I'm claiming that all three statements have different truth conditions. — J

Sure. Does any one suggest otherwise?

J and Banno may be "saying the same thing," but the statements are not. — J

The "that" in both "J judges that to be true" and "Banno judges that to be true" both have as referent "The cat is on the mat". That is why they are "saying the same thing".

I'm puzzled that this is an issue.

...stipulative... — J

That's what I had in mind. I don't see how you could assert a sentence without thereby stipulating that you judge it to be true. Asserting the sentence counts as judging it to be true.

Again, is there something here that is problematic?

"the cat is on the mat" and "Jack is on the mat" two propositions or one? — Ludwig V

I should have been clearer - my apologies. It's if the speaker does not know that jack is the cat's name. So we have

The cat is on the mat
The speaker believes that the cat is on the mat

The cat=jack

And by substitution,

the speaker believes that Jack is on the mat

Which is not the case. I'm just pointing to the opacity of propositional attitudes.

My question is whether "I judge that sentence to be true" ever follows from "That sentence is true"? If I assert the latter, have I also committed myself to asserting the former? — J

The answer is straightforward. From "That sentence is true" it does not follow that "I judge that sentence to be true". Neither does it follow from "I judge that sentence to be true" that "That sentence is true. The context is not extensional.

If you assert "That sentence is true" you have also committed to "I judge that sentence to be true" on the grounds that to assert a sentence counts as to judge it to be true. This is not an entailment but a performance.

I don't think any other discipline has asked for philosophy's help or wants it. — Srap Tasmaner

Philosophers don't wait to be asked...

This is the same issue that bedeviled the other thread, that you need something to dissect. — Srap Tasmaner

There's no shortage, is there? starting with how many legs does a spider have, and working on from there...

Williamson would absolutely agree to carefully examining theories, with the goal of improving them or producing better ones, not with the expectation they'll all be left dead on the dissecting table. — Srap Tasmaner

I suspect that the philosophers now working on metametaphyscis and so on see themselves as working on the same issue, but re-cast as a result of the considerations from, amongst others, Williamson, Chalmers, Dummett and so on.

It's not an autopsy.

I don's see that this is not captured.

• The cat is on the mat.
• J judges that to be true
• Banno judges that to be true.

Indeed, they amount to much the same view... — Banno

I don't think there's any fact of the matter regarding shared nor individual intentionality — frank

Then how do you explain a football game?

It might be worth pointing out that intuitionistic logic is a proper subset of classical propositional logic: everything provable in intuitionistic logic is provable classically, but not the other way around. It’s consistent, and it has a semantics—Kripke models, for example—that is both sound and complete.

What it doesn’t assume is the law of excluded middle or double negation elimination. That’s the point.

Dummett made use of it in his work—especially in his arguments against classical realism about meaning.

If we are tempted to agree with Dummett might give consideration to what it is we are agreeing.

If we are tempted to disagree with Dummett we might do well to understand the solidity of the foundation on which he stands.

Why do I feel like I just walked into the Meno? — Srap Tasmaner

:razz:

Do you think that "learning" in philosophy amounts to becoming clear about what you already know? Or can philosophy provide us with knowledge we did not have before? — Srap Tasmaner

Isn't becoming clearer about what you already know a way to improve your knowledge? At the least, I'm not convinced that they are mutually exclusive...

I've in mind Midgley's plumbing model of philosophy. We get the plumbing right, and then are we still doing philosophy? I'm suspicious about that. I do think philosophy can to some extent provide a service to other disciplines, fixing the leaks and bad smells.

Back to the demarcation criteria I suggested: philosophy happens when we stop doing things with words and start looking instead at how we do things with words; how those words work. Doing philosophy involves going back and looking again at what we have said, and checking how it hangs together. Dissection.

Now, a corollary of that: it remains undecided if what is left over when we get the plumbing right is still philosophy, or has become something else.

So "learning" in philosophy is at least becoming clear about what you already know, but maybe philosophy might provide us with knowledge we did not have before, after it gets through fixing the pipes. I remain unconvinced.

But "What is a proposition?" would make an excellent thread...

I'd suggest some sort of shared intentionality, social intent, along the lines proffered by Searle. Shared intent as opposed to individual intent. That for a non-extensional account.

Alternately, after Davidson: aren't "the cat is on the mat" spoken by J and "the cat is on the mat" spoken by @frank both true under the very same circumstances? That is, they are extensional equivalent - so what's the issue?

Yep!

