Restructuring Enlightenment (Session 5)

Hello and welcome to the fifth session of restructuring enlightenment from Kainaps Southbound to conceptual re-engineering, Alejandro over Teresa. Thank you very much. Hello everyone. So, nothing special from my side. We are behind, but this is why I also in the syllabus left the last session for conclusion, which I knew that it's not going to be conclusion. It's going to be basically filling the stuff we didn't actually manage to talk about.

Nevertheless, even with that, we are still behind. So we have two choices this session. Either I talk about Russell, Carnap's diversions from Russell project in off-bow onwards, the logical syntax and then you know is more mature works that or i jump right into the idea of explication or a mixture of both i mean we can decide

but first I think we have a presenter for this session yeah yes so the poor victim shall come forward. Hello, let me share my screen. I will present the manifesto which raises a call. Oh no, no, you can see it yet. Can you see it? No, not yet, Maria. It's the green button thingy down yeah well uh yeah no you should be able to screen um yeah in three seconds

uh can you see it now yeah yes uh so i will i will present what the razor called uh the manifesto of otter nirad and his friends the vienna circle but as you see there are three authors hanshan Otto Neurath and Rudolf Karnap, the scientific conception of the world. And in the manifesto, as usually people do, they set their goals and they said that they want to relegate the metaphysical thought to poets and artists and they want to make some room in order to unite sciences, to start uniting them. They first explained that metaphysics does not carry meaning, it carries only

mood and spirit. And we notice here that spirit coincides with the Hegelian spirit, but of course it is not meant to be a metaphysical assumption about metaphysics, about the metaphysical assumption. But Diviana Circle also said that the metaphysical theory is profoundly misguided by language, So I cannot catch them by the word. It is a deeper layer of meaning. And they said that, for instance, many processes are codified in language as nouns. And we are misled into believing that, for instance, reasoning is a noun and such like. And the second really big trouble with metaphysical thought is that metaphysicians try to derive thoughts from thought, but it leads only to vacuity.

And in order to think clearly, we must derive sentences from sentences. And this is some entirely different strain of thought. And they said that they would delete any Kantian remnants. even the apriorism which was really spread in the whole science. And they also said that they were interested in life practices and in designing a better life. So they outlined their sources for this thinking and received this positivism in philosophy. And outside philosophy is empirical science, of course. And they call logic logistic because this is Rosalian and logic after Whitehead, not the classical Aristotelian one.

Then they said they were interested in exeomatics and in hedonism. But in hedonism, not in the sense that in pleasure, but in the sense that I know this sounds silly, but there's no realm of ideas behind our experience. This is about life. Then, of course, the method has some implications. First of all, to remove all content remnants, and here we see what precise things they want to replace. They wanted to replace the abstract categories of space and time by relativistic after Einstein space and time, they want to replace material substance with atomic and field theory, causality

with necessary connection and functional coordination, loss of nature with statistical loss, and most important, the probability thought as confirmation of hypothesis with observation, with relative frequency of properties of events and things. As Rudolf Carnap explained it in his book on probability, we do not rely on observation when confirming hypothesis. We rely on a posterior calculations. For instance, when we are in a day-to-day situation, we can say that it's 50-50, either it will rain tomorrow or not. But when we make predictions and sciences for

predictions, we already rely on calculations. So he wanted to switch to relative frequency from probability. Then we have, we need to unmask the metaphysical problems partially as a nonsense, as pseudo-problems, and partially as something we can study with science. Also, we shall note that the manifesto was written in 1929 and Carnap's logical syntax of language in 1937. So Carnap relied yet on the system of axioms. He later changed it to logical syntax. But Carnap emphasized

in the spirit of his career the scientific basis and said that we shall start from simple axioms and then move towards more complexity. And then the Vienna Circle wanted to clarify the concept of number in order to make it not platonic but contemporary to them. And they wanted to use the methods of induction used in sciences and reduce to the given. And then a big question arrives and we uh here i found secondary literature a book on otto murat and uh all this people explain what murat and his circle wanted to say and i had three questions after the uh vienna circle manifesto what do they think is real what do they think is given and what uh place does language have

in these categories. And I found out that the Vienna Circle concealed somehow in their manifesto huge tensions, and they had three different conceptions of the given and the real. The given, I think it is an afterwards concept, and they thought of it as real. And we have, I don't know if I call it correctly, this is Schliek's concept of real. It translates in English as real. This is what we can locate in space and time. This side I didn't delete it, but it is more in detail, the space and time thing.

And here are examples. Schliek, of course, says that platonic objects like the numbers, functions, concepts do not exist, but very small objects like atoms do exist, events exist, whereas dreams do not. Events to be do only exist if they are certain. If they are not, we don't know. But Carnap had an objection, and the author of this article, Thomas Born, said that Schliepp was the most commonsensical one of the three. But Karnapp objected, he said that we conceive real in language, so we must correspond real things to other things in language.

And real, it is a relative concept, it depends on our hypothesis. He also said that Schlick did not take multiplicity into account and after this, Carnap emerged with his multiple language framework. And he also said that existence is a univocal concept and universals and material objects exist in the same sense. And Nirath has an entirely different anti-realism. He said that our view on science depends on our historical conditions and interests of social classes. And well, I noted here that he was sometimes seen as naive because he was the holistic

scientific man. He was not a philosopher as we conceive of it now, like proper philosopher. He was not a logician. He was more of empirical, empirically trained. And he relied on Marx and Duem and Joseph Popper Lincus. And he said that behind our protocol statements, there are, No, this is Schliek. Neurath saw very controversial. Schliek's belief that we start a language construction around protocol statements from marginal linguistical experiences like pain here and now pain.

Neurath said that these marginal linguistical experiences are a gateway to metaphysics, so we cannot conceive it this way. And he saw the theory of science both synchronically and dichronically. And he also wanted to construct a multiple epistemic encyclopedia where we can conceive of moon in different cultures and in different theories. And this was not a problem for behind Neurath's system. And he also said that the question of realism has no meaning because everything is inspired by theory.

And after this, Neurath's theory was taken by Althusser, and we know it now in this somehow modified approach. And after the contact with Neurath, after their exchange of opinions, Schliek thought as well that reality has no meaning. And this is why they wrote in the manifesto that the question whether something is real is metaphysical. We must not care about it. And also he thought that it is meaningless. And there are problems which none of the three manifesto authors managed to solve. The first one is that metaphysics is very hard to expel, as I demonstrated in the spirit-spirit homonymy and in many, many other things.

Then the author of the second article of secondary literature that I used, this was John Sebastik. sebastic uh he said that um sometimes uh philosophers help scientists and we mustn't discard this um for instance hegel had marx this is the most known example uh and also the third problem was murat's multiple epistemology uh and uh as sebastic said uh science may uh crumble and succumb to nonsense, to multiple pluralistic speech, and to policies and politics, and cease to be science, but as we see now, there are many theories with multiple epistemologists,

and they are, well, I don't know if say relevant, not relevant, but they are fashionable. This is all I can say. I think this is all. Thank you so much, Maria. Thank you very much. Excellent. Thank you. So many things to be addressed here and talked about. One thing that I want to ask, not just from you, but also everyone in our class, in our class.

