Thanks much. I admit to being daunted by the Thomistic apparatus, but that's my problem. Certainly a revisit with Aristotle's Metaphysics is in order. I might run a few quotes by you (and other Aristotelians) that Kimhi uses to support his position, if that's OK with you. Curious to know if K's interpretation is mainstream or outlier/revisionist.

First, it's not clear to me what your argument is. — Srap Tasmaner

it's a particular kind of argument you want to make: not so much that Frege is wrong or something, but that some other framework might prove more useful, or more perspicacious, might make easier to see something that Frege's framework makes hard to see, — Srap Tasmaner

Right, my argument is more that Frege fails to provide a way of dealing with certain features of assertion and its connection with thought or consciousness, not that he’s wrong per se in what he does countenance as part of logic. I guess that’s why I think of it as a “challenge” to Frege rather than a refutation.

‛The grass is green’ displays the assertion, and at the same time, under the right circumstances, makes it.
— J

That doesn't sound like an argument; it sounds like you (ahem) asserting your proposed conclusion. Even so, the natural rejoinder is that the circumstances in question involve someone, you know, asserting it. — Srap Tasmaner

Here, I’m hoping to get the reader’s agreement on a point of observation – namely that there’s nothing incoherent about trying to draw a distinction between force and assertion. The challenging part, perhaps, lies not in the second use of ‛The grass is green’ -- I quite agree that under these “right circumstances” someone is indeed asserting it – but the first. We’re not used to thinking that p can display an assertion without making it. The Fregean picture is more like “p would or could be an assertion under the right illocutionary circumstances (thanks, @Banno), but unless it’s actually being asserted, p has nothing in the way of force.” That’s what I’m challenging. The argument for that is in the OP and I’m sure it can be improved, so please feel free to sharpen it in the process of disagreeing, if you do.

Fun thread. — fdrake

Fun, for sure. Some go clubbing and do X, we worry about 'x'. :razz: (Some do both, no doubt.)

writing or saying the sentence counts as an assertion, — fdrake

But does it? Were you asserting it, just now when you wrote the sentence? I know you clarify this later, but in this OP I’m claiming that much depends on exactly what we mean by “assertion” so I’m being finicky here.

I like your “degrees of freedom” analysis a lot. (2) and (3) get to the heart of the matter – how can a strictly Fregean understanding of propositions give us any insight into what’s wrong with a “logical structure” that is not extensionally self-contradictory? The challenge I’m offering concurs with (3) that an explanation of the self-contradiction must be part of our logical analysis of the sentence. I’m trying to keep Kimhi mostly out of this, but will just note that (3) is absolutely essential to his revisionist philosophy of logic.

I also agree that it’s possible simply to deny (2) – isn’t that what Frege (and probably Donald Davidson) do? I’d be interested, though, to hear more about what a default operation in language is, and how it might answer the problem.

Yes, I think the ND review gets it right about Kimhi's debt to Wittgenstein, which he acknowledges. He sees Wittgenstein as a fellow "psycho / logical monist". Is a there a Wittgensteinian response about assertion here that you could offer? (In this context, assertion isn't the same as "reference.")

The Indirect Realist challenge is interesting, but I'll leave it alone as my own metaphysics is much closer to direct realism.

do we agree roughly on the account I've given? — Banno

In a word, yes. Assertion as displaying illocutionary force is part of the "standard" picture. And the challenge here is about the nature of propositional content (intension vs. extension), just as you say.

Thank you, appreciate the references.

I'm glad to hear you're reading Kimhi -- not for the faint of heart! In fact you may find parts of it easier going than I did, due to your background in Aristotle.

I didn't participate in the thread you refer us to, and I'm not prepared right now to try to take it all in. But your quoted comment about negation versus denial is definitely apropos. It may come down to the difference between 'not-X' (negation as an operation within a proposition) and 'It is not the case that (p)' (denial of a proposition), though I'm not sure about this. What Kimhi adds to this, in a manner I'm still grappling with, is the unity part: the claim that "the assertion 'p is true' is the same as 'I truly think p'." In general, the role of an act of consciousness in Kimhi's philosophy is what allows him to take a thoroughly monist stance on these matters, but as I've said before, I think he could have done a much clearer job explaining it.

I also agree that he's good on the PNC. One of the most appealing and lucid sections of the book.

Yes, I had recourse to it several times in drafting my various posts about Kimhi. Much better than the Hanna piece.

Again, thanks for the response to my concerns. Two things:

1. My question about whether “on” was a logical connective only meant that I wasn’t aware of a “logic of ‛on’” that had been worked out. For all I know, there is one, but if you start playing with it, you can see why it might be ill-suited for formal functions. “If a is on b, and b is on c, then a is on c” – true or false? Beats me. Depends. But once we disambiguate “on”, what are we going to do with it? All sorts of interesting questions hinge on getting clear about “and”, “or”, “if/IFF”, “can”, “must”, et al. -- well, who knows, maybe we need a better understanding of “on” too.

2. I deliberately didn’t say anything about Kimhi’s use of “syncategorematic” in this thread because it’s so non-standard, and even though he has a go at explaining it about three different ways, his usage isn’t transparent to me. You write:

Therefore, within the proposition "p is true", the expression "is true" is a syncategorematic expression, which adds nothing to the sense of "p". — RussellA

That’s right, but it’s right for Frege as well. Frege’s assertion (judgment) stroke, indicating “is true”, is syncategorematic.

Where it gets bizarre with Kimhi is his further claim that p itself is syncategorematic. You’re right that he regards p as a fact rather than a Fregean complex, but how then is p used? What is the context we need to provide in order to state a relation involving p? I don’t think that, e.g., joining it with q in ‛p & q’ helps. The problem lies in how facts are asserted – how they’re affirmed or denied. When the ND reviewer writes, “ ‛p’ itself . . . [does] not add anything whatsoever to the sense of ‛p’,” this can only mean that some assertion of p can add nothing to p’s sense, but that’s still orthodox Fregeanism. I think Kimhi wants to say something more radical – that the context needed to make use of (syncategorematic) ‛p’ has to involve a monistic understanding of what it is to assert. He thinks the necessary separation of sense and assertion is all wrong. “From the monist point of view, a simple propositional sign displays a possible act of consciousness.” -- the possibility of affirmation or negation.

And on this mystical note, I’ll stop.

Thanks, this helps. "Representing" is describing in words, while "mirroring" is more like ostension or making a picture. I'm not satisfied with how this carries over into logical form
(is "on" really a logical connective?), but that can wait till another day.

Within the literature, it seems to me that the words i) assertoric force, asserted, force, extrinsic and assertion seem to be synonyms for Frege's "reference" and the words ii) content, semantic, intrinsic and unasserted seem to be synonyms for Frege's "sense". — RussellA

I would say, not synonyms, but they match up with the distinction that "reference" and "sense" is meant to draw. Semantic content reveals sense, and of course can be unasserted, according to Frege. Assertions and truth-claims about what's actually "out there" depend upon the idea of referring. This thread has mostly focused on how to understand the act of assertion, it seems to me.

I appreciate your thoughtful response to this. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm going to try to write up a couple of specific examples of a Kimhi-inspired challenge to Fregean philosophy of logic, which will better address many of these questions. That way we can sink our teeth into the details, and have some idea what the arguments would need to show, without having to go read all of Thinking and Being and/or get pulled into too much metaphilosophy.

It may take a while, though. Dusting off my Frege . . .

Thank you, that gives a good context. I always approach the Tractatus with the (increasingly faint) hope that it will reveal its secrets to me, but it never has. Later Wittgenstein means a great deal to me, but I can never quite get the propositions of the Tractatus to yield the sense that I know many good philosophers find in them.

I don't want to pull us off onto Wittgenstein, so I'l just ask one more follow-up question: Can you say what the difference is between "representing" logical form and "mirroring" logical form? The example of the apple on the table suggests that, while "on" is undefinable without circularity, its logical form can nevertheless be shown through usage. That doesn't sound like the same issue -- or is it?

As Wittgenstein said in the Tractatus, one can show logic but not say it. — RussellA

Hmm. Not quite sure I get this. Can you refer us to some passages in the Tractatus?

As this thread has shown, it's complicated. A great deal depends on whether the statement "There are a hundred thalers on the table" occurs in a context where it's reasonable to assume it's also being asserted. Lying is not the only thing that could call this into question. I might be genuinely mistaken about the thalers, though of course I'd still be asserting it. Or I could be merely mentioning the statement, or pointing out something about it, or asking for a discussion of its semantic content. In such a case, the information/predicate that the statement is also true can be provided outside the context of an assertion, so that it isn't redundant. This all goes back to the basic Fregean question of whether we can "say" a proposition, or at least understand it, without asserting it, that is, separate semantics and truth-value from assertoric force. So I think my statement from the OP that you quote was too hasty. I should have written, "I can say 'It is true that there are a hundred thalers on the table' but this adds nothing to the semantic content of the proposition ‛There are a hundred thalers on the table’.

As to how we ascertain the truth of a statement, that's another story, and usually involves some combination of observation, as you say, and correct use of a language. The exact combination has been disputable and I'm sure will continue to be.

it seems what is needed is a thesis, or a series of theses, rather than a thread. — Banno

Yeah, I'm trying to work up something like that for a fresh OP.

if the point is to show that Frege is mistaken, then it's somewhat closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.

So where does that leave us? — Banno

The simple answer would be, "Providing some carrots and sticks to entice the horse back." I think that's what Kimhi is trying to do, though what you say about intensional logics also fits with some of his concerns. In any event, I don't think that's such a bad place to left in. At worst, we'd discover that Fregean principles are solid, and can withstand even the most careful and creative criticism. At best, we might get a genuinely fresh concept of how philosophical logic can be related to ontological concerns.

Just saw this after posting my latest. Thanks, makes sense.

Formalism seeks clarity in otherwise opaque discourse. In this case, what is shown is that there are no sentences that are not about some thing, and so not true sentences that are not about some thing. That seems a direct answer to the OP. (↪J?) — Banno

It's a direct answer, certainly. I was curious to learn more about what philosophers have said concerning the parallels between "truth" and "existence" as predicates, in the light of some concerns raised by Kimhi. I know I haven't given nearly enough of Kimhi's thought here (or perhaps too much :wink: ), but based on what's been discussed so far, do you think his reservations about Fregean predicate logic can be definitively shown to be misguided? I'm not sure whether you think you've answered the OP in the sense of putting my doubts to rest. I'd be very interested to hear more along those lines.

Given what you say, it is not clear to me whether Kimhi sees there to be any apprehension of being that is (metaphysically) prior to an apprehension of truth. Or in other words, does Kimhi see the fundamental "act of consciousness" as already bound up with truth? — Leontiskos

I don’t know. On questions like this, I find Kimhi at his most obscure. Typical statement: “The critical insight -- that any unity in consciousness is essentially self-consciousness of that unity -- is recognized to coincide with the insight that the consciousness of logical activity is inseparable from the capacity to manifest this activity in language.” Even in context, it’s hard to make this out. He is clear that he opposes what he calls “psycho / logical dualism”: “a theory of judgment as involving a subjective act and a truth-evaluable content – the unity and complexity of which is external to the judging subject.” In short, he doesn’t accept the Fregean picture that assertoric force is separate from whatever semantic content will determine truth value. But the “psycho / logical monism” that he does accept is (for me) very difficult to understand. I’ll take my best guess and say that, unlike Aquinas, Kimhi sees the “fundamental act of consciousness” as either affirmation or denial – what he calls a two-way capacity, borrowing from Aristotle. Propositions are affirmed or denied by acts of consciousness, not by predications – a kind of “full context principle.” Does this amount to truth being fundamental somehow? Maybe.

He also has this interesting observation, which harks back to the QV discussion, and to @banno’s reminders here about logical form and ontological commitment: Kimhi calls Frege’s logic a functionalist logic, and says moreover that it’s extensionalist, “insofar as the truth-value of a proposition depends only on the extensional identity of its components and the manner of composition. Among other things, that means that logical principles are not about propositions (thoughts) but about what gets quantified.” (my italics) This is a pretty concise way of framing the problem. Because if you oppose this view of logic, as Kimhi does, then you seem to be saying that “propositions (thoughts)” can be the subject of logical thinking without committing to “what gets quantified,” which in turn would mean that existence can – would have to be – more than just “the value of a bound variable.” I dunno, maybe I’m reading too much into it, but that’s what it says to me.

The expression "p is true" says no more than "p" — RussellA

This is a little tricky. Doesn't it depend on exactly what we mean by "say 'p'"? I can write 'p' in this sentence, as in fact I do, and we know that it's meant to stand for a well-formed proposition. But is this the same kind of "saying p" as in "I tell you p" or "I judge that p" or "I assert p"? Probably not, especially if we follow Frege. Some kind of assertion or force is missing.

So maybe we need to put it this way: "The expression 'p is true' says no more than 'p', PROVIDED that 'saying p' in this context means asserting p or judging p." But quite often, "saying p" doesn't come with any assertoric force -- we can name or mention 'p' without asserting it. That is the circumstance under which saying 'p is true' would give us a new predication. And let's not forget that asserting p, or saying 'p is true' doesn't make it true. That requires something else, maybe the Tarskian model you describe.

Perhaps Kimhi recognizes this, but the idea is that to recognize the notion of the true requires a second act of the intellect, a kind of back-folding of the intellect, or the trough and the crest of the selfsame wave of apprehension. — Leontiskos

Yes, Kimhi believes this is important. He calls it an act of self-consciousness that follows an act of consciousness, and claims that it applies to any thought that p, not just the thought ‛p is true’:

‛I think p’ can be called a spontaneous self-clarification of p. I call it self-clarificatory because it brings out the content of consciousness without adding anything to it or determining anything about it. I call it spontaneous because the clarification is immediately available through the display of the judgment that p. — Kimhi

Part of what’s confusing in Kimhi is that he often uses ‛I think p’ to mean ‛I judge that p’, as you can see in the above passage. But of course ‛I judge that p’ is even closer to what you’re calling “the notion of the true,” and Kimhi is certainly pointing to a second act of the intellect which makes self-conscious what has been initially thought or judged.

it would apparently be completely against the spirit of this thread to bracket all questions about being and ontology. — Leontiskos

If by “bracket” you mean “declare them out of bounds when discussing predication,” then yes, there wouldn’t be much left to say about whether predication might reveal parallels between existence and truth. But I think it’s fine to get clear on what the standard commitments are, and why they’re so useful. Particularly useful for those of us like me who hated actually doing logic.

A lot of my Kimhi-inspired concerns are very much contrary to the postulates of Fregean philosophy. Part of why I like his book so much is that he makes me take such a radical position seriously. (Robert Hanna subtitled his review of Thinking and Being as “It’s the end of analytic philosophy as we know it, and I feel fine!”*) Your suggestion that we try to bring Frege and other predecessors into the conversation is a good one. I’ll work on something brief and hopefully lucid that would contrast Frege with Kimhi on a couple of key questions . . .

* Let me add that I think Hanna’s piece is ill-considered and shallow, full of careless reading, and a terrible place to start if you’re interested in Kimhi.

I think that making use of the grammar of first order logic helps here, in obliging us to take care as to what we mean by "exists". — Banno

For sure, and there's a great deal to be said for clear and minimal ontological commitments. Analytic philosophy does some excellent work by taking predicate logic as a kind of model of good grammar for philosophers. Probably the things I'm worrying about in this OP only arise when one begins to question whether the world reflects these same commitments, and whether formalisms necessarily capture everything we want to say, philosophically.

Which leads to some of @Leontiskos's reservations. See my next post.

“Putatively existing” is indeed awkward, but – as you and Frodo explicated – it’s hard to find the right language in these situations. I meant what you mean: We’re talking about something in a given domain, and whether it “exists” depends on other linguistic and metaphysical commitments.

So, granted all that, here’s the concern I want to raise. We agree that in the case of ‛p is true’, we’re ascribing a property to p; we’re predicating something of p, namely its truth. But in the case of E(x)f(x), we are not ascribing a property to f. This would seem to show that “truth” and “existence” don’t share an isomorphism at this level.

And yet . . . I’m going to “tell a story” using the simplest language I can, which means I have to ignore a dozen subtleties and exceptions. But I want to capture what seems wrong with this picture. Here’s the story: Both “truth” and “existence” – especially when used in more or less ordinary discourse, about the most common topics – have the characteristic of “promoting” or “ratifying” something otherwise hypothetical. If I say of p that it is true, I’ve inducted it into the Hall of Fame of propositions that state what is the case, which is precisely what we want our propositions to do. In the same way, if I say of X that it exists, I’ve raised it out of the limbo of possibility and awarded it actuality, or being. I’m being deliberately gaudy with my terms here because I want to capture the flavor of improvement, even teleology, that is part of the story I’m telling.

So this seems like quite a parallel between “truth” and “existence,” but there’s more. We can also say (as Peter Geach does, I believe, concerning the “is” of predication) that the same state of affairs makes X exist and p true. If I discover that there is something that is a ball, whatever reasons I give to support that discovery will be the same reasons needed to show that ‛There is a ball’ is true. There is no further fact I need to learn in order to affirm the truth of the proposition about the ball’s existence. This takes “parallel” extremely close to “identity,” and at this point I could import Kimhi’s jargon for all this but I won’t. Suffice it to say that he is indeed a monist on this issue, in a way that I find confusing, annoying, but impossible to dismiss out of hand.

What’s going on here? Again, this is a very rough-grained account, especially in its cavalier separation of “truth” from any language. But still. Is this a pseudo-problem, or do we need a deeper understanding of predication from the get-go?

Appreciate the references, many thanks.

Truth is just a property of a being and only derivatively it's a property of judgements — Johnnie

Not to turn this into a Kimhi seminar, but he devotes an entire chapter of his book to this point. The chapter is called "The Dominant Sense of Being," and takes off from Aristotle's claim [Metaphysics Theta 10] that being-true exists in things, and that this sense of "being" is kuriotata, which evidently can be translated as "proper, dominant, or governing."

I am not saying "it is true that there are a hundred thalers on the table", but rather ""it is true that "there are a hundred thalers on the table"". — RussellA

Right, it's predicating truth of "there are a hundred thalers on the table." This doesn't have to come up only in cases of questioning or doubt. It's the difference between 'There are a hundred thalers on the table' understood as the occurrence of a proposition, supposedly without assertoric force, and the same statement given as an assertion (maybe using Frege's assertion symbol). That said, I think all sorts of questions remain about exactly what "is true" predicates.

Good insights, thanks. I could indeed try to limit the question to one about formal logic, and it may turn out that the isomorphism between existence and truth breaks down in formal logic. But as the QM example suggests, what's really interesting is that borderline between what is "strictly logical" and what is ontological. Stipulating something as ontologically neutral doesn't make it so; stipulating a "law of logic" doesn't show why it would obtain in the world of being. These deep borderline questions are exactly what Kimhi is chasing down, just as you'd expect from a book called Thinking and Being.

I think you’d get a lot out of Kimhi’s book – I certainly have. It’s the most interesting work of contemporary philosophy I’ve read since Ted Sider’s Writing the Book of the World. But it’s hard going, even if you have a taste for “metalogical” issues. This current OP is an attempt to start some sharing of Kimhi’s ideas, and I hope to continue in future threads.

Minor point: The passage you quote from p. 39 isn’t actually about Frege and Geach. Kimhi is talking here about what he later labels “Wittgenstein’s point,” which is contrasted with Frege and Geach’s (incorrect, according to Kimhi) understanding of what it means for a proposition to occur in a context. Shortly after the quoted passage, he writes “I shall call the conclusion Geach and Frege draw from [Wittgenstein’s point] – that assertoric force must be dissociated from a proposition’s semantical significance – Frege’s point. We shall see that Frege’s point is mistaken. It only seems necessary if we accept certain functionalist (and more generally, compositionalist) assumptions about logical complexity.” I don’t want to take us too far into the weeds on this, so I’ll stop, and anyway it doesn’t affect the point you’re making in your post.

That's what I thought. Now, returning to the "is" of quantification, when we say "∃(x)f(x)" we are not ascribing a property to f, namely the property of existing, correct? It's the reverse -- we're saying of some putatively existing individual that it has the property of f. (Bear with me, this is going somewhere, I hope. :smile: )

truth is a predicate, but of propositions — Banno

Staying within the Tarskian framework for the moment: If we say 'p is true in language L', are we ascribing a property to p? If not, exactly what are we predicating?

Aristotle's claim in the Metaphysics that to speak truth is to say of what is that it is or of what is not that it is not is very close to the truth predication question. — Leontiskos

Yes, quite close, and Kimhi is a hard-core Aristotelian if he's anything you could put a label on. But I assume Aristotle did not describe truth as a property that could or could not be predicated; that way of thinking wasn't available to him. Is there something he did say that would be more or less the equivalent of "To say of what is that it is, is not to provide additional knowledge about it"? Or maybe: "To assert of what is that it is, is the same act as identifying the being/existence of what is"? This is roughly what Kimhi wants to claim -- but again, I'm sure someone has done work on the "emptiness" question involved in predications of existence and truth, I just can't remember who.

Thanks, we certainly find the existence question in Kant. (That's why I chose "a hundred thalers" as my example.) What I'm trying to pin down is whether anyone has addressed specifically the apparent parallel between "Existence is not a predicate" and "Truth is not a predication." Does it ring any bells?

Gosh, I seem to have riled you re Haslanger, which was certainly not my intention. I said this about her: "Sally Haslanger (and others, I'm sure) has suggested a useful way of schematizing possible approaches to this kind of inquiry." I don't think it's fair to say that "suggested a useful way" involving "possible approaches" equates to "imposing her as an authority" or claiming that she's given a "metaphysical taxonomy of all the mutually exclusive ways of using terms" in a way that's "more or less on par with divine revelation."

I'd hoped my use of Haslanger would be helpful in teasing out some of the intricacies of "What is F?" questions. I'm sorry it wasn't, for you.

It sounds like you're asking Pat if he wants to be happy at the cost of naivete, and he says no. Naivete is for him a very pronounced form of unhappiness.

Of course, in our culture "happiness" has become much more psychological than eudamonia. For example, lots of people will skip the "happiness pills," but it's not because they don't want to be happy, it's because they don't think the pills produce happiness. They don't think psychological ease is happiness. Pat seems to fall easily within this group. — Leontiskos

We seem to be inquiring into, and differing about, the meaning of the term "happiness" here. As you know, Sally Haslanger (and others, I'm sure) has suggested a useful way of schematizing possible approaches to this kind of inquiry. Here’s a quick summary, with liberal unattributed quotes from Haslanger.

When asking about the meaning of F, we can broadly take three approaches:

Conceptual analysis elucidates “our” concept (that is, the concept as employed within a certain group of language users) by exploring what we we take F-ness to be. It is, more or less, a priori, or at least armchair; the assumption is that the analyst is already in a position to know how the relevant community uses the term. A more genealogical approach here would include considering the variety of understandings and uses of F-ness over time, and among different individuals.

Descriptive analysis elucidates the empirical kinds into which “our” paradigm cases of F-ness fall, in an attempt to derive a definition of F-ness through examples. For this, we usually have to do some research, especially if the question of “natural kinds” is involved. (To jump ahead a little bit, a descriptive analysis of “happiness” would probably include paradigm cases like “contentment,” “satisfaction,” “fulfillment,” “pleasure,” “sense of meaningfulness to others,” etc.)

Ameliorative analysis elucidates, more or less, what F should mean, what it ought to mean in order to best serve our philosophical needs – even, perhaps, our moral needs. It’s a normative approach, and usually results in recommendations to precisify a term, or to reorganize a series of related terms in a new way, so as to add perspicacity to what they can say.

Very rough and ready, but let’s see how it applies when F = “happiness”. Back to your original statement: “In our culture ‛happiness’ has become much more psychological than eudaemonia. For example, lots of people will skip the ‛happiness pills,’ but it's not because they don't want to be happy, it's because they don't think the pills produce happiness. They don't think psychological ease is happiness.”

This, on Haslanger’s view, reports a confusion of approaches. The statement begins by offering a (partial) descriptive analysis of “happiness”: “in our culture” the word is used to pick out certain psychological states (probably including the ones I listed above). You’re not saying that this is what the concept in fact entails – that would be a conceptual analysis – nor are you recommending (or not) using the word “happiness” in this way – that would be an ameliorative analysis. You’re simply pointing to an empirical fact about language users right now.

But next you say that many people will skip “happiness pills” -- that is, refuse to be made allegedly happy by some reliable means – because they don’t believe such means do produce happiness. So the people in question have performed (in some loose sense) a conceptual analysis of the term “happiness” -- they know what it means to them – and are disputing whether “happy-pill happiness” is in fact covered by the definition of happiness, properly understood. And of course by bringing in a judgment like “properly understood,” we reach ameliorative analysis; the pill-skippers may want us to reform our thinking on the matter and stop using the term “happiness” in this inferior way.

In conclusion, “They don’t think psychological ease is happiness.” But we’re entitled to ask, given the blurring of approaches used so far, in which sense do they disagree with this? Are they saying that they don’t believe psychological ease is enumerated among happy states by language users in our culture? (descriptive approach) This would mean that a person who says “I feel happy because I’m at ease” is using the language incorrectly, and others would have trouble understanding why he would say this. Or are the deniers saying that, upon analysis, happiness can’t be reduced to psychological ease? (conceptual approach) This would mean that the person who declares “I feel happy because I’m at ease” is not wrong about language use; this is in fact how people talk; they’re wrong per se, about the concept of happiness, and this can be demonstrated analytically. Or, lastly, are the deniers saying that one shouldn’t equate psychological ease with happiness? (ameliorative approach) – that there are good reasons for recommending a different use of the term and/or understanding of the concept. This would mean that “I feel happy because I’m at ease” can be both coherent and true, but on the recommended revision that would no longer be the case.

I’ll stop with a bit of generalization. I think the discussion on this thread, and throughout much of moral philosophy, is largely ameliorative, and rightly so. What we have here are competing recommendations for how a cloudy term like happiness might be better understood and used. Indeed, one recommendation is to abandon entirely its common usages in philosophy and substitute eudaemonia. The reason for this recommendation is important: It’s because “happiness” in English is found philosophically wanting. It doesn’t seem up to the job that we’ve asked it to do. Using it, we’re led into contradictions and unlikelihoods. Eudaemonia, in contrast, offers much more clarification – the claim is that it better captures a coherent moral stance, fits better into a larger metaphysics, and great philosophers like Aristotle are brought in to testify to this.

I say this is the right approach, but with a caveat. We need to keep Haslanger’s analysis in mind, and be very careful when we seem to say that English users “don’t know what happiness is,” or that someone “really wants to be happy” even if we can’t find any examples on the ground of how to use “happy” in this way. The language, and the way people use it, is what it is. Speakers aren’t (usually) making mistakes. My character Pat doesn’t want to be happy, on either a descriptive or a conceptual understanding of the term. At best, you might convince them that they ought to ameliorate what “happiness” means (call it “happiness*”) in order to include the kinds of things they do want – but then you can’t also say that they really wanted “happiness” all along. Competent English users would begin scratching their heads. The whole point of ameliorative analysis is to show that “happiness” and “happiness*” are not the same thing, and that one is preferable to the other -- if not morally, then at the least in terms of philosophical usefulness and insight.

Thanks, very helpful. No need to run this into the ground but I still feel there ought to be a separate category other than merely "state of vice" to describe people like Robbie. You say this involves "the enjoyment and pursuit of vice," and this is indeed how we think of wicked or vicious people -- but Robbie isn't like that. Robbie hates the condition they are in, and has no desire to keep pursuing it . . . or so they say. Do we need to say that Robbie "secretly" or "deeply" enjoys being stuck in misery, in order to explain their condition? I'm not sure that's right. But in any case, I would hesitate to judge Robbie by the same yardstick I'd use to judge the typical, "standard" person in a state of vice.

The point is that people pursue some good when they act — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes indeed, but that good may not be named as, or experienced as, happiness; we see this in Pat's case.

Robbie's behavior seems pretty well summed up in the Ethic's discussions on virtue versus vice and incontinence. It is not the case that Aristotle thinks we always prefer virtue. One can fall into vice. One can also recognize vice as vice and still prefer it, even as one knows they should try to rise to virtue. When a person is unsuccessful at overcoming desires they know are wrong this is incontinence, — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you're right to place Robbie in this general context, but I don't think their situation is quite described here. Robbie has "fallen into vice," yes. But they don't recognize vice as vice, because they don't believe they are making wrong choices. Nor is Robbie failing to overcome self-acknowledged "wrong desires," for the same reason; so Robbie's not incontinent. The missing piece from this attempt to describe Robbie is lack of self-knowledge. What does Aristotle say about this? Is there a term, or an ethical condition, that can describe a person who has "fallen into vice" but not only doesn't know it, but is convinced that they desire the exact opposite?

Yes, these are interesting points. You're saying that, IF the satisfaction of a desire matches my expectation, then I am, ceteris paribus, happier than I was before. So we need to modify the original thought to reflect this. It's not "getting what we want" that would automatically make me happier, but rather the getting + the match with expectations. The takeaway here would be that "what I want" is not something that necessarily produces happiness when achieved.

Fair enough. But this pushes us back to the question of whether any of this should be phrased in terms of happiness. And, considering the Aristotelian framework of this thread, we have to ask: "English-language happiness" or something more like eudaemonia? It seems true enough that I experience something positive when a desired expectation is met, but in English, at any rate, I really don't think "happiness" is going to cover it a lot of the time. I don't mean to pick a controversial example, but it seems well suited to capture the problem: If Ellie finds herself unwillingly pregnant in the 1st trimester, she has a choice to make among (at least) three options. Even granting that the result of whatever choice she makes does meet her expectations, can we say she is "happier" without doing violence to the language? She may believe, correctly, that her condition would be worse if she had chosen either of the other two options, but simply being "better than the other alternatives" doesn't equate to happiness, I would say. Especially in a fraught case like this, happiness seems a bridge too far.

Interestingly, I think you can make a much stronger case for the result of Ellie's decision (no matter which it is) promoting her eudaemonia, her overall well-being. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't, and can't, make us happy, though we may see that it is the right thing, and will work toward our eventual good. But here is where my example becomes controversial, so perhaps ill-chosen, because in order to acknowledge that Ellie's eudaemonia could be furthered regardless of which decision she makes, you'd also have to agree that giving birth, early abortion, and adoption are on a moral par, which many do not.

Some philosopher once said that, while common sense doesn't necessarily get the last word, it should certainly be given the first word. So I'm trying to take the contention "Humans necessarily want to be happy" on its common-sense merits, and read "happy" as what most English speakers would mean by happy.

I completely agree that this was not what Aristotle meant, but of course Aristotle did not speak English. Eudaemonia is close to untranslatable, but "flourishing" or "good spirit" will have to do, and it's a far cry from English-language "happiness." It's much closer to that sense of harmony within the human being, the identification of inner well-being with outer virtue, that I tried to hint at. And that's why I gave Aristotle that cryptic question at the end of my post, seeking to remind his interlocutor that happiness and the good are not separated in the way that English speakers believe they are.

When we get what we want, doesn’t that automatically make us happier than we would have been had we not achieved that thing that we wanted? — Joshs

This is a psychological question, not a philosophical one, I would say. For what it's worth, my answer is No. All too often, as I know from my own experience, getting what you want can be a bitter disappointment (and bad for you too!).

I'll do another post about Pat and Robbie later today, responding to Count T's placement of them in an Aristotelian framework.

More simply, the objection asks why one ought to want to be happy. For Aristotle this is sophistry. Humans do want to be happy, just as fish do want to be in the water. It's just the way we are. "We don't necessarily want to be happy," is nothing more than a debater's argument. — Leontiskos

I don't know . . . possibly I've hung out with the wrong people but the idea that "humans necessarily want to be happy" is extremely implausible to me. Here, for instance, is a person named Pat. Pat suffers from a variety of psychological, physical, and spiritual maladies that produce a kind of chronic frustration, depression, resentment, and lack of ease -- in short, what we mean by "unhappiness." If you ask Pat if they "want to be happy," the answer you will get is: "Nonsense. What you call 'being happy' is for sheep. I operate on a higher plane. Of course I'm miserable, but that is what happens when a person of true intellect sees the world aright. I wouldn't trade one minute of my unhappiness for a fool's paradise of Smiley Faces." Pat, you could say, would rather be Happy (their sense) than happy, but surely that's stretching what "happy" means. Let's face it: Pat just doesn't want to be happy, and they can give you their reasons why.

Or here, for another instance, is a person named Robbie. Robbie suffers from the same brood of ailments that Pat does. When we ask Robbie the same question -- "Do you want to be happy?" -- the reply is: "Of course I do! I'd give anything to be happy." We then recommend some basic steps that might begin to relieve Robbie's misery -- a thorough medical evaluation, perhaps, or therapy, or philosophical study, or more exercise and pleasant activities -- to which Robbie replies by explaining in great detail why none of those suggestions are options that would work for them. We go around this circle several more times and finally conclude what we must: that Robbie, despite what they say, doesn't really want to be happy. Robbie has a false self-image, that of a person who truly desires happiness, but it's easy enough to see through it.

I submit that neither Pat nor Robbie are extraordinary types, or even all that unusual. But perhaps the more important point is this: Aristotle doesn't mean "everybody" when he talks about the human desire for happiness, and we mustn't misunderstand him in that way. I believe he's speaking about a telos of the type or species "human," and asking us to conceive of a person in harmony with themselves. Such a person would understand the relation between the good and happiness; would desire both; and would have the practical knowledge to achieve them. This is very different from "All fish necessarily want to be in the water."

If we could bring him into this conversation, I think Aristotle might say: "Yes, sadly, there are those whom you have to actually convince to desire their own good, but that doesn't put the idea of 'the good' up for grabs in any important way." But wait a minute, Ari, we reply; we're talking about happiness, not the good. Aristotle smiles serenely . . . "Oh, are you?" he asks.

Yes, some fascinating connections here. I want to hold off and continue following this thread so I can learn more about Przywara, whom I haven’t read. And some day I may be bold enough to try an OP on Kimhi’s Thinking and Being, which is square in the middle of this discussion (and very difficult).

I took it that the "formal question" is about where any methodology must begin re metaphysics. Are we to begin our investigation with being or the mind? - essentially. Basically, we can't start saying things about being until we first resolve what we need to start investigating first. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, good. My concern is with the further, reflexive problem: Is that question (“Are we to begin our investigation with being or mind?”) a metaontic one – that is, is it a question about being? Or is it metanoetic, a question about knowing? (I think it would be too simple, though tempting, to say: Neither one, it’s about methodology. At this extremely abstract meta-level, I don’t think we can introduce a third category called “methodology.”)

The reasons I think this is an important puzzle are, first, that it immediately points us toward a praxis, under the rubric of “methodology,” and second, it shows how quickly the issue of the identity of thinking and being becomes crucial. Can we raise the question of methodology without positing certain things in common between thinking and being?