I would make a version of that objection too
Why does my self have to be reduced to a homunculus within a body at all? Why exactly are we proposing the homunculus me rather than my body in the first place?

No doubt my experience is not my body, but that only points to the absudity of the homunculus. How does reducing my experience to the body of a homunculus rather than the one I perceive bring us any closer to giving us an account of my experience which is NOT a body?

Is not to be myself enough? To be an experience, to be qualia? Why are we even suggesting I need to be made up by an inner person in the first place? Is my experience only a function of an homunculus organ in my body?

This is why the homunculus account has the regress. If experience was to terminate at a person within my body, it would be reduced to that state of body-- lungs ( homoculus) would supposedly give a full account of breathing ( conciousness). The Being of conciousness is missing, as with any reductionist argument.

Proponents of the homunculus argument don't accept this. There must always be more it conciousness than the body which causes it. The "hard problem" which the homunculus is thought to be resolving actually applies equally to the homunculus. How can this mere organ ( homoculus) in my body account for my experience? It cannot. It falls to the same sword as the body we perceive.

The most often argument against homunculi is it results in infinite regress. Each instance of experience is given in terms of the identity of a different being, so it results in an endless run of homunculi with homunculi.

What I perceive really of a homunculus in my head. But then that homunculus has experience, it's experiencing my perception, so it needs Its own homunculus to be experiencing it's perception. The loop repeats ad-infinitum.

Strictly speaking, this argument isn't quite enough to exclude homunculi, at least in what it describes (why couldn't there by an endless transfinite run of homunculi? They could exist). It's just people think the idea is too absurd to consider.

But they read it as absurd of a reason. The homunculus is incoherent by identity. If my experience was of a homunculus, I wouldn't be myself. I would be merely watching a body which wasn't my own.

My conciousness would by irrelevant to the body I'm perceiving around me. And so it would be to the homunculus of every level. Each would not own their experience. It would belong to the homunculus on the higher level. Now since the line of homunculi is endless, it means the passing of ownership never terminates in the existence of an experiencing being.

The homunculus account of conciousness literally says no-one exists. Quaila never belongs to anyone.

Semiotic theory is really more of a tri-aspect monism. The triad isn't replacing the dual substances of mind body dualism. It's a different sort of logical concept. Not a pair of opposed fundamental substances, but a singular system of an interacting triad. Experiences are considered states of the world.

In terms of the "hard problem," semiotic theory considers it either incoherent or irrelevant. Since qualia doesn't have an apparent logical structure, there's nothing to say about it with the constraints of logic. It's not needed to talk about how experiences are logically constrained to a form, so it sort of a pointless detour.

"Quaila" is just bad metaphysics for the semiotic theorist because it doesn't reflect a logical constraint on the world. It doesn't tell us how the world is formed, so it's irrelevant to describing what matters (at least that's how the story goes. Of course, the immaterialists, anti-realists and non-reducitve materialists have other things to say, but that's a whole range of different arguments).

I think you misunderstood what I'm trying to show in my response. For me, suffering a headache is good, because I was trying to demonstrate that any form of suffering hurts.

We cannot, as darth was doing, suggest that some forms of suffering do not hurt because they have a different pain or cause less damage to the body or mind - at least if we are being honest. My point was that darth was trying to bury the suffering of the childless couple to maintain a fiction of a worthless life and victory over suffering.

So, what you are suggesting of anti-natalism is true. They advocate our extinction, no matter how worthwhile lives might be. Though, I don't think you quite grasp what the anti-natalist is about. For them, the issue is not that life is worthless, it is that suffering is too great to make it ethical. The call for extinction is ground in the presence of suffering, not in life being worthless.

I know. You didn't interpret the triad as formless. The problem is you envision parts of triad coming out of fundamental formless substance of mind and body. As if there were, before minds and body were constrained by logical structure, a formless mind and body.

My objection to your argument is going the other way to what you interpreted. I'm saying your formless bits of mind and body are incoherent to the semiotic theorist. The problem is not that you've interpreted the triad as formless, it is you are saying mind and body somehow have presence outside the triad.

The semiotic theorist is bumping up against your substance dualism again. You've introduced the mind and body catergories of substance dualism and are now trying to understand the semiotics theorist in those terms. It's not going to work. The semotic theorist rejects the dualism fundamental substances of mind and body.

I should point out that apo is using "brute fact" differently than I am. I mean it in the sense that experiences are thought to be state of the world, as proposed to some "illusion" or transcendent form.

