Version 6

More corrections and clarifications.

Coming Next:

I have (consistent?) stories to tell about:

Speaking rationally and acting rationally.

Thought.

The form of a 'complete' explanation or argument, and the (only partly surmountable) barriers to constructing these. And more on why we can't always say why they fail.

Issues with 'absolute truths': statements about what must be true which are not 'boundary' statements (about the possibility of the game). These appear in religious dogma, but also in epistemological dogma.

I think they are statements about how to think rather than about the limitations of talk. They break the rule about ambiguous behavioural attribution of intentionality.

Ursula le Guin's 'The Author of the Acacia Seeds' from Buffalo Gals (Capra, 1987) is a nice satire on what can be treated as language.

Version 5

Minor clarifications and a table of contents ...

We choose to treat each other as human - as being able to think and to talk.

There is no final 'fact of the matter' here.

This should be clear from Davidson's need for a 'principle of charity'. (Unless he thought this was a 'principle' which we must observe - a condition of our own humanity.)

This has important consequences for any 'science' of psychology that includes the study of consciousness, or even intentionality.

Version 4

Including a parable against sensory empiricist epistemology.

Version 3

More groundwork.

Version 2

There will be a lot more. Leave it for a couple of weeks if you can't be bothered with the frequent updates.

I think recursive approaches to avoiding the open question problem are likely to be productive though. I've outlined one for meaning here, and will do the other OQ categories as well (truth, knowledge, validity, goodness ...).

Version 1

O.K.

I've been quiet for a while, but now I have a method, I think.

I'm going to maintain a single file for the general theory, but post to this blog on progress.

In each post, I'll link to an updated version of the file.

The first few paragraphs are linked to 'Version 1' above.