Re: Why choose a paragraph element for a paragraph?

On 2009-03-25, dorayme <doraymeRidThis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <slrngsh8q7.407.spamspam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Ben C <spamspam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[...]
Consider the question how two things can be said to be one? If such was
true, there is only one thing all along and one thing being itself is
not exactly news to anyone! Yet identity statements are in fact often
news and substantial information at that. Think maths. Think scientific
discoveries. Think ordinary life.

1. The man visiting the blonde women in the flat above you is your
husband!", announces the private detective to his startled client, the
man's wife.

So some analysis of this needs to be made to remove the paradoxical air.

It's only a paradox if you had previously tried to convince yourself
that the meaning of a name was its bearer.

To the rescue is a distinction between the meaning of a phrase and its
reference. "The man visiting the blond woman in the flat above you" has
a meaning independent of the actual reference. The very same words might
be used by other detectives in other places. The meaning is something
portable. Same goes for the phrase "Your husband". Here are *two*
different meanings.

But the reference, in this case, is unique. There is one man, one
featherless biped, one object that both terms refer to. Both "The man
visiting the blonde women in the flat above you" and "your husband"
refer to or point to the very same and one thing in the world. Or so we
can suppose if the detective is correct.

Meaning is one thing. What a name or description or process refers to is
quite a different thing altogether. One is about words and language use,
the other is something about the world outside of language.

OK, but what kinds of names/descriptions/processes have or need
references? And why?

"There are no blond women in the flat". Which women are you talking
about here exactly? What does "blond women" refer to?

(Let me guess, the blond women in the flat in all the other possible
worlds in which there _are_ blond women in the flat!)

Or we could just say: it's obvious the sentence does refer to the flat,
but not to any women. So asking which women these are who aren't in the
flat is simply a question that doesn't make sense.

It might have appeared that it should have made sense in some formalism
we were attempting, and we might therefore call it a paradox, and fix
the formalism. That would be a real problem with the formalism, but
that's all it would be.

We can talk *about* reference without referring and that is talking
about the meaning of the word "reference". But when we actually use
words to make a reference than the reference is typically something
non-linguistic. The reference is the adulterer, the bloke - it weighs
something!

One might call that the "referent" rather than the "reference", but it
doesn't matter.

Now, we can talk a lot about the meaning of causal phrases and
sentences. But all this talk is just one thing. There is another most
important thing about causal phrases (as with many names and
descriptions and phrases): what in the world is being referred to.

Yes you do need to know what is being referred to. But if I say "A
causes B" and you know what A and B refer to, is there anything else for
which you need to know what it refers to?

"I pull the lever and that causes the brake to come on". "Which
lever?"-- that one. "What brake?"-- that drum brake over there, at the
back of the car. These questions make sense and are concerned with
resolving references.

"OK so I know you mean this lever and that brake. But what's this causal
nexus you are talking about here?".

It's difficult to make much sense of this question, but I suppose I
could try answering, "the cable". "No, I don't mean the cable, I don't
mean the little As and Bs between the lever and the drum, that's a
matter for scientists. I mean what are you referring to, besides the
lever and the brake and the cable, when you say pulling the lever causes
the brake to come on? And don't just tell me what 'causes' means! Of
course I know that!"

I cannot make any sense of this question at all. How is it any less
nonsense than asking who are these women who aren't in the flat?

Is it patent nonsense yet? (Wittgenstein: "my aim is: to teach you to
pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent
nonsense").

Here are pretty well two sentences that mean much the same.

2. The cause of the car exploding was a bomb

3. The bomb caused the car to explode.

The phrases, the descriptions, the relations all have a meaning English
speakers understand well enough to use and get other language users
nodding their head. "The cause" and "the bomb" and the relational
"caused" have a meaning, a sense, a connotation. Different philosophers
have different analyses of this. Some locate the meaning in ideas in
people's heads, others in public language practices, others in spooky
objects - concepts - able to be contemplated by human minds. But, let us
not get into detail, basically this is *all* about the meaning of words.

But *the cause* itself, *the bomb* itself, the relation of "causing" is
all about the non-linguistic world. And we are discussing this
non-linguistic world.

Yes, the cause must exist out there in the real world for the statement
to be true.

But isn't that a question of correspondence rather than of reference?
I'm thinking of correspondence as a property of a whole statement, and
reference as a property of a term in a sentence.

[...]
Analytic statements about "causation" may be used to define it-- if
someone didn't know what "cause" meant, you might use counterfactuals in
the explanation but wouldn't have to-- or they may be used in an attempt
to make statements about it even when we know what it is.

I would like to see how someone can understand causal statements without
readily understanding some simple counterfactuals.

I didn't say they couldn't. I was just trying to make sense of the idea
that counterfactuals are part of the very meaning of causation.

So what are such statements really saying? If you say "bachelors are
unmarried" aren't you just saying that's what "bachelor" means (or
that's what "unmarried" means)?

No, you are saying that bachelors are unmarried. Not trying to be funny
here, you are not defining anything.

Under what other circumstances would anyone ever use that sentence?

[...]
You say you're not talking about the meaning of the word, but what else
is there here? What is "philosophical speculation"? How is it related to
philosophical illusion and philosophical mistake?


What more there is here is the nature of the world in respect to
causation. The reference. Now scientists will talk about particular
mechanisms and go into details. Philosophers, according to this line -
which I sense you mistrust - will do as best as they can to answer
questions left over that the scientists cannot answer. For example, what
is common to A causes B for all the many different values that fill
these variables?

But that is an analysis of grammar-- of how we use the word "causes"--
not of the nature of the world.

[...]
It hints to me at a "correspondence theory of truth" and a picture of
language in which the constituents of a statement are required to refer
to things in the world. This is the kind of thing I was thinking of when
I said all this might have a point if there were a deeper agenda of some
kind. If so, then that's the thing to examine.


Well, I would be very surprised if true sentences did not correspond to
or represent aspects of the world. You are right to raise this and I
will admit that hardly any part of philosophy is unconnected with all
the other parts.

I'm happy to say that "A causes B" corresponds to a state of affairs in
the world if it is true.

But I don't see why we need to say that the world has a nature in
respect to causation or that we are referring to that nature when we
state a cause.

Isn't that the whole reason you brought up the distinction between
meaning and reference in the first place? So that we can resolve
paradoxes by showing that name-like phrases don't always have to be used
to refer to anything?

In most sentences causal nexus don't even look like name-like phrases
anyway.

[...]
What does he say it says? From what I remember he just gets carried away
with the formalization without justifying it too much.

Well, this looks wrong to me. What you call formalization, if you are
thinking of the analysis of counterfactuality, never mind causality
for now, never mind necessary statements, is fleshing out details and
overcoming intricate objections to a clear program and question. What
makes a counterfactual true? It is not the truth of the antecedent,
nor of the consequent. So what is it outside human minds that makes it
true? And his answer is the worlds that exist outside human minds.

The purpose of this exertion seems to be to preserve the formalism: we
want all true statements to be made true by things in worlds. So we
invent more worlds.

I'm not saying it's not an ingenious solution, just that you have to ask
what problem it is a solution to.

Why do all true statements have to be made true by things in worlds in
the first place?

And his answer is the worlds that exist outside human minds. He
believed in them, they were not idle speculations for him. Might seem
curious to some folk. But intelligent folk do believe in things others
find extraordinary.

Indeed. Hume had the same problem:

"I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude,
in which I am placed in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange
uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society,
has been expelled all human commerce, and left utterly abandoned and
disconsolate. Fain would I run into the crowd for shelter and
warmth; but cannot prevail with myself to mix with such deformity. I
call upon others to join me, in order to make a company apart; but
no one will hearken to me. Every one keeps at a distance, and dreads
that storm, which beats upon me from every side. [...]"
.

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