No worries.

I'm having a ridiculously shitty day so I'm just gonna be curt here. I feel like there's something you're really missing somehow. — Pfhorrest

Forgive me. (Describe me as forgivable!) I was impatient to debate the content.

“exactly” is idiomatic here, the point is that “wrong” doesn’t bring to mind any specific descriptive indication, but rather a more general imperative prescriptive force. — Pfhorrest

To be fair, "wrong" brings to mind countless specific descriptive indications: examples of actions or behaviours that are indicated, described, denoted, labelled, pointed at, by the word.

Sure, those are cases to be proscribed, and alternatives prescribed. Right and wrong are roughly co-extensive with prescribable and proscribable, respectively. That doesn't stop an ethical choice from being one of correct description: finding appropriate descriptive application (pointing) of the ethical words.

I do see that in "specific descriptive indication" you are looking rather for guiding associations, connotations, precedents. That won't be a problem if you really don't mean "exactly", and they don't have to amount to a definition. "Causes pain to someone" is indeed a helpful guide in correct usage of "wrong", even though causing pain to someone isn't always wrong. Actions correctly described as the one are often correctly described as the other, and the association, even though not exact, so that Moore is right to find his question open, enables usage of each to guide the other. So a specific indication in this sense isn't lacking either.

What exactly is being described of an action when one decides that "wrong" is an applicable word to it, though? — Pfhorrest

Nothing exactly. Why would you expect that a word's applying to an object in a language deserved some exact explanation or justification or definition?

So, for example,

the limited domain of specifically descriptive statements:

I don't think this domain is nearly so limited as you think it is. Ethical discourse seems to me to be about deciding how to describe and (thereby) classify human behaviours, e.g. deciding whether "wrong" denotes this behaviour or that. Aesthetic discourse is about deciding how to describe and classify artworks and sensory qualities. The standards of verification or stipulation guiding such decisions in those two broad areas of discourse may differ in kind from each other and from the parallel standards operating in scientific discourse, but that wouldn't indicate that the discourses differ in whether they are fundamentally descriptive.

The fact that ethical and aesthetic statements can be treated naturally enough as descriptive, when construed with an appropriate (and natural enough) choice of domain and descriptor, as when we see that (or debate whether) the word "wrong" applies to a certain kind of killing, indicates that your distinction between descriptive and prescriptive may be a relatively shallow one, based on a passing linguistic tradition.

More fundamentally, all human discourses are cultures of word-pointing and picture-pointing (and sound-pointing and colour-pointing). Some of them (especially the political and social) excel in the positing and sorting of domains of mental entities and processes: ideas, expressions, intentions, desires, feelings etc. That doesn't necessarily make such entities and processes appropriate as the basis for analysis of the discourses.

Ok, I've ended up admitting that your analysis is far too mentalist for my taste. But regardless of that, I'd be interested in how you feel (or think) about my proposed literal and descriptive construals of ethical questions.

I knew there was another: "without impressing that opinion on anymore".

simple spelling or grammar errors, — Pfhorrest

Humeaniam and abstration. :wink:

Does that buy me a brief whinge about speech act theory?

my philosophy of language hinges on how "merely" describing something is itself still doing something by speaking — describing is an action

Hooray, so would mine. But,

- and that speech can do many other things besides just describe,

boo, if "just" means "merely" after all. As is apparently the case in a lot of speech act theory. E.g.,

I hold that the meaning of all speech can be found by paying attention to what it is that someone is trying to do by uttering that speech.

Thing is, I fear that you will roll your eyes if I hold that what that thing is, that someone is trying to do, could be anything so naive as a matter of describing something, pointing a word or picture at it. It must (according to the widespread dogma) be something else entirely that we need to notice.

What will upset me even more, actually, is casual acceptance that, of course, such naive language games are perfectly playable, but that (such being the dogma) they are uninteresting, because unrepresentative, parochial.

I think the allegedly simple and uninteresting question of which words and pictures are being pointed at which objects, and how they thereby carve up their domains, is complex and difficult enough to explain all the allegedly different species of speech act. For example, I don't see the distinction between description and prescription as fundamental.

Whinge over.

Roboticists need to rethink their approach to the subject in a fundamental way. — TheMadFool

And they did. The price of the neural network revolution was giving up (or at least severely compromising) the model of the brain (or computer) as a processor of stored symbols - internal words and pictures representing external objects. Ironically, it had to revert to Skinner's behaviourist model, a "black box". Training, without necessarily understanding the learning.

How Justin does it is as much up for speculation as how we do it.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~jxb/PUBS/AIRTNN.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjC56ut4qHoAhX3WRUIHWRVDsEQFjABegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw1RdayKc25rZVAjdcLrK0D7

If the sentence was something like "John believes that the present Queen of America is bald," where "the present Queen of America" does not denote any real object or person - how do their respective theories still argue that such a sentence can be true? — RyanFreeman

Russell says it can be true that John believes a false proposition, a proposition expressed by the sentence "the present Queen of America is bald". Frege says it can be true that John (like Russell) believes that the sentence expresses a proposition.

3. Relational - Einstein, Kantians

I think I get the first two, but it's not clear to me that we presently live in an age if relativism. — frank

This reminded me (I'm biased it's true) of this:

... that mainstream of modern philosophy that began when Kant exchanged the structure of the world for the structure of the mind, continued when C. I. Lewis exchanged the structure of the mind for the structure of concepts, and that now proceeds to exchange the structure of concepts for the structure of the several symbol systems of the sciences, philosophy, the arts, perception, and everyday discourse. The movement is from unique truth and a world fixed and found to a diversity of right and even conflicting versions or worlds in the making. — Nelson Goodman, 'Ways of Worldmaking'.

(The seventies, when relativist often meant modernist and rationalist.)

Neither. It's a response to the idea of pictures in the head. — Marchesk

Haha, sarcasm, then?

Fine, although I do think that the "neural representations" favoured by the likes of Dennett and Frankish (thanks for the links) are questionable as being probably ghosts of "the idea idea", and other mentalisms. Hence the prevaricating in 3.3 Who is the audience?. And the possible own goal, if

An appearance of something which isn't there. — Marchesk

gets supposed as a thing located in the head, to the delight and justified exasperation of dualists everywhere.

Er, so...

A homunculi watching moving pictures in its head. In color, with sound. — Marchesk

Is this your position or your proposed reading of theirs?

A homunculi watching moving pictures in its head. In color, with sound. — Marchesk

Oh, I get it. You come to expose the illusionists, not to praise?

It [panpsychism] “explains” why my socks and bubblegum are conscious, even though no one thought they were, but it doesn’t explain why the human brain is conscious the way the human brain is conscious, which is what we actually want to know. — Zelebg

Yes, well put.

what the illusionist is saying is there are no ineffable, intrinsic, private and immediately apprehended sensations. There is no redness of red. Instead, there is an appearance of something which seems to have those qualities. — Marchesk

A picture in the head?

Or did you mean the other way round: what, if anything, distinguishes concepts from mere words?

Depends who you ask, of course. Word du jour is "illusion". As in no, nothing. (My vote, indeed. Casting of which I hereby perform. )

Does the illusion of consciousness go right down to the level of bacteria and virus?

True, but it's also being used as a metaphor. Illusionists aren't saying there's literally a computer-like graphical display in the brain. — Marchesk

Oh dear. Did I suggest that? I'll read what I wrote and see if I'm to blame... But your response was awfully quick. Not saying I expected you to meditate on it with any great reverence, but blimey.

Also because vision is just one of the senses, and we should be mindful not to base too much philosophical argument based on vision alone. — Marchesk

But I did say "read".

Btw, grateful for your links on this...

An analogy used is that the illusion is like a computer desktop, which is a useful abstraction for users, while the underlying computer system is quite different from the visual interface. — Marchesk

I hear this a lot. But I wonder how, and even whether, it is meant to deflate qualia talk and Cartesian theatre talk. A visual interface is pictures we look at, and locating them in the head implies a homunculus to view them, whether or not they are to be read as depicting realistically or figuratively.

Kind of an own goal.

Do you also think that consciousness is a property of only complex nervous systems and is thus entirely absent in insects,birds and other simpler organisms? — StarsFromMemory

Entirely, or largely? (Complexity being relative in this context.)

Vote!...

Do you think that consciousness (in any important sense) goes (in any degree) right down to the level of bacteria and virus?

Grateful for any votes on this, for the reason mentioned.

Sorry.

Well, sure, most people in the thread are making assertions, claims, guesses about ontology. — Coben

And I was urging against that kind of response to the OP.

As it happens, though, doing ontology, in the straightforward sense of inferring domains of objects to serve as the potential targets of our word-pointing, i.e. doing semantics, would be my suggestion for roughly where to look for the emergence of consciousness in (e.g.) human infants.

? — Coben

Metaphysics.

But consciousness may not be a trait in this sense, it may merely be a facet of what gets called matter. — Coben

Woo.

there's never a hard line where something suddenly becomes / ceases to be "consciousness" — Pfhorrest

True, but it's arguable there is a very wide zone of uncertainty separating perfectly clear cases of consciousness from equally clear counter-cases.

Denial of this alleged clarity at either end, i.e. as proposed by the pan-psychists doubting unconsciousness of rocks at one end, and possibly by Dennett (at least as he dares to paint himself) doubting consciousness of adult humans at the other, may turn out to be the right conclusion. But it (denial of clarity, and embrace of a continuum) seems to me to be caused by slippery slope logic only, and unnecessarily.

So I like the thread question, and I hope that it ends up puncturing anthropomorphism about robots and insects more than inspiring it.

I think even the most rudimentary forms of consciousness are only in organisms that possess a nervous system — StarsFromMemory

How far down, then, for you? Ants? Robotic AI ants? Smart phones?

Just curious, for the reason mentioned.

... so the picture that is painted in their minds... — Peter Russell

In their what, now??

We really only understand one kind of consciousness - our own. — Echarmion

Fewer, surely?

Can consciousness really go all the way down to the level of bacteria and virus? — StarsFromMemory

Good question. I find that admission of such a possibility usually indicates zero prospect of any interesting discussion on this topic, as it sets the bar far too low - in relation to the psychology, anyway: it shifts the discussion away from the fascinating psychology, into metaphysical woo. So thanks for asking it.

It's the people who nearly agree with us we can't stand :wink:

What else, then, should I have done? — Alice

show him that [you] won't be fooled into admitting some continuity, between his standard and meaningful contributions to the discourse, and the nonsense. — bongo fury

In what way was I beguiled? — Alice

As though the nonsense might have been there all along and be seeping all through: in the prior discussions and in the game of syntactic replication and recognition still in play. On which spurious basis (that of such a continuity) Bob and [@Tristan L] both might hope to worry [you] and other sensible people with "yes I agree and therefore the opposite". — bongo fury

Do you not agree with me that I disagree with Bob, whereas he says that I agree with him?” — Alice

Well, if Bob's apologists are now claiming, after all, that he is not to be trusted even with coherent reference to utterances, then no, I think you are unwise to suggest you are having a meaningful agreement or disagreement with Bob about anything. You may as well just treat him as a non-speaker of the language, who fails to observe basic distinctions of meaning. This claim by his apologists is of course belated and half-hearted, because they wanted to insinuate a continuity between sense and nonsense.

As we know from many terms of service, not exercising a right doesn’t mean waiving it. — Tristan L

I disagree. Rights (like reference) are inferred from practice.

Bob might be an aspiring sophist, but I’m more and more inclined to think that he is more interested in radical monism — Tristan L

Arguably the same thing. Point words indiscriminately and they point at everything (and nothing).

Only by applying PSAN with radical thoroughness could he hope to be taken seriously. — Tristan L

No, in applying the rule he needs to compromise, and suggest coherent reference to utterances, otherwise he can't introduce contradictions in any hope of impressing as a sophist, i.e. as feigning inference and not mere nonsense.

trying to define negation — Tristan L

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. — bongo fury

By the way, I’m very well aware that the Principle of the Sameness of Affirmation and Negation (PSAN) applies on the object-logical level and all meta-logical levels, too. And if I say ‘all’, I really mean ALL. — Bob

So Bob claims permission (by this principle) to mis-quote, as well as to mis-disquote? Is that the case?

If so, does he carry out the threat? Does he say things like,

Yes, Alice, you are right, you said to me, quite clearly, and I quote, "Bob, please do mess with my phone!"

?

If so (if he says this kind of thing, and by the way whether or not he also constantly contradicts himself), then I'm surprised that either you or Alice were beguiled into conceding,

Heck, we don’t even agree whether we agree or disagree, — Alice

... thus needlessly encouraging Bob in his efforts as an aspiring sophist. Without him consistently waiving the nonsense principle when it comes to quotation, I doubt that Bob could (as he seems to) hope to get his principle taken seriously.

If not - if his avowed principle is mere bluff, as I hope you are assuring us here,

Yes, he mis-disquotes her, but he doesn’t mis-quote her. I’m not changing my stance on that, — Tristan L

... then, as I say, this is the basis on which we might persuade Bob that he has no reason to think his proposed principle to be a plausible fit with his way of talking.

Bob gave every appearance of being prepared to agree (in a non-surprising way) about these [expressing sentences]. About which phonetic sequences agree with (replicate, quote) which others, and about which ones disagree with (fail to quote) which others. — bongo fury

But he claims that certain pairs of sentences have the same meaning which Alice, you and I think have opposite meanings, doesn’t he? — Tristan L

Yes, he mis-disquotes Alice, but does he mis-quote her? Are you changing your stance on that?

That is, Alice can expose Bob by pointing out that he applies a not-standard interpretation to her sentences. — Tristan L

More importantly she needs to show him that she won't be fooled into admitting some continuity, between his standard and meaningful contributions to the discourse, and the nonsense.

As though the nonsense might have been there all along and be seeping all through: in the prior discussions and in the game of syntactic replication and recognition still in play. On which spurious basis (that of such a continuity) Bob and you both might hope to worry Alice and other sensible people with "yes I agree and therefore the opposite". No, either you don't agree, or you don't infer the opposite. Look at your syntax (which is semantics of a kind, a classification) if you need reminding of your ability to make sense. (Alice can say this, and not have to threaten to slap anyone, which I guess was to make the same point, i.e. that Bob understands better than he pretends?)

Was Alice being misquoted, or merely mis-disquoted (misread, misinterpreted, misunderstood)?

The latter, so I don't think she needed to admit, in an open ended way,

Heck, we don’t even agree whether we agree or disagree, — Tristan L

when that apparently meant disagreement about "points expressed",

including the point expressed by this very sentence as well as the one expressed by what Bob is about to say. — Tristan L

... but not necessarily about the sentences doing the expressing. Bob gave every appearance of being prepared to agree (in a non-surprising way) about these. About which phonetic sequences agree with (replicate, quote) which others, and about which ones disagree with (fail to quote) which others. So there was no cause for dismay. No need to grant to Bob the degree and kind of disruption he claimed.

After all, it was only by observing - non-pathologically - such syntactic game rules that he fooled anybody into thinking that any rules of logical inference had been set in some pathological motion. As opposed to having been willfully or unfortunately (but not paradoxically) unobservable for him.

I.e. the implication that we have already shown ourselves vulnerable to accepting or colluding with misquotation is the sleight of hand / misdirection on offer, I think.

I.e. Bob's sophistry consists in trying to imply that his daft self-contradiction undermines all of the agreement and cooperation assumed in the discourse. But daring to confuse misinterpretation with misquotation is where it gets badly exposed.

Worth a look. — Banno

No doubt. At all.

"Discover" seemed weird though...

One can discover a truth without being the first to discover it (in this context); it is enough that one comes to believe it in an independent, reliable and rational way.

In that case, why not "understand"? Perhaps because he associates that with "prove"?

The difference between merely discovering a truth and proving it is a matter of transparency: for proving or following a proof the subject must be aware of the way in which the conclusion is reached and the soundness of that way; this is not required for discovery.

Ok, but then what has happened to "in an independent, reliable and rational way"?

Also, somewhat of a wtf at this,

While there is no reason to think that mental arithmetic (mental calculation in the integers and rational numbers) typically involves much visual thinking,

... said reaction not much assuaged even by a chapter in here entitled Mental Number Lines, which (dashing my hopes) rather suggests that the (same) author is among those who, incomprehensibly to the rest of us,

form a number line representation [only] once we have acquired a written numeral system.

Perhaps it is largely in this group of people that we find those benighted politicians and educators who would (unlike probably the author, to be fair) invite children to approach mental arithmetic as an abacus or column digit system? Instead of (what seems more natural and profitable to the rest of us) as a matter of travelling between locations on a line?

I wonder in what kind of ratio the two kinds of people size up... 50 50?

Yes, Alice's side.

Yes, it isn't.

whenever they talk about red they are referring to their red. — sime

So what? Aren't they ready to gloss it (if pressed, and with cheerful inconsistency as you say) as: their red and/or your red and/or the type of stimulus? Don't they probably agree with Ramachandran that a simple sci-fi brain bridge would settle the curious question whether they are using the same type of internal colour quality as you are using to identify the same type of external stimulus? (As opposed to using a different type of internal colour quality to identify the same type of external stimulus, as in Locke's colour inversion scenario?)

If so, the inconsistency hardly seems basic or conceptual, but merely a reasonable way to skirt an issue that only a sci-fi device could settle.

Therefore consider the irrealist alternative; namely that ontological disagreements are partly the result of our collectively inconsistent use of language. — sime

Delighted to hear more about this alternative... even though I would be hoping for it to unweave the internal qualia rainbow rather than indulge it as you and Locke and Ramachandran and most people seem inclined to.

'Male' and 'female' are genetic classifications, — Virgo Avalytikh

And as such they are ever subject to clarification and revision in terms of genotype and phenotype and the implied correlation.

You could try simply identifying them (male and female) with presence or absence of a Y chromosome, which is indeed an impressively clear and easily maintained distinction. That might stabilise matters. Make the classification less open to question. Not that a gradual (or even continuous) scale going from one to the other is inconceivable, but there are precious few real intermediate examples to deal with.

However, if you then say,

The Y chromosome is the male-making chromosome. — Virgo Avalytikh

... then it's clear you expect to correlate gene with phene. (The one making the other.) So biology doesn't simplify the issue as much as you seem to hope. You need to acknowledge not only the clear chromosomal dichotomy but also a definition of 'male' in phenotypic terms which is likely to smear along countless gradual scales of differentiation, none of which has nature been considerate enough to simplify, by removing examples from the central zone.

This doesn't mean you can't, if you wish to, claim that possession of what you define as relatively male phenotypic qualities is associated with possession of a Y chromosome. Or that received cultural stereotypes reflect such real associations.

It just means you might be overestimating the scientific basis for the stereotypes.

Dawkins is great on this danger: http://www.evolbiol.ru/document/1301 (2.4 Genes aren't us).

sometimes folk use "that's true" for "I agree with you".
— Banno

...But never, in my experience, for "that is what people in the future will come to think when science has advanced sufficiently far". — Isaac

Isn't that exactly how you use it when you speculate (with or without committing) as to the relative merits of competing (and perhaps currently unfalsifiable) theories?

If you're not defining 'true' by how it is used, then I'm not interested in going any further because I don't hold with trying to define what things should mean, only what they do mean. — Isaac

Perhaps Banno and Davidson are saying that any term (including 'true' and 'mean') means only what it should mean, and/or what it will eventually mean (when science has advanced sufficiently far)?

Ok, I don't fancy the odds that Banno will agree to that. But I'm always surprised when anyone takes "what they do mean" to be a matter of fact. So I hope someone would question that.

Limit