Why is "unlearning self-immiserating habits" so important? — Shawn

Butting in, but isn't avoiding misery simply a good thing? If there's a discipline or hygiene or system of habits that at least reduces self-caused misery, does it need an excuse?

Could be that some philosophy is a self-immersating habit, while some of the rest is a cure for the first. Like bad music and good music, bad food and good food.

It may be a metaphysical statement which, as I've said many times, are not true or false, only useful or not. — T Clark

I like that. You almost save the word 'metaphysics' from oblivion.

Being true is what makes a statement a fact, assented to or not. — Banno

OK, I grant that. But I'd frame this as a statement about usage as opposed to a science of truth, fact, and assent. "You can safely substitute 'true statement' for 'fact' most of the time." I think of humans in the world interacting, barking and scrawling tokens. A definition is like teaching someone to put a worm on the hook. It's that practical, finally.

Maybe the difference is only attitude. We can express advice about usage successfully in the register of describing entities like facts.

One can of course propose an ideal or proper or authentic or official use of 'fact.' And that can be worthwhile.

What's your favourite thing about the Sistine chapel ceiling? That it keeps the rain out? — Bartricks

That made me smile. I think you were chastising me for valuing the wrong aspect of your posts, but you couldn't help being funny.

Thank you for addressing the example I gave. Since you claim it to be plausible, you didn’t give me much to argue against, for I too find it quite plausible. — javra

I guess I've just been impressed by some holes that have been poked in the initially plausible Cartesian framework. Not just by Wittgenstein, either, though he's an obvious reference. Ryle makes some killer arguments.

BTW, do you by “homunculus” simply intend a euphemism for “consciousness”? The little person within the total person that itself has a littler person within, and so on ad infinitum, is not something I can fathom anyone believing in.

At the moment, don’t have much interest in arguing one way or another about the reality of consciousnesses. But I thought I’d ask, since I am curious. — javra

Yeah, something like consciousness, the man in the box, etc. To me it's not about arguing for or against the existence of consciousness (which of course exists in the usual way) but blowing open certain conversational habits about this 'consciousness' stuff. I think that some seeming-deniers of consciousness are really attacking certain vague/complacent uses of the word.

In a sense. In another sense a belief is just a statement that is held to be true. BOth are fine so long as we keep one eye on which we are using. — Banno

:up:
Good point. It's like we start with a sketch, see something missing, and add to it. I'd say that no sketch will ever master/capture the complexity of the use of 'belief.' It changes as we study it (our study is part of that change.)

The wild animal metaphor is apt; for the rest, I'll await the details. — Banno

I think discussing the meaning of fact is a great path for us getting to understand one another on this theme.

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.

Facts are always provisional. — T Clark

I do like that definition as definitions go.

I'd remove 'can only be' to allow for uses of 'fact' to also be provisional. Is Gould's claim a fact? Also provisional then?

If, in general, you don't respect the quality of the thinking or writing on the forum, what are you doing here? — T Clark

Hey, T. I was just joking with you. You jumped on me, remember? Yeah, I'm ambivalent about philosophy, but so is much of philosophy itself.

Maybe that answers Athena's question - Facts don't exist. There are only beliefs. — T Clark

You posted that a moment before I made a similar point. I think it's a reason to not take such a definition of 'fact' too seriously, despite what it gets right. Definitions are a questionable enterprise anyhow.

Yep. That's the difference between facts and beliefs. Facts cannot turn out the be false. Beliefs can. — Banno

That seems like a plausible description of usage. It's a difference that makes a difference. A 'fact' is more settled. 'Belief' suggests a distance from the claim. A philosopher might be tempted to say, however, that therefore we only have beliefs and never facts. That to me would be an example of a rule-of-thumb being stretched into something less useful.

My hobbyhorse at the moment is the idea that words/meanings are like animals in the wild. We can play zoology and sketch these animals in broad strokes, but it's an empirical-interpretive activity. Since (as I think we agree) meaning is out there, it's a descriptive enterprise. (Creativity comes into play when parodying metaphysics, I guess.) On the other hand, the metaphysician will take this or that aspect of a word and make it absolute, so that a new kind of quasi-mathematical game is possible...but much more profound than math, since it scratches the religious/literary itch (somehow at no sacrifice of precision and certainty.)

My favorite thing about your posts is your jokes and insults. Seriously. That's where the artist in you can be free. Philosophy is no longer a serious matter, if it ever was.

Thx.

You seem to be riding on your own pompous hobbyhorse. — T Clark

Damn right, sir. But I'm aware of it. Are you enjoying yours? Isn't it a bit absurd to define 'fact' anonymously ?

Are toothache's immaterial? That's a confused question. An 'ache' is a sensation - it is something felt - and feelings are states of mind, not things. Minds are immaterial and feelings are states of immaterial minds. But you weren't actually asking, were you? — Bartricks

Confused question indeed. Consider it a parody of metaphysics. Is it a discovery that 'feelings are states of immaterial minds.' Who figured it out? Is there an experiment I can perform to doublecheck?

What the blue blazes are you blithering on about?? — Bartricks

Several things at once. 1. The 'private mind' theory tosses its own salad. 2. You used imaginary divisibility ('immaterial') as an indicator of the 'material. '

I don't think you need to overthink this. I don't think blind people have lesser minds than sighted. — RogueAI

Well I guess none of us need to overthink this. I take it for granted that we can all use 'mind' in everyday chitchat. 'I don't mind if you smoke.' 'Have you made up your mind?' 'Mind your manners.'
In second quote, is it the mind making itself up? So is mind self-created? Or is this a silly inference? Maybe the mind is more like a bed, since beds are also made. But then so are mobsters.

you are not less of a mind when you're not smelling anything or seeing anything.
Are you disputing this? Isn't the answer obvious? — RogueAI

To me its proposed obviousness is a hint that it's just 'grammar' (the way we tend to use the word 'mind'). What I object to is taking a vague, casual way of talking ('what's on your mind, buddy?') and trying to be scientific or serious about this 'mind' thing. In math, one really can just make up definitions and crank out theorems, but I don't think metaphysics gets anywhere.

'I am a mind.' Is this something I can check? Or is too obvious to be checkable? If so, it might be a hop-on. Or to quote another wag: when does a child discover that there are physical objects? When he gets the nipple that first time? Or as a college freshman in Philosophy 101?

Each of these examples shows how intelligence could be judged by a particular agenda. — frank

Excellent OP.

Reasoned reflection will tell you that your mind is immaterial in all manner of ways. You just have to listen to it and not decide in advance that you already know what your mind is. — Bartricks

I can somewhat understand how all these features of this proposed mind-stuff were cooked up. IMV, a casual and basically useful way of talking is transformed by philosophers into something rigid. Is a toothache immaterial? I guess one might say so, but is this science of some kind? 'Immaterial' is a negation. And yeah, intentions aren't like apples. Dreams aren't like shovels.

All material objects are divisible - which you can recognize just by thinking (material objects are extended in space - well, any region of space is capable of infinite division, and thus any and all material objects are capable of infinite division). — Bartricks

Do we all imagine 'pure' space in the same way? Who knows? If we are locked in private minds, I don't see how we could ever check. Why should imaginary pure space correspond to practical material reality? Maybe some things can't be sliced. Or maybe there is a way to slice dreams that we haven't discovered. Or maybe this is more about usage than reality.

Philosophy is about using reasoned reflection to figure out what's true (as opposed to just making stuff up or just believing whatever there's a tradition of believing). — Bartricks

I guess I agree with that. We might say 'science' or 'critical thinking' or 'rationality.' Indeed, the word 'philosophy' doesn't have the old magic. Allowing for exceptions, I'd be more inclined to trust an engineer than a philosopher on matters of fact. In some fields it's fine to be wrong...as long as you are seductively and creatively wrong. Question: would you trust the average poster here to manage your affairs? Even assuming their goodwill?

If I can offer a stubborn answer on a pet theme, it's hard to take this OP seriously. What is a fact? Could this be translated into "gimme some basic stuff about the word 'fact' for those learning English please"? Why not check the dictionary? Are anonymous strangers astride their hobbyhorses more reliable guides? I trust that writers of dictionaries are just reading and listening and distilling a highly complex phenomenon into a simple starter kit which is no replacement for immersion but in fact depends on it (since simple words are defined in terms of other simple words.)


I think of a magic trick. What will we pull from our hats?

