But, I think a difficulty here, when one reads a work like De Anima is the desire to see it as some sort of contemporary empirical theory, which it sort of is, but this isn't really where its value lies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thank you for the citation. I always try to read philosophers sympathetically, in context, and fortunately with Aristotle there's an enormous interpretive literature I can consult.

And in virtue of what is a stance adopted? Reason? Sentiment? Aesthetic taste? Sheer impulse? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd refer you back to the "Epistemic Stances . . . " thread. I can't say it any better than Chakravartty does, or lay out the arguments any more clearly than I did in the OP. The short answer to your list, as you will see, is "none of the above." An epistemic stance will largely depend on "a collection of attitudes, values, aims, and other commitments relevant to thinking about scientific ontology, including policies or guidelines for the production of putatively factual beliefs," to quote Chakravartty. So I guess closer to "reasons," plural, than anything else on your list.

If they are disputable they will certainly be disputed, hence "how philosophy actually proceeds." — Count Timothy von Icarus

But isn't the goal of the kind of philosophy you espouse to resolve those disputes? More, to claim that in principle they must be resolvable? This would make the history of philosophy, taken in toto, a story of failure, since the disputes live on. That's the part that I have trouble recognizing as my own experience of doing philosophy with others.

and also morally questionable.

I don't get this one. How so? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The worry here is that the foundationalist philosopher who believes that everything of importance can be demonstrated apodictically, thus resolving all disagreements in favor of a position they hold, will treat those who disagree as if they must be doing something wrong, whether due to ignorance, stupidity, stubbornness, or malice. And we can't limit the "wrong" to "intellectual wrong," because the whole foundationalist picture is supposed to hang together, such that ethics follows from metaphysics, or at least depends upon it. Thus it is not merely possible but necessary that to be mistaken in one area is to be mistaken through and through, at least on the big-picture significant questions.

I certainly don't say that everyone who values a firm foundation for their philosophy has to think this way. But, as I said, it's a worry, especially when disagreements provoke ire, contempt, and unkindness toward those who disagree. In such cases, quite apart from the merits of the arguments, it's the attitude that disagreement must be ended, and would be ended if the world operated aright and everyone could reason properly, that gives me shivers. In everyday language, it's the attitude that says, "What's wrong with you! How can you still be disagreeing with me?!" Thomas knew about what can happen next . . . the old argumentum ad baculum. (He thought it was a fallacy. :smile: )

And would a strong epistemology of rational obligation mean that we were wrong in doing this?

Wrong in doing what exactly, not affirming truth? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, I meant wrong in claiming that we had reasons for affirming what we think true, as opposed to being caused to do so. I can tell that the reason/cause thing doesn't really speak to you, and that's fine, there's no need to pursue if it's not philosophically fruitful for you.

One of the problems with relativism as a nice solution to disagreements is that it doesn't actually allow "everyone to be right" anyhow. It says that everyone who isn't a relativist (most thinkers) is wrong. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't actually think that's true. Can you cite a relativist philosopher who says this, or who's been unable to respond to this criticism? If it were that simple to refute relativism, surely the position would be in the graveyard by now!

It leads to implausible claims. Joe has the property of being awake at T1, and the property of being asleep at T2.

Indeed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I know you meant to imply this, but just to keep things straight: What's implausible here is that Joe is two different objects at these two times, not that he could have these two properties.

Which might put a spanner into Kripke. Point 1 about how "if water is H2O" -- it's not, if we include D2O, for instance. — Moliere

Yes, maybe not a spanner exactly, but we can see that Kripke is working with some (unquestioned?) assumptions about who determines what something is -- scientists, in this case. He's willing to go along with the decision that H2O is water and D2O is not. That's reasonable, but it needs to be noticed as part of K's method.

What would the opposite of this be? You start with premises that are foundational and then refuse to affirm what follows from them? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, that would be ruled out, so the opposite would indeed be irrational. That's why indisputably foundational premises might be abandoned in favor of something closer to epistemic stance voluntarism. This may not be a worry for you, but many philosophers, myself included, are concerned about the consequences of rational obligation which do seem to follow, as you correctly show, from allegedly indisputable premises. The idea that there is only one right way to see the world, and only one view to take about disagreements, seems counter to how philosophy actually proceeds, in practice, and also morally questionable.

But this seems to make reason extrinsic to the rational nature, a source of constraint rather than the very means by which finite natures can transcend their finitude by questioning current belief and desire. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm getting confused by "rational nature" and "finite nature" and "transcend their finitude". Could you rephrase in more ordinary terms? Are you talking about objectivity and subjectivity?

The cause/reason issue is complicated. Maybe the right backdrop for it is the picture we commonly have of ourselves as thinkers. We give reasons, not causes, for what we think. Why is this? What difference does this way of talking point to? And would a strong epistemology of rational obligation mean that we were wrong in doing this?

As noted in the other thread, PA just lays out the challenge to scientific knowledge and demonstration. The full justification of the solution spans a good deal of the corpus because it involves the way man comes to know, and a sort of "metaphysics of knowledge." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I understand, and I don't expect you to do my Aristotle homework for me! Would it be possible, though, to point me toward the particular passages you describe thus?:

"'justification must end somewhere,' and Aristotle himself suggests this is an old problem by the time he is writing about it."

I'm very curious to see how Aristotle framed this problem.

Essentially, what we want to know is whether "a reason" must cash out to "an obligatory cause" of holding a particular belief. This is troubling, as discussed on the thread.
— J
So, not so sure about the "obligatory". — Banno

It's a big topic, probably not for this thread. One interesting way of phrasing the issue: If realism depends upon epistemic positions that must be taken on pain of self-contradiction, would that mean that even the most apparently entrenched philosophical disagreements not only are in principle resolvable, but must be so? In short, if you start from premises you believe you can show to be foundational, does that commit you to also saying that everything that follows is rationally obligatory? That you are caused to so reason?

It's a point about how there are a posteriori necessary truths -- it doesn't say that water is H2O; it's not relying upon the science for its point. Only if water is H2O then it is necessarily H2O, and this was a process of discovery from terms we previously would not have associated with H2O. — Moliere

This is how I read Kripke as well. The truth, if it is true, that water is H2O comes first, before invoking necessity.

I think I'd push against the notion that D2O is water, after all, because it's not potable. — Moliere

Well, here the "is" is open to interpretation. D2O isn't called water; it's called heavy water, which is meant to remind us of the family connection with what we do call water. We can, and do, also call it deuterium, with no reference to "water" at all. The Kripkean approach is, I think, intended to help us distinguish between which "is" questions are about essences, or properties like "potability," and which are about uses of words. Another way of saying this:

Different ways of talking about the same stuff. Are we obligated to say one is right, the other wrong? I don't see why. — Banno

Actually, I'm inclined to think that liberalism may be the best way of coping with the fact that we have to work out how to proceed from where we are, with all our different perspectives . . . — Ludwig V

Yes, this is key. I get the sense that hardcore opponents of liberal theory would object, right at the start, to the claim that we do have to do this -- that it may not be an ideal place to start but there's no way to create a different starting place without either tyranny or miracles. We find ourselves -- we in Western democracies, that is -- in a lively and diverse, if often acrimonious, conversation about what sorts of values and practices ought best to guide us. We can either encourage that conversation, hoping perhaps for a Peircean ideal convergence of inquiry, or attempt to abort it by the imposition of one set of values. (I'm still not clear how this would actually be done.)

The other point of strong objection, I think, is that Rawls (and to an extent Habermas) believes this pluralistic situation is inevitable and irreconcilable at this moment on some moral issues. "What are the grounds of toleration," Rawls asks, "given the fact of reasonable pluralism as the inevitable outcome of free institutions?" Opponents of this view would say three things:

1. You ought to be able to specify the grounds of toleration -- and we believe they're inconsistent and objectionable.

2. "Reasonable pluralism" is in the eye of the beholder.

3. What is it about "free institutions" that you think makes this outcome inevitable?

All three are perfectly good points to raise. But what is distressing to me is that, so often, opponents of liberalism seem to believe that merely to raise them is to defeat liberal theory -- as if these were stunning new insights that had never occurred to Rawls or Habermas! I think this attitude probably springs from never having actually read the philosophers in question, and using a straw-man cartoon of "liberalism," largely derived from contemporary politics, as the target. (I appreciate, BTW, your candor about your own knowledge of R and H.). But of course these issues have been intensely and carefully examined, repeatedly, in the literature.

OK, my mistake. If it's not much trouble, could you give the citation in PA for the argument you have in mind? Many thanks.

Sorry, I meant to include this link if it's helpful.

What is that difference? The similarity is here with the concept of God would be Deism, and in that case also, the consequences for us are irrelevant as we are probably an unknown entity of the simulation to those running it. — Christoffer

I'd think any concept of God would be parallel -- after all, the simulators are beings with personalities and desires, so perhaps more like the God of theism. Who knows what they know about us?

But I don't think that's the question. Your point -- that none of this should matter, since (without an interventionist God/simulator) it changes nothing in our possible daily experiences -- is perhaps correct, if humans were different sorts of creatures, more like Mr. Spock. But we care very much about meaning, about values, about who we are in the world, and for better or worse, the question of what created our world has almost universally been taken as mattering a great deal, on these questions. It's certainly my own experience. Again, you may be right that it shouldn't matter, logically, but that would involve some enormous changes in human culture.

If we are in a simulation, it is so advanced it is essentially reality for us, meaning, what's the difference between reality and a "simulation"? — Christoffer

None, in the sense you mean, but it would probably make a difference to us if we knew we were in a simulation. It's the same question as asking, "Are we in a world created by a God?" The answer seems to make a big difference . . . but maybe it shouldn't?

I defer to @Count Timothy von Icarus on that, though my impression is that Aristotelian metaphysics does depend on a robust concept of "essence."

Wittgenstein is unknowingly retreading the ground of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics re "justification must end somewhere," and Aristotle himself suggests this is an old problem by the time he is writing about it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We discussed Aristotle's argument from PA on the "Epistemic Stances" thread. I argued that the reasoning was faulty, and concluded by saying:

"So this would not be a powerful enough conclusion to show that discursive knowledge is possible (one of the original premises of the argument as you gave it). In this version there is no longer a piece of discursive knowledge to point to. So perhaps this doesn’t get you (or Aristotle) where you’d like to go."

You never replied, but it did leave me wondering whether you agreed. I'd invite both you and @frank to have a look at the last page of that thread, beginning from where you introduce the PA, and tell me if you still believe Aristotle's reasoning holds up.

I'll insist that there can be no "pre-linguistic metaphysical practice" that we cannot put into words post-hoc; otherwise how could we be said to recognise it as a practice? — Banno

I was saying much the same thing. I don't think we even need the "post-hoc" qualification. Language can start with non-metaphysical uses, and build its boat on the ocean, as it goes along, concerning more philosophical uses. The idea is that the practice develops with the language, and vice versa. This is meant to counter the hypothesis that the relevant linguistic structures were there first, causing the metaphysical thinking to be what it is. And of course, as you say, the mirror hypothesis of "metaphysical thinking" starting before language seems unlikely as well.

It seems the problem with hermeneutics lies in specifying what criteria there could be for a reading to count as a correct reading. — Janus

Yes. And this encompasses the equally difficult question of whether there is only one correct reading. This becomes especially important when we extend hermeneutics from the interpretation of texts to the interpretation of experience, a la Gadamer and Ricoeur. What is valuable and freeing about hermeneutics, I think, is that it challenges the "one correct version" of things, all down the line. Gadamer and Ricoeur (and others) strive to find the middle ground between rejecting a kind of quasi-scientific, deductive method of interpreting experience, but also not falling into an anything-goes relativism about what counts as "correct."

But let's say we found a middle ground we could justify. Would "the meaning of X," using such a hermeneutic, be said to be knowledge? I think so. Our ordinary discourse speaks uncontroversially about "knowing what X means." And anyone is entitled to say, "That's not what I meant!" and be understood. To leap several steps ahead, I'm exploring whether the meaning of an allegedly mystical experience can be the subject of correct interpretation.

What could it mean to say I know the theory of relativity is correct beyond saying that there is reliable evidence that it works? — Janus

Quite so, but for me, the non-physicist, the reliable evidence is not Einstein's equations but my evaluation of the competence and sincerity of those who understand those equations. A very different kind of evidence, and yet I insist that I'm justified in saying that I know the theory is correct.

You seem to be hung up on the idea that every property of an object is essential to that object's identity. If not, then two distinct objects could have the same identity. Why is this difficult for you to accept? — Metaphysician Undercover

It leads to implausible claims. Joe has the property of being awake at T1, and the property of being asleep at T2. These are certainly not trivial properties, yet does anyone claim that Joe is not the same person? And this line of thought leads inevitably to the tensed character of such statements, which is why Kripke and possible worlds becomes important. I'll take your word for it that "rigid designator" seems very simple to you, but its use in understanding the issues here is not. At the risk of being a nag, could I suggest again that you actually read one of Kripke's lectures?

The point is not that the symbols on the paper somehow force you to add them, merely that when you add sums on a paper those signs determine which numbers you add. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There has to be some sort of "physical-ish causality," right? Else how could ink in a paper book (a physical object) lead you to have the very specific thoughts of War and Peace, or a light reliably make people apply their brakes? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good, I understand you better now. What I want to understand better for myself is whether this conception of causality must entail necessity and obligation. The numbers don't force me to add them (an action in the physical world), granted, but the question is, if I do add them (and only them, not some others), do they force me to have the reasons I have for my correct answer? It's the relationship between causes and reasons that I'm concerned with here, how we bridge the gap between physical-ish causes and thought-ish reasons.

Similarly, with War and Peace, the cause/reason question emerges at the connection between these abstract marks on paper and what they mean. Arguably, the introduction of meaning moves us from causes to reasons.

But let me think more on it, thanks for clarifying.

Sure. And I don't really know how much info I'd need before some insight crystallized. One missing piece (or maybe you already said?): It sounds like there's a great deal of amity and cooperation among and between both the NHI groups and the Earth nations (USA, China, Russia, all getting along well on this topic). Is that part of what you want us to imagine? I can't help feeling that needs its own explanation, and it would definitely have a bearing on how a roll-out of disclosure might go.

I'd like some coherent story of what these NHI people are doing here. — unenlightened

This is fun! But, like @unenlightened, I require more information before I could have an intelligent opinion. This is quite often the case with so-called "magical hypotheses," in which you're presented with some outrageous counterfactual situation (usually ethical) and then asked "What should you do?" All one can say is, "I have no idea, given this scanty data. Can you tell me why the brain is in the vat / why the people are on the trolley line / why the evil Programmer has put me on Twin Earth . . .?" etc. etc.

Yes, that's a useful distinction, although I don't think the two are unrelated. The numbers you are adding up play a role in the second sense of "reasons." They are the reason you add those numbers and not any other. The signs on the paper are the content determining cause of some of your thoughts. That's the causality unique to signs, to make us think one thing instead of any other. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm glad the distinction makes sense to you as well. I may not quite be following what you say next, though. The numbers -- that is, the specific marks on paper -- are the reason, in the sense that I would give as "my reason," for why I perform that particular addition and no other. You're saying, as well, that these signs (presumably uninterpreted?) cause some of my thoughts, that they "make me think one thing instead of any other." Does this process stop with the identification of one number? Or does it also compel the first sum, then the next, then the next . . .? It's that kind of physical-ish causality that I'm leery of, if you really do mean that I had no choice other than to "think one thing." But before I go on about that, tell me whether I've grasped your point.

Misunderstand, or just don't agree with? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not sure which is the case for you, that's true.

You apparently have the idea of a government that can "give answers" on matters such as human telos, or avoid doing so. But what would this mean in practice? - J

This was a genuine question for you. There is a classical liberal response to the question of how a government would "give answers" on such weighty questions -- that it involves unacceptable uses of state power -- this was the answer I sketched. I'm still wondering how you think of it, though; I'm not really sure which part of the position seems wrong to you. How ought the state, as you conceive it, give answers about the human telos, and why would that be acceptable?

. . . when [the state] answers such questions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again . . . what do you mean? Who is answering, and with what means? Do you mean through laws, or proclamations, or economic policies? I know you have something in mind but I can't see it yet.

One person's individual liberty can be justly constrained only because it "gums up the works for everyone else," i.e. because it infringes on other's individual liberty. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm still at a basic loss about what you conceive the alternative to be. What would be the other, presumably more attractive, reason for constraining individual liberty?

Here is a potential confusion. We might say we think or do something "for no reason at all," when what we really mean is "we acted without any rational deliberation." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Causes and reasons are fairly synonymous in some senses. — Count Timothy von Icarus

“There is a reason that X . . .” is different than “I have a reason for X,” when X is some belief or action. In the first case, it’s closer to saying “Something caused X”; in the second case, it’s saying, “Here is why I chose X.” So, while I agree that the equivocal overlap in usage can create the sense of synonymy, it’s usually more perspicuous to keep them distinct.

This can also be brought out with another example. You give me a string of numbers and ask me to add them up. I do so, and say, “Fifty.” Have I been caused to say “Fifty”? Or would we say that I can give my reasons for saying “Fifty”? And if I’ve added incorrectly? My reasons, as we’d ordinarily understand the word, for saying “Fifty” can’t be the same as what caused me to say “Fifty.”

I realize that's grossly over-simplified, but starting from the premiss that society and government are impositions on us is a mistake. — Ludwig V

Not grossly, though we both know there are important nuances left out. And funnily enough, I associate the position that "government imposes on individual freedoms" with certain strands of conservatism, not liberalism. The current hatred, in the US, of the federal government by right-wingers may be an offshoot of this, though of course no intelligent conservative would create DOGE.

I daresay there are strands of liberal thought that downplay the role of societal formation, and imagine a citizen as being in a position to make some ideal free choices. All I can say is, Rawls and Habermas (if you count him as a liberal theorist) are painstakingly aware of the trade-offs here.

Well I don't want to say that interpretations of mystical or religious experience cannot be correct, but I would say that there is no way of determining whether or not they are correct. — Janus

Yes, this is a good distinction. I stand by my hunch that those who firmly oppose such interpretations go further than you, and claim that they could not be correct. This moots the question about how we could determine whether they are.

It seems we have three sources of grounding for our beliefs, or if you prefer, the premises upon which we base our (hopefully) consistent reasoning―logic, perceptual observation, and reflection on and generalization from experience. The latter is what I would say phenomenology at its best consists in. — Janus

That third category is the problematic one. Is this where we'd put hermeneutics? Do you allow that hermeneutics can produce genuine knowledge? In its original sense of textual interpretation, we want to say that there can be better or worse readings, and that some readings can be known to be incorrect, and that some (perhaps quite small) group of readings can be known to be correct. Let's say this is so. Do we arrive at knowledge here by generalization from experience? I think so, but what kinds of experience? The experiences themselves are neither perceptual (that is, physical) nor logical.

Likewise we have no way of determining whether our beliefs about the reliability of others' judgements, or our scientific theories are correct, even though it seems reasonable to think we have a better idea about the veracity of those based on whether the predictions they yield are observed.

The only certainties would seem to be the logical, including mathematics, and the directly observable. — Janus

Yes, but I thought we agreed that this level of certainty is not what we require for something to count as knowledge. I know the special theory of relativity is correct, though I am not absolutely certain, because I can't do the math. On the JTB model, I think my belief is justified because of how I rate the scientific community which asserts it. I could be wrong. Just about all knowledge claims can be defeated. But I think it does violence to what we mean by "knowing something" to take this as a formal skepticism about non-analytic knowledge statements.

Oh, and the obvious reason that LNC is taken as a metaphysical or epistemic principle is that it is a grammatical principle, and our language is common to both. Language underpins both. — Banno

This is interesting. But it's open to the objection: How do we know that it's the language that underpins the metaphysics and the epistemology, rather than the reverse -- that the language has developed to reflect the metaphysics and epistemology? This, by the way, wouldn't involve positing a pre-linguistic metaphysical practice of some sort. We could have been building the grammar as we went along.

The leap from "no determinate causes" to "no reason at all" in particular still eludes me, too, and in particular because it "raises the unpleasant spectre of there being only one reasonable way to think and do". — Banno

The OP I started a while back, "Epistemic Stances and Rational Obligation," discusses this in some detail. Can't recall whether you and @Count Timothy von Icarus followed it. The debate there, between scientific realist Pincock and "voluntary epistemic stance" advocate Chakravartty, is a sharp one, and highlights the stakes. Essentially, what we want to know is whether "a reason" must cash out to "an obligatory cause" of holding a particular belief. This is troubling, as discussed on the thread.

Thanks for a considered and sympathetic response. — Banno

I always try, when the person I'm responding to shows the same traits.

So better, perhaps, to say that agreeing with either p or ~p is what we do, rather than a rule. — Banno

Hmm, this may wind up mattering quite a bit, but let's not worry about it for the moment.

There's this, about (p v ~p): "My puzzle is: How is it that these are two phenomena, which resemble each other so closely yet have such different objects?" The trite response is that p and ~p are not phenomena. What they are has been answered at length and in different ways. But further, what is salient, and what we discussed in our previous conversations concerning Frege, is that we read (p v ~p) as about one thing, not two. That's part of the function of "⊢" in Frege. — Banno

Some confusion here, likely my fault. By "two phenomena" I didn't mean p and its negation, but rather 1. the phenomenon of (p v ~p) as what I called a logical law, and 2. the phenomenon of (p v ~p) as a description of what must be the case concerning objects in the world. (Again, by using words like "phenomena" or "objects" I'm only seeking neutral nouns; no metaphysical baggage implied.) So I think your response involving Frege, while true, doesn't address my puzzle. My puzzle wants to know how it is the case -- if it is the case -- that we can understand 'p' as referring either to a logical proposition or, say, a rock.

