[FRIAM] Dogs, Computers, Joy

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

You are pushing me hard, here, but I think the up/down thang is orthogonal to the predicativist position.  (You invented that word, right?)  We Predicativists need only assert that there is a before and after: i.e., BEFORE we can say whether a thing is, we have to have said, up front, what it would be for that thing to be.  We can take it back soon as we see where it leads.  

Nick 
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2020 12:47 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Dogs, Computers, Joy

Hm. I appreciate an attempt to cleanly separate the predicative parts from the impredicative parts. But you don't seem to be allowing *any* impredicative parts. Your push to the universal foundation *smells* like predicativism to me, especially when you go off into monism la-la land.

My claim would be that Doug is correct that the words (or concepts even) are never *defined* because they cannot be defined in the way the predicativists want. This perspective is anti-foundationalism. It's not turtles all the way down. It IS that there is no such thing as *down*.

On 7/28/20 11:33 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> I saw you coming!  My bottom line is not predication but the explicitness of whatever predications one makes.  What could, of course define consciousness as "whatever humans do that seems to me conscious" or "Whatever is produced by a human brain".  But, after trying to do science with such definitions, I think most would realize that these definitions are incapacitating.  At that point, a scientist relinquishes those definitions and begins to seek others, definitions that actually direct one toward the possibility of finding answers.  Thus, I stipulate that definitions are part of the dialectic of discovery.  Neither I, nor Frank, is allowed to say M is the meaning of P for all time; we are only allowed to say that for some set of purposes, in some context, M is the meaning of P.  Are we constantly pressing a head toward the most universally applicable definitions?  You bet!  Do we ever get there?  Not yet!

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