Apo is using it in the context of the question of perception and explanation-- i.e. how do we explain the presence of these existing experiences? What causes them? How do they mean? What makes them experiences rather than something else?

In that sense, there isn't really fundamental matter or experience for the semiotic theorist.

The world is vague, not specific forms of the world. Minds and bodies don't pre-exist their logical structure. Bodies and minds are two categories of caused states in the world, constituted in particular logical structure.

There are no "formless fundamental bodies and experience bits" which are shaped in logic. Such a thing makes no sense-- bodies and minds have a logical structure. They cannot be prior to that logical constraint.

Panpsychism doesn't say matter is mind (that would make it entirely idealism). It says any matter has mind (experience). This distinction is sort of important. It considers mind and body as distinct. All matter has some sort of experience, rather than all matter being experience.

The semiotic theorist doesn't agree with this. A symbol is not a mind. The pixels on the screen might by symbolic, but they are not conscious beings. Experience might be a brute fact, but it's not a brute fact everywhere (and most critically, for the semiotic theorist, these brute facts have a logical structure; there can't be these facts without the first having the logic).

The distinction between panpsychism and non-reductionist realism is also similar. Such a realism understands experience to be brute fact, it just doesn't say it's given with all matter.

Well, I was arguing his metaphysics.

Sensation and logic are what then? The same part of what system? — schopenhauer1

Logical realm-- things of the same type which are connected and interact. Sort of like either "mind" or "body" in substance dualism. Or "material" under materialism. Only it has a triform--logic (semiotics, symbols), body (objects) and mind (experiences).

Strictly speaking, sensation isn't logic exactly, but rather dependent on logic. Our experiences and feelings are the result of many systems constraining in a symbolic way. Sensation has a structure of logic.

Sensation "just is" part of the same realm of logic and everything else, rather than being "just not" of the same realm under mind/body dualism. Sensations aren't separate to the world and logic. They are all part of the same system.

Striving-for-nothing is a great description of life. It's also not suffering. This is the grave mistake some within pessimism make. When I go to cricket training, it does not hurt as suffering (at least not usually-- e.g. injury, failure to meet some long term, time dependent training goal, etc.,etc.). I like doing it. I'm maintaining to maintain-- and that is great. I don't need anything but striving for nothing in that moment.

The "myth" is not that it's all pointless, that nothing is worthwhile, but the idea we were ever aiming for anything except our own existence-- up-to and including our own death.

I'll sort of defend apo here, if only for a moment and because mind/body dualism is terrible.

I'd say you are strawmanning. No-one said logic turned into sensation and experience. Under an argument which considers logic a constraining force of causality, it's always consider to be within the world. Sensation and experience were never separate to logic or the world in the first place. They don't need to turn into anything to be there. If logic has always been the terrain, it doesn't need to shift from a map to terrain.

Apo's?

It conflicts with the popular sides of the metaphysical divide. The materialists don't like it because it denies their separation of logic and the world. On the other hand, many immaterialists and anti-realists don't like it because it subsumes logical meaning into the world.

In the sense that we will endure suffering to get something we enjoy or want, yes-- a needle beats a continuing illness any day.

Pessimism doesn't deny this. All it says is that such a comparison doesn't involve the absence of suffering. A needle might be worth it, but it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. Paying a toll is only done because we want something, not because it's not painful or it something we want.

The (best) anti-natalist argument is given on these grounds. The toll of suffering needed to have life is unacceptable. To force it upon new life is heinous. It will simply hurt new life too much (regardless of how they might think otherwise).

I do think a number anti-natalists argue more on the basis of life being meaningless though. It's easy to call for extinction, if you don't think any life has worth. Some of them are more interested in ending the wretches of life than they are in preventing suffering.

I mean that apo views metaphysics as casual-- the logical expressions of semiotics act to form the constraint of the world, to constitute which states are caused.

So any metaphysics which deny this, such as the realist who argues the object-in-itself or the post-modernist who argues discourse in-itself, are (supposedly) missing the truth that are world is caused through metaphysics, that logic (supposedly) means our world.

In my experience, apo targets any metaphysic which places itself outside causality-- those which identify logical relationships are not an action of causality.

This encompasses everything from realist (particularly direct ones), anti-realist (e.g. post-modern accounts of identity and meaning) and probably idealistic ones which view the world as a question a brute experience.

Everything went into "belittling" their suffering in order to recognize the existence of a much worse suffering. — darthbarracuda

So I can say that the suffering if the poor and ostracised individual "isn't that bad" because someone else is being tortured on the otherwise of the world? That's just dishonesty.

Suffering isn't defined on some level of scale acceptability. "Worse" or "less" suffering do not define each other. A person who hurts defines the instance of either.

Think of how Nietzsche saw the under-man sneak his morality into the social sphere and thus "winning" over the ubermensch. It's a fake-victory. Similarly, ceasing procreation and going into extinction is not really victory, it's just deciding not to play the game.

Life is meaningless with or without suffering, suffering just brings this fact out. — darthbarracuda

This is exactly error I was talking about in my last post. The world is meaningless because we can't escape to a perfect world. Our necessary suffering is seen as the definition of life which doesn't matter. We are supposedly all "fake."

But that's not true. Going extinct isn't a fake victory over future suffering. It's actual. In such a world, there is no longer anyone who suffers. In acting to go extinct, we have achieved this world. We've played the game and, in terms of the world after we are dead, won a victory.

Those who think this is "fake" are only coveting a world where we live and do not suffer. For them the world can only fail because there's no way to have life without suffering.

Acknowledging the existence of suffering does not help anyone. If you had aspirin and I had a headache, and you refused to give me aspirin, I'd be pissed. — darthbarracuda

But suffering is unavoidable. There's no aspirin to give. The very idea of such a drug is incoherent-- we don't have aspirin. We are just pointing out we have a headache.

I'd also be more pissed if I had a headache and someone insisted I wasn't in pain at all.


And if what you say here were true, what would be the point of philosophical pessimism? If recognising the existence suffering is of no use, then it has no ethical relevance. We might as well be telling the lie that suffering can be absolved. If acknowledging suffering is not helpful, why do we insist doing so is ethically important?

Because I'm also a consequentialist, and I think some actions are worse than others depending on what their consequences are. So I'm not dismissing the suffering of the potential parents, I just don't think it's as important as stopping the creation of future sufferers. — darthbarracuda

Your didn't talk about any of that. The comments were directed at how the suffering of the childless family wasn't as bad as they felt it was. In that you aren't making an argument that doing something else is more important. All you were doing is trying to placate them, to say they don't really suffer as they feel.

You weren't stepping forward and saying with honesty: "You ought not have children. The ethical course of action is the agent of your suffering and it ought to be (and so your terrible suffering) to save future life from suffering." Everything went into belittling their suffering rather than recognising it.

Minimization need not necessitate acceptable conditions. Only required moral actions. — darthbarracuda

But does not the required moral action qualify as an acceptable condition? At least in the way you describe it. The way you speak treats "minimisation" is as if it's a victory over suffering. In the way you describe suffering, you fear it above all else-- if only life would be put to end, then we could finally say the world was at its best.

A sort of deep necessity for a world without suffering, to a point where one might say: "With the presence of suffering, life is meaningless." The same one which drives all those philosophies which assert suffering can be solved.

I think this is failed pessimism because it causes a turn away from suffering. Since any suffering person is viewed as meaningless wretch for living in suffering, it's more interested in looking to a final "minimising" than it is in instances of suffering themselves.

Not even that. Attachment to pleasure is fine, sometimes even to a point of a neurotic search for gratification. People function with obsessive hobbies all the time.

Problems only lie in the wider context, in how a search for pleasure is harms themselves or others.

I don't see how I am. People are suffering, and they will continue to do so while they are alive. It's akin to taking an aspirin for a headache. You remove the source of suffering. — darthbarracuda

You do it in the next paragraph:

The suffering they experience from not having children does not, necessarily, make up for them having children. Furthermore they wouldn't suffer themselves if they hadn't been born, or had they died earlier. And if death or non-birth is too extreme for this situation, then not having children must not be that big of a deal. — darthbarracuda

All these are dismissals of their suffering. At every turn you say their suffering doesn't matter, that it's not really that bad. You treat their suffering as if it is payment for absence of suffering, so it somehow not that bad. You insult them with the counterfactual that if they were suffering, then they wouldn't be suffering. Finally, you come right out and say it: there suffering is, in your words, " must not be that big of a deal."

How is that the statement of a philosophical pessimist who fully appreciates the nature of suffering? You've just given every "Suck it up. It's not so bad." excuse philosophical pessimism is trying to expose.

It doesn't help their suffering, but it certainly would help them. — darthbarracuda

How exactly is a course of action which is suffering for someone helping them?

I don't see why we need to make a distinction between prevention and minimization. They're two sides of the same coin. — darthbarracuda

Minimisation is a lie. It foolishly generalises suffering. Supposedly, there is a certain level of suffering which is acceptable. If only we would "minimise" suffering to a certain level, then it would be all okay-- a suffering-based Utilitarianism if you will. But it's not okay. All instances of suffering are unacceptable. We cannot generalise them into some rule which absolves the problem. Every single instance of suffering hurts too much. We cannot "minimise"-- prevent to get suffering down to an acceptable standard-- only "prevent," avoid individual instances of suffering.

Ideally, we would prevent as many individual instance of suffering as we can, but this doesn't make everything acceptable. All the instances of suffering we haven't prevented as still infinitely terrible. The problem of suffering hasn't been resolved. We've just acted such that less instances of suffering have occurred.

A black officer arresting a black person (whether guilty or not) is part of the society which is restricts opportunity, disrespects agency, takes power over them, etc.,etc., so yes, it is racist.

It's part of the racist system which sees a greater number of black people died opportunity, property and life (in the sense of being a self-directed person free to move, interact with their finds and family, etc., etc.)

The same is true when the white officer arrests the hostage taker. So, yes, also racist.

With the individual racist action, it's a single act of abuse by an officer, so no it does not mean the system is racist. However, such actions can be indicators of the presence of a culture of racism within the system. Or the system might be a wider imposition of the lives of individuals of the black community. Just becasue an individual racist action doesn't define the presnece of a racist system, it doesn't mean there isn to a racist system present.

That's the transcendent fiction talking. In this understanding, you are ignoring the suffering of the living and treating like the absence of future suffering solves the problem.

What of the people desperate to have children? An anti-natalist policy only makes them suffer. Even as a personal responsibility, for it would be akin to someone denying an integral part of their identity-- how would you feel if you felt an obligation not to be a philosophical pessimist, yet still had the same feelings about suffering?

The end of life being a preferable/rational option doesn't help their suffering, no matter how ethical it might be.

Suffering cannot be minimised. Any instance of suffering is too great. Not even the absence of any future suffering can help. If we are to prevent suffering, it's not as an absolution or minimising of suffering which is occur. Rather, it is about preventing the instances of suffering themselves.

The anti-natalist does not call for an absence life to end the suffering of a childless family. They do it to prevent suffering for those who would otherwise lives. Anyone who thinks suffering is minimised is hiding from just how terrible suffering is. For them anti-natalism is about pretending the problem of suffering has been removed or mitigated, rather than just about preventing the suffering of future life.

The living do keep score, however. Death is no balm for the suffering of the living, only way to prevent new instances of suffering. Suffering is not absolved in death, only prevented from occurring again. Our end does not provide a transcendent victory over suffering. Those who lived still had horrible lives.

To be distracted by a future absence of suffering is only to disrespect and insult the suffering of the living. Suggesting the problem is resolved by an absence of future suffering is to fail to understand what suffering entails. The latest in a long line of fictions obscuring the horrors of suffering.

Racism is an act or acting system which is a restriction of opportunity, disrespect for agency, dissolution of property or expression of power over one particular ethnicity. The presence of a society which particular hunts for black criminals, for example. Society and individuals which act on individuals of an ethnic group in a particular way.

Arresting a white person is not racist in the US. The white community does not have the same crime rate and not targeted in the same way by police (though the arresting of a white person may well be classist, as poor communities sometimes have higher crime rates and expectations of criminality).

That's what I enjoy about writers like Zappfe and Ligotti. In their analysis of human life and suffering, they clearly show suffering is a meaning. All solutions are pseudo because the meaning of suffering overwhelms them.

Not even Jesus can overwhelm sin. He's merely a distraction and fiction used to draw attention away from the suffering of the world and our finite nature. The absolute infinite is incapable over overcoming the finite--we still die, cause others pain, are unable to give everyone a just life, no matter how much we believe in Jesus or how much we are forgiven.

Philosophical pessimism's insight is there is no solution. There cannot be one. The meaning of suffering is too great. When there is suffering, nothing can be done about it.

Alas, some philosophical pessimists to not fully realise this. They treat suffering as if it has a solution we just don't have. Like the optimists they target, they believe in a myth which distracts us from suffering--if only everyone would die, then the problem of suffering would be resolved.

While this is true in sense, if everyone was dead there would be no new suffering, it does nothing to resolve suffering which has already occurred.

These pessimists aren't pessimistic enough. They think preventing any future suffering resolves the problem of suffering. Sin is supposedly paid for with the sacrifice of life. They've been caught in the distraction and promise of a fiction.


