Submission of all our propositions to an unknowable actuality? — creativesoul

No, that is the point; we know that all our identifications and definitions are static abstractions derived from, filtered from so to speak, our actual experience which is an evershifting succession of images and impressions. Our experience is the territory and the model we have evolved of the world of facts and things is our map, and as the old saw goes 'the map is not the territory'.

The map is tied to the territory by long consideration, historically speaking, of human experience, and conjecture about it, and its meaning, and so forth. But we cannot discursively set the map and territory side by side so to speak to examine the connections, whether purported to be rational or in some sense merely physical, between them.

But we don't need to do that anyway, since our experience generally makes sense to us, and we are able to cope more or less effectively in the world, which is shown by the fact that we would soon perish if we could not.

That pulls the rug out from under our own analysis, does it not? — creativesoul

So, the rug is not pulled out from under our analysis, because our analysis is justified by its functionality, not by any ultimate rational ground; which would be impossible in any case, since our static identifications and descriptions cannot ever be anything more than approximations to a dynamic lived experience.

Our propositions cannot be seen to correspond to that dynamic lived actuality, but only to our perceptions and conceptions of what is the case that have been spun out of it. So if we are critiquing truth as correspondence insofar as it cannot achieve the former feat, then we are correct, but if we quell that expectation and, more modestly, understand truth as correspondence only to achieve the latter, then we can be well justified.

Meaningful correspondence to fact is not, and that is where convention has gone completely wrong. The reason:Not having gotten belief(or meaning) right to begin with. Stuck analyzing propositions and attitudes towards them. — creativesoul

There is, as a kind of ground to all our propositions, truths and facts, a pre-linguistic actuality to which they must submit. Analysis and conceptualization cannot gain purchase on that actuality, because to do so is to bring it into the linguistic domain, and there all we have purchase on is our communal perceptions and conceptions of what is the case,

So the necessary submission to pre-linguistic actuality is ever-present and ongoing, but cannot be analyzed in its own pre-linguistic "context": It was really Kant who first pointed this out. I guess this is why truth is unanalyzable, since any analysis presupposes the validity of what is purported to be analyzed.

The cat can be hunting a mouse and that would be the case, even if there were no one around... ever. Focusing upon the words, their meaning, and what language takes misses the point here... completely. — creativesoul

This is a very tricky thing to talk about. Of course I agree that there is a pre-linguistic. non-linguistic actuality, and we can intuitively, that is imaginatively, understand the being of that actuality perfectly well, even though we cannot get any conceptual purchase on it, because as soon as we begin to want to say anything about it it is brought into the linguistically mediated world of "what is communally perceived and conceived".

The world is what is the case*. It's being perceived or conceived is irrelevant.

It seems yours is the only openly antirealist view. Kudos. — Banno

"What is the case" is meaningless beyond what is communally perceived and conceived to be the case. We can get no purchase on it, and so, to use one of your own locutions, it "drops out of the discussion" as anything other than a possibility that may or may not come to light.

That said, because of that lurking possibility what is communally perceived and conceived to be the case may change over time, which means that even the community as a whole may be mistaken. But this possibility offers no positive knowledge of what is the case, but merely a negative constraint upon what is perceived and conceived to be the case.

I don't think of myself as an anti-realist BTW.

refuses to let truth get a grip on the world, restricting it to "what is perceived or conceived to be the case", and so is answering the question "what is belief" rather than "what is truth". The oblique references to the communal and utilitarian nature of language remain. — Banno

You've misunderstood. Of course truth gets a grip on the world, but what is the world if not "what is perceived or conceived to be the case" or if you like Wittgenstein's "totality of facts..."

Your ability to misunderstand (whether deliberate or not) is remarkable.

Sounds about right...

Silence. — Banno

Paul Simon knew:

"The Sound Of Silence"

Hello, darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a streetlamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools," said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence."

From one time? No. (It takes kids more than a couple weeks to make it from kindergarten to 6th grade.) — Srap Tasmaner

Right, I agree one time would be too much to expect except in the case of genius perhaps, so it is probably by coming at it from a variety of examples and directions over time that kids do get it at some point, different for each kid I imagine.

That all sounds about right. We can know the sequence of the 26 letters of the English alphabet without knowing what number in the sequence each letter corresponds to, but in the analogous case of the number series it seems essential to understand that relation before one could be said to be counting. Although, I suppose if a child knew the alphabet and someone presented her with twenty apples and asked 'what letter do all these apples correspond to' the child could call the fist one 'a', the second one 'b' and so on down to 't'; 't' being the twentieth letter. Would we expect the child to intuitively "get" the idea of quantity or number from an exercise like that?

Counting without understanding quantity would just be a meaningless regurgitation of words. I have nothing further to say on this.

No, the numerals on a number line do not represent the number of numerals, because there is zero, and negatives. — Metaphysician Undercover

That series of numerals I presented was not meant to represent anything other than the series of numerals that it is.

You could have a series of the numeral '1' like this: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, ..... Select any point and the numeral equivalent to the '1' at that point can be found by counting all the way to the left. If you chose the last '1' on the right. then the numeral equivalent at that point in the series would be '11' because there are eleven '1's including the one selected and all those to the left of it. .

:up:

What I said in the first post on this subject, is that what is said to be counted, is the number itself. That's why our methods of learning lend themselves very well to Platonic realism. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have no idea what that means.

Of course there are:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8......at each point in that series represented by a different numeral, the number of numerals, including the one selected and all those to the left of the one selected, is equal to the number represented by the numeral at the point selected.

Sure, I'm not trying to establish a theory of teaching numbers, but counting is not counting without things to be counted. The notion of quantity is essential, and that's often shown in teaching contexts by presenting children with objects to be counted that's all I've been saying. Counting was no doubt done prior to the invention of numerals, and calculation used to be done on an abacus.

Two being after one means nothing without a notion of quantity.

We are going to have to agree to disagree. In my view the meaning of the words must be learnt by reference to numbers of objects. How would you explain what "two" means without showing two whatevers?

The idea of truth is always and only the idea of an isomorphic relation of 'fit' between what is said and what is perceived or conceived to be the case.

We experience a constant succession of images and impressions that, due to repetition. similarity and invariance across time for the individual perceiver, and intersubjective agreement about what is experienced between individual perceivers, leads to a linguistically generated "shared" world of fixed objects and facts about those objects and this factual world is an inference to the best explanation for that commonality of experience, and is also pragmatically necessary for communication.

The actual is never contained in this perceptual/conceptual picture of a world of fixed entities and facts, and cannot be "captured" conceptually, even though we all, via our embodied experience, apprehend and understand it directly as a constantly changing heraclitean "flux".

So, in this sense that the world of objects and facts is a collective, pragmatic, conventional fiction; it becomes clear that it is only within this shared ambit that truth finds its meaning. On account of this I say that the logic of truth is simple correspondence between what is said and what is seen, or imagined to be.

It is just an extension of the necessary (to this social game of communication) general correspondence between what is experienced and what is said about that experience that we call 'meaning'. The mistakes in meaningful statements that render them false do not render them meaningless, which shows that interpretations of events must be accurate, in the sense of hitting the mark, in order to be true as distinct form being merely meaningful confabulations.

As poorly expressed as it is, that is my attempt to explain my understanding of truth.

Thus it is, contra ↪Janus
S is not so much a second-rate philosopher as a coattail rider, and, in affirmation with ↪Janus
, a poor critic of Kant. — Mww

So, Schopenauer is not even a second rater, in your view? Interesting post! After further digestion, if I have any questions or concerns, I'll come back to you...

But then, doesn't it bare to reason that if our imaginations cannot image particle-wave duality, yet particle-wave duality is true, that logic isn't based on images? That these are more like heuristic arguments? — Moliere

Leaving aside the possibility that our notions of particles and waves, derived as they are from our experience, are not applicable at all in the quantum context, in other words if that unimaginable synthesis of particle and wave is the actuality (whatever that might even mean), then it isn't logic at all, and it isn't something we can directly perceive or, hence, imagine. That's my take anyway.

