Interesting.

But I have to go fix a chook shed that is falling apart ofter recent rain, and already have a pretty full reading list.

Would you care to outline their argument?

Hell, some of Wittgenstein's comments confuse the hell out of me. They almost seem to break down at a certain point. I'm still learning Banno, maybe if I live another 71 years I might grasp some of his thinking.

I plan to go and do some house painting and other work on the farm right now,, but I may be able to come back with something. As you know it is not easy to summarize the overall systematic arguments of complex thinkers, but I may be able to focus on some points that can be explained without too much difficulty. I don't want to have to write a paper on it.

At the moment suffice it to say that I think McDowell does a reasonable job of not falling into either naive realism or anti-realism. I'll leave Brandom out of it as I'm not quite as familiar with his ideas.

Which is the main point I'm making on this thread: that realism vs anti-realism is the same issue as direction of fit; and that consequently it's a question of monitoring direction of fit rather than ontology. — Banno

I actually stumbled into the same thing here:

Even in ancient Athens, we might abstract over temples, markets, homes, and so on, to come up with something we call a "building". For all I know, there's a dialogue where Socrates does exactly this (right before showing that every proposed definition of "building" fails).

The world we live in now has buildings because we have made it so: we now deliberately make buildings suitable for a variety of purposes.

We could look at ancient Athens, employ our abstraction, and say that there are buildings there; but those are not buildings in the same way that our buildings are buildings, are they? — Srap Tasmaner

That's direction of fit, but it occurred to me in a slightly different form, our ability to intentionally realize abstractions. (It's almost too obvious that you could start here at architecture and proceed to an examination of constructivism.)

And again here:

There are two answers here: (1) it is righteous to intend that reality restrict what you say about it in just the way it restricts what you can do; (2) what we say we do not say in isolation, unconnected to what else we say and do, so if you claim your time at the gym has really been paying off and you could lift my car over your head with ease, it's natural for me to say, "Prove it." At that point, I let reality do the talking for me. — Srap Tasmaner

The two options are distinguished by direction of fit.

I've hardly talked about anything else. You're welcome.

@Banno I imagine you are aware of this, and yet I am curious what your instinctual response is.

SEP on Realism and Independence

Dummett’s main line of argument against semantic realism is the manifestation argument. Here is the argument (See Dummett 1978 and the summary in Miller 2018, chapter 9):

Suppose that we are considering region of discourse D. Then:

We understand the sentences of D.
Suppose, for reductio, that

The sentences of D have recognition-transcendent truth-conditions.
Now, given

To understand a sentence is to know its truth-conditions (Frege 1892, cf. Miller 2018 chapters 1 and 2).
We can conclude

We know the (recognition-transcendent) truth-conditions of the sentences of D.
We then add the following premise, which stems from the Wittgensteinian insight that understanding does not consist in the possession of an inner state, but rather in the possession of some practical ability (see Wittgenstein 1958):

To understand a sentence is to manifest the practical abilities that constitute our understanding of that sentence
For example, in the case of a simple language consisting of demonstratives and taste predicates (such as “bitter” and “sweet”), applied to foodstuffs within reach of the speaker, a speaker’s understanding consists in his ability to determine whether “this is bitter” is true, by putting the relevant foodstuff in his mouth and tasting it (Wright 1993).

It now follows that:

To know the truth-conditions of a sentence is to manifest the practical abilities that constitute our understanding of that sentence.
So:

Our knowledge of the (recognition-transcendent) truth-conditions of the sentences of D is manifested in our exercise of the practical abilities that constitute our understanding of the sentences of D.
Since

Knowledge of recognition-transcendent truth-conditions is never manifested in the exercise of practical abilities
It follows that

Knowledge of the (recognition-transcendent) truth-conditions of the sentences of D is never manifested in the exercise of practical abilities.
So

We cannot exercise practical abilities that constitute our understanding of D.
So

(11) We do not understand the sentences of D.
This yields a contradiction with (1), whence, by reductio, we reject (2) to obtain:

The sentences of D do not have recognition-transcendent truth-conditions, so that semantic realism about the subject matter of D must be rejected.
The key claim here is (8). So far as an account of speakers’ understanding goes, the ascription of knowledge of recognition-transcendent truth-conditions is simply redundant: there is no good reason for ascribing it. Consider one of the sentences introduced earlier as a candidate for possessing recognition-transcendent truth-conditions ‘Every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes’. The semantic realist views our understanding of sentences like this as consisting in our knowledge of a potentially recognition-transcendent truth-condition. But:

How can that account be viewed as a description of any practical ability of use? No doubt someone who understands such a statement can be expected to have many relevant practical abilities. He will be able to appraise evidence for or against it, should any be available, or to recognize that no information in his possession bears on it. He will be able to recognize at least some of its logical consequences, and to identify beliefs from which commitment to it would follow. And he will, presumably, show himself sensitive to conditions under which it is appropriate to ascribe propositional attitudes embedding the statement to himself and to others, and sensitive to the explanatory significance of such ascriptions. In short: in these and perhaps other important respects, he will show himself competent to use the sentence. But the headings under which his practical abilities fall so far involve no mention of evidence-transcendent truth-conditions (Wright 1993: 17).

This establishes (8), and the conclusion (12) follows straightforwardly.

Here is a bit @Janus might appreciate regarding quietism, Wittgenstein, and McDowell:

Quietism about the ‘debate’ between realists and their opponents can take a number of forms. One form might claim that the idea of a significant debate is generated by unsupported or unsupportable philosophical theses about the relationship of the experiencing and minded subject to their world, and that once these theses are exorcised the ‘debate’ will gradually wither away. This form of quietism is often associated with the work of the later Wittgenstein, and receives perhaps its most forceful development in the work of John McDowell (see in particular McDowell 1994 and 2007). — “SEP on Realism”

Perhaps I will have to do more than wave in the general direction of SEP, but I doubt I will do a better job of getting at some of the tensions those articles are meant to highlight. What could realism be besides semantic realism? Why insist that such a realism could be intelligible (meaningfully talked about) if it requires semantic realism to discuss?




And for anyone that is interested - SEP on Challenges to Metaphysical Realism. Many good things in there that could be laid out in this discussion (and indeed, some of them hinted), but it would be nice if those nodding at the issues simply laid them out directly (e.g. references to competent speakers of English).

@frank He’s probably using ‘interpreted’ as ‘conscious of’. We’re even conscious of proposed objects. Looks like the Kantian dichotomy of noumenon and phenomenon (a kind of false dichotomy).

And as a bit of an aside, this is a nice quote that harkens to some of the other threads floating around and @Banno’s comment that he is looking for an account of truth.

4.1 Language Use and Understanding
We now turn to some realist responses to these challenges. The Manifestation and Language Acquisition arguments allege there is nothing in an agent’s cognitive or linguistic behaviour that could provide evidence that s/he had grasped what it is for a sentence to be true in the realist’s sense of ‘true’. How can you manifest a grasp of a notion which can apply or fail to apply without you being able to tell which? How could you ever learn to use such a concept? . . .

Anti-realists follow verificationists in rejecting the intelligibility of such states of affairs and tend to base their rules for assertion on intuitionistic logic, which rejects the universal applicability of the Law of Bivalence (the principle that every statement is either true or false). This law is thought to be a foundational semantic principle for classical logic. However, some question whether classical logic requires bivalence [e.g. Sandqvist 2009]. Others dispute the idea that acceptance or rejection of bivalence has any metaphysical (rather than meaning-theoretic) consequences [Edgington, 1981; McDowell 1976; Pagin 1998; Gaiffman 1996]. There is, in addition, a question as to whether the anti-realist’s preferred substitute for realist truth-conditions in verification-conditions (or proof-conditions) satisfies the requirement of exhaustive manifestability [Pagin 2009]. . . .

An apparent consequence of their view is that reality is indeterminate in surprising ways—we have no grounds for asserting that Socrates did sneeze in his sleep the night before he took the hemlock and no grounds for asserting that he did not and no prospect of ever finding out which. Does this mean that for anti-realists the world contains no such fact as the fact that Socrates did one or the other of these two things? Not necessarily. For anti-realists who subscribe to intuitionistic principles of reasoning, the most that can be said is that there is no present warrant to assert
S∨¬S: that Socrates either did or did not sneeze in his sleep the night before he took the hemlock. — “SEP on Challenges to Realism”

Cheers. The fact that it's a book and not an article is... intimidating. But there's something in the idea that is worth a bit of effort.

The ship leaves port. The mast is replaced, then the keel; the various planks of the hull are replaced. At each step something is taken and something replaced. Take out the word "objective" and it's clear that the ship that leaves is the ship that returns" is made true by features of the world. — Banno

This raises an interesting point to @Michael's claim. If we replaced each plank one at a time, but with planks dissimilar enough from the original that the ship returned an airplane, we'd be hard pressed to call it the same boat. The material composition then matters, which means that external reality is critical for identity.

If we commit to the idea that the ship is the same ship even when it's a plane just because we continue to call it a ship, we are left with the odd result of an airplane being a ship.

But, consider the caterpillar. Is it now a butterfly or do the two not share any identity? Why do catterpillars maintain identity through their metamorphosis but not boats that turn into airplanes?

I do take Michael's position to be substance doesn't define an object but only words do, leaving the question of composition irrelevant. I'm still left with the question of what is the composition of this entire enterprise, as in what substance allows us to make these definitions in the first place.

I read your comment in situ but did not reply. It put me in mind of Pliny the Younger's house - I'd just been reading his Letters. I was stuck by the size of the public space in the house; I suppose that much of the business of a high ranking Roman would have happened in that space, and not at another dedicated building. Pliny was especially fond of the private quarters he had constructed at a distance from the house.

Yes, architecture does provide a neat example fo the interplay of direction of fit.

He’s probably using ‘interpreted’ as ‘conscious of’. — I like sushi

If the "he" is Davidson or I, I don't think so.

I've just had a large lunch.

Some digestion is needed.

I can't speak for Michael, but the plane is interesting. Suppose you had a claim to the ship before it left port - when the plane returns, do you still have a claim?

I think this makes it clearer that the issue is not one as to what is the case, but as to the appropriate conventions to adopt when faced with such an issue. The direction of fit has been flipped; we are not sure how to proceed, and must re-establish our conventions.

But, consider the caterpillar. Is it now a butterfly or do the two not share any identity? Why do catterpillars maintain identity through their metamorphosis but not boats that turn into airplanes? — Hanover

Because organisms, as opposed to boats and planes, are self-regulating and self-transforming perhaps?

And 'he' (as per usual) would rather snark and evade than give any further explanation.

Leopards and spots OR are you too long in the tooth to care? :D

I mentioned Davidson, and T-sentences. The notion of interpretation I am using might have been clear from that.

"S" is tru iff T

T is an interpretation of S.

Nothing to do with

‘conscious of’. — I like sushi

@Banno My mistake. Didn’t realise this was under the category of ‘Philosophy of Language’. The whole landscape of the philosophy of language is too messy imo. I just prefer to peruse the scientific studies and not pass judgement over this or that person’s view of what ‘language’ means.

I argued for reality mediated by perceptions, with an assertion there was an objective underlying reality that was dubiously knowable. — Hanover

Right. So in what cases does the dubious know-ability of reality come in to play? Is it a model you often use to counter the argument of your fried Bob, that he can fly to the moon? I'd wager no. It's a model used to counter the argument of Bill that he can lift 170kg if he believes he can. "No, your belief doesn't make something real, you either can lift 170kg or you can't" Of course you may already know about the placebo effect and so not counter this way, but this is about the effects you don't know, not the ones you do.

The difference, as far as I can tell, between anti-realism and idealism is that anti-realism is anti-realist about something. That something might be objects, moral laws, numbers...etc. To be anti-realist about everything I admit probably would sound a bit like idealism. So the distinction between the anti-realist and the realist is over the matter of what exactly is objectively real, not the matter of whether anything is.

My point is that the 'what' in question is rarely some limit that neither side will ever encounter anyway (@Srap Tasmaner's car-lifting example). Our agreement or otherwise as to the extent to which these far-off limits are real rarely enters the picture. The 'what' is always some matter which...matters, and here it's the extent to which reality limits our representations that is in question. The anti-realist wants to remove the shackles they so dislike, the direct realist wants a stick with which to beat his opponent on some matter of dispute and "it's objectively the case that..." makes a great stick.

The ship leaves port. The mast is replaced, then the keel; the various planks of the hull are replaced. At each step something is taken and something replaced. Take out the word "objective" and it's clear that the ship that leaves is the ship that returns" is made true by features of the world. — Banno

Take out the word "objective" and we're not talking about realism anymore.

Objective features of the world change, and yet the ship that returns is the ship that leaves. It's not the same physical stuff, but it's the same thing. That it's the the same thing is a conceptual/linguistic imposition, a way we view and talk about the world. That's anti-realism. There is no mind-independent fact that determines it to be the same ship. A realist is committed to say that it's a different ship, as the material that leaves isn't the material that returns.

This raises an interesting point to Michael's claim. If we replaced each plank one at a time, but with planks dissimilar enough from the original that the ship returned an airplane, we'd be hard pressed to call it the same boat. The material composition then matters, which means that external reality is critical for identity. — Hanover

The material influences our perception and understanding, but it isn't what makes claims of "sameness" or "difference" true. If we don't see it as the same ship because it's now a plane then it's not the same ship because we don't view it that way. If we don't see it as the same ship because its parts have been replaced (even with similar parts) then it's not the same ship because we don't view it that way. If we see it as the same ship because its parts have been replaced (with similar parts) then it's the same ship because we view it that way.

And if some people consider it to be the same ship and others a different ship, then that's fine. Anti-realism isn't committed to bivalence. To say that either the people who say it's the same ship or the people who say it's a different ship are wrong is mistaken. It really is just a point of view. It's the same ship to the former, a different ship to the latter.

If we don't see it as the same ship because its parts have been replaced (even with similar parts) then it's not the same ship because we don't view it that way. If we see it as the same ship because its parts have been replaced (with similar parts) then it's the same ship because we view it that way. — Michael

Interesting discussion. You may wish to consider the notion of system or structure as well. Structures have objective reality. It is the same ship because it is structurally the same ship, or close enough to the original structure. If Theseus had added hydrofoils and an engine, it would not be the same ship anymore.

If memory serve he was supposed to change the sail for a white one if he was alive, as a signal for his father Aegeus, King of Athens, but forgot and kept the black one up. As a result, the father threw himself in the sea now bearing his name, thinking his son dead. And so in the myth, the son coming back with recognizably the exact same boat (structurally) was fatal to the father. Structures matter.

It is the same ship because it is structurally the same ship, or close enough to the original structure. — Olivier5

How is it structurally the same ship? It's new material. Do you just mean that the shape and placement of the material is the same? Well, two different ships made from the same schematics would have the same shape and placement of their respective material, and yet they are different ships.

Dummett's argument there is somewhat similar to Putnam's:

Challenges to Metaphysical Realism

According to Hilary Putnam, the metaphysical realist subscribes not just to the belief in a mind-independent world but also to the thesis that truth consists in a correspondence relation between words (or mental symbols) and things in that mind-independent world. Call this thesis correspondence truth (after Devitt 1991).

...

A much stronger anti-realist argument due to Putnam uses the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis to show that realism is internally incoherent rather than, as before, simply false. A crucial assumption of the argument is semantic externalism, the thesis that the reference of our words and mental symbols is partially determined by contingent relations between thinkers and the [mind-independent] world. This is a semantic assumption many realists independently endorse.

Given semantic externalism, the argument proceeds by claiming that if we were brains in a vat we could not possibly have the thought that we were. For, if we were so envatted, we could not possibly mean by ‘brain’ and ‘vat’ what unenvatted folk mean by these words since our words would be connected only to neural impulses or images in our brains where the unenvatteds’ words are connected to real-life brains and real-life vats. Similarly, the thought we pondered whenever we posed the question “am I a brain in a vat?” could not possibly be the thought unenvatted folk pose when they ask themselves the same-sounding question in English. But realism entails that we could indeed be brains in a vat. As we have just shown that were we to be so, we could not even entertain this as a possibility, Putnam concludes that realism is incoherent [Putnam 1981].

Well, two different ships made from the same schematics would have the same shape and placement of their respective material, and yet they are different ships. — Michael

Yes, but they are the same model of ship and one could be hard pressed to distinguish one from the other.

My point is that structures are something we recognize as real. Reality is not just matter, it is also in how this matter is bound together in a whole and how they function when thus binded, how the whole behaves as a whole.

Consider Theseus himself. During the trip, an estimated 90% of his own material constituants have changed. Water drunk and sweat, proteins eaten and used then decayed and excreted... Our body is always in flux. The boat of Theseus is us. And what Aegeus would have recognized as his son was not this or that set of molecules, but a structure binding them in a whole: his son's features, voice, manner of moving and speaking. Not his precise chemical composition.

Yes, but they are the same model of ship and one could be hard pressed to distinguish one from the other.

My point is that structures are something we recognize as real. Reality is not just matter, it is also in how this matter is bound together in a whole and how they function when thus binded, how the whole behaves as a whole. — Olivier5

Two different ships can have the same model, have material bound the same way, function the same way, and yet they are two different ships, not the same ship, so that doesn't work.

Consider Theseus himself. During the trip, an estimated 90% of his own material constituants have changed. Water drunk and sweat, proteins eaten and used then decayed and excreted... Our body is always in flux. The boat of Theseus is us. And what Aegeus would have recognized as his son was not this or that set of molecules, but a structure binding them in a whole: his son's features, voice, manner of moving and speaking. Not his precise chemical composition.

Yes, see here. The fact that the mind-independent matter isn't the same and yet the person is the same shows that the person isn't reducible to the mind-independent matter, and so can't be understood according to realism.

Although we should clarify one thing first; are you a Platonist about abstract entities? Your talk about structure (as separate from the actual matter, and as a defence of realism) seems to suggest that you are?

Two different ships can have the same model, have material bound the same way, function the same way, and yet they are two different ships, not the same ship, so that doesn't work. — Michael

One version of the puzzle has another ship being built out of the original bits, the ones that have been replaced, so that you now have two, and the question is, which one is the "real" one?

was Jacob the same person after he was named Israel — Hanover

There’s certainly a sense in which I’m not the same person I was 20 years ago. I’ve grown and changed as a person — Michael

But, consider the caterpillar. — Hanover

Peter van Inwagen, if I recall correctly, proposed (in Material Beings) the idea that only living things have an identity. Since the ship has no identity, there's no right answer, just social convention or whatever. I am the same person who read the book years ago, despite few of its details remaining accessible to me in memory.

The fact that the mind-independent matter isn't the same and yet the person is the same shows that the person isn't reducible to the mind-independent matter, and so can't be understood according to realism. — Michael

I disagree. People are real. If one is realist about structures, then people can realistically be understood as semi-permanent mind-independent structures... In short, it is not necessary to reduce realism to some odd concept of amorphous matter. Matter itself is always structured and cannot be understood otherwise. Matter is never amorphous. Even atoms have shapes and structures.

As I recall, @Banno won’t play nicely with me if I start going on about brains in vats and epistemological anti-realism. He may say something like, “But whatever we are or aren’t, doesn’t the brain in the vat suggest that there is a reality of what your are, whether or not we are capable of knowing it?”

P.S. This is to say that Banno seems interested in taking "recognition-transcendent truth-conditions" head on in his discussions about truth.

In short, it is not necessary to reduce realism to some odd concept of amorphous matter. — Olivier5

:up:

Looks like the Kantian dichotomy of noumenon and phenomenon (a kind of false dichotomy). — I like sushi

Why false?

People are real. — Olivier5

Anti-realism isn't unrealism. Anti-realism doesn't argue that people aren't real. Anti-realism argues that truth isn't recognition-transcendent and/or truth isn't bivalent. Realism argues that truth is recognition-transcendent and bivalent.

Realism

A semantic realist, in Dummett’s sense, is one who holds that our understanding of a sentence like (G) consists in knowledge of its truth-condition, where the notion of truth involved is potentially recognition-transcendent or bivalent. To say that the notion of truth involved is potentially recognition-transcendent is to say that (G) may be true (or false) even though there is no guarantee that we will be able, in principle, to recognise that that is so. To say that the notion of truth involved is bivalent is to accept the unrestricted applicability of the law of bivalence, that every meaningful sentence is determinately either true or false. Thus the semantic realist is prepared to assert that (G) is determinately either true or false, regardless of the fact that we have no guaranteed method of ascertaining which.

...

According to the constitution thesis, the literal content of realism consists in the content of semantic realism. Thus, the literal content of realism about the external world is constituted by the claim that our understanding of at least some sentences concerning the external world consists in our grasp of their potentially recognition-transcendent truth-conditions. The spurious ‘debate’ in metaphysics between realism and non-realism can thus become a genuine debate within the theory of meaning: should we characterise speakers’ understanding in terms of grasp of potentially recognition-transcendent truth-conditions? As Dummett puts it:

"The dispute [between realism and its opponents] concerns the notion of truth appropriate for statements of the disputed class; and this means that it is a dispute concerning the kind of meaning which these statements have (1978: 146)."

Even if the metaphysical realist claims to not be arguing for semantic realism, semantic realism is entailed by metaphysical realism, and so showing semantic realism to be false is showing metaphysical realism to be false.

If one is realist about structures, then people can realistically be understood as semi-permanent mind-independent structures — Olivier5

In what sense are structures, as distinct from matter, mind-independent? Are you a Platonist? And in what sense do two different sets of matter have the same structure? And not just the same type of structure, as in the case of the twin ships built to the same specification, but the same token structure, such that the ship that leaves is the same ship that returns (i.e. not just a copy of the original)?