But triangularity is a form: the mind isn't a form. — Bob Ross
But, again, then that admits that there is interaction, not in the sense of merely participation in a form, by the mind and body. No? — Bob Ross
The concern is that if something is to be philosophy then it must say something. To "say something" is to offer up something which one believes, which one is willing to defend, and which someone else might deny. Even Williamson's very minimal criterion of "disciplined by something," generates this "saying something." If one offers something that is conditioned and answerable to no discipline whatsoever, then one is not actually saying something.
That's a low water-mark for philosophy, but I find it not only helpful, but also commonly accepted and commonly deployed. — Leontiskos
I find reading Kimhi pretty unpleasant — Srap Tasmaner
I have gotten so frustrated with Kimhi over the past month that I've literally screamed, trying to untangle him. But I insist it's worth it. — J
Whereas I think it's all horseshit, but it's an opportunity to explore what I find so ridiculous about this way of doing philosophy. — Srap Tasmaner
But it will make a difference when it comes time to debate the standards he is proposing, and the justifications he (or anyone else) is prepared to offer for those standards. I was going to say there are conditional and unconditional options, but really it's just a difference in the antecedent class: "if you want to do analytic philosophy then ..." versus "if you want to do philosophy then ..." — Srap Tasmaner
When you say 'man can have knowledge of all corporeal things', is this in the sense that if the a particular of any kind of given to the senses that the mind could abstract out it's form? Or are you saying the mind can know all corporeal things indirectly through testing and self-reflective reason? — Bob Ross
I haven't found a Thomist that addresses tbh. I read Ed Fezer's elaborations and his doesn't focus on how the immaterial mind interacts with the material body. He just vaguely states that there is no interaction problem for hylomorphisists because the soul is the form of the body. The problem I have with that is that it ignores the fact that the immaterial mind is not the soul: the soul would be the form of the body and the mind (together unified); so how could they interact or be unified together like that? — Bob Ross
So, this sort of thing is maybe a broader trend. — Count Timothy von Icarus
And yes, the series I mentioned skew analytic and recent, but it's not like their epistemology texts don't mention Plato, Descartes, Kant, etc. So too for other topics like philosophy of mind or free will. Philosophy of language really struck me as an outlier, having checked out several titles. — Count Timothy von Icarus
...but more damningly, that the tyranny of the same, the monochrome paintbrush, is relied upon heavily for the dismissal of vast tracts of thought. Kant was at least contentious enough to only call the bulk of prior thought "twaddle" in a private letter, not so for the Masters of Suspicion and Hume's library bonfire. There is certainly something of the Reformarion-era iconoclasm here, as opposed to a transcending of modernity. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The point here re method is that an absolutization of method leads towards the endless "restarting" of the entire philosophical project, which also lends itself to a cheaping and forgetfulness of history, even as historicism becomes absolutized (indeed, the two are related). I have pointed out how this tends to make philosophy chaotic, "highly sensitive to initial conditions" (i.e. the new methodology and its presuppositions). This is, of course, not really "post-modern," but in a way the definition of modernity, which begins with a similar move, the Reformer's attempt to sweep away the history of the Church, theology, philosophy, etc. and to recover that mythic, original, untainted outlook—first the Church of the first century, later Western rational culture before the "Christian Dark Ages," or "philosophy before Plato—prior to metaphysics and presence." In a way, it is philosophy trying to turn itself into one of the very many sciences it has birthed, with a clear starting point in history and structure. But I'd argue that philosophy still contains all that it has birthed, and hence can never shrink itself down properly to become one of its own parts, since wisdom itself always relates to the whole. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Disagreed [...]. So maybe there's a deeper disagreement :) — AmadeusD
I do think its odd. That doesn't make it wrong. Your "How so?" would require that Curt has given me his reasons for believing it, and I cannot find a way to falsify his reasons for belief. — AmadeusD
we are talking about refuting someone's reason(s) (R) for belief (P). They begin:
R → P
R
∴ P — Leontiskos
I understand that your view is that the belief should be considered false, as long as the state of affairs doesn't obtain. I don't think that is the best use of these words, myself. — AmadeusD
Weirdly, the exact point I have made (but I guess I'm separating them in the opposite scenario - i.e, state of affairs false=/=belief false). Does this not seem so to you? — AmadeusD
Someone can have a 'true' belief in the sense I mean, despite the facts not being true. — AmadeusD
But the truth of things is in the person who knows these things. — Fire Ologist
Yeah, there is something I like to call the "Anna Karenina Principle," based on the opening of Tolstoy's novel: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in his own way." — Count Timothy von Icarus
Again, there are many ways of going wrong (for evil is infinite in nature, to use a Pythagorean figure, while good is finite), but only one way of going right; so that the one is easy and the other hard—easy to miss the mark and hard to hit. — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II.6
I came across a great explanation by Rowan Williams — Count Timothy von Icarus
Consider the phrase, "I am politically nonbinary.". Do you discern the speaker's intent differently if they are liberal or conservative? — David Hubbs
My point here is that defining progress in formal terms can sometimes prove illusory. I am not sure about the claim that we "know much more about truth then we did decades ago," unless it is caveated for instance... — Count Timothy von Icarus
The other issue is that people very quickly learn to game metrics. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Note, however, that some of the responses to this sort of thing seem deficient. For example, simply pointing to seemingly incoherent analytic or scholastic philosophy. This doesn't say much; presumably there can be bad scholastic philosophy, bad theoretical physics, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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... — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 168
Banno's position here is interesting because he is strongly committed both to the primacy of natural language and the usefulness of classical logic. The argument he often makes is that classical logic is not something you find implicit in ordinary language, as its hidden structure, say, but you can choose to conform your language use to it.
I think that view actually rhymes quite well with the description I've been trying to develop of how formal, technical language can be embedded in natural language, much as mathematical language is and must be embedded in natural language. — Srap Tasmaner
But isn't the claim that "mathematical language is and must be embedded in natural language," actually contrary to the claim that, "classical logic is not something you find implicit in ordinary language"? At least if mathematics is on par with classical logic? At the very least, you are claiming that some kind of formalism (mathematics) is implicit in ordinary language. — Leontiskos
Of course, one area where you get a lot of specificity is in scientific terms and jargon, and a common charge against Continental philosophy is that it uses these in cases that seem to fail to understand the original usage, while also not clarifying any alternative usage, which is, so the charge goes, at best a misunderstanding and at worst obscurantistism. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I think part of the problem here is that "disciplined" is being used in two different ways ― not quite two different senses. It's rather like the way we use the word "hot" in two ways: you can ask if something is hot or cold, and you can ask how hot something is (or similarly, how cold). Similarly, discipline seems to be, on the one hand, a matter of how firmly your inquiries are guided by other disciplines, and by how many; but on the other seems to be something that can be achieved, and that stands as the contrary of "undisciplined".
This is rather unfortunate. — Srap Tasmaner
Why is it unfortunate? I don't see a problem with using "disciplined" in that way, just as I do not see a problem with using "hot" in that way. This is a form of analogical predication, where we simply do not have any obvious "unfortunate" equivocation occurring. — Leontiskos
My point is that it's easy to "reverse-engineer" a normative framework just by observing how some entity tends to act (humans, ants, clouds, whatever) — goremand
Isn't the "rational appetite" just another type of "natural appetite"? Certainly most people are inclined to be rational. — goremand
And I have some sympathy with that view, and have said before that the overwhelming majority of my own posts are just chitchat, sometimes gossip, like talk in the faculty lounge or at a bar. Now and then I've done some actual work here, but not often. There is, for example, no actual philosophical work by anyone anywhere in this thread. At least on this view. Strictly speaking. — Srap Tasmaner
So I have not been trying to claim that real work can only be done in a more formal mode of expression, only that in other disciplines the choice of that formal mode is an indicator that we're working (or demonstrating, etc), rather than just talking about it. — Srap Tasmaner
Who's the "we" tallying the results and scoring the competition? — Srap Tasmaner
For ways of seeing and ways of setting up problems that begin very far apart, I'm not sure it's much use at all. — Srap Tasmaner
...if different groups in philosophy give different relative weights to various sources of discipline, we can compare the long-run results of the rival ways of working. Tightly constrained work has the merit that even those who reject the constraints can agree that it demonstrates their consequences. — Williamson, 10-11
Do you find his arguments compelling? — Bob Ross
Also, if the form of an organism extends to some other substantial, immaterial aspect (of a thinking faculty), then how would that work with interacting with the body? It seems like this view loses that edge that Aristotle has of the form being nothing more than the self-actualizing principle of the body and ends up in Cartesian territory. — Bob Ross
Well, one difficulty is perhaps a conflation between specificity and rigor. For instance, I love Robert Sokolowski's The Phenomenology of the Human Person, but one of my criticisms while reading it was that it didn't always specify what it was talking about as much as I would have liked. However, I came around on this, that this was actually a wise choice, in line with Aristotle's advice in the Ethics that we ought not demand greater specificity than our subject matter allows. Wittgenstein's appeal to a "family resemblance" is another good example (although it's funny to see this then sometimes transformed into an appeal to a sort of formal "concept of family resemblance"). Actually, I think this is one of the points Grayling (who is quite analytic) criticizes Wittgenstein on, being too vague in these ways.
I don't think that charge is totally without its merits in some cases. The degree of specificity needs to be in line with the subject matter, and it is possible to err in either direction. But it is easy to mistake a lack of specificity with a lack of rigor. The drive towards reductionism and atomism is a sort of pernicious demand for specificity in some cases, often paired with questionable metaphysical assumptions. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I think your nephew makes Socrates sound like a moron. — Fire Ologist
Banno's position here is interesting because he is strongly committed both to the primacy of natural language and the usefulness of classical logic. The argument he often makes is that classical logic is not something you find implicit in ordinary language, as its hidden structure, say, but you can choose to conform your language use to it.
I think that view actually rhymes quite well with the description I've been trying to develop of how formal, technical language can be embedded in natural language, much as mathematical language is and must be embedded in natural language. — Srap Tasmaner
Absolutely. It’s hard to explain to someone , especially if their standards of clarity are shaped by the corporate world, how a set of ideas can be rigorous yet not instantly accessible. — Joshs
I think we have to call the "setting up" work philosophy; Williamson adds a stricture on the aim of setting up, a way to compare different ways of setting up a problem, and a criterion of success or at least improvement. — Srap Tasmaner
Please just stop doing this. No one wants to hear it. — Srap Tasmaner
Or, for a more direct example, we might consider how someone like Plantinga goes about showing how "God cannot create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it," is merely logically equivalent with "God can lift any rocks." Does this bit of work resolve the issue?
Not really, it simply misinterprets the problem by trying to squeeze it into formalism. — Count Timothy von Icarus
So how does one offer an argument against logical presuppositions? The most obvious way is to argue that the presupposition fails to capture some real aspect of natural logic or natural language, and by claiming that natural propositions possess a variety of assertoric force that Frege's logic lacks, this is what you are doing. Yet this is where a point like Novák's becomes so important, for logicians like Russell, Frege, Quine, et al., presuppose that natural language is flawed and must be corrected by logic. This moots your point. Further, Quine will set the stage for a "pragmaticizing" of logic, which destroys the idea of ontologically superior logics at its root: — Leontiskos
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... — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 168
I've grown used to thinking of what you're calling technical work as simply "semantical or logic-derived analytic phil." A bit cumbersome, maybe, but as you say, we all more or less know what we're talking about.
...interest or rigor or clarity — J
2. How does Aquinas argue for the soul being immaterial? — Bob Ross
I answer that, It must necessarily be allowed that the principle of intellectual operation which we call the soul, is a principle both incorporeal and subsistent. For it is clear that by means of the intellect man can have knowledge of all corporeal things. Now whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature; because that which is in it naturally would impede the knowledge of anything else. Thus we observe that a sick man's tongue being vitiated by a feverish and bitter humor, is insensible to anything sweet, and everything seems bitter to it. Therefore, if the intellectual principle contained the nature of a body it would be unable to know all bodies. Now every body has its own determinate nature. Therefore it is impossible for the intellectual principle to be a body. It is likewise impossible for it to understand by means of a bodily organ; since the determinate nature of that organ would impede knowledge of all bodies; as when a certain determinate color is not only in the pupil of the eye, but also in a glass vase, the liquid in the vase seems to be of that same color.
Therefore the intellectual principle which we call the mind or the intellect has an operation per se apart from the body. Now only that which subsists can have an operation "per se." For nothing can operate but what is actual: for which reason we do not say that heat imparts heat, but that what is hot gives heat. We must conclude, therefore, that the human soul, which is called the intellect or the mind, is something incorporeal and subsistent. — Aquinas, ST I.75.2.c - Whether the human soul is something subsistent?
And so I think it is with philosophy. It's not really a matter of formalism at all, but more like the distinction in a legal opinion between the actual decision, the language of which is binding on parties, and obiter dicta, which could be important to understanding the decision and complying with it, but which does not have the force of law. (Maybe I should have gone for this analogy first.) — Srap Tasmaner
In fact good logic courses incorporate a lot of translation between formal languages and natural language... — Leontiskos
What follows wasn't intended as a bit of silliness as I began writing it, but I think that's what it turned out to be. It may provide amusement if not insight. — Srap Tasmaner
Then (P) is the claim that philosophy is disciplined when both (D/s) and (D/o) hold. — Srap Tasmaner
But that means there are two ways for (D/s-) to hold: failure of (D/s), or failure of (D/o). — Srap Tasmaner
There's a bit of a muddle at the beginning — Srap Tasmaner
I think part of the problem here is that "disciplined" is being used in two different ways — Srap Tasmaner
I think part of the problem here is that "disciplined" is being used in two different ways ― not quite two different senses. It's rather like the way we use the word "hot" in two ways: you can ask if something is hot or cold, and you can ask how hot something is (or similarly, how cold). Similarly, discipline seems to be, on the one hand, a matter of how firmly your inquiries are guided by other disciplines, and by how many; but on the other seems to be something that can be achieved, and that stands as the contrary of "undisciplined".
This is rather unfortunate. — Srap Tasmaner
Why does it sound like he wants to say "Be disciplined rather than undisciplined" when it will turn out, quite soon, that he means "Be more disciplined by more things, rather than less disciplined by fewer things"? — Srap Tasmaner
Now what about discipline? Here again, he seems to want to stake out what we might call "realism about discipline" ― i.e., that there is a fact of the matter about whether you are or aren't ― but where he ends up is with this scale of gradations between being disciplined and undisciplined.
Now what you'd expect from his other work (I believe this paper falls between vagueness and knowledge) is that the important corollary to the discovery of this area of gradation between disciplined and undisciplined, is that we cannot know for sure where we fall on it! We may indeed be doing proper disciplined philosophy, but we cannot know it. — Srap Tasmaner
So this is the odd thing: Williamson is a diehard realist of the first order, all of whose work seems to force on him a recognition of degrees and weights... — Srap Tasmaner
All I've set up here, is that you can falsify a belief without falsifying hte state of affairs in the belief, and vice verse. — AmadeusD
But if Trump actually had dyed his hair, aside from this video fiasco, then the state of affairs hasn't be falsified if the belief is restricted to the result, not the process. You could even go as far as to say that A's belief in this video has now been falsified. — AmadeusD
Someone can have their belief falsified, but not disbelieve the content of that belief. Someone can believe x, even when there exists incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. You're right - these are somewhat vacuuous. I somewhat noted this earlier, and tried to boil it down. Here we are - you seem to be very nearly getting it in the next part of your reply. Let's see,... — AmadeusD
Yes. For reasons I've put forward, but again, this just illustrates exactly what my above is somewhat impatient about: You don't like the sentence I use to describe what's happening for A - I don't like yours/ I don't think we're saying something different from one another. I would only note I don't think it can rightly be called 'implausible' to use words in various ways. — AmadeusD
Consider the person before it was pointed out to him that the video is a deepfake. I want to say, "At that point his belief was justified but false." You apparently want to say, "At that point his belief was true but the state of affairs was false." Do you really think we should describe his belief as "true" rather than "justified but false"? — Leontiskos
"Trump dyed his hair brown!"
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I saw it on the news, from *this video*."
"That video is a deepfake."
"Oh, okay. I guess _____" — Leontiskos
I don't particularly think the JTB schema is a great one — AmadeusD
It just doesn't make me at all intuitively uncomfortable to say belief in a false state of affairs can be called true belief (this, i suppose, in contrast to 'belief in something true' which would make some of what we're saying redundant). — AmadeusD
Really? You can't understand having the reasons for your belief removed, without necessarily having hte state of affairs affected? — AmadeusD
Do you see how my scenario included a separate reason for belief, and why the separation of that reason is necessary? — Leontiskos
Gettier cases are prime examples. If after passing the field with the sheep statue (which had a real sheep behind it), you are then later told it was statue, your 'knowledge' doesn't change but the reasons for at least thinking you have it have changed. There was a sheep in the field. But you would have considered it false unless also told "but there was a real sheep behind the statue". The point here being completed different reasons result in the same 'knowledge' despite one being 'false' on that account. — AmadeusD
The Gettier case is one where the conditions for justified true belief (JTB) are satisfied and yet knowledge does not obtain. What we are talking about here is a case where one sees that the reasons for their belief are false, and nevertheless the belief itself (and the proposition, if you like), remains undecided. — Leontiskos
That they would be "good ants" if I judge them according to my framework, and that this does not require that they have any understanding of said framework. Similarly, people can be rational without understanding the normative framework used to judge them as such. — goremand
Every agent, of necessity, acts for an end. For if, in a number of causes ordained to one another, the first be removed, the others must, of necessity, be removed also. Now the first of all causes is the final cause. The reason of which is that matter does not receive form, save in so far as it is moved by an agent; for nothing reduces itself from potentiality to act. But an agent does not move except out of intention for an end. For if the agent were not determinate to some particular effect, it would not do one thing rather than another: consequently in order that it produce a determinate effect, it must, of necessity, be determined to some certain one, which has the nature of an end. And just as this determination is effected, in the rational nature, by the "rational appetite," which is called the will; so, in other things, it is caused by their natural inclination, which is called the "natural appetite."... — Aquinas, ST I-II.1.2.c - Whether it is proper to the rational nature to act for an end?
For the record, of course I didn't say that, even inadvertently. — Srap Tasmaner
This, on the other hand -- I'll admit I was trying to coax someone into saying exactly this. Not with any particular goal in mind, it's just that this is what people always say about philosophy in the analytic tradition, so I wanted to sort of set a place at the table for this view. — Srap Tasmaner
Anyway, that's the hard view. I'd like to be able to state the opposing view as clearly, but it's quite a bit more difficult. — Srap Tasmaner
So thinking being the male and its object being the female?
Metaphorically. Or maybe archetypally. — Srap Tasmaner
Another way to say this might be that good thinking is portable, which I think most of us want to believe, but I suspect the evidence there is a little mixed. Right from Socrates we get, "If you want to know about horses, do you ask a physician or a horse breeder?" — Srap Tasmaner
Yet another way to put this might be that the good reasoning that went into a good piece of thinking, or the good thinking that went into a good decision, ought to be 'extractable', that you in your field (or life) could learn from someone else doing something else. — Srap Tasmaner
And that again relies on a distinction between the movements of a mind and its object. To draw them back together, as you are inclined to do, would be instead to distinguish reason from instrumental rationality, giving to reason not only the expertise in reaching the desired result but something like the 'proper' selection of a goal, or of an object of thought. Instrumental rationality would then be only part of reason, not the whole thing.
Is that close to your view? — Srap Tasmaner
Does it leave untouched important areas? Morality, politics, spirituality, art, culture? Of course. But thinking poorly about those important areas of human experience doesn't deserve the name "philosophy". — Srap Tasmaner
and it seems to be a distinction Williamson believes in, so there's that. — Srap Tasmaner
Not to be "Mr Woke" but do you want to try another simile here? — Srap Tasmaner
Is this to say that the most important objects of thought are only accessible to the best thinking? — Srap Tasmaner
Maybe I get where you're headed, but maybe you have another way you could explain it. — Srap Tasmaner
(1) this is almost literally the goal with spending time on logic — Srap Tasmaner
but people who work on "logic" are actually mostly people who work on metalogic, which to me is, well, a different thing. — Srap Tasmaner
(2) The other way round is important too, maintaining exposure to other fields or at least subfields, other disciplines and pursuits entirely. — Srap Tasmaner
This is vague, but one way it cashes out would be in my claim that someone will improve their own thinking in their own particular field just by reading an excellent philosopher who is speaking to a different field, though they may not know exactly how the improvement came about. — Leontiskos
True. But surely Williamson's is proposing no such definition, is he? — Srap Tasmaner
Not "has to", no, but might. Not everyone writes about everything, or even thinks about everything. — Srap Tasmaner
But I should add that your insistence on pulling the object of the verb into your interpretation of the adverb sails right past the distinction I was trying to offer.
It's a somewhat tenuous distinction, but I think if used cautiously it could be useful. — Srap Tasmaner
So I'll give a simple definition of what they were trying to do, which I hope is not controversial: philosophy is thinking well about what it is important to think about. — Srap Tasmaner