Now you are misrepresenting what I have said.

And again showing that you have not understood possible world semantics.

Meh.

I'm not sure that qualifies as an answer, even generously. — J

It's not so much an answer as an attempt to show how the question misfires.

You seem to be in the position of someone who asks how it is that their key just happens to fit their front door and no one else's.

First, we do not need to have at hand the essence of some thing in order to talk about it. See the "mum" example given previously. We use words with great success without knowing the essence of whatever it is they stand for. Demonstrably, since we can talk about faith wiothout agreeing on the essence of faith.

Thinking we can't use words unless we first fix their essence is muddle-headed.

Second, we can of course delineate and describe the way a word is used. I did as much using ChatGPT for "faith" a few pages back. We do not, in our usual conversations, use "faith" to mean corned beef, for example. But in other less usual circumstances, we might. So tow things: words do have ordinary uses about which we can chat, and words can nevertheless be use din all sorts of odd ways.

And here again, it is the use that is... useful.

Third, we do far more than just speak about... we command, question, name, promise... Unless you want to use the term in a very odd way, not all words are about; what's "and" about? Or "Hello"? or an expletive? Or your "yes"? Such words do not name anything, but instead do something. "Yes" does not pointed to or named the function of "agreement" (whatever that is); it is to agree.

Forth, I do not think that persons of faith are all of them irrational. What I have argued is that faith can bring about irrationality. Here it is again: when a belief is under duress, one can reconsider or one can double down. Faith can be characterised as doubling down when one ought reconsider.

Fifth, written a reply such as this exemplifies the law of diminishing returns. I'm not getting much out of your repeatedly misunderstanding what I write. Hence, perhaps, what you interpret as sniping.

Yes, but there is a physical relationship present that exists irrespective of us putting it into intelligible terms. — Relativist

's response is spot on. What is a "physical relationship"? We sometimes say the force caused the body to accelerate, but that force just is the change in velocity. There's an odd circularity in attributing causation to forces.

Sure. But there is an (un)natural match between Rinehart and Price.

So worst case would be Rynhart funding her? It might make for dramatic viewing. Supose they were to take the Liberals further into conservative-using-liberal-memes territory... would they win votes?

I think they both overestimate their influence and understanding of Australian voters.

...but it also identifies a physical relationship among force, mass, and acceleration — Relativist

Well, not quite. A force just is the product of mass and change in velocity - in mechanics, at least. So it's more that F=ma defines the physical relationship between mass and change in velocity.

Yes, it is predictive.

Jacinta?

Many contradictions. But her maiden speech is worth a read..

and it's not as if what we are doing on indigenous issues is working.

Both the principle of sufficient reason and determinism are misunderstandings. As pointed out, neither actually does anything.

I claim F=ma is descriptive only and has no power in itself to make anything happen. — tim wood

I'll differ here - it's what I do. And lead the thread off on an aside.

F=ma is a definition, not a description. There were no forces sitting around, waiting for Newton to describe them. Rather he defined force as the product of mass and acceleration, as the change in an objects motion.

And treating it this way actually makes your point contra stronger. The force is defined as the change in velocity times mass, which is quite different from the reification of saying that force causes the change in velocity times mass.

A can of worms.

...why do some of us feel a need for Universal Concepts, when others find Particular Percepts sufficient for survival? — Gnomon

This might be the key here. Those who "feel an need for Universal Concepts" will make an unjustified jump to them. It'll be a transcendental argument: things are thus-and-so; the only way they can be thus-and-so is if this Universal Concept is in play; therefore...

Btu that's perhaps psychology rather than philosophy. The philosophical response will be limited to showing that the second premise is mistaken, that there may be other ways that things can be thus-and-so, or perhaps that they just are thus-and-so, without the need for further justification.

For me, Meaning is not what we do (act on things), but what we think (manipulate imaginary notions). :smile: — Gnomon

The admonition is that in order to understand meaning, look to use. In order to understand what folk think, look to what they do. And here, include what they say as a part of what they do.

