I don't know if you know the paper where David Chalmers argues for a contemporary Fregeanism where 'sense' pretty much becomes 'intension'. — mcdoodle

I do not, and thanks for the tip!

That's right on top of intensional definition. Two utterances have the same extension, but the extension alone is not adequate to convey the thought.

Also Soames presents an awesome argument for why we can't dispense with propositions (a sort of netherworld object) without denying that there is such a thing as agreement. It's in Understanding Truth.

Also Soames presents an awesome argument for why we can't dispense with propositions (a sort of netherworld object) without denying that there is such a thing as agreement. — Mongrel

I think I've been pushing a Frege-inspired version of this in chatting here with Terrapin. Certainly positing propositions do give you a way to agree and disagree, etc. So they're certainly sufficient, but I want to see more clearly whether they're necessary, which is what I'm working at above. I do wonder whether starting from the conditions of communication could eventually get you a version of Frege's machinery.

But the question is, what are A and B making judgments about? — Srap Tasmaner

Insofar as truth goes, they're making judgments about the relation of a proposition to something else.

I state that as "something else" because not everyone uses the same "something else." That depends on the truth theory that someone subscribes to in the sense of correspondence versus coherence versus consensus etc.

Propositions, as the meanings of the sorts of sentences that can be true or false are not objective on my view, because meaning isn't objective. Of course Frege posited that they were objective, because Frege was anti-psychologism . . . which in my opinion was one of the dumbest moves that philosophy ever made. Not that that was only Frege's fault. I just mean the move away from psychologism in general.

If we're talking about the correspondence approach, the judgments are about the relation of a proposition to facts. Most facts on my view are objective.

Propositions, as the meanings of the sorts of sentences that can be true or false are not objective on my view, because meaning isn't objective. — Terrapin Station

So how do people compare judgments? I judge P_me true, you judge P_you true. We're not even talking about the same proposition. (In fact Frege argues that would actually be me judging P_me true_me and you judging P_you true_you.)

As I said, if you can establish that P_me and P_you, if not instances of P simpliciter, are members of some equivalence class (which we could then define to be P if we wanted), then you would have a meaningful way of comparing my judgment of P_me and your judgment of P_you.

Until you do that, it's just me saying my apple's red and you saying your banana's yellow.

So how do people compare judgments? I judge Pme true, you judge Pyou true. We're not even talking about the same proposition. (In fact Frege argues that would actually be me judging Pme trueme and you judging Pyou trueyou.)

As I said, if you can establish that Pme and Pyou, if not instance of P simpliciter, are members of some equivalence class (which we could then define to be P if we wanted), then you would have a meaningful way of comparing my judgment of Pme and your judgment of Pyou.

Until you do that, it's just me saying my apple's red and you saying your banana's yellow. — Srap Tasmaner

Are you asking me to literally report what we do? What we do should be obvious if you spend time talking to other people.

It's not like you saying your apple is red and me saying that my banana's yellow. It's like you saying your apple is red and me saying, no, you're apple is purple, where for all we can tell at least initially, we're both using the sound "apple" to "point at" the same objective thing, we're both using "red" and "purple" to "point at" the same objective things, etc.

It's like you saying your apple is red and me saying, no, you're apple is purple, where for all we can tell at least initially, we're both using the sound "apple" to "point at" the same objective thing, we're both using "red" and "purple" to "point at" the same objective things, etc. — Terrapin Station

Do you say "No, your apple is purple" because for all you can tell at least initially, when I said "My apple is red," I meant what you would have meant if you had said, "Your apple is red"?

I should have added: do you expect that for all I can tell at least initially, when you say "Your apple is purple," you mean what I would have meant if I had said "My apple is purple"?

Frege has a clear answer to that: the proposition, the thought, which is objective. — Srap Tasmaner

Could I make a suggestion here, which is that the term 'objective' is somewhat misleading in this context. This is because mathematical proofs are not actually 'objective' in the sense of being 'inherent in an object or situation'. But they are not subjective, either. I think the problem here is that our modern use of 'objective' entails a certain class of truths, which is subtly different to a priori, rational or logical truths. I don't have a suggested alternative to 'objective' but I am just pointing out that I think it's a poor descriptor for the kinds of truth that Frege is wanting to elucidate.

Could I make a suggestion here, which is that the term 'objective' is somewhat misleading in this context. — Wayfarer

This had not occurred to me. I think overwhelmingly I use objective/subjective to mean something like public/private, just because of the contexts in which I'm making the distinction. For instance, here the idea is that when you understand a sentence you have grasped something that anyone can, thus something public, as opposed to whatever images and so forth the sentence might call to your mind and your mind alone, which would be private.

