Why ought it be baffling to me? — Michael

That's because in the second shema -- (2) -- the sentence mentioned on the left has no incidence whatsoever on the meaning of "cheveaux" and "animaux equestres" as they are being used in the meta-language. But this is true also for the case of the first shema -- (1). It is, on the contrary, the independently understood meanings of the words used on the right hand side that are being relied on order to specify or define the meanings of the words of the object-language that are being mentioned (and not used) on the left hand side of the shema.

The main point is that the truth conditions expressed by the sentences being used on the right-hand side of both shemas only depend on what is the case in the world (i.e. the extra-linguistic world) regarding horses and equine animals, and don't depend on any kind of linguistic stipulation embodied in the truth theory which the T-shema is a theorem of.

The shema that Michael is making use of is the the T-shema used by Tarski to give a recursive definition of the predicate "... is true" for a given formal language. What figures on the right of the shema is a sentence expressed (i.e. used) in a meta-language independently understood by the theorist who understands, or stipulates, the meanings of the terms used in the formal language according to some specific semantic interpretation or model.

In the context of such a theory, it may be correct to say, for instance, that:

(1) "Horses are equine animals" is true iff horses are equine animals

According to the very same semantic model for the modern English language, one could translate this shema in French thus:

(2) "Horses are equine animals" est vrai ssi les chevaux sont des animaux équestres.

The same object language is the topic -- English -- but the meta-language has been switched to French. Yet the shema says exactly the same thing. This ought to be clear to TGW (and to Tarski and Wittgenstein), but it ought to be baffling to Michael, it seems to me.

Michael,

It seems to me everybody in this thread, including you, agree on 90% of the basic underlying assumptions regarding the conventional element in meaning attributions to words of language. Much of the difficulty comes from your using "is" as a word that signals an implicit stipulation about linguistic meaning (i.e. a copula, as in A is the referent of "B") rather than identity.

For instance, you take the two following sentence to mean the same thing:

(1) If "horse" was used to refer to rabbits, then rabbits would be properly called "horses"
(2) If "horse" was used to refer to rabbits, then rabbits would be horses.

The trouble is that you alone are interpreting the meaning of the consequent in the second counterfactual conditional (i.e. "rabbits would be horses") to be interpreted according to the use that is stipulated in the antecedent (i.e. '"horse" was used to refer to rabbits'). The trouble is that everybody else in this thread understand (correctly, in my view) the words "rabbits" and "horses" to have their ordinary (actual) meanings as used in the consequent of (2), and the phrase "would be" to signify identity rather than meaning stipulation. There indeed can't be any meaning stipulation there since there is no mention of the words "rabbits" or "horses".

Rather, in the consequent: "then rabbits would be horses", all the words are being used. And your interpretation of them as being used in accordance with the stipulation that figures in the antecedent of the counterfactual conditional makes nonsense of most ordinary counterfactual conditional statements.

So, almost all of the disagreement in this thread stems from your using the verb "to be", and your interpreting the consequent clauses in counterfactual statements, in non-standard ways. So, you are right that many of your claims are being misinterpreted, but you have some responsibility for that, and you equally often misinterpret their claims for the very same reasons.

I think C. S. Lewis wrote a story in which hell was a rather dreary, dark, dusty city absent of any feeling. No warmly lit windows, no laughter, no greetings. Silence. — Bitter Crank

This rather reminds me of the end of the movie The Beyond, directed by Lucio Fulci. This film is rather cheesy and often ridiculous, though a cult classic; but its depiction of hell as a rather tranquil and cold place is the most gloomy and blood curdling one that I have seen in cinema.

(Continued from my previous post)

Sellars wasn't alone in defending such a notion of synthetic a priori truths that aren't pure, in the Kantian sense, but rather must be relativized to specific conceptual schemes. Peter Strawson and Paul Grice, responding to Quine, in their In Defence of a Dogma, also defended the idea of synthetic a priori statements that are distinguished from other empirical judgments about particulars by making explicit necessary conceptual connections between the concepts used to make such judgments.

(At this early stage of the debate, and some 25 years before Kripke's Naming and Necessity was published, the analytic/synthetic distinction wasn't neatly demarcated from the necessary/contingent and a priori/a posteriori distinctions; and, indeed, Kripke's demarcations may have obscured some connections between those allegedly purely logical, modal and epistemological distinctions. But this would be a topic for another thread).

Wittgenstein's "grammatical remarks" also can be construed as the expression of synthetic a priori truths, in this sense. On that view, logical grammar, as opposed to deductive logic (first order predicate logic) aims at making explicit conceptual truths that are tacitly understood by language users, and compliance with which is exhibited in their practice, while also manifesting their understandings of the objects and concepts talked about.

This brings us back to Haugeland's claim about the constitutive inter-dependence between two levels of objective patterns. Inasmuch as patterns at both levels can be disclosed by means of empirical inquiry, they both are, indeed empirical. Patterns at the higher level, though, concern norms, laws and regularities. They are what Haugeland calls constitutive standards. Objects (i.e. patterns at the "lower level") can't be identified, or indeed, thought about, independently from the constitutive standards that they are subsumed under. One can't identify, or make sense of, a bishop, in the game of chess, that wouldn't be properly moved along diagonals on the chess board. Likewise, one can't identify, or make sense of an object's having a determinate mass that wouldn't weigh anything in the Earth gravitational field and/or wouldn't accelerate when subjected to a net force in accordance with Newton's second law.

Yet, it is one thing to recognize a chess piece to be a bishop, in a particular case, and another to acknowledge that, as such, it must move along diagonals (i.e. to acknowledge a constitutive rule of chess). Likewise, it is one thing to recognize that an object has a mass of one kilogram and another to recognize (or insist) that it must obey Newton's third law in all circumstances. The latter sort of necessary truths, expressed by synthetic a priori statements relativized to specific empirical domains, make up sets of constitutive standards for the domain. They collectively express an understanding of the objects that belong to this domain. Having such an (at least rudimentary) understanding is a requirement for those objects to be recognizable as what they are.

We may say, following both Haugeland (in Truth and Rule Following) and Sellars (in Concepts as Involving Laws) that understanding an empirical domain consists in having an (at least) tacit grasp of its constitutive standards. This understanding can be made explicit, and expressed with the use of synthetic a priori statements. Those statements are a priori because the objects that belong to the domain can't exist without obeying the standards. In fact, their obeying the constitutive standards (norms, laws of nature, etc.) is the specific manner in which objects exist in their respective domains.

This also brings us back to the distinction made by Kant, as quoted by Jamalrob in the beginning of my previous post, between knowledge that begins with experience and knowledge that arises from experience.

Laws of Newtonian mechanics, or the rules of chess (to stick with those two simple examples) can't be discovered a priori (in an epistemological sense). They either must be disclosed empirically (in the first case) or stipulated (in the second case). Once this has been done, however, the synthetic a priori (in a metaphysical sense) statements that express them determine what must necessarily occur in experience. Synthetic a priori statements therefore determine the range of possible (intelligible) experiences within a given empirical domain. Synthetic a posteriori statements express the content of actual experiences -- that is, experiences of actually existing objects that have specific determinations.

However, there can be no objective perception, and no objective judgment, when there is no prior understanding of what is possibly experienced (that is, what are possible and intelligible syntheses of various sensible determinations in a single object). Hence, knowledge of synthetic a priori truths begins with experience. This synthetic a priori knowledge makes possible objective judgments about actual objects; judgments, that is, that arise from experiences (synthetic a posteriori judgments).

