If the elephant were undetectable 100% undetectable, that would mean it does not interact with anything that we can detect because we could detect THAT interaction. So the undetactable elephant does not exist becasue it is simply not a part of the world we live in not just because we can't detect it.

Absolute space, as I use it here, is basically what physics used to call the ether. It's a substance with an inherent motion that dynamically interacts with matter so that bits of matter coincide with parts of space. Such a view of space is not inconsistent with Einstein STR but explains better what we observe than space-time substantivism or the view that spacetime is a property of matter. Einstein specifically argued that the STR doesn not disprove the existence of the ether.

And do dogs "fornulate models"?

And do earthworms?

I don't know what an "abstract construction" is. Perhaps you can define this.

I have no idea how you would know that it has a "concept" in its mind.

All it knows is how to point to what seems like a Kitty when it sees one.

Do dogs have a "concept" of "stranger" when it barks?

Does an amoeba have the concept of "food" when it feeds. Just where do you draw your line?

You seem to be putting words into such a chid's mouth (mind). He/she does not think "seeing a kitty" as far as anything I can tell by the behavior manifested.

This seems like a fantastic leap in your description. You have no idea what such a child thinks.

Is the process of definition an "abstract construction"?

Really? It "refers" to a construction? "Patch" actually refers to something in the world, to which the teacher is supposedly pointing. However do you get the sense that a word in such cases is referring to a "construction"?

So a three year old has made a "schematic description" when he points to a "Kitty" that sounds like a pretty huge leap.

How would you ever know this?

So much of behavior which you seem to imagine requires a "schematic description" does not seem to have anything descriptive about it. If you take "scheme" to mean "An orderly combination of related parts" (as your dictionary defines it), when a child points and says "kitty" it is not making, as far as I can tell, "an orderly combination of related parts description".

He is simply pointing to something he thinks he recognizes, and saying the word he think names it. Anything more, modeling, scheming, describing seems like huge conjecture.

In fact, you seem to be violating your own rule about talking about modeling and talking about the world.

When I am designing a building as an architect, I certainly can see how one might say that it makes a good description to say that I am modeling, but when I say, "That girl is a bitch!" it seems ridiculous to say that I am modeling the girl as a bitch, and that these words are referring to the concepts that are abstractly schematized in my head.

I would say that such an assertion would require, by your own rule, that there should be a detectable difference between those of your insistence that there IS modeling going on, and those if there isn't.

I simply see the girl and think "bitch".

Your insistence that I have "modeled" is superfluous as far as I am concerned, (i.e. it tells us nothing).

"Concepts" are nothing more than convenient names of groups of intentional behaviors.

I don't feel that I model the world at all, in most occasions. You are saying that your description supercedes my own experience? Why would that be the case.

Not all true statements are about "states of affairs" which are detectable.

If you are going to demand that all statements have to result in detectable states of affairs, you are going to rule out all kinds of true statements.

And how do you exactly nail down what was meant? Are you under the impression that "intent" is recoverable?

Such a demonstration does not result in "detectable" "states of affairs", as in, such statements are not empirical statements which are tested. What they result in is a difference in coherence, the way that empirical statements fit together. Now whether this is "detectable" depends on what you mean.

It could be that I have closer ears to what is being said. To my ears, "My description makes sense" implies "Such and such is the case". That others want to insist that "such and such is the case", this is nothing more than "my description makes sense".

What you said was, if I recall, that there is an undetectable property. This is silly because properties are defined by their ability to be detected, and definitively be described.

Something veritably can exist and not be declared to have "properties" in the way that "properties" are taken in philosophical parlance. Such a thing would not be a contradiction in terms at all. All that would be required for such a thing to exist is for it to be taken as the cause for beliefs held. This is precisely how metaphysical posits are taken.

Well this is the problem, not all true statements result in empirical differences, or lead to different predictions. Some such statements merely lead to a coherence of descriptions. Different assumptions might produce an attention to detail which would lead to different observations than others would (for instance monism might cause us to notice things that dualism may obscure), but this is not the same thing as making different predictions, for conceivably the observations could be redescribed in each case. The difference is in effect, and not in, as you call it "detection".

I agree with you as to the argumentative failure of property dualism,

but I do not agree that given its failure all metaphysical statements collapse under the weight of such a requirement.

Death Monkey wrote:

Probably not. From what I understand, worms do not think at all.

When you make observations, you have a conceptual idea of how these observations relate to the external world. You fill in this conceptual model of the external world with details from your observations. That is what I am talking about.

One need not be explicitly aware that they are doing this. It is an intrinsic part of how human beings, and thinking animals in general, interact with their sensory input.

Seriously? I don't know about you, but I was a child once.

And what does it mean to say that the child sees a kitty? Clearly the child has learned to assiciate various types of sensory input with what it concieves of as a "kitty". That conception is not just a label for a specific combination of sensory inputs. It is an abstraction of them.

I don't know about that. But they clearly have conceptions of various things.

Well, being capable of abstract thought seems like a pretty good place to draw the line. Amoebas are not. Children and dogs are.

Really? I can only conclude then that you have not been paying very close attention to their behavior.

Of course I do. I was a child once. And I have lived with and participated in the process of teaching children. I think I can safely say that I have some idea of how they learn and think.

Defining a term is language use. Certainly that makes use of abstractions, as does all language use.

The word "patch" refers to an abstract conception of a class of things in the world, not any one specific thing. When a person points at something and calls it a "patch", they are expressing a relationship between what they are pointing at, and a conception in their mind.

Not at all. He has something in mind that he means by "kitty". For example, the term could mean to him things like "small, fuzzy, warm, animal, whiskers", and so on.

By having studied Psychology, and knowing a bit about how the brain learns and processes sensory information.

Really? So the child is not comparing what it sees to a conception in its mind of a kitty, which is itself built up of a combination of various sensory experiences?

How is the above not an example of modeling and scheming?

What rule am I violating?

Why? That sounds like a pretty reasonably description to me.

There is. Either what the brain is doing can be accurately described that way, or it cannot. There is even a scientific field concerned with studying these things. Psychology.

Don't be ridiculous. You know as well as I do that what your brain is doing when you do that is a process far more complex than the operation of any man-made machine ever built. To assert it as being "simple", as though those were fundamental operations, is ludicrous.

It tells us something about the cognative processes involved.

And "particles" are nothing more than convenient names of groups of interactional behaviors. So what?

Well, I will not argue about what you feel. I will say that I am implicitely referring to a model of the world, and constantly updating that model, all the time.

I never said they were.

Me:And how do you exactly nail down what was meant? Are you under the impression that "intent" is recoverable?
You: How do you do it? This is ridiculous. Are you suggesting that communication is impossible?

If there are no empirical implications of the statement, then how can it possibly make any difference to the coherence of how empirical statements fit together? It would necessarily be superfluous to them.

I seriously doubt that you will find very many people who agree that this is all they mean. I personally agree that this is what people should mean by it, if they want to avoid things like category mistakes, but this is not generally what they do mean, or at least, not what they claim to mean.

I agree. It is silly. But people still do it all the time. As I mentioned before, the real problem here is that they can't define their supposedly undetectable properties. So it does not mean anything to say that something has them (or does not have them), because they cannot coherently define what they are saying it has.

I have no idea what is mean by this. One way or the other, you have to define what you are claiming exists, in order for your claim to be meaningful.

Then what is the "true statement". If the true statement is "this particular way of conceptually thinking about my observations makes more sense to me that this other way of doing it", then I have no problem with that. But I do not think that this is what most people mean when they say things like "dualism is true".

What you are describing is essentially what I mean by metaphysics being taken metaphorically, rather than literally. You seem to be just saying now is that they are always taken metaphorically.

Actually, I was talking about substance dualism. Property dualism is just plain self-contradictory.

Not if they are taken metaphorically. Then they are fine.

Then you need to define "think".

And you do not imagine that dogs "model", what do you base that on?

And I want to know what you base your description on. It is a very nice description, but nothing in it demostrates that all definitions must come from models.

Are you under the impression that this is the only such description of how human beings organizes themselves in the environment?

So when you were a child you, let us say of three, you said to youself, "Ah, I have the concept Kitty in my mind"

and your memory of this moment of self reflection is the basis of your claim? Do you realize how many problems such a proof would have?

Then, what would it mean to say that a dog sees a kitty?

An earthworm food?

Really? So dogs, though they have no language, in your mind have "conceptions", but they don't "model"?

If they have conceptions, don't earthworms?

I don't know what you mean by "abstract thought".

Is this something that you imagine that does or does not go on in the "mind" of something? Amoeba are able to organize their behavior around the environment in a way that can be characterized as categorizing kinds of things, slime molds exhibit the capacity to learn (for instance in mazes) and memorize. I am completely confused as to the notion of "abstract thought' which you regard as somehow self-evident and firmly drawn.

You imagine that the child is mentally holding up a "model" (build of a combination of sensory experiences, like a lego set is build out of legos), and what it sees in the world, and based on such a experiential act, looking at one and then the other, draws a conclusion? This is a fantastic science-fiction scenerio, I see no evidence for that at all.

Your fantasy description of what goes on in a child's head (your map of it) is confused for whatever is really going on there (territory).

And you are under the impression that psychology has universally concluded that all language use is reduced to modeling. I find this extraordinary.

You would need to refine and expand your definition of modeling, I would suggest. And not rely so much upon fantasizing what is goind on in people's heads.

You have insisted that for metaphysical statements to be meaningful they must result in a detectable difference in a "state of affairs". There are all kinds of statements which indeed are meaningful which need not result in such a difference.

You have claimed that what is "meant" is supposedly always in reference to a "model".

In terms of strict philosophical argument, I agree, but in terms of life, and the process of finding out how the world works and our place in it (what philosophy is meant to be), I don't know that I do. There is a role for such a mistake.

What is ridiculous is that when discussing what is involved in "thinking", what defines it, and what is required, you think that "the everyday sense of the term is sufficient".

And you say that brains have to primarily work through modeling.

Now I don't know if you mean "all definitions" when you say that my particular definition would be specified by some unspoken model, but if you don't mean all definitions, I don't know how you have drawn the conclusion that you have in post 38.

In post 40 you have specifically oriented a truth claim and its definition within modeling itself.

Further, you have even positioned a three year-old's cry of "Kitty!" when it he sees a dog within a "model". So where exactly do you allow for definitions that do not come from models?

Then, your (apparent) claim that all definitions, (and it seems all "abstract construction") is modeling, can't really be supported by the fact that you have taken Psychology classes, can it?

That is a description of what you may have had in your mind.

But you referring to your experiences of being a child certainly don't add to the factuality of such a description, does it?

Hmmm. I am unfamiliar with the "basic psychology" claim that all definitions and thought is modeling.

They certainly detect and organize themselves around food? Do they have the "concept" food?

Well, this is interesting. You have identified a part of the brain that has to be present, rather than a class of behavior that is described.

Isn't this a bit of a leap?

We only mark that part of the brain as such as part of the explanation of certain behaviors. If other animals have similar behaviors and not that part of the brain, isn't the problem with your explanation, (equating concepts with anatomy), and not with anything else.

Does brocoli have a concept of light? I don't know, it is you that imagines that there is such a thing as "concept" which is paramount to "modeling".

As far as I am concerned, whether there are parts of the brain present or not, it is behavior that is being explained by such "in the mind" projections.

Not at all. I don't know what the term means in your way of definiing it. Is "abstract thought" different from "concrete thought" for you?

If you are going to deny earthworms the capacity to "think" or "model" because they can't see, then you are going to have to explain what slime molds are doing when they solve mazes.

If you are going to define our mental acts in particular ways, one is going to have to definitionally describe why these acts have to be understood in this way.

You imagine that the child is mentally holding up a "model" (build of a combination of sensory experiences, like a lego set is build out of legos), and what it sees in the world, and based on such a experiential act, looking at one and then the other, draws a conclusion? This is a fantastic science-fiction scenerio, I see no evidence for that at all.

Then what did you mean by "comparing" in your: Really? So the child is not comparing what it sees to a conception in its mind of a kitty, which is itself built up of a combination of various sensory experiences?"

And you are under the impression that psychology has universally concluded that all language use is reduced to modeling. I find this extraordinary.

Then I see no purpose to your reference to psychology you have taken, or to "basic psychology" in support of your claim.

Then stop using terms as if they are self-evident. Your entire "built-up" conception of modeling and comparing models is in need of explanation. Sometimes indeed we are modeling, that is, making representations of how the world really is, but we are not fundamentally, or even primarily doing so.

You have claimed that what is "meant" is supposedly always in reference to a "model".

Many times. You have originally spoken about your own meanings in terms of your own model of the world,

and you have since characterized your own mental operations as fundamentally updating your own model of the world.

Secondly, as quoted above, you have characterized the simplest child-meanings in terms of models that they supposedly have, and the most basic ostensive definitions in terms of an imagined model (which you have said one may not even be aware of).

By and large, have pointed to "model" as the basis of meaning, from abstract definitions to child-pointing, even extending it beyond "meaning" to dog barking, all the while leaving behind just what "modeling" is.

Yes it is (while you squirm over having your assumptions and definitions questioned).

You insistence upon "detectable" differences in claims, I have argued do not always result in a difference in prediction. The "empirical implication", as you call it, is that what we empirically describe is changed by the very assumptions we make.

I don't know what I should do. One minute you are telling me that you are making philosophical arguments because you are on a philosophy forum, but the next you are telling me that you are not a philosopher. I might ask you to define a "philosopher" so that I can understand just at what level you are making your arguments. They are philosophical because this is a philosophy forum, but they are not philosophical because you are not a philosopher?????

The problem that I have is that you are, or at least to the degree that you have confessed your assumptions, operating from a Cartesian, representationalist perspective on mind, but are doing so without being aware of it. When you take recourse to a representational model of meaning, or even "concept" this is the kind of thing that needs to be, from my point of view, questioned. Perhaps you think that you are clear on what you mean, but you do not seem to be.