- Farewell and good luck!

I think we live in legitimately strange times. I doubt anyone in history has seen more change than someone who was born in the West in the 1930's and dies when they are 95.

I don’t have a problem with this view, but I am surprised you don’t...

Also, Aristotle’s description, like mine, has an interdependency on the community and the individual such that there is a need for “redress in private transactions” and “the distribution of honor, wealth, etc.” — Bob Ross

I have been following Aristotle (or Aquinas, who follows Aristotle) from the very beginning of this discussion. The problem then as now is that your conception is not Aristotelian, so I am wondering what it is. Is it Christian? Marxist? Rawlsian?

For example you want to say:

• It is unjust not to help someone on the other side of the world.
• It is unjust when the rich do not help the poor.
• It is unjust for the community not to fulfill members' needs when it can.

None of this is true for Aristotle. Distributive/communal justice does not entail any of this.

...which was my point before: — Bob Ross

Here's what I am thinking. Justice is about, fundamentally, respecting other members of the community (or social structure in which one is a member, such as a family for example) such that each member is getting what they rightly deserve and not getting what they do not deserve. — Bob Ross

I think this is too vague to do any work. "Justice is about respecting other members of the community with respect to desert." Fine, but what questions does that answer? You think the guy on the other side of the world deserves $100 and I don't. We haven't gotten anywhere.

This definition is also not found in the Webster dictionary, which you used as a critique of mine. — Bob Ross

Finding no philosophical or political antecedent, I looked to the dictionary. In my case the philosophical antecedent is clear: Aristotle.

However, in terms of what you would call “distributive justice”, it seems like if the community, e.g., has an abundance of water then they shouldn’t hoard it for the ruling elite—that would be unjust.

Moreover, this “distributive justice” seems connected still to what one is ‘owed’. Viz., it is only unjust for the community to hoard the abundance of water because they have duties, as the community, which include properly distributing resources—so that is owed to the individual in a sense. — Bob Ross

Sure, so for example, the community has a duty to properly distribute the revenue it receives via taxation, and the individual is owed a proper distribution. But he is not owed water qua water, but rather water insofar as it comes under the heading of proper distribution of communal resources. And the community is not something over and against the individual; but rather the whole of which he is a part.

But from this we do not get your ideas about duties to people on the other side of the world, or duties of the wealthy to the poor, etc.

That’s fair: negative rights a lot easier to uphold than positive ones; but I think we both agree we have positive rights. Take the water example: if you were denied any water simply because the government didn’t want to give it to you (perhaps they want to use that water for a water slide party for the ruling elites) even though you are doing your duly fair share of work in society—which we could think of it in terms of you having the money to pay for the water bill—then that is unjust because you have a positive right to the water. — Bob Ross

Well I would say we do not have a positive right to water insofar as it is an "absolute positive quantity" or insofar as it is a good or service simpliciter. We only have a right to water insofar as we have a right to proper distribution and proper distribution happens to include water in our governmental setup. Think of it this way: the only reason I have a right to half a pizza is because you and I bought it together. If we hadn't bought it together I wouldn't have a right to half of it.

I think the trouble comes in, as you rightly pointed out, when we think of positive rights just like negative ones. E.g., when we think of our right life like our right to have water when it isn’t being distributed fairly. This ends up conflating the right which can never be breached with a straw man version of the “water right” such that one thinks that the government is required to give them water simpliciter. That’s not what we are saying here. — Bob Ross

That's right, but when you say that the poor have a right to the wealthy's wealth, it looks like you are saying they have a right simpliciter. I see no private-commutative right between the wealthy person and the poor person. In fact I don't really think there are positive commutative rights at all, although everything I am saying is simplified a bit. Aristotle's "redress in private transactions" obviously does not function apart from redress (and this does not include cosmic redress!). Probably the only (positive) right to goods and services that one has is a qualified right to goods and services, insofar as those goods and services come under distributive justice. The right to half a pizza only exists insofar as the purchase or production of pizza is a joint venture.

Yes, it's not a very exciting result when applied to things like rabbits, because, as has been said, we can be pretty damn confident. — J

This is a consequence of taking the philosophy of language as first philosophy, as pointed out. If philosophy of language is first philosophy, then the fact that different people use words in different ways is inscrutable. So it's a good thing that philosophy of language is not first philosophy! But given that so much of contemporary philosophy is built on this foundation of sand, what is needed is rebuilding from the ground up, and that would be painful.

- Yep, good connection.

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Well, this is the old problem of the One and the Many — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep, and I think the entry point into one of the deeper issues at play here is the modern concept of "sortals" that mentioned.

You are probably correct here. I thought of process metaphysics because I like it much more. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, although the bundle theorist who wants to beef up or thicken their approach could always move in the process direction. The difficulty is that the modern mechanistic paradigm is the hurdle that must be leapt over, and I think it is a rather large hurdle.

I don't mean to derail the thread, but there are lots of interesting theological parallels and antecedents. The Thomistic resistance to what is now called "existential inertia," and its contention that esse is the participatory act of existence can easily be taken in a process or bundle-esque direction (although Catholicism has always tried to maintain a balance).

Further, the <simplicity and unification> approach finds its antecedent in Occasionalism, and I think there are good arguments that Hume—who is often seen as the father of bundle-theoretic paradigms—is deeply indebted to Occasionalists.

I think where a deflationist who also enjoys the functionalist paradigm above would disagree with a functionalist simpliciter is whether metaphysical {and maybe even epistemological} questions can only concern specific instances of the mapping between true behaviours and our descriptions. In effect, they disagree on whether the only salient questions about objects and concepts are of the modelling form. Which is roughly describing how things work, or describing {how describing things work} works. — fdrake

You seem to be saying that the deflationist and the functionalist (or "behaviorist") occupy the same position, but the former occupies it dogmatically and the latter occupies it tentatively. That is an interesting idea, but if someone looks like a deflationist, quacks like a deflationist, and waddles like a deflationist, is he then a deflationist? :razz:

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And sortals were my logico-linguistic way of getting at [being/essence]. — Srap Tasmaner

Okay, interesting. There is here the closely related issue of accidental wholes vs. organic wholes (organisms), i.e. whether organisms can be modeled as machines.

We don't talk this way much anymore. There was a time when "essence" was tidied up as "necessary and sufficient conditions" for ― for what? For truthfully applying a predicate, mostly. Being is scrunched down into the copula, and all that's left is being a value of a bound variable. — Srap Tasmaner

The thread, "Essence and Modality: Kit Fine," comes to mind.

If your model quantifies over ducks, you're committed to ducks as entities, no cheating. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep, and was recently overseeing this rule.

But the anti-metaphysics comes by flipping that around: ducks are entities just means you have a model in which you quantify over them. That implies "duck" has what amounts to a functionalist definition: what role ducks play in the model, how the duck nodes behave, interact with other nodes, and so on. — Srap Tasmaner

This is where 's shift from "behavior" to "function" becomes a bit precarious, especially given that he never actually drops the "behavior" language. I'm not sure that the jump to functionalism or "behaviorism" is justified. Is there a petitio principii which allows 'ducks' to be entities in the first place, as claims? This is the question of what an entity is, of what a duck is, and this is presumably related to your "sortals."

And if that's the case, it provides a kind of justification for functionalist philosophy: we know this will work because we're just doing the same sort of thing the world is already doing. — Srap Tasmaner

My basic counterargument here is that what the world is already doing in a prima facie sense is represented by our language, which includes verbs and nouns. If the behaviorist needs to rewrite that to exclude nouns (i.e. if models require only behavior and not bearers of behavior), then behaviorism is not ready-made. It requires a revision of our prima facie interpretation of the world.

Oh yeah, really far. Most ordinary people aren't going to notice that the only consistent way to do this is, like Isaac, to treat the universe as behavior all the way down, never bottoming out at some thing it's the behavior of. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, exactly.

Ralph and Sam, striding through philosophy with their functionalist hammers for years, and one day Ralph says, "Hey Sam. You ever notice that the world is full of nails? That there's nothing but nails? That's funny, isn't it?"

That's the sentiment behind this thread. — Srap Tasmaner

Okay, haha.

But I don't necessarily buy the idea that functionalism or "behaviorism" are unfalsifiable. Regardless, you are right that in order to assess it one must step outside of its frame. In many discussions with @fdrake I have the suspicion that he is not ready to step outside of its frame. For example, in the thread about triangles I kept trying to push the discussion away from merely stipulated definitions and into metaphysics, and I felt that he kept saying, "I am not opposed to metaphysics," all the while resisting the shift into the explicitly metaphysical register.

(There may be a meta-mentality about the limitations of the powers of human knowing at play, such that “metaphysics” is necessarily limited to a model-theoretic framework. On my view this is related to Enlightenment motives and the quiet significance of behavior vs. function, but more on that later.)

Also nothing more than a quick intervention...

Oh yeah, really far. Most ordinary people aren't going to notice that the only consistent way to do this is, like Isaac, to treat the universe as behavior all the way down, never bottoming out at some thing it's the behavior of. Which is why you might be right, @Count Timothy von Icarus, that this falls into the tradition of process philosophy. — Srap Tasmaner

Supposing we want to play the game of finding the "next of kin" to the OP, I would look to metaphysical or mereological bundle theory, not process philosophy. Process thought does provide an alternative to substance metaphysics, but it is historically and metaphysically thick in a way that the modeling approach is not, and I don't think it has received much attention in the Anglophone world apart from religious philosophers.

When I studied metaphysics we focused on Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, and the competition was bundle theory, not process philosophy. The main ideas are often traced to Hume, and permeate the Anglophone horizon. The OP strikes me as some variety of bundle theory. See:

A second important issue in contemporary discussions of substance is whether substances are in some sense reducible to their properties, or whether there exists some further component, such as Locke’s notion of a substratum discussed in section 2.5. Both views have been defended in recent discussions. — Bundle theories versus substrata and “thin particulars” | SEP

For another entry from SEP, see <the subsection on objects>.

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In speaking to Parmenides and Heraclitus Aristotle says something like this, "You fellows have theories that possess admirable simplicity and unification, but they turn out to be too simple to save the appearances. What we find in nature is motion, and this entails both perdurance and change."

Our age has this same tendency towards simplicity and unification, whether in the form of determinism, string theory, monism, or bundle theory. The question is whether the notion of a bundle or the notion of behavior is sufficient to save the appearances that we actually encounter in reality. Aristotle says that it is not sufficient, and that substance/substratum is also necessary. The idea is that, contrary to "behaviorism," nouns are not dispensable.

- That's fair, I guess I didn't realize how much pressure the media was bringing to bear. But I remember that even amidst all the hubbub, the average Americans that I knew were not very concerned about it. Again, his approval rating tells that tale. It's possible I was in a Democrat echo chamber, but I think that even the simple fact that Clinton managed to balance the budget put him in the good graces of middle-class Americans.

And note that the impeachment charge was of lying under oath, not being unfaithful in marriage. — ssu

Right: lying about having sex with Lewinsky. With both Trump and Clinton, when the impeachment charge finally comes up and it turns out the opposition is playing for pennies, I think the average person loses interest along with faith in the system. Clinton's approval rating and Trump's reelection show that, for better or for worse, the electorate didn't take such proceedings seriously.

I dunno about that one. — Darkneos

Yes, it is clearly wrong. It's remarkable that there are people who find such nonsense "brilliant."
Eating a poison mushroom instead of a healthy mushroom will be wrong whether or not one is in communication with others. Pain and death do not ask permission of human language before visiting. Something I referenced earlier today:

One of the differences is the very fact that the philosophy of language does not represent the first philosophy of Aristotle. In fact, it doesn’t even come close. Language is, first and foremost, a tool for understanding. Our philosophy of language is always going to be secondary to the metaphysical, logical, and epistemological perspectives that underlie it. The philosophy of language will presuppose the purpose of language itself. Rather than constituting the raw material of thought, language is both separable from thought and separable from corresponding entities. The proper use of language consists of using it to get things right about the world as it exists independently of us and our attempts to describe it. — What did Aristotle say about Meaning and Language?

A small nitpick; individualism inherently is about the relation between states and citizens. In my view, the type of problems in the OP have more to do with a cultural trend of extreme liberalism, perhaps even nihilism, and the resulting atomization. — Tzeentch

I would say that individualism is related to liberalism and nihilism, and is also not merely about the relation between states and citizens. In fact the individualism flowing from liberalism originally had to do with religion, not states, and the state then was made to soak up the social capital abandoned by religion.

People will tend to see themselves as individuals vis-a-vis the state, but also vis-a-vis religion, race, class, sex, geographic locale, and even sexual preference/orientation. In fact when people in the West speak metaphorically and pejoratively about an identity being "religious" or "cultish," what they mean is that it is oppressive to individualism. There is much value placed in the uniqueness and originality of the individual, and yet this comes up short against the fact that we are mere numbers or statistics in a sociological and programmatic world. So there is an attempt to "unionize" the uniqueness in the form of minority lobbying, especially if the minority can be construed as oppressed. The desired recognition is more attainable in this collective/unionized form.

While individualism seduces us with promises of freedom and self-definition, it often breeds insecurity in a world stripped of clear anchors. — Benkei

Yep, there is a feedback loop between individualism and isolation. I think you are right that gender is at the core of it, but things like class and race are also highly relevant, and religion is also at play in the background. In my opinion democracy itself is a great leveler that tends to drive envy and self-assertion as well as group-assertion, and this is exacerbated in a faceless internet age where all news is national or global news, and therefore the possibility of being recognized has largely disappeared (because local communities and local spotlights have disappeared). This shift towards globalism and virtual realities creates lacunae of natural communities at smaller, more realistic locales.

Good OP. :up:

I got those from After Virtue by MacIntyre — Bob Ross

Okay, so Nozick vs. Rawls (and probably capitalism vs. communism in MacIntyre's thought - property rights vs. redistribution of wealth).

I find it plausible that justice requires a balance between A and B types of justice because they are the two extremes in a community: the one, to wit, the proper assessment of individual merit and the other, to wit, the proper assessment of natures (of members). One focuses only on the individual in terms of agency, and the other solely on the needs of each member. — Bob Ross

MacIntyre's point of departure is that the two conceptions are incompatible, no? Even if there is some common ground between them?

How would you define justice, then? — Bob Ross

I would follow Aristotle, Cicero, or Aquinas. As quoted above:

But of justice as a part of virtue, and of that which is just in the corresponding sense, one kind is that which has to do with the distribution of honour, wealth, and the other things that are divided among the members of the body politic (for in these circumstances it is possible for one man’s share to be unfair or fair as compared with another’s); and another kind is that which has to give redress in private transactions. — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V.2

if the community has the resources to suffice the basic needs of each member than it should — Bob Ross

This is probably the kernel of the strangeness in your thought. This conception of justice finds no basis anywhere in the Merriam Webster definitions above. "If you can do X then you are required to do so in justice." That is a very strange claim to my ears. — Leontiskos

My first objection is to this, "If you can provide the basic needs of X then you are required to do so in justice." (Where in this case X = members of the community.) I'm not sure what legitimate conception of justice could ever support such a claim.

The second objection, to Rawls, is that cosmic justice is not justice. There is no duty to enforce cosmic justice. If someone on the other side of the world needs $100 from me, I have no duty to provide it, because cosmic justice isn't real. That someone is born shorter and therefore is not as good at basketball is not "unfair" in any realistic sense. There is no cosmic court of redress to which that person can bring their suit of unfairness. Distributive justice pertains to communities, and the cosmos is not a community. What Rawls and post-Christians want is a court of cosmic justice that we are in charge of running.

Of course, there are theological possibilities that could introduce cosmic duties, but I don't see this coming from natural reason.

Do you deny any circumstantial aspects to justice? — Bob Ross

I'm not sure. Consider your drought example. Does the community owe the members water or not? If the community owes the members water, then the drought is immaterial to this fact, and the community which has made itself an arm of cosmic justice has a duty to sort out the cosmic factors (and perhaps get water from elsewhere).

The confusion lies in the idea that distributive justice functions in the same way that commutative justice does. Distributive justice has to do with an impartial and fair distribution of things among the community ("honour, wealth, etc."). The only legitimate claim is therefore something like, "I did not get a fair share in relation to the rest of the community." Absolute claims are excluded, such as, "I did not get healthcare, and you have a duty to provide me with healthcare."

...and this is why justice was classically concerned primarily with "negative rights." — Leontiskos

So compare a negative right, "You have a right not to be stolen from," to a positive right, "You have a right to a free ice cream cone every day." The first right is not so difficult to create - it only requires us to prosecute thieves. So we need to maintain a justice system that prosecutes thieves. What about the second right? It is a bit more difficult to create, as we need to manufacture 330 million ice cream cones every day. This should be taken as a kind of reductio ad absurdum. Something which requires a promise is not a right, and we do not have a distributive right to any absolute positive quantity whatsoever, be it ice cream cones or healthcare or social security (Social Security is on point given that the U.S. fund will be insolvent by 2033, at which point we will literally have people claiming a right to non-existent money. Hopefully cosmic Santa Claus refills that fund!).

(MacIntyre's A and B are both precritical notions of justice or fairness. They need to be submitted to criticism before they pass muster.)

If you were too young to remember, the Clinton administration looked to go from scandal to scandal, had even an impeachment, and had dedicated Clinton-haters in the GOP (just as people in the dems really don't like Trump). Only on a broader perspective what the actions, policies and achievements of the Clinton administration can be seen, apart from sperm on Monica's dress. — ssu

This doesn't strike me as accurate. Just look at his approval ratings. They were generally high, and never higher than during the impeachment. In the U.S. Clinton is remembered as a good president who did his job, was well-spoken, balanced the budget, was willing to shift the historical Democrat line when necessary, and was guilty of sexual misconduct. The comparison to Trump is a stretch, although it is true that the American people have a tendency to ignore the tabloids and the superficial political machinations, as well as sexual misconduct of leaders. In both cases it was recognized by the people that the impeachment proceedings were political stunts against sitting presidents, which is not to deny that it was wrong for Clinton to have oral sex with his intern.

According to Laclau, collective political identities are forged through particular discursive articulation. Under normal conditions, social demands take the form of rational, contextually situated requests, implicitly assuming the legitimacy of governing institutions and their capacity to address them. However, when a plurality of isolated demands goes unmet, they can coalesce into a unified opposition to power, rejecting its authority. — Number2018

I appreciate this because I've never been able to figure out what the elusive term "populism" is supposed to mean. Usually it is functioning as little more than a pejorative. I think this is a reasonable account.

For Aristotle populism is probably just democracy, or more precisely, the shift from oligarchy to democracy. For Aristotle Western nations are controlled by the wealthy, not the demos, and are therefore oligarchies.

Before 2016 you had oligarchy on both sides of the U.S. aisle. In 2016 we had democracy/populism rising up from both left and right (Sanders and Trump). Trump toppled the oligarchic GOP primaries; Sanders was not able to do so, although he came close in 2020. Biden was the DNC oligarchy's answer to Sanders, for the DNC used its oligarchic resources to dramatically reshape the race after Sanders began winning in 2020. Harris was the DNC oligarchy's answer to Biden's poor debate performance. Harris' candidacy was expressly oligarchic rather than democratic, as she was an unelected candidate.

There are lots of things Trump voters were voting against, but I think much of it was tied up with the unabashed oligarchy of the DNC (which is now also bound up with progressive theories which are out of step with the demos). It sounds like Laclau sees populism as a quasi-revolutionary movement borne out of frustration with the status quo. That makes sense and I think it is reflected in the 2024 U.S. elections (as well as recent elections in Germany, Canada, France, and elsewhere).

(But with that said, it isn't necessarily revolutionary to elect the elected candidate over the unelected candidate in a democracy. Populism and democracy seem to very much go hand in hand in this case.)

What do models model exactly? It's not a hard question; the answer is behavior. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, what is the standard "model duck"? A duck decoy. And a decoy does not model behavior, it models form. The form then mediates expected behaviors, which is why the decoy is successful. In real life the metonymy of the decoy functions in virtue of the relation between the outward form/characteristics and the internal principles of action and passion. So if I see a decoy tiger I will become fearful because tigers have the power to kill me, and the thing before me looks like a tiger. If there were no difference between a tiger and its fearful behavior I would already be dead upon encountering one.

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Edit:

Much as I've enjoyed building models over the years, I'm a little uncomfortable that the approach I'm describing has a sort of blindness. Whenever a question is raised about what something is, it is immediately rewritten as a question about how that thing behaves, so that we can get started modelling that bundle of behavior.

Maybe that's genuinely the best way to go, and good riddance to questions of being, as the deflationist would have it. — Srap Tasmaner

I suppose if we stretch the word "behavior" quite far, such that it includes everything about a duck, then there can be no difference between behavior and being - no 'being' of the duck that is not captured by its behavior. And of course we may need to hone in on exactly what the OP means by 'being', or where that distinction is coming from. But I am in general wary of stretching the meaning of words in this way (whether with fdrake we stretch "social construction" to include the findings of the hard sciences, or with the behaviorist we stretch "behavior" to include potentialities such as passions, powers, and organism-unity). Usually that kind of stretching warps our thinking even where it doesn't lead us altogether astray.

Maybe this would be a useful way to think about it... Suppose a god like Aulë attempts to create a perfect replica of a living duck. What is the test of his success? We give him two "ducks," but he lacks knowledge of which one he created. We impose no limits on his investigation: he has as much time as he wants, and he can explore as he pleases, including vivisection and dissection. If he truly cannot tell the difference, then he has succeeded in creating a duck. And then we should ask: supposing he does succeed in creating an indiscernible replica, are all the criteria he ended up using in order to try to discern which duck is his, criteria which limit themselves to purely behavioral considerations? I would have an extremely hard time believing that they would be.

(So in order to reject the "behaviorism" of the OP I don't think we need to say that there are realities of substances that in no way manifest empirically, but I think it is right to reject it on the basis that there are realities of substances which manifest empirically—in "behavior," say,—but yet are not themselves properly called behaviors. A simple example would be the form/characteristics of the wings, which allow for flight. This form is not a behavior, but it is an intrinsic property of ducks and a prerequisite for the flying-behavior of ducks.)

This is a spin-off from the anti-realism thread — Srap Tasmaner

<This one>, for those who are interested.

For the deflationary style, this is the point. In the model-building style, being just disappears, and whenever you reach for it you find more behavior to incorporate into the model. But for the deflationist, ruling out the issue of being is the first move. Model-builders lose track of being; deflationists flee it and end up with behavior. — Srap Tasmaner

Much as I've enjoyed building models over the years, I'm a little uncomfortable that the approach I'm describing has a sort of blindness. Whenever a question is raised about what something is, it is immediately rewritten as a question about how that thing behaves, so that we can get started modelling that bundle of behavior. — Srap Tasmaner

Supposing Aristotle is a primary source of being/essence considerations, we should ask why he disagrees with the "behaviorist." Let me give some ideas off the top of my head.

First, going back to what I said to , "But activity is only half the picture. The other half is receptivity..." In the first place, "behavior" is a bit loose. If we model grass with artificial turf, are we modeling behavior? Does grass behave? Only metaphorically. For Aristotle the proper term is not behavior, but act/actuality (energeia or entelecheia). And the first Aristotelian objection to "behaviorism" and @fdrake is that there is not only act; there is also potency/potentiality (dunamis) (cf. SEP). For example, humans can die and female ducks can become pregnant. These are potentialities, not behaviors or acts.

For Aristotle, with natural entities we begin by observing their motion/change, both the way they move/change themselves and they way they are moved/changed by other things (and this pertains loosely to act and potency). From these observations we move to infer powers and then essence/whatness. Apparently your behaviorist thinks it is otiose to go beyond a consideration of motion/change. Why does Aristotle disagree?

He disagrees because powers explain motion/change, and essence/whatness explains powers. Truly explanatory principles are at play. To give an example, suppose we observe a human infant. As it grows it begins to speak English. Why does it speak at one time and not at another? Because it has a power to speak English. We then note that some children speak Spanish, and others other languages, and others multiple languages. We deduce that the English-speaking child not only has a power to speak English, but it also has the power to speak, or rather learn, Spanish. It has the power of language acquisition. And what can we conclude from the fact that humans can speak and learn languages, including formal mathematical and computational languages, as well as cultural languages? We can conclude that they are rational, i.e. they have the ability to compose and divide with their mind in a way that produces knowledge. For Aristotle this is a deeper explanatory level, namely that the essence/whatness of human beings is "rational animal."

Now suppose a god is going to recreate the duck, perhaps as Aulë created the dwarves. Will it be sufficient to know how ducks behave? I don't think so. I think one will also need to know how ducks respond to the behavior of other things, such as the fox that eats duck (including how it responds to having its neck broken and being digested). And one will also need to understand not only the internal proportion of duck "behaviors," but also the principles, causes, and explanations of the behaviors, which dictate the manner in which different kinds of behaviors interact (as well as the proportions and interactions between these powers). For example, ducks have a desire and power to mate, eat, survive, migrate, etc. These are more generalized than particular, isolated behaviors. Finally, when we say "duck" we are thinking of a coherent totality of properties, behaviors, environmental interactions, and potentialities that make up a unified whole, and this is the essence/whatness of a duck. It underscores the fact that there is one thing/substance to which all of these different facts are attributable, and that this substance has a determinate nature that differs from other substances, such as foxes or fish.

Interesting thread. :up:

P.S. To contrast "being" with "behavior" is a bit odd, given that behaviors have being (and also truth in relation to @fdrake's context). The reason Aristotle talks about substance, essence, and nature is because he thinks the being of the duck is different from the being of the quack, and both underlies and precedes it in an important way. 'Quack' is a verb, a behavior. 'Duck' is a noun, a substance that produces behavior. Can the behaviorist account for nouns?

Yes, truth in the intellect is most properly truth. How does it follow then that truth in arrangements of stipulated signs or formal systems, which are artifacts is also primarily truth? Aquinas speaks specifically of truth in the sense that people's words (or products of the productive arts) are adequate to their intellect for instance. This is not the same thing as truth-as-adequacy-of-intellect-to-being. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Here you go:

Whence I say that “true” is said primarily of the truth of the intellect, and of the statement insofar as it is a sign of that truth, whereas it is said of the real thing insofar as it is the cause of truth. — Aquinas, I Sent. d. 19, q. 5, a. 1

I don't. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Then give an example of univocal predication that is not analogical predication.

Truth is predicated analogously when we are moving in and out of the intellect, from the intellect to things — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes.

...from the intellect to stipulated sign systems, etc. The ambiguity surrounding the truth value propositions such as: "the room is dark" is a result of the fact that the truth of a utterance is not the same as the truth of the intellect.

...

our words are merely signs of truth in the intellect — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think so. The word/statement/utterance is not accidentally related to the soul:

Spoken words then are symbols of affections of the soul, and written words are symbols of spoken words. And just as written letters are not the same for all humans, neither are spoken words. But what these primarily are, are signs of the affections of the soul, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our affections are likenesses. — Aristotle, Beginning of De Interpretatione

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I've said that one might predicate "health" of different species univocally. I said the relationship is analogical. If it weren't, then there must be a single measure by which all healthy things are healthy. Yet the measure of a healthy flower is a healthy flower, and the measure of a healthy tiger a healthy tiger, not a sort of Platonic health participated in by all healthy things. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, if you don't think "healthy" can be univocally said of different species, then it looks like you are falling into nominalism and denying the possibility of univocal predication altogether.

Is your contention that beauty is said univocally of Beethoven and horses? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps. Beauty is a controversial topic. You keep focusing on controversial cases, such as beauty, privations (darkness), and genus differences (animals/flowers).

Univocal predication is not analogical predication. Do you think univocal predication exists? If so, where does it exist? Can we predicate 'animal' or 'health' of both cats and dogs univocally? Good philosophy does not begin with controversial cases.

Analogy isn't only involved in theology, except in later deflations of the notion. But I think the larger issue is that truth is predicated primarily of the divine intellect, not of all intellects. The proper measure of the human intellect is things. Thomas explains what it would mean to deny this; we end up with Protagoras, the human intellect becomes the measure of truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We've already been over this. Aquinas literally says that, "If therefore we speak of truth, as it exists in the intellect, according to its proper nature, then are there many truths in many created intellects..."

Now you can say that "truth is predicated primarily of the divine intellect," but you would be doing theology and making a controversial statement. Aquinas would agree that the divine intellect is the exemplar of truth, but I don't think you would find him claiming that "truth is predicated primarily of the divine intellect."

See also I Sent. d. 19, q. 5, a. 2.

IMO, if one cuts out the divine intellect it would be better to describe truth as existing first in things virtually, as time exists in nature fundamentally but not actually for Aristotle and St. Thomas. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Aquinas is clear that truth in the intellect is caused by the thing. We already looked at this in ST I.16.1.ad3. See also:

I answer that, of the things that are signified by names, one finds three differences. For there are some that are outside the soul according to their whole complete existence; and things of this sort are complete beings, like a man and a stone. But there are some that have nothing outside the soul, like dreams and the imagining of a chimera. However, there are some that have a foundation in a real thing outside the soul, but the completion of their account, as regards that which is formal, is through the activity of the soul, as is clear in the universal. For humanity is something in reality, yet there it does not have the account of the universal, since there is not any humanity common to many outside the soul. Rather, insofar as it is received in the intellect, there is joined to it, through the activity of the intellect, an intention according to which it is called a “species.” And the like is so for time, which has a foundation in motion—that is, the prior and the posterior of the motion itself—but as regards what is formal in time—that is, the numbering—it is completed through the activity of the intellect numbering it. — Aquinas, I Sent. d. 19, q. 5, a. 1

Indeed, it moves towards knowledge (and so truth) by moving from the multiplicity in the senses towards unity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And for Aquinas the unity is always a composition or correlation between what the intellect conceives and what is.

No it does not, since my table is arguable a rigid designator in the Kripean sense. I don't think it is, but you could in principle argue... — Arcane Sandwich

A rule of thumb for you: don't argue for things you don't believe are true.

These are all options, mate. — Arcane Sandwich

Here is your claim:

And the Merriam Webster Dictionary definition of the common noun "table" makes no reference to my table, the one in my living room, so how could it describe it? — Arcane Sandwich

The word "table" presumably describes the object in your living room, given the fact that you used the predication. Most of the definitions of 'definition' will suffice to show that the word 'table' describes the object in your living room.

Or you can just quote the definition of the word "indescribable", as the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines that word. — Arcane Sandwich

I could keep quoting the dictionary for you. You keep asking me to. But better that you learn to fish. Use the dictionary yourself. Before writing a post claiming that "indescribable" means something like, "unable to be described forever," go check your claim against a dictionary. Too much of this exchange has been you giving highly inaccurate definitions and me correcting these inaccuracies. If you use words in an accurate way people will be much more keen to engage your thought.

Let's revisit both A and B conceptions of Justice — Bob Ross

I don't see much merit in either of these conceptions. Are you pulling them out of thin air? Or is there some thinker or tradition that you are getting these from?

Here's what I am thinking. Justice is about, fundamentally, respecting other members of the community (or social structure in which one is a member, such as a family for example) such that each member is getting what they rightly deserve and not getting what they do not deserve. — Bob Ross

I would have the same concern about this. Where is it coming from? If we look at <a dictionary> I don't really see your conception. Or if we do, it is only there in a vague way.

We need a better starting point for a definition.

if the community has the resources to suffice the basic needs of each member than it should — Bob Ross

This is probably the kernel of the strangeness in your thought. This conception of justice finds no basis anywhere in the Merriam Webster definitions above. "If you can do X then you are required to do so in justice." That is a very strange claim to my ears.

In terms of my example of the self-sufficient man, I think you are right: it would be a matter of beneficence and benevolence and not justice. — Bob Ross

Yes, I agree.

Same thing, I think, with things like animal cruelty. Beyond the injustice which would arise from violating a person's property by torturing or killing their pet, it is not something, even outside the purview of justice, that a virtuous person would do because they need to be benevolent and beneficent. — Bob Ross

Sure, but commissions tend to be more unjust than omissions, and this is why justice was classically concerned primarily with "negative rights."

My table is in some way indescribable or inexpressible, because I cannot describe it forever. At some point, I will die. The table will still exist. At some point, humanity will become extinct. Tables will still exist, at least for some time. No one will be alive to describe them. — Arcane Sandwich

"Indescribable" does not mean "unable to be described forever." If that's what it meant then, by your own criteria, everything would be indescribable, and at that point the word would mean nothing at all.

And the noun "table" does not literally describe my table — Arcane Sandwich

Sure it does. That's why you used the word "table" to represent the object in your living room. If you had said "chair" we would have known that we are talking about a different object.

And the Merriam Webster Dictionary definition of the common noun "table" makes no reference to my table, the one in my living room, so how could it describe it? — Arcane Sandwich

When you say, "This object in my living room is a table," you are appealing to the definition of 'table'. The definition of a table describes tables. That's what a definition does.

It can't, therefore my table, the one that's in my living room, is indescribable by definition — Arcane Sandwich

Of course it's not. You already described the object: it's a table. You could further describe it by giving its color or its material or its height. In no way is your table indescribable or inexpressible.

"Indescribable". I claim that my table is "indescribable", and by that I mean, whatever the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines as "indescribable".

The example of my table still stands, Leontiskos — Arcane Sandwich

"Table" is a common noun, so when you talk about your table you have already given a description. When you talk about your table we all know what sort of thing you are describing.

If you disagree with me on these two points, then I kindly ask you to define, for the purpose of this conversation, what the word "inexpressible" literally means, and I would like a credible source for the definition of that word. — Arcane Sandwich

See:

not capable of being expressed : indescribable — Inexpressible Definition | Merriam Webster

Note how erroneous your definition is:

my table is not expressible. It's literally inexpressible. It cannot express anything by itself (because it's an inorganic object), and I cannot express it (because I cannot speak for it, since it's an inorganic object). — Arcane Sandwich

...."Unable to express itself; unable to be spoken for." You won't find your definition in any dictionary. "X is inexpressible" does not mean "X is unable to speak."

OK, the challenge is to come up with something that is both a) inexpressible, and b) whose inexpressibility can be explained. — J

If Wittgenstein or anyone else claims that X is inexpressible, then they have already expressed the inexpressible. If X were truly inexpressible then it could not be identified and deemed inexpressible.

And if Wittgenstein or anyone else claims that X is inexpressible, then they have reasons why they think it is inexpressible, and thus the putative grounds for its inexpressibility are already contained within the claim that it is inexpressible. After all, we don't claim that X is Y for no reason at all.

- :up:

But if something can't be said, it might be important to say why and surely philosophy has a role to play there. — Wayfarer

Yep.

If something is inexpressible, then by that very fact one cannot say why... Doing so would be to give expression to the inexpressible. — Banno

If someone believes something to be inexpressible, then they have a reason why. The ones who are willing to say why are the philosophers.

(And if the object of inexpressibility cannot be referenced in any way whatsoever, then there is nothing which is inexpressible in the first place.)

What can't be said can't be said, and it can't be whistled either. — Frank Ramsey as quoted in Nagel's The Last Word

Yep. :up:
The intellectus/ratio distinction is something I focused on when I first arrived at TPF, for it seems to me the biggest error that basically everyone here makes, together.

Note too the way that all moderns tend to agree with Hume that no movement from ratio to intellectus is possible. For example:

Arguments [...] based on personal experience are arguments to the best hypothesis. — J

(The abandonment of intellectus is the abandonment of knowledge in favor of opinion and hypothesis.)

I think I avoided this. I claimed that we assess mind independence - it is something we can establish. Like we'd establish that there are eggs in my supermarket. I'm claiming it's the same flavour of fact as the others. You can tell if something will be there when humanity won't be, or alternatively when its nature is not exhausted by our collective norms. — fdrake

Okay that's fair. I added a second edit a bit late, which I will reiterate below.

So I actually agree with this. But in a manner where I think perception is implicated in custom and vice versa. — fdrake

Okay.

I don't quite agree with this. Because I don't think any of the languages we care about and use are inattentive to perception and the nature of the world. — fdrake

I suppose the question is whether every language is equally attentive. For example, pre-Newtonian language will represent gravity differently than post-Newtonian language, and that difference will increase the further we move from Newton in either direction. The broad idea here is that languages (and customs) can be better or worse for truth talk.

Perception's a constructive endeavour, so's language use, and "giving and receiving" {if I've read you right} get their distinction undermined. Like in the dance example, every giving is a receiving and vice versa, and "what is given" and "what is received" are the same flavour of thing. Acts and events. — fdrake

Are you here paraphrasing Sellars? My point is that you seem to be underestimating the receptive side. It's not just actions and events, it's also passions (being-acted-upon). I tickle you and you laugh. You surrender to death (though not necessarily in that order :grin:). Are these actions? Are they events? Both analyses are incomplete without the incorporation of passion. We can call it a dance but if we only ever emphasize "leading" and never talk about "being led," then I don't think we are truly recognizing the dance. ...And in the modern world you have the "activists" who tend towards pure activity, and on the other extreme the determinists who posit pure passivity. Is the human an agent, a patient, or both?

I would say that both perception and knowledge involve crucially passive aspects. For example, Aristotle thought that there was an active part of the intellect and a passive part of the intellect, and that knowledge requires both. Push and pull.

Here is that second edit:

Edit: I now see that I am oversimplifying your position a bit, but even the phrase that "Correctness leverages," strikes me as overly activistic in a metaphorical sense. To say that we leverage mind independence feels strange to me. Or is it "correctness" that leverages it? Either way, to recognize, accept, or receive the fact of mind independence is different than leveraging. It can be leveraged, but that is only one approach. — Leontiskos

(Saying that we "leverage" mind-independence strikes me as a bit like saying that the dance partner who is being led is leading. Of course Anna can lead him to let-her-be-led, but leading and being led are in general two different and opposed things, as are leveraging and recognizing. Even the mechanic who wants to leverage a screw needs first to recognize the screw in order to then leverage it. And if we constantly emphasize the active side and only include the passive side through stretched metaphors, we will inevitably be skewing the landscape.)

-

If you're interested in the myth of the given, it's a notoriously difficult argument, and would probably be worth its own thread. — fdrake

Okay.

As a summary before I respond in detail: the world isn't true or false, it's just the world. Which means that true or false concerns our statements about it, and the world. Claiming that something is true correctly is just to correctly claim that something is true. That's about how I see it. — fdrake

Sure, I agree.

We're in a really odd position with the truth... — fdrake

Right, I agree.

I claim that this is only a puzzle if you come at it from the perspective that people cannot and do not assess mind-independence as part of what we do. But we do that all the time. The acts of assertion and assessment which are implicated in the norms of correct assertion don't change the state of the world, and the knowledge that it doesn't - and that we treat the world as if it doesn't - is leveraged in the execution of those norms. Correctness leverages mind independence and intersubjectivity as concepts, and it does those things because the state of things and the community at large do not depend upon any individuals' views of it. And the norms do not depend decisively upon any individuals use or views of them. — fdrake

This is where I disagree. There is a very important sense in which mind-independence is not part of what we do. Your picture is very activistic, in that it is all about humans doing things, acting, constructing or following social norms, etc. But activity is only half the picture. The other half is receptivity and recognition of what goes before us.

Edit: I now see that I am oversimplifying your position a bit, but even the phrase that "Correctness leverages," strikes me as overly activistic in a metaphorical sense. To say that we leverage mind independence feels strange to me. Or is it "correctness" that leverages it? Either way, to recognize, accept, or receive the fact of mind independence is different than leveraging. It can be leveraged, but that is only one approach.

Recall Srap's paragraph about dining:

When I was a kid, we used to set the table for dinner, always the same way: on the left, fork, sitting on a paper napkin, on the right, knife and spoon, in that order, dinner plate in between, and all on a placemat. That was our custom. There's logic to it, but it could clearly be done other ways, and was done differently in other homes. There's also a more general norm here, of which we had a specific version, of having silverware for everyone on the table. That too has a logic to it, but needn't be done, much less done this way.

And we could keep going, with more and more general norms that underlie specific ones. But is eating -- rather than eating specific things in specific ways at specific times of day -- is that "just" a norm? — Srap Tasmaner

Let's look more closely at the dining custom. "Knife left of spoon" - that's a fairly arbitrary social norm, much like driving on the right side of the road. It is "active" in the sense that depends entirely on human decisions about how it should be or will be. "Silverware on the left and right of the plate" - this is less arbitrary, given the spatial arrangement of human arms and hands. We are receptive before the fact that we have two arms and two hands on either side of our body. Our norms and customs are simply required to accommodate this fact if they are to be worthwhile. "Plate/food is placed along the edge of the table, close to the one who will eat" - this is even more 'receptive' and transcending of norms, as it will apply to cultures without silverware and even in a modified sense to most all mammals, given the fact that eating requires physical appropriation of food, which requires spatial juxtaposition. We are receptive to the fact that we are mammals and mammals eat. Our norms and customs must again accommodate this fact, rather than generate it.

I would say that all of the norms and customs that you are so interested in are at bottom grounded in these sorts of receptive facts (and because of this when we go "all the way down" we find something wholly different from a social construction). It is not quite right to say that these receptive facts are "something that we do." They are part of our life, but they are not something that we do. That things fall when dropped, or that mammals eat, are not things that we do. They are things that we recognize. They are truths that we recognize. Language and norms aid us in recognizing them, but the recognition is only an action in part. For it is also a passion in part (i.e. something that happens to us, or something that we yield before). Perhaps the grand-daddy of receptive facts is death, and the grand-daddy of activistic resistance to this fact which must be received is Kubler-Ross' stage of "denial" and distraction. The resolution stage is "acceptance," which is not accurately described as a form of doing.

-

I think a weakness in my view above concerns the content of acts of language. Because I've spent a long time talking about norms and correct assertion without engaging in a perhaps necessary metaphysical task. Trying to account for the commonality in our truth-speaking practices, and indeed in our acts. People eat. People entering a home agree upon object locations and object boundaries. There's a stability of content in the world itself which is somehow aperspectival. People can only disagree so much when we inhabit the same system of norms and environments - things fall down when dropped. — fdrake

Right.

How do environmental developments place constraints on norms of language use? I think the only answer I've got available for that is that event sequences can already be patterns. But that doesn't specify the relationship of pattern content with coordinating norms regarding that pattern. — fdrake

Freewheeling a bit, my hunch is that part of the move to linguistic philosophy was an attempt to simplify the object of study, and to get away from theories of mind or soul or whatnot. It's desirable to get away from those theories because the human is such a strange creature, such a strange mixture of mind and matter, of spiritual and earthly, of activity and passivity/receptivity. But the most characteristically human acts and artifacts inevitably share the same paradoxes of their source. Human languages, art, relationships, communities, etc., all contain those same paradoxes. And language along with the norms inherent therein are both active and receptive in the same way that humans are active and receptive. Language is not only imposed and created, it is also received, and part of that reception involves natural constraints and receptive facts, such as the fact that things fall when dropped. We could make a language that takes no account of that fact, but it would be inferior to one that does take account of it. In this way the social norms can be better or worse, insofar as they better reflect/mediate/receive reality. Thus it will be easier to tell the truth with certain languages and social norms.

I got to set up the underlying pattern because it was just maths. The world's far more unwieldy. — fdrake

Right. I don't know how closely related it is to all of this, but I want to read a bit on Sellars' attack on the "myth of the given."

Edit:

I claim that this is only a puzzle if you come at it from the perspective that people cannot and do not assess mind-independence as part of what we do. — fdrake

Simplifying this a bit, if I do X then I can choose to not-do X. So if mind-independence or truth or the constraints on norms are things we do, then they should be things we can choose to not-do. Are they?

When I complain about anthropocentric philosophies or ontologies, this is largely what I am thinking of. Such philosophies don't seem to give proper due to the finitude, limitations, passivity, and receptivity of human life. If we talk about everything that exists as "things we do" (even in the sense of perceiving or knowing), then a collective solipsism is just around the corner.

(1) The first being that justice can be viewed in two seemingly irreconcilable ways (and this reminded me of After Virue by MacIntyre, as he outlined in well in there): (A) in terms of some account of what and how a given person is entitled to in virtue of what they have legitimately acquired and earned, or (B) in terms of some account of the equality of the claims of each person in respect of basic needs and of the means to meet such needs. (2) The second being that moral naturalism doesn't seem to afford any notion of selfless justice whatsoever; instead, the only kind of naturalistic justice seems to be the need to socialize. — Bob Ross

Here is Aristotle on justice in the narrower sense of a particular virtue:

But of justice as a part of virtue, and of that which is just in the corresponding sense, one kind is that which has to do with the distribution of honour, wealth, and the other things that are divided among the members of the body politic (for in these circumstances it is possible for one man’s share to be unfair or fair as compared with another’s); and another kind is that which has to give redress in private transactions. — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V.2

Of course this is slightly different from your division.

I would say that for Aristotle the relevant sort of selflessness arises not by social contract, but by the fact that humans are social organisms. This interdependence creates a natural solicitude for members of the family or community. For example, rather than caring for one's spouse out of selfish motive, one's identity stretches to encompass one's spouse, or one's children, or the members of one's community. If my sense of self expands to include my family, and I act in favor of the common familial good, am I still acting selfishly? We can debate that, but it is not individualistic selfishness. At the same time, it does not extend to every family or community.

So I think an Aristotelian natural ethic is quite robust. It’s just that Christianity says things like this, “Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man—though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5). This goes beyond sacrificing for one’s friends or family members or community, and I think the modern world would do well to discern when it is drawing on religious premises and when it is drawing on natural reason.

With respect to #1, it seems like your view of justice is squarely, although I don't want to put words in your mouth, A. Whereas, my attempted rebuttals invoke a sense of B; hence the disagreement. I am not so sure now if Justice is like A, B, or some sublated version I haven't thought of yet. — Bob Ross

There are different ways to go with this. Classically equality before a community is a matter of distribution, and in that sense the one in charge of distributing honors, or wealth, or rights, is the one who is required to be just. So there is a kind of equality vis-a-vis the community, via distributive justice. But on a naturalistic conception, who is in charge of distributing resources such that they are equally available to Africa, Europe, Asia, North America, South America, and Australia? There is no one who is currently in charge (except for, say, God). Therefore it's not clear how the naturalist can make a claim like this, although I think there are certain limited claims that can be made about the equality of all those possessing a human nature, which you have begun to make.

Let me outline a basic example so that we are all on the same page. Imagine you are completely self-sufficient living up in the mountains; viz., you are able to live off of the land, which is no one else's property, and need absolutely no social interactions between people to realize your own good (e.g., perhaps you are a bit anti-social). You come across an injured person in the woods, in need of desperate help. The question is twofold:

(C) Do you have any natural duty to help them?
(D) Would not helping them be an act of natural injustice?

As it stands now, I can think of no reason why one would have a natural duty to them at all; nor why it would be unjust. I feel like it is unjust, but I am starting to think that is the mere result of the Christian conscience in me from my forebearers. — Bob Ross

Yes, I would say that failing to help them would be bad/unvirtuous, but not unjust (unless by "unjust" we only mean bad/unvirtuous). I think even the injured person would recognize this somewhat, in the sense that they would plead for beneficence rather than demand justice.

(There has been a good deal of discussion in the last five years on the topic of human dignity and infinite human dignity. For example, Alasdair MacIntyre's lecture on, "Human Dignity: A Puzzling and Possibly Dangerous Idea?")

You could reason that I've dodged the question, and substituted a particular case of counting as for the general case - but I don't know why this wouldn't be an available move to me? — fdrake

No, that’s fine. I am not critiquing you on this basis. In fact I went back and reread the first few posts you wrote after I had asked you to give your own position, and I think I have a better idea of how I am misunderstanding you. The difficulty is that with each post you tend to throw at least one wrench into the equation. This is the most recent wrench:

It's a giant hall of mirrors. Every time someone is going to say "true", I'm going to replace it with a behavioural concept that's jury rigged to fit just how we use the word. And then I'm going to argue that the jury rigging is also in the territory. Irritatingly for everyone involved, self included, the jury rigging will actually tend to be there, and that can restart our conflict. — fdrake

I guess my contention is that replacing “true” with jury rigged behavioral concepts is never ultimately going to cut it.

Further, I don’t see any significant difference between, “This is a duck,” and, “It is true that this is a duck.” So when <I asked> whether you recognized the difference between, “The duck is a duck,” and, “The duck counts as a duck,” I was comparing the truth claim to the behavioral-concept claim. I don’t see how we can have behavioral concept claims “all the way down.”

The moral of the story, I think, is that counting as a duck is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a duck. Being a duck is also not a necessary or sufficient condition for counting as a duck. But if something quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, smells like a duck... it probably is a duck. And I imagine it counts as one too. — fdrake

Then it would seem that “counting as” isn’t all that important or central to the question of truth, no? And clearly I’ve been overestimating its centrality for you.

I realise this could have been unclear earlier. Ordinarily the conditions under which someone correctly identifies X as a duck immediately count X as a duck too. I see that {and I think Sellars sees that} as a behavioural connection rather than a logical one. If something is identified as X, it counts as X. — fdrake

Okay, but then it looks like being a duck (or being identified as a duck) is a sufficient condition for counting as a duck.

The tension which I think you're picking up on is the weirdness that comes with treating counting-as as distinct from identity, even though identifying correctly is norm and theory ladened, involving standards of correctness for counting-as. I agree that this is weird. — fdrake

Right.

I would say that everything is embedded in contextual and social norms, and yet those norms do not exhaust the content that flows through them. It then follows that studying the norms is not enough.

For example, the English language is a kind of social norm. But it does not follow that the content I receive through the English language is unable to transcend the English language. In fact it does, because the language is not an object so much as a medium. Of course this too does not mean that the medium does not involve objective limitations and constraints, which affect the shape of the content.

So we here have two aspects of the English language: its norm-determinedness, and its nature as a medium. There is a balance between the two. Someone like myself emphasizes the latter along with the truth that language can mediate. Someone like yourself emphasizes the former and the fact that the language is always operating through contextual norms. I want to say that clinging to either extreme too baldly is the most significant error.

But if that’s right, then your insistence that you will “replace [‘true’] with a behavioural concept that's jury rigged to fit just how we use the word” “every time,” looks like one of the two extremes. To do that every time would apparently be to renege on the idea that humans really can do “truth stuff.” Truth stuff requires a relatively contextless and normless intention, insofar as one is dispensing with overbearing qualification. That is why this “truth stuff” has such a remarkable capacity to transcend individual and cultural contexts. Mathematics, for example, is not limited to the regions of the world where the English language is spoken, or where Anglo-Saxon culture thrives. Truth is supposed to require less jury rigging than practical realities. It can fight its own fights, so to speak, because its clout is universally recognized.

Is the idea here: "either something is predicated univocally 'we're up a creek without a paddle?'" — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, "truth" specifically. Saying that urine is healthy is not problematic.

Yet, "the truths which are in things are as many as the entities of things" and "the truths said of things in comparison to the human intellect is in a certain way accidental to them because [on the supposition that there were no men] things in their essences would still remain" (Disputed Questions, Q1, A3, R) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Article 4?

This is the same topic that I quoted from the Summa. Let me quote it again:

I answer that, In one sense truth, whereby all things are true, is one, and in another sense it is not. In proof of which we must consider that when anything is predicated of many things univocally, it is found in each of them according to its proper nature; as animal is found in each species of animal.

...

If therefore we speak of truth, as it exists in the intellect, according to its proper nature, then are there many truths in many created intellects; and even in one and the same intellect, according to the number of things known. — Aquinas, ST I-16 Article 6. Whether there is only one truth, according to which all things are true?

So Aquinas talks about univocal predication and then analogical predication, and then at the end of the corpus of the article he talks about truth as it exists in intellects and truth as it exists in things. The former is univocal and the latter is analogical. But we are talking about truth as it exists in the intellect, not truth as it exists in things. It is mistaken to say that Aquinas thinks truth is analogical. Aquinas thinks that its proper nature has to do with univocal predication, "If therefore we speak of truth, as it exists in the intellect, according to its proper nature..."

Sure, truth exists in things analogically by the one primary truth of the divine intellect. But your OP is about truth in the primary sense, not in things but in human intellects. For example, your case of the room being light is something that is true in virtue of the intellect's correspondence with reality.

Of course health can be predicated univocaly of all healthy organisms. However, health in each does not have the same measure. It's a One unequally realized in a Many. Just as beauty might be predicated of many beautiful things, but the beauty of Beethoven is not the beauty of a beautiful horse (this is an analogy of proper proportionality not attribution). — Count Timothy von Icarus

You seem to think that there are no univocal predications. You seem to think that if a monkey is an animal and a dog is an animal, then we must be using "animal" analogically, because monkeys are different than dogs. This is strange.

Note that in the passage you are quoting Thomas is referencing univocal predication as respects the way which all truth is one (in the Divine intellect) as opposed to many (unequally realized in a multitude, in Avicenna as per prior and posterior). — Count Timothy von Icarus

You seem to be reading that backwards. Aquinas says, "when anything is predicated of many things univocally, it is found in each of them according to its proper nature; as animal is found in each species of animal." You seem to think, "When 'animal' is predicated of each species of animal, it is predicated analogically because each species is not identical." Or, "When 'health' is predicated of kangaroos and daffodils, it is predicated analogically, because kangaroos are not daffodils."

Furthermore, Aquinas says, "But when anything is predicated of many things analogically, it is found in only one of them according to its proper nature, and from this one the rest are denominated." My challenge to you has been this: If you say that truth is predicated analogically, then you must set out the proper-nature-sense from which the rest are denominated.

That varies by the proper measure. The measure of a man is man, the measure of horse is horse. A sentence is not the proper measure of truth for everything. There is not one measure for all "created truth," except in the sense that all ultimately share an ultimate principle and cause.

Having the truth of sentences (their measure) be the same as the truth of anything and everything seems like the exact opposite of the idea in play. IMO, beliefs are not reducible to collections of sentences, but they can certainly be true or false, and seemingly more or less adequate. Models and imitations are not composed of sentences, but they can be more or less "true to life" or "true to form," etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

...And this does not answer the challenge. If some truth-predications are analogical, then what is the proper sense from which they are denominated? If there is no proper measure then there is no analogy.

I agree that truth is not merely a property of a sentence, as Michael claims. It is a correspondence or adequation between intellect and reality, or thought and thing.

E.g., Q. 16 of ST

"For a house is said to be true that expresses the likeness of the form in the architect's mind; and words are said to be true so far as they are the signs of truth in the intellect." Urine and blood-work are healthy as signs, but then words are true as the intellect is true? I don't think so.

Is a house true to the architect's intent in a manner that is binary? No doubt, the sentence: "This house was built to your specifications" will be either true or false as a sentence, although obviously it can also admit of many qualifications. "Yes, the house is mostly how I planned it, but we had difficulty with the intricate skylights in the entry hall and had to simplify them." But the idea here is not that it is only sentences about the house that can be true or false. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again:

And even if we are talking about truth as conformity to an ideal, this does introduce degrees of truth but it does not necessarily introduce equivocity. — Leontiskos

Suppose a man wants to buy 100 pounds of potatoes. The farmer's scale is broken, but he and the farmer eyeball a cartload of potatoes and agree on a price fit for 100 pounds. The man gets home and weighs them. They weigh 98 pounds. "Close enough," he says. The claim is mostly true.

And at this point you interject and say, "See, this proves that weight is analogical, or is being predicated in an analogical manner." But it doesn't prove that.

..."truth in things.")

E.g., — Count Timothy von Icarus

Who are you quoting?

By contrast, there is Wittgenstein's On Certainty, which has generally be read as arguing to deflationary (and been widely influential in this direction). There, truth just is part of a language game. But this comes out of the idea that propositions are the bearers of truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't disagree with this, but "proposition" is a notoriously slippery term.

Are we disagreeing on whether the thought/proposition is the center of gravity for predications of truth? I tend to think that it is, both for Aquinas and in truth. Maybe I have been talking past you on this.

In the Questions for instance, he inverts the entire order of things, putting the truth of things as respects their conformity to the divine intellect as secondary, and the truth of the intellect composing and dividing as primary, even though in the same text he has the former as the principle of the latter. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But that's exactly right. A principle is not necessarily primary. See especially:

Objection 3. Further, "that, on account of which a thing is so, is itself more so," as is evident from the Philosopher (Poster. i). But it is from the fact that a thing is or is not, that our thought or word is true or false, as the Philosopher teaches (Praedicam. iii). Therefore truth resides rather in things than in the intellect.

Reply to Objection 3. Although the truth of our intellect is caused by the thing, yet it is not necessary that truth should be there primarily, any more than that health should be primarily in medicine, rather than in the animal: for the virtue of medicine, and not its health, is the cause of health, for here the agent is not univocal. In the same way, the being of the thing, not its truth, is the cause of truth in the intellect. Hence the Philosopher says that a thought or a word is true "from the fact that a thing is, not because a thing is true." — Aquinas, ST I.16.1.ad3

Of course it gets tricky when we compare uncreated truth to created truth, but I have never found it helpful on these atheistic forums to stray too far into theology. I am happy to say that truth is analogical vis-a-vis the uncreated truth of the divine intellect, but when we are talking about truth on TPF we are almost certainly not talking about that. Instead we are talking about, in Aquinas' language, the correspondence between human intellects and reality. And that (created) truth is univocal.

(this is an analogy of proper proportionality not attribution) — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would have to brush up on the different kinds of analogy.

However, it seems obvious that this is at least somewhat true in sensation as well, since the sight of an apple is not the same thing as its being. But I have long been suspicious of the general scholastic tendency to suppose that only conscious judgement can be in error, never the senses, because this seems to be a rather artificial separation of how consciousness actually works, and conditions like agnosia seem to involve error at the pre-conscious level. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a can of worms, but in ST I.17.2 Aquinas literally says that there is falsity in the senses.

Anyhow, he has a better answer in ST; truth is primarily spoken of in terms of judgement (composing and dividing) because this is where we know truth as truth, and the knowledge of truth as truth is a perfection. I can live with that. Yet: 'Truth therefore may be in the senses, or in the intellect knowing "what a thing is," as in anything that is true; yet not as the thing known in the knower," (Q16 A2). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well this gets fairly tricky. In the same article, "When, however, it judges that a thing corresponds to the form which it apprehends about that thing, then first it knows and expresses truth." But see also ST I.85.5 and ST I.85.8. Aquinas certainly thinks that we understand indivisible wholes, but only through a process of composition and division. Even the act of recognizing that one's apprehension fits the reality is for Aquinas a form of combining (i.e. recognizing that one's intellectual conception is true).

I am sympathetic to the objection that Aquinas' philosophical anthropology is excessively discursive, but there are plenty of places where he distances himself from an extremely discursive position. In any case, this is one reason I prefer Aquinas for these forums. He is not too foreign to the discursive and naturalistic tendencies of our age to be a good interlocutor.

unless the idea is that the order of judging and the order of being are inversions of each other. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that's part of it. Aquinas certainly holds that the human way of knowing is deficient as compared to the way that God or angels know.

I appreciate the natural progression of the thread to a contemporary form of nominalism or pragmatism.

That's to say that recognising a duck requires there to be a duck and recognitions. — fdrake

I would not want to underestimate the difference between “counting as” and “recognizing.” A very significant shift has occurred here. Srap said:

When we pretend, assume, suppose, hypothesize, and so on, we agree to treat something as something knowing that it isn't. But sometimes we do it differently... — Srap Tasmaner

When fdrake talks about “counting as,” he is importing a theoretical apparatus into a bit of common language in a way that the common language has trouble supporting. For example, if I go to the Christmas party, point to the hearth, and say, “That counts as a fire,” everyone will have a good laugh. They will say, “Actually that really is a fire!” And:

People count stuff as stuff all the time, and that's a practice. And kids do it before they learn what "is" means. — fdrake

In my opinion this is a highly controversial claim. I’d say that when a child points to the fire and says, “Fire!,” she is not saying, “This counts as fire,” but rather, “This is fire.” Or rather, whatever she is doing is much closer to the latter than the former.

Now I know what you mean, and I am opening myself to the charge of quibbling here, but the point is worth observing. It is one thing to give ourselves license to use a bit of language in a loose and imprecise way, but when the imprecise language is meant to ground an entire theory of knowledge or language much more is at stake than we realize. So to use the metaphor “counts as” as a fundamental building block of an epistemological program is dangerous in the same way that Wittgenstein’s talk of language games is dangerous. As Aristotle says, a small error in the beginning makes for large errors later on.

It might surprise you, but I agree with this and find it a bad trend. I see all of those as irritating reductionisms. I'm equally irritated by a reduction of our being to ideas/thoughts. — fdrake

Okay, great. But I wonder if there is a more minor reductionism. I take it that “counts as” is an anthropocentric metaphor. The literal sense has to do with counting, which is a human mathematical act. In the metaphorical sense “counts as” is usually indexed to a subject or a community. “It counts, at least for her.” “He counts it as a victory.” “For the American people this counts as an act of terrorism.” This metaphor is usually used to create distance from ‘is’, and if all humans are doing is counting X’s as Y’s then it’s not clear that there is any fact of the matter.

Though I imagine I fall into your condemnation bucket here, since I definitely don't see humans as doing "truth stuff" primarily, we do however do it. — fdrake

Okay. As long as we do it we’re in agreement on this point. When I said “primarily” I only meant that not every act has the “truth stuff” as secondary and oblique. I certainly left myself open to that misunderstanding.

There's an order of being, which concerns what is, and an order of knowing, which concerns our learning. — fdrake

Aristotle definitely agrees with this, but the trouble is that the moderns seem to think that one must learn epistemology before they can know anything.

"counts as" is prior to "is" in the order of knowing, but "is" is prior to "counts as" in the order of being.

That's to say that recognising a duck requires there to be a duck and recognitions. — fdrake

Here’s how I read the thread at this point. Banno is challenged on whether truths can exist without minds; Michael is challenged on whether truths are merely properties of sentences; you appeal to a form of pragmatism; and then Srap offers some objections.

Now when you appeal to pragmatism with this notion of “counts as,” it looks as if you are trying to short-circuit the realism circuit, such that we only need to worry about whether it counts as a duck, not whether it truly is a duck. But had you talked about recognizing ducks, the short-circuit tack would not be a natural interpretation.

So with regard to "all the way down" - that's an intuition based on there being one hierarchy of concepts. Some things are prior to other things. And "prior" in the former sentence means one thing. That thing is: X is unthinkable without Y. — fdrake

For me the conceptual priority question is something like this. Suppose you are training a novice in the CIA to root out foreign spies. Are you going to teach them what counts as a spy? Or are you going to teach them how to identify a spy? I think they are quite different. And if—contrary to natural language use—all we mean by “counting as” is “correctly identifying,” then we are really talking about identifying spies.

For me the “all the way down” objection has to do with a form of “counting as” that is not reducible to a form of “correctly identifying” (“a suggestive way of talking about what is what” ). The objection is that this cannot be done “all the way down,” and I think Srap provided the arguments.

At this stage I’m primarily interested in whether you only mean “counting as” as “identifying” or “correctly identifying.”

(Given our discussion of triangles, what I think you mean by “counts as” is, “If we define a triangle as thus-and-such, then it counts as a triangle. If we define it in a different way then it may not.” And in that thread I’m not sure you ever answered my question about whether there are true and false definitions, especially once we get away from triangles.)

I don't think that follows. Can you show me how it does? I'm suspicious because the premises are "if counting as a duck...", and "the duck counts as as a duck". — fdrake

Let me try to put it a third way:

This isn't to say that a duck is a social construction, even though counting as a duck is. — fdrake

How do you know that a duck is not a social construction? If you can only say, “That counts as a duck,” and this act of yours is a social construction, then what license do you have to claim that ducks are not socially constructed? Or do you abstain from that claim?

One reason I haven’t posted much in this thread is because is saying the things I would say, but better. I’m perfectly happy with that, and his posts deserve priority.

It's butchered from Sellars. — fdrake

Sure, I understand that, even though I haven’t read Sellars. What I mean is that I don’t recognize it as cogent, “I don’t see anything mysterious or important in this [‘counts as’ idea].” Or as Srap said:

It's conceptual priority again. It's not obvious that our concepts can be "counts as" all the way down. — Srap Tasmaner

For me “counts as” is not even an epistemological issue. The epistemological issue has to do with what it is to be something, not what it is to count as something. I don’t find it interesting that my belt can count as a tourniquet. For Aristotle there is a fundamental difference between knowledge of artifacts like belts, and knowledge of natural realities like eating. Artifacts can count as whatever you like, for they have no telos qua artifact. But not natural realities. Fire is hot. It doesn’t merely count as hot.

-

This isn't to say that a duck is a social construction, even though counting as a duck is. — fdrake

Do you admit any knowledge which is not reducible to a social construction, custom, or convention? Or is it “counts as” all the way down?

Put slightly differently, if counting as a duck is a social construction, and a duck counts as a duck, then a duck is a social construction (contrary to what you say here).

-

Which I think he also considered as falling somewhere within the pragmatist tradition, much as Quine thought of himself. And he was deeply engaged, as they say, with Kant. So everything Leontiskos finds suspicious in one package. — Srap Tasmaner

In a broad-brush sort of way I see this as bound up in philosophical anthropology and the history of philosophy. Our current confluence of Darwinism, post-modernism, and (to a lesser extent) Kant’s reckoning with Hume seems to have minimized our belief in agency. And without agency there seems to be no possibility of really knowing/understanding reality in the classical sense. On this newer view the human capacity for speculative knowledge and truth seems to have been neutered.

So if a pragmatist wants to say that it’s just “counts as” all the way down, this is presumably because their philosophical anthropology precludes any other options. “All humans are doing is trying to survive,” or, “All humans are is a product of genetic-evolutionary factors,” or, “All humans are doing is aiming at different pragmatic goals.” If that’s “all humans are doing,” then they aren’t doing any truth stuff. At least not really or primarily. Hence while it is possible to separate mind from the world and create an unbridgeable gulf, there is also an opposite error where there is not a sufficient distinction between the mind and the world for knowledge and truth to even exist in their robust form.

<Earlier> I claimed that Michael and Banno are upholding something close to the classical view, but in much the same way that one upholds a branch that has been cut from the tree. So they say things like, “That’s just the way it is, and no further story needs to be told.” Whereas their forebears said, “That’s the way it is, and we have all sorts of stories for the underlying basis.” The older theological and metaphysical stories are done away with, and at the same time the opposition has picked up the newer stories—Darwinian, post-modern, and Kantian. Thus as I see it Michael and Banno’s view is not wrong in the main, but it is truncated to the point of being unpersuasive. And fdrake’s view—or what I know of it—is not out of step with contemporary thought, but it does have very serious logical problems (such as trying to make knowledge a matter of “counts as” all the way down).

Thomas Nagel is an example of someone who is with Michael and Banno, except that he is well aware of the metaphysical inadequacies of his view (given his naturalism), and it unsettles him.

You wouldn't refer to it as a straw or as tinder though, as the object isn't baptised that way. Things tend to keep their name from their primary context of use in the broader society - like my plastic crate keeps being called my plastic crate despite its primary use in my home being as a calf raise platform. Which it absolutely counts as for appropriate exercises. — fdrake

I should admit that I don't really recognize your "counts as" idea:

So if something counts as the ingestion of food, it counts as eating. — fdrake

I think is right that eating is not a custom or convention. If eating is the ingestion of food then someone who ingests food eats. It doesn't make sense to talk about something "counting as eating." Eating is not something we make up. It is not something we ratify.

You wouldn't refer to it as a straw or as tinder though, as the object isn't baptised that way. Things tend to keep their name from their primary context of use in the broader society — fdrake

Names of artifacts are to a large extent arbitrary. Eating is not. A dollar bill has many uses. I don't see anything mysterious or important in this.

One might say that all humans do is coordinate norms, and that the norms are plastic and arbitrary. But things like eating, dancing, copulating, swimming, etc., just aren't plastic and arbitrary norms. And therefore norm-coordination is not all humans do. In fact to think of human behavior as mere norm coordination strikes me as more or less backwards, given that all the norms are grounded in things which are not mere custom or convention, and none of these things that are not custom or convention are grounded in mere norms. It's a bit like trying to make words explain reality, when in fact reality is what explains words. Words aren't worth much apart from their referents in reality.

The duck counts as a duck. — fdrake

Do we agree that, "The duck is a duck," is not the same as, "The duck counts as a duck"? Ducks have a different relation to ducks than pictures of ducks or signs of ducks, and to say that a duck counts as a duck is to miss this rather important fact.

One must help others, in general, ceteris paribus, because they are supposed to be just; and justice requires, as mentioned above, assigning merit and demerit impartially and objectively. Therefore, a just person should care, in general, about other people (and living things) in virtue that they are people (and are living things); because there nature sets them as worthy of protection. — Bob Ross

I'm struggling to find an argument here. We must help others because they are worthy of protection? Is that the idea?

The fact that they have a rational will marks them out as the most valuable; and the fact they are alive, can feel pain, etc. makes them more valuable than non-life (like a yacht). — Bob Ross

Does this relate to your ideas about merit and demerit?

The difficulty is that yachts should not need to be brought in when we are speaking about justice. If I owe you $15,000, then I owe you $15,000 whether or not I buy a yacht. And if I don't owe you $15,000, then I don't owe you $15,000 whether or not I buy a yacht. Do I owe it to you to prefer you to a yacht? I take it that the preferential option for the poor is a Christian principle, not a principle of natural justice.
You seem to have a principle whereby wealthy people owe poor people money, simpliciter.

The easiest way to demonstrate this is to think about the contrary: to believe that one shouldn’t help a person when they could at no or little cost to themselves, is to squarely value a non-person over persons; which misses, at best, the nature of a person vs. a non-person. — Bob Ross

I would say that a greedy person lacks beneficence, but need not lack justice. It would be virtuous for the wealthy to give to the poor, but it is not owed in justice. The wealthy is not in the poor's debt (unless, say, their wealth was won at the unjust expense of the poor).

Like I said before, this equally applies to all of life. Nature is one inter-connected body. We cannot survive and realize our good without the good of Nature herself. E.g., that’s why we hunt certain numbers of certain species to ensure the balance is stable. This equally applies to humanity as a whole, including itself in the whole of Nature. If I must care about mercury pollution in the water supply because my good is bound up with my community’s good (and vice-versa); then I should care about it because my good is bound up with Nature’s good (and vice-versa). — Bob Ross

No, I don't think so. If I am vacationing in China or on a deserted island and I find a source of water pollution, I have no duty to the community to rectify it. And it really won't matter. "Nature" is not something I need attend to in itself. For example, if we find a source of water pollution on Mars, we have no duty to rectify it.

I cannot be just and value a non-living-thing over a living-thing — Bob Ross

The extreme pacifist types who try to do such a thing come up against the fact that it is impossible to avoid killing organisms, however small they may be. But I think it is a misuse of words to say that, say, a vegetarian is more just than a meat eater. Someone might claim that the vegetarian is more just insofar as they accord animals their proper rights. But the whole question revolves around whether animals have these rights, or whether human beings have a right to always receive money from those who have more money. I am not convinced that they do have such rights, and if you're not talking about rights then I'm not sure you're talking about justice.

If a nation was super-abundant and rich and could give their excesses to helping an extremely poor nation—and at no risk of nuclear war or something like—in principle—I would say they have a duty to do so. — Bob Ross

So here again we have this strange relativization of dues. You think that a super-abundant nation has a duty to babysit other nations, and that the only reason no one has a duty to babysit is because no one is super-abundant, no?

But that duty does not supercede their more local duties.

This is no different than how, e.g., a father has a duty to take care of his kids and to care about water pollution for his community, but if the two conflict then he must uphold the former over the latter. Since father’s do not tend to have a super-abundance of resources and time, we do not generally advocate that fathers should spend an enormous amount of time solving water pollution: they don’t have the time or resources. They fit into society with certain more immediate roles that they must focus on.

There’s a hierarchy to duties. — Bob Ross

You seem to think that everything we ought to do is a duty. Thus a person ought to be merciful, beneficent, witty, healthy, and generally virtuous; therefore we have a duty to be these things. I think you are stretching the meaning of words like 'duty', 'justice', etc., much too far. Any common and reasonable notion of justice would say that there are bad acts which are not unjust, and there are good acts which are not just.

That’s fair: I guess I would agree with that; as, by my own logic, a nation is not obligated to go to war with another nation to stop them from doing something egregious if it poses a significant risk to the integrity of their own prosperity. However, I can reword this to get at the main point: would you say that it is not obligatory for a nation who could stop Nazi Germany without any risk to their own prosperity, if that were possible, to do so? I think it would be, in principle. — Bob Ross

No, and let me put it this way. There is heroism. There is going above and beyond (supererogation). Now if someone goes out of their way to stop a bully or malefactor when they have no duty to do so, we call them a hero. We call them virtuous. We call them beneficent. If someone does their duty we say, "He did his job. He did what he was expected to do." These are not the same thing.

I'm not convinced that there is any room for supererogation in your moral system.

So, to be clear, you are saying that I do not actually have a duty to care about water pollution in a state of the US which I do not live because the US is not a proper community? — Bob Ross

Yep.

This is a slippery slope. I can make the same argument for my local county vs. my state. — Bob Ross

Maybe, but you can't reasonably claim that your town is not a community. The slippery slope ends at some point.

Duties arise out of roles one has; and one has roles for themselves—no? E.g., one of my roles to myself is that I need to just with myself—no? — Bob Ross

No, I don't think so. I can try to make a promise to myself, but breaking it is not injustice in any strict sense.

I am asking: what if a woman takes care of her young merely in virtue of an unbearable, primal, and motherly urge to do it? — Bob Ross

I don't think that happens. At the very least the woman is not impeding her natural instincts, and that not-impeding is praiseworthy. But in general I don't think human acts are separable into instinctual acts and rational acts. There is a kind of homogeneity, where rationality infuses and includes all of our acts (except for perhaps extreme cases of insanity and the like).

I agree that they don’t engage in volition in accordance with reason; but there’s also volition in accordance with conative dispositions. I can will as an upshot of my passions, or my reasons for doing so. Animals have volition in the lesser sense; and knowledge in the sense that they also formulate beliefs about their environment (to some degree). Have you seen how smart some birds are? Belgian Malinois are way too smart to believe that they have no knowledge; unless by knowledge you mean something oddly specific. — Bob Ross

It is not oddly specific to exclude knowledge from animals. The burden of proof is on you to find philosophers who think that animals have knowledge, beliefs, responsibilities, duties, etc. You are presenting an idiosyncratic view in this.

I thought moral relativism meant something else: nevermind. — Bob Ross

Okay.

Peter Redpath makes a pretty convincing argument that it is never our terms that are (properly) analogical for St. Thomas (obviously when we equivocate we do have ambiguous terms). It is rather the predication of the term that is analagous. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with that. I don't think it affects my points or arguments.

Indeed, if God is “Goodness itself,” (i.e. that by which all things are good— https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1006.htm) it is unclear what it would mean for "our concept of goodness" to be an “analogy” of true goodness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Aquinas explains what it would mean:

So when we say, "God is good," the meaning is not, "God is the cause of goodness," or "God is not evil"; but the meaning is, "Whatever good we attribute to creatures, pre-exists in God," and in a more excellent and higher way. — Aquinas ST, I.13 Article 2. Whether any name can be applied to God substantially?

So, my contention would be that truth doesn't need to become analogical, merely our predication of it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And my contention is that our predication of truth cannot become analogical, for the reasons already set out above. And as I said, I don't think you will find any philosophers claiming that we should use "truth" analogically.

The question is how the propositions relates to the adequacy of thought (and language) to being, or language to thought. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But if "adequacy of thought to being" (truth) has no clear meaning, then we're up a creek without a paddle.

However, he often seems to follow the Neoplatonic camp in elevating the primacy of simple apprehension of wholes as wholes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, but he is firm that this is not truth properly speaking.

Right, yet "health" for a kangaroo is analogically related to "health" for a daffodil. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No it's not. Aquinas is explicitly talking about univocal predication. It does not follow that health is being predicated analogically just because health for the kangaroo and health for the daffodil are not circumstantially the same. If univocity meant such a thing then univocalists could not have common nouns at all. "...when anything is predicated of many things univocally, it is found in each of them according to its proper nature; as animal is found in each species of animal." The predicate 'health' is not species-specific, just as the predicate 'animal' is not specific to each species of animal.

For Aristotle and Aquinas the naturalistic sense of analogical predication—where we are not trying to name God—has to do with the way we apply "health" to the animal, the medicine we give it, or the urine we collect from it. That is: essence of health, cause of health, and sign of health.

Is that the sense in which you want to speak analogically of truth? Essence of truth, causes of truth, and signs of truth? If not, in which way do you want to speak of it?

Because the difficulty for me is that we begin with a vague problem:

Here is one based on a class I had on the philosophy of AI:

Truth is something that applies to propositions (and only propositions). All propositions are either true or false. If this causes issues (which it seems it will), this is no problem. All propositions are decomposable into atomic propositions, which are true or false. Knowledge is just affirming more true atomic propositions as respects some subject and fewer false ones. Thus, knowledge can accurately be modeled as a "user" database of atomic propositions as compared to the set of all true atomic propositions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And in response we apply a vague solution: "Predications of truth are analogical." I want to do away with much of this vagueness, of both problem and solution.

Note too that Aquinas and Aristotle are much more consistent than you are in speaking of analogical predication rather than analogical concepts. For example, Aquinas will say that when we speak of God being good we are speaking analogically, and Aristotle will say that when we speak of urine being healthy we are speaking analogically. That is, they give the circumstance to which the analogical predication is limited. But you are just speaking about truth as analogical without specifying any circumstance at all. If you think it is just certain predications that are analogical rather than the concept of truth itself, then you have to say which predications of truth are analogical and which are not.

@Count Timothy von Icarus

It is worth noting that Aquinas sees truth in a largely discursive manner:

When, however, it judges that a thing corresponds to the form which it apprehends about that thing, then first it knows and expresses truth. This it does by composing and dividing: for in every proposition it either applies to, or removes from the thing signified by the subject, some form signified by the predicate... — Aquinas, ST I.16 Article 2. Whether truth resides only in the intellect composing and dividing?

And I read Aquinas as seeing created truth as univocal:

I answer that, In one sense truth, whereby all things are true, is one, and in another sense it is not. In proof of which we must consider that when anything is predicated of many things univocally, it is found in each of them according to its proper nature; as animal is found in each species of animal.

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If therefore we speak of truth, as it exists in the intellect, according to its proper nature, then are there many truths in many created intellects; and even in one and the same intellect, according to the number of things known. — Aquinas, ST I-16 Article 6. Whether there is only one truth, according to which all things are true?

Of course both of these points become complicated in other parts of Aquinas. But there is a prima facie sense in which Aquinas sees thoughts (or "propositions") as the point of departure for a discussion of truth, at least for human beings; and in which truth is univocally defined as adequatio
rei et intellectus.