Most interesting! — Ms. Marple

Excellent idea! I love it! An argumentum ad consequentiam is a fallacy they say...naaah!

An argumentum ad consequentiam is a fallacy they say...naaah! — Agent Smith

That's a nice issue to bring up. The fallacious version seems to point at practical consequences, so that an inconvenient truth is no less true for all that. But inferential consequences are something else. If 0 has a multiplicative inverse, then it's easy to prove that 0 = 1. I must abandon my belief that 0 has such an inverse or, far less likely, modify a vast system of related beliefs.

That's a nice issue to bring up. The fallacious version seems to point at practical consequences, so that an inconvenient truth is no less true for all that. But inferential consequences are something else. If 0 has a multiplicative inverse, then it's easy to prove that 0 = 1. I must abandon my belief that 0 has such an inverse or, far less likely, modify a vast system of related beliefs. — igjugarjuk

Something like that. While we figure things out, let's assume the least worst theory. In fact, on occasion, let's not...figure things out. The truth, who cares about the truth! I want to be happy!

The truth, who cares about the truth! I want to be happy! — Agent Smith

Another good theme. The norm/ideal of rationality is not our only concern. It may be a detour the, invention of some darker need (such as to replicate without reason or excuse.) This is of course Nietzscheland, where the critical mind turns on itself.

Another theme provided by Brandom (attributed to Kant) is the primacy of the propositional. The semantic atom is the judgment. Why? Because this is the minimum one can be responsible for. I am not responsible for the concept 'red.' I am responsible for claiming that Janine's hair is red. Or that a wolf is threatening the sheep.

The tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly fools villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his town's flock. When an actual wolf appears and the boy calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm, and the sheep are eaten by the wolf.

It's conceivable that other animals have simpler versions of 'scorekeeping.' I can imagine a particular chimp being treated as an exaggerator or an understater.

Another good theme. The norm of rationality is not our only concern. It may be a detour, a invention of some darker need (such as to replicate without reason or excuse.) — igjugarjuk

The possibility of us not having sussed out the truth notwithstanding, we might as well treat ourselves to some irrationality every now and then.

The heart has its reasons which reason does not know. — Blaise Pascal

Excellent opening post. I hope this will develop.

I'm not all that familiar with Hegel or Brandom, but I cannot resist chipping in a little, and I will try to follow along and educate myself.

"bimodal hylomorphic conceptual realism" (p. 108). On the objective side, therefore, incompatible contents -- such as "being a mammal" and "being a reptile" -- cannot be conjoined in one object, whereas consequential relations between contents -- such as "being a mammal" and "being a vertebrate" -- must hold. Brandom calls these relations between objective conceptual contents "alethic modal relations of incompatibility and consequence" (p. 60). On the subjective side, one can take an animal to be both a mammal and a reptile -- because we can get things wrong, and because we are (at least to some extent) free beings -- but we ought not to do so. By contrast, we ought to take a mammal to be a vertebrate, whether we do so or not: "one is committed or obliged to do so"

https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/a-spirit-of-trust-a-reading-of-hegels-phenomenology/

Reminded me of Umberto Eco : https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WPyz8ikWrsEC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

Lays eggs and has a beak = bird: suckles its young and has fur = mammal.

Aristotle starts with a classification system based on similarity and difference; a matter of aesthetics and a vague notion of what characteristics are more fundamental or superficial, and 2000 years later, Darwin proposes that this system is accounted for by literal common ancestry. And now we can measure that relatedness systematically such that our classification system has become the story of evolution.

It's conceivable that other animals have simpler versions of 'scorekeeping.' I can imagine a particular chimp being treated as an exaggerator or an understater. — igjugarjuk

They can lie!



This is surely the beginning of language and the beginning of morality? Communicative social representation gives rise to the possibility of deliberate misrepresentation in order to manipulate, but that possibility cannot become the norm, because the presentational meaning would be lost. When everyone lies, language simply doesn't work any more and becomes mere noise. Thus one can choose to deceive, but one cannot chose deception to be the norm, it has to be honesty.

Epistemic responsibility & ethics of belief!

Our task has always been, is, always will be to make the true (verum/satyam) synonymous with the good (bonum/shivam) and the good synonymous with the beautiful (pulchrum/sundaram). Presently, it ain't so - the 3 transcendentalia seem to be quite independent of each other and hence dukkha (dissatisfaction).

Excellent opening post. I hope this will develop. I adored the video of capuchins. — unenlightened

Thanks! Me too. And you are helping.

Reminded me of Umberto Eco — unenlightened

I need to read some Eco.

Communicative social representation gives rise to the possibility of deliberate misrepresentation in order to manipulate, but that possibility cannot become the norm, because the presentational meaning would be lost. — unenlightened

Indeed. Dawkins might add that it's not a stable strategy.

“Nice guys finish last” is a common saying. But Dawkins thinks there’s also a sense in which nice guys finish first. He thinks about birds who are “grudgers” (those that pick parasites off other birds, but remember the ones that don’t return the favor and ignore them the next time around). That strategy actually beats out the “cheat” strategy (accepting help with parasites but not reciprocating). Dawkins thinks the “grudger” is the kind of “nice guy” who “finishes first.” This is the individual who engages in “reciprocal altruism.” Dawkins agrees with Robert Axelrod and Hamilton that many wild animals are “engaged in ceaseless games of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, played out in evolutionary time,” which explains why nice guys finish first.

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-selfish-gene/chapter-12-nice-guys-finish-first

Thus one can choose to deceive, but one cannot chose deception to be the norm, it has to be honesty. — unenlightened

Well put! Our great strength as a species seems to be language, which implicitly means our honesty (and, to be fair, our ability to deceive enemies of the tribe.)

we might as well treat ourselves to some irrationality every now and then. — Agent Smith

Oh I think we do.

Epistemic responsibility & ethics of belief!

Our task has always been, is, always will be to make the true (verum/satyam) synonymous with the good (bonum/shivam) and the good synonymous with the beautiful (pulchrum/sundaram). Presently, it ain't so - the 3 transcendentalia seem to be quite independent of each other and hence dukkha (dissatisfaction).
3 hours ago — Agent Smith

Brandom likes to talk about taking true and making true, belief and action.

Another theme from Brandom, tho I'm more freewheeling than paraphrasing : We humans were rational before we were good at talking about that rationality. We inferred well enough before the principles of logic were codified. We sifted claims for reliability perhaps before anyone had a name for this activity. We took responsibility and enjoyed entitlements before we had the vocabulary to say so.

I imagine the slow swelling of a metacognitive vocabulary. The philosopher, among other things, makes the philosophical situation explicit. It's the aspiration to be rational that drives the explication of rationality. A relatively indeterminate goal can drive the further articulation of that same goal. Eventually a philosopher might make this making it explicit explicit.

It's the aspiration to be rational that drives the explication of rationality. A — igjugarjuk

What drives the aspirations to be rational? How and why do motivational-affective-valuative processes direct us toward rationality? Are you familiar with Brandon’s colleague at Pittsburgh, Joseph Rouse? He is attempting to ground meta-cognitive processes in biological niche construction.

Brandom likes to talk about taking true and making true, belief and action. — igjugarjuk

:fire:

Oh I think we do. — igjugarjuk

:lol: :up:

What drives the aspirations to be rational? How and why do motivational-affective-valuative processes direct us toward rationality? Are you familiar with Brandon’s colleague at Pittsburgh, Joseph Rouse? He is attempting to ground meta-cognitive processes in biological niche construction. — Joshs

Good questions. My knee-jerk answer would be to mumble 'evolution,' since I tend to see us as continuous with the other animals, despite the great leap (perhaps we killed off the missing links out of shame.) Not familiar w/ Rouse, and couldn't find much info. Perhaps you could summarize/paraphrase a choice nugget?

Not familiar w/ Rouse, and couldn't find much info. Perhaps you could summarize/paraphrase a choice nugget? — igjugarjuk

Rouse takes up Sellars’ distinction between the manifest
image and the scientific image , and shows
them to be inextricably dependent on each other. I’m this effort , he has some problems
with the views of Brandom, Davidson and Sellars.

Rouse takes up Sellars’ distinction between the manifest image and the scientific image , and shows them to be inextricably dependent on each other. — Joshs

Thanks! That sounds good. I'm not terribly happy with the 'two images' view myself. In general, I don't philosophers have done (and maybe they can't do) a very good job in this domain.

I don't know how Rouse objects to Brandom, and I'm still exploring Brandom, but I feel like Brandom is mostly on dry ground. Folks can babble endlessly about mind and matter and mostly nobody minds, because it doesn't matter. There's very little semantic constraint. The words aren't put to use.

On the other hand, the norms governing such babble are more tractable, since they are primarily also employed in more worldly and arguably more worthwhile conversations. Indeed, these norms are involved in the making of these same norms explicit.

Here’s more on Rouse’s disagreement with Brandom, McDowell and Haugeland:

“Haugeland, McDowell, and Brandom have further developed the “manifest” conception of ourselves as agents who perceive, under­stand, and act within the world as responsive to conceptually articulated
norms. Their work thereby complicates as well as enriches the task of achieving a naturalistic fusion of the scientific and manifest images.
Each of them takes his account of conceptual capacities to block any stringent or (in McDowell’s 1994 phrase) “bald” naturalism. They en­dorse a minimalist naturalism, arguing that nothing in their views is inconsistent with what we learn from the natural sciences. Conceptual
normativity nevertheless remains autonomous in their view, without need or expectation of further scientific explication. This opposition to a more thoroughgoing philosophical naturalism presumes familiar conceptions of scientific understanding, however, and also does not consider some new theoretical and empirical resources for a scientific account of our conceptual capacities. The other two developments guid­ing this book suggest that these presumptions are misguided.”

“ In contrast to traditional efforts to establish the epistemic objectivity of articulated judgments, Davidson, Brandom, McDowell, Haugeland, and others rightly give priority to the objectivity of conceptual content and reasoning. They nevertheless mis­takenly attempt to understand conceptual objectivity as accountability to objects understood as external to discursive practice. A more expan­sive conception of discursive practice, as organismic interaction within our discursively articulated environment, shows how conceptual nor­mativity involves a temporally extended accountability to what is at issue and at stake in that ongoing interaction.”

Conceptual normativity nevertheless remains autonomous in their view, without need or expectation of further scientific explication. This opposition to a more thoroughgoing philosophical naturalism presumes familiar conceptions of scientific understanding, however, and also does not consider some new theoretical and empirical resources for a scientific account of our conceptual capacities. — Joshs

It's hard to see a way around the priority of conceptual normativity. Any "new theoretical and empirical resources" will have to be justified in terms of such norms if they are to be scientific.

Any reductions of conceptual norms to something deeper and "more real" will depend on those same norms for their authority.

One criticism might be that the priority of conceptual norms is tautological and uninteresting. One retort is that maybe its only obvious useful for pointing out the absurdity in various extreme metaphysical theses that forget their dependence on an interpersonal framework of giving and asking for reasons.

Any reductions of conceptual norms to something deeper and "more real" will depend on those same norms for their authority.

One criticism might be that the priority of conceptual norms is tautological and uninteresting. One retort is that maybe it's only obvious use to pointing out the absurdity in various extreme metaphysical theses that forget their dependence on an interpersonal framework of giving and asking for reasons. — igjugarjuk

I could be wrong , but it seems you’re not comfortable in making the leap from neo-Kantianism to a phenomenologically-informed enactivism. You want to hold onto the idea of a self-subsisting (even if only temporarily) content internal not just to conceptual norms but to empirical materiality. These irreducibly inhering contents constrain and influence experience normatively , both in terms of the (temporary) intransigence of materiality and of the manifest image, the space of reasons.

What Rouse and the enactivists are saying is that the world speaks back to , interrogates and modifies our space of reasons in every interaction with others and the world. This is what Wittgenstein means by the sense of words being person-specific and context-specific, that the meaning of a word is only in its actual use right NOW, in THIS context of interaction. There are no norms, no manifest image, no space of reasons that just sit there (even temporarily) protected from active, living, changing temporal context.

I could be wrong , but it seems you’re not comfortable in making the leap from neo-Kantianism to a phenomenologically-informed enactivism. — Joshs

It's not that, though I can see why you'd suspect such a thing.

My real concern is simply avoiding the stereotypical vices and absurdities of that demon postmodernism. I was strongly influenced by Rorty and James and Nietzsche, and I was happy on the epistemological left-wing. I'm not the person who was afraid to go all the way but the person who did and had to admit that I had gone a little too far, that my beliefs were not as consistent as they could be with a move toward the center.

The basic, familiar distinction is between poetic expressions of preference or mere suggestions on the one hand and claims which are understood to bind others in the name of a universal reason on the other. What charms me about Brandom is that he's whittled it down the essence.

Whether or not a substrate makes sense is obviously secondary to the norms that govern its discussion. In other words, that substrate cannot ground those norms. I have no right to believe in it unless I can justify it. The space of reasons is the only 'Given' (to blend some keywords from Sellars.) Those norms are themselves the groundless grounds of Wittgenstein and Heidegger and Dreydegger. Of course norms drift. And we can talk about Heidegger and Gadamer here, the inherited 'interpretedness' that forces us to deal with a past that leaps ahead. 'Universal' rationality is binding without being perfectly or truly universal. Its universality is 'to come,' a point at infinity. (One might think of Peirce here and the consensus to come.)

There are no norms, no manifest image, no space of reasons that just sit there (even temporarily) protected from active, living, changing temporal context. — Joshs

But who would ever dream there was ? Anymore than they'd dream a river was the same water every morning ? As soon as human norms are seen to govern (and not frozen timeless gods), we have a mutating source of authority, our own evolving best idea so far.

The 'not even temporarily' point is hard to make sense of. If you are only saying that it's all just fiction or mirage, I guess that's fine, but so is fiction and mirage. I don't think one can plausibly deny though that we are animals in the world together using sounds and marks to arrange our affairs.

The 'not even temporarily' point is hard to make sense of. If you are only saying that it's all just fiction or mirage, I guess that's fine, but so is fiction and mirage. I don't think one can plausibly deny though that we are animals in the world together using sounds and marks to arrange our affairs. — igjugarjuk

What I mean by ‘not even temporarily’ is that only the actual interchange , in that moment, establishes the actual norm as what it is. The norm is a pragmatic action ,not a concept. This is no mirage, it is the only contact with the real. Every new moment is a new action and interaction and contests a previous instantiation of a norm. Dont let a norm be a thing that exists first and then changes, like a moving object. Let the act BE the norm.

Dont let a norm be a thing that exists first and then changes, like a moving object. Let the act BE the norm. — Joshs

I'm open to the limitation of any form/content framing, but I think you are pushing it too far. Unless all you are saying is that every move in the game has its little effect on the rules of the game.

If I say that I saw a cat on the sidewalk last night, then I'm committed to the claim that I saw an animal on the sidewalk last night. That's a fairly stable rule. If I say that the car was painted solid red, I can't go on to say that it was painted solid blue. (I can't in the sense that I ought not do so, unless in an exceptional situation where I'm talking philosophy perhaps or making a joke, etc.)

Brandom likes to talk about taking true and making true, belief and action. — igjugarjuk

Another theme from Brandom, tho I'm more freewheeling than paraphrasing : We humans were rational before we were good at talking about that rationality. We inferred well enough before the principles of logic were codified. We sifted claims for reliability perhaps before anyone had a name for this activity. We took responsibility and enjoyed entitlements before we had the vocabulary to say so.

I imagine the slow swelling of a metacognitive vocabulary. The philosopher, among other things, makes the philosophical situation explicit. It's the aspiration to be rational that drives the explication of rationality. A relatively indeterminate goal can drive the further articulation of that same goal. Eventually a philosopher might make this making it explicit explicit. — igjugarjuk

:clap: :cool:

... what Wittgenstein means by the sense of words being person-specific and context-specific, that the meaning of a word is only in its actual use right NOW, in THIS context of interaction. There are no norms, no manifest image, no space of reasons that just sit there (even temporarily) protected from active, living, changing temporal context. — Joshs

:fire:

'Universal' rationality is binding without being perfectly or truly universal. Its universality is 'to come,' a point at infinity. (One might think of Peirce here and the consensus to come.) — igjugarjuk

Good stuff. :up:

If I say that I saw a cat on the sidewalk last night, then I'm committed to the claim that I saw an animal on the sidewalk last night. That's a fairly stable rule — igjugarjuk

But what of the ‘sense’ of this rule? There is never just what is the case, a propositional truth structure. There is a way in which it is the case , a way in which it is relevant to me right now at this very moment, a commitment to a certain comportment toward the utterance. Where is the ‘how’ of this ‘what’? Are they being kept artificially separate from each other? Why did I say I saw the cat, what made it important to me to communicate this and what response am I looking for? These questions are not separate from the fact of the matter, they define the sense of this fact. I can repeat the statement that I saw a cat on the sidewalk last night, and each repetition may offer a whole new sense, a new emphasis , a new intention, a new kind of commitment, all bound up within the ‘same’ claim.

As 'rational' people, we ought to regard the warranted claims of others and justify our own. — igjugarjuk

But this only works in contexts, the empirical or the logical, where it is decidable just what being warranted or justified consists in, For me, philosophy is a matter of ideas and insights, not warranted or justifiable claims and propositions.

Excellent idea! I love it! An argumentum ad consequentiam is a fallacy they say...naaah! — Agent Smith

One man's fallacy is another man's phallus.

As 'rational' people, we ought to regard the warranted claims of others and justify our own.
— igjugarjuk

But this only works in contexts, the empirical or the logical, where it is decidable just what being warranted or justified consists in, For me, philosophy is a matter of ideas and insights, not warranted or justifiable claims and propositions. — Janus

:up:

One man's fallacy is another man's phallus. — Janus

:lol: This is a type of thinko I call evolution fallacy - reducing anything and everything to sex (Darwinian success story).