• Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Some contemporary Aristotelians suggest that Aristotle didn't think that artifacts had forms, because they think that an Aristotelian form has something to do with life. I think that's a bit of a stretch in interpretative terms, but it's something to consider. If Truman has an Aristotelian form, and if an Aristotelian form is essentially a life, then Truman's formal cause is his life. We would not say that Truman himself is identical to his life, rather we would say that Truman is alive. He has the property of being alive. It's an open question what happens when Truman dies. Is he still Truman, but dead? If so, then his form wasn't his life, after all. Or, one could instead say that it was, and that when Truman dies, what remains is no longer Truman. Instead, what remains is merely Truman's body. For someone like me, who claims that every human is identical to a living brain in a body, this is problematic.
  • Leontiskos
    3.7k
    Some contemporary Aristotelians suggest that Aristotle didn't think that artifacts had forms, because they think that an Aristotelian form has something to do with life.Arcane Sandwich

    Yes. For my teachers an artifact has a form, but not a substantial form. Yet a substantial form would not need to be soul/life, for there are inorganic compounds with a substantial form. Nevertheless, I agree that this last part is more controversial.

    We would not say that Truman himself is identical to his life, rather we would say that Truman is alive. He has the property of being alive. It's an open question what happens when Truman dies. Is he still Truman, but dead? If so, then his form wasn't his life, after all. Or, one would instead say that it was, and that when Truman dies, what remains is no longer Truman. Instead, what remains is merely Truman's body. For someone like me, who claims that every human is identical to a living brain in a body, this is problematic.Arcane Sandwich

    Right, so the question has to do with how the "property" of life relates to Truman, namely whether it is something he needs in order to be himself. Or put differently, whether it is nonsensical to talk about Truman apart from his life.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Or put differently, whether it is nonsensical to talk about Truman apart from his life.Leontiskos

    It doesn't strike my ear as nonsensical, at least not necessarily. For example, suppose that Truman's form is his soul. If so, then it's not evident to me that Truman's soul immediately leaves his body after he has died. Maybe it remains in his body for a few minutes, or even a few hours. So, in such circumstances, it makes sense to talk about Truman apart from his life.
  • Leontiskos
    3.7k


    Well for Aristotle the soul is the principle of life, so if Truman's body still has a principle of life, then he is not fully dead. But of course if we hold to a view where the soul perdures apart from the body after death then there arises the tendency to identify Truman with his perduring, separated soul.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Cool. I take the pub Test to imply that you can't suggest anything that you can't explain in two sentences to a drunk.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Note that Banno's whole logical horizon is bound up with the bare particulars of predicate logic, so I'm not sure it is possible to easily convey an alternative semantics to someone who who has never been exposed to an alternative paradigm.Leontiskos
    More about me. Cool.
  • Darkneos
    852
    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

    Ummm, what?
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Cool. I take the pub Test to imply that you can't suggest anything that you can't explain in two sentences to a drunk.Banno

    Well, no offense Banno, but I think that alcohol might be more culturally significant to Australians than to Argentines. I'm not in the habit of explaining things to drunkards.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    There's no pubs in Argentina, it's just not part of the culture. I mean, there are bars, as in, establishments that specialize in serving alcohol, but those are cultural cemeteries. There's no pubs in the Irish (or Australian) sense of the term, as traditional gathering places. There's pulperías though. Think of them as Wild West Saloons but with a menu that consists of meat, cheese, and various types of salami / pepperoni. Drinks are typically wine, beer, or strong spirits like ginebra. No whisky, though.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    I think qualia cause more problems than they solve.

    Perhaps. Robots might make better citizens.

    Unless you mean their inclusion? In which case, excluding qualia from your philosophy to "avoid problems" is a bit like removing the possibility of false statements or false beliefs from your theory of language or epistemology in order to make things easier. Sure, it makes an explanation easier, but then it isn't an explanation of what actually exists. And indeed, some physicalist theories seem to go as far as attempting just this.
  • Apustimelogist
    676
    It might be worth adding "... and get the same result". The same behaviours might be seen with very different interpretations - we get a rabbit stew even if "gavagai" means undetached rabbit leg.Banno

    Yes, this would be the case in that Quine 'two men' passage I think.

    For what could be more obvious then that we do refer to things with our words and mean things by them?Count Timothy von Icarus

    Sure, but I am not sure I need an account of this which appeals above and beyond what I find a plausible view of how the objective world works. Nor, from my own introspective experience, can I seem to point to some kind of specific, definitive sense of what it means to "refer"; nonetheless, I can use the word reasonably well. I don't see an issue with embracing vagueness, fuzzyness, indeterminacy in regards to how we engage with the world. If one believes in an objective world then the men in the Quine quote are a part of that, behaving in an objective way where they tend to say and use words in certain kinds of contexts in reaction to certain stimuli. But, if an observer were to describe what those men were doing, they may plausibly be able to do it in different ways.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Nothing quite along those lines. If you are interested in my opinion see
    Nothing to do with Dennett's quining qualia

    Not a short thread.

    Not a topic to treat in a couple of words.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Not a topic to treat in a couple of words.Banno

    So it doesn't pass the Australian pub Test?
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Then the pub Test isn't infallible. Sounds like it has the same advantages and disadvantages that common sense and intuition have.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    I'd stand by this, I think:
    Seems to me that there is nothing that talk of qualia is about. In so far as talk of qualia is usable and useful, it is no different to talk of colours or tastes or what have you. In so far as something is added to the conversation by the addition of qualia, seems to me that Dennett is correct in showing that there is nothing here to see.Banno
    But I will not try explaining it to a drunk.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Well, I reckon that you would need more than two sentences, unless each sentence is some kind of Kantian paragraph. You'd have to explain to the drunk who Dennett is, and what qualia are. The former is easy to do, the latter not so much.

    EDIT: You'd also have to explain to him that "qualia" is plural, and that the singular is "quale".
  • bongo fury
    1.7k
    Ummm, what?Darkneos

    People think: reference must be determinate because language can talk physics.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Have we killed this thread?
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    I think that's a bit of a stretch in interpretative terms, but it's something to consider.

    There is a lot of strong support for the view that organisms and the ordered cosmos as a whole are most properly beings. However, this distinction respects which things have an essence, their being "a being," or possessing a substantial form. It's important to recall that anything that is anything at all has some form/act. Even accidents have to be act/form in order to be at all. The terminology gets confusing because terms like "Aristotelian form" might refer to form/actuality in general, substantial form (the form by which something is a certain type of thing), or even essence (the "what it is to be" of a certain type of thing). .

    Aristotle distinguishes between things that exist "by nature" (i.e. possessing a nature), those that exist "by causes" (heaps of external causes), and those that exist "by craft" in the Physics, Metaphysics, and Ethics. In the Metaphysics he explicitly calls into question the idea that a cloak might have an essence. "Substance" (i.e. thinghood) is indeed said of things that are more or less heaps (e.g. rocks) or artifacts, but they do not have the same unity one finds in self-determining wholes. I think Aristotle does in fact refer to a wheel as potentially an example of secondary substance in the Categories but this is: A. thought to be an earlier work, B. just a passing example where the simpleness of a wheel is useful.

    One misses what Aristotle is really getting at, the way in which aims unify things, if one sticks to rigid categorization however.

    From my notes on the Physics:

    At the outset of Book II of the Physics, Aristotle identifies proper beings as those things that are the source of their own production.1 Beings make up a whole—a whole which is oriented towards some end. This definition would seem to exclude mere parts of an animal. For example, a red blood cell is not the source of its own production, nor is it a self-governing whole. Lymphocytes, for example, can be seen as being generated and destroyed in accordance with a higher-level aims-based "parallel-terraced scan," despite being in some sense relatively self-governing.

    On this view, living things would most fully represent “beings.” By contrast, something like a rock is not a proper being. A rock is a mere bundle of external causes. Moreover, if one breaks a rock in half, one simply has two smaller rocks (an accidental change). Whereas if one breaks a tree in half, the tree—as a being—will lose its unity and cease to exist (i.e. death, a substantial change).

    Aristotle’s mention of Empedocles' elements early in Book II might suggest that all “natural kinds” possess a nature (e.g. carbon atoms as much as men). Yet a lump of carbon or volume of hydrogen gas are both in many ways similar to a rock in that they are mere “bundles of external causes. ”Yet there is also a clear sense in which something like an water molecule is a more unified than a volume of water in a container, the latter of which is easily divided. Hence, we might suppose that unity exists in gradations.2 We can also think of the living organism as achieving a higher sort of unity, such that its diverse multitude of parts come to be truly unified into a whole through an aim.

