Hello and welcome to the second session of the seminar, the Enigma of Carnot Southbound. So yes, please take it away, Reza. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone. So basically, last session, you know, a good chunk of our time, you know, we basically had introductions, students introducing themselves. So we kind of are a little bit behind in terms of introduction, introduction to, uh, of BAU. The reason that this introduction is important because as long as we don't know what the exact, uh, missions and the goals, the underlying goals of these books are, we're kind of still in the dark. Uh, so it's important to kind of, you know,
even, even tangentially touch on some of the, without going to too many historical, um, details, kind of do a kind of like categorizations of what you know the ambitions of these projects are how he's going to do it by which historical resources and philosophy is he doing it how and then how how is he putting them together all right so that's what i would call the introduction to off-bow. Essentially, it's the contextualization of this work. So that's that. If you don't have any questions, please feel free to ask questions and drop me whenever you want. If you don't have
questions, maybe we can start with the presentation. Hello, Reza. Hello, everyone. I believe I have some question. I don't know if it's too early to ask. Sure, sure, please, please. But I was thinking about Carnap's neocantonism and the relation between the project of half-ball and the project of the logical syntax of language. And what I wrote on note, I wrote that, is there any possibility of thinking of some kinds of infantile schematism as you put in Thai philosophy already in the Alfa Bau? Or is it just happens and appears within the logical pluralism and the principle of
tolerance? No, no, no, absolutely you are correct. I mean, Alfa Bau, the whole idea, in fact, you know, the more you go further back, further into the earlier phases of Karna, it's more actually Novocantian than less as he matures, right? So yes, Afbao actually is an ode to two different, basically, creeds of thoughts, logicism and Novocantianism, particularly the Hav Marburg school. Of course, today we were talking about some of this nookantianism influences. Now the thing is that this nookantianism is always there, but you see that his commitment to certain kind of
nookantian moves that he makes in a vowel becomes less pronounced toward his further works like logical syntax of language. Um, but some of the more like cosmopolitan, um, or kind of like what you would call to be, uh, full-blooded Kantian or no Kantian, uh, theses, uh, will be retained as he moves forward. And this cosmopolitan was absolutely precisely because of his overall project, naming the projects of enlightenment re-enlightenment re-enlightenment and so as i will talk about
and i intimated it uh last session uh you know he he is uh he wants to i mean the whole project of Vienna circle he wants to re-enlighten rekindle re-enlightenment project but then there are two fundamental obstacles in front of the Vienna Circle, including him, is one, what counts as a genuine knowledge? We don't get this in the alien light of the thinkers, right? Then the second one is that what would be the relation... So the first one is a question of theory, scientific theory, right? You know, what counts as a flaw, as basically, as a piece of theory, right?
And then the second one is that how can theoretical knowledge be ever affixed or integrated with practical knowledge, practical cognitions, right? The question of practice. So there is a kind of a conundrum here for them, right? Particularly the early Karnath and early BNC. So precisely because they're, you know, the ambition of the project is to create this kind of constitutive system, you know, the system of all concepts. So they have to basically create a certain kind of a specialization of theory.
a specialization of theory. What counts as theory? What counts as science? Not the science of special sciences, specializations of the theory of sciences. What counts as theory? So with that kind of specialization, with that kind of attention to, you know, fine-grained calibration, something happens what happens is that then it seems that the project of enlightenment on the theoretical front on the question of what counts as theory what counts as genuine knowledge even further recedes from the question of practice the more you specialize such questions
about what counts as theory, the further you recede from the possibility of bridging theory with practice. That is really an unnerving question for them. So in Afbaw, actually Afbaw is really the highlight of this unnerving moment that they thought that they are going to achieve it, but now actually see that, oh my god, you are far away from the second obstacle, which is the the bridging with the question of practice. So then he uses those cosmopolitan ideas of Kant, no Kantianisms, not the explicit ones, but translate them to his own vocabularies.
And then he tries to use them in later works by way of the logic of tolerance, principle of tolerance, logical tolerance, logical syntax, so on and so forth, to show that there is absolutely a specialization of theory of all knowledge, in the sense that he has in mind, you know, of Baal is not at odds with practice, with the practical ambitions of enlightenment hence basically uh confirming the fact of enlightenment that enlightenment is not merely a scientific enterprise but a fundamentally
ecumenical and a cosmopolitan emancipation form of emancipation for thinking and practice But besides this practical question, does this have this movement has to do also with the bypassing or I don't know the less concerned with understanding as a necessary mediator between imagination and reason. and reason. Imagination, by imagination, which kind of imagination are you having in mind? Like imagination, like productive imagination, which is basically understanding
reason. Hard to say that Karnap ever did that. You see, he might have implicitly had something across what you are talking about in mind but I don't think that there is an explicit uh at least he he never talks about this explicitly but of course the second uh you know uh the you know the new generation actually of commentaries on Karna like Steve Audi uh Pierre Wagner uh Andrei Karras they think that yes there is in fact and this is precisely because uh kana in a sense
was a half and a half half frigate russell half fundamentally kantian and kantian canteen not not not Kantian in a vulgar sense or Kantian orthodoxy, but Kantian in the sense that what basically stemmed from Kant in philosophy, right? And that leads to transcendental logic of Husserl, and Marburg's school of Neokantianism, so on and so forth. The thing as he moved forward and forward with his thoughts, Russell and Wittgenstein became less and less important for him. And basically the pulls of his thoughts became ever more clear, and that was Frigge. Frigge
precisely because the revolution of logic, Frigge's revolution of logic, allowed him to revitalize philosophy on a new basis, which is logic. That's one. And the other one, Nookantianism. Essentially, how can we maintain the philosophy that has been, that now has a new basis, which is logic, a springboard, which is called logic, within the concerns, the broad concerns of Kantianism. And that's also the relation between categories of understanding, hence productive imagination and reason. But as I mentioned,
Carnap himself doesn't talk about this. You can, however, see that these are actually his concerns in his earlier writings. And there is, of course, there is a collection of his earlier writings. I mean, their realm is considered to be like one of the most classical of his pieces, where basically, I don't think that we will be able to talk about this, but one of the things that I wanted always to talk about is the role of synthetic geometry in Aufbau and how this synthetic geometry being formulated precisely in the sense that you mentioned, namely, you know, this exchange between productive imagination and reason.
Okay, thank you, that helps all it. Absolutely, absolutely. so hey oh just just a quick question and you mentioned like enlightenment and re-enlightenment would there be quite a lot of similarities with say um habermas's sort of uh like project of enlightenment um no no no i think habermas habermas essentially wants certain kinds of enlightenment through social communication techniques right whereas cornups wants kind of you see Carnap there is one part that Carnap never changed in his philosophy and that was the total and complete rejection of metaphysics and the reason that he did that was on a very specific from a very specific
actually two specific reasons. One precisely because he was in what he wanted to actually do was that to show that the ultimate idea of enlightenment, whether the cosmopolitan ones, its emancipatory, practically emancipatory ambitions or its theoretical ambitions lies in generalization of a framework, of a unitary framework of science, unity of all sciences, that allows for both practical and theoretical ambitions of enlightenment. And of course, for that, as I will talk about, he had to create an epistemological order
of this constitution system, of this ur-science, which is not physics, It's just science as a generalization domain for all other sciences, a concept, a system of concepts for all other concepts, as he said. So this epistemological ordering pertains to your sense experience, what you call auto-psychological. Then it applies to intersubjective, which passes through certain kind of linguistic calibrations or triangulations and then it applies to culture, right? So in a sense that Habermas you can say he only picks a very specific notion
of enlightenment at the level of intersubjective. Now Habermas idea of intersubjectivity is quite narrow and also unlike carnapp's he thinks that inter subjectivity by itself can actually um as a whole address the questions of enlightenment namely also not just enlightenment in a modern sense but like the idea the ideal of enlightenment you know, scientific and lively. So to that extent, I think Habermas, no, Habermas essentially is quite very different from Carnap. In fact, I would say that even if we take
the idea of intersubjectivity, linguistic intersubjectivity, as a starting point, unlike Carnap, because the idea of auto-psychological determination, which is like you know, having some sort of acquaintance with the sense data or the sense given might not be palatable for every philosopher, right? So even if we get rid of that, which is that of the Karna, the basic root of the Karna, you know, of Ba'oh, if we start with the intersubjectivity, you can still, as I mentioned, you can still come up with different levels of intersubjectivity. not all of them are reducible to the communicative rationality and their subjectivity that Habermas
talks about even random is not like Habermas so that is that is actually quite interesting so presentation presentation yeah today we have your shot right yeah i'm presenting today okay can you make me host because i have powerpoint slides you can share like all the panelists can share there's no share what we were all right now i can see you okay it's on the green thingy right down thank you yeah um yeah you have slides yes uh just you have 10 minutes i'll let you know
on the chat how that goes okay i'll try my best yeah i want to talk about you know the kind of talks about ostensive definitions i want to elucidate some problems with with regard to extensive definitions. Firstly, we can start our discussion with what can be called the semanticization problematic at the beginning of . When Carnap says a scientific statement makes sense only if the meaning of the object names which contains can be indicated, here I think meaning of semanticization takes the center stage of our problematic. And there are basically two ways of doing this, Carnap tells us. The first of these is through a sense of definitions.
He says an object is brought within the range of perception and then is indicated by appropriate gesture or bodily maneuvering or any kind of corporeal or bodily manipulation. The second, he says, you know, conserved different descriptions. Different descriptions, he says, do not need, you know, to enumerate all the essential characteristics, but only many properties as required to recognize the object clearly as an extension or referential properties of those, I think that's what he says. He says, you know, this kind of extensionalism about properties is ultimately semantic, but this semantic desiderata, this semantic aim of ours should be ultimately, you know, desemanticized. I think that's what he says. It should be desemanticized because, you know, what we want in the final analysis is the formal
or relational properties between objects not the meaningful or semantic properties of descriptions so making this kind of this distinction between ostensive definitions and different descriptions kind of ultimately says you know we don't need ostensive definitions since our aim of you know is the construction or structural characterization we can carry out this task purely based on different descriptions that are purely structural, namely the descriptions that stay within the limits of purely structural statements. But I want to argue, you know, ultimately, Karnapp does not make any distinction between ostention proper and ostensive definitions.
