Searle: All Valid Arguments Entailed Evaluation

[Peter Holmes]

1 The only features of reality that can have truth-value are factual assertions. So judgements can't have truth-value. The factual assertion 'I believe slavery is morally wrong' has truth-value, because it may or may not be the case. But the embedded moral assertion 'slavery is morally wrong' does not have truth-value, because nothing in reality can verify or falsify it.

2 A factual assertion cannot entail a moral assertion - one which expresses a moral value-judgement. A claim that it does begs the question.

3 Logical entailment from a moral assertion cannot confer factual truth-value on a conclusion. Consistency of moral assertions is not a sufficient condition. The truth-value of an assertion - and that it has a truth-value - is independent from its logical context. Hence the importance of soundness.

[Skepdick]

1 The only features of reality that can have truth-value are factual assertions. So judgements can't have truth-value.

Special pleading.

Judgments and assertions are the same thing.

I assert THAT the sky is blue.
I assert THAT slavery is wrong.

If assertions can have truth-value, then judgments can.

And they do.

[Peter Holmes]

Logic deals with language, not reality. Other discourses, such as the natural sciences, deal with reality. Logic deals only with the realtionships between assertions - what can be said consistently, without contradiction.

Features of reality, such as rocks, stones, trees and moral judgements, have no truth-value. Outside language, reality is not linguistic.

[Skepdick]

Logic deals with language, not reality. Other discourses, such as the natural sciences, deal with reality. Logic deals only with the realtionships between assertions - what can be said consistently, without contradiction.

Features of reality, such as rocks, stones, trees and moral judgements, have no truth-value. Outside language, reality is not linguistic.

Strawman. Judgments are features of reality.

Rocks, stones or trees don't have truth-value. They are features of reality.
Existence claims about rock, stones and trees have truth-value.

Rocks exist.
Stones exist.
Trees exist.
Judgments exist.

All true.

[Peter Holmes]

To repeat: it's because judgements are features of reality outside language that they don't have truth-value. Features of reality just are or were, neither true not false. Only factual assertions about them can be true or false, depending on whether the feature of reality they assert does or doesn't exist. And the moral rightness wrongness of, say, slavery is not a feature of reality that does or doesn't exist. End of story.

[Skepdick]

To repeat: it's because judgements are features of reality outside language that they don't have truth-value. Features of reality just are or were, neither true not false. Only factual assertions about them can be true or false, depending on whether the feature of reality they assert does or doesn't exist. And the moral rightness wrongness of, say, slavery is not a feature of reality that does or doesn't exist. End of story.

Special pleading.

Assertions (a.k.a judgments) are features of reality (outside language).

If a truth-value can be assigned to an assertion, then a truth-value can be assigned to a judgment.

You are a lying piece of shit. <--- True judgment.

[Peter Holmes]

To make a judgement is not to produce an assertion - typically a linguistic expression. For exmaple, if I judge slavery to be morally wrong, that has nothing to do with language. I can express the judgement using language, but that doesn't mean the judgement is linguistic.

What species of ignorant fuckwit could possibly think that? That's the sort of brainfart a giant dick might ejaculate. Oh, wait...

[RCSaunders]

Logic deals with language, not reality. ...

If anyone wants to know what has totally corrupted all intellectual inquiry, once called philosophy, it is this Kantian/linquistic-analysis/logical-positivist lie that divorces reason from that which all reason is about, reality and its nature.

Logic uses language as a method of formalized reason. Reason is the intellectual process of non-contradictory identification of real existents, their nature and relationships, to determine how to make right choices, that is, choices that conform to the nature of reality.

[Belinda]

I must find out what "entailed evaluation" means in practice.

Skepdick wrote:

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2020 9:18 am
Perhaps evaluation is implied in the mutual assumption the assembled engine is a better thing than the scattered parts?
Between you and the manual there's no "mutual assumption".

You want to assemble the engine. You are reading the manual that tells you how.

But if I had written "there is a mutual assumption between whoever paid the author, editor, and printer of the instructions for assembling a car engine, and the user of the instructions, that assembling the engine has value." ?

[Skepdick]

To make a judgement is not to produce an assertion - typically a linguistic expression.

Distinction without a difference.

To make an assertion (a.k.a judgment) is to produce an assertion (a.k.a judgment).
To produce (a.k.a make) an assertion (a.k.a judgment) is to express it in language.

For exmaple, if I judge slavery to be morally wrong, that has nothing to do with language. I can express the judgement using language, but that doesn't mean the judgement is linguistic.

Exactly! Because assertions (a.k.a judgments) aren't linguistic.

The expression of assertions is linguistic. An unexpressed assertion exists as a feature of reality.

You are clearly assigning truth-values to assertions. Ergo judgments (a.k.a assertions) have truth-value.

Q.E.D!!!

What species of ignorant fuckwit could possibly think that? That's the sort of brainfart a giant dick might ejaculate. Oh, wait...

Peter Holmes?

[Skepdick]

Reason is the intellectual process of non-contradictory identification of real existents, their nature and relationships, to determine how to make right choices, that is, choices that conform to the nature of reality.

Is that so?

What is the non-contradictory process for identifying the existent called "reason", its nature and relationships?

[RCSaunders]

Your statement was: "Any well-formed question (singular) can be stated as a yes-no question."

You are also assuming that the possible answer to a question is already known or stored somewhere.

Of course it is. You've heard the expression "state of affairs" when we speak about "facts" or "truths".

"State" is another notion for "storage". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(computer_science)

Reality is the "database". If the answer is not "stored" in reality then what are you asking?

An infinite number of questions will never answer the question, "what is your mother's maiden name?"

My mother's maiden name is a finite set of characters from the English alphabet. Finite set of characters do not have infinite permutations.

And of course there is no answer to the question, "what is the next number in this fractal series," unless you already know the formula for that series.

How do you know they are "fractal series' if you don't have the formula then?

Here is a fractal series:
-2, 2.5, -.2, 16, .8125, -2.692307, -.114285, .355918, 9.428899, .681829, -3.399928

A fractal series is determined and non-repeating and many natural phenomena produce them, from weather to the branching of ferns. One can record a series of values in such phenomena but cannot know what the value of the next event will be, and must wait for it to happen. Fractals can be identified by the way values change, the exact values determining those changes cannot be determined from the series itself, as for example in the series above.

I'm really not attempting to criticize here and I understand your point. It's just a little dangerous, because there is a tendency to think of everything as dichotomies, very often, false ones.

A yes/no question doesn't inspire dichotomies. It inspires divide & conquer strategies to coping with complexity.

I am thoroughly familiar with the utility of the method and have no argument with it. I just want to point out the limitations of the method.

Digital computers cannot perform many analog functions accurately and they have to be simulated, but analog computers perform those functions without boolean functions. Systems that combine analog and digital cannot be reduced to boolean operations. The computer that Edward Lorenz used when he discovered strange attractors (Lorenz attractors of chaos theory) was an analog computer.

Yes. They can.

If the maximum frequency of your analog computer is bounded, it's digitisable.

That's a right answer to the wrong issue. The fact that digital computers cannot achieve the same accuracy as analog computers has nothing to do with information theory, which only addresses the fidelity of transmitted or stored digital data.

The issue is that any number of analogue values can be digitized, but they all can't be. Between any to analogue values, there are an infinite number of other analogue values. They can be approximated but a unique encoding of every possible analogue value is impossible for a digital computer. An analog computer does not have to encode the analog values, because it uses the value itself, directly.

[If you are using an analog computer to analyze the change in value of the output of PLL for example for the changes in the inputs, since the values of the inputs and outputs are the actual value, no matter how small the changes are they will be indicated. If you are using a digital computer the input values will have to supplied to a AtoD converter and out put to a DtoA converter, both of which truncate some values.]

You also have the problem of rounding when floating point math is done on a digital computer, which is also is not a problem for an analogue computer which solve the same problems without math except for the final representation of the calculation.

Bounded means finite.The very concept of a "thing" in your conceptual framework reveals that your ontology is discrete.

Every material existent is finite, and is a discrete entity. Relationships between entities are analogue. You can count entities, but attributes, relationships, and behavior can only be described mathmatically as measurement, which is analogue. That is why you can count six geese and there are six absolutely, but if you weigh six geese, no matter how good the scales are, the weight is only approximate.

[RCSaunders]

Reason is the intellectual process of non-contradictory identification of real existents, their nature and relationships, to determine how to make right choices, that is, choices that conform to the nature of reality.

Is that so?

What is the non-contradictory process for identifying the existent called "reason", its nature and relationships?

Perhaps you don't do it, so there would be no way in that case for me answer that question for you, but if you do reason, that is, "think," it may be identified by what it does. Whenever you mentally ask your self a question and mentally seek an answer to that question or make a judgment about what a thing is or what you believe is right or best or whenever compare things mentally, you are thinking or using your ability to reason. It is only reason, however when the answers to your question, or your judgements, or comparisons do not result in contradictions.

[Skepdick]

Here is a fractal series:
-2, 2.5, -.2, 16, .8125, -2.692307, -.114285, .355918, 9.428899, .681829, -3.399928

A fractal series is determined and non-repeating and many natural phenomena produce them, from weather to the branching of ferns. One can record a series of values in such phenomena but cannot know what the value of the next event will be, and must wait for it to happen. Fractals can be identified by the way values change, the exact values determining those changes cannot be determined from the series itself, as for example in the series above.

What you've given me is a bunch of numbers.

Given the question "Is this series fractal?" how did you arrive at the answer "yes"?

You insinuated that it's something to do with "the way the values change". What is that "way"?

I am thoroughly familiar with the utility of the method and have no argument with it. I just want to point out the limitations of the method.

Its only limit is the lack of limits e.g unbounded quantities.

That's a right answer to the wrong issue. The fact that digital computers cannot achieve the same accuracy as analog computers has nothing to do with information theory, which only addresses the fidelity of transmitted or stored digital data.

Then you don't grok the theorem. The fidelity of your data is a function of the maximum frequency of your analog input.

Does the frequency have an upper bound? If yes - apply the theorem.

The issue is that any number of analogue values can be digitized, but they all can't be.

How many is "ALL" ?

Between any to analogue values, there are an infinite number of other analogue values.

That's not a practical problem - only a theoretical one. You don't have any equipment that can measure to infinite precision.

Your equipment provides an upper bound on your measurements. So we are back to sampling theorems.

They can be approximated but a unique encoding of every possible analogue value is impossible for a digital computer.

Well. Maybe. How many values do you want to encode?

An analog computer does not have to encode the analog values, because it uses the value itself, directly.

Analog. Digital. If you aren't dealing with infinities - there's no difference.

[If you are using an analog computer to analyze the change in value of the output of PLL for example for the changes in the inputs, since the values of the inputs and outputs are the actual value, no matter how small the changes are they will be indicated. If you are using a digital computer the input values will have to supplied to a AtoD converter and out put to a DtoA converter, both of which truncate some values.]

So what instrument were you using to measure infinitely small changes in an analog signal?

You also have the problem of rounding when floating point math is done on a digital computer, which is also is not a problem for an analogue computer which solve the same problems without math except for the final representation of the calculation.

Sounds like you are saying analogue computers can perform infinite-precision arithmetic.

How do you communicate an infinitely precise number from an analog computer to a human?

Every material existent is finite, and is a discrete entity. Relationships between entities are analogue.

So then... analog computers with infinite precision exist where?

You can count entities, but attributes, relationships, and behavior can only be described mathmatically as measurement, which is analogue. That is why you can count six geese and there are six absolutely, but if you weigh six geese, no matter how good the scales are, the weight is only approximate.

You suffer from the same sickness as every mathematician. The illusion of infinite precision (which is really the axiomatic acceptance of infinities without construction).

But then you talk about real numbers as points and points are discrete entities. That's the biggest load of conceptual bullshit there is.
The confusion is trivial to point out too. Real numbers cannot be counted (there's no next number after 0), but they can be pin-pointed.
And (this is the biggest load of shit in Mathematics) - real numbers can be randomly "chosen".

Go ahead and randomly pick an infinitely precise real number for me.

The axiom of infinite choice is the axiom if infinite bullshit.

[Veritas Aequitas]

This argument is specious.

Suppose it's true that all facts are or imply evaluations or value-judgements. That wouldn't mean that all evaluations or value-judgements are facts.

That all As are B doesn't mean that all Bs are A.

To say that it does is to say that what we call truth, facts and objectivity are not what we say they are, or that they don't exist. And that's a metaphysical delusion.

Searle did not insist ALL evaluations are facts.
Seale [OP] stated, All VALID arguments entailed evaluation.

According to Searle all facts are a subset of evaluation. As such, there are evaluations that could be falsehoods, opinions and beliefs.

And facts must be justified within their FSK in establishing their degree of veracity.
Note scientific facts are dependent of evaluation of theory selections, experimental methods, peer review. etc.
There are no standalone-facts, i.e. fact-in-itself, facts are always conditional and one of the condition is evaluation.

Thus is the same with moral facts, i.e. they have evaluative groundings, but whatever is recognized as moral fact must be justified empirically and philosophically within a moral framework and system similar to that of Science.

Btw, I have already argued, there is the fact of individuals making personal 'moral judgments' but the moral judgments by individuals are not moral-facts per se.