...there are four different (kinds of) causes :
* The material cause or that which is given in reply to the question “What is it made out of?” What is singled out in the answer need not be material objects such as bricks, stones, or planks. By Aristotle’s lights, A and B are the material cause of the syllable BA.
* The formal cause or that which is given in reply to the question “"What is it?”. What is singled out in the answer is the essence or the what-it-is-to-be something.
* The efficient cause or that which is given in reply to the question: “Where does change (or motion) come from?”. What is singled out in the answer is the whence of change (or motion).
* The final cause is that which is given in reply to the question: “What is its good?”. What is singled out in the answer is that for the sake of which something is done or takes place. — SEP

These are the classical Aristotelian varieties of cause. They are supposed by Aristotelians to be quite general. But they are not unproblematic. At their core, although they provide various examples of causes, what is not presented is an account of what it is to cause, or to be caused.

That's an issue addressed in more recent metaphysics of causation, and to which a not insubstantial reply is that there is not some one thing, or even group of things, that are common to all causes.

The notion of a family resemblance might be appropriate here, as in so many other cases of mooted definition.

This is the absurd "deduction" I was addressing above. Satisfying the JTB criteria is not what makes a sentence true. — J

Due, what's the "T"? If a sentence satisfies JTB, then it is true. Further, from "B", those who say that it satisfies the JTB account agree that it is true.

I'm genuinely at a loss to make sense of what you are saying.

f "My aunt lives in Denver" is a JTB, it must be the case that my aunt lives in Denver. No further verification is required. My point is precisely that this is absurd. To avoid the circularity, you have to posit X as true without knowing it to be true, whether on the grounds of pragmatism or T-truth or grammar or something else. — J

Well, no. If S is some sentence that satisfies the criteria JTB, then by that very fact it is true; by that very fact it is already verified; and by that very fact we already hold it to be true. The circularity, so far as there is one, is in your then asking "But is it true?" - and the answer is a resounding "yes".

What?

Knowledge of what one will do later in the day is not quite the same as having intentions or plans for what one will do later. — Ludwig V

One knows one will go for a walk later today if and only if one does indeed go for a walk later today. that is, if "I will go for a walk later today" is true. Otherwise, one was mistaken in thinking that they know they will go for a walk.

I hope that's pretty clear. Seems it is to you, Ludwig, but not so to others here.

I'm a bit puzzled about you are getting at here. — Ludwig V

Tim is playing pretty loosely with "possible". It's not the case that if some sentence is true, it is not possible for it to be false, in any but a very limited way.

That's circular. You can only satisfy the JTB if you know that X is true. — Ludwig V

Yep. I pointed this out a couple of times previously.

My concerns with JTB are all about how the truth of P is supposed to be established — J

Again, there is a difference between P being true and it being established that P is true. @J still hasn't taken this to heart.

Cheers. I'm reading some secondary material on Adorno, after my brief encounter here. And you are correct, overcoming the individualism of Kant, Hegel and subsequent writers is an issue.

"As if to encourage continued conflict, some of this body are seeking to unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state," Mr Trump said at the UN.

"Unilaterally" once meant "done only by one person". Trump used it to mean "Done my everyone except me".


List of countries that recognise a Palestinian state:
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium (recent announcements in 2025 — see sources)
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cabo Verde (Cape Verde)
Cambodia
Cameroon (varied positions historically; check source notes)
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros
Congo (Republic of the Congo)
Costa Rica
Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
Croatia (debated at times)
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo)
Denmark (varied; see source notes)
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea (position has varied; see source notes)
Estonia (varied; see source notes)
Eswatini
Ethiopia
Fiji (historical / parliamentary positions vary)
Finland (varied; see source notes)
France (formal recognition announced in 2025 — see sources)
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Ghana
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel (does not recognise — included here only for completeness of discussion)
Italy (varied; see source notes)
Jamaica
Japan (does not recognise — included here only for context)
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Luxembourg (recent actions 2025 — see sources)
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Malta (recent recognitions/announcements 2024–2025 — see sources)
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico (varied; see source notes)
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands (varied; see source notes)
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea)
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palau (position varies; check source notes)
Panama (varied historically)
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal (recent announcements 2025 — see sources)
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Sao Tome and Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore (does not recognise — included here for context; see source notes)
Slovakia
Slovenia
Somalia
South Africa
South Sudan
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Sweden
Syria
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tunisia
Turkmenistan
Turkey
Turks and Caicos (territories may have local statements; check national government positions)
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Uruguay
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Vietnam
Western Sahara *(recognises Palestine — note: Western Sahara itself is a disputed/non-UN member entity)
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

Complied by ChatGPT. Recent additions may be missing.

Banno recommends just starting with that truth, which seems similar in spirit to the pragmatic approach you describe. I'm still thinking it over. — J

The offer certainly is not mere pragmatism. That one rock and another rock is two rocks is not a question of practicality so much as of grammar. The suggestions that there are different types of truth, as opposed to different true sentences, is hopeless.

