States of affairs are not equivalent to whatever can potentially be stated. Falsehoods can be stated. True statements as well. States of affairs aren't capable of being true or false. You said so yourself. So...
We do need to draw the distinction between states of affairs and what can be potentially be stated. You are not. — creativesoul
Language less belief and the content thereof. You are focusing upon irrelevancy.
You? — creativesoul
Is omniscience a fashionable aim these days? — creativesoul
Whatever else can potentially be stated?
:brow:
That's the same conflation between statements and events(states of affairs) that I reject from Banno. — creativesoul
So, as with events, states of affairs can't be true (or false). Instead they are what make statements true (or false).
— Andrew M
Part of what makes statements true or false anyway... — creativesoul
Do you believe that it's a property of the world that whatever happens in it can potentially be stated? — fdrake
(1) - as an event - cannot be true, whereas (1) - as a statement about those events - arguably can. — creativesoul
It may be well worth setting out the agreements, or similarities between our views. I had hoped that that would take place a bit in the debate, but it did not. — creativesoul
Fair enough. I should have used the word "existing" instead of "referring"
— Andrew M
Cool. The opposite sense of subject to Strawson's sense, but fine if you are careful not to mix in that other usage without notice, or without noticing. Ah, but you see no such requirement.
(or even better, omitted the qualifier altogether).
— Andrew M — bongo fury
You instead immediately resume the confused (Aristotelian?) insinuation of some benign parallelism between the two, which the philosopher has just clarified, if only we followed the clear logic. — bongo fury
Or the ball (the subject) is being kicked by Alice (the object). [...] it is the ball that is being described (i.e., in subject-predicate form).
— Andrew M
The philosopher has no robes. — bongo fury
It seems to me that both sentences are describing both things, because both sentences say the same thing, just from different views. — Harry Hindu
I have been working on pandemic outbreaks for 15 years. There is a misunderstanding of the difference between the response in much of the West, versus successful countries (including New Zealand and Australia)
Summarizing:
1. Reactive versus proactive and goal oriented.
2. Mitigation (slowing transmission) versus elimination (stopping transmission)
3. Gradually responding to increasing levels of infection by imposing greater restrictions which enables the infection rate to grow (red zone strategy), versus starting with high restrictions to arrest transmission and relaxing restrictions only when the number of new cases is so low that contact tracing or localized short term action can stop community transmission (green zone strategy, including localized “fire fighting”).
4. Trying to keep economic activity and travel as open as possible but perpetuating the economic harm and imposing yoyo restrictions, versus making an initial sacrifice of economic activity and travel in order to benefit from the rapid restoration of normal economic activity.
5. Focusing attention on the few individuals resistant to social action because of shortsightedness or selfishness, versus recognizing the vast majority do the right thing if given clear guidance and support, which is what matters for success, as elimination is a robust strategy.
6. Incorrectly thinking that this is a steady state situation where balance between counter forces must be maintained versus a dynamic situation in which rapid action can shift conditions from a bad losing regime to a good winning one.
7. Naive economic thinking of a tradeoff between economics and fighting the virus, versus realizing a short time economic hit will enable opening normally and restoring the economy (as recognized by McKinsey, BCG, IMF and other correct economic analyses)
8. We have to “live with the virus” versus we can eliminate the virus and return to normal social and economic conditions.
9. Waiting for high-tech vaccination to be a cure all, versus using right-tech classic pandemic isolation/quarantine of individuals and communities to completely stop transmission
10. Considering the virus as primarily a medical problem of treating individuals and individual responsibility for prevention of their own infection, versus defeating the virus as a collective effort based in community action, galvanized by leaders providing clear information, a public health system engaging in community-based prevention of transmission, and the treatment of patients is, by design, as limited as possible. — Yaneer Bar-Yam, Unsuccessful versus successful COVID strategies, New England Complex Systems Institute (December 13, 2020)
Because, the only obvious reading of "(referring) subject" is to have it mean "word or phrase that refers". — bongo fury
subject:
1. A person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with.
— Andrew M
So subjects are nouns? Looks like objects and subjects are synonyms, unless you're saying that objects can't be discussed, described, or dealt with. — Harry Hindu
Very generous of you to explain correspondence theory to me, but it's wrong, Tarski knew it was wrong, and did not propose to define truth. — frank
So, just to be clear, do you at last see why
(referring) subject
— Andrew M
would have to be a typo? — bongo fury
Why the stubborn attachment to "subject" at all? — bongo fury
Truth is undefinable. IOW, if you don't know what it is, no one could explain it to you. — frank
To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true. — Aristotle, Metaphysics 1011b25
But that's not a fault of the rule. It's just the fact of human fallibility even when we're being careful. So we develop pragmatic rules to help with that relating to the reasons/justifications for making assertions.
— Andrew M
What does the T-sentence rule have to do with justifications? It's usually associated with deflation of truth. — frank
I wonder if that would work as an argument against Davidson: we can't tell if a sentence is truth apt unless we know the context of utterance.
"S" is true IFF S
That may be nonsense? — frank
States of affairs are a bit tricky. They can contain hidden perspectives like "behind X". — Marchesk
That's how it works, and drawing and maintaining the distinction between believing a mouse ran behind the tree, and believing that a description of those events is true does not in any way, shape, or form deny that some statements are about the way things are. — creativesoul
So
if (france.king.hairstyle == "bald") {polish his head} else {do nothing}
will result in nothing being done, because france.king.hairstyle is a null reference (since france has no such property as king) and so comparisons against it universally return false. — Pfhorrest
Plus the sentence could become truth apt (if we grant that sentences can be) if you named your dog 'The present king of France'
Still have to look to use to discern meaning. The meaning is the proposition (kind of). — frank
Asserting that the snow outside is white isnt useful, as it is basically redundant information -as if snow could be another color. — Harry Hindu
(referring) subject.
— Andrew M
was a typo? — bongo fury
It's just not truth apt, right? — frank
"Snow" or snow? — bongo fury
but that doesn't make the sentence have some kind of indeterminate truth value, because its strictly logical content can still be evaluated to false. — Pfhorrest
We are apt to fancy we are talking about sentences and expressions when we are talking about the uses of sentences and expressions.
This is what Russell does. Generally, as against Russell, I shall say this. Meaning (in at least one important sense) is a function of the sentence or expression ; mentioning and referring and truth or falsity, are functions of the use of the sentence or expression. [italics mine] — On Referring, p327 - Peter Strawson
In the same way that "all of my children are dead" pragmatically implies that I have had some nonzero number of children, all of which have died, but strictly logically equates to "there does not exist any x such that x is my child and x is not dead", which is true because there does not exist any x such that x is my child. — Pfhorrest
the sentence "the present king of France is bald" does express a proposition -- that there exists exactly one x such that x is presently king of France and x is bald -- and that proposition is false, because there is no x that is presently king of France. — Pfhorrest
Pragmatics is neither syntax nor semantics. — Pfhorrest
Could we say that the meaning of "the world as it is" depends on the context? The world has perceptible and imperceptible aspects, and on a day to day basis we usually want to talk about the world we perceive. — Daemon
The tetrachromats are interesting because it means all men and most women are colour-blind. So if you've ever wondered what it's like to be colour-blind, now you know. — Daemon
Andrew then added something about "standards", Platonic or Idealised standards, versus creature specific standards.
I guess "Idealised" is the same thing as "the world as it is ("in itself"). — Daemon
A concrete object is what any human being knows. If you take a billionaire from New York and a priest from New Guinea, they have the same understanding of concrete objects that everyone else has! What we call reality is what presents itself to human beings. — Rafaella Leon
This is one of Kant’s mistakes, he thinks that all of these are limitations of our knowledge, that we cannot know things in themselves, however, I assert that what I’m talking about is things in themselves! — Rafaella Leon
So if there aren't any creatures about, there isn't a way things are? — Daemon
[3] Can we see a suitable portion of the world as it is described truly?
...
Answer: [3] ... reject [4] and [5] for the same reasons as [1] — bongo fury
Ah, but the demanded condition for being able to see the world as it is, is to be able to see it free from all perspectives; which would mean being able to make absolutely true, that is completely context independent, statements about it. The true statements we are able to make are all relative to various contexts, which just isn't good enough, dammit! :rofl: — Janus
I would say we are capable of being mistaken about anything. — khaled
I am not saying that a stick that looks bent in water is actually bent, but that whether or not the stick is "actually bent" is found out by employing a creature specific standard. — khaled
That there is no "direct access" if that makes sense, we see things through fallible senses and fallible reasoning. I find people forget this often. — khaled
But in a world where most people are not color-blind, the color-blind person has to adapt to the color-normal use (say, learning how to navigate traffic lights by noting the light intensity at a bulb position). With regard to this very specific distinction (and the color-normal standard), they would not be seeing things as they are.
— Andrew M
Just seems to define "the way things are" as "the way things seem to most of us" Andrew M — khaled
This idea can be extended to animals that perceive colors differently. Are they seeing the world as it is? Yes, in relation to their perceptual capabilities. But not necessarily in relation to ours as human beings.
— Andrew M
What about in relation to as things are, or at the very least, as modern science describes those things? — Marchesk
I conclude that nobody can see the world as it is. — Daemon
Are you really saying that how things are is determined by majority vote? — Daemon
In game theory, a focal point (or Schelling point) is a solution that people tend to choose by default in the absence of communication. The concept was introduced by the American economist Thomas Schelling in his book The Strategy of Conflict (1960).[1] Schelling states that "(p)eople can often concert their intentions or expectations with others if each knows that the other is trying to do the same" in a cooperative situation (at page 57), so their action would converge on a focal point which has some kind of prominence compared with the environment. However, the conspicuousness of the focal point depends on time, place and people themselves. It may not be a definite solution. — Focal point (game theory)
Indeed that can and does happen. But we are still capable of seeing things as they are, no?
— Andrew M
That is the explicit mission of science, but since Galileo, there's something that's been left out. In the attempt to exclude subjectivity, the subject itself becomes excluded; science as now practiced has tended to put exclusive emphasis on the quantitative, what can be specificed mathematically, excluding anything qualitative - hence this debate! — Wayfarer
3. Qualification or quality (ποιόν, poion, of what kind or quality). This determination characterizes the nature of an object. Examples: white, black, grammatical, hot, sweet, curved, straight. — Aristotle's Categories
Agreed, though I would say that [objectivity] is grounded in human experience, rather than human subjectivity, which I think captures the empirical nature of the enterprise.
— Andrew M
I would say subjective experience. It helps show that objectivity stems from subjectivity, rather than be the opposite of it. — Olivier5
Is a colourblind person capable of seeing things as they are? — Daemon
In game theory, a focal point (or Schelling point) is a solution that people tend to choose by default in the absence of communication. The concept was introduced by the American economist Thomas Schelling in his book The Strategy of Conflict (1960).[1] Schelling states that "(p)eople can often concert their intentions or expectations with others if each knows that the other is trying to do the same" in a cooperative situation (at page 57), so their action would converge on a focal point which has some kind of prominence compared with the environment. However, the conspicuousness of the focal point depends on time, place and people themselves. It may not be a definite solution. — Focal point (game theory)
Or, we can't see the world as it really is, because we take delusory appearances to be reality. Which is much more likely, given our cultural context. — Wayfarer
You want to say that a feeling is of something "in the world", and not of something "in your mind". Okay, but you are either aware or not aware of being touched, and it is the awareness (or not) that makes it a feeling (or not). You are aware of the experience; you are not having an experience of the experience. — Luke
What about the feeling of pain - is that a feeling of something "in the world"? — Luke
If so, then what is the distinction between the feeler of pain (i.e. the person) and the world? Do you consider a person to be identical with their physical body? — Luke
...then there are those who insist in talking about how the word is for us, as opposed to how it really is; as if that helped. — Banno
Anyway, it sounds to me like that Cyrenaics and other ancient skeptical schools anticipated much of the modern debate around qualia, minus the physicalism and neurological part. I do recall that one criticism of ancient atomism was that atoms and the void couldn't create sensations of color and taste. — Marchesk
The Cyrenaics note that the same object can cause different perceivers to experience different sensible qualities, depending on the bodily condition of the perceivers. For instance, honey will taste sweet to most people, but bitter to somebody with an illness, and the same wall that appears white to one person will look yellow to somebody with jaundice. And if a person presses his eye, he sees double.
From the fact that the wall appears white to me and yellow to you, the Cyrenaics think we should infer that we cannot know which quality the wall itself has on the basis of our experience of it, presumably because we have no criterion outside of our experiences to use to adjudicate which one (if either) of our experiences is correct. — Cyrenaics - i. The Relativity of Perception - IEP
What I find interesting in this view — which must have many precedents — is that the Platonic world of ideas is not ‘out there’ and objective; rather it is grounded in human subjectivity, and built by our intersubjective dialogue and intellectual efforts generation after generation. — Olivier5
OK. I think of dualism as an ontological separation thesis, where each dual has its own nature and principles for understanding them.
— Andrew M
Fair. But ontology is elusive. We don’t really know what matter ‘is’, for instance. Personally I try to stay away from it. (ontology I mean, not matter, as staying away from matter would be difficult) — Olivier5
I show that Aristotelian physics is a correct and non-intuitive approximation of Newtonian physics in the suitable domain (motion in fluids), in the same technical sense in which Newton theory is an approximation of Einstein’s theory. Aristotelian physics lasted long not because it became dogma, but because it is a very good empirically grounded theory. The observation suggests some general considerations on inter-theoretical relations. — Aristotle’s Physics: a Physicist’s Look - Carlo Rovelli, 2014
Long story short, I think kicking happens out there in the world, not in people's minds (it's a kind of relation, which is part of the physicist's toolkit). However it doesn't follow that it has an independent existence apart from individuals. Which is why it is abstract, not concrete.
— Andrew M
That makes sense. But I think the same thing applies to individuals. An individual is a being (be-ing) in the sense of the term as verb, yet being, like kicking, does not have an independent existence apart from individuals.
So for me an act of kicking is as concrete as the individual doing the kicking and the object being kicked. And kicking in the general sense, is no more abstract than being or existence in the general sense. — Janus