So it's not either-or; not a choice between what we do and what we think. Rather it's a method to clarify and clean up the mess of words that constitutes philosophical conversation.

See 's post, which brings out further your observation that forms do not much help us.

Thanks for that post. A different take, but perhaps not too dissimilar to what I have been suggesting.

Interesting that you mention strange loops. You've read Hofstadter, I presume?

Wittgenstein pointed out that we can't know the answer, but he admitted that he couldn't resist being pulled back into questions like that — frank

Did he? I'm not so sure. Where did he say this?

I've a lot of sympathy for the stickiness of philosophical problems. Seems I keep allowing myself to be drawn into the same issues. But what exactly was it to which he said we cannot know the answer? Was it really "can logic really be just a tool rather than a map?"

Becasue I think I've given a roughly Wittgensteinian answer here, after the spirit of PI §201, and with a bit of Austin, Searle and Davidson thrown in.

What is the overlap between logic and the world — J

If, as I suspect, we hold to modus ponens not becasue it is self-evident or intuitive - although it may be both - but instead becasue it is what we do, then the overlap between logic and the world is that logic is a grammar for our talk about how things are.

So we might have instead chosen a grammar in which both a p and ~p are true, but then while our language would have been coherent, anything could be both true and false. Such a language would not be of much use.

So instead we choose languages in which p is true, or ~p is true, and not both. This gives our conversations quite a bit more traction.

And to this we can add some complexity. That's when we start to study logic.

Now we might be tempted to ask why p v ~p is so much more useful than p ^ ~p. But isn't one answer here just that we can do more with it? That it is more useful becasue it is more useful? That is, if instead we accepted p ^ ~p, we would not be able to have this conversation?

Asking why p v ~p and not p ^ ~p is like asking why the bishop stays on it's own colour, or why putting the ball in the net counts as scoring a goal. It's what we do.

I'm now not sure where you stand. You seem to be defending intuition in other areas - your dream being a case in point. And that's fine. Do you still think that intuition is enough to justify acceptance of logic?

I'll try to put this in as stark a contrast as I can. We all accept modus ponens. Is it, on the one hand, that we accept that if the antecedent and the conditional hold, then we intuit that the consequent also holds? Or is it that the accepted use of antecedent, conditional and consequent is that if the antecedent and conditional hold, then the consequent holds? Is logic to be grounded on private intuition or public practice?

And he argument I gave earlier seem to show that a private intuition cannot serve to ground logic in the way we may want.

Or perhaps you think that your intuitions correspond to the public practice?

I've not said there are no definitions, just that there are few good ones. We've seen numerous stipulated definitions in this thread. I've argued that they are insufficient. A stipulated definition cannot set out the necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of "faith", and that a better approach is to look at how the word is actually used.

You seem to agree with this, somewhat adamantly.

So I can't quite see what it is you disagree with. There is this:

Words name concepts. — Fire Ologist

Which is muddled. Not all words are nouns, so not all words name something. We do a lot more with words than just name concepts.

But to see this one must stop and look at how words are actually used.

What we have here is an incompatibility between a group of Aristotelian syllogisms that assume individuality requires an essence, and a modal logic that is consistent and extensible while avoiding an ontology that requires essence.

Basically, if Aristotelian logic is incompatible with PWS then so much the worse for Aristotle.

But that's not what happens in the real world, as opposed to the simple world of PF. Rather that the absurd assertion that PWS is inconsistent, Aristotelians reinterpret Aristotle's ideas so as to maximise compatibility with PWS. But that would requirer understanding modern modal logic, so it's not happening on PF.

We still have the same conclusion, the fundamental laws are violated by this conception of "individual". — Metaphysician Undercover

You keep repeating this absurdity. PWS logic is consistent with a=a. End of story. The rest is in your imaginings .

Further discourse is only encouraging your confabulations. Cheers.

Sussan Ley.

Rynhart won't be happy with a "moderate".

:rofl:

That's just a misunderstanding of what it is to be an individual. Rigid designation and counterpart theory both deal with this. PWS at least shows the issue, whereas Aristotelian modality is incapable of even framing it.

In rigid designation (Kripke), names refer to the same individual in every world where that individual exists. Identity is preserved; variation in properties does not threaten self-identity, so long as essential properties remain fixed. In counterpart theory (Lewis), identity is world-bound; talk of “Socrates in another world” means “someone like Socrates.” The law of identity is untouched, because Socrates is never numerically identical to his counterpart.

There's one now.

And yet there are folk here who stand behind that straw man.

So if I am, more fool them.

Not at all.

Forms are only one of a variety of ideas about the nature of universals, which are in turn just one of many approaches to predication. Other approaches include pragmatism, speech act theory, formal semantics, and particularised properties.

2: Forms and universals are the same thing — frank

Not so much. Forms might be a type of universal, or a theory about universals. But universals need not be perfect or idealised, nor exist in a world distinct from our own, nor cause the properties of particulars.

So what. Fill out your argument.

At issue is how predicates and universals and forms and so on are related and what they amount to. Calling predicates "universals" or "forms" doesn't do much of anything.

But also, doing is not explaining.

So fill out your argument.

Being univocal is something we do, not something found in a name. That the p in <p^(p⊃q)⊢q> is univocal is no more than how we are treat the p. One could also treat the two "p"'s as quite different, in which case the MP may not follow.

The use of a word is the simplest example of our differentiating amongst the things in the world. Someone who does not know the word "round" perhaps differentiates marbles from blocks, and in doing so shows their understanding. Again, look to what they are doing, to use, to see if they understand the concept, and show your understanding by acting in ways that are dependent on that understanding. Language is just an easy to use sub-class of the things we do.

I'd prefer to say that practical use is determined by intent rather than will.

Still no need to invoke forms.


If you are saying that meaning is seen in what we do, then we agree. There's no need to invoke forms to explain what we do. We can just act.

You mention trinity and the primacy of love as a value in a thread about faith and think no one will notice the consistency with Christianity? — Hanover

No - I intended that they notice.

My little joke.

How are you able to speak and think you are not giving me definitions? — Fire Ologist

A babe uses "mum", understanding who mum is, and yet cannot provide a definition. Definitions are secondary and derivative, not foundational. Use is at the centre of language. I think yo agree with this, but frankly it is very hard to work out what you think form what you write.

Take care.

I threw intuition and self-evidence in together simply out of laziness. They both fall to the criticism I set out, that if someone says that they do not see modus ponens as intuitive or self-evident, then there is no recourse left. However on the - what will we call it - status function account? - there is a recourse: you haven't used modus ponens the way we do. You've done it wrong. Notice that this is the same answer we might give a child who adds seven and three and gets eleven.

It might be argued that this still relies on an authority, and that may be so, but it is at least a more distributed authority.

I'll add that intuition is fine in other situations - when judging a personality, or picking a path, or what you will. Notice that it is idiosyncratic even there: if challenged, can you justify picking this individual or that path? And here we have to share criteria; or perhaps conveniently our intuitions coincide.

The piece of autobiography displays laudable self awareness. I might be inclined to call your interpretation an insight rather than an intuition.

Non of this should be taken to detract from the import of intuition, nor to the respect in which it ought be held.

There's an approach to logic - and rationality - that supposes there are foundational propositions from which it is built, that justify everything that follows. Logic is seen here as a hierarchy; the epitome being axiomatic constructions. This fell into disfavour in the eighties, replaced by natural deduction, sequent calculus and such. Gentzen-style. I was taught, and indeed have taught, both approaches. Justification in the newer approach is contextual, dialogical, and structurally horizontal, focusing on rules of inference rather than axioms. Logic became more dynamic — a tool for reasoning, not a blueprint for metaphysical truth.

This lead to a picture of logic not as a hierarchy so much as a network, and to a pictures of justification not in terms of foundations but in terms of coherence.

This directly parallels the differences being played out here. At the risk of taking us back to the topic of the tread, we have those who see a need to find some absolute immovable foundation for what is real, and those who see what is real as grounded in context and action, in what we are doing.

Why does no one agree with it? — Count Timothy von Icarus

A trivial logic might begin with p^~p, from which everything follows. Formally, it's complete and consistent, but utterly unable to help us in deciding what is the case and what isn't. Go ahead and agree with it, if you like. It won't get you far. In such a trivial logic, everything is the case. That's why we don't use them, and why (almost?) no one agrees with them. But it seems we agree that they are useless. pv~p is much more interesting.

This is an example of how the choice of logics might be made. Pick one that does the job you want done, or that will extend and enhance the conversation.

PWS avoids fatalism because it doesn't allow semantics to determine what will be ontologically true. — J

Yes, just so. Again, Aristotelian logic takes on metaphysical presumptions not found in PWS - essentialism, that misunderstanding of "a thing is the same as itself", for example. Such ideas are instead dealt with in the discussion of transworld identity and counterpart theory. PWS gives clear truth conditions, is logically consistent and is extensible, unlike Aristotle's simple syllogisms.

Both Jenny McAllister and Mark Butler taking on the NDIS. Too much for one?

It's not that all predication is equivocation, but that ordinary language is flexible and dependent on context. This is not a threat to logic, which can happily rely on univocal terms. Our understanding of words is shaped by practical use, not metaphysical essences. In this view, terms like "round" or "red" don't require metaphysical forms to function meaningfully in context, nor does logic.

I don't think so. Possible Worlds Semantics (PWS) avoids fatalism by allowing multiple possible futures, each with fixed truths, whereas Aristotle avoids fatalism by denying truth values to future contingents, preserving the openness of time. The difference lies in how each treats truth, time, and modality: Aristotle’s logic makes metaphysically assumptions of essence and potentiality, while PWS is a formal, model-theoretic system that treats possibility as quantification over worlds. Aristotle’s modal logic is limited to syllogisms, lacks a general semantics, and relies on essentialist assumptions. PWS, by contrast, provides a precise, neutral, and flexible framework for reasoning about modality.

Perhaps. I'm not so keen on such theological meanderings. Thanks.

That's your outlook. — frank

Not so much. But whatever.

Added: PI 43 doesn't say anything about the scope of the term "language game".

Again, all this shows is your lack of familiarity with modal logic.

Ok, then. It is an example of a language game about a language game, though. It's your criticism. I'll leave it to you to make clear.

Here's a simple language game involving an infinite regress.

Here's a sqip: i

If you take any squip, and put an "i" on it's left side, the result is also a squip.

So since i is a squip, so is ii. and since ii is a squip, so is iii.

You get the idea.

Here's a language game about that language game: Is there a largest squip?

Now, where is the problem?

A juxtaposition. Doubtless, as the Orange Emperor said, there are good people on both sides.

I gather that we, you and I, are agreed that faith is not much of a virtue. There are perhaps those hereabouts who on the contrary take it as a central virtue. The discussion on my part has been to dissuade others from such a view. This goes beyond the merely epistemological point, to demand a response from the faithful as to their humanity, as to the circumstances in which they would recant. It's not implicit in this, that those without faith are more benign than those with; but that faith must be tempered.

Were I writing in opposition to myself here, I might be pointing out that faith is one amongst at least a trinity, and that when set in the context of hope and love it shines, and my arguments fall away.

But it would remain that faith by itself can be a source of evil.

And, like I explained to Banno, it's not the case that any specific system of logic is inconsistent, but it is the case that they are inconsistent with each other. — Metaphysician Undercover

The trouble here is that modal logic subsumes propositional logic. They are not inconsistent.