This seems to me a much weaker post than the one before. Or maybe I am confused. Is your point that people can value something that does not exist? Or is an abstract concept? Or is not related to the external world?
None of those (I guess I’m not sure I understand the last). Those are the hard cases (or the inapplicable cases) for a causal theory of reference. Please confine your attention to valuings of objects/processes that do exist, concretely.
Maybe it was unclear. I’m just trying to make some general remarks about semantics, as applied to desires. I’m trying to suggest that it typically works just like the way the concepts involved in beliefs typically get their referents—by causal patterns that underlay the concepts as they were learned.
I’m trying to sneak as many premises under the radar, as I can get, before people will see where the argument is going. That way, objections will be more likely to be motivated by a general implausibility of these premises, rather than a dislike of the conclusion.
This seems to me a much weaker post than the one before. Or maybe I am confused. Is your point that people can value something that does not exist? Or is an abstract concept? Or is not related to the external world?
None of those (I guess I’m not sure I understand the last). Those are the hard cases (or the inapplicable cases) for a causal theory of reference. Please confine your attention to valuings of objects/processes that do exist, concretely.
Maybe it was unclear. I’m just trying to make some general remarks about semantics, as applied to desires. I’m trying to suggest that it typically works just like the way the concepts involved in beliefs typically get their referents—by causal patterns that underlay the concepts as they were learned.
I’m trying to sneak as many premises under the radar, as I can get, before people will see where the argument is going. That way, objections will be more likely to be motivated by a general implausibility of these premises, rather than a dislike of the conclusion.
Let’s hope part 3 will make sense of all of it.