Thanks for your thorough comments earlier. — NotAristotle

Sure thing. :up:

I am unsure whether a possible world semantics interpretation of modal logic can still be extensional if it refers to, not only currently existing things, but in addition, "possible things." — NotAristotle

Right, and the second article of the OP is related to this problem. There are two other places which are good references for this question:

• "Can We Speak About That Which Is Not? Actualism and Possibilism in Analytic Philosophy and Scholasticism," by Lukáš Novák.
• My thread on the problem of reference and intentional identity

All that said, I think possible world semantics definitely works extensionally, at least when the referents are well-defined in the actual world. — NotAristotle

The objection you raise is a good one. The objection I raised supposes that possible world semantics is a bona fide extensional logic, but then questions whether set theory adequately translates natural language speech about possibility and necessity. A simple way to see this is to consider the decision procedure for each. When someone inquires about the possibility of a black frog, they are not getting out their set of all possible things and thumbing through it to see if there are any black frogs in the set. This is but one example of the way the objection comes to bear, and if logic is supposed to reflect real thinking, then lazy logical approximations will be a problem to one extent or another. If you asked a (concretist) modal logician whether they are employing their logic because they think it is true, accurate, or reflective of good reasoning, they would reply, "No, I use it because of convenience: because the set-theoretic engine was pre-made. It doesn't entirely fit modal reasoning, but it's fit to purpose." At that point we always need to ask, "To which purposes is it fit, and to which purposes is it not fit?" This is the question that unreflective logicians hate, as well as nominalists in general.

Nevertheless I think there's a real gap in philosophical discourse where the unconditioned should be. If everything is contingent, then the best that can be hoped for is a kind of social consensus or inter-subjective agreement. But then, if we're part of a flawed culture, there's no reason that either will provide us with a proper moral foundation. — Wayfarer

And perhaps more pointed is the fact that such cultures have certainly existed. If morality is just intersubjective agreement then you have a form of "might makes right" where instead of "might" you have "the will of the majority" (i.e. pure democratic totalitarianism), in which case the various evil cultures throughout history cannot have actually been evil at all.

Good. Exactly. I think this is the key issue we should explore. — Tom Storm

Okay, great.

I'd need to think though how to answer thsi without making a mess of the reasoning. I'm not ideally placed to do this. :wink: We really need an experienced anti-foundationalist. — Tom Storm

As I said, I'm interested in talking to people, not interacting with ideologies that they may or may not hold. I would rather talk about what you and I actually believe than try to wield ill-defined labels.

Best I can do is this; and I'm going the long way around. An anti-foundationalist might argue that in a society caring about solidarity ("inclusion" to use the trendy woke term) is not about metaphysical necessity, it’s about practical consequences and shared aims. — Tom Storm

Again, leaving so-called "anti-foundationalism" to the side, if you want to say that a person in a society that shares the same aims can justify courses of action based on those aims, then I agree. This is why I said, "your claim that you can justify the conclusion of an argument to those who agree with (or share) the premises is not at all controversial." The question is whether people have any reason to share your aims.

Cultures that reject solidarity tend to produce fear, domination, and instability. They undermine trust and cooperation, which woudl seem essential for any functioning society. So even without universal moral facts, there are strong pragmatic reasons for solidarity: it helps communities flourish, reduces harm, and supports mutual security.

Now you can respond, “So what?” And I woudl say such a quesion is morality in action. Do we want to find ways of working together or not? Sure, we don’t have to. We could create a culture of death, pain, and suffering if we wanted. But who would really support that? Human beings are social animals who cooperate to attain goals and thrive. That's morality right there, pragmatic and unfounded on anything beyond human experince. — Tom Storm

Sure, but you're relying on all sorts of metaphysical premises in this. For example: that humans are social animals, that human flourishing requires cooperation, and that human flourishing ought be sought. That's pretty basic Aristotelianism (as opposed to Hobbesianism), and it is filled with metaphysical presuppositions. There is no tension between experience and metaphysics. Metaphysics is known precisely through experience.

Seems to me that without moral facts I can still argue that slavery is wrong if I believe it is not an effective way to achieve the goal of overall flourishing. If you ask me why we should care about overall flourishing, I would say: because flourishing reflects the kinds of lives and communities we have reason to value. — Tom Storm

Then you're committed to the value of human flourishing and you think everyone should recognize your value whether or not they do. In that case you would seem to be a moral realist, someone who sees human flourishing as an intrinsic telos of human beings.

Good to know and apologies if I have made some assumptions. — Tom Storm

No worries. My point about hypothetical vs. non-hypothetical imperatives or ought-judgments could also be revised in relation to this:

Anti-foundationalists, by contrast, hold that we can still justify our views through shared practices, shared goals and reasoning, even if there’s no single universal truth to ground them. — Tom Storm

So, as above, you could rationally say, "If you share my premises then it is wrong for you to hold slaves," but it would be irrational for you to simply say, "It is wrong for you to hold slaves." If there is no reason for anyone else to share your premises, then we have the same problem I pointed out in my first post. In other words, I would want to ask why anyone should share your values in the first place. That is the key question, and your claim that you can justify the conclusion of an argument to those who agree with (or share) the premises is not at all controversial. (Incidentally, this is what Rawls eventually admitted about his work, namely that it is not capable of reaching out beyond his own cultural context).

Wouldn't you say that there is a sense in which Marxist or Marxist-inspired ideologies are supposed to be based on compassion for the victim or the oppressed or the disenfranchised? Whether they actually succeed in helping such people, it does seem that there is a sense in which the concept of compassion is especially operative within such ideologies.

Leontiskos (one of our more rigorous and philosophically sophisticated members and, perhaps, a classicist) seems to argue that anti-foundationalism is a variation of relativism... — Tom Storm

Just as a preliminary point, I don't think I've ever said anything like that. I don't even know what "foundationalism" or "anti-foundationalism" are supposed to be. On TPF "foundationalism" is often used as a kind of vague slur. It is one of those words that is applied to one's opponents but is never adopted by anyone themselves.

Here's one way to put the argument I've made: If nothing is right or wrong, then it is not logically coherent to place blame. Or else, if moral realism is false, then there is no ground for basic moral claims. So:

Is slavery wrong? I can definitely see how it would be wrong from a human values perspective. If you essentially accept the Western tradition, that life should be about values like flourishing and freedom and well-being and the minimisation of suffering, then slavery is not an ideal way to go about it. — Tom Storm

On this view if you see a slaveholder you could rationally engage them by saying, "If you agree that freedom is an ultimate value then it is wrong for you to hold slaves," but it would not be rational to simply say, "It is wrong for you to hold slaves." On such a view there can be hypothetical imperatives but not non-hypothetical imperatives.

What I am interested in here is whether it is possible to make moral claims from either position. I can certainly see how simple relativism makes it a performative contradiction. Hence the relativist fallacy. — Tom Storm

So then the question remains: Is it possible to make moral claims from the position of "anti-foundationalism"? That depends on what you mean by "anti-foundationalism," but in a general sense I am more interested in what you yourself believe than what so-called "anti-foundationalists" believe.

But I will try to revisit this when I have a bit more time.

I apologise that I seem unable to see this. — Tom Storm

But it seems that you do see it, at least in part, with claims like these:

If someone wants to claim that all morality is just an opinion and all opinions are equally valid, then they undermine their own ability to debate moral positions. — Tom Storm

But I will merge any reply I have here into your new thread on the topic.

Okay, I will give it a go. — Paine

Paine, here is the question I asked and you deferred, claiming that you would answer it in time:

It's this clause of your post: "[Acceptance] is actively being opposed by efforts that want to have power over the next generation."

Which side of the broad sharp line wants to have power over the next generation, and which side doesn't? — Leontiskos

Is that the question you were attempting to answer? You yourself claimed that in you were trying to draw a "broad sharp line." I am asking how what you said in that post relates to this "broad sharp line" you spoke of, specifically by asking about your claim about wanting power over the next generation.

Could you quote the passage you're referring to here? — frank

Modal logic, therefore, is intensional: in general, the truth value of a sentence is determined by something over and above its form and the extensions of its components. — Menzel, 1.1

Your quote of Menzel follows directly on this premise.

Note:

the central motivation for possible world semantics was to deliver an extensional semantics for modal languages — Menzel

For Menzel the whole issue has to do with attempting to turn something that is prima facie intensional into something that is extensional. This is also one of the basic lines of demarcation between "concretism" and "abstractionism." He presents possible world semantics as an attempt to "extensionalize" modal logic, or as an attempt to argue that the intensionality of modal logic is only apparent.

I reject your definition as completely different from the one in the article we are supposed to be reading, which I quoted above. Taking a definition from a different context is not helpful, only a distraction or a deliberate attempt at equivocation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep. :up:

---

The words "necessarily" and "possibly" do not denote extensional sets. — Leontiskos

Can you say what you mean by this? — NotAristotle

Modern logic is built on the foundation of set theory (cf. SEP - Emergence of First-Order Logic), and therefore its ability to translate and track natural reasoning depends on how closely the meaning of any given natural reasoning coheres with set theory.

So we begin with something as simple as set inclusion, with things like this:

x ∈ B (x is an element of the set B)
x ⊆ B (x is a subset of the set B)

A set such as B involves quantitative extension. For example, B might be the set of three things: {x, y, z}.

Quantificational logic builds on this foundation by envisioning everything, at bottom, as a form of set membership. So if we have a natural language statement such as, "There is a green frog," then quantificational logic will try to translate it as follows:

∃x(G(x) ∧ (F(x))

...Which, commonly expressed, means, "There exists an x such that x is green and x is a frog." But everything here is based on set theory. A predicate such as G(x) will be true precisely when x is an element in the set defined by the predicate G. Similarly, the quantifiers (∃ and ∀) are also founded on set theory, where the quantifiers are intended to "quantify over" all "things" (or elements of the domain one is speaking to). They are statements about the domain conceived as a set.

Modal logic builds on this foundation by thinking of natural language modal terms ("necessarily" and "possibly") basically as extensional sets (cf. SEP - Modern Origins of Modal Logic). So if we have a natural language statement such as, "It is possible that there is a black frog," then modal logic will try to translate it as follows:

◊∃x(B(x) ∧ F(x))

The meaning here is similar to the first-order sentence above, except that the possibility operator is included (◊). Possibility and necessity operators in modal logic (◊ and □) are conceived along the lines of quantifiers, and are built on the same foundation of set theory that quantifiers are built on. So, simplifying a bit, the formal modal logic sentence about the black frog envisions a set which contains all possible things, and it affirms that the "existence" of a black frog belongs to that set of all possible things (i.e. possible "worlds"). So everything is reducible to set theory: the functions (B and F), the existential quantifier (∃), and the modal quantifier (◊).

Now this is a simplification, for set theory, first-order logic, and modal logic all took a long time to develop, and this time was used to iron out all sorts of wrinkles. But the gist remains true, namely that set theory is the foundation for all of these forms of modern logic. In a sense logicians did this because once set theory was developed, if one could make other forms of discourse conform to set theory then the developed power of set theory could be applied to boolean logic, or predicates, or modal notions, etc. It's a bit like an engineer who engineers an engine for a train, and then tries to simply modify that engine for all other purposes rather than creating a new kind of engine for other things. It is also closely related to the desire to extend the precision of mathematics to all human reasoning (which is an old error that Aristotle points out explicitly in his Metaphysics). But let's come back to your question.

When someone says, "It is possible that there is a black frog," they are actually not saying the equivalent of ◊∃x(B(x) ∧ F(x)). When we talk about what is possible, we are not talking about a set, namely the set of all possible things. And when we talk about what is necessary, we are not talking about a set, namely the set of all necessary things. In natural language there are a million different shades of possibility and necessity, and the binary logic of set theory simply cannot capture the semantic nuance involved. Pigeonholing modal language into set theory can result in half-truths and partial representations, but to pretend it is semantically equivalent is a serious error. Now good logicians actually know this, but there are lots of bad logicians who either do not know it or else are not consistent in applying it. Those bad logicians have no understanding of the historical situatedness of modern forms of logic, and they will tend to try to interpret someone's claim as ◊∃x(B(x) ∧ F(x)) and pretend that there is no difference at all, even browbeating the person if they protest that they are not talking about sets, or that the set machine is inadequate to represent their claim.

Menzel is fairly clear about the equivocation that occurs when trying to shoehorn modal language into a quantificational apparatus:

The idea of possible worlds raised the prospect of extensional respectability for modal logic, not by rendering modal logic itself extensional, but by endowing it with an extensional semantic theory — one whose own logical foundation is that of classical predicate logic and, hence, one on which possibility and necessity can ultimately be understood along classical Tarskian lines. Specifically, in possible world semantics, the modal operators are interpreted as quantifiers over possible worlds... — Menzel, Possible Worlds (SEP)

The point is clear enough, "Modal logic is not extensional, but modern logicians endow it with an extensional semantic theory." Or as I said earlier, modern logicians pretend that modal terms are extensional because they have a pre-made extensional engine, and that engine can't power non-extensional reasoning.

The historical background for all of modern logic is late Medieval nominalism (cf. SEP - The Medieval Problem of Universals, by Gyula Klima). Basing logic on set theory is a quintessentially nominalistic move, and was already being anticipated by figures like Peter Abelard in the 12th century. Yet the Medievals always understood something that Moderns consistently fail to understand, namely that repurposing a formalization engine for logic has intrinsic limitations and problems (link). The reason the modern does not see this is because the modern period has to do with control over nature, following Francis Bacon, and a set-theoretic engine aligns well with that telos.

(Edit: As alludes to, embedded sub-forms of extensionality were introduced into modal logic as it evolved, primarily by Saul Kripke. There are questions about whether sub-extensionalities indexed to possible worlds are adequate to represent modal language, but there is also the fact that the super-structure and paradigm is all extensional. Given that extensionality is the water that the fish of the modern logician swims in, it is no coincidence that "possible worlds" are inherently conceived along the lines of quantitative, set-theoretic entities.)

Logic may well be formal and content-neutral, but it does not operate in a metaphysical vacuum. — Wayfarer

Logic is actually not content neutral, although there are lots of folks on TPF who refuse to admit this. Heck, if logic were content neutral then logicians wouldn’t constantly be arguing with one another over logic. Simpson’s paper, “Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein on Self and Object,” is a great expose of logical non-neutrality in Wittgenstein.

Logic tells us nothing about the world; — J

This is wrong, plain and simple. It’s actually a bit strange that you would say this. If you understood what you were doing in all of your threads on Kimhi, or Frege, or Rodl, you would understand that you were probing various ways in which logic is metaphysically laden, which is to say that the logical system that a logician dreams up will tell us a great deal about his views of the world.

I’m not sure. I’d say humans generally find suffering unpleasant and therefore try to avoid it. And because we’re social animals, we also often try to reduce suffering for members of our own tribe, community, or culture. I’m not convinced many of us care much about the welfare of strangers or the suffering of people we don’t like. Personally, I have a strong dislike of suffering and wouldn’t want even my enemies (not that I really have any) to suffer, but that’s just my own emotional preference. I suppose I’d like others to try to reduce suffering as well, but I have a mental block when it comes to calling it “true” that we should all reduce suffering. I’m not sure in what sense I can say it is true. — Tom Storm

In my late teens I was not yet a Christian but I was reading C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. His arguments made me realize that I had to choose between relativism and moral realism. I realized that if I thought there were no moral facts, then I could not in good conscience rely on moral claims, or say things that entailed moral claims. For example, I could not accuse people of being intolerant. If moral realism is false then at the end of the day there is no good reason for people not to be intolerant, and I would be highly irrational for deeming intolerance blameworthy or wrong.

You can take any moral proposition you like: “Slavery is wrong,” “Rape is wrong,” “Discrimination against gays is wrong,” etc. If you don’t hold that there are any true moral propositions, then obviously you can’t maintain that such things are true.

Thanks, I see what you’re saying, but it never occurred to me that moral positions require objective facts. — Tom Storm

I think 'fact' is a word that hinders rather than helps in these discussions. All that is required for what I've said is that someone thinks it is true that everyone should not be intolerant. Whether this is a 'fact' is not very important.

As a non-philosopher, my view has generally been that humans are social and cooperative: we seem to try to reduce suffering and promote well-being, and our moral views tend to reflect what supports those goals. Moral discussions are simply humans attempting to find the best ways to achieve this. — Tom Storm

But is it valid to say, "Humans generally try to reduce suffering, therefore it is true that everyone should try to reduce suffering"?

My point about "fruitful dialogue" has to do with reason-giving in moral contexts. So if someone thinks their moral utterances are true, require reasons, and can be rationally engaged, then the problem I've pointed out dissipates. But at the prevailing meta-ethical level this simply isn't true on a cultural level.

I would suggest doing some historical reading on the ways that different cultures used different bases. For example, "History of Bases used in Ancient Civilizations."

- I thought I might be. :razz:

It is worth noting that one could revise the so-called "Hume's law" as follows: One cannot get meaning from an 'is'. Such is the point at which we've now arrived. When meaning (or anything else) is separated from 'is' (being), it inevitably suffocates. To say that meaning does not come from being is little different than saying that meaning does not exist. Contrariwise, anyone who leads a meaningful life would of course reject such a "law."

The Scientism angle is based on the idea that science is super important, and that its value derives from its neutrality or meaninglessness. If science had an intrinsic meaning—so the story goes—then it would lose its neutrality and it would no longer be super important (...and nevermind the fact that the import/value with which science is imbued by our culture is chock full of meaning).

I’m don't know if there are moral facts or if morality is grounded in anything beyond emotional responses, perhaps emotivism is correct, of which, presumably, there are more and less defensible versions. — Tom Storm

When someone brings up tolerance there is usually an accusation at play. There is usually the premise, "One should not be intolerant." Now it surely does not make sense to say, "One should not be intolerant," while at the same time being undecided on whether there are moral "facts," no? And emotivism of whatever variety will be of no help unless one believes that emotions are sufficient grounds for binding moral norms.

But what I find more interesting is the cultural incoherence of strong moral claims in the midst of strong moral anti-realism. The cultural standard will reproach me just as forcefully if I say that binding moral norms exist, as if I fail to recognize the binding moral norm of intolerance. I find that such a deep level of incoherence is a dead end. There must be at least a minimum level of coherence and consistency before fruitful dialogue can occur.

Are you asking me to explain what I said without reference to what I just said? — Paine

You told me that you would answer my question after I answered a new question you had. I was just hoping you would follow through on that.

@Wayfarer

The problem of Scientism seems more far-reaching than I had previously understood. It is very obvious in the religious sphere, it is fairly obvious in the logical sphere (Ayer, Tarski, etc.), but as I read Simpson's Goodness and Nature I find him illustrating convincingly that Scientism is also a dominant confusion in ethics (with the 20th century figures of Moore, Stevenson, Hare, Anscombe, Foot, Lovibound, Lee, and Warnack; as well as the earlier figures of Bacon, Descartes, Hume, Kant, etc.).

The meta-ethical confusion seems to bear directly on "the meaning crisis," given the way it precludes non-scientific human acts in a very forceful way, beginning with any acts that pertain to "values" or "oughts."

You provide an able and energetic response, and I think it succeeds in large part. I missed your post. For some reason I did not receive a notification of a reply, but let me try to give something of a belated response.

I just don't agree that Adorno's focus is unhealthily obsessive or that it risks trampling over reality on the way to the guaranteed outcome of a program. The more common complaint is that Adorno doesn't offer anything at all that can function as a program, nor any projected outcome beyond the minimal hope of an end to suffering and domination. — Jamal

That is how I took him at the outset of the thread, but what you did with Adorno made me rethink that and suppose that there is more superficiality involved after all. If one can simply appeal to Adorno to solve a complex moral or meta-ethical issues, then it does seem that Adorno, "risks trampling over reality on the way to the guaranteed outcome of a program." But I am willing to consider that your appeal was somehow misplaced or premature.

I'm reminded of the famous charge that relativism is self-refuting, which Adorno criticized: — Jamal

I don't see that Adorno succeeds in brushing away the self-refutation of relativism. What does he do? He calls the objection "wretched," gives a single sentence of justification, and then moves on to a critique that he likes better. And his critique is fine as far as it goes, but he doesn't provide any argument for why the less "fruitful" objection is "wretched." This is probably because he doesn't have one.

In other words, this popular argument against relativism mistakes a critical stance for a positive, universal proposition. Similarly, in your criticism of Adorno you mistake his critical focus on identity thinking for some first principle or originary ground—something that might function as the foundation of a system. — Jamal

I don't think this is right, but neither you nor Adorno are offering much to respond to in the way of argument. Obviously the person who thinks relativism is self-refuting would say that the "critical vs positive" distinction is ad hoc, and therefore it is hard to believe that this is a serious attempt to point up some problem with that objection. Indeed, if by "wretched" Adorno means something like, "The interlocutor would not be amenable to this objection," then his own objection surely suffers from the same problem, no?

In a general sense Adorno's quibble is usually taken into account by speaking about performative self-contradiction rather than simple self-contradiction, and that would include the relativist's belief that he has license to argue "critically" rather than "positively" in order to avoid the matter of applying his own criteria to himself. But in a more general sense, there is a strain of continentalism that sees simple arguments as passé. Like the basketball player who loves to dazzle with complicated plays and maneuvers, they have a disdain for the simple layup, and would almost argue that it should not count. Yet even if such individuals must label it "wretched," it still nevertheless counts. In some sense it counts more, because even (especially?) the uneducated can see that it is correct.

1. Adorno is not anti-system in any simple way. He regards system as a necessary or inevitable moment in, or element of, all significant philosophical thought, one that he has to pass through himself. Relatedly, he is not simply against identity thinking or classificatory concepts. These are all part of a process. Note that I do not mean that he uses them just to later on throw them away like Wittgenstein, rather that he uses them dialectically, such that they are always in play. Used like this they articulate what they cannot capture alone. The "system" of negative dialectics, if you want to call it that, is not a positive edifice but a set of critical movements designed to fail productively so as to demonstrate the priority of the object negatively, i.e., not by stating it but by showing the failure of the subject to fully constitute it. — Jamal

This is good, and I have no objection. This is precisely how one could achieve the end in question without overt recourse to ontological or theological considerations. Whether it succeeds is another question, but it is not one that I can answer at the moment.

2. System is not best characterized psychologically as monomania, but as a form of thought, one that tends to comprehensiveness and closure, synthesis and reconciliation, and the subsumption of the non-identical under identity. System, Adorno might say, is a conceptual expression of the social compulsion towards unquestionable authority. — Jamal

This is a good alternative definition to my own. :up:

Puzzles about the one and the many are very old, and there is an established school of thought that favors the universal over the particular. Still, I worry about thinkers who wish to reconfigure the relation of the one and the many based on a practical aim; or who wish to reconfigure speculative reason on the basis of practical reason. To make the truth subservient to our desires is truly wretched, even where those desires are noble. Obviously I am not a Marxist.

The question is not whether a thinker is devoted or balanced, but whether their thought fits the conditions and reproduces or resists the social compulsion. — Jamal

This does sound like Enlightenment thinking redux.

3. Adorno himself is not monomaniacal. His focus on identity thinking is not a singular fixation or cause that he is devoted to above all else. Identity thinking isn't just one thing among others or, quoting myself from above, a first principle or originary ground. Rather, it's the general form of conceptual thought in its historical actuality—the way of thinking, under concrete conditions, which assimilates the object to the subject. His critique is not pushing a specific doctrine but is focused on this tendency, which he analyzes from within rather than opposing from without. — Jamal

Well, there are two things at play here. I never thought Adorno's opposition to identity-thinking was a first principle or originary ground, and yet this does not mean that he is not monomaniacal. To be possessed by a singular idea or ideational current is monomaniacal whether or not that singular thought is seen as originary. So Adorno may or may not be monomaniacal, but I don't see that your argument here is to the point.

Indeed, after reading your reply I think my thesis would have to be revised or mitigated, but not necessarily abandoned. At the same time, I think you have provided a successful apologia for Adorno, which is to say that the onus is now on me to read a great deal more of Adorno, especially his other works (and it is unlikely that I will have the time to do so at any point in the near future). You've at least convinced me that he deserves a second look - that my thesis needs to be revisited.

4. Your comments about the Holocaust don't do justice to the role it plays in his thought... — Jamal

This is another fair point which still seems somewhat inconclusive. The kind of dogmatic over-correction I cautioned against is not ruled out by anything you say here, and yet you may be correct that it is not present in Adorno.

As for totalitarianism, I think it's too easy, or perhaps superficial, to say that an anti-totalitarian philosophy might itself become totalitarian if it goes too far. — Jamal

But wouldn't you agree with someone who says that?

Your suggestion that philosophers ought to live lives of variety and balance, and stop making such a fuss about the Holocaust, reminds me of something Terry Eagleton wrote — Jamal

I suspect we both agree that someone whose thoughts are dominated by an aversion to outcomes like the Holocaust will be especially susceptible to error. It's just that you don't think Adorno is that guy.

As an auxiliary point, I favor traditions of philosophy over novel, heroic individual efforts. Philosophizing within a tradition (and in relation to other traditions) helps smooth out rough edges and avoid the monomaniacal tendencies I alluded to. This is another reason why I am generally skeptical in cases such as these. But I might be wrong.

The possible worlds semantics creates the illusion of extensional objects, "worlds" as a referent. This is the same tactic used by mathematical set theory. They use the concept of "mathematical objects" to create the illusion of extensional referents. It's Platonic realism. The problem is that the reality of these "objects" is not well supported ontologically. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep.

The kind of expression we're talking about is:

Necessarily, all John's pets are mammals.

There's no mention of possible worlds in this expression. So no, it's not that we give "worlds" a referent by modal logic. — frank

But this is an equivocation between natural language and a specific formal language. When @Metaphysician Undercover spoke about "possible worlds semantics," he surely was not talking about natural language that uses the words that possible worlds semantics attempts to formalize. Yet your construal of his claim is mistakenly committed to the idea that this is precisely what he is doing. Indeed, if @Metaphysician Undercover were incorrect then your post would make no sense, for it is bound up with the fact he pointed to.

Possible worlds semantics reifies "possible worlds" into an (extensional) set, in order to make it conform to extensional presuppositions. But this is confused given that modal terms in natural language are not extensional in that manner. The words "necessarily" and "possibly" do not denote extensional sets. It is this confusion that lies at the bottom of so many of the problems that come up in this area. The modal logician basically says, "Modal terms are not extensional, but we're going to pretend they are." Modal terms are made into a nail by those who have only a hammer, and those who pay attention to this sleight of hand are not surprised by the strange outcomes. The various "puzzles" that inevitably come up in the latter parts of the SEP articles are largely reducible to this pretense.

I have had a different experience.

My family fought on both sides of our Civil War in the U.S. The choices between what is acceptable or not is worked out each day wherever we are. Education of children is critical to what happens next.

I don't see how your disagreements with people bear upon the matter. — Paine

I don't know how any of that pertains to the topic, or what it even means, but can you answer my question now?

I am willing to address that — Paine

I think it implicates the very moral realism that I claimed has long been eclipsed in our culture. The person decrying intolerance is implicitly affirming moral realism, while usually at the same time denying moral realism. That's why I think these debacles of "intolerance" always reduce to superficial mush.

So I would want to know which side wants to have power over the next generation. Secondly, the point originally being made about Crisp is a moral claim (hence the words "fear and resentment"), and yet the people who tend to make such claims also tend to deny moral realism, which logically takes all the sting out of their reproach. ...It's remarkable to me that on TPF moral realism is so thoroughly repelled that members regularly fail to provide any rational justification for prohibiting even the most grievous offenses, such as the slave trade, but on the other hand this has been par for the philosophical course for centuries.

I agree. — Paine

Okay, good.

I was trying to draw a broad sharp line between those who support institutions even if they often suck and those who want to shake the Etch a Sketch upside down. I am not aware of any of the former kind who subscribe to the purely emotional view you propose to be a significant factor in political discourse. — Paine

It's this clause of your post: "[Acceptance] is actively being opposed by efforts that want to have power over the next generation."

Which side of the broad sharp line wants to have power over the next generation, and which side doesn't?

The problem was that modal logic had never been rigorously developed in the way first order logic had been — frank

From the article:

And even though a variety of modal deductive systems had in fact been rigorously developed in the early 20th century, notably by Lewis and Langford (1932), there was for the languages of those systems nothing comparable to the elegant semantics that Tarski had provided for the languages of classical first-order logic. Consequently, there was no rigorous account of what it means for a sentence in those languages to be true and, hence, no account of the critical semantic notions of validity and logical consequence to underwrite the corresponding deductive notions of theoremhood and provability. A concomitant philosophical consequence of this void in modal logic was a deep skepticism, voiced most prominently by Quine, toward any appeal to modal notions in metaphysics generally, notably, the notion of an essential property. — SEP | Possible Worlds | 1.0

There is a notable presupposition occurring here. It is the presupposition that natural language yields to formal language in terms of semantic rigor. The author, Christopher Menzel, is saying that Tarski's "elegant semantics" provided "truth" with semantic rigor in first-order logic, and that there was a desire to mimic this move by providing an "elegant semantics" for natural-language words like "necessarily" and "possibly," thus furnishing them with the same sort of semantic rigor that Tarski achieved.

The underlying question has to do with the relative value of natural and formal languages (see for example the edit to ). A second question has to do with the role of metaphysics in language and logic, and Quine's "skepticism" pertains to this second question. The formalization of the concept of "truth" vis-a-vis (formal) language was driven in large part by anti-metaphysicalists who wanted to reduce truth-questions to language-questions. Those same anti-metaphysicalists, such as Quine, were presumably less comfortable with modal terms given how much more difficult it is to maintain an anti-metaphysicalism while at the same time taking such terms seriously. Put more simply, modal language is too metaphysical for Quine's liking, and this in turn signifies that modal language will be even less amenable to formal semantics than truth language, namely because metaphysical inquiries and claims cannot be reduced to formalisms. These metaphysical "incursions" become more and more obvious as this tradition progresses, and especially so in your second SEP article. The rub lies in the fact that not everyone involved in these movements was an anti-metaphysicalist, at least to the same extent.

I think this is a good idea for a thread. The difficulty for my part lies in trying to understand how to interact with an encyclopedia entry.

What Crisp is saying does reflect what is is happening here but is actively being opposed by efforts that want to have power over the next generation. Thus, all the very real dismantling of institutions that preserve the present status quo. — Paine

That read doesn't seem to align with right/left categories. Dismantling generally occurs on the far left and the far right, and not in the center. Generally speaking, cries of "intolerance!" come from those who are trying to shift the Overton Window in one direction or another.

And I think an underlying problem is that everyone, from left to right, is laboring under centuries-old rejections of coherent moral realism. So we get a vacillation between moralizing and assertions that morality doesn't really exist. Moral claims need .

Right, and I should have been more specific. I should have said, "Would you say the same thing about the gambling addict who asks to be banned from casinos?"

In any case, you seem to think that the root problem is being addressed by mere avoidance, as long as the avoidance is volitional. There are other views which would say that mere avoidance does not address the root problem, and I had mistakenly assumed that you were included in that group.

(I don't mean to draw us off on a tangent, but some of this is relevant up to a point. I will let you have the last word.)

I suppose the question is what you are intolerant of, not whether you are intolerant. — unimportant

Once one sets out what they mean by "intolerance" and what counts as "more intolerant," the question becomes answerable. For example, if we take "intolerant of X" to mean "does not allow X," and we measure relative intolerance quantitatively, then we merely need to count up the different things that each group is intolerant of. Of course a quantitative analysis will probably be insufficient, but you get the idea.

A core problem on the left is actually an equivocation where they want "tolerance" to mean "acceptance." Once one recognizes that tolerance does not mean acceptance, and that tolerance implies dislike or aversion, much of the muddle coming from the left dries up. The critique from the right is basically a request that the person on the left actually survey the things they are intolerant of, instead of pretending that they are "tolerant" of everything and that it is merely a matter of the tolerant vs. the intolerant.

Metaphorical band-aid on a wound that ultimately requires something else. — Outlander

Would you say the same thing about the gambling addict who avoids casinos? I don't say that avoiding casinos is the perfect remedy, but I also don't see that imperfect remedies should be neglected. Oftentimes the only options we have are imperfect.

I do not, ever, try to convince people to do things because i want them to. I only ever rationally persuade people to do what will best achieve their stated goal. — AmadeusD

You've obviously gone beyond hypothetical imperatives in this thread. For example, see these posts:

I will try to enforce [my moral positions] where i am not obviously violating rights — AmadeusD

My reasoning is what I am trying to get other people to assent to in those situations. — AmadeusD

The wrong-maker appears to be the thoughts. — AmadeusD

And we've already been over this with respect to my thread on non-hypothetical ought-judgments.

Even in the case where you call the police to prevent someone from violating your or another's "rights", you are engaged in classic moral behavior. You are attempting to get someone to behave in a particular way regardless of any goal they might have. There is nothing special or non-moral about the legal sphere.

That’s a terrible analogy. A more appropriate one is the gambling addict who asks to be banned from a casino. — Michael

Yep. :up:

Honestly, I think there needs to be a "right to self-ban" when it comes to technology, given its addictive nature. Additionally, computers, phones, and tablets should be required by law to include the ability to self-limit oneself. In my opinion what @Michael has done is not only morally permissible, it is morally praiseworthy. Refusing someone's request to limit their addiction is what would be morally problematic.

(At the same time I understand why the initial request was deferred given the emotional nature of that case.)

You are basically claiming that there is an incommensurability between the act of sex and the effect of procreation. It's an interesting argument. My suggestion would be that sex is not as irreducibly bestial as it has come to be seen in our culture. In any case, this is another outgrowth of the fact that man is the strange amalgam that lies between the angels and the beasts.

He's an adult who told us what he wanted. I'm not going to infantilise him. — Michael

Hard to argue with that. :up:
And I believe this is the second time, so he is clearly persistent.

- I would invite you to actually read some moral philosophers, specifically those within the traditions you identity with. You will notice that they do not follow or even acknowledge your approach, namely the approach where you try to persuade people to behave in the ways you want them to behave but then claim, in an ad hoc manner, that your persuasion is in no way moral. Reading such philosophers would presumably give you an opportunity to engage these issues in a more substantive manner. It is a great shortcoming of a metaethical theory when literally zero philosophers recognize it as a viable approach.

Moral reasoning is trying to convince something their act is good or bad. That is entirely different from rational reasoning which is about what will achieve the stated goal or not (in this context).

I think you're inventing problems. — AmadeusD

Moral reasoning attempts to convince others to behave in particular ways, and that is what you are engaged in. I don't know of any academic emotivists or non-cognitivists who would disagree with me on this. For example, both Ayer and Stevenson would see your attempts at behavioral persuasion as moral acts. There is nothing else they could be. Hare would be even more explicit, in that if you are not describing then you are prescribing. There is no such thing as trying to convince someone to behave in a certain way, and thereby arguing non-morally. Emotivists understand this as well as anyone else. Your idea that, "I am trying to persuade them to behave in a certain way, and I am doing so non-morally," is simply ad hoc, and this would be recognized even by the academics who take up the same meta-ethical position that you do.

"For now, if we want to talk to another consciousness, the only companion we can be certain fits the bill is ourselves." — Wayfarer

Right.

Furthermore, I know a priori that LLMs would affirm that. — Wayfarer

Well, LLMs don't "affirm" anything. They aren't capable of that. That word "affirm" is part of the illusory language that Pistilli points up. I think she is quite right that we ought to stop deceiving ourselves and the social community with that sort of illusory language. Else, if we are going to deceive ourselves with the word "affirm," then why not deceive ourselves with the word "consciousness"? It is quite odd that the reply, "But that's not true," has little effect on the AI aficionados. That paradigm is lost in a sea of falsehood, and truth is of little concern. Indeed, many of them seem more willing to flee into deflationary theories of truth rather than ask themselves whether what they are saying is true.

This non-paywalled article in Philosophy Now is worth the read in respect of this topic. Presents the 'no' case for 'can computers think?' Rescuing Mind from the Machines, Vincent Carchidi. If if you don't agree with the conclusions, he lays out some of the issues pretty clearly. — Wayfarer

:up:

How does it not become a form of arguing on the basis of authority? — Paine

The question that just doesn't go away. :up:
It came up explicitly in the exchange beginning with , but was never addressed or even acknowledged. It is the old difficulty of those who won't admit that they are relying on an authority at all.

In other words, it's not for doing philosophy...

We can turn all those features off, but some of them are too useful. Those who don't like the encroachment of AI might not like the "Summarize topic" feature, but I actually think it'll be good. People are often too lazy to read a whole discussion before commenting, and sometimes it's so long that nobody is going to do it. In those cases its better that they have an idea of what's been said than no idea at all, no? — Jamal

Maybe, but if users are regularly relying on AI summaries of threads then we will inevitably be using AI to do philosophy, at least on the assumption that interpreting a post or thread is philosophical work.

Notice what I said: it isn't a theorem. It's not giving a logical definition. — ssu

Again, then what is it? Turing's whole paper was basically saying, "This isn't a test for machine thinking, but it's a test for machine thinking."

Turing Test is more like a loose description of what computers exhibiting human-like intelligence would be like. That's not a theorem, yet many people take it as the example when computers have human-like intelligence. — ssu

You are saying something similar, "This isn't a test for machine intelligence, but it's a loose test for machine intelligence."

If you actually read Turing's paper it's pretty clear that he thinks machines can think, and that his test is sufficient to show such a thing, despite all the sophistical evasions he produces.

Turing himself thought that this would take about 200 years. — ssu

Nope:

I believe that in about fifty years' time it will be possible, to programme computers, with a storage capacity of about 109, to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning. — Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, 1950, p. 442

Simply put it: The Turing test isn't at all a theorem about consciousness. — ssu

Perhaps, but then what is it about? Turing was playing with the idea that machines can think, but even that question was largely avoided in his paper. I think you find the same sort of confusion in Turing that you find in the world today, namely an unwillingness to think carefully about what 'thinking' or 'consciousness' means. Still, one of her points is very interesting, "On this illusion, we have created a technological empire..." We benefit a great deal by pretending that something which is not true is true (e.g. pretending that machines can think or are conscious).

Notice that OP was published five months before ChatGPT went live. — Wayfarer

I don't think the advent of ChatGPT changes anything in her article.

ChatGPT has the largest take-up of any software release in history, it and other LLM's are inevitable aspects of techno-culture. It's what you use them for, and how, that matters. — Wayfarer

I think this is more a mantra than an argument. For some reason, many people don't want to consider the fact that we have a choice when it comes to technology. I think it relates to libertarianism and a culture enamored with technology.

(Incidentally, I think the "inevitability" was shown to be rather brittle when Michael Burry placed a short against the AI industry and the tech giants exploded with fear and anger.)

A great piece: "Debating Whether AI is Conscious Is A Distraction from Real Problems," by Giada Pistilli.

But we need to take a step back. First, it is true that Turing's writings have been interpreted differently and have conditioned an all too anthropomorphized field of computer development. For example, we refer to "intentions" when sending requests and talk about "neural networks" and "learning." Yet, in that famous article, Turing discusses the "Imitation Game," and he talks about "illusion". The goal is to delude the person being experimented on into believing they are talking to another human.

From a philosophical perspective, focusing on the illusionary part and not the intelligent one is intriguing. On this illusion, we have created a technological empire... — Pistilli

- Sure. :up: