frank

Haha, cheeky! No we didn't. — bongo fury

Oh, I thought we did.

Isn't the move from
b. Lois is ready enough to say "Superman can fly."
to
c. Therefore, Lois is ready enough to say "Clark Kent can fly."
A supposed substitution? — Banno

Look at this one:

a. Superman is Clark Kent
b. Toto the parrot is ready enough to say "Superman can fly"
c. Therefore Toto the parrot is ready enough to say "Clark Kent can fly"

The rigid designator, Superman, isn't in sentence b. All that's there is a sound the parrot is ready to make.

Behaviorism deflates belief to point that it's simple behavior. There is no content to speech. The rigid designator would be in the content.

So if we assert that Lois believes Sup can fly, we are talking about a propositional attitude toward content, not readiness to make certain sounds.

No. Three persons who each are God, is one God. That’s unique information. — Fire Ologist

I was talking about Plotinus.

Referential opacity shows up in the identity elimination schema;

Identity Elimination Schema

Major: t1 = t2

Minor: ϕ(t1)

Conclusion: ϕ(t2) — IEP

So we would have:

a. Superman = Clark Kent
b. Lois is ready enough to say "Superman can fly."
c. Therefore, Lois is ready enough to say "Clark Kent can fly."

T1 has to show up in the b sentence, and it's not there. There's nothing to substitute.

I'd be surprised to hear Catholics have embraces Spinoza. — Banno

Christianity is built on Neoplatonism. They believed God is everything.

Bongo and I were discussing whether a behaviorist could arrive at referential opacity. We decided not, but then we examined whether we could define belief as a readiness to say a certain sentence. I don't think that will work either.

Yep, and it's the same with predications of the Son. His nature/ousia is God/divine. But he is not "the god," where "the god" means something like the Father or else a generic god-person. The Nicene Creed says, "Consubstantial with the Father," which is the much more traditional phrase. — Leontiskos

Fine. The use of Logos tells that it's related to Plato, the Stoics, and Philo. The basic idea was that God is everything. That's what Plotinus believed. I'm happy to give you the victory over sorting out what Catholics believe.

The Trinity comes from a Jewish guy named Philo. He believed Greek philosophy actually came from the OT. He believed God is everything.

Fine. You're saying John 1:1 is saying that the Word was with the Father, and the Word was divine.

My give a damn is now officially busted.

Try this as your starting point for explaining "is."

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.....

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. — John 1:1-5, 14

The Word is Jesus. Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God. Explain it.

@flannel jesus called attention to this song from The Book of Mormon. I think it will clarify things.

Yes. Quine agrees. Maintain the common attitude by not quantifying in, and hence not trying to reconcile Lois' Superman with ours. Not cashing in on the (future!) "rigid" rhetoric. Not substituting. Not going de re. Not concluding sentence c. — bongo fury

Ok. You just can't do that if you're defining belief as a readiness to make certain sounds. If Quine contradicts me on that, I'd have to read what he says to see what it is I'm misunderstanding.

Because if it did, we'd be able to substitute? — bongo fury

T1 is Superman. It's a rigid designator, which is identical to Clark Kent, also a rigid designator. The b sentence tells us that Lois believes Superman (the rigid designator) can fly.

a. Superman = Clark Kent
b. Lois believes Superman can fly
c. therefore Lois believes Clark Kent can fly — frank

Sentence c, with a de dicto reading, isn't true.

If we do a de re reading of sentence c, we would claim that Lois really does believe that Clark can fly, she just doesn't know she believes that, or maybe she just wouldn't put it that way? So with the endless shenanigans people have played with this problem, there are some views that say it's not a substitution failure.

The normal, everyday, commonly held attitude is that Sentence C is wrong, and as as a result of an invasion of propositional attitudes, we have referential opacity.

The " t1" in "believes t1 can fly" won't have the same reference as the one in line 1. — bongo fury

Why not?

But isnt Quine saying, let it show up in a belief context and transparency will be sacrificed quite as much as if you put it in quotes? — bongo fury

No, you can't put it in quotes. It has to be:

t1 = t2
Lois believes t1 can fly
therefore Lois believes t2 can fly

I think what you're suggesting is a readiness to make certain sounds. That's what you're calling belief. That's fine, it's just that you won't get opacity that way.

Somehow you have to involve t1.

Well, it doesn't say the ascriptions shouldn't be in terms of dispositions to assent and dissent? — bongo fury

In this case, the misapplication is so bad you don't even have a substitution failure. You at least have to have t1 in the b sentence.

Comport yourself so that t1 shows up in the b sentence, and we can evaluate for referential opacity.

And isn't Davidson saying the parrot wouldn't recognise the opacity? — bongo fury

I haven't gotten back to Davidson. I'm still trying to figure out opacity. You're helping. :grin:

More to the point, it's referential opacity. — bongo fury

No, you only get referential opacity if there are mental states involved... specifically of a kind a parrot wouldn't have.

The problem of referential opacity is to explain why a certain inference rule of classical logic sometimes produces invalid-seeming inferences when applied to ascriptions of mental states. — IEP

Let alone that the readiness is to say it "in all sincerity"!

Not sure I see an inherent problem. — bongo fury

You were asking if it would be more surprising if propositional attitudes did not result in substitution failure. I was saying that this would depend on how one understands belief. A behaviorist might have a hard time accepting substitution failure because beliefs reduce to behavior. Evidence for substitution failure would be scarce and unreliable.

You're identifying belief with the readiness of a subject to say S with sincerity. So it's

a. Clark Kent = Superman
b. Lois is ready enough to say S1 with sincerity, where S1 is "Superman can fly."
c. Therefore, Lois is ready enough to say S2 with sincerity, where S2 is "Clark Kent can fly."

This is a misapplication of the Identity Elimination Schema, which goes

Major: t1 = t2

Minor: ϕ(t1)

Conclusion: ϕ(t2) — IEP

The reason it's a misapplication is that neither t1 nor t2 show up in the b sentence. You can't substitute t1 for a mention of t1. If you do that, you'll end up with:

a. Istanbul is Constantinople.
b. “Istanbul” has eight letters.
c. ∴ “Constantinople” has eight letters. — IEP

In other words, if we use your scheme, we'll end up applying Leibniz' Law to the speech of a parrot. Parrots can be ready enough to say S1. What does that have to do with laws of identity?

Edit. Actually, I think I'm wrong about calling that a mention, it's more just an utterance. It's just sound that Lois is making.

How could you tell from watching Ralph's behavior that he's "ready enough to say" something? With behaviorism, we're trying to avoid a God's eye view on Ralph's psyche. In fact, for our purposes (as faithful behaviorists), Ralph has no psyche.

Well, as assent to contradictory sentences? — bongo fury

So we put two flashcards in front of Lois with contradictory sentences on them, and if she nods her head to both, we have referential opacity.

We are not going to explain away the fact that one plus one plus one equals three, and three does not equal one, but that one person is fully God, the other person if fully God, and the other person is fully God, but though there are three persons, there is but one God. If you are looking for some explanation that provides a new math, that may never come. — Fire Ologist

This is in keeping with the traditional Catholic perspective. The Trinity is a mystery beyond human understanding. You alluded earlier to John 1:1. Religion scholars identify that as Logos mysticism. It's cool stuff.

I've looked, but have not been able to locate a good account of opacity. — Banno

The IEP article is terrible. I'll try the SEP article.

I think we are still waiting for an explanation of what the "is" in the Trinity is, and why.
— Banno
I think that is the crux of the discussion! I am waining too! — MoK

I was thinking the same thing. Why is there silence on that question?

The guts of Davidson's article is the difference between "Superman is Clark Kent" and "Lois believes that Superman is Clark Kent". The former is a relation of identity between two characters, the latter a belief on the part of a third character. The two are very different things. — Banno

Sorry, I was vague about that. The OP is from an IEP article on referential opacity. I was struggling to understand all the aspects of it. Davidson's article is called Rational Animals. I felt like I needed to understand opacity better before I digested his argument.

A behaviourist wouldn't necessarily deny belief or opaqueness, though? — bongo fury

To support that, you'd need to explain how a substitution failure cashes out in terms of behavior.

Wouldn't it be more a cause for wonderment if it created referential transparency?

Then the Superman of Lois' beliefs could be relied on to share all his properties with the actual fictional one? — bongo fury

It depends on how you explain belief. A behaviorist would say that what we call belief reduces to certain actions. Since Clark is Superman, we can substitute all day long, because there is no hidden object in Lois's head. There is no opaque reference. The behaviorist goes with the de re reading:

Normally, we understand such ascriptions in the way that does not, which is why we reject (2b), but if cajoled enough (“look, she does believe Clark can fly, she just wouldn’t say it like that”), we may switch to a reading that allows substitution. In the usual terminology, this is called the de re reading, contrasting with the more common de dicto reading, which disallows substitution. Other terminology for this reading is relational, contrasting with notional; transparent, contrasting with opaque; and wide scope, contrasting with narrow scope. We turn now to explaining what distinction these labels attempt to mark. — IEP

As I mentioned, it's been said that God is like a coffee cup. The handle is an analogy. The mind is the index finger. In other words, the mind can only grasp God in a limited way.

Analogy in the knowledge of the mysteries of faith. The Fathers of the Church always emphasized the inability of the human reason to discover or even to represent adequately the mysteries of faith, and insisted on the necessity of analogical conceptions in their representations and expressions. St. Thomas, after the Pseudo-Dionysius and Albertus Magnus, has given the theory of analogy so applied to the mysteries of faith. (Cf. St. Thomas, Summa, Theol., I, Q. i, a. 9; Q. xxii, a. 1; In Librum Boëthii De Trinitate Expositio.) The Vatican Council set forth the Catholic doctrine on the point. (Cf. Const., Dei Filius, cap. iv; cf. also Conc. Coloniense, 1860.) (1) Before Revelation, analogy is unable to discover the mysteries, since reason can know of God only what is manifested of Him and is in necessary causal relation with Him in created things. (2) In Revelation, analogy is necessary, since God cannot reveal the mysteries to men except through conceptions intelligible to the human mind, and therefore analogical. (3) After Revelation, analogy is useful to give us certain knowledge of the mysteries, either by comparison with natural things and truths, or by consideration of the mysteries in relation with one another and with the destiny of man.

Thanks for the response. I don't have anything to add.

But I’d ask for a small step back from you as well in some form of confession that your original post with it’s reference to lobotomies and belittling caricatures of Christianity might have been a factor in the hostility on the thread. — Fire Ologist

Sure. All cards on the table, the inspiration for the OP was the fact that there were two open threads attacking the OT, one on the basis that some of the folktales in it don't seem possible, and one complaining that the OT deity seems vengeful. I was like, did you guys think the NT makes sense? Because it doesn't.

As for whether I'm responsible for the hostility of others, that's a complicated question. Everybody gets stressed, and sometimes a certain attack is the last straw. Emotional immaturity takes over, and a counter-attack is inevitable. That aspect of humanity shows up at the heart of the message of Jesus. He was saying that you don't have to let other people control you in that way. You're free. When someone attacks you, just stop and see that they're just like you. Maybe they have taken on the last straw, and they're passing it on to you. Break the cycle. Stand up out of that web of grief and rage. You do it by the grace of God. You do it through love. One of the advantages of this is that when you drop your own rage, you can see people more clearly for who they are.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. 16 Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.

17 Repay no one evil for evil. Have[e] regard for good things in the sight of all men. 18 If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. 19 Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 Therefore

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
If he is thirsty, give him a drink;
For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”

21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. — Paul in Romans 12:14-21

Or, the frank-approved MSG version:

Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”

20-21 Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good. — MSG version

@Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm curious if we can start over without hostility or mistrust. If you will, read the following from the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, and see if you can understand how a person would get the impression that the Catholic Church holds the Trinity to be beyond human understanding. There is definitely some ambiguity to the concept of mystery, and that's mentioned here. Mystery is not synonymous with incomprehensible. The very fact that they point this out demonstrates that some have taken the word to mean that, but it goes on to say that everything we know is incomprehensible if you dig deeply enough. So the Catholic Church does warn that the mystery at the foundation of all things is unknowable. On the one hand, a believer can be said to know the Trinity, because it has been revealed, but on the other hand, the Trinity is above finite intelligence. We can only grasp it by using analogies. We can't directly understand it.

In conformity with the usage of the inspired writers of the New Testament, theologians give the name mystery to revealed truths that surpass the powers of natural reason. Mystery, therefore, in its strict theological sense is not synonymous with the incomprehensible, since all that we know is incomprehensible, i.e., not adequately comprehensible as to its inner being; nor with the unknowable, since many things merely natural are accidentally unknowable, on account of their inaccessibility, e.g., things that are future, remote, or hidden. In its strict sense a mystery is a supernatural truth, one that of its very nature lies above the finite intelligence.

Theologians distinguish two classes of supernatural mysteries: the absolute (or theological) and the relative. An absolute mystery is a truth whose existence or possibility could not be discovered by a creature, and whose essence (inner substantial being) can be expressed by the finite mind only in terms of analogy, e.g., the Trinity. A relative mystery is a truth whose innermost nature alone (e.g., many of the Divine attributes), or whose existence alone (e.g., the positive ceremonial precepts of the Old Law), exceeds the natural knowing power of the creature.... — New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia

In this passage, there is an attempt to refute Christian Rationaists. Notice

The existence of supernatural mysteries is denied by Rationalists and semi-Rationalists. Rationalists object that mysteries are degrading to reason. Their favourite argument is based on the principle that no medium exists between the reasonable and the unreasonable, from which they conclude that the mysterious is opposed to reason (Bayle, Pfleiderer). This argumentation is fallacious, since it confounds incomprehensibility with inconceivableness, superiority to reason with contradiction. The mind of a creature cannot, indeed, grasp the inner nature of the mysterious truth, but it can express that truth by analogies; it cannot fully understand the coherence and agreement of all that is contained in a mystery of faith, but it can refute successfully the objections which would make a mystery consist of mutually repugnant elements. — New Advent

In other words, they're drawing a distinction between incomprehensibility and inconceivableness. At first glance, it doesn't seem that such a distinction is supportable. Don't these two words mean the same thing? When the topic is mystery, the answer is no. A mystery is incomprehensible, but not inconceivable. They're denying that the Trinity is a contradiction, but they admit that it's superior to reason. Another way to say that is that it is beyond reason.

I think it's probably the case that the reason the word "contradiction" is rejected is that this makes it sound like the Trinity is impossible. Though the "mind of a creature cannot, indeed, grasp the inner nature of the mysterious truth" knowledge is available through analogies. An analogy is like the handle on a coffee cup. Your mind is the index finger that holds the cup by as much as the finger can grasp.

Allow me to risk being idiotic, but perhaps part of the solution lies in thinking "Lois believes that Superman can fly" is not a property of Superman. It's a fact that you can say, but it's not a property as such.

Seems more like that statement is about a property of Lois lane — flannel jesus

Yes, I misspoke. Leibniz's Law gives us the expectation that we can substitute t1 and t2 in the Identity Elimination Schema (here)

The schema itself isn't an expression of Leibniz's Law.

I'm going to be examining an argument that says language is required for rationality. It's going to be rejecting the idea that dogs have beliefs, specifically because we have no way to be sure what they believe.

If referential opacity is drawn into the argument, which it is, then it's fair to tinker with the gears in that object.

You stipulated that she does. I trust you. If you now want to bring that in to doubt, go ahead, but I don't much see the point in doing so. — Banno

I don't think it's a stipulation in that context. We know what Lois believes because we know the story. It's from the narrator's point of view. That isn't available in real life.

Another angle on the same question would be: how do you ever know what other people believe? If it's charity, do you extend that charity to dogs? Why or why not?

How do you know Lois believes it?

Perhaps a slower reading of the article is called for? — Banno

True. Davidson uses referential opacity to make his case that language is required for rationality. So I was just contemplating the background of propositional attitudes.

In the example of Superman, we know what Lois believes because it's a fictional story and we have a God's eye view. That Lois believes Superman can fly is not a speculation, it's one of the central columns of the story. I'm thinking we'd want to keep that in mind when using referential opacity as an element of an argument. It's going to be dragging that God's eye view in with it.

Referential opacity occurs between contexts. Indeed, it can be considered part of what defines a context. Getting the scope right clears up the mess. — Banno

Look at this example.

a. Superman is Clark Kent. Major
b. Lois believes that Superman can fly. Minor
c. ∴ Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly. a, b =E — IEP

We aren't really worried about how we know what Lois believes, whether it was from observing her behavior, or she told us, or we have a mind-reading machine. We just know that she believes Superman can fly. There's a magical thing about belief: that it causes referential opacity.

But if we attribute propositional attitudes to a dog, do we still get referential opacity? We can't substitute a dog in the above =E because we aren't likely to just know specifically what the dog believes. We're just guessing from a afar, and so all our attributions will have extensional definitions, right?

a. The number of planets = 3 squared
b. It is contingent that the number of planets = 9
c. ∴ It is contingent that 3 squared = 9. — IEP

This substitution failure results from the fact that the number of planets isn't a rigid designator. It's a singular definite description.

I agree. But I would say that if my interlocutor had been Kierkegaard or Nietzsche or Heidegger or Plato, etc., a fairly fascinating discussion might have fallen out of the OP. None of them would have felt threatened by the question. They all would have listened to what I actually said instead of responding to demons in the ether. Or maybe that's just how those figures loom in my mind.

:grin:

A little more formally, the rule of inference =E can be stated as:

Identity Elimination Schema

Major: t1 = t2

Minor: ϕ(t1)

Conclusion: ϕ(t2)

Here t1 and t2 are expressions which refer to entities (for example, proper names of people or cities). ϕ(t1) is a sentence containing at least one occurrence of t1, and ϕ(t2) is a sentence that results from replacing at least one occurrence of t1 in ϕ(t1) with an occurrence of t2, eliminating the “=” of t1 = t2. Recurring ti presumes that ti is univocal throughout, and recurring ϕ presumes that the sentential context ϕ is not altered, syntactically or semantically, by the replacement. If these uniformity conditions are not met, then the inference scheme is being misapplied, and it is no wonder that false conclusions are derivable. For example, in the inference “The man behind Fred = the man in front of Bill; the man behind Fred saw him leave; therefore, the man in front of Bill saw him leave,” the context “saw him leave” is not uniform, since substitution of “the man behind Fred” by “the man in front of Bill” changes the reference of “him” (Fine 1989:222–3; Linsky 1967:104).

In discussing the problem with apparent substitution-failure by using =E, many examples will be drawn from the fictional story of Superman, treated as if it were true. In the story, a child from the planet Krypton, Kal-El, is sent to Earth, where physical conditions cause him to acquire superpowers. Wearing specific clothing (red cape, blue jumpsuit), Kal-El prevents disasters, rescues endangered innocents, and foils would-be perpetrators of crimes, such as Lex Luthor. People call Kal-El “Superman” when talking about Kal-El’s actions of this kind.

But Kal-El also takes a day job as a reporter, using the name “Clark Kent.” A coworker, Lois Lane, treats him with indifference in the office, but has a pronounced crush on, as she would put it, Superman, unaware they are the same individual.

The problematic examples discussed below involve ascriptions of mental states to Lois (or occasionally Lex), arrived at by applying the rule =E to the major premise “Superman is Clark” and a carefully chosen minor premise. Lois has a crush on Superman (minor premise), so, by =E, Lois has a crush on Clark. But this latter seems false, and would certainly be rejected by Lois herself. Also, Lois believes that Superman can fly, but does not seem to believe that Clark can; she hopes to see Superman again soon, but seems not much to care when she next sees Clark; she would like a date with Superman, but apparently has no interest in one with Clark; and so on — IEP

I agree that it's not my job to tell other people what kind of relationship they should have to religion, but somewhere short of actually getting offensive, challenging a belief can shed light. Maybe it doesn't shed light on strict philosophical issues, though. Maybe it's more about psychology.