I live in Brazil and here there is a great example of a color that has changed its reference over the years. There is a soil called "Terra Roxa" (Purple soil) that is very fertile, but in fact the color of that soil is red. This change in terms occurred because in the 19th century the Italian immigrants called this type of soil "Terra rossa". "Rossa" means red in Italian, but the Brazilians thought "rossa" means "roxa" (purple).
Thank you! I'm in a meaning seminar at UCLA and currently writing my final paper on Kripkenstein and how Horwich's theory addresses his requests. You've given me another push of understanding when I've felt like I have plateaued, which is the worst feeling.
Great lecture. I've been working on this very problem for a few years now as my master's thesis. Here is the best "straight" solution I have come with so far: First, let's realize that our criteria of correctness is not dependent at all on our past usage, and only counterfactually so on our future usage. Let's call this epistemical position the "eternal present hypothesis". In other words, we can only evaluate our past hypothesis in the light of our present understanding, and the way we presently represent that past hypothesis. Which means, there can be nothing meaningful to be said about us meaning "blue" instead of "grue" in the past, yet our present understanding informs us for all possible pragmatic purposes. In other words, us meaning "blue" in the present is all that could possibly matter pragmatically, when it comes to past and present usages of the term. Now, what is left to account for is the possibility that we will mean "grue" instead of "blue" in the future; that we will mean "quaddition" instead of "addition". And here, I would simply ask if that matters as long as your present answer gets the job done. And if you consider it does so, you have no reason to reevaluate your assessment. Indeed, there is no guarantee that your present assessment will carry onto the future. Yet, if you consider your present assessment to be legitimate, and your future assessment is confirming the one you have now, there is nothing more you can do. All you can do is trust in the process, which is a fairly sobering conclusion. Yet I have yet to find a way around it.
@@CR3199 not only do they not carry any "pragmatic" benefit, but they all seem misconstrued. What we seem to be searching for is some fact about what the "right" answer to a mathematical function "should" be. And of course, we will never find such a fact, because we have confused the normative with the factual. What we have to realize is that the "right" answer to a mathematical function, as a normative judgement, cannot call for any kind of fact. What we need is instead an appeal to values; I'd argue, we need a moral theory. I've argued for pragmatism, but perhaps another moral theory would do better. My intuition after some reflection is that hedonism seems like a better bet. I call it epistemic hedonism. Under this theory, the right answer to a mathematical function is simply the one that "feels" right, until the point it "feels" wrong (for any reason, such as someone telling you it's wrong). I'm not sure it makes for a better theory, but pragmatism has its flaws too, simply because it is too vague of an explanation.
@@meeduoh That’s a very good line of thought. It might be time to review the analytic paradigm which has been dominant for the last hundred plus years. Philosophy can not and should not directly resemble the natural sciences, that thinking has lead to so many dead ends in the discipline. I admire and respect many of the 20th century hero’s of philosophy, yet I’ve never been able to get fully on board with their paradigm. I’m not opposed to analytic methods at all, I just rather all methods and approaches receive their credit. You are on a great track IMHO, please keep up the work, keep trying to get the subject to turn the corner and grow out further, hopefully becoming more relevant. If not philosophy will probably continue to tragically fade. It took me a while to realize so many problems in analytic metaphysics could be classified as pseudo problems and logic puzzles with little relevance outside the direct discussion. I’m not sure which of your pathways I favor, but these are the conversations which need to be had.
@@CR3199 I've thought for a long while myself that many philosophical problems were pseudo problems, and no doubt many are. I just lost my confidence concerning which ones should be classified as such. The linguistic turn of the last century would have us classify all metaphysical problems into pseudo problems. We thought we should reduce philosophy to logic and create a language which is fully logical, and powerful enough to express a priori any state of the world. Yet it didn't come to pass, the Tractatus, from Wittgenstein's own admission, has failed. There cannot be such an a priori perfect language. My conclusion is that philosophy is always an attempt at some reduction, so new understandings can come to birth. Every reduction will come to the conclusion that the previous problem was a pseudo problem, under the new framework. Yet, wait a hundred years, and who knows. We thought metaphysics dead, now it feels like a foolish and brash conclusion. Maybe all we should be doing is to multiply the frameworks, let them coexist; let the full creativity of philosophy come to fruition. It can't be more of a waste of time than life itself anyway.
@@meeduoh No of course, when I said pseudo problem I specifically meant the dead ends of a specific paradigm. Philosophy should have no limits of inquiry or avenues of approach since every other subject, and really all of life, is measured by philosophy. As beautiful as an ideal language account of the world in its entirety sounds it was always a doomed project. And I would personally say distinction over reduction, we very probably mean the same thing so maybe it’s just a negative reaction I have to the term itself in light of the many pushes for reductionism.
