kimchi — Leontiskos

Heh. I taught my phone "Kimhi" but it ignored me this time.

Heh. I taught my phone "Kimhi" but it ignored me this time. — Srap Tasmaner

@J might not object. "It doesn't taste good, but it is healthy!" :grin:

(A) "Dogs are nice"

and on the other

(B) "For all x, if x is a dog, then it is nice."

We just need a neutral word for the relation between (A) and (B), and, if you start with (A) and recast it as (B), we need a neutral word to describe what you're doing there. Maybe you believe you are "revealing (A)'s logical form," and maybe you don't. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, I don't think this Fregian move can plausibly present itself as something other than a schematization, so I agree with you in cases such as this one. But this is probably the weakest point of Frege's system. It's harder to tell if distinguishing force from content is artifice.

Again, for me it begins with the puzzle of the Meno. I want to say that if logic is artifice then knowledge is artificial. And of course some of what we involve ourselves in when we do logic is artifice, but that doesn't mean that there is nothing more than that involved.

Or we could put it this way: "Even if Frege's is not perfectly correct, it correctly points us in the direction of a real rational faculty that humans possess." To what extent can we speak about and explicate that faculty? And form and strengthen it? It's not altogether clear, but that it exists seems obvious.

Again, for me it begins with the puzzle of the Meno. I want to say that if logic is artifice then knowledge is artificial. And of course some of what we involve ourselves in when we do logic is artifice, but that doesn't mean that there is nothing more than that involved. — Leontiskos

This is good. I'll go look at the Meno (I think there's at least one thread on it here somewhere), and if I have anything to say, we can make a fresh start with that.

- Okay, and to be clear, Socrates proposes "recollection" and a form of reincarnation to respond to the dilemma. Aristotle proposes logic: that we can learn things that we did not know before, and that there is a manner in which this is done. I'm obviously thinking about Aristotle's answer rather than Socrates'. :smile:

Sure, sure. I, ahem, recollect the Meno and I know it weirds modern readers out. We'll do better than that. Unless I have nothing to say, then it's on you.

You know it's funny, but in what you might consider the early days of cognitive psychology, before there was much neuroscience, there was an enormous amount of research specifically on how children learn geometry. It was a core topic.

- That's pretty interesting. Plato would surely approve!

I'm not too sure what you want me to take from the stuff you quote. I went into some detail about extensionality - the topic of your quotes - earlier in this thread. It's central to Frege's account and so to this thread. So far as my previous posts on this page, I was making the point that we can talk about our utterances with greater lucidity that about our thoughts, simply because our utterances are public.

I agree with your two points. And yes, logic is useful even if it is not the foundation of our language. There are multiple logics, and we chose a logic to use in order to set out a coherent account.

It seems to me that we agree in rejecting logical monism.

I read musical notation (sheet music) only very slowly, but quickly master tabs. I choose the latter, rejecting musical monism for reasons of utility. I recognise that I would need to move to notation if if I moved to keys rather than strings. Much the same as for choices between predicate, propositional, free, or any of the various other logics. Depends what you are doing.

I'm not interested in a precise stipualtive definition. Such a thing is anathema to much of analytic philosophy, and certainly against the spirit of Philosophical Investigations. It's worth noting that those who are critical of analytic approaches usually begin by misunderstanding them. Again, I was making the point that we can talk about our utterances with greater lucidity that about our thoughts, simply because our utterances are public.

Yes, a convenient ambiguity. In the Begriffsschrift "⊢" is an explicit judgement of what follows is known. In the Grundgesetze this has changes significantly; ⊢ to something like "The following names the true". This is recounted in the SEP article on Frege's Logic. Subsequently truth was substantially replaced by satisfaction.

From what I understand, in the Begriffsschrift "⊢" is an explicit judgement; what follows is known, while — would prefix "a mere complex of ideas", un-affirmed (SEP). In the Grundgesetze this has changes significantly; ⊢ now says something like "The following names the true" (SEP). That's much closer to it's modern use, where ⊢ρ is "ρ is a theorem" and ψ⊢ρ says "ρ is derivable from ψ". Notice that in these more recent uses, truth is not mentioned. That's important. — Banno

One of the problems here is that focusing on Frege may give the false impression that his account remains paradigmatic for modern logic. It isn't.

So far as my previous posts on this page, I was making the point that we can talk about our utterances with greater lucidity that about our thoughts, simply because our utterances are public. — Banno

That may be true, but Frege was interested in thoughts. I think comparing and contrasting him to Wittgenstein would be a cool way to examine that.

One of the problems here is that focusing on Frege may give the false impression that his account remains paradigmatic for modern logic. It isn't. — Banno

That's fine. Frege remains fascinating. If I found a good article comparing and contrasting Frege and Witt on the issue of the world (...the world is all that is the case) would you be interested?

You'd have to add the problem of which Wittgenstein, and not just Tractatus vs Investigations, but the differing accounts of each. His early belief in a crystalline perfect language was pretty much in line with Frege, I supose. But that is rejected in the later, much messier account of meaning in terms of use.

I suspect that the difference of opinion between @Leontiskos and I is that he thinks of logic as an account of how we either do, or perhaps how we ought, to think. In contrast I don't see how such a view survives the multiplicity of divergent logics we now have available, and rather treat logic as a choice, a set of tools we can apply depending on what we are up to.

So Srap offered

(A) "Dogs are nice"
and on the other
(B) "For all x, if x is a dog, then it is nice." — Srap Tasmaner

But earlier Leontiskos offered an example that would have come out as

(C) There are things that are both dogs and nice

What this shows is how logic can be used to clarify the somewhat ambiguous English of "Dogs are nice" by making explicit the difference between a universal and existential quantification. Of course, we could have done the same thing in English by asking "Do you mean that all dogs are nice or that some dogs are nice?".

Not one logic, but many.

I suspect that the difference of opinion between Leontiskos and I is that he thinks of logic as an account of how we either do, or perhaps how we ought, to think. — Banno

With that guy, I'll note that

at time 1, he's opposed to x, while being as insulting as possible
at time 2, he's in favor of x, while being as insulting as possible.

There's no explanation for why he changed his mind. Something's up with dude.

Thinking and Being is almost impossible for me to put down and pick up while remembering what it was talking about. That's made me give up trying to make an exegesis of it, or even trying to come to an understanding of it I would believe accurate.

There are a few things I want to take away from my limited time reading the book (half of it over 3 sessions). The first is the syncategorematic/categormatic distinction. Syncategorematic expressions cannot be part of predicative judgements, categormatic expressions can be. An example of the former would be "Sally thinks ...", with an unevaluated placeholder. An example of the latter is "The cat sat upon the mat". The distinction there isn't between intensional and extensional understandings of expressions, either, it's to do with whether a given concept can be considerable as part of a predicative judgement tout court.

The idea of part of a judgement in the book is also non-truth functional. If someone thinks that P, the assertoric force associated with thinking that P is conceived of as part of thinking that P - and the force is not truth functional. In effect, one's thinking itself takes the form "thinking ("judgement-stroke ( that P )")", rather than "thinking ("that P")". I have used the quotes to denote something like "entity boundaries" (scarequotes, my term) in the state of consciousness that composes a judgement, and brackets to disambiguate parts which would correspond to propositions/declarative sentences.

Something particularly important for Kimhi is unity without dualities. To a first approximation, this is a unity of the propositional form in the judgement with the state of being which produces the judgement. It would thus be, respectively

A) neither psychological nor logical - in virtue of that unity being a composite of judgements of what is and of the mental juxtaposition of what is judged to be.
B) neither normative nor descriptive - in virtue of that unity consisting of a series of judgements of what is that may be true or false and thus not normative. Then, there are regularities of those judgements which enable them to express what is true or false in mental and practical ways. The latter in turn compels people to learn to judge in that manner, so that their expressions may be true or false.
C) neither mental nor abstract - in virtue of that the judgements are patterns of thought and enabling norms of chains of association, they are pragmatised patterns of thought.

In terms of the thread title, Kimhi definitely provides 'a challenge to Frege on assertion", but I think the thrust of the book is more properly thought of as providing a challenge to everything in the heritage of linguistic philosophy after Frege. And the nature of that challenge is to limit the relevance of extensional understandings of terms in judgements, undermine the distinction between psychologicism and logicism as responding to false problems, and try to bring the mental - in the sense of understanding the structure of concepts - back into the analysis of logical form.

So I'm going to imagine that Kimhi invites his readers to imagine what a post-Frege linguistically oriented philosophy can look like if it centred the understanding of concepts that coordinate expressions and situated expressions alongside the states which produce them.

I'm not convinced that Kimhi's approach to challenge that philosophical heritage succeeds or even produces anything particularly fecund for further explication on his terms, but I do think it raises interesting problems and (what seem to me to be) neglected associations.

I just don't know wtf to do with it honestly. After reading it I'm left wondering how I could use it to help me think about others' thoughts and expressions, and I see dubious relevance of it to my life. Other than reminding me that concepts matter, which is something I tend to believe anyway.

Really appreciate your thoughts here. What you say about unity vs. duality is, I think, the best shot yet at trying to explicate Kimhi on that topic. And it reveals the head-scratching problems as well.

If someone thinks that P, the assertoric force associated with thinking that P is conceived of as part of thinking that P - and the force is not truth functional — fdrake

This is also very illuminating, and I think correct about Kimhi. Is it true? I'm still not sure.

I too wonder if T&B is going to turn out to be a kind of unicorn, grazing in its own field, inviting awe and derision but perhaps not contributing much to philosophical discussion. And yet . . . look at us here, going on for pages and pages about it! Maybe a path for further engagement would be to take a step back from the specifically logical issues that Kimhi raises, and see what the book helps us to understand about the perennial problem of mind's special place in the world, or what Kimhi calls "the uniqueness of thinking." We shouldn't neglect that a good bit of Kimhi's project is highly "Continental," in that he's convinced that analytic dualities about thinking and being are just wrong, and misunderstand subjectivity completely.

Perhaps this is why philosophy of language should not be examined in a vacuum. For example, I realized I had a reply in another thread that perhaps has relevance here:

It is because the primary language was acquired in that "critical period" that we both can understand meaning of words conveyed. From there, you can ask "whence meaning from language", and one can play around with concepts like "language acquisition modules" and "language meaning comes from use", but that is contesting the "how", not the very fact that communication, is often, by and large, pretty successful and typical. Yes, language can breakdown, but it more often than not, it doesn't.

That is to say, all these questions can revolve around how it is humans have this inter-subjective understanding of meaning, and thereby how "Truth" is judged in regards to "state of affairs" (of the world - metaphysical), versus our epistemological underpinnings (a species that conceptually and linguistically communicates and invokes/evokes "meaning" in a psychological sense). But all of this is getting obscured by this talk of Frege.. As if, to make shoe-horn it.. That's just my sense.

If you read the SEP article on states of affairs, it talks about how they have the form of thoughts. In other words, we don't think of the world as disconnected objects, we think of it as states, which implies the verb "to be.". The way I've been putting it is that we imagine the world can talk.

Remember in the Tractatus, Witt says the world is all that is the case. He's expressing this same idea, but he's going to move toward saying logic is not in our field of view when we look at the world. So if one got the notion that since (phenomenologically) the world talks to us in complete thoughts, that logic is the structure of the world (this is basically Stoicism), then Witt says your language here has gone on holiday. You're spouting nonsense. Logic is not informative about anything.

That's one way to think of it anyway.

If you read the SEP article on states of affairs, it talks about how they have the form of thoughts. In other words, we don't think of the world as disconnected objects, we think of it as states, which implies the verb "to be.". The way I've been putting it is that we imagine the world can talk.

Remember in the Tractatus, Witt says the world is all that is the case. He's expressing this same idea, but he's going to move toward saying logic is not in our field of view when we look at the world. So if one got the notion that since (phenomenologically) the world talks to us in complete thoughts, that logic is the structure of the world (this is basically Stoicism), then Witt says your language here has gone on holiday. You're spouting nonsense. Logic is not informative about anything.

That's one way to think of it anyway. — frank

@fdrake

I think these questions revolve around the difference between meaning versus the "states of affairs". Once you understand that connection, you are getting closer to most of the issues at hand that revolve around correspondence.

Humans are an inter-subjective species. We by-and-large can successfully communicate meaning, and have an understanding. This is a type of consciousness- one that can convey meaning of the world. "True propositions" (reflections of actual states of affairs going on in the world), is more a question of how we cache out "Truth". Meaning, however, is largely inbuilt. Meaning itself, "The grass is green", is something that comes naturally to humans.. "It is true that the grass is green", is more of an extra layer which we learn, whereby truth is assumed to be an extra layer of "error-checking" (i.e. repeated observation, experimentation).

Maybe, but Frege denied that correspondence is a definition of truth.

Maybe, but Frege denied that correspondence is a definition of truth. — frank

Fine, can you articulate his idea of truth without reference to more obscure ideas that obfuscate it? Just speak plainly.. In a couple sentences, what is Frege's idea of Truth?

I have a sense (no pun intended), that what is going on here is something along the lines of the truth of the meaning of a proposition (that we can discern propositional meanings), and the TRUTH of the world (that those propositions accurately portray states of affairs of the world). But not sure.

Just speak plainly.. In a couple sentences, what is Frege's idea of Truth? — schopenhauer1

He thought that truth can't be defined. Definition implies breaking something down into smaller pieces (a zebra is a horse with stripes, for instance.). Truth can't be broken down any further. It can't be taught. You just know what it is.

that those propositions accurately portray states of affairs of the world) — schopenhauer1

Or that propositions are states of affairs.

He thought that truth can't be defined. Definition implies breaking something down into smaller pieces (a zebra is a horse with stripes, for instance.). Truth can't be broken down any further. It can't be taught. You just know what it is. — frank

I figured the answer would look something like this. What is the "know" here though? Meaning of words (denotation), meaning of statements (declarative statements- the cat is on the mat) or states of affairs (what is the case going on in the world)?

and see what the book helps us to understand about the perennial problem of mind's special place in the world, or what Kimhi calls "the uniqueness of thinking." — J

This is just spitballing: I didn't see much new in it? A deformation of Kant? New schema of thought and content? Concretising the schematism into expression rather than making it transcendentally prior? The only touchstones I saw for his central theme of unity were Kant and Parmenides. I have no idea about the connection between that unity and oneness.

Troll summary in a nutshell: Is the like like the like that likens the unlike with the like in the like and the unlike alike?

In this case "know" means to understand what's being asserted by the use of the word. No word means anything until it's used, as opposed to mentioned.

No word means anything until it's used, as opposed to mentioned. — frank

That itself is a (possibly not true) assertion.

In this case "know" means to understand what's being asserted by the use of the word. No word means anything until it's used, as opposed to mentioned. — frank

Truth can't be broken down any further. It can't be taught. You just know [understand what's being asserted by the use of the word] it is. — frank

This doesn't make sense to me. Does he mean that E=MC2 is somehow intuitive to us? Or that "that particular grass is green", is true? Or that "The grass is green" is intuitive? Because I would think only the last instance makes sense.. And then I was correct, this is just a difference in how "truth" is being used. "Truth" for Frege becomes simply about the ability to parse meaning of statements (The grass is green), rather than corresponding to the world, (It is true that grass is green).

Truth" for Frege becomes simply about the ability to parse meaning of statements (The grass is green), rather than corresponding to the world, (It is true that grass is green). — schopenhauer1

I think so.

Troll summary in a nutshell: Is the like like the like that likens the unlike with the like in the like and the unlike alike? — fdrake

I guess I should "like" your post. :wink:

Concretising the schematism into expression rather than making it transcendentally prior? — fdrake

That may be close to it, if by "expression" we include the act of thinking. The new part is Kimhi's confident assertion (sorry!) that what he calls the syllogisms of thinking and being cannot be connected in predicate logic. Frege might reply, But that's a good thing! whereas Kimhi sees it as a bug, not a feature.

Oversimplified, of course, but I'm trying not to dive back in!

I think so. — frank

Can't I just say that he was confusing the two forms of truth? Actually, there might be three things being confused..

1) The ability to parse the meaning of words (cat, on, mat) - a cognitive ability, related with our species' ability to use language, often associated with various brain regions, studied extensively by cognitive scientists, linguists, anthropologists, biologists, and the like..

2) The ability to use the words to make meaningful statements (the cat is on the mat)- also a cognitive ability to, related with our species' ability to use language, often associated with various brain regions, studied extensively by cognitive scientists, linguists, anthropologists, biologists, and the like..

3) The ability to use statements to make statements about states of affairs of the world- this is a culturally learned notion whereby we are taught that observation and experimentation might lead to a corresponding "fact" of the world (It is true that the cat is on the mat). It is true that the cat is on the mat, is considered "true" in a "factual way", because of repeated observations or experimentations. The cognitive ability to understand word meaning, and meaningful statements (1 and 2) are assumed.

Glancing at SEP, what I see is "States of affairs are similar to thoughts. Thoughts are true or false; states of affairs obtain or not." That's a little different. So yes, similar, but by bringing in a verb like "obtain" we are trying to move away from talk about language (such as truth values), and into the world independent of thought. It's not supposed to matter how we "think of the world." I don't think Witt meant "all that is the case phenomenologically" or "for humans" or some such, do you? Being "the case" doesn't depend on us.

Glancing at SEP, what I see is "States of affairs are similar to thoughts. Thoughts are true or false; states of affairs obtain or not." That's a little different. So yes, similar, but by bringing in a verb like "obtain" we are trying to move away from talk about language (such as truth values), and into the world independent of thought — J

Right. States of affairs are truth makers. Just using the word "state" implies being, to be. What is the state of affairs? It's that the cat is on the mat. States of affairs have the same form as thoughts. Maybe we can't move away from language. Maybe there's no way to do that.

I'm not really sure how important metaphysics was to Frege. His ideological descendants, like in philosophy of math, don't seem to really care much about the political fallout associated with being platonic. Being platonic just fits what they see as math. They leave metaphysics on the shelf.

Witt says that all such worries about how thought is related to cosmology amount to nonsense. If you're worried about metaphysics, you're trying to do something with language that it's not capable of. But the attraction of going back down the ladder and getting all worked up over metaphysics is always there. Who can resist?

This may it not have any bearing on the OP. :grin:

Witt says that all such worries about how thought is related to cosmology amount to nonsense. If you're worried about metaphysics, you're trying to do something with language that it's not capable of. But the attraction of going back down the ladder and getting all worked up over metaphysics is always there. Who can resist? — frank

The problem with that sentiment is when you are doing a sort of "origin story" of "whence language". In a way, the species' evolutionary history and intertwinement with language DOES get metaphysical- pace academics and a host of theories revolving around "semiotics" or "information theory" or simply the "metaphysics of biology" or "what it means to be a human".

Oversimplified, of course, but I'm trying not to dive back in! — J

Wise.