Wittgenstein's Chair
According to a video on the Socratic Method by Daniel Bonevac, early philosophy was mainly concerned with understanding the meaning of words and concepts. As Socrates' attempts to grasp what justice, courage, etc. are will attest to.
In this short clip, Daniel Bonevac talks about the word "chair" and in due course reveals that both we don't have a good definition of "chair" and, paradoxically, that we all "know" what a chair means and can use the word "chair" fairly well.
What I have issue with is how Daniel Bonevac, on the one hand endorses philosophical rigor in definitions and on the other hand gives credence to, what to me looks like, outright misuse/abuse of words.
Let me explain...
In line with Bonevac's belief that definitions have to be well-crafted in the sense that the rules of formulating a good definition have to be adhered to, I too think the word "chair" needs to be defined to meet philosophical standards.
Daniel Bonevac thinks that all the instances of people applying the word "chair" are valid and accurate. Thus his conclusion, since no essence is discernible from usage, that "chair" is undefinable.
However, at this juncture, I feel the necessity to bring into the discussion the notion of misuse, germane to the issue of definitions as occasions when a word like "chair" is inappropriately applied to objects. If we follow Daniel Bonevac's logic, and I'm sure he's not alone in this, there's no such thing as misuse of words, there is never an error in applying words to objects - every single time a word is used, it's always used correctly. Preposterous!?
Many, if not all, people have misused words. Misuse of words, when it's egregious, stands out like a sore thumb e.g. when I use "chair" to refer to a elephant. However, when the misuse depends on a subtle difference, people let it slide as is the case when you refer to even 3-legged furniture as "chair", assuming "chair" is defined as 4-legged. These small, almost imperceptible, slip-ups begin to multiply in all possible ways until a language accumulates a vast number of words that share the same fate as the word "chair" in that no essence can be extracted from usage.
Continuing along the same trajectory, we begin to realize that, if we factor in the possibility of words being misused then, we shouldn't consider every application of a word as correct and that means the apparent absence of an essence to some words like "chair" is an illusion - an essence does exist, it's just that words have been so thoroughly misused that that essence is lost in the multiude of ways words like "chair" have been wrongly applied.
I'm reminded of Ludwig Wittgenstein's language games, a concept which he uses to say the very same thing as Daniel Bonevac - some or all words are missing essences. However, utilizing the notion of misuse of words we see that that's not the case at all - words do have essences. It's just that small errors in word usage have multiplied over time with the net effect of obscuring these essences.
Comments (146)
1. You don't understand Wittgenstein, like, at all.
2. "In my view, words are just ..." and then some completely different theory that has nothing to do with what you said or with what Bonevac said or with what Wittgenstein said.
3. Go ahead then, define "chair" for us. (Probably, but not necessarily, a variant of 1.)
4. And where do words get these essences?
5. Well, Bonevac supports Trump, whadja expect?
6. Give us an example of a word being misused. (Related to 3; less likely to be related to 1 but likely based on at least some minimal knowledge of linguistics.)
7. What makes the use of a word a misuse? (Asked with the expectation that you won't be able to define it; this will in itself prove that you're wrong; could be 1 or, again, just some minimal acquaintance with linguistics.)
8. Patient explanations of some basic linguistics, which you in turn will argue against.
9. Patient explanations of some basic Wittgenstein, which you in turn will argue against.
I'm just going to point out two things:
1. Bonevac is a teacher. This video (which I haven't watched) was probably made with his own students in mind, if not expressly for them. He bothered to make this video to explain something he has found his students (a) mostly don't know, (b) have trouble understanding, (c) are sometimes resistant to.
In other words, you are the target audience for this video, but instead of taking in the material Bonevac offers you at no charge and reflecting on it, perhaps learning a little more about how language works, you are digging in and explaining your "position". Well, he knows your position. It's why he made the video. (Again, assuming, since I didn't watch it.)
So think about that: teacher explains "I'll bet a lot you are unaware that A, and when I tell you A, you'll find it hard to accept at first (as most of my past students have), or even understand" and then you declare for ~A almost immediately.
I'm thinking if you asked the internet whether words really have definitions, someone might answer by posting this exact video. Do you see how odd that is?
2. On a related note, is it really your position that Daniel Bonevac has never heard of the idea that a word can be misused? Your presentation suggests that you figured out he's wrong because you know that words can be misused -- he must not know that, or he would have realized he's wrong.
You could actually take this as a kind of argument: if just knowing that a word could be misused would prevent Bonevac from being so obviously wrong, and since presumably like everyone he does know this, maybe he's not obviously wrong, and whatever point he's making is not refuted just by knowing that a word can be misused; maybe I should think about this some more.
This is something like the principle of charity. (You can google that.)
Bonus point:
3. I'm not trying to discourage you from saying what you really think, or suggesting you pretend to accept things you don't. There's nothing wrong with expecting something to make sense to you before you accept it. Ask for reasons. Ask for arguments and evidence.
But whatever you happen to think about something at any given moment isn't by definition (see what I did there?) a position the rest of the world is required to accept or refute. It's just a starting point. The goal is greater understanding, not being right or wrong immediately. It might seem hard to square this kind of humility with standards that aspire to objectivity, but it can be done.
Possible, very possible. Perhaps you can help me. What is a language game, a family resemblance, form of life, etc.?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I wouldn't, at this moment, touch that even with a 10-foot pole. However, everything has a beginning and so so do words. If one has the time and the resources and spend them researching the origin of words, that first instance a word was used is where the essence of that word will be found. The family resemblance between things referred to by that word has its roots there - the entire family tree of that word branches out from thereon.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Is it that hard? If I use the word "chair" to refer to an elephant? Isn't that misuse, a word applied to the wrong object? :chin:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Good question. He does make a mention of the possibility that words could be, well, misused but that doesn't square with his belief that the word "chair" is undefinable.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I hope you do.
"I" there isn't me.
I see. I also see you haven't answered any of my questions on Wittgenstein's philosphy. Perhaps you were too busy. Let me ask you again. What does Wittgenstein mean by language game, family resemblance, and form of life?
Misusing words i.e. applying them to objects that don't satisfy definitions and not applying them to objects that do fuflill definitions results in confusion and confusion, I believe, is the bane of all philosophers.
Thank you for this post. It gave me real joy to read it.
Perhaps... an object that does not function in a utilitarian sense is simply not said object. Yet. A tiny replica 1-inch chair say for a model home is still a chair. It can't be used as one, yet we aesthetically see it is and so would call it a chair. Interesting thread, OP. At least, the questions I've been able to gather from it.
As it stands, the word "chair" is applied to various objects but what's missing is a unifying essence in these objects and that's bound to lead to confusion, no?
Quoting Pinprick
Too broad, a stool satisfies your definition.
You read some Plato, skipped ahead to Aquinas, and then just stopped, didn't you?
I'll take a shot at this in terms you might accept.
You are too focused on the instance of "chair" when you are really talking about the category of "language". Your analysis fails to appreciate that language has a purpose. It was created by sapient animals to communicate and allow for some level of cooperation. It is not absolute, and is an entirely artificial agreement reality. Therefore "chair" does not exist in any real way. Only when we attempt to communicate something to another person do we use the tool of language to indicate a thing that we think that other person will most likely recognize as a "chair". Therefore, there is no misuse, only miscommunication. In other words, every time a word is used, it is neither correct nor incorrect, it is merely effective or ineffective.
You may attempt to go down the rabbit hole of how we form these abstractions in our minds and whether they correlate to something "real", but that's all superfluous to the thing you seem to have a problem with here.
Side note: you should probably leave Wittgenstein out of this. Especially if you're going to try to refute him with "chair".
Well we're being a bit one-dimensional at this point. You know what a chair is.
"A piece of furniture typically designed for seating a single individual usually accompanied by a backrest and/or armrests."
But it begs the question. Does an object get it's properties from the creator of the object or those who observe it? You could sit atop a parking meter if you'd like. That doesn't make it a chair. Does it? Basically, the broad definition of "something you sit on" doesn't quite hold up. Think the above definition is the most widely accepted one.
A chair without backrests or armrests is just a stool is it not? Which is a type of chair... yes?
A chair that seats two or three qualifies either as a bench or loveseat or full-blown sofa if wide enough, and depending on cushioning/upholstery. Right?
The goat has an amplitude of red thoughts. What's wrong with the preceding sentence?
There's the problem and you recgonize it but only, it seems, subconsciously."Widely accepted" meaning misses the mark in philosophy or so I hear. This kind of freedom in word usage inevitably plonks everyone outside the gates of confusion, no?
Nothing. Why?
:rofl: So goats have amplitudes and thoughts are red?
Perhaps a more familiar example will clarify it for you: colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
No. Again, this is the fact-value dichotomy at work. "Widely accepted" is exactly the standard to apply in ordinary language. It is precisely what language is for.
In these sentences, you shift your meaning from language use in general to language as used by those attempting to "do" philosophy. You a making a fallacious substitution there.
To engage in philosophy, participants must take extra care to define terms for the purposes of the particular discussion they are having. Once they've agreed upon these definitions, they can proceed because the targets are not moving as much. This is why so many conversations on a board like this just end up in arguments about the meaning of words.
Words have no meaning except what we give them. That meaning can change over time, intentionally or organically. Philosophy requires that meanings be fixed and agreed upon so discussion can be more precise. None of this approaches the question of "wrongness" in words, which is an appeal to an absolute that does not exist.
And I'm not going to. And anyone who does would be wasting their time.
There is nothing I could say about Wittgenstein or any other philosopher or any philosophical theory, and nothing anyone else could say about any of those things, that could or should carry more weight than the facts that words in natural languages mostly don't have clear definitions but can be used correctly or incorrectly.
This you are prepared to deny, but you might change your mind based on, of all things, my presentation of Wittgenstein?
What's wrong with these words?
"âTwas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
âBeware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!â
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he soughtâ
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
âAnd hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!â
He chortled in his joy.
âTwas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."
As we say in Georgia, "That dog won't hunt."
The essence is itâs function, or at least it could be, but yes, the lack of an essence could lead to confusion, or relativity; such is the case with âbeautyâ and other relative terms.
Quoting TheMadFool
Couldnât a stool be considered a type of chair?
Yes, but only, as you agree, in "ordinary" language but language is a bona fide philosophical subject and we bring the tools of philsophy to bear on "ordinary" language we realize how clumsily people have been using this extraordinary tool we possess.
Quoting Pro Hominem
Well, as I said, people haven't been using language well and that's what philosophers like Wittgenstein have discovered but for some unknown reason they've drawn the incorrect conclusion that words lack essences.
Quoting Pro Hominem
Are you saying we can use any word at any time, at any place, in any context, without raising an eyebrow or two? In effect you're claiming there is no wrong usage of words. Can I call you a chimpanzee then?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
If you haven't noticed, you still haven't answered a few simple questions on Wittgenstein.
You know that I've noticed. I flat out refused.
What do you make of that refusal and the reasons I've given for it?
I don't think he actually says this, and this is the conclusion to his logic only if you assume that to misuse a word is to fail to satisfy an essential definition. It seems to me rather that to misuse a word is to use it in some way unconventionally. If you want to apply Wittgenstein in the "chair" case then this could mean something like: not used according to the family resemblances that we can see in the word's conventional uses.
You are living proof of such clumsiness (laziness?). Now you're conflating "degree of accuracy needed" with "wrongness".
Different applications of any tool will have different tolerances. To quote Adam Savage, "every tool's a hammer."
If one is describing shapes they "see" in cloud formations, the margin for error is enormous. If one is drawing up blueprints to produce precision parts for scientific instruments, the tolerance is very small. It all comes back to purpose. Different applications require different levels of precision.
I will reiterate that nowhere in any of this is there a need for this notion of absolute meaning ("essence") you want words to have. They just don't, and beyond that, they shouldn't.
Not really. It can be recognisable yet undefinable. That is to say: I know a chair when I see one; so if you show me an elephant and tell me it's a chair, I can call that a misuse of the term and still not be able to define a chair perfectly.
He talks about this at around 20:20. Did you notice? His response is to ask how you know that "chair" is being misused. If you can say all that you know, you ought be able to say when you know the word has been misused. But to know when it has been misused is just to know it's definition.
So rephrasing in terms of misuse doesn't seem to help.
Srap points out, with excruciating politeness, that you have misunderstood some of what was said in the video. I wonder, since you ask about Wittgenstein's ideas, have you say and examined the first fifty pages of Philosophical Investigations yourself? It might be of use.
Did I? I didn't mean to. I had watched exactly none of the video last time I posted in this thread.
I did eventually watch the first several minutes, but I flinched every time he said "educating our children to be virtuous" and gave up.
Quoting jamalrob
Quoting Olivier5
As I mentioned in my OP, the subtler the difference between the actual definition of "chair" and an object, the more likely it is that people will turn the other way when "chair" is applied to that object. This leniency reaches its limit, i.e. people will cry bloody murder, when an object and the definition of "chair" are poles apart as when I refer to an elephant with the word "chair".
Now, if one likes, a distinction can be made between blatant misuse and subtle misuse. Using the word "chair" for an elephant counts as a blatant misuse and using the word "chair" for a stool is a subtle misuse.
How does this help us?
Well, if we do this, it may seem that subtle misuse can be reclassified under the rubric of proper usage, a self-explanatory term. In fact, this is the norm and the accumulated excursions from the true definition of "chair" has caused "chair" to have an extension that consists of such a variety of objects that a common unifying motif can't be identified. Thus the situation you describe as "recognizable yet undefinable". Looking at it this way may save Wittgenstein's language game concept as a real philosophical problem.
However, another philosophical puzzle - the sorites or heap paradox - delivers a fatal blow to Wittgenstein's theory of language games. We began by accepting subtle "misuse" as proper usage of words because the differences between a given object and the definition of "chair" is small, so small that only an obsessive-compulsive would bother. To take this general attitude of ignoring minor differences between an object and the definition of "chair" to its logical conclusion would mean then that a list of such objects, each object differing only in a small degree from the successive object, would include elephant in the extension of the word "chair".
It seems, therefore, that we can't ignore subtle misuse of words on account of the fact that to do so would, as the heap/sorites paradox demonstrates, cause every word, including the word "chair", to have an extension that includes, quite literally, everything. After all for every object, there's always another object that the first object differs from in only a minor way.
At the end of the day then, minor misuse IS misuse and unless you want a world in which every word has the same extension - the entire universe itself (sorites/heap paradox) - you must consider all instances of applying words to objects that involve ignoring both major and, most importantly, minor differences as incorrect, inappropriate, wrong, and unacceptable.
Wittgenstein's idea of language games depends on minor misuse of words being considered proper usage and since we've demonstrated that that leads to, as per the sorites/heap paradox, a situation where all words will have the exact same extension viz. the entire universe itself, something unacceptable, it follows that minor misuse can't be considered proper usage and ergo, Wittgenstein's language game concept has no leg to stand on, is not true.
Quoting Pro Hominem
Perhaps you'll explain to me what you mean by "degree of accuracy" and "wrongness". On second thought don't bother because it really doesn't matter - when an object doesn't satisfy the definition of a word, it's wrong to use that word for that object.
Quoting Banno
Yes, to know a word is being misused is to know it's definition. However, it isn't necessary for us to know the correct definition of, say, the word "chair" to realize that words are being misused. Imagine an array of clocks before you, all showing different times. What conclusion can you draw? You don't need to know the correct time to realize that some or all of the clocks are showing the wrong time. Right?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Please read what I've said above.
:grin:
Wrong.
:smile: But why?
Definitions are made up, post hoc. You don't need them to know how a word is being used, or misused.
Wittgenstein was dull. His ideas are always half-cooked. You should study actual linguists instead, like Saussure. He would help you understand that concepts are connected with one another through contrast, differences, nuances, such as the nuance between stool and chair, and that when we define concepts, we often must demarcate them from nearby concepts. Â
« In language, there are only differences. »
We can easily point to the difference between a stool and a chair: a stool is higher, meant for the sitterâs eyes to be more or less at the same high than someone standing. In other words, a stool is for sitting while still being able to talk to a person standing next to you, without having her towering over you. A chair is lower because it is meant (generally) to sit comfortably at a table.
So I can easily demarcate chair from stool, and explain the demarcation to eg a child. Thatâs a sort of negative definition: « a chair is NOT a stool ». Thatâs how I can recognise a chair when I see one: i can understand the fence of the concept, its limits. What is much harder if not impossible, is to define positively the essence of a chair.
I still think there is such a thing as the essence of a concept, in our mind, but these essences remain forever elusive, intuitive, almost impossible to express precisely. There are literally beyond words, because (IMO) they are the basis for words.
:party:
But then it gets complicated... all and only chairs, or some more than others? We all call, or some more than others?
Bongo's chair.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that. However, his language game concept doesn't hold water because it depends on every use of a word being correct. This would result, in no time, in each and every word meaning, quite literally, everything as minor excursions from the true definition are cumulative - more and more objects will fall into the domain of every single world until there's nothing left and every word would mean every other word. It's the proverbial slippery slope - if you ignore minor differences then, eventually, you'll have to overlook major differences.
Quoting Olivier5
I gave it some thought - this ability of ours to identify objects that are NOT what a word means. For instance, we know, for certain, that a snake is NOT a chair and that's because, the chaotic haphazardness of the attributes of a chair notwithstanding, nowhere is the attribute living to be found. However, if we take into account the fact that minor errors are, well, tolerated, in natural language, it's almost certain that a time will come when a snake can be referred to with the word "chair". The boundaries which seem clear-cut will first become fuzzy and then eventually melt away until every single word will have the same extension as every other word. Just saying...
Why do you think this?
Well, take the classic example Wittgenstein uses, the word "game". It, according to him, applies to many objects but, if we try to find a common thread that runs through all these objects, you'll find none hence, the idea of family resemblance. This situation - lack of a unifying motif for the word "game" arises because the word "game" has been misused, inappropriately applied for the simple reason that language users are, unlike philosophers, flexible and will accept less-than-perfect fits between objects and words. Basically, words are used in a clumsy fashion by most people.
Coming to Wittgenstein's theory, it depends on all instances of word usage being proper usage, not incorrect in any way at all. He seems to think there's nothing wrong with the current extension of the word "game" and considers the absence of a common motif as a deep philosophical issue/problem concerning meaning, essentially attempting to declare null and void many important philosphical matters. "There is no essence in morality, to seek to understand it is folly for there's nothing to understand" is something I expect Wittgenstein to say. However, it seems to have escaped his notice that there words do possess essences, it's just obscured by how words have been misused. It's like a person who's very particular, highly meticulous in his habits, who leaves his neat and tidy room with his favorite pen placed exactly where he prefers it to be kept and then in his absence a gang of tipsy people with not a care in the world enters the room and transforms the room into a chaotic mess - the favorite pen (the true definition) is lost in the debris but that doesn't mean it didn't exist.
Well, that's... incredible.
:smile: Your sarcasm is not lost on me. Just tell me where I made a mistake.
This will never happen, because "in language there are only differences". Concepts don't mean anything in and by themselves. Instead, they draw their meaning from their relationship with other concepts. To quote Saussure more extensively:
"Within a given language, all words that express neighbouring ideas are mutually limiting one another: synonyms such as âto dreadâ, âto fearâ and âto be afraidâ draw their own value from their opposition; if âdreadâ did not exist, all its content would go to its competitors."
-- Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de Linguistique Generale
https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Cours_de_linguistique_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale/Deuxi%C3%A8me_partie
Similarly in a system of weights and measures, each unit is defined by its relationship with other units rather than as something in and by itself (e.g. a centimetre is one hundredth of a metre). Or in economy, a currency's value is defined in relation to other currencies, or in relation to its purchasing power for goods such as food. "One dollar" has no value in and by itself, it has only an exchange value.
Again, you assert that a word's "definition" is some absolute monolithic quality that actually exists in some concrete or at least enduring way and can be "known". Definitions are not absolute, not present in "reality", and not enduring. They are flexible agreements made by groups of people in particular times and places, and they are fully malleable depending upon their context.
Quoting TheMadFool
Wrong. This example simply proves my point. Let's say there are five clocks all showing different times. You say the only conclusion is that some or all are showing the "wrong" time. What if one clock is labeled "Tokyo", one "Los Angeles", one "New York", one "London", and one "Moscow"? Context is everything.
That's kinda brilliant.
What if the clocks are all labeled "Here"?
What if they're labeled as you say but their times are only a few minutes apart?
What if speaking a natural language isn't like looking at a shelf full of clocks?
Uh, then my point still holds true? Conclusions are still only "true" or "false" in a contextual sense.
Don't browbeat me with this shoddy example - I didn't come up with it. :razz: I was just trying to milk it for the obvious truth. The OP suggests that words can be "wrong" if they don't correlate to some Platonic ideal (presumably listed in God's own dictionary). This way of describing language does not reflect history, usage, experience, or even reason.
Language is a tool created to allow organisms that can use it to communicate with each other. We have developed it even beyond that into a tool for a single organism to "express themselves", without need for a recipient. Thus, words and meanings are highly personal and within groups, very flexible. The larger the group, the more there is a need for a standard of definition to support successful communication. Still, this definition is simply that which the group agrees upon through commonality of use. It is not an absolute to be appealed to. One can easily say, "when I say X, I mean the following...," and then everyone can still converse even if this definition of X is entirely novel. Thus, one meaning of a word can be "true" for the duration of a single conversation, and "false" in every other instance.
Trying to say that a given word X must mean "X" at all times is to entirely ignore the way language developed and is used. In addition it robs language of much of its power, which is derived from its very flexibility to be adapted to different circumstances.
I was trying to discourage you from doing that.
You have to know what game you're playing to make a move or take a turn. Is everyone in this thread playing the same game? Is anyone?
My kids have seen me play chess, and when little would sometimes want to "play chess like dad" by moving pieces around on the board. They're playing something, but it's not chess. They don't know how to play chess. Even when I played this game with them, my ability to play chess didn't turn what I was doing into playing chess. We were still only playing whatever that game was.
Yes, but if you use the opportunity to teach them the rules, then one day you may be able to play chess together.
If someone is struggling with coherency or consistency, you can sink to their level, talk above them, or meet them halfway. In my experience, meeting halfway offers the best chance to promote better thinking and communication in the long run.
I think you already believe what I'm saying, so this isn't intended to be instructive (to you). I said in another thread that engaging theMadFool is just shadow boxing - practicing without a real opponent. I don't see this thread as a true debate on anything - the answer is pretty clear if your thinking is similarly clear - it's just a kind of exercise.
Here's a hard question: to learn how to play tic-tac-toe, do you have to know that you don't know how to play tic-tac-toe?
Don't feel like you have to answer immediately. I'm not waiting to find out the answer so I can decide what stock to buy today before close.
It is shocking how relevant this is to the thread, and that's my excuse for some pretty odd posts.
You do.
Probably. It is possible there are things so simple that one can learn them without needing to be aware that one doesn't know them. Pretty sure this must be true for babies, for example.
To bring this full circle, I have a friend who likes to use this analogy (it's not his) to describe talking to devoutly religious people or Trump voters: "It's like playing chess with a pigeon - they knock over all the pieces, shit all over the board, then strut around like they've won."
I guess the ultimate question is whether you are talking to a pigeon or a person. :smile:
If you're willing to elaborate I'm genuinely interested.
Babies and pigeons both lack language, so you're definitely in the neighborhood I was thinking about.
Good! I hadn't even been thinking about incentive.
Any other thoughts?
Edit: other than the pure logical contradiction, or semiotic maybe: « to learn » means « to learn something new ». Like if you already know that 2+2=4, itâs impossible for you to learn it again, unless you forgot it.
You said you have kids. Have you ever tried to teach one of them something and they say "I already know this!" If they think they know it, teaching them is almost impossible. If they admit they don't know (even if only to themselves), then instruction becomes possible.
Oh but you don't have to make them admit it. You can even play along.
There's a certain kind of inartful info-dump that occurs in science fiction which I (and I think others, but who knows) call the "As you know, Bob, ..." I can be more subtle than that.
("Inartful info-dump" is not redundant; vide almost anything by Neal Stephenson.)
(Pointless aside: this thread begins with a video about the Socratic Method, whose namesake seems to have held that learning, even of things like 2 + 2 = 4, is precisely being reminded of something you already know.)
Okay so first time in. We're not developmental psychologists here -- well, I'm not -- but what role do we think is played, in learning that 2 + 2 = 4, by not knowing that, and by knowing that you don't know that. You mentioned motivation, and that makes sense.
I'm not now going to spring "the answer" on everyone -- I don't have one -- but one of the things I was thinking about is the way you can teach someone something without telling them what you're teaching them, which might always or sometimes (not obvious to me) involve not telling them you're teaching them something at all.
For small children and animals, the line between "teaching" and "training" gets blurry. Should we reserve the word "teaching" for when someone can know they're being taught? Does that mean in every instance when they're being taught, they must know that?
You can clearly teach someone how to add without ever telling them it's called "addition", and you could afterward tell them that now they know how to add. Where did we rely on them knowing that they don't know how to add? In one sense, everywhere: they don't know what to do next. In another sense, nowhere: they don't even know there is a procedure that they don't know how to follow.
You can also learn something new, which you didnât know even existed before (so you were not aware that you didnât know it), by reading the news in the morning. E.g. a new species of mollusc was discovered in someoneâs backyard in New Jersey. Itâs news to you, so you were not aware of it, nor even of your lack of awareness of it, until you read it. Still, you were objectively unaware of it and at that moment when you chose to read the article, you reckoned that this was something you were unaware of. Otherwise you wouldnât have read it. Or if you had, you would not have learnt much from it (eg a few added details).
âââââââ-
Anyway... I thought the best part of the OP lecture was its practical implication, that was left unsaid: it is very easy to derail or endlessly stall a philosophical discussion by going into âsemanticsâ. « Define freedom » can be used to kill any discussion about freedom. Not to say that we should never try to define the meaning of the words we use, but we should be aware that itâs impossible to do so perfectly. A good definition is always a good approximation of some unsayable, ineffable ghost of an idea that we call a concept.
Thatâs the best one can do: approach them. Human concepts are fuzy, relative, flexible, fluid. They are not easy to pin down. And as Pro Hominem said, thatâs the beauty of them. So we shouldnât indulge in semantics too much.
Popperâs approach, spelled out in the preface to the Open Society, is: Just try and get to the level of precision in language that you need in order to solve or at least describe the problem you are talking about. Itâs all a matter of what works, of whatâs good enough. Because your definitions are never going to be perfect.
But I'm having a hard time working out what you think. It seems you think that for each word there is an essence that gives the meaning of a word, but that one does not need to know the essence in order to use the word, nor to know that he word has been misused; So I'm wondering what sort of thing this essence is, and what it does.
The essence of "Chair" might be something that is a piece of furniture and has a back and is for sitting on and has four legs. Your notion seems to be that this is decided by the first use, and that any alterations thereto are misuses. So if someone builds a piece of furniture for sitting on with a back and three legs, they are not entitled to call it a chair because it does not match the essence of chair.
But we do call such things chairs, and more besides. Further, despite these being on your account misuses of the word chair, they can be quite successful. Indeed it seems overwhelmingly probable that the number of misuses of the word "chair" far exceeds the number of correct uses.
So pointing out that it is a misuse seems somehow trivial and irrelevant.
What should we make of a theory of language that would label nearly all of our word use as misuse?
What to make of a theory that calls any novel use of a word a misuse?
Why pay it any attention?
Okay suppose I taught you tic-tac-toe in the following way. When it's your turn, you ask me where you're supposed to put your "X" or your "O", whichever you're playing. I have a couple options for how to answer this -- I could explain what is equivalent play under a transformation of the board or I could just skip it. Let's say I skip it and I just pick one. I always tell you a move chosen from the set of best moves. I deliberately don't always make the best move myself, so that I sometimes have the opportunity to say, "And when you go here you win." We could change it up. I could feed you a less than optimal move by saying "Try going here," and then I might end up saying, "And when I go here I win."
The main thing I'm trying to leave out is that the way to win is to get three in-a-row. You have to know what games are, that there are turns, that sometimes one of the exactly two of us wins, and sometimes it's a cat, and you get to practice making Xs and Os and maybe lines. If, with repetition, you begin to recognize individual positions and remember which move led to a win, which a loss, and which a cat, do you know how to play tic-tac-toe? If you figure out the three-in-a-row thing, do you now know?
Added: forgot to mention you figuring out the transformations on your own, but you get the idea.
One must take care here, not to think both of concepts as giving the meaning of a word, and of concepts as some sort of mental furniture - items inside minds. For I can not see the mental furniture inside your mind, nor you the mental furniture inside my mind; and hence, there could be no question of our agreeing as to the meaning of a word. What we do have is the public record of what has been said and done with words, so if we are to reach agreement as to the meaning of a word, we must find it there.
But I didn't say anything about rules.
I love dictionaries, and I like to compare different definitions from different dictionaries. No need to reinvent the wheel, itâs already been written up. Modern languages are well codified, by and large.
I wasn't setting you up for a "gotcha". Kids play games that only kinda have rules, rules that can change all the time, which is to us an unusual kind of rule, but worth remembering. (Always wanted to teach philosophy taking Calvin & Hobbes as the text.)
So we have a new question: when I tell you where to put your X or your O, I'm telling you in part that doing that is allowed by the rules. Does that mean that you know games have rules? I mean, I could do this with a three year-old and they would be totally stoked and squealing each time they suddenly won! I'm not sure they know games have rules. They know that winning, especially against dad, sounds fun. (At least a couple of my kids say to this day that one of their ambitions is to beat me someday at chess.)
But somehow I've gotten us to talking about this backwards: I started out asking whether you have to know that you don't know how to play tic-tac-toe to learn to play tic-tac-toe, but now I can't figure out how to decide when to say you know how to play tic-tac-toe. How did that happen?
I'm a dictionary reader, too.
What one finds, on looking up a word, is more words. There's a certain obvious circularity in this process.
If the meaning of a word is the concept to which it corresponds, then meanings are not to be found in dictionaries. They are full of words, not concepts.
Might a child watch a hundred games, wordlessly, then play, flawlessly, yet without explicit teaching?
Genetic neural networks can learn to play well, without explicit instruction.
It is how Capablanca learned how to play chess, and it is said, in tones of deepest wonder, that when Capablanca played chess it was like he was speaking his native language.
Handball. No adult would ever be able to follow the rules. And even if they did, they wold be different the next day.
Why did you remove the reference to rules? I mean, do as you like. I silently edit posts to fix grammar and punctuation. Whatever.
I'm just wondering if you decided the discussion of rules is a mistake? out of place?
Do you have them explicitly list the rules?
Or do you watch them play?
That "supposed to" in there looks interesting. We could get around it I guess, and in early days we do. I could just say, "Okay, it's your turn now, try to make an X in this box."
How far can we get before we really really need "should" and friends?
Imagine I taught one my kids to play tic-tac-toe without rules, and then they try to teach another kid. You don't command the same kind of deference with your peers. "You have to put your X in an empty spot, not on top of my O" (note the "have to"), and then what's the answer to "Why? Why can't I put an X over your O?" It's going to be "That's just how you play." And maybe "Your way is wrong." (And maybe "This is how my dad taught me, do you want to learn how to play or not?")
Or maybe my kid comes back to me and says, "Dad, me and Griselda made up a different way to play tic-tac-toe, and it's better than your way."
Alright so back to my kid explaining the game -- not playing but explaining. Maybe she can get by with "You just don't" instead of "You can't go there", much less, "It's against the rules." So why do people end up saying, you can't go there, you have to go here or here. What does the normative language get you?
(Yes I'm ignoring your questions, and I'm ignoring the invisible answers you printed next to them, unless you really want me to be bored.)
You and I have no trouble in performing this task.
Setting out the rules explicitly... took time. Try it for yourself. One, two, three... trough to twenty; then add one to make twenty one; buy After twenty nine, write thirty. Then itâs reasonably recursive through to a hundred, when you have to introduce and.
Point being, we can perform the task with ease, but working out the rules explicitly is a post hoc, time consuming task.
We often do stuff without explicitly following rules.
Yeah I've done that one.
If we end up saying normative instruction is (just??) for giving instructions, that looks, well, obvious, but why is it necessary for giving instructions? Is it?
Quoting Banno
You're always slipping in "explicitly" and "explicit". Are you arguing that we do stuff implicitly following rules, or just priming the intuition pump?
Did you ever decide at what point the kid taught tic-tac-toe without rules is playing tic-tac-toe? Is that even a question that makes sense to you? Or is there "no fact of the matter" about whether the kid is, you know, really playing tic-tac-toe? Does their ability to teach another kid to play come into it?
But doesn't that sentence cry out for "if you want to play the game right"?
Is there a difference between playing tic-tac-toe and playing it the right way? Is the latter playing it by the rules? (Knowing that the game has rules, what they are, and how to follow them.)
putting the appropriate space in phone numbers is worse.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
We came in with the notion in the OP that one misused a word by not using it in accord with its essence. Anther way to say this is that the word is misused if it is not used in accord with a certain rule, a rule that sets out an essence.
I'm pointing out that while we might be following a rule, it does not follow that we can say what the rule is.
Hence, being able to state the rule - to be explicit as to what one is doing - is not a prerequisite for following a rule. One can follow a rule without being able to state it.
I'd be surprised if anyone were to insist that we can only follow rules that are explicitly stated. But there's nowt queer as folk.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Consider the differences between classical chess and Crazy chess, of 960, or antichess... These are variants in which the rules are explicitly, purposefully, undermined. I've been called a cheat for moving en passent or castling; and indeed at some stage in the development of the game, this would have been true.
Part of what @TheMadFool misses is that word use (what he might call meaning) changes over time. Any judgement that this is the right meaning will inevitably be arbitrary, and most likely become anachronistic with the movement of the linguistic landscape. Noticing the fraught nature of the notion of correct and incorrect use, he might have simply stoped making that distinction; but instead he wrongly accuses Wittgenstein of thinking that all uses are correct.
Better than asking which uses are correct and which are wrong, one might watch what is done in each case.
Much the same confusion is found in
Quoting Olivier5
There is an essence, but it cannot be presented, examined, discussed. If that is so, what use is it? Why bother?
But that is mediated by Quoting Olivier5
Olivier5 might be able to reconcile these two; to my eye they seem contrary.
Yep. Or indeed, the way that definitions are "perfect" is that they only attempt to constrain interpretation in a suitably general fashion. The appropriate level of precision is itself something we seek to communicate in terms of the differences that make a difference vs the differences that don't.
So the problem for naive realists or overly concrete thinkers is that they understand the world as some atomistic composite where every difference must be accounted for. A definition could only be precise if it mentions every possible difference. The problem then is that the potential differences in any "act of conception" are basically endless.
But the pragmatist story on this is that what we want to communicate is exactly where it is that further differences no longer matter to our conception.
If I want you to think about a cat, it doesn't really matter if you are thinking of a black cat or a white cat. Just some kind of average cat - an average level of variation on the theme, on the "family resemblance" - will suffice. That gets the job done in the most efficient way.
So all acts of interpretation are potentially open ended. We could fruitlessly pursue verbal precision to infinity and beyond. Yet the whole point of a pragmatic use of language is that we want to both get across an idea in general, and demonstrate the correct level of generality by our very failure to be more specific.
If "cat" should do the job, you can know that as the listener, because I didn't choose to specify further.
The essence I'm trying to communicate is the idea of a cat in general - a constraint on free possibility at that conceived level of existence. Thus also, as the corollary, whatever I just said was enough. Any difference in conception after that - whether it was black, three-legged, Persian, whatever - is not a fact that matters.
Band name!
Only if it was VERY firm.
Quoting Janus Ouch.
There is no teaching tic-tac-toe without rules; my attempt just results in a version with a much larger but equivalent set of ad-hoc rules pretending not to be rules. There still has to be some sense of "may go here; may not go there". I don't see any way around that. And you're not playing tic-tac-toe until you understand it as a rule-governed game. That there can be different but equivalent rulesets is interesting, and I suspect pretty important.
(Want to talk a lot more about rules and normative language, but I've got nothing worth saying yet.)
One might think so, but see The Evolution of Learning: An Experiment in Genetic Connectionism, for example. I'd be disincline to call differential weightings in a neural network rules...
Not everything that matters can be expressed with words; some experiences are hard to convey through that sort of code we call a language.
E.g. a painting, and if you like it, your aesthetic emotion when looking at it, cannot be properly described by words used analytically. Only poetry can help. Youâd have to be Proust to get anywhere near expressing your satisfaction at getting lost into a little patch of sublime yellow in a Wermer... It doesnât make paintings useless. Itâs a left-brain-right-brain kind of thing.
There are other experiences which point to the existence of a mental âhors texteâ. Like the sensation of having a word âon the tip of your tongueâ, or any other case when we are âat a loss for wordsâ.
Sure. I've oft argued the very same point. Such things are shown, not said; they are found in what we do, not in what we preach.
But this essence stuff - what does it do that is not done by being able to make use of a word? What does it explain?
And here: it is to be the meaning of a word, and yet also a piece of something in one's mind. But what is in your mind is unknowable to me, and what is in my mind unknowable to you. SO what you mean and what I mean are utterly estranged.
You might reply that we share a world, and so can approximately match the concept with the meaning by looking to the use of the word. But if you are going to do that, why not just talk about the use of the word?
If what we are to do is match my use against yours, the conceptual beetle drops out of the equation.
I have no preconceptions on the matter. I saw a problem - the idea of language games, Wittgenstein's, it's implication that some words are undefiniable because their extensions are missing a common, unifying motif - and analyzed it objectively (to the best of my abilities).
Wittgenstein's theory of language games depends on one crucial assumption - that, to use his own example "game", the the extension of the word "game" is not, in any way, a product of erroneous usage. Only if that's the case can Wittgenstein have a basis for his theory of language games. The language game theory basically asserts that some, all, words lack an essence - the objects in the extensions of such words share attributes alright but no single or set of attributes are common to all these objects.
After that, Wittgenstein takes it a step further - some philosophical words like "good" for example, because they exhibit the same kind of behavior, are devoid of an essence - there are many cases where the word "good" is applied but when we try to look for a unifying attribute in them, none can be found. This leads Wittgenstein to think that philosophical problems having to do with "good" are pseudo-problems; after all, by his logic, there's no such thing as "good" - no essence can be extracted from the extension of the word "good.
As I briefly mentioned earlier, Wittgenstein's language game theory works only if it's true that the word "game" has been correctly applied to all objects in its extension.
Why?
The missing essence is a function of the objects in the extension. How did the objects get there (in the extension) in the first place? By referring to them with the word "game". They only way for objects to be included in the extension of the word "game" is if we accept that the word "game" has been used correctly (to refer to them).
At this point, the idea of word misuse needs to be introduced. In the simplest sense, word misuse occurs when, in our discussion, the word "game" is used to refer to an object that doesn't satisfy the word's intensional definition. If the intensional definition is strictly adhered to it would effectively prevent the inclusion of certain objects in the extension of the word "game", objects that eventually introduce enough chaos in the extension to cause the disapperance of what we're all seeking - the common thread, the essence, in the objects that make up the extension of the word "game".
In summary, if the idea of word misuse is accepted, it precludes the possibility that all instances of the word "game" being used are correct and if that's the case Wittgenstein's theory of language games, implying the absence of essences to words, is incorrect.
:chin:
Sorry, if I didn't pay due attention to this but it looks like you're committing the same mistake as Wittgenstein, taking all usages of a word as correct. What then is incorrect usage? If I call an elephant a chair, you'll be among the first to call me out on it but if I call a stool a chair you'll let it slide. Granted that there's a gradation in the error - calling an elephant a chair is more erroneous than call a stool a chair - but they're both errors, right?
Quoting TheMadFool
Did you notice this...
Quoting Banno
Perhaps it will help.
Firstly, I agree that the meaning of words change with time but I disagree that the right meaning will be arbitrary. The first time a word is used is the exact moment its true intensional meaning is made public for use by the general populace. I believe this happens a lot in philosophy - coining new words for new ideas is part of the [philosophical] game. This happens in science too but that's something you already know.
Secondly, on the matter of words changing in meaning, this can happen in only two senses: changes in 1. intensional meaning and 2. changes in extensional meaning. Alteration of the intensional meaning occurs routinely I believe as is evidenced by poylsemy and stipulative definitions. Coming to the question of modification in extensional meaning, the usual way this happens is if the intensional meaning has been altered in some way, resulting in a new population of objects in a word's extension. As a rule, the intensional definition has priority over the extensional definition - think of the intensional meaning as a criterion that determines which objects can be included in the extension.
Wittgenstein's observation is that the objects in, I'll stick to his example of the word "game", the extension of the word "game" are not united by a common theme i.e. the word "game" lacks an essence. but, as I've already shown you, the inclusion of objects in the extension of the word "game" is fully determined by the intensional meaning of the word "game". In other words, Wittgenstein's failure to find an attribute common to all objects in the extension of the word "game" is because different intensional meanings of the word "game" have been employed by people.
Now, here's the interesting bit. Take the word "pussy". It has two meanings: 1) vagina and 2) cat. What's the difference between 1 and 2? Intensional meaning, which results in different objects being included in the extension of the word "pussy". How is this different from the situation we find ourselves in with the word "game"? They're completely identical. In both cases, the extension of the word has been altered by changes in the intensional meaning and my question is this: what reasons are there to think that the wide variety of objects, missing an essence, in the extension of the word "game" is NOT exactly identical to the situation where a vagina and cat, completely different objects, are in the extension of the word "pussy"? Wittgenstein, in essence, is conflating polysemy with the condition of a word lacking an essence.
It explains the existence of meaning and its elusiveness. Also the tension between what we mean (our intent) and what we say (our use). We cannot effectively express all of what we mean, sometimes. Miscommunication occurs. Thereâs also a loss of information in any translation between two languages, which I would find impossible to account for if language was only « use », if there was no transcendance to it in the form of a (admittedly elusive) meaning. So I find the distinction between meaning and usage important, if only to account for the occasional (frequent in fact) misalignment between them.
Does this show that chess does not have rules? No.
Does it show that at some points in history chess did not have rules? No.
Does it show that the rules of chess are not explicit? No.
I don't remember much of the history, but I believe what you would find is that there is a period when there are regional variants of chess, that in India, say, during this period, they play a version of chess that includes castling, but elsewhere do not.
Can you castle through check? No you may not, but I'll bet dimes to donuts that this was not part of the original rule allowing castling. It looks like a refinement for a situation not foreseen by the original rule.
Both have correlates in the evolution of natural languages, and both imply periods or regions in which what is correct play may be open to dispute, or to simple disagreement. But at no point and in no place do we have anyone playing chess with no rules whatsoever.
But, if it is so elusive and unstateable, could it do this?
I'm not sure I can think of a game without rules, not off the top of my head, or of a game with implicit rules. What are the canonical examples?
I'm not arguing that they do not have rules; nor that they cannot be stated; I'm arguing that the rules need never be explicitly stated for the game to occur.
The canonical example - well, consider the way we use the word "chair" without ever actually setting out the exact rules for that use...
It's pretty much what you said here:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Oh sure throw that back at me!
Anyway, now that I'm home from work I can sniff around Kripkenstein and see what sorts of things they reach for.
I'm going to stand by that quote there because science. I'm just kind of exploring now exactly how the "language game" concept works. (Last week I read Sellars's "Some Reflections on Language Games" but I cannot say I've really absorbed it all.)
Also this
Quoting Banno
is not something I can imagine saying. I hate talking this generally, or jumping to the end, but I guess what you're headed for here is roughly
"incorrect" = "not how we use that word around here" or "not how we use that word around here"
Which is just orthodox linguistics, and I get that you want to undercut there being some, I don't know, Platonic Standard of the meaning of a word, fine, but I don't see any value in suggesting that we should give up the distinction between correct and incorrect. I like the linguistics version, and I think it matches people's behavior, so you could say this is the content of "correct" -- but I'm not sure about that either, because it feels awfully far from how people conceive their own practice of judging usage.
Sorry to ramble so -- in a bit of a rush.
As for
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I was thinking more of dropping correct/incorrect in favour of successful/unsuccessful or even useful/useless.
I'm just not signing up for "dropping" words that non-philosophers use successfully all the time. (See what I did there?)
I could see bringing "correct" back to its original home, having a close look at what circumstances give rise to talk of correct and incorrect usage, etc. etc. (I always have that in the back of my mind in talk about definitions -- giving a definition is a specific practice with pretty narrow and comparatively rare occasions.)
In fact I posit that translation from one language to another cannot be explained other than by reference to the meaning of words that has to be conveyed as faithfully as possible in another language.
So meanings exist.
Yet when people say things like: âthatâs no goodâ, we know what they mean, by and large. A certain threshold of efficacy hasnât been met. When they say: âthe best is the enemy of the goodâ, you and I know that they mean something that connects to notions of âgood enoughâ, of âoptimumâ, to the idea that âgoodâ is relative to a project, an intention that one can fail to achieve by trying too hard.
Rest assured that the concept of âgoodâ has an intuitive meaning, and that itâs by and large the same for everyone aware of the concept.
Here's a thumbnail sketch of an alternative approach you might find interesting. Sellars called it a kind of functionalism. The basic idea looks sound to me, but I haven't spent much time with yet. It does give a pretty natural account of translation.
Sorry, too long, and judging from the conclusion, not alternative to much.
It appears that definitions can be of two types:
1. AND definitions. An example of this type of definition is mammals. I'm going to rely on my rudimentary knowledge of biology to define a mammal as a living organism that has fur AND gives birth to live young AND provides milk to its offspring. In AND definitions, all the essential features listed in the definiens must be present in a living organism to qualify as a mammal. A cat has all the listed features of a mammal, so does a dog and therefore both are mammals.
2. OR definitions. An example of this type of definition is good. Good is when you give to charity OR believe in equal opportunity for all OR value other people's property OR value the lives of other people, etc. In OR definitions, its' not necessary that all features listed in the definiens be present. A person may give to charity but think that giving people equal opportunity is nonsense but this person still deserves to be called good. Another person may value people's lives and outright reject committing murder but still steal and this person too is good, so and so forth.
Technically, AND definitions are the type that matters in logic and so, in philosophy too. With AND definitions there's no Wittgensteinian problem of the family resemblance kind. A thing, if it is to be referred with a given word, must possess all features as listed in the definiens and that's that. An essence will always exist in AND definitions.
OR definitions are problematic in logic and philosophy because they cause the Wittgensteinian problem. Since it's not mandatory that all features listed in the definiens be present in things referred to with words that have OR definitions, it becomes possible that no feature common to all these things exists in these objects.
The definition of good is an OR definition.
A transcendental argument...
A
A only if B
Hence, B.
If one does not agree that (A only if B), one is not obligated to the conclusion.
They are of use mainly in reinforcing the views of those who accept them, and have little influence on those who do not.
You seem to have rediscovered Normal Form.
Any proposition can be parsed in this form. It's not specific to definitions.
Not at all. I'm just saying that translation cannot be explained other than by reference to meaning. That's all. If you can describe what translation is without making reference to meaning, then please do... Otherwise my point stands.
Yes, it is. That's its logical structure.
Quoting Olivier5
Suppose you have two sentences, P and P', such that "P" is true IFF P'.
Then P is a translation of P'
There, an extensional definition of translation.
I'm not talking of definitions proper, but of something much more basic: the intuitive meaning of the word.
There is a common meaning at the core of "good", which everyone gets intuitively. That's how we usually manage to understand the new usages of a word, by going back to its core meaning and trying to figure the connection with new usage.
The important (and obvious) point to remember is that usage is linked to meaning but is NOT meaning. If words had no meaning, nobody would use them....
Symbolic languages are used to convey information through symbols. If those symbols convey no information, why are you talking?
LOL. How can you even verify the truth of a proposition if that proposition has no meaning?
If you really are interested, have a look at Davidson, Truth and Meaning
Or take a look at the Stanford article.
The point here is, there are alternatives that undermine your transcendental argument.
Those concepts are necessary, not facultative, for philosophers. You cannot dispose of the notion of âtruthâ and still pretend to say the truth. You cannot get rid of âmeaningâ and still assume that your sentences will convey information...
Truth is defined extensionally in Davidson; you define it intensional. If you have the conditions under which a sentence is true, what more could you want? What is the extra, ineffable "meaning"?
Quoting Olivier5
In effect you introduce mysticism here. That really doesn't help much. It's no better than Mad's essences.
I meant to offer a possible mechanism why you're under the impression that good is an intuition. The gut-feeling you get when someone uses the word "good" - the "intuiton" you speak of - dovetails nicely into OR type definitions. OR type definitions, because of their flexibility, permit intuitive (read lack of rigor) understanding of concepts.
Webster defines meaning as âthe thing conveyed by language.â (I kid you not)
There is -- if we accept this definition â a categorical difference between what someone says and what she means. What she says conveys what she means (or tries to). For instance, sometimes you say something but you mean the exact opposite of what you say. Itâs called being sarcastic.
More generally, thereâs always a loss of meaning â and also often an addition of extraneous meaning â during communication between two people. Confusion, misunderstanding, projection etc. Lies too, and bad faith and ambiguity and all that jazz.
But this gut-feeling also happens in mathematics. Once a math teacher asked me: âOkay so you can derive expression A from expression B and vice versa, mechanically combining the symbols, but do you understand intuitively that they both mean the same thing?
This is another example of the Wittgensteinian problem we're discussing. The gut-feeling in math is different from the gut-feeling you get when you hear/read the word "good". The former, if I'm correct, is just a matter of speed processing information but the latter, I think, involves using words based on OR type definitions or some other less rigorous process.
Then what is meaning, and while you're at it, what is speaking? What's the difference between speaking and making noises or drawing scribbles? What if someone says something and then says, "I didn't mean to say that". Which sentence did they mean to say?
Does the sound of thunder mean something? Was the sound of thunder used to mean something in the same way sounds from someone's mouth are used to mean something? If not, but the sound of thunder still means something, then meaning isn't use, rather it the relationship between cause and effect ? the sound of thunder or a spoken word, and what caused the thunder or word to be spoken.
Not really. Mathematics are also a language. The feeling is the same to me.
Before we proceed any further, what exactly do you mean by intuition?
I mean an idea not yet expressed in words, or to try and be more precise, the germ of an idea in that part of our mental world that lays beyond the language sphere.
Non sequitur. Human beings have many instinctive behaviors beyond language.
I suppose it's similar to what TheMafFool called "gut feeling".
This is a strange thing to say considering that words are themselves visual and auditory sensations. What does it mean to define sensations with other sensations (scribbles and voices)?
And mind you, no one ever learnt the meaning of the word "cold" by reading it in a dictionary. Someone shows you something cold and you touch it and he says "cold", then he shows you something hot and then... you get the idea. The meaning is shown to you, not explained in words. And for a good reason: one cannot describe such a sensation with words, rather one has to experience the sensation and associate it with the word "cold".
Oh! Fantastic!
How about we work backward with your conception of intuition. It doesn't matter that we, when we intuit something, can't express it in words. What matters is that unless an intuition is expressed in words at some point, invariably later, it can't be distinguished from confusion. The only evidence for an intuition is our ability to find the words to construct a decent proposition for it after the fact.
Yet as you must be aware, language is a source of confusion like no other, especially when used by people who don't actually think it means anything...
1. A would-be philosopher assumes that analysis is the only correct way to explore and clarify concepts.
2. He sets off to analyse X so as to clarify it. (X can be the mind, meaning, love, beauty, or any other big lofty idea like that)
3. Whatever analysis the guy does only leads him to more confusion.
4. Therefore he concludes that X cannot be clarified, and must be abandonned as a concept, not just by him but by everyone else, mind you.
Of course their mistake is mainly in the premise, point 1. Analysis cuts ideas into small pieces, and it's easy to get lost and confused with all the resulting bits and piece. It's a neat trick, called analysis paralysis.
But the error is also in their own lack of analytical capacities. Just because they couldn't analyse fruitfully a concept doesn't mean that someone else can't.
In short: I am not in the business of abandoning concepts just because some 'philosopher' out there tried and failed to analyse them.
PS: This brings us back to Daniel Bonevac's thesis: some concepts cannot be exhausted by analysis, they don't lend themselves to a perfect definition, even something as apparently simple as the concept of chair... Does that mean we should abandon the concept of "chair"? No. It just means we should be aware of the limitation of our mental tools. For instance, not everything in our mental experience of the world can be neatly and precisely expressed in words.
And that's okay. To have any utility, language must engage, exchange and struggle with non-linguistic stuff: with acts such as playing ping-pong, with sensations such as cold or pain, with emotions and intuitions, etc. A purely self-referential language with not connections with the rest of our mental world would be entirely useless.
:up: