So where is Quine going wrong? — Apustimelogist

Still, if we take the conclusion to be inscrutability of reference, then anyone who accepts (1) and (2) must admit that the argument fails, at least if (1) and (2) are more certain than the counter-premises in an argument for inscrutability. — Leontiskos

(i) x exists conceptually = df For some set C of constructs, E_Cx;
(ii) x exists really = df For some set Θ of things, E_Θx. — Bunge (1977: 157)

• "I found a weakness in your theory, therefore your theory is wrong or unacceptable."

Shorter: I can distinguish Pegasus from a phoenix. They're not the same fictional creature. Neither of them exists, so how is it even possible for me to distinguish them? Most of the time, reference is far from being inscrutable. And even in those cases in which it is, it can cease to be inscrutable. Unknown references are not the same thing as unknowable references. — Arcane Sandwich

It sounds as if one agrees with anything that Aquinas said, then one has magically converted to Catholicism. But this makes no sense to me. — Arcane Sandwich

Note: The "R" in "ERx" is meant to be a subscript, but this forum doesn't seem to have the option for subscripts. — Arcane Sandwich

E[sub]R[/sub]x

Surely most contemporary philosophers hold that ∃ formalizes both the logical concept "some" and the ontological concept of existence. I shall argue that this is a mistake. — Bunge (1977: 155)

...However, as I have argued in detail elsewhere,[3] Kenny’s objection fails on several counts.

In the first place, Aquinas simply does not have a notion equivalent to the Fregean notion of an existential quantifier. In fact, a notion that would come closest to this notion in Aquinas’s conceptual arsenal would be regarded by him not as a concept of existence, but as a signum quantitatis, namely, a signum particulare, the syncategorematic concept expressed by the Latin terms ‘quidam’, ‘aliquid’ or their equivalents, which render a proposition to which they are prefixed a particular, as opposed to a universal, singular or indefinite proposition (as in, ‘Quidam homo est animal’ = ‘Some man is an animal’, as opposed to ‘Every man is an animal’, ‘Socrates is an animal’ or ‘A man is an animal’, respectively). In any case, Kenny’s reason for holding that Aquinas would have to use in his argument the notion of specific existence, and, correspondingly, the notion of nominal as opposed to real essence,[4] is his unjustified assumption that Aquinas would take a phoenix by definition to be a fictitious bird as we do... — Gyula Klima, Aquinas' Real Distinction and Its Role in a Causal Proof of God's Existence

We needed some kind of "foothold", — Moliere

But until you have that it's a nothing, right? If we don't even recognize something as a language, for instance... — Moliere

Eventually, through trial and error, you can learn it! Even if you knew nothing of it!

Which is kind of the puzzle.... in a way. — Moliere

First, the inscrutability of reference applies even to our own language. — Moliere

Second: I'd take it that since we're talking to one another we can't ever deny that we're communicating, unless we're communicating about when we're not communicating to correct communication. So if we can connect a philosophical belief that we're not communicating that'd be damning for it -- not that'd it be false, but it'd indicate we're not communicating and thereby, in spite of all of our efforts, we're linguistically solipsistic. — Moliere

"Reference", as a philosophical concept, is the target of the "gavagai" criticism -- as well as various metaphysical theses people might have drawn from various notions of reference.

It's not so much that we can't communicate or learn. It's that there's no fact of the matter, in the sense of a true sentence which refers to the world in the same way that "gavagai' refers to the world, which will decide how "gavagai" refers. — Moliere

Is there a particular bit you want me to discuss? — Moliere

Most people want to avoid the thesis that existence is a property, and that it can be represented with a first-order predicate, such as "E", instead of the existential quantifier, "∃".

And why do most people want to avoid that thesis? Because they somehow believe that to treat existence as a property is naive... — Arcane Sandwich

20th Century thinkers like Mario Bunge — Arcane Sandwich

reference is inscrutable — Moliere

Sorry for diverting the thread too much, tho — Moliere

We need the mean, but disagree upon what the mean is. — Moliere

"But how can you include something in the domain if you haven't even conceived of it?" Well, we just did. — Banno

...that an entity can figure as a value of a bound variable in his theory is, according to Quine, equivalent to the assumption that such an entity exists; it is impossible to quantify over entities of which existence is not, eo ipso, assumed. Put more precisely: according to Quine the notion of existence just means the capability of featuring as a value of a bound variable. To assume that something exists is to assume nothing less, and nothing more... — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 159

Thus theories that allow their variables to take non-existent individuals as their values are automatically understood as possibilist, to the effect that those who share Quine’s dislike towards the overpopulated Meinongian slum feel under pressure to construe their theories so that they enable reference to actual entities only. That results in various technical problems (the Barcan Formula[50] and the like) requiring sophisticated workarounds, which however tend to introduce various ersatz-entities into the actualist systems like individual essences (Plantinga) or bare individuals “in limbo” (Transparent Intensional Logic), in effect barely distinguishable from the abhorred possibilia.

[50] If it is possible that there is an F, then (actually) there is something that is possibly an F: ◇∃x(Fx) → ∃x◇(Fx). — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 159

And why do most people want to avoid that thesis? Because they somehow believe that to treat existence as a property is naive, if not outright scholastic. After all, didn't Kant refute the ontological argument by pointing out that existence is not a predicate? — Arcane Sandwich

In many places today, for example, no one bothers any longer to ask what a person thinks. The verdict on someone's thinking is ready at hand as long as you can assign it to its corresponding, formal category: conservative, reactionary, fundamentalist, progressive, revolutionary. Assignment to a formal scheme suffices to render unnecessary coming to terms with the content — Joseph Ratzinger, Conscience and Truth

How about we start by analyzing these completely irrational themes that underlie these sorts of discussions, instead of digging our heals and just blurting out nonsensical accusations such as "You don't really understand Quine's point." — Arcane Sandwich

...I think it is worth noticing in the second [criticism] the smooth transition from “the description has/does not have a referent” to “the referent of the description does/does not exist” [...] What is interesting in the smoothness of this transition is how easy it is nowadays to have an unreflected, and accordingly deep conviction that whatever more restricted meanings existence may have, the full scope of being is that of the possible range of reference of the expressions of our language.[7] — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof: A Problem of Reference, Intentional Identity and Mutual Understanding, 2

So if we insist on using "existence" and asking what it means for something to exhibit this feature, all we can do is point to the one characteristic they have in common, "being the value of a bound variable." — J

I'm recommending we drop the word entirely — J

but I am not seeing how this "solution" resolves any of them — Count Timothy von Icarus

quantifier variance — J

From this Buridanian perspective, one cannot make claims about the relationships between language and reality from some external, God-like position, from the position of the user of a meta-language, who has a certain “context-free” or “context-neutral” access to the object-language and “the world”, both as it is in itself and as it is conceived by users of the object-language, that is to say, the totality of semantic values of items in that language. — Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 10

Not really, since "I think" as a attributer/weakener dominates English usage, any other use is very unusual and requires clarification. Far from being learned in either philosopher's work, I nonetheless see two possibilities for a "philosophical" "I think". — hypericin

What I am really doing, by my lights, is making an argument from contingency and necessity as it relates to composition; basically by way of arguing that an infinite series of composition is impossible because it would be an infinite series of contingent things of which each lacks the power to exist themselves. — Bob Ross

Yes and no. If you were to take a dead frog and “sew it back to together”, then yes you are right; but if you configure the frog’s pieces to be exactly as it were when it was alive; then it must now be alive again….no? — Bob Ross

What’s the problem with that? Are you saying that it doesn’t account for a soul? — Bob Ross

That’s true, but I say that because Aristotle’s proof only works if we think of a thing having the potential to remain the same through time and that potential being actualized through time. Otherwise, the argument fails to produce a being that would fit classical theism which is the perpetual sustainer of everything; instead, we just get a kind of ‘kalam cosmological argument’ where this being starts everything off moving.

By ‘motion’, Aristotle is not just talking about, e.g., an apple flying in the air: he is talking about the change which an apple that is just sitting there is undergoing by merely remaining the same. That’s the only reason, e.g., Ed Feser’s “Aristotelian Proof” gets off the ground in the first place. — Bob Ross

To be is to be the value of a bound variable. Which is Quine's approach. — Banno

My preferred solution, as many of you know. I've seen you refer to this as Quine's "joke" about being, but it's about time we took him seriously. — J

isn't there a way of posing the question "What are beliefs?" — J

What is interesting in the smoothness of this transition is how easy it is nowadays to have an unreflected, and accordingly deep conviction that whatever more restricted meanings existence may have, the full scope of being is that of the possible range of reference of the expressions of our language.[7]

In medieval thought, this certainly was not the prevailing idea. According to the medieval view, inspired originally by Aristotle’s Perihermeneias, reference, following meaning, is a property of linguistic expressions only insofar as they express thoughts, i.e., mental acts of users of the language. Accordingly, linguistic expressions refer to what their users intend by them to refer to in a given context, that is, what they think of while using the expression either properly, or improperly.[8] So referring was held to be a context-dependent property of terms: according to this view, the same expression in different propositional contexts may refer to different things, or refer to something in one context, while refer to nothing in another. As it was spelled out systematically already in the freshly booming logical literature of the 12th century in the theory of ampliation[9], terms that are actually not true of anything may have referents, or in the current terminology, supposita, in the context of intentional verbs, such as “think”, “want”, “imagine” and the like. But, to be sure, these referents are not to be construed as beings (entia), or objects, simpliciter, but as objects of thought — according to 13th century terminology, beings of reason, entia rationis.[10] — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof: A Problem of Reference, Intentional Identity and Mutual Understanding, 2

So, it might seem that Buridan’s semantics, represented by this semantic system, is equally committed to mere possiblia, that is to say, Quine’s possible charges are justified. But the tricky thing about Buridan’s semantics is that it makes no distinction comparable to the modern distinction between object-language and meta-language, so it has no meta-language comparable to the meta-language in which we see Quine’s charges justified.

Buridan has only one language to talk about the world as well as about the language and its semantic relations to the world. And in that one language we cannot truly say that there are mere possibilia, or that something that is merely possible exists. Accordingly, from this Buridanian perspective, the issue of ontological commitment in terms of a meta-linguistic description of the relationship between language and the world is radically ill-conceived.

From this Buridanian perspective, one cannot make claims about the relationships between language and reality from some external, God-like position, from the position of the user of a meta-language, who has a certain “context-free” or “context-neutral” access to the object-language and “the world”, both as it is in itself and as it is conceived by users of the object-language, that is to say, the totality of semantic values of items in that language. We only have this one language we actually speak (where, of course, it doesn’t matter which particular human language we take this one language to be), and we can speak about those semantic values only by means of the context-dependent ways of referring that are afforded to us by this language. — Gyula Klima, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment, 10

For one, self-consciously thinking p would be rendered as something like "I'm thinking about thinking p", not "I think p". — hypericin

A good rule of thumb for everyone is to keep in mind that, during a conversation, if it just so happens that good common sense needs to be praised, then something about the conversation has gone terribly wrong. — Arcane Sandwich

I have in mind speaking in a language you don't understand. Speaking on a subject you don't understand. Lying. — hypericin

accurately notating that you are indeed thinking-p, and reflecting on your own thought, can both be represented as "I think p" in English. — hypericin

We say someone has the concept "five" when they can add to five, count five, divide by five and so on. — Banno

What kind of benefit do you think they would get from not impugning it? — Apustimelogist

If it is just saying that there are statistical structures and regularities in reality, then fine. But why do I need to use the word "essence"? Seems to connote something more than is required so I don't need to use the word. — Apustimelogist

Let's assume for the sake of argument an older, realist perspective. Things have essences. Our senses grasp the quiddity of things. We all, as humans, share a nature and so share certain sorts of aims, desires, powers, faculties, etc. Given this, given we are already interacting with the same things, with the same abstractions, and simply dealing with them using different stipulated signs, translation doesn't seem like that much a problem. We might even allow that our concepts (intentions) and understandings of things might vary, but they are only going to vary so much.

The idea that "all we have to go on is behavior" seems like it could be taken as an implicit assumption of nominalism. Yet then the conclusion seems to be, in some sense, an affirmation of nominalism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If it is just saying that there are statistical structures and regularities in reality, then fine. — Apustimelogist

But this is not at all the same as actually thinking, or experiencing, "I think p". This is reflecting on your own thought, which you do sometimes, but certainly not always. — hypericin

And so, there is a confusion caused by language: accurately notating that you ate indeed thinking-p, and reflecting on your thought, are both notated as "I think p". — hypericin

I'll have to come back to this paper when I have some time. I would like to get a handle on the more formal aspects of Sider's account. — Banno

Thanks again for taking this discussion seriously and engaging with it fully. — Banno

People pile up citations and technical terminology as if by sheer weight these will prove the point in question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Retreat? Deflect? And what does he mean by "waive that claim"? — J

If you're willing, go here and read pp. 16-20. — J

A certain core realism is, as much as anything, the shared dogma of analytic
philosophers, and rightly so. The world is out there, waiting to be discovered,
it’s not constituted by us—all that good stuff. Everyone agrees that this realist
picture prohibits truth from being generally mind-dependent in the crudest
counterfactual sense, but surely it requires more. After all, the grue things
would all have turned bleen at the appointed hour even if humans had never
existed; under one of Reichenbach’s coordinative definitions one can truly say
that “spacetime would still have been Euclidean even if humans had never
existed”. The realist picture requires the “ready-made world” that Goodman
(1978) ridiculed; there must be structure that is mandatory for inquirers to
discover. To be wholly egalitarian about all carvings of the world would give
away far too much to those who view inquiry as the investigation of our own
minds. — Theodore Sider, Ontological Realism, 18

Is a word called “common” on account of the common cause things agree in, or on account of the common conception, or on account of both together? — Abelard via Paul Vincent Spade | Medieval Universals | SEP

The main thrust of [Abelard's] arguments against the collection-theory is that collections are arbitrary integral wholes of the individuals that make them up, so they simply do not fill the bill of the Porphyrian characterizations of the essential predicables such as genera and species.[29]

29. No wonder that in modern philosophies of language, mostly inspired by the “collection-theorist” view of quantification theory, we have the persistent problem of providing a principled distinction between essential and non-essential predicates. — Abelard via Paul Vincent Spade | Medieval Universals | SEP

You are welcome to set out what you think McDowell is saying that Anscombe says. — Banno

Personally, I think it warrants the weight — Mww

But if some posited "belief" cannot be put into the form "x believes that P", then I think that is good grounds for discounting it as a belief. — Banno

So my next question is, Can you imagine a situation in which resolving the disagreement between the two scientists would result in changing the meaning of the word "tiger"? — J

Maybe it will help if I offer my own answers. No, I can't imagine a case where further knowledge about what a tiger is -- even knowledge about its essence, if any -- would change what we mean when we use the word "tiger." — J

For purposes of comparison: Is Pluto still a planet? — J

And no, Pluto is no longer a planet, because the scientific community has changed the reference of that term, and provided good reasons for doing so. We should ask, What is the difference between the tiger case and the Pluto case? — J

he underscores that this "I think" is the unifying activity of consciousness — Wayfarer

but that does not amount to lying. — Wayfarer

Kant’s texts are notoriously dense and subject to varying interpretations. Rödl is working within the tradition of Kantian scholarship that sees self-consciousness as central to Kant’s project. — Wayfarer

To claim that Rödl is "lying" presupposes not just a disagreement but an intentional misrepresentation, which is a serious charge requiring compelling evidence. — Wayfarer

also said — Wayfarer

"That counts as a tree for the purposes of horticulture" — Banno

That is to say, properly speaking, it is only an act of judgment that can be false, by which we think something to be somehow. But a simple act of understanding, by which we simply understand something without thinking it to be somehow, that is, without attributing anything to it, cannot be false. For example, I can be mistaken if I form in my mind the judgment that a man is running, whereby I conceive a man to be somehow, but if I simply think of a man without attributing either running or not running to him, I certainly cannot make a mistake as to how he is.[12] — The Medieval Problem of Universals | SEP

These developments, therefore, also put an end to the specifically medieval problem of universals. However, the increasingly rarified late-medieval problem eventually vanished only to give way to several modern variants of recognizably the same problem, which keeps recurring in one form or another in contemporary philosophy as well. Indeed, one may safely assert that as long as there is interest in the questions of how a human language obviously abounding in universal terms can be meaningfully mapped onto a world of singulars, there is a problem of universals, regardless of the details of the particular conceptual framework in which the relevant questions are articulated. Clearly, in this sense, the problem of universals is itself a universal, the universal problem of accounting for the relationships between mind, language, and reality. — The Medieval Problem of Universals | SEP