What in particular concerns me is the exact status of sensation and affect, and the way in which the sensible relates to the rational machinery of rational conception. — StreetlightX

Quite agreed. Brandom offers little improvement over Sellars on this issue, which is why I mostly rely on McDowell and Haugeland for suitable correctives to Sellars' account of experience.

Do sortal concepts (or sortal conceiving) exist in the absence of conceiving beings?
If no, and if Saturn's independence of sortal concepts is implausible, then there cannot be a Saturn without such beings.
If yes, then what exactly is this 'minimal conceptual ground' which is independent of conceiving beings? And how can we maintain such a ground without reverting to idealism? — csalisbury

Following Frege (or maybe, Wiggins' construal of Frege in his The Sense and Reference of Predicates: A Running Repair to Frege's Doctrine and a Plea for the Copula) I tend to distinguish conceptions (our specific, yet communicable, understandings of a concept) from concepts. A general concept (such as a property) predicated of an object yields a truth value, true or false, accordingly, whether the object has or doesn't have the property. All those notions (concept, object, truth value) belong to the realm of reference (Bedeutung) according to Frege. (Which is rather more restrictive than to say, with Quine, that they are values of bound variables). Sortal concepts are a special kind of general concepts rather unlike properties or relations. That's because objects can't have them accidentally. An object such as Saturn can't cease to be a planet, just like President Obama can't cease to be a human being. If something (a large celestial mass, say) ceases to constitute a planet, for some reason, then this celestial mass can't constitute Saturn anymore. It constitutes, at best, a remnant of Saturn. So, sortal concepts are rather akin to essential properties. But it can't be an a posteriori law of nature (something empirically discovered) that Saturn essentially is a planet. It is rather more akin to a conceptual truth.

We grasp sortal concepts through forging conceptions of objects (understandings of what they are). Sometimes, we also contribute in setting up some of the conditions of their existence, as is the case for functional artifacts and many social objects (monetary tokens, chess pieces, etc.) Our conceptions are, according to Wiggins' Frege, the senses (Fregean Sinne) of predicates that refer to concepts. A conception just is an understanding. It may be correct or incorrect and hence is beholden to the object it aims at being an understanding of (or of the laws of nature the object is governed by) for its correctness. Sortal concepts determine the criteria of persistence and individuation of objects that fall under them. Someone's conception of the sortal concept under which an object such as Saturn falls can be mistaken. The reason why this conception (how it is understood for something to be a planet) is beholden to Saturn for its correctness is because Saturn is the focus of a scientific inquiry. This inquiry is objective just because it has a point -- it discloses interesting and predictable features of phenomena, and objects (such as Saturn) as resilient patterns in the midst of those phenomena. We can adjust our conceptions of object in order to track the objective features that they really have, but this means no more an no less than that our conceptions of the objects that populate some empirical domain (astronomy, say) successfully discloses patterns that we are interested in (because they afford prediction, control, explanation, etc.).

What empirical inquiry reveals is first and foremost the discloseability of intelligible objects within some intelligible mode of empirical investigation (which need no be scientific). Discolseability is a modal notion. Actually existing objects, and the empirical domains that are a part of, need not be actually disclosed in order for them to exist, i.e. to be discloseable. So, thus far, there is no threat of idealism involved in the Fregean account of sortal concepts.

What I was invoking with the idea of a "minimal conceptual ground" just is a minimal understanding of the objective sortal concept an object may fall under when it is identified empirically (maybe perceptually) as being a material object at all (rather than, say, an utterly confused bundle of sensations). I am not claiming that this understanding must be actual in order for the object to exist. My point rather is that if we abstract from even such a minimal understanding of the persistence and individuation criteria that determine what an object might be, then we can't make sense of it potentially being the focus of a protracted and systematic empirical inquiry into what it really is. That is, we must start with some understanding in order for our empirical investigation (our experiences) to rationally bear on our initial understanding (that's the inescapable theory ladenness of experience). But since there always must be some such initial understanding, and this understanding is at play in acts of receptivity (empirical inquiry) this background is transcendental, in the Kantian sense. This transcendental background consists in the discloseability (to us) -- of objective Fregean concepts -- not subjective conceptions. It is not transcendent. Concepts are 'objects' of empirical inquiry. So this background is in play, and objects can exist, even before, or without, any actual understanding (conceptions) by us. And yet, those objective concepts only are objective inasmuch at the patterns that they potentially disclose are intelligible to us (rational embodied enquirers). One may call that conclusion conceptual idealism (or pragmatism). But I think such an 'idealism' is innocuous from a naturalistic point of view since it also is a form of realism and it furnishes an account of the objectivity of empirical judgment.

I've just finished reading Brassier's paper, so I can now comment. Brassier is attacking correlationism and other forms of anti-realism (including idealism and conceptual idealism). He is rather advocating for transcendental realism, while claiming some affinity or allegiance to a similar Sellars inspired project -- his "synoptic vision" -- which is a form of scientific realism (scientism, even) described in James O'Shea's book Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn. Brassier contrasts O'Shea's realist appropriation with Brandom's neo-Hegelian appropriation of Sellars. I am familiar with Sellars, Brandom and O'Shea. I share with Brassier his reservations about Brandom's pragmatic inferentialism, but I also have reservations with O'Shea's defense of Sellars' scientism. I rather prefer the appropriation of (the best features of) Sellars by John McDowell and John Haugeland (and the similar views on concepts and objects advanced by David Wiggins in Sameness and Substance and various papers on ethics, practical reasoning, values and Frege). But those pluralist, yet realist and naturalist, appropriations of Sellars aren't considered at all in Brassier's text.

I am unsure if the severe criticisms of Latour and Fichte (and the comparatively milder criticisms of Deleuze and Meillassoux) are fair since I am unfamiliar with them. His targets as he describe them are indefensible, for sure. Some of the criticisms of Berkeley (maybe not all) seem fair but this form of idealism -- esse est percipi -- is an easy target.

I have been puzzled by Brassier's reliance on the "thing in itself" as opposed to the thing "for us". While I was reading Concepts and Objects, I was anxiously awaiting for some positive characterization (however abstract) of the "in itself" but the only thing Brassier provided were vagues gestures in direction of Sellars. It's possible Sellars has an account of the noumenon that I overlooked because it was a part of his philosophy that I had found unconvincing (and it's been 8 years since I read O'Shea), and also, my favorite Sellars' inspired philosophers dispense with this notion altogether. Maybe it is meant to be adequately illustrated by Brassier's discussion of Saturn.

So we come to this part of the text. The discussion of Saturn seemed confused to me. There appeared to be an alternation between true but trivial claims and obscure conclusions that depend on one accepting false dichotomies, as if the refutation of Berkeley's idealism was sufficient to vindicate Brassier's ill explained transcendental realism.

Brassier usefully distinguish 'Saturn' (the name), Saturn (the sense; the Fregean Sinn) and Saturn (the "referent"; the Fregean Bedeutung). But those distinctions still aren't quite precise enough. Following Wiggins, I would distinguish the sortal concept 'planet', which is part of the conception one may have of Saturn, as the sort of thing that it is, from the mode of presentation of Saturn, the Fregean sense Saturn of which this conception is a part. They are not the same thing since two persons can share the same conception of Saturn as a planet and have it presented to them under two different modes of presentation (compare the famous cases of Hesperus and Phosphorus, or Afla and Ateb, discussed by Frege). Oftentimes, when Brassier mentions the 'concept' Saturn, he seems to mean the sortal concept ('planet') rather than the Fregean singular sense, or mode of presentation of Saturn, as this is usually understood in analytic philosophy.

