Kripkenstein! (The Rule Following Paradox)

[@avatarmage34]

Thank you, this was a very clear explanation. Glad I finally found it! Why do so many people have to present philosophy in confusing ways...

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Thanks! I'm glad to help. As for that, my theory is that people present philosophy in confusing ways because they don't really understand what is going on and they want to hide that fact. Or different people understand concepts in different ways. Thanks for watching!

[@kendog84bsc]

It's not Kripkenstein, it's Kripkenstein's *monster!* Kripkenstein is the person who created the monster. How many times do I have to correct people? Geez... Just kidding! Hey I really am!

[@StephenPaulKing]

🙄

[@hkumar7340]

You are just following a different rule... Our community does not follow your rule, we follow a funky alternate rule!

[@charliesteiner2334]

Like many problems in epistemology, this makes a lot more sense once you know about a certain formalization of Occam's Razor, called Solomonoff Induction. Long story short, there are good reasons to treat simpler rules as more likely, and so you can arrive at some degree of confidence that someone is following a certain rule (this creates a second skeptical paradox about how one defines simplicity, which one does more or less have to accept at least provisionally).

[@StephenPaulKing]

Ummm, "simple to Kripkenstein"?

[@Xehops]

This is not a problem in epistemology bc the issue is not about how we know the answere to the question "is he performing addition or quaddition?" but whether the question has an answer in the first place

[@ZeroG]

I don't think we need to ask if someone is following a rule, we just need to ask if they broke a rule.

[@bernardquine1507]

The original experiment was used by Putnam in his «The meaning of ‘meaning’» for explaining that the intentionality component do not determine the meaning of the terms we use, because given two possible worlds in which earth (1) people use “water” in the same way earth (2) people use “water”, the superficial “water” every person knows, but without knowing that water in earth (1) has a different chemistry structure H20 to that of earth (2) called, let's said, XYZ. Ok, good point there. But then after, Putnam himself offers a theory of meaning dealing with the reference in a way that makes compatible the uses of the past, intuitive usage of daily, common people, with the very structures and relations we do know for the external, actual properties of a thing in our world. Basically, the meaning of water must contain the stereotype features, both superficial and deep, says Putnam, and referring them to a conception of a progressive, corrective semantic task open to scientific changes or other kind of changes in our usages, or concepts or whatever alike; given so, though two persons can use the word “gold” to refer different properties, let's say the convention of precious luxury at one hand and the chemical structure at the other, Putnam would simply says that meaning as stereotypical extensionality and common usage of concepts, terms and relations, is compatible with the social division internal to language. One person could use meaningfully the word “gold” with the first socially divided stereotypical extensionality (precious luxury) while maintaining part of the set of total stereotype extensionality the word “gold” has (precious luxury and the chemical structure). It could be accepted the double-content aspect of usage of meaning-rules simply by noting the degrees in the stereotypical extensionality a well community connected speaker is able to access. Note that if you try to set on the skeptical argument on the previous meaning rules used to determine whether a well community connected speaker is using correctly a word, by the community itself or a member of it, it would follows the same solution the Putnam's theory of meaning is offering the same stereotypical extensionality for the meta-language that assign meaning to the object-languange as well to the object-languange in itself. It seems to me strange why some people use that experiment to show that no meaning is guaranteed, since the very Putnam offered (as I see) a good and humble description of what a usage is and should be in order to apply to different, but similar cases of extensionality and at the same time being open to correct at temporal intervals. In conclusion, Kripke solution is compatible with a non-skeptical interpretation of semantics if one goes with the Putnam's theory of meaning, which allows both the reference and the equivocation derived from a given stereotypical extensionality (let's say, the alchemist stereotypical extensionality in “gold”).

[@ZeroG]

You can only test if a rule was broken, not if it was followed. By the way, that's a rule.

[@mikaelthesleff3333]

This paradox seems closely related to the general issue of verification of scientific laws. As we know experimental verification of a law in particular instances is not sufficient to establish its validity beyond doubt, but if some falsification criterion could be devised for a particular rule, that should in principle solve the problem at least regarding that rule.

[@mikevsamuel]

By the way, relevant to "is there any way that we can determine if someone is following one rule over another?" There's a sub-field of cryptography called secure multi-party computation which Wikipedia describes as having "the goal of creating methods for parties to jointly compute a function over their inputs while keeping those inputs private." If a rule player were computing a different function, these algorithms bound how many steps might complete before cheating is identified. IIRC, this usually assumes that at least 50% of parties are not cheating.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+Mike Samuel That is fascinating, I'll have to look that up. Reminds me of the radical translator thought experiment.

[@StephenPaulKing]

Nice! Could I quote you?

[@greggorsag9787]

Great video. A metaphorical way to understand this is to consider language as the most addictive intoxicant that we know of. It gives us the incredibly powerful, but hallucinatory, conception that it allows us to refer precisely to an external reality, when it actually only allows us to do things (sometimes very complex things, like science). That’s not to say that there is no such thing as external reality, or that we can’t talk about it meaningfully, but just that we can only do so in vague and philosophically unsatisfying ways. Unless quite drunk (on language). All one really has to do is read Hume, then the Investigations (many times), after perhaps skimming the Tractatus. Kripke is very smart, and helps as a third step if necessary. But Wittgenstein is written as a DIY manual and it’s more fun that way. But it can be challenging; thus the need for repeat struggles (at least for me!) As to your question: Does it matter whether we can speak truth about the world? That depends. Do you mean “truth,” or “quuth”? (Full disclosure: I got an MA in Philosophy and read Wittgenstein toward the end. Dropped the PhD program and went to law school.)

[@jmike2039]

Your bank account thanks you

[@chocolatefigure01]

All seemed language, all our concepts seemed based on spirits, all seemed to mean to be. But in the end we were souls warping through emotions.

[@kalkigillespie3906]

Thats quunny

[@ericborsheim6852]

In the case of math, I think that it works with a simple solution that people do not know the definition but rather have a rough understanding of the concept and an agreement on who to ask if they are unclear about the definition (that is mathematicians who use a formal definition). This applies for math but it does not apply for rules such as H2O is Water. For a posteriori rules I think that the best thing is to take a position where one sees empirical general propositions as having a characteristic of a fractal domain where every universal proposition has an infinite set of interpretations based on an infinite set of possible domains which are in most cases inconsequential. Only when the distinction becomes meaningful does there become a clear distinction in the rules, and until then there will just be equivocation between the members of the set.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+eric borsheim But if they cannot state the formal definition, how do you know that they actually would follow the rule? What fact about the world would determine that they are following one rule but not another, or to put this another way, can you state the rule of addition in a non formal way that precludes any other options? And even if you can, the objection about the words that you use in that definition will apply, since there is no fact of the world that determines how you are using all of those words, so it will fold into the bigger meaning problem. Interesting solution in the second part of your comment. So your response is that someone is just following one of a set of rules, which as they act gets smaller. The problem is that two people will not be able to follow the same rule, since they will have different sets of possible propositions based on past actions. Interesting idea though!

[@ericborsheim6852]

Carneades.org I would say that they are following the much simpler defined rule of doing what the mathematicians say is right. It is a role that makes them follow the formal definition since they would accept a mathematician saying they did the operation wrong.

[@guidotana5521]

@@ericborsheim6852 that is in essence Kripke's skeptical solution to the paradox. What constitutes the meaning of the rule is determined by its assertibility conditions which are individuated on a communal basis, in this case the community of mathematicians. One is correctly following the rule insofar as other agents in one's community identify what the subject is doing as correctly following that rule. The problem is that mathematics becomes what mathematicians say mathematics is, and this generalizes to any normative/propositional endeavor. Everything has the content it has merely by fiat based on what we decide to be the case, and any claim to objectivity we lay based on the norms we presume to follow cannot redeem itself from this intrinsic arbitrariness. Skepticism is largely correct, and we either admit that we don't know anything, or we allow knowledge to have non-factive uses - which for most epistemologists and scientists is at best inconsistent - as one cannot know something false -, or at worst anathema.

[@John-lf3xf]

That seems pretty easy at 5:12. We can just have someone copy a machine which provably uses some rule. Construct a Turing machine which inputs (a,b) and outputs a+b using the standard definition of addition. For a proof system of PA, S, there is a proof that this Turing machine M computes the addition (or as prior stated, we could just define it to be the output of this machine, that is, a+b = m iff M(a,b) = m). There are many algorithms which will do this. A person can do addition, plug the inputs in, and then sticks with your output if and only if it is equivalent to the algorithms output.

[@theophilus749]

Bringing machines into play here does not seem to change anything. How could we tell that the machine is following some rule and occasionally goes wrong or is just following a different rule to the one we thought it was following, or built it to follow? Generally, if there's a problem about what rules we humans are following, it would apply to machines also.

[@John-lf3xf]

@@theophilus749 Because we can mathematically prove the rule by induction. You are basically then asking why does the induction axiom work. It works because of substitutability. The machine cannot differentiate any of the cases globally. It is doing the same operations locally. Everything looks the same to it everytime it does it. It is merely repeating itself again and again and again. The same operations.

[@theophilus749]

@@John-lf3xf Hello John, Thankyou for your response. I suspect that you know far more about mathematical induction than I do, so I respond with due and respectful trepidation. However, you say that "Everything looks the same to it [the machine] everytime it does [something]. It is merely repeating itself again and again and again. The same operations". Isn't the very question the video raises that of deciding whether an operation is the 'same' as some other? The machine may well be repeating itself (over some finite attempts) so far as its physical motions are concerned, but the question would be whether it is repeating itself so far as rule following is concerned. These are not the same thing. Couldn't addition and quaddition be the same to the machine up to some arbitrary high degree, yet still, by definition, be different? Yes, we could write the rule for the machine to follow _intending_ it to be addition, but how could we ever know that it was following just that rule? How could we check? If, after a million years of checking, it came up with results we would expect from its following the rule of addition, it may be that it it is really following some quadition type rule but never been given inputs that brought the difference between addition and quadition into play. Alternatively, say it did deliver a result that was anomalous so far as addition was concerned. What the could we then say? Either that it was, in fact, flowing the rule for addition but somehow went wrong, or that it was following some alternative rule to the one we intended and delivered the correct answer. There would be no fact about the machine's operation that could determine which of these conclusions would be the right one. The mathematical intentions we humans invested in the rule would be neither here nor there.

[@plasmaballin]

Maybe you can be following multiple rules at once. If you are looking at a case where addition and chaddition are the same, then giving the correct answer would be following both rules. Or, maybe following rules is based on what goes on inside your head. When I compute 2+3=5, the mental algorithm I use does not include a step of checking whether the problem includes 398,667, so I am not following the rule of chaddition.

[@mikevsamuel]

"Humans use checklists or written recipes when rules get above a certain complexity" seems to be a fact of the world. "The set of rules that fit within a human's working memory is finite" seems to be another fact of the world. Knowing that and that the human is not using a memory aid would seem to make addition more likely than chaddition and plus more likely than quus. This might be formalizable in terms of a Shannon-coding argument: the average size of minimally-encoded Turing machines that implement addition is smaller than that of those that implement chaddition is a fact of the world. We can accept Quine's argument that no finite number of sentence exchanges will give us complete confidence that the exchangers have the same definition for a term, but we can bound some definitions by reasoning about the kinds of definitions that human minds produce which is theoretically learnable without recourse to sentence exchange.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+Mike Samuel I think that a simplicity criterion is going to betray you. take the rule of wuus, adding any two numbers results in 2. This is simpler, so it is preferable for humans with limited capacities. Certainly it is easier to test for wuus than chus, but there are an infinite number of possible functions which describe human behavior where the method is going to result in a smaller average turing machine. Take three calculators. Calculator A has almost no memory. It can only hold numbers up to 1,000,000. If the result would be larger than 1,000,000 it gives the solution as 'Error'. The average size of turing machines that follows that rule is smaller than the average size of Turing machines that follows the rule of calculator B, which cannot store numbers larger than 1,000,000,000,000. Which is in turn smaller than the average size of a calcualtor which can store numbers up to a googleplex. If you are going by size, you need space to store larger and larger numbers, so smaller Turing machines are actually going to need to be larger the larger the numbers that you want to work with. I doubt that any machine can even follow the rule that we state as addition, since all machiens are limited by memory eventually. Cool idea though.

[@mikevsamuel]

The "average size of a Turing machine" has nothing to do with how much tape it uses to compute a result for a particular input. It is defined in terms of the size of the input necessary to encode that Turing machine's state vector on a universal Turing machine that uses a minimal encoding -- so the average scales with the length of the state vector. If you can find a rule-set that looks like addition and that is computationally simpler than addition, I'd love to see it. The specific examples given fail because they dedicate states both to addition and another task, usually comparison. Doing without addition in favor of a finite state table doesn't help because such things don't compress as well as addition. That said, your point about simplicity is well-taken. The choice of addition in this case was just a convenience, and other rules that we might want to check might not be the simplest amongst apparently simpler rules, so the set of rules for which the simplicity criterion works is small w.r.t. the set of rules even if probably non-empty.

[@StephenPaulKing]

There is decent evidence from fMRI studies in neuroscience that all thought involves the use of memories. This counterexample to your claim may apply to the compsci example too!

[@StephenPaulKing]

@@mikevsamuel A TM, as defined by Turing, has at least one infinite tape or else it is not universal since there are, at least potentially, infinitely many implementations of a TM and a bisimilarity relationship must obtain between any pair of them for universality to obtain.

[@StephenPaulKing]

@@mikevsamuel Your test: "let me see it" is supported only by the assumption that you comprehend and use language of the minimal type. A minimal type is necessary atomic, no? Doesn't this revive the Monster yet again? Atomic logics are funny...

[@carlosmendes7]

Hmm, in more formalized terms (by maths and computer science) this is the Entscheidungsproblem. Alan Turing and Alonzo Church gave the answer: in some instances, yes, it is possible to have a fact (proof) that a rule is being followed correctly. However, it is proven that there is NO UNIVERSAL PROCEDURE to assert that, for any given rule, whether it is being followed correctly.

[@DManCAWMaster]

It's the son of Wittgenstein

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+DManCAWMaster Haha, the illegitimate monster child of Wittgenstein and Kripke. :)

[@SimberLayek]

I mean... Couldn't you just ask them? "What brought you to this conclusion?"

[@SimberLayek]

@Chris Olberding H?

[@SimberLayek]

@Chris Olberding I dunno what's wrong with H

[@StephenPaulKing]

@@SimberLayek Demanding a convention to be absolute and totalizing... ha!

[@SimberLayek]

@@StephenPaulKing not demanding anything, just dunno what's wrong with it

[@daMacadamBlob]

What are logicians going to jerk off about then?

[@dawnwatching6382]

Thank you, great video!

[@sethapex9670]

there is no way to say that someone is ALWAYS using words in the way that they seem to be, but there are situations that are possible in our experience of the world where we can be certain that someone is using their words to mean what they seem to mean. These situations have very precise conditions and might be difficult to set up, but they are possible. One such test is to put someone into an all-white room with a single object and ask them what that object is. This would isolate their experience of the world to the object. If people outside that room give the same or a similar description of that same object, then we know that they are each using their words to mean the same thing.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+Seth Apex But imagine the object is a red ball. They use the word 'ball' to describe the object. How do you know that 'ball' refers to sphirical objects, and not red objects, or physical objects, or spherical objects only if they are the only thing in a room. All of these are possible rules that the person in the room could be following.

[@otakurocklee]

I have a couple of questions: 1. I have memory of what I did in the past. So I remember that I used plus and not quus. My behaviors may be the same in both situations. But my memories wouldn't, since quus requires checking whether the numbers were greater than 57. So why can't this be evidence for which rule I was following? 2. If the solution amounts to "assertion", then why does it matter if the assertion is done by a "community" or a single person? I don't see the significance of "private vs public" here. We are by fiat declaring the public assertion declares "rule-following"... we can just as easily say assertion by a single individual declares rule-following.

[@StephenPaulKing]

1. Recall involves rules...

[@StephenPaulKing]

Community implies coherence of meanings, or else minds are not involved.

[@StephenPaulKing]

2. Who is the "we" that you refer to?

[@JackPullen-Paradox]

What about identifying the algorithm; then test them on application of each facet of the algorithm. That doesn't prove the rule, but it would come closer.

[@pavlova717]

I think the issue is treating language as a convention, like a game of chess. If language was just like a game of chess, then we'd need to agree on the rules for sure. But do to so, we would have to use language, and it's like playing chess to define the rules of chess, preposterous. But let's say people do have a private language and it's not a convention. Let's say it corresponds to an objective reality. Now it is easy to say that when I am speaking about water, I am intending the same meaning as other people intend in their private language that also corresponds with an objective reality.

[@StephenPaulKing]

Try hypergame!

[@veritopian1823]

I think the answer to this paradox is it contains a fallacy of false premise. It conflates the concept of "a independent rule", with the concept of "a set of dependent rules". E.g: The rule of addition (plus) is single, and universal, and independent of quantity. It's a qualitative rule. But the rule of "quus" is not a rule, it's a set of rules. It contains exceptions. It's a quantitative rule. So the paradox is invalid because a universal rule is the opposite of a rule with exceptions. Does that make sense? Great vid. Thanks.

[@StephenPaulKing]

No. You just repeated a stipulated rule and used it in a claim with out further support.

[@veritopian1823]

@@StephenPaulKing No, I didn't... I was drawing a distinction between: a. A rule, and b. A set of rules. They are different things, and shouldn't be conflated. Kripke's examples are illogical - because of this.

[@derekbroad9285]

I take a little concern with the "supposition against the rule" as I'm going to call it. We have set mathematical rules because they work and can be used to discover new secrets of the universe, life, etc. In following a belief system, such as "chaddition", that's a direct contradiction of set mathematical concepts. Also, if they cannot do some mathematical problem (such as calculating numbers above 57) I think that is an educatable skill.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+Derek Broad If you want to think about it from a mathematical context, the question is what gives one set of mathematical axioms priority over others? The use of base ten is completely arbitrary,so why should we think someone is using base 10 instead of some other base? There are contexts where other bases are in fact much more useful, (see binary and computers). Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry also come to mind. And even if there is some reason that we might suspect that someone is following a rule, there is still no fact of the world that makes it true that they are following that particular rule. The point is not that they cnanot add numbers above 57, but that they are following a different rule of addition. The deeper problem is not how to evaluate whether some new person has learned to follow a rule of a community, but how do you tell if the community actually follows that rule at all. What fact about the world makes it so that mathematicians follow addition instead of chaddition? Where is there something which makes that statement true? I have never seen something of that sort, nor do I ahve any idea what it would look like.

[@derekbroad9285]

Carneades.org Okay, so that's a lot to think about. I would say that the "priority" of mathematical axioms would be best described from a utilitarian/philosophy of mathematics standpoint. One can freely admit that mathematics impacts their everyday life, in one way or another. Can and does prove to be a useful tool. However, it's relevant to the user as well. For most layman's, they can usually get away with "basic" principles. However, as you progress into the more intrinsic side of things, such as those who do math professionally, the more complex side becomes increasingly useful. As to the addition vs chaddition/quus, or the use of base numbers other than base ten not only seems needlessly complicated, each have certain parameters. Chaddition and quus have aspects, however minuscule, that would make them incorrect in mainstream math. And sometimes, using the wrong base number can lead you down often incorrect paths. Sorry for the super long comments! Love your stuff, and getting into good debate.

[@derekbroad9285]

Or maybe more pragmatic as opposed to utilitarian, but nevertheless.. You can still change the base number in an equation, and as long as you follow with the answer that necessarily follows, then you're good. However, as previously mentioned, following a different "form of addition" seems needlessly complicated, and seems like youre breaking mathematical rules that don't need to be broken.

[@StephenPaulKing]

Maybe we can appeal to Tannenbaum's theorem. arxiv.org/abs/1311.6375

[@11kravitzn]

If we notice that someone fails to follow the rule "correctly", we can correct them. And if we never notice that someone fails to follow the rule "correctly", why do we care?

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

We care because if there is no state of affairs that makes it true that some subject S is following a given rule X, (and you follow the correspondence theory of truth) then the statement S is following rule X is meaningless. Statements like John obeys the speed limit, or Bill follows the rules of multiplication, are meaningless since there is no state of the world that would prove them to be true. We care because it is a significant problem for the correspondence theory of truth (kzbin.info/www/bejne/q5-TfJV9m9iXi68).

[@Ryndika]

Is this similar to grue? In 6:54, it seems to use same the language.

[@johnbalfour8157]

So, does this paradox as applied to addition (or subtraction, multiplication, division) call into question a claim of the consistent logic of mathematics no mater what figures are used?

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+John Balfour The problem is not that the logic of mathematics is not consistent, but rather you can never tell if someone is following a rule or not. This is a bigger problem for language since you cna't tell if someone is following the rule of how to use the word 'the' correctly. Mathematics is jsut used because the example is very clear.

[@johnbalfour8157]

And for this to be a paradox we have to assume that such a rule exists in the first place?

[@dj098]

This argument reeks of sophistry and illusion to me, no matter how interesting it may sound at first. In a true Wittgensteinian spirit, we might be inclined to say that the paradox it poses results from a confused attempt to disentangle linguistic from mental meaning, in reference to concepts such as "rule following" and "objective facts" that determine and govern our ruke following practices. Paradoxically, in order to show that it amounts to a pseudoproblem, one cannot simply ignore it, and in order to resolve it we must somehow accept its initial conditions and the way the original argument was formulated in the first place. Krioke sees this, but - as mentioned at the end of the video - it seems that the doubts of a sceptic are still not completely subdued, and I think Wittgenstein was perfectly aware of this when setting up his argument. In my opinion, Wittgenstein succeeded in showing that objective facts cannot determine the correctness conditions that underlie our rule-following practices, but Kripke's solution that brings in the idea of intersubjective agreement doesn't sound convincing to me. Some rules might be such that they are are determined solely by sociocultural norms, but surely not all are (or at least should be for that matter). Why do I believe that I am using the rule of addition when I am adding two numbers together, and not some other rule? Because I was told what the meaning and process of application of that rule was when I was a kid, and that rule hasn't failed me so far in terms of yielding relieble and correct results. Sure, I might mistakenly believe that I am using that instead of an entirely different rule, but I have no reason to suspect this - especially if I take into account that I know all the basic rules of arithmetic that are expected of me to know, and those rules alone can reasonably have any bearing on what I believe correctly or incorrectly follows when applying that rule.

[@castlebravo19]

Isn’t it also possible that there are no such things as “rules”? Could it be the case that definitions of things are purely for classification and have no objective basis? Is there any reason why I should classify “addition” as an operator that isn’t purely pragmatic? Could I be justified in defining “shmaddition” as performing 2 + 3 whereas “quaddition” is 5 + 7 and so on? This way there aren’t any rules at all and there’s no paradox. Seems like this type of paradox only reveals the absurdity of classifying things perfectly.

[@StephenPaulKing]

That would prevent the existence of languages and all other systems that use grammars... so no...

[@StephenPaulKing]

Right, it demonstrates that perfect classification are impossible.

[@MyRobertallen]

@@StephenPaulKing Nature is divided, in the words of Eli Hirsch, 'at the joints.' There are natural kinds- species. Our notions thereof are supposed to reflect the concepts those universals IMPOSE upon the perceiving Intellect, indeed become in our minds.

[@Mentat1231]

I think the solution works, but how could the first language users get their norms?

[@Eta_Carinae__]

Revise correspondence to reference empirical content instead of facts? Are they even that distinguishable anyway?

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+Allan Bartlett The problem there is while a fact is a phycislal thing out there in the world, empirical content seems like something which I can't touch. In fact it sounds a lot more like a coherentist view of truth than anything.... It is not impossible to switch the theory to this, but it makes it a very different position with very different problems. Check out my video on the correspondence theory of truth and my video on teh coherence theory of truth for more on how these are different.

[@Eta_Carinae__]

Thanks for the reply. I've seen your video on coherence, and I have a pretty good idea about correspondence. The issue for me is that the things people talk about when they use the word "fact" cannot be some physical thing. For instance, facts can refer to some fictional canon, an analytic statement, or some matter of theory. But surely just about every statement is a matter of theory, right down to our perception of objects. The idea that facts are tangible is not at all intuitive, and doesn't actually seem to, or could ever refer to anything at all. Facts sound more like propositions which are invariant cetris paribus. The cetris paribus will have to depend on the reference of the proposition in question. It just seems like you're doomed to fail if we leave correspondence the way it is.

[@StephenPaulKing]

@@Eta_Carinae__ a fact is that for which no contradiction is found. No?

[@Eta_Carinae__]

@@StephenPaulKing Do logical truths count as facts? I was under the impression facts had to be synthetic.

[@MartinQMurphy]

a fantastic creation

[@havenbastion]

I don't see how that's a paradox...

[@rockyfjord5338]

An USAF pilot said a Russian Sukoi35 pilot had not shot down an Israeli F-15 over Syria in early 2013 because 'no pilot would have divulged such a shoot-down because of the rules,' A cop said he knew something was true because of the rules. Both were wrong being in bondage to rules. They did not know the facts, but rather believed they knew something based upon the rules. Rules do not determine reality. Reality is the interpretation of facts. I know this video was not about rules per se, but I wanted to make some generality about rule worshipers and their incapability to think.

[@matthewa6881]

Brilliant

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+Matthew A Thanks! And thanks for watching!

[@RobotProctor]

This paradox is unintuitive to me, because it seems like we assume we can see "truth" directly as though reading the rules of the universe, but this is NEVER true. We tentatively assume theories (like gravity, or smiles imply happiness) to extrapolate what we're likely to observe based on what we observe now. I don't think this paradox bothers me much. We can never determine whether a rule is followed perfectly. This is fine.

[@deadman746]

You would probably enjoy cognitive linguistics. See Lakoff.

[@munstrumridcully]

OK, I'm no philosopher(more of a hard science geek) but I think this whole paradix is silly. Using the h2o example, Imo, it just doesn't matter what language one is using, nor does it matter if one identifies every single example of water in the world. If you encounter a substance that consists of molecules that are one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, it doesn't matter if you call it "agua" or "water" or "h2o" or "dihydrogen monoxide", that substance corresponds to the thing "water" describes. If you then switch to a different rule set, and/or a different usage of the word 'water", you are no longer describing the substance h2o and if would be guilty of equivocation fallacy if you switxh back and forth between usages arbitrarily while describing h2o. Meaning of words is often subjective and can change over time, but objects in the world like h2o are that thing no matter what sounds/letter combo we use to descrive them. Just like 2+2=4 no matter what words we use to describe, "a set of a thing and a thing plus another set of a thing and a thing = a set of a thing and a thing and a thing and a thing." I hope I'm expressing myself properly here, lol, but I think you'll get what I mean ;)

[@Eta_Carinae__]

munstrumridcully What if certain distinguishing features of something being H2O were unavailable to you? In science H2O is still quite ambiguous. For example atomic nuclei often have positrons sandwiched between hadrons perpetually. Deuterium and even Tritium can be substituted for hydrogen, with the retension of certain chemical properties, but with new health-risk type properties. And how exactly are we certain that all examples of water meet even every condition laid out here? Perhaps there are imaginary symmetries for isomers of H2O with different charge distributions than normal, which we may still drink and call water. The original purpose of the twin earth thought experiment was to demonstrate that no meaningful statements can be made without reference. Unless we precisely know what H2O is, by this metric we cannot make meaningful statements about it.

[@matthewa6881]

Knowing what something empirical fundamentally is, is different to how somebody is using the word that describes that thing. Nothing in the empirical world is absolutely certain. Physics cannot be. Formal proofs are as certain as the axioms in that system are. So nothing is in a sense absolutely certain. But I believe there are degrees of certainty. If we were so sceptical that we could be sure the rules of mathematics were correct or the proofs that are used to model physical phenomena are correct, and failed to explore this world, that wouldn’t be very good. Nobody would bother trying to make any progress in science. But of corse Pragmatism doesn’t mean truth. We can’t be sure whether people mean what they say but I think there is an objective realty out there that can’t be shaped by our language. I strongly object to such claims that deny this and find them abhorrent. These types of claims are widespread in postmodernist thought and poststructualist philosophy. Continental philosophers make arguments such as science is just a social activity and isn’t describing any objective phenomena because, you know, there’s no such thing as objective reality or phenomena because humans can be so powerful as to shape what it is. I can’t prove this arguement wrong but I find it to be an absolute insult to our capacity for reason. Something continental philosophers have a disdain for: using reason to understand reality through science. Most a proud of this, as science cannot tell us what truth is, as our language constructs reality. Hence whatever we think reality is, is only reality to the person defining it. Again, I can’t refute that. It’s the same as asking to prove that we exist and in what form. It’s pointless after while because we can’t know the answer with certainty. However the way we describe reality is probably only an approximation. Nevertheless this approximation can be very precise. In the realm of pure mathematics this may even be absolutely exact but it is foolish to claim we know that with certainty. Again, if the axioms are wrong, the whole system is utterly meaningless.

[@munstrumridcully]

Allan Bartlett so what? We can only correspond to an approximation of what reality is anyway. Let us say we encountered something that is just as you say about h2o. So what? All it does is add to the usages of the term "water". It in no way changes that two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom is what we understand the thing we most comonly call "water" to be chemically made of and how it is physically structured. For all we know, we exist in the Matrix or under the influence of a Cartesian Demon, and no such tbing as hydrogen or oxygen physically exist. Once again, so what? Phylosophically, we can never have absolute certainty of anything other than in the proposition, "there is a localized center of awareness of experiences called an "I" ". Anything else can be illusion or dellusion, for all any of us know for certain. But unless you want your "I" to be burned to a crisp or run over by a bus, you damned well better _behave_ as if you can know something about the subject of that localized awareness, what the vast majority of us seem to share and call "reality". Like Betrand Russel once said, "Will you leave by the window or the stairs?" Just _how_ skeptical are you willing to be _in practice_ ? Like I said, the whole "paradox" is silly.

[@munstrumridcully]

Matthew A About pragmatism not being truth: imo it can be. It all depends on what truth system one uses. Pragmatic truth is just as viable as any other, more so than an absolute one, since a pragmatic theory of truth is the only kind that can be tested given the inherent imposibility of knowing anything objectively via subjective expeience, except that there must be some kind of "I"(aka localized awareness) experiencing _something_ .

[@Eta_Carinae__]

It's a little difficult to follow your claim precisely, so it may sound like I'm responding to several different claims. If the rule states that water denotes the configuration of certain physical entities such that they produce a structure H2O, then it must follow that physical modifications to the nuclei of the atoms fall outside the definition. For the claim that we can append the definition of water to include multiple different characteristics, of the same thing, it is an analytic proposition that terms like water must have referents which are universally contained within the definition. If the definition can serve as a suitable analogue for a "rule", then you really have no discernible rule that identifies "water". Maybe a set of different rules, but the question of why these seemingly distinct entities are being unarbitrarily identified as water remains unanswered. I wasn't necessarily trying to be a radical skeptic about 'water'. I believe it's possible to resolve this. But I suspect we aren't that interested in every single physical state being true implied by the phrase H2O. Thus I suspect encountering H2O proper in the wild is not sufficient for us to start calling it 'water'.

[@MyRobertallen]

Here is the problem and its solution. philpapers.org/rec/ALLDRA-3 BTW, I took Professor Kripke to dinner at Carl's Chop House in Detroit in 1989. 0 but the best for the world's best Wittgenstein expositor: the going-on problem pushed to its logical conclusion means not even the teacher knows what he means. 'The concept of meaning vanishes into thin air.' It took a penetrating intellect to see the most disturbing skeptical ramification of the Investigation's discussion of rule-following, something that had escaped not only the notice of the whole generation of preceding Wittgensteinians, but the Master himself.

[@el-matadoh]

From moi university perspective point of view epistemology of the cave need to be verified

[@StephenPaulKing]

A *reality is that which a system of communicating bayesian minds can not agree to disagree upon, re Aumann's theorem. *Truths are incontestable in their agreed upon *reality.

[@ashnur]

It's somewhat boring how many of these questions pop up simply because the question of time is avoided. Probably because time itself is misunderstood. If you include time into the question properly, you will realize that the paradoxon is not that we can't know if someone following a rule, it's that we can even communicate such ideas as "rules". A rule would be an absolute thing that works the same way in every context. There are no such things in the known universe, not physical and not abstract. Everything changes. The whole problem stating by Wittgenstein is simply wishful thinking.

[@StephenPaulKing]

How is comprehension possible without time and temporal progressions generally. Your comment points at a paradox implicit in Platonism and all timeless interpretations of logic and math.

[@ashnur]

@@StephenPaulKingI struggle to fully understand your objective.

[@jangronwald40]

Could You please consider not reading what's on the screen, which makes anything of Yours creation notoriously impossible to watch...

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Why does it make it difficult to watch? If you don't want to listen and would rather read, feel free to put the video on mute and just watch. If you would rather listen than read, you can get all of the information by just listening to the video in the background.

[@bernardquine1507]

The original experiment was used by Putnam in his «The meaning of ‘meaning’» for explaining that the intentionality component do not determine the meaning of the terms we use, because given two possible worlds in which earth (1) people use “water” in the same way earth (2) people use “water”, the superficial “water” every person knows, but without knowing that water in earth (1) has a different chemistry structure H20 to that of earth (2) called, let's said, XYZ. Ok, good point there. But then after, Putnam himself offers a theory of meaning dealing with the reference in a way that makes compatible the uses of the past, intuitive usage of daily, common people, with the very structures and relations we do know for the external, actual properties of a thing in our world. Basically, the meaning of water must contain the stereotype features, both superficial and deep, says Putnam, and referring them to a conception of a progressive, corrective semantic task open to scientific changes or other kind of changes in our usages, or concepts or whatever alike; given so, though two persons can use the word “gold” to refer different properties, let's say the convention of precious luxury at one hand and the chemical structure at the other, Putnam would simply says that meaning as stereotypical extensionality and common usage of concepts, terms and relations, is compatible with the social division internal to language. One person could use meaningfully the word “gold” with the first socially divided stereotypical extensionality (precious luxury) while maintaining part of the set of total stereotype extensionality the word “gold” has (precious luxury and the chemical structure). It could be accepted the double-content aspect of usage of meaning-rules simply by noting the degrees in the stereotypical extensionality a well community connected speaker is able to access. Note that if you try to set on the skeptical argument on the previous meaning rules used to determine whether a well community connected speaker is using correctly a word, by the community itself or a member of it, it would follows the same solution the Putnam's theory of meaning is offering the same stereotypical extensionality for the meta-language that assign meaning to the object-languange as well to the object-languange in itself. It seems to me strange why some people use that experiment to show that no meaning is guaranteed, since the very Putnam offered (as I see) a good and humble description of what a usage is and should be in order to apply to different, but similar cases of extensionality and at the same time being open to correct at temporal intervals. In conclusion, Kripke solution is compatible with a non-skeptical interpretation of semantics if one goes with the Putnam's theory of meaning, which allows both the reference and the equivocation derived fro m a given stereotypical extensionality (let's say, the alchemist stereotypical extensionality)

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

I really need to do a series on Putnam and the myriad of issues with his positions.