Comments

  • p and "I think p"
    The real subject of the proposition, which is pain. Pain is never experienced in the third person. — Wayfarer
    But it is "adequately conveyed" in the first person?

    Or is it just had?

    This means that while we can refer to, or quote, a first-person statement like “my hand hurts,” we cannot adequately convey the subjective experience it conveys in a third-person proposition. — Wayfarer
    So can we "adequately convey the subjective experience" in the first person but not in the third? Or is it also that we cannot adequately convey the subjective experience it conveys in a first-person proposition? Is the problem with first and third person, or is it with putting pain into a proposition?
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪Leontiskos

    In a 1970 paper he says that the gavagai example is very limited, and demonstrates the inscrutability of terms rather than indeterminacy of translation of sentences. — Leontiskos
    (Quine uses the terms “ontological relativity” and “inscrutability of reference”, as well as “indeterminacy of reference”. Some philosophers have sought to distinguish these doctrines, but in later work Quine makes it clear that he uses the terms simply as different names for the same thing. See Ricketts 2011, Roth, 1986, and Quine 1986d.) — SEP


    __________________
    It seems clear to me that translation is underdetermined to some extent. — Leontiskos
    Good. So will we agree that
    because we have different words that we use for the same thing that there is no one referent for a specific thing and that therefor translation in speech wouldn’t be possible — Darkneos
    is a misapprehension of the argument Quine makes?
  • p and "I think p"
    This is a generous, sense-making interpretation — J
    Is it? Can we "adequately convey the subjective experience" of a hand that hurts in the first person, with "my hand hurts", more effectively than in the third, "@RussellA's hand hurts"?

    Is that what @Wayfarer was claiming? What more is in the first person account than in the third person account?
  • p and "I think p"
    The way things are: the tree is dropping its leaves.

    A report about the way things are: "The tree is dropping its leaves".

    A report of a thought: I think that the tree is dropping its leaves. Another: I thought "The tree is dropping its leave".

    A few more thoughts. Is the tree dropping its leaves? Is the thing dropping leaves a tree? I wish the tree would not drop it's leaves. Let's call that thing that is dropping leaves, a "tree".

    A report about a thought: I wonder if the tree will drop its leaves.

    There's quite a lot going on in each of these.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪Leontiskos

    From my first post here:
    It just says that one cannot be certain as to which name refers to which thing. Not so much about multiple words for the same thing as one word potentially referring to various things - so gavagai might refer to a rabbit, a rabbit's tail, a rabbit leg or a potential hot meal. For Quine, there is no fact of the mater. — Banno
    Now, what do you make of the gavagai example?
  • p and "I think p"
    Just to be clear, would the full thought you're referring to, which I bolded, be "I think that the tree is dropping leaves"? — J

    :grin: That's close to what I just asked you, I believe, concerning think2:
    Is Think2 "I know my hand hurts" or is it "My hand hurts"? — Banno

    Is the thought "The tree is dropping leaves" or is it "I think the tree is dropping leaves"?

    Well, one might well think either! But Rödl, on the account give here, says that one cannot think "The tree is dropping it's leaves". That looks very odd.

    But this is a bit different, since that the tree is dropping leaves is not a thought. It's a tree, dropping leaves.

    Now it seems to me pretty apparent that, that the tree is dropping leaves can be called the"content" of a thought, and that what being "the content of a thought" is, is worthy of some consideration. However, since what a thought is, is not all that clear, there are compound issues with being clear as to the content of a though. Perhaps this explains much of the puzzlement hereabouts.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    My interlocutor keeps lying. — Leontiskos
    Interesting. One of mine refuses to engage in the topic at hand.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪Leontiskos
    You are attacking me instead of addressing the topic.

    Show us where Quine is wrong. Or agree with him. At the very least, show some recognition of the actual arguments involved.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪Leontiskos
    Davidson was talking about Quine, so yes.

    Address the Gavagai problem. It's the basis of this thread.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    Yes, it is clearly wrong. — Leontiskos
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪Leontiskos
    Show that you have understood the argument that Quine presented. You entered this conversation with "Yes, it is clearly wrong". Show us how by addressing the gavagai problem.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    Quine showed a problem with interpretation. Davidson showed how charity allowed us to be confident of our interpretations. @Darkneos misunderstood the discussion. Tim thinks it's about essences. Leon has not shown that he understands any of this. Frank has.

    ↪Leontiskos
    Then we'll leave it at that.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪Leontiskos
    If you would progress this thread, address the gavagai example.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪frank
    There is a blatant refusal of folk here to address what Quine actually argued.
    Be serious. — Leontiskos
    Can you show how Alex, in the story, can determine the referent of "gavagai"? — Banno
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪Leontiskos
    Cheers. :roll:
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    But reference isn't inscrutable so his argument must be wrong. — Leontiskos
    Can you show how Alex, in the story, can determine the referent of "gavagai"?
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    The only thing with the essence of a tiger would be a tiger, not a collection of symbols. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    So what the essence of tiger is, what makes it a tiger. Ok, what makes it a tiger?

    I don't see "essence is transcendental." What is that supposed to mean? — Count Timothy von Icarus
    How do we make sense of
    Aristotle says essence isn't "in" things, but you might say it is "in" them in a trancedentalese sense. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    You seemed to say there that essence is transcendental, but now you say it isn't. I don't know what it is supposed to mean.

    I do not understand what an essence is, for you.
  • p and "I think p"
    ↪J
    Cheers.

    There is a logical error that consists in treating something as being firm and clear when it isn't.

    "Thought" may not be the sort of word that has a firm and clear use. Certainly, not all thoughts are assertions. I jus thad a thought - what if it's not an oak tree?

    My concept of a thought2 is of a proposition — J
    So "The tree is dropping leaves" is a thought, but what about that the tree is dropping leaves? I gather that, being an idealist, Rödl wants that to be a thought too. That strikes me as somewhat odd.

    If the conclusion is that "what if it's not an oak?" is not a thought, but that it is dropping leaves is a thought, then something has gone quite amiss.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪Leontiskos
    I suggest, again, that the discussion begin with the gavagai example:

    https://medium.com/@ranjanrgia/thought-experiment-1-gavagai-70ae1bfc792a

    Does it show, as
    ↪frank
    put it, that there's no fact of the matter regarding "Gavagai" referring to the rabbit?

    And can folk see how this is quite different to
    ...because we have different words that we use for the same thing that there is no one referent for a specific thing and that therefor translation in speech wouldn’t be possible? — Darkneos
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    How would we know the correct definition of "tiger"? — J

    Presumably if it specifies the things in virtue of which all tigers are tigers, while not having anything that isn't a tiger fall under the definition. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    Artifacts wouldn't have an essence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    Essences would belong to organisms most properly, maybe other natural kinds. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    yet

    "Atom with 79 protons," seems to cover gold pretty well. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    I think a crucial distinction missed in most analytical attempts to return to essences is that they aren't supposed to be something like a mathematical/logical entity. To assume this would be to presuppose that "what it is to be" something is reducible to such a thing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    Essence is "what something is," existence is "that it is." And this is how you get to the idea that essence doesn't explain existence. What a tiger is doesn't imply that tigers should exist. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    Aristotle says essence isn't "in" things, but you might say it is "in" them in a trancedentalese sense. That is, essence isn't a component of things, a part, or spatially located in things, it's what they are. — Count Timothy von Icarus



    So essence "specifies the things in virtue of which all tigers are tigers, while not having anything that isn't a tiger fall under the definition" but "isn't a component of things, a part, or spatially located in things, it's what they are"; the essence of gold is given by it's atomic number but it is not the essence of a bishop in a chess game to remain on its own colour, essence is not reducible to a logical entity, whatever that is, essence does not explain existence and is transcendental. When a child sees a tiger they recognise it as such by some sort of communion with it's essence.

    Hm.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪frank
    It's complicated. :wink:
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪frank
    On Quine's account, yep.
  • p and "I think p"
    I'm beginning to doubt that it is worth continuing with this.



    ↪Wayfarer
    Thanks again for your notes.

    Separating force and content is to do with extensionality, not with objectivity.

    And again, it may be worth explaining what extensionality is. It's simply that {a,b,c} and {c,b,a} and {a,a,b,,c} are the very same - that the order of the elements and number of times they are listed is discounted. It is about avoiding equivocation.

    This is mentioned in the page you cited earlier.
    When someone reasons p, if p then q, therefore q, then the same must be thought in the first and in the second premise, if the inference is not to rest on an equivocation. However, to assert if p then q is not to assert p. So the force, the assent to the proposition, cannot be inside the proposition to which it is the assent. The force-­ content distinction enables us to describe and understand all ­ these phenomena. Thus it has ­ great explanatory power. — p.37
    But this is muddled. "...the same must be thought in the first and in the second premise, if the inference is not to rest on an equivocation" is ambiguous - the same what? p and p⊃q are clearly not the same thought. What extensionality demands is that the "p" in the first and the "p" in the second refer to the very same thing; it does not demand, as Rödl implies here, that the "p" and the "p⊃q", are "the same".

    Perhaps this is again an issue of style. It does not aid in taking Rödl seriously.
  • p and "I think p"
    ↪Wayfarer
    I only use the example because @J did, after @RussellA. I might have asked which of "I know the tree is an oak" or "The tree is an oak" is an example of think2.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    What, the fact that you don't seem to have even grasped the very basics of what you're talking about? — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Perhaps. I had in mind Fine's rejection of Quine's holism. Kripke's origin essentialism works well. One might make sense of essences by using Searle's status functions; something along the lines of Fine's argument but using "counts as..." to set up what Fine calls a definite.

    That is, remaining on it's own colour might arguably be a part of the essence of being a bishop, since a piece that did not remain on it's own colour could not count as a bishop.

    But that might not sit well with your suggestion that things have essences that are grasped rather than granted.

    But leave it. Let's see where @J is going.
  • p and "I think p"
    We all know what it means to quote a sentence, an utterance, but it is not so clear what we mean when we talk about "quoting a thought." To quote an utterance is surely to quote the language used; but must that be true of what we report about a thought? Intuitively, it seems wrong. My thought in English is going to be the same as your thought in Spanish, even at the level of quotation. To put it another way, what makes a thought "thought1" rather than "thought2" is not a matter of holding the language steady, but of occurrence in time: "thought1" specifies my thought or your thought at times T1 and 2; "thought 2" specifies what we are both thinking about. — J

    An utterance does occur at at a time and place. Indeed, you seem here to run two ideas together - the first, rejecting the notion that a thought occurs in a particular language, the second, accepting that a thought occurs at a particular time.

    And you seem to fluctuate between though2 as "I think that the tree is an oak" and "The tree is an oak". From what Pat said, don't you need it to be the latter? But on that account, Rödl is on the face of it mistaken, since these two sentences are about quite different things.

    You've got the "think1/think2" distinction down perfectly. — J
    See the problem? Is Think2 "I know my hand hurts" or is it "My hand hurts"?
  • Australian politics
    Still reckon we're heading for a coalition government with Labour and others. — Wayfarer
    Did you mean minority government?

    Might be the best outcome.
  • p and "I think p"
    I think there's a larger issue. — Wayfarer
    Whatever. I was pointing to the prose style in my two quotes.
  • p and "I think p"
    ↪Wayfarer
    Just pointing out that these issues were addressed at the time, and since. Yes, in many ways Rödl is anachronistic. He appears to be rehashing debates about reference.
  • p and "I think p"
    Thanks.
    What I realized was: This structure parallels “I think p” using “says” as the verb instead of “thinks”. — J
    Yep. The use of "says" rather than "thinks" removes a large part of the ambiguity that plagues this thread. So many unkempt posts.

    Your think1 and think2 seem to parallel the difference between an utterance and a proposition.
    A. I said "A wolf is a carnivore."
    B. I said "Canis lupus is a carnivore."
    C. A wolf is a carnivore.
    D. Canis lupus is a carnivore.

    A and B are opaque (non extensional). If what you said was "A wolf is a carnivore" then you did not say "Canis lupus is a carnivore." C and D are transparent (extensional). If a wolf is a carnivore then Canis lupus is a carnivore.

    And keep in mind here that extensionality is just being able to substitute without changing truth value.

    So making an utterance is different to making a proposition in that the former is not extensional, while the latter is. Is that what you have in mind on your think1 and think2? Becasue if so, then think1 is different to think2, and it seems Pat is correct.
  • Australian politics
    More on Liberal policy: Dutton’s 2025 launch still leaves voters needing answers on key policies

    Michelle Grattan is a seasoned, well-respected journalist and commentator:
    Dutton keeps promising more answers later, but at some point this will start to look like a ploy for concealing the vacuums that need filling with finer print.
  • p and "I think p"
    The seminal article of Frege's is called 'The Thought: A Logical Investigation' which explicitly identifies propositions and thoughts. — Wayfarer
    So the present topic is Hegel catching up with the logic of the turn of the last century. Fine.
  • p and "I think p"
    ↪J
    It is at the nub of the argument. — Wayfarer
    So I asked what a "Fregian proposition" is and received in reply explanations about what a thought is.

    Now I've also been told that for Frege the sense of an expression is the thought it expresses. And that for Frege a proposition denoted a truth value. And that Russell showed something of how Frege was mistaken in On Denoting - a far more influential paper, set aside only with the advent of possible world semantics. Russell's paper is the one that includes the following gem:
    (2) By the law of excluded middle, either "A is B" or "A is not B" must be true. Hence either "the present King of France is bald" or "the present King of France is not bald" must be true. Yet if we enumerated the things that are bald, and then the things that are not bald, we should not find the present King of France in either list. Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig.
    That's besides the point of this thread, of course. I'm left with the impression that Rödl, and perhaps others, are going to an extreme in order not to agree that a name has a referent, and that the things we refer to can be grouped - on order, that is, to avoid a bit of formal logic.

    Rödl, especially chapter 9, seems to have noticed the intentionality involved in referring to that with the name "oak tree", and to have mistaken it for making a judgement. So he offers:
    The concept of what is, which signifies the range of jurisdiction of the laws of logic, is the concept of the object of judgment. And the concept of the object of judgment is none other than the concept of judgment, which is self-consciousness. The articulation of the concept of what is, in laws that are comprehended to govern what is universally, is the articulation of the self-­ consciousness of judgment. — p147
    (We are it seems to return to the obtuse philosophical style that was rejected by Frege, Russell, Moore and a few others. A retrograde step) Extensional logic, and hence rational discourse, is indeed grounded in "picking out" individuals. In so far as that is Rödel's argument, he has my agreement.

    When Pat looks out the window and wonders if that tree is an oak or an elm, they are wondering about that tree. That it is a tree is not peculiar nor private to Pat alone, but something on which we all might agree. In this way it is not an "I think" that accompanies Pat's wondering, but a "we think". Pat is not making an individual judgement so much as participating in a group activity. Whether the tree out the window is to be placed with the oaks or the elms is not just an arbitrary judgement to be made by Pat, but a step in a broader activity in which others participate.

    In answer to the OP, "p" and "I think that p" at the very least can be distinguished on these grounds.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    That doesn't say much. In some possible world Socrates was an alien. So leave it.
  • Australian politics
    Here's case in point of the inability of the Liberal Party to put together a coherent opinion, let alone a policy. They released a pamphlet over the weekend.

    Crikey's back, so there's some interesting Journalism around. See Bernard Keane's response.
  • What does Quine mean by Inscrutability of Reference
    Things have essences. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    A brief critique of essence.

    An essence of some item is the set of properties that are necessary and sufficient for it to be that item.

    A necessary property of some item is one that is correctly attributed to that item in all possible worlds.

    It is a trivial exercise to posit a possible world in which any particular property associated with an item is absent from that item.

    Therefore the notion of essence is problematic.     — Banno

    Where to from here? Quine had little time for essences.
  • Unsolvable Political Problems
    ↪Arcane Sandwich
    See https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/950033
  • Bidzina Ivanishvili
    ↪SophistiCat
    And hence,
    It will be interesting to see how the fate of this oligarch plays out. — Banno
    I doubt Putin, who is stretched pretty thin, is in a position to provide support to Ivanishvili. And that Georgia is nothing like Syria is further reason to play it some attention.

    Who or what replaces Putin when his time comes? Things could always be worse. — Tom Storm
    Indeed.
  • p and "I think p"
    ↪J
    I wasn't able to follow much of the differentiation between thinking p and thinking that p.

    "Fregian proposition". What's that?

    These notes are terrific, — J
    Yep.
    ↪Wayfarer
    ,
    ↪Wayfarer
    thanks.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    "So you believe you could have fixed the problem?"

    "No, I know I could fix it."     — Count Timothy von Icarus

    Are you saying that our fixer knows they can, but doesn't believe they can? The point here to work through the various ways in which "I know" is used? it would be prejudicial to supose that any was paradigmatic.
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