there's no appeal to internal meaning or intention - doing so would result in circularity. — Banno

We must charitably assume the speaker is rational and presents his statement accurately to intent. This makes no demand upon deciphering internal thoughts, but if we dispense with linking what he meant with what I understand, it deflates to Wittgensteinian meaning is use.

"To understand the speech of another we must interpret in a way that makes most of his utterances true and rational, given the totality of what we take to be his beliefs, desires, and intentions."
“Radical Interpretation"

I take this as requiring us to construct intent from behaviors but also coupled with an assumption of internal coherence and rationality.. We're not getting into the speaker's head, but we are assuming intent.

All in all, I think education can help people of all ages to acquire a better perspective from which to vote according to their beliefs, desires and needs. — I like sushi

I'm obviously a huge advocate for education for education's sake, this being a philosophy forum and all, but unfortunately education is not what creates better people and better voters

Just get the scope right. Not really a problem. — Banno

Not sure what you mean here. Need not words.

He's saying that the expectation of intent goes into calculating meaning. He's not saying the listener actually knows the speakers intent. — frank

I agree with that. The interpreter applies the principle of charity to assume the speaker's rationality and logic, which assumes consistency of usage, but he's definitely not admitting to a tapping into the speaker's internal state.

But assumption of intent is demanded, else it would be a simple conventionalism.

The problem with using ChatGPT is that it's processing statements that were intentional. It's not just randomly putting words together. — frank

I'm not sure what you mean here. The sentences created by ChatGPT are truly compositional it would seem. That is, they are not just the random slamming together of simple words into sentences or the combination of preset sentences into paragraphs. Davidson often refers to "concatenation" which identifies the ability to create infinite sentences from finite words.

Explaining how oncatenation comes to be is a major part of his project. That is, how does meaning emerge as a sum greater than its parts.

I think it's a hard argument to make that ChatGPT is just an arranging finite elements into finite sentences. It appears to compose, to concatenate.

This ties into Davidson"s resistance to convention being the primary driver of meaning. Intent of the speaker is demanded, which pulls ChatGPT out from producing meaningful statements.

If that is the result, I wonder if AI disproves triangulation. AI under his theory speaks without meaning, yet I feel I understand what it means. But, should I say its lack of intent erases its meaning, am I not just demanding the secret sauce of consciousness into the equation? If that, he becomes just another dreaded metaphysician.

Somewhat perfunctorily, the goal is not to expose the intent of the speaker, but to note the circumstances under which their utterances would be true. — Banno

Is this correct though? I took the truthfulness of the statement to be the 3rd prong, not the 2nd. As in the "cat is on the mat" has meaning if (1) I believe the cat is on the mat, (2) I charitably infer your intent is to communicate the cat is on the mat based upon my assumption you are rational and logical, and (3) the cat is in fact on the mat.

I asked ChatGPT to paint a drawing of a painting. This creates a few interesting questions.

Is a painting of a drawing of a painting a painting or a drawing? Is a painting of a house a house or a painting? Is it different to say say "nice smile" or "nice painting of a smile" when referring to the Mona Lisa?

Are these questions aesthetic questions, linguistic, or metaphysical? Is a representation art, symbol, or a phenomenonal state?

Just what is the house?

The second prong of Davidson's triangulation requires ascribing intent to the speaker charitably assuming rationality and logic to the speaker.

Does ChatGPT satisfy #2?

If not, must we smuggle in internal state talk to maintain the distinction between humans and AI?

The PM's comments don't suggest that working, paying taxing, or serving in the armed forces are conditions that must first be met to vote, but just states that if society already treats 16 year olds as adults for other purposes, then to be consistent, they should also be allowed to vote.

Your suggestions are more problematic because they impose potential voting tests, enfranchising only those that meet certain criteria beyond just age and citizenship. Historically, those sorts of tests have eliminated the least powerful and traditioanally most discriminated classes from the voting rolls.

The age of majority is necessarily arbitrary, and I'm fine with it being 18. I do know that those underage can serve in the military and get married and do other adult activities, but that typically requires parental consent. Whether it ought be 16 and not 18, I suppose an argument could be made either way, but 16 just sounds awfully young to vote or to serve in the military.

But how are they interpreting it? How do they respond to the things Hanover said? If you would like to respond to a specific example, then here's one: why does Genesis describe God making light for the earth before the sun? — Bob Ross

I am not Rabbi Hanover, so I'll cite to ChatGPT, which is generally forbidden here, but I offer it to provide you a glimpse perhaps into what I'm talking about:

Key Rabbinic Interpretations:
The "Or HaGanuz" (אור הגנוז) – the Hidden Light:

Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 3:6) and Talmud (Chagigah 12a) teach that the light created on the first day was a special, transcendent light.

This light allowed one to see "from one end of the world to the other."

Because of its purity and power, God hid this light after the first few days of creation and reserved it for the righteous in the World to Come.

The sun and stars, created on the fourth day, are seen as "cloaks" or physical vessels to carry light going forward.

Rashi’s View (Genesis 1:3):

Rashi, citing Midrash, holds that the initial light wasn’t the same as the sun’s light.

It was an independent illumination that allowed for the division of day and night even before the celestial bodies existed.

Philosophical and Kabbalistic Views:

Maimonides (Rambam), more rationalistic, tends to allegorize these verses and sees "light" as symbolic of form, potential, or divine emanation.

Kabbalistic sources (like the Zohar) associate the first light with divine emanation—a manifestation of God’s presence, not bound by physicality.

Literal Harmonizers:

Some rabbinic commentators, like Ibn Ezra, try to harmonize with natural observation by suggesting that “light” was created in a diffuse or unlocalized form first, and only later gathered or fixed into celestial bodies.

He suggests perhaps the sun already existed but was not yet assigned its calendrical role until day four.

Your questions (all of them), trust me, have all been answered in one form or the other over the past couple thousand years.

The goal should be equality for humans. — MoK

Like @180 Proof, this struck me as the unsupported part of your OP and I'd ask why this should be the goal.

To quote Dylan:

"A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now."

That is, an unnuanced equation of liberty or goodness generally to equality or really to any one single thing is overly simplistic, the behavior of someone who claims to know more than he knows, the result of clinging to youthful unprocessed idealism.

There is no "principle or parsimony" for reading historical texts that says: "stick to just one text." Really quite the opposite. We try to confirm things through as many traditions and texts as possible. I am not sure where Rashi got that idea though, if it might have been in an earlier tradition. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The biblical rule that provides authority to the rabbis:

Deuteronomy 17:8–11
"If a matter eludes you in judgment... you shall arise and go up to the place that the Lord your God shall choose. And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who will be in those days, and inquire, and they will declare to you the matter of judgment. And you shall do according to the word which they declare to you... You shall act according to the Torah which they teach you and according to the judgment which they say to you; you shall not deviate from the word they tell you, either right or left."

Consider also:

Exodus 24:12
“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Come up to Me on the mountain and stay there, and I will give you the tablets of stone, and the law and the commandment that I have written for their instruction.’”

The "commandment" is considered differently than "the law," which is interpreted as the oral tradition that was supposedly passed down from generation to generation, eventually being written into the Talmud. The Talmud is considered as authoritive as the Torah, and it is interpreted by the rabbis. That is, there is an entire legal system devised around these writings, largely given meaning by the rabbis.

It's for that reason that isolated readings of biblical passages have no authority because they ignore other binding writings and binding rabbincal authority. It's not terribly different from legal interpretative systems in secular society, giving priority to various documents and authority to interpreters.

Also, it is worth mentioning that these kinds of rejoinders, like Rashi’s, seem to fall prey to violating the principle of parsimony. No where in the OT does it suggest remotely that there were no children or that the beasts were shapeshifters: you’d think it would mention that, or at least not mention things which imply the contrary. — Bob Ross

Well, the story tells us in one passage there were 2 of each animal, but in another 7 pair of clean animal and 1 of unclean. It tells us the flood was 40 days but in another it was 150. The story fluctuates from calling God Yahweh and Elohim, which supports the theory that this is a tale from multiple sources weaved together and therefore not consistent. Keep in mind the physical impossibility of a rainfall flooding the entire earth and animals of all sorts from polar bears to kangaroos all converging upon the ark at the same time. And there is that whole problem of the Nephilim, the offspring of the gods and mortals which is given as the basis for the flood, further discussed in Enoch, a book that failed to make the canon. Why do we not stop and ask ourselves more about those giants of old who irritated God so much that he killed them by flood? And multiple gods having sex with humans seems so non-monotheistic. Like how do I make that consistent with the absolute monotheism of Deuteronomy?

The point being that I have no idea how to apply the rule of parsimony to this ancient and largely borrowed tale.

Then let's talk about your insistence upon looking only at the text. That isn't the Jewish tradition. They rely upon the oral tradition that was eventually written down in the Talmud, which has as much priority as the Torah for explaining all these things. That is, subtracting out the rabbinic tradition from the source material is not how the source material is supposed to be understood by those who are relying upon it.

Are you proceeding under the theory that the OT was written by God, that it is consistent, or that it can really be used without other documents for a complete understanding? The inconsistencies are not just curious problems that we must rectify, as if a diety of such complexities left them as riddles to challenge us. They are true inconsistencies, formed from too many cooks in the kitchen and preserved for posterity by an ancient editor, who's name or names was lost to time, meaning the scribe was not Moses.

In the United Kingdom, if you get 70% or above, you get a 1st class Bachelor's Degree and a Distinction level Master's Degree. — Truth Seeker

In the US, a 70% would be considered barely hanging in there, and in some programs that would be considered a D, just short of failing. If knowledge of only 70% of the material is considered stellar, then in the US, they'd curve the grade scale to make that an A because the grades reflect a particular standard as opposed to a particular percentage mastered. Also, there's grade inflation in the US so as to combat hurt feelings. We make sure everyone gets a trophy, but I digress.

What is "Cs"? — Truth Seeker

I guess it's an American expression. A "C" (as opposed to an A or B) is an average grade. You can be average and still get a degree.

I scored 73% in my exam. — Truth Seeker

Cs get degrees I always say.

In the new order, all comments regarding religion must be deferential, apparently. — Banno

Perhaps respectful as opposed to deferential. Or not, if it's a shouting match or snarkiness competition you prefer.

Sounds like a Marxist liberation from religion ideology. Controlling the masses through religion and all.

The Nietzchian response is to eliminate Christianity not because it's being used disparately to subjugate, but because it's subjugating the powerful by imposing the morality of the weak upon the strong. So, to the extent the suggestion is that the problem is that religion is being used to control the weak, there is an argument that it is being used to control the strong.

I see it as neither, but just a general observation about politics and how power is imposed upon people with a special pleading upon religion, as if the political mechanisms of religion for social control are importantly distinct from all the other ways human beings play king of the hill. Whether you control beliefs, normative behavior, or actual law, you can do that for the purposes of promoting your own interests or you can do it for the betterment of society. The track record of politicians generally is far from perfect, regardless of what ideology they espouse.

I'll go on record as calling rapists bad in all instances. The question is complicted by whether the person did the act or not. If there is a person who would rape if he could rape and not find himself in prison for a very long period of time, I can't say he's a terribly good person, but he's not done anything (yet at least). I think we need the intent and the act before we pass real judgment. Like if I said I'd give $1,000,000 to the poor if I had $10,000,000. Does that make me a good person even if I don't have $10,000,000 so the poor get nothing from me? So, is a guy bad if he would rape if he could rape without consequence? It's pretty hard to do that in our society, much like it's pretty hard to have $10,000,000.

But, sure, I'd like to know that it's not the prisons that keep people honest, but it's the people's honesty that keeps them honest.

So we are all bad. — Fire Ologist

I'd still maintain that all that can be concluded is that we all do bad things, not that we're holistically bad. Like if a murderer, rapist, liar, cheater, etc. helps an old lady across the street, he's not a good person. He's a bad person who did a good thing. The opposite holds true for good people who do bad things from time to time. If you didn't allow any bad acts, there'd be no good people, but clearly there are people we consider good.

When we say to ourselves that we know right from wrong, and then we still do what is wrong, if that is bad, then yes, we are all bad people. — Fire Ologist

He didn't require you do bad, just that you'd hypothetically do bad if you could get away with it. So, if you never committed a bad act, and in fact lived a super moral life, helping others in all instances, but you did it for the fame and failed to do bad because you knew you'd get caught, are you a bad person?

I'd also argue that even if you did commit a bad act now and then, you're not a bad person necessarily. You can do bad and still be overall good

It's as immoral to turn the other cheek to evil and allow it to destroy the innocent as it is to annihilate.without restraint to protect the innocent. Both at extremes are not virtuous, and, in practice, adherents of the OT and NT behave in moderated ways. There is as much turning cheeks and firing weapons from both sides.

The problem is in taking these stories too literally. It destroys all nuance and creates dichotomies that never really exist

Fast forward 600 years after Amalek to the Book of Esther. Haman is noted to be an Agagite, meaning a descendant of Agag, the sole survivor of the Amalek, who King Ssul failed to kill from sympathy. Samuel did kill him soon after, but the story being told is that evil. If allowed to spawn (and the rabbinical suggestion is Agag impregnated someone in that extra day) begets more evil. And, of course, Haman sought to murder all the Jews in the Esther story.

The point is this is a mythological story about responding to evil and the consequences of misplaced sympathy. I don't think a Christian should find that notion objectionable. It's the literalism that is unworkable.

Do you think that argument is "to simply declare your God the true God and all other believers wrong"? — Leontiskos

I think if you begin with an immovable preconceived notion of what God is (love, etc.) and you encounter a tradition inconsistent with that, you are left with either judgmentally or non-judgmentally responding to it. Non-judgmentally, you'd recognize it academically and consider yourself educated. Judgmentally, you'd tell the other side they were worshipping a false god.

Is there something you believe to be wrong with "option 4"? — Leontiskos

You said it's heresy. But, assuming we don't care about that, I'd say it's perfectly fine to say the OT and NT are incompatible and you've got to choose one, the other, or neither. But to declare which must be chosen because it's the correct one is simply to declare your God the true God and all other believers wrong

I don't know public declarations that you worship the true God bring much fruitful discussion.

Do you think Christians would say "Amen" to the claim that "God in the OT is not really God"? Because that's what you said above. — Leontiskos

I do think Bob has clarified. He did say he didn't think the OT God was consistent with what he knew God was. And I do see why a Christian would need to sort out what is pretty clearly a change from OT to NT if there is a commitment they are the same.

That being said, it just seems you've got to start with the obvious and admit to the literal inconsistency, and if you're going to adhere to that literalism, you're just going to have to admit to inconsistency.

If your hermeneutic leads to inconsistency, you either (1) live with the inconsistency as not overly relevant, (2) declare humility and lack of grasp of the mystery, or (3) change your hermeneutic.

I go with 1 and 3. God didn't write the Bible, so inconsistency should be expected and I choose a very non-literalist interpretation. My objection was to the suggestion of an a priori knowledge of God as being consistent with the NT and a declaration of invalidity to all other beliefs in God.

That is, an option 4 was being chosen. The OT was being rejected as invalid. That's the equivalent of me saying the simple solution is to reject the NT. That would work too.

But like so much of your posts, this is simply not true at all. Christians accept that the OT God is not God? What silliness is this? Marcionism is a very old Christian heresy. — Leontiskos

This isn't my position. It's @Bob Ross's. He said the OT description of God wasn't God, and I said if it's not, the he saying those who do accept it as God don't believe in God.

We can't just sideline these central questions and pretend that Reformed Judaism is the only possible approach. — Leontiskos

I never did. I've been consistenly open to other interpretations. I've only pointed out that if one claims to know what the true God is and then you claim others don't adhere to it, then you're just telling me your religion is right and mine wrong.

Donald Davidson's "Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation." An anthology of his essays, so small self contained chunks, but still dense. Each paragraph or so I end up with a 20 minute ChatGpt conversation. Maybe that's ironic because AI seems to understand fully composed sentences without reliance upon Davidson's theory of meaning, which seems to require belief, which AI lacks.

I am not arguing from Christianity here. In this life, if you don’t love God, then you don’t love love itself or goodness itself. If you don’t love that, then you aren’t orientated towards what is good: that hurts you and everything around you. — Bob Ross

Sounds exactly like Christianity to me.

As I noted, your position is reductivist and anthropomorphic as it relates to love, where love is God (reduced to a term) and we are to somehow love that we shouldn't kill, lie, and do immoral acts, as if that's not metaphor attempted to be made concrete.

All your beliefs are perfectly valid as Christian beliefs but your comment

It seems like God in the OT is not really God. — Bob Ross

is where you present Christianity as The truth. If one is Christian, they'll say Amen, if not, then not.

Why is this? It's because the attributes of the OT God obviously vary from the NT God. You've located nothing not known. Your follow up that the OT God isn't God is just your assertion of Christianity as the Truth. You're telling those who accept a version of God closer to the OT than the NT, they don't believe in God. Lovely.

I am absolutely disagreeing. The quote you gave serves only as a poetic line (even if Elie meant it as more). It's an emotion response, and rightly so, to a horror. — Bob Ross

He meant it as more. It's fine to disagree with him, but I don't think you can interpret it to mean you agree with one another.

God allowing human evil is necessary in order for us to have free will; and we need that to choose Him. This does allow, then, for humans to commit atrocities against each other. — Bob Ross

This of course leaves unanswered the purpose of suffering not caused by humans, like babies dying in floods. But as to human evil, you must commit to whatever free will we have to be the perfect free will to have. If you say we have the free will to commit atrocity because without it the world would be lesser, you'll have to commit to the idea the free will we are deprived of (like the choice to fly like a bird) is an acceptable limitation.

Don't get me wrong. I am a theist, but I can't arrive at an answer for the problem of evil and I can't commit to the idea that all pain is for a higher good. There is true evil that had it been stopped, even if it meant an outstretched arm and a mighty blow from above, things would have been better. The OT is filled with such divine interventions. Why was Pharaoh"s free will imposed upon (hardened his heart) but not Hitler's?

Holding that all sufferimg leads to higher good might give great respect to God, but it doesn't for the suffering.

Do you think it is better to love God because He makes you; or love God because you love God? — Bob Ross

I don't place particular significance on love with God. It's overly anthropomorphic and reductive and it de-emphasizes doing as opposed to believing.

So, to your question, I can't say I love God or God loves me in a way you'd think of it, as in an all embracing glorious way that salvages one's imperfect soul. I'll assume no one is terribly interested in my particular beliefs, but I'll just point out that the centrality of love to God is idiosyncratic to Christianity and not a necessary primary component of theism.

Firstly, even if that contradicts God’s nature, it is not a logical contradiction. Secondly, it does not incohere with God’s nature to allow evil to happen, like I noted before, because it is necessary for higher goods. — Bob Ross

"Auschwitz cannot be explained nor can it be visualized. The person who lived through it cannot explain it. The person who did not live through it will never understand it... There is no theological answer to Auschwitz, no philosophical answer — there is only the pain of the survivor.”

Elie Wiesel

Do you disagree then that there is no theological answer for Auschwitz? Is the btheological answer just pure abstracted faith, as in, there must be, but it is cloaked in impenetrable mystery? Wouldn't any attempt to describe the higher goodness of Auschwitz be an all new evil unto itself?

I'm not for abandoning God, but I've got to take theodicy problems seriously, and perhaps acknowledge a possibly imperfect world. But this view is covenantal and not Christian, and continues to wrestle with the angel so to speak. But how do you respond to Wiesel's position?

I mean what I said. — Truth Seeker

You say what you must, which is to say you mean what you say.

Everybody wants to be a cat because a cat's the only cat that knows where it's at.

It’s not a debate in Christiology about whether we should abandon interpreting the texts literally. — Bob Ross

Christian fundamentalism with its empahsis on literalism began in the 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism

The idea that there is universal agreeement among the billions of Christians as to what the text means is obvioulsy not true.

If this is true, it has no bearing on whether or not the OT portrays God in a manner that contradicts His nature; and, by extension, whether or not one would be justified in rejecting the Christian faith on those grounds.

I understand your point though: people tend to behave relative to the norms of their day. That is true of everyone. — Bob Ross

This sentence makes a different point, which I had not considered. You are trying to make a correspondence argument, asking if God is accurately portrayed in the Bible. I had not considered that. I was considering the Bible as a work that had certain usages, none of which are consistent with the way the Bible is literally written, as in, no one dashes the heads of babies on rocks.

But to the extent you know what God really is like and to the extent you don't see that as written in the Bible, then I'll defer.

Of course, I don't judge you. If I had your genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences, I would do as you do. — Truth Seeker

Totally get it. And that's why you just said what you said, not necessarily because you mean it, but just because you had to say it. If you tell me that you really do mean it, I'll not know if you do, but just know that you had to say it, and even if I accept you mean it, I'll know at some level that I accepted it becasue I had to. But of course all this will only happen if it had to, just like the pool ball is going to go where ever it has to now that the cue ball has been struck. It's just a matter of bouncing around now. Or maybe not. Maybe that's the analogy I had to say and I only really think it means what I said because I have to.

What do you guys think? — Bob Ross

That your analysis of the text doesn't reflect the practice of those who rely upon it.

You can certainly say the text says X and X is immoral, but it's a different matter to say that the text says X and therefore those who rely upon the text are immoral unless those who so rely apply the text as you've interpreted it.

This is the argument that appears here every few months if not more often. A literalist interpretation is used to show the horrors and uselessness of the text, and then it is pointed out that not everyone accepts these literal interpretations and not everyone who relies on the Bible relies solely on the Bible for all direction. Some think that makes sense, but others keep resisting. There are two plain issues: (1) the Bible says what it literally says, and (2) the various religious interpret their texts and practice their religions as they do. You may believe there is no way to make those two compatible. Others disagree. Regardless though, exceedingly few religions do (2) as (1) says.

Those who practice according to the Old Testamant, those who practice according to the New Testament, and those who rely upon no text at all for some reason pretty much lives their lives the same morally. That is something worth considering.

The murderer did not freely choose to become a murderer.
The healer did not freely choose to become a healer. — Truth Seeker

I did not choose to demand accountability for action. I did not choose to demand compliance to morality and law.
I did not choose to condemn evil and promote the good.

So please dear friend, do not judge me and please show me compassion when I hire more police officers, build more jails, and empower more prosecutors and judges to assure safety to the citizens.

Not only do I ignore your plea for universal compassion, but it inspires in me a greater sense of urgency to judge right from wrong because I see how far we have fallen.

Show me your compassion and let me do as I must, and so with each murderer I imprison, cheer for me, knowing you're allowing me to live out my nature.

So instead of waiting for the long haul what you call "the organic way," deliberate steps are taken in school curricula, in the racial inclusiveness and gender alternatives in mass media, and so on. I see this as simply an inevitable part of a society's self conscious evolution: the more reflective we become, the more we see need for change, and in politics especially, this is all about language. — Astrophel

The distinction is between discriptive language and prescriptive, where we consider it pedantic to require, for example, that no sentence end in a preposition. We also consider it inappropriate to condemn forms of speech that don't comport to standardizations, as in holding African American or Appalachian American dialects in lower regard because of their variations. The liberal tradition applied in those situations demands descriptive language methods for language evolution.

But then you want to suggest that prescriptive language rules apply for ethical and sociological purposes when it comes to the application of ethical propositions you agree with. That is, to demand Victorian era preposition rules isn't worth maintaining because it no longer meets any sociological goal, but to demand pronoun use meet certain sociological criteria is perfectly acceptable because it does meet sociological goals.

This is to say we either admit that prescriptive linguistics is proper and we stop condemning it as a practice wholesale, or we just say the purpose of language is political and proper speak should be the goal of those who can bring about such change. If that is the position you take, then you can't complain when the left or the right attempts to use schools and media to engage in culture wars, or even to condemn certain forms of speech not mainstream, but you just accept that as the proper course of events. That is, you position would be that language ought be designated by decree and not by use as long as that decree advances whatever the writer of the decree desires.

Had this kind of patience prevailed in the sixties, the civil rights movement would never have happened. — Astrophel

We're talking about linguistics, not about the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was obviously much needed change. That I balk at a particular language use theory your advancing doesn't suggest I think the end of discrimination was not warranted. I'd also say that the law changed as the result of social evolution, not through some sudden decree, and it did require great patience. That law was passed 100 years after the Civil War.

"Impose ontological change that does not comport"...you sound like Heidegger, putting the "correspondence theories of truth" aside. True, Heidegger had a historical view of the self and one's culture and language, and this view suggests nationalistic pride and a fear of cultural debasement. — Astrophel

No, the reference was specific to Davidson, requiring truth as an anchor to meaning in language, as opposed to Wittgenstein.

Anyway, I think you are siding here with Heidegger, and Jordan Peterson (who read Heidegger), and others who fear change. — Astrophel

That's not at all what I'm getting at. It has nothing to do with fear of change. It has to do with how we use language. You're using it here as a tool for social change, which could I suppose be the language game you're wanting to play, but it's not one I'd subscribe to. But on the other account, I take the approach that meaning has to be tied to some degree to reality, which isn't a particularly conservative or liberal view and it's one I'm attributing to Davidson. It's just a view taken to make sense out of how we speak.

I don't think anyone is explicitly policing language, but implicitly, yes. We all are policing ourselves. Are we not already policed by language? Prior to the neologism "policial correctness," was their not an established body of rules, subtle and connotative, social mores, etc., that came down hard upon you if you stepped out of line? Never referred to this as being "policed" then; indeed, "language police" is itself a neologism conceived by the right in an attempt to, as you say, "demand compliance among the unwilling." There is something to be annoyed with. — Astrophel

As I've noted above, the policing of language from a pedantic point of view has existed for a long time, but certainly not from the beginnings of language. If you're blurring the distinction between the policing of prepositions at the end of sentences and policing for social change, then you're buying into my objection above, which is that we can't priortize a descriptive linguistic theory over prescriptive ones just when it suit our purposes. This is the controversial part of my post by the way, not the other stuff.

That about cats and dogs: I think you are talking about something like, say, the calling of firemen, fire fighters, because we want to be inclusive of women in the profession. And then, sending dainty women out to actually fight fires, and is absurd. Hmmm. Not so dainty, the ones wanting to do this. — Astrophel

No, that's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if you call a cat a dog it doesn't undergo ontological change. It just changes the name. For that reason, you don't start treating the cat like a dog just because it has now assumed that name.

This is rather the attempt on the right to pretend these are major issues, so they can talk about them for hours in derogatory ways on talks shows. — Astrophel

This comment is an aside, trying to turn this conversation into what you think are bad faith dealings on the right. Whether it's true or not is irrelevant to this discussion.

Of course, it IS the left that creates these new conversations, because the left thinks, and generates analytical terminology, and it is the right (putting aside the issue of the binary nature of talk about left and right for now) that is forced to respond, albeit negatively and derisively, and in doing so, encourage their entrenchment. — Astrophel

The problem with forced linguistic change for political aims is at least two-fold: (1) it violates the typical organic way language evolves through use and instead prescribes what words are to mean, and (2) it ignores equivocation fallacies and tries to impose ontolological change that does not comport with correspondence theories of truth.

The first is simply annoying because it creates language police and demands compliance among the unwilling. The second presents absurd results. It's one thing to demand that cats be called dogs because "cat" might be now thought of as a derogatory term, but an entirely other matter to then suggest that the cats you now call dogs might be used to guard your home because we now call them dogs and that's what we all know dogs do.

Tying meaning to use is Wittgensteinian and tying it to truth Davidsonian, which means this position can't just be waved off as conservative reactionism just because it offers a result that isn't liberally conforming..

@Baden

This essay amounts to a critique of a consumerist culture that is driven by technology and rooted in capitalism. The proximate goal is not to suggest alternative political systems but to offer conceptual tools to help protect free subjectivity as a creative and self-creating force through presenting in a brief introductory way a theory concerning its cultural situatedness. — Moliere

Isn't this the Frankfurt school response, meaning we should impose ways to disrupt the capitalist takeover of technology for its malevolent purposes as opposed to traditional Marxists who would advocate removal of technology from private ownership and placing it back into the hands of the citizens?

Meaning is use [11] because use manifests this intelligibility, expressing in communicative acts the relation between an individual's neurological patternings of understandings of a concept and the social patternings of brains that share understandings of the concept. The behavioral expressions of this web of interwoven patterns, this web of webbed nodes, simultaneously express and define meaning because they represent social instantiations of this web and—in successful communication—reinforce its structure in accordance with those instantiations. This interdependence makes language both stable and mutable. Stable in that webs of linguistic meaning are self-reinforcing through communicative acts, but mutable in that the boundaries of what is considered successful communication are not absolutely fixed but depend on social and human contexts that are changeable. So, we cannot fully pin down or exhaust the meaning of a word, for example, through a dictionary defnition; there is always an excess to meaning that can expand or redirect itself. The fact that words change meaning over time, sometimes very quickly, is testament to this. — Moliere

This feels like you're trying to ulitmately ground meaning not just in use but in some internal meaning within the speaker, which would I'd submit goes beyond classic Wittgensteinian thought. You're treading in the silent area and starting to sound social sciencey.

The latter, toxic, mode of action of social life seems more and more apparent in contemporary technologically driven cultures occurring through, for example:

1. The bureaucratization of cognition (the capturing of cognitive capacity for uncreative calculative labour limited to reproducing systemic functionality)
2. (Negative) exteriorization / algorithmic outsourcing (the general stultifying of mental development through the replacement of cognitive tasks by algorithmic processes)
3. Semantic flattening (the dulling and standardization of language use towards reflexive repetition of codes of systemic reproduction)
4. Behavioural conditioning (the limiting of imaginative capacity and creative potential by the channeling of behaviour into operationally defined grooves)

When these processes dominate society, we fall into what Stiegler refers to as a “proletarianization” of mind, a general mindset unaware and / or unwilling to potentialize itself except as a function of the system in which it partakes, a society of individuals who cannot see themselves beyond how society sees them and define themselves limitedly as such [9]. Part of addressing that problem, of course, is promoting knowledge of the problem as a means to stimulate thought and action, and in a society that seems to be becoming ever more reflexive, encouraging reflection seems crucial. Of course, the weapon of the theorist in this effort is the theory itself, an idea through which we will now take a detour. — Moliere

You point here to an absolute free will that submits to control, perhaps as the result of over-whelming influence or even laziness, but your theory requires a spirit that ultimately can resist if it wants. I say this to point out you're referencing what appears to be an inpenetrable soul, set aside to do battle if it wants (again an all powerful Will) and a clear assessment that virtue lies in its resistence, perhaps it's its highest purpose, to remain true to itself.

A theory as EKM then is an epistemic protective that aims to catalyze active reflection against passive reflexivity. — Moliere

Your EKM sounds like time set aside to comtemplate your higher purpose, reserved for study of those things that most enhance your humanity, removed from the mechanistic daily activities that define the better part of our lives. Hopefully to annoy you, I'll point out you've just arrived at a rule that sounds like we should set aside a special day and keep it holy.

The freedom to say “no” to economic imperatives is concomitantly marginalized along with anyone who dares exercise it. Further, while the full spectrum of human agency seems to offer the mutative and creative perturbations in societies that may allow for advance, there is no ironclad reason to think technocapitalism cannot as previously mentioned, evolve towards an increasingly limited form of freedom and, by extension, subjectivity. — Moliere

But there's every reason to think it cannot limit freedom because you've posited in your theory an absolute ability to say "no" that lurks within us. If it weren't there, your post would be just a prophecy of doom, but you offer a solution (the EKM), which means your position is optimistic, stating that humanity has the means to prevail at every turn. It's just a matter of calling attention to the ability to say "no."

My general thought is that yours is an accurate concern from both the right and the left, and you offer a defense to this overwhelming impact of negative cultural influences (which you identify generally as "capitalism") which is to remember you are a human being with choice with a much higher purpose than submission to the will of the financially ambitious. But I think it goes well beyond captialism. It's most values you see displayed on TikTok. Our defense is to remember our higher calling. You identify that from the left as revealed through the humanities. The right is essentially saying the same thing just different words.

This is the way I look at being non-binary in anything. It is a defiance of categorical conformity, of the authority of a simple designation that attempts to reduce complexity to thoughtless complicity. — Astrophel

Someone who self-identifies as non-binary is strongly left with regard to whatever trait he's describing. That is the connotation of that word. If you simply mean you're politically independent or unaffiliated, then using those terms will eliminate the confusion you're creating by borrowing a term from gender orientation and sexual preference discussions that is used almost exclusively by those to the far left.

I like it because it alerts us to the openness of thinking. — Astrophel

One who sincerely identifies as politically non-binary doesn't alert me to any uncertainty as to his social views, as if that person bounces between trans rights advocacy and opposition to gay marriage. "Non-binary" expresses a worldview, which included within it is the self perception that one is more open to a multitude of political views than their opponents, which you have expressed. I'd submit though your position is probably better described as being more open to challenges to the status quo, but that necessarily limits the sorts of views you would be open to. It's not a difference in open mindedness. It's a difference in values, particularly as to how you might weigh the value of promoting merit versus pluralistic participation.