I don’t think you’ll find among those philosophers ( Rorty, Rouse, Heidegger, etc) who are both conceptual and ethical relativists, any enthusiasm for the usefulness of propositional truth. — Joshs

If that is so, then so much the worse for these misguided folk.

So I think one can justifiably argue that a belief in a world that is independent of our concepts or ethical values is a a necessary pre-condition for supporting the usefulness of bivalent logic. — Joshs

Well, then present the argument. What is it?

Why think when you can quote...

Relate this back to the ineffable, if you can - are you claiming that one needs a non-classical logic in order to understand the ineffable? If not, then what?

So I think one can justifiably argue that a belief in a world that is independent of our concepts or ethical values is a necessary pre-condition for supporting the usefulness of bivalent logic.
— Joshs
Well, then present the argument. What is it? — Banno

Here’s the argument from Putnam’s perspective:

“Without the cognitive values of coherence, simplicity, and instrumental efficacy we have no world and no facts, not even facts about what is so relative to what. And these cognitive values, I claim, are simply a part of our holistic conception of human flourishing. Bereft of the old realist idea of truth as "correspondence" and of the positivist idea of justification as fixed by public "criteria," we are left with the necessity of seeing our search for better conceptions of rationality as an intentional activity which, like every activity that rises above the mere following of inclination or obsession, is guided by our idea of the good.

If coherence and simplicity are values, and if we cannot deny without falling into total self-refuting subjectivism that they are objective (notwithstanding their "softness," the lack of well-defined "criteria," and so forth), then the classic argument against the objectivity of ethical values is totally undercut.”

That appears to be an argument for the objectivity of ethical values. You said you had an argument that the usefulness of bivalent logic is dependent on the world being independent of our concepts.

Bivalent logic is a type of two-valued logic, which means that it only allows for two possible truth values: true or false. In other words, something is either true or it is false, and there is no in-between or middle ground. In this sense, bivalent logic does not necessarily require that the world be independent of our concepts. Instead, it simply requires that there be a clear distinction between true and false statements, regardless of how those statements relate to the world or our understanding of it.

Bivalent logic is a type of two-valued logic, which means that it only allows for two possible truth values: true or false. In other words, something is either true or it is false, and there is no in-between or middle ground. In this sense, bivalent logic does not necessarily require that the world be independent of our concepts. Instead, it simply requires that there be a clear distinction between true and false statements, regardless of how those statements relate to the world or our understanding of it. — Banno

.

Let me compare bivalent logic to what I will call a bipolar sense. A bipolar sense differentiates itself from its contextual background ( the contrast pole) via a unique dimension of similarity and difference. A bipolar sense isn’t just something that happens to be the case. It is something that happens to be the case in a particular way. No bipolar sense ever duplicates its exact content. To apply bivalent logic to a bipolar sense is to always come up short. That is, whenever we ask whether a particular bipolar sense is the case , the answer will be no, simply because the exact sense doesn’t repeat itself.
Bivalent truth and falsity are irrelevant to bipolar senses because the former presupposes the persistent identity of that meaning one is inquiring about.

In other words, bivalent logic must have context-independence. It must apply to truth-apt concepts that are independent of our actual situational sense of what is the case.

Let me compare bivalent logic to what I will call a bipolar sense. A bipolar sense differentiates itself from its contextual background ( the contrast pole) via a unique dimension of similarity and difference. A bipolar sense isn’t just something that happens to be the case. It is something that happens to be the case in a particular way. No bipolar sense ever duplicates its exact content. To apply bivalent logic to a bipolar sense is to always come up short. That is, whenever we ask whether a particular bipolar sense is the case , the answer will be no, simply because the exact sense doesn’t repeat itself. — Joshs

What? Are you reaching for some sort of dialectic?

In other words, bivalent logic must have context-independence. It must apply to truth-apt concepts that are independent of our actual situational sense of what is the case. — Joshs

I don't know how to make sense of those sentences. Bivalent logic applies to what is the case, and to what isn't, and it apples to truth-apt sentences. I don't know what a "truth-apt concept" is, and hypothesis that a concept that is neither true nor false might not be that useful...

ALl this to say, I;ve no clear idea of what your argument here might be.

Such boundaries and exactness are the definitive traits of form—be it Platonic form, Aristotelian form, or the general form of a proposition adumbrated in the Tractatus. It is from such forms that applications of concepts can be deduced, but this is precisely what Wittgenstein now eschews in favour of appeal to similarity of a kind with family resemblance. — SEP


Notice the rejection of forms that goes along with this anti-essentialism. The concepts we use are constructed by us for our purposes, not found floating in some ideal void. They need have no centre. — Banno

What could similarities consist in if not similarity of form? Similarities of form are thus essential, if not, obviously, perfect. That is there are no perfect similarities in this world, because a perfect similarity is a sameness, and one thing cannot be the same as another except in a generic, "fuzzy" sense.

Still hiding from my mentions alerts.

What could similarities consist in if not similarity of form? — Janus

The point is that there need be no similarity for someone to be counted as part of a family.

Still hiding from my mentions alerts. — Banno

No idea what you are talking about.

The point is that there need be no similarity for someone to be counted as part of a family — Banno

"Family resemblances"—remember? There is no resemblance without similarity.

No idea what you are talking about. — Janus

Many of your posts do not show in the mentions alerts. Hence they get missed.

"Family resemblances"—remember? There is no resemblance without similarity. — Janus

Hence the rope example. No single thread runs through the whole rope, and yet we treat it as one thing.

What ties the ship to the wharf is a rope, and the rope consists of fibres, but it does not get its strength from any fibre which runs through it from one end to the other, but from the fact that there is a vast number of fibres overlapping' (pi, i, 65–7; bb 87).

Or Austin's example of "grey".

I can only imagine that the findings that there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence comes from testing subjects’ neural activity while they are smelling coffee (or while they are “in the presence of coffee” as you originally put it). Therefore, what is in common to them all is that they are smelling coffee.
— Luke

Thinking of coffee does it too. Smelling something you think is going to be coffee but isn't, expecting coffee...
— Isaac

Does what too?
— Luke

Triggers one of a number of neural networks associated with reports of 'smelling coffee'.

I'm baffled as to why this is causing such confusion.

Several different neural events result in us reporting we experience 'smelling coffee'

There's no single thing connecting all the different events other than that they all happen to result (sometimes) in reports of 'smelling coffee'

Since there's no biological link, and no external world link, the only conclusion we can reach is that it's our own post hoc construction to conceptualise any given neural event as 'smelling coffee'. — Isaac

I am trying to understand the test that brought about the results that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between smelling coffee and some common neural activity among subjects. I presume that you would get the subjects to smell coffee while monitoring their neural activity, and then find that there is no common neural activity associated with smelling coffee. The only way to find this is to have them all smell coffee.

Rather than confirm this, you said "Thinking of coffee does it too. Smelling something you think is going to be coffee but isn't, expecting coffee..." When I asked what it does too, you said that it "Triggers one of a number of neural networks associated with reports of 'smelling coffee'".

That's beside the point.

Thinking about coffee and expecting coffee may also have no one-to-one correspondence with neural activity, but in order to find that there is no one-to-one correspondence between neural activity and smelling coffee, the test subjects needed to have smelled coffee. I'm not disagreeing that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence, only that in order to conclude that there isn't, then the test subjects needed to have smelled coffee.

All you've done is introduce the fact that people also say "I smell coffee" even if they are only thinking about or expecting coffee, which is to say: even when they aren't smelling coffee. Excluding those who are only thinking about or expecting coffee, the common factor among those who report "I smell coffee" is that they smell coffee.

