Now how exactly do we manage that? Attributing a predicate to an identified individual looks straightforward, but in ordinary life we only reach for the existential quantifier in the absence of such an individual. (One of you drank the last beer. Someone left these footprints. There's something really heavy in this box.) — Srap Tasmaner
Consider that berries grow, ripen, and then rot. Can you think of an edge case where it's not clear whether something counts as a berry?
For no being insofar as it is changing is its own ground of being. Every state of a changing being is contingent: it was not a moment ago and will not be a moment from now.Therefore the grasping of a being as changing is the grasping of it as not intelligible in itself-as essentially referred to something other than itself.
Kenneth Gallagher - The Philosophy of Knowledge
Why would they be counted as such? Because that's the way "eight" is used. How is this explained without reference to the 8 berries existing prior to counting? There are presumably eight berries before they are counted.
Language games are not just words, they are things we do in the world with words.
And I do not want to say ""numerically discrete entities exist prior to counting", because that seems to be quite an odd thing to say.
Likewise, an explanation of counting seems to require some mention of the fact that the world already has things that we can count in it. — Count Timothy von Icarus
IE, it is a problem of circularity, in that there are two objects provided we have already determined that there are two objects
The joke was quite intentional. — Banno
This is not an example of quantifier variance. It is a disagreement as to the domain. — Banno
The existential quantifier plays out as a disjunct of the domain. List all the items in the domain, and if any one of them is an apple, then the existential quantifier will be true. — Banno
The self is pure medium, pure mirror for the world; their limits coincide. The self is, in a sense, one with the world. It gives way to it. Solipsism collapses into realism. — Peter L. P. Simpson, Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein on Self and Object, p. 10
The decisive role that modern formal logic is playing in Wittgenstein’s thought here can be illustrated also by reference to his account of names and objects. This itself follows from modern logic’s theory of quantification (invented by Frege), and Russell’s theory of descriptions. . . — Peter L. P. Simpson, Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein on Self and Object, p. 7
You can just as easily turn all of truth into another pseudo problem, something that is merely defined by a game that "works"—something that both defies and needs no metaphysical explanation. But when we reach a point where Goodness, Truth, our words, and now even our own conciousness itself have all been "eliminated" or "deflated," so as to avoid pseudo problems, things start to look a lot like Protagoras (or at least Plato's caricature of him). If it's games and feelings of usefulness all the way down, no one can ever be wrong about anything — Count Timothy von Icarus
Reason is fundamentally the capacity to be aware of or to know whatever there is to be aware of or to be known, and to order actions, traits of character, emotions accordingly. Reason’s range is only limited by the range of knowables. If one confines the knowable to the scientific or the mathematical, one is left with a pretty narrow idea of reason.[10] Paradoxically it is those who most object to reason in this sense who also do most to preserve it, for they are operating precisely with this notion of reason when they reject it as too narrow to capture or to base the fullness of the human being. So they say, for instance, that beauty, goodness, dignity, and so on are not part of reason because they are not knowable—they are objects of feeling or imagination or intuition or something of the sort. Thus they reinforce the relegation of reason to the hard ‘objective’ reason of modern natural science. But this cannot be the notion of reason that Boethius is using, for this narrowing of reason is a phenomenon of post-medieval philosophy. The ‘reason’ of the classical tradition is as much involved with the beautiful, the good, the lovely, and things loved (for reason in some sense loves its objects, at least to the extent they are lovable), as it is with the mathematical or ‘factual’; indeed perhaps even more so.11 It is reason that brings about the fullness of the human being because it opens up persons to the fullness of what is; without it emotions and feelings and intuitions would be blind or empty.
[10] Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is a locus classicus here. Of course he did not think that the objects of science and mathematics were the most important or the only things. But he did, in the Tractatus, think they were the only things, besides logic, one could reason and talk about. On the other hand the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle and the A. J. Ayer of Language, Truth and Logic thought not only this but also that science, mathematics and logic were the only things simply. They lacked Wittgenstein’s mysticism. — Peter L. P. Simpson, The Definition of Person: Boethius Revisited, p. 6
I almost posted about this the other day, but decided I didn't care enough. This charity metasemantics they've cooked up, I mean, it's the sort of crap mainstream (analytic) philosophy has been getting up to for a long time. It's depressing. — Srap Tasmaner
But it's toward the end there that I disagree. Yes ratiocination rests on something that isn't that, but I wouldn't call what it rests on intellection, which seems to suggest something like the grasping of self-evident truth, or something. — Srap Tasmaner
Turning to the question of the nature of mind first, it becomes clear in the De Anima that mind is able to abstract because it is active as well as passive. What is latent in particular things is brought to life, so to speak, and imprinted on the mind by the mind itself. Aristotle resorts to an analogy with light to explain this. As colors are not seen unless light first falls on them and makes them visible, so the universal natures are not seen in the particulars unless the light of the mind falls on them and makes them knowable. Now it is worth noting that one of the results which may be said to emerge from the debate about innate knowledge between Descartes and Locke, is that one cannot get out of sensible experience by itself all that is grasped by thought; some input beyond mere sensation is required. Aristotle would agree with this, but not with Descartes that that input takes the form of actual knowledge, nor with Kant that it takes the form of a priori concepts, nor indeed with Wittgenstein and others that it takes the form of the social and linguistic context; rather it takes the form of a different faculty or power that is endowed with its own distinct principle of activity (what medieval writers used to call its own “intelligible light”), which does not work by adding to the content of sensible experience (as the other solutions do), but by enabling more of what is already there to be taken out. — Peter L. P. Simpson, The Nature and Origin of Ideas: The Controversy over Innate Ideas Reconsidered, pp. 22-3
Instead, as you know, I'm with Hume... — Srap Tasmaner
So yes, I'm inclined to agree that there is a sort of fatal flaw in much modern philosophy -- the pointless and unrealistic model building like we see here -- and that it can diagnosed as a failure to understand what the foundation of reasoning really is, but I see that foundation quite differently. — Srap Tasmaner
Sure. I don't believe that what I have said implies otherwise. language games are embedded in the world. What was novel in their introduction is the idea that we do things to the world by using words.Use itself doesn't float free of the rest of the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This bit of history only partially answers the question. It remains that we might move bishops anywhere we like on the board, but to do so would be to cease playing chess, or at the least to play it differently. There is a way in which the answer to "Why do Bishops move diagonally?" is, that is just how the game is played, that its what we do. Seeking further explanation is redundant.This piece originally began life as a symbol of the elephants in the Indian army. It's original movement was 2 squares diagonally in any direction. It was a piece of only moderate power.
It was only when the game was carried to Europe that it's fortunes began to improve. The Europeans were not as familiar with the elephant as the Indians so they needed to change the piece to something that people in Europe could relate to. The church was very powerful in Europe when these changes were going on. It's influence on political life in the Middle Ages was recognized when the piece became a Bishop.
The Europeans also wanted to speed the game up as they found it laboriously slow. The Bishop was one of a number of pieces to see it's powers increase, gaining unlimited range on the diagonals.
What? I can't make anything of this, nor much of what follows. Talk of nominalists and universalists seems oddly anachronistic.if one attempts to quantify over all mammals but omits unicorns because they were not known to exist (or vice versa) then a quantitative difference of domain results in a merely artificial difference of quantifier-qua-extension. But if one attempts to quantify over all things but omits universals because they are a nominalist (cf. QVD 295) then a qualitative difference of domain results in a substantial difference of quantifier-qua-extension. — Leontiskos
I dunno OLP heads, "is" sure crops up in a lot of language games with different grammars. Almost as if there are different uses of it! — fdrake
IE, it is a problem of circularity, in that there are two objects provided we have already determined that there are two objects. — RussellA
There is only one Being, and it includes both sides of the Nature/Geist distinction — Count Timothy von Icarus
The question of which came first does not have application here. Nor is the historical development of these considerations relevant. Again, it's just what we do.
There is a way in which the answer to "Why do Bishops move diagonally?" is, that is just how the game is played, that its what we do. Seeking further explanation is redundant.
There is a way in which the answer to "Why do Bishops move diagonally?" is, that is just how the game is played, that its what we do. Seeking further explanation is redundant. — Banno
Could we change the way we use quantification in logic? Sure, why not. Indeed quantification is done slightly differently in each of the various logics. — Banno
The way quantification works changes as the way the domain works. — Banno
Talk of nominalists and universalists seems oddly anachronistic. — Banno
Whatever point you are making remains unclear. — Banno
I am seeing a bad argument against QV being made in the thread: <Quantifiers are not subject to second-order equivocation; therefore QV fails>. The problem is that this is valid but unsound, as the main premise is false. — Leontiskos
If you wish to talk of changes of domain as changes in quantification, go ahead, but that seems to me to obscure more than it reveals. — Banno
I am not sure this is so obvious. What you think about the relationship between logic (or mathematics) and the world/being itself is going to affect what you think about the value of seeking further explanation here. The assumption that any digging here is redundant seems to carry with it its own assumptions. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I actually find the role that chess plays on this forum a bit bewildering.
Is this just Wittgenstein playing out, with his assumptions that philosophy is the study of language and language is fundamentally a kind of "game"?
Funny enough, international bodies tried, and then gave up on developing a single canonical set of rules for chess, finding it too difficult. Differences in rules—variants aside—will tend to only affect high level play (e.g. how a draw is forced, etc.), but they are real differences that have not been settled. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The Laws of Chess cannot cover all possible situations that may arise during a game, nor can they regulate all administrative questions. — FIDE Handbook
9.2 The game is drawn, upon a correct claim by a player having the move, when the same position for at least the third time (not necessarily by a repetition of moves): — Ibid
Particularly, in PI Wittgenstein is equivocal about use defining meaning in all cases. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I think you can lay some blame on Wittgenstein for the concept of aiming to reduce hard problems to "pseudo problems" though. If our goal becomes not to solve problems, but rather to dismiss them, we should not be surprised if problems begin to seem intractable. It is the difference between starting with the question: "how do I understand this?" and beginning with the assumption that the real question is: "why do I not need to understand this?" or "why is it impossible to understand this?" Perhaps some problems really are problems of language or pseudo problems. However, having discovered this, it will not do to view the aim of philosophy entirely as the project of discovering how problems are not really problems. It's a bit of the old: "discovering a hammer and deciding the world is made of nails." — Count Timothy von Icarus
I think the move to viewing philosophy as a sort of "therapy" does have some strong points. There is a sense in which much classical and medieval philosophy is practically oriented, itself a type of "therapy." The ideal philosopher from these eras is a saint, even in the pagan tradition (e.g. Porphyry's Pythagoras or Philostratus' Apollonius of Tyana). They are not ruled over or disordered by desires and passions. They do what is right and just. — Count Timothy von Icarus
For, what is "pragmatism," when the Good, the object of practical reason, is itself either something that must be created according to "pragmatic" concerns, or else is illusory? — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'd be surprised if there were a substantive difference.I think we are largely on common ground then. — Count Timothy von Icarus
the sort of assertions you get when you try to squeeze a big set of phenomena into a tiny box of explanation. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The paradigmatic example is existential generalisation, f(a)⊢∃(x)f(x). The claim is that Universal Instantiation, Universal generalisation, Existential Instantiation and Existential generalisation have differing uses in different logics. And indeed, these do vary in form from one logic to another.No doubt the inferential role of “there is” or “exists” in natural language is more complex than the role of “∃” in formal logical languages, but the formal-syntactic role of “∃” provides a tidy approximation of the informal inferential role of “exists” or “there is” in English. The expression “there is” is an existential quantifier, in English, roughly because for name “a” and predicate “F”, from “a is F”, “there is an F” follows; and if a non-“a” claim follows from “a is F”, with no auxiliary assumptions made about “a”, then that same thing also follows from “there is an F”. Expressions that obey this role unrestrictedly, for all names and predicates that could be introduced into the language, express the language’s unrestricted concept of existence.
We argue that ∃ always has this role, as it invariably has the function of ranging over the domain and signaling that some, rather than none, of its members satisfy the relevant formula. Yet the quantifier-variance theorist requires ∃ to have multiple meanings. — Quantifier Variance
Those quantifiers are introduced differently, and as the paper "Quantifier Variance Dissolved" notes that provides a strong argument for a form quantifier variance without a reduction of quantifier meaning to underlying entity type it quantifies over, and without committing yourself to the claim that there's a whole bunch of equally correct logics for the purposes of ontology. — fdrake
Nothing to do with *kinds* of objects here, but to do with *how* we range over a collection of values. — Srap Tasmaner
But I am far less incline to agree that these are instances of a variation in the quantification rules themselves. — Banno
Can you set out why or how the analogy does not work? In what salient way is logic not a game of stipulation?Logic is not just a stipulative game, like chess. The analogy doesn't work. — Leontiskos
Why doesn't it matter how you quantify or which logic you use? Isn't that of the utmost import? That there are multiple logics does not imply that they are all of equal utility or applicability. Propositional logic will be of little help with modal issues, and modal logic might be overkill for propositional problems. Some art is involved in the selection of a logic to use.And as I said, if you embrace logical pluralism then it doesn't matter how you quantify or which logic you use, for everything is stipulation and no one stipulation is any better than any other. — Leontiskos
What? For example, how could a "qualitative" difference in domain in a first-order logic lead to a difference in quantification? The quantification rules are defined extensionally....within a single logic qualitative differences of domain reflect qualitatively different understandings of quantification — Leontiskos
Seems to me that such equivocation is still about the domain. I think I showed that , above. Can you show otherwise?Quantifiers are not subject to second-order equivocation; therefore QV fails — Leontiskos
(1) This shouldn't be the usual one side saying "There are more things in heaven and earth..." and the other saying "No there aren't." — Srap Tasmaner
I like the idea of each side being baffled by what the other could possibly be thinking. — Srap Tasmaner
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