Correct. It's speculative metaphysics. I don't necessarily expect it to be tested. — schopenhauer1

Admittedly, not my cup of tea, so I appreciate your patience with me.

From my point of view, it looks like a change in vocabulary. Does it look like something else to you? For instance, does it help you answer the question why there's something it's like to be a bat but not something it's like to be a rock? (Assuming there isn't.) Do we say it's because the constituent occasions of bats and rocks are organized differently? That looks to me like saying the sleeping potion works because it has a soporific power.

Wow. Thanks for the very thorough answer, since I don't know Whitehead at all.

Here's what I don't get right off though: we're trying to understand the difference between stuff that's A and stuff that's ¬A (speaking, ahem, loosely); Whitehead tells us that stuff that's A is B, and stuff that's ¬A is ¬B, the two different sorts of organization you describe. Could be helpful. Science does this. Why does this rock move the needle of my compass but this other one doesn't? Because one of them's a lodestone, and here's how that works, and here's how you can test it to see if it's true, and so on. If you posit an explanatory B, that gives you the opportunity to test for the presence of B by means that don't involve A, predict A when you've got B and then see if A turns up.

But in Whitehead's case, I assume we deduce the presence of the B-style organization only and everywhere we would before have just said we have something A. The description you give is evocative, it's interesting to think about, but it just piggybacks on what we already know. There will never come a time when you can say, here's something with B organization, let's see if it's got a soul.

Is "panexperientialism" going to include, say, rocks? Clouds? Neutrinos?

Supposing it does, does that solve your problem? Maybe you allow something "experience-ish" to be attributed to a grain of sand. Fine. What about the "what it's like to be an X"? Are you extending that to everything, or still reserving that to some smaller class?

But there's not something it's like to be sawgrass, right?

Is there something it's like to be E. Coli?

Do dogs have souls? How about the most recent common ancestor of dogs and us? Yes? What about spiders? What about the most recent common ancestor of us, dogs, and spiders? Or the most recent common ancestor of us, dogs, spiders, and sawgrass?

<shrug>
Mathematics is certainly not an empirical science. And it has a different notion of evidence. (Not just proof but also counterexample.) Even through the first half of the twentieth century, authors routinely referred to "the science of mathematics" and "the science of logic". Maybe it is worth calling attention to a shared sense of rigor.

But if it's not exclusive to, not originating with science, then why call it the scientific method? — darthbarracuda

Science is systematic common sense. I'm with @T Clark.

What sort of thing is a concept, apart from what shows in behaviour? — Banno

A way of classifying 'things' (broadly), I suppose.

There's some really abstract classifying it's pretty hard to imagine doing without language, but doesn't it also seem that language presupposes some ability to classify things, rather than engendering it?

One interesting inflection point between some animals and others might be their capacity to remember. Maybe one has to decide "food/not food", for instance, each time it encounters something, even if it's the same individual something over and over, while another might remember having already decided what to do when encountering that thing, or even another thing a lot like it.

Why not instead say that possession of a concept is always evidenced by behaviour, which in the case of some primates includes the sounds and marks they make?

Caution's nice.

Some of your points look to me like they could be, well, if not "settled" then at least addressed by research. An ape that learned to use a particular individual tool for a particular type of job might substitute a similar tool, might recognize when only one of two similar tools will work for a given problem, might, might, might, or might not. There's a threshold beyond which I'll be fine saying he knows everything I do about wrenches except how to talk about them. I don't know what that threshold is exactly, and I might need to see research even to figure that out.

They are your God. An adjusted Calvinism so you can feel so very scientific. You do have Faith that they exist, correct? — Rich

This is becoming abusive @Rich. I humbly suggest you stick to telling us what you think, and stop telling everyone else what they think. Nobody's asked you to psychoanalyze them.

I am not getting your point.

Suppose I was an accomplished mechanic who spoke only German. An English speaker could say truly both that I know how to use a wrench and that I don't know what a wrench is. The latter's just ambiguous. Just explaining the ambiguity is a pain in the ass:

• He knows what a wrench is; he just doesn't know what it's called in English. (Huh?)

• There is a type of thing, call it X; we call X's "wrenches"; he knows what X's are, but not that we call them "wrenches".

I just can't figure out if your position trades on this ambiguity or makes a point about it or what?!

Was that "yes", "no", or "not sure"?

Besides which, there are loads of reasons to think this claim is simply false. You'd have to have a language without the logical constants.

Even if you changed it to "All atomic sentences of L are false", then the question is: under what interpretation? Systematic falsehood under one interpretation is systematic truth under another.

Read this again. I did it that way specifically to leave room for the conclusion that the claim must not be a statement (i.e., not truth-apt), and that would be the result for the Liar. (You could think of that as concluding "If there's a set of all truth-apt strings, the Liar isn't in it.")

There was no reason to conclude either version of the claim is not truth-apt; both versions must be false.

I'll throw in Paul Grice too as someone with a theory of meaning that connects "natural meaning"-- what Eco calls "symptoms" in your quote, clouds meaning rain, that sort of thing-- and "non-natural meaning", that is, what we do when me mean something by a sound we make, etc., etc.

The argument is invalid anyway since (1) quantifies over the space of entities existentially. So (1) is equivalent to: there is a being Y such that Y = X and Y has property P, and a sub statement (there is a being Y such that Y=X) is exactly what the argument seeks to demonstrate, so it is circular. — fdrake

Yes, this is exactly right. I've had this argument twice with another forum member. To predicate (truly or falsely) of an object does not show that the object is within your domain of discourse, but presupposes that it is.

There is a sort of epistemic variant that is worthwhile:
1. Something is perturbing the orbits of these asteroids.
2. If there were a planet of a certain mass there, it would do that.
3. ?
Well, you don't get to conclude anything. (2) gives you an abductive hypothesis to investigate, but you still need to investigate.

I'm not disputing what fishfry meant, I'm criticising the way in which he expressed himself, which lead to a misunderstanding. — Sapientia

I'll agree @fishfry was a bit up on his hind legs. I didn't find it rude, but you did, and there's nothing more to say about that. (Might be a Merkin thing.)

You do have my sincere appreciation for the work you do to keep this place running.

That's not what I said. — Sapientia

Really? What other way is there to read this:

If we're talking about grammar, then that's an instruction. — Sapientia

Whether an utterance is an instruction depends on the context and the purpose of the utterance, its intended or expected understanding by its intended or expected audience, and so on. So it's a question for pragmatics, not grammar.

^you guys^y'all

And shame on you.

If we're talking about grammar, then that's an instruction. — Sapientia

An instruction is a type of speech act, not a grammatical form. @Cuthbert is obviously right.

Can two sides with conflicting views of truth both be right? If so, does the concept of truth remain? Can one side’s truth can be considered a greater truth that subordinates a lesser truth? Or, is the essence of a truth that it is a truth, and as such cannot be made less of a truth by another truth? — Mark Marsellli

There is the old story of the blind men and the elephant: two parties who disagree are sometimes both right because they are describing different parts of something, and both wrong in thinking the part they're describing is the whole, or that the whole must be like that part. Both speak the truth but neither speaks the whole truth, and that is the source of conflict.

If there is a greater truth, it would be one that encompasses these smaller, partial truths. Imagine two people trying to invent the idea of trading: each is hesitant because she reasons, quite correctly, "If I give you this thing, then I won't have it." But there is a greater truth they need to find, that if they both give the other something, then they have made a trade. (And it is whether that trade is fair that must be judged.)

In your case, it's entirely possible that both sides are right, but neither seems to be putting forth a greater truth that encompasses what the other is saying. Unfortunately, if that greater truth is "the effect on the US economy," no one will be able to tell you what that is.

And that's one reason there might be such a rule as not considering downstream effects in anti-dumping cases, because it would be impossible ever to decide to do what you've already determined, for other, overriding reasons of policy, must sometimes be done.

Of course each side is making the case for a decision that would benefit them, and putting forth a partial truth. Sometimes people want to test a claim by generalizing it. In this case, would the wire rod consumers be happy to give up the protection they would deny the wire rod manufacturers? Not on your life. But that does not mean what they are saying is false. It's a mistake to think your part of the elephant is the whole elephant, but it's also a mistake to say your part isn't what you say it is unless it's the whole elephant.

Banning is a last resort for lost causes. — Baden

An epigram!

Like, if the sportscaster said it afterwards, but is speaking as though he's reliving the moment, thus the lack of past tense — Sapientia

There you go. It's more immediate and by using the indicative instead of the subjunctive, it sounds more like a statement of fact, more certain.

In general terms, I think you can't read off the use being made of a sentence, in a given context, from its surface grammar, anymore than you can read off a sentence's logical form from its surface grammar. That use would be something like the mood of the utterance. (For instance, Kevin Spacey can instruct you to go to lunch by repeatedly asking, "Will you go to lunch?")

Do Americans really mix up present and past tense like that? Do they really use "doesn't" when they mean "hadn't"? That's crazy. — Sapientia

Think of it as a past tense counterfactual expressed in the historical present. No one is mixing up their tenses. It's colorful. It's also a way of avoiding the subjunctive mood, and expresses greater certainty.

What you're talking about here is the underdetermination of theory by data, yes?

Every dataset is a duck-rabbit.

Goodman shows the same effect can be found in induction-- that there are always pathological predicates that can fit your observations just as well as the usual "entrenched" predicates (or kinds).

I think, in a general way, @T Clark is on the right track by asking which theory you can act on. If you want to build a rocket, would you use $\small F=ma$ or one of the pathological alternatives?

That's sort of a "hot take" -- am I taking about what you're talking about?

Mr Tasmaner — Samuel Lacrampe

Mr. Tasmaner was my father. I'm just Srap.

(The things you can say on the internet ...)

I'll take any excuse to play at linguistics.

Imperatives are also a natural choice for perfecting conditionals: if you're negotiating, and you say, "Throw in another hundred and you've got a deal," it suggests I can make the deal if and only if I throw in another hundred (which could be false, but it's what you want me to think).

And since I can't control what the staff does — fishfry

I think the grammar is exactly as you and @Sapientia interpret it; it's the bit of context given here that makes the difference. No Americanism. "Charge me or release me!" "Either let me do my job or fire me!" would be other examples of giving instructions to people you're not empowered to give instructions to.

Permissives can do weird stuff with expressing preferences too. "You can change my post if you want, but I'll never post here again." Again, I'm not even in a position to give permission, and this is actually a threat. "What should we watch?" "You can put on whatever you like." That one cedes my portion of the decision-making power to you, perhaps implying I don't have a preference-- but it could also be interpreted as taking all the power before handing it all to you, or implying that my preference would trump yours if I had one.

That highlights that the only times these types of rules really matter are when decisions which have consequences have to be made. They don't really have anything to do with truth, they have to do with what to do next. — T Clark

This is really nice.

Generalize it and reword the second sentence, and you've reinvented pragmatism!

When I asked about statements about the future, I was thinking about an ambiguity in the word "attainable". For instance, it could be that everything we could possibly know is consistent with rolling a 1 and with rolling a 6. But that doesn't mean I can't find out which one I roll by just going ahead and rolling the die.

I think that there is something to be gleaned out of the fact that B consists of more than one statement. What counts as being a proposition is starkly different than what counts as being a belief statement. — creativesoul

Yeah, that's an option.

Conjunctions would be easy, I guess-- just two beliefs instead of three. And you could work up an approach that doesn't treat disjunctions, conditionals, counterfactuals as being potential truth-bearers at all. (Just inference rules or habits.) What about negatives?!

It's worth playing around with.

kids will think, for example, that the tree over there is objectively real — javra

I was thinking about this driving home from work last night. The standard example for perception is always something like this: I see the road sign, that is a road sign, etc., an observation at a single point in time. But in English at least we have present participles: I am continuing to see the road sign as I drive along the road. (I think a similar point has been made in "embodied" theories of knowledge and perception-- that the persistence or invariance of the object as we move about and investigate is what we should capture. Optical illusions, for instance, often depend on observer position, light source, etc.)

So that would be an example of the object not changing state but the observer. If it's still there when you come back and it's just the same-- no, but if you come back and bring someone else with you, and the two of you walk around, look at it from different angles, maybe do so at different times of day and so on, then we start to think "objective".

Can we make anything out of the difference between, on the one hand, A being a reason for believing B, and, on the other, A merely ("merely"?) being consistent with B?

LOL.

P(~J∨X∣D)≥P(J∣D). — unenlightened

Not sure why you think this.

Here's a diagram for what I said, which was $\small P(J \lor X \mid D) ≥ P(J \mid D)$:



That seems pretty straightforward: we start with the yellow and green bits and pick up the blue as well. The blue might be empty, but we still know yellow+green+blue ≥ yellow+green.

Now here's yours, which was $\small P(\neg J \lor X \mid D)≥P(J \mid D)$:



Your claim is that orange+blue+green≥yellow+green. Maybe, maybe not. Depends on whether orange+blue≥yellow, doesn't it? And our hypothesis was that yellow+green is pretty big: Smith has strong evidence for his belief.

Two more points. Another interpretation of Smith's belief would be:
$\small P(J \mid D \lor X)$
which looks like this:


That adds in the light blue bit. I don't think there's any reason to do this though, because all of Smith's reasoning is relative to $\small D$, his reasons for believing Jones owns a Ford. Adding the light blue bit doesn't change the argument anyway. It's just a bigger version of the "≥" we've already got.

Now what about $\small X \cap D$? Are the reasons Smith has for believing Jones owns a Ford reasons to believe Brown is in Barcelona? Well, they're not reasons to believe he isn't: there's no reason to think that Jones having always owned a car and always a Ford and now driving a Ford, etc., precludes Brown from being in Barcelona. So there's no reason to think $\small D$ and $\small X$ are disjoint. But it doesn't give you much to go on, so when I assigned a prior to $\small P(X \mid D)$, I made it tiny, and that seems reasonable to me.

((Apologies for the crumminess of the diagrams.))

Would you say they know what a wrench is? — Banno

Is there a difference between these two questions:

• Do you know what this is?
• Do you know what this is called?

(The latter refers to some language, not necessarily the language in which the question is asked, but maybe specifying it matters more than I think.)

It is the Great A'Tuin.

If p is true then p ∨ q is true.
If there is strong evidence that p is true, then p is true.
Therefore, if there is strong evidence that p is true then there is strong evidence that p ∨ q is true. — unenlightened

Besides which, shouldn't your conclusion be "If there is strong evidence that p, then p v q"?