As are horseshoes, which are not made any which way.
Whether someone calls it a "horseshoe" or not depends on their individual concept. It's simply a matter of what they personally require to call something a "horseshoe."
Whether someone calls it a "horseshoe" or not depends on their individual concept. It's simply a matter of what they personally require to call something a "horseshoe."
So people need not agree on what a horseshoe is? There is no collective knowledge? I’m sure I misunderstand you, and that’s not what you’re saying.
So people need not agree on what a horseshoe is? There is no collective knowledge? I’m sure I misunderstand you, and that’s not what you’re saying
Clearly, people sometimes have very different concepts in mind by the same term. And sometimes they have very different concepts in mind and it's not obvious to us, too.
Sometimes when it's clear that they have very different concepts in mind by the same term, we can translate their concept into terms that make sense to us and that seem to be coherent and consistent with how they're using the term. Sometimes we can't do that. (For the latter, see me and most continental philosophy and most "mysticist"/"esotericist" etc. philosophy for example.)
I would say that there's no collective knowledge. But knowledge certainly has social influences and assistance.
Reply to Terrapin Station You actually make sense here, but I must politely disagree. Concepts have generally true or false values, otherwise communication would fail more often than it does.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 15:58#3159130 likes
Concepts have generally true or false values, otherwise communication would fail more often than it does.
Obviously I don't agree with that (and not just because I think that communication often does fail--hence your surprise that I make sense), but it's a huge thing to get into different theories about how communication works.
Obviously I don't agree with that (and not just because I think that communication often does fail--hence your surprise that I make sense), but it's a huge thing to get into different theories about how communication works.
This is now far afield of the OP, but I will just say that the vast majority of concepts have generally true or false values. Communication fails when one or both interlocutors are wrong about concepts used. ‘Cat’, ‘chair’, ‘normative ethics’, ‘sun’, ‘Dow Jones Industrials Index’ all have correct usages. Communication fails when these concepts are used incorrectly.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 16:11#3159200 likes
This is now far afield of the OP, but I will just say that the vast majority of concepts have generally true or false values. Communication fails when one or both interlocutors are wrong about concepts used. ‘Cat’, ‘chair’, ‘normative ethics’, ‘sun’, ‘Dow Jones Industrials Index’ all have correct usages. Communication fails when these concepts are used incorrectly.
What do you take to be correct, just conformity to the norm?
What do you take to be correct, just conformity to the norm?
Community involvement, yes. Concepts can evolve or even change meaning or gain new meaning, but it ultimately depends on a community of users. Sometimes authorities such as experts determine correct usage, and sometimes the language game permits a community of users to use a concept in a unique and novel way.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 16:19#3159250 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station There are correct uses of concepts determined by a community of users. If the users didn’t have a general correct use for concepts, then communication would be impossible. Communication, however, often succeeds. That is the argument.
There are correct uses of concepts determined by a community of users. If the users didn’t have a general correct use for concepts, then communication would be impossible.
Saying "Communication is impossible unless such and such is the case" is different than saying that "such and such is correct."
But "communication is impossible unless a concept is used in a conformist way" isn't the case anyway.
Not that usage is the same as the semantic content of a concept anyway.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 16:38#3159410 likes
This is a regularly occurring misunderstanding on your part. He did not commit the fallacy of appealing to the masses.
He just said that what makes itcorrect is consensus usage. That's what the argumentum ad populum fallacy is. (And that's what it is in consensus usage, so if you believe that makes something correct, you'll not disagree.)
Reply to Terrapin Station I don’t even know what we are arguing about anymore. This is way off topic, anyway, and I’m not even sure we would necessarily end up disagreeing with each other if this discussion continued, so I will just let it go.
He just said that what makes itcorrect is consensus usage. That's what the argumentum ad populum fallacy is. (And that's what it is in consensus usage, so if you believe that makes something correct, you'll not disagree.)
That's not what the fallacy is. That's more like a rough and overly simplistic explanation of the sort you'd give off the top of your head to someone new to philosophy. It works well enough in a large number of cases, but the obvious problem with that, however, are those cases which are in fact exceptions to the fallacy, but which you mistakenly lump in, I guess because it suits your argument.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 16:51#3159530 likes
the obvious problem with that, however, are those cases which are in fact exceptions to the fallacy
The problem is that there are no exceptions. The only time the consensus opinion is relevant and not fallacious is when we want to know what the consensus opinion happens to be, but that never makes the consensus opinion correct (by virtue of being the consensus opinion).
The problem is that there are no exceptions. The only time the consensus opinion is relevant and not fallacious is when we want to know what the consensus opinion happens to be, but that never makes the consensus opinion correct.
“Correct” as in that it works. A concept’s use is correct when used in a way that people understand one another.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 16:59#3159600 likes
Do you get my meaning? If so, then what’s the problem? If not, then I’m not using the term correctly, and that’s why this communication is failing. Hence, my point still stands.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 17:03#3159630 likes
Do you get my meaning? If so, then what’s the problem?
Your "meaning," I'd say--sure. I can understand unusual usages of terms. Which is my point. You don't have to use the term the same way I do, or the same way that most people do, in order for others to understand you.
The problem is that there are no exceptions. The only time the consensus opinion is relevant and not fallacious is when we want to know what the consensus opinion happens to be, but that never makes the consensus opinion correct (by virtue of being the consensus opinion).
It does if that's the criterion for correctness. And of course there are exceptions. There are plenty of exceptions. You have persistent trouble in identifying the more nuanced exceptions, and to be honest, I don't actually think that you want to learn your error and stop making the same mistake over and again. You've always struck me as someone steadfastly committed to a position or line of argument, and sometimes that's a problem.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 17:06#3159670 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station Yes, which was my point about using concepts in unique and novel ways in certain language games. However, that was one concept. It didn’t appear that you misunderstood other concepts I was using in this discussion, no?
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 17:06#3159690 likes
I'm a fan of irony, so I'll just point out that your above statement is self-defeating, as it is itself an exception to the fallacy of appealing to the masses. But, like I said, you typically don't have a problem with the obvious exceptions, but with the more nuanced exceptions.
Reply to Terrapin Station It seems to me that you model reality differently than I, which can lead to problems with philosophical discussions. However, I’m not sure that your model is any better or worse than mine. Jus’ sayin’.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 17:29#3159890 likes
You're a strange one. I say that there are plenty of exceptions to the fallacy - which there are. There are way more exceptions to fallacy than instances of it - that's just common sense. You then reply by saying no, there aren't. I then point out that even that reply is itself an exception. You then bizarrely ask me what the appeal to the masses is there, even though I'm saying precisely the opposite to that.
Although your nose is indeed beautiful. I'll give you that.
I think @Terrapin Station's idea is cute. Now I get to say it's just an argumentum ad populum to claim that Donald Trump is president of the US. Like, that's just conformity, dude.
Magnus AndersonAugust 15, 2019 at 21:37#3161370 likes
You can use language any way you want, but since the purpose of language is to communicate, it's in your best interest to use it the way other people use it. Unless, of course, you do not want to communicate but to obfuscate.
Words do have true and false meanings but only in relation to certain language.
The correct meaning of the word "chair" in English language is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs" and this is determined by consensus (clearly not the case of argumentum ad populum.)
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 22:08#3161550 likes
I think Terrapin Station's idea is cute. Now I get to say it's just an argumentum ad populum to claim that Donald Trump is president of the US. Like, that's just conformity, dude.
Again, you can say that it's a fact that a consensus thinks about him that way, but that's all that the consensus there accomplishes.
No, we can say it is a fact that he is President. A social fact to be precise, which comes into being through consensus. And calling that an argumentum ad populum is silly, frankly, and you should know better.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 22:18#3161600 likes
Which simply refers to it being a fact that a consensus thinks about him that way. It's just like you could say, "A consensus thinks about this concept that way." And if you said that and you were accurate about it, that would certainly be the case. That would be a fact.
That doesn't make that concept with those associations correct somehow. It's just a fact (and correct) that a consensus thinks about it that way.
As I wrote way back in the thread: " The only time the consensus opinion is relevant and not fallacious is when we want to know what the consensus opinion happens to be, but that never makes the consensus opinion correct (by virtue of being the consensus opinion)." It's correct that it's the consensus opinion. The consensus opinion isn't correct just because it's a consensus opinion, however. In other words, the scope of "correct" is when we're referring to the consensus opinion being whatever it is. A claim about what the consensus opinion is can be correct. The scope of "correct" doesn't extend outside of that, so that the consensus opinion makes anything correct in general.
The correct meaning of the word "chair" in English language is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs" and this is determined by consensus (clearly not the case of argumentum ad populum.)
Exactly. @Terrapin Station, can't you see the absurdity in making such a charge in these cases? Does it not seem intuitively wrong to you to think of that as somehow fallacious? It is nothing like the obvious wrongness you can easily detect in typical examples of the fallacy. It only has a superficial similarity to genuine examples of the fallacy. Statements like that quoted above have little do with logic altogether, it really is a matter of common sense, and readily agreeable to most. Let it go. You've been stuck on this point for a long time now. I would like to see you concede and move past it.
It's been explained to you multiple times that correct usage is determined by consensus for certain facts, such as social facts, and for definitions of words etc. You can continue to deny that, but your denial is empty as language will continue to function that way and we will continue to make judgements that way.
(And if there is any utility at all in looking at things your way, please let me know as I don't see it.)
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 22:55#3161710 likes
It's been explained to you multiple times that correct usage is determined by consensus for certain facts, such as social facts, and for definitions of words etc.
Folks can explain that all they want. They're wrong. The only thing determined by consensus is consensus. Consensus makes nothing correct with respect to a scope other than what the consensus happens to think/say/etc.
I've explained many times that you're wrong about this. I doubt you'll stop claiming things that are wrong, however.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 22:56#3161720 likes
Exactly. Terrapin Station, can't you see the absurdity in making such a charge in these cases?
There is not a "correct meaning of the word 'chair.'" We can say, "It's correct that most people use the term this way," but that's all that a consensus tells us. It's not correct to match what most people do, or incorrect to not match that.
Magnus AndersonAugust 15, 2019 at 22:58#3161730 likes
There is not a "correct meaning of the word 'chair.'"
That's absurd, and that it is absurd can be put to a test of sorts. A good test to see whether you're talking bollocks is to put it to ordinary people. If they laugh in disbelief and exclaim something along the lines of, "Of course there is! It's what you sit on, silly!", then that's a pretty good indication that you've gone badly wrong somewhere. And that's exactly the sort of reaction you'd get.
And that's precisely what we want to know when it comes to the correct meaning of words.
You might want to know consensus usage, but that doesn't make the consensus usage correct. It just makes it (correct that it's) the consensus usage.
So, in other words, if you use "chair" to refer to bicycles, you're not incorrect, but if you say, "Most people use 'chair' to refer to bicycles," you are incorrect .
But I agreed with everything you said. I just used words in a non-consensus way so that they meant their opposites. (See, I did it again).
That's a nice little [i]reductio ad absurdum[/I] there. Terrapin Station is usually quite logical, so I'm surprised he can't detect the clear fault in his position you've highlighted here.
Terrapin StationAugust 15, 2019 at 23:09#3161820 likes
In this case, and many others, they conform [i]because it makes perfect sense[/I]. A chair [I]is[/I] that thing that you sit on. That's the correct answer in the context. You wouldn't be gaining anything by deviating from the norm here. It would just make you look kind of silly.
I get the feeling you're fetishizing non-conformism to the extent its impairing your ability to accept facts so basic coherent comprehension is dependent on them. It's OK to conform sometimes, you know. It helps keep things sensible. You don't get brownie points just for holding a minority opinion.
I get the feeling you're fetishizing non-conformism to the extent its impairing your ability to accept facts so basic coherent comprehension is dependent on them. It's OK to conform sometimes, you know. It helps keep things sensible. You don't get brownie points just for holding a minority opinion.
So, in other words, if you use "chair" to refer to bicycles, you're not incorrect.
Yes you are, because "chair" has a [i]completely different[/I] meaning to bicycles. The common meaning is considered the standard for determining correctness [i]by default[/I]. That's [i]always[/I] the implicit context. You seem to think that you yourself are in charge of the implicit context, and of the default standard for determining correctness. You seem to think that you can change the default setting to your own idiosyncratic meaning on whim, without saying a word. But you're [i]wrong[/I] about that. That's clearly not how things are, and not how they work, and the rest of us are keenly aware of this - it's pretty obvious when put to the test by trying to communicate in your way - which is why no one is agreeing with you. Baden has already effectively reduced your position to absurdity. You're just biting the bullet at this point. Consistency despite absurdity. Nothing to write home about.
Yes you are, because "chair" has a completely different meaning to bicycles. The common meaning is considered the standard for determining correctness by default. That's always the implicit context. You seem to think that you yourself are in charge of the implicit context, and of the default standard for determining correctness. You seem to think that you can change the default setting to your own idiosyncratic meaning on whim, without saying a word. But you're wrong. That's clearly not how things are, and not how they work, and the rest of us are keenly aware of this - it's pretty obvious when put to the test by trying to communicate in your way - which is why no one is agreeing with you. Baden has already effectively reduced your position to absurdity. You're just biting the bullet at this point. Consistency despite absurdity. Nothing to write home about.
Funny that by your own logic I wouldn't be incorrect in interpreting you as saying that I'm always right. (And it would be an argumentum ad populum to claim otherwise :party: ).
So, in other words, if you use "chair" to refer to bicycles, you're not incorrect, but if you say, "Most people use 'chair' to refer to bicycles," you are incorrect .
If you use the word "chair" to refer to bicycles you are using it incorrectly. That's a fact.
What's important to understand is what it means to say that you're using the word "chair" incorrectly. What it means is that the manner in which you use the word "chair" does not correspond to the manner in which English speaking people do. That's all there is to it.
On the other hand, I have no idea what it means to say "If you use "chair" to refer to bicycles, you're not correct". That does not look like proper English to me.
if you say, "Most people use 'chair' to refer to bicycles," you are incorrect .
But again, by his own logic, you are not incorrect in using 'use' to mean 'don't use' (and it would be fallacious to claim otherwise) and he cannot know that that is not the usage you are employing, so his own statement above is incorrect. So what it means in practice to have no notion of correct usage is that you cannot make any claim about what anyone says without clarifying their meaning, and then clarifying the clarification, and so on ad infinitum. The upshot of no usage being correct is the impossibility of communication.
(And I'm all for problematising stuff, but in order to do so you need theory, and theory whose sophistication and strength is in proportion to the problematic nature of the claim, but all we've got here is the continued assertion of prima facie self-refutations and absurdities.)
Magnus AndersonAugust 16, 2019 at 09:52#3163050 likes
You wouldn't be gaining anything by deviating from the norm here.
Since the purpose of language is to communicate, it makes no sense to deviate from the norm. By deviating from the norm, you make it difficult for others to understand you and for yourself to understand others.
It's not conformism if you want to be understood.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 10:55#3163160 likes
But again, by his own logic, you are not incorrect in using 'use' to mean 'don't use' (and it would be fallacious to claim otherwise) and he cannot know that that is not the usage you are employing, so his own statement above is incorrect. So what it means in practice to have no notion of correct usage is that you cannot make any claim about what anyone says without clarifying their meaning, and then clarifying the clarification, and so on ad infinitum. The upshot of no usage being correct is the impossibility of communication.
It should be pretty obvious that I don't think it makes communication impossible, right?
