Definitions
Look up the definition of a word in the dictionary.
Then look up the definition of each of the words in that definition.
Iterate.
Given that there are a finite number of words in the dictionary, the process will eventually lead to repetition.
If one's goal were to understand a word, one might suppose that one must first understand the words in its definition. But this process is circular.
There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition.
Now this seems quite obvious; and yet so many begin their discussion with "let's first define our terms".
Then look up the definition of each of the words in that definition.
Iterate.
Given that there are a finite number of words in the dictionary, the process will eventually lead to repetition.
If one's goal were to understand a word, one might suppose that one must first understand the words in its definition. But this process is circular.
There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition.
Now this seems quite obvious; and yet so many begin their discussion with "let's first define our terms".
Comments (236)
The process of “definition” is circular. For a reductionist like Banno, that is a bad thing. But for a holist, the circularity is actually hIerarchical or cybernetic. The iterations don’t lead you around in a meaningless chase. They should zero in on a functional state of meaning.
So this is pragmatism 101. Meaning is use. Our understanding of a word (as a meaningful sign) is uncertain.
I say to you “frepp”. Whatever could I mean?
We would discover that by the extent to which it pragmatically constrains my behaviour.
So we could never completely eliminate your uncertainty about all the ways frepp could be defined, all its possible connotations. But we could certainly constrain that uncertainty to a degree that is reasonable and pragmatic.
As a start, you might ask “animal, vegetable or mineral”. You would work your way down from the most general constraints towards the sharpest distinctions.
So “frepp” is inherently vague - capable of meaning anything as all signs are. And we can corral its meaning by the binary exercise of asking “what is frepp?” by virtue of its logical corollary - “what then is not-frepp”.
We seek a definition in terms of the differences that make a difference. And we are satistified our interpretation is sufficiently constrained when the differences no longer make any practical difference.
It is all bog standard semiotics. No mystery even if Banno wants to recycle it as some great metaphysical quandary for the nth time.
Why the name calling? Why do you agree with me in such a belligerent fashion?
Anyone else?
Sure.
Does the OP say anything that is in disagreement with this?
Quoting Banno
As Apo reiterated, look to the use.
I think it helps to begin with a dictionary definition of the term as a determined judgement, claiming the concepts or rules under which particular uses of the word supposedly fall, and from there engage in a process of reflective judgement. This involves a critical analysis of the term against inter-subjective expressions (including alternative definitions) - particularly those which transcend claims made in relation to quality, quantity, purpose and necessity. The aim is not to necessarily arrive back at a statement of definition, but an agreement on the universal communicability claims of the term.
Yes, I’ve been delving into Kant...
Ooo, take care... that can lead to all sorts of other nasty habits.
DO you think such an agreement needs to be explicit?
I don’t think it can be - not without reduction to a statement of definition, which kind of defeats the purpose. So, no.
To be honest, I think it’s an ongoing process, and the more inter-subjective contributions, the more complex the process can get. Why do you think so many terms have multiple dictionary definitions?
Alas, were that so . . . :roll:
One might want to discuss "What is a force?"
[quote=google]strength or energy as an attribute of physical action or movement.
"he was thrown backwards by the force of the explosion"
Similar:
strength
power
energy
might
potency
vigour
muscle
stamina
effort
exertion
impact
pressure
weight
impetus
punch
Opposite:
weakness
2.
coercion or compulsion, especially with the use or threat of violence.
"they ruled by law and not by force"
Similar:
coercion
compulsion
constraint
duress
oppression
enforcement
harassment
intimidation
threats
pressure
pressurization
influence
violence
force majeure
arm-twisting
badassery
3.
mental or moral strength or power.
"the force of popular opinion"
Similar:
intensity
feeling
passion
vigour
vigorousness
vehemence
drive
fierceness
vividness
impact
pizzazz
oomph
zing
zip
zap
punch
Opposite:
shallowness
4.
an organized body of military personnel or police.
"a British peacekeeping force"
Similar:
body
body of people
group
outfit
party
team
corps
detachment
unit
squad
squadron
company
battalion
division
patrol
regiment
army
cohort
bunch
verb
verb: force; 3rd person present: forces; past tense: forced; past participle: forced; gerund or present participle: forcing
1.
make a way through or into by physical strength; break open by force.
"the back door of the bank was forced"
Similar:
break open
force open
burst open
prise open
kick in
knock down
blast
crack
2.
make (someone) do something against their will.
"she was forced into early retirement"
Similar:
compel
coerce
make
constrain
oblige
impel
drive
[quote=wiki]In physics, a force is any interaction that, when unopposed, will change the motion of an object. A force can cause an object with mass to change its velocity, i.e., to accelerate. Force can also be described intuitively as a push or a pull. A force has both magnitude and direction, making it a vector quantity.[/quote]
End of discussion?
So looking in the dictionary there seem to be varied uses, and a question might arise as to whether his is mere linguistic accident or there is some connection between the coercion and the physical movement. @apokrisis if i remember right, has much to say in relation to fundamental physics, of the relation between freedom and constraint as limits, yet here they are both embedded in the meaning of a single term that has already been appropriated by physics and defined and delimited by Newton's second law. Force is what physics is all about, except when it is about form/information??
To a technician, every word is a technical term, but to a philosopher, every word it a gateway to a universe.
...as gravity might be replaced by levity.
Hmm. Is this philosophy as practiced by academia or the kind of “philosophy” that believes in crystals and scented candles?
Seriously. Show me the philosopher who treats every word as a gateway to a universe.
1. Syntactic e.g. "the", "a", etc. whose purpose is to give some form of structure to language
2. Non-syntatic e.g. "sun", "he", "cold", "run", etc. which are words that don't take part in the structure of language
Type 2 words, in my humble opinion, can all be traced back to ostensive definitions and there's no way ostensive definitions, basically naming objects, can be circular.
Of type type 1 words, I know very little except that some circularity is bound to occur.
Hmm. I recall Quine had something to say about that...
Undoubtedly there are, several, but that doesn't mean that such methods would be applicable to all words. Maybe some words remain misunderstood by both parties. Philosophy is quite unique in that much of the time no action results from the adoption of one position or another in a debate - there's no behavioural instantiation of the concept being adopted. The only thing we'd have to go on to demonstrate a shared understanding of terms in these cases would be their mutually understood application to other verbal exchanges, but if all verbal exchange carried on in this way without ever resulting in some behavioural consequence then it's perfectly possible for an entire edifice of terminology to built the correct use of which could seem completely different to each user.
The only way we'd ever know if this was the case would be if there were some subject matter in which everyone continued to disagree wildly despite thousands of years of discussion and in which terms took on ever more obscure and opaque niche uses, which yielded nothing but further disagreement about their correct application... Now, can anyone think of such a subject?
But moreover, how will you point to democracy? To parsimony? To three hundred and forty six thousand, nine hundred and twenty one? to encoded? To unfortunately? To volume?
If you are right then you must be able to do this for... almost every word.
But then once done, someone will begin using the word in a new way...
SO why not drop pointing and go straight to use.
What is serious? Is it a property of words or things? I'd say it is more an attitude one takes to them - a relationship one enters into. And relationship forms identity. At any moment one takes the language for granted in questioning one word. And the word in question leads to a philosophy. The smaller the word, the bigger the philosophy. Eg, "Is" -> ontology. "I" -> theology. "we" -> ethics.
You mean a philosophy consisting entirely of jokes? I heard that one before somewhere.
Jokes, yes... and nonsense. Nonsense is important.
Whatever can be sensed can be ostensively defined.
Abstraction is non-sense, but has import. Thus one arrives at "five" by pointing to the beans and saying "not beans". Or some such.
That's not enough. Kids arrive at five by playing with beans, moving them around, sharing them, sorting the beans from the marbles, cooking them, embedded number in their lives.
Pointing is a gross oversimplification. But you know that.
Indeed. The meaning of number is moral. Not pointing but sharing is the foundation of mathematics. Oops, I seem to have entered a new universe.
:up:
'tis a joyous thing.
I'm quite interested in what you say, apo, but you are clearly not interested in what I say. For you there is your way and silly ways. I think that makes you higher than me at least in your own estimation.
Were you wanting a definition of force as a term of art in modern physics as opposed to the many other ways of using the same word in colloquial language?
Seems like you just wanted to rant and blow off steam.
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting apokrisis
You have a curious way of discussing. Are you dismissing what I say without argument? Are you unable to understand another point of view at all? Is your wife having an affair? It seems you and I need to talk about personal issues before we can do philosophy together. (Mine is bigger.)
Yep. Guess so,
Moreoften, we know how to use the word without being able to provide a definition. Hence, providing a suitable definition is often quite difficult.
How would that work?
Quoting Banno
Providing a definition of familiar objects is not difficult. It may be more difficult to provide definitions for various emotions, though, or words like "the", "this" "I", "Mind" and so on, for obvious reasons.
Of course we can use words without explicitly having definitions of them in mind. But if we can use (at least familiar object) words we should be able to define them. Even emotions and the other kinds of words I referred to can be roughly defined.
The salient bit being, we do not need to be able to give the definition in order to use the word.
Ah, you love it. You keep coming back.
But seriously, send me a PM if I am being too much of a dick. Or ask a mod to do it for you.
Oh, I would have said that characteristic is more prevalent among the smarter and more interesting (which is of course not to say that all those who are in the higher echelons of a smarthood and being interesting share that characteristic).
Quine doesn't mean reference isn't a game of pointing, only that it's a game of pretend.
Quoting Banno
But generally also the assumed basis of any more complex clarification. (E.g. counting, sorting.)
We have disagreed on so much, Banno, allow me this moment to agree wholeheartedly with what you are saying here.
One of the problems I have with descriptors is the meaning or definition of the descriptor. "I am an atheist" means so many different things to different people, it makes very little sense to use it. "I am a liberal"; "I am a conservative; "He is not honest"; "She is fair"...and the like have that same problem. It is almost useless to use them except in casual conversation. Here in a forum dedicated to "Philosophy" (also ambiguous to many) we should be more explicit.
Maybe more later. I'm just listening in an learning for the moment.
In kindergarten the teacher doesn't use definitions made up of other words. The teacher uses definitions made of pictures. So it's not circular if words refer to visuals, sounds, tastes, smells and feelings. After all, words are merely visual scribbles and sounds themselves that refer to other types of visuals, sounds, tastes, smells and feelings, or an amalgam of all of these. Words refer to things that aren't words. Can your thoughts take any other form other than visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory and tactile sensory impressions? In thinking what a word means, are you not having some sort of visual or auditory experience - in relating some scribble with some color as in "red" means some color?
What does it mean to understand a word? If you asked me what a word means and I don't use a dictionary, rather I use gestures (what does "clapping" mean?) and facial expressions (what does "sad" mean?), will that show you what a word means without using other words?
To understand any word, don't you have to know that they are something that you can look up in dictionaries?
The word "chair" can't mean chair leg, or chair back because those are more primitive ostensive definitions. Definitions, in my humble opinion, build up from the simple to the more complex. Having not understood what "leg" or "back" means, it's impossible to understand what a chair is but once these ostensive definitions are under your belt, you can easily comprehend that a chair is something that has legs, a back, and other essential features.
Let's do an exercise. Take the most abstract concept you can think of and look at the word used for it. You'll notice that its etymology contains words that are definable ostensively. For example "mathematics" has the etymology "fond of learning" and both "fond" and "learning" can be ostensively defined.
Pointing is a use. What other uses does a word have? Does a word ( a sound/scribble) point to its definition (more scribbles and sounds)? If so, then why can't a scribble or sound point to a smell, taste or feeling?
When thinking about democracy what are you thinking about - more scribbles or sounds in your head?
What makes the sound of the word "democracy" usable in the same way a scribble,"democracy" is used? If scribbles and sounds can point to each other, then why can't scribbles and feelings or sounds and smells?
I've got a better idea. Let's not discuss "force". It would take me years to get over that one.
In some cases anyway, like, say, there aren't any running elephants in the dictionary, but we can show evidence of a stampede.
I guess this would then be a use of "running elephants".
Exemplification teaches use.
In logic/mathematics, axioms are definitions, though; they do have some use.
Then what about non-axiomatic cases when there isn't anything to point at?
For unicorns we can at least point at childrens books and cartoons, which give us uses of the word "unicorn".
Is something like this always the case, though?
Like I was asking Banno, when thinking about unicorns, what are you thinking about- an image of scribbles "unicorn" or the image of a horse with a horn? If its the latter, then the scribble points to the idea of a unicorn which is a mental image of a horse with a horn.
Sure. But not every thing we do with words is pointing.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Hello.
This is a scribble or sound used to point to the start of communication, similar to how computers establish "handshakes" with each other across a network before they actually begin the transfer of data over the network. When the computers are finished with transferring data, they close the connection in a way that is similar to saying "goodbye". These sounds/scribbles that we make are pointing to the opening and closing of an exchange of information.
This sounds like a fun game. We say a word and Harry tells us what it's pointing to. Can I try one...
The "Na" in...
" Na na na na na na na na na na na na na " - My Chemical Romance.
But what raises us above the beasts in the field and the chess-playing computers, as yet, may well be the ability to trace and hypothesise about pretended mappings from words into the world. It's unfortunate that the disillusion of one brilliant early investigator has led to so much incredulity about that possibility.
Quoting Banno
But as Piaget argued, all of that playing and sharing and using and sorting enables her to set up potentially a clear mapping or pointing, i.e. a counting out.
Of course pointing isn't evident in a lot of meaning. Maybe the child can't demonstrate an understanding of a correspondence. But pointing is the (invented, pretended) basis on which we clarify and interpret each other's utterances.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes exactly.
Quoting Isaac
Lots of the meaning in speech is musical meaning: like the meaning in all decorative and expressive arts, it points up patterns and qualities and attitudes. Goodman suggests that we can quite coherently interpret this kind of meaning as things pointing back at their potential labels, and even indirectly back at other things. "Na" in the musical work cited appears to exemplify (point up) qualities of articulation in an electric guitar riff, etc.
Wow, so the Barber of Seville must have been astonishingly ahead of it's time. Or does "La" point to something different to "Na". Do tell.
What makes some scribble or sound a word, and not just a scribble or sound?
You appeared to understand what I meant when I referred to it as a word. Is there some other arbiter of correct language use you have in mind?
Or just confused, like poor Harry. "Hello" doesn't point to the beginning of a conversation; it doesn't point to anything. It is an act done in speaking. Like "Get fucked!"; but not like "Ouch!".
Always a pleasure to have one of your pointed remarks in my threads, Street.
So the corollary is that every thing we do is largely pointing? Harry is thus largely correct?
Sounds legit.
Does one say “not everything” to mean “almost nothing”. Or to mean “well, there are exceptions”. A simple exercise in the logic of quantifiers one might have thought. Apparently not.
There is no dichotomy between a definition and usage. The way of understanding a word is by understanding how to use it. And one way to understand how to use it is to look in a dictionary at its definition. That is because dictionary definitions are derived from observing usage. Offering a definition, at least in part, is informing people of how a word is intended to be used.
Quoting apokrisis
Yes, I agree. Notice that the dictionary definition, as a description of use, is post hoc? The use precedes the definition.
The question to hand is "which is to be the master?"; and my answer is, the use is the master of the definition.
Clearly. Will you pretend not to see it? Undoubtedly.
Does one say “not everything” to mean “almost nothing”? Or to mean “well, there are exceptions”?
No need to get so huffy. Just tell us what your words mean. Point to the right answer. :grin:
For pointing, agin definitions.
Quoting Banno
How the certainty? Is pointing or not pointing a matter of fact?
But then say you are
Quoting bongo fury
SO we are both agin definitions; we agree that not all words point; we agree that some words do indeed point.
What is your disagreement with what I have said?
No, that completely misses the point (sorry), which is whether the determination of pointing that does go on should be regarded as something that can be (or already is) fixed, or as a much more precarious and subtle cooperative game.
Qualified assent. Dictionaries are compiled by people who pay careful attention to use, at least one hopes. And the definitions they write deserve some respect, and should not be dismissed because one does not perceive or recognise one's own usage in some of the senses listed in the dictionary. I'm talking about 'consciousness' here, obviously.
Such a general theory is that language is about placing limits or constraints on uncertainty. And precision - a "definitional" strength usage - boils down to a sign (a verbal construction) dividing the world with a logical force. The sign has to split the thing in question into what it is, in terms of what it is not. If the goal is precision, this is arrived at via the logical machinery of a dichotomy.
So this gets at the pragmatics of what language does, why it has such extraordinary power, but also why it is at root a vague business.
The meaning of any locution is a game. The words could be taken to mean "anything". But what they mean this time is how they function to divide the uncertain world into some binary Gestalt opposition of figure and ground, event and context.
If there is pointing going on - and in some sense there always is - it is a pointing to some relatively defined thing, but a pointing that involves also pointing away from its "other", the holistic context needed to construct the thing as "that thing".
So a locution is relative in its logical claim. It is only precise to the degree that it precisifies the "other" - the negative space, the context - that must also be "spoken of" in a definite fashion.
The fact that language is often not used with that level of precision is a reason why meanings or definitions - the "right habits" of interpretation - feel unstably communicated.
And there is then the deeper ontological point that the world itself is uncertain or probabilistic. It resists accurate definition because it is not some naive realist "state of affairs" or "set of concrete particulars". It actually is vague or unstable. And language - aiming at crisp bivalence - is simply cutting it to fit its Procrustean bed.
Quoting bert1
My argument is that language - as a semiotic tool - has this natural goal. It wants to do the powerful thing of regulating nature. And power is maximised by binary precision - the logic of the dialectic. Being able to present a "precise definition" is thus a demonstration of one's mastery of language as just such a tool.
But we should also remember that we can only point towards something if we are simultaneously seen to be pointing away from something - its dichotomous "other". That is the act that reduces the most uncertainty or entropy, creates the most meaning or information.
And we should remember that the world we speak about is not itself so crisply divided into a clutter of parts. We do violence if we cut across the actual holism of the world which - pansemiotically - can be regarded as itself a system of sign. A "conversation" nature is having with itself so as to impose a relatively bivalent state of organisation on its own fundamental uncertainty.
The semiotic view of language is thus a truly general explanation of language as a phenomenon. It is how the Comos itself organises in principle.
Anyway, summing up, language is a technology of reality stabilisation. For us humans, words allow us to co-ordinate our Umwelts - share our points of view.
There is always irreducible uncertainty in every stab at creating such a state with words. And yet the dialectical logic - the way words can act as a binary switch - means it is possible to aim as high as we like in asserting some precise state of affairs. While also, the pragmatism of language - the fact that we are social beings operating at many levels of "world-making" - is where the "language games" shtick comes in. Our practical purposes may be quite low brow when shooting the shit with mates.
Language gives us the means to aim as high as we like. But by dichotomistic definition, the same means can be used to be as vague and ambiguous as one wishes. On the surface, the two can pretend to look the same thing. :wink:
Then all it takes for a scribble or sound to be a word is for someone to assert it is a word? If that's the case, then "Zeritiustk 1( 4%as buttto----assa1+=++2?1 (tus) s)) a1" is a sentence.
Ok, then why don't we say "good-bye" when starting a conversation? Why should it matter whether or not we make the sound, "hello" or "good-bye" when starting a conversation?
Strange that this wall of scribbles seems to be trying to point to all sorts of stuff that isn't other scribbles, like mental states, pointing at pictures, and the actual, objective relationship between words and what they mean, regardless of what us "stupid" people think.
For example...
"Shut the door" when softly spoken during a romantic encounter means something entirely different than "Shut the door" when spoken sternly by someone with authority to someone who just broke some rule or another, immediately upon their entry to the office. Both uses share some meaning in that they both consist - in part at least - of correlations drawn between the same behaviour(shutting the door) and the language use. Both often aim at increasing privacy of further interaction. However, it's the parts of the correlation that differ that make the meanings remarkably distinct. The former includes correlations drawn between the language use and sexual/romantic thoughts, beliefs, memories, and/or expectations, whereas the latter does not. The latter often includes correlations drawn between thoughts of following orders and/or perhaps avoiding punishment and/or consequences of not doing so. It could also include correlations between a sudden onset of fear regarding what's about to happen, whereas the former does not.
Both uses include the exact same words as part of the aforementioned correlations drawn between them and other stuff/things.
When we talk about 'looking to use' in order to find out and/or figure out what some particular language use means, I think that it is better to understand that we must consider not only the words being used, but also everything else that is happening during the use, and perhaps leading up to it.
Dictionaries just give us more words, they're not as helpful as looking towards the actual use, because none of the actual circumstances(the use) in which the term 'acquires' meaning are contained in therein. They are, however, sometimes helpful in recognizing misuse.
A sufficiently competent language user will already know that words have multiple different definitions. They are not all compatible with one another. It is prudent and wise to be clear in the beginning about which definition one is using in any given discussion/argument. Not doing so will inevitably increase the possibility for misunderstanding. So, there's nothing wrong with clearly setting out the definitions of key terms during philosophical debates and/or discussions.
To quite the contrary...
There's often something quite wrong if one refuses to do so. While I am not charging Banno personally, I am strongly suggesting that such a refusal can be a clear sign of self-contradiction and/or an equivocation fallacy hiding out somewhere, so to speak...
Because that's what's often said in situations of parting ways, not the beginning of conversations. "Hello" is a greeting, and it is not always an appropriate/accepted method/means to begin a conversation. Rather, it is often just a pleasantry; just a nice polite way to acknowledge another's presence.
A short bit on names and pointing...
Names refer to something other than the name. They pick out some individual to the exclusion of all else. Saying that they 'point to something' is wrong-minded. "Trees" doesn't point to trees. We often point to trees when teaching a language learner how we use the term "tree", but that learner has not grasped the use/meaning of the term until they have drawn correlations between the name("tree") and it's referent(a tree). Street just offered adequate enough explanation regarding the indeterminate nature of the pointing part of those activities.
Austin is well worth reading for additional understanding of some of the other things we do with words.
I didn't say that. I asked you what arbiter of a word's correct use you'd prefer if not mutual understanding?
:rofl:
Well, I'm going to continue to side with Quine and @StreetlightX here, and say that pointing is pointedly indeterminate.
Have you a counteroffer? You agreed with Harry as to "hello", but I find that most unconvincing; and talk of pointing up music might be considered special pleading; it is not obvious that pointing up is a rom of pointing.
And frankly, I'm not overly impressed with Harry's account.
Oh, I'm a dictionary reader from way back; don't read what I'm saying as being in any way disrespectful towards lexicography.
Oh, sure. Go for it.
What ensues? If it is a discussion of differing uses, then perhaps that would be for the better. If it is a competition between dictionary definitions, then so much the worse.
Seems pretty straight forward to me.
You're a puzzle, Harry.
It might be that we can't start with ostensive definitions, but once I've grown up and understand much of the world, pointing at something and saying "that's a didgeridoo" is sufficient to teach me new words.
Ay, there's the rub.
There will be amongst us those who hold that there is such a thing as the meaning of a word; and that any worthwhile theory of language must set out, preferably in an algorithmic fashion, how that meaning is to be determined.
There will be others, amongst whom I count myself, who think otherwise, and will go along with quine:
There's more here on such issues.
If there is a philosophically interesting topic here it may be to compare and contrast Quine's critique of pointing as the source of meaning, with Wittgenstein's. It will not easily be found in a defence of pointing.
But it's not 'pointing' to those things. The fact that a word stands in some relationship to some referrant(s) does not in of itself mean that the word must therefore be 'pointing' to it.
Obviously words can't point, so I can only assume that those who believe they do are using the term metaphorically to mean something like that the word draws the listener's attention to the referrant, much like pointing draws the observer's attention to the object.
The problem with this account is that it underdetermines actual word use. I suppose you could (as has been tried) twist every word use example as drawing the listener's attention to something (object, concept, state of mind), but this is utterly trivial as everything falls into that parenthesised list, and following another's talk cannot be done without paying it some minimal attention.
What's missing from the equating of word use with metaphorical pointing (in this astonishingly broad sense) is the ability to then distinguish word use which actually is pointing (in the more traditional sense).
"Look, a golf ball" really is trying to draw your attention to a golf ball. "Duck!", is just trying to get your head out of it's path. I don't care if your attention is drawn to the ball, nor my state if mind, nor the concept of ducking. I don't care if you simply have a Pavlovian response to people shouting "duck!". I just want you to duck. The word may have referrants, but that doesn't mean my use of it is pointing to them.
Like, it was clear enough where everyone stood?
By the way, by "pointing" (at or up) I mean (to influence usage in the direction of): denoting, labelling, being true of, describing, exemplifying, naming, shared-or-multiply-naming.
Only exemplification is much different in principle from the rest, being (as Goodman noticed) reciprocal or symmetric between pointer and pointee.
The rest deserve to lose most of their habitually imposed distinctions.
Quoting Banno
Good, but you didn't, you started saying that it doesn't (always) happen, missing the point.
Quoting Banno
I agreed that a person said hello to can reasonably offer for consideration an interpretation in which the word has been pointed at (or points up) a meeting or greeting. The greeter or a passing linguist are free to argue for different interpretations.
Quoting Banno
No. The insight (Goodman's) arose out of a nominalist (in the sense of cutting out the middle-man of intentions) investigation into pointing/denotation/labelling as a formal relation between symbols and things.
https://monoskop.org/images/1/1b/Goodman_Nelson_Languages_of_Art.pdf
There are some words that are inherently self- descriptive/defining. The most well known group is onomatopoeiac words - words that sound like what they mean: crash, bang, boom, wallop. Because the quality of the word is linked to sound perception/ the senses. Others can be created simply by employing exactly what is defined in the construction of the word for example the word "word" is exactly what it defines. You can see its definition demonstrated in front of you without actually understanding it.
So yes I agree there are ways to understand word without having a definition for it.
You might be surprised.
Not a contest.
I.e. Quine, at least, agrees that all predication is shared-naming, and hence all linguistic reference, as shared and un-shared naming, is a game of pointing words at things.
Goodman extends the insight to pointing of pictures and gestures and music.
If "used" doesn't mean "pointing" then what do you mean by use? If meaning is use and I use words to point, then what's the problem? You seem to think words can only be used how you use them, Emperor Banno.
Correlation, pointing - what's the difference? And the fact that what one word correlates with/points to doesn't necessarily have to be the same for everyone doesn't mean that words don't refer to other things that aren't words. It depends upon the experiences we've had with hearing/seeing the word used, and by "used" I mean used to refer to things that are not other words.
I mean look at your's and Banno's posts. Are they not scribbles attempting to point to my mental state of misunderstanding what the meaning of words are? If not, then what are you actually saying? If I'm not wrong in my understanding, then what are you actually using those scribbles in your post to accomplish? What is your goal in mind when using some word?
Quoting creativesoulThen "Hello" isn't a word, but a sound we make when greeting someone. Issac just wants to avoid the question, but I'll ask you - what makes some scribble or sound a word other than just some scribble or sound? Do dogs use their bark? Is their bark a word, or just a sound?
Quoting Isaac
I wasn't asking about correct usage. I was asking about what makes a word a word? You seemed to think that I understood what "Na" means. I don't, so then you didn't use the scribble, "Na", because there isn't a mutual understanding of the scribble? I do understand the scribble, "word" and that "Na" isn't one.
Bang. If all language is pointing, pointing ceases to be discreet.
Indeed. A proof of how absurd the circumstance: a field linguist would be so spoilt for choice as to the right interpretation of native utterances as to make his task untenable.
What makes a word a word is about the correct usage of the word "word".
Quoting Harry Hindu
No, I think you understood what I meant by referring to it as a 'word', hence we don't have anything to discuss about whether it's really a word.
Quoting Harry Hindu
This is what I was asking you about. By what method of arbitration are you concluding that my referring to "Na" as a 'word' is an incorrect use of the term?
:point:
Quoting Harry Hindu
But haven't I just given an example where this is not the case. If I yell "duck!" I'm not expecting that you sync my image of you ducking with your image of you ducking. I'm just expecting you to get your head down. In fact, I could prove to you with fMRI, that Pavlovian response triggers, even if they're words, pass neither through the ventral pathway of object recognition, nor through the areas of the cerebral cortex where we might expect with some concept recognition, but rather straight to the sensorimotor systems to get you to duck.
I've used the word 'duck' to make you get your head down, and at no point did either of us have to picture someone ducking. I've simply learnt that that word in that context has that particular effect on the world, and, as @Banno's Quine quote nicely shows, alk that's needed for me to keep using it this way is "frequent predictability of verbal and nonverbal reactions".
Interesting example. What does it highlight then? For me, it demonstrates the developmental trajectory from iconic to indexical to fully symbolic levels of language. And how this becomes so as novelty (which would demand the whole brain being applied) becomes reduced to the simplest habit (where the brain simply emits a response without conscious deliberation).
You have to wonder where “duck” became a word that could mean get your head out of the way fast? I would guess it arose iconically. The image I have is of the way a duck bobs its head. So there would have to have been some process of habituating that image within a language community - distilling it down to a learnt motor pattern where not stopping to consider the imagistic analogy was a major part of the deal.
Shouting “magpie” might be a more meaningful command where I live. They have a habit of actually going for heads.
But anyway, a key thing about symbols is in fact their lack of direct representation of anything they might represent. We call a duck a duck rather than a quack quack. The four letters and the sound they make could be the symbol for any habit of thought or behaviour. And that is precisely why they are so meaningful once we associate them with just the one (general) habit of interpretation. If some word noise is intrinsically meaningless, then that makes our employment of it the most purely symbolic. It is rid of the iconicity or indexicality it might otherwise have.
So my point seems to be that we have a process of refinement going on. And the different views on what language is can arise from focusing on either pole of its developmental trajectory. Both sides can feel right as there is evidence for opposing views depending on whether one focuses on the early iconic and imagistic stages, or the late symbolic and unthinkingly habitual stages.
Interesting. I saw it going the other way. The reason I mentioned "Na" was that it is from a class of words which I don't see as ever having indexical meaning - "Shhh", "Oi", "Hey", "Ah"... They're word's which just 'do something' on a very primitive level. They're still cultural though, so I think that puts them squarely within language still. Someone from 300 years ago on the other side of the world might not know what on earth you're doing if you asked them to "Shhh". They still require a community of language users to use them that way, but they haven't been through any iconic or indexical stages, they are just 'when I make this sound, you do this action' and we learn the correct response through childhood. We know that "Na na na na" is just part of syncopation, we don't try to work out the meaning. When the teacher says "Shhh!" everyone falls quiet (if they don't there's trouble), the learnt response is direct.
The evidence of directly learnt responses to words opens up that possibility even with words whose meaning is also referential - ie just because a word refers to something, it doesn't mean that's always what it's doing in an expression. As Wittgenstein says, "Slab!" doesn't just refer to the slab, it gets the assistant to bring it. "No!" doesn't cause a baby to contemplate the sate of mind in the adult that this negation might be referring to - it gets them to stop. What's interesting about "No!" is it stops even children who (through maybe autism) have not fully developed a theory of mind yet. If you asked them about another's intentions, they might well become confused, but if you yell "No!" when they're reaching for a second biscuit, they'll stop reaching for it - not just stop doing everything - stop doing the thing they had in mind to do. Now, "No!" can't index their own desire to stop (they clearly didn't want to), if it indexed the adult's desire that they stop we'd expect to see the same confusion we see when talking about other people's intentions, but we see neither, they just stop. "No!" just stop them. It just does something to the world, by Pavlovian response, no semantics of any sort required.
It even works on cats.
You clearly don't know the cats I know.
Quoting apokrisis
So you're falling back on your prior comments and now disagreeing with Streetlight? Can you please be consistent because if you're not, you're not using words at all, you're just making scribbles on the screen.
Quoting Banno
Yet you can't say what that is that is going on in Issac's post that is more than pointing and Issac can't answer a simple question about what makes some scribble or sound a word.
Quoting Isaac
Sounds like we're saying the same thing. Strange, that you can say the same thing using different words? Doesn't that mean that the words point to the same thing, just like different scribbles from different languages can point to the same thing and what they point to is what is translated between the different scribbles? What is it that you are translating between languages if not what the scribbles point to?
How am I suppose to know that "duck" means get my head down if I don't already have that notion in my head? What if I didn't duck, and made a quacking sound instead? Did you "use" words if I didn't do what you imagined me doing? Or is it that you used words, and that I just didn't get the gist of what you were pointing at?
Quoting Isaac
And how exactly are we suppose to know what to do when hearing these sounds if not having a mental image of the behavior prior to hearing it? Watching someone else respond to those words is how we learn what those words point to - a behavior.
Quoting Isaac
Ok, but this doesn't happen instantly. I have to learn what the word means, which means that I have to see others react to a sound in such a way consistently, meaning more than once, to know what is expected of me when hearing that sound. And for you to know how to use that word, you had to have a visual and auditory experience at some point in your past of seeing someone put their head down when you heard that word spoken. You had to be able to predict what would happen if you say that word, and predicting involves imagining.
This behavioural bogusocity is just more platonic authoritarianism that makes language some objective fixed generalised entity with some ad hoc additions when the theory falls apart. Language is use! What a trite nothing statement!
Language is Intention....How about that?
Seems a bit grand to call them words. Is anything much lost by calling them social signs or expressive vocalisations?
I associate words with being parts of sentences. So they are really about the nested hierarchical nature of true speech acts. Components arranged by rules.
Your examples are certainly part of the pragmatics of social co-ordination. But they stand outside the grammatical system in which a word is a semantic unit being organised within the constraints of some syntactic rule.
“Hey” stands alone quite happily as the social context provides sufficient information to allow it interpretation as a sign. But we are doing something else when we are using a grammatical structure of words to convey the interpretative context via semantic symbolism.
Quoting Isaac
Sure. Words are always vocalisations. But vocalisations don’t always need to be words to be part of a social system of coordinating sign. That seems obvious enough from the grunts, hoots and hollers of any social species.
My claim is only about what makes grammatical speech so special - the power of symbols and rules. That doesn’t rule out every other step along the way to full fledged language. They don’t have to be eliminated from the repertoire. We are still social animals as much as grammatically structured thinkers.
I didn't say that such responses were.learnt without recourse to mental imagery (that would be a different argument). I only claimed that they are used without such recourse. My use of the word "duck" to someone which has learnt the appropriate response, dies not (in that use) involve any mental imagery or conceptualising in either the speaker of the responder, as such it is false to say that words always point to things. Sometimes they don't.
I should re-iterate, I think, that this aspect of words triggering a Pavlovian response is only one small part of the argument against ostention in general. As @StreetlightX has already said, you really ought to read Philosophical Investigations for a broader picture. I'm focussing on something very specific here.
No, I suppose not. Only perhaps the similarity with words which have become symbolic or triggers, there seems a neat connection there to 'words' which always were.
Quoting apokrisis
Not sure they do. I'm not particularly well versed in grammar, but "shh" or "ah" still has a correct place in sentence structure doesn't it? You couldn't put them just anywhere and expected to be understood?
Quoting apokrisis
That's fair enough if you circumscribe it that way, I suppose one could. Would words used purely emotively or as behavioural triggers then cease to be words, would they be, by their use, ruled out of 'grammatical speech'? Is saying "no" in answer to a simple question using a word, but saying "no!" to banno's cat something else?
See for examples my recent thread about moral objectivism, where in the poll question I state the things I’m not asking about and the things I am asking about in different terms, so that people won’t think I’m asking a different question than I am. Of course that depends on people being able to use the words I’m using to state the definition, but there is still a usefulness to stating a definitionally to avoid ambiguity.
What Pfhorrest said.
They are used outside of any grammatical structure. That was my point.
What is the future perfect of “shh”? “I will have shh-ed John before he could speak.” That would be using shh as a word to describe an action. So shh is both the action and - if used successfully in a grammatical structure - a symbol of the action. And quite a primitive symbol in being an icon of the action.
It actually sounds a bit wrong unless a poetic effect or some other pragmatics was intended in “shh-ed”. We would say shushed or some other word that removed the confusion of whether we were suddenly telling our listener to shut up in the middle of a sentence.
Quoting Isaac
There is a neurological pathway difference when we utter emotion driven words like “fuck” or “bugger”. The limbic part of the cingulate cortex - the emotion processing part of the higher brain which is the social vocalisation area of the mammalian cerebrum, responsible for screeches and cries - produces these kinds of expressive, but stereotyped, noises.
Grammatical speech is handled by a different set of circuits. So - as we know when we are overtaken by inarticulate rage - the two actually feel like competing forces for control of out vocal cords. We may swear in colourful habitual phrases even. But something different is happening from formulating novel acts of speech.
This is one of the things about symbolic and grammatical speech acts. Every sentence can be a fresh surprise, even to us. We wait to hear what we say so as to judge the sense of what we now seem to think. It is a live attempt to solve a problem when we seek to put the world into words.
Swearing at someone is not a creative effort at that same abstracted level. It is using the cingulate’s rather more limited vocal repertoire of some well used vocalisations to bring about some result or other in a social setting. Or just to complain about life in general.
Quoting Isaac
Logical thought is a grammar that is designed to have a yes/no answer. Telling someone no as a social expression is giving them that answer before they even asked the question.
The cat will certainly understand your angry and warning tone even if you were to growl “yes” as your habit. And if you say “no” sweetly, the cat will struggle to read your intentions.
"Oi" isn't in the Shorter OED; I'd bet on it being in the full version. The other words here are.. "shhh" is spelled "sh".
Claiming they are not words, for the convenience of a definition of "word", is special pleading.
How did you manage to extract that as something I might assert as being otherwise? Do you not think that was an omission of the bleeding obvious? :grimace:
As it happens, I was having to deal with the whims of my cat - its insistence on sitting on my lap – as I tried to tap these words on the keyboard. So I am well aware of the pragmatics of these things.
Even forceful speech is no use. Physical propulsion is what is required. :grin:
Sure.
Often, especially amongst those pretending to philosophy, clarifying which of multiple possible uses one means by a word is the bone of contention.
Yes, it seems that way to me too, especially when, as I was trying to show with my Pavlovian trigger examples, we end up that way having something which is one minute a 'word' and the next no longer a 'word' because it's been used differently.
Quoting Banno
Exactly. What all too often happens is that definitions are insisted upon first, creating a subset of language in which only those definitions are used on the world, the argument is had and the resultant points are then pasted back onto the world as if they applied to all language use. "For the purposes of my argument 'Jabberwockey' means X, my argument shows that X=Y, therefore in the real world 'Jabberwockey' means Y". Basically half the threads here are like that.
And claiming that they are is begging the question, so why don't you and Issac brainstorm and come up with a definition of "word". What makes a particular sound coming from someone a word? Does the sound have to come from their mouth? What about the sound of them sneezing or coughing, or vomiting. What about sound effects? If someone makes a fart noise with their mouth, does that qualify as a word being used? What if people react in some way to those sounds? Does that mean that those sounds were used and therefore that is what qualifies the sound to be a word? But then humans react to all sorts of things that aren't just sounds and scribbles, so what makes some sensory stimuli a word and another not?
Isn't a word both a sound and scribble? Does the sound point to the scribble or vice versa? How did we learn that some sound is the same as some scribble, and that scribbles can be used the same way as some sound?
Quoting Isaac
Right, and what you learned is what the sound/scribble points to - a behavior. Just as we learn to ride a bike or drive a car, it takes focus to learn something new. Once you learn it and become an expert at its use (which takes time and using it more than once, so using them takes practice and while you are practicing you haven't yet rerouted the information from consciousness through your subconscious yet), then you don't need to focus on it any longer. It is no longer necessary to route the information through consciousness, as consciousness is used for learning, it is the center of attention. Just because you no longer route the information through consciousness doesn't mean that what you learned is no longer the case. It has to still be the case for you to be able to not focus significant mental energy on the process. It can be handed off to the automated sub-conscious.
I asked you what if you used some word and I didn't respond as you predicted? Does that mean you used a word or not? When that happens wouldn't you mentally revisit what you learned and consciously try to re-learn it's use, just as when something new happens when riding your bike or driving your car, you have to refocus your attention on what it is that you are doing and using?
So when are you going to explain what makes some sound or scribble a word? When are you and Banno going to explain what you mean by "use" when using a word if you can use a word in such a way that doesn't include some kind of correlation between the word and some idea or behavior (what it points to, refers to, correlates with or symbolizes)? You and Banno are avoiding answering the necessary questions.
"We cannot define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, "You don't know what you are talking about!". The second one says, "What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?" ~ Richard Feynman
The OP goes as follows:
Quoting Banno
And there was this:
Quoting Banno
And yet you insist on our providing a definition. One might be tempted to conclude that you have not followed what is going on here, Harry.
Quoting Banno
These don't have to be two incompatible views. They could be two extremes of a continuum.
The general algorithm is a logical division of things into figure and ground, signal and noise, information and entropy.
Sometimes differences make a difference. Sometimes differences are a matter of indifference. So the general algorithm is the pragmatic one of how divided do we have to make the world so as to be able to talk about the world usefully?
Communication is smooth when two speakers are on the same page. They read the world the same way in terms of what is figure, what is ground, what is signal, what is noise.
Further difference-making is a wasted effort as that is pursuing differences that don't make a difference.
But equally, the communicative balance breaks down if the speakers discover some remaining vagueness in their language. A lack of bivalent precision - a failure to understand now about differences that do make a difference - becomes something that demands further work.
So a community of speech (or semiotic interactions) relies on hitting that Goldilocks balance of being neither too vague nor too crisp, neither too indeterminate or too determinate.
When communication goes smoothly, that only says a productive balance has been achieved. Some pragmatic division of reality into figure and ground - as a shared psychological model of that reality - has been reached and is serving its particular purpose.
But purposes change. A sharper view may be required. A stricter definition of terms becomes a useful exercise.
Or maybe the opposite applies. The discussion is too bogged by irrelevant details. Differences that don't make a difference. A greater degree of vagueness about the parts will allow a better focus on the whole.
Does a cat always have two ears, four legs and whiskers? Generally and yet not always. A smooth conversational balance relies on a remarkably well tuned ear for an appropriate degree of definitional precision.
So the algorithm involved is a triadic balancing act. It is a system framed by its black and white extremes, then all the shades of gray that emerge as the choices inbetween.
The world can't be a matter of "every difference making a difference", nor "no difference making any difference". It can't be all signal, or all noise. Not if it is ever going to include a "point of view" worth speaking about.
Instead speech relies on a world of contrast - that part which we find it worth speaking about, and that part we also speak about by not in fact referring to it. What we leave out of speech acts is just as important when having a conversation.
Hence the pragmatics of also resisting the idea of giving definitions. Stopping to do that interrupts the smooth flow. The interpretive context of every proposition should be taken as read. To speak about it would be redundant. Or worse yet, it would fail the test of being the part not being spoken about. The part of every speech act that is drawing the line at the pragmatically right place in terms of an appropriate ratio of figure and ground, event and context, signal and noise.
Speech acts have their negative space as well as their informational content. I somehow feel this isn't well understood in Philosophy of Language discussions. But it should be obvious from the practical psychological basics of cognition.
I wonder what you make of it.
That's not what I had in mind. I was thinking more of a specific set of instructions for carrying out a procedure or solving a problem. That is, there are those who hold that any worthwhile theory of language must set out a specific set of instructions giving how meaning is to be determined.
The distinction I wish to make is as that between seeing that and seeing as.
And I don't see how these could be construed as two extremes of a continuum. It's more like seeing the duck or the rabbit, and realising that the same drawing gives rise to both.
So isn't this another false dichotomy we have to break through to discover the right dichotomy?
One can oppose science and the arts as both being forms of life and so set the stage for which counts the higher form, which the lower. Who is our champion, who is the horrid bastard.
Or you can play the other game of just shrugging your shoulders and saying it is just two different things. Higher or lower? It's all relative. There is no essential difference if everything is a form of life, some kind of internally coherent system of communication. The question of commensurability is irrelevant as the question of incommensurability is also irrelevant.
I of course take yet another route of saying well we need to discover the complementary kind of dichotomy that brings some proper synthesis to the whole debate.
With the opposition of the sciences and the humanities, what could this be?
Pretty obviously it maps to the usual opposed poles of metaphysical being - the realm of the world and the realm of the mind. Or more pragmatically - the semiotic view of the mind~world relation - the sciences are focused on depersonalising our point of view, the humanities have as their own natural counter-goal the object of socially constructing what it means to be "most human". An ideal self.
So in the "stepping right back from it" pragmatic view - the one that starts with the "form of life" metaphysics that Wittgenstein nicked unattributed - the sciences and the humanities should make a healthy opposition that can be more than the sum of its parts. We use them as inquiries to sharpen our notion of the world and of ourselves - as the two elements in semiotic interaction.
Now this does conflict with many peoples' notion of humanistic inquiry. The advice there is to find "yourself", or worse yet "express yourself". Really, the advice needs to be "construct yourself". And as we are all socially constructed as "selves" (with a good dash of genetics of course) then we need to be able to talk about the "technology" of that construction. And even the purposes that would guide any such effort.
That ought to be the fundamental business of the humanities. And what it finds in that direction ought to inform the sciences in their own matching voyage of "discovery" - or rather, its construction of the world as a useful image. A model of reality that has the anchoring point of view of a humanistic centre.
So I guess I take a rather industrious view of both the humanities and sciences as academic disciplines. :smile:
The difference isn't about science merely analysing reality while the arts are about properly living it, being in it, feeling it, discovering it as some deeper level or experiencing it on some higher plane. All the culture wars rhetoric of which stands above the other, or is the proper ground to the other - whatever it takes to be the primary, making the other secondary.
Instead, a pragmatic/semiotic view - a form of life view - would argue that both "the world" and "the self" are the two halves of a joint construction. And progress lies in constructing the better total model. They are not separate exercises. The problems of modern life lie in the way they got disconnected pretty fast after a moment of unity in the Enlightenment. Scientism and Romanticism began the business of "othering" each other in an unhelpful way.
Fetishising either the self or the world is the mistake. We need to be consciously engaged in a co-construction of these aspects of being alive and mindful. [Insert all the usual utopian visions of that here.]
So the disproof of the Gestalt argument is ... a Gestalt argument?
There is no difference that makes a difference in the stimulus as such - from your "physicalist" point of view. But you can create a difference that makes a difference by shifting your state of interpretance - your "mental" point of view.
A bad example if you want to dispute my position.
Quoting apokrisis
I didn't so want. It was more that I wondered how you might answer @Harry Hindu. Is there in your opinion an explication of the meaning of "word"? Can you tell us what "word" means?
Edit: I should qualify that by asking if you think such an explication could be complete.
If your "saying" is based on metaphysical reductionism, then of course it can't speak to the holism that is the greater attainable view. You might be reduced to showing, rather than telling.
But let's not get bogged down by the usual point that the only way to learn tennis or drive a car is to be shown how to do it - grab a racquet, get behind the wheel, and start understanding the ineffable essence of being a tennis player or car driver.
There are grades of semiosis. Each is its own "linguistic community" in terms of the system of symbols that underpin it. Some of the major grades underpinning life and mind are genes, neurons, words and numbers. To learn the game of tennis, one must do that in the language understood by your neurons.
Social concepts like "that is the service line, this is how you score" need to be communicated too. Words are good. Mathematics is better.
Is the ball half on the line, in or out? Hawkeye can apply an algorithm to give the correct answer and remove any shred of human ineffability. If no-one umpiring is really sure and can't speak the truth, a calculating machine can ... to a millimetre or two. Differences agreed not to make a difference.
So humans are complex beasts that live a life that spans multiple levels of semiosis. Ideally, they are all aligned in some kind of holistic harmony.
But some folk never even develop a mathematical level of self. And some folk become so mathematical as to lose sight of life lived at those other integrative levels.
It all comes down to a productive balancing act again. Arguing about dichotomies like said and shown, explicit and ineffable, is only a useful exercise if the argument eventually reveals the way they are two halves of the same whole.
Have you yourself got there yet with this particular question?
Quoting Banno
In the linguistic sense, I think that is one thing Pinker managed to get right in talking about the dichotomy of words and rules.
That was the answer I gave a few posts back - https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/438849
So words and rules are how we fracture an attempt to express an idea into a set of semantic parts arranged into a syntactical whole.
A word is whatever constitutes a semantic part within such a structure.
It's all pretty plastic and flexible. The plasticity is the feature and not the bug. So "cat" could be the semantic component. And cattery, is two words - cat and -ery - combined via a rule.
The rule is that the general idea (a cat) is constrained by the general idea of a type of purposeful facility. Draw the Venn diagram and form the right logical conclusion. The intersection is now a new more specified or particularised semantic unit - a "cattery". And that can get slotted recursively back into some syntactical adventure. We can speak of this cattery and not that cattery. The cattery that occasionally houses dogs or occasionally is empty.
The ability to make further semantic distinctions via syntactical constraints is recursively infinite in principle.
And a word is thus defined as the semantic aspect of what goes on. The novelty or significance that gets meaningfully shaped into being upon coming into interaction with the structuring habits of a rational grammar.
Of course, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." That sounds as though it ought to be carrying some cargo of semantics. It is "perfectly" grammatical. And there are words. But we understand it to be nonsense. The words don't go together in a way that is rationally grammatical. No self~world state of intentionality that we can recognise is being expressed.
That is, words - as in the single items we might look up in a dictionary - are a very reduced notion of semantics. The idea of speech as a concatenation of individually meaningful signs is another reductionist exaggeration.
A speech act - whole phases, sentences, even diatribes - can be "words" in the sense of conveying the holism of a complete mind~world intentional stance. A point of view worth distinguishing from the many others that might have been available but are now neatly rendered "unspoken".
Syntax is the structure that pins down meaning to something that cannot be merely nonsense - some jumble of urgent noises or scribbles in the dust. Then individual words - like cat or cattery - are where this constraint on semantic interpretation hits the point where we become pragmatically indifferent to any remaining uncertainty.
The boundary of "a word" is defined not by the information it contains - the dictionary approach - but by the information its serves to exclude. The negative space its serves to signal. There is no need to penetrate further to find the word's meaning. It simply marks the moment where digging more would be redundant in terms of fulfilling some particular communicative intention.
Rabbit is whatever is not not-rabbit. Duck is whatever is not not-duck.
A duck-rabbit is whatever is not not-duck-rabbit. So an old lady-young damsel is not a duck-rabbit. But oh, they are both Gestalt illustrations of the constraints based approach that perception takes.
Seems it is semiotics all the way down then.
Sounds are not 'made into' words, they are sometimes referenced by words, sometimes even byt eh word 'word', but I can't make any sense of them being 'made into' words.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Which is all I was saying. If there are circumstances where one doesn't need to focus on the image/concept anymore then there are circumstances in which the use of the word is not pointing to that image/concept anymore.
Quoting Harry Hindu
What else would I have used?
Quoting Harry Hindu
No. I'd probably just say it again, but louder.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Right ho then. You tell me where to look and I'll do the legwork. where do I need to look to find out what sounds constitute a 'word'?
So I asked you more than just that. You obviously aren't interested in being intellectually honest here. Maybe if we take baby steps, Banno.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Banno
Then words communicate. What do they communicate, Banno? I would agree that they don't communicate more words. They communicate ideas, which are made up of images, sounds, feelings, etc.
Is making a fart noise communicating? If so does that mean that a word was used. Does that mean that every sensory impression is a word? Is the smell and taste of an apple a word? Does the smell and taste not communicate to me that the apple is ripe vs rotten?
When using language, can I not glean more from your language use than just your use of words? Don't you also communicate to me what your native language is and how well your grasp of it is?
:roll: What are you saying - that any sound that you point to with scribbles is a word?
Phewee! Ugh!
What have you been eating?
You are't going to be intellectually honest either, I see. The question is simple, so stop trying to skew it into something that I did not ask.
Who, or what, determines what sound or scribble is a word, or is it your belief that everything is a word, even the smell and taste of an apple?
Quoting Isaac
I know what you were saying. What I was saying is that you are wrong. The fact that you don't need to focus on it any longer doesn't mean that it no longer points to it. It seems to me that you believe that when something is out of sight/mind, it no longer exists.
Think about it this way. If I were to write a computer program for a robot to execute a certain behavior when it hears the sound, "Duck!", I'd have to link the sound with the behavior. When the program runs, you might say that the robot isn't conscious at all and is merely performing actions based on stimuli and how it was programmed. What I'm saying is that learning is the same as being programmed. It has to be programmed into you what is expected of you when hearing the sound.
If the sound didn't point to the behavior any longer then the program wouldn't work as expected. You wouldn't behave as expected when hearing that sound. This also shows that some sound can point to some behavior. Behaviors aren't words, but can be pointed to with words.
Quoting Isaac
Hand gestures? Facial expressions? Are hand gestures and facial expressions words?
Quoting Isaac
Are you sure that the only possible problem here is that I didn't hear you? How do you know the problem wasn't misunderstanding?
Quoting Isaac
Wow. It appears that you actually DO understand, as you are now asking where to look to find out what makes some sound a word, as you are asking me to point you in the right direction.
So the sound of someone gagging is a word?
We can use anything to point to something else. We could use a hand gesture of pointing your finger down your throat to symbolize the behavior of gagging. Does the fact that we can use scribbles to point to a sound, or gestures to point to a behavior is just indicative of how our mind establishes correlations and relationships, especially for communicating those things to others.
Is all symbol-use word-use?
The community of language users using the word 'word' for a shared reason.
Quoting Harry Hindu
How? If I say "duck!" just because I've learnt to say that word when a golf ball is flying towards someone, and you duck just because you've learned to do so when hearing the word "duck!", you're claiming the word still points to 'ducking' even though neither party involved thought of ducking. So the word had a property {pointing to ducking} despite the property not being attached to that word in either brain. I may be mistaken, as I thought you were a physicalist, if not, then I'm sorry for having wasted your time, if so, then where is this property, if not in either brain?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Deflection is not an answer. No one here has said that words never point, so this line of argument is useless, and it still doesn't answer the question. You seem to think there's a fact if the matter about what constitutes a word. I'm asking you where that fact is to be found.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No. "Ugh" is a word.
It's hard to think of a more canonical 'romantic' figure than Wordsworth and his Prelude is, explicitly, a long meditation on how the world and self are inescapably intertwined and co-constructing. He isn't just saying clouds and druids are what's up - check out the poem. Sartre (oof!) described a spurious operation of thought whereby two inseparable things are separated in order that the separater can then go on - tada! - to synthesize them, and slash down the gordian knot he himself tied.
There was (a) the Enlightenment where the balance was at least close to correct, then (b) the split where there was set in opposition (i) a focus on the self vs (ii) a focus on the world... and we should then do (c) a harmonious reconciling of the two? This sounds like a cliffnotes summary of the introduction to 'History of Ideas' by Idea Historian.
Instead of seeing the world as two cosmic forces in great battle, resolved triadically, its makes good pragmatic sense, in my mind, to see that there are personality types within the world as doing a thing where they reframe it all in terms of two forces, and then resolve them triadically. Salesmen often end up talking to everyone by using their first name and identifying their interests, keeping them at arms length outside their commercial needs. Photographers see everything as potential photos. King Midas can't hug his kids, because it's gold gold gold. There're a lot of ways to develop a universal hammer for a universal nail and here is one more. (It's important to understand - I think this is the core - that finding fault with this way of framing things is not simply inhabiting its mirror image any more than playing basketball instead of painting is simply a form of 'not-painting' that requires painting as a backdrop.)
Of course, if you want to frame the world in terms of big triads, there is plenty of material to fuel your quest. Just as there is for any number of things. There's a whole sea of background you can pick from to get the right foreground.
The hope seems to be that if we wire them (the terms) up to the right bits of the world in the first place, we can ignore semantics and rely on syntax.
That's exactly what I spent my three month lockdown sabbatical on - researching a defence of Hegelian history!
Quoting csalisbury
Yada, yada. If you don't like the idea of synergistic resolutions then I'm sure that a lack of them is the view you build into your every encounter with life.
How's that working for you?
But I wasn't impugning your use of time during quarantine (???) though it appears you are impugning mine. To be clear, are you responding to my post by asking if I'm having a rough go of it?
Dichotomies are the limits to continuums. So they are necessary as the division that provides then the mediating spectrum - the actual world of concrete possibilities that lie inbetween.
Its another intricacy of Peircean logic. Thirdness - as regularised order - enfolds also secondness and firstness. It is all aspects of the one whole.
So you need raw potential, you need a symmetry-breaking that reveals there could be a symmetry, you need then the symmetry that is the globally generalised state of habit - the continuum that is revealed by the emergence of asymmetric limits to the possibilities inherent in mere vague potential.
So dichotomies are the mediating step - secondness or the actualisation of asymmetry. And in revealing those complementary limits, a continuity of all the places inbetween is also revealed. Actuality is measureable in terms of its relative distance from the opposing poles of being.
Is everything a matter of mere chance? Is everything a matter or strict necessity? Nature tells us all actual being is relative to those two bounding extremes.
The false dichotomy lies in having to claim one state is primary. The true dichotomy is the dyad that is resolved triadically rather than monistically. It describes the matching limits on actual existence, and so neither limit itself actually "exists". They mark the end points of a continuum where existence lives.
I don't know much about Peircean semiotics, so I can't comment on that.
Yep. That's the trick.
You are against such totalising, even when it is a well proven success. You try to dismiss it as "pragmatic", as if being useful is a dirty word. You will blather on about poetry or feelings or other tribal artefacts of the anti-totalising brigade.
It's funny. Proper metaphysical strength Peircean pragmatism offends the objectivist and the subjectivist alike.
But that is because they are happiest trapped in that Cartesian dialectic. If its dichotomistic inconsistencies were resolved, they would no longer have anything to write poems about, or realist polemics about.
You are down that dark hole. I can hand you the ladder out but I can't make you climb. You have to want to leave the angry gloom that is the anti-totaliser's fate. [ Joking tone adopted ]
Quoting csalisbury
I was responding to your Cliffnotes jest....
I just found it funny that I had paid some special attention to exactly that as a historical dynamic. Hegel is (in)famous for his dialectical claims about the German state representing an end to history to the degree that it had achieved a natural rational order - a state of Enlightened self-governing.
Neoliberalism felt it had achieved the same natural enlightened state of arriving at the end of history - at least according to Fukuyama.
So the question arises what is the true dichotomy that human history keeps trying to resolve in a synergistically valuable fashion? That was my research topic.
Clearly it is in some sense the balance between the forces of labour and capital - to follow the Marxist analysis. Or free competitive action within the cooperative space of a collective market - the neoliberal story perhaps.
My own answer is thermodynamic - the basic view of natural systems. Humanity stumbled on a fossil fuel bonanza that could be harnessed by industrial age machinery. If we learnt to think like machines - form a mathematical level of semiosis with "reality" - then we could burn through this bonanza at an exponential rate.
So the dichotomy is between extropy (energy available for work) and entropy. Or between a source and its sink. Humanity could be gas guzzling and ride that a rocket-fueled economic curve - escape the mundanity of a life wedded to all being farmers living within the limited means of the daily solar flux.
The unresolved part of that economic dichotomy is the balance is all source, no sink. Burning fossil fuel for useful work produces also all its entropic waste products - mainly heat. That is a problem when you need to dump that heat into deep space but it gets trapped by the atmosphere. You have no sink as part of the equation.
Anyway, you see the Hegelian trajectory I have in mind. The economic system of life was always thus. An entropy gradient from source to sink. An "enlightened" world needs to pay for its sinks as well as its sources to have an economy that can last.
Something like neoliberalism becomes objectively wrong to the degree it doesn't balance the equation in that fashion. We can measure how out of line it is as we have a definition of what could count as creating a system with a long-run future.
So no, its nothing about your "rough go's". I just think its funny that the worst things I could be doing in your eyes - well I will be doing them!
That's it. The trick then is to see how both sides of the dichotomy are equally "good" as each is the creator - the definer - of the other.
We don't want to eliminate indeterminism by speaking of determinism. We don't want to eliminate order by speaking of chance. We want to draw attention to these being the limits in terms of what could be. And how both are needed to then have anything actual at all - as the blended outcome.
That is why the maths of reciprocals captures the logic of the dichotomous relation. It makes the business explicitly dialectic or self-referential. It is all about the reciprocity that connects the apparent dyadic divide.
That is why it is a healing influence in our divided world - a semiotic bridge over all the Cartesian divides.
(Well, not. Everyone hates happy endings apparently. :smile: )
Or perhaps... how it always has been, still is, and will continue to be... 'determined'.
I don't think 'pragmatism' is a dirty word, Apo. I've been reading William James all week and deeply enjoy his writing. Nor did I have plans to 'blather on' about 'poetry' or feelings.'. I do like poetry and feelings -uncontroversial I hope - but 'poetry' and 'feelings' seem charged with a special sort of meaning for you. You seem quite literally disgusted with them; I'm not sure how this fits into your holistic solve-the enlightenment-split-frame, but the disdain is palpable. Almost in drag.
You seem to be very confused about what poetry is about, like you think poems are people saying 'nature' in front of a bulldozer that says 'science.' Everything you've said has no relation to anything I've said. But you really seem to think it does. You seem upset with a type. In any case, none of what you've said, characteristically, has anything to do with anything I've said. If I'm not saying 'FREE LOVE IN OPPOSITION TO THE MACHINE" you glitch out and tell me I'm saying that. It would make things easier, granted, but that's not what's happening.
respond to the rest in the morning
William James is a dirty word to the true pragmatist. Peirce was so offended by his disciple that he had to relabel the original as pragmaticism. :rofl:
Quoting csalisbury
Keep inventing the straw man that is your ideal match up here. :yawn:
Quoting csalisbury
Is it worth it? Only if you can focus enough to justify your gripes against a totalising discourse that actually produces results,
What would that shared reason be?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Isaac
Read your own post:
Quoting Isaac
So the word, "duck" points to what you learned, just as how you use a bicycle points to how you learned how to use the bicycle. Once you master riding the bicycle, you no longer think about maintaining your balance, but then you wouldn't be able to not focus on maintaining your balance without having learned how to do that. Causes/effects point to their effects/causes.
Quoting IsaacThen I guess you weren't paying attention to StreelightX's posts. If you agree that words do point then I don't know what we're disagreeing about.
A particular shape
A particular texture to the wood and the leaves individually
A particular color to the wood and leaves individually
You can comprehend all these basic constituents of the tree (shape, color, texture) but you can’t know what “tree” means until people agree to bundle those constituents under the tag “tree”
Or at least these are my intuitions on the matter. I don’t know what words wouldn’t work like this but there probably are some.
Anything.
Quoting Harry Hindu
A somewhat idiosyncratic use of 'points'. I don't think you quite mean by it the same thing as others do. To say 'points to' seems ti me to be about drawing the attention. No attention is being paid to either ducking or riding a bike. If what you want to say is just "words have consequences", then I'd agree, I'm not sure many wouldn't, but that seems a rather trivial thing to assert.
I guess I'm supposed to be a 'subjectivist' who refuses to 'escape the cartesian dialectic' because that would mean I could no longer write poems. Which is...strange. (Btw, I'm hoping you're not saying that poetry in general is an excess generated from being stuck in a 'cartesian dialectic' but it seems like you actually might be? not sure. The only way this makes sense is maybe you're specifically upset with a certain reading of Wallace Stevens? I doubt it, but I'm struggling to figure out a charitable interpretation.)
Anyway, can you unpack this a bit? It seems to me I've been identified as someone who in his vagueness plays a 'crisp' role in a particular way of viewing the world.(Hegel would say 'crisp for-us' where 'us' refers to those with access to a properly contextualizing big picture) While I think you're confused in ascribing this role to me. I believe I have a good idea of what you're trying to talk about and how you understand it; still, I'm wondering if you could describe it a little more, to get a better sense of how you understand our exchange.
'If the knowing subject carries round everywhere the one inert abstract form, taking up in external fashion whatever material comes his way, and dipping it into this element, then this comes about as near to fulfilling what is wanted – viz. a self-origination of the wealth of detail, and a self-determining distinction of shapes and forms – as any chance fancies about the content in question. It is rather a monochrome formalism, which only arrives at distinction in the matter it has to deal with, because this is already prepared and well known.'
And it's about avoiding this, because its a profoundly alienating way of thinking/living/discussing. I have a certain draw to this kind of thing myself and have been only slowly able to disentangle myself from it. To reiterate, the 'success' of such an approach appears to me be a 'success' at avoiding any kind of surprise or any encounter with something outside one's grasp. I think this means it serves the same function that lesser addictions do - it's a repetition which always returns to the same thing, as for a drunk any new city is quickly reduced to the familiar rhythms of the bar. This doesn't have anything to do with privileging the objective over the subjective or vice versa, and it seems very odd to me to think about feelings and poetry as occupying one side of a cartesian split. This makes sense if you think of feelings or poems as merely 'subjective' but, since they are things felt and produced by beings with objective reality, this way of approaching them doesn't make any sense.
Of course, both Fukuyama and Marx were influenced (to dramatically understate it) by Hegel. I suspect that the 'true dichotomy' is a certain way of mentally approaching the world. The mind, a complicated tangle of processes within the world, is adept at finding examples of other processes that exemplify the same forms as certain of its it subprocesses. I don't even doubt that, as far as they go, these big wheeling rings of dichotomies and their resolution are accurate ways of understanding the world. Again, there's plenty of background to render crisply into foreground, if you have the time and wherewithal to do so.
Still, I'm deeply skeptical of the thermodynamics-explain-everything approach, because we humans seem to have a long track record of finding new 'x-explains-everything-approaches' that are believed fervently by bright intellects, then soon supplanted by as-bright intellects. I'm quite sure you understand thermodynamics better than me, just as Fukuyama understood statecraft better than me. I've read Fukuyama, by the way, at least his early fame-winning book and the first volume of his history of state formation. I've also read a good deal of Hegel and his later expositors. You see a pattern with totalizing thinkers where, while they do great when applying a certain methodology to sifting details, they inevitably draw big conclusions that are, if not wrong, then certainly partial truths wildly incommensurate with their initial claims to holistic explanation. You (& those you draw from) may be the one(s) to break this pattern, but I doubt it. My Bayesian priors tell me otherwise.
Note how you then launch into a long defence of the subjectivist life as the unalienated and colourful alternative. Who would not choose that over the alienated, monochrome, etc, objectivist you ask?
And as I said...
Quoting apokrisis
I don’t have to reject one pole to have the other. My way of life is able to incorporate both poles more fully.
For example, the more the world is understood and made predictable, the more surprising and delightful it feels. High contrast between figure and ground equals heightened sensation.
Quoting csalisbury
It grounds explanation. It doesn’t explain away. It starts explanation from a deeper level. It is the fertile soil that grows more.
You don’t get it then. I will repeat. It is by “avoiding surprise” that one is sharpened to discover the greatest surprise.
If your complaint about totalising is that it is rigid and blinkered, then I have explained why that is a false characterisation.
My approach is organic and not mechanical. The integration is what supports the differentiation.
If anything can be shared, how do we know that we're sharing the same thing or not?
Quoting Isaac
What did you intend when you use the word, "duck"? Using something requires intent.
In a sordid hour, I went and got drinks with a subjectivist and, as you'd expect from a subjectivist, he wanted to talk about literature. After saying 'fuck science' and showing me his grateful dead tattoo, he told me the story of Henry James' Beast in the Jungle. The protagonist, the subjectivist told me, spent his whole life waiting for his apotheosis - for the 'beast' to pop out in a single epic moment. The beast does pop up, toward the end, when the protagonist realizes that in focusing all his energy on this apotheosis, organzing his life around this moment, he's become absent to his actual life. This recognition is the beast, of course, what can you expect? 'Away with you, subjectivist' I yelled, 'this oatmeal-mush displays only your watery will!'
In all seriousness, though, I've met you in every way, while you've failed to meet me. If you don't respect me enough to engage with what I actually say, and want to reduce me to a type, that's your prerogative. I believe our exchange today speaks for itself, and I am satisfied with my half of it, though I would have preferred the surprise of an actual dialogue.
Sure. But here you need to show how that applies to what I actually do, not some mechanical caricature of that.
Quoting csalisbury
You really believe your own bullshit don't you. You haven't produced a coherent argument as yet. But you want to make that problem mine.
Christ, apo, if one were to read just your half of the exchange, they'd think I only said things like 'science can't explain feelings.' I half-think you do think that's all I've said.
And yet this is the kind of confused nonsense you feel is some kind of sharp reply.
Quoting csalisbury
How could this caricature apply to a totalising that is all about living life as it happens and building an ever heightened state of sensitivity and awareness as a result?
I never found life dull. But now I'm old it is ridiculous how many different things I find fascinating.
If your mind is confused, then confusion is all it can discover in life. Beating about the bush and never coming to a point becomes the anti-totalising habit.
Again, if you can make a sharp case against my "way of life", go ahead. In what way is it "wrong"?
You seem angry enough about it. Always bitching. But isn't that all about you in the end?
I thought my argument was pretty simple and very direct : Your approach appears to be alienating, and so is worth avoiding (or disentangling oneself from). I base that on empirical evidence. You tend to enter a thread, perform the same formal operation on whatever's being discussed, ignore people's protests that you're misunderstanding what they're saying, then treat them as whatever thought-functions are most crisply convenient. I observe that you seem decidedly insensitive and unaware, especially when you're at your most totalizing.
You seem to think that any objection to what you're doing has to define itself in terms of what you're doing. For example you say this 'Note how you then launch into a long defence of the subjectivist life as the unalienated and colourful alternative. Who would not choose that over the alienated, monochrome, etc, objectivist you ask?' in near-hallucinatory response, describing something that did not happen. Seriously! Read back my posts and your response - I quite literally never did this. Still, you believed, it appears very confidentally, that I did. This does not seem like heightened sensitivity and awareness..
Now, listen, I'm not saying my shit doesn't stink. I'm also very often alienating, repetitive, hijacking, angry (as you say), insensitive and so on. I'm sure a lot of people here think I'm a pain or a bore. I'm pretty sure that a big part of poking at you was to try to get a well-landed poke back at me, but unfortunately you keep poking the subjectivist.
Yep. Something that might be comprehensible as philosophy. So not a poem.
Quoting csalisbury
So your argument is that it IS alienating? Don't you have to show that? It could be instead enlightening - the construction of the distance that creates the very thing of a self (in relation to "a world").
You are dishing up a bunch of your prejudices in emotionally charged language. You hope the dog whistling obviates the need to provide an actual argument.
Quoting csalisbury
Poor you.
Quoting csalisbury
Jesus. This level of psychodrama just ain't necessary. Stick to discussing actual ideas and stop trying to decide if I'm your best friend or worst enemy.
It's like a game of tennis. On the court, you do everything within the rules to win. Afterwards you shake hands. Leave it at that.
This, and the associated posts, have been a pleasure to read. Would that I had your forbearance.
An episode of the Philosopher's Zone addressed a related issue neatly: What are we doing when we argue?
Quoting apokrisis
...that's a description of how it ought not be.
So I find myself wanting to reply to
But he hasn't said anything that relates to the podcast or the discussion, and hence there's not really anything worth a reply.
And yet, here is that reply.
It's curiously paradoxical.
I would win if Apo presented an argument that had me re-thinking my position. Instead, an abrasive conversation ensues, and no progress occurs.
Quoting csalisbury
Yes!
Matter: dirty, dank and brown.
And logic: what a joke!
O waterfalls and rainbows bright!
Now that’s our only hope.
Speak softly now of mother’s tears
And laundry hung to dry
Of feelings gentle as the rain
The angels learn to cry.
There’s nothing that is good but poems
All semiotics lie
What matters is to hug your friends
And see through Pierce’s lie.
The saying falls away, leaving the showing.
But then there is the doing. That's the point.
Of course we already have an understanding of what the words mean. (I wrote that sentence without consulting a dictionary.) It is only when we want to convey that understanding to others that we have to use the only tools of thought transfer that we have: words. It is imperfect an inaccurate since it is always difficult to find the right words for our thoughts. The right understanding of word is the one we have without using words (provided that understanding is shared by other language users)
...and hence vulnerability. Not the natural habitat of the cis hetro male. There's an oddly evolutionary approach in The enduring enigma of reason.
Insofar as this presupposes that there is a "right understanding of (a) word", I think it muddled. After all, what sort of thing could that "right understanding" be? Why preference the understanding of, say, @apokrisis at a certain time in a certain utterance as the right understanding?
Rather it seems that there is no right understanding, just the obvious, may, changing, alternate understandings.
I think we both have a pretty good understanding of what the word “chair” means. We rarely confuse the object it refers to with something else, and if someone asked me to get them a chair, I’m quite confident I could handle the mission. A chair is simply that thing. We know it.
But then try to define a chair, and even this very simple concept poses difficulties. How tall must the back be for it to be a chair and not a stool? If the legs are so high that you can’t climb up on it, is it still a chair? What if the seat is broken? Dictionary.com defines chair as:
“a seat, especially for one person, usually having four legs for support and a rest for the back and often having rests for the arms.”
but that doesn’t sound quite accurate. Any seat is not a chair and we know it doesn’t need four legs and armrests. Still, I’m quite sure the dictionary authors have an understanding of the word that is as good as ours.
We have the right understanding of many words, and that understanding doesn’t come from the definition. The dictionary definition is only needed when we don’t have an understanding or suspect our understanding is not in conformity with the generally accepted meaning, but when we have gained a sense of its meaning, that understanding becomes a notion that goes beyond the written definition.
This is a revelation.
I'll contend that any explicit definition will be inaccurate.
Definitions are just to see if your on the same page regarding a word. Many times it's a philosophical sleight of hand. Plato and Socrates made a whole career of bullshitting by sophistic and pedantic definitions.
This is not to be sniffed at. Very important thing sometimes in philosophy.
This is the sort of thing one concludes when one does not first look.
I can describe feelings without looking at them.
One is tempted to conclude some general theory as to the function of language - that all words are descriptions, for example - and then to look for examples. That's somewhat arse-about.
Words are not all descriptions. Indeed, very few, if any, are descriptions. Look around.
Wittegenstein = a few good ideas then obscurantism sophistry and pedantry.
Ah, I see. It's just that you have added nothing new. All I could do with you is make a few bad jokes.
But if you like: what is it that you think the word "the" describes?
What about "it's"?
"an"?
"of"?
and so on.
This is easy. Common sense meets the neurosis of wittgenstein.
(Let's wager the multiple examples banno will throw at me now. Platos dialectical sophistry at work,the banality and predictability of the academic and wanting to over define eveything.)
It describes the absence of something.
You think description is merely looking still???!
Good, good. Now, what does "Asif" describe?
Dependent on context once again.
Oh, no. I think you have not been looking.
What does "absence" describe?
Hm. Shouldn't you say it describes your name?
But that would be odd... since it is your name.
If I said "'Asif' contains four letters, that would be a description.
Abscence describes lack of prescence.
You are aware of the pattern yet?
Hm. Does "Asif" describe your name, as you claimed; or is it your name?
Asif the name is a description of the sound used to identify me given a certain context.
And you are just asking for descriptions of descriptions.
I say look you say I cant see. That's on you.
Asif is a description of the sound and a synonym is that ot is My name. Just different descriptions of the same thing.
Going back to this... Your claim is that all words are descriptions. But here I'm puzzled - is "the" a description, or just part of a description?
The name is a description of the sound?
Further, it's not used to describe you, it's used to identify you.
But that can't be right, if "Asif" is a description.
Help me out here.
Words can have different degrees of description depending on context.
Your feigned socratic ignorance is textbook!
It is a description and it is used to identify you? So it is a description and a use? Is the meanign of "Asif" given by what it describes, or by how it is used?
I'm still puzzled as to what it means to say "Asif" is a description. Descriptions generally tell us something about thing they described; SO "Asif has red hair" is a description that tells me something about Asif. But Asif, the name, doesn't seem to tell me anything about you.
Nor is it clear how you might deal with modality without the convenience of rigid designators. What woudl be your response to, say, Kripke? You can only imagine what he would make of this:
Quoting Asif
Quoting Asif
SO, what is it that they have besides description? If, say, Asif is only a little bit of description, what is the remainder?
Quoting Asif
Thank you. But I wonder that you think a Socratic ignorance might not be feigned? Wouldn't that just be plane ignorance?
Names and words Always carry a description,those who are unaware of this may look at how names identify and describe things to the exclusion of other things and carry implications,like being human,etc. Naming is describing.
A rigid designator? You mean a rigid description!
Kripke another confused soul lacking common sense.
I studied your 60 page plus thread of naming and necessity where Janus handed you your ass.
And I'm aware of the worship of witty and the banality of language is use language doesnt refer nonsense!!!!!!!!!
I'm Also aware of the way you sneakily insert chimeric contrasts and dichotomies like use and description!
Sorry,your philosophy your " language game" is procrustean. And your "use" is merely trying to bolster a beloved pet theory with has woeful descriptive accuracy.
New theory required mate.
Pwned.
A man too cowardly to confront the demolition of his twin idols.
The ironic thing is the naming and necessity thread is the best in the history of TPF.
From that thread,in spite of that thread the absolute folly of kripke witty and devotees was shown.
Platos cratylus shows far more understanding of language but alas Plato also used truth for his own folly.
You show ONE exception to description and I will show you wittys pink unicorn tesla space car.