• "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
    there's just true claims ? — Pie

    Yes. No corresponding relations or properties.
  • "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
    I think N is the wrong way to go. I think we agree ? — Pie

    Yes if N is a totality of corresponding facts. No if it's a totality of things that I ought to tidy. But they correspond merely to sentence-parts.
  • "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
    ↪Pie


    Could we all just drop "state of affairs" and "proposition"? Serious suggestion. Because even the former ends up standing for "sentence". — bongo fury

    Ambiguously.

    Not that you said "states". Events? Less ambiguous.

    ↪Almagro


    Some of the trouble traces back to Alfred Tarski's unfortunate suggestion that the formula " 'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white" commits us to a correspondence theory of truth. Actually it leaves us free to adopt any theory (correspondence, coherence, or other) that gives " 'Snow is white' is true" and "snow is white" the same truth-value. — Goodman, Of Mind and Other Matters
  • "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
    and N to be the set of non-linguistic reality bits. — Pie

    States, then? States of affairs?

    Is this just an issue with use versus mention ? — Pie

    "Just"???
  • "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
    Try to correspond with real things or events. Cats, mats and cat-on-mat events. Celebrate your confidence in the correspondence by positing actual entities that are truly called "a cat", "a mat", "a cat-on-mat-event" or are truly related verbally by "is on the".

    "The cat's being on the mat" is the controversy. Any such entity?

    Sounds a bit straw-manish, admittedly. Can we agree, then?

    So. Sentences. Things/events.

    Sentences true or false. Things/events corresponding to names or other sentence-parts.

    No entities corresponding to whole sentences. No truth-value attaching to things or events that aren't sentences.

    I thank you.
  • "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
    Alternatively propositions are expressions, — Michael

    Yes please!

    in which case the T-schema only applies when something is expressed, — Michael

    So, whenever there is a T-schema expression, at least?

    Problem?
  • "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
    one of my concerns, truth-makers, which seem like unnecessary entities. — Pie

    :up:

    Controversial!
  • "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
    "Is truth a property of sentences (which are linguistic entities in some language or other), or is truth a property of propositions (nonlinguistic, abstract and timeless entities)? — Pie

    Or is it a property of a state of affairs, whether conceived as a concrete event (region of space-time) or something more abstract? Which latter might be what many people mean by proposition. What a quagmire!

    1 truth-bearing sentence/proposition/fact

    2 truth-making event/state of affairs/proposition/fact

    Not that we have to acknowledge truth-makers corresponding to truth-bearers. Just flagging up the likely misunderstandings coming down the line.

    Could we all just drop "state of affairs" and "proposition" and "fact"? Serious suggestion. Because even the first ends up standing for "sentence". At least with those perhaps disavowing correspondence but prone to having it both ways.
  • Bifurcate vs. Multivariate Logic: The Long Shadow of Philosophy.
    There are clear enough reasons to prefer a logic with precisely two truth-values.

    But you'd be right that this oughtn't to influence our choice of scaling or classification (of things or values).

    Does it though? Colours? Tones? Aren't we multivariate with those?

    And your political examples are non-binary too, in a way, as either-or always exchanges for more-or-less. Any fairly entrenched contrast makes way for a spectrum. E.g. either-left-or-right acknowledges how-left-wing?

    Maybe what you want is a concept of a spectrum with more than two poles?!
  • Please help me here....
    I made it clear I’m not a solipsist (if I was why would I be talking to you?) but I need a logical way to dismiss it. — GLEN willows

    Where do you stand on Neurath's boat?

    Not too near the edge :lol:

    But seriously...

    Philosophy once aspired to set all knowledge on a firm foundation. Genuine knowledge claims were to be derived from indubitable truths by means of infallible rules. The terms that make up such truths were held to denote the individuals and kinds that constitute reality, and the rules for combining them into sentences and for deriving some sentences from others were thought to reflect the real order of things.

