If all of their dispositions to verbal behavior under all possible sensory stimulations were the same, then what would happen if they started talking to each other? — Apustimelogist
Quine clearly thinks that inscrutability of reference is not a barrier to communication — Apustimelogist
Yes, close to it.This conversation is the heart of philosophy. — Fire Ologist
This is close to the sort of mystical view attributed to Wittgenstein, especially after the Tractatus, where he developed a precise logical language and then concluded that what is most important is what remains unsaid.I think the best language to speak standing on this precipice is mystical, sort of pre-logical. — Fire Ologist
What definition of "inscrutable" would you offer, such that inscrutable reference poses no barrier to communication? — Leontiskos
Edit: I also want to add that earlier, when I pointed out someone who is devoted to a very narrow tradition in a very narrow slice of history, I was accused of doing the same thing in terms of the medieval period. The difference is the difference between two decades of a narrow tradition and two millennia of a broad tradition. Medievals engaged and incorporated everyone, including Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and pagan thinkers. The continuity beginning with Plato and ending in the 15th century is quite remarkable. "Antiquated" was not a slur that had much power. Everything was fair game, and this led to an increasingly robust tradition. What we now find in the English-speaking world is the opposite: the yellow "do not cross" line is erected behind Descartes if not Russell, and you end up with a lot of relatively isolated thinkers who simply cannot cope with the perennial questions of philosophy, such as the perennial task of doing more than simply ignoring common language use.
It would be quite difficult for them to misunderstand each other since I think misunderstanding generally happens when people use words in ways you don't expect, or you have no experience (and therefore expectations) of how words should be used.
Its hard to envision that in the example passage assuming that each man is cognizant of their own dispositions for using words.
Take out determinate and I don't think Quine would disagree. Sometimes we may be mistaken as to what someone is referring to, but the gavagai fable shows that we might still get our rabbit stew.That people "get on" does not negate the fact that "rabbit" and "New York City," or "Donald Trump" are notdeterminantreferences referring to a particular species, municipality, or person. — Count Timothy von Icarus
It is said that in Puerto Rico, red and green traffic lights display a curious reversal of roles. Drivers have flouted red lights to such a degree that the practice is now contagious, so that cars approaching a green light must stop from fear of those ignoring the red. Since my travels have never taken me to Puerto Rico, I cannot verify these reports. But I will take the liberty of coining the phrase ‘The Puerto Rico Effect’ to describe a similar phenomenon in readings of past philosophies. Since every great thinker is approached through an initial aura of widespread clichés, the critical scholar is always in a mood to reverse them. Good reasons should be given whenever this is done, since we must always respect the rights of the obvious. But of course there is nothing automatically false about such reversals.
As suggested earlier, it is typical of the greatest thinkers that they support opposite interpretations, just as Aristotelian substance can be both hot and cold or happy and sad at different times or in different respects. Now, it seems to me that conventional wisdom is falsely reversed when Nietzsche is read as a democratic theorist, Spinoza as a thinker of plurality, Leibniz as a thinker of monism, Aristotle as reducing substance to the human logos, or Husserl as a realist, yet I have heard actual examples of all of these reversals. — Graham Harman,
At the end of the day, it's not about Quine vs Bunge. It's about whether or not we ourselves agree or disagree with what they're saying. Who knows? Maybe they're both wrong. — Arcane Sandwich
There are many key points that I disagree with him, for example I don't accept his dichotomy of conceptual existence and real existence (there's only real existence as far as I'm concerned). — Arcane Sandwich
There is an irony in the general analytic tendency to ignore medieval thought (continentals do too, but less). No other period reflects the rigor and professionalization that analytic thought praises, nor the emphasis on logic, semantics, and signification, more than (particularly late) medieval thought. The early modern period has an explosion of creativity in part because philosophy was radically democratized and deprofessionalized (leading to both creativity of a good sort and some of a very stupid sort). — Count Timothy von Icarus
It's unfortunate because so many debates are just rehashes that could benefit from past work, whereas contemporary thought also has a strong nominalist bias that even effects how realism might be envisaged or advocated for, and the earlier period does not have these same blinders. — Count Timothy von Icarus
No clear way of showing just how words refer to what we take them to refer to? — Janus
What is Quine's intended conclusion? I don't think it is as radical as is being assumed. In a 1970 paper he says that the gavagai example is very limited, and demonstrates the inscrutability of terms rather than indeterminacy of translation of sentences. — Leontiskos
The dawn of a new day.Quine may be saying little more than that terms are inscrutable apart from context ("holism"). — Leontiskos
That is, it in effect has two domains, one of things that exist and one of things that... do not exist. — Banno
Just out of curiosity, how would you handle the claim that the universal quantifier must have ontological import, if the existential quantifier has it? It would seem that whatever import ∃ has, ∀ must have it as well. — Arcane Sandwich
If Ux(Sx⊃Bx) then ∃x(Sx⊃Bx) follows — Banno
It follows because, in classical first-order predicate logic, universal sentences have existential import: ‘∀x φ(x)’ logically entails ‘∃x φ(x)’. If we want to allow ‘∀x φ(x)’ to be true even when there are no φs (because there is nothing at all), then we do not want it to carry any ontological commitment. Ontological commitments should reside entirely with the existential quantifier. Implementing this is easy. We simply do logic so as to include interpretations with an empty domain—so-called, inclusive logic. According to the truth conditions for quantifiers in inclusive logic, all universal sentences are true in an empty domain, and all existential sentences are false. Once we have made the shift to inclusive logic, we can also say, what seems right, that conditional existential sentences—such as, ‘∃x φ(x) ⊃ ∃x y(x)’—carry no ontological commitment. — Inclusive Logic/Free Logic | Ontological Commitment | SEP
Just out of curiosity, how would you handle the claim that the universal quantifier must have ontological import, if the existential quantifier has it? — Arcane Sandwich
If any of the two terms of an affirmative categorical is “empty”, then the term in question refers to nothing. But then, [...] “every affirmative proposition whose subject or predicate refers to nothing is false.” — Gyula Klima, Existence and Reference in Medieval Logic, 3
1) ∀x(Sx ∧ Bx) - All sirens are beautiful.
