What do you think "apt" means? — Banno

It means it can be either true or false.

"The cat is on the mat" can be given a truth value, and hence counts as a proposition. — Banno

How can it be truth-apt if we don't even know which cat it is?

Isn't it apt to be true, or perhaps false? Couldn't it be true, or perhaps false, in suitable circumstances? — Banno

Exactly. You need context to turn a sentence into a proposition.

The blob is still a form and generates content for Bob. — Nils Loc

Yep. There really isn't any such thing as the Formless. It's just that once you start talking about forms, you have to have something that received the form. It's more about the way we divide up the world. It's something built in to the way we think.

How could "the cat is on the mat" be truth-apt? We don't even know which cat it is.

The old war still rages, — Srap Tasmaner

Are you like, presently in a dungeon on trial for heresy?

Through the form. — MoK

:up:

In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger critiques the idea that form and content can be treated separately, as though form were something imposed on a thing, or content were ‘beyond’ form and style. — Joshs

I first encountered Heidegger in a book about the philosophy of beauty. Some secondary source told me that Heidegger thought that we experience form and matter in a relationship of dynamic tension. We broadcast the form outward onto the world, and pull sensations in (as in listening more closely, squinting to see). That broadcasting versus drawing in (which is also yin and yang, btw), is what a thing is. Supposedly he said that the original greek word for subjectivity meant core, as in the unchanging idea of a thing, like the center of a solar system. Cool, huh?

I can only say that form is mind-dependent, and I agree with you. — javi2541997

So when you look out at the world, are we seeing mind-dependent forms all over the place?

Why is this a curious question for you? — I like sushi

This was in John Perry's book about personal identity, as I recall. It's about the relationship between form and matter (matter being defined as something formless.) It's just examining the way we think.

The idea that thought is inherently forceful can only become an insight if it is concretely shown how that idea is compatible with the fact that embedded thoughts and dependent acts of thinking must do without a force of their own. If thoughts as such are tied to some force or other, while embedded thoughts (e. g. p qua part of not-p) do not directly come along with a force of their own, it must be clarified how the indirect connection to force, which embedded thoughts must indeed come along with, is to be understood. That is, it must be clarified how dependent logical acts that have an embedded thought as their content, and the overarching logical act that does indeed bear a force of its own interlock with each other such as to provide for the unity of a propositionally complex thought." — Pierre-Normand

Couldn't it just be that the force of an embedded thought is a phantom context from which meaning can be drawn? It's not that we're imagining an actual assertion. It's that our worldview grew out of one in which the world is alive. There's some sort of divine narrator.

If I judge P true, and so do you, aren't we making something we'd want to call "the same judgment"? — Srap Tasmaner

If we make the same judgment, we agree on the same proposition. We aren't agreeing on a sentence or an utterance. Would you like to work through the argument that establishes that?

My premise lies rooted in the encounter between agent intellect (subjectivity) and intelligibility (objectivity). This encounter plays in real space as the form/substance interweave. — ucarr

This sounds like a ghost in the machine. Is that what you mean?

:grin:

Bob received a blob of clay. What he ordered but didn't receive was the work required to turn that clay into a statue as well as the artists skill and vision. — T Clark

So you're saying it's not the form Bob paid for, but labor costs?

I don't think the statue is really attached to the clay in terms of form and content. Although it is true that Bob went to a potter, a statue can be made of different material, such as marble or gold. — javi2541997

You're saying Bob paid for the form, not the clay. It sounds like you're saying we can separate the two. As you say, the same form can appear with different materials. But where is the form if it's separate? In a special realm? In people's minds?

That makes sense. I read this in the SEP article on Lotze (he lived from 1817 to 1881):

"The new model of the academic researcher demands the replacement of prominent personalities—i.e., romantic ‘geniuses’—by the new exemplar of the sober scientist."

Lotze navigated a transition from German idealism to a philosophy that focuses on values and analysis. Maybe we could say the whole western culture was shifting toward an emphasis on quiet objectivity rather than an emotional idealistic view. Frege was a part of that?

We live on the other side of the 20th Century, so we know what kind of terrain that shift was headed toward: eliminative materialism, functionalism, inscrutability of reference. Complaining about the view from nowhere seems to target something that's foundational for us: scientific objectivity.

I wonder if the impetus for separating content from assertoric force is related to the 'view from nowhere.'

It's language that's detached from any particular human. It's like the narrator of the novel we inhabit.

Sorry, wasn't trying to be dense. You mean the marbles are identified separately, but the colors, being universals, can merge?

What is wanted? — Srap Tasmaner

I don't it's a case of ambiguity. You just don't have enough information to know what's being asked. You'd have to go back and get the request clarified, right?

I agree. I think Frege would too.

I can say we agree, and I can say what we agree on, without attributing to "what we agree on" independent existence, but instead treating it hylomorphically as an abstract object that is immanent within our agreement. "Our agreement" is another such abstraction. Does it exist independently of our agreeing? — Srap Tasmaner

I think abstract objects are products of analysis. We dismantle mind and language use as if we're taking a cuckoo clock apart. We may become so engrossed in the pieces laid out in a table that we forget that.

As long as you're tuned into the fact that in this framework, propositions are content, not sentences, you're good to go.

Do we see from the above that mass and abstraction, like form and content*, are interwoven? — ucarr

Maybe we could pursue this in a different thread. It's sort of along the lines of Plato. I'll start one if you're interested.

