Yes. Listen, if you have to begin each line with 'given X', then the whole point is that I will not give you X. — StreetlightX
If we decide to change the definition of gold — Isaac
Given what the words currently mean, human institutions can't just decide that lead is gold but can just decide that a stone is a bishop. — Michael
They're restricted in chess as much as they are in science. — frank
Rhetoric, but that is very similar to what happened with 'square root of minus one'. It was as if people said - "We know that negative-one has no square root - but if we act, for the purpose of solving a particular problem, as if it does have a square root - if we just declare it to be so and stipulate how it operates in our arithmetic - then we can solve our problem." Other people got very frustrated and upset at this apparently arbitrary way of doing maths. They saw it as running against the whole idea that the world is what it is and we can't just redefine things when we find them inconvenient.trying to argue that 1 + 1 = 3 — Michael
At the moment you're trying to argue that 1 + 1 = 3 because we can change the meaning of the symbols such that the equation would be satisfied. — Michael
Yes, but it's still the case that the thing they've chosen is a bishop because that's how they've decided to use it. — Michael
That human institutions determine the meaning of the words "lead" and "gold" isn't that human institutions determine whether or not lead is gold. — Michael
That human institutions determine the meaning of the words "lead" and "gold" isn't that human institutions determine whether or not lead is gold. — Michael
There's not two 'gold's (the name and the real substance), the name is all there is. — Isaac
Use: Cheese is derived from milk.
Mention: 'Cheese' is derived from the Old English word ċēse.
You're still not acknowledging the questionable status of universals sns as such begging the question. I'm talking about cheese, not 'cheese'. Gold, not 'gold'. These universals are brought into being by our definition of them. They don't otherwise exist as anything more thsn a potential (some distinctions among an almost infinite choice of distinctions). — Isaac
But why would you expect the latter to follow from the former? — StreetlightX
And why would you expect it to? — StreetlightX
But I can just declare that a stone is a bishop by saying so and using it as such. That's the distinction between an institutional and non-institutional fact. — Michael
If the ontology must be put in such terms, then Searle is pretty much a direct realist. Speech acts are very much public. — Banno
I'm addressing Isaac's non sequitur. I claimed that we can't turn lead into gold by decree. He responded by saying that we can change the meaning of "gold" such that it refers to what we currently mean by "lead". But that has nothing to do with what I mean when I said that we can't turn lead into gold. I'm not saying that we can't use the word "gold" to refer to lead; I'm saying that we can't change the chemical composition of lead to that of gold by declaring it to be different or by changing the meaning of a word. — Michael
Searle argues that awareness has in fact two senses. The first sense is intentionalistic, about objects and states of affairs in the world, for example, being aware of a cup. The second sense is constitutive, such that an awareness of something is identical to the awareness itself, for example, being aware of a headache. — RussellA
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