How is deciding the meaning of a concept like define related to deciding such legitimacy ? — plaque flag

It's the same thing?

Note the lower textual location in B only, this in reference to understanding, whereas the other quotes with higher textual locations, refer to pure reason’s dogmatic use, and is found in both editions.

Of course definitions have a place, if only in justifications for a method. — Mww

To argue that Kant believes that definitions have a place it’s clearer to just stick with the Transcendental Doctrine of Method, where he makes an exception for defining “concepts thought by choice” (invention), which I take to be stipulative definitions. And he uses these definitions at the beginning of certain sections of the CPR, e.g., “By synthesis, in the most general sense of the term, I mean the act of putting various presentations with one anotherl and of comprising their manifoldness in one cognition.”

Kant and I are setting aside stipulation as something quite different from the central issue here (though I’m not saying that this stipulation cannot be called a kind of definition).

Well yes, I made that point in the OP, and not only by quoting Kant. I also admitted that the title overstated the case. However, you did alert me to the fact that my central thesis also contradicted Kant, so thanks for that. Here’s the new version:

A definition of a philosophical concept might be required at the beginning of a discussion only in the case that the term is equivocal.

:up:

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. The killing of an old man, if such killing had a name, would be just as significant.

So, in general, I think that we most of the time, have a decent idea or notion of what we want to communicate. The failure of communication has more to do with the ideas behind the words, than the words themselves. So, I'm inclined to agree that philosophy shouldn't be primarily about definitions, though these can help. — Manuel

I agree, but I’m putting it more strongly: they can help, but they can also positively hinder.

The first is one I've expressed here often - many, I would say most, of the frustrating, fruitless discussions we have here on the forum start out with disagreements about the meaning of words and then never make any progress toward actually dealing with any interesting philosophical issues. — T Clark

It’s not clear to me whether this situation is the result of a lack of definitions, or an excessive focus on definitions. Perhaps you answer that when you go on to say…

I don't disagree that discussions where we work out among ourselves what particular terms mean are valuable. I have started a few discussions for that purpose - What does "mysticism" mean; What does "consciousness" mean; What does "real" mean. They were among the more satisfying discussions I've participated in. — T Clark

The unfolding of a concept in discussion :up:

On the other hand, I often start discussions about specific issues I want to examine, often something to do with metaphysics. In my OPs I often make it clear exactly what I intend the meaning of specific words are for the purposes of that particular discussion. Then I obnoxiously and legalistically defend that position, sometimes asking moderators to help. I do that because I want to talk about a specific concept or subject and I don't want to argue about what "metaphysics" really means. If I don't make those kinds of requirements, the thread will just turn into an argument about something I'm not interested in. — T Clark

I understand. This looks like stipulative definition, which I was mostly ignoring, treating it as something separate. Kant himself, though he says in those quoted passages that in philosophy you can’t start from definitions, clearly makes an exception in the case of stipulating how a term is to be used in his own work. E.g., “By synthesis, in the most general sense of the term, I mean the act of putting various presentations with one anotherl and of comprising their manifoldness in one cognition.” So the aim here is to be clear and open about a technical or provisionally restricted use of a term, because there is a particular argument you want to make.

Or maybe what you’re referring to is the exception in my main thesis, those times when a term is so ambiguous that you need to prevent confusion with a clear statement that this, not that, is what you mean.

Skill looks like the right focus here. Inspired by Brandom and others, I think of applying concepts as a skilled labor, mostly inarticulate cando knowhow, manifesting sensitivity to and respect for the discursive norms we are always already thrown into, which make asking for definitions or after their value possible to begin with.

In my view, it's helpful to emphasize the larger context in which definitions matter. We make and evaluate claims about the world, including what we should do within in it, as part of a community. I claim that it's only because they are used in claims that concepts matter. — plaque flag

Seems reasonable.

