They are taking the same logic and applying it to a different range of things. — Banno

This is literally the first objection that Sider dispatches on page 11 after giving the summarized form of QV, but I already told you this <here>.

If you take that passage to be explicitly equating thinking with being, then I would say your lack of reading comprehension skills is "off the charts". — Janus

I was addressing your "thesis" that everyone who lived before modern optics must have been a naive realist. That's why I quoted your "thesis." (I am trying to be generous with the word 'thesis')

It seems that, by and large, the ancient and medieval philosophers were naive realists even if they believed in the reality of a higher realm. This is arguably because, before the modern sciences of optics and visual perception, the eyes were thought to be the 'windows' through which the soul looked out onto the world, so there would have been no notion of "distortion" which may be posited in relation to the senses as they are now understood. — Janus

The historical ignorance here is off the charts. :yikes: Maybe start with Plato, a large part of whose philosophy is concerned with the unreliability of sense knowledge:

SOCRATES: There is more than one point besides these, Theodorus, on which a conviction might be secured—at least so far as it is a matter of proving that not every man’s judgment is true. But so long as we keep within the limits of that immediate present experience of the individual which gives rise to perceptions and to perceptual judgments, it is more difficult to convict these latter of being untrue—but perhaps I’m talking nonsense. Perhaps it is not possible to convict them at all; perhaps those who profess that they are perfectly evident and are always knowledge may be saying what really is. And it may be that our Theaetetus was not far from the mark with his proposition that knowledge and perception are the same thing. We shall have to come to closer grips with the theory, as the speech on behalf of Protagoras required us to do. We shall have to consider and test this moving Being, and find whether it rings true or sounds as if it had some flaw in it. There is no small fight going on about it, anyway—and no shortage of fighting men. — Plato, Theaetetus, 179c-d, tr. Levett & Burnyeat

Ironically, Pierce's semiotic triad, which is quite popular in continental philosophy, is pretty much the same as Augustine's in De Dialecta, and signs are a major focus in scholasticism, yet this view of past thought shows up in plenty of continental philosophy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Peirce studied and benefitted from Latin thinkers like Aquinas and Scotus, and his theory of signs is especially indebted to the Latins:

And Peirce violated the cardinal commandment of modernity: Thou shalt not learn from the Latins. He read even there, and what he found, more than any single influence, revolutionized his philosophy. From Scotus in particular, but also from Fonseca and the Conimbricenses, he picked up the trail of the sign. He was never able to follow it as far as the text of Poinsot. This would have been only a question of time, no doubt; but in 1914 Peirce's time ran out.

Nonetheless, what he picked up from the later Latins was more than enough to convince him that the way of signs, however buried in the underbrush it had become since the moderns made the mistake of going the way of ideas instead, was the road to the future. . . — John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-first Century, p. 613

- Yes - gave the classic quote from Aristotle earlier today.

There is no definition in the quote you cite. — Banno

Mmk, Banno.

An adequate explanation of "what quantifier variance is" would show the difference between at least two forms of quantifier. The quote says that there are two differing forms of quantifier, but does not say how they differ. — Banno

No, this is completely wrong. Quantifier variance is a kind of insuperable second-order equivocation. Sider does not need to explicate two concrete usages of quantifiers to set out quantifier variance, any more than someone would need to explicate two equivocal terms in order to set out the meaning of equivocation. You are saying, "Sider didn't give an example of quantifier variance, therefore he didn't define quantifier variance." You're like the anti-Socrates, who receives a definition and then says that because it wasn't an example, therefore it wasn't a definition.

Can you specify what you mean by "their philosophy?" — Shawn

Their philosophy: the philosophy they do.

That quote does not set out what quantifier variance is. — Banno

Yes, it does.

Generally though, the analogy is not always used like this. Chess pieces are said to only be intelligible in terms of the other pieces, (the formalist mantra: "a thing is what it does") but chess itself sits off alone in analytical space as a self-contained entity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the lens for looking at this probably depends on your questions. If your goal is an analysis of rules and games, it makes sense to think of them as discrete entities. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Great points. :up:

Do you agree that the philosopher must uphold, almost, a fiduciary duty towards the public, in terms of living a certain life? — Shawn

I think it depends on their philosophy.

- :up:

Wittgenstein refers to many of his contemporaries in his writings. He does not mention studying others. I think the Count's point about the depth of 'classical education' is germane. But it is a matter impossible to settle from text alone. — Paine

My source here was a review by Gregory Sadler that I watched after I joined TPF and desired to learn more about Wittgenstein. See, for example, 26:44. But maybe I conflated a lack of engagement with contemporaries with a lack of engagement with the wider philosophical tradition. My point is that perhaps it is no accident that Wittgenstenians struggle to interact with other kinds of philosophy, if Wittgenstein's work was not intended to interact with other philosophy.

---

For example, you have the three uses of "is." The "is of predication," the "is of identity," and the "is of existence." But in the history of philosophy, there is plenty of debate that might make one question how discrete these really are. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am also thinking about the thread on quantification, and the way that the Wittgenstenian view in that thread is self-referential and largely incapable of interacting with the large number of alternative views.

---

It's also the notion that if one just really parses out Wittgenstein's Koans (aphorisms or propositions), one will "get it".. One just has to interpret Wittgenstein to the best ability..

One can always chastise oneself for not knowing enough, and by not knowing enough, one is not "getting it fully".. But why wouldn't that same thing be for any other philosopher? — schopenhauer1

I don't think it can be said for any philosopher but I think it can be said for some. I think Plato is the epitome, for meditation on Plato's dialogues shows them to be fecund beyond belief. I don't see any of that in Wittgenstein, and as I have learned more about his methodology I think I have begun to understand why it isn't there. But maybe I should try reading him again.

IIRC from some biographical thing I read he never bothered to read Aristotle in his lifetime. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is also well-known that he never bothered to read his fellow contemporary philosophers, and that he had a tendency to use past philosophers simply as leverage for his own thought. Maybe all of these pieces of the puzzle fit together in an obvious way. Maybe he was self-absorbed.

Antonia Soulez (sorry, I cannot find a public link to it) makes interesting observations that Wittgenstein's references to Plato, Kant, Russell, etcetera are not designed to solve their problems but as instances of what concerns his views and development. That suggests a conscious departure from the "philosophy of history" discussion.

Some have made that departure to be a parting shot, an assassination in Deleuze's view or a trip to the couch for various expressions of "therapy."

As an opponent of the means of 'natural sciences" to explain everything, I think it is helpful to compare Wittgenstein to others who did something seemingly similar but chose to wear the ermine of The Philosopher of History.

Heidegger is the true antipode to Wittgenstein. — Paine

Thanks, very interesting. :up:
This all makes sense to me.

I would question whether this is a particularly helpful or good faith way to pose the question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

He's frustrated and he's posting out of frustration, but in this case I think there is a legitimate reason for the frustration. Perhaps it's okay to exorcise the Wittgenstenianism of the forum, if it truly is getting out of control. I want to say that whenever excessive gatekeeping occurs on a public forum it should be checked, and unfortunately the checks that occur naturally are also somewhat infelicitous. Maybe that's okay.

It seems like Wittgenstein's work is inherently resistant to interaction with the rest of philosophy. — Leontiskos

There are a lot of philosophers who are "in-house baseball," such that they are only accessible to those who have read them at some length (and this is particularly true of much of the continental tradition). There are others who are not enigmatic, and can be read profitably even by those who are unfamiliar with them. This latter group are most conducive to public philosophy forums.

Wittgenstein is a strange animal in that he appears to be publicly accessible, and his adherents genuinely believe that his thought will be easy to access. But then when someone less familiar with Wittgenstein starts reading him and asking obvious questions, the weather suddenly changes and Wittgenstein becomes this enigmatic figure whose thought one must be initiated into by special rituals. It seems to me that this is just a defense mechanism that intervenes whenever Wittgenstein looks to be wrong. To consider a real objection to Wittgenstein would require accepting the possibility that Wittgenstein's paradigm and presuppositions might be incomplete. It would require a mental distance where Wittgenstein and, say, Schopenhauer are placed on equal footing, and such things cannot be tolerated by those who are truly loyal to Wittgenstein!

The aphoristic style lends itself to people reading it like a prophet.. holy writ almost. — schopenhauer1

Yep. But there's also the strange juxtaposition with the analytic context, which is different from Nietzsche.

I mean... :yikes: — schopenhauer1

Usually thinkers have successors, but it seems like Wittgenstein doesn't have any clear-cut successors, perhaps because the meaning of his thought is not determinable. At that time in history there was a revolutionary attitude that swept through many disciplines, and also reached beyond academia. Wittgenstein strikes me as someone who was trying to be original, to such an extent that he becomes opaque and even somewhat mystical (again, almost like a guru).

- It seems like Wittgenstein's work is inherently resistant to interaction with the rest of philosophy. Thoughts?

- "People do things because they believe they should do things; therefore moral realism is false." Good stuff, Janus, good stuff. :roll:

Then you should realize there is no objective morality and stop pretending you have a theory or could have a theory of objective moral truth. — Janus

Your tautology has no relation to these other claims you are making. It's not clear you realize this, either.

I say this too because I notice a tendency whereby when you question Wittgenstein's ideas, the only answer that seems to be legitimate to the majority who jump on these threads is to quote another line from Wittgenstein.. As if you cannot refute Wittgenstein, you can only have varying levels of understanding of Wittgenstein. — schopenhauer1

:lol: You're not wrong.

Did you see my post <here>? Specifically the paper, "Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein on Self and Object."

Help me understand why it is SPECIFICALLY Wittgenstein where I see this?? — schopenhauer1

I don't know that much about Wittgenstein, but I have noticed a lot of strange intransigence among those who rely heavily upon him. 'Thing is, historically speaking Wittgenstein's approach to philosophy is very weird and idiosyncratic, and when this is combined with gatekeeping what results is something that is comically absurd. There is something guru-ish about the whole phenomenon.

(Maybe this should be in the Lounge.)

People are motivated by their moral feelings and thoughts, but they may not always follow them. There is nothing tautologous in any of that. — Janus

It's little more than a barebones tautology. People are motivated by feelings and thoughts, obviously. Anyone who understands what feelings and thoughts are understands this.

I think the formalisations are thus red herrings in the discussion regarding quantifier variance. Since if even mathematical reasoning has both ambiguity and commonality regarding the underlying logic and its quantifier introduction rules, why would we expect logic to behave as more than a prop, crutch or model of quantification in natural language? Never mind ontology! — fdrake

Right, and that is why I think Sider's analysis is a great deal more incisive than Finn and Bueno's. For example, here is his shorter version of explaining what quantifier variance is:

Quantier variance: There is a class, C , containing many inferentially adequate candidate meanings, including two that we may call existence_PVI and existence_DKL. PVI’s claims are true when ‘exists’ means existence_PVI and DKL’s claims are true when ‘exists’ means existence_DKL. (Similarly, other views about composite material objects come out true under other members of C .) Further, no member of C carves the world at the joints better than the rest, and no other candidate meaning carves the world at the joints as well as any member of C —either because there is no such notion of carving at the joints that applies to candidate meanings, or because there is such a notion and C is maximal with respect to it. — Sider, Ontological Realism, p. 11

They are not tautologies; people don't have to be thus motivated. — Janus

I never said they did. The statements remain tautological. They are tautological conditionals (if/then statements).

I was interpreting this statement charitably, but I think that interpretation was incorrect:

They are binding socially (normatively) only insofar as most normal people hold to them. — Janus

What you mean to say is—simplifying even further to highlight the tautology—people do (moral) things because they believe they should do (moral) things. This doesn't say anything at all. It certainly doesn't amount to a moral theory.

People pray, for e.g., for safety while traveling, and if they arrive safely, then they believe their prayer was answered. What's bizarre is that any answer can fit within their beliefs about prayer. — Sam26

Why is that bizarre?

It's like the self-sealing argument, any outcome can fit within their belief. — Sam26

Prayer is not an argument.

The truth is there is no way to know if a particular outcome is from God, it could simply be chance or even deterministic. — Sam26

If God (of the classical variety) exists then all outcomes are from him. To say that it might be from God or it might be from something else is to misunderstand God.

More mundanely, if I ask someone to do something, and they are capable of doing it, and they receive my request, then any outcome will implicate a choice on their part. This isn't "bizarre," it's quite logical.

But prayer is asking God for something. Do they mean to say that God had decided I would recover slowly but, because THEY are asking, God will speed up my recovery? Do they think they are that important? Isn’t that egotism? — Art48

It is not egotism to petition an important or powerful person. Some petitions are motivated by egotism/pride, and some are not. If you have a reason other than pride to think that the petition is worthwhile, then you need not be egotistic. Christians do, and if you think impetration is egotistic, then Heaven knows what you think of the hypostatic union. :wink:

(The truly egotistic people don't bother with impetration. They just attempt to do it themselves.)

I seriously doubt it. QV seems to be the love-child of incommensurability and a bizarre over-promotion of the principle of charity. I don't know why I'm even posting, it's so stupid. — Srap Tasmaner

Isn't it wonderful that we can agree on things like this even while being at loggerheads on Hume and probabilistic logic? :grin:

FWIW, here first, which happens to be a post of mine you responded to, but I quoted it in the section responding to Banno, so understandable that you missed it. — Srap Tasmaner

So you haven't been reading my posts. Fine. — Banno

Ah, I actually did read those but I didn't realize at the time that a previously-uncited paper was being introduced.

Sorry. Eli Hirsch and Jared Warren, Quantifier Variance. — Srap Tasmaner

Ah okay. I think this is the first time that paper has been quoted in this thread. I don't think Sider's paper has been paid any attention at all.

I think part of the problem here is that we have been focused on a random paper that was not included in the OP, "Quantifier Variance Dissolved." The "titular topic" that speaks about is arguably not quantifier variance per se, and it surely isn't the presentation of quantifier variance found negatively in QVD. It seems to me that the OP is actually about Theodore Sider's thoughts in his paper, "Ontological Realism." This is what the OP draws most heavily upon. To expand the central quote from the OP:

But notice this: every serious theory of the world that anyone has ever considered employs a quantificational apparatus, from physics to mathematics to the social sciences to folk theories. Quantification is as indispensable as it gets. This is defeasible reason to think that we’re onto something, that quantificational structure is part of the objective structure of the world, just as the success of spacetime physics gives us reason to believe in objective spacetime structure.55 Questions framed in indispensable vocabulary are substantive; quantifiers are indispensable; ontology is framed using quantifiers; so ontology is substantive.

If you remain unconvinced and skeptical of ontology, what are your options?

First, you could reject the notion of objective structure altogether. I regard that as unthinkable.

Second, you could reject the idea of structure as applied to logic. I regard that as unmotivated.

Third, and more plausibly, you could accept the idea of structure as applied to logic, but deny that there is distinguished quantificational structure in particular. This is in effect quantifier variance, but there are some interesting subcases. . . — Sider, Ontological Realism, pp. 37-8

It seems to me that @Banno is opting for some variety of the third approach.

What does Sider mean by quantifier variance? He explains at some length beginning on page 8, and we have covered some of that same ground. On page 11 he gives a summation, and he seems to be much more careful than "Quantifier Variance Dissolved" in understanding this notion of quantifier variance. On page 11 he also begins his argument against @Banno's idea that the meaning of a quantifier is merely a matter of domain. On page 22 he begins arguing for what I have been arguing for, which I will call the "substantiveness" of quantifiers.

Their treatment of quantifiers is straightforwardly functionalist and unobjectionable — Srap Tasmaner

Who are "they"? :chin:

Seems to me that such equivocation is still about the domain. I think I showed that , above. Can you show otherwise? — Banno

I granted that and pointed out that there are two different kinds of domain differences: quantitative and qualitative. I gave at least three examples: the apple, the Jeep, and the nominalist. You haven't interacted with any of this.

Going back to the apple, the quantificational difference is over whether the imaged thing exists through the image. This is simultaneously a different understanding of quantification and a difference of domain. You have been begging the question by asserting that the domain difference is primary, and the different understanding of quantification is accidental or artificial (or, on a carefully placed definition, non-existent). Yet it is simply false to claim that domain differences are always primary and quantificational differences are always secondary or derivative, and Simpson's analysis of Wittgenstein shows this to be the case (because Wittgenstein's quantificational understanding is precisely what shaped his domain, not vice versa).

With the apple one might buddy up to pluralism and say, "Ah, well the difference is inconsequential. Use the quantifier-and-domain that let's Cézanne's apple exist or use the quantifier-and-domain that does not let it exist. It's all the same. There is no right or wrong way." Yet I wrote that example to @J because he is a Christian, and in Jewish and Christian history this was always a substantial question in relation to iconoclasm (beginning with the Hebrew commandment against images of God, and continuing with various iconoclastic controversies, but most pointedly for Christianity the Second Council of Nicea). So it is not necessarily inconsequential, and those who believe that a reality can truly manifest through an image (think Orthodox icon theology) are involved primarily in a quantificational commitment, and only secondarily in a domain-extension commitment. They quantify reality differently, namely because they quantify images differently. This has the effect of altering their domain, but the alteration of the domain is merely a consequence of the way that they catalogue reality. You can't just say, "Ah, well Orthodox Christians posit a larger domain, but they quantify icons the same way as a secular person quantifies a portrait." They surely do not do this, just as the nominalist and the universalist do not quantify reality in the same way (or the people who disagree over mereological composites, or possible worlds, etc.).

Can you set out why or how the analogy does not work? In what salient way is logic not a game of stipulation? — Banno

In what salient way is logic like chess? Why would we assume such a thing? Chess is just a made-up game we created to have some fun and amusement. Logic is at the very least supposed to substantially help us to interact with reality. These are not the same thing. "Why do bishops move diagonally?" Because we said so in a made-up game. "Why does modus ponens hold?" Because reality said so, whether we like it or not.

Why doesn't it matter how you quantify or which logic you use? Isn't that of the utmost import? That there are multiple logics does not imply that they are all of equal utility or applicability. Propositional logic will be of little help with modal issues, and modal logic might be overkill for propositional problems. Some art is involved in the selection of a logic to use. — Banno

If art is involved then we've moved beyond stipulation, and you should follow that string.

I've already said that individual moral feeling is motivating, and that communally shared moral feeling is doubly so. — Janus

So you want to say, "If you are positively disposed towards doing or not doing something, then you are in some sense motivated to do or not do it. And if you and a large group of other people are all positively disposed towards doing or not doing something, then you are even more motivated to do or not do it."

These are just tautologies, are they not? I don't see anything substantial being said.

I'm still wanting an example of where quantifier variation is not also domain variation. I don't think it can be done - quantifier variation just is domain variation — Banno

@fdrake has been consistently talking about intensional difference in quantifiers, namely by way of differing introduction and elimination rules.

I'm still wanting an example of where quantifier variation is not also domain variation. I don't think it can be done - quantifier variation just is domain variation — Banno

@fdrake has been consistently talking about intensional differences in quantifiers, namely by way of introduction and elimination rules for quantifiers.

You're not really addressing the issue in any clear or straightforward way.

1. Is a moral consensus in any way binding, yes or no?
2. If yes, then in virtue of what is it binding?

Do you have clear answers to either question?

Particularly, in PI Wittgenstein is equivocal about use defining meaning in all cases. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, interesting.

I think you can lay some blame on Wittgenstein for the concept of aiming to reduce hard problems to "pseudo problems" though. If our goal becomes not to solve problems, but rather to dismiss them, we should not be surprised if problems begin to seem intractable. It is the difference between starting with the question: "how do I understand this?" and beginning with the assumption that the real question is: "why do I not need to understand this?" or "why is it impossible to understand this?" Perhaps some problems really are problems of language or pseudo problems. However, having discovered this, it will not do to view the aim of philosophy entirely as the project of discovering how problems are not really problems. It's a bit of the old: "discovering a hammer and deciding the world is made of nails." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that makes sense to me.

I think the move to viewing philosophy as a sort of "therapy" does have some strong points. There is a sense in which much classical and medieval philosophy is practically oriented, itself a type of "therapy." The ideal philosopher from these eras is a saint, even in the pagan tradition (e.g. Porphyry's Pythagoras or Philostratus' Apollonius of Tyana). They are not ruled over or disordered by desires and passions. They do what is right and just. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is Wittgenstein's the idea that philosophy is therapy in the sense that it can properly order our desires and lives, or is it the idea that in recognizing that things we thought were problems are not really problems, a therapeutic resolution takes place?

For, what is "pragmatism," when the Good, the object of practical reason, is itself either something that must be created according to "pragmatic" concerns, or else is illusory? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, good.

I am not sure this is so obvious. What you think about the relationship between logic (or mathematics) and the world/being itself is going to affect what you think about the value of seeking further explanation here. The assumption that any digging here is redundant seems to carry with it its own assumptions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I actually find the role that chess plays on this forum a bit bewildering. Sometimes it almost feels as if chess is the foundational hermeneutical key to all reality. Folks launch into chess examples as if it is the most obvious thing that "morality is like chess" () or "logic is like chess" () or "epistemology is like chess" (). The obvious rejoinder to this unspoken presupposition is simple, "No it's not." Things like morality, logic, and epistemology are not like chess; they are not just arbitrary games we made up for the fun of it. Their overlap with chess is quite small. These chess-claims usually function to underwrite some kind of arbitrary reasoning or foundation.

Is this just Wittgenstein playing out, with his assumptions that philosophy is the study of language and language is fundamentally a kind of "game"? These are two false assumptions which contain partial truths, and which fail badly as a foundation or first philosophy. As Aristotle points out, small errors in the beginning become large errors in the end. It seems to me that the attempt to massage them to make them more plausible tends to ignore their foundational-ness, as the thing which qualifies them never ends up being more foundational or pervasive than the metaphor itself, and because of this the metaphor continues, unperturbed and still largely false.

There is a way in which the answer to "Why do Bishops move diagonally?" is, that is just how the game is played, that its what we do. Seeking further explanation is redundant. — Banno

Logic is not just a stipulative game, like chess. The analogy doesn't work.

Could we change the way we use quantification in logic? Sure, why not. Indeed quantification is done slightly differently in each of the various logics. — Banno

And as I said, if you embrace logical pluralism then it doesn't matter how you quantify or which logic you use, for everything is stipulation and no one stipulation is any better than any other. Sider, @J, @Count Timothy von Icarus, and I all seem to agree that this is plainly wrong. I think you are entertaining it because you think the anchor problem is too messy to venture.

The way quantification works changes as the way the domain works. — Banno

To reiterate, this means that even within a single logic qualitative differences of domain reflect qualitatively different understandings of quantification. Disagreement can come down to these differences, and therefore (second-order) quantifier equivocation is possible.

Talk of nominalists and universalists seems oddly anachronistic. — Banno

It's not. Peirce was a universalist and Frege was a nominalist. The story only continues, and universals is but one of the many examples the paper gives.

Whatever point you are making remains unclear. — Banno

I've been quite clear:

I am seeing a bad argument against QV being made in the thread: <Quantifiers are not subject to second-order equivocation; therefore QV fails>. The problem is that this is valid but unsound, as the main premise is false. — Leontiskos

If you wish to talk of changes of domain as changes in quantification, go ahead, but that seems to me to obscure more than it reveals. — Banno

You like stipulation. If one does enough stipulation then quantifier equivocation becomes impossible. If you stipulate the logic and the domain, then the quantifier will be stable. But one does not understand quantification without understanding the qualitative scope of the domain, and the qualitative scope of the domain is only ever partially determined by the logic.

To reiterate some of the points you ignored: logic and quantification have changed throughout history, and are not immutable. Wittgenstein's understanding of quantification strongly influenced his domain and his philosophy (as does yours). Quantification changes in large ways throughout history and from logical system to logical system, and in smaller ways within a logical system given the presuppositions of the various logicians. This isn't odd, for quantifiers are part of language and all language is susceptible to such equivocation. You simply haven't provided a reason to believe otherwise. Presumably you would continue to offer the tautology that you do it your way because you do it your way, like "chess". The question is whether you have a reason to do it your way, or any one way rather than another.

They are binding socially (normatively) only insofar as most normal people hold to them. So, I am not advocating moral subjectivism or skepticism, but rather a kind of moral inter-subjectivism. What is morally wrong is what most people would find to be so. Of course, I don't deny that this position has its weaknesses, and I think these show up in the case of social mores, like sex before marriage, but when it comes to significant moral issues like murder, rape, child abuse, theft, and so on I think it works well enough. — Janus

The first sentence seems to rely on peer pressure for bindingness; the third sentence seems to rely on the idea that the consensus of a large enough sample of human opinion will tend to be correct (I forget the name which is often given to this idea). The problem with consensus-based views is that consensus is not in itself a truthmaker. The claim that consensus is a truthmaker for moral propositions therefore requires additional explanation.

If you want to say that moral proposition P is probably true if most people believe it, then you still need to explain why this makes it probably true.

Many years ago I argued with an atheist skeptic that a general consensus is rationally inclining: that it counts as evidence in favor of the thesis (and therefore global skepticism fails). I did not commit myself to the consensus constituting anything more than a piece of evidence, for he would not even accept this. I am inclined to agree with my former self, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that the rational inclination is strong enough to bind or obligate one to accept the opinion of the consensus. So what I said seems to apply to your theory as well:

I think the reason moral subjectivism is basically non-existent in professional philosophy is because it is recognized that even if nothing supports moral propositions better than attitudes, it remains the case that attitudes are insufficient to support moral propositions. — Leontiskos

Ergo: The attitude of belief that a consensus of people have towards a moral proposition is not sufficient to support that moral proposition. Unlike the subjectivist, I think your methodology contains a certain degree of validity, and mere consensus may even be sufficient for a child or an unreflective person, but beyond that I do not think it manages to properly ground moral propositions. Still, a lot of the ethical silliness on these boards would be improved by adopting your position (e.g. ).

Yes. I'd say that one can be a cognitivist without thinking that ethics is a cognitive science. I don't think ethics is a science. — Moliere

Okay, interesting.

Not with those words, no -- to be fair to you I'm trying to make a position mostly to understand the idea, so I'm changing my position as I go along; I'm engaged in a creative endeavor. I don't have some firmly worked out idea here, though through the game we have managed to touch upon some possible interesting avenues of conversation. — Moliere

Okay.

at least in the sense of using "wants to be". In the scenario where he acts on anger "X wants to be alpha", or perhaps something more personal like the person insulted his wife: "X wants to be defender"

Where he backs down "X wants to be friend" -- he's promised, and friends keep promises.

Where he's guilty "X wants to be accepted" — Moliere

Okay, in my last I set out different senses of such desires. Are you saying they are a sort of retrospective motive for an action that has already occurred?

Why not? — Moliere

It's just how reality works. If your mother gives birth to you, then you don't give birth to your mother.

Gravitation works that way. The earth pulls on the apple, and the apple pulls on the earth -- it's just the earth is bigger so it's a more noticeable pull, but they simultaneously cause each other to meet. — Moliere

Yes, but the motion is caused by the body, not by the motion of the body. There is no circular causality here, no more than if, sitting across from each other foot to foot, we grasp hands and pull each other up.

I'm appealing to his anger. It's the right kind of anger. The words we make up after the fact notice the distinction between the right kind and the wrong kind, but the words aren't the appeal. — Moliere

An appeal to the right kind of anger is not an appeal to anger itself. Else, if you think there is an emotion called good-anger and a different emotion called bad-anger, and these are two different things with no essential relation to one another, then you would still need to say what you mean by good-anger, and I say this description will always appeal to a rational justification for the appropriateness of good-anger.

But this might be back to philosophy of emotions. — Moliere

If you are interested, one of Aquinas' central writings on the passions occurs in questions 22-48 of the Prima Secundae.

Edit: Some old threads on emotion:

• Are emotions rational or irrational?
• How voluntary are emotions?
• Difference between thoughts and emotions?
• Does the West educate about emotions?
• How May the Nature and Experience of Emotions Be Considered Philosophically?

's thread is perhaps par for the course in that it conceives of emotions as separate from the self. I'm starting to wonder if this is just how modern people think.