    This philosophical enterprise has foundered. Indubitable truths and infallible rules are not to be had. Philosophy cannot expect to underwrite the assertions of other disciplines, for its own assertions are no more secure than the rest. Nor can it reasonably aspire to certainty. For without indubitable starting points, certainty is beyond our reach.     — Catherine Z Elgin

    And scientists no longer expect any ultimate foundation or certainty for their theories.

    On the other hand... they, and anti-foundationalist philosophers, still seek to systematise, or axiomatise. Not because they expect their theories to derive truth and certainty from their laws or axioms, but the better to evaluate, test, and improve the theories.

    Hence @Pie's interest in "fixing the cogito", probably.

    But yeah, I suppose if you do accept Descartes' more occult cogito as an indubitable truth, then you are bound to demand a logical demonstration of any claim that a refutation of solipsism is available on that basis.
  • Is there an external material world ?
    Let me just start by saying I don't deny private experiences. — Pie

    Only if you admit you are admitting defeat.

    Haha, this comment is about ten days old. Posted accidentally now. Wrong thread, too. Forgive me. Been enjoying it, but... why cling to the mentalist talk in a "manner of speaking"? Why not be literal? And eliminativist?
  • Antinatalism Arguments
    I long for death, — Darkneos

    Not that you'll ever be in a position to know it.
  • The mind and mental processes
    I have a friend who has no minds eye. She does not see visual mental images. — T Clark

    Yes. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/416251

    Does she see mental images of the things in front of her?
  • Please help me here....
    Sorry but can you dumb that down just a tiny bit? — GLEN willows

    "Methodological solipsism" is an oxymoron that fairly makes its own point. In spite of its polysyllables.

    Solipsism is an absurd parlour game, or intriguing science fiction; but methodology is science.

    But, the two aren't necessarily separate. They can feed each other. Like in any good oxymoron.

    REFERENCES. Since the choice of an autopsychological basis amounts merely to an application of the form and method of solipsism, but not to an acknowledgment of its central thesis, we may describe our position as methodological solipsism. This viewpoint has been maintained and expounded in detail, especially by Driesch, as the necessary starting point of epistemology ([Ordnungsl.] esp. 23). I mention here some further adherents of this theory, some of whom apply the solipsistic method only in the initial stages of their systems and eventually make an abrupt jump to the heteropsychological. Since they do not, for the most part, employ any precise forms of construction, it is not always clear whether this transition amounts to a construction on the solipsistic basis, as is the case in our constructional system, or whether it is a desertion of that basis — Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World, p102

    The title there a provocative oxymoron with metaphysical overtones. (But that's titles for you.) "Aufbau" (I presume "structure") is the usual abbreviation of Der Logische Aufbau Der Welt. I shouldn't have assumed familiarity, especially when I did presume to bandy "umwelt" - I hope correctly.

    Anyway, this kind of scientific program does look like an attempt to take the basic empiricist dogma,

    Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses — Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19.

    literally. But for the sake of theoretical psychology, rather than metaphysical deductions.

    Was my point.
  • The mind and mental processes
    Why can't this happen in the dark
    — bert1

    But as I pointed out, the modelling relation approach to neural information processing says the brain’s aim is to turn the lights out. It targets a level of reality prediction where it’s forward model can cancel the arriving sensory input.     — apokrisis

    I wonder, am trying to make out, if this answer uses the same lighting metaphor as the question. Because I'm fascinated by the metaphor.

    I think the question is, why can't a (super impressive, say mammal-imitating) neural network type machine be a zombie, just like a similarly impressive but old-style symbolic computer/android?

    Putting this as a question of whether the world is lit up for the machine in question seems a powerful intuition pump for consciousness. I've found myself spontaneously invoking it when considering discussions of zombies, and of the alleged difference between primary and secondary properties.

    Possibly @apokrisis is following that reading, and saying that, paradoxically, consciousness happens as the organism strives to avoid it.

    I'm not sure if that would convince the questioner, who might object that it merely describes a kind of attention-management that is easily enough ascribed to a zombie.

    But as I say, I'm not sure if that is the intended answer.

    As someone who insinuates that the intuition is wrong, even if easily pumped, I of course ought to offer an alternative. Ok, maybe something like, a machine that's one us (one of our self-regarding ilk, properly called conscious) constantly reaches for pictures and sounds that would efficaciously compare and classify the illumination events and sound events that it encounters. It understands the language of pictures, in which black pictures refer to unlit events and colourful ones to lit events. Whereas a zombie, however it deals with what it sees, is like the Chinese room in failing to appreciate the reference of symbols (here pictorial) to actual things.
  • Please help me here....
    How is idealism different from solipsism? — GLEN willows

    Solipsism is very often in invisible scare quotes, and called methodological - as opposed to metaphysical.

    As such it was the method of the earliest efforts in theoretical AI, e.g. Carnap's Aufbau.

    Empiricism taken literally. Formal construction of an umwelt from sense data.

    So that's one difference. Methodological idealism not a thing.
  • Phenomenalism
    Dictionary: Phenomenalism, the doctrine that human knowledge is confined to or founded on the realities or appearances presented to the senses. — Art48

    Quite possibly presented to, not by.

    Just saying.
  • Phenomenalism
    Then you completely side step the epistemological problem of perception — Michael

    Good, if that problem assumes we see and hear internal imagery.

    and ignore the actual, substantive disagreement between direct and indirect realists. — Michael

    ... not "talking past each other", suddenly?

    Arguing over the grammatically correct way to talk about perception is meaningless. — Michael

    If you mean disputing what elements of folk psychology stand the scrutiny of literal interpretation then I don't see why that should be meaningless. Seems like you're just losing your temper.

    Is there a Cartesian theatre [implied] when we say that we feel pain... — Michael

    No.

    ...and that pain is a sensation? — Michael

    Yes, if that's in deliberate conjunction with the first. It's obviously setting up a dubious scenario in which a you inside you perceives a representation inside you, instead of just the whole of you perceiving the thing itself, in this case the bodily trauma.

    There's no philosophical difference between feeling a sensation and hearing a sensation or seeing a sensation. The nouns simply signify a different modality of perception. — Michael

    Yes, they all set up the same dubious scenario, if we aren't careful. They all say, sensing a sensation, or feeling a feeling, seeing a seeing.

    It might not be the ordinary way of speaking — Michael

    Right, so it's the careful way, that we're meant to take literally?

    but that's just an arbitrary fact about the English language — Michael

    I'm lost from here on. Again, seems like bluster.
  • Phenomenalism
    The "language trap" is arguing over which of "I hear the drill" and "I hear the sounds made by the drill" — Michael

    Well that hardly needs a hazard warning. I hear, am witness to, the sound event involving the drill. The room, vibrating. Either of the two phrases is innocent glossed as such.

    What the event tells us about the drill itself is an interesting question of physics, probably triggering hypotheses about the whole class of sound events involving the same drill.

    Further investigation might involve an appropriately defined class of sound events involving loudspeakers, instead of the drill.

    (Aesthetic interest may create a fascination with similarly defined classes of events: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/410733.)

    The "language trap" is arguing over which of [the above] and "I hear auditory sensations" is correct, — Michael

    No, the above are correct, but this version too easily suggests a little loudspeaker in the head, that I'm listening to. Sorry. I know you think that's a straw man, and my misapprehension not yours. Not sure how to get past it.

    whereas we should be arguing over whether or not drills have the auditory features that we hear them to have. — Michael

    No we shouldn't, we should just clarify whether we are talking about whether they have certain physical features, causing certain kinds of acoustical (sound) event, or about the sound events themselves.
  • Phenomenalism
    Whether sights or sounds, smells or tastes, it's all just sense data brought about by sensory stimulation and brain activity. — Michael

    Or it's all learnt classification of the external stimuli. Types of illumination event, types of sound event, types of chemical diffusion event, types of eating event, types of bodily trauma event (in case you forgot pains).
  • Is a hotdog a sandwich?
    Words are organic things, and have fuzzy boundaries, and our minds are well constituted to deal with them as such. We happily use the word sandwich, — hypericin

    Sure, especially given the inscrutability and all.

    never mistakenly using the word with hotdogs. — hypericin

    But then how could that ever be a mistake?

    Is this a chair problem?
  • Is a hotdog a sandwich?
    There is no trans-linguistic reality, no platonic essence of sandwiches which you can consult. — hypericin

    But neither is there any historical certainty about past usage, or even about uses of a word on particular occasions. (See inscrutability of reference.)

    Understanding how language works on such shaky ground is a perfectly chompable problem.
  • What are the "parts" of an event?
    But objects are events.

    Our tables, steam yachts, and potatoes are events of comparatively small spatial and large temporal dimensions. The eye of a potato is an event temporally coextensive with the whole, but spatially smaller. The steam-yacht-during-an-hour is an event spatially as large as the yacht but temporally smaller. But the steam-yacht-during-an-hour is an element in a larger whole as is the eye of the potato. — Goodman, Structure of Appearance, 1951

    I think the current phrase is "time worm". (Get it?)
  • Is there an external material world ?
    See red things. — Michael

    No, dreams and hallucinations are us exercising our imagery circuits without succeeding in seeing anything. Illusions covers a multitude, obviously.
  • Is there an external material world ?
    We can do that — Michael

    Do what?
  • Is there an external material world ?
    The point is they don't need language. — Michael

    Oh. Well my point is,

    And that's how seeing colours is seeing an external material world. It's recognising classes of objects. (Or classes of illumination events.) — bongo fury
  • Is there an external material world ?
    A dog can recognise his owner. — Michael

    Yes. By learning to compare and classify appearances.
  • Is there an external material world ?
    I have no idea what you're talking about. A hermit with no language can recognise when he feels pain. A hermit with no language can recognise when he feels pleasure. A hermit with no language can recognise the difference between feeling pain and feeling pleasure. — Michael

    I'm trying my best to make sense of "recognise" without implying language use.

    Nothing about this depends on there being some observer who can make, and justify, these claims. — Michael

    Agreed.
  • Is there an external material world ?
    Without that wider association you couldn't say they discriminated (or equated) according to colour. Only that they discriminated.
    — bongo fury

    You confuse me being able to know that that he recognises colours with him being able to recognise colours. He either can or he can't, irrespective of what I think.     — Michael

    Hence my edit: it wouldn't make sense to say they discriminated according to colour, without their associating according to a background classification.

    It's everything to do with comparing and classifying, whether or not using word-pointing so to do.
    — bongo fury

    No it doesn't. I don't need to have words for pleasure and pain to recognise the difference between me feeling pleasure and me feeling pain. Qualitative experiences differ, and that they do has nothing to do with being able to make and make sense of my own and another person's vocalisations or ink impressions.     — Michael

    I clearly allowed for there being no language as such: no word- or symbol-pointing. But there will be comparing according to a wider classification, if it makes sense to speak of colour recognition, and not merely discrimination.

    And that's how seeing colours is seeing objects. It's recognising classes of objects. (Or classes of illumination events.)
  • Is there an external material world ?
    It's nothing to do with language. — Michael

    It's everything to do with comparing and classifying, whether or not using word-pointing so to do.

    A hermit with no language could look at two objects and see them to be the same colour (or different colours). — Michael

    Not without associating those two objects with all the others of their class (or each with a different class).

    Without that wider association, and background classification, it wouldn't make sense to say they discriminated (or matched) according to colour. Only that they discriminated (or matched).
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    Plato is not only warning us about misusing language in the sense of bad grammar or syntax. Speaking badly also includes saying untruths, telling lies, creating a conflict between speech and reality - between what is said and what is. — Harry Hindu

    And didn't he say something about cutting and pasting large chunks of text from the, er, realm of ideas, with cursory changes and no attribution?

    (I was enjoying your change of style!)

    https://www.emmitsburg.net/archive_list/articles/misc/hhp/language.htm
  • Evidence of conscious existence after death.
    Which will you choose then? Let us see... Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your self-respect? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that we live again. If you gain, you gain nothing, an eternity of smug self-satisfaction, in the company of equally repellent souls; if you lose, you lose everything, as you wasted your chance to live authentically and perceive reality. Wager, then, without hesitation, that we don't. — Pascal's Other Wager
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    If I had been mentioning "aRb" I would have put it in quotes. I am surprised that was not apparent from the context. — Banno

    It was apparent, on the assumption that you were being deliberate in your use or omission of quote marks, but not on the assumption that you understood and were conveying W's meaning in 3.1432.

    So, this,

    Insofar as some true relation aRb pictures the world... — Banno

    says,

    Insofar as some relation aRb, which is itself the fact pictured by the proposition "aRb", is true in virtue of itself picturing a fact in the world... — Banno

    ?

    I don't see why you wouldn't much rather accept,

    Insofar as some true proposition "aRb" (and/or some spatial relation within its sign) pictures a fact, — bongo fury
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    As far as I can see, 3.14 and what follows concerns the structure of propositions rather than how they might picture the world. — Banno

    What I quoted clearly concerns both, but I'm grateful for reassurance that you appreciate the difference between the two. Notice how W puts quote marks around the a-R-b string when referring to (mentioning) the proposition and/or its associated sign, and deliberately leaves it unadorned when using it (the string) as a proposition to refer to (show, if only hypothetically and generally) the relation itself, i.e. the fact.

    I don't see why that is so painful to address.

    I need it clarified to see if you are saying something of interest to me (and @RussellA?) about the showing. Yes, W does seem passionate about it, in a way that raises the question whether he would approve of glossing it simply as an "isomorphism". Does he have (perhaps nascent) nominalist scruples about granting the existence of relations as such?

    But there doesn't seem much point in such a discussion if you can't bear to clarify between use and mention, using the usual convention of quote marks. Why is that so difficult? (Always.)
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    You asked how a relation pictures the world, — Banno

    No, I asked what you meant by

    Insofar as some true relation aRb pictures the world, — Banno

    and offered a reasonable paraphrase consistent with the text in question, where the author / translators / editors used quote marks in the usual way to clarify between use and mention. (Crucial in the context.)
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    So you want to put into words how a relation pictures the world. — Banno

    No, W does that perfectly well.

    3.1431 The essence of a propositional sign is very clearly seen if we imagine one composed of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, and books) instead of written signs. Then the spatial arrangement of these things wil express the sense of the proposition.

    3.1432 Instead of, ‘The complex sign “aRb” says that a stands to b in the relation R’, we ought to put, ‘That “a” stands to “b” in a certain relation says that aRb.’

    Using quote marks in the usual way to clarify between use and mention.
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    How to parse it? — Banno

    Semantically. Make sense of it. For example,

    Is "aRb" being used or mentioned (in your sentence)? — bongo fury
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    No. — Banno

    What, then? How are we to parse,

    Insofar as some true relation aRb pictures the world, — Banno

    ? Is "aRb" being used or mentioned (in your sentence)?

    Nor are "proposition" and "relation" interchangeable. — Banno

    Hence,

    A proposition, for W, is any such [relation] which... — bongo fury

    Further, propositional signs are distinct from propositions (3.12) — Banno

    3.12 — And a proposition is a propositional
    sign in its projective relation to the world.

    I.e. in the isomorphism shown between the fact and a certain relation in the sign.
  • Phenomenalism
    And what does it mean to "see something differently"? — Michael

    It means to classify the same thing differently. — bongo fury

    It means that we experience different sense-data. — Michael

    It means that we reach for different pictures and exemplars.

    I experience white and gold, you experience black and blue. — Michael

    You reach for uncontroversially white and gold pictures and exemplars, I reach for uncontroversially black and blue.
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    and is it a fact that the relation shows the state of affairs, and as such is part of the world and not distinct from it? — Harry Hindu

    I don't know exactly which other squabble you're alluding to, but bear in mind that when someone opposes "world" to "language" they often mean the less encopassing "fact" and "proposition" respectively.
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