One gesture that Brassier makes towards explaining what Saturn in itself is is to argue that one can refer to Saturn without knowing what Saturn (precisely) is. This is true. Following Putnam, we can argue that it is possible to refer to some sample of water, and re-identify it, or identify it with other samples of the same stuff, without knowing that being H2O is what it is (essentially) for something to be water. But this hardly means that one thereby means to refer to water as it is in itself (something we know not what) as opposed referring to it as being potentially answerable to a conception of what it is (e.g. as falling under some determinate sortal concept or other, we don't yet know which one). Before it has been fully investigated, people who refer to bits of stuffs can already understand that there are some (more or less) essential, or regular, properties that make it the sort of stuff that it is. This is a condition for the reference to be objective at all rather than being a reference to the occurrent and non-repeatable experience that it provoques in us.

Hence, people who refer to Saturn without knowing that it is a planet must at least know that it is something like a 'celestial body', say, that is, something objective that can be seen in the sky and will likely not reappear under the bed. This means that Saturn, thus conceived, falls under a determinable (vague) sortal concept that awaits further determination or revision. But the sortal concept under which it falls, however imprecise, still is a part of our conception of Saturn, and partly determinative of what it is.

Brassier of course accepts that the 'concept' (what he calls Saturn) is determinative of what Saturn is, as something answering to our conception of it. What he denies is that Saturn's being is thereby determined (at some point he says "circumscribed" but doesn't explain this term). This claim can have two readings, one that is quite trivial and another one that is quite implausible. The first one simply is the denial of Berkeleyan idealism, that our concept (Saturn) makes Saturn exist. OK. This seems trivially false (unless one is an idealist).

(Let me note in passing that there also remains an equivocation due to Brassier's failure to distinguish the Fregean sense of 'Saturn' from the sortal concept under which Saturn falls. The trouble is that under one account of Fregean senses (inspired by Kripke and Putnam, and further refined and defended by Gareth Evans and John McDowell) singular senses, such as the senses of proper names, or demonstrative expressions, are object dependent. But I will reserve discussion of this issue to another post. Let us just grant the denial of Berkeleyan idealism, or of the "Gem" argument that this and other idealisms allegedly depend on.)

According to the second reading, for Saturn to exist is independent of the sortal concept under which it falls when we think of it, perceive it, or talk about it, as whatever it is that it indeed is (in this case, arguably, a planet). But this is quite implausible. The reason is that reference just can't get any grip on anything objective without some minimal conceptual ground with which to anchor conditions of persistence and individuation that determine what it is one is referring to (in thought, talk, or demonstratively).

It would be easy to work out an example for an object like Saturn, but a simpler example is the case of a lump of bronze that materially constitutes a statue of Hermes. Can one point out demonstratively to 'this object' while being agnostic about its existing as a statue or as a heavy lump of stuff? Brassier, it seems, would need to acknowledge that we can only refer to it as something or other (i.e. as what it is). But what becomes of his claim that, in addition to being something that we refer to as what it is, it also is something in itself? Is that "it", that it is "in itself" still existing after we have hammered flat the lump of bronze and thereby destroyed the statue? It seems that the answer crucially depends on whether we are talking about the statue or the lump of bronze. But then there is no "it" existing independently of the what it is that is self-sustained in existence for an extended period of time independently of what it is. How long it remains in existence, and hence continues to be whatever it is "in itself" (if this makes sense at all) seems to depend crucially on what it is. Yet, Brassier seems to want to deny this.

That's the dead end/error which drives much of the nonsense about theory of truth. There isn't a "how." At some point we are simply found with awareness of particular empirical or logical patterns. We never sit outside this knowledge to somehow derive it. Our knowledge is given by the presence of the object(s) which is(are) the understanding of something else. It is a question of (our) existence rather than of reasoning.

"Ontologically primary"and "the pre-conceptual" are incoherent. Existence doesn't preceded existence. There is just existence. Anything which does exist, which can be expressed language, expresses the conceptual by definition. There can't be a computer, for example, I discover and learn to talk about if such objects fall outside conceptual expression. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I think this is rather nicely put. I had missed this response earlier. Let me just make clear that I agree with your attack on the presupposition of the question (that is: the idea that there might be some 'preconceptually existing' reality waiting to be conceptualized by us). Hence the paragraph that you quoted from my post wasn't my own question. It was my paraphrase of John's question. The rest of my response was meant to make (or gesture towards) a point similar to yours on behalf of Haugeland (who, like Brassier, albeit in a different manner, was much influenced by Sellars).

Also, though I also reject the idea of the preconceptual, the use that I make of "ontological primacy" is rather innocuous and only meant to signify a one-way conceptual dependence between two domains that both fall, indeed, within the sphere of the conceptual. In the specific case that I mentioned, Zuhandenheit is primary relative to Vorhandenheit because there is no distanced (theoretical) approach to empirical reality that isn't distanced from, or a view of some features abstracted from, a mode of engagement that directly (and inherently or constitutively) involves our interests and embodied capabilities.

I should say more about the reason why the possibility of (sentient) abilities or 'interests' that falls short from being a conceptual abilities (such a the perceptual and behavioral abilities and attitudes of the sentient albeit non-rational animals) doesn't entail that there are any 'preconceptual objects' for us to talk about, and why even (mere) animal 'affordances' (J.J. Gibson) aren't such objects. But I'll come back to this later, maybe in the thread about Brassier (Concepts and Objects).

Hey guys pretty late to this convo BUT — csalisbury

I'm even later to this party. But since this text makes contact both with preoccupations of continental philosophy that I am much ignorant of, but find interesting, and with issues of analytic philosophy that I am more conversant with, I just decided to print and read the paper. I will comment soon.

I was out in the streets early this morning... — Bitter Crank

Bagatelles are little things; the video already disappeared!

This document expresses your stances on several separable philosophical topics (e.g. atheism, free will and hedonism). No doubt, you wish to integrate those stances into a coherent whole. However, for purpose of discussion in this forum, might it not be better to discuss them in separate threads? (Maybe no more than one or two at a time).

One can read Aristotle for the first time, but it is unlikely that the latest new reader will produce any ground-breaking new insights. After all these years, the field of Aristotle has been plowed too many times for something new to be discovered. Still, Aristotle is worth reading. — Bitter Crank

New readers of Aristotle (or Leibnitz, or Hume, or Kant, or Wittgenstein, etc.) produce new insights all the time! This is because their ideas are constantly being brought to bear on new issues that arise in human social and cultural context (and philosophical conceptions) that are constantly evolving.

You may want to say that new insights into the philosophy of Aristotle merely are newer applications of an intellectual product that is, in itself, finished, as you suggest baroque musique is -- i.e. "a thing". But this is to confuse the individuals who were participants in an intellectual/artistic tradition with the tradition itself. The individuals are mortal, but the tradition only dies when it is forgotten. Baroque music, in general, and Bach's spirit, in particular, still live in the ongoing process of musical creation that finds nourishment in them (oftentimes indirectly). The same is true of Aristotle's thinking. He is, in a very real sense, still engaged with us in an ongoing dialogue that will go on until our civilization ends.

On edit: As a conciliatory gesture, let me add that I agree that there is a way for an intellectual or artistic tradition to die and become a "thing" in the sense that you suggest. This occurs in the context where the dialogue is interrupted because some tradition is enshrined and becomes an object of mere reverence or dogmatic adherence. But then, it can still be resurrected by people who are willing to re-engage in a genuine dialogue with the ancient ideas or insights.

Your post raises many issues and I will comment on just one of them. This concerns your idea of a dualism of stuff, or material constituent, and arrangement. I recently provided in another thread a link to Haugeland's paper Pattern and Being. An idea similar to yours was discussed in p.5 of this thread.

In Haugeland's view, to be just is to be an intelligible (and empirically discloseable) pattern. I will leave aside your question whether for X to be part of an ontology, X must be actual (or perceived) or merely discloseable, and thus just potentially existing. I just want to focus on your idea of a dualism of pattern and 'stuff patterned' (as one might put it).

