Do you believe that we are successfully communicating with each other right now? — Leontiskos
If Quine is right, then how could we be confident? If we can be confident, then how could Quine be right?
If it doesn't have an exciting result when applied to rabbits, then why did Quine apply it to rabbits?
No one here is taking Quine seriously. It makes no sense to say, "Quine's argument is sound, but we can still communicate our references anyways."
I would submit that just as for Hume we cannot know causes, so for Quine we cannot know references. The presuppositions of the systems ensure the validity of these inferences, and if we want to deny the conclusions we must deny the presuppositions of the systems. We can't just say, "Oh well. We can be pretty damn confident." To do that is to beg the question. If we can be confident about causes or references, then Hume or Quine must be wrong.
@Count Timothy von Icarus is simply avoiding the question-begging. He sees that if "we can be pretty damn confident/justified" then Quine must be wrong. He also sees that if philosophy of language is first philosophy, then Quine is not wrong.
8 days ago — Leontiskos
Do you believe that we are successfully communicating with each other right now? Because it seems to me that if reference were inscrutable, then this would be impossible. And if a foreign word were inscrutable, then we would never be able to learn foreign languages. But we are successfully communicating with each other, and it is not impossible to learn foreign languages, therefore reference is not inscrutable. — Leontiskos
Most people want to avoid the thesis that existence is a property, and that it can be represented with a first-order predicate, such as "E", instead of the existential quantifier, "∃".
And why do most people want to avoid that thesis? Because they somehow believe that to treat existence as a property is naive... — Arcane Sandwich
20th Century thinkers like Mario Bunge — Arcane Sandwich
What is the birds-eye account of Bunge's view, and what sort of philosophical considerations and background are informing such a view? — Leontiskos
His international debut was at the 1956 Inter-American Philosophical Congress in Santiago, Chile. He was particularly noticed there by Willard Van Orman Quine, who called Bunge the star of the congress. He was, until his retirement at age 90, the Frothingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at McGill University in Montreal, where he had been since 1966.
In a review of Bunge's 2016 memoirs, Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist, James Alcock saw in Bunge "a man of exceedingly high confidence who has lived his life guided by strong principles about truth, science, and justice" and one who is "[impatient] with muddy thinking".
He became a centenarian in September 2019. A Festschrift was published to mark the occasion, with essays by an international collection of scholars. He died in Montreal, Canada, on February 24, 2020, at the age of 100. — Wikipedia
Eventually, through trial and error, you can learn it! Even if you knew nothing of it!
Which is kind of the puzzle.... in a way. — Moliere
First, the inscrutability of reference applies even to our own language. — Moliere
Second: I'd take it that since we're talking to one another we can't ever deny that we're communicating, unless we're communicating about when we're not communicating to correct communication. So if we can connect a philosophical belief that we're not communicating that'd be damning for it -- not that'd it be false, but it'd indicate we're not communicating and thereby, in spite of all of our efforts, we're linguistically solipsistic. — Moliere
"Reference", as a philosophical concept, is the target of the "gavagai" criticism -- as well as various metaphysical theses people might have drawn from various notions of reference.
It's not so much that we can't communicate or learn. It's that there's no fact of the matter, in the sense of a true sentence which refers to the world in the same way that "gavagai' refers to the world, which will decide how "gavagai" refers. — Moliere
Is there a particular bit you want me to discuss? — Moliere
Ontology should precede epistemology. And yet modern philosophy started rejecting metaphysics. It did so just because the ruling metaphysics around 1600 was obsolete. The price paid for this antimetaphysical turn was subjectivism, outspoken as in Berkeley’s case, or shame-faced as in Kant’s. — Bunge (2010: 201)
"Our definition of "reality" cannot be other than this:
DEFINITION 3.30 Let Θ be the set of all things and [Θ] its aggregation. Then
Reality = df [Θ] = ▯ = the world.
