How does commonality between humans work because of their shared DNA?
For the same reason that there is more commonality between humans who share 99.9% of their DNA than commonality between humans and chickens who only share 60% of their DNA — RussellA
Maybe the proponent would take each person, sit them in the same room, and ask them to evaluate the sentence < Ǝx(R(x) ^ A(x)) > (“There exists an x such that x is in the room and x is an apple”). In the corner of the room is a painting by Cézanne, and within the painting is depicted a paradigmatic red apple. One person says that the sentence is true and the second person says that it is false. Upon inspection we realize that the disagreement is not over whether the painting depicts an apple, but is instead over whether the quantifier captures it as an apple. Specifically, it is over whether an imaged thing exists through the image. This is an extensional evidence for quantifier equivocation, different from fdrake's intensional evidence. The paper itself admits this possibility. It begins an argument: — Leontiskos
It is unclear that there is a coherent way of formulating any such quantification and the resulting maximal domain. If the maximal domain is a set, then unrestricted quantification would require quantifying over everything, and there would have to be a set of everything, including, in particular, a set of all sets, among other inconsistent totalities, since all of these things are in the scope of an unrestricted quantifier: everything is in its scope, after all! But that is clearly inconsistent. — p.294
I don't see how DNA would explain that, rather it might explain why we see things in the same kinds of ways. — Janus
If you want to say "nouns are a human invention," that seems like fair game. But there has to be some sort of explanation of their usefulness and development across disparate, isolated societies.
Will we say that the world consists of objects, and we just give them names? Or will we say that the names are arbitrary, we just invent them?
Maybe it helps to try to imagine a whole new vocabulary that we could use to describe said structure. Some areas get called “Gorp”, others “Vulp”, others “Cheeb”. These areas are, let’s say, definable in terms of their structural relations to each other – terms that would include “fundamentality” and “necessitation” – and are discoverable, and people can be right or wrong about which is which. So we lay out our map. Now the question is, “Which of those areas match with the terms ‛exist’, ‛real’, and ‛object’?” (There might be many more key structural elements; choosing three is just for purposes of example.) This is where the seemingly endless debate begins. But I think we need to get clear that a debate about terms is not a debate about structure, and it doesn’t follow that doubting privileged terms is the same as doubting privileged structure. — J
What isn’t privileged is the terms associated with that structure -- not even seemingly rock-bottom terms like "exist". — J
You can be shown to be wrong about logical, mathematical and empirical claims. How could you go about showing that someone is wrong regarding a metaphysical, religious or aesthetic claim?If it's games and feelings of usefulness all the way down, no one can ever be wrong about anything — Count Timothy von Icarus
There is a bit more going on.But just stating the trivial fact that "numbers are something humans use," or "words are things we say," as if this pivot to activity makes the explanation an unanalyzable primitive strikes me as essentially a non-explanation. — Count Timothy von Icarus
But just stating the trivial fact that "numbers are something humans use," or "words are things we say," as if this pivot to activity makes the explanation an unanalyzable primitive strikes me as essentially a non-explanation. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Our issue was, what sort of things are numbers? And one answer is that they are real, like trees, sticks and rocks, but that they are in a special world that makes them unavailable for examination in the way that trees and sticks are available. Roughly, Plato's world of forms. — Banno
Forms...are radically distinct, and in that sense ‘apart,’ in that they are not themselves sensible things. With our eyes we can see large things, but not largeness itself; healthy things, but not health itself. The latter, in each case, is an idea, an intelligible content, something to be apprehended by thought rather than sense, a ‘look’ not for the eyes but for the mind. This is precisely the point Plato is making when he characterizes forms as the reality of all things. “Have you ever seen any of these with your eyes?—In no way … Or by any other sense, through the body, have you grasped them? I am speaking about all things such as largeness, health, strength, and, in one word, the reality [οὐσίας] of all other things, what each thing is” (Phd. 65d4–e1). Is there such a thing as health? Of course there is. Can you see it? Of course not. This does not mean that the forms are occult entities floating ‘somewhere else’ in ‘another world,’ a ‘Platonic heaven.’ It simply says that the intelligible identities which are the reality, the whatness, of things are not themselves physical things to be perceived by the senses, but must be grasped by thought. If, taking any of these examples—say, justice, health, or strength—we ask, “How big is it? What color is it? How much does it weigh?” we are obviously asking the wrong kind of question. Forms are ideas, not in the sense of concepts or abstractions, but in that they are realities apprehended by thought rather than by sense. They are thus ‘separate’ in that they are not additional members of the world of sensible things, but are known by a different mode of awareness. But this does not mean that they are ‘located elsewhere,’ or that they are not, as Plato says, the very intelligible contents, the truth and reality of sensible things. — Thinking Being - An Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, Eric D. Perl, p28
And we build on this. "7" counts as seven, and with a few extras we can write "3+4=7". These count as numbers. — Banno
The attempt to reduce mathematics to 'speech acts' is inadequate to account for the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences' — Wayfarer
I understand what you're getting at, but it's a bit of a strawman, isn't it? "Unanalyzable primitive" doesn't seem to capture what philosophers mean when they talk about numbers and words as instances of human activity, though I suppose a deeply pragmatic view might support that.
If some society somehow stipulated that 8/2 = 5, we tend to feel we could give them a good demonstration of why this is not the correct way to do division. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Pretending 8/2 = 5 won't get you very far. You will not be able to divide the berries between two people fairly. It will be functionally inadequate. It won't work.what explains this? — Count Timothy von Icarus
You will not be able to divide the berries between two people fairly. It will be functionally inadequate. It won't work.
To put it otherwise, and bring my last two posts together, thinking you can start with eight berries and from that give five to each of two different folk is to misunderstand how "eight", "five" and "two" are used.
the Principle of Charity and assume that what they said was correct — Banno
the lack of a coherent explanation of what "quantifier variance" might be — Banno
A charity-based metasemantics assigns L the interpretation that, when all is said-and-done, when every disposition to correct and revise is accounted for, makes the best sense of the linguistic behavior of L-speakers by making their considered utterances come out true in actual and possible circumstances, ceteris paribus. — Hirsch & Warren
Modest variance says that there are many distinct quantifier languages — quantifier languages where translating one language’s quantifier into the other’s results in massive failures of charity. This follows almost immediately from top down charity and our account of quantifiers. — Ibid
the now common assumption that reason is nothing more than discursive reason — Leontiskos
Someone who thinks that all truth is known discursively will believe that discursive-syllogistic explanation is always possible, and that where such explanation fails knowledge does not exist. — Leontiskos
The obvious problem with this, as Aristotle notes, is that logical demonstration is not self-supporting. Logical demonstration presupposes simple or primitive truths in order to get off the ground. — Leontiskos
ratiocination presupposes intellection (that discursive reason presupposes non-discursive acts of the intellect) — Leontiskos
I believe this is largely a result of the democratization and pragmatization of reason, where questions of consensus and therefore adjudication become supreme. — Leontiskos
What I am objecting to is an explanation that seems to say that prior to an act of counting there is nothing that affects how counting is done. — Count Timothy von Icarus
As it happens, this is what the thread should be about. — Srap Tasmaner
because there are eight berries that exist — Count Timothy von Icarus
Can you think of an edge case where it's not clear whether something counts as a berry? — Srap Tasmaner
The way we use the word "berries" is what changes. Not the way we use "is". — Banno
What's my point?What is your point? — Srap Tasmaner
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