Tarski's theory of truth is the most we can do here without falling into error. Truth is a logical device, setting out the move between a sentence and what is says.

The "T" in JTB is that move.

The SEP article on metaphysics of causation offers an analysis in terms of type and token that looks promising. And reduction to "probabilities, regularities, counterfactuals, processes, dispositions, mechanisms, agency, or what-have-you".

But here we are yet again stuck with Aristotle.

Rather, the comment shows how "woke" is used to close off a conversation. Which is, ironically, the very complaint against "woke".

Men and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence; you can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons; the next by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas. — Attributed to Henry Thomas Buckle

It largely doesn't even make sense as a coherent concept — Mijin

Quite so.

Your description of use in the UK matches that Dow nunder.

Yep.

Did you notice the hit piece in Crickey today, from that ratbag Bernard Keane?

It is an “agenda” of the white male id — capricious, short-fused, anxious, paranoid, jealous, demanding of control but resentful of the burden of responsibility control brings — the nihilism of privilege.

...how can we be certain of the reality of the world within which the Matrix is sustained? — Janus

Bertrand Russell had just finished giving a public lecture on the nature of the universe. An old woman said “Prof. Russell, it is well known that the earth rests on the back of four elephants, that stand on the back of a giant turtle.” Russell replied, “Madame, what does the turtle stand on?” The woman replied, “You're very clever, sir. Very clever. But it's turtles all the way down".

It's VR all the way down...?

The facts are readily available.

Notice this, too:


Nothing surprising here.

, yes, I agree with , an excellent post.

I do hope that the US has the resilience to move beyond its present malaise, and expect that it does. In the meantime it makes for entertaining viewing for us in foreign parts. So much so that twice a week the ABC (ours, not yours) airs a late night show called "Planet America". Some might find it interesting.

I'm curious as to whether it is available in the US?

Yes!

We have to start somewhere, and it seems that a sentence's being true is at least as good a place as any. I mentioned previously the circularity of analysing truth in terms of knowledge when knowledge is defined in terms of truth.

Hold truth steady. Then belief that p is holding p to be true, even if it isn't. And knowing that p excludes p being false. The structure is consistent.

Indeed. You and I see this. What of them? :wink:

Another Conversation article spoke about McCarthyism, and the inept far-right “cancel culture” that can be seen even in this thread. The question might be, does the US have sufficient self-awareness to understand this, and to push back on this "new era of McCarthyism" as it has in the past? The re-election of Trump does not bode well.

It seems to me that he cannot know that he knows on his own. "I know that I know ..." is pure pleonasm. But it is an important feature of my attributing knowledge to someone that, by passing on the information that he knows, I endorse the knowledge. So "know" not only has space for endorsement by other people, it is built in to the concept as an unavoidable commitment. If I want to avoid commitment, I say that they believe that p. (If I actually disagree, I can say that they think that p.) — Ludwig V

Yes!

And thanks for introducing me to "pleonasm".

Wittgenstein doesn't think I know about them... — Ludwig V

There's a tension in his writing that it might be best to acknowledge rather than to try to sort out. This is an issue I;ve raised a few times with @Sam26. I read Wittgenstein as saying, for instance, that if knowledge is justified true belief, then we don't know we are in pain - becasue the justification just is the pain - but he also insisted we "look, don't think", and so that nevertheless he would note we do use "knowledge" in this way. There was a time, when cars became commonplace, were the corpses of slow-witted dogs littered the streets, their mangled remains a common sight that might well be used to explain how one felt after surgery. Wittgenstein understood Pascal's use, and so her meaning. In his own terms, he was being obtuse. The conclusion, perhaps unpalatable to Sam, is that we do use talk of knowing in ways that are not only about justified true beliefs.

But when I ask myself whether I believe that p, surely I need to consider whether p? — Ludwig V

How does asking oneself whether one believes that p differ from asking oneself if p is true? The response here must be much the same at the one you just gave to Tim... "I believe that is it true" is pure pleonasm.

Now it's tempting to think that therefore the JTB account amounts to only justified belief. But this fails to recognise that there is also a difference between somethings being believed and its being true. That difference is what allows error.

The "T" is JTB is not about deciding if the proposition in question is true - that's the prerogative of the "B" - it is about insisting that we cannot know what is not true.

Fair, perhaps. The data shows something quite contrary to the narrative it seems is prominent in the US.

How can speech injure? — Fire Ologist

q.v.

Sure. "Discovered" is not my word. After rejecting of the rule of others, one might look to rule with others. Who we are is also who they are. I'll accept a Foucauldian correction.

