[petri dish or] sandbox — bongo fury
Are you using 'statement' here the same way I was, or as 'a sentence that is being asserted'? — Srap Tasmaner
This is the whole point of my screwdriver discussion. — Srap Tasmaner
So we are right to recognize that a screwdriver is longing to drive screws, and this is the most joy it can find in life, but we still might drive screws without it, or use it for something else. — Srap Tasmaner
Oh, and about the Novak paper: Your link didn’t seem to take me there. Mind verifying and posting it again? Thanks. — J
As I've previously explained and illustrated via example, it is not contradictory to maintain the three stipulations of the OP - for intending the least of all wrongs when no other alternative is in any way available to you is a good, and not a bad. Maintaining the three stipulations can become contradictory when reinterpreted in the fashion you have. But, as I've previously expressed and exemplified, this is not how I myself interpret the OP's three stipulations. — javra
I will not plead for you to give your honest answer to the simple question I've asked. — javra
If you think of something people use, you might think of a tool. Tools capture the problem we face pretty well. — Srap Tasmaner
All of which, I think, explains both J 's sense that statements display assertoric force without themselves being assertions -- in much the way a screwdriver has a clear and unambiguous purpose... — Srap Tasmaner
--but also why Frege distinguishes them, because the coupling of a statement to the assertion it would naturally be used to make is loose. — Srap Tasmaner
Dissociating assertoric force from the predicate
We can grasp a thought without recognizing it as true. To think is to grasp a thought. Once we have grasped a thought, we can recognize it as true—make a judgement—and give expression to this recognition—make an assertion. We need to be able to express a thought without putting it forward as true. In the Begriffschrift I use a special sign to convey assertoric force: the judgement-stroke. The languages known to me lack such a sign, and assertoric force is closely bound up with the indicative mood of the sentence that forms the main clause. Of course in fiction even such sentences are uttered without assertoric force; but logic has nothing to do with fiction. Fiction apart, it seems that it is only in subordinate clauses that we can express thoughts without asserting them. One should not allow oneself to be misled by this peculiarity of language and confuse grasping a thought and making a judgement. — Frege, Posthumous Writings, 192
So we have a statement, which, like a screwdriver, carries in its very design its fitness for being asserted; on the other hand, we have the act of assertion which makes use of the appropriate statement. But this coupling is loose: the sentence has other uses as well,... — Srap Tasmaner
I must be missing something. I can see no more of a problem with fictional assertions than I can with fictional imaginings, fictional events, fictional places, fictional characters and so on. — Janus
In myth and fiction thoughts occur that are neither true nor false. Logic has nothing to do with these. In logic it holds good that every thought is either true or false, tertium non datur. — Frege Reader, 300
It is in that context that I am interested in Marcion who wanted to separate the creator of tradition from the gentle lord of the Savior. It can be noted that Maricon was clearly more 'Hellenized' than the followers of the Torah in Jerusalem. One does not have to purge all traces of 'Greekness' from those followers for the difference to be significant.
A similar condition applies to the earliest gnostic materials. Some are drawn from Greek ideas, some from other sources. There still is a tension between traditional life and visions of apocalypse. The desire to change a world of brutal power such as the Romans deployed remained a goal for Gnostics centuries later. — Paine
I have observed more than a few people argue that potency/potential is best left out of natural philosophy because it is, in principle, not empirically observable. Only act can be observable, hence, being good modern empiricists, we have no need for potency. — Count Timothy von Icarus
So with "appears to say", I meant something like "appears to us", "can be interpreted as", and so on. And I mean those expansively, provisionally and contingently. I think part of what makes Moore's Paradox interesting is because it invites us to bracket a normal functioning of language and thus throws it into relief. — fdrake
I would say that the context-independent interpretation is clearly contradictory, and that it doesn't make much sense to present it as context-independent and expect the hearer to place it in some idiosyncratic context. The additional context could be as simple as, "Sally, a deeply intelligent woman, said..." — Leontiskos
And moreover, I'd bet that this conflict of appearances is commonplace and essential out in the wild. — fdrake
In the wild I'd be inclined to read "believe" somewhat figuratively, like an exasperation, or an alternatively that Sally is experiencing a disconnect between whatever engenders her to assert statements and whatever engenders her to assert her own belief in statements. Basically I want to trust Sally rather than calling her out. — fdrake
The distinction is total and fundamental. Frege goes so far as to say you cannot talk about functions (i.e., predicates) at all, because to talk about them is to treat them as objects. We do, nevertheless, talk about them, because it's handy, but he considered this a shortcoming of natural languages. In his system, it is simply not possible: functions cannot be values of variables. ((That's first-order, of course, and it's well known that even to define arithmetic you have to pass on to second-order. I don't recall what he says about this, and whether a switch to classes as stand-ins for functions is good enough. Anyway, there's a gap in my account here.))
He goes further, and says that he cannot even tell you what a function is -- that is, what belongs to the type <function> -- for related reasons, but, and this is a key point, though he cannot tell you what the difference is between an object and a function, he can show you. This is the whole point of the Begriffschrift, to show this difference clearly, perspicaciously. Perforce that means logical form is not really something to be defined (though I don't recall him saying this) but shown.
((This distinction -- that there are some things that can only be shown -- I think had a tremendous influence on Wittgenstein, that was still percolating after the Tractatus, or so I believe.)) — Srap Tasmaner
Kinda, but I'd be more inclined to say that predicates neither exist nor fail to exist. No more than red is tall or short. It just doesn't apply. Objects are the sorts of things that exist (or fail to), and functions aren't objects.
I don't remember how Frege deals with non-existent objects, or if it even comes up, but in the world he left us, empty classes serve. I can name "the smallest positive rational number" but it will turn out I have defined an empty singleton class. (Extensionally equivalent to any other empty class, but not intensionally, if that matters.) — Srap Tasmaner
I don't remember how Frege deals with non-existent objects, or if it even comes up, but in the world he left us, empty classes serve. — Srap Tasmaner
Frege poses the rhetorical question as to whether it is possible to produce an example of a meaningful true statement of the form “A is B”, where A is a proper name, but there are no B’s. The challenge is not met by Frege’s opponent in the dialogue as preserved, but in case we attempted to suggest e.g. the sentence “Smaug is a dragon” as an obvious counterexample (assuming that, of course, there are no dragons), according to his principles Frege would be bound to saying that this is “not a real (i.e., meaningful) sentence”. This counterintuitive result was to be mitigated in a later phase of the development of Frege’s thought, as the distinction drawn between Sinn and Bedeutung enabled, under certain circumstances, expressions (including sentences) to have a Sinn despite lacking a Bedeutung. Nevertheless, the fundamental principle of Frege’s theory, viz. that objects capable of being judged about are, trivially, exclusively existing objects, was never abandoned by Frege, nor did he ever consider it in the least controversial. Quite the opposite – Frege regarded it as empty and tautological, since the term “existing”, insofar as it is applied to individuals, is devoid of any content and as such it does not impose any extensional narrowing: ... — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 158-9
Peirce had quantifiers too, I hear, but I've never studied his logic. I certainly defer to Kenny -- I just think of the likes of Boole and De Morgan being quite nearly there already. — Srap Tasmaner
I think we're all on the same page, I'm just using the word "claim" instead of "assert", and also drafting the word "say", all three of which have considerable overlap in everyday speech. — Srap Tasmaner
(4) Leontiskos seems almost to suggest that statements have a sort of hole in them, like Frege's functions, waiting for an agent to be inserted and complete the assertion. But we need more than an agent, we need an actual utterance (even if internal), and then we're faced with the problem of intention as well --- some of that context will take care (I'm acting in a play), but some it won't (I was just saying what he wanted to hear). — Srap Tasmaner
One way it seems relevant is that understanding the sentence as weird and contradictory on a gut level... pumps the intuition that it must function as an assertion. It would never be uttered in normal circumstances since part of its mechanism asserts something and then undermines the act of assertion. — fdrake
And it would probably be better to look at it in the form "Sally said "It is raining but I believe it is not raining"", since that dodges all the weird crap involving "I", since we know who is saying it. — fdrake
So when Sally says the second clause, "I believe it is not raining", a reading of the phrase in which Sally's assumed to be truthful and sincere associates the "I believe" in the sentence with asserting the claim "It is not raining". So the first clause appears to assert "It is raining", the second clause appears to assert "It is not raining", and those things clash together in our heads. — fdrake
Nevertheless, Sally is not in a state of contradiction. — fdrake
For Sally only appears to assert that it is raining, and only appears to assert that it is not raining. — fdrake
Eg, I've said "I don't believe it's raining!" while wincing up at a sky thick with summer rain. — fdrake
A similar logic lets you provide a model for Sally's odd phrase. I'm sitting here now, I believe it's not raining since it wasn't forecast to rain this evening last time are checked. But my curtains are closed. I just said "It is raining and I believe it's not raining" aloud... and it turned out it wasn't raining after all, when I opened the curtain. — fdrake
What I think makes Moore's paradox a good gateway in this discussion is that there's a whole context of cooperative use and interpretation, which contains a myriad of exploitable oppositions and contradictions, that just don't show up when you analyse the phrase as an instance of asserts(p & believes not-p) & asserts(p)=>believes(p). Particularly how you can make sense of it, and the kind of doubt you might have regarding Sally's faculties and situation. Maybe those are the kind of things J was looking to incorporate into a logic. — fdrake
...there's a whole context of cooperative use and interpretation, which contains a myriad of exploitable oppositions and contradictions, that just don't show up when you analyse the phrase as an instance of asserts(p & believes not-p) & asserts(p)=>believes(p)... — fdrake
Though there remains the question of whether this can be incorporated into normal flavours of logic, whether it's something that can be formalised, whether it should be formalised... and so on. — fdrake
As an aside, when I said the phrase aloud I felt a powerful compulsion to immediately open the curtain to check... Surely something we expect Sally to have done in my shoes! — fdrake
In reply to this edit: Since you're being ultra-formal in reasoning, what pacifist (either directly or indirectly) causes no harm to other life in their persisting to live by consuming nutrients via food? — javra
Just for the specific sentence "It is raining but I believe it is not raining", taken as a stand alone. When you read that, you can understand it. Even though you don't know who "I" refers to. You just know it's the person in the sentence. — fdrake
I'd make the same conjured into existence analysis for "I" or "me" in the sentences:
A) It's an egg, I know it's an egg.
B) Ask not for whom the egg tolls, it tolls for me.
C) I have to block out thoughts of eggs so I don't lose my egg.
when they are presented without further context.
Because, as internet brainrot would have it, the who "I" is is ghosted, for real. — fdrake
Excellent citations from Frege. My claim was twofold: 1) that predicate logic restricts what we can say about existence; and 2) we have to start with a logically grammatical proposition that fills the argument slot with a term, thus creating what Frege called a “name,” before we can say whether it exists or not. I’m not sure what “wider than existence” means exactly, but your citation clearly shows that Frege believed we have to presuppose that “sentences [can?] express judgments” and that there is a world out there, about which we are trying to say things. No disagreements here, and sorry if I seemed to say otherwise. — J
One point about something Frege also says here. He asks: “Can you produce an example where a sentence of the form 'A is B' is meaningful and true, A being a name of an individual, and yet 'There are B’s' is false?” To me, this shows why quantification comes first in his method. — J
He requires, correctly, that “A is B” be “meaningful and true” before... — J
If we changed Frege’s question to read: “Can you produce an example where a sentence of the form 'A is B' is unasserted, A being a name of an individual, and yet 'There are B’s' is false?”, the answer would be, Of course we can. — J
But what I was trying to point out (or what I think Roberts means, anyway) is that “the universe of discourse” isn’t neutral or discoverable or God-given or whatever. We have to determine it, which requires quantification. — J
The charge is more radical than that. The Kimhi-inspired challenge says that the mandatory dissociation of force from sense in logic is wrong. Kimhi: “[Frege and Geach] want to dissociate assertoric force from anything in the composition or form of that which is primarily true or false in a propositional sign.” And yes, I hope Srap keeps pressing his points; we need to interrogate this challenge sharply. — J
I find this all fascinating but, as I say, I don't want us to digress. — J
(1) Assertion is (a person, an agent) claiming that the possible state of affairs, let's say, described by a statement does in fact hold.