Those two levels of empirical inquiry correspond to the two levels of co-constituted patterns discussed by Haugeland in Pattern and Being. The super-ordinate level of laws and/or norms is discernible as a set of consistent patterns that emerges from a wide and systematic range of experiences (experimentations, we may rather say), which delimits possible further experiences, while the sub-ordinate level is populated with patterns of unified determinations that make up the actual objects that figure in experience and that accord with the laws disclosed at the higher level. They are the two levels of understanding (meaningful thoughts) and knowledge (contentful thoughts), that can only be actualized jointly.

Can there be true and meaningful synthetic a priori statements?

Haugeland's view about objective perception illuminates this question, I think. There was an interesting thread three months ago about Kant's Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics. Let me quote this paragraph from Jamalrob:

A few words about a priori and a posteriori. These are about justification, i.e., how we come to know things, so they are epistemological concepts. In the CPR Kant says that “There can be no doubt that all knowledge begins with experience”, but that “although our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.” What this means is that it is experience that calls forth knowledge, not that it is the source. For example, it is in experience that we come to know about cause and effect in the first place, but only because events must be experienced in terms of a prior, independent (pure) concept of the understanding. — jamalrob

This distinction between two ways in which knowledge relates to experience, here marked with the phrases "begins with" and "arises from" is interesting but puzzling. It seems clear that the first way for knowledge to relate to experience ("i.e. "begins with") characterizes this form of knowledge (expressible with synthetic a priori statements) as a condition for the very possibility of empirical (i.e. a posteriori) knowledge, and hence for meaningful and contentful "intuitions". Once the conditions for the possibility of such experiences are satisfied, then it is empirical knowledge of particular facts (and particular objects) that can "arise from" experience. This empirical knowledge is expressed with synthetic a posteriori statements.

The sorts of synthetic a priori statements that were centrally at issue, in the passages from the Critique or Pure Reason quoted by Jamalrob above, were statements that express the content of the pure concepts of the understanding, that is, the Kantian categories. Those are a priori concepts that purport to represent the form thought has in virtue of the fact that it relates essentially to intuition while abstracting from the specific empirical contents those intuitions provide. Whatever one might think of the feasibility of such an inquiry into the form of the pure understanding -- and for a masterful defense and realization, one can refer to Sebastian Rödl's Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Intellect, HUP, 2012 -- it may still sound incredible that there might be synthetic a priori statements that aren't pure in this sense, and that therefore express genuine knowledge about the empirical world, or, more precisely, about determinate domains of empirical objects.

Yet that is exactly what Haugeland's account of objectivity enables us to better understand. Wilfrid Sellars -- whose Concepts as Involving Laws and Inconceivable Without Them gets credited by Haugeland as anticipatory of some of his own ideas (further developed in his Truth and Rule Following) -- also defended a broader conception of (inpure) synthetic a priori truths.

Here is a quote from Willem A. DeVries' book on Sellars:

"Sellars believes that any conceptual framework, necessarily, includes valid forms of material inferences. But synthetic a priori truths are framework relative; there is no set of framework-independent synthetic a priori truths. The structure of our conceptual framework, which is responsible for our a priori knowledge and which we often take to reflect articulation of reality itself, is in fact mind-dependent to a significant degree."

The denial of framework independent synthetic a priori truths is the denial of what Kant argues for, and Rödl seconds, but this isn't my concern here. What is rather interesting, for my present purpose, is the assimilation of framework dependent synthetic a priori truths with the expressions of valid forms of material inferences.

Valid forms of material inferences are inferences that are warranted by the conceptual content of terms involved in the premises and conclusion, rather than being warranted by the (deductive) logical form of those statements alone. Hence, for instance, the truth that

(A) Montreal is north of New York City

can be validly (materially) inferred from the truth that

(B) New York City is south of Montreal.

This inference is materially rather than deductively valid. The inference is valid in virtue of a form of inference that can be made explicit with the use of the synthetic a priori statement:

(M) "X is south of Y if and only if Y is north of X".

This synthetic a priori statement is partially constitutive of the meanings (i.e. the conceptual contents) of the relational predicates "... is south of..." and "... is north of...". It may be worth noticing, also, that when this synthetic a priori statement is furnished as an additional premise, then one can logically (i.e. deductively) infer (B) from (A) and (M).

To be continued in my next post...

Before language, there were animals who experienced and felt. That's what's fundamental. Language is late in the game. Symbols are parasitic. — Marchesk

Indeed. Michael earlier remarked that we teach children how to respond appropriately to linguistic inputs. He meant to analogize this with the action of programming a computer. But your remark here illustrates why this analogy is misleading.

Before children come to master appropriate rules of grammar and grasp semantical world-word connections, they already have desires, sensations, yearnings, bodily skills and social relationships. Proper linguistic performance isn't taught to them by means of explicit instructions; the teaching of language rather consists in a further re-shaping of an already actualized embodied form of life. This immature (i.e. pre-linguistic) form of human behavior sustains the ascription of meaningful (albeit merely proto-conceptual) mental states. The mode of teaching is broadly proleptical (anticipative) rather than explicit. That is, there is no need to assume that the child understands what it is shown to him/her that s/he ought to do and say in response to determinate circumstances or verbal instructions. The child's (proto-)linguistic behavior is shaped holistically in a way that sustains intentional ascriptions to him/her of determinate (conceptual) thought contents only very approximately at first, and then, gradually, more determinately, as the meanings of the terms that he/she uses progressively dawn of him/her (as a constitutive result of his/her ability to use them properly in wider ranges of circumstances).

Second, simply because we do not relate to a computer as well as we do to other humans doesn't mean a computer doesn't feel. The recent movie Ex Machina explores this. To treat humans above computers simply because we don't have an emotional attachment to the latter is to have an anthropic bias. — darthbarracuda

One response to Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment is the system reply. Another one is the robot reply. Those two responses are quite different in character. That's because Searle's original contention was that however our brains "generate" understanding -- as they allegedly can, according to him -- can't be something that occurs in virtue of computation alone. All the system does still merely consists in manipulation of input symbol strings in accordance with syntactic rules. A robot does other things. It can actively gather data (not restricted to symbols provided to it) and behave in the world.

It seems to me that Searle ought to be able to consistently accept that the robot can manifest understanding while still denying that its "brain" understands anything. Searle's rejoinder to the system reply still validly applies to claims that the robot's brain (i.e. its central controlling system) understands. Searle ought to grant that, if the robot manifests understanding of Chinese (and of its surroundings) in its public behavior, then this understanding may be enabled by its brain functions but isn't constituted by those functions.

Of course Searle actually reject the robot reply. But that's because he is an internalist about intentional content. As I phrased it above, he believes that human brains "generate" understanding on their own quite appart from their embedding ("embeddedness"?) in animate bodies, and the embedding of our living bodies in our social and natural world. He defends a view of intrinsic intentionality according to which meaning and understanding (and reference) are produced by some irreducible and emergent property of biological brains -- irreducible, that is, to computations or syntactic manipulation of symbols. If we dispense with Searle's intentional internalism (i.e. the idea that mental states supervene narrowly on brain states, and depend only on them) then we ought to be happy to deny, with him, that computers understand anything. But we can also accept, unlike him, that sophisticated robots could conceivably understand, and yet deny, unlike him, that our own brains understand anything.

Seems to amount to symbol manipulation. — Michael

Yes, but does this competence with symbol manipulation constitute understanding? That you are able to manipulate the symbols in accordance with rules immediately shows, at most, that you understand the rules; that is, that you understand what it is permissible or mandatory for you to do in order to correctly apply them in particular cases. This, however, isn't the understanding that is at issue in the debate regarding functionalism, or computationalism, in the philosophy of mind.

