The Babble of Babies
It's perhaps fair to say that our 'spontaneous', everyday approach to language is to hold 'adult' language as the standard to which all use of language ought to conform. Or, to make a slightly stronger claim, that the adult use of language just is what it means to use language, and every other manner of language use is in some way deficient, derivetive, or a distortion of the 'proper' way of using language (communicating information between interlocutors, making claims, arguing over claims, etc - in short, conveying sense intersubjectively). In more technical terms, we can say that we tend to think of the development of our linguistic ability in terms of a teleology where the ultimate aim, as it were, is to speak properly. As a pragmatic approach to language, this makes sense. It is awfully useful to be able to speak properly in order to interact with other people, to achieve certain goals, and so on. Viewed philosophically however, it is in fact quite problematic to think of language along these lines.
In order to see why this is, it is useful to look at the development of language as it proceeds from the babble of babies to full blown 'grown up' language. What's of interest here is that language as we (adults) know it is primarily the result of a process of elimination - where what is 'eliminated' is the free-play of babbling, cooing and squealing noises into a set of narrower, constrained set of well-ordered phonemes that in fact constitute 'well spoken' language. Citing the results of the neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux, the philosopher Adrian Johnston puts it like this: "Through interactions with the environment, especially the social milieus of language-using adult others, the infant is prompted to pare down the proliferating plethora of noises of its baby tongue... so as to give voice to... the mother tongue into which he/she is being inducted..."
Johnston continues, "In other words, early childhood language acquisition isn’t so much a matter of building up [a language]; it’s more a matter of tearing down and eliminating (or, more accurately, attempting to eliminate) the nonsensical meanderings and ramblings of [infantile babbling], of the cognitive games [of enjoyment that] plays with the vocal apparatus." (Johnston, "Affects are Signifiers"). To the extent that this is the case, one is forced to revise - if not altogether reverse - the traditional understanding of language painted above: rather than consider deviations from proper language use as deviations from a rule, one instead ought to recognize the derivitive nature of (apparently) proper language use. To use language 'properly' is in fact to use language in an incredibly peculiar manner. A moment's reflection makes this quite obvious - the sheer number of different languages in the world attest to peculiarity of any one particular tongue.
This small 'course correction' in our consideration of language, although seemingly obvious from a certain perspective, does in fact have some rather interesting philosophical ramifications. Specifically, it renders moot any attempt to try and secure a fabled 'extra-linguistic' reality by means of (proper) language alone. It does this not in order to institute an ever strengthened linguistic idealism, but to exorcise idealism from language once and for all: by relativizing 'proper language' as an instance of a wider, more generalized phenomenon, the very status of language itself is rendered 'extra-linguistic', making irrelevant any attempt to secure or reject metaphysical theses based on 'intra-linguistic' moves alone. That is, how language 'refers to things', how it 'touches' the world becomes a non-issue: proper language is here understood instead to be constitutively related to an 'outside' which would allow language as such to function in the first place. Or rather, the very notion of an 'outside' or an 'inside' of language is deprived of sense, to the degree that language is always-already situated beyond itself and in relation to a milieu of human and even non-human action (a certain vocalization, intersubjective interaction, social convention and semantic resonances, etc).
*These conclusions are more or less continuous with my other, recent threads on autistic experience and the limits of language, only approached from a different angle - babies! Apologies if this is getting a bit old hat.
In order to see why this is, it is useful to look at the development of language as it proceeds from the babble of babies to full blown 'grown up' language. What's of interest here is that language as we (adults) know it is primarily the result of a process of elimination - where what is 'eliminated' is the free-play of babbling, cooing and squealing noises into a set of narrower, constrained set of well-ordered phonemes that in fact constitute 'well spoken' language. Citing the results of the neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux, the philosopher Adrian Johnston puts it like this: "Through interactions with the environment, especially the social milieus of language-using adult others, the infant is prompted to pare down the proliferating plethora of noises of its baby tongue... so as to give voice to... the mother tongue into which he/she is being inducted..."
Johnston continues, "In other words, early childhood language acquisition isn’t so much a matter of building up [a language]; it’s more a matter of tearing down and eliminating (or, more accurately, attempting to eliminate) the nonsensical meanderings and ramblings of [infantile babbling], of the cognitive games [of enjoyment that] plays with the vocal apparatus." (Johnston, "Affects are Signifiers"). To the extent that this is the case, one is forced to revise - if not altogether reverse - the traditional understanding of language painted above: rather than consider deviations from proper language use as deviations from a rule, one instead ought to recognize the derivitive nature of (apparently) proper language use. To use language 'properly' is in fact to use language in an incredibly peculiar manner. A moment's reflection makes this quite obvious - the sheer number of different languages in the world attest to peculiarity of any one particular tongue.
This small 'course correction' in our consideration of language, although seemingly obvious from a certain perspective, does in fact have some rather interesting philosophical ramifications. Specifically, it renders moot any attempt to try and secure a fabled 'extra-linguistic' reality by means of (proper) language alone. It does this not in order to institute an ever strengthened linguistic idealism, but to exorcise idealism from language once and for all: by relativizing 'proper language' as an instance of a wider, more generalized phenomenon, the very status of language itself is rendered 'extra-linguistic', making irrelevant any attempt to secure or reject metaphysical theses based on 'intra-linguistic' moves alone. That is, how language 'refers to things', how it 'touches' the world becomes a non-issue: proper language is here understood instead to be constitutively related to an 'outside' which would allow language as such to function in the first place. Or rather, the very notion of an 'outside' or an 'inside' of language is deprived of sense, to the degree that language is always-already situated beyond itself and in relation to a milieu of human and even non-human action (a certain vocalization, intersubjective interaction, social convention and semantic resonances, etc).
*These conclusions are more or less continuous with my other, recent threads on autistic experience and the limits of language, only approached from a different angle - babies! Apologies if this is getting a bit old hat.
Comments (93)
I don't think it is all about discrimination or elimination. It starts off as mimicry, cooing back to the mother. Discrimination or elimination seem to be a latter development.
Great quote. And I hasten to say that I don't disagree - if anything, these sorts of studies underline just the point of the OP: that the use of language we tend to call proper is indeed a derivitive mode of language use. Indeed, one of the points made in the Johnston article I cite is that these 'material' aspects of language ("babbling infants joyfully and idiotically reveling in the bodily pleasures of pure, senseless sounds") must be attended to if we are to properly understand what it means use language. In a psychoanalytic key, Johnston continues, "an infant’s babbling, prior to his/her acquisition of and accession to language as a system of signifying signs employed in exchanges of ideas, frequently involves playing with phonemic elements of his/her auditory milieu as meaningless materials to be enjoyed for the sensations they produce in the libidinally charged orifices of the mouth (when vocalized) or the ears (when heard)."
