The issue, as I see it, is this renders the whole controversy over "correspondence" to nothing more than a confusion of speaking in different languages.

There is no "how" to "correspondence" because all it doing is point out language which talks about the world. How does language work? There no such reason. Language just talks about stuff by its definition. The supposed "gap" in correspondence isn't there. Its proponents haven't suggested there is any sort of "how" to correspondence. The objection to correspondence on the basis it hasn't detailed what correspondence means outside language is a strawman. For what correspondence means in these instances, no such meaning was suggested for it. It was always the mere pointing out that our language talks about existing things which are not our language.

It's about protecting a certain understanding above all others at any cost. The "universal" is proposed to suggest that, within a given set of knowledge (say a disease and it symptoms), there is no other possible outcome or interaction in the situation. People do to try and ensure one particular understanding is always used in a particular circumstances.

As such it has ceased to be about describing the world at all. It's only concern is to prevent people from understanding the given situation in any other way. The status of the entity of "universal" is given because we need to imagine something is always there for the attempt to restrict understanding to function. If all we were working off were present moments (i.e. in these cases, this disease has caused "X"), there would be nothing to hang the (supposed) necessary outcome on. It would be obvious we haven't confirmed that the given outcome was always so for the given circumstance.

To say:"It's universal" means "The world is must be "X" at any time within this context." It gives us the excuse to say we know what must be so in a given situation.

I'd say the trick is that the experience of speaking is separate to that of observing. For many people "correspondence" really means "talks about." That's why people are often so vehement in their defence of correspondence, whether it be in reference to an earlier experience of some objects they were aware of. For many people, to deny "correspondence" is to argue language cannot talk about existing things.

The conclusion that seems most plausible to me is that, in order to be experience at all, experience must have logical content; a content which is not reliant on language, but which is, on the contrary, the very phenomenon that makes symbolic language possible. — John

Not phenomena. How could there be meaningful unknowns if logical content was phenomena? Unknowns need a logical content (that which someone is unaware of) to be defined. Considering logical content to be phenomena (a thing experienced) makes this impossible.

Logical content is closer to noumenon. It is given without the physical senses. We imagine all sorts of logical significance without being in contact with a relevant object. It logic, which phenomena (existing states) are not. And it is given regardless of what phenomena are present.

Of course, this means it basically the opposite of the noumenon envisioned by Kant: it is utterly knowable. All it takes is the right instance of phenomena (the existence of someone experiencing a concept).

It strikes me you are not distinguishing between the ethical, that something is right or wrong, and the causal, when are humans caused to act rightly or wrongly. From what you've written here, it's almost like you are expecting causal reason for human actions ( "because it will get me X," "I will avoid Y if I do,"etc. etc. ) to define the ethical significance of an action. As if, for example, murder is okay in instances where people get away with it, for they are gaining what they want and are not losing anything.

Ethics really has nothing at stake here. Whether or not someone gets away with something has no effect on its ethical significance. A murderer who gets away with it, and everything they wanted, isn't any less immoral than someone who got caught. The "why is it immoral" simply isn't touched by whether or not a person leaving wrongly is caught and/or punished. Whether someone does right/wrong ( "Have they acted morally?) is a different question than whether they should or should not ("Is this action ethical?" ) perform an action.

I’d say the attraction many people have to universals is on account of everything not in everyday life. Universals are about specifying a logic rule which applies in any situation. We are drawn to universalising because it gives us an idea, solution, about what happens outside the moment of our existence.

When we deal with universals, we are either asking questions about logic, which doesn’t exist, or we are trying to access the meaning of a state which doesn’t exist, to manipulate causality to our liking. Universals are means of creating an reproducing a definitive understanding within the human community. The moment we notice anything about the world or logic, we are prone to posing a universal. To our minds, it’s a means of eliminate risk or danger: if I understand all lions are going to eat me (universal), the threat I’ve perceived (a lion chasing me) is seemingly dealt with going forward. I will never get stuck wondering whether this lion might be my friend or eat me, and (if it turns out the lion does eat me), get eaten. Or, sometimes, universals mean unstoppable purpose to a perceived obligation. If it’s universal that God must be followed, then their cannot be no legitimate challenge to that means of living. Logic demands we must follow. We want to control our future. Sometimes this manifests in attempts to do so with out thought, as if it was our thoughts, our ideas, the “universal” which we understood, which made the world. Philosophy is littered with this notion, in various forms,that it’s imagination which defines existence (e.g. Platonism, PSR, meaning to experience, etc.,etc).

