I seem to recall, someone had a theory about that. — bongo fury

:up:

Which one, right ?

Rorty was maybe the first analytic philosopher I got into...bad influence, right ? Of course he challenged (as you prob. know) the 'mirror' or lens' or 'truth-o-scope' framework generally. Words are just paws for coping.

The meaning of a proposition remains a representation of reality, at least an attempt at it. It's not the reality it tries to depict. — Olivier5

My question is: how does (the meaning of ) a true statement depict reality ? What is this representational, optical metaphor doing or trying to do ?

"The internal"; my thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations are what is most immediately present to me. ... None of this has anything to do with Descartes. — Janus

Descartes famously emphasized that subjective reality is better known than objective reality, but knowledge of the objective reality of one’s own existence as a non-physical thinking thing is nearly as basic, or perhaps as basic, as one’s knowledge of the subjective reality of one’s own thinking. For Descartes, knowledge seems to start with immediate, indubitable knowledge of one’s subjective states and proceeds to knowledge of one’s objective existence as a thinking thing. Cogito, ergo sum (usually translated as “I think, therefore I am”) expresses this knowledge. All knowledge of realities other than oneself ultimately rests on this immediate knowledge of one’s own existence as a thinking thing.

From the horse's mouth (and he is/was a genius) :

Now that I have convinced myself that there is nothing in the world – no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies – does it follow that I don’t exist either? No it does not follow; for if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed.

But there is a supremely powerful and cunning deceiver who deliberately deceives me all the time! Even then, if he is deceiving me I undoubtedly exist: let him deceive me all he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing while I think I am something. So after thoroughly thinking the matter through I conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, must be true whenever I assert it or think it.

But this ‘I’ that must exist – I still don’t properly understand what it is; so I am at risk of confusing it with something else, thereby falling into error in the very item of knowledge that I maintain is the most certain and obvious of all. To get straight about what this ‘I’ is, I shall go back and think some more about what I believed myself to be before I started this meditation.

Well, then, what did I think I was? A man. But what is a man? Shall I say ‘a rational animal'? No; for then I should have to ask what an animal is, and what rationality is – each question would lead me on to other still harder ones, and this would take more time than I can spare.
...
Since now I am pretending that I don’t have a body, these are mere fictions. Sense-perception? One needs a body in order to perceive; and, besides, when dreaming I have seemed to perceive through the senses many things that I later realized I had not perceived in that way.
...
Thinking? At last I have discovered it – thought! This is the one thing that can’t be separated from me. I am, I exist – that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. But perhaps no longer than that; for it might be that if I stopped thinking I would stop existing; and I have to treat that possibility as though it were actual, because my present policy is to reject everything that isn’t necessarily true. Strictly speaking, then, I am simply a thing that thinks – a mind, or intelligence, or intellect, or reason, these being words whose meaning I have only just come to know. Still, I am a real, existing thing. What kind of a thing? I have answered that: a thinking thing.

Well, then, what am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wants, refuses, and also imagines and senses.

Isn’t it one and the same ‘I’ who now doubts almost everything, understands some things, affirms this one thing – namely, that I exist and think, denies everything else, wants to know more, refuses to be deceived, imagines many things involuntarily, and is aware of others that seem to come from the senses? Isn’t all this just as true as the fact that I exist, even if I am in a perpetual dream, and even if my creator is doing his best to deceive me? These activities are all aspects of my thinking, and are all inseparable from myself. The fact that it is I who doubt and understand and want is so obvious that I can’t see how to make it any clearer. But the ‘I’ who imagines is also this same ‘I’. For even if (as I am pretending) none of the things that I imagine really exist, I really do imagine them, and this is part of my thinking. Lastly, it is also this same ‘I’ who senses, or is aware of bodily things seemingly through the senses. Because I may be dreaming, I can’t say for sure that I now see the flames, hear the wood crackling, and feel the heat of the fire; but I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false; what is called ‘sensing’ is strictly just this seeming, and when ‘sensing’ is understood in this restricted sense of the word it too is simply thinking. — Descartes

This is basically a 'speculative' theological vision. Descartes 'is' 'thinking' or language. It's our being jointly 'enworldled' and 'enlanguaged' that is 'given.' Descartes and Kant seemed to have got tangled up in the 'I' and its social function. 'I think' is attached to 'P' within a normative, scorekeeping game. But 'P' is is,in its intelligibility even to its user, prior to that user, deeper than that user. Descartes implicitly asserts the autonomy of reason by striving toward presuppositionlessness. So I claim, and so I claim Hegel and Heidegger claim, to name just two. The assault on the Cartesian subject is, as I understand it, one the big events in relatively recent philosophy.

Taken as an intelligible (geistig) or an abstract being, that is, regarded neither as human nor as sensuous, but rather as one that is an object for and accessible only to reason or intelligence, God qua God is nothing but the essence of reason itself. But, basing themselves rather on imagination, ordinary theology and Theism regard him as an independent being existing separately from reason. Under these circumstances, it is an inner, a sacred necessity that the essence of reason as distinguished from reason itself be at last identified with it and the divine being thus be apprehended, realised, as the essence of reason. It is on this necessity that the great historical significance of speculative philosophy rests. The proof of the proposition that the divine essence is the essence of reason or intelligence lies in the fact that the determinations or qualities of God, in so far as they are rational or intelligible and not determinations of sensuousness or imagination, are, in fact, qualities of reason.

“God is the infinite being or the being without any limitations whatsoever.” But what cannot be a limit or boundary on God can also not be a limit or boundary on reason. If, for example, God is elevated above all limitations of sensuousness, so, too, is reason. He who cannot conceive of any entity except as sensuous, that is, he whose reason is limited by sensuousness, can only have a God who is limited by sensuousness. Reason, which conceives God as an infinite being, conceives, in point of fact, its own infinity in God. What is divine to reason is also truly rational to it, or in other words, it is a being that perfectly corresponds to and satisfies it. That, however, in which a being finds satisfaction, is nothing but the being in which it encounters itself as its own object. He who finds satisfaction in a philosopher is himself of a philosophical nature. That he is of this nature is precisely what he and others encounter in this satisfaction. Reason “does not, however, pause at the finite, sensuous things; it finds satisfaction in the infinite being alone” – that is to say, the essence of reason is disclosed to us primarily in the infinite being.
...
The necessary being is one that it is necessary to think of, that must be affirmed absolutely and which it is simply impossible to deny or annul, but only to the extent to which it is a thinking being itself. Thus, it is its own necessity and reality which reason demonstrates in the necessary being. — Feuerbach

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/future0.htm

The same applies to many objects, including material ones. — Olivier5

:up:

I personally see truth as a property of certain sentences and other symbolic representations of reality, the property of having a good enough fit with said reality, as far as we can tell. — Olivier5

That view is tempting, but I can't make sense of the comparison, of the fit. Only one side is intelligible.

We clearly aren't fitting strings of letter to reality but the 'meaning' of the utterance. Yet the 'meaning' is just the more or less tentatively embraced 'structure of reality.' It's as if world-as-speakable and language are one, but that's a tautology...(?)

How do you make sense of fit ? Do you see a problem ?

Maybe not then.

@Janus
Here are some Dreyfus-translated passages from Heidegger (from Being-in-the-World). I recommend especially the chapter "The Who of Everyday Dasein."

While it's beyond the minimal epistemic given to just assert these things, I read them as gesturing toward something similar, toward our being-in-a-world-in-language-together as our basic human situation. I am not some ghost viewing a spectacle. That's an example of 'interpretedness,' which is to say historical baggage, taken for granted unquestioningly.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The one as that which forms everyday being-with-one-another...constitutes what we call the public in the strict sense of the word. It implies that the world is always already primarily given as the common world. It is not the case on the one hand there are first individual subjects which at any given time have their own world; and that the task would then arise of putting together, by virtue of some sort of arrangement, the various particular worlds of individuals and of agreeing how one would have a common world. This is how philosophers imagine these things when they ask about the constitution of the inter-subjective world. We say instead that the first thing that is given is the common world -- the one.
...
Dasein, in so far as it is, has always submitted itself already to a 'world' which it encounters, and this submission belongs essentially to its being.
...
Primarily Dasein is 'one,' and remains so.
...
As a "one's self," the particular Dasein has been dispersed into the 'one' and must first find itself.
...
"[The one] is the 'realest subject' of everydayness."

"The internal"; my thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations are what is most immediately present to me. Your thoughts, feelings and sensations are present to me only insofar as they can be conveyed by what you say about them: if you are being honest. If you are lying or hiding your thoughts and feelings then I may have no idea; unless I feel your actions are giving you away, and I could be wrong about that. None of this has anything to do with Descartes. — Janus

From Wiki:

Subjectivism is a label used to denote the philosophical tenet that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience." The success of this position is historically attributed to Descartes and his methodic doubt.

As a reader of Heidegger, you may find this relevant. (I prefer it from the horse's mouth, but I'm not going to type up piles of prose for something so established.)

Descartes stands at the beginning of modern philosophy and Heidegger accepts Descartes' role in the history of metaphysics. Descartes is the first thinker who discovers the "cogito sum" as an indubitable and the most certain foundation and thereby liberates philosophy from theology. He is the first subjectivistic thinker in the modern philosophy and he grounds his subjectivity on his epistemology.

The orientation of the philosophical problems with Descartes starts from the "ego" (the "subject") because in the modern philosophy the "subject" is given to the knower first and as the only certain thing, i.e., the only "subject" is accessible immediately and certainly. For Descartes, the "subject" (the "ego", the "I", "res cogitans") is something that thinks, i.e., something that represents, perceives, judges, agrees, disagrees, loves, hates, strives, and likes. "Descartes calls all these modes of behavior cogitationes." (1) Therefore, "ego" is something that has these cogitationes. However, the cogitationes always belongs to the "I", I judge, I represent, etc. Heidegger maintains that Descartes' definition of "res cogitans" says to us that "res cogitans" is a res whose realities are representations.
...
Starting with Descartes, the subject becomes the center, and the subject, as the first true being, has priority over all other beings. Contrary to this priority of the subject, Heidegger's goal is to show that there is no subject distinct from the external world of things, because Dasein is essentially Being-in-the-world. Therefore, Heidegger puts together the separation of the subject and the object by the concept of "Dasein" which is essentially a Being-in-the-world. However, Being-in-the-world does not mean that it is like a piece of chalk in the chalk box. Being-in, as the most essential and existential characteristics of Dasein, signifies the expression of such terms as "dwelling," "being familiar with," and "being present to."

The distinction between the subject and the object makes the possibility of the distinction between the knower and what he knows.

https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContCuce.htm

I am open to criticism, but any criticism will be parsed through my own critical filter and accepted or rejected depending on how I judge its plausibility. — Janus

:up:

Indeed, and we want that filter to be a good one ! Surely you update it in terms of what it lets through. Your 'I'-filter isn't static.

rationality mandates only validity, not soundness once the boundaries of the empirical realm have been crossed. — Janus

How are such boundaries established ?

I've said nothing at all about objects. — creativesoul

I don't mean pumpkins or bowling balls. I mean the beliefs in question.

Where are you looking? I suggest a very careful re-read of this conversation. What you claim to be looking for has long since been presented — creativesoul

To head off any confusion, let me be clear that I'm in earnest. I don't intend sarcasm or rudeness. Here's my view of the situation.

You say you are right where all philosophers up till now are wrong...on an important issue. That's a strong claim, for which a strong case ought to be made. Note that I think talk of models already saves those philosopher from being wrong. We don't have to know or claim to know the secret hearts of cats or amoeba to postulate entities useful for predicting them. [Indeed, I think we agree that such a secret 'inside' is useless.]

How ought we to think of belief in languageless creatures ? The way I'm tracking things, you've said not-this-way and not-that-way. But where's the positive, 'operational' definition, however tentative ?

We being? — Olivier5

I can't remember the context. Presumably it's 'we especially rational and charming people who agree with @Pie'...

But neither the wood nor the sentence are "out of time". — Olivier5

Turing machines have a 'potentially infinite' tape. This just means that we don't build in any limits. I think there is a similar open-ended-ness in play.

Like a piece of wood can have a certain permanence and durability, a sentence can remain known and meaningful over time. But neither the wood nor the sentence are "out of time". They are just durable, for a while. — Olivier5

:up:

I agree. They seem to have meaning only as long as there are normative creatures with a use for them...as code as opposed to burning books to stay warm.

I definitely need that explained. — bongo fury

This is pretty good.

In computer science, a pointer is an object in many programming languages that stores a memory address. This can be that of another value located in computer memory, or in some cases, that of memory-mapped computer hardware. A pointer references a location in memory, and obtaining the value stored at that location is known as dereferencing the pointer. As an analogy, a page number in a book's index could be considered a pointer to the corresponding page; dereferencing such a pointer would be done by flipping to the page with the given page number and reading the text found on that page.

Quoting/mentioning is something like pointing at sentence-as-meant. Deferencing is like quote-stripping, 'activating' the code.

I just meant that we can still drop "proposition". — bongo fury

:up:

I probably just muddied the water by mentioning pointers.

But a sentence is already a class: of tokens, or copies. So you don't need another name for the more inclusive class. — bongo fury

:up:

The Rust language dereferences pointers automatically. I think we humans are pretty good at doing that too.

You may be right, but I don't think I'm that wrong.

Philosophers looking for some underlying nature of some truth property that is attributed with the use of the expression ‘true’ are bound to be frustrated, the deflationist says, because they are looking for something that isn’t there.
...
The suggestion that there is no truth property at all is advanced by some philosophers in the deflationary camp; we will look at some examples below. What makes this position difficult to sustain is that ‘is true’ is grammatically speaking a predicate much like ‘is metal’. If one assumes that grammatical predicates such as ‘is metal’ express properties, then, prima facie, the same would seem to go for ‘is true.’ This point is not decisive, however. For one thing, it might be possible to distinguish the grammatical form of claims containing ‘is true’ from their logical form; at the level of logical form, it might be, as prosententialists maintain, that ‘is true’ is not a predicate.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

I dispute the point that propositions are nonlinguistic and timeless entities. — Olivier5

:up:

We should perhaps acknowledge a Derridean 'iterabilty' at work, which is what suggests 'timeless' to earlier theorist (there's a certain time-independence, since old books remain legible, we can quote Tarski in a new context,...)

‘Iterability’ explains that Derrida is concerned with the logical possibility — not merely the physical opportunity — for a written text to remain readable when the absence of the sender or the addressee is no longer a mode of presence but a radical or absolute absence. He sees the possibility of it functioning again beyond (or in the absence of) the ‘living present’ of its context of production or its empirically determined destination as part of what it is to be a written mark. We can thus propose this ‘law of writing’: a mark not structurally readable — iterable — beyond the death of the empirically determinable producer and receiver would not be writing.

https://academic.oup.com/book/377/chapter-abstract/135193384?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

Both, because propositions are in fact a class of sentences. — Olivier5

Or perhaps neither ? We deny that truth is a property. "P is true" is a fancy/emphatic version of "P."

I would say we very often don't, and cannot, know if our beliefs are true or justified, and we can only know they are reasonable if they are consistent with our preferred set of starting assumptions. — Janus

I think we can have some sense of whether they are justified...or what are controlled experiments for ? We decide what counts as justification after all. Normative.

Consider practical life too. Metaphysics is full of doubt and ambiguity, but ordinary life is full of conjecture and refutation and confirmation.

I think the notion of normative rationality is a form of scientism; — Janus

I think you know not what you say. Or maybe you really are an irrationalist. There are some fun versions of it.

Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding [= reason] without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. Sapere aude! [Dare to be wise!] Have courage to make use of your own understanding [= reason]! is thus the motto of enlightenment.

It is requisite to reason’s lawgiving that it should need to presuppose only itself, because a rule is objectively and universally valid only when it holds without the contingent, subjective conditions that distinguish one rational being from another.
...
Reason must subject itself to critique in all its undertakings, and cannot restrict the freedom of critique through any prohibition without damaging itself and drawing upon itself a disadvantageous suspicion. For there is nothing so important because of its utility, nothing so holy, that it may be exempted from this searching review and inspection, which knows no respect for persons [i.e. does not recognize any person as bearing more authority than any other—GW]. On this freedom rests the very existence of reason, which has no dictatorial authority, but whose claim is never anything more than the agreement of free citizens, each of whom must be able to express his reservations, indeed even his veto, without holding back. (A738f/B766f, translation slightly modified)
...
To make use of one’s own reason means no more than to ask oneself, whenever one is supposed to assume something, whether one could find it feasible to make the ground or the rule on which one assumes it into a universal principle for the use of reason.

[N]ot even the slightest degree of wisdom can be poured into a man by others; rather he must bring it forth from himself. The precept for reaching it contains three leading maxims: (1) Think for oneself, (2) Think into the place of the other [person] (in communication with human beings), (3) Always think consistently with oneself.

I don't have Cartesian leanings, so I have no idea what you are referring to. — Janus

No offense. But by my lights you do. The key point (what I refer to) is the emphasis on the internal as the given.

I know there are secret experiences, so I don't have to defend anything. I actually don't care if you agree with me or not; I'm just reporting my own experience; you can (and no doubt will) think whatever you like about what I report; it means little to me. — Janus

I take it as a given that we aren't sharing diary entries here. You can 'know' that you have a closer walk with Jesus, 'know' that your third eye is opened, 'know' that AI will destroy the world. Plenty of people 'just know,' but surely that's not the ideal here. You indeed don't have to defend anything, but philosophers, at least one version of them, like defending their claims, care about incisive criticisms, and improve their system of beliefs. But obviously you can do you. I just don't see why you bother with debate given what I take to be almost an irrationalism. *Maybe it's just this one issue you are talking about. Hard to say.

I take serious issue with the very notion of what-it's-like regardless of the candidate under consideration. — creativesoul

:up:

If it's ghost-like stuff, I agree. There's a boring version that's acceptable, such as a report of what it's like to be blind, to be a kindergartner, etc. But the 'hidden' thing is useless.

Perfect example of anthropomorphism. — creativesoul

Which was the point, sir.

I'm looking for an alternative to a mathematical model or modeling via linguistic beliefs. So far I think you've only told us what the objects in question are not.

No, I was saying that I personally find Brandom and Sellar's approaches too anal, too concerned with "getting it right" in some objective fashion. — Janus

For some of us, getting it right is the job. Objective is good.

You're assuming that there are "best beliefs"; the same for everyone: I don't share that assumption. — Janus

I don't think atheism would suit my mom. Perhaps it's best not to believe there are best beliefs ? I'm kidding. But I would like to have true beliefs, justified beliefs, reasonable beliefs.

I also think we all indulge in faith of one kind or another, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. — Janus

I still think it's either a bad metaphor or a dilution of 'faith' into something insignificant. If everybody is X, no one is, because nothing is picked out.

our cultures should not be straitjackets. — Janus

But who would say otherwise ? Is the Enlightenment to be understood as more of a prison than a release ?

I think Heidegger was very concerned about authenticity, about living one's life and thinking one's thoughts in accordance with individual experience, judgement and resolve, not following "das Man"; not doing and thinking "what One does". — Janus

It's as if you think I'm advising human beings to be thrown in interpretedness, to have prejudices they don't even know they have (co-revealed with the other in the interpretation thereof, as Gadamer described.) Given your seeming 'Cartesian' leanings, it's my opinion that you are missing some good stuff, which I locate in Dreyfus on 'the who of everyday dasein.' "Language speaks and not the human."
It's not that the 'we' ought to have priority over the 'I.' It's more like the 'I' is an appendage. Language is the 'water' we swim in as 'spiritual' [cultural, self-made, historical] beings. We're in it as much as it's in us. That's my claim, anyway.

Language, world, us ...equiprimordial shamrock trinity....

I would be interested to hear what you think! — Bob Ross

Hi ! I sometimes talk with people on forums who have various intuitions and suggestions about infinity and other mathematical concepts. Often enough they've had no experience writing mathematical proofs, which is like not knowing quite what math is, at least to a mathematician (even if, in fact, one can go a long way in applications without ever learning proofs.) 'Poetry' is a just a metaphor for these ideas that are not yet in mathematical shape. It's fair to expect some mastery of real analysis from an innovator. (Algebra and topology are natural mentions, but real analysis is the serious theory of the numbers we all are somewhat familiar with.)

Not sure what "operational definition of this thinking" is asking for. — creativesoul

For instance, how does one detect/define consciousness ? If one rejects the idea of a mysterious X that makes the difference between an arbitrarily convincing P-Zombie and a 'Real Boy,' then we must have some threshold of recognition. In ordinary life, it'd be something like responsiveness (we could talk the details endlessly, but we wouldn't be worried about P-Zombies.)

So how do you determine or grab a nonlinguistic belief ? Currently I can imagine attributing linguistic belief or a mathematical model.

If belief is internal and external, it'd be hard to grab it, I'd think. How can one report it objectively ? Or is it merely postulated ?

Cool fact.

I never seriously explored complex analysis, but I'm dimly aware of some spectacular theorems.

It's a pretty serious offense though, whatever the reason. "Scum that infects the nation" is violently dehumanizing.

A language less child can learn that touching fire causes pain. Do they infer? — creativesoul

I'd say no, but we, who do infer, might explain them in inferential terms. We could also mathematically model the situation, I suppose. Why not ? But what else is there ? ESP ? A baby whisperer, if that made sense ? Perhaps I'm wrong, but I fear you are pointing at something ineffable.

All I've done was point out the fact that outwardly observable behaviour - alone - is not always a reliable means to know what the candidate under consideration is thinking. — creativesoul

What's your operational definition of this thinking ? If not a beetle in a box, then presumably there's something ? I don't think you mean dispositions. You seem to mean something 'inside.' Brainstates ?

I'm not following why you suggest a theory of language as a means to establish what language less belief consists of? — creativesoul

What I had in mind was your mention of behaviorism. To me, behaviorism is clearly on the right track, but too rigid, insufficiently sensitive to just how ridiculously verbal and inferential we are. So I offer a theory that is also wary of ye old ghost theory, while making plausible sense of the talky part of our doings.

It is (sufficient commonality of) personal experience that underpins public usage, not the other way around, in my view. — Janus

I think this is the natural way to think of it. But I take it to be one of the great discoveries of philosophy to have flipped things around. This flip, this revelation of the priority of the 'we' before the 'I' and the 'external' to the 'internal'...I take to be what's great in Wittgenstein and Heidegger. As I see it, one is one before one is someone in particular. Everyday Dasein is Anyone, tribal second nature incarnate.

And that's the problem with this normative rationailty ideology: it's a horrible idea, it's the fantasy of the machine men, the thought police and the political correctiphiles. — Janus

I see.

More attempted dismissal by lame ridicule? I thought you were concerned with rational argument. — Janus

We can joke too. We do want to be machine men. Was it not you who introduced folk psychoanalysis, calling Brandom and Sellars 'anal', railing against a paradoxically up-your-arse concern with justification, in defense of the soul's imagery ? I try to mirror the tone of the person I'm talking with. I am willing to change course if you are.

People will always have differing worldviews: it's a phenomenon of natural diversity. — Janus

But this is obvious. Why should we worry about settling beliefs rationally in the first place if there weren't so many candidates to choose from ? It's because you and I and the other folks are free that we can ask for reasons, demand justifications for claims. Where we might agree is that a rational person can be a hypocrite or a fanatic. Is Ayn Rand a hero of rationality ? Quite the opposite in my view. A boxer gets in the ring, and philosopher suffers exposure to difference, tarries with the negative.
Like Milton and Spinoza and Kant and others, I think free speech is crucial, so don't count me an enemy of diversity simply because I seek the best beliefs like everyone else.

It is requisite to reason’s lawgiving that it should need to presuppose only itself, because a rule is objectively and universally valid only when it holds without the contingent, subjective conditions that distinguish one rational being from another.
...
Reason must subject itself to critique in all its undertakings, and cannot restrict the freedom of critique through any prohibition without damaging itself and drawing upon itself a disadvantageous suspicion. For there is nothing so important because of its utility, nothing so holy, that it may be exempted from this searching review and inspection, which knows no respect for persons [i.e. does not recognize any person as bearing more authority than any other—GW]. On this freedom rests the very existence of reason, which has no dictatorial authority, but whose claim is never anything more than the agreement of free citizens, each of whom must be able to express his reservations, indeed even his veto, without holding back. (A738f/B766f, translation slightly modified) — Kant

The Peircean notion of the truth asymptotically approached by the "community of enquirers" is a sick fantasy; another sad attempt, like many religions, to devalue and stamp out our animal natures. — Janus

I think Peirce's idea is worthy, but my own view of truth, a descendant perhaps, is deflationary. I claim that the 'religion' metaphor is misleading. It's a bit absurd to conflate faith and rationalism. What's that leave you with ? What's your just-right porridge with so much proscribed ? Or do you insult reason to make room for faith as well as an unleashed animality ? Are we talking The Crucified or Dionysos ?

I have received, sir, your new book decrying the human species, and I thank you.(1) You will please men, of whom you speak the truth, but you will not correct them. One cannot paint in stronger colors the horrors of human society, from which our ignorance and our weakness promise so many consolations. One has never taken up so much wit in wishing us all beasts--it gives us a desire to walk on all fours when we read your work.

http://reflectionsonlandusetranslationsmorebycew.com/FrenchinAmericadelaSalleandVoltaire/VoltaireRousseau.html

What is necessary for a philosopher to make sense? To speak coherently and in terms that anyone prepared to make the effort can understand,,,although obviously not necessarily agree with. — Janus

:up:
And that means the need a common-public language to be in together, which is to say [also] a common-public world for that language to be about. You left out normative rationality. The first two requirements (arguably just one language-world) are those for any kind of communication.

That's what this thread might do, for some. — Banno

:up:

i just don't trust his book recommendations. — Banno

I may be more in the middle. There's great stuff in Heidegger and Derrida, two of his favorites, but I like dragging that stuff over toward a more analytic-friendly style.

And how did the end of history work out? He's still trying to eff the ineffable. — Banno

Oh he's beautifully mad though. His Hegel is both cutting-edge and reactionary. It's like sci-fi. Yet I think much of it endures.

I'm not so sure. I suspect it's actually pretty simple, if folk don't confuse themselves. Treat T-sentences as a definition of "...is true" and you won't go far wrong. — Banno

:up:

I think we should make it simple in just way (or close enough.)