The numbers are usually shown to correspond with objects, like five fingers, ten fingers, two eyes and so on.

No. — Tate

Que?

Material equivalence is just for propositions. — Tate

Take it up with Banno; the term was not introduced by me.

The fact that snow is white, snow being white, is a fact or state of affairs, not a proposition. What is stated in the sentence "snow is white" is the proposition that snow is white.

Speaking about something, or conceptualizzing it, are not the same as imagining it. We can conceptualize a dimensionless point, but cannot imagine it.

There is a sentence which expresses the proposition that snow is white and there is the fact that snow is white. So the two are materially equivalent, even if saying that stretches the normal usage of the term to refer to two propositions. I just did a quick search and found this:

"As we saw in the last section, two different symbolic sentences can translate the same English sentence. In the last section I claimed that “~S ⊃ R” and “S v R” are equivalent. More precisely, they are equivalent ways of capturing the truth-functional relationship between propositions. Two propositions are materially equivalent if and only if they have the same truth value for every assignment of truth values to the atomic propositions. That is, they have the same truth values on every row of a truth table. The truth table below demonstrates that “~S ⊃ R” and “S v R” are materially equivalent."

From here

I didn't introduce the term into the discussion, but it seem to me that the term is to all intents synonymous with "correspondence", albeit without the metaphysical baggage that can accompany the latter term.

There is a material equivalence between "snow is white" and the fact that snow is white. We can also say there is a correspondence.

These supposed counterexamples were given:

"But there are cases where the correspondence theory becomes opaque. It is not at all clear what the "empirical facts of the world" are that make the propositions "four is twice two", "no married men are bachelors " or "this note is worth ten dollars" true. Yet the appropriate T-sentence will still hold."

I don't think the correspondence account (I dislike "theory") is opaque in these cases at all. "Four is twice two" can easily be demonstrated empirically with apples; in fact it is by using objects that children are taught to count. It is a fact of our world that married men are not counted as batchelors, and on investigation it would be found that bachelors do not possess valid marriage certificates, and have not participated in the ceremony of marriage. That a note is worth ten dollars is a fact easily verified in any store in the world. It just takes a little imagination to see that correspondence does hold, and that in fact we have no other viable account of truth.

I didn't have my sub in mind, but then no doubt it's true that all subs have holes in them, even if they haven't appeared yet.

The imagination is the sort of thing that changes -- and so it's not a basis for understanding logic, given that logic is more stable than the imagination.

I'd have said some things once unimaginable are imaginable to me now. For instance, I thought classical and quantum mechanics conflicted at one point. I couldn't imagine that these could both be true! It was impossible! — Moliere

I think there are things which are simply unimaginable as I said, and it is those things I am referring to, not things which change; which we can come to imagine with more practice or whatever. Think of Kant's pure forms of intuition: we cannot imagine an object without spatial dimensions, or without persistence in time, or without form, or without constitution, and so on,

Your reference to QM is a good case in point: it seems contradictory to say that something could be both a wave and a particle simply because the way we imagine each of these to be seems to make them incompatible. I think it was Feynman who said "I think I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics". I think it's obvious he means that no one can imagine what is going on, not that no one can understand the maths.

Or take the idea in relativity theory that mass warps the fabric of spacetime: no one can imagine, in the sense of visualize, a three dimensional space warping (into a fourth dimension), so to get some visual purchase on the idea a model of a two dimensional surface warping (into the third dimension) is offered.

It isn't clear what this means. What's a material equivalence? Why not just an equivalence? — Tate

Material equivalence is usually thought of as obtaining between two propositions, or not. If two propositions have the same truth values on every row of a truth tables. It's another way of saying "correspondence".

The problem with using the imagination as a basis for logic is that people have different capacities for imagining -- so a logic, then, would only be understandable insofar that we have the imaginative capacity. If our imaginations are a bit dim, then our logic will also be a bit dim, and if our imaginations are incredibly active, then our logic will be incredibly active. — Moliere

That's not what I had in mind. No one can imagine a round square, or that something could be both red and green all over. In general, we are unable to imagine the actual existence of contradictory states of affairs, or, perhaps better, we are unable to imagine what a contradictory state of affairs could look like..

What be dasein? — Agent Smith

"Dasein" means 'being there' or 'there being'. Heidegger means that dasein's being is an issue for dasein. "To be or not to be, that is the question". To be or not to be what?

Fallibilism springs to mind. — Agent Smith

The idea of fallibilism in relation to belief makes sense, but not so much in relation to knowledge. To be fallible is to be possibly wrong and if knowledge is true, how could it be wrong? There seems to be a mighty hole in the AP submarine!

So you agree that truth is a relation between a proposition and something else. There might be more that goes into that, but it's at least that. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, if truth were not a relation between a proposition (or belief) claiming (or believing) whatever and something else that provides the conditions for thinking the proposition or belief to be true, then truth would be an empty wheel spinning in the void.

A complex post; above my paygrade pal. — Agent Smith

I think it's just a post just going around in circles, making it seem complex, but it is the inevitable going around in circles when trying to claim not merely belief, but knowledge (except in the case of that which is presently perceived) that is the problem. Belief may consist in feeling certain, but we don't merely want to feel certain, since then it would be possible to be wrong, but aspire, futilely, to be certain; in other words to be able to claim knowledge that we, per impossibile, know that we know and know that it cannot be wrong.

Of course, for all practical, non-skeptical, purposes we have all kinds of "certain" knowledge.

I believe in mathematics truth is defined as provable i.e. knowledge is justified true belief. — Agent Smith

Is your belief that Paris is the capital of France true or merely justified? If you want to say it's true and justified then it would count as knowledge according to JTB. But if you want to say it's true, does that mean that you know it's true or you merely believe its true?

If you can say you are certain that Paris is the capital of France and that therefore 'Paris is the capital of France' is true, then if you were correct then you could be said to know that your belief is true and justified.

It's odd that JTB says that in order to know something, what we take ourselves to know must be justified and true. But if we knew both of those conditions were satisfied, we must already know whatever it is we know to be true independently of its being justified, since they are separate criteria.

That's why I say that to know is to be certain, as distinct from merely feeling certain. But then how can we ever be certain that we are certain? It makes it look like JTB says we can have knowledge but never know (in the sense of not merely believe, or feel certain, but be certain) that we do, because that would involve an infinite regress.

But this exchange reminds me of Kant's distinction between logic as such, and transcendental logic -- the primary difference being one abstracts from spatio-temporal relations, and the other does not. If you'll allow the indulgence, I believe it goes back to Aristotle's definition of non-contradiction which you are mirroring here, Janus --

link

“It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect” (with the appropriate qualifications) (Metaph IV 3 1005b19–20). — Aristotle in the SEP on Logic




Still, worth highlighting that the relationship between time and logic is thorny. In a sense logic should be timeless. Yet we live in time. What to do with that? — Moliere

Personally I think the attempt to separate logic from temporality and spatiality is doomed to fail, or to yield an insipid and uninteresting logic, that is merely formal, and suitable only for "bean-counter" types. I think you are right about the connection to Aristotle. My questioning of the role of time and place in such formulations as 'it is either raining or not raining, but not both' shows the ambiguity of the idea of place. Time is easier for us to delimit since we have clocks.

Other examples like 'an object cannot be both black and white all over' are much less ambiguous. We can visualize the impossibility of an object being two colours or tones all over very easily, just because such a thing is impossible to imagine.

So, I believe that what seems self-evident in logic is so because of what we perceive and what we can imagine perceiving, and what we can consequently imagine being the case. To my way of thinking this is the essence of modal logic; what is impossible in all worlds just is what we find impossible to imagine, and I think what we can imagine is constrained by the general characteristics we are able to identify in what we perceive. If we perceived very different images of the world with very different characteristics, then we would be able to imagine what for us, as we are, is unimaginable, and our logics would be correspondingly different.

But this isn't Schopenhaurian but perhaps more Kantian. There is no "will-for-us" or "tree-for-us" or whathaveyou. Rather, there is representation, which is simply the "maya" of a conditioned existence (of space/time/causality) and there is the Will, which is a unified thing that is the principle with which the representation separates using the principium individuantionis that is illusory of some kind so that the will can present as if it was a subject-for-an-object. — schopenhauer1

Yes, I realize this is not Schopenhauer; it is precisely what I think he is lacking, that is nuance. I just see no reason whatever to identify the transcendental with Will, and the 'Will/ Representation' thing for me is a dualistic reification akin to Plato's duality of phenomena and the reification of their essences as universal forms, which leads to the notion of two distinct realms; one "illusory" realm and its substantive underpinning. Of course I'm not saying that Schopenhauer's philosophy equates to Plato's, but there is a certain commonality there, to be sure.

But you are parsing out Will into its various manifestations as it plays out in representation (in animal form). — schopenhauer1

I see no reason to posit some transcendent overarching Will to explain its phenomenal manifestations. I suppose you could say that just as there is the trees-in-themselves, which is thought as the counterpart of the trees-for-us, so you could have willings-in-themselves as counterpart of the willings-for-us. But I think it should be remembered that for Kant this is a merely formal or logical move and should be accorded no ontological status.

Just purely uncharitable and using old canards. — schopenhauer1

According to a biography I read years ago by Safranski (I think that's the name) he was an irritable, egomaniacal arsehole who treated people like shit (if my memory serves). He was also a spoiled rich kid who never had to work a day in his life, a fact which enabled him to spend his time philosophizing. In my view, neither an admirable character nor a great philosopher; but as I already said that is just my opinion, and it doesn't bother me if you disagree. A lot of people disagree with me about Heidegger, who I think was also probably an arsehole, but a great philosopher.

If Schopenhauer hadn't use the word 'will' what other word could he have used while remaining true to his philosophical vision?

You were all over the place, and I pushed you too hard. Not very helpful either way. — Banno

:rofl:

You are not doing argument.

It corresponds to the fact that it is never, at the same place and time, both raining and not raining. — Janus


Could it be both raining and not raining on Earth at any given time? — Janus — Banno

Further admissions?

Of course I am "doing argument"; I am examining the actual and interpretive possibilities. It seems you think I have contradicted myself, but the first statement should be read as 'if the formula is true, then it corresponds to the fact that it is never, at the same place and time, both raining and not raining". But then I go on to question the meaning of 'place'. If 'place' means 'Earth' then obviously the formula is not true. Then I offered the example of standing on the edge of a storm front. So the truth of the formula rests on the meaning and scope of 'place'.

In any case, if the proposition 'it is either raining or not raining' is true then it corresponds to the fact that it is always and everywhere either raining or not raining, leaving aside all other considerations of time and location as well as whether it is actually true or not.

Likewise if the proposition "it cannot be both raining and not raining:is true, then it corresponds to the fact that it cannot ever be both raining and not raining, regardless of considerations of time and location and whether it actually is true or not.

If you think none of this constitutes a valid argument then you should be able to say why it is not, but you have made no attempt to directly address anything I've said. All I'm getting from you, as usual, are pompous statements with no accompanying explanation. It's a poor showing.

:cool: I'll take that as an admission that you cannot come up with a counter-argument.

Could it be both raining and not raining on Earth at any given time? Place is relative and the same goes for time. It can't be both raining and not raining right here, right? But what does "right here" mean? What if I am standing on the edge of a rain front and it is raining on the right half of my body but not the left. You need to get your focus away from your precious formulas and truth tables and open your mind up to the actuality. You can do it; it's not hard to understand.