Even the (supposedly) empirical sciences have fallen to the allure of the imagined universal. They spend so long trying to find the “universal” theory which would allow us to predict everything, for the equation which would necessarily govern then true of the world. Particularly ugly sections like to suppose they’ve discovered the “rule” of human behaviour, such that they can proclaim “human nature” and specify there is a particular rule which necessitates some people must exist or act a certain way compared to others. Universals are essentialism.

There lies a great irony in lots of the “scientific” objections to Post-Modernism. Many of are not a defence of empirical science, as the objector thinks, but rather an attempt to protect and assert a universal. For all it sins, Post-Modernism formed out of a failure of our descriptions and logic. We hadn’t accounted for the individual properly. The role of each us, in our own individual circumstances, had no been addressed by the many accounts of natural forces and descriptions of society we had generated. It was directing us away from the rules which (supposedly) define the world, to examine individual states and what they express. It was a move to start describing parts of the world we were not (hence Post-Modernism’s focus on the individual experience and its presence in the world). Sometimes it stepped too far or said almost nothing in thousands of words, but it was sort of important to moving philopshy (including that which underpins science) past the allow reduction of the world to the meaning of one particular idea we had.

That belief is the position you know the Sasquatch exists without having the empirical evidence which shows it to be the case.

No, it presupposes that he is possibly knowable. — Thorongil

Yes... and that's what the version of agnosticism you talked about denies. It says there is no knowledge about whether God exists of not. This is a contradiction with God being possibly knowable. If we may know whether or not God exists, knowledge about God is most clearly not impossible. We may have it, unlike the agnostic claims.

Those are actually a contradiction. How can one believe it is true (understand) that God does or doesn't exist if there is no knowledge about God to be had? The point of believing something is true or not true is that, with respect to the belief, is that it is an expression of someone is aware of. If God is unknowable, supposing God exists or does not exist is incoherent. If knowledge is not applicable to God, there is nothing, whether true or false, for people to think and understand on the matter. Belief (either way) would be impossible.

The quote you cited as embarrassing earlier has a pretty good example:

"It might be objected that we need [ the meaning/sense of] Saturn to say what [the object] Saturn is; that we cannot refer to Saturn [the object] or assert that it is without Saturn [ qua meaning/sense] But this is false: the first humans who pointed to Saturn did not need to know and were doubtless mistaken about what it is: but they did not need to know in order to point to it."

Notice that Brassier is arguing that Saturn exists, that a meaning of Saturn he knows, is expressed in the presence of these individuals who don't know they are pointing to Saturn. Brassier is not saying that, somehow, he knows something non-conceptual (the "world outside conception" these people don't know about), but rather that the conceptual (Saturn) is expressed outside (or rather regardless of) our concepts. In the presence of the object of Saturn, whether we know about it or not, the meaning of Saturn is expressed.

Thus, Saturn is still present and people can point to it, even though no-one at the time understands what they are pointing as Saturn.

You still aren't making the distinction between the conception and object here. You are treating it like the existence of the object grants the existence of the conception. For sure our conceptions about the world are always referring to something (which we might call a "meaning" ), the object(s) we are aware of, which lies outside, but does this mean our conception is derived (i.e. given) by the structure of the object?

Most certainly not. The object is not our conception. Our conception is an entirely different state in-itself. That's why we need intuition (i.e. brute understanding). For an object to exist does not define the presence of someone who understands it. Only the outside state of a person can do that. Without this intuition, the existence of experiences which are the understanding of things, no-one would know or understand anything.

It really isn't. The essay is saying the exact opposite: anything which may be known is, by definition, conceptual.- i.e. of concepts. Brassier argument is a turn against the "pre-conceptual" or "the world outside concept," since it doesn't allow for anything which can be understood.

We don't conceptualize the pre-conceptual. The conceptual (meaning expressed by states) is so regardless of what we do or do not conceptualise.

C5 is actually embedded in P9.

