Can we think of an example where no amount of precision can create a genuine synonymy between, say, two mistakes? If the precision is only about the object of the mistakes, then yes, I think so. Here's one that occurs to me offhand as a candidate: Jack misidentifies a note in music as a G# (it's really a G natural), Jill misidentifies it as an Ab. As you may know, G# and Ab refer to the same note, under different music-theoretic circumstances, rather like Morning Star and Evening Star. So have Jack and Jill made the "same mistake"? Arguably, no amount of precisifying about the note itself is going to resolve this, since Jack and Jill are making their respective mistakes for different reasons. But then again, they're hearing the exact same tone and being wrong about it with the same result. I want to say it's two different mistakes. This is perhaps a cousin of the "carrying the 1" example. — J

Lemme see if I get this right. Trying to pick it apart to understand it.

The note is G.
Jack identifies it as G#
Jill identifies it as Ab.
G# and Ab are the same frequency.
Since G# and Ab are the same frequency, they're extensionally equivalent in terms of sound frequencies.
The note will be identified mistakenly when and only when it is not heard as G.

The thing that would let you see Jack and Jill's mistake as the same is the final principle there, right - the fact that the note will be identified mistakenly when and only when it is not heard as G.

I think there's a way of mucking with it. I'm not sure why I'm mucking with it at this point though. If Jack always identified every enharmonic equivalent in the sharp form, and Jill always identified every enharmonic equivalent as the flat form, the means by which they make the mistake would be a little different. Even if they choose the same wrong note. I think this is similar to the way I muddied the waters before with Bob's criticism of Alice's snark related beliefs - focus on the agent involved's expression rather than the claim.

Either Kimhi is underselling the rigidity with which Frege's system excludes psychology, or what he Kimhi means by 'psychology' might not be what people think. — Srap Tasmaner

I just think we should quit throwing around 'proposition' and 'judgment' and 'inference' in ways that allow people to give those words their preferred reading. Frege is a Laws of Thought guy. I don't think you get to tweak his position by pulling in a little "social context" here and there, for example. — Srap Tasmaner

That makes sense. Martins argument references (what seems) a fairly static typology from Kimhi. This is Kimhi quoted in Martins:

An assertoric gesture is analogous to a mimetic gesture that displays an act without being it. […] A mimetic gesture can be performed as basis for another act, as when we threaten someone by tracing a finger slowly across our neck. Similarly, an assertoric gesture occurs as a basis for the display of another repeatable, for example, p in not-p. An assertoric gesture is an occurrence of a repeatable – a propositional sign – that can occur either as a gesture or as a self-identifying display

I get the impression that two things are at play, related to your following remark:

And where's Kimhi? There's something about bringing psychology and logic back together, so he's messing about with the core of Frege's worldview, his platonist anti-psychologism. Does he bring them back together by ditching the platonism? That's not the impression I've gotten but I don't think I've stumbled on him addressing it either way. — Srap Tasmaner

The first thing at play: the role "the laws of thought" in Frege plays, Kimhi keeps an analogue of it, but they're less ironclad logical laws and more tight constraints on thought sequences/acts of thinking. I don't know what their nature is, or how they work, but Kimhi seems to want to notice expansive regularities in them. That might operate by positing a Platonic Realm Of Thought Laws (tm) which doesn't resemble Frege's, or it could be something far woolier. My intuition is that it's woolier, based on the second thing at play.

The second thing at play: dispositions, interpretations, acts of judgement also seem to be within the scope of Kimhi's "laws of thought" analogue concept, but they're... somehow external to a context of pure abstraction. They picture something like events - judgements, logical moves, presentations, mimicry. They're don't seem to quite be speech acts, as they're not necessarily enacted "outside the head", but they have a kinematic and dramatic air to them. As in "if you think this, then you must judge that", as if entertaining a proposition, grasping a proposition, presenting a propositional form all do something in a nascent quasi-mental, quasi-logical regime of expression.

What I'm imagining is at stake in Kimhi's assault on Frege is whether you can cleave off the bit Frege did from the "laws of thought" Kimhi is concerned with without mutilating them. Hence what look like bits of textual analysis on the logic symbols and rules Frege uses, but not following the rules Frege's stipulated.

I'm thus inclined to think some of this ambiguity regarding force, expression, and how it relates to Frege is coming from Kimhi (and Martin's) critique of Frege allegedly severing something from this nascent woolier collection of coordinating regularities in thought and expression. So the words are a bit wooly because Frege's allegedly made a model of something wooly that has no wool in it, and our fellow travellers are seeking and analysing the wool.

. You both seemed happy to pick and choose which things get Forms and which don't, but I think you'll be stuck with a Form for "disappointment with the last season of Game of Thrones". — Srap Tasmaner

What have I said which has given you the impression that I like the forms? I don't mean that in an accusing or rebuking manner, I legitimately don't understand how I've committed myself to that.