The reality of an object consists in its being a part of the world." — Bunge (1977: 161)
We have tacitly regarded all substantial properties as real, though not as autonomously real, or real in themselves, i.e. apart from the individuals possessing them. More precisely, we have implicitly employed
DEFINITION 2.17 A property P is real = df There is at least one individual x ∈ S, other than the null individual, that possesses P (equivalently: (P) ≠ ∅). — Bunge (1977: 99)
This definition applies not only to intrinsic properties (represented by unary predicates) but also to mutual properties (represented by n-ary predicates). Thus to say that a certain relation R is real amounts to saying that there are R-related entities or substantial individuals. — Bunge (1977: 99)
Mathematical objects are then ontologically on a par with artistic and mythological creations: they are all fictions. The real number system and the triangle inequality axiom do not exist really any more than Don Quijote or Donald Duck." — Bunge (1985: 38-39)
Surely most contemporary philosophers hold that ∃ formalizes both the logical concept "some" and the ontological concept of existence. I shall argue that this is a mistake. Consider the statement "Some sirens are beautiful", which can be symbolized "(∃x)(Sx & Bx)". So far so good. The trouble starts when the formula is read "There are beautiful sirens". The existential interpretation is misleading because it suggests belief in the real existence of sirens, while all we intended to say was "Some of the sirens existing in Greek mythology are beautiful". — Bunge (1977: 155)
We need then an exact concept of existence different from ∃. Much to the dismay of most logicians we shall introduce one in the sequel. In fact we shall introduce an existence predicate, thus vindicating the age-old intuition that existence is the most important property anything can possess. — Bunge (1977: 155)
DEFINITION 3.29
(i) x exists conceptually = df For some set C of constructs, ECx;
(ii) x exists really = df For some set Θ of things, EΘx.
For example the Pythagorean theorem exists in the sense that it belongs in Euclidean geometry. Surely it did not come into existence before someone in the Pythagorean school invented it. But it has been in conceptual existence, i.e. in geometry, ever since. Not that geometry has an autonomous existence, i.e. that it subsists independently of being thought about. It is just that we make the indispensable pretence that constructs exist provided they belong in some body of ideas - which is a roundabout fashion of saying that constructs exist as long as there are rational beings capable of thinking them up. Surely this mode of existence is neither ideal existence (or existence in the Realm of Ideas) nor real or physical existence. To invert Plato's cave metaphor we may say that ideas are but the shadows of things - and shadows, as is well known, have no autonomous existence. — Bunge (1977: 157)
Let us now use the existential predicate introduced above to revisit the most famous of all the arguments for God’s existence. Anselm of Canterbury argued that God exists because He is perfect, and existence is a property of perfection. Some mathematical logicians have claimed that Anselm was wrong because existence is not a predicate but the ∃ quantifier. I suggest that this objection is sophistic because in all the fields of knowledge we tacitly use an existential predicate that has nothing to do with the “existential” quantifier, as when it is asserted or denied that there are living beings in Mars or perpetual motion machines. — Bunge (2012: 174-175)
Using the existence predicate defined a while ago, we may reformulate Anselm’s argument as follows.
God is perfect ______________________ Pg
Everything perfect exists in R [really]_____∀x(Px → ERx)
God exists in R.______________________ ERg
Both premises are controversial, particularly the first one since it presupposes the existence of God. Hence the atheist will have to propose serious arguments against it instead of the sophistry of the logical imperialist. An alternative is to admit the existence of God for the sake of argument, and add the ontological postulate that everything real is imperfect: that if something is perfect then it is ideal, like Pythagoras’ theorem or a Beethoven sonata. But the conjunction of both postulates implies the unreality of God. In short, Anselm was far less wrong than his modern critics would have it. — Bunge (2012: 175)
But isn't is possible to learn the Native's language? And if I do learn the language, then haven't I learned the "fact of the matter"--which is of course conventional--about how 'gavagai' refers? — Leontiskos
We needed some kind of "foothold", — Moliere
But until you have that it's a nothing, right? If we don't even recognize something as a language, for instance... — Moliere
Note: The "R" in "ERx" is meant to be a subscript, but this forum doesn't seem to have the option for subscripts. — Arcane Sandwich
E[sub]R[/sub]x
Surely most contemporary philosophers hold that ∃ formalizes both the logical concept "some" and the ontological concept of existence. I shall argue that this is a mistake. — Bunge (1977: 155)
...However, as I have argued in detail elsewhere,[3] Kenny’s objection fails on several counts.
In the first place, Aquinas simply does not have a notion equivalent to the Fregean notion of an existential quantifier. In fact, a notion that would come closest to this notion in Aquinas’s conceptual arsenal would be regarded by him not as a concept of existence, but as a signum quantitatis, namely, a signum particulare, the syncategorematic concept expressed by the Latin terms ‘quidam’, ‘aliquid’ or their equivalents, which render a proposition to which they are prefixed a particular, as opposed to a universal, singular or indefinite proposition (as in, ‘Quidam homo est animal’ = ‘Some man is an animal’, as opposed to ‘Every man is an animal’, ‘Socrates is an animal’ or ‘A man is an animal’, respectively). In any case, Kenny’s reason for holding that Aquinas would have to use in his argument the notion of specific existence, and, correspondingly, the notion of nominal as opposed to real essence,[4] is his unjustified assumption that Aquinas would take a phoenix by definition to be a fictitious bird as we do... — Gyula Klima, Aquinas' Real Distinction and Its Role in a Causal Proof of God's Existence
That did confuse me a bit. ERx — Leontiskos
Ari's "golden mean" is something of a fallacy when taken out of context -- the middle between extremes isn't going to be true or false just cuz it's in the middle. — Moliere
Shorter: I can distinguish Pegasus from a phoenix. They're not the same fictional creature. Neither of them exists, so how is it even possible for me to distinguish them? Most of the time, reference is far from being inscrutable. And even in those cases in which it is, it can cease to be inscrutable. Unknown references are not the same thing as unknowable references. — Arcane Sandwich
It sounds as if one agrees with anything that Aquinas said, then one has magically converted to Catholicism. But this makes no sense to me. — Arcane Sandwich
(i) x exists conceptually = df For some set C of constructs, ECx;
(ii) x exists really = df For some set Θ of things, EΘx. — Bunge (1977: 157)
1. If reference is inscrutable, then we cannot communicate (or learn new languages).
2. But we can communicate (and learn new languages).
3. Therefore, Reference is not inscrutable. — Leontiskos
So where is Quine going wrong? — Apustimelogist
Still, if we take the conclusion to be inscrutability of reference, then anyone who accepts (1) and (2) must admit that the argument fails, at least if (1) and (2) are more certain than the counter-premises in an argument for inscrutability. — Leontiskos
When you say that my modest proposal entails "kicking existence out to predication," that doesn't capture the emphasis I'm placing on language. I'm not saying that the word "existence" be used to cover one sense of existence but not another; I'm recommending we drop the word entirely. (And as I've probably said before, I know this will never happen; but a fellow can dream!). The various grounding and entailment relations that legitimately exist among the various types of being will remain unchanged. A traditional, metaphysically conservative philosopher has nothing to fear here.
(DK1) There is no explanatory connection between how we believe the world to be divided up into objects the how the world actually is divided up into objects.
(DK2) If so, then it would be a coincidence if our object beliefs turned out to be correct.
(DK3) If it would be a coincidence if our object beliefs turned out to be correct, then we shouldn’t believe that there are trees.
(DK4) So, we shouldn’t believe that there are trees
The terminological problem raises its head again, in different guise. Let's say we answer, Yes, they should include such a commitment. What, then, are we committed to? How are we using "being" in a way that clarifies, rather than merely reveals our preferred usage?
Quine's idea that we have independent access to the meta-language and the object-language is absurd, and it underlies all of this. There is no objective-quantification apart from subjective-quantification. We do not possess the language of God, which would overcome all individual disagreements and force existence into our personal, solipsistic horizon
This sounds like the anti-metaphysical movement redux. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Unless the notion is that existence/being should just mean "every possible thing that has or can ever be quantified, for all philosophers, everywhere, — Count Timothy von Icarus
"all thinkers should be uncontroversially committed to the idea that 'existence' is just 'whatever anyone can or does quantify over.'" — Count Timothy von Icarus
Quine clearly thinks that inscrutability of reference is not a barrier to communication — Apustimelogist
The idea of existence as quantification is rather, wherever I have seen it presented, that people come with their ontologies, and we can now examine them in terms of quantification (rather than say entailment) in order to determine what their ontological commitments are—not "all philosophers should accept the same set of universal ontological commitments, which include anything we can possibly speak of (but don't worry about this being too broad because ontological commitments now carry no weight at all)". This makes the whole notion of Quine's approach as a "test" between theories meaningless. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, at least for Quine there is only one logic (justifying that is another thing.) — Count Timothy von Icarus
...for what is central to Quine's criterion is that one cannot quantify over entities without incurring ontological commitment to those entities. To use quantifiers to refer to entities while denying that one is ontologically committed is to fail to own up to one's commitments, and thereby engage in a sort of intellectual doublethink. Quantification is the basic mode of reference to objects, and reference to objects is always ontologically committing. — Ontological Commitment | SEP
This sounds like the anti-metaphysical movement redux. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes and no. What I would rather is that "existence/being" should be declared meaningless, dead by the thousand cuts of equivocation and ambiguity. — J
"Now I completely agree that this [Quine's motto] tells us next to nothing. [i.e. it is trivial.] (In particular, it is neutral about some of the uses of "exist" that traditional metaphysics wants to privilege as "real existence" or "what being means" or some such.). But nor should it be controversial." — J
no matter what words we use for our labels — J
What it shows is that structure -- which is what we care about — J
There views are very, very similar. Quine was also critical of "psychoanalysis, phenomenology, existentialism", and was overtly scientistic.Quine himself thought very highly of Bunge — Arcane Sandwich
There's obvious and well-known problems with the set of all sets, so presumably Bung had a way to deal with this. He says the set of all things, so does he explicitly disallow sets of sets?DEFINITION 3.30 Let Θ be the set of all things and [Θ] its aggregation. — Bunge (1977: 161)
And here he sensible removes empty sets. Can I point out that this is very close (perhaps identical?) to a set-theoretical version of Quine's "to be is to be the value of a bound variable"?A property P is real = df There is at least one individual x ∈ S, other than the null individual, that possesses P (equivalently: (P) ≠ ∅). — Bunge (1977: 99)
This is excellent. The trouble Bunge draws attention to starts when "Some sirens are beautiful" is treated as a non-empty set; and the conclusion is reached that there are beautiful sirens". A good example for us to work with. And the answer given is much the same as that offered by first-order logic. If our domain is the set of physical things, there are not sirens. But if our domain is Greek myths, we are welcome to say that "There are beautiful sirens", on the condition that we do not thereby expect them to be physical - we won't mee them on the street.Surely most contemporary philosophers hold that ∃ formalizes both the logical concept "some" and the ontological concept of existence. I shall argue that this is a mistake. Consider the statement "Some sirens are beautiful", which can be symbolized "(∃x)(Sx & Bx)". So far so good. The trouble starts when the formula is read "There are beautiful sirens". The existential interpretation is misleading because it suggests belief in the real existence of sirens, while all we intended to say was "Some of the sirens existing in Greek mythology are beautiful". — Bunge (1977: 155)
The trouble starts when "Some sirens are beautiful" is treated as a non-empty set; — Banno
(i) x exists conceptually = df For some set C of constructs, ECx;
(ii) x exists really = df For some set Θ of things, EΘx.
For example the Pythagorean theorem exists in the sense that it belongs in Euclidean geometry. Surely it did not come into existence before someone in the Pythagorean school invented it. But it has been in conceptual existence, i.e. in geometry, ever since. Not that geometry has an autonomous existence, i.e. that it subsists independently of being thought about. It is just that we make the indispensable pretence that constructs exist provided they belong in some body of ideas - which is a roundabout fashion of saying that constructs exist as long as there are rational beings capable of thinking them up. Surely this mode of existence is neither ideal existence (or existence in the Realm of Ideas) nor real or physical existence. To invert Plato's cave metaphor we may say that ideas are but the shadows of things - and shadows, as is well known, have no autonomous existence. — Bunge (1977: 157)
But if our domain is Greek myths, we are welcome to say that "There are beautiful sirens" — Banno
It wasn't an objection. Minutes after I posted I re-wrote that as:...this objection... — Leontiskos
I am agreeing with what Bunge says here, becasue it seems to me to be much the same as what Quine says, but in set-theoretical language. That would explain why Quine was so impressed.The trouble Bunge draws attention to starts when... — Banno
becasue it seems to me to be much the same as what Quine says, but in set-theoretical language — Banno
And here he sensible removes empty sets. Can I point out that this is very close (perhaps identical?) to a set-theoretical version of Quine's "to be is to be the value of a bound variable"?
((P) ≠ ∅) ≡ ∃(x) (Px) — Banno
And the answer given is much the same as that offered by first-order logic. — Banno
Two men could be just alike in all their dispositions to verbal behavior under all possible sensory stimulations, and yet the meanings or ideas expressed in their identically triggered and identically sounded utterances could diverge radically, for the two men, in a wide range of classes
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