I think Corvus was just pointing out that science shows that perception involves representation and interpretation. It's just weird to insist that that's direct (as someone in the thread was doing). — frank

I realize that is the usual way of describing certain phenomena of perception. But both "representation" and "interpretation" are usually applied in very different circumstances - when the original is also available to us. But in perception, the original is not available to us. So we end up bewailing the veil of perception which cuts us off from the world. But the point of the senses is to give us information about the world, and they do this quite successfully, on the whole. So these models are a trap.

While I agree with Austin's complaint that the delusive/veridical argument is a gross over-simplification of perception, I think that he is does not quite identify the source of the "problem". Indeed, it could be argued that he shares an important mistake with his opponents. Consider this:-

"Again, it is simply not true to say that seeing a bright green after-image against a white wall is exactly like seeing a bright green patch actually on the wall; or that seeing a white wall through blue spectacles is exactly like seeing a blue wall; or that seeing pink rats in D.T.s is exactly like really seeing pink rats; or (once again) that seeing a stick refracted in water is exactly like seeing a bent stick. In all these cases we may say the same things ('It looks blue', 'It looks bent', &c.), but this is no reason at all for denying the obvious fact that the 'experiences' are different. (p. 49)

He is here making a move that he makes earlier, in the context of the argument from illusion:-

"The straight part of the stick, the bit not under water, is presumably part of a material thing; don't we see
that? And what about the bit under water ? - we can see that too. We can see, come to that, the water itself. In fact what we see is a stick partly immersed in water." (p.30)

The problem is simply this, "experience" is not a count noun, but more like a mass term. There's no criterion for individual experiences, barring such informal criteria as we apply in context when we discuss them. (I suspect that all the empricists assume an atomic account of experience, which is simply a misunderstanding.) Austin's move is simply to widen the scope of "experience" to include the various ways we distinguish veridical from delusive. The argument gets its force from the narrow focus that is silently adopted, and a wider context allows Austin to rebut the claims.

Austin's argument is not best framed as an objection to wrongly describing a given experience. The problem is that Ayer and Price are selectively ignoring inconvenient circumstances by focusing on a narrow version of certain experiences. As Austin says:- "Inevitably, if you rule out the respects in which A and B differ, you may expect to be left with respects in which they are alike" (p.54). So Austin is right to insist that attention to a wider context will (often) correct such mistakes. But framing this as a disagreement about what the experience is is not helpful.

That's right. Austin was a classicist. He was drawn into philosophy by puzzlement at the things philosophers said. He brought his method over from Classics. — Banno

In his time, it was not at all uncommon, so I assumed he was. Perhaps that's why I feel so at home with him. It's curious, though, to see how much more complicated his reliance on ordinary language is than it seemed to be at the time.

We should try to avoid the interminable discussions that so often proceed from such differences. I take it that we agree there is a church, and that it looks like a barn, and that "I see a church" is OK, and so is "I see a barn", but that their conjunction needs some additional information - the fact of the camouflage - to avoid contradiction. — Banno

The camouflaged church is more complicated that Austin presents it, and the discussion above was an excellent dissection of it, particularly since it avoided the trap of thinking that the look of the church was something distinct from the building which could be peeled off it in the way that the camouflage could be peeled off it.

However, I think that does not take account of what is sometimes called the success logic of "see" (and "perceive"). So, for me, it is perfectly clear that no-one sees a barn, even though some people think they see a barn. Everybody sees a church, but some people do not realize that it is a church. However, in the context of this discussion, I don't have a conclusive argument for objecting to the idea that we see whatever we think we see, even though, for my money, that gives far too much to sense-data.

But what is neglected here is the context in which people may wish to communicate with each other about it - say, for the purpose of organizing a service, or even for the purpose of storing stuff. Call the people who see a church group A and the people who see a barn group B. One might say "Turn left into Hoe Lane and you will see the church half a mile down on the right". This would not work for those in group A who do not know about the camouflage and it would hopelessly mislead group B.

So I need to add "It looks like a barn." for the church-goers. But even if the aim is to find a barn to store stuff, I still need to explain to avoid large quantities of inappropriate stuff turning up at the church. In other words, "I see a church" and "I see a barn" are both inadequate (but not false) because of what they omit. (It's a sort of suppressio veri) So I would say that neither is OK. Only "I see a church camouflaged as a barn" is true.

Side-note. I'm fascinated to find this example in this context. I'm sure other people are aware that it has
a prominent place in discussions of the Gettier problem. I was aware that philosophical examples circulate in the literature, but not usually as widely as this.

I get that. But we are perceiving light, not electrical signals. We are our eyes, the signals, the brain, etc. We cannot be both perceivers and mediums. — NOS4A2

:up:

So I wonder to what extent we should take into account this topic from a Philosophy of Language perspective, and not just metaphysics. — javi2541997

The issues at this point are complicated, and I don't fully understand them. As a preliminary, it seems quite clear to me that Austin does disagree with Ayer. But he also wants to be as fair to Ayer as he possibly can. It would be easier to interpret Ayer uncharitably and produce an argument that, in the end, just attacks a straw man. But it is more convincing to refute what I have seen referred to as a steel man, i.e. an interpretation of the argument that is as strong as it can possibly be.

I'm not sure that Austin is entirely right about Berkeley. (I don't know Locke or Kant well enough to have an opinion about them.)

Berkeley is not entirely clear about whether the arguments he presents are just about language or not. If he is presented with possible counter-examples, such as the watch-maker, he shows that whatever the watchmaker believes, what he is doing can be represented in terms of "ideas" (which correspond, at least roughly to Hume's impressions and Ayer's sense-data). But his project is to refute any inference to anything beyond what can be perceived (ideas) - except minds, but set that aside for now. So it is clear that he does not think that it is just a question of language - how could the existence of God be just a question of language - except to an unbeliever?

But he gives permission several times for ordinary language to continue to be used in certain contexts and by certain people. True, there is always the proviso that users should accept his arguments. I read him as anxious to avoid the appearance of contradicting "vulgar opinion" - to the point where he allows that ordinary objects (or at least the ideas of them) continue to exist even when not perceived by anyone, since God continues to perceive them. (This is only clearly stated in the Dialogues). In short, I read Berkeley as suggesting exactly what Austin says he doesn't suggest. But I'm not at all sure that Berkeley's position on this is coherent. (If you want references to Berkeley's text, I can provide them.)

I think his melancholy is disappointment that Ayer has not really progressed from the classical doctrines, in spite of the claims that Logical Positivism is a revolution that overthrows the entire tradition of philosophy.

I also think that he is saying that he would side with the less liberal Kant and Berkeley.

The most interesting feature of this discussion is that it shows that Austin's view of language is more complicated than the dismissive interpretations of the linguistic turn suppose.

But this is all in Lecture VI, so perhaps we should park it for now and return to it later?

I wanted to point out that part of the confusion here is that we (and most everyone in philosophy in general) do not take what Austin is doing as revolutionary and radical as it is. He is not offering another theory to explain “perceiving” or something to replace it. He is claiming that the problem that everyone is arguing about how to solve is made up; — Antony Nickles

Part of the difficulty is understanding the significance of what he says. It is too easy to trivialize "ordinary language". But I think that's is a reaction to the difficulty of seeing what one might do next in philosophy. So much is being dismantled that the landscape can seem to be a desert. Bringing the nonsense in philosophy to an end is one thing. But bringing philosophy to an end is something else. Whatever motivates philosophy has certainly not gone away.

One reflection on re-visiting this text after so long. I see it differently. What Austin does in dismantling Ayer's argument is just a careful, thorough, detailed analysis of the argument. It's classic. The core of the business is not the messing about with dictionaries, but the careful critical reading of the text. Completely conventional, completely orthodox. Or so it seems to me now.

Ayer wants us to take "something looks bent" and conclude that, therefore, something is bent; it's only by our being duped in this way that we will again be convinced of the existence of sense data. — Banno

Yes, it's an example of what I think of as the tyranny of the noun.

Having gotten through Lecture IV: this is an example of where Austin takes a deep-dive into the differences between ordinary "uses" of words that philosophy takes as terms for a special purpose, but I think Austin somethings buries the point of all this. — Antony Nickles

I also found Lecture IV less than exciting, because his target wasn't obvious and it wasn't easy to see how his exploration could be applied. Your summary was helpful, in particular

the way things look is, in general, just as much a fact about the world, just as open to public confirmation or challenge, as the way things are. p 43 — Antony Nickles

However, I came out thinking, not that his approach was wrong, but that a slightly different approach would have been more illuminating. He says that he offers his examples so that we can get the feel of it, but I'm afraid I didn't. I was much more comfortable with Lecture V, because the idea that "real" is grammatically comparable to "good" gave me something to hold on to.

After scratching my head for a while, I came to the conclusion that, in spite of his saying that it is the differences are important, it is the similarities - overlaps - that are most prominent. Hence my confusion. Here are some examples of what I would have found more helpful. But I'm not sure the application to his targets is as clear as it is in what he wrote.

1) He doesn't mention that "appearance" (which is not best thought of as a noun, but as a verb) has one important use that is quite distinct from either "looks" or "seems", as in "When we reached the crest of the hill, the sea appeared, twinkling in the sunshine", or "the train appeared down the track" or "the magician appeared on the stage". There are no peculiar objects involved in these events.

2) "looks" have their home, not as peculiar properties of objects, but as something that I do. I look at things. "looks" in the senses explored in Austin's discussion, are, so to speak what I see when I look at things. As Austin points out, "looks" is part of a family of verbs, each of which is specific to one sense; there are nouns that go with each verb, as in "sounds" and "smells", etc.

3) "Seems" doesn't seem to have a noun attached - as he points out, there are no such things as "seemings". It is also the only one of the three that, to put it this way, has deception or at least the idea that what seems to be so is not the whole, or proper, story, built in to it.

It's not that Austin doesn't make the point he needs and I'm not sure that I'm not being presumptuous or just changing the subject in saying all this.

Thanks for the quotation from Austin. It does help.

Here we must consider first that it is not so much neither internal nor external but both that we are stuck with. — javi2541997

Austin's point is that we are not stuck with them. He doesn't analyse this particular duo, but if he did, he would seek to clarify exactly what they mean, and, IMO, conclude that they don't mean anything coherent.

all perceptions are somehow indirect from the minimal perspective that for any human  perception, — Corvus

Austin's point here is that "direct" and "indirect" are a pair, linked by their opposition. Each derives it's meaning from the other, like "north" and "south", "up" and "down", "hot" and "cold". If you say that all perceptions are indirect, and imply that no perception is, or could be, direct, you deprive "direct" of any "meaning" and hence render "indirect" meaningless as well.

I don't accept that my eye is an intermediary, getting in the way of my perception. It would be simplistic to say that indirect perception is perception aided by something that is not (part of) me, but it is a start, and at least rules out the idea that my eye, which enables me to perceive at all, is somehow an intermediary in a process which could not happen without it.

I am still trying to understand the direct realist's account on perception.  In what aspect perception is to be understood as direct and real? — Corvus

I am also trying to understand that, because unless I do understand that, I don't understand what "indirect" means.

Linguistic Idealism — RussellA

This is a new concept to me. As far as I know, neither Austin nor Wittgenstein recognize this classsification. Since they are both what one might call no-theory theorists, I'm inclined to think that this is a pigeon-hole attributed to them so that they can be more easily refuted. I haven't run across Anscombe's article before, so I need to look at that before forming an opinion.

however people will rebut that it is the whole body and not just the brain so it’s direct in that this is how the human brain body processes the world, — schopenhauer1

I think that this is right, at least in the sense that I perceive things, not my eyes nor my brain. I'm dubious whether it really makes sense to say that my body perceives things either, since most physical objects are not sentient. But insofar as I am embodied, it may be helpful.