Yep. Chalmers et al took themselves to be working on the same problem, as can bee seen in his Ontological Anti-Realism - he's explicitly re-casting the problem as about metametaphysics, and arguing an antirealist case from there. But the upshot appears to have been a move past the realism/antirealism dichotomy, a re-framing of the activity.

Inter-disciplinary work has developed well in recent decades... — Ludwig V

A result of philosophers being forced to pay their way, perhaps - of economics, rather than largess on the part of philosophers.

I'm trying to bring in the 1st person judgment. We can stipulate that we will use "assert" so as to mean that "The cat is on the mat" and "It is true that the cat is on the mat" assert the same thing. Indeed, this is very often how we use "assert." But does this get us to "I judge that the cat is on the mat" or "I judge that it is true that the cat is on the mat"? Are these formulations also meant to say the same thing? How? — J

I'm lost here. We have it that "the cat is on the mat" can have a particular interpretation, understood whether it is true or not; and we have it that "I judge that sentence to be true" is a distinct, albeit not seperate, item.

Is that not so?

But nowhere here are we talking about arguments showing that people actually agree, or argument as a means of clarifying, or any of the things you said and that I was asking about. Are we just moving on? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, the argument did indeed move on. Disenchantment with the global framing of the debate led to the rise of localism, Phil os science moved away from examination of method and towards examining scientific language and culture, and modal theories of causation. Philosophers moved to metemetaphysics, after the book by that title, a sideline of neo-Aristotelian approaches as a reaction against Quine, another sideline on the construction of social reality, and so on. Pholsophers got board with the lack of progress and moved on.

...do you think that clarity tends to dissolve disagreements because it shows most disagreements to have been merely verbal? — Srap Tasmaner

Sometimes, not always. It also can bring out differences in aesthetic, in what the proponents are seeking.

I think Williamson considers the end goal knowledge. — Srap Tasmaner

Ok, lets' settle on clear knowledge... :wink:

But I can't see that "The speaker holds true..." is at all helpful. What's unclear about "X believes that the cat is on the mat"? — Ludwig V

Well, there's the issues of substitution. If the cat's name is "Jack", does the speaker also believe that Jack is on the mat? It seems not. And yet Jack = the cat.

Hence the analysis "The cat is on the mat" and "The speaker holds that true", where that indicates the previous sentence. This has the benefit of separating the belief from the fact.

Davidson was not able to give up the search. — Ludwig V

I missed something.

"Better" in virtue of what? — Count Timothy von Icarus

If you have trouble deciding, I'll do it for you.

One side should eventually have an argument that the other side accepts ― if not as entirely dispositive, then convincing enough that they consider their own position discredited and abandon the fight. — Srap Tasmaner

One might think so, but this is not what happened in the realism/antirealism argument. No solution was found, no one side was shown to be discredited. So was the argument pointless? I don't think so.

It slowly sank in that there was not one, but many questions here - that what is real in mathematics is not the same as what is real in science or as what is real in ethics. Global discussion gave way to discussions about the kinds of objects particular discourses commit us to. Antirealism was seen to be dependent on internal accounts of reference that were difficult to explain. The turn was towards metametaphysics - and still is, I suspect. So the issues now concern metaphysical methodology.

So clarity may still be the end goal.


Metaphysics is not discovering the deep structure of the world per se, but proposing better ways to conceptualize and systematize our thought and language.”

Is the point of an argument to show that? — Srap Tasmaner

Might be.

What if the disagreement is not just about how to say what we agree on? — Srap Tasmaner

Might be.

...why you would reach for the word "argument" at all instead of, say, "explanation" or some other word. — Srap Tasmaner

An argument is variously a quarrel or a line of reasoning, and sometimes both. And sometimes the quarrel concerns a difference that may be sorted by a line of reasoning - an argument that dissolves an argument, as it were.

Williamson is advocating explicit and clear lines of reasoning. He's doing this in order to move past the discussion being a mere quarrel.

Yep. That she feels cold is not a matter of opinion. Not even her own - she's just cold.

Further, that I judge that she feels cold is a seperate issue - not entirely unrelated, of course, but my judgement makes no difference to her feeling cold.

Interesting that such a simple example should require so much finessing. Again, showing the need for detail.

Why would you or I bother with arguments at all? — Srap Tasmaner

Perhaps when someone thinks you and I have the same instinct about this, that there's really one shared human perspective, but say the same thing in different ways? Working out if there is agreement, or not, and what any disagreement might amount to, seems a worthy pastime.

We've gone off Williamson, sorry. — J

He wasn't that bad... :wink:

Since we got here from that paper, there must be a path from there to here.

