Why "Owl" is an intellectual coward
db...@tampatrib.com
about his objections to Objectivism. This essay contains numerous errors,
although "Owl" lacks the courage to face this fact.
Here are some that I noted in the past, which prompted cowardly flight:
In article <7lku0o$bnd$1...@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>,
Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> Again, I don't see what this has to do with my argument. My argument was
> deductively valid and had 3 premises:
Your argument is not valid, and the reasons have been given. You simply
evade the reasons.
> P1: If Objectivism is true, then [that O marries his mother] is the same
> thing as [that O marries Jocaste].
"Oedipus' mother" means Jocaste. You are unable to deny this and evade
the fact that you are so unable.
> P2: No one can both believe a thing and not believe that same thing at the
> same time.
As was already said, even though you evaded it, if the failure to believe
is contingent upon different words than the success in belief, it is
possible. I'll give the same example again, both because it's easy and
because it highlights the fact that you simply evade this point. You might
correctly believe, for example, that Navy submarines are propelled by
engines, while at the same time failing to believe that they are propelled by
steam turbines. But in the Navy, "engine" means "steam turbine." Your failure
to believe is contingent upon the use of the different words, "steam
turbine," while your success is contingent upon the use of the word "engine."
This example explains while you're totally wrong, although you evaded the
example last time.
Similarly, Oedipus believes he married Jocaste while not believing that he
married his mother.
> Which one of these premises are you trying to challenge?
The one that was challenged before. You simply evaded the challenge. Your
posts depend upon your evading the things that refute them.
In article <7lnh3f$96i$1...@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>, Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> If the word "a" and the word "b" refer to the same thing, then if
> a sentence containing "a" is true, you should be able to substitute "b" for
> "a" and still have a true sentence. Why doesn't this work on the oedipal
> sentences:
>
> 1. O believes that O is marrying Jocaste.
> 2. O believes that O is marrying O's mother.
Because sentence 1 does not completely and correctly express what Oedipus
believes, of course. Oedipus believes that Oedipus is marrying (Jocaste who
is not his mother). When you try to substitute (his mother) for (Jocaste who
is not his mother), it's easy to see that the error is in sentence 1.
Sentence 1 lacks context. You are claiming that sentence 1 represents what
Oedipus believes, but it only represents part of what he believes. Examining
everything Oedipus believes illuminates your error. When you properly
examine the things that Oedipus believes: x) I married Jocaste y) I did not
marry my mother ... it's easy to see that "my mother" means Jocaste. If it
didn't, x and y wouldn't contradict when they clearly do. Of course, this
has been pointed out already. You simply evade this point. Admittedly, the
above that you wrote is a new strategem, but it's a new strategem that relies
on the same evasion. We could whimsically call it "squirming."
> The problem with Objectivism, then, is that it ignores this second dimension
> of how language works: that people refer to things *via* senses.
The problem with your argument, then, is that it ignores a dimension of
how language works: that people refer to things with words and can be
mistaken about what those words mean. Already pointed out and evaded by you.
In article <7lnh3f$96i$1...@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>, Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> Here's another formulation of the problem (common in phil. of language):
> Everyone accepts Leibniz' law: If a=b, then any characteristic of a is a
> characteristic of b.
Characteristic of a, you say here. Let's remember that: characteristic of a.
> Now, that seems to imply the following principle about
> sentences: If the word "a" and the word "b" refer to the same thing, then if
> a sentence containing "a" is true, you should be able to substitute "b" for
> "a" and still have a true sentence.
No, it doesn't seem to imply this. Words are not necessarily
characteristics of a. Here comes the amusing part.
> Why doesn't this work on the oedipal
> sentences:
>
> 1. O believes that O is marrying Jocaste.
> 2. O believes that O is marrying O's mother.
You would have the reader believe that a is Jocaste and b is Oedipus'
mother, and that there is an x that is a characteristic of a and should be a
characteristic of b. And the characteristic of Jocaste that you here cite?
That Oedipus believes something about her. You are trying to say that
Oedipus' beliefs are a characteristic of Jocaste.
Well, that's absurd. This argument of yours isn't very well thought out.
In article <7lkvfs$c83$1...@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>,
Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> >I have explained it quite clearly, and you fail to respond except by
> >blustering.
>
> As soon as you read my explanation of what "the principles of logic" are, I
> will stop my insufferable blustering.
As I have already said, your explanation is merely an *assertion* and
isn't *shown*. In order for your "proof" to be formally valid, the steps
would have to be shown. You haven't shown them, however, and have only
asserted them, as was already said several times now. Again, you don't even
attempt to show that "inference depends upon the principles of logic," but
merely assert it. Really, at this point you're not even managing to assert
it, much less attempting to show it. Perhaps that's because when you merely
assert it there's someone who points out that that's all you've done.
In article <7l46kg$rag$1...@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>, Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> >No, that's not egoism. That's subjective morality.
> >
> I did explain at some length in the essay why I think the egoist would
> distintegrate the homeless guy.
No, you explained why a person would disintegrate a homeless guy and then
*claimed* that that person was an egoist. As was just said, you have latched
onto subjective morality rather than egoism.
----------
I hope I don't make it sound like I have a monopoly on refuting "Owl." Far
from it.
-- at no extra charge
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Stephen Speicher
> From time to time, a fellow who calls himself "Owl" posts a lengthy essay
> about his objections to Objectivism. This essay contains numerous errors,
> although "Owl" lacks the courage to face this fact.
>
> Here are some that I noted in the past, which prompted cowardly flight:
> ...
Oh my, I'm shocked. Michael Huemer (aka Owl) an intellectual
coward? Who ever would have thought such a thing. :)
Next you'll tell me that he misrepresents the philosophy of
Objectivism, and then argues against his misrepresentations.
Stephen
s...@compbio.caltech.edu
You can always tell a pioneer by the arrows in his back.
Printed using 100% recycled electrons.
--------------------------------------------------------
anth...@hotmail.com
A meaning is something you have in your head. If "Jocaste" means the
same thing as "Oedipus' mother" then if Oedipus had the meaning of
Jocaste in his head, he must have known that she was his mother, which,
of course, he didn't.
Similarly, since "dbuel" and "the most foolish person on HPO" have the
same referent, on dbuel's theory, he must know he's a fool.
Wrathbone
db...@tampatrib.com
anth...@hotmail.com wrote:
> A meaning is something you have in your head. If "Jocaste" means the
> same thing as "Oedipus' mother" then if Oedipus had the meaning of
> Jocaste in his head --
He didn't know "Oedipus' mother" meant Jocaste, idiot. That's kind of the
point of the story.
> Similarly, since "dbuel" and "the most foolish person on HPO" --
See above.
Anthanson1
>From: db...@tampatrib.com
>Date: 4/13/00 6:58 PM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8d5tuk$tfk$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>
>
>In article <8d5r34$qgf$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> anth...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
>> A meaning is something you have in your head. If "Jocaste" means the
>> same thing as "Oedipus' mother" then if Oedipus had the meaning of
>> Jocaste in his head --
>
>He didn't know "Oedipus' mother" meant Jocaste, idiot. That's kind of the
>point of the story.
That's right. But if the meaning of a term is the referent (your theory) then
he would have had to know that Jocaste was his mother, since "Jocaste" and
"Oedipus' mother" mean the same thing (because they have the same referent).
That's kind of the point of Owl's argument.
In the same way, on your theory, you should know that you're the "Fool of HPO"
since "dbuel" and "The Fool of HPO" have the same referent. In understanding
"dbuel"
you must understand "The Fool of HPO."
If your theory is correct, then, you must know you're a fool.
Wrathbone
Anthanson1
>
>Next you'll tell me that he misrepresents the philosophy of
>Objectivism, and then argues against his misrepresentations.
How does he misrepresent Objectivism,
Huckleberry?
Wrathbone
db...@tampatrib.com
Anthanson1 <antha...@aol.com> wrote:
> That's right. But if the meaning of a term is the referent (your theory) then
> he would have had to know that Jocaste was his mother, since "Jocaste" and
> "Oedipus' mother" mean the same thing --
Bonehead, do you understand what the story is about? Oedipus does not know
who is meant by "Oedipus' mother." I swear, I can't believe you're trying to
talk about Oedipus when you don't know the story.
Why don't you read the story and get back to us.
> In the same way, on your theory, you should know that you're the "Fool of
ScheetzBrian
>then
>> he would have had to know that Jocaste was his mother, since "Jocaste" and
>> "Oedipus' mother" mean the same thing --
>
>Bonehead, do you understand what the story is about? Oedipus does not know
>who is meant by "Oedipus' mother." I swear, I can't believe you're trying to
>talk about Oedipus when you don't know the story.
>
>Why don't you read the story and get back to us.
>
>> In the same way, on your theory, you should know that you're the "Fool of
>> HPO" --
>
>See above.
>
>-- at no extra charge
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.
>
You misunderstand them. They are trying to apply the principle of transitivity
to language, to somehow demonstrate that meanings of words are not related to
the referents of words.
They're basically saying:
1. Jocasta = Oedipus' mother [A=B]
2. Oedipus believes he married = Jocasta [C=A]
3. Therefore, transitively: Oedipus believes he married = his mother [C=B].
Since everyone knows that Oedipus did not believe he was marrying his mother,
the meaning of words cannot be the referent of words [or so the argument seems
to go].
Basically, whoever came up with this method of analyzing language [I think they
said it was Leibniz, but I'm not sure] is misapplying the transitive method.
_Naturally_, the method fails, when you are dealing with _falsehoods_ [in this
instance, Oedipus' lack of knowledge regarding the identity of his mother].
When Oedipus believes that Jocasta is not his mother, he is believing a
falsehood. It is inevitable that this falsehood will fail to be transitively
related to truths. Try repeating this experiment in a context where the
identifications of the participants are true.
db...@tampatrib.com
ScheetzBrian <scheet...@cs.com> wrote:
> You misunderstand them.
No, not at all. "Wrathbone" simply wants to pretend that Oedipus must know
who is meant by "Oedipus' mother." False.
> 1. Jocasta = Oedipus' mother [A=B]
A person equals a person.
> 2. Oedipus believes he married = Jocasta [C=A]
Oedipus' beliefs equal a person? Wrong. Beliefs are not people.
ScheetzBrian
>
>No, not at all. "Wrathbone" simply wants to pretend that Oedipus must know
>who is meant by "Oedipus' mother." False.
>
>> 1. Jocasta = Oedipus' mother [A=B]
>
>A person equals a person.
>
>> 2. Oedipus believes he married = Jocasta [C=A]
>
>Oedipus' beliefs equal a person? Wrong. Beliefs are not people.
>
>-- at no extra charge
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.
>
>
>
>
>
>
Dude, I disagree with them too.
The use of "=" signs was my lame attempt to reproduce their [mis]application of
the mathematical concept of transitivity to language, in the context of the
Oedipus story. I set up the "=" signs in the places where they needed to be,
if they were going to do single-item replacement of the sort they were
attempting to describe.
I was trying to make their [incorrect] analysis comprehensible. Since it
seemed that other posters were arguing subordinate points, and not their actual
[if incorrect] point.
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
ScheetzBrian <scheet...@cs.com> wrote in message
news:20000414175756...@ng-fl1.news.cs.com...
> You misunderstand them. They are trying to apply the principle of
transitivity
> to language, to somehow demonstrate that meanings of words are not
related to
> the referents of words.
>
> They're basically saying:
>
> 1. Jocasta = Oedipus' mother [A=B]
> 2. Oedipus believes he married = Jocasta [C=A]
> 3. Therefore, transitively: Oedipus believes he married = his mother
[C=B].
>
> Since everyone knows that Oedipus did not believe he was marrying
his mother,
> the meaning of words cannot be the referent of words [or so the
argument seems
> to go].
>
> Basically, whoever came up with this method of analyzing language [I
think they
> said it was Leibniz, but I'm not sure] is misapplying the transitive
method.
> _Naturally_, the method fails, when you are dealing with
_falsehoods_ [in this
> instance, Oedipus' lack of knowledge regarding the identity of his
mother].
> When Oedipus believes that Jocasta is not his mother, he is
believing a
> falsehood. It is inevitable that this falsehood will fail to be
transitively
> related to truths. Try repeating this experiment in a context where
the
> identifications of the participants are true.
Well said, but it's been said before to no avail.
--
A.Broese-van-Groenou.
a
George Dance
essay
> about his objections to Objectivism. This essay contains numerous
errors,
> although "Owl" lacks the courage to face this fact.
I note that Owl has not replied to your post as yet. While he may have
been offended by your use of the word "coward," he has of course posted
in the past that he expects such language in a newsgroup. In any case,
it would be easy enough for him to ignore your post and to answer the
substance of your charges separately.
For myself, I see that you have objections to his essay, but I am not
clear exactly what those objections are. Nor do I really want to waste
your time and mine on trying to figure them out (and maybe get them
wrong in the end anyway) from lengthy backquotes.
Would it be possible for you to post a short summary or abstract of
what your main objections are?
I have in mind something like the post I sent earlier today questioning
his claim that his intuition can generate facts that are as valid as
those gained by observaton.
If he fails to reply, you will be left still pushing on a string, as it
were; but that seems to be the position you are in anyway. You will,
though, have provided a way in which your charge - that he is lacks the
courage to face objections to his essay - can be tested. If he is a
coward, he will continue to evade; if not, not.
> In article <7lku0o$bnd$1...@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>,
> Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
>
> > P1: If Objectivism is true, then [that O marries his mother] is the
same
> > thing as [that O marries Jocaste].
>
> "Oedipus' mother" means Jocaste. You are unable to deny this and
evade
> the fact that you are so unable.
>
> > P2: No one can both believe a thing and not believe that same thing
at the
> > same time.
>
> As was already said, even though you evaded it, if the failure to
believe
> is contingent upon different words than the success in belief, it is
> possible. ...
>
> Similarly, Oedipus believes he married Jocaste while not believing
that he
> married his mother.
Your main objection seems to be that Oe
--
- 30 -
George Dance
A short summary of Mr. Speicher's charges would be welcome.
Just the main points, mind; there is no need to attempt to prove them,
in advance of any dialogue.
I should add that I am referring to dialogue with Owl, of course. You
may be able to refute all charges, to everyone's satisfaction; and there
is no reason you should not attempt to do so after they have been
summarized. However, that would indicate nothing re the issue of Owl's
alleged intellectual cowardice.
db...@tampatrib.com
ScheetzBrian <scheet...@cs.com> wrote:
> The use of "=" signs was my lame attempt to reproduce their [mis]applicat
> ion of
> the mathematical concept of transitivity to language, in the context of the
> Oedipus story.
It wasn't lame! :)
-- at no extra charge
db...@tampatrib.com
George Dance <georg...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> I note that Owl has not replied to your post as yet. While he may have
> been offended by your use of the word "coward," he has of course posted
> in the past that he expects such language in a newsgroup.
He won't reply. He quit replying way before I ever noted his cowardice -- way
back when he simply had no argument against the recognition of his many
errors.
> For myself, I see that you have objections to his essay, but I am not
> clear exactly what those objections are.
Well, it's not easy to collate them. I've never responded to his 33-part (on
my system) essay with a 33-part response. I responded to a part here and a
part there. "Owl" ran away after being trounced with regard to various
separate subthreads.
What you see in starting this thread are the last posts, the ones from which
he ran away, in those subthreads -- put together in one post. But the
original beginnings of those subthreads? That's not easy to find.
Here's some. Make sure you understand that "Owl" indeed talked about these
things below for a while, and the posts where he did so exist. The point at
which he ran away was the point noted in the post that began this thread, not
in the parts below.
----------
Owl: (1) Principles of logic are not observations. Me: This seems a
bold claim if you aren't going to say what the principles of logic are. How
do we know that things are themselves? Is that a principle of logic? But if
by "observations" you mean "perceptions," it can certainly be granted that
principles are not merely perceived. So, let's grant the argument so far.
Owl: (2) The principles of logic can not in general be known by inference.
Some principles of logic might be knowable by inference - if they could be
supported by reference to other principles of logic. But it couldn't be the
case that all principles of logic are known by inference, because this would
require circular reasoning. Me: Go on -- there *must* be some principles
of logic known by inference. For example, given principles of logic not known
by inference, we could then infer that they form a set. And this would be a
principle of logic -- that there were a set of such-and-such other
principles. So, if you were to say that there could not be any principles
of logic known by inference, you would be totally wrong. There must be some.
Of course, you didn't say that -- but this will be important in a moment.
But there is another objection. When you say it cannot be that all principles
of logic are known by inference, you are mistaken -- it merely cannot be that
they are known by inference from one another. Circular reasoning only comes
into play if it is claimed that they are known by inference from one another.
If one principle is known by inference from something else, something other
than the other principles, circular reasoning is not an issue. And there is
such a principle -- that things are themselves. Owl: Now it follows from
(1) and (2) that: (3) The principles of logic are known a priori. Me:
No, it absolutely does not. It only follows from (1) and (2) that there must
be a principle of logic not inferred from the others and not merely
perceived. And there is: The law of identity. The other principles of logic
may be inferred from it. Your a priori "proof" is not one.
----------
Owl: So I pull out the gun and disintegrate him, and then continue on my
way. The question is: Was my action morally right? If egoism is true, it
was. Me: No, that's not egoism. That's subjective morality. As I read
deeper into your essay, it gets increasingly incorrect about what it is that
Objectivism says.
----------
Owl: Oedipus, famously, wanted to marry Jocaste, and as he did so, he both
believed and knew that he was marrying Jocaste. The following sentence, in
other words, describes what Oedipus both wanted and believed to be the case:
(J) Oedipus marries Jocaste. However, Oedipus certainly did not want to
marry his mother, and as he did so, he neither knew nor believed that he was
marrying his mother. The following sentence, then, describes what Oedipus did
not want or believe to be the case: (M) Oedipus marries Oedipus' mother.
Me: You start with a thing Oedipus believes, and continue with a thing he
does not believe, and ask how he can believe the first without believing the
second if the words refer to the same thing. Well, the pitifully obvious
answer is that we do not always know to what words refer. Oedipus uses the
phrase, "Oedipus' mother," but he does not know to whom it refers. Obviously.
But a much more devastating argument is to compare what Oedipus believes
rather than what he believes with what he doesn't. Oedipus believes two
things: I married Jocaste. I did not marry my mother. Well, the second
is false, isn't it? But wait a minute, nonobjectivist: How can it be false if
Oedipus *means* something different by the second than by the first? Isn't
the second statement false precisely because "my mother" refers to Jocaste
and not merely to what Oedipus thinks it does? You aren't going to say that
these two beliefs "don't contradict," are you? Where's the "sense and
reference distinction" now? In what way is the distinction "valid" when the
second belief is *false*? Well, much of the remainder of your essay hinges
on the misconception just shattered.
----------
Now, if you take a look at the last part, there's an easier way to describe
what's preposterous about "Owl's" argument. "Owl" says that what Oedipus
believes is this: Oedipus married Jocaste. This is incomplete. What Oedipus
really believed was: Oedipus married Jocaste and Oedipus' mother was some
other lady who lived somewhere else.
"Owl's" argument then begins with ignoring the truth.
Owl
>
> 1. Jocasta = Oedipus' mother [A=B]
> 2. Oedipus believes he married = Jocasta [C=A]
> 3. Therefore, transitively: Oedipus believes he married = his mother
[C=B].
Well, that's not completely unrelated to what I was saying, but the
argument is explained better in the essay in question, which I just posted
under the subject "Why I am not an objectivist", section I.
Let me summarize very quickly. There are two ways of doing this:
Way 1:
1. If a term, A, means the same as a term, B, then in any sentence where
you see A appear, it is ok to substitute B. (premise)
2. Assume that meaning is reference. (Objectivist theory)
3. "Oedipus' mother" has the same reference as "Jocaste". (given by the
story)
4. Therefore, "Oedipus' mother" means the same as "Jocaste". (from 2,3)
5. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste. (given by the story)
6. It is ok to substitute "Oedipus' mother" for "Jocaste" in (5). (from
1,4)
7. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Oedipus' mother. (from 5,6)
Way 2:
1. If "O's mother" means the same as "Jocaste", then [the proposition that
O marries O's mother] = [the proposition that O marries Jocaste]. ("="
means "is identical with" or "is the same proposition as".)
2. If meaning = reference, then "O's mother" means the same as "Jocaste"
if and only if "O's mother" refers to the same person as "Jocaste".
3. "O's mother" refers to the same person as "Jocaste".
4. Therefore, if meaning = reference, then "O's mother" means the same as
"Jocaste".
5. Therefore, if meaning = reference, then [the proposition that O marries
O's mother] = [the proposition that O marries Jocaste].
6. Therefore, if meaning = reference, then Oedipus believed [the
proposition that O marries O's mother] if and only if he believed [the
proposition that O marries Jocaste]. (from 5)
7. Oedipus believed [the proposition that O marries Jocaste] and did not
believe [the proposition that O marries O's mother].
8. Therefore, meaning != reference.
I have written the argument in this manner, so that you can verify
conclusively that it is valid. Anyone who knows predicate logic can do
this -- I promise that your logic professor will get the same answer --
though I certainly can't guarantee that everyone on hpo will. There
should be absolutely no doubt about that (though somehow, I think there
still will be -- like people who would deny a mathematical proof). The
truth of the premises is the only thing that ought to be open to
discussion -- and then, anyone who wants to challenge either argument
should identify specifically which premise he claims is false.
Owl
news:HLPJ4.5629$5D.1...@ozemail.com.au...
> Well said, but it's been said before to no avail.
I'm surprised to see you saying that, Arnold. The message to which you
were referring was a pretty obvious garbling of what I had said, and I
would have expected you to recognize that, even if you didn't agree with
my argument.
I continue to be amazed that when I have stated an argument so clearly and
precisely people would continue to try to find something else to attack --
and never to identify which premise of what I actually said they're
claiming is false!
Désirée Davis
says...
> ScheetzBrian <scheet...@cs.com> wrote in message
> news:20000414175756...@ng-fl1.news.cs.com...
> > They're basically saying:
> >
> > 1. Jocasta = Oedipus' mother [A=B]
> > 2. Oedipus believes he married = Jocasta [C=A]
> > 3. Therefore, transitively: Oedipus believes he married = his mother
> [C=B].
>
> Well, that's not completely unrelated to what I was saying, but the
> argument is explained better in the essay in question, which I just posted
> under the subject "Why I am not an objectivist", section I.
>
> Let me summarize very quickly. There are two ways of doing this:
>
> Way 1:
>
> 1. If a term, A, means the same as a term, B, then in any sentence where
> you see A appear, it is ok to substitute B. (premise)
> 2. Assume that meaning is reference. (Objectivist theory)
> 3. "Oedipus' mother" has the same reference as "Jocaste". (given by the
> story)
> 4. Therefore, "Oedipus' mother" means the same as "Jocaste". (from 2,3)
> 5. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste. (given by the story)
> 6. It is ok to substitute "Oedipus' mother" for "Jocaste" in (5). (from
> 1,4)
> 7. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Oedipus' mother. (from 5,6)
>
> conclusively that it is valid. Anyone who knows predicate logic can do
> this -- I promise that your logic professor will get the same answer --
> though I certainly can't guarantee that everyone on hpo will. There
> should be absolutely no doubt about that (though somehow, I think there
> still will be -- like people who would deny a mathematical proof). The
> truth of the premises is the only thing that ought to be open to
> discussion -- and then, anyone who wants to challenge either argument
> should identify specifically which premise he claims is false.
>
>
>
believed he was going to marry Jocaste." when in fact it
should be "Oedipus believed he was going to marry
Jocaste, a woman who is not his mother." Given this, the
substitution in Line 6 is not valid, thus the argument
fails.
or you can leave line 5 as is and include line 4 1/2
which would be: "Oedipus believes Jocaste is not his
mother" Again, the contradiction comes from a false
belief on Oedipus' part, not the incorrectness of what
the concepts refer to, since you can't transitively
substitute words in regards to "believe" If the scenario
was "Oedipus *knows for a fact* that Jocaste is not his
mother" then maybe you'd have something.
Désirée- not anyone's mother
f
o
o
d
f
o
r
b
o
t
f
o
o
d
f
o
r
b
o
t
Peter Kinane
Désirée Davis <HBeac...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1361f0ca...@news.csulb.edu...
> In article <8d994c$l9q$1...@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>, a@a.a
> says...
> > ScheetzBrian <scheet...@cs.com> wrote in message
> > news:20000414175756...@ng-fl1.news.cs.com...
Your post seems to imply that Objectivism does not feature that people
identify with eachother about stuff, in which case truth etc. would be
individual sensitive; you say that Jocaste means Oedipus' mother in the
story (if you accept 3), but not to Oedipus. Or else you are simply dropping
context.
> > 5. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste. (given by the story)
> The false statement is line 5 in which you say "Oedipus
> believed he was going to marry Jocaste." when in fact it
> should be "Oedipus believed he was going to marry
> Jocaste, a woman who is not his mother."
You are dropping the context of 5 - the earlier points, or else you imply
that meaning and reference is individual sensitive - at least not universal.
"2. Assume that meaning is reference. (Objectivist theory)
3. "Oedipus' mother" has the same reference as "Jocaste". (given by the
story)
4. Therefore, "Oedipus' mother" means the same as "Jocaste". (from 2,3)":
Given this "Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste"; believed he was
going to marry his mother _if_ meaning is reference _and_ if people
identify with eachother about meaning and reference.
This issue of whether people identify with eachother about stuff does not
seem to have featured on hpo while I've been reading, and it strikes with me
as a crucial feature of a system.
Peter
--
For a detailed and formidably coherent account of the nature of things, in
just 3,000 words, see:
http://www.effectuationism.com/
Anthanson1
>Date: 4/14/00 12:32 PM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8d7rm9$1qm$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>
>then
>> he would have had to know that Jocaste was his mother, since "Jocaste" and
>> "Oedipus' mother" mean the same thing --
>
>Bonehead, do you understand what the story is about? Oedipus does not know
>who is meant by "Oedipus' mother." I swear, I can't believe you're trying to
>talk about Oedipus when you don't know the story.
I can only conclude that you have a non-permeable membrane of fat between the
two hemispheres of your brain.
I know the story. In fact, when I was in college I translated large portions of
it from the original.
Of course, he did not know Jocaste was his mother. But on your theory of
meaning he would have to, which proves the absurdity of your theory of meaning.
Wrathbone
Stephen Speicher
> Arnold Broese-van-Groenou <bro...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
> news:HLPJ4.5629$5D.1...@ozemail.com.au...
> > Well said, but it's been said before to no avail.
>
> I continue to be amazed that when I have stated an argument so clearly and
> precisely people would continue to try to find something else to attack --
> and never to identify which premise of what I actually said they're
> claiming is false!
>
This is the most openly blatant example of psychological
projection that one will ever see. It is Michael Huemer (aka Owl)
who has constantly been guilty of misrepresenting Objectivism,
and then criticizing the philosophy based on his own
misrepresentations. So many people have pointed this out to
Huemer but, as Arnold says, to no avail.
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> The false statement is line 5 in which you say "Oedipus
> believed he was going to marry Jocaste." when in fact it
> should be "Oedipus believed he was going to marry
> substitution in Line 6 is not valid, thus the argument
> fails.
Suppose that Jocaste had a hidden tattoo. You seem to be arguing that
"Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste" is false simply because
Oedipus is unaware of the tattoo.
Further, if it is true that Oedipus believes A and B, doesn't it follow
that he believes A? (Let A = "he was going to marry Jocaste" and B =
"Jocaste was not his mother".) So even on your formulation it is true
that Oedipus believed "he was going to marry Jocaste", and that is all
the argument needs. You are indeed right to object to the substitution
of "Oedipus's mother" for "Jocaste", but that is because they do not have
the same meaning.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Anthanson1
>
>I continue to be amazed that when I have stated an argument so clearly and
>precisely people would continue to try to find something else to attack --
>and never to identify which premise of what I actually said they're
>claiming is false!
Why are you so amazed, Owl? Evaluating arguments requires a little training,
particularly on the distinction between soundness an validity. Without this
training
most beginners try to criticize arguments from some impressionistic
perspective.
Wrathbone
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Kwag7693
>1. If a term, A, means the same as a term, B, then in any sentence where
>you see A appear, it is ok to substitute B. (premise)
>2. Assume that meaning is reference. (Objectivist theory)
>3. "Oedipus' mother" has the same reference as "Jocaste". (given by the
>story)
>4. Therefore, "Oedipus' mother" means the same as "Jocaste". (from 2,3)
>5. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste. (given by the story)
>6. It is ok to substitute "Oedipus' mother" for "Jocaste" in (5). (from
>1,4)
>7. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Oedipus' mother. (from 5,6)
I am stunned that this debate still continues. I would really like to know how
Owl can equate Oedipus' belief about the meanings of Jocaste and O's mother
with their actual meanings. O's belief, by Objectivist theory, in the meaning
of the terms is not identical to the meaning of the terms. Jocaste and O's
mother have the same referent, neither of which is O's belief system. The
referent of Oedipus' belief in his mom and his belief in Jocaste is not Jocaste
or his mom. It is O's belief system.
If you try the same proof but drop out O's belief all problems disappear. Why
would the removal of a simple predicate change an entire proof if you hadn't
changed some fundamental element of the proof by introducing it? If I am wrong
here, will someone demonstrate why? If not, will Owl please quit reposting
this essay?
>1. If "O's mother" means the same as "Jocaste", then [the proposition that
>O marries O's mother] = [the proposition that O marries Jocaste]. ("="
>means "is identical with" or "is the same proposition as".)
>2. If meaning = reference, then "O's mother" means the same as "Jocaste"
>if and only if "O's mother" refers to the same person as "Jocaste".
>3. "O's mother" refers to the same person as "Jocaste".
>4. Therefore, if meaning = reference, then "O's mother" means the same as
>"Jocaste".
>5. Therefore, if meaning = reference, then [the proposition that O marries
>O's mother] = [the proposition that O marries Jocaste].
