If arguments from undetermination show there is no "fact of the matter" about something, how does this not also apply to the inverse square law, the theory of evolution, that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, that anyone is truly "in love" with anyone else, or the existence consciousness and qualia?

If only reference is uniquely ruled out by undetermination, why? Why not social rule following? But if rule following is undetermined for men, then surely it is for any "law-like or mathematical regularities" in nature. Historical anti-realists use this same sort of argument, "no set of sources and artifacts uniquely specifies that an event occured, there are no facts of the matter." The reliability of induction itself suffers from undetermination, while consciousness, qualia, love, pain, etc. all are going to fail to be uniquely specified by stimuli given the radical constraints on what is allowed to constitute "empirical" evidence.

Either the conclusion can somehow be quarantined to reference, or it implies an extremely radical sort of skepticism. Yet if you epistemic criteria imply radical skepticism, then that's the obvious place to look for your problem. Whereas, if the conclusion is only saved by radically redefining what is meant by "fact" and "truth of the matter"—gross equivocation—than it isn't saying much, it starts to look like sophistry.

I have referred to your post. It's a function of the forum.

To be clear I mean

If I were to say something after you might be able to guess what I'm referring to. But there'd be no fact of the matter with respect to the reference -- your words will not change because I'm referring to them, and we can only decide which bits, or if all bits all the bits, not by referring to what is referred to but by talking.

Yes, I understand the underdetemination argument. As noted above, one can apply it to any manner of things other than reference. So is there no fact of the matter about any of these things either? Say, historical facts? Every historical narrative is underdetermined by the evidence. What about the laws of physics? These are also underdetermined.

Let's consider how Quine might have addressed induction.

Induction is deductively invalid. That the sun has risen every day for eons simply does not imply that it will rise tomorrow.

But our understanding of the sun rising is based on far more than just this simple inductive inference. It is also based on our understanding of the shape of the Earth, the movement of objects in the solar system and physics and astronomy generally.

For the sun not to come up tomorrow, the number of our beliefs that would have to be incorrect is quite large.

So while induction is not deductively valid, for Quine an inductive inference would be worth considering as true on the basis of it's place within our web of belief.

Similarly, our supposition that "gavagai" means rabbit might be worth considering on the basis of our other beliefs about the community we are interpreting.

We need to take care here. There need be no truth to the matter of what it is that "gavagai" refers to, but there might well be. If the men go off hunting gavagai and return with rabbits, and if they offer you gavagai and hand you rabbit stew, that may well suffice.

What's novel here is that Quine noticed how a fixed referent was not needed for "gavagai" to have a place in the doings of the community.

And, as for essences, one does not need to have at hand an "essence of gavagai" in order to make a comprehensive use of the term. The essence of gavagai is irrelevant.

This is a very different approach to that being taken by some folk hereabouts.

Notice the difference to Putnam, who seems to have suggested that since we couldn't refer with certainty, there was nothing to refer to. There is doubtless more to his ideas, but that basic inference may be a step too far. Again, it does not matter that we are certain of what "gavagai" refers to, for it to have a place in the language community.

Notice also how Quine's view meshes with the idea of looking to use rather that fixing meaning. There is much overlap here with Wittgenstein. Neither give much credence to the need for deterministic, essentialist or intrinsic meaning.

That's not really addressing the question though. The skeptical thesis is one thing, the claim that there "is no fact of the matter" is another. But you both seemed to affirm that, for reference, underdetemination means there is no fact of the matter.

Yet if underdetemination (given what Quine allows as evidence) means there is no fact of the matter, then there is no fact of the matter about a vast number of things: historical events, whether anyone else has subjective experiences, etc.

Unless reference is somehow unique in "having no fact of the matter" because it is underdetermined. But I don't see why that would be. That was my question.

Now, it also seems strange to me to speak about "knowing" things of which there is no truth of the matter. Knowing certainly can't depend on truth if we can know things for which there is no truth of the matter/fact.

To say that there is "no fact of the matter" about something seems to suggest that claims about that thing aren't truth apt. But again, if underdetemination means there is no truth of the matter, then the claims of natural science wouldn't be truth apt either.

I am pretty sure Quine speaks of discarding beliefs at the center of our web of belief and developing "new webs of knowledge" and "exchanging systems of knowledge." But on any conventional view of truth and knowledge, one cannot drop some "knowledge" and adopt different, incommensurate and contradictory "knowledge" and have both be knowledge. These are two very different notions of knowledge, which makes sense, if you accept holism, but also seems like a case of equivocation.

That's not really addressing the question though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:rofl:

(sorry... had to post that. I'll read the rest of your response now).

Not "perfect," just a substantial (type-of-thingal) form (actuality), which could be rendered "actual type of thing" or "what-it-is-to-be of certain types of thing." — Count Timothy von Icarus

So, you are not talking about Platonic essentialism?

The straightforward translation of essence is just "what-it-is-to-be" and form is what anything is, any whatness it has, and so to be anything at all, instead of sheer indeterminate potency (nothing) involves form. — Count Timothy von Icarus

OK, but what it is to be a particular tiger is not what it is to be any other tiger, because their forms are not identical. Leaving aside Plato's conception of transcendent forms, my limited familiarity with Aristotles idea of immanent forms does not think those forms in terms of sets or bundles of attributes or characteristics, as far as I know. I could be wrong about that, admittedly.

And you seem to be alluding to just this here:

I think what you've suggested is largely in line with that view, although there would be the further question of if what-a-thing-is is properly decomposable into properties. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Where your definition would also differ from the traditional view is that the traditional essence is not simply definitive but rather constitutive due to a notion of formal causality. Being a tiger explains why tigers do what they do. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are the forms of things not constituted by their characteristics (leaving aside the further question of behavior)? And saying that being a tiger explains why tigers do what they do seems like a non-explanation which could be fleshed out by saying that how tigers are constituted enables them to do what they do, and if you included the brain in that constitution it would also explain (up to a point) why they do what they do. I say up to a point because individual tigers probably do not act exactly the same as other tigers—that is their behaviors may vary in small ways, since presumably no two tigers are exactly formally the same, and also the contingencies of experience may modify their behaviors somewhat.

It's rather difficult to form an opinion concerning essence while what an essence is remains obscure. — Banno

Yes, indeed!

What's novel here is that Quine noticed how a fixed referent was not needed for "gavagai" to have a place in the doings of the community.

And, as for essences, one does not need to have at hand an "essence of gavagai" in order to make a comprehensive use of the term. The essence of gavagai is irrelevant.

Absolutely true, given Quine's assumptions. However, if we take Quine seriously then we never need any particular belief to make sense of anything. There are always alternative explanations open to us to make any belief work.

But you both seemed to affirm that, for reference, underdetemination means there is no fact of the matter. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, it would be more accurate to say that it doesn't matter if there is a fact of the matter... provided you get your rabbit stew.

Yet if underdetemination (given what Quine allows as evidence) means there is no fact of the matter, then there is no fact of the matter about a vast number of things: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. There would still however be beliefs with differing strengths.

That is not to say that rabbit=gavagai is not truth-apt; but that the truth value is inferred and allocated as a part of our web of belief.

For Quine, any of our beliefs can be modified, but not all of them. Not unlike Wittgenstein's view on doubt form On Certainty.

Now there are all sorts of problems with Quine's view. But it is useful to have a better idea of what he was saying than just "because we have different words that we use for the same thing that there is no one referent for a specific thing".

However, if we take Quine seriously then we never need any particular belief to make sense of anything. There are always alternative explanations open to us to make any belief work. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep.

That's part of what makes Quine interesting. It's the whole web of belief that provides the explanation, not any individual belief.

Yes, indeed! — Janus

I'm puzzled as to what a liger is. Is it a tiger? Is it a lion? Is it neither, or is it both?

Seems to me that this is not asking something about ligers, but about how we might best use the words "liger", "tiger" and "lion".

But if that's so, then asking if a liger is a tiger is not asking about essences of tigerness, but about word use.

Any thoughts?

Yes, I was thinking of the Aristotelian tradition, he coins the term essence. Plato's participation is fairly different.

And saying that being a tiger explains why tigers do what they do seems like a non-explanation which could be fleshed out by saying that how tigers are constituted enables them to do what they do, and if you included the brain in that constitution it would also explain (up to a point) why they do what they do.

We face the same infinite regress or atomism choice here that we did with properties, no? How do you explain the brain? Its parts. How do you explain those parts? Smaller parts. Etc.

Either we bottom out, and have to explain why some fundamental parts do what they do, or we have an infinite regress. But if we choose atomism, then we still seem to need a "because of what they are," type explanation of the fundamental parts, unless their actions are simply inscrutable brute facts.

But I feel like an added assumption of smallism needs to be tacked on here. "All facts about large things are reducible to facts about smaller parts." Prima facie, there is no reason to prefer this over bigism, "all facts about parts are only explainable in terms of the whole of which they are a part." The empirical track record of reductionism is not particularly strong, successful reductions are quite rare (unifications more common, maybe a point for bigism), so I am not sure about this assumption.

Anyhow, the bigism vs smallism debate is as old as philosophy and the entire idea of natures is to chart a via media between having nothing but clouds of inscuratble particles and just "one thing" the entire cosmos. It seems to me that philosophy of physics still has this problem. We either have atomism (less popular today it seems) or just a few (potentially unifiable) universal fields, with part(icle)s are only definable in terms of the whole field.

How to get minds from either also seems to be a vexing question, but more so for atomism. Either the fundamental building blocks are conscious, which seems bizarre at first glance, or you somehow get consciousness by stacking mindless atoms together.

- Here are some of the places where I objected to this use of "fact":

The important thing here is to set out what one believes Quine's intended conclusion was. I would suggest avoiding vague words like 'fact' in setting that out. — Leontiskos

* Again, "fact" being a weasel-word. — Leontiskos

A very remarkable weakness of modern theories of reference is that they do not manage to account in any way for speakers' intentions, such as the Medieval theory of "immediate signification" does. This is why I think modern philosophers talk themselves in circles when it comes to reference, and all of this is related to philosophy of language as first philosophy. And it is certainly true that we cannot pretend that this bad theory of reference does not bleed into all sorts of other areas, such as belief, knowledge, doubt, etc.

...they do not manage to account in any way for speakers' intentions — Leontiskos

The Humpty Dumpty theory of meaning? No, it's not very popular.

This notion of a perfect form, eidos or essence is the traditional understanding of essentialism. — Janus

So this is a good example of the very post you were responding to. Here is my response:

The response, "Show where you are getting the idea that [absurdity] comes with essentialism." Objections to essentialism tend to be strawmen through and through. — Leontiskos

What source do you use to come to this idea about "this notion of a perfect form"?

What source do you use to come to this idea about "this notion of a perfect form"? — Leontiskos

It seems uncontroversial that Plato considered the forms to be perfect and their physical manifestations imperfect. Do you deny this?

It seems uncontroversial that Plato considered the forms to be perfect and their physical manifestations imperfect. Do you deny this? — Janus

Even Plato never claimed that we have perfect knowledge of the Forms, or that we can give a perfect account of the Forms.

Even Plato never claimed that we have perfect knowledge of the Forms, or that we can give a perfect account of the Forms. — Leontiskos

That's not the point though. The point is that he conceived of the forms as perfect—the perfect circle (which does not exist in nature) being the archetypal example. Does the idea of an imperfect essence (in the traditional sense) make any sense?

We have from Plato for example ideas of The Good, Justice, Beauty, Truth. Does the idea of the essence of any of those being imperfect makes any sense?

That's not the point though. — Janus

It is the point, though, because you are giving the tired argument, "Show me a perfect essence if you want to justify essentialism," and I am saying, "What essentialist has ever claimed to have access to perfect essences?"

What essentialism says is that we have an imperfect grasp of essences. Someone who studies tigers or triangles has a better grasp of their nature than someone who does not study them.

So after all that wind, you agree with what was said. — Banno

Maybe if you wouldn't go around lying, trolling, and making up shit we would all save a bit of time. You still haven't managed to address the central issue raised <here>, but that's no surprise.

You still haven't managed to address the central issue raised <here> — Leontiskos

"If Quine is right, then how could we be confident"? See

Similarly, our supposition that "gavagai" means rabbit might be worth considering on the basis of our other beliefs about the community we are interpreting.

We need to take care here. There need be no truth to the matter of what it is that "gavagai" refers to, but there might well be. If the men go off hunting gavagai and return with rabbits, and if they offer you gavagai and hand you rabbit stew, that may well suffice. — Banno

This is just you having your cake and eating it, too. If reference is inscrutable then we cannot be confident. If we are justified in our confidence then reference is not inscrutable.

There need be no truth to the matter of what it is that "gavagai" refers to, but there might well be. — Banno

The chorus throughout this thread has been, "There is no fact of the matter. There is no fact of the matter. There is no fact of the matter." Now you have switched direction, "There need be no truth to the matter, but there might be." Your self-contradiction hasn't gone unnoticed.

If arguments from undetermination show there is no "fact of the matter" about something... — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say that:

translation is underdetermined to some extent — Leontiskos

We are always in via, growing in knowledge, whether it be with essences or references or logic, etc. A robust epistemology of what is being referred to would note not only that 'gavagai' is underdetermined, but also that it is not indeterminate. "Gavagai" has something to do with rabbits. Even someone with a poor theory of language will understand that much. And the fact that signification can be narrowed down makes all the difference between underdetermination and indetermination. The experiences of the linguist constitute a narrowing of the meaning of "gavagai" to something that has to do with rabbits. Further narrowing can then take place, which is what actually happens in reality when folks learn new languages, even through pure immersion.

Quine's complexification of the situation fails if he thinks it shows that there is no starting point; that there is pure indetermination.

(And because substance metaphysics is true and widespread, most people will begin with the thesis that 'gavagai' names the rabbit rather than, say, its ear, and they will usually be right.)

I really do not think you have understood Quine. Hence your insistence on attacking me rather than addressing the issues raised.

But maybe we can get some content here. Let's go back to the bit you raised today - Humpty Dumpty. You used the phrase "immediate signification", which is from Lock, the notion being that the meaning of a word is the idea it represents in the mind of the speaker - is that something you might defend?

I really do not think you have understood Quine. — Banno

I was responding to Count, not exegeting Quine.

rather than addressing the issues raised — Banno

You are <the one who can't address the issue for the life of you>.

Humpty Dumpty — Banno

Trolls will troll. The ignorant will demonstrate their ignorance.

which is from Lock — Banno

Wrong again.

I will make a thread that includes the topic of intentional reference/identity sometime in at least the next month. It will be a reading group, so trolling will not be tolerated.

(Double post - server stutter)

:roll:

Ok.

Is believing in essences from Plato? Is that how we're supposed to be sorting out reference? We're contacting the ideal?

Banno is not a good person to ask about this. He considered himself to have dispatched any notion of essence, still a quite active topic in contemporary philosophy, in a few sentences where he claimed he could imagine that Socrates was an alien.

Let me explain how essences even came up. Quine's conclusion is at odds with a great deal of contemporary and historical thought. If Quine is right, many others are wrong. Quine is a good logician, and so are many of the people he is disagreeing with, so if there is a seeming chasm of disagreement then the first place we should look is at the premises and terms.

I think it's fairly easy to show that other thinkers come to different conclusions about reference because they have different premises. In particular, what they take to count as proper epistemic evidence differs radically, whereas when it comes to "fact of the matter," I think there is a problem of equivocation. What Quine takes to be necessary for there to be some fact about something is radically different from many other notions of what constitutes "facts" (e.g. in mainstream analytic metaphysics.)

Essence came up because I was just throwing out examples of different starting premises that lead to different conclusions. For Quine, there are no discrete wholes out in the world to refer to. And what we have as evidence from the senses is based on the behaviorist notion of stimuli. We have energy interacting with nerves in a reductive physicalism.

For other thinkers, these are not going to be starting premises. There are discrete wholes, such as rabbits and tigers, and our senses directly communicate their existence to us. And because all humans are sensing the same discrete wholes (e.g. no culture lacks a notion of animals as wholes, or speaks only of "rabbit-like time slices"), the process of specifying reference is actually going to be much simpler (and what will constitute as evidence will also differ). In particular, people will intend to refer to discrete wholes they are aware of in many cases, the intended reference, and others will often be able to understand which discrete whole they are referring to. How many interpreters of Wittgenstein's "form of life" use it to help with communication, for instance, differs from Quine's assumptions in trying to specify observation sentences.


That said, "essence" is from Aristotle, it's just the Greek for "what it is to be," or simply "what it is" of a thing. Plato obviously has some notion of essence as well in that things are different sorts of things, although many Plato scholars will denigrate the sort of "two worlds " Platonism that often gets taught in introductory survey courses as terribly naive.

Essences, in a very loose sense, just commit us to the idea that there is something that makes different types of things different types of things. An opposing view would be that there are, strictly speaking, no "tigers, rabbits, trees, etc." in the world (or "outside language") in any sort of physical or metaphysical sense. Rather, there are stimuli humans experience and they group acceptable responses to stimuli socially, and this is how we get a words that seemingly refer to unique sorts of things.

Another sort of anti-essentialism is a mereological nihilism grounded in corpuscular physicalism. There are only fundamental particles. Anything like a rabbit is actually just a cloud of particles with no unique/distinct ensemble making up the rabbit (the Problem of the Many on SEP is a fine place to start here). When we have words for something like a rabbit, it is not because there are rabbits with proper parts, such as legs and hearts, but rather because we have correlated bundles of stimuli, sense data, with stipulated terms, and our sense data correlates with particular configurations of fundamental particles ensemble. But note that this sort of anti-essentialism normally does maintain that fundamental particles have essential natures, whereas other forms say there is no more or less correct way to group any sense data with any notion of wholes and parts.

Essence is often represented as some sort of magical spirit power inside things, which is unfortunate. It's unfortunate that explicit parody is sometimes taken to be a paradigmatic example of a philosophy. For instance, Molière's joke about realism in Le Malade Imaginaire has been used on this forum many as an actual example of realism.

But, supposing that Aristotle is talking about magical properties inside things is like assuming that Quine is talking about how there are many synonyms you could use in any translation, i.e. totally misunderstanding the concept. Just like people who dismiss early analytic thought because abstract proposition must be "magical spirit entities in Plato's realm" (i.e., "two worlds Platonism).

I think Eric Perl's "Thinking Being" is a pretty decent introductions in eidos and essences, but the actual function of the essence/nature, how it "cashes out," really requires going through the Physics (which Joe Sachs has a very good translation and commentary on).