Frege argues that thought2 can exist in the absence of thought1. The content of a thought can be objective, independent and accessible to any rational being.

Rodl argues that thought2 cannot exist in the absence of thought1. In opposition to Frege's anti-psychologism, this leaves no space for the psychological concept of judgement. — RussellA

Good.

When I think that the oak tree is shedding its leaves, I know that this is my thought rather than Pat's thought, for example. I am conscious that this is my thought.

To know something means consciously knowing something — RussellA

This is tricky. Using my terms, "When I think1 that 'the oak tree is shedding its leaves', I know that this is my thought1 rather than Pat's thought1, for example. I am conscious that this is my thought1."

So far, so good. But what do we do about "To know something means consciously knowing something"? Which sense(s) of "thought" is being appealed to here?

If I hear someone saying "the oak tree is shedding its leaves", as it is impossible to know what is in someone else's mind, I cannot know whether they believe in what they are saying, are lying, are certain in what they say or uncertain in what they say.

Even if they said "I am certain that the oak tree is shedding its leaves", they could be lying. — RussellA

So in this whole thread, you think everyone is either lying or uncertain of what they say? Should I also consider that everything you have said is either a lie or that you are uncertain in what you are saying? What is the point of using language to communicate then?

Are we to maintain the same level of skepticism when talking about anything? Is there anything that anyone can say that is more or less fact/opinion, or does every statement carry the same level of uncertainty as every other statement? For instance, do the statements, "Santa Claus exists." and "Barak Obama exists." hold the same level of uncertainty? If not, then what determines which one is more fact than opinion?

As an Indirect Realist, I believe that the Lord of the Rings exists in the world, but this world exist in my mind. What exist in a mind-independent world is, as Kant said, unknowable things-in-themselves.

A Direct Realist would have a different opinion to mine.

I believe that there is something in this mind-independent world that caused me to perceive a sound, caused me to have a thought, but I can never know what that something outside my mind is.

I hear a sound that I perceive as thundering, but I cannot know what in the a mind-independent world caused me to hear this sound. For convenience, I name the unknown cause "thundering". I name the unknown cause after the known effect, such that when I perceive something as thundering I imagine the cause as thundering.

I can imagine a mind-independent world, but such a world has derived from the world inside my mind. — RussellA

A world does not exist inside your mind. Ideas exist inside your mind. The world is all there is, included the ideas in your mind, and the book on the table that represent those ideas in Tolkien's mind that you can have knowledge of by reading the scribbles therein.

I don't know what Kant means by unknowable things-in-themselves. What is knowledge then if not something independent of the thing itself? You're assuming that there is more to know about something, when it could be possible that a finite number of sensory organs can access everything there is to know about other things. In fact, there are many characteristics of objects that overlap the senses. You can both see, hear and feel the direction and distance of objects relative to yourself. All three senses confirm what the other two are telling you. Having multiple senses isn't just a way of getting at all the propertied of other objects but also provide a level of fault tolerance that increases the level of certainty one has about what they are perceiving.

You can also depend on the process of causation in a deterministic universe as providing another level of certainty. Effects carry information about their causes. You can get at the cause by making multiple observations over time and finding the patterns. This allows you to predict with a higher certainty the cause of some effect you experienced. When billions of people use smart phones everyday, almost all day, and 99% of them work as intended, does that not give you a certain level of certainty that your smartphone will work today? Can we be 100% certain? No. Are we more than 0% certain? Yes, depending on the case. You seem to be maintaining that we can only every be 0% certain of anything.

For me, knowledge is justified true belief.

Truth is the relation between the mind and a mind-independent world.

As a 1st person experience, I hear a thundering sound. As a 3rd person experience, I can think about this thundering sound.

My belief is that it was caused by a motor bike and I can justify my belief.

However, as I can never know whether my belief is true, because as Kant said, in a mind-independent world are unknowable things-in-themselves. — RussellA

You're contradicting yourself again. First you define knowledge as "justified true belief". You then say that you can justify your belief, but then say you cannot know things-in-themselves. What does that even mean - things-in-themselves. What part of you is a thing-in-itself? What part of you is you and the rest an unknowable thing-in-itself? Is your brain an unknowable thing-in-itself?

If you don't mind, I'll take a stab at defining these terms. All knowledge stems from both observation and reason. Both are means of justifying our beliefs. If you only have one, then it remains a belief. Only by incorporating both do you acquire knowledge. One must continually justify one's knowledge by making new observations and integrating it with stored knowledge. Knowledge is supported (justified) both by observation and logic.

Galileo once said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." The same can be said of natural selection. I do not feel obliged to believe that natural selection that has endowed us with sense and reason has intended us to forgo their use. Are our senses and reason useful? If so, useful for what?

If I recognise a word, I imagine an image. Some images I recognise as words. In Hume's terms, there is a constant conjunction between some words and some images.

You had a previous question about meaning.

