Ideas/concepts/perceptions/intutions that cannot be expressed linguistically? [Archive]

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MarxSchmarx

7th May 2013, 05:44

LuÃs Henrique

7th May 2013, 13:50

It's hard to put one's finger on, but I'm wondering if anybody has any examples of some concepts that one can have a vague sense about but which are not precisely articulated yet, and likely beyond the scope of language or other formalism? How would you characterize such an idea?

It would be nice if I can give an example. I gather lots of "classical metaphysics" fall into this category, stuff like why is there something rather than nothing, and the contingency of it all. No answer can really work, I suspect, but nevertheless I think a lot of people find this question to be vaguely plausible - probably too many for it to be a linguistic confusion. It's useful to understand why an answer or linguistic formalism can't work.

As an aside, a former member would have been all over a thread like this but it's worth pursuing nevertheless I reckon.

There is a lot about science that is counter-intuitive.

Time as a fourth dimension.

Any dimensions further than the usual three.

The idea of a "beginning of time", "before" which there was no time at all.

Photons being able to occupy more than one position in space at the same time.

All those ideas are certainly "speakable" in that we can articulate them in language, but they seem so contrary to our usual perceptions and intuitions that it is difficult to realise their "meaning", if any.

Luís Henrique

hatzel

7th May 2013, 14:42

Hit The North

7th May 2013, 15:21

Whatever those inexpressible ideas are we would be unable to discuss them here.

LuÃs Henrique

7th May 2013, 17:05

LuÃs Henrique

7th May 2013, 17:10

Here is some more of the "unspeakable":

Colour
Smells
Sexual attraction
Pleasure
Death

We can evidently use these words in quite meaningful ways, but if we try to speak about their meaning, we will quickly get stalled into incommunicability issues.

Luís Henrique

Comrade #138672

7th May 2013, 17:20

LuÃs Henrique

7th May 2013, 18:10

Ah, yes, qualia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Death is a quale?

Luís Henrique

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

7th May 2013, 18:43

Quite frankly, qualia are idealist nonsense. Whenever qualiaphiles are asked to justify their notion that there exist these "irreducibly first-person"... things... their usual response is to either stare at you or to restate their position. And we seem to be able to do psychology, including the study of perception, without any reference to these qualia.

We can evidently use these words in quite meaningful ways, but if we try to speak about their meaning, we will quickly get stalled into incommunicability issues.

But this presupposes that there is more to the meaning of a word than how it is used; I think this is a suspect notion, to say the least. We use the sounds that make up the word "death" to refer to certain physical processes - therefore, these processes are what the word "death" means. What other meaning could the word "death" have?

There is a lot about science that is counter-intuitive.

[...]

The idea of a "beginning of time", "before" which there was no time at all.

This "idea" is not a part of the standard cosmological model; it is at best a semi-theological notion that some popular authors have read into a theory that demonstrably breaks down well before this alleged "beginning of time".

All those ideas are certainly "speakable" in that we can articulate them in language, but they seem so contrary to our usual perceptions and intuitions that it is difficult to realise their "meaning", if any.

And yes, you mention these ideas without your sentences becoming nonsense. The problem, as I see it, is that you seem to assume that knowing the meaning of a term implies having some sort of picture "in your head", but this belies how humans actually speak and think - I can't form a picture of a regular polygon with 107 sides, but I obviously know what the phrase "regular polygon with 107 sides" means. In fact, this entire notion of people "forming pictures in their head" assumes a Cartesian notion of a detached, incidentally incorporated subjectivity, rather than a materialist, behavioural notion.

Comrade #138672

7th May 2013, 19:03

Death is a quale?

Luís HenriqueNo, but the rest of them are. Though, you could define death as the "lack" of qualia or something (from the subjective point of view).

Slavoj Zizek's Balls

7th May 2013, 19:08

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

7th May 2013, 19:23

Anything that requires a new language and a more evolved mental state fits under the category of the inexplicable. An example would be a communist society, it is impossible to imagine what it will look like as it is significantly more advanced and rational than this society, yet we are not as advanced or rational simply because we are in this society.

What does "a more evolved mental state" even mean? Perhaps there is a case to be made for the increased capacity of human brains over time, but you make it sound as if the human race is constantly unlocking some previously hidden level of cognition.

And obviously, there are quite a few, ostensibly sensible, things that can be said about the communist society, otherwise neither Marxism nor anarchism would exist.

Another example would be God. You cannot prove or disprove the existence of a deity or deities.

That is simply not the case - the existence of some sort of deity is about as supported as the existence of phlogiston. We say that phlogiston does not exist; therefore, the only consistent answer to the question "do deities exist?" is "no".

Traditionally, the search for meaning results in one of two conclusions: either that life is meaningless, or life contains within it a purpose set forth by a higher power—a belief in God, or adherence to some religion or other abstract concept.

Or "the question is meaningless", since it is not at all clear what a "meaning of life" would be unless one supposes that there exists some divine agent.

Thus from a rational point of view, anything that requires one to believe has a duality e.g. Theists say that God exists and can only use faith/belief to maintain this whereas Atheists say that God does not exist, again requiring belief. So in order to prove the existence or non-existence of God, we would have to find out whether the universe has any meaning. This requires a leap above our current state and so provides an example of "some concepts that one can have a vague sense about but which are not precisely articulated yet" such as a future evolution in the meaning of the word 'God'.

Belief is not the same thing as faith - believing in a proposition is equivalent to holding that it is true (i.e., I believe that 2+2=4), and faith is accepting a proposition without sufficient evidence. Atheism is not a faith, no more than the notion that there exist no unicorns or Rice Krispy elves or phlogiston is a faith.

Slavoj Zizek's Balls

7th May 2013, 20:01

What does "a more evolved mental state" even mean? Perhaps there is a case to be made for the increased capacity of human brains over time, but you make it sound as if the human race is constantly unlocking some previously hidden level of cognition.

And obviously, there are quite a few, ostensibly sensible, things that can be said about the communist society, otherwise neither Marxism nor anarchism would exist.

What I make it sound is based on your perception. To me, a more evolved mental state is simply the mental state of human beings requiring new tools which we cannot currently fashion or fathom such as a new language with meanings and definitions that are currently not comprehensible and thus 'vague' to us at this moment in time. Also, what we say about communist/anarchic societies are sensible but not definite as we are not advanced enough to fully comprehend the function of such a society as I said before.

That is simply not the case - the existence of some sort of deity is about as supported as the existence of phlogiston. We say that phlogiston does not exist; therefore, the only consistent answer to the question "do deities exist?" is "no"

The theory of phlogiston was disproved by the scientific method. Faith and belief on the other hand have nothing to do with the scientific method because both words are antonyms of the word 'reason'. Faith and belief are based on assertion and not reason thus using phlogiston in your argument is incorrect.

Or "the question is meaningless", since it is not at all clear what a "meaning of life" would be unless one supposes that there exists some divine agent.

Which is what I said. Either there is no meaning, or a superhuman deity (deity is defined as a being with supernatural/superhuman/non corporeal properties) has provided meaning.

Belief is not the same thing as faith - believing in a proposition is equivalent to holding that it is true (i.e., I believe that 2+2=4), and faith is accepting a proposition without sufficient evidence. Atheism is not a faith, no more than the notion that there exist no unicorns or Rice Krispy elves or phlogiston is a faith.

