As regards the objective, the object in the world that causes an aesthetic experience in a person is not in itself aesthetic. — RussellA

OK, I don't mean to be imposing a terminology on you. I'm trying to circle back to your example of knowing without question that the Derain is great art:

"Within the tradition of painting, Derain is a great artist and Banksy is a mediocre artist"

This is a value judgement that I know to be true. — RussellA

I'm not disputing it, or your experience. (I love Derain.) I'm just trying to understand what it commits you to. Let me try to ask my questions a different way:

If I have the reverse experience, is that because I am having a different "sting" experience than you? Or are we both experiencing Derain and Banksy the same way -- you say it's not a matter of judgment at all, and the "sting" is not in itself aesthetic -- but for some reason coming to different aesthetic judgments?

I think you must mean the latter.

So then I want to know, Is an aesthetic judgment objective in the same way that the sting is? Can one of us be right, the other wrong? Or does it simply cash out to "what I like" and "what you like"?

Likewise if we say there's more to the art-object than the product, but includes the process as well, you could tie that to the similar sentiment people have with respect to great works of art: At some point it's the particular history of the art-object that's part of the art-object. — Moliere

Right, that is one promising way to challenge Danto's conception: We have to include some kind of origin story as part of the work of art. This leads to a lot of questions, especially whether it's possible to properly appreciate a work without the origin story. And, of course, whether such a story can be perceived at all, in the same way that the artwork is. It's a rich, ongoing discussion, especially around conceptual art.

just as we think replicas of great works of art aren't the "real deal", and there's no property of the object that differentiates them (let's say it's a very good forgist who uses chemical techniques to replicate the exact places of the atoms in a painting) we still differentiate them on the basis of the art-objects process of production. — Moliere

This is the very example Danto uses. He calls them "indiscernibles." What he says about the masterpiece and the perfect forgery, however, doesn't involve the process (or story) of production. He says that we decide which counts as art. Our hand isn't forced. Some traditions place a very high value on the concept of an "original art work." Others do not. Again, Warhol's work forces us to look at our own traditions and institutions: Are these "originals"? Or Sol LeWitt -- is it a LeWitt original if the whole point is that he gives you instructions and you make it?

electronic music has its own technique. It could include trying to emulate the most "dirty and real" sounding recording out there, but it would not, for all that, be a recording of that. — Moliere

Yes, and that's how many of us working in digital music-making try to think of it. Who says we don't have technique?! :grin: It's a specialized technique called "writing, performing, recording, and editing using MIDI keyboards and digital samples." (Of course some of us can actually play an old-fashioned instrument pretty well too.) Yeah, but . . . . if what I'm recording is meant to sound like a superb bass guitar, and I achieve this using my dozen post-production devices, the fact remains that I'm representing myself as having the technique of Paul McCartney when I really don't. That's uncomfortable. It's also uncomfortable because it makes me lazy. Rather than practice the damn part till I get it right, I know I can fix it in post.

One consolation is that, in a certain sense, McCartney's technique is a "representation" too. Recorded music has been edited and improved via production techniques long before there was digital tech. A good player sounds good on record in part because it's a collaboration with a guy with my kind of technique -- knob-twirling, etc. But still . . . no amount of edits will make you Coltrane. It's almost embarrassing to use the same word, "technique", to describe what an excellent producer does, and what a genius musician does.

I see. Yes, we can certainly just reject his premises and standpoint. I wonder, though, whether you're able to accept them for the sake of argument, and help us see whether the argument goes through? If that doesn't interest you, no worries.

Suppose you are stung by a wasp and say that you feel pain, but I don't believe that you actually feel pain. Is it possible that you can prove to me that you do in fact feel pain? — RussellA

When stung by a wasp, I feel pain. I don't learn how to feel the pain.

When "stung" by a Derain, I feel an aesthetic, I don't learn how to feel the aesthetic. — RussellA

You can certainly make that analogy to the wasp sting, and claim that aesthetic appreciation can't be either taught or debated. But which of these positions would you say that commits you to?:

A). Aesthetic judgments are strictly subjective -- not only felt subjectively, like a sting, but also comprising personal preferences solely (unlike a sting).

B) Aesthetic judgments are partially subjective -- they are known subjectively or intuitively, like a sting, but what is known is objective, hence everyone will have more or less the same reaction (again like a sting).

I don't mean to limit it to these two, but just to highlight the difference in terms of why someone might not be stung by Derain in the way that you are. Is it because they're "missing" what is aesthetically valuable, or because they just don't share your taste?

Well, this is a whole other approach. I'd begin by questioning how "painting" constitutes a tradition, but since you wind up with a purely subjective basis for judgment anyway, it doesn't matter. If you "know it to be true," regardless of demonstration or argument, enough said.

All I’m saying is that if you invoke “better” about any thing or as any concept, you have invoked “best” and “worst” as well.

Does that help? — Fire Ologist

No, sorry. You seem to be simply restating your position.

I suggested an example -- the battle of the bands -- in which we don't appear to need a constitutive idea of "best" in order to choose a winner. (Remember, we're both agreeing to reject that other reading of "best" which simply defines it as "top choice." That's not constitutive. That would be like saying that piety is what the gods love. It provides no content.)

I said that I thought there were probably some cases in which having an articulated, constitutive version of an "ideal" or a "best" would be helpful in inquiry. I suggested you might want to construct such an example, so we could compare it to the band example.

Was the "13" example meant to be this? If so, you'll need to say more. How does an abstract number analogize to "the best"?

This all to say that things like marketing (propaganda), access, appearance, in-group considerations and many other things contribute to what seems like an objective standard of "This many people enjoy this artist". — AmadeusD

OK, I see. I hope not too many philosophers are fooled by the equation of "popular" and "aesthetically valuable." We have to seek objective standards, if there be any, elsewhere.

I'm not sure I understand the showing you describe, though: That we can no longer equate art with any physical substrate, any thing which art must be in order to qualify. The latter part makes sense to me, it's the "any physical substrate" that has me wondering what that means, or if it's not that special and just a turn of phrase. — Moliere

Right, more a turn of phrase (mine, not Danto's). It's meant to suggest the usual circumstances under which someone will point and say, "That can't be art because it isn't made of the right stuff, or made correctly." Danto argues that Duchamp and his ready-mades began the demonstration against this view, and Warhol put it permanently to bed. Conceptual art, too.

This conclusion deeply annoys people who equate art with a craft or skill. And it leaves a serious question -- what is techne, in the arts, if it can't be equated with art itself? I've written about this in various posts, relating to my practice as a musician. I think Danto is right and I'm upset that I can now make music without mastering skills that used to be de rigueur. My "art object" is not "made of the right stuff," according to the old view. It may be indiscernible nonetheless, compared to something that is made of the right stuff, and isn't that enough? But the difference in process, in the act of creating, is damn well discernible to the artist, and I don't like it.

Yes, within the aesthetic tradition that Banksy is a great artist, then the non-relative judgment may be made that Banksy is a great artist.

But within the aesthetic tradition that Banksy is not a great artist, then the non-relative judgment may be made that Banksy is not a great artist. — RussellA

This unfairly makes it sound as if the judgment is just redundant. Let's instead say, "Within the aesthetic tradition that Banksy is a great artist, then the non-relative judgment may be made that Jimmy Wannabe is not a great artist."

In any case, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the tradition simply names Banksy as an artist working in that tradition, with the "great artist" judgment as a second consideration? I don't think any tradition automatically lays out who must be the best.

Consider Derain's tradition. Do you want to say that to understand that tradition is to understand that Derain is a great artist? Does the tradition also generate rankings of artists both better and worse than Derain? I'm not convinced, though you're getting at something important, which is that a description of a tradition or a practice is incomplete without an explanation of how to make value judgments within that tradition. But that's different, I think.

when I make up my mind about X, I generally know it, and if I change my mind, I know that too,
— J
So you say... but as Wittgenstein points out, what if it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you? — Banno

I'll grant the remote possibility; I don't know it for certain. But this is on a par with Descartes's evil demon, isn't it? A chance so unlikely that it's not worth worrying about.

Was my mind actually made up? It was. And then it wasn't. So was it ever? The only way to decide this is if you go to the shop... — Banno

That's one way. Another method is to fine-tune what "making up one's mind" means. Having done that, I'll know what to say, no matter if I go to the shop or not. With this method, the arrow goes the other way: I don't find out from going to the shop whether I'd made up my mind. I find out from a certain construal of "make up my mind" what not going to the shop means, in that regard.

TBC . . . my eyes are closing.

So sans action, have you actually made up your mind? Or is there still the possibility of your deciding otherwise? — Banno

I'm surprised to see you use a phrase like "actually made up your mind"! :wink: What can I say? I don't know how actual it is, but when I make up my mind about X, I generally know it, and if I change my mind, I know that too, but it doesn't retroactively show that my mind wasn't in fact made up.

Unless you want to fine-tune what "making up one's mind" amounts to? I was using it to refer something pro-tem. I can make up my mind to go to the store tomorrow, then decide not to. Was my mind actually made up? Yes, on my usage. And then it wasn't. But I'm open to other terminology.

