To simplify my point:

This is really the Cartesian problem of the brain in the vat. We can't know whether all of our perceptions and judgments are accurate because an evil genius might be probing our brains and inserting all of these ideas in us. Or, using a more modern example, we don't know if we're in the Matrix.

The evil genius planting thoughts in us is a deterministic force. It is that force that negates our ability to know anything about the world. Whether that deterministic force is an evil genius or just the omnipotent power of the causal chain, we can know nothing about the world. — Hanover

Under that scenario our power of knowledge is indeed abolished since, if the belief that a cat is on the mat, say, would be forcefully inserted in us while the cat isn't on the mat (or while there isn't even a cat, or a mat, etc.), then our belief that a cat is on the mat can't constitute knowledge, and that's true even in the case where, accidentally, the outside world is as we believe it to be (assuming that we could so much as make sense of the idea of empirically contentful beliefs in such a brain-in the vat scenario, which we arguably can't). The reason why we can't be ascribed knowledge, in that scenario, is that even in the case where the cat is on the mat, and our belief happens to match the way the world is, this matching isn't an outcome of a power of empirical knowledge but rather the result of an intervention of an evil genius, and the actions of this evil genius, let us assume, are (counterfactually) insensitive to the way the world is. That is, we are assuming that the evil genius would, or would be liable to, insert in us the belief that the cat is on the mat even in cases where it it isn't, or where there is no cat, etc. This is what makes the evil genius evil.

If, however, we imagine that the "evil" genius would merely ensure that (or enable the possibility that) our beliefs reliably have the content that they would have if they were the outcomes of a normal (albeit fallible) power of empirical knowledge, as such a power could also conceivably be realized in a non-deteministic (thought regular) world, then the activity of the genius drops out of the picture. It is a helpful genius of that kind that a compatibilist about the power of knowledge could pictures determinism to be embodying. Such a genius would (effectively) be looking out in the world before inserting into us a matching belief. Hence, in the case where we form the belief that there is a cat on the mat, because the evil genius is aware that there is one (and that there aren't any observational circumstances that would ordinarily defeat our fallible power of knowledge) then the counterfactual conditional claim that we wouldn't hold this belief if the cat weren't on the mat also holds true.

Consider again the deterministic robot that I discussed earlier. If the robot is designed to detect and pick up empty soda cans, and can reliably do so in some particular kind of environment, then it is irrelevant if the laws that govern the robot's interactions with its environment also are deterministic (such that the robot+environment constitute jointly a single deterministic system). The robot can still be credited with an ability to form true beliefs about the locations of empty soda cans (and manifest this ability through picking them up reliably) even though, in each case, it was already "determined" what the robot would do, even before the robot saw any soda cans, and that it would form the true belief that there is a soda can there. The compatibilist thus may view determinism as an enabling rather than coercitive "force" in relation to the robot's cognitive powers. And so can the compatibilist view our situation qua naturally evolved cognitive engines embodied in flesh in a deterministic world. This is how the compatibilist accommodates the externalist requirement about epistemic justification.

In order to rebut this account, you must, I think, either question the coherence of the view of universal determinism tacitly assumed (to be intelligible) by the compatibilist or target her ability to accommodate the internalist requirement for epistemic justification (or both).

Determinism would seem to negate the possibility, not of knowing anything, but of having any justifiable confidence in the rationality of judgements. Of course if you are one of those who is determined by nature to have confidence in the rationality of judgements, and determined to think that confidence justified, then... — John

A view similar to the one that you are expressing is called internalism about epistemic justification. It is the view that knowledge requires not only that beliefs issue from the actualization of a reliable method (or mechanism) of belief formation (in order that they would qualify as knowledge), but also that the epistemic agent be justified (in each separate case of belief formation) in believing that her belief is issued from such a reliable power. If the agent thus has a power of knowledge, this very power must include this specific reflective ability (at least tacitly).

The first condition -- of the reliability of the method of belief formation -- is the only one required by externalists about epistemic justification. This externalist condition is easily endorsed by compatibilists with an account similar to the one that I sketched in my previous post (without quite endorsing it). One could compatibly have one's belief that there is a cat on the mat determined by conditions that held one billion years ago and, also, conceive of this belief being the actualisation of the reliable power to form true beliefs about cats and mats when one encounters them. (Likewise in the case of compatibilist free will, it could have been determined one billion years ago that I would chose vanilla ice cream today, while, compatibly with this fact, my choice can be regarded as the actualization, today, of my "free" power to chose, and obtain, the ice cream flavor that I want.)

So, the area where compatibilism might clash with the possibility of knowledge concerns the specific condition of internalism about epistemic justification that you are alluding to. This would be troublesome for the compatibilist if it could be shown that belief in determinism (or lack of knowledge that determinism is false) isn't consistent with one being justified in holding the (second order) belief that one's empirical beliefs are, on a case by case basis, actualizations of a power of knowledge.

I don't endorse such a compatibilist conception myself (while I do endorse internalism about epistemic justification) but that's because, as is the case with compatibilism about free will, the idea of universal determinism, which such conceptions incorporate, seems flawed for reasons that I alluded to in a previous post. If one, however, grants such an idea of (universal) determinism to the compatibilist, then, it seems to me, it might be rather more difficult to argue that belief in determinism is inconsistent with the condition of internalism about epistemic justification, as this inconsistency would need to be demonstrated in order to find fault with a compatibilist conception of knowledge in the way you are proposing. (And also, the compatibilist could be an externalist about epistemic justification, but the shortcomings of such an externalism can be argued separately from any consideration about determinism).

Your position is plainly ridiculous. — Hanover

One could possibly be some sort of a compatibilist for the case of belief formation too (though I am usure if this resembles what TGW is thinking). That's not my view but a determinist could argue for that. On such a view our beliefs are indeed settled by antecedent causes that lie beyond our control. But it wouldn't follow that what beliefs we have can't be (broadly) explained through reference to deterministic cognitive mechanisms that "implement" our best epistemic principles, as it were. What follows from this, analogously with the case of free will, is the denial of the principle of alternative possibilities: which is something that compatibilists believe they can dispense with (dispense with the PAP, that is).

That is, if one comes to believe that P, in some antecedent "circumstances" (including inner "states" of the cognitive agent), then it isn't possible that, in those very same circumstances, she could have failed to come to believe that P. But that would fall short from showing that her coming to believe that P isn't the actualization of an efficient cognitive power. We can imagine programming a deterministic robot that would explore its environment and come to form true beliefs about it, non accidentally. It would thereby be true that the beliefs of this robot are fully determined by antecedent circumstances that the robot has no power over, and also that the robot has the power to form true beliefs (and that those beliefs thereby can come to constitute knowledge, on many accounts).

Again, that isn't my view, but it seems to be a view that a compatibilist about free will would find agreeable enough, and isn't obviously ridiculous. I just don't know if it is consistent with TGW's other commitments.

Any casual relationship, by definition, has one state relating out of another. Agents are states. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Agents, I would have thought, are rational animals and thus belong to the category of substance (ousia). A state is a particular determination (in one specific respect) of a substance. It is expressed by a predicate, whereas an agent is typically designated by a proper name (or demonstrative), and characterized as the sort of substance that it is by a "substance form" concept, (e.g. the concept of a human being). I don't know what it could possibly mean to say that agents are states. What would they be states of?

Determinism is a concept that applies to certain sorts of systems: those, namely, that evolve according to deterministic laws. The system as a whole, (or the totality of the object that make it up) can be in a determinate state at a time, and if its being in this state at a time in conjunction with the laws that govern its evolution uniquely determine its state at any other time then we say that the system is deterministic. Systems, thus defined, belong to the category of substance since they are what states are predicated of. Thus the doctrine of determinism is the thesis that the universe as a whole constitutes a deterministic system. I doubt that the doctrine is intelligible or coherent because it relies on the concept of the state of the universe at a time, and I don't think there is any such thing. Real systems are deterministic relative to a set of laws that characterizes the connections between some definite set of predicates (that make up the vocabulary of a specific science or empirical domain). But the very idea of the universe -- the set of everything that exists in space and time -- isn't restricted to a particular set of predicates (e.g. it isn't restricted to the set of physical properties).

The doctrine of determinism thus may rely on the flawed intuition that all the predicates that designate real properties somehow can be defined in term of physical predicates, and that the laws of physics are (broadly) deterministic (modulo quantum indeterminacies). In other words, the doctrine of determinism relies on the intuition that all the genuine empirical properties of all the "real" entities in the world supervene on physical properties. Even if we accept that this idea can be cashed out and made plausible (which I doubt) it still would no follow that just because the universe qua physical system is deterministic therefore all supervening sets of predicates must designate properties (possible states of real objects) that evolve deterministically. Denying this still is consistent with the idea that any "event" -- described in whatever vocabulary (e.g. the vocabulary of chemistry, geology or psychology) -- has a cause (or several causes). But this denial of determinism also is consistent with the idea that there are no sets of deterministic laws that connect states with earlier states, as those states are singled out by this "supervening" vocabulary. Davidson't anomalous monism is a instance of this idea of supervenience of the mental on the physical that doesn't carry the determinism holding at the supervened upon level to the supervenient level.

Also unclear to me is what you mean to signify with "laws of reality". Are the principles of theoretical rationality, and of practical reason, that we (often though not always) hold our beliefs, deliberations and intentions answerable to, laws of reality in that sense?

Free will is necessarily deterministic and requires the absence of absolute "freedom." — TheWillowOfDarkness

One can distinguish two concepts, or two conditions, maybe, of freedom, called liberty of indifference and liberty of spontaneity. Liberty of indifference is the condition under which human actions aren't fully determined by their antecedent circumstances conjoined with deterministic laws. This is the stringent incompatibilist requirement that if someone freely performed some actions A, in given antecedent circumstances, then it should have been possible for this person to have refrained from doing A, or done something else, in those exact same circumstances. The requirement that you are stressing is the requirement of liberty of spontaneity. This is the requirement that actions not occur at random but rather conform with what the agent wants or decides. For this requirement to be satisfied there indeed seems to be required an effective causal link between, on the one hand, the agent's decision (or, broadly, her antecedent motivations and beliefs) and, on the second hand, her subsequent actions. Her action must be intelligible in light of her reasons and motivations in order that it could be ascribed to her qua agent, let alone be ascribed to her as her free action

It's not clear that the second requirement entails that determinism must be true, however, since the sort of law of causation at issue, which links an agent's motivations and practical deliberation abilities to her subsequent actions, need not have the same form as deterministic and exceptionless laws of natures (assuming there are any such things). They may rather be principles of practical rationality, and there is no reason why one ought to assimilate such principles to deterministic laws. Under some accounts of action, the causal model that links antecedent psychological states of agent, including states of the will, to actions, is indirect. It is a model of agent causation, where the antecedent cause is an agent -- a substance -- rather than events or states. Hence, one can have liberty of spontaneity consistently with the negation of determinism. The negation of determinism mustn't be assimilated, though, with the idea that events or processes (or actions) that aren't determined by the conjunction of laws of nature and antecedents circumstances thereby are uncaused or random. It may be the case that the stringent requirement from the incompatibilist libertarian is indeed too stringent, and that it is not possible that the agent who did A could have done something different in the exact same circumstances. But it need not follow from this that her action was determined by those circumstances since there is no law of nature that links those circumstances with the action.

In the Third Antinomy of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes the empirical character of causality from the intelligible character of causality. The former reveals empirical "events" in nature to follow from antecedent "events" in accordance with deterministic laws. The latter reveals other "events" (i.e. actions) to follow intelligibly from non-deterministic principles of practical rationality, on the basis of an agent's assessment of her own practical situation (not quite Kant's own formulation, but rather my gloss on it). The two sorts of accounts seem to conflict when actions are identified with (some of) the "events" that natural sciences disclose as conforming with deterministic laws. But it is unclear that human actions can be disclosed through such an empirical stances, and hence that they can be identified at all outside of the proper hermeneutical context within which alone they are disclosed as intelligible occurrences in the life of rational animals.

Right on the button. Just what I needed. — Pneumenon

I hope this will fuel some discussions here.

We generally agree that if one is in a coercive institution that restricts one's choice to such a complete extent that they have no non-trivial choices left to make on pain of violence, forcible restraint, etc. then they are not free in any interesting sense, as with going to prison.

I am simply pointing out that birth is such an institution, though people do not acknowledge this. — The Great Whatever

That would be something worth acknowledging if all the choices that anyone makes in life are trivial and inconsequential. But this thesis more resemble a philosophically loaded nihilistic view of human existence than it does resemble a truism that one can simply "point out".

I never said any of those things. Why respond if you're not going to read what I write? — The Great Whatever

You denied that there is any significant gradation in between the series of examples that I offered for your consideration: from being forcibly jailed in Alcatraz to being born on Earth. You implied that my suggestion that there might be a significant gradation that your are failing to acknowledge is merely a pointless verbal dispute -- a symptom of exposure to philosophy. This means that, in your view, it is indisputable that being put in jail is the same as being born on Earth. This is precisely the question begging premise that you are pushing.

If the gradation isn't significant, then it doesn't affect the argument in an interesting way. If you want a verbal dispute, okay, but I don't. Too much philosophy will do that to you. — The Great Whatever

I don't see an argument. There is just equivocation. If your premise is that any restriction in the scope of freedom, however tiny, is the same as the total annihilation of freedom akin to coercion to do one sigle thing, then your premise is question begging. It is just a rephrasing of your contentious conclusion.

What options worth the name does someone in prison have? Seriously? — The Great Whatever

That would depend on the prison you have been forcefully put or born into. Have you been born in Alcatraz? Or in North Korea? Or in Norway? Or on Earth (while being free to move to any country, or to a desert island)? Don't you see some gradation in point of freedom? For your argument to run through you have to call them all prisons and deny any gradation. But what justification do you have for calling them all "prisons" without begging the question?

Maybe your problem is that you have a schizophrenic way of making claims: they are either philosophical or non-philosophical. But I don't see that as something that I have to answer for; rather you do. — The Great Whatever

Forget about philosophy and philosophical theses, then. Let us stick to the ordinary senses of freedom at issue when we say (1) that jailed people are deprived of freedom and (2) that people coerced to act in some specific way aren't free to act differently. They are still two distinct uses of the concept of freedom. It's not quite the same thing (1) to have some of your basic freedoms curtailed (e.g. being coerced to remain in jail) and (2) to have all of your options removed, at any single time, except one unique course of action (e.g. being coerced to eat your broccoli). You are trading on this equivocation between two ordinary, albeit distinct, uses of "being free" in order to slide from the premise than jailed people "aren't free" to the conclusion that people who simply have been born "aren't free" in whatever they do.

What do you want me to say? That people in prison are free to go to the bathroom right when they feel like they have to pee, or several minutes after? — The Great Whatever

I've already acknowledged that people in prison may have the scope of their freedom severely restricted. This doesn't help you much in securing your wild extrapolation to the claim that being born is akin to being restricted to just the sorts of actions comparable to the fulfillment of passive bodily functions. You never defend the wild extrapolation beyond reasserting the very weak premise from which it doesn't follow.

That's exactly what I just said. I didn't think claiming that jailed people aren't free would be so controversial. — The Great Whatever

It's not controversial at all. One one natural reading of the claim, it's a truism. On another, more contentious, reading of the claims, it is quite disputable. Your argument trades on a equivocation between those two readings, as I've already explained a few times. What is questionable is the claim that *any* action preformed by a person who is jailed is thereby also "coerced". Also questionable is the claim that being born is akin to being jailed in the relevant respect required for your argument to go through.

If I thought it was beyond discussion, I wouldn't be discussing it. What are you even talking about? — The Great Whatever

You lopsided view of "discussion" seems to me just as extravagant as your view of "coercion". In this thread, you mainly reasserted your disputed claims while systematically ignoring my objections and requests for clarification.

Lots of liberties are restricted in jail. — darthbarracuda

Yes, it also seems true to me that jailing someone severely restricts the scope of her freedom of action but doesn't necessarily obliterate it, or absolve her from all responsibility for anything that she might do while jailed. (I also hold that responsibility entails freedom).

I don't have two sets of beliefs, one for common sense truisms and one for philosophical theses. I just try to say what's true. — The Great Whatever

So, in your view it is simply true that having been born is akin to having been jailed, and you are inferring from this allegedly true premise the conclusion that no human action is free. You should have said in the OP that you hold your premise to be beyond discussion and that you also are unwilling to address any challenge to the validity of your inference.

I don't think you can be said to do anything freely if you're in jail. — The Great Whatever

Why? Is that meant as a philosophical thesis or a common sense truism? If the latter, then that would seem to depend on the nature of the jail. If you are hanging with all four limbs shackled to the wall of your cell then there isn't much you can do, let alone do it freely, indeed. In some other jails prisoners can work for money, socialize, and pursue an education. You would have to argue that even in those cases none of their actions are free before you are allowed to slide to the argument that human life is akin to a life sentence to jail, just because we don't chose to be born, and that, therefore, none or our actions are free.

I believe we have free will and I believe that we can be subjected to coercion and be forced to act against what we wish to do. I believe that there are some impersonal (and no so impersonal) determinative factors that powerfully shape our behavior. This is the compatibilist position, as I understand it. I am not at all sure I can prove that I freely willed something, decided to perform an act without influence. — Bitter Crank

This view of freedom that you ascribe to compatibilists can be contrasted with a specific libertarian construal of the principle of alternate possibilitities (PAP) according to which an act can only be free if there was a possibility, in the specific circumstances in which one acted, that one might have acted differently. That is, whenever one does A, one can only be said to have done so freely if one had the power, to refrain from doing it, or to do something else, in the exact same circumstances. Further, in this particular libertarian construal of the PAP, the circumstances at issue include the agent's character and states of mind as they were up to the moment of decision. Compatibilists are right, it seems to me, to reject this construal of freedom as too stringent. The PAP can nevertheless be salvaged by them through allowing that internal circumstances that make up the motivational state of the agent be allowed to vary in the alternative possibilities under consideration. So, on that view, one can be powerfully conditioned to chose to do A over B, proceed to do A, and still be free just because if one rether had (counterfactually) been conditioned to chose to do B over A, then one would have done B instead, in the same external circumstances.

I think this view of "powerful conditioning" is suspect and you are right to be skeptical of the possibility for one to rule out that one can know not to be under the influence of any such conditionings. You nevertheless accept the possibility of freedom in ordinary cases of (seemingly) free decision making. But this means that you are rejecting the strong libertarian construal of the PAP, as well you should. This rejection is consistent with a rather more moderate view of libertarian freedom -- which still contrasts with the compatibilist version sketched above -- and according to which conditioning circumstances that determine our preferences or desires aren't all freedom conferring (as the strong compatibilist would claim) or freedom negating (as the strong libertarian would claim) but are sources both of the makeup of our volitional character (which is partly constitutive of our free agency) and of specific cognitive dysfunction that can sometimes provide exculpation from some acts through diminishing our freedom.

Hence, although it may be difficult to assess whether someone acted freely on the basis of motives reasonably acted upon, or under the compulsion of desires that clouded her good judgment through no fault of her own, the crucial point is that this uncertainty doesn't concern the strength of the antecedent conditionings but rather their roles as either partly constitutive of practical rationality (and hence of freedom) or as providing impediments to its exercise. Further, in the case where "strong" conditionings are sources of impediment to the exercise of practical reason, it must still be decided whether, in the circumstances, the bad choices that resulted are or aren't excusable. This is highly context dependent. Only when their presence provides exculpation can we say that the action wasn't free.

