Oh, that's very good.

So we have a transcendental argument in Kant, something like: The only way we could make judgements is if we have a unified objective experience; we make judgements; therefor our objective experience must be unified; hence the "I" in "I judge...". (An outline of the argument only; we might spare ourselves detailed exegesis if we mutually accept that there will be variations and things to finesse, rathe than go in to detail?)

And that might well bypass my reservations concerning private language. I'll give it some more thought.

The other thread hanging loose here is Davidson. he might be more problematic. Kant's argument assumes a separation between world and thought that Davidson might well have rejected. For Davidson the world is not the manifold of intuition against which we have experiences - that would both be too individual, and involve a separation of world and word, a notion of an uninterpreted world of which we can make no sense. Rather than "I Think..." as the only option in the transcendental argument, Davidson would reject a transcendental subject, having instead a triangulation between belief, world and meaning.

My apologies if that is not so clear. Kant is not my area. I'm suggesting in effect that Davidson might deny the first leg of the transcendental argument, that the only way we could make judgements is if we have a unified objective experience, and say instead that our judgements arise from the interplay of our experiences and beliefs, together with our place in a community of language practice.

Anyway, that'll do for now.

I still don’t think one can use ‘better or worse’ without invoking ‘best and worst’ — Fire Ologist

Why not?

But I do know that neo-Kantians like Sellars, McDowell or Rödl have well absorbed the situated/socially scaffolded Wittgensteinian ideas on mind and language, — Pierre-Normand

Yeah, I agree with that, there should be an answer here.

But if we take "I think..." as a formal unity of judgement, it's just taking the place of Frege's judgement stroke.

And that would be at odds with Rödl, so far as I can see. The contrast with Rödl hinges on whether the “I think” (Kant) or the judgment stroke (Frege) is best understood as a mere formal marker within a shared, impersonal space of reasons, or as something more fundamentally self-involving, reflexive, or identity-constituting.

The latter, not so much.

Again, and generally, we don't need an absolute standard in order to be able to say that one thing is better or worse than some other.

I would suggest that it's going to prove impossible to justify any standards while denying philosophy any purpose or ends. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's a difference between a standard and an end.

My objection is to setting up what metaphysics is in terms of where metaphysics ends.

That framing imports a teleological structure into the practice, as if its value or identity depended on a fixed aim or destination. But metaphysics, as I understand and teach it, is not defined by its conclusion—it’s revealed in the doing. We start in the middle: with questions, distinctions, and confusions—not with a final cause or overarching purpose.

The I think must be able to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me that could not be thought at all, which is as much as to say that the representation would either be impossible or else at least would be nothing for me. That representation sound like a.that can be given prior to all thinking is called intuition. Thus all manifold of intuition has a necessary relation to the I think in the same subject in which this manifold is to be encountered. But this representation is an act of spontaneity, i.e., it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility. I call it the pure apperception, in order to distinguish it from the empirical one, or also the original apperception, since it is that self-consciousness which, because it produces the representationI think, which must be able to accompany all others and which in all consciousness is one and the same, cannot be accompanied by any further representation. I also call its unity the transcendental unity of self-consciousness in order to designate the possibility of a priori cognition from it. For the manifold representations that are given in a certain intuition would not all together be my representations if they did not all together belong to a self-consciousness; i.e., as my representation (even if I am not conscious of them as such) they must yet necessarily be in accord with the condition under which alone they can stand together in a universal self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not throughout belong to me. From this original combination much may be inferred. — Critique of pure reason, B131-2

Around about there-ish?

Notice the circularity - of course my representations must be accompanied by "I think..."

What if we were to ask what we think?

I can't help but regard this playing with private judgements with great suspicion.

I was using the turnstile as a shorthand for Frege's judgement stroke, so read "⊢⊢the cat is on the mat" as "I think that I think..." or "I think that I judge..." or whatever. Not as "...is derivable from..."

I know you are aren’t meaning to say it, or meaning to mean that, but you actively avoiding aims, telos-speak. — Fire Ologist

That there is no one aim that is the goal of all metaphysics does not imply that no meta physical activity has an aim.

The very idea of an overarching framework in which art takes place and is to be judged is anathema, to be immediately challenged. The framework becomes the target. — Banno

This seems to be the very same error you and Leon made in the other thread. It's as if, were I to say that not all cars are driven on the road, you were to argue that if that were so, no cars would be driven on the road.

