Been reading the SEP article on mental representation and started pondering on the section about conceptual vs non-conceptual. The main difference is that conceptual representation is not supposedly accompanied by qualia. Non-conceptual representation is exactly what it sounds like: sensation lacking concept.

Is it possible to eliminate the conceptual element altogether? The SEP article gives an example of a (possibly) hybrid MR (mental representation): seeing that something is blue. How would we eliminate the conceptual part of that? — Mongrel

I have the impression this remains a hotly contested region of philosophical discourse in the schools.

I'm inclined to say that perceptual experience like ours involves both sensory and conceptual activity or "content". I presume there are "layers" of nonconscious sensory processing that can be construed as involving sensory "representation" without any contribution from conceptual capacities. But on my view such representations are always already conceptualized by the time they manifest in conscious perceptual experience.

Are we talking about natural languages, like English, or some sketch of an "ideal language" in a logician's notebook? I'll assume we're talking about natural language, or perhaps language in general.

This much seems obvious to me:
1. Compositionality has its limits. Phonemes and letters don't have standalone meanings. The same word or phrase can have various meanings. The same sentence can have various meanings. The same proposition can be expressed in various sentences composed of entirely different parts.

2. Context does a lot of the work for us in constraining all that variability. Relevant aspects of context may include the intentions of the speaker; the shared associations, habits, and beliefs of the speech-community; relations among speaker's intention, utterance, and perceptible features of the environment; and so on.

3. Conversations like this one will remain mired in confusion if we proceed by assuming that everyone has roughly the same idea of what "meaning" means in them.

If a Fregean decrees that "words have no meaning", he's not rejecting the assertions in ordinary English that "words have meaning" or "words are meaningful", nor is he affirming the assertions in ordinary English that "words are meaningless" or "words have no meaning". Rather he's constraining the use of the term "meaning" in the special context of his philosophical discourse.

Of course words have some sort of linguistic significance, of course they mean something, of course they have meaning.... Of course it's often the case that we can tell whether or not someone "knows what a word means". The Fregean should acknowledge all this when he's speaking ordinary English among ordinary-English speakers; it's his burden to find some way to paraphrase these commonplace insights into his own peculiar idiom, and to find some way to make his own peculiar insights intelligible in the common tongue.

In that light, I just don't see what the tension between "compositionality" and "context" is supposed to be. It seems clear to me that the meaning of an English utterance depends in part on the meaning of the English sentence uttered; in part on the speaker's intention in uttering that sentence; and often in part on other features of context.

The analyst is free to isolate the English sentence and consider its "meaning" in abstraction from any context of utterance. It seems clear this abstract "meaning" can be analyzed in terms of the arrangement of linguistically significant parts according to rules of sentence "composition". It seems just as clear that this abstract "meaning" of sentences is only one component of linguistic meaning, and that the results of such analysis will often seem incomplete or at odds with respect to the full-blooded meaning of utterances in context.

The abstract significance of the sentence thus isolated is nonetheless an important component of linguistic meaning, essential to natural language as we know it.

Is the statement "You should love everyone" a proposition? Or rather, is the statement "Bob states you should love everyone" a proposition? — jancanc

Try this:

Propositional content: S loves everyone, S = "you" (the addressee)
Propositional attitude: B intends (desires, recommends, commands...) that "S loves everyone"

Or again:

"Pass the salt"
Content: S passes the salt
Attitude: Bob intends "S passes the salt"

We know what state of affairs is intended, how the addressee is involved in the intended state of affairs, and what attitude Bob has with respect to that state of affairs. It's on the basis of this understanding that we respond coherently to each other's imperatives. Seems clear that we can analyze imperatives in terms of propositional content and propositional attitude along such lines.

We may want to distinguish between the "internal" attitude that Bob has with respect to the proposition, and any attitude said to be involved in the speech act he uses. Bob wants you to love everyone and wants you to pass the salt, Bob urges you to love everyone and requests that you pass the salt.


On the other hand, if a statement must be an assertion, then on the surface it may seem doubtful whether imperative sentences like "Love everyone" and "Pass the salt" count as statements. It seems reasonable to suppose that such sentences may be characterized as entailing assertions constructed in terms of propositional content, propositional attitude, and speech act.

I, Bob, desire that you, S, pass the salt, and thus request that you pass the salt.


In all these analyses, the proposition at the heart of each case is the proposition the speaker aims to bring about by speaking. The speaker does not assert that p is the case, but rather uses speech as a means to make p the case.

That p is the proposition he has in mind.

Once you've tested it with the numbers you can substitute back in the ordinary terms: — Michael

It seems we're in agreement on the underlying logic.

Well, the use of "probably" and "improbably" isn't very useful. Try replacing it with percentages, where (for example) "probably" is ">= 75%" and "improbably" is "<= 25%". — Michael

Thanks for crunching the numbers for us! I'm relieved to find that the math, at least, confirms my intuitions.

I was running with unenlightened's usage of the terms "probable" and "improbable". But I am, moreover, inclined to say that ordinary conceptions of probability, and of the logical form of probabilistic judgment, are conceptually prior to, or at least historically prior to and conceptually distinguishable from, mathematical models of probability and probabilistic judgment.

I speak analogously about the priority of ordinary number-concepts and numerical judgments, and about the priority of pre-numerical quantitative concepts and judgments (more/less, greater/fewer, bigger/smaller, lighter/heavier, faster/slower), as compared to the more refined conceptualizations obtained by the construction and analysis of sophisticated mathematical models of such concepts.

In our case, I would say there is a logic of probability that is prior to, or distinguishable from, mathematical models of probability. This is no mere academic point: It seems that most probabilistic judgments by ordinary humans do not have an explicitly numerical form, and in some cases it's not clear what numerical analysis could possibly be given to express a probabilistic judgment.

Accordingly, I take it there's some good sense to the sort of claims that unenlightened and I have been trafficking in.

One glaring thing we've neglected so far is an evaluation of equiprobables. My preference is to avoid expanding the set of values. So rather than three values (probable, equiprobable, improbable), I'd try lumping equiprobable into one of the other two terms. It seems more fitting to call a 50/50 chance improbable than to call it probable, so I'd start out by lumping the equiprobable with the improbable.

I haven't bothered to sort through the implications.

@unenlightened

I'm still not sure what our discussion about probabilistic inference has to do with Gettier's paper. Is it your position that whenever rational people recognize that their reasonable expectations are grounded merely in "strong evidence", there is an essentially probabilistic deep-structure to their expectations, according to which their assertions like "Jones owns a Ford" cannot be evaluated as true or false, but must be reinterpreted as assertions like "It's sufficiently probable that Jones owns a Ford", or perhaps "I have good reason to claim that it's sufficiently probable that Jones owns a Ford"?

Along those lines, perhaps the beliefs we really "have" are beliefs about the probability of propositions, or about a given individual's being justified in making claims about the probability of propositions.... As a wholehearted skeptic, that strikes me as a line of thought worth pursuing, and I suppose there may indeed be something like this sort of structure underlying ordinary belief.

But how would that pursuit inform our view of Gettier's little essay?

At some point in the mesh of justifications and probabilistic judgments, a proposition becomes actionable, and its alternatives become negligible. Given his justifications and the probabilistic deep-structure of his expectations at the time we meet him, the rational Smith is prepared to act, until further notice, as if it were the case that Jones owns a Ford, as if it were the case that Brown is not in Barcelona, and thus as if it were the case that (EITHER Jones owns a Ford OR Brown is in Barcelona) is true. And Smith will have achieved this result by way of the same unhappy accident that we find in Gettier's paper, before and after all this additional trouble with probabilism.

Thus even the skeptic or probabilist may acknowledge that a traditional analysis of ordinary human beliefs in terms of "propositions held to be true" is a reasonable and useful simplification of the deep structure you've indicated.

So far as I can see, that brings us right back to the beginning: How, according to you, is recourse to probabilistic analysis of Gettier's puzzles relevant to our evaluation of Gettier's arguments and our assessment of the conception of justified true belief as a criterion for knowledge?

Surely someone better versed in the logic of probability than I could help us clear up this confusion.

Yes, it certainly seems on the face of it that a deduction from probable p inherits (at least) the same probability.

IF (Improbably~p) THEN (improbably ~p v q)

This seems to be just as valid, only less probable. — unenlightened

I'm not sure it's valid.

I take it the probability of (~p V q) will be very high when the probability of q is very high, regardless of the probability of ~p. Thus the improbability of ~p does not adequately inform our judgment about the probability of (~p V q). For the improbability of a disjunction requires the improbability of both of its terms, while the probability of a disjunction requires merely the probability of at least one of its terms.

Given an infinite number of such cases selected at random (cases in which it's improbable that ~p, but we have no idea whether it's probable that q), it may be reasonable to expect that (~p V q) will be false more often than (p V q) will be false. But it seems to me a statistical judgment of this sort is not the same thing as an inference in one particular case from the improbability of ~p to the improbability of (~p V q).

I recall von Mises makes a similar point in Probability, Statistics, and Truth, but I don't have my hard copy and haven't managed to find the passage online today.

IF (probably p) THEN (probably (p v ~q). — unenlightened

This one has the same basic form as

IF (probably p) THEN (probably (p V q)).

Moreover, I take it the two claims are consistent. So we might say, further:

IF (probably p) THEN ((probably (p V q)) AND (probably (p V ~q)))

IF (Improbably~p) THEN (improbably ~p v ~q) — unenlightened

I'm not sure this is valid either, for the same reasons as the first formula above.

Perhaps it may help to compare: If I roll a twelve-sided die (p) and a four-sided die (q) together, what is the probability that at least one of the two dice lands on a value greater greater than 4?

And these too. Does that worry you at all? It worries me. — unenlightened

I have yet to see reason for concern.

In 1961 Henry Kyburg pointed out that this policy conflicted with a principle of agglomeration: If you rationally believe p and rationally believe q then you rationally believe both p and q. Little pictures of the same scene should sum to a bigger picture of the same scene. If rational belief can be based on an acceptance rule that only requires a high probability, there will be rational belief in a contradiction! To see why, suppose the acceptance rule permits belief in any proposition that has a probability of at least .99. Given a lottery with 100 tickets and exactly one winner, the probability of ‘Ticket n is a loser’ licenses belief. — SEP — unenlightened

This is interesting, but suggests primarily that a rational believer would not thus lump together such beliefs without constraint. It seems to me the problem should be resolved by recharacterizing the judgment informed by a grasp of the odds. Kyburg, or the designer of the "policy" Kyburg criticizes, has smuggled irrationally expressed beliefs into a rational person's head.

Do you mean to suggest that this puzzle involving an irrational conjunction of inadequately expressed probabilistic judgments somehow informs our discussion about an inference in one particular case, from a probabilistic judgment that p to a probabilistic judgment that (p V q)?

Perhaps you would care to expand on the point. For one thing, does it matter that Kyburg's case involves conjunction, while our case involves inclusive disjunction? For another, what is there in our case corresponding to the contradiction generated by Kyburg's make-believe irrational believer? It's obvious where the contradiction lies in Kyburg's case, but so far you've given me no reason to suspect there's such a contradiction in the case at issue in our conversation. What have I missed?

It strikes me Kyburg's is another case in which probabilistic judgment over many instances is confused with probabilistic judgment in a single instance. In Kyburg's case the error's even worse, if the make-believe believer has leapt from the sound inference "Ticket n is (99:100) likely to lose" to the invalid non-probabilistic inference "Ticket n will lose". Whereas in our case, no one has been so foolish as to strip the probabilism off the claim. The cases also differ in that Kyburg's case has an explicitly mathematical form, whereas in our case Smith's probabilistic judgments do not have a clear mathematical form.

Epistemic paradoxes. — unenlightened

Is there something in this article especially relevant to our case?

Confusion and paradox are not the same.

It seems a safe bet that either my intuitions are confused and there is a paradox; or there is no paradox and your intuitions are confused.

I'll summarize my prima facie intuitions below. Let's kick them around, to see if they're consistent, and to see if we agree that they're reasonable. And to see if there are any typos...

Granting that we're judging a single particular case, with information about one term and no information about the other term of a disjunction:

VALID
(antecedent is sufficient to inform judgement that disjunction is probable)

IF (probably p) THEN (probably (p V q))
IF (probably p) THEN (probably (p V ~q))
IF (probably ~p) THEN (probably (~p V q))
IF (probably ~p) THEN (probably (~p V ~q))

IF (improbably p) THEN (probably (~p V q))
IF (improbably p) THEN (probably (~p V ~q))
IF (improbably ~p) THEN (probably (p V q))
IF (improbably ~p) THEN (probably (p V ~q))


INVALID
(antecedent is insufficient to inform judgment that disjunction is improbable)

IF (probably p) THEN (improbably (~p V q))
IF (probably p) THEN (improbably (~p V ~q))
IF (probably ~p) THEN (improbably (p V q))
IF (probably ~p) THEN (improbably (p V ~q))

IF (improbably p) THEN (improbably (p V q))
IF (improbably p) THEN (improbably (p V ~q))
IF (improbably ~p) THEN (improbably (~p V q))
IF (improbably ~p) THEN (improbably (~p V ~q))


Good exercise for a knucklehead like me.

It might help to make explicit:

IF (probably p) THEN (improbably ~p)
IF (probably ~p) THEN (improbably p)
IF (improbably p) THEN (probably ~p)
IF (improbably ~p) THEN (probably p)


And then put it together:

IF (probably p) THEN:
improbably ~p
probably (p V q)
BUT NOT NECESSARILY: improbably (~p V q)

IF (probably ~p) THEN:
improbably p
probably (~p V q)
BUT NOT NECESSARILY: improbably (p V q)

IF (improbably p) THEN:
probably ~p
probably (~p V q)
BUT NOT NECESSARILY: improbably (p V q)

IF (improbably ~p) THEN:
probably p
probably (p V q)
BUT NOT NECESSARILY: improbably (~p V q)

Of course we'd have to draw up different sets of tables for conjunction or exclusive disjunction.

Yes, it's difficult to talk about NOTHING. Being, by definition, nonexistence, it lacks properties we're familiar with and, so, is beyond our grasp.

We may, however, approach it negatively, in fact it's defined negatively - as what it isn't. The only property NOTHING has is zero, a quantiative property. — TheMadFool

As a number concept, the quantitative concept of zero entails a unit-concept. We need to specify the unit, an answer to the question "Zero what?" Moreover, one might argue that what makes a negative existential claim (There is no x such that PHI(x)) a concept of zero-units is its place in a number system; and that the concept of nonexistence is thus more primitive than the concept of zero.

To say there are no marbles in an urn is not to say there's nothing in the urn.

To sat that Pegasus doesn't exist is not to say that nothing exists.

The abstract concept of zero and the abstract concept of nonexistence are distinct from each other as well as from the yet more abstract concept of Nothing.

Judgments that there are zero marbles in this urn involve conceptual relation among the concept "marble", the concept "this urn", and the world in which it's said there are no marbles in this urn.

Judgments that Pegasus doesn't exist involve conceptual relation between the concept "Pegasus" and the world in which it's said there's no such thing as Pegasus.

It's a good first step; but so much more is involved. Consider the ancient distinction that splits knowing into knowing how... and knowing that..., and then pretends that knowhow has no place in philosophy.

Until it was pointed out that philosophers ought know how to use words.

To paraphrase, there are ways of knowing that are not exhibited in statements, but shown in what we do.

These are missing from Gettier. — Banno

Perhaps we might say Gettier's puzzles are neutral with respect to the distinction. They seem directly concerned with knowing-that, not knowing-how. Nonetheless, his problematization of justified true belief as a model for knowledge would have implications for justified true beliefs about know-how, and justified true beliefs involved in know-how.

It's tempting to suppose that models of knowing-that and models of knowing-how could be reconciled by subsuming either one into the other, and that perhaps neither has priority. If that can be done, it seems the way is open to a unified account of both sorts of knowing.

The carpenter has a special sort of know-how. He also knows that he has this know how. He believes that he can construct and repair various sorts of wooden object. His belief is justified -- not necessarily by sentences, but by deeds and memory of deeds that may be expressed in sentences if need be. He can demonstrate the skill, and he can instruct others. His demonstration and instruction may, but need not, involve speech.

Perhaps Plato shows his bias as a member of a class of privileged Athenian teachers whose reputation and livelihood depend on their expertise in literacy and rhetoric, when he suggests that true belief doesn't count as knowledge unless it's accompanied by a linguistic account. Or perhaps he doesn't mean that the account must be spoken, but only that it must be expressible in speech -- a rational understanding, a reasonably informed grasp of the matter that could, but need not, be expressed in language by a competent speaker. Or perhaps he glosses over this distinction without recognizing it, due to the richness and ambiguity of the term logos, or his own habits and biases.

By a more recent convention, we model beliefs and justifications as "propositions" and "propositional attitudes" expressed in language, but I see no reason to insist, and good reason to deny, that all beliefs and justifications have an essentially linguistic form. So far as I know, these conventions typically take for granted that the propositions do not have an essentially linguistic form, though of course we give them linguistic expression when we speak about them.

Here I think we are getting closer to what is going on in the Theaetetus. — Banno

It's been a while since I've looked at that dialogue. In my recollection, it's a conversation about knowledge, not certainty, though of course I might be mistaken. Perhaps you'll do me the favor of correcting my memory, by reminding me how the concept of certainty figures in that fine old legend.

Or is there some other way in which we're approaching Theaetetus?

One way we can be certain is when we take things as the bedrock of our discussion. In this sense, doubt is dismissed as not having a place in the discussion. — Banno

I wouldn't call that certainty, just a framing assumption.

We take claims for granted temporarily, for the sake of argument, for the sake of conversation, and thereby rule out whole regions of discourse for a while, to make room for the theme we've agreed to address.

A beautiful convention, without which there's little hope of progress in a diverse discursive community.

So, for example, this is not a discussion about the comparative benefits of diesel and petrol engines, and thinking it so is to misunderstand what is going on. Or, to use the all-pervasive example, one does not doubt that a bishop moves diagonally while playing chess. — Banno

That sounds right to me.

I might add "Ordinarily one does not doubt that a bishop moves diagonally while playing chess." For even such a simple rule might be doubted in some contexts: while learning the rules of the game, in a moment of confusion, in an altered state of consciousness, in a context of skeptical doubt....

The problem here is the philosopher's game of putting "absolute" in front of "certainty" and thinking that this means something. Outside of philosophy, minds like ours always or almost always certain. Few folk check that they have an arm before they reach for the fork. It's not the sort of thing that one doubts, outside the philosopher's parlour. — Banno

I take it "absolute certainty" means something along the lines of: 100% certain, beyond the possibility of doubt, beyond the possibility of error, not possibly false, indubitable in any discursive context whatsoever.... I agree the concept seems fanciful. I'm inclined to say that nothing is absolutely certain in this sense, and that the term is another one of those philosopher's fictions that make a laughing stock of their art when it's employed as anything more than a foil.

Thankfully practical certainty is the ordinary condition of human agents in the course of their ordinary affairs. So far as I can see, this only means that normally we're sure enough to act without question, without further checking, ascertaining, assuring, proving, testing, confirming, investigating.... Without any practical doubt, without any practical reason for doubt.

