some nice posts — Srap Tasmaner

Very kind, thanks. I keep thinking that there is some way of making this clearer in the abstract, but maybe not. Perhaps you have to examine some real practice or issue, understand how the participants do in fact make their judgments and discuss the results, and then . . . perhaps the "absolute criteria" problem would just be seen through, as it should be, in most cases. (Note escape clause -- not even avoiding absolute criteria is always an absolute criterion. :smile: And this is not a heinous contradiction, but just a report on how we do most things.)

Saying they are and they aren’t depending on the reason doesn’t address the question. Because then what criteria allows you to say that?? — Fire Ologist

So, the endless regress problem. What do you see as the way out of that?

Have you never demanded “absolutely not!” — Fire Ologist

Do you ever say “never”? — Fire Ologist

Honestly, IRL, you never shine light on the absolute with certain authority? — Fire Ologist

I have to smile, because "never" is once again an all-or-nothing option, implying that if I sometimes do, I have contradicted myself! To which I can only reply, "Sure I do, sometimes, but not other times."

You can’t say there is nothing absolute if you want to avoid saying the validity of any narrative is arbitrary. Some goal post must become fixed before the arbitrary is avoided. — Fire Ologist

Nah. There can be many good reasons for something -- hence not arbitrary -- without requiring that any of them be absolute. The infinite regress of "justifications for justification" doesn't apply to this question. If there is no "fixed goal post," all this shows is that the reasons are not certain or absolute. But I don't require either one.

What is it with this fascination with "either absolute or arbitrary"? Do you really think and act that way IRL? Not being snarky, I'm actually curious.

:smile: Thanks for listening.

I'm not sure what you mean here. — Banno

Nor am I, because this is a point of debate about Habermas, at least (not sure about Peirce and his convergence theory of truth). The question is, Is the "endpoint" a final consensus for human society (perhaps similar to the Marxian idea), or could there be, as you're wondering, an end of philosophy? The distinction I would want to make, in any case, has to do with a process of dialectic that may reach some end, but cannot be predicted to do so, versus a process where the end is already known, because the principles entail it.

Fairly sure that an "end of philosophy," were such possible, wouldn't look like a sorting of true from false.

Some narratives are acceptable, true, or valid for one sort of reason; some are so for another sort;
—J

“So is the above (narrative) always absolutely the case, or can there be reasons not to accept it?”
— Fire Ologist

There could be reasons not to accept it.
— J

Then, some narratives are acceptable for only one sort of reason. (And you have asserted some sort of absolute criteria exists and a universally non-arbitrary narrative exists and contradicted your own narrative.) — Fire Ologist

I am so lost here. Where did I assert an absolute criterion? Is that following from the fact that some narratives are acceptable for only one sort of reason? How does that make the reason absolute? I'm sorry, would you mind trying again to explain?

Touché. Maybe I'm tired! :grin:

Some narratives are acceptable, true, or valid for one sort of reason; some are so for another sort;
— J

So is this always absolutely the case, or can there be reasons not to accept it? — Fire Ologist

I think I understand your question, but tell me if I've got it wrong. I think you're asking whether the truth of the "Some narratives . . ." statement is beyond debate -- whether it represents something we can be certain of. If that's the question, my answer would be no. There could be reasons not to accept it.

an area that I would imagine most people think is purely a matter of subjective taste, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh, no, sorry if I wasn't clear. Musicology does much more than try to make aesthetic judgments -- in fact, it rather rarely does that. It's a "human science" as much as any other.

If you cannot know if they ever succeed in saying "some things that are acceptable, true, and valid," how is this not an all-encompassing skepticism? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Because I don't require this kind of certainty in order to participate in a practice that produces narratives that may be true; that offers ideas about what would be reasonable that fit my own understanding; that seem to the best of my belief to be true; but that are open to debate and revision. I don't have to know. I don't think skepticism represents such a position. A skeptic thinks all this talk of truth and reasonableness is malarkey. (Did I really just use the word "malarkey?" :smile: )

Am I being unfair? Am I being "reasonable" in my rejection? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It doesn't sound unfair or unreasonable to me, but as always, context is everything. If this is a philosopher and scholar whose work I respected, and whom I knew was part of an ongoing conversation on these subjects, I hope I'd take their views seriously, and invite them to explain, though I'd probably be surprised at their initial unwillingness to make their case.

Is this supposed to be an appeal to democratization and popularity, or just "if you do it a lot 'you just know it when you see it' better?'" — Count Timothy von Icarus

The latter, though I'd "fair it up" a little to read, "If you engage in a practice consistently and thoughtfully, you know reasonableness in that practice when you see it, usually."

But then the same problem of amorphous standards would plague that debate as well. [i.e., the debate about whether most areas of knowledge and interpretation do or do not depend on indubitable foundations] — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, this is important. It calls into question the entire project of Foundational standards -- I'm using the capital F so as to represent the idea of a standard that can be used to set and judge other standards. And this takes us back to the -- by now perhaps a little tired? -- debate about what may stand outside interpretation.

Sorry -- by "this" do you mean the quoted statement beginning "Some narratives . . ."?

As I said, I think @Banno has said most of what I would want to say about that, but perhaps an example will help:

Some narratives are acceptable, true, or valid for one sort of reason; some are so for another sort; some for a third sort; etc. A narrative about how to interpret and evaluate Beethoven's music, compared, say, to his contemporary, Hummel's, is going to say some things that are acceptable, true, and valid -- or at least try to. It will appeal to knowledge about the High Classical style, its aesthetic standards, the transition to Romanticism, European cultural history, and much more.

Such a narrative will, we hope, be "reasonable." And it has no strict criteria. We may or may not know it when we see it -- there's usually debate among musicologists concerning this kind of thing -- but we aren't utterly in the dark either. We don't want historical mistakes or bad reasoning, but merely avoiding these things will not get us where we want to go. This is, perhaps, the difference between "criteria" understood as rules which can be applied in all cases, and something much more rough-and-ready. But I still have trouble seeing how this makes anything arbitrary.

Anyway, this is the middle-ground position that I'd recommend as frequently more accurate than having to choose between "recognizing some authority" and "anything goes." It's a practice, it is learned and deepened over time, and new consensuses produce new questions. It may be the case that some philosophers, doing a certain kind of philosophy, need to find indubitable foundations to be going on with, but most areas of knowledge and interpretation aren't like that. To insist on such criteria, under the specter of "anything goes," is to misunderstand. Or I suppose you could try to convict all the musicologists of not knowing what they're doing, but surely that would be silly? :wink:

I think a similar example could be made involving hard science, but this is not my field, and one's enough to show what I have in mind.

If mathematical findings were "there from the begining" who exactly is the authority that is being "authoritarian" here? — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're right, "authoritarian" isn't a very good term for anything other than humans. My "Well, yes" was meant as an answer to the second question, "Is it structured to preclude objection?" And by "structured" I don't necessarily mean "by some agency." Thanks for helping me clarify that.

The pluralist either recognizes some authority or else "anything goes," which in turn makes all their own positions immune to contradiction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can't really add anything to the "anything goes" discussion you're having with @Banno. There's clearly something in this all-or-nothing position that seems incontrovertible to you. I will keep trying to understand it, but no luck so far.

Which is why his book is called "Consciousness Denied". — Manuel

Funny! (You do know it's "Consciousness Explained," right?)

but the people who agree with him are just tiny. — Manuel

My point wasn't about agreement -- as I said, I don't agree with him at all -- but rather about how he could even be "a useful tool to oppose" if his arguments were irrational beyond words. When people really are irrational in that way, top-notch philosophers don't bother with them, as there'd be no point. Since this is not the case with Dennett, I ask again: What do you think he might have been doing that caught the attention of just about everyone in the consciousness field?

If a person breaks an arm, or gets shot or something horrible, would Dennett say "oh, that's just a broken machine, it's nervous system is sending pain signals to the brain, nothing to worry about". — Manuel

If this is a serious question, then I think Dennett would say, "Yes, it's a broken machine, its nervous system is sending pain signals to the brain, and that's a very bad situation for this machine to be in, and deserves plenty of worry." Something along those lines; he never suggested that people were somehow less important because they were, in his view, strictly physical objects. Nor, to my knowledge, did he think that being in pain was not an experience. He thought we had incorrect views about what that experience amounted to. And he did think we could be wrong, sometimes, about whether we were in pain or not.

I don't agree with Dennett's viewpoint any more than you do, but if he was really "irrational beyond words" and showed "utter disregard" for clear evidence, how do you account for his position in contemporary philosophy? Even longtime opponents like Thomas Nagel were happy to converse with him, and considered him "the worthy opposition." Surely there must be more going on here than sheer obtuseness?

As to Chalmers and Dennett―the latter seems to me by far the more imaginative philosopher.
— Janus

Interesting. I find very much the opposite. — Hanover

I think Dennett had a great imagination, and I might have agreed he was more imaginative than Chalmers -- until "Reality +" came out a couple of years ago. Fantastically imaginative! Even Dennett might have been envious.

Anyway, imagination aside, I find Chalmers much the more interesting of the two. Dennett was hobbled by a reductive physicalism that, for all his brilliant writing, he could never make plausible for me.

Hegelian rhetoric can be brilliant, as in the mouth of that salivating Slav, Žižek. — Banno

OK, with the mods' permission, here's a link to a song my band did about Zizek, my least favorite philosopher. Just for fun, apologies if you're a Zizek fan!

But I can't say more. :wink: — Banno

Good joke, and just to be clear: We can say more, using language in all of its delightful manifestations, we just can't say more in rational discourse, with the apparatus of a formal system. Notice I'm trying not to equate "rational discourse" -- or anything else -- with "philosophy", full stop. @Wayfarer and others are right that philosophy as a practice has meant many things over the centuries.

Brilliant post. — Banno

Thanks but isn't it just how we talk? I wasn't feeling particularly insightful when I wrote it, only trying to clarify that an assertion generally has to be marked out as such, to avoid ambiguities.

Which is the same as saying that the program was written incorrectly and/or is handling input that is was not designed to handle.
— @Harry Hindu
Or, perhaps, the solution is not algorithmic. — Banno

That was the "radical reconsideration" I had in mind.

I think it's monolithic in that it's a philosophy that swallows all philosophies, and one need only spend time studying Hegel to see the truth of that. In a way one cannot disagree with it -- they can only misunderstand it. — Moliere

The closure we're talking about is methodological. — Banno

Both these comments are trying to come to grips with the question of what sorts of objections are seen as legitimate by a philosophical method. I think you're right about the formal, methodological closure, and @Moliere is also putting their finger on a characteristic of "big" philosophies such as Hegel's: The appeal is to a kind of linguistic or conceptual closure. It's not that the system is unfalsifiable -- though it may be -- but that it's uninterpretable in any way other than as laid out. Certain foundational questions or objections are necessarily misunderstandings -- on the grounds that there is only one way to understand what's being said.

Here's another way we could think about it: When Peirce and Habermas talk about the ideal forms of communication -- communicative action, the best ways to carry on a public conversation -- they seem to have in mind that there is an endpoint, or at the very least that there could be, but we do not now know what that will look like, nor could we possibly. In other words, what I'm calling "armchair philosophy" is an inadequate method. Whereas someone like Lonergan, who is a brilliant and under-appreciated thinker, seems to picture something different: Conversation is a forum to answer and refute objections, because the endpoint is already clear. I read him as saying that philosophical conversation should involve principles already known to be true, and that we can benefit from sharpening and expanding these principles by hearing the objections of others and responding. On this point, I think Peirce and Habermas have the more justifiable and more reliable method.

Mathematics is not closed to contradiction, to criticism, to what is contrary to it. — Banno

That is true, but I was using the math example to show how a deductive system may not permit different "correct" answers within that system. Probably I shouldn't natter about math, as it isn't my forte, but isn't that more or less right? If we're doing algebra, solving an equation isn't open to the "objection" that there might be another correct solution. And stretching a point, you can even call this authoritarian: If you say otherwise on a test, the teacher will flunk you! But there's nothing pernicious about any of this. It comes with the territory of an accepted formal system. The problems arise when we start to treat philosophy as such a deductive system.

OK, I see where you're coming from. Most of philosophy, in that sense, isn't very useful, I agree.

Yes, this can get complicated and nit-picky very quickly, and I doubt that we really disagree about assertions. What I'm claiming is that it takes more than "saying" something to make an assertion.

To assert X is to claim that X is true -- I imagine you agree with this, and so do I. But life, and language, has many shades of meaning, and we don't always draw such a clear line. I might say, "That man over there is my old roommate." But if you ask me, "Are you asserting this?" or "Are you saying this is true?" you shouldn't be surprised if I pause for a moment and then reply, "Well, not quite. I think it's true, it appears to be true, but I'm not 'asserting' it as if I were under oath."

Point is, we need to stipulate what counts as an assertion. That's why I was focusing on "To say 'p' is to say 'p is true'." I don't think that's right, but it is right that "To assert 'p', and make clear one is doing so, is to say 'p is true'."

Define "useful". — Harry Hindu

In this context, I meant philosophically helpful or provocative -- something worth our time to understand. Is there a way you prefer to think of it? -- I'm certainly not married to this one.

Your edit of my post isn't what I intended to say.

anything = everything about every X — Harry Hindu

Oh sorry, didn't mean to misconstrue. As for "everything about every X", I guess I don't know what to say about that!

If understanding is the first step, can you say you have successfully completed the first step if your questions that would help you understand are not answered (they get defensive by the simply fact that you are questioning anything they say)? — Harry Hindu

Fair enough. My nice division into steps is oversimplistic.

A possible outcome - yes. A useful outcome - no. — Harry Hindu

I dunno, the aporetic dialogues of Plato seem quite useful. But we may be saying the same thing -- that aporia is an invitation to reconsider. My idea is that the reconsidering is a lot more radical than looking for a "bug" in the logic, because I think aporia is often a sign that we've set the whole problem up incorrectly.

If you have reached the conclusion that we don't know anything [about X] - doesn't that constitute knowledge? — Harry Hindu

Yes, but not about X. So no contradiction, I'd say.

There is arguably logical convertability as well. To say "a man is standing," is to say "it is true that a man is standing," (assertoric force), which is also to say "one man is standing" (unity) — Count Timothy von Icarus

What we've seen in the threads about Frege, Kimhi, and Rodl is that we can't rest content with this formulation. Consider what you just "said": "a man is standing". Did you also say "it is true that a man is standing"? I certainly didn't take you to be saying that. If I were to reply to your statement by asking you, "Is it true that a man is standing?" you would be puzzled, because you intended no assertion. You would try to explain the difference between use and mention, quite rightly. And yet you said what you said.

Moral: There is no one thing called "saying", which carries with it certain corollaries (such as assertion). A statement can be used or mentioned. It can be performed in a play or suggested as a possibility. It's the same insight we find in Rodl about "p" -- we want to think of "p" as innocent, just a sort of placeholder whose meaning is obvious, but it isn't. What we choose to allow "p" to stand for makes a difference in what we can go on to say.

the idea that wisdom might transcend discursive articulation isn’t foreign to philosophy — it runs through Plato, Plotinus, and arguably into Wittgenstein himself. It’s also central to Eastern philosophy, where sometimes silence becomes the highest form of answer, akin to 'see for yourself!' — Wayfarer

Yes, and we shouldn't find this surprising or confusing. What philosophy can talk about is not the same thing as what philosophy can mention or acknowledge. That would be like saying that, because cell biology isn't a philosophical topic, it somehow fails to be legitimate. I can say that philosophy has shown me that there may be realms of experience beyond the discursive. That's not to claim that philosophy has talked about them. It's the old image of philosophy as pointing to a door you must open by other means.

The whole architecture is authoritarian in form. That style of philosophising is structured to preclude objection. — Banno

There's a lot of truth in this, but I want to dwell on why it appears this way. Let's take math. Is math authoritarian? Is it structured to preclude objection? Well, yes, if by "objection" we mean an alternative correct answer in a given math language. Math is deductive, apodictic -- in some grand sense, if we could really understand numbers, we could have predicted the Mandelbrot set. Even incompleteness was "there from the beginning," from this perspective.

Now let's take music. Is musical creativity authoritarian? Does it preclude objection? I admit it's not clear just what that might mean, but something like: Is there a right and a wrong way to write music, are some musics intrinsically beautiful, apart from context, and others not? etc. Surely not, because creative work is not deductive. You can't start from some axioms and work out what's going to be great music. My "objection" to Haydn might be to write like Bartok. But that doesn't make Haydn wrong. This whole terminology is a misfit.

OK, so where does philosophy fit between these two extremes? If one thinks of philosophy as a deductive system, beginning from something like axioms or first principles, then you get what I call "armchair philosophy" -- it appears one could just sit and think, and with rigor and persistence discover all the correct answers. So, is such a philosophy authoritarian? That's a bit strong, but it rather depends on how the first principles are justified. If there is some literal appeal to authority, then yes, philosophizing in this way can be quite uncompromising. Moreover, if the principles contain moral elements, this will collapse the idea of "being wrong" as mistaken and "being wrong" as immoral, definitely an authoritarian move.

Is this kind of philosophy structured to preclude objection? Not in the sense that it may not welcome questions and critique. But it takes "objection" to mean "something that can be overcome by the system," not "something that casts legitimate doubt on the system itself." That kind of objection is presumably ruled out in principle. This is because, as you say, "Every disagreement is downgraded to a misunderstanding of the system." Or if this is not the case, we need a clear explanation of what could make a closed deductive system revisable -- perhaps internal inconsistency?

To me, one of the most interesting questions is, "If you have a longstanding and vigorous commitment to some philosophical method, what would it take to change your mind about it?" Needless to say, this question applies to analytic philosophers just as much as Kierkegaardians or whoever. But I do think that deductive, foundationalist philosophies run a higher risk of being trapped in a method that, for structural reasons, cannot see a different viewpoint as anything other than a deductive mistake or misunderstanding.

So I guess it is a philosophical question!

If we're not careful, this is going to turn into a wrangle about the correct definition of "philosophy." NOOOooooo! :groan:

I would rather say we should try to interpret people as they themselves do, but trying to save their ideas from their own interpretation is also a great philosophical art. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's plenty good enough for me. So what we'd like to see a lot less of, both on TPF and in general, is the sort of interpretation -- if I can even call it that -- that recasts someone's view as "but what you're saying really comes down to . . ." or "but that's the same as ___ [fill in label of disliked philosophy]" and then draws a very negative and unintended conclusion. Such an approach is the opposite of "saving an idea from their own [poor] interpretation"; it actually strives for that poor interpretation and then insists that the speaker now must interpret it that way too.

There is an irony here in that many of the "great names" do this to each other. Nietzsche is obviously offender #1, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I see what you mean, except . . . I really did mean "the barest glimpse," i.e., people who've read a little bit of K or A or W in a class and feel themselves to be experts. Nietzsche acquitted himself rather better than that, wouldn't you say?

(I especially enjoyed his critique of Wittgenstein. :wink: )

[miserable truth-seeker as opposed to having chosen a more joyous path] Which sort of person is more wise is the question. — Hanover

And a very good one. Now suppose I ask, "What kind of question is that?" I'm genuinely interested in your answer; for what it's worth, mine is, "It's a philosophical question" -- that is, one that falls within philosophy to answer if it can.

The issue I have experienced is that in trying to understand the other's position you find that the person doesn't appear to understand it themselves because they haven't bothered questioning it themselves (reflection). — Harry Hindu

Sure, and that's why a charitable reading can be important. You can help make the position clearer and more compelling! (And maybe start by discarding the assumption that the person "hasn't bothered questioning it themselves." Perhaps they've done so to the best of their ability.)

When I show the discrepancies it is ignored — Harry Hindu

Well, showing discrepancies, that's step two, which requires a whole new mindset, I've found. Quite often, if I start by indicating that I do have some understanding of the position, and can see some value or importance, and then describe the discrepancies I also see, it's received more openly. Or not, of course! -- people get defensive.

I'm asking a question you should be asking yourself about your own position if you reflect honestly upon your own position. — Harry Hindu

Is the "you" here the "British 'one'" -- that is, "one should be asking oneself . . ." etc. -- or do you mean "you" as in me, specifically the position about understanding another's position that I was sketching?

If the conclusion you have reached is aporetic then you've made a wrong turn somewhere in your thinking and would need to reflect. — Harry Hindu

Say more about this? I'm not understanding yet why aporia wouldn't be a possible outcome for a philosophical inquiry.

Interestingly, this approach provides a theory that is consistent at the cost of not assigning a truth value to every sentence. — Banno

I hadn't thought about the Tarksi/Kripke angle. The "cost," when it comes to a philosophical Theory of Everything, may be something very much like this. Not every sentence can be given a truth-value, though such sentences may be needed for consistency. At the least, do we know that a truth-value in a metalanguage -- say, my "different level" in which we'd give an account of explanation -- has to be constructed differently from one within the target language? Logicians invited to weigh in here.

Can I draw your attention to how these posts are now about evaluating what we do so that we can improve? and not just that, but what it is to become better?

I like how this is panning out. — Banno

Indeed. Sometimes opening a meta-discourse such as your OP will draw people into a frame of reference that's fresher than their usual ones -- or at least that's how I experience it.

(Incidentally, from what very little I know, Richard Bernstein was not one of those who neglected [praxis, in favor of theoria]. — Wayfarer

Right. He was kind of a genius at theoretical thinking, but his background in the Frankfurt School and Aristotle never deserted him. The majority of his books turn at some point to the question of praxis, asking what philosophy, and philosophers, are doing. What is the good that we hope to accomplish? This was also why he was such great friends with Habermas, I think.

Explanation has to be on a different level than the thing it explains. Always leaving the explanation itself lacking an explanation. — Fire Ologist

Well, it leaves it lacking for the time being, within the target level. I didn't mean to imply that there might not be satisfactory, non-circular resolutions of this. @Banno has some ideas about that, above. There is also the idea that some version of "explanation" may be non-discursive, non-rational, a kind of showing or demonstration.

You really don't have a right to an opinion until you're sure you've achieved the most charitable, satisfying reading possible.
— J
I'm very sympathetic to that idea. But I don't see how one could ever be sure that one has achieved the goal and even less sure that every idea deserves the same charity. — Ludwig V

Yes, as I replied to Banno above. Maybe amend the Bernsteinian credo to "the most charitable, satisfying reading possible for you, as best you can tell." We'll never get it exactly right; we just want the good habit, the good intention.

I appreciate the Richard Bernstein account. Trouble is, there are limits on our resources. — Banno

Yes, and consider the context: He was speaking to students, young minds, and urging us to develop good habits, not necessarily to practice this kind of thoroughness on every conceivable occasion.

There are views that look to be not worth the effort. And we have to make judgements as to where we start our efforts and what to look at in detail. — Banno

Especially if such views aren't those of a historically important or well-regarded philosopher, but just some folks like us on TPF. So, often the best alternative for me is to not get involved. But if I do want to respond (and again, I wish I lived up to this as well as I should), there's really no excuse for not doing my best to construct that charitable account first.

I think too that Bernstein had in mind an approach to take with major philosophers. It's one thing to slight someone's opinion -- perhaps for good reason -- in a dorm-room bull session, and quite another to get the barest glimpse of Kant or Aristotle or Wittgenstein and then believe you're in a position to refute some key point. This is especially egregious when the refutation is scornful, implying that K or A or W must have been really unintelligent because you have shown them to be wrong! Such arrogance.

Glad you liked it. And a thorough understanding of a difficult position you're pretty sure you won't end up agreeing with is really hard! But if you don't try for it, you're just creating little straw figures in your head to call "wrong" -- or worse, to file away under convenient labels ("modern," "religious", et al.) so as to avoid doing the hard work of thinking through another person's mind.

a theory that explains, for anything that is the case, why it is the case, can't by that very fact take anything as granted - to do so would be not to offer an explanation. — Banno

Your OP has already generated a lot of the good discussion it so richly deserves. I'll chime in on two points. The first relates to the quote above. A Theory Of Everything, in philosophy, would naturally have to include a theory of explanation itself -- what counts as explanatory, how explanations do in fact make sense of things, how we recognize an adequate justification, and much more. So to avoid circularity, a TOE will have to provide this account on a different level than the theory-internal explanations of other things. One of my main difficulties with this kind of grand theorizing is that not enough attention is devoted to recognizing this problem and giving a straightforward account of the necessary postulates or intuitions for explanation. And you can't just name them: Such an account must include the reasons why these postulates or intuitions are free from interpretation by the theory itself -- no easy task.

The second point concerns the discourse vs. dissection idea, which is a very helpful way to think about phil. It overlaps with the idea that philosophy is about some kind of wisdom or understanding. I got to take a class once with Richard Bernstein, and I remember his credo, which was something like this: "You have to restrain your desire to respond and refute until you've thoroughly understood the philosopher or the position you're addressing. [And boy did he mean "thoroughly"!]. You really don't have a right to an opinion until you're sure you've achieved the most charitable, satisfying reading possible. Otherwise it's just a game of who can make the cleverer arguments." I forget this constantly, as we all do, but I still hold it as ideal. You can't start being wise until you first understand. And yes, quite often the wisdom is aporetic, but that should teach us something about the nature of philosophy, not make us look forward to some glorious day when all the questions will be answered correctly, as demonstrated by superior argumentative skill.

Well done! I'm looking forward to responding soon . . .

But I could say, “You should have seen the weather where I grew up” or concede partly “I must still be warm from inside.” — Antony Nickles

Yet more subtleties, but you're right to bring them up. The first response cashes out to "I call this warm, because I'm comparing it to some even colder place." The second response says, "I feel warm despite the temperature, so the reason must be . . . " Both responses propose ways not to be wrong when saying "It's warm out" -- but do they succeed? I think not, because "It's warm out" is taken to be a (more or less) factual description, not a report of how I use words or how I feel.

Also, interestingly, I could make either of the above responses and deny that I believe it's warm out. I could say, for instance, "Yes, I understand that it isn't actually warm, this is just some info about why I use 'warm' differently and/or how I'm feeling right now. If you press me, I don't believe it's objectively warm out; I understand that such a belief isn't consistent with the temp being 0 degrees."

Maybe it takes more, better example of when belief absolutely flies in the face of facts, because it is contingent on me, thus the desire to either discount it, or create something to fix it internally, like “emotion”. — Antony Nickles

I don't understand this exactly. Say more?

Perhaps here we agree that the thermometer reads 0℃ and yet differ as to the appropriate response? — Banno

Another, similar way of saying the above. We concede the fact of the matter but notice that different responses might make sense for different people.

Do we then have agreement as to the facts, but not as to what to do about them? — Banno

Well, I wouldn't have said "what to do about them," but I think I see what you mean. We differ on what to say about them, perhaps, and certainly on what they feel like.

Do we (not you and me, but the two people discussing the temperature) agree or differ, though, on whether it's actually possible to believe it's warm out? I want to say that agreement as to the facts means such a belief is impossible for either of them. But again, that raises the familiar issue of whether one can be said to believe something one knows isn't true.

Even if you point to the fact it is below freezing, I may still hold to my belief (impression, perspective, position). Would we then call that wrong? lacking evidence? unreasonable? irrational? — Antony Nickles

Ordinarily, just talking, I think we would use the word "wrong": "No, you're wrong, it's freezing out!" I hear you asking what, exactly, is being called wrong in such a case. I am wrong on the facts, no doubt of that: "warm" can't mean "freezing." But am I also being told that my belief is wrong? That I am wrong to believe what is not true? Perhaps I'm being told that I can't really believe it's warm out, given the temperature?

I think all these are possibilities, and I don't have a strong intuition about whether there is one correct usage here. It seems to depend on what the interlocutor assumes I do or don't know: If he assumes I don't know it's freezing out, then he probably thinks I've just made a mistake. If he assumes I do know, but maintain my belief anyway, then "wrong" starts to be replaced with either "crazy" or "lying about what I believe, for some reason". Background assumption: I can't believe something I also acknowledge isn't true.

I don't find the view you're sketching here to be absurd, or impossible, or even implausible. It may even be the case that we don't significantly disagree, because, as so often happens at this level of theorizing, we're likely giving different interpretations to certain terms.

Going carefully into that would require a paper, not a post. I'll just give one example of what I mean.

Rather, isn't it the case that our particular needs and capacities as humans allow us to perceive and group items in the world according to categories like "discrete" and "solid"? — J

Yes. That does not mean they do not exist otherwise. — AmadeusD

But I do think they exist otherwise. So what would lead to you believe I don't? Here, it looks like you want to equate what I'm calling "items in the world" with "things that exist." How should we think, then, of an item? In my way of talking, there is a description of such items that we can give, while allowing the possibility that the item could still exist under another description. In your way of talking, that isn't possible. You seem to be saying that for the item not to be described in a certain way would mean it "does not exist otherwise" -- that is, that is ceases to be an existent thing at all. Whereas I'm saying that there is a way of existing that doesn't require our usual terminology.

So we're differing about what to quantify over, I'd say.

shared intentionality and cognition first. . . . — Srap Tasmaner

Good, and your experience with your granddaughter illustrates it beautifully.

The private language argument shows the incoherence of a language that in principle cannot be shared. It remains that something – a reference – may be in fact unshared yet not unsharable. — Banno

That's where I come out too -- "private language" is a bizarre if useful thought experiment, whereas a reference may be private or not, depending. As you say, it's the difference between something that in principle would have to be unsharable, and something that just happens not to be shared.