Comments

  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    That they are abstracted from concrete situations is what prevents them from being Platonic Forms (which would "exist" prior to any concrete situations). — Andrew M

    Oh well that's a relief... thank goodness that these intangibles are really quite grounded, and far from being any kind of metaphysical fantasy! :gasp: :rofl:

    Or, less sarcastically... oh well, at least you are now out and proud with your commitment to abstractions. I'm afraid you are preaching to a confirmed atheist in that regard. A pagan, philistine, "extremist", even, for whom a sentence like this,

    A state of affairs is an abstraction - something that obtains or not. — Andrew M

    is completely incomprehensible, I'm afraid. It seems like you're saying: "I know this sounds like nonsense because we can't point at anything it's about, but still, if you concentrate hard enough..."

    But it's not that I can't see anything there. I can see too much: swirling, evocative, pregnant with meaning. In purportedly logical discourse, though, I want a simple diagram.

    A statement is also an abstraction - something that can be true or false. — Andrew M

    Ok, I admit I often teeter on this brink when I mention "assertions". Perhaps I do presume to evoke a little swirl of associations, to do with "intentions of the speaker" etc. But I assume that subsequent glossing should favour the simple diagram over abstractions. Perhaps an arrow going from word to object. Sure, a pretended, abstract arrow, but connecting tangible bits of stuff. Better that than connecting up abstractions, like they were things. Or so a nominalist thinks. Saying: notice these are abstractions we are relating one to another (proudly glossing towards the abstract instead of the concrete) doesn't tend to rub our tummies.

    But they are both abstracted from concrete situations. — Andrew M

    Oh fine, so: not me guvnor, not really hardcore phantasmagoric abstractions but only made from solid "concrete situations"; then ok, I'll have a look. Can "that it is raining outside" please be the actual raining? Can Alice's statement please be her actual utterance? But I fear your zeal for abstractions made you row back on that, here (unless I'm correcting a misprint?):

    For example, that it is raining outside (a state of affairs concrete situation), or that Alice says that it is raining outside (a state of affairs concrete situation where Alice makes a statement). — Andrew M

    I guess you needed to go bold with your belief in abstractions to have confidence in this:

    They are sharing a pattern, which just is the abstracted common form. — Andrew M

    ... in the absence of any semblance of isomorphism between the utterance and the raining. No no no, you will be able to say to that complaint, poor philistine, doesn't understand about abstractions...

    To transform a state of affairs to a statement, quote it. To transform a statement back to a state of affairs, unquote it. — Andrew M

    Just to be clear: you are saying the isomorphism supposedly securing the truth of Alice's statement is just the sameness of spelling of the quoted and unquoted statements?? Or what?

    This feeds a suspicion that metaphysics is not being easily given up by some of its supposed critics, who need to disparage nominalism because they would rather not be shown a way out. — bongo fury

    By "wrong" or "wrongly chosen" sentences, do you mean false sentences? — Andrew M

    Yes, of course.

    If so, then I take it you hold either a deflationary or correspondence-style theory of truth, not a coherence theory of truth (which is what I was assuming). Would that be right? — Andrew M

    The first. But I'd blame the second not the third for metaphysics.
  • Infinite casual chains and the beginning of time?
    I think we just need to distinguish serious chains from casual ones.
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    Do you mean you think that the T-schema actually exhibits or requires an isomorphism between the sentence p (or its quotation or both) and the situation affirmed? Or was this only, like "reflect", a figure of speech?
    — bongo fury

    The isomorphism (i.e., equal form) is between the state of affairs and the statement, as abstracted from their concrete instances.     — Andrew M

    So, it is their actually sharing a pattern? As with the case of a written melody and the sound represented?

    But apparently not, and you shrink from analysing situation and statement both into component parts, and abstracting out a common form:

    For example, it is raining outside (the state of affairs) and Alice says that it is raining outside (the statement). — Andrew M

    All we seem to have here is a sentence (as a whole) pointed at a situation (as a whole). Maybe "abstracted" was just casual (unwitting?) Platonism, indicating a preference for dealing in terms of some type or set of sentences (e.g. a proposition) and some type of circumstance? Having relatively "abstract" (in the sense of intangible) elements (such as types) pointing and pointed at perhaps validates a vague sense of some inherent connection that is more than simply pointing: which (something inherent) is perhaps what you think obtains when the statement is true. Such a reading (as indicating a preference for intangibles) is confirmed by your wiki link for "state of affairs", which recommends "nominalisation": the creation of abstract nouns. :shade:

    Anyway, not an actual isomorphism or reflection.

    I'm asking how you use the term "true". — Andrew M

    I point it at the sentences I assert.