From a 'Hegelian' perspective, concepts are always in flux, slowly drifting. We change the object being clarified (language) as we use it to articulate its own character. — plaque flag

Yes, I suppose Hegel is the next step here for me. The thing that bothers me about Hegel, and sometimes Adorno too, is the reluctance not only to give definitions—which is justified—but also the reluctance to give examples. Examples are looked down upon by several philosophers, but they’re often what allow me to first get ahold of a concept, and relevantly here, they are part of how we get by without definitions.

Beautiful metaphor ! Making It Explicit. If we named global Geistware Shakespeare, we can name the philosophical module Hegel, in honor of someone who made making it explicit explicit to itself. 'Hegel' is that part of spirit (cultural software) which articulates the character of articulation itself. — plaque flag

Very nice :grin:

The reminds me of discussions of genesis versus structure. That concepts are open make genesis possible. As individuals we can get lucky with a new metaphor which gets adopted becomes relatively literal, hardens like cooling wax. Or we can add to the machinery of metacognition by seeing that maybe the inferential relationships of claims are what make concepts within such claims meaningful, etc. — plaque flag

Nicely put.

I just wanna provide pushback on this linear definition->theorem->proof characterisation of mathematics. As Lakatos highlights in Proofs and Refutations, the concept of "Eulerian polyhedron" was redefined repeatedly over mathematical history to avoid cases which obviously weren't Eulerian polygons. Even in mathematics, a definition is an attempt to explicate a concept, which can be revised if it is insufficient. — fdrake

That’s interesting. I hadn’t even thought to question Kant on that. I suppose then that when he says in the same section that “Mathematical definitions never err,” he’s wrong?

But here’s the full passage:

Mathematical definitions can never err. For since the concept is first given through the definition, it contains exactly just what the definition wants us to think through the concept. But although there cannot occur in the concept anything incorrect in content, sometimes–although only rarely–there may still be a defect in the form (the guise) of the concept, viz., as regards its precision. — Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B759

I wonder if that covers it.

Otherwise I agree.

As an Indirect Realist, I agree with everything you wrote in your post. It is interesting that you used Kant, in today's terms an Indirect Realist, to support your case.

Kant discussed "Existence", in that there are things-in-themselves, "Humility", in that we know nothing of things-in-themselves and "Affectation", in that things -in-themselves causally affect us. Kant's concept of a thing-in-itself is not that of a Direct Realist. — RussellA

There is debate among modern interpreters over whether Kant is an indirect realist, but it is not concerned with the distinction of objects and things in themselves. The latter is a limit concept concerning artifacts of reason (noumena) that purport to refer to objects about which, in actual fact, nothing can be said. For Kant, the noumenal realm is not reality, since it is merely a product of reason. Rather, reality is that which we know about through experience and science. The clue to this is that reality for Kant is one of the categories of the understanding, thus it can only apply to phenomena.

So the question about Kant's direct or indirect realism is about how he regards spatiotemporal objects as being perceived and how he thinks we can gain knowledge about them, and in this realm--the only one in which direct and indirect realism have any meaning--I'd say he is a direct realist. He explicitly states that we perceive the external world "immediately," and what he calls representations constitute the perception and determination of objects, rather than standing in for them as images or constructions. We have awareness of objects not through anything like an inference from or construction of an internal image, but through an act of synthesis that puts the objects directly before us.

Now, what I'm saying might be seen as tendentiously pedantic (as if I'm desperate to get Kant on my side). And yes, the fact is that Kant does still split the world in two, or at least divide the world into two aspects (phenomena and noumena, appearance and thing-in-itself). And yes, he does use "realism" to refer to claims that we can know things in themselves (transcendental realism, as opposed to empirical realism). But the reason I think it's significant and the reason I tend to jump in and pounce on people about it is that, as in many other areas, I think he had correct intuitions (no pun intended) about perception. Also just because Kant is so much deeper and richer than the thing-in-itself stuff suggests (although I still think he's fundamentally wrong).

Kant is not really concerned about the question of appearance vs reality, because reality, as far as it could logically be open to us, is knowable through direct perception, experience, mathematics, and science.

