- You are the one who thinks "we can be pretty damn confident." That was the <whole point>. Are you saying that we can be confident about something that is inscrutable?

- Then you either failed to read or understand the post. Why don't you explain how empathy solves the problem of reference?

So there is no "fact of the matter"* about reference, but we can still know reference through empathy? I'm not sure how that would work, despite the newfound powers that empathy is continually granted in our day and age.

* Again, "fact" being a weasel-word.

- Sure, but my point is that confidence and the plausibility of Quine's argument are indirectly related. Affirming confidence requires attacking Quine's argument, at least in a thread on Quine's argument.

Edit: And the funny thing here is that a pro-essence argument could exactly parallel the "confidence" argument. "Quine has an argument that reference is inscrutable. But reference isn't inscrutable so his argument must be wrong." "The anti-essentialist has an argument that we can't know what tigers are. But we do know what tigers are so his argument must be wrong." Of course we can argue about what Quine's argument does or is meant to do, but apparently we all agree that it does not undermine reference.

- You might think that @Count Timothy von Icarus is not taking Quine seriously, but is anyone taking Quine seriously? Is anyone exegeting Quine? Consider:

Davidson bypasses downplays indeterminism using charity – despite not being certain, we can be pretty damn confident. — Banno

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

If Quine is right, then how could we be confident? If we can be confident, then how could Quine be right?

If it doesn't have an exciting result when applied to rabbits, then why did Quine apply it to rabbits?

No one here is taking Quine seriously. It makes no sense to say, "Quine's argument is sound, but we can still communicate our references anyways."

I would submit that just as for Hume we cannot know causes, so for Quine we cannot know references. The presuppositions of the systems ensure the validity of these inferences, and if we want to deny the conclusions we must deny the presuppositions of the systems. We can't just say, "Oh well. We can be pretty damn confident." To do that is to beg the question. If we can be confident about causes or references, then Hume or Quine must be wrong.

@Count Timothy von Icarus is simply avoiding the question-begging. He sees that if "we can be pretty damn confident/justified" then Quine must be wrong. He also sees that if philosophy of language is first philosophy, then Quine is not wrong.

- Your quote is misattributed. You are quoting me, not Count.

The important thing here is to set out what one believes Quine's intended conclusion was. I would suggest avoiding vague words like 'fact' in setting that out. My point was that it has nothing to do with J's theory about so-called "metaphysical super-glue," and it looks like we agree on at least that much.

You seem to be getting at "but people disagree, hence there can be no fact of the matter." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, and some postmodernists are dogmatic skeptics even to the extent that their inner demon compels them in this way, "There can be no fact of the matter, therefore..." This is pluralism-as-first-principle, and it comes up in J's posts a lot. For example, "There can be no fact of the matter, therefore these people must be arguing for 'metaphysical super-glue', a sheer impossibility." One thus begins to look for ways to prop up intractable disagreement, in part by shifting attention towards grounds for intractability, however fictional. This isn't super common. Moral philosophy aside, I think the only other poster who moves in this direction of pluralism as a first principle is Moliere.

- :up: :fire:

One of them was the matter of putting logical formulas into natural language (English in our case) — that matter was essential for the purpose of correctly interpreting some statements. — Lionino

A paper that shows how Medieval Aristotelian logic was in some ways more robust than current logic is Gyula Klima's, "Existence and Reference in Medieval Logic." He uses Russell's King of France example rather than conditionals.

But they don't. That's the whole problem. — J

You think they are just disagreeing over whether an arbitrary set of letters should be correlated to a concept? And that that is what Quine was worried about? Do you honestly think that when people argue over what goodness means, they are arguing over which concept we should correlate with the text-token g-o-o-d-n-e-s-s?! You are deflating these disagreements into vacuous, non-existent disputes. The point Quine is actually making is that communicating an "immediate signification" is never guaranteed or sure.

"Rational self-interest" is not a name, it is a concept. That's your basic error.

Well, suppose someone gave a definition of "tiger" as: "a large purple fish with green leaves, a tap root, and horns." Clearly, this is off the mark and we can do better or worse (although in this case, not much worse). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep, and if we want to say that this is not a tiger then we are already appealing to the idea of an essence.

Folks like to say, "Well, unless you can give me the perfectly correct (real) definition of a tiger, I won't accept that essences exist," which looks like sophistry to me. It's like saying:

• Do you have a car?
• Yes.
• Prove it. List every part that constitutes your car.
• *Gives a list of tens of thousands of parts.*
• This list omits a rear-left brake pad. Therefore you don't have a car.

- Let me try to clear up some of this confusion by quoting from a paper by Gyula Klima, which we could perhaps have a thread on.

There is a strong tendency among some philosophers to attach a name to a thing or a concept with metaphysical Superglue, such that, if there is a question about translation or clarification, we’re told we can't suggest a name change without also changing the thing named. In the case of the rabbit, that seems wrong. If for some reason we decided we needed a new (better?) name for Leporidae, that could be effected with minimum difficulty, since we could always point to the creature itself if anyone had doubt, and say, “No, the object remains the same. This is only a recommendation for a terminological change.” — J

Why would we change the name? What would it mean to have a "better" name? What is characteristically happening here is that you are confusing naming with signification (and this is common among Analytics). The reason philosophers appeal to a "super glue" is because they want to talk to each other, and they can't talk to each other without using words in the same way. It isn't a metaphysical point, it is a dialogical point. Hence "immediate signification":

In fact, Buridan would distinguish not only between meaning and naming, or in his terminology, between signification and supposition, but even between two different sorts of signification, namely, immediate and ultimate signification, and, correspondingly, between two different sorts of supposition, namely, material and personal supposition.

What a term immediately signifies is the mental act on account of which we recognize the term as a significative utterance or inscription, as opposed to some articulate sound or discernible scribble that makes no sense to us at all. If I utter the sound ‘biltrix’, it might sound like a word of an articulate human language, and in fact there may be a human language in which it is meaningful (I don’t know), but as far as I can tell, it is only Boethius’ example of a meaningless utterance in his commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation to illustrate the difference between articulate sounds that do and those that don’t make any sense to us.

The latter sort of utterances lack signification precisely because they do not generate any understanding in the mind of the listener. That is to say, upon hearing such an utterance we literally have no idea what the speaker intends by it, if anything at all, because such an utterance simply gives rise to no act of understanding in our mind. Thus, those utterances that do have signification are meaningful precisely because they are associated with some act of understanding, or, in late-scholastic terminology, because they are subordinated to some concept of the human mind, whatever such a concept is, namely, whether it is some spiritual modification of an immaterial mind or it is just a firing pattern of neurons in the brain. The point is that without a subordinated concept an utterance makes no sense, since for it to make sense is nothing but to evoke the concept to which it is subordinated.

But this is not to say that what we mean by our categorematic terms are our concepts... — Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 3

-

This is much harder with abstracta. If A says, "Let's change the name of Goodness to 'Rational Self-Interest'," it's unclear what B, who objects, can point to in protest. B can say, "That is not how Goodness has traditionally been used” or perhaps even “That is not what Goodness means” but if A’s reason for wanting to make the change is because A believes the previous usage was mistaken, what are we to say? — J

This is another example of confusing naming with signification. The retort you offer is significant, "That is not what Goodness means." Meaning and naming are two different things.

Buridan would briefly reply that the objection mixes up two distinct functions of terms, namely, meaning and naming, or in his terminology, signifying and suppositing. — Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 2

-

But the type of philosopher I referred to above (call them C) wants to disallow the argument, on the grounds that it isn’t coherent to change the name of Goodness to something else. If you do that, C urges, you’re no longer talking about Goodness. Name and concept are metaphysically wedded together. — J

I think that if we reflect on this, we should be able to overcome the strawman which says that what is at stake is a name-concept pairing. What is really at stake is a conceptual matter: the disagreement is that both parties agree that, for example, 'good' = the desirable, and yet they are disagreeing on what is truly desirable (i.e. "Rational self-interest"). The substantive dispute is over the question of whether rational self-interest is foundationally desirable, not over the question of whether the token g-o-o-d must always be attached to a particular concept.

The reason confusion arises in these contexts is because we almost never think in terms of material tokens or phonemes (and so we are prone to misunderstand when someone is using a token differently). But because of this, disputes are not usually simply over material tokens or phonemes. When someone says, "That's not what goodness is," they are not saying, "That's not what the material token g-o-o-d-n-e-s-s metaphysically attaches to." They are arguing over a normative concept, such as desirability or proper conduct or somesuch thing.

I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts as you read the book, . :up:

-

Thanks too for your summaries, @Wayfarer. :up:

Plato, for one. When Socrates questions Euthyphro about the meaning of "piety," they are both assuming that there is a word, eusebeia, that corresponds correctly with a certain content or concept. — J

This looks like an invalid argument:

• Socrates and Euthyphro assume there is a word that corresponds correctly with "piety."
• Therefore, for these men there is "a binding action that makes a word inseparable from its object or meaning or concept"

Rather, we're trying to shake up a very common assumption among philosophers, which is that there is some sort of binding action (I called it "metaphysical Superglue" elsewhere) that makes a word inseparable from its object or meaning or concept -- take your pick of these imprecise terms. — J

Like @Count Timothy von Icarus, I have never in my life heard of any philosopher falling into such a position. Socrates regularly recognizes that others are using words differently than he is. He could not spend so much time trying to refine and correct the meaning of words if he didn't think they could be used differently.

Socrates knew, for example, that people who speak languages other than Greek can also talk about the same things that Greeks talk about.

I will try and find time to listen. — Wayfarer

Read my edit above before you do. :nerd:

Edit: I just realized that McDowell's lecture is on a different book by Rödl with a slightly different title: Self-Consciousness and Objectivity (2007). Doh!

-

I listened to a talk by John McDowell on Rödl's book. It was helpful in understanding a bit of what Rödl is doing, but it was also useful to me because McDowell uses Anscombe's interpretation of Aristotle to critique a central piece of Rödl's project. The critique is basically that Rödl turns practical reasoning into speculative reasoning, and I would say that this is a very common and understandable Aristotelian mistake. The talk is exceptionally clear.

The foundational claim McDowell makes is that, for Rödl, <Practical reasoning has as its conclusions thoughts of the form "I * [should] do A">, and that this is also what Anscombe rejects.

Given that he starts with Anscombe and brings in Davidson, it may be more accessible to the folks interested in contemporary philosophy. If in one way or another Rödl casts thinking as practical reasoning (which it arguably is), then on McDowell's thesis it is easy for me to understand why Rödl would want to say thinking is self-conscious.



(Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a copy of the pdf that McDowell used for his talk.)

---

- Good thoughts

- It would be the real vs. logical distinction catalogued <here>.

Hmm. I don't know how to answer this without pulling in a lot of metaphysical commitments -- which I'd rather not do because I think the thought1/thought2 distinction is important and relevant no matter whether one thinks it's "real" or "mental," in your terminology. Sorry to lob this back to you again, but if you could say a little more about what might hinge on the choice of "real" vs. "mental," I might have a better sense of what we ought to say about that. — J

We don't have to go into this too far. The point is just to think about the manner in which Fregian propositions are being countenanced. The thought1/thought2 distinction puts us in the territory of heavy Platonism, at least prima facie. Given what Wayfarer has said I thought this sort of thing was being resisted.

My time is short this week, so I am going to try not to get too entangled here.

Yes, there is, and unless we want to go back to Kimhi's arguments, we should probably resist this. Where we stand in the discussion right now ("we" meaning all on this thread), let's go ahead and let thought1 be understood as unasserted, without force, "merely thought". We may have to change our minds at some future point. — J

Well, I can't imagine how a temporal thought-event would lack force, given that a "mere thought" (without force) is something very like a Fregian proposition (thought2). But this does get into Kimhi's question of what exactly it means to be forceless.

That may be true, but I was suggesting earlier that we don't have to understand "self-consciousness" as a new thought. — J

Well again, I have never claimed that self-consciousness is a thought. The crucial point for this thread is that self-consciousness is something. It is not nothing. And what it is is self-consciousness.

In other words, various people have said that Rodl doesn't look to be dealing with self-consciousness, and the response is always, "Oh, but self-consciousness isn't w, x, y, or z." Well, what is it? And once we have a sense of what it is, is Rodl dealing with it?

(My claim has been that self-consciousness of something we do is consciousness of our doing that thing. Thought is something we do. Therefore self-consciousness is consciousness of our act/doing of thinking. Nowhere here is the idea that self-consciousness is a thought.)

You may be right that tinkering with the targeted sentence won't produce any insight, but I think it might. I can take a shot at it if you'd rather not. — J

Feel free to give it a shot. We have, "[X] accompanies all our [Y]," where the possible values for X and Y are thought1 and thought2. I don't see how any substitution will yield a conclusion about self-consciousness. And note that Kant's I think, which is not thought1, is about self-consciousness and therefore can yield a conclusion about self-consciousness.

Good questions. I know I often blame translation for difficulties with Kant, and here again I'm tempted to say, "How would a German speaker of Kant's era understand 'my representations' or 'my thoughts'?" — J

Well, that looks like saying, "Maybe the translator mistranslated 'my'. Maybe it's not possessive after all." But this looks very ad hoc. It's logically possible that there is some sort of mistranslation or lossy translation, but until we have independent reasons to believe such a thing, it can't function as a plausible claim.

More bluntly, we shouldn't be saying, "My theory conflicts with Kant. But that's probably just a translation problem. Also, I don't speak German." Mww tried to preempt that sort of thing earlier when he consulted three different translations.

- I am tired of repeating myself as well; tired of asking for arguments rather than dismissals with vague allegations such as "truisms." We can leave it there.

I do think that it cannot be accomplished by people external to Islam — ToothyMaw

Right. That seems like a key point.

I don't have much to offer to this complex problem. What I would say is that we need to hold Islamic groups responsible for Islamic individuals, such that this pressure causes Islamic groups to eschew Jihadism.

There is very little reason to think the problem would have just "gone away." — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

- Sounds good, those are reasonable counterpoints.

Yes, that's my hypothesis. — J

Okay.

Right, that's the natural next question. This is where Rodl's idealism comes in. He believes there's a great deal more to be said about the structure of thought1, the "I think". I'm still working on finding a clear and concise way of articulating his ideas here. — J

Okay.

I don't think I understand this question. Could you say more? — J

An example of a real distinction would be the Platonic model where there are real "Fregian" propositions and there are real temporal acts in which we leverage those propositions, such that there is a real distinction between thought1 and thought2 (i.e. a distinction in reality). An example of a mental distinction would be a model where there is only one (temporal) thought under two different guises; thought1 and thought2 can be distinguished mentally but these notions do not correspond to separate realities.

The oddity is that Rodl sounds a lot like Frege, given the way we are utilizing Fregian propositions. That is, there is a strong way in which thought1 resembles force and thought2 resembles content.

I believe we can now see that there are subtleties and distinctions we need to make here. On the hypothesis of there being these two construals of "think/thought," the first quoted statement would be "Thinking2 p requires thinking1 p." But was your statement "No one disputes this" based on the observation that this is a pointless tautology, or were you aware of the different senses of "thinking p"? It reads to me like you were indeed making that distinction, and going on to raise the question of self-consciousness. But now what we must ask is, How would you divvy up the "thinks" in the next statement? The relevant bit is "whether thinking p requires self-consciously thinking p; whether it requires thinking "I think p". Rather than guessing, I'll just toss it to you. How would you disambiguate the various "thinking/thinks" here? — J

What I am suggesting is that no matter how we rearrange the various senses of thought1/thought2, we won't get an answer to the self-consciousness question. This is because thought1 (event) and thought2 (Fregian proposition) do not possess the qualities necessary to generate conclusions about self-consciousness. It seems that we have stepped away from the basic thesis of self-consciousness (of being conscious of my own thinking).

Yes, that's right. Can you say more about why (with the necessary disambiguations) this is problematic? I may not be seeing your point. — J

It just feels very odd that this is what we mean by "thoughts" in that second sense. Note that for Kant:

The I think must be able to accompany all my representations; — Kant, CPR, B131-133 (pp. 246-7)

..There is a possessive ("my"). A Fregian proposition is not possessed, being "timeless, unspecific, 'the same' no matter who thinks it, or when." When we talk about "my representations" or "my thoughts" we seem to be talking about things that are temporal, specific, appropriated by a subject, etc. This makes a lot of sense given that Kant is apparently saying that the I think (which involves self-consciousness) accompanies some thoughts1 but not others.

There is a theological difference between a religion and a sect... — Arcane Sandwich

Let me try to cut to the chase a bit. What if Jihadis win the entirety of the judicial placements in the Islamic schools? At which point all of the Islamic authorities favor "Jihadism" as part of Islam? What happens then? I submit that all the people who are now pointing to those scholars and schools that oppose Jihadism would simply pivot and claim that religious tolerance is not unconditional, and that the religion of Islam does not need to be tolerated vis-a-vis Jihad. I don't think they would claim that Islam is no longer a religion.

So the buck stops at the fact that nations (including especially secular nations) do not tolerate the violence of Jihadism. If it is non-religious they won't tolerate it, and if it is religious they won't tolerate it. It makes no difference whether it is religious or non-religious. It's not as though if the Islamic authorities can convince everyone that Jihad is part of Islam, then Jihad will be tolerated. Besides, I find the implicit idea here that religions are never inherently violent to be simply ahistorical.

- That's fair. I'm just trying to capture the OP's usage in a way that is at least loosely related to the meaning of the words. We can restrict Jihadism to extremists. I don't see that as a problem for the purpose of this thread.

-

Some Muslim scholars argue that jihadism, understood as the violent overthrow of a non-Muslim state, is not compatible with Islam, and it is therefore not the correct, religious interpretation of what Jihad is in the context of the Muslim religion. — Arcane Sandwich

Okay, but I don't see this as sufficient for the conclusion that Jihadism is not religious. Even if the Jihadi is not a "real Muslim," what they are doing still seems to be a religious act. On the premise that they are not a "real Muslim," their religion is a deviant form of Islam, but I don't see how this quantitatively small deviation from "true Islam" can cause the Jihadi to be non-religious.

I wouldn't expect any country to blanketly tolerate all religious tenets. The tenets that infringe on other's rights of non-interference will not be tolerated and should not be. — RogueAI

Right:

Suppose a state has a law against prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Now suppose they prohibit a Jihadi from exercising their religion. I would submit that what is occurring is a prohibition on the free exercise of religion, which is religious intolerance. I think the state would acknowledge this and say, "Free exercise of religion is not unconditional."

But note that religious tolerance and free exercise of religion is precisely what is not occurring in this scenario. It is being overridden by a higher law. — Leontiskos

Unless it's not a religion to begin with — Arcane Sandwich

Sure, but no one is arguing that Jihad is not religious.

It applies to some religious tenets. If your religion requires you to punch nonbelievers in the face, that shouldn't be tolerated. — RogueAI

I take it that "religious tolerance" means tolerating religiously motivated acts. So if you do not tolerate the punch in question, then you are not practicing religious tolerance. You are being intolerant of a religion.

I think the only alternative is to say, "I am tolerating religiously motivated acts by prohibiting or censuring religiously motivated acts," which is contradictory.

I'm thinking that we can say that "Jihadism" represents part of the religion of those Muslims who accept and practice Jihad in the "outer" and violent sense.

"Jihadism refers to militant Islamic movements that use violence to achieve their political and religious goals." — BitconnectCarlos

I take it that this is not pejorative. I take it that Jihadis would not disagree with this description of themselves.

Your argument is not a truism, but its crucial premise stands without support. — SophistiCat

Which one?

Intelligence sets its own norms and ends.
Computers don't set their own norms and ends.
Therefore, computers are not intelligent. — Leontiskos

-

I don't know why it is so controversial to insist that in order to make a substantive argument, you need to say something substantive about its subject (and not just things like "AI cannot transcend its limitations"), and for that you have to have some knowledge of it. — SophistiCat

I don't know why, "Computers don't set their own norms and ends," is not substantive. If this is the premise that "stands without support" then you're simultaneously claiming that the same proposition that is an unsubstantive truism is also lacking necessary support.

If “the I think accompanies all our thoughts” has been rendered uncontroversial, is it now also uninteresting, unimportant? This is a further question, which I’m continuing to reflect on. — J

It is unanticipated, but perhaps not unimportant. I have often critiqued that same tendency to reify propositions here on TPF. Aristotle's critique of Plato seems very similar to this critique of Frege.

I always read PhS as sort of suggesting, like Aristotle, that Absolute Knowing is more a sort of a virtue—and I suppose it might make more sense if the recognition of the self-conscious nature of knowledge is an ideal we are removing road blocks to attain, as opposed to something clearly applying to all human thought. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is how I read something that @Wayfarer said. But the funny thing is, I'm not convinced it's a virtue. Or perhaps it is, up to a point. I think the younger generation's fixation on self and self-consciousness perhaps pushes beyond the virtue into the vice, and so I'm a bit wary of these younger scholars pressing so hard into self-consciousness.

In an intellectual sense we see the same thing with excessively self-scrutinizing epistemologies, as if having perfectly clear knowledge of our act of knowing will justify our knowledge. When it is done in this way it has gone too far - a kind of intellectual incurvatus in se.

Fregean thought as "propositional content" versus thought as a current event, so to speak, something my mind thinks at time T1. — J

Okay, so here is an edit I added:

My main distinction here (which I do think Popper would uphold) is between an event in time and the idea of a proposition’s being timeless, unspecific, “the same” no matter who thinks it, or when. — J

Okay, but is this a real distinction or a mental distinction? Doesn't the event involve leveraging a proposition? We think thoughts and propose propositions, right? So the theory here is that there are timeless Platonic propositions that we can do stuff with in time, like doubt, entertain, assert, etc.

...Which I think tracks what you've said...?

The important insight is that, when someone argues that “the I think accompanies all our thoughts,” they are using both senses in the same sentence. We should translate this sentence as “When I think p (thought2), I must also think: ‛p’ (thought1).” Put this way, it shouldn’t even be controversial. You can’t propose or entertain or contemplate a proposition without also thinking1 it. — J

This seems to go back to <what I said to javra>. It looks like you are turning "I think p" into "p was thought."

There it is! -- "the I think accompanies all our thoughts2". — J

So the I think = thought1? Such that Rodl's claim is, "The temporal event of thinking accompanies all our [Fregian propositions]."

If the I think means only a temporal event of thinking, then what does it have to do with self-consciousness? What does it have to do with the self-reflective "I think"?

And it is also strange to try to make that term "thoughts" = [Fregian propositions]. Remember, this would mean that they are non-temporal, such that "thoughts" are not temporally distinct acts of thinking, but rather notionally distinct Fregian propositions. That is, the plural "thoughts" would capture two distinct Fregian propositions, but not the same Fregian proposition thought on two different days.

For clarity

• "The [ I think] accompanies all our [thoughts]"
• =
• "The [temporal event of thinking] accompanies all our [Fregian propositions]

So with I would say that this looks rather stipulative. But I agree that a temporal event of thinking accompanies every Fregian proposition. Like you say, that is uncontroversial (for non-Platonists).

- Sure, but they gave substantive reasoning. They didn't say, "Because no state or country recognizes it as such."

Why not? Because no state or country recognizes it as such. — Arcane Sandwich

What I would say is that it is not a religion because it is not a religion, and this is unrelated to what states or countries recognize. Talking about states, countries, or the IRS seems to simply pass the buck. For example:

Easy: You let the Federal government decide that. — Arcane Sandwich

The substantive question is about how the matter is decided, and this means that, first, the Federal government must itself engage that substantive question in determining what is and is not a religion, and second, the Federal government could get the question wrong. "The Federal government said it's a religion therefore it must be a religion," is not a valid argument.

And again, I don't think the courts would rule that Jihadism is not a religion. I think they would rule that freedom of religion is not unconditional. It seems clear to me that Jihadism is a religion (or a religious tenet).

But that's one of my other points: no state in the West, no country in the West, prohibits the free exercise of religion. — Arcane Sandwich

But why think that? Is it only because "religion" gets defined in a way that makes the claim true by definition? "Anything we are intolerant of is by definition not religion"?

The reason the U.S. has a First Amendment is because those rights are often transgressed by states. The First Amendment gives citizens legal recourse when the state prohibits the free exercise of religion, which it is prone to do.

To recap: a thought may be a mental event, which occurs to a particular person at a particular time. “I had the thought that . . .” “Right now I’m thinking whether . . .” “Hold that thought!” But a thought can also be construed as the content of said mental event, what the thought is about – this is Frege’s use of “thought” as “proposition”. — J

I don't follow the fundamental distinction here. It looks like when a thought occurs as a mental event it will always have a content, and that this content will be inseparable from the mental event. So what are the two different senses of "thought"?

The primary distinction that appears is thinking (as pointing to someone's opinion) vs. asserting (claiming that something is true). "The Earth is round {assertion} but he thinks it is flat {pointing to an opinion or judgment}."

Edit:

My main distinction here (which I do think Popper would uphold) is between an event in time and the idea of a proposition’s being timeless, unspecific, “the same” no matter who thinks it, or when. — J

Okay, but is this a real distinction or a mental distinction? Doesn't the event involve leveraging a proposition? We think thoughts and propose propositions, right? So the theory here is that there are timeless Platonic propositions that we can do stuff with in time, like doubt, entertain, assert, etc.

Isn't that what you meant here (on Rodl's behalf, not your own)?: — J

I meant to construe that not as a separate thought, but as a part of the thought p. But maybe that is not a very clear way of expressing Rodl's claim.

Yes, that's right, but I don't understand why we are talking about the IRS or the state.

Suppose a state has a law against prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Now suppose they prohibit a Jihadi from exercising their religion. I would submit that what is occurring is a prohibition on the free exercise of religion, which is religious intolerance. I think the state would acknowledge this and say, "Free exercise of religion is not unconditional."

But note that religious tolerance and free exercise of religion is precisely what is not occurring in this scenario. It is being overridden by a higher law.

See my point? — Arcane Sandwich

Sort of, but does the "religion" in "religious tolerance" exclude Islamic Jihadis? If so, why? Why is Jihadism not religious?