Comments

  • Karl Popper's Black Ravens
    This would be letting confirmation back in through the same door that Popper just tossed it out. — Pantagruel

    Agreed. Hempel induce. Popper deduce.

    Hempel confirm. Popper falsify.
  • Karl Popper's Black Ravens
    So, falsifying confirming the claim A can be done by only considering non-black things that need not necessarily be ravens. That is we may look at a green apple or white clouds and be secure that the claim A [not only] hasn't been falsified [but has also been positively confirmed]. — TheMadFool

    Which is a potential embarrassment for confirmation theory (induction), but not for falsification theory (hypothetico-deduction), which doesn't pretend to compare and rate equally unfalsified hypotheses according to their confirming evidence.

    So long as we don't encounter a non-black raven, we can, according to Karl Popper, invest our trust in the, as yet unfalsified, claim A = all ravens are black. — TheMadFool

    But no more so (according to Popper, as far as I know) than for the equally unfalsified claim that not all ravens are black.

    In other words, the Raven paradox is not a paradox in a scientific sense — TheMadFool

    Sure it is. But it's a problem for induction: for deciding between equally as-yet-unfalsified hypotheses.

    an inability to falsify a claim counts as support for whatever the claim is — TheMadFool

    You mean confirming evidence counts as support? But how to measure confirmation?

    we may believe it, given that there's also positive evidence (black ravens) to back the claim. — TheMadFool

    But what about the equally positive (but intuitively less compelling) evidence of non-black non-ravens? There's the puzzle. (For induction.)
  • Do colors exist?
    A pre neural-network (pre 80's) computational picture of the brain?
    - bongo fury

    Is there any other picture of the brain where sensory visual input is not first encoded into serial electric signal in the eye before it even reaches the brain?     — Zelebg

    :up: :up: :up:

    Nearly there.
  • Do colors exist?
    Colors do not really exist in the brain — Zelebg

    Yay

    where light waves are encoded from sensory input to form a signal or whatever electrochemical kind of abstract information. — Zelebg

    A pre neural-network (pre 80's) computational picture of the brain? Wherein you doubt neural colours but assume correlative neural symbols? Like pixel information in a computer chip, awaiting (arguably)

    an agent or “self” [...] to decode, understand or perceive those signals as colors — Zelebg

    ?

    If you say colors do actually exist, then I think you in fact must be proposing a separate realm of existence for their being, some kind of parallel dimension — Zelebg

    True, so, if you are desperate to give your psychology a pure physical ontology then why not treat colours as labels/adjectives?
  • Do colors exist?
    in what case you would say colors do exist, — Zelebg

    Wherever it makes sense to parse them as objects, e.g. objects of a semantic verb like denotes/describes/points-at/refers-to/applies-to. [edit: or is-true-of, as remarked above.]

    and what are the possible cases where you would say colors don't really exist? — Zelebg

    Wherever it makes more sense to parse them as labels, i.e. subjects of the semantic verb.
  • The Notion of Subject/Object
    Btw

    It permeates the philosophy of language (Quine's "Word and Object"), cognitive sciences, etc. — Xtrix

    Or rather... Chisholm's "Person and Object"?

    Ockham to Quine's Roscellinus. On my analysis.
  • The Notion of Subject/Object
    Funny how even behaviourism doesn't resist the "idea" idea.

    That is, if it ever did (as so often charged) espouse an initial blankness of slate.

    A slate or screen or stage in the head, and pictures or words in the head. And then, or already, intermediate images, impressions, echoes, traces, affections, representations, at all points in a continuous channel of re-processing, imagined as stretching from "object" all the way in to... er, yes, how does it end? Where and what is the "subject"? Plenty of controversy there. But virtually none for the image-or-text-processing analogy that implies video and text symbols arising within the organism.

    And we can't blame modern technology. The analogy probably (I speculate) always pervaded cultures that produced physical symbols.

    But of course animals (and neural networks) don't commit events to memory by processing and storing physical traces (like an electronic camera), but rather by training themselves to respond to stimulation (internal and external) with appropriate activity. Most of which, in humans uniquely, involves manipulation of, or preparation to manipulate, actual, external, symbols.

    ...What we mistakenly theorise as the presence of actual, internal ones.

    So, cheers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscellinus, the only clear (and probably spurious) example of bucking image-ism that I can find, before Goodman and Quine.
  • Negation across cultures
    I would like to know a little about how members here interpret negation. — Mapping the Medium

    1) As a word's (or other symbol's) happening not to point at an object

    2) As some corresponding negative's (or antonym's) happening to point at the object

    Each of which probably implies the other, in some way that would help explain global patterns of word-pointing. Such as, the tendency of a scheme of words towards "sorting" of a domain of objects, through pointing out of (more or less) mutually exclusive but jointly exhaustive sub-domains.
  • The Notion of Subject/Object
    Or at least Ockham.
    — bongo fury

    Hmm, really? That's interesting. Never read Ockham. Where does he touch on this?     — Xtrix

    ... and Aristotle, apparently.

    Now I say that utterances are 'signs subordinated' to concepts or intentions of the soul, not because, by a proper acceptance of the word 'signs', the utterances always signify the concepts of the soul primarily and properly, but rather because utterances are imposed to signify those same things that are signified by the concepts of the mind. In this way the concept primarily signifies something naturally, and secondarily the utterance signifies that same thing...

    [...] And the Philosopher says as much, [saying] that utterances are 'marks of affections that are in the soul'[4];So also Boethius[5], when he says that utterances signify concepts. And generally all writers, in saying that all utterances signify affections or are the marks of those [affections], do not mean anything other than that the utterances are signs secondarily signifying those things that are primarily conveyed by affections of the soul...

    [...] the concept or affection of the soul signifies naturally whatever it signifies, but a spoken or written term signifies nothing except according to voluntary imposition.
     — http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Ockham/Summa_Logicae/Book_I/Chapter_1

    Hence the etymology of "idea" involving "image", as in a photographic trace. (Natural as opposed to conventional.)

    And the undeniably fruitful connection of (the notion of empiricism in) philosophy of science to (the notion of empiricism in) developmental psychology. How we learn to read messages from nature.

    Still, I see Goodman and Quine as reasserting convention, and rather kicking against...

    This way of talking about the "outside world" of objects and the "inner world" of thoughts, perceptions and emotions — Xtrix

    E.g., Quine's behaviourism, and Goodman's semiotics-without-the-mentalism.
  • The Notion of Subject/Object
    at least since Descartes. — Xtrix

    Or at least Ockham.

    "Idea" is the great interloper, an unnecessary middle man between word and object.
  • Can Hume's famous Induction Problem also be applied to Logic & Math?
    It's gibberish, a contradiction, it does not compute, and being semantically invalid statement it can not be sanely reasoned about. — Zelebg

    So, on waking that morning (OP), we might all seize and catch fire like confused robots.

    But we might do that anyway if we took any logic too religiously, and felt obliged to believe all the consequences of our (inevitably) inconsistent beliefs.
  • Can Hume's famous Induction Problem also be applied to Logic & Math?
    Imagine a flower is a vacuum cleaner. — Zelebg

    Ok. I did that.
  • Can Hume's famous Induction Problem also be applied to Logic & Math?
    The problem is semantic, it is about constructing a formal system for common meaning to help us communicate. Imagining then some other system of reference meanings does not speak about actual change in the outside world, but about personal interpretation module. Dealing with it would manifest with difficulties in communication. — Zelebg

    Sure. My difficulty was with making sense of,

    knowing for a fact it is named Earth. — Zelebg

    How to know such a fact. Perhaps you meant, agreeing to assume?
  • Can Hume's famous Induction Problem also be applied to Logic & Math?
    The same thing that prevents you, or should prevent you, to imagine our planet is actually called Penis, while knowing for a fact it is named Earth. Nonsense. — Zelebg

    Interesting theory. How does it deal with the fact of me (or some Humpty) claiming to call it whatever I like?
  • Why people distrust intelligence

    Agathon: I'm afraid the word is bad. You have been condemned to death.

    Allen: Ah, it saddens me that I should cause debate in the senate.

    Agathon: No debate. Unanimous.

    Allen: Really?

    Agathon: First ballot.

    Allen: Hmmm. I had counted on a little more support.

    Simmias: The senate is furious over your ideas for a Utopian state.

    Allen: I guess I should never have suggested having a philosopher-king.

    Simmias: Especially when you kept pointing to yourself and clearing your throat.
     — Woody Allen, 'My Apology'
  • Alternative proof for the Carnap-Gödel diagonal lemma
    The proposition that there exists a Γ for which Γ(x,y=f(x)) -> true and Γ(x,y≠f(x)) -> false, is tautological for any (computable) function f. But then again, this proposition is needed just for the original proof, and not for this one. — alcontali

    I don't see how you are addressing anything like the same claim, e.g.,

    • Any symbol system that can prove all arithmetic proves at least one liar sentence.

    Your target seems to be something like,

    • Any syntactically determined boolean valuation function (your f) on all sentences in a system must, for at least one of those sentences, return the value which is the (actual? semantically determined?) value of the sentence.

    Quite apart from how this claim might or might not correspond to the first, I can't see it going through. Why shouldn't we assume that at least one valuation (call it f and even interpret it as the predicate "is false") creates a complete set of mis-matches (true-false and false-true) of s to f(s) while its opposite (~f = g) makes a complete set of matches?

    I guess you were really hoping to show that any (syntactically determined) valuation must create at least one match and one mis-match, but forgot to make sure they were shown to arise from the same valuation? You really want to claim,

    Then, the diagonal lemma says that:

    ∀f ∈ F:N→{false,true} ∃s,t ∈ S: s ↔ f(⌜s⌝) ∧ ¬t ↔ f(⌜t⌝)     — alcontali

    ?

    Perhaps it does? But your proposed short-cut no longer works. When you negate the claim you no longer make the implausible demand to exclude the possibility of v ∧ g(⌜v⌝) for some (other) f or g.
  • Alternative proof for the Carnap-Gödel diagonal lemma
    Trying to square this with the wikipedia version, I'm struggling with,

    for every computable function f that takes a number as an argument and returns false or true, — alcontali

    Shouldn't it be more like,

    there exists some computable function f with the special property that it takes the godel number of any 'gappy' sentence and returns the godel number of the same sentence eating itself,

    ... and then, continuing, state the existence of some suitable (gappy) sentence capable of consequent paradox?

    Is your f really Γ, the "graph" predicate assumed available to "represent" (presumably like the way points on a 2d coordinate graph represent a relation as a set of ordered pairs of numerals) any computable function and therefore f?

    From which assumption, we get the desired result that, roughly speaking, (logical) Γ of the gappy sentence is provably equivalent to (computable) f of the same sentence? Or, in my terms here, that the result of pushing the sentence through the (logical) u-bend is provably equivalent to the result of pushing it through the (computable) v-bend?

    I appreciate the answer is probably no on all counts, because your approach is not wikipedia's. I've tried to widen my sources, but so far am only as far as (haha) this somewhat bewildering and disorienting critique of wikipedia but also everyone else. :fear:
  • True Contradictions and The Liar
    'alternating belief' in the truth of a sentence, — sime

    Or, to simplify matters, alternating assertion and denial of a sentence.

    Or, to simplify further, production or selection of sentence tokens (utterances/inscriptions) that successively contradict each other.
  • Sider's Argument in Hell and Vagueness
    ↪TheMadFool


    Ok, do you see that you basically agreed with Sider and the OP all along?
  • Sider's Argument in Hell and Vagueness
    I agree that reward/punishment should be proportionate to the good/bad deeds respectively we do. However, Sider's claim isn't about this particular aspect of the issue. Sider claims that two people who are morally indistinguishable can have opposite destinations in the afterlife. — TheMadFool

    But that is what he sees as offending our sense of proportionality:

    Choose any moral matter of degree you like: number of charitable donations made, number of hungry fed, naked clothed or feet washed, number of random acts of kindness performed, or even some amalgam of several factors. Given a binary afterlife, there will be someone who just barely made it, and someone else who just barely missed out. This is impossible, given the proportionality of justice. — http://tedsider.org/papers/hell.pdf

    It might not have seemed to you to be the same kind of problem as proportionality. But it is, inasmuch as mapping the large, fine-grained scale onto the course-grained scale of 2 (or any much smaller number of) values will somewhere or other require differentiating the punishment of two barely different cases the same as two dramatically different cases. Hence the difference in punishment can't be in proportion to the difference in moral grading for both pairs. Hence it is the same problem as not being able to satisfy:

    that reward/punishment should be proportionate to the good/bad deeds respectively we do. — TheMadFool
  • What is truth?
    some of the sentences we call true could be false. — Bartricks

    Not without contradicting other sentences we call true.
  • What is truth?
    What do you mean? — Bartricks

    "True" is what we call sentence tokens that bear repeating on their own terms, which is to say, without contextualising in the manner of "... is untrue because..." or "... would be the case if not for..." etc.

    Such contexts are potential predators, and must be fought off and dominated.
  • Sider's Argument in Hell and Vagueness
    0 is as sharp a border as it gets. [...] ...one might be just a tiny bit better, in a moral sense, than a rock but that deserves a place in heaven. — TheMadFool

    Fine, so you get how it is...

    possible that two ethically similar people have contradictory outcomes (one going to hell and the other going to heaven)? — TheMadFool

    And you get how Sider thinks that this consequence of a sharp border conflicts with most people's intuition of "proportionality" as a criterion of justice?
  • What is truth?
    True is what we call sentences which prevail: those whose tokens replicate successfully as free-standing (e.g. un-negated) assertions within the language.
  • Sider's Argument in Hell and Vagueness
    ↪TheMadFool


    So are sin and virtue separated by clear blue water, on your view? Or do they square up either side of a sharp border?
  • Sider's Argument in Hell and Vagueness
    Why? How do you come to that conclusion? — TheMadFool

    Possibly a misunderstanding. Were sin and virtue simply your labels for the separate islands? (And not some distinct species of moral variation as I assumed?) So that the least sinful sin is a moral ocean (or English Channel) away from the least virtuous virtue?

    Then we agree, probably. I would think this interpretation jars somewhat with common usage, which tends to suggest that sin and virtue do meet, and possibly overlap. But that wouldn't matter too much. You could either adjust your terminology or else be content to offend common usage (somewhat).
  • Sider's Argument in Hell and Vagueness
    What say you? — TheMadFool

    I disagree that sin and virtue aren't just as continuous as any other conception of moral variation. And your rumination at the end, about redemption, is (to me) similarly off-point.

    But your 'islands' metaphor is my choice too: fuzzy shorelines separated by clear blue water. Hence my original gripe at the all too common conclusion,

    There is no black and white, only shades of grey. — http://tedsider.org/papers/hell.pdf

    Only one shade is needed. Sider denies the possibility of fuzzy shorelines, and hence overlooks the equilibrational benefits of having two of them.
  • Davidson - On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme
    Getting rid of conceptual schemes reintroduces being wrong. — Banno

    To be fair, so does embracing them but expecting them to connect up.
  • Sider's Argument in Hell and Vagueness
    How is it possible that two ethically similar people have contradictory outcomes (one going to hell and the other going to heaven)? — TheMadFool

    Similar as in approximately equal but not necessarily actually equal. E.g. not-noticeably-different. Two such people will go to different places if their separation (however small) on some (fine-grained or even continuous) moral scale coincides with the sharp border between one choice (by the judge) of appropriate destination and the other. So, in the same way that two people can be spatially close but in different countries.

    Sider supposes that a sense of proportionality excludes any such sharp border. It favours vagueness, and borderline cases. (I agree.)

    If people are spread like a continuum and morality is a spectrum without any discrete borders... — TheMadFool

    ... Do you mean without any discrete steps or increments, i.e. continuous?

    ... then it is possible that two people of similar moral standing may have opposite fates — TheMadFool

    Yes although the same is equally possible if the (small) distance between them is measured in discrete steps.
  • Sider's Argument in Hell and Vagueness
    Holding my nose at the god-bothering, I will say...

    People who say,

    there is no black and white, only shades of grey — http://tedsider.org/papers/hell.pdf

    miss the point, and end up ignoring the evidence (in natural as well as human message replication) that one shade of grey is sufficient, usually, to facilitate perfectly reliable (and otherwise admirable) separation of black and white.

    So purgatory does the job fine, because the distribution of judgements forms a fuzzy border between the middle option and each of the outer ones. The fuzziness itself expresses the judge's holistic and proportionalistic intuitions about each case, as well as giving due warning to mortals about which areas of the more fine-grained (or even continuous) gradation are safe, and which are pushing it. So that they don't have to risk either extreme option if they don't want to. They can aim for the other.

    This claim is not substantiated in the argument unless Theodore Sider is privy to information we're not aware of. — TheMadFool

    He considers both fine-grained and continuous scenarios as hypothetical suppositions. Why use theology as an example when ethical ones are emotive enough I have no idea.

    https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/#rfr-welcome
  • Davidson - Trivial and Nontrivial Conceptual Schemes - A Case Study in Translation
    There's no relation between the two. "Scaling-up" and a "non-critical attitude" - those two aren't related. You caught the tail-end of a longer conversation. But the two are unrelated. — ZzzoneiroCosm

  • Davidson - Trivial and Nontrivial Conceptual Schemes - A Case Study in Translation
    Yes. Learning more about Davidson by criticizing and questioning. — ZzzoneiroCosm

    I don't have a problem with the critical attitude. I'm just trying to understand what you and @Janus have against scaling up from analysis at the relatively small-scale, so that you would associate such an approach with a lack of critical attitude.

    I suspect by saying "less trivial" Davidson was using understatement to say "even less trivial, if that were possible".

    What makes you think your "non-trivials" are a different kind of problem?
  • Davidson - Trivial and Nontrivial Conceptual Schemes - A Case Study in Translation
    Not interested in refutation. Just exploration. — ZzzoneiroCosm

    Ok, this thread is to question that? Question Davidson's assertion that the problem scales up? You see the "non-trivials" as a different problem?

    Not saying you shouldn't question the man's views.
  • Davidson - Trivial and Nontrivial Conceptual Schemes - A Case Study in Translation
    You never really got a solid answer to that one over in the other thread. I don't see a clear answer. It's a nontrivial. — ZzzoneiroCosm

    I agree and again I think that distinction you highlighted between trivial and non-trivial conceptual content is very helpful. — Janus

    Thanks. Re Davidson, the analytic veterans don't seem to be overly critical in their thinking. — ZzzoneiroCosm

    You mean Davidson included?

    But the principles involved must be the
    same in less trivial cases.

    This thread is to refute that? You see the "non-trivials" as a different problem?
  • Davidson - On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme
    @Banno

    Even those thinkers who are certain there is only one conceptual scheme are in the sway of the scheme concept; even monotheists have religion.

    But this (as the implied alternative to polytheism) leaves out ecumenism/pluralism, which I think characterises most of the philosophical "persuasions" to which Davidson might be referring, e.g. those countenancing,

    • conceptual schemes (by that name, but equally...)
    • paradigms
    • social constructs
    • mental models
    • forms of life
    • language in use
    • semiotics
    • world-making

    I would guess that it's only a minority of sects that have believed in a clear separation of one deity (e.g. scheme) from another, let alone their mutual incommensurability. Much more usual has been to see them as big spongy things: networks, always evolving, by reconnecting and interconnecting. Not sealed off from each other.

    Which is fragile enough as a positive creed, since conceived as the large-scale composition of myriad occasions of reference with no factual basis. So a reification of hot air (and ink). And seldom explicitly espoused, even by believers in the various big spongy things. (But go Quine!)

    As a believer (in Quine's web for example), I should like to read Davidson as just saying to the extremists, the incommensurabilists: look, accept that if two links in 'separate' referential webs are in some undeniable way equivalent, then the webs can't be as separate as you thought.

    But I have to admit he ends up happy to seem atheist about the "very idea". Is he? Does he mock the faithful?

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    A table of terms that are associated with both organize and fit — Moliere

    I read it as pretty much Piaget's contrast of assimilate and accommodate.
  • Davidson - On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme
    Is there a reference to snow in the following?

    1) snow

    2) if snow

    3) if and only if snow

    4) if and only if snow is white     — ZzzoneiroCosm

    Glad we are back to inscrutability of reference, where we belong.
  • Davidson - On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme
    Notice that the "p" on the left is quoted, not used - I have had so many arguments with folk on these fora simply because they didn't... — Banno

    We ought also note Tarski's generalisation.

    s is true IFF p

    in which "s" is some statement and "p" is a translation of that statement.     — Banno

    Typo or I didn't...
  • Exploring analytical philosophy with Banno
    ↪Michael


    So which, if not all, of

    • talking about
    • talking to
    • seeing

    are we talking about?
  • Exploring analytical philosophy with Banno
    and the suspension of disbelief is further entrenched by more or less conscious attempts to ground the pointing fantasy as a matter of fact. — bongo fury

    I'm talking to you, not to words on my screen, but our conversation is via words on our screens. — Michael

    And the via is relevant how? As grounding the pointing fantasy in physics?

    Edit: also, talking to isn't talking about.
  • Can Hume's famous Induction Problem also be applied to Logic & Math?
    ↪A Seagull
    :up:

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/309821
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