• A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    It seems natural to say that, in some circumstances, that there is no possibility that p is false — Ludwig V
    Seems to me that the notion of accessibility does just this.

    In a world in which p is false, not-p is indeed impossible. That is within the one world. In other worlds, not-p might be true.

    (That's why, as mentioned earlier, Meta's account can be made consistent if we presume that a world cannot access itself - if we reject reflexivity. But this is false in both S4 and S5.)

    Perhaps we need to say something like before the race is run, it is possible that my horse will win and possible that it will lose, but that after my horse has won, it was possible. — Ludwig V
    Yes: before the race is won, we can (epistemologically) access both the world in which the horse wins, and the world in which it doesn't. After the horse wins, it is no longer (epistemically) possible to access the world in which it lost. All of which is a fancy way of saying that once we know the horse wins, it is no longer possible for us to know it to have lost.

    But we can still access it metaphysically - "If it had lost, I would not have been able to make the rent!"
  • Compressed Language versus Mentalese
    Yes, tot he first paragraph of your reply.

    What is incoherent is how those pre-linguistic whatevers can "mean" something. — Hanover
    If, of course, we look not to meaning but to use, those neural weightings and whatever do stuff with hands and eyes and so on. Language develops as we do stuff together. Then we learn to talk to ourselves internally. A potted analysis, an outline, but it might be worthy of some consideration.
  • Compressed Language versus Mentalese
    Let's say it didn't, and we discovered the mind computed symbolically, why would that matter? — Hanover
    If the mind computes symbolically, we'd be heading in support of Fodor and Pinker, and we really would have to conclude that all thinking is symbolic, linguistic, and indeed, algorithmic.

    But it seems to me that such a view would be far too restrictive.
  • Compressed Language versus Mentalese
    ↪T Clark
    Furhter, ther eis plenty in @Hanover's OP that is philosophical - conceptual - rather than scientific. The nature of internal thought and language, the relation between compressed thought and propositional truth, the distinction between internal language and private language and mentalese...

    What is the minimal criterion for a thought to be considered “linguistic”? Does internal compression preserve the normativity and rule-following required for something to qualify as language? How can a single, highly elliptical internal expression maintain truth-conditions? What does it mean for a thought to be “true” if the content is context-dependent and underspecified? How do we rigorously distinguish between internalized forms of public language and a hypothetical private language? What guarantees that internal compression doesn’t slip into the incoherent private-language scenario that Wittgenstein critiques?

    These are not issues that can be decided by experimentation.
  • Compressed Language versus Mentalese
    I doubt anyone likely to participate in this discussion knows enough to have a credible opinion about this subject. — T Clark

    Then since you participated, we need not pay your opinion any attention. :wink:

    PI §329, in context, does not presume that all thought is linguistic. Rather it is giving consideration to linguist thought as a sample that is readily available for philosophical consideration. He's talking about linguistic thought for the same sort of methodological reason that a geneticist might study fruit fly rather than elephants - it's easier, and we can extrapolate later.
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    This is demonstrably untrue. It doesn't allow for the common case where you smell something but cannot recall what it is. — hypericin

    Look again, with care. That is precisely what it does allow for - the smell is recognised, but the matching word is not:
    there is no gap between my smelling that and my smelling coffee. That's the point. What there might be is a gap between my smelling coffee and my choosing the word "coffee" for what I smell. — Banno

    So are qualia redundant? Incoherent? Or non-existent? Which is it, you have claimed each of these at various times. — hypericin
    All three, depending on which account of qualia is under consideration.

    Qualia is a generic term for the individual, subjective experience of smells and colors, and anything else we experience. — hypericin
    Then is it anything other than what is commonly called a "sensation"? If not, let us use that term rather than invent a new one. It will suffice.

    This does not respect the structure of qualia. The owner of the box may look inside, but no one else. — hypericin
    It is clear in the text that the owner can look inside the box. It might help if you studied what you a e attempting to critique.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    ↪I like sushi


    The critique of the OP I offered was neatly summed up by @Jamal.
    1. Assume the contested definition.
    2. Derive a conclusion that follows only under that definition.
    3. Present the conclusion as if it supports the definition.     — Jamal

    The OP preferenced one definition amongst many. Over a series of posts we saw that this was problematic, that language is better understood in terms of use than in terms of essential, stipulated and preferred definitions. @Philosophim agreed with all of this.