It goes back to @plaque flag’s question, which I don’t think you answered (you simply denied the antecedent of the hypothetical). I’ll ask it again but I’ll put it differently: if evolution was a blind watchmaker, would that render the world meaningless for you? Would that remove all reasons for ethical and responsible behaviour or for enjoying life?

I think it’s an important question because it seems to me that setting life’s meaning on the foundation of something either external to/higher than life or else something in the actual workings of evolution itself, is an idea more harmful than the Dennett-Dawkins view of evolution.

I’m not saying that the gene-centred view of evolution is right or that teleology is merely a convenient fiction. I’m not saying that science isn’t significantly infected with Cartesian mechanism and dualism. These issues are interesting, but they’re not really germane to my point. I just wonder how strong one’s dedication to meaning in life can be if it depends either on biological theory or cosmic purpose. It also seems somewhat inconsistent to me to expect a determinate connection or mapping between biological theory (empirical reality) and cosmic purpose (transcendent truth). But my main criticism is of the idea that meaning depends on something transcendent. Why can’t it be immanent in our species—in our families, society, and history? What would be wrong with that?

Yes, but in the post I replied to you implied that it was the denial of cosmic purpose that was evil, or that the only alternative to cosmic purpose is the evil ideology of Dennett-Dawkins “scientific rationalism”.

You launched a provocative polemic so it deserved a response.

Maybe clearer for you like this:

However, the idea that if one doesn’t accept that this is somehow reflected in the cosmos at large and one doesn’t believe evolution has a purpose, then one is in thrall to an evil ideology--that is a profound untruth

I think what I said is a clear response to what I just quoted from your post:

I see enlightenment (not in the sense of the European enlightenment and scientific rationalism) as having cosmic significance, that the Cosmos comes to understand horizons of being that could never be revealed otherwise, through living beings such as ourselves, and that is what the higher religions reflect, although often poorly. So, no, I don't believe we are products of the Dawkins/Dennett dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker. I believe it's an evil ideology masquerading as liberalism. — Wayfarer

However, the idea that if you don't accept that this is somehow reflected in the cosmos at large and you don't believe evolution has a purpose, then you're in thrall to an evil ideology--that is a profound untruth. — Jamal

Apart from the possibility that I misrepresented your view, I don’t know how to say it clearer.

It's just my rough summary of the views you expressed in the post I was referring to:

I see enlightenment (not in the sense of the European enlightenment and scientific rationalism) as having cosmic significance, that the Cosmos comes to understand horizons of being that could never be revealed otherwise, through living beings such as ourselves, and that is what the higher religions reflect, although often poorly. So, no, I don't believe we are products of the Dawkins/Dennett dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker. I believe it's an evil ideology masquerading as liberalism. — Wayfarer

Since this is quite vague, it's possible I misrepresented you, but I think I wasn't far off.

I don't want to defend this or that religious institution but I'm not atheist - my view is that the falsehoods of religions arise from distortions of an originally profound truth — Wayfarer

I agree with this bit. I think the profound truth is that human beings are special and that some things are sacred.

However, the idea that if you don't accept that this is somehow reflected in the cosmos at large and you don't believe evolution has a purpose, then you're in thrall to an evil ideology--that is a profound untruth.

Sometimes it’s obvious. For example, @javi2541997 hardly needs to mention that he’s reading Fiscal Reform and its Firm-Level Effects in Eastern Europe and Central Asia for sheer pleasure.

But seriously, I quite like that people are free to post here however they like, though I guess it would be nice if they said a bit more. Some do. When they don’t it’s cool.

More lectures by Adorno: An Introduction to Dialectics.

Looks like a great topic but I think I’d have to divert my reading plans to contribute adequately (or even inadequately).

On Certainty — plaque flag

And that reminds me of this:

The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says — Wilfrid Sellars

But now I’ve probably veered off topic, not only from this thread and your comments, but from myself.

