Consul wrote: ↑June 25th, 2019, 9:01 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑June 22nd, 2019, 5:04 amBut in general, I think what you say demonstrates the point I'm making about mistaking what we say for the way things are. From Aristotle, via Kant to Husserl, the fundamental mistake is the delusion that we can, as it were, look through or beyond our ways of describing reality, to grasp reality itself and compare it with our ways of describing it.
True representations are our epistemic window to reality, and we don't discover truths by
comparing representations with realities. (Truths don't look like their truthmakers.)
Why do we have to use 'true representations' in order to know things? Can we not or never know them directly? The JTB truth condition is: S knows that p iff p is true. But why should knowing that something is the case have anything to do with a proposition, let alone a true one?
"Not all the ways the world can be represented are ways the world is, so a particular species of creature found it necessary to employ the following convention to distinguish representations from misrepresentations. Representations that indicate the way the world actually is they called 'true', and representations that failed to do so they called 'false'.
Truth is a relation between two things—a representation (the truth bearer) and the world or some part of it (the truthmaker)."
(Martin, C. B. The Mind in Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. p. 24)
As I'm sure you're aware, the truth-maker/truth-bearer theory is by no means a settled matter - mainly, I think, because correspondence theories fail to account for the nature of the supposed correspondence.
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑June 22nd, 2019, 5:04 amTalk of concepts, propositions, objects, entities, substances and essences maintains the delusion.
Since nothing can be nothing/everything must be something, all entities or realities must have some
nature (
Sosein in German) or other, and belong to some
kind(s) of entities/realities or other, including highest ones as represented by ontological categories.
This is to say a thing is a thing of some kind or other, which is true. I'm saying there are no categories in reality, but only things that can be categorised.
Whether we can know (and if yes, how) what the true (correct/accurate) categorial description or model of Being is is another question (in the epistemology of ontology).
And here is the delusion at work. The idea of a true, correct or accurate categorial description or model of anything is a fantasy. Any thing can be categorised and described in different ways - and there's no limit to how many ways - according to the purpose of the description.
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑June 22nd, 2019, 5:04 amWe fantasize that logic deals with reality or thought, where all it deals with is language.
Metaphysics or ontology is neither logic nor (meta-)linguistics! It certainly
uses language, but it isn't
about language or grammar as its subject matter.
I think your misunderstanding of what I wrote here is very revealing. I'm talking about what logic deals with - which is language - and you assume I'm talking about what metaphysics or ontology deal with - which (supposedly) is reality.
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑June 22nd, 2019, 5:04 amWe've been so dazzled for so long that we imagine reality consists of subjects and predicates, which are no more than linguistic functions.
You're begging the question against substance(substrate)/attribute or object/property ontology, because the grammatical categories <subject> and <predicate> may well represent real ontological kinds of entities. And even if there are languages lacking a subject-predicate structure, there can still be substances and attributes, objects and properties, since Being is independent of language.
Of course, reality is independent of what can be said about it. And I'm advocating a radical distinction between the way things are and what we say about them. (To my knowledge, there's no evidence for the existence of subjects and predicates outside linguistic expressions. The absence of evidence may not mean they don't exist, but it does mean that to believe they do exist is irrational.)
"There is an argument against substrata that Locke did not anticipate that deserves brief consideration. The argument is that we come to believe in the need for substrata simply because it is suggested by the subject-predicate form of our language (and also, presumably, by the (Ex) of quantification in logic). Then it is argued that some languages (and also, presumably, some logics) don't have this subject-predicate form. So, the conclusion seems to be that the notion of, and supposed need for, substrata is due only to, and suggested by, a local, parochial linguistic form.
It is very difficult to see the force of this argument. First, the claim that some languages lack anything like a subject-predicate form is not the proven linguistic fact that it is argued to be. However, the argument cannot be at all conclusive, even if this claim were true. Because, secondly, if some languages suggest a substratum and some do not, the question should still arise 'Which are right?' Then the argument for substrata, and against alternative theories, would have to be considered."
(Martin, C. B. "Substance Substantiated." 1980. Reprinted in Particulars, Actuality, and Identity over Time, edited by Michael Tooley, 37-44. New York: Garland, 1999. pp. 42-3)
I'm afraid I find your quotations unhelpful. It's tedious to have to address and perhaps refute someone else's argument.
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑June 22nd, 2019, 5:04 amReality doesn't categorise or describe itself. We do that when we talk about it.
This is trivially true, but it doesn't follow that the real world is in itself an undifferentiated and unstructured, homogeneous or uniform blob. In fact, it is not! It does have some inherent existential form and structure that is independent of and undetermined by human representations (concepts).
Straw man. Reality consists of real things that can be categorised in different ways - no disagreement there. (Btw, calling human representations 'concepts' opens a whole nother can of worms.)
"The principal task of ontology is the provision of a Kategorienlehre. As long as analytic philosophy was beholden to the forms of predicate logic and its semantic partner set theory, the notion of category and the theory of categories languished. The assumption, whether implicit (in most cases) or explicit (in the case of Wittgenstein), of a thoroughgoing harmony or categorial and structural match between the forms of language and the forms of objects, left no room for consideration whether a system of classification of objects, including in its most general levels a system of categories, was anything other than something one could read off logical semantics, or in the case of ordinary-language philosophy, the meaning and use of vernacular expressions. Along with a select handful of others, including John Anderson, Roderick Chisholm, David Armstrong, and Reinhardt Grossmann, Jonathan recognized that in the absence of a methodological handrail from logic and linguistics, ontology needed to be more specific and deliberate about its selection, articulation, and justification of categories."
(Simons, Peter. "Lowe, the Primacy of Metaphysics, and the Basis." In Ontology, Modality, and Mind: Themes from the Metaphysics of E. J. Lowe, edited by Alexander Carruth, Sophie Gibb, and John Heil, 37-47. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. p. 39)
Out of context, I'm not sure I understand Simons' point here. I assume the reference is to the earlier Wittgenstein - but I'm not sure - and the conclusion seems to point in the direction of my argument.