Thanks very much for this. Very helpful.

It appears bonobos are capable of sharing our ability to conceive of others as knowledgeable or ignorant of some fact. — wonderer1

The more we look for abilities that both animals and humans have, the more we find.

The thread became entangled in animal intelligence, a garden path, to my eye. — Banno

Yes. There are those who cannot conceive of a non-human animal that truly shares any concepts with human beings and those who are quite sure that all animals in this world share that world, to a greater or lesser extent. Never the twain shall meet. Looks like two incommensurable conceptual schemes to me.

I have questions. I hope someone can enlighten me. (I have read Davidson's article, but it was a while ago...)

Does Davidson think of us as having just one conceptual scheme? Shared by all humanity, past, present and future?

Does Davidson recognize in any way how complex translation can be?

So the Kantian system is really inadequate to account for reality because it doesn't allow that the senses partake of both, the external and the internal. And the Kantian system is caught by the "interaction problem". — Metaphysician Undercover

I can see why that is a problem for the Kantian system. What I don't see is why there is a problem about accepting that, because we have senses, we can interact with our environment in ways that insensate objects cannot; this is one of the markers of being alive. But, of course, in order to establish that one has to persuade people that the phenomena (appearances, ideas, impressions, sense-data) are not a veil between us and our environment, but a window. It's not an easy or straightforward project.

Ahhhh, but they do not; the senses do nothing but forward information in the form of sensation, again, in accordance with respective physiology. — Mww

Well, that's how we think of them, especially when we have little or no idea how they work. But you seem to ignore the familiar point that the transformation of causal input into information requires a good deal of work.

Be advised: you lose absolutely nothing by neglecting noumena entirely when examining human knowledge. The only reason Kant brought it up was to plug a logical hole. — Mww

That's a very interesting take - and very helpful, Now I can see that, just as Berkeley, having acknowledged that there must be a cause of those of our ideas that are not under our control, plugs the gap left by his rejection of matter with God, Kant plugs the same gap with noumena. The fundamental problem arises from the idea that our senses do not put us in touch with reality, but separate us from it. Then generations of philosophers wrestle with a problem that is created from the way that the question is asked.

Philosophers get acclimatized to a very general use of words like "appearance". But not all appearances are the same.

For example, Descartes' point that sometimes our senses deceive us is the ground for the philosophically traditional radical scepticism. Escaping from that trap is one of the basic motifs of modern philosophy.

We know that some appearances are misleading. What follows? Does it follow that all appearances are misleading? No. Does it follow that all appearances might be misleading? No, the fact that we can tell that some experiences are misleading means that we can distinguish appearances that are not misleading from those that are.

So the Kantian system is really inadequate to account for reality because it doesn't allow that the senses partake of both, the external and the internal. And the Kantian system is caught by the "interaction problem". — Metaphysician Undercover

I can see why that is a problem for the Kantian system. What I don't see is why there is a problem about accepting that, because we have senses, we can interact with our environment in ways that insensate objects cannot; this is one of the markers of being alive. But, of course, in order to establish that one has to persuade people that the phenomena (appearances, ideas, impressions, sense-data) are not a veil between us and our environment, but a window. It's not an easy or straightforward project.

Ahhhh, but they do not; the senses do nothing but forward information in the form of sensation, again, in accordance with respective physiology. — Mww

Well, that's how we think of them, especially when we have little or no idea how they work. But you seem to ignore the familiar point that the transformation of causal input into information requires a good deal of work.

Be advised: you lose absolutely nothing by neglecting noumena entirely when examining human knowledge. The only reason Kant brought it up was to plug a logical hole. — Mww

That's a very interesting take - and very helpful, Now I can see that, just as Berkeley, having acknowledged that there must be a cause of those of our ideas that are not under our control, plugs the gap left by his rejection of matter with God, Kant plugs the same gap with noumena. The fundamental problem arises from the idea that our senses do not put us in touch with reality, but separate us from it. Then generations of philosophers wrestle with a problem that is created from the way that the question is asked.

Philosophers get acclimatized to a very general use of words like "appearance". But not all appearances are the same.

For example, Descartes' point that sometimes our senses deceive us is the ground for the philosophically traditional radical scepticism. Escaping from that trap is one of the basic motifs of modern philosophy.

We know that some appearances are misleading. What follows? Does it follow that all appearances are misleading? No. Does it follow that all appearances might be misleading? No, the fact that we can tell that some experiences are misleading means that we can distinguish appearances that are not misleading from those that are.

When Macbeth sees a dagger in front of him, there is no dagger. So we say that there appears (to him) that there is a dagger. Macbeth is deluded. The dagger is a subjective experience - an image, not a reality. When the sun appears over the horizon at dawn, exactly on time as usual, there is no mistake, no delusion. Here, an appearance is perfectly real, perfectly true, perfectly objective. These appearances are revelations, not illusions.

Before Copernicus & co., everyone assumed that it was the sun that was moving and the earth was still. That is a mistake, just like the illusion that one sometimes gets when the train on the next tracks moves in relation to our train. We tend to assume that our train is still because we are still in relation to it and there are no visual clues to tell us otherwise. But this is not a subjective, delusional appearance like Mabeth's dagger. It is just an misinterpretation of the real situation. From a different point of view, the situation would be perfectly clear.

Under certain conditions of sun and rain, rainbows appear. One wants to say that there appears to be a coloured arch floating in the sky. There is no arch. But this is not a delusion like Macbeth's dagger or the relative motion of the trains. It is a perfectly real phenomenon, which is just what it appears to be, except that the physical substrate of the phenomenon is not what we expect; it is millions of rain-drops reflecting the sun's light.

Sweeping up all sensations under one description is misleading and creates unnecessary problems. Look at the details.

I distinctly recall holding the minority view in that thread, as I maintained that the Aristotelian distinction of h.sapiens as 'the rational animal' is a valid ontological distinction. In other words that h.sapiens and canids (etc) are beings of different kinds. I said that the ability to speak, count, create technology, pursue science, and the like, amounts to a difference in kind, not simply one of degree. — Wayfarer

You are right, of course. It's probably not a good idea to re-litigate all that here. Briefly, I don't know what the difference is between an ontological distinction and any other kind, so forgive me if I just talk about a distinction (or difference). It seems to me that there are differences between h. sapiens and other creatures and similarities. A big part of the issue is which of them matter, and that depends on the context. I object to emphasizing the difference and then thinking that animals do not experience pain in much the same way as we do. But it is easy to push the similarities too far and then applying inappropriate moral values to them. It's a question of balance and context and of attention to the details of each case. Dogs are a special case because of the relationships that they have which human, which are not unparalleled but are extreme on the spectrum of human/animal relationships.

On the business about intellect, imagination, and sensation, to treat these as entirely distinct abilities, each functioning in its own box may seem clear, but distorts the complexity of our cognitive capacity and grossly neglects the importance of our not merely existing but acting in the world. This is a very large subject. It would be better, perhaps to take it to another thread.

Kant does not claim that we know things as they are in themselves (noumena), but he does assert that something external structures our experiences. — JuanZu

I can follow the line of thought until this point. But this is where, for me, it falls apart.

What are you guys calling “appearance”? — Mww

I do agree that our discussion is messy. That's partly because the context is a bit messy. From my point of view there is more than one context. There's Berkeley and Schopenhauer, as well as Kant. The immediate spark, for me at least, was the idea that happiness and unhappiness affect how we experience or interpret the world, or the phenomena or appearances. My problem with the Kantian system is simply that the idea of the noumenon. I understand this as meaning a something-or-other that sits "behind" or "beyond" the phenomena" and which cannot be known. I'm not a fan.

Thing is….I’m sure both of you are fully aware mistakes in empirical cognitions inhere in judgement, not in appearances. And mental illness is not the rule, but the exception to it. — Mww

I don't think that we first recognize that something appears to us and we then make judgements about it, or rather, even to recognize that something has appeared is a judgement. Judgement is always included in every perception.
Yes, mental illness is not the norm. There are many different kinds of problem here. The common element is the issue of how one interprets the world and how that process is not an abstract issue of knowledge, but is conditioned by all sorts of other factors.

I'm no scholar of Thomism, but I've got a grasp of the basic outlines of what Edward Feser (who's a good source in these matters) calls 'Aristotelian-Thomist' (A-T) philosophy - Aristotle's matter-form philosophy. — Wayfarer

It seems that we have a similar level of knowledge about those ideas. That helps.

For Empiricism there is no essential difference between the intellect and the senses.

Put it this way. For me, perception requres understanding. Without that, one only has a "raw sensation" which is meaningless.

Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is 'sugar' or what is 'intruder'. — Maritain

This is just behaviourism restricted, for some reason, to animals. But many people were quite happy to explain human beings in that way as well as animals. It is a way of thinking about them, not vulnerable to a simple refutation. (Compare religious belief).
But If "a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder;" how does it not see or smell the sugar or the intruder and know perfectly well what they are - what the appropriate reaction is?. I'm bewildered.

He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows,

If he has not the idea or concept, he does not know the thing. But since he responds appropriately to the thing, he has a concept of it. Not necessarily the same as yours and mine, but similar.

What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning.

A couple of metaphors do not clarify anything.

Introspection is limited, — Manuel

I agree that we know that there are things that we know that are not available to the direct access of introspection. If we know that, we have access to at least one fact about them - that they exist. If we know that we must have indirect acess to them.

It is a mistake in modern philosophy of mind to believe that everything (or almost everything) must be accessible to consciousness. — Manuel

If we knew that there are some things that are not available to consciousness, they must be available to conciousness.

I do believe that we know some fundamental aspects about mental reality in merely having consciousness. — Manuel

How do we distinguish between mental reality and other kinds (such as physical or abstract reality) unless we have access to those other kinds?

Then all ideas, even complex ideas, become like a compilation of sense impressions. This effectively evades the issue of universals. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hume and Berkeley are both nominalists. Nominalism is one solution to the issue of universals. There are others. But I don't see how accepting one solution to the problem is evading it.

Postscript - afterthought

don't we have to conclude that the world is the perception, and the world is within the person, not vise versa? — Metaphysician Undercover

If our world is the totality of our perceptions, given that the perceiver of a perception is not perceived in the perception, perhaps we need to say not the world is within us, but that we are our world. I could live with that.

The issue is where do we position "the world", in this interaction. — Metaphysician Undercover

I understand my world to be everything that I interact with, together with myself. I interact with many different kinds of thing, some of which don't have a location in any normal sense. Perceptions are one example of this. So I'm not clear what the question is asking for.

The reason for this separation (sc. of the phenomenal) is that mistakes inhere within the appearance, as mental illness demonstrates. If we do not allow for this separation then there is no way to account for the mistakes which the sense apparatus makes, in presenting its representation to the conscious mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with that. But consider - if all you have to go on is appearances, how do you know when you have made a mistake?

And since the mind only has the appearance to base its judgement on, it must allow for the logical possibility that the sense apparatus is completely mistaken, in an absolute way, as the skeptical starting point. — Metaphysician Undercover

Some appearances are mistakes. Some appearances aren't mistakes. It would be a mistake to think otherwise. The question is how to tell one from the other.

By what principles do you reduce two distinct worlds interacting into one united world? — Metaphysician Undercover

My world is what I interact with. Your world is what you interact with. It follows that if I interact with you, you are a part of my world, and that if you interact with me, I am part of your world. I don't say those two worlds are identical. I do say that they overlap.

Furthermore, it puts all those mistakes discussed above into some sort of limbo, where in one sense they have to be part of the world, but in another sense they have to be excluded from the world. — Metaphysician Undercover

Macbeth's delusional dagger is, in one sense, part of Macbeth's world. But since it does not exist, it is also not part of his world.

You are right that the quotation fails to distinguish between sensation, imagination and intellect. I would attribute this to his empiricist approach to philosophy, especially to the doctrine that all our knowledge comes from the senses; so it goes deeper than just Berkeley. I read him as based on Cartesian Dualism but adapting it, with the result that God is placed as the unseen reality moving the world rather than matter. His ideas about God, I understand, are derived from Malebranche's occasionalism. He doesn't seem to refer much to Thomist or Aristotelian doctrines, though he does re-introduce the concept of final causes, which had, of course, been abandoned by the new physics.

I don't know about Thomism in enough detail to respond to that alternative approach in detail, though I think I can see the sense in it.

I don't know enough about Berkley to know his influences (I read him pretty much blind), but this actually makes a lot of sense if one looks at his philosophy as essentially recapitulating the "classical metaphysical tradition"*, just through a sort of bizzarro world, fun house mirror setting of modernity.
IMHO though, it ends up looking terribly deflated. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. The fascination, for me, is tracking the distortions and errors that allow him to reach his conclusions. It's a long list. And yet, he somehow manages to put his finger on ideas that are not simply a recapitulation of the classical tradition and which we are still arguing about. I mean that (on my understanding), he is the originator of what we now know as the idealist tradition in philosophy; also, I don't know of earlier philosophy who explicitly argues for relativism about all our empirical knowledge of the world.

There is one topic that you may not know about, but which, I think, is helpful in understanding Berkeley. Have a look at SEP - Occasionalism

Berkeley’s talk of occasion here reveals the immediate influence of Malebranche. Malebranche held that the only true cause is God and that apparent finite causes are only “occasional causes,” which is to say that they provide occasions for God to act on his general volitional policies. Occasional “causes” thus regularly precede their “effects” but are not truly responsible for producing them.

A side-note on Dr. Johnson. I doubt if Dr. Johnson thought he was making an argument against Berkeley. He must have intended his gesture as a counter-example. At one level, Berkeley undoubtedly has a reply. He needs to "translate" "Dr. Johnson kicked the stone" into a redescription in terms of ideas, in the same sort of way that he would translate an apple falling on the stone into ideas. So far, so good. But in this case, he has to deal with God's ideas and Dr. Johnson's ideas and their interaction. The SEP - Berkeley (3.2.6 Spirits and Causation) says:-

Thus, within the domain of physical objects, Berkeley appears to think that God is the unique genuine cause, consistent with our characterization of occasionalism. There has been, however, some controversy in recent secondary literature as to whether one’s own body is to be included in this domain of physical objects. Some (such as McDonough 2008) have argued against this inclusion, while others (such as Lee 2012) have argued that we, as finite spirits, have no genuine causal input in the movement of our own bodies, and such movement is directly caused by God like any other physical object for Berkeley.

So it isn't at all clear how the translation would work in Dr. Johnson's case.

PS added later.
I don't think this is a marginal issue. Tallis' article proposes a different conception - the mind as embodied and enactive. I'm very attracted to this approach and not just in relation to Berkeley. But he does not identify what failings in Berkekely's doctrines might make this approach more plausible. If I were constructing such an argument, it would be at this point that I would intervene.

The irony or strange aspect about this here is that Schopenhauer does not mention much these happy moments, choosing to speak about art, which is fine and important. — Manuel

Art can make people happy. Perhaps he just thinks that art is more appropriate to a philosophical context than the pleasures of walking the dog.

One day the boy who cried wolf will be right. Hopefully not soon, but, sobriety ought to make us see we are not doing good as a species at all. It could change, absolutely. But it's yet to happen. — Manuel

I didn't mean to imply that the nuclear threat has disappeared. On the contrary, it may be more serious now than it was in the last century. It has just been superseded by the (possibly more serious) threat of climate change. My expectation is that it will be dealt with. But the process will be messy and only partially effective.

It's still an important step removed from direct access. — Manuel

Indirect access to reality is still access to reality. I suppose that introspection counts as direct access? But there, the distinction between reality and appearance collapses.

I think you misunderstand, "the world" is as interpreted. Therefore the world of the happy person is a completely different world from from the world of the unhappy person, and a difference of interpretation is irrelevant because interpretation is already integral to "the world". That difference is therefore a difference in the world. This is due to the role of the subconscious in interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have a lot of trouble with the term "world". It gets used of the worlds of chess and football and physics, of the "lived world", of the different worlds that orbit the sun and who knows what else? There's nothing wrong with your interpretation of it. You are also right that in this context the interpretation involved is a bit mysterious, because it is not the result of a conscious process.

But I did think that it was appropriate to take "world" in the context of the TLP as single and unique, because of the opening remarks:-

The world is everything that is the case.
1.1The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

Plus, even when, later on, he deals with the interpretations we make of the world, he about "seeing as.." which suggests to me that he is still thinking of a single reality interpreted in different ways.

If the happy person and the unhappy person are the very same person at a different time, then the worlds has changed for that person. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think this needs to be put somewhat differently. For me, "the world has changed for that person" suggests that person is living in one world, which has changed. I would suggest something like "then that person has changed from one world to another. But perhaps that would perhaps raise questions about whether that person is the same person.

I'm not quarrelling with the point that happiness and unhappiness affect how we see everything. So these moods are not simply conditioned by the way the world is. But it is complicated, because sometimes the way the world is can change our mood. I would suggest that it is a question of interaction with the world, not a one-way street.

Psychosis is not treated by getting the person to understand that what they experience is not the real world. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm no expert, but I do understand that you don't deal with psychosis by presenting evidence. Psychosis is not unique in this. It is also a mistake to think that religious beliefs can be dealt with by presenting evidence; it is not a matter of evidence, but of how one interprets the evidence. But if a non-psychotic person can treat a psychotic person, doesn't that suggest that, at some level, they are both living in the same world?

Schopenhauer has the wrong approach to happiness. — Patterner

I like all your quotations. But don't they also reveal that happiness (and therefore also unhappiness) is complicated? I understand the implication to be that there is no one right approach to happiness/unhappiness.

I'm fond of Wittgenstein's comment in the Tractatus:-

The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy. — TLP 6,43

At face value, that's nonsense, of course. The same person living in the same world may be happy at some times and not happy at other times. Neither is necessarily a permanent state. But I think the meaning is that happiness and unhappiness affect how one interprets everything in the one world. "Glass half full" and "Glass half empty" are not about different glasses, but different perspectives on the same glass. Happiness and unhappiness affect how one interprets everything.

There's another point, though,

Apparently, he did do quite many things that brought him joy, walking his dogs, eating sausages in a tavern, going to the theatre and listening to music, and lots of other small details along this line. — Manuel

Doesn't this show that happiness and unhappiness are not necessarily mutually exclusive?

It's not that his pessimism per se is wrong, one can view the world that way, but it's a particularly gloomy way of looking at the world, which is not necessary. — Manuel

I agree with you that the world seems in a particularly bad way at the moment, There are many good reasons for being fearful, even alarmed, about the state of the world order these days. But one may reflect that it is not unusual for there to be good grounds for fear and one's worst fears may well turn out to be excessive. (Most of my childhood and youth was overshadowed by the threat of a nuclear holocaust.)
But there is a counterbalancing excess of optimism, which loses touch with reality and sails gaily and blindly into disaster. We need balance and realism to function successfully in the world. Schopenhauer's (perhaps only official) totalizing gloom is a mistake, but the radical optimisim of Dr. Pangloss in Candide is no better.

In any case, we do not - and cannot - go beyond appearance. — Manuel

That's true, And yet:-

33. OF REAL THINGS AND IDEAS OR CHIMERAS.--The ideas imprinted on the Senses by the Author of nature are called REAL THINGS; and those excited in the imagination being less regular, vivid, and constant, are more properly termed IDEAS, or IMAGES OF THINGS, which they copy and represent. But then our sensations, be they never so vivid and distinct, are nevertheless IDEAS, that is, they exist in the mind, or are perceived by it, as truly as the ideas of its own framing. The ideas of Sense are allowed to have more reality in them, that is, to be more (1)STRONG, (2)ORDERLY, and (3)COHERENT than the creatures of the mind; but this is no argument that they exist without the mind. They are also (4)LESS DEPENDENT ON THE SPIRIT or thinking substance which perceives them, in that they are excited by the will of another and more powerful spirit; yet still they are IDEAS, and certainly no IDEA, whether faint or strong, can exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it.

Not only does he distinguish between - let's call them - real appearances - and - "chimeras" - unreal appearances but he also allows the existence of something beyond or behind appearances. .

He is so embarrased by this that he includes an awkward and unconvincing shuffle to disguise the fact:-

27. NO IDEA OF SPIRIT.--..... there can be no idea formed of a soul or spirit; for all ideas whatever, being passive and inert, .. cannot represent unto us, by way of image or LIKENESS, that which acts. .... Such is the nature of SPIRIT, or that which acts, that it cannot be of itself perceived, BUT ONLY BY THE EFFECTS WHICH IT PRODUCETH....... it must be owned at the same time that we have some notion of soul, spirit, and the operations of the mind: such as willing, loving, hating--inasmuch as we know or understand the meaning of these words.

He uses "notion" to designate abstract ideas, of which he denies the reality. So his use of the term here is puzzling.

It seems to me that while appearances are, indeed, all that appears to us, that the distinction between reality and appearance is available to us, not only within appearances, but also behind or beyond them.

But if definitions like "greateer than" and "less than" are only defined within a system, it follows that they cannot be applied outside it. Isn't that at least close to the OP's conclusion? — Ludwig V

Actually, because the reals and integer systems are applicable to the real world (they were developed by analyzing aspects of the real world), the terms "greater than" and "less than" do apply meaningfully. — Relativist

Yes, I put that very badly. What I was getting at was that "largest number" or "smallest number" is not defined, or rather, the possibility is excluded by the definitions of "greater than" or "less than", or, more accurately, by the absence of any definition of "largest" or "smallest".
BTW, I'm actually not entirely happy that "number greater than (smaller than) every other number" is not a definition of "greatest" or "smallest". But I have to accept that in the context of mathematics, the rules allow it.

Infinity is one number just as 10 is one number. — Philosopher19

I'm afraid that, although I can see the sense of your conclusion, I do think your argument is mistaken at this point. My reason for accepting your conclusion is that infinity is not a number, so comparisons of size are meaningless.
The concept of "infinity" is a bit like the concept of the horizon. The horizon seems to be located in space, but as you approach it, it recedes; you can never get there. Each step in the number sequnce seems to get you closer to infinity, but it is always infinitely far away. More to the point, any attempt to apply ordinary arithmetic produces nonsense. If infinity was a number, you could add 1 to it and produce a larger one.
What one chooses to make of the transfinite numbers is another question, but, for the purposes of mathematics, I think we have to accept that they work in that context. But even they are not numbers of the same kind as the natural or real numbers.
As I said earlier, your definition of "countable" is different from the one used in mathematics, so your concept of infinity is different from the mathematical concept. It is not a question of right or wrong, but of different ways of thinking.

I'm glad you agree. Nor do I find fault with the definition of a mathematical system. However, there do seem to be some differences of perspective and approach between us; these are not necessarily questions of right and wrong, true or false.
I would not want to say that @Philosopher19 is wrong - just that the argument is based on a different approach to the idea of infinity. Specifically, there is a different understanding of what "countable" means even though there is a common understanding of what "size" means and that infinity means that there is no number that is the number of the members of an infinite set.
There is a constant tension here around the fact that counting cannot be completed and the temptation or desire to think of the infinite as some sort of destination or limit. Compare "the sky's the limit" or "the gold at the end of the rainbow" or even the concept of "transfinite numbers". I don't see that there is a basis here of talking of "correct" or "incorrect" or of mistakes - that requires a shared agreed system, which is not available.

The mistake is to treat all of mathematics as a single system, with a single set of axioms and definitions. — Relativist

I'm suggesting that, in the face of the concept of infinity, there is more than one way to apply the relevant concepts. If we can choose one way rather than another, we cannot apply correct and incorrect. We need a different kind of argument.

What matters is that there is a universe (the transfinite numbers) and that there are operations that can be performed with them - including a successor function for the transfinite ordinals - which allows treating them as greater than or less than.
It's still true that there is a conceptual relation between the transfinites and the reals and integers, and that was the basis for Cantor defining them. But it needs to be remembered that definitions (like "greater than" "less than" etc) are intra-system. — Relativist

But if definitions like "greateer than" and "less than" are only defined within a system, it follows that they cannot be applied outside it. Isn't that at least close to the OP's conclusion?

I take your point. It does seem to me that ideological convictions are uniquely human and by far the most dangerous power we have. A dose of philosophical scepticism is a good medicine for those delusions. But, sadly, those who need it most are also the most resistant. Whether such convictions are ever rational, or even reasonable, is an interesting question. I can't imagine that animals are ever gripped by them.

There's a famous quote about this:-

“I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken.” — Oliver Cromwell - Letter to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland. 1650

Good advice. The irony is, of course, that Oliver Cromwell was driven by ideological convictions about which he never seems to have wavered.

I posted an earlier draft of this comment by mistake. This one is less of a mess.

It makes no sense for one quantity of 10 to be bigger than another quantity of 10. 10 is one quantity. Similarly, it makes no sense for one quantity of infinity to be bigger than another quantity of infinity. Infinity is one quantity. — Philosopher19

In the everyday use of the term, a "quantity" is always a fixed, real number (e.g. a number of liters, a number of tomatoes, a number of molecules in a mole...). Infinity is not a real number. Your mistake seems to be that you're treating it as one. — Relativist

Forgive me for jumping in, but I think what is needed here is a closer look at what is going on here. I'm not a mathematician, so I hope that you will correct anything I say that is not properly forumulated.
In essence, the problem is that the the normal concepts of number don't apply once one has defined inifite sets. So the mathematical concepts here look very strange unless one looks closely at how they change in this new context.

In one way, this situation is unique. But the concept of number in mathematics has changed several times as mathematics has developed. The ancient Greeks, for example, did not consider that either 0 or 1 was a number; that seems strange to us, but we have got used to the new concept 0 and all the many developments that have happened since the Arabic mathematicians changed everything.

As a start, look more closely at the original question?

How would a difference in size be established between them when there is no counting involved? And if there is counting involved, how would infinity be reached? — Philosopher19

The definition of size here is the number of members. It is true that the number of members of an infinite set can never be specified, and the set is uncountable in that sense. (But we can confidently assert that the number of members - and hence the size - of an infinite set is larger than any finite set.)
However, the definition of "countable" in the context of infinite sets is that the counting can be started, not that it can be finished.
There's a misinterpretation of "infinity". Inifnity is not a target that can never be reached, but the recognition that counting can never be completed, that it will always be possible to take another step in the series. It is, in my (non-mathematical) book not a number at all.

However, mathematicians work around this, but defining a new kind of number.

In mathematics, transfinite numbers or infinite numbers are numbers that are "infinite" in the sense that they are larger than all finite numbers.

See Wikipedia - Transfinite Numbers
This does not posit that there is a largest finite number. It is an application of concepts that clearly exist in the case of inifinite sets like [1, 0.5, 0.25, .....] In the case of those sets, there is a number that is smaller than any of the members of the set - 0. It is, paradoxically, not a member of the set. It is called the limit. The analgous numbers in the case of the natural numbers is <omega> or <aleph-null>. But you should read further to more fully see what is going on. The Wikipedia article is a reasonable starting-point.

One might feel that Cantor's argument does not demonstrate its conclusion. But it does demonstrate that the relationship will persist at each step along the way. A counter-argument would have to show that it will break down at some point, and I don't see how such an argument could be made.

I hope I said enough to show how the apparently impossible conclusion can be established. I'm sure someone will correct anything that I have not formulated properly.

That's perfectly clear. Thank you.

Come to think of it, it's an example of his recommended tactic of replacing a proposed mental object with an actual object in order to see how the language game would work out.

Trump has announced he would use military force to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal.This is not any worse than the Neo-Cons and invading Iraq and Afghanistan. — Athena

I must admit, I have trouble seeing how Trump's adventures would make America great again, any more than the NeoCons' expeditions did.

However, Christians got this man into office and it is Christian mythology that a god favors the US and that is irrational thinking based on a false belief. — Athena

Yes. It is hard to understand how Christians could bring themselves to support him. It seems that the prospect of power can make strange allies. It also encourages wishful thinking and so distorts people's capacity for rational calculation.

No animal could sin more than the human one. — Athena

l wouldn't say that a non-human animal can sin at all. They aren't subject to human morality. That's something that is uniquely human.

Our belief in the Biblical god is a curse. — Athena

People do seem to give up on rational thought in the context of religious belief.

How can an animal without naming and descriptive practices invent/create a meaningful utterance which stands in place of its own belief? That must be done prior to comparing that belief to the world. It is only via such a comparison that one can recognize that their own belief is either true or false. — creativesoul

The standard expectation is that when someone asserts that p, they are asserting that it is true. We can infer, without further evidence, that they believe that p. The dog cannot assert that there is food in the bowl, so we cannot infer that the dog believes that there is food in the bowl. Conventional discussions about belief do not give us any basis for inferring that any dog or other animal that does not have human language believes anything. But those discussions do not pay attention to the fact that non-verbal behaviour in humans is also evidence of what they believe. Similar non-verbal behaviour can be observed in animals that don't have human language and that provides evidence for what they believe.
The dog walks up to the bowl and sniffs it; that is evidence that the dog believes that there is food in the bowl. If there is food in the bowl, we expect the dog to eat it, and that action confirms our inference. If there is not food in the bowl and the dog walks away, that action is evidence that the dog recognizes that there is no food in the bowl.

I do not understand why you made that argument. An expectation is not the same as a belief. An expectation is thinking with the gut (feeling) not the brain (language). — Athena

I do agree that there is a difference between beliefs based on feeling (I would say, intuition) and beliefs based on a rational process (language). But surely, if I expect the children to get home from school at 4.00, I believe that they will. That may be based on feeling or on a rational process, but it's the same belief/expectation.

How about smells? That is one of the major elements of communication. I think I smell a god. Well, maybe that doesn't work. However, we can believe someone will be a good mate because of how that person smells. — Athena

Yes, there is evidence that smell plays a bigger part in our social lives that we mostly choose to recognize. (It would be good to know how often our expectations based on smell turn out to be true.) But I wouldn't call it a language. When eggs go bad, the smell puts us off eating them, but the smell is a sign that we read, not a communication sent by the egg. The smells that we (and other animals) give off play their part in negotiating our social lives, but it's not the same part as language does.

Perhaps what is going on in our subconscious also counts and is closer to animal thinking with messages that mean something but have no language for rational thinking. — Athena

Yes, that's a tempting thought. The trouble is that there doesn't seem to be any way of knowing what is going on in our sub-conscious other than supposing that it must be like what goes on in our consciousness. Which is a big assumption and should be treated with some scepticism.

Wow, you used a word I never came across before and did not know the meaning. Without the knowledge I could not understand what you said so I looked it up... — Athena

I'm sorry. I dropped a bit of philosophical jargon without explaining it. I'm glad you could work it out. The internet is sometimes very helpful.

That is the perfect word for what I think is important to this thread. Humans behave as though their thoughts are accurate, concrete information when the thought is not reality. Making humans the most irrational animals. — Athena

I think that's a bit harsh. I would say that humans are a mixture of rationality and irrationality, just like other animals. But their capacity to harm the world around them is greater than animals, so their irrationality is more damaging than the irrationality of other animals.

Gene expression in the human brain: cell types become more specialized, not just more numerous — wonderer1

Interesting. But I don't see any clear philosophical implications. Do you?

I think it’s a different story when it comes to neurophenomenology and enactive embodied cognitive science. Like Witt, these approaches reject the idea of inner, computational processes in the head in favor of practices of interaction immersed in the world. — Joshs

Absolutely. I'm not clear whether (how far) that "neurophenomenology and enactive embodied cognitive science" actually derive from W and how far they developed indedendently. But there is seems to be an important compatibility there. On the other hand, they seem to take conventional cognitive science more seriously than W.

His knack for voicing views different from what he might opine makes him difficult to pin down. — Paine

Not half! But perhaps part of his project is to undermine the process of "pinning down" as understood in traditional analytic philosophy. There are several quotations critical of that ideal in this passage, though perhaps he stops short of outright rejection.

Is that the only problem for "elemental" languages, a mistake in what those elements are? — Paine

I don't think that's right. The mistake is not merely identifying the wrong candidates for the role of being elements, but in the project of identifiying atomistic somethings as elements at all. The process of identifying elements (analysis) cannot simply forget the context that is set by the starting-point. That sets up criteria for what could count as an element; the project doesn't make any sense outside its holistic context.

I read W as being a little dismissive or derogatory toward the scientific/psychoanalytic idea of unconscious "knowing" and as gently attempting to steer us away from this view. Moreover, I read him as attempting to dislodge the commonly held view that "knowing", "expecting", "toothache", etc., must all exclusively refer to and be defined in terms of (inner) sensations only. — Luke

As to the first sentence, you are right, IMO. (Note that he doesn't distinguish between the scientific and the psychoanalytical concepts of the the unconscious. The differences are important - or at least Popper makkes a good case for thinking that they are. He seems to be thinking more of the scientific than the psychoanalytical.
As to the second, I agree also with that. I would be inclinced to think that this is his primary target.

I think I have to go back over his investigation of knowledge and the situation between science and philosophy. — Antony Nickles

I'm extremely confused about what is said here. On the one hand, there is a clear dividing line between the two, which seems to see science primarily as a matter of empirical discoveries and to reserve the conceptual apparatus involved to philosophy. On the other hand, there is the critique of philosophical views that seek perfect clarity and strict regulation.

When we talk of language as a symbolism used in an exact calculus, that which is in our mind can be found in the sciences and in mathematics. Our ordinary use of language conforms to this standard of exactness only in rare cases. Why then do we in philosophizing constantly compare our use of words with one following exact rules? — p.25"

The latter seems to undermine the former.

How far does the analogy between these uses go?

This seems to me to summarize the issue perfectly. But perhaps it is not really a question of fact, but a decision about which we need to agree.

It is a new fact that bewilders the commoner, but not science, — Antony Nickles

I suppose so, though perhaps it is the traditional philosopher that is bewildered, rather than the commoner. I found the discussion of unconscious toothache very confusing. It strikes me as a big fuss about something not very surprising or exciting. The actual phenomena around pain are a good deal more complicated than this discussion recognizes. How far is that relevant to W's purposes here? I'm not sure.
It may help to see the discussion in context.

He introduces the topic after a discussion of expectation and wishing and the objects of expectations and wishes, making the point that we may not know (exactly) what it is that we expect or wish for, with reference to Russell's account of wishing

One may characterize the meaning which Russell gives to the word "wishing" by saying that it means to him a kind of hunger.--It is a hypothesis that a particular feeling of hunger will be relieved by eating a particular thing. — p.22

My problem is that I don't see pain as a concept of the same kind as expectation or wishing precisely because pain doesn't have an "intentional" object comparable to the food that satisfies our hunger. On the other hand, he is thinking about "meaning-objects", so there ought to be a similarily of some kind.

So we have to deny the yet uncomprehended process in the yet unexplored medium. And now it looks as if we had denied mental processes. And naturally we don’t want to deny them. — ibid.

This is the part that many people find it very difficult to grasp. What's worse, it seems to me that some people who one might expect to have grasped it seem to forget it when it's needed. Hence a long and pointless argument about "illusionism".

The first step is the one that altogether escapes notice. We talk of processes and states, and leave their nature undecided. Sometime perhaps we’ll know more about them - we think. But that’s just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter. For we have a certain conception of what it means to learn to know a process better. (The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one that seemed to us quite innocent.) — ibid.

Yes. However, I find that many people are inclined to assume that neurophysiology and cognitive psychology between them will supply the deficit - a computer model of the mind. (The latest developments in science/technology imported wholesale into philosophy.) So the traditional language morphs somewhat, but survives.

If the beginning of PI and the talk of live versus dead signs in the Blue Book puts a certain understanding of learning language in doubt, that has consequences for attempts to form scientific theories about such activities. — Paine

You could say that he was changing the subject - dropping the pursuit of language as a abstract structure in favour of language as an activity (or a collection of them). The idea of a game has a similar ambiguity in it; there is a systematic structure defined by the rules, but the structure is only realized in terms of human activities. But the colour-exclusion argument (which I understand W took a particular interest in) does something else; it seems to show that the proposed structure has a flaw - the building won't stand up.

I read the problem as more about priority than independence from circumstances. W does not care about Aristotle's objections to a separate world of forms. What is being questioned is whether analysis breaking down one set of terms into simpler sets will reveal a more fundamental set of conditions. — Paine

The language is really difficult here. The meanings of "priority" and "indendence" have to be understood in the relevant context. As it happens, I wouldn't want to argue the breaking down one set of terms into simpler sets can never improve our understanding of them. W's point, for me, is that applying that approach to a general understanding of descriptive (true or false) language not only doesn't help, but throws up further problems. Hence the need to change the subject.

In this case, a general assignment of Plato to being the champion of the "ideal" versus whatever is assigned to what that is not. Soulez is not faulting either for that, just putting it into a context of what concerned Wittgenstein. — Paine

I take the point. There's always a tension between arguing about a particular version of some philosophical doctrine and arguing about something that's fundamental and in common between all versions of that doctrine. (If only there was an essence of idealism or scepticism, so that one could nail it down for good and all")
Sometimes, I think that philosophers should be encourage to think in more nuanced terms about philosophical theories. It should not be a matter of refutation or proof - black and white, win or lose - but in terms of a more judicious system of balanced judgements.

In fact, Witt’s method is based on the start of Socrates’ inquiry into what is commonly said in a situation. — Antony Nickles

Yes, Socrates does assume that we all understand what courage or piety is. His refutations wouldn't work if that was not the case. But the aporia at the end of the process seems to show that assumption is wrong, and I think Socrates takes those failures to show that he is wiser than any other Athenian because he knows he doesn't know, and they think they do. In the end, he rejects the common understanding and gives Plato the starting-point for his more technical philosophy. Aristotle, on the other hand, treats the common understand with respect, and accepts it unless he has reason not to.

“Science” is the umbrella term Wittgenstein is using for this desire for logical purity (a math-like order). — Antony Nickles

Yes. My lack of a clear, unified conception of science is based on what has happened since his time. That may be unfair.

“A given sensation” is creating the picture of feelings as objects (specific ones). And we do compare our feelings all the time and do classify them as different or the same. “I have a headache.” “Me too!” “No, but mine is throbbing in my neck” “Me too!” — Antony Nickles

Yes, you are right. So I should represent Wittgenstein not arguing that we cannot compare feelings and sensations, but that we cannot compare them in the way(s) that we can compare public objects.

We’ve seen logical mistakes here exposed by comparison to the evidence of simply what we say when doing a thing. — Antony Nickles

Yes, his examples are materpieces. But it looks as if he is just appealing to ordinary language and I'm reluctant to assume that ordinary language is always in order.

And, in a very real sense, we would not have that knowledge without Socrates’ curiosity, his dissatisfaction with the easy, first impression. — Antony Nickles

Quite so. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it certainly keeps philosophy alive. Perhaps the good side of scepticism?

The question of elemental structure is clearly directed toward such as Russell and Whitehead but also to language theorists like Chomsky. Looking for a language underneath the one we use requires employing certain kinds of assumptions. We are being asked to consider an alternative approach to what is "primitive", but it is not being presented as a competing analysis. — Paine

I may be misreading this.
The argument (comments on) the idea of elements certainly includes logical atomism but is based on an alternative view - roughly that an atomic view of them is misleading because it tries to think of the elements independently of the overall structure that gives them their meaning. It is very reminiscent of Gestalt theory. The structure which they make up is the context in which they exist as elements. It enables us to define them to. Braver (if I have understood him) calls this "holism". I think that's right.

The scientific method, as we know it, was not a model for Plato. Wittgenstein does not seem interested in Plato's own problems with analysis. There are the many times when the singular essence is sought for and not found. — Paine

Of course, the method of physics was not a model for Plato. But I was referring to his use of mathematics as a paradigm for his metaphysics. (Aristotle treats biology as his model.) But I wouldn't claim that the same is true of every philosopher since then.
I agree that W is not interested in Plato's problems, except insofar as they can be seen as intersecting with his own.

Did he look for a better model of the analysis of meaning? As we know from Baker and Hacker, Wittgenstein would rather attack ‘Plato’s Betrachtungsweise’, including Russell and himself (as expressed in the Tractatus) with Plato, in order to reshape his method of ‘comparison’ with paradigms. To his eyes, Plato’s problem illustrates a misleading model or picture of logical analysis that he wanted to get rid of. This illustration in turn could be addressed to and against Russell’s conception. His contention in §48 is rather constructing a new language game in order to confute logical atomism than, in the spirit of a critical method, trying to discuss Russell’s distinctions one by one. Wittgenstein was as little interested in critical arguments or analytical sorts of discussions with ancient authors as with modern or contemporary ones. — Soulez, How Wittgenstein Refused to Be ‘The Son Of’

Could you explain to me, please, what ‘Plato’s Betrachtungsweise’ is. (Google Translate was foxed as well!)
I agree that for W Plato is just another illustration of the method he wanted to get rid of and that he was not trying to get rid of it by further analysis, and so it is not a mistake to say that he was not offering a competing analysis. He wants to go deeper and so uses very different tactics.

To use language correctly, it makes no difference if your private sensations are the same or different to anyone else's. Even if everyone saw the same object as having a different colour, and this applied to all objects, we would still learn to use the same colour language that we do now. We would still call stop signs "red" and grass "green" and the sky "blue", even though we each saw them as having a different colour, because those are the words each of us learned to associate with our private sensations of those coloured objects when we learned the language. — Luke

This was of putting it seems to allow that we might experience private sensations even if they are irrelevant to our interpersonal communication. But the argument goes deeper than that - or so it seems to me. The point is that there is no way of comparing private sensations in a way that would allow us to classify a given sensation as either they same or different from another. It is not as if we could learn what label to stick on whatever beetle happens to be in our boxes, since there's no way of identifying the beetle; if there were a box, we could stick the label on that, but the box is only a metaphor.

He is not trying to explain rule-following in the PI, but looking at it to see why we get confused about it in our hunt for purity. As Paine says, these facts are not “competing” (but not for any “elemental structure” either), but simply arrogantly presented as self-evident in service of a greater purpose. — Antony Nickles

I agree that his style can seem arrogant. But, as he says in the preface to PI, he doesn't want to save hi readers the trouble of thinking for themselves - which again can seem arrogant. But the point of the example (language games) is to get us to see things in a different context and so differently. It's not really an exercise in logic at all.

The assertion that there are no rules or norms within a practice seems obviously false. — Luke

In one way, of course it is. But surely the point is to get us to see that common ideas about rules are confused- a rule can't reach out into the future and determine all its applications We have to learn how to apply them, and in that exercise we are learning what is right and what is wrong.

Nothing forces you to play chess but you aren't playing chess (correctly) unless you follow the established rules/customs/practice of playing chess. — Luke

Yes. But there is a penalty for not following the rules as everyone else doesn. If you don't, no-one will want to (or be able to, unless they adopt your rules) play chess with you. What is a game of chess without an opponent? Not a game of chess.

Yes, apologies for jumping ahead (to PI). I was just trying to shed some light on Ludwig V's accusation that Wittgenstein had a "gaping hole" and a "complicated hinterland" with respect to mental objects dropping out of consideration as irrelevant. — Luke

I think I put my point rather badly. I seem to have conflated two different issues.
One is about notations. If W's version of solipsism is really just a different notation, it leaves the solipsist just where they were. My answer is tht the solipsist's notation is not a notation; it can't be used. There is something they are trying to express, but it is better expressed in another way.
The other is about reasons vs causes, which was the focus at that moment. There, I did offer, tentatively a criterion - me giving reasons after the event is not a report of anything that happened before the event, but a rational reconstruction, which becomes mine when I give it. I probably confused the issue by then admitting that such reports are not criteria, but symptoms - we may find them inadequate or implausible on various grounds.

The claim was that walking away from an empty food bowl counts as recognition that the prior belief(that the bowl had food in it) was false. — creativesoul

That's right. I should have been clearer that that sentence was my report of the dog's behaviour. I thought it was obvious that the dog could not have made that report.

We do that with words, which stand in as proxy, for the belief. — creativesoul

Oh, dear, now we are in deep trouble. It is reasonable to describe some words as standing in as proxy for something. But not all. That's a big, even central, issue about language. For example, there is some sense in saying that if my dog's name is Eddy, "Eddy" stands in as proxy for the dog. But I don't think it helps to insist that "1" stands in as proxy for the number 1 or "Pegasus" as proxy for Pegasus. The philosophical issue of nominlaism vs realism as an account of universals (abstractions) is precisely about this.

Of course there is more to any thinking creature than just the recognition/attribution of causality, but it seems to me that that process, regardless of the creature, is more than adequate for being a case of thinking(thought/belief). — creativesoul

Of course. I only wanted to suggest that there are other kinds of belief.
However, Jimi's belief that Janus was displeased with him because he killed the chicken does not distinguish between causation as simply correlation and causation as something more than just correlation. I think Jimi is capable of the first, but not the second - at least, I can't think of non-verbal behaviour that would enable me to distinguish the two. I could be wrong.

