“Everything is relative. There’s no true or false. There’s no right and wrong.”
“But I don’t agree with that.”
“Then you’re wrong!”

In an earlier thread, I called this an example of "crude relativism," and said that I didn't think anyone who was familiar with philosophical inquiry could take it seriously. The relativist is obviously contradicting themselves.

I'm wondering whether this is the same position you're alluding to when you say:

Even saying “there is no one truth for all” is a truth for all. — Fire Ologist

That is, crude relativism would assert this without apparently noticing that it's contradictory.

Tell me what you think about this. Could this really be what relativism comes down to?

I think I am simply saying, if one wants to tell someone else “you are wrong” than one is operating from the standpoint that something is objective between them.

If you have the opinion that I am wrong, you also have the opinion there is something objective.

With regard to relativism, if the only basis you operate from to judge another person right or wrong is your own, subjective point of view, then you would be more consistent with your viewpoint to never see anyone as wrong. They would just be different, from their point of view, not yours.

Incoherence versus coherence is an agreed upon game, but then the agreement takes the place of objectivity. We don’t get to agree to do math and each say 2+2 equals all sorts of things. How math works becomes objective and is not subject to opinions about how to do it, if you want to play math.

They say ritual human sacrifice is good and beautiful.
You say it is not.
The relativist might say it’s culturally dependent and so it is both good and not good depending on who you ask (so neither good nor not good objectively speaking)

If there is nothing objective, then all opinions may seem different, but what else is there to say?

So if you want to have the opinion that someone else is wrong, you can’t have any opinion you want.

Of course being is not contained in language. Being is not contained in anything, and neither is language a container. Hence any any attempt to step outside of all language to describe being “as such” is suspect.

This has "hence" so I assume the third claim follows from the other two. But does it?

P1: Being is not contained in anything (including language).
P2: Language is not a container.
Conclusion: Any attempt to step outside all language to describe being as such is suspect.

I don't see any connection here. And I don't know what to make of your prior statement that "the world is always already in a language" in this case. What does it mean for the world itself to (as opposed to say, human experience of the world) "be in a language" and how was this "always already" the case for the billions of years when no language could have existed?

I don't think human experience is "in a language" either, language is one element of human experience, but that at least seems to make more sense to me.

But this seems to be what you would do - supposing that there are ants prior to "There are ants" being true; and not temporally prior, but logically prior, as if it were not sentences that are true or false.

It isn't primarily sentences that are true or false. The intellect is not a database of sentences. Animals without language certainly appear to have beliefs that can be true or false as well, and this was so before man and his language. So too for infants and those with aphasia. Models can be true or false as well as sentences; artwork more or less "true to life," etc. The truth of sentences is parasitic on truth in the intellect; it is not that certain arrangements of scribbles or sound waves themselves hold a special property of relating to being of their own accord. Speech is a sign of truth in the intellect.

Anyhow, that seems besides the point. If the truth of "there are ants" is dependent on human language existing (even if "always already") then truth is posterior to language (the problems with this are addressed above).

We can't stand outside of the interpretation that claims there are ants, in order to say there are ants outside of that interpretation...

No standing outside is required, just acknowledgement that the thing that is being interpreted in an "interpretation" is prior to the interpretation, i.e. that its being is not dependent on the interpretation. This is ontological priority. You are conflating epistemic limitation with ontological limitation, which is why the issue of priority seems unresolvable to you. But as noted above, if truth is neither prior nor posterior to language, it can hardly be dependent on it in the way you are saying.

I think you're wrong about the epistemic limits, that they follow from a fundamentally misguided philosophy of language grounded in empiricist epistemic presupposition, but even if I agreed with the epistemic limits, they still wouldn't be ontological limits. Something has to exist before it can be interpreted. The truth of an interpretation is measured by what is interpreted.

We can't stand outside of the interpretation that claims there are ants, in order to say there are ants outside of that interpretation...

This just seems like the old Kantian dualism, only now couched in terms of language and interpretation, rather than the shaping influence of the mind. But if we have never, and can never know ants, but only interpretations of ants, then there would be no grounds for the appearance/reality (interpretation/reality) distinction at play in the first place. There would only be interpretation of interpretation, "nothing outside the text." The same sort of representationalism seems at play.

Now, if the truth of an interpretation is not dependent on the prior being of what is interpreted, then this is the same as saying that the truth of what we say about ants is not dependent on ants. But I'd maintain that botany texts are primarily about plants, not about interpretations. Linguistic interpretations are a means of knowing (and just one such means among many) not [/I]what[/I] is known.

I think it's a little more radical than that. Consider any physical object - the ever-useful rock example, let's say. But now wait a minute . . . what makes it a solid object for us? Is being the discrete, solid thing that it appears to us to be a feature of "things as they are", which we have only to note and make true statements about?

Rather, isn't it the case that our particular needs and capacities as humans allow us to perceive and group items in the world according to categories like "discrete" and "solid"? This has nothing to do with whether they "really are" this or that. Now I'm not a proponent of anti-realism. For our purposes, certainly they are, and atoms are real, etc etc. My point is that we don't approach the world as a collection of neutral phenomena which hold still for us as we go on to discover what is true about them. We have a large role to play in constituting the phenomena we then say true things about. Again, this doesn't mean we make them up or that they could be any which way, or that the things we say aren't true. It means that "things as they are" should probably be reserved for a particular reductive conception of physics, and even there viewed with some doubt.

This seems to rely on the same conflation of epistemic and ontic priority addressed above. Consider what you are taking umbrage with: "things are what they are."

What is the response then? Things aren't as they are? Things are as they aren't?

This post once again sets up a false dichotomy between a "view from nowhere" and agnosticism about ontological priority. Denying the former does not imply the latter though. That our understanding of a rock is shaped by the mind, language, etc. should not lead us to conclude that the rock is not actual (existing as it is) prior to our knowing it. Interpretations are interpretations of things that already are, that's what makes them "interpretations of something and not nothing in particular.

As you say yourself: "this doesn't mean we make them up or that they could be any which way." Yet what determines interpretations? Something must first be something determinant before it can determine anything else in any determinant way.

That things must be as they are does not require knowledge of "things-in-themselves," (which is itself a completely misguided standard of knowledge grounded in representationalism.)

Now either the way things are effects interpretation or it doesn't. Either we know things as they are, or we don't. Perhaps we know things as they aren't? But if this is so, in what sense can we even say that we know them? What we know is not thing "what they are" but something else "what they aren't."

Either what things are is communicated by interpretation (the being of things is known through interpretation) or it isn't. That things are known through interpretations doesn't necessitate that the interpretation is identical with the thing it interprets, but it does mean something must be identical between the two, else they are unrelated. If they are unrelated (if we know things as they aren't) I don't know what grounds we have for the initial interpretation/reality distinction in the first place. We should just say interpretation is reality; it's interpretation "all the way down."

I would put it this way. We know things as they interact with us (not exclusively through language). We also know them through a process of triangulation, by which we see how things interact with each other, through their interactions with us (e.g. experiment, scientific instruments, etc.). Interaction is not secondary to what a thing is though. To know how something interacts is to know what it is. Interaction is the only thing that makes anything epistemically accessible in the first place, and act follows on being. If act didn't follow from being, then appearance and reality would be arbitrarily related, and we might as well call appearances reality, since reality is irrelevant.

It occurred to me that Cicero might be an example of an ethics grounded in an understanding of human nature and telos that is more "naturalistic."

I'm not really sure what you mean when you refer to "transcendence," though. Is this supposed to be God alone? These posts gave me the feeling that what is really at stake is nominalism, not "transcendence," i.e. whether or not goodness is merely a name.

That is, crude relativism would assert this without apparently noticing that it's contradictory.

Or they just don't mind contradiction.

Tell me, do you think Wittgenstein's thesis about hinge propositions is meant to apply universally, for all people, or does it only apply to those people whose existing hinge propositions allow Wittgenstein's arguments to succeed? It seems obvious to me that Wittgenstein's argument fails in the context of any philosophy that admits of a faculty of noesis, since if we have direct justifcatory knowledge of first principles due to the communication of form through the senses, then "hinge propositions" are not unjustified and have determinant truth values for all. So, is what he says about truth not true for people whose hinges include something like direct justifcatory knowledge of first principles?

Welcome to aesthetics :) -- those are the questions aesthetics tries to address -- we often believe there's a difference between say even some film that I like, and a film that I'd say is better in some sense than other films and others would like, and sometimes we can hear the same sorts of justifications for why someone likes a film -- "the film was alright, but it didn't match the book"; well, why does that matter? Must a film adaptation match a book to be good, and if so, in what way might we reason about that that's more than "Just because"?

You might find this of interest: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetic-concept/

What is the response then? Things aren't as they are? Things are as they aren't? — Count Timothy von Icarus

"Things are as they are to us."

. . . . should not lead us to conclude that the rock is not actual (existing as it is) prior to our knowing it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The idea is that "the rock" is a construct, a very useful and non-arbitrary and important one for us. But for all we know, God doesn't see it that way at all; perhaps God sees an astonishing interplay of quantum phenomena.

As you say yourself: "this doesn't mean we make them up or that they could be any which way." Yet what determines interpretations? Something must first be something determinant before it can determine anything else in any determinant way. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's fine. But that "something" may not much resemble what we call a rock. See above -- God and quantum beauty. Do you really believe you know "what things are"? Everything I manage to learn about physics shows me that the physicists themselves are no longer able to use such a concept, and remain baffled and fascinated about the ultimate structures, if any, of reality.

That is, crude relativism would assert this without apparently noticing that it's contradictory.

Or they just don't mind contradiction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's why I call it "crude relativism," somewhat derisively, and contrast it with a relativism worth reading and thinking about. Yes, I suppose there are thinkers who don't mind contradiction, but if you've read any actual relativists, and especially people like Gadamer and Habermas and Bernstein who try find interpretive middle ground between totalizing critique and unworkable foundationalism, you see that the issue of contradiction is very much on their minds. The idea that relativism -- one of the most influential philosophical positions of the previous century -- was espoused by philosophers who "don't mind contradiction," just doesn't stand up under even a cursory reading of their work.

Wittgenstein's thesis about hinge propositions . . . — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've just been following along in that discussion. I don't know enough firsthand about what Witt says on that subject to be entitled to an opinion.

"Things are as they are to us."

Right, which is dependent on how they are. "Things as they are for us" is, you might say, a slice of how they are (perhaps mixed in with error, i.e. how they aren't).

The idea is that "the rock" is a construct, a very useful and non-arbitrary and important one for us. But for all we know, God doesn't see it that way at all; perhaps God sees an astonishing interplay of quantum phenomena.

Constructed from what? Presumably how the rock actually is (its being), as it interacts with us, no? So the construction involves/expresses the actuality of the rock, what it is. Truth involves the degree to which the interpretation is adequate to what it is an interpretation of. "Everything is received in the manner of the receiver" is the old maxim, and this is as true for how salt interacts with water as for how we interact with rocks.

And sure, God would presumably be the measure of total knowledge. But the absolute is not the objective as set against appearances, but must include all appearances as well; otherwise it wouldn't be absolute. The way things appear is part of what they are (else they wouldn't be that things' appearances). Hence, total knowledge of a thing's being includes its appearances, which flow non-arbitrarily from its actuality.