You know, I think he does not talk about ostention at all, as far as the first chapter of the book is concerned. I don't know about the rest of the book, but as far as the first chapter of the book is concerned, he does not talk about ostention proper, and I think ostention proper can be powerfully used in the whole AfBaw project. I'll discuss in the next slide. The difference between ostention proper and ostensive definition is that ostention, as opposed to ostensive definitions, is purely an embedded action. You know, it's not a linguistic or conceptual act. Here I want to define concept use and language use as the same kind of activities in the broad possible sense. And I want to argue, you know, ostensive acts result in some kind of
structural difference or differentiation or saturation of the environment without being ostensive definitions or conceptual descriptions. Paragmatic examples of ostention would be, you pointing at something or gazing at something or gesturing on something. And these kind of ostentatious acts classify a pattern of action that are specified by our embedded doing that sets the stage for further actions. When ostentation is carried out, the reason why we are involved in this kind of ostentatious acts is that when the quantity of environmental bombardment proves too much to be perceptively taken as a qualitative whole or as a complete picture. What Ostenshin does, you know, as Karab says, you know, because of its
entangled relationship with perception is to classify the environment into a relatively discrete unstable units. But this classification of the environment into relatively stable units or discrete units is is carried out in a non-propositional or non-conceptual or non-logical way so basically extension curves the environment at its joints but this carving of the environment at joints is not a conceptual or logical activity it does not require any previous or prior definitions or descriptions. You know I want to talk about the example that's shown in the slide. You know for consider example of you know pointing at one's finger at a particular region of the
environment or gazing in a particular section of the environment. What we do when you are engaged in these kind of activities is to initiate a series of sensory motor active machinery that allows us to direct one's finger our finger or gaze into a particular region of the environment hence the environment becomes a particular this particular region of the environment becomes this a differentiated segment you know a structural segment a structural part that's ready for us to do all sort of things with it consider this example you know person a you know shouts to person b hey yo there's an incoming ball towards you person a wants to warm person b to dose the incoming ball
what person a does is to you know what i what person b does is to you know optimally prognosticate the spatial trajectory with expedient with expedient bodily maneuvering and subsequently avoiding the approaching ball you know the corporeal or bodily manipulation or bodily maneuvering is achieved by you know by moving a few steps back or flexing one's neck or jumping or catching the ball one is able to do the imminent threat however this specific prognostication powers of corporeal money maneuvering or bodily manipulation contains no concept of dodging or neck flexion or concept of gazing or concept of gesture the environment the environment now is
structure for person B into relatively distinct units that contains the ball, the noise that accompanies the ball, and so on and so forth. The final outcome for person B is that he employs all kinds of relationships that establish a connection within his location, with a relation of his body with the incoming ball, the body maneuvering. So the final outcome for person B is an inactive of structuration that's achieved for him, completely irrespective of what kind of conceptual logical concept that he has. Carnap says, you know, at one point, that relations form the starting point
of the whole constructional system. So I think this kind of inactively structural relationship can be the basis of construction more than, you know, sense impressions or primary experiences that empiricists talk about. I want to, next slide, I want to talk about this, the distinction between ostention and sense impressions. You know, there are certain features of ostentions that makes it fundamentally different from sense impressions or primary experience of the empiricists. The first, that you know, ostention is not merely a causal happening as Carl Lapp says, but it's a normative act. This particular sense of normativity is what counts as a correct or incorrect mode of action.
In our example, first, when person B moves a few steps back or flexes his neck or jumps or casts the ball, this kind of action can be characterized as correct or incorrect. Hence, it's a normative act. That's not a purely causal regularity, as Carnap says. Secondly, one of these particular norms is what Melo-Ponty calls the norm of optimality. And when he says, this kind of norm pertains to whether our sensory motor responses are organized in a sufficiently optimal way to engage smoothly with an action. So if a person be successfully in an optimal way, for example, he moves a few steps back or flexes his neck or jumps, hence he avoids the incoming ball. We can call his act as optimal or correct or incorrect,
but therefore it's not a purely causal regularity as Karnal says. Thirdly, I think, as obvious, you know, embedded action in the guise of ostensile acts are good direct activity. You know, they try to achieve a goal. And in the case of person B, person B tries to avoid his face being smashed. That's his goal. He doesn't want his face to get smashed or his nose broken. Fourthly, you know, ostensile acts are characterized by structural elements of their fluidity. Merleau-Pondy talks about it. The fact that, you know, bodily movements are able to adjust flexibly to the variation in the circumstance without the help of reasoning, conceptual reasoning or conceptualization. For example, person B, instead of, for example, this time,
moving a few steps back, he tries to catch the ball this time. Hence, you know, this kind of, there's a new kind of act that's carried out by a new kind of ostensive manipulation of the object and without any help of, you know, conceptualization or conceptual reasoning. Fifth, you know, we encounter this, it's the form of properties or forms rather than meaning or content that should determine the structures that we want in our structural systems, I think, you know, he risks losing objectivity or friction, but frictional content with the wealth. You know, but ostensibly pay tribute to environmental constraints. You know, for example, it's the shape of the ball that determines what kind of hand manipulations are possible
when it comes to catching the ball. You know, the person B does not just randomly tries to catch the ball or while sometimes contingently by random lucky you know catching the ball but he's actually responding to the mass volume inertia and structural resilience of the ball hence these objective characteristics or objective content of the ball necessarily constraints or embeds acts of extension without having a conceptual understanding of what mass is what volume is what inertia is what structural resilience of the ball is six i think you know reason responsiveness of the station or embedded access is obvious you know
you can have a knowledge previous proposition or know that knowledge that can inform your embodied action uh you know i what i want to say you know what these six characteristics of ostensive acts in the guise of embedded actions are fundamentally different from sense impressions no sense impressions are not are purely causal they are not reason responsive so when karma confuses ascension with you know causal regularities i think it's a fundamental mistake on his part finally this last slide i will finish you know in a minute i want to differentiate between inactive and conceptual structuration. And I want to do so with the help of Sellers.
You know, Sellers in his phenomenal paper, it's called Mental Events, I think it was published in 1981. He makes a useful distinction between the order of being and the order of knowing, you know, to elucidate the relationship between mind and language. He says the best way to understand the relationship between mind and language is to understand the fact that mind comes first in the order of being, even if language comes first in the order of knowing. So mind comes second in the order of knowing, our language comes second in the order of being. I think we can use this distinction in favor of this approach, you know that we can say that inactive or stensive structuration of the environment comes first in the order of being, even if linguistic conceptual logical structuration
comes first in the order of knowing. Secondly, I think the knowing part itself can be divided or structured itself. You can say there's a hierarchy of extreme priority that not all knowledge is just pure know that propositional logical conceptual knowledge. And you can say that, you know, embedded, embedded ostensibly acts are some sort of know how non-propositional knowledge that can first before the conceptual, explicit logical knowledge. Now, I want to talk about the method of the given and the frictionless spinning of the board. I think if I understood Karnap's claim so far correctly, I think Aftbau is bedeviled
by two fundamental problems. Because I think, I'm not sure, but I think it depends on sense of impressions and primary experiences as the fundamental units that we can logically abstract from. I think this approach is bedeviled by the method of the given. And because the structures are purely logical, I think he's bedeviled again by the problematic of frictionlessly spinning all the voids. I don't have time to talk about the exact definitions of the method of the given, frictionless spinning all the voids, but I think, at least I understand what I'm saying. Yeah, I think my basic problematic is that.
I think the foundational unit for Carnap can be an ostensive, you know, a sense of embedded activity, not a phenomenal sense impression or, you know, the primary experience is because of these two problematics, the method of the given and the frictionless spinning in the void of logic. Thank you. Thank you, Dushad. Fantastic. Excellent. Excellent. Superb. No, I mean, this is more than what I needed or asked for really. There are really good critiques here. First, I want to really thank
for taking your time. Even though I might disagree on many points here, nevertheless, I appreciate the amount of time and the amount of thinking that you have put on this. I really, I'm really, really surprised. Thank you so much. Okay, I mean, I have, I have, look, I mean, I think that if, you know, obviously, you know, we have consultation sessions, I can always give you feedback, you can write this, I can, I mean, I'm sure that you have already written this, I can actually go sentence by sentence and talk but i i simply because you know i'm merely hearing and trying to digest the stuff only um going to address um you know the points that i actually um you know
jotted down um so i don't think you see one of the things about embodied action I think this is one of the most important things. And I have seen this coming in French geocognitive leaders of embodied action, like Jean-Pierre Petit, Alain Berthaud, Giuseppe Longo, Jean Petit Toussaint, and so forth. I think that there are essentially um uh i mean they're also in their you know unity they are extremely different but i would say that one of the things for me is uh that that is like the achilles heel of uh
basically um of embodied action that's um the kind of ostentions that you are talking about um and they consider it as normative, they are not normative. How can be something that is not conceptually influential be normative? It can only be normative in a proper analogy with the resources of conceptualization that we have. Essentially, it's always retroactive analogy. It's always retroactive. To talk about this, you will soon find yourself that norms are
already embedded in the world. Hence, you will actually find yourself in a far situation, far worse situation than the myth of the given. You will find yourself in what Plato talks against basically Gorgias, you know, the greedy, the greedy skeptic of reason. The greedy of a skeptic of reason, one doesn't want to get rid of reason wholeheartedly or norms of Fusis. He wants to put those norms coming first without having the reason.
Reason, not reason as in a Brandomian sense, but in a Platonic sense. Logoi, relations between what takes place. And exactly what Carnot tries to do here is a deep philosophical undergirding. He's not interested in properties, property definitions. He is interested in relation definitions, relational definitions. And he's not merely interested in relational definitions. He's interested in structural definitions, meaning a formal matrix to understand how these things hang together in a CLRs in a way,
in a formal sense. So that I think that it is that I would say that is a key seal of the embodied mind or embodied action theories that they attribute some sort of normativity to basically to such actions, not knowing that every sort of normativity that we can ever talk about is in a proper analogy to the logoid, to our sorts of talking within theoretical and practical reasonings. However, this does not mean, now I mean someone would say that well but isn't it the case that certain kinds of these embodied actions constitute our norms? I say yes,
But first of all, two things. What do you mean by constitution here? Constitution in what sense? Constitution in the Carnapian sense, which we can actually go and theorize about it in a scientific, logical sense, so we can recreate it as a system of thoughts. Or constitution, more like evolution, right yeah if in the latter sense yes absolutely yes absolutely uh but then um even if you say i was trying to tell you you know if you can if you consider you know normativity being some sort of telosemantic some telosemantic event that happens in the evolutionary history that
that selects that which we call purposes. Yes, but tell us, I think the teleosemantics, Ruth Millikan teleosemantic thesis, if by teleosemantic means that Millikan's one, I think that it is precisely what I am trying to criticize here. I think that a version of teleosemanticism, teleosemantics can be basically retained as a very respectable, modest one. Essentially, the majority of these perceptual judgings that we do are through basically our live, real-time interaction, locomotory, gravitational, whatever you think about it. I mean, brain sense of movement, Alamberto's great book of these kinds of interaction.
But that, first of all, that doesn't really give us what perception is, science of perception. Second of all, simply something leads evolutionary to X leads evolutionary to Y is not a sufficient explanatory factor for Y or how the Y functions. how the norm functions and how there are basically everything that we talk about the world is by way of analogies to these kinds of norms in one way or another cannot be uh basically explained
by by the concept by these kinds of embodied construction i i reserve the idea of constitution for logical one. And that's basically the thing is that we should know that in Carnap, the idea of construction should be actually understood as constitution, whereas it's not really construction. So I don't think that how are we going to, I mean, look, how are you, how are we going to talk about, how are we going to talk about the most fundamental problems in logics and computation in terms of how certain these kinds of problems, a lot of logic and computations were evolved from certain kinds of natural evolution a la Daniel Denet.
Absolutely not. In the previous session I asked about you because I'm a doctor, I usually think in medical terms. If you think about homohabibus or homoerectus, I think they are pre-linguistic beings. They don't have the full-blown conceptual resources that we have. You know, imagine a homo-habilis healer trying to find a mass on the skin of one of his patients. He tries to detect or manipulate the mass. I think there's a structure for him by manipulation of his hand, and there is some sort of correctness and incorrectness. Of course, these are the undergirding of the evolution of whatever we have. That's what I mean by structuration. I don't know if you have a different kind of idea of structuration.
But I think this is the conversation. But that's not a structure nor a constitution. Yeah, no, it's not. Precisely because you see, OK, look, this is the thing. When you're playing with your cats, you throw a ball under the wall, right? But then keep a gesture. And there are empirical studies. Keep the gesture as if the ball is inside your hand. You know, you repeat this experiment without having the gesture of the ball is still in your hand or that as if you have thrown it out, right?
Depending on what you are doing, basically behave differently. why precisely because the perception is precisely this kind of what you might call to it can't would call pre-critical perceptual perceptual what you might call to be uh not judging so are not perceptual judgings uh perceptual acts perceptual acts what what karnak wants to talk about are perceptual judging, it's not mere perceptual acts that are prevalent among the sentience. Look, like for example, what is perceptual judging? Perceptual judging means that
you know when I put a piece of a pen, you know, in a glass of water, An informed person, a scientist, precisely because that person has a relation of various, you know, properties and so on and so forth, and also a structure and the logical inferences between them would say that, would say that, no, the pen is not bent. whereas give it to a five-year-old child two-year-old child says that the uh the pen is bent
because of the diffraction thing so essentially you see there is a fundamental difference from what Carnap's trying to do here and the embodied action I would say that if Carnap was alive he would have yes he would have incorporated certain uh you know insights from embodied action but that wouldn't have changed his idea in Afbau. It would have merely enriched it. Precisely because there are two different categories. Perceptual acts, perceiving acts, perceiving acts. I wouldn't call it perceptual. Perceivings, perceivings. And perceptual acts allow judgments. These are two fundamentally different. The embodied mind is on the side of the former,
Whereas what science is, is on the side of the ladder. Of course, we can think about historically that how mutually they have contributed to one another, and particularly how the embodied actions have basically created a certain kind of enrichment to the idea of perceptual acts or perceptual judgments. But that doesn't mean that, for example, we can say that, you know, it is sufficient for this kind of ostention proper in the way that you have been talking about, a lot of perceivings to cut at the joints of reality.
Because if that was the case, my cat would be a far greater scientist than Einstein. You can talk about scales of reality. Yes, but no, there are no scales of reality. Reality actually is not really an important concept. That's the whole point. Reality is something that... Yeah, that's why I think Carnap frictionly spins in the void of logic. He just spins what justifies a logical belief is another belief, to paraphrase Davidson. No, essentially, you know what he's trying to say? Essentially, first of all, Carnap absolutely is not interested in the idea of reality,
even though, as I mentioned last time, provisionally he uses this, Because he always says that you can always go with basically semantically loaded concepts that every one of us use, color, light, wave. I mean, even if we do have no idea. Scientists use them. Ordinary people use them. He says that use them. But look that when we actually look into how scientific theories work, we see that these are just like kind of designators, designators or encapsulations of far more complex logical, inferential, and epistemological systematization.
So the same thing, you see, with the idea of reality, he doesn't believe in such things. But he says that, OK, we'll return it for now. But the thing is that, essentially, That is the whole point of Afbahu, that the kind of what science is, what science is, by that is not, I think that many people don't really understand what he means by science. Although in the sense that he actually talks about it within the constitution system or theory of constitutional construction. He wants to say that essentially this is a system of a structuring, a logical structuring, and without this kind of logical structuring there wouldn't be any reality. Hence he is far more
sellers and before sellers would even actually think about the myth of the given. I have a quick question. So even if you think of something that's like a really like sort of simple ostentative idea of meaning like gesturing at a chair and telling someone else that it's a chair there's still this like deep subconscious to even that like simple perceptual event right like there has to be like a huge number of agreed upon things for for the meaning of this is a chair that you're going to be true inter subjectivity isn't there even a syntax and a primary syntactic element of perception. Like it's not just analytical thought that's mostly syntactic. It seems like even perception, it's still structural and relational. There's nothing that exists in and
of itself. Even the most explicitly ostentative thing isn't independent of a shared substrition. Right. Look, I mean, this is one of the things that unfortunately, if I wanted to give a full answer to this that it wouldn't be our fault it would be our fault plus the logical syntax of language and so on so forth essentially the idea yes syntax syntax now the idea of what is syntax really essentially a configuration of symbols having a certain kinds of figuration certain kind of figuration right so um obviously it cannot be so every obviously this is one of the most important
that karnah understands already here in our power as well that is such a figuration system of figuration symbolic figuration is not going to be part of the utter psychological level of experience, namely embodied action of me, you know, playing with a cat, so on and so forth, or any of these concepts. Essentially it's intersubjective. But the thing is that he hasn't really here defined what level of intersubjectivity he's talking about. If you are using a symbol that is not shared among a reporter or of other agents, then it's not a symbol, right? So symbol is symbol
in a formal sense precisely because it is part of an intersubjective, what you might call to be a level of tokenhood. Tokenhood is a token, right? But then, so the thing is that, so you can talk about syntax in in the most naive sense as this kind of token that is being exchanged right but imagine that if you think about a game so imagine a ball i'm throwing at you you take it maybe sometimes i you know throw it to someone else and then that someone else throws at you think about
this that there are different ways of exchanging a token when we are playing together right you know throwing balls at each other so imagine that the way that how a token is exchanged among players is a way to understand how meaning is generated from syntax, from the exchange of pure token, how semantics is being generated from the exchange of syntactical tokens. Because you see words that don't have meanings, like when I say red or say that some bullshit word that no one knows I say it no one knows the meaning of it because
words really don't have meanings concepts have meanings but what are concepts and how are they being generated where you can think about it from a linguistic perspective that you need to have a certain kind of syntax, syntactical configurations, being stabilized somehow, by way of use and practice among inter subjective agents. And through these kinds of exchange, as we move forward within our game, we will say that every time that for example, in this way I throw ball to you, I mean that's, it's a sign that maybe you should
attack the enemy. Maybe you should throw the ball in this way rather than the other way back to me. So this is, this is now, we are in the realm of emergence of meaning, of semantics, of the context, of the kind of symbols that we are using. So essentially, Carnap, as he shows later on, his theory of syntax and his valorization of syntax is not to the detriment of semantics. He just does not want to, at this point, jot the gun and saying that, well, you know, this is semantics. And let's look, we are doing really the great job. We are talking about syntax semantics and all things.
In fact, we are going to not only theory of all unity of all sciences, but unity of all languages. He doesn't want to do this. He wants to be modest, trying to show that what is actually a syntax and how this kind of syntactical reverse engineering of every phenomenon into some sort of logical configurations or logical constitution system is not to the detriment of semantics or meaning. And that's, I mean, this is one of the worst, you know, I think misguided criticisms that philosophers, particularly from the content
of philosophy, bring to people like Karnath, oh, this is just like a positive. He just doesn't want to deal with complex phenomena of semantics. No, he actually knows more about semantics than any concept of philosopher at this point, even at this point. Is it time? May I ask a question? Yes, yes, please. And then maybe a break. No, please, please go on. Please go on. Sure. So the aim of this question is just to give you give us one more shot at clarifying what Carnap's actual project is,
as opposed to some other projects you might mistake it for. So in the chat, people have been bringing up. I brought up how I'm very struck from my background of how similar some of what happens in the section we read is to um is to on denoting russell's on denoting in particular both the emphasis on definite descriptions and the notion that um these are useful partially because you can um uh you can construct in a loose sense every uh all the other concepts or definite descriptions that you eventually refer back and back and back to extensive definitions or or for russell at a certain point, sense data, or knowledge by acquaintance is his phrase. So all of that is in
here. And, you know, that can be critiqued from that, and phenomenalist views can all be critiqued from the point of view of the myth of the given. And extension can be, someone else in the chat brought up, the first passage of the philosophical investigations, right, which is this headlong critique of Augustine taking ascension as primitive. Okay, so ascension, I don't want to say that ascension and reference to sense date are the same thing, but there's this family resemblance between critiques of the idea that, oh, we can find the foundational elements that we're going to build everything up from. Okay, so you could say, well, what are we interested in the aufbau
if there's this for if you think the first move is a bad business right then um why else are we you know what are what are we what are we doing with it so what is what is mistaken about that understanding of which understanding carnapp is doing an understanding that would a um a reading that would say, oh, the first thing he does is do this foundationalist stuff that we now know is wrong. Why bother with the further steps? Well, I don't think that it's wrong. Actually, the whole point is that it's not wrong. First of all, Carnap absolutely is not merely
Rossellian. That's the whole point. I mean, the most important thing already starts. This book is a project in logical and epistemological ambit, right? So the logical one, you can say that, oh, Russell external word program, Whitehead, you know, free geologistism, so on and so forth. But then how can you actually commensurate it with epistemological one, right? So what does it make it different from Russell's? Presently that epistemological one. And what is epistemological one? How can you commensurate the epistemological dimension of the projects of Karna with its logical dimension? That's where he goes to something that are fundamentally diametrically sometimes opposite to people like
Russell or even Fouyge or Serb, Hans Weyhinger, Paul Matour, Vic Dingell, and so many of these people. Essentially, the idea of epistemological, for something to be epistemological, you have to... He actually has this in mind. they should be showing that all knowledge is essentially a subjectively experiential knowledge.
Now this is actually, he caught up I think from a very deep reading, he started from a no kantian position and then he tries to kind of synthesize his no kantianism which is always with him with the freeianism and then russell so so you say that all uh all uh all knowledge are essentially subjective knowledge of experience uh an experience of experiential knowledge. So in that sense, what you call experience, what is experience for you? So he wouldn't say, now that's an interesting thing. So his experience is not phenomenalistic. It's not Mackean, right? It is Husserlian. It is fictionalism of Hans Weidinger.
It is conventionalism of Aldinger and all of these things. Oh, and most importantly, it is the idea of pre-logic, pre-logic that even that both Husserl and Poincaré basically felt themselves associated with. What is this pre-logic? That for an object of science to be an object, that object should create its own conditions of objectivity. Meaning that a study of a pre-logic in terms
of transcendental logic of Osiris, a study of pre-logic that renders an object susceptible for it to take or to be applied, for logic to be applied to it. What, what, I mean, so what kind of objects do we need, right, for logic to be applied to it? That is an extremely important Carnapian question. And without it, we can't really talk about this constitution system, air labs, elementary experiences, so on and so forth. Essentially, the core of this question is a transcendental logic.
It has nothing to do with Frigge, with Russell program. It's Husserlian, and it is fundamentally no Kantian. We will talk about this, of course, today a little bit more. But I wanted just to say that, no, I think that Russell and Frigge, yeah, Frigge is, yeah, sure, absolutely, a fundamentally strong pole. Russell is not really that strong, and Karnak understands this as he moves forward from from Afbau to the project of rational reconstruction, the logical syntax to the projects of explication and principle of tolerance. You notice that Russell wasn't a good choice
within this kind of dialectics between logic and epistemology, right? Between his primordial interests in frigging new cantions. my freshman bathroom my my apologies if i was vague my apologies um is it time okay let's do it uh five minutes we'll come back oh
Regarding this, well, the place where we ended regarding this relation specifically between the epistemological and the logical, and since we so far mostly talked about his philosophical background, background i wanted to just ask about this his his relation to the gestalt psychology and yeah well yes yes definitely we are we are actually i'm i'm uh yes you are going to talk about it as as much as possible i think that really i mean um even if we waste time on just contextualization of this work is worth it precisely because um i mean you have you have read all of you have read
you know how he starts this book like you know no goddamn philosophers write a book like this you know he just assumes that everyone knows what he's trying to do so this is my methodology this is my logic it's my structuration these are the definitions like it or not get the hell out of here this is what i'm going to do and then he suddenly gets it like look there is there's like it just doesn't even like uh what you might call to be the intellectual foreplay here so you can can i can i add this last slide i forgot to add it to more that's you know do you see this part of my slide slide then i do no i think no
well construction than i know yeah no absolutely he he he's a beast of philosophy i mean uh the thing is that however being a beast of philosophy sometimes uh lead to your dislike by the history of philosophy, right? Essentially, this book has been misinterpreted by both his fans and his enemies, precisely because I think that he takes for granted some of the knowledge of some of the terms.
But yes, absolutely, he is on top of everything. And I would absolutely say that, yes, you know, the amount of knowledge that he has with regard to the Gestalt theory, phenomenology, Kantianism, no Kantianism, logicism, Russell and Whitehead project, is just unmatched. And that is why this is the encapsulation of what has become before, of the history of philosophy before him. And it's just like try to synthesize it into a new program by way of logic to initiate a new revolution. But of course, it fails miserably. It fails miserably.
But just because not all failures are worthwhile in contrast to Beckett, you know that if you fail fail again no I don't think so not all failures are good you sometimes never learn from a failure but this is precisely a failure that if you don't learn about it you can't actually navigate the history of philosophy in 20th century and 21st century this is it what I wanted to ask more specifically if it's okay it was about this Richardson
article we read for today where he asks exactly about what it is that makes this system epistemic logical which kind of writes in the beginning and so he asks how's the system epistemically ordered and says about the basis of elementary experience that the subjective origin of all knowledge lies in the contents of experience and their interweavings and that Carnap's basis concept is taken from Gestalt psychology namely yes that interweavings is interesting you see that interweavings is there is a key word here interweavings what is interweavings what kind of interweavings are you talking about But he's that that's that's what the quote is the recollection right right yeah I know I know yes
it's the ours ours ours problems and and they tip but but the thing is that so yes essentially um you know I think if you're ready I want to start so we can actually go through these various ramifications and diversification of how he sees this basically interviewing basically how he bridges logicism or the logic or off-bow as a logical project with off-bowl as an epistemological project such that they become an integrated picture logical or logical and epistemological project par excellence.
Sorry, I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't hear you. Would you be able to. Inter subjectivity one. Inter subjectivity sorry. One or two. When. One, two. first second oh as intersubject no no no i that was just like you know like look this is uh something that i am always on your twitter yes yes intersubjectly we wanted to so okay you know that's why i'm saying that like every concept that we are talking about this is like carnage like main idea explica explica to explicanda uh you know uh the idea of explication or conceptual engineering
you know, intersubjectivity one. So intersubjectivity one, we have a formal idea of token givenness. Like, we are exchanging a token, like a ball, and every gesture of throwing of the ball that we basically use or practice in this game of ball exchange, which is our token, leads to the entrenchment of a new meaning of a new gesture we know already if you for example uh you know um i basically like a basketball like you know uh do this do that then three
I will basically pass it to you. You probably know what I mean already as the one who receives the token, right? And this token, you can think about it as a symbol, right? As a symbol, the token as a symbol. So that's the one. We call this, let's call this formal intersubjectivity at the most basic level, syntactical level, right? Then above this we can think about semantic level of intersubjectivity, right? Like now, okay, we have played along, we haven't killed ourselves, we now understand in a pragmatic linguistic sense that what it means that if I do these kind of
gestures of ball and then throw it to you after 1,000 iterations, which creates a kind of a stabilization. And look, this is not any logical thing. It's actually precisely in tandem with your scenario of inactive mind. You know, you can't, you can't have, you know, action or act, act in any sense without certain kind of a stabilization. It's a stabilization, we shouldn't think about it as conceptual stabilization, but a stabilization nonetheless, from an information theory perspective, right? So if you do that, so we do that,
And then so now we have we have a certain kind of implicit meaning of you throwing the ball in this very specific way to me means certain things for me. And for me to throw the ball to you in this very specific sense or configuration means certain kinds of things for you. So it's basically the difference between expression and what you call the second one. I don't remember expression on designation that's the difference you think yes yes kind of kind of kind of I mean I don't want to I don't let's let's yeah of course there are caveats here but I don't want to put those caveats so you get uh you know think about some other things yes just let's for some
caveats with some caveats let's think that yes this is this is the case right so we are doing this. So essentially now we are in a certain kind of what Brandon calls implicit meaning, very dark. And essentially we have a shared report to ours of contexts. These contexts are not meanings at this point. These are the contexts of exchanging of symbols. So first we started with the context shared report war. Of context of sharing gestures like you know.
I mean i'm not going to say this I don't want to get cancelled like, for example, certain kind of finger showing to seven in certain kinds of countries mean different things, but if you and they will they will go for you. for you but if you actually recreate such repeat such uh you know gestures they might think that you are actually serious that means that you know the meaning of this gesture right so so so from this then we are going to uh this idea that implicit implicit idea that we know about the context of the act upon which we have agreed mutually by virtue of exchanging it. And you can
here simply replace the word act with a symbol in a syntactical sense. So we are already in a kind of proto-semantic, proto-semantic arena or area. Now we can go further on and we're basically in a la Brando, we make it a little bit more explicit. Explicit in what sense? Meaning that just like Socrates, expressivist rationalism, that doing this kind of gesture allows you or basically accept such a token, symbolic
or otherwise from you allow me to make certain kind of moves in the sense that it permits me to make such moves in my linguistic practice and not other ones. Like, for example, you know, Dilash, you know what this means in our countries. So if I show you this, it deprives you of certain kinds of moves and entitles you to certain kinds of moves, right? Essentially, we are in a, we are trying to now, you see that the meaning is nothing but contextualization
of symbols in this kind of deep syntactical semantic way, which is basically pragmatism. So if I do that, you know, you are deprived of certain kind of moves and you are allowed to certain kind of move. And then we are going to talk about this and that along this kind of basically what we take these kinds of moves are and what prohibitions are. And that's basically we are now becoming more acquainted with the explicit semantic aspect of this gesture or symbol.
So you see, this is why I'm saying that this is a gradational matter. And this is something that Carnap understands. Karnapps really understands that and that's why he just doesn't want to talk about semantics because he thinks his version of syntax the way that he defines it even though is not explicitly yet semantical it can be semantic given extra factors right intersubjectivity stabilization so on so forth shall I start?
I have seen that many of you are smoking cigarettes. Look, if I quit cigarettes, everyone can quit cigarettes. Okay. How are we share the screen here? It's on the on the green right right below on the bar below. My apologies. Oh yes, share screen. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Can you see this?
Yes, yes. Right. Okay, let me turn off my video. I don't want to see my face. You just want to see the diagram. So look, this is how our power starts. Zoom, can you see the fonts and stuff? Can you read these things? Yeah, it looks good. Yeah, the idea of enlightenment at the top, that's essentially as I mentioned. Vienna Circle starts with the idea of enlightenment. What is the idea of enlightenment? Theoretically and practically.
They want to create a theoretical and practical idea of enlightenment. But in so far as within the originary idea of enlightenment, the connection between theory and practice is not obvious. They have to create a new project. This is the project of Vienna Circle. so the idea of enlightenment from theoretical one is that if you are in one science you are in all sciences if you have theorized about one good thing you have theorized about all good things
if you have theorized about a good thing implicitly means that you have always been in the potential realm of a certain kind of practice corresponding to such such theorization if you have theorized about all good things about a unified form of science, you have understood the core, the practical core of enlightenment. That's cosmopolitan universalist idea of action.
so from idea so so this is what is being encapsulated in the unity of all sciences in theory and practice right in in vienna circle now from unity of all sciences then we have to move toward a different more nuanced uh position it is called generalization of what it means to be a science a science matrix for all sciences so think about this that look i say that i am going to be just right i'm not going to be an asshole
that kind of a statement if it is it cannot be re-found within a broader matrix of system of statements about being just about justice means shit it is isolationary why because why is it shit because it cannot be coordinated it cannot be connected with other instances of being just right so this is like what we are dealing with here today you know every person have a notion
of justice precisely because there is no coordination of such justice there is no attempt for the consensus among all coordination among such instances of justice we are going further and further to the illusion of justice right so this is the same thing can be said about theoretical and practical ideas ideals the generalization of what means to be a science is tantamount to a science matrix for all sciences meaning that we can think about that like espinoza that that every statement that we are making can be be brought back to a matrix of ethics.
And by virtue of this reduction to the matrix, we can see its connections with other statements of ethics in the realm of justice, in the realm of helping, whatever you can think about it. But the thing is that simply from thinking about justice, the relation between justice and health and politics and education and emancipations are not clear. So you have to do a certain kinds of hard work. You have to reduce,
Reduce, we are not talking about elementary materialism and these kinds of stuff. Reduction here means enrichment in it. Because, why enrichment? Because we are capable of understanding a certain kind of special or particular statement couched in certain kinds of fields by way of a common ground. a common ground, you know, cons. Of course, I'm kind of like, you know, trying to make this millennial for you, but this is not really what Carnap says. But I'm trying to do this so you like it. So, but nevertheless it is, I think.
So, you have to bring it down to a certain kind of commons. And from these commons, we can look within the relation between justice, emancipation, health, sexual liberation, whatever you can think about. And then once we look at these kinds of primary primitive relations, then we have the opportunity to construct them upward from bottom up and make explicit the relations between actually justice, hegemony, you know, so on and so forth.
So this is kind of like I wanted to say that what Carnap talks about generalization, what it means to be a science and science metrics for all sciences can be understood in terms of these kinds of, not allegories, but these kinds of examples that we now we are dealing with. And essentially, he absolutely, from a philosopher who has always on the back of his mind, certain kind of political commitments, he has this in mind. So, but how are we going to do this kind of generalization? So, it's going to be via the study of a general theory of constitution, constitution system. So, constitution, I'm using the word constitution,
precisely because construction is a little bit misleading. It's constitution. So what are we going to do is essentially we have to invent a certain kind of system for us to allow to, like an elevator, move between the bottom-up premises or bottom up or bottom sorry bottom bottom premises or bottom you know certain kinds of you know shared shared report to ours of you know experiences so on so forth and top divergences like for example think about science that for example there are certain kinds of
sciences that are more fundamental than others right like for example physics versus econophysics economic physics right but then obviously when we are talking about econophysics versus physics has something that pure physics doesn't have. It might be implicit already in physics, right? Well, we don't have it. Look, econophysics means that it has economy plus certain kind of supplementary physical laws. Someone would say to you that, well, economy might actually be reducible fundamentally to physics.
Karnapp doesn't think about these kinds of stuff. Karnapp, all he wants is that, so we have certain kinds of shared repertoire, and then we have certain kind of top divergences from these basic premises. So how are we going to account between the divergences on the top, the commonalities between the bottom, and how are we going to then bridge the divergences the convergences from top and bottom. That's it. So this is what he calls the logical constructions of the world. Sorry, the word missing here. Logical constructions of the world or reality, right? Within this system,
um he's is he has introduced a certain kind of trigger safety trigger right um though all sorts of metaphysical questions should be banished as why precisely because the movements from the bottom to the top of a constitutional system if this movement cannot be captured by way of the logic of the constitutional system namely the logical construction then it is metaphysical it is evil it is diabolic
is to the problematic you should get rid of it as a story can i ask a question sorry for interrupting sure sure you know i'm making i'm making exaggerations a little bit here at the bottom at the bottom of the page it says it's a logical ectomological project you know i personally understand the logic as something something interlinguistic you know uh logic is not really intraling with no okay when you are saying interlinguistic that's that's interlinguistic in what sense one two three four interlinguistics in the sense of making a space of the logical space of reasons you know the brandonian sense doesn't actually understand okay okay i'm just trying to make if i understand correctly
Yes, very close, very close. Yes, logical. I understand some logical in terms of, you know, the interlinguistic making in explicit, the logical space of reasoning. I understand the epistemological in terms of the semantic project of, you know, extensionality in terms of having objectivity to your content. So, you know, at once remove, Carnap says, you know, the question of external reality is just something metaphysical at the same time you know epistemological means something extensional something beyond the intentionality of right of language or logic i don't know how can you you know i think i think that i think a kind of is really good actually look you know we let's
say that the reality is there right right god is there right it's actually uh i actually never There's no doubt. You ever say that God is there. It's just like the last thing that I would ever say to myself. I can concede that there is a reality out there, but never God. But regardless of that, so Karnab understands this. So Karnab essentially wants to do the same thing that starts from a very shared rapport which might be what you call it the realm of the explicator fuzzy vague concepts and creepy crawlies
some of them are loaded with metaphysical evil and so on so forth but he also wants to give us a certain kind of route that look we can always be starting and in fact all sciences and all philosophies sort from such positions yourself is from such position, but what does it take for us to diverge from such positions? That's Carnap's position. Carnap is not really interested in being atheist, right? That's not really on his job description, you know, or for that matter, being even an empiricist, right? that's that's really i think it's interesting people really don't understand
what carnapp is coming from he's not going he's not simply by way of saying these kinds of stuff saying that like you know um heidegger is not even a musician because uh at the very least when i read nietzsche on my back my bed stand, I feel something of a music, of the vibe, but when I read Heidegger, it doesn't even have that. Look, it's just like, you know, it's a good philosopher, it's just a chap, and it doesn't mean that, as if, you know, it just tries to show you that all sorts of these kinds of metaphysical problems should be, should be, not can be, should be turned into
a certain axioms and kind of construction principles. If you can't come up with a construction formula for these then they're probably not really worthwhile philosophical problems in the sense that the constitution system means and that's why we are going to from next session forward put all of our efforts to clarify what a constitution system is and entails in any case so uh from from so that's logical construction of the world and so from logical construction of the world now that we have got the generalization of what it means to be a science
the science matrix for all sciences then we get to the project of as a logical and epistemological project. On the side of logical, the problem is rather simple, right? You know, you don't have too many options to legal with. It's logism, an external work program, a la Russell and, uh, uh, Russell, you know, um, particularly role of, uh, what, what nevertheless, uh, regardless of, Fregio Russell, the cornerstone of this dimension is the rule of logic as a basis for a new
revolutionary philosophy, meaning that we are not supposed to take, so you see, okay, no, actually, I have a better idea. You see, what does that mean? So when we are actually say that logic has a revolutionary status for philosophy, a position for philosophy. What does that even mean? It means that we can now think about philosophy as a constitution system, just like logic. That certain kind of assumption, philosophical assumptions we have can be constructed. If they cannot be constructed, then perhaps they have to be junked,
that they have to be trashed, a.s. do the problems. So on this side, we get Frigge and Russell and Whitehead. So on the side of epistemological, we have to explain what subjective, what role subjective experience plays in empiricism and gestalt theory at the same time. right not just empiricism but also gestalt theory then we have to talk about epistemological ordering of constitution system via integrating empiricism and gestalt theory so the whole point is that regardless of the type
of relation formal relations and we are talking about objects and property definitions in in of Baal, we ought to turn this kind of hierarchy into an epistemological ordering to show, to talk about that this relation between relational definitions, property definitions, and formal definitions, a lot of structures, formal relational descriptions, how are going to basically come together. Obviously, this becomes the main issue of why Karnap has to create a certain kind of integration between empiricism and Gestalt theory.
and for that matter navigate a broad span of ideas and concerns from basically Poincaré and Hugo Dingle to Nookantianism to Hosserl's phenomenology and Marx's phenomenism. So, um, first one, Pwankarae and Dingle, uh, experience and conventional idealism. That's the contribution. Vahinger, Cohen, Nasr. It's that's the Kantian questions of the contact between the rational ingredients and sensations.
This is the question of Marburg school, a lot of no Kantianism. Then the third one, Husserl and phenomenology. eidetic perception, transcendental logic. Investigating, investigation of necessary, of a necessary pre-logic for the application of logic. As I mentioned, sorry, what kind of, what kind of objects, so we are talking about an object of science, what kind of characteristics you should have for it to be receptive of logic. And that's, of course, I would say that it should have a certain kind of pre-logic. A pre-logic renders it susceptible to received logic.
That's the whole idea of transcendental logic. Namely, laws of constitutions of something to be counted as the object of science. How cool is that? So Max Phenomenalism. So Phenomenalism, as I mentioned, so Phenomenology is mostly about the idea of meaning or the context of experience, hence it's more on side of the transcendent or Alok Kantian. Max Phenomenalism is more on side of the the bundled theory of sensation, sense data, data as a givens or the acquaintance, acquaintance, something that you have certain kind of immediate affinity with, right?
Not immediate access, whatever, less immediate affinity. I will try to make a distinction within these two such that you don't think that Max Phenomenalism is simply a pre-critical or pre-transcendental form thinking Alastair's myth of the given, right? No, it's not really. So in Marx's phenomenalism, sense givens or sense acquaintances are the basis of experience and their organizations require certain kind of configuration according to the primacy of these sense acquaintances. So these are the four uh basically factors uh that uh create the epistemological wing
of carnapp's project namely the integration of empiricism and gestalt theory so before i move forward i have to go and check my food sorry i think my food is more important than you at this point But before that, any questions? Anything? For some reason, I have... I don't know what has happened here. Can you guys still hear me?
Yes. Yes, certainly. Yes, something, I mean, it's just, I cannot, basically, I have this like thumbnail of Dilash and some of you, okay, okay, I got it, okay, I got it. Okay, my apologies. I don't know why you called me Dilash, you know, it's basically a Persian name. Yes, yes, Dilash. My apologies. My apologies. My apologies. My apologies. Shad means happy. Basically, farewell. Shad. My apologies. So anything before I have to do two minutes, I will come back. Anything before then?
Any pressing question before I move forward? Maybe I have a question from paragraph 13. in the book. Paragraph 13 in the book. Would you be able to tell me what page number it is? One second. And the PDF is 48. I can read the sentence that's annoying to me. 48. Or 24 in the actual book. It's 48. Oh, oh, oh, oh. 24. 24. 24. 24. 24. Okay, is it the one that about definite descriptions?
Yes. Here I think we have a weird sentence that kind of looks like a pre-critical theory of perception that we know from Leibniz, Wolf, Baumgarten kind of school. Yes. Which part is it? J. Which part of the sentence i'm talking about is a definite description does not indicate all properties. J. Which fire just paragraph which is the first paragraph in the middle. J. It's a scientific statement makes sense only if the meaning of the objects. J. yeah but a few sentences forward, it says a definite description. J. called it. J. Okay, yes, a different description does not indicate all properties of the object right and that's.
Yes. Conquit perception. On the contrary, it actually appeals to perception. Also, definite descriptions do not even list all essential characteristics. Right. So it seems like he's saying a perception is like a fully, fully definite description. This is exactly like Leibniz would maybe describe what it means to perceive something. may actually ask how you came to this results because you know on what accounts i mean it just says uh if we would have a definite description that would indicate uh
i mean it says that's not a definite description yeah i think I think I talked about it in my presentation. You know, it does not say that a different description is basically characterized perception. He says our ostensive definitions or different descriptions can be entangled with perception. You know, perception feeds back into our different descriptions or our different descriptions. But I don't understand what the problem is, right? You know, first of all, he's saying that, OK, Let me repeat it. The second consists of an unequivocal circumscription, which we call definite description. Like, okay, actually, let me, for all the students, there are two ways of doing this.
The first of this is through Austen's definitions. The object which is meant is brought within the range of perception and is then indicated by an appropriate gesture. Example, that is Montblanc. I think he just says perception feeds into either ostensate definitions or different descriptions. He just, there's some sort of feedback loop. We gain data from our perception into our different descriptions or ostensate definitions. He does not- Yeah, yeah, he does not- Presensive because we are working at this point on lower levels of this kind of situation. Yeah, I think when the questioner is implying,
maybe Karnap is just like McDowell, who endorsed some kind of conceptualism about perception. I don't think he endorsed that. It's just that perception feeds. No, no, no. First of all, I think that, look, I mean, this is like, I don't, I'm not sure. I'm not, I can't read German sufficiently. Look, I think that we should give this a little bit of shadow of a doubt. I don't think that he means perception in a full Kantian sense. Perception is a judgment, right? There is no such thing as perception without judgment. Maybe he's talking about perceiving acts, right? Like the idea of, you know, the kind of embodied action scenarios that we have been talking about, right?
The uncritical, uncritical judgments. So it's hard to say what he means by this sentence, precisely because I would say that, yes, it might actually be a little bit wishy-washy, but knowing his German a little bit, I would say that he won't be too, you know, emboldened to make such sloppy moves. So it says the second consists of an unequivocal circumscription, which we call definite description.
A definite description does not indicate all properties of the object and thus replace concrete perception. On the contrary, it actually appeals to perception. Again, it really depends what it means by the perception here. Also, definite descriptions do not even list all essential characteristics, but only as many characterizing properties as are required to recognize unequivocally the object which is meant within the object domain under discussion. To give an example, the name Mont Blanc is used to indicate the highest mountain in the Alps, or the mountain so many kilometers east of Geneva. In order for definite description
to be successful, it is not sufficient that the describing sentence be meaningful. Rather, is rather in the given object domain, there must be at least one object with the indicated properties. And secondly, there must be at most one such object. Thus questions whether and what a definite description describes cannot be answered a priori, but only by reference to the object domain in question. I don't think that this essentially renders him susceptible to the myth of the given just because, you know, it says that, you know,
Mont Blanc, you know, or Damo Avent or Al Bors or, I don't know, Everest is this very unique mountain, right? It obviously doesn't want to say that, as he said, it's not going to make a discussion or an argument from an a priori position. But nevertheless, he still wants to retain certain kinds of perceptual judgments in terms of both Kant's intuitions, eschemata, and productive imagination.
And I don't think that there are, you can reduce these kinds of categories of cognitive acts to mere takings of, you know, basically the givens, the sensory givens or sensory data or air lab, so on and so forth in the way that usually we call them the method of the given. I don't think that he means that. I just don't know how you're going to interpret this for it to become like that. So you're basically saying that kind of it's just like McDowell, you know, there's like some kind of judgmental or conceptualized conceptualism about perception.
You know, when Saylor says, you know, mental, okay, this is the thing. I mean, this is the whole point. Look, the diagram that I showed you already showed that when we are talking about off-bow as a logical and empirical and epistemological project, then we not only have to have different levels of the logical, but also different levels of epistemological. And hence, the coordination within these levels is the very methodology of this book, the very systematization of our file. Yes, if in the in the way in the sense of systematization, yes, but otherwise no. If I may,
Thank you. Yes. Yes, yes. I think the last question, when you asked, I think it was James, if I'm not mistaken, was talking about property different descriptions. In my first slide, I talked about, you know, Carnapaju was just being expository.
He was just talking about property different descriptions. He finally rejects this property, different descriptions, in favor of this amount sized structural descriptions. Even if we don't know if he talks about perception in a conceptual or non-conceptual sense, whether this characterization falls to the myth of the given or not is irrelevant to him because he finally rejects different descriptions, he rejects different descriptions about properties. We just want to retain structural different descriptions. I don't know if I make any sense or not. May I start?
My apologies. So let's start from, am I still sharing the screen or not? No. OK. So let's start from, remember the diagram? Let's start from. Reza, sorry. Carnap. Can I add something? Yes. If it is possible, would you be able to ask it at the end? So I can go only on a very, very brief idea. Yifat Kharagamanu, Pham, Yeah, of course. Yifat Kharagamanu, Pham, No, no, no, absolutely no no my apologies my apologies.
Because it's relevant to what we are discussing. Yifat Kharagamanu, Pham, No, no, no, the only reason I say precisely because we are a little bit behind, I want to at least cover a little bit before we can open it up again. Yifat Kharagamanu, Pham, So. Yifat Kharagamanu, Pham, So, look, you know, corner was it. a very staunch reader of Poincaré. And since 1914, he had been basically
incorporating Poincaré's insights within his works, particularly Poincaré's works on science and hypothesis. So what is it, what is, what is one idea that Carnap's tried to latch onto? It's a basic, it's that the basic laws of mathematics and mechanics stand over and above true and false. They are conventionally stipulated because the most convenient forms of the empirical mathematical laws can be represented by means of them, i.e. because they are the most opportune.
So one can think about why is this interesting for Cardam. So Cardam actually had underlined the copy of Poncárez's Hypothesis and Science and underlined particularly one paragraph, where it says, experience can serve as the foundation of the principles of mechanics and nonetheless can never contradict them. The second one is Poncárez's own summary of the basic idea of his book.
What science can attain to is not the things themselves, but only the relation among the things. Apart from this relation, there is no knowable reality. This is says, we will find out after we have reviewed all sciences from arithmetic through geometry and mechanics to electrodynamics and experimental physics. This view is familiar with Helbold's and other people in after African. But it was also taken by Neokantians as consistent with their own position. The Neokantians like Kuntz, for example,
in a memorial address to the University of Berlin after Poincarezette summarized the philosophical achievement in these words. To point Poincaré's philosophical importance in a single sentence, one might say, he comprehensively broke the transcendental faith of the exact sciences and thereby make room once again for Kant's idealism. There are two dimensions to this, says Kuntz. A negative one, which teaches the unknowability of the innermost essence of all concepts from which mathematical science construct itself, such as mass force energy and a positive aspect,
which gives our knowledge the task of discerning relations and nothing but relations." And that's really what Kana is investing in, right? as we have read the new section in our file for today. So what is the central idea here? The central idea of Poincare that Karnak is so enchanted with. So in science and hypothesis, we get an idea that we cannot know things themselves, but only the relations among things, right?
Relations, right? Think about the relations in the Carnapian sense. So obviously, relations among things of Poe and Correa are very different from the relations among property relations, property definitions of Carnap. But nevertheless, that's the way. So we should think about like any game that so how how the movement is in the relation among things. right turn into relations among property definitions and turn into formal relations allow a structure in our power
the structure logical structure of the world so this is like so essentially this is why we are we are starting with Carnap to talk about what kind of other elements Carnap needs to basically bring into the fold for this kind of equation or this movement to be whole, right? Which are only realities, so as I said, science and hypothesis that we cannot know the things themselves but only their relations among things which are the only reality available to us. It seems what Poincaré you know means by this is closely similar to ontological humility
introduced by Helmholtz in his version in his book, which is described in words not so very different from Antoine Carreuse. He says, our sensations, our effects brought forth in our organs by means of exterior causes. And how such an effect manifests itself depends, of course, quite essentially on the nature of the apparatus on which the cause operates, insofar as the quality of our sensations gives us information about the peculiarities of the exterior process that excites us or impinges upon our sensation, it can count as a sign of that process.
Now that's really interesting. Sign of that process. Like a symbol, right? But not a picture, but not as a picture, right? It's just like, it's like, you know, we are already really, really advanced here. Like, we have, so essentially, and of course this is what Carnac has read. So the idea of a sign of the process is far more interesting than the picture of the process. Right? And this is why Carnac, I think those of you who have
read my critique of Sellar's idea of picturing, know that why I'm emphasizing this. Well, regardless, then it continues, for one expects of a picture some sort of similarity with the pictured object. But a sign need have no similarity of any sort, whatever, with that on which it is a sign. Right? The relation between them is only the same object, working its effects in the same way produces the same sign,
and that unequal sign always corresponds to unequal causes. To the popular view which naively and complacently assumes the full truth of the picture that our senses give us of things, this remainder of similarity that we recognize may seem rather trivial. In truth, it is not. With its aid, something of the greatest significance can be achieved. representation of the regularities in the process of the real world. So even if our sense impressions in their qualities are the only signs whose special nature depends wholly on our internal
organization, they are nonetheless not to be dismissed as empty appearance, but are in fact a sign, a sign, not a picture, a sign of something. Whether this is something existing or something occurring. And what is most important, they can picture the law of this occurring. Helmholtz, 1878. Now, Poincare himself makes this meaning even more explicit in chapter of the value of science. When he asks, is science artificial?
He says, the facts of science and a fortiori, its laws are the artificial works of the scientists. For the scientists. Science therefore can teach us nothing of the truth. especially Leroy's paradoxical affirmation that the science creates the fact, but this, it turns out, even for Leroy, Edward Leroy, who's a Bergsonian,
refers not to ordinary crude facts, but only to the scientific facts. Poincare shows that no unambiguous boundary can be drawn between these informal categories and that of moreover, which of them, which of them a fact belongs in the language relative. It says, all the scientists creates in a fact is a language in which the enunciation, in which he enunciates it. If he predicts a fact, he will employ the language. And for all those who can speak it and understand it,
his prediction, the scientist's prediction, is free from all ambiguity. Moreover, once this prediction is made, the question whether it is fulfilled or not evidently does not depend upon him. So Poincare and Helmholtz focus on different aspects of the interface within scientific knowledge and sense perception. Poincare and the linguistic Helmholtz on the processing of sense data, as we have seen it with, you know, what's that, a triple P, predictive processing paradigm
matrix that has come up in these kinds of stuff, you know, predicate processing brain. Yet it should be clear that from the above perspective, their views are in complete harmony. And it is very much in this spirit. Not that the Kunz or the Marburg spool that Carnap understood Poincaré's in 1920. In the above passage where Carnap explicitly disagrees with Paul Nator, he signs Poincaré in support of his point that we are only the victims of a particular habituation. Now this is really interesting, particular habituation in what sense? Does
Does anyone know what particular habituation means in philosophy post Kant? It simply means that, so we have a certain kind of, you know, when we are thinking about Kant, we have a certain idea of what it means to have a transcendental deduction, you know, by what right kind of understanding, by what right we're making such claims about the objective, Right? But the thing is that with Helmholtz and actually with Porn Kare, we can come up with a fundamentally new question. That the very fact that we can only make such a statement about certain kinds of basically
objective scenarios is precisely because of the very fact that we are particularly or especially habituated to certain kinds of transcendental structures, transcendental structures and not others. Like for example, if we are using a particular repertoire of linguistic concepts, we are habituated to that. And that basically avoids or prevents us from using other kinds of concepts. If we are, for example, having a certain kind of neurophysiological system, that this allows us to basically, at the end of the day, with regard to categories of pure understanding, reasons, so on and so forth, think about other forms of experiences.
Hence the idea of particular habituation, that the very fact that we are using certain kinds of particular languages, the very fact that we are having certain kind of neurophysiological structure to which we are, you know, basically oblivious, so on and so forth, that creates a niche for the entrenchment of our habituation routines when it comes to objectivity, when it comes to understanding what something, for something to be an objective means.
So that's really important. So Puan Kare has shown with an example how the observers and surrounding that behave in physically different way than what we are acquainted with would necessarily arrive at a mental image of a non-Euclidean space and thereby that our difficulties in imagining such a space are to be attributed only to the lack of habitual observation of the sort of physical process, i.e. only to our different socialization, to purely empirical factors. Essentially, look, you know, so we have heard about these stories that from a
neurophysiological perspective, you know, Euclidean space is quite, you know, quite in tandem with our kind of neurophysiological embodied actions, once or for habituations. But precisely, that's why we have to be very careful with this, to not understand that the source of knowledge is habit, or habituation to certain kinds of embodied acts, basically locomotory movements, use of ordinary languages, so on and so forth. So essentially both Poincare and Karna want to show
that the origin of science is not a spring from habituation, but from systematic inhabitation. And that's something that is quite very different from what we have been talking about, and particularly what we talked about earlier today. today so any any any thinking any stuff what's sorry what's the strict difference between say the habit you're talking about before and a systematic habituation systematic habituation by systematic habituation look uh think about this
I have this book which is, has always been on, is really one of the greatest books that I have read about. So for example, think about this, you know, thinking about you're a sentient rather than a sapient, meaning that you don't have accessibility to those kinds of conceptual repertoires which allow you to, you know, explicate and make explicit the relations between the kind of proto-conceptual,
spatial designations you have. Like for example, you might actually uh you have you might have when you might have some sort of habit about using your right hand some sort of habit about using your left hand right you know a lot of cans but it's not like can so you have some sort of habit to by virtue of habits and nothing else habits habituation you you make a distinction between the use of the right hand and the use of the left hand, right? So you would say that, like, in a, in a logical sense, that a mouse escapes toward
your and you use and make a gesture by way of your left hand. Right. But the thing is that, of course, and then you can create certain kinds of by virtue of this habituation of gestures, you can say that, well, it is it is an exposition, not you can say, but someone can create that kind of statement for you that like a programmer of algorithm that this is like x position versus y position, this position, right hand position, right? But then that kind of positioning of the mouse
is essentially, it does not essentially entail certain more complex spatial positions, such as, for example, that the rat is moving southwest. The rat is doing this. So you see, even if we have the most basic ideas of left and right, which is embodied simply by way of the way we use our hands and certain kind markers, whatever, even if we don't hands, that does not commit us to certain more complex addresses about how, where this mouse is or how it's running, right? Like it's moving
southwest at this point and now it's changing to its northwest, so on and so forth. These These are not really our palette at this point, because those are fundamentally in friendship, basically, relations that only a conceptual person can derive from the more rudimentary gestural spatial coordinations. Right? So within that sense, I don't think that we can ever say, we can mean, so then you might say that, OK, there is a predator, right? A predator who doesn't have these concepts, right?
But nevertheless always pounces on this mouse with pinpoint accuracy, right? Yes, of course. But think about this, that in terms of robotics, Yusuf Kauruqiangani- Like robotics precisely because the robot in the realm of robotics, it is a little bit of sentience a little bit of program attestations by by virtue of analogy to our own ways of specialization. Yusuf Kauruqiangani- So we can actually create a cat and a mouse scenario in robotics, where we can program a mouse that acts like a mouse, but suddenly gives it a fatal twist.
Like instead of basically moving in that straight line or moving that line, suddenly it stops, goes under a rock, and does something fundamentally different. that is not within the spatial temporal pattern recognition abilities of sentience in the way that we are talking about the physiological capacities of the brain and so on so forth so at that point the cat simply starts to make a certain kind of exploration and if cannot find the rat it basically
goes away. So this is the whole point that you see these kinds of navigations should be understood that when we are talking about these navigations they're not all in the realm of you know left and right or gestural cues. Some of them are actually conceptual and you can see why are we always is making these animal, basically, examples. Let's talk about this, a detective and a serial killer. A serial killer has a fundamentally different repertoire
of concepts, and so has a detective. It is not just hunter. I mean, why is that everything needs to be turned into this kind of locomotory embodied action. And precisely because it's just like a complete reduction of fundamentally more. I'm not saying that fundamentally more complex concepts are different from these gestural concepts. I would say that they are originating from them and they can disambiguate these gestural concepts, but they also have something more to them. It's not as if I am creating a rift here, right? I'm not creating a rift. I am merely trying to say that we should take into account
what makes Sherlock Holmes versus Professor Moriarty's maneuvering different from Kalileba al-Demne, Mouse and cat hide and seek. You know, Reza, I think the example was excellent. You know, you said that you know. You said. You shout, sorry. Just one thing. Like, we are passing the time. So if you have a question, keep it, like, very brief, very direct. Okay, very, very, very direct. You know, Reza said, you know, science is just systematic inhabitation. I want to give an example from medical practice.
Previously, before I was going to medical school, if I saw a patient with a stroke, for example, there is a stroke on the right side of the body, there is hemiparesis and hemisensory loss on the right side, for example, I would think directly that the right side of the brain is affected. But after reading biology and neuroscience, I knew that propositionally at the medulla part of the spinal cord here, there's desiccation at the spinal cord around the brain. After that, if I saw a patient, if I saw a patient that has a right side, you know, paralysis or paralysis, I would directly think the left side of the brain affected.
The proposition and knowledge is directly translated for me even without thinking about discation, the right side would directly and passively translate it to the left side of the brain. So I think science can be thought of as systematic habituation rather than systematic inhabituation. I don't know if that makes sense. Sorry. Yes, but I think that when I'm talking about systematic dehabituation versus habituation, I mean, what is systematic dehabituation? The first implication of systematic dehabituation is that we are no longer going to
basically adopt a voluntaristic approach to the habits of perception. right so we are not in the realm of volunteerism and that's one of the most things about Carnap essentially he wants to break philosophy perception systematization of philosophy from this volunteerism in the realm of perception cognition and perhaps even politics. And that is really the greatest idea of Karna. That's the breakage from voluntarism. What does it take? What are you going to do
to turn this break into a system rather than merely a gesture? So yeah, that's my thing for now. But yeah, of course, we are still very, very behind, but I'm sure that we are going through this. Essentially, next session, I'm going to briefly talk about Hosserl in relation to Karna, Hans Weihinger, and Otto Dingler. And that will be it. that would be it and then uh once we have it then it's much more uh it's much smoother to go and think about you know the idea of construction systems uh the idea of how
uh you know we are talking that all property definitions are relation definitions and how we can capture all relation definitions by way of structural definitions in the sense that we have been talking about. But as I mentioned, really the most important about this book is really the aim of it, the ambition of it, the context of it. Otherwise, if you go to the technical stuff without understanding what it's trying to do, it is absolutely not interesting. It's actually quite boring when you understand what it's going to do in what context it is a masterpiece of 20th century philosophy and i don't think that anything is like this even though it is
flawed even though it's going to be failing at the end of the day so who's going to be the victim next session i'll do it good great thank you thank you so much everyone any questions any any any like uh is there something that you would want me to do or i shouldn't do i mean be honest with me yes please please please okay i'll remain brief so they don't interrupt me it's just some up with regards to your last point uh regards to abandoning the volunteerism it's it's a rather interesting one as i'm not sure i
quite understood it especially because and i'm certainly certainly you're you're familiar with it as it as a mostly it's my reading from carus that has that brought attention to this but uh uh kind of is often associated with a certain volunteer volunteerism Yes, voluntarism mostly in... Regarding the establishment of conceptual systems. Yes. Through explication. Yes, but not in a methodological sense. So my question would precisely be, what is the difference between these two senses of voluntarism? Yes, I think the first one that you are mentioning is something that comes from his explicitly political,
cultural and deep historically from a historical perspective philosophical commitments whereas the other one comes from his thirst for systematization, methodological systematization, the realm of methodological systematization where the true philosophy lies volunteerism dissipates like a fog in the sense that it becomes fundamentally a social enterprise in the guise of science. And to be honest with you, this is why I said, you know, someone asked about, I think it was James who talked about, asked about Karna versus Habermas, right? So why is it so different from
Habermas. Even they're both certain kind of voluntarist people, right, at different levels, precisely because at the level of methodology, which basically is the key for Karnak, really, you know, we should understand why is that he, this man, opens his book with principles and sets of methods from which this book, this project, will be boot-slapped through a constitutional system, right? And one is that he refuses to associate these kinds of systematic methodism or methodologicality to a certain kind of voluntarism while still holding a certain
kind of volunteerism at higher levels like uh habanus i think that precisely because you know uh his project as i mentioned um does not start from any sort of inter subjectivity it starts about the logical constructions of experience from airliners upward elementary experiences upward at the level of auto psychological determination you can't have actually psychology can you i mean voluntarism can you
volunteerism requires certain kinds of semblance of intersubjectivity That's, I think that's one of the things that I think this is really something that I have been thinking about, that the idea of the auto-psychological determination as a first level for Karna, some people might think of it as some sort of individualistic, you know, idea of experience, but it's not. And essentially what I am going to talk about is that it is neither fully empirical in the sense of bundle theory or sense data, nor it is fully intersubjective in the sense
of linguistic commonalities and so on and so forth, is essentially what we have been talking about. It is the very pinnacle of this project to commensurate the logical aspects with the epistemological aspects of the unity of all sciences. with the idea that logical is impersonal, and the epistemological one is about the idea that every knowledge, according to him, bottoms out at a certain level of subjective experience. But of course, the way that he talks about subjective experience is not like your ordinary run-of-the-mill Kantian.
is trying to temper it with empiricism and temper empiricism by way of gestalt theory tempering gestalt theory by other forms of non-kantianism like conventionalism of like you know rules or fictionalism of Heinz Weichinger and that basically gives a certain kind of credits to him that makes him much more sophisticated than you know your positivist, your run-of-the-mill positivist prophet or anti-positivist rebel. Essentially I would like to ask about you about the fiscalist's turn but I'd like I'll pass the
the microphone to someone else, but eventually I'd like to. Yes, please. And please, if you want to ask some questions, feel free to email all of us, and then we can discuss them. I will think about them. Some of them, sometimes I really don't have already made answers to such questions, right? But I can always think, and please do send. I mean don't feel that you know you are basically doing something extra class you know I would be happy to think about these kinds of stuff. Thank you. Absolutely. I've just got a really quick question about specifically about the section four. I'm not sure I quite got the example. What is
section four sorry section 14 um on page 25. example of a definitive a definite description which is purely a structural right yeah he uses the example as a railroad railroad map as an example i'm not sure i quite understand uh the example um would you be able to maybe just I don't think that we can, okay, let me just mark this. Let me just mark this. It actually makes sense, but the thing is that if I actually try to talk about this,
then I have to talk about what he actually means by definite description. And then purely a structure, purely a structure. So I think that let's hold it for the next session, because to avoid possible things. I have, and would you be able, please, to remind me, I have actually written in my book um that outstanding issue you should be able to remind me about this yeah no problem yes um yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry like we had two other questions i think on the chat one but was
by jp the other one i think it was uh oh jean pierre said something yeah where's jean pierre he's uh he's auditing he's he actually asked about uh what what do you think about goodman's reading of it in the structure of appearance and we had also like james evans sitting there oh but james already asked yes so the same thing that i said to james i will say to jean pierre jean I would say to Jean-Pierre, most probably trying to bait me, whether knowingly or unknowingly. I would say to Jean-Pierre, my dear friend, I think that is just too early for even to start to talk about this and good man's. I think at this point, let's agree
that what is really important for us to understand is really why the hell? a person would write such a book, most importantly, like, look, this is a person who thinks that, oh, all mathematics can be reduced to logic, this kind of stuff. And then why is it that he's interested in synthetic geometry, gestalt theory? Why? You know? So this is the kind of like outstanding question that first we have to answer to a little bit dissipate, if not wholeheartedly dissipate some of the fog around this.
But then, yes, we will get to Nelson Goodman. And one of the things that I actually have a, if you actually allow me, if you can read this piece for me with regard to the good man's objection in the structure of appearance against Carnap. One second. My apologies, my apologies. It's a piece called, it is, it is,
forgotten where it was. Is this in this? One second. Let me actually try to. I have it. It's in my download folder. It's actually in a collection edited by Hintika. and it the the topic of this essay is the role of synthetic geometry in carna i can't i can't find
the book. I know that it's edited by Hentika, the famous logician, and it is about synthetic geometry. Basically, the whole point of this is kind of like a defense of Karner. Do you mean Thomas Mormann, synthetic geometry and alpha? Yes, that's it. That's it. Yes. I believe I put the reference further up the chat in the beginning of the beginning of the beginning of the during the beginning of the session I believe I actually wrote the reference down when we're talking about it so yes yes thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you so much yes that's that's one and there are a couple of other more uh pieces but this is the main text
Yes, so essentially this is like trying to show that, you know, if we read this thing, and actually this is like completely confirmed historically, really from the perspective of synthetic geometry, some of these basically criticism levied against Al-Faou by the likes of Goodman. It's not that they are basically prevent the Goodmanian attack, but actually lend a different, more interesting perspective to such criticisms, both on the side of Carnap
defense, possible Carnap defense, and basically Goodmanians attacks. So yes, that's the one. And I have actually another text in mind that I should bring. But yes, let's read this. But I think that it's a little bit too early to talk about this. While we exactly don't know with regard to the mythological perspectives of this book, the synthetic geometry, constitution systems, how things are working. We are just in a kind of what's larval or larval understanding
of Aufbau at this point. Like, doesn't the timing of Aufbau seem a little bit ironic because there's almost a nostalgic element to it since science probably made its biggest rupture from sense experience at around this time like so there's something a little bit sad it's not sad like it just it's like uh like uh looking towards a world that is either lost or being lost soon no no no absolutely not no no no the thing is that this is this isn't why this is why i was talking about this that you know It's not your run-of-the-mill empiricist, right? It's not. His version of empiricism is quite heretical.
It's coming from Nookanth and Marburg school, from fictionalism, from conventionalism, from basically phenomenalism, and from other kinds of these kinds of intermediary positions in Noah Kantian philosophy. So as I mentioned, there is a reason that Feigl, the Vienna Circle guy, said that every time that people talk about empiricism, logical positivisms or positivism,
I think that we are inching more and more toward these kinds of naive interpretations of what people like Karnak or Reichenbach have been trying to do. So he suggested the word logical empiricism. Logical empiricism means in the exact sense that I mentioned earlier today within this diagram. So you have a project of logicism and a project of knowledge of the external world initiated by Russell and Whitehead. And on the other hand, you have an empiricism tempered by Nookantianism, a Nookantianism that has been tempered by phenomenology. So we are not in the realm of sense data. And this is why in new translations, when we are talking about
you know, sense data, people no longer actually translate for car nap, sense data. They call it sense acquaintance. And I am trying to use this word instead of sense data. Because sense data, we are not talking about, my apologies, his name is now too insignificant for me to even remember, the rapist Chinese rule John Searle. We are not talking about John Searle, John Searle, basically kind of sense data. We are talking about sense data that is co-constituted with a certain kind of logic of how sense data can be put together, can be configured. Oh, I think I was
making a much more trivial point so I understood all that from your lecture um but the thing that is strange to me is that like science um I feel like science at around this time really stopped being grounded in any kind of observational you know any kind of co-constitution it became uh resolutely like syntactic um and and so actually it was it was at this point you see science when Carnap started it was basically mangled between two titanic scientific movements, one coming from late 19th century like Boltzmann, Gibbs, you know people like statistical mechanics they are just
a priori but then it also comes from Einstein Einstein and and so basically there and with Einstein and some of these people then there is a certain kinds of account of observation but also the account of a priori so Carnap was science project at the intermediary position between these two titanic movements that decided the history of science after the late 19th century. It wasn't merely observation or it wasn't merely a priory. It was and that's why he was forced to try to think about the foundation, logical foundation, of what counts for something
to be science, the constitution system. And a system of what does it mean for a system of concepts of all concepts to be a scientific system? Simple as that. No, that was exactly my question. Was that so I thought it might be a nostalgia, but what you're saying is it was a complex consolidation of a science that was coming into something new, but still like obviously wasn't completely. So yeah, that's exactly what I was curious about was just his relation to that historical context. Yes, and to be honest with you, the observation wasn't really the issue when Karnak wrote this. You see, in fact, the non-observational statements about, for example, physical phenomena
were controversial at that time. Look, when Einstein took, basically, put forward the theory of relativity, right? People accused him of having a Boltzmann delirium, or he's a Boltzmann heretic. Precisely, Boltzmann's idea of physics was not observation-based, essentially. Just like Carnap in his later works with regard to logical foundations of probability, where the logic of induction is not observation-based, it's purely logical, right? The same thing about Boltzmann and statistical mechanics. And now within Boltzmann's scenario, certain kinds
of laws that we were talking about, all sorts of observation-based evidences, were derived from completely non-observational, right, principles, statistical principles. And that was source of delirium for people who thought science only can only, for science to be respectable, should at least have a certain kind of fidelity to observations. That was purely delirial for these people. Einstein was the first one who told that there is absolutely nothing delirial about this. Calm down folks. This is the whole point of science. There is a coordination problem here.
The thing that's so curious is I feel like there's always been this like inviolable tension between statistics and propositional logic so it wasn't oh sorry i'm very sorry but like we went way over time uh today and i think okay maybe maybe now yes maybe we can we can start this conversation yeah please i mean email me email me email me uh some of this uh i mean or if you don't want to in to write an email just just record you know a video I'll write an email be far worse to record myself. So Yes, but yeah, absolutely. These are really interesting from historical and
philosophical perspective issues. Yes, yes, definitely. So anyway, I don't want to take our participants time any longer. Love you, everyone. We shall reconvene next week. See you later. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye.