Gareth Evans on the Causal Theory

[@PhiloofAlexandria]

We got off track a bit in discussing Evans's Louis example. The issue is not whether you are referring to Louis, the guy being talked about in the bar, while you're there. It's whether your later use of 'Louis' refers to the same person, even if you've long forgotten that conversation. Many of the issues raised are still relevant; it's by no means clear that the causal theory implies that you are, if there's no relevant causal link between that conversation and the later use of the name.

[@helenlauer9545]

right. I didn't see this comment by the lecturer when I was ragging on, above. These are the hazards of engaging with students' comments when you try to get a point across. Costly but valuable lecturing style.

[@destroydate7887]

Prof. Bonevac would you be willing to discuss Max Black's paper on Humbug along side Harry Frankfort's "On Bullshit", They are playfully serious works about usage and intention.

[@vladimirbacha6205]

Thanks for the upload. Plz add subtitle

[@cliffordhodge1449]

My objection to causal theory is that it just pushes back the reference problem to the baptism or christening. If you christen a kind by pointing and saying. "That is a tiger," how have you referred with your finger? Even assuming you use some more basic kind term, as in, "That animal is a tiger," (even if, unknown to all, it is a robot which bears an uncanny resemblance to tigers) how does this avoid pushing the problem back to the more basic kind terms which you might use? Causal theory needs an account of ostension.

[@helenlauer9545]

well, i was raised too in a climate where this seemed a very important question, and was delightedly shocked to discover there's an easy enough answer to the mystery of pointing. Just reflect upon hundreds of thousands of years of successful pointing (Tyler Burge) and it turns out we just do 'get it' as a species -- of course, not infallibly. Sometimes you can point to the falling tree, and I think you're pointing to a rainbow, and I die. So too, our domesticated neighbors - dogs, certainly, cats; it's not a big deal. Yes, when we look deep at the roots, it could be rabbit parts, time slices, but since it's whole rabbits we're often after . . . duh. I was disappointed to discover that the very question you raise got short stopped by Davidson rather late in his theorizing by declaring that the buck stops at a certain point, and your just stuck with the fact that reference in the most elementary scenario, works. A fuller treatment of knowledge as something which can be relied upon in a very primitive sense as part of our modus operandi is developed in exquisitely careful detail by Williamson.

[@helenlauer9545]

18:54 -- actually, I'm wondering whether the use (or just say the occurrence) of a particular sound in a specific idiolect really has much to do with the theory of reference being sufficient or not -- after all, it's the word's reference that is at issue. The class lecture seems to get distracted into the psychology of an individual's use of a term, and when we would say she is 'really' referring. But the focus of Evans, I thought, is about what would justify the criteria used for a successful reference when it is working. That is, ever. The fact that on certain occasions a sound string isn't really what it's made out to be doesn't matter. All the parrots in the world could not rack up to a genuine counterexample to a correct theory of reference. Neither people 'faking it' in a bar, or freshmen in class. I think the guy who asked what is required for a theory to be sufficient was asking a good question and it got overlooked. The fact that we even can distinguish incidents where someone is pretending to refer from the real thing means the fakes are not counterexamples to an adequate theory of reference. I'm reminded here too of something Ernest Nagel wisely said about the ubiquity of bias in the sciences -- it doesn't defeat in any way from the viability of aiming at impartiality. Maybe the cases where we succeed (or not) in faking reference are distractions of no consequence, really, since we are able to identify bias (often enough, anyway, to keep trying to overcome it.) Consider ornithologists - sorry to pick on a science here - trying hard to get to what distinguishes a duck, say, from a swan and a goose -- and you come along with a decoy duck made of wood; it would be irrelevant to the ornithologist, right? Something that looks, sounds, even functions to attract other ducks because it is so similar to a duck, does not break down the difference between a duck and something that's not a duck. So even a perfect decoy is not relevant to someone aiming at a theory of what it is to be a duck. This seems to discourage AI theorists of mind, but I digress. Acknowledgement here for the fake duck example, of a rather impatient remark during a supervision session some forty years ago by David M. Rosenthal, due here. Always pay attention when your supervisor is losing patience.

[@خايفتفكر]

caption please

[@cliffordhodge1449]

The causal account seems OK until you consider something like this: You begin telling me about Louis, of whom I know nothing. We converse for awhile, and I throw in comments like, "Oh, it sounds like Louis really loves pizza," and pick up on your comments about him by throwing in my own. Then I suddenly ask, "So I'm wondering, does such a person as this Louis exist?" Until that point it seems like I am referring to Louis successfully, but after I ask the question, it seems to me doubtful that I have, despite the causal chain.

[@kallianpublico7517]

Facts that are present - reference: sensation (consciousness). Facts that are absent - inference: the linguistic mind (self-consciousness). What then is memory? Purely a tool of self-consciousness? Or is self-consciousness purely a tool of memory? Not a faculty of brain but a function of self-consciousness. Persistent impressions in animals, does that qualify as animal memory? Is the sight of a predator associated with predator every time? How is goldfish 🐠 "memory" not every animals' memory? Is self-consciousness then a reaction to evolutionary pressures? He who has the best survival "instincts" or the best survival strategies (memory) gets Nature's permission to move on, for now. Thus successful self-consciousness persists. We as humans are only recently becoming aware of bacteriological predation. Is it far-fetched to wonder that human self-consciousness will adapt, change in a fundamental way, to incorporate bacteriological knowledge? Perhaps the self-consciousness of Neanderthals were largely influenced by plant predation. What about the Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks? Survival as the origin of intent. Intent as the "re"cognition of predators - memory. Memory and sound as the origin of names - language. Language as a substitute for consciousness- self-consciousness. Self-consciousness as the origin of abstraction. Abstraction as the origin of constant conjunctions or necessary connections: causation. Causation as the origin of prediction. Successful prediction as the origin of God or science.

[@NathanWHill]

I don't see why an individual's psychology masters at all. If I ask 'where were you born?' You day Duesseldorf and I say. 'I've never heard of Duesseldorf. Where is it?' I am clearly successfully referring to Duesseldorf, although I've never heard of it.

[@helenlauer9545]

40:47 -- putting 'concepts' in there is adding a free rider. What's a concept? This doesn't help at all explain how reference works by relying on descriptions that somehow account for the contribution a referring term makes to the truth conditions of a sentence. -- It's like putting in a sense datum to link a perceptual experience to the object seen. I'm surprised Bonevac gets away with this.

[@DrWhom]

Rubbish! Fraud!