Linguistic Idealism may be described as the position that puts the mind at the centre of reality and language at the centre of the mind, and language does not represent the physical world as is often claimed but is the world itself. — RussellA

Those metaphors "at the centre" are presumably shorthand for something and need a bit of explaining. It seems plainly absurd, however, to claim that language is the world, if you mean that cats and dogs are linguistic objects of some kind. (But I agree that language does not represent the world, though it certainly can be used to describe it.)

like an entire lecture on the word “real”. — NOS4A2

You miss the point. If you are going to assert that the objects of perception are unreal or that tables and chairs are real, it is a good idea to know what the word means, including what it means to other people. Unless you offer your own definition of real, other people will assume that you mean by it what it means in ordinary language. But in ordinary language, the assertion that tables and chairs are real is extraordinarily pointless, and the assertion that rainbows and sunsets are unreal is completely puzzling.

But we are not asking who or what is responsible for perception, but how perception works. — Corvus

It is true that Austin does not ask this question. But then neither does Ayer. You are right to put the question that asks in that way.

But if you ask how a rainbow is made, the rainbow will not be part of the explanation. The sunlight, and the raindrops involved are not the rainbow, but the rainbow is not an entity distinct from them either. This should not be surprising. If the analysandum is part of the analysis, you have a circularity. So looking to find a process or event that is the perception inside one's head is a mistake.

How the human brain/body works is a good question but a question for physiology and psychology, from their different points of view. The only contribution that philosophy seems to make is to define the problem in such a way that it is insoluble and call it the "hard problem", which seems less than helpful. Perhaps they should tell philosophy to butt out and leave them to it. But then, traditional comfortable dualism would be threatened. From my point of view, that's not a problem.

For my part my intent is to continue in the way I have been, reading a lecture or two ahead and then going back to re-read in more detail to make notes mostly for myself. Lecture IV will probably be very brief, then a bit more detail, or less, as we move into the later lectures, if I loose interest. If you want to move at a faster pace, go ahead, but I've found in the past that this leads to folk getting lost and needing to go over arguments again. — Banno

Thanks very much for this. I don't want to move at a faster pace (except that I have skimmed through the book because I find it helpful to have something of an overview. But it'll be a lot easier to follow and contribute if I know where the focus is in the discussion. By now, I guess you'll be reading Lecture IV - and by the time I'm actually posting this, you have read it. I found Lecture IV quite difficult and am not confident that I've understood it.

Austin is specifically tearing down philosophy's framing of the issue as both direct or indirect. — Antony Nickles

Yes. I should have explained that I was asking the question because I didn't and don't think that "direct" perception makes any sense, except in the context of Austin's account of indirect perception. But various comments have clarified sense-data are (very like) qualia, and I'm content believe that I'm right to be puzzled.

I agree that these entities are developed in pursuit of

the unabstracted perception, the unconceptualized sensation specific to one setting and one time. — J

. The idea that we can, so to speak "peel off" the layers of interpretation to arrive at a purified, simple sensation seems to me a wild goose chase. That peeling off process is itself a process and the result will be another concept of the sensation which will be, paradoxically, itself a concept. There is no "before". (I wish I could construct the Austinian argument for this.)

It’s just a question of what it is we are perceiving. — NOS4A2

Yes - in the context of our mistakes. The argument from illusion, rightly seen, is not as persuasive as the more difficult cases. The more difficult problem is that, for example, Macbeth is behaving as if he sees a dagger, and not acting (pretending), so he believes that he sees a dagger. There's no (philosophical) problem until we remember that perceiving is always perceiving something. So we invent something to plug the apparent logical gap and create something that gives us philosophical certainty, and a morass of problems to go with it. That's my diagnosis of the conjuring trick, anyway.

If the law of identity holds, I cannot consider “the final place where the perceptual judgement took place” as perceived, because the brain is a component of the perceiver. Does X perceive Y, or does X perceive X? At any rate, neither precludes any intermediary. — NOS4A2

I think perspective - subject and object - is based on two main categories: — javi2541997

I don't really understand either of these models, but it is striking that Austin (so far, at least) doesn't directly consider them. I'm very suspicious of them. For a start, they are dominated by the sense of sight. But do they apply to all the senses? Perhaps to hearing, and even to smell, but touch and taste are different, and proprioception and balance different again. It's not obvious to me how helpful they are in those contexts.

We do not have to buy in to the argument that the tree falling in the forest when there is no-one to hear it does not make a sound. It depends what you choose to call a sound.

what we imagine direct perception would be the perfect case of. So if we set aside the problem of direct or indirect, — Antony Nickles

My problem is that I can't imagine what direct perception would be. Isn't this part of what we need to recognize here? If nothing could count as direct perception, then the idea that perception is actually indirect doesn't make sense. The problem is the move from "some perception is indirect" to "all perception is indirect".

But I agree that setting this issue aside enables us to understand what is going on here better, even though I'm not entirely sure that the last word has been said here. (I have in mind Cavell's idea that the idea of a last word on scepticism is a mistake.)

The danger here is the presumption that what we perceive is all of one sort, in such a way that we can apply the label "sense data" in all cases. Austin is showing that this is not a good idea. — Banno

I certainly agree with that. If there is anything more to be said about or with sense-data, it would be off-topic here, so I shall leave it alone.

Instead it starts pretty well where we are, here and now. And it proceeds by looking with great care at the philosopher's main tools, their words. — Banno

I agree with this, whole-heartedly. But you referred earlier to some of the "critiques" of ordinary language philosophy here

Some mirth has been found in Austin's use of "the ordinary man" - as if such as he would have any idea.. — Banno

and there's a mention of Gellner's book here:-

Ernest Gellner. In his book, Word and Things, — Richard B

So I'm tempted to articulate more of a defence. But, again, that would perhaps be more appropriate elsewhere.

I'm afraid I'm a bit confused about whether we are working through the sections systematically or just reading the book at our own pace?

I only discovered this thread to-day. Best thing that's happened to me in a long time. But I have read everything from the beginning. I lost my copy of Sense and Sensibilia in the distant past, but I've downloaded the pdf.

First, a general question. Everybody seems to be confident that they understand direct vs. indirect perception. I can sort of understand what is meant by indirect perception and why it is thought to be the appropriate way of looking at perception, as here:-

In perception, there is far more going on than just identifying an object as an object i.e. reasoning, intuition, judgement and intentionality can get all involved, and for that they have to be sense data, — Corvus

It would be reasonable to introduce a term like sense-data as a place-holder for whatever it is we decide we perceive directly. It's when you try to identify what the sense-data are that the trouble begins, for me, at least. The obvious candidates are either the signals sent to our brain by our nervous system or the events that trigger our nervous system to send a signal (light waves, sound waves, etc.) But those are nothing like what Russell or Ayer had in mind.

But my biggest puzzle is what would count as direct perception. Austin seems to me to begin to give an answer to that question by explaining what we mean by indirect perception. My only doubt about his argument is that perhaps it is unhelpful when we come to experimental psychology or neurology.

Kripke allows that mathematicians can adequately specify the rules of addition. That's not being called into question. — frank

If you mean the mathematical justifications of the rule, that's true - within the rules (practices, language games) of mathematics. But what justifies those? "This is how we do it. You need to learn that. Then we can discuss justification." It's not quite foundationalism and not quite some form of coherentism. As usual, he manages to not quite fit in.

The rule is in effect, and in some sense then it produces facts — Moliere

There are rules for which the process that brings them into effect is quite clear. They are what we call laws, but there are other varieties. They are imperatives, not really different from the order given by the general. Other rules, like mathematical rules about how to calculate are different. There are proofs of such rules. What makes them effective? Which is to say, what justifies them? That's where the sceptical pressure (which W also applied) and his appeal to practices comes in. But that involves saying that the rule doesn't really of itself produce facts; human beings have to carry out the calculations (or psersuad machines to do it for them. Those results are facts, i.e. have the authority of facts? Only the calculation, which can't produce a wrong result. That means that if a result does not fit in to our wider lives in the way it is expected to, we look for the fault in the calculation and the calculator, not the rule.

At the bottom of this is the fact that "+1" can be applied to infinity. How can we know that? Certainly not by applying the rule to infinity. By definition, we can never exhaustively check that the infinite application of the rule will work out.

The skeptic has to be pointing out that we're inclined to believe there's a fact where there is none in order for the skeptic to have a point at all. — Moliere

If you mean a fact that justifies the rule and/or justifies how the rule is applied. I sometimes think that the quickest way to state the problem is to point out that the rule cannot be a fact, because the rule has imperative force and no fact can do that - a version of the fact/value distinction. For the same reason, no fact can, of itself, justify the rule.

logical nihilism or pluralism. — Apustimelogist

I prefer pluralism coupled with pragmatism. Horses for courses. Logical analysis can give a kind of clarity.

The side effect of neat clean concepts is they lose all the fuzzy non-linearity which makes them exceptionally good at being used in real life. — Apustimelogist

Yes, that's true. I'm a bit inclined to say the W sees that "fuzzy non-linearity" as inherent in all concepts. So what do we say about logic? What makes it special? (I'm not asking because I know, or think I know, the answer.)

because here we have truths that we arrive at because of the conditions of assertability — Moliere

Maybe we should distinguish between what brings the rule into effect (I chose that word carefully because after it becomes effective it is correct to say that there is a rule that ...) Can we see conditions of assertability as comparable to the licence conditions for someone to perform a wedding? If so, laying down a rule is or at least is comparable to, a speech act. We then have to explain that in some cases, the rule is not formally laid down, but informally put into effect (as when language changes, and "wicked" comes to mean the opposite of what it meant before). Once the rule is in effect, there is a fact of the matter, as when your king is in check or 68+57=125.

neurons that are physical enslaved — Apustimelogist

impelling the perceptions forced upon us — Apustimelogist

I hope so. It's the only way that we get reliable information - and, in great part, we do.

making it look like we are acting in these kinds of mysterious ways that seem somewhat messy and underdetermined by our concepts and so can only be described as "games, practises, forms of life". — Apustimelogist

I'm sure there's a lot of quick and dirty solutions and heuristic dodges involved. Anything remotely like formal logic would be too slow to be useful.

I dunno; I think looking at this way, as I seem to understand what you have said, plays down everything else that Wittgenstein seems to be getting at in philosophical investigations. — Apustimelogist

I was only talking about relying on a memorized table, instead of doing the basic calculations. It's an example of a quick and dirty solution.

One result is that I now know how to defuse Goodman's "grue". — Ludwig V

This "paradox" is structurally the same as Kripke's. Here's the link to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction, which mentions, but does not discuss, Kripke and his solution. I think that Wittgenstein's discussion of rule-following applies to both of these puzzles. Does that help? To take it much further would probably require another thread, don't you think?

Another is that it seems that Kripke has made the private language argument superfluous. I need to think about that. — Ludwig V

This point is made elsewhere. The complication is that the private language argument does rely on some of the things he says about rule-following, particularly the importance of understanding what does and does not conform to the rules about ostensive definition. But numbers are not sensations, so the cases are not exactly the same.

A third - minimal - result is that Kripke has added to the stock of examples that pose Wittgenstein's problem. — Ludwig V

W likes lots of examples. In one way, Kripke's case is just another one, although W does mention the point at PI 201 "This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule. The answer was: if every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule, then it can also be brought into conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here." I had forgotten this quotation. In time, I could no doubt find what he was referring back to. It gives a short answer to both Goodman and Kripke.

The fourth is that I notice that we have all appealed to the wider context, both of mathematics and of practical life to resolve it. Kripke's case is effective only if we adopt his very narrow view, — Ludwig V

Isn't that an accurate reflection of what we've been saying about practices?

I hope that's helpful.

This is all what I meant when I said that meanings and definitions are so impoverished that language should not be usable, yet it is. — Apustimelogist

Yes. There isn't a way of resolving that without going beyond that way of thinking. W's does that. His appeal to games, practices, forms of life etc. is an attempt to explain it. As a general thesis, it is quite unsatisfactory, (cf. God of the gaps), but as a tactic applied in specific situations, it works well (as in this case). There's an obvious catch that it may be misapplied. But that doesn't necessarily mean it is never appropriate.

therefore it seems weird to me to focus so, on whether some particular rule was used in some specific case. — wonderer1

I think the intention is to distinguish between a heuristic which may be useful in some circumstances, but not in all, and how we would settle the question whether the output of the heuristic is correct or not. The intriguing bit is why we accept one way of calculating as definitive (conclusive). Kripke's problem muddles up the two different ways of getting an answer.

we impose labels on the world at out own discretion and there are no fixed set of boundaries for those concepts or force us to impose concepts in a particular way. — Apustimelogist

That works in some ways. But the picture of the world out there, waiting to be "carved at the joints", is partial. The world reaches in and prods us, tickles us, attracts us and repels us. We do not start out as passive observers but as engaged actors in the world - which does not always behave in the way that we expect.

Can you elaborate? — Apustimelogist

H'm. My posts are quite long as it is. I'm concerned I might outstay my welcome or run up against the TL:DR syndrome. Some focus would help.

I think it'd depend upon how we're trying to judge if someone knows something or not. — Moliere

I get that distinction. Indeed, arguably an assessment whether the knower is in a position, or has the capacity, to know p is appropriate in assessing any claim to knowledge. And I can see that final truth will often be distinct from any such assessment. (The jury has a perfect right to find the prisoner guilty or not. Yet miscarriages of justice do happen - and proving that is different from proving whether the prisoner is guilty or not. (A miscarriage might have reached the right result.)) But I still feel that the distinction is quite complicated. After all, the truth would be the best assertability condition of all, wouldn't it? And the assertability conditions would themselves be facts, wouldn't they? Of course, they need not be the same facts as the truth conditions.

For example, having worked with digital logic a fair bit, I have all the powers of 2 up to 2^13 memorized and if I see 2048 + 2048 I simply recognize that the sum is 4096 without following any step by step decimal addition rules. — wonderer1

I admire your memory! But isn't it exactly the same as we all (?) do when we memorize the standard multiplication tables and recall what 12x11 is. (It's just a convention that we stop at 12. The table for 13 is no different in principle from the table for 12.) Multiplication reduces to addition, but adding 12 11's by that procedure is long and boring. By memorizing the standard multiplication tables, we have a quicker way of dealing with some questions and of calculating bigger numbers. (Incidentally, how do you deal with 2 to the power of 35?)

rules and explicit definitions are more like signposts than prescriptions on how to behave. — Apustimelogist

I agree with that. Though Wittgenstein would ask what makes the sign-post point? Again, there's a practice of reading sign-posts, which we all somehow pick up/learn. Perhaps by recognizing a similarity between a pointing finger and the sign-post.

I don't think this problem has anything to do with practical problems. The quus issue has no bearing on someones ability to perform math. — Apustimelogist

I agree with that. It's a pointless difficulty. Like most sceptical arguments. I like Hume's response - essentially that it is not possible to refute the argument but it has no power to persuade me to believe the conclusion. But that's not how the philosophical game is played - for better or worse.

Buy "you are following x rule" is factual. — Apustimelogist

There's a nest of complications buried in that. In one way, you are just raising the original question again. However, there is a fact of the matter involved - that I gave 125 as the answer to the question. Whether I was following the rule "+1" is another question. In one way, it depends on whether I had that rule in mind when I gave the answer. In another way, it depends on whether we agree with the answer - and that may depends on the wider context (consistency and practical outcomes).

It's true because that's the answer we should obtain according to the conditions of assertability, but there are no truth-conditions that make it true. — Moliere

Forgive me, I don't really understand what "conditions of assertability" are as opposed to "truth-conditions". Are they facts? In which case, we may be no further forward.

What do you think is the interesting result of this story then? — Apustimelogist

That's an interesting question. In one way, the desired result is to defuse the question so that I don't get bothered by it - that is, don't need to take it seriously. Whether that's interesting or not depends on whether you are philosophically inclined or not.

But I am learning from this. One result is that I now know how to defuse Goodman's "grue". Another is that it seems that Kripke has made the private language argument superfluous. I need to think about that. A third - minimal - result is that Kripke has added to the stock of examples that pose Wittgenstein's problem. The fourth is that I notice that we have all appealed to the wider context, both of mathematics and of practical life to resolve it. Kripke's case is effective only if we adopt his very narrow view, The wider context makes nonsense of it. (I'm not saying that a narrow focus is always a bad thing, only that it sometimes gets us into unnecessary trouble.)

Wittgenstein says somewhere that he has got himself into trouble because he is thinking about the pure world, but what we need to do is return to the rough ground.

It (sc. Philosophical Investigationscan be really difficult to read to be fair. Its one of those books where possibly what the book says has not been as influential as what othwrs have said about the book. — Apustimelogist

I agree with that. One of the difficulties is that the text is not difficult to understand (contrast Hegel or Derrida). The difficulty is to understand what the point is. That's where the commentators can help - and sometimes hinder, so don't read them uncritically.

This book is not written, as most philosophy books are, in the belief that laying out the arguments clearly ("clearly" is complicated, of course) is the most effective way of changing someone's mind. No doubt it is, sometimes. But W thought that philosophical problems were not really susceptible to that treatment. So he provide hints and leaves you to work out what he's getting at. Some of his followers do the same thing.

That's where the commentators can help - and sometimes hinder, so don't read them uncritically. You'll need a general introduction to start with. Sadly, I'm so out of date that I don't know which are the best ones. But there'll be reviews that will help you choose and you could a lot worse that read an encyclopedia entry, which would be shorter.

And as for people claiming they are following "other rules", there might be some plausibility to that if the other rules yielded the same results. — Janus

Judging from the ordinary understanding of basic arithmetic and logic I would say their results are self-evident to anyone who cares to think about it. — Janus

It's worth remembering that in geometry, it turned out that rules other than Euclid's (with all their intuitive plausbility) turned out to yield consistent systems, which, in the end, turned out to have "practical" applications.

indeed, it seems that Kripkes proof shows rules are not objectively true. — Banno

I don't think that's a particularly interesting result. Rules are instructions, so they aren't either true or false. That is, the rules of chess are not true or false; but they do yield statements that are true or false, such as "Your king is in check".

