My uncertainty is more to do with how meaning becomes public than whether it is. Or, since private meaning is a nonsense a how question for publicity is likewise nonsense, how is meaning shared? — Moliere

One of my pet peeves is the way the Private Language Argument is misinterpreted on this site. Some people do it over and over and that misinterpretation spreads. The argument only suggests that you can't have a language that is untranslatable even in principle. This has no bearing whatsoever on whether you can make up your own words for things, or have your own private thoughts which you never share with others.

So yes, you can make up words that you never tell others about. The reason you have no trouble keeping your private language straight is that it's resting on a shared language, which has rules that you learn from others.

Language use can be broken down into these parts:

Utterances: these are the actual sounds you make, or the marks you create when you write.
Sentences: these are formal entities, like The cat is on the mat. Imagine you have a group of friends who have decided to use "The cat is on the mat" as a code for You have spinach in your teeth.

You can see that the meaning of the sentence depends on the context of utterance. This is always true.

Propositions: In the case of your group of friends who have used a sentence as a code, the proposition expressed by "The cat is on the mat" is that you have spinach in your teeth. So propositions are the meanings of uttered sentences. If you take the sentence out of context and just focus on it as a formal entity, though it may have a logical meaning, it doesn't have any specific meaning.

This is the importance of saying that meaning is use. Look to use to discern meaning. Look at the setting of the utterance of "It's a small number" to discern what proposition is being expressed. Meaning is use does not mean that meaning is the actual utterances. That's absurd, but there are people on this forum who will blow through that absurdity and assert it anyway.

There's a spectrum between creativity and orthodoxy. Go too far in either direction and you have bullshit.

They'd have a vaccine pretty quickly: that's the cool thing about the mRNA technology.

The Earned Income Tax Credit is a nice way of redistributing wealth. — RogueAI

Economic disasters have a proven track record.

Because abstract reasoning requires symbols, no? — Janus

Is that your argument?

Is abstract reasoning not all and only a matter of language use? — Janus

Why would it be?

When it says his wealth increased, that means his Amazon stock increased in value. That's not income or even real money until he sells the stocks.

It seems as if there's an epidemic of imagination loss going around. Is open war the only alternative to non-resistance? — Isaac

If course not. I think the whole world should bow down to the majesty of the US military due to the realization that nonviolent resistance is key.

I think of this whole thing as giving the lie to the libertarian (or anarcho-capitalist) worldview that trade and commerce and markets are natural and self-sustaining. They're not. They must be enabled by institutions that keep the peace and enforce property rights. If they are not, some warlord will just take your grain and sell it as his own, or just blockade your ports so you can't sell it, or bomb them into rubble. — Srap Tasmaner

I think it's a matter of population density. If it's a few people transporting silk from China to Egypt in 1000 BC, they probably won't meet anybody on the trip. As the density increases, merchants can pay warlords for protection, or in the case of Islam, religion is merchant law and all the merchants have armies. Once the merchant class takes over the world, they can offload the cost of protecting their trade to society in general. So it's never been that societies create governments and that makes trade possible. It's the other way around. Where there is trade, there are roads and communication. Communication gives rise to innovation as good ideas come together. I'm just saying it's a rose with thorns, not just a big thorn, though that might be the way it seems sometimes.

I think they’re going to do even worse next year. — Quixodian

I hope so. We'll see.

Gift article from the Washington Post about how the continued GOP defense of Trump is going to cost the party. — Quixodian

I have a subscription to the WaPo. A couple of things that editorial doesn't mention: yes, gen-z'ers are coming of age to vote. The problem is: they won't. Young people don't vote in numbers that compare to older voters. This was discussed back when Trump was originally elected with regard to millennials.

The other thing that writer doesn't seem to notice is how much power Trump still has, after everything that's happened. It's not that all Republicans are crazy. It's that the crazy ones have all the power right now.

There's nothing controversial about any of this. If people who don't want Trump don't get out and vote, he'll have a second term

Your faith is touching, but I'm not falling for the schtick. — Quixodian

:rofl: What a weird thing to say.

In the polls. But as I said above, there are many, many other factors in play in this case. — Quixodian

Like the law suits? That won't stop him.

Zero chance — Quixodian

He's the frontrunner, so he'll probably be up against Biden. So his chances are about 50%. That's how close presidential elections are here.

He would be on a loosing trajectory even without having to juggle multiple federal and state lawsuits. — Quixodian

He's the frontrunner, so he's not on a losing trajectory. He has a good chance of beating Biden.

Let’s remember the fact that the Never Trumpers damn near kneecapped Trump at the 2016 Convention. You can only imagine what will happen at the 2024 Convention if he were the nominee (which I’m sure he won’t be.) — Quixodian

He's the frontrunner. He'll be there. There's a good chance he'll be the next president.

That's alright, I never understood the point of your responses from the start of the present conversation. — Janus

Inscrutability of reference probably.

It may be interesting in the context of the history of ideas. I know Christianity absorbed and repurposed some Neoplatonic ideas, but there is no personal God in Neoplatonism, so the central plank is derived from elsewhere. — Janus

I've lost track of your point.

But that wouldn't explain why we both got the joke. — Moliere

I think maybe Quine isn't your cuppa tea. :razz:

How about you present them and then we can discuss them. I don't believe they were arguments for God as conceived by the Christian founders, but I am aware that they were adapted to support their Christian theology. — Janus

You have it backward, Janus. Christianity as we know it was adapted to Neoplatonism, the dominant philosophical view of the time, not the other way around. God, as the Christian founders conceived it, is Neoplatonic. Augustine actually read Aristotle. Ancient Greek philosophy is in the underpinnings of Christianity. See how interesting the topic is?

I don't have an "expert opinion" since I am not a scholar of Ancient Greek philosophy, but the argument from first causes, for example, presupposes the ancient's understanding of causation. Also, unless I am mistaken, Aristotle did not argue for God, but for a "Prime Mover" or demiurge. — Janus

He had multiple proofs of God. Aquinas' proofs are modeled on them. The Christian founders approved of the use of ancient Greek philosophers in Christian thinking. What's your expert opinion on that?

Sure, but that is "a shared context of faith": scholastic philosophers presupposed the validity of orthodox theology. — Janus

Aristotle made proofs of God as well. What's your expert opinion on that?

Treating religious stories as literature, which may convey wisdom, as any good literature may, is not the same as arguing pointlessly over the existence of God or gods or the reality of ideas like karma or rebirth. — Janus

Scholastic philosophers taught the skill of argumentation by having students create proofs of God on their own, and their arguments would be critiqued. For a newbie, it's very fertile ground. It's like a philosophy gymnasium.

A joke, yes, but with a point -- it's true we understand one another in this conversation, I believe.

Given the indeterminacy of translation, how do we understand one another? — Moliere

I guess Quine would have us deflate "understand."

Like this:

I agree. — Moliere

ha

Im So insofar that there's no reason to disbelieve then you're probably close enough to count for "really agreeing" as opposed to "apparently agreeing". — Moliere

Apparently there is reason to disbelieve:

Indeterminacy of translation

In any conversation -- I think that makes sense. We usually end conversations when there's too much disagreement or we're confused. — Moliere

It looks like we agree. How would you determine that we really do think the same things? As opposed to just appearing to?

I think it was John Fowles who said Great Expectations sums up the main points of Christianity. I agree.

So, I am asking here about what has been the influence of Gnosticism, especially in views about the role of sexuality in the development of Christian thinking? — Jack Cummins

"Gnosticism" is a term that religion experts came up with to group together a collection of early Christian sects. A common feature is a divinity called Sophia, who falls out of heaven and spawns a blind god called Samael. This blind god is the creator of our world and you could say he's either evil or just insane. We might say insane because he doesn't mean to be evil. Samael and Yahweh are supposed to be the same guy.

German religion scholars used to be passionate about discovering the origin of the imagery in Gnostic Christianity and finally decided it was so far back as to be undiscoverable, especially when they discovered some similar imagery in Pacific Northwest native American religions, which would make the origin at least 10,000 years ago. Other scholars have claimed that trying to find an origin is a mistake, that these images bubble up from a common psychic substrate. This would be a kind of structuralism.

It's kind of hard to miss the powerful veins of feeling in the Grail stories, but those stories came from one French guy around the 12th Century. He was a professional story teller. Within 50 years of his death, there were Grail stories all over Europe, with each teller adding unique twists to it. I think we could compare it to science fiction fixtures in our world. Think about zombie apocalypse themes that have pervaded for the last decade or so. Those images are probably also appearing from lower levels of the psyche.

. I suppose people could end up on a philosophy forum without knowing much at all. — DingoJones

Probably, but they wouldn't stay long if they didn't want to change that.

Your entire post is a strawman. But you’re free to feel persecuted if you wish. — Mikie

I don't think so. I think you really are missing the point of unenlightened's post. Questions about divinity and Christianity aren't as simple as you're making them out to be. I would encourage you to delve into them and find out.

From history, not Christianity. Religion once dominated man-kinds worldview, so its only natural the further back you go the more religiosity you must account for. Christianity being present in the past doesnt grant merit to Christianity and ideas that took root at a time when Christianity was dominant doesn’t mean Christianity was essential to the idea. If you want to claim it was then you need to provide good reasons why that is the case. Good luck with that. — DingoJones

In a similar spirit to the OP: how do people end up on a philosophy forum without knowing anything about their own ideological heritage?

Why is this easier to ignore than other (similar) claims? — Mikie

For the reasons already presented in this thread. Essential features of your worldview emerged from Christianity, things like the emphasis on ultimate truth, and progress toward a better world. You just can't swing a dead cat in the philosophical realm without smashing into elements of Christianity or its roots.

in this increasingly superficial chatfest. — Banno

Why do people always talk like things are getting worse? No they aren't. They're as fucked up as they ever were. Enjoy it!

Exactly.

But conversely, the tendency to take the whole content of religion in the history of ideas is also a pretty dogmatic attitude, and it's often on display here.
— Quixodian
Hu? — Banno

I think what he means is that all human endeavor comes to nothing, it helps nothing, and it ultimately means nothing.

Therefore snarl at your neighbor for some whatever nonsense about Jesus and the Devil, or just be in awe at what some primates come up with as the earth turns toward nowhere, for no reason, before the lights go out.

For me, my birthday meant only something when I was a kid and received presents! :smile: I have stopped celebrating it since a lot of years ago. It's just a social convention. — Alkis Piskas

What I was getting at is that your age is part of the now as it relates to a point in the past. That aspect of the now is emphasized on your birthday, but it's there all the time in some way, unless you drop down below the surface. The experience changes based on which side of things you think of as stationary and which one is moving. If your birthday is imagined as a fixed point, then all your nows (present moments) are revolving outward from that point. If you think of your present now as the fixed point, then all of time is revolving around that unchanging quality of being which I picture as the center of the earth.

This is mostly Kierkegaard type stuff, I guess.

:up:

Is it? :brow: It's not a problem for me... — creativesoul

It's just a logical problem. "I think, therefore I am you" as Feuerbach said.

"He wrote as someone might who had witnessed the creation of the world, a man who understood the voice of the mountains and of the rain." — Srap Tasmaner

Wow. Mine is a quote from the back of a Somerset Maugham novel: "...an autobiographical novel in which fact and fiction are inextricably intertwined."

It's the "inextricable" that gets me.

I remember wondering what would happen if we reversed that, if we took words as saying things and instead said it was us borrowing that capacity, that we're the ones who don't literally *say* anything, only our words do. — Srap Tasmaner

Yea, or maybe you're like a dark cloud that says it's going to rain. You're both up on the stage speaking, and in the audience listening to yourself, interpreting your own performance.

My art is that way. People ask me what it means and I just stare at it, realizing I'm in the same boat they are. I'll hazard a guess as to what it might mean based on what I remember thinking at the time I painted it. After I've spoken, I'm in the audience with everyone else. :razz: