Glad you got something from Haack's essay. To start at the end (of your post), I think Haack's pluralism is very much in harmony with your OP's considerations, so I hoped you and others who followed the thread would find it interesting.

I liked Evidence and Inquiry very much, and have reread it a couple of times. Yeah, "foundherentism" is an unfortunate coinage. But as you say, something like it is surely right. And when we get into the details, we find some ingenious answers to issues that come up both for the Deferentialists and the Cynics. Her discussions about how to rescue foundherentism from the objection that it is a blurred version of plain old coherentism are really sharp.

As for her list of topics . . . We rarely see a straightforward list of problems that a very good philosopher thinks are the most interesting to explore. That's part of why I wanted to share hers. As you say, any one of them would start a TPF ball rolling. The one I find most unexpected as a philosophical issue is "What the mechanisms are of self-deception and of wishful and fearful thinking?" If anyone, reading this, happens to know where Haack might have written on this topic, I'd like to know.

Thompson concludes, according to the synopsis:

"The enactive framework strongly supports a continuity of life and mind, showing that living systems are inherently value-constituting and purposive. However, it does not conclusively establish that all life is sentient in the affective sense. The move from sense-making to feeling remains conceptually and empirically underdetermined."

I think this gets it exactly right (though I'm not familiar enough with enactivism to know whether "strongly supports" is correct). The critical issue is whether, again using Thompson's phrasing, purposive, value-driven organisms feel those values as pleasant or unpleasant. "There's a conceptual gap between responsiveness to value and the felt experience of value."

For me, this is a real step forward in putting some content to the old favorite, "what it's like to be X." We're urged to ask, "Can an entity respond in purposive, value-oriented ways without experiencing anything?" I think the answer will turn out to be yes -- and it's still not like anything to be such an organism, where "be like something" is understood as "do more than respond purposively."

I've recently read an interesting paper by Susan Haack called Formal Philosophy? A Plea for Pluralism, published in 2005. Haack is one of our most pre-eminent philosophers of logic. I doubt there's another living philosopher who knows more about formalisms than she does. So her reflections on the "two ways of doing philosophy" are worth pondering. (She sees more than two.)

Let me call out, in particular, the list of questions with which she closes her essay. Following Peirce, who at one point offered "a small specimen of philosophical questions which press for industrious and solid investigation," she gives her own list:

Whether the grounds of validity of the laws of logic are to be found in language, in conceptual structures, in the nature of representation, in the world, or where?

Whether Peirce’s idea of necessary reasoning as essentially diagrammatic is defensible, or Russell’s distinction of logical and grammatical form?

How Aristotle’s dictum [“to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true”] could best be generalized to arrive at a satisfactory definition of truth? How, if this will require propositional quantifiers, these can be interpreted without using “true”?

Whether a unified interpretation of quantifiers is possible, and if so in what terms?

Whether the semantic paradoxes are a sign of deep incoherence in the ordinary truth-concept, or a trivial verbal trick? Whether these paradoxes must be avoided by recourse to an artificial language in which they cannot be expressed, or resolved by probing the ordinary, informal concept of truth?

Whether Tarski’s definition really advances our understanding of truth beyond Ramsey’s simple formula, and if so, how?

How we are to understand the relation between the neurophysiological realization of a belief and its content?

How belief-contents are best represented? How they should be individuated?

How degrees of belief affect degrees of justification?

How to articulate the desirable kind of interlocking or consilience that gives some congeries of evidence greater strength than any of their components?

How to asses the weight of shared evidence when there is disagreement within a group, or when members give shared reasons different degrees of credence?

What the proper relation is between belief and the will?

What the mechanisms are of self-deception and of wishful and fearful thinking?

How to understand “real,” as applied to particulars? to kinds? to laws? to the world? Whether “real” has the same meaning as applied to social as to natural kinds and laws?

How to distinguish the cosmological role of historical singularities and of laws? How to understand the evolution of laws?

How works of imaginative literature can convey truths they do not state?

Whether vagueness is always undesirable, or sometimes benign or even useful? How the precision sought by a logician differs from that sought by a novelist or poet? — Haack, in [i]Putting Philosophy to Work[/i], 238

Plenty to work on here, no matter which style of philosophy you favor!

this is just to give an alternate formal definition of "future" and "past", as if a sentence were "future" when the outermost tense operator is F. — Banno

This, if I understand it, is an important point. Could I paraphrase it this way?: A sentence with a tense operator does not automatically become about that temporal location. Pp ⊨ FPp is about p, not the future (or the past).

But there is a sense in which this is already to assume Hume's law. To define what we ought do as fragile is to presume that it is distinct from what is the case, that we can clearly seperate normative sentences from descriptive sentences.

