No, I think the definition of a first cause is a constant. Causality also does not change. — Philosophim

I can see that your definition is constant. But it's empty. People will look for something.

In other words Ludwig, no one has ever proven anything as a first cause. While logically necessary that at least one exist, it is extremely difficulty to prove that any particular existence is one. — Philosophim

I think you are understating the case.

Can they prove that there is nothing prior that caused it? — Philosophim

Proving a negative like that is indeed difficult to impossible. So it looks as if your concept of the first cause is empty. There's not much fun in that.

Do you accept a free will act as a true first cause? — Metaphysician Undercover

It depends what you mean by "true first cause". In certain traditions of philosophy, free will is the traditional cause of actions (as distinct from events); it is traditionally regarded as special - either as an uncaused cause or causa sui. Neither concept makes much sense. But then, since explanations of actions qua actions are different in kind from causal explanations, they are regarded as belonging to a category different from causal explanations. In which case free will is not a cause at all.

In a similar fashion, Stephen Hawking once proposed a causally closed cosmological model of the universe , in which the universe was hypothesized to be finite but without a spatio-temporal boundary. Nevertheless, he famously asked "what breathes fire into the equations?". But this philosophical question as it stands cannot be translated into the spatio-temporal language of physics. Furthermore, there isn't a consensus that Hawkings philosophical question is even meaningful, let alone how it should be solved or dissolved if it is. — sime

Well, setting fire to equations is clearly a metaphor, standing in place for a question we do not know how to ask yet. In my opinion. Poetry standing in at the limits of physics. I love it.

A universe has finite causality. What caused this universe to have finite causality over infinite causality? It just is, there's no prior explanation.
A universe has infinite causality. What caused this universe to have infinite causality over finite causality? It just is, there's no prior explanation. — Philosophim

Indeed. Just as there must be a first cause, even if we don't know what it is yet (although the Big Bang occupied that space for a while), so there must be some brute facts. But that may only mean that we haven't formulated the question yet.

We can attribute a starting point anywhere in a chain of causality. For example, when explaining why a ball falls when I let go of it, I don't have to address quantum physics. Does that mean that quantum physics and a whole host of other things are not part of the causality of the ball falling? No. It just means we don't look at it creating a mathematical origin or starting point. — Philosophim

Yes, you're right. I've stumbled in to two different uses of "first cause". One is the everday contextual use of first cause, where we pick a starting-point pragmatically, to suit the needs and interests of the situation we are in. The other is mathematical, or conceptual, and identifies the foundations of the system we are applying. We reach a point, where the explanations run out, but that does not hold us up for ever.

So we formulate a different, and incommensurable, theory which reaches past that point. But the concept of causality is changed in the process. Newton and others, redefined the subject matter of physics in order to mathematize it and introduced the concept of gravity because it was needed (a brute fact, if you like). That concept of time and space was undermined by relativity and quantum physics. Now, physicist/mathematicians are reaching past the Big Bang. But any explanation will involve changing the rules, since "before" the Big Bang, neither time nor space existed. "First cause" will change its meaning.

I find new questions to be fun and exciting to think about! I'm glad you do as well. — Philosophim

Quite so. That's why some of the thinking that's going on in the depths of physics, beginning to open up the inevitable and obvious questions around the Big Bang is so exciting - and puzzling and incomprehensible - to me, at least. And there's the paradox. Identify a first cause and you open up new questions. That's one reason why I classify a causal chain as contextual.

The catch is that whatever caused the Big Bang (or whatever else you identify as a first cause) requires that you think differently. As happened in the step from Aristotelian physics to Newton, from alchemy to molecular theory - and then beyond. The same thing happened with Relativity. Both of which seem normal (sort of) now.

We can attribute a starting point anywhere in a chain of causality. — Philosophim

That's why I call it contextual. To be sure, we explain why your ball falls from the point you let go of it. But then we can identify a new starting-point, before you let go of it, and find additional explanations which graft on to your original starting-point. Alternatively, if you ask "Why did you let go of the ball?" you may find yourself changing gear and answering in terms of actions, purposes and reasons - in a different categorial framework. But even if you stick to traditional physics, in the end, you find that you have to change gear and think about the nature of time and space, which requires new thinking, which opens up relativity and quantum physics.

BTW. Don't you think that the idea of the chain of causality is a bit misleading? We can identify many chains of causality, depending on what questions we are asking, and we see those chains intersecting and overlapping. Wouldn't it be better to think of causality as a web, from which we can select specific chains depending on our needs at the time? That's another reason why I classify a specific causal chain as contextual.

Correct! I hope that's cleared things up a bit jgill. I appreciate you sticking with me through it. — Philosophim

I seem to have happened on this thread at a moment of agreement. Congratulations to both of you. Can I just check that I've understood correctly?

Now put the chain somewhere on a graph. The 'line''s many points are simply the links in the chain. The first link is the beginning of the line, the first point is the beginning of the line. It doesn't matter where the origin is right? — Philosophim

I interpret this as saying that causality is contextual. We can post any convenient starting-point for a causal system. I agree with that understanding.

A first cause is a logical necessity where causality exists. — Philosophim

And since causality requires time and time and space are not absolute, but relative, then surely causality must be relative. Surely?

While yes, a God is not impossible, neither is any other plausibility you can imagine. — Philosophim

On the face of it, that's not particularly re-assuring. There will be people who assign the name "God" to whatever the first cause is. That will be less attractive to them if we clearly identify causality as relative. In addition, of course, God as first cause would be a god of the philosophers, not a god of faith.

3. If the logic holds, this is a final debate on the matter. Its a solution, done, finished. Now instead of debating this tired subject, we can move onto new debates. What does the fact that there is a first cause entail? Can we work out probabilities of things forming? What does that tell us of the nature of the universe? Do we continue to look for explanations to things, or is it reasonable to reach a point where it doesn't matter anymore? — Philosophim

You are right, of course. But you've just demonstrated that any first cause will generate new questions - especially the last one. That's not a problem.

I should have said that I learnt a lot and enjoyed the debate. Perhaps we'll meet again. SIgnor (Senor?) Lionino.

I got involved in this because I'm interested in the debate about religion. We've ended up with the connection to epistemology, probability theory and so on. In a way, there's nothing wrong with that, and we could pursue our differences (which are many and radical) even on this thread. But I don't want to get absorbed in those subjects just now, and you clearly have a thoroughly thought through system in place, so that debate would be quite demanding. I expect you will get more out of a discussion with people who appear to be more on the same page, or at least the same book, as you.

my background and (one of my) passions are physics and mathematics. — Lionino

Well, that certainly seems to make sense. But that may be stereotyping, No doubt you will feel that it makes sense also that I have no background whatever in those disciplines. Apart from philosophy, you could say that my background is in literature, music and history. That doesn't mean I don't think that physics and mathematics are unimportant in any way. I've always taken an interest in what's going on as part of the laity.

That is our difference, I only count the first as agnostic. Recognising p as incoherent for me implies believing not-p. — Lionino

H'm. Do you have a background in logic, specifically the truth-functional calculus? In that system, everything is either true or false. The law of excluded middle applies. When a sentence is malformed (Chomsky's "colourless green ideas sleep furiously" is a good example), you have a problem. You can say that it is not a sentence or a malformed sentence (not a wff) and hence no truth-value can be assigned or that it belongs in some third class (truth-value). But you cannot say or believe that it is true and you cannot say or believe that it is false. The same applies to the contradictory - "Colourless green ideas do not sleep furiously" in this case.

I was dealing primarily with rational belief, where evidence and logic are used as justification. I tried searching into irrational belief and emotional belief and I could not find much unfortunately. — Lionino

I don't think philosophers are comfortable with irrational belief. But many beliefs have emotions attached to them. We're not machines.

I can say however that emotional commitments such as "I believe my wife is not cheating" can sometimes not be belief. Sure, they say "I believe", but what they really mean is that they "want to believe", but in the back of their heads they know it is not true. I am not sure if in someone's psychology reason and emotion will always be separate in belief-formation, or if they mix sometimes. — Lionino

Something that sometimes happens is a bad basis for generalizing about the concept. Your example is a case of what some people would call "wishful thinking". But I don't accept that you can rule it out as a belief just because it is awkward for you.
I think they often mix. To say that they don't represents us as disinterested machines. Some beliefs don't matter to us, but some do.

I would say that for believing something reluctantly, the "reluctantly" is the "I want to believe part", which can be discarded when we give an assesment of the strenght of the belief. — Lionino

What do you mean "discarded"? If I come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that my spouse is cheating, the emotion doesn't disappear. Most likely, it will be reinforced.

Many people hold the black-and-white view of belief where you either believe something or you don't, or the black-white-grey view where you believe, don't believe, or disbelieve. — Lionino

I've no problem with you unfolding the fan. But it wasn't clear to me that you think that the strength or weakness of belief is proportional to the evidence, - or perhaps you mean "should be" proportional to the evidence? I just think that's not the whole story. One factor that hasn't been mentioned is the idea that some propositions have a special status in that they are foundational and more or less immune to refutation. This is the category of what used to be called a priori or "analytic".

Whether we want to call a region of those shades "strongly believe" and the other "weakly disbelieve" is simply a semantic detail. — Lionino

H'm. Surely what your diagram means is not just a detail?

The epistemological status of belief is relevant only to those who insist it must be. — Arne

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. There's no doubt that many beliefs are held, but not on rational grounds; that doesn't mean the people who hold them are irrational or that they don't really hold those beliefs. But it is always interesting to ask whether a belief is held on rational grounds and if one wants to know whether that belief counts as knowledge, it is essential to ask that question.

.... though atheism isn't (for most) possession of proof positive that gods don't exist, it is the disbelief in gods (regardless of the source of the disbelief). — LuckyR

So in the terms in that quotation, agnosticism would be neither belief not disbelief, but, perhaps suspension of judgement or a belief that the question is malformed and therefore unanswerable.

It does seem to be the case that some (many) people don't think the distinction between agnosticism and atheism is important. And indeed, for some purposes, it isn't. But then, for other people, on other occasions, it is.

Isn't philosophy's goal to tidy up our minds? — Lionino

Not necessarily. I prefer an overview of what's happening. When I understand that, I might do a bit of tidying up, but only if it serves some purpose. Tidying up just for the sake of a system is regimentation, which has its uses (in mathematics and science, for example) but I see no virtue in it for its own sake - and it can be oppressive to people and misleading in philosophy.

Edit: I forgot to add and I am not uploading the file all over again. Left arrow is 180º degrees, right arrow 0º degrees, and upwards arrow 90º degrees. — Lionino

It's OK. Your diagram was clear enough for me to work that out. It is a lovely diagram.

Doxastic attitudes: believing that p and its adverbs (strongly, weakly) — Lionino

These lists are very helpful. I wasn't expecting anything like that. I would have counted everything you've listed as epistemic or doxastic. Does emotional commitment (like belief in God) count as believing strongly and believing something reluctantly (like believing that your friend has scammed you) count as believing weakly?

If there is a problem to solve, for me, it is that true agnosticism (90º degrees belief) hardly exists. — Lionino

But that's just a consequence of how you present the phenomena. a single point on the scale seems improbable. 89 degrees is also highly improbably, But a range between 85 and 90 is more probable. You assign so many values to all the other beliefs that you create a specific impression of the relationship between them. It's got nothing to do with what's actually going on.
It's the difference between a dimmer and a light switch.

The question is whether to see all varieties of agnosticism as the same kind of thing, like a bowl full of apples, or as different varieties, like a bowl with apples and oranges and kiwi fruit and maybe a few nuts. I go for the latter. Agnostic because there's no (not enough) evidence is one thing; agnosticism because the concept of God is incoherent is another; agnosticism because religion is the cause of much evil is yet another. I can't fit those on to a single scale. Why do I have to?

It is true that all those varieties of agnosticism can be held strongly or weakly, so it would be comprehensible if one proposed a separate scale for each variety. But then the same will apply to atheism and to theism.

I think you are fastening on a specific feature of belief - that it can be strong or weak - and turning that into an entire system. But belief is more complicated than that.

Sorry, this post is a bit scattered.

"Agnostic" is somewhat used as a catch-all word for the third position. But that is just how many people seem to use the word, very lax. — Lionino

I don’t see any problem with that. As you point out we manage perfectly well with no fine line between “red” and “violet”. Picking out and sorting through the varieties of agnosticism is quite interesting. But what is the actual problem that all this is intended to solve? Or is it just a tidy mind?

there is no fine line to separate agnosticism from believing that p or not-p — Lionino

This proposal, presumably, makes both belief and non-belief rare to impossible just as your similar proposal for agnosticism makes that rare to impossible. What's the advantage in that? I think not accepting p and not accepting not-p is much more than a fine line.

I would reply that {leaving "agnosticism" to an arbitrary range that we are supposed to intuit whether we fall under or not in the moment}, like 'red', is not productive, — Lionino

I think the problem is your obsession with arranging everything on a single scale. The obsession with degrees of belief makes for a tidy diagram but smothers the distinctions that might actually matter here. WHat is the problem you are trying to solve here?

Thus, if we want to have a third position that does occur often, it would be not a genuine doxastic one, which for me is suspending judgement, which can coexist with weakly believing and weakly disbelieving — true doxastic attitudes. — Lionino

I don't follow this at all. I can understand being agnostic with a leaning towards theism and being agnostic with a leaning towards atheism. But the business with percentages and doxastic attitudes is over my head - especially as we now have true agnosticism and truly doxastic. Perhaps I just haven't kept up with the argument.

I believe that scientific belief is more about "will this also happen in the future?" than anything else. There is a commitment to regularity in scientific beliefs for sure, I am not sure if I would call that an epistemic or non-epistemic factor. — Lionino

Even if you are right about what scientific belief is about, it is still a commitment to truth.
It would help me if I had some examples of clearly epistemic and clearly non-epistemic factors. Ditto for doxastic and non-doxastic.

f I don't believe in the existence of God, any god, because there is no evidence for its existence, what does that makes me? An agnostic, an atheist, an agnostic atheist? — Alkis Piskas

I think you are missing the difference between not believing in the existence of God and believing in the non-existence of God. Admittedly, for some purposes, the difference may not matter much. But if you believe that "God" is an incoherent concept, it does matter.

There's an awful lot packed in here.

In the argument that I was referencing, true agnosticism (not knowing whether p) is probabilistically unlikely (almost impossible), as the overall doxastic sway will almost always be towards p or not-p. — Lionino

What makes equally balanced agnosticism "true"? I can see what makes a 90 degree angle a right angle, but that doesn't mean that the only true angles are right angles. There's a complication here, because although right angles are not the only true angles, there is such a thing as a true right angle. But I think that only shows that one needs to be clear about what criterion of truth is at work in each use. You can choose to call equally indifferent agnosticism the only true agnosticism if you like. But I need a better reason than that.

I mixed the actual sense of 'agnostic' with its sense in the discussion of belief in God here. — Lionino

I don't see that agnosticism with a preference one way or the other is restricted to the context of religious belief.

I quote Matthew McGrath — Lionino

I'm puzzled about suspension of judgement. It is one of the non-genuine doxastic attitudes, and yet you use the same phrase to describe "true" agnosticism.

If any non-epistemic factors make a belief "non-doxastic" (not that I'm sure I know what that means), then religious beliers held on faith are non-doxastic. But why would believing that religious beliefs are non-doxastic be non-doxastic?

not doxastic but declarative. — Lionino

I don't quite get this distinction. I suppose you mean that religious beliefs are not rational. I think that is true, but the thread, as I understand it, limits the discussion to rational belief - I'm not sure whether there's such a thing as non-rational knowledge, but there might be, or perhaps some non-rational factors can be part of a knowledge system. After all, scientific beliefs are supposed to be based on a commitment to truth. Isn't that a non-epistemic factor?

A nonce-word is a word that is made for that specific reason and abandoned after. Maltheism is a word that was made for a game, if I recall it properly from yesterday. — Lionino

OK. It seems that nothing hangs on what we say, so we don't have to say anything.

a third truth-value — Lionino

The difficulty with the third truth value is that it is very hard to stop at three. One could probably make a case for thirty-three.

As to undefined, it depends on what it means. — Lionino

Yes. Your two cases are different and there are probably others. Best to leave it at that.

If you are referring to Royal Academies of language, the same is the case for Castillian. Also to some extent Portuguese and Galician. English indeed does not have that in any country afaik. — Lionino

Add Jainism to the mix in case someone wants to reject that Buddhism is a religion. — Lionino

Both I would say, ἀντί can mean 'face-to-face' among other things. — Lionino

Thanks for all these snippets. I was worrying about anti. Those two meanings combined didn't make any sense. But that explanation works perfectly. (My Greek is very rusty.)

Thie are more like nonce-words, like misotheism; antitheism is more established, though not as much as atheism admittedly. — Lionino

I'm not sure exactly what a "nonce-word" is, but I agree that mal-, dys- and miso- theism are pretty marginal. People love a label for a doctrine, especially if it can be given a name derived from Greek or Latin. But it wouldn't be practical to label every variety of possible doctrine about God. "ant-theism" is a stretch for me, but does seem to identify a worth-while difference and it has a certain antiquity that might serve as respectability.

I defend a similar position in this thread on this post, reserving agnosticism to not an epistemic position but a declarative one, of suspending judgement. — Lionino

I don't have a reason to quarrel with you, though I would classify not knowing whether... as epistemic. On the other hand, where would you put someone who thought that the concept of God, at least in Christianity, is incoherent, so that either assertion or denial are inappropriate? Or, I saw a translation of a Buddhist text that had the Buddha saying that the question was "undetermined"? Neither of those is suspending judgement.

And "faith" — mentos987

Yes, of course. I didn't mention that, for me, "" and "faith" are very closely related - and "erusr" and "loyalty" are as well.

I'd say so. Although to me they are more of a way to declare yourself unconvinced. — mentos987

OK. There is good reason to think of any opinion or attitude to religion as, in a sense, religious. There are complications - there always are - but I'm not sure that anything important hangs on them.

I don't think it is a matter of truth or not, but of usefulness. The language we use doesn't make any assertions, until it is used and applied. In the same way, the rules of a game aren't right or wrong; it is moves in the game that are right or wrong. That doesn't mean that they are simply arbitrary. The rules can frustrate the aims of the game - make it unplayable. Those rules can be said to be wrong, but that's not the same as false.

While I do not insist upon anything, is this what you asked about? — mentos987

Yes. it is. So I went back to the discussion you were quoting from.

I guess "insist" in this context sounds pejorative, so I won't insist on that word.

It seems to me that the debate you got involved in about the meaning of "atheism" and "agnosticism" is actually about the meaning of "knowledge" and "belief" and "certainty" and where there is a binary divide and where there is a spectrum. If there was agreement about those issues, the definitions of "agnostic" and "atheist" would fall into place.

It seems to me that goes back to the beginning: -

Belief is connected to knowledge through rationality. If you believe something and you're rational, it's because you know something. If you lack belief in something and you're rational, it's because you lack knowledge in it. Likewise, having knowledge in something makes it rational to believe in it, and lacking knowledge makes it rational to lack belief in it. — Hallucinogen

I'm not sure I fully understand this and I'm not sure it is right.

But it does seem important to me to note that religious belief may not be entirely rational. After all many religious people think that all that is needed is faith, though one hopes that they think that rationality has a part to play after the fundamental commitment of faith is made.

We can call them "hinge" propositions, or some other idea that treats it as a beginning, a starting-point and so not subject to rational standards in the same way as other propositions. We could even say that the foundation of religious belief is not propositional at all, but a commitment to a way of life - the existentialist idea of commitment has a part to play here.

Do we include atheism and agnosticism as kinds of religious belief? I'm not sure. It probably depends on the variety of atheism or agnosticism in question.

Something that seemingly can't be reinforced too much. — wonderer1

It seems to me that what is important and valuable in this thread is the recognition that the traditional binary position that either God exists or it doesn't. The binary opposition, as so often, is not really very helpful.

I'm also wondering who might want to insist that agnosticism is a variety of atheism, rather than being a distinct position. Where does this idea come from? How does it affect the eternal debate?

Perhaps this has been explained earlier in the thread and I've missed it.

Then what happens when there is "antitheism"? Should "atheism" move over as well? If yes, where? If no, what happens with "antitheism"? — Lionino

I don't understand the Ancient Greek word, which means "godlike" in Homer, but "contrary to God" in writers that I know nothing about; they are clearly not classical. The obvious etymology is clearly in favour of the latter meaning, which has apparently been around since 1788.

As to what happens to "atheism", it would be a choice. Sadly, no-one is in a position to make the choice, so, in the end, it will be down to users of the terms to make their choices. (In France and Sweden, at least some of these choices are made by a committee, which has legislative backing, but English doesn't have any equivalent authority.)

If antitheism means active opposition to religious belief (and pratice), then atheism would be left with rejection of belief that does not lead to active opposition. But there are other possibilities, especially when you consider dystheism and maltheism. By the way, there is at least one religion (legally established as such in the USA) that is atheist - Scientology - and Buddhism is agnostic - or at least the Buddha was.

I can't see any mileage in arguing about what the words mean. The best one could do in a situation like the one we are in is to make an agreement about how to use the words and then deal with any substantial issues.

Here is the thing: why should philosophers of religion be able to redefine a word that is at least 2000 years older than their field? A word that many people identify and have identified with while not implying the meaning the SEP claims is standard. It may be fair to say we should use the standard definition here since we are technically talking about phil of rel, but why use atheism when the meaning is better encapsulated in 'antitheism', which the IEP calls "positive atheism"?

In any case, I am very skeptical of the SEP's claims of "standard" or "consensus". Sometimes I fail to confirm the existence of thoa quite relse consensuses when I look into the topic myself. — Lionino

People often assume that "everybody" uses the word in the way that they themselves do, and I'm not surprised that you find cases like those in the SEP - though they should know better. Philosophers should be aware that claiming a consensus should be done cautiously and preferably backed up with evidence. Fortunately, a good dictionary is a quite reliable source of such evidence.

You are right that in Ancient Greek atheos - I'm sorry that I don't have an Ancient Greek keyboard - didn't mean exactly what it means now. Though, on a closer look, Plato does, it seems, use that word to mean "denying the gods" (in the Apology). But otherwise, it seems to mean "godless" or "ungodly" (in Pindar, Sophocles and Lysias) and "abandoned by the gods" (in Sophocles). The meaning in your quotation from Bacchylides does seem to be "ungodly".

But I don't think ancient Greek usage is, or should be, a final authority on what a word means now. For me, the meaning of a word is what it is used to mean and the users of a language may not know or care how the ancient Greeks used it. So use may change over time, and most dictionaries now try to capture how the word is used, rather than how it "ought" to be used or was "originally" used.

I'll skip over the change in usage of "atheist" when polytheism declined and Christianity became dominant.

Perhaps the most relevant change is the invention of the term "agnostic" by T.H. Huxley in 1869. Before that "atheist" could comfortably cover both agnosticism (no assertion or denial) and atheism (denial). Huxley's point was precisely to draw that distinction and once it is drawn, "atheism" needs to move over. People seem to have found this distinction important, and so Huxley's coinage has taken root in the language. (Yes, of course you can check that claim in a dictionary!)

Maybe there are people who don't like this distinction. It would be interesting to know why. I don't see any problem with it.

Why do you think it the main issue? — Banno

That remark was a bit off the cuff and I'm prepared and happy to be wrong, if I am wrong. I found myself picking up breadcrumbs. Put it this way - I remember the book as a collection, not a path, and was interested by the discovery that it isn't. I is an introduction, II is clearly a throwaway and III almost entirely historical. The topics gradually gets more interesting - more "live". (Over this many years, that's quite remarkable, isn't it?)

In a way, calling VI the main issue is over-simplification. The main issue is methodological, but the explanation of it is demonstration rather than analysis, and VI brings the methodology to a live issue and demonstrates that it really can help with a real issue.

The beginning of IV:-
"THE two specimens of logical litigation that we have so far considered in detail, namely, the fatalist issue and Zeno's issue, have been in a certain way academic dilemmas. We almost deliberately let them worry us just because we found them intellectually interesting. They were, up to a point, like riddles to which we want to get the answers only because getting the answers is good exercise. From now on I want to discuss issues which are more than riddles, issues, namely, which interest us because they worry us; not mere intellectual exercises but live intellectual troubles." IV p.54

Which is reinforced at the start of V:-
"You will have felt, I expect and hope, that the fatalist dilemma, Zeno's dilemma, and my puzzles about pleasure are all, though in different ways, somewhat peripheral or marginal tangles - tangles whose unravelling does not promise by itself to lead to the unravelling of the tangles that really matter, save in so far as it may be instructive by example. Henceforward I shall be discussing a spider's-web of logical troubles which is not away in a corner of the room, but out in the middle of the room. This is the notorious trouble about the relations between the World of Science and the Everyday World." V p. 68

Actually, from memory, this was, let's say, not a dead issue back in the day. But it doesn't seem to bother anyone these days. "Science tells us what the world is really like." If only they would read Austin and Ryle.

The end of V is linked to VI:-
"But you will not and should not be satisfied with this mere promise of a lifebelt. Can it be actually produced and thrown to us in the precise stretch of surf where we are in difficulties? To one particular place where the surf is boiling round us I shall now turn." V, p.81

VI leads us to VII:-
"But now I must move on to a certain very special tangle or tangle of tangles, which is, I think, for many people somewhere near the centre of their trouble about the relations between the World of Physical Science and the Everyday World. We can call this 'the Problem of Perception'. I shall not unravel the whole tangle, for the simple reason that I do not know how to do it. There are patches in it, and important ones where I feel like a bluebottle in a spider's web. I buzz but I do not get clear." VI p.92

By the way, do you think there's a link between Ryle and Wittgenstein here, or just a good idea occurring independently? (I know it doesn't matter, but there is that issue about Ryle and Austin never mentioning Wittgenstein. Not that W had published much at the time, so perhaps it doesn't really need explanation.)

And in Vii, we find a link back to IV:-
"In this one negative respect seeing and hearing are like enjoying. It was partly for this reason that on a former occasion I discussed the notion of enjoyment at such length, namely to familiarize you with the idea that well understood autobiographical verbs can still be grossly misclassified. I argued that some theorists had tried to fit the notions of liking and disliking into the conceptual harness which suits such terms as 'pain' and 'tickle'. They had misclassified liking and disliking with sensations or feelings." VII p.102

VIII reads to me like a coda - picking up the methodological theme. It isn't woven in to the structure in the same way.

I'm making sure to clarify what the position is. — schopenhauer1

I'm sure that's your intention. However, I'm afraid that all you can do is to clarify what your position is.

I think the interesting feature of my argument is that all that has to matter is the case that you actually have a causal-history (which we all do), and that actualized causal-history represents your life currently. — schopenhauer1

I agree that does matter. But it does not mean that my life began my DNA was formed. I've tried endlessly to make a discussion with you, but you endlessly repeat the same doctrine, as you did in the message you sent to me on the Ryle thread. So I don't know what to say to you. But I do know that this non-discussion is getting boring. I don't have anything more to say about this, so we'll have to agree to disagree.

Very few philosophical discussions achieve agreement, so that shouldn't be surprising. But it is disappointing. Thank you for your time and attention.

I need to revise the first sentence. The original gave the wrong title for the lecture. The correct title is:-

The title of lecture VI is "Technical and Untechnical Concepts"

Ryle gives a good summary of his own lecture towards the end of it:- “Our alarming and initially paralysing question was this. 'How is the World of Physics related to the Everyday World?' I have tried to reduce its terrors and dispel its paralysing effect, by asking you to reconstrue the question thus, 'How are the concepts of physical theory logically related to the concepts of everyday discourse?'” (p. 91/92)

He traces the problem back to the revolutions in science in the 17th century – Galileo, Descartes and Newton and the doctrine that “a scientific theory has no place in it for terms which cannot appear among the data or the results of calculations.” (p. 82) The catch is where “colours, tastes, smells, noises and felt warmth and cold” belong. He cites Aristotle and Boyle and the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities as responsible for the banishing of colours and tastes from physics. (p. 84)

Well, they are not so much banished as marginalized. “The chemist, the geneticist and the wielder of the Geiger counter, in apparent defiance of this ostracism of sensible qualities, may indeed base their special theories on the smells and tastes of chemical compounds, on the colours of sweet-peas and on the clicks heard from the Geiger counter”. They are permitted as “a reliable index” of physical facts, but still, somehow, not themselves physical facts. (p.84)

He starts with a direct challenge to one view of all this (without actually accusing anyone of adopting it). “It is not true that what is not and cannot be mentioned in a formula is denied by that formula.” He points out that “ .. Again, it is not because algebraical equations will have nothing to do with numbers, that they mention none of them. Rather it is because they are impartially receptive of any numbers you please.” (pp. 83/84)

Next, there is a diagnosis of “one intellectual motive” for “construing a logically necessary impartiality as a logically necessary hostility.” – the tradition of Aristotelian logic. It seemed obvious that what was measured by thermometer or ruler and colour or taste were both “qualities” of an object. So the distinction was drawn (by Boyle, he thinks) between primary and secondary qualities. But it is a mistake to classify both in the same way. (p. 84/85)

This is a new idea (and a new one in these lectures). Expressions like “‘Quality', ‘Property', ‘Predicate', ‘Attribute', ‘Characteristic', ‘Description' and ‘Picture'” – the latter is a survivor from the previous lecture – push together concepts of very different kinds, and this is what constitutes the dilemmas that result. (p. 85) Ryle calls them "smother-words". The only perplexing thing in the situation is whether we ought to say that being a trump-card is a 'property' or 'attribute' of the Queen of Hearts. …. This is not a Bridge-player's worry but a logician's worry. (p. 86)

We cannot answer the question what the Queen of Hearts can and cannot do unless we know the game that’s being played. (p. 86) This leads him to the concept of “theoretical luggage” or “theory-ladenness” as the critical factor in creating the illusion of a puzzle.

He distinguishes the card-playing example which he pursues throughout the lecture from the scientific theories. But acknowledges that card games and physics (or economics) are activities of very different kinds. First, we can participate or not in card games but physics and economics are part of all our lives and second, the “thinking” involved in card games is about how to win, but in economics, for example is how to get the best bargains; thinking about physics is different again. (p. 88)

And so he moves on to the main issue – perception.

If substance metaphysics, causal closure, and superveniance are your starting points, — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not sure I have starting-points as such. I'm just interested to understand what's going on here. I guess you're telling me that emergence only exists within a quite tightly defined context.

After all, if mind is strongly emergent, and thus a fundamental, irreducible force with sui generis causal powers, how is that not what people generally mean by dualism? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that's a very good point.

I see weak emergentism as most reasonable, and in the context of weak emergence the emergence is only epistemic. So on this way of looking at things there is nothing for emergence to do, except provide cognitively limited being like ourselves with conceptual frameworks that are manageable. — wonderer1

I only meant that providing ourselves with conceptual frameworks that are manageable is quite an achievement and well worth having.

Of course it is your brain is processing the data from your eyes. But it's still a cat, and it's still just a line. — Banno

I think the devil is that is in those little words "just" and "is". Do we need any more that multiple descriptions in different contexts?

Emergence, if it is to help us here, has to be akin to "seeing as", as Wittgenstein set out. So once again I find myself thinking of the duck-rabbit. Here it is enjoying the sun. — Banno

I have very little idea what emergence is, but I'm thinking of it as a kind of analysis in reverse.

So on this way of looking at things there is nothing for emergence to do, except provide cognitively limited being like ourselves with conceptual frameworks that are manageable. — wonderer1

Wouldn't that be a big step forward?

E.g. Mermin: "the Moon is demonstrably not there when no one is observing it." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I expect you know that idea is about 300 years old. Berkeley articulated and defended it. It drove people crazy then. Nothing changes. Curiously enough, he also re-inscribed dualism back into his system.

The idea is that you don't get those blocks to form a sphere, etc. unless you radically alter the paradigm, the equivalent of pulling out a Sawzall and some wood glue and tearing your blocks apart. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Or you could make your blocks a slightly different shape.

Such a house built with the blocks is reducible to the blocks. You can compute the "possible houses," and their properties from knowledge of the blocks alone. The structure of the house would be analogous to some sort of "weak emergence." Strong emergence is irreducible, and thus "physically fundamental." If substance metaphysics, causal closure, and supervenience are your starting points, "like magic" is often how strong emergence is defined. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't know enough about these concepts to make a sensible comment. Apart from wondering why people want to start from those starting-points, given that they create problems, rather than resolving them. I guess I'm just a dinosaur.

I had forgotten that passage. It is brilliant. Thank you for reminding me.

"How do you combine a bunch of building blocks and get something completely new that wasn't in the blocks to start with?" Intuitive answer is you simply don't. Same as how you don't get an ought from an is. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Doesn't that intuition depend on a specific interpretation of "completely new" and "in the blocks". Other interpretations are available. The house that you build from scratch with the blocks is completely new, and it wasn't in (or outside) the blocks before you built it.

I don't remember enough about Midgeley to comment off the cuff. But this drives me back to Anscombe's multiple descriptions of a single action and Ryle's categories.

There's an ancient puzzle about how an object can be a bundle of properties and a single object at the same time. It's easy to point out that it is the arrangement (structure) of the elements (the blocks) that makes the house. But then one has to hastily specify that the arrangement/atructure is not an additional element of the house. It is in a different category.

But the house is a physical object.

I can't see how it helps to say that the house emerges from or supervenes on the blocks - except as the name for a mystery that isn't really a mystery.

By the way, you don't get an "ought" from an "is" by deduction. That doesn't rule out getting one's "oughts" from "is's" in other ways.

I suppose that Anscombe's multiple descriptions of a single action would correspond to the fact that politics is everything, and art is everything, and physics is everything. We could put this by saying that everything has a political, artistic, physical aspect. That would address my discontent with Ryle's image of the artist and the geologist doing different things - which is not wrong, but provokes me to point out that they both work - and co-exist - in the same world. The mountain is, in a sense, the link between them.

Surely if there has been a causal history, then there has been a causal history and that fact is not dependent on your knowing it, knowing its details, or on you assuming it . — Janus

Wouldn't that be a metaphysical or ontological identity? It's no help when I bump into a long-lost friend. My point is that how I know is also an important question. I have a feeling that I usually assume that there is a causal thread, but very rarely know what it is. Perhaps it's not really relevant to my life.

In causo-historical terms, there was this set of gametes that are the terminus when looking back at how far back one may go before any actualized version of you would have changed if prior circumstances had changed. — schopenhauer1

You are assuming that the individual who grows from the DNA will be the same individual no matter what happens. But, in the first place, it doesn't follow that any individual will grow from that specific DNA, and it certainly doesn't follow that any particular individual will grow from that DNA. If my mother had suffered a deficiency of folic acid while that DNA was growing inside her, the resulting baby would have been born with spina bifida. I cannot imagine that. Therefore that person would not have been me. My family were middle class. If they had been working class, their children would have developed differently. Would they have been the same people? No clear answer.

I'm sorry I didn't notice your reply for so lon

nor does the brain ever have access to that to know if it is right or not and it cannot know in principle — Apustimelogist

Maybe we can say that it works on the reward principle, not on some reality principle. (But reward has to be interpreted generously - I mean that avoidance of pain is a reward, as well as the gaining of pleasure - in a generous sense of pleasure.

I guess I just mean talking about things like efficient coding without needing to explicitly refer to objects outside the head — Apustimelogist

One would need to construct a criterion of efficiency that was "internal" to the way that coding works - i.e. with as little wasted effort as possible. No doubt it would have to link to the reward cycle.

I just fall on the position that that kind of thing is just outside the realm of explanation, description, anything — Apustimelogist

That's what many people seem to do. But (and perhaps I should have mentioned this before) that seems to me to be a reason for saying that the question is malformed; it suggests something to us which turns out to be impossible. In other words, it is mystery-mongering - an illusion.

Come to think of it, there is a live issue where this might be relevant. At present, it tends to focus on Searle's Chinese room argument. It is the relationship between the description of physical states of a computer and the "interpretation" of them by people. (I'm not quite sure what the description of the software would apply, but I'm inclined to think that we have to think of that as a bridge between the two categories. It can't be a translation because the physical states of the computer are not a language.)

By extension, one might then see the relationship between brain and mental states as a similar problem, which, come to think of it is exactly the problem that Ryle puts at the summit of the mountain he is climbing in "Dilemmas". That's a hot topic (or is it the same topic?) as the computer issue.
By the way, I'm not intending to downplay the importance of levels of description in ethics.

That's a very interesting thought. I'm not quite sure where to go with it, though. I'm sure Ryle does talk about the idea, but I can't remember where. I'm sure that orthodox science would be most unhappy with the idea - at least, I expect "science" would prefer a monochrome (single-storey) universe. Perhaps not. I usually think of the phenomenon as a kind of contextualisation, except in the giant leap from causal to rational explanation patterns, which I see as a change of category.

H'mm. I'm afraid you'll have to tell me more before I can see your point. (I looked at the SEP article before saying that.)
I'm inclined to wonder whether she is using a different sense of "cause" from the one intended by Hume and others. More related to "causa" in Latin and "aitia" in Greek. I'm not saying that's wrong, exactly, just that it's different.

Maybe this thread is dead. But I'm going to post a summary of the next lecture, so see if that provokes any response. It is, perhaps a more recognizable difficulty than we have met so far, but it still doesn't seem to occupy much space. I think that, since he wrote these lectures, we have grown more comfortable with the weird world of quantum mechanics; which is not so say that we have got the matter sorted out. So here goes:-

Lecture V – The world of science and the everyday world.

As usual, Ryle identifies his target at the beginning: -
We often worry ourselves about the relations between what we call ‘the world of science' and ‘the world of real life ' or ‘the world of common sense'. Sometimes we are even encouraged to worry about the relations between 'the desk of physics’ and the desk on which we write. p.68

His answer is not difficult to predict: -
“In the way in which a landscape-painter paints a good or bad picture of a range of hills, the geologist does not paint a rival picture, good or bad, of those hills, though what he tells us the geology of are the same hills that the painter depicts or misdepicts.” p.80
He gets to his target in a somewhat roundabout way, by describing similar dilemmas. I’m not sure how far these diversions contribute to resolving the main problem; their contribution seems to be more to loosen our familiar patterns of thinking and prepare us to look at things differently.

The first of these is the dilemma between Economic Man – motivated primarily or exclusively by financial considerations and the market -and the “Everyday Man” for whom financial considerations are one amonst many preoccupations and far from his only concern. (p.69) Ryle maintains that the first of these is now a matter of history. It was very much alive in the 19th century. Certainly, it isn’t a live issue for us now.

There’s a brief consideration of the question who Aesop’s story of the dog who dropped his bone in order to secure the tempting reflection of the bone in a pool is aimed at. (p.70)

Then he returns to the main business – the “feud” between the world of physical science and the world of “real life”. p.71

He starts by deflating “two over-inflated ideas” – “science” and “world”:-
(a) There is no such animal as 'Science'. There are scores of sciences. (p.71)
(b) The other idea which needs prefatory deflation is that of world. (p.73)

Then he presents us with another analogy: - “An undergraduate member of a college is one day permitted to inspect the college accounts and to discuss them with the auditor.” (p.75). His discussion of this is detailed and careful and ends with: - “In fact, of course, physical theorists do not describe chairs and tables at all, any more than the accountant describes the books bought for the library.” (p.79)

He is surprisingly cautious about his conclusion: -
“I hope that this protracted analogy has satisfied you at least that there is a genuine logical door open for us; that at least there is no general logical objection to saying that physical theory, while it covers the things that the more special sciences explore and the ordinary observer describes, still does not put up a rival description of them….” (p.80)

But he seems clear enough about the source of the trouble – we should hesitate “to characterize the physicist, the theologian, the historian, the poet, and the man in the street as all alike producing ‘pictures', whether of the same object or of different objects. The highly concrete word ‘picture' smothers the enormous differences between the businesses of the scientist, historian, poet and theologian even worse than the relatively abstract word ‘description' smothers the big differences between the businesses of the accountant and the reviewer.” p.81

And so he leads us on to the next lecture by characterizing what he has said so far as “mere promise of a lifebelt”. (p.81)

That's very interesting. The causal theory of perception is obviously simplistic, just for the reasons you give here. But equally, it's obvious that organisms can learn to differentiate signals by the "sensori-motor loop". At least, I think that's what you are saying.

But here's where I find I'm tempted - the rats who have their whiskers enhanced are getting a new signal and unsurprisingly assume it is something familiar. But then they learn to distinguish the new signals and what they mean from the old signals and what they mean. Fine. But what's that like?

I've heard of people who have grafted new or enhanced sensory capacities into their nervous system. If I've remembered right, the most that they say is that they do get a recognizably new signal, which they describe as tingling or itching. I've not seen a detailed account of how they learn to interpret the signal and experience it directly as - what?

But thank you very much for the post.

What do you mean by "syllopsistic"?

Sadly, not good-bye. The argument still rages - in exactly the traditional format, which I thought had been banished. Which drives me back to Cavell's idea that philosophical ideas are not put away, because their roots are deeper even than philosophy.

On another site, I'm watching, appalled, as the debate around Dennett rages on.

The problem is, I think, that Ryle's argument doesn't address the need to locate the technical in relation to the untechnical. I think, nowadays, Newtonian mechanics has found a comfortable place, but other sciences have not - notably, as Ryle says, the sub-atomic world, but now the neuro-physiological world as well. Which I why I'm looking forward to VII.

Do you think I should post a summary of V, in case others might want to contribute?

It is classic Ryle. And yes, it's about a battle that is very much pertinent to-day. It's refreshing to see something a bit more impartial that usual. Am I right in thinking that you found IV disappointing. To be honest, I did. But Ryle sort of admits that this isn't the peak of the book (in the penultimate paragraph, p. 66/7. That, it seems is VII. I'm looking forward to that.

It is simply that that substrate of substance is that substrate and not another. — schopenhauer1

Now you have lost me completely. What is the substrate of a substance?

No, at birth one is just that which has the potential to experience, the arrival has no memories which constitute identity. — boagie

I find that a rather surprising claim. Don't babies experience things from the moment they are born, if not before?
A baby is experiencing things as soon as it is conscious, so it is acquiring memories from the moment it is conscious. In fact, we could say that being born is the moment when experience - and memory - begin, but I'm not sure that there is a sharp division between conscious and non-conscious.
But we are talking about physical continuity as an element in personal identity - at least, I think we are. I wouldn't deny for a moment that consciousness (including memory) is also necessary. But that doesn't raise the same problems.

When one is born, one is potential constitution and identity is its evolutionary process of an extended life moving through its context. — boagie

We clearly have the same approach to this. I just have one question. Surely, one has an identity from the moment one has a constitution, even if one's identity changes and develops over time?

Then you aren’t getting me because you’re focused on the genetics and not the causal history part which is uniquely an event that is tied to the person — schopenhauer1

OK. Forget the business about DNA. There are many people in my life who I meet only sporadically. I don't know what happens to them when I'm not there; I may or may not have sporadic second-hand information about what has happened to them. When I meet them, how do I know they are the same person? (You can stipulate, if you like, that I assume that there is, in fact, a continuous causal history covering the time when I was not there. I will stipulate that I don't know what that history is.)

No that other set of gametes won’t do. This one only does. Otherwise, no you. — schopenhauer1

I thought you were saying that I am over-focused on gametes, yet here they are again, front and centre stage.

I wouldn't say efficient coding necessarily entails that kind of idea and my views of the brain and mind don't hinge strongly on symbol or representation. — Apustimelogist

Fair enough. I notice that many people have no problem speaking of brain-states as symbols of representations. But a symbol is always a symbol of something and a representation is always a representation of something. But in the case of mental states, we have no access to the "something" in either case.

They are linked as phases of a particular process of growth and transformation; a unique history so to speak. — Janus

Yes, quite so. This is why I started speaking about life-cycles. Then I can reconcile the fact that some states and processes that are not a person (such as DNA) are part of the processes that you are talking about.

You rightly pointed out that fallacy here, something akin to a homunculus fallacy. — schopenhauer1

Yes, that is often committed. But that fallacy is the product of a complex structure of ideas, which may change. Newton posited gravity as an essential part of his theory, in spite of the fact that such a concept violated the then-orthodox ideas of causality and (whether this was him or not, I don't know) redefined what physical/material means. So what looks to us like illegitimate mix-and-match could be abandoned. I think it needs to be. The short version of this is that the "hard problem" is the result of the way that various concepts are defined. No solution is possible. It follows that the definitions need to change.

Rather, causal-history is essential to that identity, because it is necessary. Any other causal-history is someone else. — schopenhauer1

I understand that is your proposition. What you don't seem to have noticed is that the status of those proposition is your decision. You treat them as "hinge" for the debate - everything turns round them.

Now, I think this is just false. Whatever sperm or egg was fertilized, that conception could not have led to the person presently looking back on their life. — schopenhauer1

That depends on how you define that person's identity. I agree that, given that I have brown eyes, it is not now possible for me to have blue eyes. But I might have developed blue eyes at some point in the past and if that had happened, it would not now be possible for me to have had brown eyes. You are suppressing the antecedent in Kripke's proof.