$\Delta\nu_{20} (r)-\Delta\nu_{10}(r)=c^2\nu_{20}(r)$!

Plus it would still be immoral to commit murder even if there had never been any people. So it's kind of a brute fact.

Since we're assuming some version of realism, I think we can continue assuming whatever the hell we want.

I'll do the math. — praxis

Why don't you write
$\frac{4\pi\alpha}{\sqrt{2}\mu}$
as
$\frac{2\sqrt{2}\alpha\pi}{\mu}$?

It's soul tearing! What is told here?

And they are deontic. Each implies an obligation. Someone might move the bishop along a row, but it would no longer be a Bishop. — Banno

It would still be bishop....badly moved! The piece has a physical form that informs us of our obligations when moving it. But I get Yours and Searl's point.
Great philosopher...Natural Philosopher, especially his work on Consciousness.!

I don't think we can identify something without distinguishing it from what it's not, and even then the same thing could be identified differently depending on the context of the thing. An O could be a letter in the alphabet or an O in tic tac toe, for example. — praxis

We don’t need to identify something for it to exist.

Believing in the existence of something without being able to identify it as real is irrational

An excellent post. So here is the interesting bit:

As soon as the game starts I am annoyed that they have broken their promise to use the bishop correctly. The question is, why do I believe that the other person is under a duty and obligation to follow my understanding of the game. I could argue that the majority agree with me that the bishop moves diagonally and therefore the other person must have a duty and obligation to follow the majority. — RussellA

There's quite a lot in there that needs unpacking, but it again gives me the opportunity to use a favourite cartoon:



Language games are not decided by majority vote. The game cannot continue if Sartre decides to exercise his radical freedom, regardless of what the majority say. In much the same way as the game of the US constitution cannot continue if a small group of folk storm the Capitol Building whenever their preferred candidate for President is not elected.

Sartre was perhaps frustrated by the lack of any volition in Candyland. But not all language games are so restrictive.

You are right that one may be mistaken in thinking that others are following the same rules as we are. Indeed, @Ciceronianus and @Tobias should be thankful of this, as otherwise they would be out of work. While society consists in the institutions and institutional facts, politics, res publica, consists in their constant renegotiation.

We don’t need to identify something for it to exist. — Michael

I assume you mean because it has been previously identified and we can re-cognize it.

I am sure that Searle is correct when he says that the test of a social institution is whether it has deontic power in establishing duties and obligations on others. These deontic powers can only come from its own members, whether an elite minority or a heterogeneous majority. One further question to ask is how does one set of members gain deontic power over others of differing opinions. A further question is once having gained such deontic powers, how do they keep them.

Duty and obligation may be admirable, but surely not at the expense of the tyranny of a small elite or a heterogeneous majority.

If the other person is using the same words as I do, but defining them in different ways, I may be mistaken in thinking that they have made me a promise, and should not be surprised if they break what I think are their obligations. — RussellA

This takes us to the philosophy of politics and law. I must say, the more I delve into law, the ore I admire the simplicity of it, but also the deep understanding that goes into that apparent simplicity. The question ou asked is answered by the power of procedure. The base of deontic power is simply social convention and these social conventions arise out of the fact we can make things clear to each other using language. Through this possibility, we have devised a game in which bishops move diagonally, we call it chess. Does that mean chess cannot be played any other way? Sure it can. The rules of the game have changed over time. People have brought proposals to change the rules to the table, some have been adopted some have not. Usually through a change in customs. Custom is a form of law. People use a certain rule and feel that the rule in fact should be used and take issue with people who do not. Later on, when customs became codified and systematized and/or when egal professionals started to adhere to the judgments of their predescessors and this adherence became a rule in and of itself, law arose.

I mention legal professionals, because not all proposals to change rules have equal weiight and not all votes to change or not change have equal weight. In society a class of people started to emerge which had more knowledge of rules and also knew which rules were in place in earlier times. Some people were very skilled at arguing for the good or bad of certain rules. These were 'wisemen' and ' wisewomen', shamans or priests. They shared this knowledge among themselves. With professionalisation the lawyer entered the fray. They have an overview of the rules in place and therefore they are better equiped at arguing whether a rule change makes sense. Their sanctioning of a certain rule carries weight. So indeed often we are ruled by other people and our actions are sanctioned, in the end by a class of people chosen to do so, those are now known as judges.

Is that bad? Are we ruled by an elite of judges? Not really, because we have devised systems of checks and balances, further procedures, i.e. bodies of rules. They govern how one becomes a judge and what powers they have. Those rules also cover legislators, administrators, bayliffs to uphold judgments and so on. As long as procedures are in place and as long as these procedures are considered legitimate, there is no problem. You do not have to worry about the rules of the game of chess yourself. It has been codified for you. If your adversay moves the bishop in a wrong way you just tell her so. And you would be right to be annoyed. Had she bothered to look it up, she would have known. Of course, she mmay propose a rule change, but she should follow the designated procedures to make such a proposal. The whole paradox of the rule has something of Zeno's paradox for me. It is all nice in theory, but practice has found a way to easiluy refute the theory.

Custom is a form of law. — Tobias

I think this the wrong way around, but the point is moot.

Elsewhere you made the point that

Justice is not a conversation, otherwise we would at an impasse though, we just scream yes and no to each other. — Tobias

It may be that what must be added to the conversation are those status functions that we needs must accept in order that our conversation also acts upon the world and the body politic. So some parts of the conversation count as actions and implementations as we do things with words.

Thanks for dropping past.

.

Institutional fact: you co-opt ideas from sources and then puke links to said sources onto a thread and pretend it's you taking a position on something you would have people believe is philosophy--that is, when you're not hopping on someone else's thread to puke ad hominems and abysmally misguided proclamations of "fact" (fiction).

Hey, thumbs up. — whollyrolling

:lol:

.

I think this the wrong way around, but the point is moot. — Banno

It is legal technical, my apologies, I ran a little roughshot: I meant to say " custom is a source of law". In the early days there was little else.

It may be that what must be added to the conversation are those status functions that we needs must accept in order that our conversation also acts upon the world and the body politic. So some parts of the conversation count as actions and implementations as we do things with words. — Banno

Yes and the question becomes who gets to do what with words. Austin's speech acts. When a witness takes an oath he she is by her speech act under obligation to tell the truth. When a legal professional such as a judge swears in a witness special criminal rules start to apply. Not everyone can do so though and not under all circumstances. who can do so and under what conditions depends on procedure. Shared intentionality is one thing, Yes we want there to be such procedures and they developed in the contunuous dialectic of rule creation and rule contestation. This is essentially what law is, a case by case redefinition of rules which get refined and systematised, sometimes end up codified over time.

It shows shared intentionality, but to a lawyer it shows more. It shows the performative and enabling nature of conflict. Every judication brings about new rules that allows us to calibrate our expecations of loving together better. Ontologically, it also shows we are rule following creatures. We perceive regularities and impose them on our world, the way we see them imposed by nature. We like regularity.

The point is that what you - and Searle - would like to restrict to a class of facts holds for all facts, in fact all language use, and that the distinction between 'intuitional' and 'non-institutional' is arbitrary and unrigorous. — StreetlightX

In social cnstructivism this is known as the debate between radical and moderate social constructivism. To me the latter seems incoherent, because what is considered ' non institutional' is itself a product of social construction. Especially in the English tradition there have been distinctions between primary and secondary qualities between essential and non essential properties etc and now between institutional and non institutional facts of which I do not see the point. There might be good arguments for making the distinctions that we make, such as between wood and lead, but those ddistinctions rests on them being commonly accepted. In the end the inspiration for the distinction will probably be bodily. Wood is just easier for us to lift. Chess pieces made of lead weigh a ton. So we decided it was useful ot distinguish between the two materials on some ground, lately their chemical make up I guess. That does not make them any less socially constructed though.

custom is a source of law". In the early days there was little else. — Tobias

Is there in the modern day? Isn't the source of law not still based on custom and habit? Good habits, bad custom? Be it custom of conduct and behavior, or habit of thought?

the game of the US constitution cannot continue if a small group of folk storm the Capitol Building — Banno

You do not have to worry about the rules of the game of chess yourself. It has been codified for you — Tobias

I feel like Daniel thrown into the lion's den.

There are different kinds of games
Within a particular game are duties and obligations. An institution has deontic powers in establishing duties and obligations on those who want to take part in that institution. The participant of the game must accept these duties and obligations. The game of the US Constitution cannot continue if the rules of the game are not followed by its citizens. The game of chess cannot continue if the rules of the game are not followed by its players.

However, the game of chess and the game of society are different. If I am not willing to accept the duties and obligations within chess, I am able to leave the table. However, society is different, in that if I am not willing to accept the duties and obligations within society I am not able to leave, as one of the rules of society is that everyone is a member.

Problems arise in obligatory games
Problems arise for those who disagree with the rules and obligations imposed by an institution that they are not able to leave. To illustrate the problems that arise when members of a society disagree with the rules and obligations imposed on them, one can look at a contemporary situation, the 6 January event, and a historical event, Galileo's championing the Copernican heliocentrism.

Galileo
At the time of Galileo's conflict with the Church, the majority subscribed to the Aristotelian geocentric view that the Earth is the centre of the Universe and the orbit of all heavenly bodies. Galileo championed Copernican heliocentrism - the Earth rotating daily and revolved around the sun. Galileo's position met with opposition from within the Catholic Church, the matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was foolish and absurd. For the next decade, Galileo stayed well away from the controversy. In 1632, Galileo published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, and was called to Rome the same year to defend it. He was brought to trial in 1633 before the Inquisitor. Throughout his trial, Galileo steadfastly maintained that since 1616 he had faithfully kept his promise not to hold any of the condemned opinions. However, in 1633 he was threatened with torture if he did not recant, ultimately being found "vehemently suspect of heresy", his Dialogue was banned, and he spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

Promise and obligation in games
Searle wrote: "How can my stating a fact about a man, such as the fact that he made me a promise, commit me to a view about what he ought to do ? In thinking about games, there are different situations:
1) There are voluntary games such as chess that the person neither needs to take part in nor wants to take part in, and as they make no promise to follow the rules, they are under no obligation to follow the rules, and therefore make committent as to what they ought to do
2) There are voluntary games such as chess where the person when promising to follow the rules is declaring that they will be playing the game of chess, not through obligation but through choice, and make no committent as to what they ought to do, only what they will do.
3) There are those obligatory games such as society where the person need make no promise to follow the rules are they are obliged to follow the rules and are committed to what they ought to do.

Unfortunately, I have to leave this game of philosophy, as we are about to get underway for Las Vegas to play a different kind of game.

[Searle's] distinction between institutional and non-institutional facts, and which things are institutional and non-institutional facts, is one that holds within the framework of an existing language with existing rules and existing meanings that he will accept is a human institution. — Michael

Does it hold outside of such a framework? Are there institutional facts outside of such a framework?

An object becoming a bishop or a combination of letters becoming a word are historical events — RussellA

I disagree. Tanks rolling over a national border is a historical event. A "tank" token's being pointed at one or more tanks (or a "word" token's being pointed at "tank") is a myth, requiring continual reinforcement, itself no less mythical.

Inscrutability of reference, and all that.

In social cnstructivism this is known as the debate between radical and moderate social constructivism. To me the latter seems incoherent, because what is considered ' non institutional' is itself a product of social construction. Especially in the English tradition there have been distinctions between primary and secondary qualities between essential and non essential properties etc and now between institutional and non institutional facts of which I do not see the point. There might be good arguments for making the distinctions that we make, such as between wood and lead, but those ddistinctions rests on them being commonly accepted. In the end the inspiration for the distinction will probably be bodily. Wood is just easier for us to lift. Chess pieces made of lead weigh a ton. So we decided it was useful ot distinguish between the two materials on some ground, lately their chemical make up I guess. That does not make them any less socially constructed though. — Tobias

I see an ambiguity here that seems odd. On the one hand you have that there is no point in distinguishing institutional from non-institutional facts; on the other that "Wood is just easier to lift!".

This should be a very minor point, on that we can agree. Yes, "...we decided it was useful to distinguish between the two materials on some ground", but e can only do this because they are different.

Perhaps it will be clear if I say that that difference is marked by, but not found in, those materials. That we can make the distinction shows that the distinction is there to be made.

Or here: Someone who insists that lead is less dense than wood is mistaken, either in their perception of the world or in their use of words.

And yes, we might have used the words differently, but we did not.

To be clear, I do not think that you, Tobi, will disagree. This clarification os for the sake of others.

I feel like Daniel thrown into the lion's den. — RussellA

Don't worry, Tobi's a nice bloke.

In the OP I cited an article by Mary Midgley, The Game Game. In it she has soemthing to say about problems that arise with the overuse of the notion of games. One of her examples is Hare's criticism of Searle's work on promises. See pages 234-5 fort he discussion. Midgley has much the same argument as you present; there is something different about "the game of society" as you call it; we cannot just get up and leave if the game does not suit us. Her point is that game and institution are used for things of very different sizes, and that Hare is wrong to think that because in one we can change the details, we can also do so in the other (p.252). I cited the article in order to have it at hand for an expected objection, but instead I find you making much the same point.

Humans are far too embedded in their social institutions for even the most ardent individualist (@NOS4A2? @Harry Hindu?) to opt out.

Unfortunately, I have to leave this game of philosophy, as we are about to get underway for Las Vegas to play a different kind of game. — RussellA

Good luck, or don't get caught, whichever is appropriate.

Does it hold outside of such a framework? Are there institutional facts outside of such a framework? — bongo fury

If I might interject, and @Michael may disagree, but it seems to me that this is where @StreetlightX's point comes into play; for us there can be no outside the framework. There's nothing can be said about wood or lead without using words, and so one is always already in the framework, so to speak.

But this is entirely compatible with there being brute facts. Brute facts can be shown and said. Here, hold this piece of lead in one hand, and this piece of wood in the other. See how they feel different? We call this difference weight, and further, the difference in weight of objects of the same size we call density. Things like this show how our words "lock onto" the world around us. (@Isaac - hence what you say about language is correct, but nevertheless there are brute facts; also, this is the same point as I made to @Tobias, above.)

And again, this ought be a small point; I do not think anyone here actually thinks words could, by some "spell", make lead less dense than wood.

Is there in the modern day? Isn't the source of law not still based on custom and habit? Good habits, bad custom? Be it custom of conduct and behavior, or habit of thought? — Hillary

No. It is also based on case law, codified law, treaties and some say legal principles, but that is debated. I know you mean something deeper with your question, but that to me, as the lawyer I am now in this discussion, is meaningles. the source thesis is also a technical aspect of and within law.

3) There are those obligatory games such as society where the person need make no promise to follow the rules are they are obliged to follow the rules and are committed to what they ought to do.

Unfortunately, I have to leave this game of philosophy, as we are about to get underway for Las Vegas to play a different kind of game — RussellA

Good luck and have fun in Vegas. Tell me, where do you see the problem? That you are not asked for consent to the rules or have been asked to promis to follow the rules? Do you think you are that important that, for the rules to apply, you have to give permission? You are not. You either play by the rules or you do not. If you do not, eventually, society will remove you from the game. In modern times it means they will lock you up. The funny thing is that people think they have made some agreement with society. They have not. They are simply thrown in.

No. It is also based on case law, codified law, treaties and some say legal principles, but that is debated. I know you mean something deeper with your question, but that to me, as the lawyer I am now in this discussion, is meaningles. the source thesis is also a technical aspect of and within law. — Tobias

So the law accepts objective measures of moral, independent of human interest?

I see an ambiguity here that seems odd. On the one hand you have that there is no point in distinguishing institutional from non-institutional facts; on the other that "Wood is just easier to lift!".

This should be a very minor point, on that we can agree. Yes, "...we decided it was useful to distinguish between the two materials on some ground", but e can only do this because they are different. — Banno

They are different only because we decided that this difference merrited a distinction. Every material is different. My porcelain cup is different from your porcelain cup. The material will be different. However, we decided the difference was too small to distinguish between these materials altogether. Apparently we did find it useful to distinguish between some material we named lead and another we named wood. My guess would be we did so because we eperienced a difference in weight.

Perhaps it will be clear if I say that that difference is marked by, but not found in, those materials. That we can make the distinction shows that the distinction is there to be made — Banno

How can it be 'marked by, but not found in' materials? It must be a distinction useful to us to make. A being of infinite strength would not need to distinguish between the wood or the lead.

Or here: Someone who insists that lead is less dense than wood is mistaken, either in their perception of the world or in their use of words. — Banno

Certainly. However the proposition only makes sense when the distinction between wood and lead is already accepted. Let's say there is a a society in which the distinction between lead and wood is not made. Actually no distinction is made within matter at all. It is all just named 'matter'. Then the result is a meaningles statement: "matter is less dense than matter".

I guess I am not a realist, Well, perhaps only in streelight's sense that I thin the world could not care less about any istinction we make in it.

So the law accepts objective measures of moral, independent of human interest? — Hillary

que?

Humans are far too embedded in their social institutions for even the most ardent individualist (@NOS4A2? @Harry Hindu?) to opt out.

It has become increasingly more difficult.

It is also based on case law, codified law, treaties and some say legal principles, but that is debated — Tobias

Well, I asked if modern day law is not based on habit and custom just as well. You replied it's based on case law, codyfied law, treatise, and legal principles. So law is based on codified law? Isn't that circular?

I do not think anyone here actually thinks words could, by some "spell", make lead less dense than wood. — Banno

It’s not magic but simply lack of experience or honesty. Mere words can flatten the earth. Maybe true brute facts are our own experiences.

I don't understand what it is you are asserting here. Who's experience or honesty?

It has become increasingly more difficult. — NOS4A2

I feel your pain. That we are social animals is not the most comfortable thing.