As I mention in the OP, I'm specifically responding to a compatibilist claim that does think that coercion negates freedom, and defines the weak notion of freedom that may nonetheless be metaphysically determined as that which is uncoerced. — The Great Whatever

Didn't we already go over that? You also say in the OP that "Unfortunately, life itself is such a coercive situation, since it is impossible to consent to being born, and all 'decisions' made while alive are within the context of that coercive establishment."

This seems to fallaciously slide from (1) the idea of being put against one's will in a situation in which one is restricted to chose among a range of options that is narrower that one might have wished to have been put into to (2) the quite different idea of being coerced to do something specific.

For instance, a prisoner is, in a sense, coerced into remaining in her jail. But then she might steal an apple from a fellow prisoner. Just because she might not have stolen the apple from her fellow prisoner if she had not been put in jail doesn't entail that she was coerced into stealing it. This gloss on the situation may or may not be reasonable depending on further assumptions. Was she malnourished (while the fellow prisoner was well fed) to a degree such that the stealing of the apple was reasonable? In that case, yes, her having been put in jail could be said to constitute circumstances that deprived her from the opportunity freely not to steal the apple, according the weak notion of freedom that you ascribe to the compatibilist.

But then, in slightly different circumstances, a different gloss on the situation would also agree with this compatibilist conception on freedom. This is the case where the prisoner had reasonable options, white still being constrained to staying in jail, other than to steal the apple. We imagine that she would still have preferred not to be jailed, and hence not to "have to" steal the apple, but she still isn't "coerced" to do it just on this ground alone. To pretend that she would thus be unfree (or coerced) not to steal the apple just because she would have done something else had she not been coerced to remain in jail (as she indeed was) is an unjustified inference, even when your weak conception of compatibilist freedom is the chosen measure of freedom.

A free act cannot be performed under coercion. — The Great Whatever

In the sense of "free" that is at issue in most debates about free will, determinism and responsibility, coercion doesn't negate freedom. To say of an act that it was coerced just is to say that the agent likely wouldn't have been motivated to do it in the absence of the coercion, and that the coercitive circumstance exculpates the agent, that is, makes her action permissible and rational.

Rational and irrational actions both can be performed freely according to compatibilists and libertarians. It is precisely because there are (and only when there are) alternate possibilities for and agent to have acted irrationally, in the (external) circumstances where she actually acted rationally, and vice versa, that she is deemed responsible for her action, and that it is therefore qualified as free. One can be motivated to act irrationally, and do so. The main difference between the compatibilist and incompatibilist (i.e. libertarian) conceptions of freedom is that the former holds even free actions to be entirely determined by antecedent circumstances (including internal "circumstances" that pertain to the agents character and motivations), while the latter views the agent herself, rather than antecedent circumstances outside of the scope of her power of agency at the time of acting, as the source of her free action. Compatibilists tend to have a impersonal event-causative view of causality while libertarians are more prone to endorse an agent-causative view.

I'd take my description a bit further. Free will is not even at stake here. These legal categories are measuring specific coercive factors on an agent, not whether their act was freely defined. What it at stake here is not whether anyone had a choice or not, but rather the circumstances of the choice and how it relates to legal and moral culpability. What we are trying to work out is not whether someone was free to choose otherwise. It is whether they chose in a certain way so that we know how to respond to them and the risk they might pose in the future. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This rather sounds to me like an attempt to redefine, or salvage, traditional legal categories in the framework of an utilitarian conception of justice that aims to accommodate the metaphysical doctrine of causal determinism. This move is equally available to the hard incompatibilist since they also are determinists -- and, indeed, Sam Harris sometimes argues similarly, though he also sometimes argues, like Galen Strawson, for the medicalization of the "justice" system. What distinguishes the compatibilist from the hard determinist, thought, is her pretension to salvage the idea of free will, not explain it away, or attempt to retain it as a flawed concept that it is useful for us to (pretend to) believe in. Saying that it is practically on point, because socially useful, to sentence criminals because, though their actions are entirely governed by their circumstances, sentencing them has a useful effect on their subsequent behavior, is a move that also is available to the compatibilist precisely because she marks out those circumstances where sentencing, or the threat of sentencing, is effective as those in which actions constitute act of free will in the compatibilist sense.

On edit: Let me note, also, that Anthony Kenny argues, (in Frewill and Responsibility, Routledge, 1978,) for an interpretation of the concept of mens rea in criminal law that is also quasi-utilitarian and rests on a compatibilist view of free will. His interpretation also highlights the deterrence function of sentencing, but emphasizes particularly the deterrence effect on the public at large rather than its effect on potential recidivists who already have been caught. Awareness of the potential threat of sentencing is thus viewed as a sort of scaffolding to the flawed practical deliberation of agents who haven't quite internalized moral principles well enough to be motivated not to wrong their fellows merely on ground of the fact that doing so wrongs them (or society).

The serious point: we can't know whether a behavior is determined or freely chosen. No matter what I claimed, or you claimed, the claim would be open to challenge.

"Deterministic factors forced me to eat the whole quart of Hagen Dazs ice cream." "I freely chose to eat the whole quart of Hagen Dazs ice cream." I can't finally be certain myself, you can't be certain as an observer, whether this dessert debauchery was freely chosen or whether I was compelled (by learned behavior, by insatiable hunger, by an unpleasant desire to make sure nobody else got so much as a spoon full).

But just because we can be sure, doesn't exclude determinism, it doesn't exclude free will. What it excludes is certainty that we can tell the difference. — Bitter Crank

You are arguing that we can't know whether an action is free as soon as the claim regarding its motive is open to challenge, of if we can't be certain what the motive is. What kind of epistemology is at play here? Cartesian epistemology demands that knowledge be certain. But the ordinary concept of knowledge doesn't demand it. All empirical knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is uncertain. It still can be considered knowledge when it issues from a faculty that normally enables one to gather, fallibly, knowledge about the world.

For sure, there are cases where we are uncertain, misguided or clueless (or repressive, or self-delusional) regarding what motivates certain human actions. In some cases, for purpose of ascription of responsibility, the motive may be fuzzy or even irrelevant, because nothing much of significance hangs on the choice that has been made. There just isn't any point to evaluating it rationally or morally. In other cases the choice is significant (i.e. it is rationally or morally appraisable) and it can also be as certain as anything ever is what motivated someone to indulge in ice cream eating in spite of a dietary restriction. This may be a case where that person can't disown (and wouldn't even be tempted to disown) responsibility merely on the ground that the causal chain that underlies her gluttony extends further in the past. It's just irrelevant that it so extends, and the point regarding determinism just is orthogonal to the point about epistemology.

For purposes of "justice", we make the assumption that the person found guilty of a crime voluntarily, of their own free will, decided to pull the trigger and kill the victim. The defense may suggest that the crime was determined (couldn't be a free choice) by insanity. During the sentencing phase the defense will bring out all sorts of relevant factors showing that determinism was in play from infancy foreword. The prosecution will stick with free will.

I disagree that anyone (except maybe some philosophically inclined expert witnesses) assume that the accused acted freely rather than under the impetus of unconscious factors that absolve her from responsibility (and hence also undercut the ascription of free will, in the particular case under trial). The prosecution may be biased towards drawing this conclusion (on the basis of available evidence) while the defense may be biased towards drawing the contrary conclusion. But the regulative standards of the judicial process enjoins finding out whether the accused indeed acted freely, and culpably, or can be exculpated on ground of insanity (or rational incapacity). It's not two incompatible philosophical doctrines about free will that are put on trial, it is a human agent. It is an assumption made by both the prosecution and defense (and also, more importantly, by the judge or jury) that free will is possible but can be undercut in specific cases or circumstances by medical factors that fall outside of the scope of an agent's responsibility. In criminal cases, and many jurisdictions, certainty isn't required either, only evidence beyond reasonable doubt.

It does not, once you make the move, as I am doing, to considering birth, which on the ordinary use coerces individuals in much the same way (perhaps even more drastically) as imprisonment. — The Great Whatever

It is still not remotely plausible to argue, on the basis of the ordinary usage of the word "coerced", for the idea that all our actions are coerced just because we haven't freely chosen to be born. You claim your view of coercion to be quite ordinary and uncontaminated by contentious metaphysical prejudice. But on the ordinary view, whether a practical choice, and the action that has issued from this choice, has been made freely or not -- and/or is or isn't coerced -- doesn't require that *everything* that led to the specific range of options that are open to the agent must have been in her control. Hence, on the ordinary view, whether or not the action performed by someone, seemingly under duress, is or isn't free, doesn't depend on the circumstances of that person's birth.

It is still unclear, since you've declined to argue for your point, and merely asserted that your view rests on the ordinary concept of coercion, whether your view depends on a requirement about ultimate responsibility or, rather, a requirement that genuine freedom must be freedom from any (involuntary) narrowing of the range of possibilities open to one. Maybe you have a third argument but you haven't stated it.

Your view of coerced action also seem to neglect an essential feature of the evaluation of action. You earlier dismissed the concept of responsibility, and this may symptomatic of a conceptual problem, it seems to me. The main reason why we don't hold someone who acted under duress accountable -- when we don't -- is because the circumstance of the duress marks the choice to disobey as unreasonable. It is always relative to some alternative, or range of alternatives, genuinely open to one, that we evaluate responsibility for actions. It is when someone acts irrationally, immorally (or illegally, etc.) in the face of reasonable alternatives that we condemn someone. We further require that the person who chose badly must have been aware of the existence of alternative (and better) options, or that she could be held accountable for her lack of awareness of them (e.g. in the case of negligence).

Hence, a compatibilist can argue that even though all actions are determined by antecedent "circumstances" (including the character and states of mind of the agent) her choice can be deemed free if it is rationally (or morally, etc.) appraisable in light of the range of opportunities that were open to her from the point of view of her practical deliberative circumstances, at the time when she was called to choose. The alternatives compared in the appraisal of the actions never are the actual action compared with the possibility for the agent not having been born. The fact that one was born without having had any say in the matter doesn't absolves one from the responsibility to choose among the alternatives that later become open to one.

No, it doesn't have to be unconstrained by anything, but the circumstances of birth determine our possibilities so completely that there is no real difference between the 'freedom' of acting once born and the 'freedom' (by analogy) of giving someone your wallet 'freely' when they point a gun at you. Systematically coercive circumstances remove the possibility of free action; birth is such a circumstance. — The Great Whatever

You did not disambiguate in between the two possible interpretations of your argument that I highlighted. You have an heterodox view of coercion according to which it threatens the possibility for action to be free. Is this so because acts are "coerced", in your view, that we aren't "ultimately responsible" for, as hard incompatibilists such as G. Strawson argue -- such that we never have more than one genuinely open "option" before us at any given time -- or because the unchosen antecedent circumstances of our lives merely narrow the range of our options?

the prisoner may freely chose to remain in her cell because she values life more than "freedom".
— Pierre-Normand

That is not a free action, it is obviously coerced.

This also glosses over another distinction that I was making. In what sense is it coerced? Obviously, it answers to the ordinary language use of the term, but your own philosophical use of the term deviates significantly from the ordinary use. This case is arguably extreme, but it is an extreme along a spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum can be found cases such as one having to chose between chocolate or strawberry ice cream. Suppose after some reflection and hesitation, I settle for chocolate. Was my choice "coerced" by my antecedent preferences and prejudices? Maybe on your view of coercion it was. But then this would deviate from ordinary use. And if you wish to appeal to ordinary use to characterize the agent's choice to remain in jail rather than being shot as being coerced, then that still leaves much room for freedom in ordinary life where most choices are uncoerced like that.

I'm not a secondary source; I give my own opinions. — The Great Whatever

I sense a false dichotomy here: either one thinks for oneself or one slavishly attempts to interpret original thinkers without doubting anything that they said (rather in the the way Justice Scalia meant to interpret the U.S. Constitution.) Why it is not possible for a piece of secondary literature to express what its author meant as, in part, explanation/appropriation of the text commented upon and, in part, criticism and elaboration on it? Much of the secondary literature traditions in philosophy take the form of protracted dialogues, it seem to me. The only amount of reverence to the original text that is required is the amount necessary not to get it completely wrong (and that's already a lot, hence the need for exegesis).

I think compatibilism is nonsense. This topic is not about its merits. Rather, I want to look a little at something compatibilists often claim -- that the important notion of free will is that we are not being coerced by anyone, not that we are metaphysically non-determined. I think this is plainly false, but whatever, let's look at the weaker version of free will. — The Great Whatever

(Note: I am quoting this from the OP, but I read the whole thread before responding)

It is unclear to me why your ideas about coercion ought to trouble compatibilists. The main debate between compatibilism and incompatibilism concern, precisely, the idea of the compatibility of free will and determinism. It is true that some compatibilists will differentiate among acts that are causally determined (in a world governed by deterministic laws) those that are, at the moment of deliberating or choosing, coerced from those that aren't coerced. What you are referring to as the "weaker version of free will" thus is the compatibilist version that identified free actions with actions that aren't coerced (even though they are causally determined). You are objecting that this weaker version is empty or near empty since the situation in which we assess alternatives is severely restricted, on your view, by the circumstances of our birth.

What is unclear though is whether you mean (1) to be making an argument from ultimate responsibility, or (2) rather wish to insist that the "weak" compatibilist freedom falls short from some stronger version that would be the only one, on your view, worth having or worthy of being called freedom at all.

On the first construal, you would be making an argument on the lines of Galen Strawson's "Basic Argument" for hard incompatibilism according to which an act can only be free if, not only is it uncoerced at the moment when it is chosen, but also, all the antecedent causal circumstances of the choice (including the character and states of mind of the agent) would also fall (directly or indirectly) under the responsibilty of the agent.

On the second construal, you would seem to be arguing for a conception of freedom according to which an act is freely chosen not just if the agent is free and responsible to chose among the options open to her (that is, the options that only are directly constrained by her own choice) but also if her range of options is unconstrained by anything. On that view, maybe she can't fly because she has been born a human being rather than a bird and hence doesn't have the ability to fly. Or, she wish that she would be able to live a life free of any suffering and human life isn't like that, and hence she isn't free.

Those two arguments are importantly different. The first one centers on the notion of ultimate responsibility -- which a libertarian incompatibilist may wish to salvage -- while the second one advocates for a notion of freedom that seems extravagant even from the point of view of most libertarians.

I would also wish to note that both incompatibilist and compatibilist libertarians can construe coerced act as free inasmuch as the source of the coercition has the form of a threat or incentive rather than a hard physical constraint. Hence there is a categorical difference between being constrained to remain in jail because of the thick walls and the lock on the door, and being constrained to remain on pain of being shot. In the later case, the prisoner may freely chose to remain in her cell because she values life more than "freedom". But that doesn't entail that her choice among the two alternatives wasn't free. Circumstances outside of her control merely restricted her options to two unpleasant ones; whereas in the first case, she doesn't have any option to get out, though she may still have an open range of options regarding how she is going to spend time in her cell.

You can't ever know if you're getting a "perfectly good introduction" to the thought of some guy unless you actually read that guy for yourself. I'd rather think for myself and make up my own mind than have someone else do it for me in tortured "academese." — Thorongil

I don't understand this debate at all. It seems obvious to me that both primary and secondary literature are essential. Indeed, the only thing that truly demarcates "primary literature", so called, from secondary literature, is that it mainly consists in works that have become classics, for better or worse. Almost all primary literature has begun as secondary literature. Few philosophers have endeavored to reinvent the wheel or have abstained from commentating on contemporaries or predecessors. Hence, while Sturgeon's law applies to so called secondary literature, it doesn't apply to primary literature since in that case most of the crap already has been sifted out. If, however, one is able to be selective in one's selection of secondary literature sources, then this criterion becomes irrelevant. Aristotle makes up part of the secondary literature on Plato, and likewise for Kant and Hume, Heidegger and Husserl, Wittgenstein and Frege, etc.

On edit: I am currently reading Sebastian Rödl's Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Intellect for the third time. Is it secondary literature on Kant, or is it an original work? It is both. The distinction is pointless. On account of its specific topic, if it weren't informed by Kant (and by Aristotle), then it would be misinformed. If it weren't original then it would be redundant and pointless -- but it is neither.

Yes, it seems plausible to me too that, while we distinguish, in some contexts, the literal meaning of an expression from the metaphorical uses that can be made of it in this context, the notions of the literal and of the metaphorical don't mark a dichotomy. In order to explain the literal use of an expression (e.g. a concept name) one has to convey a practical understanding of its proper use. But in order to convey this to someone else, one must rely on an already shared background of tendencies to demarcate the domain (circumstances) in which the expression, and other expressions used to explain it, can be sensibly used to say or convey how thing are.

When the expression is used in a way such that there is a high degree of context sensitivity to its understanding, then we way that it is used in a metaphorical way. When it is used in a way such that the features of the context that are relevant to its understanding aren't salient anymore, because we have become habituated to adjust to them in a conventional way, then the contribution that those features make to the meaning of the expression tend to be ignored and we say that the expression is used literally. (If we are reminded of the genealogy of this use, we then may recognize the expression as a "dead metaphor".) And then, in such cases, we forget that what delimits the range of circumstances (including the nature of the communicative intentions) in which the use of the expression is literal from the circumstances where it is creative and fuzzy. But since it is precisely the location of this boundary that define the concepts referred to by our expressions (because this boundary demarcates what the concept applies to from what it doesn't apply to), and since this boundary can't be sharp, then the literal meaning can't be explicated without making reference to the potential metaphorical uses that lie at the periphery. But since this is inexhaustible, the literal meaning can never be fully explicated.

I think that the sleight-of-hand here is in the whole assumption of pragmatism - namely, the idea that the ultimate test of something's validity is whether or not it's useful. — Pneumenon

I think this overlooks an important difference. In another related paper, Haugeland explicitly disowns the label of "pragmatism". His account is meant to vindicate the notions of truth and objectivity in opposition with the pragmatism of Rorty that seeks to dispense entirely with both. But, at the same time, philosophers like Putnam and David Wiggins have endorsed pragmatism in a way that is consistent with Haugeland's efforts. His account also is sharply contrasted with Quine's pragmatic/holistic empiricism. Brandom and Davidson also want to recover objectivity within their own inferentialist and coherentist accounts, respectively, but while the latter struggles with the concept of empirical experience, the former seeks to dispense with it entirely. Haugeland offers a account of experience as the exercise of recognitional abilities that are constituted as such inseparably from the (understanding of) the constitutive standards that govern the objets thus recognized and that make them intelligible.

(Above edited to switch "former" and "latter".)

Haugeland is saying, I think, that a pattern exists when there is a set of rules that govern what something should do, and how we're supposed to respond when it does (or doesn't) do what it's supposed to do. We follow these rules by responding the way we're supposed to. — Pneumenon

There is one (possibly two) distinction that Haugeland makes and that you possibly missed, and another one that is merely implicit in Haugeland's discussion, and that he makes more explicitly in a subsequent paper: (Truth and Rule Following).

