Also, Lott isn't a statistician. Not that I think that that's at all the only relevant expertise.

I don’t see why. — AJJ

For one, most people are not murdered by strangers, or in situations where they might be carrying concealed weapons.

How individual people come to judge what words mean also is dependent on social facts regarding how they are conventionally used. — Pierre-Normand

Influenced by social facts, in a wide variety of ways, sure. Hence why a couple posts ago I wrote "Of course, the reasons are usually not going to be very arbitrary, but they're also not usually going to be very elaborate or educated or obscure, either."

None of this changes the simple fact that x doesn't connote y to S if S doesn't think about x that way.

People do have their own private language. The notion that communication is impossible if private language is ubiquitous is false. Wittgenstein was wrong (and about many things).

Its not just because *I* personally think that a word has a certain connotation by dint of contingent that it has this connotation. — Pierre-Normand

Words, symbols mean or do not mean something solely based on how individuals think about them. They mean or don't mean something to each individual. It's not just Pierre-Normand. My "you" was the "generic you."

Murder rates decline when either more women or more men carry concealed handguns, but the effect is specially pronounced for women.

I'd want to examine and critically analyze the data for this because the claim seems dubious.

Nevertheless what I've noticed is there's "progress" in the discussions I see around here. — TheMadFool

:brow:

:chin:

:rofl:

Yes it's an empirical claim.

Empirical claims are not provable. They're only falsifiable to the extent that someone isn't willing to make whatever moves they'd need to make to retain their claim/theory in the face of recalcitrant evidence (a la Duhem-Quine).

but it illustrates that symbols and icons, just like words (think of the N-word, for instance) can't always be claimed by their users to mean what they want them to mean — Pierre-Normand

It's not a matter of what people "want" something to mean, but what it does in fact mean to them. And just because you (or whoever else) think(s) about something in a particular way that might be connected to particular historical facts, that in no way suggests that the way you think about it is correct or that it's the way any arbitrary other people do or should think about it. People can't be correct or incorrect in how they think about this sort of stuff (re what something does or doesn't mean/symbolize to them).

What makes x a symbol representing y is that S thinks about x as a symbol representing y.

Any S could think about any x as a symbol representing y for any imaginable reason. Of course, the reasons are usually not going to be very arbitrary, but they're also not usually going to be very elaborate or educated or obscure, either. And insofar as any S doesn't think about x as a symbol of y, x is not a symbol of y to that S. Meaning is always to some S.

So a way to determine how many S's are thinking x as a symbol of some particular y is to survey S's, preferably outside of some other S trying to presently persuade them to see x as a symbol of y (because then we might instead only be learning about the influence, or about how S wants to position themselves socially, re alignments and so on, rather than learning whether S was really thinking about x as a symbol of y).

Judgment is not truth. If it were, there could be no such thing as mistaken judgment. — creativesoul

I just want to address this first. On my view, a mistaken truth-value judgment is either (i) a different person having a different judgment about the relationship of a proposition to a state of affairs--it's mistaken in the different persons' views, or (ii) the same person having a different judgment at a later time, where they feel they should have had the later judgment at the earlier time (and it's mistaken in their view, but perhaps the revision is what's mistaken in other persons' views at that point).

Of course, part of making the judgment in question, if we're using correspondence theory, is the person in question's perception of facts, where facts are not usually belief-dependent (the exceptions are facts re what someone believes).

So, on your view, this can't account for mistaken judgments because?

How would you say that a pencil on someone's desk in Japan interacts with a glass in my cupboard in New York?

How would you say that an arbitrary neutrino in the vicinity of Japan interacts with my glass?

All I care about is that you think about and address what I'm asking you to think about and address. I want you to be able to realize something about an ontological point.

I quoted one of them. This is a quote from an earlier post of yours that you believe is describing how it works: "That proposition describes/represents a particular cat being on a particular mat by using words with those particular meanings/referents."

See above. I quoted you and explained that you're not addressing what I'm asking you.

Here's an example quoting you:

"That proposition describes/represents a particular cat being on a particular mat by using words with those particular meanings/referents. "

What I'm asking you is how a description/representation corresponds with the cat being on the mat?

How do the meanings/referents correspond to the cat being on the mat?

You're giving an alternate description of what a proposition is and then just claiming that the proposition corresponds without analyzing what correspondence actually IS.

I’ve given my explanation several times of how correspondence obtains. — AJJ

No, you said things like "S proposes a description and then the description corresponds with a fact" (paraphrasing, obviously). That doesn't address how the description corresponds with a fact, especially not mind-independently. You're leaving the actual correspondence part unanalyzed.

I don’t know what dilemma you’re referring to, — AJJ

Right. And that's the problem. You can't address it if you're not even clear on what I'm asking you to address.

I've explained this a number of times. The dilemma is that correspondence/matching--whatever we want to call it that amounts to the same thing--has to work some way. It needs to be some process that occurs, or some property that obtains in something . . . somehow. We need to be able to describe how it works, or just what the property is (or properties are). I gave you a couple examples of the sort of answer that addresses this dilemma from "your side"--from a perspective claiming that correspondence can occur mind-independently, and I talked about what the problems with those answers are for this particular issue.

Well, AJJ asked this: "If a proposition is true when it matches a fact - and the fact is objective - then why in your view would that truth not be objective?"

I'm trying to explain the issue to him in a way that he can understand it. But it seems to be a Sisyphean task . . . which is unfortunately par for the course with him.

Correspondence obtains via a judgement made that a meaning matches a fact; judgements are mind-dependent, so therefore correspondence/truth is mind dependent.

I’ve had a look back over the posts on this page and that seems to be your argument. But the first part is just something you assert. You’ve ignored or bizarrely misunderstood every response I’ve made to that idea. — AJJ

No. Not my argument. What the dilemma is. If you don't understand what the dilemma is, then no wonder you're not addressing it.

Buddy, I don’t think you have any idea what I’ve been saying, or in fact what you’ve been saying. I’m happy to leave this alone now. — AJJ

In other words, no, you can't paraphrase the dilemma in a way that I'd agree that it's what I'm saying.

Yet, you understand it. Suuuure.

Because its correspondence depends on something independent of the mind... — AJJ

You're saying that literally NOTHING corresponds with something. You understand that, right?

I am understanding that, — AJJ

Let's try this to check if you understand the issue I'm getting at: paraphrase the dilemma in a way that I'd agree that it's what I'm saying.

What words do you want him to use? — DingoJones

The words that indicate that he understands that correspondence can't occur outside of making a judgment about it. ;-)

He's not understanding that correspondence needs to occur or obtain somehow, and I'm focusing on just how it occurs or obtains. He's not addressing that. He just keeps taking for granted that it works without wanting to analyze how it works.

A proposition/description is a thing within a person’s mind. However, it will only correspond with an independent reality if that reality is as the proposition describes. — AJJ

If the proposition/description amounts to nothing outside of thinking about it, then how does it mind-independently correspond with anything? Mind-independently, it's nothing. Nothing can't correspond with anything, can it?

It describes it, — AJJ

What does a description amount to outside of thinking about the description?

f a proposition conforms to it then it’s true regardless. — AJJ

This is the issue. If a proposition conforms to independent reality how? Is it structurally similar?

i asked you if pedaphilia was ok. See above posts. You are disgusting. I don't care if this gets me kicked off this site. Can i steal a million dollars from you? Your answer is no. Why the emotional response? — christian2017

There are people who don't care if you steal from them. That's a good example of the moral variance we already see. Yet nothing is collapsing.

terrible. its a fairly common belief that its wrong. Forgive yourself and move on with your life. That was a terrible response on your part. Whatever we have done wrong we should forgive ourselves and try to do better next time. — christian2017

See, even saying that it can't be talked about rationally online is met with such an emotional response. LOL

How do you quantify a ton of disagreement. — christian2017

It's a conversational term, not a mathematical term.

"Each nation"? Are you talking about laws? Mores? There's plenty of disagreement about what laws should be and over mores, within the cultures in question. There's plenty of disagreement within families even.

Is pedaphilia wrong? — christian2017

Not a conversation I'd ever do online, because it's impossible to discuss it rationally.

i disagree with your logic path. People have always agreed on moral principles to some degree. This is based on a historical perspective. — christian2017

People are going to agree to some degree if only because there are only so many stances we can imagine while there are seven and a half billion people.

The fact is that there is and always has been tons of disagreement over morality.

The point is there has to be some form of correspondence or agreement just as in in your example we see colors differently BUT the difference is uniform and so doesn't cause confusion. Anyway the issue you raise is in the realm of the impossible. Given that, in very simplistic terms, we all bleed when cut there's very little reason to suspect that there's such variability as you drscribe. — TheMadFool

Although there often is confusion, misunderstanding, etc. We see it here all the time.

This is where we got to last time. I gave an explanation and you went quiet.

Descriptions obtain via a set of words with particular meanings representing a person, object or event by way of concept and mental imagery. I describe a cat on a mat. I’m referring to a particular cat and mat, and the concept of being on something. All it takes for my proposition to be true is for that cat to be on that mat. — AJJ

So meanings, concepts, mental imagery can somehow exist or amount to something outside of a person's mind on your view? (Otherwise, how are such things matching something else independent of thinking about it and making a judgment about whether they match? (and if they're only mental, how is someone (or something?) seeing your mental content to check if it matches (and if something, how is it doing this?))

(I'm writing an additional reply rather than editing the above posts just in case you've already read the above and wouldn't read them again)

A couple suggestions as an assist to you:

One way that we say that things match is if they're very similar. For example, two prints of the same picture. They're similar formally. Their sizes, the arrangement of shapes, colors, etc. will all be similar enough that casually we call them "the same." (As a nominalist, I wouldn't say that they're literally the same, but they're close enough call them "the same" in a loose/casual/colloquial manner of speaking.)

Re propositions and facts, the tactic that some people to take is to say that they have a "similar logical structure." However, on my view, "logical structure" isn't something that exists independent of persons, and it's difficult to say how we can make sense out of meaning or a statement having the same "logical structure" as a fact (like a cat on a mat) independent of thinking about such things.

So that's the sort of answer I'm looking for, even though neither of those would work in this case. If you're going to explain how correspondence/matching works, the answer needs to be something like the above.

We have a proposition (we can just leave that unanalyzed for a moment--what it is for there to be a proposition).

We have a fact.

Now, we need matching of the proposition and fact to occur or obtain somehow.

How does that work?

If it’s an objective fact the cat is on the mat, then that proposition matches that fact. — AJJ

HOW DOES IT MATCH THE FACT?

I'm shouting because you don't seem to be able to hear me asking you that.

You misunderstand my point. People don't claim that anything interacts with nothing, they claim that there are things that do not interact with some other things, that's what I'm arguing against.

If we say that two things exist independently, we're saying that one can exist without the other, in other words they do not necessarily interact. I disagree that such independence exists. — leo

So you think that everything interacts with everything else.

Does a pencil on someone's desk in Japan necessarily interact with a glass in my cupboard in New York?

Excessive drugs have problems, extreme sexual perversion has problems (not homsexuality but extreme sexual perversion), offending others is something everyone does even sometimes when we say nothing at all (life is extremely complicated). — christian2017

I don't agree with you on any of those things morally.

So we don't agree on moral principles.

People have always disagreed on moral principles. So again, the mystery is why you think we all agree.

Then how can a proposition still be true if I judge it to be false? — AJJ

On my view, propositions are true or false to someone. It makes no sense to talk of them being true or false where that's independent of anyone.

So the only way it can be true when you judge it to be false is that it's true to someone else (or to you at a later time). Otherwise, it's not true (to anyone) when you judge it to be false.

The cat is on the mat. If that’s an objective fact, then the proposition is true — AJJ

How is the proposition true? Well, by corresponding to the fact (assuming we're going with correspondence, of course, and not coherence, etc.) But how does it correspond to the fact, exactly? That is, just how does the correspondence relation obtain? The way it obtains is via a judgment about whether the meaning "matches" the fact.

1. Can't get something from nothing
2. So something must have permanent existence (because if there ever was a state of nothingness, nothingness would persist to today)
3. Something cannot exist permanently in time ('always' existing in time implies no temporal start which implies it does not exist)
4. So there must exist a permanent timeless something. This is identical to the necessary being that philosophers have argued for down the ages.
5. The permanent timeless something is the cause of the Big Bang.
6. Timeless things are permanent (they just 'are' - no tense). They are beyond causality so do not in themselves need creating. — Devans99

I don't agree with any one of those statements. We've talked about most of them in other threads. Probably no need to rehash it here, because we're just going to end up in the same place we both started from.

A simple example of how inner experience can be variable while we don't have any problem with language despite that fact is with the old "inverted spectrum" idea.

If your experience of red is rather what my experience of green is like, and vice versa, that makes no difference in us being able to say "hand me the red color swatch," where the other person hands us the swatch we expect. Re their inner experience, they call @ "red," while we call * "red."

What we go by is whether behavior, including other linguistic utterances, makes sense to us. (And part of that is that we develop our meanings to make sense of the behavior we observe.) As long as that's going okay--although often enough it does not--we figure that things are kosher, and it doesn't really matter what differences may be taking place internally, in other persons' minds--such as them experiencing red as we experience green.