What you and Michael don't get, and what Saussure demonstrated very well, is that the thing and the things's name can't be separated as long as you are using the same word, quotations or no. — Thanatos Sand

It's been too long since I read Saussure, so I'm not sure what separating involves here and if that's what Michael and I think we're doing.

I might even agree that quotation marks are not the ideal way to do this, but in our circle it's the standard way of talking about a name (I'm speaking loosely here) instead of the name's bearer. Like I said, it's just a convention in our crowd (but evidently not yours) -- we could refer to Michael's name as <Michael> or Michael-name or Name(Michael) or whatever.

Or are you saying there is no way to talk about a thing's name instead of talking about the thing?

You wrote:

In my opinion, if it exists, it is meaningful.

So then never-mind all of the stuff(arguments from contingency) you've been saying heretofore?

That settles it now doesn't it?

I pointed out long ago that you were failing to properly quantify your arguments. If you believe all the stuff you've been writing about the existential contingency regarding meaningful statements, and this new revelation directly above, then I suggest you reconcile these claims by virtue of properly quantifying and categorizing the kinds of things that can be and/or are meaningful, and the kinds of meaning that apply to these things.

Where's Banno when ya need him?

X-)

My cat's name is "Jack". Jack is my cat. "Jack" is not my cat.

This immediately reminded me of Gettier 'problems' with the JTB account. — creativesoul

There is a kind of connection to the argument here. Gettier cases are examples of epistemic luck -- you have a belief, it's true, it's got something that counts as justification, but the proposition believed to be true is true under a different interpretation than the one you intended, and our intuition that these are not examples of knowledge is because the justification you had fit the interpretation under which your sentence was false, not the one under which your sentence was true. (That's probably not all cases -- if it were, I would have just solved the Gettier problem.)

There's another sort of luck that's even easier to get at because there's no question of knowledge at all: that's when you're asked a question on an exam (or a game show, whatever) and you guess -- and your guess is right! If you're asked when the Battle of Hastings was, "1066" is the right answer whether you've ever even heard of the Battle of Hastings or not, because truth is not the same thing as knowledge.

(Not getting into the disjunction thing yet, as I have an argument that uses disjunction still under litigation.)

Nice. Yup. That's pretty much agrees with my understanding of Gettier cases. If memory serves me correctly, all of his cases involve disjunction as a method for justification. I reject them not as lucky, but as unjustified.

I totally agree with truth not being the same thing as knowledge.

There's quite a bit of conflation around these parts regarding the difference between being true and being called "true".

It's been too long since I read Saussure, so I'm not sure what separating involves here and if that's what Michael and I think we're doing.

I might even agree that quotation marks are not the ideal way to do this, but in our circle it's the standard way of talking about a name (I'm speaking loosely here) instead of the name's bearer. Like I said, it's just a convention in our crowd (but evidently not yours) -- we could refer to Michael's name as <Michael> or Michael-name or Name(Michael) or whatever.

It's certainly not standard convention; so you cant' impose it on others. If it was, people would have to always write in scare quotes to signify they are signifying the actual signified. Not only would that be unwieldy, it is not how we write in English. Its' certainly not how we teach people to write in English departments.

As to Saussure, he correctly points out all words only signify other words that give it meaning; they are not tethered to objects.

My cat's name is "Jack". Jack is my cat. "Jack" is not my cat. — creativesoul

One of the things about use/mention I'm ever so slightly uncomfortable about is that in a sense it's a claim that there is nothing but use, and that by enclosing an expression in quotation marks you have created a name for the expression, and it is this name you are using. I get the motivation, and it seems perfectly safe when dealing with simple expressions, but I'm not convinced this is the right view when you have an entire statement enclosed in quotation marks.

It's certainly not standard convention; so you cant' impose it on others. If it was, people would have to always write in scare quotes to signify they are signifying the actual signified. Not only would that be unwieldy, it is not how we write in English. Its' certainly not how we teach people to write in English departments. — Thanatos Sand

Well a convention is not something one imposes -- do as you like. I'm just telling you it's been standard practice in Anglo-American philosophy for more than a few generations now. Indeed, we do always use quotation marks when we want to signify the signifier. You get used to it.

I don't intend to argue Saussure with you.

It's certainly not standard convention; so you cant' impose it on others. If it was, people would have to always write in scare quotes to signify they are signifying the actual signified. Not only would that be unwieldy, it is not how we write in English. Its' certainly not how we teach people to write in English departments.
— Thanatos Sand

Well a convention is not something one imposes -- do as you like. I'm just telling you it's been standard practice in Anglo-American philosophy for more than a few generations now. Indeed, we do always use quotation marks when we want to signify the signifier. You get used to it.

It's certainly something one imposes when you and Michael try to erroneously argue its legitimacy. If you didn't want to impose it; you shouldn't have entered the conversation as a third party defending it. And, indeed, we don't always use quotations when we want to signify the signifier. The fact your post I re-posted used none helps prove it. So, it's not something one should get used to.

I don't intend to argue Saussure with you.

Youre' certainly taking an argumentative tone in your statement, particularly since I was never arguing Saussure; I just explained his ideas for you. So, relax.

This immediately reminded me of Gettier 'problems' with the JTB account. The sleight of hand regarding not taking account of the difference between the candidates' actual belief and Gettier's report upon that. One cannot believe both 'X' and not 'X'. Thus, disjunction does not warrant/justify belief in both. — creativesoul

If anything, disjunctivism can handle the Gettier cases better than other accounts of justification (if they can handle them at all). Because according to disjunctivism, Gettier cases are not instances of a justified belief in the first place (because all of them are build on the assumption that evidence is not factive) and so the problem simply doesn't arise for this view.

BTW, Gettier case number 1 did not involve disjunction -- it's sort of a faulty definite description, sort of. You believe X will get the job (when it's actually you); X you happen to know has 7 coins in his pocket (and so do you but you don't know it), and you are said to believe the guy who got the job has 7 coins in his pocket, which is true, but not what you meant.

One cannot believe both 'X' and not 'X'. Thus, disjunction does not warrant/justify belief in both. — creativesoul

That's not what "disjunctivism" means in the context of epistemology or philosophical accounts perceptual experience.

In the second case, being a disjunctivist means that for one have a visual experience of a red apple (or its seeming to one that the apple is red) ought not to be construed as one being acquainted with a mere impression: a "common factor" between a veridical experience and a mere illusion, say. It rather must be construed as the disjunctive claim that *either* one is perceiving that the apple is red *or* it merely seems to one (albeit mistakenly) that one is perceiving that the apple is red. The central commitment of the disjunctivist is that in cases where the first disjunct holds -- i.e. when one isn't under any illusion -- then one's perceptual experience puts one into direct contact with the world, and not with a sense datum or some such "internal" experience.

Extended to the case of epistemology, disjunctivism means that when one's warrant to believe that P is good enough to secure one's knowledge that P, and there might be cases where one mistakenly believes that P on (what appears to be) the very same rational grounds, then that doesn't mean that one's warrant is defeasible and hence insufficient on its own to secure knowledge. It rather means that *either* one's warrant is good and sufficient to ground knowledge *or* one mistakenly takes oneself to have a good warrant. As applied to the aforementioned example, this would mean that in the case where there seems to one that there is a red apple in from of one, and one isn't under any illusion (and also, one doesn't have any good ground for believing that the circumstances of observation are abnormal, or that one is being tricked, etc.) then that one experiences the apple to be red is sufficient to secure knowledge since it is (in that case!) an undefeasible warrant for it.

In short, disjunctivism strikes at the ordinary conflations between defeasibility (of "internal" justifications) and fallibility (of epistemic powers). Our epistemic or perceptual abilities are fallible, but their fallibility isn't such as to make the successful exercise of them impossible.

Take it easy, man. I'm really not trying to pick a fight with you. I joined in not to bully you but to try to support Michael's point. You disagree. Fine.

The one who needs to take it easy is you. I never said you tried to "pick a fight" with me or to bully me. But you did get argumentative here:

I don't intend to argue Saussure with you.

Take it both easy, then, and everything's gonna be fine ;-)

Just didn't want you to think I had ignored that part of your post, even though I wasn't really going to address it. Maybe my choice of words was poor, but my intention was to be polite. It still is.

Cool man. Thanks for the clarification.

All good. We are an example to us all.

On my view the use/mention distinction is a metacognitive tool which enables one to point out the difference between the name and what's being named, when there is a difference between the two, as Banno's cat example clearly shows. Someone else earlier gave a very good rendition as well.

I hold no strong connection to the use/mention distinction, per se.

Placing an entire statement in quotes is a powerful tool that allows us to isolate and talk about thought/belief itself.

Nice. Well put.

If your account is an accurate one, then I've learned something new. That said, Gettier cases hinge upon disjunction, so when Fafner mentioned disjunctivism, the connection I drew wasn't to the school(s) of thought you've since elaborated upon, for they were unbeknownst to me. Rather, as I wrote, it reminded me of Gettier cases...

I have seriously mixed feelings about it.

If you report someone's utterance (or potential utterance) in the exact words they used (or would use), we put those attributed words in quotation marks, just like we were taught in elementary school. But it doesn't look much like a name; it looks like it still has structure. I see a lot of commonality with reports in indirect discourse, so I'm tempted to think of this use of quotation marks not as creating a name but as indicating "null paraphrase," the degenerate case of paraphrase where you have changed no words, just like you learned in school, but otherwise to be treated like any other propositional report, where you typically fiddle with pronouns and indexicals at least.

Not sure either way though.

I'm unfamiliar with disjunctivism. Thus, I wouldn't know much about how well they handle(explain?) Gettier cases. Seems that I would concur with their conclusions regarding them, even if our method for arriving at that conclusion differs, which it may...

Forget what I say, now on second thought I don't think that disjunctivism can actually solve the Gettier problem. Never mind.

Yes. I remember vaguely the case about the coins and who would get the job. I thought(perhaps mistakenly) that that case worked from disjunction as well, although not openly stated as such. At any rate, I would have to revisit the paper again to be sure what I think...

I'm really glad you brought up Gettier -- the more I think about it the more relevant it is to the debate we've been having here.

Forget what I say, now on second thought I don't think that disjunctivism can actually solve the Gettier problem. Never mind. — Fafner

I think it does actually, since it provides a conception of indefeasible warrant that can be substituted to the misguided notion of merely "internal" justification that makes the construction of Gettier examples possible. And it achieves this consistently with the correct intuition that our epistemic powers are fallible. Although, rather than saying that it solves the Gettier problem, it might be better to say that it makes the problem go away since it undercuts the motivation for providing analyses of knowledge in terms of capacities or concepts that don't presuppose it.

Edited...

The sentence "extraterrestrial life exist" is true (if it is true) because a) in English the sentence means what it means (this is the part concerning subjects) — Fafner

The sentence means what it means, without being interpreted? I give up.

So it is perfectly possible that a sentence is true without anyone knowing it, because it is plain that many sentences that we don't know their truth still make sense, meaning that we already understand what would it take for them to be either true or false without knowing what is actually case. — Fafner

The sentence only makes sense to a person interpreting it. Without a person interpreting it, it makes no sense, and therefore cannot be true.

This only shows that the 'known fact' wasn't really a known fact, but was merely believed to be a known fact. These are two different things on my understanding of knowledge. — Fafner

We can't tell the difference between a known fact, and something believed to be a known fact, because they both appear to be known facts. So we call them both known facts. Since we can't distinguish between a known fact and what appears to be a known fact, or just believed to be a known fact, then it cannot be incorrect to call the thing which is believed to be known fact, by this name, "known fact", unless you want to ban the use of "known fact". Therefore your definition of "known fact" is untenable, rendering it always incorrect to use "known fact", because we would never know whether it is a known fact or not. However, if it is acceptable to refer to the thing which appears to be a known fact, as "known fact", then your definition is wrong. So your concept of "known fact" is actually useless.

Everyone agrees that if someone knows that P, then P is true. (Someone knowing that P is a sufficient condition for P being true.) — Srap Tasmaner

No, I do not agree to that. As per the example of knowing-how, not all knowledge entails truth. Therefore if someone knows that P, this does not mean P is true. We must determine what "that P" means, to see if this is a truth or not. Otherwise, "true" is redundant and meaningless. It only comes about, that "knowing that P" is a sufficient condition for P being true, if you define "knowing that" in a particular way, which supports this. I don't think we've properly determined what "that P" means, in order to jump to this conclusion.

But now this is the converse: if P is true, then someone knows that P. (Someone knowing that P is a necessary condition for P being true.) Its contrapositive is that if no one knows that P, then P is false. — Srap Tasmaner

The arguments I produced earlier demonstrate that it is necessary for someone to know P, in order for P to be true. But "knowing P" is not equated with "P is true", knowing P is a necessary condition for P is true. So it does not follow that not knowing P leaves P as false. The problem you refer to is created by your introduction of the phrase "knowing that P". The meaning of this phrase really needs to be justified.

Let's say P = "the dog is wet". And let's say someone knows that the dog is wet. But this is not "knowing that P", because P signifies the phrase, the words, "the dog is wet". What the person knows, is that the dog is wet. So when you propose that the person "knows that P", you commit a category error, because what the person knows is a particular instance of knowledge, and P stands for a proposition. You say, "a person knows that a proposition", and this is really nonsense. The problem you point to is the result of this category error, the very mistake which Michael was trying to explain to TS.

If you believe that P signifies the meaning of the words, not the words themselves, then "P" signifies that the dog is wet, and "that P" would signify that that the dog is wet. And this is nonsense, so clearly "P" signifies the words, and your argument suffers category error.

What connections are you drawing between Gettier and the present debate(s)?

I think it does actually, since it provides a conception of indefeasible warrant that can be substituted to the misguided notion of merely "internal" justification that makes the construction of Gettier examples possible. — Pierre-Normand

Sorry, but I don't really see how disjunctivism helps here. How does a theory on perception address Gettier's original two examples? They've got nothing to do with non-veridical experiences.