If seeing, or empirically disclosing, a real pattern consists in seing a pattern in the arrangement of some entities that can be independently identified, then seeing a pattern always is a case of seeing as. An example would be seeing an arrangement of chess pieces on a chess board (at a definite stage in the course of a chess game) as constituting a king being checkmated. But, more basically, it could also be a case of some wooden figurine shaped thus and so being seen as a bishop. To be a bishop, in the context of a chess game, just is to be a material figurine (say) that plays a particular role according to intelligible rules. For chess pieces to have the identities that they have (bishop, pawn, king, etc.) is for them to be ascribed roles that disclose intelligible patterns (from the point of view of someone who merely observed the game going on). The constitutive rules and standards that govern the practice of chess playing (when insisted upon by chess players) bring those patterns into existence.

The point of this example, that I am adapting from Haugeland, is that for X to be, in the sense that X is a re-identifiable part of an intelligible pattern that belongs to some empirically discloseable domain of experience, doesn't just depend on the way in which the constituents of X are arranged internally. The internal organization of X may or may not, in some cases, enable X to play the functional role, within some broader context of activity, that defines X as the sort of object that it is. So, whenever something is part of an ontology, because it can be seen as a P (where 'P' is a sortal concept that defines what specific sort of pattern any P is seen as), then P must be discloseable within some broader context of activity (i.e. an empirical domain being governed by constitutive rules, such as the laws of physics, for instance). It may or may not be the case that for some P to exist as such (i.e. as the P that it is, where 'P' is a sortal concept) consists in its being internally arranged thus and so.

Hi John,

You don't need much acquaintance with the current state of neuroscience in order to follow this debate. Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience provides a useful survey of the evolution of the field (with significant contributions by Max Bennett), but the meat of Hacker's arguments (because it's mainly Peter Hacker who argues the philosophy) are found in the detailed elucidations of various psychological concepts. Did you read the selections from Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience provided in pp.3-48 of Neuroscience and Philosophy? Maybe those excerpts are too short to display the full power of Hacker's Wittgensteinian approach.

Hacker is, however, such a devoted and orthodox Wittgensteinian that he is liable to make tantrums when some philosopher (or scientist) deviates, by his lights, from Wittgensteinian orthodoxy and promulgates some doctrine that Hacker diagnoses (often rightfully) and denounces (with excessive fervor) as "nonsense". This explains the harsh tone of his attacks against Searle and Dennett (in the appendixes of PFoN), and the little interpretive charity that he accords them. Nevertheless, much of the substance of his criticism of them, and of a majority of practitioners of modern cognitive sciences, seems to be on target (or so I would be prepared to argue on his behalf).

What it is useful to be acquainted with in order to fully appreciate Hacker's criticisms, I think, besides the philosophy of the late Wittgenstein (roughly from The Blue and Brown Books up to The Philosophical Investigations), and Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind, is the variety of relatively new paradigms in cognitive sciences (and robotics) that are variously labeled externalist, embodied, situated, dynamical, anti-representationalist, etc. J.J. Gibson's Ecological Approach to Visual Perception also belongs to this movement. Many books on the topic of embodies cognition have appeared in recent years, but none of them, to my knowledge, surpasses the deep and insightful survey and commentary by Robert A. Wilson's Boundaries of the Mind published in 2004. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are much more than forerunners to those approaches. Cognitive science has not caught up with them, in my view. But the representationalist and internalist paradigms still dominate the scientific fields (where 'Cartesian materialism' reigns), and much of the recent analytic philosophy of mind (with several notable exceptions including, of course, John Haugeland).

Interestingly enough, Dennett was Ryle's student at Oxford, while Ryle's The Concept of Mind was very much indebted to Wittgenstein (and Wittgenstein himself who, like Hacker, was prone to making tantrums, was quite angry at Ryle for 'stealing' his ideas). This indirect influence is manifest in some of Dennett's early philosophical papers about the intentional stance and the personal/sub-personal distinction. Some of those are ideas that Hacker could have stressed as areas of agreement. In later years Dennett has moved away from Wittgenstein, and, strangely, lost touch with some of his own best early philosophical insights. Jennifer Horsby chides him for one such retreat in her paper Personal and Sub-Personal: A Defence of Dennet's Early Distinction.

I just wanted to provide some context to the debate. I'll respond to specific points that you raises separately. The paper by Hornsby that I linked to is a much easier read that her paper on the Identity Theory of Truth. It is interesting because it could be used to harnesses Dennett's own arguments in allying him with Hacker against Dennett and Searle!

That makes sense; even atoms or quarks must have some kind of form. — John

Yes, though Aristotle's notions of form and matter, and of act and power, are more general and abstract, and thus applicable to a broader range of empirical domains, than the domain of material objects (Aristotelian substances) that fall under 'sortal concepts', and that have material constituents.

So "small forms have larger forms to unite 'em, and so on ad infinitum '...or is it " large forms have small forms to disunite 'em, and so on ad infinitum "?

That would possibly be a stretch unwarranted by Wiggins' account. His account just is an account of identity and persistence criteria for material objects (substances). Haugeland has a more general account of the constitutive rules that govern 'empirical domains', broadly conceived so as to also include the domain of natural numbers and their properties, and domains of social phenomena such as chess games (e.g. the phenomena that occur on the chess board such as a king being checkmated, or a rook being threatened by a bishop), etc. When considering a particular sort of material object (specifically), there is no reason to expect that its material constituents will always be other material objects with broadly the same sort of ontological structure (as material objects typically have). Electrons and quarks fall under sortal concepts that determine the kinds of experiments, and experimental set-ups, in which they show up, and what kinds of patterns they show up as. Those intelligible patterns need not be patterns of, or arrangements of, underlying material constituents. What they are 'made of', if anything, is for physics, and the philosophy of physics, to determine. That can't be settled by a general account of concepts and objects or a general theory of language and reference.

This seems to be a very traditional understanding along the lines of saying that the matter remains while the form is transmuted. — John

No, the thesis is quite different. One main point of Wiggins' theory of the sortal dependency of identity precisely is to deny any simple dualism of matter and form. It still is close to Aristotle, though, since, arguably, in Aristotle, form and matter are concepts that are aligned with actuality and potentiality, respectively, and are likewise relative (to one another) rather than absolute concepts (e.g. a dichotomy). That is, if X is the matter of (or the 'material cause of') Y, then Y can likewise, at the very same time, be the matter of Z, etc., and something else, W, may be the matter of X. Generally, if X is some 'matter' that can potentially take the form of Y (and the existence of this potentiality is all that is said in saying that X is matter), then, when this potentiality is actualized, what was initially only potentially Y might or might not still persist as the X is was. (e.g. one might have to destroy a tree in order to make planks, but the planks can persist as they come to make up a house).

What is rather central to the account is the denial that anything could be 'raw matter', as it were, that is, being a material constituents of something else without also itself falling under some sortal concept or other, and thus having persistence and individuation conditions of its own. Everything conceivable (limiting ourselves to material objects and stuffs) that can be singled out in the material world (perceived, individuated or otherwise conceived) also had form. The material constituents of objects also are objects, in this broad sense.

Indeed. It runs all together deeper. Objects which are, later named and categorised by us, ARE something which we later identify (tall, short, soft, round, heavy, a chair, a cat, a tree, etc.,etc.). There is NO criteria of persistence and individuation.

An object, by definition, is persistent (else it would be a given language/experience that was talking about something else) and individuated (else it wouldn't be a specific finite state). All objects express these qualities, regardless of what they might be. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You misunderstand. I wasn't arguing that we are providing criteria for distinguishing objects that do persist from objects that don't persist at all. (Let us put aside objects such as numbers or events that aren't 'material objects' (or gods) -- i.e. the 'substances' of scholastic metaphysics).

Rather, I am following David Wiggins who argues for the sortal dependence of identity in his magisterial Sameness and Substance: Renewed. Material entities persist in time and can be re-identified throughout their careers (until the moment when they die or are destroyed). However, some object such as a statue of Hermes, say, can be materially constituted by a lump of bronze. The lump of bronze can spatially coincide with the statue, and, indeed, be made us of the same collection of atoms, at a time. But they are distinct objects since the statue can be destroyed while the lump of bronze persists for awhile longer. What distinguishes the statue, as an object, that is not identical with the lump of bronze that constitutes it, is its having different criteria of persistence and individuation. (Refer to the puzzles about the Ship of Theseus regarding criteria of individuation). Sticking to criteria of persistence, for simplicity, we can say that they are provided by the sortal concept under which any material object necessarily falls if it is to be counted as such.

Hence, when the statue is melted down, or hammered flat, it is destroyed. It doesn't exist anymore as a statue, which is to say, it doesn't exist anymore simpliciter. There just aren't any statue existing anymore at that location, where there might still exist a lump of bronze.

The issue, then, is what is it that supplies the sortal concepts under which existing (perceptually identifiable and countable) material objects fall? I would say that we do. Objects themselves can't be found in natures labelled with concepts that provide their persistence conditions. But this doesn't threaten realism. We supply the sortal concepts, together with the persistence conditions tacitly associated with them, and then we can look up in the world to see if some objects falling under that concept exist, and we can track them until they meet their demises (not always through our own agencies).

I think there is a subtle distinction between claims about what is and claims about what we should say about what is. — John

It is unclear to me that such a distinction is intelligible. It's like saying that one is entitled to say that some tomato is red while not being entitled to say that it can be said that it is red. How can one possibly argue that P and not thereby be committed to endorse the claim that it should be asserted (rather than denied) that P? Maybe you want to gesture at the idea that there might be things that can't be said at all (or ever). Wittgenstein commented on this in the very last proposition of the Tractatus: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

What would enable us, pre-linguistically, to reliably pick out objects, or non-linguistic animals to pick out objects ( or "affordances") if there were no ontological distinctiveness, or relevant joints to carve, to produce reliable distinctions. — John

Another way to phrase this would be to ask: how can we come to detect interesting patterns in the empirical world, patterns, that is, that are relevant to our human practices and interests, and hence that we can pick up conceptually, if there aren't distinct and 'ontologically primary' (and 'pre-conceptual') entities there to be patterned by us?

Although Haugeland's paper Truth and Rule Following doesn't seem to be available online, the paper Pattern and Being fortunately is provided here. (It's very nice from the people at the University of Chicago to have left Haugeland's page up after his untimely demise). This paper is a forerunner of some of the ideas further developed in Truth and Rule Following. It's also a criticism of Dennett's quasi-realism about mental states. But is has a much broader ontological import. Haugeland is effectively arguing that reality is conceptually structured all the way down, as it were, but not any less real for all that. He is agreeing with Heidegger that Zuhandenheit is ontologically prior to Vorhandenheit and hence that the latter can't epistemically or ontologically ground the former (my quick gloss on Haugeland's thesis).

I don't wish to burden you with yet another reference to the literature. I only provide it because it's especially good and relevant to your question. But if you would rather prefer that provide my own more detailed response and arguments, I will.

I think what Willow means by "defined in themselves" is something like "definite in themselves" or "distinct in themselves'. — John

Yes, that's how it sounds to me too. TheWillowOfDarkness seems to be defending the metaphysical stance that Putnam argued against and labeled 'metaphysical realism' (and that some call 'naïve realism'). Willow also is arguing that the attack on the very idea of "correspondence" is motivated by a tacit rejection of metaphysical realism (which he calls "realism"). Michael is right to point out that the specific notion of 'correspondence' that underlies 'correspondence theories of truth' can be challenged by people who don't commit to a specific metaphysical stance. That is, one can coherently reject the correspondence theory of truth while being a realist (like me), or while being an anti-realist (like Michael?) who nevertheless acknowledges a semantic distinction between things that belong to language proper and the things referred to to.

A perceptible object's definiteness or distinctness from its surroundings cannot be dependent on language otherwise we would never be able to identify such an 'object' to learn its name in the first place.

I don't think that's true. Objects in nature (let alone those in the human world of artifacts) don't come into existence labeled with their own criteria of persistence and individuation. At what point do some arrangements of wood, glue and screws come to materially constitute a chair, and at what point of disrepair or disfunctionality does the chair cease to exist? This seem to depend on our interests and practices, and those interests and practices leave an indelible trace in the empirical concept of a chair (that is, the criteria of 'chairhood' always are tainted by our practices and interests).

Scientific realists can grant that much for the case of human artifacts but assert the possibility of a conceptual reduction into more primitive terms (i.e. scientific concepts that refer to alleged 'natural kinds') that are said to carve nature at its (natural) joints. This scientific realism is another form of naïve realism, in my view, but my main point is to stress that one need not commit either way (regarding metaphysical realism) in order to grant both that individual chairs exist, in a robust sense (non-idealist), and are distinct from our talk about them, but that, nevertheless, our concept of chairs (or 'chairhood') hardly can be said to 'correspond' to what chairs allegedly 'are in themselves' irrespective of our interests and linguistic practices.

Many of the landmark papers on meaning and reference from 20th century analytic philosophers are collected in the book Meaning and Reference, edited by A.W. Moore. Those are papers by Russell, Strawson, Quine, Davidson, McDowell, Dummett, Putnam, Kripke, Wiggins and Evans. There are many such thematic anthologies on various topics (e.g. free will, epistemology, etc.) This is one of the best.

But, of course, you already have a rather long reading list (and so have I -- it never gets shorter!). Just remaining active in this forum will afford you more opportunities to get acquainted with some of the relevant ideas. Consider also the usually excellent entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Let me add that starting off with the topics of meaning and reference is much easier than digging into contemporary debates about theories of truth (many of which might be fundamentally misguided if we trust Hornsby). The latter topic still often causes my brain to overheat and makes me wish for a graft of 40 additional IQ points.

What is said about any thing, event or situation could never correspond completely to the thing, event or situation, and this is Frege's point, I think, but what is said about the particular facts or attributes of whatever thing, event or situation we are talking about, that are highlighted in the saying could correspond to these particular fact or attributes, in fact it logically must in order that it be just those facts or attributes that are being highlighted. — John

What you say here would be correct, it seems to be, if you would restrict it to (Fregean) objects and attributes (Fregean concepts); and drop the idea of correspondence with facts. As I urged earlier, the idea that you seem to be groping for (though I might be wrong) simply is reference. If you believe that A is F, and can accurately express this belief with the sentence "A is F", then for this belief to be true, it must be the case that the object A be suitably related to your thought about it, and likewise that the property F that A possesses be suitable related to the property that you express with the predicate "... is F". But those necessary correspondences that must hold in order for you statement to be meaningful (and for the belief that is purports to express to be an intelligible belief at all) just are relations of reference between the words that you use and the objects and properties that you are talking (and thinking) about.

Thus, those 'correspondence' relations, that really are referential properties of linguistic items, and of the (Fregean) thought components (Sinne) that they express, are necessary conditions, not of truth, but of meaningfulness. The conditions for truth isn't for the full sentence to refer to the fact. (On Frege's account, the reference of a sentence is The True of The False.) The condition for the truth of the sentence (and the thought that is expresses, which is its sense, according to Frege) rather is that the object thought about have the property ascribed to it. But this is just to say that "A is F" is true iff A is F and nothing more than that.

EDIT: My mistake. I was just excited to have found this article and so wanted to share it, but this is really not a good follow-up to "On What There Is", but is obviously better suited to "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" — Moliere

It is nevertheless and essential paper and I second your recommendation. I started typing in some comments about its relevance and its relation to the work of Kripke, which also raises difficulties for Quine's accounts of reference, meaning and proper names (one of them already mentioned by Shmik). But I would probably need to re-read In Defence of a Dogma first.

Maybe. I think the Academy was already concerned with technical issues of no general interest. — The Great Whatever

Some things (1) are of no general interest because they are trite and trivial. This is different from them (2) not arousing general interest just because many don't care, even though they would care if they were wiser or more receptive. Lastly some things (3) are 'of general interest' (in a sense) just because they are practically useful for the community (e.g. specialized crafts) although they need not arouse the interest of wise people. It is quite enough that specialized craftsmen/women would take care of those things.

If the Academy was concerned with things that wise people ought to be interested in (i.e. neither trite nor trivial) then, even though they were of 'no general interest' in the second or third senses mentioned above, there wouldn't be anything objectionable about them akin to what the authors of the article mentioned in the OP (Frodeman and Briggle) blame on the professionalization of philosophy.

The professionalization of philosophy began with Plato, not in the 19th century. — The Great Whatever

No doubt. But one of the main points that the authors make is that there was until recently an expectation that a philosopher should have a special insight into what is good, not just what is technically effective, what is simply true (albeit of little practical concern to someone who is wise) or what is a valid argument. Professionalization was thus going hand in hand with an idea of natural aristocracy. (The Greeks also thought there were 'natural slaves'). The professionalization of philosophy only recently became, in addition, a response to the perceived social need for efficiency and the instrumentalisation of human excellences.

The authors lament the movement of philosophy away from the impetus to cultivate wisdom -- conceived in broadly moral terms -- and towards cleverness, and a disinterested quest for objective knowledge on the model of the natural sciences. The dire portrait that they draw of the current state of over-specialization, and the prevalent concern for 'disengaged' knowledge, seems to faithfully represent 90% (more or less) of the productive activity of academic philosophers, especially analytic philosophers (possibly). But then, one ought to be reminded that 90% of everything is crap.

Maybe it's even fewer than 10% of published academic philosophy that rises above the level of crap. But I tend to be quite tolerant of that. It's always been the case that in any domain intrinsically worthy of human pursuit, a minority excel and very many who don't excel nevertheless are uplifted by the collective achievement to which they contribute more modestly. 'Crap' also is a relative term. It may not just be possible for everyone in the city to be a wise man/woman. But proper respect for the worthiness of the pursuit (of wisdom) is sufficient to enlighten most everyone. There only were one Beethoven, one Mozart, and on J.S. Bach, each, but they had audiences, students, interpreters/performers, and patrons. There are mutual dependencies between the wise individual (who may or may not be specialized) and other specialists, as well as more practically oriented craftsmen/women, 'consumers' of the products of wisdom, and non-specialists.

The authors also seem to contrast knowledge and wisdom (without going quite as far as claiming a dichotomy) while somewhat neglecting philosophy's ongoing contributions to our understanding of the evolving human condition. They are right to deprecate the pursuit of knowledge (or clever arguments) that are divorced from the impetus to seek wisdom (in a moral sense). Once it's acknowledged that it ought not to be expected that everyone will attain self-sufficiency in point of virtue or moral understanding, it ought to be acknowledged also that many more will contribute to understanding. Moral virtue might not always go hand in hand with the ability to explicate itself (just as great novelists don't always have the skill to teach proper style and grammar). Some degree of moral wisdom (or proper concern for the worthiness of the best human aspirations, and contempt for the motivations that ought to be reviled) no doubt is a prerequisite to determining what are the questions of philosophy that are worthy of being pursued, as opposed to merely constituting hair-splitting pointless technicalities. Progress in areas of understanding that are typified by the best products of academic philosophy ought to be appreciated by the morally wise since it responds to universal intellectual aspirations that the attainment of moral virtue likely leaves intact, or else it may procure inoculation against confusions that even the best-intentioned (and most virtuous) people -- including some politicians, activists, reformers, etc. -- are liable to fall into.

I need to finish reading that Hornsby paper (and the Neuroscience and Philosophy book) and then probably reread the Hornsby. — John

Don't sweat it, though. I've just finished re-reading it. It's much more difficult than I remembered it to be. It is likely that I had earlier read an abridged version published in The Nature of Truth, and anthology volume published by Michel P. Lynch -- and forgotten how difficult even that abridged version was. Although the paper contains many insights and pearls of wisdom that I can appreciate, many of the finer points it makes are incredibly subtle, and/or crucially depend on the reader's being fairly well acquainted with the relevant literature (much more than I am).

A paper that I would unreservedly recommend, and that much less depends on prior acquaintance with the vast literature on 'truth theories', is Truth and Rule Following, by John Haugeland. (It was published as the last chapter of his Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind). Maybe you would enjoy that more, rather than coming back to Hornsby's paper right away (when you're finished with Bennett and Hacker!) It makes most of the anti-representationalist points that are relevant to criticizing correspondence theories, and also has acknowledged Heideggerian roots that you will likely appreciate.

By the way, Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind and Language (Bennett, Hacker, Dennett, Searle and Robinson) is a book that was published after Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Bennet and Hacker), which I had mentioned. In Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, there were two appendixes (likely entirely written by Hacker) devoted to criticizing the philosophies of mind of Dennett and Searle. Those criticisms were extremely severe (many deservedly so, in my view, though Hacker's excessively harsh tone was quite unwarranted). The other volume records the contributions to a colloquium where Dennett and Searle were afforded an opportunity to respond to those criticisms. Robinson acted as some kind of a moderator/referee, I believe, and also contributed a very nice introduction to the volume. I would still recommend reading Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience before reading Neuroscience and Philosophy, ideally!

Actually I don't think of experiences as 'mental states'. In the Hornsby paper linked by Pierre there is an interesting distinction between 'thought' differently considered as 'acts of thinking' and as 'the content of acts of thinking'; and that reminds of the distinction I make between 'experience' as 'acts of experiencing' and 'experience' as 'the content of those acts'. Interestingly neither of those seem to be neatly characterizeable as 'mental states'. What if say that I want to experience eating an apple. By, and in, itself that would not seem to entail that there be any mind-independent apple to be eaten. — John

True, but what is at issue in discussions about truth, meaning, knowledge and correspondance aren't the qualitative feels of the experiences (i.e. what it is like to have those experiences) so much as as their conceptual/propositional contents. The latter is what Hornsby settles on calling 'thinkables' in her paper. What you may be thinking of as the content of an experience may be the highest common factor between a true thinkable and a false one. That is, what is naturally conceived to be common to the case of someone having the perceptual experience that P, and someone's merely seeming to have the experience that P (while it isn't the case that P). So far so good. That wouldn't involve anything contentious. What is common to both cases is the same thinkable being entertained as the way the world is.

Representationalists further claim that what is common to both of those cases is a common 'representation' that the subject is directly acquainted with in both cases. To be acquainted with this 'representation' (i.e. having the 'experience' (so called) that P) doesn't indeed entail that there is a mind independent reality that is experienced since the representation could fail to fit (correspond to) the way the world is. Correspondentism and representationalism are indeed good buddies.

The alternative put forth by McDowell, Hornsby and others is disjuctivism about experience. This is the thesis that what is experienced when the experience isn't misleading, confused, or hallucinatory, etc, is the world itself. And just in case the content of the experience isn't thus veridical (or, more generally, doesn't procure knowledge of the world -- because of the occurrence of Gettier-like cases) then the subject is simply, well, misled.

It seems to me that what you are harking for (is 'harking' the correct word here?) with your attachment to the idea of the logical primacy of the notion of correspondance might be something akin to the idea of object dependent singular senses. It has long been thought by many analytic philosophers that the Fregean senses (Sinn(e)) of singular referring expressions, (as distinguished from their references (Bedeutung(en)), can be expressed with general descriptions. Gareth Evans and John McDowell have disputed this possibility. Evans has argued (in The Varieties of Reference) that for one to think that x is F, then one must know which x it is one is thinking about. And this only is possible if x exists. This prerequisite knowledge of an individual is akin to Russell's knowledge by acquaintance (i.e. knowledge of a particular rather than knowledge of the truth of a proposition). This notion had been in disrepute for some time because it was tied up in Russell's thinking with his old fashioned epistemology and the idea that one only is acquainted with sense data and with oneself (one's own 'I'). However, disentangling it from those positivist strictures, Evans advocated what he called Russell's principle as a precondition for one to be able to so much as have definite thoughts about the world (i.e. entertain definite 'thinkables').

I won't detail anymore for now (though I would need to say much more) the accounts by Evans and McDowell of the idea of object dependent singular senses. I just bring this idea up because it dovetails with the idea that the mind can be directly in touch with the world (paradigmatically, when one know that P because one sees that P, and what one then sees, and knows, is what is the case), while allowing us to dispense with the idea that thoughts and facts can be externally related to one another (the idea of correspondence).

I should say a bit more about that in another post, but you may have reached the part in Hornsby's paper where she discusses Frege's objections to correspondence, and, in particular, the troublesome issue about the specific respects in which thoughts, or claims, might at most be intelligibly claimed to correspond to facts. There is a nice regress argument here. Very similar arguments are found in Wittgenstein regarding interpretation, representations and meaning.

Although that issue seems resolved now, it is important when discussing about language and meaning to always be very clear on the use/mention distinction. Michael was right to correct you on that. Nagase would have scolded you too. Quoted expressions function as names for those expressions (i.e. they are linguistic devices used to refer to the expressions themselves rather than use them to make claims. That is, 'snow is white' is the name of the English sentence used to state that snow is white. In the previous sentence, the sentence 'snow is white' was first mentioned (as it is now) and then used. It was mentioned by its name: 'snow is white'. This is why it's ungrammatical to state that 'P' iff P. You need propositions on both sided of the 'iff' logical connective for such a claim to make sense.

Claims, and the sentences used to make those claims, (or express the content of doxastic states such as beliefs or intentions) are different things. Correspondence theories purport to establish correspondence relations between worldly items such as facts, on the one hand, and linguistic items (or mental items that are somehow structured as linguistic items are) on the other hand. The rejection of representationalism entails that one can dispense entirely with the second relata of the alleged correspondence relation. So anti-representationalism (which is consistent with deflationary accounts of truth) makes nonsense of the very idea of correspondence. There isn't anything for the facts to intelligibly correspond to.

A correspondance theorist could object: If sentences aren't representations (such that facts can correspond or fail to correspond to them), then what are they? Well, in themselves they only are syntactically structured marks on paper, or vocal patterns, etc. Those linguistic items don't have any intrinsic semantic properties. That's a bit of a truism. They are meaningless in themselves but the standard, patterned, use that is made of them in a linguistic community can be interpreted. In that case the sentences inherit meanings from the fact that they are used to anchor intelligible patterns in the behavior (including, but not restricted to, the linguistic behavior) of rational agents.

So, you may want to say that a claim (a linguistic act, e.g. a sort of behavioral episode in the life of a speaker) can correspond or fail to correspond to the way the world is. This is true, in a sense, but it just amounts to saying that claims (or beliefs) can be distanced from the world through being false (that's the way John McDowell puts it). In the case where they are true, the world simply is as it is claimed to be by the person making use of the sentence. But this is just say what the corresponding T-shema already states. It is the deflationary account. This doesn't support any further claim of correspondence between facts and sentences. It merely states a condition for a linguistic acts, suitably interpreted, to be expressing something true.

I highly recommend Jennifer Hornsby's Truth: The Identity Theory, a paper that I found much illuminating when I first read it (as anything else that I read from Hornsby) and that I ought probably to read again.

I also wish Nagase would pay us a visit sometimes. That's part of his domain of expertise.

Deflationary conceptions of truth, or coherentist accounts such as Davidson's theory of meaning, which also centrally depend on Tarsky's T-schema, don't commit one to anything like an idea of correspondence between true sentences and facts. Quite the contrary, it seems to me, since the latter seems to presuppose a form of representationalism -- i.e. the idea that (doxastic) mental states, such as beliefs, are a matter of 'having' internal syntactically structured mental representations that represent the world to be (in some respect) thus and so. Deflationary conceptions don't commit one to representationalism at all. If for some agent to believe that P doesn't entail anything like her being related, in some way, to an 'internal' representation (some type of neural state, say), then there is no issue of correspondence that even arise to start with.

This leaves intact the idea that for a cognitive agent to be disposed to endorses the sentence 'P' as expressing a truth, and this truth being the fact that P (look up Jennifer Hornsby on identity theories of truth), then this agent is indeed representing (some feature of) the world to be thus and so (mamely, P). There being such representational acts doesn't entail that there are physical representations (syntactical items) that 'correspond' to the world. This correspondence notion remains rather obscure and quite dispensable. Beliefs (mental acts), and assertions (speech acts) that are expressive of them are actualizations of rational powers that belong to whole rational animals, and aren't features or items ('tokened sentences' or 'mental representations') somehow located in them. Indeed, Davidsonian 'holistic hermeneuticism' (as I would characterize his theoretical apparatus of radical interpretation) shares with Dennett's idea of the intentional stance a natural enmity to representationalism.

That's because, on such interpretivist accounts, definite propositional attitudes can only be ascribed to individuals on the basis of a global assignment of meanings(*) to all the sub-sentential terms that she employs when she endorses the truth of 'P', and this can only be effected in the context of a whole range of attitudes, background beliefs, intentions, etc. (with essential reliance of the constitutive ideal of rationality, and the principle of charity, in Davidson's account) Hence, in the essential background of her endorsement of the claim that P, as she expresses it with 'P', are involved her understandings of all the meaningful words being used. And those meanings (e.g. how she means what she thinks or says) can only be determined, even by her, within a whole 'conceptual scheme' (a notion that Davidson would of course have some reservations about that aren't important here), within, that is, a conceptually informed, and hence rationally structured, way to engage with the significant world (Umwelt) that human beings inhabit.

(*) Those meaning assignments to meaningful expressions (singular terms and predicates) are the 'axioms' that underscore the derivation of the T-shema (the 'theorems') of a Tarskian theory of truth.

There seems to me to be a fundamental tension in Quine's thinking about ontology, between his commitment to pragmatism (and hence to ontological relativity) and his view -- not prominently expressed in the essay On What There Is -- that experience marks an outside boundary to the conceptual sphere. Hence Quine is led to suggest that a phenomenological ontology (an ontology of sense data, or "surface irritations", is explanatorily primary relative to epistemological concerns, whereas a physicalist ontology is explanatorily primary relative to other sorts of concerns (e.g. concerns about laws governing the behaviors of re-identifiable material objects). But this way of characterizing epistemological concerns as concerns with "objects" that allegedly are closer to the experiential boundary of our web of beliefs betrays a commitment to indirect realism that is rather inimical to thoroughgoing forms of ontological pragmatism, or so it seems to me.

Interestingly, Davidson, while endorsing a view on radical interpretation that is broadly pragmatist, can't either countenance ontological relativity just because he challenges the Quinean dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content that sustains this relativity. Davidson still takes as point of departure for the (notional) process of radical interpretation of a language user her attitudes of assenting to, or dissenting from, declarative sentences in various perceptual contexts. The the view that emerges is coherentist, and non-foundationalist, since individual "perceptual beliefs" are open to challenge as much as are any other kinds of beliefs. But Davidson's view, while dispensing with sense data or surface irritations, still retains something of the idea of a perceptual boundary to the conceptually structured web of beliefs of a individual or community. (...Not entirely satisfactory, in my view, in accounting for the epistemic authority of experience, but still a progress over Quine's, possibly).

If we would ever arrive at a definitive consensus in any field of philosophy, then that would be the death of that field, it seems to me. Or, maybe, it could be a case of philosophical inquiry having spawned a domain of empirical inquiry, which is something that indeed occurs occasionally. But this intellectual (or technical) domain then moves outside of philosophy proper.

Something can't be an inquiry into the conceptual foundations, or basic presuppositions, of some area of thinking and yield propositions that are expressive of factual knowledge. This is not to say that some results of philosophy can't be enduring, and constitute intellectual progress of some sort. But the progress at issue is a progress in understanding, rather than an incremental addition to knowledge. And understanding, unlike empirical knowledge, always is liable to be challenged. When there is definitive progress, it mostly consists in highlighting habitual conceptual confusions that we are liable to fall into whenever we generalize or theorize about anything. But such confusions have a habit of re-emerging under new guises, and their standard modes of elucidation have a habit of settling down into rigid and systematic ways of thinking (philosophical "theories") that in turn spawn new confusions. The impetus to philosophize thus is more akin to a standing responsibility to unravel the confusions inevitably spawned by a constantly evolving understanding (of some domain of inquiry) rather than the expression of a desire, or need, to add to the enduring stock of human knowledge. Sciences, techniques and (conservative) arts can take care of the latter.

If ideology is as powerful as positions like this say, then whence all of the opposition to the "dominant paradigm" coming from liberal arts departments? Do academics have think-outside-the-box superpowers or something? — Pneumenon

One could suggest that those academics have the quite ordinary power to think from within a different box, that is, that they are reasoning under the impetus of a different, more progressive, ideology. However I think there also is some relevance here to Donald Davidson's insistence that there aren't several incommensurate conceptual schemes. And, at the same time, I much appreciate the Kuhnian notion of a plurality of paradigms. So, how can those various ideas be reconciled?

A slightly different suggestion might be devised for the case of the analysis of the theoretical paradigms of the natural sciences than the one that follows. In the case of the ideologies -- i.e. the practical/political paradigms that we encounter in the political arena -- I think it may be useful to distinguish (1) the abstract, general, principles that typically are adduced in support of an ideology (2) and the salient concerns that animate this ideology (and that motivate its adherents). It may be excessively narrow a focus on the general principles that makes it appear like competing political ideologies are incommensurate. However, generally, most of the basic individual concerns (for e.g. health, freedom, dignity, etc.) that animate them are shared among proponents of the clashing ideologies. The concerns being (mostly) shared is most evident in the vast amount of ordinary cases of daily life where citizens of various political persuasions easily agree about what is vitally needed, what is decent/indecent, and what it is reasonable to do in specific situations. This stock of shared concerns, and shared ideas regarding the proper arbitration between them, provides the vast background of agreement against with residual disagreements that are characteristic of specific ideologies are salient and intelligible. (This is the broadly Davidsonian point).

The defining principles of ideologies are stated in quite general terms and are acknowledged by the proponents of them not to apply universally, that is, to have exceptions or to require the open ended adjonction of ceteris paribus clauses in order to be sensibly applied. Those principles can be conceived as attempts to articulate broad guidelines about which specific concerns should be accorded priority in specific practical decision contexts (executive actions, judgments, enactment of specific policies, etc.) So, while proponents of competing ideologies share most of the same individual concerns, they disagree in specific cases (necessarily a minority of cases, if Davidson is right) about which among several concerns, or practical ends -- that can't all be simultaneously met in a specific situation -- must be accorded priority. The root of those disagreements often are understood by the proponents of ideology-A, say, not as stemming from illegitimate concerns stressed by proponents of ideology-B, but rather are blamed on too rigid an adhesion from them to the general, abstract, principles that articulate their ideology. Simply put, liberals (say) accuse conservatives of systematic bias and vice versa.

This may seem like a rather trivial conclusion, and in a way it is, but what I want to stress is that blaming the impasse (when there is an impasse) on the rival ideology, misconstrued as being rigidly embodied by its generally stated guiding principles, often mislocates the source of the disagreement. The genuine disagreement rather often concerns which among several (mostly shared) concerns ought to be accorded priority in specific cases. Explicit ideological 'principles' only are rough attempts to articulate or systematize, a posteriori, systems of priority primarily founded on practical reason and tested in specific cases (and then enshrined in case law, jurisprudence, or embodied in practical wisdom). Practical reason doesn't proceed from the top-down, starting from highly general principles in order to apply them to specific cases. The explicit principles of an ideology lack too much specificity in order to be applied like that. Practical reason rather operates dialectically from the mutual adjustment between specific concerns (e.g. acknowledgment of specific needs of individuals) and more general concerns such as the concerns for justice or fairness. The general party lines, and statements found in national constitutions, are lame attempts to codify this.

I found a compact definition of neo-liberalism on Quora, answering a question regarding the way it differs from neo-conservatism. The description seems reasonable but I was puzzled by the claim that it is under attack from the right by US Republicans (my bold in the quote below):

"...Neo-liberalism is a much broader philosophic outlook for governance which advocates a reduced role for the state in economic affairs, particularly in the developing world, combined with competitive markets and liberal trade policies in each country with the rest of the world. While neo-liberalism supports the use of state institutions for social welfare where needed, it opposes government-protected monopolies and state ownership of productive industries and resources. It is characterized by conceptualizing even the political world as a kind of market, and terms like the "marketplace of ideas," or "policy market" come from the neo-liberal framework.

While neo-conservative policies are largely confined to the right-wing of the political spectrum, neo-liberalism ranges from the social-democratic parties of the center left in Europe and Latin America to the center right parties such as Christian Democratic parties in Europe, the US Democratic Party, and the Social Christian parties of Latin America. Socialist parties tend to advocate against neo-liberalism from the left, and far right-wing parties, which now include much of the US Republican party, tends to advocate against neo-liberalism from the right." --Quora answer, by James Kielkopf.

I don't have much to say about Paul Churchland, who seems to have inherited the worst from his much more interesting teacher, Wilfrid Sellars. Sellars was committed to a form of scientism -- the project of articulating the scientific image of man -- but could recognize this conception as problematically articulated with the equally indispensable manifest image of man ("the framework in terms of which, to use an existentialist turn of phrase, man first encountered himself...") Being skeptical of any area of philosophy that can't be 'naturalized', Churchland has seemingly turned an already questionable project into a form of unabashed scientism. That seems to be a rebellion against philosophy; which is not to say Churchland doesn't have anything interesting to say, of course. It's just that I can't muster much sympathy for his overarching project.

Hi John,

Very nice post. The world/environment distinction that I use is borrowed from John McDowell who himself borrowed it from Gadamer... who himself, of course, is very close to Heidegger. In my thinking about objectivity, I was also influenced by John Haugeland who himself was much indebted to Heidegger. I also thought about drawing on the notion of readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit) -- which is what you probably want to refer to rather than presence-[at]-hand (Vorhandenheit) -- as not quite the equivalent of animal affordances, but as basic, though rational, forms of engagement with the world that animal affordances are the primitive or pre-linguistic forms of. The idea of a totality-of-involvements (Bewandnisganzheit), as exemplified by our mastery of items that are part of, and have circumstantial functions, within a whole workshop, indeed singles out what is distinctive of our own world of 'affordances' as distinguished from the mere environmental affordances immediately graspable (and exploitable) by non-rational animals.

Animals also have some mastery of some of the primitive links that tie up elements of (what would genuinely be for us) a totality-of-involvements. That is, they can pursue affordance A (e.g. walking along some path) because pursuing affordance A is an effective means to pursuing affordance B (e.g. drinking water). But they are passively drawn into those links and can't pull back from them, as it were, to reflect on them as mere practical or theoretical options -- unactualized possibilities -- that can be generalized, problematized, systematized, etc. Hence they can't found a mode of readiness-to-hand (on the basis of which to freely theorize) on their basic 'world' (i.e. environment) of affordances.

Hi John,

I don't think Damasio's inference from the observation of brain damaged patients is conclusive. It would be conclusive if we could fully ascribe all of our linguistic abilities to definite regions of the brain that are, for all we know, merely crucially involved in their acquisition and normal actualization. Localized brain damage occasion all sorts of dissociative behavior and degradation of performances that don't necessarily challenge the view that linguistic skills are central to the development of full-blown conceptual abilities. (See Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, by Max Bennett and Peter Hacker, for more on this, including some discussion of Damasio). Also, what is crucial to linguistically mediated conceptual skill is grasp of logical grammar (including the recombinant structure of general and singular terms), something that implicates people and their brains much beyond mere abilities to verbalise things fluently. Verbal behavior is one main locus of the embodiment of logical grammar, but so are activities such practical reasoning, dance, music, etc., that are narratively structured.

I don't think animals pick out the same items that we normally do, though the items that they do pick out, we can also empathetically pick out for them in a different manner, since we, unlike them, can conceptualize what their animal needs, and, correspondingly, their perceptually salient 'categories' (affordances) are. Those categories, as picked up by us, have a much higher grade of objectivity, as it were, since they rest on individuation criteria (i.e. criteria that determine what is numerically identical with what). The ball, for instance, if it goes hidden for a time and then emerges back (say, it is thrown over a fence and then thrown back to us) may be the same ball or a different though qualitatively identical one. This distinction is intelligible to us but unintelligible to a dog. The ball thrown back either still affords playing for the dog or doesn't. But a dog never would fathom that it might be a different ball that smells and looks just the same or, indeed, the same one. If two balls, instead of one, are thrown back, the dog may be indecisive (better, conflicted) for an instant about what to do, but he won't be puzzled.

Very many years ago there was a British TV show where they decided to prank passing dogs through lifting up with a crane the tree that the dogs were attempting to pee on. This turned out to be rather unfunny because as soon as the tree was being raised in the air, and didn't afford peeing on anymore, the dogs would immediately move on to the next tree to pee on and never look back for so much of a second to inquire about the peculiar flying tree. I think this tells us something about the categorical distinctness of the items that we pick up as trees (and that we conceptualize as enduring re-identifiable beings of specific sorts) and the items that dogs pick up merely as affording peeing on at that very instant.

Cavacava, I agree with much of what you say, but would like to stress a categorical difference between the way in which non-rational animals spontaneously mark differences in their perceptual worlds and the way we (rational, language users) do.

Birds may, in part instinctively, and in part through learning -- largely thanks to unthinking conditioning, but also, granted, through active and motivated exploration -- come to perceive some fruits as edible and others (which may have made then sick) as non-edible. What if, though, a bird sees another bird eat some prima facie 'toxic fruit' (that is, a fruit that this first bird is disinclined to eat) with no ill effect, or, conversely, sees another bird eat a prima facie 'edible fruit' and then drop dead? For the most part, nothing happens. That's because the bird lacks self awareness, knowledge that he is one individual among many individuals of the same kind, and that similar causes often have similar effects etc. The edible, and non-edible, are perceived by the bird as immediately affording eating, or not, respectively, (and in the later case, the toxic fruits are scarcely perceived at all, and mostly go unnoticed as part of the perceptual background to more immediately appealing affordances).

This discriminatory ability may be a proto-conceptual ability with quite a bit of aesthetic sub-structure, but what makes it categorically distinct from the full blown conceptual ability of a language using creature is that anomalies can only be perceived by us as such (i.e. as troublesome occurrences calling for some rational explanation) and thus may serve as ground for questioning appearances, and challenging some of our beliefs, concepts, laws and/or causal categories. Full-blown conceptuality enables mastery of the appearance/reality distinction and thus also the grounding of objective judgment together with responsible concept use. Aesthetic judgment still makes relevant differences salient in the perceptual world of whoever has been suitably trained and encultured into a rational form of life. This is the extension of an ability also possessed by non-rational animals. But challenges to, and rationally motivated revisions of, perceptual categories (extent systems of similarity and difference) are enabled by linguistically mediated concept use, as are our correlative abilities to withhold judgment about what merely appears to be thus and so when we have reason to think it isn't as it appears to be.

John McDowell has an account of the conceptually structured content of perceptual experience -- Kantian in spirit -- whereby he speaks of experiences as involving the passive actualization of conceptual abilities (the very same abilities that are actively actualized in judgments -- Kantian acts of spontaneity). In that sense, since they are actualized rational capabilities, they are a priori (i.e. conceptual, or 'logical', in a broad sense) features of experiences that are indeed acts, as John suggests. But since those acts are acts of receptivity, their conceptually structured contents still are constrained by what is there to be perceived in the world. This properly accounts for experiences affording a rational constraint on judgment (albeit a constraint that is somewhat holistic, and comes short from being compelling in singular cases of perceptual experience, since they ground defeasible perceptual judgments).

Coming back to John's inquiry about the 'logical' (e.g. conceptual) component of experience without which, it would seem, non-rational creatures such as dogs or cows, would be blind, on a Kantian account: I think we can indeed acknowledge that, in a quite definite sense, dogs and cows are blind to the world. They can't make any objective judgments that are warranted by their experiences (such that they could defend or genuinely question them). This is not to deny that they have perceptual experiences. They indeed have. But those aren't experiences of an objective world, but rather of an immediate environment consisting in (Gibsonian) affordances, that is, consisting in features that can immediately engage primitive forms of behaviors that belong to an animal's passively inherited form of life. Non-rational animals are (mostly) unable to distance themselves from their natural needs and impulses, and hence can't either distance themselves reflectively from features of their environment such as to constitute them as objective items (including properties) that can be questioned, reshaped or inquired about (beyond what mere appearances present to them).

I think most of the primitive features of our perceptual experiences also are Gibsonian affordances that reflect features of our animal form of life, that is, of our essentially embodied mode of existence. This is what our perceptual experiences can be analysed into, rather than, say, sense data. Our acquisition of language, and linguistically mediated conceptual abilities, reshape those (forms of) affordances such that we can responsibly ground or question our plans, intentions, or our conceptions of the empirical world, on the basis of our perceptions of them. In that way, we come not only to question the warrantedness of immediately acting as the environment (and our matching needs/desires) incline us to, but also to (sometimes directly) discern possibilities for rational (and delayed) action that we were formerly blind to. On that view, we could say that the primitive (forms of) affordances that non-rational animals (and human infants) can discern in their environments are proto-concepts and, as such, indispensable features of the contents of animal experiences just as much as conceptual forms comes to be indispensable features of our own experiences, not just contingently, but a priori.

I have been a member quite early but haven't posted anything significant yet. This is in part because I have been busy but also in part because it is a bit intimidating for me to post here. I'll explain why.

I had wanted to post in the thread discussing the paper The Extended Mind by Clark and Chalmers since I had already read it twice. I tried to find my copy of the book by Clark in which it is reprinted, since I annotate rather heavily all my philosophical readings. I couldn't find it, was quite annoyed (...felt a little bit like Otto without his notebook), and thus I printed another copy and read it a third time. In the thread, some comments by Jamalrob and others already were expressing quite acute criticisms that I was agreeing with (and were often sharper than some of my own reservations). I wanted to add a few remarks (regarding what seemed to me like a tacit and troublesome commitment to representationalism by the authors) but never got round to doing it.

In the old forum, at least until about a year ago, I was often appalled by the level of discussion, and the fact that most posters wouldn't seem to know that one can actually read some philosophical books or papers before expounding ex cathedra on a topic. When I posted, I didn't need to make much of an effort merely to raise the level of the discussion or buttress my claims with arguments and references. But here, the proportion of posters who are acquainted with the philosophical literature is much higher. I am am thus less inclined to simply bring up my own views without taking care to indicate precisely how they align with or differ from the views of the thinkers being discussed, or the views of the other posters. So, in short, I may find it more intimidating to discuss with smart and knowledgeable people, though, no doubt, it ought to prove more rewarding in the long run.

I read the Quine paper on the prompting of the recent thread. I hadn't read any other complete paper by Quine appart from his celebrated Two Dogmas. Before I could even comment, I was also motivated by Moliere to read again Davidson's On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme, which I hadn't read since 2004. I have now finished re-reading that, so it would be time for me to make a few comments in the thread (On What There Is) while it's still somewhat active.

So, the point of this post just was to express my worry that increasing the popularity of this site might bring the level of the discussion down. The level is remarkable as is it is right now (judging from reading just a few threads). But this worry is mitigated by the fact that, in my case at least, an increase in attendance, and a wider range of level of expertise, might make it less intimidating to post here. I hope some balance will be achieved, more (but not too many) posters will be inclined to join, or post more often, and the very smart people already here will persevere.

Dmitri Shostakovitch, Symphony no.7, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein.

The paper is a bit repetitive but contains many nuggets of wisdom nonetheless.