That natural confidence is often disrupted by circumstances. We learn by experience that our perceptual judgments and memories are fallible, that our calculations and inferences are fallible. Sometimes our expectations go unsatisfied or our plans go awry. Sometimes our conceptualizations turn out to have been confused or our interpretations turn out to have been biased. Sometimes what seems sure enough to us is doubted or denied by others; sometimes we doubt or deny what seems sure enough to others.

The care and method we employ in ascertaining the correctness of our judgments may vary along with our purposes and circumstances, including our assessment of the chance for error and our evaluation of the consequences of error.

Being practically certain, or feeling absolutely certain, is not the same as holding a claim that is absolutely immune to doubt.

Practical certainty is compatible with doubt -- in the study as well as in the marketplace.

And here is where the logos differs from justification. Hanover brought this to mind elsewhere. When you learn that the cup is red (again), are you learning something about the cup, or something about the use of the word "red"? — Banno

I'm not sure how this coordinates with our discussion of certainty. In any case, it seems the answer depends on what you're ignorant of at the time you "learn that the cup is red".

If you already know what those words mean, then it may be you're color blind, or looking for red cups in the dark or in green light, and have finally determined that the cup in front of you is the red one you were looking for.

If you don't know what those words mean, but already have concepts of "red" and "cup", as one who doesn't speak English might, then you may only be learning the meaning of those English words, how they map onto your concepts and your native language.

If you don't have the concepts corresponding to the words "red" and "cup", then you may be acquiring those concepts for the first time, like a child, learning to pick out new sorts of things on the basis of perception, and learning to coordinate those things, and thoughts about those things, with the corresponding words in the English language.

Well, one hand washes the other. When you learn that r justifies p, you learn more than just that r materially implies p; you learn a new way of using "r" and "p". It does not automatically follow that, if r justifies p, it justifies p v q. — Banno

Do you mean to say it does not "automatically follow", in the head of every person who learns that r justifies p? In other words, not everyone who learns that r justifies p will immediately infer that r justifies (p V q)?

That seems like a psychological point, not a logical one. I suppose I agree with the psychological point. But I would expect that, at least once a person has acquired a grasp of the form of basic propositional logic, he will be disposed to assent to the claim "r justifies (p V q)" as soon as he is disposed to assent to the claim "r justifies p".

It's not a calculus, merely annotation. In propositional logic, "probably p" or "believed p" does not add up to p, but to (p v ~p) — unenlightened

(p V ~p) is mere tautology.

(p V ~p) is true, whether or not p.

probably p is an informative and definitive claim.

probably p can serve as a reasonable justification for further claims or actions, at least in some contexts.

probably p has its own formal implications:

IF (probably p) THEN (probably (p V q)).

I've never studied probabilistic logic, but I reckon the probability that (p V q) can't be any lower than the probability that p, and can't be any lower than the probability that q.

Nothing is nothing.

I found my point of view on the metaphysics of a sleeping person's mind relevant and decided to contribute. As a mind with no consciousness and sentience can't exist, we can reach a conclusion that a person who is asleep has no mind (at that moment, that is). Of course, reaching into the topic that Victoribus Spolia started, we know that killing a person while they're asleep is a murder and morally wrong, which is because they're going to wake up, ie. they have potential to have a mind. But this is the argument Victoribus uses to justify opinion that most of us disagree on, that contraception is murder.

This is quite a dilemma I'm facing. One could ponder the relevance of the existence of physical body, but I find three counter examples to disprove this stance: first, braindead people are considered dead as they have neither mind nor potential to have one; second, dead bodies (similar to the former one except that the body isn't alive); and third, a hypothetical person with no body.

I believe the answer to be the existing social connections of a sleeping person, but this is slightly problematic as we wouldn't approve killing such a person. Alternatively a view on the metaphysics of soul that includes an afterlife might provide potential answers, as the sleeping person's mind (that didn't, at the moment, exist) would continue to the afterlife, but the soul of a person who never existed, would not. — BlueBanana

I've read something similar from Searle, about consciousness vanishing while we're asleep. But do we really have definitive empirical evidence that consciousness (awareness, sentience) is absolutely annihilated during sleep -- as opposed to say, sleep being merely an altered state of consciousness? Surely dreaming is a state of consciousness. Even exteroceptive cognition seems to continue at a subconscious level while we sleep, even to influence our dreams and perhaps our thoughts and feelings when we awaken. Further empirical investigation is required to flesh out our view of what happens to sleeping animals, or we might say, to sleeping minds.

It seems likely there are various "states of unconsciousness": different sorts of sleep, different sorts of coma, different sorts of anesthesia, different ways to be knocked out, and so on. In ordinary usage we may call a sleeping or KO'd person "unconscious", but it's up to empirical investigation to inform us whether there's anything like an "altered" state of consciousness that accompanies such phenomena.

Even if it's correct to say we are completely unconscious on certain occasions, we might nevertheless deny that our "minds" are annihilated during those periods. It seems ordinary consciousness depends on lots of subconscious and non-conscious cognitive activity. How much of the cognitive activity that continues while we are asleep and unconscious involves and influences cognitive function related to conscious activity before and after that period of unconsciousness? If there's any such activity ongoing, we might insist it is mental activity. Though the organism is momentarily unconscious, unconscious cognitive processes continue to manage the mind of the organism even while it sleeps, not merely keeping the body alive by maintaining homeostasis and metabolism and such, but also relaxing, healing, and reorganizing neural pathways involved in thought, memory, intention, affect, locomotion, and so on.

Arguably that continuity would be enough to support a claim that properly mental activity, in other words "the mind", persists even while the organism is unconscious. In that case, I would be content to speak of unconscious minds. I'm inclined to expect that something like this is the case for the sleeping animal.

Some thoughts with respect to the moral aspect of your question:

Of course a living human person, or any living thing, has a body. I'm not sure how your hypothetical case of a person with no body is relevant to the moral question. For one thing, you'd need to specify: How does one kill a living person who has no body? Or, what kind of killing is the killing of nonliving persons? How can we tell whether a bodiless person is alive or dead?

Disembodied persons aside, I'd say "a person has a mind", but not that "a person is a mind". Ordinary human animals are persons and have minds, but are not identical to their minds. Many nonhuman animals have minds, are sentient, but are not therefore called persons. Morality and law normally distinguish between humans and other animals. Even an agent who aims to treat all sentient beings with loving kindness won't treat all sentient beings in exactly the same ways, but distinguish them by their kinds.

Even if we're not satisfied with arguments, like those given above, that human minds persist during sleep, we should insist that human persons persist during sleep, even while their minds vanish. Accordingly, we say that rules against killing humans are not adequately analyzed as rules against killing things that are currently conscious or humans that are currently conscious, but rather rules against killing persons.

Then add: Non-human animals are not (necessarily) persons. Human corpses are not persons. Brainless embryos are not persons. Terminally brain-dead humans are not persons.

And so on.

What irks me about Gettier is that he appears to be assaulting a straw man. Who is it that believes knowledge is exactly justified true belief? — Banno

It often seems professional epistemologists count it their duty to construct and assault straw men. Consider their collective abuse of the moldy old straw man they call "the skeptic".

I'm not into theory-building, but I'm inclined to think that JTB stands as a fair account of our use of "knowing" language. That's not necessarily the same thing as an account of what knowledge is; but only something like a theoretical model or analysis of the conditions under which we count ourselves entitled or unentitled to assign "knowing" predicates to subjects, to say that S knows that p.

This gives a weighted disjunction, (p(99%) v ~p(1%)). And that does not lead to (p v q). It's so simple it seems to be invisible to everyone, but as soon as it is possible that ~p, the damaging disjunction (p v q) cannot be made at all. — unenlightened

According to your calculus, does (p(99%) V ~p(1%)) imply ((p V q)99%)? Or how are your probabilistic weightings related to propositional logic?

How does the weighted disjunction address the Gettier cases? Does Smith believe ((p V q)99%), on your account?

An intersting notion. So Moore might believe he has a hand, and yet doubt it. Or Moore might know he has a hand, and yet doubt it. But not Moore might be certain he has a hand, and yet doubt it.

That might be right. — Banno

Exactly.

So far as I can see, it's best way to align this family of terms to reflect ordinary usage and to clean up the epistemologist's shop.

We can extend the treatment to "certainty": So long as we mean mere practical certainty or a feeling of sureness, but not absolute theoretical certainty, certainty is compatible with doubt.

More importantly, it just seems to be the case that minds like ours never or almost never attain absolute certainty, though many of us seem awfully sure of ourselves sometimes.

I've heard fallibilism is quite fashionable in the schools in our time.

More importantly, it just seems to be the case that minds like ours never or almost never attain absolute certainty.

Redundancy applies if there is no meaningful difference in the change being made. You're suggesting that Smith holds the belief that:((p v q) is true if (p v q) follows from (p)). So the solution would look like this after filling in the blanks...

p1. ((p) is true)
p2. ((p v q) follows from (p))
p3. ((p v q) is true if (p v q) follows from (p))
C1. ((p v q) is true because (p v q) follows from (p)) — creativesoul

What I'm suggesting is that

(p AND (IF p THEN (p V q))

is already enough to give a truth condition for (p V q). Or in other words:

(p V q) is true if p.

I'm not sure what else you think is required, or how your view is coordinated with ordinary propositional logic. So far as I can see, all that's missing is sufficient warrant for the claim that p, which is provided by Gettier.

Which is not to say that (p V q), taken in isolation, is an adequate representation of Smith's belief in Gettier II.

This is to say that believing a disjunction has some sort of epistemic structure. You offered the following...

