seems like you're just ignoring the whole section where I argue that addition generally solves the sorts of problems I use it to solve, even for numbers > 57. — flannel jesus

In the challenge, you've never dealt with numbers above 57. Addition and quaddition give the same answers up to that point. The question is: what fact would show us that you were adding and not quadding?

If someone is going to tell me what's in my mind - and telling me I've been using quaddition instead of addition is doing just that - then they should have a good reason for believing that. — flannel jesus

If I could give you a fact about which rule you were following, then the challenge would fail. I think I need to flesh out the criteria a proposed fact has to meet in order to crash the challenge. I've just been busy lately. Need to collect the army of brain cells.

The big difference between you and me Frank, is that you are an optimistic pessimist, and I am a pessimistic optimist. — Agree to Disagree

Wow! I think that's actually true about me. I accept death. It would take a while to explain why, but I'm ok with oblivion. It's from the door to oblivion that you can see how beautiful it all really is.

How are you a pessimistic optimist?

if I'm disregarding the obvious silliness of the whole thing — flannel jesus

I'm finding it to be pretty mind blowing, but I can see how it would seem silly to some.

Quaddition doesn't generally solve the sorts of problems I've thus far been using addition to solve, so no, I haven't been doing that. — flannel jesus

In the challenge, addition and quaddition produce the same results up to 57, and that's as far as you've ever gone. If there is no fact about which one you were doing all this time, then it shows that if meaning arises from rule following, there is no meaning. That's the crazy part.

The country that I live in is very efficient at producing lamb and beef, I am not sure if this is totally true, but I read once that our lamb and beef has a lower carbon footprint even when it is flown to the other side of the world, than the lamb and beef produced locally there.

And our government here wants to cut back our lamb and beef production to meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement. They seem to think that it is better for other places to produce lamb and beef locally with a huge carbon footprint, rather than use our lamb and beef with a smaller carbon footprint. — Agree to Disagree

And that's just wrong. If you're very efficient, then you're a model for everyone else to follow. Not only are you helping the climate by being so efficient, your meat is healthier than what you'd get elsewhere.

Can you see why the problem of global warming won't get solved? — Agree to Disagree

It won't be solved by humans as they are now. I agree with that. We can change though. We can morph into a species that reacts intelligently. I'm not guaranteeing that will happen, I'm just saying that we have a history of being incredibly adaptable. It's possible.

Kripke's skepticism is based on his assumption that there must be some fact independent of and other than the fact of the practice of addition. — Fooloso4

He grants that there's such a thing as the practice of addition. He's asking for a fact that shows you've actually adhered to this practice as opposed to the practice of quaddition.

You chose 57, but 59 would have been better because the number after 59 is in fact 1:00. — Hanover

:lol:

If we're dealing in synthetic truths, we see the same thing. The rules governing planetary travel show a predictable course and the coordinates can be predicted so that it would appear which number would follow next, until something interferes with the travel. Would we then say we're not following the word game because the next in sequence wasn't predictable from the last in that one instance? — Hanover

For Kripke's challenge, we want a fact that shows intentional rule following. This entails justification and correctness. We usually wouldn't look for that kind of rule following in a planet because we imagine they just blindly do what they're going to do and we identify a structure in it. We then use that historic structure to predict where it's headed (which is what technical analysis of a market is, btw.)

An example of a fact that might work is dispositionality: which says it's a fact about the world that you have a predisposition to answer "125" instead of "5". That kind of thing.

One thing to consider is that not all beef and dairy production is the same. American production (and anywhere else that's been bullied by Americans) is not particularly efficient. A lot of pesticide and petroleum based fertilizer has been used. Corn production goes into beef, which again, isn't an efficient way to feed cattle. So if your local beef production is efficient, you may find that you're talking apples and oranges with an American. See what I'm saying?

I wrote a simple program for my computer, following the rules of arithmetic originating with the principle of succession from set theory. When I ask the program to add two numbers it follows the rule I have instilled. — jgill

That's wonderful. There's probably a calculator program already on there, though. See if you can find it. :cheer:

Kripke poses the challenge:

Who is to say that this [quus] is not the function previously meant by '+'? (9)

The answer is simple: the rules of arithmetic. We either follow them correctly or we do not. — Fooloso4

The challenge is to point to some fact that shows which rule you were following in the past. Remember, the challenge is not about epistemology. It's not about how we know what rule you were following. It's conclusion, and the one Kripke doesn't see Wittgenstein ever ruling out is this: there was no rule following. If you disagree, he's asking you to prove it.

