Part of McGinn's point is pretty straightforward, and similar to what @Moliere was saying, that relative to a given theory, something is explained and something isn't. That's interesting, and I would think uncontroversial.

But then it's natural to ask if there is anything that, relative to some largish class of theories, will always be in the "unexplained" bucket. Or even if there is something that will be unexplained for all conceivable theories. I would think it's around here we start talking about "brute facts."

No one actually uses, or ever learns, more than a proper subset of a given natural language. — Srap Tasmaner

Here I think you're going back on your own original impulse about 'use', though, and I admire the original impulse more. We find ourselves saying words, or writing words, or understanding words heard or read. To call this finding-ourselves-doing-something 'use' is not quite right, though sometimes near enough for jazz. Our language and our selves intertwine in expression and understanding. — mcdoodle

I think the bit you're talking about was concerned with representing our knowledge of a language propositionally. There's a whole lot to recommend that view, but no one here has risen to its defense, so we haven't really talked about it. I'm still in the skill camp, but we've been discussing what kind of skill that is. (And maybe that just comes down to analysing skill-concepts better.)

As for the word "use," it's standard, and I'm fine with it. It is true that a lot of what goes into the use of language is involuntary and unconscious, but we still count as the agents. (Since posting, I have been thinking a lot about what else the word "use" means in this neighborhood, but I'm not ready to go into it yet.)

What after all is 'a given natural language'? It feels to me that there is some residual myth of the given lurking in this. There is no monolithic English, for example, portions of which we gradually acquire. This imagined abstraction is sometimes conjured into life by grammarians and pedagogues, but lived languages are a plurality, being renewed all the time, with enough in common between us that we understand each other and can make ourselves understood.

I used "given" here to mean "arbitrarily selected." Just shop talk.

I don't disagree with the substance of the rest of what you say here, but I am unapologetic about conjuring into life imagined abstractions. It won't bother me to use a fictive English that's just a union of the vocabularies of the members of some English-speaking community, a snapshot at some time of all the words any of them use. On the other hand, I don't need it. I can get the same point just by noting that snapshots of the vocabularies of the community members are not identical. For everyone, there are words they don't know or use that are known and used by other members of their community. In short, the plurality you speak of was exactly my point.

The point of making that point was to legitimize treating beginners as users of the language, despite their lack of competence. At the moment, I'll just add that beginners are treated by competent users of the language as pre-competent, as being on their way to competence. We interact with them as users of our language from the beginning. They're sort of "honorary members" of the speech community.

There are some words that I know-that they exist, and don't forget that because they are funny-sounding, easy to remember words, but for which I keep forgetting the meaning (the knowledge-how bit).

Examples are crepuscular, crapulous, rebarbative, cupidity. — andrewk

I can't help thinking there's a joke here about Buddhism and enlightenment. "Andrew doesn't even know the meaning of the word 'cupidity.'" Something like that.

The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil. — Bertrand Russell

If we find that everything that has a heart has kidneys, and everything that has kidneys has a heart, then the two sets, things that have a heart and things that have kidneys, are the same. But is saying something has a heart the same as saying it has kidneys? It doesn't seem like it is. It seems like two different concepts, even though they apply to exactly the same things.

On the other hand, would we have to do research to find that everything that has a heart has a body? How would you search for something that has a heart but no body? (Leaving aside Roy Orbison.) It's already built into the concept "has a heart" that it can only apply to things that have bodies. That's the analytic part. So you can know that the one set is a subset of the other without looking. That's the a priori part.

I've never thought of Hume as a skeptic.

There are like three different threads in here, which is totally my fault.

First off, sure, the piano and your vocal folds are tools. I might even be willing to say that language is a kind of technology we use to communicate (among other things). Another way to say that is, "We use words to communicate," where "words" basically means language. That ambiguity is unfortunate.

I wasn't looking for use in that broad sense, but in the sense that the meaning of a word is its use in sentences, the semantic contribution it makes to sentences it appears in. (When you learn how to use a word, you've learned what it means.) I was wondering if instead of there being a generic skill--using the word ____--maybe using the word "red" is a skill, using the word "crepuscular" is a skill, and so on, just as drawing a straight line is a skill, drawing a hand is a skill, etc. (I recall now that somewhere Dummett says the issue here isn't so much individual words, but word types: how to use color-words, number-words, mass nouns, proper names, etc.)

Looking back, I don't think I ever explicitly said I meant there to be an analogy between word/sentence and note/tune. (As the tune is made of certain notes in a certain special arrangement, the sentence is made of certain words in a certain special arrangement.) But that's why I end up unwilling to say that words are tools, even if I might be willing to say that language is a tool, because I was thinking of the use of a word in a sentence rather than the use of "words," i.e. language, to say something.

But now I need to say that these two uses of "use" are the same, or at least really closely related. A word is used in a sentence precisely in the sense that a sentence is what we use to perform what we can vaguely call a "linguistic act," the sense in which we use language to do something. That still doesn't exactly make a word a tool. I'm not even sure I would say a sentence is a tool. Language is more like a shared technology that includes the producing and consuming sides of the transaction.

But I do have one more observation. I lean toward molecularism, which is why I was claiming that we don't learn an entire language in one go, and wanted to look at how we add words. But there may be a sense in which that's false. No one actually uses, or ever learns, more than a proper subset of a given natural language. This need not be an idiolect--I mean only that fewer than all the words in the language are used, but those are used in the standard way. We're surely not going to say that you don't speak English unless you speak all of it. Speaking a proper subset is the norm. There may be a sorites here--how much of the language do you have to speak? Or we could just allow that there's a continuum. (I speak "ein bißchen Deutsch.") If we do that, then from the moment you learn how to use an English word, you're in the same position as the English speaker you learned the word from; the only difference is the cardinality of your subsets.

That allows us to connect language as a shared technology to the use of a word right from the start.

You mean the observed fact that it always has fallen down?

I'm still not sure. I worry a little that the word "use" makes us think of words as tools.

If you play a song on the piano, you strike the right keys at the right time to produce the right notes. The song is made up of those notes. We don't normally say you "use" the notes to make the song, although a composer explaining a piece might say something like, "Here I'm using an A7 to build tension" or whatever. You obviously use the piano to make the notes, to play the song.

I'm not worried about this as a question of English usage. You play the song by playing the notes. Playing the notes is playing the song. There's no temptation here to think of the notes as tools. The act you perform is not made up of the tools you perform it with. It's made up of smaller acts you perform.

This seems really close to the way we speak (or write or think). But maybe words are simply more like material. The clay is not the tool you make the sculpture with, or the paint the tool you make the picture with. (W. C. Williams once described the poem as "a small machine, made of words.")

My interest here is not literary. I'm not trying to find the best metaphor for language use. I'm looking for clues to theorizing better about language.

"Propositional attitude" is a term of art. Are you really not familiar with it? (Relates to verbs like believe, know, think, doubt, say and so on, that can take a complete proposition as their object, verbs that can be followed by "that" clauses.)

(In Archer voice) Nevermind! It's too late, you've ruined the moment.

You are, for one. — Thorongil

If it's to be an insinuation, then I won't. (Did you really miss the joke? I'm about to lose all the newfound respect I had for you.)

Well, okay. I obviously agree with you.... — Thorongil

Huzzah!

There are many sorts of things, musical instruments, tools, and so on, of which I can know what they are and how they are used without myself possessing the skill to use them. Can the same thing be said of a word? Is there a step left to take between knowing how a word is used and knowing how to use it? Or from knowing how to use a word to being able to use it?

You can know, in a sort of theoretical way, how to swim, how to ride a bike, and so on, without being able to. With language, the theoretical knowledge seems to be completely coincident with the practical ability, and that's odd. (I feel certain I'm repeating here something Ryle said about abilities.)

Music makes an even better analogy, because there's the skill needed to perform, but there's also theoretical knowledge (which my son keeps trying to impart to me). As a musician, you're constantly flipping your perspective between those, aren't you?

But that holds true even in a dictatorship. — Agustino

A fair point. In practice, things don't work out that way, and the difference is institutions. It seems to me, the United States is far from perfect but more free and more just than, say, Russia. Is that because Americans are better than Russians? Or is it because at least some freedoms and some justice have been institutionalized here?

Sure, but not everyone's gonna be in on it, and the people left out will try to fuck you. Democracy in action.

Certainly people try. But there are a lot of people involved, interested parties in and out of government, a lot of moving parts, so it's always hard to get away with too much for too long. It's a question of how much damage you can do before it comes out.

Our system engenders constraints so long as you keep the institutions functional. The press doesn't have to be perfectly free, the judiciary perfectly independent, police power perfectly limited, elections perfectly fair. They just have to not fall below failure level.

Okay. You're obviously right there. Now look at President Trump's control. Doesn't look very absolute, does it? That's the whole idea. Of course he has power. We just need to make sure other people do too. That's how this works.

If I was a leader, I wouldn't expect people under me to behave morally. Quite the contrary. So I would set up the necessary structures around in order to prevent them from behaving immorally. How? By holding leverage over them. — Agustino

What you're missing is that this is the whole point of democratic institutions. You can also look at them as inscribing rights of you like, but they're also practical. Assume people cannot be counted on to behave virtuously, and give all the people leverage over each other. That's the ballot, of course, but also in the structure of government.

I don't need the lecture on how the world really works. You need to recognize that the theory here is designed to address exactly your concern. Even if you start from the belief that life is a war of all against all, maybe we can do a little better. Not by wishing away venality, but by reigning it in. That's what the project of civilization is all about. We're not stuck with the state of nature.

I see Western civilization in decline, which obviously includes the US, so I don't think it's going all that well, but it hasn't collapsed yet. And if you want to know what I think on any more specific issue, just ask, instead of floating vague insinuations to the effect that I'm some kind of nihilistic crank. The world is a snakepit, but that doesn't mean I don't give a shit about it or think that no one else should. — Thorongil

For the record I don't think I was particularly vague. Whether it was an insinuation, well, who's to say?

As for Obama and Trump, I don't actually care that much. I do care about institutions. I believe it is important that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

According to the total number of anecdotes collected by that one website, no. But I wasn't thinking in terms of numbers but in terms of severity of the lie. — Thorongil

That's a reasonable distinction. I'll look closer.

Apologies, but I'm not following how this is a reply to what I said. — Thorongil

Well one interpretation of your posts would be that you don't give a shit, and for some reason don't think anyone else should either. The world's a snakepit and we should all just accept it.

But maybe you're a serious conservative, or whatever you are. Maybe you've got some values. So I took a guess at what those values might be, and asked, in all seriousness, how you think our little experiment is going.

If you care, I would honestly like to know what you think. If you don't, I won't pester you anymore.

Obama was as mendacious as Trump. — Thorongil

Since you've heard of Politifact, here's Barack Obama's scorecard and here's Donald Trump's scorecard.

Do you think "as mendacious" properly characterizes the comparison?

I find it shocking that people find it shocking that politicians lie. — Thorongil

It pisses me of when you pull this "oh you naive little lambs" crap, but I'm going to make an effort to take your point seriously.

So, the founding fathers, they knew people could be right bastards. But freedom is worth having. Justice is a necessity. So you try to craft a system that will provide justice and freedom but won't depend on people being virtuous. They weren't writing the charter for a commune.

Has it worked? How's the republic doing? If it's gone wrong, why? Have we blown it, or could it still be fixed? We still think freedom's worth having, right? We still think justice is a necessity. And we still think everyone has a right to freedom and justice, don't we? So what do we do?

I had forgotten some of these are separable and others I didn't know.

(a) Do we think these losses are better described as losses of ability or losses of knowledge.
(b) Do we have other reasons for thinking, whatever we think of the descriptions, that what we're talking about here must be knowledge, or must be an ability. (I'm thinking of how it might fit with other parts of a model, other theories, that sort of thing.)

(Btw, yes Herbert is quietly astonishing.)

Just a little amplification.

The first analogy I thought of was kids learning how to draw. You don't just learn how-to-draw, as one big thing, and you don't just learn how-to-speak-English as one big thing. When you're just starting, you have to learn how to draw a straight line when you need one, how to draw curves of different kinds. Those feel like distinct skills. You can draw for years before you draw a hand you're happy with! It's a specific skill that will go into the meta-skill of drawing. And just like with language, you have to use those skills together, and so on.

So I thought of how we think of learning the meaning of a word, like learning a definition, and then use that word when we need something that means that. But what if we looked at it the other way round? We could just say you learn to say that word when you need it. If that's what it means to know the meaning of a word, you needn't think of it as a bit propositional knowledge at all. Adding a word to your vocabulary is learning how to use it, so it's learning how to do something, not learning that something.

But what about understanding?

Like with chisels, knowledge how to use a word is a continuous rather than binary datum. — andrewk

That's a beautiful point. Totally wish I'd thought of it. I think we could do something with that.

As far as I can see there is no opposition to science as such, — Sivad

If you think that, you must not live in the United States. Here there is most definitely widespread opposition to science as such.

Then now we have a problem and perhaps, sadly, this is where our conversation ends, because I think my last post says nothing at all, but you think it says something worth agreeing to.

So "we experience what we experience as we experience it" should mean: experience is the constituent of reality for us; subject and object are both parts of our experience; our viewpoints are irreducibly subjective; but also the objects of our experience are irreducibly objective.

Experience cannot be representational; it is the constituent of reality for us. Any representation of ours begins with experience and is only valid inasmuch as it keeps consistency with our experience. — Mariner

The "ours" here refers to a generic individual, right? Because you also say

that our viewpoints are irreducibly subjective, and that objectivity is already an extrapolation (guided by reason) of our experiences. — Mariner

Let's look at an example, however provisionally.

Suppose I am holding a glass of ice water, I am having the experience of holding a glass of ice water. It may be objected that I am surely not only holding a glass of ice water, but doing many other things as well, and that is true. It's not at first clear whether we should say that I am also having the experience of standing by the fridge, say, or if we would prefer to say that everything I am doing at the relevant moment is part of one experience. Maybe either usage is okay. For that matter, there may be nothing either necessary or objectionable about circumscribing the experience temporally; maybe it is better to talk about my experience as a totality, spread across my entire life. Perhaps all that matters is that we keep in mind that, having somehow picked out something as an experience, we could make different choices that would be just as valid, or that we recognize that how we circumscribe an experience will depend on our purpose in doing so, rather than on something intrinsic to the experience.

I understand your remark about our viewpoints being irreducibly subjective to mean something like this: I am, in holding the glass of ice water, not experiencing that object (again, among other things), or not only experiencing that object, but experiencing (myself) holding that object. If I talk about the glass of ice water, I talk about something as I experienced it. Perhaps that is also to talk about the thing, but it is any rate not only to talk about the thing.

But now it seems we have to say that I was experiencing (myself) holding the-glass-of-ice-water-as-I-experienced-it, or even: I experienced (myself) holding the-glass-of-ice-water-as-I-experienced-(myself)-holding-it. Either this ends up as Bateson's infinite regress that forever keeps the territory out of the map, or it ends up trivially as the claim that I experience what I experience as I experience it. If we opt for the former, then we are in a position to say the regress relates not just to representation, but to the having of an object at all. Although we are talking about the experience, and thus conceptualizing it, nowhere was there a question of experience being representational. All we did was allow the possibility that experience was experience of something. So the natural conclusion is that if experience is irreducibly subjective, that either says nothing or it says experience cannot be experience of something.

And perhaps that's where we want to end up. If "experience is the constituent of reality for us," then experience just is, we might say (if we were comfortable saying things like "reality just is"). If experience could be experience of something, then surely those somethings would figure large in reality.

Sorry Srap, I posted that last message accidentally while in draft. — alan1000

Btw, you can't delete posts, but you can edit them after you've posted. You could replace the whole thing with "[deleted]" or something.

This helps a lot, in understanding what you have in mind. I'll do some thinking and reading and get back to you.

Sure. It's not a point, it's a question; a request for an answer (not an argument).

Given that:
1) Peak Experience is an effect of self-actualisation.
2) Flow is automatic attention.
3) Belief is an attitude which accepts a proposition as true without evidence.
4) Imagination is the faculty of forming a mental image apart from perception.

In what way is the experience of these psychological things similar? — Galuchat

Okay. I suppose we could think of these as departures from the ordinary, practical, everyday run of things. Imagination seems to insinuate itself all over the place, but is still a stepping aside from direct experience, I guess.

I'm really not sure what we're talking about.

In what way is the experience of these psychological things similar? — Galuchat

I don't understand your point here. Can you elaborate?

the null set does indeed contain one member - itself - — alan1000

No no no. You have to be clear about the distinction between "being a member of ..." and "being a subset of ..." The null set has no members. It is a set, though.

when the null set should or should not be counted among the cardinality of a set. For example, {x,y,z} has cardinality 3. The null set is not counted. But its power set has a cardinality of 8 and the null set IS counted. — alan1000

Right, because the null set is not a member of the set {x,y,z} but it is a subset. Cardinality is the number of members; the cardinality of the power set is the number of subsets.

I'm going to leave the rest of your questions here for you to work through once you're clearer about sets and membership. Keep in mind that a set might be a member of another set: the power set has sets as members. They are not subsets of the power set (except for the null set--think that through). Subsets of the power set will be sets of sets.

On induction, you're getting there. In practice, it would work like this: you show that some property applies to 0; then you show that if you assume it applies to n, it can be shown to apply to n+1. To make that second deduction, the one that shows you can continue, you want to use an unknown, arbitrary n, because you don't want to inadvertently rely on any peculiarity of the number you chose. (0 and 1 are pretty special, so you'll stay away.)

The Peano axioms (at least as we have them today) tell us that the series of cardinal numbers is generated from 0 and and every number in the series inherits all of the properties of 0 inductively. — alan1000

I think you might be misreading the axiom of induction. It doesn't say that every natural number has all the properties of 0. It says

IF 0 has the property
AND IF n having the property implies that n's successor has the property
THEN every natural number has the property.

Is this what you're talking about? It's how induction works in mathematics. Show that you can start, and then show how you can always continue from one to the next. If you can do both of those, you get to claim you can do it for everything, which amounts to claiming it's done. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I almost went back to change what I said there about cardinality. Then I decided that what I had written was probably already too much.

Does your question reflect honest philosophical consideration, or is it merely determined by your rightist/theist bias?

counterfactual — Terrapin Station

I had to chuckle at this. "Counterfactual" refers here to a world in which there are not miracles. That's meta, dude.