P9 /P10 should read something like: "The only way to prevent the gratuitous suffering caused to animals in the food production practices is to take animals out of food production. "

"The only way to remove animals from food production is to eat a diet which doesn't require them to be part of the process (i.e vegan)."

C5: "If it is wrong to allow the gratuitous suffering (of animals) in the food production practices, a vegan diet ought to be adopted.

What does this analogy mean? I didn't follow this part of the essay at all until he got to the part about how objects are a myth view of physics and physics is a myth from the point of view of phenomenalism. — Moliere

Namely that the "object" is functioning as a simplified account of something else. Consider the object of a book. It is a collection of many individual things, pages, cover, words, binding, etc.,etc. So many different meaningful moments, which have an effectively infinite meanings in relationship, since the book may be looked, felt, heard, etc.,etc from countless different positions.

The book (or any object) has so many individual meanings to experience that we can't capture it all in any one experience. If we want to refer to another connected point of experience, we have no choice to point to it with a notion of an entity. Individual pages, words, symbols, points of the cover, etc.,etc. are condensed into the non-description of "book (object)." So it is with any object.

Irrational numbers are similar to this, at least according to Quine, in that the are a "simplified" account which points to something we haven't described in a moment of experience of the past (i.e. numbers as discrete decimal points).

I don't actually like the analogy because irrational numbers are actually a description of a specific thing which is not properly accounted for with discrete decimal points. Irrational numbers are actually closer to pointing out a specific meaning of experience not given by a simplification of "object."

People sometimes have a tendency to think of new things only in terms of the old though.
Quine calls irrational numbers a "simplification" because he supposes we are meant to get a discrete decimal answer, rather than understanding that irrational numbers just don't do that. The correct version of the analogy would use rounding of irrational numbers to a discrete number of places.

I think Quine comments on meaningless strongly allude to the account of the peculiarity. "What is?" in the "philosophical sense" is really about contest of meaning. Different sides are trying discount opposition on the grounds of making a statement which says nothing rather than paying attention to the world and logic. Instead of viewing understandings, including incoherent and contradictory ones, for what they are, a meaning someone holds to be true, people are trying to discount them in the first instance. Not merely say what someone thinks is wrong, nor even say that what someone thinks is impossible (incoherence/contradiction), but rather wipe out there position entirely, as if they had made no comment or had no thought at all. They question is, really, entirely rhetorical.

Mistakes are actually meaning(s). When someone makes an error, they are not wrong because what they say is meaningless, but rather because what they say has all too much meaning. What they said, whether we are talking about an empirical error or a logical incoherence, is wrong. It is their meaning which is at fault. The very premise of the "What is?" question in the "philosophical sense" eliminates the means by which we notice and judge mistakes. If we asking that question, essentially: "What makes some statement meaningful and others not?," we have already lost. We are doing nothing more than playing a rhetorical game to insist upon our own preferred understanding.

The problem is not knowledge of one's life. People always know about their lives and think about them in some way. That's part of living, of existing as a being who is aware of what is going on around them. As is their opinion about their life (i.e. whether they feel it is go or bad, what they value, etc., etc.).

What people are taking issue with here is the idea that the specific state of thinking: "My life is meaningful because..." is required for a meaningful life. Landru's argument cordons off the meaningful life: those who worry about it specifically, who ask the question: "Is my life meaningful?" and then conclude with: "Yes it is because..."

This is a problem. Many people don't ask that question and are perfectly aware of a worthwhile life. They value what they do and what they are aware of without ever having to ask the question: "Is my life meaningful?" (We all do this to an extent really). Landru's argument confuses instances of description of "meaningful life" in discourse for the lived experience of a life worth living. People don't necessary need to know: "Life is meaningful because..." to have a worthwhile life. They can just be aware of and live out what matters without asking the question or meaning and speaking descriptive discourse about it. One simply doesn't need to say: "My life is meaningful because..." to understand that it matters - whether or not they help out a friend, eat a meal, enjoy their favourite band, develop a great work or art, etc., etc. Actualising the self frequently has nothing to do with thinking: "Life is meaningful because..."

Insofar as I'm aware of Berkeley (I haven't done a deep study of him), he is misunderstood frequently. There is actually clue to this in the claim of the "infinite mind (God)." Is the mind of God any of ours? How then can the things we experience said to be dependent on our experience of them, as is often the characterisation of Berkeley's argument? In arguing the "infinite mind of God" Berkeley agrees with the logical distinction between (our) perception of the object and its existence.

