Good article. Very Wittgenstein.

Yes part of a series, doing a bit of summer reading....

NIce. I had to grit my teeth briefly here:

The sounds are repeated, frequently, insistently, in reference to things, actions, emotions, to the point where they become labels that are perceived together with facts in the world. As soon as you have the fact, the sound/word is present; as soon as you hear the sound/word, the fact is present. And when you make the right sound, the food arrives.

at the mention of labels being perceived.

Words are not just labels; that is implicit in their not being just signs, and a large part of why the Peirce treatment falls short. But having read the rest of the article I think this was a turn of phrase rather than a claim about the nature of words. What counts is the interaction with the world - "And when you make the right sound, the food arrives" - that's the way words work, not as labels.

Words are not just labels; that is implicit in their not being just signs, — Banno

That whole dialogue reminds me awfully of Alva Noe's book 'Out of our Heads - Why You are not your Brain' - which I bought way back and never got around to reading, so adding it to the list.

I went back to the first in the series. Beginning to understand externalism better.

I'm really boggled by the proposition that values are nonconceptual and nonempirical. I'm wondering if Agustino is using some Humean version of empiricism. Because surely values are not something that is "seen" like we might see a chair, but I'm not sure the rest of this follows.

It seems to me that values are something that can stand in the logical space of reason. That is, we can reasonably change our values in lieu of new evidence, if we have reasons given to us. They seem to be intelligible, structured most of the time, and not just an emotional sensation - whatever that would mean.

surely values are not something that is "seen" like we might see a chair, — Marty

Maybe.

Do I just see that I ought give the beggar a fiver? Perhaps. It's not out of the question.

I don't mind externalism w.r.t value properties. I'm an externalist all the way through.

I'm merely commenting on the notion that if we're defining empiricism in an old fashion sense then no such values appear to us in daily observation such that they are provided by external content. Values become a projection of our own mental capacities if we view the external world as being mere physical extended images. But such a view is untenable.

Well, I agree. We will just have to wait to see what @Agustino says.

I enjoyed that interview, thanks. It doesn't seem to be the kind of article you would favour, though. Are you breaking out? 8-)

Always!

Sorry, Banno, because you replied to Wayfarer re the article, and I found the article via your reply, I incorrectly addressed my thanks and comment to you (and now corrected). I'm very glad to hear you're always breaking out, though. :)

Understood.

It's a good series, because it is not too far out of left field, but enough to make one think. New thread?

Yes, I agree, and I want to read the other articles in the series. Re "new thread" I would say that judging from what I have read so far, they would make a good subject for discussion.

[delete]

Words are not just labels; that is implicit in their not being just signs, and a large part of why the Peirce treatment falls short. — Banno

Where does Peirce say this? You are thinking of Saussure again.

Ain't the sociology of philosophy amusing. AP has to demonise pragmatism/semiotics to secure its prestige. It can't afford for folk to realise that it is simply repeating what has already been worked out.

If you don't read Peirce, then somehow you can't be blamed for not knowing better. You can think that a dispositional theory of truth leads automatically to metaphysical quietism - philosophy's Behaviourist phase! :D

What counts is the interaction with the world - "And when you make the right sound, the food arrives" - that's the way words work, not as labels. — Banno

Uh huh. The dispositional theory of truth. The way Peirce fixed Kant's cognitive representationalism. The theme Ramsey might have really made something of. The theme that Wittgenstein then ran off the other side of the road to great acclaim.

Nothing like a pendulum that swings from its one extreme to its other, eh? "We couldn't get logical atomism to work, so now we will believe its exact opposite."

I'm really boggled by the proposition that values are nonconceptual and nonempirical. I'm wondering if Agustino is using some Humean version of empiricism. Because surely values are not something that is "seen" like we might see a chair, but I'm not sure the rest of this follows. — Marty

It's more subtle than that. Values condition our conceptions and perceptions. They are the purposes or dispositions that give shape to inquiry. So how we think of the world, and what we accept as its facts - ie: the truths we can measure - are informed by what we hope to get out of that way of looking at it.

These values are at first implicit. They are the ground on which we stand to make a start. Then we turn around and see that they are what we had to inject into the process of inquiry to get it going. We "perceive" our values like we see a chair in forming a meta-belief about the "us" that is the self at the centre of a process of inquiry.

So the OP was striving after a triadic relational view. The stool needs three legs to sit steady. But the relation has to be understood in terms of a developing or evolving process, not one that starts from any definite existence.

The total sign relation has its three parts. There is the "self" that emerges - some habit of interpretation that is "us with our evolving dispositions or collection of values and purposes". Then there is the world - the good old thing-in-itself. And mediating the relation is the signs we form of the noumenal - our phenomenal experience.

So buried in there, you have the essential Kantian insight. The mind has get started by making some abductive guess. But the Peircean approach recognises that purposes or goals are intrinsic to this getting started. The conceptual a-prioris are much deeper than some merely physical intuitions.

And thus it is the self itself that is being developed in the forming of a sign relation with the world. It is not about a mind that already exists making sense of a world that is some unknowable state of affairs. Both self and world emerge from the more basic thing which is the attempt to relate in a fruitful or pragmatic fashion.

I'm merely commenting on the notion that if we're defining empiricism in an old fashion sense then no such values appear to us in daily observation such that they are provided by external content. Values become a projection of our own mental capacities if we view the external world as being mere physical extended images. But such a view is untenable. — Marty

So it looks like we agree. The difference may be that the Peircean approach is grounded in phenomenology and then sees "the self", "the mind", as part of what emerges via a semiotic relation. Nothing exists in some brute fashion. Truth is intimately tied to the "self that has a reason to be asking that form of question". There is no truth beyond that. Truth-aptness depends on a self coming into being with its reasons. The "world" only exists as the empirical observations that would make these truths true.

Thus it is all internalism. Almost idealism. Yet it is based on the ontic commitment of there being something "out there" worth modelling. It doesn't disbelieve reality. It just doesn't think that knowledge of reality can transcend the selfhood that has to be developed for there even to be "a view of reality".

Kant's cognitive representationalism showed that "the mind" could not know reality directly. Peirce's dispositional relationism shows that even the mind is part of the construction. An image of the world wouldn't be possible unless a purposeful self, laden with values, was something that could develop due to the existence of a sign relation.