/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11847967]

Is modus ponens a mode of thinking or a normative concept?

[Anonymous No.11848088]

[Anonymous No.11848122]

>>11847967
A mode of thinking that we've abstracted and formalized into a concept. It's a ubiquitous mental strategy to assume that previously reliable premises are true and reason from there.

Logic always says something, because eventually you have to define your concepts by referring them back to the concrete world... Defining your concepts only by reference to other concepts is circular. Even abstract math has its roots in the distinctness between objects we observe in the wold. At the very least, logic reflects the consistency of relations we experience in the concrete.

[Anonymous No.11848134]

>>11847967
lol are you retarded?

[Anonymous No.11848146]

>>11847967
this is the most pseud shit ive seen on /lit/ in recent memory. either you’ve swallowed pic relateds bullshit whole and are imitating his vapid line of questioning or youre an idiot who doesnt understand the fundamentals of formal logic. how the fuck could an operator in a symbolic system be “normative?” please explain this to me.

[Anonymous No.11848192]

>>11848146
You're the complete pleb, you raging idiot. There is a large debate about logic, and if it's normative or descriptive. This is tied in with logical pluralism. Why should an intuinionist accept platonist rationality? Why should we accept existential proofs (even in mathematics)? I mean, fuck, even Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a page on logic's normative status. I swear you people are a bunch of halfwits.


See, for example:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-normative/
https://johnmacfarlane.net/normative.pdf
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/289241

[Anonymous No.11848203]

>>11848192
brainlet reporting in, surely we can't define logic because to do so would have to employ logic, making a kind of gay circle of recursivity?

[Anonymous No.11848258]

>>11848122
I agree with you in making logic relative to language but I think an "abgrund" (or in Derrida's formulation differance) conception of the "roots" of language is more helpful here

"Root" is itself a good example of this taking place. Root = cause/origin/ground/reference/signified = Grund. Very common conception in Western thought: the "grounds" of something, colloquially, the ground of the possibility of a subordinate phenomenon, the ground of something's being true, ultimate truth, the transcendentally signified, the principle of sufficient reason (actually "zureichenden Grund"). All of these function on the Grund metaphor, which is an abstraction; how does it "refer" back to any real world relation? To explain the "root" Grund metaphor, ironically the Grund of all these other uses, we need... another metaphors, more language. And so on and so on. This is the Ab-grund, the abyss that recedes (Ab-) whenever one attempts to sound it for the "true" Grund. Ultimate (grundlich) meaning, significance, ground, truth, reference, etc., these are all endlessly deferred.

Given sense data and the hardness of the world definitely do factor in. But I don't think concepts relate to them simplistically.

[Anonymous No.11848261]

>>11847967
Neither; it's a convention.

[Anonymous No.11848262]

>>11848203
It's not about defining it simply put. The problem is that of knowing whether a rule of reasoning (in OP's case, modus ponens) is truth preserving or allows us to make valid inferences BECAUSE this type of rule is inherent to our thinking, rational minds, or because they are like rules with which we measure rationality itself. Usually, the first option is tied with psychologism. Frege (a very influential mathematician) was vehemently on the camp of logic being normative, for example. Witty also records that F. P. Ramsey (another brilliant mathematician) was of the opinion of logic as being normative.

[Anonymous No.11848273]

>>11848261
So it's normative. Are you daft?

[Anonymous No.11848275]

>>11848262
>ECAUSE this type of rule is inherent to our thinking, rational minds, or because they are like rules with which we measure rationality itself.
I understand the first position, bascially a Kant sort of way of looking at the rules right? BUt the second option im not sure what you mean exactly, rules with which we measure rationality itself, isn't that the paradox of recursivity again?

[Anonymous No.11848297]

It's normative in the sense that you ought to do it if you want to be correct which is the dumbest gotcha ever

[Anonymous No.11848315]

>>11848275
Actually, the latter would be closer to Kant. If I understand the issue correctly, the question is whether logic is dependent or somehow contingent on our minds. Yes: not normative, descriptive. No: normative. Read the linked article, it's very helpful.

[Anonymous No.11848322]

>>11848315
Ok so normative logics would be 'invented' then, just tools we use? I will check out the link

[Anonymous No.11848326]

>>11848192
>stanford devotes entire page to scrutinizing the rotten fruits of a schoolboy category error
Typical cathedral

[Anonymous No.11848337]

>>11848322
The normative/descriptive distinction isn't one to do with the fundamental nature of logic, but with its role in our thinking. However, the fundamental nature of logic (whatever such a thing may be) may influence which position you take on this issue. But I don't know much, do some reading.

[Anonymous No.11848343]

>>11848337
>the fundamental nature of logic, but with its role in our thinking.
aren't these basically the same thing? I mean its nature is what it does

[Anonymous No.11848346]

>F. P. Ramsey once emphasized in conversation with me that logic was a 'normative science'. I do not know exactly what he had in mind, but it was doubtless closely related to what only dawned on me later: namely, that in philosophy we often compare the use of words with games and calculi which have fixed rules, but cannot say that someone who is using language must be playing such a game

Witty was pretty based, desu

[Anonymous No.11848360]

>>11848343
No, its nature is, for example, what it's founded in. A question in regard to this subject may go something like, "is logic independently objective, or a product of/relation to human minds?"

It's role in how we think, whether it's normative (prescriptive) or descriptive/non-normative, is a slightly different question if I understand the issue correctly

[Anonymous No.11848371]

>>11848360
Ok I think I see what you're saying. If it were descriptive, then it would be describing something that could either be an innate feature of the mind, or an objective process, for example? And if it's prescriptive, could it then also be objective, but merely a tool for thought nonetheless, or it could be prescriptive and just a product of the mind.

As in these are orthogonal divisions that produce like 4 possible categories?

[Anonymous No.11848374]

>>11848192

>intuitionistic logic

[Anonymous No.11848470]

>>11848273
Conventions aren't normative.

Example: in computers, data can be stored in one of two ways. In "little endian" systems (this is simplified), you'd store the number 1 as [1000 0000], but in a "big endian" system, you'd store that same one as [0000 0001].

When an engineer chooses between the two, he chooses arbitrarily, and doesn't claim to be deciding for everyone. There is no "normal" way to store an integer in a byte; there are only various conventions.

The same is true of logics; there's our usual 2-valued logic, but there are also 3-, 4- and n-valued logics. You just have to agree with your interlocutor(s) when you decide which logic arguments should take place in.

So, conventions aren't normative.

[Anonymous No.11848509]

>>11847967
How could it be normative? If you do X you get Y. It says nothing about what you should do, not even what you should do to get Y, as there may be other and better possibilities.

[Anonymous No.11848551]

>>11847967
>is inference a way of thought or arbitrarily defined by morals
lmao what the fuck is this shit

[Anonymous No.11848570]

>>11848258
At it's most basic, the 'ground' concept refers to the causality we experience in the world. You can argue that the term 'causality' doesn't describe the entire nature of that process (that entirety being unknown), but it is describing it to some extent. We were observing and responding to consistent relations in the universe before we had language, sophisticated thought or highly abstract concepts.

We only escape induction when we abstain from describing anything concrete... Even then though, we are relying on relations experienced in the concrete (consistency) to arrange our concepts, even if the concepts themselves are left empty. We assume these relations will remain consistent from moment to moment, so do we ever really escape induction?

[Anonymous No.11848592]

>>11848570
>At it's most basic, the 'ground' concept refers to the causality we experience in the world. You can argue that the term 'causality' doesn't describe the entire nature of that process (that entirety being unknown), but it is describing it to some extent. We were observing and responding to consistent relations in the universe before we had language, sophisticated thought or highly abstract concepts.

You're confusing the fact that we have both a given manifold of sense data and a conceptual order with a genetic, metaphysical account of what knowledge is and how conceptual knowledge developed in humans. That's fine, if that's what you're interested in, but it should be carefully distinguished from a transcendental and phenomenological account of how language "refers" or what language consists in. The simple answer to the latter two things is "we don't know right now."

Even the words you are using, "concrete," "refers," "causality," "experience," "[something] in the world" or "in the universe," the "nature" of a "process," "description," "observation," "relations," etc., all require precise definition if they are to escape language. And the only tool you have for such description is a more precise use of language, which will itself require more precise and specialised uses, etc., and all of this will rest upon colloquial and everyday language, which is the thing whose nature is supposed to be explained in the first place.

Again, if you have a genetic metaphysics of how mind emerges from matter or relates to matter primordially, that's fine, but it's very different from a phenomenological, transcendental, hermeneutic account of language or how we can "get beyond it." On the latter note, basically every titan of the last 250 years rules out the genetic-metaphysical approach: Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein all disagree. Again, for the simple reason that providing a "true" explanation of how language refers, an explanation that would encompass and stand outside language in order to view it objectively, requires the use of language and reference to begin with, i.e., must be immanent in language. That is the problem of the abgrund: language is a "groundless ground."

[Anonymous No.11848595]

>>11847967
It is a structure of thought.

[Anonymous No.11848599]

>>11848258
>>11848592
BASED

[Anonymous No.11848751]

>>11848592
A child isn't born with language, and language doesn't just appear fully formed overnight. There is a demonstrative process of pointing to concrete objects and teaching the associated word. From there, we can abstract and associate words with the imagined (although all we imagine is still composed of elements of experience).

I suppose the idea of 'getting beyond' language seems nonsensical to me, since I see language as an integrated part of an objective universe. It is not fully discrete or fully abstracted from the world it describes, or from we who employ it.

I do not have an expectation of perfect certainty/knowledge as dualists and transcendentalists appear to. The best we can do is to favour the predictive and demonstrable. I accept that language only partially describes reality, and that there is an inevitable loss of information in translating experiences into language. The important thing is that I can point to an object or effect in the world and say "This is what I mean by 'x'."

What you describe amounts to obssessing over technical incompleteness, in my estimation. It is an unreasonable standard... It is not necessary for us to have complete knowledge to have some knowledge, and to demonstrably excercise that knowledge in the world.

[Anonymous No.11848799]

>>11848751
>There is a demonstrative process of pointing to concrete objects and teaching the associated word.
>The important thing is that I can point to an object or effect in the world and say "This is what I mean by 'x'."

This is called the ostensive definition of language, related to the reference or truth-correspondence theory, and it's covered at the beginning of Philosophical Investigations. A good summary: https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2007-8/43904/_HANDOUTS/wittgenstein-naming-ostensive.pdf

The basic problem is that the statement "This is what I mean by 'x'" itself requires not only interpretation, therefore interpretive context, but NESTED interpretive contexts, i.e., a shared ontological lifeworld. Quine's famous gavagai problem is a similar exploration of how definition-by-pointing breaks down:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminacy_of_translation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inscrutability_of_reference

For a being to understand anything at all, it has to have assumptions, and those assumptions are then worked up dialectically over the course of that being's lifetime in commerce with other beings, in languages and cultural-symbolic complexes, to be able to understand highly complex things like "pointing" and demonstrative pronouns ("this," "that"), the idea of designators standing in for objects abstractly ("x"), the idea of individual subjects having interior experience ("I"), the idea of there being discrete "objects" persisting within a certain conception of time and space, the ability to correctly identify which object is the/a object at all, presumably using similar sensory apparatus, etc., etc. In fact you could keep listing things like this indefinitely, because it's not simply a matter of finding all the functions that go into making the determination "That is X" in the "correct" manner, or even of finding all the inter-determinations between multiple nested levels of conceptual determinacy. This is the functionalist understanding of cognition held by the GOFAI paradigm, for example, as critiqued in Dreyfus' _What Computers Can't Do_. Other phenomenologists and gestalt psychologists have talked about the gestalt problem too, like Merleau-Ponty, Kohler.

Again, although I think your metaphysics of cognition and language is wrong too, I'm not even trying to debate metaphysics here. I'm just saying, you're passing from a transcendental (describing language/knowledge from within language/knowledge) perspective to a metaphysical/constitutive (describing what language/knowledge "is," really and actually (whatever those words also even "mean," "really and actually")). That's the thing I think you have to be careful about. I'm not denying the possibility of metaphysics, just saying that IMHO your naive realism (not calling YOU naive - it's the technical name for the theory) is not as self-evident as a lot of people wish it were.. AI people have real problems with this, like I said.

[Anonymous No.11848821]

>>11848799
Also an interesting example of this is the Pioneer plaque, this thing. It was never really intended to be all that serious, but it WAS a semi-serious attempt at communicating bare-minimum understandable information to an alien species whose hypothetical minds we don't know anything about. But people assessing it still poked all kinds of holes in the kinds of "assumptions" (interpretive contexts) the aliens would have to have in order to understand various things, and the different ideas people have come up with are pretty interesting to think about. It stretches the limits of your imagination of what "kinds of minds" are possible.

[Anonymous No.11848980]

>>11848799
'm not arguing that language is separable from context (I argued the opposite) or that it doesn't rely upon collateral knowledge (shared experience). My claims are simply that our assumptions are products of our experience (as opposed to intuitions which precede experience) and that these assumptions can be tested by comparing experience.

There is no infinite regress of describing language from within language, since it traces back to when we have no language yet are learning about relations in the world via experience. Later, we begin associating words with these assumptions. Technical imprecision or loss/divergence of meaning between those of different experiences does not imply that language is ultimately circular -- quite the opposite. Quine's arguments are logical demonstrations of how language is not discrete from what 'is' (whatever 'is' is). I don't agree with the notions of literal metaphysicality (beyond nature) OR transcendentalism, if that clarifies things at all.

[Anonymous No.11849017]

>>11848326
Care to explain more, o great one?

[Anonymous No.11849033]

>>11848980
No, not really. Maybe I'm just losing you. It seems like you're advocating some kind of pre-conceptual experience of the world, but I am saying that virtually all of continental and (following Wittgenstein) analytic philosophy aver that there is no pre-conceptual experience of the world. Experience is conceptual.

Everything you're saying seems (to me) to be responded to by Wittgenstein and Quine: namely, you are presupposing that we "begin" (as infants) with some kind of "assumptions [about] relations [in] the world," and then later attach words to them. Which may be true for actual words, as in, spoken language before a baby learns to speak it. But experience is still conceptual experience. A certain experience of space and time is still projected onto incoming sense data, and no matter how young.

The idea that we could return to these primordial experiences in any way is pretty absurd to me -- especially since your theory (it seems to me) doesn't hinge on the existence whatsoever of pre-verbal conceptual thought, but on whether babies discretely identify "things" and then "add" words to their "ideas" of the things.

>My claims are simply that our assumptions are products of our experience (as opposed to intuitions which precede experience)
Again, maybe I'm reading you wrong here, but this would situate you around 1750 with Condorcet and Condillac.

[Anonymous No.11849215]

>>11849033
not him, but what's your phil experience?