Roughly, any other alternative interpretation would be equivalent to possible world semantics. — Banno

OK. But when I hear "There's a possible world in which P", I understand this to be equivalent to "It is possible that P". So far, I haven't identified any difference that matters in my world. Am I right?

I somewhat regret suggesting a third level, since the gap between a formal modal and a natural language is no where near at the level of the gap between a syntax and a semantics. — Banno

Well, from my point of view, the question where natural language sits in relation to the formal system is important. I don't think the difference between the two gaps is a problem at all.

Right, I haven't been saying that I see a problem with people interpreting their mystical experiences, and entertaining whatever personal beliefs they do. The problem I see is when they conflate their interpretations with knowledge and make absolutist truth claims. In other words dogma, ideology and fundamentalism are the problems...thinking others should believe as they do. — Janus

Broadly, I agree. But I think we have to modify what we have been saying a bit. Putting it crudely, it is not dogma, ideology and fundamentalism in themselves that are the problem. It is the bad behaviour that those things lead to - no, sorry, correction - often lead to. I don't mind people being dogmatic or even fundamentalist, so long as they behave themselves in a civilized fashion - that is, adapt to the world as it is, as opposed to eliminating or attempting to eliminate those features of the world that they disapprove of. (Since everybody has an ideology, we should only condemn ideologies that seek to suppress, by inappropriate means, other ideologies.)
In short, the important distinction between a mere hallucination and a vision of God is the question of harm to self and others in everyday life.

Are we really expecting those touched by the divine to say, ‘I encountered a higher power and I know we are all one, but I’ll keep it in perspective because intellectually this is the right thing to do?' — Tom Storm

That is indeed asking a bit much. But the practicalities of existence do demand that one not use inappropriate methods to compel (insofar as that's even possible) belief amongst other people.

The ego has to be tamed like the ox in Zen is tethered to the post. — Punshhh

Yes, but how do I decide who is the ego and who the ox-tamer?

The intellectually honest naysayer needs to start admitting that they don't think religious claims are truth-apt. They can't have it both ways: — Leontiskos

I'm a bit cautious about a general claim about all religious claims. I don't exclude the possibility that some, even many, may be truth-apt. But I do think that an important part of religious claims are interpretations of the world that are the basis of various ways of life and practices and that those interpretations are not truth-apt. The same applies to secularism and atheism.

This is a very strange debate. You seem to be arguing that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because of the dominance of liberalism. But I believe that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because of the increasing dominance of illiberal forces, some of which call themselves neo-liberal. We agree about something! On the other hand, I'm not sure there has ever been a time when the world wasn't going to hell in a handbasket. Certainly, not in the last three hundred years.

I can't work out what the key points are here. Some possibly random comments:-

I think the voices that helped develop our current thymos-phobia and logos-skepticism were themselves plenty dogmatic and stuck living out their own myth, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. It is certainly true that the successes of liberalism in, let us say the 19th and 20th century were the result of deep commitment and dogged determination. So it is odd that you think that people of that kind are "thumos-phobic" (if I've understood what you mean by that correctly). Their positions were based on rational argument, so it is also odd that you think that they were "logos-sceptical" (If I've understood what you mean by that correctly).

people who won't storm beaches or resist sieges (who lack thymos) also won't stand up to public corruption or resist the temptation to public corruption, and won't forgo current consumption for the sake of future goods — Count Timothy von Icarus

My understanding of thumos is that everybody has it - the capacity to adopt and pursue values with commitment and effort. The problem with it, for Plato at least, is that it needs to be directed correctly. It may be true that reluctance to forego current consumption may be part of the reluctance of Europe to support Ukraine properly. But a big part of it is a reluctance to go to war. I don't think that's a bad thing, (so long as it is not overdone!)

One way this manifests, in classical terms, is essentially the claim that man only has concupiscible appetites (i.e. an attraction to pleasure and aversion to pain), while ignoring the existence of irascible appetites (i.e. an attraction to the pursuit of arduous goods, where hope, not pleasure, is the key positive motivating force). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think this distinction would stand up to analysis. But perhaps you are channeling the distinction between epithumia and thumos? In any case, it seems to me that the widespread condemnation of epithumia is wrong-headed. Our appetites include things that are not merely pleasurable but essential. The problem arises when they are pursued to excess or in the wrong way.

They (sc. the humanities) are the ground, as you say, for making men capable of self-governance and self-rule (collectively and individually) as well as the ground for a common stock of ideas for political life, the pursuit of a common good. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That, or something very like it, is indeed the traditional argument for them. But, for many, what happened in Germany in the first half of the 20th century has more or less destroyed that argument. At the very least, we have to note that love of the humanities is not sufficient to prevent people going down some very wrong paths.

If I'm understanding Banno correctly, he's agreed with, and explicated, my talk about a "different level." To say, "The fact that 'a' has the reference it has is not a feature or property of a" is basically the same as saying, "Being referred to by a name is not part of the logical property structure -- it belongs to the semantic interpretation." Or so I believe, and if that's wrong, it's on me, since Banno has been perfectly clear. — J

I can see that it is not part of the first level. "Semantic interpretation" looks like the second level.

And to this we might add a third level, where we seek to understand what we are doing in a natural language by applying these formal systems. So for propositional logic, we understand the p's and q's as standing for the sentences of our natural language, and T and F as True and False. For predicate logic, we understand a,b,c as standing for Fred Bloggs, the Eiffel tower and consumerism, or whatever. — Banno

For what it's worth, I think reference is on the third level, because that's where we encounter the Eiffel Tower etc. I expect Banno will put us right.

The thing is, "a" has no properties at all. It's a name. So there is actually a symmetry of sorts! "'a' refers to a" is not a property of a, and "a is the reference of 'a'" isn't a property of "a", not because it isn't included in the list of "a"'s properties, but because there is no such list. — J

I suspected as much.

In order to give a coherent interpretation to these systems, Kripke taught us to use possible world semantics. In a way all this amounts to is a process to group the predicates used previously. So we said earlier that "f" stands for {a,c,e}, and to this we now add that in different worlds, f can stand for different sets of individuals. So in w₀ "f" stands for {a,c,e}, while in w₁ f stands for {a,b}, and so on in whatever way we stipulate - w₀ being world zero, w₁ being world one, and so on. Now we have added a semantics to the syntax of S4 and S5. — Banno

Thanks for this. It does make sense. I'll have to take it for granted that there are no other successful interpretations. I know that logicians accepted this as the only viable possibility.

For these two reasons, having a name is not usually considered as having the property of having that name. Being referred to by a name is not part of the logical property structure — it belongs to the semantic interpretation. — Banno

Many thanks for this. I can see the sense in it.

if I additionally ask about how "a" comes to stand for the Eiffel Tower, we can't answer that in terms of the interpretation of "a" -- that is, the various properties that can now be predicated of a based upon our interpretation. We have to move to a different level and talk about how or why "a" has the reference it has, which is not a feature or property of a, any more than my name is a property of me. — J

But part of my puzzlement was because of an apparent asymmetry between referring to something and being referred to by something. You don't explicitly say much about "a". But fixing the reference must involve both "a" and a. So I would have thought that "a"'s referring to a is also not a property of "a". Is that right?

And to this we might add a third level, where we seek to understand what we are doing in a natural language by applying these formal systems. — Banno

OK. So now the question whether the concept of a rigid designator is part of the formal system and must be assessed in that context, or part of natural language and assessed in that context. (There's something odd about classifying philosophical logic as "natural language", so perhaps we need a third alternative - not quite natural, not quite formal, but bridging.)

By "logos-skepticism," I mean skepticism about the capacity of logos (reason, rationality) to be the organizing principle and asperation of society and individual life. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you are missing an important point. For many in the aftermath of the two world wars, it was clear that the Grand Narratives that they had inherited were a busted flush. They perceived that those narratives involved a great deal of irrational myth-making, which could not stand up to a rational critique. New departures were an absolute necessity in order to avoid any repetition of history. (OK, that's an emotional sketch. But I don't think it is wrong. It is an appalling failure and a great sadness that they project appears to be on the brink of falling apart. But perhaps it never really stood a chance.)

More to the point, people are unlikely to want to storm beaches or resist sieges in the name of "reasonableness," i.e., to take the sorts of personal and collective risks that civilization requires. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's true. But the embrace of reasonableness was intended to avoid the necessity of storming beaches and resisting sieges, which were regarded as grossly uncivilized activities. Risks, by all means, but avoidance of barbarity as a priority.

There is a lot going on there, but one theory I like is that the reason the humanities latched on to this sort of style and thinking so readily is that the early-20th century focus on the primacy of science left the humanities as "a mere matter of opinion and taste." — Count Timothy von Icarus

That is certainly true. Are you suggesting that it is not a problem? Things have moved on since the fifties, though the Arts and Humanities are still in a perilous position. But then, so are the (pure) sciences, which seem to survive as the hand-maidens of Applied Science and Engineering, which is where the money is - or, if you prefer, are essential to the modern economy.*
I should not be too scathing here. In the curriculum of medieval universities, the professions, (Theology, Medicine and Law) were the crowning subjects. Humanities (otherwise known as the trivium) were preparatory, grounding subjects. It was only in the 18th and 19th centuries that the status of the Humanities improved and became the mark of a civilized, cultivated person. This was a rational response to the improved market for an education for those who would never need to work.

* EDIT Please don't think that I mean to cast any aspersions on either Applied Science of Engineering. My censure is against the near ubiquitous use of money as the only or primary measure of value.

What do you mean by perceptions here, exactly? Are you referring to raw sense data? Or the entire process of observation and interpretation of observations? Because sure, we might misunderstand what we see. But that's different from questioning the validity of raw sense perception - to reality. — karl stone

I mean the latter. Raw perceptions are a myth - a construction from our recognition that there are interpretive processes at work. The moment that the light or sound or whatever arrives at our sense organs, the process of selection, editing and interpreting begins. A perception that was raw could not be perceived by us, and a perception that can be perceived by us is not raw.

All this is supplemental to the point, that there's really no alternative to accept the dualistic nature of subjective experience of an objective reality. — karl stone

Can we just concentrate on this? It doesn't help me much, because I don't understand what you are tryinng to say. It is true that experience of an objective reality requires two poles. That's because it is a relationship. The perceiver (subject) experiences the reality (object). I don't see that any metaphysical consequences follow.
To see what I mean, look at Descartes' argument. He points out that we can distinguish between mind and body and so concludes that they are two distinct things and thence that they are different substances. He interprets "distinct" in a specific way and the metaphysics grows from that. But there is no need to interpret "distinct" in that way.

Traffic lights. Their very existence presupposes a commonality of perception. And they're everywhere! As is art, colour coded electrical wires, signs saying Keep Off the Grass! etc. This very sentence assumes your ability to see, and psychologically translate perception into meaning similar - if not identical to, that which it is intended to convey. — karl stone

.. and you interpret all that in dualistic terms. But that's an interpretation, not a fact.

However, the subjectivist takes the implications of the existence of interpretational models far too far - and does so with the intent of casting the validity of perception into doubt, to undermine the empirical basis for scientific knowledge. — karl stone

I'm not a subjectivist and I don't doubt the validity of perception as such, though I do doubt the validity of some of my perception - often rightly.

Does physics conflict with common sense? I don't think it does. Certainly not Newtonian physics; it's very intuitive. Relativity gets a bit weird, but at velocities approaching the speed of light. And quantum physics gets weird, but again, by virtue of being as small and lightspeed is quick! It's hardly surprising that conditions far removed from our experience, to the absolute extremes of velocity and scale, are difficult to understand in common sense terms. — karl stone

In one sense, it is not possible that they conflict. But people think they do, so an explanation is in order. It is true that Newtonian physics is intuitive now. But it wasn't before he came up with it and many people found it seriusly counter-intuitive. Ditto Relativity.

It is everywhere confirmed that there's an internal world, and an external world - mediated by the senses. — karl stone

Do you mean that our experience confirms it? If not our experience, then what?
I think you will find it more helpful to think of that idea as a model, or an interpretation. The most helpful comparison is with the puzzle pictures, and the idea of a Gestalt is a more general version. There's a classic discussion of this in Wittgenstein. See Wikipedia - Rabbit-duck illusion

Gestalt psychology, gestaltism, or configurationism is a school of psychology and a theory of perception that emphasises the processing of entire patterns and configurations, and not merely individual components. It emerged in the early twentieth century in Austria and Germany as a rejection of basic principles of Wilhelm Wundt's and Edward Titchener's elementalist and structuralist psychology. — Wikipedia - Gestalt

Observation in science, is thus a valid basis for knowledge of the external world, particularly when observations are confirmed by an independent observer. — karl stone

Yes, but given the way that physics conflicts with common sense, it is important to point out that observations themselves tell us that some observations are wrong, mistaken, misleading and that observations themselves enable us to correct those mistakes - usually.

Does it matter? I would say no—all that really matters is how we live our lives—how we live this life, the only life we know or can be confident we can really know, the only one we can be confident that we actually have or will have. And even knowing this life is not the easiest or most common achievement. — Janus

I agree with you about what really matters, but your downright no to the question about these experiences seems to me to be over the top. So far as I know, mystical experience does not lead to harm to the mystic or to others and, on the whole, does seem to encourage peace and loving-kindness. That's important. Also, if it is important to those who follow the disciplines and/or have the experiences, then it has a certain importance for the world. But, whether it is/leads to our final destination or not, it does not seem to make any difference to the majority who do not have these experiences. Their relevance to the only life we know is not at all clear. All this is my opinion, not my dogma.

So I still want a way to characterize the difference between saying "The Eiffel Tower is tall" and "That object [pointing] is called 'the Eiffel Tower'". Yes, the first is a property and the second is not, but where do these statements fall on the syntactic/semantic spectrum? — J

@banno If I may chime in with a related question. I seem to be missing an understanding about what a property is. I can see that whatever name that object (i.e. the eiffel tower) has is distinct from any of the properties that it has qua physical object. But if "a" refers to a, then it seems to me to follow that a is referred to by "a". So if the former is a property of "a" then the latter must be a property of a? You and @J seem to agree that "a" does have a property of referring to a, but that although a is referred to by "a", that does not constitute a property. I don't see why not. I do see that one could not use it to identity the reference of "a", because it would be circular, but that's a different matter, isn't it?

Sort of. We might say Homer is the guy we think wrote the Odyssey. But turns out it was Kostas who wrote it. Now at stake is the difference between thinking of "Homer" as denoting exactly and only "the bloke who the Odyssey", and thinking of it as denoting Homer, that person. That's what this group of thought experiments target. And that in turn is the difference between the descriptive theory of reference and the idea of a rigid designator. If "Homer" and "Kostas" are rigid designators, then we can say that it was Kostas that wrote the Odyssey, and do so without fear of our system of reference collapsing. If we think in terms of the descriptive theory, and so "Homer" refers to "The guy who wrote the Odyssey", then "Homer" refers to Kostas. — Banno

I see that. But then, it seems to me to be a matter of how one thinks about it, or perhaps what question one asks. "Homer" designates just that person every time it is used. Whether we know or how we can establish just which person that is, is not a relevant question. What bothers me is that it reminds me of the power of "+1" to define an infinite numbers of steps in advance - an astonishing fact. But, of course, it isn't astonishing at all. We apply the rule and discover or generate (I don't care which) the answer. It seems to be specified in advance because we are so sure how the rule will be applied in every case. In the same way, it seems to me, "Homer" identifies the same person in every possible world (in which Homer exists) not because it can somehow reach out across all possible worlds, but because we will decide, in all possible worlds, which person is Homer - and we will decide on the basis of the facts of the case. There's no list of facts that will determine every outcome in advance, but some facts or other will determine it.
So, are"Pegasus" or "dragon" rigid designators?

There's the point, too, that we might well see that the descriptivist theory is inadequate and yet not have at hand another theory to replace it. We sometimes have to be comfortable to say "I don't know", and to see that doing so is better than trying to repair a defunct theory. — Banno

Oh, I agree with that. I count myself among the don't knows. On the other hand, I'm not committed to a binary option for theories, though intention doesn't have anything to recommend it that I can see.

It's not a property because that "a" designates a is not a formula within the system, but part of the interpretation, of the model. — Banno

OK. Interpretation sits outside both syntax and semantics, but links the two. Since it isn't a formal system, it looks to me as if it may be conducted in natural language?

Much of the apparent bumpiness here might be worked out by your looking at the formal system and how it functions. You seem to have. good intuitive grasp of the ideas involved. — Banno

H'm. I'm an old dog. But if all this is something that logicians need, I have no problem - any more than I do about what mathematicians get up to. It's when ideas get out into the rough country beyond logic (or mathematics) that I sit up and take notice.

David Chalmers, who agrees more or less with the Wittgensteinian argument that we usually don't use "real" in this way, but goes on to ask why we couldn't. He proposes a room in to which we can go, within which we can ask such questions, and discuss the consequences. — Banno

That's a very interesting idea. It has occurred to me that some philosophers present their anti-realist arguments together with some account of what reality actually is. Which might get round Austin's objection. I'm thinking of Plato, Berkeley, Dennett and perhaps Descartes. You wouldn't know where I could find some discussion of this, would you?

I think knowledge obtained via the senses can be justified as providing an accurate picture of reality because we evolved, and could not have survived were we misled by our senses. — karl stone

On the face of it, there is something wrong here. We are frequently misled by our senses, and yet we have survived - or at least enough of us have survived.

Radical Skepticism acts like a work of fiction. A work of fiction does not make assertions to prove or disprove, the very nature of a work of fiction is an absence of any assertion about the world. There is nothing to confirm or falsify in a work of fiction. So, like a work of fiction, there is nothing to confirm or falsify in the skeptic's argument as well. — Richard B

But doesn't a work of fiction have to present something that is possibly true? The anti-sceptical arguments that I've seen aim to prove that the sceptic's conclusions are not even possibly true.

Okay, so what is the fundamental problem that you see, in your own words? — Leontiskos

Well, there are a number of issues.
Every problem in philosophy seems to have its own foundation. Which of them is fundamental? That depends on the context.
The meaning of "fundamental" is ill-defined. All too often, it is a metaphor that is never cashed out.
There seems to be an idea that, every philosophical problem can be resolved simply by identifying its foundation.
It is hard to believe that all of philosophy starts with just one foundation.
In philosophy, if you identify a foundation, you will certainly start a search for some foundation of your foundation, so foundations will never provide what you are looking for.

BTW, why did you add "... in your own words"? If a quotation answered the question, why should I not post it?

However, I am not sure I want to agree it is irrefutable, which I take to mean impossible to disprove. — Richard B

Well, technically, I was reporting what Hume said, though I admit I wasn't clear about that.

When I learnt philosophy, there was a widespread belief that scepticism had been refuted by Ryle, Wittgenstein etc. But scepticism is still ubiquitous. So my puzzle is that so many people have set out to resolve, for example, Cartesian scepticism (starting with Descartes himself) and yet it keeps coming back, like a noxious weed or the Hydra. So clearly those refutations have not sufficient purchase to put the issue to bed. Like Cavell, I am pretty sure there is something else going on here, though I don't have a defensible theory of what it is. It may be simply due to the fact that scepticism is an an initiation that very many, if not all, philosophy students are expected to go through. It's also possible that it is a phenomenon of the kind that the Harman-Vogel paradox high-lights. (That paradox turns on the fact that you can create a doubt where none exists simply by asking "Are you sure about that?".)

From my perspective, the skeptic’s argument is like a work of fiction. The main difference seems to be the intention of what is being present, one being “possibly real” and the other “make believe”. We are not trying to prove or disprove the intentions of the author, but what is being said by the author. And what is being said in both case makes no sense to even talk about proving or disproving. — Richard B

That's a very interesting take on scepticism. I get the point - a fiction needs to be "possibly real" even if it is also "make believe". Come to think of it, that's exactly how Descartes presents his method of doubt. But I don't quite see why you say both that you don't agree that the sceptic's argument is irrefutable and that it is impossible to prove or disprove. Since the sceptic is presenting the argument as a proof, doesn't that impossibility contradict or refute the assertion?

As Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus, — Richard B

I like the quotation. But doesn't it also show some of the complexity about irrefutable. In normal argumentation, demonstrating that a thesis is nonsensical is regarded as a classic refutation - reduction ad absurdum. (Note, however, that he says it is obviously nonsensical. It isn't obvious to most people.)

So, the question isn’t meaningful, it’s misguided. It treats certainty as something that needs to be justified, when in truth, certainty is what makes justification possible in the first place. — Sam26

I think we can say a little more than that.

One issue is that we can't just abandon our fundamental, taken-for-granted beliefs. Descartes, for example, sets out to doubt everything, but continues to sit comfortably by his stove, writing down his thoughts with pen on paper, believing that someone else will read them sooner or later. (Hume sums up this point by saying that the conclusions of the radical sceptic make no difference - life goes on as usual. The sceptic's argument is irrefutable, but pointless.)

When we ask ordinary questions about what is real, we ask in the question in a context that tells us what the difference is between what is real and what isn't. Asking about reality in general doesn't set a context that would enable us to answer the question.

There's a big ambiguity about the question. Macbeth famously had a hallucination of a dagger after he killed the previous king of Scotland. That dagger wasn't real, didn't exist. But when you see the bent stick in water, it exists all right, but isn't what it seems. When you see through the illusion, you see reality. Many arguments of this kind don't distinguish between the two claims.

Some philosophical theories seem to fit in between these two alternatives. Plato, Berkeley, Dennett, and modern physics don't deny the existence of common sense reality, but do assert that it is very different from what common sense thinks it is. But this seems paradoxical, because if common sense reality is so misleading, what basis can it provide for the alternative account of reality? (Berkeley, I think, was acutely aware of this paradox. Hence his protestations that he is not denying the existence of anything even though he appears to be doing exactly that.)


There's a great deal in these posts that is helpful and to the point.

But I don't think they can get round the fundamental problem, which is nicely exemplified by Husserl. Somebody earlier posted a quotation from him about his intent to start his project from scratch, in poverty, etc. It's a classic idea. Such a project might have a special status, above the fray of all the competing schools. But it's not possible, as the history of phenomenology demonstrates.

Right, this is the same question I'm raising about whether something about reference needs to be included in a list of X's properties. — J

Yes. I should have acknowledged that. Sorry.
The thing is, however, that, although the argument is, IMO, sound, it is unhelpful, because it doesn't dismisses the theory, without enabling us to dissect out the truth in what he says.

Posted prematurely. Sorry.

But, in the unlikely event that some part of this description turned out to be only a seeming -- that is, factually inaccurate -- we would say we had learned something about tigers. We wouldn't say, "Oh, that wasn't a tiger after all." — J

Yes, that's true - provided we have established that the animal in question is a tiger. But perhaps it only seems to be a tiger and the seeming we discover might amount to the discovery of that fact. For example, if we think we have discovered gold and then discover that it's specific gravity is far too low, we would say "that's not gold".

I think this is pointing to the question we've tossed around already -- whether "how a reference is fixed for X" is part of the list of X's potential properties; or whether we're mixing discourses by thinking of it that way. Can I know everything (or nothing) about X without including the reference-fixing story in my knowledge (or lack thereof)? — J

You don't need to include the reference-fixing story. But you do need to know how to refer to X. If you get that wrong, the rest collapses.

We might supose that there was a bloke names Homer, and indeed he wrote the Odyssey. But possibly, it was Kostas, his acquaintance, who did the writing, and Homer stole the text and took the credit. Now if what we mean by "Homer" is just the person answering the description "the bloke who wrote the Odyssey", when we say "Homer", we'd be referring to Kostas. Indeed, if the referent of "Homer" is fixed only by "the bloke who wrote the Odyssey", we could not coherently claim that homer did not write the Odyssey, becasue that would amount to saying that the bloke who wrote the Odyssey did not write the odyssey. — Banno

This is all playing games between the context of what we know and the context of God's view. If the only description of Homer is that he wrote the Odyssey, then this story just establishes that Homer is Kostas. But you have presupposed that there are facts about Homer and Kostas that establish them as different people. You couldn't discover that Homer stole the text and the credit unless you had already discovered that Homer and Kostas were different people.

The standard interpretation is that each rigidly designates that individual in each possible world in which that individual exists. So "a" designates a in world one, and also in world two, and so on. — Banno

And so it seems that since no property need be true of "a" in every possible world, no property need be true of a proper name in every possible world — Banno

Does this work the other way round? I mean if "a" designates an object in all possible worlds in which that object exists, is it also true that that object is designated by "a" in all possible worlds in which "a" exists. Then is there a possible world in which that object exists, but the Roman alphabet was not invented?
Similarly, if "a" necessarily designates a, can we conclude that a necessarily has the property of being designated by "a"?

Doesn't Wittgenstein's account of family resemblances dispose of this supposed problem?

Good posts on your part, by the away. Fine analytic stuff. — Banno

I'm flattered. Thank you.

Science begins with everyday observations about which we could all agree. Observations can be accurate or inaccurate, so science is correctable. Religious beliefs are not like this―because their correctness or incorrectness cannot be demonstrated.
Science begins by examining things as they present to us. The basic appearance of things in our environments is not culturally mediated, and they are present to all in a shared context so it is not a matter of merely personal experience, as it is with religious experiences. — Janus

Of course, that is just an outline of the big picture. I don't disagree with it, exactly, though there are a number of devils in various details.
But perhaps we can agree that it neatly explains why science and religion cannot conflict, doesn't it? I'm happy with that conclusion, and it seems that many people feel the same way, because they are both believers in a religion (ideology) and pursue science.
On the other hand, if "The basic appearance of things in our environments is not culturally mediated, and they are present to all in a shared context" it would seem that there is something basic that is common to both religion and science. Yet you also post "personal experience" which is not shared and it seems that you think the foundation of religion lies there. But religious lives are lived in the shared world. The difference you are identifying seems to me (roughly) a matter of interpretation, of ways of seeing.

It seems to me that the "ultimate concern" of any life governed by self-reflection is the basic ethical question "how should I Iive?" Could there be strictly empirical evidence available to guide me in answering that question? — Janus

It would be a mistake not to think that faith often involves quite prosaic and everyday matters, like whether the weather forecast is accurate. Tillich's faith is a different matter. I'm sure he's right to explain faith in terms that do not limit the scope of faith to religious faith, but identify it with decisions that lie at the heart of how we live - religious or no. I doubt that there could be strictly empirical evidence to guide us in answering these questions, because the decisions in question will affect how we interpret our experiences. But there is a common denominator - whether we can make our way through ordinary life without causing undue mayhem or causing our own misery and death.

Does it include "how to fix the reference of X"? — J

Well, I guess your argument would work, provided we can fix the reference of X without appealing to any of the properties of X. But most people would say that "tiger" refers to large striped cats that live in parts of Asia. How would you fix the reference without relying on any of the known properties of tigers?
I don't know the actual history of the discovery of black swans, but I find that case easier to think about. It is possible that the discoverers found these birds floating around on a lake somewhere and said "Oh, there's some black swans - who'd have thought it?" But they might well have asked themselves whether these black, swan-like birds were really swans at all. They would have made more detailed comparisons and come to their conclusion.
I am not arguing that there are some sacred descriptions that cannot be overturned. I am arguing that it would not be possible to overturn all the known descriptions at the same time. That is like trying to saw off the branch you are sitting on - success would be catastrophic.

It's an extensional context if substitution works. — Banno

OK. It's just that I'm not sure that it does work. But perhaps that's beyond our scope here.

I don't believe so. The idea is that we learn what some thing is, name it, and then discover that everything we knew about it was false. — Banno

There's something very odd about saying that we learn what some thing is, and then discover that what we have learnt about it is false. What is the "it" here?

What this shows is that we don't manage to pick out Thales in virtue of what we know about Thales, a somewhat counterintuitive result. — Banno

Yes. But that means that we do know how to pick out Thales.

Try a different example. Homer. I'm sure you know about him, and that there are good grounds for thinking that he never existed. But those stories exist; someone must have written them - or perhaps they are folk tales with no author in the sense that we apply the term. So our expectations when we learn the Homer wrote those epics are disappointed. But not everything that we learnt when we learnt the name is false.

Good question. To my eye, it's clear that we sometimes do work out a reference from a description associated with it; it's just that we can show that this is not what happens in every case. Indeed, it should hardly be a surprise to learn that there is more than one way for a reference to succeed. — Banno

I agree with that. One alternative way is by means of an ostensive definition - which, of course, isn't a definition at all by the usual standards. Nonetheless, it works.

What this doesn't rule out is the sort of view that might be seen in a Wittgensteinian account, in which reference is an aspect of the more general language games in which we participate, or even a sub-game within those games. On such a view a reference may be counted as successful if we get on with what we are doing, regardless of how it managed to denote it's target. — Banno

I agree with that. I'm still a bit puzzled about why I think that "how it managed to denote it's target" is not a answerable question, but "how do you know that Thales is not Homer" is.

A bajillion theories of reference (or supposition) have developed over the years; apparently it's a tough question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you suggesting that you think it is not a tough question? If so, I would love to know more.

The "problem of the many" strikes me as only particularly problematic for a certain sort of supervenience metaphysics for instance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, the cloud issue is just a sorites paradox. You're right, it makes very specific assumptions, which, IMO, are, let us say, unhelpful.

It seems obvious that people have things in mind that they intend to refer to in most cases. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is indeed. But explaining what that means is less clear.

In an extensional context, a=b iff for any string, substituting a for b does not change the value of that string. — Banno

Forgive my ignorance. That suggests that you have an independent definition of "extensional context". But I thought that intersubstitutability was the definition of an extensional context. ?

If we did find out that everything we knew about tigers were mistaken or in error, that would nevertheless be a discovery about tigers. It follows that "tiger" does not refer to tigers in virtue of some description that sets out their characteristics. — Banno

Are you possibly confusing "All the propositions that we think we know about tigers are false" with "Each of the propositions that we think we know about tigers may be false"? Consider the discovery of black swans. How did they know that those black birds were swans? Similarly, a big cat with no stripes might not be a tiger.

Notice that reference remains intact despite the failure of each description. Hence reference is not achieved by using descriptions, nor by essences. — Banno

So now I'm wondering how reference is achieved.
I seem to remember that Kripke thinks it is achieved by an unbroken causal chain between the original christening and my use of the term. That might work for the purposes of logic, but it doesn't seem a likely candidate for explaining how we achieve reference. Any history we have of the term might also turn out to be false. So how is it achieved?

Right, religious faith is based on personal experience and culturally mediated interpretation of that experience. My whole argument is that personal experience and cultural mediation are relativistic and so do not constitute good evidence for the truth of propositional beliefs, although of course they do motivate and condition beliefs. — Janus

Personal experience and cultural mediation are the basis for all beliefs, aren't they? So why do you distinguish between false religious beliefs and true beliefs, as, for example, in science. There must be an additional element that isn't taken account of in this model.

I think Hume was merely pointing out that inductive reasoning is not like deductive reasoning in that conclusions necessarily follow from premises in the latter, but not the former. We have good reason to trust inductive reasoning because it works almost all of the time and we have a vast, exceedingly successful and coherent body of knowledge based on it. — Janus

Well, I would debate some of that, but the outline is clear. The relevant question is what do you mean by saying that induction "works" and "successful"? I would be inclined to take that as some kind of pragmatism. (?)

I see the distinction, I wasn’t thinking of lifestyle as a choice so much as a direction of travel that one had arrived at. That lifestyle, or practice that is adopted initially would develop into a way of life through an evolution. — Punshhh

I see your point. It's an important feature of most (all?) religions.

There are due to their origins a number of schools(philosophies/religions) through which a believer/aspirant may come to their faith. Some more orthodox, some more devotional, some more meditation based. Some in which a deity is front and centre, others where any deity is barely defined. — Punshhh

Lots of different kinds of ways. I don't see that as a problem, in itself. It's the claim to exclusivity that makes the difficulties.

Also their are people who explore a number of schools and then follow their own path and people who follow a path, unaware that they are, thinking perhaps that they have no faith, or interest in religious, or spiritual matters at all. — Punshhh

Yes. Everyone is following some path or other, even if they are making it up as they go along.

So, I have no argument with believing just on the basis of faith (or feeling, or intuition) ―and the best outcome I can imagine in a dialogue between religionists and secularists would be agreement on the epistemology. — Janus

Well, agreement on the epistemology would be good. It would be even better if that agreement gave a basis for tolerating other religions. I realize that in many, perhaps most, places, there is already a great deal of toleration, and even co-operation through cross-religion links of one kind or another. But in another sense, it is very hard to see how there could possible be agreement between theists and atheists - or even between one religion and another. But if that could be accepted, a great deal of hot air and wasted time would be avoided.

The difficulty for some religionists is that they don't seem to want to acknowledge the obvious―that there can be no substantive evidence for belief in the existence of what cannot, even in principle, be observed. — Janus

It depends what you mean by observation. I don't want to over-generalize, but many religious people do claim that their faith is based on experience. Some of it is mystical, some not. Religions are a way of life, a practice based on a way of looking at - interpreting - the world. So they govern how experience is interpreted. That's partly why arguing as if the questions were simply empirical is a waste of time.

Covid is a bad analogy because it is something real that could kill you. — Janus

I chose it deliberately because it is not a religious phenomenon. The cognitive content of emotions is fundamental to all emotion, not just religious emotion. (Moods, such as anxiety or depression are a somewhat different kettle of fish.) My account here is only intended as an indicative summary of the line of argument.
See Stanford Encyclopedia - Emotion or
Internet Encyclopedia - Emotion

So, to be sure the fear has conceptual content, but there is no coherent concept, in the sense of something drawn from actual experience, of what hell could be. Same obviously applies to God. — Janus

In one way, of course, you are right. But there are descriptions and images of hell in plenty, and they are drawn from experience. As for God, the ideas about God do seem to me to be drawn from experience. God as Lord and Master, God as Father (or Mother). Your criterion of coherence seems to me to be unduly restrictive. The idea of a unicorn or dragon, or even of heaven and hell may nor may not be coherent in some sense. But there is sufficient coherence to enable people to react to them emotionally.

By 'faith" I mean 'feeling'. I can believe something simply because "it feels right" or "it rings true". That is what I think faith is. — Janus

I wouldn't argue with that.

I don't think authority is good evidence for the existence of anything unless it is based on sound observations. — Janus

To be sure, authority can be, often is, wrong. But much, or most, of what we know is based on it. I feel a bit like Hume recognizing that induction doesn't provide a sound basis for knowledge and recognizing that we are going to continue to use it anyway.

This is very much about lifestyle and practice(service) — Punshhh

I agree with a lot of what you say. I guess that, for a non-believer, a religion or ideology, can be regarded as about life-style and practice. However, there's a difference, I suppose, between a life-style and a way of life. It seems to me that a life-style is usually regarded as an option, not fundamental. But it seems clear to me that, for a believer, their religion or ideology, is fundamental, not just an option. It's the difference between choosing to wear certain kinds of clothes because of how they look, and perhaps, of the cultural messages they send and choosing to wear those same clothes because they are necessary for how one lives. (I'm not pretending this is a rigid distinction, but the difference is important.)

The difficulty is that, in a multi-faith society, religion or ideology needs to recognize the legitimacy of other religions or ideologies and that blurs the distinction that I'm trying to draw and that is quite difficult for believers.

So, believing in the unseeable is believing in the indeterminable, which means the belief itself is without determinable content, which is really the same as saying that it is without conceptual content, but may have affective content, which is to say it is nothing other than feeling. So believing in the indeterminable is merely the feeling of believing. — Janus

I'm afraid I was not very clear here. My immediate point was that dialogue between believers and non-believers cannot take place, or cannot take place productively, if each side digs in to its own position and exchanges arguments in the way that has become traditional in modern times. It is (or at least it seems to me to be) a completely unproductive exercise. A more productive approach to park the question whether God exists or not, leaving a space in which, perhaps some clarity about what God is supposed to be (in Christianity or Judaism or Spinoza's thought). That opens up some prospect of mutual enlightenment. Conversion or not, it seems to me, will happen elsewhere.

But I also think that your argument chain here has too many steps that are unclear or dubious to be convincing. Perhaps the weakest link (although it may seem entirely normal to many philosophers) your move from "without determinable content" through "without conceptual content" to "may have affective content". This rests on a strong contrast between cognitive (true/false) content and feelings, which are regarded as non-cognitive, because neither true nor false. But this is simplistic. Fear of COVD, for example, is a reaction to various facts/truths about COVID; it is a combination of cognitive and non-cognitive content (which rests on values or needs). More than that, fear is more than a matter of feelings, but is about certain kinds of behaviour - it is about how one reacts to the facts. So I do not see why affective content does not count as determinable content or even as conceptual content? The existence of some god is not just a neutral fact, but requires a reaction. For those reasons, I'm afraid I can't attribute any content to the "feeling of believing".

If you look again at the context "faith is evidence based knowledge" you will see that I was not agreeing with that, but disagreeing with it. — Janus

I looked again and saw that you are right. I was careless and I'm sorry.

I see beliefs determined by evidence and beliefs determined by faith (or feeling in other words) as being on a continuum, — Janus

The phrase "beliefs determined by faith" sounds as if faith is somethiing separate from belief, but surely what you mean is (roughly) "beliefs not determined by evidence"? I would agree that there is a spectrum there, from conclusive evidence through partial evidence. I think that beliefs based on authority are diffeerent in kind. In a sense, of course, authority can be regarded as a kind of evidence, but it is a rather different kind of evidence - being, as it were, evidence that the source is trustworthy. So beliefs based on authority require faith, in a rather weak sense. There are also beliefs that are not based on empirical evidence, but on, let us say, the meanings of the words in them, or the (logical) grammar of language. It doesn't seem to me quite right to say that these are based on faith. But religion doesn't quite fit in to any of these categories.

There is faith in God, faith in redemption, faith in society and human interaction. Faith in oneself, faith in truth. Faith as a tool used in mysticism, or by the ascetic. — Punshhh

Once one raises one's head from the rows about religion, faith turns up all over the place.

If religion is about the fundamentals of how one inteprets the world and how one lives in it, I think we should be thinking of faith as not merely a peculiarity of some people, but as about the foundations of whatever form life a human being pursues - however inchoate and unreflective.

That's another way to come at the subject. There's room for both, I think.

When one researches something, one has to have an issue in mind. What is the issue regarding researching God? — Astrophel

Interesting question. I was thinking about the question whether religion is a force for good. My answer is that there are lots of other similar questions. But also lots of expertise and good and bad practice to learn from. One problem is that something may count as a good thing for believers but not for non-believers. Attracting larger congregations would be an example. Some other things might count as a good thing for one side and actually a bad thing for the other side. The multiplicity of critieria creastes another problem because any overall judgement must be complex and balanced. (It's hard enough with a good car or a good house, but this is a whole different level).
The really tricky problem is the idea of researching God. Of course, it is not hard to see what researching Zeus (or Rhea) would be. There are the stories, the accounts of the relevant practices and so forth. But it's a different thing when you come to God, (or Allah, etc.). A non-believer will follow the same methods as for the research off Zeus. But, for a non-believer, who is looking to develop a relationship with God that is at least akin to a relationship with another person, so it involves a whole different dimension - not merely knowing what the non-believer knows, but learning to take part in the practices - especially the liturgical practices - and taking part in them, not to mention various disciplines designed to train (or re-train) oneself for the new life.
Does that help?

An act of faith relies upon inferences and reasons that are defeasible and not undeniable (or indefeasible). — Leontiskos

Coming to a conclusion on the basis of non-conclusive evidence is a big part of our lives. Cases where we have conclusive evidence, I would say, are relatively rare. So there is nothing special here. Arguably, what makes Christianity special is prounouncements from believers like Tertullian, with his famous "I believe because it is incredible."
It seems to me that what makes religious commitment special is, first, that it is a decision to follow a way of life, not a mere fact. The belief that God sent his Son to redeem the world demands a radical response, which is not merely a belief, but a commitment. So giving up that belief is not like changing one's mind about what the weather will be tomorrow. It is more like ending a friendship or partnership. That is what differentiates faith from belief. But it is more than that. A religion structures one's entire life - it is, to coin a phrase, a way of life. Giving that up is giving up everything.

It is an interesting thing to say. I wonder how you think one should deal with this "complex question". Research? — Astrophel

Well, of course. What else? It seems to me that any serious attempt to answer it, will have to include emprical data, as well.

Are these extremely dangerous absolutes we should be open to reconsidering? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It depends how you interpret and apply them. More specifically, it depends you treat people who violate your principles. Ask yourself why the allies went to so much trouble to put Nazi leaders through an elaborate and difficult trial process, as opposed to shooting them out of hand or, possibly, sending them to their own gas chambers? Is it because there was any serious doubt about what they did?

At any rate, what you're saying clearly can't be "Absolutely True," itself, right? :wink: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Very funny. What will you do if I give you the wrong answer?

Yes, what I said deserves more careful expression and more detailed consideration.

PS You did notice that I didn't deny that there are truths? I'm just asserting that a certain caution and humility about our judgements that we have got hold of one is appropriate. Hume describes it as "judicious" and recommends it - as opposed to the "Pyrrhonian" scepticism so beloved of orthdox philosophers.

If they acknowledged to themselves that what they believed was not the Absolute Truth but merely an expression of their own predilections, then they might understand that others need not share their beliefs. — Janus

I agree whole-heartedly that the notion that one has grasped an Absolute Truth is extremely dangerous. It makes it impossible to acknowledge and tolerate any disagreement. I cannot think of a situation in which this might be a a Good Thing, but I can think of many in which it is clearly a Bad Thing. I do not confine this to religious contexts.

Based on what I've seen in philosophical fora over the last two years, I'm left seriously wondering whether it is possible - how it is possible - to philosophize about religion with people who do not agree with me in my core beliefs, There appears to be no neutral territory.

Surely, philosophy does require that the questions whether God exists or Religion is a Force of Good need to be suspended. I don't mean that actual scepticism is required. I understand that the Buddha said that the question of the existence of the gods is "undetermined". That seems to me the only possible basis for anything that might count as a philosophical discussion.

The fundamental mistake is to treat these questions - the existence of God, whether religion is a Force for Good - as straightforward empirical beliefs with straightforward empirical answers. I don't think that the question of the existence of God is an empirical belief in any ordinary sense. There's some room for philosophy there. Whether religion is a Force for Good does look like an empirical question. But it is a complex question requiring a good deal of analysis before any empirical data can be brought to bear on it. There's already a huge amount of research on this question. If there's space for philosophy there, It needs to take that work into account.

faith is evidence based knowledge — Janus

I can't see that, in the context of philosophical discussion, there is any clear meaning attached to this slogan. I really don't know where to begin with it. It seems pretty clear, though, that faith is not simply evidence-based knowledge. If it were, there would be no particular philosophical interest in discussing it.

BTW I do wish that we could get beyond the idea that religion and science are incompatible in some way. Many people are both religious believers and scientists.

I had no idea! Is this an outgrowth of the tradition (if I've got this right) that certain members of the royal family may not vote either? — J

The British Constitution is a wonderful thing. Strictly speaking, the royal family are entitled to vote; it's just that they think it would be tactless to do so. The same applies to the bishops of the Church of England, who are all classified as "lords spiritual" and are automatically working members. Nor (since 1999) does the ban apply to hereditary peers who have not been elected to be working members. But even those who are banned from voting in Parliamentary elections are allowed to vote in local elections.

The first law about this was passed in 1699. The official reason for the ban is that members of t[e House of Lords are there in their own right and so do not need a representative in Parliament. They can speak for themselves.

As for current arguments, the answer appears to be "both": — J

Yes. It all looks like a bit of a mess. It seems likely that the real reason the practice survives is that "votes for criminals" does not look like a vote winner.

Sorry. Posted prematurely by accident.

Sure, but isn't there a clear distinction to be made between "born with a speech impediment" and "born into poverty"? Most of the boundaries are fuzzier than that, agreed, but in principle I think it's a conception worth clarifying when we can. — J

Yes, but the outcome of having a speech impediment as an adult might well rest on both causes interacting, not only after birth, but even before (polluted environment). But I'm happy to think of a specfrum, which results from the interaction of the two causes.

I vote for both/and rather than either/or. Theory + political realities. — J

Well, yes. Thought experiments and idealizations have their place. But so does hard, practical experience. Perfect impartiality may be beyond reach in practice, but practical arrangement can achieve something, and good practical arrangments can do better than bad ones.

Can you say more about what the problem is, as you understand it? (The exceptions I had in mind are the various state laws about convicted felons voting.) — J

I wasn't thinking about the details. There are various categories of people barred from voting in the UK.

Sitting Members of the House of Lords.
Those in prison.
People convicted of electoral malpractice are barred for five years.
Those compulsorily detained in psychiatric hospitals cannot vote.

The arguments are slightly different in each case. But the reasons seem obvious, except in the case of those in prison. I'm unclear whether the reason is that those in prison are regarded as unfit to vote or whether loss of the right to vote is part of the punishment.

This is a problem for classical liberalism because, while there's arguably not much we can do about differences an individual is born with, the differences in economic status are systemic, not "natural," and could be ameliorated. — J

It seems to me that the project of disentangling nature from nurture is extremely difficult, if possible at all. The two interact during the whole of life and the prospect of separating them is very dim.

The idea is resilient, though, because you can correct and stretch it without breaking it and making it useless. — J

I think we would do better to consider the ways in which we negotiate this issue in real life and, with luck, working out improvements to those. More likely to be meaningful than something dreamed up in an armchair.

Now liberal democracies believe that all adult citizens (with some troublesome exceptions) indeed have this right. — J

Yes, they do. And it is a problem. Insofar as compulsory education can address the issue, that's all we have.

I would call this "heavily qualified," if you think about what he's actually saying. — J

Yes, I agree. All very interesting.

I wonder who does the specifying and adjusting? In real life I think that there is a great deal of consensus developing and then being enforce in the same kind of ways that the rules of etiquette are enforced - spontaneous, non-organized individual reaction.

I call this typical because his conception of a "capacity" is usually individual, such that "economic capacity" might not qualify -- though I think it should. And the "essential minimum degree" bit has generated a lot of debate, which would certainly have to be extended into the economic area as well. — J

I think the talk of capacities comes from Nussbaum. As to economic capacity, I assume that means the capacity to earn money. But the limits of what might earn money are quite wide; so it's a different kind of capacity from, for example, the capacity to drive lorries or raise cattle. Perhaps, in this case at least, it may be more a question of finding some capacity that each person has that people will pay money for, as opposed to a capacity like the ability to play music, where it is more a question of selecting among the population.

The question of education raises its head again.

Some cryptic answers there! — Janus

Yes. You do well to ignore them.

On the other hand if you mean that they don't miss it precisely because they have it just as the religionist does, then I agree. — Janus

That's part of it, which the secularist has, just as much as the religionis. But Berkeley attributes more to the religionist than that.

.....hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, subservient to the ends they were designed for, God's glory, and the sustentation and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures. — "

The secularist will not do any of that. But won't miss it.

I would say that this is, very broadly, the "free institutions" enshrined in Western democracy. — J

That's all very well. But doesn't he recognize that all these freedoms are heavily qualified?

I found Prospect Magazine 2018 - Rawls' Justice as Fairness

We arrive at “the property question”: is it reasonable to allow private ownership of society’s major means of production? If we agree to conceive political society as a fair cooperative system for mutual benefit, the answer must be No: these assets are such that private ownership inevitably endows the owner with inordinate political power.
Rawls was hesitant to state this conclusion. He wanted to leave open an alternative to liberal democratic socialism that he called “property-owning democracy.” These two “ideal regime-types,” as he called them, differ essentially only in how they answer the property question.

It seems to me that secularists and religionists are equally capable of seeing purpose, meaning, and beauty, as well as order and truth. — praxis

Of course. Both are equally human. Adopting a world-view, such as a religion, does not change that, except perhaps for some people, at the margins. For the most part, human life plays out, with all its faults through the framework. I know that many believers want very much to believe that they have a better handle on things and lead better lives as a result. That may or may not be empirically true, but there's no reason to assume that it is is.

Sure - I take worldview to include the quotidian and to be the source of our day-to-day choices and actions. — Tom Storm

Quite so. But that's where the analysis in terms of world-views shows an opportunity. The quotidian is what the religious and the secular share. It is not a choice. They bump into each other. So each needs to find an account of the other (or set about eliminating them from their world.)