later perhaps — Isaac

I would much rather you had waited five hours anyway.

Why people have to reply within five minutes I never understand. The result is rarely worth it.

Suggestion.

the sign is modelled by the brain so as to be attached to a referent. — Isaac

Attached directly? Sure. So,

The mid-stage is there — Isaac

Apparently not. Not in the model.

Even in contexts of individual judgement, a speaker (game-player) may infer (model) the individual occasion of reference as a relation from the token (utterance) of the symbol to whatever the inferred referent(s), without psychologizing per the picture.

But to be fair, I've never fully understood externalism,
— Isaac

There are several versions of it, linguistic, perceptual, etc. — Manuel

But to be fair, the OP quotes discussion of a "social version" in which

what this individual means by a sign on any given occasion depends, at least in part, on this external practice. — SEP

I.e., cutting out, at least in part, the middle man in this too-universally-accepted picture:



A step which (taken in full, and ironically further than Ockham) Wikipedia calls "childish", but is arguably the natural perspective of any child or other socially-embedded language-learning machine. E.g., "what does this symbol refer to, in this language game?"

You brought him up — frank

Yes, to offer one straight answer to your question.

and now ditch the effort. — frank

How so?

indeterminate for all practical purposes for me with my poor 21st technology. I don't therefore rule out those things. — frank

So, contra Quine. As long as you see that.

I think we're done? — frank

Okely.

Brains might sync as people interact. — frank

Of course. Cool stuff.

I've actually always assumed he did rule out subjectivity, but I'm rethinking it, actually based on what you said. — frank

Then ignore what I said.

Why should I take Quine as saying the latter? — frank

Because the word is carrying too much baggage.

that we can't know whether we're thinking of the same thing — frank

Can't because it's hard to determine :down: , or can't because it's indeterminate :up: ?

And why 'think' when this was about externalism?

If we're planning to do some scientific research on what's in our heads, I think he would say we shouldn't do that due to the unavailability of facts. — frank

This sounds wrong. Not sure what you meant.

That doesn't mean he ruled out subjectivity, though, right? — frank

I don't know what "that" is, but he was usually happy to rule out such notions. Are you surprised?

In our off hours away from the lab, we could say that we might be thinking about the same thing? — frank

Again, why would you be expecting Quine to be internalist (getting into our heads) and determinatist (matter of fact) about reference?

in the sense that we're consciously referencing — frank

Why would you be expecting Quine to be getting into our heads?

referencing the same stuff, we just don't
know for sure — frank

Why would you be expecting Quine to regard this question as a matter of fact?

We can't use observed behaviour to justify any particular fantasy.
— bongo fury

But the kind of behaviorism I'm thinking of doesn't allow that there is any kind of referencing involved in communication.
— frank

Fair enough. By justify I meant choose. If there were some fact of the matter of which symbols mapped to which things then behaviourism wouldn't be wrong to reduce or replace that mapping (the reference that 'happened') with some description of behaviour. But according to Quine there is always a choice of mappings. We never know for sure what 'happened'. We have to play the game of pretend, and allow for, second guess, multiple hypotheses of what was pretended.

Which is how a 'hard' externalism about the mappings, i.e their not being in the head, can fail to mesh with behaviourism.

I'm looking for a reason to say it doesn't. — frank

It (meaning, mental content, what have you) is a game of pretending that words and pictures refer to things (externally, not in the head). We're just second guessing each other's fantasies about the reference. We can't use observed behaviour to justify any particular fantasy.

So you're saying externalism does lead to behaviourism? Contrary to your thread title?

Why doesn't hard content externalism lead to behaviourism? — frank

Not that we should assume there would automatically be some awful problem if it did. But,

I think Chomsky avers (somewhere on youtube) that Hume and Heraclitus were privy to the same insight [the inscrutability of reference]. Of course he draws a different lesson from it than Quine. But he doesn't say the doctrine itself is mistaken, or even that it is behaviouristic. And it isn't. It points out that you can't objectively ground reference in behaviour. — bongo fury

It's a game of pretend. There won't be any fact of the matter of exactly what anyone was pretending. How could there?

Living in the moment seems to be qualia worship. No wonder people find it so difficult.

I believe that is a rule of logic, but, yes, I'm thinking more of addition. — Antony Nickles

They are similar, in admitting of the same crucial change in perspective as urged by Goodman (the "see also" on the Kripkenstein page is no accident) in a rather different context, that of characterising musical and other notations:

What distinguishes a genuine notation is not how easily correct judgements can be made, but what their consequences are. [...] Marks [= tokens] correctly judged to be joint members of a character [= type] will always be true copies of one another. — Languages of Art, p134

'True' here means - in effect, in consequence - safely taken as license to make more copies, because the copying relation is maintained in such a way as not to impair the mutual exclusivity of types. No chain of copies will reach from one type (or 'equivalence class') into another. That would indeed be fatal to the system, as all the types would eventually merge, e.g. every tune would be identified as a true copy of every other. A similar (though different) demise is envisaged as the 'principle of explosion'. (Allegedly a false alarm, which is interesting of course.)

The point is that the extension or range of application of any word is a fiction, continually up for negotiation. What distinguishes the 'mathematical' from the 'ordinary' is the reasonable expectation that, however one's own utterances are interpreted (e.g. as plus or as quus), the consequent discourse will be well behaved in maintaining the distinction between distinct extensions, whatever they 'truly' are. This may or may not depend on those extensions being, like tunes, mutually exclusive.

That Frodo depends on words isn't that "Frodo" refers to words. — Michael

It might be. We would have to be careful not to confuse use and mention in fleshing it out. But I get that you don't think you are headed in that direction.

But that leads you to insist on,

"Frodo" refers to a hobbit, — Michael

Well, in the idiom of Lord of the Rings talk, yes. "Frodo" is how one particular hobbit is called by his peers. Perhaps it is presumptuous to expect to avoid that idiom.

and hobbits exist only in a fictional piece of writing. — Michael

Do you mean, in a fictive piece of writing? But then we are back to referring (indirectly, not confusing use and mention) to hobbit-pictures and hobbit-descriptions. You were adamant that you didn't want to go there.

So perhaps you mean fictional, but a fictional world? In which case, why say writing? I think it's because that (words and pictures) is indeed where you are headed, as you quite rightly try to transcend the fictive idiom, and talk literal sense.

Frodo is a hobbit, "Frodo" is a word. Clearly there are two different referents. — Michael

That may seem clear during the phase of the game where you are confident in asserting,

When I use the name "Frodo" I am referring to the hobbit, not to the word "Frodo" or my idea of Frodo. — Michael

Later, perhaps trying to square this with the fact there are no hobbits, you must start to explore ways of restating things. Hence,

Does this entail realism regarding Frodo? Of course not. Frodo is not ontologically-independent of our language and our ideas. — Michael

The existence of hobbits is traded for the existence of, and indirect reference to, certain varieties of words and pictures and other symbols.

There are all these paradoxes as to how can we talk about things that don't exist? Pegasus, Zeus, etc. — Manuel

Only one, really, and it soon straightens out. Usually, the speaker equivocated between denying that the reference was (directly or indirectly) to words, pictures or other symbols,

When I use the name "Frodo" I am referring to the hobbit, not to the word "Frodo" or my idea of Frodo. — Michael

... and admitting as much,

Does this entail realism regarding Frodo? Of course not. Frodo is not ontologically-independent of our language and our ideas. — Michael

(6 years old, but recently exhibited.)

What are the "Ordinary Language Philosophy" solutions to common philosophical problems? — Chaz

At best: sublime readability, and a mission to dig as deep as possible (though not deeper).

At worst: bluff, imperiousness, charlatanism, guruism, preistliness, laziness, sophistry, prejudice, mysticism, ism-ism, tribalism.

:rofl:

"... an' they catch 'im... an' they say e's mental!!"

I think that final gem is the culmination of the speech by the boy pictured (used earlier in the track).

Hopefully you can see the passing relevance.

If you clicked the first link, what did you hear?

Perhaps the stimulus was too noisy, literally.

Anyway, just sharing some lovely (perhaps inauthentic) social history.

No aspersions or barbs.

Carry on.

What would you replace that power with. Criminals all get treated the same regardless of their mental health? — Isaac

There's a YouTube link in my psyche. Can't insert it here as media so that it starts at the right place, but

https://youtu.be/rLmMchi2aAQ?t=220

The source is even more genius than the reappropriation. Extract only, but the audio will be familiar to some (losers).

So, you looked over the post — Cheshire

No, over the thread. Just pointing out that absolutism has a non-cosmic variety, from which point of view correctness is absolutely achieved, and your notion of 'inherent error' is unnecessarily cosmic.

nor the relevance of your comment. — Banno

Everything as it should be, then.

In error, cheers.

Good absolutism is recognising that within a language game there is often no choice between this and not-this. For example, the puzzle,

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is a heap? — bongo fury

requires a benignly absolutist grasp that answering in the affirmative isn't playing the game of English usage of 'heap'.

The good absolutist (and you would think, any competent speaker) will say,

[2] No, absolutely not. — bongo fury

Likewise with,

• Tell me, do you agree that this is not a hand?

or

• Tell me, do you agree that I may move my bishop straight forwards?

... although these don't naturally or easily create sorites sequences.

Good relativism is recognising that within a language game there is often a choice between this and not-this. For example,

[1] And tell me, do you think that adding a single grain could ever turn a non-heap into a heap? — bongo fury

deserves something like

[2] Yes, that kind of flexibility does seem intrinsic to usage of the word.

Good relativism is also about recognising that the absolutism only holds relative to the game, which can co-exist happily with other games.

Games can merge, of course, and then the relativity becomes complicated and might require loss of absolutism here and there.

Science is all about merging, and reconciling and reformulating, so while it's natural to think that

Every measurement that has ever been taken since the beginning of measuring things has inherent error. — Cheshire

it may make better sense to see the process as one of dropping or replacing or reforming whole systems of measurement that were perfectly (absolutely) stable games in their own terms, and with their own margins for error.

No, you can't be bothered, and why should you.

My bad. Carry on.

There's a double negative in what you're saying. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Of course.

RAA premise would not need to deny ~P. Rather, in this case, the premise is P. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Exactly, if for some reason you want to label the RAA line "P" rather "~P".

In a line properly signposted as RAA, and in a discussion in which someone had bothered to say

We don't need to suppose toward contradiction that there is a surjection. — TonesInDeepFreeze

it could make sense to display under that signpost (P or ~P depending on signposting preferences, or a form of words such as I chose so that the question didn't arise) the denial of what is to be shown in the argument. This denial will be the supposition toward a contradiction.

What is to be shown is that S can't, without contradiction, be in the range of f.

So the denial, the suitable RAA line, the supposition toward contradiction, if you or anyone did want to belabor the point, or understand the point about "not needing to suppose toward contradiction..." is indeed

"S is in the range of f",

and it might be interesting that this is taking the place of "f is surjective", in a proof by contradiction.

Anyway, that's not the beginning of my proof. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Agreed.

Maybe they were undecided whether it was meant to be read as a proof by contradiction or not. — bongo fury

Not a big deal — fishfry

How true.

And, of course, I wouldn't even think of denying the claim that S is not in the range of f. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Except in a line properly signposted as RAA.

The proofs prove the exact same result - nothing more nothing less, — TonesInDeepFreeze

Sure, but yours begins (read as a proof by contradiction) by denying a more specific claim of failure of surjectivity: the claim that such sets as, in particular, S will fail to be in the range of f. Was my point. Obviously that more specific claim of failure implies the more general. But the denial of it is weaker than the denial of the more general. I thought this might be the correct way to interpret

We don't need to suppose toward contradiction that there is a surjection. — TonesInDeepFreeze

(That you were saying we can suppose less.)

That's backwards. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Sure. I was prepared to guess at quantifier introduction on the backwards journey, but the "I guess" probably sounded sarcastic. Without the sarcasm it probably doesn't improve much.

In that way, fishfry's RAA is deferred in my proof to later. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Yes. It's still a proof by contradiction, just not so upfront.

I didn't write EyeX f(y) = S as a separate line, since I didn't belabor certain obvious steps; it's not a fully formal proof. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Sure. And it's still a proof by contradiction.

RAA and modus tollens are basically the same. — TonesInDeepFreeze

By RAA here I take it you mean the whole argument, while earlier it was a tag for the line that you

suppose toward contradiction — TonesInDeepFreeze

? Cool.

RAA and modus tollens are basically the same. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Another reason not to expect an important contrast in your reworking.

For some mathematicians its a stylistic preference. — TonesInDeepFreeze

signpost[ing] — bongo fury

Yes you are correct, it's cleaner to not use proof by contradiction. — fishfry

Is that a thing? Ok.

But @TonesInDeepFreeze doesn't appear to be eschewing proof by contradiction, instead merely proving (still by contradiction) a stronger denial of surjectivity than mere failure of surjectivity. Hence his supposing ("toward contradiction") that the denial is false amounts to supposing less than necessarily complete surjectivity, which would entail the whole power set being in the range of f, and amounts instead to supposing merely the presence of S in the range of f.

Thus showing, that the naturals can't be used to keep count of their own groupings/combinations/sub-sets if any of them (naturals) are needed to index (I mean count, map to) groupings they aren't in. Because that would create the set S, which would need to but couldn't without contradiction be in the range of f.

Hope I've got that right. And if I have, then the suggestion to prove only the more specific failure of surjectivity has helped me, at least.

Then again, Tones hasn't exactly signposted the supposition, that S is in the range of f (the supposition being, I thought, in order to show that it leads to contradiction), and he doesn't even explicitly state it. It just (as line 4 perhaps alludes but doesn't actually say) follows from

EyeX f(y) = S — TonesInDeepFreeze

which (I guess?) follows from

Let f(y) = S — TonesInDeepFreeze

So, I don't know. Maybe they were undecided whether it was meant to be read as a proof by contradiction or not.

Sorry.

From oasis to cess pool, in one tweak. :roll:

(R v A) -> (~R -> A)
R v A
therefore we have reason to believe ~R -> A

is not [modus ponens]. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Not if you hear it, for no reasons that are obvious to me, as talking about psychology. I hear it, for reasons of charity and extensionalism, as dialect for "therefore we have deductive reason to assert"... i.e. "therefore".

But the puzzle includes an intensional operator "believe'. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Please not. You're inviting the enthusiasts for modal logic to show off, and end up perpetuating the silly libel of a logical error subtlety. — bongo fury

Assume, assert, affirm, hold, "believe"... whatever.

an instance of modus ponens. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Indeed. And perfectly valid.

If you can't stand by all 3 lines at once, don't. They can't be a good expression of what you're trying to say. Don't necessarily involve any logic in expressing yourself, but don't think you need a better one. (I don't mean you.)

Yet — Banno

Weasel. Yes they did. If they "believed, with good reason" both [1] and [2], then they had deductive reason to believe [3].

Deductive not good enough? Sure. Deductive not always good enough. Too strict at times. Then go inductive.

"Strictly", though... deductively... modus ponens valid. Here, as anywhere.

Well... equals?

Ah, so not some one among several with the same domain.

So worlds are not in general to be identified by their domain?

That is just a nice thing about your example?

So, W1 = some world (among others) whose domain is {egg, bacon}?

W1={egg, bacon} — fdrake

A world = a sub-domain?

According to non-Bayesian statistics if the value is continuous — Cheshire

But unnecessary presuppositions aside...

there isn't one. — Cheshire

So, finally,

Unbounded precisely, i.e. not graph 4; or unbounded ever i.e. graph 2? Or unbounded how? — bongo fury

So graph 2, i.e. ditch P1, because after all, "everything's relative", or "on a spectrum".

obviously it's a puzzle if we accept also the premise that calling a single grain a heap is absurd. If calling it a heap is tolerable then, as I keep saying, no puzzle.

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is a heap?
[2] Well, certainly, it's the very smallest size of heap.

Game over. — bongo fury

Which is cool, if you find [2] an acceptable description of usage, and would say that black is minimally white, bald is minimally hairy, off is minimally on etc.

the limit of observed cubits — Cheshire

... is a questionable notion, but key to my

antonym-based constructive solution — bongo fury

Which of course is of no interest if there is no problem.

Here (and unfortunately only here) is where I assume we more or less understand each other:

I imagine there's a distribution of arm lengths and as a result a very, nearly exact distribution of cubits. — Cheshire

I don't quite get the 'very nearly exact' but never mind that. The puzzle (for an enthusiast of the heap puzzle who recognises here a classic case) is: exactly where (along a reasonably long line of arms positioned in ascending or descending order of length) does the distribution of cubits end, and the distribution of non-cubits begin?