@Joshs

Finished Rethinking Commonsense Psychology by Ratcliffe in addition to a couple of his papers that exemplify the method he champions in that book. I want to make a thread about the chicken joke!

The last chapter is particularly lucid, such a succinct presentation of the uneasy bedfellows [some species of] naturalism and [some species of] phenomenology make.

The overall project he has is fascinating. A form of eliminativism toward folk psychology that attempts to refine our understanding of social/psychological categories using a phenomenology of the everyday? Yes please. That he manages to articulate that methodology without asserting any kind of primacy to phenomenology is also very impressive, considering the sources he's drawing from.

That line of argument starkly reveals how impoverished propositional+sentential attitudes are in explaining why and how people do what they do. And especially how people feel. They don't touch the conceptual content of the folk psychology ideas they presuppose, and cannot.

The critical part of the book I enjoyed most was him being both sympathetic to, and strongly undermining, Dennett's heterophenomenology concept. He sees that Dennett's intentional stance is not a personal relation toward another - it's toward their experiences and reports from the third person, not toward a "you". This thus doesn't allow an appropriate encounter with what people are concerned with, or how people really think about what they concern.

That said, the papers I read from him, while insightful, seem to be pulling the same trick. It's a good trick, but it's the same trick. The trick is temporalising a (social or affective) state to distribute it over a history of situations and future of development - eg the looking at the conceptual content of the assertions "It hasn't settled in" and "I don't believe it" in various circumstances. A drinking game for those papers would be "sip every time Ratcliffe uses the phrase "significant life possibilities"". That body of work has a delicious, for the forum, encounter between OLP type analysis and phenomenology that I want to explore.

I will be reading more from him. His book Experiences of Depression is my next philosophy read.

This is such a neat anti-dualist observation:

According to Strawson, substance dualism is not compatible with our actual conceptual scheme. Everyday language ascribes both psychological and bodily characteristics to the same entity; ‘I’ have arms, legs, thoughts and feelings (1959, p.. 90). Bloom, in contrast, observes that we tend to describe our bodies as our possessions but neglects to mention that we speak in just the same way about our minds and mental states. Strawson argues that Cartesian dualism would require revision of our actual conceptual scheme. The ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’ or ‘she’ to which both psychological and physical characteristics are ascribed would turn out to be a ‘linguistic illusion’ (p. 94). If Cartesian dualism is true and ‘I’ am a Cartesian mind, then I do not have the properties of being six feet tall and having two arms — Ratcliffe, Rethinking Commonsense Psychology

Wheeler is well-known for his idea of the participatory universe, that the universe is somehow brought into being by the act of observation (although his definition of ‘observation’ is rather broad as shown below). There’s a well-written magazine article on him here, from which: — Wayfarer

We cannot speak in these terms without a caution and a question. The caution: "consciousness" has nothing whatsoever to do with the quantum process. — Wheeler

Matthew Ratcliffe — Joshs

I'll be reading Rethinking Commonsense Psychology the next couple of months. I may rant about it at you.

I guess one way in which I could phrase a specific question would be what are emotions made of? — Jack Cummins

They aren't made of anything. In the sense that walking isn't made of legs.

You'd probably get a lot out of "How Emotions Are Made" by Lisa Feldman-Barrett.

That one was awful. Unhinged had no right to be as good as it was (it was still bad).

Yes.



I would recommend

Unhinged by Vera Valentine, which is smut starring a lady and her apartment's front door. Followed by Plowed By The Pumpkin King by Juno Delight, which is what it says on the tin.

↪BitconnectCarlos All I said was I only started even using the term Jews when I started talking with you about Jews, in reply to you saying they're not murderous people. Though lets not get into statistical fallacies with prison population numbers, oh so many of them especially in a prejudicial system. — Vaskane

How about "the Jewish people are learned" is that also a stereotype or just a cultural observation? Are we allowed to comment on Jewish culture or is that stereotype? If we can comment on Jewish culture and Jewish cultural influences, then why not on Jewish people? — BitconnectCarlos

That is the dynamic between you two that I'm modding, yes. Keep your chat to the state of Israel. Keep inferences about the Jewish people out of it.

