someone else doing a close reading.

Well, I hope my post above offers another possibility. Yes, to think is to have a thought, big deal. But if we distinguish the senses of think1 and think2, we're also saying that no proposition can appear out of mid-air, so to speak. It has to be thought1. So how do we bridge the gap between this apparently subjective/idealist genesis of p, and its claim to objectivity? This is a lot of what concerns Rodl.

So the I think = thought1? Such that Rodl's claim is, "The temporal event of thinking accompanies all our [Fregian propositions]." — Leontiskos

Yes, that's my hypothesis.

If the I think means only a temporal event of thinking, then what does it have to do with self-consciousness? What does it have to do with the self-reflective "I think"? — Leontiskos

Right, that's the natural next question. This is where Rodl's idealism comes in. He believes there's a great deal more to be said about the structure of thought1, the "I think". I'm still working on finding a clear and concise way of articulating his ideas here. The key, I'm pretty sure, is the connection he wants to draw between self-consciousness and how thought can be also objective. But since that's the very title of the book, it's big, and I'm not going to pretend I've grasped it yet. To be continued.

My main distinction here (which I do think Popper would uphold) is between an event in time and the idea of a proposition’s being timeless, unspecific, “the same” no matter who thinks it, or when.
— J

Okay, but is this a real distinction or a mental distinction? — Leontiskos

I don't think I understand this question. Could you say more?

The important insight is that, when someone argues that “the I think accompanies all our thoughts,” they are using both senses in the same sentence. We should translate this sentence as “When I think p (thought2), I must also think: ‛p’ (thought1).” Put this way, it shouldn’t even be controversial. You can’t propose or entertain or contemplate a proposition without also thinking1 it.
— J

This seems to go back to <what I said to javra>. — Leontiskos

which was:

Thinking p requires thinking p. No one disputes this. The question of the OP is whether thinking p requires self-consciously thinking p; whether it requires thinking "I think p." — Leontiskos

I believe we can now see that there are subtleties and distinctions we need to make here. On the hypothesis of there being these two construals of "think/thought," the first quoted statement would be "Thinking2 p requires thinking1 p." But was your statement "No one disputes this" based on the observation that this is a pointless tautology, or were you aware of the different senses of "thinking p"? It reads to me like you were indeed making that distinction, and going on to raise the question of self-consciousness. But now what we must ask is, How would you divvy up the "thinks" in the next statement? The relevant bit is "whether thinking p requires self-consciously thinking p; whether it requires thinking "I think p". Rather than guessing, I'll just toss it to you. How would you disambiguate the various "thinking/thinks" here?

That is, the plural "thoughts" would capture two distinct Fregian propositions, but not the same Fregian proposition thought on two different days. — Leontiskos

Yes, that's right. Can you say more about why (with the necessary disambiguations) this is problematic? I may not be seeing your point.

This gets to both the questions I ended my earlier post with:

If “the I think accompanies all our thoughts” has been rendered uncontroversial, is it now also uninteresting, unimportant? This is a further question, which I’m continuing to reflect on. — J

Another further question is, How to understand all this in terms of self-consciousness? — J

To be continued.

Are these refinements to the use of "thought" and "think" discovered, or simply stipulated? — Banno

I hope they're discovered! Do they fit your own experience? I only mean to stipulate the terminology, or rather bemoan that we haven't got a better one.

So what is the mental content of "What sort of tree is that?" — Banno

Good. I'll work on that. Makes me wonder if Rodl is also limiting "all our thoughts" to propositional thoughts.

this content will be inseparable from the mental event — Leontiskos

There it is! -- "the I think accompanies all our thoughts2".

So what are the two different senses of "thought"? — Leontiskos

Fregean thought as "propositional content" versus thought as a current event, so to speak, something my mind thinks at time T1.

Giving examples still seems the best way for me to get it across:

Are you having a thought? Yes.
What is the thought of? p

Are you having a new thought (time has changed)? Yes.
What is the thought of? p

The content remains the same (the proposition, the Fregean thought) but these are clearly two distinct mental events. They could equally well happen to two separate people.

I'm saying that words are fundamentally scribbles and it is what we do with them that makes them into what we call words. — Harry Hindu

Ah, I think I'm understanding you better. So my question would be, Isn't language available to pre-literate people? Surely the words come first, and then, in most cases, a written language develops. Isn't your account reversing this to make the scribbles primary? We can't do anything with them unless they already represent words; it's not the doing that "makes them into what we call words."

Am I making too much of this? Maybe you just mean "sounds and/or scribbles".

OK, I see that. I agree, it's iffy. I think Rodl is probably denying the "two thoughts" interpretation.

I've realized how much of the difficulties with the "I think" hinge on the two senses of “think” (and “thought”) I discussed above (and elaborated upon by @Patterner in interesting ways).

To recap: a thought may be a mental event, which occurs to a particular person at a particular time. “I had the thought that . . .” “Right now I’m thinking whether . . .” “Hold that thought!” But a thought can also be construed as the content of said mental event, what the thought is about – this is Frege’s use of “thought” as “proposition”.

It would be very useful to have two different words for each of these two senses of “think/thought” but I don’t think coining a new terminology is the best way to go. Instead, we could indicate them by their syntax. The “mental event” sense of “think” could be shown as “I think: ‛p’ ”. The propositional sense could be shown as “I think that p” or just “I think p”. Or we can just attach numbers to discriminate them: thought1 vs. thought2, think1 vs. think2.

The important insight is that, when someone argues that “the I think accompanies all our thoughts,” they are using both senses in the same sentence. We should translate this sentence as “When I think p (thought2), I must also think: ‛p’ (thought1).” Put this way, it shouldn’t even be controversial. You can’t propose or entertain or contemplate a proposition without also thinking1 it.

This makes sense of several things Rodl talks about, though of course he is hardly the first to argue for the “I think”. He expresses the wish that we had a more accurate notation "that makes I think internal to p: we may form the letter p by writing, in the shape of a p, the words I think."

In other words, p (thought2) can be pictorialized as being constituted or given expression by a thought1. You need the thought1 to even be able to form a thought2. Or . . . “the I think accompanies all our thoughts2.”

The also elucidates the Rodelian theme of p as seemingly mysterious or unexamined. He says:

If only we understood the letter p, the whole world would open up to us — Rodl, 55

.

He’s being a little sarcastic, in my reading, but his meaning is clear: If we continue to allow p to float somewhere in the World 3 of abstracta, without acknowledging its dependence on thought1, we are going to get a lot of things wrong.

One clarification: It’s tempting to say that thought2 must be equivalent to “I judge p” and indeed I believe Rodl jumps to this too often and too quickly. But if “I judge” means “I believe to be the case”, then this is a further move, one that is not necessitated by either think1 or think2 -- at least if the force/content distinction is kept in place. I can think the propositional content p without judging that it is the case.

Another clarification: This discrimination between the senses of “think/thought” is similar but not quite identical to what Popper would say about his World 2 and World 3, as I suggested above. Popper seems to me to be unclear about whether a World 2 thought can have a propositional content, or whether it must be regarded strictly as a brain event. Whereas I want to say that “thought1” is not only something that happens with neurons, but also with what I’m calling a “mental event”: it happens not just in the brain but also in the mind. My main distinction here (which I do think Popper would uphold) is between an event in time and the idea of a proposition’s being timeless, unspecific, “the same” no matter who thinks it, or when.

If “the I think accompanies all our thoughts” has been rendered uncontroversial, is it now also uninteresting, unimportant? This is a further question, which I’m continuing to reflect on. Another further question is, How to understand all this in terms of self-consciousness?

But I have nowhere said that there are two thoughts — Leontiskos

Isn't that what you meant here (on Rodl's behalf, not your own)?:

So the claim of the OP by Rodl is <Every time p is thought, 'I think p' is thought> — Leontiskos

Sorry if I got you wrong. Maybe you thought I was attributing the thesis to you, rather than referring to your explication of Rodl.