So do I, and, for basically the same reason, I also dispute the purely or only mental — plaque flag

They’re both nothing-but-isms. And since idealism is the original nothing-but-ism, and the physical is a concept, physicalism might also be described as a form of idealism. It’s a hasty projection of an ideal concept onto reality.

I apologize. That was not my intention; I was only trying to make the same distinction as above: to separate personal conviction from general perception, professional analysis and political platform. Those perspective strike me as each markedly at variance with the others. — Vera Mont

No worries, I see where you’re coming from better now :cool:

You raise interesting questions that revolve around nationalism. I think there is definitely a tension between the modern nation-state and individual conservatism (and traditional conservatism, the philosophical position). The nation-state was in many ways, at least in some places, a liberal and ideological project, and thus not something that conservatives should have been very happy about. If conservatives as representing the -ism of conservatism were able to recalibrate their political positions and take the liberal nation-state as the new status quo, that doesn’t necessarily mean ordinary conservative people did the same.

And yet, they did: the First World War was initially hugely popular, for example, and nationalism, even aggressive adventurous nationalism, has at times been associated with conservatives.

But if it’s true that conservatism is supremely adaptable and anti-doctrinal, lacking in dogma, perhaps this actually frees it to be inconsistent and sometimes embrace dogmas as and when it suits them.

I think it depends on each state we are talking about — javi2541997

Yes indeed, and this is an example of the relativism of conservatism. Conservatisms in different places and different times don’t share much beyond their basic defence of the status quo, whatever that status quo is. It’s interesting to think that conservatism is historically and geographically relative even though conservatives often complain about relativism.

Is that an inconsistency or are they just different kinds of relativism? I think it’s probably an inconsistency, sort of: you cannot, qua representative of conservatism, uphold values as absolute if conservatism in different times and places has defended different, opposing values.

If none of that makes sense it’s because I’m thinking on the fly.

But I wasn't asking about books or philosophers — Vera Mont

I really find this attitude needlessly combative. I wrote what I though about, pretty much off the top of my head, in response to your questions, and because I don’t have all the answers to those questions I figured it might be a contribution to the discussion to mention the philosophers who can help answer them. That you didn’t want replies to mention philosophers or books—this is weird to me but fair enough—is of no concern to me. Just ignore that stuff if you’re not interested.

Thank you — Vera Mont

You’re welcome, but the bit that came after that is crucial.

At least, that was the formula used by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher — javi2541997

They represented a departure from conservatism, and some conservatives doubt that they were conservative at all. Thatcher was a radical. She rocked the boat. The conservatives went along with it, because conservatism is adaptable and she was not threatening many of their interests, even though she was not really a friend of the aristocracy.

Conservatives created the first welfare state and were quite happy to go along with a mixed economy in the UK from the end of the Second World War until Thatcher.

Conservatism is not essentially pro-free-market, but this might be because it has little in the way of essence—it defends hierarchy and power, and that takes different forms. Traditionally, conservatives are pragmatic, not doctrinal.

Generally, what you are describing is the popular, very modern use of the term “conservatism”, but because it is also a political philosophy that’s a couple of centuries old, one which is still influential, it’s worth looking at that too. Vera’s questions pertain to the discrepancies between the two.

Someone mentioned Roger Scruton. He was one of the most prominent conservative philosophers until he died recently, following on from Michael Oakeshott and going back ultimately to Edmund Burke. I see this as the main conservative tradition and the modern use of the term as hopelessly confused. There must be a book about what has happened to conservatism in the past fifty years, and no doubt it’s a strange and interesting story. And unfortunately I can’t just say that what is referred to now as conservatism has absolutely nothing to do with conservatism—it’s more complicated than that.

The SEP article might help sort out some of the confusing uses of the word:

It is contested both what conservatism is, and what it could or ought to be—both among the public and politicians, and among the philosophers and political theorists that this article focuses on. Popularly, “conservative” is a generic term for “right-wing viewpoint occupying the political spectrum between liberalism and fascism”. Philosophical commentators offer a more distinctive characterisation. Many treat it as a standpoint that is sceptical of abstract reasoning in politics, and that appeals instead to living tradition, allowing for the possibility of limited political reform. On this view, conservatism is neither dogmatic reaction, nor the right-wing radicalism of Margaret Thatcher or contemporary American “neo-conservatives”. — Conservatism, SEP

On neoliberalism, libertarianism, etc:

Conservatism is popularly conflated with neo-conservatism and with libertarianism. But right libertarians and neo-conservatives, unlike Burkean conservatives, reject state planning for doctrinaire reasons. Making anti-planning into a principle, or economic liberalism into an ideology, offends the conservative’s pragmatic, sceptical temper, which could admit a role for state planning and economic intervention were such things shown to be effective. Conservatives reject ideologies, of which neo-liberalism is one. — Conservatism, SEP

For me, if there is a core of conservatism it’s a basic suspicion of Utopianism and of the idea of the “perfectibility of man”; a resultant pragmatic attitude to politics that aims to maintain a harmonious community in which change happens only slowly and organically on the basis of experience rather than on the basis of doctrines and principles. Of course, this is to represent it in its best light, according to its self-image, and I can also describe it differently: a pragmatic attitude to politics that aims to maintain traditional hierarchies and relations of power, which are regarded as natural. This last point is crucial I think: class and war and inequality are naturalized in conservatism, and particular social formations dehistoricized.

I didn't say I have problems with notifications in general. I referred only to private messages. — Alkis Piskas

Yes, I understand.

I have asked javi2541997 about the same thing today and he told me, I quote, "TPF didn't notify me about your reply either." — Alkis Piskas

So that’s at least two people. I guess I’ll need to have a look!

Well I don’t know why you’ve had problems receiving email notifications. If someone else confirms they’re having the same problem I’ll look into it and try to fix it, otherwise I’m thinking it’s something wrong on your side.

BTW, I found out today from a TPF member that it is you who has set up this place. Congratulations! — Alkis Piskas

Thanks AP :smile:

Mind-independence and indirectness, as concepts, have so far been my target as bothersome notions -- the former because we don't know enough about minds to know either way, and the latter because it seems to posit some kind of ultimate reality that we are approximating towards which is similar to the problem of mind-independence in that since it cannot be known we cannot know we are approximating towards that reality, and therefore we have no reason to claim our knowledge has any relation at all to that notion. It functions like a thing-in-itself. — Moliere

I admire the way you’ve combined topics that I primitively tend to compartmentalize.

When it comes to direct vs indirect realism, sometimes discussions focus on direct/indirect (I tend to be more interested in that), and other times on realism/anti-realism (@Banno seems to focus on that). This is why I tend to talk about direct perception rather than, or more often than, direct realism. It means I can talk about embodiment, affordances, and so on, without worrying too much about ultimate reality or mind-independence, which are bothersome topics.

seems a great segue back to the CPR which I also want to revisit — Pantagruel

I am toying with the idea of doing a CPR reading group here on TPF. I’ve read it once but feel I didn’t really crack it.

That’s a big project though.

As the issue at hand is the role of the observer in the construction of reality, then the assertion of a reality that is 'bigger than the observers' begs the question - it assumes what needs to be shown. — Wayfarer

Fair point, but since I wasn’t trying to show that there is such a reality, this might be a slightly unfair accusation. When I said that idealism is parasitic on the real, it was semi-rhetorical; I perhaps could have said, more boringly, that idealism is parasitic on that which is contingent and transient, which I happen to believe is the reality that is bigger than us. So Kantian-style idealism cannot thereby escape the accusation that it secretly depends on empirical facts--actual people and actual society--to ground its supposedly foundational pure a priori concepts, i.e., its posited transcendentally subjective conditions for objective reality. Since empirical facts are what this idealism is supposed to be explaining with these conceptual conditions, I'm effectively accusing idealism of question-begging.

In a nutshell I'm arguing that the subjective route to the objective, as exemplified by Kant and Schopenhauer, and more loosely other kinds of idealism that seek foundations in some pure and necessary universality removed from the quotidian chaos, are more grounded in empirical contingency than they think. This argument does not rest on realism, though it's motivated by it.

(that's more or less straight out of Schopenhauer) — Wayfarer

And mine is straight out of of Adorno :grin:

However, it's interesting that Adorno's attitude differs from my own instinctive sympathies in that he is keen not to just join the realists against the idealists, while at the same time also criticizing idealism. This is to do with his basically dialectical approach to everything, where opposite poles are mutually dependent, and both idealism and realism are somehow true. Maybe.

But I’m probably some way off-topic here; I haven’t read up on Hoffman.

I think the later Wittgenstein is pretty close to the early Heidegger. Lee Braver's Groundless Grounds makes a case for this — plaque flag

Yes, I was thinking about that. I read it years ago.

I am certainly not arguing it is impossible to communicate them but it is difficult. The examples I have given is a sighted person who doesn't dream in images like me and My mother who hasn't had a headache. They can use the words "dream" and "headache" without referring to the same thing. — Andrew4Handel

Here you say it’s difficult to communicate one’s experience, but as support for this you give the fact that your mother can talk about experiences she hasn’t had. I would think this shows rather that the barriers to communication in these cases are not too high at all.

I haven’t read Heidegger. There was a time when I was very attracted to his early thought and I’d planned to read it, but lately I’ve been swayed by Adorno’s rather scornful criticism. But I see what you mean with respect to the observer. However, I think that aspect of Heidegger is shared among a few other twentieth century thinkers.

And who are these people just sitting around observing all the time? Why are they the paradigmatic subjects when others are busy doing stuff?

You say “only within which [a point of view] any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful”, and I can equally say that only within a community of speakers is any such statement meaningful, and further, only within such a community does your observer even exist. — Jamal

Incidentally, epistemology steps in here to say it’s only from a in my single point of view that I can find any secure knowledge, the “community of speakers” being relatively uncertain. But that’s just the Cartesian mistake, based on a presumed gulf between inner and outer and the choice to begin with the former.

Actually that’s a lie, I’ve read his Philosophy of History.

The “universal form of subjectivity” is Kantian.

That's more or less straightforward Hegelianism, isn't it? — Wayfarer

Not that I know of. I haven’t read Hegel. How so?

You mean, the reality that exists in the absence of any observers, right? — Wayfarer

I mean the reality that the observers are part of and that is bigger than them.

What the observer brings to experience is a perspective, a point of view, only within which any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful. Realism forgets the subject and seeks only explanations and fundamental causes which are inherent in the objective domain. But that is impossible, as the very source of that order is the mind of the observer (that's more or less straight out of Schopenhauer). — Wayfarer

And like all idealism his philosophy is saturated with what he is trying to ground through subjectivity: the objective world, language, and society. When philosophers talk about the “I”, they presuppose the “we”, because they do not mean a single empirical subject but the universal form of subjectivity, an idea that assumes its instantiation in a plurality of individuals, i.e., society. When you say “the observer”, who are you talking about? I think you’re talking not only about yourself but about lots of other actual people. Or rather, you secretly or unknowingly abstract away from lots of other actual subjects to the pure form of subjectivity.

That is to say, idealism is parasitic on the real. Both idealists and realists begin with the objective world, that which is not encompassed by the mind, but idealists don’t realize it.

You say “only within which [a point of view] any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful”, and I can equally say that only within a community of speakers is any such statement meaningful, and further, only within such a community does your observer even exist.

In the second half of the course, starting around lecture 10, he begins to build an elaborate argument, based on the CPR, against all idealism and all philosophy that seeks a ground of being or knowledge, and for dialectics. It’s rich stuff, though unexpected for an introductory course. It turns out he was doing immanent critique all along.

I’m currently at lecture 15 and eager to see where he goes next. I would honestly be pissed off if someone spoiled the ending for me.

Take your time. If it doesn’t appear for another five years, I can live with that. We’re all just excited about it.