I don't think it makes sense to say that a statement makes an assertion. People make assertions. — frank
I'm talking about the confidence that a person's intention is knowable in principle. I think that's probably a priori. — frank
To switch to another sorts metaphor, anti-realists won't step up to the plate, but hang around off to the side claiming they could easily get a hit if they wanted to. — Srap Tasmaner
If there were ideas definite enough to be discredited (or not) put forward, Williamson wouldn't have written this paper. Since they refuse to get in the game, as he sees it, they have discredited not their ideas but themselves. — Srap Tasmaner
playing a different game — Leontiskos
this comes too close for my liking to "flaw-based" resolution of a difficult issue — J
Suppose we put two identical nothings side by side and assert a difference between them. We could write it like {|}. No jokers to the left, no clowns to the right, but here I am. Now we have something, we can put to the left of nothing {{|} | } or the right of nothing { | {|}}. And that's how you make 0, 1, and -1, as surreal numbers. Then you can reverberate to infinity and beyond. — GrahamJ
“An intensity, for example, is not composed of addable and displaceable magnitudes: a temperature is not the sum of two smaller temperatures, a speed is not the sum of two smaller speeds. Since each intensity is itself a difference, it divides according to an order in which each term of the division differs in nature from the others. Distance is therefore a set of ordered differences, in other words, differences that are enveloped in one another in such a way that it is possible to judge which is larger or smaller, but not their exact magnitudes. For example, one can divide movement into the gallop, trot, and walk, but in such a way that what is divided changes in nature at each moment of the division, without any one of these moments entering
into the composition of any other. Therefore these multiplicities of "distance" are inseparable from a process of continuous variation, whereas multiplicities of "magnitude" distribute constants and variables.” (ATP)
My memory is that that's how this whole things started: Dummett pointed out that some philosophers seemed to be playing a game that they did not realize was rigged against them, so they tended to flounder.
The solution he proposed was to recognize when you were inclined to deny that a specific type of statement within a given domain was bivalent. — Srap Tasmaner
(Dummett also had no truck with more than two truth values, so for him (and I believe Williamson agrees with him about this) intuitionistic logic becomes especially attractive: the sentential operator "not" is understood as "it has not been demonstrated that ..." Hence the double negative is merely "it has not been demonstrated that it has not been demonstrated that ..." ) — Srap Tasmaner
And you do all this so that the choice between theories or approaches is not "merely aesthetic". (@Moliere) — Srap Tasmaner
Every agent, of necessity, acts for an end... — Aquinas, ST I-II.1.2.c - Whether it is proper to the rational nature to act for an end?
My first reaction is that of course there need be nothing in common between the various language games. My second, that not all language games involve justification. — Banno
That sounds fine to me, though I don't see "undemonstrated" or "unjustified" as a truth value. — Leontiskos
OK. Let me rephrase:
Compare
1) I assert, "The cat is on the mat."
2) I assert, "I think that my cat is on the mat."
Would you agree that these two assertions by me assert different things? — J
I'm talking about the confidence that a person's intention is knowable in principle. I think that's probably a priori.
— frank
Ah, sorry, I was off track. Interesting. I guess I'd respond that we have the same confidence about this re some other person as we have re ourselves. So that leaves a couple of questions: How confident is that? and, Do you mean a priori to the given circumstances, or a priori in some more deeply metaphysical way? I doubt the latter; I think we learn to be confident just as we learn anything else. — J
lowest common denominator — Leontiskos
If on the other hand, the quoted part is supposed to represent a proposition, then yes, it's definitely two different things. The proposition has all the context of utterance, truth conditions, etc. worked out. — frank
I'm sorry if I over-reacted. I'm a bit obsessed about the need to kill the idea of a meaning-object. It's called a proposition in standard philosophese, but the name doesn't matter. It's the role that's the problem.No, we're actually in agreement here. The difficulty with posting is that it's hard to convey the tone of voice, or the fact that something is being proposed for consideration rather than asserted as true! I also think the Fregean conception is, if not a mess, at least deserving of hard questioning. The "contextless sense" of assertion has been critiqued, fairly recently, by both Kimhi and Rodl. — J
The vocabulary around this is incredibly rich and therefore compicated and difficult to organize. I don't think that there are answers waiting in natural language - anything we do would be a specialized use of the terms. Utterance/assertion for the distinction you have in mind might well work; the same is true of sentence/statement or a version of the type/token distinction. There was an idea around at one time that a proposition should be defined as a sentence with its use, which would be better. I don't have any answers. We could try to agree a list of issues, like this one and then try working down it. Perhaps others might join in.That said, I do think the "utterance/assertion" distinction is useful, as a place to start talking. After all, we need some way to acknowledge that something said by me at time T1, and something said by you at time T2, can assert the same thing, on one reasonable understanding of "assertion." As long as it's 3rd personal. — J
Oh, yes, indeed. It can be very frustrating. But scientists have established first claim on knowledge and, for some reason, on wisdom as well. I have the impression that philosophers, since around the sixties, are confined to niche labelled "oddball". When I had a job in philosophy, from time to time people would ask me what I did. "Philosophy" was a real conversation-stopper.This has a lot of consequences when scientists tend to be publishing many of the more philosophical best sellers. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Economics has managed to establish itself as the most like "proper" science of the social sciences. It's all illusion. Fortunately, there are some cracks where economics is recognized as the result of human behaviour.Economics is a fine example, the texts I've taught are filled with properly philosophical presuppositions about politics and philosophical anthropology. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, but how do they see it? You can't have an argument or negotiation, decide on a winner or anything else unless the other side is in the game. If they won't play your game, you can just play by yourself or go and get involved in the other guy's game.Since they refuse to get in the game, as he sees it, they have discredited not their ideas but themselves. — Srap Tasmaner
I read this as saying that Williamson's problem is that most participants on both sides are ignoring what he thinks is important. It needs an argument to show how and why it is important, which is missing here. The other half of the problem is that most participants are concentrating on Dummett's demand. On the face of it, and without an argument, that does seem reasonable. The beef here is in the arguments, which Williamson does not discuss.Surprisingly, however, most participants in the Dummett-inspired debates between realism and anti-realism have shown little interest in the success of truth-conditional semantics, judged as a branch of empirical linguistics. Instead, they have tended to concentrate on Dummett’s demand for ‘non-circular’ explanations of what understanding a sentence with a given truth-condition ‘consists in’, when the speaker cannot verify or falsify that condition. — Must Do Better p.3
neither side — Ludwig V
I think Williamson here says, this is how it's done. — Srap Tasmaner
1), "I assert P", is an assertion about a state of affairs that is independent of me, the speaker.
2), "I assert Q", is, or can be taken as, an assertion about me, the speaker -- specifically, about a thought I have concerning my cat.
But this seems to claim that the truth of 2) isn't dependent on the truth of P. The truth of P -- whether or not the cat is on the mat -- will have no bearing on whether the same speaker had a particular thought. This is a very uncomfortable position to defend. — J
In philosophy, though, "I think that . . . " is more often supposed to be transparent. It doesn't refer to some particular mental occurrence at all, but instead to a belief or a position about whatever is being thought: "Do you think so?" "Yes, I do." So "X" and "I think that X" are both taken as 3rd person propositions. Can this be right? — J
You and I seem to agree with large portions of Williamson. — Leontiskos
Why would the truth of 2 be dependent on the truth of P? — frank
You're adding another layer to this. — frank
I'm not really sure what you're saying though. — frank
The vocabulary around this is incredibly rich and therefore compicated and difficult to organize. I don't think that there are answers waiting in natural language - anything we do would be a specialized use of the terms. — Ludwig V
There honestly isn't much point in "taking his side" here or not because the paper itself, as he acknowledges, is pretty handwavy. As philosophy, it's pretty weak tea, but it might be strong medicine for philosophers. — Srap Tasmaner
I know what you mean, and the mathematical analogy makes clear what "actual philosophical work" might look like, on this view. But I think -- and don't you? -- that this view is wrong. Two reasons... — J
Yes, and this comes too close for my liking to "flaw-based" resolution of a difficult issue. The anti-realists "refuse to get in the game" -- hmmm. — J
I wouldn't say that. I reckon that Williamson makes it pretty clear which side he's on right through th meat of the article (say pp. 4 - 9). It's a bit of a giveaway that he presents developments in logic which seem to him to give a lot of support (though empirical linguistics may be a bit of a stretch for philosophy) to one side and goes into great detail about the weakness of assertibility-conditions in relation to sentences not known to be true and not known to be false.Yeah that's fair. My memory of the paper is probably colored a bit by knowing which side Williamson is on. — Srap Tasmaner
If you want an overview, try Propositions - Stanford E. P.Or, more interestingly, our entire understanding of what a proposition is supposed to be -- as Ludwig V suggests above -- is in need of revisiting. — J
Wonder if anyone's ever thought of that before! — J
If P is not true, then the cat is not on the mat. So if I assert Q -- "I think that the cat is on the mat" -- some would allege that I am mistaken. But what am I mistaken about? Not my own thought, presumably. I must be wrong about the cat. This seems to show that the cat needs to be on the mat in order for me to speak truly when I say 2. — J
That the use of intentional operators is conventional, and admits of different interpretations, especially around "I think" — J
Or, more interestingly, our entire understanding of what a proposition is supposed to be -- as Ludwig V suggests above -- is in need of revisiting. — J
Do you have any impression what's happened since 2004? — Ludwig V
As someone who was away from philosophy for fifteen years or so before I joined TPF, it is also very handy for me.I really don't. That's right in SEP's wheelhouse though. I think of it primarily as a "recent literature review" for grad students. — Srap Tasmaner
The emoji indicates that you know the answer is "everyone", right? — Srap Tasmaner
If P is false, then you are mistaken about what you thought. You aren't wrong about having thought it.
The cat definitely doesn't have to be on the mat in order for you to truly express what you think about it, either way. — frank
How would you revisit it? — frank
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