It would be absurd to lay down any absolute philosophical principle for when to call in armed, antifascist groups. — BitconnectCarlos

I'm not asking for absolutes. I'm asking you to detail what convinced you antifa was necessary in the historical example I gave you. What I'm hoping for is a concrete and in context response, we can see later if there's any justifying principles for your approval of antifascist action in this context. I don't want to talk about the supposed ideology of antifa or whatever yet, I wanna talk about under what conditions antifascists turning up at a protest prepared for violence in self defence or in defence of others is justifiable.

You're just going to have to go by the specific situation and ask yourself questions like how many right-wingers we're expecting to show up, do the right wingers have a history of violence, what is the police presence like, how about the presence of counter-protesters who may provide a "check" but not be antifa themselves? here in boston we had a right wing rally back in 2017 where like 50 right-wingers showed up and tens of thousands of counter-protesters with a strong police presence, do we really need to call in antifa here? — BitconnectCarlos

Some extra detail about the example I gave:

You're just going to have to go by the specific situation and ask yourself questions like how many right-wingers we're expecting to show up,

In this case it was known beforehand that organised counterprotesters+local community members would be greatly outnumbered by the fascist demonstrators.

do the right wingers have a history of violence

The people going to the demonstration in the Bangladeshi neighbourhood did have a history of violence.

what is the police presence like

In context it looked as if there were enough police to secure the fascist demonstration while they were one block, but there was not enough to police its predicted after effects; much of the violence occurred after the bulk of fascist thugs stopped sieg hailing as a contained unit and broke off into smaller groups which, intentionally, are harder for police to check. The police advantage comes from being relatively armed, relatively coordinated, and in position to guide/confine the demonstration.

In case that isn't clear: say there's 50 police and 500 protesters and all protesters are in one block, the organised efforts of the police act as a force multiplier - they control the movement of the 500 protesters.

Let's say the 500 protesters break up into connected streets in groups of 50, now you've got to expect 5 police officers to manage 50 people who are moving outside of the police's crowd management strategy. The police are still relatively armed, but they're out of position and can't put on a coordinated defence since they're reacting to the movements of the sieg hailing loonies.

In practice, the police could not ensure oversight of all the splintering groups over the surrounding neighbourhoods. Not only did the group of 50-60 thugs splinter off that way, they did so without any officers there.

And just to note; antifascist militants rarely turn up armed. That tends to land them in jail or endanger them needlessly.

I think it's not instructive to think about the ideology of antifa and broader questions of free speech in the same breath as whether militant antifascist strategy is fine in any normal political context. It seems to me you believe it was fine in this case, why?

Topical.

I would add that as I use the terms, events are states of affairs, as are relations such as Earth being the third planet from the Sun (and whatever else that can potentially be stated) — Andrew M

Do you believe that it's a property of the world that whatever happens in it can potentially be stated?

As to whether the Republicans were cowards, fearful of doing the right thing, they certainly were. As to whether the rank and file actually believed the Trump nonsense, I doubt it. As to whether the Republicans can now remove themselves from Trump now that he has revealed too clearly what and who he actually is, yes. And that, as I said above, is the positive takeaway here. I don't see the rank and file GOP as much as co-conspirators in attempting to steal Biden's legitimate win, but as pathetic cowards fearful of losing their power who knew better. — Hanover

Does their intent matter if they were benefitting from advancing a politics that lead to a coup attempt? And as @frank said 45% of Republican supporters stand by Trump's coup attempt. They're not dumb; the last four years the GOP's made this bed, they should lay in it. Of course they won't, and we're expected to believe the majority of the party were cowards with noble intentions or alternatively that "both sides" do exactly the same thing.

Can we just take a moment to reflect on the fact that the "coup attempt" was a rational conclusion from Trump and the GOP's politics, that it was egged on by Trump and the GOP, that Trump is still egging it on, and only at the last second when GOP members realised the optics of the coup attempt were sufficiently bad did they back out?

This is a minor point though, because in the situation you describe it is clear that the community needed to call in the ANL as a last resort and I don't have any issue with that. — BitconnectCarlos

So you're willing to agree that antifascist actions can be necessary, when they are a "last resort", what is sufficient evidence that the situation is a "last resort"? What made you believe the example that I gave you was a last resort when there was notable police presence at the demonstration?

In my reading of Heidegger the content of word meanings is only determined collectively in the mode of idle talk , which Heidegger says is not genuine understanding but a closing off of understanding. This is the inauthentic mode of discourse, which flattens and makes generic what originates as an individually distinct process of disclosure. — Joshs

So you're saying that an authentic self chooses the meaning of the words they use?

We don’t have to learn it, it is presupposed by experiencing — Joshs

I'll follow you down the phenomenology rabbit hole insofar as humans have a capacity to recognise and engender meaningful patterns. In Heideggerese, that's a recognition that discourse's articulation renders the world always-already meaningful.

However, that capacity is collectively exercised and its content is determined by that collective exercise and environmental effects.

But it is ‘public’ in the sense that the individual is already a community unto itself, sequentially transforming itself — Joshs

It comes down to a question of whether the individual's "community unto itself" - the reflexive articulation of the given of discourse - has a strong historical dependence. Given that discourse's content is historically dependent, I would suggest that is the case.

If discourse, which is always-already interpersonal, is bracketed from the account, what remains of an agent's

(checking) our language in relation to our own anticipations, in a kind of internal conversation. From this vantage , interpersonal communication is secondary and derived. — Joshs

"stretching along in time" is bereft of any of the modifications of discourse. Which renders the idea that such streching is a "dialogue" only a metaphor. It cannot be construed as a dialogue due to the bracket placed on discursive content.

I'm fine with neighborhood watches. Communities are allowed to defend themselves, but I think its a poor tactical decision to frame a neighborhood watch specifically as an antifascist defense force. It'll have the effect of alienating a portion of the population that isn't particularly political and may be a little confused or alarmed by the ideological bent of their neighborhood watch. Just call it a general neighborhood watch, cast a wide net, and defend your community from whatever crime there is. Everyone can get on board with neighborhood safety, you're going to confuse people when you introduce ideology, especially if this new neighborhood watch is dressed in all black with black masks. Appearance matters. — BitconnectCarlos

What would sufficient evidence that police are unable or unwilling to do anything to help, again? Here's an excerpt from Dave Hann's book about the collaboration between neighbourhoods and the antifascist organisation the Anti Nazi League (ANL). NF is the fascist group the National Front. This is from 1978-1979 in the UK:

Almost as soon as the date for the second Carnival had been advertised, the NF countered it by declaring that they intended to march through the heart of the East End’s Bangladeshi community in Brick Lane on the very same day. Their move, which was an acknowledgment of the opposition generated by RAR events, sought to disrupt the Carnival and divide the anti-fascist movement. Prevarication followed by political expediency on the part of leading SWP members almost allowed them to achieve their goal.

It was announced from the Carnival stage that the situation in the East End was under control so people should stay and enjoy themselves. In fact, local ANL activists had telephoned their ANL national steering committee and begged them to send more “people down to help the anti-fascists at Brick Lane. Alongside the local ANL, members of various Trotskyist groups, anarchists and local anti-racists from the Hackney and Tower Hamlets Defence Committee tried to harass a 700 strong NF march but their numbers were too small to create any more effective action against the marchers and their police escorts. Local Bengali youth were kept away from the Front invaders by large numbers of antagonistic police. A rally at Church Road concluded the march and opened another fascist offensive. Groups broke away to threaten and cause damage to the area and its people. One gang of 50 to 60 skinheads smashed up shops on Brick Lane before being driven off by locals. — Dave Hann, Physical Resistance

The Bangladeshi community knew that the police would not stop the NF from stampeding through their neighbourhood, destroying property, assaulting people. So community members contacted the antifascist org to send militants prepared to counterdemonstrate, block the advance of the NF through the neighbourhood, and fight if need be. Not enough showed up due to the NF "demonstration" being tactically timed during another ANL event elsewhere, and predictably the NF committed acts of racist violence and property destruction.

The "neighbourhood watch" wasn't enough, the police didn't care to impede the publicly announced demonstration, sectarian violence ensued because the "last resort" of the ANL weren't there in enough numbers. How would you expect a neighbourhood watch to defend against an organised militia when the police violently protect that militia's right to march through the neighbourhood due to "absolute free speech"?

From this vantage , interpersonal communication is secondary and derived. — Joshs

How does someone learn to have this internal conversation?

Yes. Hope Not Hate put out a report last year about its spread to the UK.

But yes, when the authorities are either complicit or unhelpful in, say, stopping hate crimes then this type of vigilante action becomes more plausible — BitconnectCarlos

What would count as sufficient evidence that authorities are "either complicit or unhelpful in stopping hatecrimes"?

Incidentally, your quote of Heidegger seems unrelated to what you're saying. There he's in the middle of discussing the meaning of phenomenology. — Xtrix

In the interest of beating a dead horse and explaining a terrible joke I made at the same time.

I summarised the claim that moods and interpretation are equiprimordial out of Heideggerese with:

moods couldn't make stuff seem different if stuff seeming different couldn't affect moods. — fdrake

I used the quote to highlight the criticism Heidegger has of using "seeming" vocabulary to describe phenomena...

Rest of this post is is in merciless Heideggerese.

..because "seeming" is privative with regard to disclosure and phenomenon need not be.

Regarding the equipromordiality of attunement and understanding. Two existentialia are equipromordial (or co-originary) when each founds the other - in more transcendental vocabulary each is a condition of the possibility for the other.

There is direct textual support for the claim:

The two equi-primordial constitutive manners of being the there we see in attunement and in understanding. The analysis of these two will in each case receive the necessary phenomenal confirmation by way of an interpretation of a concrete mode, one important for the subsequent problematic. And both attunement and understanding are equiprimordially determined by talk (discourse - me) — Being and Time, P171

I don't think @Joshs is misinterpreting Heidegger by claiming attunement and understanding are equiprimordial. If you want to push on the idea that mood is a mode of attunement and not the existentialia attunement as such, and therefore there's a case to be made that mood isn't equiprimordial with understanding, I'd be game to talk about it. But I don't think it's super necessary considering there's direct textual support for the interpretation that attunement and understanding are equiprimordial.

Maybe we should ditch this game of ideological generalization then? We seem to be on a very different page. Your inspirations for antifascism seem to be Jewish partisans while mine are black-clad, weaponized young men who have murdered cops and obstruct ambulances trying tor reach hospitals. These aren't the "bad apples" either - street obstruction is a common tactic. — BitconnectCarlos

The point I'm trying to make is that there's a historical continuity between the antifascist actors I'm referring to and the ones which are currently vilified.