Berkeley's concerns are actually similar to those expressed by the direct realist in some respects. His call to experience is an attack on the coherency of various position which pose, supposedly, and external world outside conceptual meaning. How can there be something not of (any) experience if it is subject to someone's knowledge? Such contention is an incoherent. It's impossible for something to be known if it is outside what can be thought or spoken.

Indeed, one of Berkeley's concerns is exactly what Brassier's worried about here. Berkeley position, in many respects, is a flawed version of the exact point Brassier is trying to make here: that knowledge outside the conceptual is incoherent.

Where Berkeley fails is not in the metaphysical error of equating objects with existing perceptions, but rather in the gaps within his metaphysical account and the failure to understand conceptual meaning in distinct from the expression of a concept in an existing state of consciousness. Mistakes which see him speculate an infinite mind of God to account for (unknown) meaning when no such account is needed. Berkeley's failure is not a crass equivocation between existing perceptions (e.g. of existing people) and objects, but rather a failure to understand that conceptual meaning does not need to be given in a mind. What Berkeley fails to grasp is that conceptual meaning is an infinite and that this entails non-existence.

5th of January.

I hope I haven't confused Hanover. — Michael

You're doing well for a six and a bit month old.

Indeed. Which is what makes your argument that the worthy life necessary involves self-examination so egregious. Your "third person" pontifications about how only examined lives are worth living don't define the life of anyone. They may have an "unexamined" life in which they are both comfortable and good. Some people don't need the critical reflection of philosophy to have a life which is worth living for them.

I know you did... but that's not how they function. This is the same sort of "natural fallacy" you are making in the other thread. You treat an expression of a state of the world (in this case the self-interest of those committing moral acts) as if it's the logically necessary outcome of the world, as if the world only makes sense because the dictator is acting in their self-interest.

It closes off the ability for people to understand the world can exist in any other way and make sense (or in the wider sense, to understand the world makes sense in ways other than the "natural tendency" ). In your example we even have the dictator themselves doing this: they say their self-interest is immoral, they claim to understand that it is, but then, in the same instance, they assert the act in their self-interest because it's "just how they are." It's the normative masquerading as the descriptive. It's a justification misread a statement about what someone is doing. The reason here is actually an excuse for the dictator to containing doing what they want (and what they consider moral).

Utter falsehood, Agustino.

The bank robber gives you the choice between the evils of dying or handing over someone else's money. A torturer gives you the choice between the evils of betrayal or continuing pain (and frequently the loss of yourself to the world, to you friends and family, though mutilation and death). The example Landru gave are exactly of this type. You are ignoring them for the convenience of your power worship. What you are interested in here is not moral responsibility nor goodness/badness, but rather expressions of power and authority. The extent of your analysis goes merely to getting to a point of being able to shout out how terrible someone is and call for their punishment.

But you don't, Agustino. You think you do, but you have no commitment to actually opposing the self-interest in the realm of values, culture and understanding.

You say this:

However the dictator may agree that it were better that (s)he didn't exist. And yet, despite identifying that (s)he is immoral in pursuing that interest, (s)he may pursue it for the reasons I have given above. — Agustino

Here you assert the "reasons" given justify the action. You say that the dictator may pursue (rather than you know, demanding the ought not because it is immoral) these interests because well, you know, they want to do them; it's what matters to them. So said anyone who was interested in committed immoral acts. Anyone may pursue immoral acts. Someone being interested in doing so is not a reason for them to happen.

They are... in a sense.

The problem is that sometimes there are no good options. Sometimes people are putting in a situation where they cannot do good. Ever presence of personal responsibility is actually what gives Landru's argument force here. Since YOU are the one who make a difference in situations where you are coerced, what happens is on YOU. It's up to you whether the Nazi's get the information, which will lead to the murder of many people, or not. A good outcome (that is one without immorality) is impossible. Do you die and leave you friends and family without yourself and anything you provide them? Or do you condemn many other people to horrible deaths? Either option is morally bankrupt.

Where your ignorance lies here is not that the suggested actions are immoral or have bad outcomes, but rather in the supposition that a person in question made a decision to take the good outcome as opposed to a bad one.

I know. That's why I mentioned it. You are contradicting yourself. You have no moral integrity here. You wax lyrical about giving-up one's interest for the moral good, but are unwilling to commit to it when it actually comes to living. Provided the dictator can do what they want (i.e. no-one is preventing them), you proclaim how it's perfectly fine, despite everyone knowing that the pursuit of this self-interest is morally terrible.

You aren't willing to accept that that action being morally terrible is reason enough not to take it. Your moral analysis is not the courageous victory of truth over human naivety. It the mindless worship of power. You only stand against self-interest when it threatens the power you think ought to govern society. Any evil your preferred governor commits you're perfectly fine with.

A person's self-interest is not always what is good. Sometimes the world (and the person in question) would be better if a person didn't pursue what they were interested in.

Someone does not have to know that their life is worth living in comparison to another, to live well. Some people live well without engaging a process of "examination". For them, examining their life is not required to live well, and may only serve as a pointless (or even damaging) distraction.

Examining things is no doubt the basis of philosophy. Philosophy is a critical project. The problem is that ethical action is not. It's it's own state of existence, which may be present without the critical examinations of philosophy. Sometimes people just do good and know what is good.

The problem is that the emotional/conceptual distinction is a bit of a red-herring (the difference you are really talking about is between talking about God in terms of whether God exists or talking about God in terms of whether we ought to believe God exists). All the "emotional" arguments are conceptual in the sense that they make promises accusations on which danger and desire are dependent. Your argument there, for example, is working in the idea God is immoral and because of that, it immoral to worship God.

In terms of "emotional arguments" the one you give here is pretty common. It appeals to some people who are uncomfortable with the way God has acted. In some cases, it could convince people two abandon their following of God. In other cases, it's pretty weak because what you are arguing is addressing an ethical (and emotional) need of an individual.

It's not that strong with respect to people who are concerned about, for example, the suffering of the world and the desire to continue living. Indeed, they wouldn't be persuaded at all, for what matters to them is a God who gifts them a suffering free afterlife, not the nature of God's actions.

If you wanted to appeal to them, you would have to turn the world into benevolent force. Make the world provide everything God was supposed to. Argue that, for example, in the future, an afterlife with no suffering will just exists. You could even add the stipulation that, by existence, people by the nature of their actions of belief, will exists in either the suffering free state (i.e. heaven) or the opposite (i.e. hell), if you want to appear those who wanted some causal link between life lived and future reward/punishment.

But you haven't actually provided any evidence which supports that assertion, and I can think of possible counterexamples. I think that that claim is reflective of your own judgement, rather than a state of affairs. We would be closer to reaching an agreement if you would add a few qualifications to these sort of claims, but it seems that you're unwilling to do so, and your claims therefore remain fall. — Sapientia

As someone who is rather selfish, who tends to be interested in their own projects rather than the people around me (at least in a practical sense), I mostly agree with Landru in this instance. The thing about helping others is that it means the interests of at least two people (more depending on the number of people who are helped) are fulfilled. It's more productive (in the sense of immediate events and relationships) than people doing their own thing. It forms connections and support which wouldn't be there in a world in which people only cared about themselves.

The important thing though, and this is what Landru hasn't talked about, its actually in the interests of both people involved in these instances.

When helping others becomes a burden, when the individual is losing out on some important project because they are helping others, it's no longer in the helper's (perceived?) interest. That's what so unbearable. The problem is not the loss of a sacred right to have no responsibility, to be able to do anything (as egoism might have us believe), but rather the inability to do what matters a great deal to an individual. Characterising this as a mere "getting to do what you want" is a crass understatement of what's going on. What is actually at stake is the specific action someone feels they are meant to be doing.

I think there's a reason for the slippage. Brassier/Stove's dismantling of the gem is a dismantling of Gem(A). It's true that only by illegitimately conflating ideatum and object can one argue that the mind-dependence of a conception entails the mind-dependence of that which is conceived of. — csalisbury

There is a deeper reason for the slippage: if one avoids illegitimately conflating ideatum and object, while still trying to maintain conceptual meaning is only expressed in experience, it leaves nothing conceptual available for the unknown world. Brassier moves on to Gem(B) precisely because he grants Berkeley a reprieve from the error of conflating ideatum and object.