1. p [for reasons assumed in the scenario]
2. ~q [for reasons assumed in the scenario]
3. if (p and ~q) then (either p or q) [empty formalism]
4. either p or q [by inference from 1, 2, 3]

I can understand why it would seem to be helpful to formally set out an exclusive 'or'. I mean, Smith's thought/belief process results in his believing a disjunction, and he is admittedly ignorant about Brown's location, so he would not believe anything at all about Brown's location. — creativesoul

I only offer to revert to the exclusive disjunction because it seems to be the form of the thought Gettier intends to put in Smith's head.

It seems very clear to me that there is a stark contrast between formalization of thought/belief(taking an account of thought/belief) and how thought/belief actually works. — creativesoul

That sounds right. I suppose we're all talking about best practices for formalization of the case at hand.

That is partially understood by virtue of our recognizing the performative contradiction inherently within 3 that would surely carry over to 4 if we were to take your offering as an adequate account of Smith's believing a disjunction. — creativesoul

What contradiction is inherent in (3), and how does it carry over to (4)?

Belief that either p or q is true, in the sense of truth that is presupposed within all thought/belief and statements thereof, is to believe that either could be the case. — creativesoul

The exclusive disjunction is true if and only if one but not both of the terms in the disjunction are true. That's the logical form of exclusive disjunction.

I suppose believing that an exclusive disjunction is true, or having beliefs with the form of an exclusive disjunction, requires believing that one but not both of the terms in the disjunction are true. For instance, by believing that p and believing that ~q.

Smith believes neither that p could be false nor that q could be true. — creativesoul

I wouldn't say "could". We have no indication that Smith thinks it's impossible that ~p and impossible that q. And we have no indication he counts himself absolutely certain that p and ~q.

None of that is required for us to count Smith as believing with justification that p and ~q.

For him to think/believe and/or state that either p or q could be true would be for him to arrive at self-contradiction. — creativesoul

I reject this claim. I take the following to be consistent statements:

I believe that p and that possibly ~p. I believe that p, and I believe it's possible that my belief-that-p is wrong. I have beliefs and I believe it's possible that any of my beliefs are wrong.

I know that p but it's possible that I am wrong and that ~p. I have knowledge but it's possible that any knowledge claim of mine is wrong.

Moreover, I take it this way of speaking is consistent with Gettier's arguments.

Smith can believe that (p v q) follows from (p) despite his not believing (q). — creativesoul

Of course he can. His belief in that implication should not be influenced by his beliefs about the truth values of p and q.

Believing that a disjunction follows from a belief is not equivalent to believing a disjunction. — creativesoul

The truth of an inclusive disjunction follows from the truth of any of its terms.

To believe that one or more of those terms is true is to have beliefs in accord with the truth of the disjunction, and is to be disposed to assent to the claim expressed in the disjunction.

Moreover, if Smith is rational and understands the conventions of formal logic, and believes that p, and entertains the proposition (p V q) in light of his belief that p, we should be surprised indeed if he does not acknowledge that he believes that (p V q) is true.

The former is belief about the rules of correct inference, and the latter is believing that the truth conditions of a particular disjunction have been met. — creativesoul

The truth conditions of (p V q) are met as soon as the truth conditions of p are met. Or as soon as the truth conditions of q are met. Or as soon as the truth conditions of (p AND q) are met.

It seems this is the point you're neglecting, which has sent you off on a search for red herring.

Smith believes that p.

Smith does not merely believe that there are abstract inferential relations between any pair of propositions and their disjunction. He believes the truth condition for a particular disjunctive claim has been satisfied. He believes that Jones owns a Ford.

You've set out the former while leaving the latter sorely neglected. I've found focusing upon q to be entirely irrelevant, for Smith does not believe any of the q's, and we are taking an account of Smith's thought/belief process on his way to arriving at believing a disjunction. — creativesoul

I don't think I've neglected anything. We only need to focus on q if we want to follow Gettier and analyze the case as an exclusive disjunction. Smith's beliefs about q are quite relevant in that case. Because in that case, Smith must believe he has strong evidence for both p and ~q.

I'm happy to go with the flow here and focus on the case as if Smith had constructed an arbitrary inclusive disjunction instead of an arbitrary exclusive disjunction. I don't think it makes much difference for the underlying issue.

Given that, what is there in your above epistemic structural offering that is both germane and not effectively exhausted by p1 and p2 below? — creativesoul

That's my point. We don't need the rest of it.

The relevant epistemic structure is exhausted by:

warrant for p
belief that p
understanding that (IF p THEN (p V q))

That's enough to make Smith disposed to assent to (p v q), and enough to make Smith's beliefs accord with (p V q).

Add that, given that epistemic context, Smith entertains the proposition (p V q) and makes a rational judgment. In my book that's enough to attribute to Smith the belief that (p V q).

This doesn't make much sense to me. I'm saying that belief that:((p v q) is true) is not an adequate account of believing a disjunction. You've agreed to this and subsequently offered an account of believing a disjunction that results in belief that:(p or q) which is exactly what I've shown to be inadequate. — creativesoul

I have agreed that (p V q) is not in itself an adequate representation of Smith's belief. I have offered what I take to be an adequate representation, which consists of more than the mere claim (p V q).

You have claimed repeatedly, but not shown to my satisfaction, that my sketch is inadequate. You have insisted that something extra is required, but you have not made clear why or what the extra item is supposed to be.

By now it seems we're going in circles. This is beginning to get tiresome.

This is prima facie evidence that you've not understood what I've argued. — creativesoul

I might argue this discussion is prima facie evidence that you don't understand what you've argued. Instead let's proceed by assuming that neither of us adequately understands the other's point of view, and that neither of us completely understands his own point of view, at least until such time as we may attain some sort of mutually satisfactory resolution.

I understand that historically people have understood the problem to be that Smith arrives at JTB by virtue of working from false premisses and valid inference/form. I understand that folk want to take an account of Smith's thought/belief process by virtue of displaying some logical argument or another. I'm saying that they're all found to be sorely lacking in much the same way... explanatory power. — creativesoul

I don't know what all the others have said.

In my view Smith's "belief" is justified in one sense, and not justified in a stricter sense. And his "belief" is not adequately represented by the isolated disjunctive claim, but only by that claim in the context of his supporting beliefs about the facts of the case, which supporting beliefs function as his justification for the isolated claim in question.

None of them can account for Smith's considering the truth conditions of his particular disjunctions and subsequently concluding that the disjunction is true because those conditions have been met. — creativesoul

Why can't they? The truth of p is a truth condition for (p V q). Smith believes that p, and has strong reasons for believing that p. What is left unexplained?

Perhaps the abstract symbols are causing the confusion? I'll reiterate, Smith's beliefs here aren't merely about abstract inferential relations. He believes:

Jones owns a Ford.
IF Jones owns a Ford, THEN (Jones owns a Ford OR Brown is in Barcelona)
THEREFORE (Jones owns a Ford OR Brown is in Barcelona)

That's precisely what believing a disjunction requires. When that is properly accounted for, it becomes crystal clear that Smith forms and holds false belief. — creativesoul

So far as I can see, it's already accounted for by Gettier. It's already clear that Smith's view of the facts is incorrect because he holds a false belief; and clear that accordingly his beliefs about the broader context are flawed; and clear accordingly that his justification for the disjunction is, though reasonable in context, sorely off the mark.

The scope of those consequences are daunting. The Gettier 'problem' is irrefutably shown to be nothing more than an utterly inadequate account of what believing a disjunction requires and/or consists in/of. — creativesoul

I don't see anything daunting about the Gettier problems, and I'm not sure you have worked out a coherent response to them. I do think they're interesting puzzles that force epistemologists to clear up their conception of knowledge as JTB. And I think your approach -- clearing up the representation of Smith's beliefs -- is promising in its broad features.

Your attempt to "solve" Gettier II by focusing on the formal features of "believing a disjunction" -- even if it were successful -- might leave dissatisfied those of us who'd prefer a single unified solution to all Gettier-type problems. Not all Gettier problems involve disjunction.

If S knows p, then by force of logic, he knows (p v q). This works, because if he knows p, then p is true, by the definition of knowledge. But he doesn't know p and cannot possibly know p, because p is not true, and it is because beliefs are not always true that the truth preserving logic does not work for beliefs. — unenlightened

This bit I can agree with: In Gettier's cases, Smith believes that p but does not know that p, because p is in fact and unbeknownst to Smith, false.

That's why his justification for the disjunction is problematic. It's a valid argument from false premises that accidentally lands on a true conclusion. It seems to me Smith's ignorance is the whole problem, and this is what is preserved on what I take to be a common response to the puzzle: Smith does not know that p, and he does not know that (p V q), although (p V q) is true in fact and Smith believes with justification that (p V q).

I still don't see how adding skeptical couching helps to address this specific problem.

What about my example of Mary giving Smith £10?

1. Mary tells Smith that she will give him £10 if Jones owns a Ford or if Brown is in Barcelona
2. Smith justifiably believes that Jones owns a Ford
3. So, Smith justifiably believes that Mary will give him £10
4. Jones doesn't own a Ford but Brown is in Barcelona

Is this "unfit" justification? Is this a case of "that's not what I meant"? — Michael

Yes, this seems like another example. On the basis of his strong evidence that Jones owns a Ford, Smith might feel the bet's practically a sure thing. If he learns how he came to get the payout, he'll recognize it was pure luck.

Of course he still gets the payout, just like he still gets a hold of true claims in Gettier's original examples. But he gets them by a stroke of luck, not by virtue of understanding the relevant facts.

He's correct in his belief that Mary will give him £10, but incorrect in his belief that she will do so because Jones owns a Ford. — Michael

That's a fair analysis on the surface of the problem, but arguably leaves too much out of the picture.