Practical usage often doesn’t require the best: When choosing between two apples, you don’t need to know the best apple in the world; just which one tastes better. — Banno

This was my "battle of the bands" example too. I think it even goes beyond a question of practical usage. For many types of comparison, "the best" makes no sense -- apples and bands, for instance.

But not for all. @Fire Ologist, I think you can make a case that knowing an ideal type or goal is important in some kinds of inquiry. Why don't you try to construct such a specific case? -- it'd be worth doing, I think.

how is it shown that one's mind is made up? That's seen in what one does, and so is public. — Banno

Yes, but as I've often averted to in past discussions, there's one exception to this -- namely, when the audience who is "shown" is myself. It simply isn't credible that I don't know whether I've made up my mind on some subject unless I do something in public about it. Do I need to construct some obvious examples, or would you allow this?

On Danto -- yes! That's a sort of "beginning" for my thinking on the categorical question of art. — Moliere

You probably know that Danto, in addition to promulgating his theories about the artworld, offered a frankly Hegelian picture of what art is. It involves a move which is philosophical -- a process by which art comes to understand itself, to eliminate all the things that art is not. He showed, I think convincingly, that we can no longer equate art with any physical substrate, any thing which art must be in order to qualify. Art is a way of seeing; we declare what is art, we don't discover it. The "we" here is the subject of much debate, naturally.

(This applies to all the arts, not just visual arts, so substitute "way of hearing" for music.)

Why these people, and not the butchers of the same time period? — Moliere

This is key, I think. Trying to compare the relative beauty of Bach and Vivaldi may not get us very far, since "beauty" is notoriously hard to pin down. But my local classical station has an unfortunate penchant for playing all the latest "early-music discoveries" and I promise you, I can explain why both Bach and Vivaldi were better composers! Within this tradition, to be sure.

I expect their conversations to be much more rich and complicated than my toy example of a standard. — Moliere

Indeed, the more you know about a given musical heritage, the better you can make aesthetic discriminations within that practice. And in doing so, you can name the criteria that count.

Is this an institutional argument like Danto? — AmadeusD

That's a good question. I don't know what @Moliere would reply, but I would call it more an appeal to expertise and scholarship. That doesn't always overlap with the "institution"!

I'm trying to understand how we could have a standard, rather than an amorphous, temporal agreement about what's good without naming it... So, the standard would just be the actual reactions, in aggregate, of listeners.

That said, I see all the problems with this when it comes to modern music and how it's sold. — AmadeusD

I'd be interested to hear more about this.

Within the tradition that agrees paintings such as Banksy's "Girl with Balloon" has aesthetic value as works of art, then Banksy's "Girl with Balloon" has aesthetic value as a work of art.

Within the tradition that agrees paintings such as Derain's "Drying the sales" have aesthetic value as works of art, then Derain's "Drying the Sails" has aesthetic value as a work of art. — RussellA

Sure, but my point was that, within each respective tradition, non-relative aesthetic judgments can be, and are, made. The reason you've heard of Banksy and not "Jimmy Wannabe" (I'm making him up, since no one's heard of him!) is because there is widespread agreement within this tradition that Banksy is better. If it was "relativism all the way down," the relativist art critic would compare Banksy and Jimmy and say, "Whatever. There's no aesthetic distinction to be made." But we know that's not what happens -- and the same for Derain's tradition, of course.

The question is, is there such a thing as aesthetic value over and above each tradition. — RussellA

Yes, that's what I was trying to get to. If someone denies this, would you say they are a relativist about aesthetic value tout court?

Also interesting: Suppose we agree that Derain and Banksy can share a tradition. After all, they're both European painters, very broadly. How could a tradition develop its aesthetic criteria in such a way that D and B can both be given a fair look? I'm not saying this can't be done; the "how" is what interests me.

I think I am saying for 1 that we show an understanding that there indeed IS an ideal. — Fire Ologist

Well, but tie that back to the Battle of the Bands. Aren't you saying that we can't compare the two bands meaningfully without a commitment to there being an ideal "best band"? I'm not worried about the ontological or Platonic aspects here; I just don't know how to make sense of it. Can you sketch a use of "best" here that captures your meaning? Doesn't it just collapse back to that other sense of "best" which simply references "top choice out of X choices"?

“Better than” doesn’t work, has no use, means nothing, without the baggage (or bonus) of “best”. — Fire Ologist

Yes, that's the question under discussion. Don't draw a line under it yet! We're just getting started. :smile:

The problem with relativism is that Derain's "Drying the Sails 1905 has an aesthetic value equal to that of Banksy's "Girl with Balloon", which is clearly nonsense. — RussellA

I don't get that. Are you saying that a relativist is committed to claiming that all aesthetic judgments are equally valid? I don't think that's how the argument usually goes. Rather, the idea would be that, within a tradition or a practice, we can unrelativistically distinguish better and worse examples, while remaining skeptical about any overarching, tradition-independent standards about "beauty," for instance.

So the interesting question would be, are Derain and Banksy creating within the same tradition? If not, does "clearly nonsense" mean that you do see a tradition-independent criterion for aesthetic value?

I am right to avoid agreeing we can compare or speak about objects without an understanding of ideals and superlatives. — Fire Ologist

Ah, and this can be given a good, sensible construal. Let me paraphrase and see if you agree:

We can't compare items in terms of qualities they may share unequally without 1) understanding that there indeed may be an ideal amount/kind/degree of said qualities, even if we don't know what it is; and 2) understanding how to use superlatives.

Human rational judgement, including, paradigmatically, empirical judgement, may have truth as its formal aim. This formal aim is being acknowledged in the explicit claim "I think P" whereby one locates one's act in the space of reasons (i.e. within the public game of giving and asking for reasons). — Pierre-Normand

Good, and likewise your subsequent formulation in terms of shared mental representations, rather than a strictly individual/psychological construal.

acts of receptivity (intuitions) and acts of spontaneity (concepts) always must be involved together in contentful acts of judgement. ("Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.") — Pierre-Normand

Yes. Though we can always raise the question, concerning Kant, of whether a thought without content is even possible. (An intuition without a concept is possible -- though, as the motto says, we can see nothing with it.) This doubt might have interesting implications for Rödl's version as well.

Rödl usefully stresses the fact that one expressing what it is that one believes regarding any proposition P isn't a separate act from the one involved in making up one's mind regarding the truth of P. — Pierre-Normand

Would you agree that Rödl also wants to call to our attention that "making up one's mind" is necessarily 1st personal? That there is no objective form of this?

the need for acts of representation to be internal to the sphere of the conceptual, while public discourse also is internal to that sphere and must hence also be answerable to what it is that "we" think. — Pierre-Normand

We could say: The act of representation brings 1st personal experience into the Space of Reasons. We could even continue the Kantian parallel and say that our subjective life is "heteronomous," while the Space of Reasons allows us to enter as "autonomous" individuals, under the law of reasons rather than causes, just as Kant claimed in the moral sphere. The place to keep pressing, here, is how to fill out "subjective life" -- to what extent must this refer to intersubjectivity? And how far would Rödl buy in? His "absolute idealism" could be taken as strictly, individually determined, could it not? He might not desire this reading, but what prevents it?

What makes the expression of those commitments warrant the use of the first-personal pronoun in "I think" just is the fact that we each are individually responsible for our own moves. — Pierre-Normand

Well, yeah, but Rödl is "continental" enough to be saying something in addition. I think he wants a phenomenological reading as well. He's reminding us that "I think" is something that happens. It's not merely a formal term. The Space of Reasons, the "moves in a game" -- none of this can occur without me, without us. And we don't just posit this stuff, we actually experience it. In order for me to say, "I think 'The cat is on the mat'", I am first saying something about an event that occurred at time T1. There was a previous time during which I did not have this thought -- or, if you prefer verbs, that I did not think that the cat was on the mat -- then came a time when I did. Now, as result, I can offer "I think 'The cat is on the mat'" in an entirely different way. It's no longer merely a report of a psychological event at time T1; I can now, if I like, assert it. Rödl is rightly bothered by the idea that there could be assertion without this background story.

Rather than "I Think..." as the only option in the transcendental argument, Davidson would reject a transcendental subject, having instead a triangulation between belief, world and meaning. — Banno

Yes, good. And I can imagine Rödl being frustrated with this, because of how thoroughly it leaves out the 1st person, whether construed as singular or plural.

Now we should pursue @Pierre-Normand's attempt to link this back to the "what is the aim of philosophy" question.

You don’t see ‘better’ until you see ‘best’. — Fire Ologist

I don't think this can be right, at least not across the board.

I assert that the Beatles were a better band than Gerry and the Pacemakers.

I can make my case, we can discuss, and no one will be in any serious doubt what we're talking about -- whether one was better than the other, musically.

Does this mean we know what "the best band" means? Hardly. It doesn't mean anything, as far as I can tell.

There's an equivocation here between "best" as a conceptual or metaphysical endpoint -- this is what I'm claiming we don't know, or even understand, in the musical example -- and "best" as "out of X number of choices, the top choice." Sure, we can call that "best" if we want to, but it's tangential to what we're interested in, here in this thread, I think. Here, we're surely asking into "best" as a kind of telos, optimum, or endpoint.

if I understand Rödl correctly, the specific act of spontaneity involved in making the explicit claim "I think P" always also is involved in the making of the claim "P". It is the Kantian "...I think [that] must be able to accompany all my representations..." — Pierre-Normand

Yes, there it is. That is what I take him to mean, and he himself ties it back to that Kantian motto. Highly controversial, but I think he's onto something important. It shakes up the whole framework about assertions.

I'll say more about this soon . . . . getting late in my world.

*

A) I think: "I judge that the cat is on the mat."
B) I think: "The cat is on the mat."
— J

As he says, A is about my judgment, something I do or think, while B is about the cat.
— J
B is not about the cat - it is plainly about a thought. It will be true not if and only if the cat is on the mat, but if and only if I think the cat is on the mat. — Banno

You're right, sloppy phrasing on my part. Both A and B are about a thought, since each begins identically: "I think . . " What I should have gone on to say -- and this is what Rodl means -- is that what is being thought, in A, is something about a judgment, whereas what is being thought, in B, is something about a cat. You don't actually even need B to get where Rodl is going: "My thought of judging that things are so is a different act of the mind from my judging that they are so." This is apparent merely from the way A is formulated.

Excellent. Let me say this in slightly different words, to see if I've understood.

You're positing that science goes about its business by splitting off its own rational warrants, so as to avoid making science itself a totalizing critique of those warrants. In other words, a thoroughgoing scientism would seem to leave no room for parts 2 and 3 of your description of how science works. It would have to admit that "observing" and "theorizing" are subject to laws that are ultimately physical, just like anything else. So we're left with the familiar problem of how to give reason the last word -- how to exempt the truths we're claiming to discover from the obvious point that we would presumably be saying them anyway, true or not, if scientistic law-like explanations prevailed.

And I think you're right that quantum weirdness doesn't change this picture -- at least not yet.

You write:

The practice of science doesn't make a universal claim about not being subject to the laws it studies. — Srap Tasmaner

The example you give is the piece of paper on which the equations are written, but as you say, that's theoretically unimportant. I'd rather take your claim to be stronger: Scientists have to either ignore the question of how their own pronouncements may or may not be the result of law-like processes, or simply declare what you have declared: "We don't really know, but we make that assumption and it doesn't matter for our practice."

Now what about philosophy?

Is philosophy in danger of also being a totalizing critique of itself? Is there such a thing as "philosophism," which would cast into doubt the very conclusions that philosophy tries to deliver, on the grounds that there are "philosophical explanations" that explain them away?

By putting it this way, I think we can see what's wrong with that picture. A "philosophical explanation" can't call into question the entire practice of philosophical explanation in the same way that a "scientific explanation" can call into question the practice of scientific explanation, or at least make us scratch our heads and wonder how to justify the "breaking into parts." We don't have to break anything into parts when we apply philosophy to other philosophy. Philosophy's framing is unique among the inquiries.

So if that's right, I guess that puts me in camp 1.

Why might someone argue for camp 2? As you say, either fork you take there is problematic. But one might say: "Well, that's just how it is. We don't know whether 'applying norms' to our theories about norms is necessarily viciously circular. Some of us think so, some don't. Nor do we know whether the possibility of 'different norms' is enough to make the whole camp-2 approach wrong, and move us over to the camp that believes we need laws, not norms. This unresolved question requires . . . more philosophy."

Writing that, I've almost persuaded myself! At any rate, I'm not so clearly in camp 1.

I think Williamson wishes to describe something like an experimental approach to philosophy, and that's what his whole competition between theories business is meant to be. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I picture him invoking a kind of ideal community of practitioners, converging Peircean-ly (sorry, that's an adverb) on the truth, much as we would hope exists in a scientific discipline. I'm not sure how close this is to actual scientific practice. How close do you think it is, or could be, to philosophical practice? I think you've been saying, Not very.

Well, yes, but it could still be that consciousness is related to something undreamt of in our philosophy. — frank

True. My comment reveals which ticket I hold in the Consciousness Lottery: I think it'll turn out to be biological. But we don't have a clue at the moment.

I realize my homemade origin story may make eyes glaze over, but it's an interesting possibility to me. — frank

Yes, it is. My eyes got wider, not glazed! And we need to acknowledge that any story we wind up telling about the origin of propositions, or reasons, or rationality itself -- anything that we say occupies the Space of Reasons -- must also have a biological/evolutionary/cultural story to go along with it. The fact that we need both stories is itself the gateway to one of the biggest philosophical problems, right?: How to reconcile physical and rational accounts, which seem to begin from incompatible premises.

I lean toward ontological anti-realism, in other words, I don't think ontological questions are answerable, so the question of the what X is ultimately made of, is one I'm able to drop. — frank

When it's put in terms of "what X is ultimately made of," I almost always agree. If the question is more about "What are we committing ourselves to when we talk about 'existence'?" then I think Quine's motto about bound variables will do fine.

It's unclear to me where talk of propositions fits in here -- what kind of ontology-talk it needs. I was only pointing out that I found "product of analysis" to be no more anti-metaphysical, or common-sensical, or whatever, than "product of a 1st-person judgment". In both cases, we're trying to use a neutral place-holder, "product," to stand in for we know not what. And that's fine, as long as the two cases have parity.

If I'm understanding this, it's similar to what Russell would have said: a true proposition is a state of affairs. — frank

As I understand Rodl, he's setting it out like this:

A) I think: "I judge that the cat is on the mat."
B) I think: "The cat is on the mat."

As he says, A is about my judgment, something I do or think, while B is about the cat. I would say that both A and B are true propositions about states of affairs, or at least truth-apt. Do you think Russell would agree?

Do you think Soames would say that a proposition is a product of 1st-person judgment?
— J

I don't think so, but that sounds a little like an ontological question. — frank

I agree, but no more so than "a proposition is a product of analysis"! At the level of "What is a proposition?" how would we avoid ontology?

Remember when I presented Scott Soames' explanation of propositions, he started with the whole scene of a person pointing and speaking. From there, he leads through an analysis. I think Hegel would approve. Soames' starting point is life in motion. — frank

Good response, thanks. I'd like to find a perspective on this that Soames, Hegel, and Rodl could all accept. Do you think Soames would say that a proposition is a product of 1st-person judgment?

Sadly, at that price, it will be Christmas before I get my hands on it. — Ludwig V

Same boat here with academic presses, but do you have interlibrary loan? My public library got me the Rodl book and let me keep it for months. The only drawback is that, being a respectful reader, I had to make my notes separately from the text.

[Philosophy] may be unique in not leaving the frame of its own discipline. Psychology, perhaps is also self-reflexive, in a way. — Ludwig V

Now that's a can of eels! Do you think the psychologist can ask questions about psychology that are, at the same time, bracketed by psychological explanations of how questions come to be asked? What does that say about the psych's conception of psychology's explanatory powers?

If there was a consensus against Achilles, then the question will be who misunderstood the rules - Achilles or the rest of us. — Ludwig V

Yes, that's just the sort of further dialectic I was picturing. It doesn't have to follow that "consensus wins" will always be the final decision -- even when that decision is itself made by consensus.

I appreciate all your thoughtful replies.

I don't think you have to talk about propositions. It's not a bad idea to know what it is, though. — frank

In Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, Rodl says:

"If only we understood the letter p, the whole world would open up to us."

My comment on this from an earlier thread was:

"He’s being a little sarcastic, in my reading, but his meaning is clear: If we continue to allow p to float somewhere in the [Popperian] World 3 of abstracta, without acknowledging its dependence on [the 1st-person act of thinking], we are going to get a lot of things wrong."

Rodl is asking something that's right in front of our nose, so plain that we rarely question it: How do we describe or explain the being, the presence in the world, of a proposition? Where does it come from? How have we allowed it to become so central to this way of doing philosophy?

He also writes:

"My thought of judging that things are so is a different act of the mind from my judging that they are so. The former is about my judgment, a psychic act, a mental state; the latter, in the usual case, is not; it is about something that does not involve my judgment, my mind, my psyche. It is about a mind-independent reality."

This clarification is well worth keeping in mind, I think.

I didn't mean to suggest that philosophy should be counted alongside painting and music and literature. I would say that philosophy is centrally interested in truth, but, arguably, in some ways, so is painting and literature. Many people want to classify it with science, but that misrepresents it, IMO. — Ludwig V

A philosopher of art whom I respect, Susanne Langer, has pointed out that we can often learn more about an art by noticing what it does not have in common with other arts, rather than trying to find similarities and possible shared properties.

So with philosophy, perhaps. We can discover many commonalities between phil and literature, phil and science, phil and logic, phil and rhetoric, ad infinitum. But what we should be noticing is what makes philosophy different, unique.

And what is that? The candidate answer I like best is that philosophy inevitably questions itself, without leaving the frame of its own discipline.

“Understanding” in this context often refers to a kind of clarity—seeing how language functions, how confusion arises, and how philosophical problems dissolve when we attend closely to our forms of life and linguistic practices. It’s not about accumulating true propositions (knowledge in the epistemological sense), but about achieving perspicuous representation.
— @Banno
That's definitely my page. I do worry, though, about the unselfconscious use of "clarity" to identify some sort of objective property (as in "perspicuous representation") and a psychological state. What is clear to one person is not necessarily clear to another. — Ludwig V

Yes, this is the type of "understanding" we want to highlight, over against knowledge. And to me, it's a feature, not a bug, that "perspicuous representation" requires some sort of consensus. When we discover that Phil X finds something brilliantly illuminating, while Phil Y finds it clear as mud, we are being invited into a critical moment in philosophical dialectic. What separates them? What discussion is needed to bring them together? Is it a framing problem? Just a misunderstanding? A confusion about evidence? A logical flaw? etc. etc.

The reason for reading the canon is to improve on it. But in order to "improve" on it, one does not need already to have an idea of the perfect or ultimate item. — Banno

Yes. In the arts, "improve" might better be thought of as "develop" or "enrich" or, of course, "react wildly against"! And then we have the question of self-expression. There's a curious sense in which an artist does reach for a perfect or ultimate item, but that would be their very self, as expressed in the art. And no one "has that idea" at the start, if ever.

I see that Peter Singer is maybe even the founding figure in the animal rights movement. — hypericin

He certainly is, and a hero to all of us working in that area.

Interestingly, his case for animal rights goes through even if you disagree with the utilitarian framework, as I do. The other one to read as a founding figure is Tom Regan, "The Case for Animal Rights." Regan is also a philosopher, originally specializing in G. E. Moore's ethics, which I prefer. And the illustrious Martha Nussbaum has now joined the chorus.

Davidson is compatible with either realism or anti-realism. — frank

I agree, mostly. I'm rereading "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" right now, on a different issue also prompted by @Banno.

I'm not sure there's a philosophy which aims at understanding as opposed to knowledge. But then I'd accept ↪J 's example if it's important down the line. — Moliere

No, it needn't be an opposition, as my example suggested. In a too-simple sense, we could think of it as hierarchical: Knowledge can lead to understanding. And understanding is something philosophy can provide, that no other inquiry can, on this view.

Interested in the term of art distinction here between understand and know.

Do you mean “important questions in philosophy are driven by a desire to understand what others are saying, not a desire to know the things in the world they are talking about.” — Fire Ologist

Great question. "Understanding" can encompass both, I think. As above to Moliere, no opposition is implied. What's especially interesting is that, for someone like Habermas, in order to understand a subject, or a problem, you do have to reach an understanding with others about it. For him, philosophical is dialogical. You can't stand up from your armchair and declare to others that you have discovered the arguments that will solve some particular problem, or even result in understanding it, if the others haven't participated in formulating the questions which the arguments and understanding address. "Framing" vs. what's inside the frame.

I also like your question because it reminds us not to let what you rightly call a "term of art distinction" become too mesmerizing. These are just words, and vague ones at that. There seems to me to be an interesting difference between, say, knowing how grammar works, and understanding how language works. A child, or a computer, can be taught the rules of grammar. Understanding language -- although arguably a kind of knowledge, if you like -- is different. So, even if we want to think of them both as types of knowledge, calling one "understanding" helps us focus on this interesting difference. That's about as far as I'd go in defending some technical use of the terms. Within hermeneutics, others go much farther, and there are cases where interpretative understanding clearly can't be the same as knowledge.

it is as important to know as it is to understand because you can’t have one without the other, (or you can’t have the objects of one without the objects of the other). — Fire Ologist

Let's take the interpretation of a text. In a sense, yes, we can say that there is an "object" that exists pre-interpretation, or pre-understanding. And yes, without being able to interact in some way with that object, and not some different object, we can't talk about what we want to understand. But to try to bring in "knowledge" at the pre-interpretive level starts to warp the whole description. If there's indeed an "object of knowledge" here, as opposed to a vehicle of meaning, can it be pointed to in the same way that we point to, say, the book in which it is inscribed? (I don't mean point literally, of course). To me, what we're trying to describe is a structure in which knowledge and understanding don't play equal roles, however much both may be necessary.

I think you might be more at home in an anti-realist place. — frank

Heaven forbid! :grin: But thanks for the thought. No, my doubts aren't a good fit for anti-realism. And I don't have any stake in convincing you, or anyone else, that the "standard analysis" of truth-makers, truth-bearers, propositions, etc. can perhaps be challenged while still keeping a robust sense of non-language-game truth. I may not be advocating well for my own doubts, and I'm very far from having a worked-out theory of any of this. If you do have a look at either the Kimhi or the Rodl books, you might get a better sense. Though you have me wondering now . . . Rodl styles himself as an "absolute idealist" in the Hegelian tradition. I wonder if he would agree that that makes him an anti-realist. I don't think so -- the opposition here is not the old one between idealism and realism -- but it's an interesting question.

There is a more definite take on all this available, but I can't name anyone who holds this position. (@J,. . . anyone come to mind?)

The claim would be that philosophy does not aim at knowledge, as science does, but at understanding. — Srap Tasmaner

Hermeneutics. Dilthey, Gadamer. They might not say that all philosophy is interpretation, but I think they would say that most of the important questions in philosophy are driven by a desire to understand, not a desire to know. Habermas is somewhat in that tradition too.

the verb is "understand" not "know". — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, and arguably any philosopher who focuses on structure -- "hanging together" -- is going to use this verb. It's not just what's going on, but why. And this is a big issue within hermeneutics, whether the interpretation controls the "what." Do we have something to interpret if the knowledge claims are in question?

:up: If you note the part I bolded, that's what we call a proposition
— frank
Um - forgive me. But that's what I call a sentence; I would say that when it is used - to tell someone where the cat is, for example, - it becomes a statement in that context. However, I've learnt the philosophical dialect and so I know what you mean, in one sense. However, the SEP article seems to want to say that a proposition is what is in common between a number of sentences or statements. That's what I don't get. — Ludwig V

Yes. It's so hard to detach from our reliance on "proposition." @frank calls the bolded bit a proposition; you call it a sentence; I say -- and I mean it -- that I don't know what to call it because I don't know how to analyze the context in which I'm seeing it, here in a post on TPF. And I say further that the problem is much bigger than just assigning the right terms. We have a problem about subjectivity and objectivity, about how language is in the world.

That's exactly the standard analysis. — frank

And exactly the problem. The standard analysis insists that we read "the cat is on the mat" in this context in the way you did: a sentence that somebody uttered -- Ludwig? -- that asserts a proposition. But what's the warrant for that? Is that really what Ludwig did? You say he "expressed" a proposition by "uttering" a sentence? Where did that happen? How did I miss it? Please don't mind that I'm teasing a little, because I have a serious point to make: All this is indeed the standard analysis, but how is it supposed to be clearly correct?

"The cat is on the mat."

Did I just utter that? Seems to me that I wrote it in a context so bizarre that it calls the whole thing into question. Besides, perhaps I only mentioned it.

So if I merely assert the sentence, without you and I stipulating what an assertion is going to mean, are you able to come to a conclusion about whether I think it's true, or only quite likely to be true?
— J
I'm not sure what "without you and I stipulating what an assertion is going to mean" is doing here. — Banno

I mean that we have to agree on what an assertion is, what counts as an assertion, for Philosophy Room purposes. In real life, we don't, and as a consequence people conceive of themselves to be asserting a variety of things, at various levels of connection to truth, and they're not wrong to do so, because this kind of "wrongness" can only happen in the Philosophy Room.

Let's say I call an assertion "a statement I make about some state of affairs that I think is quite likely to be true." And let's say you call an assertion "a statement I make about some state of affairs that I know to be true." If we never compared our working definition of "assertion," we would sooner or later misunderstand each other, leading to words like "misfire" or "insincere."

I don't mind there being a question about whether this matters much, but is it at least clear? :smile:

Defeasibility, speech acts and illocutionary force are ideas that are quite well established in philosophy. But you may not [know them?]. So if you have come across them, please forgive me if I seem to be teaching my grandmother to suck eggs. — Ludwig V

Not at all, better than assuming I already understand! I am fairly familiar with those ideas but am trying to suggest that, though established, they may not take us as far as we want to go. @Banno quite reasonably keeps asking what is in doubt here. If I had to put it into a sentence, it would be: We are so used to working with the nailed-down logical uses of natural language that we forget that those uses are agreements, often hard won. I think "assert" and "judge" are cases in point, but clearly I need to make a stronger argument for why they seem problematic to me. So I'll work on that.

If you assert something that you think is false, or judge to be false, your assertion misfires - it is insincere. — Banno

But this assumes what I'm calling into question. Why are the only alternatives "true" or "false"? I'm pointing out that ordinary speech doesn't work this way. I don't have to be insincere to assert something that I think is merely quite likely to be true, or quite unlikely to be false -- we do that all the time.

What I'm pressing here is the idea that "to assert", limited to true and false things, is technical, it's talk in the Philosophy Room. We don't have a warrant from ordinary language to say that anyone who asserts something they believe may conceivably be false -- though it's highly likely it isn't -- is either misfiring or insincere. "May be false" covers a huge amount of territory. Why must we insist that the only sincere use of "to assert" is in a case when we believe there is no possibility whatsoever that the sentence is false? Or if that's too strong, where should we cut it off? "Very very very likely"? "Analytically true"? It all goes back to your point about "counts as" -- we have to agree on the usage.