conceived in different conditions whereby the set of gametes was different than the ones that comprise you — schopenhauer1

OK. I'll skip the issue whether the baby that is born is the person who will develop over the next twenty years or so. But there is a development process there which is recognized in most societies (all that I know of).

You have two criteria there. Suppose I had been born in different circumstances (but the same parents) and the same DNA. For example suppose I was born as a second child, not the first. Would I be the same person? I say, yes. What would you say?

On the other hand, I can imagine (just about) having been born in China in 1947. But that's imagining me born in China in 1947, or rather imagining being in the circumstances of China in 1947. I accept that I cannot imagine the person that would be me having been born in China in 1947.

My point here is that there is a wild forest of circumstances that might have been different. In some of them, I would be the same person. In others, I would not. In some, I might not be able to decide. For example, suppose I was born - same parents, same DNA - in 1947. I think that's undecidable.

about why I think its good to let those explanations speak for themselves, — Apustimelogist

I think of myself as a kind of instrumentalist about everything which most would say is just anti-realism. — Apustimelogist

LaPlace's famous reply to Napoleon (I think) that he has no need of the hypothesis of God marks the point at which instrumentalism, which had enabled the new science to evade the religious challenges ever since Copernicus, "collapsed" into realism. (I'm gesturing at an argument here but I think you probably know how it goes).

But how about a more radical position? Avoid speaking about "reality", just as one avoids speaking about "existence". (I don't remember whether you ever looked in on the thread about Austin's "Sense and Sensibilia", but the argument is in there.) Suppose we treat concepts as instruments (cf. telescope, microscope, galvanometer, etc.). Instruments do not make claims about particular empirical truths (or the generalizations we derive from particular truths). They enable us to establish empirical truths. You would be a realist and an anti-realist at the same time.

Because you haven't seemed to grasp the main point of my argument which is that if a set of parents, even your own, had two gametes that were different than the ones that created you, that is indeed a different person. This isn't even controversial. If 10 seconds later, the there was another sperm, that is no longer you. That was someone else. We'd have to establish we agree here. — schopenhauer1

There you go again. I agree that you can call that a different person, but I claim that I can decide on a case-by-case basis whether the difference warrants a change of identity or not. In addition, I claim that a fertilized egg is not a person - yet.

Yes, I've heard that story. As a result that quotation has become one of my favourites. But actually, you can't just go on about differences without acknowledging similarities. It's just that most philosophers like similarities and tend to ignore differences and panic when they are faced with them, fearing that they have encountered that boogey-man of all philosophy - a counter-example. But it's the combination that makes the world go round.

I don't see any other way you can misconstrue this idea that a differently conceived person would not be you. — schopenhauer1

Well, I have quoted the bit I just quoted again here. You originally said that just after you quoted a long argument from me, trying to explain why I thought you were wrong. But all you give me is a claim that I am misconstruing the idea. There's no explanation of what the misconstruction is. So I have nothing to engage with (apart from the rather surprising remark that you agree with Ryle's argument against fatalism, again without explanation). But apparently you do not accept that what you say is an application of the fatalism argument to this special case, but you do not explain what the relevant difference is.

And so we go back and forth. To no purpose. What do you think is needed to break the cycle? From my point of view, it seems that I present examples to you that seem to me to be incompatible with what you say, but you ignore them, without explaining what is wrong with them. What do you think?

I don't see any other way you can misconstrue this idea that a differently conceived person would not be you. — schopenhauer1

I could have fair hair and still be me. I could be six inches shorter than I am and still be me. I could have musical talent as opposed to competence and still be me. Minor changes don't matter. The issue is what features of me matter - and not all of them matter. You can decide as you wish, but others will decide as they wish.

By the way, almost all of my features are the result of a combination of genes and environment.

Thank you very much for this.

So, Ludwig V, I do take the focus on particulars, dichotomies, goals, means of reasoning, criteria of what matters, similarities and differences, case-specific categories, and considerations in each case, to be right up the same alley as Austin and Wittgenstein — Antony Nickles

Yes. I was more interested in the differences between the three than the similarities. But I didn't mean to suggest that there were no similarities. I was, I admit, concerned to bring out how little OLP was ever a school or a movement in a conventional sense. So I wouldn't argue with what you say here.

However, I do think that

Ryle does say it is not our logic, but our relationship to others that is the problem. (p.1) — Antony Nickles

is a bit misleading. It took me a while to realize what was going on.

Ryle has a rather ornate style and a great fondness for metaphors, preferably a collection at the same time. Look at what he does in paragraph on p.1 seems to be para 3:-
"There often arise quarrels between theories, or, more generally, between lines of thought, ... A thinker who adopts one of them ... In disputes of this kind, we often find one and the same thinker - very likely oneself - strongly inclined to champion both sides. ... He is both well satisfied with the logical credentials of each of the two points of view, and sure that one of them must be totally wrong if the other is even largely right. The internal administration of each seems to be impeccable but their diplomatic relations with one another seem to be internecine."
I don’t say he’s wrong. On the contrary. But it is clear that the problem can be characterized at many levels, and no characterization seems to have any special place.

But you are right, actual people do have a special place. Theories can be compatible or incompatible, points of view contradictory, and so forth. But you can see where people are special in p.11 para. 2:- "Sometimes thinkers are at loggerheads with one another, not because their propositions do conflict, but because their authors fancy that they conflict. ... It can be convenient to characterize these cross-purposes by saying that the two sides"
Believing wrongly that propositions conflict is not something that theories or points of view can do. They can apparently conflict – and who can grasp an apparent conflict except a person? A new meaning for "to err is human."

I

Perhaps Ryle will say that we see others as rivals because of our pushing an agenda (“goal”) from the start, much as we fixate only on the example that makes our best case (pain, illusion, etc.) — Antony Nickles

This is right. He does say, in the first sentence of the same para. 3 p.1 "… which are not rival solutions of the same problem, but rather solutions or would-be solutions of different problems, and which, none the less, seem to be irreconcilable with one another." But this is only the first version of what he says. Take the three examples he offers:-

Of the first case, he says "This point is sometimes expressed by saying that the conflict is one between a scientist's theory and a theory of Common Sense. But even this is misleading." He means that common sense is not a theory, so the issue is not a conflict between theories; I think he would express it as a conflict between points of view. I think also that it is important that the one actually undermines the other. By the way, I think that his formulation of this issue is different from the standard formulations, just because the skeptic does not feature; instead, we have a working physiologist. That helpfully (to me, at least) puts the argument in a different context.

Of the second, he says on p. 4 para 1:- "Consider, next, a very different sort of dilemma." and so it is. "We feel quite sure both that a person can be made moral and that he cannot be made moral; and yet that both cannot be true." This is not a conflict between theories with different goals; it is, I shall say, a conflict between points of view within common sense.

He introduces the third example on p. 6 para 3 with:- "I want now to illustrate this notion of litigation between theories or bodies of ideas with another well-known example in order to bring out some other important points."
In this case, there is certainly an issue about the pursuit of different agendas, but (and this is me speaking, not Ryle) they share an ambition - to explain everything in the terms that suit their business. Not quite Hume’s “augmentation”, but next door to it.

Ryle's discussion of categories is similarly confusing. At first sight, Ryle seems to think that this concept is cure-all and for a long time, I bought that story. But by the time he has finished his discussion (pp. 9 - 11), he has said that rejected any systematic classification of them and we are left with the concept as "not more than convenient". The real business is "showing in detail how the metiers in ratiocination of the concepts under pressure are more dissimilar from one another or less dissimilar from one another than the contestants had unwittingly supposed." – as you said at the beginning of your post.

In other words, you could NEVER have been anyone but what you are now when discussing your initial conception and birth. — schopenhauer1

Well, this is just a special application of the general argument framed by the fatalist. I guess you are not impressed by Ryle's arguments. It would be interesting to know why.

At first sight, you seem to be applying a criterion of causal continuity between conception and now. That's an understandable choice and does presuppose that our identity is not what the identity of indiscernibles proposes. I have no problem with that. Whether your choice in this case is reasonable is another question.

Your formulation is a bit confusing, since your use of "anyone" suggests that we are talking about people, but your use of "what I am" suggests that you are talking about things. Since, at conception, I am not (yet) a person, you are not asking the interesting question, which is "WHO I am". The difference between those two questions needs a bit of sorting out before we could begin answering either question.

Most people take birth as the moment when a person's life begins, though they also accept that there's a long way before one becomes an adult, fully-grown person. The question of identity in the case of human beings is complicated for that reason.

Another reason why it is more complicated than you seem to allow that I can, and do, make decisions about my own identity, and, although one might say that those choices should be respected, other people also make decisions. Conflicts are, in some cases, very difficult to resolve.

That would be an interesting thread, but for this thread, the interesting and relevant question is why you are not impressed with Ryle's arguments against fatalism.

Rather, I would want explanations of how science works, how people's cognition works, how brains work, how language works and let those things speak for themselves. — Apustimelogist

Yes, that sounds sensible. But that's an ideal and there may never be answers that are more than provision (see philosophy of science). Can you suspend all judgement while people work out all those answers? And can people work out all those answers without negotiating the issues we are bothered by - just without us? What do we do with our confusions while we are waiting?

So because they are no more than where they fit as part of our experiences, their ontological significance is kind of deflated somewhat — Apustimelogist

Well, I would go further than that.

the words / concepts we use as part of "explanations" and "knowledge" are effectively just moving parts embedded in the stream of the very thing trying be explained — Apustimelogist

That's right. Not merely fixing the ship while we sail in it, but building a new one while we sail in it.
If philosophy was easy, everyone would be doing it. Oh, yes, they are. Most very badly - even worse than you and I.

I think that there are two issues at stake here.

One of them is the definition of identity. You seem to have what I think of a strict definition of identity. Any change is a change of identity. This follows from a strict application of the Identity of Indiscernibles and it seems to follow that the identity of anything consists only of a series of time-slices of what is represented as a single enduring object in "common sense". I don't share that view but recognize that the other view is, in some sense, possible, because I don't think that there is a conclusive refutation of it.

On the other hand, there is the fact that people, unlike beings and objects that are not self-aware, are capable of making choices about what changes in themselves make a difference to their identity and what changes do not. Their choices may not be the same as the choices of other people, and this may create problems. The decision that some change does not imply a change of identity, I characterize as deciding that change is "minor".

You identity the other issue by your comparison with Ryle's argument about Waterloo, which I think is correct, when you think about the problem before conception. But your strict view of identity seems to suggest that, once I am conceived, everything is inevitable and there are no possibilities - and no uncertainties - in my life. In other words, a fatalist view of my life.

And then there is your point:-

But I am not even going down that route. I'm simply saying, that there is no way you "could have" been any other person than "you". — schopenhauer1

To which I reply that is true. But the question is, who am I? I would ask, in addition, who decides who I am?

Our moral judgement is made to judge itself unfavourably. — unenlightened

Thank you for drawing my attention to that case. I missed it because I was focused on the second lecture.

I had thought that there were two separate judgements (as suggested by Ryle's formulating the dilemma as from the parents' point of view or from the son's point of view) which contradicted each other. Hence "dilemma" instead of paradox.

On the other hand, there is a paradox in here, prompted by the paradox that if God wants to create moral beings, they need to create beings who will choose to follow their precepts freely. But then, there's an equivalent paradox that, as moral beings, we need to choose freely to follow god's precepts. There is the additional issue is that a "precept" that may be followed or not is probably not a precept, but advice or exhortation. The same could be said of parents and children - and indeed teachers and students.

This is a new thought to me.

The question now is whether Bateson (or you) think that all dilemmas are really paradoxes, or that paradoxes are one form of dilemma. Ryle, so far as I can see, seems to think that there are different forms of dilemma. I'm inclined to agree with Ryle.

Ryle was not really sure he has conclusively refuted fatalism. He says at the end of this lecture “I have produced quite an apparatus of somewhat elaborate arguments, all of which need expansion and reinforcement. I expect that the logical ice is pretty thin under some of them.” p.29 , so I feel justified in posting some of my – doubts, let’s call them – about this lecture. There are two main issues:-

1. In the first place, Ryle’s argument about the cross-roads ( pp. 24 – 27) is all very well. But I don’t quite see how it affects the fatalist’s argument. Surely, I can say that the annual village fete will be held next Sunday afternoon, and it can be true! What’s more, if it rains and the fete is cancelled, I can say that the annual village fete was cancelled (or prevented, or averted). And I can’t think of a reformulation that would work. I don’t quite trust his generalization that future tense cannot refer to events that have not yet taken place. I see that it works in some contexts, but it doesn’t follow that it works in all contexts.

2. The arguments he gives pp. 16 – 18 discuss the way that knowledge (especially God’s), and predictions, especially of anyone else are involved in the premiss of the fatalist’s argument. Then he gets to the hard core issue of truth and falsity. Now, I’ve always believed that “true” and “false” are timelessly true. Thus Pythagoras’ theorem is not true at any particular time, or at all particular times. In the case of more ordinary truths, the tenses are embedded in the that-clause. (The fete will be held, is being held, was held) The truth predicate is in the timeless present. That’s where the problem originates. Ryle seems to want to bring that into doubt.

Hi first argument (pp.17 – 18) consider what might have been meant by a timelessly true proposition like “Ryle will cough and go to bed on the evening of Sunday (day/month/year). Not an actual prediction, not an impersonal prediction (“The forecast is for rain tomorrow”), but a possible prediction (if anybody had predicted rain tomorrow, it would have come true.) He dismisses that, in an argument that is reminiscent of the argument in 1. But I don’t think it is the slam-dunk that philosophers seek to achieve by relying on logic. (Slam-dunk is the point of logic, isn’t it?)

His first move is “There is something of a slur in ‘false’ and something honorific in ‘true’, some suggestion of the insincerity or sincerity of its author, or some suggestion of his rashness or cautiousness as an investigator.” p. 18. I would call this a sub-text, and likely dependent on context. It certainly isn’t the kind of thing you expect to find in a philosophy text – and it might be argued that it depends on context anyway. I think philosophers might want to call it part of the illocutionary force of a speech act – and Ryle was writing well before they were invented.

He reinforces the point:- “This is· brought out by our reluctance to characterize either as true or as false pure and avowed guesses. If you make a guess at the winner of the race, it will turn out right or wrong, correct or incorrect, but hardly true or false.” p. 18 Well, I can’t argue that he is wrong, and it would make sense if his sub-text is correct. But he recognizes at the top of p.19 that the sub-text he has proposed is not always there but nevertheless, makes a crucial move - “But, for safety's sake, let us reword the fatalist argument in terms of these thinner words, 'correct' and ‘incorrect'.” H’m. Maybe.

There’s a persuasive paragraph on p. 20 about categories, but Ryle doesn’t expect any more than our feeling “more cordial” to the idea that the right predicates to apply are ‘correct’ or ‘fulfilled’, but not ‘true’.

From there we get to prophecies being “fulfilled” or not rather than being “true” or not, and so to the idea that the fatalist’s premiss is not, strictly speaking, true or not, but correct or fulfilled or not. I think he has shown that it is possible to present the fatalist’s premiss in that way, but not that it is impossible to present it in the fatalist’s way. Which is a step forward, but far from conclusive.

Yes, I can think I can see what Bateson is getting at. Forgive me for being dense, but I'm not clear how this relates to Ryle's use of the idea.

I agree with what you say, particularly about the discovery that one's parents are not the people who are bringing you up. But I also think that minor variations do not make a difference. Are you seriously trying to tell me that if I had been born five minutes earlier, or five hours earlier, it would not have been me that was born? I concede that someone might decide to take it that way, but, under otherwise normal circumstances, most people, I am sure, would not.

I think it’s a huge issue and opens a can of worms but, I don’t see how you can defend a claim that if you were born in different “circumstances”, then you would still be “you”; it’s is not even something you can entertain in any real sense beyond imagining after the fact. — schopenhauer1

I agree in the sense that it is a very difficult issue to give a clear answer to.

But what circumstances are sufficiently different to make a problem? For example, I might, quite easily, have been born five days before, or five days after, my actual birthday. That might well not be important. But suppose I discover that I was born a year later than I thought. Whether that matters or not (i.e. is sufficiently different to make a difference) is moot. The issue is further complicated by the fact that my parents, friends, society might decide differently from me.

Then there's the meaning of entertaining, never mind imagining, the possibility. I suggest that one could deduce some factual differences. If I had been born in India, I would be living in a very different climate and a very different society. The part that I cannot imagine, or even seriously entertain, is what difference that would make to "me". And here I remember Berkeley's "master argument", which points out that when imagining those circumstances, I will be imagining myself in those circumstances, not imagining the person I would (might) have been. (Berkeley uses this point for his own ends, but I think the point applies here, as well.)

When I said that the bewilderment is not necessary, I didn't mean that answers would be easy to come by, but that it is possible to reflect that it is, in one sense, up to me to decide what matters.

But I'm afraid that I can't pursue this right now. As I said before, I have limited bandwidth.

No, I didn't see that.

Knowing is basically about the realm of propositional reasoning and becoming is the realm of cause and effect of objects. — schopenhauer1

It does seem to be a similar point. Except that Schopenhauer puts it in metaphysical mode, where Ryle puts it in linguistic mode and uses the idea of a categories. What the difference is and whether it matters is another issue.

I liken Ryle's idea of a "contradiction" of an event that already occurred — schopenhauer1

Yes. I guess, from the problem you raise below, that you do recognize that Ryle is saying that there can't be a contradiction of an event, for the reason that Schopenhauer identifies.

On that, the identity of people has an additional complication, that they can decide what criteria of their own identity are important (to them) and those criteria may not be the same as the criteria used by everyone else. I think that many people must have the slightly dizzying experience of contemplating the possibility that their actual parents could have married - or whatever - someone else. I understand their bewilderment, though I don't think it is necessary.

Yes, I thought it was terrific! It seemed to me an application of the point that you can't identify a specific object and then say it doesn't exist.

He generalizes this when he says "Roughly, statements in the future tense cannot convey singular, but only general propositions, where statements in the present and past tense can convey both."

I'm bothered about someone having a heart attack, and getting to hospital where they prevent his death. Can we not say that his death was averted? Perhaps we can say that it was averted last Sunday, but not that his death last Sunday was averted.

So we can stipulate a possible world in which the crossroads were not replaced, and yet that does not help us in listing which fatalities were avoided. We can even stipulate a world in which the crossroads were not replaced, and yet the number of accidents was reduced. — Banno

You'll think I'm ill educated, but what I read here is "So we can envisage the possibility that (i.e. It is possible that) the cross-roads were not replaced and yet that does not help us in listing which fatalities were avoided. We can even envisage the possibility that (i.e. It is even possible that) the crossroads were not replaced, and yet the number of accidents was reduced." Am I missing anything relevant?

The way I interpret his "Cartesian" rejection, — schopenhauer1

I'm sorry. I don't have the bandwidth to take this on right now. I've already said that I don't think his version of behaviourism is satisfactory.

The dilemma known as “fatalism” has been around for a very long time. In one form or another, it is found in pre-Islamic Arabia, in India and China as well as the West. Aristotle has a version of it. See Fatalism - Wikipedia for more details. Ryle thinks that it has occasionally troubled everyone, though not very seriously, but thinks it plays a role in the more serious dilemmas known as Determinism and Predestinationism.

Since there are so many versions of it, he formulates his own. “At a certain moment yesterday evening I coughed and at a certain moment yesterday evening I went to bed. It was therefore true on Saturday that on Sunday I would cough at the one moment and go to bed at the other. But if it was true beforehand - forever beforehand - that I was to cough and go to bed at those two moments on Sunday, 25 January 1953, then it was impossible for me not to do so. … Whatever is, was to be. So nothing that does occur could have been helped and nothing that has not actually been done could possibly have been done.” P.15

“Now the conclusion of this argument … goes directly counter to the piece of common knowledge that some things are our own fault, that some threatening disasters can be foreseen and averted, and that there is plenty of room for precautions, planning and weighing alternatives.” P.16

Predestinationism is a different, though related, issue. (p.16) Nor is it about any actual (p.17) or possible (p.18) predictions that someone may have made. He does not seem to think that these are serious explanations, but rather background associations that may distract us from the core issue.

So he comes to the idea that fatalism is about truth and falsity.

The mistake here is to think that because 'true' and 'false' and ‘correct' and ‘incorrect' are adjectives, we tend to treat them as qualities or properties like “sweet” and “white” applied to sugar. “But … ‘deceased', ‘lamented' and ‘extinct' are also adjectives, and yet certainly do not apply to people or mastodons while they exist, but only after they have ceased to exist”. So we should think of ‘correct' as “a merely obituary and valedictory epithet, as ‘fulfilled' more patently is.” (p.20)

His next tactic is to “suppose that someone produced the strictly parallel argument, that for everything that happens, it is true for ever afterwards that it happened.” and points out that we don’t make a similar argument in such cases. We confuse the logical necessity in the fatalist’s argument with causal necessity. (p.21)

So now he considers “the notions of necessitating, making, obliging, requiring and involving on which the argument turns.” (p. 22) He consider first how “requiring” and “involving” are related to “causing” and, not surprisingly, identifies more than one way that one truth may require or involve another. So he can extract the causal menace from the argument and leave only a trite and dull proposition behind.

So we come to the question what does logical necessity mean? Ryle argues that the fatalist argument “tries to endue happenings with the inescapability of the conclusions of valid arguments. … The fatalist has tried to characterize happenings by predicates which are proper only to conclusions of arguments. He tried to flag my cough with a Q.E.D.” (p.24)

Ryle’s next move seems a bit strange. “If a city-engineer has constructed a roundabout where there had been dangerous cross-roads, he may properly claim to have reduced the number of accidents. He may say that lots of accidents that would otherwise have occurred have been prevented by his piece of road improvement. But suppose we now ask him to give us a list of the particular accidents which he has averted. He can do nothing but laugh at us.” (p. 24/25) How does this relate to fatalism? His conclusion is “Averted fatalities are not fatalities. In short, we cannot, in logic, say of any designated fatality that it was averted-and this sounds like saying that it is logically impossible to avert any fatalities.” (p.25)

He finally concludes “The question 'Could the Battle of Waterloo have been unfought?', taken in one way, is an absurd question. Yet its absurdity is something quite different from the falsity that Napoleon's strategic decisions were forced upon him by the laws of logic.” and that one cannot suppose that a specific event that did take place did not take place. (p.26)

His general diagnosis of the difference between future tense statements and present and past statements is “Roughly, statements in the future tense cannot convey singular, but only general propositions, where statements in the present and past tense can convey both.” Stated in isolation, this is hard to understand, but in context ( p.27), it makes more sense.

Now, he explains why he has chosen this dilemma for his first case (p.28) and then moves on to “some general morals which can be drawn from the existence of this dilemma and from attempts to resolve it. It arose out of two seemingly innocent and unquestionable propositions,...” (p. 29)

The big issue that this raises is “How is it that in their most concrete, ground-floor employment, concepts like will be, was, correct, must, make, prevent and fault behave, in the main, with exemplary docility, but become wild when employed in what are mere first-floor generalizations of their ground-floor employments?” (pp. 30/31) No answers here, but a promise of ”something of an answer” later.

Two final issues. One is that what is involved here is not a collection of individual concepts, but teams or structures of concepts (pp. 31/32). The other is a re-iteration of the importance and inescapability of everyday, unofficial concepts, as opposed to the regulated and disciplined concepts of technical and scientific disciplines. (pp. 34/35)

if Ryle is against Cartesian consciousness, that usually implies a sort of rejection understanding of basic sensory things such as "red" and "sound", — schopenhauer1

Why on earth would that be true? What is a "rejection understanding"? All that is at stake is a philosophical theory, a way of thinking about things.

If someone explains to you about rainbows, are they denying the existence of rainbows? There are, or used to be, people who said that rainbows had been explained "away". Is that true? There are others who said that the scientific explanation "reduced" rainbows (to raindrops and light) and took away their magic. I maintain that nothing is "taken away". I'm even prepared to say that if you want magic, the process that produces rainbows should be magic enough for anyone.

I don't think it's totally disconnected from Ryle — schopenhauer1

No, I don't suppose it is, given that he was taught by Ryle. But it doesn't follow that whatever Dennett thought is something Ryle thought.

Eliminativism holds that there is no hard problem of consciousness because there is no consciousness to worry about in the first place. (you quote from "Hard Problem of Consciousness).....So I guess, if you can't explain it, eliminate it. — schopenhauer1

Well perhaps so. But this has nothing to do with Ryle - or Wittgenstein, either. Ryle does wish to eliminate Cartesian consciousness, but that's a different story because it's about a conception of consciousness, not consciousness. BTW I have very little time for Dennett's idea that consciousness is an illusion; he should have read Austin before developing that illusory idea.

But this is a side-issue. We're moving on.

A bald king of France drives them crazy. — schopenhauer1

Yes, some people do make a terrible meal of it. But they are mostly logicians. 'nuff said.

One might easily get the impression that philosophers waste their time with things that no one in their right mind would have the least concern with. — Fooloso4

The obsession with non-sense is an attempt to chart the limits of sense. One way of discovering a boundary is by probing beyond it.

I agree. I'll post my summary later to-day.

The discussion of categories is complicated. But I think the basic idea is quite simple. Since Ryle wrote, there has been a lot of discussion and comment. There's a tendency to over-use and extend good ideas like this one - somewhat as since Kuhn invented paradigms, they seem to have appeared all over the place and are no longer the rare solutions to major issues - if you read the literature.

Formal logic consists of a variety of different kinds of symbol - variables for names and predicates, operators, quantifiers, truth-values etc. Each kind of variable has rule for its uses, which explain the contribution each makes to the meaning of the sentence or proposition they occur in. No kind of variable can make a sentence/proposition on its own; it is the combination of different kinds of variable that makes the sentence. Different kinds of variable are in different categories. (By the way, if I've understood the metaphor correctly, categories don't carve anything up. That privilege is reserved to concepts in certain categories. That is "category" is in a different category from "concept".)

Natural language has a huge variety of categories, but the principle is the same.

One demonstrates the rules for the use of words by showing when they are broken. So a category is revealed by sentences that seem grammatically well-formed, but are not merely empirically false, but nonsense.

Ryle's last lecture is entitled "Formal and Informal Logic". I'm sure this is the culmination of the series and that he will have a great deal more to say about this in that.

For what it is worth, I think that Ryle was mistaken about inter-theory negotiation. The development of scientific practice since he wrote shows that specialists are quite capable of sorting out inter-theory and inter-disciplinary issues, mostly in the context of specific problems. But I also think he is right to claim public concepts for philosophy, even though the border country between public and private is far from clearly demarcated.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. So let's look at the pudding that Ryle provides in the next lecture.

the realism/anti-realism debate might lead to a meta-realism debate. — Apustimelogist

Ah, that's different. The infinite meta- debates. Quite so. That's why I very suspicious of the meta-concept.

I'm thinking on the hoof here. But I think there has to be a way of arguing that the debate is broken.
The referee is not a player, but is just as much on the field as any player. They are not somehow separate and above the game, but immersed in it. Ditto judges.
A dictionary uses the same language that it describes, but is just as much a book as any other.

My line would be that the debate doesn't pay attention to the actual use of "real" vs its many opposites and the muddled idea that "real" is somehow equivalent to ontology. I think J.L. Austin "Sense and Sensibilia" Lecture VII is an excellent reference for the first claim. I'm afraid I don't have a reference for the second.

Ryle's own category mistake is in this way the same as Descartes, thinking in terms of the framework of the categories of his time. — Fooloso4

That's a very good characterization, from Ryle's point of view. The key is that Descartes thought in terms of different "substances" which is how people thought about this issue. One problem about this way of thinking is that there was never a satisfactory characterization (definition) of that term. Famously (as I expect you know), Locke was reduced to saying that substance was "something, I know not what". Berkeley leapt on this to deny that any such thing existed. Probably rightly. Effectively physics identified substance in terms of mass and extension (Locke's "primary qualities), which didn't help Cartesian dualism at all. Ryle is simply substituting "categories" in place of "substance", shifting the issue from one of metaphysics to one of language. What is at stake is the idea that the mind is an entity that exists in its own right, independently of physical objects.

What I am suggesting is that Descartes' mistake was not categorical in the sense of failure to recognize differences between fixed categories, but rather his mistake resulted from the application of the framework of the categories of his time. — Fooloso4

If that was all that was at stake, I would want to argue that one could not expect Descartes to think in any other way than in terms of the concepts available in his time. But Cartesian Dualism survived, so the issue survives, and Ryle's target is not just a change in ways of thinking.
Remember, for many people Dualism is the basis for survival after death, so you could argue that, for them, it is a question of life and death and even the existence of God. (Berkeley realized this and tired to stop the rot.)

There are not fixed logical types of thinking. — Fooloso4

Well, Ryle argues that there are not a fixed number or type of categories, so he's pretty much on your page. (See pp. 8 (last line of page) to 11.)

This is my first time reading Ryle. I took it as an opportunity to fill in some gaps. To read some things I had intentionally neglected. My comments and questions are intended as a mode of inquiry. — Fooloso4

.
I believe and hope that you won't regret filling in this gap - whether you agree with him or not.

Perhaps this will become clear as I continue reading, but from the first lecture I do not see where he makes a distinction between public and private or how it comes into play. — Fooloso4

Yes. In a sense, he's speaking metaphorically - there's a lot of metaphors in his writing. He means that only specialists use the "private" concepts, whereas everybody, including specialists, uses "public" concepts. He's just trying to carve out a field for philosophy, which is still trying to recover from the sciences spinning off as independent disciplines.

It (biophysics) studies living organisms as biological systems, but makes use of the principles and methods of physics. — Fooloso4

Yes, that's a good way of putting it. But the subject matter of biology differs in important ways from the subject matter of physics, and applying only the methods of physics would ignore what makes living systems different from non-living systems. The methods of physics do not allow that distinction to appear. That's where the category question comes in. But he takes for granted that there is some such distinction to be drawn and that was contested then and still is.

Having said all of that, it is reasonable to notice that much has changed in ideas about inter-disciplinary studies since his time. The attempt to establish a field for philosophy at the foundations of the sciences and between the sciences attracted the attention of the specialists who rightly pointed out that specialist knowledge was required to discuss those issues and decided they could discuss them themselves. So philosophy of science, mathematics, etc have become sub-specialisms "between" philosophy and science and inter-disciplinary discussions are mostly dealt with between specialists without the benefit of philosophical intervention. So his remark that "These inter-theory questions are not questions internal to those theories." were not inappropriate at the time, but need heavy qualification now. To be fair, he recognizes the issue, at least partly on p. 12. But there, he also maintains his claim on the public concepts.

Well sure, I'm just saying that I think if that discussion were opened there would be disagreements, — Apustimelogist

I think you are confusing two different things. If I say that the last bus goes at 10:30, the fact that someone can say "Oh, no! There's another bus that goes after that" doesn't prove that there is another bus that goes after that. Merely saying that the there's another step in a sequence doesn't prove that there is. That has to be proved, not merely claimed.

Yes, Kuhn mentions this — Apustimelogist

I think I agree with every word of that paragraph.

The idea that mental activity is somehow behavioral dispositions seems incoherent to me. — schopenhauer1

Yes. I do think that this is the weakest point in the book. I much prefer the more complex - and elusive - ideas that emerged from Wittgenstein's private language argument. But the main point, which I think is precisely that qualia are not distinct objects in their own right, stands.
Qualia, so far as I understand them (which is not far) seem to me to be exactly like sense-data in that they are a label for something that "must be there". But the road there seems impassable to me.

Emergentism and “integration” weasily conceits that always try to save the day as a spoon stirring dissolves the powder into the liquid as if magic. — schopenhauer1

Yes, I agree that they are not really satisfactory. But once one has seen the light about "qualia" it is hard to see what would satisfy the demand. That's how the hard problem of consciousness is created. Hardly a satisfactory solution itself.

But I don't think that Ryle plays that card in this book. I could be wrong.

But cross-disciplinary studies such as biophysics seems to contradict this. The boundaries are not natural or immutable. Understanding biology at some point requires an understanding of physics. — Fooloso4

More helpful is what Ryle himself says in the section "The Origin of the Category- Mistake" from The Concept of Mind — Fooloso4

Yes, that example confirms what the encyclopedia is pointing at. Ryle is pointing to an alternative way of looking at, and dissolving, certain kinds of puzzles. In "Dilemmas", he identifies them as puzzles about "public" concepts, i.e. those which we all, scientists or not, use all the time. In "Dilemmas" he labels them philosophical, and this example confirms that. Whether it is the end of the story is another question - few people seem to have raised that.

The cross-disciplinary studies you mention do not raise the same kinds of issues. We can say immediately that the concepts of physics are not "public" in the sense that Ryle is using the term. But we can go further.

Biology does indeed welcome physics, chemistry and similar disciplines. But it also welcomes inputs from psychology, sociology and other sciences. But, biophysics studies living organisms as physical systems, molecular biology studies them as chemical systems and so forth. All these contribute to biology, without being the whole of it. But they all apply to the organism whether it is living or dead. The category issue comes when you come to the contribution of psychology, which involves studying living organisms as living organisms. Psychology has nothing to say about a dead organism - it has become a purely physical entity and not an organism at all. That's where the category issue comes in. At least, that's how I interpret what Ryle says.

What I get from this is the last paragraph in which he looses the path where the ground below that can no longer can be recalled. — Bella fekete

You don't have him quite right. In the country that Ryle envisages, there is no path to recall. It is unexplored, unmapped. As he says "As there are no paths, there are no paths to share. Where there are paths to share, there are paths; and paths are the memorials of under-growth already cleared." You may be wondering what he would say about the efforts of philosophers before him. I think he would say that most of them are an undergrowth and need to be cleared away.

This logical subtly was present ages ago in the the Eastern World, where such distinctions need not require a mechanistic interpretation. — Bella fekete

Yes. But, then, in those systems, there is no concept that parallels the Western concept of the "mechanistic", so it's a tricky thing to negotiate.

I will try and find time to listen to some of the materials. — Wayfarer

Yes. Descartes is Ryle's main quarry in "The Concept of Mind". He's taking on a wider range of issues here, and, perhaps elaborating his idea.

With so little time on my hands , would like to nail down a remark by Wittgenstein that helps me get into the essential crux of the matter upon which to build subsequent structure , so as to recollect some way of commenting a-posterior . — Bella fekete

Wittgenstein is hard to nail down. He has several remarks about philosophy which are mostly different metaphors. "The point of philosophy is to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle" or "Back to the rough country!" I don't think you could get a consistent, complete definition from them.

Neither Ryle nor Wittgenstein are fans of essences.

/\ — Bella fekete

I'm sorry, I don't understand this.

There is a seemingly endless set of divisions within and across these distinctions. — Fooloso4

Yes, and I have the impression that's a biig part of Ryle's reason for trying to find another way to articulate philosophical problems. More and more interpretations don't help - they're infected with the same problems. And philosophers are supposed to be very clear about things!

mistake when he attempts to cleanly and neatly divide things along the lines of categories, — Fooloso4

I think you've got him upside down. He sets up his target:-
"Some loyal Aristotelians, who like all loyalists ossified their master's teaching, treated his list of categories as providing the pigeon-holes in one or other of which there could and should be lodged every term used or usable in technical or untechnical discourse. Every concept must be either of Category I or of Category II or ... of Category X. Even in our own day there exist thinkers who, so far from finding this supply of pigeon-holes intolerably exiguous, find it gratuitously lavish; and are prepared to say of any concept presented to them' Is it a Quality? If not, then it must be a Relation'."

... and knocks it down.
"In opposition to such views, it should suffice to launch this challenge: 'In which of your two or ten pigeon-holes will you lodge the following six terms, drawn pretty randomly from the glossary of Contract Bridge alone, namely "singleton", "trump", "vulnerable", "slam", "finesse" and "revoke"?' ........... The truth is that there are not just two or just ten different logical metiers open to the terms or concepts we employ in ordinary and technical discourse, there are indefinitely many such different metiers and indefinitely many dimensions of these differences". p.10

I must say, I sympathize with his impatience with systematizers. But I don't think that the hand-waving in the last sentence is helpful. Even if there is no systematic structure, it would be good to have some ideas about when and why two concepts should go into different categories. And one wonders why he suddenly stops talking about categories and starts talking about "metiers".

Aha I think this would create a regress of the same problem as someone else would come along and say that it isn't just different ways of the same thing. — Apustimelogist

I would reply that the claim needs to be backed up by a demonstration of the difference. Mere assertion won't cut any ice.

But yes, I have thought about ways of kind of possibly ignoring labels of "real" or "non-real". Ironically, I feel like its very difficult to do this in a way that doesn't just look like normal anti-realism. — Apustimelogist

Yes, it's a common difficulty when one wants/needs to deny the validity of a distinction.

But I think insofar as Davidson mentions Kuhn as an originator of the idea he is attacking, he has constructed a strawman since Kuhn isn't representative of the idea he attacks — Apustimelogist

Yes. One either picks a specific theory, but then has to interpret it correctly. But that's open to "strawman" claims, or devises one's own statement of the issue, which is also open to the same claim. There's no third alternative that I can think of.

You can then match the networks of concepts together. — Apustimelogist

I saw a suggestion somewhere that a third possibility that one adjusts one or other concept (or network of concepts) so that there is sufficient overlap to enable the theories to be compared. That would sometimes be helpful because it would enable people to conduct experiments that will support one theory or the other.

Mustn’t be forgotten that phenomena are what appears to a subject. — Wayfarer

Well, I always thought is was basically just a posh word for "appearances" but perhaps in some contexts it is better to think of them as data. In many common uses, you are quite right that they are related to a subject, but I think they are more like data than appearances. Two points about appearances (in many common uses:- 1) t they are essentially like a relation, "appearance" of something to someone: 2) they are used, not just for the way something looks - the way it appears (seems) to be, - but also for something hidden coming into view - the ship appeared over the horizon or the game of peek-a-boo.

As I see it both of those propositions are "not even wrong", just because we have no idea what they could even mean outside of very well-defined contexts. If there is an affectation it is the pretense that we know what we are talking about when we make such claims and counterclaims. — Janus

That is very true. The problem arises when some argument seems to require that some object exists, but (in Locke's phrase) "we know not what it is". People don't draw the more likely conclusion that the argument is wrong.

A realist may think the different perspectives we have on the world are different ways of viewing the same thing, an anti-realist may say those same perspectives block knowledge of the thing in and of itself. A realist may say theories are approximately true, an anti-realist may say the notion of "approximately true" is arbitrary and just highlights that the theory does not explain all of the data. — Apustimelogist

That is a brilliant account of the debates. It makes it look as if it just a question of different ways of saying the same thing. The catch is that it's hard to see why it matters which way one jumps.

Yes, I think when it comes to Kuhn at least, his mention of translation is not talking about languages generically but about words thats constitute specific scientific theories. — Apustimelogist

That may well be true. But that makes his use of "translation" very different from what translation between languages involves. Word-for-word translation is almost always a mistake. Perhaps it would be better to talk about "equivalence"; but then the concepts of a theory are inter-related, not defined one by one. Perhaps we should just stick to "incommensurable".

It's all symbolic. — Hanover

What's all symbolic?

If I were to see a small blip on a radar screen showing me an airplane, would that be an airplane or a representation of one? — Hanover

Well, it depends what you mean by a representation. There's the kind of representation that is a picture and the kind that is a symbol. The blip is a representation in the symbolic sense.

If I see an actual flower, the object I actual see — Joshs

Why do you think that when you see an actual flower, you actually see something else?

More precisely, the concept of flower is an intersubjectively constructed object. — Joshs

Quite so. Thought it is a bit odd to refer to a concept as an object. Still, it would be picky to object. It is, I submit, a concept of a living think that grows, flowers, sets seeds and so forth - planted, say, in my front garden. Some flowers manage all of that without any help from me at all. Others need a hand and some TLC.

Its objectivity is thus a socially constituted ideal. — Joshs

I think that you misunderstand what objectivity is. It is something that happens irrespective of any socially constructed ideal

I would expect that an infant sees what I see when it looks at a flower, — Hanover

William James thought that what an infant sees in the beginning is "a buzzing, blooming, confusion", just because it doesn't have any sense of what has been socially agreed upon. Sadly, they can't tell us, and we can't see it.

The example of the infant is helpful because it approximates a baseline. — Leontiskos

Are you looking for the "raw" experience? I'm not sure you'll find it there. Since it will be before any concepts are applied (since they are not yet acquired), it will be indistinguishable from seeing nothing.

That's just a restatement of naive realism. — Hanover

Maybe. But it is what you asked for. Where have I gone wrong?

This may not be a strictly philosophical observation, but does it not occur to you that calling that doctrine "naive" realism may be an instance of the rhetorical tactic of giving a dog a bad name? I think you'll find that "direct" realism is less tendentious. Names for doctrines are harder to get right than you might think.

To be honest, I am not entirely comfortable with the idea of referencing something in the world that one cannot access. — Apustimelogist

Yes, I would agree with that. But one needs to tease out what counts as access.

I think with different languages, people usually are not only literally in the same world, but living lives in similar ways with similar objects. — Apustimelogist

Yes. There's an ambiguity about language. Most people seem to equate "language" with "conceptual scheme" or "paradigm". But I can't see that natural languages can be equated to a single conceptual scheme or paradigm, so I prefer to regard them as distinct. But the point applies to conceptual schemes or paradigms as well as languages.

His account of theory change isn't about logic like Popper, but psychological change in people's minds which is not constrained in a determinate, algorithmic way by evidence. — Apustimelogist

Yes, that's clearly true. He's a bit like Hume, who demolishes the claim that logic or reason establishes causal powers or causal laws, and then turns to psychology to fill the gap. I'm doubtful about this, because it seems to reduce the issues to causality or subjectivity. Which misrepresents what's going on, I think. One couldn't seriously argue that Newton's theory was not better (more comprehensive, more accurate, more coherent (?), simpler (?)) than Aristotle's.
I hesitate about "more useful" because it isn't particularly obvious at the moment that Einstein is more useful that Newton.

Kuhn's translatability is instead just about if the structure of lexical networks match up and terms in one theory have a direct correspondence or interchangeability to constructs in the other so that they can be thought of the same thing. — Apustimelogist

Well, yes. The new science (Newton, LaPlace) abandoned the Aristotelian idea of "matter" in favour of a different conception of what physical objects consist of. But it was pretty clear that both concepts were "about" at least some of the same thing(s). Is that what you had in mind?

But I baulk whenever someone says "It's subjective". — Banno

Well, I agree. Perhaps I should not have characterized that question as objective. On the other hand, I did specify my reason for applying that term.

much use for who and for what? — Janus

Good question. One way of answering is to consider it's use in . The truism that perception always involves a perceiver, is associated with "beauty in the eye of the beholder", "nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so" and the conclusion that all perception is subjective looks plausible. How can I say that forgery or not is not in the eye of the beholder, or that thinking does not make forgery so (or not) without appearing to deny the truism?
I have to admit that my way of putting the issue might be taken to suggest that Hanover's motivation is suspect. So I have to clarify that I don't doubt that Hanover believes what he is saying.

The point wasn't to determine the liklihood of how a forgery might or might not occur, but it was to point out that a forgery is a purely subjective determination. — Hanover

Well, any true-or-false statement is determined by someone, if that's what you mean. But that doesn't mean it is subjective. Since the definition is specified by law, I would say the question is objective.
Being a forgery is not a matter of its physical constitution. I never suggested otherwise.

Give me a concrete case then of an object that is unimpacted by the perceiver so that you can say object A is described as having the qualities of a, b, and c in all instances. — Hanover

How about Banno's flower? It has four petals, a definite height and flowers at a particular time of year.

You may have determined something about Banno's flower, but I didn't determine anything about it. I couldn't make head or tail of what you were going on about.