Category Mistakes
More and more, I'm convinced that perhaps the most important skill in philosophy involves the diagnosis of category errors: errors in which there is a confusion of kinds. For example, one might ask, 'what color are ideas?'. Assuming no clever play on words or metaphorical flourish, this is, prima facie, a nonsense question. It takes one 'kind' of thing, ideas, and asks of it a question to which another kind of thing, colors, do not apply. Because of this confusion in kind, one cannot answer this question either correctly or wrongly. The question itself is confused in it's very formulation. Any answers to this question would be 'not even wrong'.
The example above is fairly straightforward. Things become confusing however - and philosophically precarious - when category errors are less obvious because of certain illusions of grammar. One immediate example of this lies in the ever popular 'What is the meaning of life?' question. It is not at all clear, in this case, that 'life' is the kind of thing to which 'meaning' would be applicable at all. Which (to be absolutely clear) is not to say that 'there is no meaning to life', but that it is grammatically inappropriate to speak of life as having, or even not having, a meaning at all. One may take issue with this particular example, and insist that one can, in fact, make sense of the question. Doing so, though, would involve specifying what is meant both by 'life' and by 'meaning', and demonstrating how the two can be articulated together as being of commensurate kinds.
I want to suggest that this kind of work, of making sense of questions, is perhaps the majority of the philosopher's work. To even ask - and make sense of - a question like 'what is the meaning of life?' is already to commit to an entire web of presuppositions regarding the kind of thing both life and meaning are, and dilating upon these presuppositions is just to do philosophy. Gilles Deleuze once wrote that 'every problem always has the solution it deserves, in terms of the way in which it is stated... and of the means and terms at our disposal for stating it". Which is to say that every philosophical 'problem' is co-eval with it's 'solution', that the two invariably come as a pair, and these is no way of posing a (true) problem that does not already contain, in the very terms in which it is posed, it's own solution.
One final way of trying to understand the above is that above all, 'philosophical work' is the work of 'sense-making'; 'making' here understood in the artisanal sense of forging and assembling. That certain questions have any sense at all, simply mustn't be taken for granted. Questions must 'prove themselves' worthy of sense through elaboration. As a means to do this, category errors, and our sensitivity to them, mark our ability to recognize the limits of sense-making efforts, the points at which our sense-making constructions fail, and are, as it were, the first and perhaps most important tool in the philosopher's toolkit. This is especially important insofar as philosophy is largely a matter of concept-mongering, and it's through the delicate probing for category errors that we can ensure the conceptual consistency of not merely our 'answers', but more importantly, our questions too (as with the 'meaning of life' question).
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Incidentally, Wittgenstein's PI might be taken to be nothing other than red-light warning against the dangers of category errors, but I just mention this just as food for thought.
The example above is fairly straightforward. Things become confusing however - and philosophically precarious - when category errors are less obvious because of certain illusions of grammar. One immediate example of this lies in the ever popular 'What is the meaning of life?' question. It is not at all clear, in this case, that 'life' is the kind of thing to which 'meaning' would be applicable at all. Which (to be absolutely clear) is not to say that 'there is no meaning to life', but that it is grammatically inappropriate to speak of life as having, or even not having, a meaning at all. One may take issue with this particular example, and insist that one can, in fact, make sense of the question. Doing so, though, would involve specifying what is meant both by 'life' and by 'meaning', and demonstrating how the two can be articulated together as being of commensurate kinds.
I want to suggest that this kind of work, of making sense of questions, is perhaps the majority of the philosopher's work. To even ask - and make sense of - a question like 'what is the meaning of life?' is already to commit to an entire web of presuppositions regarding the kind of thing both life and meaning are, and dilating upon these presuppositions is just to do philosophy. Gilles Deleuze once wrote that 'every problem always has the solution it deserves, in terms of the way in which it is stated... and of the means and terms at our disposal for stating it". Which is to say that every philosophical 'problem' is co-eval with it's 'solution', that the two invariably come as a pair, and these is no way of posing a (true) problem that does not already contain, in the very terms in which it is posed, it's own solution.
One final way of trying to understand the above is that above all, 'philosophical work' is the work of 'sense-making'; 'making' here understood in the artisanal sense of forging and assembling. That certain questions have any sense at all, simply mustn't be taken for granted. Questions must 'prove themselves' worthy of sense through elaboration. As a means to do this, category errors, and our sensitivity to them, mark our ability to recognize the limits of sense-making efforts, the points at which our sense-making constructions fail, and are, as it were, the first and perhaps most important tool in the philosopher's toolkit. This is especially important insofar as philosophy is largely a matter of concept-mongering, and it's through the delicate probing for category errors that we can ensure the conceptual consistency of not merely our 'answers', but more importantly, our questions too (as with the 'meaning of life' question).
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Incidentally, Wittgenstein's PI might be taken to be nothing other than red-light warning against the dangers of category errors, but I just mention this just as food for thought.
Comments (144)
What's interesting to me is that this is both the birth place of the fantastic in the creative sense, and the confusion sense. It is the room within grammar for misunderstanding, or for misinterpretation that grants this play, which can be both great, and disastrous.
It is comical to misunderstand things in creative ways, as well as can a whole myth be forged from this creative misinterpretation, but it requires moving beyond the understanding, which is the ground, and sense-making foundation of the myth. The trick is, that we're delivered the myth, or fantastic, and need to backwards engineer things back to the mundane. This is how we get the joke, how we appreciate the myth.
Not to someone with synaesthesia.
And are you not making yourself guilty of the very thing you're talking about? For some, asking the question: "What is the meaning of life?" is a coarse grained way of asking a question which is relevant to them on a practical level where the underlying axioms are taken to be self evident. I would agree that such should be made clear in asking such a question, a personally sufficient answer should not be used to make fundamental metaphysical claims. It's a bit much to make every question into an epistemological debate though.
You have a point and maybe a desire to seek wisdom vs a desire to seek out "technical" philosophy has become a category error which is becoming more and more evident due to the accessibility of forums like these.
And I should say that I don't think that the OP would quite stand for Witty's conception of philosophy. I think Witty understood philosophy as such to be an archive of category mistakes from beginning to end, without really finding it in a positive, autonomous enterprise unto itself. On this, I think Witty was wrong. Or, he was right about everything save the 'application' of his critique to philosophy as a whole.
Hah, I was waiting for the synaesthesia response. But then, one has provided a context by which one could make sense of such a question. And part of my point was that is just what is needed: sense-making can be understood as simply another way of saying 'context-providing': of showing how a difference makes a difference, of elaborating the stakes behind any one question.
Quoting Gooseone
And I think this is fine, as far as it goes, but I wouldn't confuse this with the work of philosophy.
1. (Claim) There exists a unique c such that c is a colour and Forall x, forall y, if x and y are both ideas then there c is the colour of x and c is the colour of y,
2. (Question) Find c.
and the second one as
1. (Claim) There exists a unique m such that m is the meaning of Life.
2. (Question) Find m.
In Russell's terms these are both 'definite descriptions', which are identifiable by the use of the word 'the' in the natural language version: 'the meaning of life' and 'the colour of ideas'.
From another perspective, they are 'loaded questions': they are a proposition followed by a question that only makes sense if the proposition is true. Russell's famous 'The present king of France is bald' deconstructs in the same way.
For the sake of advancing the discussion, I'll hypothesise that all questions that are category errors can be deconstructed in this way, to be a stapled Claim and Question. An even stronger hypothesis, of which I feel less confident, is that they all involve Definite Descriptions ('what is the X of Y?' or 'does the X Y?').
A few more examples would be good, to put that hypothesis to the test. Unfortunately my mind is a blank right now as I search for examples of category errors. I expect that searching this site for 'category error' would turn up some good examples though.
I don't agree. Perhaps I could concede that the wording is misleading, insofar as it suggests that life has a meaning. But if the question was phrased, 'what is it to live meaningfully?', or, 'what is required to live a meaningful life?', or 'is life meaningful for you?' I think it's a perfectly meaningful question. But it's also a very unpopular question in today's academy, precisely because it is rather non-PC to suggest that such a question might be legitimate. And the reason why, is that so much of the modern era has been concerned with draining the idea of meaning from the world - Weber's disenchantment. It also suggests that 'meaning' might be something which is not the prerogative of the individual to declare the existence of; and I think we would like to think that meaning is something we project or devise, or that, at any rate, it is something that requires our assent.
I have a book by Eagleton, called The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction, which has a perfectly intelligible discussion of what it means to ask such a question, and whether it can be asked - which it answers in the affirmative.
But I think the basic problem is that the idea that life might be actually meaningful just sounds a tad religious.
With the use of most common words, such as "life", there is enough ambiguity to spread an unhealthy dose of category error all around.
Quoting ?????????????
How do you believe that philosophical practise can leave things as found, while at the same time dissolve confusions? Doesn't dissolving confusions require taking things found as confused, and re-presenting them in an unconfused way?
Yeah exactly! I think Deleuze shows how one can take on board Witty style criticism, and basically turn it inside out: yes, all language use must take place in a concrete language-game, etc: but this is just what philosophy has been doing since time immemorial - and with productive results! And I think you're right that Witty wouldn't necessarily endorse this kind of 'extension', as it were, but at my most critical, I feel that his uncharitableness was simply a function of his unfamiliarity with philosophy.
And please, I could talk about this stuff all day, and it's not entirely off topic! I mean, part of what's at stake here is what philosophy 'is'; the notion of conceptual consistency as the core of philosophical practice, for example, which follows if one understands category errors as a kind of philosophical diagnostic tool, directly bears on what it means to do philosophy as a whole - and this is something Deleuze brings out when he speaks of the "endo-" and "exo-" consistency of concepts in his What Is Philosophy?. And interestingly, he employs this property of concepts to demonstrate how logical analysis literally cannot deal with concepts, and thus is totally inadequate to philosophy - which again might link back to his abhorrence of the logical positivists and by extension, Wittgenstein. Anyway, I'm missing a few steps in this story, but it's a nice little link, if you can make the leaps.
Rather, one proceeds by asking about the articulation between meaning and life, forging - creatively - a conceptual consistency between both that would avoid any kind of category mistake. To borrow a juridical phrase, questions in philosophy ought to be considered nonsensical until proven otherwise. If I picked 'what is the meaning of life?' as exemplary of a question prone to being treated as a category mistake, it is because more often than not, the question is treated precisely as self-evident in it's extension. That is, more often than not, it is nonsense. The free will question - which happens to be littering the forum recently - is another I think is mostly nonsense, where people mostly literally have no idea what they are talking about, and are mostly cobbling together pieces of word salad which are 'not even wrong'.
So there's a kind of mutability I'm more than willing to admit here: what is a category mistake in one approach might not be in another: witness Gooseone's mention of synaesthesia with respect to coloured ideas. But there is nothing self-evident about the meaningfullness of such - or any - question whatsoever, and moreover, the attempt to work out the question is itself the very practice of philosophy. If there's any kind of 'moral' to my thread it's simply: be sceptical about sense; the fact that certain questions look grammatically correct ('what is the meaning of life?') shouldn't deceive us into thinking that there is any sense whatsoever to these kinds of questions (this is Wittgenstein's lesson). But sense is not something that can be specified a priori; only ever in it's working-through.
(I should also mention that my views here are largely derived from Cora Diamond's reading of the Tractatus - the so-called 'resolute' understanding of nonsense, which I believe can also be found in W's later philosophy (e.g., see PI 500: "When a sentence is called senseless, it is not as it were its sense that is senseless. But a combination of words is being excluded from the language, withdrawn from circulation."), so I believe that you are wrong to ascribing to W' any such view)
I think there are two common ways for understanding what a 'category mistake' is supposed to be. On the first, category mistakes arise when we have a sentence that attempts to combine words that refer to things that somehow necessarily cannot be combined or put together in reality. So to take your example, one might argue that something in the nature of color and ideas preclude the predication of color to ideas. But this I believe is an incoherent position. If we are talking about the nature of the things in the world to which we are referring by our words, then it doesn't seem plausible that we can know apriori how things can and cannot be 'combined' in reality (and it is not clear in the first place what 'combined' is supposed to mean here anyway). For example we don't know apriori which substances chemically react and which don't, and for this reason we must perform experiments to know this (and there's no reason to think that the case of color and ideas (or whatever) is any different). But if this is an empirical question, then it must make sense to ask about any two substances whether they are or aren't chemically reactive, since even if they are not, it would be false and not nonsense to say that they are (and if it was nonsense, then chemical experiments would've been superfluous).
A different way to understand the idea of category mistakes would be to say that certain sentences are nonsense because of the pre-existing meaning of the words that compose them. So to take your example again, one could say that the claim that ideas have color is nonsense because the meaning of 'color' and 'ideas' somehow precludes their combination in the sentence; the sentence is in some sense semantically or grammatically 'ill formed'. And this claim I think is plainly false, because words in natural language don't fall neatly into 'categories' as you say; it seems to me that whatever 'categories' you would assign to any word, it will be always easy to come up with counterexamples.
So to illustrate, I think it is very easy to come up with an examples where your alleged 'categorically mistaken' sentence would make sense--without changing the meaning of the words, or using them in a 'metaphorical' or 'non-literal' sense. Suppose that the physicalist identity theory turns out to be true, and every time a person entertains an idea, there happens to be a brain state with a particular color (e.g., the neurons change color or something of that sort). Another possibility: imagine a synesthetic tribe of people that always see colors whenever they think about something, and so they classify their thoughts according to color. Is anything about the 'conventional meaning' of 'color' or 'ideas' entitles you to rule out such uses of language as somehow necessarily nonsensical? I think that would be indefensible thing to say. It's true that we usually do not use color terms to talk about ideas, but we do use other similar adjectives like "dark ideas" or "bright ideas".
Or think about the case of sounds or musical notes: we call certain notes 'high' or 'low', and also low sounds 'dark' and high sounds 'bright' (is a high note 'high' in the same sense that a mountain is high? yes and no). Clearly nothing about the 'literal' meaning of high/low or bright/light (in the sense of high/low places and bright/light colors etc.) determines whether it makes sense to talk about sound or pitch in this way; there's nothing logically/grammatically/semantically necessary about these terms that tells you that it is either permissible or impermissible to apply these predicates to sounds. It so happens that we can make sense of such talk for various sorts of reasons, but not by virtue of some 'metaphysical' or 'semantic' fact that we've discovered about the predicates.
So the moral is that the idea of 'category mistakes' is either false, or philosophically useless. You cannot demonstrate that some sentence doesn't make sense just by inspecting the words from which it is composed and assigning a logical/semantic/metaphysical categories to which they belong. Language simply doesn't work this way, since meaning is a very plastic thing that can develop and extend in various unpredictable ways. Here's a final example: some axioms of euclidean geometry used to be considered logically necessary in the strongest sense of the word, until people constructed new types of geometry where it suddenly did make sense to deny them, and this happened without either changing the meaning of the words or using a metaphorical talk. So the point is that even the meaning of technical terms in mathematics and geometry is not 'fixed' in advance, so that we are entitled to say that once and for all such and such sentences must be false or nonsense no matter what.
But if any sentence can be made sense of in a suitable context, then what's the point of talking about 'category errors' in the first place? If identifying a "confusion of kinds" (as you put in your OP) is not a sufficient condition for rendering a certain sentence nonsensical, then I don't see any philosophical utility in this idea (to condense the main point of my previous lengthy post).
But this new, musical lumen, if we can call it that, which now has an 'autonomous' meaning of it's own, as it were, could not be treated in the same manner - or used in the exact same manner, the same language-game - as it's specular 'parent'. If one were to start asking how many musical lumens it would take to light up the room for the sake of reading, somewhere, someone has messed up. Of course you could add further dimensions and context to make the latter question meaningful, but this would entail a further transformation in semantic resonance and so on. Part of the point here is that philosophy can be a minefield of questions about the number of musical lumens it takes to light up a room.
Which is all a roundabout, very boring way of saying: of course there are category mistakes! One can of course 'come up' with a new, novel meanings for every apparently mismatched pair of words, but not without paying a certain semantic price. Category mistakes happen when this price is not paid. So one does not need to at all hold to any kind of notion about the fixity of meanings or the 'naturalness' of kinds in order to accept that category mistakes exist; I certainly don't believe in any such thing. So there's no need to throw out the baby of category mistakes with the dirty bathwater of natural meanings of kinds. Language may be plastic, but it is also viscous. In any case, Witty's constant admonishments about the illusions of grammar or the idling engine of certain manners of langauge-(un?)use are nothing if not warnings about just this kind of uncritial use of transformed words.
But what prize?
And also notice that in the examples that I described we do not come up with a new meaning, but rely on the 'old meaning' which is extended to new cases that no one thought about before.
Of course I agree that if someone talks about measuring the brightness of a sound by using lumens, without providing any concrete explanation of what he means, then it would be a good prima fecie reason to suppose that he is talking nonsense. But my point is that you cannot know this just by looking at the sentence which he utters (that is, only from the particular words from which it is composed and their combination). There's nothing intrinsically erroneous in this or that combination of words so that you could have an easy or quick philosophical method for identifying 'category mistakes'.
Thus, as I said in my other response to you, it is not clear to me what is the philosophical utility of the term 'category mistake', if you don't mean it to be understood either semantically or metaphysically. If you simply use it to be synonymous with "words that lack sense" then by calling it this name, it doesn't explain anything about why some words happen to be nonsense (in this or that context) nor does it tell you how to identify whether something really is nonsense.
(and also I should note that this is not how 'category mistakes' are commonly understood by philosophers, so I think the way that you use the term is pretty misleading, and so is your explanation of the term in the OP)
The 'price paid' obviously depends on the change of context in question. There's no a prioricy to this, you said it yourself. And really, I'm not sure how this is such a contentious point. The meanings of words are not simply cumulative: at some point, they change to an extent that they are no longer, as it were, commensurate with their old use. Off the top of my head, the words 'subject' and 'object', for example, used to have almost the exact opposite meaning of what they are commonly understood to mean today. If one starts to mix n' match both meanings at will, one will not be speaking much sense. This is not so wild a point.
Sometimes, of course, the mixing of incommensurate senses it not as obvious. To take an example out of my recent receding, one can distinguish between (at least) eight different senses of the word 'freedom' (all of which are 'internally consistent', as it were), and demonstrate that when some of these are run together, one ends up with some pretty rough conceptual difficulties (which is what Raymond Geuss does in his essay "Freedom As an Ideal", Outside Ethics - the book in fact in full of studies of this kind, on 'well known' ethical and political concepts, which he makes it his mission to distinguish the different senses of). This 'running together' is not simply nonsense, but is in fact a result of an unwarranted mixing together of 'kinds' of (concepts of) freedom, not all of which can be spoken about in the same breath without causing issues with conceptual inconsistency. And it is awfully interesting work.
I feel this is all very obvious and trivial and it's confusing to me why this ought to be spelled out at all.
Quoting Fafner
Sure, and I did not claim, or I do not intend to claim, that there is anything 'intrinsically erroneous' about any particular use of words. But to say it once more, one does not need to in order to affirm that category mistakes exist.
I can agree with this formulation, though it still leaves open the question of how we ought to identify whenever a word/concept is used in the same or a different sense within a given context. And this is the point at which many philosophers (even some 'followers' of Wittgenstein, like P.M.S Hacker or Paul Horwich) fall into the trap of attempting to come up with semantical or metaphysical theories to explain how words mean what they mean. The challenge here (at least if you are a Wittgenstenian) is to avoid this sort of theorizing, and still have a clear method of providing a philosophically illuminating analysis of meaning or uses of language.
I agree, and moreover I think this art, this ability to create or mobilize concepts that are immanent to whatever problematic they attempt to tackle, is one particular to the philosopher. Deleuze refers to this as a philosophical taste which must be cultivated: "what appears as philosophical taste in every case is love of the well-made concept..." - recalling here that taste is the mode of aesthetic judgement par excellence, a type of judgement that is both - in Kant's formulation - subjective and universal (and thus not merely particular); a kind of judgement that expressly charts a middle path between "semantical or metaphysical theories".
An aspect of this 'taste', I want to argue, is having what I called in the OP a sensitivity to category errors, where this sensitivity acts as a kind of conceptual guard-rail, keeping us from crossing wires and running 'incommensurate' senses of concepts together (and to emphasize again, this requires no commitment to pre-established meanings!). Remembering as well the sensate is an aesthetic category too!
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This is a very interesting, unique take on the topic, and I have a response to it, but sleep calls at the moment, so bear with me : )
This incompatibility of "leaves everything as found" with "dissoIves confusions" is not related to creating concepts though. To dissolve confusion implies that things were found in a confused state, so to dissolve the confusion is not to leave everything as found.
In the case of category error, a single word may be used in different ways, so this may result in the confusion of category error. To dissolve the confusion does not require creating concepts, but clarifying existing ones. So, in SX's example, "life" might mean 1: "the condition which distinguishes active plants and animals (living things) from inanimate things", as in "plants have life" or 2: "life" might mean simply "living things", as in "life on earth". So when someone asks about the meaning of life, if we take life in sense #2, the question might very well appear as nonsense. But if we take life in sense #1, then the question makes sense because we are concerned with the meaning of "the condition" which distinguishes animate from inanimate things. Since sense #2 does not make sense in this context, and sense #1 makes sense in this context, it is very clear that to interpret using sense #2 is to make a category error, as 1 refers to a description which we are looking for the meaning of, and 2 refers to things .
In Wittgenstein's PI, he brings up the notion of "same". Is the chair the "same" chair which was here yesterday, or not? If the chair today has the same description as the one yesterday, we'd be inclined to say that it is the same chair. Now what if someone switched it over night? Then despite having the same description, it is not the same chair. Suppose that the chair wasn't switched out, but it was somewhat changed, damaged, or painted, such that it doesn't have the same description. We still call it the "same" chair despite the fact that it doesn't have the same description. So there are two distinct ways in which we use "same", 1) having an equal description, and 2) having a temporal continuity of existence. If we mix these up, it's category error, 1) "same" refers to a description, 2) "same" refers to a thing.
People should function intellectually in whatever way meets their needs.
Reason, logic, grammar, concepts, etc. are tools to be employed to do the work one wants and/or needs done.
Arguments like yours above make it sound like logic, grammar, etc. are the work, not tools for doing the work.
Probably more people would be able to experience satisfying intellectual lives if we would stop splitting hairs over what does and does not qualify as science, philosophy, etc.; what is the right way to do them; whether or not they are what people say they are; etc. and instead encouraged every person to employ whatever tools he/she needs to in whatever manner he/she needs do the work he/she needs/wants to do (finding the meaning of life; understanding the nature of things; knowing what is right/wrong; etc.).
The more that I participate in forums like The Philosophy Forum the more that I am beginning to think that philosophy is an anti-intellectual enterprise/tradition. Maybe it is the humanities' own anti-intellectualism that explains their present decline.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
...is to literally not have read a word of the OP (charitably assuming you are not simply grossly incompetant at reading). Nice off-topic rant though.
The question about the meaning of life ('meaning', that is, taken in an overarching sense) is coherent if your premise is that life has an "author" who intended it to have such a meaning, and the question is incoherent otherwise.
So, it really isn't a question of "category error" at all, but rather a matter of being coherent and consistent in relation to your founding presuppositions.
We can look for the meaning of something without assuming that the thing has an author. Geologists determine the meaning of rock structures.
By the way, to assume that anything with meaning must have an author is a category mistake. Some things with meaning have an author, some do not, but try not to mix up those categories.
Why?
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I mean, this kind of response/post is, unfortunately, the kind of thing the OP is trying to correct against. You can't just make this kind of blunt assertion - 'the question about the meaning of life is coherent if your premise is that life has an "author" who intended it to have such a meaning' - without explaining what the relationship between life, authorship, and meaning is. To be as harsh as possible, this is pretty much - to a tee - the exact kind of statement which is 'not even wrong'. There is simply no way to proceed here - other than to ask you to elaborate. It is literally impossible - at this point - to assess your assertion because you've provided no reason for (or against) it; at this point it remains a seemingly grammatically correct sentence lacking any and all substance. I know this will come off harsh, but you've provided a nice object lesson into exactly - exactly - the kind of thing out of which utter confusion blooms, the idling engine of language which the entirety of Wittgenstein is pitched against.
Yes, but that is not meaning in an "overarching" sense, but meaning within a context.
Ironically it is your response that is an "object lesson" in category error, because you are attributing your own prejuidical assumptions to a context that doesn't share them. You are presupposing what you are called upon to demonstrate.
Yes, but I haven't assumed that. An overarching meaning is a meaning which is real beyond the "inside" of a context. If there is no "outside" to life (which would mean that there is nothing intentional which is not contingent upon being a part of life), then life cannot be coherently said to have an overarching meaning.
It's a common tactic to feign ignorance when you cannot deal with an idea: your response is not "harsh" at all, but rather soft and unconvincing.
The other possibility is that you are so mired in your own prejudices that you really cannot understand what I am saying; in which case, my condolences.
For millennia, within theistic contexts, it has been thought by philosophers and common folk alike that life has an author (God) who gives it an overarching meaning. There are many of both today who still believe this to be so. It is either simple-minded or prejudicially disingenuous to say that such an idea is incoherent, because it doesn't fit within the context of your own presuppositions about what reality is. If all you're really saying is that it is incoherent to you (and tacitly acknowledging that that is on account of your own presuppositions), then that is all fine, but it is also philosophically uninteresting, because all you are telling us is what your personal opinion is, and why should we care?
Or it could also be the quality of people who turn up and post on internet fora. After all, there's no entry exam, and it's quite possible to post without knowing the first thing about the subject.
I didn't say it was incoherent outright, I said it would be incoherent if left standing as-is, without elaboration into the relation between life, meaning and authorship. My only point is that your initial post was exactly exemplary of this lack of elaboration, without which, it is incoherent. This is not prejudice, unless the criteria for prejudice is a demand that a statement be afforded some or any kind of sense, in which case I'm prejudiced beyond all measure.
But why demand that I give sense to an idea which is eminently familiar and exhaustively elaborated (theology) within the philosophical tradition; a tradition that we should both be well enough familiar with?
Hmm, I'm 50/50 on this. On the one hand, I think there is never not a 'universe-of-discourse', as you put it - and this is the case irrespective of the times or the medium or what-have-you. On the other hand, I think this has become more obvious in recent times, where one can no longer take for granted that someone else shares the same universe of discourse as you (and this especially so in philosophy - and as Deleuze says somewhere, there are no real discussions in philosophy - just people talking past each other...).
For the sake of convenient context here is my "blunt, unargued for assertion":
Quoting John
Now, I haven't claimed that theology has "an internally undifferentiated, univocal and consistent articulation between life, meaning and God", and I don't need to. It may have many such articulations. But the idea common to most is that God is the creator (author) of this world and that God created this world for a purpose (gave it an overarching meaning). This is simply common knowledge.
Now all I have claimed is that the idea of life having an overarching meaning is not rightly understood as a category error per se (if it was it would be incoherent per se; which you yourself have denied). I have only pointed out that the idea is context dependent, insofar as it is only coherent and consistent if your premise is something along those lines (that there is a real, intentional infinitely intelligent transcendent being or spirit who created the world and gives it meaning). Theological models generally assume this, or something very much like this.
You haven't explained why I should have to elaborate and give sense to the idea of a meaning-giving transcendent being when many theological models that have already elaborated that idea abound and should be familiar to you at the very least in light of the fact that our culture and language in profound ways reflect the ideas of such speculative theologies.
Before previously responding I read this:
Quoting StreetlightX
I then responded with this: What may subjectively be "nonsense" to a lot of people or objectively be "nonsense" according to the present prevalent orthodoxy in an intellectual tradition or academic discipline may be the "sense" that at least one person needs to meet his/her intellectual needs. The fact that a lot of the thinking--thinking that may well be the final piece to a puzzle that somebody has been working on his/her whole life--that a lot of people utilize is often dismissed as "nonsense", "philosophically useless", etc. betrays an anti-intellectualism that one does not expect to find in sources that supposedly value intellectual life, I said.
In other words:
"It is good that you are working on this question/problem" = the spirit that supposedly motivates philosophy.
"Your question contains a categorical error and is nonsense" = an anti-intellectual attitude.
I am happy to provide a supporting reference, the first example Ryle gives in The Concept of Mind to explain his newly coined term "category-mistake": a visitor being shown around Oxford and told about all the buildings, finally asks his guide, "But where is the University?"
I don't think you'll find category mistakes limited to definite descriptions though.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting StreetlightX
And I think this is directly relevant to Ryle's original point: that people sometimes ask a question with a mistaken idea about which box they should look in for the answer. (So for Ryle, there's the Cartesian myth that human behaviour is explained by special stuff found in the special box.) But I recently claimed elsewhere that you have to specify a domain -- what else can you do? Look everywhere? At everything?
But it is nevertheless possible to make a mistake in specifying the domain where your question's answer will come from, or to formulate the question in such a way that the answer must come from someplace that it cannot possibly come from. We want some failure-sensitivity, to know when we've gone up a blind alley.
But you have options then: even if you determine there is no answer to your question in this alley, what does that tell you? That the question has no answer? If the question forced you into that alley, you know at least that this formulation of the question yields no answer. But maybe there's a better question to ask, a way to reframe the issue that led to the question. If the question didn't force you into the blind alley, maybe you just made a wrong turn and can take your question elsewhere. I wouldn't expect a sharp distinction there, but they feel different. Failure can instruct in different ways.
For instance, in those two paragraphs I said "the answer" several times and this suddenly looks prejudicial to me. Do you know setting out that your question has only one answer, rather than various answers? Even if you find an answer in Box A, how do you know there's not another, different answer in Box B, and maybe even in Box C?
In the OP @StreetlightX, you talk about running out of sense-making resources, which is nice, and is the kind of failure-sensitivity I had in mind. I think your sense-making is much broader than what I've got here (question reformulation and domain redefinition) but this is just the bits I get from Ryle's original idea.
This (despite the restricted domain it prescribes) highlights two fourths of what philosophy deals with.The other two fourths is comprised of perfectly ordinary questions about perfectly ordinary stuff, and really peculiar questions about really peculiar stuff. ;)
The point is that this is an 'idea without content', or rather, an idea-awaiting-content: it is, at best, a kind of placeholder; it holds out the promise of saying something substantial, without, in fact, being anything substantive in itself. And look, I'm not saying you can't elaborate on it, I'm not saying that you can't, in principle, 'fill it out' with some good stuff, all I'm saying is that you didn't - at least, not in that post. Worse still, you attempted to draw some sort of conclusion from this empty statement: "So, it really isn't a question of "category error" at all, but rather a matter of being coherent and consistent in relation to your founding presuppositions". I mean, again, maybe this follows, maybe you have a point to make, but you haven't yet made it. And sure, you can gesture vaguely toward other placeholders ("look, tradition! theology!"), but this is, at best, another placeholding manoeuvre.
Perhaps we can meet a compromise here?: I agree that it's possible to make a great deal of hay out of your placeholders, but as yet, the only hay around belongs to other people.
But what may be nonsense to me may be the key that opens many doors of understanding and wisdom for others.
Frankly, I think that obsessing with "avoiding" anything or being "sensitive" to anything is intellectually self-defeating, even if we are talking about category mistakes.
The only benefit of an "avoid" or "sensitive" approach that I can think of is efficiency. Well, I suppose if your work is being funded by a grant from a particular source and you are working under deadlines efficiency might be an issue.
But if we are talking about the personal intellectual lives of all individuals efficiency is probably not a goal of many people and any demand for efficiency may take the joy out of the whole process. Even if one later determines that he/she took a "wrong turn" the journey can often still be fascinating, enjoyable, edifying, and rich in wisdom.
I don't know where you're drawing this vocabulary of 'subjective' and 'objective' from. It certainly isn't in my post, and nothing about my post warrants any appeal to orthodoxy or intellectual tradition for the validation of a concept. Indeed what I find so facinating about sense is that it undercuts any simplistic distinction between the subjective and the objective. Sense is always something shifting, mobile, and 'sensitive to conditions', as it were. But there is, for all that, a 'logic of sense' (to borrow the name of Deleuze's book), one internal to sense itself, even as it retains it's own autonomy.
A sensitivity to category mistakes is precisely a 'tool' - perhaps the tool par excellence - that one can use to explore this domain of sense, one that can be used in the service of creatively forging conceptual links between seeming disparate concepts - with the caveat that one 'does the work', as it were, that one does not take for granted that meanings are simply given. So when you say the OP somehow doesnt treat 'grammar and logic' as a tool (notwithstanding the fact that I never even once used the word 'logic'), comes off as utterly bizzare to me. I'm still not convinced that you've read nor understood the point of the OP properly, and it seems you're riding your moralist high-horse a bit too stridently to actually address the OP on its own terms, it seems.
I can see how you might take what I wrote that way, as if the goal were just to avoid mistakes and avoid failure. I don't think I really brought out how much can be learned from finding yourself in a blind alley.
But I don't want to be stuck in one. ("But the answer must be here.") I'm talking about recognizing when you were wrong and getting out to see some more of the world instead of staying in your alley because it's the right alley.
But the OP is prescribing a certain approach to intellectual functioning and saying that the lack of that approach is unacceptable.
I am saying that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to anything intellectual.
If you are simply saying that people need to be more aware of the possibility of category mistakes, that's fine.
But saying that one approach is the bulk of the work in (insert name of tradition/discipline) or one particular thing such as a "sensitivity" is an indispensable or most important tool in doing any intellectual work is severely limiting in an intellectual world full of diverse communication styles, thinking styles, learning styles, intellectual goals, intellectual needs, etc.
You are saying that we need to be sensitive to category mistakes. I am saying that we need to be sensitive to the diversity of intellectual lives/experiences. Maybe I am committing a category mistake, but I think that I really am trying to engage the spirit of your words and show that a category mistake, like any mistake/fallacy/error, does not automatically deserve don't-touch-with-a-ten-foot-pole treatment. I am trying to do the same thing you are trying to do: be a good shepherd of our personal and collective intellectual experiences.
Do you think that we have done that collectively?
Empirical science has all the answers! The answer must be in physics! Don't waste your time with philosophy, history, art, sociology or theology!
I believe it is what Ken Wilber calls "flatland".
What about in policy? Everybody on every point of the political spectrum seems to make insurance the focal point of the debate over health care in the U.S. The answer must be in distributing insurance the right way! Things like how our culture thrives on behavior that compromises health (for example, the physical and emotional toll of, say, the stress of our extremely competitive, individualistic way of life) are never seen, it seems.
I can see how we can get stuck. I wouldn't focus too much on sensitivity to certain errors/fallacies, though. I would encourage the cultivation of a holistic, multi-disciplinary, multi-tradition way of functioning.
I can see how asking "What is the meaning of life?" can open a lot of doors to understanding and wisdom for some people. Even if it contains a categorical mistake. Even if nobody is initially sensitive to that categorical mistake and everybody travels down a long road with a dead end.
I can see philosophy being done productively in the absence of some particular "sensitivity".
What is "nonsense" by everybody else's standard may be "sense" to one person.
Even if we could get everybody on the same page semantically, how do we know that any two concepts are commensurable or incommensurable? Just because the concept in your brain that corresponds with a word is incommensurable with the concept in your brain that corresponds with another word does not necessarily mean that the respective concepts in my brain that correspond with those respective words are incommensurable.
It is not about saying what is or is not important. It is about recognizing that not everybody necessarily functions the same way intellectually, that probably neither philosophy nor science can account for all of that variation, and that if there is anything we need to be sensitive to it is the latter.
Actually, it's pretty useful to bring Ryle in here to clarify some things - he was the original proponent of the 'category mistake' after all: for Ryle, one of the things that specified a 'category' was the set of questions which could be asked of it. Thus asking 'where is the university?' while being shown the library, the rectory, etc, was to commit a category mistake by virtue of asking the wrong kind of question. Thus to understand a category would be to understand the set of questions which can sensically asked of it: in the language of our discussion, it would be that the domain of discourse is specified by the kinds of questions that could be put to the subject at hand. A category mistake is what happens when one asks the wrong questions of things.
Wittgenstein, interestingly, approaches this exact issue from the other side: the PI often asks about 'what sort of answer' or 'what kind of answer' one expects from a certain question (§370, §380, §394), with the implication that questions themselves ought to - depending on the language-game - exhort certain kinds of answers in reply. And as with Ryle, a category mistake can be said to have taken place when the wrong kind of answer is given in response to a certain question ("did you leave the window open?" "but the window is round!" - this answer is 'not even wrong').
The point I guess would be that a category must always be in some way limited: no question can, in principle, accept just any kind of answer least it lose it cogency as a question; similarly, not every kind of question can be put to a specific phenomenon (as per Ryle and the university). This is why there is no 'universal domain of discourse' as it were, and only ever domains of discourse, in the plural.
As far as philosophy goes, this allows for a kind of test for questions: what kind of answer would satisfy that question? And what kind of answer would not? (again, these are Wittgenstein's questions). Importantly this 'test' is not something that can be 'passed' or 'failed' a priori: as I said in a previous post here, it serves as guard-rail in the creative construction of concepts, one which, while not specifying the' right' alleys, helps us avoid the 'wrong' ones (in the same way that a bowling alley guard-rail insures against gutter balls, but does not ensure strikes). It functions critically and negativity, rather than positively.
The point is that the "hay" has already been made by the theological tradition. I'm not here to expound theism; but merely to point out that it is within the context of traditional notions of theism, of God as the bestower of meaning, that the question about the meaning of life is coherent; and not otherwise. It's a pretty simple point, and I'm surprised you seem to be either unable to grasp it, or doggedly unwilling to acknowledge it.
You're just being obtuse; the "sense or context" for my statement is the traditional notions of God; if you can't or won't see that that is all I wanted to say, then it is your problem, not mine. It's certainly doesn't constitute a "non-sequitur" to point to what is logically entailed or made coherent by traditional notions. Now, your assertion that it is a non-sequitur: that is a category error!
OK, but if I made a "mistake" it was that I thought it would have been obvious that the notion of an "author of life who intended it to have meaning" just is the traditional notion of God.
Jesus, man, talk about being pedantic!
If the idea of a "meaning of life" makes sense; it is only in the context of theological notions. It's a huge subject (and is, arguably, ultimately a matter of taste) as to whether theological notions are "conceptually vacuous"; that is whether theological notions themselves make sense. Atheists predictably will say "They don't" and theists will predictably say "they do". The two camps have very different founding assumptions; and mostly end up just taking past one another. In any case the subject is well beyond the scope of this thread.
All I wanted to do was correct the error that consists in saying that the idea of a meaning of life is a category error, by pointing out that it makes logical sense in the context of traditional theological ideas of a transcendent creator and bestower of meaning. If you want to try to demonstrate that those well-known and time-worn theological ideas do not themselves make sense, then I wish you luck. I can virtually guarantee that your arguments will be founded upon assumptions that theologians do not share; that will be the problem you face. How are you going to overcome the fact that you will simply be talking past them; and thus committing a gross category error yourself? Wittgenstein dealt with this common problem with the idea of "language games".
This is not what you did. What you did instead is the equivalent of passing along class gossip: you pointed out that, allegedly, if you take at face value the good and totally unexamined authority of unnamed sources in the nebulous and ambiguously referenced 'theological tradition', meaning-of-life questions make sense in the context of traditional theological ideas. Whether they actually in fact do, is something you've not at all even addressed. Moreover, the onus here lies with you, not me - it's you who advanced the positive claim that they do so make sense, without so much as providing one iota of argument apart from a grossly fallacious argument from authority.
And note also that, as I clarified in my discussions with Warfer and Fanfer, my position isn't that meaning-of-life questions are inevitably category errors. It's that until demonstrated otherwise, they ought to be taken as such. And to repeat again what I said to Wayfarer, this sceptical stance ought to apply to all philosophical questions. If I singled out meaning of life questions, it's because of it's popularity and the general level of shallowness at which it is approached. I have no doubt that one can - and that people have - attempted to make good sense of it. But this sense will differ per argument, and without paying close attention to the exact, concrete argument at hand - the stakes involved, the articulation between terms - one cannot presuppose that such questions have any 'inherent' sense.
I mean, your whole 'argument' is as if, having asked you about the square root of -1, you were to assure me that, somewhere, out there, there is a textbook - which you will neither name nor cite - demonstrating that such a notion does in fact, make sense and can be answered (and of course, for the longest time, the very question did not make sense - at least, not until the invention of imaginary numbers).
And atheists might be right, in which case meaning-of-life questions are category errors. That theists have different founding assumptions isn't that those assumptions are correct. So the above really misses SX's point, which is less about arguing that meaning-of-life questions are category errors, and more about arguing that they could be.
There are two ways in which "intentionality" relates to things. Intentionality can be within the thing, like when human beings act purposefully, they act with intention. But intentionality may also be projected onto the thing from an external source, such as when a tool has purpose. In this case, the object (the tool) is created with intention, it has an author. But objects do not necessarily need to be created to have a purpose, many natural things (things without an author) are purposeful. This is the case in my example of the geologist who finds meaning in the structures of rock. The structures are purposeful in relation to the geologist's intentions, to understand. Likewise, the structures of life are purposeful in relation to the biologist's intentions, to understand, and therefore meaningful, despite the fact that the biologist is not the author of life, nor does the biologist assume that life has an author. In relation to the biologist's desire to understand, the variety in the forms of life, has meaning.
If this is the case though, it contradicts "dissolves confusions". Because "dissolving confusions" implies that the descriptions, theories, concepts etc., which are encountered, are confused. If everything is left as is, how are the confusions dissolved?
To avoid the contradiction implied by the statement, one must clarify what is referred to by "leaves everything as is", and what is referred to by "dissolves confusions", because the two phrases cannot refer to the same thing without contradiction. So "leave everything as is" must refer to the things which are being described, and "dissolves confusions" must refer to the descriptions. This requires a category separation between the things and the descriptions, to avoid the contradiction which appears at first reading.
Look. Look at this crap.
Continuing my metaphor, one sense of "doing the work" would be to say you have to go all the way down the alley to find out if it's a dead end, but on the other hand, I think what I was reaching for with the idea of "failure-sensitivity" was that it would surely be nice to be able to recognize that an alley will turn out to be dead end before going all the way down it.
If the character of philosophical problems is "I don't know my way around here," the question is how best to learn your way around.
None of this has the constructive flavour you had in mind though. When doing mathematics, it's as if you build a special flashlight for each problem that will allow you to see what you need to see. You make your tools. So that's one way.
I've been wondering if maybe instead of talking as if you choose from preexisting domains, the domain is something you construct with the question. Theoretical entities are in an obvious sense constructed, and maybe these are the members of the domain you construct. Asking a question would be the first step in building, rather than finding, an answer.
The irony is amazing; it was you that initially made the completely unsupported claim that talk about the 'meaning of life' is a category error. I merely pointed out that that claim is based on the presumption that this life provides the totality of possible context. The onus is on you to support your unsupported claim and demonstrate that this life must be the only possible context of meaning.
And what I wrote was not in any sense an "argument from authority"; it was merely pointing out that people who believe in God find the idea of a meaning of life perfectly coherent; which leaves you with the monumental task of demonstrating that they must be deluded. And you need to demonstrate that without relying on any presuppositions that they, the allegedly deluded, would not share. Good luck with that!
Sure they could be category errors, and by the same token, so could the atheist's claim that meaning of life talk is meaningless. The problem is that neither of these possibilities can ever be definitely demonstrated, which means that what one thinks about it will perennially remain a matter of taste, a matter of faith.
I mean what's the point of arguing that something could be a category error, but I can never demonstrate that it is?
Sure, but you continue to ignore that little word: "overarching".
So your favoured principle is "Guilty until proven innocent"? That in itself is revealingly tendentious; why not the other way around?
This is truly a lame and lazy analogy! Surely you can do better than that? Face the truth man; you're deeply biased here.
Agree. I like the light-handed moderation on this forum, but at the same time, there are a lot of crap posters around who ask meaningless questions with no real philosophical interests or skills. Trolls, basically. They should be shown the door.
No, I'm not ignoring "overarching" you are simply misusing the word "overarching", and that's what I'm trying to demonstrate. The "overarching meaning" would be the broadest, most general sense of the word. And the overarching meaning of "meaning" allows that we can speak about meaning without an author. It is only a restricted, more limited sense of "meaning" which requires an author, the type of meaning found in language, and this is clearly not the "overarching meaning".
Quoting ?????????????
You seem to be missing the point. In the original language-game, better referred to as "games", the words are commonly used in many different ways, perhaps corresponding to many different games, with many different objects (end goals). The category error, which the philosopher has to deal with involves taking the word as it is employed in one language-game, and assuming that it has the same use in another language-game, as it has in that original game.
There is no such thing as "the original home" for most words, and even if there was, to designate that the meaning of the word is according to its original home, when it is being used in a categorically different way, is to commit a category error. So in actuality, the philosopher has to deal with the confusion created by those who assign meaning according to some presupposed "original language-game" rather than according to the context (game) in which the word is being used.
Apparently you are thinking of "overarching" in a different sense than I am; which is fine, the word, as with all words is polysemous. I will explain again how I am using thew word; which hopefully will clear up your confusion.
Everything in life, in the world, derives its meanings in the larger context of life or the world, itself. If life is the overarching context, then as such life cannot have a meaning in terms of any larger context, because there isn't one.
If there is a larger context than the life and world that we know, then the life and world that we know could have an overarching meaning in terms of that larger context.That larger context doesn't have to be the "author", or in other words, the creator, I suppose; but it must nevertheless be a transcendent bestower of meaning; an overarching meaning that goes beyond the meanings that are contingent upon the context of immanent life and world.
Yes. This is about the third time I've affirmed this in this thread. And this was the entire point of the OP so short of you not having read it, I don't understand why you find this so surprising. The idea, to explain for about the fifth time, is that the questions attain their sense only to the degree that the very terms of the question are articulated, that until someone explicates, in concreto, the stakes and scope of a question - 'what kind of answer' would be appropriate - there is no reason - and I mean this quite literally, as in, there is no way a chain of inferences can be formed in order to construct a line of reason - to assume that any philosophical question makes sense. Your response to this has been, seemingly, to say that one ought to take it on compelete faith that, because some people say certain questions make sense, that they do in fact make sense. It's kind of mind-boggling.
Well that larger context is the inanimate thing we call the universe. Don't you agree? It isn't living, and there doesn't have to be an author of it, even though it is meaningful to us. I'm glad you've come to terms with this. What makes you think that there must be a "transcendent bestower of meaning" for this inanimate thing? As I explained already, the meaning we see in these inanimate things exists relative to us, and our intentions, not relative to some author, creator, or bestower. Nevertheless, that inanimate thing gives us a context larger than life.
Yes, exactly this! This is what I've been trying to get at with the idea that solutions are coeval with the explication of questions. Hence the citation of Deleuze's quote in the OP: "every problem always has the solution it deserves, in terms of the way in which it is stated... and of the means and terms at our disposal for stating it." What I wanted to suggest is that category errors, or rather, our ability to divine them, serve as guides through this process of construction. The construction of 'theoretical entities' - I just want to say philosophy - is never a purely 'free', subjective' act as it were; we are constrained by a certain logic of sense - of the need to avoid category errors, of making sure we do not run together terms that belong to different categories; much in the same way that a chess player - who can technically make any number of creative, interesting, and unforeseen moves - is constrained by certain rules; the difference or disanalogy being that in philosophy, or in language more generally, the 'rules' evolve along with the moves, as it were.
This is why, in a certain sense, unelaborated philosophical questions are not questions at all; they are, as it were, words strung together in certain grammatically correct forms that, sans articulation, lack sense. They provide no impetus, no orientation, with respect to what 'category' it's corresponding 'solution' is meant to fall in.
Well, I already knew you were inaptly demanding explanations, in terms of principles appropriate to contexts of immanent meaning, of positions that affirm transcendent meaning. In other words you have committed a category error. And that was precisely my criticism of your obviously tendentious position. It's common knowledge that the kinds of accounts in concrete terms you ask for cannot be given in the context of theology; that's been known for millennia, so what's new?
Overarching meaning that is understood to be given by a transcendent reality. Surely you knew this already? Are you that unfamiliar with religions and theologies?
It's true that the idea might be wrong. There might be no such reality. How are you going to demonstrafe that, though? I think the problem is that you simply have no feel for and thus do not understand the experiences, presumptions and mindsets of people who affirm such things.
To me it almost always feels like when people are debating (more often quarreling) something about "religion" one person's "religion" is apples, another person's is oranges, another person's is blackberries, etc., whether they sense it or not. Fruitless discussions, usually (no pun intended).
That's right because religious experiences cannot be intersubjectively corroborated.
One person will say this constitutes very good reason to expunge religion from human discourse and life. Another person will say, on the contrary, it is reason to value it most highly.
I really think you're talking past me entirely here. The question 'what is the meaning of life?', like any other question, either is, or is not meaningful. Either one can discuss this question sensibly, or one cannot. If the question is meaningful, one can specify the kind of answers which would be appropriate for it, and if it is not, this can't be done. This is a simple point about sense and language, and applies to all questions, theological or not, and in fact, philosophical and not. In light of this, I don't understand the relevance of this invocation of 'transcendent meaning'. Are you trying to suggest that the question has meaning in a way that, er, no mortal can understand or some such thing?
Here's some more chess analogizing...
There's an idea known as "the move the position demands." Among more accomplished players, this is the maxim that the move you want to play, even and perhaps especially if it seems impossible, is the move to look at. It may not be playable immediately, but maybe it can be prepared, and the threat of it can force your opponent into something undesirable. But sometimes it is playable immediately -- you just have to look pretty deeply to see why. You have to calculate.
Calculating variations is the sense-making part. The idea of the move is important, but the variations give it substance. The best ideas are grounded in the concrete position on the board, rather than in your preconceived ideas or your preferences. If you can look at the position on the board with an open mind, it will tell you what to do. Sadly, you have to be a damn good player for the board to talk to you.
So there are two steps: begin by letting the data lead the way -- a candidate move is much like an hypothesis and the best ones practically hold up a neon sign, IF you are tuned into the data (the board) the right way. But then there's the analysis, which is first of all a check on your intuition. But it can be more: your first idea might fail, but if it had something to it, it should provide an entry point to understanding the position better, and the right move will show up in your calculation. (Bad candidate moves don't touch the essence of the position on the board, so the variations you get for them can go right by the best move without so much as a hello.)
Yes, you've shown what Wittgenstein means by "leaves everything as it is". But "dissolves confusions" remains contradictory to this. And when I speak of dissolving confusions you charge me with changing the subject.
When people ask after the meaning of life, translate "meaning" as purpose. If you're polylingual, you know better than to ask why it translates this way. It just does.
The purpose of most things is transcendent to the thing in question. The purpose of a hammer is not found in the hammer. Purpose, in the case of life, is often stated as a mission. The Romans were on a mission from Mars to bring order to the earth. The Christian mission is obscure and wildly varied.
Lacking mission-giving divinities, purpose is still available and still has a transcendent quality. See Victor Frankl. Brian Greene also talks about his childhood encounter with Sisyphus and the purpose that followed.
So well done on attributing some kind of minimal sense to the question, without which, it would remain an incoherent one. That said, it is still unclear why life is treated by both of you differently. Neither of you have articulated why life can (in your case), or can't (in John's case) be attributed meaning in the absence of an author. This would crystallize the sense of the question further... - and in turn clarify what kind of a solution would correspond with it. And so philosophy happens.
John and I are not in disagreement. Frankl became his own author while stuck in a concentration camp.
This is all psychologically precarious stuff. Poor little Eros faces all the horror and depravity in life. Take it a little at a time. That's my advice.
Quoting John
My bolding.
Quoting John
Quoting John
The question is whether the Nietzschean creating his own values or the Sartrean choosing his own life project are recycling a model that needs something in the slot marked "God".
---- Michael beat me again.---
I like the big showdown in Matrix 3, when [hide]Smith finds Neo's refusal to stay down irrational and when he asks him why he keeps getting up, Neo answers, "Because I choose to."[/hide] That works for me.
This is sounding very 'Vienna School'. If by 'sensibly' you mean something like 'in terms of the senses' then there's your category error right there; theologists, mystics and religionists purport to be talking about something suprasensible. What kinds of "answers' to questions concerning the suprasensible would you expect. I predict you will say there cannot be any, a conclusion which would both be based upon and confirm your own presuppositions. With your orientation, of course there cannot be any such answers for you; but how can you presume to pontificate about what kinds of answers there might be for others?
In this answer to MU earlier I already acknowledged that by 'transcendent' I meant 'an intuited or imagined context' that goes beyond the life and world we know, and that it is not necessarily thought in terms of an author or creator. For example the Brahmanic and Buddhist systems do not include a creator in the way the Abrahamic religions do, but they certainly provide a "meaning of life' which is thought in terms of the transcendent.
Here is the passage:
Quoting John
So "theological notions" should be taken in its broadest possible sense.
:-O 8-) ;) :)
No, nor do I.
No I don't agree that the "inanimate thing we call the universe" is the "larger context"; it is just a part of the life and world we know, the part that is studied by astronomy and cosmology. In a sense we could say there is a transcendental "universe", if it is thought of as 'noumena', but then it would be inappropriate to refer to it as "inanimate".
I haven't anywhere said that there is a "transcendent bestower of meaning for this inanimate thing". If there is a bestower of meaning it is (for us at least) a bestower of human meaning, of meaning for human life; which is certainly not exhausted by "this inanimate thing we call the universe".
And again, I have not been referring to everyday "meaning(s) we see in inanimate things" but to what are understood to be overarching meanings concerning human life itself, the kinds of meanings that are understood to tell 'what it is all about'. [Brackets mine].
I've spent the entire thread explaining what I mean by 'sensibly'. If at this point it is still unclear to you, I can only conclude that you have not read much, or anything I've written. From where I stand, you seem to be confusing a point about semantics - how words, questions, and langauge more generally works - with... I dont know what. I'm beginning to suspect that you think I'm talking about the 'meaning' in the phrase 'the meaning of life', whereas I'm talking about the 'meaning' of phrase itself. That is, I'm talking about the rather pedestrian subject of semantics. You seem to be quite literally talking about something else entirely. Perhaps this is my fault. I should not have used such an awful example as 'the meaning of life'. It has always thrown people into fits of intellectual hystetics on account of it's utter vacuity.
OK, that does sound rather hysterical, so perhaps we ought to let it rest.
You still haven't addressed the contradiction. The "original language game", and "the philosopher's thesis", are mutually exclusive. The latter implies confusion, the former a lack of confusion. If there is confusion to be dissolved, then what is present is the philosopher's thesis, not the original language game. If the original language game is what is present, then there is no philosopher's thesis, and no confusion to be dissolved.
The statement implies that there is confusion present, by referring to confusion to be dissolved. Therefore the philosopher's thesis is what is present, as the confusion which needs to be dissolved. The confusion cannot be dissolved by referring to the original language game, because this would require taking the words out of context (the philosopher's thesis) and putting them into a contradictory context (the original language-game).
Do you see the contradiction involved in interpreting words by referring to the meaning of those words in a context which is contradictory to the context in which the words actually occur? Would it not be contradictory to you, to refer to a context where "black" refers to something black, to understand the way that "black" is being used in a particular instance, if it's being used in this instance to refer to white things?.
Quoting ?????????????
Yes, my argument is that if what you presented, is an appropriate interpretation of what Wittgenstein said, then he was wrong. But it is not necessarily my opinion, that Wittgenstein was wrong. This is not what I am arguing. What I am arguing, is that this interpretation which you have offered is inherently contradictory, and therefore wrong.
The section of the book quoted does not describe a method for resolving any confusions or problems. Wittgenstein says a lot about a particular type of problem which philosophers have, but he offers nothing as a remedy for this problem.
Your claim, that there is a way to dissolve these confusions implies that there is a resolution for this described problem, which is being offered. Remember he claims very strongly that this is all philosophers can do, describe things, not resolve problems. Their attempts to resolve problems only created problems.
Perhaps one could form the assumption that he believes that the problems shouldn't have been created in the first place, but he is describing a problem with philosophy which is already there. So the belief that philosophers ought naught to have created this confusion in the first place, is not an option for resolving it.
He clearly says at 124:
"Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it."
Do you believe that it is possible to remedy a problem without interfering with it? To remedy the problems caused by the unruly language use of some philosophers, would require interference. Where does Wittgenstein say that any philosopher should interfere with the actual use of language?
You do not seem to be distinguishing between prescription and description, and this is category error. If Wittgenstein insists that philosophy can only describe, and you claim that he goes on to prescribe, then if you are not saying that Wittgenstein contradicts himself, you are at best, accusing him of hypocrisy.
I'm pretty sure LW thought all he had to do was show us how foolish we were being and we would quit it of our own accord. There would be no need for him to tell us what to do (prescribing) so long as he could show us what we were doing (describing).
Wittgenstein's overall project in PI is to obscure the distinction between a descriptive rule and a prescriptive rule. Perhaps he believed that he could conflate these categorically distinct things, making them one and the same. But looking for the one essence of "rule" is just to make the mistake of philosophers. "Rule" is commonly used in these two categorically distinct ways, "rule" in the sense of a descriptive rule, and "rule" in the sense of a prescriptive rule. The ambiguity created by his writing style will lead an uninitiated philosopher into apprehending descriptive rules as if they were prescriptive rules.
So for instance, we describe the way language is used, and one might refer to this as "rules". These rules are a type of inductive conclusion (similar to the "laws" of physics) and form the basis for dictionary definitions. Dictionary definitions are descriptive rules. If we refer to these descriptions of how language is used, as "rules", they are, de facto, descriptive rules. Notice, it is very clear when Wittgenstein defines "rule" in PI, that in order to say that one follows a rule, that individual must be observed to be acting in accordance with the rule. There can be no private rule.
The unsuspecting reader, who is perhaps not well trained in interpreting philosophical language use, might perceive that the described activity of rule-following, is the activity of human beings obeying a prescriptive rule. But Wittgenstein clearly excludes this possibility with his definition of "rule following" (observed to be acting in accordance with a rule). He furthers this exclusion with the so-called private language argument, such that there can be no reasonable doubt that "rule" according to Wittgenstein's description in PI, refers to a descriptive rule.
However, Wittgenstein introduces the word "game" to refer to the way that language is used by human beings. We all understand games as having prescriptive rules, dictating the way that one must play the game in order to avoid expulsion from the game. The unsuspecting reader, who is not rigorous in interpretation, will think that the descriptive rules of language, which Wittgenstein refers to, are actually the prescriptive rules of a language "game". This is a category error which results in a massive quantity of misinterpretation of Wittgenstein's work
1. Prescriptive rule: Stop your car at every red light, or suffer penalty.
2. The act of following a prescriptive rule: What goes on in my mind when I approach a light which has turned yellow, or is red, which inclines me to make the car stop. This is following a prescriptive rule, what goes on within one's mind.
3. Observation of human beings who follow prescriptive rules: The human beings are observed to stop their cars at red lights.
4. Descriptive rule: Human beings stop their cars at red lights.
Notice that between 1 and 4, 2 and 3 exist as necessary intermediaries. There is a separation between 1 and 4, which cannot be removed in order to make 1 and 4 refer to the very same thing. The real existence of 2 and 3 imply that 1 and 4 are distinct. If you think that Wittgenstein in PI has removed 2 and 3, to make 1 and 4 the very same thing, then you have interpreted Wittgenstein wrongly, because what he has done is to shed light on the existence of 2 and 3, and the separation between 1 and 4.
I don't think what you are calling a "descriptive rule" is actually a rule.
Sure it's a rule, inductive conclusions create rules. All human beings are animals. Objects fall when dropped. These are rules produced by inductive conclusions. The laws of physics are "rules" aren't they? Ever hear the expression "exception to the rule"? And that's how Wittgenstein defines "rule". When someone is observed as doing something in the way which is designated as the correct way (the way described by the rule) they can be said to be following a rule. I think that this is very clearly what I am calling a "descriptive rule". Remember W says philosophy may only describe things.
Furthermore, there are no prescriptive rules of language. No rules say that we must use this word in such and such a way, or that we cannot use that word in such a way. The only rules in reference to language use are what I call descriptive rules, inductive conclusions concerning the way that people use words, like dictionary definitions. So it is impossible that what Wittgenstein refers to as "rules", in relation to language use, is prescriptive rules, because there are none.
Your "descriptive rules" are not prescriptive then? Or are you conflating the two?
Is an inductive conclusion the same as a "descriptive rule", or does an inductive conclusion produce a "descriptive rule"?
No, descriptive rules are not prescriptive rules, to conflate the two is category error. That's the point I'm making. This is the is/ought separation, we cannot derive a rule for what we ought to do, from a description of what is the case. In the case of language use, we cannot derive rules for how we ought to use symbols from descriptive rules of how symbols are used.
Suppose that everyone says "2+2=4", such that this forms the descriptive rule, "human beings say 2+2=4". There is nothing here to imply the prescriptive rule, "human beings ought to say 2+2=4". To produce that prescriptive rule we must refer to something further, and this something further, might be found in the meaning of "2+2=4". We may though, as Wittgenstein explains, declare that the person saying "2+2=4" is "correct". But "correct" here means acting in a way which is consistent with the descriptive rule. It does not mean "doing what one ought to do". To assign that meaning to "correct", "doing what one ought to do", from how Wittgenstein defines "correct", would be a category mistake.
Quoting Luke
Inductive reasoning produces descriptive rules, so an inductive conclusion is often stated as a descriptive rule.
But the problem is precisely here: the people who all say "2+2=4" have access to its meaning, if you like, and they all do say it because they all ought to. And they all ought to because they all do -- that's what it means to be part of speech community. You're in a loop flipping between prescription and description.
The approach that makes the most sense to me at the moment is Lewis's: we each prefer to conform on the condition that everyone conforms, and it's easy to get from there to normative conventions.
The loop is not necessary though it's a vicious circle imposed upon one's own thinking, by oneself, circular reasoning. If we really look at what "ought" means we see that when there is something which we ought to do, there are reasons why we ought to do it, which go far beyond :"because everyone else is doing it".
In PI, Wittgenstein asks this question of what does "ought" mean from the perspective of what does it mean to obey an order. What does it mean to follow the rules in a game? What does it mean to be guided by a sign? Instead of describing this as a case of doing what one ought to do, and proceeding toward examining what it means for a person to do what one ought to do, he describes it as a case of doing what everyone else is doing. This category mistake sets up the vicious circle, as "correct" is defined as acting in a way which is in accordance with a descriptive rule, rather than as doing what one ought to do. Doing what one ought to do really cannot be defined by doing what everyone else is doing, and to do so is a category mistake.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
This condition, "the condition that everyone conforms" is artificial though, it's made up as a way to make sense of the problems created by the category error. There really is no such condition at play here. What is the case, is that we conform because we want to conform, we apprehend conformation as beneficial to ourselves. There is no such condition. We want to do what we ought to do, because we apprehend it as good. In the case of language, doing what we ought to do allows us to be understood, and this is apprehended as beneficial.
Categories can be taught and used out of habit with exceptions. They can be enforced by law. They can be implicit by cultural pressures. They can be created on a whim. If there is some consensus on a population the category can find some stickiness.
However, those that are created in a whim have the hardest time finding stickiness because it inhibits freedom. Even those who have the greatest tendency to look for authority might resist newly created categories.
There are only category errors when there are agreements about categories within a given population arrived at in a variety of ways. Without agreement there is only disagreement (as in this thread). Education of habit is one of the primary ways to create categories. Unfortunately, for Wittgenstein, his writings are not part of the elementary school curriculum.
Yeah, that's the whole point of conventions. I prefer to conform on the condition that everyone else conforms. There's no particular benefit to me driving on the right side of the road unless everyone else does, and everyone else feels the same.
There are many reasons why I drive on the right side of the road, the possibility of an accident or a fine, to begin with. And mostly, it's what I'm supposed to do. But I definitely do not do it on the condition that everyone else does it. That seems kind of childish to me, like "I'll only do what's right if you do what's right". The number of bad drivers that I see on the road demonstrates clearly to me, that the reason I try to be a safe driver is not because everyone else is a safe driver. Your "condition" that we only behave ourselves on the condition that everyone else does, seems very unrealistic.
It's not inherently right to drive on the right or the left side of the road. In the USA we drive on the right and expect everyone else to drive on the right and do so because we have these mutual expectations of each other. What makes it a convention is that we could just as well drive on the left like they do in the UK with suitably translated expectations and intentions.
I agree that it's not "inherently right". I would have a hard time believing that there is anything which is inherently right. Right and wrong are judgements which we make concerning actions. If I designate an action as the right action, I will proceed with that action, based on this judgement. When I make the decision to drive on the right side of the road, it is because I have been taught that this is the correct thing to do, and I have come to believe this.
In my training, it was expected of me, that I would come to this conclusion. So I make the decision to drive on the right hand side, based on what I believe others expect of me. The expectations are not mutual, because if I expect something back, for behaving in the correct way, it is some type of benefit, reward (my license, the privilege of driving, my safety). My expectation is not that others will behave in the same way as me. That claim is artificial, a falsity, created to support the vicious circle of circular reasoning.
Yeah. What's more, you expect them to. If you expected everyone to drive on the left, driving on the right would be the wrong thing to do in whatever way you like.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Really? You don't think everyone drives on the right and expects you to?
We're not talking here about driving defensively. There is a general expectation that people in the USA drive on the right; that's not the same as an expectation of each driver that they always will.
Do you really think your choice of which side of the road to drive on has nothing at all to do with other drivers?
No, I have no such expectations, the thought never enters my mind until I see bad drivers driving on the wrong side of the road in inappropriate situations. But this just makes me realize that if I had them, such expectations would be unfounded.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think that other drivers make this choice in the same way that I do, they are trained to do this, just like me. We are all trained to drive on the right. We all see it as the correct thing to do, and expect to get the privilege of being allowed to drive if we do it correctly, and so we do. I don't think we learn to drive by observing others, and using the invalid deduction "if others are doing it this way, then I ought to do it this way too". That's the attitude which learns us bad habits, not the correct habits. The correct way is learned by training from the authorities, following the training precisely, and learning to resist the temptation to follow others in their bad habits.
Sure. The point you're missing here is that you're also taught "WE all drive on the right side of the road," you're taught that other people will do this, and that's why you need to do it too.
Do you think it's a coincidence that all these people individually being taught what the right thing to do is are all taught to drive on the right side of the road?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Pretty sure I never said anything remotely like that, nor does my claim require it.
You're taught to drive on the right rather than the left just because that's how we drive around here. We all continue to drive on the right because we all continue to derive benefit from it, and pass it on to others, so we have no motivation for changing, but other conventions do change if a better alternative arises and is adopted.
Your argument here is that this must be either a prescriptive rule (your view) or a descriptive rule (what you wrongly take to be my view). I'm telling you it's both and has to be both. It only makes sense to tell people to do it if it's what everybody does. If you lived in the UK, you wouldn't teach your kid to drive on the right.
Now if you want to say, we teach people to drive on the correct side of the road, whatever that is, go ahead. Can you teach someone to drive on the correct side of the road without teaching them which side that is?
Actually I think it's you who is missing the point. You misuse the word "because" here. The thinking which you demonstrate is a vicious circle. The cause of us driving on the ride side of the road is other people driving on the right side of the road. You express no understanding of how such a convention could come into existence. If you had such an understanding you would not say "we do X like this because that's the way we do it around here". This is the problem which Socrates demonstrated when he asked people if they knew what they were doing. They said of course we know what we are doing, because we are doing it, doesn't that demonstrate that we know what we are doing? But they could express no understanding of what they were doing, and Socrates was able to convince them that they really didn't know what they were doing. Saying that we do X like this "because" that's the way we do it around here, demonstrates that you do not know why we do X like this..
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I agree that there is both a descriptive and prescriptive rule concerning this issue, that's not at question. The point is that to conflate these two is a category mistake. The prescriptive rule has causal impetus which the descriptive rule does not. To ask how a prescriptive rule has causal power is a very important philosophical question. To answer this question by referring to the descriptive rule, "we do what we ought to do because that's the way that we do it" is to give the wrong answer. It is the wrong answer because it is an answer designed to avoid the issue. It does not answer the question of why we drive on the right side of the road around here. Instead of following the inquiry into the reasons for the rule, the motivations behind doing what one ought to do, and the issue of how the prescriptive rule may cause the existence of such conventions, the entire question, which is a very important philosophical question, is dismissed with the assumption that we do what we ought to do because others are doing it that way.
It is the in the nature of conventions that it barely matters how it got started. Members of a population face recurrent coordination problems. If there is only a single course of action that is clearly best for each party, the solution will not be a convention -- that's just doing what's best.
What makes their solution a convention is that there are multiple acceptable solutions available. Traffic flows smoothly on two-lane roads whether everyone drives on the left or on the right. There may be various particular reasons for doing one or the other at a given time and place, but they pale in comparison to the utility of settling on one or the other.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'd talk of reasons rather than causes here, but at any rate conventions generally are normative. My reasons for following the convention will always be connected to others following suit. If for some reason people start driving on the other side of the road, I had better do that too.
You can find all the gory details in Lewis's Convention, if you like, but I'm happy to continue as his spokesman since it makes perfect sense to me.
I really don't think this is true. In each instance of there being a conventional way of doing things, there is a reason why that convention was adopted. As time passes things change, knowledge progresses and society evolves. The technology of the modern society may render the conventional way, as not the best way of doing things. So we ought to revisit the conventions periodically to determine why those particular ones are used, and whether a better way has come to light.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't know about this. "Normative" is a word often used in strange ways, so I wouldn't agree that conventions are necessarily normative without some explanation of what you mean by that term. A norm is a standard, a convention is an agreement. If there is a type of convention which is an informal agreement, then there cannot be a standard to be adhered to with this type of convention. Therefore, strictly speaking, this type of convention cannot be normative. Many philosophers will argue that the use of words, and perhaps even agreements like the social contract, are this type of "informal" convention. To those philosophers, I would argue that it is impossible that these so-called conventions are normative. To maintain the proposition "conventions are normative", we'd have to dismiss things like common word use as non-conventional, allowing that only word use in logical exercises is truly conventional.
Okay, but earlier you offered these two examples of "descriptive rules":
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But aren't these also examples of "prescriptive rules"? For example, doesn't this prescribe what ought to happen to objects when dropped?
I think before answering, I'd better ask what you imagine these standards to be.
Elsewhere, you have argued at length that truth is just certainty, that it is at best intersubjective. Are you going to suggest here that there are objective standards for us to conform to?
That's prediction, not prescription. We use descriptive rules to make predictions. Prescriptions are commands of what one ought to do, predictions are statements about what one believes will occur in the future.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Standards are principles or rules often used for comparing one thing to another. A straight forward example would be a rule of measurement. What type of existence standards have is an unresolved philosophical question, often debated. So there are a number of different views on that.
So, prescriptive rules ("commands of what one ought to do") are limited only to human actions, whereas descriptive rules are not so limited? Seems somewhat ad hoc...
Can you provide an example of a prescriptive rule? Who prescribes these commands?
If you think that describing the way things are, which is what philosophers are supposed to do, is "ad hoc", then I suppose the distinction between descriptive rules and prescriptive rules is ad hoc. It's just a description of how things are, the reality of the situation. There are existing rules, formed by inductive reasoning which describe the world, laws of physics etc.. I call them descriptive rules. There are also existing rules which tell human beings what they ought do and ought not do.
Quoting Luke
Take a look at a law book, common law, civil codes, that sort of thing. Or if you prefer, try a book of building codes. These are prescriptive rules. They are not produced as descriptions of how human beings behave, they are designed to conform human behaviour in certain ways. They have been drawn up, "commanded" by people in the position of governance.
If you prefer, consider the rules of a game. These prescriptive rules are very limited in scope, because they only apply to those who choose to play the game, and are only in effect for that particular game being played. Unlike the rules of a game, you are subject to the laws of the society where you live, regardless of whether you want to play that game. The rules of the game are drawn up by those who invent the game
So now we're right back where we started from.
To say that a rule is prescriptive is, in the first place, an incomplete description of why I follow it, if I do; I must also be, according either to myself or to others, obliged to follow the rule.
The model you give, where a prescriptive rule originates from someone recognized as an authority, seems clearly not to apply when it comes to, for instance, language use: here either there is no such authority, or we are all of us the authority. The latter seems preferable, but requires further analysis, which happily is quite interesting.
Wish granted.
Yes, that's right to the point. Language use, except in the case of formal logic including mathematics, is not controlled by prescriptive rules, in the same way that a game is regulated by prescriptive rules. We do have dictionary definitions of how language is used, but these are descriptive rules, not prescriptive. And there is no recognized principle which dictates that if a thing can be described by a rule, then it must be guided by a prescriptive rule, otherwise natural inanimate things would be considered to be following the guidance of prescriptive rules. So if we desire to understand how language use is guided by some sort of rules we cannot look at definitions of meaning, because this would be a category mistake.
I think that the question of whether there is no authority, or if we are all authorities, is to proceed in the right direction. Surely there is a demonstration of informal rules which are taught to us when we learn things. When someone shows us how to do something, we follow their rule. So in as much as we teach others, we are all authorities. But this requires another category of "prescriptive rule", principles which are not explicit, but implicit. So when you demonstrate to a student how to do something, it is implied by your act of demonstration, that the person ought to do it this way. By presenting yourself as an authority, the student apprehends you as an authority, and the implication is made, that the procedure ought be carried out in the way that you demonstrate. In this case, there is no prescriptive rule per se. There is authority, recognition of authority, the will to follow, and habituation. The result is essentially the same as the explicit prescriptive rule, with one big difference that I see. The explicit prescriptive rule may be published and directed to the masses, whereas the implicit demonstration reaches a limited number of people. The key point which is essential to both is the recognition of authority.
But you've left out other people again.
Teaching the use of a word is in many ways like teaching a skill: "Here's how you ..." But speaking a language is essentially cooperative, so the success of your performance is always connected to what other members of your speech community do.
I did leave out "other people", just for simplicity sake though. But I guess I thought it was rather obvious that we have more than one teacher, therefore there is more than one authority in the lives of each one of us. As you suggested, we are all authorities, and I agreed that as much as we are teachers, we are authorities.
I guess you could say that when someone misuses a word and you correct them, that puts you in the position of teacher, but whence derives your authority to be that person's teacher? When you're learning a skill, you grant authority to someone who possess the skil you want to learn; but this is a little different because the misuser must acknowledge that they do not possess the skill they thought they did.
And for all that, it is possible cooperatively to change the rules. Languages evolve.
Hey Srap, let's take it to the other thread.
This thread already keeps merging in my mind with the "Social Constructs" thread, where SX and I are about to talk about stipulative definitions, which is right next to what we're talking about here.