concepts are used in different ways. — Shawn

No! That's not what it says. Rather, concepts are what we do. The difference is central. Concepts are not things!

Treat this as an example in which the malady is misunderstanding the notion of concept, and the treatment is to show that concepts are what we do, and not things.

If you're looking for a specific answer, then go ahead, provide one. — Shawn

I'm not. I'm wondering about your thinking on the topic, and how it relates to

...the passage of the Philosophical Investigations, I/§383, regarding "concepts as words" and Wittgensteins nominalism. — Shawn

It is clear Wittgenstein is rejecting any notion of treating words as just names, and that concepts are about use, not just grammar.

Are philosophers still in need of therapy? — Shawn

Midgley's plumbing metaphor might show the point better than Wittgenstein's therapy metaphor.

So what sort of thing is a concept?

We are not analysing a phenomenon (e.g. thought) but a concept (e.g. that of thinking), and therefore the use of a word.

What more is there to any given concept than what we do?

Well, isn't it good to have all that finished with, then?

Now we can move on to more fundamental things, such as why 'mercans say "cookie" when they mean biscuit.

I'm just not going to go on a tangent to other topics. — Vivek

But

G.E. Moore asks a similar question. What exactly do we mean when we say something is good? What does it mean when we say something is right or wrong? — Vivek

I asked you to apply this to your "survive, to live, to thrive"... looks bang on topic to me.

Well, how else will Vivek get sales?

What are the site rules about spruiking, @Jamal?

So, I think, there is some internal aspect of how learning can at all take place... — Shawn

But "And the question will then arise whether we are still willing to use the concept of 'calculating in the head' here—or whether in such circumstances it has lost its purpose, because the phenomena gravitate towards another paradigm."

It seems you think a concept is something only in one's mind, a rule to be followed. Do you think Wittgenstein would agree?

Are you alluding to qualities of concepts — Shawn

Not qualities, but uses. In addition to the grammar, there is what we do - we choose the blue bicycle and go for a ride. That's not grammar.

For some value of "helps".

If it is all about the externalities of the topic, then I'm only concerned with the internal aspect of how concepts are understood. — Shawn

So concepts have "internal" and "external" aspects? We might leave aside for now how it is possible to talk about these "internal" aspects, and suppose that the grammar, since it is shared, is "external". See PI §385.

What do you make of PI §381-2? This by way of addressing your "what other factors are associated with concepts apart from grammar?"

Thanks for that, Josh. Most helpful.

Hmm. Finished, then? Nothing here inspires me to read your book. Cheers.

Consider the concept blue, the concept democracy, and the concept of cycling. What do these have in common such that we can call them all concepts?

The sue of these words is governed by Grammar, sure. Is a concept just a set of grammatical rules? A democracy is not only a set of grammatical rules, nor is a bicycle.

Concepts are (perhaps) governed by grammar, but isn't something more involved?

So what is good is to survive, to live, to thrive?

Can you think of something that enables you to survive, and yet that is not good? Something that enables you to thrive, and yet is not good?

I've always held that by obeying the same grammar, which allows people to coherently formulate their thoughts in language, we are able to understand concepts. — Shawn

So you say sharing a common grammar makes it possible for us to understand concepts. What are concepts?

Probably won't have time. — Tom Storm

A shame.

SO you are claiming that what is good stands in some sort of relation to something that is alive? What is the nature of that relation? "To live! To survive! To thrive!"?

Is that right?

What do you think a concept is? A thing in your head? Then how is it that you and I can be said to have the same concept?

I pretty much agree. The critique in Gellner misfires.

Have a read of Moore's Principia Ethica. Then Philippa Foot. Then Martha Nussbaum.

, good to see that you have done some reading. Tell us, what in your opinion is the Open Question Argument, and how does it relate to the topic?

what do you think? — Shawn

About what?

There's an obvious difference between doing what is good and doing what you want.

Too much on the Tractatus.