What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of Noam Chomsky calling Israel a Jewish supremacist state. Obviously not an ethical issue at all. — Vaskane

I'm not speaking as a partisan in this debate, I'm just modding it in the forum.

There's a sense in which Israel can be accused of being a Jewish supremacist state, which does not entail that the Jews as a collective perpetrate those (alleged) acts of supremacy.

"The Jewish people are violent" or "The Jewish people are peaceful" - these are racial stereotypes.
"The state of Israel is violent" or "The state of Israel is peaceful" - those are judgements of a state's actions, and not prejudiced without further qualification.
"The Jewish people support Jewish supremacy" - borderline antisemitism, it's at best a racial stereotype.
"The state of Israel supports Jewish supremacy" - in need of qualification, but it can be said without bigotry and with reasonable justification.

If you're unable to see the difference between these senses, there isn't too much I can do to help you. I'm willing to read what you're saying charitably - like you're talking about the state of Israel, rather than the Jewish people, and what's happening in this thread is the usual equation of the state of Israel with the Jewish people that occurs... Just be careful around it alright.

That also goes for you @BitconnectCarlos

@Hanover@frank @BitconnectCarlos

Please stop equating the state of Israel with the Jewish people. All that pattern of argument does is invite prejudice. Now you're arguing in a way that sounds like Jews Bad vs Jews Good. Be more careful or posts will start disappearing.

Edit: that goes especially for you @Vaskane, be careful.

There isn't anything in principle wrong with discussing whether an institution should be considered intelligent. What's at issue is the way you're going about it.

Here are some suggestions to improve your post:

Have a thesis with somewhat defined terms, if you're using intelligence, how is it going to relate to consciousness, collective consciousness, collective intelligence - how are tissues intelligent in the same way institutions are?

There is scientific evidence for the notion that intelligence is fractal, that our cells are intelligent, that a collection of cells in a tissue is intelligent, that a collection of tissues in an organ is intelligent, that a collection of organs is intelligent (e.g., us), and that a collection of organisms in an organization is intelligent, and if organizations join together to work together (e.g. associations) those would be intelligent, too. — ken2esq

That is the sort of thing you could turn into an argument. Except the fractal claim, which isn't elsewhere in your post. You seem to be advancing a thesis that intelligence is present in a composite entity if it is present in each of that entity's parts. That is the kind of thing you could advance an argument for. There isn't an argument or a question about it though. Only speculation.

Oh, if you think the idea of superconscious influence is totally insane, delusional, completely anti-logic, anti-science, then WTF do you call FREUD???? His famous id, ego and superego, the three parts of our mind?!! The SUPEREGO is the influence of organizations, of our society? He literally proposed that we are influenced by our organizations to which we adhere, he merely was unaware of the new scientific notion that these organizations are actually intelligent, are basically intelligent life like us, albeit they are to us as a forest is to a tree. You think Freud is insane, delusional? You think me citing notions that align with Freud should be deleted because they are too crazy and delusional?? — ken2esq

Speculation with other speculation on top. It would be an interesting thread to look at how you could apply psychoanalytic categories to institutions as if those institutions had appropriate minds.

The major problem with your posts isn't the attempted themes, it's the execution. If you put more effort into forming an argument for anything you've said it'll be better.

I'm going to close this thread. It's not philosophy, an argument, adjacent to philosophy or well written. Please see this thread for the site guidelines and this thread for a guide on writing good OPs.

I think this is a good sense of culpable stupidity. Is all stupidity culpable? — Leontiskos

Maybe? Can you think of an example which isn't culpable? I'm imagining that "refusal" means that stupidity is a practice of avoiding learning through habits you have (and thus someone who behaves stupidly behaves incuriously @Jamal).

I'm phrasing this in terms of "behaves stupidly" rather than "is stupid" because I very much see stupidity as something you can learn, get headfucked into, and unlearn.

What do you think?

Although I guess it can amount to the same thing, mutatis mutandis. — Jamal

Aye.

I don't think much effort is required to learn. If you even just listen to someone genuinely you learn. Curiosity alone tends to suffice I think? But there's the question of exposing one's curiosity to situations that engender learning. Curiosity as an attitude vs curiosity as a practice.

