A general response.

Note the passage you quote was given as an objection to Rödl. — Wayfarer

Sure.

“Banno goes PoMo”. — Wayfarer

:wink: Never gonna happen.

I had in mind the revelation that some folk do not have an inner monologue, and the lesson that it is not safe to assume that other folk have a similar mental world to oneself. That Ródl has a certain mental life does not imply that everyone else has the same, nor that they ought.

The point is methodological, and perhaps cut to the phenomenological basis of this thread.

The point is methodological — Banno

I dare say not - isn’t it rather an example of ‘psychologism’, the contention that logical functions can be reduced to psychological factors?

Not so much.

It's rather that given a conflict of evidence concerning mental life, whaat process can we employ in order to settle our differences?

Not unlike The Dress, it's not that those who saw it as blue/black were wrong - that is indeed what they see. And the colour of the actual dress.

Relating this back to the OP, what grounds is there for insisting that Pat is wrong in how she understands her own experience?

It's rather that given a conflict of evidence concerning mental life, whaat process can we employ in order to settle our differences? — Banno

It's a good question, and is addressed in the sections of Chapter 3 I'm now reading, specifically 3.2 Removal of Obstacles.

See PM. Set it out, if it makes sense for you.

I’m working on it. More later.

The force-content distinction is a close parallel to the distinction you're trying to draw between thought1 (the act) and thought2 (the content). — Wayfarer

It is, with a key difference which is obscured by Rodl's insistence on using "think that" as synonymous (or at least interchangeable) with "judge that".

The idea of "content" is more or less the same, but my "thought1" is not the same as Frege's "force" or Rodl's "judgment". I intend thought1 to be much more neutral, a simple label we can apply to any mental event. Such a thought doesn't assert anything, nor judge anything to be the case.

Now, do you read Rodl as denying that there can be any such thought? I don't. I read him as denying that we can think, in the sense of "judge", any proposition without an accompanying "I think".

Is this "I think" a thought2? -- that is, some piece of propositional content? Clearly not. But nor is it a thought1, a new mental event; Rodl rejects this. I hate to multiply entities, but it seems as if the "I think", as an act of self-consciousness, must be yet a third term we require in order to understand what it means to think. It is not, properly speaking, a thought at all, but rather constitutive of a certain kind of thinking, much as space and time function in Kantian metaphysics. "The very framework within which all thinking and evaluation occur," in your words, though I'm not yet ready to say "all thinking."

For Rödl, these are not separable aspects of judgment. — Wayfarer

Yes. But to say they cannot be separated at all, or do not successfully refer, is a further step. If Rodl is indeed trying to take that step, then I'm tentatively saying he's wrong to do so.

I think the error lies in the attempt to objectify thought (although that is not Rödl's terminology or method.) But it relates to his later point from Thomas Nagel about 'thoughts we can't get outside of'. — Wayfarer

I'll wait till you get to the Nagel/Moore material before offering any responses about that. As to objectifying thought in general, I believe Rodl is saying that there is no such thing as a thought which hasn't been thought. The whole idea of a "p" which resides somewhere in the ether, waiting to be thought, makes no sense to him. And we know that he affirms objectivity, in his own way: thought can be objective precisely because it is self-conscious, and vice versa. It knows itself to be judging what is the case. What I'm still working to understand, as you can tell from my other comments, is whether this way of seeing objectivity forces us back into some version of the force/content distinction -- which was the point you began your post with, and it's a good one.

The problem of one thought and then another is a product of the view of propositions Rödl is militating against. — Paine

Yes. For Pat to think, "Hey, I'm thinking about a tree" would be an example of a second thought being simultaneous (or nearly so) to a first thought. Rodl, as I read him, is fine with this; it's of no interest to him. What he denies is that the "I think" works like this.

So when I followed his lead in making the distinction between "my thought of judging p" and "judging p", I was well aware that this is a terminology he's putting in the mouth of his opponent. But we can still ask, If the "I think" is not "my thought of judging p", what is it? And what I'm suggesting is that we have a problem no matter which horn of the dilemma we choose -- see my response to @Wayfarer

I think the problem of talking about what is a new 'thought' has to first pass through the issue of the first person being the one making the judgement. — Paine

Yes. One of the central issues of S-C&O is whether 1st-person thought is "a thorn in the flesh of the friends of propositions," or merely "a local problem" concerning a type of reference. What I've read so far, in terms of argument for this, seems equivocal, but there is much more I haven't yet gotten to.

rejection of the "affirming subject" — Paine

. . . understood as a subject who is always affirming in a context. So any other subject could theoretically be plugged into that context, leading to "objectivity." Being true for one means being true for all. Rodl rightly calls this trivial:

First-person thought, insofar as it is first-personal, is not objective. — Rodl, 27

. . . but so what? The problem is not rooted in this obvious fact. This is not the "thorn in the flesh."

If someone disagrees with this, if they perhaps insist that their thought of judging that things are so just is judging that things are so...

What are we to do? How are we to settle such an issue? Are we to say they are mistaken? Wrong? Misunderstanding the issue? — Banno

Why presume there is even some fact of the matter? — Banno

First, note that Rodl does disagree with this. The quote is his version of what an opponent of his views might say. His own view is much closer to your "judging that things are so just is judging that things are so."

But your question about how to settle a disagreement here is one of my favorite meta-philosophical problems. Philosophy always seeks to understand itself, to know its own nature, to comprehend what it is capable of. The question of resolving a philosophical issue is central to one's conception of how philosophy can proceed. What sorts of resolutions can philosophy accomplish, in a case like this? Is somebody right? If we trace the disagreement back to a divergence in some fundamental premises, what do we do next?

Sorry for the mini-essay, but it's a prologue to replying that it's a lot easier to say what wouldn't settle the issue. I don't think an appeal to differing personal experiences will do it; Rodl wants to say something about all thought. More broadly, I don't think there's any empirical resolution; the issue is metaphysical. Whether there is, then, no "fact of the matter" will depend on how you feel about metaphysics.

To conclude with something optimistic: You know how, when something goes wrong with some electrical or digital set-up, 9 times out of 10 the problem is something silly and hardware-related, like forgetting to attach a cable? And you've been sitting there trying to understand the software and figure out what you're doing wrong? Similarly, I find that more often than not a philosophical disagreement can be, if not resolved, at least better understood by assuming the problem is a terminological dispute. That's part of why I've been going at this thought1/thought2 business so heavily.

Similarly, I find that more often than not a philosophical disagreement can be, if not resolved, at least better understood by assuming the problem is a terminological dispute — J

I would say look for the conflict in temperament, the hidden emotion on the scene. What's really being attacked? defended?

we could devise a more accurate notation “that makes I think internal to p: we may form the letter p by writing, in the shape of a p, the words I think.” — J

A splendid proposal, I say, but improvable. In a spirit of extensionalism, we may remove the thinker from the analysis, and instead form a suitable word shape from the words "this sentence token hereby asserts that".

Pat's objection is likewise less psychological. He says

it might as well read, "this sentence token declares true that". But either way, you seem to be confusing utterance or inscription in the object language with utterance or inscription in the meta-language. Or at any rate, it's not my experience that a declarative sentence usually refers to its own semantic properties. And if it did so, the effort would be unnecessary, as is well known. The prefix would be entirely redundant."

I think he has a point, about assertion and declaring true. But I disagree about redundancy. Thinking you can speak (utter or inscribe) as though completely in an object language, without referring implicitly to the convention of reference between word and object, albeit the convention of a make-believe and non-physical relation, is magical thinking. Not in the good way of playing the game of pretend, but in the bad way of pretending not to be.

- A very useful post. :up:

What I said should be read as a general critique of some forms of phenomenological method. In so far as Rödl is dependent on such a method his argument doesn't hold unless one is willing to insist that Pat is wrong in her account of her own metal life. Which is what Rödl appears to be insisting on in the section referred to by .

So Rodl believes that the force/content distinction is a discrimination between a "psychic act" or "mental event" and a "mind-independent reality" that does not involve "my mind, my psyche." It is this that he denies. — J

This seems obviously wrong. There is clearly a valid distinction between the content of judgements and the force of judgements. When I believe a judgement there will always be a force, the force of my belief. On the other hand I can consider some judgement, wonder whether it is true, or just analyze its content without believing anything.

The other thing that seems obviously wrong is that the self-conscious awareness of making a judgement is always present whenever a judgement is made. It seems an obvious fact about human life that we can make judgements without even being aware of doing so.

It is only in a kind of tendentious analysis-after-the-fact formal sense that the "I think" accompanies all judgements. And obviously, the "I think" is not synonymous with self-conscious awareness if it is considered merely formally.

Judging from Rödl's work as it is presented here by those who are reading him, he seems seriously confused. And I am self-consciously aware of making that judgement.

An ingenious idea for "translating away" the 1st person. I think I know what Rodl might say, though: Pat is still performing an act of judging, regardless of whether the object-language sentence concerns herself or a sentence-token. "A declarative sentence" can't refer to anything at all, or judge anything; only a person (or thought) can do that, he would maintain. It's a variation on his skepticism about p -- "It stands ready quietly, unobtrusively, to assure us that we know what we are talking about. . . . If only we understood the letter p, the whole world would open up to us." (55)

But I disagree about redundancy. — bongo fury

Me too.

I quite agree. I'm somewhat bemused that he is being taken seriously.

What I said should be read as a general critique of some forms of phenomenological method. — Banno

OK.

In so far as Rödl is dependent on such a method his argument doesn't hold unless one is willing to insist that Pat is wrong in her account of her own mental life. Which is what Rödl appears to be insisting on in the section referred to by ↪Wayfarer. — Banno

I'd need to see what @Wayfarer comes up with here. I don't recall Rodl saying this. But way back in the OP, that was my possible response #2 to Pat:

"The “I think” is an experience of self-consciousness, and requires self-consciousness. When you say you are “not aware of it,” you are mistaken. But you can learn to identify the experience, and thus understand that you have been aware of it all along."

I don't think it's a good response, but not because it would be impossible for a person to be wrong about their mental life. I think it's misguided because Rodl's thesis about the "I think" doesn't describe a mental event at all. Thus, response #3:

"The “I think” is not experienced. It is a condition of thought, a form of thought, in the same way that space and time are conditions of cognition. Self-consciousness, in Rödl’s sense, is built in to every thought, but not as a content that must be experienced."

This is correct according to Rodl, I believe. What we've been chasing up and down the yard these 20-odd pages is whether this is a coherent thing to say.

The bit about "I think" being ambiguous.

Yes, it's puzzling.

While I appreciate many of your observations, the arrogance of this remark is not a benefit.

Judging from Rödl's work as it is presented here by those who are reading him, he seems seriously confused. — Janus

Yeh. A thread like this really needs to provide a clear account of the motivations behind the strange thesis.

"Why in the world would he do/say that!?"
"Because he was being chased by killer bees."
"Oh, okay. I get it now. Thanks for explaining."

Really? Bemused, not amused. That is, puzzled, confused. Is that arrogance?

Let me ask you both, then, what you make of this:

The [force-content] distinction is introduced as a matter of course; the student is trained not to be tricked by the act-object ambiguity. But there is an awareness that the force-content distinction and the doctrine of propositions have difficulty accommodating 1st-person thought: I ____. — Rodl, 22

Rodl goes on to argue that the 1st person must be understood as self-conscious, but let's not worry about that right now. @Banno, I think you've noted before that we need to do some tinkering within Fregean logic to accommodate the 1st person. Would you agree with Rodl that, without such tinkering, there is indeed a difficulty presented for the "doctrine of propositions"?

Sorry, which bit? There are so many "I thinks" here!

Have you not settled all possible readings to be useless?

Yes! That's it! :wink:

Just to be sure, this is an excellent thread, in that, that he is taken seriously is itself the puzzle. I am missing something here, but what?

I don't see indexicals as so problematic that we need to drop extensionality entirely - which is what Rödl's account seems to require.

@Paine, how would you characterize the "big picture" here, especially with respect to the OP? Rödl says that the I think accompanies all my thoughts, or at the very least he wants to place a very strong emphasis on self-consciousness in thinking and judging. It seems overboard. What is the context that would account for this sort of emphasis? Thanks.

I am missing something here, but what? — Banno

I'm not sure, but following along in this thread, I believe what separates the Rodl-deniers from the Rodl-curious (I don't think we have any committed Rodelians, certainly not me) is whether or not they can see a problem about p. I do see the problem Rodl (and Kimhi) see. How can there be objective content that is also thought? This is not a problem in logic, it's an ancient epistemological puzzle. It's the "view from nowhere" problem, which is why Rodl spends so much time on Nagel. Rodl's concerns about p are a relatively new and often infuriating way of going at this, but I don't think we can just say he's confused.

Can I ask, if a bright child asked you, "What do philosophers mean when they talk about p?" how you would answer? In the simplest terms, what do you think p is meant to signify?

Well, I was trying to go a little slower. Ignore Rodl's possible solution. Is there something that needs solving about the 1st person in order to keep propositional logic workable?