If a cat watches a mouse run behind the stove and subsequently believes that the mouse is behind the stove, then that belief is existentially dependent upon language in the same way that the previous example is. The stove is existentially dependent upon language. So, language needs to be involved in those particular beliefs as an existential precondition for the possibility thereof. — creativesoul

Sounds like the belief of the cat the mouse is behind the stove is as dependent on language as my belief that the milk is in the fridge is dependent on cows (if it's cowmilk) - as a cat-external factor (and one the cat might only dimly understand to begin with). Why, then, are we talking about language and not, say, gravity. The stove's existentially dependent on many, many things, few of which seem part of the present belief.

I didn't see it that way at all. You do not look foolish to me. Becoming aware of our own false belief seems like an accomplishment. I mean, we're all aware of our own fallibility, aren't we? — creativesoul

I didn't become aware of a false belief in that case: I lost track of why I was uttering the proposition, given that statements that include "all" tend to not reflect beliefs of mine, but function more as attractors for... something. I'd forgotten what that was, partly through focussing too much on the truth content.

Truth, for me, tends to erode meaning. Hard to explain psychological process.

What's the difference between using the English language and using the English language like one knows it is a nominative-accusative language? — creativesoul

There is none. Since English is a nominitave-accusative language, speaking English is speaking a nominative-accusative langue. I'll have to highlight again that I said "in the sense that they use it like that without trouble". It's not the most precise phrasing, I'll admit, but the point here is very important.

English native speakers needn't reflect that English is a nominative-accusative language, ever. And since they don't need to, they usually don't. In fact they usually don't know that they could reflect on that.

So:

I originally thought that this focus upon English was meant to be an example of a background belief that is brought to the foreground. — creativesoul

For a linguist, or someone who knows a linguist, or for someone who's confronted with, say, an ergative-absolutive language, this comes to the foreground. Usually it doesn't. When it does come to the foreground for the first time, it's usually a recontextualisation of what you've been always doing: things could have been very different - in a way that's not immidately, intuitively understandable.

So knowing "that English is a nominative-accusative language" (in the theoretical sense) includes knoledge that knowing that English is a nominative-accusative language (in the practical sense) doesn not include. In the previous sentence I used quotationmarks to distinguish the knowledge-levels, here. This is related.

However, the practical knowledge comes first: it's a way of talking, something you do. The theoretic knowledge is derived, and now a nominative-accusative language is both something you speak and something you can speak about.

Learning that "English is a nominative-accusative language" doesn't impact the way you speak English at all - but understanding what you're doing when you speak English might make it easier to learn, say, Basque. Theorising this way is necessary not to speak English, but to contextualise English. There's potential for new practical knowledge.

Also, a potential for greater awareness of what you're doing, though that might come at the cost of your practical efficiency when speaking English (thought patterns previously impossible might interfere now).

And to some degree this is the relationship between human and cat in the example: when we talk about what the cat believes, we take the point of view of the theoriser. There's a mat and a mouse. And so on.

This is what "behavioural implicature" means to me. A perspectival imputation. Basically: linguist:native speaker = human:cat. And since I'm a pretty staunch relativist, I'm fairly sure there's no way around behavioural implicature.

So, how does this notion of behavioural implicature deal with the fact that behaviour alone is indeterminate regarding that? — creativesoul

Via an iterative process of situational compatibility. Behavioural implicature is reinforced when our expectations are met.

So:

We all know, I presume anyway, that a mouse is incapable of contemplating the consequences of the double slit experiment. — creativesoul

Under behavioural implicature the question is: what sort of behaviour from a mouse would have you question this piece of "knowledge"? We're not coming at this from a neutral postion. We make working assumptions until they fail us. I mean, I certainly wouldn't assume that a mouse was reading this thread, just because I catch it looking at the screen...

If we are to attribute thought and belief to another creature, we ought to have at least a well-grounded idea and/or standard regarding what sorts of creatures are capable of forming which sorts of beliefs. — creativesoul

What sort of commonalities do we start off from here, each of us, to begin with? I mean, in this thread I'm not even quite clear yet what counts as a "thought". Meanings and context relevances change the further we draw back, or the further we move in. I mean, the cat might believe that there's a mouse on the mat, and we might ask questions about meaning overlap and distinct life environments until the cows come home. If we go all the way back to the opening post, I'm fairly sure none of us would assume that the cat's going from "how's Ann doing" to "it's Ann's birthday, I need to catch a juicy mouse for her and drop it in front of her bedroom", at least not if we involve the words. Part of the problem here is scope.

If you remove language what remains? Can you compare across different life environments? And so on.

What does it mean to say: "the cat believes there's a mouse on the mat"? Any question, any answer, any puzzlement around this always comes from a particular perspective within that entire field. It's the philosophy tango. (Can you tell I'm getting tired?)

Would you care to set this disjunct out a bit more? — creativesoul

This wasn't there when I hit submit on my post above. I'm spent right now. I'll wait to see if something I said above helped make more sense of it. If not I'll (hopefully) come back to this.

ETA: It was there when I hit submit. It wasn't there when I started typing, and I didn't notice it before hitting submit. (So much for my precision...)

To the degree that the content therein is existentially dependent upon language. — creativesoul

Sure. To me that's just rephrasing the question.

Okay. So, it is not the case that beliefs might all be prelinguistic. — creativesoul

The logo-vampires have come and drained this proposition of all its meaning.

Seriously, though: When I say anything with "all... might..." it's almost always the case that I'm wrong, so if I say "no, it's not," here, I don't feel like I have said anything too meaningful. But then I also feel like I haven't said anything meaningful in the first place, here. Agreeing to this feels like a conversation stopper: I no longer know what to say, and I don't feel anything has been accomplished either. I end up walking away feeling vaguely foolish.

As I've said before in this thread, I don't think in words. When I say something, I also do something. But saying something is also doing something, so I do two things at once. When I then need to face what I said in too much detail, I get lost: I forget what it was I was trying to do in the first place, by saying what I said.

I normally don't lay this out, but I feel its pertinent to the topic of this thread, so....

Anyway, I'll take things out of order now:

I'm fairly certain I do not quite understand the point being made here. I'm curious about this notion of behavioural implicature. Could you explain it more, please? Thank you. — creativesoul

By behavioural implicature, I simply mean that if we do X, that implies we believe Y, otherwise our behaviour would be random. On this level, "we" includes any creature capable of meaning. Behavioural implicature, for the cat, means that if the cat wants to catch that mouse over there, it must believe that there is a mouse over there, or it couldn't want to catch "that mouse over there". But that applies to me just as well: if I ask you to pass the salt, I must believe many things: that you understand my language, that there's salt, that you're willing to co-operate, etc.

Now there's an important difference here between natural and institutional facts: If I believe this glass contains some drink, but I forgot that I used this glass to prepare salad dressing, I a sip will disabuse me of my belief: I was wrong.

If I believe that one shouldn't split infinitives but I can't kick the habit, I'm not wrong. I just fail to live up to my "belief". If I'm unaware that I'm splitting infinitives, there are two possibilities: (a) I have the false believe that I don't split infinitives, or (b) I just don't topicalise myself at all until someone points out my usage, and then I have options (consider my usage wrong; allow for exceptions; refine the "rule"...).

On the behavioural-implicature level, what matters for this post is whether I modify my split-infinitive behaviour, or whether I modify surrounding propositional output.

So:

Propositional attitudes are beliefs. — creativesoul

If behavioural implicature points towards believe, and propositional attitudes are beliefs, then I think a sentence like this would be meaningful: That you belief infinitives shouldn't be split, doesn't mean you belief that infinitives shouldn't be split. I'd just be using the same word in different ways.

So we need to be careful here: if the meaning of a proposition can be present without a proposition (as in the cat-case), and if there are cases where the propositional attitude points towards a different belief than the behavioural implicature, then what are we dealing with here?

It would, for example, be a valid approach to say that if the meaning of a proposition can be present without the proposition, then we can say that the cat has an attitude towards a proposition without needing to hold a proposition in mind (and the same goes for humans). After all, my concept of "behavioural implicature" also imposes mental content I can understand onto a creature which is not me.

But I don't belief that's useful here because it de-emphasises what ties the language and the throught together. All I have here is a vague idea of directionality: behavioural implicature points upwards towards propositional attitudes, and propositional attitudes point downwards towards behavioural implicature. A "belief" would have to be the entire system. The propositional part can miss entirely with no problem, but if there's no behavioural implicature, there's no meaning to the propositional attitudes.

So:

All I'm saying is that knowing that English is a nominative-accusative language requires knowing how to use "nominative-accusative", whereas plenty of native English speakers have no clue what those words mean(how to use them). They are native English speakers nonetheless. — creativesoul

If the topic is the proposition "English is a nominative-accusative language," then having an attitude towards this would require understanding it, sure. But I said:

For example, all native speakers of English "know" that English is a "nominative-accusative language", in the sense that they use it like that without trouble. — Dawnstorm

They display behavioural implicature that leads linguists to make the appropriate generalisations. The linguists are the humans; the non-linguist native speakers are the cat. The phrase "nominative-accusative language" is not that important here. One needn't priviledge language like that, when it comes to thought. Each of us, in this thread, when we type, reproduce a nominative-accusative language. We simply know how. The linguists describing it like this isn't necessary; other theoretical constellations could conceivably take care of that. But what they do is describe knowledge that exists, even if not in propositional form.

My approach is vague. And it has weaknesses (it's ill equipped to deal with highly abstract stuff - which includes philosophy, heh) It's my bias that leads me to the approach (and the bias stems to the way I think - often without words).

I apologise if none of that makes sense to you; I'm trying to explain something I haven't fully figured out.

However, I'm arguing that belief formation is required prior to that belief later becoming a part of the background. — creativesoul

I don't disagree. The question, though, is to what degree language needs to be involved in belief formation.

In this case, the belief candidate under consideration is/was an attitude/disposition towards the following proposition:

"Beliefs, for example, might all be pre-linguistic". — creativesoul

And it would definitely make sense to say that - in this case - language had to be involved, given what I've said in this thread. So this might count as an example of a belief that is not pre-linguistic.

But then we're almost exclusively talking about the proposition, and the attitude towards it:

All propositions are existentially dependent upon language. All attitudes/dispositions towards propositions are existentially dependent upon propositions. All attitudes/dispositions towards propositions are existentially dependent upon language. That which is existentially dependent upon language cannot exist prior to it. Thus, there are no such things as "prelinguistic" propositional attitudes/dispositions. — creativesoul

But what's the relationship between a propositional attitude and a belief? I'm fairly sure I've heard beliefs defined as "propositional attitudes", but since I'm comparing language-using and lagnauge-less creatures here, that definition doesn't seem useful. In the traffic-lights example above I've treated belief as "behavioural implicature". But now I have the reverse problem that "behavioural implicature" doesn't quite cut it for "beliefs might all be prelinguistic". Is there away to tie these disparate situations together?

What does it mean to "have an attitude towards a proposition", and what does it mean to "imply a belief in your actions"?

I think this is instructive here:

I am not one who holds that knowledge of the rules governing language is shown by correct usage(following them). — creativesoul

Nor am I. I've chosen the nominative-absolutive thing for a reason: it's so intuitive that most native speaker can't imagine it being different, and they usually have trouble learning an ergative-absolutive language. It's not the rules that determine what people do; it's what people do that determines the rules.

Language is interesting in that the expressed attitudes towards the propositions don't match what you would get from behavioural implicature. Linguists will, in these cases, side with behavioural implicature:

To make it clearer: People who will berate you for splitting an infinitive usually split infinitives themselves. That's not a one-rule-for-you-one-rule-for-me situation. They don't know they do it. They will correct themselves, and then err again. (I'm not sure this occurs with split-infinitives; but it's a common phenomenon.)

So the following is part of it:

Knowing how to use language does not require knowing how to talk about the rules governing such language.

But once you do try to talk about such language, you introduce the possibility of a disjunct between your propositional belief and your behavioural implicature.

Note that such a disjunct is not a factor for nominative-accusative languages. People out side of linguistics may have heard "nominative" and "accusative" (less so in English, as only pronouns still decline), but that's usually the extent of it.

Knowing that English is a nominative-accusative language requires both, knowing how to use English, and knowing what counts as being "a nominative-accusative language"(knowing which descriptions set that out and which do not). Knowing how to use English does not.

Knowing the associated propositions requires knowing about the typology. But the propositions are supposed to describe what people are doing. So if the propositions don't describe the behavioural implicature, the rule isn't there. So, from this perspective, either native speakers know that English is a nominative-accusative language, or linguists are wrong in some way. That's the connection here.

More generally, this is the relationship between theory and praxis. It's a difficult subject to work through, but I think we need to, if we wish to consider what various creatures have in common.

When preparing to cross, you don't think "green means go" in words, but aren't you proposing that the belief is activated and present for you, as your behavior demonstrates? — J

Yes, that's the gist of it.

I didn't actually think of "background beliefs" here. I'm not educated enough in philosophy to have that term at the fore of my mind, so I didn't consider that this could interfer (I've heard of those "background beliefs" before, but they're not likely to bubble up into my active consciousness.)

When I was talking about foreground vs. background here, I was thinking more about what's already active in the situation. We're talking about language and thought here: langauge-thought commands attention; that's why I think of it as the foreground. The trafficlight example just demands enough attention so that I don't miss danger. It's active, but background to whatever goes on in the foreground (that might be a book I've read on the train, or a problem I expect to face at work, etc.). If I were to witness an accident, I'd certainly have some of that bumped up to foreground, with a likely lasting effect on future backgrounds (i.e. I might be more cautious for a while, until routine reasserts itself).

That sort of foreground-background analysis is not something I'd dare do for a cat, now that I think of it. Maybe one of the functions of language is to facilitate a foreground? This something I actually haven't thought of before. If there's something to this, how would I handle it?

It seems to me that "Some thought relies on language" is undeniable. The content of some language less thought relies on language as well. Hence, such language less thought relies on language.