Your understanding of belief is not correct, taking into consideration your use of mathematics. One does not believe that 2+2 = 4, one knows and can prove that 2+2 = 4. There is no doubt involved, no trust required in mathematicians to state that 2+2 = 4 as that logical equation is irrefutable. Belief is an acceptance that a statement is true (or acceptance that something exists), it is not where one knows something to be true in an irrefutable sense. Faith is a stronger form of belief where complete trust or confidence exists in something without the need for irrefutable proof such as that found in a mathematical equation. Proof and reason are disregarded as a result.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

7th May 2013, 20:12

What I make it sound is based on your perception. To me, a more evolved mental state is simply the mental state of human beings requiring new tools which we cannot currently fashion or fathom such as a new language with meanings and definitions that are currently not comprehensible and thus 'vague' to us at this moment in time. Also, what we say about communist/anarchic societies are sensible but not definite as we are not advanced enough to fully comprehend the function of such a society as I said before.

What new tools? Why would we require them? Why do you think that they will arise in a communist society? Admitting that your theory is horribly vague is not exactly encouraging; if you have some definite, clear statement to make, do so, but it makes no sense to argue against vague, impressionistic claims.

The theory of phlogiston was disproved by the scientific method. Faith and belief on the other hand have nothing to do with the scientific method because both words are antonyms of the word 'reason'. Faith and belief are based on assertion and not reason thus using phlogiston in your argument is incorrect.

So method X that is sometimes applied to statement Y is completely incompatible with method Z, and therefore method Z is not applicable to statement Y? Sorry, this simply doesn't follow. You can't act as if everything the religious claim is the case is so special that they deserve some special epistemic category to insulate themselves from all criticism.

Your understand of belief is not correct, taking into consideration your use of mathematics. One does not believe that 2+2 = 4, one knows and can prove that 2+2 = 4. There is no doubt involved, no trust required in mathematicians to state that 2+2 = 4 as that logical equation is irrefutable. Belief is an acceptance that a statement is true (or acceptance that something exists), it is not where one knows something to be true in an irrefutable sense. Faith is a stronger form of belief where complete trust or confidence exists in something without the need for irrefutable proof such as that found in a mathematical equation. Proof and reason are disregarded as a result.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it best:

" Contemporary analytic philosophers of mind generally use the term “belief” to refer to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true. To believe something, in this sense, needn't involve actively reflecting on it: Of the vast number of things ordinary adults believe, only a few can be at the fore of the mind at any single time. Nor does the term “belief”, in standard philosophical usage, imply any uncertainty or any extended reflection about the matter in question (as it sometimes does in ordinary English usage). Many of the things we believe, in the relevant sense, are quite mundane: that we have heads, that it's the 21st century, that a coffee mug is on the desk. Forming beliefs is thus one of the most basic and important features of the mind, and the concept of belief plays a crucial role in both philosophy of mind and epistemology. The “mind-body problem”, for example, so central to philosophy of mind, is in part the question of whether and how a purely physical organism can have beliefs. Much of epistemology revolves around questions about when and how our beliefs are justified or qualify as knowledge.
Most contemporary philosophers characterize belief as a “propositional attitude”. Propositions are generally taken to be whatever it is that sentences express (see the entry on propositions (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/propositions/)). For example, if two sentences mean the same thing (e.g., “snow is white” in English, “Schnee ist weiss” in German), they express the same proposition, and if two sentences differ in meaning, they express different propositions. (Here we are setting aside some complications about that might arise in connection with indexicals; see the entry on indexicals (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/).) A propositional attitude, then, is the mental state of having some attitude, stance, take, or opinion about a proposition or about the potential state of affairs in which that proposition is true—a mental state of the sort canonically expressible in the form “S A that P”, where S picks out the individual possessing the mental state, A picks out the attitude, and P is a sentence expressing a proposition. For example: Ahmed [the subject] hopes [the attitude] that Alpha Centauri hosts intelligent life [the proposition], or Yifeng [the subject] doubts [the attitude] that New York City will exist in four hundred years. What one person doubts or hopes, another might fear, or believe, or desire, or intend—different attitudes, all toward the same proposition. Contemporary discussions of belief are often embedded in more general discussions of the propositional attitudes; and treatments of the propositional attitudes often take belief as the first and foremost example."

(source (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/))

LuÃs Henrique

8th May 2013, 14:09

But this presupposes that there is more to the meaning of a word than how it is used; I think this is a suspect notion, to say the least. We use the sounds that make up the word "death" to refer to certain physical processes - therefore, these processes are what the word "death" means. What other meaning could the word "death" have?

Well. If you ask me what "car" means, I can give you an explanation, ie, break it down into other words ("it is a means of transportation with wheels, especially one that carries mainly passengers as opposed to baggage, and especially one that is for private use", for instance). It is quite difficult to do this with "things" like "red", "barbecue smell" or "death".

And yes, you mention these ideas without your sentences becoming nonsense. The problem, as I see it, is that you seem to assume that knowing the meaning of a term implies having some sort of picture "in your head", but this belies how humans actually speak and think - I can't form a picture of a regular polygon with 107 sides, but I obviously know what the phrase "regular polygon with 107 sides" means. In fact, this entire notion of people "forming pictures in their head" assumes a Cartesian notion of a detached, incidentally incorporated subjectivity, rather than a materialist, behavioural notion.

I would say a regular polygon with 107 sides (a "circle", and consequently a high-status person in Flatlandese) is an abstraction to start with. It cannot exist materially, only as an object of thought. True, material objects that mimick or "represent" such abstraction can be made, but they are not the abstraction in itself.

Things may vary from individual to individual, but I think most people would have trouble making mental images of polygons, regular or not, with more than 6 sides. But still, we can certainly explain what a regular polygon with 107 sides is, and even reach logical conclusions about it (such as how many degrees its angles have, or how many diagonals it has, etc.) We can speak of it, so to say, both "to the outside" ("the plant of the capital city of the Elfs had the shape of a regular polygon with 107 sides") or "to the inside" ("a regular polygon of 107 sides is a closed, plane, convex, geometrical shape, with 107 sides of the same length that do not cross each others, and 107 equal angles").

Can blind people "form pictures in their head"?

You can explain what a "regular polygon of 107 sides" is to a blind person, regardless of that. You cannot explain what "red" is to a blind person - again, regardless of whether they can or cannot "form pictures in their head". You can speak of "red" "to the outside" ("John's car is red"), but you cannot speak (meaningfully) of it "to the inside".

Back to death - evidently we use "death" to denote a series of biological phenomena; there is nothing mysterious there. But, unhappily, such biological phenomena have implications that are not merely biological. For all we know, death implies the cessation of all conscious activity on the part of the deceased individual. But since dead people cannot communicate, we cannot be sure of that on merely empirical grounds. So, that is the "other meaning" the word "death" has: it is a transformation of the state of consciousness of a person (like sleep, trance, alcohol intoxication, etc), but, as opposed to those, one that we cannot directly experience. That - not grammatical quid-pro-quos - is (plus the emotional reactions we have toward it) the base of the enormous "metaphysical" constructions about "death".

Luís Henrique

LuÃs Henrique

8th May 2013, 14:26

Another example would be God. You cannot prove or disprove the existence of a deity or deities.

One problem here is that theists trade "a deity" for "their particular deity" in their sophisms.

Maybe one cannot prove the inexistence of deities in general, but I think it is quite clear that a deity that is both "good" and "omnipotent" - which is usually the deity that theists intend to prove - cannot exist.

Luís Henrique

LuÃs Henrique

8th May 2013, 14:33

Your understanding of belief is not correct, taking into consideration your use of mathematics. One does not believe that 2+2 = 4, one knows and can prove that 2+2 = 4. There is no doubt involved, no trust required in mathematicians to state that 2+2 = 4 as that logical equation is irrefutable.

Within non-modular arithmetic, that is.

But, even then, 2+2 = 2+2; "4" is just a different name we give to 2+2 (or, to be more precise, to 1+1+1+1; to say "2" is already a linguistic operation).

Luís Henrique

Flying Purple People Eater

8th May 2013, 14:49

While I disagree with some of the sentiment here, it is true that different languages can hold different expressions of emotions/ different descriptions of ideas. Some languages, for example, have very little words for expressing one's inner feelings - said feelings simply being 'assumed' as you will in normal speech. Then there are very philosophical languages such as Russian and Chinese, which have intriguing words for certain mental concepts.

I have been told that there is actually a term in Russian that means 'What are the thoughts going through your head at this moment?'

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

8th May 2013, 16:10

I would say a regular polygon with 107 sides (a "circle", and consequently a high-status person in Flatlandese) is an abstraction to start with. It cannot exist materially, only as an object of thought. True, material objects that mimick or "represent" such abstraction can be made, but they are not the abstraction in itself.

The status of those entities that are usually considered abstract is an interesting question, in which I lean perhaps to the side of Simondon, Deleuze and similar thinkers, but it is, I think, not strictly speaking relevant to this discussion. I might as well have said "a centipede with 97 legs", and centipedes are probably not abstract objects, pace Hegel.

Things may vary from individual to individual, but I think most people would have trouble making mental images of polygons, regular or not, with more than 6 sides. But still, we can certainly explain what a regular polygon with 107 sides is, and even reach logical conclusions about it (such as how many degrees its angles have, or how many diagonals it has, etc.) We can speak of it, so to say, both "to the outside" ("the plant of the capital city of the Elfs had the shape of a regular polygon with 107 sides") or "to the inside" ("a regular polygon of 107 sides is a closed, plane, convex, geometrical shape, with 107 sides of the same length that do not cross each others, and 107 equal angles").

I am not quite sure this distinction stands up to scrutiny; every property you list seems to reference other entities. One can designate certain of these properties as "core" ones, but just which properties make it into that group depends on the context.

Can blind people "form pictures in their head"?

I don't think anyone can, strictly speaking. People often talk about such pictures, but they are, it seems to me, behavioural and not visual entities, and whether blind people can form them depends on whether they can exhibit the appropriate behaviour.

You can explain what a "regular polygon of 107 sides" is to a blind person, regardless of that. You cannot explain what "red" is to a blind person - again, regardless of whether they can or cannot "form pictures in their head". You can speak of "red" "to the outside" ("John's car is red"), but you cannot speak (meaningfully) of it "to the inside".

Red is the colour of light in the range from ~600 to ~750 nm. (I know the actual account is more involved, but that doesn't matter now.) Why is that insufficient?

Back to death - evidently we use "death" to denote a series of biological phenomena; there is nothing mysterious there. But, unhappily, such biological phenomena have implications that are not merely biological. For all we know, death implies the cessation of all conscious activity on the part of the deceased individual. But since dead people cannot communicate, we cannot be sure of that on merely empirical grounds.

Sure we can - brains can't cause the complex sort of behaviour we call conscious when they've rotted away and liquefied.

So, that is the "other meaning" the word "death" has: it is a transformation of the state of consciousness of a person (like sleep, trance, alcohol intoxication, etc), but, as opposed to those, one that we cannot directly experience. That - not grammatical quid-pro-quos - is (plus the emotional reactions we have toward it) the base of the enormous "metaphysical" constructions about "death".

Why is it the case, then, that not all cultures and not all periods treat death as something special? This Heideggeresque mystification of death - an unpleasant, but fairly clear, phenomenon - is simply metaphysical idealism that appeals to some very understandable fears.

FionnagÃ¡in

8th May 2013, 16:32

Whatever those inexpressible ideas are we would be unable to discuss them here.
Only if we assume expression to be necessarily exhaustive. It's possible that we may be able to express an idea in a partial or ambiguous way, and hope that others are able to combine this expression with their own experience to grasp our meaning. For example, if I say that something is "blue", I am not offering an exhaustive representation of the colour in question, but you none the less take my meaning because you yourself have experience with the quality of blue-ness.

LuÃs Henrique

8th May 2013, 16:54

Red is the colour of light in the range from ~600 to ~750 nm. (I know the actual account is more involved, but that doesn't matter now.) Why is that insufficient?

When I say "a car is a means of transportation with wheels, especially one that carries mainly passengers as opposed to baggage, and especially one that is for private use", this allows the other person to relate to other concepts she can directly experience, at least if she knows what "means of transportation", "wheels", "passengers", "baggage", "private use". This will result in her discarding a boat, or a lorry, or a bus, as "cars". But the range of wavelenght of "red" doesn't help me to identify red, or to decide whether an object is red or not. It rather functions the opposite way: - what does a wavelength of 600 to 750 nm mean? - well, if we are talking about light, it means what you would call "red". - Ah, I understand.

Sure we can - brains can't cause the complex sort of behaviour we call conscious when they've rotted away and liquefied.

While I certainly agree with you, we don't know that empirically.

Why is it the case, then, that not all cultures and not all periods treat death as something special? This Heideggeresque mystification of death - an unpleasant, but fairly clear, phenomenon - is simply metaphysical idealism that appeals to some very understandable fears.

I fear that most if not all cultures treat death as something special. Which are those you believe don't?

But the point is, the mystification doesn't arise from misuse of words; the misuse of words implied in it arises from material causes - fear of the unknown, plus the immediate unknowability of what death entails for the individual.

Luís Henrique

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

8th May 2013, 17:36

When I say "a car is a means of transportation with wheels, especially one that carries mainly passengers as opposed to baggage, and especially one that is for private use", this allows the other person to relate to other concepts she can directly experience, at least if she knows what "means of transportation", "wheels", "passengers", "baggage", "private use". This will result in her discarding a boat, or a lorry, or a bus, as "cars". But the range of wavelenght of "red" doesn't help me to identify red, or to decide whether an object is red or not. It rather functions the opposite way: - what does a wavelength of 600 to 750 nm mean? - well, if we are talking about light, it means what you would call "red". - Ah, I understand.

So, why are armoured cars, well, cars, while lorries are not? This is perhaps only tangentially connected to the discussion, but it seems to me that this notion that every word has a clear and concise definition and that learning the definition is enough to learn the word, fails when confronted with the reality of human language. To learn the meaning of a word, one must learn how it is used.

Again, you seem to assume some picture theory of meaning - since you require an explanation of a word to "relate to concepts one can directly experience", but this theory seems unable to explain why people know what, for example, an electron is.

A blind person could, conceivable, be given a spectroscope - there are these cute "pencil" spectroscopes that one can carry in one's hand easily - and measure the wavelength of incoming light. That would (in a very simplified account) allow them to distinguish red objects from non-red objects - so the definition I provided seems to be good enough.

While I certainly agree with you, we don't know that empirically.

We can observe brains, we can observe behaviour, and we can observe the correlation between the two. I'm afraid that I don't see your point.

I fear that most if not all cultures treat death as something special. Which are those you believe don't?

The Hebrews before the pharisaic movement, for example, or, apparently, a significant portion of the population in the Chinese Warring States period.

But the point is, the mystification doesn't arise from misuse of words; the misuse of words implied in it arises from material causes - fear of the unknown, plus the immediate unknowability of what death entails for the individual.

