If you mean truth makers and truth bearers, then moderately so ("do all truth bearers require truth makers?", "what makes it true that x?", etc.)  I took it that you were somehow trying to undermine my own theory of truth. However, I don't see what that attempt is predicated upon, in part since I don't recall having either explicitly or implicitly ventured much of one in this thread. Besides my obvious penchant for attenuation, and thus my possible dispensation with truth as orthodoxly conceived.

No. My goal in this thread is purely inquiry.* (I told you at the start: “I'm just trying to get to know you a bit better”.) I'm putting forward objections to see how you respond.

(I suspect that there are arguments of equal weight both for and against every substantive ontological thesis and, so, there is a sense in which, even if you give me a successful counterargument, you're just reaffirming what I already thought. I don't have “turf” to defend in ontology. Not anymore, anyway. Not right now. My approach to ontology discussions is correspondingly undogmatic.)

*I even suggested you bite the bullet on a non realist theory of truth to avoid the objection.

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

There is a problem with your thought here that Miguel is trying to show you : either when you say, for example, that "the content of the thought lies in the conjunction of the firing of the neurons and the rest of the body" has a meaning and a value (even if it's not graspable by human minds), either it doesn't. But if it doesn't, you can't use it in a discussion to argue your point (since it's not, as you'd put, a "(universal) propositional content"), as it would be meaningless. Unless you can clarify how you can (magically?) circumvent the problem, you can't even explain your thoughts, or the "universality" of such a mechanism/phenomenon/law.

I understood Miguel perfectly. And I understand you. The problem is that he and you see a particular-only account of justification, argumentation, soundness, etc. as essentially insufficient to account for the reality that we can use logic etc. Whereas I do not. In part because I don't think that's really what's going on. That last sentence is our dispute in a nutshell. We can't argue over which explanation is sufficient if we can't agree upon what is in need of explanation.

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

This is not what is in question here; because you're still using "different" as it would have (universal) propositional content, which is what you're apparently denying [...]

Wrong. Either x pattern of firing neurons must always be the same thought, or x pattern of firing neurons potentially represents different thoughts. And if thoughts are particulars, or at least non-universal, then no affirmation of propositional content has been made. The fact that I asked a question which you take to have presumed propositional content does not entail that I presuppose it. After all you can ask a question that presupposes atheism, and that doesn't entail you are therefore committed to atheism.

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

(besides the idea that "people" and all in your mind have no point, being "mere abstractions").

If you think that things must have a "point" then you'll certainly disagree with me. However, I don't see that the affirmation of (universal) value is justified given reality. It seems to me to be a mere emotional reaction.

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

I'm going to be honest : I find such a position whacky and crazy. It sounds offensive, but the way I see it appears to be clearly shambling and incoherent, and unless you can clear that, I doubt I'll be convinced.

No offence taken

Surroundx, you have not answered my questions, however.

1) First there are the issues about universal propositional content which I mentioned, and Frenchy asked as well. You have to tell us what a "pattern" is if there really are no universals and everything is strictly particular. And how can we be talking about the same things or thoughts, to have a meaningful conversation?

2) If there is no universal propositional content to our thoughts, I asked you how you would avoid problems such as Kripke's plus and quus; how could you be sure that "Socrates is mortal" immediately follows from the preceding thoughts if, after all, *they are all different thoughts and have no common universal meaning*, including "Socrates", "mortal", "is".

3) I don't know about Frenchy but in my case I do, additionally, insist that a thought must cause another by virtue of its propositional content. So even if we'd have universal propositional content (say, by some kind of magical supervenience between neurons and universal thoughts), "Socrates is mortal" must be caused by "every man is mortal and Socrates is a man" by virtue of their propositional content, in a ground and consequent relation according to the laws of logic, and not merely as a physical causation in accordance with the laws of physics. You can definitely bite the bullet and ignore all this as "folk psychology", but to me that move will be self-defeating, incoherent and ultimately at odds with our introspective phenomenological experience of thinking and rational inference. Also you have to at least provide a model for how we are still able to have valid and sound reasoning, logically valid inferences, and so on, if our thoughts are only ever sufficiently caused by physical causes and never by any universal propositional content in a ground and consequent relation.

4) What is your reply to the counterfactuals argument I gave? If you accept it, the situation is even worse than 3 because you will literally be accepting that a person's having reasons to accept or rejecting belief X has absolutely nothing to do with their coming to hold that belief. If that is the case then I have no idea what you would still be willing to call "rational inference", "reasonable", or say that you believe in materialism because of evidence or whatever.

Even if you were to bite every bullet, however, the problem of mental causation, a well known problem for materialism in the philosophy of mind (Jaegwon Kim, Davidson, Wiliam Hasker, Victor Reppert, originally C. S. Lewis etc) will at least provide a justifiable response against your suggestion of specified geographical location as a requisite for causation. So I think it is enough as a defeater.

Miguel wrote:

How does that get around the problem? If anything it even aggravates it, for you're pretty much admitting that the content of thoughts is irrelevant for the firing of neurons.

Imagine two robots, both of which have a green button. They are programmed differently such that pressing their green button will elicit a different response. Let's say one jumps, and the other waves its arms. The actions of the robots (jumping or waving) are the product of the conjunction of the programming (i.e. neurological environment) and the button pressing. The green button is identical, but because the environment is different, the green button pressing has different results. That's the basic thought.

Rather than two robots, we might consider ourselves over time. A relatively recent scientific finding is that the genomes of our neurons differ from each other. A mechanism that might explain certain differences between even identical twins. So one might defer to the simpler hypothesis that neurons alone fully determine the content (or particular causal potency) of thought. However, given the number and variety of thoughts that we do in fact have, and the much larger set that we potentially could have, the various number of actual and potential states of any given neuron seem too few to account for our diversity of thought alone. And assigning each neuron only one or a few thoughts presupposes some non-neuronal explanans. So that the above account to do with the robots isn't really less simple.

Miguel wrote:

And if you are biting the bullet that there is no universal propositional content to my thought that "Socrates is a man", then how can we say that my thought really is that "Socrates is a man", especially if the same neurons could be identified with a different thought? You're just opening the door to Kripke's plus and quus problem.

If by "biting the bullet" you mean going against appearances, then no I'm not biting the bullet. I cannot of course speak to what appears to be the case to you. So for you it might appear to be biting the bullet, and if so, that's a natural consequence of our differential "experiences".

I don't think that your thought really is "Socrates is a man". At least not literally. And I'd tend to think that you would agree about the non-literalness, viz. bilingual people etc. To be sure, something is going on when you think about Socrates and his masculinity. I wouldn't deny that. But it seems to me that universal propositional content is superfluous.

Let me clarify "the same neurons could be identified with a different thought". As the robot example illustrates, it isn't the case, strictly speaking, that the neuron is identified with different thoughts. Rather, the neuron would be identified with a different thought given a relevant difference in the neurological environment. What the green button does depends upon the programming, but what the green button does given the same programming is identical. Thus the identification of the neuron with different thoughts is contingent upon there being a potentially relevant difference in the "programming" such that the neuron can be identified with different thoughts.

Miguel wrote:

Secondly, if there really is no universal propositional content, then how can both of us be thinking about the exact same thought ("Socrates is a man") in order to understand a syllogism that would apply anywhere at any time? If our thoughts don't have universal propositional content, then we are not even thinking and talking about the same thing, and what that would be w.r.t. "Socrates is a man" I have no idea. And of course, if it is not the same universal propositional content, we have no real non-question-begging reason to accept the syllogism we once did - it's a different syllogism, with no universal propositional content!

It does not follow from the fact that universal propositional content does not exist, that we can't be thinking and talking about the same thing, broadly understood. If what is happening in the brain is the same in two individuals, then even if you don't want to assign propositional content to their thoughts, their thoughts are concrete and hence have causal potency.

We need to make a conceptual distinction here between universal applicability and particular applicability. You suggest that a sound syllogism applies anywhere at any time, and that this involves the exemplification of universal applicability. Well let's compare this with an undoubted example of particular applicability. Wherever a cannonball sits atop a soft pillow it will reshape the pillow. Given the conjunctive natures of the two entities, and the necessary relation (which is somewhat hard to characterise), the pillow will be so affected by the cannonball. And this remains true so long as the necessary physical conditions (which together are sufficient) apply.

A syllogism is simply a type of conjunction. So it isn't really that the conclusion universally applies, rather it is that the conclusion is always reached by the aggregation of its conjuncts. Take instead the primary colours red and blue.  Whenever they are added together they produce magenta. However, if we add green and brown, we do not get magenta. Thus either the premises (intended conjuncts) taken together are identical to the conjunction or they are not. A clear case of particular applicability which, although not mutually exclusive with universal applicability, does not engender universal applicability either.

Miguel wrote:

Thirdly, I have argued that not only our thoughts need to have universal propositional content, but they must be causally relevant to the formation of other thoughts. That is to say, we must deny the causal closure of the physical. In your view, my thought-consequent that "Socrates is mortal" is produced only by neurons by virtue of their physical activities. In other words, your thought that "every man is mortal and Socrates is a man" has nothing to do with the formation of your belief that "Socrates is mortal", since the belief is formed only as a result of physical causes, and not by virtue of the propositional content of the previous thoughts. But then this reasoning is invalid. My belief that Socrates is mortal MUST in part be caused by virtue of the propositional content of "every man is mortal, Socrates is a man" in a ground and consequent relation, and not simply as a series of physical causes involving salts and electricity.

It isn't the case that "Socrates is mortal" is a thought-consequent in the causal manner that you describe. Rather it is a conjunction of more basic thoughts. "Socrates is mortal" doesn't strictly follow from "Socrates is a man" and "All men are mortal", it simply is both of those taken together. Thus you burden me with a non-problem. This also explains how we are able to have thoughts about things which do not exist. Like primary colours, we add them together to create new combinations. For example, a unicorn being the conjunction of two simpler thoughts "horse" and "horn" (to massively oversimplify, of course).

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Miguel wrote:

On your view, no one would ever make valid inferences, no one would ever reason. It is up to you to defend how we can have reason, dialectical soundness and validity, etc, if our thoughts have no universal propositional content and no thought ever causes another by virtue of their propositional content.

How do you define reason in such a way that it does not presuppose universal propositional content, and thus beg the question? As I've argued, validity is not a precedent-consequent relation. Rather it is simply a conjunctive relation. Soundness, on the other hand, is much harder to adjudicate upon since it involves differential theories of truth. My own view is that 'truth' is a synonym of reality. Soundness is congruity between all causally relevant particulars.

It's up to you to defend universal propositional content from problems like the ontological grounding of UPC, the causal mechanism whereby UPC causes valid inference etc., and most importantly the reason that people reason fallaciously. If "Socrates is a man" and "All men are mortal" cause "Socrates is mortal", then how do some people arrive at different conclusions than "Socrates is mortal"? You're presupposing perfect causal efficacy while denying perfect causal efficacy. You have a serious problem.

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Miguel wrote:

To make the same point in a different manner, let's consider an argument by William Hasker ("The Emergent Self"). What we are considering is the relationship between the physicalistic explanation of a person's belief ("she believes such-and-such because of such-and-such antecedent physical conditions") and the rational explanation of that same belief ("she believes such-and-such because she sees that it is supported by good reasons"). By the hypothesis, the physical causes are sufficient to produce the belief in question. But is the possession of good reasons *necessary*, under the given circumstances, to produce the belief in question? Let's consider the following counterfactual conditions:

(A) She would have accepted the belief if she had not seen that it was supported by good reasons.

(B) She would not have accepted the belief if she had not seen that it was supported by good reasons.

Would a possible world minimally changed from the actual world in which she doesn't see that her belief is supported by good reasons, be one in which she would not accept the belief? There are many ways in which the world could be changed just enough to satisfy the antecedent of the conditional, and in some of these she accepts the belief while in others she doesn't, and there is no basis for saying those in which she doesn't accept the belief are less changed from the actual world than those in which she does, and vice versa. But then A and B are both false and what we'd be forced to conclude would be that if she had not seen that the belief was supported by good reasons, then she might have accepted the belief, but it's also the case that she might not have accepted it. Under physicalism, the principles of sound reasoning have no relevance to determine what actually happens. But that's absurd. To avoid this counterfactual argument a materialist might say that the mental/rational states supevene on the physical states, but we might imagine the truths of supervenience being different than what they are, and so the same problem would come up again. We could even come up with a zombie world in which all physical facts hold, but there are no mental states as such, and then the problem we could still not decide whether A or B would hold in worlds minimally changed from the actual one.

The counterfactual argument considers physicalist explanations and rational explanations to be mutually exclusive. As I pointed out above, this is problematic because the problem of fallacious reasoning arises. Either bad reasoning is a physicalist explanation, or it is a rational explanation. If it is a physicalist explanation, then reasoning can be physical, and hence both your rejection of reasoning as strictly non-physical is contradicted, and it makes it more probable that good reasoning is also physical. If it is a rational explanation, then we arrive at a contradiction.

Miguel wrote:

More fundamental, however, is the fact that our thoughts must be caused by other thoughts by virtue of their propositional content and in accordance with the universal laws of logic, and not merely by virtue of physical causation. Even if the materialist could somehow escape the counterfactual problem, this issue would remain. And then we are forced to concede that geographical location is not a requisite of causation.

Not at all. It might be the case that thought x causes some brain state which causes thought y. So that thoughts do not directly cause other thoughts. Or that thoughts do not in fact exist in the sense in which we think.You seem to be glossing over (epistemic) possibilities in order to reach your desired goal.

surroundx wrote:

You're the one who has saddled me with blob nominalism/blob theory! I explicitly said that I don't think that I am a blob nominalist.

Haha. I saddled you with blob nominalism because you explicitly rejected both universals and tropes (see posts #64 and #68), and blob nominalism is the only remaining alternative. (I don't recall you ever explicitly rejecting blob nominalism.)

Trope bundle theory is not parsimonious par excellence. Take away the bundling/collection/compresence and you might have my view.

If you take away the bundling relation, you still have tropes. You've explicitly rejected tropes.