    For example, I assume you believe there were dinosaurs roaming the Earth millions of years ago based on evidence such as the fossil record. Is your belief true because you have formed it based on that evidence? ... — Andrew M

    Meh. Attitudes... obviously I can assert the wrong sentences, or (equivalently) call those wrongly chosen sentences true. So?
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    In ordinary use, there is an isomorphism between statements and the world, as captured by formulations such as "p" is true iff p. On that schema, we are mistaken when our statements don't reflect the way the world is. — Andrew M

    Do you mean you think that the T-schema actually exhibits or requires an isomorphism between the sentence p (or its quotation or both) and the situation affirmed? Or was this only, like "reflect", a figure of speech?

    If the former, we can get down to brass tacks.

    So I'm curious what it means, on your view, for a statement to be true. — Andrew M

    Unless you just mean, how do I generally get or assess my information (science, ideally), I don't see how you are expecting that not to sound metaphysical.

    We use experiment and such like to decide the best choices of pointing. — bongo fury

    I.e. to decide which sentences to assert, i.e. which ones to evaluate as true.

    Does it simply mean that you classify the statement as true (according to some specifiable criteria), — Andrew M

    Again, why assume there would be some criteria besides whatever my reasons to assert p?

    and thus it is something that you can't be mistaken about — Andrew M

    Lost me.
  • What Would the Framework of a Materialistic Explanation of Consciousness Even Look Like?
    Yeah, phenomenalists pick on "illusion" as self-contradictory, and they have a point if it implies internal pictures?
  • What Would the Framework of a Materialistic Explanation of Consciousness Even Look Like?
    A sense of consciousness (enabling modern English speakers to coherently use the word "conscious" and perhaps pre-moderns the word "sentient") arises from our ability to think and talk in symbols, which leads us to continually (and generally harmlessly) confuse three different things:

    • thoughts (brain shivers)
    • symbols (words and pictures)
    • other objects (things and scenery)

    The confusion may be fleeting, or persist into our thinking and talking about the inter-relation of the three.

    By "confusion" I mean a semantic association subject to severe or recurring doubt and revision: hence, a cognitive process attending to its own attitude of choosing among symbols, and hence quite possibly conscious, in the sense here proposed.

    Confusion of this general sort may be so tangled as to be rarely if ever resolved. Indeed, a symptom of its intractability could be the fact that we fail to recognise it as a confusion, but develop instead various culturally specific narratives that purport to explain (and do at least reinforce) certain sub-types of the confusion. For example, "ideas", "mind's eye", "inner voice", "qualia" etc. (Which may of course serve useful cognitive functions.)

    In turn, these vectors of public (but partial) recognition of common varieties of confusion, in human processing of symbols, may facilitate the coherent, if problematic, usage of the word "conscious" found in modern society. In particular, I suggest that the overall notion of symbolic confusion serves to identify those features of an artificial intelligence that would convince most people (most competent users of "conscious") of that machine's consciousness; including most people sympathetic (like me) to Searle's "Chinese Room" critique of the Turing Test, and even perhaps some people susceptible to the notion of "philosophical zombies".

    Searle showed that common usage of "conscious" implies that a conscious person has a "proper semantics": an ability to connect words not only with semantically related words, but with things out in the world. Since AI robotic machines are even now only beginning to learn to predict the trajectories of balls or sticks cast into a relatively small world, it's hardly surprising that most people will not yet be willing to grant them a "proper semantics", if that means an ability to predict the (imaginary) trajectories of words cast (as it were) into a relatively vast world.

    On the other hand, there seems no special obstacle in the way of increasingly powerful neural network machines being set towards that task, and making the same kind of smooth (and internally somewhat mysterious) progress displayed by similar machines allowed to train in all sorts of skills, from playing games of strategy to painting pictures or composing music. Now, we don't feel inclined to attribute consciousness to those machines, and it seems to me that we might be similarly unimpressed by one that did somehow impress us as having Searle's "proper semantics" or "intentionality": at least under my interpretation of that notion as just sketched, i.e. an ability to learn the social game of pointing symbols (words and pictures) at things. On the contrary (to being impressed), we should, I imagine, be ready to dismiss such a machine as a "zombie", in the straight forward sense of it being, like a smart phone, an unconscious or "mere" machine, not tempting us to infer the presence of a "ghost" inside.

    This scenario, in which we easily intuit a lack of consciousness in hypothetical machines that otherwise impress as capable of thought, leads many to the view that consciousness is inherently immune to an explanation merely in terms of patterns of thought. (And is fundamentally "harder".) I think that Searle's requirement of a proper semantics provides the needed specification of thought pattern, as long as it is couched in (the possibly un-Searlean) terms of the pointing of external rather than internal symbols, and is subject to the plausible expectation of those symbols getting habitually confused with thoughts and with the symbolised objects.

    Imagine a machine capable of equivocating between e.g. its thought whilst momentarily looking at (or imagining or dreaming of) a tree, a picture of the tree, and the tree itself. The nature of such equivocation in the fleeting moment will require separate analysis; suffice here to suppose that, on subsequent introspection, the machine reports that its thought had consisted of a picture, or even of a tree. Perhaps by way of surprise or apology, either kind of entity is qualified as "mental" or "phenomenal", in which manner the machine has learnt that it may join with us in curious but apparently meaningful talk about such thoughts.

    The machine's thought processes here strike me as conscious. Not, obviously, if it merely fakes the required kind of confusion: which for example it would need to if it lacked even a "proper" semantic connection of symbols to objects, confused or not; but which it might otherwise fake by learning to deceive us about the confusion. Not, either, if it really did have words or pictures in its head, like a camera or a pre-connectionist symbolic computer.

    If I'm wrong, and the appropriately confused machine might still be unconscious, I need alerting towards features of my own conscious thoughts that I am leaving out of consideration. However, I don't think the usual claim of unreflective and immediate certainty will be one of those features. Indeed, the confusion hypothesis suggests a reason for that kind of claim: certainty arose in our assessment of the status of the tree itself, but we mistakenly ascribed it to our confused (e.g. pictorial) characterisation of our thoughts.

    Whence the confusion? Maybe because skill in playing the social game of pointing symbols at things came so late after all the pragmatic and syntactic (e.g. musical) skills. Hazy on this.
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    And while a re-presentation always depends on a prior presentation (i.e., the world precedes language),
    — Andrew M

    Do you mean, when we point symbols at things, it depends on the things being there (not necessarily there and then) to be pointed at? Or something more elaborate, like the choice of symbols depending on the choice of things?
    — bongo fury

    The first. There needs to be something that we are talking about beyond the talk itself. At least, there does if we want our talk to be useful or meaningful.

    As I read you, it seems that it is the talk itself that constitutes the world.     — Andrew M

    You keep going cosmic.

    When we point symbols at things we sort them, and present them a certain way. The way they are is how they are sorted. We use experiment and such like to decide the best choices of pointing.

    Platonism says (after a process of cosmic reasoning) that our pointing must also reflect the way the things really are, and introduces more things (properties, similarities etc.) to create a new level of sorting. To correspond with the first.

    Nominalism says, no need. Games of symbol pointing are interesting enough already. Viz.,

    foundations of math, psychology of consciousness, theory of reference, theory of learning, logic of induction, semiotics etc? [...] plenty of philosophy [...] cheerfully non-metaphysical — bongo fury
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    I'm not making claims about meta- and object-languages, — Andrew M

    I didn't say you were.

    nor of being "outside" the world — Andrew M

    I did say you were. Glad you deny it. :smile:

    And while a re-presentation always depends on a prior presentation (i.e., the world precedes language), — Andrew M

    Do you mean, when we point symbols at things, it depends on the things being there (not necessarily there and then) to be pointed at? Or something more elaborate, like the choice of symbols depending on the choice of things?

    There's no contrast. — Andrew M

    Oh, ok. I thought the contrast quite noticeable. But of course as a nominalist I'm used to interpreting similarity talk in that way. I don't know about the typical reader.

    I'm just making a further natural language claim which, in this case, makes explicit what is implicit in the earlier claim. — Andrew M

    So, its following by (some kind of) implication from the earlier claim about the orbits is incidental, and you would perhaps rather have claimed the similarity as a bald fact? Like a physical property, perhaps? And not as being in a particular respect?

    Again this is just a natural language convention. — Andrew M

    What is? The similarity being independent of language?
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    Perhaps you could unpack what the phrases "from outside" and "as meta" are contributing in your above explanation. — Andrew M

    "from outside":

    • You keep saying it's nonsense (and metaphysics) to say that "how the world is" is dependent on how we describe it. I keep saying it's nonsense (and metaphysics) to deny it. You ask me to use language to represent a state of the whole world without language. I have to remind you that is impossible, and the best we can do in that direction is represent a state of a part of the world and assume that it is represented from outside of it.

    "as meta":

    • On that basis, we might say plenty of things in an object language; but saying things is just hot air, and we will inevitably desire to say things about how the hot air relates to things in the specified part of the world. "F = ma" won't be enough, and we will want to say how the symbols map onto things. I mentioned that I was excluding "similar" from the likely vocabulary of an object language.


    Let's also consider one more example. — Andrew M

    Cool.