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 10:56#3163170 likes
What's missing in the conversation here is any sense of the problems to which concepts respond. Concepts are addressed to problems to which they form a response. This thread started with a horseshoe - a horseshoe is designed to protect the hoof of a horse: it is a solution to a problem. And not just any solution will do. The 'two sides' here, one placing concepts in the purview of the individual, and the other in the social, are both entirely wrong. Both ought to think to ask the horse, which cares neither for what individuals nor societies think about horseshoes.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 11:09#3163220 likes
Instead of worrying about whether an interpretation is correct or not, why not worry about things like whether communication with someone is coherent, consistent, etc.?
It should be pretty obvious that I don't think it makes communication impossible, right?
Then you must use some other word than "correct" which has no practical difference in meaning.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 11:21#3163300 likes
That's the whole gist behind aesthetic objectivism, too. Some folks have a psychological need to be right/correct. Simply having the tastes they have isn't sufficient for them.
Instead of worrying about whether an interpretation is correct or not, why not worry about things like whether communication with someone is coherent, consistent, etc.?
Yes, but in order to be coherent/consistent etc there are certain presumptions to be made including that there is a standard of correctness that we can both agree on with regards to the meaning of words. Again, I'm all for problematising but this idea that the notion of correct usage inheres a logical fallacy doesn't stand up to scrutiny and just impedes communication. You need something more sophisticated than that.
Then you must use some other word than "correct" which has no practical difference in meaning.
Communication simply depends on being able to understand others, which is a matter of being able to assign meanings to their utterances (say) in a manner that's coherent, consistent with their other past and future utterances, etc.
There's no need to bring the idea of "correct" into it.
Re the notion of definitions being correct or not, they're conventional or not. It's not incorrect to be unconventional. The conventional definition of "correct" isn't "conventional."
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 11:25#3163340 likes
Yes, but in order to be coherent there are certain presumptions to be made including that there is a standard of correctness that we can both agree on with regards to the meaning of words.
That's not required at all, and your notion there is anti-instrumentalist.
Not that this is communication, but it's similar to, say, understanding planetary motion, with a stationary Earth, as containing epicycles. That's coherent, but it's not what's actually going on.
Communication simply depends on being able to understand others, which is a matter of being able to assign meanings to their utterances (say) in a manner that's coherent, consistent with their other past and future utterances, etc.
There's no need to bring the idea of "correct" into it.
Re the notion of definitions being correct or not, they're conventional or not. It's not incorrect to be conventional. The conventional definition of "correct" isn't "conventional."
I find it really silly that you don't want to use the word "correct" like the rest of us, even though it makes no practical difference. When you interpret the meaning of these words in sync with their intended meaning, and/or in accordance with the English language as per the relevant dictionary definition, that's what the rest of us call "correct". You can call it whatever you want, or nothing at all, but that would be silly and make no meaningful difference.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 11:30#3163360 likes
It's hard to even know what your claim is now. A standard of correctness does not have to be an absolute. It's a yard-stick. Felicity and appropriacy are other terms used in similar contexts. And if as per @S this all boils down to some pedantic notion regarding the term "correct", it really has been a waste of time. Although either way your argumentum ad populum claim is senseless and you ought to drop it and rephrase your objection in a more coherent manner.
Again, the conventional definition of "correct" is NOT "conventional."
The first dictionary definition I found fits the situation I described just fine:
[B]correct[/b]
"1. free from error; in accordance with fact or truth".
If your interpretation matches the intended meaning (that being a matter of fact or truth with which you would be in accordance with) then that's an instance of successful communication whereby you would have understood me correctly, not misunderstood me, which would mean an erroneous interpretation.
I shouldn't even have to explain that, as it's obvious. You're not a child, so why are you acting like one?
"1. free from error; in accordance with fact or truth".
If your interpretation matches the intended meaning (a matter if fact or truth with which you would be in accordance with) then that's a successful match and you would have understood me correctly, not misunderstood me, meaning an erroneous interpretation.
I shouldn't even have to explain that, as it's obvious. You're not a child, so why are you acting like one?
You're not understanding something I've explained many times:
It's correct that the definition of "correct" above is "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."
It's correct that that's a conventional definition.
That doesn't imply that it's correct to define "correct" as "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."
It's a scope issue. The distinction is similar to the bound/unbound distinction.
In the one case, we're making a claim about what happens to be the case re popular usage, re what a dictionary says, etc. "Correct" is bound to those claims qua those claims--that is, what popular usage is, what the dictionary says, etc.
In the other case, it's an attempt to make an unbound claim--"It's not correct to define 'correct' as 'a type of puppy'" is not saying, "That's not what the dictionary says" or "That's not the conventional definition." It's broader than that. The unbound claim has an implication that one SHOULD follow conventions, should follow suit. That it's right to follow conventions. But that's hogwash of course.
If you were simply saying "Defining 'correct' as 'a type of puppy' is not the conventional definition; it's not what the dictionary says," the person you're saying that to can simply say, "So what? I wasn't attempting to relay the dictionary or conventional definition."
You'd still want to say that they're incorrect, though.
unenlightenedAugust 16, 2019 at 11:50#3163450 likes
You're not understanding something I've explained many times:
It's correct that the definition of "correct" above is "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."
It's correct that that's a conventional definition.
That doesn't imply that it's correct to define "correct" as "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."
Are you insane? I'm not failing to understand your irrelevant points. It is correct per my usage, and per common usage, and per a matching interpretation from you. Any mismatched interpretation is incorrect. That's how the rest of us use the words "correct" and "incorrect" in situations like this, and you haven't provided any sensible reason for refusing to use them likewise. All you've done is express an irrational unwillingness to join in, due to some childish aversion to the notion of conformity, which to you is some sort of bogeyman.
It's a scope issue. The distinction is similar to the bound/unbound distinction.
In the one case, we're making a claim about what happens to be the case re popular usage, re what a dictionary says, etc. "Correct" is bound to those claims qua those claims--that is, what popular usage is, what the dictionary says, etc.
In the other case, it's an attempt to make an unbound claim--"It's not correct to define 'correct' as 'a type of puppy'" is not saying, "That's not what the dictionary says" or "That's not the conventional definition."
And in the unbound claim, there's an implication that one SHOULD follow conventions. That it's right to follow conventions.
You're completely off track there. This is a simple matter of whether you're willing to use a word, "correct", like the rest of us, in a situation which makes sense, or whether you're going to continue to resist on no reasonable basis, given that your arguments miss the point.
If you've interpreted the above as I meant it, which is also how the words are commonly used in that context, then you've correctly understood me - you've ascertained the correct meaning - and if not, then you haven't - you've made an error.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 11:57#3163480 likes
This is a simple matter of whether you're willing to use a word, "correct", like the rest of us, in a situation which makes sense, or whether you're going to continue to resist on no reasonable basis, given that your arguments miss the point.
And if you're not willing, you're incorrect?
unenlightenedAugust 16, 2019 at 11:59#3163490 likes
In a sense, yes. Like Baden said, we're not dealing in absolutes. So, under the working assumption that willingness in this context indicates correctness, then obviously you would indeed be incorrect if you're not willing.
You're wrong because your position fails, and the collective position of the rest of us works. It is superior. It makes sense. Yours does not.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 12:03#3163520 likes
In a sense, yes. Like Baden said, we're not dealing in absolutes. So, under the working assumption that willingness in this context indicates correctness, then obviously you would indeed be incorrect if you're not willing.
But then you're not just saying that the dictionary or conventional definition of "correct" is "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."
After they tell you, "I define 'correct' as 'a puppy,'" you're saying that the person needs to follow the convention.
But then you're not just saying that the dictionary or conventional definition of "correct" is "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."
Of course I'm not just saying that. Haven't you been listening? I'm saying that when that's what's meant, and when you interpret that meaning accordingly, then that's correct, that's successful communication. Why the hell is that so difficult for you to a) understand, and b) acknowledge? You haven't given any sensible response to that.
If course I'm not just saying that. Haven't you been listening? I'm saying that when that's what's meant, and when you interpret that meaning accordingly, then that's correct, that's successful communication. Why the hell us that so difficult for you to a) understand, and b) acknowledge? You haven't given any sensible response to that.
Can't you successfully communicate with someone using the word "correct" to refer to "a puppy" once they tell you that?
And they can successfully communicate with you using the conventional definition if they're familiar with it, etc.
Can't you successfully communicate with someone using the word "correct" to refer to "a puppy" once they tell you that?
Yes, but so what? I never at any point said that conventional usage is the only possible standard of correctness. I very clearly said that it is the default standard.
And they can successfully communicate with you using the conventional definition if they're familiar with it, etc.
Yes, and again, so what? Is this the point where you backtrack after all of this apparent disagreement? It wouldn't be the first time you've done that.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 12:16#3163610 likes
Yes, but so what? I never at any point said that conventional usage is the only possible standard of correctness. I very clearly said that it is the default standard.
So "correct" has no normative or prescriptive weight in your usage here?
So "correct" has no normative or prescriptive weight in your usage here?
What do you mean by that? Why wouldn't it?
And besides, please don't create diversions. It feels as though we are on the verge of finally getting somewhere. All you have to do us come out and clearly and directly address this key point that I've put to you:
I'm saying that when that's what's meant, and when you interpret that meaning accordingly, then that's correct, that's successful communication. Why the hell is that so difficult for you to a) understand, and b) acknowledge? You haven't given any sensible response to that.
[B]So, do you a) understand that, and b) acknowledge it to be so?[/b]
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 12:21#3163630 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station I'm not even going to read your reply, because it is apparently a response to your own digression, which you seem to want to continue. Enough with the red herrings. Answer the key question in bold.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 12:23#3163660 likes
Are you insane? I'm not failing to understand your irrelevant points. It is correct per my usage, and per common usage, and per a matching interpretation from you. Any mismatched interpretation is incorrect. That's how the rest of us use the words "correct" and "incorrect" in situations like this, and you haven't provided any sensible reason for refusing to use them likewise. All you've done is express an irrational unwillingness to join in, due to some childish aversion to the notion of conformity, which to you is some sort of bogeyman.
What it "means" is that they're not using the word conventionally/a la common usage, right?
No need for scare quotes. That's exactly what it means to say that someone is using some word incorrectly -- it means that the person is not using the word the way most people do.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 12:27#3163720 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station You began a digression before answering the most important point of disagreement between us. I want you to give a clear and direct answer to that key question before I humour you any further on secondary points which you'd rather pursue instead.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 12:28#3163740 likes
I am not sure I know what it means to say that a convention is correct or incorrect.
You just said that what it "means" to say that word usage is correct/incorrect is that the word usage is the same as the convention/not the same as the convention.
So on your view, what it is to be correct (in this context, at least) is to be (the same as) the convention. Is that not right?
First, it's not a digression. It's what I'm talking about.
It's both. The digression can be traced back to this exchange between us. I clarified my position to you, and did not get a proper reply from you. I am still waiting for that reply.
Stop being difficult and answer the bloody question.
But then you're not just saying that the dictionary or conventional definition of "correct" is "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."
— Terrapin Station
Of course I'm not just saying that. Haven't you been listening? I'm saying that when that's what's meant, and when you interpret that meaning accordingly, then that's correct, that's successful communication. Why the hell is that so difficult for you to a) understand, and b) acknowledge? You haven't given any sensible response to that.
Also, here's more evidence that you're a bad listener. I said the following in that same post:
Why should someone adhere to the consensus usage when they tell you they're using some odd definition, like "I define 'correct' as 'a puppy'"?
If I'm using it in accordance with the consensus usage, and they want understand me, then they should drop - at least temporary - their own idiotic made-up definition, and adopt instead the consensus usage.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 12:38#3163790 likes
Also, here's more evidence that you're a bad listener.
I'm not a listener at all when it comes to long(er) posts. I've explained this many times. You can write posts as long as you want, of course. I'm not doing more than what I consider to be one point or issue at a time, however (especially if someone is in the mood to argue with me). It's up to you whether you want to write stuff that I'm not going to read.
Reply to Terrapin Station Right, it's reached that point again where you are effectively conceding the debate due to deliberate trouble making, in this case, not putting any effort into actually reading what's being said, and wilful evasion.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 12:40#3163810 likes
Definitions/descriptions are different than meanings on my view.
The meaning of a symbol is the set of all things that can be represented by that symbol.
The definition of a symbol is a verbal or non-verbal description of its meaning.
So yes, I am inclined to think that they are two different things.
The meaning of the statement "Person P is using word W incorrectly" can be described using an equivalent statement such as "Person P is using word W in a way that most people don't".
You just said that what it "means" to say that word usage is correct/incorrect is that the word usage is the same as the convention/not the same as the convention.
So on your view, what it is to be correct is to be (the same as) the convention. Is that not right?
No. The word "correct" does not mean "in accordance with convention". The word "correct" is far more abstract than that. It means "free from error". What kind of error? Well, that's determined by context. The word itself does not specify it.
The degree to which a usage of word is correct or incorrect is determined in relation to some convention. So yes, in this particular context, correct / incorrect is the same as conventional / unconventional. But that does not hold generally. In other contexts, correct / incorrect has nothing to do with conventional / unconventional.
You mean you want to ignore the main thrust of the lengthy debate we were having in order to pursue your red herring.
You do this all the time. Just as we're getting somewhere - Bam! - a red herring, and then there's no going back for you.
Maybe don't start posts with stuff that you consider superfluous? Keep them short and dive right into what you want to discuss at the start. Again, you don't have to do this. It's just a suggestion if you think that I'm addressing superfluous stuff (via my tendency to stop and reply at the first thing I have an issue with)
Right. So in this case, "correct/incorrect" is just descriptive, where it's the same as "conventional/unconventional." It has no prescriptive weight on your view?
Right. So in this case, "correct/incorrect" is just descriptive, where it's the same as "conventional/unconventional." It has no prescriptive weight on your view?
If you want to be understood and if you want to understand others then you should use words the way other people do.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 13:03#3163930 likes
Of course I'm not just saying that. Haven't you been listening? I'm saying that when that's what's meant, and when you interpret that meaning accordingly, then that's correct, that's successful communication. Why the hell is that so difficult for you to a) understand, and b) acknowledge? You haven't given any sensible response to that.
— S
Can't you successfully communicate with someone using the word "correct" to refer to "a puppy" once they tell you that?
And they can successfully communicate with you using the conventional definition if they're familiar with it, etc.
This is a clearcut example of a red herring. Instead of answering my question, he replies with a question of his own, and makes an irrelevant secondary point.
Reply to Terrapin Station A discussion between two people should be [I]quid pro quo[/I]. What I've learnt from engaging you in discussion is that you don't care about that, even when it becomes a problem.
Magnus AndersonAugust 16, 2019 at 13:09#3163990 likes
If you say something like "I use 'correct' so that it refers to 'a puppy'" that's easy to understand, isn't it?
It's easier if people speak the same language. The more you use existing words in your own way, the more difficult it becomes for others to understand you (and also, the more difficult it becomes for you to understand others.)
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 13:12#3164010 likes
A discussion between two people should be quid pro quo. What I've learnt from engaging you in discussion is that you don't care about that, even when it becomes a problem.
In my opinion discussions don't work when they're not easygoing/friendly, when people are trying to prove the other wrong rather than trying to understand them, and when one person gets too controlling. Hence why I make the moves I make when any of that stuff happens.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 13:12#3164020 likes
It's easier if people speak the same language. The more you redefine existing words, the more difficult it becomes for others to understand you (and also, the more difficult it becomes for you to understand others.)
So would you say it's easy to understand someone redefining "correct" that way or not?
In my opinion discussions don't work when they're not easygoing/friendly, when people are trying to prove the other wrong rather than trying to understand them, and when one person gets too controlling. Hence why I make the moves I make when any of that stuff happens.