I think overwhelmingly I use objective/subjective to mean something like public/private, just because of the contexts in which I'm making the distinction. — Srap Tasmaner

'Common to all who think', would be a way of putting it. The same as saying, '7' is the same for anyone who can count (and meaningless to anyone who can't) That's why I drew attention to the example of 'the triangle' - that is a concept, which must have the same meaning for any observer. But what I'm wanting to say, is that those kinds of facts are of a different order to objective judgements. We will, for example, call on them when wishing to make an objective judgement - 'she said there were only 5 left, but I counted them, and there were definitely 7'. We rely on numerical judgements all the time to assess what is objectively the case, but numerical reasoning in some sense precedes objective judgement; objective judgement relies on our ability to count or to make rational judgements. That's the sense in which I'm saying that numerical judgements aren't 'objective'; it's not as if they're 'subjective', either. I think they're something more like 'transcendental', in the Kantian sense.

That is why we have an overwhelming tendency to defer to science when it comes to adjudicating what is or is not a matter of fact. Scientific judgement at the end of the day deals with matters that can be made subject to quantitative analysis. Qualitative questions are of a different order; how do we measure them? The rules of maths, and the rules of logic, can be brought to bear on almost any subject. This is why scientific judgement can be said to be 'public', in the sense that it comprises findings which produce measurable data that others can observe (notwithstanding the so-called 'reproducibility crisis'.) And that underlying assumption is buried very deep in our naturalistic culture.

Sorry if I'm rambling. I'll leave it at that for now.

Among a particular community, we could identify the sense agreed upon. Yet that sense is a sense among many that are out there (and over time.) — Mongrel

This is absolutely true of course, and you may have to narrow the context all the way down to the occasion of utterance, and even then you may have to appeal to the intention of the speaker to disambiguate an expression.

There is something mechanical about this process though, which may be why it's of slightly more interest to linguists than philosophers. (Perhaps wrongly.)

1. Does communication presuppose complete disambiguation?

2. The real trouble seems to come once disambiguation is done, assuming it can be: when I understand something you say, have I acquired the content of your utterance, as a sort of payload?

In regard to those questions, it's common to be interested in building an argument up to the answer dictated by one's ontology. You said you don't have any ontology. So how do you want to answer the questions: logically? By observing people from afar? By observing the events of your own mind?

E: all of the above.

I really cannot imagine doing philosophy by deciding ahead of time what I'll quantify over, if it comes to that. I have the same physicalist or naturalist prejudice most philosophers do, but that only decides all questions if you also believe in a form of reductionism that looks pretty suspect. Sometimes you're stuck with your theoretical entities.

Other commitments are certainly a factor in choosing one theory over another, but I'd say the main thing is always explanatory power: does the theory make sense of our collective intuitions? does it clarify murky cases? does it include what it should and exclude what it should? The opposites of those (and whatever else goes in there) are bad.

Sometimes you're stuck with your theoretical entities. — Srap Tasmaner

Should also have said something here about category mistakes.

I'd say the main thing is always explanatory power: does the theory make sense of our collective intuitions? does it clarify murky cases? does it include what it should and exclude what it should? The opposites of those (and whatever else goes in there) are bad. — Srap Tasmaner

That's cool. Could you give an example of the type of thing you want to explain?

I'm not usually too impressed by explanatory power. Explanations come and go. Each has some power, I suppose. I'm more drawn to a geometric approach. Pretend I'm an eliminative materialist. What would I have to conclude about the presuppositions of communication? What would I say about content?

What's the opposite of being eliminative? What would I see if I stood in that position? To make a square out of it, what view partakes of both of the above opposites (there should be two of them to make a square)?

Yes to both questions. Again, isn't obvious that that's how people operate in these situations?

There's the sentence I actually utter: "My apple is red."
There's the sentence you imagine uttering: "Your apple is red."
Do they have the same meaning? Express the same proposition? Are they equivalent in some other way?

Propositions, as the meanings of the sorts of sentences that can be true or false are not objective on my view, because meaning isn't objective. Of course Frege posited that they were objective, because Frege was anti-psychologism . . . which in my opinion was one of the dumbest moves that philosophy ever made. Not that that was only Frege's fault. I just mean the move away from psychologism in general. — Terrapin Station

I'm just still trying to figure out what all this means. Maybe if you clarified what you mean by "objective" and "subjective" -- I may have guessed wrong -- that might help.

I believe I understand how Frege's view works; I don't understand how your view works. If you want to just explain it, that would be fine.

There's the sentence I actually utter: "My apple is red."
There's the sentence you imagine uttering: "Your apple is red."
Do they have the same meaning? Express the same proposition? Are they equivalent in some other way? — Srap Tasmaner

We have to clarify what we're asking re whether the have the same meaning. Obviously, as a nominalist, I don't believe that they're literally the same. We're not talking about a numerical identity. (And I wish we didn't have to clarify this, but some people are confused into thinking that they must be numerically identical.)

But we assume that they're similar enough that they might as well be the same until there's a good reason to believe otherwise.

