Damn straight.

Thoughts on Epistemology

Assuming we all confront the same world, then reality is all we can say about what is manifest in it. If so then epistemology's locus of truth then lies in the manifest and not in judgments about a reality behind it. We observe the world and presume conditions that make its manifestations possible which is the work of epistemology.

That is, there is a meaning that is seperate from the public utterance.

That is what is being denied. — Banno

I think of interpretation as value based. So when I say my interpretation is not exactly the same as you, I am not claiming a meaning which is separate from the public utterance, I am claiming that we value, or evaluate that meaning differently.

Do you recognize a distinction between value and meaning? Meaning only obtains purpose when it is related to something else, and in such a relationship it has value. So the meaning which is in a public utterance only becomes purposeful when it is related to something else, given value. The way that each of us relates that utterance to other things varies, and so the way that each of us values that utterance varies.

The folk view would be that you have a meaning in your head that you cannot quite translate into English.

But perhaps instead what is happening is that the thought is incomplete, the meaning unfinished, until the right words are found.

That is, the words make the thought as much as the thought makes the words. — Banno

I don't see the point of this, but I do not see how your conclusion follows from what you present. It is the act of thinking which puts the words together. If one cannot find the required words, this does not mean that there was no act of thinking. So you cannot conclude that just because one could not find the appropriate words to say, that there was no thought there, because there still was thought there. Nor can you say that the words make the thought.

Ach. Redirecting. Excellent behaviour management!

reality is all we can say about what is manifest in it — Cavacava

So what is, is what can be said?

So you cannot conclude that just because one could not find the appropriate words to say, that there was no thought there, because there still was thought there. Nor can you say that the words make the thought. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perhaps. The thought was there, but incomplete.

We can say why the stick looks bent in a glass of water, or why gravity affects us the way it does, we can truthfully explain why things appear the way they appear.

What do you think would constitute the completion of a thought? We think with words, so we scramble them around, swap them out in trial and error, so having words for the act of thinking is not what completes the act of thinking. It may be that making the statement is what completes the thought, but then finding the proper words to say is not what completes the thought because this is something other than that. What do you thinking completes the thought, finding the proper words to say, or saying the words? I think it's neither of these two, it's something else which we call judgement.

What do you think would constitute the completion of a thought? — Metaphysician Undercover

Put so, I'm not sure a thought is ever complete. I'm increasingly intrigued by externalist ideas - the notion that thinking occurs outside of heads. Counterintuitive, but interesting.

As I said, we would use the resources of the communal language, but would be free to create private words. — apokrisis

Have you created any private words? What purpose do they serve? How do you know that you are using them the same way (i.e. correctly) each time? Why can't your left hand pay your right hand money?

Who is this person really? Is s/he a social construct or is s/he a neurobiological individual? — apokrisis

That probably depends on the context/aims of the discussion when talking about the person. I don't believe there is a universal, context-free (metaphysical) answer.

So I am focused on what it could even mean to be private - in any sense. Or public, in any sense — apokrisis

I think the sense of privacy that Wittgenstein had in mind was the traditional philosophical sense, such as that presupposed by St Augustine in the opening quote of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, or such as that presupposed in Cartesian dualism and in many other philosophical theories.

Otherwise, "public" and "private" have well-established usages in the English language.

You need an actual theory of wholes which makes sense of the forming of the parts. Which is the issue I am focused on. — apokrisis

I hope you are able to resolve that issue.

I agree that it wouldn't be properly called language, but that makes it no less real. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree - it wouldn't be properly called language. As Wittgenstein responded to his own question of whether he was really just a "behaviourist in disguise" and whether, for him, "everything except human behaviour is a fiction", he said, "If I do speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction." And "grammar" for Wittgenstein was used in the wider sense of his philosophical treatment, where language is embedded in social customs, institutions and use.

Is belief irrelevant to epistemology? I think not. — creativesoul

The issue is not whether belief is irrelevant to epistemology, it is a question of how an epistemologist ought to define "belief". One could define it as "what is expressed by a statement or proposition". That is what I suggested. But you go on to demonstrate that animals without linguistic capacity demonstrate behaviour which indicates the existence of something belief-like. So you want a definition of "belief" which includes this as belief.

If we proceed in this direction, then we must dismiss the notion that a statement or proposition expresses a belief. We would have to define belief as something deeper within the mind, than what is expressed by the statement. Making a statement, might demonstrate the existence of belief, like the cat "makes a statement", but we cannot say that the statement is an expression of the belief, as the belief is something deeper than the meaning of the statement. We could say that what the statement expresses is "a meaning", or something like that, but the meaning of the statement is not a belief. This would allow us to get beyond the problem of deception, which I was concerned with, because the meaning of the statement would not necessarily be consistent with the belief.

Now there's two problems which need to be resolved. First, the obvious, is that we need some sort of definition of belief. What exactly is a belief if it is not what is expressed as the meaning of the words? The second problem is a little more complicated. We have now driven a wedge between meaning and belief, creating a bifurcation. Assuming that we can come up with a definition of belief which would suit our needs, we now have to account for meaning. The words of a proposition or statement do not represent any particular belief, they simply have meaning. Surely there is a relationship between belief and meaning, but how would we describe this relationship?

I'm increasingly intrigued by externalist ideas - the notion that thinking occurs outside of heads. Counterintuitive, but interesting. — Banno

I don't know if such a notion is interesting, as I have no approach to it, never heard that before. I think, and it seems like my thinking is going on in my head, and I have seen no reason to believe otherwise. I must admit that dreams are a bit odd though, seeming to occur somewhere other than in my head. Perhaps you could outline some principles whereby I could consider that my thinking is going on outside my head.

I think, and it seems like my thinking is going on in my head

Look at the rubber glove illusion, which, I think suggests that your perception that thought it is going on in your head is part of the multi-sensory unity of your body has created, and your mind's dependence on that unity for its sense of self ownership. If so then you as a multi-sensory being who's locus is your body, your body in this limited sense thinks.

A source mentioned before.

http://www.nybooks.com/topics/on-consciousness/

As Wittgenstein responded to his own question of whether he was really just a "behaviourist in disguise" and whether, for him, "everything except human behaviour is a fiction", he said, "If I do speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction." — Luke

Again, the complaint I have here is that it fails to distinguish grades of semiosis or "grammatical" structure.

So yes, you can look to behaviour as speaking to what is truly believed. That is the turn from Kantian cognitivism to a Pragmatic enactivism or embodied cognition - a Peircean sign relation with the world. We betray our beliefs in our actions.

However the human mind has a double structure. It is structured both at a basic animal/neural level, and then that is elaborated on by a social/linguistic level of semiosis. So there is a neural code and speech code in play.

Semiosis is then about how codes in general are about constructing useful "fictions". Both our neurology and our sociology want to reduce reality - the noumenal - to the phenomenal, an umwelt. We want a reality that is a play of interpreted signs. We want a view of the world that is not of the world in itself, but a view of our selves in a world that has an intelligible structure.

So there is a general semiotic logic at work which founds any notion of what counts as truth. And the component that is generally neglected is indeed - where Wittgenstein is correct - that the truth is the truth that is this view of a world within which we exist.

The rub is that this "we" is a construct. And not just a social/verbal construct, but also a biological/neural construct. And so there is a double "grammatical fiction", a layered "grammatical fiction", at the centre of any theory of truth debate.

That is what I have consistently argued. But most folk seem attracted to Wittgenstein because he seems to promise an end to exactly that kind of complex analysis.

Peirce is "too difficult", "too tricksy". Give us quietism and an end to metaphysics. Let us just slay Descartes and Kant and not worry about what more sophisticated epistemology has to replace them. Let us just return to our dogmatic slumbers and dreams of naive realism.

I agree to some extent with the article you referenced, as I stated to MU,

I think suggests that your perception that thought it is going on in your head is part of the multi-sensory unity of your body has created, and your mind's dependence on that unity for its sense of self ownership.

but then let me quote your question.

So what is, is what can be said?

If there is truth it can only be said of what is manifest, which is reality as we know it, and is not located in the brain, or in objects outside ourselves. The epistemic move, I think has to be aside from any ontological assertion, at least in regards to the reality, that which is manifest.

Folk think too hard about truth. Saying that the cat is on the chair and saying that "the cat is on the chair" is true amount to much the same thing.

The ontology of cats and chairs is presupposed by the statement that the cat is on the chair.

@Sam26

I want to apologise for becoming carried away in @apokrisis discussion at the expense of the theme of this thread.

When you have time, i would be very interested in discussing the differences in our understanding of private language and private mental states.

The phenomenology of the 'cat is on the chair' presupposes that we can say the cat is on the chair, but not that the cat is ontically on the chair, since we could be wrong.

That's it. — Banno

I believe it is not possible to make a wholly novel vocabulary intelligible to myself without translating it into English. I know I can't do it, and I know this introspectively. Is there any other way to know it, I wonder? Is it possible I could gradually learn to do it? Could a person who had never acquired a public language do it, in however rudimentary a fashion?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words

I just find that rendering of a simple sentence overly complicated. The phrase "ontically on the chair" does not add anything that is not already in "on the chair"; if you think it does, then show me what.

The statement "the cat is on the chair" will be true in exactly the case that the cat is on the chair.

Anything more is superfluous.

A source mentioned before.

http://www.nybooks.com/topics/on-consciousness/ — Banno

I don't see how the referred articles describes thinking as going on anywhere other than within the person who is thinking. It just appears to be a unique way of explaining what thought (within a person) is. I don't think it is counter-intuitive to say that the person is thinking, rather than that the person's head is thinking. This seems like the way we normally speak. I thought you were trying to say that thinking goes on somewhere right outside of the person.

If so then you as a multi-sensory being who's locus is your body, your body in this limited sense thinks. — Cavacava

I have no problem with this idea, that it is more accurate to say that your body is thinking, rather than to say that your brain (or head) is thinking. The brain is just a part of the whole, which is the self that is thinking, by itself the brain would not be thinking. But this is no different from saying that it is more appropriate to say "I am thinking", rather than to say "my brain is thinking", and this is the normal way of speaking. I thought Banno was suggesting that thinking is going on somewhere outside of the person.

Maybe we are misunderstanding, I agree that all we can say is that the cat is on the chair, because it is manifest. I thought you mean't that this 'is' the case, as if it could somehow be beyond what we sense.

Saying that the cat is on the chair and saying that "the cat is on the chair" is true amount to much the same thing. — Banno

Except that one is a spatiotemporal occurrence and the other is a timeless assertion. Janus tried to point that out.

There is a gap - or epistemic cut - that epistemology still needs to account for. The fact of a displacement in terms of our ontic commitments is the epistemic feature and not the metaphysical bug.

So trying to collapse that - as in attacking the Kantian dualism of scheme and content - is philosophically obtuse.

Janus tried to point that out. — apokrisis

I think that should be attributed to Cavacava, unless you are referring to something further back in the discussion. :)

My gut reply would be "no". Private language seems to me logically contradictory, like squaring the circle. There are cases of languages that are private to twins and so on. But a private language could not in any way be set against the world. So if the meaning of the terms in a private language changed over time, there would be no way to know.

Ildefonso is interesting.

I don't see how the referred articles describes thinking as going on anywhere other than within the person who is thinking. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, that's the thesis of the series, so that leaves us nowhere to go.

Perhaps. the answer might rest on how we use "manifest".

DO you want to set out some details?

Except that one is a spatiotemporal occurrence and the other is a timeless assertion. Janus tried to point that out. — apokrisis

SO add a time and place, if you like.

The fact of a displacement in terms of our ontic commitments is the epistemic feature and not the metaphysical bug. — apokrisis

I don't understand this sentence. Can you clarify?