If Berkeley accepts a "mind independent" world, avoids equating ideatum and object, then he is committed to something outside experience. Unknown objects are present on a grounds other than experience. But this creates a problem: what are the unknown states? And how are they even there?

The point of an unknown is something is yet to enter knowledge. It's a conceptual meaning not known to anyone. Unknowns do not fit within a position which holds "mind dependence" of conceptual meaning. Berkeley's own call to the meaning of concepts is turned against "mind dependence." We, indeed, cannot not know of something without having a concept of it. But this also means something else: there can't be something knowable unless is it conceptual (so allowing the possibly someone will know what it is).

Expression of the meaning of concepts cannot be limited to experiences, as the correlationism would have us believe. Objects just express the meaning of concepts too. Objects, in themselves, must express conceptual meaning, whether they understood by someone or not. Unknown states require the "independent world." We must grant unknown objects express conceptual meaning or else accept their existence is impossible (in which case, we make the error of equating ideatum and object).

In the context of scientific laws and theories, it's more a matter of rationalism vs empiricism, where empiricism alone can't get you to something like e=mc2. And it also goes back to Plato and the universalism debate. The shadows on the cave wall don't give you the forms. In scientific terms, the empirical data doesn't provide the theory. That's something humans add to make sense of the data. The realist question is whether that addition exists independent of us, or is made up by us, or is due to our constitution as cognitive agents (Kantian categories). — Marchesk

The question is a mistake in the first instance. Relationships like e=mc2 are an expression of the functioning empirical world. To ask whether, for example, e=mc2 exists doesn't make sense. It's not a state of the world. As a logical expression of states of the world, it is not an existing object itself. We can't look out in the world and find and e=mc2 anymore than we can find the meaning of "red" sitting on the road.

Ever touched the sand on a beach? — Agustino

That's... in a pile, Agustino.

Nope, another strawman. I never claimed the natural tendency belongs to the individual, but rather to man in general. — Agustino

I know that. The problem is not that you claimed it. It is that you are thinking it. Your position is that you can understand individuals through "man in general" (i.e. property of "man in general" is of individuals, such that universal of the "man in general" describe something about the individual).

The problem is sort of the reverse you suggest: you claim individuals belong to the universal, that individuals are of "man in general," when that is what individuals never are (as the are specific states).

And no, please don't tell me that a natural tendency tells us about how some individual ought to be, because it doesn't - it only does that in your mind. — Agustino

It runs deeper than that. What it suggests is that individuals only make sense if the are a certain way (of the "natural tendency" ). It is not a question of thinking what someone ought to be, but rather what it make sense for them to be.

What you are concern about is having an understanding of the world which hold that humans, necessarily MUST be and ARE, something in particular. What you hate about modern philosophy and culture is it holds there is no universal, there is no "general" which gives the individual.

In its shallow form, this modern philosophy gives the position that we and are world are nothing, that all existence is a blank slate, never with direction, always present with "freedom" and without any other sort of meaning which actually makes our lives enjoyable or worthwhile (e.g. need to work, the happiness of doing, the understanding was are something and that, as as state of existence, there is something we do). Supposedly, there is no idea (universal, general) which can say what existence is.

The "natural tendency" which you are so enamoured with is an attempt to get beyond this unsatisfying state of "freedom." It is to say: "Well, this is natural/unnatural, so it matters." The universal,"man in general," is used to fill the perceived meaningless of the individual. Supposedly, we finally have a world that matters, a world which one must (not ought, but MUST-i.e. it is a question of the meaning of existence, rather than just whether or not we ought to do something) respond to and be within.

But the problem is you've made exactly the error you are trying to avoid. The "universal" only needs to come along to say how existence matters because you've believed the shallow argument in the first instance. In the face of "freedom," you've accepted that it tells the truth about the individual. You've failed to grasp how it is a junk argument.

Instead pointing out that, contrary to what the "freedom" argument claims, individuals are always have some particular meaning, you've accepted the shallow modern argument gets us right, such that we need some extra "universal" to define how ourselves and world matters.

We don't. The world matters in various ways itself. How each state matters is an expression of that state itself. The world is never stuck in "freedom." No "universal" is required to rescue how the world matters. When we begin with the crazy idea that, you know, things matter in some way, we don't need any way to "make" them matter.

Yes, grains of sand are hard is also an expression only given when there are man and sand grain together — Agustino

A rather unfortunate place for me to miss I had missed a "y." I was saying "many sand grains together. Piles of sand are only soft when there are many sand grounds are present in a particular configuration. All sand grains DO NOT have (the) two different meanings. The ones not in a pile are not soft.

I haven't argued that a natural tendency is a property of the individual mate. Quite the opposite if you read what I wrote properly. — Agustino

That's exactly what you are arguing. What you are doing is specifying a universal meanings (e.g. hard and soft with sand, natural and unnatural with humans, etc.,etc.) and arguing it gives insight into the nature of individuals,that it describes what they are what they are meant to be telos). Given individuals, you are, of this universal meaning, which can be used to understand the significance and reaction of any individual in the given category. You argument is making the universal the property of the individual, such that talking about a universal (supposedly) gives the nature of an individual.

Just like white swans and black swans form the same group, even though we can say the natural tendency for swans is to be white. — Agustino

This is the "naturalistic fallacy" I was talking about. Not your imagined version you are strawmanning, but the one I've been arguing from the start. I've never withdraw the claim you are making this naturalistic fallacy and my point about the failure of the distinction "natural tendency" and "unnatural tendency" is a continuation of this point.

The mistake you've been making from the start is to consider that some in the group are something more than themselves (i.e. "a natural tendency" rather than just themselves).

No, you are the one who has no argument, but insist you are right. What can I do? You insist you are right, so I tell you: perhaps, just like some people are myopic and cannot see at distance, so too you cannot understand these matters. That too is a fact, and it doesn't mean that they don't exist. — Agustino

My point was that you were not making arguments on the ground your argument is true. You were side-tracked into making a plea about just how important the belief was to you, that it is what you felt and what you saw, and so it simply much be true an accurate. Here my problem was neither that you feel different or understand something I don't (which you, in an important sense very much do; I'll cover that in taking on Landru's assertion this is merely a meme. There is something wider and more significant going on, no matter how flawed the understanding might be), but the way you are arguing about it makes a mockery of logic.

No, that's an axiom or tautology.

If we accept that P1 is true, which we are in the context of the meaning of your argument, then there is no possibility of a B which is not an A. (hence you don't need C. or P2. to assert the point).

You haven't shown or concluded this must be so though. It's just the axiom tautology you've provided. You haven't given P1. any reasoned support.

What you are thinking of as a "logical argument" is not a valid argument but rather understanding of a basic definition. You are treating understand definitions as if they were a matter of giving a valid argument. Instead of realising we know what a definition means in the first instance (e.g. that saying "only As are Bs" means "there are no Bs which are not an A" ), you are working under the mistaken assumption that we somehow have to work thorough what a definition means, that we somehow have to exclude possible meaning it could have though reasoning about it with a valid argument. This is never the case. Any definition only ever has one possible meaning.

I know you don't know how it works, invizzy. How about that for some "rudeness?"

I've seen you do this all the time. You play convoluted words games and misread the use of those words for support of some concept you are arguing.

The argument you are trying to make would go something more like this:

P1. Property C is always found on As.
P2. Only Bs have property C.
P3. Anything with property C is an A.
P4. All Bs have property C.
C. All As are Bs
C. Any B is an A.

(or in long form: C. All As, and only As are Bs).

Your argument doesn't reason it conclusion. It doesn't have premise which lead to conclusions based on premises. You just say: "All As, and only As are Bs" and that's it. There is nothing showing why it is so.

But it's not a valid logical argument because you have not concluded P1./C. You've just asserted all As are only Bs. It's a tautology. You haven't shown how all As are only Bs at all. You've just said its so.

They aren't.

P1. says the same thing as C. through the "only." Since only As are Bs, you've already said all Bs are As. If there was to be a B which is not an A, it would mean it was not only As which are Bs.

Given P1., there is no possibility of a B which is not an A. C. does no work because you've already removed any possibility of a B which is not a A in P1.

My point is that C. is merely a restatement of P1. You are merely asserting P1./C.

P2 doesn't give any conclusion about either A or B. You don't have a valid argument. All you have is a stated premise: "Set of As are the entire set of Bs" (P1./C1) and an irrelevant tautology "B=B" (P2).

There is no argument or reasoned conclusion.

P1. and C are useless there.

You already said everything in C. in P1. (all and ONLY As are Bs- i.e. The entire set of B is As).

P2. is just a meaningless tautology. Of course, Bs are Bs. That's the identity of B. It isn't driving any so of conclusion about because nothing is premised upon it.

It's also an admission of their own wilful ignorance.

If I hold the position I am talking to a different person, my perspective holds it does not exhaust reality. You, who is not me, who is not my perspective, is present. To then say: "but from my perspective there is only my perspective" is to ignore what I know about the world. It is to pretend the world is nothing more than matter of my perspective when I know very well it isn't.

Good. Thus it requires the processing of an understanding. — Agustino

That's exactly what we never have. Each meaning of an thing (including "relations" to other objects- e.g. the computer screen is 50 is cm away form my eyes) is its own discrete instance, which we have no access to prior to the presence of our understanding. No process of understanding occurs. If we learn the ethical significance of something, we do it not through "deriving" (i.e. now I understand this state and by seeing it I know it's bad), but through the brute appearance that something is (im)moral in our experience. There are no "steps." We either know about meaning, in which case we understand it, or we do not.

Just like all sand grains are hard, but certainly all sand grains are also soft. — Agustino

Absolutely not. Only plies of sand are soft. It is an expression only given when there are man sand grain together. A similar meaning expression in humans, for example, would be the decision of a group. When there is a decision made by a group, there is something present which is not found in any instance of an individual human.

All (indvidual) grains are not certainly soft. Just the opposite in fact. Each one is still hard. It just so happens that a collection of them is soft.

Yes. Neither is a natural tendency a property of any individual human being — Agustino

A contradiction. That which is only a property of a group cannot be the property of an individual.

Exactly! A natural tendency is a property that is expressed in the particular instance where there are many human beings together! Finally you're seeing some light! How refreshing WoD — Agustino

Yeah... that's what you think, but is an error. Any group property is expressed in particular instance when there are many humans together.

No doubt "natural" and "natural deviation ( "unnatural" )" are thought to be group properties. That's there entire point: all non-gay people (a group), supposedly, make sense with respect to the telos of humans, while all gay people (another group) do not. But this is both a normative claim, whether or not individual humans meet human telos, and an incoherence, as you can't talk about the significance of human individuals in terms of what is the only the group.

But there is such a why. If you do not see it, you do not see it. Maybe some of us do see it; you shouldn't take the limits of your vision as the limits of the world — Agustino

So said the believer of every falsehood ever, Agustino. The limits of my vision here are logical coherence. To admit you "vision" is to commit a logical error. I'm not letting you get away with peddling logically incoherent arguments just because you happen to like the idea of telos.

You are making the "But I believe it so it must be true" argument here, Agustino.

Ethical significance is not seen with one's eyes. It's a feature of an object which is understood. It's not understood in the act of looking at an object. Like many other instance of logical significance, like any part of an objects identity, it is a question of understanding some meaning of the object.

Also, I might add. Any human makes sense. But ALL humans don't, without this explanation. A fallacy of composition WoD, which assumes that if any individual human makes sense, nothing else is missing. Maybe "all humans" have properties which individual humans don't, just like how every single grain of sand is hard, while a pile of sand is soft. How much more embarassing do you want this to get? — Agustino

Incoherent. All humans are individuals. If all humans had a quality it would, by definition, by present on all individuals.

The softness of a pile of sand isn't a property of any individual grain. You are making a category error. It's a property expressed in the particular instance where there are many grains together. By definition the property of softness is one of a group of sand. It is not found in any individual member in the pile. The opposite of what you (that some individual humans have the property of "natural deviation" and others do not) are arguing.

This is PSR are all over again, Agustino. You look at the state of the world, the existence of non gay people and gay people, and take away the conclusion these things and their casual relationship are not enough. You want a "why" that sits above humans themselves. Like the proponent of PSR and/or God, you demanding there must be a "why" to how the world is itself, as if it it wasn't enough to make sense on its own.

Aristotle's Finial Cause is, amongst other things, this error. It is a notion of telos, that there is some force directing each the existence of state to a purpose, a "why" that the world supposedly needs to make sense.