This is yet another thing from the prolific David Lewis, contextualism, the short version of which used to be that we do know things in everyday life that we don't know in the philosophy seminar room. — Srap Tasmaner

That's not an unreasonable idea. Nonetheless, if it turns out that we are wrong, we are expected to withdraw the claim to knowledge. I may be said to know that my car will be safe in the car park, and that may be well justified. But it is is stolen, I have to admit that I was wrong.

the truth of things which are true by definition and logical self-evidence is simply obvious, and just needs to be pointed out to be established in conscious understanding. — Janus

It is obvious to us. But we have learnt how to do reasoning as part of learning language and interacting with people.

It's not enough, for the sentence to be known, that we believe it to be true. It must also be true. — Banno

What bothers me is the interface between belief and reality. "It must be true" is the something more that is required. But once I have assessed the evidence, what more could there be? so I have difficulty in seeing what this amounts to. The best I can come up with is that claims to knowledge, like any other claim, have to be withdrawn if they turn out to be false. There may be cases in which the truth or otherwise of the proposition in question is finally and conclusively determined, but most of the everyday stuff doesn't come up to that standard. So the caution remains in place.

Well, I think Gettier creates a strange division between justification and truth, but the Gettier cases I am familiar with involve a proposition that is true, not false. — Leontiskos

It's not all that strange. A standard use of "justify" does indeed assume that if P is false, then there is no justification for believing that p. But this has the consequence that I can only be said to know P if I have a conclusive justification for P. That means that I do not know, for example, that the earth goes round the sun. So that definition can be said to be too strong. So many people believe we should relax the criterion and allow that I do know that the earth goes round the sun, even though I only believe it on authority. It is tempting to say that it follows that I can be justified in believing something even though it is false and Gettier explicitly says that is his assumption.

First, in that sense of "justified" in which S's being justified in believing P is a necessary condition of S's knowing that P, it is possible for a person to be justified in believing a proposition that is in fact false. — Analysis. vol. 23 (1966)

There's a wrinkle here that Gettier does not mention. It is clearly wrong to believe something that is known to be false and conclusive proof over-rides any non-conclusive justification. But where there is no conclusive evidence, one has to go with the evidence one has, and that does mean that one can be justified in believing something that turns out later to be false. That's a weakness in most of the cases. However, most people seem to go along with his (unstated) assumption that we must continue to call him justified when we know, but he does not, that his belief that Jones will get the job is false.

The proposition in question, in his first case, is

(e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. — Analysis. vol. 23 (1966)

Smith wrongly, but not without justification, believes that Jones is the man who will get the job, but the truth is that Smith will get the job. So Smith is using "the man who will get the job" to refer to Jones, but we (and Gettier) are using it to refer to Smith. That makes two different statements expressed in the same words. There is no problem. (This solution does not apply to all Gettier cases).

This has the awkward consequence that I can never learn anything from anyone else.
— Ludwig V
Why think that? — Leontiskos

JTB requires me to accept a claim to knowledge only if I know it is justified and true (and believed). But that means that I have to know p as well as the person claiming knowledge.

Kant framed it as noumenon, that which exists independently of our forms of cognition. — Truth Seeker

Actually, my understanding (admittedly based on encyclopedias) that there is a distinction iin Kant between the noumenon and Being-in-itself. But I'm not at all clear what that amounts to. Then there are all the various ways that philosophers have articulated Being-in-itselr. But I think we have to accept that there is a very respectable philosophical tradition that is sure that there is something beyond appearances.

Still, I wonder: do those successes give us reason to think we are asymptotically approaching reality-in-itself, or only that we are continually refining the human image of the world? — Truth Seeker

Refining and/or extending, I would say. I can't see beyond the frontier - that's how it is defined. So there's no way of telling which it is. On the other hand, we can't know if we are approaching, asymptotically or not, any kind of terminus.

Or do you lean toward collapsing them into a single problem about how language points beyond itself? — Truth Seeker

In a word, yes. There's an argument I encountered in learning about the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that one cannot explain how a picture pictures - or at least, not by drawing a picture. (If you can understand my picture of picturing, you can already understand a picture. If you can't understand a picture, drawing a picture is just more of what you don't understand. That's one way of understanding Wittgenstein's showing, not saying. So I think that that how language points beyond itself is something one can show, but not say. Very frustrating for philosophers. Yet every human baby gets it. Most animals are very bad at it, though I'm told that pigs can do it.

But, as you point out, every example we can give (light spectra, bird magnetoreception, etc.) still relies on human conceptual frameworks to describe it. — Truth Seeker

How could that not be so? Anything we could come up with would immediately become a human conceptual framework. The only way out of the puzzle is to turn it round and look at it the other way. Human conceptual frameworks enable understanding the world, including letting us understand what we cannot grasp.

So maybe “reality-in-itself” always risks being a placeholder for “what we don’t yet know how to grasp — Truth Seeker

My inclination is to say that the whole thing is a mistake, resulting from the regrettable tendency of philosophers to test everything to destruction. Yet it is a well-established way of thinking and the moving frontier is the best I can do by way of extracting some sense from what people say about it.
But I would insist that Reality-in-itself is not a thing, nor is there a special class of things that we can separate off as being real, leaving whatever is unreal on one side. We know something about everything and there is much that we don't know about everything. Mostly, it's a question of aspects, not of distinct objects - though there are also unknown objects, I've no doubt. The story of the discovery of pulsars is a nice example. A mysterious phenomenon resists every attempt at explanation. Finally, after studying it more carefully, we develop a concept which "saves" the phenomena and a new kind of object enters our collective ontology.

Do you think it’s coherent to maintain that these distinctions are useful heuristics even if, in practice, we can never step outside cognition to test them? — Truth Seeker

We can always push at the boundaries and find places and methods where there are new forms of cognition to be had.

Or do you lean toward collapsing them into a single problem about how language points beyond itself? — Truth Seeker

Language is always important, but I'm not sure that it is ever the whole story. I do think philosophers should be much more careful about generalizations and pay more attention to differences. So it's quite tempting to sweep reality-in-itself and being-in-itself together and I'm sure they are related. But I'm also sure that they are different, and both need to be recognized.

I don't see how belief would be destroyed, but there is at least one sense in which justification and truth rise or fall together. But that gets us back to Sam26's questions about Gettier's objection. — Leontiskos

You are right that there is at least one sense in which justification and truth rise or fall together. But Gettier's argument assumes that they do not, that is, that it is possible to be justified in believing that p and for p to be false. In that case, the link between JTB and knowledge rests entirely on the T clause. But if I'm evaluating whether someone knows that p, I must make my own evaluation of the truth or falsity of p, which re-introduces the entire process.

That the sentence is true is one of the criteria for the sentence being known. This says nothing about how we determined if the sentence is true. — Banno

I agree with you. But does that mean that the definition must take the truth or falsity of the sentence as given, in some way?

You seem to have an image of an investigator looking at a sentence and saying "ok, Criteria one: I believe this sentence; criteria two: this sentence is justified by such-and-such; but criteria three: how can I decide if the sentence is true?" But that's not how the idea would be used - there's an obvious circularity in such a method, surely. If you believe the sentence (criteria one), then you already think it to be true and criteria three is irrelevant. — Banno

Considering the process of applying the definition is interesting. I don't often see it raised. It seems just obvious to me that it must be my evaluation of the knower's justification (NOT my justification), my evaluation of the truth, and the knower's belief. That means, IMO, that I have to take a position on whether the sentence is true or not. This has the awkward consequence that I can never learn anything from anyone else. That seems to make the concept of knowledge a bit limited and rules out the possibility of standing on anyone's shoulders, giant or not.

First, when you suggest that “partly” knowing reality-in-itself implies that we do in fact know something of it, what safeguards do we have against simply projecting structures of our cognition outward and mistaking them for reality? — Truth Seeker

I'm afraid I'm somewhat handicapped here, in that I don't really understand what reality-in-itself is. I mostly understand Reality as everything and anything that is real. I difficulty understanding that because most things are real when we describe them in one way, but not real when we describe them in other ways. There's not one group of real objects and a distinct group of unreal objects.
But then I don't understand what "reality-in-itself" is. Your concern about simply projecting the structures of cognition outward is not unreasonable. But there's no single answer. We have to consider case by case. If we do that, we find ways of distinguishing between projections and reality. We see a particular spectrum of light, and we have discovered that the spectrum is much wider than just the colours. But we have discovered that by means of our vision as it is and we have developed ways of grasping the invisible parts of the spectrum. We know that some birds (migratory ones) can perceive the magnetic field of the earth and use that to navigate from A to B even though we don't (directly) perceive it ourselves. So there may be distortions in our perception of the world, but we can deal with them when we discover them.

Second, you asked how “reality-in-itself” differs from “Being-in-itself.” For me, “reality-in-itself” gestures toward what exists independently of any observer, while “Being-in-itself” (to use Sartre’s term) connotes the sheer presence of things apart from consciousness. They might overlap, but one emphasizes ontology, the other epistemology. I’m curious: do you see them as distinct, or just two ways of naming the same riddle? — Truth Seeker

But don't both those definitions create a puzzle about what does exist independently of any observer, or what the presence of things apart from consciousness is. What are the criteria that tell us these differences? Or are you asking what we know independently of all the ways we have of knowing anything? It's like asking how we can walk without legs. Of pay for things without money.
At the moment, I'm trying to work out whether they are distinct issues or different varieties of the same issue. I suspect they are quite closely related, but not identical. It's possible that they may be the same issue formulated as epistemology and then as ontology, but the fact that Reality does not equal Existence tells against that.

I also like your suggestion that empiricism, rationalism, phenomenology and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive. Maybe the question isn’t ‘which is right?’ but ‘how can they work together?’ to give us the most complete account of reality. — Truth Seeker

That's a very interesting idea, but, as you say, it isn't quite clear how all of them might be fitted together. One might start by observing that empiricism and rationalism do seem to fit together in the sense that they deal with different things - experience vs concepts. But fitting in the other two is more difficult.

For me, the open problem is: if all our approaches (empirical, rational, phenomenological, pragmatic) remain within the limits of human cognition, how do we ever know we are not simply locked inside those limits rather than perceiving reality as it is? — Truth Seeker

A lot depends on how you think about it. In some sense or other, we can describe limits to our cognition. But how do we know about them? It can't be because we can get beyond them, so it must be that our knowledge within its limits points to, or, possibly, even creates, the idea of something more to be known. The other observation I would make is that one can consider what we can know and bemoan our fate in being confined within them, ignoring the fields of knowledge that those limits create. There are two sides to a limit; on one side there's all that is open to us, on the other side, there is all that is closed to us.
If we can have so much as the idea that there is something beyond out limits, we open up the possibility of transgressing the limits and exploring beyond the frontier. If we then look at our history, it seems pretty clear that we then work out how to extend out knowledge beyond them. The limit is a moving frontier, not so much a limit as a border between what we have learnt and what we will discover.

Do we need to accept that reality-in-itself will always remain partly unknowable? — Truth Seeker

"Partly" is interesting. You seem to be accepting that we do in fact know some things about reality-in-self. Which suggest that we can know more. No doubt, there will always be more to be learnt - every answer is the foundation for the next question. Perhaps this is just an infinite process and the idea that our knowledge will ever be complete is no more than the impossibility of completing such a process.
But I'm not sure what you mean by "reality-in-itself". How does it differ from "Being-in-itself"?

If the latter, (sc. "what we mean by object here is something (i.e. general category) whose sense transcends the instant and context of its use?") then it would seem to tie ‘same’ to the consultation of a categorical picture. — Joshs

I'm not sure whether you are talking about the picture as a shadow-object (the illusion that W is trying to show is superfluous), or about the relevant sentence (which he compares to a picture). I think that, in your example of the two photographs, the photographs are doing the job of the sentence, and that this is consonant with what he is trying to say.

I mean that part of the point of the concept of an object is that it persists through a variety of contexts. — Ludwig V

If that's right, then, what is happening with the two photographs is a question of how we interpret the photographs, rather than of the photographs themselves.
A side-note - a important curiosity here is that some differences between the two images may be crucial in our deciding that it is the same car in both pictures. The car will have aged and maybe undergone events that leave traces in the photographs - a dent, a patch of rust, a sticker. When we say it is the same car, we take that in to account and actually rely on those changes as evidence that it is the same car.


I haven't much to say about these pages. They are splendid examples of his method and I think they are very clear and work well. Hi remarks about method are also very helpful. But I do have some comments.

Ironically, our confidence in our personal experience leaves us without a shared world, only “a lot of separate personal experiences of different individuals”, — Antony Nickles

It is ironic that the search for certainty ends up by removing, or making problematic, so much of what we want to be certain of. The supreme irony here is that W's account of "I have a pain" as an "expression" as opposed to a description, trades on the absolute certainty of our experiences, but turns it into a problem, rather than a secure foundation. The price of certainty is the inability to say anything.
(There's a similarity here with the parallel issue about analytic statements, which cannot tell us anything just because they are so "secure")

Our investigation tried to remove this bias, which forces us to think that the facts must conform to certain pictures embedded in our language. — p.43

This expresses an ambivalence about our (ordinary) language which is perhaps rather glossed over, not only in some of W's own remarks, but also in "ordinary language philosophy. Ordinary language is sometimes "all right as it is", but sometimes it is not. The trick is to tell the difference.

But the trouble with the realist is always that he does not solve but skip the difficulties which his adversaries see, though they too don't succeed in solving them. — p.48

It is very hard to persuade people to accept W's stance, for example, that neither realism not ant-realism are correct or incorrect and that what is necessary is to understand both in order, one might say, to transcend them.

I added this example as an after-though:-

the expression of belief, thought, etc., is just a sentence;--and the sentence has sense only as a member of a system of language; as one expression within a calculus. Now we are tempted to imagine this calculus, as it were, as a permanent background to every sentence which we say, and to think that, although the sentence as written on a piece of paper or spoken stands isolated, in the mental act of thinking the calculus is there--all in a lump. The mental act seems to perform in a miraculous way what could not be performed by any act of manipulating symbols. Now when the temptation to think that in some sense the whole calculus must be present at the same time vanishes, there is no more point in postulating the existence of a peculiar kind of mental act alongside of our expression. — p. 42

W makes clear, admittedly without saying so, that, in a sense, the calculus is present whenever we speak or write. But in a lump, and not in the sense required by the idea of a mental act of thinking - not that that idea could contain the whole of language "in a lump" without magical properties.

His method allows us perspective on thinking as the assumption that we just speak our “thoughts” (not in the sense of voicing our inner dialogue), by asking “what do we say if we have no thought?” and then pointing out the sense of speaking thoughtlessly as simply not considering beforehand the consequences of saying something in a particular context. — Antony Nickles

Now here's a difficulty. The trick here is to juxtapose a sense in which one can speak thoughtlessly with the philosophical doctrine, in such a way that the emptiness of the doctrine stands out. But much depends here on the reaction of the audience, who, I find, are a bit liable to object that they did not mean that, so that the two sides are speaking past each other.

Do you mean that I am using “same” as a rule which outlaws beforehand certain ways among others that we may use general and generality, — Joshs

That is what I was suggesting.

or that general and generality are exclusively associated with specific ways of use (“the” ways we actually use them, versus a potential infinity of possible uses)? — Joshs

Not quite that. It would be incautious of me to deny the possibiity of non-standard uses of "general" and "generality". All I was saying was the standard logical definition of "same" (A=A) makes standard uses of "general" and "generality" pointless or reduces standard uses to sloppy versions of the strict or pure use that logicians prefer. For me, it is A=A that is non-standard - not wrong, exactly, but a limiting case.

What I was trying to do was not outlaw any particular use of “same” , but to point to a use of same which relies on the consultation of a picture. — Joshs

That is very helpful.

If we say that two photos of an object depict the same object, or we stare repeatedly at an object and report that our perception continues to be of the same object, should we say that the sense of ‘object’ here is unique to the specific context and instant of use, or that what we mean by object here is something (i.e. general category) whose sense transcends the instant and context of its use? If the latter, then it would seem to tie ‘same’ to the consultation of a categorical picture. — Joshs

Two pictures of my car - one in London and one in Edinburgh, say - are two pictures of the same object. Clearly that object transcends the instant and context of each picture - in some sense of "transcend". (Actually, the idea of an object that exists only at an instant or in a specific context is - let's say - a bit odd, or perhaps specialized. I mean that part of the point of the concept of an object is that it persists through a variety of contexts.)

Would you agree that if there is no essence of meaning of any word , then there is no essence of meaning of ‘particular’, and likewise no essence of meaning of ‘general’, paradigm, game, category, etc? — Joshs

Yes. But you seem to me to be laying down an essence of "same" and using that as a rule which outlaws the ways in which we actually use "general" and "generality".

The answer to: “Why are you tense, steadying yourself, holding your breath?” is not: “I have an expectation.” — Antony Nickles

The answer to idealism, in a nutshell.

As well, I see “groping for a word” not as putting a word to something “already expressed” internally (p. 41), but as an activity (though perhaps just passive waiting). In this sense, the expression is only in having found the word, in the saying of it (to you or myself). — Antony Nickles

I think of it, not as a repetition of something stored, but as a recreation, in which each element is added because it "fits" with the previous one. Or, the metaphor of the pearls being drawn out of a box, but are not stored in the box, but (re-)created at the moment that it is needed.

(The power of this “must” I take as very important to why all the forced analogies and “fixed standards” (p.43), but so far he only goes so far as to blame our forms of speech—not yet seeing the need driving it). — Antony Nickles

That's a nice example of how a new position can generate the next question.

I think it is worth noting that he wants to add back in a sense of “private” thinking and experiences, — Antony Nickles

Perhaps this passage should be quoted more often in debates about the PLA.

I have been trying in all this to remove the temptation to think that there 'must be' what is called a mental process of thinking, hoping, wishing, believing, etc., independent of the process of expressing a thought, a hope, a wish, etc. — p. 41

It is striking, at least to me, that what he means by a mental process is a conscious process, which we can become aware of if we pay attention what we are conscious of from moment to moment. It's an effective tactic, even if it smacks more of phenomenology than logic. But I am puzzled about the mental processes posited by congitive science. I have the impression that these writing do not pay attention to the difference between conscious and unconscious processes. That allows the argument that the must be certain processes going on that we are not aware of - i.e. unconscious processes. (No doubt this is not intended in a dualistic sense, but is based on the assumption that a physical substrate will be identified in due course.

Yes, but each time we invoke the same generality we mean a particular sense that wasn’t already present in the generality. So it’s never the ‘same’ generality being used each time. — Joshs

Yes, you get that result if you think of same in the light of the logical axiom that A=A is the paradigm of sameness. Actually, for me, it is the limiting case of sameness and is the point at which it is deprived of all real meaniing. Obviously, any generalization must be applicable to a range of particular cases, which may will likely not be identical in all respects, as required by our paradigm. But the concept of a paradigm allows for differences. In short, your argument suggests that generality is, strictly speaking, impossible. That may not be a reductio ad absurdum but it is certainly a reduction to pointlessness.

Part of what Newman is doing here is arguing that, in the more primary epistemic sense, law has to do with will and not with nature. He is turning Hume on his head, and will continue to do so. — Leontiskos

Thank you for that quotation.
I guess Hume will survive being turned on his head. It is no more than what he tried to do to the "Schoolmen". But Newman's argument is reminiscent of Berkeley's, and, presumably, gets to a very similar conclusion. I'm not greatly bothered by his argument about natural the uniformity of nature, since I don't consider it to be a truth, but a methodological presupposition. governing the search for order in the world.

The distinction follows from the metaphysics in the same way that someone who accepts the Doctrine of Transcendentals will acknowledge a distinctive logical function for One, Good, and True and their derivatives (Something, Thing, Beautiful, etc.), in that they are transcategorical and that they are conceptual/logical (as opposed to real) distinctions that add nothing to Being but which are coextensive with it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’ve never understood metaphysics and I don’t know enough about the doctrine to dissect this. But it looks as if metaphysics and logic reflect each other here and that someone who accepts the doctrine of transcendentals agrees that there is a distinction that is at least very similar to the modern fact/value distinction.

It would be like arguing for moral realism on the grounds that the Doctrine of Transcendentals makes a different logical distinction re "Good." — Count Timothy von Icarus

So I guess you don’t buy the argument. In that case, it is irrelevant.

As noted earlier, I don't think "good" always indicates or approves of an action. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’m open to examples.

On something like an Aristotleian account, the goodness of actions is always parasitic. Goodness is primarily descriptive there and grounded in final causes, and particularly in beings (organisms). — Count Timothy von Icarus

A lot depends on the details. What is the goodness of actions parasitic on? If goodness is primarily descriptive, like theoretical statements, how come it can move us to action, as in his paradigm example, “Dry food is good”. But the key questions are 1) whether “good” is univocal, like “red” or changes its meaning according to context, like “real” or “exists” or “large” and 2) whether Aristotle (and Aristotelians) are right to posit a Single Supreme Good and 3) the role of those things (activities) that are “good in themselves” or “good for their own sakes”, like theoretical reason, music and friendship.
Now I’ve mentioned “real”, I need to say that I don’t feel a great need to answer the philosophical issue, in relation to values or anything else. There are certainly values of several sorts, moral values included; the questions are about their nature, their role in our lives. I don’t see that recognizing a distinction between facts (which also exist) and values brings that into question in any way.

Even in common language today though, "good" often seems to be used in strictly descriptive ways. — Count Timothy von Icarus

An explanation of what you mean by “in strictly descriptive ways”, possible including examples would help enormously.

Nor do I think that what makes a claim "evaluative" is generally clear. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with you. We’ve been using both “descriptive” and “evaluative”, not to mention “fact” and “value” and “is” and “ought” on the assumption that we have a common understanding. Which may well not be true. But the context of our discussion is morality and ethics, so that kind of evaluation is obviously the focus. That should help a bit.

"That's hot" can be a claim recommending action. It can also be merely descriptive. "That's too big," is often a claim recommending action, but it can also be descriptive. Context determines if it is taken to recommend action or not. But more to the point, no one thinks that because "that's too big," or "that will break it" might recommend action, that they are not also, and often simultaneously fact claims and descriptions. Their being evaluative in one context doesn't remove their descriptive nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, this is difficult. One could well say that the difference between description and evaluation is the use made by sentences in a context. Then we would need to say that descriptive statements are statements whose use in standard contexts is descriptive and similarly for evaluative statements.
But we need to think, for example, about what kind of arguments or evidence supports or undermines a descriptive vs an evaluative statement (use of a sentence), and what kinds of role they play in our language and life.

Anyhow, perhaps I interpreted this wrong, but you seemed to be supporting the general fact/value distinction in light of the logical distinction. If so, I would say this argument is circular. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I thought I was trying to articulate a logical distinction. What is the general fact/value distinction as distinct from the logical fact/value distinction?

Note that the move to subjectivize value here could just as well he made for all descriptions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe so, but that’s a different issue, isn’t it?

Some people make a differentiation between first person declarative and third person informational statements. I find this distinction more useful, but it cuts across claims of value and "facts" and does not presuppose the two are exclusive. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are certainly important differences between the two. But if they cut across the fact/value distinction, how are they helpful?

In any case, there obviously often is assertoric force. If there is, then "x is y" is equivalent with "it is true that x is y." Now, we might not believe that "x is y," but surely if it is really true we ought to affirm it, right? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, if x is y, then you do well to answer the question “Is x y?” in the affirmative. But asserting that x is y just because you believe it is, well, a bit odd. Am I supposed to assert everything I believe. How often? What happens if I don’t?
Asserting what one believes is one activity that expresses one’s beliefs. But then, any action for which x being y is a good reason expresses one’s beliefs just as well. When x being y is not relevant, it doesn’t come up.

Although, I suppose it's true that for the values anti-realist "y is true" never implies "affirm y," and the move to affirm y must always come from irrational, inchoate sentiment. …. Whereas the counter to the effect that we have a "sentimental" desire for truth qua truth ("all men desire to know") is just reintroducing the rational appetites with the adjective "sentimental" tacked on. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh, I see, this is about the rational appetites. Well, I’ll acknowledge a desire for truth. But I don’t think there is anything special about that desire. Like others, it can be excessive or deficient. Like others, it has to take its place among our other desires and values. A being that was devoted to truth and nothing else would not last long in this world; I don’t think I could recognize it as a human being.
But there’s another point about this. Like many others, I think that our emotions and feelings (sentiments) can be rational – that’s why they can be assessed as irrational. But their connection with actions mean that they are reasonable, as opposed to logical. It is reasonable to fear the lorry that is hurtling towards us and reasonable to get out of its way. In that context, the emotivist’s account of morality looks rather different, doesn’t it?

This is very similar to his claim that we never sense causes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps so, but how is it relevant?

The idea that "good" involves something like "thou shalt" or that "ought" primarily denotes duty or obligation (or even action), is a product of that context. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps so. But I think we should evaluate the idea for its own sake, in our context, rather than anyone else’s. Rejecting an idea just because of it’s original context seems a bit like prejudice to me. Actually, what I was trying to say was something vaguer, more like statements of value can be major premisses in a practical syllogism – or statements of value (and so of desire) explain the motivations for action in a way that statements of fact do not.

I'll respond to the rest later but I wanted to point out a potential miscommunication: — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this discussion is getting too complicated. I would like to set aside the historical debate. However, I can’t resist two observations – I don’t expect you to agree with me, but I think we can make more progress by focusing on the core issues. This post is about sorting out the focus, setting aside debates, not because they are not worth while, but because one cannot deal with everything at once.

1.Likewise, one need not suppose that Hume rejects final and formal causality on theological grounds to accept that he is writing in a context where final and formal causality have already been excised from "scientific/philosophical discourse" primarily on theological grounds. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It’s true that Hume was not involved in the ejection of final and formal causality from physics but that he was writing in the context of that decision. Whether that decision was made primarily on theological grounds is another question. I don’t have the expertise whether that was so or not, so I won’t argue the point.

2. I am referring to the section in Book III where he says that we never sense (touch, smell, see, etc.) vice or badness.
"Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. … The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a regular technique for the empiricists, isn’t it? There’s always a catch. Here, it is “as long as you consider the object” – our attention is directed away from the context. Certainly Berkeley is very fond of this move, though he doesn't let it get in the way of a good argument. I don’t set much store by it. But consider the end of that section.

Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of these be pleasure and uneasiness ; and if favourable to virtue, and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behaviour. — Hume Treatise III. 1. i.

That doesn’t sound like moral anti-realism to me. On the contrary, what he seems to think he has found is a foundation for virtue and vice that is consonant with his methodology. There are problems with it, of course. First, there is the let-out clause “If favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice”. I’m sure many people would point out that our sentiments are often not particularly favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice. In addition, there is the Euthyphro question, whether the gods love piety because it is good or whether piety is good because the gods love it. On top of that, there is Moore’s fallacy.
Hume is more complicated, even slippery, than he is usually thought to be. I think standard representations of him are misrepresentations. But I don’t think it’s a black-and-white issue.

The distinction follows from the metaphysics in the same way that someone who accepts the Doctrine of Transcendentals will acknowledge a distinctive logical function for One, Good, and True and their derivatives (Something, Thing, Beautiful, etc.), in that they are trans-categorical and that they are conceptual/logical (as opposed to real) distinctions that add nothing to Being but which are coextensive with it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’ve never understood metaphysics and I don’t know enough about the doctrine to dissect this. But it looks as if metaphysics and logic reflect each other here and that someone who accepts the doctrine of transcendentals agrees that there is a distinction that is at least very similar to the modern fact/value distinction.

It would be like arguing for moral realism on the grounds that the Doctrine of Transcendentals makes a different logical distinction re "Good." — Count Timothy von Icarus

So I guess you don’t buy the argument. So I won't let it distract me.

He does not take up the influential arguments for the appetites associated with reason, but simply declares they cannot exist. But I consider the phenomenological and psychological arguments made for such appetites to be quite strong, and Hume's declarations to be quite destructive, so I have no idea why we should take them seriously. — Count Timothy von Icarus

OK. Would you mind explaining what the arguments are that you consider to be quite strong? I’m intrigued by the idea of appetites associated with reason.

The fact/value distinction in Hume (see Book II) is justified in a circular fashion from this premise. — "Count

Hume’s wraps up his premiss in some rather confusing flourishes, but he realizes that no set of facts can provide a deductive proof of any statement of value and sets out to provide an alternative explanation. Are you saying that he is wrong about that?

We experience obscenity, depravity, cruelty, etc. — "Count

Hume doesn’t disagree with you. On the contrary, he argues that morality is based on our responses to those experiences – on how we feel about them. He realizes that those responses can’t be validated by deductive reasoning, but believes that, nonetheless, they are the basis of morality. I think that’s an over-simplification, but not unreasonable as part of a more comprehensive theory.
The biggest weakness in his argument, in my view, is that he seems to think of experience and our reactions to it as something given. He doesn’t distinguish between what our experience is and how we have learnt to interpret it. That knocks a big hole in the idea that experience is the foundation of knowledge – and, indeed, or morality. That doesn’t rule it out as a contribution to or a factor in our knowledge and morality.

Hume's argument, that "virtue and vice" don't show up in our "sense data" is extended into the seeming reductio claims of later empiricists and phenomenologists, that we also don't experience cats, trees, the sun, etc., — "Count

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Yes. Actually, it was Berkeley that first articulated that argument and critics made the same criticism. It didn’t impress Berkeley and it doesn’t seem to impress modern idealists either. I don’t know why Hume is not also subjected to it.

what we are given to understand is a contextual sense of an object that cannot be swallowed up within a more general categorical definition on it. — Joshs

Broadly, that's ok with me.

The particular givenness doesn’t imply the more general concept. On the contrary, the general meaning is secondary to and derivative of the particular sense. — Joshs

I'm a bit puzzled about what "swallowed up" means here. We only ever encounter particular houses and particular people. Even though they are particular, they can be described in terms of generalities.

we are only aware of the need to explain or clarify before or after the expression. Sometimes there is no “understanding”; we don’t speak of it when I ask you to pass the salt, as you say, “trading on shared assumptions and attitudes.” — Antony Nickles

Yes. There's an interplay between what we are aware of, what W calls a mechanism of the mind - I think of it as the unconscious. Understanding seems to occur in both ways. But perhaps we need a third category - our ability to explain ourselves, to answer questions. A disposition is odd. It manifests in certain circumstances and not in others. In between manifestations, there's nothing - except counter-factuals about what I would do or what might manifest itself in a different context.

I'm not denying a difference between commands and recommendations and descriptions, just the idea that so descriptions involving values are actually commands or expressions of emotion. Such theories do violence to language. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wasn’t suggesting that descriptions involving values are actually commands. I was pointing out that descriptions involving values are also commands, or, more accurately, have the force of commands, etc.

The idea that "good" always refers to something like "thou shalt" is a product of Reformation volanturist theology, the tradition that shapes Hume. To say that all value claims are about "thou shalt" isn't to observer an ironclad law of philosophy or language. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn’t limit that list to commands, or recommendations, but was gesturing towards a connection between certain descriptions and action (or inaction).

It's just the (originally explicitly theological) premise that shaped Hume's context, i.e., "there is no intrinsic value (teloi) because intrinsic value would be a constraint on the divine will. Thus, value must be about divine command." — Count Timothy von Icarus

The theological premiss may have been the first version of the idea. But, given that he does not mention it, I think we can be reasonably sure that it was not Hume’s premiss.

"This is a great car," does not mean "thou shalt drive my car," or even "I should drive my car," just as "this is good (healthy) food" does not directly convert to "thou shalt eat this food," or even "you ought to eat this food." This is even more obvious when we move to the beings that most properly possess goodness. "Peter is a good man," need not mean "thou shalt choose Peter," or "I recommend Peter." It can, but it needn't; it can be merely descriptive. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’m sorry, I seem to have misled you. I was not saying that any description was synonymous with any command, in the sense that one “directly converts” to the other. I was saying that many descriptions have the force of commands, or recommendations, or (Hume’s favourite) approbations or even expressions of emotion. (I’m assuming that you are reasonably familiar with the concept of speech acts.)

Centuries of war waged against intrinsic value in the language haven't been able to paper over these issues. While "that's a good tiger," might seem a bit odd in English, descriptive value statements made in a slightly different ways are still common and natural. Hence, "that tiger is a perfect specimen," or "that is a perfect tiger," is generally about the tiger as tiger, not recommending the tiger or commanding us to do anything vis-á-vis the tiger. So too, "that is a pathetic, miserable bush," isn't telling us to do anything vis-á-vis the bush, but is normally telling us something about the bush as a bush. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are cases where it doesn’t make sense to describe them as “good”, such as, “This is a good disease”. I surmise that’s because their badness is built in to the concept. In other cases, like “tiger”, it may be because they have been known to kill us, and are dangerous. They are very good at hunting; the catch is that they are perfectly capable of applying those skills to hunting human beings. In yet other cases, the oddity may be because there are no criteria for evaluating them. I suspect “planet” may be such a concept; “oxygen” may be another.
Let’s think about dog shows. The rules for these competitions include descriptions of the various breeds. The rules for a Shih Tzu and for an Old English Sheep Dog are different, but they specify what makes one competitor better than another in each class. To evaluate a Shih Tzu by the criteria for an Old English sheep dog is a solecism or a misunderstanding or nonsense.
The project here is to specify criteria for the evaluation of each competitor. Identifying a dog as a Shih Tzu tells us that specimen conforms to the criteria, to a greater or lesser extent, and so justifies the classification; but the rules also justify evaluating specimen as better or worse than another. It is essential to the project that description and evaluation are distinct activities, linked by the rules. This is a formalization of a conceptual structure that is very common in our language, and which presupposes that description and evaluation are distinct. Another field with a similar, but different, structure is the legal definition of a crime – murder, say, or theft.

So let me ask a pointed question: does the descriptive statement "x is y" essentially mean "you ought to affirm that x is y is true?" If not, then why, if y is "good" would it automatically change to "you ought to do y." — Count Timothy von Icarus

1) No. 2) Because “good” is an evaluation and “x is y” is a description.

To be sure, we ought to choose the good and avoid the bad. But we also want to affirm truth and reject falsity. And yet we don't say that "x is true" becomes equivalent with "affirm x," and so "x is good" shouldn't be subject to this sort of transformation either. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The whole point of the distinction is that a (pure) description is not equivalent to an evaluation. But some concepts have both descriptive and evaluative components; sometimes, in specific context, a description may be treated as an evaluation.
I don’t think that “x is y”, of itself, suggests that we should affirm it or should not affirm it, except in specific contexts. Sometimes we should and sometimes we should not. (Cf. Kant on truth-telling)

More later…

The separation of practical and theoretical reason was centuries old. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, indeed - even millennia old. So why do you think that the fact/value distinction is a distinctive error of empiricism - or even an error at all?
(As I remember it, Aristotle even asserts that "Reason, by itself, moves nothing". That's what motivates his construction of the practical syllogism.)

It's precisely the assumption that there are no final causes (and perhaps, no facts about goodness) that allows for a novel move here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you are over-simplifying here. That decision was a re-configuration of the distinction between theoretical and practical reason, not, or at least not necessarily, an abandonment of the ideas of purposes and values. Oversimplifying again, final causes are not the province of science, that's all.

Prior thinkers hadn't missed the difference between "ought" and "is;" yet they thought there could be descriptive statements about the good and beautiful (just as we can speak about what "ought to happen" given purely descriptive predictive models"). — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is true that the interface between fact and value, or between theoretical and practical reason, is more complicated than is usually recognized. We do not always draw a clear distinction between the two, so one can always turn an evaluative statement into a factual statement - and there are many concepts that combine the two. Yet we can also to disentangle them. "Murder" combines fact and value, but I think everyone understands how to distinguish between the two aspects. "Abortion is illegal" is, in one way, a statement of fact and not of value (unless one is arguing that one ought to obey the law). But we can also ask whether abortion ought to be illegal. We can also, I think, see the difference between "ought" of expectation and prediction ("we ought to get home in three hours") and "ought" of moral or ethical principles ("you ought to be on time for this appointment"). The factor that can create confusion is that we usually expect people to meet their moral and ethical obligations.

You can see this in the fact that if you replace "good" in the second statement with "common" you get a straightforwardly descriptive statement: "It is common for people to be kind to their mothers." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Surely you can see that those two statements have very different force? One implies an instruction or command, or recommendation. The other doesn't. "`It is common for people to take a summer vacation" is an observation which does not have the force of a recommendation or instruction, while "It is good for people to take a summer vacation" does not imply that it is common and is compatible with it being rare to do so, but it does imply that one should. When the surgeon holds out his hand and calls "scalpel", it's an instruction and the surgeon expects the nurse to put one in his hand; when the nurse holds up a scalpel and asks what it is, the same word is a description - there is no expectation that the nurse will put it in his hand.

It seems to me to be akin to demanding that every logical argument include the additional premise that: "we ought affirm the true over the false" tacked on to it. Granted, I see no problem in adding either since they seem obviously true. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, a logical argument does not require that premiss. If the argument is sound, it is sound whether or not people affirm the conclusion. It is true that when we are trying to explain the force of these arguments, we try to explain that, and why, we ought to affirm the conclusion. It's a knotty problem.

Sometimes I feel like his examples here are just terrible. I mean is it just me or waaaaay too unnecessarily esoteric for the point he is trying to make, except that he seems to feel he needs to chase the rabbit all the way down the hole to cover as many senses/analogies in which philosophy might frame our thinking as objects, etc. — Antony Nickles

I'm glad you mention that. I agree with you, and there should not be a problem about recognizing that Homer sometimes nods. I still have no way of shifting my feeling that something has gone wrong in the discussion of imagination and the question whether we can imagine the abolition of redness.

Most importantly, understanding is not “present” during communication. Understanding happens after expression, in coming back to it, .... — Antony Nickles

Yes. I think that W is right to point to the importance of explanations after the event. But it seems odd to say that understanding is not "present" during communication. Surely understanding is expressed in communication and in even in non-communicative action. In any normal action, there is a huge amount of complexity and we may be unable to resolve various ambiguities simply of the basis of a single action. Then we need to clarify after the event. But a great deal of that complexity can be expressed in the processes of planning and preparation, before the action.

philosophy interprets the sheer possibility of disconnection, and the difficulty of reconnecting, as if the “problem” is in the activity of (always) connecting which is then just a puzzle to “know”, like a “a queer mechanism” (cue some neuroscience). — Antony Nickles

Philosophy wants to construct a logical structure of the action and then turn it into an actual structure "in the mind". It's like insisting that all arguments be expressed in formal logical format, even when we actually utter a short version, trading on shared assumptions and attitudes.

But I think this leads to an unfortunate and common conflation where the second sort of "empiricism" is appealed to in order to justify the first sort, such that all scientific progress is called on as evidence for the superiority of the first sort of empiricism, and a rejection of empiricism is said to be a rejection of science. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. It is odd that those theories are often classified as idealist.

Yet to my point in the OP, if our epistemology leads us to this—to dismiss claims as seemingly obvious as "it is bad to have my arm broken," or "it is bad for children to be poisoned at school" as lacking any epistemic grounding (i.e., not possibly being facts)—then I'd say this is an indication that we simply have a bad epistemology. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can see your point. But it's only an over-view. It needs a slightly more detailed argument.

I think this is especially actue in metaethics, where empiricsts epistemic presuppositions essentially amount to metaphysical presuppositions. "Examine the sense data; there are no values (or universals, or facts about meaning, etc.) to be found." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh, I think that Hume's argument is a bit better than that. There is some value to recognizing that statements of value (evaluations) are not in the same logical category as statements of fact.

The same sort of thing that happens with "empiricism" happens with "naturalism." Both have been equated with accepting or rejecting science to such a degree that virtually no one says that they aren't an naturalist. Yet this just leads to a huge amount of equivocation, where "naturalism" can be either extremely expensive, or "only reductive, mechanistic materialism." I think it is, in general, an increasingly useless term. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The problem is that if one gives up using all those terms, and tries to concentrate on the issues rather than the labels, other people will pin them on us according to their needs.

I do think that solution is better, but the point isn't to highlight that specific solution, but rather the genealogy of the "problem" and how it arises as a means of elucidating ways it might be resolved or else simply understanding it better." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not sure whether you mean the Aristotelian solution or the Neoplatonist one. Either way, I don't think we can assume that we can lift one part of a coherent system of thought and make it work in our context. More than that, there are, in my book, two versions of empiricism. One of them has been popular in philosophy and leads to the empiricism of appearances, ideas or sense-data. The other is mostly unspoken but is the foundation of science; this version understands experience in a common-sense way and doesn't posit theoretical objects that boast of being irrefutable and turn out to prevent us from understanding the stars or anything else.

Thus, we should not be surprised that borrowing their epistemology leads to skeptical conclusions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A fair point. It looks as if we need to be a bit careful what we take from those times if we want to avoid the same sceptical conclusions.

You speak as if “the color system” guarantees a metaphysical space for redness, as though the system enforces an ontological necessity. But the necessity is grammatical, not metaphysical. It comes from how we use color words, not from a hidden structure of reality. — Joshs

I get your point. But eventually realized that the peculiarity of this discussion is precisely that it is conducted, to put it this way, de re and not de dicto. If he asked whether we could abolish the concept of redness, that would have been one question. But he doesn't. He asks whether we could abolish redness, and compares it to destroying a watch. That comparison is a nonsense, to start with.

I keeping reaching for a key that will make all this fall in to place. But it still elude me. The discussion later on page 38 is all very well, but I don't see it clarifies this passage.

Wittgenstein returns to the question. "What is the object of a thought?" (e.g. when we say, "I think that King's College is on fire"). (Page 34)
This is, he says, typically metaphysical, because “an unclarity about the grammar of words” is expressed “in the form of a scientific (he has physics in mind) question”.

He identifies four “origins” of the question, which I think are intended to be confusions expressed in it. (Page 35)

1.. ‘One of the origins of our question is the use of "I think/expect" and “I think/expect” in two distinct ways. “I expect him” and “I expect that he will come”. We then compare “I expect him” to “I shoot him”.
He turns his attention to the shadows:-
2 a) Two different sentences can have the same sense, which becomes a shadowy being (unless perhaps it is a material object).
2 b) Shadowy sense to “be a picture” that “cannot be questioned”; it doesn’t need any interpretation.
3) Sometimes a sentence brings images before our mind's eye. These images are “translations” into pictorial language. But they must be similar to, copies of, what they are pictures of.

i) A map of all or part of our planet, he says, is not a picture by similarity or a copy in this sense. (Page 36)
ii) A picture of someone’s face projected it “in such a way that no one would normally call the projection ‘a good portrait of so-and-so’ because it would not look a bit like him”. This is, let us say, a bit complicated.

This gets him to where he wants to be. The sentence itself can do the work of the shadow, and so no shadow is needed. We can explain what the sentence means, perhaps, by an ostensive definition. That’s how words and things can be connected.

He can now go back and correct the path that he started down. (Page 37) The idea of the shadow is deeply rooted, but it is not what we really want to say. What we want to say is that “the fact which we wish for must be present in our wish”. Well, the answer just above cited ostensive definition to explain what “King’s College is on fire”. That works for expectation and wishing, too – after the event. But I could have given a similar explanation before it, as well.

At this point, a summary. How do our thoughts “connect” with the things they are about? The connection is made by means of ostensive definition. Ordinary language makes it seem that the connection must have been made during the act of thinking. But that’s not the case.
He gives us examples that could be taken to mean that thinking or meaning can be regarded as a mental activity, and so leading us to feel that something has been explained and no further questions are appropriate.

Now he returns to imagining and King’s College (Page 38) and subjects this to a cross-examination. I take it that links back to the rather unsatisfactory discussion of imagining earlier. But here, he concludes that our mistake is to think that images and experiences of all sorts, must be present in our mind at the same time.

Finally, a metaphor (Page 39) , - pulling a string of beads being pulled out of a box through a hole in the lid, to persuade us that “We easily overlook the distinction between stating a conscious mental event, and making a hypothesis about what one might call the mechanism of the mind.”

You suggest Wittgenstein’s “pressing the eyeball” example is irrelevant because color concepts are socially learned. — Joshs

Well, yes. Pressing one's eyeball and noticing a new colour is not enough. We have to see how other people describe the phenomenon. So I'm very puzzled, except that, perhaps, he hasn't yet constructed the private language argument. BTW, I pressed my own eyeball to see what would happen. Nothing - only darkness and the usual display from my retina. As I pressed harder, I experienced pain. Not that it matters.

He isn’t denying the biological basis of vision; he’s showing that philosophy generates pseudo-problems by treating “redness” as if it were an inner object. — Joshs

Yes, that's the general context. The specific context is the question how we can think of something that does not exist, and he is considering the answer that we just imagine it. But if imagination is just combining elements that do exist in new ways, imagination cannot play the role of shadow facts. Yet he presses the argument further, and seems to want to find a way of saying that we can imagine something that does not exist.

Wittgenstein might say “abolishing redness” looks nonsensical not because of biology but because of how the grammar of color words works in our language. — Joshs

What puzzles me is that he seems to conclude that abolishing redness is not nonsensical. He seems to be grasping for a sense in which it can make sense.

Suppose I said "Exerting a pressure on your eye-ball produces a red image". Couldn't the way by which you first became acquainted with red have been this?
And why shouldn't it have been just imagining a red patch?

I think he also acknowledges that this does not resolve the problem, because he promises to deal with the "reservations" we "may be feeling here at a later occasion."

I'm finding this point very confusing.

I'd favour the more humble point, that cause is overrated if it is considered to be the only, or even the most important, explanation. — Banno

OK. It's just that causal explanation, along with the metaphor of the machine, has been such an icon of what science is about that I find it hard to grasp the alternatives (apart from statistical explanations).

That willingness to live with and investigate the precariousness inherent in the absence of deductive certainty is more than just science; it's the human condition — Banno

That sounds good. Actually, there are reasons for thinking that deductive certainty is not all that it is cracked up to be.

we've seemingly, as has been made clear too many times with recent posts, made the case that realism/anti-realism distinction has sort of killed itself. — substantivalism

I would be inclined to agree with you. But then I find that it is still alive and kicking.

You can still play a make-believe game of REALISM if it. . . to you. . . feels more intellectually useful in deriving the results you desire for whatever means. — substantivalism

If you want to argue with someone, it is best to start from where they are at.

BECAUSE THESE DEBATES DO NOT DIE and they probably just transfer themselves to the new popular domain of philosophical discussion — substantivalism

Too right. That creates an interesting, and difficult, field of understanding what's really going on.

Some folk tend to think of F=ma as setting out how the force causes the acceleration. — Banno

Yes, I get that point. Are you saying that we should stop talking about causes altogether, or that we need to re-think the concept of causation?

That underdetermination stuff is a feature, not a problem. It's about being unhappy with a determinate causal answer such as "God willed it" and looking for more, doing the experiments, using your imagination, seeing what happens when you do this or that... — Banno

Setting aside the local issue about God, I understand you to be saying that underdetermination is the space for research and discovery, rather than a prison of doubt and uncertainty. Is that fair?

He’s not a mainstream philosopher, — Wayfarer

Yes. That's part of his appeal.

The equation, in philosophy, of the self with the ego is a specialized locution. It doesn't reflect how the word is used in general discourse. For example, here's what Merriam-Webster says:-

(1): an individual's typical character or behavior (e.g. her true self was revealed)
(2): an individual's temporary behavior or character (e.g. his better self)
(3) a person in prime condition (e.g. I feel like my old self today)
(4) the union of elements (such as body, emotions, thoughts, and sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person)
(5) personal interest or advantage
(6) the entire person of an individual
(7) the realization or embodiment of an abstraction
(8) material that is part of an individual organism (e.g.ability of the immune system to distinguish self from nonself)

I like the equation with both one's typical character and some temporary behaviour.
Think too, about "losing oneself" in philosophy or music, not to mention identifying oneself with the car one is driving.
Anyway, I have to confess that I think that the attempt to identify the self with the ego, or with anything else, never mind the attempt to locate it (self/ego) somewhere, are chasing the end of the rainbow.

Ever run across Douglas Harding 'On Having no Head'? He hasn't been mentioned much on this forum, but he was quite a popular spiritual teacher a generation ago. — Wayfarer

I came across that about a year ago on another forum. I could see how he got there but was not sure how seriously to take it. It just goes to show that phenomenology can take you to some unexpected places.

Thanks. That's clear enough. I'll pick up from where you left off and go to p. 40.

I don't think I have much to say about pp 32 - 35.

The page numbering problem is a nuisance. But I'll work out what's going on quite soon.

I don't remember that, but it is quite possible. I seem to remember that there was also a theory that the mind resided in the stomach.

He went straight at tearing done the house of cards and is never seen as building it back up from the rubble that still remained, I would say because he turns to why we (he did) fight so hard against it. — Antony Nickles

Yes. It seems to me that Descartes and Hume both receive similar treatment - they are known as sceptical philosophers, when actually, the point of their work was to deal with scepticism.

I've got a bit confused about where we are. It doesn't help that the page numbering in my copy (from Gutenberg Press) seems not to have a page 33!

I shall go from p. 32/33

Then if this scheme is to serve our purpose at all, it must show us which of the three levels is the level of meaning. I can, e.g., make a scheme with three levels, the bottom level always being the level of meaning. But adopt whatever model or scheme you may, it will have a bottom level, and there will be no such thing as an interpretation of that. To say in this case that every arrow can still be interpreted would only mean that I could always make a different model of saying and meaning which had one more level than the one I am using.

to p.36/35

Another source of the idea of a shadow being the object of our thought is this: We imagine the shadow to be a picture the intention of which cannot be questioned, that is, a picture which we don't interpret in order to understand it, but which we understand without interpreting it.

Tomorrow.

Perhaps the ancients were not as much "in their heads" and language oriented as we are today. — Janus

I think that's very likely.

Our organs of sight, hearing, smelling and tasting are all located in the head, and that may contribute to making it seems as thought the mind is located there. — Janus

That's true. Though I think the most influential point is that we see from a definite point of view, which just happens to be where our eyes are. Since we can locate the source of sounds, we can become aware of where our ears are, so there's that.

The more I think about this, the more complicated it gets. I just wanted to draw attention to that. The results of introspection are not necessarily correct. But it is a bit of a rabbit-hole. I'm not sure how much hangs on it, though it would obviously suit some forms of materialism quite well.

"Every event has a cause" is one of Watkins' "haunted universes" doctrines, neither provable nor disprovable. — Banno

It seems to me that "neither provable nor disprovable" is the beginning of the story, rather than the end. I mean that proof of the kind we require for specific causal explanations is inapplicable. The proposition is not in the business of asserting truths, but of articulating the conceptual structure in which specific causal connections are discovered and asserted. If you are looking for some sort of justification, that lies in the success of our attempts to find causes - and more than that, our determination to find what order we can in the world, so that when full causal explanations are not available, we wring from the data whatever order we can. So we switch models and go for statistical explanations.

Science doesn't look to causes so much as to predictability. — Banno

There is a reservation here, because statistical laws don't really predict anything about individual cases. I've never quite worked out what probability statements say about them. It certainly isn't what I would call a prediction. However, they do come in very handy when it is a case of making decisions in a risk/reward context. Betting may be a bit iffy, but insurance is perfectly rational.
But perhaps more important in a philosophical context is that predictability is not enough. Plato, at least, would insist that the goal is understanding, not mere prediction. I think he has a point.

It's not about event A causing event B but about the relation between a's and B's, especially when that relation is expressed in an equation. — Banno

I hadn't thought that the move to equations amounted to actually abandoning causal explanations. But I can see that it is a very different model from the Aristotelian model.

That the coin we flip comes up heads is supposedly explained as "the will of God"; but that explanation will work equally well if the coin had come up tails. Regardless of what happens, the explanation is "God caused it to happen that way", and so we never learn why this happened and not that; this is no explanation at all. — Banno

There's no doubt that "God wanted it to happen" is empty, as it stands. But if our framework is that God controls everything, we can produce different explanations according to what happens. If the coin lands tails and I lose the bet, I can say "God is punishing me for my sins". If the coin lands heads and I win the bet, I can say "God is rewarding me for my virtues". My reason for rejecting these explanations as empty is that neither explanation will stand up to standard scientific experimental scrutiny.

If presenting a cause is to function as an explanation, it must say why this even happened and not some other event. Saying that "Things/events have causes" is trivial, indeed frivolous. — Banno

I don't think it is as bad as that. Surely "every event has a cause" is not really an assertion. It is a methodological decision. It is not that we can always identify the cause of an event, but that we will approach every event on the basis that there is a cause to be found. It is a presupposition that the world is not disorderly. If we do not find one, we attribute that to our failure, not the failure of the principle. We would file such a case in the "pending" tray.

some positions that appeal to Wittgenstein, such as the cognitive relativism thesis, lead to a sort of broad skepticism about our ability to understand others (outside our own time and culture, or even tout court). This is a misreading of Wittgenstein to the extent it is attributed to him I think, but I think most advocates don't say this; rather they claim that if you follow out Wittgenstein's insights, with their own additions, you get cognitive relativism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't get this. I think there must be a typo or something here. ?
Broadly speaking, I see a tempting reading of the PI that is relativistic. But I don't think it what he intended. If he had, he would, surely, have not talked about our form of life, but about our forms of life. To put it another way, there are many differences between practices and forms of life which are more or less difficult to understand and communicate between. But, if we are all human beings, it is possible to grasp the other's form of life or practice. If it is really not possible (and how would one prove that?), then the other is not a human being. That's what lies behind his extraordinary remark that "if a lion could talk we could not understand him." The twist in this story is, of course, that there is a good deal of mutual understanding between humans and lions even in the context of an extreme language barrier and I see that as based on a shared form of life.

Funny, this is generally precisely how I've seen his approach to skepticism described. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps this is more a labelling problem than an actual disagreement. But his position is scepticism de-fanged, if it is scepticism at all. The implication of what he says, to my mind, is a rejection of the doctrine. But I can see that others might not see it that way. Mind you, I'm not even sure that Descartes was really a sceptic.

I would think Hume's approach actually isn't that different from the ancient skeptics however. Their skepticism is also largely pragmatic. What do you think makes them radically different? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps I wasn't clear. The distinction I'm focusing on is the one that he himself adopts - between what he calls pyrrhonism, but which is probably actually closer to Cartesianism. (Given the history of philosophy taught in Philosophy 101, it seems very odd that he doesn't mention Descartes.) I think that he is really quite close to the old tradition, without the Stoicism (so far as I can discern). (I owe that understanding to you.)

If you think I am calling Wittgenstein himself a sceptic then this is incautious reading. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That reading is a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein. I do not think you include Wittgenstein among the incautious sceptics.

Presumably, it would remove some of our warrant for thinking things will continue on as they have in the past, seeing as how there is no past. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I classify the expectation that things will continue as they have in past as a default position, in the absence of positive evidence for anything else. We don't need a warrant.

Thanks for cracking this, well done; — Antony Nickles

I was at a loss (and maybe still am) as to why we imagine a difficulty in picturing what is not. ….I take the confusion that follows to be that: if we are thinking of the absence of something, than how can there then be an object that is the thought. — Antony Nickles

I think you are right. I think that Wittgenstein must have recognized this. That’s why I emphasized the way the problem is presented. It seems to me to be quite carefully set up so as to make the problem clear.
There’s room here for a discussion of how philosophical problems arise. We don’t just stumble onto or into them. So Descartes initial reflections in the Meditations are not just an ancillary to the project. Nor, to be fair, does he present them as such. The difference is that Descartes thinks that he is recognizing the problem. We (or at least I) think that he is creating it.)

Asking "How can one...?" (p. 30, 1965 Harper's Ed.) “beautifully” plays right into his method of drawing out the means for doing a practice—its workings (grammar), how we can…. i.e., the “grammar” of thinking, facts, and "existing", etc. — Antony Nickles

Yes. That’s not an accident, of course. It’s part of the project.

If a watch is seen to "exist" because, say, it is completely put together, or functioning, then we might let go of identification by correspondence with an internal object. — Antony Nickles

Yes. Or rather, it should. It does rather raise questions about what it means to say that something exists, since the broken or toy watch does, nonetheless, exist - it's just that the description "watch" doesn't apply.
I’m always a bit saddened by the persistence of mental or internal objects in philosophical discourse. Many people don’t seem to be impressed by or don’t understand the private language argument. It’s not easy.

The feeling of difficulty in first identifying red I would think comes from the desire to identify color by equating that color, as a “quality”, with an internal “object” of our vision, say, an “appearance” as part of “perception”, which philosophy would ask: “how could we have that object of red before encountering it?” But I take it the way color works (it’s grammar) is like a pain (PI #235) In saying “it is not the fact we think”, I would offer that he is showing that, though something is a fact, like a house is on fire, its “fact-ness” is not an object (of thought, always there), because its expression may not be used as a fact. — Antony Nickles

Yes, I found this part very difficult. I’m not sure I really understand what he was getting at. The business about seeing redness when one presses one’s own eyeball didn’t impress me. The need to learn from others what redness is makes this possibility dubiously relevant – unless everyone has the same experience, which is, I suppose, possible.
But the idea that one could somehow abolish redness, I think, is based on a misunderstanding of how colour works. Colour words are a system; they segment the colour spectrum, so abolishing redness sounds as if it would leave a gap in the spectrum, which is hard to understand, or just restrict the spectrum. That is possible. Dogs, for example, can’t see red. As I understand it, they see red objects as black, so the abolition is a substitution. But the ability to see red is, for us, a physiological capacity – are we to imagine some feat of genetic engineering?
I think you may be right in comparing colour with pain – in the sense that W is thinking of redness as (grammatically) like pain. Perhaps this is possible if one doesn’t understand the colour spectrum, but we do. That makes a huge difference, because if there is a spectrum of pain, it is a spectrum of intensity, not of quality. We do have qualities of pain – stabbing, aching, throbbing etc. – but they are not on a spectrum.
The question is “what do you mean by ‘redness exists’? I’m wondering whether this may not be about the limits of thought as compared with the limits of the imagination and the distinction between meaningful and meaningless sentences/thoughts. After all, one of the classic tests of meaningfulness is whether one can imagine – the sun not rising tomorrow morning, for example, or a round square. I’m not all sure that the non-existence of redness, as opposed to red things, is conceivable, whereas the non-existence of red things is. The reason is that colours are a system, and the space for redness is guaranteed by the system.
If that’s what he’s getting at, thinking what is not is not necessarily imagining what is not.

I am at a bit of a loss on the “shadow fact”, but I imagine it plays the same role as “appearance” or “impression”; inserted in between the ordinary process of vision and identification, etc. in order to mitigate all our statements in order to explain (and control) the possibility of error. — Antony Nickles

You are right about the role of the shadow fact. It does indeed fit with “proposition” and sense of a sentence”. Appearances and impressions are tangled up with experiences, so he may have wished to set them aside.
In a sense these terms do explain the possibility of error. But in another sense, they do less and more than that. They articulate the possibility of error. The essence of a hallucination is that Macbeth is acting as if there was a dagger before him, but there isn’t. To describe the situation in that way (Macbeth is acting as if ... but there isn't) has a sharp edge of paradox about it. The concept of a hallucination enables us to get through that. Perhaps it includes the idea of a visual image. That may seem to help, but doesn’t really add anything.

David Hume’s argument against causal inferences and explanations, as well as his hugely influential “Problem of Induction;”

For some reason, a little while ago, I re-read Hume's Enquiry, and realized that he is not at all the sceptic that he is painted to be. His rejection of what he calls pyrrhonism is emphatic. (He does not believe that it can be refuted but argues that it is inconsequential, and recommends a stiff dose of everyday life as a remedy.) He distinguishes between pyrrhonism and "judicious" or "mitigated" scepticism, which he thinks is an essential part of dealing with life. See Enquiry XII, esp. part 3.
PS I read the conclusion of this section (book-burning) is a rhetorical trope, designed to show how extreme views can lead one into absurdity. That fits better with his actual analysis.

So why would it be any more or less likely that a universe just "happens to be" with a first state something that looks something like cosmic inflation rather than a first state full of memories and people? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think that a meaningful estimate of that is possible, unless we know the range of other possibilities. In any case, as every lottery winner knows, extremely unlikely or improbable events occur all the time. In the end, though, one has to consider whether it is more plausible (not likely or probable) that all our memories are false, and that no evidence actually points to a real past, or that at least some memories are true and some evidence is good. In any case, what difference would it make if it were true that the first state was full of memories and people? This is a blank space, which can only be filled up with fantasies and dreams.

But if we assert, to the contrary, that the cosmos had a determining cause, then presumably this is a realist claim. In which case, maybe an inability to dismiss anti-realism will bother us. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, yes and no. If we think that we have to dismiss this anti-realism by means of argumentation in the traditional fashion, we have a problem. But if we analyse the terms and context of debate, we may not be so bothered. However, these arguments can have an effect on how we perceive the world. Many people find the vision of the world proposed since the 17th century extremely depressing and can get quite miserable about it. Others find it full of wonders and possibilities and find it extremely exciting. Neither view will be much affected by traditional argumentation.

That said from a phenomenological perspective, it does seem to me that my thoughts are going on inside my head, not in my torso, arms or legs or even neck. I mean it just feels that way. So while we cannot be directly aware of neuronal activity, that activity seems to generate sensations that make it seem like thought is in the head (to me anyway). — Janus

I'm pretty sure that our phenomenological perspective on mental phenomena is heavily conditioned by our culture. For example, it is very difficult to answer the question where (in the body) the mind is to be found in ancient greek (or roman) culture. There are good grounds for answering that it is a distinct entity - a ghost - that survives death. There are also grounds for saying that it is the breath - an interesting choice, since it isn't quite clear where the breath is. I think the best answer is that the question where the mind is was not even formulated in that culture. It requires, I would say, a culture that has already problematized mental/physical relations, as happened in Western Europe in the 17th century or so.

Have you encountered Alva Noë ‘Out of Our Heads’? ‘Noë’s contention is that you are not your brain – rather, that “consciousness is an achievement of the whole animal in its environmental context”. — Wayfarer

That is an idea that makes complete sense to me. I've even wondered how to make a case for it.

I'll have to work out a way of getting hold of it.

Thank very much for that.