The first (explicit) distinction to be made distinguishes two levels of patterns exemplified, respectively, in the constitutive standards that objects obey, and, secondly, in the objects themselves. For instance, to recognize something as a bishop in the game of chess is to recognize it as the object that it is, and to recognize that bishops, in the general case, only move along diagonals, corresponds to the recognition of (or insistence on, or institution of) a higher level pattern -- i.e. the existence of a constitutive standard.

The merely implicit distinction alluded to above is that between two sorts or "rule-following". When the objects (lower level patterns) obey the objective standards, they -- the objects themselves -- are "behaving" in accordance with rules, we may say. But our recognizing them the be the objects that they are, on the one hand, and our recognizing that they accord with the constitutive standards, on the other hand, both depend on our correctly exercising perceptual abilities, and hence, our correctly following rules. (More comments on that later, in a followup post).

Those distinctions become apparent when (and make it possible that) the objects that we perceive appear not to behave in accordance with the constitutive standards of the domains that they belong to. Those distinctions are reflected in the different ways in which we can be mistaken and the different ways in which, accordingly, we attempt to correct those mistakes. One source of error consists in our having misidentified an object (e.g. we thought it was a bishop when, in actuality, it was a rook). Another source of error occurs when we are mistaken about some constitutive standard. The second case, however, splits into two sub-cases. When an object has been correctly identified (as a bishop, say) and then seems to have moved in a way that doesn't accord with a constitutive standard, this could be because we have incorrectly judged it (in experience) to violate this constitutive standard, or we are mistaken about this standard being empirically valid. (For the standard to be empirically valid, here, isn't meant to be inconsistent with its being brought to bear to experience a priori. For more on that, see my two posts above about synthetic a priori propositions.)

This last distinction can be illustrated with numerous cases of apparent falsification of scientific theories when, historically, the theory was actually, and correctly, saved from falsification through the adjonction of an auxiliary hypothesis. Oftentimes, the ad hoc (so called) hypothesis was later empirically confirmed independently. One classical example is that of Uranus that was seen not to precisely follow the orbit prescribed by Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. Inasmuch as Le Verrier was justified to postulate the existence of another planet that had precisely the mass and orbit of Neptune, in order to explain this anomaly, then the apparent discrepancy exemplified an error in our bringing to bear the constitutive standards of Newtonian mechanics to the behavior of Uranus. But it sometimes also turns out (as it later came to be the case with the anomaly in the orbit of Mercury) that the standards themselves have to be adjusted or relinquished.

This brings me back to your claim quoted above regarding what it is that the rules say regarding what we are supposed to do when objects don't behave (or don't appear to behave) in the way they should. It is quite important to Haugeland that no rule dictates what it is that we should do in such circumstances. That is a matter of adjusting our knowledge of (objects in) the world with our understanding of (the constitutive standards of) the world. The adjustment is mutual, and, in some cases, the former may be at fault, and in other cases the latter may be at fault. But there is no general rule for deciding which. There only possibly could exist such a rule if empiricism were true, and the objects (lower level "patterns") could be singled out in experience independently of the standards that govern their behaviors. But Haugeland's insistance that the higher level patterns always are disclosed as constitutive standards for the objects that can populate some empirical domain precludes the very possibility of such an independent identification of objects as correlates of "raw" experience.

I only am acquainted with two works on the topic. Yuval Dolev, Time and Realism: Metaphysical and Antimetaphysical Perspectives, MIT Press, 2007, is fascinating but it's been a while since I've read (most of) it only once, and I can't therefore vouch for it unreservedly. It got me thinking about the thickness of the present (i.e. the idea that the "present time" always has a contextually defined finite temporal extension -- an idea that meshes well with ideas regarding embodied cognition), among other things.

The second work only is tangentially related to the "philosophy of time", proper. It is Sebastian Rödl's Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Intellect, HUP 2012 (originally published as Kategorien des Zeitlichen in 2005). This one is a momentous and a stunning achievement. I am currently going through my third reading. But it's not so much about time as a topic, but rather more about transcendental logic -- the study of temporality (tense, aspect, and generic thought) as a system of forms that characterizes out thoughts as they relate essentially to experience. It does, of course, have profound implications about the nature of time, but also about epistemology, the metaphysics of propositions (i.e. Fregean thoughts), and a variety of other topics.

I've been so busy with work lately, and now I'm a bit burned out, so...I'll have to return to it when I can. — John

No worry, and no hurry. The end of this month isn't a deadline either. The discussion about Brassier's paper spilled over the next couple months and there are outstanding issues there too (such as the "argument from ancestrality".)

And to assert this wrongness does seem to commit one to the idea that truth is not a property of statements but of the propositions that are expressed by them and also to the idea that there must be, in some unimaginable way, unexpressed propositions. Then this begins to look like a form of Platonism. — John

Yes, this raises issues regarding the ontological status of propositions (Fregean thoughts). But maybe this is a topic for another thread; or possibly suited for the now dormant Pattern and Being thread ;-) (Hint: a proposition can be regarded as, in a sense, a possible pattern -- i.e. a possible way for our world to be -- while a true proposition would be grasped when one objectively refers to an actual pattern -- i.e. a way our world can intelligibly be thought to be, and, indeed, is. Also, in the previous sentence I have used "to be" and "is" tenselessly. Our world being different in the past makes a difference to how it "is" in that sense)

And you replied that you did not mean to imply that "dinosaurs roam the earth" was not true at the time. This seems to contradict your earlier statement that you agreed with Michael, so now I am confused as to what you do beleive. — John

That's because I understand "...is true" as predicated of a statement to be tenseless. The statement at issue is the statement expressed by us, in the present, with the use of the mentioned sentence. Statements that are true at one time are true at all times. This is more apparent in the case of so called eternal truths, such as mathematical truths, but is also true of temporal truths (i.e. truths that pertain to something being in a definite state at some definite time). The latter is somewhat hidden by the fact that we represent statements with the sentences used to express them. For instance, if Smokey the cat is on the mat right now, the sentence used by me in the future to express this very same fact (which concerns what's up with Smokey right now) will be different. This sentence will use a past tense.

So, when someone claims that "dinosaurs roam the earth" was not true at the time, one may mean that the present tense sentence "dinosaurs roam the earth" would not have expressed a truth if it had been used by an English speaker in the distant past. It could also mean that the statement made by us through using that sentence right now doesn't truly ascribe a property to the Earth that it would have exemplified in the distant past. (It doesn't really matter if you hold either "... roam the earth" or "dinosaurs roam ..." to be the predicate). But on that second interpretation, the sentence is understood as an open sentence that includes a time variable. Saying then, now, that it "was true at the time", is meant to fill up the time variable in the mentioned sentence in order to express with it a definite statement (expressing a timeless truth) that is then properly evaluated true, and tenselessly so.

It is the second interpretation that I favor, since it is how the T-schema, and disquotational schema, are meant to be understood, with the mentioned sentence held to express a definite statement (i.e. a definite Fregean though) rather than as an open statement (i.e. a Fregean concept) that is predicated of a time.

So, I am agreeing with Michael that the disquotational schema, or the T-schema, are valid even as they refers to past circumstances before any human language was in use. But I disagree about the interpretation of the schema often incorrectly foisted on it, possibly by Micheal, but also by other participants in this thread too. And this is not just a matter of convention, but reflects are deeper philosophical point about the tenselesness of "...is true" as revealed by logical grammar, though somewhat hidden by English grammar.

No, not language users; language. Without language, there can be no sentence. If there can be no sentence, then there can be no true sentence. Yet, at that time, it would be the case that the universe exists (but not that "the universe exists" is true). — Sapientia

On edit: If you will bear with me, I will make my main point more explicitly in the last paragraph below, also added on edit.

The statement '"Smokey the cat is on the mat" is true' (if you allow me to stick with this example) isn't qualified by a time. It is a statement that we are making right now. It doesn't really make sense to ponder over what change it would make to the truth value of this statement if we were to evaluate it as it would have been made at a different time. Likewise, if the English statement "Smokey the cat is one the mat" is true, then it doesn't really make sense either to inquire about its truth value if the statement itself had been made by me three feet further on the left. Likewise with 'moving' the expression of this statement three hours or three billion years in the past.

One difficulty that seemingly arises is due the the tense of the verb that occurs in the sentence used to make the statement. This tense seems to make the statement dependent on the time when it is made in order to determine what strate of affairs it is describing. But this is an illusion that stems from confusing (1) the situational sentence used with (2) the statement made with the use of this situational sentence, as I had earlier suggested.

If I say right now that I am at home, and I am thereby making a statement that is true, my statement remains true in the future when I am not at home anymore. I could then re-express the same statement, if I wanted to, with the use of a different situational sentence that included a past tense verb. Those difficulties usually are glossed over in discussions of the T-schema through assuming that the truths being evaluated are eternal rather than temporal (e.g. we assume that Smokey always has been on the mat or never was). But if we are to make the account more general, we have to interpret all the indexical words and verb tenses of the mentioned sentence relative to its intended circumstance of expression in order to determine the statement being made, and hold this statement fixed while considering the range of circumstances relative to which its truth value is evaluated.

On edit: The range of circumstances just mentioned, relative to which the truth value of the statement are evaluated -- and, indirectly, the truth value of the sentence used by us to make this statement -- includes past, future, and counterfactual circumstances where we weren't yet around, aren't around anymore, or never were around, respectively.

They are ruled out because of the biconditional. Which is why it's also problematic to remove the biconditional and replace it with a material conditional. I don't want to allow the logical possibility of inappropriate truth conditions:

"P" is true if Q.

"The cat is on the mat" is true if the dog is on the bed. — Sapientia

I don't understand this. This last statement can't be derived from the disquotational shema where it is assumed that the mentioned sentence belongs to the same language as the language in which the truth conditions are stated. I think part of the confusion comes from your considering the mentioned sentence as a free standing material object, or uninterpreted syntactical object, such as an inscription on a billboard, that is envisioned to have different conventional meanings relative to the circumstances where it is being employed (e.g. in different cities where different languages are spoken). But the sentence being evaluated (and mentioned) rather always is the sentence used by us, in the present, and in English, in order to describe what is or would be the case in a variety of possible circumstances.

If there is no language. — Sapientia

There being language users in the vicinity is not a feature of the circumstances that has any relevance to evaluating whether the English sentence "Smokey the cat is on the mat" is true when Smokey the cat indeed is on the mat in those circumstances. We can imagine some circumstance in the distant past, in the distant future, or in a distant galaxy far away, when, or where, there are no language users around. If, in those actual or counterfactual circumstances, Smokey the cat is (was, or will be) on the mat, then the English sentence "Smokey the cat is (was, or will be) on the mat" as used by us now to describe what is (was, will be, or would have been) the case in to those actual or counterfactual circumstances is true.

So, you are free to interpret the biconditional form as the conjunction of two subjunctive conditionals, or as the statement of a material equivalence. — Pierre-Normand

Sorry for quoting myself, but I want to add this precision:

The intended interpretation as a conjunction of subjunctive conditionals is equivalent to saying that, in whatever worldly circumstances you might find yourself, then, in those specific circumstances, the T-shema interpreted as a statement of material equivalence must be true. And this means that the truth value of the mentioned sentence must be ascribed to it accordingly.

For instance, if you were to find yourself in circumstances where Smokey the cat is on the mat, then for the following statement of material equivalence to hold in those circumstances,

(1) "Smokey the cat is on the mat" is true iff Smokey the cat is on the mat

the truth value "true" must be ascribed to the sentence "Smokey the cat is on the mat" in order that it be properly interpreted and used as a statement in the object-language.

I think you are confusing the purpose of the biconditional. Do you mean it as a material equivalence, or something like, 'for any situation, if the thing on the left of the biconditional holds in that situation, then so does the thing on the right?' If you mean it as a material conditional, then only the current situation is relevant, making your claim trivially true, and at odds with the more grandiose claims you made at the beginning of this thread. — The Great Whatever

The way it is used in the literature on the philosophy of language and theories of truth, the disquotational shema always is meant to express a biconditional that holds over a range of possible worldly circumstances. It says of the mentioned sentence that it is properly evaluated as true in the object-language (i.e. it expresses a true statement with the use of the object-language) whenever, and only when, circumstances in the world are as described by the used sentence. So, you are free to interpret the biconditional form as the conjunction of two subjunctive conditionals, or as the statement of a material equivalence. You have to remember that the possible circumstances of evaluation range over ways the world might be (e.g. where Smokey the cat may or may not be on the mat) but hold fixed, and indeed uniquely determine, the semantic properties of object-language. (And that the meta-language also is held fixed ought to go without saying),

Michael and TGW,

This sort of ambiguity about the individuation condition for sentences of a language can be circumvented with the use of the word "statement" to refer to speech act forms -- i.e. expressions of determinate thoughts in language. In that way, "Snow is white", as used by English speakers and "La neige est blanche", as used by French speakers, make the same statement using two different sentences. Conversely, the same sentence can be used to make two different statements in two different languages. When Michael thus refers to an "English sentence", he is talking about the statement that is made when this sentence is used by English speakers.