Although I guess it can amount to the same thing, mutatis mutandis. — Jamal

Probably the same thing. You think that pervasive refusal is intellectual only? I've got in mind people like athletes, who learn technique and discipline. Though it's quite difficult, if such embodied skill negates stupidity.

A pervasive refusal to try to learn.

I like Kant's definition best, which he says is a "lack of judgment" (= Mangel an Urteilskraft), whereby for him judgment is the ability to subsume sensory impressions under the concepts of reason. (Kant: "intellectual concepts as such are empty, mere perceptions are blind) . This ability of judgment is therefore the "hinge" between the world outside and the world of ideas and concepts. If this hinge is defective, as in the case of stupidity, then the ideas and concepts work idly, in a void, so to speak, without any connection to reality. — Matias

It strikes me that subsuming sensory impressions under concepts of reason is something that people do involuntarily, all the time. Even as part of perception. If someone was totally unable to do that, they wouldn't be able to see, hear, think etc. at all. Which is an absence of consciousness, rather than stupidity. Stupidity must be in how things are done, not in what things are done.

I'm bad at chess. Unskilled in it. I can't "see" the lines of play in a board like regular players can, and masters can with a glance. I don't have the ability to subsume the sensory impressions of a chess board state under the concepts of chess playing in that regard. I don't think that makes me an idiot, just bad at chess.

If I was bad at everything in life like that, perhaps I am simply unskilled at living, or unable to exercise my capacities to function adequately in life's typicalities. Some people are like that, and need help - children, people with disabilities. Are they stupid? No.

What if someone is able to learn, calculative, intelligent, wilful, determined, of sound mind and they still do not learn and grow? Still don't try to excise their errors and expand their strengths across many domains they are in fact able to?

That looks like stupidity to me. A pervasive refusal to try to learn.

Whereas I claimed that language is for communication, you seem to be claiming that language (or at least reference) is tied to action ("the referring token can be acted upon"). That's a fairly significant difference. — Leontiskos

I don't know what the essence of reference is, so to speak, I broached it the way I did to try to find a speech act containing a successful reference which "piggybacked" on another's successful reference. Can you give me one instead?

This is because the purpose of the customer's assertion is not being realized, given that they do not know what a catalytic converter is and therefore have no basis for their assertion. It seems to be a kind of lie. — Leontiskos

Aye I agree with you that it's obfuscatory. Where I'm coming from is that I'd have difficulty being able to imagine it as an obfuscation if we didn't recognise that "my car's catalytic converter" indeed did refer to my car's catalytic converter, and that I was bullshitting in ignorance of this fact. If we assumed that "my car's catalytic converter", in this instance, did not refer to my car's catalytic converter, on what basis would we be able to say that the mechanic - when grabbing the converter to check - displays an understanding of the car's catalytic converter which we lack?

I'm trying to say that how reference works is in some sense orthogonal to communication. Because communicative speech acts, and non-communicative speech acts, both can contain successful references.

"That website you mentioned last night" is an adequate description with an adequate referent. The partial knowledge is necessary in order that the friend can supply the remainder of the knowledge, by sending the URL. — Leontiskos

What is it about the partial knowledge that

"catalytic converters in cars can break"
"my car has a catalytic converter"

Which goes into

"I think it's the catalytic converter"

which distinguishes it from the website example?

Sounds Fine to me. Is there a particular part or aspect of Fine's article that you are interested in discussing? — Leontiskos

Nope. Further work though - truthmaker semantics. I don't know owt about it and would need to do homework.

I am inclined to doubt this, although it depends on what we mean by 'refer'. On my view not knowing something prevents you from referring to it. Suppose I get into a conversation with my mechanic and starting using the word "catalytic converter," despite having no idea what it means (I am feigning competence). In this case we are both using the token 'catalytic converter', but in entirely different ways. Now if language is for communication then this is a failure of language. Even if I manage to fool the mechanic for a few minutes, no substantive communication is taking place. — Leontiskos

I don't know how to define reference. Or what the conditions for successful reference would be. Let's say you said "There's a problem with the catalytic converter", and you didn't know what the catalytic converter was, the mechanic could go and look for the car's catalytic converter. While you didn't have the car's catalytic converter in mind while saying "catalytic converter", it would not have stopped the mechanic from interpreting the word and finding what it, in fact, designated.

