Posted by zeugma on October 11, 2005, at 18:39:34
In reply to Re: Russell, realism, and the albatross » zeugma, posted by alexandra_k on October 10, 2005, at 22:26:20
> hello :-)
hi there :-)> >
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> i guess acquaintance... is with the referent. so here is where it gets tricky... i want to say there is no meaning apart from mind / language. but then we typically want to be good content extenalists about mental content... and if reference is part of meaning... we also want to be externalists about reference too. but... i don't think there would be any reference or any meaning aside from mind / language. because even reference... to get that the referent of water is H2O you have to apply the sortal 'natural kind term' to water in order to create a distinction... and mind / language creates distinctions (that are not inherent in reality). so the distinction (sortal) tells us that what is relevant (as opposed to irrelevant) for the reference is chemical composition.
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hmmm. 'sortal' denotes that we sort items by neans of such terms, i.e make distinctions for whatever reason (I should look up my Strawson on this, but it's too late at night); but natural kind terms are surely a special kind of 'sortal'? Water has to be H2O, or Twin Earth experiments lose their force. The distinction is inherent in relaity, because where else are we to look? Not in subjective experience... ex hypothesi (I love sounding like I know what I'm talking about) retaw (McGinn's felicitious name for Twin earth's liquid of sustenance)is indistinguishable from water except for its aberrant chemical composition. Take on the other hand 'pencil.' On Twin Earth pencils might be made of something other than graphite, but it doesn't matter, because pencils aren't a natural kind. But what is special about natural kind terms that causes our semantics to break down as we move from one world to another? Is it mind- or language-dependent? Alternatively, what is special about pencils that we can keep our semantic grip on them even in places as remote as twin earth?
> to be honest... i haven't done a lot on Russell. Just a little... just a little. so... from memory... the kinds of things we can have acquaintance knowledge of...
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> 1) universals
> 2) sense data
> 3) perhaps... 'I'.
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> with respect to the first...
> i'm not so sure about universals being 'in the world'. i think... the judgement of similarity / difference is something that we do via mind / language. i'm not sure how we can be acquainted with universals... no matter how many instances of 'tobacco' i encounter i seem to be going beyond the samples i have encountered when i grasp the concept 'tobacco' and grasp that it not only applies to all the samples that i have encountered, but also to past present and future samples that i have not encountered. i'm not so sure that knowledge of universals can be grasped by acquaintance with something external to us...
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> with respect to sense data... they don't seem to me to be mind independent.
agreed. Russell's epsitemology was crap. Sense data are mind dependent and not the place to look for acquiantance (a word whose spelling still eludes me).
i guess i would say that those... are the meeting point of mind and world.
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if all goes well with our senses, yes.> and with respect to knowledge of objects... well... the same object can be multiply realised with respect to sense data. the sense data alter as we view it from a slightly different perspective etc. all the problems that we have trying to get face recognition etc up off the ground in AI would seem to crop up quite significantly if objects are to be viewed as merely conjunctions of sense data...
ah. now this is the point i am interested in. Objects as conjunctions of sense data is untenable metaphysics.
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> there is also the point that i cannot access your sense data. and you cannot access mine. sense data are thus subjective... i don't see how we can get from sense data to mind independent reality...
agreed. i don't think sense data gets us far at all.
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> i thought that was a major problem for Russell...
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> and with respect to having an acquaintance with 'I'. well... that is notorious. i have to say that i have sympathies with hume when he said that no matter how much he introspected and tried to find this thing 'the self' he could only be aware of particular thoughts, memories, mental pictures, or impressions. he could not find this thing that was supposed to contain all that.
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> i don't think...
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> i experience a self either...
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my self is rapidly slipping away as i write (damn these stimulants with their wretched half-lives). the place to look for a self is not through introspection. damn these stimulants....
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:561840
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050910/msgs/565774.html