Sure is. You Aussies sleep during the day, I see. (US-centric gag.) To be continued.

Not everyone. Some, certainly. Some (mis)readings of Wittgenstein, or other appeals to underdetermination, seem to result in very wild theses.

Just for one example of a thesis derived from Wittgenstein that seems troubling (from A.C. Grayling's book on him):

Cognitive relativism is a troubling thesis. Consider the point that it makes the concepts of truth, reality, and value a matter of what sharers in a form of life happen to make of them at a particular time and place, with other forms of life at other times and places giving rise to different, perhaps utterly different or even contrary, conceptions of them. In effect this means that the concepts in question are not concepts of truth and the rest, as we usually wish to understand them, but concepts of opinion and belief. We are, if cognitive relativism is true (but what does true now mean?), in error if we think that truth and knowledge have the meanings we standardly attach to them, for there is only relative truth, there is only reality as we, in this conceptual community at this period in its history, conceive it.

The reading of Wittgenstein which suggests that he takes such a view is consistent with much of what he otherwise says. For Wittgenstein the meaning of expressions consists in the use we make of them, that use being governed by the rules agreed among the sharers of a form of life. This presumably applies to expressions like true and real themselves and indeed, it is precisely Wittgenstein's point that such expressions cease to be philosophically significant once we remind ourselves of their ordinary employments. It follows that the possibility of there being other forms of life, even just one other, with different agreements and rules means therefore that each form of life confers its own meaning on true and real and therefore truth and reality are relative not absolute conceptions. This is a highly consequential claim.

Wittgenstein sometimes appears to be committed to cognitive relativism as just described. He says: "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him" (P II p.223); "We don't understand Chinese gestures any more than Chinese sentences" (Z 219). These remarks suggest relativism across "forms of life"; Wittgenstein may be saying that because meaning and understanding are based upon participation in a form of life, and because the forms of life in which, in their different ways, lions and Chinese engage are quite different from ours, it follows that we cannot understand them their view of things is inaccessible to us and vice versa. In On Certainty Wittgenstein appears to commit himself to relativism in a single form of life across time, by saying that our own language-games and beliefs change (C 65, 96#7, 256), which entails that the outlook of our forebears might be as inaccessible to us cognitively as is that of the lions or, differently again, the Chinese.

One need not take as one's target so radical a form of the thesis to show that cognitive relativism is unacceptable, however. This can be demonstrated as follows. Suppose that cognitive relativism is the case. How then do we recognize another form of life as another form of life? The ability to detect that something is a form of life and that it differs from our own surely demands that there be a means for us to identify its presence and to specify what distinguishes it from ours. But such means are unavailable if the other form of life is impenetrable to us, that is, if it is closed against our attempts to interpret it enough to say that it is a form of life. This means that if we are to talk of other forms of life at all we must be able to recognize them as such; we must be able to recognize the existence of behaviour and patterns of practices which go to make up a form of life in which there is agreement among the participants by reference to which their practices can go on. Moreover, if we are to see that the form of life is different from our own we have to be able to recognize the differences; this is possible only if we can interpret enough of the other form of life to make those differences apparent. And therefore there has to be sufficient common ground between the two forms of life to permit such interpretation.

This common ground has to involve two related matters: first, we have to share with the aliens some natural capacities and responses of a perceptual and cognitive type, giving rise to at least some similar beliefs about the world; and secondly we have to be able to share with them certain principles governing those beliefs; for one important example, that what is believed and therefore acted upon is held to be true. This has to be so because, as remarked, detecting differences is only possible against a shared background; if everything were different participants in one form of life could not even begin to surmise the existence of the other.

But this requirement for mutual accessibility between forms of life gives the lie to cognitive relativism. This is because the respects in which different forms of life share an experiential and conceptual basis which permits mutual accessibility between them are precisely the respects in which those forms of life are not cognitively relative at all. Indeed, cultural relativism, which is not just an unexceptionable but an important thesis, itself only makes sense if there is mutual accessibility between cultures at the cognitive level. Hence it would appear that the only intelligible kind of relativism there can be is cultural relativism.

Now, few want to tread down these paths. However, some do it quite eagerly, in part because "there is no truth," is—like "there is no truth about what is good or bad"—seen as "liberating" (a "freedom from reality" perhaps). This is hardly unique to Wittgenstein, some embrace the critique of holism, which most holists want to fix, that it implies that no one who doesn't already share the same beliefs ever truly communicates. Or there are related paths to the resurrection of Latin Averroism and the idea that the truths of each "field" can contradict each other because they are each "hermetically sealed magisterium." (Of course, this very doctrine implies that it itself may only be true in some fields, and that what constitutes a proper hermetically sealed field will also itself vary by field).

Crucially, on that last one, there often seems to be nothing other than bare stipulated fiat that stops the hermetically sealed magisterium from shrinking down to just each individual's beliefs, such that we reach a Protagotean relativism of "whatever one thinks is true is true (for that person)."

What claim could be more straightforwardly self-refuting than "nothing is really true or false?" Yet people make it. And if I recall, you were of the opinion that this is in fact the overwhelming consensus amongst all current logicians. Sad it would be if it were truly so.

But most people don't want to reach these sorts of conclusions. They try to work their way back. Fair enough. Can they? Wanting to fix your own philosophical problems is not the same thing as fixing them. Kant surely didn't want his system to imply dualism, but plenty of Kant scholars think it essentially does. Likewise, the trick is in avoiding a slide into a sort of extreme relativism and deflationism in a coherent manner. Which is where people can be more or less successful. Less successful, I would say, are solutions that just involve invoking "pragmatism! It is not helpful to me to believe this level of relativism" But of course the radicals do think it is helpful, and the so this is hardly much of a philosophical answer.

Whereas, when people do "work their way back" to common sense, they often end up saying things that sound very similar, about rabbits and such existing as a certain sort of actuality in the world that cannot be collapsed with that actuality of their being known by the human mind, and so on. Terms will vary because the detours through skepticism create a vast jungle of terms.

Do you believe it's true that the earth orbits the sun? Did you know that this "truth" is relative to choices that we little people make? If there's no one to choose a frame of reference, there is no truth of the matter. This is not philosophy. It's physics.

Do you believe it's true that the earth orbits the sun? Did you know that this "truth" is relative to choices that we little people make? If there's no one to choose a frame of reference, there is no truth of the matter. This is not philosophy. It's physics. — frank

Hi, excuse me. In my personal ontology, truth is a feature of Reality itself. It has nothing to do with humans. Not all frames of reference are human. The fact that the Earth orbits the Sun would be the same fact if humanity went extinct, or if it never existed to begin with. It is true that the Earth orbits the Sun, because that truth is related to a fact. It would have been related to that fact even in the absence of human beings. And in fact, it was, it still is, and will be, for as long as it is a fact that the Earth orbits around the Sun (if, in the extremely distant future, the Sun ceases to exist, then such matters of fact will have changed).

If there's no one to choose a frame of reference, there is no truth of the matter. This is not philosophy. It's physics. — frank

There is an actuality which is the Earth orbiting the Sun. We model that actuality using physics. And some silly philosophers say that because 'the Earth orbits the Sun' is a sentence which is, in this case, true, and because truth only pertains to sentences, judgements and beliefs, without language and linguistically competent beings there is not truth.

It's a lame and misguided argument in my opinion. The problem is that when it comes to arguments like that there doesn't seem to be a determinable fact of the matter as to whether they are true or false—and the result is that such arguments are interminable.

It's true that the earth orbits the sun if we say the sun is stationary relative to the earth. We could instead pick the earth as the stationary point and then it wouldn't be true that the earth orbits the sun. This is not rocket science guys.

Also energy and mass are constructs. They aren't observable. The list goes on.

A good rule of thumb for everyone is to keep in mind that, during a conversation, if it just so happens that good common sense needs to be praised, then something about the conversation has gone terribly wrong. — Arcane Sandwich

Maybe now is a good time to tell you that a fitting subtitle for the forum would be as follows:

$The\,Philosophy\,Forum:\,Where\,Conversations\,Go\,Terribly\,Wrong$

:sweat:

Physics, not philosophy, suggests nothing is really true?

Physics, not philosophy, suggests nothing is really true? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I gave you an example of a truth that's relative to the choices we make.

The description is relative to choices we make, not truth. No one says that the expression of truth isn't relative in this way, and people don't tend to use SR/GR as an example of deflationism or all-embracing relativism because it isn't. One can describe things more or less accurately in different ways, and different languages. The Ptolemaic model is not entirely inaccurate, but it is certainly wrong in many key respects. And in the Newtonian model we are already focused on a center of mass, not "the sun," although the sun is so much more massive that a statement of heliocentrism is not wholly false either.

Einstein famously regretted the moniker precisely because of this sort of confusion, and thought "theory of invariants," would be a better name. The whole edifice aims at clarifying invariance and constancy.

Hold up. Let's go over it a little more slowly. We just start with the realization that when we say the earth orbits the sun, we have chosen a frame of reference. Doing so requires that we choose a point and call it stationary relative to the rest of the points in the system. Are you with me so far?

I understand the inscrutability of reference, and more generally the indeterminancy of translation to be more or less equivalent to contextualism as opposed to relativism, because semantic indeterminancy is a theory (for want of a better word) of meta-semantics that in effect considers the meaning of a proposition to be relative to the context of the agent who asserts the proposition, and hence the public inability to know what the speaker is referring to - as opposed to relativism that is a theory of truth that considers truth to be relative to the speaker.

To my understanding, relativism actually presupposes non-contextualism, because it must assumed by relativism that debating communicators are at least talking about the same referents if those referents are to be assigned conflicting properties or truth values by the debaters. On the other hand, if we do not assume that the debaters are referring to the same thing, then we have no basis for inferring that the debate is a disagreement about reality. In fact, I consider relativism to be self-inconsistent (for how can the truth be considered to be relative, either from an individual or collective perspective?). I think relativism is mainly motivated by a lack of appreciation for, or misunderstanding of, the logic of contextualism.

E.g suppose Bob insists that "The Earth is Flat". Then it is natural to also suppose that at the very least, there exists external physical causes and internal psychological causes for Bob's assertion, but the chances are the topology of the Earth is a negligible causal factor with regards to Bob's assertion, especially if it is assumed that the Earth is Round. So an objective semantic analysis of Bob's assertion cannot use the topology of the Earth as the referent of Bob's assertion.

Essentially, there is a conflict between

1) Interpreting a proposition as referring to a given state of affairs, and
2) Interpreting the proposition as being wrong about that state of affairs.

For this reason, I suspect that the concept of belief states is inconsistent and that beliefs don't exist in the sense of mental states, such as propositional attitudes.

I understand the inscrutability of reference, and more generally the indeterminancy of translation to be more or less equivalent to contextualism as opposed to relativism, because semantic indeterminancy is a theory (for want of a better word) of meta-semantics that in effect considers the meaning of a proposition to be relative to the context of the agent who asserts the proposition, and hence the public inability to know what the speaker is referring to - as opposed to relativism that is a theory of truth that considers truth to be relative to the speaker. — sime

You're absolutely right. Quine's insight was touched on earlier, but lately the thread has centered on global skepticism.

Well, what exactly is a concept? You won't find one by dissecting a brain. — Banno

So is a belief a thing, or a series of interconnected activities and ways of thinking? — Banno

The comparison to "concept" is good. Neither one can be reduced to physical items. But don't we agree that there's more to existing than being physical? (Actually, let me interrupt myself here to say that I still think, as I've argued elsewhere, that we'd be better off dropping "exist" and "existence" entirely in metaphysical discussion. But let's go along with it for now.) So my question about how deeply our "denial of thingness" goes was meant to differentiate two positions. One would say that beliefs (and concepts too, perhaps) are valid terms to refer to in propositions, that they pick out important aspects of experience, that they are capable of being understood and related to other abstracta, etc. etc, but they aren't "things" in the sense that a tiger (or a neuron) is. The other position, which I called more radical, would say that beliefs aren't even that, that if we can't be more specific about their ontology, then there's no point in invoking them at all. They don't refer, except as describing a propositional attitude.

It sounds to me as if, by using the phrase "series of interconnected activities and ways of thinking," you lean more to the first construal. That is, there's nothing wrong with talking about beliefs as long as we don't reify them. Is that about right?

An interesting comparison with the word "darkness": I doubt if anyone wants to say that "darkness" is incoherent, or doesn't refer, or betrays a misunderstanding of some sort. At the same time, just about everyone wants to say that there is "no such thing" as darkness. I'm not saying this is a parallel with "belief", which presumably isn't the absence of something else, as darkness is. It's just another example of how we can insist on the existence (that word again) of a phenomenon that can't be understood as a physical item in the world's inventory.

It's true that the earth orbits the sun if we say the sun is stationary relative to the earth. We could instead pick the earth as the stationary point and then it wouldn't be true that the earth orbits the sun. — frank

:roll:
The speed of light is the only thing in the Universe that is constant, in the sense of being frame invariant. Is that what you want to argue? :roll: There's other stuff that is also frame invariant, "c" is not the only one. And it's possible to argue from there (after a somewhat lengthy series of steps) that the Earth orbits the Sun.

This is not rocket science guys. — frank

No, it isn't. So why are we even talking about it? Just for the sake of arguing?

Also energy and mass are constructs. — frank

No, they're not. They're real properties that physical things have. We refer to them with "E" and "m", those are the constructs, not the referents themselves. The territory is not the map.

They aren't observable. — frank

So? Just because something is not observable, it doesn't mean that it's not real. I can't observe a living Triceratops. That doesn't mean that there weren't living Triceratopses in the past (and yes "Triceratopses" is indeed the plural of "Triceratops").

The list goes on. — frank

The list of what? Things are not words, and words are not things. The map is not the territory. The map successfully refers to the territory. Is it a perfect 1-to-1 match? Of course not. But why would anyone say that the territory that the map refers to is inscrutable? It isn't.

The comparison to "concept" is good. Neither one can be reduced to physical items. But don't we agree that there's more to existing than being physical? — J

Oh, very much so. Nothing here should be construed as suggesting that there are no such thing as beliefs. And I'd even go along with reifying them, when we use them as explanations for actions, for example, so long as we are aware that this is what we are doing.

Beliefs are curiously foundational in regard to actions. That I went to the tap to get a glass of water is explained by my belief that the tap was a suitable place to obtain water together with my desire for water. That I believe the tap a source of water is sufficient, regardless of of whether the tap works or not. While it makes sense to ask why I believe the tap a source of water, it is somehow incoherent to ask if I believe the tap to be such a source, given my actions and assertions.

I think what this shows is the directionality of beliefs of this sort. So in coming to believe that the tap is a good source of water I am changing my belief to match the way things are. But in going to the tap to fetch water I am changing the way things are (my location) to match my belief (that there is water in the tap). This I take to be bringing out the intentionality involved in beliefs as well as explaining why they are foundational in explaining actions.

I'd also ask folk to note the part played by the propositional content of the belief in explaining behaviour. Without "taps are a source of water", the belief would have no explanatory value. Those who would deny propositional content will at some stage need to contend with this problem.

The comparison with darkness is helpful, although as you say belief is not an absence.

How did we get to this from Quine? We were talking about essences, and moved to beliefs. We were discussing beliefs in part becasue of the place they have for Quine in the Web of Belief.

We moved to essences when made the suggestion that to "grasp the intelligibility of things" - gavagai, perhaps - we needed first intelligible essences... or something like that. There was an odd circularity here, in that we need essences to understand what something is, but when pressed it seems Tim thinks an essence is exactly what it is to understand what something is... we understand what something is by understanding what it is. Now circularity is not strictly invalid, but it is far from convincing. And there's the rejection of logical atoms, together with the analysis around family resemblance, amongst other things, for advocates of essence to deal with.

seems now to be ascribing some form of cognitive relativism to someone - not sure if it's Quine, or @frank, or me, or all of us. I don't see anything like that in Quine, who was strongly enamoured of science and empirical evidence, rejecting radical pluralism. Quine sought coherence and utility within a single scientific worldview. For my part I've long advocated the rejection of cognitive relativism found in Davidson's On the very idea...".

Anyway, we are each not responsible for the way others misunderstand us - and there has been plenty of that in this thread. The way to overcome this is by continuing the conversation. But even then there may be a point at which we might not be able to progress, and all we can do is laugh and walk away. Perhaps charity has limits.

The upshot of this is that it would be a mistake to expect an express some "essence of belief", and that expecting such a thing might be a philosophical foible. It doesn't matter.

I quite agree, indeed it seems we all agree, that relativism is inconsistent. It remains unclear who, if anyone, is being outed as a relativist.

I suppose Quine's approach to dealing with Bob would be to draw upon his web of belief to show him a few inconsistencies, and ask him which of his beliefs he would modify in order to remove those inconsistencies. The recent thread does this sort of thing.

I also agree that a belief is not well represented as a mental state. However I do think there is some use in treating beliefs as an attitude towards a proposition. Perhaps my last post above to J will explain some of this.

The Earth doesn't orbit around the sun, nor the sun around the earth, but both orbit around a common centre of mass, under the influence of the other bodies in the solar system; and this will be so regardless of the frame of reference chosen.

The Earth doesn't orbit around the sun, nor the sun around the earth, but both orbit around a common centre of mass, under the influence of the other bodies in the solar system; and this will be so regardless of the frame of reference chosen. — Banno

There's a kind of absolutism that belongs to a theistic outlook. It's the kind of absolutism that would have a person deny something as simple as Galilean transformation. Meh.

We moved to essences when ↪Count Timothy von Icarus made the suggestion that to "grasp the intelligibility of things" - gavagai, perhaps - we needed first intelligible essences... or something like that. There was an odd circularity here, in that we need essences to understand what something is, but when pressed it seems Tim thinks an essence is exactly what it is to understand what something is... we understand what something is by understanding what it is. Now circularity is not strictly invalid, but it is far from convincing. And there's the rejection of logical atoms, together with the analysis around family resemblance, amongst other things, for advocates of essence to deal with.

I have no idea how you came to this take. Essence has to do with what something is, it is not dependent on a human's understanding it. If it was, then what things are would fundamentally change when we came to understand them, or came to understand them more fully. I am not sure of any thinker who puts forth an idea of essences as "what it is to understand something." Rather, essences would be what is understood.

The pattern is "rabbits exist as a distinct whole outside and prior to human understanding" followed by "the senses communicate such wholes to us," followed by "through sense experience, imagination, and reason, we can gain a grasp on what things are" (the last of course, is not a binary, one can understand something better or worse).

↪Count Timothy von Icarus seems now to be ascribing some form of cognitive relativism to someone - not sure if it's Quine, or @frank, or me, or all of us

No clue where you're getting that either. I brought up Grayling's quote because it is an example of problematic theses that can follow from linguistic turn era philosophy. This is very obvious in how the quotation is introduced. I point out specifically that few want to be led to these conclusions, but then the question becomes "how exactly shall they be avoided?"

Things are not words, and words are not things

:up: Right, words as a means of knowing versus what is (primarily) known.

Plus, the claim that mass and energy are "unobservable" needs to be qualified. On the view that all that exists is physical, and that what is physical consists entirely of these two (some add information as a third, or even as a more ontologically basic prior of course), to claim that matter and energy are unobservable would be to claim that nothing is observable. Although, I'm sure there is someone who, via IIT or computational theory of mind, has come to the conclusion that only information is observable.

You'd have to qualify it. There is a sense in which anytime you see something fall to the ground you are observing mass, and whenever you see anything (which of course involves light rather directly) you are obviously observing energy.

At any rate, what constitutes the center of a star system or galaxy is not arbitrary.

At any rate, what constitutes the center of a star system or galaxy is not arbitrary. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's a kind of absolutism that belongs to a theistic outlook. It's the kind of absolutism that would have a person deny something as simple as Galilean transformation. Meh. — frank

Banno and Timothy are correct, it's not a matter of "absolutism' and it's not arbitrary. The Solar System as a whole has a centre of mass known as a barycenter around which everything in the system orbits. It is constantly changing its position depending on the positions of all the planets. The position of the barycenter is relative to the whole system, so it is not absolute but is also not a matter of perspective.

There are few atheist flat earthers.

Figures.

I have no idea how you came to this take. — Count Timothy von Icarus

By trying to make sense of your post. For instance,

Things have essences. Our senses grasp the quiddity of things. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn't say that you said that essences is "what it is to understand something", rather that understanding what something is, involves understanding its essence. So ok, you think that "essences would be what is understood" but when asked what an essence is there is a gap; not properties, not definitions, but quiddity; and I have nothing left with which to understand quiddity except as "the inherent nature or essence of something". The circularity remains. As I said, not vicious, but not helpful in terms of explaining stuff.

No clue where you're getting that either. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, your posts are erudite and expansive, but perhaps not so pertinent as they might be. Passive aggressive writing as an art form? Almost making an argument, but not quite, so as to maintain plausible deniability...

I dunno. It seems we each misapprehend the other. But it pleases me that you have seen fit to bud two threads off from this one, at the least it has had you doing some reconsidering.

Cheers.

It's clear that someone can show us a lead weight, but not a kilogram. Mass is not directly observable. But this is not to say that there is no such thing as mass. @frank's point seems clear enough.

Cheers.

The territory is not the map. — Arcane Sandwich

Harking back to General Semantics, again? It's "The map is not the territory", and reminds us that any map is incomplete. Sound advice.

The map may be an excellent example of how Quine's web of belief works. That dot - it is the Church? In order to work that out, you will need to orient the map and interpret the other dots and lines in terms of the territory. You cannot decide that the dot is the church without giving due consideration to the whole; or perhaps to the context, as put it.

So yes, that dot on the map is indeed inscrutable, until the surrounds are taken into account. Much like "gavagai".

I don't read @frank as suggesting that mass is not real. Quite the opposite.

I don't read frank as suggesting that mass is not real. Quite the opposite. — Banno

Yes. Mass and energy are real. They're both scientific constructs.

Mass in modern physics has multiple definitions which are conceptually distinct, but physically equivalent. Mass can be experimentally defined as a measure of the body's inertia, meaning the resistance to acceleration (change of velocity) when a net force is applied.[1] The object's mass also determines the strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies. — Wikipedia

In physics energy is not a substance, nor is it mystical. Energy is a number. A quantity. And the quantity itself isn’t even particularly fundamental. Instead, it’s a mathematical relationship between other, more fundamental quantities. It was 17th century polymath Gottfried Leibnitz who first figured out the mathematical form of what we call kinetic energy – the energy of motion. He realized that the sum of mass times velocity squared for a system of particles bouncing around on a flat surface is always conserved, assuming no friction and perfect bounciness. Leibnitz called this early incarnation of energy vis viva – the living force. — Matt O'Dowd

A proper noun such as "Neil Armstrong" successfully refers to Neil Armstrong. A Russellian definite description such as "The first person to walk on the Moon" successfully refers to Neil Armstrong. When Buzz Aldrin says to Neil Armstrong "Hey Neil, how's it going?" he is successfully referring to Neil Armstrong. When I say "that rabbit", and I point to a rabbit, I am successfully referring to that rabbit that I am pointing at. When I say "that rabbit's front left paw", I am successfully referring to that rabbit's front left paw. The word "gavagai" is a word that Quine made up. It is intentionally vague. Its vagueness can be remedied by specifying what the word refers to. Very few words are comparable to "gavagai" in that sense. The word "gavagai" is just as nonsensical as the word "pegasizes", as in, "nothing Pegasizes". Is there something in the world, according to Quine's reasoning, that "gavagaizes?" Is there an object or creature in the world that performs the act of "gavagaizing"?

It has been said that “E = mc²” proves that physics has dematerialized matter. This claim involves two confusions: the identification of “matter” and “mass”, and the belief that energy is a thing, while actually it is a property of material things: there is no energy without things, just as there are no areas without surfaces. — Bunge (2012: 137)