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?

But first we might consider, is this really the first, most formal problem of metaphysics? It certainly seems dominant. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for starting this thread. I will follow it with interest. But just to be clear, could you state what "this" refers to, in the quoted sentence? Is the "first, most formal" problem the difficulty of saying whether the first problem is metaontic or metanoetic? If so, is that question metaontic or metanoetic?

A very interesting OP and discussion. A salutary reminder that analytic philosophy doesn’t necessarily provide the correct framework for all important philosophical problems.

The phrase “this feeling ‛yourself now’”, and your identification of this subjective experience with subjectivity itself, puts me in mind of the notorious Kierkegaard passage that opens The Sickness Unto Death. There’s a new translation from Bruce H. Kirmmse, but the canonical Walter Lowrie version seems clearer to me:

What is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation [which accounts for it] that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but [consists in the fact] that the relation relates itself to its own self. — Soren Kierkegaard

I think SK is pointing to the same slippery fact that you are trying to articulate – that something uniquely difficult to describe or explain happens when we make our subjective experience an object of our own reflection. Must this attempt fail? Does the experience’s existence in a kind of perfect present tense doom any attempt to grasp it, as you suggest? SK says, on my understanding, that what characterizes a self is an activity, a relating. It is not a relation – that would make it an object – but rather an activity or experience that allows, or results in, the “relation of self-reflection,” which can be grasped, more or less. Whether this activity can yet be objectified in some other way, through some further reflection, perhaps through memory, I don’t know, and it’s not clear to me what SK thought about that.

Writing this, I experience the same difficulty that I assume SK and you experienced in trying to articulate this crucial yet elusive moment of thought. I well remember colleagues in grad school who used this passage from SK as a kind of exemplar for everything they thought opaque and phony about continental philosophy. Au contraire! Difficult though it is, we have to keep trying to push the limits of language in order to learn what we think about the self, about ourselves. And it may well be the case that -- again, uniquely to this problem of subjectivity -- what we think about the self constitutes the self.

Haven’t we conflated two different problems here? The first – the one raised by Locke – is whether there are innate ideas, which are presumably concepts, or contents of thought, or something equally non-physical. The second is whether there are innate physical traits, like having hands or growing leaves, that can be partially explained through concepts of potency and telos (and, I suppose, DNA).

Before I take this thought any further, let me ask whether you see these as in fact the same problem? Does “innate human qualities” cover both these categories? I didn’t read Locke as arguing for the latter.

But just stating the trivial fact that "numbers are something humans use," or "words are things we say," as if this pivot to activity makes the explanation an unanalyzable primitive strikes me as essentially a non-explanation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I understand what you're getting at, but it's a bit of a strawman, isn't it? "Unanalyzable primitive" doesn't seem to capture what philosophers mean when they talk about numbers and words as instances of human activity, though I suppose a deeply pragmatic view might support that. On this thread, and pretty generally, I think, we're merely trying to make some ontological sense out of numbers and quantifiers. If numbers aren't "out there," Platonically, if they represent a human construction based in the activity of doing mathematics, they can still be as real as you'd like them to be. We mustn't fall into the trap of believing that nothing could be real, or be said to exist, that isn't "out there" with or without humans. And yes, I fully agree that there are versions of scientism that encourage such a belief.

The kind of explanation you want, if I'm understanding you, is one that would show us one of two things: either why numbers are so marvelously suitable to our human inquiries, or why they correspond to features of the world that aren't arbitrary, and hence are part of saying true things about that world. Ideally, an explanation of their correspondence to reality would also explain their usefulness.

Sider is indeed arguing for a privileged ontological structure, and so is Nagel, and so am I. What isn’t privileged is the terms associated with that structure -- not even seemingly rock-bottom terms like "exist". Maybe it helps to try to imagine a whole new vocabulary that we could use to describe said structure. Some areas get called “Gorp”, others “Vulp”, others “Cheeb”. These areas are, let’s say, definable in terms of their structural relations to each other – terms that would include “fundamentality” and “necessitation” – and are discoverable, and people can be right or wrong about which is which. So we lay out our map. Now the question is, “Which of those areas match with the terms ‛exist’, ‛real’, and ‛object’?” (There might be many more key structural elements; choosing three is just for purposes of example.) This is where the seemingly endless debate begins. But I think we need to get clear that a debate about terms is not a debate about structure, and it doesn’t follow that doubting privileged terms is the same as doubting privileged structure.

Of course this can feel counter-intuitive because we really want to believe that, once we lay out the “map,” it will obvious which of our ordinary terms must correspond to Gorp, Vulp, and Cheeb. Surely it will be obvious which of them “exists”? Maybe Gorp is the most fundamental bit, so that’s the one that “exists”? Or maybe we ought to call the most fundamental bit “real” -- is that a better match with our concepts? But there’s just nothing we can point at (within philosophy, anyway) to settle it and say, “Obviously, this area is what exists” or "Since Vulp depends on Cheeb, Vulp must be our 'object'." As I said before, in a phrase I quite like :wink: , “To argue for a common-sense meaning (or any other) for 'exist' is done in a natural language, not Logicalese.” And that argument can go on, in terms of pragmatics, even as we work to figure out the metaphysical structure we believe is most accurate.

Thanks, that's helpful, and I will mull my response to this. But just one thing . . .

To simply assume that disagreements of fact are impossible is to have begged the question in favor of pluralism or Sider's, “in essence, quantifier variance.” — Leontiskos

No one is assuming that such a disagreement is impossible. The puzzle goes deeper than that: We want to know how we could recognize or describe this kind of fact, so as to have something to disagree about, without stipulating a meaning for "existence" that would also be disputable. I'm sure you're not saying that there is a plain fact of the matter as to whether mereological items or universals exist, but I admit that I'm not sure just what you are saying. Is there a sense of "fact" you're wanting us to understand and accept? Is it related to the Quinean "To be is to be the value of a bound variable"?

(And for the record, this isn't about skepticism concerning everyday objects. It's about how to divvy up metaphysical structure.)

There's a lot here, and in your recent previous posts. I want to reply, but first I'd like to make sure I'm understanding you. Is there any "second-order equivocation" going on in the example I originally gave from Sider?

Borrowing an example from Sider, let’s say I am a non-native English speaker who has recently learned the language. I mistakenly believe that the word for “number” is “fish”. You and I have a conversation in which we discover we’re both nominalists. You say, correctly from our shared point of view, “numbers do not exist”. I agree with you, saying “fish do not exist”. Sider claims, I think rightly, that this is not a “verbal dispute” in the classic sense of two people talking past each other because they use words differently. You and I both mean the same thing – we are each thinking the same thing about numbers – but I have made a verbal mistake. Presumably, genuine disagreements between languages can’t be analyzed and resolved in this way. And what about disagreements about quantifiers? (This is me now, not Sider.) If I say “mereological composites exist” and you say “there is no such thing as a mereological composite”, which kind of dispute is going on? Are we disagreeing about concepts, while using the same words? Or are we holding the concept of “existence” steady, while (someone is) making a mistake in terminology? How could we know which of us is making the mistake?! — J

I would have thought "first-order equivocation" would be "the classic sense of two people talking past each other because they use [the same] words differently," but maybe that's not what you mean. And in the follow-up situation about mereology, the question would be: Is "disagreeing about concepts while using the same words" an example of first-order equivocation, while "holding the concept of 'existence' steady while (someone is) making a mistake in terminology" second-order equivocation? Note that we don't need to talk in terms of "mistakes," in this situation; it's enough that there be a difference.

Oh, and this bit is salient:

What all of this illustrates, is that in tying quantification to existence, two distinct roles are ultimately conflated:
(a) The quantificational role specifies whether all objects in the domain of quantification are being quantified over or whether only some objects are.
(b) The ontological role specifies that the objects quantified over exist.
These are fundamentally different roles, which are best kept apart. By distinguishing them and letting quantifiers only implement the quantificational role, one obtains an ontologically neutral quantification. Ontological neutrality applies to both the universal and the particular quantifier (that is, the existential quantifier without any existential, ontological import).
— Quantifier Variance Dissolved — Banno

Yes, good spotting. "Ontologically neutral quantification" (which I bolded, above) is exactly what we want. It's a good way of describing the difference between the "exists" of quantification and the "exists" of ontology.

Your claim that "Ǝ never actually changes its meaning" is refuted by the simple fact that there are different forms of quantification available in different kinds of logic; thus falls the first, univocal horn of the dilemma. — Leontiskos

Is this really right? I haven't worked with modal logic deeply enough to say. Certainly I had in mind the standard use of Ǝ in non-modal logic, and I was under the impression that 'Ǝx' means 'Ǝx' no matter what may then be done to it in terms of possibility and necessity. But I'd welcome any help with this, as it's germane to the QV issue. (Is there a reason Finn and Bueno don't cite modal logic as an instance of QV?)

Frege was trying to reduce mathematics to logic . . . this isn't necessarily a deformation of logic by focusing on a limited domain, so much as an idealization of logic by focusing on the domain that most cleanly, we might say, represents human thought. And as it happens, I think Frege thought so as well. I think he was mostly of the opinion that natural languages are too much of a mess to do sound work in. — Srap Tasmaner

This thread has developed far and wide, with the discussion quality very high, and I don’t mind at all the divagations from my OP. Unsurprisingly, thinking about quantifier variance opens the door to basic questions about existence and the nature of philosophical thinking itself.

So, just a few responses: The above statements about Frege are right, I believe. Responding to the messiness of natural language, he/we’ve gone on to develop the quantificational apparatus and the ability to speak Logicalese, which really does clear up some of the mess, quite often. But it leaves us with puzzles too, like this one about whether quantifier variance is a coherent idea. The underlying problem doesn’t go away just because we declare (as I think we should) that Ǝ never actually changes its meaning, or, better, its use. If I say, in English translation, “Numbers exist,” and you say, “Numbers do not exist,” we’re disputing what it means to exist, not how to use the quantifier correctly. This is even clearer with a mereological example such as “There exists an item composed of my left nostril and the planet Venus”. We very much want to deny that such an item exists, but we can’t do it by claiming it’s impervious to quantification. To argue for a common-sense meaning (or any other) for “exist” is done in a natural language, not Logicalese.

What's asserted in an existentially quantified formula is not really, say, "Rabbits exist," but the more mundane "Some of the things (at least one) that exist are rabbits." Or "Not all of the things that exist aren't rabbits," etc. — Srap Tasmaner

This makes the same point well. To say that "Some of the things that exist are rabbits" doesn't tell you a thing about what "exist" means.

To take the example of the OP: quantifier meaning is not unconditioned by ontological commitments — Leontiskos

This would be the pro-QV position, but suppose we said instead, “The meaning of ‛existence’ is not unconditioned by ontological commitments.” This seems unproblematically true – in fact, if we’re not careful, it becomes redundant. But I’m recommending it because it rids us of the assumption that quantifier meaning is about ontological commitments – the very point that needs to be demonstrated. (And no, I don’t think simply saying “To be is to be the value of a bound variable” demonstrates it, catchy though that is.)

Does QV amount to a claim that no one can be mistaken? — Srap Tasmaner

It had better not. But it’s not the only position in the neighborhood that threatens that consequence, so denying QV is only a beginning. As I was saying to Banno previously, the real question is ontological pluralism, which at the very least seems to imply that, if you are mistaken (about basic ontological questions), you’d never know it.

basic logic is the fundamental tool of everything done in mathematics, absolutely everything -- it's just taken as given at lower levels of learning, without any suggestion that you're actually borrowing from some rarefied advanced field of mathematics. — Srap Tasmaner

One of my friends is a distinguished physicist who also knows a lot of philosophy. He is adamant that logic precedes math, in just the way you suggest. (I’m trying to get him to opine about Reality-with-a-Capital-R but he’s being coy. Claims he doesn't understand the question . . . what a cop-out.)