Once we say "I think" has nothing to do with consciousness of thinking we have departed much too far from the meaning of words. — Leontiskos

I'm about to post something that may clarify this.

Thanks for this, very interesting. I especially appreciate:

I think Rödl is on much shakier ground though, because it's less obvious that this sort of self-reflection is either implied in all judgements, nor does it seem impossible in recursive judgements. — Count Timothy von Icarus

and

The idea that to "think p" is to judge p, and also to judge that one judges p, seems to court the reduction of thought to judgement — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm about to post something in the "p and I think p" thread that touches on the reduction of thought to judgment.

Mac users - if you go to Control Panel>Keyboard>Text Replacements, you can enter Rödl with the umlaut to replace every instance of the name typed without it. (And it will also work on your other iOS devices should you have any e.g. iPad, iPhone using same Apple ID.) — Wayfarer

Miraculous.

OK, that helps some.

So the claim of the OP by Rodl is <Every time p is thought, I think p is thought> — Leontiskos

Well, no. Rodl specifically says, "This cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p."

Again, as I understand it what is at stake is self-conscious thought, not conscious thought — Leontiskos

Sure, but again, Rodl is asking us not to assume that being self-conscious means having two simultaneous thoughts, as above. I raise the issue of un- or sub-conscious thoughts because understanding their role in mentation, if you countenance their existence, may help us understand what Rodl has in mind when he describes an item -- the "I think" -- which is clearly mental but just as clearly isn't present to consciousness.

I hate to say it, but a great deal of this comes down to how we want to use very ordinary words like "thought" and "accompany."

"I think" is a self-conscious, intentional act. — Leontiskos

See my comment in the previous post about the possibly unfortunate choice of this term by phenomenologists. Most of our uses of "I think" are indeed conscious and intentional. (Not sure if they're also self-conscious, but often enough, I suppose.) But "the I think" is, or may be, different. It's a highly technical usage that points to structure and transcendental conditions for thought, not just "some thought that comes along when we think anything."

We can say this, though: If "thought" is by (someone's) definition a phenomenon necessarily present to consciousness, then there is no "I think" that is also a thought. We've agreed that Pat is right about that -- no mysterious "thought of thinking" that accompanies our thoughts.

PS -- As the writer of the OP, I officially declare that we no longer have to use the umlaut when referring to Rodl. What a pain in the ass :wink: .

I hadn’t responded to this and similar points earlier because it seemed to be based on a misunderstanding and I wasn't sure how to clarify it. The "I think" is not supposed be some simultaneous, conscious "thinking about thought" or "thinking that I am now having thought X." (Maybe the term "the I think" is ill-chosen, since it can suggest that misapprehension.)

But now this occurs to me: Is it possible that you don’t countenance the idea of any thoughts that are not conscious? So therefore the “I think”, on that understanding, would be either present to consciousness or nonexistent? Or another possibility: You countenance the idea of various un- or subconscious processes that accompany thinking, but want to reserve the word “thought” for what happens consciously?

Is any of this close to how you see it?

Speaking as an Indirect Realist, the content of the sentence "I believe that the postbox is red" is "the postbox is red". — RussellA

So "I believe" wouldn't be a separate fact that could appear in a predication? Just asking . . . I think this is pretty close to Rödl, yes.

That might be satisfactory to Rödl as an idealist. I don't know his position on the physical world.

numbers, functions, and thought contents are independent of thinkers "in the same way" that physical objects are.

Just to note that "in the same way" could use a little work, even if physical objects are independent, pace Schopenhauer. Does Burge mean the "same way" in terms of the origins of this independence -- neither thoughts nor objects are mind-created -- or does he mean the "same way" that we relate to them in the world, regardless of the question of their origin?

I have never seen statements or propositions  in colons and quotes in logical WFF.  So, if you meant to just communicate what you thought to other folks, maybe it would be ok.  But if you were trying to make up philosophical statements for analysis and debates, then those writings wouldn't be accepted as logical statements.