I am just pushing back on the idea that one either knows everything or one knows only a simulacrum. The actuality (or form) of things must be present in the senses and intellect, else knowledge and interpretation would not be "of" anything prior (which is what makes them determinant, non-arbitrary).

Do you really believe you know "what things are"?

Sure, to some degree. What's the counterpoint. That we don't know what thing's are to any degree? That we are totally ignorant of what anything is and cannot ever know? How is that not epistemic nihilism? One need not know everything to know anything, or be infallible to be even partially correct. If we have any grasp on truth at all, then by definition, we have some grasp on being as it actually is.

Now, if one is fully committed to representationalism and is skeptical about the logic of priority (i.e. that representations are posterior to/caused by what they represent), then the epistemic difficulties are immense. Indeed, I hardly see how we could be justified in calling our representations "representations," in this case, since by our own admission, it is quite impossible to know if these "things" are related to anything they are "representations of" in any determinant way. Nor would we have justifications for positing "things to be represented in the first place."

That's why I call it "crude relativism," somewhat derisively, and contrast it with a relativism worth reading and thinking about. Yes, I suppose there are thinkers who don't mind contradiction, but if you've read any actual relativists, and especially people like Gadamer and Habermas and Bernstein who try find interpretive middle ground between totalizing critique and unworkable foundationalism, you see that the issue of contradiction is very much on their minds. The idea that relativism -- one of the most influential philosophical positions of the previous century -- was espoused by philosophers who "don't mind contradiction," just doesn't stand up under even a cursory reading of their work.

Every philosopher is a relativist, contextualist, and perspectivist to some degree. Some things obviously are culturally or historically relative. Opposition to relativism is normally opposition to epistemic or moral relativism in some robust sense, i.e. that goodness and truth (and not just their expressions or reception) are posterior to culture.

I'm not really sure what you mean when you refer to "transcendence," though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Did I mean "transcendental"? I actually meant a source of morality beyond the human, like God or Plato's forms, or anything external to humanity.

It occurred to me that Cicero might be an example of an ethics grounded in an understanding of human nature and telos that is more "naturalistic." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could be, but do we even believe there’s such a thing as human nature? I'm not sure. We are a social species, and that tends to promote certain behaviors, like the codes of conduct we call morality. I’m just not sure how deep that really goes. I'm not partial to essentialism.

Is being the discrete, solid thing that it appears to us to be a feature of "things as they are", which we have only to note and make true statements about?

Rather, isn't it the case that our particular needs and capacities as humans allow us to perceive and group items in the world according to categories like "discrete" and "solid"? — J

1. Yes. It is a fact about the world; true without humans (is my view);
2. Yes. That does not mean they do not exist otherwise.

My point is that we don't approach the world as a collection of neutral phenomena which hold still for us as we go on to discover what is true about them. — J

I think we do. I think that is the intuition of 99+% of people and, as far as I can tell, the basis for why anything we do actually works.

We have a large role to play in constituting the phenomena we then say true things about. — J

I have been over this position a few times (in various forms - a semi-popular one in phil). I don't buy it. I don't think we have anything to do with the actual things which are out there that we are describing. We constitute our own concepts, and overlay these onto those things - thus, potentially creating daylight between the 'real world' and ourselves (i'm an anti-realist about perception, anyways just not objects). But I do not buy, and can't see any reason to think this affects the world around us, rather htan our internal (collectively internal?) world.

It means that "things as they are" should probably be reserved for a particular reductive conception of physics, and even there viewed with some doub — J

Hmmm. I can still buy this, due to the (now) bolded above. That said, I do not think anything at all is going amiss when we do this outside of those fields. It seems to be hte case - we're just inadequately clear when we want to make that distinction, i'd say.

Also, if you wanted to confine "things as they are" to terms of intersubjectivity — J

That certainly could be done.. No real issue.

However I still don't understand what makes 'the world go round' in the sense of artistic quality. — Red Sky

Now mayhaps it's inevitable, but give how little attention is paid to aesthetics on the fora I thought it worth noting that the OP was asking after the notion of "objectivity" not with respect to knowledge, ontology, or ethics.

One thing I wanted to know was when it came to art what was the judge of quality.
Specifically if there was one thing you needed no matter what. (I am still open to opposing ideas)
Do a number of factors combined have to meet some standard? But if something was slightly less than that standard, would it also not qualify? — Red Sky

There's a clear distinction that George Dickie describes which might help you as you go forward, though won't answer these questions.

He notes how there's the categorical and the evaluative use of "work of art"

So we can say "yes that's art" even if we like or dislike it, or would even rather it not be art.

But we can also say "That's a work of art" to mean "that's something excellent for what it is, something worthy of appreciation"

*****

If there was one thing you'd need to know no matter what I'd say it's some art or other. Else you'd just be reading about what others said -- it can be performance or appreciation, but it seems you'd have to engage in art in some way in order to to be able to judge the quality of art (in the "no matter what" way)

“Being” isn’t a content to be grasped outside language—it’s not in language, but we can only talk about it within language.

The idea of “stepping outside language” is incoherent, not because language limits being, but because thought and communication are what make talk of “being” meaningful in the first place.

The goal is not to deny reality, but to deny that we can talk about reality as it is apart from us in any meaningful way.

We are not going to achieve anything much here, so go back a bit. The claim you made was as follows:

I am not more inclined to think that man, with our without his institutions and "games," is the sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos (or goodness, or truth for that matter). — Count Timothy von Icarus

The obvious response is, why should we supose that there is a "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos" at all?

And go back a bit more, where I said

Aesthetic claims - that the roast lamb in the oven as we speak, slow cooked with six veg, to be served with greens - is better than a Big Mac, is not just an expressions of feeling nor statements of fact—but an interpretation within a context of belief, intention, tradition, form, and reception. It arises as a triangulation of speaker, interpreter and dinner. It's not objective, but it's not relative, either. It is cultivated and critiqued, without requiring foundational aesthetic truths, because it is an integral part of a holistic web of taste that extends beyond the speaker and even beyond the interpreter into the world at large. Further, no such aesthetic scheme is incommensurable with other such schemes. — Banno

Supose that there is a "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos". How do we mere humans identify it?