That's interesting, given that one of your biggest problems is that you get too controlling. You [i]simply must[/I] be in control of the direction which the discussion takes, even when I object, justifiably, on the grounds that you've suddenly changed the subject before we've resolved what we were previously discussing, and even when I persistently and forcefully try to get us back on track.
How many discussions have we had which have ended in this way? Because you refuse to play ball? Because I give up?
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 13:41#3164140 likes
It just depends on how the conversation is going, if I think it's going. I was writing some longer posts, but this one fell apart when you ignored points I was making, ignored questions I was asking, and then after that, insisted that I answer something in a way that you preferred, or you wouldn't play.
It just depends on how the conversation is going, if I think it's going. I was writing some longer posts, but this one fell apart when you ignored points I was making, ignored questions I was asking, and then after that, insisted that I answer something in a way that you preferred, or you wouldn't play.
You often try to turn it back on me, as though I'm the one in the wrong. Try to think about [I]why[/I] I did that. You backed me into a corner. You gave me no choice. Why should I tolerate red herrings? If you have any sense of ethics, you should be able to see why that's not a fair approach to discussion. I traced the red herring back to you. The trouble began with you, not me.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 13:51#3164160 likes
You often try to turn it back on me, as though I'm the one in the wrong. Try to think about why I did that. You backed me into a corner. You gave me no choice. Why should I tolerate red herrings? If you have any sense of ethics, you should be able to see why that's not a fair approach to discussion. I traced the red herring back to you. The trouble began with you, not me.
It's supposed to be a conversation where we're trying to understand each other, no?
Why would you even look at that as something where "red herrings" could be introduced?
It's supposed to be a conversation where we're trying to understand each other, no?
Why would you even look at that as something where "red herrings" could be introduced?
Why on earth would it not be a situation where red herrings can be introduced? It's exactly that kind of situation.
I've lost hope that I'll get any real answers from you about why you do this, or why you seem to think that it's acceptable, so I'll tell you what I think. I think that you can't bear to concede, so when backed into a corner, you change the subject instead. I put effort into arguing my side, asking the right questions, but it amounts to nothing, because of your eventual evasion before I can pin you down.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 13:56#3164200 likes
Why on earth would it not be a situation where red herrings can be introduced? It's exactly that kind of situation.
I've lost hope that I'll get any real answers from you about why you do this, or why you seem to think that it's acceptable, so I'll tell you what I think. I think that you can't bear to concede, so when backed into a corner, you change the subject instead.
Also re conceding. How is that something that is done in a conversation where people are trying to understand each other?
Also re conceding. How is that something that is done in a conversation where people are trying to understand each other?
Conceding is something you do in a competition.
I can see through what you're doing, you know. You're suggesting a bad motive on my part. It's not a competition, but there's more to this than simply trying to understand each other. In any disagreement, there is often a right and a wrong. Is it that you can't bear to be in the wrong? Conceding is the right and proper thing to do when you realise you're mistaken in some respect in a debate, discussion, conversation, or whatever you want to call this. But you can't concede if you avoid the subject altogether, even when it is repeatedly brought to your attention. And that's the real problem: evasion. Deliberate evasion. And it's even worse when you make excuses.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 14:07#3164230 likes
You're interested in debating. I'm interested in having conversations. Re an issue like this, this isn't something I'm going to think that I'm wrong about. I didn't just arrive at my view, and I'm not unfamiliar with the alternate views being expressed. So debating with me about it, as if I'm going to change my mind, because you're going to present something to me that I hadn't thought about before, is probably going to be futile. I like having conversations, though. I like explaining my views and why they are what they are, in contradistinction to other views, and I enjoy people give their views in their own words, plus I think it's worthwhile for both parties to once again examine how their views work in context of contrary views.
You're interested in debating. I'm interested in having conversations.
No, it doesn't matter what you call it, the problem remains, and you ought to take responsibility for your part in the breakdown of the conversation we were having.
Do you see nothing unethical about suddenly changing the subject when things seemed to be coming together, and then adamantly refusing to return to what we were talking about?
So debating with me about it, as if I'm going to change my mind, because you're going to present something to me that I hadn't thought about before, is probably going to be futile.
That's not even the problem! You are perfectly welcome to stick to your view, but when drawn into a line of questioning about that view, you bolt and change the subject. I can't get anywhere with you if you do that. There's no resolution. No conclusion. No outcome. Just a broken down discussion. You're like a slippery eel, wriggling out of my grasp.
You haven't as yet offered much of substance to back up your claims. If you would like to go into some depth we might be able to identify more nuanced sources of disagreement. As it stands what you've presented seems to be nothing more than a trivial strawman re the notion of correctness. Re language usage, it's understood that there's flexibility in terms of what's considered correct. The scope of the notion is defined by the degree of consensus regarding that to which it is applied and is informed by both empirical evidence regarding use as well as the views of recognized authorities (while being set in the context of the appropriate level of language community). That's the way things work. If you want to question the validity of that, fine, but there's no point questioning it on the basis of presuming that when we refer to 'correct' usage we are establishing an absolute binary of correct/incorrect with precise expressible boundaries. One grain is certainly not a heap and a million grains are. But that there is a question over whether a heap may apply to x number of grains does not mean we cannot correctly identify heaps. Or, even more jarring, that to claim we can entails a logical fallacy.
Well, it started with claims like this, where he makes a trivial point where he doesn't seem to consider the importance of context, which changes everything, and results in a completely different answer, the exact opposite of the above.
After a lengthy discussion, he then basically just abandoned that position and began asking distracting questions and bringing up vaguely related points.
Maybe he changed his mind, but didn't want to explicitly acknowledge that.
Concepts are nothing but half a relational proposition, from which a cognition becomes possible, the other half herein being beyond the scope. Whether or not a concept relates to its object is the purview of judgement. It follows that any error in cognition, or even if a cognition can be given, is the fault of judgement, and has nothing to do with whether or not the concept in use is correct in itself, but only has to do with whether or not it is itself the correct concept to use.
One can sleep in a chair, but the regular parent, given the general states-of-affairs in this world, isn’t likely to tell his kids it’s chairtime when the nightly sleep event comes around.
follows that any error in cognition, or even if a cognition can be given, is the fault of judgement, and has nothing to do with whether or not the concept in use is correct in itself, but only has to do with whether or not it is itself the correct concept to use.
The way I understand it is that concepts have meaning, and it’s not a matter of using a correct concept, but of using a concept correctly.
I think that that's just saying something else based loosely on the gobbledygook that he produced, but it's good that you're able to make sense from nonsense.
I think that that's just saying something else based loosely on the gobbledygook that he produced, but it's good that you're able to make sense from nonsense.
Can you give us a bit more to chew on? A link even. It's got to be more interesting than what's come before.
One way to think about it is that concepts have purposes. They are motivated by something, necessitated by a convergence of issues and problems (like a horseshoe). We invent a horseshoe so as to stop the wearing down of the hoof due to our use of horses. If one starts thinking of horseshoes in terms of 'agreed upon terms' or 'individual uses', one abstracts from the whole point (read: purpose) of a horseshoe to begin with. It's the latter that grounds the former, and any debate that takes place wholly on the grounds of meaning in this narrow sense is misguided from the beginning.
With respect to 'correctness', that's also a poorly posed notion. Concepts are neither correct nor incorrect, but rather useful or not useful, felicitious or infelicitious. A horseshoe is neither correct nor incorrect, and it's simply bad grammar to consider it so, the kind of thing one corrects in grade school. They are however, more or less suited to their purpose, a better or worse response to the problem and constaints around keeping a horse's hoof from wearing out.
What's the grammar of a chair? Roughly, something to sit on, shaped for a human sized butt, mostly mobile but not always, useful for when you've been walking all day. A chair is roughly a response to the problem of human fatigue, our particular physiology, and our ability to create things (some other stuff too). The concept of a chair responds to all of this. We know, for the most part, what counts as a chair because we know all this. We understand how humans live. Not merely how they talk (the latter a subset of the former). But if it's framed at the question at the level of talk only, we lose everything important. Significance, not meaning.
On the idea of the concept of the idea of the correctness of concepts, not as concepts, but as the object of perception:
Cognition in itself, or rather the manifestation whereby a cognition translates through the mechanism of conceptualisation, to a subject, the content of a judgement, is not itself the result of the relationship between concept and subject, but rather falls under the purview of the very possibility of judgement itself. It therefore follows that correctness does not, and cannot, apply to the concept [i]as a concept[/I], but only to the concept as an object of perception.
Reply to S Conceptualization is not a relationship between concept and subject, but it is the act of forming a mental model, the concept itself. The mental model or picture is not correct or incorrect in itself, but is correct or incorrect in its relation to the objects of perception or cognition. :lol:
With respect to 'correctness', that's also a poorly posed notion. Concepts are neither correct nor incorrect, but rather useful or not useful, felicitious or infelicitious
Just a quick note with respect to this. I've clarified I'm not posing things that way and specifically mentioned felicity and appropriacy. @Noah Te Stroete made it clear too.
There is no "correct" when it comes to this stuff.
...
I demand that you let me use language however I want to. I don't identify as a conformist to what others want.
Conceptualization is not a relationship between concept and subject, but it is the act of forming a mental model, the concept itself. The mental model or picture is not correct or incorrect in itself, but is correct or incorrect in its relation to the objects of perception or cognition. :lol:
My head hurts, even from your watered down attempt at translating what I said. I can't say whether you're right or wrong in your translation, because I have no bloody idea what I originally wrote meant, but if it sounds good, I'll take the credit. :lol:
What's the grammar of a chair? Roughly, something to sit on, shaped for a human sized butt, mostly mobile but not always, useful for when you've been walking all day. A chair is roughly a response to the problem of human fatigue, our particular physiology, and our ability to create things. The concept of a chair responds to all of this. Was it an individual or a group which decided this? Who cares? An arbitrary, not very relevant question.
You know what a chair is and can describe it thus because its meaning is grounded in a community of users without which your description would carry no weight. That is the relevant individual vs group distinction here and the one which renders Terrapin's argument absurd. How the concept came about is a different question, I'd say.
schopenhauer1August 16, 2019 at 17:43#3165060 likes
You do this all the time. Just as we're getting somewhere - Bam! - a red herring, and then there's no going back for you.
Although I've had some issues with your debate style in the past (mainly unnecessary rhetorical taunting/antagonizing), I have to confirm that this is the case here with TP as far as red herrings and evasion goes.
There is no "correct" when it comes to this stuff.
...
I demand that you let me use language however I want to. I don't identify as a conformist to what others want.
The "demand" was in the context of folks demanding that I use particular pronouns to refer to them.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 19:41#3165300 likes
Do you see nothing unethical about suddenly changing the subject when things seemed to be coming together, and then adamantly refusing to return to what we were talking about?
I don't see anything unethical about any utterances. That doesn't mean that I like all utterances that people make in all contexts, or that I think all no utterances are a bad idea, but "unethical" is too strong in my opinion.
I don't see anything unethical about any utterances.
Which is an extreme position which I, along with the vast majority, would reject. But whether you talk about it as an utterance or as a behaviour (it's both) it only shows poor judgement on your part to fail to see why it's unethical.
You were asking me to explain my view, to aid your understanding of it, and I didn't explain it to you?
No, clearly I did not think that you did so, or at least not adequately, otherwise I wouldn't have asked you the question in the first place, and I wouldn't have kept on asking you it multiple times afterwards when you wilfully decided to evade answering it.
And at this point, I've totally lost interest, and I gave up attempting to have a productive discussion with you on that topic a number of hours ago.
Which is an extreme position which I, along with the vast majority, would reject. But whether you talk about it as an utterance or as behaviour (it's both) it only shows poor judgement on your part to fail to see why it's unethical.
I can't be wrong about whether something is unethical. (Of course, I can't be right, either. Right and wrong don't apply here.)
Re the other part, in other words, it didn't seem to me like you were asking me to explain my view with the goal of better understanding it for the sake of understanding it.
Re the other part, in other words, it didn't seem to me like you were asking me to explain my view with the goal of better understanding it for the sake of understanding it.
Your personal impression of what seems to be my motivate in that regard is entirely irrelevant. And let's be clear that that's all it is: a personal impression, or how it seems to you. Not fact, not truth, not knowledge.
The bottom line is that you should have had the decency to answer. I granted you that decency throughout, at least until you reneged on the [I]quid pro quo[/I] relationship I expect of interlocutors.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 21:04#3165520 likes
How, in your view, can someone be mistaken about whether something is unethical?
Because that's just how ethics functions. Neither of us are extraterrestrials recently landed on this planet. We both know what ethical discourse looks like, what it involves, what it's based upon, at least on a basic level.
"That's unethical", "No it isn't, it's perfectly acceptable", "You're wrong about that", "Says who?", "Says me!".
That's what it looks like. People make moral judgements, feel certain ways about matters relating to ethics, agree and disagree, tell each other they're in the right or that they're wrong.
All of the meta-ethical details, all of the various meta-ethical interpretations, have no immediate relevance here. It doesn't mean that I can't tell you that you're mistaken. But I suspect that that's what you're getting at. Though regardless, that's what ethics is, that's the norm, and if you do it any other way, then you're basically doing it wrong, just like with all this nonsense from you about there being no correct or incorrect use of a concept in a context which very clearly (to everyone else, at least) indicates just that.
I see the norms more as an ancillary ending place.
Yes, and look where that's gotten you: a position that is counterintuitive. A position that myself and others find unacceptable. An implausible minority position.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 22:04#3165730 likes
Well, obviously, I would suggest a different approach, for starters. I think that any account of ethics which is so radical as to be unreflective of how people tend to talk and think and feel when actually engaging in ethics is destined to fail.
When you express an ethical judgement which contradicts what I strongly feel is right, then it's natural for me to react by thinking that you're mistaken. And that's not just how it is for me, it's how it is for everyone.
So that shouldn't be scrapped as somehow inapplicable, but rather explained in a way which works. There is correct and incorrect, in a sense.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 22:16#3165780 likes
Because you have a problem with it? That's your problem.
I'm not about to change something I'm fine with just because other people have a problem with it.
Pah! Then why even ask me that in the first place? I don't care whether you actually take on board my suggestions, but you asked me what you're supposed to do about it, so obviously I told you what I think.
Terrapin StationAugust 16, 2019 at 22:21#3165800 likes
Pah! Then why even ask me that in the first place? I don't care whether you actually take on board my suggestions, but you asked me what you're supposed to do about it, so obviously I told you what I think.
It's rhetorical, because (in my opinion) obviously you should realize that other people have no obligation to cater to you when they don't have a problem with something but you do. Why shouldn't you just as well cater to them?
It's rhetorical, because (in my opinion) obviously you should realize that other people have no obligation to cater to you when they don't have a problem with something but you do. Why shouldn't you just as well cater to them?
I don't care whether it was rhetorical. I answered it anyway, because I'm bored. And I never suggested that you have any obligation to cater to me. That's come from your own imagination. Whether you follow my suggestion or not is for you to decide. I'm simply expressing my thoughts on the matter. That's what we do here, remember?
DeleteduserrcAugust 16, 2019 at 22:53#3165870 likes
Tangential to the central argument (which i haven't read all of, so I may be repeating) but if we think of concepts, like horseshoes, as a kind of solution to a problem, then we have the possibility of an evaluative context which (1)isn't correct or incorrect, and is also (2) outside the felicitous/infelicitous divide (which is about effective use of things already given)
You could look at concepts (and horseshoes) in terms of how effectively the resolve the issue. In solving one problem, they push out other possible solutions, which means they resolve tensions in one way while foreclosing the actualization of other potentials.
Terrapin for instance has, in the past, vocalized a problem he has that people seem frustrated by his way of holding a conversation in a way he personally finds baffling. and now he's put forth a family of concepts involving, among other things, the absence of responsibility for the effects of one's words, the total subjectivity of meaning, the ethical freedom to ignore catering to others and so on. It works in one way, but the path of theoretical commitments required to remain loyal to these concepts requires a lot of goofy kludges at the expense of more fruitful avenues of discussion.
You could look at concepts (and horseshoes) in terms of how effectively they resolve the issue
Could you give an example of this? Is a concept supposed to be solving a non-conceptual problem?
I think it's concepts all the way down, so this perspective would require that concept and issue emerge simultaneously.
DeleteduserrcAugust 17, 2019 at 00:06#3165980 likes
Reply to frank It's like when we were talking about wolfpacks the other day. There were a couple open conceptual threads in the air, and you brought them together in the image of a wolfpack. It wasn't just a metaphor, but a way of thinking of hierarchy, authority, cohesion etc. together.
A marxist example, to try to tie conceptual solutions to nonconceptual problems, might see the idea of individual liberty + rights as a convenient way to explain how factory workers aren't being violated (they freely exchange their labor for wages, they aren't slaves.)
For the the left, the concept of the 'alt-right' packages up mentally a hyper-diverse set of people as a single bloc, while for the right 'Soros is a mastermind' packages up a different hyper-diverse set.
The theological concept of the trinity, which is chronically in interpretive revision, aims to solve the problem of what christ means/is.
'She has daddy issues' explains all sorts of things in one fell swoop.
(here, I was going to try to do this with something like Kant's noumenon but I don't have the focus right now)
DeleteduserrcAugust 17, 2019 at 00:12#3166000 likes
I'd add that some of these examples I think are helpful conceptual solutions, others not so much.
Reply to csalisbury I see. A concept may be shaped by an agenda or it might facilitate something.
It's not that the concept of a tree is supposed to be solving a problem related to sensory data, or that the shared concept of a triangle has been solving a shared problem for the last 10,000 years.
DeleteduserrcAugust 17, 2019 at 00:38#3166050 likes
Reply to frank My examples may have skewed too agenda heavy. I think the tree works too. The concept of tree has evolved a lot as we have. Triangle too. It doesn't mean we invented trees and triangles, tho, it means we developed ways to interact with and think about then.
It doesn't mean we invented trees and triangles, tho, it means we developed ways to interact with and think about then
Sounds like indirect realism.
DeleteduserrcAugust 17, 2019 at 00:50#3166090 likes
Reply to frank Maybe. I think you can interact with trees and triangles without concepts though. I don't agree with the object - perception - concept - mind model except as a subset of what we do.
Maybe. I think you can interact with trees and triangles without concepts though. I don't agree with the object - perception - concept - mind model except as a subset of what we do.
But I can't know a thing is a tree if I have no concept of a tree, so maybe it's about knowledge (and foreknowledge). But having said that, I think I've gone as far as I can in saying something about what concepts are and what it means to have one. I really don't know.
DeleteduserrcAugust 17, 2019 at 01:05#3166120 likes
Reply to frank You can interact with something without knowing what it is. You have a vague sense of it, or sometimes not even that.
You can interact with something without knowing what it is. You have a vague sense of it, or sometimes not even that.
Do you mean like the cloud of unknowing? I haven't read that, BTW.
DeleteduserrcAugust 17, 2019 at 01:28#3166190 likes
Reply to frank I don't mean that here. Cloud of unknowing (I've read it, though don't claim to truly understand it) I see as a very precise text for the practicing mystic, mostly about prayer, silence, loneliness, moods --- the affective states for the day-to-day mystic, and how to make sense of them.
I meant something simpler. The best thing I could think of is kids playing a game, like in a forest. The trees are there and part of it, but just part of it. In a weirder, mystic sense, we're all part of an ecosystem and are connected, sharing something, without feeling, at a given moment, how it relates together.
The moment where we identify a tree as a tree is already a kind of distance.
You know what a chair is and can describe it thus because its meaning is grounded in a community of users without which your description would carry no weight. That is the relevant individual vs group distinction here and the one which renders Terrapin's argument absurd.
I agree that most of everything Terrapin says is absurd, but I think there's a confusion between understanding chair as a nominatum (the thing named) and chair as nominans (the name 'chair'). Qua nominans, yes, to understand what a 'chair' is requires a community of users who use the word in that way, etc etc. Qua nominatum, you need a great deal more than that, including all the stuff I mentioned regarding the grammar of chair (used for sitting, moveable, etc). I only insist that we can't treat the two nomen separately, and its only at the 'shallow' level of the nominans that one can argue about individuals vs groups and so on.
(Sorry about the Latin terms, but it's just a useful distinction that I'm used to and work nicely here).
Shallow's an apt term. Thankfully, the thread is taking a more interesting direction now. It is a bit rough to put things as I did. A hammer for a nail. So yes, it's right to emphasize the layering and development of concept as nominatum (shape and personality) vs the static practicality of use of nominans (linguistic token of exchange). My idea of a concept qua nominatum would be a virtual form that straddles cognitive modalities, mercurial but with a stable core and structurally bound. I also like the Deleuzian idea of the concept as friend (although there's also a sense in which we possess concepts and they possess us). And yes, there's the issue of solving problems. Although I might put it that concepts address needs and then build the foundations for more as they build us as thinking things. Anyhow, I need to properly read the last couple of pages here and catch up.
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 09:38#3167210 likes
With respect to 'correctness', that's also a poorly posed notion. Concepts are neither correct nor incorrect, but rather useful or not useful, felicitious or infelicitious. A horseshoe is neither correct nor incorrect, and it's simply bad grammar to consider it so, the kind of thing one corrects in grade school. They are however, more or less suited to their purpose, a better or worse response to the problem and constaints around keeping a horse's hoof from wearing out.
There are correct and incorrect definitions of words. For example, the correct meaning of the word "chair" is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs". Hardly disputable.
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 09:50#3167220 likes
I agree that most of everything Terrapin says is absurd, but I think there's a confusion between understanding chair as a nominatum (the thing named) and chair as nominans (the name 'chair'). Qua nominans, yes, to understand what a 'chair' is requires a community of users who use the word in that way, etc etc. Qua nominatum, you need a great deal more than that, including all the stuff I mentioned regarding the grammar of chair (used for sitting, moveable, etc). I only insist that we can't treat the two nomen separately, and its only at the 'shallow' level of the nominans that one can argue about individuals vs groups and so on.
In other words, it's one thing to study the word "tree" and another to study physical objects that can be represented by the word "tree". I am pretty sure most people here are aware of this distinction, so I would claim that no confusion is taking place. (Notice also how I didn't use a single Latin word to express myself.)
I believe this thread is about words and not about things that can be represented by words.
Terrapin for instance has, in the past, vocalized a problem he has that people seem frustrated by his way of holding a conversation in a way he personally finds baffling
the absence of responsibility for the effects of one's words,
In cases where utterances are not causal. There can be cases where utterances are causal. For example, a bomb that's triggered by a voice command--"Alexa, set off the bomb."
Re concepts as solutions to problems, would you characterize the concept of "food" for example as "the solution to the problem of finding sustenance/recognizing substances that won't be dangerous/deadly to ingest"?
So that you'd be saying that it's often an attempt to find a solution to a problem where we're not at all thinking about it in those terms?
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 11:32#3167540 likes
I'd take issue with your claim that you've given "the correct meaning". It's 'a' meaning but not the only one in current use.
New usages may even emerge in the future. These new usages, in my view, wouldn't be incorrect.
It's important to understand what the other is saying before one proclaims that what they are saying is true or false.
Specifically, it's important to understand what it means to say that a word is being using in a way that is incorrect. What it means is that the word is being used in a way that is not used or that was not used by some group of people at some point in time.
"Word W is used incorrectly" simply means "Word W is used in a way that is different from the way that it is used or was used by some group of people G during some period of time P."
Nowadays, when people use the word "chair" what they mean is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs". In the future, the definition might change, but when I say that this is the correct definition of the word, what I mean is that this is how people use the word nowadays.
Nowadays, when people use the word "chair" what they mean is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs". In the future, the definition might change, but when I say that this is the correct definition of the word, what I mean is that this is how people use the word nowadays.
I think you're mistaken.
Any good dictionary (essentially a record of existing usages) will give at least 6 different meanings.
Or are you saying that the one used most frequently is the correct meaning?
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 11:58#3167620 likes
I'd take issue with your claim that you've given "the correct meaning". It's 'a' meaning but not the only one in current use.
And I'd take issue with your interpretation of what he meant. I don't think that he meant that it's the only one in current use at all. I think he meant something along the lines that that's what it generally means in typical circumstances. I think that it's quite uncharitable to assume that he was unaware that oftentimes a word carries a number of definitions.
That's true. Maybe I can correct myself by saying that's one of several correct meanings of the word?
Or that it's the correct meaning in the appropriate circumstance, that being the typical circumstance of referring to the familiar item of furniture we use to sit on, namely a chair.
I don't think that you've anything to correct. I think he just misinterpreted you.
Terrapin StationAugust 17, 2019 at 12:07#3167680 likes
<---doesn't for a second believe that anyone here is actually using "correct" to simply descriptively refer to what's conventional, with no hint of a prescriptive connotation to it.
Reply to Terrapin Station So what? There's nothing wrong with that. As you said to me last night, that's your problem. It isn't a problem for the rest of us. The rest of us do not have a chip on the shoulder about this.
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 12:11#3167700 likes
Reply to S You're right. He assumed that I'm claiming the word "chair" has only one correct definition. He somehow ignored my main point which is that the word "chair" has a number of correct meanings (one or more) and a number of incorrect meanings (again, one or more.) The exact numbers are irrelevant. Even if I did make a claim that there is only one correct definition of the word "chair" it's irrelevant.
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 12:13#3167710 likes
<---doesn't for a second believe that anyone here is actually using "correct" to simply descriptively refer to what's conventional, with no hint of a prescriptive connotation to it.
The correct answer to the question "Is 2 + 2 = 4?" is "Yes". What's prescriptive about that?
Terrapin StationAugust 17, 2019 at 12:15#3167720 likes
The problem would be if one is claiming that anything prescriptive is objective, and of course I'm not a fan of people putting prescriptive social pressure on others.
Terrapin StationAugust 17, 2019 at 12:16#3167730 likes
The correct answer to the question "Is 2 + 2 = 4?" is "Yes".
Are you just saying that that's the popular way to think about mathematics?
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 12:17#3167740 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station "2 + 2 = 4" is a statement that claims that the symbol "2 + 2" is equivalent to the symbol "4". It's a statement about language. So yes, it has to do with conventions.
The correct answer to the question "Is 2 + 2 = 4?" is "Yes". What's prescriptive about that?
Nothing, and I take that to be a true analogy, given the implicit context of what you're saying about correct meaning. But why would it even be a problem if it was prescriptive to some extent? I can conceive how there might well be some accompanying thought along the lines of, "This is the meaning you should go by if you want us to have a meaningful conversation about chairs without you being a pain in the arse by making up your own meaning". Is it a serious problem to think like that rather than to pretend that nothing's the matter, and to humour the other person? No. I think that it's only a problem for people like Terrapin, and I've never met anyone who shares his peculiar gripe here. So I think that it's fairly safe to say that this is a Terrapin problem, not a real problem.
Terrapin StationAugust 17, 2019 at 12:55#3167800 likes
"2 + 2 = 4" simply means that the symbol "2 + 2" is equivalent to the symbol "4". It's a statement about language. So yes, it has to do with conventions.
Can we make statements about something other than language in your view?
And would you say that you never use "correct" prescriptively?
Terrapin StationAugust 17, 2019 at 12:57#3167810 likes
"This is the meaning you should go by if you want us to have a meaningful conversation about chairs without you being a pain in the arse by making up your own meaning"
Which of course is already putting social pressure on them. If they don't use the meaning you're calling "correct," they're being a pain in the ass.
Or are you going to claim that "pain in the ass" is only descriptive, too?
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 13:01#3167840 likes
Can we make statements about something other than language in your view?
Absolutely. You can make statements about any portion of the universe -- not just language. For example, you can say that Donald Trump's face is orange. Nothing to do with language.
And would you say that you never use "correct" prescriptively?
Saying that something is correct or incorrect is not a prescriptive statement, it is a descriptive one. If you say that "The sky is red" and I say "That's not correct" that is not the same kind of statement as "You should adopt the view that sky is blue" or "People should have true beliefs". Of course, I'd rather be surrounded by people whose beliefs are true . . . if that's one of the things you're asking me.
Saying that something is correct or incorrect is not a prescriptive statement, it is a descriptive one. If you say that "The sky is red" and I say "That's not correct" that is not the same kind of statement as "You should adopt the view that sky is blue" or "People should have true beliefs". Of course, I'd rather be surrounded by people whose beliefs are true . . . if that's one of the things you're asking me.
"Correct" has a prescriptive connotation. Because people would rather be surrounded by folks whose beliefs are true as you say.
It's true that most people use words to refer to things that most people use them to refer to.
When someone uses a word in a way that doesn't at all match the convention, do you ask them first if they were trying to match the convention before you tell them they don't have the word correct?
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 13:21#3167910 likes
You said your definition was "the correct meaning of the word chair". You repeated this in your follow up reply to me.
As I'm sure you're aware, there's an important distinction to be made between "the correct meaning" and "a correct meaning".
Well, that's not what I meant. Let's say I expressed myself in a way that wasn't the best. What I wanted to say is that the word "chair" has a number of correct meanings (one or more) and a number of incorrect meanings (again, one or more.) I don't know the exact numbers, I just know that the number of correct meanings is >= 1 and the number of incorrect meanings is also >= 1.
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 13:26#3167930 likes
So, when someone uses a word in a way that doesn't at all match the convention, do you ask them first if they were trying to match the convention before you tell them they don't have the word correct?
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 13:28#3167960 likes
If they're not trying to match the convention, then telling them that they're not matching the convention (by saying that something is correct/incorrect) is irrelevant, right? And they're certainly not saying something not true, because they weren't trying to match the convention.
Let's say I expressed myself in a way that wasn't the best.
I thought that might be the case but I wasn't sure. My initial response to you gave you the opportunity to correct your mistake but for some reason you decided to go defensive.
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 13:33#3168010 likes
I thought that might be the case but I wasn't sure. My initial response to you gave you the opportunity to correct your mistake but for some reason you decided to go defensive.
I don't think I was being defensive in the slightest.
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 13:38#3168020 likes
If they're not trying to match the convention, then telling them that they're not matching the convention is irrelevant, right? And they're certainly not saying something not true, because they weren't trying to match the convention.
The mistakes they make might stem from their lack of regard for conventions. Such cases are numerous. But you're right in the sense that it's not always relevant. Sometimes. it simply does not matter.
And yes, if you speak your own language, that does not necessarily mean what you're saying is wrong.
Terrapin StationAugust 17, 2019 at 13:39#3168030 likes
Sure you were. (Being defensive) Chris H made a 100% understandable reading of what you said, and then you acted like he was foolish or assuming. He wasnt at all. His point about the distinction between “a” and “the” is well made. The meaning of the sentence changes significantly between uses of the two words.
It doesnt matter, you clarified what you meant but the only mistake in the exchange was made by you when you didnt choose your words (just one word in this case) more carefully.
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 13:41#3168060 likes
I'm asking you specifically about word definition/usage.
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 13:58#3168200 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station I am telling you that it is relevant to criticize their lack of regard for conventions because it makes them blind to reality. Have you ever come across people who claim that the brain is inside consciousness and not the other way around?
I am telling you that it is relevant to criticize their lack of regard for conventions because it makes them blind to reality.
? First off, this is prescriptivist.
Secondly, how does not regarding linguistic conventions make them "blind to reality"?
Re the brain/mind question, yes, sure I've come across people who believe that, but what does that have to do with what I'm asking you about whether someone is trying to match conventional language usage when they define or use a term?
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 14:58#3168390 likes
If they're not trying to match the convention, then telling them that they're not matching the convention is irrelevant, right?
And I responded by saying that I disagree.
There are times when it is relevant to remind them that they are using words in an unconventional way -- even though they themselves have no interest in using words the way most people do. For example, if they are misunderstanding others because they forgot or simply never realized that other people are using words in a different way, then you have to remind them of this fact.
If I say something like "Cats cannot fly" and you tell me I am wrong merely because you fail to realize that I don't define the word "cat" the way you do -- you define it to mean "dragon" -- then it would be more than relevant to remind you that your use of words is unconventional.
Reply to csalisbury Concepts are residents of the realm of reflection and analysis. Retrojecting them into unified experience is a natural thing to do, but it produces philosophical problems when we notice a priori features of concepts.
In spite of that, we do retroject, and in the process we construct an analyzed world.
It's a matter of confusing the dismantled cuckoo clock for the unified one. We do this reflexively and then laud that it "works" and therefore must yield a solid foundation for a kind of realism.
Agree?
Terrapin StationAugust 17, 2019 at 17:23#3168920 likes
If I say something like "Cats cannot fly" and you tell me I am wrong merely because you fail to realize that I don't define the word "cat" the way you do -- you define it to mean "dragon" -- then it would be more than relevant to remind you that your use of words is unconventional.
That has nothing to do with what I asked you. I said, "If S is not trying to match the convention, then telling S that they're not matching the convention is irrelevant."
You're positing S not matching the convention and S telling U that U is wrong.
Let's say I expressed myself in a way that wasn't the best.
You expressed yourself just fine, and far from coming across as defensive, you conceded too readily in my opinion. Those who are jumping in to criticise you just failed to fill in the blanks correctly. If they had've done so, then they would've realised that this point which they raised about "the" vs. "a" simply doesn't apply here. It is a correct meaning, but more importantly it's [i]the[/I] correct meaning [i]given the circumstance you had in mind[/I]. There is only one correct answer in this hypothetical situation, in spite of the fact that there are multiple definitions for the word. That there are multiple definitions for the word is of no relevance in relation to the point you were making.
"This is the meaning you should go by if you want us to have a meaningful conversation about chairs without you being a pain in the arse by making up your own meaning"
— S
Which of course is already putting social pressure on them. If they don't use the meaning you're calling "correct," they're being a pain in the ass.
First off, I notice that you quoted me out of context. But yes it is (if expressed), and yes they are.
Or are you going to claim that "pain in the ass" is only descriptive, too?
Doesn't even matter. Like I said, the original statement we were talking about isn't even prescriptive ([B]Magnus Anderson[/b] is right about that), and the phrase you're quoting there was taken from a potential accompanying thought rather than from the statement itself, although I can't stop you reading things into the original statement if you're set on doing so.
In my first post I explained clearly the difference between "the correct" and "a correct" and stated that I disagreed with your use of "the correct".
Well, that makes no sense, unless you disregard the implied circumstance he had in mind and insert your own, but then your criticism wouldn't apply to his point, because you wouldn't be talking about the same thing. It's not difficult to imagine a circumstance where there are multiple correct answers, and where a chair being the thing you sit on is just one of many, but that has no bearing whatsoever on his point, because it's clear to me that that's not at all what he had in mind.
I do find it rather silly that some people in this discussion apparently feel the need to point out, as though we are oblivious of the fact, that, say, "chair" can also mean the person in charge of a meeting, or idiosyncratically anything you want it to, and that these meanings can still be correct in a sense. That is simply missing the point.
That has nothing to do with what I asked you. I said, "If S is not trying to match the convention, then telling S that they're not matching the convention is irrelevant."
You're positing S not matching the convention and S telling U that U is wrong.
The way I understand you, what you're saying is that it makes no sense to criticize someone for not using words the way most people do if that's not what they are trying to do.
Is that what you're trying to say? If so, my response is an adequate one.
On conformity and all that jazz. It's precisely the fact that there is a (non-absolute) standard of correctness by which you can be judged to be wrong about usage that makes an individual relationship with the concept possible and not only that but allows for exactly the organic deviations that over the course of time redistribute concepts among the structural relationships they inhabit. In other words, the openness of language only persists in a recognition of the boundaries that bring it into meaningful existence in the first place.
Reply to ChrisH Yes, the implied circumstance. Did you think he was just saying what he said in absolute terms, context free? :brow:
No. By applying the principle of charity, I don't think it's difficult to make sense of what he said. Just compare it with what he has previously said in this discussion. The correct meaning, given x, y, z. It's just that that last part was left implicit.
Alright: Say the chair tables a motion that the motion of chairs and tables should be considered the tabling of chairs in motion, then rather than chairing the chair in victory we should table him along with the tables in order that that motion should be chaired not tabled.
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 21:54#3170660 likes
?ChrisH Yes, the implied circumstance. Did you think he was just saying what he said in absolute terms, context free? :brow:
When I said that the correct meaning of the word "chair" is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs" I had no specific context in mind. I was talking about what the word "chair" means in general. So yes, I do think that @ChrisH is right. However, it's an insignificant mistake that was made on purpose + it's not true that I was being defensive (I merely failed to understand what he was trying to say the first time I responded to him.)
Magnus AndersonAugust 17, 2019 at 22:02#3170730 likes
The correct meaning of the word "chair" is far too complex to be a part of a short forum post. This is why I had to make it simpler than it really is by disregarding all correct meanings except for the one most widely in use. I could afford to do this because my point wasn't to define the word "chair" in the best possible way. My point was to illustrate that there are correct and incorrect definitions of words.
Terrapin StationAugust 17, 2019 at 22:02#3170740 likes
The way I understand you, what you're saying is that it makes no sense to criticize someone for not using words the way most people do if that's not what they are trying to do.
Well, or I'm asking if you'd do that and why. S using a word unusually and saying something to U, who is using the word conventionally, where S doesn't realize this, is not what I'm talking about.
Reply to Magnus Anderson But what the chair means in general, when analysed, is found to require a specific set of circumstances, otherwise it wouldn't mean what it does at all. And that specific set of circumstances includes the kind of things which we were talking about earlier, like consensus among a community of language users. It requires a history, a familiarisation, a learned association. It also requires cooperation, or playing by the rules. And what I meant there was that you had in mind just this sort of case, and not the kind of idiosyncratic scenarios of Terrapin's imagination.
Concepts are residents of the realm of reflection and analysis. Retrojecting them into unified experience is a natural thing to do, but it produces philosophical problems when we notice a priori features of concepts.
In spite of that, we do retroject, and in the process we construct an analyzed world.
It's a matter of confusing the dismantled cuckoo clock for the unified one. We do this reflexively and then laud that it "works" and therefore must yield a solid foundation for a kind of realism.
Agree?
5d
Hey sorry, I'd missed your response here. I think I agree mostly tho I still have some additional thoughts that muddle it up a little ( & big caveat: I'm mostly thinking out loud on this thread and I don't have much canonical philosophy to back any of this up. (I guess this all vaguely Deleuzian, but with none of the rigor. )
I think that there are degrees to which a concept is clear and distinct, that they're on a continuum on this regard, and that most concepts are halfsubmerged in a preconceptual muck that secretly sustains them and gives them sense. They emerge as cognitive solutions to transconceptual problems, and thinkers are, at best, half-medium, half constructor. (That's why thinking seems to follow grooves, to be guided by existing landscapes of thought, and why sui generis creation of a concept is all but impossible.)
Another way to say this that i think they grow organically, like everything else, and the activity if reflection simply sharpens them, like cutting a diamond.
To recreate reality from dismantled pieces is, yeah, definitely a temptation and a confusion, since concepts are one part of reality itself. Though their 'working' (as opposed to simply being internally consistent) is still a sign of some kind of realism, because it means they're linked up to something beyond thought.
Does that make any sense? I don't know how well I expressed that.
I think so. What I didn't like (I don't think you were saying this, I just made it up as I was trying to understand) was the idea that reality is out there doing its thing when we arrive and discover problems due to our fumbling attempts to engage it, so concepts appeared the same way lungs and thumbs do: they randomly emerged and then stayed because they opened the door to a certain kind of life being able to perpetuate itself, and so became part of that lifeform. Let's call this Realism 1. It's basically indirect realism and the assumption is that reality is pretty much as we see it.
Carlo Rovelli said that the way we perceive time is a side-effect our point of view, in the same way the sun moving through the sky is. Recognizing this, we see that any true statement about Realism 1 is only true from a certain point of view. Let's call this Realism-POV. We're still in the truth business, but our truths are all POV dependent. So as Rovelli discussed what the universe looks like from near a black hole, it seems mind bending because you can't look out of your own eyeballs and see what he's talking about. His report is profoundly conceptual. Realism-POV tells you to ignore what you see; to ignore all the ways you embrace Realism-1 in your daily life.
What I struggle with is imagining a POV that has no conscious witness. I don't think there is any such thing. We always put a phantom person there and give her a pencil and paper. Without any conscious witness, what we have is Realism-POV without any POV. There are no true statements that can be made about it?
Terrapin StationAugust 23, 2019 at 14:37#3194220 likes
What I struggle with is imagining a POV that has no conscious witness. I don't think there is any such thing. We always put a phantom person there and give her a pencil and paper. Without any conscious witness, what we have is Realism-POV without any POV. There are no true statements that can be made about it?
That's interesting because it's more or less the opposite of my ontology, where I'm a realist but I don't think it's coherent to be absent a "POV" (which is probably not the best name for it, but I'll go with your terminology).
That's interesting because it's more or less the opposite of my ontology, where I'm a realist but I don't think it's coherent to be absent a "POV" (which is probably not the best name for it, but I'll go with your terminology).
I wouldn't say incoherent. It's the Realism-1 I was talking about: its says that the world as we know it would be just as we know it without any witness.
Terrapin StationAugust 23, 2019 at 14:48#3194280 likes
the world as we know it would be just as we know it without any witness.
I agree with that view as long as we're strictly talking about objective stuff (hopefully that makes sense--it's the simplest way to say it), but I still think that it's not coherent to suppose anything can be absent a "POV."
It's probably too much to get into (I've explained it in some detail on the board, but I don't recall the thread or who it was in response to), but basically the idea is that properties are different (not necessarily, perhaps, but most are) at different points of reference ("POVs" in the terms above), and there's no way to have a "non-POV POV" for properties to be some way from.
Comments (292)
Whether someone calls it a "horseshoe" or not depends on their individual concept. It's simply a matter of what they personally require to call something a "horseshoe."
So people need not agree on what a horseshoe is? There is no collective knowledge? I’m sure I misunderstand you, and that’s not what you’re saying.
Concepts aren't correct or incorrect.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Clearly, people sometimes have very different concepts in mind by the same term. And sometimes they have very different concepts in mind and it's not obvious to us, too.
Sometimes when it's clear that they have very different concepts in mind by the same term, we can translate their concept into terms that make sense to us and that seem to be coherent and consistent with how they're using the term. Sometimes we can't do that. (For the latter, see me and most continental philosophy and most "mysticist"/"esotericist" etc. philosophy for example.)
I would say that there's no collective knowledge. But knowledge certainly has social influences and assistance.
Haha--as if that's surprising.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Obviously I don't agree with that (and not just because I think that communication often does fail--hence your surprise that I make sense), but it's a huge thing to get into different theories about how communication works.
This is now far afield of the OP, but I will just say that the vast majority of concepts have generally true or false values. Communication fails when one or both interlocutors are wrong about concepts used. ‘Cat’, ‘chair’, ‘normative ethics’, ‘sun’, ‘Dow Jones Industrials Index’ all have correct usages. Communication fails when these concepts are used incorrectly.
What do you take to be correct, just conformity to the norm?
Community involvement, yes. Concepts can evolve or even change meaning or gain new meaning, but it ultimately depends on a community of users. Sometimes authorities such as experts determine correct usage, and sometimes the language game permits a community of users to use a concept in a unique and novel way.
Aside from pro-conformism sucking in my opinion :joke:, that's an argumentum ad populum fallacy then.
It’s not an argument. It’s a description.
And there's nothing wrong with it.
Claiming that something is correct because it's common is an argumentum ad populum.
I’m claiming that’s how it works in practice. That that is how it works in practice is a true description.
What you said is that there are correct concepts.
This is a regularly occurring misunderstanding on your part. He did not commit the fallacy of appealing to the masses.
Saying "Communication is impossible unless such and such is the case" is different than saying that "such and such is correct."
But "communication is impossible unless a concept is used in a conformist way" isn't the case anyway.
Not that usage is the same as the semantic content of a concept anyway.
He just said that what makes itcorrect is consensus usage. That's what the argumentum ad populum fallacy is. (And that's what it is in consensus usage, so if you believe that makes something correct, you'll not disagree.)
That's not what the fallacy is. That's more like a rough and overly simplistic explanation of the sort you'd give off the top of your head to someone new to philosophy. It works well enough in a large number of cases, but the obvious problem with that, however, are those cases which are in fact exceptions to the fallacy, but which you mistakenly lump in, I guess because it suits your argument.
The problem is that there are no exceptions. The only time the consensus opinion is relevant and not fallacious is when we want to know what the consensus opinion happens to be, but that never makes the consensus opinion correct (by virtue of being the consensus opinion).
“Correct” as in that it works. A concept’s use is correct when used in a way that people understand one another.
A common definition of "correct" is "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."
How does "it works" connect to that definition?
Do you get my meaning? If so, then what’s the problem? If not, then I’m not using the term correctly, and that’s why this communication is failing. Hence, my point still stands.
Your "meaning," I'd say--sure. I can understand unusual usages of terms. Which is my point. You don't have to use the term the same way I do, or the same way that most people do, in order for others to understand you.
It does if that's the criterion for correctness. And of course there are exceptions. There are plenty of exceptions. You have persistent trouble in identifying the more nuanced exceptions, and to be honest, I don't actually think that you want to learn your error and stop making the same mistake over and again. You've always struck me as someone steadfastly committed to a position or line of argument, and sometimes that's a problem.
Holy moley--"correct" again.
There is no "correct" when it comes to this stuff.
I demand that you let me use language however I want to. I don't identify as a conformist to what others want.
No, there aren't.
I'm a fan of irony, so I'll just point out that your above statement is self-defeating, as it is itself an exception to the fallacy of appealing to the masses. But, like I said, you typically don't have a problem with the obvious exceptions, but with the more nuanced exceptions.
That means that there are. It seems that everyone agrees.
Topsy turvy day?
What's the appeal to the masses there?
I didn't say anything like "There are no exceptions to it by popular view, so that's correct."
I knew you'd agree.
Pee Wee, is that you ?
Oh, I'm sorry you're hurt. Don't worry, everything's well be fine.
You seem very confused. Do you know the meaning of the word "exception"?
Oy vey.
Your nose is beautiful.
You're a strange one. I say that there are plenty of exceptions to the fallacy - which there are. There are way more exceptions to fallacy than instances of it - that's just common sense. You then reply by saying no, there aren't. I then point out that even that reply is itself an exception. You then bizarrely ask me what the appeal to the masses is there, even though I'm saying precisely the opposite to that.
Although your nose is indeed beautiful. I'll give you that.
I think @Terrapin Station's idea is cute. Now I get to say it's just an argumentum ad populum to claim that Donald Trump is president of the US. Like, that's just conformity, dude.
Words do have true and false meanings but only in relation to certain language.
The correct meaning of the word "chair" in English language is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs" and this is determined by consensus (clearly not the case of argumentum ad populum.)
Again, you can say that it's a fact that a consensus thinks about him that way, but that's all that the consensus there accomplishes.
No, we can say it is a fact that he is President. A social fact to be precise, which comes into being through consensus. And calling that an argumentum ad populum is silly, frankly, and you should know better.
Which simply refers to it being a fact that a consensus thinks about him that way. It's just like you could say, "A consensus thinks about this concept that way." And if you said that and you were accurate about it, that would certainly be the case. That would be a fact.
That doesn't make that concept with those associations correct somehow. It's just a fact (and correct) that a consensus thinks about it that way.
As I wrote way back in the thread: " The only time the consensus opinion is relevant and not fallacious is when we want to know what the consensus opinion happens to be, but that never makes the consensus opinion correct (by virtue of being the consensus opinion)." It's correct that it's the consensus opinion. The consensus opinion isn't correct just because it's a consensus opinion, however. In other words, the scope of "correct" is when we're referring to the consensus opinion being whatever it is. A claim about what the consensus opinion is can be correct. The scope of "correct" doesn't extend outside of that, so that the consensus opinion makes anything correct in general.
Exactly. @Terrapin Station, can't you see the absurdity in making such a charge in these cases? Does it not seem intuitively wrong to you to think of that as somehow fallacious? It is nothing like the obvious wrongness you can easily detect in typical examples of the fallacy. It only has a superficial similarity to genuine examples of the fallacy. Statements like that quoted above have little do with logic altogether, it really is a matter of common sense, and readily agreeable to most. Let it go. You've been stuck on this point for a long time now. I would like to see you concede and move past it.
It's been explained to you multiple times that correct usage is determined by consensus for certain facts, such as social facts, and for definitions of words etc. You can continue to deny that, but your denial is empty as language will continue to function that way and we will continue to make judgements that way.
(And if there is any utility at all in looking at things your way, please let me know as I don't see it.)
Folks can explain that all they want. They're wrong. The only thing determined by consensus is consensus. Consensus makes nothing correct with respect to a scope other than what the consensus happens to think/say/etc.
I've explained many times that you're wrong about this. I doubt you'll stop claiming things that are wrong, however.
There is not a "correct meaning of the word 'chair.'" We can say, "It's correct that most people use the term this way," but that's all that a consensus tells us. It's not correct to match what most people do, or incorrect to not match that.
And that's precisely what we want to know when it comes to the correct meaning of words.
That's absurd, and that it is absurd can be put to a test of sorts. A good test to see whether you're talking bollocks is to put it to ordinary people. If they laugh in disbelief and exclaim something along the lines of, "Of course there is! It's what you sit on, silly!", then that's a pretty good indication that you've gone badly wrong somewhere. And that's exactly the sort of reaction you'd get.
But I agreed with everything you said. I just used words in a non-consensus way so that they meant their opposites. (See, I did it again).
You might want to know consensus usage, but that doesn't make the consensus usage correct. It just makes it (correct that it's) the consensus usage.
So, in other words, if you use "chair" to refer to bicycles, you're not incorrect, but if you say, "Most people use 'chair' to refer to bicycles," you are incorrect .
That's a nice little [i]reductio ad absurdum[/I] there. Terrapin Station is usually quite logical, so I'm surprised he can't detect the clear fault in his position you've highlighted here.
That's a good test if your goal is conformism.
Then for once you're right.
In this case, and many others, they conform [i]because it makes perfect sense[/I]. A chair [I]is[/I] that thing that you sit on. That's the correct answer in the context. You wouldn't be gaining anything by deviating from the norm here. It would just make you look kind of silly.
I get the feeling you're fetishizing non-conformism to the extent its impairing your ability to accept facts so basic coherent comprehension is dependent on them. It's OK to conform sometimes, you know. It helps keep things sensible. You don't get brownie points just for holding a minority opinion.
:up:
Yes you are, because "chair" has a [i]completely different[/I] meaning to bicycles. The common meaning is considered the standard for determining correctness [i]by default[/I]. That's [i]always[/I] the implicit context. You seem to think that you yourself are in charge of the implicit context, and of the default standard for determining correctness. You seem to think that you can change the default setting to your own idiosyncratic meaning on whim, without saying a word. But you're [i]wrong[/I] about that. That's clearly not how things are, and not how they work, and the rest of us are keenly aware of this - it's pretty obvious when put to the test by trying to communicate in your way - which is why no one is agreeing with you. Baden has already effectively reduced your position to absurdity. You're just biting the bullet at this point. Consistency despite absurdity. Nothing to write home about.
:up:
Funny that by your own logic I wouldn't be incorrect in interpreting you as saying that I'm always right. (And it would be an argumentum ad populum to claim otherwise :party: ).
:wink:
If you use the word "chair" to refer to bicycles you are using it incorrectly. That's a fact.
What's important to understand is what it means to say that you're using the word "chair" incorrectly. What it means is that the manner in which you use the word "chair" does not correspond to the manner in which English speaking people do. That's all there is to it.
On the other hand, I have no idea what it means to say "If you use "chair" to refer to bicycles, you're not correct". That does not look like proper English to me.
Here's another amusing pickle Terrapin is in. He says:
Quoting Terrapin Station
But again, by his own logic, you are not incorrect in using 'use' to mean 'don't use' (and it would be fallacious to claim otherwise) and he cannot know that that is not the usage you are employing, so his own statement above is incorrect. So what it means in practice to have no notion of correct usage is that you cannot make any claim about what anyone says without clarifying their meaning, and then clarifying the clarification, and so on ad infinitum. The upshot of no usage being correct is the impossibility of communication.
Since the purpose of language is to communicate, it makes no sense to deviate from the norm. By deviating from the norm, you make it difficult for others to understand you and for yourself to understand others.
It's not conformism if you want to be understood.
It should be pretty obvious that I don't think it makes communication impossible, right?
And norms/conventions are correct because?
I wouldn't be incorrect in interpreting this to mean that you think it makes communication impossible?
There aren't correct/incorrect interpretations.
I interpret that to mean "there are correct/incorrect interpretations". Good to be in agreement.
Or disagreement depending on the interpretation, right?
Instead of worrying about whether an interpretation is correct or not, why not worry about things like whether communication with someone is coherent, consistent, etc.?
By that I'm not incorrect in assuming you mean I am obviously right and you are obviously wrong?
That's certainly not what I'd say. You seem unusually consumed with being right, correct, etc.
I could suggest a therapist.
Then you must use some other word than "correct" which has no practical difference in meaning.
Yes, but in order to be coherent/consistent etc there are certain presumptions to be made including that there is a standard of correctness that we can both agree on with regards to the meaning of words. Again, I'm all for problematising but this idea that the notion of correct usage inheres a logical fallacy doesn't stand up to scrutiny and just impedes communication. You need something more sophisticated than that.
Quoting Terrapin Station
As long as it's not whoever you're using. :lol:
Communication simply depends on being able to understand others, which is a matter of being able to assign meanings to their utterances (say) in a manner that's coherent, consistent with their other past and future utterances, etc.
There's no need to bring the idea of "correct" into it.
Re the notion of definitions being correct or not, they're conventional or not. It's not incorrect to be unconventional. The conventional definition of "correct" isn't "conventional."
That's not required at all, and your notion there is anti-instrumentalist.
Not that this is communication, but it's similar to, say, understanding planetary motion, with a stationary Earth, as containing epicycles. That's coherent, but it's not what's actually going on.
I find it really silly that you don't want to use the word "correct" like the rest of us, even though it makes no practical difference. When you interpret the meaning of these words in sync with their intended meaning, and/or in accordance with the English language as per the relevant dictionary definition, that's what the rest of us call "correct". You can call it whatever you want, or nothing at all, but that would be silly and make no meaningful difference.
Again, the conventional definition of "correct" is NOT "conventional."
It's hard to even know what your claim is now. A standard of correctness does not have to be an absolute. It's a yard-stick. Felicity and appropriacy are other terms used in similar contexts. And if as per @S this all boils down to some pedantic notion regarding the term "correct", it really has been a waste of time. Although either way your argumentum ad populum claim is senseless and you ought to drop it and rephrase your objection in a more coherent manner.
The first dictionary definition I found fits the situation I described just fine:
[B]correct[/b]
"1. free from error; in accordance with fact or truth".
If your interpretation matches the intended meaning (that being a matter of fact or truth with which you would be in accordance with) then that's an instance of successful communication whereby you would have understood me correctly, not misunderstood me, which would mean an erroneous interpretation.
I shouldn't even have to explain that, as it's obvious. You're not a child, so why are you acting like one?
Can you give us a bit more to chew on? A link even. It's got to be more interesting than what's come before.
That's all it is, I'm sure.
You're not understanding something I've explained many times:
It's correct that the definition of "correct" above is "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."
It's correct that that's a conventional definition.
That doesn't imply that it's correct to define "correct" as "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."
It's a scope issue. The distinction is similar to the bound/unbound distinction.
In the one case, we're making a claim about what happens to be the case re popular usage, re what a dictionary says, etc. "Correct" is bound to those claims qua those claims--that is, what popular usage is, what the dictionary says, etc.
In the other case, it's an attempt to make an unbound claim--"It's not correct to define 'correct' as 'a type of puppy'" is not saying, "That's not what the dictionary says" or "That's not the conventional definition." It's broader than that. The unbound claim has an implication that one SHOULD follow conventions, should follow suit. That it's right to follow conventions. But that's hogwash of course.
If you were simply saying "Defining 'correct' as 'a type of puppy' is not the conventional definition; it's not what the dictionary says," the person you're saying that to can simply say, "So what? I wasn't attempting to relay the dictionary or conventional definition."
You'd still want to say that they're incorrect, though.
Are you insane? I'm not failing to understand your irrelevant points. It is correct per my usage, and per common usage, and per a matching interpretation from you. Any mismatched interpretation is incorrect. That's how the rest of us use the words "correct" and "incorrect" in situations like this, and you haven't provided any sensible reason for refusing to use them likewise. All you've done is express an irrational unwillingness to join in, due to some childish aversion to the notion of conformity, which to you is some sort of bogeyman.
Quoting Terrapin Station
You're completely off track there. This is a simple matter of whether you're willing to use a word, "correct", like the rest of us, in a situation which makes sense, or whether you're going to continue to resist on no reasonable basis, given that your arguments miss the point.
If you've interpreted the above as I meant it, which is also how the words are commonly used in that context, then you've correctly understood me - you've ascertained the correct meaning - and if not, then you haven't - you've made an error.
And if you're not willing, you're incorrect?
Not even that. If you are not willing, you are not saying anything.
:rofl:
In a sense, yes. Like Baden said, we're not dealing in absolutes. So, under the working assumption that willingness in this context indicates correctness, then obviously you would indeed be incorrect if you're not willing.
You're wrong because your position fails, and the collective position of the rest of us works. It is superior. It makes sense. Yours does not.
But then you're not just saying that the dictionary or conventional definition of "correct" is "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."
After they tell you, "I define 'correct' as 'a puppy,'" you're saying that the person needs to follow the convention.
No! :lol:
Of course I'm not just saying that. Haven't you been listening? I'm saying that when that's what's meant, and when you interpret that meaning accordingly, then that's correct, that's successful communication. Why the hell is that so difficult for you to a) understand, and b) acknowledge? You haven't given any sensible response to that.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Only if they want to understand me!
Jesus H. Christ.
Can't you successfully communicate with someone using the word "correct" to refer to "a puppy" once they tell you that?
And they can successfully communicate with you using the conventional definition if they're familiar with it, etc.
Yes, but so what? I never at any point said that conventional usage is the only possible standard of correctness. I very clearly said that it is the default standard.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes, and again, so what? Is this the point where you backtrack after all of this apparent disagreement? It wouldn't be the first time you've done that.
So "correct" has no normative or prescriptive weight in your usage here?
What do you mean by that? Why wouldn't it?
And besides, please don't create diversions. It feels as though we are on the verge of finally getting somewhere. All you have to do us come out and clearly and directly address this key point that I've put to you:
Quoting S
[B]So, do you a) understand that, and b) acknowledge it to be so?[/b]
Because you keep claiming that you're simply using the term descriptively, so that it simply pegs the consensus usage as such.
Why should someone adhere to the consensus usage when they tell you they're using some odd definition, like "I define 'correct' as 'a puppy'"?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Where did I say that conventions are correct?
Or that they can be correct?
I merely explained what it means to say that someone is using words incorrectly.
What it "means" is that they're not using the word conventionally/a la common usage, right?
pfft
Well said. You made me chuckle (:
I'd be interested if you were to address my last post to you.
No need for scare quotes. That's exactly what it means to say that someone is using some word incorrectly -- it means that the person is not using the word the way most people do.
There's a need because I don't consider that meaning.
Okay, so then the convention is correct, no, and differing from the convention is incorrect?
First, it's not a digression. It's what I'm talking about.
You don't consider that (what that?) to be . . . what?
When someone says "Person P is using word W incorrectly" what that means is "Person P is using word W the way most people don't".
That's the meaning of that statement.
You can disagree with that i.e. you can think that that is not the meaning of that statement.
I am not sure I know what it means to say that a convention is correct or incorrect.
Definitions/descriptions are different than meanings on my view. ("that meaning" was a shorthand way of saying "that to be meaning")
Quoting Magnus Anderson
You just said that what it "means" to say that word usage is correct/incorrect is that the word usage is the same as the convention/not the same as the convention.
So on your view, what it is to be correct (in this context, at least) is to be (the same as) the convention. Is that not right?
It's both. The digression can be traced back to this exchange between us. I clarified my position to you, and did not get a proper reply from you. I am still waiting for that reply.
Stop being difficult and answer the bloody question.
Quoting S
Also, here's more evidence that you're a bad listener. I said the following in that same post:
Quoting S
And yet you repeat essentially the same point I already addressed here in a later reply:
Quoting Terrapin Station
If I'm using it in accordance with the consensus usage, and they want understand me, then they should drop - at least temporary - their own idiotic made-up definition, and adopt instead the consensus usage.
I'm not a listener at all when it comes to long(er) posts. I've explained this many times. You can write posts as long as you want, of course. I'm not doing more than what I consider to be one point or issue at a time, however (especially if someone is in the mood to argue with me). It's up to you whether you want to write stuff that I'm not going to read.
lol
And I'm still not going to read/respond to a bunch of different points/issues at a time when one is in the mood to argue with me.
The meaning of a symbol is the set of all things that can be represented by that symbol.
The definition of a symbol is a verbal or non-verbal description of its meaning.
So yes, I am inclined to think that they are two different things.
The meaning of the statement "Person P is using word W incorrectly" can be described using an equivalent statement such as "Person P is using word W in a way that most people don't".
Quoting Terrapin Station
No. The word "correct" does not mean "in accordance with convention". The word "correct" is far more abstract than that. It means "free from error". What kind of error? Well, that's determined by context. The word itself does not specify it.
The degree to which a usage of word is correct or incorrect is determined in relation to some convention. So yes, in this particular context, correct / incorrect is the same as conventional / unconventional. But that does not hold generally. In other contexts, correct / incorrect has nothing to do with conventional / unconventional.
You mean you want to ignore the main thrust of the lengthy debate we were having in order to pursue your red herring.
You do this all the time. Just as we're getting somewhere - Bam! - a red herring, and then there's no going back for you.
Not on my view, but that's another can of worms to get into.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
The idea wasn't that you were necessarily saying this generally. In this case, the norm/convention is correct because?
Maybe don't start posts with stuff that you consider superfluous? Keep them short and dive right into what you want to discuss at the start. Again, you don't have to do this. It's just a suggestion if you think that I'm addressing superfluous stuff (via my tendency to stop and reply at the first thing I have an issue with)
Because when you say that someone is using some word incorrectly what that means is that they are not using that word the way most people do.
Right. So in this case, "correct/incorrect" is just descriptive, where it's the same as "conventional/unconventional." It has no prescriptive weight on your view?
If you want to be understood and if you want to understand others then you should use words the way other people do.
If you say something like "I use 'correct' so that it refers to 'a puppy'" that's easy to understand, isn't it?
This is a clearcut example of a red herring. Instead of answering my question, he replies with a question of his own, and makes an irrelevant secondary point.
@Terrapin Station does this all the time.
Yes, I respond with questions all the time. My goal is to get folks to think and learn.
It's easier if people speak the same language. The more you use existing words in your own way, the more difficult it becomes for others to understand you (and also, the more difficult it becomes for you to understand others.)
In my opinion discussions don't work when they're not easygoing/friendly, when people are trying to prove the other wrong rather than trying to understand them, and when one person gets too controlling. Hence why I make the moves I make when any of that stuff happens.
So would you say it's easy to understand someone redefining "correct" that way or not?
That's interesting, given that one of your biggest problems is that you get too controlling. You [i]simply must[/I] be in control of the direction which the discussion takes, even when I object, justifiably, on the grounds that you've suddenly changed the subject before we've resolved what we were previously discussing, and even when I persistently and forcefully try to get us back on track.
How many discussions have we had which have ended in this way? Because you refuse to play ball? Because I give up?
It just depends on how the conversation is going, if I think it's going. I was writing some longer posts, but this one fell apart when you ignored points I was making, ignored questions I was asking, and then after that, insisted that I answer something in a way that you preferred, or you wouldn't play.
You often try to turn it back on me, as though I'm the one in the wrong. Try to think about [I]why[/I] I did that. You backed me into a corner. You gave me no choice. Why should I tolerate red herrings? If you have any sense of ethics, you should be able to see why that's not a fair approach to discussion. I traced the red herring back to you. The trouble began with you, not me.
It's supposed to be a conversation where we're trying to understand each other, no?
Why would you even look at that as something where "red herrings" could be introduced?
Why on earth would it not be a situation where red herrings can be introduced? It's exactly that kind of situation.
I've lost hope that I'll get any real answers from you about why you do this, or why you seem to think that it's acceptable, so I'll tell you what I think. I think that you can't bear to concede, so when backed into a corner, you change the subject instead. I put effort into arguing my side, asking the right questions, but it amounts to nothing, because of your eventual evasion before I can pin you down.
Also re conceding. How is that something that is done in a conversation where people are trying to understand each other?
Conceding is something you do in a competition.
I can see through what you're doing, you know. You're suggesting a bad motive on my part. It's not a competition, but there's more to this than simply trying to understand each other. In any disagreement, there is often a right and a wrong. Is it that you can't bear to be in the wrong? Conceding is the right and proper thing to do when you realise you're mistaken in some respect in a debate, discussion, conversation, or whatever you want to call this. But you can't concede if you avoid the subject altogether, even when it is repeatedly brought to your attention. And that's the real problem: evasion. Deliberate evasion. And it's even worse when you make excuses.
You're interested in debating. I'm interested in having conversations. Re an issue like this, this isn't something I'm going to think that I'm wrong about. I didn't just arrive at my view, and I'm not unfamiliar with the alternate views being expressed. So debating with me about it, as if I'm going to change my mind, because you're going to present something to me that I hadn't thought about before, is probably going to be futile. I like having conversations, though. I like explaining my views and why they are what they are, in contradistinction to other views, and I enjoy people give their views in their own words, plus I think it's worthwhile for both parties to once again examine how their views work in context of contrary views.
No, it doesn't matter what you call it, the problem remains, and you ought to take responsibility for your part in the breakdown of the conversation we were having.
Do you see nothing unethical about suddenly changing the subject when things seemed to be coming together, and then adamantly refusing to return to what we were talking about?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Big surprise there. That answers my question.
Quoting Terrapin Station
That's not even the problem! You are perfectly welcome to stick to your view, but when drawn into a line of questioning about that view, you bolt and change the subject. I can't get anywhere with you if you do that. There's no resolution. No conclusion. No outcome. Just a broken down discussion. You're like a slippery eel, wriggling out of my grasp.
You haven't as yet offered much of substance to back up your claims. If you would like to go into some depth we might be able to identify more nuanced sources of disagreement. As it stands what you've presented seems to be nothing more than a trivial strawman re the notion of correctness. Re language usage, it's understood that there's flexibility in terms of what's considered correct. The scope of the notion is defined by the degree of consensus regarding that to which it is applied and is informed by both empirical evidence regarding use as well as the views of recognized authorities (while being set in the context of the appropriate level of language community). That's the way things work. If you want to question the validity of that, fine, but there's no point questioning it on the basis of presuming that when we refer to 'correct' usage we are establishing an absolute binary of correct/incorrect with precise expressible boundaries. One grain is certainly not a heap and a million grains are. But that there is a question over whether a heap may apply to x number of grains does not mean we cannot correctly identify heaps. Or, even more jarring, that to claim we can entails a logical fallacy.
Well, it started with claims like this, where he makes a trivial point where he doesn't seem to consider the importance of context, which changes everything, and results in a completely different answer, the exact opposite of the above.
After a lengthy discussion, he then basically just abandoned that position and began asking distracting questions and bringing up vaguely related points.
Maybe he changed his mind, but didn't want to explicitly acknowledge that.
He also said outlandish things like this, and still hasn't conceded, to my knowledge. If you said it out loud, people would laugh.
There [i]is[/I] a correct meaning of the word "chair", and we all know what it is.
[B]Terrapin Station[/b] has been refuted. He has lost the debate - sorry, "conversation". And that's that! :party:
Concepts are nothing but half a relational proposition, from which a cognition becomes possible, the other half herein being beyond the scope. Whether or not a concept relates to its object is the purview of judgement. It follows that any error in cognition, or even if a cognition can be given, is the fault of judgement, and has nothing to do with whether or not the concept in use is correct in itself, but only has to do with whether or not it is itself the correct concept to use.
One can sleep in a chair, but the regular parent, given the general states-of-affairs in this world, isn’t likely to tell his kids it’s chairtime when the nightly sleep event comes around.
This makes sense to me.
Alright, then rephrase it in plain English.
I think that that's just saying something else based loosely on the gobbledygook that he produced, but it's good that you're able to make sense from nonsense.
:lol: Perhaps I’m projecting my mind into his.
One way to think about it is that concepts have purposes. They are motivated by something, necessitated by a convergence of issues and problems (like a horseshoe). We invent a horseshoe so as to stop the wearing down of the hoof due to our use of horses. If one starts thinking of horseshoes in terms of 'agreed upon terms' or 'individual uses', one abstracts from the whole point (read: purpose) of a horseshoe to begin with. It's the latter that grounds the former, and any debate that takes place wholly on the grounds of meaning in this narrow sense is misguided from the beginning.
With respect to 'correctness', that's also a poorly posed notion. Concepts are neither correct nor incorrect, but rather useful or not useful, felicitious or infelicitious. A horseshoe is neither correct nor incorrect, and it's simply bad grammar to consider it so, the kind of thing one corrects in grade school. They are however, more or less suited to their purpose, a better or worse response to the problem and constaints around keeping a horse's hoof from wearing out.
What's the grammar of a chair? Roughly, something to sit on, shaped for a human sized butt, mostly mobile but not always, useful for when you've been walking all day. A chair is roughly a response to the problem of human fatigue, our particular physiology, and our ability to create things (some other stuff too). The concept of a chair responds to all of this. We know, for the most part, what counts as a chair because we know all this. We understand how humans live. Not merely how they talk (the latter a subset of the former). But if it's framed at the question at the level of talk only, we lose everything important. Significance, not meaning.
On the idea of the concept of the idea of the correctness of concepts, not as concepts, but as the object of perception:
Cognition in itself, or rather the manifestation whereby a cognition translates through the mechanism of conceptualisation, to a subject, the content of a judgement, is not itself the result of the relationship between concept and subject, but rather falls under the purview of the very possibility of judgement itself. It therefore follows that correctness does not, and cannot, apply to the concept [i]as a concept[/I], but only to the concept as an object of perception.
Now, what did I mean by that?
Just a quick note with respect to this. I've clarified I'm not posing things that way and specifically mentioned felicity and appropriacy. @Noah Te Stroete made it clear too.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Quoting Noah Te Stroete[his bolding]
To which came this type of thing:
Quoting Terrapin Station
My head hurts, even from your watered down attempt at translating what I said. I can't say whether you're right or wrong in your translation, because I have no bloody idea what I originally wrote meant, but if it sounds good, I'll take the credit. :lol:
You know what a chair is and can describe it thus because its meaning is grounded in a community of users without which your description would carry no weight. That is the relevant individual vs group distinction here and the one which renders Terrapin's argument absurd. How the concept came about is a different question, I'd say.
Although I've had some issues with your debate style in the past (mainly unnecessary rhetorical taunting/antagonizing), I have to confirm that this is the case here with TP as far as red herrings and evasion goes.
"What's a chair? Is it that thing you sit on?"
"That's correct".
End of discussion.
Simplification is good. :up:
That's actually probably all the refutation needed on Terrapin. Unless he can pull something else out, we should probably move on.
What next? Tables?
:scream:
The "demand" was in the context of folks demanding that I use particular pronouns to refer to them.
I don't see anything unethical about any utterances. That doesn't mean that I like all utterances that people make in all contexts, or that I think all no utterances are a bad idea, but "unethical" is too strong in my opinion.
Quoting S
You were asking me to explain my view, to aid your understanding of it, and I didn't explain it to you?
Which claim did you want more "substance" for?
I don't agree that there's any context within which concepts are correct.
Which is an extreme position which I, along with the vast majority, would reject. But whether you talk about it as an utterance or as a behaviour (it's both) it only shows poor judgement on your part to fail to see why it's unethical.
Quoting Terrapin Station
No, clearly I did not think that you did so, or at least not adequately, otherwise I wouldn't have asked you the question in the first place, and I wouldn't have kept on asking you it multiple times afterwards when you wilfully decided to evade answering it.
And at this point, I've totally lost interest, and I gave up attempting to have a productive discussion with you on that topic a number of hours ago.
Fine, don't agree, but you've been shown extensively and definitively to be wrong on that point.
I can't be wrong about whether something is unethical. (Of course, I can't be right, either. Right and wrong don't apply here.)
Re the other part, in other words, it didn't seem to me like you were asking me to explain my view with the goal of better understanding it for the sake of understanding it.
And you're mistaken about that, as well.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Your personal impression of what seems to be my motivate in that regard is entirely irrelevant. And let's be clear that that's all it is: a personal impression, or how it seems to you. Not fact, not truth, not knowledge.
The bottom line is that you should have had the decency to answer. I granted you that decency throughout, at least until you reneged on the [I]quid pro quo[/I] relationship I expect of interlocutors.
How, in your view, can someone be mistaken about whether something is unethical?
Because that's just how ethics functions. Neither of us are extraterrestrials recently landed on this planet. We both know what ethical discourse looks like, what it involves, what it's based upon, at least on a basic level.
"That's unethical", "No it isn't, it's perfectly acceptable", "You're wrong about that", "Says who?", "Says me!".
That's what it looks like. People make moral judgements, feel certain ways about matters relating to ethics, agree and disagree, tell each other they're in the right or that they're wrong.
All of the meta-ethical details, all of the various meta-ethical interpretations, have no immediate relevance here. It doesn't mean that I can't tell you that you're mistaken. But I suspect that that's what you're getting at. Though regardless, that's what ethics is, that's the norm, and if you do it any other way, then you're basically doing it wrong, just like with all this nonsense from you about there being no correct or incorrect use of a concept in a context which very clearly (to everyone else, at least) indicates just that.
Cool. Glad to hear it.
Wait, your saying that ethics is also determined by norms?
I'm saying that that's a sensible starting place, so my understanding of ethics takes into consideration norms.
I see the (statistical) norms more as an ancillary ending place.
("statistical" because I don't buy the notion of prescriptive norms period)
Yes, and look where that's gotten you: a position that is counterintuitive. A position that myself and others find unacceptable. An implausible minority position.
Which I of course do not see as a problem.
And I of course see that as a problem in itself, in addition to all of your other problems.
Okay . . . what am I supposed to do about it?
Well, obviously, I would suggest a different approach, for starters. I think that any account of ethics which is so radical as to be unreflective of how people tend to talk and think and feel when actually engaging in ethics is destined to fail.
When you express an ethical judgement which contradicts what I strongly feel is right, then it's natural for me to react by thinking that you're mistaken. And that's not just how it is for me, it's how it is for everyone.
So that shouldn't be scrapped as somehow inapplicable, but rather explained in a way which works. There is correct and incorrect, in a sense.
Because you have a problem with it? That's your problem.
I'm not about to change something I'm fine with just because other people have a problem with it.
Pah! Then why even ask me that in the first place? I don't care whether you actually take on board my suggestions, but you asked me what you're supposed to do about it, so obviously I told you what I think.
It's rhetorical, because (in my opinion) obviously you should realize that other people have no obligation to cater to you when they don't have a problem with something but you do. Why shouldn't you just as well cater to them?
I don't care whether it was rhetorical. I answered it anyway, because I'm bored. And I never suggested that you have any obligation to cater to me. That's come from your own imagination. Whether you follow my suggestion or not is for you to decide. I'm simply expressing my thoughts on the matter. That's what we do here, remember?
You could look at concepts (and horseshoes) in terms of how effectively the resolve the issue. In solving one problem, they push out other possible solutions, which means they resolve tensions in one way while foreclosing the actualization of other potentials.
Terrapin for instance has, in the past, vocalized a problem he has that people seem frustrated by his way of holding a conversation in a way he personally finds baffling. and now he's put forth a family of concepts involving, among other things, the absence of responsibility for the effects of one's words, the total subjectivity of meaning, the ethical freedom to ignore catering to others and so on. It works in one way, but the path of theoretical commitments required to remain loyal to these concepts requires a lot of goofy kludges at the expense of more fruitful avenues of discussion.
Could you give an example of this? Is a concept supposed to be solving a non-conceptual problem?
I think it's concepts all the way down, so this perspective would require that concept and issue emerge simultaneously.
A marxist example, to try to tie conceptual solutions to nonconceptual problems, might see the idea of individual liberty + rights as a convenient way to explain how factory workers aren't being violated (they freely exchange their labor for wages, they aren't slaves.)
For the the left, the concept of the 'alt-right' packages up mentally a hyper-diverse set of people as a single bloc, while for the right 'Soros is a mastermind' packages up a different hyper-diverse set.
The theological concept of the trinity, which is chronically in interpretive revision, aims to solve the problem of what christ means/is.
'She has daddy issues' explains all sorts of things in one fell swoop.
(here, I was going to try to do this with something like Kant's noumenon but I don't have the focus right now)
It's not that the concept of a tree is supposed to be solving a problem related to sensory data, or that the shared concept of a triangle has been solving a shared problem for the last 10,000 years.
Sounds like indirect realism.
But I can't know a thing is a tree if I have no concept of a tree, so maybe it's about knowledge (and foreknowledge). But having said that, I think I've gone as far as I can in saying something about what concepts are and what it means to have one. I really don't know.
Do you mean like the cloud of unknowing? I haven't read that, BTW.
I meant something simpler. The best thing I could think of is kids playing a game, like in a forest. The trees are there and part of it, but just part of it. In a weirder, mystic sense, we're all part of an ecosystem and are connected, sharing something, without feeling, at a given moment, how it relates together.
The moment where we identify a tree as a tree is already a kind of distance.
I know what you mean. Knowing the scientific name for the tree species would take you even further out of the moment.
It can be hard to get back once that happens. The tree doesn't come and go with this change in focus, though.
Hmm. Gotta sleep.
I agree that most of everything Terrapin says is absurd, but I think there's a confusion between understanding chair as a nominatum (the thing named) and chair as nominans (the name 'chair'). Qua nominans, yes, to understand what a 'chair' is requires a community of users who use the word in that way, etc etc. Qua nominatum, you need a great deal more than that, including all the stuff I mentioned regarding the grammar of chair (used for sitting, moveable, etc). I only insist that we can't treat the two nomen separately, and its only at the 'shallow' level of the nominans that one can argue about individuals vs groups and so on.
(Sorry about the Latin terms, but it's just a useful distinction that I'm used to and work nicely here).
Shallow's an apt term. Thankfully, the thread is taking a more interesting direction now. It is a bit rough to put things as I did. A hammer for a nail. So yes, it's right to emphasize the layering and development of concept as nominatum (shape and personality) vs the static practicality of use of nominans (linguistic token of exchange). My idea of a concept qua nominatum would be a virtual form that straddles cognitive modalities, mercurial but with a stable core and structurally bound. I also like the Deleuzian idea of the concept as friend (although there's also a sense in which we possess concepts and they possess us). And yes, there's the issue of solving problems. Although I might put it that concepts address needs and then build the foundations for more as they build us as thinking things. Anyhow, I need to properly read the last couple of pages here and catch up.
There are correct and incorrect definitions of words. For example, the correct meaning of the word "chair" is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs". Hardly disputable.
In other words, it's one thing to study the word "tree" and another to study physical objects that can be represented by the word "tree". I am pretty sure most people here are aware of this distinction, so I would claim that no confusion is taking place. (Notice also how I didn't use a single Latin word to express myself.)
I believe this thread is about words and not about things that can be represented by words.
What is it that we do, that these would only be a subset of?
I'd take issue with your claim that you've given "the correct meaning". It's 'a' meaning but not the only one in current use.
New usages may even emerge in the future. These new usages, in my view, wouldn't be incorrect.
Not sure what that's referring to.
Quoting csalisbury
In cases where utterances are not causal. There can be cases where utterances are causal. For example, a bomb that's triggered by a voice command--"Alexa, set off the bomb."
Unless my overactive imagination is projecting stuff that isn't there, I think there was more to it than that.
Re concepts as solutions to problems, would you characterize the concept of "food" for example as "the solution to the problem of finding sustenance/recognizing substances that won't be dangerous/deadly to ingest"?
So that you'd be saying that it's often an attempt to find a solution to a problem where we're not at all thinking about it in those terms?
It's important to understand what the other is saying before one proclaims that what they are saying is true or false.
Specifically, it's important to understand what it means to say that a word is being using in a way that is incorrect. What it means is that the word is being used in a way that is not used or that was not used by some group of people at some point in time.
"Word W is used incorrectly" simply means "Word W is used in a way that is different from the way that it is used or was used by some group of people G during some period of time P."
Nowadays, when people use the word "chair" what they mean is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs". In the future, the definition might change, but when I say that this is the correct definition of the word, what I mean is that this is how people use the word nowadays.
:up:
I think you're mistaken.
Any good dictionary (essentially a record of existing usages) will give at least 6 different meanings.
Or are you saying that the one used most frequently is the correct meaning?
That's true. Maybe I can correct myself by saying that's one of several correct meanings of the word?
And I'd take issue with your interpretation of what he meant. I don't think that he meant that it's the only one in current use at all. I think he meant something along the lines that that's what it generally means in typical circumstances. I think that it's quite uncharitable to assume that he was unaware that oftentimes a word carries a number of definitions.
Or that it's the correct meaning in the appropriate circumstance, that being the typical circumstance of referring to the familiar item of furniture we use to sit on, namely a chair.
I don't think that you've anything to correct. I think he just misinterpreted you.
The correct answer to the question "Is 2 + 2 = 4?" is "Yes". What's prescriptive about that?
The problem would be if one is claiming that anything prescriptive is objective, and of course I'm not a fan of people putting prescriptive social pressure on others.
Are you just saying that that's the popular way to think about mathematics?
Nothing, and I take that to be a true analogy, given the implicit context of what you're saying about correct meaning. But why would it even be a problem if it was prescriptive to some extent? I can conceive how there might well be some accompanying thought along the lines of, "This is the meaning you should go by if you want us to have a meaningful conversation about chairs without you being a pain in the arse by making up your own meaning". Is it a serious problem to think like that rather than to pretend that nothing's the matter, and to humour the other person? No. I think that it's only a problem for people like Terrapin, and I've never met anyone who shares his peculiar gripe here. So I think that it's fairly safe to say that this is a Terrapin problem, not a real problem.
Can we make statements about something other than language in your view?
And would you say that you never use "correct" prescriptively?
Which of course is already putting social pressure on them. If they don't use the meaning you're calling "correct," they're being a pain in the ass.
Or are you going to claim that "pain in the ass" is only descriptive, too?
Absolutely. You can make statements about any portion of the universe -- not just language. For example, you can say that Donald Trump's face is orange. Nothing to do with language.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Saying that something is correct or incorrect is not a prescriptive statement, it is a descriptive one. If you say that "The sky is red" and I say "That's not correct" that is not the same kind of statement as "You should adopt the view that sky is blue" or "People should have true beliefs". Of course, I'd rather be surrounded by people whose beliefs are true . . . if that's one of the things you're asking me.
I didn't assume anything. You said your definition was "the correct meaning of the word chair". You repeated this in your follow up reply to me.
As I'm sure you're aware, there's an important distinction to be made between "the correct meaning" and "a correct meaning".
I think it a little unfair to accuse me of making assumptions for simply taking you at your word.
"Correct" has a prescriptive connotation. Because people would rather be surrounded by folks whose beliefs are true as you say.
It's true that most people use words to refer to things that most people use them to refer to.
When someone uses a word in a way that doesn't at all match the convention, do you ask them first if they were trying to match the convention before you tell them they don't have the word correct?
Well, that's not what I meant. Let's say I expressed myself in a way that wasn't the best. What I wanted to say is that the word "chair" has a number of correct meanings (one or more) and a number of incorrect meanings (again, one or more.) I don't know the exact numbers, I just know that the number of correct meanings is >= 1 and the number of incorrect meanings is also >= 1.
In most cases, yes.
So, when someone uses a word in a way that doesn't at all match the convention, do you ask them first if they were trying to match the convention before you tell them they don't have the word correct?
If they're not trying to match the convention, then telling them that they're not matching the convention (by saying that something is correct/incorrect) is irrelevant, right? And they're certainly not saying something not true, because they weren't trying to match the convention.
I thought that might be the case but I wasn't sure. My initial response to you gave you the opportunity to correct your mistake but for some reason you decided to go defensive.
I don't think I was being defensive in the slightest.
The mistakes they make might stem from their lack of regard for conventions. Such cases are numerous. But you're right in the sense that it's not always relevant. Sometimes. it simply does not matter.
And yes, if you speak your own language, that does not necessarily mean what you're saying is wrong.
You're saying that even if they're not trying to match the convention, they could be making a mistake?
Sure you were. (Being defensive) Chris H made a 100% understandable reading of what you said, and then you acted like he was foolish or assuming. He wasnt at all. His point about the distinction between “a” and “the” is well made. The meaning of the sentence changes significantly between uses of the two words.
It doesnt matter, you clarified what you meant but the only mistake in the exchange was made by you when you didnt choose your words (just one word in this case) more carefully.
I am saying that their lack of regard for conventions can lead them to making mistakes of all sorts.
If you're not trying to match the convention, because of a lack of regard for it, how could you make a mistake in word definition/usage?
Maybe you'd like to go back and read my initial response to him:
Quoting ChrisH
Quoting Magnus Anderson
I do, however, think that he's nitpicking and missing the point.
Defensiveness? Not really.
You can form mistaken beliefs.
I'm asking you specifically about word definition/usage.
You're quoting your second response to me.
Your initial response contained no correction and repeated your error. That looks defensive to me.
It was your second post that made your point clear.
In my first post I explained clearly the difference between "the correct" and "a correct" and stated that I disagreed with your use of "the correct".
What was not clear?
? First off, this is prescriptivist.
Secondly, how does not regarding linguistic conventions make them "blind to reality"?
Re the brain/mind question, yes, sure I've come across people who believe that, but what does that have to do with what I'm asking you about whether someone is trying to match conventional language usage when they define or use a term?
Quoting Terrapin Station
And I responded by saying that I disagree.
There are times when it is relevant to remind them that they are using words in an unconventional way -- even though they themselves have no interest in using words the way most people do. For example, if they are misunderstanding others because they forgot or simply never realized that other people are using words in a different way, then you have to remind them of this fact.
If I say something like "Cats cannot fly" and you tell me I am wrong merely because you fail to realize that I don't define the word "cat" the way you do -- you define it to mean "dragon" -- then it would be more than relevant to remind you that your use of words is unconventional.
Don't you agree?
In spite of that, we do retroject, and in the process we construct an analyzed world.
It's a matter of confusing the dismantled cuckoo clock for the unified one. We do this reflexively and then laud that it "works" and therefore must yield a solid foundation for a kind of realism.
Agree?
That has nothing to do with what I asked you. I said, "If S is not trying to match the convention, then telling S that they're not matching the convention is irrelevant."
You're positing S not matching the convention and S telling U that U is wrong.
You expressed yourself just fine, and far from coming across as defensive, you conceded too readily in my opinion. Those who are jumping in to criticise you just failed to fill in the blanks correctly. If they had've done so, then they would've realised that this point which they raised about "the" vs. "a" simply doesn't apply here. It is a correct meaning, but more importantly it's [i]the[/I] correct meaning [i]given the circumstance you had in mind[/I]. There is only one correct answer in this hypothetical situation, in spite of the fact that there are multiple definitions for the word. That there are multiple definitions for the word is of no relevance in relation to the point you were making.
First off, I notice that you quoted me out of context. But yes it is (if expressed), and yes they are.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Doesn't even matter. Like I said, the original statement we were talking about isn't even prescriptive ([B]Magnus Anderson[/b] is right about that), and the phrase you're quoting there was taken from a potential accompanying thought rather than from the statement itself, although I can't stop you reading things into the original statement if you're set on doing so.
He is.
Well, that makes no sense, unless you disregard the implied circumstance he had in mind and insert your own, but then your criticism wouldn't apply to his point, because you wouldn't be talking about the same thing. It's not difficult to imagine a circumstance where there are multiple correct answers, and where a chair being the thing you sit on is just one of many, but that has no bearing whatsoever on his point, because it's clear to me that that's not at all what he had in mind.
I do find it rather silly that some people in this discussion apparently feel the need to point out, as though we are oblivious of the fact, that, say, "chair" can also mean the person in charge of a meeting, or idiosyncratically anything you want it to, and that these meanings can still be correct in a sense. That is simply missing the point.
"Implied circumstance"?
The way I understand you, what you're saying is that it makes no sense to criticize someone for not using words the way most people do if that's not what they are trying to do.
Is that what you're trying to say? If so, my response is an adequate one.
No. By applying the principle of charity, I don't think it's difficult to make sense of what he said. Just compare it with what he has previously said in this discussion. The correct meaning, given x, y, z. It's just that that last part was left implicit.
Needs more chair.
Alright: Say the chair tables a motion that the motion of chairs and tables should be considered the tabling of chairs in motion, then rather than chairing the chair in victory we should table him along with the tables in order that that motion should be chaired not tabled.
When I said that the correct meaning of the word "chair" is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs" I had no specific context in mind. I was talking about what the word "chair" means in general. So yes, I do think that @ChrisH is right. However, it's an insignificant mistake that was made on purpose + it's not true that I was being defensive (I merely failed to understand what he was trying to say the first time I responded to him.)
Well, or I'm asking if you'd do that and why. S using a word unusually and saying something to U, who is using the word conventionally, where S doesn't realize this, is not what I'm talking about.
Haha--yeah, I realized after I typed the first example that "S" might be read as referring to you rather than being a variable.
Hey sorry, I'd missed your response here. I think I agree mostly tho I still have some additional thoughts that muddle it up a little ( & big caveat: I'm mostly thinking out loud on this thread and I don't have much canonical philosophy to back any of this up. (I guess this all vaguely Deleuzian, but with none of the rigor. )
I think that there are degrees to which a concept is clear and distinct, that they're on a continuum on this regard, and that most concepts are halfsubmerged in a preconceptual muck that secretly sustains them and gives them sense. They emerge as cognitive solutions to transconceptual problems, and thinkers are, at best, half-medium, half constructor. (That's why thinking seems to follow grooves, to be guided by existing landscapes of thought, and why sui generis creation of a concept is all but impossible.)
Another way to say this that i think they grow organically, like everything else, and the activity if reflection simply sharpens them, like cutting a diamond.
To recreate reality from dismantled pieces is, yeah, definitely a temptation and a confusion, since concepts are one part of reality itself. Though their 'working' (as opposed to simply being internally consistent) is still a sign of some kind of realism, because it means they're linked up to something beyond thought.
Does that make any sense? I don't know how well I expressed that.
I think so. What I didn't like (I don't think you were saying this, I just made it up as I was trying to understand) was the idea that reality is out there doing its thing when we arrive and discover problems due to our fumbling attempts to engage it, so concepts appeared the same way lungs and thumbs do: they randomly emerged and then stayed because they opened the door to a certain kind of life being able to perpetuate itself, and so became part of that lifeform. Let's call this Realism 1. It's basically indirect realism and the assumption is that reality is pretty much as we see it.
Carlo Rovelli said that the way we perceive time is a side-effect our point of view, in the same way the sun moving through the sky is. Recognizing this, we see that any true statement about Realism 1 is only true from a certain point of view. Let's call this Realism-POV. We're still in the truth business, but our truths are all POV dependent. So as Rovelli discussed what the universe looks like from near a black hole, it seems mind bending because you can't look out of your own eyeballs and see what he's talking about. His report is profoundly conceptual. Realism-POV tells you to ignore what you see; to ignore all the ways you embrace Realism-1 in your daily life.
What I struggle with is imagining a POV that has no conscious witness. I don't think there is any such thing. We always put a phantom person there and give her a pencil and paper. Without any conscious witness, what we have is Realism-POV without any POV. There are no true statements that can be made about it?
That's interesting because it's more or less the opposite of my ontology, where I'm a realist but I don't think it's coherent to be absent a "POV" (which is probably not the best name for it, but I'll go with your terminology).
I wouldn't say incoherent. It's the Realism-1 I was talking about: its says that the world as we know it would be just as we know it without any witness.
I agree with that view as long as we're strictly talking about objective stuff (hopefully that makes sense--it's the simplest way to say it), but I still think that it's not coherent to suppose anything can be absent a "POV."
It's probably too much to get into (I've explained it in some detail on the board, but I don't recall the thread or who it was in response to), but basically the idea is that properties are different (not necessarily, perhaps, but most are) at different points of reference ("POVs" in the terms above), and there's no way to have a "non-POV POV" for properties to be some way from.
Maybe better: if humans had existed at the time, this is what they would see or realize: