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.

Analytic philosophy may be broader than you seem to suppose. I'll be happy to accept some "hierarchical ontology", if you can demonstrate the need. As things stand you appear to be indulging in some sort of special pleading rather than engaging with the very direct and explicit comments above.

I'm somewhat surprised to see you accept such an authoritarian stance.

As things stand, I think I have presented very good reasons not to make use of forms in any worthwhile ontology, but instead to look at how we make use of words. You haven't provided much by way of a reason to supose otherwise.

Analytic philosophy doesn't eschew metaphysics so much as insist that it be done well. Here, it suggests that we not introduce unnecessary entities such as forms. Can you show that they are needed?

,

I put stock in my own intuitions — Janus

A more coherent plan than putting stock in some else's... :wink:

Supose we wanted a logic that could take on a public, normative, and accountable role in our reasoning.

If we ground our logic in self-evidence or in intuition, we are isolating it to those who share that intuition. If those intuitions are not shared, then the resulting logic cannot be generalised across all individuals, we do not have a criteria for their correctness that is independent, or that can be generalised. Such a logic loses normative traction. Hence we can answer this:

There are times, though, when an intuition feels so internally consistent and repeatedly validated by experience that it gains a kind of personal certainty. — Areeb Salim

Quite so. But the issue then becomes why you should accept my certainties. So we might ask, how do we tell "when enough people independently arrive at similar conclusions"? And here it will not do to simply stipulate that this occurs when we have agreement - that would be to say that we agree when we agree.

What we need is an doing, a cooperative action that demonstrates our acceptance. A showing, if you will.

And that is what hook, and the language games thereabouts, provide. To understand the operator "⊃", is to understand that if p and p⊃q, then q. Asserting p and p⊃q counts as asserting q.

See the account of status functions I gave previously. Logic is the setting up of a way of using language that we can do together, or not, as we prefer. Our personal intuitions become superfluous.

It's not clear to me what I am to conclude from your reply.

to be sure, there is a worthy area of study that seeks to understand the forms as they are found in various worthy historical works. Please, if that is the task here, go ahead.

But if the forms are to be taken as serious contenders for an account of how things are, then there might be a reckoning with the criticisms given above. If "they exist in a different manner to phenomenal objects", then an account of this different existence might be offered, and a reason given as to the need for such a thing, especially in the light of what was said above.

And I don't see such a thing here.

Again, you attack me, and not what I have argued. And you do so behind my back, by not making use of the @ function to link a mention.

It's not just simply rudeness; it's craven.

Thank you. It's good to know there are folk who are reading along. If you are interested, there is more on this approach to philosophy to be found in Wittgenstein, and in philosophers such as J. L. Austin.

Why would that be a problem?

That seems to be your rule of engagement, perplexity at other minds saying things you wouldn’t say. — Fire Ologist

Yes, that seems to be the case, at least for your posts.

Sentences beginning with "faith is..." might be predications, not definitions. I've used a few of them in mapping the use of "faith", and I think at some length. But I do not think that this provides a complete account of each and every use of "faith", which is what some folk seem to think they have done with such stipulations as "faith is trust in authority" or some such. I've tried to look at how the word is used in the wild, rather than to just make some shite up.

I hadn't noticed .

Here's a potted history of some of the main arguments from the last century of analytic thought.

“In virtue of what are all just acts just, or all round things round?”—is itself misleading. It presumes there must be some essence or metaphysical commonality underlying all uses of a term. But why should this be so? Why should there be a thing that is common to all our uses of a word? Why should we not, for example, use the same word to name different things? And if one looks at the uses to which we put our words, it seems that this is indeed what we do. The red sports car and the red sunset are not the same colour, despite our using the same word for both. The round hill and the round ring are quite different.

There simply need be nothing common to all red or round things. And perhaps the same is true for the Just. Rather there may be many, diverse and overlapping similarities. The classic example here is of a game: we use the word "game" quite successfully despite not having at hand a rule that sets out for us what counts as a game. And indeed, it seems that were any such rule proposed, it would be a simple matter to find or invent a counter instance, a game that does not fit the rule. Yet we manage to use many, many words without access to such rules.

One approach leads us to suppose that there is a thing called “roundness” that exists apart from round things, a thing called "redness" apart from cars and sunsets. There's then the problem, central to this thread, of what sort of thing redness or roundness might be, if it exists over and above round or red things.This is hypostatisation, the act of treating an abstract idea or concept as a real, tangible thing or entity. It's what leads to asking what the forms are. But perhaps they aren't.

We might see this more clearly by asking how we learn what is red, what is round, or what is just. We don't learn to use these words by becoming familiar with a form for each. We learn to use these words by engaging in the world and with those around us. By using language. And here we will not be just learning to use a rule, since the application of any rule requires a background of practice and training against which to stand. We learn how to use "red" not only by talking about red things, but also by being told that the sunset is not red but pink, the car not red but orange, and so becoming able to use these words to act with others in a community. Learning is not an abstract process, but an engagement with the world.

We would do well not to sit back and consider such issues in the abstract, but instead to take some time to observe what happens around us. “Don’t think, but look!”. "We are not looking merely at words... we are looking at what we do with words." We should examine what words do in the wild, as well as in philosophical captivity. In what situations do we say something is "round", or something is "just"? And what do the misuses of such terms look like, and what do they tell us?

Most of all, we should have the humility to admit that these words work very well, thank you very much, without, and sometimes even despite, the interventions of philosophers.

yep. That’s a real egg- an Easter egg. But it’s not a real chook egg, unlike the one next to it. Those two are real, the third one is not a real egg, it’s a hologram.

“Real “only makes sense in contrast to unreal or not real.

Except when you’re doing metaphysics, apparently. Then you ask for license to talk about what’s real without telling us what is unreal.

I don’t agree. That doesn’t fit my understanding of “language game”.


And why not have a language game about language games?

Not following you here at all. I've been at some pains not to present a definition.

Rather famously, Galileo recanted. Sensible fellow.

"There is meaningful discourse. What, therefore, must be the case in order for this to be true? Answer: logic." — J

And what is it for discourse to be meaningful? Of course we can turn from this to consider what we are doing...

"we are playing a language game; what must be true in order to play this language game?"

Well, what constitutes the game?

Ideas such as being self-evident or intuitive or analytic have considerable baggage. Set them aside and just consider p⊃q. Taking on p⊃q and p counts as taking on q. To suppose otherwise one must misuse either p or p⊃q.

No authority here, no intuition or cumbersome structure of analytic and synthetic. It's just what we do when we use hook.

Of course folk can do other things with these symbols. They would not be participating in the same activity. If someone claims to have understood p and p⊃q, and to agree that p and p⊃q are true, but disagrees with q, then we have grounds to say that they are doing it wrong (or at lease differently), and have not understood p and p⊃q at all, or some such rejection of their view.

, can you see how this avoids the fraught notion of intuition?

The implication seems to be that I deviated and went off-track somewhere. — Janus

Not that so much as that your position may have been misrepresented in the other replies.

We think an intuition is true if it "feels right". I wonder how else we could gauge its seeming truth. — Janus

... and thereby hang all the problems of private languages and so on. Intuitions will not hold up. Indeed, I am somewhat surprised to see them being used at all, given their poor track record.

So if you were to disagree with someone's intuition, not to share their intuition, they have no comeback. It's difficult to see how not having an intuition is something you can be wrong or mistaken about. i think we agree on this. It's a pretty poor grounding for the whole of rationality.

The alternative, that being rational is something we do, bypasses this by setting rationality in our shared accounts of how things are - our language.

Why would any one agree or not agree to a logic? That's the question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're perhaps under no obligation to be logical. But we might not pay you much mind if you so choose.

Thanks for the link but it was not of much use. You did not appear to me to address, and perhaps did not understand, the issues I raised.

Now, you suggest that there is "no reason," — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well no, I didn't. That's your wording. What I sugested is the possibility that

Rules such as non-contradiction are stipulated and constitutive rather than intuitions or being self-evident... — Banno

Indeed, your post has several quotes that you are apparently attributing to me, that are things I did not say, or were said by you, not by me... "for no reason at all", "no reason", "others have already chosen to agree to some game rules," and "useful to agree." Odd.

In a trivial logic, it is trivial to prove that it is actually better to pick a logic that no other human agrees with, because one can prove anything expressible in such a logic.) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Such a trivial logic would, by the very fact that no one agrees with it, have the singular misfortune of being quite unless. Choose it if you like. It would be like dribbling a ball around the field while those around you play Football.

Logic exhibits some of the structure of our languages, and as such is a communal activity. It's not something granted by god, so much as a project undertaken by you and I.

Angus Taylor or Sussan Ley.

Bloody hell.

You seems to be suggesting that if one is not following an explicit rule, one is acting arbitrarily. Do you really want to make such a claim?

I hear the Vatican went with an American in order to avoid tariffs.

Perhaps in the place of transcendence, we might use constitutive rules. Rather than saying Modus ponens is somehow transcendentally true, we just supose that accepting p and p⊃q counts as accepting q, if one is talking logically.

