rigorousintuition.ca

Value expressions, that is expressions of personal prejudice and preference, and propositions are quite different.

The first is an act of self expression, the other is a statement about the world.

I might declare that the finest food of all is cheese, and you might disagree. What I mean to say and what I should say is that my favourite food is cheese - thus there is no argument.

Barracuda wrote:(G)ut feelings or gag reflexes are simply the re-formation within the recipient's understanding of a notion into more strictly propositional forms coinciding nearly instantaneously with a rejection of the proposition based upon a fast and dirty evaluation of that proposition as incomplete, poorly formed, or tautological within the moral scheme held by the recipient. Every decision is a moral decision. Every statement of belief holds within it a value judgement. Decisions formed outside of a value judgement or moral schema are merely instinctive and can only rise to the level, at best, of cunning.

A fast and dirty evaluation will not allow you to put aside your prejudice in order to see clearly. In fact, it seems to be a deliberate attempt to invoke prejudice, which is your accumulated memory of likes and dislikes, which in turn is based upon your desires and fears. What you really need is a slow and clean evaluation, and the ability to put aside your personal prejudice.

Every statement of belief holds within it a value judgement.

This is not true. You seem to be asserting that every proposition expresses a value judgement. A proposition is a statement, an assertion concerning a particular state of affairs. We might argue over who was the greatest prime minister of england, because we value different things in a prime minister, but we can hardly argue over who was the tallest, given the facts of their relative heights, of course. "Churchill was five feet nine inches tall," versus "Churchill was the greatest prime minister in england's history." The first issue might be settled, the second, never.

barracuda wrote:Kid, I must say it is a bit of a joy to watch you ply away at your métier.

vanlose kid wrote:meat-machines

I don't think there's really any significant argument against the idea that at a certain level we are indeed meat-machines, and I see little reason to formulate a construction which essentially acts as a pejorative with regards to our meat-nature. We should take great pride in our meatiness, as it is the source of much joy and pleasure and industry, and to denigrate that by the presumption that meat all by itself is not a fully wonderous thing in the universe is hubris, or at the very least self-disdain. As far as we are aware, meat exists only on this planet - it is unique in the vastness of space. And any comprehension of the spiritual that can come to a man can only enter his being through his meaty faculties, even if it is in his indefinable heart and soul that it finds a throne. Surely if there is a god, meat is for Him a favored medium...

b, that first sentence: "I don't think there's really any significant argument against the idea that at a certain level we are indeed meat-machines..." i agree with that. and the reason i do is because you included this phrase "... at a certain level". this implies that there are other levels. but as we're discussing reductionists, their view is that there is one and only one level (not sure that makes sense, compare: "there is one and only one height"). now i can understand that one would, for purposes of investigation, isolate the object thereof by excluding what one prejudges as being extraneous or irrelevant to the investigation. say when you want to investigate the human heart and how it functions. what you leave out of the investigation you do so for practical reasons. this is fine. it's the next move (and i know the analogy isn't water tight here, i'm making use of an analogy) which is to judge as nonexistent all of what you excluded at the beginning, e.g. the lungs, blood vessels, etc.

so you want to study the body as some sort of biomechanical apparatus (already we're making pictures) and hence you exclude what you do not deem pertinent to questions regarding this. once that is done you either remember that you've been studying the body of a human being or you redefine the concept by not bringing back into it what you excluded for purposes of investigation. you've reduced the problem and therefore imagine you've eliminated the questions that go with all the other stuff. reductionism just does not do justice to human life. that is my contention. and as far as i know i am far from alone in thinking this.

re "meat-machine". the purpose of the phrase was to mark out this move, this elimination of all the other levels, or all else that one normally considers part and parcel of what it is to be human. of course the counter argument is that all that other stuff is just that, stuff, of dreams, illusion. i do not mean it as a pejorative at all. those who do reduce us to meat-machines wouldn't say that they view it so either. they'd probably say it's about "being real, illuminati, niggaz!" not subject to the illusions that bother mere mortals. if i'd only eat my prescribed pills and punch the clock at regular intervals everything would be fine. i wouldn't think so much. etc., etc.

barracuda wrote:...

I wonder, really, just how much sense it makes to discuss god or spirituality divorced from the existence of man, anyway. If there are no men, is there god? It is unfortunate that we cannot really comprehend his motivations or his plan, and have to sort of muddle by with what scraps we get. We have our conscience, but we know those things are malleable, finicky and perfidious, and have not, through history, shown any inclination in a general sense to a consensus of behavior. We have free will, but don't you wish upon occasion that certain people's free will had been less exercised upon the rest of us? We have love, but not without loss or the threat of it.

Onerous flesh of animals, stuck in our limited consciousness, yet what else besides our eyeballs sees the vast glory of the world, what besides our ears hears the yawning infinitude of existence? Our amazement takes away our breath, and gives fullness to our ecstatic visions. Without the carne y hueso there would be only mind, only soul, and what is that? Would that be somehow less machinelike? I would hate to be an angel...

it wouldn't make much sense. i agree. seems we're moving into theodicy here, though. (where's my lifeline?) think i'll pass on this one for now. i know, i'm copping out. think i'll just quote Jeff quoting Rumi:

Whenever a feeling of aversion comes into the heart of a good soul,
it's not without significance.
Consider that intuitive wisdom to be a Divine attribute,
not a vain suspicion:
the light of the heart has apprehended
intuitively from the Universal Tablet.
- Rumi

no se, hombre. no se. Preguntarle.

barracuda wrote:...

they are reliable and attempts to assign probabilities.

I guess I'm saying he's set them too high. Estimate roughly the percentage of falsehoods believed by men versus the truths, and you'll see what I mean. Now think of our real ability to encompass the godhead within our perceptions. If there is god, if there is a spirituality, the vast majority of mankind is able only to view these things, these most important things as a glimmer or sheen. It is the nature of god that man must be warned time and again of the dangers of looking upon him or saying his name, so time and time again our senses and perceptions and beliefs are designed to act as shields from the brightness of truth. Falsehoods run the world, meanwhile the important truths are occulted from our beliefs...

that's "scientific" anglo-american or analytic philosophy for you. that's fairly common methodology. if you can assign probabilities to propositions you're being scientific. (Bernanke and Geithner et. al., do it all the time.) he does way more than talk on those things in the vid clip. and most of it is useless as far as i'm concerned. that's how he makes his living though. fulfilling his contract.

barracuda wrote:...Estimate roughly the percentage of falsehoods believed by men versus the truths, and you'll see what I mean. Now think of our real ability to encompass the godhead within our perceptions. If there is god, if there is a spirituality, the vast majority of mankind is able only to view these things, these most important things as a glimmer or sheen. It is the nature of god that man must be warned time and again of the dangers of looking upon him or saying his name, so time and time again our senses and perceptions and beliefs are designed to act as shields from the brightness of truth. Falsehoods run the world, meanwhile the important truths are occulted from our beliefs...

i don't think we can encompass the godhead within our perceptions. i'm not sure i even understand what it might mean to attempt to do so.

take Jack's inventory. assuming it made sense and was complete God would not be on that list, by definition (cf., Jack re "real existing things" above). i'd agree.

to step a bit in the direction of theodicy and link up with the previous part of your reply, it does not make sense to think of God in terms of a member of our moral community. nor does it make sense, to me, to think of him as a person in the moral sense in which we think of our fellows as persons. that's a conception of him that is foreign to me and to an older and somewhat neglected part of the tradition. the mystics don't think in these terms. Weil, for instance, doesn't. all i can do now is refer to her and what she had to say. let's say she's my lifeline. i'll think on it though, and get back to you if i come up with something useful or worth saying.

but as you surely know, we're getting to the point where we're banging our heads against the limits of language. where even logic falls short. where we seem to have no other recourse than song and poetry.

let me leave you with this old BBC program on the person i think expressed it best:





*

Hammer of Los wrote:Value expressions, that is expressions of personal prejudice and preference, and propositions are quite different.

The first is an act of self expression, the other is a statement about the world.

I might declare that the finest food of all is cheese, and you might disagree. What I mean to say and what I should say is that my favourite food is cheese - thus there is no argument.

I have every little argument about that except to say that I must make a value judgement anytime you tell me what your favorite food is, that is, I must decide whether or not I should trust your statement, and thus I've made a moral decision.

Every statement of belief holds within it a value judgement.

This is not true. You seem to be asserting that every proposition expresses a value judgement. A proposition is a statement, an assertion concerning a particular state of affairs. We might argue over who was the greatest prime minister of england, because we value different things in a prime minister, but we can hardly argue over who was the tallest, given the facts of their relative heights, of course. "Churchill was five feet nine inches tall," versus "Churchill was the greatest prime minister in england's history." The first issue might be settled, the second, never.

I suggest that we need to define terms here, so as to not confuse the two things, belief and proposition. I am talking about belief as it is commonly understood, that is,

• 1. something believed; an opinion or conviction.
  2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof.

You are discussing knowledge regarding propositions, which can be true, or false, or something else. For example, we really only know anything about Churchill's height by whay we've been told, and to accept this as a fact we have to exercise a moral decision. There are also entire sets of propositions which fall into the category of qualia, and have to be accepted as true or false by social convention or consensus, as they cannot be proved to be true or false. Not all propositions are facts, and facts are only those things which are independantly and empirically verifiable. I have no way of determining Churchill's height except by believing anecdote. I refer you to Wittgenstein's discussion of Napoleon.

A fast and dirty evaluation will not allow you to put aside your prejudice in order to see clearly. In fact, it seems to be a deliberate attempt to invoke prejudice, which is your accumulated memory of likes and dislikes, which in turn is based upon your desires and fears. What you really need is a slow and clean evaluation, and the ability to put aside your personal prejudice.

Maybe. But propositions of fact are a very limited path to understanding of the world. I see little reason to take a great deal of care and time in the assessment of whether or not a foot is twelve inches long. Thankfully, we can relegate most propositions to fairly simple states of factuality, in that they are some degree of true, false or unknown.

What I consider important about understanding the world is not necessarily facts, it is not likes and dislikes, it is not desires and fears, but rather is the results of moral action in play and decisions made in the real world as they stand in relationship to beliefs. It is the settling upon of moral belief that is the meat of the matter here, and how a moral belief can be judged to be a wise or a foolish one. It is here that a slow and clean evaluation is important, so that your belief can have enough integrity to become a conviction that "properly" guides your actions.

^ ^

just an observation. maybe it's the way you say it that sometimes puts some people off. rigor can come across as harsh and unforgiving. but i like the way you say it. the fact that you're saying it to yourself at the same time. i actually think you say it way better than me. thanks.

*

I doubt we'll be having any serious disagreements along these lines, as it seems we've both owned a few dog-eared copies of the Tractaus along the way. I myself have never substantively understood the book but in the most surface reading of the few of his crystal-like statements which I could come to terms with, but I love him so much as a man and an architect that I managed to secure a deck chair in the style of his so that I might at least experience a similar physical feeling as he might have felt at classes in Cambridge:



Mine, though, is decadently outfitted with a more colorful cloth, has the added feature of possessing arms, and is rather sensibly located on an actual deck.

vanlose kid wrote:maybe it's the way you say it that sometimes puts some people off. rigor can come across as harsh and unforgiving. but i like the way you say it. the fact that you're saying it to yourself at the same time. i actually think you say it way better than me.

I think that's about the nicest way anyone has ever called me an asshole. You can often find me tersely telling my cat just how he should behave, all the while lazing around myself and smoking cigarettes.

^ ^

well, i guess you can take pride in the fact that in that you, according to some accounts, resemble Wittgenstein.

anyway, i dropped in to post this.





“In every way it has come to this, that what one now calls Christianity is precisely what Christ came to abolish.” – Soren Kierkegaard

*

..

likemind wrote:(B)ut as you surely know, we're getting to the point where we're banging our heads against the limits of language. Where even logic falls short. Where we seem to have no other recourse than song and poetry;

Quite right of course. And song and poetry is exactly what sprang to mind when I read the following question. It seems pregnant with subtle meaning to me, silly old harmless pseudo mystic that I am;

Fishwaxinglyrical wrote:(W)hat else besides our eyeballs sees the vast glory of the world(?)

JonAnderson wrote:My eyes see the coming revolution
My eyes see the glory of the world
My eyes see the coming revolution
My eyes see the glory of the world

My eyes see the coming revolution
My eyes see the glory of the world
My eyes see the coming revolution
My eyes see the glory of the world

Looking for the mystery in the woman
Dancing with the teacher in the circle
Watching for the reasons we are going
Getting ready for the big bang
Everybody looking for that great connection
Somebody help me find that universal dream
Everybody watching, is something happening
See what I mean

Looking for the real man
Looking for the teacher
Dancing with the circle
Looking for the real world
Everybody knows where we're going to
Don't forget to leave good footprints behind
Never let the grass grow over your soul
Only time will tell, leave good footprints behind

I have seen the way
The way is clear to save your love
High upon the sky
The forces come to break you free

Forgiving is what you have
Forgiving is what you see
Forgiving is what you know
Forgiving is all you are
I have seen the way
The way is clear beyond your soul

I have seen the way
The way is clear to save your love
High upon the sky
The forces come to break you free
Forgiving is what you have
Forgiving is what you see
They say the soul has so many lifetimes
My eyes see the coming revolution
My eyes see the glory of the world

Only when you stop to listen
Only when you stop to see
Forgiving is what you have
Forgiving is what you see
Forgiving is what you know
Forgiving is all you are
I have seen the way
The way is clear to save your soul
I have seen the way
The way is clear beyond you soul
My eyes see the coming revolution
My eyes see the coming revolution
My eyes see the coming revolution
My eyes see the glory of the world
My eyes see the coming revolution
My eyes see the glory of the world

Don't forget to leave good footprints behind
Don't forget to leave good footprints behind

ps I'm still mulling over my next post where I tangle with that slippery animal, language, once more.

vanlose kid wrote:i haven't been tetchy at any point

Oh, okay. I just thought so because you kept asking questions without saying what you thought. I'm sorry I got you wrong.

vanlose kid wrote:you're the one championing the view that science will some day give us the answer to the universe and everything.

What is the question, to which that will be the answer? I don't think there is one answer, but clearly science has given us the answers to a whole lot of very interesting questions.

Science is what explains and predicts. I suppose that is an idiosyncratic definition, but I like it. Dowsing is more scientific than supply-side economics, despite the latter's theoretical underpinnings. New sciences come into being as discoveries allow the use of new technologies, and bad sciences (that are originally adopted for their elegance and for political reasons) fall away as we realise that they aren't valid, that they don't work. Rational choice economic theory will go the way of phrenology. That's why I'm quite flexible about what I define as science: I haven't examined all these esoteric streams in depth but I've dabbled in a lot of them and in some of them I have personally found prima facie validity. Like the I Ching, or astrology. I went looking for a quote by some occultist now, couldn't find it but it goes something like 'What they now call magic, in a hundred years they will call skill'. The political side of what is and is not generally accepted as science shouldn't be underestimated: I think that social factors could explain why relativity, for instance, isn't widely known (apart from E = mc² as cartoon shorthand for extreme cleverness) and why the implications of relativity and radioactivity haven't yet (after almost a century!) filtered through to the other sciences, let alone general discourse. There's resistance to the idea that ultimately there's no such thing as matter.

vanlose kid wrote:your beliefs are your beliefs.

That's a bit of an unusual thing to read in a thread about epistemology! If you think I arrived at my beliefs through faulty thinking I'd expect you to say so. That's what we're here for. I'm not shy to criticise the beliefs of others, as long as I have a leg to stand on and it's not trivial.

vanlose kid wrote:go in peace.

You too man, thanks for the contributions.

Hammer of Los wrote:To ignore the psychological (Psychical? Spiritual? Soteriological?) aspect(s) of the world is to suffer from a self imposed blindness, a narrowing of the range of perspective of one's illuminating vision. The materialists live in a hell of their own making.

Signed! But again, science needn't be synonymous with materialism.

I must make a value judgement anytime you tell me what your favorite food is, that is, I must decide whether or not I should trust your statement, and thus I've made a moral decision.