Cross referencing is a complex manner of drawing correlating/associating/connecting different things. As is naming. I'm curious if you'd agree with that? — creativesoul

This sounds mostly fine. The thing is I don't have a clear grasp on what that means, so I can't sign this just yet. We have differences in, I think, terminology that I'll adress further down this post.

But I'm cautiously agreeing here. (What I'm slightly worried about is whether you would agree with my reasons for agreeing with this... It gets complicated. You'll see later.)

I find that this quandary undermines itself. My attitude/disposition about the suggestion required first reading the suggestion. Hence, clearly not before it. I believe that the suggestion is not true. Your attitude/disposition about the possibility first required articulating the possibility. Again, clearly not before language, assuming you believe it to be true. — creativesoul

Yes, this happens when I got lost in my inner "quicksand" (to get the reference, refer to the David Bowie song of the same name). I over-extend myself. There are clearly beliefs that are impossible without language. I'll single this line out:

"Your attitude/disposition about the possibility first required articulating the possibility."

Unsure. I'm fairly sure that it's at least possible that that formulating some beliefs is what brings to your attention what you've implicitly believed so far. That is: sometimes formulating a belief is raising it from background to foreground status, and forgrounded beliefs are perceived more at risk. People might think they formed a belief, but really what happened is that - for the first time - they have cause to defend it. A conscious belief has entered the social arena, so to speak, and needs to be defended or modified or even abandoned.

Basically, the "possibility" needn't be articulated to act on it without a hiccup in social situations, and it's the hiccup in the social situation that causes you to formulate your belief. An attitude about a possibility is often part of the unacknowledged social praxis. We formulate possibilities to the degree that our beliefs have become problematic. We act on them without formulating them all the time. For example, all native speakers of English "know" that English is a "nominative-accusative language", in the sense that they use it like that without trouble. But among native speakers of English, you rarely need to formulate this: linguists are one systematic example. They know, too, that one alternative is the "ergative-absolutive language", and they can talk about the difference. A native speaker of English might have trouble understanding what's going on while learning, say, Basque. You now need to go back and formulate what you've always been instinctively doing, so you can then get back at the difference. But you certainly don't need to be able to explain the difference (or even know it exists) to speak English.

We're seeing the same mismatch currently around the gender topic, I think.

I don't see how the last statement follows from what preceded it. Although, I agree that there's a difference between result based thought/belief and process based, I would argue that it's not a difference in kind, but rather it's a difference in the complexity level necessary for forming/having it. All result-based thought/belief is process based. Furthermore, it seems to me that avoiding danger and gathering resources is results based. So, I do not see the value in the distinction here. — creativesoul

Yes, I'm on shaky ground here. I'm not at all confident about the distinction. However, I also think I might think in a different direction than you do, here. When it comes to ongoing thoughts, a process would provide something like an ongoing stream, a frame for the situation. And a result is something that was likely a frame in some other situation but not the present one with this precise ongoing thought.

Unsure, though. Not sure if this even makes sense. I need to think more on this (and I mean beyond the scope of this conversation; ask me again in a few years, and if I don't remember the distinction I didn't find it useful).

I'll skip a lot mostly because of a time limit, but this seems promising, as this seems to be where our perspectives mainly differ:

I don't know if I understand the first question, but I think you're asking something along the lines of how meaningful the mat is to the cat. That would all depend upon the sheer number of correlations that the mat had been a previous part of in the cat's thought, in addition to the content other than the mat. That's generally the case for all 'degrees' of meaningfulness, on my view. If you meant something else, perhaps you could rephrase the question?

I do not understand the second question at all. A mouse is a mouse. One hundred percent. If you're asking me whether or not the cat sees the mouse as a mouse, I'd defer to my last post which briefly discusses such manners of speaking, and ask if it is possible for a cat to look at a mouse and see something else? — creativesoul

When I think of a thought, I think of what's currently present in the mind and how it presents itself to the "thinker" in question. So, yes, it's about "how meaningful the mat is to the cat," but not only as a generalised object, also how relevant it is in the current situation. What about the mat is represented in the cat, so to speak, and what about the situation draws the attention to the mat. It is entirely possible that whatever-the-mat-means-to-the-cat-in-general is entirely in the background for the present situation. To believe that "the mouse is on the mat" is to draw a connection between the mat and the mouse that may be entirely a potential. The cat *can* have such a belief, but currently doesn't.

But here we stand perpendicular to the situation: whatever-the-mat-means-to-the-cat is not automatically the same as whatever-the-mat-means-to-the-human, though I expect there to be sufficient overlap for comparison.

Now, I think that we might - methodologically - assume a "hunting situation" that we assume we both understand. What then is the minimal overlap we'd expect, what are the opportunities for misunderstanding. The question about the mat then becomes to what degree does the cat have cause to form believes about what the human thinks of as a mat, in this very situation. This goes beyond the situation down to the bits of the cat's world-view that's inaccessible to us, but it always has the hunting situation at its core.

In short, we methodically assume a commonality, so that we don't have to assume commonalities outside of that context (hunting). But that also means we must attempt to scale back what we take for granted about mice and mats - and often the result of that is more a discovery about how we view the world than it is about how the cat views the world.

It's a methodology of controlled estrangement, if you will. The cat will not see anything but a mouse, in the sense that the mouse is there. But the mouse's mouse-ness is called into question - methodologically - by not assuming more commonalities than we must (and we must assume some commonalities, if we are to think at all).

So how to mats and mice correlate here? We can question mats, and we can question mice, and that's comparatively easier to questioning "mats and mice" at the same time. This assumes that there's no particular way any one individual (whether human or feline) might see anything else, though there's probably a set of restrictions of what's possible on the side of what becomes a mouse or a mat when presented to a consciousness.

I'd understand if this is hard going. You said earlier, you don't accept phenomenology (or something to that effect?), and this is definitely somewhat in the vicinity of Husserl, though viewed through the lense of sociology (say Alfred Schütz, or even Helmut Plessner). It's probably fine to drop that angle, if it gets in the way. But it'd be good to bear in mind the difference (if there be one), as I can't excise the influence easily, and it'll come up from time to time.

On the whole, we don't seem so far apart?

Hopefully "the line" is a bit better understood after the past couple posts. — creativesoul

Maybe. I'll know when the dust has settled (I tend to tire myself out.)

I'm trying to inquire into something even more basic: Does a cat even have a belief? — J

Ah, well, yes. I should have been more careful, I suppose. The problem here is that we might be having very differents of what a "belief" is. For example:

It would of course involve a major reform of our current analyses of "belief," which emphasize that a belief requires an object of belief, and that one cannot set out a belief without language. But I'm game to try! — J

I'll admit I'm on thin ice here. I never quite know what philosophers talk about when they talk about belief. I have two meanings present: one is a behavioural necessity: for the cat to want to catch that mouse over there she would have to believe there's a mouse over there. It's just activity and implicature. That seems too wide. And then there's the conscious commitment to some form of social meaning. This is mostly about belonging and individuation. This seems too narrow.

What you're interested in seems like I'd have to describe as some sort of interaction of the two concepts. I think the "propositional belief", if we were to call it that, is not a thing on its own.

And I'd probably agree a cat wouldn't have that, as the cat-human relevant shared context tends to be entirely located within the living-together context.

So:

Here I would take issue. Yes, thinking about language is one of the things that a language-using creature can do, that a language-less creature can't. But the more central difference concerns language as symbol, as a potential designator of universals. A dog unquestionably understands how the sounds I make refer to his world, and what he's supposed to do about them. But I find it very unlikely that he understands what "toy" means. He knows what that sound means for him. But he doesn't see that the word "toy" could be uttered in any other context (unless I've taught him another association) and with any other purpose. He can't, quite literally, think about "toy," because "toy" doesn't exist for him as a symbol. Can he, in his doggish non-linguistic way, have an image of a toy, or a desire for one? I'm sure he can. But he doesn't know it's a toy! — J

So what do humans do to themselves when they use words as designators for universals? That'd be the question here. A dog demonstrates what he understands a toy to be by playing with it, and so do humans. With humans, though, we also have the language layer, so that when we're thinking toy we're think non-active situations as far as they're present in our thought-habits. Dogs lack that. I agree.

I think we have a different scope in mind for "thinking about language". For example, a dog might play with his owner's shoe. For the dog in the moment, this is a toy, as demonstrated by the playing. But the activated guilt when the owner comes back shows that the dog knows he shouldn't have played with the shoe. A human can export these situationals into language: "a shoe is not a toy", so we can then, when we want to play, activate "toy" and auto-exclude "shoe". A dog can't. But you can train a dog not to play with shoes, and then we have a similar effect. And once that works, the concepts have aligned a little more.

That's not so different from how humans work when they interact with each other. When you internalise as a kid "this is not a toy", then you internalise two things: "don't play with this", and "play with toys(don't play with non-toys". That second layer is relevant, as - henceforth - you classify things into toys and non-toys so you can function socially. And you also grow emotionally attached to the concept of "toy" in some way: this is a toy, this isn't a toy - all's right with the world. Once you're secure in that you can handle exceptions.

Putting things into the categories play-with-this and don't-play-with-this is something a dog can do at the very least on a case-by-case basis, but there's probably some categorisation involved, too: you can teach your dog not to play with shoes (also future shoes you haven't bought yet), without going through all the possible ones. What changes when you have a word for "toy" is that it's practically always available as a category when you encounter something confusing. What is this? It's an "X".

For me it's an open question how much of these categories have to be accompanied by words to activate.

For example, when I go from the train station to work, I'll cross the street at a traffic light. However, there's an exit (relevant for buses, taxis, and a parking lot) that goes green at the same time my traffic light goes green for me. Cars have to take care not to hit pedestrians when they turn. This makes me nervous; I have cars coming from my back and swerving in. So my modus operandi is that I look at the traffic light for the cars on the main road (the one for the exit I can't see). There's a time when this is already red, but my traffic light (and presumably the one for the exit) isn't yet green. I usually start walking when the main-raod trafficlight goes red, but before the pedestrian traffic light becomes green. That way, I'm halfway across the road when the cars behind me start their engines. But there are exceptions: if I see cars still approaching on the main road, I don't walk. If I see mothers with small children on either side of the road, I don't walk. And so on. I make all these decisions without words. I just look. It's all thought habits. And I had terrible trouble even trying to describe this now (and I'm not even sure if I was remotely successful).

Traffic lights are non-linguistic signals. The rules of traffic are something I have learned, and needn't go through. And so on. And more imporantly, I'm usually thinking of other stuff (I might, for example, formulate a version of a post like this in my mind, so that'd be what my linguistic faculty would be busy with). It's not that relevant language never occurs, but it's fragmented and less coherent than what's expressed in me just acting.

In terms of behavioural implicature, you could say that I believe "green means go", even though I never think this. At some point in my life, I'll certainly have words to that effect. But that's just one aspect of the training that went into the belief.

I can, obviously, put into words what I blief. But I can also put into words what a dog or a cat believes. What I think is that it's all approximations, and I'll probably get closer for myself than for another person of the same culture, and then we have different cultures, different species... at some point I might discern no believes at all. What does a plant or a bacterium believe? Huh.

The problem is that language doesn't just go into describing believes: language goes partly into forming believes (for creatures that have language). Language, when it comes to thought, comes with its efficiencies and dangers. But it's plausible to me that language makes difference.

What difference, though? And how much? (And what does "how much" mean here, given that it's not immediately obvious we can quantify this.) My intuitive hunch is that we overestimate the importance of language. For example:

But I find it very unlikely that he understands what "toy" means. — J

Do we? That there's a meta-level the dog doesn't follow us onto seem plausible to me, but beyond that? Given that we can train a dog not to play with shoes, what about "toy" transcends this? It's not an easy question.

If you can illustrate what a non-linguistic belief would be like, perhaps I'll come around to believing (sorry!) that it's possible. — J

I'm not sure I'm up to it. What do you make of the traffic light example? You need to understand that the assumption that belief always has linguistic components is not intuitive to me, and I don't quite understand what it is that want me to illustrate. For me, figuring out what I believe is a matter of saying something like "I did that so I must believe X". Words are two unreliable. If I read something I wrote some time ago I might no longer know what I wanted to say, and I might be equally in need of interpretation than a non-originator. Even if I voice a thought, there's always a slight sense of unease as if these words are insufficient. In this thread, too. I'm never quite sure what I'm saying; I know better what I think. But especially on a message board I can't get across what I think without saying something. (In person I often substitute showing, demonstrating, etc. for speech. People often wonder why I don't just say what I mean. I often don't know how. What I can say approximates what I think, but might also change what I think via the desire to "own my words" - I must align my thought with what I said. That's a common struggle.)

Belief (in the present context), to me, means something like "working assumption" - nothing more.

So the idea is that some objects can't come into existence without a language-using community. That makes sense.

The challenge here would be: But natural objects also "come into existence" as a result of language use. — J

Since it's about language again (my pet topic) I'll poke my head in again. Might even have more time going forth, who knows? In any case:

When language comes up in here, we're mostly talking about "naming objects". But that's a rather small aspect of language. Naming is something that pets understand (if you've ever called your pet and it responded regularly, you'll know.) Naming is just the most basic operation.

I'd argue that, if the results aren't doctored, Alex the Grey Parrot understood simple syntax, and definiately morphology (when coining new words, such as "cork nut" for almond).

What we haven't so far demonstrated in any animal studies (as far as I'm aware of) is complex syntactic operations, such as embedding smaller structures in larger structures (see these parentesis I keep making)?

Some thought, I do think, relies on language, as language supplies a retrievable label that stands in for a sub routine. If there isn't a word for something, we can still talk about it but it takes longer. If there's a word for it, we just say one word, but mean the same thing (wasting less time). And that process is iterative. "Hm, what do we call this reverse track ball? Kinda looks like a mouse, doesn't it?". There's grammatical crossreference that's quite common: the verb to marry, its participle form "married" ending up ambiguous between verbal and adjectival usage (an ambiguity striking in the analysis of passive voice...)

What I'm ending up with in the current conversation is the question of what even is a "language-less creature"? With respect to thought language is some kind of mental activity. And it seems clear to me that there isn't a clear-cut distinction between humans and other animals to be found. At some point we arrive at complexity we don't see in other creatures, sure. But the basics seem to cut across species.

Beliefs, for example, might all be pre-linguistic, but they might be about things that couldn't exist if we didn't trick our limided attention spans with shortcuts, and then embed those shortcuts in thoughts that again get short-cutted, until we've got a thought-habit no longer reliant on the original thought process. In other words, we can switch on the light without knowing how to fix the circuits in the wall should they break.

Here the difference between animals and humans seems to break down: it's not so much about being "language-less". It's about not being an expert in the origin and nature of the generative concept. I'd argue it's more about result-based perception vs. process-based perception.

With the cat-mouse-mat example as construed by a human observer, I would argue that a human has a more process-centred approach to the mat than the cat (we know where to get one; we know more vaguely how it's made, etc.). There's a difference in the relevance-structure of the human observer and the cat when it comes to the mat. So:

A cat can think/believe that a mouse is on the mat. The content of the cat's thought/belief includes the mouse(which is not existentially dependent upon language) and the mat(which is). — creativesoul

To what degree does the "mat" feature? There are other questions: to what degree is the "mouse" a mouse? Is there a sequence of: movement over there; focus attention; prey; plan: pounce. Now? Now? Now? Now!

As the referential piece of reality the human and the cat my have, under a theory of comparison, similar believes: compatible ones. Their tied together in a situation: both the human and the cat might like for the cat to catch the mouse. But there are differences, too: the human mightn't want mouse droppings on the mat (it might be harder to clean up than on the floor, depending on the texture of the mat), whereas the cat won't care. And so on. What's important here is that the overlap between worldviews seems stronger when it comes to "mouse", then when it comes to "mat". Or not. Maybe the mat is the place where it's not cold in winter, so there's a sense of "territory" in the situational background that the human lacks specifically for the mat, as it's relevant for the entirety of the house?

As the above paragraphs show, I think that humans and cats have comparable "thoughts". Language isn't irrelevant, but it's not where I would draw the line (given relevance to thought).

I'd say result-based concepts are thing we interact with, but are largely ignorant about and thus don't think of as processes. The light-switch is a thing I use. I have limited process-awareness of it, compared to the electrician who fixes the circuit when the switch doesn't work. The light switch is a thing that works or doesn't. I'd say that's pretty much the relationship between the cat and the mat (except that it might serve less of a function in the current activity).

I see language as an activity, much like switching on the light (but much more complex). It's related to thought, because usually when we utter a sentence we mean something by it. It is possible, though, to utter a sentence in a language we don't understand, maybe focusing on the aspect of getting the pronunciation right. It's hard to get foreign pronunciations right because of acquired speech habits. That is: language itself isn't only a possible tool for thought, it also always a target of thought (we monitor for mistakes, for example).

So the putative difference between a langauge-having and a language-less creature is mostly that a language-less creature cannot and does not have to think about language. But puzzling out what the difference between language-accompanied and language-less thought is seems at the core of this thread.

It occurred to me, while reading the current discussion, that it might be relevant that I grew up bilingually. I grew up in Austria, with my mum being Austrian and my dad being Croatian (which would have been "Yugoslavian" when I was a kid). I'd almost exclusively talk German, even when spoken to in Croation by my dad. Maybe that's why I never associated words and thoughts quite as closely as others, and in turn why I also don't think language is quite as important a creature feature during species distinction. Maybe? (Just an aside.)

They might or they might not go away. Again, I think the situation could be considered analogous to that for gay people. Although the problems are not gone, social acceptance has improved. — T Clark

I'm not sure how to reply. After thinking this through, I'm not sure I understood you right. Are you talking about the results of a social justice movement? I was talking about the effects of a single personal transition and the results on that individuals life in the portion you quoted. But even then I was simplifying far too much (there's "being able to pass" vs "a perceived pressure to pass" - there's a tension field here or not, depending on the trans person's personality. I've lost track and I'm confused. I apologise.

This got me thinking about changing rooms in various gyms I've been in. None of them have been mixed, and women have complained about the presence of biological men, as in this story:
https://www.newsweek.com/gym-chain-center-tish-hyman-dispute-flooded-negative-reviews-10989692
This is also an issue in school locker rooms. Girls, understandably, are not always comfortable with biological boys being around them while they're changing. — RogueAI

Yes, that is one of the situations where empathy tears me apart inside and I dispair. In my darker hours I just think people deserve each other. Not all the time, I'm getting there more often than not lately.

I can't side with anyone here. Not with the trans woman, not with the lady, not with the gym. At the same time I realise it's a difficult situation. Given my personality: If I'd been the woman, I'd likely have been uncomfortable, too, but I'd have kept my head down. If I'd been the trans-person, I'd not have been there in the first place, and if for some reason circumstance would have driven me there, I'd have tried to be as inconspicable as possible, which wouldn't have been very inconspicable. If I were an employee present at the time, I'd be physically sick while being faced with firm policy, and two people fighting it out without giving a quarter.

This is stand-your-ground territory, and I tend to choose flight over fight whenever possible. It's people who choose fight over flight that tend to make headlines like these. And then people line up on either side of the fence, and that's what dominates the discourse. We're doomed, I tell you. Dooooooomed.

(Sorry, I'm better now.)

So what does this mean? We know from biology that on average, men are taller than women. Can an individual man be shorter than a woman? Sure. This is biological expectation, not gender expectation. Gender is when society places cultural actions on a biological sex that have nothing to do with their biological sex. So for example, "Women wear dresses". Is there anything innately biological in a woman wearing a dress? No. Its purely a cultural construct of subjective expectation. — Philosophim

This seems too crude a term to be analytically useful if the goal is to understand what's going on within the wide area on gender-non-conformism. For example, intersex is a biological condition, but it doesn't easily fit the expectations we have about bodies. Our society doesn't really provide easy categories and thus they're "deviant bodies". That implies a social role.

So on to "transgender":

A trans gendered individual is not a trans sexual individual. It is an individual of one sex that does not like the cultural expectation of their sex. So they might be a man who likes to wear dresses, or a woman who likes to wear top hats. Or perhaps a man believes that only women stay at home and take care of the house while men have to work. So he lets his wife work and stays at home. — Philosophim

I know you make that distinction, but it's a difficult one to make, because the terms aren't clear. There are people who are trans who use the terms like you do here, for sure. There are people who are trans who have no use for the term gender to being with. There are people who are trans who reject that they can ever be tanssexual, no matter how much they'd like to be; the latest reasoning (read by doing research while reading this thread, but I didn't keep a link) was that "they can only tinker with their phenotype; their genotype they have no control over").

I dispense with the distinction because I don't find it useful. Also simply cross-dressing does not make you trans. You lose a distinction here that is socially meaningful:

A cis woman who wears a dress, is the default expectation. It's unexceptional. Women these days don't stand out (at least not where I live) for wearing jeans and t-shirt instead. That's very common, too, so these days it's a "can-norm".

Every other constellation is aware that what they're doing shirks gender expectations. The model above would suggest you lump them all in the same category: people who are not biologically female yet still like to wear a dress are all trans. They're not. They're all aware that they shirk some sort of gender expectation, but their motivation and behaviour potential vastly differs:

A cis man can wear a dress for many reason. It could be a sign of rebellion. He could just like wearing dresses. It could be the outgrowth of an interest in haute couture... He'll generally not try to pass as a woman, though, unless he's into trolling.

A trans woman who wears a dress, wears the clothes of the gender she feels like. It could be what she wants to do, or maybe she'd prefer to wear her usual attire, but thinks that would make it harder for people to accept her chosen gender. Maybe it's peer pressure; other trans people want her to wear dresses.

More importantly, a cis man who likes to wear dresses may be at odds with a trans woman who uses wearing dresses as a signal of her felt gender. One wishes to loosen the dress code, while the other - as a side-effect, mind you - re-inforces the dress code. In places, where women are still expected to wear dresses and face censure for wearing trousers, cis women who like to wear trousers find themselves more aligned with cis men who wear dresses than with trans men who wear dresses: it's "I'm a man, and I can wear a dress if I want to," vs. "look at me, I'm wearing a dress, I'm a woman."

With the trans woman, wearing a dress also might help her "pass". That may relief the stress of having to explain yourself over and over again, but it carries the risk of being "found out". This might carry the stigma of dishonesty, even though that's not the intent. The mismatch is two-fold here: you're subjectively misgendered on account of your body, AND you're accused of a personality flaw you do not have.

A trans man who is wearing a dress is actually conforming to the expectations people have of him according to his body, and thus it's perhaps the least obvious form of shirking gender norms. I've recently learned of the term "girl moding". As long you're not close to passing you pretend to be what others think you are, but not you yourself. Once you're close to passing you may switch (or not, who knows).

It's far, far easier for me to navigate this messy situation if it's not only behaviour but also bodies that are gendered.

So:

When Mulan was found to be female, no one said, "Oh, well you were a man, but now you're only a woman because we made you wear a dress." Its an odd way of thinking that doesn't seem quite right. — Philosophim

Yes, that's an odd way of thinking. And it's not how I think.

Its light hearted, but your point is well stated. Its interesting to think about what people feel. Some people might view Ms. Pacman as 'biologicaly female' as in 'female pac-creature'. Some people may feel that there is no separated sex intent between the two creatures, and that the only difference is that one wears a bow while the other doesn't. — Philosophim

That, too. But what I'm drawn to here is that I think most people only perceive the gender and never topicalise sex to begin with. I think this might be more common in real life than we realise. I wish I could explain what I think this means in detail, but I'm unsure. It's certainly not that I think biological sex is irrelevant.

Where I do agree, I think, with @T Clark is that I do think treating the "mental condition" of being trans in the sense of "making them realise what they really are" is akin to conversion therapy for gays. But at the same time I think being trans is a real, bodily thing, and you can be wrong about being trans. And finally I don't trust that anyone currently alive knows enough about the subject to tell the difference. And that's a rather difficult postion from which to approach the subject.

[Argh, what a long post.]

Gender is a social construct. Bathrooms are divided by sex, not social constructs. Use the bathroom of your sex. — Philosophim

Well, here's where differ: I do not think bathrooms are "divided by sex." I believe this is surface rhetoric. Bathrooms themselves are social constructs. And bathrooms being "divided by sex," means that bathrooms are gendered: there are bathrooms for girls and bathrooms for boys and unisex bathrooms. Gendering bathrooms is, first and foremost, something we're doing. Something we're used to doing. Something ingrained in our daily praxis. Gendering bathrooms is social behaviour.

So what detail level of sexual facts do you require for gendering bathrooms? Stalls and toilets, for example, are usable by both male and female anatomies. A urinal is quite a bit harder to use with a female anatomy. So here we run up against physical limitations. But that's not quite all. Where I live toilet stalls for girls often have garbage bins that toilets for boys don't. Why? Used tampons need to go somewhere, and they tend to clog toilets. Biology has these effects. However, urinals don't prevent girls from using toilet stalls, and garbage bins would be useful in toilets for boys, too. So while some biology invites different equipment, separate spaces are not biologically necessary.

If inquire into why spaces are separated we get various arguments based on human behaviour: safety and hygiene are the most common arguments I hear. Stuff like modesty/embarrassment/nakedness etc. are not usually talked about as much, but - I feel - often implied. I find the comparison to saunas interesting; they seem to be often mixed without problems: but there are two important differences: while nearly everyone uses public toilets, using saunas is far more optional. And the taboo nature of excreting heightens feeling of shame, which is absent with saunas.

I see no inherent biological reason to gender places of excretion in a penis/vagina way and even less reason to differentiate for genotype (which seems to be the current last bastion for "bathrooms are sexed, not gendered".)

To make my position clear: sexual facts applied in social contexts is always gendered. That includes biology: the way we organise the facts to make sense of them could be different. But biological facts do set boundries of what is likely to be successful. So empirical research is going to be far more strict than socially structured excretion.

A lot of things tag onto the facts we order into "male"/"female" categories: a lot of them are at least partly learned. What you expect, what you fear, what you feel comfortable with and what you don't. And a lot depends on everyday routine conduct. Every day routine conduct is not something people like to question, because everyday life becomes much more difficult to navigate if you do. As such, ways to avoid questioning the obvious include surface rhetoric like "bathrooms are divided by sex." Smart people are good at building elaborate justifications that work out logically. But these elaborate legitimisations, too, are constructs, and not ones likely to be shared with trans people - or me, for that matter.

Now I'm a cis male and use bathrooms for boys without a second thought. I neither know or care if I ever shared a bathroom with a trans man. As a result, this is not an issue that intimately impacts me. Which also means that I'm talking from an easy place. I can question the status quo with little problem, because a change won't impact me personally at all. Meanwhile, having to enter places I'm not welcome in is far more relatable and that serves as a personal bias guiding my sympathies.

So, yeah, gender is not just expected behaviour; gender runs deep. It's common interpretation patterns. It's often unacknowleded expectations on when sexual facts are supposed to be relevant, what facts are of prime importance (during my lifetime I've seen a shift from genitals to genes in frequency - call that anecdote), and how generally you integrate sexual facts into your life.

Finally a thought experiment:

Does Ms Pacman have a female biology? My personal take (in worldbuilding terms; I know Ms Pacman is just pixels... or scan lines... depending on the technology) is that Pacmen reproduce by mitosis (when you've eaten enough you get an extra life, no?). This is only partly a joke. I think this topic reveals how important gender is in daily life - even in the absence of biological facts (even in in-world expectations). Introducing gender into Pacman games is unmotivated in biology. It's more motivated in the bathroom discussions (urinal, for example), and it's most motivated in empirical biological research. But it's a gradiant, and gender is always relevant.

There's always going to be problem when technical terms escape into the wild; they change, become less stable, a their usefulness becomes much more a matter of personal bias. And personal bias is inevitable. So it goes.

In the past, enjoying being a homosexual was probably also “ difficult at best.” How much of the difficulty associated with being transgender comes from how these people are treated in our society? — T Clark

That's the question, yes. But notice that bodily issues might go away with transition while the social problems won't go away. That is a trans person with dysphoria I would generally expect to want to become a trans person without dysphoria. (Some might be proud of their endurance or something? People come in all types.) For some people transitioning might come with too high a cost, and they might prefer not to transition. That's a topic about means and goals. But dysphoria is always a cost. That's the "dys-" in "dysphoria".

What does any of this have to do with whether
transgender people deserve human and civil rights? — T Clark

Little probably. I went off on a pet-topic I suppose. On the topic of rights, I generally follow the position that says rights that nobody grants don't exist, but if you see a right you want you can advocate for it. The Declaration of Human Rights is something I support in principle, not because I think humans have them simply by human, but because I suspect acting as-if makes the world a better place. I'm a social relativist and social constructivist.

As for the topic at hand: my reading isn't whether trans people deserve human rights. They do because they're human. It's, I think, whether the status of being trans is meaningful when it comes to human rights. If we go by the Maslow pyramid, I'm thinking few people would deny them physical needs and safety (and even fewer would admit to it). Things get dicier when it comes to the love and belonging tier, but it's still fairly uncontrovial, I think. Note that problems do show up on these levels, but I don't think those are the problematic topics.

I think it's esteem and self-actualisation that are at the centre of the discussion here. And my position here is that trans-people deserve esteem and self-actualisation as trans people. But I also think you can be wrong about being trans, and that - for example - inducing dysphoria by transitioning would be a fairly good indicator of that.

Non-gender-conforming cis people are a thing, too. Being non-gender-conforming does not make you trans.

Correct. Transition is a coping strategy to deal with gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is not mere discomfort, it is life destroying discomfort. This in the past was diagnosed for people who could not hold jobs or had severe mental problems and social issues due to it. It has been loosened for some to 'mild discomfort', much like autism has become 'an autism spectrum'. — Philosophim

I'm with you this far.

On one hand some will say this serves people with minor difficulties for better quality of life. Others may say this expands the number of patients a doctor and psychologist can make money off of. I leave you to judge which. — Philosophim

I judge this not mutually exclusive. Probably both - but to what extent and where? "I leave you to judge with," sounds like rhetoric interested to set up two teams for I game I don't want to play.

What you'll have to take here is whether I am a trustworthy and honest person. — Philosophim

If my intuition is fine: I have no reason to judge you as dishonest. I believe that's what you've seen. And I believe you have good reason to interpret what you've seen as you do (see the part of my post above about "heavy breathing"). I also believe you could still be wrong, and this is not personal, I as constantly second-guess even myself like that. One reason why I tend to drop out of debates is because I loose my footing: if the other has a clear and steadfast opinion I've already lost a game I never wanted to play, if that makes sense. See my above comment about about "I leave you to judge which." This is the type of rhetoric that makes me... cautious. (Also if I catch myself doing it, and I'm sure I don't always catch myself. You're lucky not to see what I don't post...)

Do you understand where I come from?

In any case, "transbien" is something I've never heard of; I'm curious.

This, however, has me suspicious:

Read Phil Illy's book online "Autoheterosexual". Most straight men who transition have a 'gender euphoric' drive which is sexual at its core for wanting to transition. — Philosophim

Not that it exists. That's hardly a surprise. But most? It doesn't fit the image I got from people I talk to online at all. It feels like an overgeneralisation, and this is where I wouldn't take your word (or Illy's, if that's what they're saying). But I also don't feel confident in my ability to research this from a chair in front of a screen. I certainly don't have the facts.

But:

It doesn't excuse inappropriate public behavior like wanting to be in women's locker rooms as they dress naked in front of you. We need to be aware most straight trans individuals are driven to it by eroticism, which may very well be an innate form of sexuality like being gay. — Philosophim

This is where my position is difficult to explain. First, I don't take it as a given that "most straight trans individuals are driven by eroticism". However, I won't rule out that it's a factor that disproportionally shows up in people who would take advantage of "the right to your bathroom", while you're avarage less activistic/performative trans person would still avoid public bathrooms.

This is a case of policy not having the intended effect, but the ensuing social visibility helping to spread a "most trans people are driven by eroticism" stereotype. I've been reading biological papers a couple of years ago, and it was hard going. I think the topic is too contentious currently, and while we might have actually good data, it's very hard for me to figure out who to trust when I don't have the expertise. I'm not interested in playing hobby biologist.

I do have a degree in sociology, but it's about 25 years old now, and I've been a sociologist in the mean time. (As it happens, by now I'm more knowledgable in linguistics than sociology.) Here I have the problem of knowing too much and not being willing to expend the effort I know I would take. Unlike biology, the effort would likely be fruitful, though.

So should I speak of the topic at all?

I'll declare my bias as this: I overwhelmingly think trans people should have the abstract right to excrete in public places without much trouble, just like cis people have by default. I do not know how to accomplish this pragmatically. I worry that a civic right to bathroom choice would end up having an adverse effect, at least in the current climate. But I also worry that saying this out loud will encourage backlash that I don't want to encourage. And I think that most bathroom-yes-no discourse is ideological posturing, which I'm not interested in.

Finally, I also think that cis-women being uncomfortable with trans-women in what they consider their space is something that should be taken seriously, but on the realisation that they have a "safe bathroom" in the first place, which trans people almost always lack.

What to do? The person who figures this out deserves a Noble Prize for Peace, IMO:

Not long ago homosexuality was considered a mental health issue. It no longer is. — T Clark

This is... a difficult comparison to make. "Gender Dysphoria" and "being trans" are not one and same. It's perfectly possible to enjoy being homosexual; to enjoy gender dysphoria is... difficult at best. Transitioning, for example, is supposed to reduce the symptoms of dysphoria, and if it doesn't it turns out to have been a bad idea. Conversly, if you think you're trans, but you're not, and you transition, you might induce dysphorie (which could be a surprising feeling you didn't ever understand you could have.)

There are two things at issue here: a trans person's relationship to their own body, and a trans person's relationship to their social environment. There are various "reference groups" that matter to a trans person, and they might have incompatible demands. That includes local activists. You're navigating a difficult area: you "know" you're in the wrong body, but there are things that don't bother you. However, if you send incongruent images to your social environment, you're going to increase social discomfort. What's worse is that, even if your social environment is mostly supportive and you're fine with sending incongruent signals (i.e. a transwoman with a beard), you might experience pressure from activists to conform to the gender-expectations of your target gender. I've heard about trans people being pressured into voice lessons. The activist justification was, at least on one occasion, that a transwoman who talks like a man "makes their job harder".

Basically, trans people might have the problem that decreasing their bodily discomfort comes at the cost of increasing their social discomfort. Some trans people might prefer to suffer their bodily discomfort over suffering the social discomfort - this sometimes leads to stopping hormone therapy, or reverse surgery. Studies who look at detranstioning often throw these cases in with "mistakes".

Finally, "social discomfort" doesn't always come from "hate": it can be as simple as fatigue from having to explain themselves over and over and over again. It may be easier for them to "lie": to pretend to be cis. If you're miserable either way, you might walk the path of least resistance.

So what amount of suffering a particular person considers acceptable, bearable, inevitable, etc. varies among personalties. It's hardly a surprise that activists have a compartively low acceptance threshold, and when you don't learn to accept stuff, it becomes harder to bear stuff, too.

Take the bathroom/locker room issue: activists want the (civil) right for trans people to go into their respective bathrooms. Alongsides the civil rights issue, they also desire social acceptance. But social acceptance doesn't come easy. For many trans people the current solution is simple: avoid public bathrooms, drink less before or while going out, etc. For other trans people? Just choose the bathroom where you draw the least attention. Without gaining social acceptance, I personally think the civil right isn't going to get used much. And the people who do use the civil rights are going often not going to be representable for larger population.

Now, back to "gender dysphoria". I wish I knew fully how the term is currently used. Is social discomfort part of "dysphoria" as currently diagnosed? Is there, internationally, some sort of coherence in how we diagnose dysphoria? I'd say the lessening of social discomfort would let you focus on bodily discomfort and how to deal with that, also with less misgivings about unintended social side-effects. Would it even be possible to differentiate between bodily and social discomfort (given the possibility of psychosomatic issues, for example)?

Take this:

For example, I have seen an older man who recently got their legs shaved, pull their pants up to their knees and rub their smooth legs while breathing heavily while closing their eyes as if they were looking at a porno. I confess to bias here, as I found instances like these to be viscerally disgusting. The community will vehemently deny that there is any sexual undertones for some transitioners, but if you get into the community a bit and you find a lot of these individuals. — Philosophim

Imagine a burn victim with badly damaged skin on their hand getting a transplant and stroking that part of their hand again and again again, because they can't believe it's really them. Something that bothered them is suddenly gone. I have no problem believing people when they say it's not sexual.

That said the "breathing heavily" part is suspicious. I'm not sure whether I'd have described the scene the same way had I been there, but I have no problem believing stuff like this happens. I also have no problem believing that stuff normally restricted to private settings happening in public. If you're basically "on the tray" all the time anyway, many people will either go into hiding or lose their sense of shame. I'd expect this sort of behaviour to become rarer with more acceptence (I may be right/I may be wrong).

*****

I'll probably regret making this post eventually. Even ten years ago, it would have been easier to talk about these issues, where "easier" doesn't imply "easy". To boot, I'm currently not in the best mental state (nothing to do with the topic of this thread: simply changes both at home and at my job, and I'm the nervous type who relies on habit a lot...). I'll try to reply to any reply to my post, but if I don't... it's likely not personal.

So in order for you to explain to me how you know that 5 + 7 is equal to 12, you have to go back to grade school in your mind and try to remember the process of learning what the scribbles mean. If you can't then just ask a teacher how they teach students through memorization and repetition. — Harry Hindu

Even if I were to ask a teacher how they typically teach that wouldn't really help me remember. Might even encourage false memories. But is it necessary to go that far back? Simple addition is part of my daily life. I work among other things with cash. Any combination of X + Y where X and Y are below 10 come up daily. It's constantly being reinforced. I need number words only for the last operator. So if I've got a column adding 15 + 27 + 13, I'd look at 5 and 7 and think only 12 but not 5 and 7, presumably because they're visually present. Then it's 12 + 3 = 15, and 15 overrides 12, and then I write down 5, and think "1" because that carries over and then it's basically "2", "4", "5" and I write down "5" and then the result is 55. That's only if I've written it down in a column, though. If I were to read these numbers in a line, I'm less organised. For example, I just stared at what I've written, and noticed that 3 + 7 = 10, so adding 27 + 13 up to 40 comes first and then adding another 15, and I get 55, too, but because the process is more ad-hoc I tend to be less secure about the result and keep a "surveillance stream" open, which requires more concentration and leaves me more vulnerable to distraction. And I could be wrong about anything I just said, since when I'm doing addition I'm not running a self-observance stream, and when I'm running a self-observance stream that might influence (through preconceptions) what I actually do. The further back I go the less reliable what I come up with is going to be. Childhood? It's just gone.

Ask a teacher how they teach? What for?

“Can one J-thought cause another, and if so, is this by virtue of a World 2 relationship, a World 3 relationship, or some combination?” And lurking behind this question is another, broader one, which has also been raised repeatedly here: If causation isn’t a very good model of what happens when we think J-thoughts, then can we come up with a better description, something more contentful than merely “association” or “affinity”? — J

Take this sequence of events (arbitratily conceptualised as single events on the fly, no thought at all given to detail-level): Event 1 = I drop a vase, Event 2 = it falls to the ground.

Event 1 is the cause of event 2. I cannot imagine a sequence in which event 2 causes event 1. (You'd need to go into semantics to make this work: you could, for example, interpret the vase being heavy as the initial step of falling; for our purposes, I'd consider this a stretch.)

Now, if your two events are: Even 1 = "I wonder how Ann is doing? I haven't seen her in a while." and Event 2 = "Oh, it's Ann's birthday soon," then we don't have the same relationship. The propositions we attach to the mental events are exchangable. Event 1 could have been event 2 and vice versa, and the chain of causation wouldn't change. Now there are discourse markers here: "Oh," suggests its a follow-up thought. But that's not part of the propositional content. Compare:

Event 1 = "Hm, isn't it Ann's birthday soon? I wonder what I should get her." Event 2 = "How's she doing anyway. Haven't seen her in a while."

Different discourse markers, but the same propositional contents. There's a flow that's relevant, but the sequencing is part of you moving through your real life.

If we then take a look at entailment, we see no connection between the events: thinking "It's Ann's Birthday soon," does in no way entail having thought "How is Ann doing?" first. Either of these can come first.

If I'm holding a vase, I need to let go for it to fall. If I was holding the vase, and it is now falling, that logically entails that I let go. (Well, in logical space. Somene might have sliced of both my hands at the wrist, so that I technically didn't let go and hands are falling together with the vase...) But I think you get the drift.

In terms of entailment, though, we can say that both thinking "How's Ann doing," and "It's Ann's birthday soon," entail the more general process of thinking of Ann. What we could then say is if either thought came first, the second has an easier time coming, too. This is the rough area I'd poke around for a cause, if this makes sense. But not while disregarding context.

Maybe I'm thinking "How's Ann doing," then I'm walking past a calendar (or some sort of public digital clock that displays the date), and taken together these two events lead to "Oh, it's Ann's birthday soon." Maybe walking past that calendar would have been suffictient to trigger "It's Ann's birthday," and then something latent in your stream of consciousness triggers "How's she doing?". Physical causation seems less context dependent (though it's context dependent, too: if I let go of a vase in space it drifts instead of falling).

Just rambling to clean the cobwebs in my head really.

Philosophy tends to do that - leading you to question things you took for granted only to find out the reason you take it for granted is because the issue was already solved long ago and you "taking it for granted" is you having relegated the process to unconscious thinking, and later in life you participate in runaway philosophical skepticism to bring it back to conscious processing - Why do I believe 5+7 = 12?. What proof is there that 5+7 is 12? You end up discovering that these are actually silly questions precisely because you are trying to solve a problem that was already solved in your grade-school years.

Are there ideas that we hold, or take for granted, that should be questioned? Sure, but not every idea. — Harry Hindu

Do you think I was questioning that 5+7 is 12 in this thread?

Yes, this is practically all stuff I took for granted when making my posts. I have no issues with anything you said in this post. Each and every post I made should be based on this. So what went wrong? Why are you trying to lead me to things I think are basic? Where's the misunderstanding? What's the problem? I don't know how to reply. I'm confused.

(I don't remember the details of when and where I learned about "5+7=12"; likely in or shortly before elementary school?)

I haven't read many of Ted Chiang's short stoies, but I've liked what I read so far. If I were to write this story, the narrator would fail.

First, I have to appologise. I'll likely not be writing much in the weeks to follow. We're transitioning from one piece of software to another and it's so different that apparently data export and re-import isn't possible. So we're currently working with two pieces of software, while also transferring data by hand... and I'm very bad at multitasking. I'll be mentally exhausted most of the time. I am now.

I don't see how one isolates a thought from the process of thinking. It would be like trying to isolate the stomach from digestion, and I don't see how that would get us any closer to how thoughts are caused. — Harry Hindu

That wasn't well-phrased by me. If "a thought" causes another "thought" (countable: one thought, two thoughts...) and it's all "thought" an ongoing process, then we need to divvy up the stream of thought into distinct pieces each of which is "a thought".

Since I came into this thread saying that "sentences" aren't clear expressions of thoughts and thus "I wonder how Ann is doing," isn't a 1:1 expression of thought, it's up to me to say what a thought is and how it's related to its sentence. I tried in this thread, but... it's hard.

I'm not trying to say "thinking over here" and "thoughts over there"; I'm asking something like how many thoughts are there in a given stream of consciousness and do we have a reliable method to tell where one thought ends and a new one begins. This is not a question of "what is going on?"; this is a question of which tools are best for looking at what's going. The theory that leads to a theoretical definition that we can then operationalise so we can look at what's really going on.

Would you agree that conclusions are caused by reasons? Have you ever reached a conclusion without a reason? Would that still qualify as reasoning (thinking)? — Harry Hindu

I don't know how to approach this question. We might call a particular stretch of thought "a conclusion", but it might just be a subconscious decision which in turn caused us to look for ex-post rationilastions. In other words, I think that sometimes (and if I'm pessimistic, most of the time) we think of our causes the wrong way round.

Why do I think this? Am I right? How would I tell the difference? (I actually second-guess myself like that all the time.)

In what way is a baseball causing a window to break different than 2+ 2 causing 4? 2+2 isn't necessarily equal to 4. — Harry Hindu

That's part of the point of the thread, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know, but it's an interesting question. (I think there's a difference.)

It seems more important to lay out what we mean by "cause" so even understand how it happens in the physical realm to understand how it might apply to the mental. — Harry Hindu

That's part of the opening post, too. I focused on "thought" out of personal necessity: it's the thing that's the most unclear to me, so if I can't figure that particular topic out I have little to contribute.

This doesn't make any sense. — Harry Hindu

Yeah, we don't seem to be on the same page. Maybe not even in the same book.

You have to already have learned what the relationship is. Your recognition that 5+7 and 12 mean the same thing is an effect of your prior experiences. If you had never seen those scribbles before your thoughts about them would be different. — Harry Hindu

Obviously. I'm not sure what to make of this whole paragraph. We're talking past each other.

Are you saying that we only think when we are learning something new and when it becomes reflexive it is no longer a thought? — Harry Hindu

I'm saying that's one way to look at it. It's not actually my preferred way, but I think in a context of causation a more narrow concept of what constitutes "a thought" may be more useful than my intuitive model that is broader.

It seems to me that consciousness has out-sourced it's thinking to other (sub/un-conscious parts of the brain) once something has been learned sufficiently enough where conscious thought is no longer needed. Does this mean that thinking is no longer involved, or that thinking was simply relegated to another part of the brain that does not require updated information from the senses? — Harry Hindu

As I replied to Patterner, I'm not concerned with "thought"; I'm concerned with how to isolate "a thought" from the process of thinking such one can say that "thing" is caused. And I need to be concerned with this because I'm denying that thought corresponds either with words or propositions. The problem is that have no clear alternative.

If I engage with other people on this topic, I can't just assume we mean the same concepts just because we use the same words. I'll go into examples when replying to Patterner.

You knew you were being prompted to retrieve 12, so chose not to, all without thinking of 12? aren't you thinking of 12 when you realized it's what was being prompted? Isn't the best you could do choosing to stop thinking about 12? — Patterner

To be precise, at no point did I retrieve the word "12". That is a fact, if my memory is reliable, which it might not be. The choice would have been subconcsious, if it's a choice at all, and not just me being busy with other things. One of my interpretations, is that - on account of me having made a strong connection between "5+7" and "12" - thinking of "5+7" already is thinking of "12". Me recognising your intention is me foregrounding your intention and thus actualising the connection between "5+7" and "12" was not neccessary. This is not a fact. This is me guessing what went on my in mind.

Part of that is - again - the connection between thought and language. Thinking "5+7=12" has many aspects to it. One is the idea of an equation. "5+7" and "12" are literally synonymous on account of what an equation means. So I can recognise addition as an equation, and can see 5+7 (and through reading actualise it in the moment) and then not actualise "12", the sign, as it refers to the same concept of the compound sign of "5+7". They have the same meaning in the value sense, but different meanings in what they represent within a mathematical operation. Since this thread, though, isn't about maths, I think I felt no need to actualise "12" because my mind/brain was busy with the topic of the thread.

This is plausible to me because the topic of this thread is highly complex; not having time for associations that would otherwise trigger seems plausible. That doesn't mean it's true, but it's the best I have.

I can't say I'm entirely clear on what you have in mind. — Patterner

All I really have in mind is vague ideas and a question. That is to say, I'm not entirely clear on what I have mind either. I'm not ready to make a model yet. Currently I'm waiting for "@J's" post.

As for the three worlds: it's basically physical world, experience, and abstraction. I'm sure I use it differently than Popper did. But the basic distinction is useful when it comes up. I'm not sure I'd ever have brought it up myself.

You think? — Patterner

I think or at least thought so. I'm, of course, uncertain, even more so now that you brought it into question. The thing is, when I read 5 + 7 in your post I didn't think 12. I knew you what you were going for, and that was enough for the purpose of this thread, which is very mentally demanding.

Now what's going on my mind here? I really did think that 5+7 is mostly memorised (of course not always for everyone). That's definitely true. So what was my thought process here? What's clear is that, even though I was prompted to "retrieve 12" and I knew I was prompted such, I didn't bother to retrieve twelve. Given my memorisation bias, I didn't bother to retrieve a synonym. "7 + 5" and "12" are labels for the same thought, so there was no need.

If that really is what happened, then we would have one concept beneath and two labels on top, and maybe three thoughts in total (one of which I didn't find necessary to activate). If this is not what happened, then it's possible that I misinterpret what's going on between thoughts and language inside my head. An my testimony on the topic would be at best unreliable.

The type of social study I gravitated towards while in University (sciology) relied a lot on self-report. So there's that.

I intentionally looked for an example that I didn't think is memorized. I don't know that people memorize addition the way we do the Times Tables.

I don't mean delibertaly sitting down and memorising tables. 12 is a low enough number so that if you've done a lot of addition by hand (as I have; when I was a kid in the 70ies even pocket calculators were expensive; these days everyone has smart phone) then you'll remember 5+7 as 12 simply by repetition. I assumed that's normal. Not something I now think I should assume.

It's also more involved than counting by 2s. And not as thoughtlessly easy as adding 1 or 2 to any number.

Not for me. 5+7 and 12 are literally synonymous in my mind. No extra steps needed. No need to retrieve 12, when I already have 5+7. Interestingly, I just went through other digit-pairs that end up at 12, and it seems I take slightly longer even with 11+1. It seems 5+7 is special for me somehow. Huh. Not what I expected.

Well, even if it's not the best example, I'm sure we can find one that is net memorized, but is easy enough that the majority of people would add it up sticky and reading, rather than shrug and walk away.

I agree.

I haven't thought about this before, but I'm inclined to disagree. I don't see how something we are thinking short isn't, but definition, a thought. And even if we're talking about counting by 2s, which most beyond whatever age can do easily, without any sort of calculating, do we not have to think to do it? — Patterner

I think you misunderstand my position. "Thought" is what's going on in when we're thinking. The process; the stream of consciousness (or part of it, whatever we're willing to count as thinking). "A thought" is unit that occurs with that process. It's perfectly possible to be thinking, but there's no good way to break what's going on apart to isolate "a single unit that makes up a thought".

So, if two thoughts are part of the same stream of consciousness, then if you zoom in one thought might cause another, but if you zoom out they're both part of a bigger thought. And it's easy to skip zoom levels without noticing. So, maybe we suspect thought 1 causes thought 2, when thought 1 is really just the beginning stage of thought 2. We've not been clear enough what happens on what level. But to be clear about that we need a sane model (and I have none).

I'm suggesting we need a model of what type of thoughts can reasonable compared to each other on a level that's relevant to causation. I'm sorry for being so convoluted, but that's just how I... think.

I don't see how it's possible that it's not thought. Photons can hit our retinas without us really seeing it. We don't notice everything in our visual field, and wr sometimes don't notice things dead center in our visual field. But if you notice it enough to decide you are not going to do the math, you're thinking about it. — Patterner

Again, this was meant to be a terminological enquiry. Above it was "thought" vs. "a thought". Here it is about the place of thought within a cognitive framework. Is all cognition "thought" or is it a specialised form of cognition distinct from other terms, such as "memory", "recognition". Maybe some people would like to use "thought" only for "reasoning"?

It seems like running to me. Running happens. It's a process. And you go for a run. Thought happens. It's a process. And you have a thought. — Patterner

Yes, that's my intuition, too, until that last sentence. Here I'd deiverge, maybe like this: "...It's a process. And you have a thought/thoughts." The slash is supposed to represent a modal "or" - depending on how you count what different grammatical structures apply. I wish English would mark this in its number system: singular, plural, either. I'd have used the third form here.

I do not believe driving, or walking through a crowded store, on "auto-pilot" is done without thought. We certainly relegate such things to the background. Sometimes so much so that we have accidents. And, not dwelling on any moment, nothing makes it into our long-term memory. But I have to believe there is some thought involved. — Patterner

Yes, that's my intuition, too, but it makes for a really broad term. The trade off is that - suddenly - thought is everything and nothing that goes on in the mind. With a definition so broad the question "can a thought cause another thought," becomes a trivial yes, but it's no longer an interesting question on it's own. It's a doorway to host of different questions.

Finally, thought in the context of cause and effect needs certain traits amenable to cause. What are they? If we review the thread we've had "causation = physical" and "entailment = logical", and then pair that up with Popper's 3 worlds. Causation would then inhabit world 1, and entailment would inhabit world 3, but thought would inhabit world 2 (as it's centre of operation, but it has tendrils in both world 1 and 3). If causation language is biased towards world 1, then how should we model thought, if we want to focus on world 2. Does that seem like a fair description of the confusion this thread is in (or is just me overthinking things again...)

How Does a Thought Cause Another Thought? — Patterner

It's precisely what counts as a thought that is insuffienctly described for me to have much of an oppinion about it.

Take "7+5". In what ways is that even thught? If I read "7+5" and think "12" then I might just cover this with a stimulus-response model without ever invoking the concept of "a thought".

Another problem: 5+7=12 is usually just memorised, so what happens is that we're completing a culturual template. In a manner of speaking, we're completing a default thought: filling a gap we automically perceive. So "5+7" might be an incomplete thought where we automatically fill the gap in the proper way.

This is not mainly describing what actually happens. For example, "5+7" = thought 1 and "12" = thought 2 might require a different theoretical model of thought than "5 + 7 = 12" is a common and context-evoking cultural template, so that "5 + 7" is auto-completed to make a recurring thought happen once again.

Take "432 + 493 = 925". If you were to see "432 + 493" and you recognise this as addition. You may solve, or you may shrug and walk away. These are two responses: do any of those involve thought? Is shrugging and walking away less of a thought than mumbling "Who cares?" and walking away, because the latter includes language and the former doesn't? Is the recognition of addition already thought, given that it's implied but not expressed in either reactions? How many thoughts are involved in solving the addition?

For example, I just went back to front: 3+2, put down 5, 9+3, put down 2, carry over 1, 4+4+1, put down 9. I could have been quicker if I'd just used 432 + 500 = 932; 932 - 7 = 925. I realised that too late. Is me automatically choosing my habitual mode a thought? To me this type of choice has a lot in common with completing 7+5; both happen almost without thinking.

What's different here is the output. If the output is language we tend to name it "a thought". I'm reminded of the line "A sentence is a complete thought". In creative writing circles this is usually used to stigmatise run-on sentences, or advocate for many short sentences over one long sentence. This has always struck me as silly. My intuition is to decouple thought and language, but if I do that what remains to look at. What kind of concrete entities remain as hints that you are thinking?

If "thought" is the process and "a thought" is a usefully demarcated stretch of that but that demarcation does not necessarily co-incide with the demarcation of the words what is there to go into the model. I'm not saying that words shouldn't be in the model, just that we should be careful not to use words and sentences as stand-in for thoughts.

This is me just rambling, really. To cut it short: I'm not convinced that "7+5" illiciting the response "12" is usefully modelled as one thought causing another (though I'm also not convinced that it doesn't). Maybe you just see "7 + 5" and think "7 + 5 = 12": maybe it's a visual stimulus triggering your mental copy of culturally template. But then for the reflected light on your retina to transform into a visual stimulus is thought necessary? And if so, how much of it? And if thought happens is there anything you could usefully demarcate into "a thought"?

Dawnstorm might argue for a stream-of-thought, out of which the (linguistic) elements of your sentence popped up. — J

I'm actually not ready to argue for anything yet. I'm still trying to find a way to describe what we're asking here. For example, if I were to stick with the stream metaphor, I might say that the stream isn't all there is - there's plenty of stuff that doesn't flow: the river bed, sediment, big heavy objects that cause turbulence...

My pre-occupation at that time is simply that it's hard to pin down what about the stuff that surrounds the readily-accessible sentence is thought and what isn't. And my major concern, as I think I said before (though I might have done so in a deleted response...), is that we shouldn't confuse the stability of the sentence-form with stability of sentence meaning.

Adding a 3-worlds-model on top here complicates things because now the sentence-meaning multiplies, even just from the production point of view:

A primal W2 element - what triggers the sentence productions

A W2 object triggered by the sentence - the expectation of what the W3 object is meaning to a generalised other - did I say it right?

A realigned W2 object based on using the sentence W2 object - I think I meant to say what I think others will hear.

The re-aligned W2 object is something I see people rarely pay attention to. The thing is that I suspect the re-aligned W2 object can but needn't replace the primal W2 object. The primal W2 object drives your actions while the re-aligned W2 object comes up when you need to legitimise your actions. In some cases that might lead to others seeing you as a hypocrite, while you're incapable seeing yourself as such (as your world view integrates both W2 objects as unproblematic).

Take for example grammar. It's easy to use but hard to analyse. You mention the "giant mushroom festiveal" ambiguity. Is the mushrum festival giant or are the mushrooms giant? Phrasing the ambiguity like this makes it a semantic ambiguity, but there's also a syntanctic ambiguity [giant[mushroom festival]] or [[gaint mushroom]festival], where the brackets mark constiutients ("Immediate Constituent Analysis" if you're curious). There's a different ambiguity in the whole clause, that's an obvious syntactic ambiguity, a subtle semantic ambiguity (one of emphasis probably), and rarely ever a situationally relevant ambiguity:

[[Kathmandu] [will be] [the site [of a giant mushroom festival]] [in the year 2145].] vs. [[Kathmandu] [will be] [the site of [a giant mushroom festival in the year 2145]].]

The syntactic ambiguity concerns whether "in the year 2145" is an adverbial to the clauses verb phrase, or whether it's part of the noun phrase. In either case, the festival takes place in 2145, but where in the sentence we express this changes. My hunch is that most people will have the first syntactic reading as the ad-hoc reading. But what if I replied:

A giant mushroom festival in the year 2145 is unlikely, but if it did take place Kathmandu would make for a good site.

I now copied the exact string of words, but there's now no syntactic ambiguity anymore.

If the sentence represents the thought, what about the instinctive syntactic reading of what "in the year 2145" attaches to? Is this a "thought"? Is this some background linguistic mental behaviour yet to be named, but not falling under "thought"? Is this an aspect of your model of all thought that includes linguistic aspects?

Sometimes the syntactically easier parsing is at odds with the intended syntactic perception. Take garden path sentences, where you miss the end of a unit and don't notice until the sentence either fails to parse or gives a clearly unintended reading (e.g. "The old man the boat.")

So, how many sentences can express the same thought, then?

For example: In 2145 there will be a giant mushroom festival in Kathmandu.

Same thought? The difference in formality expressed by the more conversational wording - part of the thought, or part of the thought's context?

I sort of need to answer questions like these before I can start building a model. Given that I myself have never really had cause to wonder whether thoughts can cause thoughts before reading this thread (I actually might have read similar threads in the past, but for simplicity's sake let's pretend I haven't) so I have no intuitive substratus here. I'm still trying to figure out what the topic is.

We can make sentences that have never been thought before. Kathmandu will be the site of a giant mushroom festival in the year 2145. — Patterner

We can make sentences that have no clear-cut meaning until you figure out later what they might mean. I'm not even joking. I used to write SF stories, and one of my exercises was to improvise meaningless sentences to world-build around. The only example I remember:

A couple of sinker limpets got hold of me, but then the afterwash set in.

The world I came up with was one with migrating lakes instead of rivers. (Never finished thinking this through, which is probably why I remember the sentence.)

The idea I have is that thinking words is one type of thought and thinking content another, and since they run together, you can't quite distinguish word-first content from content-first words. It is a proposition universally acknowledged, that a single sentence of good standing must be in want of a truth...

Many years ago, I heard of a study where they injected novacaine or something into people's throats so they could not make those micro movements. The people found it extremely difficult to think.. I believe the conclusion was that we unconsciously make the movements of talking when we think, and the association is extremely strong. I know it is for me. Especially if I think of a song in my head. I've noticed many times that my throat is moving as I'm reciting it in my head. I often pay attention to my throat when I'm thinking, to try to make sure I'm not "going through the motions." — Patterner

I haven't heard of that one; thanks for bringing it up. I was vaguely aware of research, but nothing drug related.

Does entailment pertain/exist even with no mind to think the constituent propositions? — J

I'd like to highlight the difference between an entailment not being thought, and there being no mind to potentially think it. People who can work through an entailment can do so because they know how entailment works. Knowledge underlies all thought in many ways, but is passive without thought OR action.

So:

What sort of being do propositions have? Can they be created (thought) as W3 objects in good standing, and then persist "out there" somewhere when no one thinks them? I'll send us all back to Plato for that one. — J

Yes, they can "persist", but no, not, in a platonic idealist way. I think propositions are at their most stable when they're not being thought, because that means they're passively available as memory traces. It's when they activate in social situations that they change. Knowing of a proposition is passive and provides structure; thinking it is making a problem of it and potentially changing it.

But that's not the extent of it. If the knowledge of knowledgable agents across a relevant population then there's a structural conflict potential: that's when stuff gets unstable, and people try to push for more favourable knowledge or repair what they have (as it's been useful so far). The most prominent example currently, I think, is the gender discourse. The need to express certainty hints at conflict. Things that actually are certain don't even need to be thought. And that's a problem with the current gender discourse: there are people who are forced to think of gender nearly always, and people for whom the binary is so certain that they don't even understand what others are talking about, with all sorts inbetween.

For an example of shared knowledge that nearly no-one questions in daily life, look at money. (Things might be different in specialised context like the stock market. I don't know enought to even speculate.) Certain aspects of language come to mind; for example, every native speaker of English knows that English is an accusative-nominative language, which they demonstrate just by speaking. That knowledge is embedded in the praxis of speaking, though. Most people don't know that they know that; they don't know it could be different (you'd need to be either interested in linguistics, or speak a language that's ergative-absolutive, like Basque).

So finally:

But if it is meaningful to speak of an entailment as forcing or necessitating a conclusion, doesn't this have to happen in a mind, in conjunction with some W2 thoughts? — J

Yes and no. Again you need to step from the mental level to the social level. An entailment doesn't force a conclusion in any given individual's W2. There's ignorance; there's making mistakes, etc. But all these things only make sense before a social background; there has to be someone to plausibly be able to convince you that you're ignorant, wrong, etc. by demonstrating what it is like to be right. Unsuccessful demonstrations cause social unrest, and you have predictable conflict which is also part of the knowledge. Think again about the gender discourse, people on the extreme ends may not understand each other, but what they have in common is their mutual knowledge that they won't find agreement. Which makes much of the posturing performative for their own knowledge group.

There are many measures of the stability of social facts (W3 objects): for example, do we tend to trust the experts? Do we just act on knowledge without topicalising it? And so on.

Sociologists often speak of "consensus" here, but it's mostly not a conscious act of agreeing. Much of it is a tacit performance of the way things are. The less it's questioned the more stable it is (think for example toilet training). There could be a social scale of stability for W3 objects:

Things that most people agree upon, and disagreement is a form of stigma to reinforce the status quo.
Things that people take for granted that opportunities to agree or disagree rarely arise.
Things that people take for granted so much that most people don't know it could be different.

W3 objects do ultimately rely on W2 activity, but there's never really a context where a single mind's enough.

So:

If there is mental causation, perhaps we require some kind of instantiation or embodiment (en-mind-ment?) of the entailing propositions in order to effect the conclusion. Someone has to think it. — J

Rather than "Someone has to think it," think "many people have to know it," where knowledge isn't some "justified true belief", but the capability to successfully complete social situations. You can't buy something from someone who doesn't know how to sell.

One important difference between knowledge and thought is that knowledge is continually present in the background (unless forgotten) and only activates when situationally relevant. (You could, I suppose, assume that knowledge doesn't persist but comes into being again every time we need it, but that doesn't sound plausible to me.) Meanwhile thought is situated much more episodically. This is why stuff that persists in W3 must be known but can go a long time without being thought. It mustn't be forgotten, and must be passed on to the next generation of minds to persist.

Furthermore, because what one mind "knows" (in the social sense) can be wrong only because there are people who know differently, So as long as enough people know that 5+7=12, entailment will pertain. This is an iterative process; a chicken-egg situation if you will. People know what they learn, and they teach what they know. And just like with chicken and eggs the process allows for change. What one generation teaches isn't necessarily what the next generation learns, but it could be close enough that the difference only surface in concrete situations once it's too late.

There's a hierarchy of dependence from W1 to W3. You need W1 for W2 and W2 for W3, but neither W2 nor W3 is necessary for W1 to exist. Influence, however, can go the other way. W3 can influence W2 and W2 can influence W1. It's this asymmetry that makes me think the difference between causation and influence could be vital to pin down. To put it in concrete terms: I don't think "Matter causes minds," and "Money causes anxiety," use the word cause in the same way. But I can't pin down a concrete difference.

If I understand you, the W2 thought should be seen as pre-linguistic, and this is part of why it is a W2 object. Its nature is "mentalese," not linguistic or propositional. When words enter the picture, we now have a W3 object, because language is a human construction. — J

I think that's how I presented it, but it's a simplification. There's a lot of overlap. Language that doesn't create an artifact (sound or scribbles or signing) is entirely "inside the head", so to speak. This is difficulat to parse out. The key issue here is that there is a pre-linguistic flow that is less clearly demarkated and also less repeatable than the linguistic aspect of the flow. A W2 thought will involve language, but not all of the language in your head is exhausted within the W2 framework. (Maybe it becomes clearer if you consider Wittgenstein's private language argument here.)

Maybe (not sure but maybe), there's this mentales flow that is entirely a W2 object; the linguistic level that is both a W2 and a W3 object, and then the propositional layer which is entirely a W3 object, but has to be represented in W2 to exist (as all W3 objects) - probably via the W2 part of language, which has to connect to the sublinguistic flow for meaning to occur.

Under that model it's not entirely clear what a W2 thought is. I don't think can begin to delimit a "thought" before I've got a model of what actually happens. For example, I said this:

Thinking of Ann -> World2 thought of how Ann is doing -> Production of World3 object "I wonder how Ann is doing" which overlaps with ongoing World 2 thought -> Potential for recall of World3 object ("I wondered how Ann is doing.") and creation of World 2 thought similar to earlier thought. — Dawnstorm

But it's entirely possible that in some situation it's:

Thinking of Ann -> Production of World 3 object "I wonder how Ann is doing" -> World2 thought of how Ann is doing...

A particular situation might trigger a word habit, which is then associated with a thought habit. That is: I could easily imagine both word-first and concept-first situations.

Now that I've (hopefully) clarified, it should be clear that I'm not saying this:

But are you also asking whether the W3, linguistic thought "I wonder how Ann is doing" can ever be a W2 thought? That is, must it somehow be stripped of language before we can place it "in the brain" as a psychological or mental phenomenon? — J

When you think a word, you think the sign-body as well as the meaning. It depends on the person how you internally think the signbody: some people might hear it said (they literally have a word in the head), some people might just think the word purely abstractly - I don't know if that is possible; for me, thinking a word is performative - I believe I can sometimes - not always - detect micro movements of the speech aparatus (the vocal chords are probably not involved, I'm more thinking about the tongue, palate etc.)

But the meaning is doubled; the canonical meaning of the word needs to fit into the stream of what you want to say. That process would usually be automatic and unconscious, but you'll notice it when you can't think of word, or think of many words none of which fit. What I'm thinking here is that there's not necessarily a 1:1 relationship between say a word (both it's sign-body and canonical meaning) and what concept you wish to impart. But I'm not sure how to model that relationship. There's a wholistic flow that you need to partition for langauge, but there's also the pre-partitioned word-stuff that you import, so there's some sort of give and take here (and that give and take regularly crosses the borders between worlds 2 and 3). I have no model for how this works at this point.

Would you say that, in your "stream-of-Ann" thoughts, there is an element of causation that produces A, B, C, et al.? And can the surface-level thought A indeed cause thought B to rise up as well? Or is causality altogether the wrong way to think about this process? — J

Well, I used the words "externalise" above in a context like "language externalises throught". Maybe I should use the World 2 & 3 model to give you some hotch-potch ad-hoc model of my own?

Basically, both A and B are part of the "stream of Ann", so part of the stream of Ann is also part A and B. So what you have here is a sequence A -> B, where both A and B are part of an ongoing process.

So: some initial trigger made you "think of Ann". This is vague and unspecific; some set of neurons triggering maybe? It's pre-conscious and manifests as "How is Ann doing?" That manifestation is what you would like to call a thought. Now, if these exact words pop into your head, then you have something that persists in its form longer than anything in the actual stream. But it's made of language, which, for you to learn it, has to be a World 3 object, and once you have these words, you have soething that endures and triggers compatible World 2 thoughts. That works as communication from person to person, or as a particular form of memory from self to future self.

For example, if Ann were a mutual acquaintance of ours, you could say "I wonder how Ann is doing," and then I would wonder, too. Inside your head, it's a similar process; you just eliminate one person and it's all yourself. But the words are cultural set-ups that you've calibrated to your word-habits. Basically:

Thinking of Ann -> World2 thought of how Ann is doing -> Production of World3 object "I wonder how Ann is doing" which overlaps with ongoing World 2 thought -> Potential for recall of World3 object ("I wondered how Ann is doing.") and creation of World 2 thought similar to earlier thought.

You can analytically set the boarders anywhere in the process. Is the thought "I wonder Ann is doing" viewed as a type that anyone can have? Is it the thought that's in your brain? Is it the World 3 words and its associated propostion?

It's possible, for example, that "thinking of Ann" sets the stream in motion and some other stream (the birthday stream, the october stream, whatever) intersects and creates the World 3 sentence "Oh, right, Ann's birthday is coming up soon." And it's possible that stream initiates at roughly the same time as "how is Ann doing," but the former is more "primal" so it finishes production sooner. If that is the case, there is little causal connection. But if the production of the World 3 object somehow influences the "thinking-of-Ann-stream", it could do so in a way that kick-starts the Ann's-Birthday stream, and then there could be some causal connection (how do we differentiate between cause, influence and trigger, for starters).

I'd also like to note that world 3 objects aren't always as fixed as words. Take the concept of "story". I've never read much of the Moby Dick book, but I've seen the film with Gregory Peck. I've read Kipling's Jungle Books and seen the Disney "adaption". To what extent do the books and films contain the same story? Does the mode of "telling" change the story? The Moby Dick story as presented in book and film is a World 3 concept, and it frames the differences between instantiations. There are more differences with the jungle books, here. You extend the scope of the term "story" to some extent. You might, for example, feel as I did that it's "not the same story anymore". But that's influenced by context: it's supposed to be an adaption, but it isn't. This flips on its head with "Kimba the White Lion" --> "Lion King", where "it's practically the same story" because the inspiration goes unnoticed. If attributed and names kept, for example, one might say "it's not the same story anymore"; i.e. create mutually exclusive sentences that on the thought-level are quite compatible if contextualised. So what is a "story"?

If you're substituting "thought" here, you'll run into similar problems, because a thought put into words is always also a world 3 object. You're referring to propositions, here, for example. Now I think that, and that's probably controversial, that a thought you don't share and only think to yourself is also partly a world 3 object if you include the words. You certainly have a world 2 thought, too, but when looking at this from an analytic point of view there's a danger that you attribute world 3 properties to a world 2 object. For example:

It can also be argued that it did, but I think there's a much stronger argument that the thought "7 + 5" caused the thought... — Patterner

Great. That's exactly what I'd like to hear about: Can we give a sense of causality to entailment or logical equivalence? — J

As maths, a world 3 object, entailment pertains even outside of any thought.

Inside a thought, that particular mind must know how to do addition first. Which is why the description of a causal chain is complex.

I think there's a danger here that the straightforward and stable entailment serves as a model for mental causation. It's not an invalid model, necessarily, but the mental processes just aren't as straightforward. (And then there's the problem that world 3 objects need to be maintained by world 2 process for them to exist, but my head's spinning already.)

I hope I'm making sense. This is the third version of this post.

A. I think: “I wonder how my friend Ann is doing.”

B. I then think: “It’s her birthday soon; I must get her a present.”

The most standard description of what’s going on here is, I believe, something like: “The first thought reminded me of the second thought,” or “When I thought of Ann, I remembered it was her birthday soon, which reminded me that I want to get her a present.” — J

I come from sociology rather than philosophy, so my first impulse is always two things: (a) what's the theory, and (b) how do we operationalise it? But I'm not a very systematic thinker at the outset. So here I go:

My first thought reading this was that you went straight for the "hidden variable". As far I read you, you meant to ask whether thought A causes thought B. But you interpret thought A as "thinking of Ann". However, thought A is literally wondering how Ann is doing. You topicalise a rather specific ignorance and thereby show interest. That is I was automatically seeing "thinking of Ann" as a background process that instatiates as both A and B. Wondering how Ann is doing and her birthday are two different elements you could connect with Ann.

That suggests we're instinctively leaning towards a different approach: (a) A --> B, or (b) A <--[Thinking of Ann]-->B, where the order of the alphabet is the order of the surface manifistation.

You address the difference here, I think:

I'm suggesting that "thought" can be understood in at least two ways. The "voice in the head" version would be what I'm calling a W2 thought. Unheard thoughts? I think not, for purposes of this discussion. — J

Here's the thing: I don't have an inner voice, and when I think words its formulating a thought with a background stream running to see if my word-thought expresses what I'm actually thinking. For me, "unheard thought" is core thinking and the verbalisation is surface expression there-of, at most assymptotic to the "real" thought. This is why the connection to propositions feels... strange. Propositions, for me, go top-down, while thinking is bottom-up, and verbalising a thought creats a loop of bottom-up - top-down - bottom up.... Words are externalised meaning and thought is internalised meaning. It's not quite so clear a differentiation, and verbalising a thought changes the flow of consciousness of course. But I can't easily pin down a single thought.

So for me, in the above example there would be an ongoing Ann-stream, with "how is she" surfacing firt and then the topic of birthday "intruding" and integrating. To do this, a second stream must be present (a keep-track-of-the-date stream, maybe; or a I-recently-forgot-another-birthday stream).

Isolating words is far easier than isolating thoughts, so propositions are helpful tools to put down an anchor so to speak, but I think it would be a mistake to conclude from a clearly demarkated proposition to a clearly demarkated thought. Words kind of externalise meaning and thereby encourage the repetition and variation of a thought-pattern. They're kind of thought attractors.

So if you'd be excluding "unheard thoughts", I probably have little to contribute. It leads to a highly unintuitive theoretical frame work for me.

I think we are interpreting Calvino's essay differently. — javi2541997

Before that, I think we're reading different versions of the essay. The online-version I linked above has been published in the New York Review on October 9, 1986. None of the online-reprints I've seen had the list. It's very likely that the article itself (the one in the NYR) is a reprint and translation. Is the version you've read older or younger?

For example:

For this reason, I still argue that it is surprising how Calvino skipped or missed very important authors, and he was biased with Italian writers. — javi2541997

In the version I've read he barely mentions any Italians (as far as I can tell), and there's this line:

"I notice that Leopardi is the only name from Italian literature that I have cited. This is the effect of the disintegration of the library. Now I ought to rewrite the whole article making it quite clear that the classics help us understand who we are and the point we have reached, and that consequently Italian classics are indispensable to us Italians in order to compare them with foreign classics, and foreign classics are equally indispensable so that we can measure them against Italian classics." (Above link)

"Us Italians" gives away the target audience (so it's likely a reprint; this reads differently to American audiences, no?).

So now there's a bias towards Italians? Maybe he actually did re-write the essay? (It could still be older.)

There's a lot I can't say, because there's a lot I don't know. See? For example, I don't know how he framed the list you gave us. It's entirely possible that I'd agree with you. (I'm speculating that I won't, mostly based on the impression I have of Calvino, but that's neither here nor there. I know too little about Calvino.)

This, though:

For this reason, I still argue that it is surprising how Calvino skipped or missed very important authors — javi2541997

It's inevitable that a short informal essay skips lots of very important authors. There are just too many. Bias is inevitable, and I don't think eliminating bias is even something one should attempt. Especially not in an article that wavers between social and personal, like this one.

I definitely agree that Don Quixote is one of the most important pieces of world literature; there's no way around this. But if everyone should say this whenever the topic comes up than I'd say:

A classic is a book you grow tired of by overexposure, long before you even see a copy.

It's the flipside of classics that Calvino doesn't mention, probably because he'd want me to read them. For example, two of the most important classics in 20th Century dystopian novels are 1984 and Brave New World. I've read Brave New World, but I haven't read 1984. Yet, I have this irrational and likely completely wrong feeling that I'm more familiar with 1984, mostly because people talk about it more. It gets more adaptions (in film, rock music and videogames...). And so on. If I read 1984, I'd probably enjoy it and find new things about it (things that stand out to me more than to others most likely). But I'm just not motivated to read it, because it's just being talked to death. And I even own a copy. And I even have the time.

It's all really weird.

On the other hand, I disagree that Don Quixote is not necessary to be mentioned in his essay because it is already known by the vast majority. According to that point, he wouldn't have mentioned Odyssey as well, when this is another important and recognised work of literature. — javi2541997

Yeah, well. What I said here doesn't work very well as an argument. And, yeah, there are plenty of well-known works in the list, too. And I hope you don't think I'm denigrating Don Quixote. It's no doubt one of the most important pieces of world literature out there in terms of influence - spreading both into pop culture and academic circles. And I also found it a great read (though I read a German translation, me not speaking Spanish).

Surprisingly, Calvino did not include Don Quixote in his list. He just mentioned "Tirant lo Blanch", an epic poem very similar to Cid. I mean, of course these are important and excellent books of my country, but putting them above Don Quixote... Wow! That was kind of excessive. — javi2541997

Mentioning something and not something else is "putting one above the other"? Why? You write an essay and mention what comes to mind to fit the flow of your point. One could argue that it's not necessary to mention Don Quixote, because everone knows it anyway.

I can't remember not knowing about Don Quixote (though I definitely heard about the book for the first time at some point). I saw a pretty good Spanish cartoon series as a kid - I later read the book (both part one and two) and found the cartoon surprisingly accurate, actually. I really liked part one. Part two I liked considerably less - it had its high-points but it felt like a... bitter repsonse to being misunderstood by the fan fiction writers of his day and... more impactfully by the Catholic church. You wade through quite a bit of that in part two.

I tried to find out what the point of the list is, but none of the versions I could find have it. (You say the essay is from 1981, and the versions I find - if the penguin page can be trusted - is from 1986 - 5 years later. Written later? Published later? Date of the translation? I just don't know.)

I mean, I go over the list and it's often not the well-known books he menitons (Robert Louis Stevenson - The Pavillion on the Links? Dickens - Our Mutual Friend?). It's like he's encouraging you to go beyond the well-known and figure out your own canon. I doubt it's about consulting a list for the most classic of classics. That doesn't sound like what I know about Calvino (which isn't much; haven't even read If on a Winter's Night a Traveller..., though it's been on my list forever now.

I tried to track down the essay, because Calvino doesn't seem the type to give lists, at least not to set them as authoritive or exclusive or anything like that. I found only version of the essay, which didn't have the list. I found it multiple times; here's one from Penguin books:

Why Read the Classics

You seem to have misquoted the first line, unless it's different in the version you read (which is very possible): it's "'I'm rereading...', never 'I'm reading...'". This is more in line with what I would have expected. I also think the tone here is one of irony. Calvino almost certainly doesn't rule out hearing "I'm reading..." with respect to a classic.

Also, the entire essay seems to waver between the tension point of cultural and personal impact. I've only skimmed the essay so far, but I quite like it. My favourite example comes from near the end:

13. A classic is a work which relegates the noise of the present to a background hum, which at the same time the classics cannot exist without.

14. A classic is a work which persists as background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.

That's just so brilliant!

There's a sense with classics, that the difference between a rist read and a re-read collapses: we've absorbed the classic so that it's always already familiar, but it's also always not quite what we expect (and that seems to hold to true even if we've actually read the book before). The essay seems to be about that; at least that's my initial reading.

I'll read it in full when I have more time (given that I only skimmed it, would that be a re-reading? Hm....)

Reading this thread, I'd say: the classics are books which inspire arguments whether they should be on a list or not. (Harold Bloom made a long one, and I'm fairly certain he was more serious about it than Calvino.)

My own thought experiment is of thinking about how life would have been if I had not existed. It involves eliminating oneself from every aspect and incident in which one has ever partaken in. I wonder about how different life would have been without me for my family, friends and in all respects..How would life have been different for others without my existence in causal chains? — Jack Cummins

I've thought of this, too. I gave up, mostly because I was overwhelmed by the complexity. It starts with your birth. If you're not there, then, for example, the day of the hospital personal that were on duty that day might have been different. How? Who knows. And it goes on: you enter a packed subway train and take up space, people organising around you. Maybe that got people to talk who would otherwise not have been next to each other? In summary, most of the consequences of me being around likely have nothing at all to do with what I value about myself (either positively or negatively). Stories tend to go the route of things would have been better or worse, but really things would likely have been just wildly different. (For example, going back to my birth: If I hadn't been conceived, then my mother wouldn't have been pregnant during the nine prior months. Someone else might have been conceived during that time, and that in turn would likely throw off the entire rhythm of the world such that it would have been very unlikely that my little sister would have been born, simply because sex at a different time would entail different ovum/sperm combinations....).

My hunch is this: if you hadn't been born, you'd be entirely irrelevent, since the world in which your relevant comes into being with you. Ultimately, the comparison between world-with-you and world-without-you is far to complex and includes a lot of stuff we find incidental rather than significant to us. The question just stopped mattering to me the moment I realised a ceteris-paribus hypothesis is untenable.

Not sure you get what I mean, but that really was a switch for me. I'm here and that is it. Any world without me is either unimaginable or implausible, due to the limits of cognition.

If an exact duplicate is made so both original and duplicate exist, are both originals? I don't see how that can be. — Patterner

I think the very concept of original and duplicate breaks down entirely. — flannel jesus

Can you explain what you mean? — Patterner

Human sense-making arises out of our daily praxis: selective attention and all that. Our terms cluster around that, too. We think in terms of original and copy, because the technology is hypothetical, and we go by our daily praxis. If you want to guess (and guess is the best we can manage, I think) what our intutions would be were to live in a society where duplication technology is possible, you need to radically question your immediate intution.

I see at least two issues:

Social responsibility:

We have the new situation where two people share the same dispostion to act on top of the same memories. Up to the point of the copying event there was only one person. After that event there are two people, both of which share the same personal connection to the same singular past. Under our present original/duplicate concept, only the original really does have that connection, while the duplicate only thinks he has that. Do you think this makes for sustainable social organisation? The thing is that, I think, different events pull in different directions:

A married man duplicates himself. Is the duplicate married?
A murderer murders a man. Is the duplicate responsible for the murder?
A person who owes me a dollar is duplicated. Who owes me a doller, and how many do I get back?

There are a million of these situation that all influence each other. What do rights and duties to you have? Does the original-duplicate distinction remain practically relevant equally across all domains? What sort of social conflict can we expect. Would the "duplicate" status enshrine itself as a new minority, for example?

Note that however this is going to organise, people are going to try to game the system, and that in itself will influence how the system evolves. And at some point the last person who was born into a duplicate-technology-free society will be history, and everyone will take it as unquestioned routine that duplicates exists.

The Relationship between the scanned data, the continuous person, and the assembled person:

If we understand the data well enough to temper with it, there will be potential applications. For example, if the duplication technology scans the space that's the person and reassembles that space one for one, it would often reassemble more than just the person. Relevant here is medical stuff: it would reassemble stuff like food being in the process of being digested, air in the lungs, parasites, pace makers, etc. Everything. Some of those things are part of the person, some not - some (such as oxygen in the air and nutrients in the fodd) will soon be part of the person, and so on.

Now imagine I have cancer; I make a duplicate but edit out the cancer. I can now be jealous of my cancer-free person. There is what is theoretically possible; there is what people would do; and there is what people would then feel about what it is that people will do. There's going to be a new normal at some point, but it's hard to see what that is.

The cancer example from the previous example shows a soical-psychological difference, I think, between the teleporter case and the duplication case, as in the teleporter case only one, the assembled person, remains - thus jealousy is impossible, and data-tampering might be viewed, by some at least, as a less risky procedure than an operation. But if you retain your cancer and the copy doesn't? It gets even weirder, depending on the person: for example, if the duplicated person is altruistically inclined, the copy might feel guilty for not having cancer, while the original might be happy for the person, and they both might have a good laugh at the absurdity of the sitution, since they also share that ironic distance to what they consider real.

We can have what-if relationships to our alters (whether we're the original or the copy doesn't matter) in a way we can have to no-one else, not even identical twins (since they don't share a first-person history up to a duplication event).

***

I was born in the seventies, and as a kid I was naturally drawn to SF. So I've been thinking about this almost all my life. The more prominent source of the transporter question for people is probably Star Trek, and I certainly watched that. But the transporter never seemed very interesting to me; it felt like a convenience device, both on cool-tech aspect and the story beats ("evil Kirk" was more fun that plausible, so I didn't really switch on my brain for that, not even as a kid).

For me, the SF source of the transporter is actually the 1958 version of The Fly. (I'm fairly sure me talking about parasites and half-digested food above comes ultimately from that first impetus: the difference what you think of as yourself, vs what a machine would. This was much more interesting to me than anything Star Trek did. That, and I was also an animal nerd as a kid.)

My understanding is that in English this dativ form only remains to point out (identify) the (indirect) object, such as “I gave them flowers”, but nowadays in English we would normally say “I gave flowers to them”. — Antony Nickles

Pretty much. Outside of that it only survives in specific idoms, such as "Woe is me," which I've seen native speakers miscorrect to "Woe is I" (which shows that the dativ is ailing).

As for what you'd normally say, while I can't offer a native speaker's intuition, my impression is that people put the important information at the end of the sentence, so it'd be "I gave them flowers," if the focus is on what you gave them, and "I gave flowers to them," if the focus is on who you gave the flowers to (whom you gave the flowers... <-- this usage seems in sharp decline, which must irk the no-preposition-at-the-end-of-a-sentence crowd).

Someone told me Russian speech pervasively pictures properties as external things, impinging on the subject, where in German, the speaker owns the properties, so instead of the cold is upon me, it's I have cold. Do you think that influences the respective philosophies? Germanic languages conjure a huge inner landscape. — frank

As a native speaker of German, I'm unsure what difference they articulated here. It certainly doesn't work for "cold", as "I'm cold," is most commonly "Mir ist kalt," which translates to "Me is cold," where "me" is the dativ case, as in "Give ME the book." This is far closer to "cold is upon me" than "I have cold."

There are certainly "I have" constructions, such as "Ich habe Hunger," ("I have hunger") or "Ich habe Angst" ("I have fear"). In some cases, alternatives are equally common, as in "Ich bin hungrig," ("I am hungry.")

None of this conjures any kind of inner landscape for me (but that's something that might emerge as meaningful in direct language comparison).

n is not the same for everyone. — unenlightened

Ah, yes, of course. I missed that (thought of it in another context, but somehow didn't make the connection on the practical front). Thanks.

And so everyone, whatever colour their eyes (because no one knows their own eye colour), is waiting to see if after n nights (where n is the number of blue eyed people they see) the blue eyed people leave, and if they don't, they can conclude they also have blue eyes, and if they do then they conclude they have eyes of some other colour. — unenlightened

Yes, that's all perfectly clear to me. What's not clear to me, for example, is why they can't skip forward to day n. I know they can't, but it makes no sense other than in purely logical terms. That's what I find so nuts about this riddle. There's a rift between logic and experience here I don't know how to bridge.

Here's what they know:

A blue-eyed person knows there are either 99 or 100 blue-eyed people.
A brown-eyed person knows there are either 100 or 101 blue-eyed people.

No-one knows the number of eye-clolours, but they do know it's either 2 (the ones they can see), or 3 (if their own isn't among the ones they can see). Therefore:

A blue-eyed person knows there's:
(a) 99 blue-eyed people and 101 brown-eyed people (and their eye-colour is brown)
(b) 100 blue-eyed people and 100 brown-eyed people (and their eye-colour is blue)
(c) 99 blue-eyed people, 100 brown-eyed people, and themselves (with a unique, unknown eye-colour)

If (a) and (b) were the only options, Michael's rule would work from a logical point of view, but (c) messes up things, here. We know that [# of blue]+[# of brown]=200; they don't: [# of blue]+[# of brown] could be 199.

So what changes when the Guru tells them something they already know?

That's the problem. There's a wedge between a logical sequence and an empirical reality I find hard to reconcile:

See, the catch is this: If an islander sees no blue-eyed person, then all other islanders see exactly one person with blue eyes. So all of the logic here is counterfactual: you don't really have to go see if someone leaves; you know nobody will. But at the same time, this logic spins forward until Day 99 or Day 100, depending on wether the person is blue-eyed or brown-eyed (unbeknowest to themselves), and then it's supposed to work in the world we live in. How?

It's the event on Day 100 of all blue-eyed people leaving that tips the brown-eyed people off that they're not blue-eyed (but not that they're brown-eyed). All that hinges on the fact that systematically brown-eyed people see more blue-eyed people than blue-eyed people do, and thus their set-off point is later. And their set-off point is only later, because the Guru talked about blue-eyed people.

The important fact seems to me this:

Every Islander knows that blue-eyed people see one fewer blue eyed person than non-blue eyed people.

If there had been 100 blue-eyed people, 90 brown-eyed people, and 10 green-eyed people, they'd still have had to wait 99 days before making the decision, because both brown-eyed and green-eyed people form the relevant group of people whose eyes aren't blue.

If there had been 20 blue-eyed people and 180, the game would be over much sooner if blue-eyed people were "seen" by the guru, or much later if brow-eyed people were "seen".

It's obvious to me, matemathically, that the announcement matters. I just don't know how to interpret this in pragmatical terms. It's baffling.

1) Consciousness is fundamental, not emergent from the physical.*

2) Therefore, something non-physical is also at work.

3) There's no reason to think matter everywhere in the universe that is arranged like us would not have the same subjective experience that we have.

4) The non-physical aspect of reality that gives us our subjective experience is doing the same everywhere in the universe. — Patterner

Haven't been on here for a few days, so I just now saw this. I'm looking at this argument, and I don't see how you can argue this while holding that consciousness is fundamental.

1) Okay.
2) What "therefore"? If consciousness is fundamental and not emergent then something non-physical is at work, sure. And that something... surely is consciousness? This seems circular?
3) That seems to be upside down to me. Again, it's true, but only because to have the experience we do is fundamental, and it involves being arranged like we are. Again circular?
4) I reality gives us our experience, then reality (whatever that is) is fundamental. I suppose I might have been implying from the beginning that - if consciounsess is fundamental - then reality isn't. It's consciousness that arranges reality.

That is, unless, you've rowed back on your definition, and consciouness isn't subjective experience, but something weird that gives us our experience. But then you have no definition.

What am I missing?

We don't have a clue as to how consciousness could emerge from the physical. It's like asking how we could build a house out of liquid water. Worse, in fact, because at least houses and water are both physical things. — Patterner

Yeah, we don't have a clue what consciousness even is apart from our experiences. In fact, even the "our" is an assumption here. I think it's at its very core a perspective problem, but I don't want to argue this here (as I'm not actually a panpsychist, just sympathetic to the idea.)

What do you have in mind by "consciouness being fundamental doesn't imply everything being conscious"? What is the alternative? — Patterner

Fundamental =/= Omnipresent

If CON = Present, CON = Fundamental
If CON =/= Present, N/A

Also, I think the term "everything" is problematic in the sense that what appears to us as a unit may not be conscious, and what is conscious may not appear to us as a unit. Thus "everything" is necessarily undefined in this thread. The best we can do is permutate whatever units make sense to us and assume that every permutation is potentially conscious even if viewed as a unit it doesn't creat sense for us. (So, for example, not only I am conscious, but every hair on my head is, too. Not only every hair on my head, but every random (to me) pair of hairs on my head; every random (to me) set of three hairs... and so on. All those consciousnesses fan out as a reality each and overlap. (The "potential" here isn't a potential in the sense of a "potential energy"; it's just a measure of our ignorance.)

For any unit to be conscious as a unit, it must be a unit processing energy. Arrangements of particles must mean something other than the arrangements of particles that they are, and they must be processing that information. So DNA, the beginning of life, is also the beginning of groups of particles that are conscious as a unit. — Patterner

It now seems like you're not actually saying "everything" is conscious. That's perfectly fine, since consciouness being fundamental doesn't imply everything being conscious. It just feels... different from what I read you saying before (partly due to the rock example, no doubt).

Sorry, I just don't understand your idea. — Patterner

Don't worry. It's a thought experiment I developed for myself to make sense of an intuition I have. And the thought experiment failed to achieve that goal, so far, but I still get back to it from time to time. If you don't have that intuition, it must seem like even more nonsense than it seems to me. But I do think there's some opportunity here to figure out... our disconnect?

I think the following might be elements of my intuition:

There is one world, and it is what is.

Within that world there is consciousness, at least mine. Probably more. How many there are is a fact that is not available to me.

Things that appear to me as a unit may or may not be conscious.

There may be "things" that don't appear to me as a unit that are conscious. They would be units in themselves, but not for me.

If that is the case, then consciousnesses might be an aspect of the world-that-is-what-it-is that internally devides it into differening units. That might be what "a reality" is. Thus: a reality is one way to organise the world-that-is-what-it-is and it differes from other ways the world could be organised. The nodes that organise the world into realities would be consciounesses.

Some ways to interally organise the world-that-is-what-it-is are compatible with each other, and some are not. That means what units are "real" depends on what consciouness constitutes a reality.

That leaves us with the putative globe-as-unit in my thought experiment: partly part of a butterfly, partly part of a flower... etc. could be a real thing if we posit a putative way to internally organise the world-that-is-what-it-is such that this globe needs to stay a unit. We need to also posit a consciouness that makes sense of this. (As with your theory, "makes sense" would not be a mental event here; it would just be a mode of organisation. What's a real unit for one consciousness, is not necessarily a real unit for another. Mutual compatibility between consciousnesses and thus realities would depend, possibly among other things, on overlap of "real units".)

I haven't quite figured out what to do with "the world-that-is-what-it-is". Logic tells me that, since it is the thing to be organised, it is in itself unorganised and thus has no consciouness and isn't real. This is a major area where I short circuit my thinking.

In the end, it's just something that keeps my mind busy when I'm bored. None of this seems practically relevant to me. And most of it is probably nonsense, but it should be able to serve as a signpost to how my mind works.

I'm not sure "subjective experience" works as a definition, mostly because this uproots what "experience" means: you sometimes express sympathy for "felt experience", then you say that a rock "experiences being a rock," but also that rock has no feelings. There's a muddle here that's nearly impossible to deal with if your intuition is foreign to the concept.

I'm actually sypmapthetic towards the concept of panpsychism, but I've never been able to make it work. I think if consciousness is fundamental but not mental, then it would have to do more with... perspectivity? It's an organising principle. For example:

A human being is a unit. — Patterner

If consicousness is emrgent than we would say that a human being being a unit is a necessary precondition for it to be conscious; but if we posit that consciousness is fundamental then we might examine the idea that a human being is a unit, because it is conscious. Consciousness organises the world flow into units. The difference between a human being with mental events and a rock without mental events might be that human beings don't only form themselves as units, but also other things around them, while rocks only form themselves as units (if rocks have consciousness, and their being a unit isn't just an artifact of human consciousness).

Basically, what would count as a rock's consciousness would be independent from human category-making. For example, a human breaks a rock. What now? Two consciousnesses where previously there was one? One consciousness as broken rock? Both? Is the world flow constantly splintering off and merging consciousnesses? Does really everything have a concsiousness (regardless of whether it's comprehensible as a unit to a human mind)?

Quite long ago now, I've come up with a thought experience. Imagine you come across a butterfly sitting on a flower. To you there's a butterfly, a flower, stuff around that that's neiter... all that is intuitive and comprehensible. Now imagine an invisible globe, such that part of the butterfly and flower is in the globe, and part of it is outside of it. That is less intuitive, but due to maths we can imagine it. Now imagine the butterfly taking off and flying away. And now find some sort of mathmatics that allows to recalculate the entire universe such that whatever was within the imagined invisible globe stays a unit. I think that's impossible (from a human perspective), but if we imagine it possible, surely the result would be entirely incomprehensible. However, if the contents of the globe were conscious than there would be an experience that would make this cohere, however incomprehensible this would be to us. And yet it would be the very same world flow that contains our consciousnesses, too.

I never got far with this thought experiment, to be honest. But to me, if consciousness is fundamental, then - in this way - either we cannot tell what counts as a unit with regards to consciousness, or we need to accept that there a plenty of incomprehensible units as consciousness, or we would have to find a way to transcend human consciousness while at the same time retaining enough to be able to compare.

It's a muddle I can't resolve, which keeps me from buying into panpsychism (and also keeps me from ruling it out).