    Then, when the conclusion was reached that there are ways of understanding "Trans women are women" that are true, @Philosophim slipped back to insisting that there is a preferred definition of "woman", maintaining that the word is ambiguous rather than polysemous while refusing to justify that claim.

    That's a pattern that has been seen many times here - were a careful philosophical analysis is rejected because it doesn't fit a particular prejudice. It's a refusal to follow the argument where it leads, and accept the outcome. Sad, but ubiquitous.
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    I think if someone was going to strip away your qualia... — Patterner
    Oddly irrelevant.

    It remains for advocates of qualia to explain what qualia add to the conversation that is not already found in our talk of sensations, colours, odours and sounds.
  • Compressed Language versus Mentalese
    ↪Hanover
    Quality OP


    To consider mentalese as a highly compressed language is to accept mentalese.

    The idea of a private mental language supposedly explains how pubic languages come about, emerging from some innate and private place. It's a supposed computational explanation for how language arrises.

    Private language was shown to be incoherent.

    And we increasingly understand how the brain is not computational. It uses neural nets, which do not code situations symbolically.

    So mentalese, if it is anything at all, must be a form of talking to oneself that is a back-construct from public language.

    So briefly and dogmatically, mentalese as an innate, computational system is incoherent. Internal thought may appear compressed or elliptical, but it is always derived from public, norm-governed language. Any “mental language” we experience is a back-constructed internalisation of public language, not a separate symbolic system. The brain’s architecture (neural nets, not symbolic computation) supports this derivative view.

    But that idea of thinking as a very compressed language still has merit.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    ↪EricH
    Yes, and
    This is because "p is true" means that it is not possible that p is false — Metaphysician Undercover
    is the source of Meta's confusion. If we apply Meta's logic to the example I just gave, then because it did not snow last night in Jindabyne, we cannot give any consideration to what may have been the case had it snowed in Jindabyne last night.

    But I hope this is obviously not true. We can talk about what it would be like in Jindabyne, had it snowed, even though it did not.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    Your posts are becoming increasingly confused.

    The “actual world” is not a special kind of world. It is simply this world—the world we inhabit. Every world can call itself “actual” from its own viewpoint. No, it doesn't "consist" of verified statements.

    There's been a cold snap, and it might have snowed in Jindabyne overnight. I haven't checked the weather, so both "It snowed in Jindabyne overnight" and "It did not snow in Jindabyne overnight" are possible, so far as I know. Either is epistemically possible.

    Now I've just checked, and there was no precipitation in Jindabyne overnight. So it didn't snow. It is not epistemically possible that it did snow, since we now know it didn't.

    But we can consider what things would have been like had it snowed overnight in Jindabyne. The roads might be closed, the school shut, and so on. It remains metaphysically possible that it snoed there overnight.

    Notice the two differing modalities, metaphysical and epistemic. Your account, as I've said before, fails to differentiate these. It makes the error of thinking that because epistemically, we know it did not snow in the actual world, it is not metaphysically possible that it might have snowed.

    In more formal terms, consider to worlds w₁ and w₂ and "p"= "it snowed in Jindabyne last night", such that p is true in w₁ and false in w₂. Epistemically, prior to our checking the truth of p, we can access both w₁ and w₂ - either might be the case. After checking, we no longer have access to w₁.

    But metaphysically speaking, we continue to have access to both w₁ and w₂ even after checking.

    Note that in all cases the actual world is one of the possible worlds.

    On your account, Meta, because it did not snow, we could consider the possibility of what things would be like if it had snowed. But this is false. We can consider what things would have been like had it snowed.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    ↪Jamal
    Yeah. Nothing in that post deserved a reply. I was going to leave it.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    ↪I like sushi
    Ok, so if "incidental" is too weak, I'd say "constitutive" is too strong.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    I do not think there is a single viable reason to allow a trans gender person in cross sex spaces. — Philosophim
    If you insist that only sex counts, then of course only reasons grounded in sex will seem “viable.” But that is a choice of rule—part of how you are choosing to play the language-game.