So obviously, they want to kind of market Vienna Circles' ambitions to a great range of people. You know, one would be appealing to more it's more liberal, bourgeoisie attitude in both economy, art, then to kind of historical materialist, rather naive,

but nevertheless socialist, emancipatory project. And the third one would be probably Carnap's crowd, which probably is extremely slim. that would be like a scientific crowd, right? In fact, Karnap adamantly refuses to be bunched together with the Nurad camp or Shilig's camp in this manifesto. He, even though he goes

along with them nevertheless his propositions are way too abstract for them to be have any sort of concrete social economical or economic or political consequence but then i would also argue that that sort of abstraction, that sort of core abstract ideas which appear to scientists in the manifesto coming from the side of Kana are necessary for in fact the maturation of the Vienna Circle as a whole, rather than jumping the gun and getting to the social,

historical, artistic consequences of something like Vienna Circle. And it is, of course, it's extremely hard to convince people, even Viennese population, educated Viennese intelligentsia of that time, which is quite knowledgeable, it is quite hard to convince them that Vienna Circle can actually put some meat on your table, your artistic, your political, your social table. Because I mean, the whole thing, I mean, you can't just sometimes pass on these kinds of meager soup of scientism and logicism as

some sort of, you know, kind of meat beef stew to people. People ultimately will say that, look, this, yeah, this is all good and great, but you are somehow distorting the real image of the Vienna Circle in order to piggyback on social trends of the time, to make Vienna Circle popular and through that popularity exert certain kind of influence. This is the question that I have, is that this is very actually

today is very, what you might call to be, similar to things like xenofeminism, no rationalism, left accelerationism, and all that sort of jazz that people talking about. That's the recipes, the ideas, seem to be way too abstract for them to be mobilized or deemed as mobilizable in terms of socio-political, consequential, socio-political movements. So with that said, what does this mean?

And this is something that we, I mean, from only from a historical perspective that we can talk about, does this mean that something like Vienna Circle from the start was doomed to not have any sort of sociopolitical or economic or the welfare of human beings consequence. Or no, or that's basically, or that we can see Vienna Circle as a necessary step for the maturation, of certain forms of thinking that allow us to navigate these problems down the road.

So this is actually, I would say that it would be an interesting thing to think about, not only for Vienna Circle, but also for the stuff that are happening now in the realm of philosophy, humanities, and so on and so forth. So any thoughts on this, Maria or any person? I thought about it for a while and 1929 was a whole epoch in the Soviet Union, an epoch of new economic policies just ended and the repressions like large scale started and the whole avant-garde project with the avant-garde project of the Soviet Union contained all

spheres of life, like from the hygiene of sleep to public kitchens to abortions to everything. And then it all stopped just in a second. And the Vienna Circle manifestly marked the last, the most flourished utopian thinking. And after that, it just stopped for historical reason. That is why I think, because in the whole world, the same processes started and the new reactions started being Jewish as well. Are you familiar with the Academy of Artistic and the Academy of Scientific Artistic Practices? That's when Kandinsky was associated with.

Yeah, that was another pinnacle of this, that basically science becomes the vehicle of artistic practices. And so, certain kind of synthetic approach. But of course, it was short lived. It was probably like, what was it, like eight years or something that was in function. Yes, I mean, obviously, there is definitely a link with the avant-garde. From the perspective, I think, of the social impact of these philosophies. But I wouldn't say that Carnap was ever keen on the avant-garde aspect of it. This is why he, in fact, distanced himself from Nurath and Shellik. Shellik being the liberal, you know, kind of pro-bourgeoisie

interests, and Shellik being more on the side of the worker class, pedagogical education for the masses and so on and so forth. Because for Karna, Vienna Circle was not supposed to, in fact, I don't know why he in fact contributed to this manifesto. Maybe because he needed to as a, you know, main member, a centrist member. But otherwise, from his point of view at the very, at that time, it just doesn't make sense because he doesn't want Vienna Circle to have any social sort of social impact right at that moment. He really thinks of Vienna Circle having a much more ambitious

project, and that would be the constitution of a new system of philosophy, scientific system of philosophy. So yeah, but anyway, please, Enda, or anyone else. I just had a quick point which was, I guess I picked up elsewhere and I guess this would be maybe the Frankfurt School criticism of the Vienna Circle, that it's not just a matter of its disconnection from cultural practices but also from actual scientific practices and for all its talk of you know restructuring the sciences and trying to create a unified science that bears

little like connection to you know scientific practices and I'm not sure like I think my own view on this would be that in being untimely that doesn't discredit the project's kind of intellectual kind of salience or even prescience right it just might be that you know auspicious conditions for its flourishing, what they had to work with at the time. And even the fact that we are talking about it now just sort of means that the ideas themselves have some legacy that is kind of demonstrably relevant. But yeah, I mean, I do wonder, I don't have a good answer to the question of whether there's something inherent to the project,

which always means that it's going to be alienated from real practices, in a sense. No, I wouldn't say so. I mean, that's actually, I would say that it, obviously, any sort of philosophical project, I would take side with a more pessimistic approach here. I would say that any sort of philosophical movement that tries to leave an immediate social mark or mark on the social fabric needs to be approached

as rather suspiciously. That such, leaving a mark on the social fabric, a consequential positive mark on the social fabric should only be understood from a historical progression of ideas, which is basically philosophy itself, rather than a specific movement. And of course, the reason that I think that Vienna Circle ultimately managed, as you said, to be actually, we now see that has created a positive effect, is that for the past decade or so, it has created a resurgence of interests

in ideas about enlightenment, about, you know, principle of tolerance, Haslanger emeliorative reasoning for talking about class, gender, so on and so forth. So yes, there are consequences, but but then this also brings back that the idea that can there be a true philosophy, meaning true to its own spirit, rather than true to the spirit of something outside of it, that can have immediate consequential sociopolitical effects? I personally don't think so, but I'm willing to hear all sorts of sides of the discussion.

I mean, I would always have thought that the effects of any sort of branch of thought would be diffused rather than like... Diffused, yes, diluted for the time being. They get consolidated, they canalized. Essentially, what I think about these sort of philosophical movements are like nodes in some sort of navigational web that sustain... the threads that lead to them and the threads that get out of them. By the way, here is the thing that I mentioned, Gartner, Russia. That's actually

one of the perhaps even more interesting than Bauhaus. I've been to this show, liked it very much. It's by Nikita Sazonov. yes i i actually talked i know megita is very good um so yeah any any more thoughts uh arman felipe brian vincent cassia etna sebastian and here Dr. Staryar Conner.

Okay. I think that, can someone read Philippe's comment? I can't read it, it's just too small for me. It's on the sidebar, Philippe's comment. Can someone read it loud? I guess that's my job. So Philippe, is this the one at 3.34? Philippe says, I think that a huge level of abstraction is necessary to undergird any kind of Prometheanism, otherwise it'll be throwing sand to our own eyes. The Vienna Circle project was not doomed.

Sadly, it was crippled by history and probably that was what kept it at a somewhat social democracy compromise. Yeah, this is something that Carnap, I mean obviously he, now I'm kind of being dodgy bastard and trying to twist Karnak's words when basically Karnak emphasizes on philosophy as method, method, method, and that's about it. And I think that you can generalize this appeal for the method to that this thirst for abstraction development of abstract tools for thinking

or techniques of thought of systematic thinking is part of essentially Carnap's project to re-understand philosophy as method with capital M that allows any sort of other form of thinking to take off the ground its ambitions. So this is actually really interesting that this also comes back to some of the stuff that I've been talking about that, for example, some of this stuff

we read about, I don't know, the philosophical. I mean, there are so, of course, I mean, this is absolutely I'm not going to recommend this. But majority of this stuff about highly abstract mathematical notions in category theory, topos theory, new logics and stuff are always going to be at the level of metaphor unless one is a practitioner of such fields. But nevertheless, even at that level, we are capable of abstracting, I mean, going toward a deeper form of abstraction with regard to the concept we have already been

using as philosophers. And that sort of honing out, fleshing out our methodological tools, I would say that by any means is a worthy project in itself. It's a worthy project in itself. And the same thing can be said, in fact much more so with with the whole Vienna circle. I mean, the way that they change the method of thinking, that is a worthy project in itself. That is an emancipatory project. People, you see, this is why Neuronath was always considered to be the naive one, as Maria was saying, because Neuronath is not really a philosopher. He's a dialectical

historical materialists and they are not really interested in the nitty-gritty of engineering the methods of thinking or thinking about the techniques of thinking right precisely because for them all sorts of such techniques have their genealogy in social fabric that is already a kneecap move that disabled from developing better tools. You know, that comes back to this whole idea of this, you know, communization theory, you know, no Marxist, no left people have, that, you know, that this source of abstractions are always doomed to have their roots in the social dynamics,

social fabric, socioeconomic fabric, and by virtue of that, reports about their success or their potencies should always be taken with a grain of salt. I think that's, that is actually a naive position, I would say. But that's a different discussion. So yeah. I've been thinking the whole read, like, if this scientific position could not produce

another like a metaphysical narrative, you know, like over scientific. I think it's impossible humans could think without all these metaphysical narratives. Oh, no, absolutely. I think, no, I think we are. I mean, they essentially what they want to do, they they know it already. They want to make people think about their metaphysical commitments and not just simply take them for granted. But yes, I actually think that Hegel was right. I mean, I'm giving a kind of like a deflationary

metaphysical reading of Hegel in the sense that Hegel thinks that metaphysics is a bane, is a curse. But you can't just pretend you can live without it. Because the moment that you pretend that you can live without it, you will be a slave to the worst sorts of metaphysical dukmals. So I think that they are fairly working in that tradition of suspicion about metaphysics, rather than denial or rejection of metaphysics wholesale. Even though they appear to say it all the time,

they strive toward a great utopia without such metaphysical, you know, um pseudo-problems, but nevertheless they they know that, um, quite well that's the point is to construct the system, system of philosophy in which, uh, metaphysical problems are brought to the foreground if they are hidden, they are exposed as systematically exposed as metaphysical problems, and then if possible retain the sort of issues they are trying addressing without, you know, the

the grand metaphysical narratives that are usually attached to these issues, issues such as mind, life, consciousness, so on and so forth. And isn't it the whole task of explication ultimately? You see that the task of explication is essentially a, not an anti-metaphysical, but a post-metaphysical domain of thinking, domain of, uh, uh, do it, getting philosophical jobs done. In a sense

that when we say that what is life, what is mind, what is consciousness, um, these are extremely vague concepts. We need to, and, and the thing is that such a, this is like, of Carnap's early but also late conviction that vague or inexact concept, namely the explicata de explicandum, are hosts of this source of metaphysical conundrums or pseudo-problems.

So one way to go about and resolve this issue is by progressively engineer better concepts, fruitful concepts more exact uh simpler uh calibrated con sorts of concepts such that then you can't pose those sorts of grand philosophical metaphysical narratives at at those level of explicated concepts or explicata. As I mentioned last session, this is actually,

this really bugs the shit out of philosophers, really. Precisely because, I mean, I'm going to be, like, I had this pseudo-debate, quasi-debate, with this philosopher at IAI, I forgot his name. About consciousness and stuff. Kastrup. And he's just right off the bat, he assumes,

He says something like that, that, you know, the problem of consciousness is something that Eduardo Castro. Problem of consciousness is a bugbear of philosophy of mind. Why? precisely because he says that we want to explain everything by consciousness, everything in the world by consciousness, but also we want the world to ultimately explain the nature of consciousness. You see, this looks very smart on the surface, that sort of statement, but actually it is not. It's the smartness is the consequence of deploying an inexact,

unexplicated concept, namely consciousness, at one level, and then trying to take the conclusions about the idea of consciousness at another level, such that he's, for example, he's using as his premise consciousness one but takes as his conclusion the consequence of his statement or his argument consciousness two with these sorts of concepts you need to be extremely careful and that's why think about thinking about consciousness mind life these sorts of stuff are honeypots for charlatans, right?

Philosophical charlatans. The only way to move forward, I mean, and obviously, as we have seen in speculative realism, so on and so forth, any person who tries to deal with these sorts of concepts, these sorts of problems around these concepts, without going through the systematic task of explication which is an engineering philosophical task will end up to dig deeper holes for himself in order to get out of the hole you see uh so you have to you have to do that task of explication to kind of expose the metaphysical bloatware residues of the metaphysical bloatware

inside your unexplicated concepts as you move forward. But that is not immediate. You have to explicate even forward for localizing, triangulating concepts for different purposes within different systems in order to be successful at that. And precisely because a task of of explication takes time takes steps the hostility the vienna circles the carnapps carnage hostility against metaphysics also should be understood as a stepwise mission rather than a wholesale right off the bat

I think Cassia is waiting to ask a question as well. Hi, I was thinking about how would it be the correct way to tackle these problems with regard to the relation of Vienna Circle with sophistic ideas and platonic ideas, because in the manifesto the vienna circle's enter enterprise is described is described as sophistic but uh carnapp uh particularly late carnapp uh has some similarities with uh the the ideal of uh demyugen uh present in philebus by play two so uh maybe it's just more of a comment

but I was curious about what is left or to understand does Platonism or sophistry survives in the Vienna circle? I think my idea is a little bit naive about this. Maybe Gabriel has something, but as far as I know, when they say, you know, mention Sufism, they essentially mean what Sufism is great at, analyzing the structure of language itself, right, as a key, as a key to truth, to being. I mean, that's just one-on-one of ancient

Sufism. The thing, however, now this is actually quite, we are getting into really a slippery slopes here. I know that Ray has written that essay for Stasis called that which is not right where it clearly marks and also there was there's also that that um talk uh with nathan brown and a couple of other people that went sour at the end about the nature of sophistry so i think that there is this thing that uh a ray uh this is something and this is

why so that it's going to be a slippery slope um then so analyzing the language this the inner structure of language is is a prime uh what you might call to to be driving engine of sophistry, ancient, systematic ancient sophistry. But then there is this kind of a standard reading of Plato in which Plato's attack on sophism

is being deemed as attack on death thesis, that you can, that, that, that basically, uh, that, um, all we need, uh, to talk about being is by talking about talking, right? So, uh, that which, namely the equivocation, the, the purported, the purported equivocation between that which is said and that which is. Right? So Ray obviously doesn't like that. Completely understandable. But I think that, I don't think this is really

Plato's main attack on sophism. In fact, in Theaetetus, which is a transitional work from Republic, the middle period works, to later works such as Philobos Law, Arbenides, there is a clear indication that Plato thinks that language is all there is. But that then comes back again to some sorts of a very, what you might call to be laser-eyed carnav, as Gabriella put it on Twitter, that objects and concepts are the

same. They are just two different modes of speech about the same thing. So Plato has that too in TI particularly. So I, I, this is actually, you brought it for the first time. I had it like in the background of my mind, but I need to think about it. However, I, in the true spirit of honesty, I don't think, as I mentioned, that if by superstars, Ray understands it, talking about talking, being sufficient to talk about being, if that's the assault, Platonic assault on Sufism, I don't think that is actually correct. Because

Plato in Theaetetus makes the same sort of gesture. Plato's attack on Sufism has essentially different route. It's not about really the language as the analysis of the structure of language or talking about talking. But that would be perhaps requires much more me talking about what does actually play to trying to do in his assault on sophistry. Gabriel, please. No, just to perhaps try to develop Cassa's point on the relation on what exactly is the

appeal in the manifesto to the softest. As she herself has said in the chat, perhaps the, I believe it's Protagoras' famous statement that humans, humans the measure of all things. I think that's precise. Advancing a different interpretation of force, it's equally speculative. So I hope you can be properly critical of it, not take it as something that is socially well something well-founded it's mostly just me speculating but yeah i think i think that's probably probably the the the gateway to the relation between the the project of you know

of the vienna circle and and the in the softest ideas let us say um and we could i think we could approach it in two ways one would be richard richard what rod what richard jeffries refers to as karnap's volunteerism which is a he has a like a great or great article it's actually gets real real boring in the second half but the first half is like really good and i really advise everyone to to to read it he makes this great analogy between kahnep and the karts where whereas the karts all truths our truths depend depend on the on god for them to to be truth in the sense that god could will

could will could will it so that the truths are different and jeffrey proposes proposes that we understand carnap as a humanistic uh version of this in the sense that all truth all all truths depend uh the depend on on our maintaining the like basically summing up jeffrey's point is that all truth depend depend on us maintaining certain certain conceptual practices that are that are openly they're ultimately found on so that the truths are ultimately found on are grounded on conceptual

practice that we that we either accept we either accept them unquestionably or actively propose them so of course he will think that we should propose and not really something but but the most important say for the comparison between between the sophist and the manifesto is precisely this part in the sense that fundamentally all truths are grounded on our conceptual practice. And if we go back to the early Vienna circle, we could see this coming to them through the influence of thinkers like Poncahead, Duhemann, Dingler, in the sense that in the conventionalist turn or conventionalist understanding of trans of of the content transcendental and the content

transcendental stops being something like a a super empirical or an infra empirical however one of consider the structure that it that is prior to all to any and all human conceptual activity but through Poincaré, which was probably one of the main influences for someone like Neuret, which was the main writer of the Manifesto, he wrote the Manifesto and then sent it to Hans and Carnap to read and approve and modify it as needed, but Neuret, the great propagandist, was of course and you can see that it was a Marxist who wrote the thing. It's very clear that it was someone.

Anyway, Neureth was greatly influenced by Poincare, so we can see, we can perhaps, I think this would be the minimum, something that lends this reading some legitimacy. So So through conventionalism, the transcendental structure becomes something that is itself instituted by the human act of convention. So yeah, I think I've went on too much and kind of lost my mind. It's absolutely interesting. I'd say this would be my suggestion for the relation between the socialist ideal. I had this idea that I had, this is magnificent compliment. So my idea was when I first saw this

sophism that is a clear, for me, I thought that is a clear reference to Plato's sophism and the Eliotic stranger, right? In the sense that, um, uh, so I mean there are two times, I mean obviously they are, if they are going to obviously either sophism in the sense that you mentioned, or sophism in the sense of historical philosophy. The only way, the only gateway to that sort of sophism to understand the concept of sophism, if they are using it nonchalantly, would be Plato and nothing else because they don't have access to really a theory of sophism other than Clitus and basically the sophists. So in both, what we are dealing here is two

different things that actually do highlight what a sophist is. One, that someone exploits the arbitrariness of a sign. This point actually was brought by Gérard Genette with regard to Plato. And the second one is a famous one that's coming from the old man of Elia, the stranger consistently defends the view that basically in order for us to talk about being

all we need to know is introspection into the structure of language. coming back to the idea that thinking being a linguistic enterprise and being are ultimately the same. Um, but obviously he's not a part, aileotic stranger is not a Parmenidian, he's a sophist actually, but a sophist who is coming from a Parmenidian, aileotic trajectory. So I was thinking of their reference to sophism more along this line, precisely because they are also coming from the Frigge's logicism and then the influence of Wittgenstein.

That for them sophism is that essential commitment, not commitment, espousal of one, the fact of the arbitrariness of linguistic science, logical science, that is at the cornerstone of the sophist enterprise. And two, basically, that introspection into the structure of language is sufficient to talk about objects in nature. But the thing is that objects in nature is actually a very, very, again, another trap when talking about Plato.

Because for Plato, Phusis is not the sort of nature that new materialists or materialists have in mind. So, yeah, I mean, definitely, it's really a great thing to think about what sort of sophists do they have in mind? So either the first one, which then renders their idea of sophists rather less technical, but rather more commonsensical. or the second one, a more technical, historical

idea of sophist by way of, you know, Plato's work on sophism or a mixture of both? Thoughts, ideas, anything? As you were trying to explain how you thought about the reference to sophism, the only person that I could think of was the early Wittgenstein, if for them that is the philosophy, the task philosophy if you can think of because as you said in this in the sophist what the stranger does

to try to find what whose office is is exactly going through the structure of categorical relations of names and actually industries in a very strange way. If you think of it as talking about the structure of language, of course, Wittgenstein and the whole problem of metaphysics being something that is the result of our way representation and logic and syntax and etc as I understand it. The whole point of that then would be a sophistry in the philosopher from the philosophical point of view that would be a

sophistry. A philosopher wouldn't like that because any philosopher that try to try to do a philosophy you can go to this position that no this is not this is not a real problem what you are saying because in what you are saying you are already off. You cannot even know what you are saying. So this is as Socrates himself would say, this is just a wind egg, which is I think one of one of the best analogies for a bad idea. Yes, yeah. I mean, another thing that is really interesting about Heliotic Stranger as like a hypersophist, a hypersophist in sophist,

is that so he's coming from a sophist direction, apparently he's, he has some ties with Gergias, he has also sometimes with Parmenides, the old man. The thing is that he's not regular kind of sophist that is usually being targeted by Plato in earlier works, such as Gorgias, Dalai Gorgias, and so on and so forth. And the thing is that he, he wants actually, it's a really an interesting thing that this sort of sophist shows the constraints, the limitations, and also the philosophical potencies

of what you might call to be talking about criticizing that which is not, criticizing that which is not, the non-being, right? Criticizing that which is not as essentially a false sort of talk. But that sort of criticism as Plato shows throughout the dialogue, comes back again to the subtleties of how a sophist sees the nature of language.

I mean, in Theaetetus, Theaetetus, you have read it, Armand. Theatotus is probably the closest Plato gets into the inner core doctrine of sophism. That the nature of language, what it does, it freezes the arbitrary sign. It freezes the arbitrary sign and by freezing the the arbitrary sign, it freezes the flux of stuff from chaos to order. So whereas Plato thinks that it is not the idea that what

makes soft is that sort of negative figure. It's not really the idea that language is sufficient to talk about nature, right? Think that he defends in the introspection to the structure of language, talking about talking as a way of talking about being. This is not what Plato wants to attack. Plato wants to attack the arbitrary deployment of sign. language for him freezes or regulates the arbitrary deployment of a sign. This is in fact the argument is extremely important work precisely because this is the

first time that Plato uses a concept, I've forgotten the Greek word, that resembles categories, Aristotelian categories as the source of regulatory model concepts. Go on, Gabriel. No, it was just a simple comment, perhaps a bit provocative, but but response to Armand's comment is that if we take seriously the pronouncements of authors like Neuret and Kahnep

during this high period of the Vienna Circle, They do not claim or they are okay with being deemed as not being practitioners of philosophy. there is a i i there is this there's this thing before the at least the english i don't know if if it was also in the german version but in the english version of the of what was published as the unity of science which in the german was uh physicalist language as universal as the universal language in the in the english edition of which was published as unity of science there is the

authors the author's warning which start which starts with like in in in capital letters the v the vianney circle does not practice philosophy and it's an entire section and it's an entire section that is dedicated to that is dedicated to saying that it that we do not we do not claim to be we do not claim to be doing neither ethics nor metaphysics which is of course but common sense, but interesting, perhaps for what I'm interested in, neither epistemology nor anything, and that if what we are doing are supposed to can be called philosophy, it is merely a terminological

dispute, which is of no interest to us. Perhaps it should very well be cast aside this term, which would be the And it's the actual neurotic position, which Carnap is kind of like tipping his head in that direction. But so, yeah, anyway, it's mostly just a provocative comment. But yeah, in the very sense, the Viennese circle was OK with not being conceivable as philosophers. So there is this. So again, there is perhaps another direction. of it great magnificent excellent comment okay um let's have a break come back and then we start

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Should we get going again? I'll take the silence as being a yes. Okay, yeah. Where's Gabriel? Oh, Gabriel is there. Yeah, Gabriel, if you can write that comment that you made about their alliance with SOPism, rather than Platonists, Epicureans, rather than Pythagoreans. If you can write it down on Google Cloud. Is Google Classroom, by the way, active? Yeah? Well, I don't know how to get into this. What do you mean by active?

I mean, it's there, but I don't think anyone's. I mean, it's just where they archive all of the videos of the sessions and the chats. But I mean, people can definitely access it if that's. Yeah. Gabriel, if you can actually share that comment in written form, that would be magnificent. Yeah, I was thinking about it. It's just, to be honest with you, I mean, now that Gabriel said that, I think that probably we shouldn't take it too. I mean, it's hard to say, to be honest with you. I wanted to say that now I actually take that their alliance with a grain of salt.

I don't think that they actually mean sophism in the technical sense that Plato is talking about, but rather than kind of like a very kind of like an innocent way of traditionally the fight between Platonists and sophists were being understood in the history of philosophy. which is not really how Plato approaches sophists. But then there is also, there is a sentence, if I remember correctly, is it in the same manifesto? There is something around that paragraph when they say that we don't, something like to the extent that we don't care about depth, all we care about is surface

or surfaces. I believe there's something like that in the festival. In science, there are no depths. There's just surface everywhere. Yes, that is actually quite a very sophisticated position. Precisely coming back to the idea of understanding the mode of a speech. Talking about talk is all there is. That surface. That is the ultimate surface. And there is no other depth, real depth, to what you might call to be the scientific image of the world. That's actually, yeah, that's, I would say, it's a fundamentally heliotic stranger's position in sophist,

to which Plato partly agrees and partly disagrees, for fundamentally different reasons that usually Plato's fight against sophists is being identified as. Anyway, um, so what are we supposed to do? Um, we have one hour left. Should I just skip the Russell part, leave it for when we have time and jump into the starting about explication get the wheel going for principle of tolerance computation and probability theory

or yeah personally like option two but it would be good to hear from others if they have strong Yeah, I mean, do you want me to start with Russell? If I start with Russell, all of today would be Russell. It would be Russell that. If not, then I will just jump into the explication. I mean, we already know what the explication is, but it's just kind of getting a little bit nitty-gritty. Talking about Turing, particularly. uh and strange things are happening in logical syntax leading carnal moves to the doctrine of explication in logical foundation uh probability and that esoteric reference to curing which is

actually quite telling but obviously look we are basically axing a lot of topics here I wanted to talk about Carnap out-Rustling Russell, Carnap out-Witkenstein in Wittgenstein. So then I prepare this whole platform to talk about Carnap and Turing relations, such that I can actually move to the final frontiers of Carnap's work. work. I mean, so what's going on? End up, what is the vote? It seems to me that people are kind of leaning towards the latter option being the conversation about explication and about Russell.

Okay. Look, I mean, if we have time, I will definitely come back to Russell. I really still want to talk about how every time that they think that they are in agreement, that agreement is being shattered. Russell and Carnot from 1920s conversations to about logical syntax and onwards. But it's an extremely fruitful dialogue. Yeah, so let's just quit on the back burner for it to similarly. do that. So I have some diagrams I haven't probably for next time for explication.

I will share them and would you be able to if you're generous enough to send me a reminder so i send these two diagrams to everyone on email yeah thank you so much one like on sunday sunday monday yeah sure so My apologies.

So there's this kind of really bizarre things I have read, a different, basically, accounts of Carnap Computation Turing Probability Explication, that Carnap has never even once mentioned Turing's name. I don't know where these people are actually getting that from. Carnap is explicitly naming the summer school where Turing, and Turing's essay where Turing talks about the halting problem, the idea of that which is computable.

That's, I think, in the page, I actually wrote it down to say it without looking at it so as if I appear to be having a very good memory I think it's page 193 on the logical foundations of probability. So nevertheless, this is actually very, we're doing a kind of an underground subterrain undercurrent of number of associations which are not actually incorporated in the regular canon

of Carnapian studies, right? It's Carnap and Turing. With regard to the notion of analysis, the notion of analysis. Next session I will talk about how Carnap progressively diverged from the notion of analysis as set forward by Kant moving toward a different notion of analyticity, which is intrinsic to the concepts of explication. And within that sort of newly espoused concept of analysis, Kana is far more closer to Turing than he thinks of.

But of course, he really thinks like that. And I want to say that logical foundational probability is precisely the result of that sort of implicit agreement between Karner and Turing. So as we have been talking about, Once Carnap had developed the position expressed in logic and syntax of language, his principle

of tolerance licensed a form of conciliatory pluralism, right, about positions in the foundations of mathematics and logic. Carnap's pluralism construed debates over infinitary reasoning, impredictivity, logicism, and intuitionism as rationally tractable, but not through direct reasoning on behalf of truth claims. Rather, Carnap proposed the development of formal axiomatizations of languages and pragmatic assessments of these. In subsequent work, Carnap was not inclined to view these particular foundational debates

as the primary arena for the articulation of his philosophy. Instead, he broadened his conception of explication to account for the distinction between analytic and synthetic truth in all areas of science. We can here focus on Church-Turing's thesis, namely, Turing's explication of the mathematician's intuitive notion of effectively calculable, the concept of effectivity in computation, effective computation. And by the way, did you guys, any of you check that?

Yeah, I think that I mentioned Tom's essay. So Turing explica-, yeah, Turing explication of the mathematician's intuitive notion of effectively computable, calculable. I mean, just to be sure here, my apologies, I don't want to be condescending, I just want to make sure that we have a certain kind of agreement about terms before I move forward. How many of you know about what effectively

calculable means? Okay. So let me talk it in a very informal way, because we are going to take a journey to talk about this in a far more robust, healthier, more systematic, solid way. Effectively calculable. So Maria, think about this. We're not even talking about computation, okay? We're talking about calculations. Do you know about dead reckoning? What dead reckoning is? Dead reckoning. Dead reckoning is is a form of navigation in which, for example,

thinks about ants, right? Ants create a pathway, a hormonal pathway, follow the hormonal frolic acid to a certain segment. After that, they require another update for them to proceed. Think about this, that at each step you move forward you need a beckon a fire at the night right to to to basically to reposition your navigation back to the nest right so this is dead reckoning dead reckoning is this is a simple form of calculation that you basically move a step by step each step

requires an update meaning that the output of each step will be compared in a ledger with the new inputs it can be corrected and then the next step takes place like for example think about this that a commando or an ant trying to get to their base so they can't see the fire at their base what they can do however is that they can rely on the information given to them by their comrades at each step like a fire a beckon frolic acid

they get to that then the information gets updated then they rectify if they have created an error in terms of a step then they rectify that a step towards uh basically getting to the nest. But this problem, however, is time sensitive in a common sense called one. You cannot take infinite time to finish it. Right? You need to have finite state. Finite state means that it needs to be cognitively tractable for you, for the ant. You have, obviously, you are a human being, ants is an organism, you have certain kind of computational resources, memory resources,

to make such a calculation, to rectify your position and finally get to the nest. If it is untractable for you, you will never get to the nest. Quiet. Now, the notion of effectively calculable simply in a commonsensical way means that within finite run steps within this that's what we call within finite time finite time we don't mean it in terms of temporality or time in the big sense of metaphysical sense but run a step simply how many steps does it take for you to accomplish this mission right so within finite run steps within finite memory

of calculating and updating each step can you accomplish the mission getting back to your nest that's effectively calculable computation effective calculation now of course effective calculation comes in weak and strong varieties but that's not our issue right now. Why tries to say effective calculation? That for any sort of calculation by that we don't mean let's actually be a little bit vulgar here

and expand notion of calculation by saying a calculation by that we mean anything that you can ever do or think right can you do that within finite time and finite memory constraints. So Turing, Church and Turing, trying to come up with a method, a method, a mechanic method. That mechanic method is called an algorithm, right? devises a base form of calculation whereby you can decide whether you can actually solve

a calculation, a problem, or not. Meaning that whether you can actually meet those constraints and limitations of time and memory or not. That's the notion of effective calculation or effectively computable problem. Is it sort of kind of clear? Any person, any, Gabrielle, Maria, any person please, Cassia, Brian, I mean I'm just trying to being vulgar here could there be an example of something that is not a compute computationable or compute computable or calculable uh what the the thing is that look at here the whole point

is that every sort of problem can be rendered into a computational problem. But the decision whether it is computable or not is after the notion of analysis of that problem into computational terms. Right? That's the main issue here. That there is no such a thing inherently uncomputable. right because that notion of analogicity that Turing and Church put forward is kind of like Carnac's idea of analogy that any sort of a statement about the world can be decomposed ultimately into some sort of syntactical and perhaps even semantical statement where you can

actually makes it tractable so the same thing if if you can actually construct that sort of Syntax, I mean, works or you can make, you can always turn everything into an algorithm. That's the whole point of theory. But the thing is that once you decompose, you once you analyze a problem into an algorithmic problem, in terms of an algorithmic problem, then you might find that this problem is incomputable, not because it is non-algorithmic, but precisely because the sort of algorithms that correspond with your problems won't be able to compute or resolve the issue

infinite time and memory, infinite time and space. A space here is just a jargon for memory, memory of a machine, a Turing machine. Not memory, sort of Kantian episodic memories and stuff. So coming back to the, so as I mentioned, Carnap's pluralism construed debates over infinitary reasoning in productivity, logicism,

intuitionism as rationally tractable and not through direct reasoning on behalf of truth claims, rather he proposed development of formal axiomatizations of language and pragmatic assessments of these. In subsequent work, Carnac was not inclined to view these particular foundational debates as a primary arena of the articulation of his philosophy. Instead, he broadened his conception of explication to account for distinction between analytic and synthetic truth.

And then I mentioned that Turing's explication of the mathematician's intuitive notion of effectively calculable using his notion of a machine seems to fulfill Carnap's ideals of explication in an exemplary way, such that the concept of explication coincides with notion of analyticity. that is at the ground, uh, at the foundation, at the foundation level of Church-Turing thesis of computation. Church thesis identifies the notion of effective calculability with that

of general recursive for Turing computable. Now again I won't be able to hash out the source of technical concepts properly so I have to dilute them vulgarize them a little bit for people who are not familiar with these terms to at least have a, you know, kind of a latch on to what is at the stake here. So what is that recursive? What is the notion of recursive? Does anyone know what recursive means in kind of a very commonsensical way?

It would just mean that for the computation, it like uses its own resources to like progressively make the computation if that makes sense. Yes, yes, but what else, but what else that makes it recursive? You know there is a kind of recursive. The iterative dimension of it, right? Okay, yes, but then what would be, what would be then, I'm trying to get you in the right direction, then what would be the difference between a recursion and a reiteration, mere repetition? uh recursive might be aware of itself in a certain way but yeah but what would be that certain kind of way what what does actually distinguish that

certain way that sort of uh yeah that sort of instruction meta instruction that goes into the process of iteration mere repetition repetition brian you want to join in i um i was thinking about something before regarding what you said about hegel and carnap and being condemned to uh metaphysics and uh you know i think about explication i think about about conceptual engineering and I think about these issues with metaphysics and how conceptual engineering is where it's where the rubber meets the road or it should be at least

like what is a concept I mean what is his metaphysics of a concept how do you engineer something without any explicit understanding of what is to be engineered I mean is it just a word is it just a language is it just a uh you know a turn of phrase or something how is that instantiated instantiated in the brain is it this turing machine and this sort of representational memory kind of thing that is manipulated how does explication hook up to that sort of conception of the brain you know these are the sort of thoughts i've been thinking absolutely yeah those are I think that really bugbearers of these sorts of ultra clean

approaches, yes. No, absolutely. I mean, the whole idea that Luke, obviously, yes, he would say that most probably, like, Turing would say that, look, it doesn't really matter. Essentially, this is a sort of kind of a universe, a mathesis universalis, that you can get into it. And through that, it's a kind of a key to reveal what sort of a supporting structure it is being plugged into, this sort of stuff. I mean, isn't it really that's what

the late-tearing papers are about that source of stuff with regard to topology of organism and stuff? It seems that they are always feeding off of this algorithmic vision of the world. And with Karnab, probably it would be different, but kind of similar. Hard to say. Hard to say. But yeah, that's essentially where what I would say that, because of the extremist, not in any sort of negative connotation, because of the extremist nature of Carnap and Turing's thesis, sooner or later you will find yourself face to face

with the harsh reality of neuroscience. Right? But I would say that they would probably discount the problems of neuroscience as not their deal. That's not their deal. Is it because of like the symbolic, sub-symbolic debate? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, they would say that this is not our deal. With Turing and late Carnap, however, it's kind of different, particularly with Turing, not that much with Carnap, late Carnap. with Turing is that he really does think that there is a sort of, that the problem of material

structure is important for understanding nature of certain kind of symbolic processes other than the other. And one good example of this would be intelligent machinery, the one that I mentioned to you last session, which is the one that was never published in his life because it was not peer reviewed, where he talks about the issue of connectionism. And he basically finds the issue of connectionism, neural connectionism,

at a far more deeper level than the sorts of, you know, classic Turing machine that he had already proposed. So there is, there are these kinds of stuff in Turing. But we kind of, no, I'm not sure really. Even in logical foundations of probability, no. I think he's just not interested in those kinds of problems. And, you know, I mean, he was way back there, too. I mean, you didn't have like the cognitive neuroscience revolution. You didn't have the sort of things we have now anyway.

You know, I guess it just seems so intuitive to me that when I think about conceptual engineering and I think about opportunity and utility in it, and I think about it as a way to manipulate our concepts, you know, that in which we use to understand the world and then to intervene into the world with some kind of like intentionality or some kind of mastery. or something like your uh even your ant metaphor right um i can't help but to think that there are points of intervention or there are interventions that we're missing if we don't acknowledge that

some symbolic sub-symbolic level if we don't acknowledge yeah that make concepts you know if we just have this conception of concepts as symbolic things, I think we're just missing out on opportunities. Now, of course, this is going way off of Carnap here. I'm going Yes. No, no, no. I mean, Luke, I mean, the thing is that people, if they are going to be very dismissive of this, would say that, well, you know, of course, I have done that when it was necessary to basically scatter the flies against my no rationalist empire, would say that, look, everything that you ever say is going to be modeled on such symbolic processes, about non-symbolic process.

But that would be just dodging the bullet, right? It's not as if you have to resolve the issue. The most important thing is that Turing actually now, precisely throughout his computational principles of he understands the nature of a structure as computationally or as computable, nature of a structure as that which is computable. Now he begins to think about even the non-symbolic or sub-symbolic level of supporting a structure for symbolic processing within computational terms, meaning that it is no longer actually the proper subjects, or let's say the not proper subject,

no longer only biology can talk about that subsymbolic. Computation actually can talk about it far better. And this is the way that he talks about this, that look, you need to have certain sort of, for example, this source of connectionist model, non-connectionist model, reward punishments, networks, We are going to talk about how symbolic processes are run on hard structuring machines, like neural networks of various kinds. So that's, that I think is really a worthwhile discussion.

opposed to uh you know this sort of scott baker david roden uh you know neuroscience said this neuroscience said that evolutionary speculative neuroscience no i actually think that computation uh theory has far more better understanding of the supporting systems at working functioning at the level of sub symbolic necessary for the functioning of symbolic processing. Yeah, I mean just personally I tend to side more with Chris Eliza Smith and Paul Taggart's work on semantic pointers and how basically a semantic pointer is a kind of postulated entity

idea they don't have any confirmation that's in brains or anything but it's something that um decomposes into sub-symbolic uh representations or memories whatever your leanings are um and it is a a symbolically encoded um kind of i guess you could say entity or something something like ontological commitment or something that um is built on out of these these sub-symbolic processes and then these memories and whatnot and um i mean as far as sub symbolic and symbolic debate i i mean i think the brain is a symbolic processor i think it's also a sub symbolic processor too i don't really like the debate at all um so i mean i i mean isn't it one of the

greatest i think revolutions of turing wait if i could if i could interrupt you for just one moment So that's then what I'm curious about is, see, like when I understand a concept, I think of it as like the distributed memory regarding some target object or something in the world across all the sense modalities, tactile, auditory, olfactory, visual, etc. that then fire in unison or work in unison that's what the semantic pointer then explains how that's possible such that you may have a coordinated agency or some kind of coordinated or even just inference or prediction everything I mean look I mean having a phenomenal self-model about Metzinger

having concrete ego, a perceptive ego a la Kant, having what you might call to be cognitive practical self-consciousness a la ego, all of that stuff. But I mean one of the greatest things about hearing that I always thought, I mean I hate French people, sorry, no I'm not this is not actually talk about French people I mean French philosophers they always attack Turing for being this pig-headed narrow-minded Brit yeah sure it's Brit but so what um the thing is that he tries to re-address all these issues these levels of understanding of processing

within the generalized architectonics of computation. So all such problems becomes subsets of the architectonics projects of computation, meaning that what is the architectonics of computation? That they can only be ever talked with regard to the problems of computation understood broadly and with the caveat of computation being an explicated concept, meaning that one of the reasons that usually this whole idea of everything being understood within the architectonics of computation lead to a kind of a pan-computationalist debacle.

But no, for Turing, computation is also an explicated concept because it originates from a certain commitment, the notion of analyticity. Meaning that the sort of computation that we talk about, the brain, the principles are the same as the one that we talk about symbolic processing. but the extra extra premises the context differs and hence you need to have a specific understanding of computation at that sort of level so that I don't see that

we have anything better than at this point if we are generous enough without understanding of church theory, computation, we have anything better enough than computational neuroscience to talk about brain, or for that matter, symbolic processes. The origin, the origin of symbolic processes, not symbolic processes functioning themselves, but the origin of them. I mean, precisely because it renders the problem of sub-symbolic computation contiguous with the problems of processing symbolic

tokens. I guess what I'm asking, and I've been speaking too long now, but ultimately what I'm asking is this sort of machinery that the two of us have just laid out here briefly, that includes some kind of neuroscientific subsymbolic processing and then a symbolic processing layer too is there any way to connect Carnap's explication and I guess modern conceptions of conceptual engineering to that like can we use that sort of machinery to inform them to inform then how we go about designing our concepts having designer concepts basically

such that we can be... At the level of specificity, I would say that, no, a lot of work needs to be done. But at the level of the demand upon the job of explicating the concept of computation, yes, I think that Carnap is on the right track. But I wouldn't say, I wouldn't be too overexcited to say that, look, Carnap actually makes such a ground revolutionary groundwork such that we can basically say that there is this what you might call to be a clear sure cuts way of thinking about explication i mean i don't think we can do this now you know

No, we can't. No, we can't. And this is not really in Carnac. But I think that the germ cell is already planted there. And I think that that's magnificent. That's why I wanted to talk about this. Simply that new explication is really, ultimately, the concept of computation broadly understood. I want to go as broad and vulgar as this, to not lose my students at this point. Yes, precisely because the concept of computation is extremely context sensitive. It's a local concept with global properties. That's excellent how we can think about conceptual engineering enterprise.

So you have a global, what you might call it, a global commitment or a global atmosphere or a global framework, and then you have local instantiations, increasingly particularizations and specificities. Yes, yeah, we will get to this hopefully next session. it figures because unfortunately i don't think i'm going to be here next session but i'll watch it and i'll well you will watch it you will watch it um so yes oh recursion recursion recursion because it's like my apologies so recursion recursion simply like that so iteration

think about this that the ants that i was talking about reaching to its nest this is like a measure for ants distance they can travel so you have use this then use this then a step by step you reiterate it we repeat the same procedure repeat the same position this is like encapsulation of your hands procedure you just repeat it by putting it there the the inputs see this is the input this is the output so that your output now becomes your input input becomes your output output becomes your

input sourceable. This is an iteration process in computation. Now recursion is different though. Recursion means that we have... how many of you know anything about goddamn engineering, like servomechanism, cybernetics and shit? No one shame on you. Anyway, So you probably know what thermostat is, kind of. Do you know how thermostats work? Thermostats have something like a potentiator. But then I have to say what potentiator is. Potentiator is essentially what you might call to be a signal booster of some sort,

kind of like that. Meaning that, so thermostat is something that measures the feedback of input and output as the heat temperature rises so at some point it cuts off the heat, right? Mission accomplished. Potentiator, so thermostats are fine, great, excellent, but your modern heating facilities are not actually just working with a thermostat. They also work with something called a potentiator. A potentiator is something that sends another input into the network. This input is a stable. So it can, the difference between the input or the output

that comes into the network through the thermostats and being changed over time is always being compared with the potentiator signal. Think about this. US dollar as a world reserve currency. So any sort of exchange that you make with other sorts of sheds, cryptos and stuff can always be compared with the fluctuation, a small fluctuation of US dollar. That allows you to update the price of everything else. The same thing can be said about recursion and cybernetics.

So instead of just merely your input become your output, you become your new input, so and so forth, you add an extra signal into the network such that you would be able to not just act on the outputs of your previous step, but also a correction, a correction of that output. So this procedurally, look, if you have some sort of a step-by-step sign, signpost, even if you have had one kilometer divergence from your path, as long as you

can see that correction, you can slowly and slowly get back to the path. That's what we call recursion. Simple as that. So recursion is essentially updating of the outputs. Iteration plus updating of input and outputs. So would it be correct to say that in a recursive system it's the self-reference that differentiates it from just an iteration? Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes. And of course, recursion is, I mean, the whole idea of recursion came into the realm of mathematics after the invention of,

of what's that? No, no, no, this is not what in English. So when you say that, not gas chambers, I'm not talking about Nazis. Those basically pressure, pressure, pressure engines, pressure engines, not gas chambers. Pressure engines, pressure engines, precisely because the pressure engine allows you, they have a safety mechanism built into it, such that it corrects the error. And the engine keeps functioning.

Yes. These are, of course, fundamentally proto-cybernetic technologies. Yeah, so OK. Gas chamber. I mean, I used to make a Stalin joke style. Gas chamber. This is canceling material simply. Okay. One sec. So, Turing, so Turing computer, Turing recursive, general recursive or Turing computable. That's what Turing computable

means. So a recursive function that can become effectively computable, meaning that it can be accomplished, attained within finite time and space in the sense that I mentioned. Turing explication of this class of functions is distinctly vivid and simple. It offers similarity between explicandum and ex and explicance precision of formulation within systematic science fruitfulness in the formulation of general laws and remarkable simplicity moreover the explication is neutral as between intuitionists logicists and formalists while

also demonstrating the values of explication using the tools of formal logic. Finally, Turing confirms the importance of logistic to the foundations of science, for the specification of a particular Turing machine is a mathematically rigorous model or device, sufficiently precise to serve in mathematical proofs and development and analysis of artificial, artificially constructed languages. It could even be thought of as a specification of a particular formal system or excellence. And yet, Turing also espoused certain ideals of explication

that contrast with Carnap's. Aided and abated by the later Wittgenstein, he voiced an attitude toward logistic that while hardly refuting Carnot's view, does seem to place them in a new light. At the very least though, Turing endorsed certain values and methods of approach neither emphasized nor commended by Carnot. So let's consider the only reference to Turing that we may be sure Carnot saw, other than the logical foundations of probability. That extra reference is in Feigl's contribution to Schill Buconcarta,

the biographical one. Feigl refers not to Turing's, but rather to computing machinery and Intelligence, 1950. And by the way, if you want to read these, read the essential Turing edited by Jack Copeland. All of these essays are there. Where Turing had proposed an operational definition of intelligence, the so-called Turing test, defending what he calls a systematic physicalist identity theory. Feigl remarks that we do not seriously apply mentalistic terminology to machines because their internal structure is so different from ours.

Thus, while he admits that the issue turns on an analogy between humans and machines, it is clear that Feigl takes Turing to propose an analysis of the notion of mental state, according to which it has no specifically human physiological or biological marks. In his reply, Carnap agrees with Feigl's criticism of emergentism, expressing a shared preference for monistic language. He, though, takes Feigl's argument to establish recommendations that operate at the meta level, i.e. pragmatically endorsing a particular choice of language or science, not the scientific plausibility at the object level of a theory of the nature of mental estates.

Consistent with his principle of tolerance, Carnap sketches how it could be that even an egocentric language of the dualistic sort might be usable for certain purposes. He therefore declines Feigel's invitation to reject Turing's supposed analysis of the notion of mental estate on factual empirical grounds. What we see here is that Carnap's ideal of explication is in full swing. Formal languages are central to Carnap's philosophical enterprise, because it is by their means that the precise communication of the logical and linguistic elements of a scientific language or theory may be achieved.

achieved, and because they help us make rigorous the intuitive distinction between formal and empirical justifications in science. Such tools clarify our expression of the ontological, semantical, logical commitments of the speaker, aiding in the resolution, or at least clarification, of philosophical disputes, which in certain cases, Carnot believed were ultimately based upon nothing more and nothing less than choice of logic and or language a choice that might be defended and pragmatic but not a priori compelling rational grounds what artificial language is designed to eliminate are the kind of vagueness unfruitfulness unclarity that have traditionally surrounded philosophical discussion of basic

notions, the grand notions of the philosophical discipline. And he says this, he refers to such notions in logical form, there is not probability as what is causality, what is life, what is mind, what is consciousness. After learning of Goodall's incompleteness theorems in 1930, Carnap became especially sensitive to the possible varieties in choices of logics and languages and the limitations of particular formalized languages for accomplishing goals of precification, making concept precise. In the logical syntax of language, he is stressed that

that the idea, the idea that it is important not to naively equate formalize or for that matter formalizer in a particular formal system with rigorous or rigorizable or cognizer in any absolute sense. So it doesn't equivocate between these two, right? Formal and rigorous. Indeed, one of his signal philosophical contribution was to insist that any distinction between analytics and synthetic should be relativized to the choice of language by means of a formal reconstruction of the logical syntax and semantics.

Afterwards, of that language, his pluralism extended to the means of reasoning, the logic itself by way of an insistence on the plurality of languages. Explication or rigorization in the relevant sense is generally speaking theory relative for Carnap, and hence it is dependent upon one's choice of logic and language. It is thus natural for him to express the importance of convention and arbitrariness in the erection of appropriately precise principles for a given part of science, as well as the role of pragmatic and normative discussions of these choices. In general,

for Carnap, there is no reason to expect that for a given speaker or communities speech habits, there is one and only one persificatory, uh, or, uh, procedure possible. Carnap's view of explication was explicitly at the beginning Taylor so as to allow for the use, the discussion and comparison of any particular formalized language. Carnap not only welcomed the idea of plurality of languages, his position depended upon it, for his approach fully exploited the object meta-level distinction, as well as the notions of an interpretation of a formalism and translation of vague language into the formal mode.

This exploitation enabled his schematic treatment of philosophical claims, giving systematic expression to his view of them as were vague, requiring precision through the use of logistics logistics uh logics i.e. meta theoretic and syntactic methods of explication from this perspective it is not curing core reductionist philosopher of mind but instead Turing, quo a logician and philosopher of logic, who is most interesting to compare with Carnap. Carnap himself had an a-psychological view of logic. His idea broached in his reply to Figo

is that it is the conceptual aspect of Turing's analysis that should be stressed, rather than its relation to empirical evidence or psychology. This is, in fact, an idea of great importance. But getting clear about what is meant by conceptual analysis in connection with Turing work will involve some rather topsy-turvy discussions, which we are going to cover next session. And I think that would be it for today. So unless there's any questions, but before we adjourn, is there something?

A reading, a reading. Would you be able, my apologies now, I want to actually do something else that I know that it wasn't in syllabus, but I would like to add it. And would you be, when you're actually sending me that email, also send me the, maybe you should send it actually Sunday. So I can also, a reminder about the reading material. I want to include an essay by Turing that to me, hearing that to me looks as Carnapian as possible with regard

to the concept of analyticity and so on and so forth. Yeah, sure. I can remind you to send us that. And also, one thing, how many of you have read Katharina Durzelnovey's work on formal logic? Which work exactly? The famous one, the one that I'm curing in Karnap. I was actually planning to read it. It's a good thing.

It's the one she co-wrote with REC. No, no, no, not that one. It's formal languages in logic. A philosophical and cognitive analysis. So next session, we are also talking about, you know, what is really a formal system?

um how formal systems are closely connected to the idea of explication by way of tiering by way of karma so there i think that there is a chapter or section um where katarina talks about two notions of formality by way of tiering and by way of um de-sematification project maybe you should also read that one it's quite short there is also actually a chapter in that book on Carnap's explication uh Felipe is saying in the chat I think it's the first chapter of that book

yes yeah yes yes I think so yeah I believe so yeah yeah i can i can find the text and upload that as well i don't dare to ask katarina to teach classical logic in new center she's a celebrity now I can't approach her. Okay. I think that's it.

Any last words? Oh, who's going to be the next presenter? It's going to be me, I think. Okay, Sebastian. Okay, excellent. And is there a... I don't know. I'm not sure. You want, okay. How about this? I mean, you can either you can both, you can be the respondent or you can actually separately present something else. Sure. Okay. Thanks. Excellent. Magnificent. Okay, then. My tooth is getting painful again. I think I don't want to hear about you or your questions.

Let's leave the question for the next session instead. OK. Have a great weekend. Love you. And ciao. Thanks, everyone.