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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

Here is that second edit:

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

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

-

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

Okay.

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

Sure, I agree.

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

Right, I agree.

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

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

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

Recall Srap's paragraph about dining:

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

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

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

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

-

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

Right.

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

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

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

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

Edit:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course this is slightly different from your division.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article 4?

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E.g., Q. 16 of ST

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

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

Again:

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

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

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

..."truth in things.")

E.g., — Count Timothy von Icarus

Who are you quoting?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let me try to put it a third way:

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

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

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

It's butchered from Sellars. — fdrake

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The duck counts as a duck. — fdrake

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

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

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

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

Does this relate to your ideas about merit and demerit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that duty does not supercede their more local duties.

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

There’s a hierarchy to duties. — Bob Ross

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

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

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

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

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

Yep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay.

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

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

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

Aquinas explains what it would mean:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

@Count Timothy von Icarus

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

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

And I read Aquinas as seeing created truth as univocal:

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

...

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

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

This works sometimes. I don't think it always does; that is, we cannot reduce thought down to "atomic propositions."

But even if we can, does this mean the higher level statement has no truth value at all? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would want to think in terms of intellects and intention. If someone asks, "Did you have a good day?," are they asking a question with a binary answer-constraint, are they inviting someone to share about their day, or are they doing something else? And if someone says, "I had a good day," presumably they are making an assertion and all assertions are truth claims (in a rather binary sense).

I think the equivocity attaches to the term 'good' rather than to the truth value, but even an assertion utilizing analogical equivocity must have a determinate and assertable form. If it doesn't then there is not any unitary thing being asserted.

Think about an interaction between two co-workers:

• "That was a great day!"
• "Eh."

Now the co-worker who is responding may not be opposed to the material proposition, but rather to the emphatic sense in which it was said (and therefore its circumstantial meaning). The question for the equivocity of truth is this: if the first statement is not meant to be true in a univocal sense, then is it possible for the respondent to disagree with it? To agree? To even understand what is being said?

I am largely opposed to the idea that truth is analogically equivocal, even if it may be in a deep theological sense.

Both IMO. Language involve analagous predication because being involves analogy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Language involves analogical predication, but that doesn't guarantee that truth is an analogical predication.

I don't see how LEM is directly at stake. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, let's leave that aside for the moment.

A fair characterization. But I think the view of truth as related primarily to isolated (often "atomic") propositions has a wide reach even outside of those who go all the way over into deflation. It affects a lot of analytic thought. — Count Timothy von Icarus

True.

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

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

"Artificial" seems to like the key word to apply here.

Alternatively, there are all the deflationary approaches, which often make some of the same assumptions, particularly that truth is primarily about propositions (or more broadly "how a community uses language.") There is the same issue here of missing the "adequacy of thought to being." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for the sketch. There is a lot going on here. It's hard to pinpoint the error, given that a number of errors seem to be at play.

I suppose I'll have to give this more thought. I have seen the same thing you are seeing, but I've never been able to muster a tidy critique.

- See this exchange and following:

Just as a sentence being true (or false) before it is said makes no sense. — Michael

What are the chances that anyone has ever said that 799168003115 + 193637359638 = 992805362753? — Srap Tasmaner

Something cannot be true and false because nothing can both be and not be anything, in the same way, at the same time, without qualification. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right.

When it comes to logic, our predicates should be univocal, and this sort of ambiguity should be ruled out. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, on pain of equivocation.

But even for propositions like: "you had a good day," the truth of this is not reducible to a binary. Sometimes, if asked if we had a good day, we don't really know. Does this mean that there is no truth as to whether or not anyone ever has a good day? That the sentence is not truth-apt? I don't think so. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But is this a matter of the univocity of truth or of the ambiguity of language? And is the LEM being rejected if the truth-value is not binary?

Usually the non-binary response will be an attempt to distinguish different parts of the day instead of collecting it into a single whole.

Well, the problem that I think is most acute is ascribing truth and falsity primarily to propositions. Actually, it seems that in a lot of philosophy they are the only bearers of truth. That's what leads to, IMO, bad conceptualizations of knowledge. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I agree. This is happening a lot in that thread I referenced in my first post.

