I judge someone to be cold and hand them a blanket, then I am asserting that they are cold; I cannot remove myself from my assertion,
— sime

I agree, but if I also hand the guy a blanket, I'm making the same assertion you are: that he's cold.

My act of asserting can't be your act of asserting, but the proposition we're asserting is the same.
— frank — J

I was responding to sime's statement that he can't remove himself from his assertion. I read that as saying his assertion can't be treated as something hanging in space, separated from him. I agree with that, but I can logically separate him from the proposition he's asserting. This is coming from Soames' argument that shows why eliminating the concept of propositions carries the cost of also eliminating any agreement between people. If we agree, we aren't agreeing on an utterance. We aren't agreeing on a sentence. We're agreeing on a proposition. It's a pretty solid argument which I could dredge up if I had to. :smile:

Hence my question: Are you two really asserting the same proposition? You may be. But the concept of assertion is just too elastic for us to know for certain. — J

That's true. Communication has these underlying presuppositions, like that we can know the content of someone's utterance. In a court room, the disposition of the defendant may depend on what a witness says, so we're very confident. But is this confidence based on observation? On reason? Or is it apriori? How would you answer that?

We must take care not to equate sentences with beliefs without anchoring them in a speaker's use. — Banno

Quite so. Statements, not propositions.

Better, perhaps, not to use "proposition" here at all. The philosopher's finesse is usually to move from sentence to statement to assertion, although Davidson If I recall dropped "statement" and "proposition" both, leaving the gap between syntax and use as wide as possible.

He might write ""The speaker holds true the sentence 'The cat is on the mat.'" This makes clear that the speaker is doing something with a sentence.

What has any of this to do with the topic of this thread, which is a specific paper by Williamson?

Can someone relate it back to the theme?

That's to stipulate that we are playing by Frege's rules, keeping "the cat is on the mat" constant in order to look at "it is true that..." and "it is possible that...". We might alternately stipulate Wittgenstein's approach from PI, and look to the use of "the cat is on the mat" - a hedged assertion, or an expression of hope or fear, or a counter to someone's denial.

. . . .

It's just not the case that one and only one of these ways of talking must be the correct one in all circumstances. — Banno

Yes, good. My question was closer to Witt than Frege. As you've shown me, 1st-person assertion is a bit of an issue for Fregean logic. I was wondering how two individuals might separately use an assertion about the cat -- or the blanket.

They also want to say, it would seem, that there's no logical space between "You are cold" and "I judge you to be cold."
— J
There's clearly a logical space between the two. If the first is true, the second may be true or false. — Ludwig V

No, sorry if I wasn't clear. The issue is not that "You are cold" could be true, independent of whether I judge it to be the case -- I think that's the example you're describing. Rather, the issue is that if I assert "You are cold," I must also be asserting, "I judge that you are cold."

It's this idea that every assertion X(p) has to be a judgment. If I assert, in this special sense, "The cat is on the mat," I'm understood also to be asserting, "I judge that the cat is on the mat."

I agree with that, but I can logically separate him from the proposition he's asserting. — frank

Yes, hence the rather mysterious nature of a proposition. We want to imagine a proposition as independent of a context of assertion. That's why 1st- and 2nd-person assertions give so much trouble -- they can't have their indexicals paraphrased away (on some accounts).

In a court room, the disposition of the defendant may depend on what a witness says, so we're very confident. — frank

This sounds interesting but I don't quite follow. What is it we're confident about?

He might write ""The speaker holds true the sentence 'The cat is on the mat.'" This makes clear that the speaker is doing something with a sentence. — Banno

I feel a little foolish, but . . . does this construal allow for us also to say things like "The speaker suggests that 'The cat is on the mat' is likely to be true"? This, to me, isn't simply the same as saying "The speaker holds possible the sentence 'The cat is on the mat'." It's not just that the speaker is pointing out a possibility; they're also opining on a likelihood. I'm trying to work this back around to the ways we actually say things, which are so often in various grades of assertivity and certainty. The more I think about this, the more I appreciate the assertion-stroke!

Can someone relate it back to the theme? — Banno

We've gone off Williamson, sorry.

Now if you also hand the guy a blanket, we really don't know what you're asserting. Is it more like the general version I was suggesting?: "You look cold to me." Or might you be claiming something stronger, like sime?: "You are cold" or "I judge you to be cold." Or some third thing, perhaps, "If I were you, I'd be feeling cold"? — J

You are doing the exact same thing you did here:

What happens if we change the designation to "The man over there who I think has champagne in his glass is happy"? That's where Kripke himself winds up: "The speaker intended to refer . . . to the man he thought had the champagne in his glass." Has the speaker still made a mistake in reference? I think we have to say no. — J

The answer is the . Switching from "You are cold" to "You look cold" makes no difference, especially given that the second-person claim was already sign-based from the first (and therefore fallible). Every such second-person claim will be fallible, namely an inference from a fallible sign. Lowering one's certitude does not produce a qualitatively different judgment.

Yes, hence the rather mysterious nature of a proposition. We want to imagine a proposition as independent of a context of assertion. That's why 1st- and 2nd-person assertions give so much trouble -- they can't have their indexicals paraphrased away (on some accounts). — J

I don't follow. What's the problem with 1st and 2nd person assertions?

In a court room, the disposition of the defendant may depend on what a witness says, so we're very confident.
— frank

This sounds interesting but I don't quite follow. What is it we're confident about? — J

That the content of an assertion is knowable in principle. I thought you were leaning toward skepticism about determining what a speaker means.

It's this idea that every assertion X(p) has to be a judgment. If I assert, in this special sense, "The cat is on the mat," I'm understood also to be asserting, "I judge that the cat is on the mat." — J

Have you said more here than that to assert "the cat is on the mat" is to assert that "the cat is on the mat" is true? Not seeing it.

The judgment stroke serves to seperate out the interpretation from the use - here it might be best to thinking terms of the extension of the sentence. "the cat is on the mat" will be true exactly if the cat is one of those things that are a member of the things on the mat. And this is so whether you are asking, demanding, asserting, convincing or judging.

Between the string of letters and the judgement sits the interpretation...

...does this construal allow for us also to say things like "The speaker suggests that 'The cat is on the mat' is likely to be true"? This, to me, isn't simply the same as saying "The speaker holds possible the sentence 'The cat is on the mat'." It's not just that the speaker is pointing out a possibility; they're also opining on a likelihood. I'm trying to work this back around to the ways we actually say things, which are so often in various grades of assertivity and certainty. The more I think about this, the more I appreciate the assertion-stroke! — J

We seperate the semantics from the pragmatics... and judging, holding the possibility, pointing out that possibility... these are all treated as part of the pragmatics. syntax - semantics - pragmatics; the letters or sounds, the interpretation, and what we are doing with them.

The Fregean account shows us how these bits fit together, the Wittgensteinian account reminds us that they are inseparable.

We've gone off Williamson, sorry. — J

He wasn't that bad... :wink:

Since we got here from that paper, there must be a path from there to here.

Somethign to do with this, perhaps:

Banno's position here is interesting because he is strongly committed both to the primacy of natural language and the usefulness of classical logic. The argument he often makes is that classical logic is not something you find implicit in ordinary language, as its hidden structure, say, but you can choose to conform your language use to it. — Srap Tasmaner

Or is this just an extension from @sime, and not relevant to the topic? Was Sime's post a response to this...

She will be huddled under blankets while I am comfortable in my tee shirt. But we at least agree that she is cold while I am hot; that this is the fact of the matter. And this will be so regardless of what the thermometer shows, it would be impertinent for me to say she was mistaken here. So let's not suppose our differences to be merely subjective. — Banno

...which was in turn a response to Srap's differentiation between relative and absolute senses of "discipline". Back here:

At issue was the place of semantics as a discipline. The discussion since shows that there is a lot going on with semantics, and we might need include pragmatics.

This relates to our PM discussion of the difference between an argument as convincing someone that something is the case, and an argument as working out how best to say something that we agree is the case.

And I'll read Williamson as advocating the latter.

the difference between an argument as convincing someone that something is the case, and an argument as working out how best to say something that we agree is the case. — Banno

Why would I need to convince you of something you agree with me about? Why would you or I bother with arguments at all?

It merely depends on what we mean by "subjective." If we mean by it "subject-relative," then such things are subjective. — Leontiskos

The most common usage of "subjective/ objective" means "matter of opinion/ not matter of opinion" and that was, of course the usage I had in mind. So whether one feels cold or not is not a matter of opinion, and hence there is an objective fact of the matter.

Why would you or I bother with arguments at all? — Srap Tasmaner

Perhaps when someone thinks you and I have the same instinct about this, that there's really one shared human perspective, but say the same thing in different ways? Working out if there is agreement, or not, and what any disagreement might amount to, seems a worthy pastime.

Yep. That she feels cold is not a matter of opinion. Not even her own - she's just cold.

Further, that I judge that she feels cold is a seperate issue - not entirely unrelated, of course, but my judgement makes no difference to her feeling cold.

Interesting that such a simple example should require so much finessing. Again, showing the need for detail.

I'm just puzzled about where the word "argument" comes into it for you, and in what sense is an argument is

working out how best to say something that we agree is the case. — Banno

Suppose we do

say the same thing in different ways — Banno

Is the point of an argument to show that?

What if the disagreement is not just about how to say what we agree on? When I say "one human perspective", I mean something very fundamental; there's still a great deal of headroom for disagreement up toward the surface of our mental lives.

Sorry, I'm just puzzled now about whether you have some general view of disagreement (which, amusingly, I don't think I share), and about, given that, why you would reach for the word "argument" at all instead of, say, "explanation" or some other word. When someone is under the mistaken impression that you disagree, the usual thing to say would be something like, "I think we're saying the same thing ― let me explain ..." I don't know how the word "argument" got in here at all, if you're talking about agreement.

Is the point of an argument to show that? — Srap Tasmaner

Might be.

What if the disagreement is not just about how to say what we agree on? — Srap Tasmaner

Might be.

...why you would reach for the word "argument" at all instead of, say, "explanation" or some other word. — Srap Tasmaner

An argument is variously a quarrel or a line of reasoning, and sometimes both. And sometimes the quarrel concerns a difference that may be sorted by a line of reasoning - an argument that dissolves an argument, as it were.

Williamson is advocating explicit and clear lines of reasoning. He's doing this in order to move past the discussion being a mere quarrel.

And sometimes the quarrel concerns a difference that may be sorted by a line of reasoning - an argument that dissolves an argument, as it were. — Banno

But when an argument settles a disagreement, one side agrees that the other was right. The disagreement isn't dissolved, but remedied.

Williamson is advocating explicit and clear lines of reasoning. He's doing this in order to move past the discussion being a mere quarrel. — Banno

I think there's something to that, yes. Williamson is bemoaning the lack of effort put into the realism/anti-realism debate, so it would be fair to characterize it as a kind of quarrel, and the worst kind ― the kind where people haven't developed their own positions enough for it to be clear to both sides exactly what the disagreement is and what might resolve it.

But clarity is not the end goal. One side should eventually have an argument that the other side accepts ― if not as entirely dispositive, then convincing enough that they consider their own position discredited and abandon the fight.

Clarity is a necessary condition for arguments to matter, but clarity can only resolve a disagreement if that disagreement was actually a misunderstanding.

One side should eventually have an argument that the other side accepts ― if not as entirely dispositive, then convincing enough that they consider their own position discredited and abandon the fight. — Srap Tasmaner

One might think so, but this is not what happened in the realism/antirealism argument. No solution was found, no one side was shown to be discredited. So was the argument pointless? I don't think so.

It slowly sank in that there was not one, but many questions here - that what is real in mathematics is not the same as what is real in science or as what is real in ethics. Global discussion gave way to discussions about the kinds of objects particular discourses commit us to. Antirealism was seen to be dependent on internal accounts of reference that were difficult to explain. The turn was towards metametaphysics - and still is, I suspect. So the issues now concern metaphysical methodology.

So clarity may still be the end goal.


Metaphysics is not discovering the deep structure of the world per se, but proposing better ways to conceptualize and systematize our thought and language.”

But when an argument settles a disagreement, one side agrees that the other was right. The disagreement isn't dissolved, but remedied.

I think that's fair. Although, with Socratic dialectic, it's often that the sophist simply lapses into silence and refuses both to accept the argument nor to continue the discourse. Obviously, Plato's dialogues are contrived, but this is a real enough outcome. This isn't so much "acceptance" or "defeat" as it is often instead an interval leading up to "the pursuit of argument by other means," (to borrow from Clausewitz). After all, the story's arc is that those silenced by Socrates turn from discourse to power and simply have him killed, and there are undertones of violence throughout the dialogues, in the opening of the Republic for instance, with the idea being that reason is defenseless precisely because it points beyond itself (is ecstatic), and is ultimately grounded in what is sought for its own sake, as opposed to what is sought instrumentally (which points back to power and sophistry).

Whereas the ultimate conclusions of the "ontologies of violence," that follow Nietzsche is that those who killed Socrates ultimately understood the nature or discourse and politics better than Socrates did.

A comparison to the productive arts and their intersection with the natural sciences is useful here. There, techne, the ability of theory to lead towards the improvement of art, is the proof of theory. Yet this cannot be the case in the pursuit of what is sought for its own sake (and one sees this in attacks on "useless" scientific fields like quantum foundations, which are accused of being "too philosophical"). Nor does it really work that well in the social sciences, since the very desirability of what is produced is at issue in "politics," broadly speaking. So, while technology can play the role of objectifying theory (e.g. positive and negative charge are objectified in jumping your car, rewriting an outlet, etc.), this doesn't work for philosophy, leaving it more open to attack or the descent into power—i.e. "sophistry" for Plato. And this is consequential since philosophy continues to have a very large effect on the sciences and politics, albeit the academic discipline of "philosophy" has ceased to be the main source of this philosophy.

Just for an example, the empirical results of economics could be fit to many different anthropologies. That it is instead fit largely to the anthropology of man as the atomic rational utility maximizer/satisfier is in many ways accidental, a view whose origins were heavily influenced by a certain theology and theory of law. Yet this is hugely influential, since economics has come to play a huge role in political science, politics, psychology, and philosophy itself, and I'd argue that it even influenced which sort of metaphysics is judged to be preferable and which ought to be taught (I don't think it's any accident or by sheer inertia that the 19th century vision of the world as ensembles of "balls of stuff" has remained so dominant in education for instance).

If one wants to speak "truth to power,' one has to first demonstrate the desirability of truth over power. It's only then that "good argument' becomes "argument that leads towards truth," as opposed to "whatever argument convinces or silences." And I think it's tempting to rely on method to do this, and maybe it even works to some degree. An agreement on method is also an agreement on ends to some degree.

Which is just to say that the failure of arguments to terminate in agreement or synthesis is not always an indictment of argument.

Metaphysics is not discovering the deep structure of the world per se, but proposing better ways to conceptualize and systematize our thought and language.”

"Better" in virtue of what? The question of ends shows up here too.

He might write ""The speaker holds true the sentence 'The cat is on the mat.'" This makes clear that the speaker is doing something with a sentence. — Banno

I sympathize with Davidson's project. But I can't see that "The speaker holds true..." is at all helpful. What's unclear about "X believes that the cat is on the mat"?
There was a time, long ago, when a proposition was defined as the meaning of a sentence. That was at least based on an actual practice. (You say "the cat is on the mat" and I can ask what you mean and you can explain,) But once we have lost interest in meaning-objects, thanks to Wittgenstein, we feel the need to give that definition up. Some people proposed to define a proposition as a sentence with its use. But that seems more like a definition of statements, which didn't provide the expected unity. It seems, Davidson was not able to give up the search. I think you put me on to his article "On saying that", in which he argues that "that the cat is on the mat" (a noun-phrase) is what I assert. Perfectly straightforward. I though it was a helpful analysis and did something to escape from the prison of the standard usage.

We want to imagine a proposition as independent of a context of assertion. — J

But the meaning of an assertion is often, if not always, determined to a greater or lesser extent by the context. For example, whether "the cat" refers to Felix or Tiger or... is determined by the context. So is the reference of "the mat". Then what does the unity independent of the context of assertion amount to?

Rather, the issue is that if I assert "You are cold," I must also be asserting, "I judge that you are cold." — J

The implication is that every time I assert P, I am also asserting every logical consequence of P. I don't think that works at all. When I assert that the cat is black, do I also assert that the cat is not white, not red, not blue, etc? No, they are different assertions, linked by a logical relationship.

I was wondering how two individuals might separately use an assertion about the cat -- or the blanket. — J

There's no straight answer. If we both assert that the cat is on the mat (in the same context), we are both making the same assertion - . At the same time, because you asserted it and I asserted it, there are clearly two assertions. It just depends on what criteria of identity you choose to apply.

One might think so, but this is not what happened in the realism/antirealism argument. No solution was found, no one side was shown to be discredited. So was the argument pointless? I don't think so. — Banno

Not entirely "pointless" perhaps, but Williamson is holding up the realism/anti-realism debate as an example of a philosophical debate that wasn't good enough.

And he claims that there was no resolution, or even much progress, because the anti-realist side, in particular, did not develop their theories to a sufficient extent. That is, they were never clear enough for specific arguments to take hold and produce even local, partial answers.

(He suggests that debates about truth went somewhat better and that some progress has been made.)

But nowhere here are we talking about arguments showing that people actually agree, or argument as a means of clarifying, or any of the things you said and that I was asking about. Are we just moving on?

I'll try another question: do you think that clarity tends to dissolve disagreements because it shows most disagreements to have been merely verbal? ("Just semantics" as lay people say.)

It slowly sank in that there was not one, but many questions here - that what is real in mathematics is not the same as what is real in science or as what is real in ethics. — Banno

I don't know the history here, but my memory of Dummett's paper was that he was identifying a pattern in debates across several domains in philosophy, so this would be a little odd.

So clarity may still be the end goal. — Banno

I think Williamson considers the end goal knowledge. You might not be able to know everything you want right away, but you can claim progress if you know more than you used to. And that's exactly what he says ― for instance, "we know more about truth now".

Williamson's paper argues that if we don't do better (which would include your "clarity") we'll never learn anything.

What's the problem with 1st and 2nd person assertions? — frank

Compare
1) The cat is on the mat.
2) I think that my cat is on the mat.

Would you agree that the two statements assert different things? If so, the problem is how to understand the context of 'The cat is on the mat', and its truth conditions, in some alleged independence of anyone's thought (or statement).

In a court room, the disposition of the defendant may depend on what a witness says, so we're very confident.
— frank

This sounds interesting but I don't quite follow. What is it we're confident about?
— J

That the content of an assertion is knowable in principle. I thought you were leaning toward skepticism about determining what a speaker means. — frank

OK, I see. No, my puzzlement is about how to understand what "assertion" refers to, not so much a skepticism about "meaning" in general.

So my answer to this question:

But is this confidence based on observation? On reason? Or is it apriori? How would you answer that? — frank

would be, "Some combination of observation and reason. Not a priori. Perhaps especially not in a courtroom, where a hermeneutics of suspicion is appropriate."

It's this idea that every assertion X(p) has to be a judgment. If I assert, in this special sense, "The cat is on the mat," I'm understood also to be asserting, "I judge that the cat is on the mat."
— J

Have you said more here than that to assert "the cat is on the mat" is to assert that "the cat is on the mat" is true? Not seeing it. — Banno

I'm trying to bring in the 1st person judgment. We can stipulate that we will use "assert" so as to mean that "The cat is on the mat" and "It is true that the cat is on the mat" assert the same thing. Indeed, this is very often how we use "assert." But does this get us to "I judge that the cat is on the mat" or "I judge that it is true that the cat is on the mat"? Are these formulations also meant to say the same thing? How?

But the meaning of an assertion is often, if not always, determined to a greater or lesser extent by the context. For example, whether "the cat" refers to Felix or Tiger or... is determined by the context. So is the reference of "the mat". Then what does the unity independent of the context of assertion amount to? — Ludwig V

Yes. I was using "we want to imagine" with a skeptical accent. Can we really imagine it? How much of formal logical structure depends on this imagining?

The implication is that every time I assert P, I am also asserting every logical consequence of P. I don't think that works at all. — Ludwig V

This is another way of showing the issue. In one sense of "assertion" -- the "contextless" one -- any statement asserted as true would carry with it all the logical consequences. But if "assertion" is understood as a perspectival, 1st-person activity, then no, just as you say.

At the same time, because you asserted it and I asserted it, there are clearly two assertions. It just depends on what criteria of identity you choose to apply. — Ludwig V

And perhaps a good way to talk about that is to distinguish between assertion and utterance. You and I have made two utterances of a single assertion, not two assertions. More in line with Fregean "thoughts".

Williamson is advocating explicit and clear lines of reasoning. He's doing this in order to move past the discussion being a mere quarrel. — Banno

He is recommending that and also more than that.

But when philosophy is not disciplined by semantics, it must be disciplined by something else: syntax, logic, common sense, imaginary examples, the findings of other disciplines (mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, history, …) or the aesthetic evaluation of theories (elegance, simplicity, …).

This is a remarkably heterogeneous list. He discusses two cases. "technical work by philosophical and mathematical logicians ..... on how close a predicate in a language can come to satisfying a full disquotational schema for that very language without incurring semantic paradoxes" (p. 4). and "the success of truth-conditional semantics, judged as a branch of empirical linguistics" (p.6). in the context of Dummett's programme for realism vs anti-realism. He bemoans the lack of interest in these developments without telling us exactly why we ought to find them of interest. I found that disappointing. Perhaps I'm missing something.

The vision of philosophy being supported by other disciplines is certainly very interesting and makes an excellent change from the more traditional (and markedly unpopular outside philosophy) view that the role of philosophy is to police the other disciplines. Inter-disciplinary work has developed well in recent decades, but is difficult and complicated. An approach that suggest that one academic department should discipline another is unlikely to go down well. I suspect that a lead department calling for help as required from other departments as required is much more common. In the end, each department needs to discipline itself.

And he claims that there was no resolution, or even much progress, because the anti-realist side, in particular, did not develop their theories to a sufficient extent. That is, they were never clear enough for specific arguments to take hold and produce even local, partial answers. — Srap Tasmaner

That's how I read him at first. But

Surprisingly, however, most participants in the Dummett-inspired debates between realism and anti-realism have shown little interest in the success of truth-conditional semantics, judged as a branch of empirical linguistics. Instead, they have tended to concentrate on Dummett’s demand for ‘non-circular’ explanations of what understanding a sentence with a given truth-condition ‘consists in’, when the speaker cannot verify or falsify that condition. — Must Do Better p. 6

It seems that the problem is that most participants decided to concentrate on Dummett's demand.

Williamson's paper argues that if we don't do better (which would include your "clarity") we'll never learn anything. — Srap Tasmaner

It's not as bad as that.

We should not be too pessimistic about the answer, at least concerning the broad, heterogeneous intellectual tradition that we conveniently label ‘analytic philosophy’. — Must Do Better p.3

That fits with the title of the paper, though it doesn't explain the force of the "must".

Yes. I was using "we want to imagine" with a skeptical accent. Can we really imagine it? How much of formal logical structure depends on this imagining? — J

Well, Frege built his logic around the concept of a proposition, and I believe that Russell &co followed him. If that concept is a mess, answering your question is going to be difficult. I think it is a mess.

This is another way of showing the issue. In one sense of "assertion" -- the "contextless" one -- any statement asserted as true would carry with it all the logical consequences. But if "assertion" is understood as a perspectival, 1st-person activity, then no, just as you say. — J

Ah, but I don't think that the contextless sense makes any sense. An assertion is an action, an event, and requires an agent.

And perhaps a good way to talk about that is to distinguish between assertion and utterance. You and I have made two utterances of a single assertion, not two assertions. More in line with Fregean "thoughts". — J

Your difficulty is that the more you align with Frege, the closer you will get to propositions, and the less you will do anything to remedy the mess. (I'm a bit heterodox here. Frege deserves great reverence for his achievements, but in the end, he is just another philosopher.)

No, we're actually in agreement here. The difficulty with posting is that it's hard to convey the tone of voice, or the fact that something is being proposed for consideration rather than asserted as true! I also think the Fregean conception is, if not a mess, at least deserving of hard questioning. The "contextless sense" of assertion has been critiqued, fairly recently, by both Kimhi and Rodl.

That said, I do think the "utterance/assertion" distinction is useful, as a place to start talking. After all, we need some way to acknowledge that something said by me at time T1, and something said by you at time T2, can assert the same thing, on one reasonable understanding of "assertion." As long as it's 3rd personal.

Clarity is a necessary condition for arguments to matter, but clarity can only resolve a disagreement if that disagreement was actually a misunderstanding. — Srap Tasmaner

this is not what happened in the realism/antirealism argument. No solution was found, no one side was shown to be discredited. So was the argument pointless? I don't think so. . . . The turn was towards metametaphysics - and still is, I suspect. — Banno

This is a very good exchange. It shows that a protracted disagreement isn't simply left to rot, with a shrug of the shoulders, nor is it (we hope) dismissed by one side or the other as merely showing that their opponents aren't smart enough or whatever. Rather, it forces questions and new understandings at a different level. It produces insight, not resolution. This is peculiarly characteristic of philosophical inquiry -- that a lack of knowledge and consensus about some point can lead to what turns out to be a more interesting knowledge about another "frame-level" point.

Given Williamson's critique of (the lack of) anti-realist semantics, another title for the paper might have been "Put Up or Shut Up."

I think Williamson finds anti-realism deeply suspect, but is frustrated because its opponents are denied the opportunity to land a solid punch, if not quite a knock-out blow.

To switch to another sports metaphor, anti-realists won't step up to the plate, but hang around off to the side claiming they could easily get a hit if they wanted to.

If there were ideas definite enough to be discredited (or not) put forward, Williamson wouldn't have written this paper. Since they refuse to get in the game, as he sees it, they have discredited not their ideas but themselves.

Compare
1) The cat is on the mat.
2) I think that my cat is on the mat.

Would you agree that the two statements assert different things? If so, the problem is how to understand the context of 'The cat is on the mat', and its truth conditions, in some alleged independence of anyone's thought (or statement). — J

I don't think it makes sense to say that a statement makes an assertion. People make assertions. What we're doing is analyzing human communication, "analyzing" in the sense of taking it apart, making flowcharts. For instance:

The professor points to the whiteboard, which has the numeral "2" written on it, and she says, "That's a prime number."

The utterance is the sounds made by the professor. The sentence uttered is: "That is a prime number."

What is the proposition being expressed by the utterance of the sentence? This is something we would discern by observing the whole scene. All sorts of questions would have to be answered, let's say that having answered these questions, we're fairly certain that the professor is expressing the proposition that 2 is a prime number.

This example is straight from Scott Soames' book on truth. It's an explanation that is in line with the way the word "proposition" is used in contemporary AP.

I want to emphasize that the above is in no way controversial. Whether one likes this kind of analysis or not, there's nothing fishy or woo about it. It carries no ontological implications. The folks who are likely to be allergic to the word are usually referring to the same thing but some other wording, it they may be behaviorists.

Some combination of observation and reason. Not a priori. Perhaps especially not in a courtroom, where a hermeneutics of suspicion is appropriate." — J

I'm talking about the confidence that a person's intention is knowable in principle. I think that's probably a priori. I don't of any observation or reason that would serve as justification for that confidence.

The vision of philosophy being supported by other disciplines is certainly very interesting and makes an excellent change from the more traditional (and markedly unpopular outside philosophy) view that the role of philosophy is to police the other disciplines

IDK, it seems to me that the opposite is generally the issue, at least in analytic "scientific" philosophy, where the "scientists" are absolute authorities within their discipline. This is equally problematic in that many disciplines are heavily effected by their own philosophical commitments, which are sometimes historically accidental or political, and yet they are far less likely to question these because they become transparent due to the focus on the particular subject matter. Economics is a fine example, the texts I've taught are filled with properly philosophical presuppositions about politics and philosophical anthropology. And smaller fields have more of a risk of becoming idea logical echo chambers.

This has a lot of consequences when scientists tend to be publishing many of the more philosophical best sellers. For instance, neurosciences' tendency towards reductionism (as opposed to say chemistry or physics) shows up when a number of neuroscientists are publishing popular philosophical works, and vice versa.

You realize that in most of these threads, we keep falling back into virtually identical discussions. (Good ones, when I don’t interrupt.)

This makes sense, to me, because we have remained people the whole time too.

But we keep discussing:
- our language, as it
- comes from a speaker, and as it
- references a thing in the world.

I mean every word in that last sentence.

Many OP’s start from “laws in the universe” or “ways to philosophize” or “what is belief” or so many others, and we are back to grappling over language, speakers, and the world.

The same moving parts of all inter-personal relationships, at all times.

Is it only these three? It’s always these three, but am I missing more than these? Everything else we say seems to involve one or more of these three.

I should admit this is off topic, but the reason I post it is to notice it seems to be one of our only topics.

The most common usage of "subjective/ objective" means "matter of opinion/ not matter of opinion" and that was, of course the usage I had in mind. So whether one feels cold or not is not a matter of opinion, and hence there is an objective fact of the matter. — Janus

So if you say "I feel cold" is not a subjective statement, then what is an example of a subjective statement?

In any case, I don't think the common usage of "subjective" means "matter of opinion." If someone gives their opinion they are not necessarily making a subjective claim. "In my opinion the U.S. should stay out of foreign wars," would not be seen as a subjective statement, for example. Usually, "In my opinion...," just means, "I assert this to be true, but with diminished certitude..."