Are monads tokens ?
Roger Clough
----- Receiving the following content -----From: Roger CloughReceiver: everything-listTime: 2012-12-16, 08:17:27Subject: Davidson on truth
Donald Davidson on truthI don't think you can do any better on understanding truth than studying Donald Davidson.As I understand him, in1) he justifies comp (the use of tokens, because they are nonreductive) as long as we allow for(a) mental causation of physical events; (b) that there is a strict exceptionless relation(iff) between the events; (c) that we use tokens and not types to relate mental tophysical events2) He narrows down what form of language can be used.Not sure but this seems to allow only finite, learnable context-free expressions only3) He clarifies the meaning and use of 1p vs 3p. Observed that Hume accepted only 1pknowledege, the logical positivists accepted only 3p knowledge, where 1p is knowledge byacquaintance and 3p is knowledge by description. I might add that IMHO 1p is Kierkegaard'sview that truth is subjective, so K is close to Hume.about the mind: token mental events are identical to token physical events. One previous difficulty with such a view was that it did not seem feasible to provide laws relating mental states—for example, believing that the sky is blue, or wanting a hamburger—to physical states, such as patterns of neural activity in the brain. Davidson argued that such a reduction would not be necessary to a token identity thesis: it is possible that each individual mental event just is the corresponding physical event, without there being laws relating types (as opposed to tokens) of mental events to types of physical events. But, Davidson argued, the fact that we could not have such a reduction does not entail that the mind is anything more than the brain. Hence, Davidson called his position anomalous monism: monism, because it claims that only one thing is at issue in questions of mental and physical events; anomalous (from a-, "not," and omalos, "regular") because mental and physical event types could not be connected by strict laws (laws without exceptions)."1. Token Mental events ( A justification of token physicalism: these being comp and purely token functionalism)
In "Mental Events" (1970) Davidson advanced a form of token identity theory
Davidson argued that anomalous monism follows from three plausible theses. First, he assumes the denial of epiphenomenalism—that is, the denial of the view that mental events do not cause physical events. Second, he assumes a nomological view of causation, according to which one event causes another if (and only if) there is a strict, exceptionless law governing the relation between the events. Third, he assumes the principle of the anomalism of the mental, according to which there are no strict laws that govern the relationship between mental event types and physical event types. By these three theses, Davidson argued, it follows that the causal relations between the mental and the physical hold only between mental event tokens, but that mental events as types are anomalous. This ultimately secures token physicalism and a supervenience relation between the mental and the physical, while respecting the autonomy of the mental (Malpas, 2005, §2).
2. Truth and meaning (A justification of the use of certain types of language--- I think this might mean context-free (finite) language)
In 1967 Davidson published "Truth and Meaning," in which he argued that any learnable language must be statable in a finite form, even if it is capable of a theoretically infinite number of expressions—as we may assume that natural human languages are, at least in principle. If it could not be stated in a finite way then it could not be learned through a finite, empirical method such as the way humans learn their languages. It follows that it must be possible to give a theoretical semantics for any natural language which could give the meanings of an infinite number of sentences on the basis of a finite system of axioms. Following, among others, Rudolf Carnap (Introduction to Semantics, Harvard 1942, 22) Davidson also argued that "giving the meaning of a sentence" was equivalent to stating its truth conditions, so stimulating the modern work on truth-conditional semantics. In sum, he proposed that it must be possible to distinguish a finite number of distinct grammatical features of a language, and for each of them explain its workings in such a way as to generate trivial (obviously correct) statements of the truth conditions of all the (infinitely many) sentences making use of that feature. That is, we can give a finite theory of meaning for a natural language; the test of its correctness is that it would generate (if applied to the language in which it was formulated) all the sentences of the form "'p' is true if and only if p" ("'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white"). (These are called T-sentences: Davidson derives the idea from Alfred Tarski.)
This work was originally delivered in his John Locke Lectures at Oxford, and launched a large endeavor by many philosophers to develop Davidsonian semantical theories for natural language. Davidson himself contributed many details to such a theory, in essays on quotation, indirect discourse, and descriptions of action.
3. Knowledge and belief (The difference between 1p and 3p. Also, a triangulation position on solipsism)
After the 1970s Davidson's philosophy of mind picked up influences from the work of Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, and Keith Donnellan, all of whom had proposed a number of troubling counter-examples to what can be generally described as "descriptivist" theories of content. These views, which roughly originate in Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions, held that the referent of a name—which object or person that name refers to—is determined by the beliefs a person holds about that object. Suppose I believe "Aristotle founded the Lyceum" and "Aristotle taught Alexander the Great." Whom are my beliefs about? Aristotle, obviously. But why? Russell would say that my beliefs are about whatever object makes the greatest number of them true. If two people taught Alexander, but only one founded the Lyceum, then my beliefs are about the one who did both. Kripke et al. argued that this was not a tenable theory, and that in fact whom or what a person's beliefs were about was in large part (or entirely) a matter of how they had acquired those beliefs, and those names, and how if at all the use of those names could be traced "causally" from their original referents to the current speaker.
Davidson picked up this theory, and his work in the 1980s dealt with the problems in relating first-person beliefs to second- and third-person beliefs. It seems that first person beliefs ("I am hungry") are acquired in very different ways from third person beliefs (someone else's belief, of me, that "He is hungry") How can it be that they have the same content?
Davidson approached this question by connecting it with another one: how can two people have beliefs about the same external object? He offers, in answer, a picture of triangulation: Beliefs about oneself, beliefs about other people, and beliefs about the world come into existence jointly.
Many philosophers throughout history had, arguably, been tempted to reduce two of these kinds of belief and knowledge to the other one: Descartes and Hume thought that the only knowledge we start with is self-knowledge. Some of the logical positivists, (and some would say Wittgenstein, or Wilfrid Sellars), held that we start with beliefs only about the external world. (And arguably Friedrich Schelling and Emmanuel Levinas held that we start with beliefs only about other people). It is not possible, on Davidson's view, for a person to have only one of these three kinds of mental content; anyone who has beliefs of one of the kinds must have beliefs of the other two kinds."
[Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]
12/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
Craig Weinberg
Are monads tokens ? I'm going to say yes, because each monadrefers to a corporeal body as a whole (so it is nonreductive at the physical end)even though each monad, being specific about what it refers to,identifies the type of object it refers to.
Monads are self-tokenizing tokenizers but not actually tokens (tokens of what? other Monads?). Tokens don't 'exist', they are figures of computation, which is semiosis, a sensory-motive experience within the cognitive symbolic ranges of awareness.
Craig
Stephen P. King
�Are monads tokens ?� I'm going to say yes, because each monad
refers to a corporeal body as a whole (so it is nonreductive at the physical end)even though each monad, being specific about what it refers to,identifies the type of object it refers to.
Dear Roger,
��� Does the type-token duality apply?
�Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]12/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
�
----- Receiving the following content -----From: Roger CloughReceiver: everything-listTime: 2012-12-16, 08:17:27Subject: Davidson on truth
Donald Davidson on truth�
I don't think you can do any better on understanding truth than studying Donald Davidson.
�
As I understand him, in
�1) he justifies�comp (the use of tokens, because they are nonreductive) as long as we allow for(a) mental causation of physical events; (b) that there is a strict exceptionless relation�(iff)� between the events; (c) that we�use tokens and not types to relate mental� tophysical events���
2) He narrows down what form of language can be used.
Not sure but this seems to allow only�finite, learnable context-free expressions only�
3) He clarifies the meaning and use of 1p vs 3p. Observed that Hume accepted only 1pknowledege, the logical positivists accepted only 3p knowledge, where 1p is knowledge by
acquaintance and 3p is knowledge by description.� I might add that IMHO 1p is Kierkegaard's
view that truth is subjective, so K is close to Hume.
"1. Token Mental events ( A justification of token physicalism: these being comp and purely token functionalism)
In "Mental Events" (1970) Davidson advanced a form of token identity theory about the mind: token mental events are identical to token physical events. One previous difficulty with such a view was that it did not seem feasible to provide laws relating mental states�for example, believing that the sky is blue, or wanting a hamburger�to physical states, such as patterns of neural activity in the brain. Davidson argued that such a reduction would not be necessary to a token identity thesis: it is possible that each individual mental event just is the corresponding physical event, without there being laws relating types (as opposed to tokens) of mental events to types of physical events. But, Davidson argued, the fact that we could not have such a reduction does not entail that the mind is anything more than the brain. Hence, Davidson called his position anomalous monism: monism, because it claims that only one thing is at issue in questions of mental and physical events; anomalous (from a-, "not," and omalos, "regular") because mental and physical event types could not be connected by strict laws (laws without exceptions).
Davidson argued that anomalous monism follows from three plausible theses. First, he assumes the denial of epiphenomenalism�that is, the denial of the view that mental events do not cause physical events. Second, he assumes a nomological view of causation, according to which one event causes another if (and only if) there is a strict, exceptionless law governing the relation between the events. Third, he assumes the principle of the anomalism of the mental, according to which there are no strict laws that govern the relationship between mental event types and physical event types. By these three theses, Davidson argued, it follows that the causal relations between the mental and the physical hold only between mental event tokens, but that mental events as types are anomalous. This ultimately secures token physicalism and a supervenience relation between the mental and the physical, while respecting the autonomy of the mental (Malpas, 2005, �2).
2. Truth and meaning (A justification of the use of certain types of language--- I think this might mean context-free (finite) language)
In 1967 Davidson published "Truth and Meaning," in which he argued that any learnable language must be statable in a finite form, even if it is capable of a theoretically infinite number of expressions�as we may assume that natural human languages are, at least in principle. If it could not be stated in a finite way then it could not be learned through a finite, empirical method such as the way humans learn their languages. It follows that it must be possible to give a theoretical semantics for any natural language which could give the meanings of an infinite number of sentences on the basis of a finite system of axioms. Following, among others, Rudolf Carnap (Introduction to Semantics, Harvard 1942, 22) Davidson also argued that "giving the meaning of a sentence" was equivalent to stating its truth conditions, so stimulating the modern work on truth-conditional semantics. In sum, he proposed that it must be possible to distinguish a finite number of distinct grammatical features of a language, and for each of them explain its workings in such a way as to generate trivial (obviously correct) statements of the truth conditions of all the (infinitely many) sentences making use of that feature. That is, we can give a finite theory of meaning for a natural language; the test of its correctness is that it would generate (if applied to the language in which it was formulated) all the sentences of the form "'p' is true if and only if p" ("'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white"). (These are called T-sentences: Davidson derives the idea from Alfred Tarski.)
This work was originally delivered in his John Locke Lectures at Oxford, and launched a large endeavor by many philosophers to develop Davidsonian semantical theories for natural language. Davidson himself contributed many details to such a theory, in essays on quotation, indirect discourse, and descriptions of action.
3. Knowledge and belief (The difference between 1p and 3p. Also, a triangulation position on solipsism)
After the 1970s Davidson's philosophy of mind picked up influences from the work of Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, and Keith Donnellan, all of whom had proposed a number of troubling counter-examples to what can be generally described as "descriptivist" theories of content. These views, which roughly originate in Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions, held that the referent of a name�which object or person that name refers to�is determined by the beliefs a person holds about that object. Suppose I believe "Aristotle founded the Lyceum" and "Aristotle taught Alexander the Great." Whom are my beliefs about? Aristotle, obviously. But why? Russell would say that my beliefs are about whatever object makes the greatest number of them true. If two people taught Alexander, but only one founded the Lyceum, then my beliefs are about the one who did both. Kripke et al. argued that this was not a tenable theory, and that in fact whom or what a person's beliefs were about was in large part (or entirely) a matter of how they had acquired those beliefs, and those names, and how if at all the use of those names could be traced "causally" from their original referents to the current speaker.
Davidson picked up this theory, and his work in the 1980s dealt with the problems in relating first-person beliefs to second- and third-person beliefs. It seems that first person beliefs ("I am hungry") are acquired in very different ways from third person beliefs (someone else's belief, of me, that "He is hungry") How can it be that they have the same content?
Davidson approached this question by connecting it with another one: how can two people have beliefs about the same external object? He offers, in answer, a picture of triangulation: Beliefs about oneself, beliefs about other people, and beliefs about the world come into existence jointly.
Many philosophers throughout history had, arguably, been tempted to reduce two of these kinds of belief and knowledge to the other one: Descartes and Hume thought that the only knowledge we start with is self-knowledge. Some of the logical positivists, (and some would say Wittgenstein, or Wilfrid Sellars), held that we start with beliefs only about the external world. (And arguably Friedrich Schelling and Emmanuel Levinas held that we start with beliefs only about other people). It is not possible, on Davidson's view, for a person to have only one of these three kinds of mental content; anyone who has beliefs of one of the kinds must have beliefs of the other two kinds."
--[Roger�Clough],�[rcl...@verizon.net]
12/16/2012�
"Forever�is�a�long�time,�especially�near�the�end."�-Woody�Allen
-- Onward! Stephen
Roger Clough
----- Receiving the following content -----From: Stephen P. KingReceiver: everything-listTime: 2012-12-16, 14:25:48Subject: Re: Are monads tokens ?
On 12/16/2012 8:36 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
�Are monads tokens ?� I'm going to say yes, because each monad
refers to a corporeal body as a whole (so it is nonreductive at the physical end)even though each monad, being specific about what it refers to,identifies the type of object it refers to.
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
�
----- Receiving the following content -----From: Roger CloughReceiver: everything-listTime: 2012-12-16, 08:17:27Subject: Davidson on truth
Donald Davidson on truth�
I don't think you can do any better on understanding truth than studying Donald Davidson.
�
As I understand him, in
�1) he justifies燾omp (the use of tokens, because they are nonreductive) as long as we allow for(a) mental causation of physical events; (b) that there is a strict exceptionless relation�(iff)� between the events; (c) that we爑se tokens and not types to relate mental� tophysical events牋�
2) He narrows down what form of language can be used.
Not sure but this seems to allow only爁inite, learnable context-free expressions only�
3) He clarifies the meaning and use of 1p vs 3p. Observed that Hume accepted only 1pknowledege, the logical positivists accepted only 3p knowledge, where 1p is knowledge by
acquaintance and 3p is knowledge by description.� I might add that IMHO 1p is Kierkegaard's
view that truth is subjective, so K is close to Hume.
"1. Token Mental events ( A justification of token physicalism: these being comp and purely token functionalism)
In "Mental Events" (1970) Davidson advanced a form of token identity theory about the mind: token mental events are identical to token physical events. One previous difficulty with such a view was that it did not seem feasible to provide laws relating mental states梖or example, believing that the sky is blue, or wanting a hamburger梩o physical states, such as patterns of neural activity in the brain. Davidson argued that such a reduction would not be necessary to a token identity thesis: it is possible that each individual mental event just is the corresponding physical event, without there being laws relating types (as opposed to tokens) of mental events to types of physical events. But, Davidson argued, the fact that we could not have such a reduction does not entail that the mind is anything more than the brain. Hence, Davidson called his position anomalous monism: monism, because it claims that only one thing is at issue in questions of mental and physical events; anomalous (from a-, "not," and omalos, "regular") because mental and physical event types could not be connected by strict laws (laws without exceptions).
Davidson argued that anomalous monism follows from three plausible theses. First, he assumes the denial of epiphenomenalism梩hat is, the denial of the view that mental events do not cause physical events. Second, he assumes a nomological view of causation, according to which one event causes another if (and only if) there is a strict, exceptionless law governing the relation between the events. Third, he assumes the principle of the anomalism of the mental, according to which there are no strict laws that govern the relationship between mental event types and physical event types. By these three theses, Davidson argued, it follows that the causal relations between the mental and the physical hold only between mental event tokens, but that mental events as types are anomalous. This ultimately secures token physicalism and a supervenience relation between the mental and the physical, while respecting the autonomy of the mental (Malpas, 2005, �2).
2. Truth and meaning (A justification of the use of certain types of language--- I think this might mean context-free (finite) language)
In 1967 Davidson published "Truth and Meaning," in which he argued that any learnable language must be statable in a finite form, even if it is capable of a theoretically infinite number of expressions梐s we may assume that natural human languages are, at least in principle. If it could not be stated in a finite way then it could not be learned through a finite, empirical method such as the way humans learn their languages. It follows that it must be possible to give a theoretical semantics for any natural language which could give the meanings of an infinite number of sentences on the basis of a finite system of axioms. Following, among others, Rudolf Carnap (Introduction to Semantics, Harvard 1942, 22) Davidson also argued that "giving the meaning of a sentence" was equivalent to stating its truth conditions, so stimulating the modern work on truth-conditional semantics. In sum, he proposed that it must be possible to distinguish a finite number of distinct grammatical features of a language, and for each of them explain its workings in such a way as to generate trivial (obviously correct) statements of the truth conditions of all the (infinitely many) sentences making use of that feature. That is, we can give a finite theory of meaning for a natural language; the test of its correctness is that it would generate (if applied to the language in which it was formulated) all the sentences of the form "'p' is true if and only if p" ("'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white"). (These are called T-sentences: Davidson derives the idea from Alfred Tarski.)
This work was originally delivered in his John Locke Lectures at Oxford, and launched a large endeavor by many philosophers to develop Davidsonian semantical theories for natural language. Davidson himself contributed many details to such a theory, in essays on quotation, indirect discourse, and descriptions of action.
3. Knowledge and belief (The difference between 1p and 3p. Also, a triangulation position on solipsism)
After the 1970s Davidson's philosophy of mind picked up influences from the work of Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, and Keith Donnellan, all of whom had proposed a number of troubling counter-examples to what can be generally described as "descriptivist" theories of content. These views, which roughly originate in Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions, held that the referent of a name梬hich object or person that name refers to梚s determined by the beliefs a person holds about that object. Suppose I believe "Aristotle founded the Lyceum" and "Aristotle taught Alexander the Great." Whom are my beliefs about? Aristotle, obviously. But why? Russell would say that my beliefs are about whatever object makes the greatest number of them true. If two people taught Alexander, but only one founded the Lyceum, then my beliefs are about the one who did both. Kripke et al. argued that this was not a tenable theory, and that in fact whom or what a person's beliefs were about was in large part (or entirely) a matter of how they had acquired those beliefs, and those names, and how if at all the use of those names could be traced "causally" from their original referents to the current speaker.
Davidson picked up this theory, and his work in the 1980s dealt with the problems in relating first-person beliefs to second- and third-person beliefs. It seems that first person beliefs ("I am hungry") are acquired in very different ways from third person beliefs (someone else's belief, of me, that "He is hungry") How can it be that they have the same content?
Davidson approached this question by connecting it with another one: how can two people have beliefs about the same external object? He offers, in answer, a picture of triangulation: Beliefs about oneself, beliefs about other people, and beliefs about the world come into existence jointly.
Many philosophers throughout history had, arguably, been tempted to reduce two of these kinds of belief and knowledge to the other one: Descartes and Hume thought that the only knowledge we start with is self-knowledge. Some of the logical positivists, (and some would say Wittgenstein, or Wilfrid Sellars), held that we start with beliefs only about the external world. (And arguably Friedrich Schelling and Emmanuel Levinas held that we start with beliefs only about other people). It is not possible, on Davidson's view, for a person to have only one of these three kinds of mental content; anyone who has beliefs of one of the kinds must have beliefs of the other two kinds."
--[Roger燙lough],燵rcl...@verizon.net]
12/16/2012�
"Forever爄s燼爈ong爐ime,爀specially爊ear爐he爀nd."�-Woody燗llen-- Onward! Stephen
Roger Clough
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Craig WeinbergReceiver: everything-listTime: 2012-12-16, 10:38:14
Subject: Re: Are monads tokens ?
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Bruno Marchal
Hi Craig WeinbergNo, the monads are (inextended) "tokens" of corporeal (extended)bodies of one part.But in comp, tokens are simple (nonreductive), ie contain no parts,while "types" such as are used in Functionalism, has parts on bothends. So comp. which uses tokens, is not functionalist.
A monad contains a many-parts (functionalistic) description of acorporeal body of one part, which is therefore nonreductive.
So it is like a type on one end and a token on the other.