(2) Assertion is (a person, an agent) affirming the claim about the world made by a statement. — Srap Tasmaner
This seems slightly at odds with the descriptions involving a repeated identical 'p': there are no repeated complete symbols here. — Srap Tasmaner
Frege isn't remembered for the propositional calculus, which predates him, but for quantifiers and their use in tidying up the predicate calculus, to make it safe for mathematics. — Srap Tasmaner
I noticed that too. Absolutely. I think the general thrust of the whole modern Frege-Tarski-model-theoretic approach is to presuppose the existence of the objects within the universe of discourse, and then the questions addressed are which objects satisfy which predicates, and that's all. — Srap Tasmaner
The ones for Greek scholarship (mostly re Aristotle) that I can find in the text are: Charles Kahn (mainstream, right?); Jennifer Hornsby; Jonathan Beere; Michel Crubellier; Lukasiewicz (also mainstream?); Anscombe (not sure how she's regarded now); C.W.A. Whitaker; Benjamin Morison; Walter Leszl; John McDowell; Edward Lee; and I may have missed some. So I think the scholarship is there (minus the Medievals, as you point out), it's just hard to get an overall picture of what Kimhi is relying on. — J
Re Beere, Kimhi does say, "Both my usage and my understanding of the Aristotelian terminology of capacity and activity are informed by Jonathan Beere's illuminating study, Doing and Being (OUP, 2009)." Do you know Beere's work? Is Kimhi wise to rely on it? — J
Irrespective of what your anticipated answer will be, I again deem the choosing of the least bad to be a good in an of itself, rather than a bad in and of itself. — javra
Is it a bad to choose - or else to intend the manifestation of - the lease bad from all alternatives that are available to oneself at the juncture of the given choice? — javra
It’s true that this doesn’t moot the ontological question, but it’s a special and severe restriction on what we can say about existence. It’s also a precise description of the order in which Fregeans have to proceed: quantification first. — J
Here I would retort: If “Sachse exists” should mean “The term ‘Sachse’ is not an empty sound but it stands for something”, then it is correct to say that the condition that “Sachse exists” must be satisfied. This, however, is no new premise, but a self-evident presupposition of all our words. The rules of logic always presuppose that the words used are not empty, that the sentences express judgements, that we are not playing with mere words. Given that “Sachse is a man” is an actual judgement, the word “Sachse” has to stand for something; in which case I do not need any further premise to infer “There are men” from that. The premise “Sachse exists” is superfluous, as long as it means nothing over and above that self-evident presupposition of all our thought. Or can you produce an example where a sentence of the form “A is B” is meaningful and true, A being a name of an individual, and yet “There are B’s” is false?[4]
[4] [...] Gottlob Frege, “Dialog mit Pünjer über Existenz” (between 1879 and 1884), in Schriften zur Logik und Sprachphilosophie: Aus dem Nachlass (Meiner Verlag 2001), 99, p. 11–12. [...] — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 157-8
If we attribute any content to the verb “to be”, to the effect that the sentence “A is” is neither superfluous nor self-evident, we shall have to concede that the negation of “A is” is, under certain circumstances, possible, viz. that there are subjects to which being must be denied. Then, however, the notion of “being” generally won’t be suited to be used as an interpretation of the meaning of “there is” any more, according to which “there are B’s” would be equivalent to “some being falls under the concept of B”. For if we applied this interpretation to the sentence “There are subjects to which being must be denied”, we would obtain the sentence “Some being falls under the concept of non-being”, or “Some being is not”. This is unavoidable, as soon as one ascribes any content whatsoever to the concept of being. If the interpretation that “there are B’s” means the same as “some being is B” is to be correct, then it is simply necessary that “being” be understood as conveying something completely self-evident.[5]
[5] [...] ibid., 20-21 — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 159
Newtonian physics is still a powerful tool, despite getting the big picture all wrong. — J
If Frege’s system is insufficient in its basic understanding of how propositions work, how they must be understood within logic, then while it may remain a powerful tool, it’s defective in explanatory power at the metalogical level. — J
I’m suggesting we think of force as something that can be displayed without assertion. And having said that, the question is whether this is just playing with words – whether the nuance I’m proposing really clarifies anything, or would change how we think about logic. To that question I would say, “Kimhi thinks it does, but I’m not clear on it yet.” — J
Both@Leontiskos and Fdrake have concerns about the “I” of assertion. This is very important, in my opinion. — J
I think the answer is no. — J
I have seen analytics fall into this trap of thinking that sentences can float in the ether without any speaker, even a logically remote one. In that sense I would agree with the OP that all sentences have a kind of force, but I would call it an intentional force rather than an assertoric force. — Leontiskos
I'm not sure how damning it is to describe something as merely useful, but you've got a hobby horse to ride and I'll not stop you. — Srap Tasmaner
I don't think "logic in its entirety" is a thing. — Srap Tasmaner
In short, when the only available alternatives to one are all of differing degrees of wrongness, or of badness, then it is virtuous (and hence good) to choose that alternative which is the least wrong, or bad, among the available alternatives. This in contrast to choosing an alternative which is more or else most wrong, hence bad.