The understanding at issue rather is the understanding of the meaning of linguistic symbols (and hence also the understanding that grounds intentionality -- e.g. reference to extra linguistic items in the general case). Functionalists claim that competence in following the syntactic and/or logical (i.e inferential) rules that govern the use of the symbols is sufficient for constituting an understanding of their meanings. Searle disputes this. Hence, for him, an ability to "understanding" the rules (i.e. display an ability to comply with them) falls short from understanding the language.

Well, I think this may be as muddled as I am but the muddle is about Haugeland's core principle: what is rationality when she's at home? Why does it have to be specified separately in thinking about patterning? — mcdoodle

If anything ought to be called Haugelans' core principle, in relation to the thesis defended in Pattern and Being, it seems to me that it might be the idea that recognizing objects in an empirical domain requires existential commitments directed simultaneously to those objects (i.e. sub-patterns) and to the normative standards that govern their behaviors (i.e. super-ordinate patterns) -- and this dual commitment both enables and presupposes an understanding of those objects. Surely, such an understanding of objects also presupposes that whoever understands them (and their empirical domain) is rational. But rationality as such isn't quite thematized as itself being the constitutive principle of objective perception. (Though such a more demanding thesis may be defended in the more explicitly developed neo-Kantian account of objective truth telling found in Haugeland's later Truth and Rule Following paper.

Rather, in Pattern and Being, Haugeland merely invokes the specific constitutive standard of rationality, and the corresponding empirical domain disclosed by intentional state ascriptions to rational beings (i.e. to Dennett's "intentional systems"), as just one example among many potentially discloseable empirical domains of objects. Being able to recognize super-ordinate "patterns" of rationality in the behavior of "intentional systems", and being able to objectively ascribe to them beliefs, desires and intentions, etc., go hand in hand. The recognitions of the former (i.e. of the constitutive standards of rationality) and recognition of the latter (i.e. particular beliefs and desires ascribable to individuals, etc.) make up a unitary understanding of two levels of patterns that are co-constituted -- that is, such that each one of them can be intelligibly recognized to exist only in relations to the other. The level of objects (sub-patterns) isn't thus basic in relation to the super-ordinate level of constitutive standards (higher level patterns) governing them. Both levels are equally basic.

It is a bit of a distraction that the only sort of entity that can understand an empirical domain of "intentional systems" itself must belong to such a domain and therefore be rational. Nevertheless, the subset of our "actions" that aren't fully, or not at all, "rational", and that may more closely resemble the instinctual, learned or conditioned behaviors of most of our animal relatives, also are phenomena that belong to a specific empirical domain (a proper object of study for ethology, perhaps) that would have its own constitutive standards, according to Haugeland, and those standard -- e.g. the demand that behaviors be seen as adaptive, make ecological sense, etc. -- will no doubt fall short from demanding the subsumption of those behaviors under demanding norms of rationality.

This is a followup to this post in which I was intending to show that laws** purportedly governing "things-in-themselves" are unintelligible, unlike the laws* that govern the objects ("patterns") that show up in empirical domains constituted by those laws* (i.e. normative standard) as they are potentially understood by us when we commit to them. The demonstration of this thesis, and the explanation of what it means, though, is a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. I had conjectured that the fundamental laws that govern Conway's Game of Life, which are the rules that determine from one 'time step' to the next one the state (on/off) of each individual pixels as a function of the states of the 8 neighboring pixels, would be unintelligible and unknowable to (eventual) intelligent 'inhabitants' of such a Life Plane. That conclusion likely is too strong and not quite what I needed in order to show (or, at least, suggest) that objects can't exist apart from the normative standards that we hold them answerable to.

My initial idea was that if we were to run a computer simulation of such a 'world' (i.e. an artificial life simulation) then the temporal evolution of the simulation would be quite divorced from the 'time' 'experienced' by the simulated 'creatures' who 'inhabit' the simulated 'world'. That's because such an experienced 'time' is part of the content (or, more properly, the form) of their intentional states and those states are disclosed by our adopting an intentional stance towards their 'behaviors'. (I am using single-scare-quotes to refer to all the phenomena that are, from our own perspective, merely simulated and a matter of our interpretation of the regular features -- the patterns -- that emerge in our interpretation of the computer output).

If we were to interrupt the simulation and resume it at a later time, then, this obviously would have no impact whatsoever on the 'experiences' of the simulated 'creatures'. This only shows, though, that our own experienced (and measured) time is divorced from the 'time' that marks the progress of the simulation (e.g. the discrete time steps in the Game of Life). It is only to the latter that the 'experiences' of the simulated 'creatures' are pegged. But this also highlights the fact that whatever those 'creatures' 'experience' (or 'think') doesn't even depend on our running the simulation at all. Destroying the computer doesn't destroy their 'world' any more than it would destroy the decimal development of the number Pi if this were what the computer was computing at the time when is was destroyed. Simulating a world just is exploring the features of a "logically possible world" (if that much) and falls short from creating one; or so I would be prepared to argue. From such considerations I had thought that I could easily infer that the simulated 'creatures' can't, by 'observational' and/or 'theoretical' means, or by any other means, discover the basic laws (i.e. the rules of the Game of Life) that govern the evolution of their 'world'. That's because those laws mirror the rules codified in the algorithm being executed by our computer, and this computer needn't even exist for their 'world' (and the 'objects' within it) to 'exist' for them.

But this inference involves a confusion. What depends contingently on the existence of the computer, the laws that govern its functioning, and the norms determining that it is functioning correctly (i.e. that it is running the algorithm that we want it to run) just is the simulation process, not the 'world' being simulated. Hence, there isn't any reason a priori, so far as I can see, why the 'creatures' that 'inhabit' some 'world' (which we may or may not want to, or be able to, run a simulation of) wouldn't 'discover' its 'fundamental laws' irrespective of the laws that govern the simulation process. It is those latter laws that are unknowable to them. But, if the simulation is running correctly, then the computer algorithm just happens to mirror the 'laws' of their world -- something that whey could come to 'know' as their 'fundamental physics'. (What I mean for them to be 'discovering' such 'laws' just is that such formal laws would be (part of) the content of the intentional states that we would ascribe them (or to those among them who are 'physicists') if we were to adopt the intentional stance toward them in the context of a simulation of their 'world' -- and of their 'scientific activity'.

My original question nevertheless remains, regarding the ontological status of the fundamental 'objects', the individual pixels in the Life Plane of Conway's Game of Life, from the pont of view of its 'inhabitants'. Assuming that they would correspond to theoretical entities knowable to potential 'inhabitants' of the Life World: are such 'objects' existing in themselves appart from the 'laws' governing them? (I conceive of them as simple objects that have the property of being either on or off, in addition to having relational topological and spatial properties) But I think what I originally intended to show can still be shown. It is only through adopting an intentional stance towards potential 'inhabitants' of the Life World that we have come to conceive of those pixels as objects at all, as opposed to them being uninterpreted symbols potentially churned out by a meaningless computer algorithm. Those 'objects' only have intelligible being qua theoretical entities that have some degree of explanatory value either for the of potential 'inhabitants' of the Life World, or, as re-identifiable patterns that are interesting to us (even in the case where no 'life' emerges in the Life World). Those objects, therefore, as Haugeland surmised, don't exist apart from the laws that govern them, and those laws only are intelligible as part of some set of constitutive standards that we (or Life World 'inhabitants') commit to when investigating them. The argument may not be quite complete yet, but I may have bitten more than I can easily chew.

The interlining within the message paragraphs seem cramped to me. I am usure if this is related to paragraph style or the default font, but the interlining seems to be just a bit too narrow for confortable reading, and it is also unaesthetic to my eyes -- the text doesn't breathe. I am unsure if this can easily be fixed. It is a rather minor complaint, though. (I also notice that the interlining is fine in the edit box, though not in the preview window box, where it appears to be the same as in the posted messages.)

I've got an area I'd like to explore but will wait until Pierre-Normand has made his further case. Very rewarding essay to bounce off. — mcdoodle

Please go on! I'm rather busy at the moment but will try to complete my followup later today. My argument also is harder to articulate than it had seemed to me when I rehearsed the argument mentally. In any case, I don't mind this being a peripheral sub-thread.

Let me jump in right away and elaborate on a specific but rather central point Haugeland makes in Pattern and Being. To perceive an object in the world is to get hold of a "pattern", and such a pattern is objectively perceived inasmuch as it, together with other objects in the same empirical domain, is governed by constitutive standards (e.g. governing rules, norms, and/or enabling material/ecological/social conditions) in such a way that it (e.g. the purported object or phenomenon perceived) could conceivably fail to accord with some of those standards, and hence signal a case of misperception of the object, or misunderstanding of the purported empirical domain. Hence the objective perception of an object involves some degree of understanding of the laws (or norms) that objects of this sort obey (or are held up to, in the case of objects that belong to socially instituted domains and practices). And perceptual acts can't count as objective -- in the sense Haugeland seeks to explain -- unless the observer also has, at the very least, a tacit understanding of, and commitment to, the constitutive standards governing the empirical domain this object belongs to.

One paradigmatic example of such an empirical domain is the domain of "intentional" (in Brentano's sense) mental "states" such as belief, desires and intentions. Ascribing such states to persons only is possible, and only makes sense, when effected against the background of a larger pattern of rational behaviors (including speech acts) that justifies a large set of broadly consistent such ascriptions. This constitutive standard of rationality can be assimilated to Davidson's constitutive ideal of rationality (making possible the "radical interpretation" of the linguistic performances of an individual), and to Dennett's insistance that the intentional stance towards intentional systems only can succeed trough treating such systems as suitably "rational".

In this post (and the following one), I am going to take for granted Haugeland's accounts of objects, or "objecthood", and of the objectivity of judgment/perception. Other participants are free, of course, to question them. I rather want to explore an interesting consequence of Haugeland's thesis, defended in Pattern and Being, that objects can be identified with patterns that are objective (i.e. that are real objects, though not necessarily material "things") only inasmuch as they are constituted by standards governing broader empirical domains those objects are "sub-patterns" of. This thesis might by regarded as the ontological counterpart of the epistemological thesis of the theory-ladenness of experience/observation. There doesn't exist "raw data" of either sensory experience, or scientific observation, uncontaminated by theory and, likewise, there aren't any "raw objects", as it were, that would be the objects that they are quite appart from the "laws" governing them. The laws that govern the objects found in an empirical domain make up broad patterns -- patterns of conformity with coherent sets of constitutive standards -- within which alone those objets are, not only discernible by us, but can so much as exist as the sorts of objects that they are.

I now come to the consequence of this thesis that I wanted to highlight. Conway's Game of Life, as well as the idea of a universe governed by universal laws, such that the "temporal-evolution" of such a universe could be simulated on a digital computer, suggests the possibility -- seemingly ruled out by Haugeland -- that the fundamental entities making up our universe have ontological primacy in the sense that they exist in themselves appart from the super-ordinate patterns that they make up, or (equivalently) appart from the laws (deterministic or not) that govern their interactions and "temporal" evolution. We can thus imagine that the "inhabitant/scientists" who might have evolved into, and "inhabit", a "universe" thus simulated could, by means of "observation" of the empirical phenomena that occur in their "world" (and that we can also discern in the printout or display of the computer simulation), together with suitable theorizing, come to disclose the "laws" that govern their own simulation. Those "laws" just would be the rules of the Game of Life, or of whatever set of fundamental physical laws govern the temporal-evolution of universe we have chosen to simulate and in which those "intelligent creatures" "evolved".

This is just a thought experiment, and it may be the case that the laws of quantum field theory (or whatever fundamental physical theory can be held to subsumes them) preclude our own universe being simulated in any kind of digital computer imaginable, even with the provision of infinite resources. This will not affect my main point since I am merely using the thought experiment as a loose metaphor to highlight two distinct conceptions of natural laws. There are, first, laws* as Haugeland understands them, which fall under the generalized concept of constitutive standards of an empirical domain. Those laws can, indeed, be disclosed empirically and/or imposed conventionally, in the case of socially instituted domains such as the the domains of chess, or economic markets and currencies, etc.

(Let me note, as my previous "and/or" suggests, that Haugeland doesn't hold to a dichotomy here between laws of nature and laws of men (or customs or whatever). It can be a matter of empirical discovery for a field anthropologist to find out that members of some foreign tribe are playing a game such as chess in an unfamiliar medium. Instituted domains also obey internal constraints, may have a higher degree of contingency than the domains of the natural sciences, but still be suitable objects of empirical, and objective, discovery. The patterns at issue may be natural patterns, social patterns, mathematical patterns, etc., though, maybe, the applicability of the idea of empirical discovery could be quibbled with in the third case.)

And then let me come to a second conception of "laws", let me label them 'laws**', that describe patterns of subsumability such as the "rules" that govern the evolution of the "life plane" in Conway's Game of Life. This second conception of the "laws of nature" dovetails with "metaphysical realism" (as Hilary Punam uses the term critically in Representation and Reality), and with the idea that our world (or "universe") is as it is, at a fundamental level, and temporally evolves as it does (in accordance with laws**), independently of whatever our contingent interests might be. The common belief among physicists, possibly shared with some "realist" philosophers (though by all means not all, since Haugeland himself was an avowed realist), is that such "fundamental" laws**, just like Haugeland's own laws* (e.g. the constitutive standards of specific empirical domains) can be discovered empirically. I would like to question this. And indeed, I would like to suggest that, inasmuch as laws** can't be disclosed empirically at all (as I purport to show), and can't make any difference to the nature and structure of our experiences, they are unintelligible.

I'll make my case, which I take to be continuous with Haugeland's thinking, in a followup to this post.

Note to readers of Haugeland's Pattern and Being:

Haugeland discusses briefly Conway's Game of Life, which had been used by Dennett to illustrate patterns, their recognition, and ontological status. There is a nice wikipedia page on Conway's Game of Life, and one can easily find online simulators just in case some readers aren't familiar with it.

before homo sapiens, via radiocarbon — mcdoodle

I hope you don't mind an inconsequential quibble, but radiocarbon dating relies on carbon-14, which has a rather short half-live (5,730 years), and isn't reliable past 62,000 years. A variety of other isotopes enable radiometric dating all the way back (with ever coarser resolutions) to several billion years in the past.

Hi csalisbuty,

Thanks for raising up the problem of ancestrality. I wasn't acquainted with it -- at least not under this guise. I gave it some thought and still need to give it some more. Incidentally, I had likened your 'lol-planet' concept to Goodman's 'grue' concept. Maybe a closer analogue would be Dennett's lost sock center!

You are missing that, in that instance, the statue is named. You began by pointing at a statue. The object you were thinking of has been there all along. Similarity, Brassier begins by talking about Saturn. What object someone is pointing at is always, assuming a coherent claim about the world is made, given in talking about some state of the world (statue, Saturn, etc.,etc.). — TheWillowOfDarkness

Hi Willow,

I apologize for the long delay. Brassier's example of people pointing at Saturn, while not knowing what it is, is supposed to problematize the idea that "Saturn's existence -- that it is -- is a function of what it is -- that Saturn [the concept] is indissociable from Saturn..." (Concept and Object, p.62)

It could be argued that for an object (e.g. Saturn) to exist, or not, doesn't depend on our ever having acquired, uncovered, or created the concept under which it falls. This concept (e.g. the concept of a planet) is the referent of some word that expresses our conception of what it is, on my Wiggins/neo-Fregean account. Saturn itself is the referent of its proper name (or of some definite description, or some deictic act of reference such as pointing), and any such act of reference in thought or speech is enabled by our having some grasp of the concept.

What is more difficult to conceive, and this was my main objection, is that there might be anything out there that answers to the description "the object pointed at by people who didn't know what it is". This could be sensibly said if what was meant was "the object pointed at by people who still only had at that time an indistinct conception of what it is". But that can't be what Brassier meant since he wants to divorce the idea of the object's existing by itself from the concept of what it is.

Another way to convey the point of my 'lump-of-bonze / statue' example is that someone who didn't have possessions of any one of those two concepts (or any other relevant concept of a definite sort of material object under which the object pointed at falls) and who nevertheless pointed her finger in direction of the statue (thereby also pointing it in direction of the lump of bronze, and countless other things) would not thereby make *any* deictic act of reference since she wouldn't have any normative standard on the basis of which to determine if any part of the "object" is indeed a part of it (rather than, say, something extraneous accidentally attached to it, or touching it) or under what conditions the object could be said to have been destroyed and/or ceased to exist.

So, the alleged possibility of an act of "pointing" to Saturn by people who don't know what Saturn is at all seems to fall short from showing that Saturn's existence -- that it is -- can be separated from the concept of what it is.

Haugeland's Pattern and Being was first published in the volume Dennett and His Critics, before it was reprinted in Haugeland's Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. But it really stands on its own. Dennett was dubious at first, if I remember, but then, when he reviewed Haugeland's volume of essays, and saw the paper in a broader context, he commented approvingly, on the lines of: 'I now see what you mean, this is indeed what I always have been recommending myself -- objective perception is an achievement'. Haugeland's core original insights didn't seem to leave a discernible mark on Dennett's subsequent thinking about the mind, though.

There is one standalone piece by Dennett that is both available online and that is quite recommendable. This is his sharp critique of Harris' Free Will.

Michel Bitbol - "Ontology, Matter and Emergence" (on emergence and causation): http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4006/1/Emergence1.pdf — StreetlightX

I would likely endorse that too ;-)

It's intentionally provocational but still quality stuff (kinda like the philosophical equivalent of a Lars Von Trier film.) — csalisbury

Off topic (and spoiler): I only saw Von Trier's Dogville, and watched it two or three times. I was quite moved by it, emotionally, but also intellectually. The final pitch from Grace's father to her, in his car, about "arrogance" seemed to me, in light of the previous unfolding of events that furnished context to it, thought provoking and pregnant with philosophical implications about freedom, determinism (of the social conditioning sort) and moral responsibility. Maybe I'll start a thread on that eventually.

Let me apologize again for putting you on the back burner. I'll likely be back to you before the next 48h.

(Fwiw, your view strikes me as Heidegger in Fregean Clothing) — csalisbury

Yes, that's a fair characterization. You can also say that it's a form of strong correlationism.

Your main question to me concerns the the 'existence' of sortal concepts in time, and whether those concepts pre-exist the objets that instantiate them. One might ask the same question regarding secondary quality concepts and the answer would be similar. (I'll single out relevant differences in the last paragraph below). For something to be red just is for it to look red to us in standard conditions. "Look" is here understood dispospositionally, as a passive power that red objects have to affect our sensibility in a specific way. Hence an object currently not looked at (or never looked at) still is red because it still has the relevant power. Even though optical properties of surface reflectance may be part of the explanation of this power, the concept of redness is nevertheless inseparable from the structure of our sensibity since only some specific (to us) features of reflectance spectra are visually salient to us (owing to both physiology and culture). When we conjecture that Triceratops might have been red this means that, for instance, had we been around before they went extinct, then they would have have looked red to us.

There is a pseudo-problem generated by the question whether red objects still would be red in a universe where there are no observers. This is a pseudo-problem because there is no such thing as "a universe" that we can refer to from the outside, as it were. As regard the question whether red objects still would exist in our universe if we became extinct, or never came about, the answer is simply yes. Bus then this is just a simple counterfactual modal claim similar to the claim about currently unobserved or far away red objects. It still refers to *our* universe and *our* concept of redness. (Kripke's possible-world model for modal logic -- as used in Naming and Necessity -- unlike Lewis' own counterpart theory, respects this point, I believe -- See Gregory McCulloch, The Game of the Name, a book worth its price for the title alone). We are thus merely inquiring about the hypothetical causal impact of our specific extinction, and not any 'impact' from stripping away, as it were, our conceptual scheme from the world.

The 'lol-planet' pseudo-sortal concept is pointless, as is Nelson Goodman's 'grue' pseudo-secondary quality concept, because it resists being integrated into a conceptual scheme intelligible to us. A conceptual scheme intelligible to us isn't an arbitrary formal construction, but rather is a way of talking (shaped by the specific human form of our embodiment and enculturation) that enables us to disclose objets in the world that answer to our interests and rationally justified existential commitments (from the point of view, ultimately, of practical reason). The existential commitments of the scientific community, for instance, ground the justification for some definition of a 'planet' over another because this definition enables the scientists to sustain or increase the intelligibility of the empirical domain of astronomy. The domain itself isn't circumscribed independently from the interests of the community, so long a the historically situated scientific practice has a point, and responds to some pragmatic interests including the fulfillment of explanatory, predictive and/or technical aspirations. This leaves room for some amount of contingency and arbitrariness (hence the occasional need for a vote).

The main difference between general sortal concepts (that single out objects and incorporate our understanding of their conditions of persistence and criteria of individuation) and general property concepts (among whose secondary quality concepts are paradigmatic, and primary quality concepts (so called) are derivative abstractions) is that the general property concepts are valid across several empirical domains. There are red finches, red tables, and red planets. But there are no planet fruits or planet tables. Sortal concepts have more restricted scopes because they single out objects not just in respect of specific causal powers that those objects have to affect us (and their surroundings) but in respect of the way those objects are constitutively individuated in a manner essentially tied up to the empirical domains that they belong to (and hence also to the conceptual schemes within which those domains are disclosed). Individual pants and animals are conceptually tied up to the self-perpetuating life forms that they belong to (which determines their norms of health and behavior) while artifacts are tied up with the human practices within which they are brought into existence. Scientific objects are likewise tied up to scientific practices within which they serve explanatory purposes.

There would be more to say regarding the relatively higher grade of autonomy (with respect to our conceptual practices) that belongs to life forms compared to the sortal concepts that single out human artifacts, socially constituted object (e.g. currencies) or 'scientific objects' such as planets or electrons.

Hi Pierre, I didn't think I was making an inductive argument — John

No. I was charging you with trying to advance a deductive argument in support of the validity of inductive reasoning. I don't think just pointing out that we have no doubts that thing will go on in the future as they went in the past is a pragmatist argument in support of inductive reasoning. It seems more like a proclamation of faith (I am not saying this disrespectfully).

John, I think when you are trying to construct an argument to defend inductive reasoning, you may be involving yourself in a performative contradiction, as it were (though, I may be wrong. This is just a suggestion). An inductive argument, however it is defined, is supposed to be something different than a deductive argument.

One should not, while defending inductive reasoning, offer some mutually accepted premises (of whatever nature) on the basis of which our interlocutor ought to be able to infer, deductively, that conclusions of inductive arguments (based on true premises) are true. That would be to misrepresent an inductive argument as a deductive argument!

The defense of inductive reason ought rather be something like an account of the sort of embodied practice engaged in by subjects who thus reason; something that is bound to seem circular from the point of view of a skeptic who only has faith in deductive arguments and may doubt even the existence of the sensible body. Rather than portray the inductive argument as some sort of a risky generalization based on a finite set of experienced 'data', one could explain how the practice of inductive reasoning is, well, reasonable. And for the practice to be reasonable just is for it to be able to secure knowledge. Once the fallibility of our epistemic powers is acknowledged, then we can brush off the challenge offered to us by the skeptic who questions the epistemic status of our beliefs. The skeptic isn't merely challenging a particular belief on some specific rational ground, but our entitlement to any empirical belief whatsoever since such beliefs only are inductively justified (i.e. conceived as the upshot of ordinary, fallible albeit reliable, perceptual powers). The reason why we are entitled to brush her skeptical challenge off, is precisely because we aren't committed to prove everything deductively!

Hi Agustino,

Yes, your figures for coal (60%), gas (11%) and cement production (8%) match what I can find in the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage. However fuel oil also accounts for 7.3%, while oil refineries account for 6%. So, the total for oil would be 13.3%, which would put it in second place. And then there is the issue of trends in consumption. The demand for oil might be expected to rise faster than the demand for coal in coming decades unless substitutes are found and promoted, I surmise (though I am not very knowledgeable about that).

Some more suggestions (all available online):

John McDowell, Avoiding the Myth of the Given
John Haugeland, Pattern and Being
Susan Hurley, Varieties of Externalism
Andy Clark, The Twisted Matrix: Dream, Simulation or Hybrid?
Michael Thompson, Apprehending Human Form

Many earlier suggestions would also get my vote.

Lots of critical comments to make, but this'll do for now. — StreetlightX

This post strikes me as an excellent summary, much better than I could have done myself. I thought for a second that you had misconstrued Quines' treatment of proper names because of your phrasing ("there is a something, X, of which we are speaking about"), which is a bit hard to parse as a definite description, but you cleared that up later on. I'm looking forward to reading your critical commentary.

Sloterdijk is rapidly becoming one of my top 3 favorite thinkers. — csalisbury

Who are the other two? And who is being threatened with being bumped in fourth place?

Regarding Dennett, I agree that Consciousness Explained is very bad in most of its positive explanatory aspirations. Peter Hacker eviscerates him an appendix of Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. But it also contains quite a few good insights. Among my favorite "intuition pumps" from him is his discussion of the distinction (or rather pseudo-distinction) between the Orwellian and Stalinesque models of consciousness content elaboration. Another gem from Dennett is his critique of Harris' Free Will.

Dennett was Gilbert Ryle's student at Oxford. There are several mentor/pupil pairs in the history of 20th century analytic philosophy such that, reading works from the pupil, I am left to wonder how it is possible for the core insights from his/her mentor to have been watered down or misconstrued so much. Those are the pairs that puzzle me most:

Gilbert Ryle -- Daniel Dennett
John Austin -- John Searle
Wilfrid Sellars -- Paul Churchand
Peter Strawson -- Galen Strawson (father/son, in this case)
Hilary Putnam -- Jerry Fodor

I'd be interested to hear a bit more about this undercutting of the fact/value dichotomy. — unenlightened

I'll make a few more comments later on, but meanwhile let me just provide some of the most relevant references. There is, of course, Putnam's The Collapse of the Fact Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. (Some of the "other essays" are quite relevant to the topic at hand, in addition to the titular one). McDowell's Values and Secondary Qualities (reprinted in Mind, Value and Reality) is a response to John Mackie that presses this analogy. Also relevant in the same volume (MV&R) are Aesthetic Value, Objectivity, and the Fabric of the World and Projection and Truth in Ethics. Finally, but non exhaustively, are David Wiggins' A Sensible Subjectivism (reprinted in Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value) as well as his recently published Truth, Pragmatism and Morality, a commentary on, and refinement of, Putnam's attack on the dichotomy.

Since what's being excluded is that which derives from a (finite) perspective, it's natural to hone in on those elements which relate to vision. But, to my mind, what's most difficult is the exclusion of experienced time. Of course we can say that a year refers to nothing but the earth's rotation around the sun and, as such, will hold just as well absent sentient beings (the earth will still revolve.) But drop the passage of time as experienced and just how quickly does the earth revolve around the sun? We can certainly compare this duration to other durations, but we can't quite grasp what any of it means without bringing it back to our experience of some particular duration. And that experience is always relative to the temporal scale we inhabit (cf Kant's Critique of Judgment, the relevant section of which I'm too lazy to produce at this moment. But I'll furnish it if pressed.) — csalisbury

This, and earlier paragraphs that I didn't quote, is very nicely put. I think you would enjoy Sebastian Rödl's Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Intellect. This treatise nicely complements Gareth Evans' The Varieties of Reference, that focuses rather more on the spatiality of embodied experience.

Brassier IS NOT attacking that people understand Saturn in various ways conceptual ways, some right (bright light in the sky, the planet Saturn) and other wrong (mighty sky god). Rather he is pointing out that the conceptual expression of Saturn is present even when no-one understands Saturn to be there. Here the way Saturn is "sorted" conceptually by us at a given time has no relevance to Brassier's point. He's pointing out the object Saturn expresses the meaning of Saturn no matter how we might understand it. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I am only quoting and responding to this paragraph because it nicely hones in on the ground of my perplexity with Brassier's idea of the thing itself, which you construe (possibly faithfully) as an object's self-expression of its own meaning. Even if we grant Brassier the possible intelligibility of such a notion -- which I am prepared to do for the sake of argument -- I don't see how it can be squared with the idea that this object can be pointed at (i.e. referred to deictically). That's because the understanding that we have of an object isn't something over and above the object's spatial and temporal extension. (I am saying this loosely without committing myself to perdurantism; since I rather favor endurantism regarding substances). Our understanding rather singles it out together with the spatial extension that it has, and temporally delimits the conditions of its coming into, and going out, of existence.

The example that I gave earlier was that of the lump of bronze that constitutes, over some finite time period, a statue of Hermes. One can point at the statue (and thereby also point at a lump of bronze) while being unclear over what kind of object it is. Now, Brassier would say that the object pointed at exists regardless of one's knowledge of what it is. (See paragraph 42). But what object is it that Brassier believes is being pointed at? There are at least two of them -- a statue, and a lump of bronze -- and arguably an indefinite number of different objects that different possible understandings of the ways in which the empirical world can be carved up could single out as the object being pointed at. It could be Hermes' nose, of even, supposing Hermes were a person, Hermes himself (with the demonstration of his statue being a conventional means of referring to him).

Brassier objects to the idea that understanding what Saturn is (the concept Saturn) is required for the object pointed at to exist. He objects that this requirement would commit one to conceptual idealism. I would like to agree but I must ask what "object pointed at" is he is talking about? What we are committed to, with 'conceptual idealism', might not be the claim that our having a conception of the object makes it exist, or is necessary for its existing since the object could indeed preexist our conception of it, in the manner of a living Triceratop that existed a long time ago, and could even dispense entirely with our ever coming to that understanding. What we are committed to, rather, only is the claim that for an object of a specific kind to be existing, at any given time, just is for it to be potentially answerable to a correct conception of that kind of objects. In Fregean terms, for the object to exist just is for it to fall under the intelligible and objective concept (regardless of anyone actually grasping the concept) that determines what kind of object it is (together with its persistence and identity conditions).

Inasmuch as both the old and the new definition each have a point within different scientific (sub)-practices, they can both single out an object, just not the same, on pain of equivocation (and violation of Leibniz's Law). — Pierre-Normand

I am quoting myself because I want to preemptively address a possible objection, but I don't want to dilute the main point of the previous post.

I was discussing a case, or a possible construal, of an episode of 'conceptual revision' (scare quotes explained later), where the proposed revision can be taken to replace, though not annihilate, the point of the old concept. Hence it is still legitimate to say that Pluto still is a planet (old definition), even though Pluto* isn't a planet* (and never was).

The objection is that this way of construing things makes it nonsense to say that Pluto (or whatever you want to call it) still exists but isn't a planet anymore. It is indeed nonsense to say this, and it rests on an equivocation between Pluto and Pluto*, but I must explain why it nevertheless makes sense to say that Pluto still exists (as a celestial body), and is the selfsame object that people knew about before the episode of conceptual revision.

The proper construal of this episode of 'conceptual revision' may be suggested by Putnam's discussion of the meaning of 'water' in The Meaning of "Meaning". It is often proper to credit early users of a concept, who had the old understanding (and were relying on the old definition) proleptically with an inchoate grasp of the new concept, or, at the very least, to ascribe to them a standing rational obligation to be open to good reasons that motivate the 'conceptual revision' (so called). Hence, what occurs isn't conceptual revision at all (that is, a revision of a Fregean concept), but rather a revision of the conception people had of the concept that always had been inchoately understood and correctly referred to. This inchoateness needs not even be a nascent state of subjective undertanding, but -- as in the case discussed by Putnam, of 'water', a natural kind concept that singles out a sort of substance initially referred to deictically by means of an exemplar, and/or by means of a prototypical definition -- rather depends on external factors: e.g. as of yet unknown features of the world (such as the chemical composition of water) that contribute to securing the reference of our concept-names.

Hence, for the case of Pluto, it isn't unfair to credit older folks with the true belief that Pluto now is the selfsame object that they always have (correctly) known as 'Pluto', event though they once incorrectly thought it to be a planet*. What they were understanding to be the conditions for something to be a 'planet' just was an incorrect conception of the selfsame concept (planet*) that has now more perspicuously been expressed with the new definition -- a definition that excludes Pluto from its extension.

I am not arguing that this is the most accurate description of the recent historical Pluto case, but it may be a good construal of very many episodes of 'conceptual revision' (or conceptional revision, ought we to awkwardly say) encountered when progress occurs in our understanding of concepts that we already were (or should have been) aware to have a fallible understanding of. Putnam's own 'water' case may be more fitting. And also, such an account clears up some puzzles about proper names, natural kind terms, identity and reference. One may refer to Gareth Evans: The Varieties of Reference, especially the chapter on proper names, for more background on this neo-Fregean gloss on Putnam (and Kripke).

I'm in thoroughgoing agreement that some kind of transcendental background is necessary to get cognition going. It will not do to begin with raw sense data and nothing but.

But just what is the ontological status of these sortal concepts? Do they exist (insist? subsist?) waiting to be discovered? Are they somehow baked into the objects they determine? — csalisbury

They are ontologically co-eval with the objects that fall under them. So the sortal concepts have the same ontological status, that is, the very same grade of objectivity, as the objects that fall under them. For instance, a particular rabbit (Fluffy, say) may fall under the sortal concept oryctolagus cuniculus. Understanding, and investigating, the sort of thing Fluffy is goes hand in hand with investigating the life form that it belongs to, the species, something like an Aristotelian immanent form.

In the case of a functional artifact such as a can opener, its function, as the kind of tool that it is, and the context withing which it operates, which includes the intentions of its designers and users (mostly) determine what it is.

Objects of scientific inquiry -- so called natural kinds (including chemical substances or elements) -- sometimes fall under sortal concepts that are partially constituted by the pragmatic point of the scientific practice that discloses them. In all cases, for both entirely 'natural', or (partially or mainly) socially constituted objects, the sortal concepts are 'baked' into the objects that fall under them, indeed. This is just to say that something can't exist appart from existing as an exemplar of the kind of object that it is, whatever we may happen to know (or decide) about it. It is only discloseable or thinkable as such. (This doesn't rely on the fallacy of the Gem, I don't think. ) It nevertheless makes good sense to say that natural kinds (one particular kind of sortal concepts) are discovered rather than invented, since, unlike socially constituted objets (such as dollar bills) we aren't responsible for the conditions under which they come to be instantiated.

Since "planet" is the sortal we've been playing with, it seems a good candidate for close examination.

[...]

Yet (as you noted on the Quine thread) there exists a certain celestial mass that has ceased to constitute a planet. Is there no longer Pluto, only a remnant of Pluto?

No object ever ceases to be the kind of object that it was just because some definition has changed (unless the sortal concept is entirely socially constituted, and the objet falling under it is instituted by a performative act). Pluto would cease to exist altogether if Pluto itself was materially altered (or some of its relational properties that is part of the definition of a planet changed) -- through losing mass, say -- and in that case the residual mass left behind could be called a remnant of Pluto, no longer a planet, and no longer Pluto.

If there occurs a conceptual revision within a scientific practice, and "planet" is given a new definition, we are entitled to say that Pluto still exists as a planet, under the old definition, and Pluto* doesn't exists anymore as a planet* under the new definition. Inasmuch as both the old and the new definition each have a point within different scientific (sub)-practices, they can both single out an object, just not the same, on pain of equivocation (and violation of Leibniz's Law).

As you probably know, the revised definition of planethood responsible for Pluto's exile was established by a vote. This vote was motivated by the discovery of new celestial bodies which, according to the definition which afforded Pluto planethood, might themselves qualify as planets.

The reason for Pluto's change of status was not a realization that our conceptions of it were mistaken; rather a new definition of what "planet" meant was constructed

Yes, I agree. But it was constructed with a view towards achieving more coherence and perspicuity in a classification scheme. The view that ought to be resisted (I would urge) is that we can single out objects as they are in themselves appart from the way they are individuated within the schemes that express our understandings of them. Those understandings can't be separated from our practical and/or theoretical interests in those objects, and the systematic relations (laws and norms) that they bear with other objects and phenomena in the specific empirical domain that they populate (e.g. the cosmos).

Now whether or not a given body satisfies the definition of planet indeed depends on the characteristics of the object itself. But, as the vote illustrates, the very concept of 'planet' is a contingent human construction, informed equally by empirical discovery and categorizational expediency. While we may assume that pluto existed before humans, it makes little sense to say that the sortal planet did.

I am unsure why you would think that, though I wouldn't phrase it exactly like that (as sortal concepts existing). All I am saying is that, whatever your definition of a planet might be, assuming only that it has a point (as part of an intelligible conceptual scheme) and isn't utterly confused or incoherent, planets existed as planets, and were thus discloseable as such, for as long as there have been planets. Similarly for rabbits and the life forms that they instantiate. An animal can't come into existence before the life form that it exemplifies (or so I would argue).

Yes, you are right. I misused the term "naive realist". I meant to refer to the stance of some scientific realists, who I believe to be naive ;-). However the label "scientific realist" could also be applied to people who simply argue that theoretical entities are real and not just explanatory. But that would also make me a scientific realist. And since I am a direct realist, I also am likely to be charged with "naive realism". So, all those labels are banana peels; which is why I am attempting to articulate the underlying issues as explicitly as possible whenever I can. In any case, what I was mainly objecting to (and mislabeled) was eliminative and/or reductionist materialism/physicalism; i.e. scientism. What I am advocating instead is (McDowell's) relaxed naturalism.

In fact it might be a useful definition of being - that which does not change just because we change how we talk and think about it. Or is that horribly naive? — unenlightened

This definition might be false and naive under one reading, and unobjectionable, though consistent with the kind of realist conceptualism that I take from Frege, Wiggins, McDowell, Hornsby, Putnam and Haugeland. Under the second reading, things indeed don't change just because we change how we talk about them. But that is true also of planets and intimate relationships. The intimate relationship of course changes if *participants* in it change how they talk about it, but that's just because how they talk about it is partially constitutive of it (just as how we exchange money is largely constitutive of the value that it has). How *other* people change the way they talk about it doesn't have any such impact, except inasmuch as it might disclose different features of the relationship they are witnessing (and, of course, the participants themselves can be influenced by this external gaze if they come to be aware of it). But this is just to say that how they (the non-participant observers) talk about the relationship between Pat and Chris, say, determine which features they are disclosing, not that they are changing those features.

The case of planets is more clear cut. How we talk about them determines (or rather singles out) some determinate concept of a planet (a sortal concept) under which we subsume some celestial bodies. Given one possible perspicuous understanding of the word 'planet', one according to which a planet must (among other things) have cleared out its path, Pluto isn't a planet. But this fact doesn't change when we change how we talk about planets. What changes is the reference of the word "planet" (the sortal concept referred to, also on the level of Bedeutung according to Frege) and hence, also, the truth value of the *sentence* "Pluto is a planet" (since the sentence now has a different meaning).

Most revealing of all might be the concept of a secondary quality. Wiggins and McDowell both defend what has been dubbed secondary quality realism. This realism undercuts both scientism and the fact/value dichotomy (also attacked by Putnam). Secondary qualities, such a color and smell, that we perceive, and ascribe to objects, also don't change when we change the way that we talk about them. Not always, in any case. Talking about them can induce changes in the brute shape of our sensibility and aesthetic appreciation. That can lead to a change in the reference of the words that we use to refer to secondary qualities. That much is easily granted (it is akin to redefining the word "planet" under the impetus of some new pragmatic scientific consideration).

For an object to be red just is for it to look red to normal observers under normal conditions. What counts as normal, in both cases, is tacitly part of the way we understand and use the concept in ordinary use. (This necessary tacit understanding is underlined in Sellars' Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind) It would be an error to view the perceptual concept thus defined as being subjective and our judgments about unchanging objects liable to change if, and when, the conditions of our sensibility change.

This would be to misconstrue the definitional relationship between looking red and being red, rather in the way Russell's (or Quine's) definite description analysis of ordinary proper names misconstrues the naming relationship between names and objects. It misidentifies the modal character of the relationship. This has been highlighted by Kripke in Naming and Necessity. Putnam (implicitly) and Wiggins (explicitly) have brought Kripke's insight to bear on the case of secondary qualities. Just as, when one uses the proper name "Gödel" to refer to Gödel, the Fregean sense of the mane can't be expressed with a definite description, even though such a description may (or may not) have been used to secure the reference of the name when it was first introduced into the language, the sense of the predicate "red" doesn't either reduce to the sense of the definite description "looks read to us". It is rather the reference of the predicate (the sensible quality) that is thereby fixed. The upshot is that "...being red" as predicated of particular objects yields perfectly objective judgments. We may change the way we use the predicate "...is red" (which would amount to changing the reference of the predicate), and, indeed, do so under the impetus of a change in the shape of our brute sensibility, aesthetic appreciation, and/or discriminatory abilities. But that would amount to changing the concept being used, that is, not (necessarily) a change in judgment, but a change in topic. (It can also occur that the conception was revised, and hence also the judgment, but that is beyond the present point).

Naive realists believe that there is a fact/value dichotomy, where values are placed on the side of our contingent sensibilities and understandings. They thus believe science ought to be tasked with peeling off (or explaining away) the appearances that our use of secondary quality concepts yield. What would remain of reality after mere appearances (to us) have been thus peeled of is the objective world as it is in itself. But if the dichotomy is illusory, as I believe it is, then the peeling off leaves nothing.

How am I to understand this 'exist as such', except as 'exist as stuff', as distinct from 'exist as a sortal concept': is this not the dualism of stuff and arrangement sneaked into the analysis without acknowledgement? — unenlightened

I explained this to mean "exist as a P, where P is a sortal concept". It could be, for instance "exist as a bean". I didn't raise any issue about sortal concepts themselves 'existing'. What I was challenging is the idea (which you might not be strongly committed to) that for something to could as a P, quite generally, just is for something to have material parts, or constituents, and for those constituents to be arranged in the sort of pattern that makes them into a P. If this were the generalized explanation of a sortal concept, then every material object would be the object that it is only in virtue of its intrinsic, internal organization. But it often is the case that a material object is the object that it is in virtue of its functional role in a wider context, or some combination of its intrinsic arrangement and the existence of such a role. Consider, for instance, the concept of a planet (such that Saturn is one, but Plato isn't, because it didn't clear up its path, on one possible account of what it is for something to be a planet).

Which is to say that though we must see a bean as a bean in order to count it as a bean, there is no 'seeing as' about how many beans make five. — unenlightened

But there is a seeing as, a sortal concept, that makes something -- or rather singles it out as -- a bean. The question that can't possibly be answered through appeal to 'things as they are in themselves' is "How many objects are there in the pod?". Atoms are objets, so are bean parts, bacteria, and two beans stuck together may count as an object (for some purpose or other). Strip away all purpose and understanding (by us) and you dispense with all sortal concepts. But in that case there is no answer to how many "things" there are in the pod.

Frege got at this idea (in The Foundations of Arithmetic) when he proposed to define the concept of a number, understood as as expressing a specific count of something, as being signified by a second order functor that yields a truth value when saturated with a definite description (a first order functor). It then expresses the count of the objects that fall under the definite description. A definite description that single out material objects of a specific kind includes a sortal concept. The sentence "there are five beans in the pod" can then be analysed as "there are 5 x such that x ..." (a second order functor) saturated with the expression "...is a bean in the pod" (a first order predicate that includes the intelligible sortal concept of a bean). The concept of a pod merely restricts the scope of the quantifier in this example.

I'll respond to your second question later on...

Hi Willow, I'll respond later (and edit this post), just to let you know.

(On edit: I answered below, at long last)

I mean look at this, from paragraph 42.

" It might be objected that we need [ the meaning/sense of] Saturn to say what [the object] Saturn is; that we cannot refer to Saturn [the object] or assert that it is without Saturn [ qua meaning/sense] But this is false: the first humans who pointed to Saturn did not need to know and were doubtless mistaken about what it is: but they did not need to know in order to point to it."

This is downright embarrassing. Yeah, of course the first humans didn't need to have our current understanding of what saturn is to point to saturn. But they quite obvious had some sort of understanding or experience of what they were pointing to. Otherwise they wouldn't have pointed. — csalisbury

I am glad you noticed too. Maybe I should have read the whole thread before commenting.