They don't look WFF to start with, and you cannot use them in the proofs or axiomatization. Hence they wouldn't fit into P and I think P of the OP title. So, I wouldn't use them as philosophical statements or propositions for logical analysis or reasoning. — Corvus

Right, it's a puzzle knowing what to do with them. Rödl calls 1st person statements like these "a thorn in the flesh of the friends of propositions." Leontiskos and I posted about something similar in the "Question for Aristotelians" thread: et seq.

It looks clear if it were written in a message, diary or report of some sort. — Corvus

So, if you meant to just communicate what you thought to other folks, maybe it would be ok. — Corvus

Agreed. That was what I intended with my statement a), which I said was unproblematic. If I'm just mentioning a thought as something "I had" -- an event -- then its content doesn't affect the logical status of the report.

The recursive case is certainly an odd and rare kind of predication (and judgment). — Leontiskos

Rödl replies to this head-on in S-C & O. He says, of recursive, 1st person cases:

This may seem a limited failure of the force-content distinction. I think p cannot be a proposition because judgment is self-conscious. But this character of the act of judgment does not affect its object; that is a proposition all right. The force-content distinction is fine; it is just that we must not apply it to first-person thought of thought. There it breaks down on account of the peculiar character of thinking -- its self-conciousness. But this character of thinking leave untouched the nature of what is thought. — S-C & O, 20

Rödl goes on to argue that the problem can't be contained this way, that regardless of how "odd and rare" this sort of (attempted) predication is, it reveals problems that infect all attempts to apply the force-content distinction. That's a whole other topic, of course, but I just wanted to affirm that Rödl is well aware that one way out of this problem would be to mount a successful argument that there's something special about recursion.

When you are thinking, "water is H2O", or "the oak tree is shedding its leaves", what is it like for you? What form do these thoughts take in your mind? How do you know you are thinking these things? What exactly is present in your mind, and that you are pointing at when telling me what you are thinking, when thinking these things? — Harry Hindu

These are excellent questions. I believe it was Keynes who, when asked whether he thought in words or images, replied, "I think in thoughts." Is there such a thing? And what accounts for the (apparently) self-validating quality of the experience -- this ties to your question "How do you know you are thinking these things?"

For myself, I can only say that my experience of thinking is an inchoate mish-mash of words, images, sounds, and "thoughts" (which seem to go much faster than any of the others but which I find almost impossible to describe, other than to say they have "content," which isn't much help). Probably there are other modalities in the mix too.

Not to harp on "scribbles," but I think you mean the equivalent of what a piece of written-down language would look like to someone who didn't know that language? Is that about right?

Yes by all means. I PM'd you about format.

hardly the ideal summertime reading, as it is here. — Wayfarer

Oh stop! We're snowed in where I live.

So isn't Rödl arguing, on this basis, that you can't really show the mind-independent nature of metaphysical primitives in the absence of a mind, which can only be that of the knower of the proposition? — Wayfarer

I’m not sure. Do you mean that, because it would take a mind to demonstrate the mind-independent nature of metaphysical primitives, this represents a sort of contradiction? Or more like, Abstractions can't exist in the phenomenal world, and therefore anything we discover about them is a discovery about our world, the subjective and/or World 3 world? Or neither . . . Everything else you and Burge say about Frege seems correct, and definitely the focus of Rödl's challenge.

You would usually add supporting sentence(s) to clarify what your exact sentence means after a sentence starting with "I think" . Therefore adding "I think" to a statement seems to contribute in making the statement obscure in its exact meaning. — Corvus

I agree. In the context of this thread, the relevant rephrasings are probably:

a) I think: "The Eiffel Tower is 400m tall".
b) I think: "I think the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall".

a) is now clear, if we take it as a report about a mental event, a particular thought the speaker is having. b) remains ambiguous. The first "I think" can also be taken as a report about a thought, but then we don't know whether that thought -- the thought that "I think the Eiffel Tower is 400m tall:" -- is expressing meanings 1, 2, 3, or 4, above.

But is Rodl using the word "judge" in a particular way? — RussellA

No! -- or at least that's how I read him. He's really saying judgment shouldn't be called a propositional attitude, despite what all the traditional sources maintain. The entire separation of force (judgment, attitude) and content is off base, according to him. That's why it's kind of an outrageous viewpoint on the face of it.

It sounds like your mind is already made up that anything Nagel says about views is true. — Harry Hindu

Oh gosh, no. I just think his book does the best job I know of laying out the problem. That's the thing . . . he isn't trying to settle the issue at all, one way or another. He's trying to show why we should worry about it!

My experience is that people say, "read <insert your favorite philosopher here>" as a means of hand-waving another's arguments off, as if because some famous philosopher wrote something, that disqualifies my argument. — Harry Hindu

I know what you mean, but hopefully that's not what I'm doing. (And besides, any number of "famous philosophers" disagree completely with Nagel, so I'd need a better reason to agree with him than because he was famous and wrote something!). It's just really hard to summarize what an excellent book-length piece of philosophy says, or hard for me, at least.

the scribbles, "water is H2O" — Harry Hindu

statements (strings of scribbles and sounds) — Harry Hindu

etc.

I can see that "scribbles" is doing the work of a technical term for you, but I'm honestly not sure what you mean to be contrasting "scribbles" with. Possibly that's why I'm having trouble understanding your argument.

Someone recently told me about Noesis and Noema. I have only started reading it, but I think it's relevant? — Patterner

Circling back to this . . . Yes, I agree this is a way to state some of the problem in a different vocabulary. I know Husserl from the outside, so to speak -- he's never engaged my imagination very much. I'll tap @Joshs and see if he wants to respond; I think he may have a better perspective.

I don't need to read Nagel. — Harry Hindu

Well, this probably won't get anywhere -- you sound like your mind is made up -- but OK.

When I think "Water is H2O," I am imagining myself speaking objectively. Water would be H2O regardless of whether I think it, and regardless of whether anyone else does.

Don't take "view from nowhere" too literally. Any talk of "views" is metaphorical. All I mean, and all Nagel means, is that there appears to be an entire class of statements that remain true regardless of who says them, and in many cases regardless of whether anyone says them. But how can this be? We are, as you point out, individual knowers with limited consciousness. What could entitle us to claim a truth that is apart from point of view?

If your next question is, "Right, tell me how," I'll demur. It's just too big a subject to deal with on this thread, and we'd have to set it up with a lot of reading. Reams and reams have been written about it. For what it's worth, my current opinion is that we lack a good account of how to reach a so-called view from nowhere, but our entire philosophical enterprise rests on the need for one. Living in this tension seems to characterize the very core of doing philosophy as I see it.

Did Nagel ever address or mention the Observer effect in QM? — Harry Hindu

I don't recall that in Nagel, though I'm not sure.

How does one imagine a view from nowhere using a view from somewhere? — Harry Hindu

Indeed. If you're willing to regard that as an open, rather than rhetorical, question, then the Nagel book is for you. If you're already certain it's impossible, then not.

That's certainly one way to "look" at it. (Pardon the "view" metaphor!) I think the desirability of articulating a "view from nowhere" lies in helping us sort out subjectivity and objectivity. It's possible, of course, to simply declare that objectivity cannot mean what most people take it to mean -- that is, a point of view that is made true not by virtue of who has it but of what is seen -- but I think that's hasty. We can learn a lot more by wrestling with it as a genuine problem, and trying to see what would have to change in some of our basic philosophical outlooks, if traditional "objectivity" is indeed chimerical -- which it may well be. But again, the Nagel book goes into all that -- if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

A view is inherently 1st person. — Harry Hindu

This, in a simple sentence, is the bone of contention. Our language, our choice of a metaphor like "view," certainly suggests that someone or ones must be doing the "viewing." But there is a correspondingly robust tradition that says differently. Nagel's The View from Nowhere gives the best account I know of what such a view would entail. Nagel's position is also discussed at some length in Rodl's Self-Consciousness and Objectivity.