maybe word things differently in other areas, such as the self. — Manuel

Here's a Brandom quote from my Becoming Whole discussion.

Kant’s most basic idea, the axis around which all his thought turns, is that what distinguishes exercises of judgment and intentional agency from the performances of merely natural creatures is that judgments and actions are subject to distinctive kinds of normative assessment. Judgments and actions are things we are in a distinctive sense responsible for. They are a kind of commitment we undertake. Kant understands judging and acting as applying rules, concepts, that determine what the subject becomes committed to and responsible for by applying them.
...
The responsibility one undertakes by applying a concept is a task responsibility: a commitment to do something. On the theoretical side, what one is committed to doing, what one becomes liable to assessment as to one’s success at doing, is integrating one’s judgments into a whole that exhibits a distinctive kind of unity: the synthetic unity of apperception. It is a systematic, rational unity, dynamically created and sustained by drawing inferential consequences from and finding reasons for one’s judgments, and rejecting commitments incompatible with those one has undertaken. Apperceiving, the characteristically sapient sort of awareness, is discursive (that is, conceptual) awareness. For it consists in integrating judgments into a unity structured by relations of what judgments provide reasons for and against what others. And those rational relations among judgments are determined by the rules, that is the concepts, one binds oneself by in making the judgments. Each new episode of experience, paradigmatically the making of a perceptual judgment, requires integration into, and hence transformation of the antecedent constellation of commitments. New incompatibilities can arise, which must be dealt with critically by rejecting or modifying prior commitments. New joint consequences can ensue, which must be acknowledged or rejected. The process by which the whole evolves and develops systematically is a paradigmatically rational one, structured by the rhythm of inhalation or amplification by acknowledging new commitments and extracting new consequences, and exhalation or criticism by rejecting or adjusting old commitments in the light of their rational relations to the new ones.

In other words, you and I are doing being selves right now by trying to live up to this kind of responsibility. I am the kind of the thing, that as an I, must be coherent, or at least minimize incoherence. A self is the kind of thing that can disagree with others but not with itself. It's an avatar on which score is kept in a social space of reasons (inferentially related claims.)

God was used back then by almost everybody, Descartes had no special claim in relation to others in using God as an explanation. — Manuel

But, respectfully, that's beside the point. Whence the rational norms ? Whence this language in or even as which beingthere finds itself ? Whence the unity of the voice that thoughtlessly and credulously takes itself for an 'I' that ought to make a case for its claims ? What's missing here is an awareness of a massive tacit assumption of the philosophical situation itself.

It's late here so I can't reply to your longer post.

I don't understand your problem with Descartes. What do you mean by "whence the rational norms?"

Beingthere? That's the Heideggerian critique, which is interesting, though Descartes had a specific problem in mind, to account for the mental, since for him and his contemporaries, the physical was well understood. Outside his experiment, in ordinary life he didn't live like a skeptic, nor did he act as if an evil demon was an issue.

The "I" is a construct, I am re-reading Descartes soon, but I believe he was aware of this.

If you could perhaps phrase the post in a different manner, I could better understand your criticism or concern.

Kant’s most basic idea, the axis around which all his thought turns, is that what distinguishes exercises of judgment and intentional agency from the performances of merely natural creatures is that judgments and actions are subject to distinctive kinds of normative assessment. - Brandom — plaque flag

Hence the incompatibility between transcendental idealism and naturalism.

I'm wondering where that self-confidence comes from. — Isaac

The original exchange which you keep referring to was a long time ago, but I think it had to do with something like the 'hard problem' issue. I noticed that in connection with that (and should we decide to pursue it again, it should be in one of the threads on it) that you tend not to recognise that there is a problem which neuroscience can't address. So at the time I made that remark, what I was trying to convey was that if you don't see it as a problem, then there's no use in trying to explain it further.

here you are deriding as 'evil' world views... — Isaac

Specifically I was referring to the eliminative materialism of Daniel Dennett and the way he uses Darwinian biology in support of that view, which I (and a lot of people) regard as anti-humanist. I was certainly not characterising anyone I differ with as evil.

Hence the incompatibility between transcendental idealism and naturalism. — Wayfarer

Personally I don't want all of Kant's baggage, but I love what Brandom takes from him in that passage.

Naturalism seems like a blurry concept, so I looked it up to confirm: The term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/

We can just say that norms are 'primordial' or foundational. Any philosophy that doesn't account for them, despite of course depending on them and existing within and even as them, is incomplete, flawed, confused.

But one need not insist that norms are outside of nature, anymore than beavers' dams are, now is there any obvious reason that Darwinian evolution can't help explain them. To be sure, our linguistic norms are staggeringly more complex than any other creature's that we're aware of. It makes sense that Darwin and Dennett turned their consideration to how memes might use as hosts. Our is it better to say that we are the bundles of memes that use human bodies as hosts ? Layers! We might more reasonably identify with what binds time here (wacky Korzybski, quoted below) [or as bound time] , as the historical noosphere that Hegel and Heidegger seemed to prioritize. Geist. Memeplasm.

And now what shall we say of human beings? What is to be our definition of Man? Like the animals, human beings do indeed possess the space-binding capacity but, over and above that, human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them-I mean the capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever increasing light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is at once the heritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity.

The "I" is a construct, I am re-reading Descartes soon, but I believe he was aware of this. — Manuel

I would say that the 'I' is indeed a construct in the sense of a social norm. Of course we have individual bodies, so the issue is how these bodies are trained to take responsibility for what they do and become relatively autonomous. You might say that the self is a tradition we perform. Part of this tradition is conforming to logical norms. To be a scientist, for instance, is not to guess randomly and get mad at those who disagree. It's a conformity to more or less explicit rules about presenting and accepting claims. To speak as a philosopher or scientist, is ( I claim) to accept the selftranscending bindingness and legitimacy of these norms. It is to make a move in an always already ideally public space, as if in the light of expectations of telling a coherent story. The coherence of the story that the mouth of the body tells is the coherence of the associated self as a locus of responsibility for just this coherence. So the self is allowed to disagree with others but not itself. To contradict yourself is to fail a social duty, go out of focus. But we aren't perfect, so the self is more like an avatar in social space for a process that strives endlessly toward coherence (and expansion, but that's another issue.)

Specifically I was referring to the eliminative materialism of Daniel Dennett and the way he uses Darwinian biology in support of that view, which I (and a lot of people) regard as anti-humanist. I was certainly not characterising anyone I differ with as evil. — Wayfarer

I really don't see how specificity is a defence against describing an alternative view as 'evil'. The accusation is not one of bigotry, it's of hubris. I'm not concerned that you offend the actual proponents of such a view (thought that is heavily implied), It's that your position is indefensible - literally you admit this yourself "if you don't see it, there's nothing more to say", and yet positions that differ can themselves be 'evil'.

If the only grounds on which you think your position right is that it just 'feels' that way to you, can you not even see that others might defend their own contrasting positions the same way?

Why invoke 'fear of religion', or nihilism, or lack of understanding... when you know from your own personal experience that some positions simply 'feel' right and do so with such strength that it is impossible to really see how they could be mistaken. Can you not empathise then with Dennett, Dawkins, and others who might feel the same way - why must you invoke such nefarious motives to them when you own contrasting position is held with no less passion and with no more defensible ground?

Why invoke 'fear of religion'... — Isaac

Have you read the essay that this is quoted from, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, by Thomas Nagel? I think what he says in that essay is extremely relevant to many of the arguments we see on this forum, including this one, which is why I quoted it.

I don't know how simply saying that the self is a kind of fiction or a necessary social construction is any less clear than adding the aspect of a "tradition we perform", nor do I see how a scientist or a philosopher is "to accept the selftranscending bindingness and legitimacy of these norms."

What norms? If a scientist is speaking about astronomy, she is specializing in a specific branch of science, attempting to clarify what exists in the mind-independent world. I'm not sure I am seeing the rest of what you are arguing. I suppose I am missing something.

The "I" is a construct, I am re-reading Descartes soon, but I believe he was aware of this. — Manuel

The 'I' is the usurper of the Church's authority. The 'I' is the thing that thinks, that reasons, that chooses, that decides, and wills.
.

Sure. The "I" is a mark of mind (along with creative language use and thinking), which according to him, could not be explained by appeals to materialism, which is why he postulated res cogitans.

The issue for me is, was he aware, maybe inexplicitly, that the self is a creation of the mind, or if he took it to be a literal thing, or both? Then again, by arguing for dualism, one can take it to imply that he took it as a literal thing, maybe unconstructed...

Putting the issue in a modern way, was he aware that the given, which includes the self, is as much as a construct as the external world, which we construct on the basis of sense data?

I'll need to read him in more detail to see if this specific topic is addressed by him.

The "I" is a mark of mind ... — Manuel

As I understand him, it is not a mark but the thing that thinks. The 'I' asserts itself. Claims its place and authority.

The issue for me is, was he aware, maybe inexplicitly, that the self is a creation of the mind ... — Manuel

Does he make this distinction between self and mind?

As I understand him, it is not a mark but the thing that thinks. The 'I' asserts itself. Claims its place and authority. — Fooloso4

I see. Although it has a certain intuitive appeal, it is kind of nebulous. Which occasions the question you ask:

Does he make this distinction between self and mind? — Fooloso4

I don't know. It looks like an important distinction though. Also important is to see what differences there are (if any) between "I" and self.

it is kind of nebulous — Manuel

I think it is important to consider Descartes' rhetoric. He uses the terms 'I', soul, and self interchangeably.

Continuing with the case of other animals, suppose someone says "dogs will learn how to use laptops, it's just a matter of "learning more" and eventually they will understand it". — Manuel

Dogs don't have fingers to operate laptops, but the notion of them learning button-pushing communication is not far-fetched. Amazon has several models of "dog button mats" available. And I've seen several videos of dogs that seem to know how to speak with technology, even though they lack a human larynx. I wonder what Chomsky would say about chatting doggies using human language to convey their thoughts. :smile:

How Do Talking Dog Buttons Work? :
https://www.petmd.com/dog/behavior/how-do-talking-dog-buttons-work

My Talking Dog Uses Her Buttons to Talk About The Past :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS3kviWGkH0

He starts with a story about Newton who apparently destroyed materialism once and for all.
Moreover, Chomsky goes ahead denying altogether even the notion of materialism/physicalism, saying that we do not know what matter is. — Eugen

Can't get this. On the one hand, Chomsly accuses Newton for destroying the notion of materialism and on the other hand, he denies himself the notion of materialism.
There's something wrong here. Or do I misss something?

Thanks for the heads up. Descartes is up next on my re-read list, so once I finish that I may be able to answer some of the questions you pose.



They can't because dogs don't have a language faculty. Communication and language are frequently confused, they are not the same. All animals (or most of them) have some form of communication, but they don't have language.

the notion of them learning button-pushing communication is not far-fetched — Gnomon

They can be taught many tricks, no doubt. But I wouldn't go as far as saying that a dog knows it's pushing a button. More likely the dog reacts to a very specific environment, which we interpret as the dog pushing a button.

I really don't understand what's controversial about the idea that biological creatures have limits. It would be a miracle if they didn't. I mean, it should be completely uncontroversial, a truism.

But, apparently, it's giving up on enquiry or being arrogant or something. Oh well...

Descartes is up next on my re-read list, so once I finish that I may be able to answer some of the questions you pose. — Manuel

It has been a while since there has been a thread on Descartes. Looking forward to hearing what you have to say. What will you be reading?

I have his 3 collected works volumes. Besides the mandatory Meditations (including part of Objections and Replies) and Discourse on Method, I'll probably read his Rules for The Direction of Mind, Principles of Philosophy and Comments on a Certain Broadsheet.

I'll probably skim some of his personal correspondence. And I'm unclear if I'll finish the entire Rules, but that's more or less what I have in mind. Although I want to understand his general thought better, I want to put special focus on innate ideas.

Why invoke 'fear of religion'... — Isaac
Have you read the essay that this is quoted from, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, by Thomas Nagel? I think what he says in that essay is extremely relevant to many of the arguments we see on this forum, including this one, which is why I quoted it. — Wayfarer

Apparently, the majority of humans do not "fear religion". It's mostly god-fearing intellectuals & liberals who are not attracted to mysterious & authoritarian religions with bloodthirsty deities. Religious people seem to reason that it's best to be on the side of the biggest baddest M-F, when the world is out to get you.

I haven't made a study of that specific fear phenomenon. But I see a possible explanation in Liberal vs Conservative politics. Most ancient religions, from which our tamer modern religions evolved, were designed to appease capricious nature deities or sword-wielding warrior-king gods. I take the words of the "preacher" literally : "Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind." The most fearsome gods were modeled upon the typical Middle-Eastern ("off with his head") Tyrant Kings of the era.

Living in fear of your god makes sense if you don't want to get on his bad side. As a political concept, that may explain the resurgence of Fascism in the modern world : Trump ; Putin, etc. As long as Hitler was successful in dominating Europe, most Germans were content to accept his selective benevolence (Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, non-Aryans, etc. were outcasts). It was only a few intellectuals, who could foresee a bleak future for non-conformists in a Fascist world (e.g. The Man in the High Castle).

The upside of Machiavellian dictators & Tyrant gods is that they mandate order --- making the trains run on time --- making it rain for the pious. But the downside is that they surround themselves with yes-men, and kill-off independent thinkers (philosophers), who ask too many questions. Perhaps Mysterianism envisions a more decent deity, but doesn't see much evidence for it in the political and religious realms. :smile:


Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion :
I am talking about something much deeper--namely, the fear of
religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z_IqIxLEwAaRi2ztoP3PIF_6lCSfqm-X/view?pli=1
Note-- Like what? Like Hitler's Reich where Jews like Nagel were not welcome?

They can't because dogs don't have a language faculty. Communication and language are frequently confused, they are not the same. All animals (or most of them) have some form of communication, but they don't have language. — Manuel

The dogs in the videos are obviously using pre-recorded human language to express their limited doggie thoughts. But they seem to know the meaning of those sounds. So, it's true that human Language is uniquely human, but the mental & emotional elements from which spoken & written communication evolved were inherited from animal ancestors, who were limited to gestures, such as wagging tails. Apparently language evolved along with hands, big brains, and upright posture. :smile:

Why Chimpanzees Can't Learn Language :
Chomsky not only argued that language was uniquely human but he also questioned Charles Darwin's theory that language evolved from animal communication and B.F. Skinner's theory that language could be reduced to learned behavior.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/terr17110

That may be the case, gestures are a big form of communication. But it's also quite sophisticated, a bit more so than animals, in terms of the circumstances in which a specific gesture can mean many, many different things to different people.

As to the evolution of language, or cognitive faculties more broadly considered, here's a paper Richard Lewontin, who Chomsky often sites concerning the topic, which is quite interesting:

https://langev.com/pdf/lewontin98theEvolution.pdf

I don't know how simply saying that the self is a kind of fiction or a necessary social construction is any less clear than adding the aspect of a "tradition we perform" — Manuel

Did you understand Brandom's take on Kant's transcendental unity of apperception ?

nor do I see how a scientist or a philosopher is "to accept the selftranscending bindingness and legitimacy of these norms." — Manuel

Let me use some weird rhetoric to try to get the point across. The following is not meant to be rude.

Who cares if you can see it? Seriously, who ? One cares. A philosopher as such cares. What are doing at this very moment if not holding one another to a joint responsibility to be clear and consistent ? If I speak as a philosopher, then I claim to speak with the authority of our great god secular rationality behind me. Except I'd say that rational norms are between us like stop signs and handshakes, even if they surely leave and depend on marks they leave on personal biology such as our brains.

What norms? If a scientist is speaking about astronomy, she is specializing in a specific branch of science, attempting to clarify what exists in the mind-independent world. — Manuel

What makes what a particular human being does science ?

I suggest also that mind-independent world is way too biased metaphysically. I claim that science gives objective unbiased explanations of this world, our world. Its claims aren't independent of 'mind' (it's not even clear what this means) or even of the language they are made of. Its claims are independent of this or that observer. What's negated is not mind but personal perspective. In my view, this kind of dualism is hopeless and yet so often projected on physics, for instance.

Chomsky not only argued that language was uniquely human but he also questioned Charles Darwin's theory that language evolved from animal communication and B.F. Skinner's theory that language could be reduced to learned behavior. — Gnomon

The better our bots get, the more it seems that yeah it's continuous with animal communication and we even have synthetic brains analogous to our own that can learn language from examples, finding the structure implicit in those examples to create novel and successful sentences.

I believe I follow some of it, though other points seem to me somewhat dubious. It feels a bit strange to say that one is to be held responsible for making a judgement - I don't think that must follow. It seems to me as if we make judgments much the same way as we breathe in oxygen, that is automatically.

As for the revision of commitments given new data and judgements, that sounds radical, but in my personal experience it's not too frequently that I stumble upon an idea or an argument that makes me revise all or even most of my previous "commitments". That whole idea is strange to me, which is not to say it can't be useful.

As to the plausibility of Brandom's reading of Kant, I may have some doubts, but for that @Mww is your guy. He knows his Kant better than most scholars, as far as I can see. And he's quite a character to boot.



Weird rhetoric? Only if you think it'll make your point clearer. This is already rather dense.

If I understand you correctly, I think rationality (more so than norms) goes significantly beyond stop-signs or handshakes, it's an innate characteristic of a very peculiar creature, namely, human beings.

Its claims are independent of this or that observer. What's negated is not mind but personal perspective. In my view, this kind of dualism is hopeless and yet so often projected on physics, for instance. — plaque flag

That's a fair way to phrase it.

By mind-independent I mean what the word says. If we did not exist, there would still be planets and suns - in some fashion - as would there be photons and fossils. I don't believe that we literally created the world, that there was nothing here prior to homo sapiens.

But without us, these distinctions couldn't be made and what would remain as far as we can tell, is at best a bunch of fields of energy and a worst (from our want of understanding) a "I know not what" Lockean substance, or a noumenon in the negative sense, in Kant's philosophy.

I think rationality (more so than norms) goes significantly beyond stop-signs or handshakes, it's an innate characteristic of a very peculiar creature, namely, human beings. — Manuel

Respectfully, can you not hear the vagueness in this ? Is the difference qualitative or more a matter of complexity ? When will the bots become good enough to make you doubt the divine spark that seems to be hinted at here ?

It feels a bit strange to say that one is to be held responsible for making a judgement - I don't think that must follow. — Manuel

Here we are though discussing the very norms you don't find plausible. Which inferences play by the rules ? Are valid ? That's us discussing what concepts mean in the first place, or so might an inferentialist claim.

To grasp what I take from Brandom, just zoom out and look at what we are doing right now, along with everyone on this forum. Claims and inferences. Trying to get our moves and conclusions recognized as valid.

By mind-independent I mean what the word says. If we did not exist, there would still be planets and suns - in some fashion - as would there be photons and fossils. I don't believe that we literally created the world, that there was nothing here prior to homo sapiens. — Manuel

Sure. I think the world was here before us and will be after us, in some sense. But I don't think that implies science studies mindindependent stuff. We simply project our models before and after our ability to talk, which we can do now while we are here. I agree that this is weird situation.