In that regard "catalytic converter" would allow someone to manipulate what was designated, even if you didn't know anything about what was designated.

An example I was thinking of is "Can you send me a link to that website you mentioned last night?" when a friend had told you about one website last night, but you can't remember what it was or what it was about. "that website you mentioned last night" refers to that website the friend mentioned last night, and they could pluck its URL out of their internet history.

I suppose what I'm saying there is that a sufficient condition for a speech act to contain a successful reference is that the referent of the referring token can be acted upon. And if that suffices for a successful reference, it would thus suffice for a reference (simpliciter).

And where I'm going with that is that because that sufficient condition can be satisfied without an understanding of the catalytic converter, or the website's, essence, a speech act can contain a reference without requiring its doer understand the referent at all, never mind its essence.

Though that doesn't tell you whether the reference relation between the words "my car's catalytic converter" and the car's catalytic converter could be sustained or set up, even in principle, without there being an understanding of a (not just my) catalytic converter's essence. Even if not by the speaker.

I'm going to close this thread as it's in feedback. If you feel like making another thread to discuss the same topic, you may. Just make sure you've got an OP which makes a point or sets up a philosophical question.

I don't know. If you make a thread saying what you think it is in detail, I could. If you're looking for a definition of a superintelligent AI, there's a Wikipedia article about it with citations.

I removed it. The OP could have used more detail on what you thought superintelligence was, or what the stakes of your question were.

That seems reasonable, but of course the devil’s in the details. — Leontiskos

Aye. I was too ambiguous to pin down my own position, and don't even know it - going down to brass tacks.

On the other hand, your post was comparing Fine’s Aristotelian essentialism to Banno’s linguistic approach, which is also different than the topic of this thread. I suppose that is what I was responding to. — Leontiskos

Yeah that makes sense. I think we'd proceed better by going into tangential discussions at this point. But I'd not be interested in pursuing them without a detour, onto the original path, through more of Fine's work.

I would have thought “...and the referent’s nature” was meant to circumvent such a rub. — Leontiskos

Perhaps does. It seems like I can refer to my friend's blegbleg successfully even though I have no interpretation of its nature, and I could not tell a blegbleg from a non-blegbleg, based on a property or otherwise. I suppose whether that should go into a theory of reference is itself up for debate. Maybe because reference can work without the speech act "invoking" the referent's nature, a theory of reference might not need to talk about a referent's nature at all. But a theory of reference "fixing" might need to talk about that. I'm not convinced they can be pulled apart in that manner, and that might be a question of what you expect a theory of reference to explain in the first place... So many forking paths.

Great posts, by the way. Is there a thread where I can ask about your philosophical background? — Leontiskos

I can just tell you. The only philosophy background I have is in scientific inference - so logic and statistical theory + methodology work. The research I've done has been fundamental in that intersection. Not fundamental in terms of importance, of course, but in terms of abstraction. So learning "conceptual analysis" has been useful.

Also studied philosophy a bit as a student. Yours?

he attempt to limit oneself to the "discursive context" collapses on itself whenever an act of expression expresses an object. — Leontiskos

I guess that goes back to the sense/reference discussion you were having with @Banno earlier. Specifically whether/how reference leverages concepts or practices that are (often) exclusively associated with sense.

For example, a proper name is a 'rigid designator' which means that the object it identifies is ostensibly unique, and accounting for the manner in which one identifies such an object inevitably draws one outside the "discursive context." — Leontiskos

I don't read Fine to be talking about reference in the article, relationships between the sense/reference distinction and essence/definition relation look "downstream" from the issues in the article.

The meaning of a proper name is incomplete without some account of the way that proper names are used to reference real objects. — Leontiskos

I agree with that, even though it's outside the scope of the thread. I believe that any speech act which refers does so on the basis of a history of use outside its immediate context, and how the referent is individuated+interpreted is informed by that history and the referent's nature. So I believe that the association of names (like "Socrates") with referents (Socrates) is done through an interpretation+individuation of the referent, and that the discursive contexts which refer to that referent must keep associating a "sufficiently like" (weasel words) interpretation+individuation of the referent to fix+continue that particular sense/referent/reference relation.

Though there's a rub. Like if you and your friend are having a disagreement about whether the blegbleg really is a shmooblydoo or a bigglewiggle, another friend observing the disagreement can successfully refer to the blegbleg by aping their reference, even without their own understanding of the blegbleg's sense, conditions of individuation, or its real nature.

How does that rub relate to the thread? Who knows, it just seems to.

Yeah I don't think the article makes a particularly involved positive case for essence. It's very much a prologue. I think he wants to blow open a hole and pour a different flavour of essence in. More blowing here, less pouring.

You got any links to more systematic treatments of his account? I'll look into your Bruces thread. Fine's arguments against names having a sense, included. If he believes that my Evans comments were way off mark, I think!

It seems like a recognition of the subjective aspect of the act of understanding is what is being overlooked in some of the opposing viewpoints. — Leontiskos

I think I can see what you mean there. Though I read it the other way - how Fine is using the vocabulary of essence makes meaning "thingly" or "concrete" - puts the locus of sinigication/expression closer to the described object or act. Like the essence of Socrates is constrained by who Socrates was. Whereas how @Banno, I think, thinks of meaning precludes putting the "locus of expression" anywhere near a described object or act, since objects do not express, acts of expression do. And the acts of expression for Banno don't 'contain', 'reference', 'represent' or 'engender' some underlying hidden 'meaning' of the entity, since the meaning of a speech act is only ever its use in a discursive context, not an object or process which may be considered (relatively) independently of a (range of) discursive contexts.

to provide a suitable account of essences in ontological terms using modal language, — Banno

I think your cynical self is asserting fundamental presuppositions which the article is challenging, rather than engaging with them on their own terms.

Fine moved essentialists over to epistemology and now seek to give an account of essences as how we know (understand, conceive, etc.) that something is what it is. — Banno

Construing understanding as epistemological is also something you're construing, there's not really much in the article about knowledge, it's about interpretation and meaning. Which I appreciate you have particular views on.

What we take as a simple depends on the task at hand - on what we are doing. I read PI as a rejection of the Augustinian essentialism expressed in §1, and might roughly be expressed as a rejection of real essences. — Banno

I think you can productively read it in the following manner - things have natures which constrain and partially determine how they behave. When you describe such a thing or process, that means setting out that nature in an act of understanding it The understanding of the thing or process determines which properties we express as necessary to it, that which it could not be understood as it is without. It seems there's a possibility for an error in relevance there, like the singleton containing Socrates, which (according to Fine) should not be construed as part of Socrates' essence.

Perhaps contrary to most of the discussion so far, I also think this discussion is almost orthogonal to how reference works. The intersection might be somewhere in the region of Evans' critique of a causal theory of reference that sees no place for predication or contextual cues in referring behaviours.

It is not obvious that such a view is at odds with Kit FIne's essentialism. — Banno

It isn't obvious, I think it depends on whether you construe the properties of a thing as entirely determined by the language games they're used in, or whether the properties of a thing constrain language games they're used in. It also isn't obvious to me that there's anything Augustinian in what Fine's said, or theological.

It might be productive to think of a speech act like "I do". The essence of the speech act "I do" at a wedding might be construed like:

1) A symbolic commitment to an existing partnership, that it will be ongoing.
2) Taking on a definite legal commitments with that partner.
3) A declaration of profound and sustained romantic desire.
4) A commemoration of profound and sustained romantic desire.
5)...

Does it make sense for there to be a "real essence" of the speech act above and beyond the use of language? I don't think so, but I do think on such a basis that the kind of things that Fine might throw into understanding a concept won't just be extensional in the sense he's criticised. He wants essential properties to have a different extension, and to somehow be sourced from a thing in a (largely unspecified) manner.

The vocabulary of "flows from" he uses at one point I think has its roots in theology though, so it may be impossible - in the last analysis - to separate discussions of essence from some metaphysics.

I read Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man recently, and it was one of the most gleefully inflammatory things I've read. Radical feminist goes under cover as a man for 18 months, gains access to traditionally male spaces - a bowling club, a strip club, a monastery, a men's group therapy collective - and tries dating.

One of the things in it that will stick with me is that she actually experienced misogyny based on her failures in dating, as in she became prejudiced - from time to time - against women based on how they treated her male persona. It's going to stick with me because it's an amazing demonstration that developing a personal prejudice is still a broadly structural phenomenon.

Fine shows that there are necessary truths (the singleton) that are not true of the essence of Socrates, and so that the set of necessary truths is not identical to, or constitutive of, the essences. — Banno

I think that's about right. If you think about an essence of a thing as set of properties, a candidate set must be identical to that "essence set" to count as that thing's essence. I think what Fine is illustrating is that sets of the form: {Properties P such that Necessarily(x = A entails P( x ))} are too large. Since they contain tautologies and the singleton, etc.

I think he's gesturing toward a bit more than that though. That discussion on the "source" of a "necessity" also suggests he has a qualitatively different account of necessity as a modality for expressing essence to the possible worlds one discussed in the article, and which you're using as a lens on his view.

If no modal account of essence is possible, then this is important for our understanding of the metaphysics of identity. For it shows that even when all questions of necessity have been resolved, questions of their source will remain. The example shows further that these questions will not always be unproblematic; they may raise real issues. Thus the subject should not be taken to be constituted, either in principle or practice, by its claims of necessity. — Fine, Essence and Modality

So it seems that he believes there's some subset of the necessary (possible worlds sense) truths which are necessary (essential) to an entity's being. The "source" of these essential necessities seems to be the being's nature, as opposed to qualities like the singleton Socrates set, which derive from the whole possible world Socrates is in and the underlying logic which links statements within that world.

Attending to the "source" might limit those extraneous derive-ables and baseline assumptions, so that in specifying the necessary (essential) properties of Socrates, we'd then express Socrates' essence. In a similar manner that the authors of a dictionary exclude the set containing a bachelor from their definition of "bachelor" by expressing the essential characteristics of bachelorhood - what it means to count as a bachelor.

So I think he's firing shots at the combination of Moore's account and the modal modelling device of quantifying over possible worlds together in being used to flesh out essence. Seemingly Fine did come up with an alternative semantics for necessity, more relevant to his construal of essence, at a later date.

One way into it.

Moore's account of essence is modal. A property P is partially constitutive of A's essence if the following implication holds: Necessarily (If x = A, then P( x ) ). That is, if x = A then P( x ) in all possible worlds.

Fine construes this as saying too much. As whatever constitutes the essence of A must characterise what it means to be it, not what being identical to it implies. An illustration of that distinction, what this means "A implies B, A, therefore B" and what "not A or B, A, therefore B" mean differ despite being semantically equivalent in propositional logic. You know that because the use of a modus ponens (the first) is distinct from the use of a disjunctive syllogism (the second) - NB, I am not talking about the use as theorems in propositional logic, I am talking about their use in a holistic sense that includes what the propositional logic encodes about our broader practices of reasoning. Like they have separate presentations, wikipedia pages etc.

This distinction manifests in the fact that the use of the modus ponens does not entail the use of the disjunctive syllogism, even though the two are interderivable in propositional logic. What gives there? It's an observation of a difference in practical language use, practical understanding, of the terms which is not reflected in the modal account.

That failure seems to come from the material implication holding over multiple worlds failing to capture the informal aspects of the connection of identity and necessitation insofar as it characterises their use. In other words, what it means for a being to be an A is different from what being an A must materially imply. And that derives from a context insensitivity in the logic whereas the essence of a thing demarcates a context it arises in and ought be understood as part of. That understanding the essence of a thing requires attending to the context an understanding of its nature imbues.

A dictionary definition is thus a bit closer to an essence than the modal account, since it tries to "minimally" specify the use of a term without all the subordinate variations that use engenders. Like listing all tautologies which it may materially imply.

Thus, rather than a metaphysical extravagance, a more definitional concept of essence is attuned to the practicalities of language use in a manner a modal logical characterisation must be blind to.

Ultimately that blindness comes from severing the connection between the target of the definition and how it seamlessly dwells in the world - beyond the words, its essence. What it means to count as a bachelor is different from what it means for a bachelor to count as an unmarried man.

Vilnius Poker - Ričardas Gavelis

@Jamal - I have a vague memory you've read this one, what did you think of it?

“ongoing conversation.” — Mikie

@Banno

An ongoing conversation always conducted elsewhere.

But maybe it's vacuous? The problem of vacuousness seems to hinge on the proposition that the set of all possible ontological differences between entities is in fact different than the set of all possible observable differences. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think I see what you're saying. If you take my attempt at formalising your maxim:

"If X is such that necessarily ( 1 ) there does not exist an observer O such that possibly ( 2 ) there exists (a distinction of X from Y for O) then X is indiscernible from Y." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you're saying one of two things.

The First Thing

The outer modality ( 1 ) and the inner modality ( 2 ) might be different flavours - like the outer might be "physical necessity" and the inner might be "conceptual possibility". That would render the principle something like:

Physical-conceptual ) If X is such that the following claim is required by natural law: there does not exist an observer O such that they can conceive a distinction of X from Y for O, then X is indiscernible from Y.

Which has a similar scope to the fabled imaginary managerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie. We're in the case where imaginary differences decide what counts as indistinguishable from what, despite the outer modality being physical.

Is this what you meant? You might mean the outer modality is "ontological" and the inner modality is "phenomenal" too.

The Second Thing

I'm going to requote the reformulation for reference:

"If X is such that necessarily ( 1 ) there does not exist an observer O such that possibly ( 2 ) there exists (a distinction of X from Y for O) then X is indiscernible from Y." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Alternatively, you might be referencing that the distinction predicate - and thus implicitly the class of distinctions you're quantifying over - should only range over phenomenal differences. Which, seemingly, are ones which require the existence of "an observer". That can interact strangely with the two modalities outside of it.

For example, it's fully consistent with physical law that there are no observers. So in worlds whose neighbours in the sense of the first modality are all devoid of observers, everything is indistinguishable in that world. So we're in the previous situation. If the outer modality is a conceptual possibility, we're imbued with the ability to hypothesise the distinctions an observer could make in a given world devoid of observers by looking at worlds similar to that world which do, in fact, contain observers. In that regard whether two things are indiscernible in this world comes to turn on whether they can be imagined differently; if your modality is very broad there, you might end up with everything being only indistinguishable from itself (if x is indistinguishable from y then x=y and vice versa).

However, I think these are indeed a different sets. We can easily posit real ontological differences in properties that necessarily never result in any phenomenal differences. The Principle just says that we shouldn't bother doing this since, whether or not claims of this sort are true or false will necessarily be a matter of indifference to us. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If you took this world back in time, prior to the invention of detectors for radiation, there would be no observable differences of someone dying from non-radiation and radiation causes since we lack a sense for it. If we lack a sense for it, then there'd be no phenomenal properties associated with it. So either observability turns into an inferential concept - we'd need to include things that can be inferred from our senses, and delimit the scope of inference - or alternatively worlds with radiation are indistinguishable from worlds which are not, prior to the invention of a Geiger counter.

Just saw this. Thanks for the heads up that nLab has Hegel articles.

The Principle of Indiscernability is this: if for some entity X, X is, in principle, always and forever indiscernible (for all observers) from Y, then we can assume X=Y. We can assume that X = Y because in all possible cases X will always appear to be equal to Y.

This move doesn't seem like a big one, but I have noticed that it is far less popular in metaphysics, mostly because of what it says about the reality of the "external world" if there are no observers of that world. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's quite a big one.

Identity of indiscernibles only unambiguously applies to unary predicates/properties. You'll notice that F applies to an entity x and no other. It's an extension of the principle to allow that properties of the form G(x,...) containing other expressions. Like two sets both having the least upper bound of 2. There's also issues regarding whether properties count as entities in that regard.

"x can be seen from some position as blue"

So g( x ) would be "there exists a position a such that x appears blue from the definite position a"
g ( y ) wouldn't quite work with direct substitution there. Since there would need to be an additional guarantee that the position that y is seen as blue from is the position x is seen as blue from - so long as they're blue from some position each they'd both satisfy g.

The Principle of Indiscernability is this: if for some entity X, X is, in principle, always and forever indiscernible (for all observers) from Y, then we can assume X=Y. We can assume that X = Y because in all possible cases X will always appear to be equal to Y. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"In principle", "always and forever" are both other augmentations of the original principle, and the observable one you suggest. Both are modal concepts.

Let's take "x can be seen from some position as blue", and assume that y could be painted entirely red, it would be a contingent fact that y could be seen from some position as blue, thus there is a circumstance under which y could violate indiscernability even if it does not in fact now do so, even if it was never in fact painted red. They would thus be modally distinguishable even though they are not distinguishable in the real world.

The Principle of Indiscernability is this: if for some entity X, X is, in principle, always and forever indiscernible (for all observers) from Y, then we can assume X=Y. We can assume that X = Y because in all possible cases X will always appear to be equal to Y. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The bracketed and bolded expression also gives a means of attacking your formulation. It's very vulnerable to vacuous truth - if there do not exist any observers, then for no observer are any properties mismatched on any object, so all objects are indiscernable.

From your construal, I think an observer is meant to be an agent, so all things become identical prior to the existence of agents. There may be some wiggle room involving conjuring up a possible observer prior to conjuring up the entities they possibly may observe, like:

"If X is such that necessarily there does not exist an observer O such that possibly there exists (a distinction of X from Y for O) then X is indiscernible from Y."

With some way of fleshing out the distinction predicate.

Lots to chew on!

Being — Mikie

...

Awareness

A being is aware of X if the following hold: X is causally related to the being, X constrains the being's possible states and the being has a process of representing X's causal and informational relationship to itself. A process of that being is a means of being aware if that process' normal functioning establishes that the being is aware of some X - it can have more than one role. A being's awareness is the sum total of its means of being aware.

Consciousness

A being which can represent its own awareness is conscious.

Time

A time is process whose events index another process's, treated solely as the derived index.

Sensation

Perception

Thinking

The internal state of an aware being is the aggregate of the conditions which minimally determine its awareness at a given time point. The internal state is modular, in the sense that it arises from the inter-relation of different modalities (sense organs eg) and processes (inference, head tilting, chewing). The internal state is hierarchical, in the sense that those inter-relations, modalities and processes have different activation conditions and reaction rates. Sensations, perceptions and thoughts are parts of an internal state which involve a means of being aware.

A sensation is a component of the internal state which is relatively low in the hierarchy - a minor abstraction from the data of a sense organ. It stipulates little about the aware being's environment and state.

A perception is a component of the internal state which is middling high in the hierarchy - a moderate abstraction from, and correlation between, sense organs and exploratory behaviours to manipulate those sense organs' states. It stipulates quite a lot about the aware being's environment and state. Perceptions react slower relative to sensations, and thus are a fabricator of times.

A thought is a component of the internal state which is very high in the hierarchy. It's a great abstraction from sense organs, exploratory behaviours and correlations between them. It correlates perceptions and causal interventions. It stipulates a lot about the aware being's environment, and state, and past environments. Thoughts react slower relative to perceptions, and thus are a conjuror of histories.

In that respect, sensations are the least conceptualised components of awareness, thoughts are the most.

Mind

The ongoing updates of an aware being's internal state.

Body

A closed collection of means of interacting with an environment.

Good

Optimal action. One can be good at something unjust.

Happiness

A judgement which applies to a life spent in pleasant internal states.

Justice

Optimal action without unjustified prejudice.

Truth

Optimally justified assertability.

I'll use the words differently obv, but we all know that how words are used is not how things are! So I wanted to write down how I thought things are.

But it would be cool to have another discussion about perceptual content and its relationship to the nature of its distal environmental causes.

That's okay. I don't agree with it any more either.

although I no longer stand by it entirely: I think I may have made a couple of stupid mistakes of argumentation, and it's probably a bit shallow. — Jamal

We haven't had that argument in 3 years now. Could be time to have it again.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy — Maw

Heard this one is great. Been on my To-Read for a while.

That might be what ↪Paine and ↪fdrake said. — Banno

It was!