Finally Some Americans

Edmund Gettier (left) was born in Baltimore, Maryland.  William Van Orman Quine (right) was born in Akron, Ohio.  Quine was able to travel to Europe while studying and meet members of the Vienna Circle (including Carnap) and Polish logicians (who were known for groundbreaking work at the time).  Gettier is best known for the short paper we read in class, which was put together after Gettier was encouraged to write something up in order to satisfy the administration at his school.  Both are known for their influence in philosophy of language and epistemology.

Sartre Context

Like Descartes, Sarte is a dualist.  He thinks there are only two kinds of substances that exist: Being and Nothingness.  Being includes physical bodies in the world, including our own bodies.  Nothingness is our consciousness.  Nothingness determines itself and is radically free.  Being is externally determined.  As humans, we are both Being and Nothingness.  Our consciousness is free even if our physical existence is determined by external forces.  One of the results of our dual nature is bad faith.  Bad faith means that you always tend to get wrapped up either in your Being or your Nothingness.  If you think you have more freedom than you actually do, you're lost in your transcendence.  If you think you have less freedom than you actually do, you're lost in your facticity.   Bad faith is a basic structure for humanity.  We cannot escape it.

Sartre recognizes that many people associate existentialism with despair.  Indeed, this is not a necessary consequence of buying into the notion that for humans existence precedes essence (our actions define who we are).  Rather, despair just seems to be a common response to the feelings of responsibility that arise when we recognize that we are in control of deciding our own character

Sartre Background

Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris, France in 1905.  He is known for his existentialist philosophy.  He was also paired with great thinker Simone De Beauvoir.  The two carried on in a romantic relationship for years which served as the basis for much of De Beauvoir's writings.  In addition to his philosophical work, Sartre has also published numerous plays and pieces of short fiction.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but declined the official honors, claiming that no writer should institutionalize himself.  And yes, he was cross-eyed.

Carnap v. Popper

Remember that Carnap thought that a sentence can only be a meaningful statement if we know the conditions for verifiability for that sentence.  In other words, a sentence is only meaningful if it can be verified.  Popper introduces an alternative standard for the statements of science.  As he notes that no verification can be permanent, he shifts attention from verifiabilility to falsifiability.  In Popper's terms, statements are only scientific if they can be falisified.  Any single statement from an existing system of scientific facts can be used to falsify an entire system.  A statement need not be falsified in order to be scientific.  But there must be the possibility that the statement can be falsified if it is a scientific statement.

Popper Background

Like Wittgenstein, Popper was born in Vienna.  He worked in construction for a short time, but most of his life was devoted to philosophy.  He was a professor at the London School of Economics and has been knighted in Britain, making him Sir Popper there.

Background on Heidegger

Heidegger was born in Meßkirch, Germany.  He was a student of Edmund Husserl.  Under the Nazi regime, Heidegger rose to prominence as Rector of the University of Freiburg.  Many agree that Heidegger himself was not an anti-Semite but an opportunist and a coward.  He was de-Nazified, but in his last interview, he famously fails to denounce his Nazi Past.  Some Heidegger scholars see his

works in his later years as devoted to the kind of values that would directly oppose the National Socialist Party.  Either way, Heidegger is a controversial man with controversial philosophy.  The influence of his thought can be found here in the U.S. and abroad in places like Japan and Iran.  Heidegger is internationally known and respected in spite of his past.

To what extent should the personal history of an individual color our perception of his or her philosophy?

Heidegger-style Discourse in Hip Hop

In this track, Yolandi Visser of Die Antwoord appropriates certain vocabulary and assigns them her own meaning.  If metaphysics is a poor substitute for art (as Carnap asserts), then maybe this hip hop crew from South Africa is 'the answer' to some of life's important questions. Warning: Explicit Content.

The Truth is Here

Here is a track called "The Truth is Here" from Brother Ali, just in case you were wondering where it's been.

What is Meaningless?

In a definite language, a word designates a concept. We get m'less words when a word loses its old m and does not acquire a new one. The meaning of a word is made up of two things: a fixed syntax for that word and fixed conditions for verifying the truth or the falsehood of the elementary sentence for that word. The elementary sentence is the sentence that fixes the syntax for a word, or specifies how that word is to be used in a sentence. For example, "X is a stone" is the elementary sentence for stone, as it indicates that nouns are stones. That 'stone' is the category of word that applies to nouns. Once we have the elementary sentence, we should be able to determine what other sentences are deducible from that sentence.  

Some sentences of metaphysics are meaningless because they have meaningless words in them.  Others are meaningless because they are formed either counter-syntactically or because they contain type confusion or type errors.  Contrast "I has and cheeseburger" with "Kobe is a right angle".  In the first sentence, words are arranged in a grammatically incorrect way.  The sentence is meaningless because it is counter-syntactically formed.  In the second sentence, the words are not in violation of the official rules of grammar, but the kind of predicate applied to Kobe is the wrong kind of predicate.  Carnap thinks that in addition to word categories like predicate, copula, etc., we need further sub-categories.  For example, there are some predicates that are appropriate to apply to humans (e.g., a man, a basketball player, a rapist) and others that are not (a right angle, a prime number, a breath of fresh air).  

Perhaps uses of the second kind can have metaphorical associations, but that's just not scientific meaning, according to Carnap

Existential Quantifiers and Existence

In order to understand what Carnap says about existence not being a quality but a logical form, you need to know a little bit of predicate logic. In predicate logic, the sentence "Kobe exists" would be translated into "Ǝx (Kobe)". The content of the statement is within the parentheses. The sign combination of " Ǝx" is a logical form (sometimes called logical constant) that tells us the quantity of what is inside the parentheses. Specifically, the existential quantifier tells us that there exists some thing to which the signs in the parentheses refers.

The point is that when we use a logical language (predicate logic), <existence> is expressed not as a predicate itself, but as a form of a predicate (namely, that it exists).

Carnap Background

Carnap was born in Wuppertal, Germany.  He was a philosopher in Germany and Austria until 1935.  As the Nationalist Socialist Party rose to power, Carnap became weary of Europe and moved to the U.S.  His last post was as a professor of philosophy at UCLA.  He had previously refused to work for the UC system because it requires signing an oath of allegiance.  Carnap was in principle opposed to signing an oath of allegiance (emphasis on was).  He was a member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate for logical positivism.  He saw the main task of philosophy as clarifying language and concepts for empirical sciences.

"In science there are no depths; there is surface everywhere."

Facts vs. Objects

Wittgenstein says that the world is made up of facts (not objects).  What does this mean?  It might seem particularly confusing, especially since he also says that facts are combinations of objects.  The key to understanding this distinction is to remember that the world has a logical structure.  An object on its own does not have a structure because it is not related to anything else.  But when objects are combined in definite ways (as they are in facts), then the objects are arranged into a logical structure.  Objects are in the world insofar as they are organized into facts.  Objects don't just exist free-floating in the world.  They only exist in the world when combined in definite ways.  The world itself has a logical structure that arranges objects into facts.

Husserl and Intentionality

Husserl and an Intro to Phenomenology

The first chapter of Ideas is about the phenomenological method. In order to help us understand phenomenological bracketing, he contrasts the standpoint we take when we perform phenomenology with what he calls the natural standpoint, or natural attitude.  Husserl says that the first outlook we have on the world is from a natural standpoint. This means that you are simply aware as the world as there--even without paying any special attention to it.  In fact, this is the 'General Thesis' of the natural standpoint: the world exists, it is continually present to me, and I am a part of it

In this natural standpoint, or natural attitude, the world is experienced as being full of value. Things are experienced as good or bad by me. Things are experienced as useful. People are experienced either as friends or foes. The world is also experienced as a "W-about-me", meaning that the world is always experienced relative to my conscious acts. Conscious acts (acts of the Cogito) include describing, comparing, distinguishing, collecting, counting, presupposing, inferring, theorizing, wanting, willing, and emotional states and feelings like sadness, happiness, anger, fear and boredom.

Not only do I experience the world as real and as continually present to me. I perceive it as available to other subjects. I experience other as subjects, as units like me, as selves, as egos, as <Ich>s. Because I immediate perceive the other as a subject, I take them to be in the same relation to the natural world as I myself am. The world about me and the world about them are one in the same, even if we have completely different subjective experiences of it.

Natural sciences stay within the natural standpoint. Phenomenology, however, attempts to radically alter the natural standpoint. For methodological purposes, the general thesis of the natural standpoint is subject to radical Cartesian doubt. This doubt is only as a device of method. This doubt does not affect the form of Being itself.  Doubting the existence of the world does not affect the world  The attempt to doubt is not a denial of Being or of the natural world. Rather, it is a suspension of the thesis.

p.108, "It is not a transformation of the thesis into an antithesis...we set it as it were "out of action", we "disconnect it", "bracket it"." Husserl also calls this methodological suspension of the natural attitude Epoche.

In the second chapter of Ideas, Husserl turns his attention away from the method of bracketing and towards the object of phenomenological inquiry. Phenomenological reduction (bracketing) means putting the whole world into brackets. When we do that, what is left over? The world of fact is disconnected. The world of form, however, is not disconnected. The world as Eidos, as form, as structure, remains in pure consciousness. Husserl calls this pure experience, or pure Ich, phenomenological residuum. Basically, the form of experience is all that is left over when we abstract away from all actual experience.

When considered in its full concrete context, each experience has an essence or a content. After performing the phenomenological reduction, we can grasp the essence of the experience. This is a task of phenomenology. Even though the experience has been bracketed, they still share in the essential nature of the original experience. Both the original experience and my phenomenological reduction of that experience are about something.  Consider this analogy.  The sentence "Kobe is tall" is about a living thing in the natural world.  The name "Kobe" is directed towards Kobe the person.  When I put the name in brackets, then I'm not just talking about the person Kobe.  I'm talking about the mode of presentation for that person.  But the content of <Kobe> is still directed towards Kobe.  <Kobe is tall> is still about Kobe, even if I suspend all belief in the existence of the natural world for methodological purposes

Be warned, however, not all experiences have this characteristic. Only experiences that are actually conscious experiences of some thing have this characteristic. Such experiences are called intentional experiences. Intentional experiences are just experiences that are about something. In other words, these experiences are intentionally related to some object. In yet other words, these experiences have intentionality because they are experiences of something.  My experience of watching Kobe on TV is an  intentional experience because it is an experience about Kobe.  But if I hallucinate that Kobe is in the room with me, then my experience is not actually about something real.  The hallucination is not an intentional experien

A Picture of Wittgenstein's Picture

Rilke and Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein wrote a book about a picture (Bild) theory of meaning.  Rilke, a poet who Wittgenstein financially supported, wrote a poetry book called the Book of Pictures (Buch der Bilder).  The poem below is my translation of the first poem of the book, called Eingang.  Can you identify themes from Tractatus in the poem below?

"Entrance" from Buch der Bilder

Who you also would be: in the evening steps out

out of your room, where you know everything;

as the last one before the distance lies your house:

who you also would be,

With your eyes, which seldom wearily

free themselves from the necessary threshold,

you absolutely slowly heave a black tree

and set it up against the heavens: small and alone.

And you have made the world. And she is big

and like a word that yet ripens in silence.

And like your will grasping its own sense,

they sweetly let your eyes go...

This is Not a Blog Post: Complications for 'Picture' Theories of Representation

One of the main themes of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is that representation (verb abbilden: to depict, to picture; noun Abbildung: image, reproduction, picture) is possible because reality (the world) and language (our picture of the world) share logical structure.  The metaphor that he uses to show this is that a picture shares a logical form with what is pictured.  The elements of a picture are arranged in a structure that is parallel to the way in which the real objects are organized in the world.  This shared structure is not represented in the image.  The shared structure is the relation of representation itself.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984), French 'continental' philosopher and supporter of the Iranian revolution, wrote a collection of essays titled This is Not a Pipe (translated from French).  In the first short essay (just over three pages), Foucault analyzes two paintings from Rene Magritte (shown below).  In this playful, insightful piece, Foucault challenges the notion that there is a logical structure shared by an image and what the image represents.  Access to the article is available on the class website (or with the help of Google).

NYMPHS: Bracketing vs. Supposition

Water Nymph by Wilhelm Kotarbinski

Phenomenological bracketing, also called Epoche, disconnexion, and phenomenological reduction (among other terms), is different from mere supposition or assumption because when we merely suppose something, such as supposing that nymphs or the tooth fairy exist, our thoughts are not about some actual thing in the natural world.  If we earnestly suppose the existence of nymphs, unicorns, leprechauns and dragons, we are not disconnecting from a thesis about a living thing in the fact world.  We are just thinking about something imaginary.  This difference is important because in it lies a key to Husserl's theory of intentionality.  Thoughts about the world--even thoughts where we suspend belief in a thesis about the world for the sake of a phenomenological reduction--are always about something in the natural world.  When we have an experience of the world, it is of something.  The content of our thoughts is directed at objects in the external world.  And this external world is one in the same for all human subjects, even if we experience it differently.  Even though we have very different experiences with this world, all of our thoughts are about the real world.  Even if we suspend the natural attitude and bracket the general thesis of the natural standpoint, our phenomenological reductions are aimed at the natural world.

Hylas and the Nymphs by John William Waterhouse

  When we suppose something (like supposing nymphs exist), however, our thoughts are not about an object in the intersubjectively available world.  So remember NYMPHS: Not Your Mental Proposition Having Sein.  Sein is the German word for Being.  Being is just what is.  It is what exists.  It is the fundamental metaphysical entity.  The same sign can be used as an infinitive form of the German word for 'to be'.  When you suppose the existence of imaginary things, your thoughts are not actually about objects in the world.  Your thoughts are not about things that 'are'.

Wittgenstein Background Information

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born to a wealthy and notable family in Vienna, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now part of Austria).  At one point, he was one of the most wealthy men in Austria, and he was a patron for Ranier Maria Rilke and Georg Trakl, two of the most famous names in modern German-language poetry.  His sister Margaret's wedding portrait was painted by the renowned Gustav Klimt.  His Tractatus, dedicated to someone speculated to be his lover, was written during his time spent in the trenches fighting for Austria-Hungary during WWI.  He became a professor of philosophy at Cambridge University, where he focused primarily on philosophy of language.

Background on Husserl

Edmund Husserl was born in Prossnitz, Moravia.  At the time, it was part of the Austrian Empire.  Now, the city is known as Prostejov and lies in modern-day Czech Republic.  He received a doctorate in mathematics before completing a Habiltation (super-doctorate) on the philosophy of mathematics.  Frege and Franz Brentano are two people who influenced his forays into philosophy, and Husserl spent the majority of his philosophical works dealing with a theory of intentionality ( a theory of how language is about something).  His phenomenological method (Epoche, bracketing, phenomenological reduction) was meant to help us to talk about language and its relationship to the world. Late in his career, his philosophical interests turned toward ethics with a distinctly existential-phenomenological twist.  His last major text warned about the modern crisis of meaning wherein humanistic inquiry into things such as morality and the meaning of life have been delimited and perverted by inappropriate application of scientific standards.

Representation and Rap

This track, called "Color My World Mine" is from Eyedea & Abilities, a hip hop/rap duo from MN.  In this track, Eyedea muses about a man whose pictures more than just share structure with reality.  Consider it a playful meditation on the role that representation plays in our lives and the importance of expression of meaning for a fulfilling human life.  Also consider it a trippy musing about the delusions we have about representation.

Bucephalus the Beautiful

Frege uses the example of Bucephalus to elucidate the distinctions between conception (Vorstellung), sense (Sinn) and referent (Bedeutung).  Bucephalus is the name of Alexander the Great's horse.  The referent of the name is the actual horse that existed.  The referent is an object in the world.

The sense for the name is the mode of presentation that is used to refer to the horse.  It can be represented as <Bucephalus>, using brackets to indicate that we are no longer talking about the horse itself, but we are talking about the mode of representation, or manner of conceiving the thing.  We're not talking about the thing (referent) or the word (sign).  We're talking about the way in which we are talking/thinking/writing about the horse.  In Frege's terms, we're talking about what is expressed by the sign.



                                                                                           

The conception for the same name will be very different depending on who is thinking about the name.  The conception means the subjective set of experiences and feelings one has when they think about that name.  Frege notes that the conception when thinking about Bucephalus will be very different for a painter, a horseman and a zoologist.  What would Bucephalus himself have as a conception for his own name?

Background on Frege

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was born in Wismar, Germany.  His father was the headmaster of a girls' school.  After Frege's father passed away, his mother took over as head of the school.  Frege is known for his contributions to logic and mathematics.  He first studied mathematics before growing interested in logic.  Sometimes given credit for founding 'analytic' philosophy, he is also known posthumously as a raging anti-Semite.  He wrote "Ueber Sinn und Bedeutung" ("On Sense and Reference") in 1892.

Master Morality vs. Slave Morality

Master Morality was established by a spontaneous creation of values. According to Nietzsche, the origin of moral good is just the origin about judgments about what is 'good'. He asserts that it is most likely that the noble, high-born people in power first took up a pathos of distance, or dominating attitude, towards the low-born, weak people. By claiming what is 'good' for themselves, they decided that everything opposite of them was 'bad'.

Slave Morality was established as a reaction to master morality. The lower classes, having experienced years of ressentiment (resentment and thirst for revenge) towards the upper classes, decided that those in power were 'evil'. First defining what is evil with characteristics opposite of their own characteristics, they then defined 'good' with the characteristics that they themselves possessed.

GOOD powerful noble aristocratic high-born strong light-haired slave owners BAD meek, humble common poor low-born weak dark slaves

EVIL powerful noble aristocratic high-born strong light slave owners GOOD meek, humble common poor low-born weak dark slaves, former slaves

Distinctions in Kant

A priori knowledge is knowledge that is not derived from experience but from concepts.  This knowledge does not depend on experience for its truth, and so experience can never disprove this kind of knowledge.  Common examples include mathematics and geometry.  1 + 1 = 2 will never be disproven by experience.  Just as mathematical propositions cannot be disproven by experience, neither can definitional propositions, such as <All bachelors are male>  (I use brackets here to indicate that I am talking about the content/sense of that proposition).

A posteriori knowledge is empirical knowledge gained through observation and experience.  This kind of knowledge cannot be gained simply by thinking about concepts; it requires interaction with the world and not just thinking about ideas.  Most fields of natural science will fall into this category, including zoology, ecology, cell biology, chemistry, pharmaceutical sciences, etc.  Many social sciences will also fall into this category, such as psychology, sociology and economics.  Certain axioms or principles used in these disciplines may be abstract concepts that qualify as a priori knowledge (if you believe in that kind of thing), but the methods of these sciences is to interact with the world and gain knowledge through observation and experimentation.

Analytic statements are statements where the predicate (verb, adjective, etc.) attached to a given subject (noun, name, etc.) is only presenting information about the subject that is already included in the definition for the concept of the subject.  For example, <All bachelors are male> is an analytic statement because part of the definition of bachelor is to be male.  <All lines consist of at least two points> is another example, because it is the definition of line that it consists of at least two points on a plane.  

Synthetic statements are statements where the predicate attached to a given subject is not already part of the definition of that subject.  In other words, synthetic statements amplify or add to our knowledge about the subject because they present new information that is not already included in the concept for the subject.  Kant thinks mathematical statements are of this kind.  He says that <7+5> does not already include <12> in the concept, so propositions such as <7 + 5 = 12> are synthetic.  Another example is <f=ma>.  The concept for <f> does not include <ma>.  The connection between the two concepts can be logically necessary, as it is the case for both of these propositions.  Yet the concepts are not one in the same, so the predicate is providing new information about the subject.

WTFrege?

Context.  What is Frege doing?  Why is he doing it?  Frege's larger project is to create an artificial language that is logically complete.  This Begriffschrift is supposed to contain a totality of meanings.  All meanings should be able to be understood in terms of the meanings of other signs (words) in the language, and every sign must have a sense (mode of presentation) that has a referent (designated object).  The sign is the physical word.  It is the combination of symbols and letters.  The sense is something more abstract.  The sense is expressed by the sign.  It is the way in which we designate, or fix, the referent.  The essay we read is a critique of natural language.  He wants to show the limits of natural language, and to introduce new distinctions that can help us to use language more precisely.  At the most general level, he wants to talk about language, how we use it, and how we must use it if we are to do science (Wissenschaft)!

Why are we reading this text in this class?  One of the main themes of the course is to consider what role language plays in our interaction with the world, and how we ought to use language and logic when we do philosophy.  This text picks up on these themes and provides a radical alternative to our previous author, Nietzsche.  

Content.  What are the important things to remember from Frege?  First, you should understand the conception/sense/reference distinctions.  Second, you should be able to understand Frege's general worldview about language, logic and science.  Third, you should understand what it means to say that the referent of a true sentence is the truth.  Fourth, you should be able to explain the effects of putting words in quotation marks and how this changes the referent of the signs used.  

The referent of a word is the object to which the word refers.  In other words, it is the object designated by a sign.  In yet other words, it's the actual thing about which you are talking.  For example, when I say, "The Schwarz is not as huge has he used to be.", the person about whom I am talking is Arnold Schwarzenegger; he is the referent of the name 'The Schwarz'.  The sense is the way in which the referent is being presented.  It is also known as the mode of presentation.  It is the particular way that the object is conceived.  For example,when I say, "The former governor of California is not eligible to be president because he was born in Austria.", the referent of 'The former governor of CA' is the same as the name used above: Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Although the referent is the same, these are two ways, or modes, in which the object can be presented.  The conception is the particular subjective experience and feeling that one gets when he or she thinks of the name.  For example, a big fan may get goosebumps thinking about Schwarzenegger and may get lightheaded while thinking about his big muscles.  The conception is entirely dependent upon the individual subject who is having the experience.  The referent is an object in the world.  The sense is neither entirely objective (since it is not itself the object about which we are talking) nor subjective (since the different mode of presentation is available intersubjectively--we can all read the same word that expresses the sense).

Frege's general worldview is discussed above in the section labeled 'Context'.

The referent of a name is an object.  The referent of a declarative sentence (assertion) is the state of affairs in the world that fulfills the truth conditions for that statement.  For example, the sentence "Kobe Bryant is tall." refers to the fact that Kobe is tall.  A judgment is to recognize the truth value of a sentence.  So, to judge this sentence as true is just to recognize that is is the case that Kobe is tall.  The referent of this judgment, then, is not the state of affairs in the world, but the truth of the statement.  The sentence that makes a true claim is about the truth created by the satisfaction of the truth conditions of the statement.  In other words, the sentence is about the combination of the proposition's truth conditions and the actual real-world conditions that make that proposition true.  And that's the truth.  Phew!

When words are put in quotation marks, this changes the referent of the sign.  E.g., when I say, "Kobe is tall", then 'tall' refers to a feature of Kobe.  But when a friend asks a clarifying question, "What do you mean by 'tall'?", then 'tall' is no longer referring to the feature of being tall but to that mode of presentation itself.  To put words into quotation marks is to stop talking about the object itself and instead to talk about the mode of presentation of the object.  We do the same thing by putting words into <brackets>.

Herd Instinct & Hip Hop

Nietzsche was concerned with the morality of the day was leading to a leveling off, or weakening, of his European peers.  In these two tracks, Kicking Knowledge in the Face and Ants, rapper P.O.S. expresses his own concerns about the damaging effects of the herd instinct.  How might the value systems for Nietzsche and P.O.S. be alike?  Warning: explicit material.

Nietzsche Background

 Friedrich Nietzsche was born and raised just outside Leipzig. 
Given that Nietzsche's critique of morality hinges so much on his notion of strength and power, you may find it ironic that Nietzsche himself was a very sickly man for most of his life.  For the last years of his life, he was vegetative after suffering a severe mental breakdown and late-stage syphilis.  He lived out his last years with his sister, who would allow visitors to observe the uncommunicative (and likely insane) Nietzsche.  Before his last major breakdown, he was in Turin Italy when he saw a horse that was unable to continue on and was being beaten.  Nietzsche reportedly threw his arms around the horse to protect it.   

Some Background on Kant

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) lived and died within a 30-mile radius of his hometown of Königsberg, Prussia.  The town is now known as Kaliningrad in Russia.  It is located close to the Southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea.

Prolegomena, published in 1783, was published two years after the first version of Critique of Pure Reason.