>6. Therefore, if meaning = reference, then Oedipus believed [the
>proposition that O marries O's mother] if and only if he believed [the
>proposition that O marries Jocaste]. (from 5)
See? Where the hell does Oedipus' belief come from? If it wasn't introduced
in 6., there would be no problem, but since Owl switches focus from the meaning
and reference of O's mom and Jocaste to O's beliefs, the problem's source is
pretty clear.
If Owl really thinks that this is a valid attack on Objectivism, maybe he would
care to come up with a proof that doesn't conflate the items of analysis.
Kevin
Jim Klein
"Gordon G. Sollars" <gsol...@pobox.com> wrote:
>You are indeed right to object to the substitution of "Oedipus's mother"
>for "Jocaste", but that is because they do not have the same meaning.
Except they do have the same meaning, at least in this example. Oedipus
does indeed believe that he's going to marry his mother. Maybe it would be
easier worded thusly, "Oedipus believes that he's going to marry (the person
who is his mother)." That's precisely what he believes even as he's unaware
that she's his mother, which is quite a separate claim as Kevin points out.
And I've still got the "referent as a referent" dodge still on the bench;
pleading as it does to context, there's nearly nothing that can't be
explained with it! But meanwhile, you guys want it both ways when it suits
your purposes. When we drink water we're drinking H2O because of what it
is, but suddenly Jocaste isn't Oedipus' mother even though she is.
Are you sure you're not an Objectivist?
jk
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> And I've still got the "referent as a referent" dodge still on the bench;
> pleading as it does to context, there's nearly nothing that can't be
> explained with it! But meanwhile, you guys want it both ways when it suits
> your purposes. When we drink water we're drinking H2O because of what it
> is, but suddenly Jocaste isn't Oedipus' mother even though she is.
I haven't been following the the H20 thread, so I don't know what the
others have said. But remember that Owl and Wrathbone are professional
philosophers, while I am just an amateur. However, O /is/ marrying his
mother, but it is not the case that he believes he is marrying his mother
(while it is true that he believes he is marrying Jocaste). Does that
help, or do I have to read the H20 thread now?
> Are you sure you're not an Objectivist?
On your view, I am an Objectivist whenever I hold the right position
with regard to something, so it is difficult for me /not/ to be an
Objectivist. ;-)
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Owl
where
> > you see A appear, it is ok to substitute B. (premise)
> > 2. Assume that meaning is reference. (Objectivist theory)
> > 3. "Oedipus' mother" has the same reference as "Jocaste". (given by
the
> > story)
> > 4. Therefore, "Oedipus' mother" means the same as "Jocaste". (from
2,3)
> > 5. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste. (given by the
story)
> > 6. It is ok to substitute "Oedipus' mother" for "Jocaste" in (5).
(from
> > 1,4)
> > 7. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Oedipus' mother. (from 5,6)
> The false statement is line 5 in which you say "Oedipus
> believed he was going to marry Jocaste." when in fact it
> Jocaste, a woman who is not his mother."
This doesn't make sense to me. Let's label your substitution (5a).
Compare:
(5a) Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste, a woman who is not
his mother.
(5) Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste.
5a *entails* 5, so your claim that 5 is false because 5a is true baffles
me. But fine, let's go ahead and put 5a into the argument instead. So we
get:
1. If a term, A, means the same as a term, B, then in any sentence where
you see A appear, it is ok to substitute B.
2. Assume that meaning is reference.
3. "Oedipus' mother" has the same reference as "Jocaste".
4. Therefore, "Oedipus' mother" means the same as "Jocaste".
5a. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste, a woman who was not
his mother.
6a. It is ok to substitute "Oedipus' mother" for "Jocaste" in (5a).
7a. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Oedipus' mother, a woman who
was not his mother.
Well, (7a) is at least as obviously false as the original (7) was. So
this is at least as good a refutation of the assumption in (2).
> or you can leave line 5 as is and include line 4 1/2
> which would be: "Oedipus believes Jocaste is not his
> mother"
You could do that, but what would be the point?
Saying that there is some *other* true proposition, not stated in the
original argument, does not constitute an objection to a deductive
argument. When it comes to deductive arguments, if (a) the premises are
all true, and (b) the conclusion follows from the premises, then the
conclusion is true. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Adding further
information to the premises cannot make a deductive argument turn invalid.
It cannot make the conclusion untrue.
Example:
"Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal."
is a valid & sound argument, and its conclusion is true. No *further*
information that you add about Socrates can change that. If you suddenly
find out that Socrates had a beard, that doesn't mean the original
argument was unsound.
> Again, the contradiction comes from a false
> belief on Oedipus' part, not the incorrectness of what
> the concepts refer to, since you can't transitively
> substitute words in regards to "believe"
I don't understand what this means. I don't know what contradiction
you're talking about, and the issue here is not how to explain the source
of some contradiction. I also am not saying anything about any
'incorrectness of what concepts refer to' (whatever that would mean). And
I also am not saying that Oedipus didn't have a false belief.
All I am saying is that if you make the assumption in (2), conclusion (7a)
follows, that (7a) is false, and therefore (2) is false. All you have to
do is look at each premise, decide whether it is true, and then follow the
logical steps leading to (7a).
Owl
news:8datq4$df6$1...@slb0.atl.mindspring.net...
> Except they do have the same meaning, at least in this example. Oedipus
> does indeed believe that he's going to marry his mother. Maybe it would
be
> easier worded thusly, "Oedipus believes that he's going to marry (the
person
> who is his mother)."
So we ask him, "Oedipus, are you going to marry your mother?" He says,
"No, of course not." Is he lying? Is he expressing a belief of his? If
so, what belief?
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> If Owl really thinks that this is a valid attack on Objectivism, maybe he
> would
> care to come up with a proof that doesn't conflate the items of analysis.
I don't need a proof. Some time back, I gave a simple counter example to
the Objectivist view using not O and J, but the equally venerable Morning
Star and Evening Star. The referent of both is, of course, the planet
Venus. But Bob knows nothing about astronomy. Early one day just before
sunrise, Bob is walking with Alice who points at Venus and utters the
true statement, "There is the Evening Star!" Bob is baffled by this
pronouncement because he can not imagine why the bright object in the
morning sky is being called an /evening/ star.
So sense of a term is not the same as its reference, as this simple
example shows. However, this is not a counter example to the Objectivist
view, /if/ Objectivists want to identify meaning with reference rather
than with sense (as most non-Objectivists do). Fine - labels don't
matter to me. I will simply say to Objectivists that sense is not the
same as meaning.
Now, if any students of Objectivism think they have a way to re-label
things so that sense and reference are the same, /that/ would be
interesting.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Owl
news:20000415143253...@ng-fk1.aol.com...
> Why are you so amazed, Owl? Evaluating arguments requires a little
training,
> particularly on the distinction between soundness an validity. Without
this
> training
> most beginners try to criticize arguments from some impressionistic
> perspective.
Yes, that's exactly what's going on. Rigorous thinking would teach you to
just think in terms of (1) is each premise true, (2) is each inferential
step valid, but most people try to assess an argument somehow without
doing that. And yet the whole point of having arguments like this is to
make it easy for people to think step by step. I would think most people
had some exposure to this in math classes.
Owl
I went to the trouble of setting out my proofs step by step. If you think
you have an objection, the least you could do would be to identify *which
step* you're claiming is false and why. I'm not going to respond to some
vague impressionistic criticism that doesn't show any indication of having
tried to follow through the steps that I laid out.
Gordon G. Sollars
Czarnecki writes...
...
> Premise 1 is true only in a particular context and is false in respect to
> beliefs, you commit the 'masked man fallacy' in your reasoning.
Who was that masked man?
I can believe it is true that nine is greater than seven, but false that
the number of planets is greater than seven. Is this the kind of thing
you are thinking of? Quine's term for this is "referential opaqueness".
I'll let Owl defend his argument, but even if it is flawed that doesn't
show that sense and reference are the same, as I pointed out in a nearby
post using the Morning Star and the Evening Star.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Owl
news:MPG.1362f39974...@mail.nji.com...
> I can believe it is true that nine is greater than seven, but false that
> the number of planets is greater than seven. Is this the kind of thing
> you are thinking of? Quine's term for this is "referential opaqueness".
You mean opacity. That's another good example.
> I'll let Owl defend his argument, but even if it is flawed that doesn't
> show that sense and reference are the same, as I pointed out in a nearby
> post using the Morning Star and the Evening Star.
The substitution of "the # of planets" for "9" is invalid (in
referentially opaque contexts). The question for philosophy of language
is why that is so. Why can there be opaque contexts? It was Frege who
first identified the correct explanation for the phenomenon.
Kwag7693
>I went to the trouble of setting out my proofs step by step. If you think
>you have an objection, the least you could do would be to identify *which
>step* you're claiming is false and why.
Ok. I am claiming you are introducing premises into your derivation that
aren't proven, given or even valid. The step I am claiming is false is either
your application of one or the step at which you begin to change the focus of
your proof from the meaning of the terms Jocaste and O's mother to the objects
of Oedipus' belief (step 5 in your first derivation and step 6 in your second),
depending on how you interpret your own manuever.
O's belief system hasn't entered into the derivation before that point, but you
conflate his belief structure with the actual meaning of the terms you
previously discussed, namely O's mom and Jocaste.
>1. If a term, A, means the same as a term, B, then in any sentence where
>you see A appear, it is ok to substitute B. (premise)
>2. Assume that meaning is reference. (Objectivist theory)
>3. "Oedipus' mother" has the same reference as "Jocaste". (given by the
>story)
>4. Therefore, "Oedipus' mother" means the same as "Jocaste". (from 2,3)
>5. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste. (given by the story)
See? Suddenly, at 5, you stop talking about the meaning of the terms and
start talking about O's belief system. Why? O believes X cannot be
transcribed in a similar fashion to X, which isn't surprising. If you
transcribe your proof into predicate logic you will either find you cannot
derive 7 from the preceding six, or more likely, that 7 doesn't contradict the
following sentence: Oedipus marries his mother. I think the latter is more
likely, because I know the following two sentences don't contradict: Oedipus
marries his mother, Oedipus believes he does not marry his mother.
Premise number one is not a rule of predicate logic, as you apply it. If a=b
then you can substitute Rb for Ra. What you try to do and cannot do is to
substitute an object of Oedipus' belief for the meaning of a term. 'O believes
he marries Jocaste' has a massively different transcription than 'O marries
Jocaste.' The latter could be (Ex)Mxj(Oedipus marries Jocaste); the former is
too tough for me to transcribe with my very limited exploration of predicate
logic. I can be certain it would NOT be a simple two place predicate. To say
Oedipus believes that Jocaste and O's mom don't have the same referent is
different than saying Jocaste and O's mom don't have the same referent. It is
easy for both to be consistent, because 'Jocaste and O's mom' stands under the
rule of a different relationship (O's belief) in the first instance, and so
isn't interchangeable with the second instance.
Nothing in Objectivism requires that concept-formation be infallible. You are
conflating the Objectivist position on meaning with the Objectivist position on
the context of knowledge. Oedipus doesn't know the referent of the concept
"O's mom". That Jocaste isn't his mom is a belief he holds, though it is a
presumption that is unsupported by evidence. What does this have to do with
the meaning of the terms involved? You switch the context of your derivation
at 5, and as a result you get step 7 conflating the referent of a term with
Oedipus' beliefs about same.
If you were doing a derivation, you wouldn't be able to discharge 5, ever,
because nothing in 1 through 4 leads to its contradiction. Since HE doesn't
know the meaning/referent of the term 'O's mother' is the same as Jocaste's
meaning/referent, we can't use the former to contradict the latter, because in
HIS belief system marrying Jocaste but not Mom doesn't contradict. The two
facts contradict in reality, but that cannot be used to contradict his BELIEF
until it becomes an object of HIS knowledge, which given our premises, it
won't.
Is that clear enough? Nothing in Objectivist theory mandates that people hold
contradictory beliefs.
Kevin
Kwag7693
>Venus. But Bob knows nothing about astronomy. Early one day just before
>sunrise, Bob is walking with Alice who points at Venus and utters the
>true statement, "There is the Evening Star!" Bob is baffled by this
>pronouncement because he can not imagine why the bright object in the
>morning sky is being called an /evening/ star.
How does this counter the objectivist view? Rand said the meaning of a conept
is its referent. Bob doesn't know very much about his referent if he thinks
that Venus, the morning and evening stars are separate entities in the world.
He has faulty concepts. Nothing IN Objectivism mandates that humans
automatically form correct concepts, so why is citing some mistaken guy's
conflation of one object with multiple objects a proof that meaning and
reference aren't the same? He doesn't know the full meaning of morning or
evening star or Venus, as Objectivists use the term.
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
> > The referent of both is, of course, the planet
> >Venus. But Bob knows nothing about astronomy. Early one day just before
> >sunrise, Bob is walking with Alice who points at Venus and utters the
> >true statement, "There is the Evening Star!" Bob is baffled by this
> >pronouncement because he can not imagine why the bright object in the
> >morning sky is being called an /evening/ star.
>
> How does this counter the objectivist view? Rand said the meaning of a c
> onept
> is its referent.
And Humpty-Dumpty said, "When I use a word it means just what I choose it
to mean - neither more nor less." If Objectivists, starting with Ayn
Rand, want to use a special language that's fine with me. I am
interested in the real distinctions, not what they are called.
> Bob doesn't know very much about his referent if he thinks
> that Venus, the morning and evening stars are separate entities in the world.
He has never heard the terms before, so he has thought nothing at all
about them. He could know that some small, bright objects in the sky are
called stars. (He does know that it is morning and not evening.) No one
is born with this sort of knowledge, so there is nothing strange about
Bob. What is strange, and the point of my example, is that Alice chooses
to say "There is the Evening Star" in the early morning hours. She is
correct in some sense, since the object she is pointing to - Venus - is
the Evening Star. Perhaps it would be more correct for her to say "That
is the object sometimes called the Evening Star." Bob would still be
puzzled, because the /sense/ of "Evening Star" is that of an object in
the evening sky, and here it is morning.
I have already said that it is of no major moment if students of
Objectivism wish to identify meaning with reference - although it
sometimes leads to confusion in talking with them - as long as they do
not deny that words have senses as well as referents.
> He has faulty concepts. Nothing IN Objectivism mandates that humans
> automatically form correct concepts, so why is citing some mistaken guy's
> conflation of one object with multiple objects
That is not what is going on in my version of the story (and, btw, there
are not multiple objects - just one, Venus). That Bob is rightly puzzled
by Alice's true statement shows that there are senses apart from
references.
> a proof that meaning and
> reference aren't the same? He doesn't know the full meaning of morning or
> evening star or Venus, as Objectivists use the term.
At one time no human being knew that Venus in the morning sky was the
same object as Venus in the evening sky. So no one had a "correct
concept" of Venus? Heavens! ;-) What other incorrect concepts do we
have in use today?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
Czarnecki writes...
...
> The "masked man fallacy" is the mistake of arguing that because someone
> knows something under one description, they must therefore know it as the
> same thing under another description. The point I make about misapplying
> Leibniz's law to that of beliefs is another way of claiming 'referential
> opaqueness'.
In my example, Bob does not know Venus under any description, so we do
not have to worry about the complications of opacity.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
George Dance
However, it does apply to Owl's Oedipus paradox, because Oedipus does
know Jocaste.
I would be interested in reading the full post that you were replying
to, as this may be the fallacy that Owl's paradox utilizes. However, it
does not appear on the thread, and your article is not linked to it.
Where can I find it?
--
- 30 -
George Dance
> Gordon G. Sollars <gsol...@pobox.com> wrote in message
> news:MPG.1362f39974...@mail.nji.com...
> > I'll let Owl defend his argument, but even if it is flawed that
doesn't
> > show that sense and reference are the same, as I pointed out in a
nearby
> > post using the Morning Star and the Evening Star.
Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> The substitution of "the # of planets" for "9" is invalid (in
> referentially opaque contexts). The question for philosophy of
language
> is why that is so. Why can there be opaque contexts? It was Frege
who
> first identified the correct explanation for the phenomenon.
Of course, the "defence" called for here was an explanation of what the
"phenomenon" is, and why it would not apply to Owl's Oedipus Paradox.
Of course, Owl does not attempt either one.
vanosaur
> Oedipus
> does indeed believe that he's going to marry his mother. Maybe it would
> be easier worded thusly, "Oedipus believes that he's going to marry (the
> person who is his mother)." That's precisely what he believes even as
> he's unaware
> that she's his mother, which is quite a separate claim as Kevin points
> out.
What does poor Oedipus do when he finds out who Jocasta is? He plucks
his eyes out, in his pain and agony. Why? Because, although he MEANT to
marry Jocaste, he did not MEAN to marry his mother.
An unknown part of the stpory is that before the forementioned tragedy
took place, Joe the joker asked Oedipus who he married.
- Jocaste.
- You mean you married your mother?
- Don't be ridiculous.
(Ok, so I made that up). The only way to make sense of the O'ists
position is to claim that Oedipus _does not know_ what he means, which
is, of course, a ridiculous position, because it goes completely against
the common understanding we have of the term "meaning."
Meaning and reference are different because meaning is about intention,
while reference is not.
--
email is iordonez at columbus dot rr dot com
My sugar-free music at http://www.mp3.com/SicTransitGloria
Kwag7693
>are not multiple objects - just one, Venus). That Bob is rightly puzzled
>by Alice's true statement shows that there are senses apart from
>references.
I know you are using Frege's example and that there is only one object of
reference. Alice is not right in calling Venus the evening star, unless she
simply means it as a proper name for the star. The obvious etymology of the
term evening star is star that appears in evening; if anything it is a holdover
from when people didn't understand the full context of the planet's appearance.
If Bob wondered why she called that planet Venus when Venus was to his
knowledge a statue in a museum would you still have the same problem with sense
and reference?
>At one time no human being knew that Venus in the morning sky was the
>same object as Venus in the evening sky. So no one had a "correct
>concept" of Venus?
Right. They also didn't have correct concepts of the morning or eveening star,
as evidenced by their faulty belief that all three were separate.
>What other incorrect concepts do we
>have in use today?
If I am using them, I obviously don't know what they are.
Owl
news:20000416010248...@ng-ci1.aol.com...
> >1. If a term, A, means the same as a term, B, then in any sentence
where
> >you see A appear, it is ok to substitute B. (premise)
> >2. Assume that meaning is reference. (Objectivist theory)
> >3. "Oedipus' mother" has the same reference as "Jocaste". (given by
the
> >story)
> >4. Therefore, "Oedipus' mother" means the same as "Jocaste". (from
2,3)
> >5. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste. (given by the
story)
>
> See? Suddenly, at 5, you stop talking about the meaning of the terms
and
> start talking about O's belief system. Why? O believes X cannot be
The only relevant questions, when you're assessing a deductive argument,
are (a) is each premise *true*, and (b) does the conclusion follow from
the premises. I don't see you as doing either here. Are you claiming (5)
isn't true?
> transcribed in a similar fashion to X, which isn't surprising. If you
> transcribe your proof into predicate logic you will either find you
cannot
> derive 7 from the preceding six, or more likely, that 7 doesn't
contradict the
> following sentence: Oedipus marries his mother. I think the latter is
more
> likely, because I know the following two sentences don't contradict:
That's right -- but I'm not saying that (7) contradicts the fact that
Oedipus marries his mother, so this isn't an objection to my argument.
> Premise number one is not a rule of predicate logic, as you apply it.
True, it isn't a rule of predicate logic; it's just a premise that I'm
asserting. Are you saying it's false?
> If a=b
> then you can substitute Rb for Ra. What you try to do and cannot do is
to
> substitute an object of Oedipus' belief for the meaning of a term.
Huh?
> 'O believes
> he marries Jocaste' has a massively different transcription than 'O
marries
> Jocaste.' The latter could be (Ex)Mxj(Oedipus marries Jocaste); the
former is
> too tough for me to transcribe with my very limited exploration of
predicate
> logic. I can be certain it would NOT be a simple two place predicate.
Actually, "O marries Jocaste" would be just M(o,j). O believes he marries
Jocaste would be B(o,[M(o,j)]), where the bracketed phrase refers to the
proposition, M(o,j). In other words, it's a 2-place relation between
Oedipus and the proposition M(o,j).
So now, why would not the substitution be legitimate in that context?
> You switch the context of your derivation
> at 5, and as a result you get step 7 conflating the referent of a term
with
> Oedipus' beliefs about same.
Step (7) was "O believed he was going to marry O's mother." I think your
remark here is the same as above. You're saying, again, that the
substitution of "O's mother" for "Jocaste" is illegitimate when the latter
term appears in the "B(o,[M(o,j)])" context. Why?
I agree that it's illegitimate, but I have an explanation for it (Frege's
explanation), which has to do with the sense-reference distinction and how
the two terms don't have the same meaning. I'd like to see you explain it
without using the sense-reference distinction.
> If you were doing a derivation, you wouldn't be able to discharge 5,
ever,
> because nothing in 1 through 4 leads to its contradiction.
(5) isn't what's supposed to get 'discharged'. (2) is the assumption in
the argument that gets discharged. I didn't make this explicit, but the
final reasoning would involve that (7) "O believed he was marrying his
mother" is false (i.e., we take on the additional premise that O did not
believe he was marrying his mother), and then we conclude that the
assumption in (2) was false.
> Is that clear enough?
Yes, thanks. I still think it's wrong though.
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> reference. Alice is not right in calling Venus the evening star, unless she
> simply means it as a proper name for the star.
What she "means"? ;-) To try to stay clear, she was using a proper
name. That is why I capitalized it (perhaps I failed to be consistent
about that).
> The obvious etymology of the
> term evening star is star that appears in evening; if anything it is a ho
> ldover
> from when people didn't understand the full context of the planet's appea
> rance.
Indeed. Now a student of Objectivism might want to argue that if the
"full context" was always understood, then meaning (or sense) and
reference would always coincide. But, of course, it is not always
understood.
> If Bob wondered why she called that planet Venus when Venus was to his
> knowledge a statue in a museum would you still have the same problem with
> sense
> and reference?
He might be momentarily confused, but most users of a language would
quickly understand that the name "Venus" was simply being used in a
different way. The problem could be the same, but I prefer my version,
because it is not as easy to know what sense a speaker attaches to
"Venus" as it is to "Evening Star". Bob knows that a star is a small,
bright object in the sky, so the sense of "Evening Star" is, obviously, a
star that appears in the evening.
Here's another, true life example. Many years ago in the Ancient Days of
computing, IBM published a green-colored, folding cardboard card with all
sorts of useful information for the System 360 assembly language
programmer on it. It was called, simply enough, the "Green Card". Then
one day (as I recall, when the System 370 was introduced), the same
information was printed on a yellow card. It was not uncommon for one
old timer to ask another if he could borrow his "Green Card" and be
calmly handed a yellow card, while a newcomer would scratch his head
trying to figure out what was happening. The sense of "Green Card"
suggested a green card, yet it did not refer, after the 370 was
introduced, to a green card, but to a yellow one.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Kwag7693
>are (a) is each premise *true*, and (b) does the conclusion follow from
>the premises. I don't see you as doing either here. Are you claiming (5)
>isn't true?
I don't think it relates to 1 through 4. It is a switch in cotext that
invalidates the rest of the derivation.
>> Premise number one is not a rule of predicate logic, as you apply it.
>
>True, it isn't a rule of predicate logic; it's just a premise that I'm
>asserting. Are you saying it's false?
Yes. You can't substitute across an assumption when the assumption includes
the entity you want to substitute. To go from (Ex)Mx to M(Jocaste), you have
to do an assumption governed by 'Jocaste'. If you do that, you cannot
substitute your identity Jocaste=Oedipus' Mom into the subderivation and you
won't be able to discharge the subderivation.
>Actually, "O marries Jocaste" would be just M(o,j). O believes he marries
>Jocaste would be B(o,[M(o,j)]), where the bracketed phrase refers to the
>proposition, M(o,j). In other words, it's a 2-place relation between
>Oedipus and the proposition M(o,j).
Yeah, but you have eliminated the existentials, which isn't helpful in a
derivation, how would it look with the existentials?
>So now, why would not the substitution be legitimate in that context?
See above; when you use the rule of existential elimination, you aren't going
to be able to use your identity any more.
>Step (7) was "O believed he was going to marry O's mother." I think your
>remark here is the same as above. You're saying, again, that the
>substitution of "O's mother" for "Jocaste" is illegitimate when the latter
>term appears in the "B(o,[M(o,j)])" context. Why?
>
>I agree that it's illegitimate, but I have an explanation for it (Frege's
>explanation), which has to do with the sense-reference distinction and how
>the two terms don't have the same meaning. I'd like to see you explain it
>without using the sense-reference distinction.
Fine. Here is what I am getting out of your argument: you claim an explicit
contradiction when we conjoin 3 premises: 1) Oedipus believes he doesn't marry
his mother 2) Oedipus believes he marries Jocaste and 3) Jocaste and Oedipus'
mother have the same referent. The reason this is wrong is that 1 & 2 are
governed by Oedipus' beliefs and the third is not.
Oedipus doesn't believe that his mother and Jocaste are two names for one
entity. He knows the referent/meaning of Jocaste but not the referent/meaning
of the equally particular "O's mom". We do, but that is irrelevant to any
assumption governed by Oedipus' belief.
From p. 237 in the ITOE: "Prof. A: "By "understanding the meaning of a concept"
you mean understanding what a concept means?" AR: "Yes, understanding which
existents it refers to in reality."" and also "Understanding the meaning of a
concept is an epistemological issue. It is understanding to what in reality
that concept refers. Its being able to distinguish the referents from all
other existents."
We understand the meaning of the O's mom; O doesn't. Can he distinguish O's
mom from all other referents? He can't even identify her while sharing her
bed. Simply put, he doesn't know what O's mom means.
No fact from our omniscient context of knowledge will prove his beliefs lead to
an *internal* contradiction; since you depend on that internal contradiction in
your proof, it is wrong. His belief is non-contradictory. You can't
interchange the meaning of two terms within the context of a belief that holds
them non-identical.
Bottom line: Since he doesn't know what "O's mom" means/ to what it refers,
there cannot be a contradiction arising out of meaning is referent, him
believing he doesn't marry his mother, him believing he marries Jocaste, him
marrying Jocaste and Jocaste having the same referent as O's mom. I mentioned
this same point in my last post but you snipped it.
Kevin
Gordon G. Sollars
Gordon G. Sollars
Czarnecki writes...
...
> Historically 'sense' has been used in a variety of ways with different
> meanings, which way are you using it?
Gee, and I would have said that historically "meaning" has been used with
different senses. ;-) Sense (or meaning for non-Objectivists) is the
intention of the speaker; reference is the extension.
> Your example only indicates something
> about Bob's beliefs not that senses exist independent of reference.
It shows that senses and referents are not the same thing. Whether
senses exist independently of anything I will leave to Occam's Razor and
another time.
> In fact
> your example indicates that the term (at least to Bob) has reference but no
> sense.
Not at all. The term has the sense of a star that appears in the evening
sky. If it did not, Bob would not be confused.
> The difficulty your example shows is that Bob has trouble using the
> word 'evening' to describe an object in the 'morning'. But Bob does
> understand that when Alice says "evening star" she means 'that bright object
> in the sky', the object she is pointing at.
Because she is pointing, the paradigm case of reference. If she had
pointed and said, "That is the Great Father of Us All!", he would also
have known to what she was referring, by virtue of the pointing (although
even pointing can be ambiguous some of the time), not the sense.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
anth...@hotmail.com
ScheetzBrian <scheet...@cs.com> wrote:
>
> Basically, whoever came up with this method of analyzing language [I
think they
> said it was Leibniz, but I'm not sure] is misapplying the transitive
method.
Transitivity is not a method. It is a property of certain relations.
Besides, the argument does not rely on transitivity, it relies on
substitution.If Jocaste and My mother have identical meanings, (as the
reference theory of meaning proposes) then any time either term is used
in a proposition, one should be able to replace it with the other
without changing the truth-value of the proposition.
Hence the proposition, I want to shag Jocaste, might be true for
Oedipus, but the truth-value obviously changes with I want to shag my
mother. Since the truth value changes, the meaning of the two terms
can't be the same.
Wrathbone
--
anth...@hotmail.com
George Dance <georg...@my-deja.com> wrote:
no need to attempt to prove them,
> in advance of any dialogue.
>
> I should add that I am referring to dialogue with Owl, of course. You
> may be able to refute all charges, to everyone's satisfaction; and
there
> is no reason you should not attempt to do so after they have been
> summarized. However, that would indicate nothing re the issue of
Owl's
> alleged intellectual cowardice.
I am sure Owl would be more than happy to debate the substantive issues
of Objectivism with Speicher. Speicher never addresses substantive
issues. In the second or third exchange he gets cornered and frustrated
and tries to find out personal information about his opponent to
discredit him. Peruse the Deja acrhives and pick at random some of
Speicher's and Owl's posts. You will see who the real intellectual
coward is.
Wrathbone
anth...@hotmail.com
100...@photon.compbio.caltech.edu>,
Stephen Speicher <s...@compbio.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
> This is the most openly blatant example of psychological
> projection that one will ever see. It is Michael Huemer (aka Owl)
> who has constantly been guilty of misrepresenting Objectivism,\
As usual, Speicher has nothing substantive to contribute to the debate
in question, viz. meaning and reference. He claims misrepresentation,
but knows he is incompetent to point out where the misrepresentation
is. Who is really the intellectual coward?
Wrathbone
--
anth...@hotmail.com
Désirée Davis <HBeac...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The false statement is line 5 in which you say "Oedipus
> believed he was going to marry Jocaste." when in fact it
> should be "Oedipus believed he was going to marry
> Jocaste, a woman who is not his mother." Given this, the
> substitution in Line 6 is not valid, thus the argument
> fails.
(-:(-: (-: Look at premise (1), honey. If you agree that premise one
is true,then your claim, Oedipus believed he was going to marry
Jocaste, a woman who is not his mother, has to be false. (1) says you
can substitute his mother, for Jocaste. If that's true then I can
substitue his mother for Jocaste in your sentence which would read
Oedipus believed he was going to marry his mother, a woman who is not
his mother. Therefore, Owl's claim about what Oedipus believes (5) is
true, and your claim about what Oedipus believes
is false, since Oedipus did not believe that he was going to marry and
not marry Jocaste. In other words, want your claim about what Oedipus
believes to be true, then you have to show that premise 1 is false.
