It has many ways of dealing with many placed predicates and relations. The ancients and medievals did not lack a notion of polyadic properties. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Many ways. All of them are ad hoc workarounds. Compare the tortured "Socrates is-a-thing-taller-than-Plato" to Taller(Socrates, Plato).

Aristotle’s logic dominated scholastic philosophy through the middle ages; indeed, as late as the eighteenth century, Kant maintained that Aristotle’s logic was perfect and in no need of revision. But the theory of the syllogism is far too limited to model anything but the most superficial aspects of mathematical reasoning. — Open Logic

While you are there, check out the rest of the Open Logic text, a summation of recent logic, and contemplate how few of those thousand pages might be put into Aristotelian terms.

And that is an introduction.

Wasn't there a time when the Mods removed this sort of thread on sight?

Or did I dream it

Sure.

A question worth considering is how this failing on the part of syllogistic logic relates to the whole edifice of the philosophy of "being". A misplaced logic as the source of "being" from Hegel through to Heidegger?

But of course this is philosophical imperialism and I have entirely missed the point.

Moreover, "is-ness" appears to be yet another example of how merely syllogistic logic fails to deal with identity. Syllogistic logic can only deal with single-place predicates, and so must interpret any relation, including A=A, as a single place predicate - "A has the property of being A". Hence the invention of the pseudo-predicate "is-ness".

Interesting how folk are happy to use logic until it doesn't get them what they want, and then just drop it.

the essence is the 'is-ness' of something. — Wayfarer

What's "Is-ness"? Isn't that a reaffirmation of A=A, that the essence of A is that A is A? Doesn't that leave you with defining the "is" of identity in terms of essence, and then defining essence in terms of identity?

Or are you saying that the essence is what makes something a particular thing? In which case, if God does not exist, how is god a particular thing? Does god not then have an essence?

"Is-ness" is no clearer a term than "essence" - and even that's being generous. It's better if an explanation is clearer than the thing it is trying to explain.

But that snippet gives a hint as to why you can't get opacity with behaviorism. You'll end up with a de re reading of everything. — frank

Davidson is happy to say that people have beliefs, and to use beliefs to explain actions, and says that such explanations are causal.

So not behaviourist.

Anscombe - and by association, Wittgenstein - also accepts that actions are explained by beliefs. Neither is behaviourist.

I don't understand what that definition is referring to unless essence refers to properties and abilities! — MoK

The standard modern definition of an essence is as those properties had by some individual in every possible world that includes that individual.

It's not too far from the classical definition as what makes a thing what it is, and not another. It avoids the circularity of "'Essence' is 'what is essential to the being'". There's still room for ambiguity and interpretation.

You haven’t given any new effort to show me some pretenses. — Fire Ologist

Not sure what that sentence is. The ball remains in your court, so far as I can see.

How does 1+1+1=1? By misunderstanding either "1" or "+" or "=", or using at least one of them in a way that is not in accord with their usual use.

Pretty much. This thread will doubtless go on for several more pages.

End of discussion. — Fire Ologist

Unfortunately not.

All you have shown here is the inability of a merely syllogistic logic to represent relations, including equivalence.

Your SA is muddled. It conflates logical identity with linguistic identity. "Hesperus" and "Phosphorus" both refer to Venus, but one in the evening and the other in the morning. Utterances, especially those in a natural language, occur in context.

Merely syllogistic logic cannot deal with modal or other intensional contexts. It treats identity as just another predication. That's one of the reasons it's not much used anymore.

If you really think the God who is a trinity of persons is like the person who is suffering from DID... — Fire Ologist

No, I don't think that. What I've shown is that the description of God presented here is muddled. The arc is that the muddle is continually papered over. This is now the bit where you pretend that you and Leon pretend to have answered the problems raised. You haven't.

Suit yourself. Multiple persons sharing one being does sound a bit mad...

Added: Googling "Multiple persons sharing one being" returns DID. Googling "God: Multiple persons sharing one being" returns the Trinity. Don't shoot the messenger.

4. When one is offended by another person, whose fault is that feeling of offense? The hurling of insults is certainly the fault of the one hurling insults, but the feeling of offense, who is responsible for that? — Fire Ologist

Neither explanation is particularly clear nor cogent. Also, if they were right then the Trinity is superfluous, anyway. We might hope that a good explanation should decrease the degree of mystery, not multiply it.

How is something like “disassocistive identity disorder” even possible to imagine as a coherent thing? — Fire Ologist

Take it up with DSM-5. Are they also full of shit?

Three persons, one substance.

Sounds not unlike Dissociative identity disorder.

Recognising Palestine.

The interesting thing here is probably the increasing isolation of US foreign policy.

Yep. The danger for the Catholic is polytheism.

Banno is one of the things that is a man, so is Bob and so is Frank. Three different things that are all men.

So Jesus is one of the things that is god, and the holy spirit is another, and the father, another. Three different things that are all god.

Puts me in mind of Captain Scarlet...

And I'll note that you've failed to answer the simple question, — Leontiskos

Dude,

A part of analytic method is to use formal logic to model natural language. The bits and pieces of a formal logic are much more rigorous than those of a natural language. We can borrow this rigour in order to show clearly some differences in use in natural languages.

This is brought out nicely in predicate logic. Three differing uses of "is" are:
1. The "is" of predication - "The ball is red" - f(a)
2. the "is of equivalence - "Two plus two is four" - a=b
3. The "is" of quantification - "There is a ball" - ∃(x)f(x)

We can see similar uses in a natural language such as English. A clear English sentence containing "is" might be parsed as one of these, but it may be that there are English sentences that include "is" but do not parse into one of these three; or at least that are somewhat ambiguous or difficult. Consider auxiliary uses, "What I’m telling you is, don’t touch that switch." So the list is not intended to be exhaustive.

It's also worth noting that (2) is a special case of (1). The "=" is a binary predicate over a and b.

In syllogistic logic, all relations are reduced to single-places predications. “Socrates is taller than Plato” have to be paraphrased into one-place predicates like “Socrates is-a-thing-taller-than-Plato” before entering a syllogism. Something like "Tully is Cicero" has to be treated not as a relation, but as a single-placed predicate. It has to be treated the same way as, say, "Tully is a writer". Tully is a member of the group of writers, and Tully is a member of the group of things which are Cicero.

An adherence to merely syllogistic logic might explain some of the difficulties had hereabouts.

"=" is reflexive, symmetrical and transitive; A=A; if A=B then B=A, and if A=B and B=C then A=C. Other relations can have all three - if your birth month is your birth month, and if it is the same as mine, then mine is the same as yours, and if mine is the same as yours and yours is the same as hers, then mine is the same as hers. Taken together these three give us equivalence but not identity.

Classically we can add x=y⇔∀P (P(x)↔P(y)), Leibniz’s Law. This is the standard definition of "=" for first-order logics. Two things are identical if they have exactly the same properties.

It's extensional. What that means is that if A=B, then for any theorem that contains "A", we can instead stick "B", without changing the truth value. The truth of the theorem is not dependent on the term used, but on the thing - the extension - of that term. So since "A" and "B" refer to the very same thing, we can swap 'em, and what we say stays true.

But Leibniz’s Law falls over in modal contexts. The Opera House is in Sydney, but might have been instead built in Melbourne (God forbid! Picture it on the banks of that dank cloaca, the Yarra, in the rain...). But if we keep Leibniz’s Law then it would not be the Opera House, that very building, that was built in Melbourne, and so on... The answer to this, From Kripke, is to drop Leibniz’s Law but keep extensional substitution - that is, to use rigid designation. — Banno

I'll leave you to your own resources, then. Enjoy.

It might be best if you did the homework for yourself...

I prefer Mysterians, with whom you have much in common.

Again, I'll leave such stuff to the theists and mysterians to deal with.

I set out a bit of an explanation fo "=" yesterday. Here it is again.

A part of analytic method is to use formal logic to model natural language. The bits and pieces of a formal logic are much more rigorous than those of a natural language. We can borrow this rigour in order to show clearly some differences in use in natural languages.

This is brought out nicely in predicate logic. Three differing uses of "is" are:
1. The "is" of predication - "The ball is red" - f(a)
2. the "is of equivalence - "Two plus two is four" - a=b
3. The "is" of quantification - "There is a ball" - ∃(x)f(x)

We can see similar uses in a natural language such as English. A clear English sentence containing "is" might be parsed as one of these, but it may be that there are English sentences that include "is" but do not parse into one of these three; or at least that are somewhat ambiguous or difficult. Consider auxiliary uses, "What I’m telling you is, don’t touch that switch." So the list is not intended to be exhaustive.

It's also worth noting that (2) is a special case of (1). The "=" is a binary predicate over a and b.

In syllogistic logic, all relations are reduced to single-places predications. “Socrates is taller than Plato” has to be paraphrased into one-place predicates like “Socrates is-a-thing-taller-than-Plato” before entering a syllogism. Something like "Tully is Cicero" has to be treated not as a relation, but as a single-placed predicate. It has to be treated the same way as, say, "Tully is a writer". Tully is a member of the group of writers, and Tully is a member of the group of things which are Cicero.

An adherence to merely syllogistic logic might explain some of the difficulties had hereabouts.

"=" is reflexive, symmetrical and transitive; A=A; if A=B then B=A, and if A=B and B=C then A=C. Other relations can have all three - your birth month is your birth month, and if it is the same as mine, then mine is the same as yours, and if mine is the same as yours and yours is the same as hers, then mine is the same as hers. Taken together these three give us equivalence but not identity.

Classically we can add x=y⇔∀P (P(x)↔P(y)), Leibniz’s Law. This is the standard definition of "=" for first-order logics. Two things are identical if they have exactly the same properties.

It's extensional. What that means is that if A=B, then for any theorem that contains "A", we can instead stick "B", without changing the truth value. The truth of the theorem is not dependent on the term used, but on the thing - the extension - of that term. So since "A" and "B" refer to the very same thing, we can swap 'em, and what we say stays true.

But Leibniz’s Law falls over in modal contexts. The Opera House is in Sydney, but might have been instead built in Melbourne (God forbid! Picture it on the banks of that dank cloaca, the Yarra, in the rain...). But if we keep Leibniz’s Law then it would not be the Opera House, that very building, that was built in Melbourne, and so on... The answer to this, From Kripke, is to drop Leibniz’s Law but keep extensional substitution - that is, to use rigid designation.

This is not a complete account, but it'll do.

I'd say the fact that we don't really know what we are saying with (1) is significant. — Leontiskos

"=" is very well defined in both maths and logic, but cannot be adequately defined in merely syllogistic logic, which cannot deal with relations.

I have the article.

Given the confusions here, I'm not keen on moving on to it quite yet - it presumes quite a bit about the way we might view belief, and won't be understood without those presumptions.

Much of the confusion here seems the result of an over dependence on syllogistic logic, which cannot deal adequately with relations.

Are you happy with that explanation of "essence"?

I'm not.

..the thrust of this particular OP is historical — Wayfarer

Sure. I enjoyed the OP. As a bit of history it's not problematic.

The whole framing here is problematic. It presumes a subject/object dichotomy, then concludes that there are subjects. Hardly a surprise. Your answer to the problems of novelty, error an agreement presume there is something other than the mental against which our ideas stand. And despite it's popularity hereabouts, there are good reasons that philosophy moved past Thomism.

The explanation on offer, "god did it", can account for anything, and so accounts for nothing. Not what I look for in an explanation.

I find it hard to make sense of "collective mind".

I wan't going to do this. Damn.

's Op is excellent. I wasn't going to enter into this conversation since it's stuff he and I have been over multiple times.

I can't see how idealism is able to explain three things - or perhaps better, in offering explanations it admits that there are truths that are independent of mind and so ceases to be different to realism in any interesting way.

Novelty.
We are sometimes surprised by things that are unexpected. How is this possible if all that there is, is already in one’s mind?

Agreement .
You and I agree as to what is the case. How is that possible unless there is something external to us both on which to agree?

Error.
We sometimes are wrong about how things are. How can this be possible if there is not a way that things are, independent of what we believe?

But moreover I reject the idealism/realism dichotomy, and the notion of "real" at work here.

I think Way takes a leap too far. He's welcome to do so, I won't be joining him.

You can't surmise belief from action? Why not?

Nice.

Prima Facie Davidson might reject this, since it implies a separation between schema L and world W.

We talk about beliefs becasue we sometimes find that what we have taken to be the case is mistaken - that there is a difference between how we think things are and what is true. It's tempting to think of W as the One True Description of the World, something to which Davidson might have objected.

Perhaps we can drop W from the schema, and instead consider how we might go about understanding Lois' beliefs L in terms of our own beliefs, say L'. We charitably match the structure of L to L', maximising agreement. In doing so we find the "best" match is made when we include "Superman is not Kent" in L, despite including it in L'.

And again we do not need the god's eye view.

Sure. But not Davidson, nor any one else under consideration here. Arn't we here considering only those who do attribute belief?

The rigid designator, Superman, isn't in sentence b. All that's there is a sound the parrot is ready to make. — frank

Yes, and arguably neither is Superman in 'Lois is ready enough to say "Superman can fly"', that that sentence is not about Superman, but about something Lous says. I gather your behaviourist is not inferring any intentionality to Lous or to the parrot. Do you know of any one who proposes such an approach?

Perhaps it would be better to say that coherence is stable?

Incoherence seems to imply that something is missing, that someone is mistaken, or perhaps worse, that there is a contradiction, in which case anything goes.

Or perhaps the occurrence of an incoherence should be understood methodologically, as indicating the need to find a better way to set things out, one that is coherent.

oh yea indeed. I’ve spent time with one or two.

Isn't the move from

b. Lois is ready enough to say "Superman can fly."

to

c. Therefore, Lois is ready enough to say "Clark Kent can fly."

A supposed substitution?

What else could it be?

Jesuit — Wayfarer

:wink:
The Jesuits are a way to keep the smart people in the Church.

I'd be surprised to hear Catholics have embraces Spinoza.

A behaviourist might say "Superman is Kent; Lois will ascent to 'Superman can fly' but not to 'Kent can fly', and so we can infer that she does not believe that Superman is Kent".

Is there a problem here?