Well, neither is quite right. It's a question about meaning. What do we claim when we say "Jenny can add"? And more generally, what do we claim when we say that someone follows a rule? — Banno

Well, I would suggest that what is at stake is the refutation of a certain conception of what rules are - the idea that logic/mathematics is some kind of structure that determines the results of all possible applications in advance. Nothing can reach out to infinity. What we have is ways of dealing with situations as they come up which do not appear to have any limitations to their applicability. (That phrase could be misinterpreted. I mean just that "+1" can be recursively applied indefinitely. What we can't do is apply it indefinitely.)

Again, the point is underdetermination so its not about whether one rule is workable or not, any time you use addition it has an underdetermined characterization, and your ability to use it and practise it has little to do with that. — Apustimelogist

Yes, but that doesn't mean that we cannot have ways of responding to, and dealing with, problems as they come up - if necessary, we can invent them - as we do when we discover irrational numbers, etc. or find reasons to change the status of 0 or 1. In the case of 0, we have to modify the rules of arithmetical calculation.

I have a distinct sense that some level of consensus is developing. :smile:

And I'm glad I did some of the homework. — Moliere

And I'm sorry I didn't. He seems to come out so close to W that there doesn't seem much mileage in asking whether his view is W's or not. I didn't know that.

So we still don't have any basis for determining that S followed a particular rule. We just treat certain circumstances as if she did. — frank

I'm not sure that we don't have to re-think what "S followed a particular rule" means. Even if S's application of a rule agrees with ours, it is always possible that the next application may differ. We even find this happening empirically, when some circumstance reveals that a friend has a very different understanding of a rule we both thought we agreed on.

An afterthought.

Kriipke's sceptic does not escape from all this. Posing the problem takes for granted that we can recognize ("get") the difference between addition and quaddition. So posing the problem is based on, and does not bring into question, the agreement..

Could there be an arch-sceptic who cannot see the difference? Perhaps. But such a person could not join in our debate.

Imagine there is a wedding, and there are 68 guests from one side of the family and 57 from the other side. — Janus

Of course, applications of "+1" include practical applications. The point is that the rule must be applied to each case; it does not reach out to the future and the possible and apply itself in advance.

There is a forward problem of mapping rules — Apustimelogist

Yes, that's part of W's point. We can apply the rule to imaginary or possible cases, but we have to formulate them first. We cannot apply a rule to infinity. Hence mathematical induction.

It is natural simply because we can intuitively get the logic — Janus

.
There's truth in this. In some ways, "getting" a logical point is like "getting" a joke, If someone doesn't "get" modus ponens or a joke, we don't formulate more arguments. We try to help them "see" the connections.

But the fact that we mostly agree is not inevitable, not guaranteed. It is a "brute fact", which is the foundation of logic (and other rules). Bedrock is reached.

Or, to put it another way, if these agreements fail, we become bewildered and attribute the problem, not to the rule, but to the person who cannot follow it.

It is therefore possible to use alternative concepts without any difference in behaviour. — Apustimelogist

If they don't make any difference, how are they alternative?

On the other hand, it is perfectly possible for two or more of us to get along quite well for a long time with different interpretations of the same concept or rule. The differences will not show themselves until a differentiating case turns up. This could happen with quaddition or any other of the many possibilities. Then we have to argue it out. The law, of course, is the arena where this most often becomes an actual problem.

There would only be a logic to countermand if there was a sensible definition of these things in the first place which specified the correct behavior without requiring prior understanding — Apustimelogist

I don't think you can give me a satisfying definition of counting or quantity, — Apustimelogist

What is fundamental to understanding concepts is not their definition, but knowing how to apply the definition. That is a practice, which is taught. Learning to count and measure defines number and quantity.

the natural logic of counting and addition; — Janus

There is a natural logic of these things. But we had to learn how to do it. It seems natural because it is a) useful and b) ingrained. "Second nature".

Here there's a few bases from which we could confuse one another: arithmetic as a practice, arithmetic as a part of our rational intuition, arithmetic as rule-following, arithmetic as it was in its genesis, and arithmetic as it is. — Moliere

There's certainly a difference between arithmetic in its genesis and arithmetic as it is. For the ancients, arithmetic was developed for severely practical reasons. The first texts on the subject are clearly meant to enable administrators to provision and organize the work force or the army (Ancient Egypt). The Greeks did not count (!) either 0 or 1 as numbers - it was the Arabs who included them. Arithmetic as it is includes all sorts of crazy numbers - irrational, complex, etc. Yet it is always the use of the numbers in calculations that drives the changes.

However, the idea of arithmetic as rule-following and the idea of arithmetic as a practice are closely related. If you ask me to justify my claim that 68+57 =125, I can do so. But if you ask me to justify my application of the rule "+1", I can only start to teach you to count. Counting is a practice, which is either done correctly or not, where correctly means what we agree on (bearing in mind that pragmatic outcomes provide a semi-independent check on purely subjective mutual agreement).

This is what Wittgenstein means by saying "justification comes to an end" or "This is what I do".

Counting makes sense as a genesis of arithmetic. But is doesn't escape from the sceptical question. There is no fact of the matter that determines whether I have counted correctly - except the fact that others will agree with me. This reinforces me in my practice of counting, as my agreement with others about their counts reinforces their practice of counting.

But counting is just applying the rule "+1", so it doesn't escape Kripke's question.

But Kripke's question is a mistake. A rule doesn't state a fact; it gives an instruction. So the question here is what counts as following the instruction. The facts can't possibly determine that on their own. It requires acceptance of my response to the instruction. But my acceptance of my response is empty. Acceptance of a response must, in the end, come from other people.

There are other ways to prove the error, sure; I just gave the one I knew about — Mww

Well, there seems to be a variety ways to prove the error. Something for everyone. Consensus!

This makes it clear that the question is whether action is known only non-mediately, and that would seem to be false, which makes the argument as reformulated valid, but unsound. — Janus

Yes, I see that Janus is chasing the same point about action, and has reformulated the first premiss to avoid the ambiguity of "it".

I didn't understand that this was a Kantian discussion. I don't know enough about those texts to contribute.

Thank you for clarifying.

Perhaps I should stay away from this. Perhaps other people have recognized what seems to me to be obviously wrong, but I haven't picked it up. So -

If anything is an appearance it is known mediately,
The individual knows that he (or she) acts non-mediately
Thus, action cannot be an appearance. — KantDane21

Surely, "If anything is an appearance it is known mediately," is ambiguous, because "it" might refer a) to the appearance, or b) the object of the appearance (i.e. what the appearance is an appearance of. The appearance is what is introspectively perceived, that is, however the object appears to me is its appearance. I perceive appearance directly (non-mediately) and the object of the appearance indirectly (through the appearance and so mediately). If the statement means a), it is false. If it means b) it is true.

"The individual knows that he (or she) acts non-mediately". This is ambiguous, depending on the description under which the action is identified. a) I know introspectively that I am trying to turn on the light when I press the switch. b) Whether I succeed in pressing the switch or turning on the light, I only know from perceiving the consequences of my attempt. If the statement means a), I know non-mediately. If the statement means b), I know mediately.

So, without clarification of those ambiguities, nothing can be said as to whether the argument is valid or sound.

"Thus, action cannot be an appearance." Every appearance is an appearance of something. The object of an appearance is distinct from its appearance. In that sense, this is analytically true and trivial. However, in a different sense, an action can appear to be something it is not, as when I pretend to do something or mimic someone doing it or when I misunderstand what someone is doing. ("Not waving but drowning").

So, depending on how it is interpreted, the conclusion is trivially true, independently of the premisses, or false.

Those things seem to be observer dependent. As with all other properties. — schopenhauer1

Yes, this problem seems to me a special case of the general problem about whether there is a reality that exists independently of observers.

This seems to me embedded in our language and thought, except possibly in sub-atomic physics, and that's a special case because the act of observation directly affects what happens next.

But the idea of an unobservable reality seems absurd or pointless.

Either way, what does this particular problem reveal that other objects don't? — schopenhauer1

But although the indiscernibility of identicals seems trivially true, the identity of indiscernibles seems very problematic.

So this topic gets to me from every direction.

Sure. But we've already stayed the hand holding the razor to allow unobservable noumena to exist. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I was going to ask about that. But then it had struck me that the companion formula (contrapositive( of the identity of indiscernibles -- (∀x)(∀y)(x=y) → (Fx ↔ Fy) -- does not seem to me to imply or require an observer. Doesn't it follow that ∀F(Fx ↔ Fy) → x=y doesn't imply an observer either?

Clearly, in a universe with an observer, two things identical in every way can be distinguished by the boundaries of the two things and their positions in space and time. — schopenhauer1

Even if there is no observer and space and time are infinite? (If you want an observer, we could stipulate that both objects are observers.)

Moreover, if you do consider it, what stops us from considering an infinite number of such in principle forever unobservable entities? — Count Timothy von Icarus

For example, suppose we posit a new fundamental particle, the nullon, that interacts with nothing, nada, no way to see it through any interactions, by definition. This would be an example that by definition cannot be observed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Wouldn't Occam's razor deal with both of those? Come to think of it, wouldn't it deal with any unobservable noumenon? After all, ex hypothesi, there would be no reason to suppose that such things exist.

I'm contemplating a thread about Davidson's project. It would be a long one. — Banno

I'm wondering whether the second sentence is a threat or a promise.

It would stretch my boundaries, but if one can't take risks here, where can one?

The article is interesting, but hard going.

For the thread, I would need to read slowly, so not too many pages at one go, please.

I won't feel obligated to respond here. It would be off-topic.

I don't see this approach as being of help here. It's a quagmire. — Banno

I must say, I do find the last few posts very difficult to follow. That's probably my fault. But to comment would likely be unhelpful.

Thanks very much for the pdf. I shall be busy for a while. I'm hoping that I shall at least understand referential opacity better.

The idea is something like that we sometimes both use and mention; SO "Galileo said that the Earth moves" might be analysed as a conjunct of "The Earth moves" and "Galileo said that", where the demonstrative "that" points to "The Earth moves", or even to Galileo's utterance of "The Earth moves". — Banno

The article doesn't seem to be readily available to me, though a number of criticisms of it are.

Sticking to the topic, then. This has to do with referential opacity or transparency. Correct? So do I take you to be saying that p in "Davidson said that p" may sometimes be used and sometimes be mentioned? I wouldn't resist that conclusion. I'm not sure that the same applies to belief.

In the case of belief, I think that substitutions are sometimes appropriate, even required, depending on the context of a) the believer's beliefs and b) my audience's beliefs. Specifically if the believer refers to an object in one way and the audience refers to the same object in a different way, substitution is needed to communicate accurately what the believer believes. (Roughly).

Yep.

But nup. Davidson's analysis. — Banno

That's extremely interesting. But I don't understand it. Could you give me a reference for Davidson's analysis?

the object of a belief is not a proposition qua proposition, just as when I look through a mirror to see a reflected object my act of sight does not terminate in the mirror itself. — Leontiskos

Another metaphor, but still, it works for me.

the subjective act of belief prescinds from notions of propositionality or representation. — Leontiskos

I think this is OK. Where do we go from here?

It is curious, though, that 'belief' insofar as it is distinguished from knowledge really is propositional in the way that Searle is talking about. If I say, "I believe X but I do not know X," then apparently there is an intentional propositionality, and one which is much more common than Searle's example of Bernoulli's principle. — Leontiskos

We are saying roughly that believing uses a proposition rather than mentioning it. But we are also saying that it is possible to believe something of a proposition - second order belief, presumably based on a proposition about a proposition.

"I believe X but I do not know X" seems to take back or modify in the second half ("..but I do not know X") something that is asserted in the first half ("I believe X"). But it isn't a flat contradiction. So I think you are saying that "I believe X but I do not know X" expresses a view about the certainty of, or evidence for, X - that certainty is less than complete, or that evidence is less than conclusive.

Is that something like what you meant?

Beliefs are stated as an association between an agent and a proposition. This superficial structure serves to show that a belief is always both about a proposition and about some agent. It might be misleading as the proposition is not the object of the belief but constitutes the belief. — Banno

The last sentence, in particular, nicely reconciles the issue about the object of the belief. There might be more to be said, but it is a good starting-point.

This association is such that if the agent acts in some way then there is a belief and a desire that together are sufficient to explain the agent's action. Banno wants water; he believes he can pour a glass from the tap; so he goes to the tap to pour a glass of water. — Banno

Quite so. "Association" is vague enough to enable it to stand up even when he cannot pour a glass from the tap (because the water has been turned off).

Some folk hereabouts think something like that there are beliefs which are not propositional. It remains unclear to me how that could work. It's supposed that there are hinge beliefs that are in some way not propositional, but that is quite problematic, since hinge beliefs are also supposed to ground other beliefs by implication, and implication relies on propositions. — Banno

That's at least partly about different uses of propositional forms. If I point to something red and announce "That's red.", I may be making an empirical observation, or teaching someone what "red" means, which case the object is a sample and to be used in a different way. That's only an example. There would be other cases to consider.

Unless your point is that Lois might have inconsistent beliefs? — Banno

Isn't that a problem, though? Any proposition will have a cloud of implications around it. There's no guarantee that I can see that Lois will have drawn all those implication or that she would instantly agree to all of them if they were presented to her, or that she will not draw any false conclusions from what she does believe.

It seems worth making the point that parsing natural languages into formal languages is not a game of finding the one, correct, interpretation. Rather one chooses a formalisation that suits one's purpose. — Banno

Your analysis of Lois' beliefs illustrates how useful formalization can be.

Or is it better thought of as a sensation, a feeling, an impression, an intuition? — Banno

I would rather say that sensations and feelings (when expressed in the grammatical form of a proposition) and impressions (ditto) can give rise to beliefs, rather than being beliefs. Not sure about intuitions. One can intuit that...

If my belief is directed at the world independent of any proposition, then how could I ever be wrong about what I believe? — Leontiskos

The standard way is to post an "intentional object" (in this case a proposition). But then, what's a proposition? The standard "meaning of a sentence" doesn't help much. I believe that Frege thinks it is something like thinking of a state of affairs without affirming or denying it. Are there no other proposals around.

The other way might be to push your metaphor a little harder and say that if a is directed at b, it can still miss.

We are supported in understanding the "use of the word in the wild" by formal analysis. — Banno

Mutual support? Interdependence? But perhaps not on topic here.

actions are related in an explanatory or causal manner. — Leontiskos

Well, if you are happy for me to say that beliefs explain actions, I'm content to do so and to leave the notion of explanation undefined because it is off-topic.

It has had an effect on what I said, so if you count that as an action, I guess you could say it did.
But I think that is a different definition of action than the one I had in mind. — Janus

So long as we agree, I won't quarrel about the words and I won't fuss about saying something to oneself silently or about that multifarious word "think".

The proposition is the content of the belief, not the object of the belief.(Searle). — Sam26

That seems to me to be exactly right. I was never happy with propositional attitudes, though on different grounds.

It is not inconsistent to say that Lois Lane believes Clark Kent wears glasses, a sentence that can be parsed more formally. — Banno

I wouldn't quarrel with the representation B(X,p), if that's what you mean. But I don't see that it helps any. I would suggest that before settling on a formal representation we need a good understanding of the use of the word in the wild.

I think most particularly that we need to better understand why beliefs explain actions even when the belief is false.

I'm saying that if we're to say that Mary has a belief, then for us to know that Mary believes X it must be expressed in some action (linguistic or nonlinguistic). — Sam26

I wouldn't object to saying that a given belief may never be expressed in action, only that it would be if circumstances were right. Though I would look for an episode of acquiring the belief. Just what that might amount to, I'm not sure about.

It is legitimate to describe what belief does as a way of understanding what belief is. — Leontiskos

That's enough for me.

one belief can cause multiple effects, and therefore a belief and its effect are not the same thing (even when it comes to thinking). — Leontiskos

I agree that a cause is distinct from its effect, though how far that's an accurate description of science is another question. Since Hume, we establish a cause/effect relationship by observing correlation and contiguity between them. There is no more than that to it. We cannot observe beliefs independently of their effects, (any more than we can observe electrons and their effects independently - or the wind and its effects), so we cannot establish a cause/effect relationship between a belief and its effects.

Unless you are using "cause" (or possibly "belief") in a way different from the way it is understood in orthodox philosophy.

I'm sorry to be difficult. But the idea that belief causes appropriate actions seems perfectly commonsensical. I wouldn't deny that there must be something right about it. All I'm saying is that on the orthodox philosophical view of causation, it doesn't make sense. Maybe it makes sense in some other way.

the examples of beliefs which do not show themselves in actions seem to be countless. — Janus

That's true. But is it absurd to go counter-factual and say that a belief would show in action (where thinking counts as an action) if appropriate circumstances arise? Or are you saying that there is no necessary relation between belief and action?

Your examples don't include bedrock beliefs, and I'm inclined to think that my belief that I have a hand or two shows every time I pick something up, so they couldn't occur on this list. Is that right?

The examples on your list all seem to be things that I have learnt or at least thought about, at some point. Would that be a necessary condition?

Methinks that the Anglo bias towards empiricism is rearing its head and conflating beliefs themselves with the ways in which we empirically detect beliefs in others, even to the point that a belief is re-defined to be the detection of a belief — Leontiskos

You are, I think, picking up on the lingering traces of logical positivism in that philosophical tradition. But isn't it legitimate to describe what belief does, as a way of describing what belief is? I have in mind the role of belief in our language, which is not reducing it to the question how we know what people believe. Perhaps I'm just fooling myself.