I'd have to go with Schopenhauer and say that subject and object are two sides of the same coin.

The mass of an object, for instance, can be treated as an abstract object, — Srap Tasmaner

Abstract objects are things like numbers, sets, and propositions. Mass is a physical property.

as long as you're not saying that agreement is only consensual, then we're on the same page. — J

I'm happy exploring behaviorism and pondering whether there really is any such thing as agreement, but my home base is to imagine that I agree with billions of people I've never met on a mass of propositions, many of which I've never brought to mind consciously. :smile:

I like the clarity of this, but doesn't it beg the question? The "other side," so to speak, would say, "A proposition is supposed to be a thing with a truth-value, something we don't merely agree or disagree on, but claim objective reasons for doing so." — J

I didn't mean to say that propositions are limited to the things we agree or disagree on. We imagine there are true propositions that no one knows, for instance, the answer to whether there is life on other planets.

I was trying to show what's at stake if we decide that there are no propositions in the Fregean sense of the word. We'll have to give up the notion of agreement as we commonly understand it. I was thinking about this because I was quoting Soames and the first chapter of his book on truth explains why we can't use utterances or sentences as the basis of agreement. It has to be propositions, or the content of an uttered sentence. With regard to whether there's life on other planets, notice how we "smuggle in" an assertion as Kimhe puts it.

I start to think that frank might be working at the US Fed Res. — javi2541997

I'm the janitor.

You just can't do hummus without lemons. It's unthinkable.

Thanks for the info and sticking up for the little guy. — BitconnectCarlos

But you're right. Israel is the little guy. They wouldn't be there if it weren't for their strategic value to the US, which has been fading for several decades now.

Your contribution is appreciated. — BitconnectCarlos

Awesome.

Cool, thanks!

Maybe I misunderstand you but I don't see the distinction between a thought being merely entertained (or grasped) and it being asserted to line up with the distinction between (merely) formal and natural languages. — Pierre-Normand

I think that when you entertain a thought, you're imagining it as an assertion, even if there was no such event. For instance, if you contemplate "the cat is on the mat", in terms of thought, all you have is a sentence that could mean all sorts of things. It's not truth-apt. To the extent that meaning is truth conditions, it's meaningless. Am I wrong?

Ascriptions of semantic content to the responses of LLM-based AI agents, and interpreting them as having assertoric force, is a matter of taking a high-level intentional stance on their linguistic behavior with a view of rationalizing it. — Pierre-Normand

And I think that's what we do all the time when we communicate. We rationalize. I don't think you can really see any meaning in the output of an AI unless you take it as having assertoric force. It's a reflexive part of communication.

it also is liable to send us off into tangential directions regarding the specific nature of current LLM-based AI agents, the issue of their autonomy (or lack thereof), their lack of embodiment (and the issue of the empirical grounding of their symbols), how they are being individuated (as machines, algorithms or virtual agents in specific conversation instances), to what extend their assertions have deontic statuses (in the form of commitments and entitlements to claims), and so on. — Pierre-Normand

I'm not seeing that as tangential. I think it would highlight, especially for the naive, like me, the difference between a formal language where apparently there are propositions that aren't thought of as asserted in any way, and ordinary language, where the listener always thinks of what's being asserted in the light of who asserts it, or in what setting it's asserted. But I'll go with your judgment.

Would you say an AI can assert a proposition? Or are we just treating it as if it can?

In analyzing a situation or a historical comparison, power dynamics are important to me as are the fundamental nature of the parties involved & their aims. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't think comparing WW2 to the recent Gaza invasion helps me understand much. But as for the power dynamics, you know the Palestinians in Gaza originally went there and started lemon farms. The Israelis purposefully diverted the water supply away from the lemons because they didn't want the Palestinians to be there. They wanted them to move to Jordan, but they couldn't bring themselves to forcibly transport them because of what had happened in WW2.

So the Palestinians resorted to starting small businesses in Gaza to support themselves. The Israelis increased taxes until all the Palestinians went out of business. Gaza became a giant refugee camp because the Israelis intentionally undermined their efforts to survive there.

The Israelis have been persecuting the Palestinians for decades. It's just a fact, man.

If, for example, propositional thinking is said to be part of the human animal, that needs to be explained. — schopenhauer1

I think there are two approaches to the OP, and maybe in philosophy in general:

1. You can start with ontological biases and let those views form the limits of investigation.
2. You can start by trying to map out where you are, and let the borders remain foggy.

Both approaches have virtues. What's at stake with the concept of propositions is the communing part of communication. It's all about agreement. If we ever really do arrive at agreement, then we would say we're thinking the same thoughts. That's what a proposition is supposed to be: that thing we can agree or disagree on.

If you start with a strongly materialistic bias, you're likely to lean toward behaviorism, which says that we never really agree on anything. All agreement is really just a certain kind of behavior. If we follow this approach, we're never even going to arrive at the OP, because it's about thinking.

Frank is just trying to uphold his idea that in "real life" we don't talk about unasserted declarative sentences, without actually going through the work of defending it. — Leontiskos

I talked about that a lot. I don't think you saw it.

:up:

Why would that not be ontological? You are literally discussing someone's understanding of what an object is. — schopenhauer1

I get that. It's just that when I've tried to pin down the ontological significance of "abstract object", the answer seems to be that this question doesn't need to be answered. We're more in the realm of just identifying what we can't do without.