I waited until we hit the 1k mark, out of an attempt at respect to @jgill -- but now we going to really figure out this ineffable thang at 2k posts. heeeelllll yeah. :D

Somehow sensations are supposed to occupy some middle (@Moliere) ground, private, ineffable, yet somehow despite that, the foundation of our understanding (@Constance).

You clever folk all agree, but can't explain it. I call bullshit. — Banno

Must be. . . incommensurable?

I think I'm still on the naturalist side. I'm on team disappointment, at least, however that leads us ;)

Many of your posts do not show in the mentions alerts. Hence they get missed. — Banno

OK, that's weird; I don't know why that would be.

Hence the rope example. No single thread runs through the whole rope, and yet we treat it as one thing. — Banno

I don't see the relevance. If there is a family resemblance then there must be some resemblance, i.e. similarity, however small.

I'm not familiar with Austin's example of grey, you'll need to give some more detail.

Nice new thread of yours, by the way. Haven't chimed in yet, biding my time.

There's a long reply half-written at the back of my mind that rants on about how phenomenology is supposed to provide a firm foundation for philosophical speculation but instead gets itself tied into a knot by presuming to talk about what it itself supposes to be ineffable. Something along those lines is implicit in the OP here.

Oh yeh. I think we're close enough that we agree there on the bad sides of phenomenology, too -- including ethical abuses, and such.

I feel differently about the other phenomenologists, though. And Sartre kind of qualifies, I think, in the Cartesian sense, though his focus isn't that, and he is creative enough to be read on his own. But really I think it's Merleau-Ponty and Levinas which have won me over, making me realize I need to dig into Husserl for realzies.

Take your time. I'm slow, but I do come back around to things eventually.

phenomenology is supposed to provide a firm foundation for philosophical speculation but instead gets itself tied into a knot by presuming to talk about what it itself supposes to be ineffable. — Banno

Can you provide a quote from any phenomenologist to support your strange contention that they suppose what they are talking about to be ineffable.

I don't see the relevance. — Janus

Apparently.

But you are familiar with the arguments in PI, I assume? See the section in WIkipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance#Formal_models, which derives from something I wrote many years ago. The bit that is missing is that a family resemblance can grow, so there can be no definite statement of what that similarity is.

Nope.


Edit: Seems to be what @Constance has in mind, and I suspect @Moliere would at least like it to be correct. @Joshs view is harder to grasp, but generally works, homunculus-like, from subjective stuff to infer an "outside" word.

To claim there's such an entity as 'the smell of coffee' requires that coffee produce a consistent experience, but it doesn't seem to. — Isaac

The smell of coffee is nothing but a sensation that belongs to a certain thing, experienced as the thing it is conceived to be. This thing being sipped will always be the same coffee experience iff the sensation of the thing being piped sufficiently replicates the sensation by which coffee became known.

Coffee with sugar will always be experienced as coffee with sugar, coffee with just milk will be experienced as coffee with just milk. Same for old coffee, burnt coffee, cat-shit coffee, Folger’s freeze dried coffee, and on and on an on. It’s how we are informed of differences in fundamental conceptions, by adding to or taking from, those basics. And the coffee we sip, is of course, merely water of different qualities, which are determined by the sensations given from them.
————

These are aesthetic judgements on an object already perceived, not the sensation itself given from objects themselves as they are perceived.
— Mww

Where is that sensation? What are we using as evidence (rational or empirical) that such a thing exists? — Isaac

The evidence is quite apparent. It manifests in how a thing elicits a feeling. It manifests as “this just doesn’t feel right”; “I don’t feel good about doing this”. “Je-SUS, that’s the ugliest freakin’ thing I’ve ever seen”. This kind of sensation addresses the quality of our subjective condition, and is most often understood as mere opinion.

As to where it is….ehhhh, consciousness is as good a location as any. It isn’t an existence per se. Doesn’t matter much, in that every otherwise acceptably rational human makes aesthetic judgements. Or, to be fair, does something in the form that could be called aesthetic judgements.

Impeccable timing?

We use the word "red" for sunsets and sports cars and blood, but these things are not the same colour. — Banno

I can perceive a sports car that appears blood-red in color. What’s the point again?

the transcendental argument is false. — Banno

A transcendental argument is merely an illegitimate logical construction, insofar as the premises are derived from conditions the conclusion cannot meet, or vice versa, the truth or falsity of it thus being irrelevant.

The smell of coffee is nothing but a sensation that belongs to a certain thing — Mww

Don't like nothing buts, for the same sort of reason that I don't like transcendental arguments. That it's the smell of coffee is down to the place of coffee in one's day to day antics. The "nothing but" hides that.

The bit that is missing is that a family resemblance can grow, so there can be no definite statement of what that similarity is. — Banno

Sure, something can change and become more like something else, but I don't see how that fact rules out stating what parts of the things have become more similar to each other. In any case "no definite statement of what that similarity is" sounds like ineffability.

the truth or falsity of it thus being irrelevant. — Mww

Love that. Explains a lot, having an argument for which the truth or falsity is irrelevant.

What’s the point again? — Mww

I ask myself that, often.

Time to go do other things. Have you noticed how good it feels when you stop banging your head against the wall?

Later. Take care.

So you are now saying that since George Eliot was also named Mary Ann Evans, these are two distinct individuals, and that the author of Middlemarch and Mary Ann Evans are different people. — Banno

No, I never said any such thing, and I can't see how this is relevant.

We can have two different descriptions of the very same thing. We can have two names for the very same thing. We can have a description and a name that both refer to one thing. — Banno

The point was that Isaac implied that they are not the same thing, by explicitly confirming that there is not a one-to-one correspondence relation between what the specified "neural activity" refers to, and what "I smell coffee" refers to. Clearly, we do not have two different names of the same thing then.
In the case where two distinct names refer to the same thing (like your example), there is a one to one correspondence in what the names refer to.

Further, if "neural activity", and " I smell coffee" are both descriptions, rather than names, then there is no identified, or named thing which these are supposed to describe. If you don't identify the thing which is being described, then there is no reason to believe that they describe the same thing. You have two separate descriptive phrases "neural activity", and "the smell of coffee", and no entity identified as the thing which these both describe.

If, as Isaac seemed to want to say, one is the named thing, and the other a description of the thing, then what "neural activity" and what "the smell of coffee" each refer to are of separate categories, like one being the subject, and the other the predicate. So in this case it would be a category mistake to say they both refer to the same thing, as "red" does not refer to the thing which is describe as being red, unless we are identifying the particular red of that thing.

Another possibility would be that there is an assumed thing, which the specified "neural activity", and "smell of coffee", as descriptive phrases, are both describing. But what could this third thing possibly be? And why assume a third thing which we have no indication of its existence, just because that's what's required to support such a piss-poor ontology?

So no matter how you look at it, what Isaac was saying did not make any sense.

You failed to note "provided this functions as part of the task at hand". Look to the use. The meaning of a sentence is found in its use. — Banno

The point was that it cannot function for the task at hand, as that would be made impossible by the prescribed circumstances.

Coffee with sugar will always be experienced as coffee with sugar, coffee with just milk will be experienced as coffee with just milk. — Mww

No, no, no. You cannot make blanket generalizations like this. A small coffee with triple sugar is much different from a large with single sugar. And the experience of a coffee with milk and just a couple grains of sugar is much more similar to the experience of a coffee with just milk, than it is to the experience of a coffee with sugar, despite the fact that it is a coffee with sugar. That is why it is commonly said by philosophers that the senses deceive us.

I can perceive a sports car that appears blood-red in color. What’s the point again? — Mww

It was with reference to

Why do think that? Have the same drinks not given you different experiences at different times?
— Isaac

How could it, if I call it the same drink? And conversely, if I have different experiences, how could I say such experiences are of the same drink? — Mww

The sports car is a different tone in the shade, under a street light and in the full sun, yet red in all three cases. We use the same word for a range of different things. The drink tastes different when made in slightly different ways, yet we use the same word.

There need be nothing in common between various cases for which we use the same word. Hence the discussion of family resemblance. And hence the rejection of the essentialism that requires some one thing to be the same in order to justify the use of that word.

It's just not what we do.

You cannot make blanket generalizations like this. A small coffee with triple sugar is much different from a large with single sugar. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, but I can, and I’m justified in doing so, if the point to make was the valid notion of differences in experiences relative to differences in the objects senses.
————-

That is why it is commonly said by philosophers that the senses deceive us. — Metaphysician Undercover

….and said by the critical philosophers that they don’t. Deception is merely error in judgement, and judgement is not what the senses do, so…..
———-

The sports car is a different tone in the shade, under a street light and in the full sun, yet red in all three cases. — Banno

Of course. And what do you suppose it is that tells you that? Perhaps the same as what tells you…so what? The car is this color, even if it appears not to be this color at this time under these conditions. Coffee is still coffee with sugar or without, hot, cold, burnt or otherwise. Sorta like ol’ Bertie, back in 1912….threw a tablecloth over the table, then asked if the table was still there despite being unseen as such. (Sigh)
————

There need be nothing in common between various cases for which we use the same word. — Banno

Need is irrelevant, in the face of universal necessity. I mean….the commonality is cloaked in the very assertion claiming there isn’t one.
———-

I don't like transcendental arguments — Banno

Good onya; and those who actually know what one is, wouldn’t be caught using one.

And I made a mistake, for which I should have known better. Paralogisms are arguments of illegitimate form, content be what it may, whereas transcendental arguments are false with respect to their content, hence immediately invalid. In short, transcendental arguments are those in which the categories are contained in the predicates of pure a priori cognitions, where they don’t belong.

Still…as in all philosophical doctrines, just depends on how one defines the term, which in turn depends on the doctrine in play. You say you don’t like them, but leave it to the reader to figure out for himself what it is you don’t like. You imagine one should be able to figure out what you mean by the term by associating it to its antecedents, but if one doesn’t understand the antecedents, or disagrees with them, he’s no better off then he ever was.

And you really should relinquish your love affair with David Stove. To say any propositional content with a hyphen is a bad argument is itself a bad argument.

Oh, but I can, and I’m justified in doing so, if the point to make was the valid notion of differences in experiences relative to differences in the objects senses. — Mww

OK, you can do what you want, it's a free world, but I don't buy your justification because you are making a very similar category mistake to the others. You were saying that "the smell of coffee" is experienced as a "thing", rather than saying what it really is, a generalization. It is this fact, that "the smell of coffee" represents a generalization, which allows for the vast variance within how "the smell of coffee" is described, that is demonstrated by Banno's flavour wheel. This intrinsic variance, along with the possibility of contradiction, indicates that what "the smell of coffee" refers to is not a thing.

Deception is merely error in judgement, and judgement is not what the senses do, so….. — Mww

Again, you are misrepresenting. Error in judgement can have many causes. Deception is a cause of error in judgement. It is not itself the error in judgement. You ought to separate the means from the end. That the error in judgement occurs, as the end, is evidence that the deception has been successful. But the act of deceiving is not necessarily successful. When we recognize that deception is a valid possibility as a cause of error in judgement, we can take measures to prevent it, and that includes not relying on that which might deceive (the senses in this case).

And you really should relinquish your love affair with David Stove. — Mww

:up:

You were saying that "the smell of coffee" is experienced as a "thing" — Metaphysician Undercover

Is precisely what I’m NOT doing. The smell of coffee is that by which an experience OF a thing is concluded, in the case of first instance of it, or, the smell of coffee is that by which knowledge of a thing is given, in all cases subsequent to, and under the same conditions as, the first. The first is a learning by synthesis, all others are then merely sufficient correspondences to it.

Smell is not a thing, therefore cannot in itself be an experience at all. But the smell of, henceforth subsumed under a conception, is of a particular thing, in this case coffee, therefore not a generalization. Now, coffee itself may be a generalization, but it is still the case that each particular coffee subsumed under the general conception, will exhibit its own sensation. Otherwise, how else to ground the distinction one from the other?

I shouldn’t have to tell you that the more conceptions subsumed under a general, and relating to it without contradiction, the better understood the thing will be. And if it is irrational to assign conceptions arbitrarily, then it must be that the assignment of conceptions must follow a rule, such that irrationality is circumvented. Because coffee is an empirical object, the rule must follow from that which is the case for any empirical object, and that which is the case for any empirical object which makes the rule and thereby the circumvention of irrational reasoning possible, is the sensation by which objects are presented to us in order for there to be anything to even assign non-contradictory conceptions to in the first place.
———-

You ought to separate the means from the end. That the error in judgement occurs, as the end, is evidence that the deception has been successful. — Metaphysician Undercover

Judgement is not an end, it is an intermediary result. It still must be allowed how the error in a judgement manifests, by its comparison to that which follows from it. That an error in judgement occurs must be proven.

Error in judgement can have many causes. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, which presupposes that from which judgements occur.

That the error in judgement occurs, as the end, is evidence that the deception has been successful. But the act of deceiving is not necessarily successful — Metaphysician Undercover

Am I to understand by this, that the act of deceiving is the presupposition for the cause of errors in judgement? All we need to justify that, is posit what the act of deceiving is. If judgement is part of the cognitive process, the act of deceiving as cause must be antecedent to the error contained in the judgement as effect, thus also contained in the cognitive process. So what part of the cognitive process deceives? What’s worse, apparently, is whatever part that is, it may not deceive, thus may not be the cause of errors in judgement, which is to say there isn’t one. So some part of the cognitive process both deceives and doesn’t deceive, and the only way to tell which, is by whether or not there are errors in judgement. But determining whether or not there are errors in judgement can only arise from a judgement made on whether or not there has been a deception.

What a incredibly foolish….errr, irrational…..way to do things, wouldn’t you say? Let’s just remain with the idea there isn’t a deception, there is only a subsumption of conceptions in a synthesis of them that doesn’t relate to that which the conceptions represent. That this doesn’t belong to that isn’t a deception, it’s merely a misunderstanding, which manifests as a error in judgment, proven by a different understanding that does relate different conceptions properly. Simple, sufficient, logically non-contradictory. What more do we need?

There are so many wonderful ways in which humans beings can talk about what matters to us , what is relevant and how it is relevant. For instance , harmonious, integral, intimate, consistent, similar, compatible, intelligible. Of all of these, ‘true and false’ are
particularly narrow and impoverished. — Joshs

I agree. Talk of 'true and 'false' can very often be imported into discourse in which they don't belong. I've argued elsewhere at length against the use of '...is true' as a cudgel. But this isn't addressing the issue.

The issue here is simply one of theorising and the incorporation of data into those theories (whether one uses true/false, or harmonious/disharmonius, or intelligible/unintelligible scales). None of this answers the critique. No matter the scale used, the question is one of what constitutes a move in the direction of greater valuation as opposed to the lesser (more true, more harmonious, more intelligible...) from where one started. If one starts with "this is how things seem to me" and then conducts any kind of 'investigation', one is implicitly affirming that the way things seem to one is lesser, by whatever measure, than the potential result of that investigation. Less true, less harmonious, less intelligible - whatever.

So the very nature of an investigation has, at it's core, an acceptance that the way things currently seem to one is flawed in some way - in whatever measure you're using to judge the model you have.

Once one has accepted that the ways things seem to one is potentially flawed, one cannot rationally, at the same time, use "but that's the way it seems to me" as a counter to any alternative model put forward. we've just accepted that the whole reason we're undertaking an 'investigation' in the first place is because of a lack of certainty about the way things currently seem to us.