In order to always have a secure compass in hand so as to find one's way in life, and to see life always in the correct light without going astray, nothing is more suitable than getting used to seeing the world as something like a penal colony. This view finds its...justification not only in my philosophy, but also in the wisdom of all times, namely, in Brahmanism, Buddhism, Empedocles, Pythagoras [...] Even in genuine and correctly understood Christianity, our existence is regarded as the result of a liability or a misstep. ... We will thus always keep our position in mind and regard every human, first and foremost, as a being that exists only on account of sinfulness, and who is life is an expiation of the offence committed through birth. Exactly this constitutes what Christianity calls the sinful nature of man. — Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted in Schopenhauer's Compass, Urs App

Husserl argued that philosophy needed to ask the basic questions about what lies in the presuppositions of science and the "naturalistic attitude". To look this deeply into the essential givenness of the world, one had to suspend of "bracket" knowledge claims that otherwise dominate ideas. — Astrophel

consider the standard truth tables taught in logic classes, and see how abstract they, referring to propositional values only. What happened to actual world?? It simply does not matter, which is why ango american philosophy collapsed in on itself. — Astrophel

Reason cannot, keep in mind, understand what it is, cannot "get behind" itself (Wittgenstein). for this would take a pov outside outside of logic itself and this cannot be "conceived". — Astrophel

It depends on how reason is conceived. Reason for the ancients and medievals is ecstatic and transcendent, "the Logos is without beginning and end." Often today it is not much more than computation. How it is conceived will determine its limits. Is reason something we do inside "language games?" Is it just "rule following?" Or is it a more expansive ground for both? Does reason have desires and ends? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It would be fun to see the Iliad or Beowulf rendered in logical form. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus,
that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.
Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades,
and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures,
for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled
from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men,
and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

I listened to a talk by John McDowell on Rödl's book. I — Leontiskos

Yes, in many ways Rödl is anachronistic. — Banno

So the present topic is Hegel catching up with the logic of the turn of the last century. Fine. — Banno

So I asked what a "Fregian proposition" is and received in reply explanations about what a thought is. — Banno

We are it seems to return to the obtuse philosophical style that was rejected by Frege, Russell, Moore and a few others. A retrograde step — Banno

Whether the tree out the window is to be placed with the oaks or the elms is not just an arbitrary judgement to be made by Pat, but a step in a broader activity in which others participate. — Banno

Whereas Kant seems to imply that an individual’s mind controls thought, Hegel argues that a collective component to knowledge also exists. In fact, according to Hegel, tension always exists between an individual’s unique knowledge of things and the need for universal concepts—two movements that represent the first and second of the three so-called modes of consciousness. The first mode of consciousness—meaning, or "sense certainty"—is the mind’s initial attempt to grasp the nature of a thing. This primary impulse runs up against the requirement that concepts have a "universal" quality, which means that different people must also be able to comprehend these concepts. This requirement leads to the second mode of consciousness, perception. With perception, consciousness, in its search for certainty, appeals to categories of thought worked out between individuals through some kind of communicative process at the level of common language. Expressed more simply, the ideas we have of the world around us are shaped by the language we speak, so that the names and meanings that other people have worked out before us (throughout the history of language) shape our perceptions. — Lecture Notes, Hegel

Talk at this level of abstraction can plunge us into huge terminological problems, as you know. — J

Nagel says that "we can't understand thought from the outside." — J

The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. — Thomas Nagel

If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions. — Thomas Nagel

if you could say a little more about what might hinge on the choice of "real" vs. "mental," I might have a better sense of what we ought to say about that. — J

Intelligible objects must be independent of particular minds because they are common to all who think. In coming to grasp them, an individual mind does not alter them in any way, it cannot convert them into its exclusive possessions or transform them into parts of itself. Moreover, the mind discovers them rather than forming or constructing them, and its grasp of them can be more or less adequate. Augustine concludes from these observations that intelligible objects must exist independently of individual human minds. — Cambridge Companion to Augustine

By focusing on objects perceptible by the mind alone and by observing their nature, in particular their eternity and immutability, Augustine came to see that certain things that clearly exist, namely, the objects of the intelligible realm, cannot be corporeal. When he cries out in the midst of his vision of the divine nature, “Is truth nothing just because it is not diffused through space, either finite or infinite?” (FVP 13–14), he is acknowledging that it is the discovery of intelligible truth that first frees him to comprehend incorporeal reality.

Now that I am reading Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, it would help if you cited where you are quoting from. — Paine

I read the Schopenhauer passage as not confirming the Rödl statement. Was that your understanding as well? — Paine

It must be an error to suppose that thought, in order to be objective, must be of something other than itself — Sebastian Rödl

"Fregian proposition". What's that? — Banno

It must be an error to suppose that thought, in order to be objective, must be of something other than itself — Sebastian Rödl

All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But ...all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and active in time. — Arthur Schopenhauer

I always read PhS as sort of suggesting, like Aristotle, that Absolute Knowing is more a sort of a virtue— — Count Timothy von Icarus

if eudomonia consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be the virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the Intellect [νοῦς], or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble and divine, either as being itself also actually divine, or as being relatively the divinest part of us, it is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it that will constitute perfect happiness; and it has been stated already that this activity is the activity of contemplation. — source

Then your use of "mental event" is quite broad. — Banno

The parasympathetic nervous system controls salivation. Is salivation then to be thought of as a mental event? — Banno

Are there other mental events that are not thoughts? — Banno

As the writer of the OP, I officially declare that we no longer have to use the umlaut when referring to Rodl. — J

Starting with human intelligence, an answer is that it is a psychological construct — frank

Arguably, the question of the meaning of being is the question par excellence of all philosophy. — Wayfarer

if we deny to AI conversational assistants the ascription of genuine emotions or autonomous drives, that must be, it seems to me, mainly on account of their lack of embodiment (and social embedding as persons in a community) rather than some missing (literally or metaphorically) "inner" ingredient. — Pierre-Normand

Feel free to credit me in spirit (or as a friendly AI collaborator!) and best of luck with the discussion—it sounds like an engaging and thought-provoking thread! :smile:

All these comparisons suggest (and those of 1967a, pp. 23-24; 1962, p. xxiv; 1984, pp. 363, 369; 1967b, p. 354, 359 explicitly state) that numbers, functions, and thought contents are independent of thinkers "in the same way" that physical objects are.

Abstractions can't exist in the phenomenal world, and therefore anything we discover about them is a discovery about our world, the subjective and/or World 3 world? Or neither . . . Everything else you and Burge say about Frege seems correct, and definitely the focus of Rödl's challenge. — J

. For what it's worth, my current opinion is that we lack a good account of how to reach a so-called view from nowhere, but our entire philosophical enterprise rests on the need for one. — J

The picture of grasping is very well suited to elucidate the matter. If I grasp a pencil, many different events take place in my body... but the pencil exists independently of them. And it is essential for grasping that something be there which is grasped... In the same way, that which we grasp with the mind also exists independently of this activity... and it is neither identical with the totality of these events nor created by it as a part of our own mental life. — Tyler Burge, Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, p639

I guess that invites the question: how do humans develop an autonomous will? Do they? — frank

That sounds like a rehash of data they came across rather than an intelligent exploration of the question. Achievement: yes. Intelligence: no.

But that doesn't mean they can't cross over into intelligence, which would be characterized by learning and adapting in order to solve a problem. — frank

"Don't rely on any experts, scientists, NASA photographs -- prove yourself that the earth is round," what do you do? — flannel jesus