(Ron)

The reason why I don't type my comments underneath the persons quotes is twofold. (1) I don't like the style. If the conversation goes on, especially with several people, it gets hideous in format and really only benefits the two talkers. An onlooker loses interest quickly. (2) Paragraphs, I think, make the remarks more substantive. They force your to organize your points before you offer them. They make you digest the other person's mail before sending your own. It also discourages talking off the top of the head. And as well it discourages placing comments below a sentence, only to find that, three sentences later, something is said that should have erased the first injection. Bottom line: if composition is too easy, the matter starts looking like a chat room. 

Also, the paragraph-format makes the message board more readable. (Although I don't think people read it as much anymore).

Regards and thanks
 
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

(Chris)

... the people who actually "bind" their progeny through time do so with cultural practices like the Amish. Religious practices also "bind," and usually do so through rituals of sacraments and so forth, not through language. Drama and theater are behaviors that allows us to re-live the psychology of other times. But law is neither, and never has been, theater, religion, sacrament or the vehicle of cultural stagnation. Rather, it has only ever been one thing: regulation through language. And if law is language, the question of whether the framers can bind us is false. The only question is in whether the language does. And because the great majority of constitutional words are family resemblance ideas, how one complies with them is only an EXAMPLE of compliance. Hence, subsequent generations can surely comply with the language by electing a different EXAMPLE.

The rules for the language culture determine this, not the idolatry of the past. See: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1405451
    
Regards and thanks

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

 
----- Original Message ----
From: Christopher Green <crgreen@olemiss.edu>
To: conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu
Sent: Thu, February 11, 2010 11:46:45 AM
Subject: RE: Originalism

We've probably had this conversation before, but of course the Founders can
bind us, if they can convince us to take an oath to be "bound" by "this
Constitution," per Article VI.  See http://ssrn.com/abstract=1227162.  If my
op-ed today were somehow able to command the oaths of the denizens of 2240,
that'd do the trick, I think.

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(Glen)

1. This point below isn't bad. But the matter of "brain script" is dealt with here: http://seanwilson.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=1240&start=0&S=f7be91516311c79a95c6924ab2f75637. You have yet to understand it. All it attempts to do is use computer notation to illustrate sense. And you also don't understand that it represents an intermediate position to brute-behaviorism and what is called "cognitivism" -- that is, it represents Wittgensteinianism. And it does so by borrowing certain arguments from AI, but using them in ways opposite to their liking. It's a creative way to wed Wittgenstein to Fodor, I think.  (But this last point I am not exactly clear on).   

2. The OLP technique you describe is supposed to illustrate that the sense of "see" used out of context creates the puzzle that falsely employs philosophers. On this much we agree. But that doesn't mean that when someone uses "see" in colorful ways, that nonsense is made. It only means that the sense must be captured. The fallacy here is not to realize that ordinary senses of see are themselves composed only of portions of other ideas that are: (a) assembled for the current vehicle; and (b) can be broken down and used partially here or there -- which creates senses of "see." 

That's the point. That there are SENSES. To assert that only an ordinary sense of "see" could ever be used in language, is NOT to do anything remotely close to what Wittgenstein espoused. In fact, for one to say that anything out of an ordinary sense of a word would be nonsense; or that language only amounts to how the person behaves -- neither of these are Wittgensteinian. 

I don't know how many quotes I'd have to pull out to show you this. I noticed that you responded to my last mail and apparently did not read the quotes. What have you to say about a Rose with teeth, fat Wednesday, and a yellow "e" -- AND the assertion by Wittgenstein that these are NOT METAPHORICAL??? (Please see quotes in the very last mail).

Part of me does not mind your devotion to behaviorism. Another part really does not mind your spirited nature. But what bothers me is that you seem to think that you have some better hold of Wittgenstein than me. And for the life of me, all I can see about this matter is that you do not understand certain high-end Wittgenstenian notions. Why not just say "I don't agree with that part of Wittgenstein." Wouldn't that be a better course of action?

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

----- Original Message ----
From: Glen Sizemore <gmsizemore2@yahoo.com>
To: wittrsamr@freelists.org
Sent: Thu, February 11, 2010 4:47:52 AM
Subject: [Wittrs] Re: [C] Re: Games with Logic and Bachelor

 Now, Sean's repeated references to brains, and "brain scripts," and "brains processing language" etc., is very interesting. It is now standard cognitive "science" talk. What is interesting is that it is a sort of institutionalized-language-takes-a-holiday. When I used to teach, I would joke with my students and say that, for example, one could define "seeing" as "the creation and utilization of representations of the world in the brain constructed via light entering the eye*." Then I would point out how the word "see" (and related forms) is really used as in, for example, "John saw the police and ran away." What was witnessed when the person said that? Were they observing John's brain? No, of course not. They observed John's behavior within a particular context. That, of course, illustrates a part of the language games in which "see" (and related forms
are used). Now, it is true that saying things like "When we see, we are really seeing a representation" has become its own little langauge game. But this does not make it OK. Indeed, this notion is one of the worst things that ever happened to psychology, philosophy, and now much of neuro"science." It is an institutionalized-language-takes-a-holiday; it is exactly the sort of thing that Wittgenstein's "meaning is use" was supposed to illuminate as garbage. Now, when Sean talks about things that PEOPLE do as "brain behavior" he is, of course, making exactly the kind of error that later Wittgenstein was trying to get people to avoid. But, I guess I could be wrong as Sean is a self-proclaimed "master" of Wittgensteinian philosophy. 

*Subsequently, I came across this definition in some piece of trash masquerading as a scientific paper! 

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

> If "physical forces" it's physical. Every physical thing is not an
object!

or a "physical force" has no material reference because "force" is an
abstraction like work and love, just as mind is an abstraction without
material reference. But you don't see it that way because, I think, you
are obsessed with entities. So when I say "change" isn't physical (but
an abstraction), you suggest that the only alternative is that...

> It's certainly not a matter of spirits!

which, of course, I agree since "spirits" are just another entity made
out of something else. So what is consciousness?

> Certainly consciousness isn't an entity, isn't like a physical object.

Then you agree that is is a concept we apply in certain contexts, I
presume. So let's examine this concept.

> the mistake is in presuming that it makes sense to carry the feature
> we see at our level down to levels that underpin it.

Are you saying "it is a mistake to attribute intention to the underlying
brain? If so, it is equally inappropriate to attribute causation to
mind. That leaves us with a substance monism -- it's all physical -- but
no way of relating physical x (brain) with physical y (mind) unless you
want to say "C is caused but then everything else is intentional." Makes
any sense?

> Consciousness ...appears on our level of operation
> though this is to say nothing of how it comes about.

Is that necessarily the case? Love appears on our level and we explain
its origin. If C is a concept, and concepts only appear on our level,
then it makes sense to explain how it comes about. And that is how its
done. The physiological correlates show the conditions of what must be
in place for mind but there is no way of explaining how physiology makes
psychology because psychology doesn't appear physiologically.

> There is no sense in arguing that consciousness works
> at our level according to the laws of physics even if it
> is the outcome of undergirding physical phenomena that work
> "according to the laws of physics".

There is no sense in arguing that consciousness works according to
physics because it is obvious that physics concepts don't apply. The
problem is relating to where they apply -- the brain -- to where they
don't. Undergrirding is a nice word but itself tells us nothing.

One alternative: The "physical" is no less a concept than the "mental"
and what we need to relate are two concepts, not two entities, and
conceptual relations are logical, not causal.

bruce

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

> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > If "physical forces" it's physical. Every physical thing is not an
> object!
>
> or a "physical force" has no material reference because "force" is an
> abstraction like work and love, just as mind is an abstraction without
> material reference. But you don't see it that way because, I think, you
> are obsessed with entities. So when I say "change" isn't physical (but
> an abstraction), you suggest that the only alternative is that...
>

It may be that our real difference is just one of language (though I am inclined to think it's more based on many past discussions).

"Physical force" is still physical. It involves causes and effects observable in a physical way in the physical world. It is part of what we mean by the physical world when we endeavor to provide a full description of it. Gravity is part of physical reality, too. As are light and velocity and mass, etc.

What does it mean to say they are "abstractions"? An abstraction is non-entity like by definition though we can name and reference abstractions in the same way we name and reference entities and so we are often led into the Platonic error of thinking that what can be named and referenced must be real, like entities are real, albeit on some other, perhaps more ethereal, plain.

THAT is what it means to be "obsessed with entities". But I would suggest to you that denying the physicality of such aspects of the universe (itself the ground of all physical things) on the basis that, being an abstraction it must not really be real like these things we call entities, is the real mistake, the real example of being obsessed by this kind of picture.

> > It's certainly not a matter of spirits!
>
> which, of course, I agree since "spirits" are just another entity made
> out of something else. So what is consciousness?
>

Think of the turning of a wheel.

> > Certainly consciousness isn't an entity, isn't like a physical object.
>
> Then you agree that is is a concept we apply in certain contexts, I
> presume. So let's examine this concept.
>

I can agree to that, of course. I have often defined "consciousness" as the aggregate of those features we find in our own subjectiveness, our subjective experience, and which we typically reference as being parts of our mental lives. Such features would include things like: awareness, understanding, intentionality, intelligence, perceiving, feeling, thinking, etc. Nor do I maintain that they are all necessarily distinct and apart from one another though I think we often tend to think and talk of them as though they are.

> > the mistake is in presuming that it makes sense to carry the feature
> > we see at our level down to levels that underpin it.
>
> Are you saying "it is a mistake to attribute intention to the underlying
> brain?

Yes, in most ordinary cases.

> If so, it is equally inappropriate to attribute causation to
> mind.

No, when "cause" is understood in terms of how I am using it (see Searle's use and the model of molecules of water behaving under certain conditions in a way that causes water's wetness). But I will reiterate for the nth time that I am not wedded to the term. I will readily stipulate to any of a number of alternatives including produce, make, render, engender, bring about, etc. My only caveat is that it be understood that what I mean to denote by the term we agree on is an existential dependence of what we call "mind" on what we call "brains".

But we have been around this block too many times for me to suppose THIS will solve this problem for you which is why I think our dispute is about more than words here. I think you are wedded to a particular picture and will not accept any language that suggests a different one.

> That leaves us with a substance monism -- it's all physical

I am not arguing for a metaphysical position and never have been. Again, my point is only that the Dennettian model is consistent with what you want to call physicalism though it is neither a proof or disproof of, or an argument for, such a position.

-- but
> no way of relating physical x (brain) with physical y (mind) unless you
> want to say "C is caused but then everything else is intentional." Makes
> any sense?
>

Destroy the brain and the mind goes away. That's it, the whole enchilada concerning this particular point. All the rest that you keep trying to say about x's and y's and C's is just sophistry at this point.

How we account for the obvious dependence of the mind on its physical platform is the question at hand. We can either say it is physically derived and thus another part of the physical universe or it is not a part of the physical universe in which case it must have some other non-physical derivation.

Your own solution, to declare it all unintelligible, is just a move to halt the debate without considering which alternative is the better one. Since, however, there is nothing unintelligible about saying that minds are dependent for their existence on the brains we associate with them, your move to proclaim "unintelligibility" is forced, to say the least.

> > Consciousness ...appears on our level of operation
> > though this is to say nothing of how it comes about.
>
> Is that necessarily the case? Love appears on our level and we explain
> its origin.

Do we? Aren't there different levels of explanation for the occurrence of love? (Valentine's Day being in the offing, I presume you mean romantic love here, of course.)

> If C is a concept, and concepts only appear on our level,
> then it makes sense to explain how it comes about. And that is how its
> done. The physiological correlates show the conditions of what must be
> in place for mind but there is no way of explaining how physiology makes
> psychology because psychology doesn't appear physiologically.
>

That is nothing more than a bit of dogma at this point. There is no reason to believe that there is "no way" of explaining psychology in terms of physiology merely because we have yet to do it completely at this stage in human history.

> > There is no sense in arguing that consciousness works
> > at our level according to the laws of physics even if it
> > is the outcome of undergirding physical phenomena that work
> > "according to the laws of physics".
>
> There is no sense in arguing that consciousness works according to
> physics because it is obvious that physics concepts don't apply. The
> problem is relating to where they apply -- the brain -- to where they
> don't. Undergrirding is a nice word but itself tells us nothing.
>

Consciousness at our level involves particular subjective experiences which, for us, relate to various stimuli. And so that is what we talk about. But if we want to talk about how particular stimuli produce particular subjective experiences qua experience itself, then we certainly can hope to do so by referencing physical explanations.

> One alternative: The "physical" is no less a concept than the "mental"
> and what we need to relate are two concepts, not two entities, and
> conceptual relations are logical, not causal.
>
> bruce
>

Not a good one though because the issue is what those terms represent for us. Let's say the concept is the form of the representation (how the dimensions of a term's associations relate to other such terms, etc.) If so, then what the term represents in cases where we are talking about things in the world are not the concepts but actual objects of reference. Human behavior, evidencing a mind, is just such an object of reference and so how we use a term like "mind" refers to that. But it also refers to our own subjective experiences which we relate to behaviors in ourselves and others.

It's too facile to try to reduce this to just being about concepts (and here is an example where Josh would be right and that we cannot get away with simplicity alone since to try for that is really to be simplistic which means overly simple for the case at hand).

SWM

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SW,

"... it seems to me the issue is never whether bearers are real or not."

...except when it is.

(An exercise: when does "the issue is" serve as a useful clarification and when is it a pretentious way of saying, "I'm really not interested in discussing that"? There's nothing wrong with saying the latter of course, but putting it the former way perhaps gives an impression of being "objective". Without specifying the context in which a particular point is not really "the issue", it becomes a dogmatic dismissal. "Telephone conversation format", though you loathe it, has the advantage of preserving some context. But even then to say "never"...?)

Your choice of a fictional place, "Mordor", as an example of a "bearer-call" is highly relevant to my attempts to understand what you're saying. Unless you want to say that it was just a very bad example. If Mordor is not real, then a fortiori, the use of the name "Mordor" cannot be made be people present in Mordor (except in the fictional context).

Now, I've asked for clarification on the idea of "presence" and you have not obliged. Allow me to offer some suggestions on further ways that your way of putting matters may be problematic.

You've emphasized a contrast between cases "where bearer and name are assumed to be together" ("bearer-calls") and contrasted these with those "where names and bearers become separated" ("bearer-assignments" or "predicate-calculation"). If I understand the distinction you wish to make, then this is the wrong way to go about it. Or the wrong way to put it. What matters here would seem to be the connection between the user of the name and the bearer of that name on the occasion of its usage. (And here, you need to distinguish various sorts of "connection", various sorts of "presence". You also need to distinguish between the presence of the bearer when the name is bestowed or assigned, when the usage of the name is taught, and on other occasions of usage.)

If you talk about the name and the bearer being together or separated, here's one problem. Suppose that someplace, the remains of Moses are buried and with them an inscription identifying them as "Moses". The name and the bearer are not separated! But to a user of the name "Moses" who is unaware of and unable to find these remains, that is little help. Likewise, if Sally is attending a luncheon someplace and wearing a "Hello, My Name is..." sticker. Again, the name and the bearer and not separated. But if you aren't at that luncheon and you use the name "Sally", her wearing that name tag is quite irrelevant to your own usage. And if you'll pardon a fictional reference, with all the applicable caveats, if Keyser Söze is sitting in an office in Istanbul with his name on the door, he and his name are together. But that by itself will not help detectives in the US trying to identify and locate a man they know only through rumors.

A separate point about the remains of Moses. Were archaeologists to find such a thing, then we would actually be adding another putative description to those descriptions we have under consideration in using "Moses", viz. "the individual whose remains were found..." And linking this description with the other descriptions would be a significant problem. Perhaps the inscription reads, "Here is Moses, the Giver of The Law" (or some similar description-cum-title) and the carbon-dating checked out. Then we'd have some reason to suppose that the "Moses" of these remains is the "Moses" with which the Biblical stories were concerned. Still, I want to emphasize that even in the presence of the bearer, we may still be concerned with matching descriptions with other descriptions.

Further points on existence and presence:

Many of the planets were first observed by the ancients, without the aid of telescopes. Others were discovered only with that invention. In either case (or so I suppose), their names could be bestowed by what you've called "bearer-calls". (And you can see from this example how tricky the various accounts of "presence", "together", "separated", and so forth can be. They are of course all quite distant from us!) Now, one could point out Mars and say, "That's Mars." But in teaching astronomy, one would also teach descriptions, permitting the student to reidentify Mars on later occasions.

