TMax01 t1_it9pqyk wrote on October 21, 2022 at 11:37 PM

Reply to comment by Capital_Net_6438 in /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | October 17, 2022 by BernardJOrtcutt

>But I care about the general moral.

Whether the thumb is a finger is not really any different than whether a hot dog is a sandwich. With all due respect for Kripke, if formal systems of any kind whatsoever could resolve such things, they would have been resolved long ago, whether by Kripke himself or by Aristotle or by someone in the interim.

>Could the authorities conclude that green isn’t a color?

Green isn't a color. Green is an experience of perceiving a frequency of electromagnetic radiation that opsin molecules most sensitive to ~535 nanometer wavelengths respond to. So the authorities say.

> Suppose physicists announced that. I think I want to say they could be wrong.

It seems like you are reticent to confess that, as if physicists, biologists, or scientists in general are priests with the blessing of God who must not be contradicted. This is scientificism, not science.

>The fact that the authorities announce a classification doesn’t make it automatically right. But could it be right?

Ay, there's the rub.

"Could" is something we mere mortals must deal with. Scientists (and analytic philosophers like Aristotle or Kripke) should stick with "is", and we should ignore them when they don't, because they are not priests providing divine revelations.

The meaning of words (like "finger" or "sandwich") does not derive from being codes for logically precise and consistent categories. Socrates was [mistaken ]( >But I care about the general moral.

>Could the authorities conclude that green isn’t a color?

> Suppose physicists announced that. I think I want to say they could be wrong.

>The fact that the authorities announce a classification doesn’t make it automatically right. But could it be right?

Ay, there's the rub.

The meaning of words (like "finger" or "sandwich") does not derive from being codes for logically precise and consistent categories. Socrates was mistaken when he said that in order to know if virtue can be taught we must first define it. Substitute 'wisdom' or 'knowledge' or 'sandwich' for "virtue" it makes no difference. The definition of a word depends, innately, inherently, and intrinsically, on context. Whether a thumb is a finger or a hot dog is a sandwich depends on why you are using the word "finger" or "sandwich", not on the physical (or historical, or "conceptual") properties of fingers, thumbs, wieners, or food.

Conventional philosophy includes a supposedly unavoidable premise that words (or "concepts", a word invented to avoid dealing with this very issue/truth) cannot have communicative value in this fashion: they must be codes or else they are meaningless. Nothing could be further from the truth. (I mean that literally, not just figuratively.) Your intuition may tell you (since you have been taught according to this convention) that this informal/non-categorical/illogical method of words and language would result in incomprehensibility: that words would be unintelligible if their definitions were entirely derived from context rather than "authority". But the truth is, this is how words have always worked, since humankind first started using them. And it is worth pointing out that we started using them long before we realized we were doing so, and came up with the word "word" to identify and describe them, let alone before analytic philosophers started insisting they'd work better if they were a formal and logical system of codes.

So the reality (and I mean that, again, literally rather than rhetorically) is that scientists are authorities on science, which is about quantities and formulas, not words or reality. There are ways (contexts) in which a thumb is a finger, there are other ways it is not. It isn't really that confusing unless you want it to be. Your brain might be nothing more than an organic computer programmed by natural selection and operant conditioning, but your mind is independent of that, and is all about self-determination, reasoning, morality, and ignoring as much of what you've been taught as you need to in order to do better than those who taught you.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

Capital_Net_6438 t1_itbg8wq wrote on October 22, 2022 at 10:52 AM

Thanks for the response. There’s a lot there so I’ll just respond to a few.

First a very minor thing. I don’t think I was aware of this hot dog/sandwich thing. However, it seems to the situation as far as whether a hot dog is or is not a sandwich is surely dramatically different from whether Pluto is a planet. (I think that’s better as an example than the thumb or color situations, for reasons that I’ll perhaps get to.) With Pluto I take it at a broad level of description people are looking at whatever data, trying to systematize it in accordance with whatever empirical/logical criteria. And they say Pluto is or is not a planet.

Are there people looking at data trying to systematize analogously to figure out whether hot dogs should be classified as sandwiches in our best empirical theory of edibles? I guess sandwich and planet seem to me like relevantly different kinds of concepts with respect to a potential effort to discover how they carve up reality. But I’m open to persuasion on this.

As far as green being a color: I don’t think mainstream physics says green isn’t a color. I think they claim to have discovered the (admittedly surprising) nature of green and color, which is whatever involved fact about light and reflection and whatnot.

I am reticent to acquiesce in a conclusion by a group of investigators that really seems in conflict with how I thought my concepts worked at a basic level. Thus the 5 is not a number example. I imagine you’d be reticent to acquiesce in that alleged revelation?

Context: It’s interesting you mention that because I’ve been thinking along those lines for thumb, Pluto, etc. We take our concepts (I know you don’t like that term!) to connect up with reality as a team. So the scientists do whatever ferreting about planets and discover the whole affiliated team fits better if Pluto is not a planet. I assume my concept is theirs and therefore there is this chain reaction whereby I don’t think of Pluto as a planet.

I really should study in detail what these people are drawing on in the various examples (Pluto, time, thumb, monkey). I guess one thing I suspect is that they don’t care much about being faithful to a common concept of planet or finger or whatever.

I agree on the importance of context I think generally. But I think pretty much the same questions remain about the relationship b/been my planet classifications and the astronomers.

TMax01 t1_itc00p7 wrote on October 22, 2022 at 2:09 PM

> whether a hot dog is or is not a sandwich is surely dramatically different from whether Pluto is a planet.

Not really even a little bit, for all the reasons already discussed, as I will again explain:

> With Pluto I take it at a broad level of description people are looking at whatever data, trying to systematize it in accordance with whatever empirical/logical criteria

Nope. Now, granted, because the issue with Pluto is a very limited one in several ways, your mistaken notion of systemization is closer to being realistic. But it highlights the inadequacy of that model at the same time.

First, in that case there undoubtably is an explicit authority involved. And in theory they are only dispassionately determining what category and object belongs in. But what happens in real life? Rather than describe the issue as "whether astronomers call Pluto a planet or a dwarf planet" becomes "whether Pluto is a planet", with 'dwarf' planet being a 'demotion' (whether something is a "dwarf" is no different than whether it is a "sandwich", syntax be damned) and a tempestuous argument because it involves whether school children will learn the same "nine planets" their parents did.

Words aren't words in science. They're merely alphabetic symbols for mathematical quantities or logic categories chosen to resemble words, effectively as a mnemonic device. Science works well, because math (aka logic) works well, for physical objects, which can't intentionally change their behavior because they don't like what someone said. Whether you should care about what a scientist says depends on whether the math works out, it never actually has anything to do with the meaning of the words as descriptors for what they measured to produce quantities for their calculations. Unless you believe scientists are priests who's moral dictates must be followed, they are not in charge of what words we use.

Now the problem is that the word "science" is, like "finger", a word. Whether something is "science" actually depends entirely on why someone might call it science, or why someone might not. We again are taught that there is a "concept" or "category" the label confers and by which we can infer validity and certainty in an absolute sense, and there are, of course, good reasons for that notion.. But they revolve around the justifications for calling something science (the process, the empiricism, the mathematical predictions of future objectively quantifiable results) not any magic power the 'label' has. 'Science', ultimately, is a word, and like all words it isn't a label for a logical category of "thing", it is an identifier and descriptor who's validity depends on whether it is recognized as accurate within a particular context, not any existential ability to be calculated True of False in a universal sense. People who are emotionally certain that language is (or must be, or wouldn't work unless it was, or would benefit by being) a formal system then invent new 'categories' like soft science to maintain their faith in their assumed conclusion when their initial argument can no longer be defended. Is psychology actually science or a scholarly tradition of myths? There are philosophers (themselves assuming conclusions and wishing dearly for philosophy itself to be an analytic science) who insist that all science is myth-building, and only consciousness truly exists.

>Thus the 5 is not a number example. I imagine you’d be reticent to acquiesce in that alleged revelation?

I believe you really mean whether 5 (or any other number) is real, rather than whether 5 is a number. I am very familiar with the "located in time and space" criteria. I would not describe my position as reticent, acquiescence, or allegation, but actual revelation: it is the same question as whether a hot dog is a sandwich. As an object, all sandwiches can be located in time and space. As a category of thing, "sandwich" does not occur in time or space. Whether a restaurant puts it in the "sandwiches" section of their menu is as potentially trivial and potentially consequential as whether astronomers regard Pluto as a planet, or whether school children learn to recite that categorization as if it was a fact.

> I guess one thing I suspect is that they don’t care much about being faithful to a common concept of planet or finger or whatever.

They definitely do; their entire worldview would unravel (according to the dogma of their faith, although in real life the change would be less dramatic and more beneficial, since their worldview is inaccurate in this regard) if words weren't empty symbols used as arbitrary labels for "concepts" and logical categories for "concepts" which are themselves "concepts". This explains the supposedly revelatory explanation of the status of a thumb as a finger that initiated your dive down the rabbit hole of existential epistemology because it rocked your worldview.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.