:victory:

World-first as Australian donates organs after self-administering assisted dying medication

Out of interest.

So, by way of checking my understanding

• Modal semantics can only function as semantics if it is embedded in practices of judgment that distinguish getting things right from merely playing a consistent formal game.
• To say of some sentence, that it is true, is to make a commitment, to take responsibility.
• This commitment is to something's being the case, and not otherwise. That given what I take to be the relevant conditions, denying p would be an error?

But "Given the conditions, it cannot be otherwise" here is not modal, so much as epistemic. That is, the judgement that such-and-such is true commits one to denying that it is false; but it doens;t commit one to saying that it is true in all possible circumstances. Yet this is what would be required in order to move from "such and such is true" to "such and such is necessarily true".

That is , this "unconditional" truth is a step further than is justified by the commitment to such-and-such being true.

That is “If everything were conditioned, final truth is undermined” - perhaps; I'm not sure what final truth might be. but not truth per se.

If you have a theory of language which appears to break down as soon as you swap out a few simple nouns, then I'd say that's a pretty strong argument against your theory of how we should be approaching language. — BenMcLean

Ok.

Has someone done that?

Yeah, ok. I'll leave you to it.

I wondered how it happened - but was baffled.

I must have had two windows opened, unawares.

Once more unto the breach dear friends...

“Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?” isn’t something we can answer by grabbing a biology textbook and pointing at chromosomes. Words like woman and man aren’t fixed labels; their meanings come from how we use them in our lives, in law, in society, in everyday practice. Language isn’t a static system of definitions—it’s a web of practices, habits, and shared understandings.

So when someone says “transwomen are women,” that statement can be perfectly true in ordinary English, in legal contexts, and in social reality, because those uses of the word woman include gender identity and lived experience. To insist it’s false because of some narrow biological criterion is to pretend there’s only one correct meaning, which there isn’t. We can’t just ignore the ways language functions in the real world.

I’m not saying “woman” means whatever anyone wants it to mean. Context matters. Meaning is negotiated, shared, and socially embedded. You can’t pull an abstract definition out of thin air and pretend it’s universally authoritative. The truth of these statements depends on which meaning of woman and man is operative in the conversation you’re having. In some contexts, they’re true; in others, they might not be—but that’s a property of language, not a reflection of some underlying “essence.”

In short: the slogans are true in the contexts where language and social practice treat them as true, and the only reason people think they must be false is because they’re secretly privileging a single, rigid, biological definition without admitting it. Words don’t work that way.

• Language is polysemous: multiple legitimate uses exist for “man” and “woman”.
• Meaning is contextual: truth isn’t fixed by biology alone nor reducible to private claims.
• Statements like “transwomen are women” can be true in some contexts (social, legal, identity based), and false in others (strict biological categorisation) depending on which use of the term is salient.
• Attempts to privilege one use as “the only correct one” ignore the plurality of language functions and tacit prejudices about what counts as “rational” uses of terms.
  
  

More on this; Gabrielle Bychowski has done some interesting research. See Were there Transgender People in the Middle Ages?

Crossed two versions of that post... I'm baffled as to how.

...wonderment... — Wayfarer

...which I much prefer to bafflement... :confused:

wonderment — Wayfarer

Will bafflement suffice?

you're not answering my questions very often. — bert1

Yeah, I am. Maybe not in the way you expected.

A person needs support to achieve some outcome if, as things stand, they are unable to achieve the goal on their own.

No "can't".

I don’t think intelligibility is the sort of thing that calls for explanation in the way empirical relations do. — Wayfarer

Yep!

Good response.

And this is why, going back to the thread, answering "Is there anything that exists necessarily?" with "Yes - intelligibility" is disoriented.

The something in (2) is not a thing.

Thanks for the chat - it helped my articulate what we troubling me about the posts hereabouts.

I'll take some issue with

the mind can't see itself reason — Wayfarer

In so far as the mind is singular that might be so; but at least a part of discourse is one mind seeing the reasoning of another.

The transcendental answer to "Why are things so-and-so?" is "In order for things to be so-and-so, it must be the case that such-and-such".

The Wittgensteinian answer is more "Because that's how we do it"

I agree that the world (the sensory domain) is intelligible in some fundamental sense. — Wayfarer

Well, it's not unintelligible...

Let's set out a plausible argument so that we have it out were we can see it and talk about it.

1. The world is intelligible.
2. Hence something made it intelligible
3. And this we all call...

Now we agree as to (1), and I think we agree that (3) doesn't follow.

What of (2)? Why should we think of intelligibility as in need of explanation?

Yep.

Is there an argument here?

Do they need support?

↪Banno Something I've gone to write in this thread, but haven't, is that the very wording of 'necessary things' is a problem to begin with. In my understanding, things must always be contingent, as they are compounded and temporally bound. In the classical tradition, this is why the ideas (forms, principles, eidos) were said to possess a higher degree of reality than 'things'. Here in a secular context, the traditional understanding is deprecated, but it might be worth recalling what exactly has been deprecated. — Wayfarer

Yeah, I think I agree. the problem is common to the two threads. I can express it most clearly, at least for me, in terms of the difference between the formation rules and the domain of discourse in a formal language. In natural language that'd be the same as distinguishing what we say from how we say it. In Wittgenstein's language it might be the difference between playing the game and setting up the rules.

The problem is how we might deal with treating the formation rules as a part of the domain; treating how we talk as what we are talking about; mistaking putting the pieces on the board for playing the game.

You will recall the game I sometimes try to play in which players take turns to make up a new rule. That's a joke on the same theme. Playing the game involves changing the way the game is played.

And the answer, it seems to me, is that we are always playing the game, that putting the pieces on the board is as much a part of the game as is moving the pawn two squares forward.

@Esse Quam Videri would have us seperate out, as a preliminary, a prior, that the world is necessarily intelligible, before we can start to talk about the world. But does it work that way, or is part of talking about the world making it intelligible?

That characterization is neither an accurate representation of the argument I'm making, nor an apt framing of the state of the discussion in general. — Esse Quam Videri

Ok. Yet that is how your argument appears.

In my , I showed that requiring an individual to exist in all worlds is a stipulated metaphysical condition, not a logical or semantic consequence.

I take that as pretty much setting the OP.

There is a different question, concerning intelligibility, that you raised. It appears that you are making some sort of transcendental argument, along the lines that we have an ongoing discourse; that the only way in which we could have an ongoing discourse is if the world is intelligible; and that therefore intelligibility is necessary.

The following appears to be making exactly that argument:

In that light, my appeal to necessary existence isn’t meant as an extra metaphysical posit, but as a way of naming the fact that inquiry treats intelligibility as finally answerable to what is the case, not merely to the conditions under which reasons are exchanged. If that orientation is illusory, then truth itself becomes internal to practice; if it isn’t, then intelligibility points beyond practice, even while being exercised within it. — Esse Quam Videri

Being intelligible is not a feature of the world as such, but of our practices within the world. That's the point makes.

Interpretation depends on some sort of triangulation involving the speaker, the interpreter and a shared world against which the interpretation occurs. That shared world is a part of the practice and amounts to what is the case - what is true.

Perhaps this shows that there isn't any real tension between you and @Joshs. We should however recognise that talking of intelligibility in terms of necessity and existence risks conflating two very different language games, one concerns the semantic and pragmatic conditions for discourse (the shared world, interpretation, triangulation); the other concerns ontological or metaphysical necessity (existence in all possible worlds).

Yep.

Consider Sadie. What support does she need? — bert1

What does she want to do?

And that 's the question to ask first, not what she can't do.

It would be odd to put in place supports before one identified a need for them, no? — bert1

How do you identify the need without knowing what Sadie wants.

Hmm.

So if I've understood, the method you propose is that incapacity is identified first, then support is implemented, and capability appears only as a downstream effect.

A "deficit first" model.

If someone isn't disabled, they don't need help. — bert1

This is somewhat tone deaf. It depends on making a hard distinction between the disabled and abled.

Autonomy is not the absence of the need for support. This can be seen in the difference between supporting someone and doing stuff for them.

Again, what is more important: what they can't do; or what they might do?

Not how I would have phrased it, but your diagnosis of the problem here is spot on.

@Esse Quam Videri's account amounts to the argument that discourse requirers words.

The topic has moved from that there exists a necessary being to that discourse presupposes a world-structure in which claims can be true or false.

@Wayfarer, the issue is much the same as in 's Absolute Presuppositions of Science thread, in that it confuses the domain of discourse with the language being applied.

Davidson might point out that a discussion already supposes a shared world within which agreement is the constant that permits interpretation.

I heard an account from an academic that told of an AI, in response to a question, providing a factually wrong answer about Pindar; when questioned, it doubled down on its mistake by providing quotations to back up its claim. A long search through a lot of actual text in an actual library eventually proved that it was wrong. It had written the quotations itself. Many hallucinations will not be subjected to that level of examination. What earthly use is a machine like that? One might as well ask one's next-door neighbour. — Ludwig V

As with a human, if a quote is given, then a citation must be provided. A human, or an AI, that quotes Pindar without giving a citation that can be readily checked can be ignored.

No need to search. Ask the AI where the quote is from.

...autonomy is much more important than independence.. — bert1

Now go back to your definition:
Indeed.

P is disabled in relation to task x if and only if P cannot do x. — bert1

Does it help achieve autonomy? Hence, what is more important: what they can't do; or what they might do?

...and why is it so important to do whatever "P" is? And for whom is it important?

They're both the same. — bert1

Well, no. The list of things they can't do is not the same as the list of things they are capable of doing.

I work with autistic people all the time. — bert1

And is what more important: what they can't do; or what they might do?

I don't see how to help here. If you don't see what is remiss in delimiting people in this fashion, I doubt I can show you more.

...and x is a task most people can do most of the time. — bert1

...and there it is, again.

I'm pretty sure that's how Banno would see it. — Wayfarer

Yep.

"Close the door"
Is "Close the door" true? Upon what evidence is "Close the door" accepted? How can we demonstrate "Close the door"? What right have we to presuppose it if we can't?

These questions are infelicitous.

Same for "Construct explanations only in terms of matter and energy".

Thanks.

P is disabled in relation to task x if and only if P cannot do x. — bert1

So the next step is to see if you can find something that P cannot do, that would not seem to count as a disability in our offhand use of the term - flying, writing a great novel, putting their foot behind their head.

And then ask, does this wayward example show some great misunderstanding in the casual notion of disability? Or does it just show the definition to be somewhat inadequate?

But

The test is what creates the disability. — Banno

So

The elephant can't get up the tree in comparison to the monkey who can. — bert1

It's that the test is getting up the tree that is disabling. If the test were instead pushing the tree over...

Sometimes a disabled person will want... — bert1

...and stop there. The frame has moved from social expectation to what the person with a disability wants. That's already a step in the right direction. Should we always give them what they want? No - but notice that now we are asking a different question to "how do we fix this broken body?" That's the point.

The sun is that yellow disc in the sky up there — bert1

...looks to be a description. The difference between definitions and descriptions may not be as hard-and-fast as some think. Those advocating the social model don't much care about platonic realism, so much as about the way stairs and QR codes disempower some folk more than others. They differentiate the medical and social models in order to question assumptions about what a human body can do.

No, I think we're operating in different registers. What you're saying is quite true about domains of discourse. But I'm extending that to a further argument about epistemology and about the inherent contradictions of physicalism. — Wayfarer

Epistemology just is a domain of discourse.

You couldn't complete the formalising of your argument, and I think that's because there is a mismatch between your four presumptions and your conclusion. They are in different domains.

Re-arranged:

I’m denying that logical relations themselves—validity, necessity, entailment—can be reduced to physical causation. — Wayfarer

That's not unlike someone complaining about being given a fifty dollar note cut in half instead of twenty five dollars. I don't think Clarky disagrees - I certainly don't. I agree.

But I don't think we need ghosts to explain the difference.


(indeed, I don't think physics can be reduced to physical causation... but that's another topic...)

There is only a contradiction because you don’t accept the possibility that mental processes can be understood in terms of physical, chemical, biological, and neurological processes. You and I agree that reductionist physicalist explanations for many phenomena are limiting and misleading. You just take it significantly further than I do. — T Clark

Yep - sort of.

A coin (remember coins? It's how we used to do money) is just a bit of alloy, but it takes on a special role in some of our games. There is a physical description and a financial description, and perhaps never the twain.

The point is, it's a glaring contradiction: — Wayfarer

Formally, there is a difference between the domain and the formation rules, and how each is used. The language is about the items in the domain, the rules for that language are not the subject of that language.

When a physicist looks for explanations in terms of physical substances, they don't presume that those explanations have mass.

You and I agree that physicalism, at the extreme, is erroneous - that maths does not have mass. We agree that this shows science to be incomplete. You try to explain this by supposing that there must be some other substance, some spirit, to go along with the physical. That brings in all the problems of dualism.

My response is less forthright - I am just pointing out that maths is something we do, rather than some sort of substance. Mathematics is a practice, a framework of reasoning, not a thing with substance.

No doubt this is another example of not truly understanding you.

(Can I point out how much I appreciate your putting up with my crap? Thanks for the replies. )

But surely the many fervent disagreements sorrounding the ontological status of numbers and scientific laws indicate that there is an issue there, beyond the strictures of formal logic. Specifically, the question of, if everything is indeed reducible to the physical, what of the nature of the mathematical reasoning that underpins physics? — Wayfarer

It simply depends on what you call a "thing". It's pretty clear that thinking one can apply F=ma to 7+1=8 and find the mass of = is a category mistake.

These are different games. As if you had complained that a checkmate beats a royal flush.

That some folk make such errors does not imply they have a point.

Cheers. And likewise. Good thread.

The question that jumps out at me is: are the mathematical laws themselves physical, and, if so, how? I don’t expect an answer to that, as there isn’t one, so far as I know. But it makes a point about an inherent contradiction in physicalism. — Wayfarer

In formal logic, there is a difference between the domain of discourse - the a's, b's and c's that make up the content being discussed - and the logical connectives - the ^'s, ∃'s and =.

In physics, the content, the a's, b's and c's, are all of them physical. The connectives, including the mathematics, are not physical.

No presumption is made that 4+4=8 is physical.

If I had believed that the criticisms you offered had truly understood what was being proposed, I might be inclined to so believe. But, no. — Wayfarer

Ok. I'll bow to the true Scotsman. Those who disagree with you have not truly understood.