This is not an exegesis of Wittgenstein. It's not an attempt to correctly capture what he thought out of the elusive text he wrote. This thread is about considering a Kripkean challenge.

Bacteria that decompose methane into fertilizer and tofu.

Just kidding, it's not tofu, it's some kind of edible sludge.

that's roughly the story of John Chau in 2018, just not Africa but the Sentinelese. So, not hypothetical. — jorndoe

I think that's the guy I was thinking of.

Surely the only thing you need to prove historically that you weren't quadding is to show any instance where you've added two numbers > 57, right? — flannel jesus

Yes, but in the thought experiment, you've never done that. The idea is that in real life there's a number you've never added up to before. For the sake of presenting the challenge, we just pick 57.

If I've done proofs via induction using addition, doesn't this show that I've taken addition all the way to the infinite in the past? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think so, but in the challenge, you've never added numbers up to above 57.

That or I smugly pull out a crumpled sheet of paper from my pocket with the Peano Axioms written on them. I inform the skeptic that, as a good positivist, I only preform arithmetic by starting from this sheet and working up from there. "Show me how it is possible to derive quusing from these axioms and I will accept your proposition." — Count Timothy von Icarus

He grants that math has specified rules, but is there a fact that shows you're following those rules every time to add? Do you really take the sheet out?

Still, I get the point. Defining systems only in terms of past use seems to miss something. — Count Timothy von Icarus

He sees it as an outcome of the private language argument. This is the PDF text if you become fascinated enough to read it. :grin:

Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language

Why it helps to have a weak sense of identity:

You know how there was this American missionary who decided to bring the faith to a small island off the coast of Africa? It was an area where there were no police, there was no government, and no law. People told the missionary not to go because the natives would kill him.

He was like, "No, I have love in my heart, and these people will see into my soul and understand that I'm coming to help them. He was practically glowing with his bright pearlescent halo as he set out alone in a canoe to save some souls.

They killed him.

It's good to try to look at the world through other people's eyes, but if you find that you don't have the experiences necessary to do that, at least recognize that the basic trust necessary for human interaction is not built by beaming your righteous heart out at the world you want to save. Sometimes you have to notice what other people need in order to trust you. If you're too bound up in your ego to look outward, you may end up destroying any chance of trust (like by insisting that in your flesh and bones you believe the ends justify the means, that's a bowling ball into trust.)

it is because of simple accounting. — Agree to Disagree

I don't know, accounting is pretty complicated. :razz:

The same is true of a "farm". In the long run the farm captures carbon atoms from the atmosphere (or has them delivered in other forms e.g. grains to feed the cows). It outputs carbon atoms in a variety of ways (crops, fruit, vegetables, milk, meat (processed cows), etc). The farms biogenic carbon cycle must balance. — Agree to Disagree

The whole planet's carbon cycle has to balance because of gravity. :grin:

:smile: :up:

But the articulation between language games is a topic of some considerable complexity. It's all that incommensurability stuff and the very idea of a conceptual scheme I keep ranting on about. IS that where you are headed with your thread? — Banno

Not really. I was just pondering Kripke's skeptical challenge. It's had me reaching around to get my bearings. :razz: Thanks for your help!

Ok, then in contrast, true and false are moves within some language games. — Banno

Exactly!

The looming issue is this: when the ancient Greeks wondered whether the world is made of fire or water, were they engaged in a language game? Or were they beyond the limits of language? It appears that the context for their discussion is somewhere outside the world, outside of time, in short, outside of everything. So was it nonsense?

And with this question in mind, we come back to PI itself. What of the concept of a language game? What's the context for this discussion? Where are we when we have a vantage point on language use? Is it nonsense?

So roughly, nonsense is the stuff that happens between language games, or when terms from one are inexplicably applied to another, or when grammar is stretched beyond recognition. — Banno

And that makes sense. In fact, it makes more sense than the PI itself. Non-Pyrrhonian interpretations fill in blanks with ideas that aren't there explicitly.

Yeah, sure. As time goes on the interpretations of Witti become increasingly distorted. I think the Pyrrhonian reading misses much of what he had to say. Those who worked with him do not adopt it. — Banno

There aren't any interpretations that aren't controversial though. It's interesting that in this case you emphasize age as the guide. You usually poo poo older philosophy and favor newer.

But what counts as false and what counts as nonsense will depend on the game being played.

So what is the outcome if you say that talking pots are nonsense, as opposed to saying that it is false? It depends on how the games are set up. — Banno

That's cool. There's another way to interpret it though.

Along these lines, two overlapping distinctions concerning how to read Philosophical Investigations have arisen: the resolute–substantial distinction, and the Pyrrhonian–non-Pyrrhonian distinction. In general, the resolute and Pyrrhonian readings make Wittgenstein out to be an anti-philosopher, one who is not offering positive philosophical theses to replace false ones; rather, his goal is to show the nonsensical nature of traditional philosophical theorizing. It is this goal that is partly responsible for the unique style of Philosophical Investigations (its dialogical and, at least at times, anti-dogmatic, therapeutic character). On the substantial and non-Pyrrhonian readings, Wittgenstein is not only presenting a method for exposing the errors of traditional philosophers, but also showing how philosophy should rightly be done and thereby offering positive philosophical views, views which must often be inferred or reconstructed from an elusive text.

There is neither a single resolute/Pyrrhonian nor a single substantial/non-Pyrrhonian reading of Wittgenstein. Moreover, there is an important difference between the resolute–substantial and Pyrrhonian–non-Pyrrhonian distinctions. The former distinction arises from a continuing debate on how to read Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, both on its own and in relation to Philosophical Investigations (see, e.g., Conant 2004 and Mulhall 2007), and is associated with the so-called New Wittgensteinians (see, e.g., Crary and Read 2000). The Pyrrhonian and non-Pyrrhonian discussion is to be found, for example, in Fogelin (1994), Sluga (2004), and Stern (2004, 2007), and concerns the ways in which Wittgenstein might be considered as writing in the tradition of the ancient Pyrrhonian sceptics, who were philosophically sceptical about the very possibility of philosophy (see Fogelin 1994, pp. 3ff and 205ff). These distinctions cut across the distinction between Orthodox and Kripkean non-orthodox readings of the text: both Orthodox and Kripkean non-orthodox interpreters have tended to offer substantial or non-Pyrrhonian readings of Wittgenstein—though the line may not always be clear and some (e.g., Hacker, 1990) move from a resolute/Pyrrhonian to a substantial/non-Pyrrhonian reading without remarking the fact.

Some (Fogelin, Stern, and Mulhall, for example) have come to question whether it makes sense to suppose that either one or the other, resolute/Pyrrhonian or substantial/non-Pyrrhonian, must be the correct way to read Wittgenstein. Fogelin and Stern see the tension in the text of Philosophical Investigations as the expression of a tension, indeed a struggle, within its author, between his wanting to uncover the ‘disguised nonsense’ of philosophical theses and his being tempted and drawn into still other philosophical positions on the nature of language, reference, private experience, and philosophy itself. — SEP

The interpretation you gave is non-Pyrrhonian, that is, you're saying Wittgenstein was offering a philosophical approach for all the follow. The alternative interpretations would be

1. Pyrrhonian, which would take this passage as pointing to why all philosophy is nonsense: talk of a conscious pot is beyond the limits of language because there's no context for such talk. This means the words of the story are pulled out of regular language use.

2. It could be that this passage highlights a struggle in Wittgenstein that lies behind PI. When he asks whether it's nonsense or false, he's actually asking about the PI itself. Of all the ways to interpret that passage, this is the most mind-blowing.

Might be best to keep Kripkenstien to his own thread. — Banno

I was just explaining why I'm not looking for immersion in any particular method of interpretation. Kripke's interpretive anchor was the community view, but he draws some astounding conclusions out of it. I was just trying to fit Kripke into the rest of the history of Wittgenstein interpretation. Thanks for helping me flesh it out!

I will let you go first. — Paine

I already did. It's in my recent thread: Kripke's skeptical challenge. I won't be responding further.

Yes, I have read it. — Paine

Great. What did you think of it?

It's in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language by Kripke.

Okay. How would you put that view in your own words? — Paine

Kripke's view? He says the private language argument indicates that there is no rule following. There was no rule you followed. There is no rule now.

Open scalp. Brain explodes.

I'm mainly trying to understand how Kripke's take on the private language argument fits into the larger zodiac of interpretations. — frank

:brow:

I don't know what to make of this place where you are collecting evidence for a particular purpose. — Paine

I'm not collecting evidence for a particular purpose.

This view is odd since the Tractatus keeps referring to "what is the case." — Paine

One interpretation of the Tractatus is that it concludes that we can only talk about what is the case in the world in which we find ourselves. Statements about the world itself are beyond the limits of language. Some say the PI should be understood in that light.

By the way, I'm mainly trying to understand how Kripke's take on the private language argument fits into the larger zodiac of interpretations. To that end I'm collecting a flow chart of the different avenues. I'm not really looking for a deep dive on any particular one, although I'm always interested in people explaining what a particular philosopher meant to them personally.

Firstly I should have looked a bit more closely at the source of these articles. While they are by University of CA, from what I can gather these studies are funded by our old friends the cattle industry (I could be wrong on this — EricH

I assumed the one from UC Davis was produced through a grant from some beef collective. It just has that written all over it.

Now just to be precise we could quibble about the "net zero-ness" of this cycle since the whole process of raising cattle creates additional CO2 apart from the CH4 - but for purposes of discussion we can ignore that. — EricH

I agree. Through this discussion, people have been approaching the issue as if it can be answered by applying armchair principles. I doubt that. If it takes a super computer to run a simplified model of the climate, why would somebody think they can spitball the effect of cows? C'mon!

I took the point of the observation to be that we can deliberately use what is not experienced (for the most part) to imagine a scene that is neither false nor meaningless.

The sword cuts in two ways. Separating truth from falsehood belongs to some activities but not to others. There is something about this constraint that invites other ways of making sense. — Paine

:up:
There are two primary ways to interpret the PI:

1. Pyrrhonism: that Witt believed that all philosophy is nonsense because it can't be about anything of this world.
2. Non-pyrrhonism: that Witt believed that philosophy can point out the cases where philosophers fall into nonsense, but that he was also offering positive philosophical views (which often have to be reconstructed from the text).

Then there's the third way: Witt wanted to abandon philosophy because he knew that it's all nonsense, but he couldn't stop, so the PI is confusing because he was stuck in this struggle when he wrote it.

According to this scheme, there are three ways to take the private language argument:

1. That he believed the question is nonsense.
2. That he believed it is truly impossible to have a private language.
3. That the argument carries the dynamic tension of the struggle all philosophers face when they realize that philosophy has no answers, but we can't stop looking for them.

I took the point of the observation to be that we can deliberately use what is not experienced (for the most part) to imagine a scene that is neither false nor meaningless. — Paine

This is what we tell ourselves when we set out again asking philosophical questions, right?

The sword cuts in two ways. Separating truth from falsehood belongs to some activities but not to others. There is something about this constraint that invites other ways of making sense. — Paine

What are the other ways of making sense?

Following our failure to deliver a fact that distinguishes our historic use of "plus" vs "quus," it appears Kripke's skeptic has caused the "idea of meaning to vanish into thin air."

Why? Because if we weren't following any specific rule in the past, then it follows that we aren't now, in spite of my confidence that I know now what I mean by "plus."

I'm not quite following why this is true. Why does meaning have to be rule following? Why can't it pop into thin air in the present?

There's something I'm missing

:up:

I looked at the video. At the portion you marked, the guy is suggesting that if we limit methane emissions from cattle (apparently California has already dropped it by 25%), then we can reduce the CO2 content in the atmosphere.

He's saying that in cattle production there's an opportunity to go beyond net zero to net negative. I get that. We haven't discussed that up to this point, though. We were just talking about whether or not cattle production is net zero.

You and Kripke may be excused. Return to dinner when you have stopped playing your little games. — jgill

Hey, general relativity came out of little games.

a previous post, Agree to Disagree linked to an article from the University of California that supposedly showed that cattle farming is net-zero. However this article makes the OPPOSITE point (apologies for shouting). The full impact of this article is that reducing methane from cattle farming is a cost effective way to reduce global warming - because reducing methane has a more immediate impact on the environment than reducing CO2. — EricH

I don't see where it says that. This is the entire article:


"The Biogenic Carbon Cycle and Cattle
February 19, 2020
By Samantha Werth

"Cattle are often thought to contribute to climate change because they belch methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas. While this is true, cattle do belch methane, it is actually part of an important natural cycle, known as the biogenic carbon cycle.

"Photosynthesis and carbon
The biogenic carbon cycle centers on the ability of plants to absorb and sequester carbon. Plants have the unique ability to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and deposit that carbon into plant leaves, roots, and stems while oxygen is released back into the atmosphere. This process is known as photosynthesis and it is central to the biogenic carbon cycle.

"When plants perform photosynthesis, carbon is primarily converted to cellulose, a form of carbohydrate that is one of the main building blocks for growing plants. Cellulose happens to be the most abundant organic compound in the world, present in all grasses, shrubs, crops, and trees. Cellulose content is particularly high in grasses and shrubs found on marginal lands, which are places where grains and other human edible crops cannot grow. Two-thirds of all agricultural land is marginal, full of cellulose dense grasses that are indigestible to humans. But guess who can digest cellulose?


"Cattle upcycle cellulose… and carbon!
Cattle are made to digest cellulose. They are able to consume grasses and other plants that are high in cellulose and, through enteric fermentation, digest the carbon that is stored in cellulose. Cattle can use that carbon, upcycling the cellulose, for growth, milk production, and other metabolic processes.

"As a by-product of consuming cellulose, cattle belch out methane, there-by returning that carbon sequestered by plants back into the atmosphere. After about ten years, that methane is broken down and converted back to CO2. Once converted to CO2, plants can again perform photosynthesis and fix that carbon back into cellulose. From here, cattle can eat the plants and the cycle begins once again. In essence, the methane belched from cattle is not adding new carbon to the atmosphere. Rather it is part of the natural cycling of carbon through the biogenic carbon cycle.

"Fossil Fuels Are Not Part of the Biogenic Carbon Cycle
The biogenic carbon cycle is a relatively fast cycle. That is, carbon cycles between plants and the atmosphere in a short period of time, usually in the range of a few years to a few decades. In the case of cattle, this cycle is about ten years. By comparison, carbon exchange between the atmosphere and geological reserves (such as deep soils, the deeper ocean, and rocks) is on the span of millennia, 1000 or more years. Hence, why the extraction and burning of fossil fuels (i.e. geological reserves) has a much greater impact on our climate than the biogenic carbon cycle.

"It takes 1000 years for CO2 released from the burning of fossil fuels to be redeposited back into geological reserves. That is tenfold (10x) the amount of time it takes methane belched by cattle to be redeposited back into plant matter. To put this in perspective, the CO2 released from driving your car to work today will remain in the atmosphere, having a warming effect on our climate, longer than the lifetimes of you, your children, or even your grandchildren. Thus, the burning of fossil fuels has a longstanding impact on our climate, one that is much more significant than the belching of methane from cattle, which is part of the short-term biogenic carbon cycle."

It looks like it's saying that cattle farming is not a significant contributor. What am I missing?

I think that you and I agree on about 99% of what we are talking about. But that doesn't make for an interesting discussion, so I am going to concentrate on the 1% where we disagree. Also, I don't like tofu. :grin: — Agree to Disagree

Yea. That's probably how it works. Tofu is especially good in Thai food. :grin:

Anytime you need somebody to be confused, I'll be happy to help. — T Clark

:lol:

I give up. — T Clark

Your challenges still helped me flesh it out, so thank you.

The big problem is that economies and countries and people (farmers, etc) who depend on cows (beef, dairy, etc) are being punished for no good reason. Economies and counties and people are being damaged financially. Countries that are damaged financially have less money to fight fossil fuels, and are wasting resources that could be used to fight fossil fuels. — Agree to Disagree

But let's say that the public begins to favor a lower cholesterol diet and they want to move away from monoculture land use with all the pesticides and fertilizers that go with that. The people in the beef and dairy industries could adapt to the changing scene just like all the people who had to adapt to the rise of computers and the end of American steel. They could find jobs doing something else, like making tofu.

I guess where I land on the issue is that I think the use of coal and natural gas needs to be the main issue. Doing something about cows will not solve the problem. Doing something about coal, considering the massive amount of coal we have left to burn, would be a giant step toward solving the problem. Whatever social technology we develop to make that change will help us change whatever else needs adjusting.

I mean, the very notion that people would sit around arguing about cows seems crazy to me. We all agree on what the main problem is. Our common ground is huge compared to the rest. How the hell to we end up at each other's throats over the tiny bit we disagree on?

They are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, as the Titanic slowly sinks. — Agree to Disagree

At present, this is true. The present global commitment isn't enough to accomplish much even if there was universal buy-in.

I think that there is something that we might be able to do about global warming long-term. If we concentrate on the right solutions. Even then, it will be difficult and take a long time. I favor a slow move away from fossil fuels. But not so fast that it creates big problems. — Agree to Disagree

:up:

It's specifically about your assessments of past behavior. You assume you know the rules you were following. Kripke's skeptic suggests that there is no fact of the matter. The fiction of "quadding" is just meant to illustrate this. — frank

I got this wrong. Kripke's challenge is not about epistemology. It's metaphysics. That's the point of the emphasis on facts.

Wow.