2) ∃x(Sx ∧ Bx) - Therefore, some sirens are beautiful. — Arcane Sandwich
If Ux(Sx⊃Bx) then ∃x(Sx⊃Bx) follows — Banno
SO we have :
Classical logic
Existence is not a first order predicate
All singular term refer to members of the domain
The domain is not empty
Free logic
Existence is a first order predicate, and hence
Singular terms can refer to things which are not members of the domain
The domain is not empty
Inclusive logic
Existence is a first order predicate, and hence
Singular terms can refer to things which are not members of the domain
The domain may be empty — Banno
In Free Logic or Inclusive Logic, the existential quantifier explicitly asserts existence when paired with a predicate like ∃x(x=t), and existence becomes a property rather than a background assumption tied to the quantifiers. — Banno
Whether such [Meinongian] logics can legitimately be considered free is controversial. On older conceptions, free logic forbids any quantification over non-existing things...
Historically, quantification over domains containing objects that do not exist has been widely dismissed as ontologically irresponsible. Quine (1948) famously maintained that existence is just what an existential quantifier expresses. — 5.5 Meinongian Logics | Free Logic | SEP
Does the statement "All sirens are beautiful" have ontological import, in your view? — Arcane Sandwich
Doesn't the quote you provide imply that, if they started talking to each other, they may talk past each other entirely? — Leontiskos
Ah, but therein lies the counterintuitive part. If one takes themselves to be making definitive references, or, through one's understanding of one's own sense of making definitive references, takes others to be doing the same, one is mistaken about what is truly going on. — Count Timothy von Icarus
and one takes another's "that rake right there," to be definitive, one has misunderstood, no? — Count Timothy von Icarus
What definition of "inscrutable" would you offer, such that inscrutable reference poses no barrier to communication? — Leontiskos
What does Quine mean by the inscrutability of reference? — Darkneos
So, my question is the following: does ¬∀ have ontological import? How could it not, if it's equivalent to ∃? And if that's so, then does ∀ have ontological import, since it's equivalent to ¬∃? — Arcane Sandwich
Maybe it's just me, but I fail to understand how and why someone would treat ∃ and ∀ differently, as far as the discussion about ontological commitment goes. — Arcane Sandwich
This is what we should probably assess, even though (3) is farcical:
3) ∀x(Sx ∧ Bx) - Everything is a beautiful siren.
4) ∃x(Sx ∧ Bx) - Therefore, some [existing] siren is beautiful.
i.e. "If this is valid, then the universal quantifier must have ontological import." — Leontiskos
I say that neither of them does. — Arcane Sandwich
There would be no reason to say they are talking past each other in any radical sense because their verbal dispositions are the same so they communicate perfectly. — Apustimelogist
Are you saying that even if they do talk past each other, they won't tend to register each other's speech as inscrutable? — Leontiskos
Except Quine literally says, "the meanings or ideas expressed in their identically triggered and identically sounded utterances could diverge radically." If the meanings and ideas expressed by our identical utterances diverge radically, then I would say we are talking past each other by definition. — Leontiskos
But that becomes more implausible the longer we draw out their conversation (say, from 15 seconds to 2 minutes to 5 minutes to 30 minutes...). The longer we talk the more likely we will realize that we are using words in radically different ways. — Leontiskos
Interesting observation. So it is that becasue the word "gavagai" is so effective that folk have developed something like and expectation that it has a fixed referent?Why do people think a unique determination is a reasonable expectation? Quine talks about the consequences, not so much causes, of failure to perceive the indeterminacy. But it seems reasonable to blame this failure on the success of language in talking about real, physical relations. Its unreasonable effectiveness, if you will. — bongo fury
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