My problem with hate speech laws is based on just what I see here in the United States. — BC

Well, yes, and the issue there is the same as elsewhere - finding a balance between being able to express an opinion while not being permitted to incite or induce violence. Looking at other jurisdictions might show that the approach in the US, expressed hereabouts as a naïve acceptance of a refusal to forbid any speech, is fraught with inconsistency. We must acknowledge the capacity of speech to injure, beyond mere offence.

Oh, Ok.

Analysis in terms of illocutions and perlocutions - speech and its consequences - provides a structure in which to understand the act as a whole. It's a counter to those who would say that we must protect the right to express oneself, even if the consequences are unacceptable. So it seems we agree in not accepting that the speech and its consequences are separable, at least for the purposes of ascribing complicity.

This is the argument now being put by sections of the commentariat on the right; that the left is complicit in violence that purportedly resulted from what they have said. It's curiously parallel to earlier arguments put by sections of the commentariat on the left, that and that is the apparent target of the OP. The shoe seems to have changed foot.

At some stage one might grow to recognise oneself as a member of a community, to acknowledge the need in others to also overcome themselves.

And then one might begin to consider ethics. One might become an adult.

I continue to think there is a consideration of scope here that is missing from your account.

Notice that knowing is an attitude towards the proposition, hence the requirement that we set out who it is that is doing the knowing. So we want to get to "J knows that p".

According to the JYB account, we must have it that the following are all true:

1. J believes that p
2. p is justified
3. p

Notice that it is the belief that brings J. into the scope of the knowledge statement.

This, at least in part; since it is arguable - and I would argue - that the justification is also an attitude.

Notice that the last, "p", is not justified in any way, nor is it believed - it's just true. It is not about your "finding out" if p is indeed true.

Would the facts necessary (to find out whether X is true) be the exact same ones cited as my justifications for believing X? — J

Notice that you are not asking if p is true, but how you find out if p is true, and so again asking about an attitude. The facts that help you decide on your attitude are irrelevant to whether p is true or not.

I don't like "hate-speech laws" and "hate crimes" either. Their meanings are far too vague, which makes them useful for suppression of speech that someone doesn't like. — BC

And yet outside the USA, they are ubiquitous. Some reasonable sophisticated communities have found ways to live with the tension other than a naïve adherence to freedom of speech.

Another example for consideration. We accept, I hope, that a sign saying "Whites only" on a bus is unacceptable.

Another example, from On ‘Whites Only’ Signs and Racist Hate Speech: Verbal Acts of Racial Discrimination

Imagine that an African American man boards a public bus on which all the other passengers are white. Unhappy with the newcomer, an elderly white man turns to the African American man and says, “Just so you know, because I realize that your kind are not very bright, we don’t like niggers around here,…boy. So, go back to Africa…so you can keep killing each other…and do the world a favor!

What is the salient difference between the utterance as described, and the elderly white man saying "Whites only!"? (Seems that being elderly is relevant - presumed authority. I suspect that now the antagonist would be more likely to be a young white male.)

The conclusion, "we have good reason to believe that some racist hate speech (that in the public bus example) constitutes an illegal act of racial discrimination"; that absolute adherence to freedom of speech is naïve.

So we ought consider the act constituting the locution separately to the act consequential to the locution? The first is protected, the second, not so?

In Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts Rae Langton consider an example elaborated from Austin:

Two men stand beside a woman. The first man turns to the second, and says "Shoot her." The second man looks shocked, then raises a gun and shoots the woman.

Do we say that, since the act of shooting was not constitutive of the utterance of the first man, that he bears no responsibility for the killing? I think not. The consequences of an act might well be considered as part of that act.

Langton uses the argument here to support the case that pornography - a speech act in the broad sense - subordinates and silences women; that the subordination and silencing are inherent in the pornographic act. The subordination and silencing are as much of the pornographic act as the killing is of the order given by the first man.

Recent commentators seem to be in agreement with Langton on this point, when they hold supposed "left wing radicals" responsible for Kirk's murder.

At the least, it is apparent that there is much other consider here. My own intuition is, at least when considering responsibility, to treat the act as a whole, not separating out the illocution of the order from the perlocution of the killing. That is, there are illocutionary acts that are also acts of violence and hate.

Thank you for at least attempting some philosophical analysis.

I fixed an ambiguity in the post. I think we are in agreement.

And now the discussion becomes the usual parochial hectoring, as predicted.

This comes out in an anecdote related by Fania Pascal, who knew him in Cambridge in the 1930s:

I had my tonsils out and was in the Evelyn Nursing Home feeling sorry for myself. Wittgenstein called. I croaked: “I feel just like a dog that has been run over.” He was disgusted: “You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like.” — On Bullshit Harry Frankfurt

So he Kirk upset people, and they don't like it, so he shouldn't be allowed to make further comment...?

ok.

Ok. You said "making and searching for meaning is what we do, it’s not our purpose". That appears to imply exclusively that either it's something we do, or it's our purpose. But isn't our purpose something we do?

Hu? Something to do with wearing sunglasses?

Ok.