Hello and welcome to the seventh session of Mestructuring Enlightenment from Carnap's Outbow to Conceptual Engineering. Reza? Thank you very much everyone. My apologies for cancelling last week's class. So today, as I promised, we'll talk about Carnap concepts of probability there is time we'll get back to Turing uh uh Turing and Wittgenstein and how they uh explicate um the Hilbert's decision problem you know which basically this becomes uh ultimately at the hands of Turing uh theory of computability um
with regard to uh so we are kind of really tight on time if you want to uh look i mean if uh there is this uh if enda can uh uh basically uh do that uh i can add 30 more maths next session which is the last session so at least we have a better chance but still with that we are uh behind um because i know that if i talk and start to talk about carnav and the idea of probability uh so as to come back and then talk about theory we won't have enough time for that much of a discussion really uh so i i'm more willing to do the all the discussions and stuff
of next session. So at least we have some groundwork covered here. So that's it. Who is going to present today? Yes, Cassia and- Yeah, that would be me and Cassia. I'm gonna share my screen. Okay, I'm guessing the normal presentation, right? Thank you so much, Dan, I'm here. Okay.
So, since I'm becoming just this year familiar with analytic philosophy and had not much philosophical training so far, I did not feel prepared to write and say or to present something entirely on my own thoughts. I prefer to enjoy the text the most and extract from it what I could, so I decided to summarize some of the topics and to highlight what was most interesting for me. First of all, I have to say this text had been a pleasure to read, although it was my first reading of Kana. It is clear, precise, and therefore easy to understand. Of course, it was the first chapter of the book, which he presents and explains his method of explication. so it's not a hard theoretical one full of formalizations, but a methodological text.
I felt though that I would enjoy it more and understand the text better if I read the two prefaces in which he presents his goals and tasks of the book. In general, the problems of the book are the ones of induction, that is inductive logic, and probability. At the time of the beginning of his writing there were not so many books and texts attempting to solve the conceptual problems of probability. It was apparent that many philosophers, mathematicians were at the time looking for solutions. So at the preface of the second edition, 12 years later, he announced that he gave up on a second volume of the book that would contain the technical construction of the fundamental parts
of inductive logic based on the general conceptions developed in the first part. So he attained to the more fundamental conceptions and published just the first part of the work, since there were a lot of books and texts dealing with that he would propose in the second part anyway. The main goal of the book is to construct a system of inductive logic, Dealing with concepts such as the degree of confirmation and with the help of methods of symbolic logic and semantics. He devised the probability doing already what he calls explanation as a first part of the explication method into probability one, the logical concept of probability, which is the
degree of confirmation of a theory. probability to the frequency concept of probability, which is the common sense core use of the concept today, such as rolling the dice, how often I will have the number x if I roll it y times. Given a brief resume of his intentions in the book, I will now dwell in the first chapter on explication. In the very beginning, he impacts the problems of the book, the degree of confirmation, the induction, and the probability, which he intends to Clarificate, and when possible to define these concepts throughout the book. Although scientists frequently use the concept of degree of confirmation to speak about scientific
theories in general, and to state which theory is more or less robust in front of the assessed data, it is not at all precise enough, and it is the task of the book to do it. With the precise and clarified degree of confirmation, it is possible to construct a system of inductive logic, which is a logic based on degree of inducibility or confirmation. With this done, then we could unpack the concept of probability into the two versions mentioned earlier. The explication is needed here, for example, to dissolve some inconsistencies, ambiguities, and incongruities, and to finally ameliorate concepts and make new, better concepts. So, as mentioned, the test of the book is to tackle and make a clarification of these
three concepts, degree of confirmation, induction, and probability. The first one is about how a hypothesis is confirmed through any experiment. We have scientific statements, such as the experiment again confirms theory t, and the quantum theory is confirmed to a considerably higher degree by the experimental data known today. This is itself the concept of probability one, and is the one which has most appeal to Kana. The second one, the induction, is equivalent to the problem of the logical relation between a hypothesis and some confirming evidence for it. The definition of the first concept, of the degree of confirmation leads us to a system of inductive logic.
Which connects to the third concept, the probability, and it is here that we need an explication to define which probability and to divide them into two. Probability two is the frequency concept of probability and probability one the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis. A system of explication is made of three components. An explicandum, which is a concept made of common sensible thought, merely everyday and pre-scientific language. The operation of explication itself, which is the transformation of the concept. And the explicatum, a more precise definition, able to participation in a well-constructed system of scientific concepts, either logical, of mathematical or empirical ones.
To begin with the explication, it is need first a clarification of the explicant, that is an amelioration of it through a better formulation. Can be made by specifications in the context of the concept we are dealing with. Carnap exemplifies this with salt, which bring questions such as, which salt are you talking about? Is it the one which results from the reaction between acids and bases? Is it the salt from minors? Is it the one I use in the kitchen? So yes, to the last question. It is the salt we use in the kitchen. Mainly kitchen salt. Now, although not properly explicated, it was given by clarification, a context of use,
and it narrowed down the possibilities of such a concept. The next step then is to explicate in a concept, which is exact such as any ACL or sodium chloride. So it is now free of ambiguities. Another example I found when I was walking to the vaccination station this week, there was a light post in the street, broken and being held by the cables it actually sustains. So I said, imagine the tension it is having right now. And my partner answered, literally, Well, then I realized that there was more than one tension in the context. So I remember there were several uses for this concept, and here I bring just four of them, although I found a lot more.
We have a mechanical tension, which we usually see in string computations, but also in buildings, for example. There is also the electric tension, which is called voltage sometimes. times. There's psychological tension, which is another name for stress, also ambiguous. And there is a geological tension, which is similar to the mechanical but applied differently. From tension to adjective plus tension, we have a clarification. And if we quantify these concepts by putting in a formal system of scientific concepts, we have explicated them. Unfortunately, some are harder than others to explicate, such as geological tension, and even more than psychological tension,
but I'm not saying that it's impossible, just that I don't know, that I'm not familiar with. So I leave here as an exercise. There are requirements for the explicatum to be an explicatum, and Carnap writes about four of them. similarity to the expert condom, exactness, fruitfulness, and simplicity. The least important requirements are the similarity and simplicity. The former is a way of confounding or giving an impression that is another different concept, instead of a betterment of a concept known before. He gives an example of fish, which was at a center point interpreted as some
animal which lives underwater without much precision. Then in zoology it was found useful to give restrictions to what would be considered fish. So some animals such as whales and seals no longer a part of this concept. It was not the case that they discovered anything new about whales and seals. It is the same in the case of Pluto, now fitting the concept of a planet. It was found useful to conceptualize it as a dwarf planet instead. In Carnot words, it is not a correction in the field of factual knowledge, but in rules of language.
It is this path to precision that leads to the exactness, which is one of the most important requirements. The other important requirement is fruitfulness, the reason for the explication. This fruitfulness has to do with the possibility of relations in which the concept takes part with others through a constructed system of explication. Here I quote Carnar, a scientific concept is the more fruitful, the more it can be brought into connection with other concepts on the base of observed facts. The least important is the simplicity. It has two forms of attaining. One is by the simplicity of its own definition and the other by the simplicity of the laws
which connect with the concept with the other ones. Although scientists seek simplicity or elegance when it is possible, it is not always the case and the other requirements have priority in the explication. So when the three others are accomplished, the simplicity is searchable. Carnap categorizes the kinds of concepts in three, classificatory, comparative, and quantitative. The classificatory is when we classificate one concept in mutually exclusive kinds, for example, metals and non-metals, organic and inorganic, and so on. The comparative is when we compare a property or a feature in different situations. And the quantitative is provided by the most effective instruments in the scientific arsenal.
So we have numerical values such as length, length of time, velocity, mass, volume, density, temperature, etc. He illustrates the different kinds using concepts as warm, warmer and temperature. When we feel something warm and we detect something with our skin, brain or a biological sensory apparatus that's warm, we can be very dubious and not precise at all. For example, when one person enters the room coming from a hot place and another comes from a cold place, they feel something completely different from each other. Because we say it's not the warmth of the room, but actually the transference of heat between our body and the external environment. So it is clear there is a need for a better concept. Warma is a better explicando, but it still has some ambiguities in it.
The case is closed when we have some measurement of this warmth, and it is possible because of the property of the materials to change the volume with the increase of the temperature. So if we don't have a proper thermometer or temperature apparatus, but have a way of knowing that the volume change, we can have Warma asterisk, which is an explicado. The more precise the concept, the more it is able to relate with other concepts, constituting a well-constructed system. The less precise it is, the more it is absolute, in the sense that it stands alone in itself. It is difficult to prove or to relate with other data. It must be said here that this relationality has nothing to do with subjectivity. Rather, it is even more objective than the absoluteness of classificatory concepts.
When we have clarified and explicated the concepts, we insert them in the scientific system of concepts. To do that, we use the axiomatic method, which is consistent with two phases, the formalization of the concepts, constructing an axiom system, not always formal, but could be also semi-formal, and the interpretation of the primitive axiomatic terms that were left to interpretation. This second phase has rules which have a semantical nature. In Kanapian words, for a genuine explication, however, an interpretation is essential. To finish, I would like to make a question about the requirements, not for the explicatum, but for the explicando.
The examples he uses are somehow easier to explicate since he has some way to have experimental data about it, warmth and substance. Of course, the arithmetic systems and the true example he gives some exception to this, but I'm wondering if there are requirements for explicando or if we could explicate any concept we want. So thank you. Absolutely fantastic, excellent. Really nice presentation. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Cassia, my dear friend. Hi, I'm going to present on Carnap and the concept concepts of explication, but departing from Karo's interpretation of it. Just a minute. Yeah, so this presentation is roughly divided in three moments. This is the first is the description of the concepts of the conception of language that follows from the coupling between the ideal of explication and then in the synthetic principle of tolerance, both proposed by Carnot. And after I briefly present the Wittgenstein and concept of forms of life
using the connection that it has with Alan Turing's notion of computability as a point of departure of comparison between these two approaches. So, the direct consequence of Russell's paradox is the need for a metalinguistic system, right, that entails the formation of an infinitely expanding nested hierarchy of metalanguages brought about by the incessant emergence of the same paradox. And due to the inherent instability of particular synthetic systems, one confronts the necessity to construct an external point of view that subsumes the syntactic rules
of the analyzed language as an object language. The main features of logical syntax acquire greater significance only when they are informed by the task of explication that is proposing logical foundations of probability. An important difference between the two approaches here, Carnapet and Wittgenstein, in the case, is the place occupied by artificial and natural languages in relation to each other. And I tried to focus on this relation for this presentation. For Carnap, natural language is a subcase, a particular system within a larger set of constructible languages.
as in for Wittgenstein is the artificial languages that becomes possible from the prior sharing of natural languages normativity which provides the semantic and synthetic material for further elaborations in laboratory. However, by including the systematic notion of explication and the processes that constitute it, I try to demonstrate that the difference between these two perspectives does not characterize a patent incompatibility, but should be conceived departing from the dynamics that they establish between each other in the broader context of inhabiting the words that we
inherit and construct. The system of a logical syntax is not conceived as a set of gears that are independent of the rest of the machine. The symbolic malleability that is proper to the principle of tolerance finds its use and traction in the systematic process of explication and its consequences. It is precisely in this implementation that the significance of an unrestricted logic is shown when its tools are aimed at the conceptual clarification that is needed for the re-engineering of everyday language itself. It is not up to the synthetic system to decide whether an attempt to
explicate a concept is correct or not, but we can decide whether it is satisfactory or not using external criteria, or better put what Carnap would call the concepts of external questions. In his article Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology, Carnarv interrogates about the existential status of abstract entities. And the basic idea he supports in this text is that we can only speak of meaning if we presuppose the existence of a linguistic framework. If we ask about the existence of a given object, it is necessary to understand that this question is asked within a specific
framework, a logical linguistic domain where signs or symbols are arranged in such a way that makes the question possible in the first place. Each linguistic framework has an internal system of rules, which allows and precludes certain constructions within it. And this brings us to to one of the main questions posed by the texts, that is the difference between internal and external questions regarding the linguistic framework. Everything that can be said can only be said because it omits being framed by a particular linguistic or symbolic form, whether those that are naturally evolved and that we use in everyday life,
or the artificial ones that are constructed formalized by logic, particular sciences and social institutions. By internal questions, Carnap means any question, whether about the existence of an entity or the relation between entities that is already framed by a specific normative system, that is, any question that is or can be put into a formal language. While the internal questions concern the activity of science, the external questions are assigned as the role of the philosopher, and as one depends on the other, philosophy and science have an important relation with each other that makes it possible to have knowledge of the word. As Carnap states in empiricism semantics and ontology, the demand
for a theoretical justification, correct in the case of internal assertions, is sometimes and erroneously apply to the acceptance of a system of entities, which means that the choice for the linguistic framework to be taken to include or not include such and such an entities is independent of the work of these particular sciences. The external questions concern the practical and in some sense pre-linguistic decision that I think that ethical questions are included too. That this decision determines which frame of reference
is used to whatever ends is proposed. As far as the set of criteria that determines our values and preferences, this remains untouched by Carnap, but his indication is clear that it is this criteria, however vague and slippery, that guide our choice of linguistic framework. The clash of the Carnapian position with a certain kind of realism become less intense when the implications of the idea of external question are examined. If the question of the existence of an entity belonging to a framework only admits as an answer analytic judgments, what confers the possibility of analyticity is precisely a previous decision on external questions,
which are not theoretical problems, but practical ones. The factor that guides the mobilization of these frameworks for the construction of concepts is therefore ethical, relative to a set of values that produces attitudes and recognition towards sapient and sentient beings, things, and the world. So this is a quote from Semantics, Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology. Carnap says that to be real in the scientific sense means to be an element of the system. Hence, this concept cannot be meaningfully applied to the system itself. Those who raise the question of the reality
of the thing word itself have perhaps in mind not a theoretical question, as their formulation seems to suggest, but rather a practical question, a matter of a practical decision concerning the structure of our language. We have to make a choice whether or not to accept and use the forms of expression in the framework in question. So, according to Carnap, the The introduction of new ways of speaking needs no theoretical justification because it does not imply any assertion of reality. However, this does not mean that one can ignore or reject the status of reality to what is usually asserted as real within a particular framework. On the contrary, besides implying the dismissal of any substance to the very concept of reality
by relativizing what exists to the frame of reference through which entities are postulated, thought, and structured, what is real is simply everything that forces a practical necessity to be included as an entity in a framework that structures it. And as such, everything that is real is potentially the object of a scientific investigation, since the way of talking about such and such an object is always subject to systematization. Although he takes a quietest position somehow with regards to the problem that originates from external questions in his work, Carnap offers with this concept the possibility of including something as forms of life,
that is what is given in the realm of linguistic normativity, which of course is formed on the basis of historical, social, biological, etc. conditions. This is because the practical necessity that constitutes an external question is prior to the structuration of the framework whose pertinence is decided upon. The formal apparatus of illogical syntax appears under this expanded horizon as an unrestricted toolbox of possible tools, that is the unrestricted ocean, unbounded ocean, that enhance our concrete tools to understand, interact with, and manipulate elements of reality.
In more precise terms, it is the unrestricted possibilities of syntactic recombination that assists us in creating methods for conferring cognitive content to any candidate's scientific object, be it social, exact, natural, or biological. In other words, methods of explication whose construction requires exercises in the production of schemata. So, Cairo says that the choice between alternative explications is a practical problem. It must be made in the context of action, which overlaps to some degree with the Lebenswelt.
the life-world as experienced pre-analytically, in which participants articulate the values and preferences that guide their choices. So the task of explication consists in satisfying the demands for a method that allows for an inexact, vague, and equivocal concept to have the rules of its use clarified and tacitly explained. In other words, to go from an explicandum to an explicato, an exact concept that can be mobilized as a tool for the sciences. So I'm just going to skip this paragraph because I think Zenobio explains very well. So in order to understand the key role that
that explication plays in the compatibility between a constructivist vision of language and a certain kind of language as universal medium, I don't know, which allegedly is defended by Wittgenstein and Turing, it is necessary that this concept be presented in two possible meanings. The first sees explication as a concrete and localized task, some kind of a methodology, and the second takes explication as a global practical ideal. Andrea Carus describes the Enlightenment projects as more aligned with the second conception.
So while particular sciences develop methods to adequately explain every concept they use to build predictive models of reality, such explanation, such explication remains without an absolute set of criteria that can determine by necessity whether or not it is correct. There is no way to decide the validity, correctness, or usefulness of a theoretical system from within it, even if it presents itself as a coherent whole. So it is in the sense that explication is the gateway of intrusion of life forms into the infinite ocean of syntactic recombination connecting mind and life theory and practice we can only judge the pertinence
of the tools designed by models which do not necessarily model phenomena or factual structures when we place it in superposition to the reality of things and values so the relation The relationship that is established between natural languages and formal languages cannot be analyzed, therefore, without considering the axiological dimension that motivates the adoption of one set of linguistic frameworks in detriment of the others. So, the ideal of explication consists in adopting the suspension of dogmatic prohibitions that interrupt the development of formal experimentations with languages as an ethics.
So, such adoption is a necessary condition for understanding the processes of transformation and evolution of language, both in everyday social practices and in the sciences, which in their relations to the former and to life are conceived as a unity. This is a quote from Carnot. He says that in both deductive and inductive logic, we deal with abstract schemas, with sentences that belong to constructed language systems and are manipulated according to exact rules. This is admittedly a step away from the real situations of observations, belief, etc., in which we find ourselves in practical life.
The choice of this procedure is not based on the assumption that real situations are not important and that exact schemas are all that matters. Rather, the ultimate goal of this whole enterprise of logic, as of any other cognitive enterprise, is to provide methods to guide our decisions in practical situations. So, I take that Wittgenstein already seems to announce that the very way in which Carnap would treat his project of logical syntax from the idea of explication, departing from the idea of explication, that is, that is a theoretical solution to practical problems,
which gains traction through the interrelation of cognitive, heuristic, behavioral, and social processes. Even so, these problems are local and emerge according to the way in which the interaction, both between agents and their environments, and with the languages they use, becomes more complex to the point of arising the need to solve specific structural problems in the linguistic system adopted. This is why the existence of the self-reference paradox is the driving force behind the creation of metalanguages, ceases to be so problematic insofar as it only needs to be resolved when there is a practical urgency that makes it necessary for the linguistic system in use to be examined and transformed.
So, departing from my reading of Kherous, I made this diagram that illustrates somehow the relations between formal and natural languages. So this is zone one, this is zone two, zone three that he talks about. There is a feedback system that is formed by the proper formal languages, which are regulative constructed systems. And this is what he calls this gray zone that together with the practical axiological dimension constitutes natural language per se. So this gray zone includes experimental findings, data effects, empirical generalizations, oral
tradition and lore about the use of the apparatus, the logical apparatus, and is the zone of understanding. So this zone provides the input to regulative constructed systems, that is the formal languages, and the way in which the formal language is structured, feedback to this gray zone. But the decision from the for the framework that is used in this feedback uh system is made by this practical and axiological remains dimension which is the realm of values uh which he attributes to ethics aesthetics where there is no widely accepted explication so
i think that's it Just when I think that you have done all of your, all of you, by that I mean all of you, you have done your best thing, there is always something more amazing that comes through. Yeah, no, I mean absolutely I love every presentation that you have, every one of you have given it's just that it never fails uh to amaze me um absolutely fantastic really great um okay i think i need to go to the bathroom before i start to say something here
Thank you. Sorry, I didn't mean to force you to restart your cameras. I just did my job. I came here. We still have time. Cassia, would you be kind enough to send this to end?
So he can then share it. That would be magnificent. Excellent work. I mean, this is why I think, you know, no, I'm not supposed to say something like that. We are recording. We need to have some sort of, you know, there is no other way that I can reward it without sounding. I will say after the class, But I think that these are some needs to be published somewhere. And would be magnificent that Cassia, if you can, I mean, I have mentioned to it, you know, before.
You know, some of these essays needs to be published. Or at the very least, you can turn it into a presentation, upload it somewhere, because they are actually really good. Zenobia's PowerPoint was really like classic presentation. Absolutely, I know that how much work you put into these things, probably a whole month or so. I know that these things do take time, particularly if you are not coming from this sort of direction, right, analytic philosophy. really appreciated both presentation extremely well. I don't have enough time to go over
both presentation precisely because there is a lot to be unpacked there. With regard to the question that Zenobio mentioned, it is really hard to say uh first of all we know yes that there are certain kinds of concepts which are pseudo-problematic in the metaphysical sense those cannot be explicated at all but there are certain kinds of concepts that by virtue of their qualitative qualitative semantic nature cannot be as straightforwardly, as straightforwardly explicated in the sense of quantitative concepts
that Carnap has in mind, right? You can make comparative concepts out of them, but attempts at ground zero explicatum most probably will fail. If it doesn't fail, it will lead to certain kinds of unwanted confusions and problems. Majority of concepts that ethics works with, as ends and values ends practical ends and values two different things what uh john name or faith
fiddly says that um um concepts that usually deal with permission and prevention of certain kinds of values, ends, practices, and so on and so forth, they are, they can't be, I don't think that they can be as straightforwardly explicated in the sense of transporting them in terms of to the realm of quantitative concepts. But of course, people have done that. I mean, isn't it rational choice theory, majority of these kinds of so-called rational economy stuff, right? Rational economy theses.
um precisely have put their efforts on on quantifying um these sorts of ethical practical concepts um but then that has that has resulted in certain kind of trivialization of such concepts rather than the enrichment of the concept because explication ultimately should allow you to enrich the concept. Analyticity, because it is built on an analyticity which is not mere reductionism, right? It's the analysis of the concept, the critique of the analytics of the concept. You can see that, you know, all of this stuff about liberal
market theory decision theory rational decision theory rational choice theory they are essentially doing that quantifying your preferences and values in terms of either micro decisions or macro decisions that are basically the foundations of the market financial market right so they do that kind of a stuff but we have seen the consequences the great consequences of that in the realm of ethics and thinking about values. That is, there is more, it has been more of a reduction, pickheaded trivialization and reduction, than explication, clarification,
and ultimately enlightenment enrichment right uh so i would say that these source of concepts uh are a little bit slippery uh when it comes to explication that doesn't mean however uh of course i'm i'm this is something an open question even uh at this point i wouldn't even touch it uh It is still an open question whether no concept regarding two ends and values can ever be turned into quantitative concepts.
Because that requires then for us to fully explain what is it exactly that is actually part of the task of explication, right? What is it exactly that such explicandons are not ready? is in them that the render them kind of foreclosed to the task of explication that is actually part of explication for you to explain what is exactly there for us to not be able to uh turn them into
quantitative concepts uh explicata right uh isn't the whole point that uh carnapp begins Turing begins in their task of explication, for example, is something of a more of a nature of the Godel and Hilbert situation. Hilbert's problem of undecidability, that Godel perfects it. It's simple as that. Look, when we are making certain kind of a statement in a formal system, right? A formal axiomatic system. Some stuff cannot be done. Okay, some stuff cannot be done. But Hilbert is saying that you can't just say something like that.
That's idiotic. You have to say something like that. That's the formulation of the excitability question. You have to say something like this, that what is exactly cannot be done inside this formal system and by virtue of what and by virtue of what right you just cannot simply go on and say that out of thin air saying that such and such concepts cannot be explicated such and such concepts require the introduction of a metal language or meta theory or meta mathematics so on so forth,
right? You have you have to basically say what is exactly cannot be done, what is exactly is impossible, and what renders it impossible to begin with. That is the task of that's part of the preliminary yet important task of explication. Other than that if we just try to pretend as if we have solved the problem of impossibility of what source of concepts cannot be explicated, we are still in the dark realm of the nebulous, nebulous realm, let's not make it exciting, nebulous opaque realm of the explicando, right? So obviously this, for at least in the realm of mathematical logic and mathematics, this
is the very nature of undecidability problem. And Gödel's attack on completeness of certain formal systems is precisely like that. It's not some sort of basically sowing doubts at the heart of enemies and infidels, right? But rather saying that what sorts of questions remain fundamentally undecidable? And through that undecidability, they become impossible to be answered within that system. Dilshad has a question if you can.
Go ahead, Dilshad. My apologies, Dilshad, I didn't see you. You were at the bottom, now you're on the top, as always. Hi, I had a question regarding the status of abstract entities in Karla. I'm a little confused because in the early Carnap, in the AFA, we talked about the fact that, you know, actually Carnap's AFA was quite post-coignan because he does not differentiate between external and internal questions. but in the later carna because he distinguished between external internal questions the status of abstract entities seems to be on a par with other
other you know when he says as kassi talked about when carnapp says you know to be is to be an element of a system just like coins quantificational uh ontological Yusuf Kauruqa Tsevichoukoumououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououououou because in the lighter corner, abstract entities would be just like empirical statements
because they are all element of the system. At the same time, we distinguish between internal and external questions. Yes, yes. That's a very good point. Yeah, please go on. So the commitment to abstract entities and commitment to external and internal questions, I think they are in conflict with each other in the lighter corner. I mean, maybe, maybe not. Look, the thing that the early Carnarv is definitely a global deflationist, right? A global deflationist in a Quinean sense, right? I think that he becomes more of a local deflationist as time passes. But the thing is that, yes, I do agree that even we know that he's a local deflationist,
he's not a global deflationist anymore, precisely because of actually his departure from the Kouinian position throughout all of that conversation. But I completely agree that is even local deflationism does not exactly tell us how to differentiate between abstract entities and the concrete ones. Yeah, that unfortunately is there, but I mean someone might actually work this out because I do really think that if we endorse a certain sort of local deflationism, we might be able to, but of course, don't exactly know how, but I think that from the
hunch of it, we can still be able to say that, for example, these sorts of mathematical entities talk about them as if they were not exactly the same things as quarks, atoms, and so on and so forth, right? While still being, having that sort of deflation is a spirit that look, these are a structured entities, right? Otherwise it couldn't exist in any sort of meaningful sense of existence, right? But nevertheless, there should be a differentiation and accountability with differentiation. I don't think that Karna really manages to say this or maybe I don't know.
I mean, if Gabriel's knowledge of later Carnap is far better than me. But from what I know, he hasn't answered that. Absolutely not. That's why I think Sellers' critique of Carnap, of his quantificational ontological commitment, is that Carnap really does not, yeah, he seems like a local deflationist because he distinguishes between external and internal questions. But at the same time, his commitment to this quantification variable coin and ontological commitment seems to be in intention with that kind of local deflationism. So he should either drop the local deflationist and become the global deflationist of the early corner
or he should drop the coin and quantification commitments to variables. You see... I am not sold on this argument, though, precisely because I would say that local deflationarism would be able to run something like an explicated function, C function, on basically certain sorts of statements such that certain sorts of statements can be categorized as app pertaining to abstract entities and the other ones to other sorts of entities.
I think that it is not about really the quantification points. So I wouldn't say that we should bunch together local, even though Carnap doesn't do that, right, doesn't basically clearly distinguish what is the difference between local deflationism and the global deflationism of coin. But I would say that local deflationism would still be capable of explicating the sort of functions of quantification, existential quantification range over entities ranging over entities such that we can say that these are by virtue of this sort of existential quantification,
right, because of explication and so on and so forth. These are abstract entities, not concrete entities. Carnot doesn't do that. But I wouldn't say that this essentially means that he has to abandon this, have the cakes and eat it too, like, you know, either this or either that or both or not, right? I wouldn't say so, precisely because the whole idea of existential quantification over variables is itself an extremely interesting question, something that unfortunately philosophers uh have only started to understand like what does it mean uh to basically existentially quantify
over variables the understanding that we have different logics we can actually quantify over different sorts of variable not only that but we can also change the sort of existential range of of existential quantification. I mean, I think these sorts of questions, we shouldn't rush into them. I would say that these are certain kind of historical questions that we should let them to become mature and find their own answers. I don't think that sellers really definitely points to a problem in Carnar, but I don't think that Sellars himself understands the
nature of the question, the explicated question, as either. Look, Sellars really is not great at understanding the nitty-gritty parts of logic. We know that. It's fundamentally Kantian giant, so to speak, a magnificent philosopher. But sometimes these sorts of commitments do interfere with his judgments, and his judgments usually sharp, crystal clear, and final. But he does make mistakes quite often. I mean, have you read induction as vindication paper of his?
Yeah, actually, I did a seminar presentation on induction as vindication. It is actually quite good, but no. Uncle Sellars, no, this is not your territory. Don't do that. I mean, a great, basically, counter example to that sort of reading is Reichenbach. essay on induction as vindication. Magnificent. Reichenbach is quite, you might actually quite like Reichenbach, because Reichenbach is not a car, right? He's quite actually very hand in the dirt kind of guy, philosopher.
and is poetic, is extremely basically understanding what you might call to be the constraints of reality, whatever they mean, right? Because he's a scientist. Reichenbach is really great on these issues. But now you brought this question. This reminded me of something else that you or other people can talk about. So we have a global or local deflation, right? Scenario. About talking about not just abstract entities, but what you might say, existence entities in any sort of sense of something being existent.
Now, I'm sure that you have read Peter Wolfendale, Wolfendale Transcendental Realism essay, right? It's a really good essay. It's like the essay that catapulted him to fame, Transcendental Realism. Ray actually suggested before I even know Pete, suggested this essay to me. So this essay is in defense of transcendental realism in the sense that he understands, for example, he thinks that Brandon is something like a local deflationer,
deflationist. Quine is a global deflationist. And then he wants something called transcendence with regard to nature of reality, right? And then he wants to talk about transcendental realism, that it is not all about a structure. There is a certain kind of undercurrent interaction or mutual constrainment between that which is out there and logical linguistic structuration. I used to believe in this transcendental schema of mutual
constrainments by that which is out there and the logical linguistic structuration. But as the time has passed and this is raised, you know, one on one thing too. I mean, I don't know is exactly is position today, but it used to be. But I have become extremely skeptical of transcendental realism thesis. Precisely because when you say that mutual constrainment, obviously you mean that there is something outside of the structure, right that constrains that sort of linguistic logical structure
essentially this means that you are pointing to a limit allow wittgenstein to a limit of linguistic structuration what as lawrence pontel has talked about for us to talk about a limit means that we are already beyond the limit, hence we see the limit. So transcendental realism to me at this point, I still need to write something about this. So please don't take my words seriously at this point. It's just a critical view at this passing moment
I see a transcendental realism as engaging a little bit of historical and conceptual gerrymandering with regard to nature of what we call reality or the real. I have seen it quite, I mean, there is obviously one solution to that makes transcendental realism pieces a respectable idea. And by and that's when we say that historically, after the fact, we can come back and say that according to such and such
developed theories, we have seen that certain kinds of stuff out there have constrained our ways of a structuration. But that is not exactly what they are trying to do here. Because otherwise they would, they, what is the fucking point of having transcendental realism to begin with? Then you are, you can, you can easily be a local deflationist, a respectable, not a Carnapian, like a brandonian, local deflationist, and say that, look, at some point in the future, uh, we can show that according into our pragmatic, socially evolved scientific theories that there were in fact such and such
entities that they have decided how we think we are, we structure such and such things, right? That is not really an interesting idea, right? To just put all of your answers into the basket of history. Marx could do that better than you. I think you already do that in the intelligence and spirit. Spiritual intelligence, I don't know. When you talk about- I do all sorts of dodgy stuff. It's just for money. Yeah, I remember I was reading a paragraph. You talk about Ruth Millikan's telesemantics. You say that Ruth Millikan, she actually falls prey to some sort of syntactic category
of the given because she assumes that there's a syntactic to the world that is constraining. Yes, yes. Yeah, actually, I think you are a global deflationist in that respect, no? I think that I'm a global deflationist. Yes, absolutely. I think that, look, Carnap, maybe Carnap. Carnap is, of course, what am I against the giant Carnap, right, the polite tank that rolled the world. That's what these students called him. against Conor, but I would say that, look, I'm actually sick of local deflationism. It's a shit sort of deflationism. I'm going to go global with it. But look, no, I'm kidding.
I still, as I mentioned that, I still suspect that local deflationism would be a great way to handle this problem. But that requires explicating the idea of quantification over variables in the logical sense. But that's a different idea. It's not my job to think as if I were a logician. So Enda and then Arman. I think Arman was first, so Arman, you can go ahead. Oh, my apologies. I don't know. Thank you, Enda. I have something to say about the logician part, not because I'm a logician, but because I recently read something about the exact same argument.
What the figure that is absent in our argument, it seems that this Tarski and the model theory and stuff like that. And what constraint that we are talking, we're talking about that it's in the system, out of the system, it's real, it's in existence. We are talking about these ladder of Tarski, if I understand it correctly. So, when we say global deflationism, deflationism in a sense of quine, we already are committed in, as Delsha said, we are already committed to ontological commitment of quine, that being is just being in variable stuff. stuff. For Quine, the model for all the natural, that is because for Quine, the model for natural language is the world, and that is because the natural language doesn't say anything exact
or any fact about the world. So this kind of commitment can be revised in the light of model theory, and can be revised in the structuralist scientific philosophy of science, that they try to do exactly this kind of kind of explication on the concept of being outside of the model of a theory of being inside it being of a being of an object of a theory of not being of it. And Tarski says about quantification so looks I think maybe this is because I'm not very knowledgeable about it but I think I think it has been a more kind of simple idea logical idea if you have a quantification think of quantification as a as a numerator what can numerate a sequence of objects
in a model of theory in a model of a theory or language so a quantificator a quantific quantification on these objects in this object language needs to be needs to be defined in in a kind of way that can accept the objects that are the objects that the theory or the formula can enumerate. You see any x, for example, in for all x, essay x, the x wouldn't be all objects in the world. So here, problem of truth is more salient than the problem of formal... success of formalizing a language. For example, in what Cassia said or in what pragmatist reading of Karnap would tell us,
that this formalization is a part of our explicating concepts, but choosing our language is a practical choice. I understand this. But as we can see it already in our life, in the example, as for example in the example of fishes or fish the practical idea of our life becomes infected by the way that we explicate our ideas and maybe explication and the connection of it with the idea of enlightenment is this very exact relation between the explication and then the practical ideas. Why cannot say thinking about why can't we think about virtues in this in this way?
Okay, there is this argument that because the virtues are already in the making of the system, we cannot talk in the system about them. But the system isn't the only system that we have, even if we are talking about natural language or language as a universal medium. So I think the problem here becomes the understanding of a modern theoretic kind of approach to truth and not to for example formalization of a language the truth well i mean yeah yes but what look i mean model theory is is fundamentally hamstrung uh when it comes to this sort of thing it has been shown that it has a fundamental technical uh uh limitations
But what I agree, look, a couple of things here though, fish and the fish case, what was that, Carnac explication of fish. I actually think that it's a shitty example. It's utterly bad example. Because when you're talking about fish and this sort, it is actually a change in categorization. primarily is a change in categorization. It is really not an explication. His probability example is explication. I think Karnap is far too gone to be able to actually say
what is wrong with natural language and natural language concepts exactly rather than in a broad stroke to tell us that what is exactly wrong with natural language ordinary ordinary sense that we have to abandon it right now as if it were a sinking ship he can't do that he just cannot do that this is why i think that uh Ultimately, Carnap deserves some of the vitriol that he gets by even analytic philosophers,
precisely because he's basically skyrocketing out of the stratosphere way too fast without actually giving a semblance of what is actually impossible, as I mentioned earlier on. is actually impossible to be done within natural language. He never does that, actually. He resourced if this fish example is a good example, that's just a sort of example. It has zero scientific capacity to stand further scrutiny. He does, though, with probability, the concept of probability,
That's that's that's quite astonishing way to do it. So that's one and two with regard to the quantification. When we are talking about deflation is in first and foremost, we are talking about existential existential quantification in logical sense. So then it would be an extra step for us to expand on the relations between existential quantification, which is the point of deflationism and mathematical quantification, the relation between these two is not firsthand obvious.
So we cannot jump into conclusions about existential quantification in a logical sense to mathematical quantification, i.e. enumeration right away, because that requires a lot of bridge building between logic and mathematics. And that's where many people are uncomfortable with this sort of bridge building between logic and mathematics since early to an eight century, so to speak. Ander, you want to say something? Sure, I'll ask a very, I'll try and keep it quick. I guess it just goes back to the same question about decidability in these, I guess, like prematurely reductive models of quantifying ethics.
um so i guess my question was like uh do we suppose that the kind of thickness of ethics that these seem to uh occlude um is you know is that a problem of not having the correct kind of mechanisms for biasing our kind of reasoning program about ethics such that you know ethics could ultimately be quantified in a more effective way if we had better programs that fell short of it. I wouldn't say that if we had better programs, I would say that, look, anything that cannot confront with the most, basically the super acid of methodology,
meaning that what is exactly impossible within this realm this conceptual realm within this sort of system that cannot be done you have to explain it done in quantitative sense you have to explain that what is exactly first of all is net what is exactly uh uh impossible what is exactly undecidable here. They cannot be formulated in that sort of exact sense, right? If you cannot do that, you are, in fact, in the realm of the explicando. So simple as that, as I mentioned, that
I love Hilbert. I mean, Hilbert always gets the wrong side of the stick. People just don't understand who Hilbert was and how he contributed to mathematics logic and mathematical logic by simply saying something like that at look you can't simply say that this is uh not going to be done that something cannot be proved this or that yes or no that's something that you can't simply sow the seed of doubts in systems right unless and until you say something like that explain it in the utmost formalizable way or clear way that there are such and such
components of a system that cannot be said whether they are possible or impossible whether we can do something with them or not whether we can say yes they are true or false that sort of attitude requires first and foremost what is exactly within these sorts of axioms, systems, statements, facts, whatever you might call them that render them basically foreclosed to that sort of scrutiny. Right? Because the moment that you try to smuggle
that as if you had taken that sort of ineffability, impossibility into the problem without knowing what the nature of that impossibility is and what causes it, then you are absolutely on the side of the explicatum, pre-theoretic, pre-scientific statements about the world. Well, I don't know. I just, yeah, I suppose that for me, like the kind of reductive ethical stuff doesn't even like brace this kind of question, right? No, I mean, reductive, you see, and that sort of, I mean, by reduction, I don't mean scientific reduction. I love scientific reduction. Look, I mean, scientific reduction actually is an instrument
of enrichment most of the time, right? But that sort of trivial reductionism that we see in Austria and the school economy and so on and so forth. No, it's just like basically it doesn't go through the preliminary stages of explication. So that's what I wanted to say, that explication requires, just like when a plane takes off, it requires to go through the whole taxi over the runway. white, it just cannot get off the ground. If it gets off the ground right away, it's most probably in an hour or two it will crash, if not just five minutes later. That's sort
of, that's exactly the problem with these sorts of reductions, because they don't go through the systematic work of explication. Look, explication is not simply saying that, oh, I'm going to touch, move from this exact concept to a more exact, fruitful concept and so forth. No, it's actually, you have to say, what is undecidable, what is impossible, what is unfeasible in my system? And what is exactly the nature of that unfeasibility, that undecidability, such that I can actually find the concept that resolved that issue. Adel Shafir.
Adel Shafir. Yeah, I had a question regarding this, you know, this ineffability argument we talked about. Ineffability one or ineffability two. Ineffability, when we look in German idealism, it is actually quite a very specific concept. So we have ineffability, something like a dynamic system, in the sense that we do not know how the trajectory or tendencies of systems emerge in the future, right? Shit might happen, so to speak, in the complexity dynamics sense. And it always does. But there is an ineffability that something is by its essence foreclosed
to scrutiny. Two different concepts of ineffability. Yeah, I understand that. But, you know, I was going to dodge this ineffability argument and say, you know, maybe even as Kara talks about, you know, the concept of fish in ordinary language. You know, I previously I have read to know a lot of later Wittgenstein and J.A. Austin ordinary language philosophers, you know, they argue that, you know, maybe they don't necessarily start with some sort of ineffability argument, but they say that, you know, maybe ordinary language has some sort of distinctions that are fundamental at a certain level of ordinary description of quote-unquote reality that we simply cannot do without
not because they are ineffable but because they are indispensable like the example that Karna talks about in talks about you know fish is the definition of in the ordinary language is the definition of an animal that lives in the water so that maybe certain concepts do not require explication in the formal logical sense. I don't know. Yes, it can be. It can be. But I would reserve it not for such. Abstract entity or concrete entity sort of concepts. I'm reserved for more like. The discourse of values and ends. I I would say that. for us to say that certain kind of we cannot for for if we talk about if we are in the discourse
of talks of entities whatever they mean i don't think that we we can resort to that sort of saying oh well something inevitable about this isn't it the whole idea that we have uh turing basically has been talking about, like we have certain sort of mental entities, right? Emotional entities, cognitive entities, so on and so forth. And then Turing says that, would you be able to tell me what is actually ineffable about it? Well, that unfortunately become, you become David Rodin if you try to answer this. That, well, there is something there, kind of speculative stuff. But no, what the fuck is it really?
Look, that moment, you easily fall in the trap hole of Pascal Wager. What if such and such ineffability could exist? But does it have a case really, an epistemological case that can be rendered scientific? well of course I would say that Wittgenstein at some point might have said that well this is exactly what I was talking about we shouldn't think scientifically about every sort of question but mostly and primarily philosophically about questions
in the sense that he means that there is a clash between science and philosophy, and philosophy should not admit the intrusion of sciences. Unfortunately, I do disagree with that. And I know that Witkanszheim would have absolutely had great time with this idea, right, of the ineffable nature of language, perhaps not in the in a romantic sense of late German romanticist movements, like Ludwig Klegers and so on and so forth. But he would have a good time with it. But look, I don't think that it's tenable. It's just it would be ultimately you have to admit
that you don't have a case and you are merely speculating out of your guts, right? Does Celar's like that? Absolutely doesn't fucking like that. Wittgenstein actually likes that sort of idea too, but for ultimately fundamentally wrong reasons, in the sense that he wants to rescue the the modesty the quietude and the power of philosophy against the intrusion of science that i think is not terrible anymore absolutely not terrible any philosophy that just doesn't make philosophy the handmade the underdog of science but nevertheless
we should be aware there is a certain kind of mutual constrainment not between language and what is out there but philosophical statements and scientific statements my my sincere apologies my dear comrades i cannot take any more questions i have to to get into my presentation because otherwise we wouldn't have any sort of dinner tonight. Five minutes, actually four minutes thing. We go to, so yeah, we go to like, I don't
Thank you. My apologies if I had to cut the questions, because I know that everyone gets these kinds of stuff, everyone has a question, but we have to, at some point, just get on with the material.
One thing I was thinking that, look, I mean, this whole nature of ineffability, I mean, this whole nature of ineffability, again, as I mentioned, so we have two different, when we look in the history of philosophy, we have two different forms of ineffability. is something more like you know that uh that there are certain kind of tendencies uh emergentic tendencies of a system that render it ineffable uh right uh kind of i wouldn't call it unpredictable but simply that you can't interact with it as if you basically
you could predict or you could you could in a in a some sort of reliable way say that when I say when I do X with the system the system basically interacts with me with Y and so on so forth so that's that's notion of one notion of of ineffability that usually comes with a sort of organism. In late German philosophy, philosophy of life, Goethe, so on and so forth, Schelling, it's being carried over then to French,
early French mathematics and French philosophy, Henri Poincaré and so on and so forth. that sort of ineffability is essentially the groundwork of what we today call dynamic systems, right? So that's that sort of ineffability that has been, it's actually quite a respectable idea. You can, of course, you know, separate the bad parts of it from the good parts of it. But there is one also form of ineffability, which is what you might call to be full-fledged epistemological ineffability, opaqueness, something intrinsically opaque in the sense of a nominum.
But not nominum, essentially, because nominum is... You can still talk about nominum. by way of phenomenon or in terms of as if thought experiments, right? In terms of as if, as if there was such and such thing. You can still talk about phenomenon in that sense. but ineffability in late German philosophy in the second sense simply marks the limits of what can be said or what can be thought precisely because it is it is the very limit right
the thing is that to quell this sort of um ineffability you need to have a certain sort of at the very least epistemological commitment for you to say that on what accounts how do you know you see these sorts of questions like Ray is really good in his polemics, you know, when talking about Deleuze and Guthrie and so on and so forth. How do you know? What is exactly the nature of it? You say, oh, well, this, we cannot, what is the case?
What is the case? You know, do you have a case for it? And if it's the case, then how do you arrive at this case? So on and so forth. that sort of epistemological inquiry, I think, is necessary to quell the strong version of ineffability, which means that Kardap cannot fully forego with epistemology par excellence precisely because he needs a version of it at least in a logical sense, in order to say that such and such concepts are ineffable or have ineffable components.
This is one of the things that happens that from Kant to Vienna Circle and post Vienna Circle, the nature of ineffability, like the nature of language in German Romanticism is absolutely ineffable in the second sense. There are criticisms of that sort of ineffability, not on epistemological ground, but mostly on logical grounds, on the question, around the question of a structuration, yeah, linguistic and logical structuration. So I wanted to just make this brief digression that not only we have two notions of ineffability
in German philosophy, but also we have two different strategies to deal with the second that is the strong version of ineffability. So let me start. So as I have talked to you past sessions, we know that the second half of philosophical career of Ralph Karnap was a different sort of philosophy than, you know, the first half.
Within that, within the second half, he developed systems of inductive logic based on what he regarded as a logical concept of probability. from the first of his papers on probability all the way to papers that were published after his death in 1971 if I recall I don't know I have to check so this successive formal system sub-inductive logic continued to be expanded and refined According to what seems to be the leading interpretation of the development of Carnap's inductive logic, both the formal features of the systems of inductive logic and their conceptual underpinning changed significantly between 1945 and 1970.
Logical foundations of probability is a bridge between this earlier phase and later phase. The interpretation of probability in which Carnap's inductive logic was based according to the standard view of the late Carnap evolved from a lot from a logical towards a subjective or Bayesian conception of probability. So I can't talk about too much about what subjective probability is, but you
can look at the Finetti's thesis on subjective probability. So, uh, subject probability is something like this that, uh, look, probability is nothing but everyone's probability judgments, AKA opinions about probability. when they neither have past experience of instantiations and observations of a certain kind of frequency of observations
nor do they have a theory of probability so it's actually really interesting here that subjective probability is not uh everyone can have their opinion of probability and that's basically that's right no that's essentially it is predicated on two fundamental assumptions lacking theory of probability lacking past past experience of observations frequency of observations such as for example like Goodman's idea well water grass at time t1 green time t2
green time t3 green after such enumeration frequency of observations I would say that after potential uh hypothetical time tn all well water grass is green right they're not going to be blue so it is essentially subjective probabilities that's on the assumption that we neither have a theory of probability nor past experience with regard to frequency of observations we are on our own meaning that we have what we might call
a subjective everyone's probability opinions about what has just happened what is going to happen This, of course, is the baseline also of Bayesianism, modern Bayesianism. It's actually quite a respectable and not as I simplified it thesis in probability. It's quite actually complex. But nevertheless, people think that, uh, basically Carnap's work moves increasingly toward this
Dufinetti's idea of subjective probability. Uh, what I'm going to talk about is that the expl- the explication of the concept of probability and how it does it from 1950s to 1960s, 1970s, works on the foundations of logical foundations of probability cannot be understood purely in terms of subjective probability. It is a different project altogether. So I highly recommend, by the way, I think I mentioned this to Felipe.
Felipe, did I do that? Brian Scrims? I think that I mentioned one of his books to you, right? Yeah, I think I have it here and not the book. recommendation yeah so Brian Scrims is really is a very good respectable guy philosopher of probability extremely great so this is something in defense of you know the traditional view of Carnap's move in probability for philosophy of probability toward a subjective notion of probability he says by the end of his
life Carnap had moved from a logical conception of probability inspired by K-Nez and a unique inductive rule based on a flat prior for an IID process to a subjective conception of probability and a class of inductive rules corresponding to this different priors IID is simply an abbreviation for independent and identically distributed random value variables in probability theory. Now, of course, the Skirms Skirms Brian Skirms is not the only one who says that many other,
know great philosophy philosophers of probability I have also said that like Ehrman I mean Ehrman is particularly an astute philosopher of probability Yet, looking deep into Carnap's transition, this view of the conceptual evolution of Carnap's inductive logic, at first glance appears to be at odds with his own view, a deeper view. In the accounts published
in the 1960s, this is what we usually call late Carnapian inductive logic, he insists that his basic philosophical view on probability did not change one bit since 1940s for instance in 1963 paper remarks on probability he says about his first monograph on probability written in 1949. The major features of my theory, as explained in the book, are still maintained today. This holds for both the basic philosophical conception
of the nature of logical probability explained in the first half of the book and the formal system constructed in the second half. He says the same, makes the same similar pronouncements in replies and systematic expositions and so on and so forth. So what I'm going to talk about here today is I'm going to provide you with a closer look at this apparent clash between Cardap's self-identification and the subsequent interpretations of his work
in the sense that the task of explicating the concept of probability does not fundamentally always make you to diverge from your prior position, right? Because that wouldn't, because if every sort of explication was, could allow you to drift away and away from your position, then we would have been in something that what Mark Wilson, philosopher Mark Wilson would say, a global drift, right?
the difference between a drifter and engineer will hit us really hard in the sense that a drifter is the one that in every instance of explicating the concept drifts and diverges away from the original concepts further and further to such an extent that the connection, the traction upon the original concept, which was the base of our problem, completely evaporates, completely disappears. And we will find ourselves at the wind of a new problem, a problem that
we couldn't even imagine. Sure this is a good thing but if all the time this happens this means that we can never actually put back a world or a world of vision or a world version together. Meaning what does that mean essentially? It means that the ideal of the enlightenment is in the trash bin. There is no integral world anymore. The task of science in this sense or philosophical scientific task of philosophy at this point
simply coincides with an eternal drift. into further and further smaller places, nests of concepts where the possibility of integrating agreements between microscopic or micro concepts and micro concepts forever is being doomed. so why we need something called enlightenment at this point if such thing happens right you know and the whole idea of enlightenment was supposed to be at its base a universal conceptual
endeavor right integration of all concepts such that the fragments of world pictures can be glued together once more at better levels at better resolutions so on and so forth but if we are always going to drift further and further into incommensurable concept nests then such dream is truly distant if not impossible. So, as I mentioned, Carnap continued to insist on the logical character of a system and its concept
of a probability up to an including in the last published programmatic account of inductive logic. So what I'm going to talk about is this apparent clash between Carnap's self-identification of the subsequent interpretations of his work. Are the modern accounts of Carnap's evolution misguided or was Carnap himself delusional about the actual conceptual implications of the technical developments within his inductive logic, such as, for example, theories of formal learning or formal induction as proposed by Raymond Solominov. In order to answer this question, we can investigate
how exactly Carnapian inductive logic changed over time and whether the changes that did occur constituted a break from a logical concept of probability, which we can call pre-theoretic, and acceptance of a subjective one. So what I'm going to do is to provide a conceptual analysis of the differences in in the successive published version of Carnap's inductive logic, his account of inductive logic. Obviously, we can't do a precise reconstruction of this whole chronicle
or the exact reasons behind such an evolution, even though we have somehow talked about them since off-bowed, illogical syntax, so on and so forth. But we are not, at this point, because of the time constraints, cognitive constraints, so on and so forth, that is not our business. Even though that is something that can be further investigated in those precise terms. It is known that Carnap offered very little motivation for his modeling and conceptual choices. For a reason, a proper analysis of the reasons
for the change within inductive logic would have to be primarily based on the unpublished materials. Hence, that adds further, you know, basically obstacle to looking at this problem with better clarity. So out of 20 plus articles and books on inductive logic and related matters that Karnan published
in his lifetime, a much smaller number can be identified as contributing significantly to the conceptual development of the whole program. The two earliest papers introducing the basic concept of presuppositions were later included in the main monograph of the early period, Logical Foundations of Probability, which is a primary reference for the earliest stage of the development. Published only a little bit later, the small monograph, The Continuum of Inductive Methods, 1952 is considered an important step in the technical progress of inductive logic. Now, we can argue that in these later in these 50s papers and books,
this view of inductive logic as an explication of the concept of inductive forability should guide our understanding of the whole project, Carnarvian project. In explication, a sharp, exact, new concept, the explicatum, is proposed as a replacement of an already used but less clear concept, the explicando. Carnap saw the identification and specification of the explicando as a significant part of the task and devoted substantial effort to it.
We can see the Carnap's conception of inductive logic or changes in Carnap's inductive logic are best understood by focusing on its changing view of the explicando of the concept of probability nothing changes the formal system of inductive logic i.e. the explicantum remember what i mentioned earlier that if you want to do the best sort of explication you ought to focus on the explicandum right
by highlighting why is it actually that is an explicato what are the reasons behind it being an explicato like i talked about the undecidability problem impossibility of certain choices so on so forth so essentially what i am going to talk about is precisely this sort of further attention to the idea of explic explicama rather than the end result of the explication namely the explicato
These changes in the explicandum are laid out in the evolving list of its informal specifications appearing in different publications written by Karnab. Let's begin after this sort of historical introduction. Let's begin with the idea of inductive logic. As a form of deep explication. not simply reducing one concept to another concept, not even what you might call to be replacing an exact concept with a more exact concept, but rather
a different way that I mentioned, looking in the problem that what exactly makes an explicatum an inexact concept inexact, what are the causes behind it, and then from then we move, we mobilize a task of explication so inductive logic for Kana was a project of explication in fact the greatest form of explication among all kinds precisely because it had all the characteristics and features
of explication, including the most important one, replacement of a qualitative concept, a comparative concept, with a quantitative one, right? A quantitative concept. Quantitative in the sense that a concept becomes quantitative precisely because its relations with other source of concepts are not only now clear, specific, exact, but also they are exact by virtue that they can be quantified.
So that is the whole point of a quantitative concept. Quantitative concept not that in the sense that we will basically reduce human intelligence to IQ numerals, right? Intelligent quotient numerals. No, we can actually reduce, not reduce, sorry, my apologies. We can actually now replace the qualitative concepts of intelligence to quantifiable relations that are being obtained from other explicated quantifiable concepts.
So explication in this in the sense of the logical concept is what you might call to be quantification of the inferential link between different concepts rather than just one concept this i will talk about is with regard to the concept of confirmation or credits or credibility in in the sense of inductive logic where the concept of credits believing something will happen or not something is true or not will now be a quantifiable range a quantifiable index between various again quantifiable concepts
but not just one quantifiable concept the relation between a range of quantifiable concepts that itself can be quantified. Right? So that's that is actually brings us, you see, when I talked about the project of of of power that the quasi-analysis project, their relation between certain stores of elementary experiences. Now you see that this source of conceptual undergirding has always been there.
It's just a car I've never realized until to this point how they can be actually thought in terms of an engineering form of philosophy. That we can actually, what is important is not really individual concepts, but really the quantifiable relations that can be obtained from them. Reza, sorry to interrupt you. My apologies. Just one question. You know, you defined explicit explication, I think just like explicitation in terms of inferential relationship between quantifiable units.
Is it exactly the same as explicitation? But does explicitation sometimes, or more often than sometimes, more often result in replacements of older concepts with new concepts that can completely replace them? Does that? I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, Brandon pragmatism is quite generous. He always talks about that. Look, the idea of exquisition in my book, in fucking Brandon's book, not fucking MacDowell or any other person. In his book is that.
Repair a concept. If you can't repair it enough, then abandon it. Yes. In that sense, if we mean explicit exquisition in that sense, yes, it's explication. just with additional clauses about quantification, comparative concepts, and so on and so forth. But explicitization in the general sense, I don't think that at all means explication. Explicitation simply means clarification at best. at best. It's not always signifying replacement of a better functionally efficient concepts,
an old concept with a better functionally efficient concept. That's usually not a task of explicitation. I mean, for example, think about it. Where does explicitation comes from? From what you might call to be dark rationalism of Socrates, right? Expressivism, rationalist expressivism, in the sense that Socrates wants to get you into some sort of rabbit hole that shows that, look, there are so many other things, these concepts that you knew. Why? This is this amelioration. This is what you might call to be edification, conceptual edification. This is not ultimately conceptual engineering. You can edify someone with better concepts,
but that does, for example, think about this. I'm someone who actually great engineer at basically making buildings, right? From bottom up. But look, how about this? That someone actually comes with a certain sorts of class of concepts to me that I don't require, that I no longer require to make building bottom up. I will make it top down. How about that? So that sort of class of concepts is really important because explicitation always used within the family of similar concepts, whereas basically conceptual engineering explication
tries to work as as much as possible within the family of similar concepts but if necessary switch to a completely different family of concepts who was that who did who did raise hand No, not you. No, someone else did that. It was me, but my comment is very long, so forget it. Okay, let me go on. Love you. I mean, look, as long as... And I don't want to pressure my poor good friend.
I mean, we can always go overboard next session. But I just want to give you some sort of material to work with for the next session so we have a fundamental discussion. That's my apologies. That's why I'm actually getting a little bit nasty about the question and answer this session. So, where was I? So, yeah, in basic term, explicating concept, which is called the explicando consists of creating a new precise concept explicata, we know that.
which can then replace the explicantum in the relevant context. In the relevant context, this is really important. Ultimately, as I mentioned, it's not as if you can say that, oh, well, this sort of concept is an explicatum to that sort of inexact concept while your explicatum is just utterly something different, right? It is essential for us to understand that the relation between explicando, the vague, inexact concept, and the explicatum, the more exact concept,
should happen within a family of context-sensitive use of these concepts. quite this is what you might call to be the intermediary task of explication not the final goal of explication because final goal of explication might land you in fact in a very very different sort of context but you cannot pretend as if you have achieved that sort of replacing context. Like, for example, there are certain kinds of notions in physics, in engineering, where
you have to go through a certain kind of family context-sensitive concepts, like Zenoboel said, tension, brittleness, toughness, this sort of stuff, right? right we do that in engineering through young modulus and so on so forth but then somehow once you have gone through this but you have to go go through this sort of responding to the context sensitivity of of the relation between the explicatum the explicandum and explicatum after you go through it and you have to go through it you might find yourself that you are in the realm of a family of concepts
which can no longer be entertained within the context of your old concepts but that's an end game of explication it's not how it is done that it's not it's transitory force right it's mobilization is something that can be achieved as a matter of practical conceptual and pragmatic attainment down the line. Sorry. However, the picture of explication that emerges from the first sections of foundations of probability
is actually a three level one. It can be summarized in the following schema. So first we have informal pre-theoretic notion, then we have a specification of the explicando, as I mentioned to you. A specification of the explicando is the only way that you can move forward with task of explication you know what is possible what is impossible what is undecided what is decidable and what really renders it such and such doesn't so right then at the last stage we have explicitly confirmed the new more precise concept so to speak now
And would you be able to share with the Tenghi diagram that I mentioned, that I shared with you? Is that okay? You can see it? I don't know. Yeah, thank you so much. So So in this sense of the transition from pre-theoretic to post-theoretic concept, from inexact to exact
concept in the precise sense of explication we have been talking about we can we can see in in the case of Carnap inductive logic the informal pre-theoretical notion of Carnap focused on was the concept of probability before even proceeding to the clarification of the explicando Carnap points out that the word probability even within science is used in two fundamentally different kinds of ways right so look that even a specifying explicato you have to still do some chiseling
the idea of mind consciousness you have to do some chiseling even in our in our ex in our vague territory of vague concepts namely explicando you still can do a lot better you know and philosopher unfortunately don't do it what do you mean by consciousness do you mean phenomenal self-model? Do you mean awareness of objects in time? Do you need, do you mean a perceptive agency, critical perception, so on and so forth? Which, what do you actually mean by it, right? So you can't simply go and explicate the concept of consciousness without first,
you know, chisel it such that the differences become pronounced in the concept. The difference in differences in the content of the concept become pronounced. First, foremost task. Then after that, you will specify that, okay, which one of these according to which sort of use of this concept and the content of the concept are not possible and for what reason and then go through all that sort of explicatory task. Of course, look, if this was really, I think Akarnab is so fucking deluded. If this was a task of philosophy, no one could become
ever philosopher right i mean the philosophers act philosophy in general feeds off of the lack of such criteria you know but that is a different question you are not concerned with philosophers or philosophy so as i mentioned in the case of inductive logic the informal pre-theoretical notion of Karna focused on uh focused on was the concept of probability. Before even proceeding to the clarification of the explicandum Karna points out that the word probability even within science is used in two fundamentally different kinds of ways. That is to say it has two
explicanda to uh to wake concept just like consciousness so you have phenomenal self-model rational perception this that that that so first what you have to do with such concepts you have to break them apart to chisel them to to triangulate them at different scales of of explicando or explicando. At least do the better work of clarifying your inexact concepts. Understand their context of use,
understand how they function, what they pertain to, so on and so forth, right? Now, these two explicanza of concept of probability, Karnak calls probability one, probability two. Probability one is a semantic, purely logical concept. sentences conveying numerical values of this kind of probability are true or false in virtue of their meaning rather than any empirical facts sentences conveying the values
of probability two are true or false in virtue of empirical facts so probability one is a property of sentences or propositions and the sort of logical relations that's being obtained from them while probability two is a property of events or things it is probability one that Carnap wishes to explicate and since the short characterization above is too vague and general to provide a basis for rational reconstruction it needs to be specified further in order to narrow down the desired
explicando so you have to look this is really important thing important philosophical message you have to calibrate your vague concept in exact concept as much as possible before even the task of explication starts. Any sort of shortcutting, shortcutting this sort of labor results in another confused explicando, worse than your original one. So, really, that sort of focusing on what I am actually going to talk, what I am going to explicate, is the initial step of this whole philosophical task.
Karnak gives us two versions of such characterization, making the two phases in the conceptual development of inductive logic. In the first version in logical foundations, 1950, there are three descriptions of probability. One, to characterize the explicando. The first and most important one is the measure of evidential support. Also known as degree of confirmation, given by one sentence, a sentence representing an observation to another representing a hypothesis. what you might call to be basically c confirmation of credence
being a function over h and e hypothesis h for i hypothesis and e as evidence right observation of evidence now of course he wants to so he wants to start with this explicandum from this inexact concept and move toward a quantitative concept of C. H in relation to H quantified and E also quantified. Logically or numerically, that is important. So that's basically lancing on the concept of degree of confirmation.
So as I mentioned, the first and most important one is the measure of evidential support or the degree of confirmation. Even by one sentence, a sentence represents representing an observation to another representing a hypothesis. Furthermore, probability one of a hypothesis H, given on evidence statement E, is taken to be the fair betting quotient, in particular kinds of bets on H, conditional on E. The third way of describing probability one is an estimate of probability two values.
That is an estimate of relative frequency. So Carnap in Schelp's volume still characterizes the project as one of explication, but provides a somewhat different list. This is 1963, like almost a decade after, more than a decade after writing foundations of probability. So Cardiff is still in this volume, characterizes project as one of explication, but provides a somewhat different list of ways to describe the explicando. So probability one is still thought of as a fair betting quotient and estimate of relative frequency.
However, the most important meaning of probability one is now taken to be one that applies decision making. The values of probability one for the relevant pairs of sentences are those numerical values that should be used as probabilities in the calculation of expected utility in a decision situation in order to arrive at a rational choice. Once the target concept is narrowed down to an explicando, it is clear or at least much easier to decide which of its features should be captured in a newly designed explicando.
In the case of inductive logic probability one, the explicatum is a theory of confirmation functions, that is to say a specific numerical functions defined in the pairs of sentences or propositions of a particular formal language like C or another function from lambda continuum. continue one such a formal theory of confirmation functions is the inductive logic proper that is formal theory whose probability statements are analytic this is the main sense in which inductive logic is in fact a logic it is a formal theory of certain language forms such that the determination
of truth values of some of its sentences is possible without recourse to empirical checks. This is a sense in which Kona understood the logical status of inductive logic has been acknowledged, but for some reason this awareness seems to have been lost later on. So coming back to a diagram uh so we see probability one probability two that's a citation from logical foundations of probability uh we can we can see this whole progression of you know uh meeting mid-kana the more mature karnak 1950 to 1963 1970 as a move as an explicatory move
of a philosopher manifested in the con in the explication of the concept of probability from informal pre-theoretic notion of probability to an explicando a specification of explicando of what probability means right what sort of probability are we talking about right and which are which of them are worthy of explication in that precise scientific quantitative concept terms right so it is probability one or p functions so in 1950s carnapp identified this probability one with measure of evidential support fair betting quotient estimate of relative frequency
1963, fair betting quotient, estimate of relative frequency, and values for calculating expected utility. This is what we call a rational credibility function, RRC function or CR function, C subscript R function. this is the point for his later explicato the full explication of the concept of probability toward a more scientific concept or scientifically friendly concept that is called the explicato which is the c function credence function confirmation function in the sense of c
open parenthesis H such that we have also certain sort of evidences, empirical facts. These empirical facts, however, are not actually defined in terms of frequency of observation. They are simply logical references to such observations. Essentially, Kardam doesn't want to have anything to do with Hume's problem because he thinks rightly so and this is something that Goodman actually recognized that the problem of induction is itself a subclass
of a logical problem of induction it is a subclass of inductive logic right So the explicatum at which induction and the problem of induction are reinvented are C functions, degree of confirmation, the theory of C functions, which is called the inductive logic. uh i think that we are running out of time i will continue this uh talking about further about this whole idea of probability and distinguishing between these two sense and how early and later
carnav with regard to the idea of explication of the concept of probability fairs historically Yeah, and hopefully we have time getting back to the Wittgenstein idea of analyticity and Turing one as well. Okay. I actually, I'm not sure what the arrangement should be with presentations. I don't have the sheet handy. Was there someone here that I don't need, do we need any presentation? I don't think we need.
I think most people have, I would maybe just say like if there's one or two people that haven't, would they, would it be possible to I mean, completely on a voluntary basis. We are not going to force in the last session on poor people. What about for people who haven't presented? Will there be a paper? You have presented, haven't you? No, I haven't. Okay, then you have to present them. Absolutely I have to present. In fact, I will force it upon you. This was my intention, actually. Delshad brought it on himself. That wasn't my doing. I did great. I said I wanted to be a very, for the first time, a very benevolent dictator. He actually forced it upon me to be a very cruel one.
So, yeah, so we have Delshad. Is there anyone going to dance with him? yeah are you going to do it yeah i will present something yeah super super magnificent excellent but but give us a interesting topic please no interesting topic how about this this. I mean, let's actually broadly, I mean, of course, you can tailor it to your own taste and your philosophical thing. That's a question of what sort of concepts cannot be explicated?
or perhaps from a pragmatic sense should not be explicated in practice, right? I think that's actually a very nice topic. In the next session, would it be helpful to also, like, say, have a quick kind of moratorium on questions until we finish the bit and then we can sort of like open it up, do open season type thing? Or do you feel like we've covered enough ground now for us to just go straight into the no i mean okay how about this uh i said you see all of these classes always all the time
they're going to lack some ground right we can't just go all the time uh at some point look we should just be happy with what we have learned i will give how about this i will give 40 minutes a straight talk presentation about the continuation of this just to give a certain kind of resolution to all of that shit and then after that I don't uh basically need to talk I want to hear from you uh we discuss everything uh both micro questions and macro questions I think that that would be nice I mean I'm really the one who is complaining about eight sessions
poor Jean-Pierre has only one credit four sessions and he has to talk about so many other stuff how to build a world in four weeks I mean but to be honest with you I mean really I have noticed that teaching is extremely difficult, particularly if people's backgrounds are different. Like I can simply skip over so many discussions, so many explanations, if we were all coming, but we can't. But that also is what makes it
interesting. I mean, that's one of the really you don't, I To be honest with you, I have taught in academia in departments of applied math and philosophy and stuff. But it's just never exciting like this. People coming from different backgrounds. There's no real, there's no component of competition, petty competition. It's the spirit of comradeship. Everyone supports one another. They say, oh, well, great, amazing presentation. stuff. They ask questions, they go through the question. This doesn't really, unfortunately, happen in a goddamn department of philosophy. People are cutthroat in those departments.
People don't want to share their secrets, right, because they think that they are key to them having a career over and learn perks and so on and so forth. These are the sorts of stuff that unfortunately it is sad as basically rendered academic philosophical life so depressing and so what i would say anathemic to actual intellectual work. But let us not gloat. And there was just one other question whether we should, if there's something in particular that
that would be good to read for next session. No, I don't think that we are going to read anything more. I think it'd be a fun. Look, I mean, I'm joking. Carl Sachs is a great friend of mine. Sent me and Ray that, so how many texts should I give to people? And he had like three texts for four sessions, a small text. And Ray was saying that I think that you should cut it down. I was saying that no, go more. No, I mean, look, at some point, you have to say no to the texts. They're not really, to be honest with you,
you can always tell people what texts they can read in their free time, but forcing texts on people is not really a good way to go about it, unfortunately. I mean, not everyone has free time to go through this obtuse, utterly frustrating text. What the fuck does he mean, in fact? Do I actually care about it? so any any uh last uh questions and stuff what was this movie thingy that uh came up the problem of categorizing whales oh okay
anything oh yeah i just wanted to say i pushed it in the discord i'm officially going to be going to ut for philosophy i got in superb magnificent magnificent but look this is magnificent news you need to be prudent you need to start to think about how you are going to continue it if you're going to go to philosophy you better stay in philosophy teach in academia make money you don't want to be a miserable person do you
to to a struggle for money day in and day out right best thing to do i i used to be at this idea that you know it's a revolutionary i i'm not part of academia i've never touched it i only have a tangential uh connection with it but look um that sort of lifestyle pushes you to make far more compromises in your life and with your intellectual currency and so on and so forth. Always think about that, look, one or two of your students in a lifetime
can become great sort of people if you give them enough support. And you have to always give everyone support. But from probabilistic sense, right, it's just one or two people who are ever going to be magnificent. But magnificent doesn't mean anything. It is the fact that you can create enough great ordinary people, a great chef who knows philosophy, a great climatist, activist, so on and so forth. That is a task, not creating the next best philosophy. it. That is a goddamn French myth, a dynasty of philosophers that is unfortunately extremely
basically toxic to the progression of intellect, right? It always has this sort of trickle down thing about it like but you know something that came from soccer this trickle down and but you can actually give some trickle down effects to us poor people no poor people should learn philosophy not the evidence is that a shots at the gym no i mean i'm just like i just generally i like to take a piss on french philosophers that's all uh yeah just let me know when you want me to stop the recording because
unfortunately look these are the completely no one facts about me so i'm not doing saying anything that i haven't said already let me know when you're about to say the thing that you need me to stop the recording for oh yeah i oh yes yes i stopped the recording oh yes now i remember that but okay i'll stop