The danger is that Russell presumes rather than demonstrates Hume's law. In which case she will have provided a powerful way for us to talk about deontic logic but not have settled the issue. — Banno

Yes. And your reservations about how to formalize "ought" are also significant. So there've been attempts to create a semantics for "ought," but they haven't succeeded? That's interesting. Similar attempts to standardize ordinary-language uses of "ought" also have failed, as far as I know.

You also need to answer the question I asked above, a kind of litmus test for those with your stance:
[Concerning] a Urbilaterian (a brainless ancestor of you, and also a starfish). Is it a being? Does it experience [pain say] and have intent?
— noAxioms
If yes, is it also yes for bacteria?
The almost unilateral response to this question by non-physicalists is evasion. — noAxioms

I don't know. And that's not evasion, just honesty.

But I also don't think that the right answer to that question reveals much about the larger problem. I think consciousness will turn out to depend on biology, but that's not to say that everything alive is conscious. If we could eventually determine that a bacterium isn't conscious, that would say nothing about whether the beings that are conscious require a biological basis in order to be so. In other words, being alive might be a necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness.

I've also generated a synopsis which will be helpful in approaching the essay. — Wayfarer

Thanks, I'll read it.

No worries. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

If both work the same, it's all the same. — Millard J Melnyk

I'm not sure what you mean. They work quite differently, as I tried to show.

Please explain how the distinction matters. — Millard J Melnyk

It may not matter at all, for the points you want to cover. But as @Ludwig V has elaborated, any theses involving "think" and "thought" need to be carefully laid out so as to show which uses and concepts you mean to refer to.

"You're beautiful."
"I think you're beautiful."
"I believe you're beautiful."
"I know you're beautiful."
"I whatever you're beautiful."

You can see the differences, right? — Millard J Melnyk

Sure. But consider these:

I think it's raining.
I believe it's raining.

Wouldn't you agree they're nearly synonymous?

The point is, all these usages are linguistically dependent. They approach, or recede from, synonymy depending on context. And in another language, I'm sure the various usages would be different.

"I think" and "I believe" are semantically different in specific, consistent ways — Millard J Melnyk

They can be, and sometimes they aren't. Context again.

This takes us back to your OP premise:

Epistemically, belief and thought are identical. — Millard J Melnyk

I hope it's clear now why that's only true in the cases in which they are understood to be identical by language-speakers.

a rhetorical shift from “I think” to “I believe,” — Millard J Melnyk

Well, yes -- when the use of "I think" means "I believe", that shift often takes place. It doesn't have to. Not to belabor the point, but we can think many things without necessarily believing them. We can also think them in ways such that they're not even possible candidates for belief (such as my Case 2, above).

my topic question, while framed as a first-person issue, is actually not why you're in that 'difference' group, but why the non-difference group is necessarily wrong. — noAxioms

Yes. And I'm in no position to claim that any view on consciousness is necessarily right or wrong. We're dealing with educated guesses, at best.

There will always be those that wave away any explanation as correlation, not causation. — noAxioms

Hmm. I suppose so, but that wouldn't mean we hadn't learned the explanation. :smile:

we'll learn that you can't have consciousness without life."
Which requires a more rigourous definition of consciousness I imagine. — noAxioms

Absolutely. If a biological explanation turns out to be the correct one, I imagine it will also show that most of our rough-and-ready conceptions about subjectivity and consciousness are far too impoverished. It would be like analyzing 18th century views on "time" and comparing them to relativity theory.

Yes to all of that. So the idea that "think" and "believe" are synonymous is a non-starter. The OP would need to be much more specific about which uses of "think" are equivalent to "believe."

Yes, that too, but the equivocation I referred to shows up a lot. It's just how we use the English language. Sometimes "I think" is uttered to state something the speaker endorses; other times it's a report about a mental event, something "entertained" but not endorsed.

Came in late on this, so forgive me if the following point has already been made.

There's an equivocation going on between two senses of "think":

Mary thinks the house is on fire.
Mary thinks, "The house is on fire."

The first usage is more or less synonymous with "believe." It refers to the content of a proposition. The second usage, however, is completely separate from the issue of belief. It refers to a mental event, a thought, that Mary is having at the moment. She may be having it for any number of reasons, some of which will have nothing to do with a particular blazing house. (Perhaps she's remembering a line in a poem she likes.). It is this usage that @Banno refers to when he says:

We can certainly entertain thoughts that are not true - that's where things like modality and error come from. — Banno

Mary, in the second usage, is "entertaining" the thought. Consider the different ways she would respond if you asked her, "Do you believe the house is on fire?"

Case 1: Yes, I do.
Case 2: What house? Oh, you misunderstood me. I had that thought for a completely unrelated reason, sorry. I was evaluating scary sentences, trying to decide how I felt about this one.

These two usages of "thought" and "think" are taken up in much more detail in the thread, "Can a Thought Cause Another Thought?".

Somehow I managed to miss all of these over the last several days. Sorry for the crickets -- I will catch up.

As J points out, some of us do not hold out for an ontological difference between a device and a living thing. — noAxioms

I did indeed point that out, and I think it's important to understand why. I hope I also made it clear that I am not one of "non-difference" group. I find myself being the devil's advocate in this discussion, largely because I don't think we'll get anywhere if we don't thoroughly understand why the ontological difference is not obvious or axiomatic or whatever other bedrock term we care to use. As philosophers, we're watching something exciting unfold in real time: a genuinely new development of a consequential question that the general public is interested in, and that we can help with. That said, I'll say again that when we eventually learn the answer about consciousness (and I think we will), we'll learn that you can't have consciousness without life. But that conclusion is a long way off.

Reason is not just a pattern of inference; it is an act of mind, shaped by actual concerns.

-- @Wayfarer

This begs the question, doesn't it? Yes, if reason is (exclusively) an act of mind, then only minds can reason, but that's what we're inquiring into. You offer a definition, or conception, of what it is to reason, which demands "an inner sense of value or purpose"; things have to "really matter to them." God knows, there is no agreed-upon definition of reason or rationality, so you're entitled to do so, but we have to be careful not to endorse a concept that must validate what we think about aliveness and consciousness.

So, why the relationship between life and consciousness? — Wayfarer

For me, this is a crucial question, and I very much like your thoughts about it. Life is indeed purposive, and consciousness may be, in a sense we don't yet quite understand, an expression of that purposiveness. (This also connects with your idea of reason as purposive, but let's not confuse reason or rationality with consciousness; they needn't be the same.)

Why do you [think] it must be alive? What aspects of life do you think are required for consciousness? — Patterner

And this connects to the discussion above. I'd endorse @Wayfarer's speculations, and add quite a few of my own, but it's a long story. Maybe a new thread, called something like "The Connection between Life and Consciousness - The Evidence So Far"? And yes, if panpsychism is valid, that would appear to contradict the "consciousness → life" hypothesis.

Although you have to give it credit for its articulateness. — Wayfarer

:lol: But there remains a serious question, which I raised when you previously quoted a modest AI: What would you conclude if the alleged entity said it was a subject of experience? The point is, you're applauding it now for its truthfulness, but would you change your mind about that if it said something you thought wasn't true?

I’m pretty much on board with Bernardo Kastrup’s diagnosis. He says, computers can model all kinds of metabolic processes in exquisite detail, but the computer model of kidney function doesn’t pass urine. It is a simulation, a likeness. — Wayfarer

This seems a straightforward refutation of the idea that a computer could be alive. The awkward difference, with AI, is that it doesn't just model or simulate rationality -- it (appears to) engage in it. Putting it differently, only an imbecile could get confused between a model of kidney function and a functioning kidney -- as you say, the telltale lack of urine. But what's the equivalent, when talking about what an AI can or cannot do?

I return to my idea that only living beings could be conscious. If that is ever demonstrated, and we accept Kastrup's argument as a refutation of alive-ness, then the case would be made. But as of now, it doesn't matter whether the AI is alive or not, since we haven't yet shown that being alive is needed for consciousness in the same way that being alive is needed for producing urine.

It is a kind of idealised entity, not subject to the vicissitudes of existence - and part of us wants to be like that, because then we would not be subject to illness and death. — Wayfarer

Good insight. They're also dispassionate in a way that is impossible for all but Mr. Spock -- something many people idealize as well.

If we ever make a device with as many information processing systems working together with the goal of the continuation of the device? — Patterner

Yes, that's the question we don't know how to answer: Would such a structure result in consciousness or subjectivity? Is that what it takes? Is that all it takes? My initial reaction would be to ask, "Is it alive?" If not, then I doubt it could be conscious, but I have no special insights here. Many years of thinking about this incline me to believe that consciousness will turn out to be biological -- but we don't know.

"Everything"? Surely not. — Patterner

I meant the types of experiences that @Wayfarer listed -- sensory awareness, memory, knowing you exist. But you're right to narrow the target. We currently care a lot about this question because of some specific recent developments in artificial intelligence. It's those devices about which I imagine these issues being raised. They may not "experience everything we do," but neither does a bee. The question is whether they can, or could, experience anything at all. My educated guess is that they can't -- they can't be subjects -- but it seems far from axiomatic to me.

@Wayfarer, I wish you would say more about what you see as the critical difference between a so-called artificial intelligence and a living being, and what implications this has for consciousness. I'm fairly sure I would agree with you, but it's good to lay the whole thing out in plain terms. Maybe that will make it obvious. "Forgetfulness of being" is all very well as a diagnosis, but the advocates for intelligent, soon-to-be-conscious AIs deserve something less dismissive. If for no other reason than this is becoming one of the central philosophical/scientific/ethical tipping points of our age.