But I suppose my point is that contradiction in this case is used as the lens through which truth as a whole is analyzed. This leads to concepts like "the one true canonical database of all true propositions" and when concepts like this are shown to be flawed, there is a crash into deflation. Truth ends up being either univocal, and contained in "the one true set of propositions," or else entirely relativized (with some appeals to "pragmatism" as a backstop). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, I sort of see that. I do think discursive/propositional knowledge needs to be grounded in something more, but I don't see the critiques of classical notions of truth as a great threat.

• "I took a magnifying glass to every part of your vehicle and found a squeaky axle. Therefore I will not drive or trust it."
• "Do you have some alternative vehicle to propose?"

...That's about how I view the attack on classical notions of truth. The naysayers look like contrarian novelty-seekers who are unwilling to engage in the foundational philosophical act of providing constructive alternatives. They take any imperfection to be a fatal flaw, and end in some variety of skepticism.

-

The second, no. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, so how would you characterize the view you take exception to?

However, we can have propositions that make statements about how true something is to some ideal. "This is a good car." Does this reduce to a binary? I don't think so. Is it simply not truth-apt? I don't think this works either, because a car that won't start is in an important sense not a good car. It isn't true to its purpose. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Regarding an ideal, the nurse might ask, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how much pain are you in?" This obviously requires something other than a binary answer.

When I imagine a conversation beginning with, "This is a good car," I don't foresee non-binary truth values. The interlocutor might say any number of things:

• Damn right it is!
• It is a good car, but the rust is just beginning to set in.
• I wouldn't call a car that cannot idle without killing "a good car."

I haven't read much on this specific subject, but I am not aware of anti-univocalists who think truth is not predicated univocally. And even if we are talking about truth as conformity to an ideal, this does introduce degrees of truth but it does not necessarily introduce equivocity.

What objectionable thesis does your opponent hold? — Leontiskos

So:

The Univocity and Binary Nature of Truth

...

I'm going to make a case against both of these assumptions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Let me try to do what I want you to do. I will try to capture each position you oppose with a thesis:

• The univocity of truth: "Truth" means only and precisely one thing.
• The binary nature of truth and falsity: Propositions which are true and propositions which are false are qualitatively different, and have no mediating degrees between them.

Are these the positions you are opposing? Or is it something else?

What about the quote from the OP? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see it. A good entry point into Aquinas' topic is to read the objections, and none of the objections are claiming that true/false are contradictory. He is in large part asking whether they belong to a common genus, i.e. assertion. His answer is, "Yes, they belong to the common genus of assertion."

Yes, something cannot be black and not-black — Count Timothy von Icarus

And to say that something is not-black is to say that it is false that it is black. Something cannot be true and false, therefore the true and the false are contradictory:

Edit: For Aristotle contraries allow for an unexcluded middle, but true/false do not, therefore true/false are not contraries. Cf. Metaphysics IV.7 - 1011b23. — Leontiskos

Truth and falsity are mutually exclusive in cases where... — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would challenge you to give a case where truth and falsity are not mutually exclusive.

I always assumed Thomas's point here was pointing back to Avicenna and ontological truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, that's fair, but ontological truth/falsity as they exist primarily in the intellect. I guess I didn't realize that in the OP you were talking about true/false as states of the intellect. For example, you critique a thesis regarding propositions, and seem to in some way question the LEM:

Such propositions are true or false (there is no gradation) simpliciter. Such a view seems to require some dubious assumptions... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe it would be helpful to circle back and simplify the position you are challenging in the OP. What objectionable thesis does your opponent hold?

I can see that Aquinas would agree that the intellect which is true does not contradict the intellect which is false, in the ontological sense. But in this case we are not talking about predications or assertions of falsity. Surely we agree that "p is false" contradicts "p is true."

Truth represents a perfect adequacy between the intellect and being. Falsity is the absence of this adequacy. If any inadequacy makes a belief or statement false, that seems to be quite problematic. For one, it would mean that all or almost all of the "laws" of the natural sciences are false, along with our scientific claims.

A theory or hypothesis might not perfectly conform to reality, but this doesn't make it completely inadequate either. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, that is helpful. But remember that falsity is a privation, not an absence. If the intellect has no truth it cannot have falsity.

- :up:

, I think you are saying that because knowledge can be more or less, therefore propositions about knowledge can be more or less true. For example, "I know how to build a bridge." That is a claim that could be true in degrees, so to speak, spanning from the child with his Erector set to the engineer building a suspension bridge. But I don't see how we go from this idea to the claim that true/false are contraries and not contradictories. Perhaps you need to define what you mean by "contrary."

Seconds, for the term "true" to have any content, it must not to apply equally to all things; falsity must be at least a possibility. For my part, it's unclear to me how we can have falseness without an intellect. For instance, stars, rocks, numbers, and trees are not true or false, but rather beliefs and statements about them are. Nor will it do to have truth and falsity be properties of "language," as isolated from any consideration of language users. Rocks do not come to know things by having truths carved into them, and in a lifeless universe of random shifting sands, a proposition that happens to be spelled out in English by pure chance means nothing to anyone. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is a rather long ongoing discussion on this topic beginning on page 12 of another thread.

the idea that all knowledge and belief is reducible to atomic propositions, that knowledge is the type of thing that can be atomized or is a whole that is merely the sum of its parts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

See:

At the end of the day it is not merely sentential. Knowledge/truth is more than a set of sentences. — Leontiskos

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St. Thomas makes the case for this — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is interesting insofar as Thomas delineates an assertion of falsehood from a negation, which we came up against in the threads on Kimhi.

But I don't see Thomas saying that the true and the false are not contradictories, nor do I see Aristotle saying that. Classically, true/false are contradictories:

“opposite assertions cannot be true at the same time” (Metaph IV 6 1011b13–20) — SEP on Aristotle and Non-Contradiction

(The law of the excluded middle must also be mixed in.)

Edit: For Aristotle contraries allow for an unexcluded middle, but true/false do not, therefore true/false are not contraries. Cf. Metaphysics IV.7 - 1011b23.

- Yep.

It treats the universe as sort of flat and so it tells a story that is sort of flat.

...

But I don't always want a framework that doesn't distinguish eating from dancing from speaking, or leaves those distinctions optional, or builds up to them in a similarly generic way (apo). — Srap Tasmaner

I got a degree in computer science a few years before formally studying philosophy. Some years later as I was reading Plato I finally popped out of the flat paradigm, and it was a bizarre experience.

For the computer scientist (and the analytic philosopher) everything is computer- and computation-centric. The computer is the operating element, and it is just doing things with inputs. Labeling them, classifying them, ordering and combining them in different ways. This looks to be a consequence of the Kantian shift, where everything began to orbit around anthropos. On my view the flatness of such a conception lies in the idea that all inputs are prima facie equivalent (e.g. eating, dancing, speaking, thinking, classifying...). It presupposes the autonomous subject freely interacting with static and rationally manipulable inputs. The knowledge does not go beyond these rational manipulations and comparisons.

While reading Plato that day I finally understood the pre-Kantian and pre-modern view, which is dynamic through and through (in subject and object). Eating, dancing, speaking, and everything else that we encounter are ineliminably distinct and unique. It's a bit like when a psychologist has a tidy personality theory that is supposed to encapsulate all persons. But then they may encounter a string of people who do not at all fit their schema, and come to recognize that the schema is highly artificial. The attempt to make all objects commensurable vis-a-vis the computational motherboard now strikes me as a highly artificial endeavor. It can be done to one limited extent or another, but in the end it is in vain.

This Kantian shift gobbles up conceptions of correspondence, even before pragmatism hits the scene. An Analytic thinks of correspondence between sentence and reality, and looks for some corresponding content. For the pre-modern correspondence of the intellect is something like a shapeshifter taking on the form of different species. To be/know a giraffe is much different than to be/know a woman, or an Indian, or a river. It is not a static relationship between mind/computer and object/input. At the end of the day it is not merely sentential. Knowledge/truth is more than a set of sentences. There is a very important sense in which substances are incommensurably different, and they dynamically interact with us in ways that we cannot anticipate or control. But the solipsistic tendency to take a static-computational paradigm for granted is very natural in our time. In always holding substances at arm's length and requiring them to be commensurable and static we limit our knowledge of them, and we limit our conception of knowledge (indeed, even to speak of substances rather than objects is to shift).

Yep, great illustrations. I like the way you pressed that line.

(Coming back to this thread when I have more time...)

I am not just speaking about war, but also diplomacy. — Bob Ross

Okay, but in your OP you talk about "forcible imposition" and "taking over North Korea," which look like warlike acts (i.e. imposing some value on a country by taking it over).