His belief that his own behaviour caused Janus' comes replete with the further inference/belief/expectation that if he does not, Janus will not do that either. — creativesoul

H'm. "Replete with" is not altogether clear to me. I notice that you do accept that that Jimi's belief that his own behaviour caused Janus' displeasure is distinct from the belief that if he does not behave in that way, Janus will not be displeased. So it is possible that he might believe the first and not the second. This fits well with the fact that killing the chicken is a sufficient, but not necessary, consequence of Janus' displeasure, getting from one to the other requires an inferential step, which Jimi has failed to make after the first kill, but does (apparently) make after the second.

Two comments on pp.18 - 20

Language games are the forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words. The study of language games is the study of primitive forms of language or primitive languages.

Don't these remarks invite distracting arguments about whether they are factually correct? Do w need to say more than this approach is a useful way of analyzing language and understanding how it works?

Now what makes it difficult for us to take this line of investigation is our craving for generality.This craving for generality is the resultant of a number of tendencies connected with particular philosophical confusions. — p. 17

So we can add the craving for generality to the craving for certainty as examples of the kind of answer that W is looking for. Again, though, this is not a blanket disapproval of generalization as such - the word "craving" clearly says that it is the inappropriate pursuit of generalization that is the problem, not generalization per se.

with the confusion between a mental state, meaning a state of a hypothetical mental mechanism, and a mental state meaning a state of consciousness (toothache, etc.). — p.18

This is quite right and it is, in a sense, due to the craving for generality. But it is a somewhat different form from the Galtonian photograph in the previous paragraph. It depends on adopting what can be said of some cases, as when we know that some mental event occurs in some circumstances and then trying to apply that model universally. As when "we are looking at words as though they all were proper names, and we then confuse the bearer of a name with the meaning of the name." (p. 18)

Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. — p. 18

Certainly, respect for science is often exaggerated and it may explain some metaphysics. Plato is a particularly clear example. But I think that W may be over-generalizing here.

And after all, there is not one definite class of features which characterize all cases of wishing (at least not as the word is commonly used). If on the other hand you wish to give a definition of wishing, i.e., to draw a sharp boundary, then you are free to draw it as you like; and this boundary will never entirely coincide with the actual usage, as this usage has no sharp boundary. — p.19

We need to show that this is not just a trivial question of notation, where we could simply agree to use our different notations. But I'm not sure how, exactly. W's new philosophy is less decisive, less certain, than the tradition expects. To expect traditional "results" from his investigations is to indulge the cravings for generality and certainty.

If it is the case that creatures capable of having meaningful experiences roamed the earth long before the first language users like us(those employing naming and descriptive practices) did, then any and all acceptable notions/conceptions/uses of "thought", "belief", and/or "meaningful experience" must be able to take this into proper account. Lest they be found sorely lacking. — creativesoul

Yes. That seems to be our starting-point. Out differences lie in what a proper account is.

It may strike some as odd, but I'm not convinced any dogs know their own name in the exact same way that we do. I would deny that altogether. Some know how to act when they hear their name being called in certain familiar scenarios. Some are still learning how to behave when they find themselves in such circumstances. Some live nameless lives. — creativesoul

No, I don't suppose that a dog that knows its own name "in the exact same way" as we do. For example, it can't tell anyone what its name is. But it can do many of the things that we can do when we know our own name. In my opinion, the overlap is sufficient.
You are right, of course, that animals that don't undergo training in human ways, won't have to opportunity to learn their name. We probably ought to think of them as using pronouns only, though our reports might use names for people.

It's all too easy for us to conflate our report(and what it takes) of the mouse's belief with the mouse's belief(and what it takes). There is a very long history and/or philosophical practice of treating these as one in the same. The report is existentially dependent upon language, for it is language use. — creativesoul

Yes, and that's important. For example, when a dog checks out a bowl, because it expects there to be food in it, and is disappointed, I don't suppose it says to itself "Oh, my belief that there was food there is wrong" or anything similar. It simply walks away. But that action counts as a recognition that its belief was false.

Please help. I am trying to understand animal thinking that is done without language, by being aware of my own thinking. besides thinking of math, — Athena

That is probably the biggest difficulty. I have some ideas about how to respond to it, but will have to try to articulate them later.

I strongly think many female humans are unaware of wanting a baby when they start putting on lipstick, and possibly dressing and otherwise using body language, to attract the opposite sex. They might even be really against getting pregnant. — Athena

As I understand it, the paradise bird's behaviour is specific to mating and breeding. Human (and, presumably, bonobo) sexual behaviour is not strongly linked to fertility. I'm told that, at least in the case of bonobos, that sexual behaviour has additional functions in their social lives. That is certainly true in the case of humans.
Dressing up may be a sometimes a preliminary to actual courtship and mating, but it has other functions as well. It would be seriously reductionist not to recognize that. It claims membership of a social group and helps give one self-confidence. In relation to others it can deter aggression and form the basis of alliances. Other animals are not all the same in this respect. One needs to look at their lives holistically to understand what is going on.

My point is we need to stop thinking animals decide to things for a reason and thinking about how unreasonable humans are. :lol: — Athena

Yes, they are and we often equate irrationality with instinctive behaviour. But it's more complicated than that. Our instincts are mediated through the social and practical rules that we have learnt, so our actual behaviour is based on instincts, which are given. It doesn't follow that they are irrational, although they might be non-rational; I mean that they are best thought of a like axioms - starting-points for rationality, which adjusts instinctive impulses to the outside world. In addition, we can explain the instincts as rational, not from the point of view of the animal, but from the point of view of the evolutionary pressure to survive and reproduce.

I am thinking what would motivate me to go out in the old? — Athena

One of the functions of rationality, it seems to me, is to balance competing desires. But there are situations when it doesn't work very well, as in your case. I deeply sympathize with your desire not to hide from life whether in a machine or something else. It is not easy. The best I can offer is baby steps, building up slowly. If going outside to check on a neighbour is too much, try to think of a smaller steps that you can actually do. Going outside for one minute. (If you see her indoors wave at her throught the window.) Ringing your neighbour. (I suggest asking if you can borrow a cup of sugar, rather than just asking if they are OK.) That's how I try to handle those feelings. Mind you, I'm not very good at it.

I feel so much pain for all the children who are punished again and again and don't just magically realize how to avoid punishment. — Athena

No-one seems to recognize that punishment only works if the person being punished takes it the right way. But there's nothing to prevent people getting the wrong end of the stick. Like the fraudster who is caught and punished and responds by getting better at doing the fraud without getting caught.

There is a whole school of dog training which emphasizes reward-based training and frowns on the traditional punishments or even stick-and-carrot training.
It's important to emphasize that there is a form of punishment involved, but it is only withholding reward. In the context of no punishment, that works to deter unwanted behaviour. So if I were training Jimi, I would make a point of being around when Jimi is around chickens and keeping him distracted - ideally by playing his best game with him, or getting him to sit with me by offering intermittent treats. Once he's got that idea, you can gradually phase out the treats.

Creatures are capable of those things. If logical/valid conclusions contradict that, then the presuppositions/unspoken assumptions underwriting that train of thought are somehow mistaken. — creativesoul

Some people might call that begging the question. One needs to explain the criteria for assertng it. But that's not a simple matter of evidence, because thinking of a dog as a sentient, rational creature is not a simple matter of fact but of thinking of a dog as, in many ways, (like) a person.

How does Jimi disconnect Janus's presence from Janus' outward unhappy behaviour? — creativesoul

Sometimes Janus is present and not outwardly unhappy, sometimes he is present and outwardly unhappy.

Jimi most definitely is capable of recognizing and/or attributing causality. That's um... sometimes as far back as we need to go. I'm puzzled at the response though. Are you averse to the idea that dogs are capable of recognizing causality? — creativesoul

That's very helpful. It clarifies what you meant when you said that all belief and thought consists of correlations. Thanks.

So Jimi's experience when he killed the first chicken might be expected to lead him to refrain from killing any more chickens on the principle that the burnt child fears the fire. But Jimi didn't fear the fire. He killed another chicken. (I'm not sure that dogs have a concept of causality as such. Simple correlations might be enough. But that's another issue.) What went wrong?
Maybe he forgot. But that suggests that he did not realize the significance (meaning) of his experience - i.e. he failed to generalize from it, in the way that the burnt child does. Then he was reminded of the first experience when he saw the chicken dead, or perhaps when Janus returned. That's the moment when he generalized from the first experience and realized that he was in trouble.
But it's not enough for him to generalize and understand that (1) whenever he kills a chicken, he will be in trouble. He also needs to understand that (2) if he does not kill chickens, Janus wll not be displeased with him.

There's more to Jimi than just recognizing causal correlations.

Are there any other ways of(processes for) thinking about thought and belief, if not as subject matters in their own right? How else would/could a creature capable of forming, having, and/or holding thought and/or belief also be capable of thinking about its own thoughts? — creativesoul

So when a creature recognizes that some belief it holds is false, it isn't thinking about its own thoughts? When a creature recognizes that some other creature is about to attack it, it isn't thinking about the other creature's thoughts?
I don't know what the question "how" means in this context. But one can think without language.

An “explanation” for him is driven by the desire for the kind of “answer” we want in looking at skepticism as a “problem” as above. — Antony Nickles

That would work. I suppose it is (or is like) the difference between those who think that "the present king of France is bald" is false and those who think it is unanswerable. The former have on their side the law of excluded middle, so we end up denying that the question is a question which seems absurd.

I’m reminded of the role of explanation with respect to the language game. There can be a language which is organized in such a way that an explanation can be an intelligible move within it. But one can only describe the language game itself, because to explain it is to do no more than to rep — Joshs

Yes, that's true. I'm not quite sure what to say.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson published the best "argument" for this - "What the tortoise said to Achilles" - Mind, Vol. 4, No. 14 (Apr. 1895), 278-280. The form of the argument is a regress. W's discussion of "aspect blindness" is also relevant. The possibility of this "rule refusal" is always present. On the other hand, maybe in practice, cases as simple as that don't come up in real life, and in the complexities we can find the resources to help the tortoise to see the point.

There are two places we might look to understand this. One is how we actually deal with people (e.g. students) who can't "see" a logical argument. In addition, there are - let us call them - informal resources in language, which often get taken up when the standard forms let us down - notably metaphor and analogy.

He is trying to find out why the solipsist is “irresistibly tempted”. — Antony Nickles

I'm sorry, but I had the impression that his explanation of the temptattion is the only answer that I found in the text. I must have missed something.

The solipsist who says "only I feel real pain", "only I really see (or hear)" is not stating an opinion; and that's why he is so sure of what he says. He is irresistibly tempted to use a certain form of expression; but we must yet find why he is. — Paine

I’ve always thought they both start in the same place: asking what we say in a given situation, but Witt listens in a way where Socrates seems to already have something in mind. — Antony Nickles

Yes, he tries hard to get to the heart of the problem. "A feeling that the water is three feet deep." But he doesn't deviate from his view that the solipsist is mistaken.
It's a side-issue, but Socrates' irony seems to me to be a product of Plato''s writing. I don't think we can conclude that the historical Socrates was always being ironic - that would contradict his claim in the Apology that he was testing the oracle.

***turns out it’s the group who believe in the gods but that believe they don’t hold dominion of over us, as if rationality had no sway. They would be (this translation) “ministered to their souls salvation by [*]admonition” for five years then killed, for their “folly”. Laws, Bk 10, p. 909. (In America, it’s four years.) — Antony Nickles

Thanks for that. I must have misremembered or misunderstood.

I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is 'purely descriptive'. — "p.18

I was struck by how confident he is about this. He doesn't seem to take into account that a description can be an explanation and can give us a new view of what we are already looking. Nor does he seem to be thinking of the ideas about interpretation (seeing as) that occur in the Brown Book and the PI. Maybe he only came up with those ideas after writing this.

The question is - and always has been - what does it take in order for some creature or another to be capable of thinking about its own thought and/or belief? — creativesoul

It would help if we could clarify whether we are talking about a creature being capable of thinking about its own thought and belief or about a creature that is capable of thinking about the thought and belief of other creatures. Or both. (The cases are somewhat different.)

(

Her coming to you after you call her name is inadequate evidence for concluding that she knows which dog you want to respond. I'm certain that that sequence of events is ritualistic. Her drawing correlations between her name being called, her own behaviour(s), and yours afterwards more than suffices. — creativesoul

The sequence of events - call, coming, praise - could does have a similarity to a ritual. Those correlations do indeed suffice. After all, the training consists of establishing associations between her name being called, her behaviour and the subsequent reward, and teaches he what her name is, i.e. which dog the name refers to. This training also enables her to know (after a little more training) what to do when she hears "Judy, sit" as opposed to what she should do when she hears "Eddy, sit". (At times, I have had more than one dog.)

I've mentioned on multiple occasions that the conversation was in dire need of a clear criterion and/or standards by which we can judge/assess whether or not a candidate is or is not capable of forming, having, and/or holding some thought or another. — creativesoul

How do we assess whether a proposed criterion or standard is clear and correct? By submitting cases to it. (Examples and counter-examples).

Current convention is chock full of practices that clearly show we have not gotten some rather important bits of this right. That is clearly shown by the inability for many a position to admit that other creatures are capable of forming, having, and/or holding thought and belief. — creativesoul

How do you know that current convention is wrong in not being able to admit that creatures are capable of those things? Many people accept the conclusion that they are not. So before you can demonstrate they are wrong, you must already have a clear and correct criterion.

What is a concept of a tree if not thought and belief about trees(if not correlations drawn between trees and other things)? What is a concept of food if not thought and belief about food(if not correlations drawn between food and other things)? I do not see how the notion helps us to understand our own minds let alone other species'. — creativesoul

It looks to me as if you have a reasonably clear concept of what a concept is. So there's no problem with that idea.

Correlations drawn by Jimi between his killing the chook and Janus's behaviour afterwards is more than enough. The correlation drawn is one of causality. Jimi attributes causality(draws a causal connection between what he did and what Janus did afterwards). Granting Janus' story is true, it took more than one occasion for him to alter his own behaviour accordingly(to stop killing hens).
Jimi's behaviour afterwards, complies with what Janus wants of Jimi's behaviour, but not as a result of Jimi's knowing what the rules are. Rather, it 'complies' because it fits into Janus' wants regarding Jimi's behaviour. Jimi stopped killing chooks because he did not want Janus to do whatever Janus did the first time. Jimi believed his behaviour caused Janus'. — creativesoul

The thing is, there's more than one correlation in play. He might have correlated the dead chicken, or the dead chicken and Janus' presence - or both together- with the displeasure. But neither of those is the correlation that he is supposed to make; he got it wrong. (That's why a causal account is unhelpful, because it cannot recognize that.) It seems that Jimi did learn to leave the chickens alone - even when Janus was not there - from the experience. So his future behaviour does not correlate with either a dead chicken or with Janus' presence - much less on the presence of both.
You could correlate what Janus wants with Jimi's behaviour. But that's just another rule. (BTW That's not a causal correlation, because it is possible that Jimi might not comply.)

Cavell will point out that the teacher is only “inclined to say: ‘This is simply what I do.’” (PI #217] so of course we can shut the door to further teaching with dogmatism and authority, but we can always continue the conversation in order to reach agreement and compliance, because it’s the relationship—to each other, to society—that’s more important in this case than anything we might take (or force) as foundational. — Antony Nickles

I don't know the texts well enough to comment on Cavell's comment. There is sense in what he says, but I'm not sure that it is what W wants to say.

In one way, you are right about what's important. However, the (not, perhaps, very clearly expressed) point of the ideas in the PI is (I think) that at the stage of learning how to argue and/or think, we are not in a position to make decisions about what is important, much less what is correct. We are inducted into the ways of what we do. It's not a question of argument, but of learning. That's the authority of "This is what I do". Paradoxically, my ability to dissent from and to question what I am taught (in any meaningful or relevant way) rests on my having learnt what it is to dissent and to question.

There's a moment in Plato's Laws, when he considers what to do with atheists - and he seems to mean this in the modern sense of not believing that gods exist. (There were such people among the pre-Socratics.) His answer is to corral them in a safe place outside the city and there to persuade them of the error of their ways. He is quite clear that the end of this process is only reached when the atheists recognize the error of their ways. This is not a conversation. A conversation is only meaningful if the conclusion of the conversation is open. Even refusing to end the conversation until agreement is reached is an authoritarian position.

The intertwining of authority and negotiation is very complicated, and I think it is misleading to insist that they are polar opposites.

Claiming that a male bird of paradise clears out an area and dances because he's trying to impress a female is a bit of a stretch.
— creativesoul
I wonder how one might explain that behaviour. The idea that he is doing it for fun is not impossible, but is a bit of a stretch. If females did it too, it would be plausible. But, as I understand it, they don't. Suppose that female behaviour indicates that they are attracted by what the male does. Perhaps that Is just an coincidence, but that's a bit of a stretch too. — Ludwig V

On reflection, I'm very unhappy with this comment. Setting it right, or at least righter, high-lights a complication in our question which has not gone unrecognized, but which, it seems to me, has not been fully recognized.

I don't think anyone seriously wants to reject the idea that the male bird of paradise builds his bower in order to attract a female. But @creativesoul is also right to observe that that purpose is not necessarily the bird's motivation. We ought to know this, since the same issue can be observed in human beings. Display behaviour can be observed in both males and female human beings, but it does not follow that they are motivated by the desire to make babies (though they may be, sometimes). Human beings can tell us what their motivation is, but the birds cannot. It seems to me, in fact, most likely that the birds just feel like building a bower, finding it a satisfactory and worth-while thing to do - just as so much display behaviour in human beings is done only because they feel that it is a worth-while thing to do.
But there is no doubt that such behaviour serves an evolutionary purpose. What's more, it explains the behaviour as rational; "feeling like it" doesn't explain anything.

Brilliant. Thanks very much.

The familiar Wittgensteinian paradoxes about rule following similarly block any institution of norms merely by invocation of a rule,

It all goes back to this. But doesn't it follow that the authority of a pronouncement within the language is actually conferred on it by the (brute) fact that we accept it as authoritative - and our children accept their version of the practice after they have learnt ours?

But this having reached bedrock is precisely the way out of despair, or precisely, the way to free ourselves of the meaningless that confusing empirical with grammatical certainty leads to. — Joshs

In the context of philosophical scepticism or nihilism, that's so. The remark was, in a sense, only a flourish. But I was thinking of the parent trying to deal rationally with a child who has discovered the possibility of an infinite regress of "why". In the end, the authoritative. dogmatic, answer is the only possible one.

The language game makes intelligibility possible by taking for granted a founding system of interconnected meanings that it would make no sense to doubt as long as one continued to move within that language game. This built-in normativity of our languaged practices is not a failure to properly ground meaning, but the condition for keeping meaning alive. — Joshs

I agree with that, of course. That's the explanation that makes the authoritative answer not merely dogmatic.

Successfully navigating the world requires successfully distinguishing oneself from the rest of the world. Slime molds do this. Bacteria. All forms of life avoid danger and gather resources and thus... successfully navigate the world while they survive. — creativesoul

Yes, I'm aware that the idea of autonomy can be applied to any living creature, including bacteria and moulds. (There are complicated cases, like lichens.) I didn't include those in what I said, because they are neither sentient nor rational. In fact, I think of them as indistinguishable from autonomous machines, apart from their ability to reproduce. There no question of wondering what they think or of language-less behaviour.

What is the standard and/or criterion you're using to decide/determine/judge what sorts of beliefs language less animals can and/or cannot have?
— creativesoul
Roughly, the same ones that I use to decide what believes human beings have when I cannot ask them.
— Ludwig V
Care to elaborate? — creativesoul

I can try. My thought is roughly this. I fear that if I talk about "words" here, you'll think I'm talking about words in a narrow sense and miss the point. Fortunately, concepts relate to specific words or terms in language and there are rules about how they are to be used. But in many cases - I expect there are exceptions - some of the rules are about how we should apply them in our non-verbal behaviour. A bus stop is where one congregates to catch a bus; a door bell is there to be rung to announce our arrival; etc. We often use this feature to attribute beliefs to humans when we cannot cross-question them. I don't see any reason to suppose that this feature enables us to attribute our concepts to dogs. The concept of food is not just about it can be idenitified and analysed, but how it is to be treated - cooking and eating. Hence, although dogs cannot cook food or analyse in the ways that we do, it can certainly identify it and eat it. This fits perfectly with the idea that our ideas and language about people can be stretched and adapted to (sentient and/or rational) animals.

I see no ground for presupposing she (sc. Ludwig's dog) is comparing your (sc. Ludwig's) wants to anything. — creativesoul

I'm not at all clear what you mean about comparing wants to things. It was usually pretty obvious when she wanted something and when she had got it.

Metacognition is not an idea. It's talking about our own thoughts. — creativesoul

Well, animals are not capable of talking, so that's not hard. The question is, then, is whether they are capable of knowing what others and themselves are thinking; if that means they are capable of thinking about their own and others thoughts, then so be it.

The point was that Jimi trembled as a result of drawing correlations between his behaviour and Janus'. That's all it takes. — creativesoul

I grant you that Jimi's fear might be triggered by Janus' return. But let's think this through. It might well be that he only started trembling when Janus came through the door. The trigger, then, would be the chicken plus Janus. That would explain why he killed the chicken. But it doesn't explain why he was still sitting beside it. Surely, an innocent, oblivious dog, would either start eating it or would wander off in search of something more amusing. I think the dead chicken reminded him of the previous occasion; Janus' arrival was the crisis, so he may well have got more anxious as he came in.

Jimi cannot compare his own behaviour to the rules in order for him to know that his own behaviour did not comply. Jimi did not suddenly realize that he had broken the rules upon Janus' return. He was suddenly reminded(drew the same correlations once again) when it all came together again. — creativesoul

I'm trying to think what dog behaviour might distinguish complying with the rules from knowing that s/he is complying with the rules. Nothing comes to mind, so I'll give you that one. However, I'm reasonably sure that if they are complying with the rules, they know what the rules are. Jimi's killing of the chicken suggests that he had forgotten what the rule was. There's no doubt that he remembered at some point after the event. The question is, what triggered his memory and hence fear?

But the really significant point about the story is that he never bothered another chicken. That was the lesson he was supposed to learn. What correlation do you suppose that is based on?

...I set out how a creature without naming and descriptive practices can form, have, and/or hold belief about distal objects that are themselves existentially dependent upon language users. — creativesoul

Therefore, the mouse(a creature without naming and descriptive practices) can indeed form, have, and/or hold belief about some of that which is existentially dependent upon language use. Not all. — creativesoul

OK. So we agree. I suppose we might disagree about which bits they can hold beliefs about which they cannot, but perhaps we don't need to tease that out now.

Belief that approaches are all about epistemological claims, in that they attempt to show how truth is presupposed in all belief statements and/or knowledge claims. As useful as they are in helping us to think about such things, they are useless in determining and/or acquiring knowledge of what language less thought and belief consists of. — creativesoul

You've said twice that on reflection you are not happy with this. I don't see what's wrong with it. Could you explain?

I feel that you have ignored all that I have said about theory of mind and remain close-minded to understanding it. I repeat - it's not about reading outward signs - it is about forming theories about what is in anther mind. — Questioner

I read both of the Wikipedia articles - which does not make me an expert.
Wikipedia - Theory of Mind[/url and Wikipedia - Theory of mind in animals
There's a lot of interesting empirical work here. Not much, I have to say, in the way of consensus agreements. The actual psychology under this heading seems very worth while. But the heading is very confusing.

Discussions of theory of mind have their roots in philosophical debate from the time of René Descartes' Second Meditation, which set the foundations for considering the science of the mind.

Quite so. Psychology seems to have more difficulty than any other science about escaping from its philosophical roots.

In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them.

That seems to be clear. We do know that we understand other people. I'm not sure whether "by ascribing mental states to them" is a harmless paraphrase of "understanding other people" or something more substantial, philosophically speaking, and more controversial. But the question how our understanding works seems a sound starting-point for scientific research.

The "theory of mind" is described as a theory, because the behavior of the other person, such as their statements and expressions, is the only thing being directly observed; no one has direct access to the mind of another, and the existence and nature of the mind must be inferred. It is typically assumed others have minds analogous to one's own;

Philosophically speaking, this is indeed a theory. I read it as a philosophical theory of the mind. But that's not what is meant by "theory of mind" in this context, because each of us has our own theory. That's why I find the name for research in this area so confusing.
I'm not sure that it is wise to treat these propositions more or less as axioms when they are the focus of much philosophical debate. Perhaps it doesn't make any difference whether philosophical dualism or one of its variants is true, but if that's so, it makes a big difference to philosophy.

I’m not sure we would act for a reason (seems like a motive, or a principle), but after the fact (post hoc) we could give reasons for acting as I did (which could include causes and motives, as it could include excuses and justifications). — Antony Nickles

I don't deny that. But I think W leaves a gaping hole in the demonstration that mental objects - in the "occult" sense, drop out of consideration as irrelevant. But what makes the reasons mine, as opposed to justifications after the event? Perhaps the fact that I give them as reasons after the event is what makes them mine. In giving them, I claim them, or perhaps acknowledge them. Either way, they are to be compared to "I am in pain" or "That tastes sweet". There is a complicated hinterland here, which is usually acknowledged only in passing, that one's authority in such cases is defeasible. We may be joking or pretending. But it's time to move on.

This is the point where people say that understanding or meaning or interpretation "drop out", because Wittgenstein is insistent that anything you try to grasp as standing behind the words will be just another sign. There is something genuinely radical, or at least strange, going on here. — Srap Tasmaner

That's right. It seems to me that this is why W ends up (in the PI) with the faintly despairing "But this is what I do!" or "When I have reached bedrock, my spade is turned.

An utterance is not judged as, or as not, a ‘use’ of words; an utterance has a use—it is a plea, or a threat, or points out a difference; as are the examples regarding the pencil—depending on the context. Thus why words are not ‘meant’ by us, other than in contrast to when we jest. — Antony Nickles

W doesn't give an analysis of his use of "use" in this context, but there is more than one use of words at stake here. Austin identifies some of them when he develops his concept of speech acts - which are, after all, uses of words. (I'm thinking of locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts) But he doesn't pay attention to two different ways of thinking about language. One is the approach through the idea that language is a structure and can be thought of as existing independently of speakers - much as a game can be thought of as a structured set of rules as well as in the playing of them. Here, we can say that speakers must conform to the rules, on pain of failing to communicate or saying something we did not mean to say. In this mode, we can speak of the "grammar" of language. But this approach doesn't pay attention to the various events of speakers speaking; here, breaking (or stretching) the rules is possible, because it turns on the intentions of the speaker and the reactions of the audience.
Of course, there is a sense in which the grammar of language only exists insofar as speakers conform to it. But that doesn't mean that anything goes.