In fact, if one is to take the studies you cite seriously, one should perhaps be careful in calling these cooing and warblings 'senseless': the different intonations of the babies cries seem to testify to another sort of sense at work, a sense that belongs to a different - sensual - order than the rationalist notions of sense that we tend to be accustomed too (and that are associated with language-proper). In the psychoanalytic literature, this type of sense if often referred to as jouis-sense, a 'enjoyment-sense' that revels in the rhythms of assonance and mimicry that constitute the babbling of babies. Maxine Sheets-Johnston, in her studies on movement, in fact decries those positions which attributes sense only to linguistic structures, and notes that for infants, sense primarily takes form in the mode of movement:
"Not only did we all learn to walk and to speak, but prior to these fundamental “I cans,” we all discovered ourselves in the acts of sucking, swallowing, crying, kicking, turning, stretching, reaching, smiling, babbling, and much, much more. In the process of discovering ourselves in all these ways, we expanded our repertoire of “I cans”; we learned possibilities of movement and became progressively aware of our capacity to move effectively with respect to these possibilities — by moving ourselves." Language here can be seen to be one specific type of precisely these 'learned possibilities', one grounded in a far more primordial experience according to which "quality [and hence sense - SX] is both fundamental and fundamentally kinetic. Before language creeps in and a typically Western adulthood settles us down to a blindered and reductive ... outlook, we perceive a world abounding in quality and we sense ourselves moving in qualitative ways." (Sheets-Johnston, The Primacy of Movement)
Again, the point is language as we know it is developmentally continuous, rooted in a world of which it is one element among a vast assemblage of things, movements, bodies, institutions and so on. One can't treat language as a reified world-unto-itself without ignoring the very conditions by which language can be what it is.
Yes, I agree with what you wrote. I think simple things such as an infants instinctual grasping of objects become cognitive over its maturation. If I remember correctly, Jean Piaget proposed that this reflex as well as other reflexes are transformed over into the cognitive realm as a child matures out of its earliest stages of development. Isn't this what Lacan calls the "Real"?
Quoting StreetlightXFollowing up on the above, I think it would be more accurate to say that we tend to think of the learning of a specific language (like English) in terms of a teleology where the ultimate aim is to speak that language properly (where "properly" means something like "in accord with the relevant set of intersubjectively developed conventions"). The further contention that this just is what it means to speak properly, or that it is the only way to speak properly, seems unfounded. And ascribing it to the general populace seems to misunderstand their intentions in teaching language to others. If a parent tries teaching a child English and they come out speaking German, then the parent will be frustrated even if the child speaks "adult" German flawlessly. Similarly, a German teacher will not accept "but I am speaking properly according to the conventions of adult English" as an excuse for being unable to utter a single complete sentence in German.
Quoting StreetlightXI'm pretty sure that I am as capable of doing this as I ever was. So the ability hasn't really been eliminated. I've just learned that in order to communicate with others, I have two options: use one of the existing set of linguistic conventions, or forge a new one. The former is much easier (and the only one made explicit to me by my parents), so I went with that. But there are certainly people who attempt the second option from time to time.
Quoting StreetlightXI think there might be an illegitimate shift going on here. That the use of any given language is peculiar (in the sense of unusual) due to the number of languages doesn't seem to be evidence for the claim that using (a) language in "properly" or in the "adult" way is peculiar (in any sense—and certainly not in the same sense given that it is quite ordinary for people to speak "adult" languages).
Quoting StreetlightXI have no idea what you mean by "secure" here. And unless it is being used as an odd synonym for "describe," I'm not sure what or whose project you might be objecting to. I'm also curious whether "fabled 'extra-linguistic' reality" is supposed to mean that you don't think there is any such thing as an extra-linguistic reality. Indeed, it would seem problematic for your argument if you did think such a thing when combined with other things you seem to think are true about language. Specifically, if there is no extra-linguistic reality, and if our language declares everything other than "proper" language to not be language, then there's no way of refuting such declarations. You can only get people to agree to new conventions (which changes what is true without refuting what was true), and anyone who wants to resist the change can dismiss your claims as nonsense until you succeed in shifting the intersubjective agreement.
Quoting StreetlightXAgain, this doesn't seem like anything revolutionary. So if you are trying to undermine an existing tradition, it is unclear how this move helps.
Quoting StreetlightXI have no idea what this means. Was the status of language itself ever not extra-linguistic? The status of language is the status of language. That it may be described a certain way within the language doesn't make the status itself intra-linguistic.
Quoting StreetlightXI am again curious who the target is here. I can think of at least two opposing traditions that might both be seen as being in your sights here (both the ordinary language tradition and the metaphysicians of the post-Positivism/post-linguistic turn era). I suppose the moves you make might be a bit more relevant against the ordinary language movement, but that's more or less dead among contemporary philosophers. Contemporary metaphysicians, on the other hand, would deny that they are attempting to secure or reject metaphysical theses based on intra-linguistic moves alone.
Quoting StreetlightXAnd again, I don't see how this follows. I have impressions I don't need words for, and things that I cannot describe in words. So it seems I still have room for understanding something as outside of any language I know (and thus something that can be outside language, even if there might be some language that can describe it even though mine cannot).
Ultimately, it is unclear what you are trying to get at here. But I'm less concerned about the conclusion (indeed, some of what I've written might be seen as helping that along) than I am with the argument for it.
That's fair enough PB. I guess I didn't name any explicit targets because A) I'm trying to aim at broader tendencies and attitudes in philosophy than any one particular position, and B) I meant this thread as a continuation of some themes I've been exploring and poking at in some other recent threads I've posted. Specifically, I'm interested in the perceived overlap between language and sense, and my 'target' are those positions which conceive of sense as a strictly linguistic phenomenon. In both this thread and the one on autism, I'm interested in looking at phenomena which exhibit sense while at the same time exceeding the linguistic sphere as we know it (the babble of babies, the movements of austistics) - thereby breaking the correlation between sense and language. There are at least two ramifications I want to draw from this:
1. First, it allows us to precisely specify the status of language as simply one element among a broader world wherein it holds no particularly special place. This perhaps seems rather commonsense, but it short-circuits the vulgar arguments about how we can never 'get outside of language' or how 'language can only refer to language', fueling the fires of some varieties of linguistic idealism. This is why speaking about the status of language matters: it's no good to say 'the status of language is the status of language': if we don't situate it among a broader plane of sense which extends beyond - or rather through - it, you can lapse into positions which treat language in abstracto, divorced from it's evolutionary-developmental history.
2. Second, it paves the way for a naturalization of sense. The question of sense is a particularly vexed one in philosophy, insofar as - excepting religious discourse which tries to attribute some conceptually incoherent and divinely ordained 'meaning' to the world - sense is very often understood to be some sort of 'subjective' veneer thrown over an asensate 'objective' state of affairs. But if we can untether sense from language, we can begin to understand sense as more than just a sort of subjective epiphenomenon that tends to be tied to language in it's syntactic, grammar-bound (and hence 'merely' human) form. One can begin to speak of an alinguistic sense that is operative at the level of bodies - whether it be in the movements of autistics or the tonal inflections of crying babies.
