All I’m saying is that if you invoke “better” about any thing or as any concept, you have invoked “best” and “worst” as well. — Fire Ologist

I would say yes, sort of. We could imagine gradations of betterment that go on forever. It just keeps going. I don't know of any reason to deny this scenario.

But there's an obscure problem with this having to do with the fact that parts are always understood relative to a whole. If the whole is infinite, then it's undefined. For practical purposes of the intellect, there is no whole to give meaning to the parts. That means there's no way to say how much better x is than y.

On the other hand, if we set a limit, we now have a best, a whole, and a way to give the increments of betterment meaning. But how can bestness be other than arbitrary? Why can't we exceed our best?

You joined on April Fools Day. Just kidding. That's great. I'm sure you're a positive influence on your community. Sometimes a little compassion makes a huge difference.

Aren't you a Christian? — Bob Ross

No

but I am finding the choices and actions God makes in the Old Testament to be littered with blatant atrocities. — Bob Ross

He was a bit of an asshole.

Love for all is not doormatism because if you are acting like a doormat, you are not loving yourself. Loving all, is a balancing act, where one does one's best to make every interaction and transaction a win-win for everyone involved. — Truth Seeker

I hear you. But with some people, you're going to have to rain hell down on them to make them leave you alone.

I don't know what that means. Please explain. Thank you. — Truth Seeker

Doormatism is where a person acts like a doormat. Some people won't respect you unless you meet their aggression by making a giant fool out of them in front of everybody. After that, they'll magically respect you.

I'm afraid this might end up as door-mat-ism.

Can we measure how much does the artwork plant a growing seed? — Fire Ologist

The artwork is just sitting there. Whether it becomes part of a living person depends on the person. Adorno's form/content distinction makes sense here. If you look at the average Andy Warhol work, you'll notice that it has the same composition as a religious icon, except what's being held up as sacred is not a saint, but something mundane, that you might throw out with the trash. You can make your own pop-art by just taking the label off a jar and putting it on a shelf, raising up the invisible, seeing the sacred in the tiny. The form in this case is the actual physical screen print. The content is your living experience, unfolding in time.

I disagree with Witt and so could agree with you that philosophy stands apart from language games because philosophy really is about the real world distinct from its language. — Fire Ologist

I think philosophy stands apart from language games because it doesn't emerge from group dynamics per se. The original Sophia myth was about an entity in heaven who simply asked the first question: what's happening? Philosophy breaks a kind of silence by exiting normal life to reflect. Wittgenstein pointed out, I think correctly, that language is going to be all stretched out of frame when it's used in this way, often into the realm of nonsense.

It is difficult to escape the language game when describing Banksy as an artist. — RussellA

I agree with that.

‘Seed planting and seed sprouting or not sprouting’ is an analysis of all art. You set up a language game. — Fire Ologist

It's a metaphor. Explaining art is philosophy, which I think is an activity that stands apart from language games. With the idea of language games in mind, all philosophy is on the verge of being useless, but we do it anyway.

Does "aesthetic value" in the Bansky language game mean the same thing as "aesthetic value" in the Derain language game? — RussellA

I would say there's no Bansky or Derain language game. An artist is more like a farmer than an interlocutor. Her art is like seeds that sprout in the souls of the observers. Each sprout is unique because each person in the audience is. So if you aren't fond of Bansky, it's not as if there's a language game you're not participating in properly. It's that you're rocky terrain for that particular seed.

The way a piece of art gains value in our world is a reflection of the capitalism that pervades it. If I were to put jargon to it, it's that value is associated with the rumor that a work is an investment opportunity.

Aside from the peculiarities of our world, aesthetic value is related to a number of things, both physical and psychological. Grace and force are at the crossroads of physicality and psychology, and they've been around since people started enhancing themselves and their environment with decoration.

My eyes got wider, not glazed! — J

Cool. :grin:

And we need to acknowledge that any story we wind up telling about the origin of propositions, or reasons, or rationality itself -- anything that we say occupies the Space of Reasons -- must also have a biological/evolutionary/cultural story to go along with it. — J

Well, yes, but it could still be that consciousness is related to something undreamt of in our philosophy. We'll know if we ever know.

How to reconcile physical and rational accounts, which seem to begin from incompatible premises. — J

Yep.

It's unclear to me where talk of propositions fits in here -- what kind of ontology-talk it needs. I was only pointing out that I found "product of analysis" to be no more anti-metaphysical, or common-sensical, or whatever, than "product of a 1st-person judgment". In both cases, we're trying to use a neutral place-holder, "product," to stand in for we know not what. And that's fine, as long as the two cases have parity. — J

I see what you're saying. Somewhere along the line I started wondering if propositions might come from a time when people thought that the world was speaking to them (when it may have been their own motor cortex talking).

That would explain why propositions seem to have a God's eye view, or the way I would put it: the world is talking. This might show up in activities like I'm looking for a can of paint. I'm asking the world where it is. The world eventually tells me that it's under the work table. That it's under the table happens to be a proposition. Who asserted it? It's like the world did.

I realize my homemade origin story may make eyes glaze over, but it's an interesting possibility to me.

As he says, A is about my judgment, something I do or think, while B is about the cat. I would say that both A and B are true propositions about states of affairs, or at least truth-apt. Do you think Russell would agree? — J

Yes.

I agree, but no more so than "a proposition is a product of analysis"! At the level of "What is a proposition?" how would we avoid ontology? — J

We used to have an AP expert who would stop by the forum from time to time. His name was Nagase, and I learned a lot from him. I asked him once what he thought about the ontology of propositions, and he said he didn't feel the need to address it. I think the point is that we're mapping out the way we think about communication. Ontology is a background issue.

I lean toward ontological anti-realism, in other words, I don't think ontological questions are answerable, so the question of the what X is ultimately made of, is one I'm able to drop. If you find that you aren't able to drop it, you can at least look at what you're giving up if you eliminate propositions as a component of language use. It has to do with that illusive goal of communication: the meeting of the minds.

Do you think Soames would say that a proposition is a product of 1st-person judgment? — J

I don't think so, but that sounds a little like an ontological question.

Rodl is asking something that's right in front of our nose, so plain that we rarely question it: How do we describe or explain the being, the presence in the world, of a proposition? Where does it come from? How have we allowed it to become so central to this way of doing philosophy? — J

A proposition is a product of analysis. Hegel would object to hanging propositions in a netherworld, per his mechanism argument, which says we end up with component parts by way of describing the world. It's a mistake to take our understanding from that dismantled world, though. Put the clock back together and watch it functioning in time: that's where the truth lies.

Remember when I presented Scott Soames' explanation of propositions, he started with the whole scene of a person pointing and speaking. From there, he leads through an analysis. I think Hegel would approve. Soames' starting point is life in motion.

"My thought of judging that things are so is a different act of the mind from my judging that they are so. The former is about my judgment, a psychic act, a mental state; the latter, in the usual case, is not; it is about something that does not involve my judgment, my mind, my psyche. It is about a mind-independent reality." — J

If I'm understanding this, it's similar to what Russell would have said: a true proposition is a state of affairs.

But I thought you said it wasn't about money: — Harry Hindu

Are you not able to explore an issue without judging it? An disenfranchised person could be white if they live in Kentucky and their community has been decimated by drug abuse. Just think about the generic struggling person. The issue is: which does more to help:

1. Alter their environment so that they are receiving positive recognition.
2. Alter their environment so they can get their share of the economic pie.

An advocate of identity politics would say that focusing entirely on economic realities fails to account for the fact that some people won't take advantage of the opportunities they have if they have a negative sense of identity. They won't excel in school, they won't go to college, they won't start small businesses.

My personal opinion, based on things I've seen, is that a capitalist society bestows recognition on anyone who has money. Make the money available, and they'll get recognition.

:up:

You're offering an ostensive definition, and your problem is that when you point to a proposition "the bolded part", I see a sentence. If you think about it, it isn't possible to "bold" a proposition - it's like trying to italicize an apple. Wrong category. — Ludwig V

That's true. A proposition is along the lines of content.

Yes, but to the extent that the two sentences are different, you give me grounds for wondering whether it is the same proposition. I would prefer to stop talking about propositions, but it's too well embedded in philosophical discourse for that to be realistic - it's tilting at windmills. The formula I've offered does avoid some of the worst problems. — Ludwig V

I don't think you have to talk about propositions. It's not a bad idea to know what it is, though.

Things moved on. — Banno

I see. Thanks.

But look at "A nice derangement of epitaphs", were conventions are rejected in favour of interpretation - an active process! And so closer to Dummett's group dynamics, but keeping the primacy of truth. — Banno

Ok. So you could tell Williamson not to hold his breath waiting for more work to be done on the issue because the two sides crashed in the middle.

The core difference is that for Dummett truth concerns verification, but for Davidson truth is a primitive notion. — Banno

The difference between realism and anti-realism comes down to this: how we handle the unknowable. If you think the unknowable is still truth-apt, you're a realist. If you think language doesn't conform to some mind-independent world, but rather aids group dynamics, then you're likely to agree with Dummett, truth is a social fixture.

Davidson, a champion of truth-conditional semantics, is a hero to the realist, because he offers a way to be a realist without propositions. Whether he actually was a realist is another matter. :grin:

Better perhaps to think of Davidson, like Wittgenstein, as rejecting the realism/antirealism dichotomy, than as compatible with either. — Banno

True, but Williamson is holding Davidson up as an example of realist semantics, and he is compatible with both.

I think you might be more at home in an anti-realist place.
— frank

Heaven forbid! :grin: But thanks for the thought. No, my doubts aren't a good fit for anti-realism. And I don't have any stake in convincing you, or anyone else, that the "standard analysis" of truth-makers, truth-bearers, propositions, etc. can perhaps be challenged while still keeping a robust sense of non-language-game truth. I may not be advocating well for my own doubts, and I'm very far from having a worked-out theory of any of this. If you do have a look at either the Kimhi or the Rodl books, you might get a better sense. Though you have me wondering now . . . Rodl styles himself as an "absolute idealist" in the Hegelian tradition. I wonder if he would agree that that makes him an anti-realist. I don't think so -- the opposition here is not the old one between idealism and realism -- but it's an interesting question. — J

In the context of the OP, anti-realism is just the attitude that speech doesn't conform or correspond to states of affairs. Language is first and foremost a mechanism of social dynamics.

By way of Davidson, you can ditch propositions, but at the cost of buying into the notion of identifying truth-conditions. Plus with Davidson, realism is just an add-on. Davidson is compatible with either realism or anti-realism.

I dig Hegel, but I feel a little more resonance with the Neo-platonism that he was working with.

Ukraine: "Send More Weapons."
US. "ok."
Ukraine: "Thank you."

I think you might be more at home in an anti-realist place. Language games. That's anti-realism. Propositions really come from analyzing realism, where we have truthbearers and truthmakers. For the language gamer, truth is not a central issue, in fact there is no one truth.

I don't know. Is a strong will and the range by which we need confirmation from others to define ourselves an inborn trait (natural) or something that is the result of one's upbringing (nurtured)? While I will agree that our upbringing has a large impact on the person we are today, there are some that appear to develop in stark contrast to their upbringing. Maybe they were raised in a home that did neglect them but found a true friend that encouraged and supported them, and it still is the nurturing, I just can't say. We would have to study the details of each case. — Harry Hindu

I agree. But I would say that lacking a clear sense of identity isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yes, it poses an obstacle to self-advocation, but a person like that is basically what a Buddhist is trying to figure out.

The way this plays into identity politics is that a person who only sees negative images of people like themselves (say a black child only sees blackness depicted as being gang related, or enslavement)
— frank
What black child today lives in such informational isolation? — Harry Hindu

I was just giving an example to clarify it.

The question is do we bring down one group to raise another, or simply stop representing one group only in a negative light? — Harry Hindu

I don't know. I was just explaining what recognition has to do with identity politics. Just rambling, really.

The U.S. has evolved since then, but it appears that there are some that want to take us backwards by pushing the pendulum back to the opposite extreme - where another group receives special treatment at the expense of others to make up for the way things were while ignoring how things are now. — Harry Hindu

Again, I don't know. I would say an economic focus is more important that identity politics because to the extent that Hollywood panders to minorities, it's doing that because minorities buy tickets and merch. On the other hand, notice the next time you see a hospital advertisement. If they're depicting one of their awesome doctors, they'll be showing you an old white dude. Possibly Jewish. Why do you think they're doing that?

Um - forgive me. But that's what I call a sentence — Ludwig V

We identify propositions using sentences. For instance, maybe you said "That's on the mat" while you were pointing to the cat. The proposition you expressed by uttering that sentence was that the cat is on the mat.

However, the SEP article seems to want to say that a proposition is what is in common between a number of sentences or statements. That's what I don't get. — Ludwig V

You say, "That's on the mat."
I say, "Yes, Ludwig, the cat is on the mat."

We're expressing the same proposition by way of two utterances and two sentences. If you look back at your own analysis:

How about "collection of sentences that enable us to say that the cat is on the mat in different ways" — Ludwig V

That's exactly the standard analysis. The bolded part that follows the word, "that" is a proposition. Maybe an incentive for understanding it would be this: if you want to be a realist and avoid propositions, your best best is Davidson. It's 10 times more complicated, and will leave you with a different set of mysteries. Take your pick.

I can see that. With recognition theory, we're just saying that if a person doesn't receive recognition, they end up with a frail sense of self. This doesn't mean they're wishy-washy, though. They may be very staunch in their rejection of any kind of identity.

The way this plays into identity politics is that a person who only sees negative images of people like themselves (say a black child only sees blackness depicted as being gang related, or enslavement), then that person is less likely to develop a clear sense of themselves, what they want, and what they advocate. If I'm inferior, or in some way wrong, then I shouldn't engage the world the way the right people do. All of this may be half-conscious.

Identity politics is saying that what the oppressed need is not more money. They usually aren't actually looking for that. What they want is recognition, which is a basic requirement of a psyche that can advocate for itself.

How about "collection of sentences that enable us to say that the cat is on the mat in different ways"
or "collection of ways to say that the cat is on the mat".
Suggestions welcome. — Ludwig V

:up: If you note the part I bolded, that's what we call a proposition.

I repeat - all we need is a collection of sentences that say that the cat is on the mat in different ways. — Ludwig V

This looks like slipping grammar to me. How does a sentence say something? A sentence is just a series of words that form a unit.

Read this.

There will be an essay test after you finish.

I don't follow this. — Astrophel

I thought of doing a thread on the philosophy and psychology of recognition, but then I realized that would be too much effort. :razz:

So, the reason I find political categorical rigidity unable to express the fullness of complex ideas is because.....I was neglected as a child? — Astrophel

No. A person who invests themselves fully in the identity of Democrat or MAGA probably didn't experience neglect, whether they accept that categorization enlarges the pixels is a different matter.

I couldn't make sense of most of your post, sorry.

According to my recent reading on recognition, people who have any kind of non-binariness probably experienced neglect in childhood, so that they never developed a clear sense of self, which requires being recognized by others. So if someone tells you they have no favorite football team, you can ask them if they were neglected. They probably were.

This seems a bit much for me. Consider the most popular variety of ontological realism, physicalism. Is this based wholly on whim and faith? — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a misunderstanding. Physicalism is not a variety of ontological realism. Ontological realism just says we have the ability to declare what the world is made of, whether physicalism, idealism, or whatever. An ontological antirealist (from soft to hard approaches), says we don't have this ability, for various reasons.

An example of a justification for ontological realism would be that God told us in some book that the world is his mind, so it's idealism. So though we don't have the means to verify that, we believe it because we believe everything in the sacred book by faith.

Physicalism, for obvious reasons, isn't likely to have that kind of justification, but whatever justification a physicalist comes up with, it will come down to faith.

Second, it's not as if anti-realists are free of their own epistemic and metaphysical presuppositions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, they are free. A hard ontological antirealist (like me), doesn't believe ontology is anymore than a sort of philosophical game. It has nothing to do with what it purports to be.

However, if the very issues at hand are various forms of anti-realism, e.g. anti-realism re values (i.e. the very idea of anything being better or worse at all), anti-realism re truth (i.e. the very idea of anything ever being truly better or worse), anti-realism re linguistic meaning, etc. it seems to me that it will be impossible to appeal to "better or worse language," without begging the question re anti-realism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is true. A behaviorist, for instance, can't complain much about wording, because no language use is supposed to actually refer, or convey meaning, do ontology, etc.

Just be aware that some anti-realisms exist because of apparently insurmountable problems with the corresponding realism (no pun intended.) If one persists in being a hard ontological realist, for instance, it appears the basis is pure whim... or a kind of faith. There's no power to persuade.

If you were hoping that one day people will occupy Antarctica, probably not. It would take a 5-10 degree global shift upward for 10,000 years. Humans won't be able to accomplish that because the oceans will absorb the CO2 too quickly.

Then how do you explain a football game? — Banno

I don't.