Sapere Aude, dare to understand, dare to experiment, dare to believe, make the leap of faith - children who are learning arithmetic do this, they make a leap of faith - and this seals their competence!
20:00 A table and a bachelor are both functions and structure. Thus to point to only the structure and say "That is what it is" won't work. We need both to create a proper isomorphism (in the Category Theory sense) so that we can compare similar, though not exact, objects and people. Simply pointing to an object to define a table won't work, one must also define the function a table serves to create a proper isomorphism. Similarly, simply pointing to a person to define a bachelor won't do, one must also define the function a bachelor serves to create a proper isomorphism. Armed with the structure and function of the isomorphism you've set you, you should be able to select any object or person and then see if they are isomorphic to the pre-defined table or bachelor. 30:00 Wouldn't adding a "if and only if" qualifier be enough to distinguish any algorithm you designate as addition from any other algorithm someone else called quaddition? " (+) designates Addition IFF it follows these two rules: 1) (x)+(0)=(x) 2)(x)+(y) = (x+y)" And now quaddition condition (IF (x+y)=57 THEN modify rule 2) would break the iff and thus distinguish it from addition.
If I were to give a desk a description, I think all the ways we have imagined to build something we would generally call a desk would need to be specified or categorized in something that is not a desk but is very similar. And then I think I would need to define those by the context that must be known prior of using or seeing the desk and explain how it is used in order to start giving the object some meaning.
Regarding the girl who brought up the problem of measurement: what she may have had in mind and what would be a more relevant problem has to do with the refutation of the observational/theoretic distinction. This involves the claim that all statements involve a theoretical assumption, and none is a statement purely of observation. For example, when we use a ruler to measure, e.g., the length of the desk top, we assume (theoretical) that the ruler itself does not grow or shrink when moved from one place to another, so that a ruler that is 12 inches length up at the chalkboard, is only 8 inches long when brought to the desk.
It is often clear watching these videos that at least some of his students are absolutely not on the same page. They have so completely missed the point. He just used table as an off-the-cuff example of something which is inherently difficult to define and they go and try to define it!
Three people see a "baguette", a Frenchman an Englishman and a hunter gatherer. What do they "call" it? The Frenchman calls it "le pain", the Englishman calls it bread, and the hunter gatherer calls it a log if we force him to . The "observer" has a predisposed experience of things. Knowledge is what we call the coincidence of observation and experience. Ignorance is what we call the dissonance of observation and experience. The scientific analogy, instead of the mathematical problem you used, is Young's two slit experiment. The experiment used to justify the quantum theory of wave-particle duality. We are used to waves and particles. We are not used to the quantum world. Our "definitions" need updating. Until they are we force ourselves to call something new something we already know. We're guessing. As observers scientists are used to particles and waves. So their experiments are designed to differentiate between particles and waves. When they encounter something new they are not experimentally, experienced enough to design an experiment to tell them what they're measuring. If it was a "log" how could they tell, if all they know is bread and baguettes? This points out two unresolvable realms. Sensation versus the linguistic mind: novelty in Nature versus "novelty" in understanding. Can there be anything new in understanding that does not FIRST have its origin in Nature? If so, how could we tell? Since there is no "reference" in Nature that we can all agree to by sensual impression; how could we tell that something is new in understanding? Give an example of something new in understanding, that has no reference in Nature, that we call real. Would Einstein's theory of relativity be valid without observational proof? How? What sort of society would we live in if we accepted theories based on their "novelty"? Would we be living in a democracy or a commune or a dictatorship? In science we have superposition, entanglement and dark matter and energy. In religion we have omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience and God. They are all theories without reference in Nature. So are numbers, letters, beauty, truth, equality. What should this mean for meaning? Correspondingly what does this mean for humanity which processes meaning? What sort of society would we be living in if we believed in superposition, entanglement and Dark matter. The same sort of society that believes in God? The same sort that believes in numbers, letters, truth, democracy? What sort of society SHOULDN'T we be living in? What exists in Nature, currently, is an "evolutionary" fact. What existed in Nature in the past, or what can exist in Nature due to genetic manipulation, how should they be viewed? As more valid than what is current or less valid? What faculty of judgement can let us know, as humans? What faculty does Nature use to balance its competing interests? Blood or agreement: agreement by reason? Which is more violent? Are both just as valid?
I allways liked philosophers for there ability to think a hypotetical tought, outside it is a long forgotten skill. The exampels are so nicly vauge to prove a concept and not what they show. Thats why the examples and idees are simple but still there can be a clasroom full of people that claim that they actually not think they get anything.
stel je voor ik wil mezelf iets leren. bijvoorbeeld ik heb een gas toestel, een fornuis met 4 grote pitten en een kleine middenpit, en 5 knoppen om het te regelen. maar ik kan de bewegwijzering niet lezen en ik weet nooit of de pit rechtsboven nu de uiterste rechtse knop is of die daarnaast. maar zojuist wilde ik die pit uitdraaien en ik nam de meest rechtse, ik durfde te kiezen! en het was de juiste keuze. hoewel ik dit nergens op kan funderen, had ik ongetwijfeld ook op basis van subliminaal achtergebleven informatie in mijn brein de juiste knop gekozen. en wat belangrijker is: door aldus te handelen bevestig ik mijn kennen en weten, en mijn beheersing van een stof! dus juist zonder dat er een feit is ten aanzien van mijn mentale positie (wat dat ook zou mogen zijn!??). Ik DURF te handelen, en daardoor leer ik "de regel" ---------
In OC Wittgenstein mentions how his life depends on the fact you have to accept something's. So surely having base acceptances would kind of throw a few things off with this?
I suspect that the most meaningful answer to these problems will come from understanding the neuroscience of perception, cognition and language use, and the formalisations of such processes will be basically those of the neural network operations behind them. This approach includes the epistemological bridge between the perception and the concept, at least for colours like Red, and it would still be formalisable. In that respect, I think machine learning approaches that model the human perceptual and conceptual apparatus represent the best hope of resolving these semantic issues in a way that can still be analysed and understood mathematically.
3:17 Then this 'skeptic' does not understand recursive definitions. Recursive definitions are a PRESCRIPTIVE rule which we say we will carry out given some input. Sure we can define arithmetic differently. But the addition of those numbers is defined only relative to some semantics of the literal symbols, and one of those is the above recursive definition and if that is the semantics which we attribute to that literla representation of symbols, then we will obtain the answer 125. You can question whether we can have recursive definitions, the answer seems to be yes but by an inductive argument. What does he mean by describe addition? We define addition. 3:24 7:57 You cannot conclude from what you are doing in itself that you intended to do either addition or quadition (obviously). What do you mean by "I meant"? If they are literally equivalent over that domain you can say since the specific actions are the same, if we are thinking of the semantic entailments of the terms, then yes you intended to do both quaddition and addition (and any term which is assigned by someone to have an identical semantic entailment).
interesting. but i think it's because there is a fact (the tone of your voice, your body movements, even in some language syntactical rules) that gives directions for understanding a question as a question and not qua-estion. you can't doubt if it's a question or a regular utterance due to the behavior that serves as a fact (as the sign in the road) to understand what is happening. with concepts like addition or table this is not possible since it's there is never a fact about it who informs me of the future uses.
Let’s see. Let’s picture a table. (At this moment you and I have a very wide range of options to choose from) If i say, it’s a wooden square table that the dimensions of the top flatter part are 4’x4’x1” with four sticks on each corner, the dimensions of that being 1”x1”x2’. What do we do now? How can we even picture something with specific dimensions accurately in our mind? I think it is easier if we would both experience a specific table and even then we would only be able to correctly agree on one table.
Yes, but something can be both self-refuting and other-refuting :P If Peano arithmetic is inconsistent, then you might similarly call a proof of its inconsistency in its own language "self-refuting." But it still demonstrates the inconsistency. You can't get around the skeptical problem so long as you demand infallible answers from epistemology, because it's really just pointing out the fallibility of epistemology (which you can only dismiss as "unlikely" if your epistemology talks about likelihood rather than absolutes).
It wasn't clearly pedagogically useful to spend time on how difficult it is to come up with definitions (e.g., family resemblance wasn't being covered). The part people have a hard time getting is that the Kripkenstinian is not questioning the rule, or the possibility of the rule, he is only questioning if there is (or can be) a fact of the matter regarding whether one is acting in accordance with one rule rather than an indefinite number of other applicable rules. No matter the candidate rule or definition, no matter how abstract, no matter whether there's even a fully specified or yet to be specified rule, one can put brackets around it and add an additional clause. The clause can even entail actions that bear no resemblance to our past use of the term: Perhaps in 1981 had Kripke wanted to be truly absurd he could have written Trus instead of Quus, where Trus is some widely accepted rule for plus with the extra clause that for a certain range of dates one publicly makes an outrageous endorsement that one cannot defend or publicly comment on 12 months later.
I find it interesting that Kripke is forced to define quus by reference to plus; this in itself already defies his line of thinking, because any reference to quus thus necessarily presupposes plus. So, it therefore turns out that we do know what plus means. To say this doesn't apply to the past is simply a mythology whereby this moment is tagged as ontologically different from any other moment, that is just preposterous
@@adrianzondervan6521 Sorry. Your comment seemed to imply that Kripke's line of thinking would be self-refuting if 'quus' is defined by reference to plus. But your take here presupposes that Kripkenstein is arguing that we don't know what 'plus' means. I don't think this presupposition is correct. We all know what 'plus' means, i.e we know how to go on. Rather, what the skeptic aims to show is that our ways of accounting for that knowledge are groundless. Clearly the answer is not 5, but no internal facts or past dispositions can be cited that would justify our knowledge. I may be wrong about this, needless to say.
@@octavianion7304 Kripke "assumes" or rather "grants" that we know what plus means now but that we can never be sure we meant the same in the past. But this is just word play. There is no metaphysical difference between now and some moment in the past. 2. Kripke treats plus as something somehow intrinsically unified; this is utter nonsense. It is a system of rules, and all those rules are explainable. No more "accounting" is called for. The account that Kripke asks for -without really knowing what he asks for- would be nothing but a duplication of the rules as they (already) are. 3. There is a slight conundrum about the infinite extension of this set of rules but this never gets us into problems, and moreover is not what Kripke focuses on. 4. 68 + 57 is simply a challenge that I know how to tackle now and I knew how to tackle it yesterday; precisely because the arithmetics is systematic. 5. "Internal facts" is a term without meaning, unless you make it concrete by saying: "Since a year I know how to do arithmetics" - that could be called an internal fact
Kripke is (als) iemand die het eigenlijk niet WIL begrijpen; of anders gezegd: hij wil het "op een verzengende manier" begrijpen (als iets subliems), en hij presenteert het als iets dat alleen subliem of via de mind zou kunnen worden begrepen; en als dat -zo lijkt het- niet blijkt te kunnen, dan zegt hij: "dus het optellen kan (in het geheel) niet begrepen worden". C.q. ik zou niet kunnen bewijzen dat ik deze regels beheers. Dit is natuurlijk absurd. De redenering klopt niet alleen niet, zij BESTAAT NIET. Wat valt er er bijvoorbeeld te begrijpen aan 4 + 7 = 11? Of aan 35 + 88 = ...? En op welke manier zou Kripke's skepticisme een van deze genoemde optelsommen onmogelijk, onoplosbaar of onbetrouwbaar maken? Zijn redenering is werkelijk de absurditeit zelve. 68+57= ...? is een som, een opgave als ieder ander, simpelweg vallend onder "het systeem" en kan door iedereen die het systeem (de praxis) beheerst, opgelost worden. Nog anders gezegd: er zijn zonder twijfel tussen 0 en 10.000 talloze paren van gehele getallen aan te wijzen die ik nooit heb opgeteld, maar daarmee is toch niet twijfelachtig geworden dat ik elk van deze paren KAN oplossen?! Ik KAN het toch, verdomme? En dat ZEGT toch iets?! Kripke is als een meesmuilende, intellectueel wegsmeltende filosoof die een koket spelletje speelt met het zogenaamde probleem van de oneindigheid. Die de oneindigheid aanwijst als een soort vergaarbak waaruit hij tot in het oneindige counter-examples op mij af zou kunnen vuren, of zogenaamd twijfelachtige gevallen. Maar die twijfelgevallen zijn er helemaal niet, ik daag iedereen uit er zelfs maar een te noemen! Kuipke spreekt ook ten onrechte exclusief over plus als het optellen van twee (waarom niet ook drie of vier?) gehele getallen (waarom niet ook negatieve getallen en breuken, e.d.)? Met welke autoriteit vult hij zo de definitie van "addition" in?!
Surely it can't be a sort of induction that uses past experience to merely make a *probable* prediction about the future. There must be some fact in the past that you can use to *prove deductively* that you don't secretly expect the world to descent into chaos tomorrow :P
How is this topic interesting? If you are skeptical of some mathematical facts, say the consistency of Peano Arithmetic, by posing that any past knowledge is undecidable or inapplicable at present moment. The by the same logic you should also be skeptical that you can carry any knowledge over time, say what you possibly learn from this discussion. So you are essentially questioning your own sanity.
Your lectures are very clear, and easy to understand. It's a delight to listen to them.
Much easier than listening to Kripke 🤯
@@DougieBarclayby far lmao
He’s an amazing lecturer.
I live in Brazil and here there is a great example of a color that has changed its reference over the years. There is a soil called "Terra Roxa" (Purple soil) that is very fertile, but in fact the color of that soil is red. This change in terms occurred because in the 19th century the Italian immigrants called this type of soil "Terra rossa". "Rossa" means red in Italian, but the Brazilians thought "rossa" means "roxa" (purple).
Thank you! I'm in a meaning seminar at UCLA and currently writing my final paper on Kripkenstein and how Horwich's theory addresses his requests. You've given me another push of understanding when I've felt like I have plateaued, which is the worst feeling.
Great lecture. I've been working on this very problem for a few years now as my master's thesis. Here is the best "straight" solution I have come with so far:
First, let's realize that our criteria of correctness is not dependent at all on our past usage, and only counterfactually so on our future usage. Let's call this epistemical position the "eternal present hypothesis". In other words, we can only evaluate our past hypothesis in the light of our present understanding, and the way we presently represent that past hypothesis. Which means, there can be nothing meaningful to be said about us meaning "blue" instead of "grue" in the past, yet our present understanding informs us for all possible pragmatic purposes. In other words, us meaning "blue" in the present is all that could possibly matter pragmatically, when it comes to past and present usages of the term.
Now, what is left to account for is the possibility that we will mean "grue" instead of "blue" in the future; that we will mean "quaddition" instead of "addition". And here, I would simply ask if that matters as long as your present answer gets the job done. And if you consider it does so, you have no reason to reevaluate your assessment.
Indeed, there is no guarantee that your present assessment will carry onto the future. Yet, if you consider your present assessment to be legitimate, and your future assessment is confirming the one you have now, there is nothing more you can do. All you can do is trust in the process, which is a fairly sobering conclusion. Yet I have yet to find a way around it.
That seems exactly right, other solutions are so expensive and don’t carry any additional (pun intended) pragmatic benefit.
@@CR3199 not only do they not carry any "pragmatic" benefit, but they all seem misconstrued. What we seem to be searching for is some fact about what the "right" answer to a mathematical function "should" be. And of course, we will never find such a fact, because we have confused the normative with the factual. What we have to realize is that the "right" answer to a mathematical function, as a normative judgement, cannot call for any kind of fact. What we need is instead an appeal to values; I'd argue, we need a moral theory. I've argued for pragmatism, but perhaps another moral theory would do better.
My intuition after some reflection is that hedonism seems like a better bet. I call it epistemic hedonism. Under this theory, the right answer to a mathematical function is simply the one that "feels" right, until the point it "feels" wrong (for any reason, such as someone telling you it's wrong). I'm not sure it makes for a better theory, but pragmatism has its flaws too, simply because it is too vague of an explanation.
@@meeduoh That’s a very good line of thought. It might be time to review the analytic paradigm which has been dominant for the last hundred plus years. Philosophy can not and should not directly resemble the natural sciences, that thinking has lead to so many dead ends in the discipline. I admire and respect many of the 20th century hero’s of philosophy, yet I’ve never been able to get fully on board with their paradigm. I’m not opposed to analytic methods at all, I just rather all methods and approaches receive their credit. You are on a great track IMHO, please keep up the work, keep trying to get the subject to turn the corner and grow out further, hopefully becoming more relevant. If not philosophy will probably continue to tragically fade. It took me a while to realize so many problems in analytic metaphysics could be classified as pseudo problems and logic puzzles with little relevance outside the direct discussion.
I’m not sure which of your pathways I favor, but these are the conversations which need to be had.
@@CR3199 I've thought for a long while myself that many philosophical problems were pseudo problems, and no doubt many are. I just lost my confidence concerning which ones should be classified as such. The linguistic turn of the last century would have us classify all metaphysical problems into pseudo problems. We thought we should reduce philosophy to logic and create a language which is fully logical, and powerful enough to express a priori any state of the world. Yet it didn't come to pass, the Tractatus, from Wittgenstein's own admission, has failed. There cannot be such an a priori perfect language.
My conclusion is that philosophy is always an attempt at some reduction, so new understandings can come to birth. Every reduction will come to the conclusion that the previous problem was a pseudo problem, under the new framework. Yet, wait a hundred years, and who knows. We thought metaphysics dead, now it feels like a foolish and brash conclusion. Maybe all we should be doing is to multiply the frameworks, let them coexist; let the full creativity of philosophy come to fruition. It can't be more of a waste of time than life itself anyway.
@@meeduoh No of course, when I said pseudo problem I specifically meant the dead ends of a specific paradigm. Philosophy should have no limits of inquiry or avenues of approach since every other subject, and really all of life, is measured by philosophy. As beautiful as an ideal language account of the world in its entirety sounds it was always a doomed project.
And I would personally say distinction over reduction, we very probably mean the same thing so maybe it’s just a negative reaction I have to the term itself in light of the many pushes for reductionism.
marks:
11:33 table example
27:24 go back to candidates for fact from questions
Makes you think about how our ancestors first explained any concept of math to another.
Sapere Aude, dare to understand, dare to experiment, dare to believe, make the leap of faith - children who are learning arithmetic do this, they make a leap of faith - and this seals their competence!
From one dan to another, thank you - this helped me understand this much better :)
Kripkenstein is my favorite philosphical thesis.
20:00
A table and a bachelor are both functions and structure.
Thus to point to only the structure and say "That is what it is" won't work.
We need both to create a proper isomorphism (in the Category Theory sense) so that we can compare similar, though not exact, objects and people.
Simply pointing to an object to define a table won't work, one must also define the function a table serves to create a proper isomorphism.
Similarly, simply pointing to a person to define a bachelor won't do, one must also define the function a bachelor serves to create a proper isomorphism.
Armed with the structure and function of the isomorphism you've set you, you should be able to select any object or person and then see if they are isomorphic to the pre-defined table or bachelor.
30:00
Wouldn't adding a "if and only if" qualifier be enough to distinguish any algorithm you designate as addition from any other algorithm someone else called quaddition?
" (+) designates Addition IFF it follows these two rules:
1) (x)+(0)=(x)
2)(x)+(y) = (x+y)"
And now quaddition condition (IF (x+y)=57 THEN modify rule 2) would break the iff and thus distinguish it from addition.
If I were to give a desk a description, I think all the ways we have imagined to build something we would generally call a desk would need to be specified or categorized in something that is not a desk but is very similar. And then I think I would need to define those by the context that must be known prior of using or seeing the desk and explain how it is used in order to start giving the object some meaning.
Regarding the girl who brought up the problem of measurement: what she may have had in mind and what would be a more relevant problem has to do with the refutation of the observational/theoretic distinction. This involves the claim that all statements involve a theoretical assumption, and none is a statement purely of observation. For example, when we use a ruler to measure, e.g., the length of the desk top, we assume (theoretical) that the ruler itself does not grow or shrink when moved from one place to another, so that a ruler that is 12 inches length up at the chalkboard, is only 8 inches long when brought to the desk.
Oh, I was expecting she meant something like "doesn't this show up if you just measure something that can be broken down into 68 and 57 subdivisions?"
It is often clear watching these videos that at least some of his students are absolutely not on the same page. They have so completely missed the point. He just used table as an off-the-cuff example of something which is inherently difficult to define and they go and try to define it!
Three people see a "baguette", a Frenchman an Englishman and a hunter gatherer. What do they "call" it? The Frenchman calls it "le pain", the Englishman calls it bread, and the hunter gatherer calls it a log if we force him to .
The "observer" has a predisposed experience of things. Knowledge is what we call the coincidence of observation and experience. Ignorance is what we call the dissonance of observation and experience.
The scientific analogy, instead of the mathematical problem you used, is Young's two slit experiment. The experiment used to justify the quantum theory of wave-particle duality.
We are used to waves and particles. We are not used to the quantum world. Our "definitions" need updating. Until they are we force ourselves to call something new something we already know. We're guessing.
As observers scientists are used to particles and waves. So their experiments are designed to differentiate between particles and waves. When they encounter something new they are not experimentally, experienced enough to design an experiment to tell them what they're measuring. If it was a "log" how could they tell, if all they know is bread and baguettes?
This points out two unresolvable realms. Sensation versus the linguistic mind: novelty in Nature versus "novelty" in understanding.
Can there be anything new in understanding that does not FIRST have its origin in Nature? If so, how could we tell? Since there is no "reference" in Nature that we can all agree to by sensual impression; how could we tell that something is new in understanding? Give an example of something new in understanding, that has no reference in Nature, that we call real.
Would Einstein's theory of relativity be valid without observational proof? How? What sort of society would we live in if we accepted theories based on their "novelty"? Would we be living in a democracy or a commune or a dictatorship?
In science we have superposition, entanglement and dark matter and energy. In religion we have omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience and God. They are all theories without reference in Nature. So are numbers, letters, beauty, truth, equality. What should this mean for meaning? Correspondingly what does this mean for humanity which processes meaning?
What sort of society would we be living in if we believed in superposition, entanglement and Dark matter. The same sort of society that believes in God? The same sort that believes in numbers, letters, truth, democracy? What sort of society SHOULDN'T we be living in?
What exists in Nature, currently, is an "evolutionary" fact. What existed in Nature in the past, or what can exist in Nature due to genetic manipulation, how should they be viewed? As more valid than what is current or less valid? What faculty of judgement can let us know, as humans? What faculty does Nature use to balance its competing interests? Blood or agreement: agreement by reason? Which is more violent? Are both just as valid?
Can someone point me to the lecture where the whole class of Bonevac tries to figure out the definition of "chair" please?
I allways liked philosophers for there ability to think a hypotetical tought, outside it is a long forgotten skill.
The exampels are so nicly vauge to prove a concept and not what they show.
Thats why the examples and idees are simple but still there can be a clasroom full of people that claim that they actually not think they get anything.
stel je voor ik wil mezelf iets leren. bijvoorbeeld ik heb een gas toestel, een fornuis met 4 grote pitten en een kleine middenpit, en 5 knoppen om het te regelen. maar ik kan de bewegwijzering niet lezen en ik weet nooit of de pit rechtsboven nu de uiterste rechtse knop is of die daarnaast. maar zojuist wilde ik die pit uitdraaien en ik nam de meest rechtse, ik durfde te kiezen! en het was de juiste keuze. hoewel ik dit nergens op kan funderen, had ik ongetwijfeld ook op basis van subliminaal achtergebleven informatie in mijn brein de juiste knop gekozen. en wat belangrijker is: door aldus te handelen bevestig ik mijn kennen en weten, en mijn beheersing van een stof! dus juist zonder dat er een feit is ten aanzien van mijn mentale positie (wat dat ook zou mogen zijn!??). Ik DURF te handelen, en daardoor leer ik "de regel" ---------
Is this related at all to Nelson Goodman’s new riddle of induction (about grue)
In OC Wittgenstein mentions how his life depends on the fact you have to accept something's. So surely having base acceptances would kind of throw a few things off with this?
Wouldn’t you only be able to define that thing itself? What we see in that time and place?
8:25 bookmark
I suspect that the most meaningful answer to these problems will come from understanding the neuroscience of perception, cognition and language use, and the formalisations of such processes will be basically those of the neural network operations behind them. This approach includes the epistemological bridge between the perception and the concept, at least for colours like Red, and it would still be formalisable. In that respect, I think machine learning approaches that model the human perceptual and conceptual apparatus represent the best hope of resolving these semantic issues in a way that can still be analysed and understood mathematically.
3:17 Then this 'skeptic' does not understand recursive definitions.
Recursive definitions are a PRESCRIPTIVE rule which we say we will carry out given some input.
Sure we can define arithmetic differently. But the addition of those numbers is defined only relative to some semantics of the literal symbols, and one of those is the above recursive definition and if that is the semantics which we attribute to that literla representation of symbols, then we will obtain the answer 125.
You can question whether we can have recursive definitions, the answer seems to be yes but by an inductive argument.
What does he mean by describe addition? We define addition. 3:24
7:57 You cannot conclude from what you are doing in itself that you intended to do either addition or quadition (obviously).
What do you mean by "I meant"? If they are literally equivalent over that domain you can say since the specific actions are the same, if we are thinking of the semantic entailments of the terms, then yes you intended to do both quaddition and addition (and any term which is assigned by someone to have an identical semantic entailment).
is there any place where i can find this lecture transcribed?
Isn't the question self-refuting? How do I know the skeptic isn't asking me a qua-estion versus just a question?
interesting. but i think it's because there is a fact (the tone of your voice, your body movements, even in some language syntactical rules) that gives directions for understanding a question as a question and not qua-estion. you can't doubt if it's a question or a regular utterance due to the behavior that serves as a fact (as the sign in the road) to understand what is happening. with concepts like addition or table this is not possible since it's there is never a fact about it who informs me of the future uses.
Let’s see. Let’s picture a table. (At this moment you and I have a very wide range of options to choose from)
If i say, it’s a wooden square table that the dimensions of the top flatter part are 4’x4’x1” with four sticks on each corner, the dimensions of that being 1”x1”x2’. What do we do now? How can we even picture something with specific dimensions accurately in our mind?
I think it is easier if we would both experience a specific table and even then we would only be able to correctly agree on one table.
Yes, but something can be both self-refuting and other-refuting :P If Peano arithmetic is inconsistent, then you might similarly call a proof of its inconsistency in its own language "self-refuting." But it still demonstrates the inconsistency. You can't get around the skeptical problem so long as you demand infallible answers from epistemology, because it's really just pointing out the fallibility of epistemology (which you can only dismiss as "unlikely" if your epistemology talks about likelihood rather than absolutes).
It wasn't clearly pedagogically useful to spend time on how difficult it is to come up with definitions (e.g., family resemblance wasn't being covered). The part people have a hard time getting is that the Kripkenstinian is not questioning the rule, or the possibility of the rule, he is only questioning if there is (or can be) a fact of the matter regarding whether one is acting in accordance with one rule rather than an indefinite number of other applicable rules.
No matter the candidate rule or definition, no matter how abstract, no matter whether there's even a fully specified or yet to be specified rule, one can put brackets around it and add an additional clause. The clause can even entail actions that bear no resemblance to our past use of the term: Perhaps in 1981 had Kripke wanted to be truly absurd he could have written Trus instead of Quus, where Trus is some widely accepted rule for plus with the extra clause that for a certain range of dates one publicly makes an outrageous endorsement that one cannot defend or publicly comment on 12 months later.
I find it interesting that Kripke is forced to define quus by reference to plus; this in itself already defies his line of thinking, because any reference to quus thus necessarily presupposes plus. So, it therefore turns out that we do know what plus means. To say this doesn't apply to the past is simply a mythology whereby this moment is tagged as ontologically different from any other moment, that is just preposterous
@@adrianzondervan6521 the skeptic is not trying to show that we don't know how to add. We know how to add.
@@octavianion7304 Don't be so compact, explain what you mean properly
@@adrianzondervan6521 Sorry. Your comment seemed to imply that Kripke's line of thinking would be self-refuting if 'quus' is defined by reference to plus. But your take here presupposes that Kripkenstein is arguing that we don't know what 'plus' means. I don't think this presupposition is correct. We all know what 'plus' means, i.e we know how to go on. Rather, what the skeptic aims to show is that our ways of accounting for that knowledge are groundless. Clearly the answer is not 5, but no internal facts or past dispositions can be cited that would justify our knowledge. I may be wrong about this, needless to say.
@@octavianion7304 Kripke "assumes" or rather "grants" that we know what plus means now but that we can never be sure we meant the same in the past. But this is just word play. There is no metaphysical difference between now and some moment in the past. 2. Kripke treats plus as something somehow intrinsically unified; this is utter nonsense. It is a system of rules, and all those rules are explainable. No more "accounting" is called for. The account that Kripke asks for -without really knowing what he asks for- would be nothing but a duplication of the rules as they (already) are. 3. There is a slight conundrum about the infinite extension of this set of rules but this never gets us into problems, and moreover is not what Kripke focuses on. 4. 68 + 57 is simply a challenge that I know how to tackle now and I knew how to tackle it yesterday; precisely because the arithmetics is systematic. 5. "Internal facts" is a term without meaning, unless you make it concrete by saying: "Since a year I know how to do arithmetics" - that could be called an internal fact
so, there are still 35 minutes left to watch from this video, but don't have patience, pls. someone tell me, do the prof use the A-series only?
Kripke is (als) iemand die het eigenlijk niet WIL begrijpen; of anders gezegd: hij wil het "op een verzengende manier" begrijpen (als iets subliems), en hij presenteert het als iets dat alleen subliem of via de mind zou kunnen worden begrepen; en als dat -zo lijkt het- niet blijkt te kunnen, dan zegt hij: "dus het optellen kan (in het geheel) niet begrepen worden". C.q. ik zou niet kunnen bewijzen dat ik deze regels beheers. Dit is natuurlijk absurd. De redenering klopt niet alleen niet, zij BESTAAT NIET.
Wat valt er er bijvoorbeeld te begrijpen aan 4 + 7 = 11? Of aan 35 + 88 = ...? En op welke manier zou Kripke's skepticisme een van deze genoemde optelsommen onmogelijk, onoplosbaar of onbetrouwbaar maken? Zijn redenering is werkelijk de absurditeit zelve.
68+57= ...? is een som, een opgave als ieder ander, simpelweg vallend onder "het systeem" en kan door iedereen die het systeem (de praxis) beheerst, opgelost worden. Nog anders gezegd: er zijn zonder twijfel tussen 0 en 10.000 talloze paren van gehele getallen aan te wijzen die ik nooit heb opgeteld, maar daarmee is toch niet twijfelachtig geworden dat ik elk van deze paren KAN oplossen?! Ik KAN het toch, verdomme? En dat ZEGT toch iets?!
Kripke is als een meesmuilende, intellectueel wegsmeltende filosoof die een koket spelletje speelt met het zogenaamde probleem van de oneindigheid. Die de oneindigheid aanwijst als een soort vergaarbak waaruit hij tot in het oneindige counter-examples op mij af zou kunnen vuren, of zogenaamd twijfelachtige gevallen. Maar die twijfelgevallen zijn er helemaal niet, ik daag iedereen uit er zelfs maar een te noemen!
Kuipke spreekt ook ten onrechte exclusief over plus als het optellen van twee (waarom niet ook drie of vier?) gehele getallen (waarom niet ook negatieve getallen en breuken, e.d.)? Met welke autoriteit vult hij zo de definitie van "addition" in?!
How do I know "the sun" will be the sun tomorrow?
Surely it can't be a sort of induction that uses past experience to merely make a *probable* prediction about the future. There must be some fact in the past that you can use to *prove deductively* that you don't secretly expect the world to descent into chaos tomorrow :P
You don't said David Hume.
Yan , tan, tethera......??
How is this topic interesting? If you are skeptical of some mathematical facts, say the consistency of Peano Arithmetic, by posing that any past knowledge is undecidable or inapplicable at present moment. The by the same logic you should also be skeptical that you can carry any knowledge over time, say what you possibly learn from this discussion. So you are essentially questioning your own sanity.
Sounds like a math of the gaps argument.