Preventing suffering does nothing to make the suffering which has already occurred better. For anyone who has suffered, the world is still just as bad as it ever was. Suffering is still unresolved where it counts.

I should clarify what I was trying to say about final cause.

Final cause isn't an empirical state or distinction of the world. Someone suggesting final cause isn't talking about a state of causality. They are trying to say a particular logic defines the world's presence-- e.g. God, evolution, biology, manifest destiny, human nature, experience, etc., etc.

Any of these is immune to the "why" question because it's logically defined as the answer. To ask "why God" is to misunderstanding what God means. The same is true of any answer to the question. An inability to ask "why" of final cause is its entire point.

Understanding of what exactly? The "why" of the world? No. Reason does not give the world. Final cause is incoherent. No instance of reason is capable of removing the possibility of existence. The world may always be something different to what we understand. Reason cannot be used to define what must exist. We can't say the world is because we (or God) thinks it is.

This is a bit different to most accounts of "cannot understand though." Often people use it to dismiss the idea we can understand parts of the world or logical turths themsleves. I'm against this in the strongest possible terms. Endless possibilities and alternative meanings doesn't destroy the ones we have.

The inability to know "why" is because the concept is incoherent, not because our capacity for knowledge is compromised.

I don't disagree with any of that. The shallowness is not in the account of how the infinite has no care for us. It's not that the account is mistaken, merely that it's missing a different piece of information.

The apathetic/amoral nature/God is also an expression of our lives. Human desires and actions also express God. So does the world, with all its distinctions, from empirical, to ethical, to mathematical. While God may not care for us, it does not follow the infinite is irrelevant to the world.

Meaning cannot be constrained by human feeling, existence or thought. People are, of themselves, meaningful, even if they think otherwise. So is the world.

God does not care if you think you need to be infinite to mean. You are finite and mean something anyway. God's amorality points to the necessaity of our meaning, not it's absence. The world always expesses its meaning, no matter how much we want it to be otherwise.

I don't think the point is to distinguish. Final cause is about a sort of unity. It's a logic under which possibility is destroyed. Events are said to be a necessary by a logic force which determines everything.

Reduction of the world to a particular underlying principle is the point. Understand final cause and we will know why the world has to exist the way it does. It's about making the world by reason, rather than existing states.

Racism is not a causal force or "explanation." It is a logical expression of particular social and individual states. To say there is racism is to indicate there actions and states which amount to the denial of an opportunity or disrespect for agency amongst people of particular ethnic group.

Racism isn't an idea that causes. It's the existence of an act or state of disadvantage or abuse. Whether we are talking about a cop deliberately shooting black people or the fact higher crime rates mean police action has a greater impact on black individuals, they are states of the world. A person has their life turned upside down and restrictions placed upon them.

To speak of racism as a "cause" is to ignore it's presence. It's to pretend racism is some seperate thing to people's lives in our society, so we can pretend it isn't really there.

If someone points out the white community doesn't suffer from having their families torn apart by police action at the same rate, you will dismiss the difference in opportunity, respect for agency and power. You will say: "But the police were just doing their jobs. Racism is not the cause."

But the cause was never the point. The point was black people being torn away from their lives and families. It's about the suspicion directed at black people that results in abuse. Description of what is done to black people is the point.

I'm not concealing the realities of why the police arrest black people. Even if it a justified action against criminals who commit henious acts, it still locks a black person up and tears them away from their family and friends. Opportunity, power, property and respect for agency are removed. The black community suffers from this imposition more often than the white community. My point is it is racist no matter why the police acted ( and even if they ought to).

With such analysis who is on the step after relativism, but before full understanding of the finite and infinite. He's successfully understood the infinite cannot be or act upon the finite. The realisation that logic/the infinite/God cannot give us the world we desire or even (in some cases) ought to have. An "uncaring universe" if you will, where logic does not guarantee any sort of just or pleasant outcome. That ideas do not give existence has been understood. Self-hatred over not being infinite tends to dull because it's raised as an impossible.

It's a step above relativism because the individual isn't considered primary important. If applied in the ethical realm, it asserts people are irrelevant to the infinite rather than defended by it. An objection on the meta-ethcial level that ethics don't make sense, not an argument each individual is right in whatever they think.

one gets a vision of God/Nature independent of human concepts of right and wrong. One trades a just kosmos for something more terrible and wonderful. A random string of bits forms the teeth in God's nowhere-differentiable smile. — who

Here is the understanding of the "uncaring universe." Our world will do what it does, even if that doesn't fit with our ideas of what is just. God (the infinite) cannot act to help or protect us. We are a "random" even of the world rather than one guaranteed through logic.

But this is a shallow account of God. The infinite is not merely defined in that which is unable to act in are world. It's also a whole host of meanings-- 2+2=4, Willow is a poster on The Philosophy Forum, a feeling of happiness, objective ethical expressions etc., etc. The necessity of God amounts to the necessity of meaning: meaninglessness is logically impossible.

While God may not care for the world, that doesn't mean God means nothing or that the world does not care for God. The inability of the infinite to give us what we ought to have doesn't take away its meaning.

Ethics are a prime demonstration of this-- even though ethical logic cannot define the existence of ethical behaviour, it remains true. Despite the "uncaring universe" existing with immorality all over the place, the infinite of ethics remains true and meaningful. Even if everyone exists behaving immorally or insists there are no ethics, the infinite meaning of ethics is still there.

Separation of the finite and infinite goes both ways. While it means the infinite cannot define the finite, it also means the infinite cannot be destroyed or overruled by the finite. No matter what the "uncaring universe" does, it cannot touch or harm the infinite. Meaning remains no matter what the world might do.

I argue the opposite. The infinite is meaning which we can understand. Logical truths in comparison to states of existence.

In the sense logical truth are never the existing states of ourselves (e.g. our body, the presence of our happiness, the sight of a truck, etc.,etc), they are of a different realm. A state of my body will never exists as the necessarily logical truth expressed by it.

After I've finished making this post, my body will ceased to be writing it. As an existing being,the writing of this post will be dead. My existence will never achieve the necessity found in logic. The meaning expressed by the act of writing-- that Willow made this post-- this post will remain regardless of the rest of time. My body will never get to that. We may understand the distinction of infinite (logic) and finite (states of the world) perfectly. All it takes is to know states of the world (the finite) cannot be logic (the infinite). The infinite is entirely within human comprehension, just not applicable to any state existing state of a human.

Insofar as we access the infinite, it can only be in understanding. The image of ideas is the only place logic occurs for us. States of ourselves (including the presence of our experiences) cannot ever be the infinite of logic-- to be saved from a meaningless finite existence by a "transcendent force" is logically impossible. To do so would require the infinite to act upon us. God would have to turn us into God.

We might say "God is dead" because God was never alive and cannot be alive-- it would require finite presence. God cannot act upon us and be infinite. If we are to mean, it can only be in the ideas and infinite expressed by our existence. God cannot act to the work for us. Meaning must be without God taking action.

I sort of agree with it in a sense. It has a respect for suffering. I may be giving more naunce than it warrants, but I wouldn't automatically read it as saying: " a life without pain, suffering or less than some arbitrary standard is not with living."

We may use "perfection" to refer to our significance regardless of the disappoints we suffer, mistakes we make or wrongs we commit-- I am perfect as I am, even if I didn't achieve something or get what I desired. Sometimes it used to celebrate a life full of failure and disappointment.

In this sense perfection is certainly required. Without it we are caught thinking ourselves worthless for being stuck in world where we can't do everything we want. Life has to be perfect despite (and with) it's failings or else we are eating ourselves for existing.

It allows us to begin to focus on and understand the non-prejudice oriented factors perpetuating today's social problems in a way that is not distracted and obfuscated by inflated perceptions of racism and the ensuing racial tension/guilt that must then be dealt with. "Police are out to get black people" is not a rational portrayal of the American police force as a whole... — VagabondSpectre

I'd say it's just the opposite. The "non-prejudical" aspects aren't separate to social problems and how our society is failing black people. Consider the higher crime rate. What does this mean? What happens when someone is committing crimes? They become targets for the police.

The police are quite literally out to get black people who are committing crimes. Before we even get to the question of specific racial abuse enacted by police, there is already a racially charged element which affects the black people-- the police, by their very mission, are out to get more black people and have an impact on the individuals in their community.

Racism is not merely a question of one individual abusing another. It's also about the social context and the impact it has on people's lives. To be poor, committing crimes and to be sort after by the police (even if the person is guilty and justly pursued) are factors of prejudice themselves.

I'm inclined to say morality is objective and made as we go along. The significance of morality is always tied to the world. It's about how the world matters. We can't set pre-set an objective rule which is going to work in all situations no matter what's going on. With each moment the world is made and moral value is it's expression.

Yet, to be coherent, morality must be objective. The world can't have a significant which is true and false at the same time, in the same context. If the value of the world is such I ought not kill random strangers on the street, it does not work to then say "it's only an opinion" and that such killing is morally fine for someone else who think so.

Your initial example did seem to treat Pluto as a question of it characteristics rather than our category. Pluto(1) was implied to be different than Pluto(2) in terms of the object of Pluto, even though the characteristic that resulted in Pluto's reclassification wasn't new.

I'd say there was only one Pluto (object) and then our categorising of Pluto(1) and our categorising of Pluto (2).

The Wittgenstein point is this disagreement is meaningless because we are using different languages. To say Pluto is a planet uses a different category or language than saying it's not. In a more general sense of "planet," Pluto does qualify. Under the more specific version defined recently, Pluto does not qualify. Both categories are truthful. All we can do squabble about is which language we ought to use. It doesn't affect Pluto or the meaning of Pluto either way. If we are arguing over it, all we are doing is trying to get people to use one language over another.

The supposed problems surrounding naming and reference stem from ignoring what the speaker intends with language.

Statements are mistaken to have a problem referencing if they are untrue (e.g. "Willow who is president of the US," talking about me) when that has no impact on reference. Just because I'm not US president, doesn't mean someone can't intend that I am. I can be referenced in untrue statements.

Furthermore, the true statement ( "Obama is the present of the US, not Willow" ) is a language used when someone points out the falsehood about me. The names "Obama" and "Willow" are used with meaning and reference to the world in this context.

To imagine either "Obama" and "Willow" as blank slates names is to miss the entire point of both statements and what each person is talking about.

Because when we are talking about the modality of the proposition -- its being necessary, possible or impossible -- and not just talking about its truth, then we are also talking about the world as it could or couldn't possibly be, and not just about the world as it is. — Pierre-Normand

For me this is the exact problem. If we were talking about Paris in our world, then we talking about what it is, not what it might have been or some other world entirely. To talk about our Paris is to exclude all other possibilities and worlds. Modality is what we don't want to talk about if we wish to understand the meaning of our Paris-- I don't want to know if Paris is the capital in some alternate history. I don't want to know if Paris can be a capital or not in some other place. I don't even want to know if Paris can be the capital of France in our world.

Modality doesn't tell me anything. Sure we can talk about it. Paris could be the capital of France in our world, but it leaves out all relevant information. If I say Paris might (or might not) be the capital (which is true), I don't have any information on whether I should treat it as a such. If someone says to me, "Go pick up the delivery in the capital of France," I'm stuck guessing. Paris might be the capital. It might not be the capital. Whether I can make the pick-up is down to a toss up. Is the Paris the capital of France? I have no idea. I'll only be able to tell with the addition of "Paris is the capital of France."

There is an ideality at play within the mainstream understanding of modality. Supposedly, if we can say "Paris being the capital" is a necessary true (in all possible worlds), then we have what we need to know Paris is the capital, otherwise it all still up in the air.

But this analysis ignores how Paris is of our world. Our Paris cannot be true in all possible worlds. By identity, any other Paris, whether a concept in modal analysis or an alternate world, is a different city. For Paris to the capital in all possible worlds is impossible. Not merely because there might be different states, but rather because our Paris in necessarily tied to our world. To say "Paris is (not) the capital in all possible worlds" or "Paris might be the capital" gets us nowhere. We can't draw what is true about the world from modality-- is the proposition "Paris is the capital of France" true? We don't still know. We won't until we learn whether Paris is the capital.

'Possible worlds' aren't other worlds. It's just a fancy name for ways the world either is (actually) or could have been (counterfactually). It's a device for formalizing semantic theories of modal statements. — Pierre-Normand

Yes. They're all a logical construction-- even the possibility of our own world. In our world, it is true the Paris may or may not be the Capital of France. This possible world is not actual. It's only a logical concept which indicates which states might be actual.

Mainstream modal analysis fails so often because it treats actuality like this possibility. People get caught in the trap of thinking knowing the possible world gives knowledge of the actual world. Everyone starts tripping up over how Paris could (or could not) be the capital of France rather than paying attention whether it is.

Everything necessarily is, in the actual world, as it is in the actual world. This tautology says nothing about something being necessary or contingent simpliciter. Something isn't necessarily true if the world could have been such that it is false. This is what is meant when we say that there is a possible world in which (or at which, as it is usually expressed in the technical literature) it is false. — Pierre-Normand

I know, but that's sort of the point. What use is knowing necessary or contingent simpliciter if our subject is the actual world? Since modality is only a logical construction, it can't help us if we want to know something about the actual world. All it can do is tell us about the possible one-- e.g. no short, tall, fire snowmen who are made of only sand. We can use it to disregard the existence of contradictory or incoherent states, but that's it. If is's not necessary by logic, the possible world can't make comment. So why exactly are we trying to use it to tell whether or not Paris is the capital of France in the actual world?

That's not very philosophically interesting. — Pierre-Normand

I think it's the most philosophically interesting relation to modality. It represents the logic a describing the world. For us to say, logically, the capital of France is Paris, we need to now about Paris in our world. If I am to know where to pick-up the delivery, what I need to know is that Paris is the capital of France in the actual world. Far from being trivial, it points out the most important thing about knowledge: if it's of the actual world, then it must be knowledge of the actual world. We can't get there with modality. Possible worlds won't tell us anything about the actual world.

A proposition is necessarily true iff it is true at all possible worlds. If you stipulate from the get go that you are restricting your attention to only those possible worlds where it is true, you hardly have shown that the proposition is necessarily true -- only that is is true wherever it is true! — Pierre-Normand

Isn't that the definition of necessity though-- that there is no other possibility in the context?

Consider the proposition: "In our world, the capital of France is Paris." Is this true of our world? If so, how exactly are other possible worlds relevant? Why is Paris being true in all possible worlds a requirement if we are only talking about our own actual world? How would it even make sense to say necessity required the city of one possible world to be present in any possible world? Our Paris cannot be the Paris of another world.

To say that Paris is necessarily the capital of France in our world, we only need the truth that Paris is the capital of France in our world.

Necessity isn't the absence of possibility, just possibility's irrelevance. The capital of France isn't Paris because an alternative cannot occur. It's Paris because, at the moment, that is what is true of the capital of France.

The issue has more to do with the inadequacies of the a priori/posteriori and analytical/synthetic understanding of knowledge. Rather than types of knowledge, what the are trying to distinguish is different sorts of meaning-- a state of world (posteriori) compared to a logical truth (priori), an contingent act of language (synthetic) in contrast to a truth not bound to what is spoken or done in the world (analytical).

In each case, the priori/posteriori and analytical/synthetic understanding is meant to act as reduction of the meaning involved, such that we know it significance to knowledge. Such as, for example, that 2+2=4 is a logical truth known by definition while a presence of a elephant is known by observing the world. In the context of only asking about different types of knowledge, this appears to work because we are only considering ideas we already have. Our role in knowing is obscured.

Problems arise in a priori/posteriori and analytical/synthetic account of knowledge when we start to consider ourselves. Consider the synthetic posteriori of "There's an elephant in the room." According to it's distinction, I would know it by observing the presence of an elephant in the room. I don't need any sort of (necessary) a priori logical concept and cannot know about the elephant unless I've observed it.

Yet, where is my experience of the elephant and my language? In observing the elephant, I have not encountered either. How then can my knowledge of the elephant be synthetic posteriori? I'm relying on concepts and language which are not observed to know about the elephant. Without knowing what I saw was necessarily an elephant, I would not be able to think or say what I observed was an elephant at all. To know a posteriori requires a priori.

The analytical/synthetic discintion also collapses. If I was the only one speaking English, what I observed would still be an elephant. In my English, it is necessarily an elephant, no matter how anyone else speaks, how English changes or if my language is never spoken anywhere else. My concept of elephant and so my knowledge of what I observe is analytic-- it's known by definition in my language.

Now circle completes. If any posteriori is known by an analytic a priori (e.g. the concept of an elephant in the time and space in question), I don't even need to observe it to know about it. Let's say on the day before observing the elephant, I thought: "There will be an elephant in that room tomorrow." I have knowledge of the elephant in the room prior to (or even without) observing it. Knowledge about a state of the world does not require observation or direct experience at all.

Yet, knowledge itself is a state of the world. To know about the elephant, I have to exist in a certain way. I must have the concept of the elephant, in my language (as opposed any other language). In my life I must have learnt this language and about the object of which it speaks. Despite my concepts being analytic a priori, they are only given in the synthetic.

I could have been different. I might have spoken differently, known differently or not existed at all. What I am and the content of the world is not necessary. So despite any instance of knowledge being formed by an analytic a priori, they are all synthetic. At anytime, we may understand differently. This is even true of any analytic a priori knowledge-- we could all wake up tomorrow and understand 2+2=5.

"Paris" might by the capital of France now, and is knowledge formed by an analytic a priori concept, but tomorrow its capital might be Nice, if our language and conceptual practices were to alter in the right way.

While Paris is necessarily the capital of France, it is only so until Paris ceases to be the capital of France.