It is the old Taoist paradox: finding meaning in the meaningless. — Merkwurdichliebe

It's not so much of a paradox if we realize that we're creating meaning "in the meaningless."

The better question is: what is it that we can actually presuppose exists in its entirety prior to our discovery of its existence in its prior entirety? — Merkwurdichliebe

"its existence in its prior entirety"? What is that saying?

I wouldn't know what "its existence in its entirety" would be saying, even, that "its existence" wouldn't suffice just as well for (in other words what is "its entirety" adding to "its existence"?), but then modifying "entirety" by "prior" is that much more confusing.

Yeah I mean these supposedly zealous advocates for Free Speech(tm) either willfully turn a blind check towards censorship regarding issues they dislike, or condone outright censorship. — Maw

Not in this zealot's case.

I suspect I am being consistently tracked and casually harassed. — THX1138

What do you suppose makes you so interesting that people would be tracking you?

They may then weaponize the information they've gleaned against such an individual. — THX1138

How would anyone do that? Give a specific example of the info that would have been gained, how it would be "weaponized," and to what end.

At its most basic art, visual art for instance, can be measured aesthetically or otherwise. These are ‘The Elements and Principles of Art’: line, shape,form, colour, value, texture and space. A shape for instance is created when a line crosses itself, a shape is given form with tone. — Brett

You can measure the objective stuff in various ways, but the word aesthetic has value connotations (and other mental connotations) that can't be measured in the items in question. That stuff is about how we react to the items in question, how they affect us (or not) psychologically.

If you shit on the floor and call it ‘art’ I ain’t gonna do more than regard you as an imbecile (unless you happen to be able to shat out some geometrically beautiful wonder. — I like sushi

Just because something cannot be measured precisely it doesn’t mean it cannot be measured at all - or you wouldn’t have an opinion in the first place. — I like sushi

You can't measure objective (e)valuations at all, because there are none. People obviously have (e)valuative opinions, because we have psychological reactions to things, we apply our personal concepts (such as what we count as art or not), and so on.

The consequence is that an idea/theory/practice is not considered unscientific because there are objective criteria that show that it is unscientific, but because some authority or majority have decided to label it as such, based on their own subjective desires. — leo

The whole idea that there can be objective criteria is way off base. Any criteria are going to be subjective. It's simply a matter of whether there's some consensus about it or not. And there is a consensus about what's scientific or not, even though the consensus is a bit fuzzy around the edges/something that a robot might have some problems with. Also, obviously one does not have to care about the consensus, though it is true that the consensus has some socio-psychological impact that's more difficult to avoid.

Not sure what the question or comment is there. :wink:

This question comes up periodically, and I thought I answered it again recently, but in a nutshell, it's a combo of

(a) initially she wrote fiction and it's difficult to move out of being pigeonholed (she's still popularly thought of as primarily a fiction author),

(b) she didn't develop or emerge from academic philosophy socially, and as unfortunate as it may be, it's much more difficult to "break in" to that world than it is to emerge from within its confines,

(c) she's seen as (i) not being a "systematic" philosopher and (ii) having a lot of wonky notions, having misunderstandings, etc. about previous philosophers and theories, and this is seen as an upshot of and justification for (b). Of course, many philosophers who are studied in universities, who are regularly published in academic journals, etc. also have issues with (i) and (ii), but they developed within academic philosophy.

The Quine aphorism was forwarded under the umbrella of Russell's theory of descriptions. As such it's tackling philosophy of language issues.

From the nominalist perspective, any universal/type term is a concept. No concepts are necessarily as they are.

I was actually responding to a misread. I thought you said, "You assume that other creatures ARE conscious."

I just think that the evidence for any belief that "Some of the most successful creatures on the planet, in terms of survival, are not conscious." i — ChrisH

I'm not sure what we're referring to re "some of them are not conscious."

But I just told you the evidence we have. What's the objection to it? (And the evidence had better not amount to it not being certain.)

I'm simply saying that beliefs about consciousness in any entity other than ourselves are, by necessity, assumptions — ChrisH

If "assumptions" can be things we believe on plenty of good evidence, though that seems like an unusual way to use that term.

True, though it might be a vivid designator for any Ralph believing his neighbor is a spy? — Wallows

It seems as if you're trying on terms of art like they're hats that you might incorporate into a Halloween costume.

So it seems that you assume others are conscious but you are "certain" that some others (creatures) are not conscious. My point is that both these beliefs are assumptions (you have no unassumed evidence of consciousness/lack of consciousness in any human/creature). — ChrisH

There's plenty of evidence--behavioral, structural, etc. It just doesn't support a conclusion that's certain (or proved--but that's a truism with empirical evidence period) and people fall back on that completely ignorant "either certainty or it's a stab-in-the-dark guess" dichotomy.

Never heard of the Barcan formula? — Wallows

The simplest Barcan formula is just to have the mailman come. Your dog will go crazy.

But maybe tackle one small thing at a time until we've solved (or at least resolved) it, and then move on?

Yes, but, doesn't that make it a de facto a de re attitude? — Wallows

What makes something de re is that it's positing a property (or lack of a property) to some (particular) thing(s) in the world, and it's not about the language per se. At least so the normal distinction goes, where we're at least pretending the distinction holds water/doesn't wind up falling apart.

An easy way to think of it and remember it is to think of English words related to the Latin words in question, such as "real"/"reality" versus "diction," "dictionary" etc. And then in short, are we saying something about a (particular/specific) real thing or set of specific things ("the dogs at the Main St. Shelter" for example) or are we saying "something about the dictionary" or about language qua language.

So if we suppose that someone is saying that some sort of de re counterfactual is impossible, we're saying that the person is saying that it's not possible to posit a real thing having or lacking different properties in possible worlds. But that's not what people say unless they're simply denying possible world talk altogether.

If Ralphs believes his neighbor is a spy, then this can only obtain for stipulated worlds where Ralph is paranoid or has some essentialist feature of being a paranoid schizophrenic. Therefore, the rigid designator becomes the fact that Ralph will believe in any possible world where he is not treating his disorder (such as paranoid schizophrenia) and continues to believe in those worlds that the government is out to get him or his neighbor is a spy.

I don't think that this is an incredulous assumption and one that makes some sense in an essentialist manner? — Wallows

? When do you get to the "impossibility of de re counterfactuals" part or why we'd think that Kripke would say that there's any sort of de re counterfactuals that are impossible?

the point of this is not whether or not JP withdrew his plans for a website attempting to get subjects like ethnic studies and women's studies sidelined — Izat So

My point is that that wasn't what the website would have been. The article makes it clear that it would have just been a review site. That's my point because I want us to say things that are accurate. Not sensationalized falsehoods.

In a YouTube video posted to his personal account, he highlighted English literature, anthropology, sociology, women’s studies and ethnic studies as the types of courses “that have to go.” — Izat So

Sure. he doesn't like them. Again, the website was simply going to be a review site.

Women's studies and ethnic studies "have to go" — Izat So

What does that have to do with the article about the website?

My point was just that the article didn't actually say that they were trying to--or thinking about trying to--shut down anything.

People can have a mental model of an ideal for something, and people can influence each others' mental models, so that many people who spend time focusing on a particular thing have a similar ideal model in mind. And yeah, that happens moreso when it comes to sports, since there are literal rules, statistics are kept, etc.

But none of that is non-subjective re valuing or evaluating anything.

You are asking for speculation on the evolutionary origins of 'languaging' as a co-ordinating behavior. — fresco

It depends on your view of how concepts work. Do you believe that we receive concepts from others?

If you want to get pedantically literal about it, sufficiently declining enrolment would result in the end of a department. — Izat So

The thesis would have to be that a significant number of students taking the courses in question wouldn't take them if they knew the sort of information that would be in the reviews. Without knowing that information beforehand, however, they stay in the courses once they've signed up for them.

Some examples of adult language:

"mortgage"
"wrinkles"
"tax season"

How would you say that "thrownness" addresses how concepts are started?

Sure, but the choice of purpose is totally arbitrary, and it's hard to get excited about something superfluous. — yupamiralda

That's not a matter of wanting there to be purposes where there are none, though.

It's an issue of not being satisfied with the fact that purposes are something that we create for ourselves.

They're not arbitrary in the sense of "random," by the way.

So what we'd need to diagnose is why self-created purposes aren't intuitively good enough in your view.

Concepts are not about anything. — fresco

How do believe that concepts get started?

Not that I'm saying this as a way to telegraph a position on gun availability (see the end of the post for my position on that), but it seems to me that it's a much broader, more complicated socio-cultural issue (or rather complex of issues) in the U.S.

What we need to figure out is why the people who are snapping are snapping and tackle those issues. My suspicion is that the core of it is often a combo of survival pressures and relative isolation or marginalization, when those are felt by someone who has the "right" combo of mental issues. As was the case here, many of these shootings have been precipitated by loss, and often, as in this case, a lost job.

In the U.S., there's not a feeling of a "social safety net." Especially as folks get older, they worry about how they're going to find another job--as there seems to be a lot of age discrimination (combined with wanting to hire younger employees because you can pay them less), and in conjunction with that, people worry about a loss of health care, an inability to keep paying rent/a mortgage/car payments, etc., and so on.

On top of this, a lot of people feel relatively isolated or marginalized, which is due to a number of both cultural and geophysical factors.

And because of the health care issues we have, a lot of people with mental problems do not get help (or even get diagnosed). You have to worry about insurance covering it, it's expensive otherwise, and of course there's a cultural stigma associated with it.

None of these sorts of things are easy to change.




So finally re gun availability, my stance is that we should try any and every approach, from a complete gun ban on one extreme to mandatorily arming and training everyone on the other extreme, and then any and everything in between--to see if any different approach would lessen gun violence, or in other words, my stance is "We should do whatever would work to lessen gun violence"--I don't actually care about what the gun laws would happen to be. I care about what, if anything, would work to decrease gun violence. We'd need to experiment to see what might work in our particular culture.

If the issue is primarily cultural instead of just hinging on the availability of guns, then probably no gun availability stance will have much effect. It's much easier to focus on guns than it is to focus on the more complex socio-cultural (and political) issues, such as fixing our health care system, our approach to employment, cultural norms that make it easy to be isolated or marginalized, etc. I do think that tackling the gun issue is worthwhile--because who knows, maybe it would have some effect, but my suspicion is that that's not going to really be the problem.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/11/10/u-of-t-profs-proposed-website-would-target-professors-teaching-womens-and-ethnic-studies.html — Izat So

If you read that article, it would basically be a "review" website, where the reviews are focused on a particular, anti-SJW perspective.

This article containing an account of Heidegger's Dasein gives a backgound to my view of 'existence' being a function of human activity. — fresco

Even the philosophers that I consider myself a big fan of say at least as many things that I think are misguided, misconceived, etc. as they say things that I think are insightful, on-target, etc.

Heidegger is not at all someone that I'm a fan of. Heidegger, in my view, is easily one of the worst philosophers, along with folks like Hegel, Derrida, Sartre, etc. I see Heidegger as consistently being a combo of incoherent and extremely confused, off-track, misguided, etc. So appealing to him won't clarify anything and won't amount to successfully meeting any criticism I'm forwarding.

Since what we call epistemology and ontology are well known to be inextricably linked, I can't see the problem. — fresco

An example of the problem is this: "Scenarios 'prior to human observers' is an oxymoron because you the current speaker are the observer of such a scenario in 'your minds eye' as we speak."

You, as the observer of whatever you're observing, is an epistemological perspective. It's a matter of what we know and how we know it.

Scenarios prior to human observers is not talking about an epistemological perspective. It's talking about an ontological perspective (where we're reading "ontology" as what ontology is about).

So there's no contradiction there (to fuel an oxymoron), because we're not talking about the same thing, in the same respect, from the same perspective, etc., in both cases.

In short, it's the rudimentary error (that persists throughout too much philosophy despite how rudimentary it is) of conflating things like concepts, for example, with what concepts are about. Or, it's conflating sense and reference.

Heck, I still lob critical challenges at Plato when I read him. ;-)

Do you think that Kripke would argue that the impossibility of de re counterfactuals — Wallows

So re Kripke's views, my first thought is, "Wait--I don't recall Kripke saying anything like 'de re counterfactuals are impossible.'" Can we review where he said this, or why we believe that he'd say it?

(Maybe you meant de dicto counterfactuals? Remember that "The shortest spy might not have been a spy," on the conventional view, isn't possible de dicto, that is, in the reading where we're talking about whatever person--we don't know exactly which person--who would be the shortest spy. It's not person for that person to not be a spy.)

No, I am saying that 'things existing',only has meaning in the context of language users. Scenarios 'prior to human observers' is an oxymoron because you the current speaker are the observer of such a scenario in 'your minds eye' as we speak. The fact that we can visualize such scenarios which have explanatory utility for current events is an entirely human activity. — fresco

Why isn't this simply confusing epistemology and ontology?

At the moment, I'm interested in your account of concepts. So that's why I'm asking questions about it.

Your account of concepts is important for the thread, because you're hinging your argument on claims about what we're doing with concepts, how concepts work, etc.