Yep.

Yep. He and Davidson have that common background. They would presumably agree on some form of the indeterminacy of translation.

(I take that back - turns out Lewis was critical of indeterminacy... A new rabbit hole! Thanks again!)

No fixed set of rules (conventions) can capture all actual or possible uses of language.

The key seems to be that conventions cannot be the basis of interpretation, but that this does not mean there are no conventions.

There's the somewhat trite analogy of Gödel sentences, that cannot be produced by the rules of a system.

Thanks for that.

What is interesting here is the compatibility between Lewis and Davidson. They agree that the shared context includes both action (the utterance, in the main) and belief. For Davidson this is seen in adopting the Principle of Charity - thinking of your interlocutor as rational and mainly in agreement as to how things stand. Lewis depends on convention for this task. Both think of language as a way to assign truth functions to sentences. Both triangulating speaker behaviour and context to determine what must be true if the utterance is true.

The difference is perhaps that for Lewis convention is presupposed, while for Davidson it is secondary to the interpretation.

It is worth asking how Lewis might have dealt with malapropisms, were convention is often reversed.

A good rule of thumb is that no sooner is a convention proposed than that someone will show it's antithesis.

Thanks. That quote risks giving the impression that the meaning of some utterance is to be found in the intent of the listener or the speaker. That's not Davidson's approach. For Davidson, an utterance functions in a context by the listener interpreting that utterance in such a way as to discern the beliefs and intentions of the listener, on the presumption that the speaker and listener share much the same beliefs and are both rational.

Hence Davidson's account provides an explanation for how we are able to understand malapropisms, which by their very nature run contrary to the conventions of language.

Davidson might well say Tim's "words do have a stipulated, conventional meaning that relies on limited context, that is accessible to all speakers" is a useful fiction, but no more.

For me the interesting thing here is the comparison with Searle, who gives an excellent account of how conventions function in the construction of social reality. I don't see a strict incompatibility between Davidson's account of interpretation and Searle's account of the construction of social institutions. Paying that out would make an interesting thread.

As for Tim and Leon, from previous discussions I suspect they share a simplistic view of meaning as speaker's intent, although I may be mistaken. We won't find out, until they find a way to move past merely scoffing and actually address the discussion.

Why should I clarify an argument I haven't made?

Yes, not much here from Spain, I'm afraid. We haven't had a large wave of Spanish immigration to drive imports - Italy, Greece and Lebanon, yes... Even paella rice can be hard to come by.

Sounds like you need sleep.

You can’t say “better” in any meaningful way. — Fire Ologist

Can and do.

This thread has been better. Others will agree. That'll do.

If something can be seen by any observer — Fire Ologist

Nuh. Science looks for an explanation of what is seen that will be applicable to multiple observers.

Not the same thing.

Folk see different things. Science looks for a common explication.

Stipulations are functional, temporary versions of absolutes. — Fire Ologist

Another mere assertion.

Why not "absolutes are arbitrary invalid inductions from particle instances"?

The LNC is an absolute. — Fire Ologist

Is it? Then whence paraconsistent logic, Dialetheism, Many-Valued Logics, Intuitionistic Logic, Non-Reflexive Logics...




The pattern, were you agree with the critique of your position, only to snap back of a sudden to were you started, is repeating.

Fine by me.

Being in the middle is not being at the end or the beginning.

A stipulation, then?

"Here is a hand".

Not as asn observation, but as a stipulation - "this counts as a hand"

Something to hang the door from.

And off we go.

And to do so, introduce the fixed “start”. We identify an absolute... — Fire Ologist

You presume these are the same. Are you simply stipulating an absolute?

The conversation is now too suppositional to be useful.

But that description of publishing fits equally well with presenting one's work so that it apples for anyone.

What I am doing is trying to have you present your account in a way that hangs together.

I can't really "disagree" with something that is so unclear.

...that idealised observer... — Wayfarer

There is no idealised observer.

There's you and me and them.

Science seeks to give an account that works for any of us.

That "perspectiveless abstraction, stripped of embodiment, situatedness, or any first-person particularity" is a philosopher's invention.

I love it. That’s philosophy to me. Analysis, but not just analysis of analysis, but also analysis of living in the world or “topics that lie beyond analysis as such”. I’m good with that. — Fire Ologist

That's what we are doing.

Did it just click?

You seem to think you have made a point. Presumably that "none" is an absolute.

But you have yet to be clear as to what an "absolute" is.

I hope I've helped you see that your intuition is difficult, perhaps impossible, to clearly articulate.

You might reconsider.

The relevance here is to whether we must start doing philosophy at some firm foundation, or whether we find ourselves already doing philosophy, and must start instead from where we are.

Hence the relevance of Ramsey, who shows us a way to start from indifference.

And Wittgenstein, who asks us to look at what we do, not what we theorise.

Bottom line to me, philosophy must concern itself with consistency and coherence of language and argument - that is logical validity. But philosophy must also concern itself with the world and the persons in it and their existential/metaphysical questions - that is where soundness of arguments is measured. — Fire Ologist

None of which implies absolutes, whatever they might be.

It is true that relativity theory and quantum theory undermine the idea of absolute objectivity. — Wayfarer

You have claimed this, but I do not believe that you have succeeded in defending such a view.

And that is becasue the juxtaposition of objective and subjective here cannot be made coherent.

What we might call “objective” is defined with respect to all observers. But this still presupposes observers and their frames—so it’s not objective in the naïve sense of “from nowhere.”

Alternately, what is called “subjective” is often grounded in shared practice as Wittgenstein might say and so not purely private or solipsistic.

Science is not trying to give an account of what the universe would be like were there no observers. It is trying to give an account of what the universe is like for any observer.

Hence it is not denying the observer.

It means precisely the same thing. — Wayfarer

Well, no.

A view from nowhere has no location. A view from anywhere has any location. These are not the same.

The intent of a given principle is that it be applicable in as many cases as possible. It's much the same as that the principles on which we base our physics be the same in all reference frames, including accelerated and non-inertial ones.

That is not to claim that the principles on which we base our physics be the same in no reference frame whatsoever.

What a mess.

Ok, what you assert is true.

Then there's not much point in continuing this conversation, is there.

The “view from nowhere” isn’t a critique of what scientists do, but of what scientific objectivity aspires to — a standpoint purified of subjectivity. — Wayfarer

So it claims. And my reply is that it is not what scientists aspire to.

They are not seeking to remove perspective, but to give an account that works from as many perspectives as possible.

The view from anywhere.

For the viewers, Tim apparently asserts that language is governed by conventions. The best rebuttal of that of which I am aware is Davidson's essay. I've used it before, it has been discussed at length.

Tim and Leon prefer to pretend it doesn't exist.

So you are back to talking about me in order not to feel obliged to do any thinking.

Nothing new.

:rofl:

Here's the argument.


It's against Tim's

But words do have a stipulated, conventional meaning that relies on limited context, that is accessible to all speakers. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You might have to do some work to catch up.

Have fun.

The "view from nowhere" expresses a misunderstanding of the approach adopted by scientists.

They are not attempting to create an account that 'abstracts away from the subjective entity"... or some such.

They are creating an account that will work with the broadest generality, that is pretty much an application of the Principle of Relativity.

It's preference for accounts that work in multiple situations.

It's the view from anywhere.

The quote is the conclusion of an argument presented in the article "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs", available at https://www.scribd.com/doc/82848058/Davidson-A-Nice-Derangement-of-Epitaphs

There's also a substantive thread here on the article.

Better is defined by best — Fire Ologist

Mere assertion.

"Longer" is defined by "longest'.

Nuh.

This reminds me of the Aristotle's practical syllogism, — Ludwig V

Sure. We learn where to use the syllogism, and where not to. We might do much the same with Ramsey's idea. We are not obligated to shoe-horn.

Again, I'm not seeing a substantive point if disagreement.

So can we set out an argument that making any comparison requires some sort of "absolute"? — Banno

I'll help. I think your intuition is along these lines:

1. Making any comparison requires a standard.
2. That standard must be fixed
3. That fixed standard must be independent on the things being compared
4. to be both fixed and independent is to be absolute
5. hence any comparison requires an absolute standard

Something like that?

Can you see why this is incorrect?

What is an "absolute"?

I juxtaposed "relative" and "absolute" measurements, in the example of hot and cold - I hope that is clear.

We can instead play with "local", as in the example of cardinal numbers. Locally, given any cardinal, we can add one, producing another cardinal. That doesn't lead to the "absolutist" conclusion that there must be a highest cardinal.

So can we set out an argument that making any comparison requires some sort of "absolute"? I don't think so.

I almost left the word "internally" off that paragraph, yet you see it as pivotal. So something is adrift.

The simple point is that we can deal with our present situation without positing some absolute.

I don't have much more to say on the issue.

It seems to me that you do not have an argument, so much as an intuition - something like that we can only have consistency if there is a "metaphysical endpoint", whatever that might be.

But that's not right. It's as if you were to notice that (locally) every number has a higher number, and conclude that therefore there must be a highest number. It ain't so.

The bet is just a portrayal of any act. The philosophical move is from the action representing the belief to the action constituting the belief.

The two accounts are of very different things.

You have a plant. You water it every day. This is not a symptom of a hidden, private belief, on Ramsey's account - it is your belief. Notice the similarity to Ryle.

A Bayesian account presumes some level of belief and modifies it, without saying what that belief is. You think 150ml is enough for the plant, it starts to wither, so you adjust the watering up to 200ml, and so on, adjusting your belief according to the outcome.

Ramsey offers a minimal account of the nature of belief, while the Bayesian account assigns a value to a belief without specifying what that belief might be. Ramsey gives an account of belief’s nature; Bayesianism gives a rule for belief’s revision.

So your criticism that Bayesianism assigns a value to belief without saying what belief is, is quite fair. But does not apply to Ramsey.

Cheap. Worthy of your friend Leon. Read the article and address that.

Ok.

Bayesian analysis takes a prior and updates it given further information. Ramsey is different, more fundamental. His stuff is setting out what rationality looks like in a situation in which we have only partial belief - no certainty. The betting structure shows gives us a way of understanding what a belief and preference amount to, using just behaviour.

I wasn't thinking of Bayesian analysis in my comments, until that was raised by your good self.

So not so much about laws.

This needs a good example. I'll work on it.