132. We want to establish an order in our knowledge of the use
of language: an order with a particular end in view; one out of many
possible orders; not the order. To this end we shall constantly be
giving prominence to distinctions which our ordinary forms of
language easily make us overlook. This may make it look as if we
saw it as our task to reform language.
Such a reform for particular practical purposes, an improvement in
our terminology designed to prevent misunderstandings in practice,
is perfectly possible. But these are not the cases we have to do with.
The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine
idling, not when it is doing work.
133. It is not our aim to refine or complete the system of rules for
the use of our words in unheard-of ways.
For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But
this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely
disappear.
The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping
doing philosophy when I want to.—The one that gives philosophy
peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself
in question.—Instead, we now demonstrate a method, by examples;
and the series of examples can be broken off.—Problems are solved
(difficulties eliminated), not a single problem.
There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed
methods, like different therapies.

593. A main cause of philosophical disease—a one-sided diet: one
nourishes one's thinking with only one kind of example.

254. The substitution of "identical" for "the same" (for instance)
is another typical expedient in philosophy. As if we were talking about
shades of meaning and all that were in question were to find words
to hit on the correct nuance. That is in question in philosophy only
where we have to give a psychologically exact account of the temptation
to use a particular kind of expression. What we 'are tempted to say'
in such a case is, of course, not philosophy; but it is its raw material.
Thus, for example, what a mathematician is inclined to say about the
objectivity and reality of mathematical facts, is not a philosophy of
mathematics, but something for philosophical treatment.
255 . The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness. — Philosophical Investigations

In case there is some doubt as to correlation, here's a couple of interesting maps.

Which country is having trouble deciding and needed it's own special choropleth?



Meh. 'merca is a schizoid nation. I guess that's what makes it interesting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/12/how-often-do-views-capital-punishment-abortion-align/

'mercans, of course. Elsewhere saner attitudes might prevail.

From six years ago:

What pisses me off most about the choice debate is the insincerity of the antagonists.

The reason you want to ban abortion is nothing to do with fair ethical consideration. It's because the people who tell you what your invisible friend wants say abortion is naughty.

The same misogynist folk who fight against child care, public education, maternity leave, and most other things that will actually benefit people. The ones who think giving guns to children is a good idea, and are shit scared of anyone who is slightly different, sexually, ethnically, geographically, politically or spiritually.

The folk who will not mention, let alone consider, the role of the potential mother; utter bullshit. — Banno

And

Opposition to abortion is immoral.

It is immoral because it puts the "needs" of a cyst ahead of those of a human.

Pretending a cyst has rights in order to defend one's invisible friends is immoral.

My blood cells are human. They do not amount to a human being. A blastocyst is human. It is not a human being. Anti-abortion rhetoric relies on equivocating between human and human being. Cysts are not persons. Being a person involves sentience, emotion, affection, physical health, an appetite, and rationality. A woman is capable of all of these. A cyst, of none.

But a blastocyst can only achieve personhood by inflicting its demands on a woman. Opposing the morning after pill is immoral because it denies the dignity of the woman involved. The cyst has no moral standing.

Nor does a foetus start as a person.

Now some folk have trouble with this; they need a firm, hard line drawn. They find the fact of the slow development of the person from the embryo disconcerting. They try to force a firm break into a situation where one does not exist.

That's their problem. A proper study of philosophy of language might lead to an improvement in their understanding of what is going on when we categorise stuff, and may hopefully dispel their need for certainty.

It is also important to recognise the usual mode of argument of the anti-abortionist. They start with the belief, gleaned from their invisible friends, that abortion is wrong, and then proceed to find arguments for their case.

They are not involved in a real open discussion of the ethical issues involved. Their minds are already decided. — Banno

:grimace:

You attribute intent to LLMs. That's at best premature. LLMs have no idea what it is to tell the truth, any more than they know how to lie. They do not soak up reasons, stake grounds or make claims.

This will not end well.

It looks at philosophy from an odd angle. — fdrake

Nice. It seems there is something going one here, then.

Seems to me to leave you wide open to being misled.

The mooted primacy of assertion over other locutions? I don't see any reason to think of assertions as more central or foundational than commands or questions. The do very different things. Assertions only "convey some sort of corresponding relationship to a state of affairs in the world" when felicitous - Austin's term of art - but then questions and commands can also be infelicitous, commanding someone to do the impossible, or asking a ridiculous question.

But how does it differ?

Another few words about force.

Since Newton, a force changes the movement of an object. We have a pretty clear notion of what that means. Someone can be forced to so something if their choices are restricted. That make sense, too. Someone can be a force for peace, in that they press in that direction.

"Illocutionary force" is what is different about question, statements, commands and so on; and that difference is what we do with those types of utterances. We do something different with a question to what we do with a statement or a command. Here again the word 'force" has some legitimacy, marking the act, the doing, the making it so.

"Assertoric force" makes sense in terms of Frege's Judgement Stroke, understood variously as "We know that..." or "It is true that..." prefixing and holding in its scope the whole of the subsequent expression, ensuring that multiple uses of the same term therein will be extensionally equivalent and so on.

If "assertoric force" is proposed to be understood as not an illocutionary force ranging over the subsequent expression, then it is up to the proposer to set out what it is that the force does that is different to the illocutionary force of asserting.

I'm not seeing that here.

Assertion does NOT equal denotation.. "The cat" is a reference to something "in the world". — schopenhauer1

Sure. There are at least two places where something is done with a statement. The first is that somethings are spoken about, and not others - the statement denotes stuff, The second is to assert that the speaker holds something to be the case - the assertion.

Folk hereabouts seem to want a third "force", such that it is not a full illocutionary assertion yet more than a denotation. What I've been pressing is for them to set out explicitly what that might be. In my view no clear account has been given.

Tarski? — schopenhauer1

Extensionality. I understand that Frege spoke of the "course-of-values" for a variable - the list of values it might take. Tarski added the definition of truth as part of a metalanguage.

Perhaps it is worth pointing out that if one is going to assert that Frank posts on PF, one will need to set out that "Frank" denotes Frank and that "...posts on PF" denotes the list linked above. That is, one will need to set out the domain of discourse.

...the muddle between force in thread and illocutionary forces... — fdrake

Just to be sure, the reason I introduced talk of illocutionary force into the discussion was to give @J and others something by way of context against which they might develop whatever notion of force they see in Kimhi. I said explicitly that I would "go over my own understanding of the Fregean account and subsequent developments".

Seems to me that Frege's Judgment Stroke is a precursor to the subsequent work done in Oxbridge.

I think this is trivially true. — frank

Well, it's trivial, yep. And it can give you an idea of what you are doing when you say something is "true" - you are talking about sentences, at least as much as about how things are.

Maybe a more direct example will help. Consider "Frank posts on PF". Here is a list of folk who post on PF. "Frank posts on PF" will be satisfied if and only if Frank is in that list.

Extensionally, that's all there is to understand in "Frank posts on PF". Of course, there are other things that can be said about both Frank and PF, many of which are interesting and informative, but they are by the by. Whatever else might be understood, "Frank posts on PF" just means Frank is on the list of PF-posters.

Nothing here about truth.

But we might add, if we want" "Frank posts on PF" is true IFF Frank is on the list of folk who post on PF. Now we are talking, not about Frank and PF so much as about the sentence "Frank posts on PF"

"Grass is green" will be satisfied if grass is one of the things listed in the things that are green.

If you understand that, you understand what it would take to satisfy the proposition "grass is green".

Now we can add to that, "Grass is green" is true IFF grass is one of the things that satisfies "...is green". Adding truth is a step further.

By way of an excuse, I can't offer a sharp argument against whatever is being asserted in this thread when not only is there no consensus but little by way of a clear account of what is being asserted.

The same for "Is the grass green?". But consider "What colour is the grass?" where part of the propositional content is missing...

The command doesn't contain a proposition. — frank

Well, yes... that was kinda the point. The grass will be green in the case in which being green is satisfied by grass. It's a conditional, and hence "grass is green" is not asserted.

Truth is defined in terms of satisfaction, and hence is not asserted.

I develop propositional attitude by analyzing the context of utterance, — frank

From my first post

First we should be clear about the nature of illocutionary force. Taking your example, "The grass is green", we can imagine various situations in which this utterance does quite different things. Imagine a meeting in which a landscape gardener is presenting their plan for the forecourt of a new build. One of those present is unclear as to which parts of the drawing are cement and which are lawn, and asks "The grass is green?". The designer replies, "Yes. The grass is green." There follows a conversation about how best to represent the lawn after which the manager gives the instruction "The grass is green!". Here we have the same sentence being used in three quite different ways - as a question, as a statement and as an instruction. The same sentence is being used with three differing illocutionary forces. — Banno