Look up a word in the dictionary to find its meaning. You get more words. — RussellA

Yes. Russell's acquaintance theory says that you know what "blue" means from direct acquaintance with it, not from looking it up in a dictionary, so even Russell is immune to that problem.

The issue about love indicates a need for intensional rather than extensional definition. That's what I thought were focusing on

We are in an ice age guys. Get yourself up to speed.

Yes, that's a kind of explanation that we employ sometimes, isn't it? — SophistiCat

Yes. Will the intellect be satisfied with that kind of explanation, though?

I guess I'm saying that the intellect will feel stymied by being unable to specify a cause for everything.

aRb leads into an infinite regress
Russell in his introduction gives an example of aRb: "If we say “Plato loves Socrates”, the word “loves” which occurs between the word “Plato” and the word “Socrates” establishes a certain relation between these two words, and it is owing to this fact that our sentence is able to assert a relation between the persons named by the words “Plato” and “Socrates”.

Wittgenstein introduces First Order Logic in an explanation of aRb
4.1252 Similarly the series of propositions aRb (∃x): aRx. xRb
In the case of Plato and Socrates there is something x such that Plato relates to x and x relates to Socrates, where x is "love". X is an individual, is independent of either Plato or Socrates and is an external relation

We can replace x by "relates", and get the situation there is something x such that Plato relates to x and x relates to Socrates. Again we have the situation of a relation relating, which as Bradley pointed out, leads to an infinite regress — RussellA

This is raised an an objection to Russell's 'aquaintance' theory of meaning. It's not considered to be a problem for Wittgenstein because he emphasized context-based understanding of propositions. In other words, Wittgenstein won't allow you to understand P just by breaking it down into partial references. You're going to have to be involved in the conversation. "Showing" is something that happens in live language use, which is what he's focusing on in the Tractacus (according to the references I'm reading.)

. I told him Trump supporters were the complete opposite of relativists. — Joshs

True. They do have an amazing capacity to ignore things though.

For a vantage with a particular history, which remakes itself in creating and recreating a stance. The ‘standing ‘ of the stance isn’t a fact but a performance. — Joshs

Do you and your friends do this impromptu in the middle of the street sometimes?

We don't know what is the intellect's limit and thus there's no meaning talking about it. — Alkis Piskas

Thank you, Ludwig. You're probably right

Heidegger also saw the boundaries of language as a problem for the articulation of being — Joshs

So he opted to express 'what it's like' from the first person view, right?

The very idea of a concept of everything as all the furniture of the universe is what the grammatical structure of language imposes on us. — Joshs

From what vantage point are you making this observation? Where are you standing? How did you get there?

Heidegger and Wittgenstein wanted to explain being in terms of becoming rather than interms imposed by the static ‘is’. — Joshs

Hegel already said that being is derivative of becoming. It's in P of the Spirit.

Here's the quote:

Wittgenstein on Heidegger, from 1929:


I can very well think what Heidegger meant about Being and Angst. Man has the drive to run up against the boundaries of language. Think, for instance, of the astonishment that anything exists [das etwas existiert]. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer to it. All that we can say can only,a priori, be nonsense. Nevertheless we run up against the boundaries of language.

Kierkegaard also saw this running-up and similarly pointed it out (as running up against the paradox). This running up against the boundaries of language is Ethics.

I hold it certainly to be very important that one makes an end to all the chatter about ethics – whether there can be knowledge in ethics, whether there are values [ob es Werte gebe , whether the Good can be defined, etc.

In ethics one always makes the attempt to say something which cannot concern and never concerns the essence of the matter. It is a priori certain: whatever one may give as a definition of the Good – it is always only a misunderstanding to suppose that the expression corresponds to what one actually means (Moore). But the tendency to run up against shows something. The holy Augustine already knew this when he said: “What, you scoundrel, you would speak no nonsense? Go ahead and speak nonsense – it doesn’t matter!"

Really? Can you find a quote for that? — Joshs

I'll try. :grin:

ideal conditions, the human intellect can explain anything ...
— Tate

It may be that the ideal conditions under which anything can be explained are not human conditions. We are limited animals who often go about unaware of their limits. — Fooloso4

I think the intellect resists accepting any limits. The intellect says you'd have to have a vantage point beyond humanity to know that it's limited. I'm sure you recognize this as ponderings based on the Tractacus.

Contemporary philosophy doesn’t look for first causes to explain Everything. They look for formal structures of becoming and transformation. Hegel was among those who started this trend with his dialectic of becoming. — Joshs

Wittgenstein warned that Heidegger was trying to do something that can't be done.

I was just responding to your original claim that before Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, almost nobody knew about CC. — Olivier5

I just meant that the average person didn't know. It was mostly science nerds who knew.

Except in France where everyone was a damned climatologist at a time when those in the field described it as "a science of wild guesses.".

ideal conditions, the human intellect can explain anything
— Tate

What are these ideal conditions? — Noble Dust

This came from imagining that I'm talking to the human intellect. I asked if it's capable of explaining anything.

It said under ideal conditions, like if it's smart enough, has access to the right data, has peace and quiet to put it together (as opposed to having to struggle for safety in a war).

It's confident that in those conditions, there's nothing it can't explain.

Then I asked if it could explain Everything. It said I was talking about God as a symbol of the ultimate cause.

But what about other kinds of explanation? — SophistiCat

I'm trying to think of a kind of explanation that's not about relationships to other things.

Would breaking a thing down into parts and relating the parts to each other serve as an explanation?

Given how polarized US politics was becoming at the time, I'm starting to wonder if Gore being the face of climate change activism in the country made Americans LESS likely to address it. Not that was his fault, of course (more society's), but we all know how politics ruins literally everything. — Mr Bee

Could be. I hadn't thought of that.

You're making my argument for me. The wealthy generally produce more emissions than the poor, and since they are wealthy and live the extravagant lives they do by choice, that makes them all the more responsible. — Janus

Whatever.

Relevant to assessing degree of responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions, what do you think? — Janus

Oh. No, it's not relevant to that. CO2 footprint is relative to wealth. Few are poor by choice

Relevant to what?

Is there any point to that statement of the obvious? — Janus

Just that "per capita" doesn't mean much.

Al Gore, in 2006, broke the news to Americans only, — Olivier5

Global warming was a common theme in science fiction in the 1980s. The 1982 movie Blade Runner was typical. So no, the news wasn't broken to Americans by Al Gore. He was just unusually successful in raising alarm.

I am not arguing otherwise — Olivier5

I see. You just meant that climatology was taught in French high schools in the 1970s. That's odd, but ok.

Put it on your tombstones for no one to read. — unenlightened

"In all situations, be melodramatic as hell"

--the unenlightened family motto celebrated by his descendants living in Greenland

The potential heating effect of certain gases such as CO2 was well established in the lab by the end of the 19th century. — Olivier5

Sure. We were talking about climate change, not the greenhouse effect in general.

It wasn't clear until the 1980s that the climate was warming. I'm not sure why you would argue otherwise.

means that both are increasing reaching an equilibrium: — boethius

Sedimentation captures CO2.

You say:

The CO2 we've added to the atmosphere will be absorbed into the oceans eventually.
— Tate

And then contradict that statement with:

As the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the amount of dissolved CO2 in the oceans will increase. It's Henry's Law.
— Tate — boethius

That's not a contradiction.

What?

Untrue statement.

Ocean concentration reaches a balance with CO2 atmospheric concentrations, that it is absorbing and releasing the same amount. — boethius

As the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the amount of dissolved CO2 in the oceans will increase. It's Henry's Law.

has been part of the national curriculum in French highschool since the 70's. — Olivier5

I doubt it. In the 1970s it wasn't clear if the climate was cooling or warming. The effect of the Milankovitch cycle wasn't discovered until the mid 1970s.

In the 1980s it started to become clearer that the climate would warm and, as I said, it was a few science nerds who paid attention.

It's in superposition.

Indeed but it was in a key position to encourage or discourage the efforts of others, and it did the latter, since the 90's or so until now. Very systematically too. The US owns this crisis. It's made in the USA. While the problem is global, the search for solutions is necessarily local. The US opted to deny the problem. — Olivier5

Al Gore was American. How many people knew about global warming outside the community of science nerds prior to his work?

You're overstating it. It was not made in the US. It was made by all fossil fuels users.

This is why scientists (the ones that produced the data you are talking about) are alarmed. That the changes to CO2 levels (and land-use, fish, etc.) we've caused is far beyond planetary boundaries. — boethius

The CO2 we've added to the atmosphere will be absorbed into the oceans eventually.

The greatest challenge to life on earth so far was low CO2, btw. High CO2 hasn't been been as much of a threat.

I see what you mean, although China is presently the largest producer of CO2.
— Tate

Not per capita, by a long shot
3h — Janus

The climate doesn't really care.

Should the scientist wonder if these scenarios indicate they don't have access to the "real" apple or orange? Seems absurd to say such a thing. — Richard B

We know exactly how the computer's analog to digital converter works and what the computer does with that data. No, the computer does not have direct access to the apple.

It is empirically under-determined a priori what observations the entities of the Standard Model refer to. Yet the same is equally true regarding the ordinary public meaning of "redness". For what precisely, under all publicly stateable contexts, are the set of experiences to which "redness" refers? — sime

Wittgenstein makes this point in the Tractacus 3.221:

"Objects I can only name. Signs represent them. I can only speak of them. I cannot assert them. A proposition can only say how a thing is, not what it is."

In other words, language itself implies something beyond it: something that can't be spoken: the reference. References can only be named, though. Naming them and relating them to each other is all we do. We don't fathom what they are .

Wittgenstein is really doing a kind of phenomenology here: just describing the nature of language use.

have had extensive experience with psilocybin, LSD, DMT. mescaline and salvinorin, although not with ketamine. What you claim has not been my experience, however powerful the hallucinatory experience has been, if I have had the presence of mind to test it in the way I outlined — Janus

You didn't enter into a dissociative state, then. As it pertains to the thread, just the fact that you had to check makes the point that experience of the world and hallucinations are very similar in character.

A poster had denied that, but the discussion was a dead end.

But to the extent that the US is the leading power, and the leading per capita producer of CO2, and a leading technological innovator, it does have the power to influence by example and encourage compliance with a strategy by economic means, and hugely contribute to the solution instead of hugely contributing to the failure to tackle the problem at all. — unenlightened

I agree. My focus tends to be on the scale of centuries. The US won't exist in a thousand years, so I tend to ignore it. Maybe I should pay more attention to the contribution my generation makes.

Washington sends a message to other nations that they don't need to make any effort, and worse, that they efforts if they decide to make them will amount to nought because the biggest world polluter is not doing its share. — Olivier5

I see what you mean, although China is presently the largest producer of CO2.

I don't believe the US has ever been in a position to solve the problem. It's a global, long-term problem.

So we have no way of telling if someone is on Ketamine? — Banno

Why is that significant?

Hence your claim that hallucinations are not the same kind of thing as normal experience is wrong.