Being reasonable(coherent) means following the rules of correct inference. A belief system can be both perfectly reasonable(coherent) and false. Thus, being reasonable(coherency alone) does not guarantee truth. Given that all belief presupposes it's own truth somewhere along the line, and coherency alone(being reasonable) does not guarantee truth, it only follows that being reasonable(coherency alone) does not constitute sufficient/adequate reason for our assent/belief(warrant).

Not all...

As always.

:lol:

If it is reasonable it must be warranted,
— Janus

...I think that is what is in contention. — Banno

Yep.

Logical possibility alone does not constitute sufficient reason to believe(does not warrant belief).

I do not just mean that things exist in relation to a self-conscious subject, but some meaningful relations certainly do, and cannot exist in absence thereof.

Funny thing is that I read the entire OP without ever speaking aloud.

Meaning without purpose, aye? Can you demonstrate that? — praxis

Well, I'm not sure what would count as a successful demonstration to you, but I could try...

Touching fire causes pain. One can learn that touching fire causes pain by virtue of touching fire, feeling pain, and drawing a correlation between the touching and the resulting pain. The fire becomes meaningful to the creature by virtue of doing so. The creature has attributed/recognized causality, and has done so correctly in this case.

Where would purpose fit into this? The creature didn't aim to get burnt.

...would you agree that any possible relation is meaningful? — Possibility

I wouldn't. I would completely agree that many relationships exist prior to any and all language use(causality, spatiotemporal, symbiotic, existential dependency, elemental constituency, significance, familial, biological, etc.); that some relations do not(they depend upon language use for language use is part of the relationship); that some language dependent meaningful relations exist prior to an individual language user's acquisition thereof; that some relationships exist prior to meaning; etc..

...but I would not agree that all relations(or any possible relation) are(is) meaningful.

"Meaning exists in it's entirety long before we've acquired the means to discover and/or take proper account of it" was just making the point that (some)meaning exists in it's entirety prior to language. — creativesoul

So you’re saying that meaning may exist prior to language, but we have no means to discover it as such. — Possibility

I'm saying that meaning exists prior to language, and language is the means by which we can discover and take proper account of that.

How would you know that it exists fully formed, then? — Possibility

Well...

We can know that meaning exists in it's entirety prior to language use(naming and descriptive practices) by virtue of using language to acquire knowledge of how all meaningful language use works; how meaningful things become meaningful to us; how successful communication happens; how all successful translation happens; how all meaningful thought and belief that are formed via language use can be, and then discovering that there is a basic autonomous process underlying all this that makes it all possible, and that that process does not require naming and descriptive practices to be a part of it. Rather, we can know that language use becomes part of this already ongoing process, adding to it's complexity.

We can know that meaning exists in it's entirety prior to language use(naming and descriptive practices) by virtue of knowing that language-less creatures form, have, and/or hold thought and belief about what's happened, is happening, and/or is about to happen, in very much the same way we do(by virtue of the same basic process) and knowing that all thought and belief is meaningful to the creature forming, having, and/or holding it.

Purpose.

It's the aim of all translation... — creativesoul

Aside from the bit above, I'd say that that's as close as any other besides...

Meaning. All purpose is full of meaning. Not all meaning is full of purpose.

Hey Praxis!

Hope this finds you well.

To say that meaning emerges by virtue of drawing correlations only ‘between different things’ rules out the possibility of meaning emerging from a correlation between a ‘thing’ and some undiscovered existence of meaning. — Possibility

This deserves revisitation.

That's not what I said.

Can't wait for the disappointing answer to this hot mess of a riddle. — Nils Loc

A nice bit of rhetoric. Lacks quite a bit of meaning. Enough to sound profound to some, I'm sure. Not I.

It's also poisoning the well.

Either way, I misinterpreted your statement here:

It exists in it's entirety long before we've acquired the means to discover and/or take proper account of it.
— creativesoul

as existing prior to emerging. — Possibility

I see. Understandable.

"Meaning exists in it's entirety long before we've acquired the means to discover and/or take proper account of it" was just making the point that (some)meaning exists in it's entirety prior to language.

In the above, we could exchange "exists" with "emerges" and lose nothing meaningful. Emergent meaning is newly formed. I would not agree that meaning exists prior to being formed, although I realize that several schools of thought believe otherwise.

Yup. The Kantian difference. Judgement as a talent.

:wink:

Be well.

Those are meaningful things.

...given that meaning exists before it emerges... — Possibility

That's not a given. How can something exist before existing? Emergence is coming into existence.

To say that meaning emerges by virtue of drawing correlations only ‘between different things’ rules out the possibility of meaning emerging from a correlation between a ‘thing’ and some undiscovered existence of meaning. — Possibility

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Could you provide an example of some undiscovered existence of meaning?

Witt is helpful in expanding our understanding of what all goes into some meaningful expression or another. Witt's failures(on my view) are what so many people hold with high regard(the claims about not being able to get beneath language, the limits of one's language is the limits of one's world, and that sort of thing). Those are the sorts of considerations that made it so tempting to link him to folk like Heiddy. Both had a clue of the impact that language has upon one's life and worldview, but Witt's was just an inkling of a clue that could not be developed to the extent that understanding results as a result of his pre-existing beliefs being too unshakable. Heiddy just failed to make much sense because he did not quite have the basics down in order to be able to effectively take proper account of the affects/effects that language use has upon it's users.

Anyway, I'm busy in real life. Sorry if I seem short here, but my full attention is needed elsewhere.

Take care. Be well. Until next time...

:flower:

There are multiple sensible uses of the term "belief". Not everyone knows and/or uses them all. Some of them are in direct conflict with others.

That does not bode well for what you've been arguing here.

...what is meaningful to us are our shared judgments. — Antony Nickles

That's quite the impoverished notion of what is meaningful to us...

I believe my work is done here.

I'm not sure what metacognitive means — Antony Nickles

Thinking about thought, belief, and language use as topics and/or subject matters in their own right.

My only quibble that I can see is that it emerges by virtue of drawing correlations, full stop — Possibility

Cool. I'm listening. Quibble away.

:wink:

Not that we don't have misunderstandings, but that it is not a confusion between your meaning and my understanding — Antony Nickles

A misunderstanding is a lack of shared meaning.

Usually, when one misunderstands another, they've misattributed meaning somewhere along the way. However, in the case of Mrs. Malaprop, understanding another requires misattributing meaning to the speaker's actual words, because those words were misspoken to begin with. Hence, both speaker and listener misattribute meaning to the speakers own words, and successful communication happens despite the speaker's mistaken language use.

What a boring bunch.

:mask: :smirk: :mask:

he examples we imagine are even how they are used in philosophy but they have to be put in a context--which traditional philosophy doesn't do--of when we express our concepts, like "believing"... — Antony Nickles

Concepts...

Muddle on top of misunderstanding.

We aren't discriminating between "uses"... — Antony Nickles

Sure we are. It's a bit curious that you'd deny that that's exactly what we're doing.

Then these claimed criteria of our concepts like thinking, knowing, intending have to account for the issues of the philosophical tradition. — Antony Nickles

Those who hold that all belief content is propositional are using different senses of the term "belief", ones that cannot possibly take proper account of belief that exists in it's entirety prior to language use unless they somehow attempt to claim that propositions can exist prior to language in such a way so that they can be the content of language-less belief. All propositions are proposed. All propositions require language. Language-less belief cannot. Thus, such a notion(that all belief content is propositional) leads - on pains of coherency alone - to a denial of language-less thought and belief.

Like that?

:wink:

We arrive at different acceptable senses of the same term.

Then what?

:brow:

"575. When I sat down on this chair, of course I believed [had the hyposthesis] it would bear me. I had no thought of its possibly collapsing... — Antony Nickles

When one has never even had the thought of the chair collapsing, there could be no possible belief that it would not. Believing a chair will bear our weight is to consider(think about) whether or not it will collapse under our weight, and believing that it will not. That's exactly what having the hypothesis that a chair will bear our weight amounts to.

There's a little irony here, regarding the method I'm using.

If you could, would you mind revisiting the post where I described Gettier's mistake? Imagine, before you do, that I'm employing a similar approach to OLP. I'm setting out what Smith(anyone and everyone in that same situation) must mean if he's(they are) talking about himself(themselves), which he purportedly is.

Smith believes, for good reason, that he will get the job. Smith does not believe that anyone else but himself will get the job. Smith believes, again for good reason, that Jones owns a Ford. Smith believes "Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona" is true, because Jones owns a Ford. Smith does not believe that "Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona" is true because Brown is in Barcelona.

Is this not the aim of OLP? To make explicit what is otherwise implicit in some native speakers' language use?

The underlying, unspoken aim is a better account of meaning.

Part of what Witt is trying to do is elevate the publicness of our communication. — Antony Nickles

I've no issue at all with rejecting the idea of private language. To reject private meaning however, shows an inherent inability to take adequate account of language creation and/or acquisition, successful communication, and/or the minds of any and all creatures prior to having done so.

That's unacceptable.

A statement can be certain and false, and uncertain and true.
— creativesoul

And? Not....or? For a, re: singular, statement? — Mww

Yes... I left the rest unspoken...

Because some belief statements can be both uncertain and true, and certain but false, it only follows that certainty has nothing at all to do with truth.

The attempt to create a dichotomy between belief and knowledge is asinine. It's akin to creating a dichotomy between an orange and a valencia orange. Knowledge is a kind of belief.

The approach depends upon a metacognitive endeavor; to make that which remains implicit explicit. Exposing and/or discovering the implicit content of some particular language use is the aim of the OLP endeavor. It is an aim that is satisfied solely by virtue of offering an adequate account thereof.

All accounting practices require something to be taken account of, something to take account of it, a means in order to do so, and a creature capable of doing it.

OLP is taking account of... how it takes account.

The aim is the implicit meaningful content accompanying specific instances of ordinary language use.

I've asked a few different questions, and raised a few different concerns. Do you believe that you've answered and attended to those satisfactorily?

I've asked a few different questions, and raised a few different concerns. Do you believe that you've answered and attended to those satisfactorily?

This would seem to be a kind of census; like linguistic anthropology. We are not "acquiring" knowledge; we already have it from growing up and learning English at the same time. — Antony Nickles

Well, the claim I'm making is quite a bit more nuanced than that...

We do not have the kind of knowledge about our own minds; about our own thought and belief; about our own imaginings, experience; worldview; about our own operative influences that I'm talking about simply by virtue of growing up and learning English at the same time. If such knowledge acquisition were that easy, none of us would be wrong.

But yes, we certainly do know how to use certain words in certain situations for specific reasons simply by virtue of growing up and learning English at the same time(we learn the Grammar of certain words by learning how to use them at the right time and place for the right reasons).

What is implied when we say/do is justified by your being able to make the same claims, or see for yourself that I am correct. — Antony Nickles

We may agree upon specific scenarios/situations/circumstances in which "I believe" implies a guess. That's one language game(Grammar?) involving the use of "I believe". It's not the only one.

We are just making what is implicit in saying something, explicit. — Antony Nickles

Right. Sometimes this is quite unproblematic. Could be trivial even.

However, and this is to further labor the point being made...

If we take the words "I believe", when spoken by someone with unfettered confidence that something just happened, and what immediately follows that particular use of "I believe" is nothing other than a description thereof(a belief statement about what happened), it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for us to make a universal claim that all English speakers' use of "I believe" implies a hypothesis about future events.

Do you agree?

Sitting around thinking about what other people's use of some word or phrase implies doesn't do anyone much good at all regarding any of the acceptable uses that are unknown to us. It looks like a recipe for some pretentiousness about another's language use.

Ought we not ask others?
— creativesoul

It is not "other people's use" it is a claim on behalf of everyone. — Antony Nickles

I'm not going to object to the idea that we can acquire knowledge regarding everyone's language use. That is, we can make universal statements about each and every native English speakers' use of "I believe", and those claims about that use can be true of each and every native English speaker. However, it will quite simply not be true if we claim that all native English speakers' use "I believe" in the same way/sense of those words, because they quite clearly do not. Otherwise, we would not have different acceptable senses of the same terms. But we do. So, clearly it is false to say that we(each and every English speaker) uses "I believe" in a manner that implies something about what has not yet happened but is expected to(hypothesis about future events).

Need this be further argued?

Two problems immediately come to mind. First, there are multiple different accepted uses/senses/definitions of the same term, and not all of them are compatible. We know that much the same thing is true regarding phrases as well.
— creativesoul

As I discussed above, Witt will call these the "senses" (as in options) for a concept (like "I know" discussed above), and thus why it is important to fill out a context which differentiates one sense from another. These senses are not endless. — Antony Nickles

Again, understood.

I'm still struggling quite a bit here. I'm trying to wrap my head around what the purpose of this method is? What is achieved? What does it have to do with the historical philosophical problems mentioned in the opening paragraph?

Say we follow the metholodogy to a tee, as precisely as possible. We will arrive at multiple different senses of the same words, each respectively accompanied by their own sets of special circumstances and/or implications(whatever those may be).

What have we done here that is philosophically interesting or relevant aside from parsing out different acceptable uses, albeit in a bit more detail than usual? Surely, this is a method capable of acquiring knowledge about language use, what different people in different situations may or may not mean when they say______. But...

It quite simply cannot be done effectively in an armchair. Can't happen. Sitting around thinking about what other people's use of some word or phrase implies doesn't do anyone much good at all regarding any of the acceptable uses that are unknown to us. It looks like a recipe for some pretentiousness about another's language use.

Ought we not ask others?

By the way, I may have very well misunderstood your response to the bit I offered about "I believe" sometimes being accompanied by uncertainty and sometimes not. To be sure, are you denying that "I believe" can be accompanied by certainty and uncertainty both? Are you denying that "I believe" is sometimes used in a manner that is not a guess?

I did say OLP was analytical philosophy that worked within the tradition. I've also said that it looks at what we might say at a time and place (in context) to see what the ordinary criteria are (the implications, etc.). It does not speak in "ordinary language", nor is it trying to explain skepticism to lay people. — Antony Nickles

Understood. Never implied otherwise.

the abstraction ("divorcing") of statements from their expression removes a context for them, which allows for the creation of criteria for certainty, universality, etc. in general--as in the difference between a "true" (certain, universal) statement and a statement of belief (uncertain, contingent). — Antony Nickles

I had to consciously refrain from criticizing this...

It is one of the historical conventional mistaken practices that paved the way to Gettier; misunderstanding belief, and neglecting to take careful note of the differences I laid out earlier in my refutation of Gettier. It's too tangential for this topic though. So...

I'll leave it here.

True belief statements are true statements. A statement can be certain and false, and uncertain and true. So...

By the way, I am impressed by his treatment and discussion about the use of "voluntary" regarding the argument referenced between Ryle and Austin...

I'm still wrapping my head around the three kinds of statements made about ordinary language, and it seems that grasping that is a key part of rightly understanding the methodology.