Choosing not to choose between the alternatives in this situation would also be, by my reckoning, a non-virtuous act - for, in so choosing not to choose, one then of one's own accord allows for the possibility of the more or else worst wrong to be actualized. — javra
It looked to me like the argument form here was something like this:
A: Fs are not Gs.
B: But in a way they are.
That's a disagreement, I guess, but I wouldn't call it an argument. And yes maybe it's a disagreement over presuppositions, but what's the argument for dropping the presupposition? — Srap Tasmaner
If we find that there are multiple frameworks for analyzing the symbol systems of humans and their utterances, and each is useful for particular purposes, we might consider the possibility that the speakers of a language also have at their disposal multiple frameworks for thinking about the utterances of their fellows. The distinction between between force and logical form might not be a fact, so much as a strategy, something people do because for some purposes it's very useful to do so. — Srap Tasmaner
The odd part of it seems to be "I" conjures an asserter. Which isn't the person who writes the sentence (me), it's the person in the sentence. — fdrake
The Fregean picture is more like “p would or could be an assertion under the right illocutionary circumstances (thanks, Banno), but unless it’s actually being asserted, p has nothing in the way of force.” That’s what I’m challenging. — J
Curious to know if K's interpretation [of Aristotle] is mainstream or outlier/revisionist. — J
‛The grass is green’ is not neutral as to force — J
But for now, what do you all think? Have I succeeded in raising a genuine challenge to Frege, or does the Fregean have an obvious counter-argument? — J
In Quine’s hands, however, the principle takes on a purely descriptive meaning, stating merely what kind of entities a given theory presupposes to exist – namely those that can figure as values of bound variables in that theory. In other words, the Principle features in Quine as his famous criterion of “ontological commitment”, which, since language has been purged of all directly referring expressions, lacks any a priori connexion to reality and becomes rather a matter of pragmatic choice. — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 166-7
And that’s what Kimhi’s book is about. — J
These are not statements that apply to angles or even Zeus. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Can you provide some examples of that? — Paine
I’m looking for some source help. I know that the parallel between ‛X exists/doesn’t exist’ and ‛p is true/false’ is a familiar one, but I can’t find a focused discussion of it in the literature — J
In scholasticism the matters are rather more complicated. Generally speaking, the scholastics lacked the Russellian revisionist attitude towards natural language, and therefore they rarely explicitly challenged the obvious capacity of the natural language to refer to non-existents. Their approach was, generally, to explain and analyse, not to correct language – and so the standard scholastic theory of supposition (the mediæval counterpart of reference) naturally allows (via devices like ampliation etc.) for reference to non-existents.[18] — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 168-9
So much for ignoring me. — Fooloso4
You are not following what I've said. My point is only that perception is a mental construct. — Hanover
What Kimhi adds to this, in a manner I'm still grappling with, is the unity part: the claim that "the assertion 'p is true' is the same as 'I truly think p'." — J
In Judaism the messiah is not God. — BitconnectCarlos
To break the Law is not limited to infractions. — Fooloso4
Absolutely not! — Fooloso4
Point being, from what are likely the very earliest Christian sources Christ is seen as divine. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I thought that that 'issue' had been long since resolved. — creativesoul