[analytic] Isness: Asserting Thatness without Asserting Whatness
Joseph Polanik
jPolanik wrote:
>>is it vacuous to have shown that the language within which ontological
>>inquiry/discourse is conducted *must* provide a way to assert that
>>there is an even prime number *without* simultaneously making a claim
>>as to its mode of isness (aka 'reality type' in my terminology or
>>'mode of existence' in yours)?
>the Anglicisations: *essence* and (its Joe-Speak nursery version
>*isness*) together with *quiddity* and the other ontologically
>inappropriate Latinisms used by the religious and religion-infected
>transcendentalista
you have misaligned your dichotomies.
essentia answers a question (what is it (ti estin?)) about something by
stating its whatness or quiddity.
existentia states of something merely that it is (hoti estin); it states
thatness or quoddity.
the is of isness only asserts isness without asserting a mode of isness;
hence, it asserts quoddity rather than quiddity.
of course, isness is like a variable which is specified by whatever is
the root predicate of a given thinker's vocabulary. thus, the is of
existence asserts existence without asserting a mode of existence.
this then is another place where the road forks when constructing a
language within which ontological discourse may take place: does the
grammar of that language permit asserting thatness without asserting
whatness?
I say 'yes' it does.
Joe
--
Nothing Unreal is Self-Aware
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
iro3isdx
--- In anal...@yahoogroups.com, "Larry Tapper" <larry_tapper@...>
wrote:
> responding to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/analytic/message/28687
> Larry:
> The issue isn't just whether I, the utterer, am capable of knowing
> that something is without knowing what it is. It is also whether
> you, the addressee, can make any sense of what I'm talking about
> without knowing enough of what it is to fix the reference.
This makes sense to me. In an earlier post (message 28573), I
expressed skepticism about ontology. While I did not say it there, my
own view is that the question of what exists should be an epistemic
question, not a metaphysical question. I don't see any important
distinct between "X exists" and "we say that X exists". And we say that
X exists because we want to say things about X. We say that cats exist
and dogs exist, instead of saying that small animals exist. And we
treat those as distinct entities because the things we want to be able
to say about cats are different from the things we want to say about
dogs.
So I say that the question of what exists is a pragmatic one that
serves our epistemic purposes. And the number 2 can thereby exist as a
useful fiction.
Regards,
Neil
Joseph Polanik
>Joe Polanik writes:
>JP ...this then is another place where the road forks when
>constructing a language within which ontological discourse may take
>place: does the grammar of that language permit asserting thatness
>without asserting whatness?
>JP> I say 'yes' it does.
>I say it doesn't, for a number of reasons, the simplest of which might
>be that a grammatically complete assertion requires a subject as well
>as a verb.
'I am' has a subject and a verb. it lacks a subject complement; so, no
predication is accomplished; hence, no whatness is asserted.
>Suppose I inform you, out of the blue, that Throckmorton exists.
>Suppose also that I follow your lead and refuse to give a substantive
>explanation of what I mean by 'exist', holding that your ontologically
>neutral Parmenidean definition is sufficient. That is, we temporarily
>agree (for the purpose of argument) that it is possible to wield the
>'is of isness' in a way that says nothing about the properties of the
>subject.
>In that case, there is still the problem of fixing the reference of the
>subject 'Throckmorton'. When I inform you that T. exists, what sense
>are you to make of this assertion? Who or what is Throckmorton? The
>fattest postman? The smallest prime number? A minor assistant to the
>angel Gabriel?
>The issue isn't just whether I, the utterer, am capable of knowing that
>something is without knowing what it is. It is also whether you, the
>addressee, can make any sense of what I'm talking about without knowing
>enough of what it is to fix the reference.
did *you* have enough knowledge to fix the reference of 'Throckmorton'
when you said 'Throckmorton exists'? if so; then, withholding that
information from your addressee may well explain why your addressee
doesn't know what you are talking about.
>Jud has actually made this point several times, and I agree with him.
>Just thought it might be useful for you to hear it from someone else.
>Recently Jud theorized that when the addressee encounters an unfamiliar
>noun that rings no bells, he provisionally classifies it as
>meaningless. I objected that in practice we give people credit for
>successfully referring to something or other, so what we do, typically,
>is assign some vague and generic meaning to an unfamiliar term in the
>absence of further information. Jud cheerfully accepted this amendment
>of his theory.
however useful the Evans-Tapper theory may be in explaining the
phenomenology of reactions to unfamiliar *nouns*, it is a quagmire of
irrelvance when it comes to claims that are pronoun based.
'I know that I am, but not what I am' contains two pronouns; but, no
nouns.
>However, if I told you that Throckmorton exists, and I was then totally
>unable to explain what I meant by 'Throckmorton', you would be more
>than justified in concluding that I was talking gibberish.
>This by the way applies to your Descartes interpretation. The way you
>tell the story, somewhere in the middle of the second meditation,
>Descartes finds himself in the rarefied state of being able to say "I
>know that I am, but not what I am."
the use of the pronoun 'I' removes the problem of fixing the referent of
a noun. there is no noun there ... yet.