How would what you are suggesting differ in application to what I have suggested here?

Even if the metaphysics of beauty differ—whether it's mind-independent or constituted in interpretation—that makes no difference to how we actually respond to or deliberate about aesthetic judgments.
We still compare, critique, educate taste, appeal to tradition or innovation, and seek resonance with others. Whether beauty is discovered or constructed, the practice of aesthetic life—what we do in the face of a judgment—remains the same.

“Being” isn’t a content to be grasped outside language—

We don't grasp being at all with the senses prior to language acquisition? So infants have no grasp of being? Animals as well? The disabled who cannot speak?

Being is either a content that can be grasped outside language or all those without language have no grasp of being (which presumably means something like: "they have no thoughts, beliefs, or goals vis-á-vis being")." This seems obviously false in terms of humans without a grasp of language and higher animals.

it’s not in language, but we can only talk about it within language.

Sure, you cannot speak about things without language. This amounts to "you cannot not use language while using language." This is a limit on the order of speaking and writing. It does not seem to be a limit on the order of knowing or being. Why would it be?

There seem to be plenty of counter examples, like the poor language user who knows what they want to communicate but cannot do so. Here, language is not the limit on their knowing.

To counter the priority of being, my argument, you need to support instead: "being isn't something that is outside language; things cannot be (or be known) without being spoken about; things need language to exist (or to be known)" That is what would show that being (or knowledge) is not prior to speech.

The idea of “stepping outside language” is incoherent, not because language limits being,

Again, it seems the senses must be prior to speech, and that man must first be before he can sense or speak. Your positioning of philosophy of language as first philosophy has you reversing the orders so that everything must collapse into the order of speaking as an absolute limit. But things are intelligible and meaningful in the senses prior to being so in speech, else how could we intelligibly speak about what is known through the senses?

Deflation, whereby reason (and so intelligibility) is simply reduced to rule following in "games" seems to be lurking here.

because thought and communication are what make talk of “being” meaningful in the first place

Right, this is the claim that "meaningfulness," i.e. intelligible content, form, or "being something determinant and actual," is posterior to language. All my prior arguments apply here.

First, riddle me this, if true interpretations "of something" do not convey something actual about that thing that existed prior to the interpretation, in what sense are they "interpretations of" anything in particular? In virtue of what are they "true?" By your claim, there was nothing meaningful vis-á-vis anything spoken of until after it was spoken of. Talk is what makes being "meaningful." The speaking generates all the intelligible content.

Yet if things were not determinant and actual prior to being spoken about there would be no reason to speak of them one way and not any other. That the sky is called blue has to do with something that is prior to human speech. Indeed, this seems obvious because, at the very least, things must have determinant actuality vis-a-vis the senses prior to being spoken of in any particular way. Else, everything is merely potential prior to speech, and so there is no prior actuality to explain why one thing is said and not any other, and "interpretations" are not really "interpretations of" anything definite, but rather nothing in particular. And it cannot be that "everything is always already spoken of," since language has not always existed, and we discover new things to speak about all the time (which presumably existed prior to entering language).

The obvious response is, why should we supose that there is a "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos" at all?

Only man has language right? Didn't you just claim that all meaningfulness only exists within language? By your logic, it seems that to be beautiful, something must be called beautiful in language. No? So, if only man uses language, then man's language is required to make anything beautiful (or good, or true presumably). Indeed, if truth is only a property of sentences, and only man uses language, then man would also be the source of truth, since man generates language (language is posterior to man), and truth is dependent on sentences (is posterior to language).

For someone who accused me of making "no arguments," you don't seem to want to address the argument about priority at all. The priority issue applies just as well to "use" as well. Something prior needs to determine what is useful, else things would be arbitrarily useful (which is not what we encounter). Hence, use is dependent and cannot be appealed to as an unanalyzable metaphysical primitive.

Being” isn’t a content to be grasped outside language—it’s not in language, but we can only talk about it within language.

BTW, let me try to break this down into premises:


P1: One cannot use language to speak of anything without using language.
C: Therefore, being isn't a content to be grasped outside language (i.e. it lacks meaning outside language).

The idea of “stepping outside language” is incoherent, not because language limits being, but because thought and communication are what make talk of “being” meaningful in the first place.

This seems to be a formulation of the same idea.

I am not sure about how the conclusions is supposed to follow. That you cannot use language without using language is true, but that you cannot use language to refer to anything outside of language seems obviously false, since we refer to things that exist outside language all the time. One would need a very particular philosophy of language where it is hermetically sealed and cannot refer outside itself for this conclusion to make sense, but then that would also need to be included as a premise. Prima facie, language would be fairly useless if it only referred to itself. When I refer to trees, I refer to trees, not some linguistic entity, etc.

This is not unlike the position that we can never know anything outside the mind, because one always uses the mind to know anything. Indeed, it seems to me to be the same position applied to language. But such a position has a mistaken idea of how the mind and language grasp being (as well as the aforementioned issues with priority that make it impossible to justify the relationship between the non-prior "noumena" and the phenomena of mind or language).

I don't find the view you're sketching here to be absurd, or impossible, or even implausible. It may even be the case that we don't significantly disagree, because, as so often happens at this level of theorizing, we're likely giving different interpretations to certain terms.

Going carefully into that would require a paper, not a post. I'll just give one example of what I mean.

Rather, isn't it the case that our particular needs and capacities as humans allow us to perceive and group items in the world according to categories like "discrete" and "solid"? — J

Yes. That does not mean they do not exist otherwise. — AmadeusD

But I do think they exist otherwise. So what would lead to you believe I don't? Here, it looks like you want to equate what I'm calling "items in the world" with "things that exist." How should we think, then, of an item? In my way of talking, there is a description of such items that we can give, while allowing the possibility that the item could still exist under another description. In your way of talking, that isn't possible. You seem to be saying that for the item not to be described in a certain way would mean it "does not exist otherwise" -- that is, that is ceases to be an existent thing at all. Whereas I'm saying that there is a way of existing that doesn't require our usual terminology.

So we're differing about what to quantify over, I'd say.

We don't grasp being at all with the senses prior to language acquisition? So infants have no grasp of being? Animals as well? The disabled who cannot speak? — Count Timothy von Icarus

To my eye, and I'd supose to the eye of many who have given it some thought, this use of "being" is fraught. The question as posed seems to depend on a very specific and perhaps equivocal sense of "grasping being," without clarifying what that would amount to. As such much of what you say here has a merely rhetorical quality.

That is, you seem to have missed the point entirely.

Now It's clear that the picture you see before you makes sense to you. Uncharitably, you seem to think that God made the world in discrete pieces ready for the Greeks to name.

But that's a very suspect view.

You would have me respond to sentences such as that quoted above, but "being" is not a term I would choose to use, let alone defend. That we "grasp being" strikes me as verging on a nonsense expression. That I use the term at all is by way of showing how problematic it is.

All this to say I will not be joining you in the metaphysician's chamber. It's a waste of time.

I'll instead insist on a path I set for us earlier. I'll change it a bit, to see if it can elicit a reply. If there is a "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos", and also a nice ceramic before us, how would we go about deciding if this particular ceramic is in line with the "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos", in order to evaluate it aesthetically?

Now I suggest that we settle such things by engaging in a conversation involving the pot, discussing glazes, inclusions, differing firings and clays, workmanship and provenance. We make up a story.

And I suggest that we would here have common ground, regardless of whether there is a "sui generis source of beauty" or it's something that we decide for ourselves.

And here's the rub: it is this way becasue even if there were a "sui generis source of beauty" it is we who would still have to decide how the pot exemplifies that beauty.

Man is the measure of all things — because it is always human beings who determine what counts as a thing to be measured, and by what standard.

I'm quite enjoying this thread. Aesthetics is not something we discuss as often as we perhaps might, but that can bring out quite profound differences in our approaches to philosophy more generally. I hope you are reading along.

I came into this thread in my heavy handed way, voicing objections to objectivity. Too esoteric to be of much use.

We agree that how good a book is, is not related to how many people like it. But on the other hand, it would be mere snobbery to reject something becasue it is popular. Popularity must count for something.

I'd suggest that the quality of a book, and of any item, is seen in the stories that accompany it. If this is so, then the value of a piece is not so much in the piece itself as in what we do and say about it.

And popularity is part of that story.

Of course what we do and say varies with our emotional response to a piece, and so also becomes a part of its story. It's not a mistake to think in terms of the emotions elicited, but it's one part of a complex.

If we were to come up with a "standard" by which to judge the quality of a book, wouldn't that just set a challenge for an intrepid writer to produce something that fails to meet that standard, brilliantly?

Setting a standard runs the danger of freezing creativity.

All of this talk of "standards" and "stories" could be made more sophisticated, defended and critiqued at length. The core here is that aesthetics is not a found thing with rules, but a process that promises no end.

To my eye, and I'd supose to the eye of many who have given it some thought, this use of "being" is fraught. The question as posed seems to depend on a very specific and perhaps equivocal sense of "grasping being," without clarifying what that would amount to. As such much of what you say here has a merely rhetorical quality.

The verbage of "grasping being" is yours Banno. You wrote that "being cannot be grasped outside language". Now it is "bad argument" and "merely rhetorical" to respond to someone's exact words? Was your statement that:

Being” isn’t a content to be grasped outside language

also "merely rhetorical" and an equivocation?

I might have said something like "knowing," although I think "grasping being" or "grasping truth " is fine. It's good enough.

The question is: can animals know anything? Can infants or those who have lost their language production and comprehension capacities? It would seem so. There seems to be a sort of sense knowledge that animals and infants are capable of, which implies a grasp of truth, i.e.., what is the case. It would seem that they can know what is without language. Hence, your claim that "being cannot be a content grasped outside language" seems false. Sense knowledge would seem to be a "grasp on being" if anything is.

However, per your previous claim that truth is a property of sentences, there would be issues here. If committed to this idea, we would have to say that either infants, the disabled without language, and animals somehow grasp or possess sentences, or else cannot understand if their beliefs or perceptions are false (which, based on research, seems false).

That is, you seem to have missed the point entirely.

Now It's clear that the picture you see before you makes sense to you. Uncharitably, you seem to think that God made the world in discrete pieces ready for the Greeks to name.

But that's a very suspect view.

Another ridiculous strawman mixed with bigotry. I said nothing about Greeks or God. Very briefly, the issue is that:


A. if the actuality of things is not prior to language, why would language "about things" be one way and not any other?" Likewise, if "meaning is use" this just brings up a similar question: "what determines usefulness?" Either something determines language or usefulness, and is thus prior, or nothing does. If nothing prior determines language or usefulness, why are they one way and not any other?

Aside from this difficulty, the idea that language or what we find useful can be "any which way," is deeply contrary to experience.

B. if the being of what is being interpreted is not prior to an interpretation, how could an "interpretation" actually be "of" anything? If being lacks determinant actuality prior to interpretation, then interpretations are "of" nothing in particular (nothing determinant).

You would have me respond to sentences such as that quoted above, but "being" is not a term I would choose to use, let alone defend. That we "grasp being" strikes me as verging on a nonsense expression. That I use the term at all is by way of showing how problematic it is.

You make metaphysical claims all the time. Then when challenged, you claim, without supporting argument, that every term involved in metaphysics is simply unusable (even though you yourself use them to make the claims you favor).

This is a non-argument. Stop making metaphysical claims like "the world is always already in language," if you're going to turn around and say "I cannot defend anything I am saying because all metaphysical language is too problematic." You're rejecting even basic terms like prior and posterior (actually, you claimed, with no supporting argument, that one needs a "view from nowhere" to discuss priority).

You say things like:

Of course being is not contained in language. Being is not contained in anything, and neither is language a container. Hence any any attempt to step outside of all language to describe being “as such” is suspect

This presupposes that language is something that must be "stepped outside of" to know or refer to the world. That is a metaphysical/anthropological claim.

But now "being" is in fact a nonsense term. This is reminding me of when you claimed that "correct logic" was also a "loaded term" in a discussion of logical pluralism, and I had to point out that it's a term in every major article on the subject, including the one you were citing (in the first sentences), and in the first sentences of the SEP article on logical pluralism.

Terms can be unclear. It is not good argument to just claim that all the basic terms of a field are "unusable" especially if you yourself keep using them to advance your own position. You have to show why a term is unclear.

Truth doesn't reflect the mind's grasp of being, it is the minds grasp of being. “Prior” suggests an ontological gap that can’t be made coherent. We don’t grasp being by representing it from the outside, but are embedded in a structure of interpretation, where belief, truth, and world hang together.

I can't see how to make sense of your attempt to foreclose on this. You bold "Nothing about this priority requires any claim about stepping outside of all interpretations" only to then say " The truth itself is grounded in being, and hence is already actual prior to any interpretation." You appear to just be smuggling back in the scheme/content distinction you reject.

This is the same old, tired false dichotomy. Either there is a "view from nowhere" or linguistic turn philosophy must follow. I already pointed out how your conclusion has no clear relation to your premises in other instances, and it is the same here:

P1: We don’t grasp being by representing it from the outside, but are embedded in a structure of interpretation, where belief, truth, and world hang together.
C: Therefore, it is impossible to speak of anything being prior to language, or for language to refer to what exists outside the context of language itself.

The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.

You need additional premises like "knowing something in any way requires language," and "what something is must be posterior to human speech about it" or "nothing can be actual prior to human speech about it," as well as "language only ever speaks about language and linguistic entities, never about what exists outside the context of human language." That is, you need to actually support a metaphysics of language that concludes that language cannot ever refer outside itself, else you are just engaged in question begging.

"There is no view from nowhere," does not entail any of those additional premises. Indeed, since you're not making a skeptical argument i.e., "we can never know if anything is prior to language," but rather a positive one "nothing is prior to language and it is meaningless to claim otherwise," I think you'll need all of those premises.



Here are your previous arguments:

P1: One cannot use language to speak of anything without using language.
C: Therefore, "being isn't a content to be grasped outside language" (i.e. it lacks meaning outside language).


The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.


Likewise:


P1: Being is not contained in anything (including language).
P2: Language is not a container.
Conclusion: Any attempt to step outside all language to describe being as such is suspect.


The conclusion doesn't follow here either. Nor have I argued for anything like the position that is dispatched by the conclusion in the first place. I have said that we can use language to speak of things that exist prior to language. That's not the same thing as "stepping out of language." It is using language. You need an additional premise:

P3: To ever speak about anything's being outside the context of human language, or ontological priority, requires not using language while you speak about it.

But P3 seems obviously false.


Are these merely rhetorical objections?

a process that promises no end. — Banno

…or beginning…or even a specific process…

An eternal reinterpretation…of the same process…

truths become available within human discourse—not arbitrarily, not as illusions, but as intelligible articulations of a world we are always already in relation with. — Banno

How not arbitrarily? From whence comes that which prevents arbitrariness?

If not arbitrarily or as illusions, then it seems to me you should be agreeing with Count.

And if not arbitrarily, you have promised an end, namely, something that is not arbitrary or illusion (also namely, the truth).

Banno, although I think my questions follow from the position you are articulating, (or are in the process of articulating), I’d much rather see you respond to Count’s post just above.

The verbage of "grasping being" is yours Banno. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Tim, in this discussion between us, "being" is first used by you here: , several times in your extended quotes concerning Plato. A quick flick through the subsequent posts shows that you used it a dozen times before I used it, , in responding to a direct quote from you.

From this search, we see you use

grasp of being — Count Timothy von Icarus

first, and again,

grasp on being — Count Timothy von Icarus

before I quote your use.

It's not a term I use happily. It's yours. It pleases me that you would disown it, perhaps you see now that it isn't of much help.

The question is: can animals know anything? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why is that the question? The topic here is aesthetics, not animal psychology.

Look at the question: can animals know anything? Giving an answer presumes we have a grasp of what "know" means. What conditions make it intelligible to attribute knowledge in the first place?

After the dog chases the possum up a tree, we might say that the dog knows where the possum is. It shows that it knows which tree the possum went up by circling the trunk and looking up. If knowledge is taken to be justified true belief, then there is the problem that the dog cannot provide a justification for it's knowledge, nor make any knowledge claims. Nor can the dog give reasons, represent its belief or its justification to others, or doubt or reflect on whether it was mistaken.

The question "can animals know anything?" is as much about how we ought use the word "know" as it is about animal psychology. It is equally a question about how we ought to use the word "know," and what background conditions make such a concept meaningful. Without clarifying that, we risk treating what is a conceptual issue as if it were merely empirical.

I'll happily attribute knowledge to the dog, so long as we recognise that knowledge is not monolithic.

...you seem to think that God made the world in discrete pieces ready for the Greeks to name. — Banno

Another ridiculous strawman mixed with bigotry. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It was an obvious joke.

However your use of "straw man" might be telling. It's not uncommon for accusations of committing the straw man fallacy to come from folk who have not set out their account as clearly as they think.

The topic here is aesthetics, not metaphysics. You emphatically wish to shift the ground. Why is that?

And why insist on attributing arguments to me that I have not made? I would not use "actuality of things" any more happily than "grasp of being". Nor does it follow, from what I said, that language can be used "any which way".

There is straw in your house as well.

We can go on in this vein, if you like.

But there remains the issue I've now raised several times, to which I would like to see your response.

Can you set out what practical difference you see resulting from the view of aesthetics that you defend?

I've made the claim that aesthetic assessments are a construct of human culture, built by an interaction between the object, the speaker and those in the community.

How are assessments made, in a world that features your "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos"?

My hands are open: If your assessments in your account are made in the same way as are assessments in my account, then deciding if something matches the "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos" is a construct of human culture.

If so, like Wittgenstein’s beetle in the box, , the "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos" drops out as irrelevant. a placeholder for something that makes no practical difference in our shared practices of judgment.

Part of this relates to a topic you and I touched on earlier, as to whether there can be more than one consistent account of some state of affairs. This amounts to little more than that we might well have more than one true description of the same thing.

Davidson might have it that there can be at most one description. He resists the relativism of multiple, equally valid but irreducible worldviews. There's a tension here for my own views, since I would side with Davidson while maintaining that there can be different descriptions. I think it can be managed.

In Davidson's triangulation we have the speaker, the interpreter, and the world. While the conclusion from "On the very idea..." is the rejection of a gap between scheme and content, this does not imply that we could not have more than one description of the very same state of affairs.

Multiple true descriptions can emerge, provided that they are mutually interpretable and answerable to the same worldly constraints. That preserves both Davidson’s realism and the possibility of plural, non-relativistic perspectives.

And @frank, this is not unlike the way in which intentional states vary depending on the description given - after Anscombe as well as Davidson. Turning on the light and alerting the burglar as different intentional interpretations of the very same act.

So we might describe a chair variously as constructed from multiple pieces of wood, or as a collection of gluons and forces, and yet have both descriptions as equally true, but differing in intent.

And the vase as polycrystalline with have amorphous (glassy) phases, or as ochres, umbers and intentionally rough instantiation of wabi-sabi. Both may be true.

Either something determines language or usefulness, and is thus prior, or nothing does. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly. And if nothing determines language, then all that we say is arbitrary.

the idea that language or what we find useful can be "any which way," is deeply contrary to experience. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Although language can be any which way to the equivocator who is not interested in truth, who is only interested in some sort of meaningless game. But for anyone who uses language to convey meaning to another about the world we share in common, it is certainly contrary to experience.

being cannot be grasped outside language"↪Banno. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Existence, actual things, the world. What is. Being.
Cannot be grasped outside of language?
How about with a hand?
Or by “grasped” do we mean “understood”? Then how about as an intuition, too vague to be put into words but nevertheless grasped? Or analogously as sensation, or sense knowledge?

the world is always already in language, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right. That is a metaphysical claim. About language and the world.

Aesthetics entails a metaphysical standpoint.
Ethics entails a metaphysical standpoint.
Which is why threads starting along those lines, like this one, when placed in the hands of the Wittgensteinians, end up in this same conversation about language and not the thing language is speaking about (whatever the thing is). Sparring for the most consistent use of language instead of saying something about the world that another person might also say about the same world.

Doesn’t there inevitably have to be something else to talk about besides talking?
By talking, people inevitably make metaphysical claims. Why is it so hard to make that obvious point?

So we might describe a chair variously as constructed from multiple pieces of wood, or as a collection of gluons and forces, and yet have both descriptions as equally true, but differing in intent. — Banno

But isn’t that all blathering about ourselves, meaningless in the world, only for the sake of being reinterpreted into some other blather, if in fact “the ‘chair’ is always already in a language”?

(You said “the world is always already in a language”. Here, applying this theory, your world is a chair. Or should I say a ‘chair’?)

I mean, what could possibly be the point of trying to put into words that which distinguishes wood from gluons, without a pre/non-linguistic world/experience that necessitated different words for different things, regardless of any intent? Are you just gaming the listener, and if so, why ever settle on any distinctions? Gluons are wood, and forces, and are not forces, etc. as long as they remain in a language to be reinterpreted, promising no end.

Why is that the question?

Because you have denied the priority of not only Beauty, but of Being itself to language. So, if I want to move on to Beauty, wouldn't it make sense to demonstrate that Being and Truth are first prior to language?

Now, your earlier ad hominems said I offered nothing but rhetoric, so I set my and responses out in clear premises. You haven't responded them at all (despite claiming all I offer is rhetoric and not the vaunted "dissection" of argument you claim to prize). I have dissected your argument.

All you have offered in response is that this is now "off topic" and that now "knowing" is also too problematic of a term to use. So now "being," "exists," "prior," "posterior," (and so presumably "cause" and "effect") and "knowing" are out as problematic.

To be sure, these terms are difficult and could require unpacking, but do they really require much unpacking for my particular example?

My point is that things are prior to their being spoken of. Existence precedes speech. The order of speaking is not the order of being; the world is not "in language" as you put it. One does not need to "step outside language" to point out that this priority must exist.

Do we really need to unpack "know" here? I don't think so. Swap out "grasp of being" for "know" or put in "experience." The same thing will apply.

Do dogs have "experiences," or is "experiences" also a "loaded term?" If dogs have experiences, they presumably do not have them "within language," but presumably they are experiencing something actual that exists, else they would not have any reason to respond to their experiences one way and not any other. Likewise, infants either experience (or "grasp") being prior to knowing language, or they do not have experiences prior to having language. If it is the latter, how do they learn language without experiences?

Is it too problematic to say that infants experience things before having language? Do the disabled who lack language lack experiences? It would seem not. Are their experiences of "what is?" It would seem so. Presumably, their experiences aren't self generating and causeless. If they were, there would be no reason for them to be one way and not any other. Hence, what exists is prior to experience.

But if things exist prior to language, what of truth? If it is the case that things exist as determinant actualities prior to language, then surely "what is the case" is also "true."

This means that the world is not "in language." One never needs to "step outside language" to experience being. Infants are born experiencing without language. One does not need to step outside language to speak of ontological priority. If something can be experienced prior to language, it clearly exists prior to language. One does not need to step outside language to speak about what is not language. Again, you haven't backed up the need for this "stepping outside," you've just asserted it.



See below again, in line with your stated preference for dissection:


P1: We don’t grasp being by representing it from the outside, but are embedded in a structure of interpretation, where belief, truth, and world hang together.
C: Therefore, it is impossible to speak of anything being prior to language, or for language to refer to what exists outside the context of language itself.

The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.


P1: One cannot use language to speak of anything without using language.
C: Therefore, "being isn't a content to be grasped outside language" (i.e. it lacks meaning outside language).

This also doesn't follow.

P1: Being is not contained in anything (including language).
P2: Language is not a container.
Conclusion: Any attempt to step outside all language to describe being as such is suspect.

This also doesn't follow, and as noted before, for the conclusion to be relevant it would have to be the case that one must "step outside" language to describe being, which would be an additional thesis that needs defense.

As I noted earlier:

You need additional premises like "knowing/experiencing something in any way requires language," and "what something is must be posterior to human speech about it" or "nothing can be actual prior to human speech about it," as well as "language only ever speaks about language and linguistic entities, never about what exists outside the context of human language." That is, you need to actually support a metaphysics of language that concludes that language cannot ever refer outside itself, else you are just engaged in question begging.

Thank you for confirming my suspicion that my point was not impenetrable and too unclear to understand. I thought it was clear enough, at least clear enough to address.

Aesthetics entails a metaphysical standpoint.
Ethics entails a metaphysical standpoint.
Which is why threads starting along those lines, like this one, when placed in the hands of the Wittgensteinians, end up in this same conversation about language and not the thing language is speaking about (whatever the thing is). Sparring for the most consistent use of language instead of saying something about the world that another person might also say about the same world.

Well, this is the great sin of anti-metaphysics, right? It ends up being a sort of metaphysical position. It can hardly do otherwise. Indeed, in terms of recent history, it has been arguably the most dogmatic and overzealous, with a huge negative effect on quantum foundations up through the 2000s. Its practitioners still want to interject in metaphysical discussions, and still serve up their own metaphysical positions.

Which is fine. The difficulty is that, if one goes in assuming all problems are pseudoproblems, it lends itself to a tendency to ignore argument in favor of appeals to having "unmasked the pseudoproblem." Because the anti-metaphysician assumes that their position is somehow "non-metaphysical," it is taken to be immune from metaphysical scrutiny. Hence, threads like: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15218/wittgenstein-and-how-it-elicits-asshole-tendencies/p1

if one goes in assuming all problems are pseudoproblems, it lends itself to a tendency to ignore argument in favor of appeals to having "unmasked the pseudoproblem." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Discussion becomes a bait and switch. They posit something, thereby staking a metaphysical position, but then, if someone disagrees, they switch the conversation to one about what is or is not metaphysical and what one can or cannot say about anything. The belief that the the goal posts are always moving allows for a consistent defense against all who disagree.

When they agree with each other, they sound like metaphysicians.

But I guess this is off topic, although not really since the topic poses a metaphysical question.

There's two definitions of disagreement at play here. Disagreement can be applied as differences in belief or as differences in values.

If person A enjoys metal and person B enjoys classical, and they are both objectivists about aesthetic value, then they have a disagreement in belief and it does imply an objective conclusion.

However, if they are both subjectivists, then while they disagree with their values (as in they hold seperate values), they dont find anything 'incorrect' about the other so theres no implication of objectivity.

Disagreement only implies objectivity if objectivity is already presumed within the point of disagreement. I think it's an unfortunate equivocation rather than a self-refutation.

It is wrong to murder. — Hanover

This statement cannot be objectively true because it's incomplete and thus, at present moment, meaningless. Its essentially saying "It is bad to do bad killings" which reduces to "bad is bad", which is meaningless without a definition of "bad" to refer to, hence requiring subjectivity to fill the gap. However, each person simply maps their conception of what constitutes "murder" and thus the statement becomes definitionally true, because "bad is bad" is logically true regardless of definition. The only other way I can imagine the statement is "It is wrong to kill" which I think the vast majority of people would disagree with, as there is seemingly many justified reasons to do so in various situations.

Does their disagreement demonstrate that there is no fact of the matter here? — Count Timothy von Icarus

C. Too little familiarity - this problem occurs when we have no context to place an aesthetic experience within. If we have heard very little music, we might find jazz or a symphony overwhelming on a first exposure.

If the aesthetic value of an object can be driven by psychological interactions rather than perception itself, then surely even if there is a objective property being observed, one cannot point to a single response as correct/true. If person A see's beauty where person B see's ugliness, and they are both seeing the same object, then surely they are both correct? Otherwise, this line of argumentation would seemingly imply that there is no aesthetic property, hence the disagreement despite perfect perception.

While I agree that disagreement itself does not negate the possibility of an objective answer, disagreement in psychology despite perfect perception implies at the very least that aesthetics responses are not objective, even if there is some true aesthetic property being seen. Hence an object could be both beautiful and ugly simulataneously, and this could be considered objective. Although I consider this is equivalent to aesthetic subjectivity at this point.