Have you ever seen Scared Straight? — BitconnectCarlos

We could be talking about how the majority of the time antifascist actors are not violent towards people except in self defence. But I think the more interesting discussion is about violence as a political strategy; the police are violent all the time, that's how they work.

So we should distinguish between antifascist actors at protests as a check against violent actors (and police!) and violent antifascist tactics outside of the protest. Self defence against police action like this excerpt from an antifascist actor at Red Lion Square:

There were two or three rows of police who were pressed up against the crowd and they had their truncheons drawn, although as I said, this was when things had quietened down a bit. Behind these rows of coppers were a number of police on horseback. There was one particular copper there, he was in the second row, and he was frothing at the mouth trying to get at people. He was hurling all sorts of abuse and urging the other coppers to attack us. I then felt a push behind me, and I turned around and saw that someone had fallen over. I didn’t have a clue who it was at the time but I now know of course that it was Kevin Gately. I heard afterwards that he had fainted due to the crush of the crowd. There was a shout that somebody had fallen and I shouted “Ease back, ease back.

Give him room.” This evil little copper then started shouting “One of the bastards is down. Quick let’s “rush them. Trample him.” I looked at him and said quite calmly “You vicious bastard. I’ve got your number.” I could see he wanted to get at me, but the coppers in the front row were inadvertently blocking his way.

...

I’ve been asked many times if I think the police killed Kevin Gately. I can’t say for certain that they did but if someone is charging into a packed crowd, waving around a truncheon and saying “Let’s trample the bastard” then, well, I’ll leave it for you to judge. — Dave Hann, Physical Resistance

From an act like tailing a man who was writing antisemitic slogans and threats over houses of Jewish Londoners home then beating the shit out of them with the threat (paraphrased) "If the slogans come back, we do" - the slogans did not come back. The affected community went to the police before this, the police said (paraphrased) "Your lot aren't liked around here" and refused to act.

When that community organised with antifascist groups - after the police refused to do anything, mind -,they effectively made their own police force to stop hate crimes being committed against them which the police were indifferent to. And it worked. The British fascists stopped bullying that neighbourhood.

Have I ever been scared straight? No, but I have been stopped from doing things because I was afraid of the consequences. And the latter is the point. So: I don't think education is the purpose of intimidation and fear strategies like that. It's not for the person victimised by fear and intimidation, it's to make them afraid and to stop doing whatever they're doing. That was an attempt to control, through fear, someone who's committing hate crimes, or otherwise legitimising violence, the police either cannot or will not intervene in to prevent or stop.

It's very prescient to remind ourselves of how Oswald Mosley vilified the antifascist actors back then - he defended what he did under free speech.

We have reached a point in this country in which free speech is a thing of the past, organised bands of "Reds", armed with sticks, bottles and razors, attend all important meetings which threaten their position... The reason our Fascist Defence Force has been organised (is to protect free speech) — Oswald Mosley

An organisation with the purposes of populist race baiting, encouraging and committing hate crimes, defending its own aggression and racism through freedom of speech. Of course, if someone defends someone's right to say something, you never have to defend what they say!

This is a strategic weakness of liberal democracy, as noted by Schmitt. Free speech absolutism provides absolutely no defence against bad faith and subversive actors from within the system, in fact all that is needed to be done to get people on the side of bad faith actors is for them to claim they are being silenced. So long as liberal democracy is willing to hold free speech to such high regard it risks facing the bad conclusion of the paradox of tolerance; erosion of the very norms that were protected. So long as people side with these bad faith actors, antifascist action will be required as a counterbalance to defend liberal norms. An unglamorous job, as everyone hates them for it.

This really doesn't make much sense I'm afraid. — Xtrix

You mean in Heideggerese or in normal english? I think it makes good sense in Heideggerese. Out of Heideggerese I think it's the observation that when people interact with something, their current disposition/mood colours that interaction. If I'm worried I'll think about different things than if I'm not worried. If I'm feeling horny my body will be sensitised differently than if I'm feeling contemplative. If I'm hungry at the supermarket the food is more tempting. Similarly, if I see tempting food, I can become hungry.

Putting that in Heideggerese requires rephrasing it in a manner that doesn't separate people from something.

*fdrake dons his pedantic Heideggoggles*:"people interact with something", as if people were separate from the interaction and what they interacted with. It's better to say that people inhabit their surroundings (and even their own body) differently depending upon their mood. And vice versa. That "and vice versa" is equiprimordiality; moods couldn't make stuff seem different if stuff seeming different couldn't affect moods.

*fdrake dons a stronger pair of pedantic Heidegoggles*: SEEMING? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN, ME?

In this kind of self-showing a being “looks like . . .” Such self-showing we call seeming. And so in Greek the expression ϕαινο µενον, phenomenon, also has the meaning: what looks like, what seems to be, “seeming”; ϕαινο µενον αγαθον means a good that looks like, but is not “in reality” what it gives itself out to be. For any further understanding of the concept of phenomenon everything depends on seeing how what is named in these two meanings of ϕαινο µενον (“phenomenon” as what shows itself and “phenomenon” as seeming) coalesces in its structure. Only inasmuch as something strives to show itself, i.e. to be a phenomenon, can it show itself as something that it is not —can it “only look like . . .” Already in the one meaning of ϕαινο µενον (“seeming”) there lies the primordial meaning (phenomenon: the manifest) as founding the other. We assign the term “phenomenon” to the positive and primordial meaning of ϕαινο µενον, and distinguish this from seeming as its privative modification. What both terms express has from the start nothing whatsoever to do with what is called “appearance,” let alone “mere appearance.” — Heidegger, Being and Time

Everyday time is a past present and future as separate units, based on the idea of an endless sequence of identical nows. Radical time is a past which is changed by the present it functions in , and this present anticipates beyond itself. This complex structure defines a single moment, not three separate time positions. — Joshs

I wonder how you'd react to the idea that the dynamical interplay of memory, anticipation and the current context that goes into perception must be inscribed into a Cartesian notion of time as successive instants. Yes, there is a dynamical interplay of these things, and a reciprocal co-constitution of the agent and environment in perception, but when do its generative events occur? What does the reciprocal-co-constitution evolve with respect to?

I find no disagreement here. You seem to be arguing against something that I also disagree with. — Sam26

:up:

Fair enough then. I wasn't sure if I was arguing against a position you actually held.

EG, if I claimed that my partner makes me feel a special way and I called it "blimblam", and I described it as a composite of homeliness, horniness, care and calm. You'd know how to use the word. It's not my blimblam thoughts and sensations that are doing the work in the setting up the use of the word, it's leveraging the public criteria we share that characterise the use of those sensations and feeling words we both already know.

However, there has to be agreement publicly in terms of the use of words, it can't be about my own private mental state. — Sam26

I think that applies definitionally; a use can't be set up/a word can't be defined with respect to only the presence/absence of a mental state. But it seems to me we can use speech acts to describe mental states and moreover that speech acts routinely express mental content. The philosophical thought experiment that makes the meaning of the word be the thought that motivated it is blocked, but I don't think that blocks language use in general from thematising mental states or expressing intentional content. Mapping the private with the public is part of the public.

I think I agree with the first part of this, but explain your last sentence a bit more. — Sam26

There's a lot of philosophy that says that mental states play no part in what speech acts express, because the connection between a mental state and a word can't be constructed in accordance with a public criterion. Instead, the behavioural states associated with the mental states are treated as the sole informers of language use. In W's private language argument context I think this is a reaction against "language of thought" theories from Frege, but the private language argument can be read (sensibly) as support for logical behaviourism. As SEP puts it:

Analytical or logical behaviorism is a theory within philosophy about the meaning or semantics of mental terms or concepts. It says that the very idea of a mental state or condition is the idea of a behavioral disposition or family of behavioral tendencies, evident in how a person behaves in one situation rather than another. When we attribute a belief, for example, to someone, we are not saying that he or she is in a particular internal state or condition. Instead, we are characterizing the person in terms of what he or she might do in particular situations or environmental interactions. Analytical behaviorism may be found in the work of Gilbert Ryle (1900–76) and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–51) (if perhaps not without controversy in interpretation, in Wittgenstein’s case).

If it turned out that internal states were already expressed in words, that the connection between mental states and speech acts was itself part of the norms of language use, that would go against the logical behaviourist conclusions of the private language argument (when it's read that way). We already took the beetle out of the box, as it were.

Are you saying that even our own speech acts are mapped to interpretation? So, that as I write these words I'm mapping my thoughts through the given speech acts? On the other hand, if I'm reading or listening to someone else's speech act/s it seems truistic that I interpret them, or as you say, the speech act is mapped to "interpretation." — Sam26

I hadn't given much thought to the mechanics of the mapping process; I imagine that it's done by agents utilising background knowledge of norms and commonalities - in Witty speak how a language game is embedded in a form of life, how epistemic notions require a background and so on.

What I meant to imply was that what speech acts express is dual to how they can be interpreted in context. The agent doing them expresses, the agents receiving them interpret. To a large degree, a speech act expresses that which it can be expected to be interpreted as. Just like a picture of a bird can be expected to be seen as a bird.

This seems rather obvious, unless I'm missing some finer point. — Sam26

To be clear on the significance I think it holds; if intentional content is expressed in a speech act, so are the type of mental/agential states that characterise that intentional content (with some transduction/transformation involved). Overstating it a bit to provide an upshot; the "meaning is use" conception of language has the connection between mental states and speech acts as part of use, and thus part of meaning. To mix metaphors, Wittgenstein's beetles are crawling all over words and eating them from the inside, not inside our heads.

If by "antifascist actors" you mean actual members of antifa or the ones that dress in black and go to protests I'd like to dig a little deeper into this. I'd love to have these statistics. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't have 'em. To my mind we're both speculating on the demographics:

don't believe that a liberal social democrat would fit in in the modern antifascist movement in the US, or the black bloc elsewhere — BitconnectCarlos

I'd be happy to revise my opinion on the demography of ideas in antifacist actors given present data about it! The historical demography seems mixed; considering the record seems to be mostly concern institutions that approved of antifacist action - they were communist, socialist, anarchist and left allies. Or were institutions made by marginalised communities in response to the threat of violence. The two groups were allied and intersected. AFAIK they also intersected with the membership of major political institutions in the UK (unions and the Labour party).

It seems to take a perceived stage of emergency, as you say, to generate common approval of antifascist action among liberals.

Wouldn't you say that depends on the person though? We have some antifascists on this site who have made some very violent, gruesome statements towards people like Biden and others. I think it's disingenuous to group in every modern antifascist with, say, a Jewish anti-Nazi fighter around the time of WWII. Even as a Jew not every anti-Nazi fighter was good; there was a famous plot that was foiled when a group of Jewish partisans after WWII sought to poison the German water supply. — BitconnectCarlos

A person's reasons depend on the person. I don't think "a persons reasons depend on the person" is an allowed move in the game of ideological/demographic generalisation we've engaged in so far. It destroys all generalisation.

A major idea of antifa is "punch a Nazi." For me it's very emotionally satisfying to see a Nazi get punched, but ultimately it's not an effective way to deal with Nazism or racism in a non-emergency environment. I hate to say it, but the antifascism movement, much like the neoconservatives of the Bush years, have a habit of viewing the current era as Germany, 1933 and that it is incumbent on us now to act immediately and decisively (with the neocons it was Saddam in Iraq, today it is the far right in America.) If you believe that America today is basically Germany, 1933 I don't know what to tell you. In war there is no talk, only violence. — BitconnectCarlos

I think there are decent grounds for comparison. A highly nationalist and xenophobic political faction has widespread appeal, it's lead by a demagogue who by all rights has engaged in violent suppression of peaceful protest (see the Lafeyette Square Incident), has publicly signalled support for a white supremacist militia and so on. I would like to add demonising antifascist actors to that list, as it's easily seen as a preparatory move to "at first coming for the socialists" as the poem goes, charging protestors with sedition tolls the bells for the same group.

I don't mean to convince you that the emergency is as great as it was back in WW2, I mean to convince you that it's reasonable to conclude that the current state of things is a growing state of emergency. And of such emergencies, we seem to agree that "prevention is better than cure" Antifascist action is a preventative measure in the same way that education is on a societal level.

Don't of course take that as a blank "fight by any means necessary" cheque, things can indeed get worse than white supremacist militiamen stabbing 4 counter protestors in the street because they're contesting an attempt to overturn an election... But I can see why people of conscience and reason could conclude that now is not the time for patience only.

I'm with you 100% that widespread antifascist education would be a good thing for society, though. It just seems that there's no way to educate the knives out of those protesters' bodies.

I don't wanna pivot between conceptual and demographic characterisations. I'm making the demographic claim that social democratic liberals can be antifascist actors, and that the majority of contemporary antifascist actors are not smash the state anarchists or revolution now communists; simply because those doctrines are comparatively rarely held among contemporary progressives.

I do believe that such hardline positions are disproportionately represented relative to the general population in antifascist actors, though, and that antifascist organisers as a demographic category are (historically) even more likely to have more hard line positions.

I bet you'd like David Hahn's "Physical Resistance: a Hundred Years of Struggle", a history of antifascist movements.

An important part of a liberal arts education is genuinely exploring views which we don't like. — BitconnectCarlos

I think that's rather uncharitable. It strikes me that someone who commits to antifascist praxis does so from a principled place of understanding, study and experience. EG, the antifascist praxis of Jewish communist groups just before, during and after WW2. (Emphasised in the book I referenced). You don't have to agree with it to see it as a reasoned position.

Antifa is not fundamentally a movement about discourse and the free exchange of ideas; it is about stifling any potentially dangerous idea before it is allowed to spread. It is a fundamentally illiberal movement.

I'm sure from their perspective it is actually protecting the liberal rights you hold dear, cf paradox of tolerance. The only conditions under which a "free marketplace of ideas" could exist sustainably are ones with well enforced rules and laws of conduct. When those rules are rejected wholesale or too weak, the fragility of "the free marketplace of ideas" is laid bare; cf "money as speech". Whenever absolute decorum for speech is desired, enforcement of the principles that uphold it is required too. In that context, antifascist action is a democratic check-and-balance.

While there may be social democrats in antifa, the ideology of the group is not liberal in the least. A liberal who wants to join the antifa movement in america and maintain their liberalism honestly has no idea what's going on. — BitconnectCarlos

I think they can and do. There just aren't enough committed anarchists and communists to make up everyone who acts with the intention of disrupting fascism.

I suspect you're using liberal in the "classic liberal" sense and not the sense I meant it; by a liberal social democrat I intended a reformist believer in the institutions of liberal democracy. Someone who broadly approves of the way things are set up fundamentally, but criticises/protests flaws when they see them. Those people who will act against resurgent nationalism, political oppression and systemic issues without wanting to overthrow states (anarchism) or the world order of capitalism (communism) [or both].

The modern Antifa movement in America is actually a Stalinist movement, which ironically implies that it is also fascist. — Garth

In terms of praxis, antifa's a highly decentralised popular front, Stalin's politics was a centralised united front. In terms of ideology; the popular front aspect of antifa makes it a hodgepodge of liberal social democracts, anarchists, communists and others; doctrinally mixed; the united front politics of Stalinism was notorious for its commitment to doctrinal purity (whatever the doctrine was at the time).

For a sane characterisation of fascism, as distinct from authoritarianism, see here.

And in the context of the bone I picked with @Banno, I was trying to expand declarative sentence content (what they express) to include the intentional content of the speech acts which assert them, which I imagine goes against the grain of taking belief's content to be an assertion. Butchering it a bit for clarity: assertion's content is a belief vs belief's content is an assertion.

Do you see this as different from what I've expressed in other threads about beliefs states, say the act of opening a door, shows your beliefs about doors, expressed or not? — Sam26

I don't know the specifics of your worldview enough to comment. By the sounds of this thread we seem to agree on things in context.

Someone else might express "This is an abnormality," as you exhibit the "abnormality finding state." Or, someone else might say he believes X, by observing some intentional act or another. This it seems to me (your e.g. as well as mine) shows that the belief is quite separate from the expression. — Sam26

That sounds right to me. I have the sneaking suspicion that we disagree a lot on some nearby issues, but it's hidden by how you've used the words "separate" and "expression".

To a first approximation, let's imagine what a speech act expresses as a kind of inverse of interpretation. Call the process by which (speech) acts are mapped by people to interpretations "interpretation". Expression's then the process by which interpretations are mapped by people to speech acts.

Interpretation takes an act and gives it an interpretation. Expression takes an interpretation and puts it in a speech act.

In that view, if we look at the assertion "It is raining but I do not believe it is raining", the performative contradiction in it can be explained with: assertions of fact (speech acts) express that their asserters believe what they say is so. The intentional content of belief expressed in "It is raining" is that it's raining, which is contrary to what is expressed by the latter part of the phrase; another assertion of a fact, that the asserter does not believe it is raining.

"It is raining..."->(the asserter believes that it is raining), the -> is expression/showing.

I'd have it that because speech acts can (and indeed routinely) express intentional content in that manner, they should be considered as part of what speech acts mean.

I think we're close too. — Sam26

:up:

I only want to say that there are certain base or foundational beliefs that arise quite apart from language content.

Putting aside the foundational issue if we can. I'll agree that "hinge propositions" are a thing, hopefully not much turns on our possible foundationalist/anti-foundationalist dispute. I'm also quite happy to grant that some (many) beliefs are proximally due to environmental stimuli (events in the "form of life").

However, there is no doubt that language plays an important role in how and what we believe.

:up:

We use language to expand our beliefs, so I don't want to say that language in general is separate and distinct from all beliefs.

I don't either.

For example, what about declarative sentences that arise as we expand our beliefs using language?

I think it depends on the sense of "arise as we expand". Whether it's the declarative sentence that we've learned or invented doing all the work of expansion or whether there is an interplay between the expansion of intentional content and what our declarative sentences can express.

An example might be that a doctor's trained eye can look for abnormalities in an x-ray scan, the intentional state is abnormality seeking, Asserting "This is an abnormality" would be derivative of finding an abnormality. What I'm trying to highlight is that the content of the abnormality finding state is expressed somehow in "This is an abnormality", it would also be expressed in whatever description of the abnormality occurred.

Yes, which is why, if I understand your point, I believe that although language expresses one's belief, it's not a necessary component of that belief. — Sam26

I think we're close then. I didn't want to say language in general was a distinct phenomenon from belief's content; I think there are good reasons to suspect that language use informs what we believe and how we believe it; but that declarative sentence content was a distinct phenomenon from belief's content.

Ya, I think we agree. — Sam26

Would you agree that it shows that whatever the intentional content of belief is, because it is expressed (perhaps with some transformation/mutilation) through assertions it forms part of the content of assertions? But remains distinct from the content of the assertions?

One's intention is shown in one's acts — Sam26

I think I agree with you.

What I'm illustrating is that because intention is shown in acts; including speech acts; one's intention forms part of its content. eg, Asserting "It is raining but I don't believe it is raining" is a performative contradiction because one shows one believes a statement by asserting that it is so.

Watkins seems aware of the problem of spelling out this sense of conceptual suggestiveness he's leaning on.

In "Between Analytic and Synthetic" (available for free on jstor with a public account), he sets out a hierarchy of concepts; at the top are things like haunted universe doctrines, at the bottom are observation statements. An observation statement is a report that something has been found to be the case by observation. Like "This substance dissolved in my sample of sulphuric acid". Their distinguishing property is that they are verifiable and falsifiable by observation alone.

At the next level of the hierarchy, he places instantial hypotheses. Instantial hypotheses predicate what they concern using only observable predicates. So "Every metal would dissolve in my sample of sulphuric acid" is instantial because you can check if a particular metal would dissolve in my sample. He calls an instantial hypothesis empirical if the conjunction of an instantial hypothesis and an observation statement entails another observation statement. So "Every metal dissolves in my sample of sulphuric acid" and "This is metal" gives you through modus ponens "This is would dissolve in my sample of sulphuric acid". Presumably "instantial" derives from taking an instance of the universal quantifier at the beginning of the statement, "all" goes to "this".

At the top level of the hierarchy, he places non-instantial (systems of) hypotheses. Non-instantial hypotheses are characterised by the property that if you take a conjunction of them with a collection of instantial hypotheses, they give rise to (his words!) observation statements, while themselves being neither falsifiable nor verifiable. A statement like "Every metal dissolves in some type of acid" is non-instantial - for any given metal it can't be checked without trying all the acids.

Observation statements are verifiable and falsifiable. Instantial hypotheses are falsifiable but not verifiable. Non-instantial hypotheses are neither falsifiable nor verifiable.

Notice however that "Every metal dissolved in some type of acid" actually contradicts the falsifiable statement "Gold is insoluable". Falsifiable because if you found a solvent for gold (eg aqua regia), it could be shown to be false by contradicting an observation (statement).

The paper tries to flesh out the regulatory role in a predictably falsificationalist way; haunted universe doctrines when taken in conjunction with observation statements stand in contradiction to some other observation statements. They are thus empirically meaningful.

However, it's got exactly the same hole as the other paper, and he knows it. The paper concludes:

Finally, since influential haunted universe doctrines are neither demonstrable nor testable, it becomes urgent (my italics) to investigate the ways in which they may be rationally supported or criticised

.

The extent to which "rationally criticising and supporting" haunted universe doctrines saturates our investigations will be the extent to which the active "gives rise to" Watkins uses in characterising the regulatory role of haunted universe doctrines can be fleshed out by the passive constraints haunted universe doctrines place on the logical space of scientific hypotheses. Inspiring the investigation of a hypothesis is much different from constraining what hypotheses can be investigated.

So if belief was a movie, the protagonist's having an attitude toward a proposition is just one scene. — frank

Yes. The "where are they now" montage at the end.

"But what is a bird?" he asks, "If not a deadening label for the endless mystery of rustling and flashes of light amidst the humid aroma of moss and dirt? — frank

I imagine it's like Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency; the plot seems linear once you've already watched the show.

Circumscribing reduces all-and-some statements to falsifiable form. — Banno

That seems to be one way of doing it. "Reduces" hides an awful lot of work though.

Rolling marbles, for example, can be used to display conservation of momentum in a limited case. — Banno

Let's go through it as a worked example then.

A really general statement of the conservation of momentum would be "For all systems which have a translation invariant Lagrangian there exists a conserved quantity under that action; linear momentum". That's an all and some statement with a proof; so it's verifiable and falsifiable in some sense of both words. However, by itself it's not a description of a reality; it's not put to that use. If that statement was taken as the hard core, it's an all and some statement of a different type since it can be shown to be true, and it can be shown to not apply (if the Langrangian isn't translation invariant).

However, it is quite suggestive of the claim that "Every physical system whose dynamics aren't sensitive to where in space it takes place will conserve linear momentum". That one has a lot of flexibility to it; points of ambiguity for auxiliary hypotheses at "physical system", "dynamics", the concept of sensitivity, how "conserve" applies when friction's thrown into the system and so on. Seems more like the all and some statement talked about in the paper.

Then, allegedly, someone looks at a series of marbles in a row, plinks one into it to start a series of impacts, and sees the end one moves off at a comparable speed as the one they threw into it. Through some series of conceptual moves, this is linked right back to the maths.

Going from the first stage - the mathematical theorem - to the second isn't just a case of quantifier restriction, it's actually changing the type of entity considered. A similar alchemy of types occurs in the transition from the second to the third; you go from mathematically suggestive generic descriptions of things to considering concrete, manipulable, particulars. The first lot is just about maths, the second one is some weird mix of math and reality, and the last one's about some marbles in a row that shunt about.

If you want to construe that as an operation of circumscription, it doesn't seem to conserve the types of entities considered. It's not, I guess one way of putting it, a metaphysically inert operation; you change what the statement is considered to apply to between stages. Another way of putting it, the "for all" in the first bit refers only to mathematical objects, the "for all" in the second bit seems to refer to some weird halfway stage between concrete particulars and mathematical abstractions, the "applied instance" of the marbles seems just to consider concrete particulars.

Nevertheless, it seems true that the first is suggestive of the second and the second is suggestive of the third. You know your logic, so I'm sure you can see that they're not following by modus ponens. They seem a lot more artful, more similar to transcendental deductions or interpretive links than strict logical entailments.

Well, three levels are offered; disguised analysis; Lewis-Carol-like nonsense; and the intermediary of not having any truth value. For my part I don't see that a statement without a truth value has much by way of meaning...

But that's not quite right, either. — Banno

The intermediary and the disguised analysis are the interesting cases.

If it's disguised analysis, the all and some statement should somehow engender a falsifiable statement; but then if you treat that engendering as logical entailment the original all and some statement can be modus tollens'd through the falsifiable one. That would make the all and some statement falsifiable, so it can't be that. So what sense of entailment is it in the disguised case?

This sentence has tripped me up. I don't know what you mean. — frank

I was gesturing towards something like: propositions are part of an interpretive device we use when analysing sentences and relating them to truth, to say that we hear them construes hearing as the kind of capacity that is characterised by the analysing the truth or falsity of sentences.

I agree. Art conveys truth that can't be squashed into propositions. — frank

I agree with you there. I wanna push back on the idea (if you were suggesting it) that it's exclusive to art though. In terms of the expression of semantic content and engendering intentional content of interpretation, I believe artistic expression uses capacities everyday expressive practices do already. There's one of those where do you draw the line problems between art and non-artistic expressive practice.

I'm answering your post backward. This last paragraph, taken alone, seems to be launching existentialism of a kind I can definitely embrace because I'm somewhat aspy and its very familiar. I rely on memorized soundbites to get through life, but when I'm tired, I can become almost completely nonverbal. It makes for awesome relationships. I also frequently have dreams that don't have rational components. I reach for metaphors and the content of the dream slips through the words like sand through my fingers. I totally get why Nietzsche suggested that the idea of truth takes hold when we've forgotten that we're talking in metaphors all the time. — frank

Dancing's a good example of a nonverbal expressive practice with its own kind of grammar, being attuned to a partner's rhythms I'd guess is a less contextually constrained version of the same thing. With a partner, you don't just have to learn the moves for a specific dance, you have to learn what dance you're doing. That tapestry of cues, interpretations and what is articulated by people's actions is the subject of a more phenomenological and pragmatic take on language and expression. Expecting to be able to fit such things into declarative sentences and being mystified when everything of substance is left out from such an account is the trauma that first silenced Wittgenstein ("whereof we cannot speak...", "“There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.” from Tractatus) then attuned him to the essential saturation of language use with all that silenced him:

102. The strict and clear rules of the logical structure of propositions appear to us as something in the background—hidden in the medium of the understanding. I already see them (even though through a medium): for I understand the propositional sign, I use it to say something.

103. The ideal, as we think of it, is unshakable. You can never get outside it; you must always turn back. There is no outside; outside you cannot breathe.—Where does this idea come from? It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off.

105. When we believe that we must find that order, must find the ideal, in our actual language, we become dissatisfied with what are ordinarily called "propositions", "words", "signs". The proposition and the word that logic deals with are supposed to be something pure and clear-cut. And we rack our brains over the nature of the real sign.—It is perhaps the idea of the sign? or the idea at the present moment? — Philosophical Investigations

There's a real tension in any account that places speech acts; which are paradigmatic examples of expressers of intentional content ; at the locus of control of expression, but cashes out the kind of content they express in terms of more circumscribed analyses of declarative sentences and their truth conditions. Only the pliability that comes with all expressions allows their square pegs to be deformed into the round holes of declarative sentence content.

Luckily, once the glasses have been taken off (and not replaced with a monocle), all that allegedly mystical stuff in expressive practices can be used to thematise itself. That's an embarking point for a phenomenological and pragmatic investigation of expression.

Isn't this dealt with in the article - being the topic of Section VII? Or have I misunderstood you? — Banno

It defers the problem of how you go about "weighing" an all and some statement to the context of the all and some statement:

I do not think that any single criterion, such as conformity with existing science, can be laid down for assessing haunted-universe doctrine. This task is more like assessing the worth of a man's character than the legality of his acts...

But although these doctrines cannot be proved or refuted they can be criticised and weighed

Which seems a cop out to me. The account is happy to quantify over research programs and abstract over their content, it's also happy to talk about the types of relations between components of research programs - relating them is what all and some statements do. But when it comes to a general description of how this regulative role of all and some statements occurs - it defers to context, appealing to a pragmatic inability to abstract in a similar way to what the article's already done.

IE:

But although these doctrines cannot be proved or refuted they can be criticised and weighed

How?

He wants his haunted universe statements to take on much the same role as the core theories of Lakatos' research programs. — Banno

I drew that comparison too, though I saw a hole in the account.

The hole is: using the "all and some" logical form for the role that "research hard cores" play in Lakatos is that precisely how an "all and some" statement could be rejected needs a theory.

A naive account of falsificationalism might have that the central components of a research program can be defended from potentially refuting evidence by adopting auxiliary hypotheses in the following way; if the research program's central assumptions are A, and the refuting evidence claims not A but can be interpreted as not A or B, B can then be added to the research program's hypotheses provisionally to defend A from falsification. A and B are both falsifiable in that account, and the study showing not A has a modus tollens impact on the research program. If the central hypothesis is an all and some statement, it's not falsifiable, so no candidate study could have the same modus tollens impact on it. I'm not saying that it couldn't be refuted, I'm saying that the model of refutation modus tollens impact provides in naive falsificationalism doesn't work on central components of a research program that contains "all and some" statements - something else is needed.

I imagine that comes down to spelling out a sense of conceptual entailment - an attempt to answer the questions.

(1) From the "normal science" side: how does an all and some statement suggest/generate falsifiable (or verifiable) research hypotheses?
(2) From the "paradigm shift" side: how does evidence or theory refute an "all or some" statement?

Exactly! We're drawn to conclude that propositions are abstract objects by the logic of communication. If I agree with you, it doesn't make sense to say that I'm agreeing with either the sounds you made or the sentence you uttered. — frank

The article I linked to you in the previous post explores the issue. Whether you are agreeing with what you've heard is quite different from hearing a proposition being expressed. The latter might be involved in the former in some cases, but it might not. Dreyfus construes the degree of involvement as the degree to which conceptualisation is required in understanding an act - even a speech act. Though (and the paper I linked argues) that the distinction isn't sharp and the two types of understanding it references should be understood reciprocally.

I agree we're drawn to conclude that propositions are both abstract objects and play a central coordinating role in the connection between practices that involve language and the world. The relevant aspect of it to me is whether being drawn to conclude in that way is an inappropriate framing brought on by ingrained habits of reflection; inappropriate because it misses the relevant phenomena (expression, the connection of intentional states to statements etc).

For Heidegger, the majority of what goes into expression, understanding, interpretation is termed "pre-predicative", that is a style of content distinct from the content of declarative sentences. That is signalled by eg. we can struggle to put things in words which are palpable, urgent and intimately understood. There is a certain compression involved, assertions are just one way of making sense. This is not to say that "there are things which cannot be said", but it is to say "understanding and crafting assertions requires a broader but distinct capacity of understanding the world than the understanding that we're putting into assertions". If someone restricts intentional state content to declarative sentences' propositional content (eg, making beliefs only target propositional content or propositions) it removes both the character of that content and the means of its interpretation.

Since you seem to like visual imagery, the kind of picture here is more similar to; assertions and the like attract meanings which they then engender, "putting things in words" - especially conceptually - is a kind of filter for content. The filter is sharp and distorts what is put in it, pliable square pegs in sharp round square-ish holes. Mistaking the properties of the filter for the properties of what's put in (expression) and what comes out (interpretation) - the dyad of expression and interpretation - is an easy error to make, as the practice of putting things into the filter -especially conceptually- is an ingrained habit. We reflect and see roundish lumps that've been put through the filter, if you realise the shape of the filter you might see that they were pliable square pegs all along.