My impression of the thread's argument is that:

Every proposition has a bunch of gubbins associated with it. Some of those gubbins can be treated as separable from the proposition's nature, some of them can't. Frege's allegedly arguing that whatever the judgement stroke represents can be separated from the content of a proposition that a judgement stroke is applied to. Kimhi's arguing that whatever the judgement stroke is supposed to represent, it cannot be separated.

There's then a lot of quibbling about the type of gubbins that everyone involved is talking about, and whether that's an adequate representation of Frege. A subset of the gubbins quibbles are as follows:

1 ) Whether the flavour of force Kimhi's talking about is related to illocutionary force.
1.1) Is that illocutionary force something... mental? Does it mean that you have to grasp "the assertoricity of the proposition" in order to comprehend it at all? Does it make sense to call such a mental thingybob part of a speech act at all?
2 ) Whether the flavour of force Kimhi's talking about is related to Frege's judgement stroke.
2.1) Kimhi's force seems... mental, and not reflected in propositional form. Whatever it is is to be found when examining expressing a proposition. Namely, as a part of what it would mean to be in a state of expressing that proposition and none other.

We probably have to agree that there's some proposition flavour thing in an assertion or a rejection to get going, even if we end up saying the proposition flavour thing is inextricable from some of its associated gubbins. I think that equating the proposition flavour thing and its inextricably associated gubbins with the composite of its logical form, the judgement stroke, and an extensional interpretation of its contained terms is what's at stake. So we've repeatedly embarked on a voyage of gubbins demarcation, often by example.

So I'd situate my remark above in 2.1, specifically talking about "what it would mean to be in a state of expressing that proposition and none other", where a state of expressing a proposition was a rejection or assertion of a claim.

If it turned out that the propositional doo-dad in the rejection of a claim and the assertion of a claim didn't work the same in both cases, then it'd be an example of some of the gubbins associated with expression intermingling what can be thought of as the proposition and how it is expressed/presented/display/considered/grasped/entertained.

I've not read the Kimhi in the OP, I've just read the Martins paper and a fair chunk of the thesis @Leontiskos linked earlier.

But it's about judgment. Kimhi wants to show there is no "logical gap" between P and "We who think P are right — Srap Tasmaner

Could you give me some more words on that please, or a link to where you've previously spelled it out?

If I judge P true, and so do you, aren't we making something we'd want to call "the same judgment"?

If I infer Q from P, and so do you, aren't we making something we'd want to call "the same inference"?

We can go further.

Suppose I forget to "carry the 1" in a piece of simple arithmetic, and so do you. Aren't we making "the same mistake"?

How far can this analogy go? Couldn't we have the same taste in music? The same fear of snakes?

Or is there some reason all of these things aren't just as objective as Frege's propositions? — Srap Tasmaner

If I infer Q from P, and so do you, aren't we making something we'd want to call "the same inference"?

I think we'd want to call it "the same inference" in some contexts and not in others. Bad reasoning might infer Q from P, and good reasoning might infer Q from P, but bad reasoning is not good reasoning. The means of inference may need to be the same.

Suppose I forget to "carry the 1" in a piece of simple arithmetic, and so do you. Aren't we making "the same mistake"?

At least the same type of mistake, a carrying the 1 related error. But one could compute 12+9 incorrectly as 11 in virtue of adding 2 to 9 and forgetting the relevance of the tens column, and incorrectly as 11 in virtue of adding 2 to 9 correctly then forgetting to add the 1 to the 1 in the tens column. Both of those ways forget to carry the 1, but the means for addressing them in a student would be different, right. The second's probably simply forgetting to do it, the first is probably a more fundamental misunderstanding.


Insert gesture here toward family resemblance identity.

@Srap Tasmaner @Pierre-Normand

The dilemma can be solved as follows: If an unembedded thought and its embedded counterpart must both be distinct and identical-in-content, while their distinction cannot be accounted for in purely logical terms, namely, by recourse to further logically complex thoughts into which p is embedded, the embedded thought p must be the very same thought as the unembedded thought p, but logically identified in a way that takes recourse to a nonlogical factor. Accordingly, what is distinctive about the embedded thought p is that it must be indirectly identified by recourse to that non-logical factor. If that is so, any unembedded thought p, insofar as it is logically embeddable, must itself be such as to allow for indirect identification, by recourse to some non-logical factor or other which it comes along with. For reasons that will hopefully become clearer in a moment it is apt to call such a non-logical factor which a thought comes along with a “real guise”, a “sign” or “an expression” of that thought. — Martins, On Redrawing The Force Content Distinction

Rejection being irreducible to asserting a negation in some contexts is fairly straightforward as an idea right.

A) An extensional analysis of rejection regarding a statement p( x ) must rely on the following claim: asserting the statement ¬p( x ) is equivalent to rejecting p( x ).
B) The equivalence in ( A ) requires that an asserter of p( x ) would commit themselves to all and only the same claims that a rejecter of ~p( x ) would.