One issue I have with Wittgenstein's claim that meaning is use is that even definitions viewed in terms of essences is, after all, use of a word to stand for a certain idea or object. I don't recall anyone attempting to clarify how Wittgenstein's theory differs in a significant way from essence-based definitions which are, bottom line, also use. — TheMadFool

I think of W as just one slap in the face among others, to wake foolosophers up from a dream. Some of his early metaphors still hold, IMO. The ladder is disposable. The evidence of something like understanding Wittgenstein is talking less silly talk. Definitions can still be useful, but they are taken far less seriously than a certain kind of philosopher might want to take them (as if they were formal definitions that might be used in a mathematical proof.). I think the big point is that meaning is out there with them not in here with me. No one cares about my 'definition' of [choose a sound-mark]. Why should they? I don't decide what 'justice' or 'knowledge' or 'science' means, though I can bark and squeak like the rest on such matters. Yeah, a few of us bark and squeak so well that others' barks and squeaks come to resemble our own stolen noises. But the main thing is to just look and listen at what's going on ('meaning is use' blah blah blah.)

Er, no. My mind is not a material thing - so it is not located in space. It is not my body. Not my brain, not my hands, not my spine. — Bartricks

Mind is not material. Black is not white. And so on. Point being that this seems more about grammar/usage than obscure immaterial entities. Wouldn't most people talk as if one's mind stayed with one's body, on a flight to Iceland perhaps? Doesn't mean they are right, or that there is such a thing as a mind, but it might be more useful than other insights about 'mind.'

There’s no point to disputing poetry. — praxis

:up:

Right, we can just critique it as hackneyed.

This seems indisputable.
....
Are you less of a mind if you're not smelling or seeing anything? That seems easy to answer: no. Do you think the answer is yes? — RogueAI

Maybe 'mind' is just a noise/mark that we use in innumerable ways. It doesn't have to correspond to some definite entity. The temptation is to understand mere arguing about appropriate usage for some kind of science of obscure entities like The Mind.

If it's not an empirical issue, it's a usage issue? Or poetry?

But I'm attracted to the idea that there is a grounding of the effects in nature that are non-representational in nature, which we can't access. A bit like trying to understand how the brain works by thinking about it.

So I entirely concede that I may be masquerading here, at least in part. — Manuel

I like the idea (which I can also make more sense of) that reality may just be too complex for us to model, that there are complicated patterns we'll miss.

What you mention above reminds me of the blindspot on the retina. Or the guy who can't find the glasses he's wearing.

Right, so it's a matter of identity. — frank

Yeah. And, side-point, it only seems 'rational' to me when we admit irrational tendencies like this. We include our bias in the model.

As one example, the pain or pleasure I might at one moment associate with a given color due to my own idiosyncratic experiences - with this color momentarily leading my thoughts to a certain outcome of affect and, in so governing my thoughts' intentionality, granting this color a momentary meaning to me - will be a fully private occurrence. That the color orange momentarily means putrid to me on grounds that it vividly reminds me of an orange I one ate that was spoiled will be a meaning of the color orange that is fully private to me. — javra

While all of this is plausible, I do suspect that the 'grammar' of the word 'private' drags us toward thinking of some mind-box with a private picture show. Then one can worry about solipsism or the thing-in-itself and so on. But we don't have to start with this Cartesian picture. Or rather we can become aware of it as an optional inheritance. The whole 'one peeping Tom homunculus per body' is just the way we've done things. One headstone per corpse. One proper name. One bearer of praise and blame (and whatever 'free will' is supposed to be beyond this.)

I suppose we can try to build language from the inside out (little souls learning to get in sync) or from the outside in ('soul' talk is a part of coordinated action talk, etc., as if of a relatively hidden variable, or a variable accessible by conversation rather than stethoscope.)

I don't find a tension in these ideas. But I do have a "metaphysical itch", so that may be why. I could imagine a different intelligent species from us being able to cognize the world in a deeper manner, perhaps perceiving more than we could, in some respects. So I don't see a problem with this idea in principle — Manuel

For me the issue is: why would the other species be seeing 'deeper' into reality? Maybe they have another sense organ, a bigger brain. I grant that they'll have a more adaptive/complex understanding. If that's all deeper means, then I withdraw my objection. For me the issue is the 'really' in the 'really know.' Or we don't 'really' know what X is despite being able to deal with X. I'm saying that this vague, hidden surplus is suspicious to me, as if it's feeling masquerading as thought.

But I imagine Wittgenstein asking, is not ‘rule’ also a word? — Joshs

An important point, easy to miss, is that W's insights double-back to subvert taking his statements about language (or yours or mine) too seriously. There will be no final sentence that gets it right in some context-independent way, not even this one. We are barking and meowing our iterable tokens. Challenged, we can only bark and meow still more tokens.

There is no such thing as a word outside of some particular use; but that is a different claim from saying, with Baker & Hacker, that words belong to a type of use. For a word to be is for a word to be used. Language does not exist external to its use by us in the world.” — Joshs

There is no such thing as a word outside of some particular use. Is this not crazy-talk? To those not in our little game here? Maybe it's useful, hard to say. I can't make rules against it. I can only worry about my own animal noises and scratch-marks. Anyway, the gist seems to be that B & H aren't radical enough. Perhaps you're right, but perhaps you and I can't be radical enough either. The trick is to stay intelligible and make case, all the while subverting that case. (To establish 'scientifically' the impossibility of a certain kind of (fantasy) science.) I remember the TLP's talk of its own nonsense. Perhaps we are breaking the first rule of Fight Club.

The writer seems particularly stuck with the idea philosophy is always worried about what foundation it does or does not have. — Antony Nickles

Ah but so many do raise the same old issues. How can I be sure? Not sure enough to act with confidence...but even surer than that somehow. Infinitely sure. What do we really know? One of the things I got from W was a suspicion about this kind of talk. There are questions which are earnestly uttered and yet eventually reveal themselves as lyrical cries. One can't even imagine the form of the answer, unless it's a hug from Jesus.

The point is that the extension or range of application of any word is a fiction, continually up for negotiation. What distinguishes the 'mathematical' from the 'ordinary' is the reasonable expectation that, however one's own utterances are interpreted (e.g. as plus or as quus), the consequent discourse will be well behaved in maintaining the distinction between distinct extensions, whatever they 'truly' are. This may or may not depend on those extensions being, like tunes, mutually exclusive. — bongo fury

:up:

As I noted earlier, however, Wittgenstein was not a mathematical Platonist, so this could be the cause of some confusion. — Luke

Right. Not a Platonist at all. A critic of Cantor's Paradise.

You draw an interesting connection here between mathematics and Platonism. I wonder if this is what Antony means by “mathematical” in the thread title. — Luke

I speculated that Antony meant something like that. In any case, I've sometimes thought of the later W as trying to wake philosophers up from the language-is-math fantasy. If language was like math , then the philosopher could crank out profound theorems (with perfect certainty and clarity) about Reality and the Metaphysical Subject and Genuine Knowledge. Probably the essence at least of the Future could be inferred, and we'd be essentially free from humiliating surprises. I'm not sure that anti-philosophy evades this temptation, and perhaps it simply continues the quest ironically. (I can't help feeling I've learned something from W and others like him about reality, something of durable value.)

In short, a language does not strictly exist in my head, no. Yet meaning - or, what is intended via symbols - does. — javra

Hi. If I may interrupt, I think we tend to use 'meaning' in a way that suggests that it's attached to a person. 'I said ketchup, but I meant mustard.' It reminds me of W's talk of toothaches. It's the 'grammar' of our language that 'toothaches' and 'intentions' are (as if) private entities. But I think that it ('meaning') nevertheless boils down the social. How could I learn what an 'intention' is without interacting with others? Even if you postulated some internal-private machinery that's just there, we'd still have the issue of how certain tokens get attached to these entities. And we'd also have the question (one of many like it) of how we could know that we all have the same internal machinery (is my green your green?). What tempts us to put meaning-language mostly (if not entirely) in the head...when it can only be made sense of as part of a social world?

It would be interesting to be able to have knowledge of the actual thing or phenomena that produces these effects in us, that is, what grounds the effects that we perceive as laws of nature or even ordinary perception. — Manuel

I confess that I find the idea of the 'actual thing' problematic.

There was a time in which this was the aim of science, roughly Descartes' time up until Newton. The Universe was comprehended as a universal machine - like a giant clock - if you can build it, you can understand it. It appears to be our innate way of understanding our given common sense world. — Manuel

In the above I find (correctly or not) two different ideas. First there's the 'actual thing' (which I can't make sense of, ultimately) and then there's 'you can understand it iff you can build it' (which I agree with.) The first idea expresses the metaphysical itch. The second is more pragmatic. Do you not find some tension between these ideas?

Thus science was forced to reduce it aims: from understanding the world to understanding theories of the world. That type of knowledge Descartes and others wanted, would be nice to be able to access. But is beyond our comprehension. — Manuel

How about the 'reduced' aim of better technology? And perhaps it's only 'beyond our comprehension' in the sense that we don't know what we are even looking for (or, really, I'd say it's a feeling that folks are looking for in metaphysics.)

I think you are missing my point. Consider my question: what kind of knowledge beyond the usual, practical stuff do you (or others) have in mind in the first place? What form would an acceptable answer have?

I ask because the talk of 'really' knowing gestures toward something vague and unworldly. The best way that I can see to figure out what we are talking about is to look at what we do while we are talking as we talk. For instance, certainty is manifest in (or simply 'is'?) carefree, confident action. Knowledge is manifest in (or 'is') the control and prediction of one's environment. So what is the 'real' gravity or magnetism 'under' our current successful application? Maybe the 'thing' isn't 'under' the phenomena like a blanket but more like a useful pattern we find in them (and which allows us to see them in a certain light to begin with.)

But when you go to observe clouds and rocks, don't you think you might be influenced by your worldview? If you saw an indication of intelligence in rocks, wouldn't you speed to explain that away? — frank

:up:

While I don't see much intelligence in rocks and clouds, I think you are right to acknowledge the role that interpretive habit has on my not finding it. There's also the obvious relationship with self-image. 'I'm not one of those flaky types.' Or 'I'm not one of those closed-minded science-worshippers.'

The essay we are debating is in Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome. — Antony Nickles

I tried to find an online copy but found only a review. What do you make of this?

Pursuing a theme that will be familiar to readers of Cavell's earlier writing, he does not dispute the skeptic's claim that rules lack absolute grounds but laments the skeptic's cure. The cure, associated with Kripke, strips rules of their pretense of resting on an independent reality but then restores a demystified, antifoundationalist version of rules in which they ground themselves not in truth but in consent. Cavell claims that skepticism rejects one justification of conformity to existing rules only to endorse a more sustainable conformity. Skepticism, in this light, encourages conformity to community consensus. This argument about the politics of antifoundationalism should prompt further discussion of the links between liberalism's antifoundationalist update and the ongoing crisis of conformity in US democracy.

https://www.academia.edu/45638569/Review_of_Stanley_Cavells_Conditions_Handsome_and_Unhandsome

The comments on 'skepticism' (is that really a good word for it?) remind me of old critiques of OLP, that it was stifling and conformist. 'My' practical (semantic) 'skeptic' isn't sure what 'absolute grounds' are even supposed to be, if not something like God's voice and the threat of Hellfire or the brutally simple addition algorithm.

So ask a simple question: "what is gravity?", "what is a particle?", "what is magnetism?". The answers given are only the effects we can perceive of the phenomena. As to what these things are, we don't know. — Manuel

I agree with a point I think you are trying to make, but still: what kind of knowledge beyond the usual, practical stuff do you (or others) have in mind in the first place? What form would an acceptable answer have?

"[G]ravity, also called gravitation, in mechanics, the universal force of attraction acting between all matter." https://www.britannica.com/science/gravity-physics

So then we can ask what 'force' means and so on. What anchors this network of words if not our work in the world? Is there a vague longing for something more than 'knowing' how to build a bridge, set a broken bone, etc.?

In some ways, I think that knowledge is socially constructed and is not absolute. — Jack Cummins

But what if the vague notion of the 'absolute' is one more social construction? It sounds like God, and perhaps the vague idea of knowledge-beyond-utility or knowledge-beyond-social-construction serves the same purpose. A cynic might call it a philosopher's self-flattery. It's tinged with unworldliness. Those who build and run the machines of the world don't 'really' know anything. But (they might answer, if they could find the time and cared to join in a questionable game) it seems that philosophers don't 'really' know what it means to 'really' know something.

its meaning is unambiguous in the given context and situation. — Cidat

Some questions occur to me.

How do we judge whether something is sufficiently unambiguous? In general I think we rely on practical criteria. We are simply satisfied or not with the results of talking-acting together in a context.

You ask:

Are there things we can’t describe with the English language?

I'm tempted to joke with you and ask for an example. Does it make sense that there's a proper answer to this question? IMV, a simple yes/no answer would be useful, and the justifications for either yes or no might be illuminating or amusing. Can God make a stone he can't lift?

Excellent quote.

...the idea that our mastery of the use of the word ‘chair’ consists in knowledge of a rule that settles the truth-value of ‘There is a chair’ in every conceivable circumstance is confused... — Baker and Hacker, exegesis of PI 80

The 'confused' idea here seems founded on 'mathematical' fantasy of how language works. 'God' knows exactly what 'chair' and 'is' and 'there' mean (semantic Platonism.) So 'there is a chair' always has a proper-official-authentic meaning, which the Philosopher can sort out for us. Meanwhile, in the real world...

Obligatory plug for David Lewis's Convention: either side of the road is an equilibrium, a stable solution to the coordination problem. — Srap Tasmaner

:up: