--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "jrstern" <jrstern@...> wrote:
<snip>

> http://www.stephenjaygould.org/reviews/dennett_exchange.html
>
> Yikes.
>
> Are you saying, you side with Gould on this?
>
> I'm entirely with Dennett.
>
> Josh
=========================================

It's very amusing but what is the substance of the issue(s) they are arguing about? -- SWM

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
>
> It's very amusing but what is the substance of the issue(s) they are arguing about? -- SWM

Evolution, mostly. Not mind as such, and very little philosophical import, I think.

However, you want some evolution news, try this:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.500-horizontal-and-vertical-the-evolution-of-evolution.html

Josh

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

Very interesting, Josh! The idea of lateral transfer of genetic material had never occurred to me (though, apparently, this isn't so new in the field). It's almost Lamarckian albeit at a very deep level. -- SWM

--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "jrstern" <jrstern@...> wrote:
>
<snip>

> However, you want some evolution news, try this:
> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.500-horizontal-and-vertical-the-evolution-of-evolution.html
>
> Josh

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

A few examples, bacteria pick up antibiotic resistance across "species", was demonstrated fifty years ago that corn plants have "jumping genes" and that's why genetically modified plants might be dangerous, even human and other high-level genomes have viral "invasions" that become part of our DNA and are passed on.

(in fact, that's my private theory, which I've never seen in print, of why we have 99% "junk DNA" - that means that an invading virus or gene has a 99% chance of hitting junk and being ignored)

I don't think we'll wake up tomorrow and see rats with pigeon wings, but it certainly raises questions about just what transfers are possible and do occur in nature, or could be done in the lab.

Another example, look at viral mutations and combinations, such that they have names like H1N1.

So, no, it's not _exactly_ news, but it is very interesting.

And probably more in keeping with Dennett's view of evolution than with Gould's or even Dawkins' - though I suppose it was Dawkins who created the concept and title, "The Selfish Gene", and it is more Gould's concern about how high-level features evolve, but it's Dennett's view of the matter as a giant design space that evolution explores, and it might as well go sideways now and again.

Evolution remains a subtle and complicated subject, and even asking why and how it can *be* so subtle and complicated, is a difficult issue.

Josh

--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
>
> Very interesting, Josh! The idea of lateral transfer of genetic material had never occurred to me (though, apparently, this isn't so new in the field). It's almost Lamarckian albeit at a very deep level. -- SWM
>
> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "jrstern" <jrstern@> wrote:
> >
> <snip>
>
> > However, you want some evolution news, try this:
> > http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.500-horizontal-and-vertical-the-evolution-of-evolution.html
> >
> > Josh

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:

> It's very amusing but what is the substance of the issue(s) they
> are arguing about?

Dennett accused Gould of being unscientific.

Regards,
Neil

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

CJ wrote on Sat, 28 November 2009 14:28
> On Nov 27, 2009, at 3:50 PM, Sean Wilson wrote in regard to the Martin piece:
>
> > (Stuart)
> >
> > The piece is atrocious. It doesn't understand Wittgenstein or his views.
>
>
> If this group is to be a group devoted to Wittgenstein, it would appear somewhat shameful that the most active participants make no effort to actually rely on the Wittgensteinian texts but instead utilize this forum as some sort of "support group" for their own personal ends----while inflicting endless streams of groundless blurting having nothing to do with Wittgenstein at all....unless, one concludes that, ironically, the therapeutic eliminiation peculiar "itch" to blurt nonsense unthinkingly is considered one of the goals of Wittgenstein's lifework.
>
> For those readers who are interested in more than their own narcissistic opining and would rather view Wittgenstein's "situation" in regard to religious belief, not in terms of mediocre third and fourth person and third and fourth rate accounts by pathetic propagandists such as Martin, with his own atheistic axe to grind, or in terms of their own somewhat duller "half-axed" needs to blurt out what's almost on their mind before they consider the actual Wittgenstein texts, here are a couple of interesting comments by those who have actually spend some time and care on the matter, and who can point us to the fact that for Wittgenstein, the question of religious "belief" was very a recognition of a "form of life" and one which, he admittedly had difficulty in coming to terms with as a participant in our culture.
>
> Indeed, if one takes, what seems, on the basis of the participation of some of the chronic "spam" generation of this list, to be the unusual step of actually engaging in a careful reading of Wittgenstein's lectures on religious belief, rather than relying on the reading of a grotesquely flawed critique, one can see that Wittgenstein's statements in these lectures, although not articulated in the depth of his arguments in the Investigation, in regard to this fundamental, almost 'instinctive" notion of "belief in" are parallel to and much akin to his arguments in regard to a private language and , indeed,are even more akin to his arguments in regard to the notion of 'pain".
>
> Of course, it would probably be expecting too much to discover any actual followups and discussions of Wittgenstein's texts or of these central concepts on this forum in any depth, other than those provided by Sean.
>
> But I provide these two interesting points of view nonetheless for those readers who aren't here to vent some curious, ungrounded personal spleen by diminishing Wittgenstein without actually understanding ...or even reading....his words.
>
> CJ.
>
> Book Review: Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? by Norman Malcolm (edited with a response by Peter Winch copyright 1993 by Ruth Malcolm Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York ISBN 0-8014-2978-1 (hardback) 192pp incl. index
>
>
>
> Malcolm begins: "When Wittgenstein was working on the latter part of the Philo- sophical Investigations, he said to his former student and close friend M. O'C. Drury: 'My type of thinking is not wanted in this present age; I have to swim so strongly against the tide.' In the same conversation he said: 'I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.' For a long time I have been puzzled by this second remark. My understanding of Wittgenstein's thought seemed to be threatened. For the 'problems' to which he was referring were not the problems of poverty, disease, unemployment, crime, brutality, racial prejudice, war. .... The problems he meant are philosophical: those very perplexities and confusions with which he grapples in the Investigations."
>
> Malcolm next offers a disclaimer: "I am going to present an interpretation of what it could mean to say that there is, not strictly a religious point of view, but something analogous to a religious point of view, in Wittgenstein's later philosophical thought." In the following chapter, he unpacks the statement "I am not a religious man".
>
> He begins by recounting anecdotal evidence from the memoirs of various people (including himself, Drury, Pascal, and Rhees). These show that Wittgenstein had a genuine and profound concern for what we call matters of conscience. He prayed, made confessions, believed in a last judgement, had a stern sense of duty, and so on. He once said to Drury, before Drury was to be sent to the front as a medic in WWII, "If it ever happens that you get mixed up in hand to hand fighting, you must just stand aside and let yourself be massacred."1
>
> Malcolm next considers a number of remarks from Wittgenstein's journals, pub- lished in English as Culture and Value, which explicitly deal with such topics as Chris- tianity, the Gospels, faith, the last judgement, the resurrection, and so on. Malcolm writes:
>
> "He thought that the symbolisms of religion are 'wonderful'; but he distrusted theological formulations. He objected to the idea that Christianity is a 'doctrine' .... For Wittgenstein, the emphasis on religious belief had to be on doing -- on 'amending one's ways', 'turning one's life around' ....
>
> Once I quoted to him a remark of Kierkegaard which went something like this: 'How can it be that Christ does not exist, since I know that he has saved me?' Wittgenstein's response was: 'You see! It isn't a question of proving anything!'"2
>
> Malcolm notes that "his religious sense was Christian; but he distrusted institu-tions" [RPV, p. 21] and he refers to another remark Wittgenstein made to Drury: "...one of the things you and I have to learn is that we have to live without the consolation of churches."3 "Wittgenstein had an intense desire for moral and spiritual purity," Malcolm continues [RPV, p. 23], but never felt at home in any established religious institution, church, or doctrine. "We can say with confidence that he knew the demands of religion" [RPV, p. 23] Malcolm concludes; what he leaves unsaid is that one of the things that troubled Wittgenstein throughout his life was the realization that he could not, or would not, meet those demands: "I cannot kneel to pray," Wittgenstein wrote, "because it's as though my knees are stiff."4
>
> "Religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference, ... a way of living..."5 Wittgenstein wrote. It must be no mere detail in your life, but the purpose which informs it--otherwise it isn't religious, but something else (however intensely you may feel it). Evidently Wittgenstein did not commit his life to a system of reference, such as Roman Catholicism, and that is the sense in which he was not a religious man.
>
>
>
> In the second piece, those who are inclined can take a look at the distinction between "believing in" and "believing that" which is drawn by the author.
>
> Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Religious Belief
> Patricia Sayre, Notre Dame
>
> Contemporary philosophers of religion delimiting their field often distinguish between belief in and belief that, and then focus on the latter as more pertinent to a philosophical investigation of religious belief. The believer's relationship to a proposition, and the relationship between that propo- sition and reality is of primary concern. The epistemology of religious belief has thus tended to be approached as a species of justification theory; its task is to provide a satis- factory account of our acceptance or rejection of various religiously relevant propositions. It is against this back- ground that some of the more well-known discussions of Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion have taken place. Hence one much belabored question has been whether standards for the justification of religious belief can only be determined within the context of the language-game played by the community of religious believers; another has been whether religious beliefs are even the kind!
of thing open to justification, for it may be that the language in which they are framed is expressive rather than proposi- tional.
>
> While these are interesting issues, and one can see how various strategies and techniques employed by Wittgenstein in his later work gave rise to them, they seem curiously bloodless when held up against his terse, intensely passionate, writings on matters of religious belief. The reason for this, it seems to me, is that when Wittgenstein thinks about religious belief, he does so against a very different set of background concerns than most philosophers of religion bring to the table. That is, while mainline philosophy of religion is almost exclusively focused on belief that, Wittgenstein is more concerned with belief in. Hence the questions that disturb Wittgenstein have less to do with the epistemic status of religious belief than they do with the spiritual status of the religious believer, where what is crucial is believing in one's own redemption, passionately embracing a "system of coordinates" so as to radically reorient your life. (Wittgenstein 1998, 73e)
>
>
> Let us begin with the provocative comments with which Brian Clack concludes his helpful overview in An Introduc- tion to Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion. Elaborating on points similar to those made above, Clack writes that while "the mistake made by philosophers of religion em- barked on a justificatory project is that of envisaging relig- ion as something which possesses explanatory power and which rests on intellectual foundations...religion is pre- sented by Wittgenstein as something like a particular perspective on the world; a means of assessing life and of judging one's actions, a way of living." (Clack 1999, 109) In fleshing out his account of this way of living, Clack looks to Wittgenstein's 'Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough.' There we learn that a religious form of life has "its roots in in- stinctive human behavior....[and] this primitive behavior is definitive of humanity, filling as large a role in the natural history of human beings as does eating, drink!
ing, procrea- tion, playing games, singing, making art, and so on." (ibid., 123-124)
>
> But how, if religion is rooted in instinct, can one experi- ence an incapacity to passionately embrace a religious point of view? If we possess primitive instincts of this sort, shouldn't it come naturally to us to adopt a religious stance? As Clack is quick to point out, primitive instinct is only part of the story. Human instincts typically play out within the context of human communities, and cultural practices can be powerful inhibitors of instinct. If we are to understand how belief in could become a genuine problem for a person, we need to take into account culture as well as primitive instinct. Thus, when reflecting on the "two determining features of Wittgenstein's approach to religious belief: first, the extent to which he was drawn with awe toward the religious view of the world; and second, his own inability fully to share in that perspective," Clack suggests that it might be "something about the character of 'this age' which constrained his religious impulses."!
(ibid., 126-127)
>
>
> Wittgenstein often seems to write from the perspective of one who longs to believe in his redemption, but finds he cannot honestly lay claim to the status of a religious be- liever. The problem is not that his intellect rejects the belief that redemption of human persons is possible, for this, he writes, is "something that actually takes place in human life." (ibid., 32e) The problem is a matter of will, of finding within himself the capacity to passionately embrace his own redemption. "I cannot kneel to pray," he writes, "be- cause it's as though my knees were stiff. I am afraid of dissolution (of my own dissolution) should I become soft." (ibid., 63e) Problems of this sort tend to be dismissed by philosophers of religion as beyond the reach of philosophy. Important as they may be, they are pastoral, spiritual, or psychological difficulties, not epistemological ones.
>
> All this may seem simply to strengthen the case for there being something about our age prohibiting religious belief, but Kierkegaard draws a different conclusion. The character of our age, far from ruling out religious belief, simply throws into starker contrast what such belief requires, namely, that each one of us, for ourselves and without expecting our culture to do the work for us, leap passionately into the arms of God. Here we have a leveling which places the same religious requirement before us all, and while the abstract leveling of our age can obscure the leveling involved in a religious point of view, there is no in principle impossibility in the passionately interested indi-vidual discovering the difference. For Kierkegaard, then, although the spirit of our age may bear a different relation to the spirit of religious belief than that of other ages, the task that faces the individual believer is a task of the same infinite difficulty whatever the historical era.

CJ,

I like your way with words. And I do like these two references- I shall have to look into them more later.

To the first, I can only recall that the TLP's point was ethical, and that to Wittgenstein, religion and ethics were very similar terms.

Consider the truth tables, and how to an atheist 'God' is a contradiction and to a theist 'God' is a tautology.

And on that note, was Christ a Chrisitian?

(...no, he was a Jew.)
--
He lived a wonderful life.
==========================================

Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

... wanted to send these quotes along from Monk. They are interesting. First, some preliminaries:

1. OC 300-676 written in the last month and a half (month and three weeks) of his life. Wrote furiously. Very regularly.
2. OC 65-299 written late in the summer of 1950.
3. OC 1-64 written on separate paper and left at Anascombe's house, date of authorship uncertain but believed to be in 1949.  

And now two very interesting assessments:

FROM MONK:

"During the two months left of his life Wittgenstein wrote over half (numbered paragraphs 300-676) of the remarks which now constitute On Certainty, and in doings so produced what many people regard as the most lucid writing to be found in any of his work." He continues, "... explores the issues in much greater depth, and expresses the ideas with much greater clarity and succinctness than hitherto. Even when he is chiding himself for his own lack of concentration, he does so with amusingly apt simile: 'I do philosophy now like an old woman who is always mislaying something and having to look for it again: now her spectacles, now her keys.' Despite this self-deprecation, he was in no doubt that the work he was now writing would be of interest: 'I believe it might interest a philosopher, one who can think himself, to read my notes. For even if I have hit the mark only rarely, he would recognize what target I had been ceaselessly aiming at.'" (577-578)

FROM WITTGENSTEIN:

"The truth is this. a) I have not been able to do any sustained good work since the beginning of March 1949. b) Even before that date I could not work well for more than 6 or 7 months a year. c) As I'm getting older my thoughts become markedly less forceful & crystallize more rarely & I get tired very much more easily. d) My health is in a somewhat labile sate owing to a constant slight anemia which inclines me to catch infections. This further diminishes the chance of my doing really good work.e) Though it's impossible for me to make any definite predictions, it seems to me likely that my mind will never again work as vigorously as it did, say, 14 months ago. f) I cannot promise to publish anything during my lifetime."  (letter written to Malcolm about Malcolm's efforts to secure a research grant for Wittgenstein from the Rockefeller Foundation). (Monk, 565).

MY THOUGHTS

One thing that I think we should be careful of here is the assumption that if Wittgenstein is writing clear passages, that those writings reflect work of a certain caliber or quality. Indeed, one of the hallmark features of clear and lucid exposition is that the ideas are often very ordinary. And one of the things we don't want to do is to attribute the fact that we can follow something as evidence for the fact that it therefore must be good. One of the hallmark features of Wittgenstein's writing is that each passage requires you to contemplate what on God's earth is gong through his mind. Wittgenstein is a lot like scripture in this sense. But I have to be careful. Because, once again, I am not making any assertion that OC is deficient to any of Wittgenstein's writings. I just think when people read it, they need to be cognizant of what it is and the conditions under which it is authored.

Really, the mistake is to read ANYTHING of Wittgenstein's without understanding who Wittgenstein was. One can only properly understand Wittgenstein as one does his or her child. And so, if a child said something that you could attribute to knowing the ways of the child -- what Wittgenstein referred to as "imponderable evidence" -- the learning of this attribution would be the highest you could obtain to "making sense." No one should read OC or any Wittgenstein writing without first developing an understanding of the "imponderable evidence."  And if they don't have this, they need to read for that objective (and read biography).         
  
Regards.

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

First, I think the essay whose link you provided isn't far from the right track as far as Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion goes:

"It is important to distinguish varieties of religious non-realism based on an
error theory from another set of views sometimes labelled ` non-realist'. I have in
mind here views inspired by some remarks on religion by the later Wittgenstein.
Proponents of this view tend to deny that religious discourse ? outside philos-
ophy and philosophically dominated theology ? has ever been in the business of
making the sort of metaphysical truth-claims realists are wont to defend. This is
an important view, but one outside the scope of the present discussion. In con-
trast, proponents of the non-realist views discussed below should be understood
to concede the realist aspirations of traditional religious speech-acts ; but having
concluded that these aspirations are not fulfilled, they offer a reinterpretation of
the aim and function of religious discourse."

This strikes me as correct as far as it goes.

However, one might still observe that Wittgenstein has been (mis)interpreted as having theories about what traditional religious talk involved. Using the terminology of the essay, something like the "religious positivism" view has been ascribed to Wittgenstein, though he explicitly rejects the idea that there should be some translation that said just what the believer wished to say. Likewise, he has been read as espousing "religious expressivism" (and not without reason), but again the point about translation militates against this. As does the rejection of theorizing and putting forth contentious theses, of course. "Religious instrumentalism", though still objectionable a theory, is much more plausible as something close to some of Wittgenstein's views.

Still, calling a religious text "fiction"... Is this an extended usage? If so, that's fine but we mustn't be misled as to the differences between religious texts and works we typically call "fiction". Is it a simile? A simile can be revealing in various ways and it can be misleading: things are like and unlike in various ways and similes apt and unapt. And what the "fictionalist" is trying to do is to disagree with the realist, not to reorganize the library shelves or the curricula of religious studies.

Where we go wrong most often in discussing Wittgenstein and religion is in overlooking his general approach to debates about realism in various forms. When he considers debates between Realists and Idealists or debates between Platonists and Intuitionists or Formalists or between Cartesians and Behaviorists, he is subverting the very terms of the debate. What the Realist and Idealist want to do is say things that are undeniably true and at the same time contentious. And this leads to nonsense, to queer and misleading pictures, or to mere "battle cries". And similarly with the other disputes. But one must examine each case carefully, each temptation to talk nonsense. And the same applies to the metaphysical glosses we may wish to give to religious utterances.

A last point. These approaches start from the idea that the believer and non-believer have substantive disagreements then proceed to show how what the believer has to say might be understood in a way that would be perfectly reasonable by the non-believer's lights. That is one possibility, but Wittgenstein also wants us to consider another: that sometimes the differences between the believer and non-believer may run so deep that they can't even really disagree. That too needs to be considered and such considerations of different cases is one reason that attempts to derive a single systematic view of religious belief from Wittgenstein's remarks is doomed to fail.

JPDeMouy

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

... anyone know of any good sources discussing the grammar of "is." I know Wittgenstein talked about this here and there (though I can't locate it right now). But I'm more interested in an article or detailed treatment of it. For example, how many senses of "is" are there?

1. Identical to. 2 = 2. [same thing]
2. a member of (Kennedy is Irish)
3. Equivalent with (six of one is a half dozen of the other) [adds up to; "in effect"] 
4. an occurrence of (He is rejoicing).

Are there others? Are any of the above duplicitous? I'm writing a paper where I assert four senses.

(I sent this to analytic as well)

Regards.

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

SW,

If I recall correctly...

Most of Wittgenstein's remarks on the subject allude to the Frege-Russell distinction between identity, predication, existence, and subsumption roles of the copula functions which is built into modern logical notations. The debate between Russell and Meinong is important here. (Prior to Frege and Kant, Aristotle and Kant are most important.) Peirce also wrote extensively on this but his work was less influential. Logicians also distinguish between predication as class membership and as class inclusion, the latter of which is equivalent to subsumption. J. Hintikka is probably the most important recent philosopher on the subject.

Now, some fanciful examples:

1. Identity Wonder Woman is Diana Prince
2. Predication Wonder Woman is invulnerable
2a. Class membership Wonder Woman is Amazon
2b. Class inclusion Amazons are women
3. Existence. Wonder Woman is.
4. Subsumption Amazons are women

Vaguely recalling some recent stuff on the issues Russell and Meinong. Ah, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_square_copula
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonexistent-objects/#DuaCopStr

There's of course extensive literature of metaphor, e.g. Wonder Woman is a tank. I'm not familiar with anything specific on the usage you mention which we might gloss as "is effectively".

JPDeMouy

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

... very nicely done, J. You are a walking encyclopedia!

(Actually, you're far better than that. If you think about it, a walking encyclopedia would be a bit of a parlor trick I think).

I'd like to discuss the sense of "is" in the near future when I complete my review of your directions. Because I think I have some objections to certain things. For example, I had thought of including "existence" among the four senses that I had thought of (it being a fifth), but I could not bring myself to do it. I would take "Wonder Woman is" as merely saying "WW occurs."  But anyway, I need to consider your assistance here before I can form better ideas.

Thanks a bunch!  
 
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

Sean Wilson wrote:
> ... anyone know of any good sources discussing the grammar of "is." I know Wittgenstein talked about this here and there (though I can't locate it right now). But I'm more interested in an article or detailed treatment of it. For example, how many senses of "is" are there?
>
> 1. Identical to. 2 = 2. [same thing]
> 2. a member of (Kennedy is Irish)
> 3. Equivalent with (six of one is a half dozen of the other) [adds up to; "in effect"]
> 4. an occurrence of (He is rejoicing).

See http://www.formalontology.it/fregeg.htm for the 4 Frege-Russell
senses of 'is' --- existence, identity, class inclusion and predication

Joe

--

Nothing Unreal is Self-Aware

@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@

==========================================

Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

Yes, very nice post, JD.

> Now, some fanciful examples:
>
> 1. Identity Wonder Woman is Diana Prince
> 2. Predication Wonder Woman is invulnerable
> 2a. Class membership Wonder Woman is Amazon
> 2b. Class inclusion Amazons are women
> 3. Existence. Wonder Woman is.
> 4. Subsumption Amazons are women

Doesn't Quine say that "existence is not a predicate"? Funny, he uses the word "is" to deny it! Shall we talk negatives?

And in object-oriented (computer) programming, a common usage of "is" is in the inheritance and other properties of objects, being most usually type/token systems, and "is" generally being taken in that regard as "is-a" relationships, not just class membership but instantiation, specialization, dynamic relationships, and whatnot. I suppose all of these can also be found in common usages as well.

Linguistically, isn't "is" one of those non-specific words, like "do" only more so?

What else ... in Spanish you have two forms of "to be" (of which "is" is the present tense), representing permanent versus ephemeral states.

And then you have president Clinton, wondering what the definition of is, is. Along those lines I was just reading Fodor about opaque versus transparent reference, "is" water H2O or XYX on Twin Earth?

Josh

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

JRS,

> Yes, very nice post, JD.

Thanks.

> Doesn't Quine say that "existence is not a predicate"?

Actually, Kant said it long before Quine and it influenced Frege's and Russell's notations.

Lot's of little puzzles can arise around "is", yes. "The" as well, as with Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions.

JPDeMouy

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:

> Moreover, one has the problem of explaining HOW
> brains do the trick of bringing something wholly new into the world

Unless one doesn't recognize brains as bringing anything, nothing new or
old. I know I'm clipping out of context. Is it your position that brains
do bring us something new? That is, thoughts and feelings are new
phenomena, that now occupy the world along with sticks and stones?

> As noted, my view is that there is only dualism and non-dualism.

Where dualism means there are TWO and non-dualism means there is only
ONE -- but, as you wrote above, now ONE or TWO substances but ONE or TWO
what?

bruce

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:

>
> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > Moreover, one has the problem of explaining HOW
> > brains do the trick of bringing something wholly new into the world
>
> Unless one doesn't recognize brains as bringing anything, nothing new or
> old. I know I'm clipping out of context. Is it your position that brains
> do bring us something new? That is, thoughts and feelings are new
> phenomena, that now occupy the world along with sticks and stones?
>

No, I was actually arguing against that view (see the full text wherein that statement appeared).

My point was that to hold the above view is consistent with dualist thinking, as is arguing against a Dennettian model on the basis of a claim that the features we associate with consciousness are irreducible to anything that is not, itself, conscious already.

If thoughts and feelings, etc., are reducible to things unlike themselves, as the Dennettian model claims, then nothing new is introduced into the world, it's just the same stuff doing different things. But if they are not reducible, then that implies that the physical brain brings into being something totally unlike itself. And now you've got dualism again.

My argument against Searle's CRA is partly based on this, i.e., he claims to hold that brains cause consciousness while computers can't. But the reason he draws the general conclusion in favor of this assertion from the CRA is because he is conceiving of consciousness as irreducible, i.e., it cannot be explained as a system property.

But since Searle agrees that consciousness IS reducible to brains (or to something they do), then he is stuck because, if it is reducible in brains then there is no reason in principle it should not be similarly reducible in computers, contra the conclusion of his CRA. But if it isn't reducible in computers, as per the CRA, and brains are, indeed, responsible for bringing it about (as Searle claims), then the only way brains can be responsible is by acting as an agent for bringing SOMETHING NEW (an ontological basic, something irreducible) into the world.

I'll grant this is a subtle argument and that many don't see it. But I think it's compelling when you really think about it.

>
> > As noted, my view is that there is only dualism and non-dualism.
>
> Where dualism means there are TWO and non-dualism means there is only
> ONE -- but, as you wrote above, now ONE or TWO substances but ONE or TWO
> what?
>
> bruce

Ontological basics.

"Substance" is an outmoded way of speaking about things that exist and, as I've said before, it's really to misuse the term "substance" because the term is more properly applied to dog poop and similar things under appropriate circumstances. There is no basis, given the state of our current theories of physics, for speaking of ontological basics as substances any longer.

I had asked that perhaps you would be good enough to explicate your own view since I have been explicating mine for a long, long time now. I think it's only fair that we figure it's your turn now.

SWM

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/