Right. Can they both frame assertions? I would say so. — J

A. It's true that
B. It's possible that

Some philosophers would say that anytime a person asserts a proposition (P), whether by speech, writing, road sign, stern glare, blanket handing, etc, that "P" means the same thing as "It's true that P." This is redundancy theory, or just redundancy. There are those who deny this. They think there's some subtle difference between the two, although I can't remember what their point is. Scott Soames mentions this in Understanding Truth.

If I assert that it's possible that you're cold, the proposition is that it's possible that you're cold. By redundancy reasoning, this is the same as saying "It's true that it's possible that you're cold."

Are you pointing to the ambiguity that may be there with communication, especially nonverbal? If so, I was just thinking about that yesterday, and by way of meaning as use, this is one of the ways a person can shape a social situation. Let's say you issue an insult in my direction, but it's unclear if you're joking or serious. I can shape things by my reaction. If I laugh and say "That's so true." then the ball is back in your court for what you really meant. You may have been serious, but now you're willing to let it go, so you laugh as well, and it was officially a joke. Wittgenstein's Group Dynamics.

Bottom line, they can’t escape it by burying their heads in the sand. — Christoffer

I've been looking at what the Middle East will be like in 2100. It occurred to me that living underground might be an option, so burying heads in the sand might work. Or maybe become nocturnal. But above ground, the inland areas won't just be uncomfortable, they'll be incompatible with human life.

Digging a little more deeply into that: Does this understanding of assertion commit you to including both "it is true that . . ." and "it seems quite possible that . . ." as assertions? If so, do they assert the same thing? — J

I don't think It's true that and it's possible that have the same meaning.

I like that thought though, at the end of the universe there's a to-do list that will never get done.

I agree, but if I also hand the guy a blanket, I'm making the same assertion you are: that he's cold.

My act of asserting can't be your act of asserting, but the proposition we're asserting is the same. No ontological implications there, it's just how we understand assertions.

I think we're talking past one another. I don't think Trump has any particular policy regarding the middle east.

That Western democracies don't do this and cannot do this perhaps makes him irritated. — ssu

I doubt it. He just does whatever he can get away with, as always.

So what's really the point? — ssu

Trump is having fun. His advisors tell him stuff, he expounds his great wisdom to them. They say, ok. He's the commander in chief. I get that some people expect there to be more to it than that, like grand purposes, grievous failure of some continuous long-term policy. Nothing will convince them otherwise because they have a worldview that says things somehow make sense. There's a plan. There is meaning. It's not wasted breath to vent your hatred of the USA.

By the way, did you see the video I posted in the news thread about Elvira Bary's take on Russia? I guess I knew some of the things she was saying, but I was still a little shocked at the way she put it together. She says there's an underlying current of thought in Russia that says it needs to be an empire in order to survive. It's not just about being big shots, it's that the west will eat them up if they aren't strong enough. It's strange how differently people see things when we're all attached to the same rock flying through space.

But, again, then that admits that there is interaction, not in the sense of merely participation in a form, by the mind and body. No? — Bob Ross

Aquinas believed the soul is fused to the body by supernatural means. They aren't really separate. The intellect is an aspect of the soul, right?

I guess it is metaphysically possible, but how does that work? Wouldn't there have to be some medium which supplies the imaginery to the agent intellect? Otherwise, why doesn't the agent intellect receive imaginery from other bodies? — Bob Ross

I guess the soul is supposed to be fused to one brain. You could think of the way a computer's software interacts with the hardware. Or maybe it's like a tuning fork and it picks up vibrations. Or by electromagnetism. I mean, Aquinas was in the 13th Century. Our idea of materiality has expanded a lot since his day.

According to Aquinas, if I understand correctly, the intellect does not just witness the images: it (viz., the agent intellect) actively extracts the form from the image and passes it along to the understanding (viz., the passive intellect). — Bob Ross

So do you think the intellect can or cannot witness the images? If it can, it would just abstract based on what it saw. In this scenario the brain would be an interface between the world and the intellect. The intellect is a central processing unit and the brain is an analog to digital converter. That sort of thing.

Oh, so he's saying the intellect witnesses the images. And you're saying it couldn't do that?

3. The brain produces phantasms. — Bob Ross

Why do you say the brain produces phantasms? Why couldn't the mind do it?

You are right. If US Middle East policy is looked on the long run, it really has been a train wreck — ssu

The Middle East has been fucked up since the British ruled it. The US has not returned it to a state of organic ease and well being, but all they wanted was oil, right?

Due to fracking, the US could probably meet it's own energy needs now

I've thought a lot about Adorno's ideas about form and content. He's saying that if you sit in the audience and listen to a symphony, it may be labeled as a Mozart concert, but in a sense, you aren't listening to Mozart. Mozart is the form. What you're actually contacting is the content, alive and unfolding out of itself in time.

This idea that the performance is what it's all about became the norm with the recording of music. So if I refer to Jimi Hendrix's performance of the Star Spangled Banner, it's content I'm referring to. Yes, the form is there, but as a necessary component.

In our time, things have partially changed again with mixes, so that production is often the focal point, for instance you can hear multiple performances of a Teddy Swims song, sung by him. What's different each time is the production. I'm not sure how production fits into the form/content scheme. Sgt. Peppers was released two years before he died, so he might have had a chance to recognize the importance of production. He might have aligned it with content? Although, it's such an integral part of the music it's hard to separate it out.

Is Pop art a variation of impressionism — Joshs

no

Probably so. I'm not sure what you said, but, probably so.

How would you know time elapsed?

Are you saying time only exists if linearity exists ? — kindred

No. The idea is that time and change are the same thing. Carlo Rovelli's view.

If there's ever a heat death of the universe, time would stop for all practical purposes because nothing would happen. Nothing would change.

I knew about Hacker. He's basically saying Kripke strayed from Wittgenstein's intentions. Since you've read it, I'm sure you realize that Kripke was extrapolating from what's revealed by the private language argument. It's ok that he's not doing an exegesis. We don't complain that Sartre didn't do a good job of explaining Heidegger. He was a branch off the Heidegger tree. Same with Kripke.

The term "non-binary" is borrowed from gender orientation discussions, which creates a liberal connotation, meaning anyone who claims to be non-binary politically is likely actually liberal or sarcastically conservative. — Hanover

Or they might just be independent?

I’ve read it. It may be stunning but it is widely rejected by scholars of the later Wittgenstein as a rigorous reading of his work. — Joshs

Like who?

They'll care as soon as they understand what it actually means — Tzeentch

I doubt it.

Kripke failed miserably to grasp the later Wittgenstein. — Joshs

Why do you think that? Have you read Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language? It's stunning.

but if we run Kripke through mid 19th century thinkers like Dilthey, Brentano and Kierkegaard, I think we can come up with solid critiques of his work. — Joshs

Kierkegaard critiques Kripke. Off the top of my head, I'd say the two didn't have the same interests. I don't see why they wouldn't give the thumbs-up to one another in the spirit of "whatever floats your boat." I don't know about Dilthey and Brentano.

Kripke is a branch off Wittgenstein. I don't think that kind of philosophical reticence existed in the early 19th Century.

Philosophy dives into and back out of mysticism. Wittgenstein was the latter.

They don't care about that either.

The average American genuinely couldn't give a flip. I think that's true of Trump as well. He's just having fun.

Consider the phrase, "I am politically nonbinary.". Do you discern the speaker's intent differently if they are liberal or conservative? — David Hubbs

They're both.

Some shit we made up might even be true.

The question is, how do you decide which is which? — Banno

This is the problem Socrates talked about when he said every philosopher longs for death so he or she can stand outside of life and finally see it from that vantage point. We don't have access to that place outside of life.

I think even AP philosophers sometimes build castles in the air and offer that some scaffolding will be provided at a later date, for instance, Davidson. In the meantime, his theory of meaning does work, but it works for realism as easily as it does for anti-realism. That underlying question remains unanswered. And it probably always will.

:up:

The situation after a world war would not seem to be the same as a the major economic player defaulting on their debt. Can such a thing happen without consequence? — Janus

It would cause a global economic depression. Marxists were the first to start talking about the social effects of the boom/bust cycles of capitalism. They believed that eventually there would be a depression so severe that capitalism would basically die and be replaced by something else.

Borrowing against increased future prosperity is okay provided future prosperity will indeed be greater, otherwise it would seem to be economic suicide. — Janus

The British were in debt before the Great Depression. That debt was never repaid. The whole global economy just reset after the war. The same thing will eventually happen to the US national debt.

At this point economic suicide would be halting lending. That's basically what the crisis of 2008-2009 was: a hard credit freeze.

If there were real growth in prosperity, then why the need for growing debt? — Janus

Our way of life is dependent on the idea of virtual capital. The banking system as we know it started in Italy. Italian bankers financed wars and from there the financial sector started moving toward the center of the European economy.

It's true that we're basically living beyond our means, but that's how we've become what we are now. That simple idea of debt revolutionized us.

C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image has some pretty neat stuff on how the Gothic cathedral is an image of the medieval cosmos. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I read Otto Von Simpson's book. It made an impression on me. Is Discarded Image something I should read?

According to Elvira Bary, romanticizing criminals is a legacy from the Soviet days for Russians. So like Russian baby boomers and Gen X wouldn't be ashamed of Russian criminals doing their thing. They're doing what they have to to get by. There is zero rule-of-law vibe because they don't have the institutions for that.

I'm curious what younger Russians would think, like their Millennials.

Gothic architecture was pretty amazing (and philosophical). They just lacked the technology to fully see it through.

People close to him say he's conflict habituated. He'll make something to fight against if there is nothing. It's just the way he is...

The Russian elite, as a class, descended from criminals who managed black markets and engaged in illegal manufacturing during the Soviet era. They provided services the government couldn't, so they were tolerated. In the chaos following the fall, they just kept doing the same things, and thereby became the elite. But romanticism about criminality survives in Russia to this day. This is one of many reasons the Russian people are not disposed to revolting. Another is that there's an ingrained belief that the only way to survive as a country is to be an empire, so there's a tendency to see meaning in suffering if it's in the name of empire building, and this suffering isn't expected to ever decrease because the job of defending Russia is continuous.

I think he's saying you could discipline your philosophy purely by semantics, but it's likely to end up "distorted." He might mean that you could end up with a theory that's semantically unafflicted, but which carries a glaring logical fallacy. Obviously the reverse could happen if you just use logic as your discipline: it's logical, but it's language on holiday. We end up using multiple disciplines because experience warns us that we ought to.

Suppose AP never does anything with the questions it raised about the nature of meaning. Will it fall back toward mysterianism? What is the future of philosophy?