I'm unable to work out where we disagree - if at all.

I gather we agree that induction - the conclusion that a general rule is true, on the basis of specific instances - is problematic.

We have it from Hume, Wittgenstein et al. the despite this, it is not unreasonable to believe in some general rule, given specific instances.

We have it from Ramsey and others that there are solid statistical methods for comparing and revising various beliefs, and we agree that these are A Good Thing.

Do we have a disagreement?

I'd already avoided saying that.

In the new order, all comments regarding religion must be deferential, apparently.

Jordan Peterson has a new book. :roll:

But the insistent contempt for nuance and disagreement (“idiotic”, “addled”, “egregious”), and the reduction of any alternative perspective to its most shallow or trivial form, does not encourage the serious engagement Peterson presumably wants. This is an odd book, whose effect is to make the resonant stories it discusses curiously abstract. “Matter and impertinency mixed”, in Shakespeare’s phrase. — We Who Wrestle With God by Jordan Peterson review – a culture warrior out of his depth

Ok. What's the "reification" you are referring to?

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

??

Should that question be directed at ?

I want to go back to this:

Instead of seeking justification for induction, (Ramsey) explains how we act as if inductive reasoning were valid. — Banno

I hope it's clear that I am not advocating doing induction using probability. Better to drop induction all together and instead look at how a bit of maths can help show us if our beliefs - held for whatever reason, or no reason at all - are consistent.

Not sure what to make of that. The act is a distinct thing - asking a question, giving a command. Things we do with words, and they are recognisable different to the words themselves.

It's not seperate to the words - you can use a screw driver as a hammer. Neither the hammer nor the driver are the act of hammering, but the tool is not seperate to the hammering.

This is good, since I've long puzzled over what you were thinking on this topic.

Making an assertion is an act - like hammering. Various different locutions can be used to make an assertion.

There are conventions, but they do not determine the way in which the locution is to be understood - as is evident from various malapropisms. One can give an order or make a statement by asking a question.

Why not performed that performance, acted that act, etc... — bongo fury

:worry:

If you like; They have acted.

...the sentence is a machine for pointing predicates at things, but it doesn't really happen, it's all made up. — bongo fury

Of course it's "made up". That's not a deprecation. It does really happen. We do make statements, ask questions, give orders.

The process of interpretation is the process of making stuff up.

I would say, the mere occurrence of an assertion (claim etc) doesn't amount to assertion (claim etc) of or about the assertion (claim etc), but that doesn't in the least prevent it from being an instance of that very kind linguistic entity. — bongo fury

What you are doing here is unclear to me.

To be sure, the mere occurrence of a sentence with a declarative grammatical structure does not amount to some's making an assertion - to their having performed that act.

We have the mere concatenation of 'T', 'h', 'e', ' ', 'c'... and so on. (Phonic act)

We can see this as a sentence with a declarative grammatical structure. Same thing, looked at in a slightly different way. (Phatic act)

Then we might give it an interpretation - "the cat" serves to pick out that cat; "the mat" serves to refer to that mat. The truth of the whole is not yet asserted - it might be so, it might not. Here we can say that "The cat is on the mat" is true if and only if the cat is on the mat. (rhetic, and together with phonic and phatic, a locutionary act)

Then we might assign a truth value. "The cat is on the mat" is false. An illocution.

There are various judgements all through this. Austin names some of them phonic, phatic, rhetic, which together form the locutionary act and lead on to the illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. All acts, things we do with words, and all are different descriptions of the very same thing.

To me this is bread and butter stuff, pretty much granted. So I have trouble seeing why it is no obvious to others.

So I can agree with you if what you are saying is that the performance of a phonic, phatic, rhetic, or locutionary act need not amount to the performance of an illocutionary act.

Is that close?

"p" is a place holder. We can replace it with some other sentence.

It's usually understood uncritically as standing for any sentence, but doubtless there are examples that do not work. Nevertheless, it is useful.

A very large part of the issue here - if not all of it - stems from the attempt to substitute illegitimately.

The Judgement Stroke in Frege was a first approximation to a context in which we could substitute while preserving the truth. Within the scope of a Judgement Stroke we may substitute like for like while preserving truth.

"p" and "p is true" are very different.

This is the part of Rödl I haven't been able to make sense of. He seems to want that the phrase “p is true” is not equivalent to the judgment that p, and in doing this he keeps the judgement as "the actualisation of self-consciousness", a substitutionally opaque context if ever there was one.

Simplest approach seems to be that Rödl is wrong. Or at least, doing something very different to logic as it is now understood and used. He wants to play another game, and it's very unclear that his game works - or what use his approach might have.

So while we can't foreclose on it entirely, it certainly needs a lot of explaining if it is going to carry any weight.

Even something like "P = P is true" starts to look bizarre once you let go of the standard accounts of P. If P is true, and is the same thing as P, doesn't that mean that P is a bit of language? So when I see that bit of language, I know it's true? Obviously that's not what we mean; we need some kind of assertion to go along with it. So "P = P is true" isn't right. But how do we provide the assertion? Is there a single way this is supposed to happen? — J

There's a difference between "p = p is true" and "p ≡ p is true".

If we allow "p = p is true" aren't we going to fall victim to the slingshot - that all true statements refer to the same fact? We can avoid this by realising that the mere occurrence of a sentence does not amount to an assertion of that sentence.

But words do have a stipulated, conventional meaning that relies on limited context, that is accessible to all speakers. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is that so? or is it right, up until we try to pay it out. Then we find that theory rests on a mistaken view of the nature of language.

There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with — Davidson, A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

There are conventions, to be sure, but those conventions do not determine the meaning of an utterance - this is shown by your example, that any phrase can serve as a password.

We can make sense of the following:

Rather than take for granite that Ace talks straight, a listener must be on guard for an occasional entre nous and me. . . or a long face no see. In a roustabout way, he will maneuver until he selects the ideal phrase for the situation, hitting the nail right on the thumb. The careful conversationalist might try to mix it up with him in a baffle of wits. In quest of this pinochle of success, I have often wrecked my brain for a clowning achievement, but Ace’s chickens always come home to roast. From time to time, Ace will, in a jersksome way, monotonise the conversation with witticisms too humorous to mention. It’s high noon someone beat him at his own game, but I have never done it; cross my eyes and hope to die, he always wins thumbs down — Quoted in Davidson op cit

And we do so despite, not becasue, of the conventions. Any utterance can be used to mean anything.

If we are talking about a conception of absolutely everything, then we’d describe justice and rocks the same way. — Antony Nickles

I like that - a simple argument. There's benefit in having different ways to describe different things, hence collapsing everything into one description is leaving things out?

I assure you, my mind is completely unfurnished. — Ludwig V

As is mine.

But it is also possible to revise my interpretation in the light of more and better information or even to actually misinterpret my action — Ludwig V

Yes, indeed. But if we are to do so consistently, we might do well to presume a few things. Ramsey doesn't tell us how to be certain. He tells us what it means to be coherently uncertain — to reason, act, and believe in a way that fits together, even when the world is incomplete, and we are fallible.

Your preferences reveal what matters to you, that your beliefs are not binary but admit of degree, that you would do well to choose those acts that maximise expected utility, given your beliefs, and that you can update your beliefs, given new information. And perhaps most originally, that you would do well to value your beliefs so as to be internally consistent; so as to avoid a dutch book.

That this is not the whole explanation for your possible actions does not retract from the usefulness of these suggestions.

Only if you can read it correctly. — Ludwig V

What could it be to "read it correctly"? The presumption here seems to be that there is a seperate and "correct" belief, perhaps a piece of mental furniture, apart from the choice to go to the fridge or not.

But neither of us want to say that.

Thanks - there's a lot here. I'm not closing the book on probability, but opening it.

That our deliberations rarely fit propositional or predicate logic clearly and unambiguously does not undermine the use of propositional or predicate logic. It may still provide a model for our reasoning. That same goes for the various examples of the use of probability here. You don't need a confidence of 100% in order to go to your fridge with the expectation of retrieving a beer. Indeed, it makes little difference if there are six or five, if what you are after is one. Your confidence that there is more than one beer is what is at issue. Your confidence in that is shown through action.

Ramsey's contribution is to show the interaction of belief, preference and action, and what must apply if these are to remain consistent despite being partial, fallible, and changing - his axioms.

Ramsey doesn't guarantee that we will always bet rationally. He sets out (or better, begins to set out) how we can understand being rational in circumstances of partial belief. He shifts the question from “Is this belief true?” to “Is this belief coherent with my other beliefs and actions?”

So will you go to the fridge or keep watching the game? Your choice shows your preferences and what you think is so.

Ok. Guess I'll just watch for a bit.

The things phil says about these absolute conceptions are not put forward as true beyond the historical or cultural context of the philosopher -- they are not "known to be true" in the same way that the absolute conception knows things to be true. — J

Ooooo nice...

Trouble is I don't think any of science, revelation, mysticism or whatever can have "absolute knowledge"... 'casue I don't see how we can make that sort of phrase work.

I might as well also play with the toothpaste, while I'm here.

The claim that science seeks a "view form nowhere" is a misrepresentation. Science seeks a view from anywhere. It phrases it's pronouncements in terms that maximise the contexts in which they can be taken as true.

Since the cardinality of contexts is undefined, there is no end to what science has to say.

But having said that, I remain unclear as to the "very original move", so let me reflect it back to you, see if I have it right.

Our problem: If philosophy allows that some other discourse - science, religion, mysticism, revelation... provides an absolute account of the truth, then what is left for Philosophy?

Well, the come back is that philosophy still has at least that it's science, religion, mysticism, revelation or what ever that provides an absolute account of the truth... this becomes the last bastion of philosophy.

But then philosophy does lead to at least this little bit of absolute knowledge... and so philosophy's having allowed that some other discourse is the source of absolute knowledge is itself an absolute knowledge...

But then the "very original move", that even if philosophy provides a conception that includes the idea of absolute knowledge, this doesn’t entail that philosophy knows that the conception is itself true in an absolute sense. It's still presumably the science or religion or revelation or mysticism that performs this task...

How is that? Is that close enough?

Then this seems to me very close to what we have been discussing concerning philosophy as plumbing.

There's the obvious point that we do compare aesthetic judgements. They are not private.

There's the further point that our discussions of aesthetic judgements change those very judgements. Out aesthetics are not fixed in stone.

Calling an aesthetic judgement subjective often serves to stymie the discussion. Worth avoiding.

So back to the account I gave previously, and how it goes astray:

So an aesthetic opinion. will amount to a choice we make in our actions. Vanilla over chocolate. The preference is individual - we do not expect others to agree, and are happy for her to have chocolate rather than vanilla. — Banno

I'll maintain that our aesthetic is shown in our choices. But we do expect others to agree with our aesthetic choices, and are surprised at the choices others make...

Much to do here.

Looks like you are not going to get the science toothpaste back in the tube.

Could have been worse; it might have read

He points to a familiar problem: We would like some sort of absolute knowledge, a View from Nowhere that will transcend “local interpretative predispositions.” But what if we accept the idea that religion aims to provide that knowledge, and may be qualified to do it? What does that leave for philosophy to do? — J

:wink:

added: or
"what if we accept the idea that revelation aims to provide that knowledge"
or
"what if we accept the idea that mysticism aims to provide that knowledge"
and so on.

And again, your argument does not meet your conclusion.

Have fun.


Added: Just to be clear the Kimhi quote is against writing ⊢(⊢p → ⊢q), not ⊢⊢(p→q).

More from elsewhere...

A double judgment-stroke would make no sense for Frege. It is precisely a syncategorematic expression, and therefore cannot be nested in that way.
— Leontiskos
Syncategorematic means it has no meaning in isolation, only in context (like logical connectives), but that doesn't automatically rule out meta-level use — i.e., a second-order application about a judgment. Your argument again does not arrive at your conclusion.

"~" is also syncategorematic; yet we can write ~(~(A)). Necessity is syncategorematic; yet we can write ☐(☐(A)).

In Grundgesetze, Frege does not propose nesting judgment-strokes, but he does engage in meta-logical reflection — talking about what is asserted, and about the act of asserting.

A nested judgment-stroke would not violate Frege’s logical vision; it simply belongs to a different level — a meta-logical one — where judgments themselves become the objects of analysis. — Banno

Google, for those from foreign parts:

In Australian slang, "stirring the possum" means to provoke, instigate, or cause a disturbance, often by raising controversial topics or engaging in heated debate. It implies deliberately riling things up or causing a reaction, much like disturbing a sleeping possum would likely result in a negative response. The phrase can also be used to describe someone who is a "stirrer," someone who enjoys causing a bit of trouble or debate.

A noble activity.

Perhaps.

I'm not seeing a problem here. Seems @bongo fury is stirring the possum, which is fair enough. Something might come of it.

has the same post in two places, so some of the context was lost. My reply:

There's a difference between understanding what it would take for "the cat is on the mat" to be true, and asserting that the cat is on the mat.

Between "p" and ⊢p".

One might, somewhat redundantly, further assert that one asserts that the cat is on the mat. If the need arose. — Banno

Oh yes, those. You say it (a proposition) is only a description (of a state of affairs) until asserted of reality? Until then, proposed but not yet carried, I suppose? — bongo fury

There's a difference between understanding what it would take for "the cat is on the mat" to be true, and asserting that the cat is on the mat.

Between "p" and ⊢p".

One might, somewhat redundantly, further assert that one asserts that the cat is on the mat. If the need arose.

moved his post.

There's an intricate relationship between degrees of belief and belief in probabilities, which I find confusing. It looks to me as if "S has a x degree of belief in p and S believes that p has a probability x. Are they equivalent? If there's a difference, what is it? — Ludwig V

It seems that for Ramsey the degree that one is willing to bet constitutes the partial belief. A belief is not "private" or "subjective", but measurable, and comparable with other beliefs.

The relationship, then, is not between "degrees of belief and belief in probabilities", but between degree of belief and willingness to act. Consider willingness to act as an extensional substitute for degree of belief.

There need be no inner fact about belief that can diverge from one’s consistent actions.

Kant, Critique of Pure reason, A825 / B852.

Kant is not measuring degrees of belief but critiquing overconfidence and metaphysical presumption. It's not to do with explaining belief so much as measuring it. The belief remains for Kant a piece of mental furniture.

Ramsey is closer to saying that the belief just is the disposition to act. The disposition to act is the degree of the belief. His axioms are then used to build a model of rational action.

You might see the difference between Kant and Ramsey if you consider this:

One way to highlight the difference between this view and representationalism is this: Imagine that we discover an alien being, of unknown constitution and origin, whose behavior and overall behavioral dispositions are perfectly normal by human standards. “Rudolfo”, say, emerges from a spacecraft and integrates seamlessly into U.S. society, becoming a tax lawyer, football fan, and Democratic Party activist. Even if we know next to nothing about what is going on inside his head, it may seem natural to say that Rudolfo has beliefs much like ours—for example, that the 1040 is normally due April 15, that a field goal is worth 3 points, and that labor unions tend to support Democratic candidates. Perhaps we can coherently imagine that Rudolfo does not manipulate sentences in a language of thought or possess internal representational structures of the right sort. Perhaps it is conceptually, even if not physically, possible that he has no complex, internal, cognitive organ, no real brain. But even if it is granted that a creature must have human-like representations in order to behave thoroughly like a human being, one might still think that it is the pattern of actual and potential behavior that is fundamental in belief—that representations are essential to belief only because, and to the extent to, they ground such a pattern. Dispositionalists and interpretationists are drawn to this way of thinking. — SEP Article on Belief

Gilbert Ryle might have more in common with Ramsey than with Kant.

Although we arrived at Ramsey from critique of Kant and induction, it has another place in the discussion, since it provides us with a model for comparing constraints of the sort discuss at around p.17 of the Must Do Better article.

Ramsey doesn’t start with an absolute scale of belief or value. Instead, he begins with cases of indifference — where outcomes or propositions are treated as equally preferable or equally likely — and uses these as anchor points to infer a system of degrees of belief and utility that is coherent, even if it is partial, subjective, and shifting.

Now a point of indifference in a philosophical debate is a point of agreement.

An alternative method might be, rather than demanding an absolute resolution, begin with points of indifference or agreement — shared constraints, overlapping commitments, common ground. From these, construct a framework of reasoning that remains coherent, though incomplete or evolving.

Ramsey shows the formal consistency of such a method, given the axioms of his system.

Some fairly vague thoughts, prompted by

Is it possible to tie it into Williamson's concerns? — Moliere

My "enthusiasm" stems from my reading Davidson's Truth and Predication, where Ramsey is mentioned. I'm not advocating Ramsey so much as exploring some ideas I haven't given much attention too until now.

It's not what I expected. He's not claiming that "induction is really just about probability" so much as dropping induction as a justification and instead considering degrees of belief. So while we might not know what is true and what isn't, we can have degrees of belief, and deal with them in a rational fashion.

...you would bet more on f(e) given f(a), f(b), f(c), f(d) than you would on (f)c given f(a), f(b)... — Ludwig V

...isn't the sort of thing that Ramsey is claiming, from what I can work out. He's not necessarily basing the bet on some series of accepted truths but on degree of belief, measured through betting behaviour, and arguing in favour of follow the axioms of probability to avoid incoherence.

...what's wrong with Hume's custom or habit, based on our general heuristic of association? Or Wittgenstein's "This is what I do." — Ludwig V

It's more that this is an implementation of "what we do" that is coherent; or perhaps better, shows is what coherence might look like.

Or we could just stop treating induction as a poor man's deduction. — Ludwig V

I think that's pretty close to what Ramsey is doing - moving past the problem of induction, getting to the point of how it is we behave.

He presents us with a tool that allows us to navigate uncertainty.



_____________
Added: Yeah, I said

Ramsey instead says given f(a) and f(b), how much would you bet that f(c)? and develops a logic around this. — Banno

but that's not quite right. He's not saying that f(a) and f(b) implies f(e) is a better bet than just f(a). He;s not saying anything about f(a)'s truth or falsity at all. He's instead talking about the degree to which you and I believe f(a).

Thanks for the question - working out the answers is a great help in working out what Ramsey was doing.

Ask Dummett to join a betting circle?

Yes, it's just a game, in much the same way as predicate calculus is just a game.

Can it be used to model some of the things we do? Can it show us how we can act more coherently?

Well, yes. It shows us how a Dutch Book reveals an inconsistency, for example.

You are right that there is a lot going on here, and plenty more to be said. People do not act rationally. Leaving aside the question of whether they ought act rationally, Ramsey has given us a part of the way to understanding what it is to act rationally. Not a theory of how people actually think, not a theory of what beliefs are true, but a framework for what it would be to act coherently, given one’s own beliefs and preferences.

Ok.

is it a metaphor or a mechanism? — Moliere

Quite literal.

Good, bad, indifferent, what is it we are judging when judging a philosophy on aesthetic grounds — Moliere

Does it have to be one thing? Does it even have to be specified?

what is it we are judging when judging a flavour on aesthetic grounds?

I think of Bayesian epistemology I think that it's the attempted "cure" to induction. So rather than a truth it's part of the myth. — Moliere

It bypasses induction - it doesn't make use of induction.

Induction tries to show that, given some beliefs f(a), f(b), and so on, we can induce Ux(fx) for some domain. This is invalid.

Ramsey instead saysgiven f(a) and f(b),* how much would you bet that f(c)? and develops a logic around this.

There's no claim that U(x)f(x) is true - no induction.

It replaces belief in a general law with a degree of belief, as used for an action.

This parallels the other discussion in this thread, again showing that we need not work with the general law, but can instead work with the local belief, contra Tim's apparent suggestion.

*There's no need for this, so struck through... Ramsey is just asking, apart from or including other evidence, how much would you bet that f(c)?

Ramsey's assumptions are pretty specific. We could finesse the betting process in all sorts of ways. But the point is not the bet so much as the ability to compare partial values - from simple preferences among hypothetical bets or wagers, we can uncover both the subjective probability a person assigns to a proposition and the utility they assign to outcomes.

Truth And Probability (1926)

Anyway, here we are moving into the whole area of Bayesian epistemology, not a small step.

That sometimes folk sometimes bet poorly is as relevant as that folk sometimes will argue invalidly.

I'm prone to thinking of induction as a kind of myth. Not the bad kind, but the good kind -- that is still a myth. — Moliere

Sure.

suppose philosophers formed a sort of betting ring on their particular philosophical ideas.... Does this make for a rational activity? — Moliere

Very much so. Ramsey can be seen as providing a way to compare partial beliefs. If we treat beliefs as things that come in degrees, then betting behaviour provides a way to compare and measure those degrees. The degree of a belief is measured by the degree to which we are prepared to act on it.

No, sorry. You seem to be simply restating your position. — J

Yes. There doesn't seem to be much point in going over this again.