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

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

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

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

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

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

No, I didn't see that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bald king of France drives them crazy. — schopenhauer1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are not fixed logical types of thinking. — Fooloso4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, Kuhn mentions this — Apustimelogist

I think I agree with every word of that paragraph.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neither Ryle nor Wittgenstein are fans of essences.

/\ — Bella fekete

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's all symbolic. — Hanover

What's all symbolic?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Its objectivity is thus a socially constituted ideal. — Joshs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

much use for who and for what? — Janus

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

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

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

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

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

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

those paradigmatic grounds for our beliefs are not themselves beliefs, so at this level the issue is not one of fallibility or error. — Joshs

I accept that the issue is not one of fallibility or error. But if they are beliefs, they involve propositions. So, not ordinary contingent propositions, but propositions of a different kind. Surely?

I was looking for a stronger word than adopt because in some cases we don't choose or adopt them, they may more be like presuppositions for a world we think of as true. — Tom Storm

Yes, one might well want to tease out some details about them. They certainly are not ordinary, true-or-false beliefs. But whether they are beliefs or precognitions, they seem to involve propositions. Quite how to express it is another question. You seem to be verging on Kantian apriori. I'm thinking something more like grammatical or hinge propositions, after Wittgenstein.

the issue is not one of fallibility or error. — Joshs

Yes. The point was not well put. It comes back to the question of paradigm breakdown.

Perhaps Kuhn's concept of an anomaly is useful here, but that presupposes some sort of intrusion from "outside" - "actuality"?. It's important to remember (or point out - what I've read seems mostly to forget this) that paradigms/conceptual schemata are not static constructions but dynamic systems of thinking and practicing. So I don't think that anomalies are necessarily the only form of breakdown. Internal difficulties (contradictions?) seem to me just as plausible.

That's a very helpful analysis. Thanks.

What you describe seems to me to come down to working out ways to get along in the world that we share. (And we must be sharing it because we know that the others radically disagree with us.) It is more demanding that "toleration", because toleration is compatible with non-communication - which will often break down because we must co-exist or fight.

What is the legitimacy of “conceptual schema” in the scientific literature — schopenhauer1

I think it is one way of articulating what is happening when normal ways of conducting arguments break down. That problem is not only found in science.

Well, if you are committed to empiricism, then I would suppose what is closer to "actually the case" is the scientific evidence, not journal articles leading back to neologisms from various early analytic philosophers. — schopenhauer1

I glad you put "actually the case" in scare quotes. It is the crucal question. The great temptation for empiricism is to jump to conclusions. Too much focus on the data is not helpful. Too little is a waste of time.

So my own idea I guess is that philosophers of the empirical bent have to be committed to where the evidence from science takes them, — schopenhauer1

But that's the question. Where does this evidence take us? This question becomes acute when there is evidence pointing in different directions - or interpretations of the available evidence that do not agree on which way it points.

Otherwise, as I stated in an earlier post, science just becomes a noisy room of various disparate findings — schopenhauer1

Well, from the outside, it all too often looks as if that's exactly what it is. Given time (maybe a century or so), the community usually sorts itself out - and then finds something else to disagree about.

If I forge a dollar bill and the king is so impressed he declares it real, then it is real. — Hanover

On the assumption that you have not forged a dollar bill and do not have the abiity to do so, you meant to say "If I were to forge a dollar bill and the USA (I assume this scenario is set in the USA?) has become a monarchy, then it would be real". Maybe. It depends how real dollar bills are defined in the USA. I rather doubt that your scenario is even likely, so I don't feel any need to decide that question.

There's an example in Sense and Sensibilia (pp.65,66) "Suppose that there is a species of fish which looks vividly multi-coloured, slightly glowing perhaps, at a depth of a thousand feet. I ask you what its real colour is. So you catch a specimen and lay it out on deck, making sure the condition of the light is just about normal, and you find that it looks a muddy sort of greyish white. Well, is that its real colour? It's clear enough at any rate that we don't have to say so. In fact, is there any right answer in such a case?"

I conclude that our ordinary understanding of colour will settle what to say about normal variations under various conditions, but doesn't settle what to say about all possible variations under all possible conditions, now matter how remote and fantastic they are.

This distinction collapses, I'd argue, because there's no meaningful difference between the arbitrary changes we impose by photoshopping as there is with regard to the arbitrary changes we might make to the external environment or to our own ability to perceive. — Hanover

Well, I don't see why you say that the difference is not meaningful. The fact that the changes are, in a way, arbitrary is irrelevant.

Perceptions can be manipulated in a number of ways: (1) by manipulating the external environment by changing the lighting, the temperature, the air pollution level, whether it's suspended in air or in a glass of milk, and all sorts of ways; (2) by intentionally changing it by photoshopping it, drawing on it, cutting its leaves, etc; or (3) by changing the perceiver, by altering someone's consciousness, optic nerves, or putting rose colored glasses on the perceiver. — Hanover

You posit a number of different circumstances of different kinds. Why would there be the same answer for all of them? See above.

I find the next paragraphs very confusing, because you shift between talking of the flower and the picture without being clear which you mean, so I'll skip to the chase.

I see whatever I do as an interplay of the object, the environment, and my subjective way of seeing things, which is why Descartes was correct in asking whether his perceptions were reliable measures of reality. — Hanover

I would say the object, the environment and me. However, whatever we say about these cases does not justify asserting that the same difficulties apply to everything we see.

For them it can never be the case that a disconnect exists between what is actual and what we think is actual, a source of fear that illusion and error could cloud our apprehension of what is true. — Joshs

I think I see what you are getting at. I would worry that this way of putting it seems to claim (or could be misinterpreted to claim) that we are infallible or that certain beliefs are infallible. Don't we have to acknowledge that error (I assume that's what "a disconnect between what is actual and what we think is actual" means) is always possible? The point is, we can recognize it and rectify it (in principle).

We inhabit forever preconditions for belief and doubt, but never reality itself. — Tom Storm

That seems unnecessarily pessimistic. We don't inhabit "preconditions for belief and doubt", we adopt them. When and if they fail, we can correct them. I'm not quite sure what inhabiting reality means, but if I understand what you are getting at, I would say we do inhabit reality - and the possibility of error, and the correction of error - is part of that.

I saw what you did there. — Banno

It's an old one, but still a good one. Credit to Ryle.

Once we establish a basis for our skepticism regarding the veracity of our perceptions in one instance (as we just did from your flower example), we'd then logically need to do the same for all perceptions, — Hanover

That doesn't follow. Take the example of forged money (notes or coins). Some money is forged. Some money is genuine. Both those statements must be true, or the distinction between them collapses. So one cannot ask of all notes and coins whether they are all forged. One can ask of each note or coin, whether it is forged. But when it has been established that a given note or coin is genuine, the question is empty.

It was a joke!

More seriously, the question where philosophy ends and science begins is not clear and is contested.

What is clear is that when conceptual clarification is needed, observation, and empirical science generally, is insufficient.

I share your irritation with low-key armchair theories, but am also irritated by over-confident (and over-excited) generalization from scraps of evidence.

What is the legitimacy of “conceptual schema” in the scientific literature — schopenhauer1

I agree that's one of the issues in the background of this thread.

"Is it the 'concept' part or the 'scheme' part of a 'conceptual scheme' that's allegedly incommensurable?" — J

Now, there's a problem.

I have a dim memory that Aristotle characterizes the square root of two as "incommensurable". That would be a different sense again.

Perhaps we need someone to dissect out various uses and various problems.

The article uses Austin's approach, even talking of misfires. — Banno

I have to read this. In context, this use of misfires speaks volumes. Isn't language wonderful?

Anyway, I wanted to thank you both form making this thread far more interesting, informative and certainly longer than I expected. — Banno

It was a surprise to find the thread and a great pleasure to participate, and I'm very grateful to you and . And I learnt some things into the bargain.

For what it is worth, I couldn't agree with you more on the free will debate article you shared: most scientists just assume there's no free will because the world is determined. — Bob Ross

Well, they are free to assume whatever they want, aren't they?

What is important is that the individual's relation with particulars is direct. That the generalizations require intersubjective agreement only reinforces the idea that they are secondary, or posterior to that primary relation (the individuals of the intersubjective relations are themselves particulars). — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, for me, it is a hen-and-egg relationship and I don't see what is important to you, or what you mean by "direct" here. So we'll have to agree to disagree.

The modern conception of Platonism, if intended to represent the philosophy of Plato, is a straw man. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, I'm sure one can find all sorts of things in Plato if one looks hard enough. But it's not something I'm into at the moment. It would help if you specified, when you mention Plato, whether you mean the modern Plato or the ancient one.

Then that black thing would be irrelevant, and you would not even have the example you gave me, because the naming it as a swan was essential to the example. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, the unproblematic black thing is not a problem for the issue at hand. The problematic black thing is the problem, and therefore the relevant case. I didn't go into the intricacies because I thought they were obvious - and indeed it is clear that you understood the situation. So what's the problem?

So until we know what an "interpreter" is, we cannot exclude the chair as a possible interpreter. — Metaphysician Undercover

An interpreter is a person, normally a human being, a person. (I do not rule out the possibility of non-paradigmatic cases). A chair is not a human being, a person, and not even sentient. That's background understanding in normal circumstances. If you want to consider that a chair might be an interpreter, I don't know where to begin. I'm not really interested in a long dissection of the idea of a person vs an insentient object. To make a discussion of this, you need to give me a problem. Simply announcing your question is not enough.

I don't agree reference must be maintained. I think its plausible one could explain the same data with very different constructs. — Apustimelogist

I would say that if both theories are explaining the same data, reference has been maintained. And I never meant to say that all references must be maintained. Just enough to establish that they are both theories of the same things, or at least the same world.

I am not entirely sure it is *essential*. — Apustimelogist

I was trying to be brief, but in this case I was too brief. As I understand it, the point is that Einstein is more accurate that Newton, and the difference between them at "normal" - sub-light - speeds is negligible for many purposes.

Incommensurability is not inherently about some inherent sense of intelligibility or communicability, its about whether the concepts in different theories correspond to each other. — Apustimelogist

"Correspond" is a strong word. I would compare different languages (I'm not saying that "theory" and "language" mean the same thing). We can recognize that two languages are about the same world and even about the same things, so long as some (most?) references correspond; it helps if some (most?) concepts overlap, at least roughly. But we can recognize at the same time that that is not true of all references or all concepts.
It seems to me that incommensurability is really quite vague.

It is a long time since I read Davidson's article and I haven't read Wang's - yet. Putting that right will take a while, but, on the basis that I have dealt with this issue before and read various things, including Kuhn, I hope these interventions are not merely annoying.

While something can be said to be the same, something has changed fundamentally so I don't think it stops incommensurability without coming to the conclusion that SR and NM are identical. — Apustimelogist

Perhaps we should consider the possibility that incommensurability is not as drastic as it seems. There are a number of ways in which we can see a bridge of some kind. First, not only is it possible to for someone not only to learn both Newton and Einstein, but also to use one or the other as appropriate in context. Second, it was essential for the acceptance of Einstein that it explained all the old data (already explained by Newton) as well as the new anomalous data. This suggests that while reference may break down in some areas, it must be maintained in others - at least if the new theory is to compete with the old one. Third, the practices must be recognizable as the same (similar) or different if incommensurability is to be identified at all and when practices are not purely verbal (even if theory-laden), the possibility of sharing references across the divide becomes essential.

I think a strong case can be made for human linguistic ability being evolutionarily adaptive, on the basis that it does provide humans the ability to communicate truths to each other. — wonderer1

Adaptive, yes. But also so much more. Theoretical practices are important, but only to creatures that have values, wants and needs, doubts, questions, mistakes - and these need to be expressed, communicated and even discussed as well.
It is hard to know how to proceed further. The big problem is how far the practice of the relevant science should be taken on board here.

But then I have to admit that there is a solid difference between meaningful disagreement, which does seem to need agreement to at least continue, and silence or absurdity. So Davidson still has a point to me, and I feel, in reading all this, that I'm even more uncertain than when I started in spite of spilling so many words. — Moliere

Yes. The agreements required in order to disagree and, equally important, to reach agreement. seem particularly important to me. But I don't see that necessarily rules out incommensurability that prevents reaching agreement, there must be sufficient commensurability to recognize difference.

Observation, and empirical science generally, is insufficient when conceptual clarification is needed. — Banno

... and if only people would let philosophers get on with what they do best!