How is the isolated claim "Mary will give me £10" supported in the context of Smith's beliefs? creativesoul has been arguing that we need a more thorough representation of Smith's beliefs in order to make sense of the problem. I'm inclined to agree.

We can't adequately understand what Smith believes -- we can't adequately interpret his propositional attitude with respect to the proposition we purport to represent by way of the English sentence "Mary will give me £10" -- without getting some of Smith's reasons into the picture. We need to show a relation among Smith's beliefs that supports the belief in question.

I suppose a JTB account of knowledge always requires us to dig deeper than a single knowledge claim, to show how the claim is justified for a given believer. In Gettier's cases, that digging turns up such a mess, it seems unreasonable to count them as cases of "knowing" -- as Smith himself would be prepared to admit, were he apprised of the relevant facts.

Are you saying that a belief is only justified if it's true? — Michael

No.

What counts as a sound justification from Smith's ill-informed point of view does not count as a sound justification from any well-informed point of view. Smith's "argument" is valid but not sound, as it depends on false premises.

Once Smith is apprised of the relevant facts, he realizes that he only got hold of a true conclusion by chance, not by sound reasoning. What had previously seemed a sound justification now turns out to be an unsound justification, because the premises on which it was based now appear to be false. (Not all variations on Gettier's theme turn on false premises in such an obvious way, so I'm not suggesting that "soundness" is the road to a general solution.)

It's interesting that philosophers like Gettier seem prepared to count such valid inference from false premises as "complete justification", while presumably they would not count invalid inference from true (or false) premises as justification. Why treat the norms of inference as if they were more objective than the facts? On the other hand, why not treat justifications involving invalid inferences as nonetheless justifications for the one who doesn't notice his fallacy?

My suggestion is that we make a theoretical distinction between a claim i) "justified" from an ill-informed epistemic context or finite point of view, and ii) "justified" from a well-informed epistemic context or omniscient point of view. Then we might say, the J in JTB is justification in sense (ii).

This seems in line with Plato's original suggestion. I suppose it also makes justification a mercurial little trickster like truth and knowledge.

We count claims as true, as known, as justified, each of us from his own point of view. But we take for granted that there is a fact of the matter that determines whether we are correct in those judgments.

Except when there is no fact of the matter.

1. I am claiming that believing a disjunction is necessary for knowing one — creativesoul

Agreed, at least for the sake of argument.

2. Believing a disjunction is not being taken proper account of — creativesoul

Agreed, in that Smith's belief is not an isolated "belief in a disjunction", but has an epistemic structure. I've sketched my take on that structure, and I'm not sure I understand your take.

3. Belief that:((p v q) is true) is an utterly inadequate account of what believing a disjunction consists in/of — creativesoul

Agreed, same as (2).

4. An adequate account of believing a disjunction clearly shows that Smith's belief is false — creativesoul

Every account on the table clearly shows that the premise p is false and that the premise ~q is false. That's the problem. The justification is flawed because it's based on false premises, but it still reaches a true conclusion by way of valid inferences.

Is there something else you show to be false, some other proposition relevant to the problem?

5. False belief is not a problem for JTB, no matter how it is arrived at — creativesoul

Agreed.

But valid inferences from false premises to true conclusions arguably pose a problem worth addressing, at least given the peculiar character of the Gettier cases.

6. The underlying problem in Case II is a grossly inadequate (mis)understanding of what believing a disjunction consists in/of — creativesoul

I'm still not clear on what your view of "believing a disjunction" amounts to.

I agree that clarifying the "representation" of the relevant belief is a promising approach to the problem, and that the complete picture should include more than "Smith believes that (p V q)" [or more than "Smith believes that (either p V q)", to follow Gettier's example more closely].

I've suggested that clarifying the relevant sense of "justification" is another promising approach.

Seems that Gettier does as well as many many others including yourself. I mean, you say so immediately after saying that (p v q) is not an adequate representation of Smith's belief. — creativesoul

I'm not aware of having said that.

I do say that "(p V q)" can and should have a place in an adequate representation of Smith's belief. That's not the same as doing the job all by itself.

So far as I can see, we need to add the premise that supports the inference to (p V q), and also the warrant for that premise.


Does it help if we adjust to reflect the exclusive disjunction in Gettier's paper:

1. p [for reasons assumed in the scenario]
2. ~q [for reasons assumed in the scenario]
3. if (p and ~q) then (either p or q) [empty formalism]
4. either p or q [by inference from 1, 2, 3]

p1. ((p) is true)
p2. ((p v q) follows from (p))
p3. ((p v q) is true if...(insert belief statement(s) regarding what makes this particular disjunction true))
C1. ((p v q) is true because... (insert belief statement(s) corresponding to the prior 'if'))

That is what believing a disjunction takes. That is what it consists in/of. I've invited anyone to imagine a disjunction arrived at by a rational agent on the basis of believing P that is not completely exhausted by the above solution. There are no problems. Fill it out. — creativesoul

The first problem that comes to mind is that (p2) can fill in the blank at (p3), which makes (p3) redundant.

(p V q) is true if p.

All that remains is to provide warrant for p.

If justified true belief does not amount to knowledge, then what the eff is knowledge and what does amount to it? — unenlightened

So far as I can see, Gettier problems don't give us reason to reject the conception of knowledge as justified true belief, they only present eccentric breakdown cases that push us to clarify. I've suggested we might respond to the issue by clearing up the relevant conception of belief, which seems to be creativesoul's approach, or by clearing up the relevant conception of justification, or both.

Where I'm at with this at the moment is that Smith does not arrive at his belief 'p' by formal logic, but by informal induction, and therefore he is not entitled (by logic) to treat his belief as a certainty, which is required to form the disjunction with a random 'q'. — unenlightened

I'm not sure I follow.

Knowledge is not the same thing as certainty. I can know the way from here to the grocery store, even while doubting that I know the way. Belief and knowledge are compatible with doubt.

In Case I, Smith is not certain that Jones will get the job, nor certain that Jones has ten coins in his pocket. He only has "strong evidence" to support those claims.

In Case II, he has "strong evidence" that Jones owns a Ford. It's not made explicit how Gettier makes sense of the warrant for "Brown is not in Boston, Barcelona, or Brest-Litovsk". Say: Smith has a good idea of the history of Brown's whereabouts and Brown's plans for the next few weeks, thus believes accordingly it's extremely unlikely that Brown's at any of those three places, so has good reason to assume Brown's not in any of those three places.

In each case, there's no question of certainty, but only strong evidence that provides defeasible warrant for premises that ground the inference leading to the proposition in question.

So far as I can see, the problem is not that Smith is certain when he shouldn't be, but rather that Smith makes valid inferences based on false premises, and still winds up latching onto true conclusions. The lack of fit is so severe that we're forced to deny that Smith knows what he's talking about when he affirms the true propositions in question.

This problem remains whether or not Smith's beliefs account for the possibility of error.

No. But for many philosophers the intuition here is that the justified true beliefs in Gettier cases are not knowledge, so it's a problem for such accounts of what knowledge is. — Srap Tasmaner

Gettier gives two special cases in which a justified true belief arguably does not count as knowledge, due to inadequate fit between the justification for the proposition and the truth of the proposition in question.

I suppose one might conclude that, though JTB may be necessary for knowledge, it is not sufficient.

That's not a troubling claim in my book. Even less so, given that Gettier's first case involves a superficial error of description, and his second case involves an arbitrary and artificial inference. Does anyone really believe that way? What is in fact believed when such sentences are uttered in such contexts?

My reasons for believing that p are obviously relevant to my believing that p v q, but it will turn out they have nothing to do with what makes p v q true. It's a bit of luck that I believe p v q for one reason but it turns out to be true for another. (Abusing the word "reason", I know.) — Srap Tasmaner

Plato proposes that justification (account, logos) be added to true belief as a criterion for knowledge, to rule out cases in which a belief is only "accidentally" true.

Gettier helps us further specify the conception of knowledge as justified true belief, by indicating cases in which a justification for an accidentally true belief does not function the way the believer intends.

In both of Gettier's original cases, we expect the lucky believer, apprised of the relevant facts, to think something like "That's not what I meant".

His beliefs about the relevant state of affairs are on the whole contrary to fact, even though that view of the state of affairs disposes him to assent to a single proposition that is arbitrarily true with respect to his beliefs.

We might say the target propositions do not really reflect what is believed, and insist that beliefs be represented more thoroughly with respect to epistemic context.

Or we might say the ascribed "beliefs" are not really justified, though they seem justified from the point of view of the local epistemic context. A belief is true or false, independent of our grasp of the truth value of the proposition believed. Likewise, we might say, a justification for that proposition is "fit" or "unfit", independent of our grasp of the fitness of that justification.

Along such lines we could advocate for something like "fitness" as a "fourth criterion" to round off JTB, yielding Fit Justified True Belief. (Or try fullness, completeness, adequacy….). But this is only to clarify the original conception of "justification". For the thought was never that any old story that sounds good to me is good enough to warrant my beliefs, but rather that my story must line up with the relevant facts.

That sort of response should fly just as well for Barn Façade variations on Gettier's theme.

The original paper... — creativesoul

It's not clear to me what position you take yourself to be arguing against or what position you take yourself to be defending, nor how your position is related to Gettier's .

"S believes that p" does not entail that p is true.

"S's belief, that p, is a justified belief" does not entail that p is true, nor that p is justified in every epistemic context.

"S knows that p" entails that p is true.

"T asserts that S knows p" does not entail that S knows p, and does not entail that p is true, even when T = S.

Sometimes knowledge claims are false claims. Like Wittgenstein says:

One always forgets the expression, 'I thought I knew'. — Wittgenstein

Gettier's paper is a critique of the concept of knowledge, not a critique of belief and justification, and not a critique of the validity of disjunction. It seems to me he takes ordinary epistemological concepts of belief, justification, and truth for granted in his paper. For instance:

If these two conditions hold, then Smith does not KNOW that (h) is true, even though (i) (h) is true, (ii) Smith does believe that (h) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (h) is true. — Gettier

Indeed. The trouble comes when those pontificating about Smith's thought/belief process conflate his belief that:((p v q) is true if...(insert belief statement(s) regarding what makes this particular disjunction true)) and ((p v q) is true because... (insert belief statement(s) corresponding to the prior 'if')) with belief that:((p v q) is true). The latter cannot exhaust the former, and thus belief that:((p v q) is true) is not an adequate representation of Smith's belief. — creativesoul

I hope it's clear from my preceding remarks that I agree: (p V q) is not an adequate representation of Smith's belief in the case we began by considering.

Who says it is?

To say it is not an adequate representation of Smith's belief is not to say it can have no part in an adequate representation of Smith's belief.

For one thing, Smith believes

1. p [for reasons assumed in the scenario]
2. if p then (p V q) [empty formalism]
3. p V q [by inference from 1 and 2]

For another, Smith believes or is disposed to affirm that he has no idea whether q is true -- which is not the same as merely believing the tautology (q V ~q).

The trouble comes this way:
If you have good reason to believe that p, then you have good reason to believe that p v q, and if p v q is true you have a well-founded true belief, but it is possible for p to be false and q true, in which case your reasons for believing that p turn out to be irrelevant. — Srap Tasmaner

Is there some reason to insist that we cannot have justified true beliefs of this sort? To say p is justified in some epistemic context is not to say p is justified in an epistemic context that includes all the relevant facts. Such cases may lead to trouble for the one who believes that p, but I don't see what special difficulties they present for our analysis of these cases.

My reasons for believing p are not "irrelevant" to my judgment (p V q) in the case you've just described. They are the reasons that justify my judgment that p, and it's only this judgment which grounds the inference to (p V q).

That whole epistemic context is reflected in my disposition to alter my judgments in light of future changes to my view of the relevant facts. Such changes alter the balance of reasons for judging that p, which undermines the chain of inferences that had previously supported the claim (p V q).

All of which goes to show how the reasons that support the judgment that p are crucial to the judgment that (p V q) in this case.

Surely we're agreed on such matters? There must be something else at issue here....

Let us suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following proposition:
(f) Jones owns a Ford. Smith's evidence might be that Jones has at all times in the past within Smith's
memory owned a car, and always a Ford, and that Jones has just offered Smith a
ride while driving a Ford.

Let us imagine, now, that Smith has another friend, Brown, of whose whereabouts he is totally ignorant. Smith selects three place names quite at random and constructs the following three propositions:

(g) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Boston.
(h) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona.
(i) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk.

Each of these propositions is entailed by (f). — creativesoul

Do you mean to say that (g)-(i) are exclusive disjunctions, and that each of these exclusive disjunctions is entailed by (f)? That just seems wrong. For it's logically possible that Jones owns a Ford while Brown is in any one of those three locations.

If instead you mean that (g)-(i) are ordinary (inclusive) disjunctions, then they are trivially entailed by (f). In that case these propositions should not be expressed with the form "either (f) or (p)", but rather with the more modest form "(f) or (p)".


Redraft accordingly:

(f) Jones owns a Ford.

(g') Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Boston.
(h') Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona.
(i') Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk.


Smith believes that (f).

If Smith believes that (f), and Smith's beliefs are rational, and Smith understands the conventional meaning of logical disjunction, then:

1. Smith's beliefs are consistent with (g')-(i').
2. Smith is disposed to assent to (g')-(i')

None of those propositions commit Smith to having any expectations about the whereabouts of Brown. The belief that (f) does not commit Smith to having expectations about the whereabouts of Brown. Consider:

(u) Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is a unicorn.

The belief that (f) does not commit Smith to having beliefs about Brown or about unicorns. If Smith is rational then his beliefs are consistent with (u). If Smith is rational and understands the conventions of propositional logic, then Smith is disposed to assent to (u).

To all appearances, the truth of the second term in each disjunction is independent of the truth of (f) -- not only as a matter of logical form, but also as a matter of fact. Such propositions are utterly arbitrary and uninformative. To believe them, to have beliefs consistent with them, or to be disposed to assent to them, is merely to be a rational person who believes that one term in the disjunction is true.

I see nothing especially troubling in this way of speaking.

It seems to be that if I can justify an all evil, all knowing, and all powerful God with the same line of argument my friend used, then there must be something wrong with it. — rickyk95

The problem of evil begins from the assumption that God is benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent: Assuming that God is so, how is it possible that evil exists? The task of solving that problem need not involve finding justifications for the assumption that God is so. It need only involve providing an account of what is called evil that is consistent with the assumption that God is so.

Likewise your problem of good. The problem of good begins from the assumption that God is malevolent, omniscient and omnipotent: Assuming that God is so, how is it possible that good exists? The task of solving that problem need not involve finding justifications for the assumption that God is so. It need only involve providing an account of what is called good that is consistent with the assumption that God is so.

Accordingly, your solution to the problem of good does not provide any justification for the claim that a malevolent God exists. It only provides (or aims to provide) an account of good that is consistent with the assumption of a malevolent God.

I was not questioning whether we experience love, but rather asking if from your perspective, it is solely within experience? I agree with the rest of your account about this and the ways people can become confused. — Punshhh

Do you agree, in particular, with the distinction I made between one respect in which love is "in experience", and another respect in which love is "outside experience" in the bodies of the animals who love?

Regarding universal love, the way I am treating it in this conversation is in the sense of the principle, the reality and the experience of love and realities of which love might be a derivative, having some real and fundamental presence in the processes of existence itself, or the existence we find ourselves in. — Punshhh

My view is that it has a "real existence", in the bodies of those sentient animals and in the experience of those sentient animals.

For example our existence might be hosted by a demiurge through a process of creative love and life for that demiurge might be all within the realm of mind where intellectual compassion and love is as concrete as physical matter is for us. — Punshhh

I suppose on my view, love is as concrete as physical matter. Or, a particular instance of love is as concrete as a particular instance of physical matter. But I see no reason to suppose that love is "fundamental", in the sense that it is a basic feature of anything said to exist. Tables and chairs, sunbeams and raindrops.

A story like the one you've told about a demiurge: We can imagine it so, and we can imagine it not so. We can imagine countless alternatives like this one, each as consistent with the balance of appearances as any of the others; each as unsupported by the balance of appearances as any of the others. On what grounds would we choose among all those possibilities?

This particular story emphasizes a connection between love and sentience. That's an interesting dimension of our discussion: Can we conceive of love without sentience?

Are the love and sentience of the demiurge, or of the demiurge's "realm of mind", similar to the love and sentience of our animal experience, or how are they different? How do we know the answer to such questions? On what grounds would we support an answer?

Are those opposed to corporate power's influence in our democracy opposed to the process that resulted in the veto of this bill? Or does the fact that the preferred result was achieved negate the corrupt process that brought about the result? Or, do you think that the process was not corrupt at all and that corporations play an important role in our democratic process by using their influence to get results? — Hanover

I don't see any contradiction generally entailed by one's participation in a society, institution, or process of which one is critical and which one also acts or would act to reform. For instance, you can provide clear justifications for voting in an election even while "being opposed" to details of the structure of the electoral system -- say, the fact that there's no paper trail left by some new voting machines, perhaps even the one you're using to vote.

Likewise, you can oppose the current role of corporations in politics, for instance in connection with the deregulation of campaign finance and with ideology that "money is speech", while continuing to exert influence on corporations as a means to reform the status quo in any respect.

Moreover, a call to reform the role of corporations in politics is not the same as a call to abolish corporations. Even if members of corporations had no direct influence on government, corporate profits would be of interest to governments, for instance because of the tax revenues and jobs associated with them. Thus even if such conditions obtained, a nationwide threat to boycott a corporation could put pressure on a state or local government.

Accordingly, the tactic you've singled out here is morally compatible with an interest in reforming the role of corporations in politics, and it's utility is to some extent independent of the current degree or state of corporate influence in politics.

So love is something in experience? — Punshhh

Don't we experience love?

To say that we do, is not to "reduce" love to something like a "mere appearance" with no other place in the world apart from the "experience" of love. To all appearances, all the experience, all the thought, perception, emotion, action of a human person is intimately correlated with physiological processes in the animal organism with which that person is naturally disposed to identify itself.

Accordingly, it seems to me that ordinarily when I say, truly and correctly, "I love" or "I am loved", "She loves" or "She is loved", I am reporting facts that I observe. Just as when I say truly and correctly, "I'm hungry" and "I'm tired", "She's hungry" and "She's tired", I am reporting facts that I observe, facts about these animals. One way to noninferentially acquire knowledge of such facts is by way of third-person observational judgments based on ordinary sense-perception, as when I can tell, by watching her, that she's hungry. Another way to noninferentially acquire knowledge of such facts is by way of first-person observational judgments based on ordinary introspection, as when I can tell, by my introspective awareness of my own feeling of hunger, that I am hungry.

Such observational judgments, whether made on the basis of perception or on the basis of introspection, are fallible; and the relevant conceptualizations, for instance of hunger, fatigue, or love, may be more or less refined, and more or less confused.

and we as experiencers may project it (psychologically) onto the world, imagining it as something, on occasion, external to experience? — Punshhh

Along lines I've just suggested, I'm inclined to think of any experience of love as involving facts "external to experience" that also happen to appear "within experience".

Sometimes, infatuated with another, one may fall into confusion and mistakenly judge that his beloved loves him too, in the same way he loves her, with the same intensity, and with the same implications for action. There are many variations on this sort of error, many ways to go wrong; I suppose we could say some of them involve a sort of unwarranted "projection" of the love one feels himself into a misconception of reciprocal love in his beloved, perhaps construable as a sort of delusional misfiring of empathy.

It seems reasonable to expect that a similar illusion obtains, when the meditator or runner experiences a powerful, blissful feeling he associates with a conception of reciprocal love, of loving and being loved, of a world radiant with love, in association with his whole present consciousness, with everything in his current field of perceptual and introspective awareness, and with his intellectual conception of Totality.

Of course there's something external to the experience in such cases of confusion, namely, the physiology of love in the one who is thus blissfully confused.

We can have the same experience, without consenting to the judgment here supposed to be confused. If the experience can be the same, with or without the accompanying judgment, then on what grounds would we affirm or deny the judgment?

But what about a universal love, is this similarly a projection? — Punshhh

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "universal love" in this conversation.

I have a conception of myself and of others like me, as loving all human beings, as loving all sentient beings, as loving the whole of existence. I'd say this is a sort of "universal love" that really does exist in creatures like us, in hearts and minds like ours, in animal bodies like ours. I might say this is one sort of conception of universal love, the love of one for all.

It may be tempting to try, but I'm not sure how I might reasonably support an assertion like "Each human being in fact loves all humans, all sentients, all existence, no matter how confused he happens to be about this fact", or "Each sentient animal in fact loves all sentients and all existence, no matter how confused it happens to be about this fact", or "Each molecule or superstring loves every other molecule or superstring", or…. It seems to me that once we begin to speak this way, we lose touch with the objective basis against which we may test and define our conceptions and judgments about love; we lose touch with the objective basis according to which we may coordinate our discourse and adjudicate disagreements on the subject; we pass over into poetic sentiment, wishful thinking, and arbitrary fantasy.

Like they say, anything's possible. I can imagine that each quark loves every quark, and that each quark loves every animal; and I can imagine that no quark loves at all. On what grounds shall I take any such judgement or conception seriously, and integrate it into what I count as my own reasonable expectations about the world according to the balance of appearances?

An account of such a rapture by one of the correspondents of R M Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness: — Wayfarer

Have I heard you cite Bucke before? What a reference! I've just ordered a copy.

I ask you to you to profess and define what is most important to you. I think the answers will surprise us all. — woodart

It's hard for me to deny that my life is the most important thing in my life. For it seems that without my life, I'd lose everything else that I have, and the basis on which I have it, and whatever interest I have in any other thing.

This thought's not disturbed by the fact that I may value some things more than I value my own life, and that there are circumstances in which I might be willing, or hope I'd be willing, to sacrifice my own life. For instance, to save my wife's life, or perhaps to defend the liberty of the people from the oppressors.

For without my life, I would not value these things or any other; and if I were not alive at the moment of sacrifice, there would be no question of sacrificing.

Accordingly, it seems my life is "the most important thing" in the sense that it is a prerequisite. I must be alive in order to value anything at all.

I am wondering if we have justification to conclude that love is real in any universal sense, other than as we find it, as a bonding emotion in mammals, or more generally in organisms. — Punshhh

I can't think of any good reason to suppose that love belongs to the world in any way at all, apart from its appearance in creatures like us, as part of our animal nature.

Of course there are experiences -- for instance experiences associated with meditation or the practice of compassion, or associated with the endorphins that flow after a good workout -- that one might be tempted to describe as experiences in which sentience and loving compassion seem to belong to the whole world. But I see no good reason to treat those experiences as evidence that the claims in such descriptions are true; no more than I see a reason to imagine that the sky is angry when it thunders, or that the earth is angry when it quakes.

For example, is the complex and subtle love experienced by intelligent humans, in some way a real expression of something universal in nature, or of divinity? Or on the contrary is it an intellectual, romanticised, expression of our animal emotions. Emotions evolved simply to reinforce the processes of sexual reproduction and the survival of the species. — Punshhh

I see no reason to speak as though we can reduce an account of love, or of affect and emotion in general, to the mechanisms of mutation and natural selection. It's one thing to say that arms and legs like ours have been produced by and are the outcome of a process of evolution, and another to say what it's like to have arms and legs like these, and another to say what arms and legs like these can be used for -- and another for each of us to put his arms and legs to use in the way he sees fit on each occasion.

Of course mating, pair-bonding, child-rearing, and kinship bonds should be part of our story of love among animals like us. To do that story justice, I suppose we'd have to account for other emotional tendencies associated with love, such as joy and bliss, peace and contentment, reciprocal belonging and intimacy, mutual care, jealousy and possessiveness, envy and coveting, grief and loss, pride and rage.... We'd have to consider this complex of psychosocial forces at play not only among sexual partners and life partners, not only in families and kinship groups, not only among friends, but also as extending in us somehow to subcultures and cultures and nations, and to similarly generic social groupings, or even more generically, to humanity as a whole, or to all sentient beings, or to the whole of existence.

Thus we'd come full circle, back to the one who meditates or has a good run, and looks around, and feels the whole world full of love.

Therefore, suffering is necessary to the wellbeing of individuals alone and as members of a society. — TheMadFool

What's necessary to well-being is performance of right action and avoidance of wrong action. I'm not sure that pain and suffering are absolutely necessary for that, but they sure are part of the way that comes natural to creatures like us.

What kind of ramifications would this realization have?

For one, we can do away with pessimistic philosophies that have, well, misunderstood the whole point of suffering. They think suffering shouldn't exist, implying that it is unnecessary, which I've shown is actually necessary for survival. — TheMadFool

What is a good reason for suffering?

You've pointed out a few in this conversation. Stubbing your toe is a good reason for suffering, because it warns you to retract your foot from some hard object, and in the long run it teaches you to walk around mindfully. Failing a test may be a good reason for suffering, if it warns you that you haven't been working hard enough, and in the long run teaches you to work harder and smarter toward ends you value.

An account of the role that suffering with good reason plays, and must play, in animal nature and human life, is perfectly compatible with a moral outlook that aims to avoid causing suffering without good reason, and that aims to minimize suffering without good reason, in oneself and in others.

I presume an accomplished practitioner of arts like those associated with the Stoic or Buddhist feels a pain when he stubs his toe, much like the pain most of us feel when we stub our toe, but reacts to it somewhat differently than many of us do. If that practitioner has ceased to suffer pangs of regret when he fails tests, and has ceased to suffer pangs of pride when he passes tests, I suppose it's because he's spent decades training his appetites and emotions, his desires and aversions, his impulses and intentions... so that he may live in harmony with his own conception of right action, without being perturbed by the unruly passions that tend to push and pull us from what we ourselves conceive of as the right course. The same practitioners may aim to reduce the unnecessary suffering of others, and to divert all natural suffering to flow toward suffering for good reason.

If duty is defined as 'a task or action that someone is required to perform' then the question who requires and why it is required come up. There are many answers to this question from our need to survive to our need pay taxes...ultimately (I think) it is my acceptance of a duty that makes it a duty for me. — Cavacava

I'm strongly inclined to agree. The only thing that makes a duty or obligation binding as such is the agent's agreement that he has the duty or obligation in question.


I suppose that sort of agreement is different from following a rule merely for the sake of consequences. To agree that I am duty-bound or obliged to perform a certain action is in general to have a sense of obligation regardless of consequences.

Perhaps that's hard to clear up: If I perform the action merely because I expect failure to do so will result in a punishment, then I have not performed it from a sense of duty or obligation. Specify, further, that the expected punishment is something "external", an action others will take to correct me, not merely an internal feeling of remorse.

What about empathy for another's unhappiness, or harm to another, brought on by my refusal to act? This seems a fuzzy boundary. Arguably such feelings of empathy projected into consideration of prospective actions and consequences are the ordinary basis of the human sense of obligation. But it's not clear how to distinguish this sort of mechanism from an "anticipation of punishment".

I avoid the "punishment" of my own potential feelings of remorse, when I consider how my actions might affect others. In this respect, it seems that acting from an ordinary sense of duty or obligation typically involves a sort of concern for punishments.

I think there is a difference between societal imperatives/norms and individual duties. While individual duties may evolve from societal norms, it is my take on these norms that I manifest in my actions. If there is any objectivity to duty, it may lie in this structure, which seems applicable to all societies. — Cavacava

The objectivity of duty might be said to consist, for instance, in the biological bases of obligation and norms in general, but also in the particular norms or particular sources of norms that one happens to consider himself obliged with respect to. For instance, if I am a soldier and I believe that it's my duty to obey orders, there is an objective standard of obligation for me. If I want to eat healthy, and feel some obligation to do so, there are objective standards of right nutrition I can and should use to guide my action and to inform my principles of action.

The fact that there are "objective" bases of duty in us, and "objective" (and potentially conflicting) sources and standards of duty that we may or may not feel obliged to respect, does not resolve any questions whatsoever about what individual agents in general are obliged to do. It seems there is nothing that individual agents in general are obliged to do. And it seems there is nothing that individual agents in general are obliged to do in a given cultural context.

It seems the standard of obligation is always in each one of us, always a matter of personal responsibility, no matter how informed by cultural context and rooted in biological bases.

We're socializing creatures. We're better when we come together to feed, clothe, shelter, and defend one another. When does this dependence become slavery? — Mongrel

Slavery is in the first place a word we use to name a special social status, for instance as defined by law. By United States law, by Roman law, by Sharia law, and so on, from one time and community to another.

Do we have a single concept of slavery as a special social status across all such legal definitions and across all communities in which there is no legal system in place or no laws that pertain to slavery? It may be difficult to articulate such a concept precisely in a way that's suitable for all cultural contexts. This difficulty expands into a broader one, concerning the use of the concept of slavery as a metaphor for various socioeconomic conditions in which the freedom of individuals is arguably restricted unjustly.

One way to bring out the difficulty: Someone might want to argue that one or another group in the U.S. or in similar Western nation-states are currently "enslaved": farm animals, pets, children, the elderly, incarcerated felons, the institutionalized insane, the disenfranchised, the proletariat, the 99%.... It's far from clear how to adjudicate disputes about whether the relevant conceptions of "slavery" are appropriate or inappropriate conceptions. Accordingly, one might prefer to avoid use of the term in such contexts, to wave off disputes about such use of the term as insignificant, and to focus conversation on facts about the relevant groups, facts about the relevant abridgements of rights or liberty, and arguments about the justice or injustice of the relevant facts.

When what you are doing is not by choice and you begin to build up resentment, against those whom are making you do it, including but not limited to yourself. — "ArguingWAristotleTiff

By this standard, all or nearly all communities would be communities that have "slaves"; and whether or not a member of the community counts as a slave would vary from one moment to the next along with his social contexts, choices, and emotions.

If my friends pressure me to dance when I don't feel like it, and I do it and then resent them and myself for it, am I a "slave"? What if I refuse to dance, but resent them and myself anyway?

Taken one way, this seems a frivolous definition that should offend anyone with an historically informed sense of what literal slavery has and still does entail for literally enslaved human beings.

On the other hand, we do speak metaphorically about being a "slave to your own impulses", a slave to ambition, a slave to gluttony, a slave to the esteem of others....

Accordingly, it should be specified what sense of "slavery" is at issue in the present conversation. Slavery as a formal social status, slavery as a metaphor for oppression, slavery as a metaphor for akrasia, or what?

I was thinking about the human body: how liver cells spend their whole lives being the liver, skin cells are skin, heart cells beat from birth to death. None of them are acting by choice are they? Even if the heart is struggling because it belongs to someone who became very overweight... it never gives up. It never goes out on strike to get better conditions. It just goes until it can't go anymore and at the very end it will go into overdrive trying to compensate for its own failure. — Mongrel

My heart is my heart, it's not my slave. There's no reason to think of the parts of an organism as "slaves" of the organism. In general there's no reason to think of parts of a whole as "slaves" of the whole.

I am not a slave to myself, but I have my own limits. Some of these limits are limits of action imposed by my body in each environment. Under normal conditions, I can't fly, I can't run beyond a certain speed, I can't lift more than a certain weight. I can train up my speed and strength only at a certain rate, with certain effort, and with certain limits to my progress. I must take in air, and water, and food if I'm to flourish or survive....

There's no reason to say I am a "slave" to these limits of mine. They are conditions of my existence and conditions of my freedom. I would not be myself without them, and I would not be anything without some such limits. To exist is to have limits. Having limits does not entail being a slave.

I'm not sure it makes any sense to speak literally of slavery except where sentient agents are enslaved by other sentient agents. This is only a necessary, not a sufficient, criterion for a clear conception of slavery.

One way to flesh out that conception might emphasize the concept of property: A slave is the property of a slave-owner. Another way might emphasize the subordination of will: According to relevant social norms, the will of the slave is in principle subordinate to the will of the slave-owner, which can mean, among other things, that the owner is held responsible for the actions of the slave. Details of property rights and responsibility pertaining to slaves have varied across cultural contexts in which slavery has been treated as legitimate; that's one reason it's difficult to produce a generic conception of slavery that suits all cultural contexts.

A human society is different from that. The idea of slavery causes revolts and revolutions. I'm trying to find the beginning of that. Is it something that's done to us? Or is it something we're all collectively creating? — Mongrel

I have the impression that literal slavery begins after human communities develop resources sufficient to hold captives -- typically including members of alien communities captured during raids or combat -- while giving those captives enough freedom of movement to perform tasks assigned to them by their captors. I hope it's obvious how and why this might cause revolts of the enslaved and their sympathizers.

Isn't there a middle ground between a clear conception of literal slavery, on the one the hand, and any old metaphorical use of the term? Can we agree that "oppression" and "coercion" are terms that figure prominently in this middle ground?

Is it our duty as members of society to confine ourselves to it's standards? — protectedplastic

What is a "duty"?

One might say it's an agent's duty to do what seems right, or what seems best, or what seems most appropriate... to the agent in each set of circumstances.

Thus characterized, one's sense of one's own duty may conflict with norms of action prevalent in any community to which one belongs. One's sense of one's own duty, and the actions that follow from it, may conflict with the attitudes and judgments of one's peers.

As has pointed out, each of us belongs to a variety of communities, and the same individual may be a member of communities with conflicting norms.

Along these lines, it seems it's always up to the individual to determine his own conception of right action.


I suppose one way for an individual to reduce potential conflicts that require special choices would be to prioritize one clear communal standard and aim to align one's sense of duty, or right action, with that standard. This practice would give rise to its own special conflicts: For instance, whenever the individual cannot bring himself to agree with the communal standard he has prioritized, and thus feels torn between the communal standard and his own best judgment. In such cases we might say there is a conflict of two standards of duty or right action, and once again the individual is forced to choose among competing standards. I suppose if this choice is made consistently enough over time, it becomes a habit. There's no need for individuals to aim to reduce the strain of their personal burden of moral responsibility this way; it's only another choice. Arguably it's also a recipe for cognitive dissonance and bad faith.

Some communities, or perhaps all communities, have norms pertaining to dissent, or norms pertaining to the rejection of norms. In some communities, failure to conform with some rules triggers consequences most members consider severe, while failure to conform with other rules triggers consequences many members consider negligible. This suggests that in such communities, some rules are considered more valuable and unbreakable than others. Arguably, the fact that rules are or must be enforced by negative consequences for rule-breakers shows that rule-breaking and dissent belong to the community and to the system of communal norms: Dissent at your own risk.


How do we define "community"? We might speak of "communities of dissent" (for a given rule in a given community; for any rule in a given community; for any rule in any community) even where members of a community of dissenters are unaware of the existence of other members. We might say the "norms" associated with such communities are entailed by its members' action and ideas of action:

For instance, it seems anyone who rejects a communal norm because he thinks it wrong or unjust, and because it conflicts with his own sense of what's right and just, belongs to the same community of dissenters defined by this very principle of action.

If we agree to define communities and communal norms this way, then it seems there may be no way to act without abiding by the norms of some community or other, even if it's a community of dissenters one has never encountered.

That puts some spin on the thought that it's not a question of whether we have a duty to abide by community standards, but only a question of which communities we choose to belong to and which standards we choose to live by.

I am talking about the experience one has before one´s own sentence is created. That feeling which allows you to start and finish a sentence. — Perdidi Corpus

Do you mean to suggest there is one special sort of feeling that always proceeds your utterances? I'm not sure I've encountered that sort of thing in my experience.

Sometimes I seem to notice a feeling of impulse in association with an intention to voluntary action I am about to discharge, say, waving my arm or starting a set of bench presses. I suppose sometimes I notice such an impulse when I am about to make an utterance. But this sort of feeling, which I associate with voluntary action in general, is not what I would call an "idea". And when it precedes a speech act, it surely is not an idea that becomes "translated" into or expressed by my utterance.

Sometimes I feel a pain and say "ouch" or "quit it". If a doctor's prodding me, I might feel a pain and say, "That's where it hurts". In this context my feeling of pain is not an idea expressed by that sentence, it is the hurt I am reporting, and it figures into my sentence in virtue of other thoughts in my head, thoughts about the context of utterance, none of which is identical to that pain.

Likewise, if I'm tasked with playing sentry by watching out the window for a certain car to appear, I might feel a rising energy and flush of affect before and during my report, "It's here." This feeling doesn't seem like an idea to me, but rather seems to be part of a physiological response to seeing that the car is here.

I might call the thought that the car is here an idea, and the thought that the pain is here an idea, but my feeling of excitement when I see the car is not the same as my idea that the car is here, and my feeling of pain when I am prodded is not the same as my idea that the pain is here.


Sometimes I'm struggling with a vague idea, not sure what I mean or how to put it into words. In what form does the idea occur to me, how does it make itself manifest to my awareness, if it has not yet found its way into words, and is not accompanied by anything like an imaginary picture in my head? I suppose I'm willing to call this sort of awareness of a vague idea a sort of "feeling" -- somewhat as Hume notes a subtle feeling that accompanies belief.

Call my awareness of my vague idea a feeling. Should we say that this feeling is identical to the idea I am about to express, or rather that this feeling is an awareness of the thinking that works over my idea until I'm prepared to let it loose by speaking?

Could it be either? How could we tell the difference?

I'm inclined to say such a "feeling" is or involves an awareness of thinking, but is not itself an idea.

It seems there are various ways of speaking, and various ways of interpreting speech, and various purposes for speech and for interpretation.

On what grounds would we demand that there is one and only one "proper" method of interpretation, suitable for all texts and for all exegetical purposes?

Can interpretations of authorial intention be useful in exegesis? Of course they can. Must accounts of authorial intention be decisive in determining all interpretation or all correct interpretation? Of course they need not.


I'd emphasize, however, the difference between interpretation, construed as an interaction with a text, and conversation, construed as an interaction with another speaker.

I'm not sure what it would mean -- I'm not sure it's possible -- to converse with another person without taking into account his intentions in speaking, what he means to say, his reasons for saying what he says. I might say that one must take an interlocutor's intentions into account responsibly in order to converse responsibly. To converse is to make oneself responsible to the intentions of an interlocutor.


Misunderstanding is inevitable. Why complain about being misunderstood, when you can take the opportunity to express yourself more clearly, for the sake of conversation, in a manner adapted to another's point of view?

We exercise the same sympathy in conversation, speaking so that our speech is understood by others, and listening so as to understand the speech of others.