    Now, if we step back and try to consider our original question: if being is “many” or “one,” it seems to me that the most readily apparent example of the multiplicity of beings and of their unity is the human mind itself. We have our own thoughts, experiences, memories, and desires, not other people’s. The multiplicity of other things, particularly other people, and the unity of our own phenomenal awareness is something that is given.3


    1 i.e. “possessing a nature.” Actually, at the very start of Book II, Aristotle gives us a brief list of things that might constitute proper beings possessing their own nature, namely animals and their parts, as well as simple elements (i.e., Empedocles’ five elements). However, Aristotle revises this estimation in the second paragraph.

    2 Very large objects like stars, nebulae, planets, and galaxies are an excellent example here. These are so large that the relatively weak force of gravity allows them to possess a sort of unity. Even if a planet is hit by another planet (our best hypothesis for how our moon formed), it will reform due to the attractive power of gravity. Likewise, stars, galaxies, etc. have definable “life cycles,” and represent a sort of “self-organizing system,” even though they are far less self-organizing than organisms. By contrast, a rock has a sort of arbitrary unity (although it does not lack all unity! We can clearly distinguish discrete rocks in a non-arbitrary fashion).

    3 Hume, Nietzche, and many Buddhist thinkers have challenged the notion of a unified self. I don’t think we have to entirely disagree with their intuitions here. Following Plato, we might acknowledge that a person can be more or less unified. Indeed, we can agree with Nietzsche’s description of himself—that in his soul he might indeed find a “congress of souls” each vying for power, trying to dominate the others. But on Plato’s view (and many others) this would simply be emblematic of a sort of spiritual sickness. This is precisely how the soul is when it is not flourishing, i.e. the “civil war within the soul” of Plato’s Republic, or being “dead in sin” (i.e. a death of autonomy and an ability to do what one truly thinks is best) as described in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Romans 7).

    If Truman has an Aristotelian form, and if an Aristotelian form is essentially a life, then Truman's formal cause is his life. We would not say that Truman himself is identical to his life, rather we would say that Truman is alive. He has the property of being alive.

    The form involved in Truman's life is the soul. Klima has a pretty good article on this, although IRCC I didn't agree with all of it (https://faculty.fordham.edu/klima/bodysoul.htm).

    It's an open question what happens when Truman dies. Is he still Truman, but dead? If so, then his form wasn't his life, after all.

    Well, for Aristotle death is a substantial change. A corpse is not a man. Yet death does not involve instantly transforming into an ooze of prime matter. There are levels of form/matter, and sometimes the flesh, bones, wood, rock, etc. that some thing is made of is referred to as its matter because it is its substrate, the substrate on which the substantial form is actualized. So, the underlying wood of a table, or flesh of a man while being the material substrate of either, nonetheless involves some actual form, since it isn't just sheer potency.

    Contemporary Aristotelians and Thomists don't really shy away from looking at how hylomorphism can be applied to contemporary natural science because it tends to layer on quite well. Previously, the big difference was in the claim that there were fundamental subsistent building blocks that made up matter, but that isn't even popular in physics any more.

    Or, one could instead say that it was, and that when Truman dies, what remains is no longer Truman. Instead, what remains is merely Truman's body. For someone like me, who claims that every human is identical to a living brain in a body, this is problematic.

    How so? A corpse doesn't consist of "a living brain in a body," so it need not be Truman, although surely it is Truman's body.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    "How we manage to refer is mysterious, but what is being referred to is not indeterminate."

    Yes?

    Or:

    "How we manage to refer is inscrutable, but what is being referred to is not inscrutable."
    Leontiskos

    "gavagai" is a word without context -- I have no knowledge of the language. When someone says "gavagai" it could mean the rabbit, the time of the year, the soup we're going to make, the teacher's authority over the kitchen, etc. etc.

    That is, there's no fact of the matter that I can point to to fix the reference of gavagai: it's inscrutable from the perspective of a person without knowledge of the language.

    But if we know the language we can refer with it -- I just don't think that this is somehow a feature of language, necessarily, but one of the many things we can do -- emphasis on it taking two or more -- once we know a language.

    But the facts of the world in the moment aren't what affixes the reference -- that is, there are no definite descriptions which pick out a name, and much less an understanding that reference is even what's happening at all when we have no knowledge of the language "gavagai" is spoken in.

    My take-away here is that since there's no fact of the matter that affixes reference, but we are able to refer, there must be something other than the facts which makes us able to refer. As is often the case in my thinking where this leads me to is the necessity of us sharing a language -- the things language does is present to more than my own cogito. So there's no theory I can hold to in evaluating whether you have referred separate from our collective interpretation of the language being spoken. It takes two to refer.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    There is a lot of strong support for the view that organisms and the ordered cosmos as a whole are most properly beings.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yes, but Aristotle's Prime Mover, which is pure form, is arguably not alive, at least not in the sense that trees, dogs, and people are. If, on the other hand, "form" is to be understood as some kind of activity (i.e., as energeia, as distinct from potentiality), then I can see how organisms and the Prime Mover would both have "form" in the same sense.

