Would there be no central government at all then? It has been stated earlier, and I read it in The Conquest of Bread yesterday, that there would still be federation between these small groups. As such how would that happen? — unimportant

In the ideal there would be no central government at all. Federations could exist in various ways but they wouldn't be run by officers who are elected to the position for a set term, but rather it would just be someone's job to serve as a communication network.

So in our municipalities you have some representative that you can appeal to in the event that you have some political interest in the business of the city. Were a city run anarchically rather than going to a representative who would then bring whatever case they deem worthy of bringing before the officers of the city you would bring the proposal to the decision making body, and you would advocate for it.

The extremely exciting part of this is learning parliametary procedure through the thrilling epic known as Robert's Rules of Order, in terms of a practical blueprint for making collective decisions.

Basically there wouldn't be representatives, and what representatives do in our society would be all of our responsibility. How we go about that will be up to us, but there are previous ways of collective debate we can riff from and modify to suit the needs of a particular collective.

Also, I tried starting ND today.

I can see what you mean @Jamal about how the difficulty has gone up a few notches. I've had to reread several sentences just due to the sheer number of pronouns, and the parts that I've understood so far are only because we've gone over them in the lectures prior -- so I'm glad we started with something to at least give me some footholds into the material!

You have a talent for concision. :up: — Jamal

Thanks :)

I find myself conflicted often with his various remarks on happiness, and ideology, and especially the use of the term "bleating" -- reminds me of Nietzsche's disdain for the herd.

There's part of me that agrees a lot with him on happiness in that there is nothing shallow or deep about happiness -- but I'd say the same of suffering and melancholy and pain. And I like his approach because I get the sense that the essence of something comes forth through this back-and-forth process -- but there's still this element of desire as a lack that I generally think is a common but wrong way to think on happiness since I don't think happiness is something that even can be fulfilled or pursued so much as worked towards by stopping doing what we think will make us happy and starting doing what will actually make us happy. But that's not as tragic as Adorno's philosophy :D

:up: Sounds good. You got outvoted @hypericin :D

I will submit something. I suggest we post them to the main forum, maybe with a prefix like [PF Essay]. They are topical, after all! — hypericin

The plan as I understand it is to post them in the Phil. Writing Activity 2025 subforum, whose contents appear on the front page. I'm good with adding a PF Essay tag in addition to the title of the paper so that it's easily discernable without clicking on the sub-forum, though clicking on the sub-forum ought to filter out for the essays alone if that's what someone wants to focus on.

It's a good line. I hadn't heard it before. And it's good to set against the impression that anarchism is ... kinda boring. — Jamal

:rofl:

Hey, I don't know what's wrong with the rest of the world but reading old translations of 150 year old political theory is :fire: -- keeps me up all night.

Easy. The whole thing says that for a closed system, the system (described by one wave function) evolves according to the Schrodinger equation, which is a fully deterministic equation.

Non-deterministic interpretations involve what Einstein apparently detested: the rolling of dice. A good deal of interpretations involve this. — noAxioms

Yes -- but maybe Einstein was wrong.

Is the whole universe rightly described as a closed system?

With all due respect, you are ignorant of anything else as far as first hand experience. And that is a fact. — Outlander

So how can you claim:

5,000 years of recorded human history where wars are waged and the stronger or larger force takes and destroys from the weaker or smaller force is an "assumption?" — Outlander

Unless you have first hand experience of 5000 years? Or is recorded history enough?

Something I found interesting in this lecture is the connection of speculation to depth, and thereby speculation to the appearance/essence distinction. Part of me wonders if it is better to read it as "essence" since he makes the remark about how Marx was enough of a Hegelian to maintain essence in his philosophy, but I'm not sure. Either way I can see avoiding debates on essentialism is a good idea :D -- I'm just thinking out loud on how to interpret him.

