Kripke allows that mathematicians can adequately specify the rules of addition. That's not being called into question. — frank
There are rules for which the process that brings them into effect is quite clear. They are what we call laws, but there are other varieties. They are imperatives, not really different from the order given by the general. Other rules, like mathematical rules about how to calculate are different. There are proofs of such rules. What makes them effective? Which is to say, what justifies them? That's where the sceptical pressure (which W also applied) and his appeal to practices comes in. But that involves saying that the rule doesn't really of itself produce facts; human beings have to carry out the calculations (or psersuad machines to do it for them. Those results are facts, i.e. have the authority of facts? Only the calculation, which can't produce a wrong result. That means that if a result does not fit in to our wider lives in the way it is expected to, we look for the fault in the calculation and the calculator, not the rule.The rule is in effect, and in some sense then it produces facts — Moliere
If you mean a fact that justifies the rule and/or justifies how the rule is applied. I sometimes think that the quickest way to state the problem is to point out that the rule cannot be a fact, because the rule has imperative force and no fact can do that - a version of the fact/value distinction. For the same reason, no fact can, of itself, justify the rule.The skeptic has to be pointing out that we're inclined to believe there's a fact where there is none in order for the skeptic to have a point at all. — Moliere
logical nihilism or pluralism. — Apustimelogist
The side effect of neat clean concepts is they lose all the fuzzy non-linearity which makes them exceptionally good at being used in real life. — Apustimelogist
because here we have truths that we arrive at because of the conditions of assertability — Moliere
neurons that are physical enslaved — Apustimelogist
I hope so. It's the only way that we get reliable information - and, in great part, we do.impelling the perceptions forced upon us — Apustimelogist
I'm sure there's a lot of quick and dirty solutions and heuristic dodges involved. Anything remotely like formal logic would be too slow to be useful.making it look like we are acting in these kinds of mysterious ways that seem somewhat messy and underdetermined by our concepts and so can only be described as "games, practises, forms of life". — Apustimelogist
I was only talking about relying on a memorized table, instead of doing the basic calculations. It's an example of a quick and dirty solution.I dunno; I think looking at this way, as I seem to understand what you have said, plays down everything else that Wittgenstein seems to be getting at in philosophical investigations. — Apustimelogist
One result is that I now know how to defuse Goodman's "grue". — Ludwig V
This point is made elsewhere. The complication is that the private language argument does rely on some of the things he says about rule-following, particularly the importance of understanding what does and does not conform to the rules about ostensive definition. But numbers are not sensations, so the cases are not exactly the same.Another is that it seems that Kripke has made the private language argument superfluous. I need to think about that. — Ludwig V
W likes lots of examples. In one way, Kripke's case is just another one, although W does mention the point at PI 201 "This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule. The answer was: if every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule, then it can also be brought into conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here." I had forgotten this quotation. In time, I could no doubt find what he was referring back to. It gives a short answer to both Goodman and Kripke.A third - minimal - result is that Kripke has added to the stock of examples that pose Wittgenstein's problem. — Ludwig V
Isn't that an accurate reflection of what we've been saying about practices?The fourth is that I notice that we have all appealed to the wider context, both of mathematics and of practical life to resolve it. Kripke's case is effective only if we adopt his very narrow view, — Ludwig V
This is all what I meant when I said that meanings and definitions are so impoverished that language should not be usable, yet it is. — Apustimelogist
therefore it seems weird to me to focus so, on whether some particular rule was used in some specific case. — wonderer1
we impose labels on the world at out own discretion and there are no fixed set of boundaries for those concepts or force us to impose concepts in a particular way. — Apustimelogist
Can you elaborate? — Apustimelogist
I think it'd depend upon how we're trying to judge if someone knows something or not. — Moliere
I admire your memory! But isn't it exactly the same as we all (?) do when we memorize the standard multiplication tables and recall what 12x11 is. (It's just a convention that we stop at 12. The table for 13 is no different in principle from the table for 12.) Multiplication reduces to addition, but adding 12 11's by that procedure is long and boring. By memorizing the standard multiplication tables, we have a quicker way of dealing with some questions and of calculating bigger numbers. (Incidentally, how do you deal with 2 to the power of 35?)For example, having worked with digital logic a fair bit, I have all the powers of 2 up to 2^13 memorized and if I see 2048 + 2048 I simply recognize that the sum is 4096 without following any step by step decimal addition rules. — wonderer1
I agree with that. Though Wittgenstein would ask what makes the sign-post point? Again, there's a practice of reading sign-posts, which we all somehow pick up/learn. Perhaps by recognizing a similarity between a pointing finger and the sign-post.rules and explicit definitions are more like signposts than prescriptions on how to behave. — Apustimelogist
I agree with that. It's a pointless difficulty. Like most sceptical arguments. I like Hume's response - essentially that it is not possible to refute the argument but it has no power to persuade me to believe the conclusion. But that's not how the philosophical game is played - for better or worse.I don't think this problem has anything to do with practical problems. The quus issue has no bearing on someones ability to perform math. — Apustimelogist
There's a nest of complications buried in that. In one way, you are just raising the original question again. However, there is a fact of the matter involved - that I gave 125 as the answer to the question. Whether I was following the rule "+1" is another question. In one way, it depends on whether I had that rule in mind when I gave the answer. In another way, it depends on whether we agree with the answer - and that may depends on the wider context (consistency and practical outcomes).Buy "you are following x rule" is factual. — Apustimelogist
Forgive me, I don't really understand what "conditions of assertability" are as opposed to "truth-conditions". Are they facts? In which case, we may be no further forward.It's true because that's the answer we should obtain according to the conditions of assertability, but there are no truth-conditions that make it true. — Moliere
That's an interesting question. In one way, the desired result is to defuse the question so that I don't get bothered by it - that is, don't need to take it seriously. Whether that's interesting or not depends on whether you are philosophically inclined or not.What do you think is the interesting result of this story then? — Apustimelogist
I agree with that. One of the difficulties is that the text is not difficult to understand (contrast Hegel or Derrida). The difficulty is to understand what the point is. That's where the commentators can help - and sometimes hinder, so don't read them uncritically.It (sc. Philosophical Investigationscan be really difficult to read to be fair. Its one of those books where possibly what the book says has not been as influential as what othwrs have said about the book. — Apustimelogist
And as for people claiming they are following "other rules", there might be some plausibility to that if the other rules yielded the same results. — Janus
It's worth remembering that in geometry, it turned out that rules other than Euclid's (with all their intuitive plausbility) turned out to yield consistent systems, which, in the end, turned out to have "practical" applications.Judging from the ordinary understanding of basic arithmetic and logic I would say their results are self-evident to anyone who cares to think about it. — Janus
I don't think that's a particularly interesting result. Rules are instructions, so they aren't either true or false. That is, the rules of chess are not true or false; but they do yield statements that are true or false, such as "Your king is in check".indeed, it seems that Kripkes proof shows rules are not objectively true. — Banno
Well, I would suggest that what is at stake is the refutation of a certain conception of what rules are - the idea that logic/mathematics is some kind of structure that determines the results of all possible applications in advance. Nothing can reach out to infinity. What we have is ways of dealing with situations as they come up which do not appear to have any limitations to their applicability. (That phrase could be misinterpreted. I mean just that "+1" can be recursively applied indefinitely. What we can't do is apply it indefinitely.)Well, neither is quite right. It's a question about meaning. What do we claim when we say "Jenny can add"? And more generally, what do we claim when we say that someone follows a rule? — Banno
Yes, but that doesn't mean that we cannot have ways of responding to, and dealing with, problems as they come up - if necessary, we can invent them - as we do when we discover irrational numbers, etc. or find reasons to change the status of 0 or 1. In the case of 0, we have to modify the rules of arithmetical calculation.Again, the point is underdetermination so its not about whether one rule is workable or not, any time you use addition it has an underdetermined characterization, and your ability to use it and practise it has little to do with that. — Apustimelogist
And I'm glad I did some of the homework. — Moliere
So we still don't have any basis for determining that S followed a particular rule. We just treat certain circumstances as if she did. — frank
Of course, applications of "+1" include practical applications. The point is that the rule must be applied to each case; it does not reach out to the future and the possible and apply itself in advance.Imagine there is a wedding, and there are 68 guests from one side of the family and 57 from the other side. — Janus
Yes, that's part of W's point. We can apply the rule to imaginary or possible cases, but we have to formulate them first. We cannot apply a rule to infinity. Hence mathematical induction.There is a forward problem of mapping rules — Apustimelogist
.It is natural simply because we can intuitively get the logic — Janus
If they don't make any difference, how are they alternative?It is therefore possible to use alternative concepts without any difference in behaviour. — Apustimelogist
There would only be a logic to countermand if there was a sensible definition of these things in the first place which specified the correct behavior without requiring prior understanding — Apustimelogist
What is fundamental to understanding concepts is not their definition, but knowing how to apply the definition. That is a practice, which is taught. Learning to count and measure defines number and quantity.I don't think you can give me a satisfying definition of counting or quantity, — Apustimelogist
There is a natural logic of these things. But we had to learn how to do it. It seems natural because it is a) useful and b) ingrained. "Second nature".the natural logic of counting and addition; — Janus
Here there's a few bases from which we could confuse one another: arithmetic as a practice, arithmetic as a part of our rational intuition, arithmetic as rule-following, arithmetic as it was in its genesis, and arithmetic as it is. — Moliere
There are other ways to prove the error, sure; I just gave the one I knew about — Mww
This makes it clear that the question is whether action is known only non-mediately, and that would seem to be false, which makes the argument as reformulated valid, but unsound. — Janus
If anything is an appearance it is known mediately,
The individual knows that he (or she) acts non-mediately
Thus, action cannot be an appearance. — KantDane21
Those things seem to be observer dependent. As with all other properties. — schopenhauer1
Either way, what does this particular problem reveal that other objects don't? — schopenhauer1
Sure. But we've already stayed the hand holding the razor to allow unobservable noumena to exist. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Clearly, in a universe with an observer, two things identical in every way can be distinguished by the boundaries of the two things and their positions in space and time. — schopenhauer1
Moreover, if you do consider it, what stops us from considering an infinite number of such in principle forever unobservable entities? — Count Timothy von Icarus
For example, suppose we posit a new fundamental particle, the nullon, that interacts with nothing, nada, no way to see it through any interactions, by definition. This would be an example that by definition cannot be observed. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm contemplating a thread about Davidson's project. It would be a long one. — Banno
I don't see this approach as being of help here. It's a quagmire. — Banno
The idea is something like that we sometimes both use and mention; SO "Galileo said that the Earth moves" might be analysed as a conjunct of "The Earth moves" and "Galileo said that", where the demonstrative "that" points to "The Earth moves", or even to Galileo's utterance of "The Earth moves". — Banno
the object of a belief is not a proposition qua proposition, just as when I look through a mirror to see a reflected object my act of sight does not terminate in the mirror itself. — Leontiskos
the subjective act of belief prescinds from notions of propositionality or representation. — Leontiskos
It is curious, though, that 'belief' insofar as it is distinguished from knowledge really is propositional in the way that Searle is talking about. If I say, "I believe X but I do not know X," then apparently there is an intentional propositionality, and one which is much more common than Searle's example of Bernoulli's principle. — Leontiskos
Beliefs are stated as an association between an agent and a proposition. This superficial structure serves to show that a belief is always both about a proposition and about some agent. It might be misleading as the proposition is not the object of the belief but constitutes the belief. — Banno
This association is such that if the agent acts in some way then there is a belief and a desire that together are sufficient to explain the agent's action. Banno wants water; he believes he can pour a glass from the tap; so he goes to the tap to pour a glass of water. — Banno
Some folk hereabouts think something like that there are beliefs which are not propositional. It remains unclear to me how that could work. It's supposed that there are hinge beliefs that are in some way not propositional, but that is quite problematic, since hinge beliefs are also supposed to ground other beliefs by implication, and implication relies on propositions. — Banno
Unless your point is that Lois might have inconsistent beliefs? — Banno
It seems worth making the point that parsing natural languages into formal languages is not a game of finding the one, correct, interpretation. Rather one chooses a formalisation that suits one's purpose. — Banno
Or is it better thought of as a sensation, a feeling, an impression, an intuition? — Banno
If my belief is directed at the world independent of any proposition, then how could I ever be wrong about what I believe? — Leontiskos
actions are related in an explanatory or causal manner. — Leontiskos
It has had an effect on what I said, so if you count that as an action, I guess you could say it did.
But I think that is a different definition of action than the one I had in mind. — Janus
The proposition is the content of the belief, not the object of the belief.(Searle). — Sam26
It is not inconsistent to say that Lois Lane believes Clark Kent wears glasses, a sentence that can be parsed more formally. — Banno
I'm saying that if we're to say that Mary has a belief, then for us to know that Mary believes X it must be expressed in some action (linguistic or nonlinguistic). — Sam26
It is legitimate to describe what belief does as a way of understanding what belief is. — Leontiskos
one belief can cause multiple effects, and therefore a belief and its effect are not the same thing (even when it comes to thinking). — Leontiskos
the examples of beliefs which do not show themselves in actions seem to be countless. — Janus
Methinks that the Anglo bias towards empiricism is rearing its head and conflating beliefs themselves with the ways in which we empirically detect beliefs in others, even to the point that a belief is re-defined to be the detection of a belief — Leontiskos
In my view, the conception/meaning of wavelengths is entangled with everyday experience. — plaque flag
In short, indirect realism that takes the scientific image as the hidden real seems to miss that this image is very much on the side of appearance and only his its meaning in context. — plaque flag
I don’t understand the difference between “you have the experience of falling freely” and “you can experience falling freely.” — Patterner
No I'm sorry, this got misunderstood. — goremand
I can doubt "plainly" without invoking any tricks of the mind. — goremand
It seems to me the text is liked because many people shared with him that assumption but struggled with putting it into words, — goremand
I can doubt "plainly" without invoking any tricks of the mind. — goremand
Which conclusion do you mean? I try to read him, but can’t usually get far. — Patterner
Are you saying a machine that was given consciousness would no longer be a machine? — Patterner
At the moment, the only solid stance I’ll take about subjective experiences is that they exist. — Patterner
What do you think the things dualists invented the term for actually are? I mean, you see blue, and taste sugar, and feel pain. What category of existence do you attribute to them? — Patterner
Totally color blind people surely believe those of us who see in color have subjective experience. — Patterner
I don’t know that argument, or how it deflates the debate. Actually, not sure exactly what debate you mean. — Patterner
I think something we don’t understand is going on....Something is added by experience. — Patterner
We’ve created machines that do the same. — Patterner
I’m asking your opinion. Do you think qualia are non-physical things? — Patterner
I don’t see anything wrong with anyone writing about topics on which there is not universal agreement, even controversial topics, from their pov. — Patterner
But there’s an obvious difference between that action and a car’s or brain’s. — Patterner
Do you think the definition is correct? — Patterner
That list of events captures - or perhaps describes, it all. — Patterner
If we did the same for a brain, a much more gargantuan task, — Patterner
The fact that consciousness is not physically reducible is the reason some people say it doesn’t exist. — Patterner
I think we have enough brain scans and dissections to know that the brain does not reshape itself into to match things we see. — Patterner
There is no hint of qualia. — Patterner
We need a different list to capture the experience. — Patterner
Nagel, according to this video summation of What Is It Like to Be a Bat? (particularly beginning at 17:07) says such a list is not possible. — Patterner