I actually agree with you. It's pretty strained to say that I could be Obama. It probably just means I'm giving advice, "if I were you..." :grin: — frank

Yes, either "Here's what you should do . . ." or "Here's what I would do if I found myself in your situation . . ." Interesting that the first is about "you", the second about "me".

This might be a good moment to go back to one of your original questions:

When does speech about a proper name become nonsense because a contradiction has arisen between an assertion and something essential about the object of the assertion? How did Kripke handle this question? — frank

"Elizabeth Windsor was born of different parents" -- would that be an example?

I'd like to hear your thoughts. And are there some target passages from N&N you think we should look at?

So I'd be open to saying even the expected results differ, that we want explanations from the natural sciences but interpretations from the human sciences. That may be. Where I've been hoping to link them is in the process enacted to produce whatever kind of knowledge they produce, all that business about careful procedures and communal self-correction. — Srap Tasmaner

I think you're absolutely right to do this. A good interpretation requires all the same care as a good explanation. Arguably the community that produces the "communal self-correction" may not be as universal for a given human science, certainly not for an art. But we still want "something like the truth," just as we do from science. The big difference, for me, lies in the explanandum. The science of acoustics gives causal accounts of sounds. The human science of musicology gives interpretations of musical events -- which are already being understood as more than sounds.

So, part of me does want to say that there can never be enough data to explain, much less predict, human action, and certainly not unlikely human action like creativity. The "human sciences" would then be marked either by arrogance or folly, as you like — Srap Tasmaner

But does that consign the human sciences to arrogance or folly? Hermeneutics suggests that the job of the human sciences is not to explain but to interpret and understand.

I think you're right that we could never have enough data to explain human actions, even assuming those actions were deterministic enough to be explained. But more often than not, that isn't the right kind of explanation anyway. What we want to know isn't whether Lisa ate the peanut butter sandwich, but why Lisa chose to play what she played. And now we need an interpretation in order for the question to make sense -- in order for it not to be about collisions of atoms and neurons. "What she played" has to be given meaning, not just physical description.

God has all the data, so how does he understand the world and the people in it? — Srap Tasmaner

Right, and I'm positing that even God understands the world through interpretation, not (only) causality.

The data question I was raising about digital recording is a different one, of course. We can connect it to your question about knowing-that and knowing-how, though. My collection of digitized data that I use to produce a piece of music is a great big "knowing-that." It really is "all the data," at least arguably. Where does the knowing-how enter? From me -- but the thing I know how to do is to record the music, not perform it. There's still a techne, but it has shifted a great deal. Hence my worry that the old-fashioned performance techne gets atrophied.

the difficulty of notating jazz correctly — Srap Tasmaner

Right, it's always a compromise. So is any notation, but jazz especially.

those tiny variations that distinguish a good performance from a great one. — Srap Tasmaner

I'd want to say that those tiny moments of musicality shouldn't be notated, even if they could be. This is the place where the musician can express something beyond the control of the composer.
Something has to be left un-notated for true musicality to emerge.

Now, should we say there is no hope of a scientific approach to great musicianship? I actually don't think so. I think the point is that vastly more data is needed than you might at first think, certainly more than you would think if you looked even at a complex score, which is great simplification of what a musician actually does.

Any of that make sense to you? — Srap Tasmaner

Boy does it ever. I do a lot of composing and recording, and this touches on a really tense issue right now, not just for me but for all musicians who avail themselves of digital technology. It would need a separate, not-very-philosophical thread to go into it in detail, but basically: What happens when software approaches the same abilities that humans have, in terms of performance and expressive nuance? With "vastly more data," can we get ProTools (industry-standard recording program) + various samples of instruments + intensive post-production editing tools = "great musicianship"? We are getting very close to this, not via better scores and notation -- that's 20th century, man! -- but via this whole new digital approach to coding and re-playing information.

As a 20th century guy, I find this worrisome and downright offensive. But I can't deny what my ears are telling me. Even more disturbing as a practical matter, if I've recorded a bass part that is "too hard" for me to play well, even with a lot of practice, do I give up and bring in a better player? Nope. I play it the best I can and then fix it, with post-editing. And by "fix it" I don't just mean correct wrong notes or timing -- that's the least of it. I can add "musicianly" nuances and phrasings, subtly adjust pitch and rhythm and groove, and generally massage the thing till it really sounds human-made, including little "mistakes". Human-made by a great musician? That goal is getting closer and closer. I'm deeply uncomfortable about what this is doing to my musicianship, and everyone else's who does this, but technology dictates artistic practice, and we're not going back from this, it's too valuable. (and fun)

PS -- The "vastly more data" as of right now would still include much better sound samples for many important instruments (this is data about timbre, one of the least well-notated aspects of traditional musical practice) -- and of course vocals are in another category altogether. But can that be far off?

he handed it back to her and said, "It's too hard." — Srap Tasmaner

Just an aside: That's a great story, which I'd never heard before. I wish I could have been there; I would have asked him, "Do you mean too hard to play, or too hard to sight-read?" They're both forms of knowing-how.

What do you think? — frank

The default assumption is that what goes for one, goes for all, if the property in question is putatively essential (as "identity" would be). If I am a mind, why would any other person be anything else? If tiger A is a mammal, why would tiger B be a bird? etc. I'm calling this an assumption, because there's nothing that immediately shows it must be true, but it would take some powerful reasons to unseat it, I think. Remember, we're talking about our world, not just a possible, "idiolecty" world. In our world, we don't declare one person to be a mind, another a body, except maybe in some unusual cases of brain death or similar perplexities. At any rate, we don't do it when there is no other difference between the two.

Ah, but perhaps we should, if the key difference is between "I" and everyone else. That would be the solipsistic possibility I referred to earlier. Maybe there aren't any other minds! But I don't think that's in the spirit of what you're examining.

What does Adorno say about this? And can you say more about how we might understand persons, if they can be categorized as either minds or bodies, depending?

Because it only defers the real question, "Yes, of course, but why do you want to say that?"
— J

Why do you say that's the real question? When Kripke says Nixon could have lost the election, would you say we need to know why he would say that? — frank

Yes, I think so, if we're wondering whether to speak the same idiolect. And K can give the answer, "Because I want to bring out the character of rigid designators, and show what 'N could have lost the election' means." Compare to your being asked, "Why opt for 'frank' as a mind and 'Obama' as a body?" If you reply, "Because that lets me talk about the possibility that I could have been Obama," we then have to decide if "that lets me talk about X" is a good reason. I'm suggesting that it's a genuine, if trivial, reason, but defers the interesting question of why you'd want to talk that way. Whereas the Nixon example is not about "this lets me talk about N losing the election," but about, more directly, "this lets me explain rigid designators." But perhaps there is a comparable reason one could give for your example -- I admit I haven't thought this through in depth.

Were you additionally suggesting it as a real possibility?
— J

What do you mean by "real" possibility? — frank

I should be fined for using "real", against my own strictures. :smile: Let me rephrase: Were you suggesting the "frank=mind / Obama=body" structure as something that might reflect how things stand in our world? I was assuming you were not, but only using the example to probe Kripke.

It wasn't ad hoc. It's what I was thinking about from the beginning of our discussion. — frank

Sorry, didn't mean to say that you were bringing it up in an ad-hoc way here. Rather, if someone were to ask you, "Why opt for the bizarre reference-fixing schema with 'frank' as a mind and 'Obama' as a body?" and you were to reply, "Oh, I did that so I can say that it's possible for me to have been Obama," that would be ad hoc, or makeshift, or at any rate not the sort of answer the questioner was presumably looking for. Because it only defers the real question, "Yes, of course, but why do you want to say that?"

It's just straight Descartes. That we can't say the mind is necessarily identical to the body was mentioned by Kripke in N&N. — frank

The absurdity I was referring to isn't Cartesian dualism -- nothing absurd about that, though I don't subscribe.

No, I was pointing to the idea that identity could in one person's case be mental and in another physical -- or maybe "arbitrary" is a better word than "absurd." I took you to be raising that in order to see if it was consistent with Kripke's views on reference -- which I think it is, for the "mini-community" that uses that idiolect. Were you additionally suggesting it as a real possibility? Not a Cartesian one, at any rate!

:lol:

I don't think that's quite what he meant, but it's funny anyway!

Heh. I like that movie a lot too. Trying to remember . . . doesn't the main character co-inhabit JM's body along with JM? (Though neither can "speak" to the other.) MC doesn't gain control of what JM does; he's like an epiphenomenal consciousness, along for the ride and watching the world through JM's senses. So it isn't an exact parallel to the situation you're imagining, which would require JM's mind to vanish and MC to take over for him. Or I could be misremembering.

Anyway . . . does your situation play by Kripkean rules? Let me paraphrase what I think you're saying: You, frank, can fix references as you see fit, and as long as someone -- J, let's say -- accepts what you're doing, the two of us know what we're talking about. And in this case, you have the breathtaking audacity to fix the reference for "frank" one way and the reference for "Obama" another! "frank" will refer to a mind, "Obama" to a body. Using that interpretation (borrowing from @Banno here), either one of us can indeed say "frank could have been Obama," because we know what we've agreed that would mean, and there's no contradiction involved.

So far, so good. I think Kripke would be on board too, in the very limited sense that you and I, as a mini-community, can agree to speak as we see fit. But the picture thus described faces challenges.

The first is that the "argument" can only work for you and me. It can't be used to persuade anyone who won't use our idiolect. Which leads to the second: Naturally we'll be asked why the references of "frank" and "Obama" should be fixed in such radically different ways. This would amount to asking, "Why should I join you two in this particular reference-fixing?"

I see a non-serious and a serious answer to this. The non-serious answer is, "Well, it's an ad hoc way of allowing us to speak about the possibility that frank could have been Obama." A reason, admittedly, but not a very good one, since nothing of philosophical interest follows from such ad-hocness.

The serious answer is, "We all know how to use phrases like 'if I were you' and 'if I'd been Obama'. Our idiolect explains, in simple terms, what those phrases mean, and why they're so handy. When we use them, we're automatically adopting an interpretation of each term that allows one to 'be in' the other. Then, when no longer needed, we drop that interpretation and go back to our usual usage. All this is so common as to be literally unremarkable. You could call it a type of equivocation, but it's useful, not confusing." (This isn't my own preferred analysis of how 'if I were you' works, BTW.)

So, two questions: First, is this allowed? And second, At what point do we need to step in and protest that such reference-fixing is ludicrously out of step with how the world is?

I think it is allowed. Again, two people can agree to talk any way they want, as long as they don't expect agreement from others. But now your OP question arises:

how far a rigid designator can be stripped of properties and still be valuable. — frank

This example isn't so much a matter of being stripped of properties as it is of being saddled with absurd ones. In our mini-community, we wish to maintain that some subset of persons (which includes frank) are minds, and another subset (which includes Obama) are bodies. I don't know how we'd get that off the ground, as we "look out at the world," to use your phrase. Just for starters, how do you tell the difference? Well, radical solipsism, maybe.

So let me stop, before I confuse myself, and say that the difficult question lies right here: What does Kripke's view about reference commit us to, concerning metaphysics? Because "the world" is metaphysics. You can't jump from how we use language and logic to how such use relates to the world without bringing along your basket of metaphysical assumptions -- about physics, about causality, about realism, about how we know stuff about the world, and much more. When we ask whether our "frank/Obama" idiolect could represent a picture of our world, not just a possible world, we're asking a metaphysical question, IMO.

This isn't about necessity in general. It's that when I pick an object, like the pillow with the red button, I'm only looking at possible worlds where that object exists. There are possible worlds where the pillow doesn't have a red button, but I don't care about those. For the purposes of my communication, the red button is necessary because it's in all the possible worlds I'm paying attention to. I magically made the red button necessary by fiat. — frank

Yes. In fact, maybe we should say, not that the object now has the properties, but rather that those properties (which were always there) are now made necessary. That way we can work our stipulative magic without the illusion of adding or subtracting properties to what we're talking about.

He's saying that when I rigidly designate an object, like the pillow with the red button, you're supposed to pick up on what I mean by it. It's all about me and my intentions as a speaker. — frank

I think this is a good explanation, thanks. It broadens "idiolect" to include not merely the language that happens to be spoken, but the particular idio-syncratic intentions of the speaker.

The subjectivity/circularity issue is perhaps even clearer in what Kripke goes on to say here:

If one was determining the referent of a name like 'Glunk' to himself and made the following decision, 'I shall use the term "Glunk" to refer to the man that I call "Glunk"', this would get one nowhere. One had better have some independent determination of the referent of 'Glunk'. — 73

Pretty clearly, you can't cite the fact that you refer to something as X as the criterion or determination for why you do so!

Would you agree that #6 of the theses explains how an object obtains necessary properties? It's a matter of the speaker's intentions. That's at least one way.. — frank

Yes, one way, and on one understanding of necessity (a priori). And notice how we're forced to phrase it: the object obtains the properties. Is this magic? :smile: Can this be what Kripke literally means?

BTW, do you take "in the idiolect of the speaker" to be Kripke just being careful (like "in language L"), or is he making some additional point?

I hope I've made clear how clean the distinction is between syntax and semantics in formal systems. — Banno

You have indeed. And it makes it clear that my question arises around what you call a possible third level "where we seek to understand what we are doing in a natural language by applying these formal systems." Using the Eiffel Tower example, we agree that the fixing of the reference "Eiffel Tower" is a semantic step. We have a rough-and-ready language system that shows us how to pick out objects and name them. On the analogy with formal systems, what part of that rough-and-ready system do we call syntactic? It precedes any talk of naming or interpretation, doesn't it? So I still want a way to characterize the difference between saying "The Eiffel Tower is tall" and "That object [pointing] is called 'the Eiffel Tower'". Yes, the first is a property and the second is not, but where do these statements fall on the syntactic/semantic spectrum?

OK. So this harks back to the idea that there might be something constitutive of the experience itself which allows us to ID it as a purported memory. The indexical is a feature, a marker, if I can put it that way. Let me walk through this.

what marks a memory as such . . . is a constitutive part of its content — Pierre-Normand

That is, the "past" indexical ("yesterday", etc.) presents with any purported memory. It is not only constitutive, but can be recognized to be so.

since your ability to locate the thing remembered in time (even just roughly, as something past) . . . — Pierre-Normand

Again, this refers to the indexical -- that is what gives me the ability.

. . is essential for identifying what it is that you are thinking about (i.e. for securing its reference). — Pierre-Normand

The interesting move here is making "securing its reference" a synonym for "identifying what it is that you are thinking about." Consider two interpretations of "what it is": 1. my childhood bedroom; 2. a memory of my childhood bedroom. #2 requires the past indexical. But does #1? Under that description, perhaps so, but if I were in my childhood and merely looking at the bedroom, it gets a different indexical. Once again we're faced with a possible representation that is abstracted from any feature that marks it as a purported memory. The bedroom is atemporal -- it could even, granted precognition, be a vision of the future.

So . . . on this construal, the past indexical is essential for identifying "what it is that you are thinking about" if we interpret that as #2. I think you're saying that we can't fix the reference at all -- we can't represent "childhood bedroom" -- without the indexical. That would make the indexical essential for #1 as well.

I'm still mulling this over, but before I go further I should ask: Have I more or less understood you?

the question of whether Kripke was doing analysis or building a metaphysical picture — frank

Yes, the quoted passage shows him doing the former. He's trying to lay out the requirements for a consistent picture, not choosing among pictures -- that would be one way of putting it.

Maybe as we look more deeply into Kripke, we'll see whether this is always his strategy.

Do you want to examine the lectern example in this thread? Or a different one? — frank

Not surprisingly for a thread called "What is real?" this one has taken a lot of detours. How about a new thread?

This makes the issue much more precise, thanks. I agree that my question may be, in part, a question about syntax and semantics, about what can be said pre- and post-interpretation.

My question was:

". . . whether "how a reference is fixed for X" is part of the list of X's potential properties; or whether we're mixing discourses by thinking of it that way." - J

I'll switch back to "a" rather than "X", to fit your usage.

So reference-fixing is giving an interpretation, yes? We're agreeing what "a" will stand for. Now a will also have a number of properties. Let's say a is the Eiffel Tower. We can list some of them: tall, made of metal, speaks French :wink: etc. And you're pointing out that, if I additionally ask about how "a" comes to stand for the Eiffel Tower, we can't answer that in terms of the interpretation of "a" -- that is, the various properties that can now be predicated of a based upon our interpretation. We have to move to a different level and talk about how or why "a" has the reference it has, which is not a feature or property of a, any more than my name is a property of me.

If I've got this right, then my only question is: Is "syntax" the right name for this second level? Doesn't all the syntax get specified before any a or b or c can be referred to? A question about reference-fixing doesn't seem syntactical so much as stipulative. As you say:

Notice the difference between saying that a is f, f(a), which happens within the interpretation, and saying that "a" stand for a, which is giving (stipulating) the interpretation? — Banno

I guess my question is why giving the interpretation qualifies as syntactic. I would have said that both kinds of statements are semantic, it's just that one happens within the interpretation and the other does not. Does that make it syntactic by default? So that the best way to think about "'a' stand for a" is as a syntactical premise?

I take him to be assessing the way a person normally comes up in conversation. He's analyzing the way we think and speak, not revealing necessity in the realm of selfhood. — frank

The informal style of N&N does leave this somewhat open, I agree. Kripke certainly talks as if he means not just how we think, but what is in fact the case. He says, for instance:

The question really should be, let's say, could the Queen -- could this woman herself -- have been born of different parents from the parents from whom she actually came? . . . Let's suppose that the Queen really did come from these parents . . . [etc.] — N&N, 112

But you're wondering whether he means, more precisely, to be asking: "Would we refer to this woman as the Queen if she came from different parents?" Possibly. "Necessity in the realm of selfhood" would be something about this woman that must pick her out from all others, in all possible worlds. So we're asking, Can such a property exist, or inhere, within the woman herself, as opposed to within the process of picking-out? One is tempted to reply, "Yes indeed. The genes, the DNA. They are there regardless of whether we use them for any reference-fixing."

the way Kripke uses the concept of essence in N&N. Is that use fraught in your view? — frank

Well, yes, in the sense that he's availing himself of terminology that has a long fraught history. And I'm not sure he's always consistent about invoking essences. For instance, he says, about gold:

Any world in which we imagine a substance which does not have these properties is a world in which we imagine a substance which is not gold, provided these properties form the basis of what the substance is. — N&N, 125

All well and good, but is "properties that form the basis of what the substance is" the same thing as "essence" or "essential properties"? How does an essence, if that's what we're talking about, form the basis? Again, the conversational character of the book makes me want a bit more precision. A brilliant book nonetheless.

I'll get some cool quotes together. — frank

Excellent.

Kripke asks (of Queen Elizabeth):

How could a person originating from different parents, from a totally different sperm and egg, be this very woman? . . . It seems to me that anything coming from a different origin would not be this object. — N&N, 113

And at several other places he's clear that what makes a person that person is being born of certain parents. Whether this equates to an essence is a fraught subject, of course.

Can you say more about the context question? I read Kripke as saying, not that one could refer to an Obama who has certain parents, but that we must -- that's where the "baptism" starts.

That's fair. I was agreeing with Kripke's view here.

EDIT: and it raises the interesting question of whether the cogito generates a personal identity. I'm inclined to say no, but it's certainly arguable.

I wonder how we make sense of such claims as "if I were you then ...." (or to use proper names, "if Michael were Banno then...") — Michael

But this analytic interpretation of the phrase seems misplaced. It's not how we ordinarily understand it. — Michael

Yes. See the exchange above about "If I were Barack Obama . . . " Taken literally, it can only mean "If I were not I . . . " which can't get off the ground. When we say things like "If I were you . . . " we mean either "Here's what I think you should do/think etc." or "If I (still being me!) were in your situation, here's what I would do; perhaps you should do the same."

But this claim also coheres with the thesis what what you are entertaining isn't a representation of your childhood bedroom but rather is an act by yourself of representing it (and taking yourself to remember it) to be thus and so. And it is because, in some cases, you are representing it to yourself as looking, or visually appearing, thus and so that we speak of "images." — Pierre-Normand

This is fine. I don't think we're disagreeing. That's what I was trying to get at by talking about a "seeming image." All we can do is report what it seems like. Where does the representation come from? Is it somehow formed directly from a memory? Or is it constructed by myself and presented as an act of remembering? All good questions, but not, strictly speaking, questions we could answer based upon the experience itself. Unless . . .

The "image" only is a putative memory when it is an act by yourself of thinking about what you putatively knew, and haven't forgotten, about the visual features of your childhood bedroom. — Pierre-Normand

Here you're suggesting a way we might answer those questions about the origin of the representation, based only on how it presents to us. You're saying, I believe, that we should regard the identification of a putative or purported memory (which was my OP question) as a necessary outcome of the previous process of construction by myself. That previous process is required, on this view, in order for the purported memory to present as such. That is, if I hadn't "thought about what I putatively knew, and hadn't forgotten" etc., then the experience would not present as a purported memory. It would be more like the idle daydream, which lacks that clear ID as "memory."

That is quite ingenious and plausible. But it still leaves unanswered the question: By what feature or fact, if any, do I make this identification? Am I recognizing something about the process of constructing a representation? Or am I merely inferring it from the fact that the representation has presented as a purported memory?

I have to emphasize again how simple-minded my question really is! I just want to know how we're able to do it, in the moment. "How" as in "how am I able," not "how" as in "how (or why) does it happen."

That is honestly, in my view, utterly bananas my guy. — AmadeusD

this claim is one for which I would want to prevent you from holding office its so absurd. — AmadeusD

flabbergastingly made-up — AmadeusD

Gee, you really make me want to continue the conversation! :wink:

I can see I've pushed your buttons, so I'll let it drop, no hard feelings.

As I understand it phenomenology aims to reflect on and characterize the general nature of human experience. I have always been skeptical about attempts to make inferences from human experience to metaphysical claims. — Janus

And phenomenology was initially meant as a corrective to this tendency. But as many philosophers have argued since, this is very hard to do. In the act of reporting an observation, say a simple perception of a tree, we must include metaphysical assumptions if we are to speak at all. (Granted, this depends on a fairly broad interpretation of "metaphysical.").

What we're talking about here, I think, is the difference between the inference that there are really trees out there, and the inference that there is really a god out there. The evidentiary bases are wholly different, and would need to be weighed differently as well, but I want to claim that the basic process is the same -- we try to describe and understand our experiences, and then see if we can infer anything from them about the world, even if it's only an inference to the best explanation.

I think the salient question is as to just what is the content of a mystical experience — Janus

I agree. And to be unbiased, we should really put "mystical" in quotes, since several possible descriptions of their content would reveal "mystical" as an error.

The interpretation of mystical experiences seems to me to be a very personal matter. For me interpretation is more of a feeling, a sense of something, more like poetry than anything which can be couched in definite terms. — Janus

I think we were talking about interpretation earlier in this thread, weren't we? (Or was it somewhere else? Sorry!) I'll just say here that I think interpretation is much more than just a feeling or a sense. There are good and bad interpretations, in terms of their fidelity to the facts. Hermeneutics tries to lay this out in a systematic way.

It seems that there is a cross-cultural commonality of mystical human experience―but what does that point to? Who can say? — Janus

Good questions. And that, I believe, is the important thing -- that they are good questions, not ones we can dismiss because the answers are somehow obvious.

For an extraordinary claim like, “I had direct communication with God” an atheist is going to need more than someone's personal testimony. — Tom Storm

I would divide this into "the subjective experience," described as neutrally as possible, and "the explanation," in this case a purported direct communication with God. I'm suggesting that the atheist can accept that an extraordinary subjective experience took place while denying the explanation. But this isn't about rejecting personal testimony -- unless, that is, the claimant wants to maintain that the experience was what I'm calling "self-credentialed."

I wouldn't say 'ruled out' but worthy of robust skepticism certainly. — Tom Storm

Me too. Again, a "nicer atheist" may take this position, but I've just as often heard it described as "impossible" or "incoherent."

Is there a non-naturalistic explanation for anything we can definitely identify? — Tom Storm

I think all explanations that involve reasons, as opposed to causes, are non-naturalistic -- but that's a whole huge other topic.

Yes, this is the nub of the issue: is the God explanation really of equal weight to alternative explanations - such as psychological phenomena, mental illness, or substance use? — Tom Storm

It may not be, in a given case, but I wasn't saying all the possible explanations had to be weighted equally. Indeed, it would be odd if they were; that isn't how it works with "ordinary" explanations for things like sensual perceptions. I was saying that we ought to allow the "God explanation" to be weighed along with any others. Equal weight? That will be influenced by many factors, including substance ingestion!

And perhaps it's not worth debating, these discussions rarely shift anyone’s position and too often descend into unproductive or abusive exchanges. Not from you, I hasten to add. — Tom Storm

Nor you, thanks.

If the purpose of the discussion is really to shift someone's position on religion or mystical experiences, I completely agree -- ain't gonna happen. But I do think it's worthwhile to get some analytical clarity on what's involved in talking about, and evaluating, this kind of report. Especially, we want to understand better how beliefs are formed, and what counts as adequate justification and refutation.

Well, atheists I know would not say, as you write, “there isn’t any personal god.” — Tom Storm

You know nicer atheists than I do! :smile:

such experiences rely on subjective testimony — Tom Storm

I don't think this is the heart of the problem. We routinely accept subjective testimony about all sorts of things, if by "testimony" you mean merely "Here is what I saw/heard/tasted/thought." Rather, the problem is the explanatory value, as you say here:

experiences that, while meaningful to the individual, could have multiple naturalistic explanations and thus can't meaningfully serve as reliable evidence for the existence of a divine being. — Tom Storm

An alleged mystical experience can indeed have multiple explanations, just as an experience of romantic love can. The atheist can allow the experience, on a purely descriptive level; what they draw the line at is the explanation. They don't believe -- and I think they're right not to -- that any experience can be completely "self-credentialing." I can't claim that my experience of X includes as part of that experience the knowledge of what caused the experience. At best, we draw the most plausible conclusions.

And this leads to the other point that the atheist wants to insist on -- your use of the phrase "naturalistic explanations." I think that, for most atheists, non-naturalistic explanations are ruled out a priori. But if we don't do this, and simply talk about "multiple possible explanations" among which could be explanations based on an encounter with God, then at least the "God explanation" can join the other contenders and be weighed for its plausibility just like any other.

Good post, and like you I think epiphenomenalism has to be wrong. The possible descriptions of the psychophysical nexus, however, need to give a clear answer to this question: When I come up with a solution to some problem -- fixing a car, say -- and implement it, have I in fact come up with a solution? And then used my (mental) solution to affect physical objects? Or is all this loose talk for some kind of "emerging" and "constraining" and "causal relevance" and "shaping" and "filtering" and "operating" that, if and when we fully understand it, will make the "solution" story either much too simple or downright wrong?

I'm not making fun of your terminology at all. I have none better to offer. It's very hard to use our current concepts to construct a simple picture of what's going on here. And yet it's the simple picture that we need: Am I along for the ride, like steam from the train, or do my decisions really cause anything to happen? And if these binaries are misguided, how should we understand that?

I can honestly imagine being in your shoes to some extent. If you reject that line of thought, then yes, such talk couldn't reflect the way you actually think. — frank

I don't reject it, in fact such empathy is very important. I just believe it doesn't count as a genuine possible world for philosophical purposes.

I can imagine possible worlds where I'm somebody else, or a rock. I'd love being a rock. — frank

Looooooosely, yes. :smile: Do you know this song?

the name . . . as a sort of nexus of possibility — frank

That's a very good way of putting it.

All of that is sorted out by a specific statement. For instance, if you say, "If I were Barack Obama, I would have told the Syrian rebels to calm down. — frank

Not so sure about this. First of all, I don't take "If I were Barack Obama . . . " as a genuine reference to a possible world. For me, this is loose talk for "Barack Obama should have. . . " If we insist on pressing this hypothetical, we run up against Kripke: "You can't be Obama; he was born of different parents." And I think this is right. "If I were Obama . . . " etc. reads like a meaningful sentence but that's an illusion.

But there's another issue as well. Let's compare to "If I were a rock, I would have been happy in 2015." I suppose the "different parents" argument could be said to apply, but the problem seems deeper than that. We've crossed over from loose talk into nonsense. Why, and how? Can we say that being a rock is even less possible? Someone can be Obama -- namely, Obama himself -- but no one can be a rock. That sounds a little ad hoc, but I don't know.

if "a" necessarily designates a, can we conclude that a necessarily has the property of being designated by "a"? — Ludwig V

Right, this is the same question I'm raising about whether something about reference needs to be included in a list of X's properties. (I'm going to stick with X rather than a because the lower-case "a" can be confusing.). I asked:

Can I know everything (or nothing) about X without including the reference-fixing story in my knowledge (or lack thereof)? — J

and you replied:

You don't need to include the reference-fixing story. But you do need to know how to refer to X. If you get that wrong, the rest collapses. — Ludwig V

I'm inclined to agree, but it opens a messy subject: What is the difference between fixing the reference of an individual versus a generic? In the gold example, we can indeed be wrong about whether sample G is gold, but what about "gold" as a substance? Don't we have two items whose references have been fixed -- sample G and "gold"? How these are fixed is quite distinct. If we both can recognize sample G out of a dozen other samples, that's because of a reference-fixing story that is local and specific. It really has nothing to do with understanding what "gold" refers to, if you see what I mean.

human experience in general — Janus

This, I think, deserves attention. You're saying that, because phenomenology et al. are at least "quasi-empirical," we can reasonably abstract from them to make statements about human life in general. This can't be rigorously intersubjective, but it is more so than mystical or religious experiences. Would it follow, then, that if most people had mystical experiences, we'd consider them also to be "quasi-empirical" and possible evidence for general conclusions? How many would we need? What would be the threshold beyond which the experiences gained evidentiary status?

There's a general anti-religious argument that goes something like: "There isn't any personal God, because there's no evidence for such a being. That explains why so few people are 'mystics' and claim to have such direct evidence. They're a little crazy, and are misinterpreting their experiences." The question is, Which way does the reasoning go? Are we saying that the lack of evidence shows the non-existence of God, or are we saying that, because God does not exist, there couldn't be such evidence? If it's the latter, that would commit us to saying that even if everybody had mystical experiences, they'd still be wrong in believing they were evidence for a personal God. I think this is what most of the atheists I know would say: You can't have evidence for unicorns because there aren't any. Those who believe in them nonetheless are, charitably, misguided.

So compare that to our (relative) confidence in the conclusions of quasi-empirical inquiries such as philosophy. Do we have confidence in them merely because the experiences they're based on are so widespread? Or is it rather that we have independent, non-experiential reasons for believing in the credibility of these experiences -- and thus expect most people to have them?

So we say that "a" and "b" are like proper names, and since "a" and "b" are rigid designators, we say that proper names are also rigid designators. And so it seems that since no property need be true of "a" in every possible world, no property need be true of a proper name in every possible world — Banno

Yes, but let's not forget indexicals. These are rigid designators as well. This seems a little puzzling. Do we want to consider "the fact that I am 'I'" -- or, if you prefer, "the fact that 'I' designates me" -- to be a property of me? I can't remember if Kripke goes into this. If it is a property, then it would appear to be a property that must be true in every possible world -- I am always the person in question. But if it is not a property, then it must be strictly a "seeming" or "pointing" by which we fix reference. I suppose we could take this latter course and, when switching perspectives, just go ahead and switch pronouns too, but then don't we have the same problem? "The fact that you are 'you' . . ." etc.?

I think this is pointing to the question we've tossed around already -- whether "how a reference is fixed for X" is part of the list of X's potential properties; or whether we're mixing discourses by thinking of it that way. Can I know everything (or nothing) about X without including the reference-fixing story in my knowledge (or lack thereof)?

Weird similarities with the "existence [is/is not] a predicate" problem too.

Could there be strictly empirical evidence available to guide me in answering that question [of how I should live]? — Janus

This caught my eye. Could you tighten up a couple of things? First, what would strictly empirical evidence be? Do you mean, say, physical evidence that is uninterpreted, or at least only minimally interpreted according to schema that would gain universal assent? Second, can evidence guide me without demanding or demonstrating a particular answer? I'm guessing that's what you mean, since otherwise you wouldn't say "guide" but something more like "determine" or "necessitate".

I am not arguing that there are some sacred descriptions that cannot be overturned. — Ludwig V

No, that's clear. The relevant question is:

. . . provided we can fix the reference of X without appealing to any of the properties of X. But most people would say that "tiger" refers to large striped cats that live in parts of Asia. How would you fix the reference without relying on any of the known properties of tigers? — Ludwig V

We can do it by talking about how tigers seem, and how we use that seeming to fix the reference. It's a kind of austerity or agnosticism about whether what appears to us is also in fact the case about the object. So yes, "large striped cats that live in parts of Asia" is exactly how tigers seem, and if they didn't seem that way, we wouldn't have been able to fix the reference. But, in the unlikely event that some part of this description turned out to be only a seeming -- that is, factually inaccurate -- we would say we had learned something about tigers. We wouldn't say, "Oh, that wasn't a tiger after all." This is Kripke's basic argument.

If we did find out that everything we knew about tigers were mistaken or in error, that would nevertheless be a discovery about tigers. It follows that "tiger" does not refer to tigers in virtue of some description that sets out their characteristics. — Banno

The idea is that we learn what some thing is, name it, and then discover that everything we knew about it was false. — Banno

There's something very odd about saying that we learn what some thing is, and then discover that what we have learnt about it is false. What is the "it" here? — Ludwig V

if a human successfully "picks out" the fresh water, hydrates themselves, and survives to see another day, don't we want to say he knows how to "pick out" fresh water? If the answer is "yes", in this scenario, what sense can we make that this human could later discover "that everything we knew about it was false"? Seems we are flirting with radical skepticism. — Richard B

Depends what counts as part of "everything we know" about X. Does it include "how to fix the reference of X"? If it does, then no, we can't discover that this was false. In such a case, we'd discover we were talking about something different. But if "everything we know" is limited to properties of X, then yes, we could even discover, of a tiger, that it was translucent and incorporeal, and only gave the appearance of being the sort of thing we've come to reference as "tiger". This startling result would be described as being about the tiger.

The fresh water example seems trickier, because we're using a property,"freshness," to name the item in question, which gives the illusion of an essence. To make matters worse, we're associating that property with what we believe is an inductively necessary effect on humans. But I think the principle is the same: Change the name to "lala." If we then discover that lala sometimes makes us sick, what would we say? We'd say we were wrong about lala always producing a certain effect on us. The question of freshness would be handled separately, and differently: Now we also need to say that being fresh doesn't necessarily prevent us from getting sick. It's the little cause-effect story that's been proved false, not anything about lala.

Or to put it another way, by giving a different answer to Richard's question: No, we mustn't say that humans know how to pick out fresh water. We know how to pick out lala on the basis of whether it harms us -- or we did, until the hypothetical counterexample arrived. Now we're not sure how to do it.
And notice that the "biological machinery" can remain intact. That's because we can say that the hypothetical counterexample happens(ed) so rarely that it didn't affect evolution.

PS -- I let all this age for a while, and upon rereading, I have some doubts about the fresh water example. But rather than launch into the counter-arguments, I'll just wait and see how others respond.

Yes, this highlights an important fact about memory, which is its peculiar status as both present and past. We can bracket "a memory" or we can bracket "the experience of remembering". They are not the same. The latter must emphasize my conscious role, now, in what is occurring. I, the remembering self, am a player in the drama, so to speak -- as Proust was. Of course, many on this thread have rightly inquired whether "a memory," taken on its own, is really so innocent of the self's involvement.

What makes it, something I am remembering, and not sensing or imagining? — Fire Ologist

Right, and we need to keep discriminating the "what makes it" or "how does it happen" question between two possible meanings. We might give a psychological, semi-causal reading to this question, and try to answer it by describing how memories are formed -- what literally makes a memory. Or we can interpret the question, as I've been doing, to be about how the purported memory presents itself to us, quite apart from its psychological origins. So "what makes it something I am remembering?" here means "how can I tell it's something I'm remembering?"

There is something “already” in a memory, that is not there in an imagination-representation.

I am saying there is a similar something “already” in what purports to be a sensation. — Fire Ologist

Additionally, a sensual perception seems to include the same kind of near-instantaneous identification as does a memory; we're not aware of doing a quick mental check to make sure it's really a perception. What you're calling the "already" does seem to be part of this.

whatever this is “already” in a memory or a sensation, it is not there when imagining a unicorn flying through space on an orange peel.

This is difficult to talk about, without . . . sounding like an insane person apparently. — Fire Ologist

Oh, that doesn't stop anyone around here. Say more about the unicorn on the orange peel! :smile:

Thanks for this thoughtful answer. I understand better what you mean now. But I'm going to take issue with it.

You are remembering your childhood bedroom to be this or that size, to have this or that location in the house, to be furnished thus and so, etc. All of those mental acts refer to your childhood bedroom (or, better, are acts of you referring to it in imagination) and, maybe, chiefly refer to visual aspects of it. But there is no image that you are contemplating. — Pierre-Normand

It's possible that I haven't succeeded in describing the phenomenon I'm asking about. (I've noticed that several other people on this thread find it rare or at least unusual.) It's this: I'm going about my daily business when all at once, for no discernible reason, a visual/mental image flashes into my mind. Let's say it's the childhood bedroom, as seen from the bed. Now, everything you say would be true, if I were describing how the image is formed. I do indeed remember, or claim to remember, the shape, the furnishings, etc. And yes, these acts refer to the bedroom, or perhaps are imagined acts of reference.

But none of this is what occurs, what happens. All I'm trying to do is to give a phenomenological description, and I don't find any of that. It's almost as if you're giving a transcendental argument for what has to have happened, what must be the case, in order for me to have the experience I do have. And you may well be right. But the actual experience is one of a visual mental image which I claim to recognize as a memory. In fact, let's leave out the "memory" part entirely. When you say, "There is no image that you are contemplating," this would presumably apply to any alleged mental image, memory or not. And this is what I have to deny, based on my own experience.

Now there is one possible sense in which you may be correct. If all our talk about mental images is mistaken, that may be because we misunderstand what they are, or mean, rather like an illusion. But I want to say that the phenomenology doesn't allow us to make this discrimination. If we ask for a phenomenological description of a thirsty person in the desert who believes they see water ahead, we aren't going to be making any reference to whether there is water. All we can do is tell, faithfully, how it seems, how it presents to experience. And so it is with mental images. If you mean by "But there is no image that you are contemplating" the possible fact that this experience fools us in some way, rather as a mirage does, I have no quarrel. But I am using "mental image" to mean what I seem to be contemplating. For this usage I claim general linguistic agreement. And for the fact that I do indeed contemplate such a seeming image, I must insist on my privileged access.

Does any of this make sense to you?

I'm not sure what you mean by pallette-style. — Dawnstorm

I'm using that term to describe an image that doesn't come to me as a memory -- the snark would be a good example -- but which, as you point out, still has to be composed of discrete memories from a palette of colors, shapes, etc. It's an imagined composite image comprising elements I do remember.

A memory being (a) true and (b) autobiographical is part of the intentionality of the act of remembering, but not of the actual memory - neither the flash, nor its more substantial substratus. — Dawnstorm

Good, this would be a fresh approach to my problem. If I understand you, you're agreeing with me when I can't seem to find any "marker" or "feature" that would allow me to recognize a purported memory. And when I ask, "Yet how can it be that I nonetheless do make that identification?" the reply is, "Because what makes it this kind of memory -- the kind that's purportedly true and autobiographical, not merely images composed from the mental palette -- is a type of intentionality."

I'll give that more thought, to see if I can fit it into my personal phenomenology. The only part I'm leery about is "just assume," which seems to throw it back again onto something brute.

Do you see what I mean? — Dawnstorm

I do. When we interrogate "memory" in this way, all the questions you raise are important. Are they phenomenological questions, though? I think the actual experience is cruder and less thoughtful than this -- and therefore puzzling to me.

I get the mental image and along with it, some kind of identification. You're quite right that we need to remember many things in order to make up a snark, that every image is almost certainly composed of a palette of remembered colors, shapes, contexts, et al. Yet none of this seems to matter in identifying the kind of memory under discussion, namely the kind that purports to be a) true and b) autobiographical. In other words, it's fine to extend what memory does to include the palette-concept, which makes nearly all mental images partially formed by memories. But I'm asking about something much less general -- that certain type of remembering that's typified by my getting an image of my grandfather on the street. We distinguish that from a snark, even if we agree that we need the concept of "memory" for other purposes as well, and that this is by no means the only correct way to use the term. So . . . can we identify anything in the experience that allows us to make this distinction?

You remember stuff that doesn't manifest as "a memory". If you didn't, no "memory" could manifest. — Dawnstorm

I understand the first part -- it's what I was just discussing, hopefully. But could you say more about why "no 'memory' could manifest"? Do you mean we require the palette-style of remembering in order to have the other, more specific type that satisfies a) and b)?

Is any one reading this? — Banno

Yes. I'm getting a lot from what you and @Richard B and your interlocutors are discussing.

. . . fundamental philosophical questions, about more than simply 'what we can say'. — Wayfarer

I'm plucking this phrase out of its context because of what I think it implies. One version of what a "fundamental philosophical question" is would claim that such a question is about something that might be inexpressible in words. Another version would limit the idea of a "fundamental philosophical question" to what can be said in a language, on the grounds that philosophy must not be misunderstood as the gatekeeper of all truths, all things "fundamental." Philosophy is limited to discourse, and so must be the subjects of its questions. Yet a third version would insist on a distinction between "answer" and "subject": thus, we can answer a philosophical question within the realm of philosophical discourse, but that doesn't mean that the subject of such discourse is also necessarily linguistic.

I think you mean to stake out the first territory, yes? That there are truths -- answers to fundamental philosophical questions -- that cannot be uttered? Or is it closer to the third version, with all truths utterable but not all subjects being linguistic?