1) The analysis spelled out in A and B must apply in all contexts, some contexts or no contexts.
2.0 ) Assume it applies in all contexts.
2.1) Then there is no example of a rejection which is not also extensionally equivalent to affirming a negation in the sense spelled out in B.
2.2) If Bob rejects the claim "Alice believes that snarks fly" that does not commit Bob to asserting "Alice does not believe that snarks fly" or that "Alice believes that snarks don't fly", Bob can simply fail to commit to either in this rejection. eg maybe Bob believes Alice has no beliefs regarding snarks.
2.3) 2.2 is an example of a rejecter of a claim not committing themselves to all the same claims as an asserter of that claim's negation.
2.4) Discharge 2.0) - the analysis in A and B does not apply in all contexts.
3) Conclude: the analysis in A and B either applies in some contexts or no contexts.

Regarding 2.2, I believe it is mistaken to analyse this as follows:
"Bob believes ¬(Alice Believes that snarks fly)" as equivalent to "Bob rejects that Alice believes that snarks fly", the reason being that Bob can be taken to reject it makes any sense at all to associate snark related beliefs to Alice. Formally speaking, Bob could reject that Alice was a type of entity that the predicate "believes that snarks fly" could be affirmed or denied of, much like "is prime" and "is not prime" could not be asserted of the operation +.

Less formally, an example where A,B clearly applies: Two mathematicians arguing over whether the set {apples, oranges} consists only of fruit, where "...is a fruit" is a predicate defined on that domain. Rejecting the claim that the set consists only of fruit just means believing that there must be an element of the domain which satisfies ¬"...is a fruit".

With regard to generalisation, one source of rejection being irreducible to assertion of negation is that rejecting a claim can proceed on the basis of rejecting a framework that the claim relies upon. Like whether it makes sense to ascribe beliefs about snarks to Alice.

To illustrate the variability in the rejecton, consider rejecting the claim "There are three angels dancing on the head of this pin". If I reject the claim "There are three angels dancing on the head of this pin", I do not thereby commit myself to the claim "There are n angels on the head of this pin with n≠3". That rejection occurs on the basis of it being trite to think about angels on the head of a pin at all, not on the basis of believing a different number of angels reside on pinhead.

Rejecting a claim can carry, therefore, a rejection of the expected conditions under which that claim is expressed rather than forcing a commitment to the negation of the rejected claim on the speaker. I believe that is the kind of non-logical factor Martins was referring to.

I believe what marks this flavour of thing as a "non-logical" factor is that it is "extra-logical" to implied context of an assertion. One rejects the rules of the implied game. Rejecting the pin-angels claim comes from rejecting the operations of thought and expression - language use, deduction, informal reasoning, gut feelings - that would enable its expression in the first place, rather than negating it in its assumed context of expression. One rejects the it-makes-sense-to-think-about-angels-on-pins-to-begin-with rules.

One could also reject a claim like "abortion is a sin" in a manner which believes in sin and a manner which does not believe in sin. The former could say that of the set of acts which satisfy the predicate "...is a sin" does not contain abortion. The latter might disagree with the Christian framing of it and think abortion's a-ok, even if eg "abortion is morally permissible" is not a negation of "abortion is a sin" (maybe there are morally permissible sins etc etc).

Should we be downloading stuff that we'd like to keep? — Amity

It never hurts.

I'm mostly discussing with other students in a university but I'm also including informal discussion with strangers. — Jafar

I should've asked before too, sorry, what do you want to get out of the discussions too?

But thanks for clarifying. I think fellow students and strangers are two different collections of contexts with different rules of thumb. I tried to write this from the perspective of someone who'd sat 16 y/o me down and told him how the hell to talk with people about abstract nonsense and the bizarrely emotive.

tl;dr - if you try to practice active listening and keep your dialogue exploratory, you'll get something from it. But you might not get out of it what you want.

With fellow students:
S1 ) Ask questions and ask to confirm you understood the answers - rephrase and say stuff back. Try to do that before responding, especially if critically.
S2 ) Do your best to keep discussions on topic, if you don't understand where a connection's come from ask in the manner of 1.
S3 ) If the discussion is textual, make sure you reference the text to support points.

With strangers IRL:
O1) They probably don't really want to be talked with philosophically, it's at best tiring, at worst a series of terrible faux pas.
O2) People do get something out of you behaving like the point S1 though, but generally only if they bring it up and you riff on it.
O3) You can smuggle in philosophical topics by sharing anecdotes that have the same theme.
O4) You can't expect randomers to enjoy playing with ideas like a philosophy enthusiast would, pay special attention with regard to ethical and political discussions!

While rapport's important in both contexts, rapport's all that can be expected when in philosophical discussions with random strangers. Randomers probably will not have studied philosophy at all.

On the forum - S1,S2,S3 are good. You can get away with being a bit more combative and blunt on here than you would IRL, since we're an old style forum.

On social media - good god I don't know, just don't.

Welcome.

How do you engage with philosophy, whether when you're reading or discussing/debating with others? — Jafar

Who're you speaking with?

One consequence of such a view might be that it's not really the tale we believe but the teller. We do not adopt a propositional attitude of "belief" toward the story, except perhaps as a consequence of adopting a social attitude of "trust" toward the storyteller. — Srap Tasmaner

This is some rambling.

Belief in a story would be a different flavour of belief than the one in this thread anyway. Telling a story is, at least, a sequence of sentences presented with different forces and roles, and we've been dealing with single sentences with possibly a single illocutionary force.

Belief in a proposition vs belief in a story. Minimally belief takes the form "x believes that p", but belief in a story doesn't even seem to have an easy parsing as modal applied to a collection of sentences... it's hard to tell which sentences. The sentences of the story? That wouldn't do, since no one believes "Frodo went to Mordor" is true, they just believe it's true that Frodo went to Mordor in the Lord of the Rings. And it's precisely the ability to stipulate that we must evaluate the story in narrative terms which we're after, the missing mechanism of stipulation, rather than the ability to believe in the story's statements once construed as being part of such a stipulation.

The boring deflationary answer is just to say that understanding a given text as a story means just the following: belief in any presented sentence in that text is equivalent to believing that that sentence is a part of the text. Line of the story as story event. I believe that Gollum lied and cheated if and only if it says so in the book.

Suspension of disbelief works in opposition to the latter boring answer. Like the deus ex machina eagles at the end of Lord of the Rings. A flight of massive eagles coming in and saving the day, really? You only doubt it, "c'mon, really?" because you believe it happened in the story, but it could be felt to collide with the story's narrative. No one would doubt the eagles came, they just would doubt whether in some sense they should've.

Which gives an opportunity for more expansive, and more boring, deflationary answer.

Understanding a given text as a story means just the following: belief in any presented sentence in that text is equivalent to believing that that sentence is a part of the text in its context of evaluation. Line of the story as story event in the context of the story. I believe that Gollum lied and cheated if and only if it says so in the book and that seems reasonable in terms of the rest of the world and the story's narrative.

If the latter is true, it doesn't say anything insightful at all.

What's missing, that everyone kinda pretends isn't, when you tell a (fictional) story? — Srap Tasmaner

Can there even be an answer using speech act properties alone for that? The sense of nonreality afforded to fiction is surely something closer to intangibility.

"Frodo touched the ring" - fine
"I touched Frodo" - madness.
"Frodo often doubted his ability" - fine
"I often doubted Frodo's ability" - fine.
"I saw Frodo touch the ring" - a bit off, "saw" would have to be understood figuratively, as a stand in for "read". "I saw that Frodo touched the ring" would ring better.

So in a certain sense, nothing seems to be missing, besides the capacity for personal sensorimotor relations with elements of fiction. You can have beliefs and intuitions about them all you like, you just can't smell, see, taste, touch them (except figuratively).

Looks like that has a physiological/phenomenological answer to me, anyway. Probs off topic.

This contrasts with the advocacy of "universal" principles and the the denunciation of parochialism by folks like David Deutsch who follow Popper in aiming at universalism through building a picture that purportedly approximates reality ever more closely. — Pierre-Normand

That makes sense. The type of bias involved reminds me of founder effects. In which a diversity of initial properties in one contexts transforms into several stratified contexts devoted to relatively few of them.

Getting closer to reality, both in theoretical and practical thinking, rather consists in learning to better espouse its variegated contours, and achieving a greater universality in the scope of our judgements through developing greater sensitivity to their specificity. — Pierre-Normand

Also related to the heightening specialism of knowledge over time? And the propagation of arbitrarily specific caveats.

Yes, what makes being able to hold those norms in suspense IRL useful is also what makes it rude to do so in most circumstances. You challenge how things, and others, are.

You learn ways of thinking about the world by learning to use words. Sometimes the ways you learn think stop you from questioning things you should question, or make you question things you shouldn't. They might stop you from being able to think about some things entirely, at least without a lot of effort.

A philosopher is paradigmatically someone who sits in an armchair and thinks about the world, analysing its concepts, seeing how they relate, and criticising them. Sometimes they come up with new concepts too. Philosophers often get confused by language because their thoughts reflect upon the ways the world is normally interpreted - which is using something full of holes and prejudices to analyse something full of holes and prejudices.

People who are not philosophers are also bewitched by language, they just don't need to care, because few of the inconsistencies in our norms of interpretation matter. And it marks you as unusual, and perhaps rude or stupid, to care about those inconsistencies and point them out.

I'd stipulate that there are two common bewitching errors, errors of generalisation and errors of presupposition. Errors of generalisation arise when attempting to form cohesive interpretations of concepts across similar contexts in which you might encounter them. The errors take the form of greedy generalisations bordering on equivocations. Whereas errors of presupposition arise when a person's way of thinking is so tied to a use case, or nascent context, that it stops that person from understanding what they intend.

An example of an error of generalisation: Like the word "right" used in the expression "that's not right", if you analogised all uses of that expression you'd end up with a sense of right that spanned moral, legal, epistemic, social and political categories. Because the phrase itself could serve as an admonishment to a conman or as part of disagreement about business strategies.

An example of an error of presupposition: believing that everything which exists exists in an articulable context to humans, or everything that humans do is articulable in everyday speech... Or that British people love hotdogs. When in fact British people love sausages, and the person thinking that highly offensive thought about hotdogs had only ever seen bratwurst.

If you're trying to stop making both errors - you probably can't. You can just try to make them less. I don't have much good advice there unfortunately.

Posts and mentions are below your name on any page. For me that's page top, screen top left on a web browser.

0.96, an improvement.

but I thought I'd just say it out loud. Right now, there are a number of points I'm eager to address but you won't be hearing from me till tomorrow at the earliest. — J

That's very kind of you to highlight. I'm not expecting responses personally, and I encourage you - as a mod - to take whatever time you need to respond. Your posts and the discussion you have fostered here are a model in both content and conduct.

@Leontiskos - that masters thesis you linked is a good read.

This is a different matter as far as I'm concerned: — Leontiskos

I suppose appears was inopportune. I meant to say that the reader is invited to interpret Sally to be asserting that it is raining, and invited to interpret Sally as asserting that it is not raining in virtue of her statement of belief. Those two things oppose each other somehow.

So with "appears to say", I meant something like "appears to us", "can be interpreted as", and so on. And I mean those expansively, provisionally and contingently. I think part of what makes Moore's Paradox interesting is because it invites us to bracket a normal functioning of language and thus throws it into relief.

I would say that to assert is to believe. Therefore if Sally asserts that it is raining then she believes that it is raining. This is all that is needed to recognize her contradiction, and this premise seems very secure. What you have done is given some possibilities where she doesn't actually assert, but that strikes me as beside the point. — Leontiskos

I don't agree with that. On the basis that I interpret Sally's utterances truthfully and sincerely, I believe it's appropriate to infer that Sally would be in unusual scenario that makes sense of the bizarre composite of asserting that she believes not-p and asserts p in the same breath. In the wild I'd be inclined to read "believe" somewhat figuratively, like an exasperation, or an alternatively that Sally is experiencing a disconnect between whatever engenders her to assert statements and whatever engenders her to assert her own belief in statements. Basically I want to trust Sally rather than calling her out.

My points might not be well targeted at Frege though, so point taken. I hope it is at least relevant to whether assertoric force should be severed from the logic (whatever that is) of an asserted statement.

This is all somewhat interesting, and there are many ways we could go with it, but you may first have to convince me that it is on topic for this thread. — Leontiskos

One way it seems relevant is that understanding the sentence as weird and contradictory on a gut level...

I think this reflects the confusion in modern thought where it is presupposed that there can be statements without implicit speakers. — Leontiskos

pumps the intuition that it must function as an assertion. It would never be uttered in normal circumstances since part of its mechanism asserts something and then undermines the act of assertion.

If it is indeed contradictory in some sense, it is contradictory by virtue of a property it has as an asserted statement, and not its propositional content (what makes it true or false). Since extensionally it's fine. It can be raining while its speaker believes it is not raining, so I can assert "It's raining and I believe it is not raining" and it could true.

The reason that would be relevant is that it highlights a kind of contradiction which can occur by virtue of the acts and attitudes contained in the statement relating to the statement's propositional content, which suggests that there is a type of contradiction which is not governed by the phrase's propositional content. In the sense that a stairway implies distinct floors.

Maybe analysing it in terms of illocutionary forces is good. And it would probably be better to look at it in the form "Sally said "It is raining but I believe it is not raining"", since that dodges all the weird crap involving "I", since we know who is saying it.

"It is raining but I believe it is not raining" is asserted by Sally. It has assertoric force.
"It is raining", the first clause, is something which could be true or false. Sentences that begin with "It is" parse as assertions. EG:

Sally said "It is an egg".
Sally said "It is a nice day today".
Sally said "It is going to be 3 degrees Celsius this evening".

So reading the sentence, the first clause invites us to interpret that Sally has asserted that it is raining.

Then there's "but", which registers an opposition or contrast between what came before and what came after. The sentence is still odd with "and" instead, so I shan't make too much of the "but" in it.

The second clause is "I believe it is not raining", which invites us to interpret it as an assertion. Sentences which begin with "I believe" parse as assertions of belief on the part of their speaker. EG:

Sally said "I believe it is an egg".
Sally said "I believe it is a nice day today".
Sally said "I believe it is going to be 3 degrees Celsius this evening".

When someone asserts something, they are often taken to believe it. I think that's a good default assumption when someone makes a simple claim, and you've no reason to otherwise doubt them. Though it isn't necessary that when someone asserts something, they believe it - they could be lying, they could misspeak, they could be confused, they could be deluded, they could have very unstable beliefs in the moment etc. The expectation is that when someone says "I believe (blah)", they count as asserting (blah) truthfully.

So when Sally says the second clause, "I believe it is not raining", a reading of the phrase in which Sally's assumed to be truthful and sincere associates the "I believe" in the sentence with asserting the claim "It is not raining". So the first clause appears to assert "It is raining", the second clause appears to assert "It is not raining", and those things clash together in our heads.

Nevertheless, Sally is not in a state of contradiction. For Sally only appears to assert that it is raining, and only appears to assert that it is not raining. With logical heads on, that feels like she has just asserted that it is raining and that it is not raining, which is a contradiction. But I think a better explanation of the weirdness in the sentence is that appearing to assert X is both logically and behaviourally consistent with appearing to assert not-X in some contexts. I'd bet this conflict of appearances and a scramble for context is something you sever if you remove the attempt to contextualise the statement (radical interpretation eh?). And moreover, I'd bet that this conflict of appearances is commonplace and essential out in the wild.

Eg, I've said "I don't believe it's raining!" while wincing up at a sky thick with summer rain. And I wasn't insane at the time, I was just complaining. Making sense of "belief" in that statement didn't require too much work on the part of my friend who was with me, since they'd known that was the only day with a good forecast that week.

A similar logic lets you provide a model for Sally's odd phrase. I'm sitting here now, I believe it's not raining since it wasn't forecast to rain this evening last time I checked. But my curtains are closed. I just said "It is raining and I believe it's not raining" aloud... and it turned out it wasn't raining after all, when I opened the curtain.

What I think makes Moore's paradox a good gateway in this discussion is that there's a whole context of cooperative use and interpretation, which contains a myriad of exploitable oppositions and contradictions, that just don't show up when you analyse the phrase as an instance of asserts(p & believes not-p) & asserts(p)=>believes(p). Particularly how you can make sense of it, and the kind of doubt you might have regarding Sally's faculties and situation. Maybe those are the kind of things @J was looking to incorporate into a logic.

Though there remains the question of whether this can be incorporated into normal flavours of logic, whether it's something that can be formalised, whether it should be formalised... and so on.

As an aside, when I said the phrase aloud I felt a powerful compulsion to immediately open the curtain to check... Surely something we expect Sally to have done in my shoes!

The oddity is that fdrake seems to think that there was no asserter prior to the one who was "conjured" by the "I" — Leontiskos

Just for the specific sentence "It is raining but I believe it is not raining", taken as a stand alone. When you read that, you can understand it. Even though you don't know who "I" refers to. You just know it's the person in the sentence.

I'm saying conjured because the sentence is really weird. Firstly it's a philosophy brainrot meme, no one is actually going around saying that sentence. I can't expect it to work like a sentence outside of a philosophy thought experiment in all respects. Which is fine, it's made to illustrate something tacit about our intuitions surrounding statements, assertions, logic and beliefs.

The sentence is free floating. The sentence "Sally said, 'It is raining but I believe it is not raining'", also illustrates the paradox, but now you know "I" refers to the speaker Sally. Rather than some retrojected speaker you conjure into existence, for the sentence, when you get to the words "I believe" and form a coherent interpretation of the sentence in light of that.

I'd make the same conjured into existence analysis for "I" or "me" in the sentences:
A) It's an egg, I know it's an egg.
B) Ask not for whom the egg tolls, it tolls for me.
C) I have to block out thoughts of eggs so I don't lose my egg.

when they are presented without further context.

Because, as internet brainrot would have it, the who "I" is is ghosted, for real.

What's the plan here? What do we think we're doing? — Srap Tasmaner

If I'm part of that "we", I see a relatively clear but restrictive theory proposed as Frege's in and clarified wonderfully in . I wanted to put some pressure on the restriction in it. The restriction being that an account of a sentence's "logic" ought to solely concern under what conditions is that sentence true. And moreover, in the final analysis, that logical structure of truth conditions spells out all of what is asserted in an assertion and thus how that assertion works whenever it is asserted.

I don't think this has much grander significance, at least to me. I just enjoy thinking about formal vs informal reasoning and how that interplays with speech acts and extensional semantics.

But does it? Were you asserting it, just now when you wrote the sentence? — J

This is a precise question, thank you.

"Does it?" and "were you asserting it?" seem to be a false dichotomy to me. There is another possibility.

Reading the sentence "It is raining but I believe it is not raining", as a competent interpreter of English, produces the uncanny effect. I don't believe I, as the writer of the sentence, was asserting it. Rather I believe the sentence "It is raining but I believe it is not raining" suggests, as part of a normal interpretation of it, that the ambiguous referent "I" in the sentence is ascribing an ambiguous/ambivalent/weird state of being to themselves through the opposition between the clauses. Whether I write the sentence or not is irrelevant, I suppose, what matters is that the proposed speaker conjured into being by "I" in the sentence ascribes the unusual state to themselves.

I know you clarify this later, but in this OP I’m claiming that much depends on exactly what we mean by “assertion” so I’m being finicky here.

So in the context of the sentence, it would count as an assertion on the part of whoever "I" refers to. Even if that reference isn't fixed. The odd part of what makes it count as an assertion seems to be "I" conjures an asserter. Which isn't the person who writes the sentence (me), it's the person in the sentence.

But aren’t there two different ways in which “occurrence of an assertion” can be understood? An assertion can be displayed, perhaps as an integral part of a proposition, without being an “actual assertion.” Or better, let’s stipulate that to display force is not the same thing as to assert. Let’s add a nuance to the vocabulary so that we can now claim to be able to discover the force of ‛p’ without actually asserting it. — J

And again, the natural rejoinder is that the context of which you speak includes someone asserting this. You haven't actually shown why we ought to think force is part of logical form. Have you? — Srap Tasmaner

Fun thread.

I bolded "a" in the quote since, if I read it right, you're construing Frege's view that every proposition cannot contain assertoric force as part of its logical structure. There's several degrees of freedom in that sentence.

1 ) What counts as a proposition.
2 ) What counts as a logical structure.
3 ) What counts as an integral part of a proposition.
4 ) I suppose whether you read "logical" as a subset of a "linguistic" or "sentential" structure or a more broad "performative" and "pragmatic" one.

But if the claim is that Frege's view applies to every proposition, all you'd need is one example of a proposition whose logical structure wasn't totally covered by Frege's account of logical structure.

I'd posit that Moore's Paradox's has an assertion as an integral part of a sentence, and highlights a kind of contradiction (underlying logical structure?) which isn't representable in normal flavours of sentential logic.

The sentence "It's raining but I believe that it's not raining" is weird. It can be true, and it will be true (extensionally) whenever it is raining but the utterer believes it is not raining. For example, if their curtains are closed and they just looked at a false weather forecast for their area, that is a plausible belief I could have.

What makes it strange is that writing or saying the sentence counts as an assertion, so the clause "It's raining" doesn't just state that it's raining, it imbues a state of awareness of the fact that it is raining to the speaker, which engenders us to ascribe that state of awareness to the speaker. Whereas the latter clause "but I believe it's not raining" cancels the ascription of the state of awareness to the speaker as well as ascribing opposed content to the clause "It's raining" to the speaker's state of awareness.

That sets up the statement as... weird... since it contains a performative contradiction of some kind, but it isn't a strict one. One would expect that the speaker believes that it is raining if they have indeed asserted it, and will do so on the basis of having inferred that it is raining somehow based on contact with the rain. Nevertheless the statement entails no logical contradiction. Though it could be analysed as entailing a contradiction when the utterance of the statement is treated as a speech act. However the sensible interpretation of the speech act is not what would make it true in virtue of its extension, as demonstrated with the example of not seeing the weather and seeing an inaccurate weather forecast.

With reference to the above list of degrees of freedom:

1 ) I'm counting the conjunct ((It is raining) and (I believe it is not raining)) as the proposition associated with the sentence.
2 ) I'm asserting that an analysis of the "logical structure" of the sentence should include an explanation of why it appears to be self contradictory, even though extensionally it is not self contradictory.
3 ) I'm asserting that whatever the answer is in ( 2 ), it should be seen as an integral part of the sentence, since the sentence strikes every competent interpreter as weird.
4 ) I think this engenders a broader, less formal, sense of logic as expectable behaviour and interpretation which should be considered as part of the analysis of propositions.

I do think it's possible to resolutely deny that the logical structure in 2 has anything to do with the logical structure of propositions, or to say that the contradiction is well explained by the common belief in the proposition that "if X asserts Y then X believes Y" as a default operation of language. But the post is long enough so I'll only offer detailed rejoinders to those things if asked to.

I prefer to take time to read, think and write calmly and carefully. So, 'more dynamic' holds no attraction. — Amity

It's pretty much the same as this forum, just with a different interface.

Sorry :yikes: — Amity

That's ok. I agree with Jamal. The referenced post reads like a personal reflection on a poem. Which is a bit like a book review.

A couple of sentences about, say:
1) why the structure of poems ought to engender a feeling of unbearable nostalgia
2) or how they might do that

speculations of that flavour linked to the poem would give the OP contestable arguments about poetry and aesthetics. As it stands it could've been a review in the Currently Reading thread, and thus Lounge.

Compare: "I like vanilla ice cream, vanilla ice cream is so refreshing. The purpose of ice cream is to bring on an incredible sense of refreshment and pleasure." to "Vanilla ice cream is a sweet and refreshing flavour, which makes it the best ice cream to eat on days of rest and celebration. Like at the beach with family and friends. There seem to be analogies of food flavour profiles to expected properties of events in which they are consumed...The enjoyment of a food is this optimised when eaten in a scenario that reflects the food's properties in (specified way)."

Not that the above is as pleasing to read as @javi2541997's post.

It is not meant as a paean to a life of non-conformity but rather a wry comment on how we look back on our lives and try to show how we are masters of our fate. — T Clark

Astute. Very ironic given that much of the book is about self mastery.

The amount of adultery the author committed in their life is not surprising given they give a qualified defence of shagging your own psychotherapy patients after an impassioned essay on commitment being life's meaning.

No worries.

If you read the original thread, you'll see two things happened.

1) Great Replacement Theory was used as part of a factual claim. It was in the headline title, and used in thread to make the same point.
2) It was presented as if it was from a respectable news organisation.

There are other contextual factors regarding post/mod history.

The specific thing which made this warnable, in my view, is evincing your own belief in a racist conspiracy theory as part of your argument.

:up:

I think if someone wants to talk about the philosophy of white supremacy, even support it, then sure, but talk about it like a fucking philosopher, not like a dementia-laden geriatric who just discovered the internet. — flannel jesus

'mon. Dinnae insult. Edit: (to be clear, this isn't anything modworthy or formal, I'm just prodding at you for insulting someone in a feedback thread, it's preferable you don't)

He should be banned for that deception imo — DingoJones

Let's just hope it's a media literacy slip up eh?

Just posting a picture and a link isn't suitable for an online philosophy discussion forum, it's more suitable for facebook. I'm sure you can post content of that caliber to your hearts content on facebook, I don't blame the mods for having a higher expectation of you here. — flannel jesus

To be clear, we probably wouldn't mod for poor citation practices so long as the posts are made in good faith, @Lionino is getting warned here for using a white supremacist conspiracy factually and presenting it in a manner as if it's from a mainstream news source. On top of other comments we've dealt with prior.

No worries. It's misleading, and on @Lionino's head.

That article is unobjectionable.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/918129

The posted image is not from that article. It's from Remix news:

https://rmx.news/article/great-replacement-comes-to-ireland-280-migrants-planned-for-small-town-of-165/

The latter article is the one with the white supremacist conspiracy headline. Not the Irish Independent.

Lionino, your posts often end up in the mod queue due to their content. We have pretty lenient standards on being acerbic, especially in political discussion threads. There is a distinction between being acerbic and speaking prejudicially.

If you need help telling what's prejudiced and what isn't, feel free to send a DM.

The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck

This has not aged well. Absolutely horrible at times.

I pinned this for a bit. Unpin it when you like.

More broadly, I think the emphasis on language can lead us to overlook something fundamental to Wittgenstein, namely, the distinction and connection between saying and showing or seeing, which remains throughout his writings, as can be seen it his discussions of such things as seeing aspects, aspect blindness, seeing-as, and seeing connections. — Fooloso4

They're discussed in terms of speech acts and gesturing towards new ways of seeing though, right? There's little psychology in it. Or to put it better, the only things he seems interested in are those elements of perception which are mediated by not just involving acts of speech. The eye under the aspect of language.

I’d love to hear what ‘commonplace positions’ you think these writers are regurgitating. — Joshs

It's mostly "what a word means depends upon the context" innit. Language game, form of life, background, communities of language use... All contexts.

What do you suppose their commonplace critiques of the ‘logical validity’ you obviously prize might look like? — Joshs

By that I meant that you can't put either of their arguments into syllogisms (premise/inference) form without massive exegetical issues. They just don't write or think like that.

Nevertheless when people use Wittgenstein's ideas, they have to interface with other arguments. Perhaps you can do that solely in his terms, but honestly trying to do it equitably makes it very difficult for Wittgenstein. Which is a weakness of his, rather than of philosophy.

Super good philosophical literature at any rate. Very evocative. I've spent altogether too long studying Wittgenstein and Heidegger, I appreciate both, just not in the manner of being a member of their mystery cults.

There are, of course, deeper things to draw on in Wittgenstein, but sometimes these get served up as if they are full explanations. E.g.:

"What is logic?"
"It's something humans engage in, an activity." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Despite the theories about forms of life, I do not think it is vague unless one treats it as a theory. He has no theory about forms of life, he is simply pointing beyond language as something existing in and of itself to our being in the world and all that entails conceptually and practically. The boundaries between one way of life and another or one practice and another are not fixed and immutable. — Fooloso4

I think that's part of the problem our dear Count is highlighting though. You can use Wittgenstein's ideas as a line in the sand between philosophical and non-philosophical use of thought - what counts as bewitched and right thinking. Which is quite frustrating, as his distinction between philosophical and non-philosophical forms of thought (life/language...) is also one of his positions.

There's a prosaic, wistful, unreflective and somewhat romantic construal of the everyday. Which is removed from the interminable and alienating abstraction of analysing concepts. Despite life being saturated with interminable and alienating abstractions.