    The planets Mars and Venus both orbit the Sun. — Andrew M

    Sounds like science. Plausible as talk in an object language.

    They are similar in that respect. — Andrew M

    Quite a contrast: we're chatting about perspectives and descriptions.

    They were also similar in that respect billions of years ago — Andrew M

    Mixing the two: sneaky! But realistic. I'm not suggesting object- and meta-language are ever perfectly separated, outside of semantic theory.

    Now it seems that you think that is false. — Andrew M

    Only in the same way that the similarity is false of the planets now: i.e. in any sense supposed independent of language.
  • The Human Condition
    The little society, one and all, entered into this laudable design and set themselves to exert their different talents. The little piece of ground yielded them a plentiful crop. Cunegund indeed was very ugly, but she
    became an excellent hand at pastrywork: Pacquette embroidered; the old woman had the care of the linen. There was none, down to Brother Giroflee, but did some service; he was a very good carpenter, and became an honest man. Pangloss used now and then to say to Candide:

    “There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund; had you not been put into the Inquisition; had you not traveled over America on foot; had you not run the Baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts.”

    “Excellently observed,” answered Candide; “but let us cultivate our garden.”

    –– THE END ––
  • Dialetheism vs. Law of Non-Contradicton
    Therefore I'm somewhat surprised, and incredulous, — Harry Hindu

    Correct usage: mods please note. :wink:

    What use is a contradiction? To what use could dialetheism be applied? — Harry Hindu

    Vagueness. For example, non-vague discourse requires a non-vague syntax, provided by alphabetic characters of some kind. But these are always vague around the borders, causing judgements of syntactic identity to conflict. In Languages of Art, Goodman pointed out that the conflict is systematic, and maintains a suitable margin for error between the characters.

    Some discourses also aspire to a non-vague semantics, in like fashion. Zones of permitted controversy concerning correct usage of a word maintain zones of unanimity concerning unacceptable usage.
  • Metaphysics Defined
    The causal relationship between the first principle (i.e., God, or a strong wind) and any teleological concept of being (Being) is, according to Pascal, "so ludicrous that it's not even funny (Funny)." — ibid.
  • Metaphysics Defined
    Finally, there can be no doubt that the one characteristic of "reality" is that it lacks essence. That is not to say it has no essence, but merely lacks it. (The reality I speak of here is the same one Hobbes described, but a little smaller.) — Woody Allen: My Philosophy
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    The answer doesn't depend on those questions. — Andrew M

    I think it might.

    On conventional use, there was no language prior to the emergence of life. — Andrew M

    Well I failed to clock that you might have shifted your example from the Jurassic period to some pre-life (Hadean) eon. Was this deliberate? Would you rather talk the similarity of inorganic rocks than of animals? Fine with me. I have a rockery, with no language inside it. I'm happy to say that any similarity between any two parts of it is relative to the language used (from outside) to label the parts. I recognise the notion (of similarity) as meta to any physical or mechanical concepts. Maybe that is a sticking point, I don't know. Perhaps if we clarify the example we may find out.

    Any theory that describes the universe is going to depend on human language. There's no implication that the universe itself would depend on human language. — Andrew M

    Some important-seeming questions of the 'globalising' variety will always arise. The trick is to be prepared to recognise when one's efforts have developed the symptoms described in the OP, and to then have the humility (or strategic sense) to retreat to more solid ground. — bongo fury

    Like, my back garden.

    Neurath's boat works fine as a metaphor for how we investigate the world from within it, — Andrew M

    Whereas... ?
  • Can something be ''more conscious'' than we are?
    ↪Banno
    cool
  • Can something be ''more conscious'' than we are?
    ↪Banno


    Fair enough. A rock can't even be awake, let alone conscious. :up:
  • Can something be ''more conscious'' than we are?
    But to be honest, I don't know if ''more conscious'' even makes sense. — Eugen

    A sense of consciousness (enabling modern English speakers to coherently use the word "conscious" and perhaps pre-moderns the word "sentient"? I dunno) arises from our ability to think and talk with symbols, wherein we continually (and harmlessly) confuse thoughts (brain shivers), symbols (words and pictures) and objects. The confusion may be fleeting, or persist into our thinking and talking about the inter-relation of the three.

    (The alleged illness) Schizophrenia has often been characterised as an excess of consciousness.
  • Can something be ''more conscious'' than we are?
    The notion of consciousness is explained by opposing it to unconsciousness. — Banno

    Yeah but probably not by equating those with wakefulness and sleep. As you say, even computers sleep. But are they conscious when awake?
  • Feature requests
    Ah.
  • Feature requests
    ↪Banno
    You know you can see all their posts in date order from most recent?
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    Wasn't the world prior to the emergence of life a world without language? — Andrew M

    Depends... Is my garden a world without language? And calling a part of it a tree is correct because it is, independent of language?

    There won't be any fact of the matter of implicit conventions, of course, but one that seems to me to be just as widely asserted is that language presupposes a world already formed/carved/sorted in the terms of the language. (Don't blame me.)
    — bongo fury

    Not "in the terms of the language". For example, scientific language changed as Newtonian mechanics was superseded by relativity and quantum mechanics, and will presumably continue to change in the future. But the world itself didn't change on account of humans using different language to talk about it.     — Andrew M

    So implicit conventions are a matter of fact? Or do you mean that no one reasonably could, considering your argument, persist in the opinion that a theory was speaking "the language of the universe"?

    Not that I'm one of those; my point was that both positions are metaphysical (although possibly redeemable in terms of object- and meta-language), and usually dispensible.

    Then it seems your position precludes any rational basis for agreement. That is, people can agree on one fiction or another (per their preference), but not on how the world is independent of their agreement. — Andrew M

    But "how the world is, independent of our agreement", though a laudable consideration in some contexts, is metaphysical claptrap in most. Science is on Neurath's boat, remaking it from earlier versions of itself, not from something meta.
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    That is, that language presupposes a world for language to be about. — Andrew M

    Sure. But, a world independent of language?

    (the talk just got metaphysical but through no fault of nominalism) — bongo fury

    So don't blame me...

    For example, would you agree that two brontosaurus dinosaurs were similar in the sense of both having four legs before the emergence of human beings and human language? — Andrew M

    But clearly something has gone wrong, as the things that a language (or other symbol system) likens to one another clearly don't have to be contemporaneous with it. So of course we can agree on that. But it doesn't get us any nearer to the chimerical "world without language".

    So I'm unclear on how you would make sense of that project. It seems to require rejecting the convention I stated above, — Andrew M

    Too right. There won't be any fact of the matter of implicit conventions, of course, but one that seems to me to be just as widely asserted is that language presupposes a world already formed/carved/sorted in the terms of the language. (Don't blame me.)

    , but for what purpose? — Andrew M

    foundations of math, psychology of consciousness, theory of reference, theory of learning, logic of induction, semiotics etc? [...] plenty of philosophy [...] cheerfully non-metaphysical — bongo fury

    And ethics.

    I assume there is no empirical fact about it, in the sense of an observable difference. However there may be logical (or absurdity) arguments against one or the other of those choices. For example, the Third Man argument which is an infinite regress argument against Plato's Theory of Forms. — Andrew M

    This feeds a suspicion that metaphysics is not being easily given up by some of its supposed critics, who need to disparage nominalism because they would rather not be shown a way out. — bongo fury

    The way out is to see that we are social animals who think and talk with symbols, whose wholly fictional connection to things is a matter we have to (and learn successfully to) constantly convince each other we are agreed about. Often we can agree that a word points at an abstraction, and often that is because doing so serves as a shorthand for reference to all of the more concrete instances abstracted from.
  • What Would the Framework of a Materialistic Explanation of Consciousness Even Look Like?
    but my initial reference wasn't to Norbert Weiner — Wayfarer

    Haha, ok forget about Weiner, and this ill-conceived thread.

    From that you have retained the Cabanis quote and hope to use it to mock (now that you see that Wiener sought only to bolster) materialism.

    No worries.
  • What Would the Framework of a Materialistic Explanation of Consciousness Even Look Like?
    Mine was a reference to the original quote, by Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, a French materialist philosopher of the Enlighenment. It was his expression 'Le cerveau sécrète la pensée comme le foie sécrète la bile.' — Wayfarer

    Fine, so Wiener used as caricature a phrase from one of the theories whose assumptions he was targeting.

    That quote of Weiner's is commenting on the same point. — Wayfarer

    Yes, remarking how early attempts to understand brain function without reference to an immaterial soul ended up implying one through carelessness of metaphor.

    I would enlarge on Weiner's point — Wayfarer

    ... on your obstinate (deliberate, even?) misreading of it.

    Although, I never found a pdf of the Wiener book, and you had only the wiki-quote; but I would be astonished if my emphasis (above) is incorrect.
  • What criteria should be considered the "best" means of defining?
    Obsessing about definitions seems largely in aid of fixing meaning. If you assume, or have a theory, that meaning is fixable, then definitions will be your tool of first choice, and probably useful early on.

    But if you assume that meanings are a myth or social construct that we maintain as best we can in the absence of any consensus as to its nature, mythical or otherwise, then definitions are probably only a specially assertive kind of glossing, and a lesser priority. Each word choice will be more a strategic punt than a clearly motivated decision, and glossing of some sort or other will serve, on a more occasional but ongoing basis (than if we thought meaning fixable), as Public Relations for the strategies, which we aim to share.

    I suspect one should see the second, more fluid point of view just as much in cases of triangles etc. Definitions in such cases clearly succeed in oiling the pragmatic wheels of a language (e.g. math) game, but perhaps not necessarily by means of fixing the reference of terms.
  • Feature requests
    :grin: :cool:
  • Feature requests
    Mods could maybe correct spelling mistakes in thread titles?

    Or might it ailenate people?
  • What Would the Framework of a Materialistic Explanation of Consciousness Even Look Like?
    the materialist canard, 'the brain secretes thought like the liver secretes bile'. — Wayfarer

    Anyone perplexed by this phrase should know that it is @Wayfarer's bizarre mis-reading of this,

    The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.
    — Norbert Wiener: Computing Machines and the Nervous System. p. 132.     — Wayfarer

    Which is, as per my added emphasis, harsh on historical theories of brain function that ended up fueling dualism or eleven kinds of pan-psychism, but not on materialism.

    I.e., not a "materialist canard" at all, but an apt caricature of how an abstract noun (like consciousness) can conjure up goo as well as woo. Hence the incredulity,

    how non-conscious stuff can produce consciousness — RogueAI

    Somewhere inside of which there may lurk a valid question, but it won't need to luxuriate in the usual fantastic premises (e.g. pictures in the head, or a world in the head) that phenomenalists claim are undeniable.
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    Do you mean,

    Now it seems to me that if two things are [not similar non-similar in a sense of similarity] independent of language, then applying the same term to them doesn't make them similar. — Andrew M

    ?

    To the nominalist ("extreme" :lol: or not) this sounds metaphysical, although possibly redeemable in terms of object- and meta-language. Are you in the habit of saying "F=ma, independent of language"? Would you then mean independent of any language (the talk just got metaphysical but through no fault of nominalism), or just higher-level ones?

    If you mean,

    Now it seems to me that if two things are [not never] similar independent of language, then applying the same term to them doesn't make them similar. — Andrew M

    then of course the nominalist disagrees, and is interested in how language creates a similarity between the things.

    On the other hand, if two things are similar independent of language, that doesn't imply the existence of a third entity for a language term to denote. — Andrew M

    But it does often coincide with use of a general term applying to both: a shared name (or adjective or verb). Then we are presented (sooner or later) with the opportunity to reinterpret the general term as singular, and with questions about how such a choice affects just what entities (e.g. a third one) are thereby implied. Platonist and nominalist might come down on either side of the choice as expected, but the modern nominalist is often prepared to be agnostic on the matter, since there is no fact about it, and because a singular reading (referring to a collective or whole or essence or quality) might be a shorthand for the general reading (referring distributively to all the individual instances).

    Lazerowitz was right to read Quine this way. More substantial implications are drawn out in Languages of Art. But here we are well out of the metaphysical mud.

    The issue in both cases is that similarity doesn't imply a name at all, whether in a Platonic or Nominal sense. — Andrew M

    However glorious.
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    or, do you have examples of such a mirror symmetry?
    — bongo fury

    Yes. The Platonist embellishes similarities as (capital-N, entity) Names, the Nominalist reduces similarities to (small-n, paper draft [*]) names. Neither side challenges that reclassification nor sheds any light on similarity.     — Andrew M

    Yes, I know you think that outcome is inevitable, but I was wondering where, or if, you were finding any examples.

    You can call it nominalist, but are you telling us any more than how you're classifying it? ;-) — Andrew M

    I don't think nominalists will tend to deny that calling anything by one name rather than another can tell us more than how we are classifying it.

    That's fine but it doesn't tell us anything about the ontology of the world, only about his preference. — Andrew M

    About the what of the what, now?? This feeds a suspicion that metaphysics is not being easily given up by some of its supposed critics, who need to disparage nominalism because they would rather not be shown a way out.

    What we do know is that in the course of our investigations of the world, we can identify similarities and differences in things. — Andrew M

    Sure.

    That's the natural home that those terms arise in and by which we then classify things (according to our various purposes). — Andrew M

    What is? The course of our...?

    So classification itself depends on a prior notion of similarity and difference. — Andrew M

    What do you mean "prior"? Formed in the process of shared-naming, as a nominalist tends to assume? Or do you, like the Platonist (e.g. Russell), want to cling to a notion of something more innate?

    Lazerowitz's analysis is interesting and informative because he's investigating and forming a hypothesis about what philosophers are doing, — Andrew M

    Yes, this is such a seductive trope in philosophy: to be too wise to solve any problems. But, as I still say, his analysis might as well call itself nominalist because his suggested reading of Platonist arguments does suggest constructive solutions.

    , not discussing how to classify similarity (per the Problem of Universals). — Andrew M

    Good, not doing metaphysics, then, just as the nominalist isn't, either, and neither should you (or Russell).

    More broadly, an investigation and analysis of how language is used in various contexts is also interesting and informative. But, as Wittgenstein notes (quote below), that is not Nominalism. — Andrew M

    Do you mean to damn the enterprise with faint praise, or rather to identify it with Witty's own project, whilst initiating a terminological squabble? If the latter, then hooray, more support for exchanging metaphysics for,

    let's assume we are talking about physical particulars and also about the talking of organisms such as ourselves, about those particulars, and let's be especially careful not to get confused when the two targets of our talk overlap, which they probably often must. — bongo fury

    which Wittgensteinians can call linguistic analysis if they prefer.

    Per "material", yes, which is one side of a Platonic dualist framing that reiterates the reductionism implicit in Nominalism. — Andrew M

    Yuk. Metaphysics. Give it up :brow:

    Similarity, for Nominalists, reduces to just names. Which precludes even the possibility of investigation. — Andrew M

    No, stop assuming this (Platonist canard). Examples please, of doomed investigations into shared naming. Languages of Art for starters if you have to throw it back (and require examples of superlative investigations into shared naming).

    Nominalists make the mistake of interpreting all words as names, and so of not really describing their use, but only, so to speak, giving a paper draft on such a description. — L. Wittgenstein, PI §383

    Meh. It's a matter of emphasis. Ludo probably reacting against some of his own earlier assumptions about naming, which are not necessarily those of a modern nominalist. But the point certainly is,

    We are not analyzing a phenomenon (e.g. thought) but a concept (e.g. that of thinking), and therefore the use of a word. — L. Wittgenstein, PI §383

    The pointing of symbols at things by social animals.
  • If objective truth matters
    A better approach to ridding ourselves of relativism is found in dismissing the notion of incommensurate descriptions. Truth is not bound to particular conceptual schemes, but rather is what allows us to compare them one to the other.

    The grain of truth in the OP is that it is truth that allows us to determine which descriptions are wrong.     — Banno

    Alternatively, to see the truth of relativism, notice that truth is relative to conceptual schemes or discourses, but that these are fictions that need weaving from smaller ones and joining into bigger ones.

    The grain of truth in the OP is that truth is how we define the consistency we demand in the weaving and joining.
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    The broader point is that it is easy to be misled by language and there are plenty of examples of this in the history of philosophy. — Andrew M

    You don't say. :meh:

    The Nominalist, in their attempt to exorcise the Platonist spirits, can end up being a mirror-image or dual of the Platonist because of a deeper framing of the problem that neither side has recognized. — Andrew M

    In the fond imaginings of a third kind of philosopher, yes of course... or, do you have examples of such a mirror symmetry?

    Lazerowitz does begin with the same too-easy claim, but then proceeds with a perfectly useful analysis that might as well call itself nominalist, like the Quine piece cited. (I'm still not sure you grasped the point of the quoted extract nor Lazerowitz's point about it.) So, examples of the alleged symmetry are lacking.

    The Nominalist applies their razor to the immaterial side of that duality (because ghosts, extravagence, etc.), but finds they are left with an impoverished material world that provides no resources for solving the problem. — Andrew M

    Which problem? The "problem" of universals? The modern nominalist exchanges that for a more interesting investigation into all of the implications of shared naming...

    foundations of math, psychology of consciousness, theory of reference, theory of learning, logic of induction, semiotics etc — bongo fury

    Is the material world supposed lacking in resources for these investigations?
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    Understood metaphysically, — Andrew M

    You jest? (Forgive my irony failure if so.)

    Wasn't Quine briefly gesturing to a nominalist translation of sets-talk in terms of shared naming before admitting sets as entities for the sake of exposition of the standard Platonism? And then wasn't Lazerowitz seeing the gesture as support for his proposal: where possible, and in a spirit of charity, read Platonists as positing universals as a shorthand for shared naming?
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    ↪Wayfarer


    I liked your choice of the Russell as a case study because it is clear and analytical enough to suggest an answer to the OP's question how philosophy becomes metaphysical, often in spite of itself. I'm therefore sorry that my sketch of an answer prompted such an outpouring of metaphysics.

    I guess that kind of reaction might explain the tarring of "nominalism" as metaphysical, so I have edited my question to specify modern nominalism, which is what I would like to save from the tar brush. The assumption that to say (e.g.) ...

    ... that anything is white or a triangle if it has the right sort of resemblance to our chosen particular. — Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

    ... is to say merely that the thing is picked out in our talking as exemplifying the same word as the other exemplar. I.e. that we say it is white when we do. You might complain that is a circular answer, but it's a circular question.

    Modern nominalism is happy with that, not only to close off metaphysical misadventures but also to address psychological questions (learning, perception) where some circularity is inevitable, though hopefully to some extent straightenable: with enough care, and enough healthy distrust of woo.

    And yes it does reject any obligation to its ancestors. Even Roscellinus . :smile:
  • Lazerowitz's three-tiered structure of metaphysics
    So I brought up a discussion of the ontology of universals, from Russell's Problems of Philosophy, and other sources on the ontology of math, referencing a couple of articles from SEP and IEP. I note very little reaction to or comment on those issues, which are actually the kinds of things that academic metaphysics discusses. — Wayfarer

    Yes, nice counter-example. Not that @Snakes Alive meant to shield even the likes of Russell from the aspersion that metaphysics makes fools of us all. So can we see how it arises, here?

    Perhaps it is inevitable wherever questions posed in (what might plausibly be read as) an object-language get entangled with questions in a corresponding meta-language? Where questions not requiring use of a term like "denotes" merge with questions concerning the same domain but so requiring?

    But a difficulty emerges as soon as we ask ourselves how we know that a thing is white or a triangle. — Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

    So this might be using the word "white" to ask about things, but it might also be asking about the relation of the word (and its relatives) to the things. Probably @Snakes Alive is here begging that we please stick to either the one,

    Is it, do electrons exist? Okay, sure. Is it, do electrons have similar properties? Okay, sure.

    What else is there to say?     — Snakes Alive

    ... or the other,

    Are you talking about the general ability to use nouns? — Snakes Alive

    ... While @Marchesk is with Russell in happily mixing it up:

    Do things share properties and if so, what does that entail? — Marchesk

    If we wish to avoid the universals whiteness and triangularity, we shall choose some particular patch of white or some particular triangle, and say that anything is white or a triangle if it has the right sort of resemblance to our chosen particular. But then the resemblance required will have to be a universal. — Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

    Which is woo... or where it starts.

    But I (like
    ↪Marchesk
    ?) don't understand why [modern*] nominalism should be tarred with the same brush, if all it says is, let's assume we are talking about physical particulars and also about the talking of organisms such as ourselves, about those particulars, and let's be especially careful not to get confused when the two targets of our talk overlap, which they probably often must.

    * edit, see below.
  • Materialism and consciousness
    ↪Wayfarer


    What picture?
  • The Turing P-Zombie
    Do you mean that human understanding is reducible to computer logic — TheMadFool

    Only in the almost trivial sense that neurons are quite evidently some kind of switch or trigger.

    but that we haven't the technology to make it work? If yes then that means you agree with me in principle that human understanding isn't something special, something that can't be handled by logic gates inside computers. — TheMadFool

    I roughly agree with you now (maybe, or maybe the switches will have to be actual neurons; we don't yet know), since you're talking about way off in the future.

    But do you at last see the trouble here,

    Searle's argument doesn't stand up to careful scrutiny for the simple reason that semantics are simply acts of linking words to their referents. Just consider the sentence, "dogs eat meat". The semantic part of this sentence consists of matching the words "dog" with a particular animal, "eat" with an act, and "meat" with flesh, i.e. to their referents and that's it, nothing more, nothing less. Understanding is simply a match-the-following exercise, something a computer can easily accomplish. — TheMadFool

    ?
  • The Turing P-Zombie
    That's to say there is no meaning except in the sense of a consensus. — TheMadFool

    If you like. Is that an objection?

    What makes you think computers can't do that? — TheMadFool

    What, agree and disagree about where each other's words have 'landed', out in the world? If by computers you mean some future AI, then sure. This would no doubt be a few steps more advanced than, say, being able to predict where each other's ball has (actually) landed. Which I assume is challenging enough for current robots.
  • The Turing P-Zombie
    How do we do it, link the word "water" to the water itself, in your opinion? — TheMadFool

    By learning to agree (or disagree) with other people that particular tokens of the word are pointed at particular instances of the object.
  • The Turing P-Zombie
    Yep. So what is it that a computer so easily (according to you) links to the word "water"? The referent you just described, or merely the description?
    — bongo fury

    The description consists of referents.     — TheMadFool

    Ok, well to see "why people make such a big deal of understanding" you need to see that they are interested in how we link the word "water" to the water itself, and not merely to more words for water.

    "Referent" usually refers to the designated object itself, not to other words, semantically related or not.
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