"My thought of judging that things are so is a different act of the mind from my judging that they are so." — J

⊢⊢the cat is on the mat

is different to

⊢the cat is on the mat

Sure. What's the issue? Isn't this exactly what is recognised by the use of the judgement stroke to mark the scope of the extensionality of each?

If you reject the notion that philosophy has aims... — Leontiskos

Oh, Leon. That's so far from what was actually said.

"My thought of judging that things are so is a different act of the mind from my judging that they are so. The former is about my judgment, a psychic act, a mental state; the latter, in the usual case, is not; it is about something that does not involve my judgment, my mind, my psyche. It is about a mind-independent reality." — J

I can't get past this as a misframing.

A) I think: "I judge that the cat is on the mat."
B) I think: "The cat is on the mat." — J

There's so much ambiguity in this!

As he says, A is about my judgment, something I do or think, while B is about the cat. — J

B is not about the cat - it is plainly about a thought. It will be true not if and only if the cat is on the mat, but if and only if I think the cat is on the mat.

...that "perspicuous representation" requires some sort of consensus... — J

...and requires nothing more. That consensus might be all we have.

the concept of progress in the arts is very tricky, — Ludwig V

And

I do worry, though, about the unselfconscious use of "clarity" to identify some sort of objective property ( — Ludwig V

Earlier I used this example:

She will be huddled under blankets while I am comfortable in my tee shirt. But we at least agree that she is cold while I am hot; that this is the fact of the matter. And this will be so regardless of what the thermometer shows, it would be impertinent for me to say she was mistaken here. So let's not suppose our differences to be merely subjective. — Banno

This is a triangulation, between her, the thermometer and myself. We reach an agreement, a level of mutual comfort.

Consider it along side Quine's gavagai and the indeterminacy of translation. The lack of agreement does not prevent ongoing interaction.

We might do something similar with progress and clarity. If we agree that there has been progress, then what more do we need? If we agree that there is clarity, what more do we need? And if we disagree, then at the least we can agree that we disagree - we might agree that you think some idea clear while i disagree, That I think progress is being made while you do not.

Again, while there is no fact of the matter that we can use to decide the issue, and no overarching aim, we have reached an agreement that might allow us to move on.

What we have here is not an agreed doctrine, but a method, a heuristic.

Group dynamics, I suppose — Ludwig V

the two sides crashed in the middle — frank

Hence this:

The realist/antirealist debate petered out in the first decade of this century. Part of the reason is Williamson's essay. The debate, as can be seen in the many threads on the topic in these fora, gets nowhere, does not progress.

The present state of play, so far as I can make out, has the philosophers working in these areas developing a variety of formal systems that are able to translate an ever-increasing range of the aspects of natural language. They pay for this by attaching themselves to the linguistics or computing department of universities, or to corporate entities such as NVIDIA. — Banno

Things moved on.

Pretty close.

But look at "A nice derangement of epitaphs", were conventions are rejected in favour of interpretation - an active process! And so closer to Dummett's group dynamics, but keeping the primacy of truth.

Yep. The very idea of an overarching framework in which art takes place and is to be judged is anathema, to be immediately challenged. The framework becomes the target.

Much the same in philosophy. It questions the framework (aim) rather than submits to it.

, pay attention.

He mentions Davidson in relation to "systematic application of compositional truth-conditional semantics to natural languages", suggesting that it might be helpful if those who follow Dummett made use of such an approach. Not sure that amounts to claiming Davidson as a realist. Maybe.

The core difference is that for Dummett truth concerns verification, but for Davidson truth is a primitive notion. For Davidson, world, belief and interpretation are inseparable. Davidson collapses the distinction between scheme and content on which Dummett depends.

To call something misleading is to say it leads somewhere—but crucially, somewhere we didn’t intend, or that doesn’t fulfill the function we took ourselves to be engaging in. That’s not the same as saying there is a metaphysical end-point we ought to be led to; rather, it’s to say that a particular use diverts us from how the practice normally works or what it aims at internally.

, , Better perhaps to think of Davidson, like Wittgenstein, as rejecting the realism/antirealism dichotomy, than as compatible with either.

I'm not sure there's a philosophy which aims at understanding as opposed to knowledge. — Moliere

There's an obvious equivocation between understanding and knowledge, but natural language philosophy does pretty much seek understanding before knowledge. “Understanding” in this context often refers to a kind of clarity—seeing how language functions, how confusion arises, and how philosophical problems dissolve when we attend closely to our forms of life and linguistic practices. It’s not about accumulating true propositions (knowledge in the epistemological sense), but about achieving perspicuous representation.

Given the ubiquity of the methods of natural language philosophy, in practice if not in name, seeking understanding is found throughout.

Perhaps the divide, isn’t between traditions that aim at knowledge vs. those that aim at understanding, but between those who recognise this methodological humility and those who think philosophy can deliver substantive, positive theories in the mode of science. The accusation of scientism runs both ways.

Apparently Banno's answer is, "I want to do philosophy purposelessly. I want to do philosophy aimlessly!" This is deeply confused. — Leontiskos

And deeply misrepresentative. Your standard practice, when you don't like an argument, is to misreport it.

If meaning is use, then use must have an end. — Fire Ologist

The phrase "If meaning is use, then use must have an end" equivocates on “end.” It reads “end” as telos—as if every use must aim at a final goal or fixed purpose. But that misrepresents the point of saying meaning is use (as in Wittgenstein). “Use” in this context refers to the way expressions function in language-games: in asking, asserting, commanding, joking, praying, etc. To say meaning is use is to locate meaning in those practical, varied, rule-governed activities—not to suggest that every instance of use must point toward a singular purpose or culminate in some definable outcome. So no, use needn’t “have an end” in the teleological sense. It need only have a role—a place in a practice, a regularity, a way it makes sense to respond. Saying that meaning is use does not bind us to the idea that use must be goal-directed in some ultimate or final way. Instead, it resists that very assumption by inviting us to look at the variety of language’s functions—how words are used in actual human life.
The quote imports a metaphysical constraint (an “end” to use) that Wittgenstein’s insight was meant to avoid.

To even call a metaphysical claim "misleading" instead of simply "ugly' is to suppose to there is something to be properly "lead to." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, no. And this seems to me to suffer the same error as your argument in the Two ways to Philosophise thread. “To call a metaphysical claim ‘misleading’” doesn’t require that there is something to be properly led to—it only requires that the claim presents itself as if there were. “Misleading” is a pragmatic evaluation of the function or effect of the claim, not necessarily a commitment to metaphysical realism or a teleology of inquiry.

One can say that a metaphysical claim is misleading because it invites a way of thinking or framing that leads us into confusion, pseudo-questions, or circular debates—even if one doesn’t think there is any final “truth” about Being or substance or whatever at the end of the metaphysical road.

Well, there is the possibility of working out how to answer a question, if you don't know. — Ludwig V

Fair point. So how would that work? I'd suggest Cartesian method, breaking the question down into sub-questions, answering each, and putting together an overall solution, as one possible path.

That is, one might work out how to answer a question by asking answerable questions.

The expectation is that students will be enabled to create new work by developing a critical judgement from those examples. — Ludwig V

This works for me. The reason for reading the cannon is to improve on it. But in order to "improve" on it, one does not need already to have an idea of the perfect or ultimate item.

I quite agree with what you have to say about propositions. Best set aside. Did you suppose I thought otherwise? If so, where?

But not for his idea that there is only one such hierarchy — Ludwig V

I am a bit down on Aristotle at present, mostly becasue his ideas are being used broadly and badly in the forum. But on this, at least, we might agree.

Anyway, the usual mischaracterisation is occurring here (not by you), so I'll go back and re-trace some of what I've said. What I am suggesting is that there need be no explicit overall goal for ontology - or any other study - prior to or in virtue of which that study proceeds. No "essence" of ontology. This is a pretty commonplace point, since Wittgenstein. It's misrepresented by others here as my asserting that there can be no overall goal, no essence of ontology, but that's not what I suggested. Of course folk can stipulate a goal, if they so desire. There's just no need to do so, in order to get on with the work.

More like: Look for questions that look answerable, or at least for which you have some way of recognising the answer.

My classes did not begin with broad statements of what metaphysics is, but proceeded by doing metaphysics, self consciously, examining what we did as we proceeded.

Becasue we do not start with a definition—we start in the middle. We do not start with a definition becasue we are not only teaching a body of beliefs, but also providing a set of tools.

Nice rhetorical move on your part.

Well said.

The advantage of the question What is bread made of?" is that there is a pathway to answering the question, that we might well answer the question. You have the answer when you can make bread.

Seems pretty direct.

The aim of philosophy...

Teleology.

We need not assume that meaningful discourse requires a teleological structure. - that we must have an aim. I don't grant that assumption—it's a relic of an Aristotelian metaphysics that I'm not committed to.

Teleology is metaphysically extravagant and misleading. Galileo, Descartes, and Newton sought mechanical rather than final causes. Hume warned against inferring purposes from observed regularities. Darwin replaced natural teleology with natural selection. Wittgenstein urged philosophers to describe how things are used in practice, not to seek hidden purposes or essences. So today, to speak of ends in the Aristotelian sense is to reinvigorate a discredited metaphysical picture. Best left alone, unless one explicitly defends that framework. As, indeed, some do.

Why are the only alternatives "true" or "false" — J

They're not. The point is that the scope of the "⊢" takes in all the propositions, so as to maintain extensionality - and this is so whether we understand "⊢" as "It is true..." or as "I judge..." or as "perhaps..." or even "quite likely...".

Why must we insist that the only sincere use of "to assert" is in a case when we believe there is no possibility whatsoever that the sentence is false? — J

But this is not what is being pointed out. Someone might go ahead and assert that the cat is on the mat despite it being blatantly obvious that the cat is not on the mat. What we are entitled to conclude from their assertion is not that the cat is on the mat, but that they hold it to be the case that the cat is on the mat, provided we take them as sincere.

I'm really not seeing the problem.

Moliere and I were talking about the norms of analytic philosophy, and I don't think either one of us ever mentioned it. — Srap Tasmaner

It seems to me that you are advocating absolute norms while @Moliere (and I) advocate relative or comparative norms. I may be mistaken.

I don't think there's a standard measure of how clear a proof is. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep. There need be no absolute measure. But if you and I agree that this proof is clearer than that, then we might proceed. A comparative measure.

My point right here will be that, once again, clarity is a means, not the goal. — Srap Tasmaner

For you, sure. But why shouldn't clarity also be a goal, if not for you, then perhaps for others? And so an aesthetic.

What I hope my example shows is that working with small, clear questions may lead to progress on big, vague questions.

This used to be called "analysis".) — Srap Tasmaner

And hence analytic philosophy... dissection over discourse.

Mary Midgley, perhaps?

This is where my view is at odds with that of Williamson. I am on the side of the doubters at the philosophy conference in Presocratic Greece, rejecting the discourse of Thales and Anaximander in favour of dissecting the bread.

Good stuff. I hope you are enjoying this, too.

Perhaps it might help if I went back to this, regarding the philosophy conference in Presocratic Greece

My response: Those who jump too quickly to an answer to "what are things made of?" fall; not water, not fire. The doubters have it right: we can intelligibly ask what bread is made of, but not, at least amongst the presocratics, what everything is made of. It is a step too far to ask what things in general are made of. It was exactly by answering questions like "what is bread made of" that we were able to progress towards the broader question. The answerable questions have a large part in this progress. Understanding the nature of grain and water and heat, and how they interact, lead by degrees and indirectly to the questions of chemistry and physics that constitute our present start of play. — Banno

The trouble is, "What are all things made of?" is not as clear as "What is bread made of?". I'd suggest that progress came from iterating clear questions: "What is φ made of?" - "what is bread made of?"; "What is water made of?"; "what is Hydrogen made of?"; What are protons made of?" And that this has proved more agreeable than just-so-stories about water and fire.

None of this business about absolute or relative clarity was at issue. — Srap Tasmaner

Odd. Seems to me the very point of contention.

Is making things clear, to whatever degree, the goal of mathematics? — Srap Tasmaner

A goal, at least.

Great. They have enough clarity to get on with what exactly? Making other parts of mathematics clear? And in the meantime of what? Of making set theory even clearer? — Srap Tasmaner

Yep.

Given two proofs, the clearer is preferred. On that we agree?

Right, that was more or less my point. It's not a logical entailment or something that's true by definition. We have to agree on it. — J

Call it a performative entailment, rather than a logical entailment, if you like. If you assert something that you think is false, or judge to be false, your assertion misfires - it is insincere.

Good old Austin.

So if I merely assert the sentence, without you and I stipulating what an assertion is going to mean, are you able to come to a conclusion about whether I think it's true, or only quite likely to be true? — J

I'm not sure what "without you and I stipulating what an assertion is going to mean" is doing here.

But I do think that if you make an assertion, we are entitled to conclude both that you think what you assert is indeed true, and that you have judged it to be so.

This does not mean you cannot assert something tentatively, or for the sake of argument - but again, the issue is one of the scope of the assertion.

I don't know whether Williamson is closer to my view or yours. — Srap Tasmaner

Neither do I.

But yours is a provocative post. I think maybe we might look back to the difference between an absolute and a relative measure - to being hot or cold. Do we need an absolute criteria for clarity? Perhaps not. Perhaps we might do with a sufficiency, enough to be getting on with.

A mathematical proof is never completely clear - there is always more to be said, more for the mathematician to clarify. There is still work being done on ZFC. But there is enough clarity for mathematicians to get on with other questions in the mean time.

And while what is clear to one mathematician may not be clear to another, it may be clear enough for them to agree and move on.

There's more here, that could be related back again to PI §201. We reach a point in our explanations at which we stop asking questions and just act.

I've heard of the judgement stroke, but no-one has ever explained to me what it does before. Thank you for that. — Ludwig V

Cheers. See A challenge to Frege on assertion for a bit more, if you are interested. Frege set the force of an utterance aside so that we could look to other aspects of it's structure. As I said there, the "a" in

is the same in both occurrences. This is how Frege might represent ∀A∀B(A→(B→A)), reading from bottom to top, something like "we judge that in all cases "a" gives us that "b" gives "a"". Notice that the whole expression sits within the scope of one judgement stroke, the "⊢" on the first line - that's the force of the utterance, the judgement or belief or what have you. The "⊢" is nowadays reduced to "it's true that..."

All this talk of assertions is making me think about speech acts. — Ludwig V

Yes, good point. The issue seems to be what Searle called the "sincerity condition", which requires that the speaker genuinely possesses the mental state expressed by the speech act. In this case making an assertion involves the speaker in committing themselves to the mental state of holding what is asserted to be true.

Could we not say that clarity has more than one value? — Ludwig V

I'll go along with that. We could fill in the details of how an aesthetic value relates to an obligation, and I'd also agree that we have an obligation to each other to be clear enough to be understood. Taht was part of what is behind @Moliere's thread on aesthetics, I believe.

Added: This might be a better account: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/931997

"Yes, I'm saying this, and it's most likely true -- close enough that I'm willing to assert it." — J

Can you do this without therewith judging that it's most likely true -- close enough that you are willing to assert it?

Yes and no. An analytic philosopher can talk *about* values, the roles they play in discourse, all that sort of thing, but by and large is determined not to offer a "wisdom literature." So it might be able to "clarify" (hey Banno) that it's the values at stake in a dispute, rather than something else, but it's not, as a rule, espousing a set of values. — Srap Tasmaner

Seems to me that we can posit clarity as an aesthetic value. As something that we might preference not becasue of what it leads to, but for it's own sake.

Seems @Moliere agrees, but perhaps you do not. That's fine. Perhaps at the least we might agree that some folk value clarity, and not just as a means to an end. Then we might wonder if Williamson is one of them.

I'm increasingly unconvinced that Banno is willing to provide his ends at all. — Leontiskos

"Ends" are a figment of Aristotelian framing. So, no.

Question - suppose that the speaker does know that the cat=jack. Then, by substitution, the speaker believes that Jack is on the mat. Is that not the case? — Ludwig V

Sure. Frege's judgement stroke is a way of showing this, by clarifying the scope of the judgement:

⊢(the cat is on the mat, the cat is jack, therefore Jack is on the mat)

but not

⊢(the cat is on the mat)
⊢(the cat is jack)
⊢(therefore Jack is on the mat)

The substitution between seperate judgements is not countenanced.

To me this talk of "ends" appears hollow. If, after Wittgenstein, we should look to use rather than to meaning, you might supose that a use is an end. That's a stretch, "end" drags in to the discussion so much baggage that might not be found in "use". It also does not follow that language must therefor have an end.

...surely there has to be some notion of the end this language is "better for." — Count Timothy von Icarus

"Surely" is a word to watch out for in an argument. It indicates that the conclusion doesn't follow as tightly as he proposing the argument would like.

Adding teleology here is making presumptions of Aristotelian metaphysics. It's already loaded.