I think we have a duty to help humans qua Justice. Our rational capacities mark us out, teleologically, as requiring of ourselves, among many other things, to be impartial, objective, and to bestow demerit and merit where it is deserved (objectively). Under my view, a human has a duty to be Just merely in virtue of being a person; and basic human rights are grounded in one’s nature as a person, and so, yes, a rational alien species would have those same basic rights. — Bob Ross

So is your answer, "We must help the guy on the other side of the world because justice?" I don't see a concrete argument here. Why does justice require it?

Note how clear my argument was when I spoke of justice:

"Suppose I see a source of mercury polluting the water supply. I should remove it, because as a member of the community I should value the health of the community and the cleanliness of its water. My good is bound up in the community's good, just as its good is bound up in my good."

This was based on what Aquinas says, "it belongs to general justice to do good in relation to the community..."

I am not arguing that we have a responsibility to take care of other nations; but we do have a responsibility to stop immoralities when they are grave enough. — Bob Ross

Why wouldn't you be? Why don't you require that we have a responsibility to take care of other nations? And isn't that precisely what we are doing when we intervene to prevent them from engaging in immoralities?

Under your view, I am not following why one would be obligated to even do this; as it is not their community. — Bob Ross

We are not obligated in a natural sense.

Under your view, is it not a just war to invade Nazi Germany? Is it not an obligation other nations would have because they have no duty to victims of another nation? — Bob Ross

You are mixing together the notions of obligatory and permissible. What by natural virtue is supererogatory is neither impermissible nor obligatory.

Well, that’s my point: the whole of humanity is a para-community no differently. So if a person must be concerned about the pollution in their nation, then they should be concerned about it every else on planet earth. — Bob Ross

Well the point is that a para-community does not possess obligations. The U.S. is so large, diverse, and diffuse, that what is at stake is more like an alliance than the natural obligations of a community.

But they would still have moral obligations—no? One such obligation would be to use their excess of resources to help other persons (and then other non-person animals). No? — Bob Ross

No, I don't think so. Not on natural premises. Else, what is the argument for why a person with abundant resources is obligated to help others?

Ultimately, your teleology as a human. You are a rational animal, which is a person. Persons must pursue truth, knowledge, honesty, open-mindness, justice, impartiality, objectivity, etc. in order to fulfill their rational telos. — Bob Ross

The first problem is the idea that I have a duty to be virtuous. To whom is this duty owed? Strictly speaking, one does not owe oneself anything, because they are but one agent, not two.

The second problem is the idea that justice requires us to fulfill the things you want us to fulfill. How does it do that? I am not aware of any kind of justice that obliges me to help people on the other side of the world.

Yes, but I don’t think the lion is ignorant just because it lacks the sufficient ability to will in accordance with reason. My dog, e.g., wills in accordance with its own knowledge and conative dispositions all the time. — Bob Ross

For Aristotle your dog does not have knowledge, and it therefore does not have volition.

So is a human bound by nature to care for its young, does that mean that a woman who takes care of her babies is not dutiful to her maternal duties? — Bob Ross

A human is bound by reason to care for its young, unlike a lion.

Or, perhaps, do you mean by “bound by nature” that it wills it not in accordance with its own will, but some other biological underpinning? — Bob Ross

Yes, biological instinct dictates that lions care for their young. They do not engage in knowledge, volition, choices, etc.

Let’s take the most famous example of moral relativism that is a form of moral realism: Aristotelian Ethics. — Bob Ross

I don't take Aristotle to be a moral relativist.

E.g., I would consider “I should live a virtuous life” to be a categorical imperative that is derivable from Aristotelian Ethics even though it is true relative to the Telos of living creatures. — Bob Ross

Sure, so to speak.

but I'm interested in why you think an atheist would need there to be UFOs to impart meaning on their lives and why you think theists would lose something if they accepted that UFOs existed. — Hanover

I added a sentence for that:

Neither one really believes that we are all alone. — Leontiskos

For atheists it is statistically improbable that we are all alone, therefore there must be alien intelligence. If you follow the actual reasoning this is what you will find.

Edit: There is also the narrative that solves the abiogenesis question by appealing to extra terrestrials.

UFOs and bigfoot could exist under our current concept of physics and scientific reality. Gods and angels, not so much. — Hanover

Except that scientific atheists do not limit their conception of extraterrestrials to our current concept of physics, and smart atheists know that God and angels do not contradict science.

I think that's probably why atheists can better accept UFOs and fundamentalists cannot. — Hanover

But haven't you equivocated between fundamentalists and believers? Was your study about fundamentalists?

I wondered about that, but this article says religious people are less likely to believe in UFOs than are atheists. — Hanover

Atheists believe in UFOs because they don't believe in God. Theists don't need to believe in UFOs because they believe in God. Neither one really believes that we are all alone.

Michael says no or "mu" or "cannot compute" — fdrake

I think Michael is driving in the direction of the kind of consistency I was gesturing towards at the very beginning of this discussion, and I maintain that the best entry point is to ask about whether there can be truths absent minds (rather than talking about sentences or utterances).

I think Nietzsche would have us be nominalists after killing God. At the outset Banno implied that there is gold in Boorara absent minds. The view that we imbibed with our mother's milk is that there is gold in Boorara, and that this is true independent of human utterances and human minds. That makes sense for a Platonist, or an Aristotelian, or a Stoic, or a Christian, or a Muslim. It therefore makes intuitive sense for the Western mind. But it no longer makes sense if we move into a principled atheism.

Largely pointless pseudoproblem conjured by insisting upon the meaning of sentences being separate from but mirroring the world they engage with. It's ye olde how does the representation correspond to the represented but with sentences. IMO there isn't a correspondence or symmetry of content, there's mutual constraints of word and world, so I don't care much. — fdrake

Does that really address any of the issues? For example, how is the question about the metaphysical status of truth the same as the debates of representationalism? They seem quite distinct, although not entirely unrelated. And I don't see anyone disputing the idea that "there are mutual constraints of world and word."

I heard that Australia is in the process of implementing a law that prohibits anyone under 16 from using social media.

Meanwhile, drones fly over NJ and no one is entitled to an explanation. — Hanover

Shoot them down and wait to see who sues you. Problem solved.

I don't care too much about which account is true, they both seem like cromulent ways of doing business. It's just two ways of answering "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does it make a sound...", Michael says no or "mu" or "cannot compute", Banno says yes, in ye olde page 2-10 @Leontiskos sort of says "yes, because God hears it" and @Wayfarer sort of says "no, because what it means to be a sound is to be heard". — fdrake

What do you say? There is a problem on TPF of criticizing views without giving one's own view. You pointed it up in Michael quite well, but to be complete you should also be willing to give your own view.

- :up:

I mean, I know such arguments are unfavored here, but you don't actually know anything about what does or does not happen after death minus what a 2 year old can observe and comment on. — Outlander

Yes, we do not know that at all, despite the fact that seculars today pretend to.

Harming oneself is bad. ...That's a sound principle that does not require pretending to know that there is nothing after death. Things are not at bleak as they seem. Reality has a way of surprising our simplistic and short-sighted fears and expectations.

I see what you are saying, but if Aquinas is just noting that no man can punish another who is not in their jurisdiction (to do so) but that they can restrain or stop a person from doing wrong; then this does not, per se, negate my point since invading a nation like North Korea is done primarily for stopping them—not punishing them. — Bob Ross

Well, to occupy a country militarily seems quite different from, "to restrain a man for a time from doing some unlawful deed there and then." I think you're really talking about an act of war, and I don't think just war theory would permit initiating a war or a war-like act simply for the sake of preventing some country from engaging in immorality. Some immoralities may justify wars, but certainly not all.

I thought you were saying, by way of Aquinas, that a nation cannot invade another nation to stop them from doing immoral things to their own people because that nation has no jurisdiction over the other one (and thusly no duty to do it). That’s inherently about the legal system: the jurisdiction that they don’t have is purely legal—no?

Likewise, the polis is about legal jurisdiction: it is the city-state. — Bob Ross

My point is that, just as there is legal jurisdiction, so too is there moral jurisdiction. One is not morally justified in preventing every act of immorality, just as one is not legally justified in preventing every act of illegality. It is an analogy. I am not saying the moral and the legal are identical.

And no, the polis is not about legal jurisdiction. It is about mutual interdependence.

It arises out of the roles an agent has within that teleological structure—e.g., a good dad, a good son, a good mother, a good police officer, a good firefighter, a good judge, etc. — Bob Ross

Okay.

