the de re reading, contrasting with the more common de dicto reading, [...] relational, contrasting with notional; transparent, contrasting with opaque; and wide scope, contrasting with narrow scope.
— IEP

Also reference, contrasting with sense? (I wonder.) — bongo fury

Also objective, contrasting with subjective, according to Davidson.

Also semantics, contrasting with syntax, according to Searle in his Chinese Room.

Also rigid, contrasting with flaccid.

Also real, contrasting with pretend, according to any five year old.

Or real, contrasting with suppose, from about 10 years.

Let's take care not to confuse the two, as @Banno says. Sure. But let's maybe see the possibility or likelihood of confusion (and the struggles to avert it) as a condition of "rationality", as Davidson says?

@frank's objection is to making it a sufficient as opposed to merely necessary condition of rationality? A machine doesn't achieve beliefs just by getting in a logical tangle over sentences?

Just trying to over-simplify. Carry on.

Someone purchasing Guernica for say $100millionUSD, they aren't buying a painting, per se. — AmadeusD

And someone paying that much to prolong their life in the same body, they aren't preserving their person, per se?

But then, what's the painting per se, and what's the person per se?

@Mijin Where do you stand on The Perfect Fake? (Chapter III)

We decided not — frank

Haha, cheeky! No we didn't.

The normal, everyday, commonly held attitude is that Sentence C is wrong, and as a result of an invasion of propositional attitudes, we have referential opacity. — frank

Yes. Quine agrees. Maintain the common attitude by not quantifying in, and hence not trying to reconcile Lois' Superman with ours. Not cashing in on the (future!) "rigid" rhetoric. Not substituting. Not going de re. Not concluding sentence c.

Why not? — frank

Because if it did, we'd be able to substitute?

No, you can't put it in quotes. — frank

Not without losing transparency, no, exactly. But Quine says, do this instead:

t1 = t2
Lois believes t1 can fly
therefore Lois believes t2 can fly — frank

and things are no better. The " t1" in "believes t1 can fly" won't have the same reference as the one in line 1. So substitution not ok. Quantifying in (from outside) not ok. Lois' t1 not our t1.

So belief ascriptions are (if we're not careful) as chaotic in their logical consequences as quotations.

So you do get opacity that way. You don't necessarily get belief, no. You may just have lines of questionable logic about belief ascriptions, yes.

Comport yourself so that t1 shows up in the b sentence, and we can evaluate for referential opacity. — frank

But isnt Quine saying, let it show up in a belief context and transparency will be sacrificed quite as much as if you put it in quotes?

And isn't Davidson saying the parrot wouldn't recognise the opacity?
— bongo fury

I haven't gotten back to Davidson. — frank

Nor have I, which is why I edited out that remark. :wink:

Well, it doesn't say the ascriptions shouldn't be in terms of dispositions to assent and dissent? Seems bizarre if it did, given that would rule against Quine, who introduced the phrase. (I think?)

a. Clark Kent = Superman
b. Lois is ready enough to say S1 with sincerity, where S1 is "Superman can fly."
c. Therefore, Lois is ready enough to say S2 with sincerity, where S2 is "Clark Kent can fly."

This is a misapplication of the Identity Elimination Schema, — frank

I dare say. More to the point, it's referential opacity. :smile:

How could you tell from watching Ralph's behavior that he's "ready enough to say" something? — frank

Let alone that the readiness is to say it "in all sincerity"!

Not sure I see an inherent problem. But I don't know if anyone (e.g. Davidson) has to be fundamentalist about the behaviourism, anyway? I think it's plausible that we describe the psychology of a linguistic animal in terms of its dispositions to assent and dissent to sentences?

As with Ralph accepting sentence (11) here?

https://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Quine(1956).pdf

Yes.

A behaviourist wouldn't necessarily deny belief or opaqueness, though?
— bongo fury

To support that, you'd need to explain how a substitution failure cashes out in terms of behavior. — frank

Well, as assent to contradictory sentences?

the de re reading, contrasting with the more common de dicto reading, [...] relational, contrasting with notional; transparent, contrasting with opaque; and wide scope, contrasting with narrow scope. — IEP

Also reference, contrasting with sense? (I wonder.)

A behaviourist wouldn't necessarily deny belief or opaqueness, though? Belief can be a disposition to assent to sentences, and opaqueness will be a natural affliction, given imperfect information? My point was merely that the opposite would be more surprising?

Edit: @Leontiskos exactly :ok:

There's a magical thing about belief: that it causes referential opacity. — frank

Wouldn't it be more a cause for wonderment if it created referential transparency?

Then the Superman of Lois' beliefs could be relied on to share all his properties with the actual fictional one?

Granted that would spoil story-telling, and perhaps also Davidson's proposed intentionality test.

Ok cool. But then, was I wrong here?

most of us accept Copied, and you too, — bongo fury

Rather, you think Copied can't answer:

what happens to the consciousness — Mijin

?

You don't think consciousness events must be at least as separate and numerically distinct as the regions of spacetime at which they occur? You do think they might rather achieve some inherent unity? Like entangled particles, perhaps? I guess it's far from inconceivable. I just don't see why you think that a technology of instant copying would demand such an explanation. Copying could just be copying, and why ever not?

apart from the proposition that perhaps our consciousness is never persistent. — Mijin

Maybe not as persistent as we'd like, but it often ebbs and flows in a fairly continuous stream, doesn't it? I need more help seeing the problem here?

If you consider Copied to already be refuted then great; — Mijin

You mean Sent?? Or confirmed? (Sent refuted or Copied confirmed.) Otherwise I don't know what's going on.

there are two major positions*, let's call them Sent (your consciousness is transported) and Copied (the person on Mars or wherever, is a new instance of consciousness). — Mijin

Right, and most of us accept Copied, and you too, but you want to tackle Sent on their own ground (show them it's a quagmire), so it's tiresome if I don't join you on that ground?

Fair enough. But the ground over at Copied is perfectly firm? You keep saying it's soggy? Like,

why spatio-temporal continuity matters, I mean why is it critical to whether consciousness persists or not? — Mijin

What's consciousness got to do with it? Copied doesn't need consciousness. (Nor unconsciousness of course.) It just needs a reliable basis for individuation (same what? different what?). Spatiotemporal continuity is such a basis.

E.g. same person?... stage of the same body?

The common answer — Mijin

Can you edit this to clarify which position is answering which, and what you mean by "existence is branched"?

No worries. I wonder if you are equally (or differently, or not at all) non-plussed by this:

Well, if the transporter didn't kill you when you entered at the source (such that now there are two "yous"), everyone would call the machine a people fax instead of a transporter and you would be the original and the person at the destination would be the facsimile. Thus the "transporter" isn't a transporter at all, it's a fax machine that destroys originals. — LuckyR

?

Why? Because of the definitions of the words. — LuckyR

Agreed.

Perhaps you're proposing at a certain point a facsimile becomes indistinguishable from an original. — LuckyR

Yikes, not me.

More to the point, though, I'm denying that at any point the facsimile becomes a part or continuation of the original.

Your answers are basically just asserting your position again. — Mijin

If the question is

what makes the particular atoms that you are made of special, — Mijin

then how is "nothing" not an answer? Perhaps you meant,

assuming there is something special (and sufficient!) about the particular atoms that you are made of (or at least, something special about their physical configuration), such that putting them together (or correctly putting together any others) creates a continuation of (a part of) the original, rather than a facsimile, then what is that?

Is that what you meant? There must be something special (and sufficient) but what is it?

What I am trying to get at, is why. — Mijin

Why is there nothing special? Or, why is the special thing special?

like why it would make a difference if I move your atoms from point A to point B in one piece or separated for a nanosecond. — Mijin

Like why bother distinguish between different tokens of a linguistic type? Between original and facsimile?

I like this AI explanation: — Athena

Isn't this kind of thing against the forum rules?

Begging your pardon, of course.

Another entity could be qualitatively identical to me, but if he is not numerically identical to me, then he's arguably Mijin but not me. If you stick a pin in him, I don't feel a thing. And when I'm lights out, I have no reason to believe I will suddenly have his conscious experiences. — Mijin

Exactly. Perhaps arguing that he is Mijin doesn't add clarity. "Mijin 2" better.

I'll ask again: what makes the particular atoms that you are made of special, — Mijin

I'll answer again: nothing; only my continued corporeal integrity matters.

and how many of your own atoms need to be incorporated into an entity for you to survive in any form? — Mijin

And so, all of them would be not enough, if you rebuild me from scratch.

If assembling your own atoms back into the configuration that they were in isn't you, then what is missing? — Mijin

I.e. Why isn't

a facsimile an original?" — LuckyR

??

If we believe that there is some persistence of consciousness from moment to moment then — Mijin

It seems more realistic to infer episodes of relative coherence among otherwise fleeting and unconnected moments of consciousness?

They deserve identifying with (or as) one person because they arose in that particular (spatiotemporally continuous) brain and body.

My memory of Waterloo, however vivid and historically accurate, did not.

Spatiotemporal continuity (with me).
— bongo fury

Why does that matter? — Mijin

It seems crucial to the viability and identity of an organism, at least? Pre-sci-fi, of course.

And how, precisely, do we define it? — Mijin

Mereologically? Topological closure? :yikes:

whether I as an organism have spatiotemporal continuity with an entity at a past state of the universe is something less clear. — Mijin

Really? I suppose there are edge cases, like that of conjoined twins? But generally we, like the ship of Theseus, maintain our personal identity by losing and replacing a few planks at a time. Whereas, we lose it by being rebuilt from scratch. That produces only copies. More or less different: perhaps identical. But spatiotemporally non-overlapping. Lacking the spatiotemporal continuity that connects the "time-slices" of you.

Maybe we attach too much importance to this kind of identity? Perhaps we should regard our biological relatives, or our Star Trek duplicates, as equally entitled to our memories?

And I deserve Napoleon's?

"no continuity even before the transporter" — Mijin

How not?

... By way of focusing on consciousness? I don't see that as crucial to the question whether I am personally continuous with spatiotemporally non-overlapping replicas.

an IME thing — Mijin

Independent medical exam?

What does the person at the destination lack in order to be you? — Mijin

Spatiotemporal continuity (with me).

If it makes a difference whether we literally move the individual atoms, does that mean you're suggesting that the atoms held the soul?" — Mijin

Held the continuity, yes. I suppose a one atom at a time transportation would destroy it, though. (Is this what Parfitt discusses?)

what happened to the original; whether they were in some sense "transported" or simply killed. — Mijin

My original question was (because I'm curious), if we answer "quite obviously the latter", how does that convict us of

believing in souls. — Mijin

?

where the transporter makes perfect copies, it's a given that the person at the destination is identical in every way to the person went in, such that Kirk's colleagues see no discontinuity in their interaction with him, and Kirk is convinced he's just been transported. — Mijin

But so (by hypothesis) will any number of duplicates be convinced of their continuity with Kirk. So what? I'm convinced I'm Napoleon.

humorously, both sides of the debate tend to accuse the other of believing in souls. — Mijin

Asking for a friend... I personally wouldn't dare chip in without having yet got around to reading Parfitt. But your clear exposition got me, sorry, got my friend thinking that if I politely decline use of your machine it's because I know full well that anyone waking up in a different (spatiotemporally non-overlapping) body and/or world is mistaken if they believe they are a continuation of me?

I'm a material token, not a type? So not a soul botherer?

No worries.

Do you think that those sentence strings mean those different things as they stand? Or do you only mean that they will end up meaning the different things if and when they are later on asserted?

Haha, 3 a step too far?

Are you back peddling on 1 also? Its being a claim and an assertion, even while lacking a prefix to that effect?

You seemed to provide confirmation on the point. But there may have been a misunderstanding.

What type of action did you have in mind? I was thinking predication. The pointing of a predicate at a thing. By means of a conventional agreement that the predicate term gets pointed by the sentence at the object identified by the subject term.

If that's silly (I think Geach pours scorn on it?) maybe it's unnecessary for present purposes anyway.

In the game of language, yes.

the act and the performing of it as distinct things. — bongo fury

Whatever narrower psychological sense of "perform" or "assert" makes us disqualify an otherwise appropriate sound event from being a performance, or an assertion string from being an assertion. (Is what I feared was being reified.)

That the score and a performance can't be identical is shown by the fact that we can have many performances of the same score. What's being reified? — frank

Yes, we have many performances of the same song (from copies of the same score). Let's reify tokens vs type.

But no, they aren't later on disqualified (unperformed) when we are distracted by some narrower psychological sense of "perform".

Yes, many utterances and inscriptions of the same assertion (assertions of the same claim, if you like), but no, these not disqualified (as tokens of the same claim or assertion or proposition or declaration or sentence or predication) upon reification of some more specific aspect.