It would have to admit that "observing" and "theorizing" are subject to laws that are ultimately physical, just like anything else. So we're left with the familiar problem of how to give reason the last word — J

I think mostly science can and must say that their own practice is subject to natural law, but what you can deny is that it is theoretically relevant. (Except when it is.)

Now maybe totalizing critique is lurking here, as you suggest. Maybe we can sidestep that with a distinction like Ryle makes between being governed by laws and determined by them -- the rules of chess don't determine how a chess game goes, but they still constrain how it might. That's kind of a cultural argument. (Roughly it's "determinism was never a real threat, but a misunderstanding.")

What I want to say is something like this: we know perception is physical, in the sense that there is at least a transfer of energy and this facilitates a transfer of information, etc. But there is still a recognizable difference between physical interaction between an organism and an object that we would call "perceiving" and an interaction we would call "eating" or "breaking" or something else. And so with thinking. There may be a longish causal chain between the object of my thought (or its elements) and my thought of that object, and that chain is governed by physical law, as is the functioning of my brain, but my thought, like my perception, need have no physical impact on its object.

Science relies on this distinction, which it finds in nature, and then deliberately submits itself to being acted upon, either through the act of dropping weights from a tower, or by watching those weights fall. The scientist is not acted upon by the weights as they fall, and is acted upon by gravity but not in a way that matters. If he looks, then he is acted upon by the weights, but only as perception. If he then theorizes about gravity, there's no longer even that, even though he continues to be subject to gravity and would generally prefer being able to see the paper and ink he writes with.

None of this is news, but what interested me is that science doesn't really begin by saying subject over here, object over there; it begins by deliberately submitting to being acted upon, in a controlled way, and separating its work into being-acted-upon and not-being-acted-upon. That separation is just making more salient and more definite distinctions found in nature, although I think that to clearly define it you have to have theory as an element (to be able to identify when something is relevant).

I never actually provided an argument that this separation is the source of science's rigor. Maybe it's not, or maybe it's important because it enables something else that is.

I'm still not happy with any thoughts about philosophy on this score, so this whole post is just repetition. I could add that I am almost totally unconcerned about science undermining itself through totalizing, and I think the reason is somewhere in here, but untheorized.

the concept of progress in the arts is very tricky, — Ludwig V

And

I do worry, though, about the unselfconscious use of "clarity" to identify some sort of objective property ( — Ludwig V

Earlier I used this example:

She will be huddled under blankets while I am comfortable in my tee shirt. But we at least agree that she is cold while I am hot; that this is the fact of the matter. And this will be so regardless of what the thermometer shows, it would be impertinent for me to say she was mistaken here. So let's not suppose our differences to be merely subjective. — Banno

This is a triangulation, between her, the thermometer and myself. We reach an agreement, a level of mutual comfort.

Consider it along side Quine's gavagai and the indeterminacy of translation. The lack of agreement does not prevent ongoing interaction.

We might do something similar with progress and clarity. If we agree that there has been progress, then what more do we need? If we agree that there is clarity, what more do we need? And if we disagree, then at the least we can agree that we disagree - we might agree that you think some idea clear while i disagree, That I think progress is being made while you do not.

Again, while there is no fact of the matter that we can use to decide the issue, and no overarching aim, we have reached an agreement that might allow us to move on.

What we have here is not an agreed doctrine, but a method, a heuristic.

Group dynamics, I suppose — Ludwig V

...that "perspicuous representation" requires some sort of consensus... — J

...and requires nothing more. That consensus might be all we have.

I could add that I am almost totally unconcerned about science undermining itself through totalizing, and I think the reason is somewhere in here, but untheorized. — Srap Tasmaner

Could that be simply because it works? We can point to progress in science by using what we learn, so that, who cares that it totalizes and undermines itself - it works.

Philosophy has a harder time doing that, a harder time yielding results we can point to working and that change how we live regardless of how they may also lead to self-defeating, paradoxical, unspeakable conundrums.

I would say philosophy is more immediately self-aware than physical sciences. You have to take an extra step to make science self-aware (which is why they can ignore their assumptions and just run with the experiment).

the whole point of an experiment is to submit some apparatus or material to the forces of nature so that you can see what happens. This part of the work of science deliberately submits itself to nature at work.

But the two further steps, observing and theorizing, are intended to be separate, and not subject to the forces and constraints and whatnot under investigation. The weights fall from the tower and I observe the action of gravity upon them, but my watching them does not require that I too fall from the tower. I need not submit my process of observation to gravity to observe the effect of gravity on bodies. — Srap Tasmaner

Philosophy is the act of separating from the forces in order to observe and theorize. When a biologist observes and theorizes they don’t call it doing philosophy because we have placed the biologist so firmly in a box of organic material. But when the bill fist bumps up against chemistry, or bumps up against the physics of gravity, they become a meta-biologist, or more simply, a philosopher. Because doing philosophy is stepping outside of in order to observe and theorize. Being human, desiring to know/understand, taken to an expert level.

I always thought of philosophy as a science first. Maybe like politics can be a science and history can be a science, so not like physics and chemistry, but more like physics and chemistry than arts like painting or literature or music. There was always a reason philosophy led to schools and the sciences, and a reason so much math was developed by philosophers (Pythagoras, Descartes, Leibniz, Russell).

Philosophy is the science of science (which looks obvious to me in the quote just above), or the science of language (as all sciences must speak), or the science of being human in the world (we speakers of scientia), thereby making the subject of philosophical inquiry everything all at once and each thing taken apart, simultaneously. But a science.

We call it an art because it involves so much ice sculpture (invisible shapes that are easily broken apart if they don’t melt first, always restating ‘water’, something like that… :wink:), always hoping something we say won’t just melt. Like scientists try to say something as “law” or at least “repeatedly working, over and over”.

Is it really similar to how science does this? If it's not, does it still make sense? — Srap Tasmaner

It definitely makes sense and I think it's close enough to say yes, that's how science does it -- but I must note the caveat that "science" is a huge category. So saying "yes, that's science" might not imply enough.


I like the idea of an experimental philosophy, though.


And your seperation, though I'm still untangling it, I feel kinship there. Somehow there's the thing we're questioning, the thing we're measuring, and the way we judge these things, or something along those lines. And one part of the science determines the other -- in a way this is Popper's division between observation statements and theoretical statements (as I remember it at least)

That consensus might be all we have. — Banno

Hey, at least it's something. Solipsism is avoided.

"My thought of judging that things are so is a different act of the mind from my judging that they are so. The former is about my judgment, a psychic act, a mental state; the latter, in the usual case, is not; it is about something that does not involve my judgment, my mind, my psyche. It is about a mind-independent reality." — J

I can't get past this as a misframing.

A) I think: "I judge that the cat is on the mat."
B) I think: "The cat is on the mat." — J

There's so much ambiguity in this!

As he says, A is about my judgment, something I do or think, while B is about the cat. — J

B is not about the cat - it is plainly about a thought. It will be true not if and only if the cat is on the mat, but if and only if I think the cat is on the mat.

If you reject the notion that philosophy has aims... — Leontiskos

Oh, Leon. That's so far from what was actually said.

If you reject the notion that philosophy has aims...
— Leontiskos
Oh, Leon. That's so far from what was actually said. — Banno

But do you at least see why he said that?

I know you are aren’t meaning to say it, or meaning to mean that, but you actively avoiding aims, telos-speak.

I think it’s worth addressing.

A) I think: "I judge that the cat is on the mat."
B) I think: "The cat is on the mat."
— J

As he says, A is about my judgment, something I do or think, while B is about the cat.
— J
B is not about the cat - it is plainly about a thought. It will be true not if and only if the cat is on the mat, but if and only if I think the cat is on the mat. — Banno

You're right, sloppy phrasing on my part. Both A and B are about a thought, since each begins identically: "I think . . " What I should have gone on to say -- and this is what Rodl means -- is that what is being thought, in A, is something about a judgment, whereas what is being thought, in B, is something about a cat. You don't actually even need B to get where Rodl is going: "My thought of judging that things are so is a different act of the mind from my judging that they are so." This is apparent merely from the way A is formulated.

However, the SEP article seems to want to say that a proposition is what is in common between a number of sentences or statements. That's what I don't get.
— Ludwig V

That's exactly the standard analysis. The bolded part that follows the word, "that" is a proposition.
— frank
You're offering an ostensive definition, and your problem is that when you point to a proposition "the bolded part", I see a sentence. If you think about it, it isn't possible to "bold" a proposition - it's like trying to italicize an apple. Wrong category.
Not sure whether mine is the standard analysis, but it may be. It's a work in progress, anyway. — Ludwig V

I can't see a problem with the idea that propositions are the conceptual content of assertive statements or sentences, or in other words propositions are what is being asserted (proposed). Sentences and statements obviously may take many different forms, even in the one language, not to mention different languages, while conveying the same ideas. So the propositional content is simply the idea or ideas which are conveyed. Where's the problem?

"My thought of judging that things are so is a different act of the mind from my judging that they are so." — J

⊢⊢the cat is on the mat

is different to

⊢the cat is on the mat

Sure. What's the issue? Isn't this exactly what is recognised by the use of the judgement stroke to mark the scope of the extensionality of each?

I know you are aren’t meaning to say it, or meaning to mean that, but you actively avoiding aims, telos-speak. — Fire Ologist

That there is no one aim that is the goal of all metaphysics does not imply that no meta physical activity has an aim.

The very idea of an overarching framework in which art takes place and is to be judged is anathema, to be immediately challenged. The framework becomes the target. — Banno

This seems to be the very same error you and Leon made in the other thread. It's as if, were I to say that not all cars are driven on the road, you were to argue that if that were so, no cars would be driven on the road.

⊢⊢the cat is on the mat

is different to

⊢the cat is on the mat — Banno

Hmmm. My first thought was to wonder whether this is true, but on second thought the weirdness of this is that the LHS of the turnstile is empty. From what set of premises can you derive "the cat is on the mat"? My grasp of this is weak, but is the following sensical?

Γ ⊢ (Γ ⊢ "the cat is on the mat")

Is it conceivably false if sensical?

I think that when you have

A ⊢ (B → C)

then you can say

A ∪ {B} → C

And if that sort of thing holds for the turnstile, then you'd have Γ ∪ Γ on the LHS, which is just Γ, so they'd be the same.

I guess I could just look it up...

@J

One other thing we might say is that the reason you know some of your work needn't concern itself with the effects of what you're observing and theorizing about, is if your theorizing is overwhelmingly dependent on something that is not part of the observed.

That's gonna end up a bit Kantian, but the point right here would be to claim that there is no mathematics involved in the bodies falling from the tower. They do not consult my equations to see how fast they need to accelerate. The mathematics is something I add to the total situation (object of study, my observation and theorizing, etc.) so I needn't worry about it being compromised in any way.

And so with philosophy, one might argue that reason ― or simply logic, whatever ― is something not found in what philosophy studies, but added by the philosopher. That looks a bit dodgy because often people want to say that reason is part of human nature, but I think anyone really committed to such a view could argue, with a clear conscience, that the reason found in the wild is quite imperfect, unlike the reason I am employing, blah blah blah.

Or you could claim some sort of structural insulation ― that in reasoning about a bit of reasoning, I am perforce reasoning on a different level or at least concerning a different object from whatever you were reasoning about. (This looks like it will be headed for problems about reflexivity reminiscent of issues in set theory, but who knows. I sometimes think that natural language is not as a matter of fact its own meta-language, but it supports the generation of temporary meta-languages on the fly, as needed. Maybe.)

Anyway, someone might be inclined to describe philosophy as special in a way similar to this, with the added benefit of a comparison to mathematics, which is the paradigmatic armchair science, for everyone from Plato to Williamson.

I was using the turnstile as a shorthand for Frege's judgement stroke, so read "⊢⊢the cat is on the mat" as "I think that I think..." or "I think that I judge..." or whatever. Not as "...is derivable from..."

I see.

What I should have gone on to say -- and this is what Rodl means -- is that what is being thought, in A, is something about a judgment, whereas what is being thought, in B, is something about a cat. You don't actually even need B to get where Rodl is going: "My thought of judging that things are so is a different act of the mind from my judging that they are so." This is apparent merely from the way A is formulated. — J

I haven't yet read Rödl's Self-Consciousness and Objectivity (2018). So, my understanding derives from my reading of his earlier book Self-Consciousness (2007). What I gathered from this reading is that the thought contents, or propositions, one might express with the sentences A "I think the cat is on the mat" (where one could also use "believe" or "judge" instead of "think") and B "The cat is on the mat" indeed are different. The former one predicates a judgement to oneself while the later one predicates being-on-the-mat to the cat. The act of the intellect involved in making the second claim might be an act of receptivity (being governed by the thing in the world that one perceives) while the first one always is an act of spontaneity, whereby one takes oneself to be making (or, when the claim is being made out loud in a public setting, to commit oneself to) a specific move in the space of reasons, as it were, and thereby drawing on determinate (and also, arguably, shared) conceptual abilities.

However, and this is the important point, if I understand Rödl correctly, the specific act of spontaneity involved in making the explicit claim "I think P" always also is involved in the making of the claim "P". It is the Kantian "...I think [that] must be able to accompany all my representations..."

Here is now the point that brings us back a little closer to the OP's topic (or rather the OP of the other thread this one branched out of) about the aim of philosophy. Human rational judgement, including, paradigmatically, empirical judgement, may have truth as its formal aim. This formal aim is being acknowledged in the explicit claim "I think P" whereby one locates one's act in the space of reasons (i.e. within the public game of giving and asking for reasons). It doesn't mean that all the specific truths (true judgements) that one might express on particular occasions, including true philosophical pronouncements, all aim at expressing a maximally general Truth that they all are specifications of. What it rather means is that they all fall under a general metaphysical form, whereby (to simplify) acts of receptivity (intuitions) and acts of spontaneity (concepts) always must be involved together in contentful acts of judgement. ("Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.")

In order to stress how the "I think" always is implicitly involved in all acts of judgement, Rödl usefully stresses the fact that one expressing what it is that one believes regarding any proposition P isn't a separate act from the one involved in making up one's mind regarding the truth of P. This may mesh well with the core intuition motivating disquotationalist or redundancy theories of truth (regardless of their possible shortcomings in other regards).

*

Just a quick check -- you mean the first one for the bolded phrase, yes? — J

Correct! Thanks, I'll correct my post.

if I understand Rödl correctly, the specific act of spontaneity involved in making the explicit claim "I think P" always also is involved in the making of the claim "P". It is the Kantian "...I think [that] must be able to accompany all my representations..." — Pierre-Normand

Yes, there it is. That is what I take him to mean, and he himself ties it back to that Kantian motto. Highly controversial, but I think he's onto something important. It shakes up the whole framework about assertions.

I'll say more about this soon . . . . getting late in my world.

The I think must be able to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me that could not be thought at all, which is as much as to say that the representation would either be impossible or else at least would be nothing for me. That representation sound like a.that can be given prior to all thinking is called intuition. Thus all manifold of intuition has a necessary relation to the I think in the same subject in which this manifold is to be encountered. But this representation is an act of spontaneity, i.e., it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility. I call it the pure apperception, in order to distinguish it from the empirical one, or also the original apperception, since it is that self-consciousness which, because it produces the representationI think, which must be able to accompany all others and which in all consciousness is one and the same, cannot be accompanied by any further representation. I also call its unity the transcendental unity of self-consciousness in order to designate the possibility of a priori cognition from it. For the manifold representations that are given in a certain intuition would not all together be my representations if they did not all together belong to a self-consciousness; i.e., as my representation (even if I am not conscious of them as such) they must yet necessarily be in accord with the condition under which alone they can stand together in a universal self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not throughout belong to me. From this original combination much may be inferred. — Critique of pure reason, B131-2

Around about there-ish?

Notice the circularity - of course my representations must be accompanied by "I think..."

What if we were to ask what we think?

I can't help but regard this playing with private judgements with great suspicion.

Don’t this:

doesn’t require that there is something to be properly led to
— Banno

And this:

that leads us into confusion, pseudo-questions, or circular debates
— Banno

Contradict each other?

I'm not sure if it's a contradiction per se, but I would suggest that it's going to prove impossible to justify any standards while denying philosophy any purpose or ends. Consider:

To call something misleading is to say it leads somewhere—but crucially, somewhere we didn’t intend, or that doesn’t fulfill the function we took ourselves to be engaging in. That’s not the same as saying there is a metaphysical end-point we ought to be led to; rather, it’s to say that a particular use diverts us from how the practice normally works or what it aims at internally.

Intend:

1. Have (a course of action) as one's purpose or objective; plan.

2. Design or destine (someone or something) for a particular purpose or end.

I don't think one can discuss "better or worse" while denying ends completely.

I suppose though that in following sentence @Banno is setting up some sort of dichotomy between "how the practice normally works" and some notion of a "metaphysical end-point?" Is this a real dichotomy though? It seems to me that we can deny or remain skeptical about a "metaphysical end-point," and still elucidate our own goals, and what our goals/ends ought to be.

Further, I'm not sure if "how a practice normally works," allows us to speak of "better or worse." It merely tells us about what current practice is, and if we are deviating from it. Hume's Guillotine seems relevant here. Presumably, current practice could be deficient. Indeed, if we accept "deviation from current practice" as our standard re "good and bad" or "misleading", that would seem to perhaps suggest a sort of intellectual straitjacket, an inability to deviate from current practice, since our standard is just whatever practice just so happens to currently be. Likewise, a focus on current, consensus "internal aims" would seem to rule out radical critique a priori. Is "the goal of metaphysics" the sort of thing that ought to be democratized?

Here, we might also consider that metaphysics very much was thought to have a sort of telos, maybe even in something like the sense Banno means to indicate here. So, to think of metaphysics in this way was (and still often is) "how the practice normally works." And yet Banno earlier sang the praises of Hume, Wittgenstein, etc. for challenging what then was "current practice." Yet for these efforts to have been improvements ("better"), the standard for their being "better" cannot be "whatever metaphysics just so happened to tend towards in that epoch" or "what its practitioners took to be its end." If that was the standard, they would be deviant, and so "bad metaphysics." Or, we end up with a sort of relativism where Neoplatonist metaphysics is good for Neoplatonists, Hegelian metaphysics good for Hegelians, anti-metaphysics good for anti-metaphysicians, etc., because each of these is "current practice" and aligns with "internal aims" within the context of those specific "games."

Nor is the dominant "current practice" in metaphysics today something like the assumption that: "metaphysics is not discovering the deep structure of the world per se, but proposing better ways to conceptualize and systematize our thought and language." This isn't even the dominant view in analytic metaphysics. Introductory texts do not introduce the field as being primarily about language, but instead still tend to refer to "ontology, mereology, causality," etc., and not as linguistic terms, but as facets of the being. Yet it hardly seems like one can argue for a revisionist agenda in metaphysics while appealing to "current practice," or "current internal aims."

@Banno I would just add that:

if one doesn’t think there is any final “truth” about Being or substance or whatever at the end of the metaphysical road.

...would itself be a metaphysical truth claim if stated as a belief that is used to define how the discipline of metaphysics ought to proceed. It's not the sort of thing that can be assumed a priori in attempting to define metaphysics at least, or so it would seem, since it would beg the question against the bulk of the history of metaphysics, both Eastern and Western. Which is just to say, it's not the sort of thing that could be worked into the standards by which metaphysics is judged from the outset, but is itself related to the questions of metaphysics.

Hence, why I would say the goal is truth, and not merely what is currently believed to be true, or what one gains honors by claiming to be true.

Also:

To call something misleading is to say it leads somewhere—but crucially, somewhere we didn’t intend, or that doesn’t fulfill the function we took ourselves to be engaging in.

“To call a metaphysical claim ‘misleading’” doesn’t require that there is something to be properly led to—it only requires that the claim presents itself as if there were. “Misleading” is a pragmatic evaluation of the function or effect of the claim, not necessarily a commitment to metaphysical realism or a teleology of inquiry

Again, I don't think it's useful to have a binary dichotomy between "pragmatic evaluation" and some sort of "Aristotelian telos." "Pragmatism" itself requires some sort of end/goal to be pragmatic about. We'd have to unpack what you even mean by the latter, because I was only speaking of ends/goals in a very general sense; as a principle for judgement, which is to say, in the same sense that to say: "'[some]thing speaks for [or] against it...' presupposes a principle of speaking for and against. That is, [we] must be able to say what would speak for it."

But it also seems that it must be a false dichotomy, since plenty of thinkers who deny Aristotle's notions of final causality nonetheless speak to a purpose of philosophy, such that "better or worse" is determined in terms of some sort of end. Indeed, with no end, it's hard for me to see how any outcome (i.e. end) for philosophy or discourse could be considered "better or worse."

I would suggest that it's going to prove impossible to justify any standards while denying philosophy any purpose or ends. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's a difference between a standard and an end.

My objection is to setting up what metaphysics is in terms of where metaphysics ends.

That framing imports a teleological structure into the practice, as if its value or identity depended on a fixed aim or destination. But metaphysics, as I understand and teach it, is not defined by its conclusion—it’s revealed in the doing. We start in the middle: with questions, distinctions, and confusions—not with a final cause or overarching purpose.

Again, and generally, we don't need an absolute standard in order to be able to say that one thing is better or worse than some other.

Notice the circularity - of course my representations must be accompanied by "I think..."

What if we were to ask what we think?

I can't help but regard this playing with private judgements with great suspicion. — Banno

So would I but the individualistic reading of Kant is tricky.

This an issue that is only tangentially related to the topic regarding the aim of the activity of philosophising, or the aim of seeking truth in judgement, but I do know that neo-Kantians like Sellars, McDowell or Rödl have well absorbed the situated/socially scaffolded Wittgensteinian ideas about mind and language, and therefore don't conceive the transcendental requirements of empirical judgement to incorporate a need for mental representations to be "internal" in the individualistic sense that Wittgensteinian considerations on private languages tell against. The "internalism" at issue in Kant's quoted passage can be more charitably interpreted as the need for acts of representation to be internal to the sphere of the conceptual, while public discourse also is internal to that sphere and must hence also be answerable to what it is that "we" think.

I asked Claude 4 Opus whether it thought there was anything in Kant's own thinking (as opposed to more recent neo-Kantian reinterpretations) that might warrant your worry.

we don't need an absolute standard in order to be able to say that one thing is better or worse than some other. — Banno

By what you just said above, you don’t mean to say merely that:

one thing is better — Banno

…but you had to say it anyway to say what you said.

I don't think one can discuss "better or worse" while denying ends completely. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly.

Banno, you seem to be rejecting the ‘best’ and the ‘worst’, while seeking to retain the ‘better than’ and the ‘worse than’.

But to do this, you are saying “one thing is better” which means, between the two things, one is best and the other isn’t.

I don’t think any of us would necessarily be disagreeing regarding the quality of some thing, just because Banno might call it ‘better than’ the others and Count might call it the ‘best,’ but I still don’t think one can use ‘better or worse’ without invoking ‘best and worst’, and without saying things with as much finality as Banno saying “one thing is better”.

It’s like “better” only happens after “best” has happened. “Best” is tied up with the standard and measurement and theory; and with that in mind, or in hand, while operating in the middle somewhere far away from the best, we can then identify what is better and what is worse in hand because we have best in mind to judge.

We start in the middle: with questions, distinctions, and confusions… — Banno

I agree with that. That, full stop, is worth pondering itself. We have to stake a claim to make a ‘start’ because we are already in the middle.

However, in addition, I don’t think we could tell we are in the middle without also seeing a

cause or overarching purpose. — Banno

We see ‘middle’ only when we simultaneously see ends. We cannot speak, think or point to any one thing without referencing ‘start, middle, end,’ or ‘worst, better, best’ no matter where in the middle of these scales the thing actually falls.

This is all right in the crosshairs of everything - good discussion. I don’t think anyone has made our points clear enough yet.

But I do know that neo-Kantians like Sellars, McDowell or Rödl have well absorbed the situated/socially scaffolded Wittgensteinian ideas on mind and language, — Pierre-Normand

Yeah, I agree with that, there should be an answer here.

But if we take "I think..." as a formal unity of judgement, it's just taking the place of Frege's judgement stroke.

And that would be at odds with Rödl, so far as I can see. The contrast with Rödl hinges on whether the “I think” (Kant) or the judgment stroke (Frege) is best understood as a mere formal marker within a shared, impersonal space of reasons, or as something more fundamentally self-involving, reflexive, or identity-constituting.

The latter, not so much.

I still don’t think one can use ‘better or worse’ without invoking ‘best and worst’ — Fire Ologist

Why not?

Yeah, I agree with that, there should be an answer here.

But if we take "I think..." as a formal unity of judgement, it's just taking the place of Frege's judgement stroke.

And that would be at odds with Rödl, so far as I can see. The contrast with Rödl hinges on whether the “I think” (Kant) or the judgment stroke (Frege) is best understood as a mere formal marker within a shared, impersonal space of reasons, or as something more fundamentally self-involving, reflexive, or identity-constituting.

The latter, not so much. — Banno

I was thinking that the "I think" marks oneself as being able to make moves in the game of giving and asking for reasons, with everything such an ability entails (the intersubjectivity of judgement, shared practices, common objects of perception, the ability to track one's own deontic scores in rational discourse, etc.). John Haugeland, for instance, in his essay Truth and Rule Following, has highlighted the existential commitments to objects that motivate our insistence on the constitutive rules of the empirical domains within which those objects are constituted.

So, as Opus suggested while bringing up McDowell's elegant solution, the "I think" is tied up with our standing in the game of giving and asking for reasons. But the resilient constitutive rules that we must therefore insist on (or agree to revise when circumstances rationally warrant doing so) in order to satisfy our existential commitments include the transcendental requirements for the unity of judgement.

What makes the expression of those commitments warrant the use of the first-personal pronoun in "I think" just is the fact that we each are individually responsible for our own moves. But the "we" sometimes expressed in declarations like "We the people..." or "(We) the authors of this article..." or "We worshipers of the Great Spaghetti Monster" accomplishes the same integrative function for pragmatic/epistemic joint enterprises, where "we" share existential commitments (and we therefore wish to foreground areas of agreement rather than loci of rational dispute between members of the "we").

Why not? — Banno

I could only surmise that this is a reaction the admitted absurdity of "infinitely better" or the absence of the concept 'optimal' in place of best, given it would need to be about outcomes and optimizing outcomes seems reasonably plausible.
Still, I don't see any real issue with an open-ended, primitive spectrum of value or best-fit. Sort like metaphysics :P