The pictogram of a plough has no meaning in itself. It must refer to something else to have meaning, such as a plough. The plough has no meaning in itself. It must must refer to something else in order to have meaning, such as the ability to grow food. Even the physical plough is a symbol for something else. — RussellA

Yes, meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. What caused these scribbles to be on your screen? You observe the effect - the scribbles on the screen. Now how is it that you can get to the thing-in-itself - other people's ideas - by seeing scribbles on your computer screen if not by taking what you know from prior experiences and using that to predict how the scribbles appeared on your screen and what they refer to? What level of certainty do you have that you are correct in understanding that the scribbles appeared on your screen through a complex causal process where some humans sitting half way around the world are sitting at their computer typing in scribbles to represent their thoughts and submitting them to the internet that your computer has access to and can then read?

Ah, ambiguity!

Hehe

Seeing words can make us think of things, and kinds of things, no other visual experience can. Things that wouldn't exist but for language. Rhyming, for example. If their weren't words, we wouldn't open a wooden barrier in a hole in the wall, behind which is a large, tusked pig, and bloody, dead body, and think:
The door
Hid the gore
Perpetrated by the boar

I'm sure there are things other than rhyming and poetry that can't wouldn't and couldn't be thought without words. Much of math and science must surely depend on them. — Patterner

My point is that we could use anything to symbolize other things. Any visual could represent some other visual, sound, feeling, taste or smell. Our ancestors used natural objects to symbolize complex ideas like status within the group, or one's role in the group. It is merely the efficiency of symbol use that has increased exponentially with writing scribbles is more efficient than hanging a bears head above entrance to your tent. Increasing the number of symbols and their relationships allows one to represent more complex ideas and probably does improve the efficiency of conceiving of new ones. Can a society without a written language evolve? The Incans did not have a written language but were able to pull of some very sophisticated feats of engineering.

The fact that we can use hand movements (sign language) or braille to symbolize things is evidence that words can take any form that we can perceive and can be used to represent almost anything.

Rhyming is simply making similar noises in succession.

I always end up posting a link to this video in discussions like this: A Man Without Words

This man is deaf and never learned a language, or even understood that there was such a thing as language) until he was an adult, yet he was able to survive within society. I doubt a bear or lion would have trouble opening a wooden barrier in a hole in a wall to find a dead pig without language.

And again, not all thoughts have the form of a statement. One can think of a question. So what is the mental content of "What sort of tree is that?" — Banno

Probably the recalling of the visual experiences of similar looking trees which then creates the doubt of which tree it is, or if it is one that you haven't seen before even though it appears similar to other trees you've observed. Only making more observations (a closer look) can you determine what is different and therefore which tree it is. If you have never seen a tree before you'd think all trees look like this one.

If you want to discover the use of "thinking", it pays to be wary that you are not stipulating it. So "A thought is a mental event"... is it? Are there other mental events that are not thoughts? If so, how do they differ? Are there mental phenomena that are not events? If not, what is the word "event" doing - would we be better off thinking of mental phenomena? Is a toothache a mental phenomenon, a mental event or a thought? All this by way of showing that the surrounds may not be the neat garden Rödl seems to be seeing. It may be a bit of a jungle. — Banno

I'd say that things like toothaches, red, body odor, sweet, etc. are sensory impressions, imposed on us without any work by our consciousness and thinking is work done with these impressions either by remembering them, categorizing them, or planning a response to them. The sensory impressions are like the data entered into the computer and the computer thinks, or processes the data to produce meaningful output.

I could prove "the moon exists", as the moon exists external to me, but I couldn't prove that "I know I think the moon exists", as my knowing that I think exists internal to me. — RussellA

Fair point. When you say, "I know I think the Moon exists." sounds like just a monologue to yourself, which cannot make objective proof or verification. Or it could be a psychological statement telling yourself, that you believe that the Moon exists.

So it seems clear that "I think p" can be proved as true or false statement. But you could just have said "p", instead of "I think p". Because "p" sounds clear enough with no strings attached to its implications.
Whereas "I think p" sounds less clearer than "p", and has some points to clarify.

When you say "I think I think p", it sounds something is wrong and deeply wrong in the grammar and its meaning, and will be rejected for its dubious clarity.

When you say, "I know p", you will be expected to prove that you know p.
"I know I think p" is a psychological statement with no objective meaning to deliver apart from to yourself.

Or are they different "I think"? — Corvus

They are different. The additional word "therefore" changes the meaning of the full sentence exactly as you just described. — EricH

Ok, sounds reasonable. Does it mean "therefore" has some logical significance in the statement and all statements?

When you say, "I think therefore the Moon exists. ", doesn't sound quite logical or convincingly meaningful or true, than "I think therefore I am.". What do you make of this?

For instance, do the statements, "Santa Claus exists." and "Barak Obama exists." hold the same level of uncertainty? — Harry Hindu

On the one hand I saw Santa Claus in person at Hamley's Regent Street store when I was very young, yet have never seen Barak Obama. On the other hand, many people have told me that Santa Claus is not real.