Of course, some folk might talk illogical, but we needn't pay them attention, any more than we ought pay attention to the birds on a football field in order to make sense of the game.

Getting away from the topic here, but there are various objections to the view I;ve just expressed. Here are three of the better ones:

• Pluralism threatens to undermine the normative role of logic.
• Logic might be transcendentally necessary for meaningful discourse.
• It's potentially contrary to the apparent objectivity of mathematics

But perhaps this is not the place.

...we work away at the contradictions from the inside. — Jamal

I'm wondering if he has the right tools for this.

"...as physics, rather than as metaphysics?" - well, as science, rather than meta-science. Perhaps the reason it doesn't appear that the disciplines that study these phenomena can offer us what we want is that we want more than can be done.

But that's unclear. Indeed, I'm not sure I follow what it is you are after here. The idea of applying the criticism of transcendental arguments to modus ponens is interesting - is that what you are doing? But as I said, I do not think that we accept modus ponens as a result of a transcendental argument. It's rather than if we accept modus ponens, and a fee other rules, then this will be the consequence; we might well do otherwise, with different and usually less appetising consequences. In particular, we are not obligated to accept modus ponens by some overarching authority - what could that look like?

Why must we accept modus ponens? Well, p⊃q just means that if we accept p and p⊃q then we accept q; that's all. Not accepting modus ponens just amounts to not understanding how to use p, q and p⊃q; to not playing the game. And of course, you don't have to play the game, but there will be consequences.

We are not compelled to accept modus ponens by some external justification.

Edit: , for you, too.

"Is the Grand Canyon just a big hole?" — Outlander

The problem here is with the "just". As you show, it's a big hole and then some. A neat metaphor about supposing that there is One True Description. It'a a hole and...

I think you were on the right track to start with. Rules such as non-contradiction are stipulated and constitutive rather than intuitions or being self-evident... whatever that might mean.

An appeal to authority is of course invalid.

So yes, being consistent consists in not saying or doing things that are contradictory. It's normative in that it's choosing classical rather than paraconsistent logic. You can have a logical system that is just "rule following" all the way down. You can choose whatever logic you prefer of any of the infinite possible logics over any others. But it's of no use unless the folk you are talking to agree.

So how do you get out of the starting gate with any inquiry into anything, on any terms? — Fire Ologist

Interesting how a transcendental argument can prevent folk from seeing alternatives.

You've changed the topic. I haven't seen any argument that religious folk disproportionately evil, or more so than atheists.

Yep. The epitome is of course found in Kant.

You want to to turn all that's been said here into a bit of pop psychology. Fine. There's your straw man.

It's really not. — Hanover

That's simply not what I read in the responses to my posts here.

:grin: nice, reason might be subject to a critique paralleling that of faith I gave elsewhere. it would be interesting to follow through on that - although it might be restricted to faith in reason... I'll have to give it some thought.

I have to some extent set aside the discussion of logic hereabouts, since Adorno appears to either misunderstand the nature of modern logic or to be talking about something quite different. I'll go with the latter. Recent advances in formal logic - you mention relevant logic - take a step back form the neatness of Fregean premisses, while maintaining formal clarity. His interest is perhaps in the interpretation that occurs before logic commences.

The 'why something rather than nothing' perhaps sits with the sort of metaphysics that seeks to justify or explain god rather than the world.

Wouldn't we class questions "about structure -- about how the world hangs together", as physics, rather than as metaphysics?

But yes, this is a very Wittgensteinian approach. Although perhaps in contrast to the common view, it's not that we shouldn't indulge in metaphysical speculation, but that when we do so, we fail to understand what it is we are saying.

The general form of transcendental argument is something like:

Q
The only way that Q can be true is if P
therefore, P

I suggested that the issue is it's reliance minor premise; that there may be other ways, unimagined by ourselves, in which Q can be true that are not dependent on P being true. I skated over the problems here. There is. pretty clear run through in the SEP article on the topic, if folk are interested. It's not that they are invalid - the argument form given above is certainly valid - so much as that they set up the solidity of P on the basis of the solidity of Q, which is may be as unreliable. We can't reject all transcendental arguments off hand, but we do need to evaluate them in their context.



I don't see modus ponens (or other bits of logic) as reliant on such a transcendental argument. It's more that what we mean by P⊃Q just is that if P it true, then Q is true.

That said, I wouldn't argue that religion is the sole source of abject cruelty on our planet. It's merely one of the major players. — Tom Storm

Indeed; int might not so often be the reason, but as you point out it is often used as an excuse, for doing things we know we ought not.

For many, it is uncomfortable to draw attention to that aspect of faith.

My wording could have been better. There's a logical gap between “I can’t imagine it being otherwise” and “this must be how it is” that's found in transcendental arguments of all sorts.

It's a transcendental argument becasue it goes: things are thus-and-so; the only way (“I can’t imagine it being otherwise") they can be thus-and-so is if forms are real. Hence, forms are real. The minor premise is the problem - how you can be sure it's the only way?

But there is also a different criticism here, the the transcendental argument also presumes hylomorphism in the major premise - the "Things are thus and so" just is the presumption that hylomorphism is correct.

So the "lack of sufficient warrant" just is that presumption.

(That's probably not very clear - but it's not so much about pragmatism as logical structure...)

Or when we consider philosophical questions... — Wayfarer

...badly... :wink:

We just engage in certain activities and make distinctions that help us navigate the world. The need for an answer to “What is real?” arises only when we confuse our linguistic habits with the nature of the world.

That’s just taking a way of talking and mistaking it for a structure in things.

We shouldn’t take the distinctions we make—like form and matter—as marking structures in reality. That’s just grammar projected outward.

The supposed problem in the OP only arise when we mistake the workings of language for how the world is. We ask what makes a thing what it is, then imagine there must be something—a form—that answers the question. But the need for that answer was created by the way we framed the question.

Instead of asking what makes a table, a table, we might just recognise that treating things as tables is an activity in which we habitually engage. Use, not meaning.

We can leave it there, since it'a a point of aporia between us.

More interesting might be the scientistic answer, that what is real is atoms and molecules and so forth - at the least we can agree that this is in error.

See how those arguments presume hylomorphism? That the right kind of explanation is one that makes essential-formal distinctions.

But why should we presume that there is such a thing as the form of the table—that what something really is must be explained in terms of its purpose or essence? Isn't that just importing a metaphysical picture shaped by our cognitive preferences, not by necessity?

As I said earlier, the theory of forms is an application of a mistaken theory of reference. That theory holds that names refer to things, and that therefore, if there is a name, then there must be a thing to which it refers; So there must be a thing to which universals and such refer - the forms. Alternatively, we might understand "triangularity" as a way of grouping some objects; as something we do, and without supposing the existence of a mystic form. Your reply was that "Words can only be general because they denote universals." This repeats the referential theory that is being critiqued, rather than responds to it.

The simplest way to understand universals is not as the names of etherial forms, but as a way we talk about the things around us.

And yes, that's an oversimplified version of the theory of forms, there are better ways to understand them; but all rely on reification and none are as clear as the treating them as word use.

There discussions amongst Aristotelians are irrelevant if Aristotelianism is misguided.

, ;

Let's not deny that it’s natural to be struck by the fact that there is something rather than nothing—or to want an explanation. Instead we should distinguish between the desire for a reason and the legitimacy of any particular answer. Our concern is for when that desire underwrites metaphysical commitments without sufficient warrant—when “I can’t imagine it being otherwise” becomes “this must be how it is.”

And my suspicion is that this is an approach common to Aristotle, and many of our friends hereabouts, including @Wayfarer.

,

What exactly is the phenomenon that metaphysics is addressing? If it’s something like the surprise that there is something rather than nothing, why should we treat that surprise as indicating a real problem? Isn't it just a psychological reaction, not an ontological puzzle? Why assume there’s a “why” here at all?

Perhaps the very urge to ask “why is there something rather than nothing?” is a kind of metaphysical craving that misunderstands the role of explanation. Explanations work within the world—given that things exist, why does this or that happen?—but they break down when we try to apply them to existence as such. The impulse isn't deep; it’s a confusion of category.

But that's one of many ways "faith" might be defined, which is the question of this thread. — Hanover

That's' one way to approach the OP, but not the only way. One alternative is, instead of merely choosing this or that stipulation, to cast about and see how the word is used.

The flying bullets is a neat game. But perhaps the issue isn't how many bullets were fired by anger and how may by faith, but in acknowledging that at least some were fired in faith.

But perhaps you and I agree were others will differ. Do we agree that it is the actions, not the thoughts of the actor, that have the main moral import?

And especially, that an act is done in good faith is insufficient for it to be counted as a good act, or a being the right thing to do.

If you are saying that it depends on context then you are agreeing with Austin. And if you are not, then you are still trading on the ambiguity.

Clarifying the contrast isn't a way of dodging the philosophical question, it’s a way of dissolving a pseudo-question. Austin isn’t denying that there are meaningful inquiries about what things are or how we know them—he’s just insisting those questions stop pretending to be about some singular metaphysical “realness.”