Conclusion: it's not possible for us to gain or obtain knowledge about anything that goes beyond our senses, memory and testimony. — Humelover

Or is it?...

But here it may be proper to remark, that though our conclusions from experience carry us beyond our memory and senses, and assure us of matters of fact which happened in the most distant places and most remote ages, yet [...]

In a word, if we proceed not upon some fact, present to the memory or senses, our reasonings would be merely hypothetical; and however the particular links might be connected with each other, the whole chain of inferences :wink: would have nothing to support it, nor could we ever, by its means, arrive at the knowledge of any real existence. — Hume, Enquiry, section 37

Had not the presence of an object, instantly excited the idea of those objects, commonly conjoined with it, all our knowledge must have been limited to the narrow sphere of our memory and senses; — 44

Hence likewise the benefit of that experience, acquired by long life and a variety of business and company, in order to instruct us in the principles of human nature, and regulate our future conduct, as well as speculation. By means of this guide, we mount up to the knowledge of men’s inclinations and motives, from their actions, expressions, and even gestures; and again descend to the interpretation of their actions from our knowledge of their motives and inclinations. — 65

(My emphasis.)

The bad science part is to assume that it's simple. For instance, there is probably some genetic basis for character traits, but there's no one-to-one relationship between genes and character traits. "The genes of love" or "the genes of selfishness" are gross simplifications of far more complex realities. — Olivier5

To be fair:

The bogey of genetic determinism needs to be laid to rest. The discovery of a so-called ‘gay gene’ is as good an opportunity as we'll get to lay it.

[...]

Genes, in different aspects of their behaviour, are sometimes like blueprints and sometimes like recipes. It is important to keep the two aspects separate. Genes are digital, textual information, and they retain their hard, textual integrity as they change partners down the generations. Chromosomes — long strings of genes — are formally just like long computer tapes. When a portion of genetic tape is read in a cell, the first thing that happens to the information is that it is translated from one code to another: from the DNA code to a related code that dictates the exact shape of a protein molecule. So far, the gene behaves like a blueprint. There really is a one-to-one mapping between bits of gene and bits of protein, and it really is deterministic.

It is in the next step of the process — the development of a whole body and its psychological predispositions — that things start to get more complicated and recipe-like. There is seldom a simple one-to-one mapping between particular genes and ‘bits’ of body. Rather, there is a mapping between genes and rates at which processes happen during embryonic development. The eventual effects on bodies and their behaviour are often multifarious and hard to unravel.

The recipe is a good metaphor but, as an even better one, think of the body as a blanket, suspended from the ceiling by 100,000 rubber bands, all tangled and twisted around one another. The shape of the blanket — the body — is determined by the tensions of all these rubber bands taken together. Some of the rubber bands represent genes, others {105} environmental factors. A change in a particular gene corresponds to a lengthening or shortening of one particular rubber band. But any one rubber band is linked to the blanket only indirectly via countless connections amid the welter of other rubber bands. If you cut one rubber band, or tighten it, there will be a distributed shift in tensions, and the effect on the shape of the blanket will be complex and hard to predict.

[...]

So, if you hate homosexuals or love them, if you want to lock them up or ‘cure’ them, your reasons had better have nothing to do with genes.
— Dawkins: Genes Aren't Us - A Devil's Chaplain, chapter 2.4

or take this to PMs — fdrake

Please not!

Why are you pestering this thread — Srap Tasmaner

Pardon me? You engaged me, not me you?

You called reference a fantasy; — Srap Tasmaner

You seem to have assumed this was an insult? I'm insulted. :wink:

but of course it turns out this is a picturesque way of describing anything abstract — Srap Tasmaner

What is? Clarification, please.

What's the intended force of this though? — Srap Tasmaner

Do you mean, what do I mean? Or some more technical question?

Are you distinguishing reference from something we do with language that is not a fantasy? — Srap Tasmaner

No.

If you aren't, why should we care? — Srap Tasmaner

Why should we care about

language, art, and money — bongo fury

?

A declarative sentence is the standard linguistic device for pointing a word at one or more objects.

An assertion is the device in operation.

Why is it hard to tell the difference? Because the operation is a fantasy.

https://youtu.be/Tud43e2dT30?t=303

I don't see what you are asking. — Banno

Only for clarification. Which is probably too much. :wink:

I can't make a passing theory of what you meant, here.

If it were mandatory that the statement were an assertion, then the turnstile would add something (viz, what was already mandated)?

Nvm. Found the passage (though not the paper).

It's not a convention that what one says by way of a statement is an assertion; if it were, the turnstile would add something to the utterance. — Banno

Clarification, please? If it were... mandatory that the statement was an assertion? ...or, mandatory that it needed or allowed specifying as such? ...or...?

The creatures dominant on this planet hold a great many beliefs, beyond the findings of their excellent sciences. Perhaps most fundamental, deeper even than religion, is their belief in the reality of their symbol systems, such as language, art, and money. Prowess in such make-believe probably accounts for their dominance. Many other creatures attain sophistication in the conduct of some fairly fixed and innate system of communication, able to convey the location of food sources for example. But they are like Searle's Chinese room: automata. Humans alone seem equipped to entertain what we might call "passing theories" of reference, guessing and second-guessing possible novel (and completely pretended) correlations of symbols with objects: cave floor with tundra, rock with mammoth, pebble with bait, etc.

In principle, we can imagine creatures able to maintain such theories in an entirely hypothetical mode: second, third and nth degree-guessing. (Lewis.) However, the utility of and need for belief (or suspension of disbelief) in this respect, is easy enough to credit. Shared enough, passing theories thus solidify into "conventions" or "prior theories". Solid enough, they obscure or trivialise the level of semantic skill attained, so that even philosophers are able to catch each other out taking them (and it) too literally or inflexibly.

my soccer story — Srap Tasmaner

I keep being reminded of Elgin's Monday morning quarterback story. (Is it a good case of a passing theory?)

A visual map can be encoded in binary on a computer, and a human could read off those ones and zeros, even if they didn’t understand what they were reading. All the information in the picture would be retained in the sound of the human voice.
— Pfhorrest

So this seems to me an excellent example of the obvious differences to be found between an object (whatever it was, a still life?) and its representation or description (the vocalised bit map). The map is certainly not the territory.

If that picture were to be perfectly detailed down to the subatomic level, it would have to be animated
— Pfhorrest

If you mean represent temporally successive states, gradients etc. then, sure. If you mean represent them by a temporal succession of symbols, then surely not? Why? (I know the bit map is vocalised as a succession, but thus far that aspect was irrelevant to what it described, and could continue to be so, I would have assumed.)

or at least include temporal information in it like momentum, and all of the structural details that give a complete picture of its function,
— Pfhorrest

Sure, why not. We're on a flight of fancy as regards the level of precision achieved by the description, but that's ok. Bolt on another hard drive (or immortal chanter) to store the whole bit-map.

and contain within it all the exact information that the physical thing the “picture” it is of does.
— Pfhorrest

(Interesting syntax... reminds me of "no head injury is too trivial to be ignored" ;) )

Do you mean, "the physical thing that the picture is (a picture) of: the thing it depicts; the bowl of fruit?

Ok, the picture/bit-map/description must be as complex as the physics of a bowl of fruit; but was this paragraph meant to show how the bit-map must become a replica of the bowl of fruit? That's what I'm not getting. — bongo fury

Talking about a literal map of a city is probably a clearer illustration. — Pfhorrest

Evidently not. How or why must the ever more elaborate vocal performance which is the bit-map become more and more like the bowl of fruit?

Yes? When was the last time you saw a yurg? — tim wood

You wrote the puzzle :wink:

No yurgs are green, or, all yurgs are blue, on the other hand, cannot be presumed to imply there are any yurgs. — tim wood

:up: Cool, e.g.,

For all choices of x, not yurg without blue. (Could be zero yurgs.)

you would have them as proof of the existence of yurgs. — tim wood

No, but their negations, yes. E.g.,

For fewer than all choices of x, not yurg without blue... hence, for some one or more remaining choices of x, yurg without blue.

~∀x~(Yx & ~Bx) => ∃x(Yx & ~Bx)

By the way, though, also the green:

~∀x~(Yx & Gx) => ∃x(Yx & Gx)

Or even just non-yurg:

~∀x~(Yx) => ∃x(Yx)

and

~∀x(Yx) => ∃x(~Yx)

Also of course

∀x(Yx) => ∃x(Yx)

I.e. a universally quantified conditional (just like a universal categorical) needn't imply existence ('import') of the type of object named in the antecedent; but the quantifier itself always refers to the whole universe of assumed entities, and hence always facilitates implication of some existential statement or other.

if the false proposition were that no yurgs were not dinosaurs, then you're in the position of affirming the existence of yurgs. — tim wood

Yes, being asked to deny the non-existence of yurgs of a certain type is being asked to affirm their existence, surely?

If you are disconcerted by that step, maybe you (like me, often) slipped into thinking the invitation was to deny, instead, some spurious inference to the existence of yurgs of the opposite type?

I was reminded of this (for me) very embarrassing thread when quoting Quine here:

But the configuration of prefixes '~∀x~' figures so prominently in subsequent developments that it is convenient to adopt a condensed notation for it; the customary one is '∃x', which we may read 'there is something that'.
— Quine, Mathematical Logic — bongo fury

the argument itself does not grant people. — tim wood

Doesn't it at least deny:

1) ∀x~(Px & ~Dx)

I.e. for all choices of x, no personhood without dinosaurhood?

And wouldn't that denial:

2) ~∀x~(Px & ~Dx)

i.e. for fewer than all choices of x, no personhood without dinosaurhood

... seem to suggest that for some one or more remaining choices of x, personhood without dinosaurhood? ... i.e.,

∃x(Px & ~Dx)

as per Quine's definition?

There is only the public red. — Banno

... or...

Sure there are beetles. — Banno

?

It's intended to reinforce the argument that the question drops out of any relevance. — Banno

I doubt it has the intended effect. It implies that you are only concerned about what is relevant to the linguistic aspects, and are perfectly prepared to admit the possibility of a beetle beetling away.

And are they differently set for thinking than for saying?

Ok, but your interlocutor could reasonably complain of having been misled by your blarney here:

Or, to switch examples, even if you and I don't mean the very same colour when we say "red" - if your red is my blue - — Banno

Fair enough.

So this is the question:

If Alice is thinking something, must we conclude there is something that Alice is thinking? — Srap Tasmaner

Vote no.

And, if Alice is saying something, must we (can we) conclude there is some sort of a thing entering into a binary "is saying" relation with Alice?

It would be unresponsive to what I said. — Dfpolis

... about correspondence, or abstraction?

I've fixed the quote link, but apologies for the tangle. My bad.

hmm...

My bad for quoting you in this other thread. I think @Srap Tasmaner already questioned your usage of "abstraction". How about:

But true sentences can correspond only to made-up abstractions chimaeras. — bongo fury

Truth is not correspondence to reality. Why? — Dfpolis

Because only whole sentences can be true, whereas only parts of sentences can correspond to reality.

The correspondence relation is sometimes called "is true of", but that doesn't help, although it perhaps fuels the expectation.

But true sentences can correspond only to made-up abstractions.

Or, to switch examples, even if you and I don't mean the very same colour when we say "red" - if your red is my blue - we will both stop at the red light. — Banno

Is it just me, or oughtn't everyone here (and on similar threads) to clarify which of these two related but separable questions they are addressing?
• is my external red the same as your external red?
• is my internal red the same as your internal red? — bongo fury

E.g. isn't Wittgenstein's aim (with his linguistical speculation) to dissolve or reconceive the second one, not to entrench it?

I guess that you and he are saying "even if" the second question makes sense, but, like... how could you?? Are your linguistical insights worth the price of that hypothetical admission? Or is the private language argument no more than a reductio on the hypothesis of qualia? Excuse my irony failure if so.



et al

For at least 20 years - confounding my assumption that it would inevitably worsen - I've been able to cure the occasional onset of a "tuning fork" tinnitus within a few seconds, apparently by calling its bluff: listening as carefully as possible to the tone as though it were produced by a musical instrument, comparing it with the rest of real and imagined sound with respect to pitch, volume, tone colour, partials etc. Either by complete coincidence or (I prefer to think) in consequence of a recalibration of the whole auditory system, it stops.

I've seldom had the courage or presence of mind to withhold the procedure and thus test for coincidence. Too anxious to make it stop. Which is appalling superstition. I must henceforth attain more (haha, even the slightest semblance of) rigour in assessing the effect of the procedure. (But hey, this is the internet, so, take it from me, it really works!)

But what is recalibration? Not necessarily correction of a mapping of (sets of matching) internals to (sets of matching) externals. (Qualia sets to stimulus sets.) Rather, perhaps, just the matching of externals: (re-)learning to recognise the same stimulus sets that others do.

Same with pain, except the stimulus sets are types of bodily trauma and hence partly or wholly internal. But pains are (analogously) traumas as classified through public pain-talk.

Thank yooo!! Time to change my avatar then... :cool: (although I like it).

0.76

"No respect..."

I'm trying to think how Goodman and Elgin might solve your dogs vs. coyotes problem...

Btw though:

A place where we see a more trivial side of ontological relativity is in the case of a finite universe of named objects. Here there is no occasion for quantification, except as an inessential abbreviation; for we can expand quantifications into finite conjunctions and alternations. Variables thus disappear, and with them the question of a universe of values of variables. And the very distinction between names and other signs lapses in turn, since the mark of a name is its admissibility in positions of variables. Ontology thus is emphatically meaningless for a finite theory of named objects, considered in and of itself. Yet we are now talking meaningfully of such finite ontologies. We are able to do so precisely because we are talking, however vaguely and implicitly, within a broader containing theory. What the objects of the finite theory are, makes sense only as a statement of the background theory in its own referential idiom. The answer to the question depends on the background theory, the finite foreground theory, and, of course, the particular manner in which we choose to translate or imbed the one in the other. — Quine: Ontological Relativity

Is the aforementioned problem (and other ordinary talk) posable as a finite one, and would it help?

Also:

The only tenable attitude toward quantifiers and other notations of modern logic is to construe them always, in all contexts, as timeless. — Quine: Mr Strawson

:chin:

As you like, it's just that math never uses quantifiers that range over even all mathematical objects, — Srap Tasmaner

So thanks, because what I needed was to think of searching "range of quantification", and it turns out that @SophistiCat's drift, which I recognised as a (kind of a) thing, was into what's called "bounded quantification". Thing is, though, it is a mere abbreviation:

The existential proposition can be expressed with bounded quantification as

∃x∈D P(x)

or equivalently

∃x (x∈D & P(x)) — Wikipedia

It's an abbreviation that supports your point of view, that the range of quantification is restricted, but it doesn't resist undoing (as shown here), so that ∈ is a binary predicate and ∃ ranges over the whole domain of discourse - which in a mathematical discourse is presumably all mathematical objects, no?



Also supporting your point of view:

A [..] natural way to restrict the domain of discourse uses guarded quantification. For example, the guarded quantification

For some natural number n, n is even and n is prime

means

For some even number n, n is prime. — Wikipedia

So yes, you can (informally at least) use "existence" to highlight more and more predicates (sub-domains?) applying to the specific entities you are about to assign a predicate.



And then I think I might get your whole agenda here: you want to separate the process of identifying and setting up a target (which is to be the subject for a forthcoming predication) from the actual predication, the 'firing' of the predicate at that target. Anything like that?

quantification in the restricted way math does. — Srap Tasmaner

Does it? Do you mean something involving x∈R as alluded to previously? So the drift from

∃x (x∈R, f(x) = 0) — SophistiCat

to

∃x∈R ( f(x) = 0) — SophistiCat

isn't a mere abbreviation, and ∈ a mere binary predicate? (In math?)

(a) what are we talking about? — Srap Tasmaner

What things, or what kinds of thing?

The only thing that all chairs have in common is that we call them all "chairs". — creativesoul

:party:

But then it gets complicated... all and only chairs, or some more than others? We all call, or some more than others?

Bongo's chair.

I might remark, 'Listen to those dogs howling.' If someone else tells me, 'Those aren't dogs; they're coyotes,' they're not telling me I assigned the wrong predicate to an object, they're telling me I picked the wrong sortal. — Srap Tasmaner

I.e., that you assigned the right predicate to the wrong things? Apparently so:

the main error seems to be picking the wrong collection of individuals to consider attributing "howling" to. — Srap Tasmaner

In which case I get:

that what I'm calling "sortals" here might be how we specify the domain for our variables on the fly. — Srap Tasmaner

... As per @jamalrob's comment and probably others.

But "specifying a domain" is flagging up a likely rupture of your individual discourse from the wider "web" :wink:, e.g. your specified domain might be fictional, or (per the OP?) hypothetical, or for other reasons resist identification with any more widely recognised domain. Mending ruptures is difficult, and hence (maybe):

the plain language of that sentence ("I thought the coyotes were dogs") is ludicrous. — Srap Tasmaner

But then, isn't mending or patching together and reconciling domains what science is about? In which case I am surprised if,

What makes me uncomfortable about the predicate calculus — Srap Tasmaner

... is the quantifiers requiring us to make our selections in terms of predicates, define our sorts in terms of attributes. Which it does, so that the selection can be from a maximally inclusive domain. Maybe?

Oh dang. Thought it might misfire, it did and I'm sorry.

Probably I don't even understand "disingenuous". I meant it in an admiring way, thinking you might have skillfully cornered a hard-problem-ist.

I'll stop digging.

Are you just concerned about (not) making metaphysical commitments when we write formulas?
— SophistiCat

Yes. — Pfhorrest

But, the million dollar question is, Does the existential quantifier, ∃, need to make a distinction between fact and fiction?
— TheMadFool

No. — bongo fury

tl;dr: 'Everything is a unicorn' and 'Something is a unicorn' both commit you to there being unicorns. 'Nothing is a unicorn' doesn't. — Srap Tasmaner

Although of course it does commit you to there being non-unicorns :wink:

the wiki page for "ingenue" (from which "disingenuous")

I simply answered the question as given, and do not know what specific part of the hard problem you feel neuroscience cannot answer. — Philosophim

:rofl: