For example, we can say "red" or "angry" of the number "4," in ways that are entirely correct vis-á-vis form. Yet obviously such talk is nonsensical because if one considers the content of: "the number four is angry and red," it is clear that the subject is not of the sort that it can possibly possess these predicates (obviously, this implies we are speaking of the number, not some drawing of 4 in a children's book, which might indeed be angry and red). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is about competent language use. Russell's paradox isn't about language use. It's not nonsensical.

In essence, material logic is more concerned with the actual content and how it corresponds to reality, whereas formal logic deals with abstract structures and patterns of reasoning

I asked you before: are you saying that if X is paradoxical, it can't exist? I guess I'm wondering if this is a question you don't want to address for some reason?

If you do this, you just have the study of completely arbitrary systems, and there are infinitely many such systems and no way to vet which are worth investigating. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with this. Roughly what I'm thinking is that consciousness evolves and that this involves both changes in environmental conditions and native mental flexibility. So, for instance, if the people who inhabit a two-dimensional world evolve into beings who can experience three dimensions, it will be partly because the environment makes it so they need to, but long before the general population changes, there will be those who have been expressing flexibility, even though it may have seemed pointless to those around them. These will be people who denied that their traditional logic limited them or the world.

Therefore it's ok to do pointless investigations. It's always been part of what we are, since at least 60,000 years.

Especially because the liar's sentence gives justification to P2 in the original argument: No principle holds in complete generality. — Moliere

Yep

I don't think future potential is all that relevant. — Michael

Maybe your society is different from mine. Where I am, prognosis is more important for life and death decisions than present state.

Forcing a mother to carry to term and birth a child because the 1 day old zygote in her womb is a living organism with human DNA just ain't right. — Michael

I agree. The day-after pill pretty much solves that problem. All women should be able to get it at no cost. Men don't have to pay anything if they generate a zygote. Women shouldn't either.

It's true that if there is no consciousness, it helps in making the decision not to intervene and let a baby die, but ultimately the decision is more about prognosis than whatever the present state is. For instance, if a baby has a head bleed and the brain is squashed because of that, we go ahead and intervene because of the possibility that the brain could recover and grow. And we do make death easier for children who are fully conscious, but can't live off of special machinery. That's basically killing them, again, because of what we know the future holds.

Think about how that focus on what the future holds bears on the disposition of a fetus. The human potential includes Einstein and Mozart. :grimace:

Is it that formal logic outlines how one statement follows from another, and material logic looks at the limits of thought and language?

The issue here seems to lie in predication, and so it's more obvious that there has to be a metaphysical side to the investigation — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do you think the possibilities for this universe are limited by what strikes us as conceivable?

I was looking for a 'it can't happen because it's illogical.'

Care to step up to the plate?

If we follow the peripatetic axiom that "nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses," my question is "where are the paradoxes in the senses or out in the world?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

A paradox is not the type of thing that has a location.

I have never experienced anything both be and not be without qualification, only stipulated sign systems that declare that "if something is true it is false," and stuff of that sort. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not having experienced it so far doesn't rule it out, though.

Some might say that if you have strong feelings about logical monism, you would probably have some way of dealing with paradoxes. Would you agree?

There is the "discourse of language" which is constrained by the "discourse of the mind — Count Timothy von Icarus

What are your thoughts on Russell's paradox? Is it like Witt thought, from a transcendental logic? Or what?

I see.

Know and believe are intensional operators. Is that where you were headed?

It's called dialetheism. I thought about doing a thread on it. Probably not.

The idea of a state of affairs comes from the Cartesian worldview. You can't demolish someone's worldview without giving them an acceptable alternative. They won't let you.

Thus far it seems to have very little explanatory power. — J

I take it as phenomenology.

Yet evolution and history of the universe are things we cannot have a vantage point about. — schopenhauer1

Maybe so. I'd have to think about it.

So when someone refers to the "Metaphysics of X", and it's only part of the world, that is not metaphysics? — schopenhauer1

That would be an application of an overarching ontology to X.

So is evolution and the development of the universe also be off the table even though we don't have those vantage points? — schopenhauer1

Metaphysics is different because it's talking about the whole world. Language is for talking about things in the world, like evolution or cosmology.

Have you ever noticed that when someone sets out a state of affairs, they do it by setting out a statement? — Banno

For a while Russell thought they're the same thing. A true proposition is an obtaining state of affairs. Neutral monism.

In the Tractatus. — Srap Tasmaner

no

Non-sense in what way? There's several senses to non-sense. — schopenhauer1

It would be like the knight on a chess board describing the game of chess. It can't have that vantage point.

Well, but this is what I'm contesting. Even on the most generous interpretation of "form," a cat sitting on a mat doesn't look remotely similar to any thought or linguistic expression. — J

Form is probably the wrong word. How did the SEP put it? They're similar?

Possible but unlikely. Do you believe that Witt himself succeeded in demonstrating this? — J

I think so.

In a way, the species' evolutionary history and intertwinement with language DOES get metaphysical- pace academics and a host of theories revolving around "semiotics" or "information theory" or simply the "metaphysics of biology" or "what it means to be a human". — schopenhauer1

Yes. It's a secret that it's all nonsense.

Glancing at SEP, what I see is "States of affairs are similar to thoughts. Thoughts are true or false; states of affairs obtain or not." That's a little different. So yes, similar, but by bringing in a verb like "obtain" we are trying to move away from talk about language (such as truth values), and into the world independent of thought — J

Right. States of affairs are truth makers. Just using the word "state" implies being, to be. What is the state of affairs? It's that the cat is on the mat. States of affairs have the same form as thoughts. Maybe we can't move away from language. Maybe there's no way to do that.

I'm not really sure how important metaphysics was to Frege. His ideological descendants, like in philosophy of math, don't seem to really care much about the political fallout associated with being platonic. Being platonic just fits what they see as math. They leave metaphysics on the shelf.

Witt says that all such worries about how thought is related to cosmology amount to nonsense. If you're worried about metaphysics, you're trying to do something with language that it's not capable of. But the attraction of going back down the ladder and getting all worked up over metaphysics is always there. Who can resist?

This may it not have any bearing on the OP. :grin:

Truth" for Frege becomes simply about the ability to parse meaning of statements (The grass is green), rather than corresponding to the world, (It is true that grass is green). — schopenhauer1

I think so.

In this case "know" means to understand what's being asserted by the use of the word. No word means anything until it's used, as opposed to mentioned.

Just speak plainly.. In a couple sentences, what is Frege's idea of Truth? — schopenhauer1

He thought that truth can't be defined. Definition implies breaking something down into smaller pieces (a zebra is a horse with stripes, for instance.). Truth can't be broken down any further. It can't be taught. You just know what it is.

that those propositions accurately portray states of affairs of the world) — schopenhauer1

Or that propositions are states of affairs.

Maybe, but Frege denied that correspondence is a definition of truth.

If you read the SEP article on states of affairs, it talks about how they have the form of thoughts. In other words, we don't think of the world as disconnected objects, we think of it as states, which implies the verb "to be.". The way I've been putting it is that we imagine the world can talk.

Remember in the Tractatus, Witt says the world is all that is the case. He's expressing this same idea, but he's going to move toward saying logic is not in our field of view when we look at the world. So if one got the notion that since (phenomenologically) the world talks to us in complete thoughts, that logic is the structure of the world (this is basically Stoicism), then Witt says your language here has gone on holiday. You're spouting nonsense. Logic is not informative about anything.

That's one way to think of it anyway.

It requires more than that. Those born with anencephaly, if still alive when born, don't last very long. — Michael

If an infant's brainstem is intact it can live for a long time. They could put a feeding tube in and maybe a tracheostomy for mechanical ventilation. What we don't want to do is hand a parent a horror movie that they'll have to watch for the next however many years it lives. Let it die.

Also I'm not sure if it's coincidental. I suspect that a sufficient degree of consciousness is required for an animal life to be viable, and as the brain is the most complex organ it stands to reason that everything else is likely to have already developed enough. — Michael

Viability is about the connection between the vascular system and the alveoli in the lungs. It's called the AC membrane (alveolar capillary). It starts approaching functionality around 22 weeks.

So no thalamocortical interactions, no consciousness. — Michael

If you look back at any source that asserts this, you should see that it's based on an assumption that consciousness is "localized" in the cerebral cortex. So if there are no connections between the thalamus and the cortex, one assumes that the discharges from nociceptors can't make it to the area that governs consciousness. Therefore, no pain, no awareness.

A good source should also warn you that we don't presently have NCC (neural correlates of consciousness) pinned down. What we have are theories. Do our theories on this front conform to observation? One problem with verifying this particular theory is that the fetus is sedated by the conditions in the womb. We can't just thump them and wait for an "ow." What we commonly do in medicine is look for a stress response to confirm pain, such as an increase in heart rate, or a cortisol bump. We actually do see stress responses in fetuses around 18 weeks, but are they actually conscious of anything? The truth is we don't know. We have theories.

When making a decision about life and death, one would really like to have more than a theory that any scientist would tell may change tomorrow.

The fetus is minimally conscious before that. I think you're looking for a higher level of consciousness.

The scientific evidence supports the claim that consciousness requires a brain-like structure — Michael

Ok. The fetus has a brain-like structure at 3 weeks. I'll put you down for supporting abortion up to 2 weeks after conception. :up:

I’d dismiss it as nonsense, — Michael

So your view isn't scientific. You just hold to that folk wisdom.

Consciousness requires a sufficiently complex and functioning brain (and plausibly some other brain-like structure). A zygote is just a small collection of cells. It lacks the necessary physical stuff that allows for an organism to be conscious. — Michael

Per CBC theory, cells are conscious in that they have awareness of their environments. How would you show that this view is wrong?

We know that adults are conscious and zygotes aren’t. — Michael

There's science that says that?

Why is it wrong to kill something that could survive outside the womb? — Michael

Sentiment probably. That's what's behind morality in general.

Yes, which is why it would be wrong to kill someone who’s asleep or unconscious or with locked in syndrome but not wrong to take someone who’s brain dead off life support. — Michael

I don't think there's really a scientific dividing line when it comes to consciousness, owing in part to our lack of understanding of what it is and what's required for it.

I think the reason it would feel wrong to kill a fetus over 24 weeks is that it could possibly survive outside the womb.

I wasn't suggesting that a 24 weeker is identical to a newborn.

I'd say it's with the development of thalamocortical connectivity, which occurs ~24 weeks after conception. — Michael

So there's nothing behavioral that signals cognition to you. It's a matter of wiring?