    Cheers.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    What do you think I was saying here? — I like sushi
    I think you were saying what I said before:
    That appears to say that there are biological reasons that women do not fight. — Banno

    :brow:

    I fed your whole comment in to ChatGPT, and asked it what the paragraph in question said.

    When we observe that historically men have been the ones who fight (in war, combat, etc.) rather than women, this is not merely a social or gender role but is rooted in biological differences between males and females. Therefore, biological sex is constitutive—not incidental—to at least some social groupings and social roles (such as “fighters”). — ChatGPT

    So. If that was not what you were saying, I'm at a loss.
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    And yet, keeping with the paint store for an example, we have no idea how we experience redness. We know about photons of certain wavelengths, the retina, cones, optic nerve, neurons in the brain, and more other things than I can guess. But we have no idea why all of that physical activity is accompanied by our experience of redness. No idea how to even beginning looking for the answer. — Patterner

    Sure, all that. But how do qualia help here? I think that they are a red herring...

    And I think I've made a good fist of showing that they are not well understood.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    ↪I like sushi
    You said women don't fight. That's not so.

    Here it is:
    Do you think men fighting rather than women is a 'gender role' that has nothing to do with biology? It is clearly a biological difference we are talking about here that groups men as fighters and women as non-fighters. — I like sushi

    That appears to say that there are biological reasons that women do not fight. But women do fight. If I've misunderstood, let me know how.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    I've laid bare your contradictions — Metaphysician Undercover
    You've laid bare your own confusion.

    The actual world is a possible world. The actual world is the one in which we may empirically verify statements as true, as opposed to other possible worlds, where we stipulating them to be true.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    What do you mean we don't get to stipulate that we are in the actual world? You personally, have stipulated that we are in the actual world, numerous times just today. — Metaphysician Undercover
    :rofl:

    Keep going.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    I just want to be clear the conversation has at no point involved trans sexuals or their particular considerations. — Philosophim
    Why not? Seems odd to exclude them. But whatever.

    No. — Philosophim
    Churlish. Ok.


    So maybe back to this:
    I don't understand. We agreed, I'd thought, that there need not be a single fundamental definition for a word, but that we might look to how a word is used in order to make sense of it's meaning. We'd agreed that "woman" might be considered to to mean "female adult human", or it might be "one who adopts a certain social role".
    — Banno

    Correct.

    In your OP you claimed that "a trans woman is a woman" is false, on the grounds that a trans woman is not an adult human female. But if we understand "woman" as being used as "one who adopts a certain social role", then "A trans woman is a woman" is equivalent to "A trans woman adopts a certain social role" and is true.
    — Banno

    Also correct.

    So contrary to the OP, there is an interpretation of "a trans woman is a woman" that is true.
    — Banno

    Not quite. Yes, there is an interpretation of 'a trans woman is a woman' that is true.     — Philosophim

    I take it that we've shown some difficulties with this paragraph:
    So are transwomen women? Are transwomen men? No. The terms man and woman indicate a person's age and sex, not gender. Are transwomen men who act with a female gender? Yes. Are transmen women who act with a male gender? Yes. — Philosophim
    That it's overly simplistic, if nothing else.

    That might be an end, then.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    You can be a trans sexual and decide to follow the gender of your natal sex. — Philosophim

    Ok, point taken.

    But it remains that a transgender person may change their physiology.

    Banno, go re-read as I noted, its already been said several times. I also never equated polysemous with ambiguous, please read my point again. — Philosophim
    At the very least, provide a link.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    There is no requirement that changing your biology means you are a trans gender individual. — Philosophim
    Sure. But transgender people do change their biology. All transsexual people are transgender. Not all transgender people are transsexual. Transgender includes transsexuality.
    So, no to
    They have been exclusive in the context of this entire conversation. — Philosophim

    If there is an ambiguity, set it out. Polysemous does not mean ambiguous.
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    ↪Patterner
    So where do you think it makes a difference?
  • Australian politics
    ....in fact, far more young voters say the US cannot be trusted at all (39% of 18-29 year-olds) compared to China (26%)... — Crikey Daily
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    I have. I'm not going to repeat myself unnecessarily. — Philosophim
    Ok. Then the point is rendered moot.


    No, physical characteristics are not involved. — Philosophim
    Of course they are. Beards, tats, body building, breast reduction...

    That would indicate a trans sexual who is attempting to change their biology, — Philosophim
    You might think of it that way. But eating is changing your biology.

    A trans gender individual requires no hormones or bodily alterations. — Philosophim
    Being transgender, perhaps, does not require it; but transgender folk do change their "biology" - your word.

    They are two separate terms. — Philosophim
    Indeed, and these are neither exclusive nor complete.

    ...the unambiguous version of the phrase... — Philosophim
    As I said, if you won't defend that usage, it doesn't do anything.

    Back to call-and-answer, so not expecting much now. A pity.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    I have not seen any argument here that indicates the phrase is not ambiguous — Philosophim
    Nor any that it is not a cat.

    If you think it ambiguous, set out the ambiguity.

    But if instead we can agree that trans men are (often) female adult humans who take on male social and physical characteristics, we might do better.

    And that, itself, only as an approximation to the degree to which such terms are flexible.
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    I see you added a bit.

    I still don't know how the"game" functions without the "beetle" — hypericin

    The Beetle Game
    Materials / Setup:
    Each player has a small sealed box (their “beetle box”).
    Inside the box is an object known only to that player. It could be anything: a pebble, a coin, a crumpled note — the point is that no one else can see it.
    There is a shared score sheet or public ledger.

    Rules:
    Naming:
    Each player must choose a word for their private object. Let’s use “beetle.”
    Whenever a player’s beetle is referenced publicly, they use the word “beetle,” but no one can look inside the box.
    Public Tasks:
    Players take turns making statements about their beetle: “My beetle is shiny,” “My beetle is round,” “I will pass my beetle to the next player.”
    Others respond according to the rules of the game, not by inspecting the box, but based on the pattern of use of the word “beetle” in prior turns.

    Scoring / Action:
    If a player uses the word “beetle” consistently with prior uses (for example, always passing it when they say “pass my beetle”), they earn points.



    The content of the actual object is irrelevant; the game rewards coordination in public usage, not private inspection.

    The game works without anyone knowing or needing to know what a beetle actually is; all that matters is that the word is used consistently in public practices.The “private beetle” may exist or not, it may change from day to day, but the language-game continues unaffected.

    Specifically, how you are able to accurately utter "l smell coffee" without the involvement of qualia. — hypericin

    By uttering it when there is a smell of coffee.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    here can be ambiguity over polysemous words used in a phrase correct? — Philosophim

    The difference between woman and used as a gender term and as a sexed term is not that of ambiguity.

    Polysemous does not mean ambiguous.


    There is nothing wrong with clarifying the phrase "Trans men are men" to "Trans men are adult human females who exhibit the gender of adult human males." — Philosophim
    So long as you acknowledge that you are making a choice in doing so. It is not a correction dictated by the language itself; it is a stipulation about meaning that you are imposing. English already allows “trans men are men” to be understood clearly in the gendered/social sense of “man.” Choosing to redefine it biologically is a deliberate, prescriptive move — not a clarification required by ordinary usage.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    ↪Philosophim
    It's not an ambiguity. It's Polysemy. It's not that the meaning is unclear, but that there are multiple uses.

    And that you are choosing to prioritise one of those uses over others, calling that choice "rational" by way of an excuse, yet without providing any argument or evidence.
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    Sorry, but the gap is far too great. — hypericin

    What gap? It's the smell of coffee.

    If you want phenomenology, there is no gap between my smelling that and my smelling coffee. That's the point. What there might be is a gap between my smelling coffee and my choosing the word "coffee" for what I smell.

    What is a smell if not a quale? — hypericin
    ...and that's the very question I asked, way, way back. If qual are just smells and colours, why bother? Why not just talk about smells and colours?
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    There is language without conveyed personal or social context, and when that happens we default to the context of the language, such as English. — Philosophim

    This amounts to special pleading - deliberately ignoring those aspects that are unfavourable to your argument.

    There is always a personal or social context.

    No, I am observing that one sense is what is rationally interpreted in English and culture as of today. — Philosophim
    How to make sense of this.

    You admit that the gendered version is also "one sense (that) is rationally interpreted in English and culture as of today", yet insist on the primacy of the sexed version.

    And yet don't seem to see this as problematic.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    You can when language is stated without context. — Philosophim
    There is no language without context.

    Is there a problem with clarifying the phrase so there is no ambiguity or confusion? — Philosophim
    But this is not what you are doing. You are choosing one sense over the other.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    ...there is a context that this can be true when 'men' unmodified refers to the gender of adult human men. But it is not rationally what someone would hold to be true read alone without further context. — Philosophim
    There can be no "what someone would hold to be true read alone without further context". Language is always embedded in life.

    You are simply giving primacy to one context - the biological one.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    ↪Outlander
    Seems to me you are playing on various differing uses of "world" here. The use of "world" in modal logic is clearly set out in the formal systems that use it. It need not be the same use as that found in describing the world of TPF.
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    Perhaps this suffices to describe what my brain does. I'm not generally aware, unless I'm struggling to identify an odor. — hypericin
    it is unlikely that there is a table of any sort in your brain. More likely that there are neural paths that activate when there is coffee in the air.

    The qualia I experience still matches my "table", even in the implausible scenario both are drifting. — hypericin
    Yep. But the qual plays no role. You want an explanation that goes odour→qual→table →coffee when one that goes odour→coffee will suffice.

    Suppose that everyone had a box with something in it which we call a “beetle”. No one can ever look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. But what if these people’s word “beetle” had a use nonetheless? If so, it would not be as the name of a thing. The thing in the box doesn’t belong to the language-game at all; not even as a Something: for the box might even be empty. a No, one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. — §293


    While qualia themselves are momentary, the cognitive machinery which produces them must be stable enough to allow for recognition through time. — hypericin
    Yep. Same for smell, which unlike a qual has temporal continuity. That is, your qualia become smells in order to be of any use.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    Banno said we stipulate which world is the actual world. — Metaphysician Undercover
    Banno said we are int he actual world. He also said that we can stipulate that we are talking about the actual world - a bit of semantics. We do not get to stipulate that we are in the actual world.

    You are playing on the difference between the metaphysical truth that we are in the actual world, and the semantic truth that we can stipulate whatever possible world we want. That failure to recognise the difference between semantics and metaphysics runs right through the confusion you show here.
  • Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
    Yes, there is an interpretation of 'a trans woman is a woman' that is true. — Philosophim
    Cool. Which was to be shown.

    ...for English and general culture, it is most rational to read 'woman' unmodified to refer to 'sex', and not gender. — Philosophim
    This appears contrary to
    We'd agreed that "woman" might be considered to to mean "female adult human", or it might be "one who adopts a certain social role". — Banno
    Which you accepted. That is, you are giving an unjustified primacy to one interpretation. "Rational" just names a prejudice here.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    You are missing the point. You cannot stipulate which possible world is actual. That's not a decision that we can make. We can only recognize the status of the actual world. — Ludwig V

    yep.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    A god logician will understand that they can only know what it is possible to know.
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    For instance, I make use of qualia when I identify the smell of coffee. If I didn't recognize that particular subjective olfactory experience as coffee, I couldn't make the identification. That there is coffee in the air is revealed to me by the quale of coffee aroma. — hypericin
    So you "have" a qual, and you run down a table of qualia and match it to the qual you previously identified as "coffee".

    I just smell coffee.

    Suppose that your qual for coffee changes over time, and your table of qualia also changes to match. You still run down the table to identify the qual, yet it is a completely different qual.

    What role did your qual play here?


    But further, a qual is supposedly a here, now sensation. However the existence of the table implies the qual for coffee stays the same over time, that the qual you have now is the same as the one you had previously. Qualia are supposed to explain how we recognize things, but the recognition depends on stability, which qualia, as momentary sensations, cannot guarantee.
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