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hyporational comments on The Relation Projection Fallacy and the purpose of life - Less Wrong
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If we're naming fallacies, then I would say that this post commits the following:
The Linguistic Consistency Fallacy: claiming, implicitly or otherwise, that a word must be used in the same way in all instances.
A word doesn't always mean the same thing even if it looks the same. People who worry about the purpose of life aren't going to be immediately reassured once you point out that they're just missing one of the relata. "Oh, silly me, of course, it's a three-place relation everywhere else, so of course I was just confused when I was using it here". If you ask people who are worrying about the purpose or meaning of life, "Purpose for whom?", in my experience they tend to say something like "Not for anyone in particular, just sort of "ultimate" purpose". Now, "ultimate purpose" may well be a vague concept, or one that we get somehow tricked into caring about, but it's not simply an example of people making a trivial mistake like leaving off one of the relata. People genuinely use the word "purpose" in different (but related) ways.
That said, the fact that everywhere else we use the word "purpose" it is three-place is certainly a useful observation. It might make us think that perhaps the three-place usage is the original, well-supported version, and the other one is a degenerate one that we are only using because we're confused. But the nature of that mistake is quite different.
If you think I'm splitting hairs here, think about whether this post feels like a satisfying resolution to the problem. Insofar as I still feel the pull of the concept of "ultimate purpose", this post feels like it's missing the point. It's not that "ultimate purpose" is just a misuse of the word "purpose", which, by the Linguistic Consistency Fallacy, must be used in the same way everywhere, it's that it's a different concept which is, for various reasons, a confused one.
FWIW I think "2-Place and 1-Place Words" is a bit dubious for similar reasons. Both this post and that make the crucial observation that we have this confusing concept that looks like it's a good concept "partially applied", but use this to diagnose the problem as incorrect usage of a concept, rather than viewing it as a perhaps historical account of how that confused concept came about.
Like I said, sort of splitting hairs, but it makes all the difference if you're trying to un-confuse people.
I'd really like to see someone taboo or at least write out what they mean with this 2-nary purpose. It surely got me confused before, and especially now after the op clarified my thoughts, it feels like a completely meaningless and incoherent utterance.
Can you give any other examples where purpose is used this way in common language with intended 2-nary meaning* except "the ultimate purpose"?
*edited, sorry for the confusing wording
"What's the point of that curious tool in your shed?"
"Oh, it's for clearing weeds."
The purpose of the tool is to clear weeds. This is pretty underdetermined: if I used it to pick my teeth then there would be a sense in which the purpose of the tool was to act as a toothpick, and a sense in which I was using it for a purporse unintended by its creator, say.
Importantly, this isn't supposed to be a magically objective property of the object, no Aristotelian forms here! It's just a feature of how people use or intend to use the object.
Sorry if I worded my question confusingly.
I think the op already addresses this and is not simply projecting minds. The important part is that an agent can be assumed and queried. I was hoping for an example where an agent cannot be assumed as in "the ultimate purpose".
Your example would make no sense at all if an agent could not be queried.
Oh, I see. Sorry, I misinterpreted you as being sceptical about the normal usage of "purpose". And nope, I can't give a taboo'd account of it: indeed, I think it's quite right that it's a confused concept - it's just that it's a confused concept not a confused use of a normal concept.
Actually, "the ultimate purpose" seems double-confused, lacking both the object and the optimization process :)
If the object is "life", I can't tell if it is supposed to mean life-in-general, or my life, or all our lives.