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  • p and "I think p"
    Judgment is a fundamental activity of thought — Wayfarer
    Then it seems I was right; he only thinks in terms of assertions. He doesn't think of questions.

    In asking what sort of tree that is, one is already supposing that there are trees of different sorts... is that the idea?

    If so, where does the "I" come from? It's not just I who thinks there are different sorts of trees...
  • p and "I think p"
    ↪Wayfarer
    What events are not mental events? — Banno
  • p and "I think p"
    ↪Wayfarer
    Then your use of "mental event" is quite broad. I suppose that follows from your idealism.

    What events are not mental events?
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    You seem to not acknowledge that there are uses of "I know..." outside JTB — Sam26
    Rather, I was wondering whether you made that acknowledgement. The wording 'Not every language game involving the use of "I know..." is about an epistemological language game (JTB)' strikes me as problematic, again. Epistemology is, arguably, the study of "I know..." more than of JTB.

    Cheers, thanks for humouring me.

    the whole Gettier problem is misguided — Sam26
    I quite agree.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    ↪Arcane Sandwich
    Gettier is just a repeat of the aporia of the ending of the Theaetetus. Let's not.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    ↪Sam26
    Then as an account of the uses of "I know...", JTB is incomplete.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    ↪Sam26
    Cool. Then the JTB definition is incomplete?
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    I would say they aren't JTB at all, and that's Witt's point. — Sam26

    So there are legitimate uses of "I know..." that are not instances of justified true belief?
  • p and "I think p"
    ↪Wayfarer
    So there are mental events that are not thoughts?

    The parasympathetic nervous system controls salivation. Is salivation then to be thought of as a mental event?
  • p and "I think p"
    the I think accompanies all our thoughts — J
    Is that saying something profound, along the lines that any thought must include some notion of the self... or is it merely the grammatical observation that to think is to have a thought? Because the latter is pretty analytic, while the former is at best dubious.

    Is Rödl just confusing these two reading, and thinking that he has made a discovery when all he has done is make a stipulation?
  • p and "I think p"
    Makes me wonder if Rodl is also limiting "all our thoughts" to propositional thoughts. — J

    He seems to be. Considering too few alternatives is a common failing in such situations.

    If you want to discover the use of "thinking", it pays to be wary that you are not stipulating it. So "A thought is a mental event"... is it? Are there other mental events that are not thoughts? If so, how do they differ? Are there mental phenomena that are not events? If not, what is the word "event" doing - would we be better off thinking of mental phenomena? Is a toothache a mental phenomenon, a mental event or a thought? All this by way of showing that the surrounds may not be the neat garden Rödl seems to be seeing. It may be a bit of a jungle.
  • p and "I think p"
    @J – Are these refinements to the use of "thought" and "think" discovered, or simply stipulated?

    And again, not all thoughts have the form of a statement. One can think of a question. So what is the mental content of "What sort of tree is that?"
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    I believe that JTB is still a good definition, but given OC, it needs a bit more nuance. — Sam26
    But did Wittgenstein continue to believe it was a good definition?

    "Don't think, look!"

    "I know I have a toothache - how silly of you to suppose otherwise!". "I know where my hand is".

    These look to be reasonable, straight forward uses of "I know..." and yet they are problematic for the JTB account. The use of "I know..." is broader than the JTB account sanctions. The game is played, in such a way that the JTB account is inadequate to explain it.

    I had my tonsils out and was in the Evelyn Nursing Home feeling sorry for myself. Wittgenstein called. I croaked: I feel just like a dog that has been run over. He was disgusted: “You don't know what a dog that has been run over feels like.”

    Would he also say that you don't know that you have a toothache?

    And if he did, would he be right? Or would he be delineating "know" in an arbitrary fashion, against his admonition to look to use?

    I don't think it contrary to the OC to say Wittgenstein was arguing for the inadequacy of Justified True Belief. And he would be in good company.

    But this is one of the problems with working on an unfinished document.
  • p and "I think p"
    Mac users - if you go to Control Panel>Keyboard>Text Replacements, you can enter Rödl with the umlaut to replace every instance of the name typed without it. — Wayfarer
    Or just hold the "o" down and press 4. ö.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    My account of JTB is a bit more nuanced than what you might normally hear from those who hold to JTB. — Sam26
    Yes, and my apologies if I implied otherwise. Your account of Wittgenstein is excellent, well-researched and coherent. But I do not quite agree with it. The problem is working out exactly where...

    My target was a critique of Wittgenstein that misrepresented his views. Perhaps that has been cleared up.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    I never suggested they were. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Good. But you did say "
    A. Knowledge is belief. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    That's pretty clearly an equation. The problem was more your expression than my comprehension.

    And:
    Wittgenstein stays within his narrow analytic context (since he never much ventured beyond it), but the idea that:

    A. Knowledge is belief.
    B. That truth (particularly in a "traditional sense") requires justification.

    Are both historically hotly contested issues.     — Count Timothy von Icarus
    suggests that Wittgenstein had the contestable view that knowledge is the very same as belief. Again, you said as much. And again, he did not.

    But if that is now not what you meant, we might move on. So now we can deal with
    knowledge cannot be belief. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    But one must surely believe what one knows? "I know it's raining, but I don't believe it!" is ironic? A play on our expectations?

    Am I reading you too literally, again?
  • Australian politics
    Instead we get governance based on 3 year long reelection political decision making with very limited trust in oppositions. — kazan

    So I find myself trusting in the six-year term of what Keating called "that unrepresentative swill". But the Senate gives equal weighting to the states, and so not to intelligence or problem-solving potential.

    Again, the Senate may well be more significant than the Reps after the forthcoming election. Especially if we have a minority government. The bastards will have to negotiate.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    2. Where do we find Wittgenstein claiming that knowledge is justified true belief? — Fooloso4
    See my last. I rather think that he can be read as showing that JTB is too narrow. But On Certainty is unfinished, so we simply do not have his conclusions. Just my conjecture.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    What?

    I'm pointing out that
    A. Knowledge is belief. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    is not a presumption of analytic philosophy. They are not equivalent. Knowledge is (sometimes) taken as that subclass of beliefs that are true, and that have some other feature often summarised as "justified".

    But, see https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4982 This is not a majority view.

    All this by way of pointing out that simplistic talk of analytic approaches will not cut it.

    Hence,
    1. Where in the grammar of ordinary language do we find the idea that knowledge is justified true belief? — Fooloso4
    ...is spot on. "I know that this is my hand" is quite clear and correct English. If we are to look to use instead of meaning, then "justified true belief" might give way to a more nuanced account. So the charitable approach to "On Certainty" is that Wittgenstein is chastising those philosophers who would take the JTB account seriously, pointing out that it is just another example of doing philosophy badly.

    Sorry, @Sam26.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    Of course knowledge must be true. A true belief is a belief though. The contested position would be that knowledge is merely (justified) true belief. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    You implied - stated - that Wittgenstein, and analytic approaches generally, equate belief and knowledge. That is not so.

    Hegel doesn't object to much at all anymore. He has had others do that for him, what with being dead and all. Whether they represent his views or not is moot.

    You still seem to be off target.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    A. Knowledge is belief. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Wittgenstein certainly did not equate knowledge and belief. He consistently takes knowledge to be both believed and true, and spends much effort in working through what else is needed.

    B. That truth (particularly in a "traditional sense") requires justification. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Truth does not require justification. A proposition may be either true or not true, regardless of its being justified, known or believed.

    So it seems to me you are off target.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    ↪Joshs
    Again, as in our previous exchange, you take a tone of disagreeing with me while saying things with which I agree.

    Presenting an argument is a language game. If a proposition is to function as an assumption in an argument it must have a truth value. And " it always must be asked in what sense, what context of use, within what language game I mean to use this word"; and this is the case "If I say that something is true", or for any other use to which I might put language. And "To state that a truth value is a property of propositions that function as assumptions in an argument is to lay out the terms of a language game.

    But"
    ...such assumptions are not themselves amenable to ascertainment of truth value. — Joshs
    Well, no. We do assign truth value to some propositions, but we also work out the truth value of other propositions. Not all assumptions must be hinges.

    But apart from that, we seem to be agreeing.
  • Unsolvable Political Problems
    Here's the first three sentences:
    Humans have material bodies with material needs. So, the material is the most immediate cause of everything that happens. Therefore, if a person has the power to kill you, he has power over you to make you do anything, up until the point where you'd rather die. — Brendan Golledge

    Read that again to yourself, slowly. It's not an argument, not a sequence of ideas that follow one from the other. It's a sequence of assertions, with an illegitimate "therefore" thrown in, presumably as a pretence to rationality.

    Humans have minds as well as material bodies. Nor does it follow, from our bodies being material, that most of the causes of our actions are material; that we have minds implies instead that at least some of our actions are chosen rather than caused by our material circumstances. That's what a mind does.

    Then there is the odd jump to violence. And the post goes down hill from there.

    Hence, drivel.

    Parochial, becasue the view taken is yet again the American Myth, this time in its libertarian variation, the Robert Heinlein Republican machismo. It's self-justification when what is needed is self reflection.

    You're another moron who replies to my threads... — Brendan Golledge
    I'll agree that replying to your thread is moronic. Better things to do.

    Cheers.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    ↪Joshs
    It's a simple and fairly direct point. If a proposition is to function as an assumption in an argument it must have a truth value. So if hinge propositions are to "ground" our deductions, they must have a truth value.

    Here is a hand. Therefore there are hands. f(a)⊢∃(x)(fx).

    So "here is a hand" must be true.

    I don't know what to make of "the sense of ‘ know’ and ‘true’ are not the same for hinge propositions as for particular facts within the games that they set up". I don't see that we need say there is a different sort of "true" for hinge than for other propositions. And if Wittgenstein is right then we cannot properly be said to know hinge propositions, since they cannot be doubted; and if that is so, then what is one to make of saying we know hinge propositions in a way that is different to other propositions?

    So I do not see that there is a "distinction between the sense of ‘true’ with regard to a way of setting up a language game and an observation within that language game".

    And language games are played or not. I don't know what to make of saying that they 'are true or unintelligible'. If a language game were unintelligible, what grounds could there be for claiming it was a language game at all? (Davidson, again).

    So I'm not sure how to respond to your post.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    ↪Sam26
    So what is the point of disagreement? I'm really not sure, apart from my not being keen on "pre-linguistic beliefs" nor on your separation of truth from epistemology.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    it just depends on the language game being used. — Sam26
    Trouble is that language games are not discrete.

    It is true that the bishop never changes from the colour square it starts on; this is a consequence of the hinge propositions that set the game up. If these hinges were not true, then we could reach no such conclusion about the bishop.

    If it appears that I lump all language games about truth into a single mix, that is becasue the games around knowledge and the games around truth are not unrelated. One can only have justified true beliefs if there are truths.

    And if hinge propositions are not normal propositions, they are not abnormal, either. There is nothing deviant or undesirable in their use. Rather than being distinct from epistemology, hinges are foundational.
  • Unsolvable Political Problems
    The OP is Parochial Drivel.

    Folk who cooperate will always be better off than those who do not. The myth of masculine competition is talk amongst the boys around the camp fire; it keeps them out of the way while everyone else gets on with making things work.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    100℃ counts as the temperature at which water boils at sea level. That's not an observation about how the world is, but a way of setting up a language game that talks about temperature. One cannot be mistaken about water boiling at 100℃ or about ice melting at 0℃; 100℃ is the temperature at which water boils and 0℃ is the temperature at which ice melts. These are examples of hinge propositions.

    To doubt that water boils at 100℃ is not to doubt some observation, but to fail to understand what 100℃ is.

    And again, it is a mistake to think that these propositions are not true. If they were not true, we could not use them to make observations or deductions.
  • How do you know the Earth is round?
    Find a large area of flat terrain (here in Australia that is not difficult.) Point to a feature on the horizon of said area. Drive to that feature and observe it is no longer on the horizon. — Wayfarer

    Did you leave something out here?

    Find a tower on a large salt plain. Drive away from it and you will notice that the bottom of the tower disappears below the horizon. Did it just go below a slight rise, previously unseen? That's the reason for using a body of water, which could not have a "hill" in it.
  • How do you know the Earth is round?
    ↪flannel jesus


    Choose a clear cool day and take a strong pair of binoculars or a small telescope to the headlands to watch a ship sail over the horizon. You will not see the ship shrink to nothing, but sink until at last the superstructure disappears.

    Observe a number of lunar eclipses. The shadow of the Earth on the moon is always curved, both at the start and the end of the eclipse.

    Consider how many other of your beliefs would have to be false if the world were indeed flat. And how many navigators would have to be in on the conspiracy.

    But most especially, why not look up the answer, why doubt the consensus view, why think that your own experiences should have a primacy that is beyond doubt? Think about the attitude that folk take into a discussion such as this - are they looking to disprove their existing view, or just to confirm it? What, for them, counts as a disproof?

    Becasue no evidence ever forces you to a particular position. There are always auxiliary hypotheses that you can employ to prevent your pet doctrine from being falsified. For some, the cup really contains the blood of Christ, despite all the evidence to the contrary. At some stage you, and only you, must decide what to believe, and that is about you, not about the way the world is.
  • Australian politics
    Left | Right | Out

    An analysis of how Australian voters see their position on the left-right scale. Age, property and god are conservative, while the educated tend to the left. The central party in Australia is the ALP, the Libs leaning to the right and the greens to the left (see fig. 1.)

    Yes, the socialist party is seen as most central. Australians do have a preference for socialist policy, quite a difference to the US.
  • Australian politics
    Albo... — Tom Storm

    ... lacks the arrogance of the historically most successful ALP leaders. And I can't decide if that is a negative or a positive.

    He's been unwilling to make strong policy decisions. Negative gearing should have been changed, Aukus reconsidered, and long overdue reforms in health and eduction implemented.

    But again, perhaps keeping away from controversy will work.

    But it's dull.
  • Australian politics
    But I am thinking more about extravagant claims and blatant lies, stunts and fear mongering. — Tom Storm
    ...all in Abbott's record.

    The issue is, will the Australian population be taken in, in sufficient numbers, for the Liberal Party to gain an absolute majority? They have been sliding slowly into conservatism for a long while, and the disenfranchised middle class are retaliating through the teal independents. Liberal failure to address energy, housing and environmental issues in their last government hangs over their heads still, and looks unlikely to change.

    Australians have a natural, inveterate aversion to smart arses not shared by 'mercans. I hope imitating a Trump-like campaign would just increase the disenfranchisement of their middle ground.

    Look at Clive Palmer, $100 million for a single Senate seat.
  • Australian politics
    ↪Tom Storm
    They are all present, funny, charming and smart...

    But in answer to your question, Dutton is I think more like Abbott than Trump.
  • Australian politics
    ↪Tom Storm
    My general view is that the Liberal Party is opportunistic, run by Old Boys who live by their own Entitlement. When forced to make policy, which they hate to do, they reach for vaguely liberal, market ideology. They studied Law, and sometimes economics, but never science, let alone humanities.

    They like Dutton because he is from Queensland, has a certain machismo and never had an original thought.

    Dutton learned at the feet of Abbott, and will follow that playbook.
  • Australian politics
    ↪Arcane Sandwich
    Are you surprised? Think about it.
  • Australian politics
    https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=billabong%2C+outback&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3
  • p and "I think p"
    Cheers.

    Rödl calls this kind of statement "a thorn in the side" of propositional logic — J
    Again I'd point out hat this is a misappraisal. The problem is not with propositional logic, but with interpretation. The conceptual puzzles are us working out wha the structure of such sentences might be.

    Speech act theory is much more useful than talk of world 2 and world 3. "Thought" is a group terms for a range of activities, "I wonder...", "I assert...". "I suggest..." and so on. These are each slightly different in ways that clumping them together hide. And declaratives explain how the structures thought of as part of world 3 come about.
  • p and "I think p"
    ↪J
    I don't think I can help here. How a sentence is parsed in logic depends on the task in hand. So even "The oak tree is shedding its leaves" might be parsed as "is shedding its leaves (the oak tree )", with the form f(a); or as "Is shedding(The oak tree, its leaves), with the form f(a,b); and the possibilities multiply in the other examples. Explicitly, there is no standard way to parse "I think that φ".

    I'd add that this is not a problem for logic, but for English, in that "I think..." is unclear, and even ambiguous, outside of a context, and hence first order logic has multiple options as to how to pars it.

    In particular, is "Pat thinks the Oak is shedding its leaves" something Pat experiences, as your OP implies, or something Pat does?

    So yes, C and D are logical problematic, in that there are multiple ways to set out their structure.
  • Do you consider logic a part of philosophy or its own separate field?
    ↪Dorrian
    Once, logic was thought of as setting out rules for rationality. Now it is thought of as setting out the structures we use in our language. When you read, watch or engage in metaphysics or other philosophical discussions, you are for better or worse engaged in an examination of the structure of those discussions, and hence of their logic.

    That is, in doing philosophy, you have no choice but to therein be doing logical analysis.

    And you can do that analysis either implicitly or explicitly. Doing it explicitly will make your argument clearly, thus enabling a better grasp of what you are saying. Doing it implicitly will leave you open to others explicit analysis and perhaps rejection of your argument.

    Studying logic is understanding the tools you use in doing philosophy.
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