Puzzling.

The retreat into subjectivity. Subjective or objective "One ought not kick puppies for fun" is true, and that's its salient feature.

But those not under the spell of logical positivism might puzzle at the lack of empathy apparent in Ayer's children, and further conclude that emotivism misses something of great import: that there are some things we ought despise.

If you assume that only statements about material things or sense data are facts, then of course you will conclude that moral statements are not facts. You will have done no more than reiterated your assumption.

So you are forced to deny what is blatantly evident, that these are indeed true statements, facts, simply to keep your ideology.

You diagnosed the issue as lack of clarity. I showed that to be erroneous.

I wasn't showing how to derive an ought from an is, but to disprove your suggestion that colloquial speech is very imprecise.

Command-c?

Keep in mind that it was Apple who invented this keyboard command. It's Windows that has the command wrong.

I find myself wondering if the larger problem in the Guillotine isn't that "is statements" shouldn't also be "ought statements." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. "fragile" tells us how to act towards the parcel - if you work for Qantas, it tells you to use it for basketball practice. "Is" statements can tell you what you ought do.

I'm tease the poor thinking hereabouts with Searle's argument. I do agree that there is a difference between what is the case and what ought be the case. I think that better captured by Anscombe's shopping list. The difference is that of direction of fit; when we say what is the case, we change our words to fit the way the world is. When we say what ought be the case, we are changing the way things are to match our words. The first sentence in Searle's argument is an "is" statement that sets out a change in the way things are - the movement of $5.

So the mistake here is to confuse direction of fit with type of statement. An "is" statement can set out an obligation.

Kant's imperative, as a preference for consistency, has my sympathy. But folk seem to think it goes further than mere tautology, and of that I am suspicious. I don't think it much help in deciding what to do. But that's a different story.

If you like.

But that has no impact on the derivation - which commences with an "is" and finishes with an "ought".

If your claim is that here is an implicit ought in (1) then you seem also to be reiterating objection 2 from the article. Yes, you ought to keep your promises - that's a fact about what a promise is - and a mere tautology.

Yep. The point was to show the error of your

...without simply making the latter an encrypted or ambiguated version of the former. — Bob Ross

The post is about your misuse of "ambiguity'.

Fixed. Thanks.

Finishing my previous thought, I need to jump ahead a bit to pp119-120 where Austin talks about entailment.

If the equivalence I set up were so, then statements about sense data would entail statements about material objects.

Now I set up this equivalence as a way of understanding the minimum requirement for there being two languages.

Austin shows that

a statement about a 'material thing' entails 'some set ofstatements or other about sense-data'. But-and this is his difficulty-there is no definite and finite set of statements about sense-data entailed by any statement about a 'material thing'.

The symmetry is broken; and with it the two language theory.

Changes from 1884 to 2022 in global temperatures from cooler than average to hotter.(Supplied: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio)

That one ought not kick puppies for fun is a moral statement.
It is a true statement that one ought not kick puppies for fun.
Facts are true statements.

Therefore there are moral facts.

Plagiarising myself again, here is the part of Davidson's argument that addresses the division between scheme and content.

Davidson makes an interesting distinction between two sorts of possible worlds.

In one, we alter what is the case in this world in order to construct other possible worlds, associated with a dualism of necessary and possible sentences.

In the other, which he attributes to Kuhn but for which we might blame quite a few others, what is the case is held steady while those observing each create their own conceptual world. Doing this is what forces a divide between scheme and content.

The idea is that there is stuff, the stuff needs sorting, and the conceptual scheme is what does that sorting. Davidson is here squashing a vast range of philosophical ideas into few small paragraphs; and in summarising it I am insulting it further. Experience, sense data, phenomena, prediction, the given... all these philosophical garden paths bundled into one analysis for easy disposal.

So we have a distinction between stuff (content), and language as sorting that stuff by organising it (schema). So incommensurable schema would be incommensurable sorting of the same stuff. They must be about the very same stuff.

Now one might agree that we could disagree as to how to sort this or that; but it makes no sense to suggest we disagree about everything. Davidson talks of organising the closet as opposed to organising the shirts in the closet:

We cannot attach a clear to the notion of a meaning organizing single object (the world, nature etc.) unless that object is understood to contain or consist in other objects. Someone who sets out to organise a closet arranges the things in it. If you are told not to organize the shoes and shirts, but the closet itself, you would be bewildered. How would you organize the Pacific Ocean'? Straighten out its shores, perhaps, or relocate its islands, or destroy it's fish? — Davidson, p. 14

it's much the same point as Wittgenstein made in On Certainty; one might doubt something, but one cannot sensibly doubt everything; since then one must doubt the very stuff that makes doubt possible.

One can sort the shirts in the cupboard in a different way, but that would remain a sorting of the shirts. There would still be shirts, and so commonality. Two different ways of sorting the cupboard are not incommensurate. So one cannot make sense of incompatible schema in this way.

Joseph Rouse’s critique of Rorty on this point would seem to strengthen Wang’s argument by asserting that the notion of raw unmediated perception is incoherent. His claim is that the content of common sense experience is irreducibly and inextricably entangled with the schematic organization of linguistic and material practices. — Joshs

I mustn't have understood what you are suggesting here. Davidson's argument is a reductio, beginning by assuming that there is a clear distinction between scheme and content and showing how this leads to inconsistency, and so rejecting the assumption.

In particular, it is clear at the conclusion of his article that Davidson is rejecting the notion of raw unmediated perception.

Musician Peter Gabriel has been funding research into animal communication. There'sa. curious lecture at


Bats, because they are supposedly, famously, beyond our keen. But see here that we know quite a bit about what goes on in a bat's mind. Bats sing like birds. They learn new vocalisations from their community. They use it to "other" bats from outside their territory.

As points out we need empirical data, but that will not be the whole story. We also need good plumbing.

Thank you, , for your sympathetic and considered reply. This thread ought first pull apart the content of Wang's argument, in the light of Davidson's work, and see what is actually being argued. It won't, folk will give their opinion and move on.


So I'll first plagiarise myself to summarise what I take as the main argument in Davidson.

Davidson begins by characterising the notion of conceptual scheme he wishes to critique. A conceptual scheme is such that what counts as real is relative to the scheme, because the scheme supposedly organises and categorises our experiences. Hence, what is said in one scheme is incommensurable with what is said in some other scheme, since any standard that might be used to relate one scheme to another is itself part of one scheme or another.

Notice that he is not arguing that this is the case, but setting out the characteristics of the notion of conceptual scheme to which the article is being addressed.

Now we can apply convention T to conceptual schemes.

We saw that any conceptual scheme worthy of the title must be true. What we want to know is if there can be a conceptual scheme that is both true and untranslatable.

So slot that into our generalised T-sentence, replacing "s" with the mooted untranslatable conceptual scheme, and "p" with the impossible translation.

s is true IFF p

Think on that a bit. I hope it is obvious that we could not know that s is true, unless we had a translation of s; but by the very presumption that s is untranslatable, we reach an impasse.

We could not know that some untranslatable conceptual scheme was indeed true.

Hence, the very idea of a true, untranslatable conceptual scheme is incoherent.

Now the dolphin issue, mentioned above, questions the assumption that any conceptual scheme worthy of the title must be true.

I'd hoped that this might be what Wang addressed in "Redistribution Of Truth-Values Cross Alternative Conceptual Schemes", but it was not so. Instead Wan focuses on the Principle of Charity, claiming that it is muddled, repeating various trite examples. I think he is mislead here. Take the WMT vs CMT example. Both practitioners agree that there are human bodies, that these bodies can experience pain, that these bodies have a pattern of organs, and amongst these is a pancreas, and that there are ways to treat pain in bodies. There is overwhelming agreement. And yet we focus on a relatively small difference, a diagnosis of imbalance of yin and yang, as being untranslatable. Supose the CMT practitioner recommends Ginseng tea; maybe WMT will show that this does not work, maybe that it does, and identify a triterpene saponin that addresses the issue with the pancreas. Here WMT and CMT are no where near incommensurate.

And they cannot be, because they are dealign wiht the very same issues int he very same world. Charity holds.

Yeah, I'll rescind that. Needs more work.

X continued...

The next part, pp. 106..., concerns the two languages theory, which according to Austin is supported only disingenuously by Ayer.   Now I had previously understood Ayer as suggesting something along the lines of

(This collection of sense-data statements) is true IFF (this statement about a material object)

But it seems I've jumped the gun. I'd been misled by such things as

any pro- position that refers to a material thing must somehow be expressible in terms of sense-data, if it is to be empirically significant — p.107

...supposing that at a minimum the two languages must have some equivalence of truth value. But there is to be no such symmetry. "The material-object language must somehow be reducible to the sense-datum language".

(an incomplete post... an unfinished thought.)

Anyway, in that thread I suggested that we dispose of the notion of concepts and replace it with the notion of beliefs.

And this is part of what I suspect goes amiss in Wang's paper. It's not that we can't seperate concepts from beliefs, nor concepts from meaning, but that it is questionable what a concept is, and what it does. .

That needs to be traced through the Wang paper. I'll just drop it here for now, lest I forget.

Four years ago.

Isaac

In that thread, I had an extended, interesting and intelligent discussion with @Isaac. Over the length of the thread we worked out a difference between "models" in conceptual schemes, as treated by Davidson, and "Models" as used in studies of consciousness and perception . See , and thereabouts. It was one of the most powerful interactions I've had on the fora.

has informed us that Isaac has died. No details have been made available.

I'm saddened by this loss. We differed strongly on our attitudes towards a number of issues - Covid comes to mind; and I know others had run-ins with him. I found him to be forthright, and admired the clarity with which he argued his case.

Farewell, Isaac.

If you doubt this, then try and make a syllogism that concludes “you should kill Tom” is derivable with “today is Tom’s last day on earth” without simply making the latter an encrypted or ambiguated version of the former. — Bob Ross

1. You ought make whatever the Godfather says should be true, true.
2. The godfather says “today is Tom’s last day on earth"
3. You ought make “today is Tom’s last day on earth" true.
4. You should kill Tom.

Thing is, there is nothing ambiguous about "“today is Tom’s last day on earth". It's not open to an alternative explanation - unless it's Major Tom, talking to ground control - but that would be an utterly different context, not a case of ambiguity. It isn't a case of "converting an imprecise sentence into its underlying meaning".

I think we can be confident there is no chance of anyone in the room with The Godfather misunderstanding.

See Searle's reply tot he second objection, p.50 in the article linked above.

I'm still not too sure of your point.

If I promise to do something it presupposes I have decided already that is the right thing to do. — Pantagruel

Even if this is so, the issue is that the fact of the utterance implies the obligation.

, it appears is not interested in replying to your point about Christianity looking very derivative, and my point about Islam appearing a more suitable candidate for consummation.

I think Tomasello's more empirical approach might agree and disagree with Davidson — schopenhauer1

If you don't say how it might disagree, then that doesn't much help.

Given the baggage, you'd have to set that out in more detail. Are you saying that one ought keep one's promises? But that is what a promise is, so of course. That doesn't make (1) not an "is".

, , its pleasing to see some serious objections being raised to Davidson. I've always harboured a doubt as to the argument, but have found it quite resilient. Despite some hesitancy, I have long accepted that the argument is sound.

Why, then, any doubt? When an argument is that good, it deserves to be treated with suspicion. In setting out the argument Davidson sets out a position on the nature of language. Language is truth-functional, it makes statements about how things are, about what is the case. When i try to articulate my doubts, I usually think of Dolphins. They engage in a sophisticated aural interaction that looks prima facie very much like a language. On Davidson's (and Quinn's) account, we should be able to identify regularities, perhaps using statistical analysis, such that some of the sounds made by the dolphin can be identified as equivalent to some of our own utterances - coarsely, there should be a commonality of belief such that "Click Squeak" is true IFF "That is a mullet". But we seem not to have been able to make progress in this direction. It seems instead that Dolphin and whale sound, while exhibiting complex patterns, does not correspond in the requisite way to our statements.

Some suggest that cetacean sounds are more like poetry or music than language. If that is so then we cannot find the equivalent statement in English simply because they are not making statements.

So here's my doubt: for Davidson, language must make statements. Yet here we have what appears to be a language that perhaps does not make statements*. The Davidsonian response will simply be that, therefore, cetacean sound is not a language. But that seems a bit to fast, too neat. Why shouldn't we count something that aural and complex as a language without statements?

The relevance of all this is that I have great sympathy for Wang's view that Davidson's "notion of conceptual scheme and conceptual relativism have a very limited scope". On a first reading I am not convinced that Wang succeeds in rescuing scheme-content dualism from Davidson. I don't see how there could be any scheme-neutral content, any more than there could be a thing-in-itself; for no sooner do we start to talk about it than we place it within a scheme.

But the introduction of a third truth value, with its implicit antirealism, might make for an interesting argument - but I don't see it here. The allegory of the riverbank and the text thereabouts seem to say that there is an interchange between scheme and content, whereas to carry their case Wang must show a separation.

Good thread. Damn nuisance, as Im occupied elsewhere.

Searle might have a clearer example.

(i) Jones uttered the words "I hereby promise to pay you,
Smith, five dollars."
(2) Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars.
(3) Jones placed himself under (undertook) an obligation
to pay Smith five dollars.
(4) Jones is under an obligation to pay Smith five dollars.
(5) Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars — How to derive an ought from an is

The "Is" is the utterance of the words, a fact. The "Ought" is the obligation.

The usual response from those who like Hume's guillotine is that there must be a slight of hand somewhere in the argument. I don't think there is any such prestidigitation. it's just that we do in fact commonly place ourselves under obligations.

The promise example avoids the quibbles and side issues of authority and ethics.

There's a vast literature stemming from Searle's paper. Further, Searle was a student of Austin, to whom is making reference, if obliquely.

Meta is notable for apparently not having even mentioned Austin on a thread about Austin.

:up:

My affectation thread will subsume this forum, eventually. — Ciceronianus

Incorrigibly, it already applies to all my posts.

Stretching it too far. — Corvus

Indeed, you have.

I am confident that you turn off the gas and lock the door before bed, just in case untoward things happen while you are asleep.

In that way, your account is an affectation.

I'll leave you to it.

Go back and look again. The Earth has been shown to rotate even when you are asleep. Therefore the earth exists even when you are asleep.

Frankly this thread is a manifestation of 's question concerning affectation.

The pendulum is evidence.Yes I introduced it. Are you now demanding that no one introduce anything novel into the conversation?

You are not paying attention. Your account has been refuted.

The Earth moves, and does so even while you are asleep.

Anyhow we were not talking about the pendulum at all, but the visual unobservability of the actual earth rotating round directly while being located on the earth. — Corvus

As I pointed out, your philosophy protects itself against counter examples. But we can trace back the thread of this conversation.

You said:

You cannot observe the earth rotating around visually sitting on any point on the earth. — Corvus

and:

...the earth rotating the Sun was purely found out by the Mathematical deduction, not empirical observation. — Corvus

The Foucault pendulum shows these two statements to be wrong.

So you are obliged to reconsider the point from Manuel, to which was replying:

The world looks and feels flat, but there is much more evidence to support the claim that it is round, but most of the evidence we use to support this claim comes from experiments which go beyond immediate conscious perceptions.

So, your own example is an argument against your own OP. — Manuel

and

...it is more coherent and is better supported than the alternative of nothing existing absent us. There is more to evidence than continuous perception of a thing. — Manuel

The account that the word continues when one is unconscious is simpler and explains more of our observations in more detail than your alternative.

X

The pursuit of the incorrigible is one of the most venerable bugbears in the history of philosophy.

Ayer's word, "incorrigible', can be taken as either "so good that it cannot be improved" or as "that cannot be proved false." As mentioned earlier it is the latter for which Ayer is cited in the OED.

This is to be contrasted with Certainty: "Established as a truth or fact to be absolutely received, depended, or relied upon; not to be doubted, disputed, or called in question; indubitable, sure."

Being incorrigible is not so demanding of some proposition as being certain.

So to his credit, and Austin seems to grant this, Ayer is not looking for certainty, as Descartes and others did. He will settle for the best he can get, or at least avoiding being proven false. Ayer is after knowledge, rather than truth.

The following is worth quoting in full:

In a nutshell, the doctrine about knowledge, 'empirical' knowledge, is that it has foundations. It is a structure the upper tiers of which are reached by inferences, and the foundations are the data on which these inferences are based. (So of course-as it appears-there just have to be sense-data.) Now the trouble with inferences is that they may be mistaken; whenever we take a step, we may put a foot wrong. Thus-so the doctrine runs-the way to identify the upper tiers of the structure of knowledge is to ask whether one might be mistaken, whether there is something that one can doubt; if the answer is Yes, then one is not at the basement. And conversely, it will be characteristic of the data that in their case no doubt is possible, no mistake can be made. So to find the data, the foundations, look for the incorrigible. — Austin, p. 105

This lecture is about why this is a misguided approach.

Again, you decide your philosophy and then force everything else to conform. You use your philosophy to protect itself against any possible refutation, and think that this is rational; you even take this to be a moral high ground - "doubt everything that is not my direct perception" has become your ideology, and this despite the numerous refutations here in your thread and elsewhere.

Hence you cannot accept the evidence of the Pendulum, and refuse to think about it in a serious way.

Here's the physics in detail. It's down to you now to explain where this goes wrong and give an alternative account.

Or concede that the Earth rotates.

Your ball.

I often feel much the same way.

You cannot observe the earth rotating around visually sitting on any point on the earth. :) — Corvus

Yeah, you can, from anywhere within sight of a Foucault pendulum.

See, trouble is, you are not paying attention. You do your philosophy then try to squeeze everything in to it.

Yep. But there is so much to unpack here.

I was amused to see Austin describe philosophy’s desire for certainty in a few lines (it takes Wittgenstein half his book). — Antony Nickles

I laughed out loud. He's certainly succinct. In truth, I'm somewhat surprised, and very pleased, at how opposed to philosophy Austin is. He shares the antiphilosophy usually attributed to Wittgenstein. I don't recall being aware of this in previous readings.

I'll get to the point of attempting a summary. Still mulling stuff over. By all means, please go ahead with further comments. I'm waiting for your overview; I'm sure you have some critique of Austin waiting in the wings.

I haven't paid much attention to Carnap, his approach just didn't seem to me to get off the ground; but I'm told Chalmers makes use of Carnap's approach, so it may have some present relevance.