There's a considerable ambiguity in natural language terms and concepts, which gives them a kind of cohesion through fuzzy boundaries, which can then be interpreted as a coherent unity, — fdrake

Maybe there's a basic imperative to gather everything into a single framework.

Could you flesh out exactly what you're saying about fully developed humans like yourself? I'm assuming it's not that you think you have some sort of divine grace. Why should you have legal protection? Is it a matter of sentiment?

Just a history note: in Jamaica, during the time the English used slave labor there, all the slave women who became pregnant aborted their pregnancies so that their children wouldn't grow up in the world they were living in. The same would have been true in Brazil, but there were very harsh punishments for abortion there

It's not true that all women who have sought abortions denied the humanity of what they were killing, and this is still true today.

I don't exactly object to classical logic, though -- I'm saying it has limitations, not that it's wrong in every case. — Moliere

Right. Logical pluralism is saying that there is no one logic that applies to all cases. A logical pluralist would agree that the LONC is useful... where it's useful.

That you value those cells over the person who must carry them is heinous. — Banno

Yes, pro-life people are heinous. They're like those creatures from the Lord of the Rings who are some kind of supernatural evil. They never bathe and they have fangs and they're all ugly.

Just immigrate to Canada, dude. They won't be able to find you!

:up:

A tale. One of the pre- socratics - I forget which - "proved" that air becomes colder under pressure by blowing on his figure. The breath feels cold. And we all know that a wind is cold. Hence, he disproved that gases under pressure increases in temperature. Do we take this as a refutation of thermodynamics? — Banno

Exactly. We don't use logic to tell us what's in the world. If we did, we'd still be in the stone age.

I've gathered that you're just not going to answer that question. That's cool. :up:

Does the fact that it doesn't make sense to speak about something "moving greenly," "economic recessions being pink," or "plants being prime," only have to do with the rules of competent language use and not with what those things actually are? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good question.

Sure, that was just an example on the relevance of content to meaningful predication. But Russell's paradox is about stipulated sign systems, "languages," no? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Tarski is stipulated sign systems. Set theory is fairly intuitive. Even the foundations, which obviously directly defy Aristotle, are fairly easy to embrace, especially after you've studied calculus. I guess you could target set theory's foundations in favor of finitism. Is that what you're thinking?

What would be an example of a paradox in nature? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't know. My consciousness might have to evolve some before I can see it. My question, though, is do you think the possibilities of our universe are limited by what appears inconceivable to us?

For example, we can say "red" or "angry" of the number "4," in ways that are entirely correct vis-á-vis form. Yet obviously such talk is nonsensical because if one considers the content of: "the number four is angry and red," it is clear that the subject is not of the sort that it can possibly possess these predicates (obviously, this implies we are speaking of the number, not some drawing of 4 in a children's book, which might indeed be angry and red). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is about competent language use. Russell's paradox isn't about language use. It's not nonsensical.

In essence, material logic is more concerned with the actual content and how it corresponds to reality, whereas formal logic deals with abstract structures and patterns of reasoning

I asked you before: are you saying that if X is paradoxical, it can't exist? I guess I'm wondering if this is a question you don't want to address for some reason?

If you do this, you just have the study of completely arbitrary systems, and there are infinitely many such systems and no way to vet which are worth investigating. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with this. Roughly what I'm thinking is that consciousness evolves and that this involves both changes in environmental conditions and native mental flexibility. So, for instance, if the people who inhabit a two-dimensional world evolve into beings who can experience three dimensions, it will be partly because the environment makes it so they need to, but long before the general population changes, there will be those who have been expressing flexibility, even though it may have seemed pointless to those around them. These will be people who denied that their traditional logic limited them or the world.

Therefore it's ok to do pointless investigations. It's always been part of what we are, since at least 60,000 years.

Especially because the liar's sentence gives justification to P2 in the original argument: No principle holds in complete generality. — Moliere

Yep

I don't think future potential is all that relevant. — Michael

Maybe your society is different from mine. Where I am, prognosis is more important for life and death decisions than present state.

Forcing a mother to carry to term and birth a child because the 1 day old zygote in her womb is a living organism with human DNA just ain't right. — Michael

I agree. The day-after pill pretty much solves that problem. All women should be able to get it at no cost. Men don't have to pay anything if they generate a zygote. Women shouldn't either.

It's true that if there is no consciousness, it helps in making the decision not to intervene and let a baby die, but ultimately the decision is more about prognosis than whatever the present state is. For instance, if a baby has a head bleed and the brain is squashed because of that, we go ahead and intervene because of the possibility that the brain could recover and grow. And we do make death easier for children who are fully conscious, but can't live off of special machinery. That's basically killing them, again, because of what we know the future holds.

Think about how that focus on what the future holds bears on the disposition of a fetus. The human potential includes Einstein and Mozart. :grimace:

Is it that formal logic outlines how one statement follows from another, and material logic looks at the limits of thought and language?

The issue here seems to lie in predication, and so it's more obvious that there has to be a metaphysical side to the investigation — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do you think the possibilities for this universe are limited by what strikes us as conceivable?

I was looking for a 'it can't happen because it's illogical.'

Care to step up to the plate?

If we follow the peripatetic axiom that "nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses," my question is "where are the paradoxes in the senses or out in the world?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

A paradox is not the type of thing that has a location.

I have never experienced anything both be and not be without qualification, only stipulated sign systems that declare that "if something is true it is false," and stuff of that sort. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not having experienced it so far doesn't rule it out, though.

Some might say that if you have strong feelings about logical monism, you would probably have some way of dealing with paradoxes. Would you agree?

There is the "discourse of language" which is constrained by the "discourse of the mind — Count Timothy von Icarus

What are your thoughts on Russell's paradox? Is it like Witt thought, from a transcendental logic? Or what?

I see.

Know and believe are intensional operators. Is that where you were headed?

It's called dialetheism. I thought about doing a thread on it. Probably not.

The idea of a state of affairs comes from the Cartesian worldview. You can't demolish someone's worldview without giving them an acceptable alternative. They won't let you.

Thus far it seems to have very little explanatory power. — J

I take it as phenomenology.

Yet evolution and history of the universe are things we cannot have a vantage point about. — schopenhauer1

Maybe so. I'd have to think about it.

So when someone refers to the "Metaphysics of X", and it's only part of the world, that is not metaphysics? — schopenhauer1

That would be an application of an overarching ontology to X.

So is evolution and the development of the universe also be off the table even though we don't have those vantage points? — schopenhauer1

Metaphysics is different because it's talking about the whole world. Language is for talking about things in the world, like evolution or cosmology.

Have you ever noticed that when someone sets out a state of affairs, they do it by setting out a statement? — Banno

For a while Russell thought they're the same thing. A true proposition is an obtaining state of affairs. Neutral monism.

In the Tractatus. — Srap Tasmaner

no

Non-sense in what way? There's several senses to non-sense. — schopenhauer1

It would be like the knight on a chess board describing the game of chess. It can't have that vantage point.

Well, but this is what I'm contesting. Even on the most generous interpretation of "form," a cat sitting on a mat doesn't look remotely similar to any thought or linguistic expression. — J

Form is probably the wrong word. How did the SEP put it? They're similar?

Possible but unlikely. Do you believe that Witt himself succeeded in demonstrating this? — J

I think so.

In a way, the species' evolutionary history and intertwinement with language DOES get metaphysical- pace academics and a host of theories revolving around "semiotics" or "information theory" or simply the "metaphysics of biology" or "what it means to be a human". — schopenhauer1

Yes. It's a secret that it's all nonsense.

Glancing at SEP, what I see is "States of affairs are similar to thoughts. Thoughts are true or false; states of affairs obtain or not." That's a little different. So yes, similar, but by bringing in a verb like "obtain" we are trying to move away from talk about language (such as truth values), and into the world independent of thought — J

Right. States of affairs are truth makers. Just using the word "state" implies being, to be. What is the state of affairs? It's that the cat is on the mat. States of affairs have the same form as thoughts. Maybe we can't move away from language. Maybe there's no way to do that.

I'm not really sure how important metaphysics was to Frege. His ideological descendants, like in philosophy of math, don't seem to really care much about the political fallout associated with being platonic. Being platonic just fits what they see as math. They leave metaphysics on the shelf.

Witt says that all such worries about how thought is related to cosmology amount to nonsense. If you're worried about metaphysics, you're trying to do something with language that it's not capable of. But the attraction of going back down the ladder and getting all worked up over metaphysics is always there. Who can resist?

This may it not have any bearing on the OP. :grin:

Truth" for Frege becomes simply about the ability to parse meaning of statements (The grass is green), rather than corresponding to the world, (It is true that grass is green). — schopenhauer1

I think so.

In this case "know" means to understand what's being asserted by the use of the word. No word means anything until it's used, as opposed to mentioned.

Just speak plainly.. In a couple sentences, what is Frege's idea of Truth? — schopenhauer1

He thought that truth can't be defined. Definition implies breaking something down into smaller pieces (a zebra is a horse with stripes, for instance.). Truth can't be broken down any further. It can't be taught. You just know what it is.

that those propositions accurately portray states of affairs of the world) — schopenhauer1

Or that propositions are states of affairs.