Comments

  • Is there an objective quality?
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    The world is always, already interpreted. It shows up for us through our practices, our language, our forms of life. To suggest otherwise is to appeal to a view-from-nowhere—a fantasy of access to the world prior to interpretation.

    So I have to ask: aren’t you smuggling in a theological or metaphysical assumption, something like a First Cause or transcendent source? Why suppose that beauty must have a ground outside human life—outside history, culture, or shared understanding?

    Why does this need for an external “source” apply to aesthetic judgments in particular? Does language require a source beyond human life? Do games, rules, rituals, or cultural artefacts?

    We don’t create beauty from nothing—perhaps. But why assume the alternative is no creation at all? Isn’t that a false dichotomy? Why not acknowledge that we shape, interpret, and respond to the world from within it—not outside it? That we bring forth meaning without having to posit some metaphysical “before” or “beyond”?

    This need to find beauty’s origin “elsewhere” seems to rest on an unexamined assumption: that what’s meaningful or real must come from outside us. But why believe that?
  • Is there an objective quality?
    Can man create something from nothing? — Count Timothy von Icarus

    We did not starting from nothing. We start embedded in the world and in a community.
  • Some questions about Naming and Necessity
    I think I know what you're saying, but I can't be certain. — frank
    So you don't get my intent?

    That's fine, we could keep chatting and see if we can reach some agreement, or at least some point form which we might move on. That strikes me as more important than sorting out the Gavagai.
  • Some questions about Naming and Necessity
    The act of referencing does not succeed or fail. — frank
    Well, seems to me that referring to something can fail in a few different ways, and that it might be worth paying them some attention. I treat them as speech acts, and so bring on board the sort of analysis found in Austin and Searle.

    The intent can only ever be inferred.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    Wouldn't a "simple statements of fact" also involve: "an interpretation within a context of belief, intention, tradition, form, and reception?" — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Yep.

    Glad we have a point of agreement.

    Is it worth my saying I don't usually read your long cut-and-paste quotes? Will it save you the effort? I will presume that if you have an argument of substance you will present it in the body of your post.

    Why supose there is a "sui generis source of beauty ". Do you supose that that in order for beauty to be real, it must have a source, and that source must be outside human life? I don't agree. I'll throw the burden back to you to show that such a thing is needed.
  • Some questions about Naming and Necessity
    So if no one understands what's being referenced, the reference failed? — frank
    Well, yes.

    We do it all the time. — frank
    No. You use what is said or shown. We do not have access to intent. We might infer it, but...
  • Some questions about Naming and Necessity
    he's being identified as being the object of a thought of the speaker. — J
    All sorts of problems with meaning as speaker intent. The most significant one is that we do not have access to what you intend, only to what you say. So we can't use your intent to fix the referent.
  • Some questions about Naming and Necessity
    Reference is set by the speaker. — frank

    Set, maybe. There's more.

    The example is set at a party, presumably with many men and various drinks. The speaker says "The man over there with champaign in his glass..."; it's water, not champaign, but enough for the hearer to understand that the speaker does not mean any of the other blokes with a beer.

    Pretty obviously, the reference is a success if the hearer and the speaker are in agreement as to who is being talked about.

    Champaign or water, we have enough to move the conversation on.

    And we can conclude that the reference was a success, despite the description being wrong.

    ↪Srap Tasmaner
    I see you made the same point.
  • Measuring Qualia??
    But this commentary leaves the confines of your Wittgensteinian box. — Hanover
    Good.

    "Qualia" are either a something about which can share nothing, or they are the subject of the common terms we already use to talk about our experiences.

    The private language argument does not conclude that we do not have sensations.

    Surely pain is measurable. — Outlander
    Indeed.

    Hanover has misunderstood the argument twice today.

    Could we show ChatGPT what pain is? It does not have the mechanism required, obviously. But moreover it cannot participate in the "form of life" that would enable it to be in pain.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    They are not rules and I do not say they are universal, but I do think they are practiced widely in the West. Possibly elsewhere, I have not made a survey. — Tom Storm

    There's a key difference here. @Hanover seems to be looking for a set of rules that are practiced. But what answers the question, and what you have provided, is a set of rules that ought be practiced.

    So Hanover points out in triumph that they are not practiced everywhere, missing the point entirely.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    Specifically if there was one thing you needed no matter what. (I am still open to opposing ideas)
    Do a number of factors combined have to meet some standard?     — Red Sky

    No sooner is the "one thing you need no matter what" specified than some smart arse provides us with a counterexample.
    1*D0rJoLx7OEmwaFKs7U_ezw.jpeg
    Aesthetics is not a search for One Ring To Rule Them All, but a conversation between artist and viewer, triangulated with the piece. A fancy way of saying that the quality of the piece does not in some way inhere in the piece, but is found in the conversation.

    It's the story that makes the piece valuable.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    My point was merely that disagreement is poor evidence for a lack of objective aesthetic value/criteria. People disagree about virtually everything. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    All well and good, provided that we do not conclude that there must be an "objective " aesthetic value. That there is some agreement on aesthetic value does not imply that there is a fact of the matter.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    My point is that if there was a science to art that resulted in proven, repeatable "good art," then any artist that doesn't do that would be a fool doomed to failure. However, we frequently see art that "breaks the rules" change how we think about art and what makes it "good." — MrLiminal
    If the conclusion here is that there cannot be 'a science to art that resulted in proven, repeatable "good art"' then we are in agreement. Art is not algorithmic. Few things are.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    There is equivocation here, but not the one your think. It's very unclear what you are trying to say, despite the erudition. "Noumenal" is even less useful than "subjective". Science works because of agreed-upon standards of evidence and repeatability, not because it gets at “things-in-themselves.” You appear to be making the merely rhetorical move of redefining "objective".
  • Is there an objective quality?
    I understand that it's not that Witt denies the internal meaning is there, but it's that he ushers it out as superfluous — Hanover
    That's a deeply mistaken account of Wittgenstein, for whom the most important things were aesthetic and ethical.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    ~~
    I took though Davidson's critique to be that objectivity is universally muddled thinking. If the point he makes is simply that aesthetic judgments in particular don't lend themselves to objective reasoning... — Hanover
    The answer given for aesthetics is applicable to ethics and science. I gave aesthetic examples becasue that's the topic here.

    Aesthetic and moral judgements tell us how we want things to be, other judgements tell us about how things are. That's a useable distinction.

    It often seems that folk misapply this is/ought distinction, thinking it is the same as that between subjective and objective. Such folk are apt to say that morality and ethics are subjective while science is objective. That's a mistake.

    We end up with folk thinking that "though shalt not kick puppies" is about the way things are, when it is about the way things ought be. They look for proof that one ought not kick puppies in the wrong place.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    ↪Jack2848
    Cool.

    What we can do is map out the interrelations between our words, though. So we differentiate knowing and believing. We can say "I believed it was raining but I was wrong" but not "I knew it was raining but I was wrong". We can believe things and be wrong, but if we know something we are not wrong.

    But what can we say about the difference between these and justice? Or information?
  • Beliefs as emotion
    these terms are referring to the same physical item — I like sushi

    Hang on - again, is the suggestion that reason and emotion are physical things?

    It did shock me how many people took 'belief' to mean 'unsubstantiated' irrespective of the context. — I like sushi
    Yeah, I concur. But we have agreement that the topic is wider than that, including at least substituted statements that are held to be true.

    ...all brain states can be expressed as emotional. — I like sushi
    Care to fill this out? It doesn't match my understanding of the state of neuroscience.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    Is what I wrote above an example of such a background of agreement or have I strayed too far? — Tom Storm
    Pretty much.

    But a consensus like this doesn’t rest on some timeless truth. — Tom Storm
    This is to the point -
    ↪Hanover
    wants a "basis" so he can "condemn their art you find abhorrent"; and that basis is all around us and includes our community of learning and language.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    ↪Hanover
    Ah, better. A good comeback. But you've moved over to ethics, and we probably should remain in the area of aesthetics, for the sake of the theme of this thread

    So ChatGPT's argument would be something like, replacing moral with aesthetic,
    This is the trap:
    Either you accept that aesthetics is objective, and so your theory is committed to standards that transcend culture, history, and agreement.
    Or you give up on objectivity and admit that any community’s coherent aesthetics framework is as valid as any other — including Star Wars societies or McDonald's.     — ChatGPT

    But it's a false dilemma. Aesthetic claims - that the roast lamb in the oven as we speak, slow cooked with six veg, to be served with greens - is better than a Big Mac, is not just an expressions of feeling nor statements of fact—but an interpretation within a context of belief, intention, tradition, form, and reception. It arises as a triangulation of speaker, interpreter and dinner. It's not objective, but it's not relative, either. It is cultivated and critiqued, without requiring foundational aesthetic truths, because it is an integral part of a holistic web of taste that extends beyond the speaker and even beyond the interpreter into the world at large. Further, no such aesthetic scheme is incommensurable with other such schemes.

    We do not need some absolute aesthetic algorithm in order to make aesthetic judgements, but instead make them in a community as we discuss the gravy, decide if the potatoes really did need to be scraped in order to brown, and choose between the chard and the Brussels' sprouts.

    No simple algorithm or rule will suffice for every aesthetic judgement. It's an activity in which we engage and improve.

    And the lamb smells wonderful. Bah.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    ↪Hanover
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  • Is there an objective quality?
    Maybe it means the same thing. — Jamal

    No!

    The objective/subjective dichotomy is a mistake. Much clearer to use charity and truth, after Davidson.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    ↪Tom Storm
    That word - objective - again causes more confusion than clarity.

    If
    ↪Jamal
    had only said that disagreement can only take place against, and so presupposes, a background of agreement, instead of saying it presupposes objectivity.

    But yes, great post.
  • Beliefs as emotion
    ↪Antony Nickles
    Good to see you here.

    Those different things – hope, resolve, and so on – are they but species of belief?

    The standard analysis has three parts: attitude, the believer and the statement believed. A simple account might have the cognition found in the statement, the emotion found in the attitude, and as you suggest the responsibility in the individual. Bringing in responsibility is a neat twist.

    I'm plotting a post linking belief to action, something only addressed obliquely in the article.

    Hope you have time to read an consider the article.
  • Beliefs as emotion
    ↪T Clark
    No, no thumbs up. Its not a good thing. Disagree with me! Show me were I'm wrong!
  • Beliefs as emotion
    ↪T Clark
    Ok, that makes more sense.

    Frankly I'm not sure we have a point of disagreement. I'd put silentism were you put the Tao.

    I don't think we would have the terms cognitive and the connotative if there were nothing to be saidhere. And that 's what this thread is about mapping out.
  • Beliefs as emotion
    By your logic, materialism, idealism, realism, anti-realism, and all the other isms also explain nothing. — T Clark

    Now you're getting it.

    Is Damasio's idea an hypothesis, as your quote says, or a fact, as you claim?
  • Beliefs as emotion
    I don't think jumping to the Tao level is much of an answer — J
    Yes, as per our PM conversation.
    The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao... — T Clark
    ...says nothing. In explaining everything, the Tao explains nothing. There's still the work to do; we still carry water, gather wood. That's why this:
    Everything in our minds is a blending of cognitive and non-cognitive states. — T Clark
    contributes nothing.
  • Is there an objective quality?
    ...objective... — Red Sky
    So hackneyed a term, given that no one seems to know what it means.

    Are you looking for a mind-independent truth? But how could a judgement be mind-independent? Are you looking for something impartial or unbiased? But the whole point of attributing quality is to be partial and biased. So are you looking for values that exist despite opinion? What could that mean?

    Are we left, then, with "intersubjective agreement", So that the bare fact that so many people eat McDonalds (or watch Star Wars) means it must be of a high quality?

    Or is aesthetic judgement embedded in community and culture, tradition and workmanship, coherence and responsiveness; is it learned and communicable, an aspect of growth?

    An activity rather than a thing.
  • Beliefs as emotion
    A possible middle ground might be that there are no "entities" called reason and emotion, and that we can separate them only conceptually, not physically. If that's what sushi meant, I'd to hear more about the conceptual distinction. To what does it correspond? — J

    The idea that we can seperate reason and emotion physically is surely a category error?

    ↪I like sushi
    Hesperus and Phosphorus rigidly designate Venus. Two names for the same thing. Is the suggestion that reason and emotion are the same thing?

    It would be interesting to see this filled out.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    OK. But when I hear "There's a possible world in which P", I understand this to be equivalent to "It is possible that P". So far, I haven't identified any difference that matters in my world. Am I right? — Ludwig V
    Yep. Not seeing the relevance.

    Modal logic can be translated into FOL thus:
    □A → ∀w′ (R(w, w′) → A(w′))
    ◇A → ∃w′ (R(w, w′) ∧ A(w′))
    Where:
    w and w′ are world variables,
    R is the accessibility relation.

    That is, necessarily A means that A is true in every accessible world, and possible A means that there is an accessible world in which A is true.


    ...the question where natural language sits in relation to the formal system is important. — Ludwig V
    It's an important question. Note that there need be - indeed, there cannot be - a systematic relation between the two in the way there is between a system of syntax and a stipulated model for that syntax.

    That's why the enterprise of the Tractatus couldn't work.

    What we can do with formal logic is to show the coherence of some fragments of natural language.
  • Measuring Qualia??
    ↪Wayfarer
    Fair.
  • Measuring Qualia??
    ↪Wayfarer
    You may stipulate as you wish. It makes no nevermind.

    My opine:
    Seems to me that there is nothing that talk of qualia is about. In so far as talk of qualia is usable and useful, it is no different to talk of colours or tastes or what have you. In so far as something is added to the conversation by the addition of qualia, seems to me that Dennett is correct in showing that there is nothing here to see. — Banno
  • [TPF Essay] Wittgenstein's Hinges and Gödel's Unprovable Statements
    ↪Amity
    Deadnaming! :scream:
  • Measuring Qualia??
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Yep.

    ↪Wayfarer
    I'm fairly well acquainted with some of the literature. My basic objection is that if they are private experiences then they are unavailable for discussion, and if they are available for discussion then they seem to be just what we ordinarily talk about using words like "red" and "loud".

    So not of much use.
  • Measuring Qualia??
    ↪Wayfarer
    Given that I don't think the very notion of qualia can be made coherent, I oddly find myself agreeing with you, but for completely different reasons.

    My laptop, even after all these years, still insists on quail over qualia.
  • Measuring Qualia??
    ↪Wayfarer
    That's the research?

    There's a section on the method used to measure belief. If there is to be a critique of that idea, it ought start by explaining the process used.

    Would that we had a neuroscientist on call.

    a subject’s phenomenology can be mathematically formalised as a belief (i.e. a probability distribution) encoded by its internal states. The subject produces first person descriptions of phenomenology that can then be used to infer its lived experience... Bayesian mechanics affords a correspondence between internal dynamics and belief dynamics. This furnishes a generative passage if we assume that phenomenological content can be formalised as a belief — p.14

    So there's the usual Bayesian analysis as a stand-in for belief. All sorts of things wrong with that, and foremost the presumed equivalence to which Way points.

    But the notion of qualia being used - the word only appears in a footnote - remains obscure.
  • Beliefs as emotion
    emotional thought — I like sushi
    Not too sure what that is.

    Why should we give the last word on this to neuroscience?
  • Beliefs as emotion
    ↪Hanover
    Lots in that.

    So if something... some statement, be it form Descartes, Kant or Wittgenstein, is indubitable, will we count it as a belief? Seem to me we do. Should we? I'd have supposed that the statements of which we are certain form a subset of the statements which we believe. Am I mistaken?

    You father seems an eminently sensible fellow. If being in an upper room causes anxiety, it would not be conducive to a good night's sleep. It would be irrational to do so.

    I had hoped to keep the god bothering at bay.
  • Beliefs as emotion
    Everything that is consciousness is directedness. Ergo, there is always emotional content. What we feel is driven and what is driven is felt. — I like sushi

    Does my air conditioner fit that, then? It intends to keep the room at 22ºc. Does it feel satisfied when it achieves it's goal, and frustrated by the frost?

    A hackneyed argument to be sure, but it carries some import.

    Perhaps we might avoid equating some brain state to "believing that..." at least until we have a clear way of setting out what a brain state is? No need to jump the gun.
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