Good luck!
Wrathbone
> f
> o
> o
> d
>
> f
> o
> r
>
> b
> o
> t
>
> f
> o
> o
> d
>
> f
> o
> r
>
> b
> o
> t
Kwag7693
>reference theory of meaning proposes) then any time either term is used
>in a proposition, one should be able to replace it with the other
>without changing the truth-value of the proposition.
The truth value of "Oedipus believes X" doesn't relate to the truth or falsity
of X as a proposition. Oedipus can believe the moon is green cheese,
evaluating the truth of that proposition doesn't entail going out and checking
the moon. Similarly, Jocaste and O's mom can have the same referent;
regardless, finding out if the two terms are identical in Oedipus' belief
system doesn't entail finding out if O's wife is also his mom..
Kwag7693
>"full context" was always understood, then meaning (or sense) and
>reference would always coincide. But, of course, it is not always
>understood.
And in these instances, I think students of Objectivism are likely to say that
the individual in question has a faulty conception of the object of his
awareness.
anth...@hotmail.com
or you can leave line 5 as is and include line 4 1/2
> which would be: "Oedipus believes Jocaste is not his
> mother" Again, the contradiction comes from a false
> belief on Oedipus' part, not the incorrectness of what
> the concepts refer to, since you can't transitively
> substitute words in regards to "believe" If the scenario
> was "Oedipus *knows for a fact* that Jocaste is not his
> mother" then maybe you'd have something.
Not if (1)is true. If (1) is true then the claim which you think is
true (4 1/2)would be "Oedipus believes Jocaste is not Jocaste, which is
certainly false. Before you can add your 4 1/2 you have to show (1) is
false. Good luck!
Wrathbone
>
> f
> o
> o
> d
>
> f
> o
> r
>
> b
> o
> t
>
> f
> o
> o
> d
>
> f
> o
> r
>
> b
> o
> t
>
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Peter Kinane
>
> Here's another, true life example. Many years ago in the Ancient Days of
> computing, IBM published a green-colored, folding cardboard card with all
> sorts of useful information for the System 360 assembly language
> programmer on it. It was called, simply enough, the "Green Card". Then
> one day (as I recall, when the System 370 was introduced), the same
> information was printed on a yellow card. It was not uncommon for one
> old timer to ask another if he could borrow his "Green Card" and be
> calmly handed a yellow card, while a newcomer would scratch his head
> trying to figure out what was happening. The sense of "Green Card"
> suggested a green card, yet it did not refer, after the 370 was
> introduced, to a green card, but to a yellow one.
>
> --
A pool of organisms through interaction effect connotational empathy. The
greater the degree and the narrower the field of interaction the greater the
similarity of their concepts, and the better they will 'understand'
eachother's referrents.
Robert J. Kolker
"Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
> Here's another, true life example. Many years ago in the Ancient Days of
> computing, IBM published a green-colored, folding cardboard card with all
> sorts of useful information for the System 360 assembly language
> programmer on it. It was called, simply enough, the "Green Card". Then
> one day (as I recall, when the System 370 was introduced), the same
> information was printed on a yellow card. It was not uncommon for one
> old timer to ask another if he could borrow his "Green Card" and be
> calmly handed a yellow card, while a newcomer would scratch his head
> trying to figure out what was happening. The sense of "Green Card"
> suggested a green card, yet it did not refer, after the 370 was
> introduced, to a green card, but to a yellow one.
Here is yet another example from the same culture. There is the famous
"green word" which was a 4 byte structure defining the structure of
blocked records for the IBM sequential access methods. It was called
the "green" word because when the structure was laid out (at IBM)
the speak used green chalk to illustrate the structure. The term "green word"
stuck, even though the structure has no color. Those who knew the context
had no trouble understanding the reference or the sense. The reference
was the instance of green chalk or marker being used to the present the str
ucture
(on a blackboard which was probably white) and the sense is the structure
describing 4 byte pre-amble to a sequential access record.
Bob Kolker
>
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> A pool of organisms through interaction effect connotational empathy. The
> greater the degree and the narrower the field of interaction the greater the
> similarity of their concepts, and the better they will 'understand'
> eachother's referrents.
Fine by me, but why even bother to put "understand" in quotation marks,
if that is what understanding is all about?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Peter Kinane
Re "'understand' eachother's referents":
For me the conventional / predominant usage of "understand" has connotations
of "to identify with a concept", or to identify with someone about
something. Whereas I would want it to convey / connote something more like
"a degree of empathy" - therefore the inverted comma. (I hope that is the
best way of expressing that position).
Peter
db...@tampatrib.com
Anthanson1 <antha...@aol.com> wrote:
> I know the story.
No, it seems you don't. Sorry. Oedipus did not know who was meant by
"Oedipus' mother," but "Oedipus' mother" meant Jocaste. Tough luck,
"Wrathbone."
> But on your theory of
> meaning he would have to --
See above. Next.
-- at no extra charge
T L Clarke
>
> .... Now a student of Objectivism might want to argue that if the
> "full context" was always understood, then meaning (or sense) and
> reference would always coincide. But, of course, it is not always
> understood.
What exactly is "full context"?
Does it exist?
How does it differ from omniscience?
Tom Clarke
Owl
> >The only relevant questions, when you're assessing a deductive
argument,
> >are (a) is each premise *true*, and (b) does the conclusion follow from
> >the premises. I don't see you as doing either here. Are you claiming
(5)
> >isn't true?
>
> I don't think it relates to 1 through 4. It is a switch in cotext that
> invalidates the rest of the derivation.
Was that a "no"?
> >True, it isn't a rule of predicate logic; it's just a premise that I'm
> >asserting. Are you saying it's false?
>
> Yes. You can't substitute across an assumption when the assumption
includes
> the entity you want to substitute.
Huh?
> To go from (Ex)Mx to M(Jocaste), you have
> to do an assumption governed by 'Jocaste'.
I don't know what you're thinking that the above expresses, but it seems
to involve thinking that "(Ex)Mx" was a step in my argument, which it
wasn't.
I don't know what you mean by an assumption being 'governed by' a word.
> If you do that, you cannot
> substitute your identity Jocaste=Oedipus' Mom into the subderivation and
you
> won't be able to discharge the subderivation.
I don't know what 'the subderivation' in question is, nor what you mean by
'discharging' one.
You're misusing a lot of logical terminology, and it would be safer just
to stick to identifying a specific step that you claim is wrong.
> >Actually, "O marries Jocaste" would be just M(o,j). O believes he
marries
> >Jocaste would be B(o,[M(o,j)]), where the bracketed phrase refers to
the
> >proposition, M(o,j). In other words, it's a 2-place relation between
> >Oedipus and the proposition M(o,j).
>
> Yeah, but you have eliminated the existentials, which isn't helpful in a
> derivation, how would it look with the existentials?
There weren't any existentials. This suggests that you didn't follow the
argument.
> >So now, why would not the substitution be legitimate in that context?
>
> See above; when you use the rule of existential elimination, you aren't
going
> to be able to use your identity any more.
Again, I didn't use such a rule.
> Fine. Here is what I am getting out of your argument: you claim an
explicit
> contradiction when we conjoin 3 premises: 1) Oedipus believes he
doesn't marry
> his mother 2) Oedipus believes he marries Jocaste and 3) Jocaste and
Oedipus'
> mother have the same referent.
Actually, no, (3) should say "the same meaning." I think 1, 2, and 3 are
*true*; I think the contradiction only happens if you assume
meaning=referent. Btw, please be careful about the use/mention stuff.
(Your (3) is a use/mention error.)
> The reason this is wrong is that 1 & 2 are
> governed by Oedipus' beliefs and the third is not.
This isn't a use of "governed" that I recognize.
> Bottom line: Since he doesn't know what "O's mom" means/ to what it
refers,
> there cannot be a contradiction arising out of meaning is referent, him
> believing he doesn't marry his mother, him believing he marries Jocaste,
him
> marrying Jocaste and Jocaste having the same referent as O's mom. I
mentioned
> this same point in my last post but you snipped it.
I won't snip it this time. I agree with everything you're saying *except*
the implication that you addressed the problem. In other words, merely
saying "Oedipus didn't know what 'O's mother' meant" is just irrelevant.
And in order to see that, you have to just focus on the actual, logical
argument.
Now, let me revisit the argument. This time I will follow it by the
formal symbols:
1. If a term, A, means the same as a term, B, then in any sentence where
you see A appear, it is ok to substitute B. (premise)
2. Assume that meaning is reference. (Objectivist theory)
3. "Oedipus' mother" has the same reference as "Jocaste". (given by the
story)
4. Therefore, "Oedipus' mother" means the same as "Jocaste". (from 2,3)
5. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste. (given by the story)
6. It is ok to substitute "Oedipus' mother" for "Jocaste" in (5). (from
1,4)
7. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Oedipus' mother. (from 5,6)
So, more formally: We need some special terminology:
"P{a}" refers to some sentence that contains the term "a". For instance,
"Fa", or "(Fa v Gb) -> ~Ga" would be examples of sentences. (Normally, I
would use a capital Greek letter, like phi or psi, instead of "P", because
"P" here is *not* being used as a predicate; instead it's being used as a
variable ranging over certain predicate-calculus expressions. However, a
Greek letter won't show up in ASCII, so just imagine it.)
"P{b/a}" stands for the sentence which results from taking P{a} and
substituting the term "b" wherever you see "a".
Sxy = x has the same meaning as y (where x and y are two expressions).
Rxy = x has the same reference as y.
Mxy = x marries y.
Oxy = x is y's mother.
o = Oedipus
j = Jocaste
m = Oedipus' mother
"j" = the expression, "Jocaste"
"m" = the expression, "Oedipus' mother"
[P] = the proposition that P. (The effect of putting brackets around a
sentence, in other words, shall be the same as the effect in English of
prefixing "the proposition that..." to it.)
I assume the rest of the symbols I use will be self-explanatory. The
argment, then, goes:
1. (x)(y) (Sxy -> (P{x} -> P{y/x}))
(Premise. Technically, this is a rule stated in the meta-language, rather
than being a statement of predicate calculus, but let's not worry about
that. Note that the variables there range over *expressions*.)
2. (x)(y) (Sxy <-> Rxy)
(Assumption.)
3. R("j","m")
(Premise. That looks funny, but it's the atomic sentence which ascribes
the relation R to "j" and "m".)
4. S("j","m")
(From 2,3.)
5. B(o,[Moj])
(Premise.)
6. B(o,[Moj]) -> B(o,[Mom])
(From 1,4.)
7. B(o,[Mom])
(From 5,6.)
Now, I said before that the rest of the argument is that since (7) is
false, we have to reject the assumption. Thus:
8. ~B(o,[Mom])
(Premise.)
9. B(o,[Mom]) & ~B(o,[Mom])
(From 7,8)
10. ~(x)(y) (Sxy <-> Rxy)
(From 2-9, by reductio ad absurdum)
Let me say another thing about (1). What that rule is saying is that if
"x" means exactly the same as "y" then a sentence containing "x" will have
the same truth value as the corresponding sentence with "y" in place of
"x". The idea is that the meaning of a sentence is a function of the
meanings of the terms in it, together with the way they are combined. If
you keep the structure of the sentence exactly the same, therefore, and
you also keep the meanings of all the constituent words the same, then you
keep the meaning of the whole sentence the same. It doesn't matter here
if you change the inscription that is used in a certain place, as long as
the new inscription has the same meaning.
A comparable example would be the following, which is a valid move:
Pierre thinks that it is raining.
Pierre thinks that it IS raining.
Here, I change the inscription used in the fifth place (by using capital
letters), but I don't change the meaning, because "is" means the same as
"IS" (or, if you don't like that one, imagine that I just write the
sentence in a different font). I would be amazed that someone would claim
that somehow, something about the nature of *belief* makes it so that this
move is not okay. In other words, compare:
It is raining.
It IS raining.
I would be amazed that someone would think that although this latter
transition is okay, the one with "Pierre thinks..." in it is somehow
wrong, because of something about the nature of belief. And yet this is
just the sort of thing that Kevin seems to be saying.
beejo
it seems once again my friend you hav NO IDEA what you're talking
about. it's all about the Return of the Rattlesnake, jacko. besides,
you should be working...
bj
Kwag7693
>includes
>> the entity you want to substitute.
>
>Huh?
It doesn't matter as I think you are using universally quantified variables,
not existential ones.
>I would be amazed that someone would claim
>that somehow, something about the nature of *belief* makes it so that this
>move is not okay. In other words, compare:
>
What I find amazing is that you understood something remarkably similar to the
nature of my claim in relation to another poster's objection to your claim but
not in relation to my own.
I don't know how else to communicate what I see so very clearly. What you
snipped from this particular posting was what I thought was the most vital
point I could communicate. By Rand's usage, he doesn't even have a functioning
concept of O's mom because it cannot be used to identify to what in reality the
concept refers.
His mom is Jocaste, so his belief that he marries Jocaste but not his mom is
definitely false. What you cannot demonstrate through this particular method,
is that the fact that his beliefs are contradictory means reference is not
meaning. One of his concepts has NO referent and no meaning.
Here is how I retranscribed your derivation, I am not familiar with
metalanguage, so here goes:
1. For all (or is it some?) X and Y such that if X means the same as Y, then I
can substitute Y into sentences replacing X.
2. Assume that if X means the same as Y then X refers to the same as Y and if X
refers to the same as Y then X means the same as Y, for all X and Y.
3. The expression "Jocaste" has the same reference as the expression "O's Mom"
(I guess you are using the rule of universal elimination, not existential
elimination?)
4. "Jocaste" means the same as "O's mom" (From 2 & 3 you have demonstrated
that a two expressions with the same reference and meaning can be substituted
for one another in each sentence. You have demonstrated nothing about the
entities Jocaste and O's mom, because an entity cannot havea referent, it IS
the referent.)
5. Oedipus believes he marries Jocaste.
6. If 5 then he believes he marries his mom. (From premise 1 and 4) (4 relates
information about expressions, not about Jocaste)
7. He believes he marries his mom. (5,6)
Is 6 even a valid deduction?. Jocaste is not the same thing as "Jocaste".
Oedipus doesn't believe he is marrying the expression "Jocaste" and expressions
are all you have shown have the same reference and meaning, therefore all that
can be substituted in 6 is "Jocaste" for "O's mom" or vice versa.
Semantically, you think that since Oedipus has internally contradictory
beliefs, 'meaning is reference' is negated. Wrong. His contradictory beliefs
don't arise out of some inherent contradiction from equating the two. They
arise out of the fact that one of Oedipus' beliefs is false, based on a concept
that has no meaning.
You cannot say a concept with meaning (Jocaste) has the same meaning as a
concept without meaning (O's Mom), which you rely upon in 7.
Since you do, you are led to an explicit contradiction. While the expressions
Jocaste and O's mom DO have the same meaning and referent (language isn't
private after all), the entities of O's belief don't have the same meaning and
referent. One of them has no referent at all. How can we tell this? By
premise 8, which is truly believed by Oedipus, but which is not the case. If O
knew what O's mom was, if he knew to what existent the concept referred, as
Rand put it, then premise 8 would be false. It isn't so you are wrong. Either
you cannot assert the negation of 7 or you cannot claim that demonstrating O's
beliefs are contradictory has anything to do with equating meaning and
reference. QED.
Kevin
In one through 4 you are noting relations of expressions. In 5 you switch
Oedipus' belief about entities. How do the two relate? You should be able to
come up with a semantic equivalent of your symbolic argument, explaining what
it means and why it works. Why can't you?
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
> >Indeed. Now a student of Objectivism might want to argue that if the
> >reference would always coincide. But, of course, it is not always
> >understood.
>
> that
> the individual in question has a faulty conception of the object of his
> awareness.
So? Most people probably have conceptions that are faulty in some
respects, that is, they readily draw false inferences or could be lead to
draw them. A good theory of meaning and reference ought (I claim) to be
robust enough to handle this. A reference-only theory just does not seem
up to the task.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
George Dance
anth...@hotmail.com wrote:
> I am sure Owl would be more than happy to debate the substantive
issues
> of Objectivism with Speicher. Speicher never addresses substantive
> issues. In the second or third exchange he gets cornered and
frustrated
> and tries to find out personal information about his opponent to
> discredit him. Peruse the Deja acrhives and pick at random some of
> Speicher's and Owl's posts. You will see who the real intellectual
> coward is.
>
> Wrathbone
I have only two months' time on this list, so I will have to bow to your
experience without question (unless it's questioned by someone else with
experience, of course). I concede that it is possible and even likely
that Owl learned his style from others on the list, and believes that
this is how it's done here. My complaint against him (besides the issue
of his own ethics) is that that is not how it should be done here. I am
glad that you similarly denounce such tactics where you find them.
--
- 30 -
Kwag7693
>respects, that is, they readily draw false inferences or could be lead to
>draw them. A good theory of meaning and reference ought (I claim) to be
>robust enough to handle this.
I think Objectivism would handle this well by pointing out humans aren't
automatically correct and that they can honestly come to mistaken judgements.
Sometimes people use terms for which they don't know the meaning. Since this
is very often the case, I don't see what the problem is.
Kwag7693
>1. If a term, A, means the same as a term, B, then in any sentence where
>you see A appear, it is ok to substitute B. (premise)
>2. Assume that meaning is reference. (Objectivist theory)
>3. "Oedipus' mother" has the same reference as "Jocaste". (given by the
>story)
>4. Therefore, "Oedipus' mother" means the same as "Jocaste". (from 2,3)
>5. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste. (given by the story)
>6. It is ok to substitute "Oedipus' mother" for "Jocaste" in (5). (from
>1,4)
>7. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Oedipus' mother. (from 5,6)
I just realized there is a much clearer way to point out why Owl's attack on
meaning being reference is faulty.
Oedipus holds two contradictory premises.
1. I marry Jocaste.
2. I don't marry my mom.
Jocaste and O's mom are two names for one entity. This is represented in
predicate logic by an identity and we can label this identity 3.
What Owl does is to use premises 1, 2 and 3 under an assumption of Rand's
conception of meaning and reference. Since 1 and 2 contradict, Owl can prove
any sentence to be false or true. Thus, Owl's proof has nothing to do with
meaning and reference. Oedipus holds contradictory premises. We know that O's
mom and Jocaste are two names for one thing. This is all Owl capitalizes on.
It doesn't take any equation of meaning and reference to know that the names
Jocaste and O's mom are interchangeable.
Demonstrating that two already contradictory premises, lead to the
contradiction of meaning as reference, doesn't mean anything more than the
simple fact that any sentence can be derived from contradictory premises.
If he wanted to disprove meaning and reference being the same, he would have to
use sentences that are consistent under his theory, that meaning and reference
aren't the same, and show how Objectivist theory makes them inconsistent.
Instead he uses sentences which are inconsistent in all frameworks, and which
can therefore yield any sentence or its contradiction.
Using this method one can disprove Owl's own theory.
1. O believes he marries Jocaste. (premise in story)
2. O believes he doesn't marry his mom. (premise in story)
3. O's mom = Jocaste. (premise in story)
4. Meaning is not reference. (assumption)
5. O believes he doesn't marry Jocaste. (2 & 3)
6. 1 & 5.
With 6, we can now derive any sentence we want, including the negation of 4, so
by reductio ad absurdum, meaning _is_ reference after all!
It is not some special problem with equating meaning and reference that leads
to Oedipus holding contradictory beliefs, he starts out with contradictory
beliefs. Since all Owl actually uses to disprove that meaning is reference is
that Oedipus' beliefs are ultimately contradictory, he isn't really proving
anything.
Kevin
Owl
Kwag7693 <kwag...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20000417223535...@ng-ft1.aol.com...
> 1. For all (or is it some?) X and Y such that if X means the same as Y,
then I
> can substitute Y into sentences replacing X.
That should be "for all x and y, if x means the same as y, then ..."
> 2. Assume that if X means the same as Y then X refers to the same as Y
and if X
> refers to the same as Y then X means the same as Y, for all X and Y.
> 3. The expression "Jocaste" has the same reference as the expression
"O's Mom"
> (I guess you are using the rule of universal elimination, not
existential
> elimination?)
Right, also known as "UI" for "universal instantiation." There's
different terminology out there, which is why I avoided naming the rules.
> 4. "Jocaste" means the same as "O's mom"
> (From 2 & 3 you have demonstrated
> that a two expressions with the same reference and meaning can be
substituted
> for one another in each sentence. You have demonstrated nothing about
the
> entities Jocaste and O's mom, because an entity cannot havea referent,
it IS
> the referent.)
See below.
> 5. Oedipus believes he marries Jocaste.
> 6. If 5 then he believes he marries his mom. (From premise 1 and 4) (4
relates
> information about expressions, not about Jocaste)
> 7. He believes he marries his mom. (5,6)
Right. The above is basically what I said originally -- I then translated
it into symbols, and then you translated it back.
> Is 6 even a valid deduction?. Jocaste is not the same thing as
"Jocaste".
> Oedipus doesn't believe he is marrying the expression "Jocaste" and
expressions
> are all you have shown have the same reference and meaning, therefore
all that
> can be substituted in 6 is "Jocaste" for "O's mom" or vice versa.
This is why we needed meta-linguistic principles, particularly in (1).
Think of the rule in (1) as a rule of inference: it tells you when you
have a certain sort of sentence, you're allowed to write down another sort
of sentence as following from it. Sentence (5) is of the form P{"j"}
(i.e., it's a sentence containing "Jocaste". We already have that
S("j","m"). Rule (1) says we can therefore substitute the sentence
P{"m"} -- i.e., we're allowed to write down the sentence that is just like
(5) except that "m" has been substituted for "j". And so we do that, and
we get (6).
What's confusing you is how come meta-linguistic statements (statements
about words) lead us to metaphysical statements (statements about
objects) -- mustn't that be wrong, in general? Well, no. Consider the
fact that the *sentence* "It is raining" is true. Well, this implies that
it is raining. So, you might say: A fact about a *sentence* implies a
fact about *the weather*. My inference is comparable: it licenses you in
writing down a certain sentence (much like if I say, "You can say 'It is
raining', truthfully") -- once you've written it down, you're now
asserting something about the objects the sentence is about.
> In one through 4 you are noting relations of expressions. In 5 you
switch
> Oedipus' belief about entities. How do the two relate? You should be
able to
> come up with a semantic equivalent of your symbolic argument, explaining
what
> it means and why it works. Why can't you?
I think by "semantic equivalent" you mean stating the argument in English.
That's what I did first, and then I translated it into symbols.
Owl
> Oedipus holds two contradictory premises.
> 1. I marry Jocaste.
> 2. I don't marry my mom.
>
> Jocaste and O's mom are two names for one entity. This is represented
in
> predicate logic by an identity and we can label this identity 3.
>
> What Owl does is to use premises 1, 2 and 3 under an assumption of
Rand's
> conception of meaning and reference. Since 1 and 2 contradict, Owl can
prove
> any sentence to be false or true.
This is the biggest confusion yet. My argument did not contain YOUR (1)
and (2) at all. You seem to be equating MY statement "Oedipus believed he
was marrying Jocaste" with the statement "Oedipus was marrying Jocaste."
What an egregious error.
> 1. O believes he marries Jocaste. (premise in story)
> 2. O believes he doesn't marry his mom. (premise in story)
> 3. O's mom = Jocaste. (premise in story)
> 4. Meaning is not reference. (assumption)
> 5. O believes he doesn't marry Jocaste. (2 & 3)
> 6. 1 & 5.
>
> With 6, we can now derive any sentence we want, including the negation
of 4, so
> by reductio ad absurdum, meaning _is_ reference after all!
I'm afraid not. First, there is no contradiction between 1 and 5
(although 5 is obviously false). Second, 5 does not follow from 2 and 3.
Sorry to disappoint you, but you're really not following this logic stuff.
Kwag7693
>and (2) at all. You seem to be equating MY statement "Oedipus believed he
>was marrying Jocaste" with the statement "Oedipus was marrying Jocaste."
I said Oedipus holds two contradictory premises. How does this not entail that
he believes them? Why do you seem to always take an interpretation so odd and
narrow that you cannot understand what I say?
It was Oedipus believing "I marry Jocaste," obviously. The contradiction
occurs within a framework of his beliefs. In your own derivation, you use a
contradiction of his beliefs as proof that your assumption leads to
contradiction. Why wouldn't it work here?
>I'm afraid not. First, there is no contradiction between 1 and 5
Oedipus can believe and not believe that he marries Jocaste?
I guess 5 could be more accurately stated in English as "It is not the case
that Oedipus believes he marries Jocaste," but it is apparent that 5 as stated
means just that.
>(although 5 is obviously false). Second, 5 does not follow from 2 and 3.
Yes it does, though not in just one step, but so what? If two entities are
identical anything predicated of one can be predicated of the other. Is it
impossible to derive 5 from 2 and 3? Clearly not. If ~(B(oMoj)) then
~(B(oMom)) when j=m is a valid deduction. If it isn't, I am interested to read
how you think its functional equivalent is valid in your own derivation.
Kwag7693
Is 1 sound? It is evident that "Jocaste" means the same as "O's mom." It
isn't evident that any of Oedipus' beliefs relate to the meaning of the words
involved. Specifically, he doesn't know what "O's mom" means. How can his
belief that he isn't marrying his mom be taken as relating to the true meaning
of the words involved?
Check this out:
1. If a term, A, refers to the same as a term, B, then in any sentence where
you see A appear, it is ok to substitute B. (premise)
2. Assume that reference is reference. (law of identity)
3. "Oedipus' mother" has the same reference as "Jocaste". (given by the
story)
4. Therefore, "Oedipus' mother" refers to the same as "Jocaste". (from
2,3)(actually this is now just reiteration of 3)
5. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste. (given by the story)
6. It is ok to substitute "Oedipus' mother" for "Jocaste" in (5). (from
1,4)
7. Oedipus believed he was going to marry Oedipus' mother. (from 5,6)
All I did was to replace every instance of "meaning" or "means" in your proof
with "reference" or "refers". Voila! Your proof allows me to demonstrate that
the Aristotelian identity is false.
Kevin
ScheetzBrian
>with "reference" or "refers". Voila! Your proof allows me to demonstrate
>that
>the Aristotelian identity is false.
>
>Kevin
Since Oedipus' belief is false, the law of identity cannot be applied to it -
except to disprove his belief.
Actually, the fact that the substitution does not work would constitute a way
of proving that his belief was wrong.
Wow. Falsehood and error arranged into a proof format ends up as gibberish.
Who-da thunk it!
Mark Sieving
>
Nothing wrong with these premises.
> 3. O's mom = Jocaste. (premise in story)
What does the equal sign signify in this context? If you take it to
say, "'O's mom' and 'Jocaste' refer to the same person," there's no
problem. If you take it to say, "'O's mom' means 'Jocaste'," then
you're begging the question.
> 4. Meaning is not reference. (assumption)
Given the proper interpretation of (3), i.e. "'O's mom' and 'Jocaste'
refer to the same person," this assumption says that (3) is irrelevant.
> 5. O believes he doesn't marry Jocaste. (2 & 3)
Non-sequiter. Given (4), "O's mom" and "Jocaste" are not
interchangeable in meaning, even though they refer to the same person.
If I understand Owl correctly, it's not entirely correct to say that
meaning is not reference. It would be better to say that meaning is not
*only* reference. I don't think that Owl would deny that reference
plays a role in meaning, just that there is more to meaning than just
reference.
anth...@hotmail.com
db...@tampatrib.com wrote:
> In article <20000414175756...@ng-fl1.news.cs.com>,
> ScheetzBrian <scheet...@cs.com> wrote:
>
> > You misunderstand them.
>
> No, not at all. "Wrathbone" simply wants to pretend that Oedipus must
know
> who is meant by "Oedipus' mother." False.
Not pretend. If "Oedipus's mother" means the same thing as "Jocaste," as
you assert, it follows that in understanding the meaning of "Jocaste"
Oedipus would understand that Jocaste is his mother. Since he doesn't
understand this, the two terms can't mean the same thing. It's a simple
modus tollens argument, Huckleberry.
Wrathbone
anth...@hotmail.com
I think if you stay around for a while you will find that Owl is one of
the more civil participants in the newsgroup. Owl is attacked,
generally, not because of his tactics, but because of his ideas, who
most here disagree with and many Objectivists get frustrated because his
ideas are much more thought out than theirs.
I have no idea what you are talking about when you make general
statements like this about his ethics. Such general condemnations are
exactly what you should be complaining about. What specifically are you
referring to? To be honest, if I had to be in a trench with either an
Objectivist, or someone with Owl's ethics, I'd pick the latter every
time.
db...@tampatrib.com
anth...@hotmail.com wrote:
> Not pretend. If "Oedipus's mother" means the same thing as "Jocaste," as
> you assert, it follows that in understanding the meaning of "Jocaste"
> Oedipus would --
Nope. Oedipus doesn't know who "Oedipus' mother" means. That was the point of
the story. Go read it. Your initial assumption here is wrong.
Tough luck, "Wrathbone."
-- at no extra charge
George Dance
anth...@hotmail.com wrote:
> I think if you stay around for a while you will find that Owl is one
of
> the more civil participants in the newsgroup. Owl is attacked,
> generally, not because of his tactics, but because of his ideas, who
> most here disagree with and many Objectivists get frustrated because
his
> ideas are much more thought out than theirs.
This could be very well be true, as it also explains Owl's apparent (to
me) non-civility and unwillingness to debate - if he has ended up
wasting a lot of time patiently explaining his POV to those who don't
understand it, and are not even willing to make the effort to try to
understand it before they form an opinion on it, he could well have
decided by now to always cut off debate early, where it looks as if his
points are not being understood, rather than waste more time on more
unproductive conversation. Of course I don't like or agree with that
assessment of me (if that's what it is), but I can understand it.
> I have no idea what you are talking about when you make general
> statements like this about his ethics. Such general condemnations are
> exactly what you should be complaining about. What specifically are
you
> referring to? To be honest, if I had to be in a trench with either an
> Objectivist, or someone with Owl's ethics, I'd pick the latter every
> time.
Thank you for asking for clarification. What I meant was: Owl's theory
of ethics, the ethics he teaches and avocates. My specific complaint is
his teaching that moral statements are statements of absolute fact,
discovered and validated by a sense of intuition.
I won't rehash my arguments here, since they're scattered throughout the
newsgroup. It is important, though, for me to emphasize that my
comment on Owl's ethics referred to his teachings, not to his character.
--
- 30 -
db...@tampatrib.com
beejo <br...@guavaween.com> wrote:
> bj
IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR NAME IS
Hey, what's the big idea calling "Owl" an intellectual coward in your subject
header? :P
-- at no extra charge
Owl
> >This is why we needed meta-linguistic principles, particularly in (1).
>
> Is 1 sound?
Yes.
> It is evident that "Jocaste" means the same as "O's mom."
No, it isn't. That's exactly what we're debating.
> It
> isn't evident that any of Oedipus' beliefs relate to the meaning of the
words
> involved. Specifically, he doesn't know what "O's mom" means. How can
his
> belief that he isn't marrying his mom be taken as relating to the true
meaning
> of the words involved?
It's hard for me to clearly understand what you're asking. However,
you're correct if you're saying that Oedipus doesn't have any beliefs
about the *words* "O's mom" or "Jocaste", at least, not any that are
relevant to the argument. The argument doesn't attribute any such beliefs
to him, and what he believes about those words is irrelevant.
In fact, as I mentioned before, since Oedipus is a Greek and doesn't speak
English, he doesn't know what the word "mother" means, so he doesn't know
what "Oedipus' mother" means. That doesn't prevent anything in the proof
from being true. (Recall my earlier discussion with jeff about the fact
that Pierre's not knowing English doesn't stop him from believing that
it's raining.)
A sentence attributing a belief to Oedipus will be true so long as what
*the attributor* means by the words following "Oedipus believes..."
corresponds to what Oedipus thinks. I.e., in
(Q) Oedipus believes that the cat is on the mat.
Q is true if what *I*, the person speaking Q, mean by "the cat is on the
mat" is the same as what Oedipus believes -- not if what *Oedipus* means
by "the cat is on the mat" is the same as what he believes, since Oedipus
may not even know the words "cat", "mat", and so on.
What counts, in short, is the meanings that the words in Q have for the
speaker of Q. That is why, if we substitute some word that (for us) means
the same as "cat", we should get something with the same meaning -- hence,
something attributing the same belief to Oedipus.
> 1. If a term, A, refers to the same as a term, B, then in any sentence
where
> you see A appear, it is ok to substitute B. (premise)
And of course, this is false. That's not how "refers to" works, but it is
how "means" works. Again, the point is that one of the constraints on
"means" in ordinary English is that if two words "mean the same thing" or
are "synonymous", it follows that you can substitute one for the other in
any sentence. That, I'm saying, is just part of how we use the word
"mean". Precisely what this argument is demonstrating is that you can't
treat "refer" in the same was as we treat "mean".
Owl
> I said Oedipus holds two contradictory premises. How does this not
entail that
> he believes them?
First, Oedipus didn't have any contradictory beliefs. He only had false
ones. Now, let's suppose we take someone who really does have
contradictory beliefs -- say, Leonard Peikoff, who believes:
(1) People have free will, and free will requires that an entity sometimes
has multiple possible actions available to it.
(2) The law of causality is true, and the law of causality implies that an
entity has only one possible action available to it at any given time.
In that case, of course he believes those things. But what I can't do is
to, myself, assert (1) and (2) in the course of an argument. I can
assert:
(1') Peikoff believes (1).
(2') Peikoff believes (2).
in my argument, because 1' and 2' are both true. I can't have 1 and 2 in
my argument, though, because one of them is false.
> It was Oedipus believing "I marry Jocaste," obviously. The
contradiction
> occurs within a framework of his beliefs.
You only get a contradiction if you actually assert 1 and 2. And *then*,
as you know, anything follows. But 1' and 2' do not constitute a
contradiction, and so not anything follows from them.
> In your own derivation, you use a
> contradiction of his beliefs as proof that your assumption leads to
> contradiction. Why wouldn't it work here?
My argument only used statements about someone's beliefs; it did not
assert the truth of those beliefs. In other words, my argument was like
one asserting 1' and 2'. Your parody, however, was like one asserting 1
and 2.
> >I'm afraid not. First, there is no contradiction between 1 and 5
>
> Oedipus can believe and not believe that he marries Jocaste?
No, he can't believe P and not believe P. But he could believe P and
believe ~P. Of course, Oedipus didn't actually have any contradictory
beliefs in the story, but people can have contradictory beliefs, as in the
Peikoff example.
> >(although 5 is obviously false). Second, 5 does not follow from 2 and
3.
>
> Yes it does, though not in just one step, but so what? If two entities
are
> identical anything predicated of one can be predicated of the other.
The point here is that "S believes that a is F" does *not* predicate
something of a. Rather, it predicates something of the sense of "a".
If you believe what you just said, and you believe that "S believes that a
is F" predicates something of a, then do you think the following
inferences are valid:
(i)
S believes that the lost city of Atlantis is in the Pacific Ocean.
:. There is an x such that S believes x is in the Pacific Ocean.
(ii)
Lois believes that Clark Kent is in the office.
Clark Kent is Superman.
:. Lois believes that Superman is in the office.
The whole point of Frege's discussion of sense and reference was to
provide an explanation for why these kinds of inferences fail, using the
distinction between a word's sense and its reference.
> Is it
> impossible to derive 5 from 2 and 3? Clearly not. If ~(B(oMoj)) then
> ~(B(oMom)) when j=m is a valid deduction. If it isn't, I am interested
to read
> how you think its functional equivalent is valid in your own derivation.
I'm really not sure if I've successfully communicated the Fregean theory
of sense and reference at all. Perhaps I'll make one more attempt.
Frege's explanation is that in inferences like (i) above, the terms
following "believes that..." come to refer, not to the lost city of
Atlantis and the Pacific Ocean (as they *normally* would), but rather to
*the senses of* those expressions. Thus, in the premise of (i), "the lost
city of Atlantis" refers to a sense, but in the conclusion "the lost city
of Atlantis" (purportedly) refers to a lost city. Thus, the inference is
invalid, something like an equivocation.
In (ii), in the first premise, "Clark Kent" refers to a sense, again. It
refers to the sense of the expression "Clark Kent." In the second
premise, "Clark Kent" refers to the person, Clark Kent. So it doesn't
refer to the same thing in both premises. This makes the argument
invalid, again, because of a sort of equivocation.
Now, obviously if you declare that sense=reference, then the above
explanation collapses, because then we wouldn't be distinguishing two uses
of "Clark Kent".
Jeff has noted correctly that you can give a parallel explanation by
saying that the first "Clark Kent" refers to something other than the
ordinary referent of "Clark Kent" (i.e., something other than Clark Kent),
but not say that this other thing is a "sense". Instead, he says it
refers to a "concept." (Side note: actually, Frege called senses
"concepts" too.) My response was : then you're adopting my theory in
substance, while differing only verbally. When I wrote my essay, I even
said that I considered 'meanings' to be ideas in the mind. Of course you
don't have to call them 'senses' or 'meanings' if you don't want to.
(Second aside: I think you actually have to further distinguish meaning
qua idea in the mind, from meaning qua intension or 'profile', but I left
that distinction aside for the sake of simplicity.)
Owl
news:8dkksh$p4a$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> If I understand Owl correctly, it's not entirely correct to say that
> meaning is not reference. It would be better to say that meaning is not
> *only* reference. I don't think that Owl would deny that reference
> plays a role in meaning, just that there is more to meaning than just
> reference.
I'm happy to allow that "meaning" can be used in more than one sense --
that in some contexts "means" means "refers to". I just want to insist
that there is a perfectly legitimate sense in which "means" doesn't mean
"refers to". That's all I need to get the analytic-synthetic distinction,
which is what all this is really angling towards.
Stephen Speicher
> Now, let's suppose we take someone who really does have
> contradictory beliefs -- say, Leonard Peikoff, who believes:
>
> (1) People have free will, and free will requires that an entity sometimes
> has multiple possible actions available to it.
> (2) The law of causality is true, and the law of causality implies that an
> entity has only one possible action available to it at any given time.
>
> In that case, of course he believes those things. But what I can't do is
> to, myself, assert (1) and (2) in the course of an argument. I can
> assert:
>
> (1') Peikoff believes (1).
> (2') Peikoff believes (2).
>
> in my argument, because 1' and 2' are both true. I can't have 1 and 2 in
> my argument, though, because one of them is false.
>
Michael "Why I Am Not An Objectivist" Huemer (aka Owl) is an
intellectual buffoon. In his typical grade-school level
approach, he misrepresents the Objectivist view and criticizes
what he has manufactured. Huemer is supposed to be a
'professional' academic philosopher, and yet he is unable to even
grasp what the law of causality means, at least according to
Objectivism.
Huemer asserts that it is Dr. Peikoff who holds a false view,
while it is Huemer himself who is ignorant. If I had a child
going to the school where Micahel Huemer (aka Owl) teaches--the
University of Colorado, Boulder--I would ask for a refund based
on intellectual fraud.
Stephen
s...@compbio.caltech.edu
You can always tell a pioneer by the arrows in his back.
Printed using 100% recycled electrons.
--------------------------------------------------------
Joseph J. Durnavich
>(ii)
>Lois believes that Clark Kent is in the office.
>Clark Kent is Superman.
>:. Lois believes that Superman is in the office.
>
>The whole point of Frege's discussion of sense and reference was to
>provide an explanation for why these kinds of inferences fail, using the
>distinction between a word's sense and its reference.
Mike, are you demonstrating some feature of meaning or just of
belief statements? I noticed that you don't use examples like:
Clark Kent is a bachelor
Clark Kent is Superman
:. Superman is a bachelor
--
Joe Durnavich
db...@tampatrib.com
Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> (ii)
> Lois believes that Clark Kent is in the office.
> Clark Kent is Superman.
> :. Lois believes that Superman is in the office.
What Lois actually believes is that Clark Kent, who as far as Lois knows
surely isn't Superman, is in the office. Note, for the thousandth time, how
the arguments of "Owl" hinge on a preposterous equivocation.
But "Owl" has had this pointed out to him before. He is a charlatan.
Ananda Gupta
<lots of discussion about sense/reference distinction snipped>
Isn't it true, though, that all this debate about whether Oedipus believed
Jocaste was his mother, or whether his failure to believe that affects the
substitutivity, etc., might be avoided by another example? I volunteer
Quine's:
(1) Giorgione = Barbarelli (two names for the same person -- they have the
same reference and therefore, under the O theory of meaning, the same
meaning)
(2) Giorgione was called Barbarelli because of his size
Substituting, we get:
Giorgione was called Giorgione because of his size...
which is clearly false.
Now I suppose one could say that (2) is false; rather, it should be:
(2') Giorgione was called "Barbarelli" because of his size
But then we could say, okay, if we're going to deal in names, then we can
also change (1) to read:
(1'): "Giorgione" = "Barbarelli" (two words used to describe the same
person)
and use the same substitution to get:
(3'): "Barbarelli" was called "Barbarelli" because of his size
In fact you don't even need the two-place predicate "x was called y." Just
use "x was so-called". Then we get:
(4) Barbarelli was so-called because of his size
and then by (1) we get
(5) Giorgione was so-called because of his size
which, again, doesn't work.
It has been a long time since I read "On what there is" but that seems to
me the gist of it. I am not sure whether the shuffling about regarding the
words Giorgione and "Giorgione" is legitimate but perhaps people here can
refresh my memory.
Ananda
carmichael
db...@tampatrib.com wrote in message <8dl7am$euu$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>In article <8dku91$4c4$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> anth...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
>> Not pretend. If "Oedipus's mother" means the same thing as "Jocaste," as
>> you assert, it follows that in understanding the meaning of "Jocaste"
>> Oedipus would --
>
>Nope. Oedipus doesn't know who "Oedipus' mother" means. That was the point
of
>the story. Go read it. Your initial assumption here is wrong.
>
>Tough luck, "Wrathbone."
Wrathbone is beating his head on a brick wall. He means that Oedipus would
know, if both terms had the same meaning. You have just admitted that he
knows the meaning of one, but not the other. Try another way: Just answer
this: When O. wanted to marry J., did he know the meaning of "Jocaste"? If
he did but, as you just said, did not know the meaning of "Oedipus' mother"
then the two terms have different meanings, although they have the same
referent.
Mark Young
> [...] O /is/ marrying his mother, but it is not the case that he
> believes he is marrying his mother (while it is true that he believes
> he is marrying Jocaste).
Whether the sentence "Oedipus believes he is marrying his mother" is
true or not depends on *how* we resolve the references -- how we change
it into a proposition. There are at least three different propositions
that it can express:
(a) (Ex) Mother(O, x) & Bel(O, will-marry(O, x))
(b) (Ex) Bel(O, will-marry(O, x)) & Bel(O, Mother(O, x))
(c) Bel(O, (Ex) will-marry(O, x) & Mother(O, x))
(a) is true. (b) is false. I don't recall whether (c) is false or
true (did O know of the prophecy, and if so did he believe it?).
Now I find (b) the most congenial reading of the sentence (the first
that springs to mind), and (c) the next most -- but (a) is still a
valid reading.
This issue and many related to the problems of resolving language to
reference are discussed in Gilles Fauconnier's _Mental Spaces_. He
avoids the formal forms I give above (since they are not capable of
expressing all the distinctions he wants to make), but does show how to
derive the above from his diagrams. I recommend the book to anyone who
wants to understand how people use language to refer to things.
...mark young
db...@tampatrib.com
carmichael <acar...@mail.com> wrote:
> Wrathbone is beating his head on a brick wall.
"Waah."
> He means that Oedipus would
> know, if both terms had the same meaning.
And that's moronic. If two words mean the same thing, everyone knows it?
Wrong.
By the way, you've just described "Wrathbone" as meaning to what he is
referring. Thanks for proving my point.
> You have just admitted that he
> knows the meaning of one, but not the other.
Correct. But "admitted" isn't really the right word. "Acknowledged."
> Try another way: Just answer
> this: When O. wanted to marry J., did he know the meaning of "Jocaste"?
As much as any man does; he knows to whom the name refers, but he does not
know all her characteristics. How could he? He'd have to be omniscient.
> If
> he did but, as you just said, did not know the meaning of "Oedipus' mothe
> r" then the two terms have different meanings, although they have the same
> referent.
Since he did but, as was said, he does not know to whom "Oedipus' mother"
refers, then the two terms have the same meaning, the same referent, and
Oedipus didn't know it. Try again.
You're saying that if we know A and B refer to the same thing, and Oedipus
knows to what A refers, Oedipus must know to what B refers. Do you call that
the "Psychic Oedipus Argument?" Hey, you just gave me an idea.
-- at no extra charge
George Dance
db...@tampatrib.com wrote:
> In article <8dlhha$5g$1...@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>,
> Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
>
> > Lois believes that Clark Kent is in the office.
> > Clark Kent is Superman.
> > :. Lois believes that Superman is in the office.
>
knows
> surely isn't Superman, is in the office. Note, for the thousandth
time, how
> the arguments of "Owl" hinge on a preposterous equivocation.
Actually, I get his point, that the Paradox rests on (what he calls) the
Objectivist definition that the [only true] "meaning" of a concept [to
anyone] is [nothing more or less than] its referent [as it really is, as
opposed to anyone's idea of how it is]. [The words in square brackets
do not appear in anything he or his critics have said, but are needed to
make the Paradox work. I am no expert in O epistemology, so cannot say
whether the sentence means the same thing in Objectivism with or without
square brackets; this may be an "equivocation" by Owl.]
> But "Owl" has had this pointed out to him before. He is a charlatan.
I notice that Owl's attack on Objectivist ethics depends on treating
Rand's concept of "egoism" in the identical way, using the definition
she allegedly supported (but he is explicitly opposing) to get:
(i) Rand believed that she supported ethical egoism.
(ii) Ethical egoism is nothing more or less than consideration only of
one's immediate interests as the only good there is.
(iii) Therefore, Rand believed that she supported nothing more or less
than consideration only of one's immedate interests as the only good
there is.
This has also been pointed out before, with the same lack of response.
--
- 30 -
Désirée
gsol...@pobox.com says...
> In article <MPG.1361f0ca...@news.csulb.edu>, Désirée Davis
> writes...
> ...
> > The false statement is line 5 in which you say "Oedipus
> > believed he was going to marry Jocaste." when in fact it
> > should be "Oedipus believed he was going to marry
> > Jocaste, a woman who is not his mother." Given this, the
> > substitution in Line 6 is not valid, thus the argument
> > fails.
>
> Suppose that Jocaste had a hidden tattoo. You seem to be arguing that
> "Oedipus believed he was going to marry Jocaste" is false simply because
> Oedipus is unaware of the tattoo.
No, if Oedipus didn't know about the tattoo, I'd say that "Oedipus
believed he was marrying Jocaste, a woman without tattoos"
>
> Further, if it is true that Oedipus believes A and B, doesn't it follow
> that he believes A? (Let A = "he was going to marry Jocaste" and B =
> "Jocaste was not his mother".) So even on your formulation it is true
> that Oedipus believed "he was going to marry Jocaste", and that is all
> the argument needs. You are indeed right to object to the substitution
> of "Oedipus's mother" for "Jocaste", but that is because they do not have
> the same meaning.
Of course they have the same meaning. It is only Oedipus' irrational
belief that they don't.
His belief that Jocaste is not his mother (a requirement since he
doesn't want to marry his mother) is irrational because he has no
evidence for it. He is making the statement "Jocaste is not my mother"
based on faith, not rationality, as is clearly shown by the fact that he
was in error. I'm not quite clear on how a rational critique of a
philosophical system can be derived from irrational beliefs.
Désirée- who is not Jocaste
Désirée Davis
> Jim Klein <rum...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
> news:8datq4$df6$1...@slb0.atl.mindspring.net...
> > Except they do have the same meaning, at least in this example. Oedipus
> > does indeed believe that he's going to marry his mother. Maybe it would
> be
> > easier worded thusly, "Oedipus believes that he's going to marry (the
> person
> > who is his mother)."
>
> So we ask him, "Oedipus, are you going to marry your mother?" He says,
> "No, of course not." Is he lying? Is he expressing a belief of his? If
> so, what belief?
>
Yes, he is lying. In truth, he has no direct knowledge of whether this
woman is his mother or not. The truthful answer (I.e. the answer
consistent with the facts of reality) that he should have given was "I
don't know."
Désirée Rex (well maybe not...)
Owl
news:8dlnm4$1ben$1...@Mars.mcs.net...
> >Lois believes that Clark Kent is in the office.
> >Clark Kent is Superman.
> >:. Lois believes that Superman is in the office.
> Mike, are you demonstrating some feature of meaning or just of
> belief statements? I noticed that you don't use examples like:
>
> Clark Kent is a bachelor
> Clark Kent is Superman
> :. Superman is a bachelor
Well, the answer is "both." Frege's explanation, which I accept, is that
in the belief statement, terms embedded in the "believes that" context
come to refer to what is ordinarily their sense, which is different from
what is ordinarily their reference.
In your example, this doesn't happen -- that is to say, all the terms
refer to their normal referents.
So, the Fregean theory says something about belief statements, and it says
something about the difference between sense and reference.
Owl
news:8F1C12BECasgup...@32.97.166.128...
> (2) Giorgione was called Barbarelli because of his size
> Giorgione was called Giorgione because of his size...
> Now I suppose one could say that (2) is false; rather, it should be:
> (2') Giorgione was called "Barbarelli" because of his size
That's right.
> But then we could say, okay, if we're going to deal in names, then we
can
> also change (1) to read:
>
> (1'): "Giorgione" = "Barbarelli" (two words used to describe the same
> person)
But this is false. Although the person Giorgione (whoever the heck that
is) is identical with the person Barbarelli, the word "Giorgione" is not
identical with the word "Barbarelli", so the substitution will not work.
> (4) Barbarelli was so-called because of his size
> and then by (1) we get
> (5) Giorgione was so-called because of his size
This one is trickier. I think the right analysis is that in (4), the word
"Barbarelli" is referring *both* to the person, Barbarelli, *and* to the
word "Barbarelli." In (5), "Giorgione" is referring both to the person
(the same person) -- so that's ok -- and to the word "Giorgione" -- it's
the latter that is bad, because as noted above, "Giorgione" is not
"Barbarelli".
db...@tampatrib.com
George Dance <georg...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> This has also been pointed out before, with the same lack of response.
Right -- you probably made too much sense or told him a truth he didn't want
to hear.
-- at no extra charge
Ananda Gupta
>Ananda Gupta <asg...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
>news:8F1C12BECasgup...@32.97.166.128...
>> (2) Giorgione was called Barbarelli because of his size
>...
>> Giorgione was called Giorgione because of his size...
>...
>> Now I suppose one could say that (2) is false; rather, it should be:
>> (2') Giorgione was called "Barbarelli" because of his size
>
>That's right.
>
>> But then we could say, okay, if we're going to deal in names, then we
>can
>> also change (1) to read:
>>
>> (1'): "Giorgione" = "Barbarelli" (two words used to describe the same
>> person)
>
>But this is false. Although the person Giorgione (whoever the heck that
>is) is identical with the person Barbarelli, the word "Giorgione" is not
>identical with the word "Barbarelli", so the substitution will not work.
(btw I have no idea who Giorgione is; no doubt he is some obscure literary
reference, the use of whom made Quine feel clever)
Rats, and here I was thinking I had a germane example that shows why
reference and meaning are different (since clearly "Barbarelli" and
"Giorgione" refer to the same person but do not mean the same thing).
>> (4) Barbarelli was so-called because of his size
>> and then by (1) we get
>> (5) Giorgione was so-called because of his size
>This one is trickier. I think the right analysis is that in (4), the word
>"Barbarelli" is referring *both* to the person, Barbarelli, *and* to the
>word "Barbarelli." In (5), "Giorgione" is referring both to the person
>(the same person) -- so that's ok -- and to the word "Giorgione" -- it's
>the latter that is bad, because as noted above, "Giorgione" is not
>"Barbarelli".
Too bad my copy of "From a Logical Point of View" is elsewhere. Quine had
more to say about this. OTOH I already accept the conclusion that
reference and meaning are't identical, so maybe it's just time to go back
to lurking, heh.
Ananda
Anthanson1
>From: George Dance
>Thank you for asking for clarification. What I meant was: Owl's theory
>of ethics, the ethics he teaches and avocates. My specific complaint is
>his teaching that moral statements are statements of absolute fact,
>discovered and validated by a sense of intuition.
I happen to be an intuitionist too. (-: In fact, I think I am the only other
one on the newsgroup. BTW, intutionists don't believe that all moral statements
are statements of absolute fact.
Many people misunderstand intuitionism, since "intuition" has certain
unfortunate connotations. I would prefer to call myself a Rossean deontologist.
Wrathbone
George Dance
Anthanson1 <antha...@aol.com> wrote:
> I happen to be an intuitionist too. (-: In fact, I think I am the only
other
> one on the newsgroup. BTW, intutionists don't believe that all moral
statements
> are statements of absolute fact.
Right; moral statements can be false, and true statements can be
logically derived from others.
> Many people misunderstand intuitionism, since "intuition" has
certain
> unfortunate connotations. I would prefer to call myself a Rossean
deontologist.
Who is Ross? Why do you call yourself a Rossean?
--
- 30 -
Anthanson1
>From: George Dance
>Who is Ross? Why do you call yourself a Rossean?
(From The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The last serious attempt to revive duty-based ethics is W.D. Ross's The Right
and the Good (1930). Like his 17th and 18th century counterparts, Ross argues
that our duties are "part of the fundamental nature of the universe."
Accordingly, Ross falls into the deontological (or nonconsequentialist) camp of
ethicists. Ross believes that when we reflect on our actual moral convictions
they reveal the following set of duties:
Fidelity: the duty to keep promises
Reparation: the duty to compensate others when we harm them
Gratitude: the duty to thank those who help us
Justice: the duty to recognize merit
Beneficence: the duty to improve the conditions of others
Self-improvement: the duty to improve our virtue and intelligence
Nonmaleficence: the duty to not injure others
Although some of these duties are the same as those of traditional duty-based
ethics, such as beneficence and self-improvement, Ross does not include duties
to God, self-preservation, or political duties. By appealing to our actual
moral convictions, Ross attempts to address the problem of including principles
that are not duties by our standards today. This list is not complete, Ross
argues, but he believes that at least some of these are self-evidently true.
He also addresses the problem of choosing between conflicting moral duties. For
Ross, the above duties are prima facie (Latin for first appearance) insofar as
we are under obligation unless a stronger duty shows up. If I am torn between
two conflicting actions, such as preventing myself from starving or a neighbor
from starving, I am under obligation to follow only the strongest of the two
duties. Ross argues that there is no obvious priority among the principles,
hence it will not necessarily be clear which is the stronger duty. To choose
between conflicting duties, we must use our own insight on a case by case
basis.
Wrathbone
Kwag7693
>>
>> Is 1 sound?
>
>Yes.
mean 1
t verb (PAST and PAST PARTICIPLE meant) [with OBJ.] 1 intend to convey,
indicate, or refer to (a particular thing or notion); signify:
This is from the Oxford dictionary. Rand's use of reference and meaning is
closer to the common usage than your own.
>> It is evident that "Jocaste" means the same as "O's mom."
>
>No, it isn't. That's exactly what we're debating.
Either they mean the same, as Rand used the term meaning, or all you are
demonstrating is that Rand's theory is incompatible with how you are willing to
use 'meaning'. Big deal.
>A sentence attributing a belief to Oedipus will be true so long as what
>*the attributor* means by the words following "Oedipus believes..."
>corresponds to what Oedipus thinks. I.e., in
I understand what a proposition is supposed to be. This is not what I am
saying. I quoted Rand's definition of meaning. If we apply that definition to
Oedipus, it is clear that he doesn't know what Oedipus' mom means. He doesn't
know the meaning even as Oxford defines meaning.
>(Q) Oedipus believes that the cat is on the mat.
This presumes Oedipus understands the proposition. He knows what cats and mats
are, he knows what the concepts involved mean. He doesn't know what his mother
is.
>What counts, in short, is the meanings that the words in Q have for the
>speaker of Q.
Great. What does Oedipus mean by his belief that he isn't marrying his mom?
He knows nothing about his mom.
Further, Rand wasn't talking about the meanings of all words, when she claimed
that meaning is reference. She was mentioning concepts. I don't think Jocaste
is an integration of two or more units, which was Rand's definition of a
concept. I don't know if she thought simple names had any meaning at all.
>And of course, this is false. That's not how "refers to" works, but it is
>how "means" works.
Not according to Rand or the Oxford dictionary.
>Again, the point is that one of the constraints on
>"means" in ordinary English is that if two words "mean the same thing" or
>are "synonymous", it follows that you can substitute one for the other in
>any sentence.
That is certainly what you think. Would Rand have claimed that a name and a
concept had the same meaning or referent? I don't know. If Oedipus' mom and
Jocaste are both similar mental units, with the same referent, I am sure Rand
would have been fine with substituting the two. They certainly don't seem to
be similar though.
In any case, and as I have repeatedly noted and you have repeatedly declined to
respond to, the contradiction in your assumption of Rand's theory comes from
Oedipus holding two contradictory beliefs. You appear to take it as prima
facie evidence that the meanings of Jocaste and O's mom aren't the same,
because he has mistaken beliefs about one and not the other. One easy way
around this is to claim, as I have often, that he doesn't know what O's mom,
means. Both by Rand's usage and the OED's, he doesn't. This being the case,
you should be hard pressed to show a contradiction in his meanings, when one
term has none.
>Precisely what this argument is demonstrating is that you can't
>treat "refer" in the same was as we treat "mean".
I think it demonstrates that with your relatively esoteric definitions, Rand's
theory doesn't make sense. I don't think the problem lies in Rand's theory.
If you assume that O's mom and Jocaste have the same referent and different
meanings, then Rand's theory isn't going to be coherent. This is all you do.
One thing I am sure of is that proving that Oedipus holds contradictory
propositions to be true is no way to prove that meaning isn't reference. His
beliefs were contradictory before Rand introduced her theory of meaning.
Inserting an explicit contradiction into an assumption will prove it false, but
will do so to any proposition.
Now if you want to hold that his beliefs were not contradictory, okay, but then
I am sure that your substitution of the correct meaning and reference of
Jocaste and O's mom, into his static and false belief system, is faulty. It
won't demonstrate anything about your initial assumption.
Either his beliefs are contradictory from the outset, or you cannot substitute
one term for the other meaningfully in O's belief system. You can't show my
beliefs contradict by demonstrating that you can import contradictory meanings
into my belief system. Red and rojo mean the same thing. But if I believe
that an object is red, but not rojo, you can't use that fact to demonstrate the
two don't mean the same thing. However, you do just this with Oedipus.
Kwag7693
>> mom from all other referents?
>
>Circular. That is necessary to "meaning" only on the view that you are
>assuming.
>
>> He can't even identify her while sharing her
>> bed. Simply put, he doesn't know what O's mom means.
>
>I doubt that this will help at this point, but that should be "Simply
>put, he doesn't know who O's mom /refers to/". If asked "What does O's
>mother mean", O could quite reasonably reply "The woman who gave birth
>to me". Of course he does not know to whom that refers; that is the
>point of the story. But he nevertheless can successfully use the term
>"my mother" (or "my father") to communicate with others. Now, if you
>simply /define/ meaning to be reference, then he can not, but that is
>Humpty-Dumpty's game.
If you want to show that Rand's theory is contradictory, wouldn't you want to
use her terms as she did?
You mention what O's mom means, and I find your definition adequate if a bit
circular. Can you define Jocaste? I don't think "Jocaste" is a concept.
Names and concepts aren't the same thing.