Conceptual capacities are capacities that belong to their subject’s rationality. So another way of putting my claim is to say that our perceptual experience is permeated with rationality.
— McDowell

The important point, for me, is that concept isn't private. Concept is essentially public and social. — Eee

When you say, “that concept isn’t private”, do you mean to say by “that concept”, McDowell’s claim?

Or maybe you meant the important point is that conception isn’t private, and thereby conception is essentially public.

I submit that anything belonging to a subject’s rationality, per McDowell, is private, and to suggest that the totality of subjects in possession of rationality is the same as rationality itself being “essentially public and social” does not follow. And if rationality is not essentially public, thus is private, and rationality is grounded in “conceptual capacities”, then conceptual capacities are equally private. Which is why your “concept is essentially public and social” is false, or at least needs clarification.
——————

Some clarification is here:

So while we know that concepts are 'only in our heads,' they also make such judgment possible. — Eee

.....which is correct in the philosophical sense, which seems to indicate concepts are indeed private, but just serves as either a self-contradiction (“concept is essentially public”), or, my lack of understanding.

Help me out?

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I consider myself a 'fallibilistic epicurean spinozist' (of a quixotic sort) with a strong affinity for Deutsch's QTM, Rovelli's RQM & Tegmark's MUH, for instance; with that said ...

On the question of the status of Platonic ideals, where are we? Where should we be? — tim wood

"Ideals are real" (e.g. horseness, redness, treeness, etc) is a reification fallacy. Plato proffered a solution in search of a problem: as Epicurus et al taught in antiquity, appearances are not false but rather it's our interpretations which are mistaken or false. Reality is intelligible but not transparently or simply so; it does not fool us, rather we fool ourselves with our self-serving simplifications (i.e. idealizations).

What appeals to me, is that there *is* 'an abstract reality. Because, if true, then it turns out materialism is falsified, as there are real but immaterial things. — Wayfarer

Explain what you mean by "abstract" and "reality" and "things". (The above seems like language gone on holiday again.)

The 'rational subject' is bracketed out by the initial 'grand abstraction' of science, which purports to deal with 'ideal objects'; and then having been bracketed out, is forgotten about. — Wayfarer

Subject (pov)/gauge-invariant scientific models either defeasibly explain some transformation - physical or formal - or they don't. That's all they are used for. "The 'rational subject'" which uses scientific models cannot also be the object of scientific modeling anymore than eyes can also be within their field of vision. Territories necessarily exceed maps, or abstractions (i.e. informational compressions - simplifications) of territories; the map-maker - map-making - is always the enabling lacuna of every map and any lacuna-free map - corresponding 1:1 to a territory - would be useless as a map.

Thus, the inefficacy - usually patent failure - of idealism, no matter the flavor (e.g. platonic, subjective, critical, absolute, phenomenological ...), or antirealism, or immaterialism to provide corrigible, testible, robustly fecund explanations of matters of fact from which unique predictions can be derived and open-up further inquiries - paths of research - into other unforeseen matters of fact which in turn require extending current explanations, formulating new explanations, or even (rarely) adopting new paradigms of explanation.

Methodological, not metaphysical, materialism no doubt is the worst, least true, intellectual commitment made in human cultural history, except, of course, for all the others tried so far in the last three plus millennia vis-à-vis progressively disclosing how the world (which includes subjects-in-the-world ... as opposed to shibboleth "rational subjects" or "transcendental egos" or "immaterial souls" etc) works.

Which is how you end up with Daniel Dennett. — Wayfarer

Yeah. A wry, scientifically literate, world-class, analytical philosopher emeritus who doesn't proselytize pseudoscience by preaching fatuous woo. For my filthy lucre, Dan Dennett's work is easily worth more today to intellectual culture anywhere than the biggest, funkiest, ashram-load of Deepak Chopras, William Lane Craigs, Jordan Petersens & other - so-called scholarly, "new age" or p0m0 - mystifying obscurants.

Thus, the inefficacy... — 180 Proof

All you are saying is: scientific models are models, the explain something specific - 'they explain some transformation' - which is perfectly true, whereas

....or immaterialism to provide corrigible, testible, robustly fecund explanations of matters of fact — 180 Proof

Idealism (etc) does not, being a reflection on the act of knowing itself, being philosophy as distinct from empirical science. ('According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1964), philosophy is “the set of questions in which the one who questions is himself implicated in the question” ' .) Which is your only point, along with your endless reiterations of your detestation of anything you deem 'spiritual' (only ever illustrated with comic-book examples.)

A lecturer I had used to say of Hume's famous remark '“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion" that it applies to the very book of which it is the conclusion. He compared it to the uroboros, the mythical self-eating snake, saying, 'the hardest part is the last bite'.

A wry, scientifically literate, world-class, analytical philosopher emeritus who doesn't proselytize pseudoscience by preaching fatuous woo. — 180 Proof

What Dennett does, is methodically apply the techniques of philosophy to undermining philosophy (the 'acid of darwin's dangerous idea). So how that is not 'fatuous woo' I will never know, clothed in the garb of science.

Or maybe you meant the important point is that conception isn’t private, and thereby conception is essentially public. — Mww

Yes, this is more like what I was getting at. I'm influenced by thinkers like Heidegger and Derrida. While it's an overstatement, I think there's truth in the notion that language speaks the subject.

And if rationality is not essentially public, thus is private, and rationality is grounded in “conceptual capacities”, then conceptual capacities are equally private. Which is why your “concept is essentially public and social” is false, or at least needs clarification. — Mww

How could it be false or need clarification if rationality is private? If rationality is private, it's true because I think it is. I offer that playfully, only to emphasize my point.

I'll try to offer to better response later, when I'll have more time. At the moment I'd say roughly that we are stuck with (at least) two incompatible perspectives. We can try to build the world up as the dream of a private subject or we can derive the subject from system of concepts that are no longer simply concepts for just that reason. Because we know in an obvious, practical sense that 'consciousness' depends on the brain, we are tempted to start with the subject and move toward inter-subjectivity, etc. Yet a close investigation of this 'subject' suggests that it's more like a voice without a pure interior.

I see myself as trying to point out what tends to be overlooked. I don't have a final, settled theory and, indeed, don't think one is possible, given the nature of language.

If that doesn't count as being crazy... then nothing will. — creativesoul

Incredible. Instead of talking about his sentiments about Platonism, which can be gleaned through his incompleteness theorems or Turing's Halting problem, and his dismissal of mathematical formalism and with that a deathblow to mechanism, we're focusing on whether he was "crazy" or not.

Whatever dudes.

I agree that formal concepts are 'not private' in that they're not the creation of individual minds. In that sense, they're 'public', although it is a strange way of expressing it. 'True for all observers' would suffice.

Whatever dudes. — Wallows

Mentioning that he starved himself to death because of a food paranoia tends to grab the attention.

I agree that formal concepts are 'not private' in that they're not the creation of individual minds. In that sense, they're 'public', although it is a strange way of expressing it. 'True for all observers' would suffice. — Wayfarer

Calling concepts 'true for all observers' doesn't seem quite right. Statements made possible by concepts might be viewed as true for all observers.

While my expression may sound strange, what exactly do you mean by 'all observers'? Presumably you mean those not yet born. An infinite or ideal subject seems to be implied, which is to say a concept of the human mind in general or rationality.

Mentioning that he starved himself to death because of a food paranoia tends to grab the attention. — Marchesk

:mask:

My bad then...

And if rationality is not essentially public, thus is private, and rationality is grounded in “conceptual capacities”, then conceptual capacities are equally private. — Mww

I suggest that rationality is essentially public, while strangely being grounded in individual conceptual capacities. It's a shared dream, if you like, but calling it rational emphasizes its sharedness --or potential or ideal sharedness. For me there's nothing mystical in this. It just acknowledges what we are doing as philosophers, which is something like negotiating the real. One could joke that we are cyborgs, at least if language is understood as an external technology that is sewn into our 'consciousness.' But this 'external' technology is how we talk about or create an interior where the meaning of words lives in some imagined purity. It's not that traditional concepts become useless, since we need them in order to criticize them, but only that they aren't experienced as absolutes.

What is a formal concept?

But, a circle is a circle in all possible worlds, whether h. sapiens has evolved to understand it or not. And when we do understand it, then we understand something that is in no way 'founded in biology'; we've evolved beyond the exigencies of biology at that point (to become, in Greek terms, 'the rational animal', which is a difference that makes a difference - an ontological difference, I claim.) — Wayfarer

As far as circles being independent of humans, I don't see an easy way to prove that. How can we see around our own eyes?

That appeal to biology is a reasonable guess, it seems to me. Why doesn't my cat talk to me in English? Her brain is built not for it. It's possible that she understands everything I say and chooses not to talk.

What does 'within' mean? Within what? What is the ontological status of ideas? That suits 'naturalised epistemology' very well, because evolution gives rise to brain gives rise to mind. — Wayfarer

I believe I already indicated that we can also start from concepts and understand the 'within' of the 'subject' as a theoretical fiction or sign among signs. The mental/physical distinction should not IMO be taken as an absolute, despite its utility and familiarity.

It is not that these signified forms are universals or have any universal existence; they exist only as the individual acts of being characterizing individual things. (And, as we will see, even the sense in which they “exist” in individuals can admit of great qualification.) But as the individual forms of individual things, they have a potential intelligibility which can be abstracted by the mind; abstracting this potential intelligibility—making it actually understood by the mind—is the formation of the concept. It is by means of such a concept that a word signifies, an

Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality 2 .

This seems more or less right to me. I see Fido as a dog. I agree with Heidegger and others that much of our understanding is far more automatic than this. But at the theoretical level we can speak of the dog we saw on our walk and not specify Fido. We understand classes.

Whether universals exist is another matter. I say that they exist in a sense - but you will find, modern thinking has no scale along which that expression is intelligible. For us, things either exist, or they don't. — Wayfarer

I'd say beware of generalizations like 'modern thinking.' Who are the most famous philosophers of the 20th century? And what did they worry about? Heidegger obsessed about the meaning of being.

Let's back up in order to bring Heidegger's central concern into better view. (The ‘way in’ to Being and Time that I am about to present follows Gelven 1989 6–7.) Consider some philosophical problems that will be familiar from introductory metaphysics classes: Does the table that I think I see before me exist? Does God exist? Does mind, conceived as an entity distinct from body, exist? These questions have the following form: does x (where x = some particular kind of thing) exist? Questions of this form presuppose that we already know what ‘to exist’ means. We typically don't even notice this presupposition. But Heidegger does, which is why he raises the more fundamental question: what does ‘to exist’ mean? This is one way of asking what Heidegger calls the question of the meaning of Being, and Being and Time is an investigation into that question. — SEP

Completely agree. Compare that with this claim by Jacques Maritain - that 'what the Empiricist speaks of and describes as sense-knowledge is not exactly sense-knowledge, but sense-knowledge plus unconsciously introduced intellective ingredients, -- sense-knowledge in which he has made room for reason without recognizing it.' Which I think is a precise characterisation of most modern empiricism. The 'rational subject' is bracketed out by the initial 'grand abstraction' of science, which purports to deal with 'ideal objects'; and then having been bracketed out, is forgotten about. — Wayfarer

Yeah I do think that can happen with thinkers. They ignore the lifeworld that grounds science. This is possible because fundamental concepts are so 'public' and 'automatic' that they are perhaps ignored as uncontroversial. We have to already share a world in order to make observations and present intelligible hypotheses. So in some sense philosophy is more difficult or ambitious than physical science, which contributes perhaps to its results being endlessly disputable. Working technology is overpowering, and perhaps it's not materialism but really just being dazzled by technology that obscures other forms of being.

OK. Thanks.

What is a formal concept? — Mww

An illustration.

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.

Feser, Some Brief Arguments for Dualism

Elsewhere he discusses how for example algorithms and scientific theorems fall into the same general category. For instance the laws of motion are determinate and exact (for the range within which they apply.) So such principles are the 'ligaments of rationality'.

Who are the most famous philosophers of the 20th century? And what did they worry about? Heidegger obsessed about the meaning of being. — Eee

Right - and he is as far from the typical anglo-american reductionist as you can get, right? Heidegger has had a huge impact on 20th c philosophical theology. He's not the kind of person I have in mind when criticising reductionism.

As far as circles being independent of humans, I don't see an easy way to prove that. How can we see around our own eyes? — Eee

See remark above about triangularity.

That appeal to biology is a reasonable guess, it seems to me. Why doesn't my cat talk to me in English? Her brain is built not for it. It's possible that she understands everything I say and chooses not to talk. — Eee

Sure. I'm not denying the fact of evolution, what I'm objecting to is the widespread belief that this provides what amounts to a philosophy of mind. My view is that once h. sapiens evolves to the point of being a language-using and meaning-seeking being, then we have capabilities that are beyond the scope of biological theory per se. (This was also Alfred Russel Wallace's view but of course he can be conventiently dismissed as a Victorian spiritualist in contrast to the hard-headed materialism of the 'Scottish enlightenment'.)

I agree that the use of universals in the mode of seeing creation as "intelligible" existences having relationships with each other is far enough away from the focus of concepts as what humans "do" that the latter is not in a position to opine upon the former.
Conversely, however, the limit works the other way. Both sides will never lose their Home games.
Something is missing from both sides.

See remark above about triangularity. — Wayfarer

That remark isn't conclusive for me. We have the concept of the triangle and various images of it. All of this is still quite human.

Conversely, however, the limit works the other way. Both sides will never lose their Home games.
Something is missing from both sides. — Valentinus

Well said. I like to think of enduring stereoscopic ambiguity. But this is also a pleasure.

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Bashing on Godel... — Wallows

Making clear statements about someone's insanity is not bashing. Godel was one of the brilliant ones for many reasons... "Crazy" ain't always a slur my friend.

:wink:

Lighten up.

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How about this:

Explain what you mean by "abstract" and "reality" and "things". (The above seems like language gone on holiday
again.) — 180 Proof

and while you're at it, Wayf, how about this too (unless, of course, you can't because ... y'know ... you're full of __it): "materialism is fallacious". :yawn:

I submit that anything belonging to a subject’s rationality, per McDowell, is private, and to suggest that the totality of subjects in possession of rationality is the same as rationality itself being “essentially public and social” does not follow. — Mww

This might help too.

Heidegger constantly reminds us throughout Being and Time, the account of 'inauthentic' life of everyday anyone is not to be interpreted evaluatively or morally but rather ontologically. It is an a priori Existential of being human: "the anyone is the condition of possibility of all human action" (p. 2). Thonhauser writes: "To be socialized in the framework of established modes of intelligibility and regulated modes of comportment is the prerequisite for becoming an agent in one's own right" (ibid.).

First of all and most of the time (Heidegger's zunächst und zumeist, BT 370), humans live following the social rules that they apprehend in some kind of mindless, non-explicit, anonymous manner. — link

What I have in mind is something like this 'Anyone.' In some sense the 'we' is prior to the 'I' as a kind of software that makes the hardware fully human. Kant could only write the CPR because he knew German, because he was 'in' German. He was anyone before he was someone. And we love Kant not as a fountain of opinion but because he is reasonable. He speaks to what is rational in us.

The world may have been created by God, but it was now in the hands – for better or worse – of humanity. The world was a human stage, with human values, emotions, hopes, and fears, and this humanity was defined, in turn, by a universal human nature. — Robert Solomon

The idea is that a theological notion was humanized. Reason is a transformation of the Holy Ghost, metaphorically speaking. (To me it's all thoughts and feelings and metaphors. While you know Kant better than me, I mostly feel like some kind of Kantian, exploring the limits of cognition from the inside.)

I'd rather not. I already presented my rationale, earlier.

My view is that once h. sapiens evolves to the point of being a language-using and meaning-seeking being, then we have capabilities that are beyond the scope of biological theory per se. — Wayfarer

To me this is akin to the notion that biology is no substitute for philosophy, which with I agree. This theme is well explored, too, in I am Strange Loop.

Another key passage from Gerson (who is incidentally considered one of the leading academic specialists on Platonism):

seven key themes (of 'ur-Platonism']:
1. The universe has a systematic unity;
2. This unity reflects an explanatory hierarchy and in particular a “top-down” approach to explanation (as opposed to the “bottom-up” approach of naturalism), especially in the two key respects that the simple is prior to the complex and the intelligible is prior to the sensible;
3. The divine constitutes an irreducible explanatory category, and is to be conceived of in personal terms (even if in some Ur-Platonist thinkers the personal aspect is highly attenuated);
4. The psychological also constitutes an irreducible explanatory category;
5. Persons are part of the hierarchy and their happiness consists in recovering a lost position within it, in a way that can be described as “becoming like God”;
6. Moral and aesthetic value is to be analyzed by reference to this metaphysical hierarchy; and
7. The epistemological order is contained with this metaphysical order. — Lloyd Gerson

I regard that as a succinct statement of the 'grand tradition' of Western philosophy. I also recognise that it is thoroughly unfashionable and probably pretty Non-PC too boot.

Explain what you mean by "abstract" and "reality" and "things". (The above seems like language gone on holiday) — 180 Proof

Language is a universalizing activity. Whenever you say that 'something is something', or 'something means something', then you are making a rational judgement. But the elements of rational judgement have no physical equivalent. Certainly you can, and we do, represent the elements of rational judgement in symbolic form, which is the basis of written language, logic and arithmetic. But those elements are not themselves material or physical in nature, their nature is purely intellectual or noetic. They can only be understood by a rational intelligence.

Your evolutionary account of intelligence is that mind is first and foremost an evolutionary adaptation. That is certainly arguable in the case of non-rational animals, but the problem with the argument is that it essentially claims that speech acts are like reflexes or patterns of behaviour that have no intrinsic meaning (which is how positivism and behaviourism depict them). The issue is, that if this account is correct, then it's utterances are meaningless. Alternatively, if they're not meaningless, then speech acts do have intrinsic meaning and the argument fails.

The same arguments are frequently brought against Dennett. His book Consciousness Explained was mocked as 'Consciousness Ignored' by his academic critics. And if he was consistent, then he would say nothing, because if his argument is correct, then philosophy is just meaningless noise. And if it's not meaningless noise, then his argument is not correct.

OK. Thanks. — Mww

Your welcome. I just saw this response. I'd be grateful for any feedback, even if it's disagreement. I enjoy your posts.

An illustration. — Wayfarer

Ok. The modern version of universal forms, ideals, sentiments, various sundry renditions of.....

“...that which exists a priori in the mind...”

......because.......

“.....the distinguishing characteristic of their nature consists in this, that they apply to their objects, without having borrowed anything from experience towards the representation of them....”.

.......meeting the criteria of my personal favorite, a transcendental object. My main concern with the inquiry (what is a formal concept) was, so long as, e.g. “triangularity”, is not given the authority of a category, it can be given any theory-specific name its creator deems fit. I say this because the formal concepts are reducible, insofar as triangles and thereby triangularity, presuppose quantity and relation, specifically.
———————

A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once. — Wayfarer

I hesitate in granting that any concept is objective simply because it is grasped by many subjectivities.

Even if “....to grasp a concept is simply not the same thing as having a mental image...”** is true, because the reverse is actually the case, it does not follow that grasping concepts is objective. Rather, the objects of conceptions are objective, iff one communicates his understanding of them, and they meet with congruency by other minds. Upon being asked to illustrate an object, a plurality of minds will all draw from a conceptual ideal per-existing a priori, and the drawings will all be different in particulars while similar in form. And the drawings will differentiate in direct proportion to the complexity of the concepts required for it, re: the drawings of stop signs will be closer to each other in appearance than the drawings of a house. To then say the conceptual form of these objects is objective contradicts the laying of it a priori in the mind.

Anyway...thanks for the Feser reference and the explanation.

** Feser, 2008.

In some sense the 'we' is prior to the 'I' as a kind of software that makes the hardware fully human. — Eee

Understood, and agreed, in principle. On the one hand, no human is possible without the antecedent humanity, but on the other, a general condition of some empirical unity is in itself insufficient to explain the multiplicity of disparate conditions of its particulars. In other words, why I’m this, or why I think this, doesn’t explain why you’re that, or why you think that, merely because we’re both human. Being human is sufficient for those, but insufficient to explain why those. And if what we want to know is why, which is almost always the case, then we see it just won’t answer anything if we ground our investigation on some fundamental ontological condition.
—————-

I mostly feel like some kind of Kantian, exploring the limits of cognition from the inside. — Eee

As well we all should. When the lights go out at the end of the day, there’s nobody there but ourselves. “Know thy-self”, and all those other colloquial admonishments, doncha know. Which, ironically enough, leave off “as best you can”, or, “but you’re probably wrong”.

Thanks.

The main reason for my comments, I guess, is your McDowell passage, which I find agreeable, followed by the saying of things seemingly diametrically opposed to it, which I don’t. After your furtherances I understand you better, but not the opposition to McDowell. Just trying to learn something, is what it boils down to. Same with the Feser comment.

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