That devices are not subjects of experience is axiomatic, in my opinion. — Wayfarer

I would like this to be true, but I don't see how it is. One objection I would raise is simply, "If it's axiomatic, why are increasing numbers of not unintelligent people doubting it?" Maybe you mean something different by axiomatic, but for me it's a cognate for "obvious," and I would apply it to a postulate or process that's needed in order to do any thinking at all. In fairness, do you really believe that rationality breaks down in the face of the possibility that AI's may be, or will become, conscious subjects of experience? As for "truths that have no opposites," well, the opposite of "only living things are conscious" would be, quite coherently, "some non-living things are, or may be, conscious." You can make a good case for the axiomatic nature of, for instance, first-person experience, but again, that is not being questioned by my hypothetical proponent of "device consciousness."

Maybe this doesn't need repeating, but my own view is that it will turn out to be the case that only living things can be the subjects of experience. But I believe this is far from obvious or axiomatic.

As for LLM’s, ask any of them whether they are subjects of experience and they will answer in the negative. — Wayfarer

An interesting test! What would you conclude if one of them said, "Yes, I am"?

The question of the nature of being is the subject of Heidegger’s entire project (and phenomenology generally. Consider Sartre’s in-itself and for-itself). It could be argued that it is the central question of philosophy. — Wayfarer

It sure could. If I had to paraphrase "what is it like to . . ." I might go for "what is the experience of . . .", and as you point out, such a formulation requires the concept of experience to get off the ground. (I'm not sure I agree that "being as such is not an object of experience," but the very fact that it's possible to have two reasonable positions on this only highlights the centrality of the issue.)

As to whether I can, or should, explain what that means. I can’t prove to you that there’s something it’s like to be you. — Wayfarer

No, probably not. But that's not what my hypothetical questioner is asking. They want to know, "Why couldn't it be the case that everything you describe as pertaining to yourself, and other living beings, also pertains to devices, AIs, et al.? Why is it obvious that they're different?" We could extend the question to all objects if we wanted, but that's arcane; the question comes up relevantly in the context of our new world of ostensibly intelligent or even conscious entities, which are causing a lot of people to demand a re-think about all this. Philosophy can help.

There is 'nothing it is like' to be a car, because a car is a device, an artifact - not a being, like a man, or a bat. — Wayfarer

Welcome back. I agree with the quoted statement. But those of us who do hold out for an ontological difference between a device and a living thing should be careful about two points:

1. "What it's like" defies precise definition, relying on a (very common, I'd say) intuition conjured up by the phrase. Does this work in other languages? How might the intuition be expressed in, say, Japanese?

2. To you, to me, the difference under discussion is obvious. But it isn't obvious to everyone. The fact that I believe something to be obvious doesn't let me off the hook of trying to explain it, if someone questions it in good faith. Explaining the obvious is a quintessentially philosophical task! Both of us should welcome questions like, "But why can't a device have experiences?"

This is particularly helpful, as is the whole idea of thinking of it in terms of an asymmetry. I think that's where my "intuition" wants to go astray; perhaps we naturally conceptualize in symmetries until shown otherwise?

Got it. My only question is a natural-language quibble: When you say "We find that we cannot derive sentences about the future from sentences about the past," that hinges on a certain strict understanding of "derive" (and maybe "about" as well). Nothing prevents us from saying either 1) "The sun is overwhelmingly likely to rise tomorrow" or 2) "It is logically certain that, if the future resembles the past [in the relevant respects], then the sun will rise tomorrow." These are surely true sentences about the future, based upon knowledge of the past, they just aren't "derived" according to a model that takes into account terms such as "likely" or "resemblance." This has no bearing on what Russell is demonstrating, of course.

Ah, I get you now. I thought you had a typo because I was considering the case where one knowingly chooses the worse over the better, not vice versa; hence my confused response. I agree, Kant makes a crucial point here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good, and sorry if I added to the confusion.

Plato's point is similar to Kant's . . . — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. One of the things I dislike about the "pre-modern -- modern" distinction is that it tends to imply that there's no continuity in problematics or thought between the ancients and ourselves. (People like MacIntyre, read loosely, seem to reinforce this.) Certainly Plato knew about this question, and equally certainly, Kant had read his Plato and was not entering the conversation de novo.

. . . although I think more nuanced, in that he sees this desire for the "truly best" as known as good as what allows us to transcend current belief and desire, and thus our own finitude. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I see lots of similarities between Plato and Kant on this issue (and of course Platonic Christian philosophy is the bridge between them). P and K both see a sharp divide between types of motivation, and both situate this divide as a question of immanence versus transcendence. For Kant, the vocabulary is "autonomous will" versus "heteronomous desires." In the heteronomous world, pushed and pulled, acted upon and reacting to, we find ourselves with desires particular to ourselves, as individuals. But by virtue of our participation in the autonomous world of rational freedom, the "kingdom of ends," we discover an entirely different order of motivation which is the same for everyone, though we are free to act or not act upon it. It is this motivation, or will, that Kant believed had moral value.

Your thoughts about Kant and freedom are interesting, but is it really possible for any philosopher to have a view on freedom that doesn't depend on "metaphysical assumptions"? Surely the ancients were no different. Also, I'm not sure I agree that Kant's autonomy is "bare, inviolable, individual." Mountains have been written about this, and I've only read some of it. I would say that Kant (who was a Christian apologist, though he tried to avoid being seen that way), did see individual freedom, understood as the power to choose, as an unavoidable human condition, influenced but never conditioned by social circumstances, and roughly analogous to the free will (and possibility of sin) of Christian theology. The twist here, though, is that Kantian autonomy is meant to represent a denial of a certain sort of individual freedom. It's only when we abandon our heteronomous orientation for what is categorical and valid for all humans (or rational beings) that the possibility of truly acting freely can arise.

Kant is getting at something important here, I just don't see how it is missing from the earlier tradition, whereas he also misses that the good person ideally desires the good because of its goodness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

An important issue to raise. I'd say Kant doesn't so much miss this point, as reject it, and offer what he feels is a better description of ethical action. The good person (not a term Kant often used) is the person who acts from a good will. Is the good will a desire? That's the rub. Most interpret Kant as saying it's something else entirely, whereas the Greek/virtue ethics framework must interpret it as yet another desire, so that the "ordering of desires" idea can be preserved, and linked with an anthropology.

One place where I do see an overlap between Kant and some of the classical thinkers is this: It's possible to read Kant's discussion of autonomy and ethics as an argument for conforming to what is human nature, or at any rate rational nature. Read this way, it isn't so different from any ethics based on a view of what is essential or natural to humans, using an allegedly established or obvious definition. I go back and forth on how accurate a reading of Kant this is. The problem, as we know, is that the categorical imperative seems to depend on an anthropology no less rigorous than Aristotle's. The difference would be that Kant tries to establish his view of human possibilities on various arguments from self-contradiction. These are notoriously tricky. What counts for Kant as a "contradiction" seems to vary in meaning and implication, depending on which part of the cat. imp. we get a handle on. But anyway . . .

I am working on a project that compares modern character education literature to late-antique philosophy and it's almost like two wholly different Aristotles! — Count Timothy von Icarus

This sounds interesting. I'd like to learn more about how to rescue Aristotle and the virtue-ethics tradition from the charge of selfishness. Or, for that matter, how to repair the gaping hole that seems to be there when it comes to Christian virtues such as compassion and mercy.

the higher required ever-increasing conformity to the Good, which of course involves the willing of the Good for its own sake — Count Timothy von Icarus

See above comments. Notice that you don't speak about desiring the Good for its own sake, but of willing it. Kant would reply: "Excellent. You've just passed from the heteronomous world to the autonomous world!"

, there are many possible reasons for choosing the better over the worse,
— J

Such as? — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is where Kantian ethics makes a real contribution to the discussion. As I'm sure you know, Kant believed that only the good will was truly good, in an ethical sense. Put another way: My motivation for acting is of paramount importance; what I do may actually be ethically insignificant, but why I do it will always matter.

So, to your question: I may choose the better over the worse because I want to be seen as someone who chooses the better over the worse. (This is only one example; there are many we could consider.). Have I indeed chosen the better over the worse? Yes. Have I done so knowing it is the best? Yes. But have I chosen it for the right reason -- do I have a good will? No.

We can particularize this to an act of charity. I may correctly see that helping an effective AIDS charity is an act of goodness, or the right thing to do, or in accordance with spiritual principles, or however one cares to phrase it. But if I do so because (though I absolutely agree that it's good to help AIDS patients) I enjoy the attention and the gloss to my self-esteem, Kant would call the action ethically worthless. I wouldn't go that far, myself, but Kant is raising an important point. Isn't there a huge difference between the person who does the right thing for the wrong, or equivocal, reasons, and the person who does it because they want to do the right thing? (An interesting subsidiary question, by the way, is whether "wanting to do the right thing" can be stated in non-Kantian -- that is, non-procedural -- terms, or whether the Kantian conception requires some version of the categorical imperative as the basis for discussing ethics.)

Like everything in ethics, this is nuanced and endlessly complex. I don't think deontological ethics offers a knockdown argument to virtue ethics. In fact, I think they work best in tandem. But one can certainly point out that the question of motivation in virtue ethics needs a lot of elaboration. Is "wanting to be a 'good' human" (in the pre-modern sense of "good human", where it's the same sort of usage as a "good hammer" or "good poem") a sufficient motivation for ethical action? Doesn't it matter why one wants this? Or must we disregard motivation entirely, and merely speak of good or right actions, or the human good as a kind of correspondence with what is essential or natural to humans?

if the good is being qua desirable (what is truly most fulfilling of desire) . . . — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not sure I get this. Can you expand?

Why choose the better over the worse? Why choose good over evil? These seem extremely obvious to me, so I am not sure how to answer. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I sympathize. Explaining what seems obvious to you, to someone for whom it isn't obvious at all, is difficult. I won't press you. I'll just say that, from my viewpoint, there are many possible reasons for choosing the better over the worse, only some of which are ethical reasons. And for what it's worth, the question "Why choose good over evil?" seems to me to be a different question entirely.

I don't quite understand this. Are you saying that, for those without the inclination or capacities for respecting social norms, there is no argument that can be made that what they're doing is wrong? Not necessarily an argument that would convince them, but a general argument showing that there is an ethical sense in which they ought to behave differently?

So here is a restatement of the issues in the OP, as influenced and I hope clarified by the subsequent discussion.

1) I began by saying that the question of “thought-to-thought” causation should be understood in the context of psychologism vs. logicism. I still think this is a possible approach, but most of the discussion focused on the Popperian vocabulary of World 2 and World 3 objects/processes, so I’ll stick with that.

2) The OP assumes an overly binary version of how we have to understand what a thought is. This was partly for purposes of simplification and tractability, but also partly because I hadn’t deeply considered some of the points about “streams of thought” and non-verbal thoughts that subsequently arose. I proposed that when we have the ordinary mental experience of first thinking “I wonder how Ann is doing” and then “It’s her birthday soon; I must get her a present,” we must choose between seeing these thoughts as either psychological events in my mind, or as propositions that could find expression – and possibly necessitation of some sort – in anyone’s mind. And this is fair enough, but it suggests that “thought” must come equipped with certain properties it may not have, especially linguistic expression. The problems that @Dawnstorm and others raised about this are exigent.

3) So what does the question “Can a thought cause another thought?” really ask? I now believe it’s a question about a certain kind of thought, namely a thought that has been expressed linguistically and is thus a candidate for being described in propositional, World 3 terms. But not all thoughts are like this. If we ask, “But what caused the original thought about Ann?” we are giving proper importance to this point – what “caused” (if this is even appropriate) the original thought may have been completely non-verbal, but nonetheless a thought if we allow “thought” to cover many more mind-events than the OP suggested was possible. And I’m inclined to think we should.

4) Now there’s the danger that the discussion will swerve into a terminological dispute. Let’s avoid that. I don’t much care about deriving a precise definition of what a thought is, or what are the correct ways of using the term “thought.” I’m happy to narrow my questions about mental-to-mental causation to a certain type of thought; call it a J-thought. Such a thought is one that can be given a description in either World 2 or World 3 terms – thus, it is likely linguistic, or at least a linguistic thought would be the type-specimen of a J-thought. So my initial question is now: “Can one J-thought cause another, and if so, is this by virtue of a World 2 relationship, a World 3 relationship, or some combination?” And lurking behind this question is another, broader one, which has also been raised repeatedly here: If causation isn’t a very good model of what happens when we think J-thoughts, then can we come up with a better description, something more contentful than merely “association” or “affinity”?

Happy to forge on, or of course we can let it go at this point.

It’s not that humans have to or ought to see others as similar to themselves, it’s that they tend to and are capable of seeing them that way. — T Clark

Oh, I definitely agree about the tendency and the capacity. It's just that, if I happen to be one of those lacking that tendency or capacity, we've pulled all the ethical teeth out of the argument if you can't say to me, "But here's why you ought to" (or perhaps, "Here's why you should at least behave as if you did"). Otherwise, ethical injunctions only apply to those who have the proper tendencies and capacities. But it's the very ones who don't that we'd most like to persuade, if we can.

This ought is not a choice — Joshs

Well, OK. So if I were to say to someone, "You ought to ____ [filling in your description of what you call the intrinsic striving for self-expression]," that would be pointless, since they're doing it anyway?

1. It is true that we ought to choose the better over the worse.
2. X is better than Y.
C. Thus, we ought to choose Y. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I know we've been here before, but I have to point out that this could only be true if "better than" is defined as "should be chosen" or "is worthy [?] of choice," in which case the alleged argument becomes a tautology ("We ought to choose what we ought to choose"). But if "is better than" is given an independent interpretation from "should be chosen," then the argument merely shows that the "ought" premise in needed in order to get to the "ought" conclusion. How do you justify the first premise? Why is it morally obligatory to choose the better over the worse? -- that question needs to be answered without reference, overt or covert, to what is worthy of choice; otherwise it just goes in circles.

Yet even after centuries of this, we still don't use the word "ought" in this way. "You ought to try the chicken," or "she likes you, you ought to ask here out," do not imply "you are morally obligated to eat this chicken," or "you are morally obligated to ask our friend out on a date." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course they don't. That's why they aren't moral injunctions. Whereas "You ought to help the poor" is. Is there a reason why "ought" can't have both moral and non-moral uses? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that "we still don't use the word 'ought' exclusively in this way"? For why should we? -- surely the deontological ethicists weren't recommending that.

We care about others because we see them as like ourselves, which allows us to relate to them, learn from them, expand the boundaries of our sense of self. — Joshs

I agree with the thrust of your post, and I personally share the sentiment quoted above. But . . . suppose I don't? Suppose I don't see others as like myself, and am not interested in relating to them or expanding my sense of self. Are you arguing that I ought to? If not, what does this have to do with ethics and morality, with doing the right thing or pursuing the good or however one cares to phrase it?

I don't know anything at all about Popper. I only heard his name for the first time recently, in another thread, and haven't been able to make head or tail out of what you two are saying about his Worlds. — Patterner

Sorry, perhaps we should have elaborated more. Fortunately it's a pretty easy concept to grasp.

He proposes a novel form of pluralistic realism, a “Three Worlds” ontology, which, while accommodating both the world of physical states and processes (world 1) and the mental world of psychological processes (world 2), represents knowledge in its objective sense as belonging to world 3, a third, objectively real ontological category. That world is the world

'of the products of the human mind, such as languages; tales and stories and religious myths; scientific conjectures or theories, and mathematical constructions; songs and symphonies; paintings and sculptures.]' (1980: 144)

In short, world 3 is the world of human cultural artifacts, which are products of world 2 mental processes, usually instantiated in the physical world 1 environment. — SEP article on Popper

This schema, which at first glance seems a bit rough and simplistic, proves surprisingly useful as a way to at least get a foothold in these ontological distinctions.

So, for thoughts, we have a World 2 event -- a "psychological process" -- and, often, a World 3 event as well -- language, math, often expressed as propositions and entailments.

Perhaps the moral system of human society is itself an adaptive tool formed under evolutionary pressures to promote group survival and reproduction. In other words, morality is a cultural apparatus that "serves the fundamental purpose." — panwei

Your OP is a well-stated version of an evolutionary explanation for morality. As such, it's open to the usual objections, which I think are correct.

First, let's assume that we really could come up with the ideal "natural" or "socially adaptive" or "evolutionarily coded" description of how humans may best flourish. Conceivably, you could take this description and apply it to the species in general, saying "For the species to flourish, this is what must happen." But a species is not a moral agent; it doesn't know about terms like "ought" or "should." But individuals do, and at the individual level, the same old problem arises: Why should I, an individual, care about the flourishing of the species? For that matter, I may not care much about my own flourishing -- and if I don't, what is the argument that I ought to? What makes it right for me to do so? You need some previous moral premises (involving an ethical preference for life over death, happiness over pain) in order to make that work. Now of course, as a matter of fact, most of us do prefer happiness to pain, but not because it's ethically right to do so. It just feels better -- and that's only a moral reason if you can make the argument that feeling better is the right thing to pursue, ethically.

Second, it seems all too clear that what's been selected by evolution for human behavior isn't a reliable guide to morality anyway. You refer to "a factually given setting at the level of biological mechanism." Well, just to pick one such setting, heterosexual men are hardwired to find nubile young women/girls sexually desirable. There are obvious advantages to being able to begin reproduction as early as possible, and a 13-year-old girl will likely be strong and healthy too, suggesting healthy offspring. But most cultures now regard such a program as immoral. Why? What is the reasoning that would show us -- rightly -- that childbearing at such a young age is an immoral hardship to impose on a girl? To make such an argument, you have to weight different "natural" features of our species, and make an ethical decision about which ones to take as guides. In short, "ought" and "should" must again be introduced; there is no "specific type of 'is'" that can help us.

I understand Russell's and Pryor's interpretations. I'm still not clear on how something can be neither particular nor universal. Also, why "not universal" isn't the same as "particular" -- this is perhaps just another way of phrasing the first unclarity. "Fa v ∀xGx is not universal" . . . and yet, as you show, {Fa v ∀xGx, ¬Fa} is not particular. This is hard to understand. It makes sense using the "rows" illustration, but not conceptually or intuitively; it seems like a paradox. Probably I should wait for your "more on this later."

If causation language is biased towards world 1, then how should we model thought, if we want to focus on world 2. Does that seem like a fair description of the confusion this thread is in (or is just me overthinking things again...) — Dawnstorm

I want to hear @Patterner's response, but I'll just jump in to say that I do think it's a fair description of the confusion -- or at any rate the uncertainty -- with which I began, and which prompted me to start the thread in the first place. I don't know that anyone's responses has made it any worse, or that there would have been a clearer path to follow. I'm still working on my own restatement of the OP question. . .

The knitting analogy is a bit clunky, — Banno

No, I found it helpful.

Prior's Dilemma — Banno

A question here. If we agree, as we should, that Fa v UxGx is not universal, how does that help in addressing the second version of Prior's counterexample, the one that derives UxGx? UxGx is a universal, correct? And ¬Fa is particular. So we're getting a universal conclusion from (1) a premise that is not universal [Fa v UxGx] and (2) a premise that is particular [¬Fa]. When you speak of "sentences which are neither universal nor particular," I assume that Fa v UxGx is such a sentence. But how does its not being universal mean that we haven't derived a universal from a particular? Is the idea that both premises must be particular, in order to claim to have derived a universal from a particular?

I'm still trying to figure out what the topic is. — Dawnstorm

so far, this discussion looks to me like a solution in search of a problem. — SophistiCat

I just want to note that I understand these comments. For me, they point to two things: First, the difficulty of adapting our concepts of causality on the one hand, and the mental on the other, to even frame a sensible question. And second, as we've already noticed, the disconcerting way in which a perfectly simple (!) query -- Can a thought cause another thought? -- quickly expands into large theoretical questions, most of which we have at best tentative answer to.

Nevertheless, I'm going to try to post a reformulation of my initial OP question, in light of the very interesting discussion that's ensued. Hopefully later today.

Do we need to analyze thoughts in terms of causation? — SophistiCat

To this, I'd say no, we don't. I'm quite open to other hypotheses about the "relations," "affinities," "influences," "associations," et al. among thoughts. The only line I'd draw in the sand would be: We mustn't talk as if we already understand this issue, or as if there is no issue.

Ah, OK, much clearer, and now I understand why the 1st diagram seemed counter-intuitive. I hadn't understood that only the single, designated F was a. So of course the addition of something that is ¬F can't change anything with respect to a.

Carry on.

Kathmandu will be the site of a giant mushroom festival in the year 2145. — Patterner

Yeah, saw that. It was on the internet. Why did you think you made it up? :wink:

I guess not all thoughts are caused by thoughts. — Patterner

Absolutely right. Those that are caused by previous thoughts are a special category. We can stretch the term "thought" until it snaps, but I agree with you (though I think @Dawnstorm would not) that whatever made you invent that sentence, it wasn't some previous thought standing in a causal relation. Dawnstorm might argue for a stream-of-thought, out of which the (linguistic) elements of your sentence popped up. But regardless of our terminology, you question is a good one: What caused that sentence (as a thought in your mind, that is, not in your post)? We're drawn to a World 2 explanation, aren't we? Some individual, particular elements in your mind and no other were the key links of the causal chain. But that's not quite right. The words and the grammar are available to all. But the absence of anything resembling entailment, or even rationality, is striking: no part of the sentence seems required by any other. (And of course it's ambiguous: Giant festival, or festival featuring giant mushrooms?)

Try to construct an explanation, assuming a sincere questioner asked you, "What caused you to think that sentence?" I wonder what you'd get. Would you wind up denying causality completely?

I happened to run across this, in Peirce:

Ideas tend to spread continuously, and to affect certain others which stand to them in a peculiar relation of affectibility. — Collected Papers, 6.202

"Affectibility" is yet another near-synonym, like "relationship" or "association" or "influence," a way of approaching the idea of "cause" without committing to it. It's also interesting that Peirce must have had propositions or other World 3 objects in mind here, since it wouldn't make much sense to suggest that my thought or your thought (qua W2 thoughts) could have this effect. What's needed is the content, the meaning, in order for the idea to "spread continuously." In fact, the very term "idea" already implies a separation from the psychologically grounded W2 thought.

In Susan Haack's essay on Peirce's "synechism," she provides this suggestion:

[Peirce believed] we should take "thought" and "mind" to refer to both the particular minds of particular organisms, and to the intelligible patterns, the Platonic Ideas, found in the formation of crystals or the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb. — in Putting Philosophy to Work, 83

Here again, the distinction between World 2 and World 3 thoughts. I wouldn't care to make an argument that there is a thought-like "intelligible pattern" to be found in aspects of Nature, as Haack thinks Peirce believed. But the idea that such patterns are outside of particular minds is the whole point of asking into whether, and how, they might be causative.