It may be worth pointing out that this recent tangent on judgment comes not from the OP nor from Rodl's book, but from <an article that Rodl wrote in 2020> (linked here).

And at the heart of this what I see happening is that Jihadists transgress the basic dogma of secularism, which is that the power of coercion/force belongs only to the state. Anyone who transgresses that dogma forfeits all rights, and particularly the right to be tolerated. The secular tenet of "religious tolerance" is at best second-tier. It is easily trumped by the more basic dogmas. Cf. "A fire strong enough to consume the house : the wars of religion and the rise of the nation state."

Secularism aside, there is also the natural end of self-preservation, such that anyone who tries to eliminate you forfeits their right to be tolerated. "Religious tolerance" also tends to be trumped by this natural end, and for this reason any state—secular or otherwise—will tend to repel Jihadists.

So, you see, Leontiskos, it is the jihadists themselves who claim that jihadism and secularism are incompatible. — Arcane Sandwich

Yes, of course they claim that. But do they claim that the one who is intolerant of Jihadists is still practicing religious tolerance?

I think my original point stands. I am not questioning the idea that secularism and Jihadism are incompatible. I am questioning the idea that one can be intolerant of a religion and still be practicing religious tolerance.

I did something subtle — Arcane Sandwich

The subtlety that I picked up was using "the concept of religious tolerance" rather than simply "religious tolerance." This could mean that there is some specialized concept. For example, in the West we don't consider militant religions real religions, and this allows us to think that intolerance of such religions does not transgress religious tolerance.

• If I am intolerant of a religion then I am not practicing religious tolerance
• Jihadism is a religion (or a religious tenet)
• Therefore, if I am intolerant of Jihadism then I am not practicing religious tolerance

Do you disagree with that argument?

3. "Legg and Hutter (2007b, p. 402) defined intelligence as “an agent's ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments”" — frank

It sounds like the idea is to conceive of AI as a "soulless" human. So that it has no goals of its own, but if someone gives it a task/goal then it will be able to complete it. A super-duper slave. And its ability to complete arbitrary goals is what makes it intelligent. It is a hypothetical imperative machine which not only provides information about how to achieve any given end, but in fact achieves it.

1) If jihadism is incompatible with secularism, then the concept of religious tolerance does not apply to jihadism.
2) Jihadism is incompatible with secularism.
3) So, the concept of religious tolerance does not apply to jihadism. — Arcane Sandwich

Pardon, but I think this is a bit too easy. For example:

4. Jihad is a religious tenet.
5. Religious tolerance applies to religious tenets.
6. Therefore, religious tolerance applies to Jihadism.

The implicit premise of your arguments is <Secularism never transgresses religious tolerance>, and I take it that this is the erroneous premise. If someone does not tolerate a religion, then they lack religious tolerance. It doesn't matter if they are secular or non-secular. It doesn't make sense to say, "If I do not tolerate something, then that something is not a religion," or, "By definition I {or secularism} never transgress religious tolerance."

If this is right, then the substantive question asks when religious tolerance should be abandoned.

That it is empty. — SophistiCat

How is it empty if it supports the second premise of the argument that you ignored?

Truths about the nature of computers may be "truisms" in that they are obvious, but if you don't understand the implications of such truths then they are less obvious to you than you suppose. And if you won't address the arguments that draw out those implications then I don't know what to tell you.

I was addressing the argument - not the thesis about what is sine qua non for intelligence, but that it is out of reach for AI by its "very nature." — SophistiCat

But the sine qua non of setting one's own norms [and ends] is the premise used to draw the conclusion that it is inherently out of reach for AI. That sine qua non isn't separate from the argument.

Given that there is a valid syllogism at hand, I think the only question is what to do with it. "The syllogism relies on a truism" is not a counterargument. And while I am glad that you agree with my "truisms," not everyone does.

- Interesting, thanks Wayfarer. :up:

- Sounds good. And know that it can be a tricky book. A commentary like <this one> can be helpful.

I was just pointing out the emptiness of critique that, when stripped of its irrelevant elements, consists of nothing but truisms. — SophistiCat

I think you just haven't understood the argument, and thus are engaged in a "lazy dismissal." You could disagree with the claim that humans are able to "set their own norms," but you wouldn't be on very solid ground. Most people see that humans do have a capacity to set their own norms and ends, and that this explains the difference between a human and an animal. If we understand that capacity as intelligence, then the question is answered. AI does not set its own norms and ends.

Your rejoinder that, "Humans are also bound by their 'architecture'," doesn't carry any weight unless we have reason to believe that human "architecture" also precludes the ability to set one's own norms and ends. The reason we argue from architecture in the case of the computer and not in the case of the human is because we understand the computer's architecture but do not understand human "architecture."

dismissive truisms like this: — SophistiCat

What exactly is your complaint, here? That it is true? That I've relied on a general truth about computers in the argument?

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

Do you have a counterargument?
If you are just going to say, "That's too easy!," then I would point out that not every problem is hard.

PS -- As the writer of the OP, I officially declare that we no longer have to use the umlaut when referring to Rodl. What a pain in the ass :wink: . — J

:lol:
I was using copy-paste, but as others stopped using the umlaut it became harder to find.

At least for this thread,
Rödl = Rodl = Roooooooo4dl

Well, no. Rodl specifically says, "This cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p." — J

Sure, but again, Rodl is asking us not to assume that being self-conscious means having two simultaneous thoughts, as above. — J

But I have nowhere said that there are two thoughts. That is not the issue. I wonder if you are conflating the issue of simultaneity from the other thread with the issue of self-conscious thinking of this thread? The proposition I have been attributing to Rodl comes from the OP.

We saw that for Kant the I think is not a thought, it is a kind of representation, it does not always accompany representations (or thoughts) and, when it does accompany them, it therefore represents a true form of self-consciousness.

I hate to say it, but a great deal of this comes down to how we want to use very ordinary words like "thought" and "accompany." — J

That's right, and I think it's just a matter of using words wrongly. When we are not conscious of thinking a thought, we are not self-conscious of our thinking of that thought. It doesn't make sense to say, "He is self-consciously thinking a thought without being conscious of his thinking the thought." If he is not conscious of thinking then he is not thinking the I think.

See my comment in the previous post about the possibly unfortunate choice of this term by phenomenologists. Most of our uses of "I think" are indeed conscious and intentional. (Not sure if they're also self-conscious, but often enough, I suppose.) But "the I think" is, or may be, different. — J

We could omit "intentional" if we like, but I don't see how we can omit "conscious." Once we say "I think" has nothing to do with consciousness of thinking we have departed much too far from the meaning of words.

- I agree with the others who claim that you are mistaken in calling intelligence a psychological construct.

The "I think" is not supposed be some simultaneous, conscious "thinking about thought" or "thinking that I am now having thought X." — J

I am wondering what it is supposed to be.

But now this occurs to me: Is it possible that you don’t countenance the idea of any thoughts that are not conscious? — J

Again, as I understand it what is at stake is self-conscious thought, not conscious thought:

Thinking p requires thinking p. No one disputes this. The question of the OP is whether thinking p requires self-consciously thinking p; whether it requires thinking "I think p." — Leontiskos

-

So therefore the “I think”, on that understanding, would be either present to consciousness or nonexistent? — J

See:

And what is that supposed to mean? "I think" is a self-conscious, intentional act. Does Rödl think people engage in self-conscious, intentional acts un-self-consciously and unintentionally? Do they think "I think" without realizing that they think "I think"? — Leontiskos

So the claim of the OP by Rodl is <Every time p is thought, I think p is thought>. And I don't think it makes sense to say, "You are thinking <I think p> but you don't know you are thinking <I think p>." Or more succinctly: self-conscious thought is self-conscious, and if a thought isn't self-conscious then it isn't a self-conscious thought.

We can talk about architecture in a loose sense, as an essential and enduring structure of a thing. — SophistiCat

This doesn't help with the logical fallacy of equivocation, for "the essential and enduring structure" of humans and computers are very far apart, both actually and epistemologically. Computer programs don't transcend their code. You can say that humans don't transcend their code, and even "talk about code in a loose sense," but the fact remains that, even if humans have "code," we have nothing like an exhaustive understanding of that "code."

Well, like I said, the fact that AI is designed by people has little bearing on the question of its potential capabilities — SophistiCat

That which is designed has a determinate end. It acts the way it was designed to act.

The issue here is that we reason discursively, and we do not (strictly speaking) ever simultaneously engage in more than one judgment. So when <I judge that I judge that a is F> there is at least a temporal distinction between the two instances of judgment, and in this case there is also a logical priority issue, i.e. one of the two judgments must be logically prior to the other.

So if Rodl wants to read that proposition as a non-temporal angelic intellection, it won't make any sense. That is, if we try to make both instances of 'judge' temporally and logically identical, it won't make any sense.

One way for Rodl to dispute true recursivity would be to say that the only way to interpret <I judge that I judge that a is F> in a non-vacuous way is to interpret it as <I judge that I have judged that a is F>.

Yes. I deal with a number of people on a daily basis that do not seem to understand how worldviews form, grow, and evolve over time and/or how they work. — creativesoul

Right. And we didn't really have developed theories on that score until the 19th and 20th centuries.

One reason I opted out of further explanation earlier was based on the succinct manner in which you drew the distinction between self-conscious thought and conscious thought. That was enough to make the basic case against the claim at the heart of the OP. — creativesoul

Thanks. :smile:

Think about children's thought prior to their ability to think about other minds as well as their own. Their thought is most certainly not prefixable with "I think". When they say "That is a tree" it is not accompanied by any sort of unspoken or implied "I think". It is their thought nonetheless. — creativesoul

Yep. :up:

I think developmental considerations often give the lie to these theories. When a child runs up to a puppy to pet it, upon recognizing a puppy they are not saying to themselves excitedly, "I think puppy! I think puppy!" This seems fairly uncontroversial. — Leontiskos

What's interesting is that, even for adults, the "I think" is quite difficult. Most people have difficulty understanding how others could think differently than they do precisely because there is no recognition of their own act of thinking.

Rödl goes on to argue that the problem can't be contained this way — J

Well without those arguments I have no reason to assent to their conclusions.

Again, Rodl is giving a reductio, and I am pointing out that no one sees any problem with the so-called "absurdity."

You could phrase it this way, as a true/false question:

• Judging 'a is F' is different than judging 'I judge a is F'
  
  • True
  • False

Most people would answer, "true." So why believe Rodl when he says "false"? Again, what are needed are arguments for the implausible position. Recursive thought is odd and rare, not impossible.

If it cannot, then my argument that only humans and other living organisms can change their normative motives, goals and purposes would seem to fail. — Joshs

We live in the Dark Ages of philosophy, where we cannot discern the difference between a human and an animal, much less the difference between a human and a machine. But with that said, it is true that AI is sub-animal.

I think the difficulty with your position here is that when one says, "AI is designed and humans are designed," or, "AI has an architecture and humans have an architecture," the words 'designed' and 'architecture' are being used equivocally. AI is literally a human artifact. It literally has a design and an architecture. Humans do not. So:

What A.I. lacks is the ability to set its own norms. — Joshs

This seems uncontroversial. One might argue that humans also lack the ability to set their own norms, but that claim would be at least controversial. I take it that the difference between human beings and artifacts human beings build to mimic themselves is not a small one. I don't see this as a trivial prejudicial critique.

More simply:

• I can think 'p' without thinking 'I think p'
• Judging 'a is F' is different than judging 'I judge a is F'

Rodl says that these are both false, but commonsense would say that they are true, and this was borne out in your other thread, at least regarding the first claim.

Regarding the second claim:

• a is F
• I judge that a is F
• I judge that I judge that a is F
• I judge that I judge that I judge that a is F

Rodl seems to be claiming that these are all the exact same judgment. Or more precisely, that "what is judged" in each is exactly the same. That strikes me as understandable but also implausible. Odd as it may seem, we can make judgments (and predications) about our judgments. For example, when one conscientiously "doubles down" in the midst of an argument, this is what they have done. They have examined their judgment and judged it correct (and in the midst of that process they indeed "judge that they judge," especially in confirming the interlocutor's interpretation of their claim).

If it makes you feel better, Rodl would be correct when it comes to angels. Self-judging judgments require temporal-discursive reason. That might be my response to Kimhi and Rodl: I see your dissatisfaction with excessively compositional reasoning schemes, but it is true that we are not angels. There is a strongly compositional aspect to the way we reason. Reducing our reasoning to ratio makes no sense, but it is also wrong to reduce it to intellectus. We are involved in both.

It is clear that, if “I judge a is F” is of this form, specifically, if it represents someone to adopt an attitude, then what it judges is not the same as what is judged in “a is F”: the latter refers to a and predicates of it being F; the former refers not to a, but to a different object and predicates of it not being F, but a different determination. — Rödl, The Force and the Content of Judgment, 506

That seems right to me. In fact I was recently quoting Aquinas saying something very similar in 's thread:

But the intellect can know its own conformity with the intelligible thing; yet it does not apprehend it by knowing of a thing "what a thing is." When, however, it judges that a thing corresponds to the form which it apprehends about that thing, then first it knows and expresses truth. — Aquinas, ST I.16 Article 2. Whether truth resides only in the intellect composing and dividing?

1. a is F
2. I know that a is F

Aquinas is saying that, supposing (1) is true, to judge (1) is to have an intellect which is true in relation to proposition (1). But to know the truth (per se) one must see (2) and its basis. This is easier if you have the student judge (1) and his teacher judge a variant of (2), namely, "He knows that a is F." When the intellect rightly corresponds to reality it is true; and when the intellect sees that it rightly corresponds it sees that it (the intellect - itself) is true.

The only difference seems to be that Rodl wants to talk about judgment rather than knowledge:

1. a is F
3. I judge a is F

Following Aquinas, what is judged in (1) is different than what is judged in (3), and therefore the conclusion that Rodl wants to avoid is simply true. But the trick is that this is comparing, "I judge (1)" to "I judge (3)," where the latter evaluates to, "I judge that I judge a is F." Nevertheless, it really is possible to predicate judgment in a way that is different from merely judging. The intellect possesses that power of recursivity.

I don't know whether it should be called a "propositional attitude." And depending on what Rodl means by a "predicative determination," one could dispute whether it is a proper predication. The recursive case is certainly an odd and rare kind of predication (and judgment).

The deeper problem I see here is exactly what came up in the Kimhi threads. The discussion inevitably turns into an academic exegesis of Frege, and to what end? Rodl seems to have a better grasp of Frege than Kimhi, but even if Rodl emerges victorious from the contest for Deutungshoheit, the thesis becomes tied in a precarious way to abstruse Fregian interpretation. If the thesis is significant, then it must be significant beyond Frege, in which case Rodl should be willing to say, "Even if I've got Frege wrong, my work is still important because _____." The fact that Banno thinks Frege is largely obsolete is another way into this conundrum. There is a danger of hyper-focusing on Frege without first showing that Frege matters, and this is particularly true on TPF where the relevance of the thesis is to the front of everyone's mind.

The idea of a mean between extremes is interesting. I need to sit with that for a bit in order to avoid saying something off the cuff. — Paine

Sounds good. The idea is a little bit off the cuff itself. I'm just trying it on for size. Whether or not it holds up to rigor, that basic model of "a mean between extremes" is the heart of the constructive criticism I would offer to @Wayfarer. If he can demonstrate a thesis that involves some kind of triangulation I would find it more persuasive.

That’s fair, but those individuals would be sanctioned by the government—if not public servants themselves. My dilemma here is not about public servants nor people who volunteer (and thusly bind themselves) to raise orphans. The question is whether or not Aristotle can justify any sort of duty or obligation for a standard citizen—which is not actively in the course of their public duties which may relate—to take care of a child that is dropped off at their porch. Maybe, just maybe, there is a duty in the sense that a citizen must call the appropriate authorities and take care of the baby until they arrive; but most people would go beyond that say that even if there were no authorities coming that the person has a duty to take care of that child. What do you think? In terms of justice, can Aristotle rightly claim that it would unjust for the citizen, in the above example, to turn the other way? I see how it would potentially be inbeneficient and malevolent; but not unjust. — Bob Ross

Like the way "we might pick up litter for the sake of the community"? The community is the people as a whole, not the government apparatus. In a democracy the government exists and operates at the behest of the community. It's important to distinguish the community from the government.

The natural way that an orphan is cared for is by next-of-kin, which is a communal consideration (albeit the smaller community of the extended family). But the logic of this is a logic of distributive justice, and insofar as the large community mimics this case of the extended family, it will also be a matter of distributive justice.

The problem I have with that quote, which I read as well in the Eudemian and Nichomachean Ethics, is that Aristotle is being too vague. All he is saying there is that a part of justice is giving people proportionate goods to their merits. Ok, I don’t think anyone disagrees with that. The question is: how does one determine merit and demerit in this kind of manner where everyone gets a proportionate amount? — Bob Ross

I think you need to re-read it. He is not saying that justice is giving people goods proportionate to their merits. In fact he is explicitly addressing the latter question. So for example, look at the way he compares democracies to oligarchies to blood-aristocracies, to true aristocracies. There he is giving an example of different measures of worth, and distribution will depend on the measure used. The real meat of this comes in book two: The Politics.

That’s true, and I agree to an extent; but it gets finicky real quick. E.g., if Jimmy can support himself working 60 hours a week and Bob is not supporting himself at all, why would Bob have merit for the welfare but not Jimmy? On your elaboration here, it seems like Jimmy would have no merited grounds; but at the same time we would recognize that the sheer work he is putting in might make it fair to give him it as well. — Bob Ross

You are mixing two different measures of worth: labor vs. need. I surmised that the UBI is based on need, and if it is based on need then the one in need is the one who receives the payment (but of course this does not occur with the UBI). You want to switch out need in favor of recompense, which actually looks like commutative justice, not distributive justice.

- Okay, thanks. No worries and I will try to get to this soon. :up:

These are some of the papers from Rödl's Academia.edu page that popped out at me. Some of them are extremely closely related to @J's interest in Frege. All of them are written by Rödl himself:

• Logic and Self-Consciousness (2022)
• Self-Consciousness, Negation, and Disagreement (2017)
• I think – Mrs. Smith thinks (2020)
• Self-Consciousness and Knowledge (2013)
• The force and the content of judgment (2020)
• Logical Form as a Relation to the Object (2006)
• Judgment as Synthesis (2009 - Book Review)
• Joint action and recursive consciousness of consciousness (2015)

And the book review that J pointed out:

• Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism (2018 - Peter Hanks)

- It looks like Rödl has an AcademiaEdu page where he makes some of his papers available. Maybe there is some article there that would be able to make the relevant arguments freely and publicly accessible.

then I will [in]effectively engage you — Arcane Sandwich

Fixed. Ciao.

That's fair, I take that back then. I apologize. Will you accept my apology, yes or no? — Arcane Sandwich

Sure, I will accept your apology, but know that I am not planning to engage you on the forum.

- I don't believe @Bob Ross counseled you to go into threads that are not about Thomas Aquinas, complain that not enough is being said about Thomas Aquinas, and tell people there to "kindly fuck off" for doing things that haven't been done.

So, back to the main point: "mate" is a British English word, not an "Australian" word, mate. — Arcane Sandwich

It's well known that the word is most commonly and strongly associated with Australia, but that is helpful to know that it flows out of British English.

I've put you on ignore given that you're a dumbass. Good luck with that.

From a different thread:

But we must also distinguish certain senses of potentiality and actuality; for so far we have been using these terms quite generally. One sense of “instructed” is that in which we might call a man instructed because he is one of a class of instructed persons who have knowledge; but there is another sense in which we call instructed a person who knows (say) grammar. Each of these two has capacity, but in a different sense: the former, because the class (genos) to which he belongs, i.e., his matter (hyle), is of a certain kind, the latter, because he is capable of exercising his knowledge whenever he likes, provided that external causes do not prevent him. But there is a third kind of instructed person—the man who is already exercising his knowledge; he is in actuality instructed and in the strict sense knows (e.g.) this particular A. — De Anima, 417a 22, translated by W.S Hett

The actual existence of thinking in both passages is a confluence of circumstances. A living person must come from a particular kind of matter and become capable of actually knowing and thinking. I agree with Wang that the "activity" is not outside of the creature but think he is looking at it from wrong end of the telescope. All coming-to-be is from agency beyond the particular organism. That particular kinds of material are required is a rebuke to the Pythagorean view that Forms shape purely undetermined goo. — Paine

Yes, and this is what I was trying to point out <here>. "Forms shaping purely undetermined goo" is similar to the idea of the OP where there are just bundles of behavior (or forms). 'Behavior' is basically an instance of the "third kind" that Aristotle gives (first actuality).

True enough, and the closest I've gotten so far to "what that is" would be: propositions seem to have to be uttered by someone; they aren't "in Nature"; and yet the Fregean treatment of them wants to point us the other way, to something called "p" which has an independent existence in some intriguing but unspecified way; they can be separated from their assertions. — J

Fair enough. That is helpful. This is such an age-old question and puzzle of philosophy (the problem of universals) that I think many people have despaired of a perfect answer. So Frege's imperfect answer is sort of par for the course.

There was a long tangent in the recent thread, "Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong." Originally it wasn't about the ontological status of propositions, but rather the ontological status of true propositions.

It started:

For me the strangeness of Banno's position is the claim that truth can exist where no minds do. Classically, truth pertains to minds/knowers, and if there are no knowers then there is no truth. — Leontiskos

It moved explicitly into considerations of truth-Platonism and sentence-Platonism (with Michael taking the lead):

It is interesting that Banno looks like a Platonist, with self-subsistent truths floating independently of any minds. There is something about this that is resonant with analytic philosophy, and in particular its pre-critically scientistic metaphysics. This is curiously on-point for your project. — Leontiskos

Folks in this thread see mind as accidental to truth. They seem to think that the world is a database of Platonic truths, and when a mind comes on the scene it can begin to download those truths. — Leontiskos

And it spawned Michael's thread, "Mathematical Platonism," as well as Srap's thread, which had to do with fdrake's approach rather than Michael's.

---

False. I was born in Argentina, not Australia. — Arcane Sandwich

Okay, my mistake. I thought you were from Australia given the way you call everyone your 'mate' and given the fact that you only recently filled in your biographical information.

In the context of your theme of a reality lost in history, the conditions for it are closer to the claims of this realism than to any method of behaviorism. — Paine

Nice post, Paine. :up:

-

@Wayfarer, In some ways I want to see a spectrum:

In dialogue with a strongly idealistic thinker Thomas is going to emphasize the autonomy of creation, and I think this is something you underestimate a bit. He is going to tell the Hindu that creation is more autonomous than they think, and he is going to tell Hume that creation is less autonomous (or less alien) than he thinks. For Hume the external world is too alien to really be known; whereas for a strong idealist (say, a pantheist), it is too immanent to really have its own separate existence. Thomas is going to say that it has its own separate existence and yet can really be known. — Leontiskos

On the far left of the spectrum we have a conception where mind and reality are alien to one another and reality is largely inscrutable. This is "mind-independence" in the extreme, where reality is so independent of the mind that it can hardly be known at all. On the far right of the spectrum we have a conception where reality is perfectly intelligible to mind, even to the extent that it is not other than mind. When mind knows "reality" mind is just knowing mind. This is "mind-dependence" in the extreme, where reality is so dependent on the mind that it is not anything other than mind.

Now first notice that pretty much everyone wants to steer a middle course. Aquinas would be one example of a middle course, and one which is more moderate (in my opinion) than either Scientism or Berkeley's idealism. For Thomism matter is inscrutable and form is intelligible, and reality is a combination of the two.

The difficulty for me is that when you hammer on "mind-dependence" you are pointing to the right. But I don't think we can just point in a direction. I think we need to find a mean between left and right.

- Yes, but what I am saying is that this did not cause the early Christian to stop abstaining from animal blood. So the theology of blood-abstention remained, except for the Eucharist. In certain parts of Christianity it still does, like Eastern Orthodoxy.

he headlined his response 'the sense of being glared at'. I know how he feels. — Wayfarer

:lol:

I like Rowan Williams, will give that a listen. — Wayfarer

Sounds good. Those questions of the Q&A reminded me of you.

---

Edit:

I have noticed a lot of secularism from the Australians, both on this forum and others. Here is the newest recruit from your country:

My premises, the premises of my personal philosophy, [...] are the following five terms.

1) Realism
2) Materialism
3) Atheism
4) Scientism
5) Literalism — Arcane Sandwich

Maybe you are a cultural outlier?

'Metaphysical realism' is really just philosophy-speak for direct or naive realism, which phenomenology criticizes as 'the natural attitude' - the world just is as it seems, and if we can learn more about it, it can only be through science. — Wayfarer

Okay, and that would be a good starting point for a discussion. :up:

In all of this, there is an underlying theme, but I agree it is hard to see all the connections. But then, one thread running at the moment has provoked many pages of argument on the meaning of a five-word sentence. I'm a 'meaning of it all' type, not someone interested in hair-splitting minutae. — Wayfarer

When I arrived here I had given up for the moment on starting my own philosophy forum. Part of the difficulty is that philosophy forums have a tendency to become analytic, and it's fairly hard to inculcate a deeper and more contemplative culture. So I share your concern about "wisdom," and I'm not even convinced that anything I do here will have much effect in that regard. Similarly, I am not sure if arguing with proponents of scientism creates wisdom. It might, but it might also just be the wrong modus operandi. Like teaching someone how to stop arguing by winning an argument. Sometimes I go off script, but am only met with blank stares.

Tonight I finished a lecture by Rowan Williams. There were three consecutive questions in the Q&A that you might enjoy listening to, beginning <here>.

I think this is the attitude of a sizeable majority of contributors. — Wayfarer

Well, this is the point at which you tend to lose me. I don't have any real problem with that SEP quote, and I don't really understand the critique you have of that quote. Aquinas would probably have said, "Yeah, that seems right, but I would never have thought to phrase it in that way."

The easiest way to set out a disagreement is to say, "Patrick says X is true, but I say it is false." The methodological difficulty I have seen with your approach is that the clear distinction never gets made. Usually X is said to be something like "mind-independence," but then we have to ask what mind-independence means, and the meaning of that term seems to slide around as if on ice.

One motive I have identified is your desire to rebut scientism; another is your preference for wisdom over superficial knowledge. But then when we get down to concrete propositions it becomes more difficult. The critique of scientism seems to cash out in a predilection for idealism, but then once again we run into the difficulty of the ambiguity of 'idealism'.

That's not to say a critique of a cultural current is easy. I have deep reservations about Analytic philosophy, but it's difficult for me to put my finger on a precise critique. @J seems to take issue with something or another in Frege, but he is still working out exactly what that is.

If I were to critique scientism I would more or less follow Edward Feser's critique of mechanistic philosophy. I think Hume creates a stark division between mind and reality which alienates mind from reality and leads to a worldview that is mechanistic and quantitative. This leads to a diminished, superficial, and fragmented intellectual culture. What you like about Aristotle and Aquinas responds well to this alienation of the mind from reality, but I don't see Hume's form of empiricism in the SEP quote you presented.

That's what I'm getting at. It's often said that he was a realist philosopher, but scholastic realism is worlds away from today's scientific realism. But I'm trying to analyse it from the perspective of the history of ideas, rather than philosophy as such. — Wayfarer

Well what is the opposite of scholastic realism? It is nominalism. What is the opposite of modern realism? It it usually either idealism, subjectivism, or eliminativism. So they are somewhat different forms of realism.

I also think many forms of Indian thought tend in the direction of a non-Thomistic idealism. Buddhism and Hinduism are allies of Thomism (and Christianity) in some ways, and opponents in other ways. In dialogue with a strongly idealistic thinker Thomas is going to emphasize the autonomy of creation, and I think this is something you underestimate a bit. He is going to tell the Hindu that creation is more autonomous than they think, and he is going to tell Hume that creation is less autonomous (or less alien) than he thinks. For Hume the external world is too alien to really be known; whereas for a strong idealist (say, a pantheist), it is too immanent to really have its own separate existence. Thomas is going to say that it has its own separate existence and yet can really be known (and this is in line with Christian theology, where God is wholly other and yet is not remote or unknowable - it is the precondition for authentic revelation).

Joshua Hochschild — Wayfarer

Yeah, I should look at that again. The reason I prefer Feser is because he is more accessible and his thesis is less contentious. In comparison with at least that article of Hochschild's, Feser is less subtle, and this relative lack of complexity aids the cogency and staying power of Feser's argument. But at least in the early part of that article, where Hochschild lays out the big picture, I think it is good and useful. Towards the end he ends up in subtle internecine disputes of scholasticism, if I remember correctly.

(This makes sense as Hochschild's has been at a Catholic university and seminary his whole career, whereas Feser has taught at a city college. Hochschild doesn't focus on that topic in many other places, and he probably doesn't encounter secular thought in the same way that Feser does. The paper you reference was a web essay for Anamnesis that grew out of Hochschild's opening address for the 4th Annual Ciceronian Society Conference (CV) (link). Incidentally, Feser canvassed it when it came out).

Set theory is closely tied to logic, and lies in an area overlapping mathematics and philosophy. So one might ask whether Philosophy of Mathematics is a part of philosophy. I say it is, but others might disagree. — jgill

I would argue that there are metaphysical considerations that are bound up with mathematics, such that mathematics does have a very broad reach. For example, the reason set theory is so useful in a general sense is because we encounter a world of unitary objects, and set theory provides a basic way to categorize unitary objects. Every kind of thing that we collect into sets has a unitary nature that allows it to be collected in that manner, and this unitary organization is basic to our experience.

Another example might be time. We are temporal beings who move. Indeed, even the rational movement spoken about implies time, where time is itself a way of sequencing this temporal movement according to number. Thus every kind of rational movement will involve progress, this progress can be measured and sequenced, and this will involve mathematics insofar as it involves division and number.

but I do struggle to see how logic can be grouped with epistemology, ontology, metaphysics, morality, ethics, etc. when it is just so distinct from them and uses a completely separate methodology. — Dorrian

On a broadly Aristotelian understanding, disciplined thinking involves rational movement. For example, when we think in a disciplined and structured way, our mind moves from point A to point B. Because every formal domain of study involves this sort of disciplined thinking (e.g. physics, chemistry, history, ethics, metaphysics, et al.), therefore every formal domain of study involves this sort of mental movement from point A to point B.

Logic is the art of this disciplined thinking. The one who possesses the art of logic is able to move from point A to point B securely. Namely, they are able to use their current knowledge in order to produce new knowledge without falling into error. Finally, because every formal domain of study involves rational movement and disciplined thinking, therefore every formal domain of study uses logic to guide that rational movement. This is logic's job. It is not limited to mathematics because mathematics is only one of the many formal domains of study, and the way that mathematicians progress in knowledge will not be identical to the way that other specialists progress in knowledge within their own field.