>Later the cogito and a benevolent deus ex machina come in to save the
>day.
after concluding that 'I am' is true. Descartes notes that he doesn't
yet know enough about *what* the I is. he starts asking 'what am I' and
is off on the quest for the noun whose referent he will fix as the
referent of 'I'.
>But what if, in his moment of exquisite doubt, Descartes rushed out to
>tell his friends about it. And what if one of them asked, "But what do
>you mean by 'I'"?
>Good question, if you ask me.
I is the syntactic device by which its user self-references.
Larry Tapper
Walto writes:
W> LT has written "In my opinion, an ontological dispute is in part a dispute about what we *should* mean by 'exist'." But I guess I don't entirely understand that. I guess upshot of this is that I think there is a univocal ontological sense of "exist" (and I think that that is the position that Joe SHOULD (but doesn't) take.
W,
I can certainly see why you'd prefer to go with some univocal sense of 'exist'. And I take Joe to be arguing for a univocal sense, too, albeit in a qualified way.
His point as I understand it is that there are many senses of 'exist' in practice, such as Jud's 'to be a matergic object'; but they are unsuitable for ontological discourse because they are question-begging. But, Joe maintains, there is an ontologically neutral sense, his Parmenidean one; and this is the univocal meaning in the sense that it is the only one suitable for serious non-question-begging ontology.
This interpretation is consistent with various old posts by Joe in which he says that we may regard 'exists' and 'is' as synonymous so long as the definition of 'exists' is brought into alignment with the Parmenidean sense.
However, while I agree in principle with the desirability of a univocal sense, I have yet to see one which doesn't strike me as vacuous. Can you picture any dialectical use for Joe's 'something exists if it is not nothing at all'? I can't. Seems to me that as soon as you supply criteria for distinguishing the somethings from the nothings, you are once again stuck with a substantive ontological theory, which is what you were presumably trying to avoid.
Note the cagey way Merriam and Webster deal with this problem:
"exist (1) --- to have real being whether material or spiritual"
We might call this the disjunctive dodge: to exist is to have real being according to *some* theory of what it is to have real being; and we lexicographers don't care which, we're just reporting the linguistic facts.
What I am questioning is whether it means anything to say something has real being independently of *any theory at all* about what it is to have real being.
That is, I am suggesting that the concept 'exists' is theory-laden. And Merriam and Webster apparently agree with me. As does Quine, who holds that what there is just falls out from our best available theories, suitably trimmed by Occam's razor.
Note that this is not at all the same thing as the suggestion that the concept of existence is epistemic, which was Neil's angle. As you know, though, I do share with Neil serious doubts as to whether formal ontology is good for anything. The line that keeps coming back to me is Yablo's "I do not know how to take the existence of the city of Chicago more seriously than I already do."
Larry
And perhaps it follows from that that I disagree with you that
it's an epistemic rather than metaphysical question. However, I want to say
(though maybe it's inconsistent to do so?) that what we take "exist" to mean
reflects our pragmatic (or scientific) interests.
Put that (mess) all together and I guess you get something like:
What we take "exist" to mean will reflect our pragmatic/scientific interests.
But once it means something, it means something--and flipping meanings will just
result in equivocations.
--- In anal...@yahoogroups.com, "walto" <calhorn@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In anal...@yahoogroups.com, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > --- In anal...@yahoogroups.com, "Larry Tapper" <larry_tapper@>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> > > responding to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/analytic/message/28687
> >
> >
> > > Larry:
> > > The issue isn't just whether I, the utterer, am capable of knowing
> > > that something is without knowing what it is. It is also whether
> > > you, the addressee, can make any sense of what I'm talking about
> > > without knowing enough of what it is to fix the reference.
> >
> > This makes sense to me. In an earlier post (message 28573), I
> > expressed skepticism about ontology. While I did not say it there, my
> > own view is that the question of what exists should be an epistemic
> > question, not a metaphysical question. I don't see any important
> > distinct between "X exists" and "we say that X exists". And we say that
> > X exists because we want to say things about X. We say that cats exist
> > and dogs exist, instead of saying that small animals exist. And we
> > treat those as distinct entities because the things we want to be able
> > to say about cats are different from the things we want to say about
> > dogs.
> >
> > So I say that the question of what exists is a pragmatic one that
> > serves our epistemic purposes. And the number 2 can thereby exist as a
> > useful fiction.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Neil
> >
>
>
> That's an interesting way of looking at the matter. My sense, however (though I could be wrong), is that it doesn't require that there be a different sense of "is" for each group of entities "we say exists."
>
> LT has written "In my opinion, an ontological dispute is in part a dispute about what we *should* mean by 'exist'." But I guess I don't entirely understand that. I guess upshot of this is that I think there is a univocal ontological sense of "exist" (and I think that that is the position that Joe SHOULD (but doesn't) take. And perhaps it follows from that that I disagree with you that it's an epistemic rather than metaphysical question. However, I want to say (though maybe it's inconsistent to do so?) that what we take "exist" to mean reflects our pragmatic (or scientific) interests.
>
> Put that (mess) all together and I guess you get something like:
>
> What we take "exist" to mean will reflect our pragmatic/scientific interests. But once it means something, it means something--and flipping meanings will just result in equivocations.
>
> I mean, there's a sense in which everything "is epistemological" or even psychological. But once the terms are defined in accordance with our epistemological preferences and psychological causes, we can do metaphysics just as we can do botany. One is then no more epistemological/psychological than the other.
>
> W
>
Larry Tapper
W> I think it's important to distinguish the criteria for distinguishing X's from the meaning of "X." My making (or attempting to make) "exist" theory neutral doesn't mean that the best theory won't, in the end, determine what things there are. It means that it's possible for theorist 1 and theorist 2 not to be talking past each other when one says: "Only physical objects exist." and the
other says "Nu-unh! Spirits exist too!" If they didn't mean the same thing by "exist" I don't see that there would be the potential to disagree.
W,
Yes, I think that is exactly the problem here, and a good statement of the motivation for a univocal sense.
My first question, though, is: if the materialist and the dualist want to start their argument on the right foot by agreeing upon a definition of 'exists', what definition would that be exactly? I'm just saying, show me. Are you saying you're happy with Joe's "is not nothing at all"? How would that help the materialist and the dualist sort out their differences?
Joe's definition appears to establish a level playing field, which is a nice thing. However, it looks to me like a level playing field with no game, no ball, and no rules, only two players scratching their heads.
I'm not even sure how Joe's definition is supposed to apply in situations where there is no disagreement. For example, there is lively and complex disagreement about the ontological status of numbers. But *everybody* --- the monist, the dualist, the platonist, and the nominalist --- agrees that there is no largest prime number.
So plugging in Joe's definition, we all agree that the largest prime number is not not nothing at all. But it's not clear to me what that even means, let alone how we could get there.
(By the way, note that it won't do to explain that the set of largest prime numbers is equivalent to the empty set. Because the nominalist doesn't think sets exist, either!)
Larry
--- In anal...@yahoogroups.com, "walto" <calhorn@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Larry.
>
> I admit to being somewhat flummuxed by this issue, but I have a couple of comments.
>
> >
> > Walto writes:
> >
> > W> LT has written "In my opinion, an ontological dispute is in part a dispute about what we *should* mean by 'exist'." But I guess I don't entirely understand that. I guess upshot of this is that I think there is a univocal ontological sense of "exist" (and I think that that is the position that Joe SHOULD (but doesn't) take.
> >
> > W,
> >
> > I can certainly see why you'd prefer to go with some univocal sense of 'exist'. And I take Joe to be arguing for a univocal sense, too, albeit in a qualified way.
> >
> > His point as I understand it is that there are many senses of 'exist' in practice, such as Jud's 'to be a matergic object'; but they are unsuitable for ontological discourse because they are question-begging. But, Joe maintains, there is an ontologically neutral sense, his Parmenidean one; and this is the univocal meaning in the sense that it is the only one suitable for serious non-question-begging ontology.
> >
> > This interpretation is consistent with various old posts by Joe in which he says that we may regard 'exists' and 'is' as synonymous so long as the definition of 'exists' is brought into alignment with the Parmenidean sense.
>
>
> My initial (so very possibly wrong) instinct is to agree with that.
>
>
> >
> > However, while I agree in principle with the desirability of a univocal sense, I have yet to see one which doesn't strike me as vacuous. Can you picture any dialectical use for Joe's 'something exists if it is not nothing at all'? I can't.
>
>
> I guess I don't expect the term to have any important dialectical use.
>
>
> >Seems to me that as soon as you supply criteria for distinguishing the somethings from the nothings, you are once again stuck with a substantive ontological theory, which is what you were presumably trying to avoid.
>
>
> I think it's important to distinguish the criteria for distinguishing X's from the meaning of "X." My making (or attempting to make) "exist" theory neutral doesn't mean that the best theory won't, in the end, determine what things there are. It means that it's possible for theorist 1 and theorist 2 not to be talking past each other when one says: "Only physical objects exist." and the other says "Nu-unh! Spirits exist too!" If they didn't mean the same thing by "exist" I don't see that there would be the potential to disagree.
>
> >
> > Note the cagey way Merriam and Webster deal with this problem:
> >
> > "exist (1) --- to have real being whether material or spiritual"
> >
> > We might call this the disjunctive dodge: to exist is to have real being according to *some* theory of what it is to have real being; and we lexicographers don't care which, we're just reporting the linguistic facts.
> >
>
> But...isn't that precisely what the lexicographers SHOULD do? Does "exist" really mean two different things pursuant to the two theories just because they're saying two different sorts of things exist?
>
>
> > What I am questioning is whether it means anything to say something has real being independently of *any theory at all* about what it is to have real being.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean here by it meaning anything to say something has real being. I suppose different theories will have different criteria for "proving existence" and, presumably, those differences will result in a different group of items that they "believe in." And, I'll concede that without any criteria at all, it doesn't make a ton of sense to be making any existence statements. They'll be random. But....won't they still make sense? Even if there's no basis for them?
>
>
>
> >
> > That is, I am suggesting that the concept 'exists' is theory-laden. And Merriam and Webster apparently agree with me. As does Quine, who holds that what there is just falls out from our best available theories, suitably trimmed by Occam's razor.
>
>
> I agree with Quine about that; I just don't see that that determination (i.e., to use Occam) by determining what exists, also determines what "exists" means. If it did, I don't see how we could really know what he was talking about. And I don't think Occam's Razor would really make any sense at all.
>
>
>
> >
> > Note that this is not at all the same thing as the suggestion that the concept of existence is epistemic, which was Neil's angle. As you know, though, I do share with Neil serious doubts as to whether formal ontology is good for anything. The line that keeps coming back to me is Yablo's "I do not know how to take the existence of the city of Chicago more seriously than I already do."
> >
>
> Though I'm not exactly sure of the distinction you're making in this graph, I'm happy to agree with you that formal ontology isn't much good for anything, and I also love Yablo's excellent line.
>
> (BTW, I was hoping you'd stop in at quickphilosophy to defend Quine on analytic/synthetic.)
>
> W
>
Joseph Polanik
>>Joe Polanik writes:
>LT> Suppose I inform you, out of the blue, that Throckmorton exists.
>LT Suppose also that I follow your lead and refuse to give a
>substantive explanation of what I mean by 'exist', holding that your
>ontologically neutral Parmenidean definition is sufficient. That is,
>we temporarily agree (for the purpose of argument) that it is possible
>to wield the 'is of isness' in a way that says nothing about the
>properties of the subject.
>LT In that case, there is still the problem of fixing the reference of
>the subject 'Throckmorton'. When I inform you that T. exists, what
>sense are you to make of this assertion? Who or what is Throckmorton?
>The fattest postman? The smallest prime number? A minor assistant to
>the angel Gabriel?
>LT The issue isn't just whether I, the utterer, am capable of knowing
>that something is without knowing what it is. It is also whether you,
>the addressee, can make any sense of what I'm talking about without
>knowing enough of what it is to fix the reference.
when you say 'Throckmorton exists' without giving any further
identifying information, no one will know who you are talking about.
does it follow that, when Throckmorton say 'I exist', no one will know
who he is talking about?
if not; then, reference fixing via 'I' differs from reference fixing via
proper names as to how much knowledge is required for intelligible use.
in any case, the Throckmorton example is weak because 'Throckmorton'
sounds like a name; and, that shifts the context from 'what am I' (the
question Descartes asked) to 'who am I'.
>JP the use of the pronoun 'I' removes the problem of fixing the
>referent of a noun. there is no noun there ... yet.
>There remains the problem of fixing the referent of the pronoun.
there is no such problem. 'I' is defined to refer to its user.
>So? Pronominal reference-fixing is indispensable just as nominal
>reference-fixing is. It raises somewhat different problems (for example
>anaphora and indexicality are often involved) but still the addressee
>needs to know what the pronoun refers to.
Descartes is lone meditator. there is no addressee (until much later
when he writes down his completed meditations).
Descartes is thinking to himself and concludes that 'I am' is
necessarily true whenever he thinks it.
are you claiming that, in the moment that he says 'I am', he
automagically knows what the I is?
Georges Metanomski
Larry
..
This last point relates to something I read a couple of months ago in a paper by someone whose name I can't recall exactly (might have been Margolis). The author noted that a lot of current debate that conventionally goes by the name 'ontology' is inaptly named, in a way, because it is not about what exists but rather about what is fundamental.
================
You sure it was not me?
Georges
walto
--- In anal...@yahoogroups.com, "Larry Tapper" <larry_tapper@...> wrote:
>
> > What I meant was something like this:
> >
> > "I don't believe we can so easily escape "theories" imposed by ordinary language and common sense or that joining a "philosophical school" or taking an ontological position requires a complete bath in a new linguistic fluid."
> >
> > I really should improve my proofreading skills. Sorry.
> >
>
>
> W,
>
> Me too. When I'm in a rush, strange things get posted sometimes.
>
> It seems to me that the points you make here --- and they are good ones --- militate against the idea of *starting* a philosophical debate with an explicit neutral definition of the concept at issue. Perhaps this is what I should have been saying all along, instead of complaining about the vacuity of proposed neutral definitions of 'exist'.
>
> That is, if I want to pay due respect to ordinary language and common sense (and I do) I'd start with a survey of occasions on which I would be inclined to affirm or deny that something exists, speaking my natural idiolect and not highfalutin philosophy talk. Only then would I think about whether there's some definition that covers those cases, as well as uses of 'exist' by other speakers who may disagree with me about the fundamental categories, etc.
>
> And even then I would say that the search for a good definition is optional. We may need it if one of our aims is to do a conceptual analysis of 'exist'; but if all we're doing is wrangling about which categories are irreducible to other categories, we can do without it.
>
> This last point relates to something I read a couple of months ago in a paper by someone whose name I can't recall exactly (might have been Margolis). The author noted that a lot of current debate that conventionally goes by the name 'ontology' is inaptly named, in a way, because it is not about what exists but rather about what is fundamental.
>
> Larry
>
Hmmmm. That's a very interesting and reasonable-sounding (to me, at least) take on this matter, Larry. I'd like to give it some thought. Thanks.
W
yandahir
silly, and apparently he is recommending this situation as good.
Perhaps part of the reason there is confusion on THIS issue is that often part of the core use of `exists' is as something that does not depend on meaning, but, as I say, perhaps that just helps sustain the confusion.
I'm inclined to think as far as meaning is concerned it is gavani all the way; we are always having to test and re-build our ship while hoping we are actually still afloat in it. This is one reason logical deduction is crap, it's built on the illusion we can know what we mean. Since we don't know what we mean there is no such thing as sharing a meaning so we can talk to each other, we have to check all the time and that's how we do talk to each other. Speaking the same language just narrows the process down a bit.
Baz
--- In anal...@yahoogroups.com, "walto" <calhorn@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In anal...@yahoogroups.com, "Larry Tapper" <larry_tapper@> wrote:
> >
> > LT> ...I'm just saying, show me. Are you saying you're happy with Joe's "is not
> > nothing at all"?
> >
> > W> I don't think it's terribly helpful, or that it adds anything, if that's what you mean. But that's true of lots of words. Take "meaning" for example, or "thought."
> >
> > W,
> >
> > Point taken about not expecting too much from a definition, though Putnam did write a famous paper entitled "The Meaning of 'Meaning'".
> >
> > Being a sort of incorrigible pragmatist, however, I'm always looking for *some* cash value in an idea, even if it's just a few pfennig.
> >
> > We might say that two disputants benefit from a neutral, agreed-upon definition in a negative way and also a positive way.
> >
> > The negative benefit, as already noted, is that nobody is allowed to try to steal an argument by definitional fiat.
> >
> > The positive benefit is that each party can check any claim or thesis against the agreed upon definition, and hold the other accountable in the event of a mismatch.
> >
> > Does Joe's Parmenidean definition of 'exists' yield any positive benefit at all? None that I can see. How do we test an existence claim against the criterion that something is not nothing at all? Or a non-existence claim against the criterion that something is not not nothing at all? I haven't a clue --- have you?
> >
> > If I'm right about the neutral definition yielding no discernible positive benefit, then I would say that considerably diminishes the force of Joe's complaint about the tendentiousness of Jud's definitions.
> >
> > The headstrong Jud whom we all know and love might say:
> >
> > (1) 'Exists' means 'exists as a matergic object' and only degenerate trannies think otherwise!
> >
> > While a more circumspect Jud might say:
> >
> > (2) In view of the instrumental and moral superiority of science over superstition, I think that the word 'exist' should be used only to refer to matergic objects.
> >
> > And a bewilderingly accommodating Jud might say:
> >
> > (3) I do not think that anything other than a matergic object fulfills our definitional requirement of not being nothing at all.
> >
> > Now (1) gets points deducted for bad seminar manners, but aside from that, I don't see much real difference in content between (1) and (2).
> >
> > And (3) doesn't really say much, does it? Looks to me like nothing more than a throat-clearing exercise before saying (2).
> >
> > Larry
> >
>
>
> As I've said, this is a somewhat flummoxing issue for me, but I think I agree with you and Quine about the following:
>
> (1) The analytic/synthetic distinction is (TO SOME EXTENT) over-rated.
>
> (2) Thus, you and Quine are right that there is a "radical translation problem" as between the meanings of words in different theories, since each word is to some extent theory-laden.
>
> So, where (if anywhere) do I disagree with what you've written above? My current thought is that I don't believe we can so easily escape the "theories" imposed by ordinary language and common sense. And that joining a "philosophical school" or taking an ontological position requires a complete bathing in a new linguistic fluid. There may not be any outside position from which we can determine which theory is true, but that doesn't mean we can't see that the two theories actually disagree or can't understand any one without also disagreeing with it. We can't escape our theory-laden tongue, but it's ordinary language we're stuck with, not any particular philosophical position that must, in some important sense, go back to it for support.
>
> And, I'm not sure--in this case, anyhow--that this "lingua-centric predicament" is such a bad thing, since it allows two people to disagree about such things as what there is without talking past each other.
>
> So, perhaps there's a radical translation problem between Urdu and English. But not between the 21st Century English used by an American nominalist and a British realist. We mean the same thing by "exist" and thus can disagree about what there is. If one of us starts using the term heterodoxically, the other is right to scoff,'That's not what either of us is talking about by 'existence'! I (and all the other philosophers around) want to know what there IS and what you think there IS, not what ther SHMIS or what you think there SHMIS." No doubt our shared language is fluid, and, thanks to the advance of science and TV sitcoms, there is likely even a translation problem between the English of Locke's time and the English of today. But even though I don't necessarily agree with Strawson that the basic features of our conceptual scheme "have no history" (I guess) I think there is an analytic/synthetic distinction
> within any particular natural language spoken by native speakers at or around the same time.
>
> What that implies about your (1)-(3) above is that (3)--for all its vacuity--is best. It's best because the "matergist" isn't making a claim about how we should agree to use words at all. He's saying what he thinks really exists in the world, as you and I and likely everybody else reading this, understand "exist" and "world."
>
> I know that's an epicycle-filled response, but I'm afraid that it might be the best I can do.
>
> W
>
Joseph Polanik
>Joe Polanik writes:
>>...Descartes is lone meditator. there is no addressee (until much
>>later when he writes down his completed meditations).
>>Descartes is thinking to himself and concludes that 'I am' is
>>necessarily true whenever he thinks it.
>>are you claiming that, in the moment that he says 'I am', he
>>automagically knows what the I is?
>I am claiming that at the moment he says 'I am', he knows at least one
>thing about what the I is: that it has experiences.
he knows a fact about the I: I experience.
I wouldn't say that this fact is knowledge "about what the I is" until
he makes this fact the basis for selecting a noun to define as referring
to the referent of 'I' --- a judgement that the I is an experiencer.
>(Some say that this argument is faulty and that D. is only entitled to
>conclude that experiencing or thinking is happening. But that is a side
>issue.)
>Recall that this whole sub-thread is in rebuttal to your contention
>that it is possible to know something exists without knowing *any* of
>its properties. That is the point of my emphasis on fixing the
>reference of the subject. ... at least one property is required to pin
>down the subject
'property' is a contentious term; meaning, that philosophical disuputes
can turn on which definition is used. [1]
I prefer to say, that Descartes has a fact and uses that fact to select
a cognate term as a referring noun.
>You might say, in response to this, that using a property P to fix the
>reference of 'X' is not the same thing as *knowing* that X has the
>property P.
I'm saying that there is a period of time between the point at which
Descartes concludes that 'I am' is true and the point at which he
further concludes that 'I am an experiencer' is true; and, that this
time is taken up by his deliberations --- the process of arriving at
that further conclusion.
my claim is that during this period of time, it is appropriate to
depict Descartes' state of knowledge as 'I know that I am; but, not
what I am'.
are you claiming that it is not appropriate to so describe Descartes'
state of knowledge during that period of time; or, are you claiming that
there is no such period of time --- that Descartes' knows he is an
experiencer the moment he knows that he is?
Larry Tapper
JP> are you claiming that it is not appropriate to so describe Descartes' state of knowledge during that period of time; or, are you claiming that there is no such period of time --- that Descartes' knows he is an experiencer the moment he knows that he is?
Joe,
Refresh my memory, please. How exactly does Descartes know that he is before he knows that he is an experiencer?
If he's not necessarily the one having those thoughts and experiences, what makes him so sure he exists?
Larry
Joseph Polanik
>Joe Polanik asks:
>>are you claiming that it is not appropriate to so describe Descartes'
>>state of knowledge during that period of time; or, are you claiming
>>that there is no such period of time --- that Descartes' knows he is
>>an experiencer the moment he knows that he is?
>Refresh my memory, please. How exactly does Descartes know that he is
>before he knows that he is an experiencer?
Descartes realizes that not even a malicious demon of supreme cunning
and power could deceive him into thinking that he is something when in
fact he is nothing.
>If he's not necessarily the one having those thoughts and experiences,
>what makes him so sure he exists?
the confrontation with the demon is a literary dramatization of someone
coming to discover, by using it, the principle for which Descartes is
best known: I experience; therefore, I am.
Joseph Polanik
>JP: ...the confrontation with the demon is a literary dramatization of
>someone coming to discover, by using it, the principle for which
>Descartes is best known: I experience; therefore, I am.
>It still beats me why you think this shows how Descartes could know
>that he existed without knowing that he was an experiencer. If I
>experience, then I am an experiencer, n'est-ce pas?
I've already given you my reason: while he clearly arrives at a position
that he could have formulated as "I experience; therefore, I am an
experiencer", he does it in two steps. first he uses the fact "I
experience" to conclude "I am". only after further consideration does he
make the fact of experiencing the defining characteristic of the I.
are you are saying that it is logically impossible for anyone to
conclude "I experience; therefore, I am an experiencer" in two steps
instead of one? if so, please explain the basis of that claim.
if it is possible to arrive at this conclusion in two steps; then, what
is the basis for your belief that, after the first step has been taken
but before the second step is taken, no one may describe his or her
state of knowledge as "I know that I am; but, not what I am"?
>Here, in addition to being puzzled about your own theory of knowledge
>of the existence of propertyless entities,
I do not allege either that there are or that there are no propertyless
entities. if you wish to be sucked into another quagmire of irrelevance
speak directly to Jud. it seems to me that he is giving the impression
that I have alleged that there are propertyless entitites.
>I'm basically just repeating a familiar criticism of the cogito which
>has occurred to several readers from Lichtenberg to the present day.
>I like the way Kierkegaard put it. He wrote that the Cartesian
>syllogism (if it is a syllogism) should properly be described as
>starting with:
>Some X is thinking.
>I am that X.
>So the question is already begged in Step 2.
are you saying that you can translate cogito-style arguments into a
syllogism that you say begs a question? if so, you are begging the
question as to the accuracy of the translation.
if you are saying something else, please be a little more explicit.
Joe
PS. I would appreciate a citation for the Kierkegaard commentary above.
Joseph Polanik
>Joseph Polanik wrote:
>>Larry Tapper wrote:
>>>I am claiming that at the moment he says 'I am', he knows at least
>>>one thing about what the I is: that it has experiences.
>>he knows a fact about the I: I experience.
>How does he know that is about the I? A Buddhist would just say that
>there is expereince
a Trappist monk wouldn't say anything at all.
what is your evidence that Buddhists allege that there is no experiencer
of its experiences; or, that they make this allegation because of their
Buddhism?
Joe
PeterDJones
--- In anal...@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote:
>
> PeterDJones wrote:
>
> >Joseph Polanik wrote:
>
> >>Larry Tapper wrote:
>
> >>>I am claiming that at the moment he says 'I am', he knows at least
> >>>one thing about what the I is: that it has experiences.
>
> >>he knows a fact about the I: I experience.
>
> >How does he know that is about the I? A Buddhist would just say that
> >there is expereince
>
> a Trappist monk wouldn't say anything at all.
>
> what is your evidence that Buddhists allege that there is no experiencer
> of its experiences; or, that they make this allegation because of their
> Buddhism?
Georges Metanomski
G:
"Descartes is wrong" brings 771 000 Googlers' cackles.
Compared with that, the strange things uttered in the answered post
are just a drop in the ocean. I shall comment only two:
-A."I experience; therefore, I am".
-B.Kierkegaard's "Some X is thinking. I am that X."
The latter preambled: "Kierkegaard or not, an idiocy is an idiocy".
I'll start with Tatarkiewicz's interpretation of Cogito, which, with
all my respect - such as it is - I prefer to 771 000 Googler's
cackles and to strange things uttered in the answered post.
Tatarkiewicz (free quote from memory):
"I think, therefore I am" was meant as a rhetorically salient title
of a new, revolutionary epistemology. In spite of "am", suggesting
on the face of it some ontological implications, the choice of
"think", rather than "feel", "sense" or "experience" clearly indicates
the cognitive and not existential meaning o Cogito.
Other confirmations come from the context:
1.The originating Doubt does not concern my existence, but the
certainty of the themes of my thinking,
2.The sequels encompass whole contemporary foundation of cognition
and science in immanent subjectivity, sending to trash the myth of
transcendental objectivity.
Thus,
For A: Descartes never said "I experience", but clearly used
"I think" with conclusions above.
For B: Founding existence of "I" in some transcendental "X" is
diametrically anti-Cartesian.
First, what he founded was cognition and not existence.
Second, he founded it in "I" and not in any transcendental Xes.
Whatever 771 000 Googlers may cackle, "Cogito" boils down to:
I'm certain that I think while doubting all themes thereof.
Georges.
===============
JP> ...the confrontation with the demon is a literary dramatization of someone coming to discover, by using it, the principle for which Descartes is best known: I experience; therefore, I am.
Joe,
It still beats me why you think this shows how Descartes could know that he existed without knowing that he was an experiencer. If I experience, then I am an experiencer, n'est-ce pas?
Here, in addition to being puzzled about your own theory of knowledge of the existence of propertyless entities, I'm basically just repeating a familiar criticism of the cogito which has occurred to several readers from Lichtenberg to the present day.
I like the way Kierkegaard put it. He wrote that the Cartesian syllogism (if it is a syllogism) should properly be described as starting with:
Some X is thinking.
I am that X.
So the question is already begged in Step 2.
Larry
--- In anal...@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote:
>
> Larry Tapper wrote:
>
> >Joe Polanik asks:
>
> >>are you claiming that it is not appropriate to so describe Descartes'
> >>state of knowledge during that period of time; or, are you claiming
> >>that there is no such period of time --- that Descartes' knows he is
> >>an experiencer the moment he knows that he is?
>
> >Refresh my memory, please. How exactly does Descartes know that he is
> >before he knows that he is an experiencer?
>
> Descartes realizes that not even a malicious demon of supreme cunning
> and power could deceive him into thinking that he is something when in
> fact he is nothing.
>
> >If he's not necessarily the one having those thoughts and experiences,
> >what makes him so sure he exists?
>
> the confrontation with the demon is a literary dramatization of someone
> coming to discover, by using it, the principle for which Descartes is
> best known: I experience; therefore, I am.
>
> Joe
Joseph Polanik
>... only humans speak human languages and use alphabetical
>symbolisation - I am the human that the English thinking X is thinking
>about - therefore I am X.
>But as I said many times in the past - all he has to do is say or think
>*I* - identification job done and dusted!
the language user instantiates the word 'I' --- not the other way
around.
jpolanik
>
> LT> It still beats me why you think this shows how Descartes could know that he existed without knowing that he was an experiencer. If I
> experience, then I am an experiencer, n'est-ce pas?
>
>
> Joe,
>
> Here your phrase "defining characteristic" highlights a key ambiguity in "I know not what I am". By that you could mean that you do not know which of your properties are defining or essential; or you could mean that there are no particular properties at all such that you know that you have them. We have been focusing on the latter because you have made the peculiar claim that you can know something exists without knowing any of its properties. As noted, I think that is just false.
my claim is that 'I know that I am; but, not what I am' represents a possible state of knowledge/ignorance. it should also be clear to everyone that this claim can only be stated using the is of isness; although, you personally seem to be okay with that.
> If, however, you mean the former, that is a very different ball of wax, because it is a normal and commonplace state of affairs to know something exists without knowing its *essential* properties. However, *that* claim of ignorance seems far too weak to fit the context of the cogito. That is, if you know various properties of something, but you do not know which are essential and which are accidental, that would seem to be enough to support an *existence* claim, at least.
if you recognize the difference between essential and accidental properties; then, you have no basis for saying that it is not possible ever to assert that something is without asserting what it is.
> So you seem to be stuck with your problematic "I know that I am, but I don't know any of my properties" interpretation.
as I've said, I'm not convinced that 'I experience' is a property at all. in any case, the conclusion 'I am' derives from the fact that the claim is made in the first person; and, I just don't think that every first-person statement I might make denotes a separate property.
>
> JP> are you are saying that it is logically impossible for anyone to
> conclude "I experience; therefore, I am an experiencer" in two steps
> instead of one? if so, please explain the basis of that claim.
>
> You can make that inference in a thousand steps if you like. But the point is the conclusion follows from the premiss immediately and trivially.
the point is that the conclusion "I experience, therefore I am an experiencer" happens at step two. you are ignoring the fact that 'I am' is established at step one; consequently, that I am is asserted prior to what I am.
> JP> if it is possible to arrive at this conclusion in two steps; then, what is the basis for your belief that, after the first step has been taken but before the second step is taken, no one may describe his or her state of knowledge as "I know that I am; but, not what I am"?
> Anyone can declare himself to be ignorant of anything at any time, so long as he avoids self-contradiction in the confession of it.
>
> But "I experience, therefore I am an experiencer" is a naked tautology and there is no reason to delay affirming it. It is as if you want to say "I know (A and B), but I do not know A". You can say that if you like, perhaps truthfully, but all that reveals is that you are remarkably slow on the logical uptake.
>
> Many have argued that "I experience, therefore I am" is a tautology, too, because the premiss already affirms the existence of the 'I'. That was Kierkegaard's point.
Kierkegaard's point is that 'I am experiencing' entails 'I am'. this is the familiar claim that the is of predication makes a claim of existence, which I agree is true.
your claim that the premise affirms the existence of the I is overly broad. only the 'I' of 'I experience' is used. more precisely, only that fact that a claim is made in the first person is used. although 'I experience' is certainly true, even a claim that is false can be the basis of this sort of argument.
you can probably guess, from the fact that I sign my name 'Joe' instead of 'Jo' that I am male. thus, 'I am female' would be false whenever I assert it; but, the fact that I have asserted this claim demonstrates that I am. why? because Descartes follows a Parmenidean style principle that nothingness can not be predicated.
Joe
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
Joseph Polanik
>Joseph Polanik wrote:
>>PeterDJones wrote:
>>>Joseph Polanik wrote:
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta
>>that page contains the following:
>>"Although Buddhism rejects the notion of a permanent self, it does not
>>reject the notion of an empirical self (composed of constantly
>>changing physical and mental phenomena) that can be conveniently
>>referred to with words such as 'I', 'you', 'being', 'individual',
>>etc."
>>what is your basis for claiming that the empirical self can not
>>self-reference using the word 'I'?
>Buddhists do no reify "I". There are experience, thoughts etc --that
>is the real situation for them
are you saying that Buddhists say that no experience is ever
experienced?
SWM
> experienced?
>
> Joe
Buddhism holds that the "I", the self, is an illusion, as is philosophical discourse about it (which is why Buddhism is ultimately about practices, not discourse). -- SWM