• Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Here's a really good defense of permissivism by Fairchild and Hawthorne, titled Against Conservatism in Metaphysics.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    O shit.

    It's more explosive than I had imagined, then.

    Relating this back to Quine, it reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_beard

    ***

    I'm tempted to say this is along the lines of Wittgenstein's PI 1 that I linked earlier -- that just because you have something to say that it must indicate or refer to something seems wrong to me.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Permissivists are realists. Conservatives and eliminativists are also realists. This tripartite discussion is a debate within the realist camp. It has nothing to do with language or thought.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Meaning is not found, it's made. Or better, drop meaning and reference altogether and talk instead about use.Banno

    Yeah, but I want to talk about meaning and reference :D
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    :up: I'll keep it in mind.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k


    Here's an example of a permissivist argument against metaphysical conservatism:

    Let us now imagine we come across a community with a very strange metaphysical view. Members of this community think that tables exist, but chairs don’t. Under dialectical duress, the Tablers are very stubborn: “It just strikes us that way,” they say. “Our perceptual systems make it seem that when particles are arranged tablewise, they compose an object, but when particles are arranged chairwaise, they don’t.” When asked for general metaphysical principles to corroborate their beliefs, they demur: why should you expect our views about what exists to be undergirded by general ontological principles? We don’t go in for that kind of theorizing. You are like anti-particularist ethicists who tell us that we are not able to say that an act is bad unless we have a fully general theory about the principles by which badness is determined.Fairchild & Hawthorne
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Yeah, but I want to talk about meaning and reference :DMoliere

    Well, there's your problem, right there... :wink:
  • Moliere
    5.1k


    I can stop anytime I want!
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    I have more to learn.

    My thinking was that the medium-independence of meaning is weird, from a metaphysical perspective, whether we accept that meaning is real or not-real. It's unexpected from the perspective of an ontology of objects, at least if we believe there is a difference between speaking and writing.

    I'd much prefer to save discussions on reality for after discussions on how we think about reality. There are currently a handful of traditions in philosophy which allow us to do that.

    One thing I take seriously is that if we can, in fact, have thoughts sans-metaphysics then it must be due to language. Or something along those lines. We can communicate about whether or not Daniel Dennett was conscious and understand that perfectly, but in scenarios where we start to question the meaning of meaning -- and all the baggage that comes with self-reference -- I at least don't know how to tell y'all (not including me) that what I'm saying means nothing other than to demonstrate a contradiction**.

    And, at least usually, we don't think of objects like that.

    **EDIT: And to turn the confusion up to 11 -- even then, sometimes contradictions are meaningful. "Meaning is a mystery" makes lots of sense to me.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    All I can say is that 20th century philosophy has been overly preoccupied with our access to objects, in the form of language and thought, instead of being preoccupied with the objects themselves.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Which objects we talking about here?

    ;)
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    There's three options:

    Eliminativism: none of them (neither ordinary nor extraordinary). Or at least almost none of them.
    Conservatism: some of them (only the ordinary ones). Or at least most of the ordinary ones and almost none of the extraordinary ones.
    Permissivism: all of them (both ordinary and extraordinary). Or at least almost all of them.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Seems like "Some of them" is the easy way out?

    "Some" in a logical sense, at least. "Ordinary" seems sus
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    "The ordinary objects" for a medieval baker, or the CEO of a Chinese business in 2017?
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    We can juxtapose two views, that either the dog is an whole regardless of language, or it is a whole in virtue of language. Then we can pretend that the one must be true, at the expense of the other.

    Must we pretend? Do dogs do not exist outside human linguistic frameworks?

    We can appeal to use, but this won't get us very far from the initial question. What is a key use of language? To refer to and describe things and processes!

    Plus, if we find some language more useful than other sorts, presumably this is not for "no reason at all," an uncaused brute fact, or else unanalyzable. There are reasons that different ways of "divvying up the world" are useful. There are causes that shape how language evolved and continues to evolve. One wouldn't explain the evolution of mammalian hearts by simply by pointing out that hearts must be useful and then leaving it at that, why should language be any different?

    What is the most obvious reason that it might be useful to think of sheep as a thing, as an organic whole? Because they are such! If you're a farmer and you cut your sheep in half to have dinner, the rest of the sheep isn't going to fare too well. A sheep isn't like a rock where you break it in half and have two rocks, a sheep broken in half is a corpse.

    Presumably, it would also be useful to understand how language works. If language works, at least in part, by referring to entities whose existence is not dependent on language, then the two views you offered up aren't equal. One is wrong. And as with anything else in science, starting from premises that are false is unlikely to lead to useful theories.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Seems like "Some of them" is the easy way out?Moliere

    It's actually the hardest position to maintain. Eliminativists and permissivists seem to think that their positions are far more consistent, which is why they mostly duke it out between themselves.

    "Some" in a logical sense, at least.Moliere

    Yes, from a mereological point of view, conservatives tend to be particularists. Eliminativists are usually nihilists about composition (or exceptionalists, like van Inwagen and Merricks), while permissivists are usually universalists about composition.

    "Ordinary" seems susMoliere

    Then you have two options: eliminativism or permissivism.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Then you have two options: eliminativism or permissivism.Arcane Sandwich

    What about "not-ordinary, and conservative"?

    Some objects are real. Check. Some objects are not-real. Check.

    Or "Names are weird" -- I think they really are weird and not understood.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    What about "not-ordinary, and conservative"?Moliere

    If you're asking if there could be a fourth position, "only extraordinary objects, none of the ordinary ones", then I would say two things:

    1) Yes, it's logically possible to defend such a view.
    2) No one actually defends such a view.

    Why not? Because you would be saying that there are fouts, but no dogs or trouts. There are incars, but no cars. There are snowdiscalls, but no snowballs.

    It would be the most insane position of all, even crazier than permissivism, and that's saying a lot.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    If you're asking if there could be a fourth position, "only extraordinary objects, none of the ordinary ones", then I would say two things:

    1) Yes, it's logically possible to defend such a view.
    2) No one actually defends such a view.

    Why not? Because you would be saying that there are fouts, but no dogs or trouts. There are incars, but no cars. There are snowdiscalls, but no snowballs.

    It would be the most insane position of all, even crazier than permissivism, and that's saying a lot.
    Arcane Sandwich

    Heh, cool. Then I don't think I'm going down that path, and have more to learn.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Then I don't think I'm going down that pathMoliere

    I mean, you could, if you wanted to. It's not like philosophers haven't been saying crazy things for the past two or three millennia. What is Parmenides saying, when he says that nothing changes, if not something outrageous and crazy? What is Heraclitus saying, when he says that no one can step twice in the same river, if not something outrageous and crazy?
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Yeah, but I don't see a real motivation to saying something crazy just to say it.

    I gotta know that it's true first. So I keep coming back to these various odd beliefs.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Then I'd say that your intellectual honesty as a philosopher is commendable. Some philosophers seem to say crazy things just to see who can say the craziest thing.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Thanks :)

    I know I explore odd things, but I hope to maintain the notion that there's a reason -- even if only philosophical -- I pursue them.

    It's not that interesting when you figure out the game is "say the weirdest thing you possibly can get away with"
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    It's not that interesting when you figure out the game is "say the weirdest thing you possibly can get away with"Moliere

    Welcome to professional philosophy. The next step is to use first-order logic to give more credibility to whatever nonsense you feel like saying, such as "the existential quantifier has ontological import."
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    a sheep broken in half is a corpse.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Is it still a sheep, though? Are there such things as scattered objects? If there are, then this is the slippery slope towards affirming that there are indeed such things as fouts. Unless the inference from split sheep to fouts can be blocked in some way.

    I'm tempted to agree with Korman when he says that some artifacts, at least, can exist as scattered objects. What is a bikini if not a scattered object, composed of two disconnected parts?
  • Apustimelogist
    674
    even ambiguousCount Timothy von Icarus

    I think it is ambiguous if you're willing to consider all animals that have ever existed.

    But that is not what the fossil record suggests for man, for just one example.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Fossil record doesn't say much. Whatever fossils we have of anything are a miniscule fraction of individuals that have existed.

    There have not been "very many species indistinguishable from man" existing throughout the Earth's history. There have been, on contemporary accounts, just the one. And this certainly wouldn't be true for domestic animals either.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Again, you just have to think about yourself or chickens tracing their lineage back generation-by-generation - perhaps to the same common ancestor of yourself and that chicken, maybe some kind of fish - and ask if there are sudden jumps between one kind and another. There cannot be, it would be absurd. The changes are gradual and slow.

    Unless you are merely speaking of the transition from wolf to dog, in which case what of it? Yes, domestication is not a binary. Yet the aurochs is extinct, the cow is not. More to the point, a stegosaurus is not a dog, an oak is not a dog, a rock is not a dog. These are quite discrete distinctions between dog and not-dog.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Sure, there are objective distinctions between animals, but the kind of criteria that we use to concretely identify dogs as a species start to become fuzzy if you consider all individuals that ever existence and the graded differences in genetic make-up. That allows scope for disagreement or ambiguity about where exactly mammals start and stop being dogs. Even if you use criteria like reproducibility there will be gradation since plausibly there may be two dogs from different times that cannot breed with each other but plausibly there may be an intermediate dig that can breed with both. You then end up with this kind of moving window of different dog species, possibly many many many which are all legitimate and overlapping.

    If we cannot find it, shall we conclude that either no dogs ever die, or that none have ever lived? Or perhaps that "life" and "being a dog" are mere cultural or mental constructs, ens rationis and not ens reale?Count Timothy von Icarus

    Not necessarily, but classifying species is not a trivial endeavour just because the average person can idenitify a dog on the street and everyone else agrees with them. The mass of all individuals who have ever existed whos genetics have drifted and changed slowly and gradually over time is kind of independent of the ways we choose to classify them, which we do in a way that that our current context allows. Clearly dog genes are some kind of objective marker that separates them from other species, but this objective marker would become less informative were we to consider all the biological animals that ever existed. Thats not to say that it isnt an objective marker shared by those individuals - but it becomes less salient compared to a world where the overwhelming majority of organisms lineages die out or change leaving pockets that are easy for us to discriminate. I think reality is generally more complicated than the everyday way we make classifications.

    For example, there are curlterpillars: caterpillar-like objects that begin to exist when a caterpillar rolls up into a ball. There are incars: vehicles that look like ordinary cars, but that can only exist when they're inside a garage.Arcane Sandwich

    Who knows, there maybe some possible scenario where the structure of the world renders these distinctions useful to us.

    I think ultimately we have to consider that the world is intractibly more complicated than we actually immediately perceive and it is part of the brains imperative to simplify the structure of what we see so it is most informative. But clearly, what exactly is informative depends on the context. Seemingly arbitrary combinations like "fouts" are not interesting and don't connect to the world in interesting, regular ways. Like how if we consider all organisms that ever existed, the dogs on earth now as a species would seem less interesting and stand out less. Certain kinds of sticks on trees bent at specific angles may be completely arbotrary and mean nothing, but imagine if it was the sign that a certain animal had been in the area doing something. It gains information and you end up giving this arbitrary bent stick a name because it helps you find and eat this animal. Classification is holistic. Statistical structures only mean something when they stand out from or relate to a background, and exactly how that statistical structuring is being achieved. Things then can look different in various contexts and different scales even though the information is coming from the same objective world. There is nothing wrong with a plurality in the use of concepts in this respect I think and I think in actuality hardly any of the things or concepts we talk about are strictly independent and mutually exclusive. I think the concepts we tend to use are probably not arbitrary in relation to the world because they reflect the most efficient, informative way of making or pointing out distinctions in our perceptions. But then I think what is most efficient and informative may still depend on the context somewhat, and obviously we only ever get a limited purview of the world. If the context had been different, different structures in the world may become more salient - and thats not to say some things magically disappear or come into existence. We just change the way we attend to what is in perception.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Could be. Metaphysical permissivism is a serious contender. It sounds less crazy when one takes a look at their arguments, but it still sounds insane from the point of view of common sense. And I'm not one to throw out common sense out the window just because it's not infallible.

    What does your forum name mean, by the way? I googled "Apustimelogy" but there were no search results for that term.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Must we pretend?Count Timothy von Icarus

    Pretending isn't such a bad thing. This counts as a 'dog' - let's pretend. It gets us by.

    Use is pretty ubiquitous - not just a "key use"; we don't just refer with word, we question, demand, command, name, promise.

    Sheep are an "organic whole" only until they reach the abattoir. What counts as a whole depends on what you are doing.

    Your essentialism is showing.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Your essentialism is showing.Banno

    Anti-essentialism can only get one up to a certain point. "Essence" might be an ugly word for an analytic ear, yet Kripke argued that the essence of a gold atom is the property of having an atomic number of 79, which is the number of protons in the nucleus of a gold atom. Kinda hard to argue with that, even if one isn't an essentialist.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    If your philosophy of language forces you to ho and hum and deflect away from questions like "did cockroaches not exist until humans decided to 'count' them as such?" then yes, that seems like a rather major defect. For one thing, when it comes to the discovery of new species or phenomena causation seems to move in demonstrably the opposite direction. First the phenomena is observed, then it is named. Presumably, it must exist before it can be observed as well.

    Essentialism isn't a problem, it's what prevents having to affirm things like: "North America didn't have a coastline until it was mapped," or: "insects didn't exist until they were named," or else having to deflect away from what should be fairly easy questions, or having to settle for "pretending" in questions of physical and biological science.

    What counts as a whole depends on what you are doing.

    Sure. When it comes to a consideration of the origins and evolution of language, and of animal communications more generally, it will not do to suppose/pretend that it is "equally true" that animals both did and didn't exist until people decided what would count as an animal.

    Either animals of different sorts existed prior to any human language community or they didn't, or the proposition that they did is somehow (bizarrely) not truth apt. That, or things can be both true and not true, depending on what is useful. Take your pick.

    I personally think "what is useful determines what is true," is a fairly disastrous way to do science and philosophy.
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