This is the crux of the issue and it's important to clarify: what is the 'function' of the predicate? What work is it doing? This is the most delicate part of Sellars' argument: Sellars argues that it is not doing any work insofar as it is a predicate. Instead, it is only doing work insofar as it is a linguistic object (which just so happens to be, in this particular but entirely contingent case, a predicate). This is crucial to understand. The predicate qua predicate isn't doing any kind of job at all; in fact the only reason that it seems that it is doing any work is because it is a linguistic object. Putting it graphically might help, in terms of a hierarchy:
{Linguistic object(predicate)}
Where predicate is a 'species' of the genera 'lingustic object'. The work is being done by the fact of it's being a linguistic object, not by the fact of it being a predicate. The trick is to recognise that there are other linguistic objects than predicates, and that it is at this more general level where the work 'takes place'. Thus, boldface X, X is doing 'meaning work' by the fact of it's graphical difference, in it's capacity as a graphic object, and not because it does the work done by the predicate. This might seem a minor and even obscure difference, but the upshot is that it diffuses the tendency to abstract predicates as conceptual properties or metaphysical attributes. I quote Ray Brassier's gloss on this:
"The predicative role should not be reified and turned into an abstract entity called a “property” that exists independently of sentential contexts. Still less should the conceptual property supposedly expressed by the predicate be hypostatized and turned into an ontological attribute that exists not only independently of language — as conceptual properties are alleged to — but also independently of thought. As Sellars puts it, “The extralinguistic domain consists of objects, not facts. To put it bluntly, propositional form belongs only in the linguistic and conceptual orders” (Brassier, Nominalism, Naturalism, and Materialism).
@Banno I hope the above also clarifies why X being above Y does not indicate the predicate, but rather indicates the general function which the predicate contingently happens to fulfil. — StreetlightX
So, what is a predicate? Is it not a linguistic object or symbol denoting a particular meaning, or having a particular function? And, is it not its particularity which gives it meaning? We must understand that this linguistic object is, or functions as, in particular, a predicate, in order to understand the meaning. — Sapientia
I really don't get how 'X' above 'Y' is any different from 'Q(x,y)'. — Sapientia
Yeah, thinking of language in terms of what it commits one to really is the key here. That said, I borrowed the vocabulary of commitment not from Sellars (who prefers to talk of 'uniformity of behaviour' and 'patterns of inference') but from Robert Brandom, who more or less takes Sellars' 'inferentialist semantics' and develops it. Brandom actually says that there are two modes of inference at work when using language, one of which is commitment and the other is entitlement. Saying things commits you to inferring or being able to say/do other things; and commitment in turn entitles you to saying/doing other things (If I am entitled to 'it is raining' then I am entitled to 'the streets are wet'; also, if you commit to 'it is raining', I am entitled to asking for reasons why you think so). It's a way of seeing language as a kind of contract that comes with rights (entitlements) and responsibilities (commitments). — StreetlightX
A predicate does not denote a particular meaning, and it is not its particularity which gives it meaning. — StreetlightX
Another way to put this is that on it's own, a predicate is meaningless: — StreetlightX
What matters, in other words, is the 'matter-of-factual' (graphic, inscriptual, physical) relations between X, Y and Q, which show but do not say, the relation between X and Y. Which is another way of saying that Q does not denote and does not signify. It is a physical pattern which we respond to in rule governed ways. — StreetlightX
The argument is not that because we can dispense with predicates, they have no ontological standing. It's more along the lines of, given that we can dispense with predicates (as per demonstrated), what kind of ontology can we forge on this basis? The motivations for doing so are not internal to the argument; rather, the demonstration functions within a larger project in which the goal is to construct a naturalist ontology and with it, a naturalist theory of representation. One of the 'fallouts' of this desideratum is that such a theory must be a nominalist one, with respect to attributes like 'redness' or 'triangularity'. — StreetlightX
There's a particular asymmetry at work which I tried to detail here. — StreetlightX
I see. But then we have another problem. In the passages, Sellars talks about inscriptions of the X above Y variety. How are we to interpret such inscriptions? Are they sentence tokens? If so, they must be instances of sentence types. And as soon as we admit types, then nominalism is out. So the problem is less with "redness" or "triangularity" and more with "Xness", "Yness" and "aboveness". — Nagase
Notice that it won't do to just say that there are no types, just inscriptions that we are regularly disposed to react in a certain behavioristically specified way, since there must be a regularity for us to respond to. That is, there must be something that accounts for the similarity of the various X inscriptions, and this can't be just our behavior, as we are dispositionally inclined to regularly react to Xs because they are similar, not the other way around. — Nagase
Is the "is" the essential element of predication? — Janus
I don't think so, at least not for Sellars. He often drops the copula entirely, preferring to use logical notation like 'Fa', or even alternative expressions like 'X stands for Y', 'X exemplifies Yness', or even 'X means Y'. He does note the specificities of each formulation (he leans on some but not others when trying to parse out both meaning and truth), but I don't think it's so relevant when talking about predicates as such. In fact I think the use of so many ways of expression is deliberately meant to show how widely applicable the strategy of 'dropping predicates' is meant to be.
If so, then are Sellar's examples 'bold X' and 'X above Y' really any different than if we drop the 'is' to express the same ideas, 'red apple' and 'X larger than Y' respectively? — Janus
Depends on what angle you want to look at it - for Sellars the answer is of course, no, they are not really any different at all, but you can only 'say' this if you recognize the essential continuity between bold X and red apple; and doing this in turn should lead one recognize the dispensibility of predicates. The key for Sellars is in understanding that subject-predicate couples do not stand for a relation between non-linguistic facts but between linguistic objects. 'X above Y' are two linguistic objects in a spatial relationship with each other, just and 'X larger than Y' contains three linguistic objects, 'X', 'larger than', and 'Y', in a triadic spatial relation to each other. — StreetlightX
What exactly happens when you turn up your recessor coils? — Srap Tasmaner
It's as if most reasoning proceeded on the basis of a bait and switch between learned stuff summarised and internalised and really existent abstractions. But it looks like a real relation between these two is denied? Dunno. I imagine this is similar to apokrisis's perspective in some ways. — fdrake
But what is pressure? Is there such a thing? — frank
just started reading Schelling's Micromotives and Macrobehavior.) — Srap Tasmaner
He's a far more accessible writer than Sellars, but then almost everyone is. — Srap Tasmaner
With respect to isomorphism, he even distinguishes between a 'first-order' isomorphism (where word mirrors thing) and a 'second-order' isomorphism in which what are correlated are patterns in the causal order, which language itself is part of. This is why he qualifies linguistic objects as natural-linguistic objects — sx
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