Both Sheets-Johnston, who I quote here, and Erin Manning, who I cite in the thread on autism, speak, for example, of a manner of thought that occurs as movement; movement here not understood merely as a displacement in space, but as an active relational engagement with an environment. This is why I refer to language as being constituted by more than 'adult' language - language which extends beyond the rule-governed rationalist conception we tend to understand it by, and which is instead operative at the level of sensation and affectivity. By paying attention to the liminal cases of sense - the movement-language of autistics and the jouissance inflected language of babies - we can see how so-called 'normal' language is simply a subspecies of a wider genera of naturalized sense production which has it's roots deep in an affective-coporeal realm which is often overlooked in reflections on language. I'm clearly not addressing you point by point here, but I just wanna give a taste of the motivations at work in the OP.
Quoting StreetlightXAh, I see. From what you had written above, it seemed like you were arguing in favor of linguistic idealism (which would thereby increase my sense that what I was reading was both confused and confusing).
Quoting StreetlightXAre you thinking of Frege here? Because I don't think this would be an accurate representation of what he's getting at when he talks about senses and referents. Even the Lockean can accept both a radical conventionalism and the claim that sense can be naturalized (since the conventions grow out of something external even we ultimately gain control of them to the point where we gain an awareness and control of speaker meaning). So maybe you have someone else in mind?
Quoting StreetlightXI think my real problem here is that I just can't think of a currently popular position that denies this. But again, this might be due to my academic milieu. Contemporary analytic philosophy of language has been so given over to evolutionary explanations that the notion of sense as a subjective epiphenomenon has no foothold.
Quoting StreetlightXI think that's the proper strategy. Maybe I just need to go back and read the other threads because I'm clearly still missing something important.
Also, the quoted passages in the OP seem to beat a dead horse of "Language is about restrictions and rules and smothers the free play of the child's naive mind!" Well, okay, but what are we supposed to do with that?
That being said, one seems to learn the particular sorts of nonverbal communication that normally come with spoken language before one learns the actual words. This toddler can't quite talk yet, but she has no problem carrying on an argument with her father:
Not in the slightest. Constraints are always enabling constraints: their valence is entirely positive to the degree that 'restrictions' on the free play of language always always for new and far more complex moves to be made, not less. To eliminate is to enable. The account given in the OP is descriptive, not prescriptive, it's not a 'judgement' of language, it's just stating how it is. I think you're projecting things here.
My real question is this: how does your conclusion follow from your observations at the beginning? Are you just observing that language is derived from a more general set of behaviors? I'd grant that, but I'm not sure how this eliminates problems in philosophy of language; I could observe that the practice of mathematics is derivative of symbol manipulation, and then make some argument about how symbol manipulation is derivative of pre-rational behavior. None of this would inform me as to whether or not Platonism is true, however.
(Apologies if the foregoing is a bit cranky-sounding. I've been in a rotten mood lately and may be engaging in some semantic passive-aggression of my own.)
The toddler knows tone and gesture as meaningful sans words, and for us to read words is to reanimate them in order to understand them, as one reads music...
And more so for the autistic - she uses it (her language) on the world, waving to the flag or the wind, scratching to the roughness, t(r)ickling to the water, singing the resonances of the room. Thus is the world structured and stabilised.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that puddles mean jumping in them. And laughing.
"To make metaphysics out of spoken language is to make language convey what it does not normally convey. That is to use it in a new, exceptional and unusual way, to give it it's full, physical shock potential, to split it up and distribute it actively in space, to treat inflections in a completely tangible manner and restore their shattering power and really to manifest something; to turn language and its basely utilitarian, one might almost say alimentary, sources, against its origins as a hunted beast, and finally to consider language in the form of Incantation." (Antonin Artaud, "Metaphysics and the Mise en Scene")
Like this:
Interesting you say that because the traditions that I draw these ideas from are almost exactly these two quarters: 'postmodernism' and Wittgensteinian approaches to language. With the so-called 'post-modern' authors in particular, alot of the furor directed at their ideas was based precisely on the misunderstanding of their affirmation that sense extended far beyond the linguistic realm. People thought that this meant something like 'everything is language', when in fact, it meant the exact opposite: that language as we know it is in fact just an exemplary subdomain of sense, the study of which would allow us to cast light on phenomena not traditionally understood as linguistic. Frankly, I'm not convinced that the ramifications of their insights have been truly absorbed, even today.
Quoting Postmodern Beatnik
Perhaps this is a symptom of what I mean when I say that these insights haven't been absorbed. When I said that one shouldn't speak of an 'extra-linguistic reality', this is because the whole point is to dispute the very idea of a sharp (a priori) diving line between what would constitute the linguistic and the non-linguistic. At the very least, such a division would be one that would be instituted historically, institutionally, pragmatically, for the sake of setting down some limits to analysis. We have to change not just what we think but how we think: we can no longer naively appeal to categories like 'inside' and 'outside' (of language - or thought, for that matter), without qualifying ourselves. It's one thing to say that one recognizes the evolutionary-developmental rootedness of language. It's another to pursue it's implications all the way.
I don't think the classical problems are simply regarding how to 'bridge' the 'divide' between language and reality but between, for example, the string of symbols "chair" and the thing upon which I'm sat. I think it obvious that language is an "instance" of reality (which I assume just means that language is a real thing that really happens) but less clear is how this "instance" relates to some other (often very specific) "instance".
But once you cash language out as a kind of significant behavior - as an action - it's no less puzzling than how me pointing to a chair 'refers' to a chair. Frankly, my pointing doesn't 'refer' to anything whatsoever. My pointing gesture is not a 'stand in' for the chair any more than the string of symbols 'chair' is. Instead, for me to understand what your pointing 'means' is just for me to be able to act or react to your gesture in the appropriate manner, given the particular circumstance in which the pointing has taken place. This is why it pays to 'dissolve' language into a wider realm of significance in general: it allows us to show just how wrongheaded it is to ask how a string of symbols 'relates' to something. It's not the string of symbols that's doing the relating - I am, insofar as I am a product of an education which has thought me how to use language and act appropriately in certain circumstances of those usages (to respond correctly, etc).
Think about, for example, how I know I can't walk through walls. The wall holds a particular significance with respect to my body - try as I might, I've learnt that it ain't gonna happen. Similarly, I learn that to use language in a certain way - to say this, rather than that - is to afford certain outcomes, to bring about certain states of affairs. The wall doesn't 'refer' to my inability to walk through it any more than words 'refer' to things. Instead, I come to know the significance of both the wall and the inky scribble arranged just-so on the page in front of me. In each case I have a practical knowledge of things, a way of moving about the room in one case, a way of responding appropriately in the other. This dimension of praktognosis (practical knowledge) and it's importance is very hard to parse if one treats language in isolation without recognizing it's imbrication with the world.
The problem is the "how" is entirely absence. When we use language, nothing manifests which specifies now word is talking about a particular thing. It is always already embedded within the language. If I use the string of symbols "chair" to talk about something, what I reference is already contained in my language use. In this usage of "chair," I understand what the string "chair" is talking about, and so does anyone else who is using the same language as me. No bridge exists. Asking what it looks like will always come-up empty because it isn't there. One is asking for a description the treasure chest as it appears in an empty room, which is a futile question of contradiction.
In succinct terms, there is no relation. A use of language exists and someone either knows what it talking about (they make use of it) or they do not (they do no know what the language is saying).
For me the critical aspect is dropping the idea of "deriving." All the controversy about the meaning of language pivots on the idea of "deriving" what language means or references.
Supposedly, there aspect of our world which enables language to mean and refer, which then allows us to infer what language means from outside language. Using "chair" to talk about the object I'm sitting on, for example, is thought to need some sort of outside support, or else we are left with a "mystery" of what language means and how we speak about anything with language. The problem of "mystery" is created entirely by taking the assumption language is derived.
In a critical sense, the difference between language and reality is linguistic. It means that, by it definition, our language talks about reality. "Chair" means and refers to a specific instance of the world. And we (who use the language) know it does and can talk about it. "Mystery" is nonsensical. We have language and we know what it means. Language is its own state of the world (i.e. not "derived") and it, as an existing state, it talks about reality (making all of reality and its differences "linguistic" ) .
And I would probably agree with this. I was just pointing out that your account of the classical problems seemed imprecise. They're not over how language relates to reality but over how language relates to other parts of reality. One of the prominent classical problems is that of the notion of "correspondence". A statement (e.g. "the chair is in the other room") is true if something else -- something other than the empirical use of the language and any associated significant behaviour -- is the case. Your account, rather than making this problem "less pressing", just seems to reject this notion of correspondence, which rather than having no ontological import, has a rather significant one. As your account seems to explain (or "dissolve") the meaning and truth of such a statement in (immediate?) empirical and conceptual terms it seems to imply the sort of idealism or anti-realism that you claim to deny.
1. Meaning and truth of statements like "the chair exists" is being tied up in/is dependent on empirical and conceptual behaviours/events rather than something else.
2. ???
3. Therefore this account is anti-realist/idealist.
Because that's what it means to be a realist, as per Dummett's account in Realism where he coined the term "anti-realism" as the rejection of this view.
Many say that a statement is true if it corresponds to some verification-transcendent state-of-affairs (i.e. something "above and beyond" experience and ideas and language-use). This is the traditional realist view, and it's the one I reject (hence why I'm an anti-realist). And it's because your account also rejects such a thing that it is anti-realist (as per Dummett's coinage).
Fitch proved it, remember? At least, if you want to preserve non-omniscience. Kek!
The suggestion that learning language primarily consists in paring down possibilities rather than acquiring new capacities is so profoundly ignorant I don't think it deserves comment.
Of course it does. Anti-realism is, by definition, a rejection of realism. If you reject the realist notion that truth is verification-transcendent then you are anti-realist.
Of course it's not. You're addressing the classical problems, and one of the most prominent classical problems is regarding the correspondence notion of truth and the account of reference where words "stand in" for other (often non-experiential, non-conceptual, non-linguistic) things. The people who call themselves realists do so because they are in favour of such accounts. And to reject these realist accounts is to be anti-realist.
It seems to me that you want to reject the substance of traditional realist theories and yet retain the realist label. Why?
About what? That realism argues in favour of verification-transcendent truth or that anti-realism rejects this? You can make a case for the former but certainly not the latter as he coined the term. If you make a (successful) case for the former then we run into the confusing situation where those realist theories which reject verification-transcendent truths are also anti-realist theories.
Premise 1. To be anti-realist is to reject verification-transcendent truths
Premise 2. Your position rejects verification-transcendent truths
Conclusion. Therefore, your position is anti-realist
A realist may reject verification transcendent truths without rejecting verification transcendent actualities and verification transcendent speculations or inferences.
In any case, if you have nohing to add other than bicker over labels as insubstantial as these, I might have to end our conversation here I think.
Sure, but the question is then on what else is needed. Is language -- and the empirical contexts in which it's used -- sufficient? Or is something which transcends empirical (or conceptual) verification required? The realist argues for the latter and the anti-realist argues for the former. Your account seems to argue for the former, hence why I characterize it as anti-realist. The meaning and truth of "the chair exists" is not to be understood or explained in terms of correspondence to some mind-independent state of affairs but in terms of linguistic conventions and observable behaviours and conceptual significance. It all sounds anti-realist to me.
But that involves more than a semantic distinction. It's a distinction between different states of the world. In pointing out states of language are not what language talks about, one is drawing a distinction between two different things in the world. One is is talking about two different forms of ontology, not merely a difference in what words mean.
The mereological language you use - parts and wholes - simply betrays the fact that your attempt to acknowledge that language is part of the world is merely lip service. You still treat language as if it were a realm unto it's own, ignoring the trans-linguistic implications of sense and the way in which sense is the outcome of a process whose elements cannot be neatly partitioned into 'language' and 'everything else'. To isolate language and ask of it the sorts of questions you want to ask is to fracture sense and deal instead with a dead fragment rather than a living process of sense. It's posing malformed questions motivated by artificial problems.
I think this is wrong, as a matter of fact, or at least radically incomplete. The babbling stage is imitative and thus eliminative, and I vaguely remember some studies that find that in the process certain distinctions are lost in favour of refining others, such that important sounds in one language cannot be distinguished if one has not heard them at the early stage.
Nevertheless, there is a magical realisation that I seem to see, that babble is not just babble, but means something. The first word moment is easily missed amongst the babble that sounds vaguely appropriate, but I think it is a step-change. There is an awakening to significance that is mutual - to in some rather interesting way 'another world'.
If it is not another world, then perhaps after all we are just babbling to each other.
It makes me wonder if there are others who suppose it might be the there way around?
Meow!
GREG
You cannot bring-up a "semantic" distinction before this ontological one because talk about existence required to describe the distinction between the state of existence of the language "chair" and the state of the chair. If you only bring-up a "semantic" discintion, one which is only relevant to the "realm of language," you fail to talk about the difference of the two states of the world.
Suggesting language is of some other "realm" is, indeed, not required. It is a grievous error in fact; a position which commits one to ignore the significant of language in the world.
You are, however, insisting on making this distinction of language as another realm. At every turn you are trying to insist that the distinction of the world you are describing (i.e about existing states, talking about something with ontological significance) is merely semantic, as if your description was in some realm outside existence (ontology) and had nothing to do with it, as if what you are saying wasn't talking about the world. Just about every single discussion we've had on this topic has you proclaiming your language doesn't need to be about the world (i.e. only semantic), even though it is both of the world and is actually talking about it (and so, by definition, is about "ontology" ).
StreetlightX's point is you have already assumed language ("Hey, its only semantic. Distinction in the world is unnecessary" ) is of a separate realm and so you are completely missing the worldly nature of language.
The point is distinction in the world (i.e. "of ontology") is necessary. Not in the sense of a "foundation," as if language needed something outside itself to ground its meaning, but rather as a feature of language itself. Language which draws distinction between things in the world, such as instance of language and what those talk about, is saying something about what exists. One cannot have language which is only of the "semantic" realm. Such different realms are not only unnecessary, but are impossible by the nature of language itself. Language was of the world from it emergence and is always contained within this sole realm.
This is the very discintion, between the "realm" of the world and the "realm" of language, which you are supposedly proclaiming is unnecessary. Here you insist must be made.
Parts of language don't fall into the domain of the world. It all does. Any use of language is a state of the world. Parts of the world don't sit outside the domain of the language either. We may use language to talk about any part of the world.
Cavacava raised a similar point which I addressed in my reply to him on the first page.
Quoting StreetlightX
Yes, we disagree; it is discontinuous, as awakening is discontinuous with dreaming. It is precisely the initiation into a shared world, an awakening from the private world.
In the video in the autism thread, the section marked 'translation' is no translation. It declares that there is meaning and then refuses to share it. Well perhaps there is another awakening which I have not had, but then there is another world to which I have no access.
If one spends time with folks whose language one does not speak, one becomes very sensitive to emotional tone, to the relationships expressed by looks and gestures. One sees intimacies that the speakers have forgotten they are expressing and do not consciously read in each other. And this happens because one is ejected from the world of linguistic meaning back into the bar-bar world of the barbarians.
I didn't say that (only) parts of language fall within the domain of the world. I said that (only) parts of the world fall within the domain of language. Not every "state of the world" is language-use.
When I say that parts of the world don't fall within the domain of language I am saying that there are things in the world which aren't words or gestures or other examples of language-use. When I talk about a chair I am not talking about language.
I haven't said anything like this. What I've said is that one can distinguish between language and its subject matter without invoking metaphysics. The word "chair" and the chair are defined as different things. In making this distinction I'm not treating language and the world as belonging to separate ontological realms. Both the word "chair" and the chair are real things in the real world.
You ignored my previous objection, so I will try again.
A realist could reject verification-transcendent truth (in the sense of acknowledging that we cannot understand what it means to say that a statement about something which could not be verified (even in principle) could be true, without necessarily rejecting verification-transcendent actuality.
Having said this, though, even in regard to verification-transcendent truth, I think we all believe there are such. If I say to you "Remember that online debate we had about realism/anti-realism last Friday, but of which there is now no record since Philosophy Forums crashed and all the posts were lost, and you say "No, we never had any debate last Friday", don't you believe that it is simply either true of false that we had such a debate, even though it can never be verified (i.e. even though it is a verification-transcendent truth/falsity we are dealing with)?
When I say that parts of the world don't fall within the domain of language I am saying that there are things in the world which aren't words or gestures or other examples of language-use. When I talk about a chair I am not talking about language.[/quote]
The problem is this is misleading. It creates the sense of separation between your language and the world which isn't there. When you talk about a chair, you are still speaking language and as such the world (the chair) is in the domain of language.
No doubt there are things which aren't language use, but this instance of speech is not one of them. When you talk about a chair, you are speaking language and what you are talking about (in this case a chair) falls within the domain of language (things spoken about in language).
Indeed, but the relevant question here is what constitutes the discintion between two existing states. A metaphysical argument is not need to make the distinction, but that doesn't mean the distinction has nothing to with existence. In pointing out the distinction, you are identifying to different states of the world. You are pointing to a rock (language) and a tree (chair) and saying: "There is an existing rock (language). There is an existing tree (chair)."
One cannot distinguish between the two states without invoking a description of what exists. The distinction, what you are talking about, is about the world rather than just language. It is not merely "semantic." And talking only in semantics (e.g. "chair" does not mean "language speaking about chair" ) will never draw this distinction between things in the world, for it only talks about what language can logically mean (i.e. semantics is metaphysics ). We might not need metaphysics to draw the distinction between two states of existence, but that doesn't mean we are only making a semantic discintion.
In splitting the discintion in terms of "semantics" and "metaphysics" you have created to realms which aren't relevant to it. The discintion in question is pointing out states of the world. It is neither semantic nor metaphysical. It doesn't even make sense to ask the question: "Do we need to argue semantics or metaphysics to draw this distinction?" The discintion, what the language is talking about, is of the world. You are ignoring this so long as you envision the distinction as a question of using semantics or metaphysics.
The language or "chair" and the chair aren't merely defined as different things (semantics), they exist as different things.
The former (semantic) discintion only identifies that the meaning of language about a chair and a chair are different. It doesn't actually point out the difference between two states of existence. It fails to point out the difference between the presence of someone speaking about a chair and the presence of the chair they are speaking about. It doesn't talk about any state of existence at all.
This is an encapsulation of the separation between language and the world you are still holding. The point is this “classical” problem has never been an issue. It only arose because people ignore what language does and what the world is.
Words have never “stood” in for things in the world. They have only ever talked about them. “Correspondence/coherence” between words and the world has only ever meant that someone words are speaking about something which exists. It has never been about replacing states of existence. Just talking about them.
Things are only non-linguistic, non-experiential and non-conceptual in the sense that they are different states of existence to experiences, language and concepts we have about them.
A rock, for example, is non-linguistic, non-experiential and non-conceptual in that the object is not the existence of our language, concept or experience of the rock(i.e. the difference between an existing object and language about the object).
The rock, however, still falls in the domain of the language, concepts and experience. We may talk about it, think about it and experience it. In terms of language, concepts and experience, the object of the rock is significant. Just because things aren’t language, doesn’t mean they have no significance in language. The resolution of the realist/anti-realist debate comes in rejecting the separation between language and the world, while at the same time regaining the differences between language and the things the talk about. The “classical problem” is cut-off before it even begins
(and this is also the reason for direct realism: the unexperienced rock exists as it would be experienced, for it has its significance in experience, concepts and language, even as it is distinct from those states of experience of the rock- which is why it is an unknown rock).
And what about the truth of "there exists a verification-transcendent actuality"? Presumably to be consistent one would have to say that this statement is made true by something which transcends verification? Hence a verification-transcendent truth.
If one were to instead say that the statement is made true by something which doesn't transcend verification – if it's (wholly) made true by experience and linguistic conventions and conceptual models – then the existence of this verification-transcendent actuality doesn't really satisfy metaphysical realism.
I'd either say that it's true or say that it's false. But this is just to engage with the language-game I've learnt to use. When asked a question I consider the things I've seen (or am seeing) and the things I've been told and respond with the most appropriate answer. Nothing about this requires accepting the realist's verification-transcendent truth.
[quote=Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language, Dirk Greimann and Geo Siegwart]His, I assume, strongest argument, the manifestation argument, begins
with the quite plausible claim that a theory of meaning is a theory of
understanding. After all, to understand a linguistic item is to grasp its
meaning. Obviously, the theory must explain in what the understanding of
the language consists. [b]Understanding a sentence, Dummett contends, is not
an inner mental state, but a practical ability, an ability to manifest a certain
sort of behavior, If one understands a sentence, one must be able to man-
ifest that understanding. For our grasp of the meaning of a sentence con-
sists in our ability to make correct uses of it.[/b] The public communicability of
language requires that meanings are accessible to speakers of the language.
So far, so good. Then, however, Dummett goes on to identify the practical
ability to make use of a statement with the recognitional capacity to verify or
falsify that statement. To understand a statement one must be able to
recognize certain situations as verifying the assertion of the statement. This
identi?cation, requiring as it does an association between individual sen-
tences and particular recognizable wordly conditions which justify them,
seems to me to be the crux of the argument. Here Dummett‘s epistemologi-
cal and, since he ties meaning to evidence and veri?cation, semantic anti-
holism become evident. On this basis, he tries to establish that statements
can only have veri?cation conditions because a statement that had objective
recognition-transcendent truth conditions could not be understood. [b]Our
knowledge of the recognition-transcendent truth conditions of statements
can never be manifested in our exercise of the practical abilities which constitute
our understanding of those statements[/b]. Thus, knowledge of the meaning of
such “effectively undecidable" statements does not consist in knowledge of
their realist truth conditions. Rather, an understanding of a sentence can
only consist in knowledge of what counts as evidence for its truth.”[/quote]
Doesn't sound right to me. What is the recognitional capacity to verify or falsify "hello!". Or "I christen this ship 'Jane'"? This is the problem of course - even Dummett, the supposed arch-anti-realist about truth still assesses truth according to realist criteria (does truth have recognition-transcendent conditions or not?). The whole point of course, is to show the irrelevance of those criteria, to change the very terms of the debate. Sara Ellenbogen for example, in her excellent reconstruction of Wittgenstein's account of truth, writes of how Dummett's arguments "presuppose a commitment to a realist conception of truth. [His] belief... rests upon an assumption that the only thing that could make a given statement true is its correspondence with some segment of reality in virtue of which it is true.... it is only because Dummett assumes that the claim “p is true” amounts to the claim that there is something in virtue of which it is true that he is led to his antirealist conclusion, namely, that we treat certain statements as being true or false for which we can give no content to what our grasp of their truth conditions consists in."
Ellenbogen's solution - which is in fact a reading of Wittgenstein's own conception of truth - instead notes that we simply have the option of giving up on the realist's conception of truth altogether - something Dummett, for all his supposed 'anti-realism', is quite incapable of doing. And it precisely to this degree that "both sides of the realist/antirealist debate [are] part of the same metaphysical tradition. Antirealists follow Wittgenstein in rejecting the idea of transcendent truth, yet they remain very much implicitly committed to the realist view of truth that lies behind it. Therefore, in rejecting realism, they merely replace it with another view based on the same metaphysical assumption."
What is required is instead a different account of truth, one that rejects both sides of the anti/realist ledger in order to affirm that "to grasp a concept [like truth] is to have a practical mastery of the inferences it is involved in. It is to be aware of its role in justifying some further attitudes and in ruling out others.... For example, to learn the use of the word “red” is to learn to treat “This is red” as incompatible with “This is green,” as following from “This is scarlet,” and as entailing “This is colored.”" So too with truth - "the truth conditions of our statements are determined by... our conventional rules for predicating “is true” of them... once we conceive of learning the uses of “is true” as a matter of learning a certain practical mastery, the meaning we take our sentences to have is necessarily consistent with the use to which we put them. For we learn what it means to say [for example] that a past-tense statement p is true when we learn the [practical] criterion for judging its truth, that is, when we learn how to use the statement “p is true.” (Sara Ellenbogen, Wittgenstein's Account of Truth).
In other words, we learn to predicate truth of propositions in the same way learn to predicate color of things. By learning in what circumstances it is normally considered appropriate to make such predications. We learn to use language in a certain way, according to the circumstances which would allow ourselves to achieve what we set out to do with it (e.g. to testify in a trial ["It's true, he did it!"], hurt someone ["it's true that you're an asshole"], express affection ["I love you, it's true"] and so on). Truth is just a certain manner of using language. Like any other word. Anti/realism no more applies to it than the use of the word "apples", "pathbreaking" or "green". Truth is a word like any other.
Perhaps a better way to look at it is to understand the phrase "the recognitional capacity to verify or falsify that statement" as "the recognitional capacity to determine the correctness of using that statement." This then applies to greetings and christenings (there are times and places where such things are the wrong thing to say). And it's here where the distinction between realist and anti-realist is made; the anti-realist argues that the correctness of using statements is determined by the things we see and the things we say and the things we think whereas the realist argues that the correctness of using (some) statements (e.g. "there is a chair in the next room") is determined by something else (something verification-transcendent).
I don't see how "the truth conditions of our statements are determined by ... our conventional rules for predicating 'is true' of them" is any different to Dummett's account. It's a rejection of the realist's claim that truth conditions transcend verification. The truth of "there is a chair in the next room" is (wholly) determined by linguistic conventions and the empirical contexts in which language is put to use. Seems like anti-realism in a nutshell.
This is absurd because statements aren't made outside of the context of our experience. If we are asking about the correctness of a statement, we are always dealing with what we experience. The distinction you are worried about doesn't get off the ground in the first place.
A realist arguing a statement is true because a chair exists in the next room doesn't suggest a truth maker outside what we think and say. Indeed, it is just the opposite: if we are dealing with a true statement, then they entire point is we have said something about the world. The realist argues that truthmakers, the existence of state itself, which someone is talking about in language, is that which we are thinking and talking about.
But, I wasn't asking about what you would say. In the thought experiment you say that we did not have a debate last Friday and I say that we did. There is no way of verifying which of us is correct (the case is verification transcendent).
Are you claiming that since there is no way to verify which of us is right, that it cannot be the case that either of us are right, or that both of us are right? Or are you saying something else?
But there's nothing to be anti-realist about. What is different are the reasons for such a rejection. Dummett rejects them because he thinks that natural language is full of sentences whose truth conditions we would not be able to recognize as obtaining - meaning that one must reject a truth-conditional theory of meaning. I reject them because the very idea of truth conditions that can or cannot be recognized makes no sense. I don't reject the realist's claim that truth conditions transcend verification because it is false. I reject it because the very idea of truth as correspondence is literally senseless. It's like asking 'what does 'dichotomy' taste like?'. The question is malformed, and one cannot take a stance on it either way.
Dummett still thinks that truth is a matter of correspondence (here's Dummett: "the correspondence theory expresses one important feature of the concept of truth... that a statement is true only if there is something in the world in virtue of which it is true." He literally elevates this to a 'principle' he christens 'principle C'). Dummett's semantic-anti realism actually consists in the 'next step' he takes, when he goes on to argue that because meaning cannot be wholly parsed according to this theory of truth, then one must reject truth-conditional theories of meaning. But Dummett, like the realists he argues against, both have truth all wrong to begin with. Correspondence is not even at issue, it never was, it never will be. Truth simply doesn't work like that.
A way to think about it is like if two people had differing opinions on whether cars can blink. One is a blinkist, and another is an anti-blinkist. A third bloke comes along and says, hold on, the whole idea of cars blinking is ridiclious. He notes that sometimes people speak of cars as having 'blinkers' which indicate left and right, but they don't blink, at least not in the way of having eyelids and so on. After which the other two immidiately tell him that he's actually an anti-blinkist. There is a sense in which they are right, but only in a way that is completely trivial and inane. The anti/blinkists are not simply wrong - they are not even wrong.
Are you claiming that since there is no way to verify which of us is right, that it cannot be the case that either of us are right, or that both of us are right? Or are you saying something else?[/quote]
Either it is appropriate, given the empirical situation (memory, experience, and so on) and the rules of our language-game, to answer with "it's true" or it is appropriate to answer with "it's false" (or the appropriateness is debatable). One doesn't then need to say that there is some verification-transcendent fact-of-the-matter, independent of this appropriateness. The "verification" is the empirical situation and the language-game, not something else.
So what I would say is all that matters.
OK, so you are saying that you don't believe there is any fact of the matter?
I don't get this "not even wrong" thing. Surely either cars blink or they don't. Those who say that cars blink (the blinkers) are wrong and those who say that cars don't blink (the anti-blinkers) are right. The fact that "the whole idea of cars blinking is ridiculous" is not that "the whole idea of cars not blinking is ridiculous" so your rejection of anti-realism on the grounds that realism is nonsense just doesn't make any sense to me.
Are you a flyerist (believe that people can fly (without technological aid)) or an anti-flyerist (believe that people can't fly)? I'm an anti-flyerist, and I think it perfectly sensible (and in accord with the mechanical facts). How is this any different to the case of blinking cars or verification-transcendent truths? Or is it the same and you will maintain your "not even wrong" position and neither claim "people can fly" nor claim "people can't fly"?
This seems inconsistent with your claim that "In other words, we learn to predicate truth of propositions in the same way learn to predicate color of things. By learning in what circumstances it is normally considered appropriate to make such predications." Surely the circumstances in which it is (in)appropriate to predicate truth of a statement is a truth-condition? It is because of these circumstances that the claim "X is true" is the right (or wrong) thing to say.
The way I understand it, in any case of the type I outlined where two people remember events differently: "debated on Friday", "did not debate on Friday" there are only possibilities; 'debated on Friday' or 'did not debate on Friday'. It could not be the case that we both debated and did not debate on that day.
Do you agree that one of the memories of the events, if they exclude the possibility of the other, must be wrong?
Do you agree that in (at least) certain cases there is no possibility of verifying which of the memories of events is right, and that such situations qualify as 'verification transcendent'?
Do you agree that, in such cases, the rightness or wrongness of the memories of events cannot be established and thus cannot be dependent on anything that is said?
There are countless examples like this, not necessarily involving more than one person. For example, on any day I perform countless actions that I have no memory at all of. Does the fact that I cannot remember those actions entail that they did not occur? If someone is murdered and the murderer is never caught, does that mean that there is not someone out there who committed the murder, even if they don't remember it themselves?
As I see it your anti-realism can have no coherent answers to such questions.
Streetlight, I'm not quite sure what you are saying here. Are you saying that the truth of sentences is dependent on, or independent of, human discourse.
For example, say X murders Y, but no one knows it for sure, including X (due to amnesia, say). People suspect it though, and the sentence 'X murdered Y' is uttered. The truth status of that sentence is "verification transcendent", it cannot be established; does that entail the sentence is not either true or false?
But the understanding of the conditions which amount to a statement being true aren't separate to that.
In the you are using it, there is no act of verification. The person who knows "X is true" doesn't need some separate thing verifying it is "really true." They just need the understanding the condition in question is true.
The idea truth conditions can or cannot be recognised is nonsensical because, in any situation where truth is known, where someone knows about a truth condition, they have recognised the truth condition by definition.
I know, for example, that it is true I am writing this post. The question of whether or not a recognise this truth condition is moot. Given my knowledge, my understanding, I must. I can't know: "Willow is writing this post" is a true statement if I haven't recognised the truth condition in question.
You are making the very distinction, and asking for the event thing, the support for something being "really true," which you are claiming is nonsensical.
The problem is the question in the first place. You are asking someone who knows (analogous to the truth condition of a statement) the answer to that question (e.g. people can't fly), whether it is true people can or can't fly. And then when the person states the know people can't fly, you are ignoring their knowledge and asking the question again. (e.g. "Ah, but I need "verification" you know people can't fly. We still don't know whether people can fly or not. Please show me people not flying is "really true" ).
In the you are using it, there is no act of verification. The person who knows "X is true" doesn't need some separate thing verifying it is "really true." They just need the understanding the condition in question is true.
The idea truth conditions can or cannot be recognised is nonsensical because, in any situation where truth is known, where someone knows about a truth condition, they have recognised the truth condition by definition.
I know, for example, that it is true I am writing this post. The question of whether or not a recognise this truth condition is moot. Given my knowledge, my understanding, I must. I can't know: "Willow is writing this post" is a true statement if I haven't recognised the truth condition in question.[/quote]
So you accept that there are truth-conditions. That was the point.
I'm not claiming that being "really true" is nonsensical. I'm claiming that being "really true" as something independent of whether or not it is appropriate, given the empirical context and the rules of our language-game, to predicate truth of it is nonsensical.
This is completely mistaken. My point was that it is no more nonsensical to claim "cars can't blink" or "truth is not verification-transcendent" than to claim "people can't fly".
You have a tendency to read the strangest things from my posts.
I agree that either it is appropriate, given the rules of our language-game and the empirical context (e.g. my memory), to claim that "it happened" is true or to claim that "it didn't happen" is true. That's all there is to truth.
I agree that sometimes we don't know whether or not it is appropriate to predicate truth of some statement, and also that it is appropriate to predicate truth of the statement "either it is true or it is not". But I don't agree that there is some verification-transcendent condition in virtue of which the former statement is true (or false).
Yes, but if you admit that you don't know which claim is appropriate, but that one of them must be, then you are admitting that there are unknown conditions which would (if only we could know them) determine which one is appropriate.
Which claim is appropriate cannot be determined by "the rules of our language-game and the empirical context" (but of course if they were to be determined or could be determined, they could only be determined within "the rules of our language-game and the empirical context", which is a different
matter entirely). I think you are failing to see this logical distinction, basic to our intuitive understanding of truth conditions, between being determined by and being determined within.
So, there are "verification-transcendent condition(s) in virtue of which the former statement is true (or false)" but there are no verification transcendent conditions in virtue of which it could be determined to be true or false, because determinations of truth and falsity are possible (if at all) only by virtue of verification immanent conditions. The point is that even verification immanent conditions are not created by "the rules of our language-game and the empirical context" but our understanding of them is merely mediated by the latter.
The anti-realist position you seem to be advocating cannot support a coherent distinction between truth and belief, that is its fatal flaw.
Not at all. I'm not saying either that "X" is true by virtue of some verification-transcendent condition or that "X" is false by virtue of some verification-transcendent condition. I'm saying that "X" is either true or false by virtue of the axiomatic laws of thought (excluded middle and non-contradiction).
Of course they are. The truth of "bachelors are unmarried men" is 'created by' the rules of our language-game and not by some verification-transcendent condition.
Of course it can. "X" is true iff it is appropriate, as per the rules of our language-game and the empirical context, to predicate truth of "X". "X" is believed to be true iff one believes that it is appropriate, as per the rules of our language-game and the empirical context, to predicate truth of "X",
What about truths other than tautologies?
And how do you differentiate between "appropriate" and "believed to be appropriate"?
LME?
Still about the rules of our language-game and the empirical contexts in which it's put to use. I see this and so it's appropriate to say that.
Well, the semantic difference is apparent to me as a native speaker of the English language. I know that "'X' is appropriate" and "'X' is believed to be appropriate" mean different things. I know that there are contexts in which it is appropriate for me to say "John believes that 'X' is the appropriate thing to say but actually 'not X' is the appropriate thing to say".
Law of the Excluded Middle.
You have not answered the questions adequately.
I don't believe you are interested in discovering the weaknesses of your position, but rather want to gloss them.
The law of diminishing returns...
Ah, so LEM rather than LME. ;)
Well, what leads anyone to believe it? Perhaps it's just an axiom. Perhaps it better describes the structure of our language. I'm not entirely sure how the reason for accepting it is relevant to the discussion anyway.
Well, I think I have answered them adequately. If you disagree then perhaps you could explain what's problematic.
But that's the problem your approach. You fail to understand how language is of the world, that awareness of the truth condition is embedded within language, such that the standard or "really true" never make sense. Any knowledge of a truth condition is given in a person's language. Their can be no "verification" of this knowledge from outside their language. The standard of "really true" doesn't make sense because any instance of empirical confirmation is found within how is thinking or speaking. Any justification of "really true" is merely within a person's own language and experience. It doesn't get outside their experience, their judgement, to demonstrate what is true free of the "taint" of their perception. Things themselves, which may be around when not perceived, are of a nature as spoken by the appropriate language game and that which is seen in empirical observation.
And because of this position you are strawmanning the (direct) realists. They've never asserted that things are independent of language games and empirical contexts. Indeed, their point is this is never true: things of the world are as they are perceived, as they are appropriately spoken about in language.
The problem isn't claiming cars can't blink. On can do that perfectly well, and be right or wrong, depending what type of blinking someone is talking about. Rather, the problem with the question you are posing, which ignores that people know the truth, which views knowledge as a question of "Proof outside your language" rather than a matter of language embedded in the world which says something true.
Yes they have. That's what it means to be a realist.
But we've been over this countless times before.
But crucially, misunderstanding of direct realism aside,with respect to understanding language, you are still making the split between the world and language. You are treating it is if language doesn't talk about the world by its definition (i.e. it's first and foremost only semantic), as if we could have language which talks about the world which was in the first instance, only semantic.
Except I haven't and I don't. Again, you read the strangest things from my comments.
Here you are saying that, for a chair to be in the next room, all we need is for someone to speak of the relevant empirical and linguistic context. Supposedly, the "semantic" is enough to define the truth.
But it's not. We may have a person who speaks of the empirical context of the chair, but not a chair. The use of language may not talk about the world, even profess that semantic meaning. Equally, their could be a chair in the next riot which no one is speaking about.
The truth of "there is a chair in the next room" is NOT (wholly) determined by linguistic conventions at all. It takes a state of the world for that statement to be true. One which is not given by the language alone. For "there is a chair in the next room" to be a true statement, there needs to be relevant state of the world and, specifically, a language which talks about that state of the world. There is more to the truth condition of "there is a chair in the next room" than whether someone utters words with that meaning.
I didn't say that we need to speak of the empirical and linguistic context. I said that the empirical and linguistic context is what makes our talk of other things – like the chair in the next room – appropriate.
Does this state of the world transcend verification? Realism requires "yes" and anti-realism requires "no".
Law of Middle Excluded??? :-}.
How and why do you think the LEM is self-evident to you? Do you think the fact that contradictions cannot obtain merely reflects the "structure of our language" or is it not rather that the structure of our language reflects the nature of experience and the experience of nature?
You haven't said what it means to know "when you see this it's appropriate to say that", as distinct from merely believing it is (out of habit, convention, convenience or whatever).
Saying that you must understand the distinction because you know how to use the two phrases is a cop out; all it shows is that you know the definitions of the words in the phrases, not that you can explain the logical distinction, as it consists in your position (if it indeed does), between knowing something and believing something.
If you can explain that distinction in terms of anti-realism then do so; if you cannot then admit it.
But its not. We need more. In this case, as the language is about the world (and of the world), we need the worldly context. We need, in the world, the existence of language which talks about something in the world. What is at stake is more than the definition of language, for than what constitutes a statement which means.
You are missing the critical description that the empirical and linguistic context is worldly.
This question is a misstep. No state transcends verification. It is possible to verify any state subject to empirical verification.
But it is also true that states, even known states (e.g. the rising sun tomorrow), frequently are unverified. So in the sense that states of the world are frequently unconfirmed, they do "transcend" verification.
Where am I missing it? I have never said that they're not worldly. In fact, I've repeatedly said that they are.
And that's exactly why realism fails.
I'm not sure. But I am sure that the law of excluded middle isn't made true because some verification-transcendent conditions are satisfied. So, again, I don't understand the relevancy of this line of questioning.
I know that if I see water falling from the sky then it is appropriate to say "it is raining". If someone else were to say "it is sunny" then I will say that they believe that "it is sunny" is the appropriate to thing to say, but that actually it isn't. What's hard to understand about this?
We're quite capable of understanding the difference between saying that something is true and saying that something is only believed to be true. We're quite capable of knowing when to say that something is true and when to say that something is only believed to be true. And this is "despite" the fact that we do not have access to these supposed verification-transcendent conditions. So your very claim that verification-transcendence is required to make a distinction between truth and belief is refuted by the fact that every day we do make this distinction. Clearly empirical and linguistic contexts are sufficient.
1.The issue is not about whether the LEM is "true", but about the originary, pre-linguistic nature it codifies, about the way that structures experience and language itself.
2. You only think you understand (in the sense of being able to explain) how it is that you know it is appropriate to say "it is raining" when you "see water falling from the sky".
Try to explain how it is that you know you are seeing water falling from the sky and you may get the point.
Clearly "empirical and linguistic contexts" (intersubjective conditions) are necessary, but not sufficient. You are leaving out the other half of the equation. In any case if you want to continue to reduce human experience and discourse to a bloodless linguistic equation, then I will leave you to it; it's becoming distinctly boring to hear repetitions of the same unargued assertions.
That which cannot be verification (i.e. the object, as opposed to experience of an object) is NOT outside the linguistic or empirical realm, but rather within in it, which is how our experience provide understanding and verification of any state of existence. Some meanings expressed by that which is never verification (the car) is are the SAME as an linguistically or empirical context (the perception of a car).