The bLOGOS

hola, me parece un tema bastante penetrante en la ...

2009-11-12T22:25:59.790+01:00

hola, me parece un tema bastante penetrante en la vida de cualquier persona, lo curioso es que no se que hago en esta pagina, porque estaba buscando información sobre mi proyecto llamado Generic Viagra,pero escogí esta pagina en google y me pareció interesante, gracias por compartirla!

So, just for the record: I certainly accept (ii). ...

2009-11-11T21:55:19.721+01:00

So, just for the record: I certainly accept (ii). To be real/fundamental is to be a truthmaker, and to be derivative is for the fact that you exist to be made true by something other than yourself.

RE (i). I think that A makes p true iff p is true in virtue of the truth of [A exists]. So truthmaking itself isn't a relation between truths (at least, not always): it's a relation between some thing(s) and some truth. But it goes hand in hand with the obtaining of the in virtue of relation between truths.

That on its own doesn't say anything about whether one of these relations is prior to the other, of course. But I'm somewhat tempted by the view (and I think this is what Dan has in mind by attributing (i) to me) that it's the in virtue of relation that's prior, with truthmaking defined in terms of it via the above biconditional. Why? Economy, and I don't think there's a neat way to define in virtue of in terms of truthmaking.

Thanks Dan! Basically, I want to do what you thin...

2009-11-11T15:05:01.567+01:00

Thanks Dan!

Basically, I want to do what you think won't do. I want to hold the following: that if you have your present intrinsic nature partly in virtue of having the property F and it's not true that you have your present intrinsic nature partly in virtue of having the property G, then it's not true that you have your PIN partly in virtue of having the conjunctive property being F and G. All the work is being done by F, none at all is being done by G, so what settles your PIN is your being F, nothing to do with G, so the conjunctive property F&G isn't helping settle your PIN, only the one conjunct is.

Now, maybe there's a liberal notion of in virtue of according to which (*) follows from (#). (Maybe!) But as long as there's *some way* for me to make the required distinction, that's all I want. So perhaps the only admissible properties are those that play a role in the minimal difference-making base. I can't see a reason to doubt that there's some way of distinguishing difference-making properties such that a conjunctive property with a difference-making property as a conjunct doesn't itself automatically count as a difference-making property.

I'm no expert on the truthmaker literature, but I'...

2009-11-04T23:00:05.667+01:00

I'm no expert on the truthmaker literature, but I'm pretty sure Ross would accept (ii): things like me and you don't serve as truthmakers. I think that's because he wants fundamentality and truthmaking to be tied together: to be fundamental is to do truthmaking work. Or at least he's up for something like that.

I'd be surprised if Ross was okay with (i) though.

Hi Rich! We were mainly people working partly on ...

2009-11-03T14:11:22.616+01:00

Hi Rich!

We were mainly people working partly on metaphysics, but I know the kind of eye-rolling you mention.

Interesting stuff about the relation between the relation between (say) parts grounding the wholes they compose and that between (say) these parts (or wholes) making some truths true.

Re Ross, if I don't misremember he holds two relatively unorthodox views about truth-making, right? (i) That it is a relation between truths as opposed to things such as myself and truths and (ii) that (truths corresponding to) non-fundamental, derived things such as myself don't truthmake. Hmmm...

Hey Dan, My own take on the matter is that we nee...

2009-11-03T11:44:37.421+01:00

Hey Dan,

My own take on the matter is that we need some kind of hyperintensional notion in metaphysics, and various people -- Ted, Kit, Ross, Jonathan -- have put different options on the table. And I think anyone tempted towards those views will look upon the (1)-(2) inference as being obviously sound. What I've found interesting is (i) how lots of metaphysicians don't like these kinds of views -- eyes roll when you mention naturalness or quantificational structure. (Not in Leeds, of course ;)) but (ii) how lots of non-metaphysicians tend to find the views natural and appealing. So I'd be interested to hear what the demographic was in the session when you read it, and especially whether the metaphysicians were more reticent to accept the (1)-(2) proof, and the move to fundamentality.

FWIW, and since you mentioned the paper, I'm not totally happy with Schaffer's view. On reason is that he's focusing mainly on the case of entity-grounding, whereas we want a more general account of grounding that tells us what grounds the truth of propositions. I can see how this might go, within Schaffer's setting, but I'm a bit concerned it either (i) collapses into Ross's view (truth-grounding = truth-making, and entity-grounding drops out) or (ii) needs to invoke ugly primitives (i.e. states of affairs, facts, or somesuch structured entities).

I thought the discussions about this on the occasi...

2009-10-27T19:13:13.000+01:00

I thought the discussions about this on the occasion of Dan LdS's presentation at the LOGOS-Jean Nicod meeting were clarifying. I would say that the examples only show that with one and the same "utterance" (individuating utterances relative to the physical properties of the uttering-output) one can make different "utterances" (now individuating them on the basis of constitutive semantic properties, such as the contribution of indexicals). Egan also appears to go for this (pp. 269-71), although he is not ultimately fully committal. But I agree with Dan's main claim, that there is a natural way of interpreting Lewis' framework of sentences, indexes and context that can also accommodate the examples.

Yes, I had a discussion with him about this last y...

2009-10-27T19:04:11.941+01:00

Yes, I had a discussion with him about this last year at a St. Andrews conference, and it was clear that he was defending a view similar to MacFarlane's.

Thanks for this! Lasersohn also commented on the ...

2009-10-27T17:59:30.869+01:00

Thanks for this!

Lasersohn also commented on the issue, replying to this post on why the view in (2005) is not non-indexical contextualism but (radical) relativism proper.

Hi all, about Pablo's first comment: if I underst...

2009-10-19T13:44:08.668+02:00

Hi all,

about Pablo's first comment: if I understand you well, your argument pressuposes that objects are identical to fusions of other objects (cells, atoms or whatever) but is this assumption a plausible assumption from a Wiggins-style framework?

The same for the Strong Supplementation principle.

about Pablo's second comment: even accepting the Strong Supplementation principle, could not defenders of "constitution is not identity" say that the cat has the following part : a sortal-component (in the style of Koslicki 2008) which it does not share with the piece of feline tissue out of which it is made? What do you think?

Marta

Hi Dan! The first part of the paper was actually ...

2009-10-15T18:33:37.422+02:00

Hi Dan!

The first part of the paper was actually to argue (with Egan) against the interpretation of his audience’s “positional” context as context of assessment, in MacFarlane’s sense ;-).

Re the core or your post, though, I interpreted Egan as suggesting that the phenomenon of audience-sensitivity motivates a refinement of the Lewisian basic notion of a sentence being true at a (Lewisian) context (= Kaplan context, according to my (and Lewis’) interpretation of Kaplan), positing both a context for the speaker and a context for the audience. (I contended that contexts were already flexible enough as to accommodate the phenomenon, a position that Egan himself considers in a couple of footnotes, acknowledging discussion to Carrie Jenkins.)

Part of the discussion did concern how the phenomenon could seem to pose a problem, or allow for an alternative form of accommodation, when (various conceptions of) particular acts of uttering, as opposed to sentences in context, are involved. Perhaps this a good occasion to invite people to elaborate ;-)!

Strong Suplementation tells you that if the cat is...

2009-10-09T17:42:42.704+02:00

Strong Suplementation tells you that if the cat is not part of the lump, the cat has a part that is disjoint from the lump. Now, suppose for reductio that the cat is not part of the lump. Then, which part of the cat is disjoint from the lump, given the “plausible assumptions” I mentioned? It cannot be one of the cells, because each cell is part of both the cat and the lump. It cannot be one of the bigger parts of the cat, like the head, because the bigger parts are also composed by some of the cells that compose the lump. So the cat must be part of the lump after all. And for parallel reasoning, the lump is part of the cat. In order to keep the Wigginsian view that the lump and the cat are non-identical, one has to reject anti-symetry. I hope I am not confused :)…

I don't know much about Wiggins, Marta might elabo...

2009-10-09T17:11:06.422+02:00

I don't know much about Wiggins, Marta might elaborate. Just a quick question: How does the argument from Strong Supplementation against Antisymmetry go?

For those of us who were not present, could you pl...

2009-10-09T17:01:29.489+02:00

For those of us who were not present, could you please elaborate on the doubts about why Wiggins should count as an anti-extensionalist? Could he really claim that the head of the cat is part of the cat but not of the lump of feline tissue that constitutes the cat (or the ‘mere sum of cat cells’, as you put it)? Here is a brief argument against this possibility: it seems plausible that there is a set of things, some cells, that fuses into both the cat and the lump –so both the cat and the lump are made of exactly the same cells. It also seems plausible that every part of both the cat and the lump is made of some of these cells. But then, given Strong Suplementation, the cat is part of the lump and vice-versa. (Something that, if I remember correctly, is accepted by Thompson, in her defense of a Wiggins-like position…this comes with a rejection of the principle that if x and y are both part of each other, then x=y). And then, by transivity, the head of the cat is part of the lump and so anti-extensionalism as characterized by Varzi is not avoided…the cat does not have any parts that the mere sum lacks. ---

I think I did not get something, because I still d...

2009-10-03T09:25:19.243+02:00

I think I did not get something, because I still do not see why would the Strawsonian formulation of the difference between illocutions and perlocutions make it question-begging to claim that making someone to see something in a new light, or to notice resemblances or to think about one thing in terms of some other thing, is a perlocutionary act, i.e., an act done with perlocutionary intention. Also, I don't see how could this possibly be illocutionary.

Here is how I understand the Strawsonian formulation of the relation of communicative intention, illocutionary intention and perlocutionary intention.

Illocutionary intentions are such that their “fulfillment consists in their recognition”. This is not true of perlocutionary intentions. Examples might be of help here.

1) You might recognize that what I am trying to do is to convince you that metaphors effect is perlocutionary even in Strawsonian terms, still, despite the recognition of my intention you might, and most probably, you will remain unconvinced. And if it is so, it is hard to say that I performed the act of convincing you.

2) On the other hand, if you recognize that what I am trying to do is to make or perform a request, then you cannot but take me to make or perform a request. Even if it is not possible for you to give me what I ask for, I still performed the request and you will take what I have done as a request. Searle, (Speech Acts, 1969) who, I think, adopts the Strawsonian view, put it this way:

"[i]n the case of illocutionary acts we succeed in doing what we are trying to do by getting our audience to recognize what we are trying to do. But the ‘effect’ on the hearer is not a belief or a response, it consist simply in the hearers understanding the utterance of the speaker. It is that effect that I have been calling the illocutionary effect." (47)

So much for the difference between illocutionary and perlocutionary intentions. Are they both communicative intentions? Well, what I've found in the literature is that people equate communicative intentions with illocutionary intentions as far as linguistic communication is concerned. I do not really understand this move, but, anyway, it is not important now. One might say that what we have here are two effects, both causal, but there is a difference in the way they are produced, and that is what is important.

The question is whether the intention to make someone to think about one thing in terms of something else is illocutionary and, thereby, communicative intention or not? I am sure its fulfillment does not consists in its recognition, as the Confession of C.S. Lewis illustrates

"I am so coarse, the things poets see
Are obstinately invisible to me,
For twenty years I’ve started my level best,
To see if evening—any evening—would suggest
A patient etherised upon a table;
In vain, I simply wasn’t able,"

Consequently, it cannot be illocutionary. But maybe I am wrong about the Strawsonian way of characterizing the difference between illocutions and perlocutions.

In my talk, I said that I do not really like this formulation; let me give my reason here. According to this characterization, understanding the utterances of others requires the ability of attributing and recognizing complex mental states (reflexive intentions) of others. Now, children under the age of three do not really have that ability, still they understand others' illocutionary acts and are able to produce utterances with various illocutionary forces (cf. Kissine 2009 Illocutionary forces and what is said, Mind and Language).

And again, as Manuel García-Carpintero pointed it out rightly, I agree that in the case of metaphors there is something illocutionary over and above the literal illocutionary act. It basically follows form the fact that we do make claims, as questions etc., by metaphors. My interest lies in answering the question: How can we make this compatible with the claim that metaphors' effect is perlocutionary (on every theory of perlocution formulated so far).

¿No puede ser que los cerdos no sean el tipo de co...

2009-08-23T21:56:09.068+02:00

¿No puede ser que los cerdos no sean el tipo de cosas acerca de las cuales se puede 1-concebir? ¿No dice Chalmers en algún lado que las proposiciones a 1-concebir sólo pueden contener términos "neutros"? Esto es, términos que no están anclados en un individuo o un natural kind y que, por ello mismo, no son rígidos.

Por otro lado, una interpretación que a mí me seducía de la concebibilidad positiva -que no sé si nadie defiende- es que uno concibe positivamente que p si es capaz de imaginar experiencias tales que, de tenerlas, tendría indicios suficientes para creer justificadamente all-things-considered en la verdad de p.

Imaginar ver a los nazis entrar en Londres, escuchar a Churchill por la radio declarar la victoria de Alemania, etc. Cosas así serían las que nos permitirían declarar que podemos concebir positivamente tal cosa. Esto, claro está, sigue siendo compatible con la imposibilidad metafisica de la cosa en cuestión.

Luis pregunta: ¿Significa esto que las únicas Oi r...

2009-08-18T10:13:54.869+02:00

Luis pregunta: ¿Significa esto que las únicas Oi relevantes para 1-concebir positivamente un mundo-S son aquellas en las que el condicional es a priori?
Siguiendo lo que Luis explica:

Si quiero 1-concebir positivamente que un cerdo vuela necesito.
1. Condicionales del tipo: Si a vuela entonces B(a) que sean a priori
(Si a vuela entonces se eleva del suelo, etc)

Sea BT el conjunto de condiciones necesarias para que a vuele en un mundo S:

2 que una descripción D relevante de un mundo-S sea consistente. Es decir, que BT (cerdo) sea consistente.

Si entiendo tu análisis lo que necesito es la consistencia a priori de BT(cerdo) para decir que "un cerdo vuela" es 1-concebible positivamente.
¿Si esto es así porque es tan difícil de 1-concebir?

No tengo muy clara la diferencia entre concebibilidad negativa y positiva si esta queda reducida a que S no sea falsa a priori y que una descripción D relevante de un mundo-S sea consistente.
Al menos a la hora de hablar de 1-concebibilidad:

Si para juzgar si algo es consistente sólo podemos tomar elementos a priori en la 1-concebibilidad, entonces:

Si la descripción es consistente entonces no es falsa a priori.

Si la descripción no es falsa a priori entonces es consistente (si sólo podemos tomar en cuenta elementos a priori para considerar la consistencia)

Me da la impresión que 1-concebible positivamente y 1-concebible negativamente es lo mismo.

Permanezco atento a la discusión aunque no creo poder aportar más que dudas.

3d scanning from Surfdev, a specialist scanning se...

2009-08-12T13:31:00.949+02:00

3d scanning from Surfdev, a specialist scanning service performed by a reverse engineering company.
Vaccum forming and CAD/CAM, APHWEB provide high specification work, working from drawings and models using modern and traditional methods.

I also like to think that all colour experiences h...

2009-07-14T14:15:03.318+02:00

I also like to think that all colour experiences have some common phenomenal character, absent in non-colour experiences (even a synesthete would agree with that).
To your first question: Yes, I think that (broadly speaking) experiences of different shadows of green share some phenomenal feature. But my point is that this intuition only arises because we are speaking broadly. In general we tend to say things like “I feel different things when looking at very distinct shadows of green but differences are not so marked as when I look at an orange”. So it is intuitive to conclude that they all share the some phenomenal feature.
Now, if we speak more specifically and consider some concrete cases, the intuition does not seem so clear to me. Take for instance one of these images to test daltonism where there’s a red number over a background of different green spots. When compared with the salient red number, the phenomenal character of our experiences of all these green spots is, if not the same, closely similar. But think about an artificial dark grass football field with a very pale green ball in the middle field. At least for this case, the salient pale green ball would make its corresponding colour experience phenomenologically different from the colour experience of the surroundings. Still, you can speak broadly and argue that it doesn’t matter because your theory is just concerned with the phenomenal character of colours in general. But if you go that way I think you would be missing something important: how the phenomenal character of a colour experience arises not just depending on the colour in question but on the relation with surrounding colours.
To the last question: I used to think that visual experiences have phenomenologically speaking something in common. After taking last year the course of processes of multisensorial integration things are not so clear. The normal functioning of brains is a multimodality functioning, there’s a lot of multisensorial stuff there which I think not so independent from the what-it-is-like thing.

Manolo, it seems to follow from what you are sayin...

2009-07-14T09:24:19.638+02:00

Manolo, it seems to follow from what you are saying that the phenomenal character of an experience of red34 is not irreducible. Do you agree?

Thanks Fernando. Do you think that different exper...

2009-07-13T18:09:12.730+02:00

Thanks Fernando.
Do you think that different experiences of very different shadows of green (but not at all borderline cases like green-yellow or green-blue) have phenomenologically speaking something in common?
And two experiences, one of a clear borderline case of green-yellow and one of clear green?
Setting aside the case of synesthesia (I agree with your objection at this point, but now I am more interested in brains that function "normally" and the one of the synesthete is not one of them), would you agree that, in your case, visual experiences feel somehow similarly? do you think that those experiences have phenomenologically speaking something in common?

Yep, I think all colour experiences have some comm...

2009-07-13T18:02:01.686+02:00

Yep, I think all colour experiences have some common phenomenal character, which non-colour experiences lacks. Mutatis mutandis for experiences as of red.

I am not very acquainted with this topic. Anyhow, ...

2009-07-13T12:50:35.072+02:00

I am not very acquainted with this topic. Anyhow, from what you say I infer that to solve whether a set of colour experiences have something phenomenological in common what calls the tune are the clearly distinct cases. Now, the fact that there are borderline cases in which someone would hesitate to label a certain shade as 'green' or 'yellow' makes the supposition controversial, doesn't it? I would say that we tend to think that the answer to your first question is positive because when it comes to think about it we normally have in mind the whole visible spectrum of colours. My sorites-flavoured intuition is that we don't get a positive answer unless we solve in the first place the case of borderline colour experiences (those which we feel neither green, neither yellow).
For the second question, I think that a sound-colour synesthete wouldn’t agree.

Yep, the thing is: I can see how this enabling can...

2009-07-09T11:28:47.877+02:00

Yep, the thing is: I can see how this enabling can be done by HPCs; for other "natural properties", we should see.

At any rate, I think we need what one could call an induction-structure: a cluster of properties that are frequently coinstantiated and a reason why they so corecur. The bare-bones version of this requisite is the HPC but, I think, traditional-essence natural kinds could also do the trick: water, e. g., is also such that a number of properties (transparent, liquid, hydrating, etc.) go together for a reason.

BTW I take it that holding that the relevant refer...

2009-07-09T08:22:51.594+02:00

BTW I take it that holding that the relevant referents are HPCs is your favored metaphysical view on that, but how much of your proposal essentially depends on this? If someone just believed in a fundamental distinction between natural (enough) properties and the rest, could she still adapt your proposal, and say that what determines the reference of the positives of a mental mechanism M is the following?

M has the function to indicate the presence of Fi, for a number i of properties, and the emergence of this function has been enabled by the presence of a natural (enough) property, say, F. The reference of M is, then, F.

I guess I should just read your stuff, sorry ;-)!