So leave it.
Your own grasp of the intelligibility of things and understanding of what it is to be human. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Our eyes are not on our backs, and so we'd have no idea what we are identifying. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Let's assume for the sake of argument an older, realist perspective. Things have essences. Our senses grasp the quiddity of things. — Count Timothy von Icarus
There is a sort of parallel between this and what Rodl is saying about not removing the thinker from thoughts. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Rather, we're trying to shake up a very common assumption among philosophers, which is that there is some sort of binding action (I called it "metaphysical Superglue" elsewhere) that makes a word inseparable from its object or meaning or concept -- take your pick of these imprecise terms. ("Cannot be grounded in any infallible a priori knowledge," in the words of the SEP article.)
Does this help us understand the relation of word and object, which I believe is Quine's point with "gavagai"? Not a rhetorical question -- you may well be seeing something here that I'm not.
There may well be. Rodl devotes an entire chapter to discussing Nagel's "view from nowhere," and one of his criticisms is this problem of the "loss of the viewer" -- what it does to 1st person propositions.
Who held such a position though? — Count Timothy von Icarus
It's obvious that different peoples use different words for different things and that anything can be said in many ways. — Count Timothy von Icarus
But think about this re Socrates. I believe he'd dispute it vigorously
I also take MacIntyre's idea that we've lost the meaning of classical terms to exemplify this. The assumption seems to be a kind of "one word, one meaning" theory, so that if A comes along and says,"I'd like to use 'virtue' and 'essence' in the following ways" (giving cogent reasons, we'll assume), B replies, "No, you can't, for that is not what 'virtue' and 'essence' mean."
A key idea here is that definitions can be more or less correct — Count Timothy von Icarus
How would we know when one was correct?
↪J
How would we know when one was correct?
Well, suppose someone gave a definition of "tiger" as: "a large purple fish with green leaves, a tap root, and horns." Clearly, this is off the mark and we can do better or worse (although in this case, not much worse). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Perhaps. I had in mind Fine's rejection of Quine's holism. Kripke's origin essentialism works well. One might make sense of essences by using Searle's status functions; something along the lines of Fine's argument but using "counts as..." to set up what Fine calls a definite.What, the fact that you don't seem to have even grasped the very basics of what you're talking about? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Plato, for one. When Socrates questions Euthyphro about the meaning of "piety," they are both assuming that there is a word, eusebeia, that corresponds correctly with a certain content or concept. — J
Rather, we're trying to shake up a very common assumption among philosophers, which is that there is some sort of binding action (I called it "metaphysical Superglue" elsewhere) that makes a word inseparable from its object or meaning or concept -- take your pick of these imprecise terms. — J
There is a strong tendency among some philosophers to attach a name to a thing or a concept with metaphysical Superglue, such that, if there is a question about translation or clarification, we’re told we can't suggest a name change without also changing the thing named. In the case of the rabbit, that seems wrong. If for some reason we decided we needed a new (better?) name for Leporidae, that could be effected with minimum difficulty, since we could always point to the creature itself if anyone had doubt, and say, “No, the object remains the same. This is only a recommendation for a terminological change.” — J
In fact, Buridan would distinguish not only between meaning and naming, or in his terminology, between signification and supposition, but even between two different sorts of signification, namely, immediate and ultimate signification, and, correspondingly, between two different sorts of supposition, namely, material and personal supposition.
What a term immediately signifies is the mental act on account of which we recognize the term as a significative utterance or inscription, as opposed to some articulate sound or discernible scribble that makes no sense to us at all. If I utter the sound ‘biltrix’, it might sound like a word of an articulate human language, and in fact there may be a human language in which it is meaningful (I don’t know), but as far as I can tell, it is only Boethius’ example of a meaningless utterance in his commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation to illustrate the difference between articulate sounds that do and those that don’t make any sense to us.
The latter sort of utterances lack signification precisely because they do not generate any understanding in the mind of the listener. That is to say, upon hearing such an utterance we literally have no idea what the speaker intends by it, if anything at all, because such an utterance simply gives rise to no act of understanding in our mind. Thus, those utterances that do have signification are meaningful precisely because they are associated with some act of understanding, or, in late-scholastic terminology, because they are subordinated to some concept of the human mind, whatever such a concept is, namely, whether it is some spiritual modification of an immaterial mind or it is just a firing pattern of neurons in the brain. The point is that without a subordinated concept an utterance makes no sense, since for it to make sense is nothing but to evoke the concept to which it is subordinated.
But this is not to say that what we mean by our categorematic terms are our concepts... — Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 3
This is much harder with abstracta. If A says, "Let's change the name of Goodness to 'Rational Self-Interest'," it's unclear what B, who objects, can point to in protest. B can say, "That is not how Goodness has traditionally been used” or perhaps even “That is not what Goodness means” but if A’s reason for wanting to make the change is because A believes the previous usage was mistaken, what are we to say? — J
Buridan would briefly reply that the objection mixes up two distinct functions of terms, namely, meaning and naming, or in his terminology, signifying and suppositing. — Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 2
But the type of philosopher I referred to above (call them C) wants to disallow the argument, on the grounds that it isn’t coherent to change the name of Goodness to something else. If you do that, C urges, you’re no longer talking about Goodness. Name and concept are metaphysically wedded together. — J
Well, suppose someone gave a definition of "tiger" as: "a large purple fish with green leaves, a tap root, and horns." Clearly, this is off the mark and we can do better or worse (although in this case, not much worse). — Count Timothy von Icarus
How would we know the correct definition of "tiger"? — J
Presumably if it specifies the things in virtue of which all tigers are tigers, while not having anything that isn't a tiger fall under the definition. — Count Timothy von Icarus
the disagreement is that both parties agree that, for example, 'good' = the desirable, — Leontiskos
That is, remaining on it's own colour might arguably be a part of the essence of being a bishop, since a piece that did not remain on it's own colour could not count as a bishop.
How would they resolve this?
What are you talking about? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Can you give examples of philosophers who don't think goodness has anything to do with desirability? — Count Timothy von Icarus
How would they resolve this?
By considering what tigers are. — Count Timothy von Icarus
But they don't. That's the whole problem. — J
You seem to be getting at "but people disagree, hence there can be no fact of the matter." — Count Timothy von Icarus
Not really familiar with "choiceworthy." Is that a synonym for "desirable"?
Rather, I'm working toward understanding what we need to refer to in order to resolve a disagreement about what I'll call "essentiality" (or perhaps you have a term you prefer).
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