Our difference may be that I think there is a point at which our spade is turned, a point at which the only answer is "It's what we do", but that you would try to dig further. I take the "counts as..." function to be sufficient, so that putting the ball in the net counts as a goal, no further explanation being possible. You seem to me to want to ask why it counts as a goal, to which the answer is it just does.

Does this seem a fair characterisation? — Banno

Yes.

So I'll throw the ball back - can you convince me that there is a further issue here that remains unanswered? — Banno

In reflecting on this, I notice that the difficulty is similar to the one I pointed out concerning allegedly pseudo- or misfiring questions. How can one demonstrate that a question is legitimate? The temptation is simply to reply, "Well, if you've never been troubled by this question, what can I say?" but I think that is a bad response. Getting people to be troubled by questions they haven't heretofore been troubled by is a primary goal of philosophy! So let me try.

How about if, for starters, we both agree to eschew "game" analogies. I've often wondered if Witt understood the connotations of "game" in English. Certainly the implication that "It's all a game!" drives many people batty -- but I doubt he meant it that way, as a trivial pastime we could just as easily not engage in, or exchange for a different one. The point, surely, is about rules, and about how knowing the rules is a spade-turning experience.

Before I go further, does this seem OK so far?

Setting some criteria of relevance, to me, is a sibling to just saying there is such a thing as a definition. — Fire Ologist

More like a second cousin, I'd say, but I understand you. :wink: Again, though, let's keep in mind whether the "such a thing as a definition" is meant to refer to our innocuous, stipulated-for-the-purposes-of-discussion definition, or something more permanent and indisputable. Because the question of relevance can be similarly discriminated. Biologists are clear on their criteria of relevance for discussing and defining "tiger" in the second sense. We philosophers are not, when it comes to terms like "faith" -- again, excluding silly limit-case examples.

OK. With respect, you really need to read Kripke and his critics before tackling this. The concept of a rigid designator is indispensable for understanding what's being debated. All the things you're calling "obvious" about possible worlds and identity are the very topics of this discussion.

Naming and Necessity is a transcription of lectures that Kripke gave, very informal and accessible.

So while I don’t disagree with what you are saying, I don’t think you’ve said enough, or as much as I am saying. — Fire Ologist

That's fair. I could easily have added something about how even a stipulated or tentative definition is going to have to exhibit certain features, if there's to be any point to it. Which features, exactly? Lots of dispute about this. We probably want to include something that will prevent talking about "socks" as part of a discussion of what faith is. In other words, some criterion of relevance. But, apart from the obviously absurd cases, this is a lot harder than it looks.

I'll try to come back to this . . .

And so on. — Ludwig V

Of course. Some sort of absolute personal freedom to do anything whatsoever is a non-starter -- and has nothing to do with liberal political philosophy. I can't think of anyone, actually, for whom this is a "slogan" -- some early 20thC anarchists?

The context in which this came up was whether there's something sketchy about a government organizing itself "primarily to enable the freedom of the individual to flourish." I don't think either @Count Timothy von Icarus, who raised the question, or I meant to imply that such a government wanted to return its citizens to some nightmare of self-willed anarchy. The question, rather, was why a desire for individual freedom, in and of itself, should be suspect. I don't want to be free of traffic regulations; I very much want to be free to read what I like. I was asking why talking about "freedom" as the freedom for an individual to flourish seemed wrong-headed to Count T.

It's all a convoluted mess with the mind, with thoughts about things, or with language about thoughts about things, and further convoluted when we try to get two people to agree on the language about thoughts about things. It's why so many threads devolve into this same issue - "what can be said clearly, at all, ever, about anything?" — Fire Ologist

Welcome to philosophy!

you were forced to draw a clear line, provide a provisional, cursory, placeholder definition of "definition" to show a distinction between your concept of things and mine.

That is all my point is. — Fire Ologist

Then we're in accord. This is what I mean by "stipulating a definition for the purposes of discussion."

We dance around the elephant we keep inviting into the room when we think we are not defining things as we speak about things. — Fire Ologist

Well, this isn't quite so simple. Usually, when people talk about defining something, I think they have in mind more like a dictionary definition, an agreed-upon use of a word which makes it correct. But you've said, and I agree, that "stipulating a definition for the purposes of discussion" isn't like that. It's more like drawing a temporary distinction in terms so that two people can converse intelligently. I'm not sure what's elephantine here.

It's the question of "how do we know." It's "what is truth?" It's "What is meaning?" It's "What is a thing?". Same ultimate issues presented. Words-concepts-communication. — Fire Ologist

Just a suggestion: In a sense, you're right that all these Big Questions refer to, and hinge upon, each other, but by linking them up like this, they become so flabbergasting that it's hard to know where to start. It makes it sound as if you have to address them all, and all at once, in order to get any philosophical work done. In my experience, picking smaller, more tractable questions works better. You arrive at the big ones anyway, but the path is clearer.

it does rule out action that is not determined by prior actuality. Defaulting on this would be defaulting on things having causes and the world being intelligible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can just about imagine this, in the physical world, though the determinism is breathtakingly thorough. But does this principle also mean that everything you and I think and do is similarly poised between "determined by prior actuality" and "having no reasons at all"? Apart from the metaphysical difficulties around causes versus reasons, it also raises the unpleasant specter of there being only one reasonable way to think and do.

It would take us a while to sort out the differences in our terminology (potency, "determined by being", "moved to actuality by prior actuality," et al.) but that's all right, I just wanted to help you and @Banno disagree constructively -- may have failed completely! The leap from "no determinate causes" to "no reason at all" in particular still eludes me.

Oh, about the bent key: Surely it's just terminology? Sometimes we think of a key as something that opens X. Other times we think of it as a thing that used to open X, or ought to open X. If we favor the "working model," so to speak, then it's perfectly sensible to say of a bent key that it used to be the key to my house, but now isn't a key to anything, and that when it's bent back, it is so again. I didn't mean any of this to be controversial, sorry.

Thanks for this. I haven't forgotten you. I'll reply soon.

But that isn't what "your house key" means. If someone changes the locks on my door while I'm out, my key doesn't cease to be mine. And if I bend the key, it won't turn the lock, even though it is still the same key and the same lock. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Hmm, I dunno. In the first case, it's no longer my house key, though it is still mine. And in the second, calling it "the same key" is equivocal; it isn't really isn't a key any more at all.

If we allow "why does my key turn my lock?" to become an aporia, then what won't be? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh, I agree. I don't want it to be aporetic at all. It's just a hard question to answer, when the analogy is extended to logical primitives.

What would it mean for them to have different objects? It would mean that thought is arbitrarily related to reality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see why. Why must the difference be arbitrary? If anything, my puzzlement postulates the opposite: that it isn't arbitrary, that there ought to be some explanation. But you can't deny that a rock and a proposition are extremely different items.

If reality is arbitrarily, randomly related to appearances . . . — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, you're reading way more into my position than I intended. Arbitrariness and randomness are not the only alternatives.

. . . unrelated to any thought or experience anyone has ever had, or could ever have? — Count Timothy von Icarus

And again. Why puff it up in this way? No one, least of all me, is saying anything like this.

PNC can be formulated as a metaphysical, epistemic, or semantic principle. — Count Timothy von Icarus

OK. So you're saying that, as it happens, it applies to three areas or types of phenomena. Or would "types of activity" be better? I don't want to put words in your mouth.

Ultimately, the latter will tie back to the former if the former is affirmed because being (existence) is prior to being experienced and being spoken about. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"Tie back" raises the problem once again. Why does it do so? In what way? The priority of existence to human experience wouldn't guarantee the fidelity of our descriptions of that existence. Why does the key fit?

I think what you're saying is that PNC is a principle both of thinking and of being, full stop. It (and its cousins in the P family :smile: ) is what we mean by "truth", mean by "exist". But if that is all that can be said, then shouldn't you agree with @Banno and Witt? Further questions about how or why this is the case would be ill-formed.

In other words, your classification of the ways we perceive and use PNC may be quite accurate, but it leaves untouched my question about why, about what grounds what. See my reply to @Banno above: How is it the case that the world, and our experience of it, is so structured? Does the PNC and its cousins represent spade-turning principles about both thinking and being, in the same way, and for the same reasons?

Now we might be tempted to ask why p v ~p is so much more useful than p ^ ~p. But isn't one answer here just that we can do more with it? That it is more useful because it is more useful? — Banno

I'm not sure that qualifies as an answer, even generously.
— J

It's not so much an answer as an attempt to show how the question misfires.

You seem to be in the position of someone who asks how it is that their key just happens to fit their front door and no one else's. — Banno

In a funny way, that is what I'm asking. It seems too good to be true -- not that the key fits, but that I find myself with that particular key to hand. — J

OK. Deep breath. No, I don't think your response is a deflection, as @Count Timothy von Icarus is suggesting. When a philosopher believes that a question is a not a good one -- that there is no answer that can be meaningfully given, because it doesn't discriminate between two genuine alternatives -- it's often hard to show this. Telling a little analogical story can help. Witt of course was the master of this.

So, faced with a question that you think is defective, you ask me to imagine myself puzzled about why my housekey fits my door, and only my door. Very well. Imagining this, what might puzzle me? It could be two things: I might ask, "Why does this key uniquely fit my door?" or I might ask "Why do I happen to have this key?"

Now I think what I'm supposed to imagine next is that both questions get an explanation or a deconstructive answer that can resolve my puzzlement. To the first question, the reply is, "Because that's what 'your housekey' means. You can't have 'your housekey' without it having both those attributes: it fits your lock, and only your lock. So if you understand 'your housekey', there is no further question to be asked about it." To the second question, the reply is, "Because that's how an object comes to be yours: you possess it, it's been made for you and given to you. Also, since it's an important object in your life, you'll have it to hand, and shouldn't be surprised that this is the case. Are you still puzzled about why you live in a world in which all people fortunate enough to be housed have keys? You just do; that is your world; there's nothing special about you."

Being a philosopher, I can make trouble for both these replies, but I don't really want to. On the whole, they're reasonable, as an account of the keys-and-locks "game." But I challenge whether the story is analogical to my questions about logical primitives.

(p v ~p) appears to fit -- to "be the key" -- to two types of phenomena. It appears to be a law of thought, perhaps normative, perhaps transcendentally descriptive, perhaps psychological, depending on how we rate Frege. It also appears to describe necessary facts about objects in the world, all things being equal. My puzzle is: How is it that these are two phenomena, which resemble each other so closely yet have such different objects? Or am I wrong about that? Must I simply accept that the "key" of logic fits the "lock" of the world? Is it the case that, just as you can't have "my housekey" without understanding "my uniquely fitting key", you can't have (p v ~p) without understanding "our description of the world" or perhaps "what we do, talking about the world"?

It's interesting that both the time-honored view of mind as reflecting the structure of reality -- a "unique fit" if there ever was one -- and the contemporary Witt-based view that questions about the relation of mind and reality are defective, aim at resolving the same question, the question I'm posing. I don't find either view persuasive on the merits. Both attempt to dismiss the question at a bedrock level. Each finds its "spade turned" at the idea that this just is how it is, though I think most earlier versions would postulate God as the reason.

I don't think what I've just written is a satisfactory rebuttal to the analogy of the locks and keys. I would need to say more about what makes logical items like (p v ~p) hold up under the deconstructive dismissal I've described. But for now, I just want to give a picture of how I see the question. If you want to correct my versions of how the question might be said to misfire, please do; I don't want to waste anyone's time with straw-persons.

If we do not accept that the frog can be both alive and dead, then a logic that allows this is not suitable. — Banno

Conversely, if we do accept it, then such a logic would be suitable? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you two are trying to formulate an answer to the question I keep posing: What is the LNC about? What is it a law of? What domain does it govern? What can fill in 'p'?

I don't want to interrupt your conversation, which perhaps you find fruitful, but you might take a stab at answering -- or dissolving -- that question, tentatively. I'll expand this in a subsequent reply to @Banno about the suspicious key that fits my lock.

The problem is that my "ordinary accumulations of experience cannot be obvious to anyone else, so I think my intuitions about something like choosing intuitively who to hire as Tom Storm gave as an example does not seem to offer any cogent justification for my believing his choice was correct unless I had my own accumulated experience that showed a substantial history of his good judgement of character. — Janus

I meant to suggest something similar, when I wrote about the trustworthiness of people's intuitions. Your intuition about the job candidate is private and, in an extreme case, unjustifiable to anyone but yourself. But my choice to trust your intuition can be justified fairly easily -- again, not with any absolute certainty.

the belief in the existence of God or that some metaphysical thesis is the true one are not experiences, but may be held on account of experiences, and in turn give rise to experiences. — Janus

Yes. This takes us to the question of meaning, of interpretation. My sense is that those who are firmly opposed to the idea of religious or mystical experiences believe that no conceivable interpretation of experience that include references to godlike entities could be correct. That, I'm sure we both agree, needs independent argumentation.