...I should care about the cleanliness of the water on the whole planet for the sake of the entire moral project (which is to properly respect life in a nutshell).

I don’t just have a duty to clean the water for my own ‘community’ (as you mean it) but, rather, to preserve the human good and the good of all life—don’t you agree? If you see a polluted stream that you knew with 100% certainty wouldn’t pose any threat to your community but would to another, then you think you have no moral obligation, ceteris paribus, to do something about it? The human good (in terms of as a whole) doesn’t bind you at all—just the communal good? — Bob Ross

I think we have a Christian duty to help humans qua human, but not a natural duty. Kant is attempting to rationalize Christian morality, and I don't think he succeeds. For example, what is your rationale? What does it mean that we have a duty "for the sake of the entire moral project?"

Presumably you would say we also have a duty to rational aliens on other planets, if they exist?

If I am traveling in China and I notice a source of water pollution, I do not think I am bound in natural justice to address it.

The reason the average Western citizen thinks he has duties to random strangers on the other side of the world is because he was reared in a Christian culture.

Not quite, this is, again, the straw man that I am arguing that every human is obligated to do the impossible; but I am saying that human’s have duties to the human race—not just their own nation. — Bob Ross

I know, and again, "The bee would have no reason to believe you." Do you offer any reason for why we are responsible to people on the other side of the world?

A nation wouldn’t be a community then: they aren’t self-sufficient. They have to trade with other nations. — Bob Ross

For wealth, but usually not for necessity. But a nation would generally be seen as a kind of para-community.

I don’t think so. For you, would you say that if you didn’t require the resources of anyone else in your nation (and thereby were living completely self-sufficiently), then you have no obligations to help other people? What if you are filthy rich and completely self-sufficient and there are people that are starving? It seems like under your view there would be no duty or obligation to help them because there is no interdependence. — Bob Ross

Humans are pretty much always dependent, but if there were a non-social species then yes, it would not have communal obligations. One does not have communal obligations if one does not belong to a community.

I don’t remember how I initially presented the principle, but it might have been. What I am saying is that there are duties which arise out of the roles one has in a teleological structure, some of which can be morally relevant, and that those duties do extend to the entirety of the moral project [of respecting life—Justice and Fairness]. — Bob Ross

Supposing I have duties to random strangers on the other side of the world, in virtue of what teleological reality do I have those duties?

I used that example of purpose in anticipation (;

If I am right that duties arise out of the roles derived from the teleological structure and duty is living in proper agreement with those roles and being dutiful is fulfilling one’s duties, then a lion is dutiful if the lion is fulfilling its roles within the teleological structure of being a lion—e.g., a good father lion, etc.

Voluntariness and choice are not the same thing—given that I take the Aristotelian approach here—and duty is just acting in alignment with one’s obligations; which can be done voluntarily without choice. — Bob Ross

A lion is bound by nature to care for its young, but not by reason. I don't see that Aristotle would attribute volition to lions. He says, "a voluntary act is one which is originated by the doer with knowledge of the particular circumstances of the act" (Nicomachean Ethics, III.i).

If they are a chess player, then they are bound to follow the rules. Sure, they can decide to become a chess player or not, but that doesn’t make the goodness, badness, and dutifulness which is relative to that teleological structure a hypothetical imperative for a chess player. — Bob Ross

Your point looks tautological, "If he wants to play the game of chess, then he must follow the rules of chess, because in order to play the game one must follow the rules." But you are trying to say that chess duties are not moral duties. I would say that if one breaks their promise to play chess then they are acting immorally, which can be done by cheating. I don't recognize non-moral duties.

If I take your argument seriously, then it sounds like all forms of moral relativism must express merely hypothetical imperatives. — Bob Ross

Sure, that sounds right to me.

Who says it has to be unconditional? — Vera Mont

:up:

1. One cannot reprimand a person which one has no jurisdiction over.
2. One can reprimand a person which is doing something unlawful. — Bob Ross

The word "reprimand" does not appear at all in the passages you quote, which hinders your argument for equivocation.

Then we are not restricting ‘duty’ to its strict meaning as it relates to law — Bob Ross

What do you think it would mean to restrict duty to that which relates to law? Are you thinking of positive law or something?

The question, then, becomes: “what kinds of teleological structures can support duties?” — Bob Ross

How do you suppose a teleological structure would support a duty?

If I were to grant that one such set of moral duties relates to the teleological structure of ‘community’, then it seems to plainly follow that the entire human species, as a whole, is the highest of this type of structure as it relates to humans — Bob Ross

Suppose I see a source of mercury polluting the water supply. I should remove it, because as a member of the community I should value the health of the community and the cleanliness of its water. My good is bound up in the community's good, just as its good is bound up in my good. But the human race is not a community in any obvious sense. For the ancients the largest community would have been the polis, the city-state. Telling a human that they are responsible for every human would be like telling a bee that it is responsible for every bee, as opposed to the bees of its hive and especially its queen. The bee would have no reason to believe you.

Perhaps the argument is not that because they are so distant to each other that they are not proper communities but, rather,... — Bob Ross

What is a community? It is something like a group of mutually self-sufficient people. Communal obligations arise in virtue of that interdependence. The parties to a war would be an example of separate communities.

I wouldn’t say that one must oppose all the immorality that they can per se: one should oppose all immorality that they can as it relates to their duties. — Bob Ross

But that's circular, for you are appealing to your principle in order to establish duties.

The difference between us, is that I think of duties as relating to many teleological structures, whereas yours seems to be limited to legal structures. — Bob Ross

I don't know where you are getting these ideas, but I don't think you will find them in my posts.

So, what teleological structures can support duties? I would argue: all of them! Just as all teleological structures can and do support objective, internal goods to and for the given structure; so, too, does it house duties which relate to the preservation and realization of the purposes in those structures. E.g., just as there is such a thing as a good lion, there is such a thing as a dutiful lion. — Bob Ross

I was about to make a joke about the animal kingdom, and then you went on to talk about dutiful lions. So you think that teleology entails duties and lions have duties?

Surely, e.g., a dutiful lion is not morally relevant, for the lion cannot rationally deliberate (in any meaningful sense). — Bob Ross

If lions cannot deliberate then I'm not sure what a dutiful lion is.

Doesn’t, e.g., a chess player have certain chess duties (such as not cheating to win) even though they are not directly morally relevant duties? — Bob Ross

The chess player has a hypothetical imperative to follow the rules of chess, but unless he has a duty to play chess he has no duty to follow the rules of chess. Yet if he promises someone to play chess with them, then he has a duty to follow the rules in virtue of his promise. In any case, hypothetical imperatives are not duties.

I didn't say it. — Michael

Heaven forbid that you would say something. :wink:

Yes, I saw you nudging in that direction. I don't know. I think things get tricky once we realize how important the predispositions of philosophical inquiry are, and then try to manage them. It is there, in the heart of the jungle, where you encounter the most danger and require the most care, and yet after the long and taxing journey care and attention is often lacking when it is most needed. A text like Przywara's Analogia Entis is an attempt to plumb those depths, and the success is always only partial.

Traditionally the difficult question and the cleft/alienation doesn't appear with truth, but rather with falsity and error (and the threads on Kimhi danced around this). We can debate the relation between truth and falsity, but it looks to me that in the long history of epistemology the conundrum is, "What is falsity?" "What is error?" And if the false cannot be known then how can the ship be righted?

(Michael was poking around in this when he earlier said that realism inevitably courts skepticism. The problem is that his idiosyncratically defined "anti-realism" doesn't seem to offer a substantive alternative. The problems posed by skepticism aren't so easily evaded, at least at the theoretical level.)

Yes, that is an interesting idea. It also seems to me that there's a kind of pre-reflexive movement—something like faith or trust—that determines the outcome in a curious way. If you trust him then he turns out to be trustworthy, and if you don't trust him then he turns out to be untrustworthy, and there is no middle ground.

I see this a lot in the analytical stance of trying to achieve that neutral middle ground, a stance which carries within itself commitments that are unseen.

:up:

This is the classical problem of "realism," namely the debate between those espousing some account of universals and those espousing nominalism. Usually on TPF we read about a philosophical issue on SEP like someone who reads about the wetness of water. The benefit of real argument, such as this thread represents, is the same as the benefit of familiarity with water itself, as opposed to encyclopedia descriptions.

Dare We Say, ‘Thanks for Nothing’? — FrankGSterleJr

Sure, if you have nothing. But it's mostly not the people with nothing saying such things.

- Good posts. :up: