To me, many of these conclusions seem like the conclusions of a reductio argument. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The section in the link ↪Arcane Sandwich provided on eliminativism covers some of the theories I am talking about. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This strikes me as an odd framing of "naturalism," as if naturalism is defined by a commitment to the linguistic turn. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Quine accepted naturalism, but is not much considered not part of the "linguistic turn" - although Semantic Ascent is included in Rorty's book. Semantic ascent is the move from talk about things to talk about the language of those things. The aim is to attempt to reframe metaphysical issues as linguistic issues, at least to achieve some confidence in the language we are using, and potentially to dissipate some metaphysical issues entirely. The Gavagai fable is an example, where the ontology of rabbits and rabbit parts is considered by examining the referent of "gavagai".(Quine) rejected Aristotelian metaphysics. In general, he rejected the idea that objects have an intrinsic nature, independent of our web of belief. This follows pretty readily from naturalism, with our understanding of the world embedded in science and language. What we might think of as intrinsic to the stuff around us is dependent on the other beliefs we bring with us, and not to some presumed but cryptic intrinsic nature. — Banno
It's just crazy nonsense to say that there were no divisions before humans, but divisions existed afterwards. — frank
Last example of equivocation: "to exist is just existential quantification." — Count Timothy von Icarus
I quite agree! But what will these be like?At some point the web has got to include statements -- beliefs -- about how propositions connect with that world. — J
Sure. Not in contention, for me.There's no denying that the two learnings -- of tigers, and of "tiger" -- can go hand in hand. I'm just holding out for there being a difference. — J
:blush: You say that like it was a bad thing......trying to cram the idea into the frame of philosophy of language as first philosophy... leads to continually conflating and collapsing the sign vehicle by which something is known, the interpretant (i.e. the knowing), and the referent (what is known). — Count Timothy von Icarus
One solution is that they [statements about how propositions connect with the world] will involve some sort of stipulation; that this counts as an "a".
That's the point of ↪frank' example, chess. Yes, a meaning may be stipulated, perhaps explicitly, sometimes more by acceptance or convention. — Banno
There's no denying that the two learnings -- of tigers, and of "tiger" -- can go hand in hand. I'm just holding out for there being a difference.
— J
Sure. Not in contention, for me. — Banno
And then......whether there are grounds for a given stipulation that are justified by the world itself, as opposed to what we want to do with the terms we stipulate. — J
But...we don't have a use for it. — J
the person who believes this... is making a mistake. — J
words are the tools of philosophers — Banno
You use tools, and you use words. — Banno
Now you're getting it. — Banno
That is to say, properly speaking, it is only an act of judgment that can be false, by which we think something to be somehow. But a simple act of understanding, by which we simply understand something without thinking it to be somehow, that is, without attributing anything to it, cannot be false. For example, I can be mistaken if I form in my mind the judgment that a man is running, whereby I conceive a man to be somehow, but if I simply think of a man without attributing either running or not running to him, I certainly cannot make a mistake as to how he is.[12] — The Medieval Problem of Universals | SEP
These developments, therefore, also put an end to the specifically medieval problem of universals. However, the increasingly rarified late-medieval problem eventually vanished only to give way to several modern variants of recognizably the same problem, which keeps recurring in one form or another in contemporary philosophy as well. Indeed, one may safely assert that as long as there is interest in the questions of how a human language obviously abounding in universal terms can be meaningfully mapped onto a world of singulars, there is a problem of universals, regardless of the details of the particular conceptual framework in which the relevant questions are articulated. Clearly, in this sense, the problem of universals is itself a universal, the universal problem of accounting for the relationships between mind, language, and reality. — The Medieval Problem of Universals | SEP
"That counts as a tree for the purposes of horticulture" — Banno
I liked that ↪J equated statements and beliefs. We'll make a Davidsonian out of them yet. — Banno
Of course they can. That's one of the things they do - explaining our actions. An example from my BioCan they surface non-linguistically? — J
If an agent acts in some way then there is a belief and a desire that together are sufficient to explain the agent's action. Banno wants water; he believes he can pour a glass from the tap; so he goes to the tap to pour a glass of water. — Banno
So my next question is, Can you imagine a situation in which resolving the disagreement between the two scientists would result in changing the meaning of the word "tiger"? — J
Maybe it will help if I offer my own answers. No, I can't imagine a case where further knowledge about what a tiger is -- even knowledge about its essence, if any -- would change what we mean when we use the word "tiger." — J
For purposes of comparison: Is Pluto still a planet? — J
And no, Pluto is no longer a planet, because the scientific community has changed the reference of that term, and provided good reasons for doing so. We should ask, What is the difference between the tiger case and the Pluto case? — J
But if some posited "belief" cannot be put into the form "x believes that P", then I think that is good grounds for discounting it as a belief. — Banno
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