Maybe if you clarified what you mean by "objective" and "subjective" -- I may have guessed wrong -- that might help. — Srap Tasmaner

I've done that many times, but once again: subjective = mental phenomena, objective = the complement --things aside from mental phenomena.

But we assume that they're similar enough that they might as well be the same until there's a good reason to believe otherwise. — Terrapin Station

That's not far from my earlier suggestion for how we can Grice's types rolling, but I still think that this similarity needs grounding, and we probably want a little more than an assumption to do it. And we need to explain how similarity does us any good.

Here's how I see the dilemma.

Option 1 (Frege's): propositions, meaning and truth are not subjective mental states or events.
Pros: meaning and truth are public and shareable; communication works as advertised -- understanding is grasping the same meaning as the utterer; logic works as advertised -- if A asserts P and B asserts ¬P, they're talking about the same thing.
Cons: entails a third (platonic) realm of entities (?) that are neither physical objects or subjective mental states or events.

Option 2 (psychologism): meaning, truth, etc. are subjective mental states or events.
Pros: does not entail the third realm.
Cons: communication and logic do not "literally" work as they do in Option 1: A and B cannot be in the same subjective mental state, thus A and B cannot "literally" understand each other's utterances, cannot both assert or deny the same proposition, etc.

You can of course just plump for option 1 or 2 and accept the consequences: accepting option 1 entails accepting a third realm many find implausible; option 2 leaves you hanging out with the freshmen asking, "How do I know your blue is the same as my blue?"

If that's not enough, there is further motivation for crafting a third option: there is a sense in which Option 1 explains nothing, but simply redescribes what we want to explain, with the needed theoretical entities (meanings, propositions, etc.) and a framework showing how they are related; Option 2 goes wrong not by relying on mental states and events, but by not engaging the theoretical framework of Option 1 at all.

We could modify, or clarify, Option 1 somewhat: it's platonic entities people are hesitant about, and it's not really clear what Option 1 is committed to in the way of entities. (Elsewhere, Frege is committed to numbers as objects, etc.) Propositions and concepts are not treated by Frege entities at all. But is the sense of a proposition? We talk about it as if it were, but perhaps there is a way of refining our presentation of Option 1 so that the population of theoretical entities is smaller and more acceptable.

We could modify Option 3 along the lines contemplated earlier in this thread, by gathering utterances and mental states into types or equivalence classes, with the intention of plugging this into the framework of Option 1 in place of the theoretical entities there. We somehow already do something like this with phonemes (or cheremes), for instance.

You can of course just plump for option 1 or 2 and accept the consequences: accepting option 1 entails accepting a third realm many find implausible; option 2 leaves you hanging out with the freshmen asking, "How do I know your blue is the same as my blue?" — Srap Tasmaner

Re option 2, I don't see your cons as cons. We simply have to have theories of communication, understanding, etc. that reflect what's really going on given that 2 is the case.

Re how it's known that the blues are the "same," it's not something that can be known, but more importantly, it doesn't matter that we can't know this. There is nothing of practical importance that hinges on knowing this.

Re your third option, yeah, we can use the standard way of talking about this stuff, contra psychologism, as a useful fiction. There's nothing wrong with that as such, as long as we acknowledge that it's just a fiction that we're engaging in to make it easier to talk about the topics at hand. Hence why I'd normally talk about the same meaning, say, without explaining nominalist issues, etc.

I think psychologism is prima facie implausible as an account of how we talk about mathematics, for one thing. Now the psychologismist, if they weren't just going to deny this -- I expect you will -- could respond that Frege's machinery was developed especially to formalize mathematics, and so there's no surprise that it works there, but also no reason to think it works at all anywhere else. But then the question is, what's different about mathematics? If the response is that mathematics is just convention, that it's all true by definition, something like that, that leaves unexplained how such conventions could possibly arise, conventions for which Frege's account does actually work. And if you could have such conventions as the basis for mathematics, why not for other things, why not for natural language?

There's nothing wrong with that as such, as long as we acknowledge that it's just a fiction that we're engaging in to make it easier to talk about the topics at hand. — Terrapin Station

Talking as if something were something else is very close to something counting as something else, and I still want to know how that works. As I've said, I think there's a kind of start in the way phonemes work -- there's a whole range of sounds that will count as the phoneme. That involves selecting certain features and ignoring others. Pitch, for instance, is irrelevant in English.

That "selecting certain features" part makes it sound like we're headed right back toward the Fregean machinery. But maybe not, or not only that. At the very least, we're talking about counting numerically distinct objects or events as instances of the same thing, and in a sense it doesn't matter how "objectively" similar or different they are -- counting two things apparently identical in every way, that as far as we can tell are copies of each other, as instances of some thing-type is still a leap. And it's that leap that is the basis for whatever else we do.

So I'm still stuck at the move from utterance to utterance-type, belief to belief-type, thing to thing-type.