I agree with most of this, but I think the fear in question is the somewhat more prosaic fear of being dead.

LuÃs Henrique

8th May 2013, 18:21

So, why are armoured cars, well, cars, while lorries are not?

No, I don't think "armoured cars" are cars, no more than starfishes are fish. Phrases are not mere justapositions of words, they are separate lexical entities.

This is perhaps only tangentially connected to the discussion, but it seems to me that this notion that every word has a clear and concise definition and that learning the definition is enough to learn the word, fails when confronted with the reality of human language. To learn the meaning of a word, one must learn how it is used.

Of course no words (or only a small part of them) have clear and concise definitions, and evidently we don't learn words by "learning" their "definition". But also, it is false to say that learning how a word is used is different from learning its definition (after all, dictionary definitions - at least when the dictionary is good - are exactly lists of possible, and preferably frequent, uses of words). Unless we are talking of the absurd abuse of the notion of "meaning is use" that leads to thinking that if you ask what a word means, you already know it, because you have just used it, and in a correct way...

Again, you seem to assume some picture theory of meaning - since you require an explanation of a word to "relate to concepts one can directly experience", but this theory seems unable to explain why people know what, for example, an electron is.

Knowing what an electron is is different from knowing what the word "electron" means. What people in general think about electrons (that they are small balls orbiting around nuclei like planets around the sun? that they are waves of probabilities?) probably is very different from what an electron is.

A blind person could, conceivable, be given a spectroscope - there are these cute "pencil" spectroscopes that one can carry in one's hand easily - and measure the wavelength of incoming light. That would (in a very simplified account) allow them to distinguish red objects from non-red objects - so the definition I provided seems to be good enough.

And they would still not know what "red" is, besides of course that it is what seeing people "see" when they say "red"...

We can observe brains, we can observe behaviour, and we can observe the correlation between the two. I'm afraid that I don't see your point.

What can we observe? That a dead body no longer moves. But this is too little to make the case that death means the extinction of volition, self-awareness, perception, etc.

The Hebrews before the pharisaic movement, for example, or, apparently, a significant portion of the population in the Chinese Warring States period.

And what exactly they believed about death?

What did they do to the bodies of the deceased, for instance?

I agree with most of this, but I think the fear in question is the somewhat more prosaic fear of being dead.

Of course.

But I also fear, for instance, breaking a leg. In that case, however, I don't build fantasies about what happens when one breaks a leg; I know people who broke their legs, I talk to them, I read texts written by them, etc. Basically, it is painfully, and if incorrectly treated, may make me unable to walk properly again. All these are perfectly down-to-earth things, which don't make any room for ideas of the kind of "if I break my leg but if I am a good person, it will not hurt, or it will heal without any need of proper treatment". In the case of death, however, experimental evidence is insufficient to establish what actually happens, so there is plenty of room for "metaphysical" fantasies.

Luís Henrique

Slavoj Zizek's Balls

8th May 2013, 18:58

Well no point in me replying to Semendyaev now so I'll throw in a general question.

Do you think that that human beings will be able to supplant their current (on average) mental abilities with that of a genius', that is to say what we consider to be the creation of a genius now becomes the norm in the future?

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

9th May 2013, 10:30

No, I don't think "armoured cars" are cars, no more than starfishes are fish. Phrases are not mere justapositions of words, they are separate lexical entities.

I realise that; I was, however, under the impression that armoured cars are usually considered a type of car, an automobile (unlike railway cars, for example), at least the Soviet Broneautomobil series I had in mind.

So, alright, the example is contentious, but other examples are fairly easy to find - why are limousines cars, but lorries are not?

Of course no words (or only a small part of them) have clear and concise definitions, and evidently we don't learn words by "learning" their "definition". But also, it is false to say that learning how a word is used is different from learning its definition (after all, dictionary definitions - at least when the dictionary is good - are exactly lists of possible, and preferably frequent, uses of words). Unless we are talking of the absurd abuse of the notion of "meaning is use" that leads to thinking that if you ask what a word means, you already know it, because you have just used it, and in a correct way...

That meaning is use implies that someone understands the meaning of a word if they can consistently use it in a correct manner - obviously one or two instances of correct use are not enough. The point was that someone can consistently use a word in the correct manner without knowing any of the various dictionary definitions - for example, I have no idea what the OED says about the word "manner", and I doubt that finding our would improve my knowledge of the English language.

Knowing what an electron is is different from knowing what the word "electron" means. What people in general think about electrons (that they are small balls orbiting around nuclei like planets around the sun? that they are waves of probabilities?) probably is very different from what an electron is.

I have no idea what most people think about electrons; but if they think that electrons are "small balls orbiting around nuclei like planets around the sun", they are simply not using the word "electron" correctly. In most cases, the common usage determines the meaning, but this is one of the exceptions, I think; the term "electron" is part of the technical language of physics and its meaning is determined by how physicists use the term.

And they would still not know what "red" is, besides of course that it is what seeing people "see" when they say "red"...

They would know what objects are called red. Do you think sighted people know something else about red? If so, what?

What can we observe? That a dead body no longer moves. But this is too little to make the case that death means the extinction of volition, self-awareness, perception, etc.

We can observe more than that; the complete cessation of electrical activity in the brain, for example, and well, the fact that every organ that enables conscious activity stops functioning and rots away. How is it that nobody questions what happens to a computer that falls and breaks, but quite a few people who otherwise consider themselves materialists profess agnosticism when it comes to the afterlife?

And what exactly they believed about death?

That dead people are, well, dead and gone. They had no concept of an afterlife.

What did they do to the bodies of the deceased, for instance?

They buried or burned them, with the appropriate rituals. But this does not imply a belief in an afterlife, or even uncertainty concerning the subject; atheists for example still get married even though they do not think their relationships need the approval of some sky tyrant. Confucian thought, for example, stresses the role rituals play in maintaining social norms and cohesion - the Confucian maxim being, I believe, "Know that your parents are dead, act as if they were alive.".

Of course.

But I also fear, for instance, breaking a leg. In that case, however, I don't build fantasies about what happens when one breaks a leg; I know people who broke their legs, I talk to them, I read texts written by them, etc. Basically, it is painfully, and if incorrectly treated, may make me unable to walk properly again. All these are perfectly down-to-earth things, which don't make any room for ideas of the kind of "if I break my leg but if I am a good person, it will not hurt, or it will heal without any need of proper treatment". Except they do, don't they? A lot of people believe in all sorts of "miraculous" or "faith healing" malarkey.

In the case of death, however, experimental evidence is insufficient to establish what actually happens, so there is plenty of room for "metaphysical" fantasies.

There is no room whatsoever for such fantasies, given our present knowledge, and people only make room for it by ignoring the scientific facts. Treating humans as anything other than animals that inevitably drop dead and decompose just exacerbates the problem - which becomes rather problematic when the political consequences of afterlife beliefs are taken into account.

Do you think that that human beings will be able to supplant their current (on average) mental abilities with that of a genius', that is to say what we consider to be the creation of a genius now becomes the norm in the future?

I think that the notion of "genius" is too vague to be useful, frankly, and I don't think an increase in the average mental capacities is likely in a communist society. Of course, talented individuals will find it easier to develop their talents, if they choose to do so. But the transition to the communist society will not make humanity more capable; if anything, the present cult of intelligence will hopefully fade away (as, I hope, will any notion of one human having more worth than another human who isn't Ann Coulter) and society will be organised so that it does not rely on "geniuses" or "great men".

LuÃs Henrique

9th May 2013, 13:54

I realise that; I was, however, under the impression that armoured cars are usually considered a type of car, an automobile (unlike railway cars, for example), at least the Soviet Broneautomobil series I had in mind.

So, alright, the example is contentious, but other examples are fairly easy to find - why are limousines cars, but lorries are not?

First of all, the word "car" can be used in several different ways; I am sure there is a general sence in which armoured cars, railway cars, limousines and lorries are all "cars" - vehicles on wheels. There is probably a different general sence in which the wheel-less vehicles in Jetson comics are "cars" too (vehicles for private transportation of middle-class professionals from their homes to their jobs daily, and to leisure activities weekly). There is a sence in which a car is opposed to trucks (vehicles on wheels that primarily transport passengers, not cargo); in this sence, a limousine or a bus are "cars", and a lorry is not. So I would say that a lorry is a car, as opposed to a boat, but that it is not a car, as opposed to a limousine.

Why? Well, because that's the way we have informally convened it should be.

But nice to see you gather the idea that phrases are not reducible to their constituent words; Wikipedia article on ordinary language philosophy, for instance, attempts to arrive at conclusions about the word "reality" by analysing the phrase "in reality" and this seems to be a common mistake among people who adhere to the "meaning is use" trope.

That meaning is use implies that someone understands the meaning of a word if they can consistently use it in a correct manner - obviously one or two instances of correct use are not enough. The point was that someone can consistently use a word in the correct manner without knowing any of the various dictionary definitions - for example, I have no idea what the OED says about the word "manner", and I doubt that finding our would improve my knowledge of the English language.

But it would probably improve my knowledge of the English language - because English is my second language.

You are right that one or two instances of correct use are not enough (Merriam-Webster lists seven different entries for "manner", and it probably still isn't enough); but that is not the point. Dictionary definitions are descriptions of word use, not something else, so the dichotomy use/definition is misleading.

I have no idea what most people think about electrons; but if they think that electrons are "small balls orbiting around nuclei like planets around the sun", they are simply not using the word "electron" correctly.

Why not?

If they are still able to understand that they are negatively charged, that they are organised within different levels of energy, that they swap between atoms to form electrovalent or covalent bonds, that the number of them distinguishes between different chemical elements, that they are what "moves" in electrical currents... why does it matter that they misunderstand them as "solid" balls? It seems quite the kind of difference between "meaning" and "use" that ordinary language philosophy doesn't grasp.

They would know what objects are called red. Do you think sighted people know something else about red? If so, what?

The exact sensation of "red".

We can observe more than that; the complete cessation of electrical activity in the brain, for example, and well,

From the 20th century on, yes. But death unhappily didn't wait for our development of tools for measuring electricity to impose onto us.

the fact that every organ that enables conscious activity stops functioning and rots away. How is it that nobody questions what happens to a computer that falls and breaks, but quite a few people who otherwise consider themselves materialists profess agnosticism when it comes to the afterlife?

I think this is a bad example. I certainly can copy the "soul" of a computer from its hard disk to another, or even print it on paper or paste it into an internet site, for further use in another computer. Sure, some hardware will always be necessary - but also most "theories" of afterlife involve some kind of that - new bodies, either in "heavens" or "hell" or even here in the corruptible world, as in reincarnation/metempsychosis.

But I am not an agnostic when it comes to afterlife, by no means. I only disagree that it is empirically refutable.

That dead people are, well, dead and gone. They had no concept of an afterlife.

They buried or burned them, with the appropriate rituals. But this does not imply a belief in an afterlife, or even uncertainty concerning the subject; atheists for example still get married even though they do not think their relationships need the approval of some sky tyrant. Confucian thought, for example, stresses the role rituals play in maintaining social norms and cohesion - the Confucian maxim being, I believe, "Know that your parents are dead, act as if they were alive.".

Well, I am an atheist (not an agnostic) and I certainly don't think my sexual relationships need the approval of a "sky tyrant" or any other kind of supernatural entity. And yet I married once. Why? Because while me and my wife didn't think we needed the approval of a supernatural entity, or of the State, for what it matters, to sleep together, we realised we needed the approval of other social actors (mainly her family, in the short term) to do it on a daily and regular basis. If it wasn't for such social pressure, I doubt we would have had the trouble. And this, I suppose, is the same reason why most atheists are buried, and even have a tomb with a cross (if they happen to live and die in post-Christian countries). I wonder what would the "proper rituals" be in a society that completely disacknowledges the notion of an afterlife?

Except they do, don't they? A lot of people believe in all sorts of "miraculous" or "faith healing" malarkey.

Yes, certainly, though it is certainly not as widespread as belief in afterlife, or even close. Those beliefs are still of a different kind: people know what the pain of breaking a leg is, and understand what kind of deformity an improperly healed bone causes - and such knowledge is empirical. We don't empirically "know" what death entails; we can and should realise what it is through other, very different, epistemological tools, but that requires rejecting empirism.

There is no room whatsoever for such fantasies, given our present knowledge, and people only make room for it by ignoring the scientific facts. Treating humans as anything other than animals that inevitably drop dead and decompose just exacerbates the problem - which becomes rather problematic when the political consequences of afterlife beliefs are taken into account.

Ah, yes - science and politics. But those are very different from empiricism.

Luís Henrique

Dean

9th May 2013, 17:04

I don't think that there is really anything that can not be expressed in words to some extent. HOWEVER, and this has been mentioned in various discussions which invariably bring up Wittgenstein, no words truly and accurately describe human experience or the real world.

Its the difference between form and practice. So that you can say you have 2 apples in a basket, but the various specifics of each apple are not manifest in that statement, and the next 2 apples in a basket will be very different in their specifics as well.

But if my wife asks me to bring 2 apples home from the grocery tonight, she can be reasonably confident that I will invision the same thing she does in that statement. Crucially, I will probably bring honeydew apples home as those are her favorite and what she expects when she takes one for a snack. And if I ask her to pick up an apple, she may remember that I like green ones - so that is what I am expecting.

Words are euphemism for shared understanding. And their meanings are individual to the speaker and listener. I don't think that language is inherently limited from anything that isn't also limited from the extent of our ability to recognize and communicate it. However, the present limitations of our language structure and the extent of our descriptors is a constant limiting factor.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

10th May 2013, 10:49

First of all, the word "car" can be used in several different ways; I am sure there is a general sence in which armoured cars, railway cars, limousines and lorries are all "cars" - vehicles on wheels. There is probably a different general sence in which the wheel-less vehicles in Jetson comics are "cars" too (vehicles for private transportation of middle-class professionals from their homes to their jobs daily, and to leisure activities weekly). There is a sence in which a car is opposed to trucks (vehicles on wheels that primarily transport passengers, not cargo); in this sence, a limousine or a bus are "cars", and a lorry is not. So I would say that a lorry is a car, as opposed to a boat, but that it is not a car, as opposed to a limousine.

Why? Well, because that's the way we have informally convened it should be.

Quite so; but none of the commonly cited definitions of the word "car" I am familiar with are sufficient when it comes to deciding whether the vehicles in the Jetsons are cars. If such vehicles actually existed, it is an open question whether we would call them "cars".

I am not questioning the limited utility of definitions when first encountering a new word; but there is an old and pernicious trend in philosophy, going back to Plato at least (and first denounced by Sextus Empiricus, if I'm not mistaken), of relying on (very simplified) definitions, and in fact requiring that every term has such a simplified definition. For example, you seem to imply that "red" is somehow mysterious because it does not have such a definition (it is defined in operative terms, rather than through a list of properties, like many concepts in physics).

But nice to see you gather the idea that phrases are not reducible to their constituent words; Wikipedia article on ordinary language philosophy, for instance, attempts to arrive at conclusions about the word "reality" by analysing the phrase "in reality" and this seems to be a common mistake among people who adhere to the "meaning is use" trope.

Some words are only meaningful in phrases, though; the word "lieu" for example means nothing without the phrase "in lieu". I think the term "reality" is fairly empty in any case; it seems to either refer to everything that is the case, or it is used in "als ob" philosophising to smuggle in scientifically unsupported "true" realities.

But it would probably improve my knowledge of the English language - because English is my second language.

English is my second language as well; but "manner" was one of those words I picked up without ever consulting a dictionary (I watched a lot of British programs when I was younger). So, if I open the OED now, and see what it has to say about the word "manner", will I learn anything new about the English language? I honestly think that I won't.

Why not?

If they are still able to understand that they are negatively charged, that they are organised within different levels of energy, that they swap between atoms to form electrovalent or covalent bonds, that the number of them distinguishes between different chemical elements, that they are what "moves" in electrical currents... why does it matter that they misunderstand them as "solid" balls? It seems quite the kind of difference between "meaning" and "use" that ordinary language philosophy doesn't grasp.

Not quite; the misunderstanding of electrons as little balls leads to incorrect usage - talking about the location or velocities of electrons in the classical sense, for example.

The exact sensation of "red".

Quite frankly, this sounds like an abuse of language to me. What does it mean for someone to "know" the sensation of red? I know what it is to have the sensation of red, but we don't usually think that different somatic states correspond to some special sort of knowledge.

From the 20th century on, yes. But death unhappily didn't wait for our development of tools for measuring electricity to impose onto us.

Even so, it is quite obvious that people can only act in a conscious manner while most of their organs are intact - I find it difficult to believe that, even without measurements of electrical activity in the brain, one could argue for the possibility of consciousness in a skeleton or mummified corpse.

I think this is a bad example. I certainly can copy the "soul" of a computer from its hard disk to another, or even print it on paper or paste it into an internet site, for further use in another computer. Sure, some hardware will always be necessary - but also most "theories" of afterlife involve some kind of that - new bodies, either in "heavens" or "hell" or even here in the corruptible world, as in reincarnation/metempsychosis.

The computer, however, is the hardware. Perhaps a case could be made for personal identity pertaining more to the "software" side in humans, but even in this case, it is fairly obvious that there is no natural process that could recreate the "software" side of a person. And this ignores how the "software" and "hardware" are interconnected in humans.

But I am not an agnostic when it comes to afterlife, by no means. I only disagree that it is empirically refutable.

Again, you seem to have an odd notion of what is "empirical"; surely we say that the fact that glasses that fall break and don't magically glue themselves together is an empirical fact? Why is it any different when it comes to humans?

Well, I am an atheist (not an agnostic) and I certainly don't think my sexual relationships need the approval of a "sky tyrant" or any other kind of supernatural entity. And yet I married once. Why? Because while me and my wife didn't think we needed the approval of a supernatural entity, or of the State, for what it matters, to sleep together, we realised we needed the approval of other social actors (mainly her family, in the short term) to do it on a daily and regular basis. If it wasn't for such social pressure, I doubt we would have had the trouble. And this, I suppose, is the same reason why most atheists are buried, and even have a tomb with a cross (if they happen to live and die in post-Christian countries). I wonder what would the "proper rituals" be in a society that completely disacknowledges the notion of an afterlife?

Dog food factories. I think my point still stands; that a society is influenced by previous beliefs in an afterlife does not imply that such beliefs are still widespread.

Yes, certainly, though it is certainly not as widespread as belief in afterlife, or even close. Those beliefs are still of a different kind: people know what the pain of breaking a leg is, and understand what kind of deformity an improperly healed bone causes - and such knowledge is empirical. We don't empirically "know" what death entails; we can and should realise what it is through other, very different, epistemological tools, but that requires rejecting empirism.

Ah, yes - science and politics. But those are very different from empiricism.

Luís Henrique

Empirical methods rely on human experience, human interaction with other objects in the world; empiricism is one particular model of such methods, and not a particularly convincing one. Marxist and bourgeois (Quine, Putnam, Davidson etc.) philosophers have pretty much buried empiricism. You seem to conflate the two.

And surely, we can recognise that no scientific or philosophic problem exists in a social vacuum.

LuÃs Henrique

10th May 2013, 13:55

Quite so; but none of the commonly cited definitions of the word "car" I am familiar with are sufficient when it comes to deciding whether the vehicles in the Jetsons are cars. If such vehicles actually existed, it is an open question whether we would call them "cars".

They are certainly called "cars" in Jetson comics.

I am not questioning the limited utility of definitions when first encountering a new word; but there is an old and pernicious trend in philosophy, going back to Plato at least (and first denounced by Sextus Empiricus, if I'm not mistaken), of relying on (very simplified) definitions, and in fact requiring that every term has such a simplified definition.Indeed, but unhappily this can't be cured by "meaning is use" terminology.

Here we have an adept doing exactly what you denounce, while calling it "use" instead of "definition":

You must be kidding...

(and I don't mean that you are under some compulsion, urgency, requirement, or imperativeness to make a joke - nor do I think I am making a non-sence sentence in any way...)
Actually, in normal conversation that's what "must be kidding" would mean.

For example, you seem to imply that "red" is somehow mysterious because it does not have such a definition (it is defined in operative terms, rather than through a list of properties, like many concepts in physics).

I don't think "red" is mysterious at all, but I am pretty sure I would, if I was born blind.

You can use words as blocks to build sentences, which does not require any analysis of the internal structure of their meaning. And this is fine, and can make sence, and is indeed the only thing that can be done with a word such as "red". It is what I called above talking of it "to the outside". But we can discuss "the internal meaning" of a word, which is what I called above talking of it "to the inside"; such is what we have been doing with the word "car". This can make sence with words like "car" but does not make sence with words like "red".

Some words are only meaningful in phrases, though; the word "lieu" for example means nothing without the phrase "in lieu".In English; in French, where it has been imported from, that's not the case. But indeed, there are words that are only used within phrases. This is not the case of "reality", though.

I think the term "reality" is fairly empty in any case; it seems to either refer to everything that is the case, or it is used in "als ob" philosophising to smuggle in scientifically unsupported "true" realities.Merriam-Webster lists these different uses:

the quality or state of being real
a real event, entity, or state of affairs <his dream became a reality>
the totality of real things and events <trying to escape from reality>
something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily
television programming that features videos of actual occurrences (as a police chase, stunt, or natural disaster) —often used attributively <reality TV>

What you deem illegitimate is the fourth acception above (and perhaps the first?). All other uses are perfectly "ordinary language" (and indeed, the most comical aspect of the Wikipedia article I cited is that it uses the word "reality" in such ordinary way, without realising it is doing it ("Further, when we talk about a "real gun", we aren't making a metaphysical statement about the nature of reality")).

English is my second language as well; but "manner" was one of those words I picked up without ever consulting a dictionary (I watched a lot of British programs when I was younger). So, if I open the OED now, and see what it has to say about the word "manner", will I learn anything new about the English language? I honestly think that I won't.Perhaps not. Most words are used in several different ways, some of which are quite especialised, though, so I am by absolutely no means sure that we wouldn't find something new by consulting the dictionary - or, even, more probably, be reminded of a use to which we are acquainted, but have forgotten (for instance, if JazzRemington had looked up "must" in the dictionary, or the author of the Wikipedia article had looked up "reality", they would have avoided involuntary humour, and quite probably realised that they use these words often and ordinarily).

Not quite; the misunderstanding of electrons as little balls leads to incorrect usage - talking about the location or velocities of electrons in the classical sense, for example.Ah, I see.

But if I say something like, "two atoms of oxygen share electrons in a covalent bond in the most common kind of oxygen molecule", I suppose I am making sence and using it correctly? Even if I misunderstand electrons by thinking they are small solid balls?

Anyway, this puts us a complex problem. We have only realised "what electrons really are" a few decades ago; for many decades before that, we (including cutting edge physicists) have thought of them as small solid balls. So, have we only started to use the word "electron" properly since Heisenberg? If so, we are subordinating language use to ontological considerations, and we raise the possibility that all our uses of words are possibly "wrong". (For how long we will keep, for instance, our present day comprehension of what an electron "is"?) This, I fear, would destroy "ordinary language philosophy", for it would imply a "metaphysical" meaning that is not the use.

Quite frankly, this sounds like an abuse of language to me. What does it mean for someone to "know" the sensation of red? I know what it is to have the sensation of red, but we don't usually think that different somatic states correspond to some special sort of knowledge.Well, it is only the knowledge of what the sensation is.

Even so, it is quite obvious that people can only act in a conscious manner while most of their organs are intact - I find it difficult to believe that, even without measurements of electrical activity in the brain, one could argue for the possibility of consciousness in a skeleton or mummified corpse.And people have argued for that for tens of thousand years, though.

The computer, however, is the hardware. Perhaps a case could be made for personal identity pertaining more to the "software" side in humans, but even in this case, it is fairly obvious that there is no natural process that could recreate the "software" side of a person. And this ignores how the "software" and "hardware" are interconnected in humans.Of course, the idea of an afterlife requires some kind of supernatural "hardware" - heavens, hell, some kind of limbo where "souls" wait for reincarnation, perhaps a God or gods to sort out where "souls" should be sent. The problem, of course, is that such things, by definition, cannot be seen, heard, etc.

Again, you seem to have an odd notion of what is "empirical"; surely we say that the fact that glasses that fall break and don't magically glue themselves together is an empirical fact? Why is it any different when it comes to humans?I don't like the phrase "empirical fact" much, indeed; but while glasses that fall don't glue themselves, it is well known that they can be glued if someone decides to do it. So the question is whether there is, or can be, someone/something that can "glue" human beings together after they are dead. I certainly don't think so, but I also don't think this can be "proved" by empirical evidence or by manipulations of word meanings.

Dog food factories. I think my point still stands; that a society is influenced by previous beliefs in an afterlife does not imply that such beliefs are still widespread.I don't think any human society has ever been devoid of supernatural beliefs, not even the pre-pharisaic Hebrews.

Empirical methods rely on human experience, human interaction with other objects in the world; empiricism is one particular model of such methods, and not a particularly convincing one.One that reduces human experience to human perceptions, probably.

Marxist and bourgeois (Quine, Putnam, Davidson etc.) philosophers have pretty much buried empiricism. You seem to conflate the two.Maybe. I do tend to think of "empirical methods" as those that exclude human action properly, and rely on perception only; perhaps this is a mistake.

And surely, we can recognise that no scientific or philosophic problem exists in a social vacuum.No, they don't, which is another reason to reject the idea that philosophic problems only arise from "misuse of words".

Luís Henrique

blake 3:17

11th May 2013, 07:08

It's hard to put one's finger on, but I'm wondering if anybody has any examples of some concepts that one can have a vague sense about but which are not precisely articulated yet, and likely beyond the scope of language or other formalism? How would you characterize such an idea?

It would be nice if I can give an example. I gather lots of "classical metaphysics" fall into this category, stuff like why is there something rather than nothing, and the contingency of it all. No answer can really work, I suspect, but nevertheless I think a lot of people find this question to be vaguely plausible - probably too many for it to be a linguistic confusion. It's useful to understand why an answer or linguistic formalism can't work.

As an aside, a former member would have been all over a thread like this but it's worth pursuing nevertheless I reckon.

It's foolish to think that language , particularly in the form of "an answer or linguistic formalism" doesn't work as some be all and end all.

A brilliant attempt was made by Kenneth Goldsmith with his Fidget http://archives.chbooks.com/online_books/fidget/index.html

And this where've I've finally realized the greatness of both Heidegger and Deleuze's turns in Western philosophy -- just start thinking. Think for its own sake.

evermilion

11th May 2013, 20:38

I'm not sure if there's already terminology for this: I get this sense that there are social responsibilities, but that these responsibilities can become hindrances to artistic expression. For example: the use of oppressive language in art, whether to describe the reality of an oppressive world or to signify something else, presents a problem to Marxist artists who want to infuse their art with the flawed rawness of humanity while considering their responsibility to the progress of society.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

14th May 2013, 18:05

They are certainly called "cars" in Jetson comics.

This does not mean that similar future vehicles would be called "cars". After all, we do not refer to tanks as "land ironclads", even though this is how Wells called a machine remarkably similar to modern tanks.

Indeed, but unhappily this can't be cured by "meaning is use" terminology.

Here we have an adept doing exactly what you denounce, while calling it "use" instead of "definition":

[OMITTED]

That is simply an example of someone having an incorrect notion about the common use of the word. It might be mildly amusing - though note that English is not a first language to many people on this site - but it really isn't the same as redefining widely understood words left and right, something many philosophers are guilty of, including prominent figures such as Spinoza or Plato.

I don't think "red" is mysterious at all, but I am pretty sure I would, if I was born blind.

I am fairly sure I would not, since I find nothing mysterious about ultraviolet, even though I can't see that part of the spectrum. The problem seems to be that, again, you are equating knowledge with having some sort of picture "in your head", a red or ultraviolet quale.

First of all, this notion is thoroughly idealist, since these qualia can not be reduced to material processes in the brain or society without losing the "mysterious" character that makes them attractive to philosophers.

Second, it is obviously incompatible with our knowledge of material objects; I think Chisholm and Sellars argue convincingly that statements about material objects can't be reconstructed in terms of statements about perceptions.

Third, that is simply not how the word "knowledge" is commonly used. Would you believe someone who, when asked a question, assured you that they perceive the answer, but can't put it into words? We'd all think they were dishonest or unhinged.

You can use words as blocks to build sentences, which does not require any analysis of the internal structure of their meaning. And this is fine, and can make sence, and is indeed the only thing that can be done with a word such as "red". It is what I called above talking of it "to the outside". But we can discuss "the internal meaning" of a word, which is what I called above talking of it "to the inside"; such is what we have been doing with the word "car". This can make sence with words like "car" but does not make sence with words like "red".

Light whose wavelength is in a certain range is red. Your only objection to this is, apparently, that this is not the same as some "inner knowledge" of what the perception of red is like, but it seems to me that there is no such inner knowledge.

In English; in French, where it has been imported from, that's not the case. But indeed, there are words that are only used within phrases. This is not the case of "reality", though.

Merriam-Webster lists these different uses:

the quality or state of being real
a real event, entity, or state of affairs <his dream became a reality>
the totality of real things and events <trying to escape from reality>
something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily
television programming that features videos of actual occurrences (as a police chase, stunt, or natural disaster) —often used attributively <reality TV>

What you deem illegitimate is the fourth acception above (and perhaps the first?). All other uses are perfectly "ordinary language" (and indeed, the most comical aspect of the Wikipedia article I cited is that it uses the word "reality" in such ordinary way, without realising it is doing it ("Further, when we talk about a "real gun", we aren't making a metaphysical statement about the nature of reality")).

The fourth definition is outright bizarre, and seems to be half-digested Scholastic malarkey, to be honest. The first definition is fairly empty.

Ah, I see.

But if I say something like, "two atoms of oxygen share electrons in a covalent bond in the most common kind of oxygen molecule", I suppose I am making sence and using it correctly? Even if I misunderstand electrons by thinking they are small solid balls?

To an extent, but as I said before, one or two instances of correct use do not imply that someone has grasped how the term is used.

Anyway, this puts us a complex problem. We have only realised "what electrons really are" a few decades ago; for many decades before that, we (including cutting edge physicists) have thought of them as small solid balls. So, have we only started to use the word "electron" properly since Heisenberg?

No - but the term "electron" meant something else (that happened to not exist).

I will respond to the rest later, perhaps.

LuÃs Henrique

15th May 2013, 15:52

This does not mean that similar future vehicles would be called "cars". After all, we do not refer to tanks as "land ironclads", even though this is how Wells called a machine remarkably similar to modern tanks.

But since the word is used in the comics in that sence, without readers rejecting it as wrong or incomprehensible, it follows that the word is already used in that way. And what is more, readers seem to intuitively grasp the meaning. The same goes for "land ironclad"; while for merely historic reasons the phrase isn't used any more, the idea stems out of it clearly: an armed and armoured vehicle like an ironclad, but moving over land instead of water.

That is simply an example of someone having an incorrect notion about the common use of the word. It might be mildly amusing - though note that English is not a first language to many people on this site - but it really isn't the same as redefining widely understood words left and right, something many philosophers are guilty of, including prominent figures such as Spinoza or Plato.

I am pretty sure his first language is English, and that if he looked at how he himself uses the word "must" he would realise the use he was denying is a pretty common one. Indeed, what he was doing was exactly "redefining a widely understood word" (albeit restrictively, which is probably not the way most philosophers mystify words), but anyway redefining it in order to mystify a supposedly philosophical issue.

I am fairly sure I would not, since I find nothing mysterious about ultraviolet, even though I can't see that part of the spectrum. The problem seems to be that, again, you are equating knowledge with having some sort of picture "in your head", a red or ultraviolet quale.

First of all, this notion is thoroughly idealist, since these qualia can not be reduced to material processes in the brain or society without losing the "mysterious" character that makes them attractive to philosophers.

Second, it is obviously incompatible with our knowledge of material objects; I think Chisholm and Sellars argue convincingly that statements about material objects can't be reconstructed in terms of statements about perceptions.

Third, that is simply not how the word "knowledge" is commonly used. Would you believe someone who, when asked a question, assured you that they perceive the answer, but can't put it into words? We'd all think they were dishonest or unhinged.

Light whose wavelength is in a certain range is red. Your only objection to this is, apparently, that this is not the same as some "inner knowledge" of what the perception of red is like, but it seems to me that there is no such inner knowledge.

Suppose you are required to explain what "red" is. You may of course point to a red object and explain, "there, this is a red object; 'red' is the colour you see when you look at it". But if the person who asked is daltonic, she may object, "no, that object is brown; either you are mistaken, or you are implying that 'red' and 'brown' are synonyms". Here, you perceive the answer, but you cannot put it into words. Is she entitled to deem you dishonest or unhinged?

The fourth definition is outright bizarre, and seems to be half-digested Scholastic malarkey, to be honest. The first definition is fairly empty.

And so we have three definitions, or three uses, that you don't deem either bizarre or empty. Isn't that enough to show that the word 'reality' has indeed an independent meaning, not being reducible to the expression 'in reality'?

To an extent, but as I said before, one or two instances of correct use do not imply that someone has grasped how the term is used.

It doesn't seem to follow.

As I have shown, the word car is already used to mean the flying vehicles in Jetson comics. But I wouldn't say that a person who never read Jetson comics and isn't aware of such use has not "grasped how the term is used" if she is able to use and understand the word in its several different and much more common uses.

No - but the term "electron" meant something else (that happened to not exist).

That's still highly problematic, though. While electrons were not like they were imagined at that time, they still were responsible for electric currents or covalent bonds, so the outdated concept of electrons meant something that actually existed (whatever moves in an electric current, whatever links atoms of oxygen in the molecule O2), even if not in the form of small solid spheres as one would have thought of them some time ago.

Luís Henrique

Palmares

17th May 2013, 06:59

One could of course take a somewhat Korzybskian (is that even a word? What's the adjective from Korzybski?) approach to all this and argue that no ideas/concepts/perceptions/intuitions whatsoever can be expressed linguistically. The map is not the territory and all that jazz, assuming the idea/concept/perception/intuition is the territory and language is the map representing it. But then technically speaking the idea is already a map, so that would leave us with a map of a map of a territory...ah...

I actually think there is some credence to this.

Given we are talking about words (that are "unspeakable", or similar), I think it's also inevitable we venture into semantics. Linguistics, knamean.

For me, analysing how words themselves, thus language, are merely representations stems from a general analysis of alienation. Just as Marx talked of the alienation of the proletariat from the fruit of their labour, and the situationists with the spectacle (the very essense of analysing representations), there are also those critiquing language itself.

This isn't to necessarily language is not worthy of use (and of course language encompasses more than simply words), but at the very least for the awareness of what is a representation, and what is "real".

Language is descriptive. We experience the world through our senses. We translate these experiences into concepts, and communicate thus to others for recognition of thus experiences. In this way, we are using language as a tool.

Having sex is certainly alot better than being told about the experience of sex.

But then again, the question of this thread is about expression linguistically.

What is the purpose of language? What is language?

And then the word cannot.

False dichotomy? :confused:

What is it that we can express? What is expression?

With the plethora of words, languages, we can express alot of things. That is obvious. We can express things well. We can express things not so well.

Alot of men I know can't express their feelings. Infact, I think they can (unless they have a speaking disability), they simply don't.

Alot of men I know don't express their feelings.

If there's a word (or a symbol?) for it, that is an expression, linguistically, of that given concept.

But like others I believe already mentioned, some words and/or concepts don't exist between different languages, so in that case, thus cannot be expressed, linguistically (in that language). Yet.

Phew... goddamn semantics...

LuÃs Henrique

11th June 2013, 15:37

That is simply an example of someone having an incorrect notion about the common use of the word. It might be mildly amusing - though note that English is not a first language to many people on this site - but it really isn't the same as redefining widely understood words left and right, something many philosophers are guilty of, including prominent figures such as Spinoza or Plato.

Here is another example (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2628023&postcount=11) of someone having an incorrect notion about the common use of a word - or, in this case, of a phrase:

I find it's often best to abandon terminology like "free time." The whole notion of freedom involves numerous assumptions and axioms.

But here it seems more clear that such incorrect notion about the common use of the phrase "free time" is caused not by practical ignorance of the English language, but directly by ideological blinders related to the (mis)use of "ordinary language philosophy".

Luís Henrique

LuÃs Henrique

12th June 2013, 01:32

One could of course take a somewhat Korzybskian (is that even a word?

If it wasn't, now it is. Thanks for coining it!

Luís Henrique

Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk

12th June 2013, 01:35

LACAN - SYMBOLIC ORDER (perhaps)

language itself is arbitrary, so most concepts are only expressed arbitrarily when you boil it down to that.