My first thought was that it goes without saying that the person expressing themself may be consciously, or even possibly unconsciously, deceiving themself or others; that this was not a serious consideration. When people express themselves I recognise it as such, they do so as an act of reportage, rather than an attempt to mislead. But then I realised I live in a world where I imagine everyone to be honest. Most of the people I know are working class mothers or children. They tend to be honest in reporting their own ideas and feelings. Then I cannot help but imagine the overwhelming paranoia and uncertainty that prevails when the most basic assumptions of honest conversation are overturned, and recall my own feelings that have arisen in response to exchanges on this very forum. I am sure I am not the only poster to have unwisely entertained notions of the disingenuity of my fellow community members. Paranoia and suspicion make honest communication impossible.

So, you might call me naive, (or even faux naif!), but I believe in the possibility of honest communication, and therefore choose to treat all apparently honest communications as honest. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I shall choose to trust people when they seem to be attempting to honestly express themselves.

Barracuda wrote:I suggest that we need to define terms here, so as to not confuse the two things, belief and proposition. I am talking about belief as it is commonly understood, that is,

1. something believed; an opinion or conviction.
2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof.


You are discussing knowledge regarding propositions, which can be true, or false, or something else.

Oh dear. This is going from bad to worse. That is entirely incorrect, it is my sad duty to inform you. It is precisely beliefs and not knowledge which are said to be either true or false.

It is typically understood that in order for something to count as knowledge, it must be true.

A proposition is an assertion that may be true or false. Belief is belief in something, the truth of something, the truth of a proposition or statement. Holding a statement to be true or false is to hold an opinion or conviction; a belief. The "something believed" in part one of your definition refers exactly to a proposition, a statement. A belief is something that is held to be true, which by and large means we act as if it were so. Knowing requires firstly that your belief be true. Some hold, of course, that a further element(s) of justification are required for something to count as knowledge.

Of course, next we can go on to what counts as true and what counts as false, what we mean by true and false* and/or how to go about verifying or falsifying your propositions/statements/assertions/opinions/beliefs, by which I mean to say how we go about establishing the truth or falsehood of a statement. We could even talk about what it "means" to "mean."

I knew three years studying formal epistemology would come in handy one day. I just hope I haven't said anything really stupid! It's the early onset Alzheimer's you know.

You see, I am not just a lazy useless bum. I am A PHILOSOPHER!

Now excuse me, I have to go and polish my stones.

Hammer of Los wrote:So, you might call me naive, (or even faux naif!), but I believe in the possibility of honest communication, and therefore choose to treat all apparently honest communications as honest. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I shall choose to trust people when they seem to be attempting to honestly express themselves.

Perhaps if you'd spend a year or two acting as a moderator here you might be cured of that disability.

Barracuda wrote:I suggest that we need to define terms here, so as to not confuse the two things, belief and proposition. I am talking about belief as it is commonly understood, that is,

1. something believed; an opinion or conviction.
2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof.


You are discussing knowledge regarding propositions, which can be true, or false, or something else.

Oh dear. This is going from bad to worse. That is entirely incorrect, it is my sad duty to inform you. It is precisely beliefs and not knowledge which are said to be either true or false.

It is typically understood that in order for something to count as knowledge, it must be true.

I guess I meant that I had been speaking somewhat colloquially. But I think we are close to being on the same page, because when I wrote,

• "You are discussing knowledge regarding propositions, which can be true, or false, or something else."

What I was trying to say was "You are discussing knowledge (regarding propositions, which can be true, or false, or something else.)"

That is, the clause, "which can be true, or false, or something else" was attempting to point at the noun "propositions" as its object, not the noun "knowledge".

If then you are saying that a proposition cannot be indeterminate, I'd be genuinely curious as to why not.

Of course, next we can go on to what counts as true and what counts as false, what we mean by true and false* and/or how to go about verifying or falsifying your propositions/statements/assertions/opinions/beliefs, by which I mean to say how we go about establishing the truth or falsehood of a statement. We could even talk about what it "means" to "mean."

I think you asterisked me there and left me hanging. I'd love to hear anything you might have to say about all that, but first I must know - is cheese really your favorite food?

I did asterix you, but I can't for the life of me recall why.

Can a proposition be indeterminate?

Typically a proposition is said to be either true or false, it cannot be true and false, or neither true nor false, and still remain meaningful according to a positivist position. Not that I am actually a positivist per se, but I am currently channelling Freddie Ayer, so don't mind me.

We may be unable in practice to determine the truth or falsehood of a proposition.

We may even be unable to suggest under what circumstances we would consider a proposition verified or falsified, which is more problematic, because in this instance we cannot say, even in principle, what it would mean for that proposition to be considered true. Such a proposition is often said to be meaningless in a literal sense.

I never studied formal logic at anything but the most basic level. Perhaps there are systems under which a proposition may be neither true nor false or both true and false, and still remain meaningful.

stefano wrote:Like the I Ching, or astrology. I went looking for a quote by some occultist now, couldn't find it but it goes something like 'What they now call magic, in a hundred years they will call skill'.

They do that now with football players.



BTW the I Ching could be seen as a form of mathematics based on direction not magnitude.

Hammer of Los wrote:I did asterix you, but I can't for the life of me recall why.

Probably due to the hangover after the potion wears off.

To asterisk: *

To asterix:

(barracuda might differ that it wasn't this bad)

JackRiddler wrote:

Hammer of Los wrote:I did asterix you, but I can't for the life of me recall why.

Probably due to the hangover after the potion wears off.

To asterisk: *

To asterix:

(barracuda might differ that it wasn't this bad)

You are right. I gotta lay off that potion!



But I am a twice an idiot. Once for having misread 'Cuda (perhaps his awkward phrasing can share the blame), and secondly for being a self-declared pedant, and then writing "asterix" when I ought to have written "asterisk," as any fule kno. And I didn't even do it deliberately for comic effect either, although in conversation I love nothing more than a humorous and well chosen malapropism. I kinda dig spoonerisms too. Anyway.

I always loved Asterix. I have many of the books by Goscinny and Underzo. Here's my favourite character, of course. I like druids (although they are hampered by poor ac in ad&d first ed);



I am also still considering 'Cuda's reference to a "moral" dimension to belief. I'm mulling that over. See pic above. People have "beliefs" which are guides to action, action is always moral action. Yes, I can see that. Even more important then that our guides, our beliefs, lead us true rather than false. The problem with humanity is not that we do not know enough, but that there are too many things we think we know, but about which we are profoundly mistaken. But I don't normally think in "moral" terms at all. I don't like to use rules or standards in order to come to a judgement, they are rather limiting, in that then one is tied to the past elements and can only create the present from the past. We must experience the present free of the mask of the image of memory. They have their part to play of course, technical knowledge and so on. But our image of the past, all our memories and associations, all of that comes up whenever I recognise something and identify it. Then I have to be able to understand the image I have developed, the concept I have acquired through memory and experience, is not the thing itself. Then I can try to find out if perhaps innate intelligence can choose the right course, as long as it sees clearly and is not clouded by the obvious elements of fear, anger, desire, lust, hate, envy and so on, the accumulated psychic debris that buries me in ignorance and false views. This is alchemy, to free the self, to transform base metal to gold, to attain the kingdom of heaven. It is done here and now or nowhere and never. Meditation is awareness of outer and inner. Mindfulness. That is all that is required, not all this gobbledygook occultism or mantras or whatnot. You know in real life I would never go anywhere near any sort of supposed guru, dont you? I did get quite near the Pope once, I guess. I wouldn't count him as a guru though, more a guy with right wing connections who they shoehorned into the papacy after getting rid of the genuine reformer that preceded him. Well, according to some folk who presumably like to slander the vatican. It was probably all down to Opus Dei. I'm kiddin', I'm makin' this stuff up now.

Ramblin' mode off. I need more of my favourite potion. I know I've posted this before, but what the heck;

yo b,

found these a while a go, thought you might be interested.

Episode 7: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: What Is There and Can We Talk About It?

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on August 19th, 2009

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:27:08 — 79.8MB)

Discussing the beginning (through around 3.1) of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Mr. W. wrote that the world is made up of facts (as opposed to things) and that these facts can be analyzed into atomic facts, but then refused to give even one example to help us understand what the hell he’s talking about, and so Wes and Mark argue about it per usual while Seth corrects our German pronunciation. The first 3/4 of this episode was recorded off-site from our regular equipment, making the audio quality relatively sucky. Enjoy!

http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/20 ... -about-it/

Episode 8: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (and Carnap): What Can We Legitimately Talk About?

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on September 4th, 2009

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:37:48 — 89.6MB)

Continuing last ep’s discussion of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with some Rudolph Carnap (a logical positivist from the Vienna Circle: “The Rejection of Metaphysics” from his 1935 book Philosophy and Logical Syntax) about what kind of crazy talk is outside of legitimate discourse.

Carnap interprets W as simply ruling out as unscientific most of the talk we’d consider philosophical, i.e. metaphysics, ethics, the self… Or is W really a mystic who just wants to distinguish these from science? Why doesn’t he just write more and explain himself? This tricky text inspires Seth to start a cult.

To follow along, read the Tractatus from the beginning through around 4.12, then skip to 6.3 and read to the end, skimming the more technical material in the middle. Here’s the text for free online, or you can buy the book.The Carnap text can be found here.

Also, if you’re confused by the description of truth tables (which are hard to picture without seeing some), look here.

End song: “The Last Time,” by Mark Lint and the Fake from the 2000 album So Whaddaya Think?

http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/20 ... alk-about/

An Analytic Philosopher Grapples with “Soul”

Posted by Wes Alwan in Web Detritus on May 12th, 2010

If Star Trek’s Data were to write about the soul, it might be this self-parodyingly soulless:

Soul talk is expressive in the same way as other nondescriptive utterances, like “oh my God” or “ouch” or “yuck” or (with head nodding to music) “Yeah, that’s funky.” There is no clear referent for those. They don’t seem to refer to or represent anything—they seem somehow pre-representational (or presentational). Soul talk, like other emotive talk, bears little relation to the goals of scientific language, and probably can’t be assessed with that language. Like other expressive forms, soul talk in ordinary folk language won’t have much theoretical interest, because it is rarely, if ever, trying to explain a phenomenon. In the same way that a poem is not trying to explain a phenomenon, soul talk is equally uninterested in induction, hypothesis, prediction, and corroboration. Instead, soul talk tries to express our hopes and aspirations (“I hope I see my family again in the afterlife”) or to identify inspiration (“This song really speaks to my soul”), or to express feelings deeper than friendship (“I’ve finally found my soul mate”), or to scare people into doing something (“Your soul will burn in hellfire”), and so on.

via Soul Talk – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

While the use of words like “soul,” is non-descriptive, not all non-descriptive utterances are merely “emotive.” As we saw in our discussion of Wittgenstein, logic is non-descriptive (and hence strictly speaking meaningless (or “senseless”). And as we’ll see in our upcoming discussion of Kant’s Prolegomena, while a word like “soul” corresponds to nothing empirical, it can say something significant about our meaning-making tendencies — even as these tendencies persist in trying to make everything concrete as “understanding is forced out of its sphere” of the empirical. Kant thinks of this as reason’s overweening tendency to try to find a final answer that goes beyond the chain of empirical causal conditions to an uber-answer that undergirds the chain itself. In this case, “soul” is an attempt to grapple with the sense that our consciousnesses seem to have a subjective unity: to posit a “substance” that underlies the motley stream of consciousness–in all its variety and even chaos. For Kant, this is an illegitimate attempt to treat something to which we only have reflective access as something like an empirical object: to reify it, hypostatize it. But while we do best to avoid metaphysical claims about substance, this does not mean we have to give up our interest in in the subjective unity that led to them; or to make the correlative mistake of supposing that this unity — and that consciousness generally — is an empirical object for science. It isn’t. The point is that consciousness remains a philosophical problem that is inaccessible to science. And the use of “soul” can be seen as involving not a metaphysical claim but an assertion of this problem: “soul” is a placeholder, an “x”, in an equation that has no solution.

For the author of this article, there is meaningfulness to “soul” language — but as “expressive folk language” to accompany aesthetic and ethical activity. He seems to have invented a new persuasion, Condescending Kantianism (Kantdescending? — apologies). The legitimate use of the word “soul” reflects not a profound problem for science and philosophy alike, but merely a playground toy for making such statements as “that singer has soul” (really, he says this). But really he seems to be unaware of Kant and is thinking of Wittgenstein’s related, simpler (and I think unfortunate) claim that metaphysical assertions merely amount to attempts to reify grammar.

Finally, the implication here that there is no genuine philosophical problem of consciousness reflected in the word “soul”–and that the domain of science has it covered–is merely other side of the same coin: both try to treat consciousness as an empirical object, and both try and replace an un-shakeable uncertainty with a form of faith one quasi-religious, the other quasi-scientific. Neither religion nor science need the category error.

http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/20 ... with-soul/

Topic for #34: Frege on Language, Truth, and Logic

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in General Announcements on February 13th, 2011


What is it about sentences that expresses truth or falsity? Gottlob Frege is considered one of the fathers of analytic philosophy, but it’s hard for someone with a general interest in philosophy to see much of his work as overtly philosophical. He did a lot of the work inventing modern symbolic logic, with an eye to providing a logical foundation for mathematics. But in doing this, he showed a philosophical agenda that was very influential for Wittgenstein and many others.

Frege is concerned with what it is about sentences that make them true or false. He’s convinced that while our judgments about matters of fact are subjective, the matters of fact themselves are not. His objectivity is so extreme here that he considers abstract propositional entities, numbers, and meanings to be objectively real; they aren’t just ideas you or I have in our heads, but are discovered and shareable between different people. He thinks that while a proper name refers to something in the world (“Dick Clark”), a sentence about that name (“Dick Clark is bad ass”) correspondingly refers to THE TRUE, i.e. a weird metaphysical entity that all true sentences refer to. Smoke that, man!

Read these articles along with us:

“The Thought” (1918)

“On Sense and Reference” (1892)

“On Concept and Object” (1892)

Frege’s introduction (p. 12-25) to his book The Basic Laws of Arithmetic: Exposition of the System (1904)

http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/20 ... and-logic/

Russell’s Atomistic Metaphysics

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in PEL's Notes on June 10th, 2011

Some information about Russell’s atomism was discussed in in our Wittgenstein’s Tractatus podcast.

For a bit more information, here’s his essay “The Ultimate Constituents of Matter,” pointed out to us (dismissively) by frequent blog discussion contributor Burl and mentioned on our recent episode.

I leave it to you all to explore this essay as you like, but let me give you a taste, which aligns well with what what we’ve seen previously of Russell, i.e. that perception grasps (by definition, it seems) something non-mental, that he believes in sense data, and (stressed more in our Wittgenstein discussion) he gives those sense data a primary place in the ontology:

Common sense believes that what we see is physical, outside the mind, and continuing to exist if we shut our eyes or turn them in another direction. I believe that common sense is right in regarding what we see as physical and (in one of several possible senses) outside the mind, but is probably wrong in supposing that it continues to exist when we are no longer looking at it. It seems to me that the whole discussion of matter has been obscured by two errors which support each other. The first of these is the error that what we see, or perceive through any of our other senses, is subjective: the second is the belief that what is physical must be persistent. Whatever physics may regard as the ultimate constituents of matter, it always supposes these constituents to be indestructible. Since the immediate data of sense are not indestructible but in a state of perpetual flux, it is argued that these data themselves cannot be among the ultimate constituents of matter. I believe this to be a sheer mistake. The persistent particles of mathematical physics I regard as logical constructions, symbolic fictions enabling us to express compendiously very complicated assemblages of facts; and, on the other hand, I believe that the actual data in sensation, the immediate objects of sight or touch or hearing, are extra-mental, purely physical, and among the ultimate constituents of matter.

I brought this up in the context of Russell’s discussion of the Dedekind cut, where an irrational number like the square root of two is commonly taken as a limit that the numbers around it can never reach. Russell’s point was that this is not a number at all, but rather a gap between numbers, meaning that the space between two integers is not a continuum: here’s a cut between two numbers that is just not filled, i.e. it’s not any particular number. You can still have infinitely many numbers, even just between 1 and 2, but however many there are, they don’t amount for a continuum. While this doesn’t entail that space itself is not continuous, it’s certainly compatible with Russell’s ultimate pluralism about matter: it’s not just one, big thing a la Spinoza’s God.

-Mark Linsenmayer

http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/20 ... taphysics/

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