So a quick summary as I understand it: Philosophy is resistance to the facts as they appear. It engages in speculation in order to probe the depths of the phenomena, and while Adorno emphasizes that this is never a complete process it's something that philosophy must do in order to obtain depth, or even be a worthwhile philosophy. He makes some notes about how there's a false depth which is bound up with suffering such that expressions of happiness are taken as a mark of shallowness, and Adorno notes how this is to miss depth for what depth is about. Depth expresses human suffering rather than says "I am suffering, so I am wise" -- analogy to the artists who give impressions, and thereby were more metaphysical painters than the ones who painted explicit scenes of people "touching the source".

:up: Cool.

Just wanted to make sure it's a bit of an analogy to the Big Picture -- something like a negotiated middle for people trying to do anarchist things in a world dominated by states.

:up:

Yup. That's one way to think on it. Though one can be part of a housing or grocery co-op without being an anarchist, of course, these are some real examples that give an idea of how it works. (for instance, a co-op could be owned by everyone but still run on hierarchical principles of hiring workers that work for the co-op, which would be a hierarchical social relationship and so not really in accord with the whole idea)

After I'm done with this lecture I'm going to skim over Adorno's notes for lectures 11-25 and bring things up here if I find them interesting. What I won't be doing do is reading "The Theory of Intellectual Experience," which is printed first alongside the notes to lectures 11-25, and then in full in an Appendix, because this is just the introduction to ND, and we'll be coming to that very soon. — Jamal

Cool.

It was my understanding that we'd be switching over to ND after Lecture 10.

Trade unions organize the workers at a place not owned by the workers, whereas a workers collective owns the place and runs it in accord with whatever decision-making process they set up.

Though you could also have a union-collective -- a union run in accord with those same principles, rather than the usual method of organization.

I would be terrified if the lowest common denominator were making decisions. Look at the Trump situation.

Then again maybe if it was on a smaller scale it would not be like that? For example like decision making in small towns rather than the lumbering hive mind you might see on a place like reddit. — unimportant

Yeah, think of it like a municipality -- but rather than voting on representatives to vote for what to do everyone represents themselves and can speak on what to do. I've heard this described as the "spokes and wheel" model of organization: where working groups are organized in accord with a central working group which deals with communications between working groups.

Or, if you'd like, think of it as a team at your workplace -- but rather than having a boss all the workers set the rules for the workplace. This would be a workers collective.

But, really, I'd emphasize doing some of the readings rather than listening to me. You'll get ideas of your own that way and the theorists explain themselves in better detail than these little maps I'm trying to make :)

Maybe in an anarchist state you would not longer have such idiots which is just a product of the diseased capitalist system. Not that I am proposing an old boy's club either but how does one ward against the least qualified person having as much say as the most qualified?

You don't. The premise is that everyone has not just the opportunity to grow, but everyone is fundamentally equal in a political manner.

Example an anti-science climate change denier having as much say on policy as a career climate scientist?

Isn't this the case in our present day democracies?

What keeps them in check there is that there are representatives which do the voting for them, and there's a decision-making process in place that is democratic.

The anarchist wouldn't want to deprive the idiot of their rights -- generally speaking anarchists have a generally optimistic view of human nature, and given time the idiot will either prove the collective wrong or will come around to seeing that it was right or will move onto another collective.

Heh, yeah we don't need to simplify to that point. I think we basically agree -- I was just peeved you'd say that no one would ever say such and such, and so asked you to provide something similar that might be better. But it's no worries now, and it doesn't really matter.

how do anarchists propose to manage things like law enforcement, healthcare and the like if there is no government or is there government just only local government so it would be just all grass roots, cottage industry type of companies locally for all human public services? — unimportant

Different ways, depending on the particular anarchist you're talking to. Some general themes that emerge are an emphasis on horizontal decision making and a minimization of hierarchies in our day-to-day decisions. The basic unit of society for an anarchist is the collective, in terms of the day-to-day(individuals are just as important in this notion of collective -- there's a unity between the two such that the individual is respected within the collective). One joins a collective and shares the benefits of cooperation with its members while negotaiting with other collectives. Some collectives proposed are industrial-wide unions ran on syndicalist lines, some collectives are worker or housing coops, some are political working groups, some are bikeshares, some are childcare shares....

A major difference between how our world operates and that world operates is that there's not really a person in charge which takes on the responsibility for a task. It's the collective's responsibility, which includes every individual within the collective. Horizontal decision-making usually involves consensus-building among the group until agreement is reached by the collective, and its this willing agreement which is meant to keep things running smoothly -- since everyone genuinely agreed to such-and-such they act in concert together for the benefits of collective activity.

This demonstrates the difference I was alluding to, and you've already pinpointed as a difference -- the way anarchists speak about nature differs dramatically from the way Marxists speak about nature. I'm not speaking here in terms of which is better than what, but only trying to lay out conceptual distinctions to differentiate, and do so in a manner that's user-friendly, though accurate.

For Marx "the economy" is very much in the human realm of things, to the point that our very being is defined by the process of production.

But anarchists tend to see it in a wider sense, as embedded within an ecology, and tend to have more respect for nature than Marxists do, who are certainly part of the industrial revolution. This is because of their universal stance against hierarchies, be they socially constructed or imposed on other living creatures.

Nature is something to be exploited for human ends, in a Marxist philosophy. It's part of the Enlightenment inheritance. Further, hierarchy is a useful means to an end which the Marxist will not shun.

Yup. That's Marx/Proudhon(EDIT:Bakunin) are also a great place for getting an understanding of the distinction.

I can think of nitpicks, but I can't see how what I said is at odds with this.

Also, is that the shortest version you got? :D

OK, this demonstrates a good theoretical difference -- something for philosophy.

I'm gathering that you're speaking from the anarchists perspective in this. In which case "the economic system" does not mean the same as it does in Marx -- whose goals are also clear in a desire to change the means of production in order to change society.

Yes to who owns what -- but the idea really is that the state would wither away once classes were abolished. And so we'll get later adaptations of Marxism which are more nationalist in character, which justify hierarchies, and so forth, on the basis that it's overthrowing the capitalist mode of production, the real Big Bad.

So, yes, there will be differences along the way. And they will be important at times.

One of them here being even an understanding of what constitutes "the economy", since it seems you're in favor of some kind of anarcho-primitivism, given your comment that hunger will teach people to garden

****
But just for a moment try to crystalize what you understand of both philosophies into a single sentence. What would you say rather than what I've said? Try to simplify it, rather than cover every nuance through several paragraphs.

What would you say the difference is, when you keep it simple?

Yeah. Especially not my map, which isn't meant to go into details. If it needs to be said, yes, you'll find a lot of differences along the way -- including once backed by material struggle.

"Takes care of itself" would be a kind of doe-eyed utopianism, which I can see wanting to reject, but the gist of what they care about in your summation is a good starting point, IMO. One focuses on economic exploitation and overcoming that, the other focuses on hierarchical exploitation and overcoming that, and sometimes their endgoals look really similar and you wonder why it is we're fighting, but then that's the nature of politics. And as it turns out the differences are substantive, i.e. difference between building a union vs. building a party, or what-have-you.

Literally no Marxist or anarchist would ever say either of these idiocies. — boethius

There's a thing called "simplification" that we do to get the gist of an idea across. If someone doesn't know what a representative democracy is we don't rush into make sure that someone understands the nuances between a federal or a confederate or a singular state, whether one utilizes a first-past-the-post or other electoral mechanism, etc. You start with Locke, the state of nature, and so forth, and attempt to simplify the complex so that people can branch out on their own.

So marxism the revolution is economic and the rest sorts itself out and anarchism is social structure and the rest sorts itself out? — unimportant

Yup -- that'd be the utopian version of both, but in terms of differentiating them and trying to wrap your mind around it that's a good simplification.

My only comment is the glib observation that in my experince Marxists are less interesting than anarchists. — Tom Storm

Oh, for sure. At least my experience says the same of the modern tendencies, though I've been out of the game so I couldn't say what things are like now now.

But, on the other hand, Marxists did build longer lasting institutions, or at least more of them that had an impact in national affairs. From the anarchist's standpoint that may be a demerit, depending on how idealistic the anarchist is.

I am not someone who believes in utopias or the perfectibility of human beings and I usually find people who see the world as a rigid expression of theory to be dull monomaniacs. But in the current world of plutocracy, I hear my Marxist voices calling.

For myself I just see capitalism as a problem which Marx describes well -- I don't think that politics will end if we manage to create a new socioeconomic way of life, but perhaps the problems of capitalism will wane if done correctly. Similarly so with anarchy -- if we manage to find a way to organize ourselves sans hierarchy I'm certain that politics will continue, that we will continue to have to decide things together and confront challenges and that people will continue to be people for all that. But we may still be better off if we overcome the challenges of hierarchy.

I tend to think of these as central problems that cause a lot of suffering rather than fixalls that bring about a utopia.

Where I think utopian thinking makes sense is in imagining a world we might want to live in. But I don't think it makes sense to base a political philosophy entirely on that world, which is why I like Marxism -- it has a more practical edge to it which allows one to enact the political mechanisms that exist today rather than inventing them wholesale as a counter to the hierarchical systems. The latter are far more like what I'd prefer to live in, but the former tend to fair better against hierarchically organized states since they have no qualms in utilizing hierarchy, which is good at orchestrating people towards winning, if not towards making them happy.

So I feel an attraction to both, and often try to think of blending the two into a coherent political philosophy.

You're not crazy. Many have tried, and you're welcome to too.

What in particular could someone say to you, other than to say "keep going, I'm listening"?

The "correct in its domain of validity, profoundly innovative, immensely influential and has introduced structures of thinking on which we are still building" bit might have less of a rhetorical influence with respect to chemists though.

Roughly, yes.

I love that paper so much.

This is the testament of a man who has lived the sailor’s cycle as it was for centuries: — Ian James Hillyard

Good luck with your memoir. I hope your experience of dying right now isn't you dying right now.

But if so I'd much rather have companions to talk to in that situation, rather than not.

Your emphasis on the sailors life makes me think of Moby Dick. Especially as here you are talking of your memoir.

it's probably important to see that the differences between these two traditions of political thought are about both means and ends. That is, Marxists and anarchists disagree not only about the end goal (although quite often they agree about that, and call it communism), but also, I'd say primarily, about how to get there: can we overthrow the rulers and transition to a communistic society by taking control of the state, using the institutions, hierarchies, and powers of government, police, education, the legal system, etc.—as Marxists usually believe—or does it have to be a ground-up, grassroots revolution, as the anarchists believe. — Jamal

:up:

Means/Ends reasoning definitely differs between the two. I like your notion that communism is the theoretical they aspire towards, but maybe that's just the only idea they relate on, given the differences in material struggle.

A question to keep in mind for myself, then -- I thought of Sartre and Camus, but would defend them as "good" examples of blending the disciplines while keeping them separate too.

Good questions. One's I still reflect upon.

For Marxism I recommend www.marxists.org as a resource. For anarchy I recommend An Anarchist FAQ.

The wikipedia entries are good fodder for names and dates and historical events. Some of the "differences" between the two are more historical than conceptual, but still articulatable. There are times I think it comes down to almost nothing, though the popular conception is that they are opposite, so things become confusing as we rely upon our common notions.

Which is why I like the texts to begin getting at a difference.

But a rough-and-ready differentiation I could provide would be -- both are radical political philosophies. By "radical" I mean that they posit some underlying mechanism that is the result of many problems within current society. For Marx that radical center to society is the mode of production of a given society, which in turn is defined by ownership relationships to wealth production through labor-time, and so changing this mode of production is its goal for a classless society. For anarchy the radical center to society are hierarchical social relationships, so in order to develop an anarchist society we change our social relations such that we no longer hold hierarchical positions towards others.