Somethign to do with this, perhaps:

Banno's position here is interesting because he is strongly committed both to the primacy of natural language and the usefulness of classical logic. The argument he often makes is that classical logic is not something you find implicit in ordinary language, as its hidden structure, say, but you can choose to conform your language use to it. — Srap Tasmaner

Or is this just an extension from @sime, and not relevant to the topic? Was Sime's post a response to this...

She will be huddled under blankets while I am comfortable in my tee shirt. But we at least agree that she is cold while I am hot; that this is the fact of the matter. And this will be so regardless of what the thermometer shows, it would be impertinent for me to say she was mistaken here. So let's not suppose our differences to be merely subjective. — Banno

...which was in turn a response to Srap's differentiation between relative and absolute senses of "discipline". Back here:

At issue was the place of semantics as a discipline. The discussion since shows that there is a lot going on with semantics, and we might need include pragmatics.

This relates to our PM discussion of the difference between an argument as convincing someone that something is the case, and an argument as working out how best to say something that we agree is the case.

And I'll read Williamson as advocating the latter.

It's this idea that every assertion X(p) has to be a judgment. If I assert, in this special sense, "The cat is on the mat," I'm understood also to be asserting, "I judge that the cat is on the mat." — J

Have you said more here than that to assert "the cat is on the mat" is to assert that "the cat is on the mat" is true? Not seeing it.

The judgment stroke serves to seperate out the interpretation from the use - here it might be best to thinking terms of the extension of the sentence. "the cat is on the mat" will be true exactly if the cat is one of those things that are a member of the things on the mat. And this is so whether you are asking, demanding, asserting, convincing or judging.

Between the string of letters and the judgement sits the interpretation...

...does this construal allow for us also to say things like "The speaker suggests that 'The cat is on the mat' is likely to be true"? This, to me, isn't simply the same as saying "The speaker holds possible the sentence 'The cat is on the mat'." It's not just that the speaker is pointing out a possibility; they're also opining on a likelihood. I'm trying to work this back around to the ways we actually say things, which are so often in various grades of assertivity and certainty. The more I think about this, the more I appreciate the assertion-stroke! — J

We seperate the semantics from the pragmatics... and judging, holding the possibility, pointing out that possibility... these are all treated as part of the pragmatics. syntax - semantics - pragmatics; the letters or sounds, the interpretation, and what we are doing with them.

The Fregean account shows us how these bits fit together, the Wittgensteinian account reminds us that they are inseparable.

What has any of this to do with the topic of this thread - an account of the distinction between having a philosophy and doing philosophy?

Can someone relate it back to the theme?

What has any of this to do with the topic of this thread, which is a specific paper by Williamson?

Can someone relate it back to the theme?

Better, perhaps, not to use "proposition" here at all. The philosopher's finesse is usually to move from sentence to statement to assertion, although Davidson If I recall dropped "statement" and "proposition" both, leaving the gap between syntax and use as wide as possible.

He might write ""The speaker holds true the sentence 'The cat is on the mat.'" This makes clear that the speaker is doing something with a sentence.

Well said.

's point perhaps stands, in that the judgement (belief, act of making an assertion) can be seen as an association between the speaker and the proposition.

There are those amongst us who apparently seem to see no distinction between the syntactic structure and the illocutionary act.

The syntax of "the cat is on the mat" is that of a statement, to be contrasted with "Is the cat on the mat?", which has the syntax of a question.

But each may be used to the same ends. One can use "The cat is in the mat" to ask if the cat is on the mat, and one can use "Is the cat on the mat?" to make an assertion.

We must take care not to equate sentences with beliefs without anchoring them in a speaker's use.

Can they both frame assertions? — J

Both are second level predications, perhaps.

It is true that the cat is on the mat
it is possible that the cat is on the mat.

Both have the form X(the cat is on the mat), or X(p) were p is a proposition.

But they are payed out in very different ways. "the cat is on the mat" will be true IFF the cat is on the mat, but "the cat is on the mat" will be possible if the cat is on the mat in at least one possible world.

"the cat is on the mat" is the same in each. That this is so is a stipulation that allows us to talk about possibility and truth sensibly. That's to stipulate that we are playing by Frege's rules, keeping "the cat is on the mat" constant in order to look at "it is true that..." and "it is possible that...". We might alternately stipulate Wittgenstein's approach from PI, and look tot he use of "the cat is on the mat" - a hedged assertion, or an expression of hope or fear, or a counter to someone's denial.

This is much the same point as I tried in your thread p and "I think p".

It's just not the case that one and only one of these ways of talking must be the correct one in all circumstances.

To be recognised, there must be a pattern...

Duck-rabbits and frog-horses - is it really a duck, really a frog? No, it's a Duck-rabbits and it's a frog-horse. It makes no sense to ask which came first, which is it really.

Discovering and producing as the very same thing.

The even larger problem: many people don't wish to acknowledge that it is undecidable or even that their shit is made up... — Janus

See this again:

She will be huddled under blankets while I am comfortable in my tee shirt. But we at least agree that she is cold while I am hot; that this is the fact of the matter. And this will be so regardless of what the thermometer shows, it would be impertinent for me to say she was mistaken here. So let's not suppose our differences to be merely subjective. — Banno

Is it hot or cold? Or is it undecidable? Or is it just shit we made up?

None of these quite work.

I've been interested in the comments on this thread which focus on aesthetics, — J

My mention of aesthetics wasn't so much about style as about what we admire.

well, ask a silly question...


We could all go learn some physics?

Yeah, there's two views here that might seem antithetical.

The one is that there are ordered laws of nature, and they are there becasue god said so.

Now this is not much of an explanation, since whatever way the universe is, this view explains it.

The other is that the universe just is this way, that there is no reason for it being this way rather than some other.

And the same point applies: no mater how the universe is, this view works, so it doesn't serve to explain anything.


Indeed, they amount to much the same view...

I'm pleased you understood my argument.

For example, the motion of the planets around the sun? This of course is due to the law of gravity governing such motions — kindred

Is it? "Due to..." that is

The law of gravity governs the motion of the planets? Does the law cause the movement of the planets? How can a law cause such a thing?

Isn't what we call a "law" here just a description of how the planets indeed move?

And if the other laws are also just descriptions of what happens, then the answer to "why are there laws of nature?" is just "Becasue that's how we describe what happens".

If one defines regressiveness as the regurgitating of older systems of thought, then Kripke’a work is no more than a variation — Joshs

And Picasso was regressive; he was no more than a variation on Cézanne.

I agree with this, with the caveat that there is nothing wrong with "making shit up" provided we don't take it to be real, or to be the truth. — Janus

Some shit we made up might even be true.

The question is, how do you decide which is which?

My point was simply that he need not explicitly situate himself at all — Janus

Yes, fair enough. Others will situate him, of course, but that's their problem, presumably.

No, Kripke didn't use "textbook analytic philosophy".

Where traditional analytic philosophy (especially mid-20th century varieties influenced by logical positivism or the ordinary language movement) emphasized linguistic analysis aimed at dissolving philosophical problems, verificationist or deflationary attitudes toward metaphysicsand and an a priori, often conceptual, methodology, Kripke brought back robust modal metaphysics (possible worlds, necessity vs. contingency, essentialism), causal-historical accounts of reference instead of descriptivist theories, and a more realist attitude toward necessity—one that didn’t reduce it to analytic truth or linguistic convention.

In that sense, he was doing something strikingly new: not abandoning analytic philosophy, but expanding its scope and rehabilitating kinds of metaphysical argument many thought had been permanently discredited. So while he was using the tools of analytic philosophy—careful argumentation, attention to language, etc.—he was not merely repeating its "textbook" methods or conclusions.

So again, the premise of your thread - that there has been a decline in the quality of philosophy - remains unsupported.

Do you think Russell and Wittgenstein, after 1930 -32, could have managed something like this? I'm really not sure. — Srap Tasmaner

Excellent example.

[He] has a kind of mystic insight, and seems to think ordinary language is good enough for philosophy. I do not agree." — Russell, letter to Gilbert Ryle, 1945

I think what Williamson wants is for you and I to be rigorous enough that if we disagree it is clear that we do, and, in the best case, we can agree on what would count as resolving the dispute, and, in the very best case, we agree on a way of getting there and know what it is. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, it's clear enough that Russell and the later Wittgenstein disagreed; could they resolve the dispute?

Curious that Russell put so much effort into ethics - especially in his later life; yet so little into aesthetics. But I think Russell recognised that Wittgenstein had moved on to doing an aesthetics of philosophy; and didn't like it. So no resolution between them; however we might be able to see what their differences were, and to articulate the psychology that prevented Russell from dealing well with Philosophical Investigations.

Russell could not reach an accomodation with Wittgenstein, but we might at least see what was of concern in their disagreement.

And we head into issues of Charity. We may not be able to agree on a method of resolution, but we can try to interpret the disagreement charitably enough that we understand what was at stake for each of them.