Do I believe what I have seen with my own eyes, or what people tell me?
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The world is all there is, included the ideas in your mind, and the book on the table that represent those ideas in Tolkien's mind that you can have knowledge of by reading the scribbles therein. — Harry Hindu

The Direct Realist believes that there is a book on the table. However, the Indirect Realist would disagree.
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I don't know what Kant means by unknowable things-in-themselves. — Harry Hindu

The problem is, how is it possible to know about something that exists in a mind-independent world when all we have is our minds.

From Wikipedia Thing-in-itself

In Kantian philosophy, the thing-in-itself (German: Ding an sich) is the status of objects as they are, independent of representation and observation.

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You can also depend on the process of causation in a deterministic universe as providing another level of certainty. — Harry Hindu

The same effect can have many different possible causes. I see a broken window, and even if I know that something caused the window to break, one particular effect can have many different causes. There is no certain means of knowing what the cause was, a stone the previous day, a rock the previous week, a seagull the previous week, a crow within the hour, a window cleaner, etc.

The cause may determine the effect, but the affect could have been determined by many different possible causes.
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You're contradicting yourself again. First you define knowledge as "justified true belief". You then say that you can justify your belief, but then say you cannot know things-in-themselves. — Harry Hindu

From SEP The analysis of knowledge

The tripartite analysis of knowledge is often abbreviated as the “JTB” analysis, for “justified true belief”.Much of the twentieth-century literature on the analysis of knowledge took the JTB analysis as its starting-point.

From Wikipedia Thing-in-itself

In Kantian philosophy, the thing-in-itself (German: Ding an sich) is the status of objects as they are, independent of representation and observation.

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All knowledge stems from both observation and reason. — Harry Hindu

A Direct Realist believes that they directly observe things in a mind-independent world. The Indirect Realist disagrees.
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Are our senses and reason useful? — Harry Hindu

That is my point. What is important are our senses and our reason. What exists the other side of our sense is open to debate.
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Now how is it that you can get to the thing-in-itself - other people's ideas - by seeing scribbles on your computer screen if not by taking what you know from prior experiences and using that to predict how the scribbles appeared on your screen and what they refer to? — Harry Hindu

How to get from what we experience in our senses to what exists the other side of our senses, and whether it is even possible, has no agreed solution.

From Wikipedia Phenomenology (philosophy)

Phenomenology is a philosophical study and movement largely associated with the early 20th century that seeks to objectively investigate the nature of subjective, conscious experience. It attempts to describe the universal features of consciousness while avoiding assumptions about the external world, aiming to describe phenomena as they appear to the subject, and to explore the meaning and significance of the lived experiences.

I don't know what Kant means by unknowable things-in-themselves. What is knowledge then if not something independent of the thing itself? You're assuming that there is more to know about something, when it could be possible that a finite number of sensory organs can access everything there is to know about other things. In fact, there are many characteristics of objects that overlap the senses. You can both see, hear and feel the direction and distance of objects relative to yourself. All three senses confirm what the other two are telling you. Having multiple senses isn't just a way of getting at all the propertied of other objects but also provide a level of fault tolerance that increases the level of certainty one has about what they are perceiving.

Indeed, whatever properties something has when it is interacting with nothing else and no parts of itself are not only epistemically inaccessible, but causally inert and can make no difference to anyone, ever. Hence, we might think that knowledge of "things-in-themselves," far from being the "gold standard," is rather worthless. Things participate in the world by interacting, as the old scholastic adage goes actio sequitur esse, "act follows on being."

Now, its obviously true that what we are affects how we interact with things. This is the ol' quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur, "everything is received in the manner of the receiver." But this is true of all interactions. Salt dissolving in water only occurs because of what both salt and water are, and just as a ball only "appears red" in the presence of a seer," salt only ever dissolves when placed in an appropriate solvent.

Direct realism need not be naive. Aristotle, for instance, combines some of the precepts of enactivism with the idea that what we experience is the interaction between our sense organs and things, as mediated through the ambient environment, and that knowledge involves universals that are not, strictly speaking "in" things. Yet he also doesn't have everything taking place in the imagination, through phantasms/representations, as many moderns would have it.

You can also depend on the process of causation in a deterministic universe as providing another level of certainty. Effects carry information about their causes. You can get at the cause by making multiple observations over time and finding the patterns. This allows you to predict with a higher certainty the cause of some effect you experienced. When billions of people use smart phones everyday, almost all day, and 99% of them work as intended, does that not give you a certain level of certainty that your smartphone will work today? Can we be 100% certain? No. Are we more than 0% certain? Yes, depending on the case. You seem to be maintaining that we can only every be 0% certain of anything.

:up:

"...every effect is the sign of its cause, the exemplification of the exemplar, and the way to the end to which it leads." St. Bonaventure - Itinerarium Mentis in Deum.

You can explain this in terms of modern supervenience theories as well. As you pile up more and more observations the set of possible P-regions (spatio-temporal regions capable of producing some interval of experience) consistent with our experiences gets smaller and smaller.

To illustrate this, suppose we have three mostly identical systems involving three identical subjects having identical experiences of seeing an apple. In one case, the apple is whole. In another case, the apple has been carefully hollowed out. In a third, the apple is fake, plastic, but it appears indiscernibly similar to the real apples. In this example, we would say all three systems have the same B-Minimal properties because they produce the same phenomenal experience. Another way of thinking about this is that the B-minimal properties associated with any given interval of experience could be said to correspond to a set of possible P-regions, different physical ensembles that give rise to the same experience. Our experiences have a direct correspondence to some of the object/environment’s properties, just not all of them.

But now consider a longer interval of experience where a person sees an apple, walks up to it, picks it up, and takes a bite of it. The B-minimal properties of a system giving rise to this experience must be quite different. It is no longer the case that the hollowed-out apple or the
plastic one will be indiscernible from the real apple in these scenarios. As we can see from this example, the subject’s interaction with the environment affects the B-minimal properties required to produce their experience. When we move to an interval where the subject bites into the apple, the B-minimal properties must now be such that they can produce not only the sight of the apple, but the feeling of weight it produces in our subject’s hand, its taste and its smell.

One way to think of this interaction might be to say that the set of possible P-regions that have the B-minimal properties required to produce our subjects' experiences has been reduced by their walking up to the apple and taking a bite of it. In the case where the subjects merely looked at the apple, we just needed something that looked indiscernibly like a given apple from a fixed angle to produce the experience. In the second scenario, we need something that looks the same from different angles, feels the same, and tastes the same.

As we interact with objects in our environment, using more of our senses, we greatly reduce the number of possible physical systems that could give rise to our experiences.xiii In turn, the one-to-one correspondence between the B-minimal properties that act as the supervenience base for our experiences and our experiences comes to apply to a narrower and narrower set of possible physical systems (set of P-regions), and we come closer to uniquely specifying the properties of the objects we interact with.

Now consider what happens when we conduct scientific experiments, using finely tuned instruments that allow us to probe the properties of objects. In such cases, there is an even greater reduction in the number of possible P-regions that are consistent with the experiences of the experimenter. Moreover, we can consider what happens when a vast number of people are involved in such experiments, leading to a very large number of such experiences. As we consider more and more experiences, there appear to be fewer and fewer ways “the world could be” and still produce the same experiences investigators are having.

Such an insight does not, of course, rule out radical skepticism. We could still suppose that such experiences might be the product of some “simulation” or an “evil demon” à la Descartes. Yet representationalists generally allow that our experiences do have something to do with the world. Indeed, their claims are often based on findings in the sciences. Rather, they claim that the relationship between our experiences and the properties of objects is too indirect and dynamic to allow for true knowledge of those things.

Whereas "I think p" sounds less clearer than "p", and has some points to clarify. — Corvus

Yes. If I said "I think the oak tree is shedding its leaves" I would sound more uncertain than if I had said "the oak tree is shedding its leaves".
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When you say "I think I think p", it sounds something is wrong and deeply wrong in grammar and its meaning, and will be rejected for its clarity. — Corvus

In ordinary language when chatting at the bus stop, I agree. But perhaps not on a philosophy forum.
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When you say, "I know p", you will be expected to prove that you know p. — Corvus

Agree
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"I know I think p" is a psychological statement with no objective meaning to deliver apart from to yourself. — Corvus

And hopefully to others on this thread about "p and "I think p""

I know my thoughts, as my thoughts are inside my mind.
I have the thought that the moon exists.
Therefore, I know my thought that the moon exists

I believe that the moon exists.
I can justify my belief that the moon exists.

A belief is true if it corresponds with what exists in a mind-independent world.
The insurmountable problem is how can the mind know about a world that is independent of the mind.
Therefore, truth about a mind-independent world is unknowable
Therefore, knowledge about a mind-independent world is impossible.

However, this is why we have axioms in logic, science and mathematics and hypotheses in general life.

Hmm. I don't know how to answer this without pulling in a lot of metaphysical commitments -- which I'd rather not do because I think the thought1/thought2 distinction is important and relevant no matter whether one thinks it's "real" or "mental," in your terminology. Sorry to lob this back to you again, but if you could say a little more about what might hinge on the choice of "real" vs. "mental," I might have a better sense of what we ought to say about that. — J

We don't have to go into this too far. The point is just to think about the manner in which Fregian propositions are being countenanced. The thought1/thought2 distinction puts us in the territory of heavy Platonism, at least prima facie. Given what Wayfarer has said I thought this sort of thing was being resisted.

My time is short this week, so I am going to try not to get too entangled here.

Yes, there is, and unless we want to go back to Kimhi's arguments, we should probably resist this. Where we stand in the discussion right now ("we" meaning all on this thread), let's go ahead and let thought1 be understood as unasserted, without force, "merely thought". We may have to change our minds at some future point. — J

Well, I can't imagine how a temporal thought-event would lack force, given that a "mere thought" (without force) is something very like a Fregian proposition (thought2). But this does get into Kimhi's question of what exactly it means to be forceless.

That may be true, but I was suggesting earlier that we don't have to understand "self-consciousness" as a new thought. — J

Well again, I have never claimed that self-consciousness is a thought. The crucial point for this thread is that self-consciousness is something. It is not nothing. And what it is is self-consciousness.

In other words, various people have said that Rodl doesn't look to be dealing with self-consciousness, and the response is always, "Oh, but self-consciousness isn't w, x, y, or z." Well, what is it? And once we have a sense of what it is, is Rodl dealing with it?

(My claim has been that self-consciousness of something we do is consciousness of our doing that thing. Thought is something we do. Therefore self-consciousness is consciousness of our act/doing of thinking. Nowhere here is the idea that self-consciousness is a thought.)

You may be right that tinkering with the targeted sentence won't produce any insight, but I think it might. I can take a shot at it if you'd rather not. — J

Feel free to give it a shot. We have, "[X] accompanies all our [Y]," where the possible values for X and Y are thought1 and thought2. I don't see how any substitution will yield a conclusion about self-consciousness. And note that Kant's I think, which is not thought1, is about self-consciousness and therefore can yield a conclusion about self-consciousness.

Good questions. I know I often blame translation for difficulties with Kant, and here again I'm tempted to say, "How would a German speaker of Kant's era understand 'my representations' or 'my thoughts'?" — J

Well, that looks like saying, "Maybe the translator mistranslated 'my'. Maybe it's not possessive after all." But this looks very ad hoc. It's logically possible that there is some sort of mistranslation or lossy translation, but until we have independent reasons to believe such a thing, it can't function as a plausible claim.

More bluntly, we shouldn't be saying, "My theory conflicts with Kant. But that's probably just a translation problem. Also, I don't speak German." Mww tried to preempt that sort of thing earlier when he consulted three different translations.

Well, that looks like saying, "Maybe the translator mistranslated 'my'. Maybe it's not possessive after all." But this looks very ad hoc. It's logically possible that there is some sort of mistranslation or lossy translation, but until we have independent reasons to believe such a thing, it can't function as a plausible claim. — Leontiskos

Just quickly on this one, heading out the door. I didn't mean it was a mistranslation of the possessive. I meant that different languages (and different eras) have different senses of what connotes "possession," what sorts of things can be mine. I think this is relevant in a case like this, where the issue of the subjectivity (the my-ness) of thought is the very question. Sorry if I confused you.

Nagel says that "we can't understand thought from the outside." — J

He says, rather, there are thoughts we can't understand 'from the outside'. His essay Evolutionary Naturalism and Fear of Religion provides an example, speaking of the attempt to justify reason in terms of evolutionary adaptation:

The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. — Thomas Nagel

But there are times when you can 'step outside thought'. If I ask of you, 'why do you think that?' in respect of <p>, you will give reasons. But

If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions. — Thomas Nagel

I think this very close to the thrust of Rödl's arguments, which I presume explains Rödl's focus on Nagel.

//

if you could say a little more about what might hinge on the choice of "real" vs. "mental," I might have a better sense of what we ought to say about that. — J

We're trying to understand the ontological status of intelligible truths: are they merely constructs of human cognition, or do they have an independent, universal existence that reason can apprehend?

Something that has occurred to me, is the sense in which the substance of 'Fregean propositions' (e.g. elementary arithmetical truths) are, on the one hand, independent of your or my mind, but at the same time, facts that can only be grasped by reason. I think this is an extremely salient point in all these discussions. So they are 'mind-independent' in one sense, not being dependent on the individual mind, but not in another, as they can only be grasped by a mind.

It seems to me that Frege (great a philosopher as he was) overlooks this fact. When he says that arithmetical proofs possess the same kind of mind-independent reality as pencils or stars he is overlooking this fundamental metaphysical and epistemological point.

Recall the passage I provided about Augustine and intelligible objects in the discussion on Platonic Realism:

Intelligible objects must be independent of particular minds because they are common to all who think. In coming to grasp them, an individual mind does not alter them in any way, it cannot convert them into its exclusive possessions or transform them into parts of itself. Moreover, the mind discovers them rather than forming or constructing them, and its grasp of them can be more or less adequate. Augustine concludes from these observations that intelligible objects must exist independently of individual human minds. — Cambridge Companion to Augustine

So, they're independent of particular minds, but they're not empirical objects. At the end of the quoted section, we read:

By focusing on objects perceptible by the mind alone and by observing their nature, in particular their eternity and immutability, Augustine came to see that certain things that clearly exist, namely, the objects of the intelligible realm, cannot be corporeal. When he cries out in the midst of his vision of the divine nature, “Is truth nothing just because it is not diffused through space, either finite or infinite?” (FVP 13–14), he is acknowledging that it is the discovery of intelligible truth that first frees him to comprehend incorporeal reality.

'Certain things that clearly exist'. But whether these are, indeed, 'existing things' would be contested by almost any modern philosopher, and certainly by empiricism, for whom the 'epistemological buck' stops with what is materially existent, and what can be inferred on the basis of mathematical abstractions from such existents (as discussed in the Platonic realism thread.)

To tie this back to Rödl - the act of judgment itself (I think that <p>) presupposes the intelligibility of its object. After all, if the object were not intelligible, then you couldn't say anything about it - I think that <?> is meaningless! This suggests that intelligibility is not imposed by the act of judgment but is a prior condition of the object that judgment recognizes and articulates. (And note the link again to Kant's transcendental arguments.)

Nagel says that "we can't understand thought from the outside."
— J

He says, rather, there are thoughts we can't understand 'from the outside' — Wayfarer

My citation was actually a direct quote from The Last Word, an earlier work than the "Evolutionary Naturalism" essay, I'm pretty sure. I suspect that when Nagel wrote "thought" in that earlier citation, he had in mind something more like "reason" or "justification." So his subsequent descriptions, which you quote, are a little more precise. In any event, yes, this is the territory Rodl wants us to consider and, to a significant degree, amend.

We're trying to understand the ontological status of intelligible truths: are they merely constructs of human cognition, or do they have an independent, universal existence that reason can apprehend? — Wayfarer

I like your whole discussion of this -- very clear and insightful. I'm not entirely sure that your first alternative, above, is what @Leontiskos had in mind when he wrote:

An example of a mental distinction would be a model where there is only one (temporal) thought under two different guises; thought1 and thought2 can be distinguished mentally but these notions do not correspond to separate realities. — Leontiskos

I suppose it depends on what more you want to say about the nature of the "independent, universal existence." For instance, could this existence inhere in what L calls "one (temporal) thought under two different guises"? Is a guise close enough to an existence? Or do you want to hold out for "separate realities"? Talk at this level of abstraction can plunge us into huge terminological problems, as you know.

'Evolutionary Naturalism' is actually a chapter in The Last Word. I've read that particular chapter a number of times but I need to re-visit the rest of the book.

Talk at this level of abstraction can plunge us into huge terminological problems, as you know. — J

It's all to do with universals. There's another good discussion of them in Russell's Problems of Philosophy: The World of Universals. For the pre-scientific revolution worldview, the problem didn't present itself, because of the correspondence between ideas, universals, and the Divine intelligence. But, back to Rödl - I'm working towards Chapter 4, The Science without Contrary. Let's stick to Rödl for now (my digression, I know.)

It is at the nub of the argument. — Wayfarer

So I asked what a "Fregian proposition" is and received in reply explanations about what a thought is.

Now I've also been told that for Frege the sense of an expression is the thought it expresses. And that for Frege a proposition denoted a truth value. And that Russell showed something of how Frege was mistaken in On Denoting - a far more influential paper, set aside only with the advent of possible world semantics. Russell's paper is the one that includes the following gem:

(2) By the law of excluded middle, either "A is B" or "A is not B" must be true. Hence either "the present King of France is bald" or "the present King of France is not bald" must be true. Yet if we enumerated the things that are bald, and then the things that are not bald, we should not find the present King of France in either list. Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig.

That's besides the point of this thread, of course. I'm left with the impression that Rödl, and perhaps others, are going to an extreme in order not to agree that a name has a referent, and that the things we refer to can be grouped - on order, that is, to avoid a bit of formal logic.

Rödl, especially chapter 9, seems to have noticed the intentionality involved in referring to that with the name "oak tree", and to have mistaken it for making a judgement. So he offers:

The concept of what is, which signifies the range of jurisdiction of the laws of logic, is the concept of the object of judgment. And the concept of the object of judgment is none other than the concept of judgment, which is self-consciousness. The articulation of the concept of what is, in laws that are comprehended to govern what is universally, is the articulation of the self-­ consciousness of judgment. — p147

(We are it seems to return to the obtuse philosophical style that was rejected by Frege, Russell, Moore and a few others. A retrograde step) Extensional logic, and hence rational discourse, is indeed grounded in "picking out" individuals. In so far as that is Rödel's argument, he has my agreement.

When Pat looks out the window and wonders if that tree is an oak or an elm, they are wondering about that tree. That it is a tree is not peculiar nor private to Pat alone, but something on which we all might agree. In this way it is not an "I think" that accompanies Pat's wondering, but a "we think". Pat is not making an individual judgement so much as participating in a group activity. Whether the tree out the window is to be placed with the oaks or the elms is not just an arbitrary judgement to be made by Pat, but a step in a broader activity in which others participate.

In answer to the OP, "p" and "I think that p" at the very least can be distinguished on these grounds.

So I asked what a "Fregian proposition" is and received in reply explanations about what a thought is. — Banno

Neither coincidental nor misplaced. The seminal article of Frege's is called 'The Thought: A Logical Investigation' which explicitly identifies propositions and thoughts.

We are it seems to return to the obtuse philosophical style that was rejected by Frege, Russell, Moore and a few others. A retrograde step — Banno

But that begs a question. As Rödl is claiming to represent absolute idealism, and a re-statement of Hegelian logic, that is not surprising, but whether it is 'retrograde' depends on whether we agree that the 'linguistic turn' against idealism was an improvement in the first place. Which is one of the major points at issue.

Whether the tree out the window is to be placed with the oaks or the elms is not just an arbitrary judgement to be made by Pat, but a step in a broader activity in which others participate. — Banno

Whereas Kant seems to imply that an individual’s mind controls thought, Hegel argues that a collective component to knowledge also exists. In fact, according to Hegel, tension always exists between an individual’s unique knowledge of things and the need for universal concepts—two movements that represent the first and second of the three so-called modes of consciousness. The first mode of consciousness—meaning, or "sense certainty"—is the mind’s initial attempt to grasp the nature of a thing. This primary impulse runs up against the requirement that concepts have a "universal" quality, which means that different people must also be able to comprehend these concepts. This requirement leads to the second mode of consciousness, perception. With perception, consciousness, in its search for certainty, appeals to categories of thought worked out between individuals through some kind of communicative process at the level of common language. Expressed more simply, the ideas we have of the world around us are shaped by the language we speak, so that the names and meanings that other people have worked out before us (throughout the history of language) shape our perceptions. — Lecture Notes, Hegel

The seminal article of Frege's is called 'The Thought: A Logical Investigation' which explicitly identifies propositions and thoughts. — Wayfarer

So the present topic is Hegel catching up with the logic of the turn of the last century. Fine.

I'm working towards Chapter 4, The Science without Contrary — Wayfarer

I'm up to 5.6, Nagel's Dream. Much more familiar territory for me.

let thought1 be understood as unasserted, without force, "merely thought". — J

Do I have to read much (books? paragraphs? posts?) to learn what this means?

My point is that we could use anything to symbolize other things. Any visual could represent some other visual, sound, feeling, taste or smell. Our ancestors used natural objects to symbolize complex ideas like status within the group, or one's role in the group. It is merely the efficiency of symbol use that has increased exponentially with writing scribbles is more efficient than hanging a bears head above entrance to your tent. Increasing the number of symbols and their relationships allows one to represent more complex ideas and probably does improve the efficiency of conceiving of new ones. — Harry Hindu

It seems that you start off disagreeing with me, and end up agreeing. Certainly, our ancestors used things other than words to symbolize other things. We still do. But words and language is a huge step above anything else when it comes to communicating specifics, and let's us think about things I doubt think we could think about without it.

Can a society without a written language evolve? The Incans did not have a written language but were able to pull of some very sophisticated feats of engineering. — Harry Hindu

I guess that depends on what we mean by "evolve". if we mean ethically or artistically, I don't see why not.

Musically would take longer, unless you have musical notation but not written language. Which I guess is possible, but no culture in human history is known to have done so. A society's literature would also take much longer to evolved. I mean things like story-telling and poetry, which don't have to be written down. Anyone listening to the Aboriginal "Dreamtime" stories in Australia hundreds of years ago might have thought it would be good to create a huge, complex story. But very difficult to do that, as opposed to Shakespeare getting the idea. So the Aboriginies concentrated on stories that were important to their culture.

Technologically? No. The ability to store, and easily access, information, rather than being limited to what was able to be memorized, is a gigantic advantage. If they never started using written language, Incans were not going to the moon.

The fact that we can use hand movements (sign language) or braille to symbolize things is evidence that words can take any form that we can perceive and can be used to represent almost anything. — Harry Hindu

I agree. But if you don't find a way to store sign language outside of memory, like in writing, you won't get as far in some ways.

Rhyming is simply making similar noises in succession. — Harry Hindu

It's making similar sounding words in succession.

I always end up posting a link to this video in discussions like this: A Man Without Words — Harry Hindu

Watching it now. Sounds fascinating!

In this way it is not an "I think" that accompanies Pat's wondering, but a "we think". Pat is not making an individual judgement so much as participating in a group activity. — Banno

I wish Rodl had devoted more consideration to this. Or perhaps he does, as I've not finished the book yet. Certainly such a "group activity" could be equally constitutive of thought as an "I think" -- doesn't Cassirer talk about this somewhere in Symbolic Forms? It's been years . . .

let thought1 be understood as unasserted, without force, "merely thought".
— J
Do I have to read much (books? paragraphs? posts?) to learn what this means? — Patterner

:grin: Well, you don't have to. . . . As a short cut, forget about "thought1" -- this is just me trying to specify some terminology -- and focus on the idea of a thought as being merely entertained qua thought, as something to ponder or question. Are you familiar with the force/content distinction? The OP of "A challenge to Frege on Assertion" gives an overview. Take a look and then I'm happy to try to clarify.

I’ve been rereading Davidson’s “On Saying That” and noticed an interesting parallel with our “I think p” question.

The essay is about indirect discourse and quotation. It discusses the logical structure of a sentence such as “Mary says x.” One of the issues is that, if we’re meant to be quoting Mary here, you can’t just substitute logical equivalents and have it come out right.

Mary says, “The evening star is out tonight.”
Mary says, “Venus is out tonight.”

“The evening star” and “Venus” have the same extension but different meanings. So it’s quite possible that Mary said the 1st sentence but did not mean the 2nd (if she didn’t happen to know that the evening star was Venus).

What I realized was: This structure parallels “I think p” using “says” as the verb instead of “thinks”.

(I’ve switched to “I” rather than “Mary” to remind us that this is not an issue that depends on the noun or pronoun.)

A. I think1: “A wolf is a carnivore.” (think1 = have this thought at a particular moment)

This pretty clearly can’t be translated to:

B. I think1: “Canis lupus is a carnivore.”

Not only might I not know that a wolf is Canis lupus, but more importantly that was not actually what I thought, according to statement A. Statement A uses think1 to provide a quotation of my thought.

C. I think2 a wolf is a carnivore (think2 = entertain or propose this propositional content)

The question is, is this translation OK?:

D. I think2 Canis lupus is a carnivore.

Has the meaning changed? Or am I more likely to respond, “No, it’s the same thought. I meant the same thing in both cases.”

Thanks.

What I realized was: This structure parallels “I think p” using “says” as the verb instead of “thinks”. — J

Yep. The use of "says" rather than "thinks" removes a large part of the ambiguity that plagues this thread. So many unkempt posts.

Your think1 and think2 seem to parallel the difference between an utterance and a proposition.
A. I said "A wolf is a carnivore."
B. I said "Canis lupus is a carnivore."
C. A wolf is a carnivore.
D. Canis lupus is a carnivore.

A and B are opaque (non extensional). If what you said was "A wolf is a carnivore" then you did not say "Canis lupus is a carnivore." C and D are transparent (extensional). If a wolf is a carnivore then Canis lupus is a carnivore.

And keep in mind here that extensionality is just being able to substitute without changing truth value.

So making an utterance is different to making a proposition in that the former is not extensional, while the latter is. Is that what you have in mind on your think1 and think2? Becasue if so, then think1 is different to think2, and it seems Pat is correct.

So the present topic is Hegel catching up with the logic of the turn of the last century. Fine. — Banno

Yes I know that anything that existed before 10 minutes ago is now obsolete.

Just pointing out that these issues were addressed at the time, and since. Yes, in many ways Rödl is anachronistic. He appears to be rehashing debates about reference.

Yes, in many ways Rödl is anachronistic. — Banno

I think there's a larger issue. I'm not alone in seeing at least some elements of German idealism to be essential to larger questions of philosophy, and its rejection by the 'plain language' analytical philosophers (famously initiated by Moore and Russell) as basically sidestepping or deprecating many of those important questions. Everything is reduced to interminable arguments about terminology or valid propositions or what can be validly stated. The same can't be said of Continental philosophy
- Nagel starts another of his essays 'Analytic philosophy as a historical movement has not done much to provide an alternative to the consolations of religion. This is sometimes made a cause for reproach, and it has led to unfavorable comparisons with the continental tradition of the twentieth century, which did not shirk that task. I believe this is one of the reasons why continental philosophy has been better received by the general public: it is at least trying to provide nourishment for the soul, the job by which philosophy is supposed to earn its keep.' (Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament.)

But then, I do understand that any mention of 'nourishment for the soul' will be tarred with the same brush as disdain for anything deemed religious. There's a kind of subterranean barrier which declares what is and is not deemed 'acceptable philosophical discourse' according to that criterion. (I notice John Vervaeke, the philosophically-informed cognitive scientist that I'm listening to, manages to navigate these issues without being so constrained. Anyway, another digression. I'll try and get back to the actual text.....)

Does it mean "therefore" has some logical significance in the statement and all statements? — Corvus

There are likely an infinite number of sentences (or certainly a very large number) that could contain the word "therefore", so I can't comment on how it would work in all sentences. But I would agree that typically the word "therefore" is used to indicate that there is a linkage between the other components of the sentence (or perhaps a previous sentence). I googled synonyms for "therefore" - "accordingly", "hence", "thus" "consequently" & "ergo" all seem to have similar usages (with some subtleties in emphasis and style.)

When you say, "I think therefore the Moon exists. ", doesn't sound quite logical or convincingly meaningful or true, than "I think therefore I am.". What do you make of this? — Corvus

We can construct an infinite number of sentences (or certainly a very large number) that are grammatically correct/sound but which have no semantic meaning. "The capital of France is Paris therefore zebras have purple hexagons for camouflage". "Quadruplicity drinks procrastination" "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" etc