The end-goal is where they look similar, but a lot of the things they care about along the way shows they have relevant differences to them too -- and I think those differences are best found by reading the thinkers of each.

Cool. And, OK, good examples.

Good summary, and noting how this lecture is conceptually dense in that it's using more original terms than the first 8 lectures have.

So throughout I was thinking about his take on "intuition", and how it gets at something right in terms of practice, but perhaps we could still "hold onto" intuition through a modification in theoretical thinking.

For Adorno, what you noted, is that the limits of "intuition" were beyond "the facts", but simultaneously he's committed to the notion that philosophy is a conceptual activity, whereas art can get away with this because it's not even trying to speak in the conceptual way but reveal truth in the non-conceptual in the artwork.

Obviously this goes back to Kant, and like you said this means "experience" and "beyond experience", where intuition is within experience but justifies our intellectual wonderings. For Adorno it seems it's mostly just that sense of an insight, but ultimately he's not interested in defending a hard distinction but rather trying to salvage the good parts of intuition while maintaining a difference between philosophy and art.

I can tell he's very interested in differentiating art from philosophy, but aside from that being an interesting question I think him speaking plainly about what he roughly means works as well as a precise definition -- there are philosophers which present their philosophy artistically, and artists who create philosophical works of art, and these activities are both human but different in some capacity. But we can adhere to Adorno's warnings on the two bad ways of treating intuition -- positivistically or idealistically -- without having to have a theory of what differentiates philosophy from art, even while we reflect on the nature of art and borrow those concepts for understanding philosophy.

I wonder to what extent he means the bad kinds of philosophy and art that try to do what the other is doing -- does he have particular examples?

***

Marx as speculative philosopher: when he talks about the two unifying speculative concepts Marx must maintain I was inclined to read his interpretation along similar lines as the notion that theories are always underdetermined, and yet the guide the research. Marx couldn't appeal to the obvious facts -- a pile of government economic records and newspapers -- but had to utilize them and order them in a speculative (good-kind) manner.

As an aside I think it's this noticing how theoretical constructs serve as a kind of order for our facts/intuitions/what-have-you is where people get an idealist impression. But here Adorno utilizes Marx as an example of a materialist who is at the same time speculative.

The reason I mention the above is while I get the sense that Adorno is hounded, I also get the sense that the positivists are wrong about science too :D -- science is a speculative endeavor. It doesn't just give you a list of facts, but explains the facts, orders them, predicts them and so forth.

This post by way of pointing out how our own conceptions on what constitutes philosophy are different, so we are talking past one another.

Okay, sure. Water cannot be divisible and indivisible. This is a true contradiction. Yet this is the first time I've seen you presenting Aristotle as a proponent of indivisibility. Earlier you were talking about teleology. — Leontiskos

The purpose of using names isn't to demonstrate what I've read and understood, but to refer to a shared body of knowledge between speakers. So when I say "Aristotle", I presume you understand Aristotle well enough and modern science well enough to be able to put together the dots that teleology and modern science, especially of the enlightenment era, are in conflict.

I switched to divisibility because the example is as good as the teleological one -- namely, I don't know if Lavosier, on a personal level, might have believed there was some kind of teleology behind water, but the whole enlightenment project basically rejects teleology in favor of efficient causation for its mode of explanation -- this is one of the primary reasons people reject Enlightenment era materialism and go in various ways.

There is no strict division between philosophy and science. Aristotle is generally referred to as a scientist, perhaps the first, and yet this does not disqualify him as a philosopher. — Leontiskos

I agree. My inclination to using examples is to overcome this -- we don't have to define things in terms of their necessary and sufficient conditions, but can instead use paradigmatic examples to show what we mean: definition by ostension.

So there are three names that we've been using, and with those names I'll draw some differences:

Aristotle is an ancient scientist and philosopher
Lavoisier is a modern scientist
Kripke is a modern philosopher.

Because I'd draw a distinction between ancient and modern science -- they don't operate the same. And Kripke counting as modern because of the scope of the question which utilizes Aristotle.

Right... I guess I would need you to set out the thesis that you believe to be at stake. I wrote that post with your emphasis on falsehood in mind. You have this idea that Lavoisier must have falsified something in Aristotle. The whole notion that we can grow in knowledge presupposes that we have something which is true and yet incomplete, and which can be built upon. — Leontiskos

I think all it takes to grow in knowledge is to plant seeds and see what happens. And what had been can die, and what is will stop being.

But noting here: even our notions of "falsification" are at odds. So perhaps we cannot appeal to falsification in our back-and-forth, because even this is being equivocated in our dialogue.

I assure you that by my understanding of falsification that Lavasioer does not falsify Aristotle, and that this is pretty much just another rabbit whole to jump down before getting to the topic "What is real?"

To say what's at stake: I don't think science delineates what is real. I also think that the project towards finding essences using the sciences is doomed to fail -- the big difference between Aristotle's and our day is the sheer amount of knowledge that there is. In Aristotle's day it probably seemed like a reasonable project to begin with the sciences and slowly climb up to a great metaphysical picture of the whole.

But any one scientist today simply can't have that perspective. Looking at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ their tagline on the front page states "PubMed® comprises more than 38 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books."

Aristotle could review all the literature that was in his day and respond to all his critics and lay out a potential whole. But he didn't have so many millions of papers or forebears to deal with. And I'd be more apt to look to the Gutenberg Press to explain this difference.

But this is only if we treat metaphysics as exactly the same as science, too. That was Aristotle's goal, but it need not be metaphysics goal. I'm more inclined to think that these metaphysical ways of thinking are ways of dealing with the sheer amount, the multiplicity, that one must consider to make a universal generalization. The generalizations, rather than capturing a higher truth, is a way of organizing the chaos for ourselves.

So what's at stake -- the usual stuff. The relationship between science, philosophy, and whether science can or ought to have or how much they ought to have a say in "What is real?"

It is odd to say that it is false. If it is "good enough" to begin understanding, then it simply cannot be wholly false. If it is wholly false then it is not good enough to begin understanding. — Leontiskos

Another terminological difference. I tend to think attributions of "not wholly false" or "not wholly true" can be reduced to a set of sentences in which the name is sometimes the predicate and sometimes not the predicate, and so we need only refer to the conditions for each. "False" doesn't admit of degrees in a strict sense, I don't think, though it's a common way of parsing the world in our everyday reasonings.

If I know something about water, and then I study and learn more about water, then what I first knew was true and yet incomplete. It need not have been false (although it could have been). Note, though, that if everything I originally believed about water was false, then my new knowledge of water is not building on anything at all, and a strong equivocation occurs between what I originally conceived as 'water' and what I now understand to be 'water'.

For Aristotle learning must build on previous knowledge. To learn something is to use what we already know (and also possibly new inputs alongside).

I agree that Aristotle would accept and expect this -- but I don't think he'd predict what's different.
— Moliere

Right. He knows that there is more to be learned about water even though he does not know that part of that is H2O.

So what I see is that skepticism, rather than security, is the basis of knowledge. Jumping out into the unknown and making guesses and trying to make sense of what we do not know is how new knowledge gets generated -- if we happen to find some connections to what we thought we knew down the line that's a happy accident.

The emphasis on security, I think, leads one to complacency. Rather than testing where we are wrong we defend when we are right.

Right, good. Let's just employ set theory with a set of predications about water:

Aristotle: Water: {wet, heavy unlike fire}
[Call this AW]
Lavoisier: Water: {wet, heavy unlike fire, H2O}
[Call this LW]

On this construal Lavoisier's understanding of water agrees with Aristotle in saying that water is wet and heavy unlike fire, but it adds a third predication that Aristotle does not include, namely that water is composed of H2O.

What is the relation between AW and LW? In a material sense there is overlap but inequality. Do Aristotle and Lavoisier mean the same thing by "water"? Yes and no. They are pointing to the same substance, but their understanding of that substance is not identical. At the same time, neither one takes their understanding to be exhaustive (and therefore AW and LW do not, and are not intended to, contradict one another).

Now the univocity of the analytic will tend to say that either water is AW or else water is LW (or else it is neither), and therefore Aristotle and Lavoisier must be contradicting one another. One of them understands water and one does not. There is no middle ground. There is no way in which Aristotle could understand water and yet Lavoisier could understand it better.

If one wants to escape the problematic univocity of analytical philosophy they must posit the human ability to talk about the same thing without having a perfectly identical understanding of that thing. That is part of what the Aristotelian notion of essence provides. It provides leeway such that two people can hit the same target even without firing the exact same shot, and then compare notes with one another to reach a fuller understanding. — Leontiskos

I think your construal of AW and LW is such that they look like they agree more than they do not agree. Maybe, but note this is why the historical method is more interesting than stipulated definitions.

I'd go back to the distinction in this post I made between Aristotle, Lavoisier, and Kripke.

Aristotle's concern is philosophical and scientific, and he lives in an era where his project is feasibly both philosophical and scientific. He has a much wider theory of water that conflicts with the enlightenment, mechanistic picture of H2O which Lavoisier is credited with determining. I think of hisLavoisier's work primarily as a scientist because his work as a scientist was in improving analytic methods, and it was due to his care towards precision that he was able to demonstrate to the wider scientific community the ratio of Hydrogen to Oxygen you get with electrolysis. So maybe there's some philosophical work of his I do not know, but I'd say this work fits squarely within the scientific column, even if we don't have strict definitions to delineate when is what.

And, likewise, Kripke is making a point about whether essences can be made viable in the 20th century after they had been largely abandoned by contemporary philosophy (even if there are other traditions which keep them). So he's a philosopher, but if science turns out to be wrong about the whole H2O thing his points will still stand(EDIT:or fall) regardless. So he's not a scientist, in this particular instance.

Excellent response.

Good laying out of positions and replies -- I just finished it so nothing to substantive to say, but wanted to give kudos for a well thought out response on the topic.

My conclusion is that all three uses of the symbol "=" have different meanings in the aforementioned scientific equations. Additionally, these uses do not seem to reflect the logician's use in an expression such as "a = a". While I can see the application in Kripkes' examples of "table = table" or "Nixon = Nixon", its application to these so called "identity statements" discovered by scientist, well that is a bridge too far. — Richard B

I agree here -- which is why I began to think that the lecturn lectern example might be better because it gets us out of thinking about how the science relates to the metaphysics, which is a whole ball of wax, and starts to focus on an object which we take as real, and then Kripke demonstrates how we might still be able to have necessary relationships after the fact and so a kind of "essence" might still hold good.

The level of abstraction in what I’m saying here produces the suspicion that it’s lacking in substance. I don’t think it is, but maybe there’s a need to bring it down to earth with concrete examples, more concrete than talk of rationality and irrationality. Maybe later. — Jamal

I don't think it's lacking in substance.

(Btw, Tuesday is when I'm catching up on 9)

Ableist, becasue it minimises the intelligence and perceptiveness of pre-linguistic or non-verbal individuals, and misses the real problem, which is isolation from language, not failure to understand the world. — Banno

:up:

Rather than the object or referrent serving as a ground for meaning I rather think it's the linguistic community that's more important in determining "What is real?" specifically because that's the "home" of meaning. It's how terms come to refer in the first place, to be able to name and predicate in the first place depends upon how those around us name and predicate.

Right. This happened right in this thread, when Moliere claimed that because Aristotle views water "teleologically" and Lavoisier views it as H2O, therefore Lavoisier has falsified Aristotle. — Leontiskos

I don't believe that Aristotle was falsified by Lavoisier.

Falsification is a much more complicated maneuver than disagreement on fundamentals. Disagreement on fundamentals -- such as whether water is an element or not, or whether water is composed of atoms or not -- don't so much falsify each other as much as they both make claims that cannot both be true at the same time. This is because they mean different things, but are referring to the same object.

I would say with respect to reasoning about reality -- deciding "What is real?" -- the PNC is not violated, of course, but they can't both be true either. Water is either a fundamental element which does not divide further into more fundamental atoms, or it is a composition of other more fundamental elements and so does divide further, or something else entirely (in which case both thinkers are false when making the universal claim -- there's an implicit universal claim in both, namely that All water is such and such. This is how I read them anyways, which is where the conflict arises. They can't both be true such that All water is such and such ((and not the other thing)))

The thinkers are very far apart from one another in terms of time, who they are talking to, the problems they're trying to address, and so forth, and yet are talking about the same thing -- at least I think so. So the variance between the two can only be accounted for by looking to the meanings of the terms, which in turn is how we can come to understand how people have made inferences about fundamental matter in the past, and thereby can serve as a kind of model for our own inferences.

For my part I don't believe in essences or even that water must be H2O. The lectern example of Kripke's makes more sense to me, but even then I'm hesitant to make necessary claims with respect to the object -- hence why I'm speaking about meanings, inferences, and all the rest.

What water is seems to me more of scientific than philosophical question, but then I know that barrier is another bit where we're likely not in agreement, since for Aristotle the question of science and philosophy isn't as separate. His whole philosophy has large parts dedicated to ancient science and he's making use of philosophical arguments.

My guess is that the various empirical "methods" -- which really just amount to norms of collective argument -- probably handle claims about reality better than universal claims about what something is or is not. But then the picture of nature that arises isn't exactly one of a harmonious whole.
 
EDIT: Also, to head off something I see-- just because science is good at one thing doesn't mean philosophy is overturned or useless or anything like that. I think it stands on its own without the need for the sciences, but that its methods are good for the reflective practice of science, which is where we begin to clarify what it is we mean.


I, for one, am in favor of there being true sentences.

Yes, in a way, but I think reality comes first. I think we have to have some familiarity with water before we have any sensible familiarity with "water." Familiarity with water is a precondition for familiarity with the English sign "water." — Leontiskos

Heh -- well as long as it's the reality I understand then I'm OK with that ;)

Much of this is right, but again, the crucial point you are failing to recognize is that neither Aristotle nor Lavoisier mean that anyone who does not mean what they mean must therefore be wrong. That is a very strange reading. No one is claiming to have a complete and exclusive understanding of water. — Leontiskos

I'm starting to think this is just something of a misunderstanding that I haven't figured out yet. I'm not saying either believed they had the complete or exclusive reading, even in what they meant.

I am referencing what they meant and relating it to what we know about reality, though, to make a point about "How do we know what is real?"

I think the key here is that when Lavoisier says, "Water is H2O," he could be saying two different things:

M: "Water is H2O, and if anyone, past or future, says anything else about water, they are wrong."
N: "Water is H2O, and there are all sorts of other true things that can be said about water."

You seem to take Aristotle to have said something like (M), but that's not generally what a scientist means when they say, "Water is such-and-such." If all scientists are saying things like (M) then there can be no growth in knowledge and therefore Aristotle's approach is wrong. But given that scientists are usually saying things like ( N) there is no true barrier to growth in knowledge - either individually or communally. — Leontiskos

I'm taking the "M" translation to demonstrate a point -- these are both very intelligent persons who have done scholarly work on water, one philosophical and the other scientific -- though with the added qualification that Aristotle's scholarly work has a kind of proto-scientific thing going on in his philosophy.

The "N" translation I take for granted, in a sense. Yes, we can figure out ways to reconcile them.

Because learning occurred and knowledge grew. Lavoisier knows more about water than Aristotle did. Aristotle would expect this to be the case for later scientists. — Leontiskos

I agree that Aristotle would accept and expect this -- but I don't think he'd predict what's different. Namely that the atomic theory is correct, that water does not act in accord with any teleology, and it's not a fundamental element.

But then, in comparing the meanings between the two, it doesn't seem they mean the same thing after all... even if they refer to the same thing, roughly.