Then there is Neptune. Neptune's existence was predicted mathematically, based on deviations of Uranus from its expected motion. Then it was observed, not far from its predicted location. But consider Vulcan. Not the fictional homeworld of Mr. Spock, but the planet that was similarly predicted to explain deviations of Mercury's orbit from the predictions of Newtonian mechanics. Of course, there is no such planet. But astronomers searched. (General Relativity later explained Mercury's movement without such recourse.)

With Mars, we've gone from being able to pick it out in the night sky (a "bearer-call"?) to having various descriptions at our disposal based on all sorts of further observations. With Neptune, we've gone from an identifying description based on calculations (a "bearer-assignment"? "predicate calculation"?) to being able to aim a telescope and say, "that's Neptune" (a "bearer-call"?). But with Vulcan, no such transition is possible. We have only the description and nothing satisfies it. Vulcan does not exist.

("Vulcan" in Star Trek is fictional, of course. And it is in a different star system. Saying "Vulcan does not exist" means something quite different when discussing science-fiction and when discussing the history of science. They are distinctly different descriptions, though neither description is satisfied by an actual planet.)

In none of these cases should we say that the name and the bearer of that name are "together".

(Actually, I believe some of the missions to Mars did leave plaques, but I doubt you'll regard that as indicating an essential difference!)

Honestly, I don't see what clarity is gained by jargon like "predicate-calculation" (Isn't this just going by a description? Why not say that?) and the pseudo-formal way of putting some of these matters. And my desire to be charitable makes me wonder if I have missed the point. If I have, I hope perhaps these examples and questions will assist you in making matters clearer to me.

"A name can separate from its bearer whenever the bearer does something to distinguish his or her identity in language."

You seem to be focused on the paradign of heroic deeds and such. But nothing need be "done" by the bearer. "The eldest daughter of...", "the person assigned SSN...", "the newborn in bed number..."

"The game of bearer-call and bearer-assignment is the fundamental issue in why there is confusion in philosophy over proper names. If you ask yourself a simple question before any name-game is played, you will clear up the confusion: what is your objective, to play bearer-call or bearer-assignment?"

These claims for your distinction strike me as wildly inflated. And the idea that ordinary language users ("before any name-game is played") are confused and need to ask themselves any such question seems presumptuous. Philosophers should ask how the name is being used and I am quite sure they'll find that it various quite often during the course of some games and among the game's participants. And it is not the philosopher's job to tell them that they should be more orderly and adhere to her distinctions and jargon in the matter!

"For certain kinds of historical or fictional proper names, answering this question is very difficult. Because if you say you want to play bearer-call for Moses, we might never know of which the X's called 'Moses' is the right X, if stories are mythical."

If the stories are entirely mythical, then there is no "right X". And apart from the case above where I described the possibility of finding the remains of Moses, what would count as "playing bearer-call" with the name "Moses". (Of course, many contemporary people are also named "Moses", but surely that's not the point!)

"And note that you cannot say 'there is no Moses' because that is bearer-assignment logic. You are precluded from that."

Saying, "There is no Vulcan," indicates (among other things) the futility to trying to make a transition from a description ("bearer-assignment logic"?) to being able to point out Vulcan using a telescope ("bearer-call"?). Why anyone should be precluded from making that point eludes me.

And likewise, why should anyone should be precluded from saying, "there is no Moses." It is obvious enough that such a claim could only be that one is using some description or other and that one has reason to believe that no actual person satisfies such descriptions. Now, people may consider different descriptions relevant and the boundary is not predetermined for how many of the descriptions must be satisfied for an individual to count as "Moses", but the fact that this is all "bearer-assignment logic" shouldn't preclude anyone from raising the point. Why should anyone be straitjacketed by your jargon?

And note that, barring something like finding remains such as I described, we aren't going to play "bearer-call" with the name "Moses" anyway! Whether or not such a man once existed, he does not exist today, except perhaps in a sense (or senses) that some believers would accept.

"But let's say certain stories are NOT mythical. If they are used to identify the X who accomplished them, it would be utterly pointless to then say: 'if X does not bear N, he cannot be N,' because at this point your game has, by definition, switched to bearer-assignment."

First, if the game has changed (at least as you are inclined to distinguish games) that wouldn't make the remark pointless. Pointing out that a shift has taken place is one thing and it may be very important that we take note of such a shift. But to call the remark "utterly pointless", to stigmatize it in that way, would be to insist that games should never bleed into one another. You don't honestly suppose that Wittgenstein advocated any such regimentation of language games, do you?

Second, it's not at all clear to me what, "if X does not bear N, he cannot be N," is even supposed to mean. What are the criteria for determining whether X bears N? Apart from situations like the luncheon where everyone is wearing a "Hello, My Name is..." sticker, when do we ever make an argument anything like that? We ask people their names, we ask someone else, we recognize them by their description, we take fingerprints, we test DNA, we ask for ID, and so forth. And it's not clear to me that all of these are cases of "bearer-assignment". And the sticker case likely isn't either. It's not at all clear what you're saying here.

"Here's what I want to say: I don't think the game of bearer-call can be played with 'Moses'..."

I don't either, unless we're talking about his remains.

"...unless we mean something like this: 'the man born of such-and-such people who lived at such-and-such.'"

How is that a "bearer-call"? That's another description. A "predicate-calculation"?

"And so if we identify the X of N here, it would be immaterial what 'Moses' did in life. We would have our X of N."

I'm not sure I see the reason for treating descriptions of the deeds someone has performed differently from other descriptions but that seems to be what you're doing. How does that distinction match up with the distinction between whether or not the bearer is present on the occasion of the use of the name? And how would this distinction apply to the names of places and artifacts? Maybe I am not getting your distinction at all. It seems to be all over the place.

If "born of such-and-such people" refers to, e.g. the Israelites, then the description doesn't pick out Moses from among numerous others. But if it refers to his biological parents, aren't they just as much a problem? You've just moved the problem back a step.

JPDeMouy

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JD:

Good see you back old boy! Wittrs is nothing without its First Citizen. Very boring indeed. Just a quick note: I'll be heading out of town tomorrow, so I probably won't attend to your posts until maybe around Sunday.  I haven't read them yet, but I look forward to them.

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

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SW,

First, a general remark. "Family resemblance" is a useful simile. So too is the comparison with tools. And while it is entirely possible to turn a screw with the blade of a knife, you may also damage the knife, damage the screw, or cut yourself.

I also note that you haven't addressed or so much as acknowledged my point about Wittgenstein's revisions and his laboring over choosing precisely the right word or the right phrasing as that point stands in relation to your own pretense that it is somehow more "Wittgensteinian" to just talk about "family resemblances" to show a causal disregard for standards of correctness.

Note: I am not trying to play "more Wittgensteinian than thou," which I consider an utterly asinine form of argument. But I am asking how you reconcile these two things in your claim to be oh-so-Wittgensteinian.

"3. I can't agree with several things you have said about what analytic philosophers do with statements like 'If Tiger is married, he is not a bachelor.'"

Are you disagreeing with my contention that they make such arguments as I presented? If so, I can offer citations, but since you then refer to "analytic philosophy of this sort", it appears you acknowledge that after all. But then it would appear that you just wish to express your disagreement with such arguments. Well, since I presented conflicting arguments, it should be obvious that I disagree with at least some of them as well.

"In fact, this is exactly what the fallacy of analytic philosophy of this sort is. It pretends as though the statement is not governed by culture and cognition, and that it presents a question that should be resolved mimicking science or mathematics."

No doubt that is the case in some cases. But broad generalizations like that aren't very helpful. In fact, they're quite empty. "(A)nalytic philosophy of this sort..." What sort? Well, the sort that does that sort of thing.

And for those who like that sort of thing, that's the sort of thing they like.

One particular argument I presented, the only one I would personally be inclined to actually defend, was very much connected to culture. Namely, the role that that concepts like "bachelor", "marriage", "fidelity", "voews", and so forth play in people's lives. How you could say that such an argument as a denial of the role culture plays is quite beyond me.

"For the truth of the matter is, that the statement is only governed by sense of the _expression_, and that once the sense is shared, there is no other issue other than informational (what Tiger did, what his 'marriage' is like)."

Questions I would include, "Shared by whom? In what contexts? On what occasions?"

I have not acknowledged the usage, only pointed out that it is a sort of joke. Note that Wittgenstein also observes departures from normal usage that make sense as jokes. Metaphor, irony, and various other uses of language are parasitic upon literal usage. That's different from saying that it's all just "family resemblance", but it doesn't deny the variety in our usage.

"If we would treat married and bachelors only as predicate-calculators, we would have precluded any counter-examples from being shown by virtue of the language game being used. We would have shut them out."

If you re-read my remarks, you'll see that I was actually calling you to task for that.

"You seem to think that logic has some status over language. I sense this in you. You must be a philosophy professor who teaches symbolic logic. Let me help you with this: 'I release you.' (You like Lord of the Rings?)"

I've been accused of far worse and on better evidence. In any case, it would depend on what you mean by "logic". If you mean the subject taught in courses in symbolic logic, then certainly not! In a wider, Wittgensteinian sense of "logic" - a concern with those rules that are constitutive of sense - then I wouldn't call it a "status over language". That would be a very misleading way of putting it.

I am more of an SF fan but Tolkein is good. Have you watched Caprica?

"Here's what I think you aren't getting. Definitions don't prescribe the use of words, behavior does."

Dictionaries both describe and prescribe. People regularly treat dictionary definitions prescriptively. In education, in scholarship, in Scrabble tournaments... And these activities are of course behaviors. Marks on paper by themselves neither prescribe nor describe but being a dictionary is also about being used in various ways and in various activities. And some of these uses are prescriptive.

The fact that language users are also creative and that language evolves shows that dictionaries are not always treated as rule books that keep language in a "frozen" condition. But that is not to say that dictionaries are not used prescriptively!

"What are commonly called definitions in dictionaries are nothing but accounts of these uses."

Recall the remark I'd shared about the judge and treating statutes as anthropological descriptions or as guides to how he should rule. You seemed enthused about the quote but perhaps you missed the point!

"Sort of like a newspaper for the language game. No one I know of would credibly say that if a use was meaningfully understood that it couldn't be made because the dictionary didn't yet have it."

Being understood and being correct are not the same thing. But that was a clever seduction on your part. I depreciated it!

I've already acknowledged non-literal uses. I also do not deny that language evolves. Nor yet do I deny the existence of slang and idioms shared among small communities. To deny any of those would be exceedingly foolish. But no less foolish would be to ignore the perfectly ordinary distinctions we regularly make between correct and incorrect, between standard and nonstandard, and between literal and nonliteral usages, and to treat rule as exception and exception as rule.

"And so, for the idea of calling Tiger a 'bachelor' to be a joke can only be true IN A SENSE OF TALKING."

What does that even mean? What is an example of a true statement that is true in some other way than in the particular senses of the words used?

"You are observing a fence again. You use the word 'bachelor' and 'marriage' with a fence in both yards. That's fine. You're allowed. Many people do. Your point is taken. But what you don't understand is that if people use these words without such fences, they too are allowed whatever goals they score"

Your condesension notwithstanding, the idea of what people are "allowed" to do is not a concern of mine. I am concerned with what makes sense and with distinctions between different kinds of making sense, not with telling people what they are or are not "allowed" to say - as if they would listen to me anyway!

It may be that some of my prior remarks came across as some sort of hysterical prediction of sociology-cum-religious-conservatism, viz. "If we allow people to call Tiger Woods a bachelor, then the institution of marriage will be destroyed, the favric of society will be torn apart, it will be anarchy!" But my remarks were not sociological or anthropological: they were grammatical. I was pointing out connections between the concept of bachelorhood and concepts of marriage, fidelity, and so forth, and how treating a non-standard usage as standard breaks those connections.

What we mustn't overlook with the Tiger Woods example is that Tiger's marital status and infidelity are both common knowledge, thanks to our sensationalistic media. Given this shared background, "Tiger Woods is a bachelor" could not be meant to tell us about either: his marriage and his cheating are known to just about anyone who would recognize his name. So the sense of the utterance would be an ironic remark on Tiger's behavior: he may be married but he sure doesn't act accordingly. hence, a joke.

But suppose we're talking about someone less famous. A traveling salesman (to reference a vast body of humor) who is married says that he's a bachelor. Now, perhaps he says this to people who know him or who see his wedding band and know his profession. And with further enquiry, he offers something like, "This week, I might as well be a bachelor," or "When I am on the road, I live as I did when I was a bachelor." (And this need involve nothing untoward. Perhaps he just means that he eats Chinese take out standing over the kitchen sink in his motel room and falls asleep watching TV on the sofa in his underwear.) Calling himself a bachelor is then a humorous commentary on his life. A joke.

But suppose he removes his wedding band and tells people who don't know him that he's a bachelor, including women he seeks to bed. Is he just making a joke? Or is he a damned liar! Suppose in a court of law, he testifies that he's a bachelor. You're an attorney: tell me how that goes? Tell me how it works out for him if his wife in another state is discovered and he says, "I was just using 'bachelor' in a different sense"? And any married people: tell me how it goes over with his wife when she hears about it.

"Aww, Pookie! I was just using the word in a different sense, y'see. Sweet'ums, you're insisting on drawing fences around words, but language doesn't really work that way. It's about 'family resemblances', y'see. Yeah, and dictionaries just describe how people sometimes use words but they don't really prescribe anything. I was just using 'bachelor' in my own personal way. There was no deception, honestly!"

Tell me how things work out for the attorney who is discovered to have advised her married client, "Say you're a bachelor. After all, in a certain sense you are."

(I'm not about allowing or disallowing people's choice of words. But other people just might be!)

"E.g., Being married to yourself is a meaningful idea. So is being married to work, an _expression_ which is widely in play in the language game. (I myself am married to my ideas)."

Yes, there are other uses of the word "marriage". I would not deny that. Though I would need some further elaboration to make sense of "married to oneself". However, since you've now acknowledged that calling an isolated word (rather than its definition) a tautology makes no sense (would have to be understood as some sort of shorthand way of putting it), then the point of my remark about marriage to oneself has already been made.

However, note that I took your parenthetical quotation, "Marriage is between a man and a woman," as an allusion to controversies over homosexual marriage. In that context, the fact that we speak of someone being married to her work is quite irrelevant. It is a question of legal recognition, of changing the legal definition. Saying that Richard is married to his partner Phil just as I am married to my work and Joan is married to her political cause would be completely missing the point!

"So, the next time you put the Tiger sentence up and call it 'logic,' you may want to replace that with sense of _expression_."

Senses are a concern of logic, in both the technical sense and the wider, Wittgensteinian sense. Do you know who originated the distinction between sense and reference (though there were related precursors)? The logician, Frege.

"Once again, the right analysis is this:"

(I find it exceedingly odd that someone who insists on accusing others of a dogmatic reliance on formal logic would so casually speak of "the right analysis". And what follows is not "once again". You changed what you'd written before, without acknowledging the changes and without answering my questions about the previous "analysis". That's fine but to say "once again" is simply dishonest.)

"1. If the bearer called TIGER is married (in a sense of that word), he is not a bachelor (in a sense of that word). [IT DOESN'T FOLLOW]."

Of course, he could be a Bachelor of Arts. No one is denying that words have different senses. I am only urging that we keep these senses clear. I am pointing out distinctions. If it's a different sense, then it's not a counter-example to the received definition.

"The Pope example that you exempt..."

I didn't "exempt" it. But I do consider it a more significant counter-example to the standard analysis. That said, I also think that one could say, "the Pope is married... to the Church," or one could say, "Strange as it may sound, the Pope is a bachelor." And I don't insist on either being "correct", though for some particular purpose, one might have reasons to favor one or the other.

"...is of the same sort of thing as Tiger."

That rather depends on how one fills in "sort of thing".

"Here is the key to the riddle: the point of 'bachelor' in the language game is to denote 'dating eligibility.'"

That is one point. There are others.

"That's what the idea does in the game, which is all tha matters."

If I were to grant that there were a single point, it would be "eligibility for first marriage", not "dating eligibility". 13 year old boys are eligible to date, parents permitting, but they aren't bachelors. Men in cultures where marriages are arranged may not be eligible to date, but are bachelors. Divorcees are eligible to date but aren't bachelors.

"Question: Did Tiger have a bachelor pad? Answer: he probably did. Does the Pope have a bachelor pad? Answer: no. What's the difference? One is eligible to date, the other isn't."

One has various means to facilitate dating and the other does not. And an adult man who has never married and lives with room mates or in his parent's basement may also lack the facilities but that doesn't make him any less a bachelor.

"Asking whether Tiger is a 'bachelor' is a language game every bit the same as asking whether a penguin is a bird or a scorpion a bug or a large living-room bean bag a chair."

Each of these examples is different. "Bird" has a zoological definition as well as ordinary usage. "Bug" does not, though "insect" and "arachnid" do. "Chair" has no definition in any natural science but large bean bags are commonly called "chairs", albeit not prototypical chairs. These question are not "the same".

(Wittgenstein, quoting Kent in Shakespeare's _King_Lear_, considered as a motto, "I'll teach you differences.")

"In this language game, the funcion of the idea is present (eligibility to date) but the format isn't right (is married). This language game transposes form and function. The Pope is the opposite: he is not eligible to date but is not married. He has the format of bachelor but not its function. Many family resemblance games do this."

Gibberish.

"Imagine someone asking inside Tiger's female circle whether Tiger was a 'bachelor.' What would the inside person say? They'd probably be unsure of what to say. They might say, 'he is and he isn't.' Or, he is IN A SENSE. Tiger is a family member who you have fenced off with a sharp boundary."

My guess:

First, they would wonder where you had been the past several months not to have heard all about it. Then, if they knew you were informed of the circumstances, they would wonder what your point was in asking such a question. Finally, they'd probably think you were attempting to make a joke in very bad taste, perhaps at their expense, and might be inclined to slap you. Or worse.

I do not get the impression that you have anything like the kind of mad skillz to talk to women that way. Your black belt Wittgensteinianism and linguistic acumen notwithstanding.

"And by way, calling Tiger a bachelor would not upset anything in the culture or the language game. It would overturn nothing. It would simply be another case of mix-and-match."

No, it wouldn't upset anything. But using "bachelor" to mean "anyone who dates a lot" and treating that as the standard rather than as some special usage would sever a lot of connections to other concepts. Of course, we would work around it, just as we work around "gay" now meaning "homosexual" and "sex" now meaning "copulation". It's a source of muddles but we manage.

One last thing. I find it odd that after previously insisting that "bachelor" was a "tautology" or a "predicate-calculation" or whatever, that you're now insisting on complete flexibility in the word's deployment, even to the point of apparently denying distinctions one might draw between different usages. it's fine if you change your mind, but you may want to acknowledge the change.

JPDeMouy

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SW,

A few thoughts. (No Kripke exegesis though. And I do not know whether and on what points we agree or disagree.)

"Water does not contain sodium." Well, seawater is still called "water". So is dishwater. And these both contain sodium. But for a particular purpose, we can reserve "water" for, e.g. water distilled or filtered to a certain standard. Then we might say that such filtered water will contain no more than x parts per million of sodium. And this statement might be a definition of water for purposes of some experiment, medical procedure, manufacturing process, et al. Or it might be a specification of the efficacy of the filtration process. Or it might be a standard by which the success of filtering a particular batch of water is to be assessed.

"Water" used in such a restricted sense - purified water - is also H2O. Chemists use chemical formulae to describe volumes, not just individual molecules.

"Water molecules do not contain sodium." That's a rule of grammar. What would we count a discovering that a water molecule contained a sodium atom?

(Keeping in mind various remarks of Wittgenstein's about certainty, about symptoms and criteria, about shifting riverbeds, about agreement not only in definitions but opinions, agreement not just in methods of measurement but in results of measurement, and so forth.)

But there is a transition from talking about the molecules that make up "this stuff" and talking about individual molecules.

Any attempt to define homo sapiens or any other species is going to face borderline cases. (Basic evolutionary theory. And a consequence of the literalness of "family resemblance" in such cases.)

Your use of "bearer-calls" and "bearer-assignments" is getting less and less clear to me.

JPDeMouy

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

Bruce: The choice is between a mechanical or purposive model.

> No, it is not. The models are applicable in different contexts.

Correct! If we want to model brain mechanically and mind purposively,
and want to relate brain and mind, we need to mesh the two models. Here
you try.

SWM: all experience involves the physical both in terms of experiencing
whatever we are experiencing and in terms of what it takes to have an
experience at all, i.e., brains and physical events that become sensory
input via signals passed along the neural pathways, etc.

It's the etc, that's our problem. At some point, in your mechanical
model, the physical becomes experiential. Because you hold to a
mechanical model you are required to explain this transformation. Do you
see why it isn't my problem? I see your mechanical account as
conceptual. Shifting concepts requires justification but no account of
transformation.

> I suggest you have another look at Dehaene

A global neural workplace is a way of metaphorizing the brain in
mentalistic terms that gives some the impression that he has discovered
the transformation of brain into mind when all he has is a correlation.
But this fact doesn't diminish the practical use his finding for
understanding brain damage. It just doesn't address our philosophical
muddle and hence can't resolve it.

> The brain's operations cause the features we associate with
consciousness

The brain causes "features" -- features of what? -- consciousness? --
then why write "associate with." You make it sound as if the brain
causes something to happen somewhere else (the mind). But according to
Dehaene the brain dioesn't cause the GNW, the brain is the GNW. The
brain is mind. An identity, not a causal account, closer to two sides of
the coin. If you see the coin as conceptual, then no problem, but if you
try to place the sides of a coin in a causal relationship, you got
trouble.

bruce

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

<snip>

> SWM: all experience involves the physical both in terms of experiencing
> whatever we are experiencing and in terms of what it takes to have an
> experience at all, i.e., brains and physical events that become sensory
> input via signals passed along the neural pathways, etc.

Bruce: It's the etc, that's our problem. At some point, in your mechanical model, the physical becomes experiential. Because you hold to a mechanical model you are required to explain this transformation. Do you see why it isn't my problem? I see your mechanical account as conceptual. Shifting concepts requires justification but no account of transformation.


SWM Replies: As I have said and been saying for an interminably long time now, at the end of the day this is about HOW WE CONCEIVE CONSCIOUSNESS! So yes, it's "conceptual". Congratulations! Is it a shift? Well, yes, of course. Dennett argues that we can account for all the features we typically associate with consciousness in ourselves by thinking of them in a different way, changing the paradigm. The argument against him must be to show that his proposed paradigm doesn't do what he claims, i.e., fully account for all the features of consciousness, that something critical has been left out. You want to say I or he have left out the transformation of a physical phenomenon to a mental one. Fair enough. But then you miss the point because we haven't left it out if one accepts the paradigm shift. So you can't argue against the shift by saying it isn't the same as the pre-shift paradigm. Well, of course it isn't. THAT'S JUST THE POINT!

> > I suggest you have another look at Dehaene
>
> A global neural workplace is a way of metaphorizing the brain in
> mentalistic terms that gives some the impression that he has discovered
> the transformation of brain into mind when all he has is a correlation.

Dehaene doesn't give any indication that he is "metaphorizing" even if you want to take him as doing that. But if you do you are not really considering his actual words, you are simply reinterpreting them to fit with YOUR preferred paradigm which he manifestly doesn't share. Note that he says of his research at one point that "it turns out Dennett was right". If he shared your paradigm, he couldn't say that now could he?

Again, there is no "transformation" of brain into mind, as you put it, to be discovered because that would be like claiming to discover the transformation of wheel into turning!!!!!!!

> But this fact doesn't diminish the practical use his finding for
> understanding brain damage. It just doesn't address our philosophical
> muddle and hence can't resolve it.
>

His research is aimed at discovering what it is that brains do that yield/produce/constitute/cause consciousness. Yes it has important medical and other practical applications but at the end of the day he is interested in how brains produce what he calls "access consciousness" (being aware). The only one who is philosophically muddled about this . . . well, you know my opinion!

> > The brain's operations cause the features we associate with
> consciousness
>
> The brain causes "features" -- features of what? -- consciousness? --

I have described consciousness as being an agglomeration of certain features we recognize in ourselves, specifically in our subjective experience. This is hardly the first time in our many discussions that I have referred to "features" or described consciousness in this way!

> then why write "associate with." You make it sound as if the brain
> causes something to happen somewhere else (the mind).

You simply misread me. By "we associate with" I meant (and have always meant) the things we think of when speaking of consciousness! You continue to be fixated on this idea that the "mind" if invoked as such must be taken to mean something entity-like. Think again of the wheel and its turning. If the wheel is an entity, must we think its turning is, too??????

>But according to
> Dehaene the brain dioesn't cause the GNW, the brain is the GNW.

No, he says it is many different parts of the brain working together and interacting that are the global neuronal network. The brain is firstly more than just those parts and secondly a physical object and not, itself, such a network.

> The
> brain is mind. An identity, not a causal account, closer to two sides of
> the coin. If you see the coin as conceptual, then no problem, but if you
> try to place the sides of a coin in a causal relationship, you got
> trouble.
>
> bruce

Here's the coin picture again: The brain's processes, its operations, are the coin. The publicly observable features of those operations (the electrical firings, the identifiable patterns seen through the agency of an fMRI) are the one side. The experiences occurring to the subject, the subjectness, are the other. Two sides, one coin, but each side is also itself and not the other. Not logical identity, something else, albeit something perfectly ordinary and comprehensible if one can shake the fixation on identity as a claim of logic.

SWM

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

> We agree that adaptation isn't best described in mechanical
> terms. But does your example serve?

I deliberately choose a very simple example, so that it was clear to
Stuart that I was not assuming anything non-physical. Even then,
Stuart seems to say that I am assuming something non-physical.

Sure, there would be better examples, where a case can be made that the
adaptive behavior is purposive.

Regards,
Neil

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

> On the use of "mechanism" I have invoked, the movement of the stream
> involves some mechanism, too, in this case the way(s) in which the
> molecular constituents of the stream operate at a deeper level. But
> one could also speak of a stream's mechanism in more macro terms,
> e.g., by referring to its behavioral tendencies.

I think you are mostly confusing yourself here.

The point is that we make our machines to follow our rules, and to
resist external influence. And sure, the resistance is not unlimited,
and a strong enough external influence can change it. So trains can
derail, but not easily.

Adaptive things are far more sensitive to small changes in the
environment.

In some sense, we can be conscious to our world because we are
sensitive to small changes in our world. The computer is unconscious,
and essentially solipsistic, because it is largely oblivious to small
changes in the world.

> If the homeostatic system's adaptive behavior is a function of
> the operating mechanics of its constituents, which is hardly
> an unreasonable supposition given what we know of chemistry and
> physics, then there is no reason to presume that "adaptiveness"
> is a stand-alone or otherwise basic competitor of "caused behaviors".

I'm not sure what point you are making there. I have never suggested
that homeostatic systems are exempt from causation.

> In keeping with what I've already said, it seems to me that the
> distinction you are making is wrongheaded. Whatever is adaptive is
> so because of its underlying mechanisms which are describable as
> algorithms (sets of procedural steps).

I challenge you to accurately describe the adaptiveness in terms of
algorithms.

> Anyway, and in keeping with my question, is the breakdown of the
> underlying relations, relative to how we get consciousness, that
> you want to give the following then:

> Homeostasis produces Pragmatic Selection produces Perception produces
> Adaptiveness produces Consciousness?

No, that's far too simplistic. Homeostasis provide a way of making
pragmatic judgments, but is not necessarily pragmatic on its own
account. Pragmatic judgment provides a way of making the decisions
needed to construct a perceptual system, but pragmatic judgment does
not necessarily lead to perception. Perception is a requirement for
consciousness, but perceiving systems are not necessarily conscious.

Regards,
Neil

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