Comments

  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    ↪Corvus
    Fixed error from self correct: "to use it"

    Thanks.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    If one says one can use words without knowing its meanings, then he is wrong, whoever he is. — Corvus
    I agree. But to know a word is to use it, and to use it is to know it.

    That doesn't mean they know what "red" is. — Corvus
    ...but nor does it mean that they do not!
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    ↪Richard B
    Nice.

    ...and to admit lobsters only after boiling.

    Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfil the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.     — Word and Object
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    This seems to conflate several issues. Why is my description of my red quale a private rule? What would be the (correct, presumably) use of a public rule to describe the quale? I'm not seeing the alternative. — J
    Quite so; if someone referred to "the sensation S" for themselves alone, then the qual is private; and if they do it for others, isn't it just the colour red? Here's the problem with qualia: if they are private, then they are outside of our discourse, and if they are public, they are just our common words for this or that.

    ? What do we teach a child when we teach them color names? "When you point to that, say 'red'?" And if the child replies, "Why?" what do we say? — J
    Rather we play with them, ask for the red block, offer them a lolly - but only the red one, and so on. We teach them to use the word. Then there is no "why?" as the task is of forthright interest.

    As for whether you and I are naming the same quale, wouldn't the answer be: Conceivably we aren't, — J
    ...and it doesn't matter!. Becasue what counts here is the use!

    That is, and here I'm grossly overgeneralising, the extension.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    Wittgenstein was wrong. — Corvus
    Well if your are to convince me of this I'd first have to be convinced that you understood Wittgenstein.

    They could be using the word red metaphorically... — Corvus
    ... and so on. If I ask for the red pen, and they hand me the red pen, that's not metaphorical, nor is it merely rhetorically, and it certainly isn't idiomatic. It's pretty much literal and extensional.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    Not everyone agrees with Wittgenstein. — Corvus
    So what.

    Think on it some more. Colour blind folk do use the word "red" correctly - how can that be?
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    ↪Corvus
    So it should be no trouble to set out that difference with a bit more than a mere label.

    How do you tell that someone has the "concept" red?

    By seeing how they use the word, and what they do in the world with red things.

    So again, what more is there to understanding the concept "red" than being able do stuff with red things...


    Welcome to the wonderful world of Wittgenstein.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    The inference of the meanings are not the meanings themselves, are they? — Corvus
    What is the difference between learning the meaning of a word and learning to use the word?

    (
    ↪J
    , you might consider this, too. )
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    ↪J
    So now you are making use of a private rule... this (indicating the qual) is red...

    And how can we say that what you pick out by "this" is the same as what I pick out?

    I don't see that question as having any significance. That is, we can't talk about the hidden stuff, only the things around us that are red. When we think we are talking about the hidden stuff, we are mistaken.

    It's not wrong to say that this (indicating the qual) is red; rather it's senseless.

    ( I do like the line of reasoning you are adopting.)
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    ↪J
    Ok. SO you are looking to divorce "red" and "green" from individuals that are red or green... Good move. Keep going.


    (Note that I am not a fan of qualia... https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9509/nothing-to-do-with-dennetts-quining-qualia )
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    Meanings can be learnt via inferences from observations on the real world and how others use the words in social situations. — Corvus

    Yep - The meanings of words are learned by using them...
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    ↪J
    Is there more here than the collapse of "meaning" that occurs as one attempts to say what meaning is? That circularity is answered by looking to use, or, which is the same thing, by showing rather than saying. So if what you are after is the bit of intentionality that is inexpressible, then what one can do is acknowledge that inexpressibility and carry on.

    One cannot use words without knowing the meanings. — Corvus
    If that were so, no one would ever learn the meaning of a word.

    ↪DifferentiatingEgg
    I can't decide if your talk of receptors is anachronistic or just incongruous. Let's keep this conversation to the PM - it's a bit too off-topic here.
  • What is faith
    It's not all that odd. If someone tells you how things are, it is up to you to decide whether to believe them. — Ludwig V
    Perhaps the point might have been expressed better. If someone says the cat is on the mat, there is a fact of the matter that we can check against - take a look and see. If someone says that cat ought be on the mat, there is no similar process available for us. We must instead decide.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    ↪DifferentiatingEgg
    That's pretty opaque. You seem to see everything through Nietzsche. I don't find that at all helpful.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    ...means... — J
    That word. If everything hat applies to {1,2,3} applies to "...is red", then what more is there to "meaning"?

    And yes, it is not necessary that {1,2,3} are red. They might have been blue. That's kinda the point, isn't it?

    I think the power of an extensional first-order language is easily underestimated. It'll not do to just assume that extensional contexts are inadequate, it must be shown. It is not clear that there is ""failure of substitutivity" in the instances Quine lists. The whole substitutivity issue doesn’t pose a deep problem if we understand "meaning" in terms of systematic extensional correspondence rather than some mysterious intensional essence.

    But doubt this will convince you.
  • Thoughts on Determinism
    ↪T Clark
    Then there is something about Popper and falsification that you have missed, and I have not adequately explained.

    Popper draws a clear distinction between the logic of falsifiability and its applied methodology. The logic of his theory is utterly simple: a universal statement is falsified by a single genuine counter-instance. Methodologically, however, the situation is complex: decisions about whether to accept an apparently falsifying observation as an actual falsification can be problematic, as observational bias and measurement error, for example, can yield results which are only apparently incompatible with the theory under scrutiny. — Popper, from SEP, (my bolding)

    There is a difference between being falsifiable and being falsified. Have a read and a think.
  • Thoughts on Determinism
    ↪T Clark
    A quick version of naive falsification. A theory is a universal statement - "all swans are black". basic or protocol sentence would be "Here is a white swan" and "Here is a black swan". "Here is a black swan" is consistent with the theory, but by itself cannot verify it. To verify the theory we would have to check out every swan, not just the one before us. "Here is a white swan" falsifies the theory.

    The not-so-naive version of falsification is to note that "Here is a white swan" might be countered - it's not a swan, or it only looks white in this light, or other ad hoc hypothesis that protects the theory from falsification. There is a difference then between a theory being logically falsifiable, and the decision that the theory has indeed been falsified.

    Protocol sentences were taken as irrefutable - the idea being that one could not be wrong in thinking "I see a white swan, there, now".

    Theories are falsifiable becasue hey have the logical form U(x)(fx⊃gx) - for all things, if they are swans then they are black.

    Protocol sentences have the logic structure "f(a) & ~g(a)" - such a sentence falsifies U(x)(fx⊃gx). "This is a swan and this is white {ie, not black)" falsifies "for all things, if they are swans then they are black".

    Can you see how protocol sentences do not have structure that is falsifiable?

    The above is Popper's own logic, from The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
  • What is faith
    My point is, one can always blame the God character and think how things should have gone, but in doing so one simply takes on the role of God. It's very natural to do this. — BitconnectCarlos
    It's not just natural, it is inevitable. A part of the human condition is that we each decide what we do next, so in your words we must each "take on the role of God".

    That's the odd thing about "ought" - even if someone else tells you how things "ought" be, it is up to you to decide if they are right.
  • What is faith
    ↪BitconnectCarlos
    Ah, too many threads here.

    ↪frank
    So long as you don't do it to my face...
  • What is faith
    It's not between man and man. It's between man and God. — BitconnectCarlos

    It was between Abraham and Isaac.
  • What is faith
    After reading it, summarily reject all it says and tell me how horrified you are at the binding of Isaac. That's the process we've followed going on a couple of years here. — Hanover
    That's not what I recall. I will happily accept the essay you point to as a valid interpretation.

    I offer another interpretation, were the actions described are seen as obscene, and were we look on the faith Abraham placed in the Lord even to the point of committing an abomination, and are asked whether as mere humans we ought follow our beliefs with such confidence. Because we might be wrong.

    "After the trial in which God was found guilty of abandoning his people, a dark and profound silence fell upon the room. A few moments later, the men realised it was time for the sacred Jewish ritual of evening prayer."

    Or Cromwell's "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
  • What is faith
    ↪Fire Ologist
    So we are to get personal?

    From your "about" page:
    I actually have it all figured out, understand the meaning of life and the nature of what exists, I'm just not telling anyone so you can all discover it for yourselves.

    And yet you say of me, "You just won’t give an inch".

    There's nought so queer as folk.
  • What is faith
    Oh,
    ↪frank
    . Good of you to worry about me so.

    I believe quite a few things. I trust in quite a few folk. But in neither case would my belief or trust be unbounded. There is a point at which I would be willing to say "This is wrong".

    That point has been sorely tested at times, and sometimes I got it wrong.

    There is a place for doubt as well as faith.
  • What is faith
    All we need is to trust God and no one gets hurt. — Fire Ologist

    There are few folk as dangerous as those who are certain they know the will of god.

    prima facie, trussing up your son, placing him on a pile of wood and holding a knife to his throat is abuse. It takes a good lawyer to explain this away. Even our @Hanover is not up to the task. But the various churches have been quite adept at hiring good lawyers in cases of child abuse.

    Trust in god does lead to people being hurt.
  • What is faith
    ↪Fire Ologist
    But we are never fully informed. We don't know everything there is to know. That's kinda the point, isn't it, that we have to act despite not being fully informed?

    So if your argument is that Abraham was fully informed, then the story does not apply to us.

    And we are back to having to decide without knowing all the facts.
  • What is faith
    So we have faith as either trust or belief, taken to an extreme. Considered as belief, it becomes believing despite the evidence; considered as trust, it becomes trusting to the point of engaging in turpitude.

    Neither of these is acceptable.
  • What is faith
    That was the sacrifice - not the act of a madman; not someone blindly obedient - it was a fully informed decision to, despite all else, trust God. — Fire Ologist

    ...to the extent of performing an abominable act. That the decision was as you suggest "fully informed" only serves to add to the affront.

    Had Abraham acted as
    ↪javra
    suggests, the story might have had some merit.

    And we might follow on from
    ↪praxis
    reply to you to ask who it is to whom you owe obedience.
  • What is faith
    It can't be stated often enough that if perspicuity is rejected (which I do), then a 4 corners literalist interpretation is irrelevant — Hanover
    That argument might hold if there were agreement amongst the learned. There isn't.

    However,
    Remember then: there is only one time that is important – now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary person is the one with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with anyone else: and the most important affair is to do that person good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life.” — Tolstoy, The Three Questions
    And by this standard the stories of the Binding and of Job show culpability.
  • What is faith
    As humans our perspectives are limited and biased and to draw such broad and universal judgments such as which suffering is ultimately "justified" and which is "unjustified" is beyond us. The book stands against man's hubrism and his tendency of all encompassing judgment. — BitconnectCarlos
    This is simply to renege on your responsibility to decide if an act is right or wrong, to hand that most central of judgements over to someone else. To look the other way.

    What God does to Job is ethically wrong.

    What follows is that if god is loving, then the story of Job is not about god. Or that it's part of an iron-age morality of servitude that we might transcend.

    A better lesson would be, rather than accepting one's place, not to accept injustice and to work toward making the world more just.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    ↪BC
    For what it's worth, the dash in a Tesla looks like they decided to glue in an iPad as an afterthought...
    tesla-model-3-journey.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=is&k=20&c=heMHlNGRzpg-INszt6IKvI2_meSqzvXjVtyk9nBKskU=

    Compare Mercedes...
    mercedes-eqs-580-interior.jpg?s=2048x2048&w=is&k=20&c=VdN6Al_parz1P_okrQePOWKlIdfa0C8DCYEt9RtdCWY=
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    ↪Janus
    But here is the Plutocracy's employment paradigm: Gig workers aren’t self-employed – they’re modern-day feudal serfs
  • What is faith
    ↪ChatteringMonkey
    Nothing in that proposal implied self-sufficiency; quite the opposite. Interdependence leads to trust and a better quality of life.

    But that is hard to explain to 'Mercans.

    And off topic.

    I'm European. — ChatteringMonkey
    Replying her as this is off topic - fair enough. Present circumstances place the point in high relief. I've in mind something along the lines of John Rawls as modified by Martha Nussbaum, adopting a capabilities approach.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    ↪Janus
    Eliminating both taxes and services would be fairly straight forward - it's called serfdom.
  • What is faith
    ↪ChatteringMonkey
    Yeah, well, my inclination is more towards the social order being sorted so as to serve the "personal interests" of the populace.

    Suit yourself.
  • What is faith
    ↪ChatteringMonkey
    We should "sacrifice what may be in your personal interest for... ...what preserves the social order"?

    Fascism it is, then.
  • What is faith
    ↪BitconnectCarlos
    :meh:
  • What is faith
    ↪BitconnectCarlos
    See the topic? See how it is not "Floods"?
  • What is faith
    ↪praxis
    A garage, by its very nature, tends toward disorder, for it is in its essence a space of storage and utility, where various objects accumulate over time. No matter how much one may strive to impose order upon it, the garage will inevitably revert to this state, as it is proper to its function. This tendency is not accidental but arises from its very purpose, much like how all things move toward their natural ends. — Aristotle
  • What is faith
    You insist that all align to your judgment. — BitconnectCarlos
    Cobbler's awls. No, I hope for a bit of conversation, some intelligent disagreement. I'm not insisting on agreement so much as enjoying disagreement.
  • What is faith
    ↪frank
    Perhaps.


    I have intuitions. I make judgments, for sure. — BitconnectCarlos
    Cool. So it's not that people make judgements that is problematic when you say"
    I get it. You, like many others, have very strong intuitions about how things should be. — BitconnectCarlos
    So your point remains obscure.
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