    A corpse is not a man.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Contra Aristotle, I might argue that it is. A corpse is a man that happens to be dead. It's a man that no longer has the property of being alive. Though some philosophers, like Eric T. Olson would disagree with me. Are you familiar with his distinction between "corpse concurrentism" and "corpse creationism"? He discusses this topic in his article The Person and The Corpse.

    Or, one could instead say that it was, and that when Truman dies, what remains is no longer Truman. Instead, what remains is merely Truman's body. For someone like me, who claims that every human is identical to a living brain in a body, this is problematic.

    How so? A corpse doesn't consist of "a living brain in a body," so it need not be Truman, although surely it is Truman's body.
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    Indeed, a corpse doesn't consist of a living brain in a body. Since I claim that a human being (or perhaps even a person) is identical to a living brain in a body (and not identical to a Christian soul, for example), it follows (if I want my system of beliefs to be coherent) that a human corpse is not a human being (and perhaps not even a person). But this strikes me as an unwanted consequence of my premises, so it seems to me that one of my premises is dubious. I want to be able to say, at the same time, that a person just is a living brain in a body, and at the same time I want to say that a recently deceased human being is still a human being, not merely a corpse. When a deceased person "rests" in a coffin, and the person's loved ones attend the corresponding funeral, it seems to me that the deceased person is still there, right where the corpse is. So, I haven't found a way to reconcile these claims, yet. Shorter: Truman is just his living embodied brain, and when Truman dies, he's still Truman, even though he's no longer alive, and yes, I acknowledge that this is contradictory.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    Yes, but Aristotle's Prime Mover, which is pure form, is arguably not alive, at least not in the sense that trees, dogs, and people are.

    Maybe in some limited sense of "alive" as in necessarily mobile/mutable biological life. But per Book XII of the Metaphysics:


    Such, then, is the first principle upon which depend the sensible universe and the world of nature. And its life is like the best which we temporarily enjoy. It must be in that state always (which for us is impossible), since its actuality is also pleasure.54(And for this reason waking, sensation and thinking are most pleasant, and hopes and memories are pleasant because of them.) Now thinking in itself is concerned with that which is in itself best, and thinking in the highest sense with that which is in the highest sense best.55 [20] And thought thinks itself through participation in the object of thought; for it becomes an object of thought by the act of apprehension and thinking, so that thought and the object of thought are the same, because that which is receptive of the object of thought, i.e. essence, is thought. And it actually functions when it possesses this object.56 Hence it is actuality rather than potentiality that is held to be the divine possession of rational thought, and its active contemplation is that which is most pleasant and best. If, then, the happiness which God always enjoys is as great as that which we enjoy sometimes, it is marvellous; and if it is greater, this is still more marvellous. Nevertheless it is so. Moreover, life belongs to God. For the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and the essential actuality of God is life most good and eternal. We hold, then, that God is a living being, eternal, most good; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to God; for that is what God is.

    Are you familiar with his distinction between "corpse concurrentism" and "corpse creationism"? He discusses this topic in his article The Person and The Corpse.

    Vaguely. Or there is a similar typology for the question of "do persons cease to exist at their death?" (e.g. "the terminators," etc.)

    I want to be able to say, at the same time, that a person just is a living brain in a body, and at the same time I want to say that a recently deceased human being is still a human being, not merely a corpse. When a deceased person "rests" in a coffin, and the person's loved ones attend the corresponding funeral, it seems to me that the deceased person is still there, right where the corpse is.

    Perhaps personal identity outlasts biological life? After terrorist attacks we still speak of dead Christians, dead communists, etc. One can still refer to "George Washington" or to "medieval Muslims," yet surely they are not still around. Perhaps in some cases, properly prepared, parts of the deceaseds' bodies still remain somewhat intact, but in many cases their body has ceased to exist as anything remotely distinct. It has already decomposed and become parts of many other fungi, plant, and animal bodies, perhaps even human bodies. Yet where is the dividing line where the corpse ceases to be? Or are there corpses of man and beast scattered throughout all of our bodies, and dinosaur corpses in my soup and in the tree outside?

    Hence, I find good reason to identify the person with the soul, i.e., with a certain actuality (as process), since, for instance, 98% of the atoms in the human body are replaced each year. What you identify is just one of the difficulties of identifying people and personal identity with bodies. The fact that the decay of the body, and when it ceases to exist is ambiguous is no real problem once one accepts that the dead body is essentially just a heap. It no longer has any unifying aims through which it is made an organic whole.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    What you identify is just one of the difficulties of identifying people and personal identity with bodies.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yes, indeed. It's a particularly difficult philosophical problem to solve, especially for atheists such as myself.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    My take-away here is that since there's no fact of the matter that affixes reference, but we are able to refer, there must be something other than the facts which makes us able to refer. As is often the case in my thinking where this leads me to is the necessity of us sharing a language -- the things language does is present to more than my own cogito. So there's no theory I can hold to in evaluating whether you have referred separate from our collective interpretation of the language being spoken. It takes two to refer.Moliere

    Yep.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    It'll be a problem if what you want are the necessary and sufficient conditions (or properties, or whatever you choose - the nature of essences remains unaddressed beyond an ineffectual equivalence) under which the proper use is supposedly determined. The self, in psychology, has long been treated as the sum of various attributes or aspects. Remove some of those, add others, the self remains. It's a pretty clear example of a family resemblance. There need be no definitive set of attributes that set out what the self is in a determinate way. Or folk of a more authoritarian bent may insist that this or that particular set simply is that definition, and say that anyone who uses "self" otherwise is mistaken. That's a posture, not a fact.

    So we can talk sensibly of Truman's body as still being Truman, and we know what that means, and how the corpse is different to the living man. There's not a problem here. I don't see any contradiction, rather a mistaken notion of reference.
  • Leontiskos
    3.7k
    it's inscrutable from the perspective of a person without knowledge of the languageMoliere

    But that's a mundane claim, isn't it? Almost tautologous? The stronger and more interesting claim is that something is inscrutable in that it cannot be fixed. I hope Quine is doing more than uttering a tautology.

    My take-away here is that since there's no fact of the matter that affixes reference, but we are able to refer, there must be something other than the facts which makes us able to refer.Moliere

    From the early pages of this thread I have objected to this vague use of the word "fact." What is it supposed to mean? Does it mean anything to say there is no fact of the matter? If it did, then what would it look like if there were a fact of the matter?

    It takes two to refer.Moliere

    Will someone raised apart from language and people be able to identify food, such as berries? And will this be a cognitive identification, such that they might find they are hungry for berries and decide to go out looking for them? Because if so, then it looks like they can refer to berries without two.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    But that's a mundane claim, isn't it? Almost tautologous? The stronger and more interesting claim is that something is inscrutable in that it cannot be fixed. I hope Quine is doing more than uttering a tautology.Leontiskos

    Let me rephrase because I believe that the inscrutability applies to one's own language as well, so this is a hard point to express-- to get the concept across we have the fable of a made up language we have no knowledge of, and "gavagai" somehow counts as a locution in that language.

    The reason for the fable is we are misled by being able to refer in our language into thinking that there is some fixed reference. So we have the fable -- where you say it's almost tautologous -- which is meant to elucidate even our home tongue.

    So, yes, reference is inscrutable in our own tongue, as I understand what's going on here.

    Inscrutable being defined as I've said about facts here, but I see there's something of a dispute with facts so I'll go to that next:

    From the early pages of this thread I have objected to this vague use of the word "fact." What is it supposed to mean? Does it mean anything to say there is no fact of the matter? If it did, then what would it look like if there were a fact of the matter?Leontiskos

    A fact is a set of true sentences.

    So when I say Truman is dead that is a true sentence about Truman. That Truman is dead, however, does not affix the reference of "Truman" -- nor do any other true sentences.



    Will someone raised apart from language and people be able to identify food, such as berries? And will this be a cognitive identification, such that they might find they are hungry for berries and decide to go out looking for them? Because if so, then it looks like they can refer to berries without twoLeontiskos

    You ever read about feral and dramatically maltreated children?

    If so, sure. But I am not so sure that it is so.

    So, yes, I think it takes two. But that's just my theory in response to the puzzle: if we refer and yet it can't be scrutinized, I.E., there isn't a fact that makes the reference refer, that just leaves the puzzle open. My solution is that if I check in with you and ask "Oh, do you mean this Truman or that Truman" we can refer in a given conversation, rather than that "Truman" always refers to Truman because of this or that theory of reference.
1161718192027
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.

×
We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences.