To make a case against it you'd have to engage with why living would be preferable when it's not a requirement to be alive. — Darkneos

I honestly don't understand what you're after, though. "Preferable"? So I consider suicide: (a) Do I prefer to continue living, or (b) do I prefer to die? That's a choice. "Requirement"? Someone or something requires me to live. Who? What? How does that impact the choice I'm about to make (as soon as I stop dithering)? Or would you like some convincing philosophical position that makes the choice moot?

The two poles aren't equal, here. It's not a choice between to equally attainable options, where you can also just walk away. Vanilla or chocolate ice cream? Meh, I want strawberry. Maybe next time. If one wonders whether one wants to die or not, one is necessarily alive. You don't need to make a decision to go on living: that's the default state. When I was suicidal, I was constantly dithering until I was no longer suicidal. I never made a choice, so I still live. If I'd made the choice to go on living, that would, presumably, have changed the way I went on with my life.

In real life situations, rather than being between life and death, the choice is usually between taking different sorts of action: there are quite a few ways to go out, and there are quite a few ways to go on. A lot of the time, people may have decided to kill themselves, but they don't go through with it because they can't find a good method (success-rate too low, too painful, leaves too much of a mess for others to clean up...). Some people might kill themselves because there's an easy method available (e.g. the gun in Daddy's locker), and because the way forward has no visible path. People don't pick between life and death in a cosmological slot machine. They decide act: one way or another. (Or, as in my case, make no choice at all.) It's a rare philosophical suicide who chooses between life and death on some underlying requirement.

That doesn't mean that there's no discussion here; it just means that, because over the course of my life, I've read a lot about suicide for personal reasons, I tend to have my head filled with the practicals. So what could a requirement for life even be in principle? The way I see it living things live and eventually die. Any choice occurs during that stretch of time. "To live" is thus not a choice. The child that wasn't born doesn't get to choose life. The child that does get born, doesn't get a say either. So the requirement must somehow be ex post facto: it's a requirement for the living to continue living. And they do anyway: until they die. So it's not so much a requirement to continue living (which is automatic), but a proscription: don't take actions that shorten your life. But then we're not quite with suicide yet. See, that can apply to any risk taking behaviour, too: don't smoke, don't be a fire fighter etc. So maybe it's "Don't set death as your goal?"

But if it's about goal setting, what do I make of this line from your OP:

Desire for pleasures only applies if you are alive, if you die there is no need for any of that. Same with love, friendship, food, money, etc. — Darkneos

Pleasure and Death are alternative goals you can set. As you say, they're mutually exclusive. What you're saying sounds to me like "Given that I'm dead, why should I set as a goal any of those things that can no longer matter to me?" But this makes no sort of sense to me: first, you can't set any goals once you're dead. Second, once you're dead that-which-matters-to-you is n/a. You're gone. It's a category error. It's not that things no longer matter to you; it's that mattering has ceased.

This is a long and maybe pointless post, but I'm having trouble pinning down a perspective from which it makes sense to tackle your question. I hope you understand my troubles otherwise we're bound to talk past each other.

(Besides this, there's a secondary question I have: what if there's a requirement for life, but I don't like that requirement and kill myself anyway? But that's a different post.)

I'm going to question what a "reason for living" even is to begin with. I was suicidal from, roughly, 12 years of age to... maybe 16 years of age, and I was quite vulnerable to a relapse for at least a decade more, I'd say. It's hard to tell. I'm over 50 now, and memory isn't... reliable?

I've never been looking for a "reason to live," though. What I was looking for was... determination. Either way: determination to get myself in order, or determination to end it. I think if I'd found determination, I wouldn't be here today. Being a wimp saved my life, for whatever that's worth. I grew out out the suicidal mindset, but the language stayed with me. I still think every now and then, I should just end it. But I've lived through wanting to be dead, so when it comes up now (I don't say this out loud to any one), I'm quite confident that I don't mean it. Wanting to die just feels different.

Something I've often wondered, though, is this: what if I'd really found "determination"? What would I have done? Would I have killed myself, or would have gotten my act together? It's possible, for example, that if I had been the person who could reach the determination to kill myself, might I have been a person who didn't want to kill himself? I'm quite content to never find out, because quite frankly I don't want to go through something like that ever again.

I don't have a "reason to live", though. And I don't feel like I need one. I find that life is... naturally persistent. I've been living all my life, and I'll be living until one day I won't be living anymore, which is a stretch of time only available as abstract protection - I may call it death, but since it's not part of my life it's not a state I'll ever have to contend with. Dying though... Dying is part of life, and a lot of the ways to go are unpleasant. Unless you die really quickly, or just drift off while asleep you'll have to contend with dying. Dying is far more frightening than being dead, to be honest.

So I just muddle through from day to day, enjoy what I can, and take on the rest as it comes. Life is value neutral, though it acquires secondary value - as a perceived binary switch - through the balance of things enjoyable and not. You can switch it all off, but if you do you're dead, and the question of whether it was worth it or not won't apply anymore. While I'm here, I might as well make the best of it, no? Won't always succeed, but, well... that's life. Because I used to be sucidal, and because the language never really left me, though, I have to stay vigilant. You see, a good internal "life sucks" can be quite cathartic, but say it just once too often, and it becomes this... habit, and it takes over the way you think. That's quite frightening. From someone who's been through it: life spent brooding about wanting to die is far more scary than death can ever be. It's a state of mind I don't ever want back.

But at the same time, all this talk about "love", or "life is good"... it all feels hollow and unreal to this day. It's ineffective. At the same time, though, some of it is demonstrably true.

As long as you think only of yourself, you will keep coming back to the same miserable thoughts again and again. — unenlightened

Oh, yes, have I ever been through this. Around ten(?) years ago, I remember saying that not much worked when I was in deep, but what ultimately helped me was "doing things and watching people". That's how I phrased it, and it got a laugh out of who I think might have been a suicidal teen. It's really simple. In theory that is. Your wordview's quite a prison; tailored to keep you in.

So if people ask for a reason to live, what is it they ask for? A surefire plan to go through life without suffering? A teleological end so that your live will have had meaning once it's gone? A pot of gold at the end of a rainbow you can chase even if you know it's not there?

To me, looking for a reason to live sounds like trap to keep brooding. Life is value-neutral. Without it, you have nothing - which is sometimes good and sometimes bad, and when it's gone, it's neither good nor bad, because value has gone out with it. (Er... yes, we have social effects that outlast us and cast tendrils back in time to influence what we do while we can still do things, but my post's too long as it is.)

So, yeah, what helped to get back into the groove was "doing things and watching people", as a younger, wiser me has put it. Life won't necessarily get better, but the bad things get easier to bear, and the good things get easier to enjoy. The latter I found especially valuable.

Not easy, though. Not easy at all. A song that gets it, but promises too much:

I don't know that I'm caught up in a stigmatisation of telling. Or that I agree with a default of showing. — Amity

This I find difficult to talk about. First, I did quote what you literally said, but the "you" in the line was supposed to be the generalised you (like "one says"). It's so difficult, because the phrase means different things to different people, and it's not even always clear how the rhetoric relates to the praxis of writing.

There's the rhetoric with its personal impact and its social impact, and then there's the personal meaning of the phrase, which is part of the personal impact but not all of it; there's what the writer actually does, which again relates to both the personal meaning and the personal impact of the phrase, but the show-don't-tell part of writing isn't a thing on its own. Whether you're "showing" or "telling" in a particular section of text depends on how you interpret those terms (part of the personal meaning of the phrase). This then means that the personal meaning of the phrase goes into the praxis potentially twice, once as a generative rule and once as a corrective rule. And it's not clear that the generative rule and corrective rule are the same, even though the phrase of origin is definitely the same.

Then, beyond that, none of these rules are meant to be absolute. Nobody says that. They're meant to be rules of thumb. So figuring out whether an author who favours "show don't tell," in his discourse about writing also favours it while writing isn't easy - you first have to figure out what the line means to the writer, and then you have to figure out how many exceptions are too many.

None of that would matter much. What really matters in the end is the text. But then there's the social level: no matter what the rule means to any specific writer, the phrasings are socially "out there". "Show, don't tell," is a phrase you can google. And the discussions around the phrase cover various predictable meanings. And the time spent on figuring out what this vague line means could be spent writing and developing an intution for what to do (though some people find that hard to do without guidance and thus seek out rules...)

Now once the phrase is out in the open, people who don't yet have an understanding of the line will encounter and hear it, and what they hear is a sentence of "do this, don't do that". So when they approach the problem of what to do when writing they do so with that particular topic framed as one thing to do, and one thing not to do. They'll eventually figure out that something you do have to tell (i.e. the thing you should not do according to the phrasing), but by that time, showing is already the default. You're usually showing, but somtimes you have to tell. However, that's a judgement that doesn't fit all styles equally. To top it off, some people are natural showers (their "native style" tend towards that), but they might still worry they tell too much.

So:

I could have phrased it better and I could have expanded...
I was trying to say that both were needed. — Amity

Yes, but there's a way to talk about this we all participate in. Me, too. I sort-of vaguely half reject the rule, but that's also participating in the lingo. When I reject the rule, it's no clearer what about I reject than what it is that others like about. One thing you should know about me is that I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to these righting rules. That doesn't mean I disagree with everything proponents of the rule say, or that I think you can't write well while keeping that rule in mind, or... or... or... If I go online to talk about writing, I'll always go into rule-blaster mode - and it'll never quite come across how I want to (if I even know how I want to come across). I've built up a lot of frustration that way, and that's why I've been bowing out of writing forums.

A message-board experience in creative writing sounds like my idea of hell. I guess some forums are more helpful than others. — Amity

Oh, it was lots of fun. I'm more of a short story writer, but I did finish a very rough draft of novel, which I doubt I'd have finished on my own. I had some excellent feedback.

Hmm. I'll have to take your word for that. — Amity

Nah, don't take my word for it. That's precisely the kind of nonsense I catch myself saying when I go into rant mode. Here's again what I wrote: "it's just that people suddenly started put the same few stock movements in place of the same few stock emotions." This is mostly based on a subjective impression by a biased mind, and it's now all around a decade ago, so on top of that it's a memory. First, I'd edit out the "suddenly". I'm fairly certain nothing about it was sudden. Second the body-movement/stock-emotions part is more of an excerpt example (to be sure, I could probably find examples, but that doesn't say anything). See, when talking about why I don't like those rules, I find myself doing the same sort of thing I don't like about the rhetoric that surrounds them. I'm vague, I'm inaccurate, I make mistakes (I don't think I made one in this post, so no example for the time being), and so on. I demonstrably do know a lot about writing, but I'm hardly the only one, and on a message board I tend not to be as careful as I should be. I end up saying stuff that I find embarrassing (like that line, for example). So, no, don't take my word for it. Never take my word for it.

So, a quick way to connect and evoke. A short-hand without the need for detailed explanations.
Handy, especially when words are limited as in a micro/mini story.

The repetitive use of 'Turned his/her head' isn't the same kind of short-cut. It's just unimaginative. — Amity

To be sure, I called "putting the same few body movements in place of the same few stock emotions" a cultural-shorthand. This what we're comparing to "turned his/her head". The head-turning I'd call just a bad habit. It's between me and my writing. But if you see many people make the same type of edits for a variety of texts, when different texts would need different approaches, that's a different problem. Do they edit their own texts the same way? Is this sort of behaviour triggered by the message board environment? I don't know any of that, so I can't classify it on a personal level. I don't know if it's even a habit, and if so, if it's a writing habit, an editing habit, a critiquing habit, all of it? Whatever it is on the personal level, it's a cultural shorthand on the social level.

So the differences: Mine: personal level, about writing. "Theirs": social level, about critiquing (and sometimes editing). And in terms of judgement: Mine: flag for a re-write. "Theirs": Do it like this to improve your text.

In the process of laying out this difference, I've noticed another aspect about my line above that's nonsense: "same body movements for the same stock emotions" is not only judgemental, it unintentionally judging the writing I meant to defend (the "stock emotions" are what occur in the original writing, as opposed to the "body movements" which occur in the edit). Really, it's good not to trust me too much.

Goodness. That is quite an obstacle for anyone, never mind a creative writer. I can't imagine how difficult that must be. Having no inner eye means not being able to visualise. This is key to imagination and perhaps links to empathy? — Amity

It's not that bad. In fact, for most of my life, I never noticed that I didn't have an inner eye. I thought when people talked about that it was more of a metaphor than it actually seems to be. I can visualise to a minimal degree: if I close my eyes and concentrate very hard I can create a micro-second flash of an image. Research about aphantasia indicates that the "inner eye" can be trained. It's not particularly difficult to engage in creative writing with aphantasia. In descriptions, I tend to focus on a few key properties when writing; extended descriptions in fiction I read tend to bore me if they exceed my capacity for detail-retention. I sort of space out, then. If I want to see stunning scenery, for example, narrative is never going to cut it for me; I prefer the visual arts - where I actually have something to look at. I used to just put it down to taste - which it still might be, who knows?

Why did you stop creative writing? Don't you miss it? Have you considered taking part in TPF's Literary Activity - either as a writer or reader, both? — Amity

I stopped creative writing when I got a job I didn't particularly like. I just felt too drained to actually write. I don't particularly miss it. I figure I'll pick it up again when I retire. I've still occasionally generated story ideas, for example. I just don't feel like actually writing. Even when I was writing, I usually didn't share what I was writing (and what I shared on writing forums was usually written specifically for community activities). I've considered taking part in the Literary Activity here, but I think participation would overwhelm me - too much time and energy (I mean, just look at the size of this post, and it's not even about a particular piece of writing). Also, one thing I've noticed is that I don't like reading fiction on a computer screen. No problem with academic articles, blog posts, forum posts etc. No problem with poetry. But fiction? For some reason it doesn't quite work for me, on a screen. Weird.

I read that Chekhov is the culprit who inspired the concept of 'Show, don't tell'.
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." — Amity

I've heard that. It's such a beautiful way to put it. It's so very much like Chekhov that the reflecting glass is broken. I bought a book of his short stories which I really enjoyed. A lot of those rules go back to something authors said. I find those examples really interesting in that sort of context.

Maybe "show don't tell" is more like "tell the effects, not the fact." For example, instead of saying it was a dark and stormy night you describe indistinct shadowy movements, the trees swaying, rain pounding on the conservatory roof, and a door being blown open. — Jamal

Yes, and all that description takes time, which means you'll get into the meat of the story later. Or maybe the style's more exposition heavy (e.g. Marquez)? Can you lead in with that sentence, if you still give all those description afterwards? On message boards, blogs, etc. these "rules" tend to mean sort-of-but-not-quite the same thing. Nearly everything you can dislike has a name:

Exposition? Falls under "Show, don't tell," for sure, but more specifically "info-dump". Conveying information through unnatural dialogue? Google "As you know, Bob" (the Bob is optional, but if a name's there that's usually the one). And so on... Actually, the admonition against As-you-know-Bob dialogue is one of the few I've heard I find very hard to dismiss: it's very specific, and exceptions would have to be very deliberately crafted (I'm sure they exist).

The 'show don't tell' - has a point but, of course, some telling is necessary. — Amity

"Show, don't tell," is one piece of advice that's... vague. The problem is, since you're in a medium that almost always works with text, the only way to really show something is to tell about something else, so the author might think they're showing, but the reader might be reading one abstraction-level down, and thus read it as telling. So what does that piece of advice mean, in the end?

There's an intuitive space that's almost always telling, and one that's almost always showing, but there's a lot of overlap in the middle. Often, there's no clear difference between showing telling. For example, a simple line like "He picked up the phone," omits a lot of details, and whether you get a showy or telly feeling from it depends on what's going on in the scene, and how important the event is. But that's not always in the text; it can be in the reader-side interpretation. (Of course, a single line occurs in a wider text, and it's that wider text that's showy or telly, and not the line alone. I'm just simplifying because it's easier to make a point.)

The basic question here is (a) when do people interpret details that are in the text vs. (b) when do people imagine details that are not in the text. And what do you, as the author, want? This, too, ties in with point of view in some narrative context: for example, a telly line like "this made him very angry," might be a misinterpretion of unrevealed details by an unreliable narrator.

The problem with standard rules is that they often guide attention in a rather limiting way. When you edit with a rule mindset, there's a danger that you lose the big picture. "Show, don't tell," in my message-board experience, discourages lines like "this made him very angry," and would render situations in which this would work as exceptions. And beginning writers "must know the rules before they can break them."

So at the moment you say "The 'show don't tell' - has a point but, of course, some telling is necessary." you're already caught up in a rhetoric that stigmatizes telling and sets showing as the default, when what you really need is an understanding of how many details to use and when. It's not clear whether "show, don't tell," is helpful or harmful. That depends on (a) how you learn to interpret the line, and (b) what sort of style your intuitive voice tends towards.

For example, when I was still writing, I noticed that my characters were "turning their heads" a lot when something caught their attention. All of them. When I wrote "turned his/her head", that was usually me putting in a short cut. It's a physical detail, a sort of behavior-icon for some recurring type of events. It's not only repetitive, it's also not taking into account the character's body language. So I have this private little rule that says "beware of swivel-head syndrome." So... should I peddle this rule? Should I just assume that many people share the same problem? Should I stigmatize head-turning?

Not really, no. It's a problem I have. I can't just put it out there. However, "swivel-head syndrome" is, as an unintended consequence, encouraged by "show, don't tell," as a rule. It doesn't have to be, but that's been my message-board impression. Don't tell me something caught their attention, show them turn their heads. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Again, it's not an inevitable consequence of the rule; it's just that people suddenly started put the same few stock movements in place of the same few stock emotions. Like a cultural short hand.

So noticing this trend, I could abstract from my "swivel-head syndrome" personal rule, and say something like "Know the body language of your characters!" But if that caught on (I doubt it would; it doesn't tell you what to do), it would likely be distributed as a slogan, and it's context would eventually be lost, and it would create its own set of problems.

(Aside: One of the reason "know the body-language of your characters!" is useful for me is because I have aphantasia. I have no inner eye. I can't see my characters at all, and often don't even know what they look like until some setting interaction fixes a trait. So making up random body-language in keeping with their personality helps me add some visual touches to stories. My swivel-head syndrome is a side-effect of getting lazy in that process. People with a vivid inner eye are almost certainly not going to profit from that rule, given that they probably just need to visually imagine their characters. It's very involved.)

Care to say more? — Amity

Sure, but let me address the following first:

A bit harsh, no? We can all be prick-ish and think we're right. Difficult to let go of own ideas/beliefs when challenged. But wonderful to be surprised by an 'Aha!' moment when reading or listening. — Amity

A bit harsh? Yes and no. It's not that I thought that's how I came across to others. Sometimes maybe, but they can counter; that's fine with me. My problem was that the more I got embroiled in arguments, the more I found myself saying things that... I didn't really mean. I did mean them to some extent, but the matters-of-fact here are... difficult, and the moment you put something into words, you can think of a few ways that could be wrong, and so on and so forth. It became exhausting to argue a position more vehemently than you mean to, but at the same time feeling that if you let go the rebound of the opposing position would smash your right into a wall. In the end, I figured what I have to say isn't all that important, since my core point that underlies all the creative writing stuff is that people have to find their own way. I just retreated.

As for the "chaos" comment, that sort of follows from what I just said: people need to find their own way. Writing seminars can certainly be part of that, but I find that... a lot of the advice I've come to expect works against that. There are those well-meant slogans: "Show, don't tell", "Don't end a sentence with a preposition," "Avoid the passive voice, adverbs, etc.", "a protagonist needs a goal"...

Taken all together these sort of rules converge on a style. More then once I saw authors put up their writing for criticism, get a few predictable remarks (e.g. there are too many adverbs), then edit the excerpt, post it again, and then get better responses. I once asked one of those writers which version they personally liked better; they said they liked the new one better, though they might just be in the high of the moment. The thing is this: I almost always liked the original version better. The edited version might be smoother, but usually they lost voice. What remained is that uni-voice style. Some authors naturally fit into that style (I think David Mitchell of Cloud Atlas is a good example), so it's not that the style can't produce a good voice. I'm not against that style. The thing is, though, that in direct comparison there's something to an authors original voice that gets lost when it's edited down to an industry standard.

Another anecdote: When defending adverbs, my favourite example comes from the final paragraph of James Joyce's short story "The Dead". It's just a beautiful use of adverbs, and it contains sentence structures that would not be possible without adverbs. One time, though, I quoted what I though was an ingenious example of use of adverbs in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. The reply I got was that this was unreadable. Fine. I'm not going to argue against someone's taste. I loved the section, someone else did not. I moved on. Years later, though, I read an interview with Rushdie where he basically said something along the lines of having used to many adverbs in his earlier fiction. I wasn't sure that included Midnight's Children, though it's likely. The book is full of adverbs. Thing is, I really liked the style, and here the author himself aligns himself with the... prevailing tend.

To be sure, it's not a loss. Rushdie's later books are still fun to read, and the older books won't go away. But it's sort of exasperating. It's like there's a set of industry standards slowly forming... taste. It's like these writing rules are slowly becoming true through... taste formation?

And now go back up to the introductory paragraph: I don't actually think any think any of this is true. Real life is more complex, and I think I'm being melodramatic. One other thing that changed, for example, is that with the rise of Amazon, it's become harder to find the books I'd like to read in bookshops, and I don't buy stuff online. So I'm sort of out of touch. For all those reasons, I don't really want to be believed.

But at the same time, these anecdotes really happened. I've seen rough but interesting texts polished into a smeblence of professionality, but losing that initial spark in the progress. More often than I ever wanted to, I've seen texts being polished until they're utterly dull. If I were a slush-pile reader, I probably wouldn't have accepted the original versions, but I'd have remembered them. The edited version I'd have passed over without a second thought. So now, when I read a potentially interesting book that's ultimately not very memorable I wonder if that happened here, too; if somewhere hidden in this version is an interesting original that's been edited out. See, it's entirely possible, likely even, that other people (including the author) really love the result. It's possible that that's just how they write, and that I just don't get it. That would be too bad for me, but all in all it would be all right. However, if there's really an original version out there which - for all its flaws - I'd have liked better - than that'd make me a little sad.

I agree that there is overlap. However, I don't think that short stories are 'encouraged to spin out of control'. TPF's Literary Activity ( previously Short Story Competition) is a case in point. The latest: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15585/literary-activity-dec-2024/p1 — Amity

Oh my, this was six years ago? I don't remember this post at all, and I had to go back to read this thread for a while to see why I was saying what I was saying and what I could have meant by it. So it was about creativity in academic writing?

I'm quite fond of chaos in literature, and I find that - since I came online in early 2000s - a certain brand of "creative writing" seminar style has taken over writing forums, so that I grew bored of them and abandoned them. I was also a bit of a know-it-all and a prick back then; didn't much like my way of communicating any more...

Basically, I think my main point was that in writing short stories you're allowed to let your mind wander even if it doesn't go along with your original impetus of writing the story. The same process ruins a philosophical thought experiment.

It amuses me to see that, back then, I'd only written 50 posts! — Amity

Interestingly, I still only have 244 posts (including this one). I'm not the most proficient poster, it seems.

Why assume that the thinking thing , and all its activities, is the most important and most characteristic part of being a subject? — J

One of the reasons I tend to stay out of cogito-ergo-sum threads is that I never read Descartes and am only passingly familiar with it. I find the topic interesting, though, and this line is a good lead in for a problem I've always had with the response to this line.

You see, I came across this line in my childhood. I already knew enough Latin to parse the line, so I must have been between twelve and fourteen, not quite a teen yet. And for a long while this has been (a) intuitive, (b) banal, and (c) rhetorically witty. I quite liked the line. Only later did I learn that my intuition may not have aligned with Descarte's, and it certainly didn't align with a lot of other people's.

So on to your quote: according to my intuition, the thinking thing's importance is contextual. While I doubt (a form of cogitating), I can't doubt that I doubt. It's like a plug. A moment of certainty. As soon as I pull back only slightly, out comes the plug and life flows back in. Which is why "thinking thing" is a rhetorical stand-in. At the moment of "cogito-ergo-sum" you're certain of your existence, but nothing else. It's a holiday from doubting, but little else. Nothing can follow from it, since at that point no other interest can be cogitated about. You gained certainty at the expense of your worldview. No meaning is left. Cogito-ergo-sum is a dead end. You can pull back, but you can't take your certainty with you. But you, the radical doubter, have a place of rest. However the you-that-needs-such-rest only exists by virtue of its connection to a world full of doubt, and you take back that feeling and rationalise it. For example:

The Cogito points to the indubitability of the disunity part. — frank

Pulled back too far, but if that's the way you make sense of it...

What does this mean? Is it unwarranted to conclude that he is a thing that thinks? Isn't thinking essential to being human? — Fooloso4

Pulled back too far, but if that's the way you make sense of it...

And so on. (There are many more examples in this thread, I just picked two from the page I'm currently on.)

I did come across a take on Descartes that resonated with my intuition once, but I forget what it was (a vague memory of "you can be certain you have a toothache, but not that you have teeth"). I want to say it's Ortega y Gasset, but I really am not sure. In any case, the collapsing of a world-view into the cogito and the reconstruction of the world-view in daily praxis feels quite compatible with phenomenology as I understand (which is not as far as some others on this board - I'm not a well-read philosopher).

Not sure I made much sense here, given that I'm not sure how compatible I've ever been with Descartes or his reception, but that's where I've always been.

I doubt anyone deliberately aims for their points to be misunderstood. — Tom Storm

I sometimes wonder how important it is to *have* a point. I remember, back at University, in a literary class, I was trying to explain my point. The lecturer seemed really interested, and then said, I never even thought of that, what an interesting point. He then checked back if he understood me correctly. It turns out he hasn't. I was making a different point, but because that other point I could have made but didn't was so much more fascinating, I forgot what it is was trying to say... Fun times.

Again, at universtiy, I would often try to make a point, then talk myself into a corner and find myself unable to continue, because everything I've been saying up to that point seemed like nonsense, which I then admitted to. It usually didn't go down well with others, who thought I was saying something interesting and were hoping I'd get to the end...

I sometimes wonder if people think they have a point just use repetition and rhetoric to fool themselves. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream...

This post, btw, doesn't really have a point; more something like a strange attractor.

This seems to be the crux of your argument, and I am not following this distinction you are making.

All I meant, was that the truth-value of something is completely independent of any stance taken on it. — Bob Ross

I believe I may have confused myself here, or missed something. Let me go through this step by step with "Torturing babies is wrong."

1. "Torturing babies is wrong," is propisitional. It has "truthity"; i.e. it is either true or false. (Do I understand your use of "truthity" correctly here?)

2. I can believe the proposition to be false or true.

3. That I believe the proposition to be true (or false) is distnict the proposition's being true (or false).

4. Because of (3), I can evaluate the dependency structure of the believe that a proposition is true and the truth of a proposition. This leads me to two questions:

5. a) Is that I believe torturing babies is wrong dependent on torturing babies being wrong?
5. b) Is torturing babies being wrong dependent on me believing that torturing babies is wrong?

To me, your syllogism seems to show 5.a) not 5.b).:

P1: A stance taken on the truthity of something, is independent of the truthity of that something. — Bob Ross

Applied to the current example: I can believe that torturing babies is not wrong, even if it is.

P2: A belief is a (cognitive) stance taken on the truthity of a proposition.

Yes.

C1: Therefore, a belief cannot make a proposition true or false.

How do you arrive at that conclusion? You have shown that the belief is independent of the truth(ity). You have not shown that the truthity is independent of the belief. Now this clearly leads me into into a muddle:

Given that truth is dependent on belief (but not the other way round), I'd get a truth table like the following:

"Killing babies is Wrong." Believe, Truth, allowed under dependency structure

B --> independent of T

B: Yes. T: Yes (allowed)
B: No T: Yes (allowed)
B: Yes: T: No (allowed)
B: No T: No (allowed)

T --> dependent on B

B: Yes: T: Yes (allowed)
B: No T: Yes (not allowed)
B: Yes T: No (not allowed)
B: No T: No (allowed)

Logically, that believe is independent of truth does not necessitate that truth be indepenent of believe. It's possible for believe to be the independent variable, and truth the dependent one. This leads us into a contradiction (bolded above): I can be wrong about a truth I'm setting by believing in it.

I think that this problem might come out clearer if we investigate the social aspect of morals. Beliefs set morals in aggregate via a complicate process; thus any single belief is both a hypothesis and a bid.

Moral truth is iterative through belief. (What the role of a proposition is in all this, I don't know, but it would have to play some role.)

P1 is not the claim that beliefs cannot make something true or false (which would beg the question): it is an uncontroversial claim that the stance taken on something is distinct from that something. — Bob Ross

I'm not that familiar with moral subjectivism, but with this you've given me something to react to. Let me try to make sense of this.

Here you use the word "distinct", but in your opening post you used the word "independent". The two words are significantly different:

If A is distinct from B, then B is distinct from A. But if A is independent from B, it does not follow that B is independent from A.

So a subjectivist might agree that the stance on the truthiness of something is independent of the truthiness of something with little ill effect. If moral believes make moral statements true, what they'd need to argue is that "The truthiness of something is independent from the stance of the truthiness of that something." Your P1 doen't seem to address that at all.

They're both still "distinct", though.

***

As I said I'm not very knoledgable about what moral subjectivists are saying. But what's missing in this thread, I feel, is the acknowledgment of the social aspect of moral statements.

So "Torturing babies is wrong," is a moral statement with a truth value. I assume you believe this to be true. I certainly believe this to be true. It comes up a lot in discussions like this, precisely because a lot of people believe this is true, AND because they believe it's uncontroversial. There seems to be a desire to go from uncontroversial to "absolutely true" or "objectively true"?

There's something odd going on with belief in social situations, as it's two-pronged: it's on the one hand, looking backwards as a hypothesis what you can expect others to agree with, but it's also - looking forward - the source of action - i.e. part of future data sets of what future people might expect. If suddenly a significant number of people were to pop up who genuinely believe (and express that believe) that "torturing babies is not wrong" than we'd be looking at moral change.

In effect, every moral proposition is both a guess and a bid. And it's all in flux. (I'm really not sure how to work this into meta-ethics, though.)

A trial of the soul is a concept used by Kierkegaard. Precisely, K talks about 'Anfaestgalse' a Danish word which there is a big debate on what really means. I have the Spanish version, and it is translated as 'anxiety', but I found some English papers and the authors translated it as 'trial of the soul'. Approaching the main topic of this thread, I wonder if, after behaving badly or unethically, there would be a trial about my soul. I mean, is there a cause and effect? It is obvious that in the tangible or real world there are a lot of consequences. People stop trusting me and I lack confidence and I suffer from anxiety. But I want to dive deeper into this matter. Afterwards, is there a possibility that our spirit will experience a trial because of our actions? By the way, I am not referring to karma. — javi2541997

I've tried to look up what Kierkegaard said on the topic, but... it's impenetrable answers to impenetrable questions. I really need to go back a few steps if I'm even to hope to know what he's talking about. What I read felt like gibberish, I'm sorry to say. I'm not sure I have the time and inclination to dive that deep, though. (Note: I'm not saying that Kierkegaard is gibberish; I'm saying my current understanding of Kierkegaard is gibberish.)

Also: google doesn't know "anfaestgalse". My mothertongue's German, and the word doesn't sound very Germanic either. Some sort of typo? Anxiety, according to one source I found, would have been "angest", which makes sense as it's cognate with English (and German) "angst". I didn't find any reference to "trial of the soul" (after very superficial googling, mind you), but I did find "spiritual trial", which may or may not be an alternate translation; I didn't find the Danish word, though.

In any case, I'm unsure how much solving the language puzzle would help me; no idea how similar Danish and German are, and how much my intuition might mislead me.

Because sins, bad actions, unethical behaviour, lying, etc, Have to affect someone or something. Don't you think? I believe those affect the vitality of the spirit. — javi2541997

Well, yes, lying affects relationships. But I feel like I can analyse or think about this without any reference to the soul.

Say you're freshly in love, and the person you're in love with cooks a dish for you that you hate (it's no the cooking but the main ingredient). You can't bring yourself to admit this and successfully pretend that it's delicisious. The lie will set expectations for the further relationship. Now you may have to eat food you hate or admit to lying in addition to telling the uncomfortable truth. The more often you repeat the lie, the more involved this becomes. And there's a good chance that the truth will come out in a rather unpleasant situation; like when you're fighting one time. I can imagine that a situation like can feel in a way that could be described as a "taint in a soul" or something like that, but for me this would just be a short cut for something more complex - but all there is is actions, expectations, relationships and things like this. I can't go from there to a trial of the "soul". There's nothing coherent enough so that it can be tried. Or tainted. There's just the flow of my daily conduct and its outward connections into social situations, sometimes good, sometimes bad, often neither, always a muddle. I live, I sometimes fret about it, and then I live no more. That's about the whole of it for me.

No! I don't think so. There is nothing here which causes me infliction. It is completely otherwise. I think it is good to open myself to others in this thread. — javi2541997

I didn't mean only right here in this thread. More like: at this point in your life, you're worrying a lot about this topic, and from a non-spiritual perspective such as mine this looks like the extent of what spiritual trial might be. Judge, jury and defendant in one person, only the defendant isn't much interested in defense.

It's this soul stuff I don't properly understand, though, so I'm likely wrong. So:

Hmm... Didn't you ever feel anxiety for not acting accordingly to values and ethics? — javi2541997

To the extent that I have a conscience, sure. But there's no blight on my soul, nor a soul to begin with, in my world view. The worst anxieties I experience are for the future: when all the choices realistically open to me seem equally bad. After the fact, it's usually more a kind of shame. I sort of imagine that's the origin of Japanese seuppuku: cutting yourself open from the soft tissue in the belly upwards: that's where I start to feel the shame in extreme cases. (Though knowing Japanese culture it's probably more a show of determination - cutting yourself there hurts a lot.) Anxiety is more chest-centred for me.

Indeed. Why does this happen? Well, because when a person (like me) is used to acting in a mask constantly, it is not that difficult to keep acting in the same way. OK. I say sorry to the ones I lied to. But how do I know I will not lie again? This is where the problem arises. I don't want to cause that bad behaviour as part of my 'nature'. At the moment, the only solution to this issue is redeeming myself. To start, finally assuming that acting badly has its consequences and there will be a trial to my spirit after all. — javi2541997

It's about what you do from now on out, then, right? Or do I misunderstand?

This does sound plausible: forgiving yourself too easily can lead to letting yourself go, which in turn makes all that self-examination seem more like a sort of gambit, or self-pity. You do need the motivation to better yourself, and forgiving yourself too easily can get in the way of this. There's no such problem when it comes to others (or, on second thought, there may be: forgive them too easily and you enable their bad habits maybe?)

Not sure I understood you correctly, here. I'm not sure what difference a "soul" makes. I never had much use for the concept of "sin", for example. Shintoist kegare seems more useful: less judgemental, but also a bit of... too afraid of the world maybe?

For me it's all just a muddle of what I think I should do (which I often don't know), what I think my most selfish aspects want to do (which I often don't quite know either), and what I think I'm mostly likely to do (which is the easiest to predict), and how I think about all of that (not too well, since I tend towards pessimism - luckily my pessimism is tempered by my cynicism). I just sort of muddle through all that on day by day basis until one day I'm gone.

.

Will there be a trial of the soul after all? — javi2541997

Aren't you inflicting one upon yourself right now?

A question that occurred to me: Given the same act, do you find it easier to forgive it in others than in yourself?

For context: I'm neither spiritual nor religious, so I probably can't fully understand what you're going through.

TE=thought experiment. — AmadeusD

Ah, thanks. I could have figured that out, but didn't.

I think that's true, yes. There memories would differ in "cogito"-type ways that ensure knowledge of which they are. — AmadeusD

Actually, I think I made some assumptions when I said this, so it's not necessarily true. For example, if the "original" were duped into thinking it was just going to be a transportation, then the person popping out on Mars would think he's the original, and the person walking out of the transporter would think the transportation failed. What really matters, I think is this:

There's a difference in bodily continuity between the person not "transported" and the person on Mars, and that difference is susceptible to ordinal description: one body is more continuous than the other.

That is not the case under the Star Trek model. Even non-duplicative transporter usage creates a copy of a body that's been destroyed. So is the person who steps into the transporter the same person that steps out of the transporter, even though the body that stepped into the transporter has been taken apart and re-assembled?

And if the answer to that is "yes," then what changes when you assemble a copy more than once?

Personally, I think: not much. (And I think the answer is "yes", not because of any philosophical position, but because that's how I think people treat each other in Star Trek stories.)

This is not the case in the TE. The branch line case results in the original and one duplicate; not two duplicates. Perhaps that’s the issue — AmadeusD

Ah, yeah, I was talking Star Trek transporter as per the OP. I missed the two-line post about Parfit. I've never heard of that case, and am unfamiliar of the specifics. I'm not sure I'd change my mind, but I might. What's "TE"?

So after reading up on Parfit's branchline scenario, that's definitely a case with an original and a copy, based on physical continuity. Consider the difference to the Star Trek transporter technology with the following example:

I kill a person, then duplicate myself. Then two identical people show up at the police station, saying "One of us killed X."

Under the Parfit model, the guilty party would be the one who walked out of the scanner; and it would be a matter of proving who that was. At the very least the original and copy would know who is who.

Under the Star Trek teleporter model, there's nothing meaningful to distinguish the resulting individuals, since the original (who committed the killing) got taken apart, and both versions were assembled using the same information. There'd be no practical way to tell them apart, so any ruling (if you hold only one responsible) would have to be of a theoretical nature. Not even the people themselves would have a clue.

So, yes, I'd say there's at least a theoretical difference here; but the simple existence of such a duplication technology might have effects that need to be dealt with one way or another.

For example, consider a religious fanatic who thinks he must kill unbelievers but since killing is a crime, he must also atone for it. He could use this technology to first kill someone, then duplicate himself, then turn himself in, expecting his duplicate to do the same (which he probably will if it is possible, since he is an identical copy of the original).

If comparable cases are relatively rare, this could probably be accommodated somehow under existing legal models. But if it becomes a common pattern, we might be looking at a new legal concept. A new type of legal person (defined as a natural person and all its copies)? A reframing of responsibility? And so on.

This is not primarily a philosophical problem; it's not about truth. It's about how to efficiently get things done, and how to accommodate the new social-psychological configuration of the public, all of which is hard to predict.

And since I think our ideas are based on our experiences, I think such technology might have rather radical effect on what ideas we can even think about.

I've re-read your post, and I now think our differences might be this:

A transporter accident results in:

You: an original and a copy

Me: Two copies of the original (which is destroyed).

Thus, I think during normal operation a transporter creates a copy of a body, and the beam contains the information for re-assembly. The information can be used multiple times.

As for souls; I don't find the concept useful, so I don't worry about that.

There was only P1 before the splitting even - regardless of Classic or Branchline version. — AmadeusD

This is where I think we're talking past each other.

First, this is not how I used P1 and P2. Before the duplication event there was one person P. After the duplication event, there were two people P1 and P2. P1 and P2 exist simultaneously as separate existances. P exists only in a past where neither P1 nor P2 existed.

How do you connect P1 and P2 to P? Who's responsible for acts that P did? Nobody? P1? P2? Both?

Second, I don't know what you mean by branchline vs. Classic version. For me, there's a branching point in the personal history of P, such that at some point History(P) split into Histoy(P1) and History(P2). This is a novel situation. There is no Classic version I can see.

I'll re-read your post later. Maybe I'll get it some time.

If there's something meaningful that remains between teh two, fire it at me — AmadeusD

They share a history. This is something no legal system is equipped to handle.

If I do something, I'm liable for it, no? I'm not legal expert.

Person P(t1) did deed D(t1), therfore Person P(t2) is responsible for D(t1). That works for many things: marriage, debt, murder... Legal responsibility assumes that the Person who did the thing at t1 is responsible for it at t2.

Now, if we have a branching point, what we get is

P(t1) --Duplication event--> P1(t2) and P2(t2). There is no P1(t1)/P2(t1). There's only P(t1).

So what's your intuition here? Mine is that P1(t2) and P2(t2) are P at t1. That's where biographical continuity leads for both of them. It would then, maybe, follow that they both are responsible for D(t1), because there is no distinction between P1 and P2 at t1. That can lead to absurdities, though, like in the situation of debt collection.

Obviously, the problem disappears for all deeds that occur at t2 or later. The branching point creates a situation where two people are identical with one person before a certain event. This is a fundamental change. We need to adapt to this: legally, morally, economically, pscho-socially...

For example: Is it more economic to train 1000 employees, or to train 10 and then duplicate the best one 1000 times? And if the latter is more efficient on paper, what about a working environment where you only work with versions of yourself (not twins, but people who know everything about you that you know, too, before the branching point).

I don't think any of our current intuitions can prepare us for this type of technology. We need to go through a period of chaos and see which way it settles.

As for specific points:

These relate to whether you're a legal positivist or not. Yes? — AmadeusD

What any one person believes is besides the point. How likely is it that all relevant personage agrees? And what about effects and implications of their decisions that they didn't anticipate?

As I said, they are not the same person on ANY conception except Immaterial Soul — AmadeusD

As per the above, they are not the same person now. They were the same person before the splitting event, which is when the certificate was issued. Legally, I see three possibilities:

a) The certificate is invalid for both (because neither P1 nor P2 are uniquely continuous with P)
b) The certificate is valid for both (because both P1 and P2 are continuous with P)
c) The certificate is valid for one of them, and invalid for the other (no idea how to argue for this; my least favourite)

On top of that, a/b/c might apply differently in different contexts. For example, in the case of marriage, I could see annulling the marriage with a possibity of remarriage with one of them as a plausible solution. In the case of ownership of property, though, joint ownership might be a better solution.

Of course:

NB: probably worth realizing that in a world that this machine exists, the Law knows about it and has anticipated these problems. — AmadeusD

Yes: if the tech's been around for a while. I'm talking about the transition period. You're not going to predict all the problems that'll arise from the introduction of such a fundamental novelty.

For example: when I wrote about joint ownership above, I wondered how that would look like. Pre-arrangements would be likely, if the duplication is voluntary (and not an accident or forced). But what would that pre-arrangement entail? My immediate intuition went to "contract", but that wouldn't work, since the potentially disagreeing parties are at that time still one person. A type of "will"? I will let this to P1 and this to P2?

Obviously, after the first few generations this is all going to be the new normal. But for the people who have to figure out how to deal with non-unique personal continuity as a novelty, these are going to be... interesting times.

No issue for them either. — AmadeusD

As a hobby SF writer (in the past), I disagree. In fact, there are issues to figure out that more pressing than body-soul dualism. For example, here: Could the spouse be tried for bigamy? Multiple spouses suggests yes. Only one marriage certificate suggests no.

Wait, only one marriage certificate? Two individuals sharing the same certificate? After all, both of them have the same history, so that one certificate is valid for them both.

So what about... oh, I don't know... debt? You borrow a dollar on Monday, get duplicated on Tuesday, and now what? Do I get two dollars on Wednsday? After all, no matter who pays me, the other didn't pay me and still owes me a dollar.

If it's a freak accident, people will figure things out, but in the Star Trek case... it's a transporter malfunction. You know what that suggests to anyone even remotely familiar with the history of invention? That's right: human duplication technology. You can *try* to make it illegal, I suppose, but... black markets and rich guys with silly philosophies... (In the Star Trek Universe, the prime suspect would be Ferenghi, no?)

Now you have a social problem. While we talk about body-soul dualism, several legislators die of aneurisms while trying to solve very real problems. So here's the question: solve those legal problems and see whether your approach tells you something about your instinctive attitude towards the problem at issue. Maybe?

Her book on it is How God becomes Real. It's worth reading the jacket copy as it actually is quite close to what you've suggested here. — Wayfarer

That's an interesting book. "How God Becomes Real," sounds like a great title to describe what I'm interested in, too. Thanks for that.

I would agree, but wouldn't this intimate that there are two separate acts taking place, that don't necessarily require each other for pertinence? For example, If i am yelling across a crowd at someone to elicit some action (come to me, go get X, leave this place etc.. ) but they cannot hear me, only one side of the exchange actually obtains, yet my speech act seems to cover off all its requirements to be an act of Speech. — AmadeusD

Your speech act doesn't cover all of its requirements under speech act theory. There are two possibilities I see here:

You yell across the crowd at someone. They're unaware of you, and since they don't hear you, they remain unaware. The perlocutionary force as intended by the illocution fizzles out. No effect at all. The speech act remains incomplete.

You yell acroos the crowd at someone. They're aware of you, but can't hear you. Maybe they yell back, "what?" (and you can't hear them either, but you're able to guess based on visual cues). In that case the perlocutionary force doesn't bring you the expected effect, which makes the illocution unsuccessful.

In both cases, what's complete is the utterance.

Note that I have no idea if actual adherents of Speech Act theory would agree to my interpretation here. But an act in an actual situation can be re-defined, like when you accidentally insult someone and apologise. By the time you apologise you acknowledge that your speech act was an insult (or you're going through the motions); you didn't intend to make an insult. Conversly, you might intend an insult but your interlocutor doesn't notice. Double down on the insult, or try to hide you intended one?

Typical speech acts are ideals and might be useful in analysing real-life situation.

So:

In the converse, I often times "hear" my wife say something specific, that she hasn't said. My brain has filled in based on some previously noted house-bound noises, that my wife was talking, and in fact calculated what she's likely to be saying. OFten, it transpires she was about it - but in fact hasn't - made a speech act - yet my side of the exchange obtains regardless. — AmadeusD

So, yes, here you have a speech act you can describe in detail according to the theory, but once you find out that your wife hasn't spoken, all that description does is tell you which specific speech act didn't take place.

If you're going to use Speech Act Theory to analyse empirical situations, you'll need a theory how ideal-type speech acts relate to real speech acts. (Above statements imply some sort of theory, but I haven't quite worked it out - I just supply a potential analysis.)

A speech act has actually three components; a speaker, a hearer, and a set of rules that both of them expect the other to know. Those rules have no existence independent of the speaker/hearer, and needn't be the same for the speaker and hearer. They just have to be compatible to a high-enough degree to let situations in which speech acts occurs unravel to the satisfaction of either participant.

A non-linguistic example would be buying and selling. If you sell something, that implies that someone else bought something. It's a feature of the buying-selling transaction. Selling can't complete without buying also completing, and buying can't commence unless selling also commences. Speech acts aren't always like this, but they often are:

"Telling someone about something," isn't complete unless the hearer receives the information, for example. (The relevant technical term, I believe, is Felicity Conditions: the conditions a speech act needs to meet to be completed.)

I still can't see how you got there. Sorry. — Tom Storm

It's partly because I misread you. For some reason, I thought you suggested "confidence" instead of "faith", when you just had a question because someone else suggested it. This is the paragraph I misread:

My question came about because of the use of the word 'confidence', which I had laid out in a different context earlier, as an alternative to faith. — Tom Storm

I don't know how or why. It's clear enough on a re-read.

My focus is primarily on the reality (or not) of the entity (gods), not upon the reasonable confidence. — Tom Storm

This, though, is a very real difference between us. My focus is on understanding what people do (in their heads) when they "believe in God". It's not easy when the concept is not native to your world view. Many of my intuitions will work against me.

Whether or not God exists is a topic that, I think, mostly comes up when theists and atheists cross paths. But the existence of God is usually something of a background assumption for theists, when it comes to having faith in God. Their "relationship with God" is the focus. If you focus on the background assumptions, you might miss the core.

Which is why, when I read the opening post, about "types of faith", I had no intuition at all. What's the concept we're supposed to subdivide here? Like you, I tend not to use faith outside of the context of religion.

I don't see how these relate since we can demonstrate the existence of parents and interact with them and easily assess whether they can be trusted or not. Lots of children don't trust their parents because experience has taught them not to. We can't gauge trust in the same way for any gods I am aware of. We can't even demonstrate if they are real. How are they the same? — Tom Storm

They're not the same. I've said (or implied) multiple times that I see the relationship between "faith in person" and "faith in God" as metaphoric (or figurative in some other way), meaning that the cognitive/emotional behaviour will be the same in some, but different in others. I don't have the details.

I would focus less on the putting of faith and more on the reality of the physical experience. When I cross a street I am interacting with physical processes which I can demonstrate to be true and which is more or less identically shared with others. I only cross at lights (if at all possible) and I practice vigilance, looking to see if the road is clear. I believe I can have reasonable confidence that empiricism and the fact that I seem to inhabit a physical reality will allow for a safe crossing. — Tom Storm

That's not something I disagree with, but again my focus is different. I think most social behaviour is habitual, but open to modification to adapt to situations. Questions of confidence tend to be relevant in exceptional situations only.

If I cross at a traffic light and zebra crossing, I mostly do so out habit. Questions of confidence seem to come into it when I'm, say, in a hurry: it's late at night, the traffic light's not green yet, but the traffic lights for the cars in both directions are already red, so I'm fairly confident in starting to walk a little early. That's a show of confidence a step above the usual habit; it's a recurring situation so it's also prone to habit, but at the very least I need to gauge if it's the sort of situation that allows for the less common habitual sequence.

Atheists and theists have very different thought habits when it comes to God, which is why - when they clash - both of them tend to be in fringe situations. That complicates mutual understanding, but it's hard to get around this.

Based on all this I might summarise my position as the following? Faith in God is a habit transfer from faith in people to something that that habit transfer creates in the first place: faith in God is a modified faith in people that creates its own target: faith constitutes God as that which is necessary for the tranferred habit to stick. Of course, I don't expect theists to agree, and thus this isn't a good theory if my goal is understanding. So what am I to do?

Perhaps faith as opposed to confidence a person is more likely to put something at stake to represent the sentiment?

Like a person sky diving and trusting their god and religious beliefs with protect them. They literally put their life at risk. I suppose thrill is the main reason for sky diving so maybe an example more along the lines of joining the military is better.

Meanwhile confidence that isn't faith is making conclusion about the odds, but without really risking anything to make a point? — TiredThinker

Like @Tom Storm, I'm someone who doesn't usually use the word faith, unless it's a religious context, and even then usually only when a believer brings it up first. Tom Storm said the following:

To use 'faith' to describe plane flight or crossing the road is a rhetorical tool used by apologists who like to equivocate on language to help them smuggle in their ideas. — Tom Storm

I relate to this. There's a bit of a difference with me, since I usually don't have to deal with apologetics. Austria, where I live, is a fairly secular country, so the you-have-faith-too line is something I've only ever encountered on the internet. It's not a thing around here.

But the point is this:

Atheist: I don't believe in God, that's all.
Theist: But you have faith, too. For example, everytime you [insert examples, say the ones from Tom Storm's post].

And, my intuitive response to this is pretty similar to Storm's: that's just not faith. But other than him, I don't see "confidence" as an alternative. I'll have to backtrack a bit at this point:

When I read your opening post, my immediate question was: what is faith to you in the first place? I can't talk about types of faith without having a clear idea of where you draw the line. My own concept of "faith" is fairly narrow: a type of trust in a person (or person-like entity to account for the religious use) backed by some sort of commitment to that person (or person-like entity).

In that sense, I could actually sort of go with the apologetic usage "but you have faith, too," to some degree. It's helpful to understand how they relate to god, in a metaphoric way. When I cross the street I put my faith in the drivers; they will not run me over. When I get on a plane, I put my faith in lots of people: engineers and pilots come to mind. And so on.

Except I don't think that's actually happening. One crucial element of faith, trust-in-a-person and religious version alike, is that the commitment to trust backs me up in a moment of doubt. But the thing is this: if I walk across a street and suddenly a car speeds towards me, I'll do my best to get out of the way. Whatever I supposedly have faith in, it's certainly not that particular driver in that particular moment. If this were a type of faith, I should just be walking across the street as always. I have faith in the traffic system. It cannot fail me. That car will stop. The traffic light's green, after all. Faith, in this sort of situation, would cause me to act like a self-endangering idiot.

If the but-you-have-faith-too rhetoric targets me, I could accept that and use it as basis of definition of what faith means to the believer. So, when I get on a plane or cross a street, do I think I can never be hit by a car, or that planes never crash? Obviously not. That which I put my faith in is fallible; I know it to be fallible; and that faith is predicated on that fallibility. I need to put my faith in say a pilot or car drivers, precisely because I know they could mess up and harm me (or even deliberately harm me, who knows?). This works for person-faith, too: you commit to your relationships; you don't let go of that trust easily. And in turn you attempt to act trustworthy, too.

But abstract enough, apply it to God, and I, an atheist, am left with... nothing that makes sense. What it looks like to me is this: From early on, you put your trust in God the way you put your trust in your parents. And by the time you differentiate between fallible people and the triple-omni God, that faith is in place and it needs a target. The meaning of the concept is quite literally what you put your faith in. Basically, faith constitutes God by way of the trust-people metaphor.

But obviously that's not going work very well as common ground between me and a believer. So now we can have alternative concepts that - to some degree - does serve as common ground; at the very least we'll know where we part ways if we can figure this out. "Confidence" though doesn't do the trick for me, mostly because I think it's a red herring.

What I think happens when we cross a street or board a plane is that we have implicit working assumptions which are based less on confidence than on habit. We just don't think about what can go wrong until there are signs that things might go wrong. I think that's just basic human behaviour. How we react to having these habitual working assumptions challenged depends on the person. Me, personally? "Shit happens" is more likely to calm me down than "everything's going to be all right," for example. Other people might find that putting faith in the pilot might calm them down. Either way, the plane's either going to crash or not.

This where we segue into you example: Sky diving. A repeat quote, more selective this time:

Like a person sky diving and trusting their god and religious beliefs with protect them. They literally put their life at risk.
...
Meanwhile confidence that isn't faith is making conclusion about the odds, but without really risking anything to make a point? — TiredThinker

They both literally risk their lives. Risk isn't the difference.

In my experience, putting faith in God usually doesn't mean that theists feel safer. The Christians I know, were they praying for a save landing, wouldn't few the prayer as some sort of petition. They take the risk, and they take the responsibility. It's not about being safe; it's about re-affirming the relationship. If things go wrong, maybe God will save them, or maybe He won't. He'll know best. Sky divers don't want to die. Sky divers likely won't die. Most of them don't. But should the worst happen? Well, they can only hope they lived the best life they could, and there's always heaven (actually, the details are up in the air). People who put their faith in God affirm a relationship, not some sort of confidence in an unknown outcome (like surviving sky diving unhurt). Christian sky divers might risk their life, but their faith protects them from risking their relationship with God, should things go south.

Atheist sky divers certainly risk their life in the same way. And should they put faith in their own abilities, they might risk their pride (and that faith could lead them to blame, say, manufactures of equipment and prevent them from seeing their own short comings; which won't matter much if they die, but could be disastrous if they survive with wounds and go on to make the same mistakes again). But they can't (from their own perspective) risk their relationship with God; they don't have one.

So up until now I've treated faith as trust in a person or person-like entity; but you can actually direct a similar energy towards your habits (like, say, rational thought). It's served you well until now. It's, I think, a variant of putting faith in yourself: when I do this I succeed, and if I don't it's not my problem. (I'm a rational atheist; those are irrational theists... and such.) Come to think of it, this is where "confidence" comes in after all. I have no trouble of thinking of that as some kind of "faith". The difference seems to me mostly... rhetorical?

I think what faith and confidence have in common is that they can help you stay calm when your habits show signs of failing you. Faith is the ultimate skill in that respect; I suck at it. I don't mind much, though, since faith tends to lower you perception skills when in use. I do mind some, since anxiety - what happens to me when my habits are failing me - also lowers my perception skills. The trouble with the faith skill is that it activates when not needed, too.

Maybe I could express the difference between confidence and faith like this (I couldn't tell what the sentence means, though):

It's quite easy to be overconfident, but you'll never have enough faith.

I'll make another reply in a moment to reveal the word. — Dawnstorm

The word that doesn't appear in above post, and whose token count is zero, is "armadillo". While typing the above post I did something with the word "armadillo" without typing the word "armadillo". What I did wasn't actually count the word. What I did was "thinking of an example of a word I didn't use." I produced a token of the type in my head, which none of you can verify.

I apologise for the double post. It's partly a joke, but part of me thinks the double post was necessary to make a point. You can do things with words without actually creating an artifact associated with it (naturally occuring brain activity suffices). And I had to make a double post for reasons stated in my above post.

It's still silly, though, for me to do this.

I did something with a keyboard. I can watch myself do this. Rather, you did something with the words. You read them. This appears to be the only thing we’re doing with words. — NOS4A2

This is how I roughly read you: There are no words. You do things with a keyboard. Now there are words. Now other people can do things with words.

I think a lot of miscommunication here might arise from careless handling of the type/token distinction. Speech Act theory, I'm fairly certain, assumes that uttering the word "cat" produces a token "cat" of the type "cat". "How to Do Things with Words" includes both type and token, as without tokens we can't have types, and without types we wouldn't have tokens.

Word count: "The cat sat on the mat." Type-count: 5, Token count: 6

For example, if I were to count how many times the word "word" occured in this post, I'd be assuming that the word "word" is a word indepently of any words that actually occur in this post. To produce a token count of "word" I need to know how to identify a token of "word". For example, I must know that "ward" isn't a variant of the type. I must have, in my brain somewhere if you will, knowledge about the type "word". I could count a word that doesn't occur in this post and come up with a token count of zero, but I can't give an example in example in this post, because I'd be using a word token to do and thus disqualify it in the process. I've just thought of a word whose token count (in this post) is zero. I'll make another reply in a moment to reveal the word.

Where you begin counting, and the first count are two different things. They are not the same. Everyone counts this way, but not everyone realizes they are starting from 0. — punos

I just want to say that I find these last two posts very interesting, but I'm not sure I fully understand. I just deleted a post of mine (before posting) where I noticed I talked past the problem while nearly done.

My hunch is whether where you begin counting and the first count are two different things depends on how you model counting, and which model you use depends on what you what you want from the model.

Frankly, counting models that do not start at zero are very counter-intuitive for me, and the last time I thought about things like counting is - what - 20 years ago? (More like 25 come to think of it; time flies whether you're having fun or not...)

I mean if the number of rocks is a variable, and I want to compare the variable over time or space, I'd definitely use a zero-starting point.

But if for some weird reason I want to count a given number of rocks just to align them on an ordinal scale with one rock per category (this is the first rock I counted; this is the second rock I counted...) I would have no zero point. I have no idea why I'd want to do something like that, but then I just find the idea of "numbers starting" weird to begin with, so... why not?

Yeah, I made a mistake, there. Either "< 3" or "<= 2" (if there's such an operation in python, which I don't know) instead of "<2".

When the context is counting rocks, then obviously the first loop i wrote is correct because it correlates with the results we get when we naturally count for ourselves. — punos

Makes perfect sense to me, except I'm not sure about the "obviously".

I mean the original question, in the context of your post, could be read as if I count 2 rocks do I count from 0 to 2 or from 1 to 2. Surely I can translate either of that into a program? I just tinker with the numbers and/or operators, and the order of operations until I get what I want.

The relevance lies in the logic, not the programming language. There is a right and a wrong way to count. When counting rocks, it is essential to establish whether there are already rocks present. If i have 2 rocks and then pick up and count another rock, i will have 3 rocks (the count begins at 2). Conversely, if i don't have any rocks and then pick up and count 1 rock, i will have just 1 rock (the count begins at 0). — punos

Well, when you wrote that program that's how you interpret "counting". You chose not include the initial value in the count; if you'd performed the print operation before the adding operation you'd get [0,1,2] and [1,2] (correct me if I'm wrong; I don't know python).

I really don't see a logical difference. Either one's fine. (In specific contexts one might be more efficient than the other, though.) Basically, you can have either initial value for the desired output; you just have to switch the operations around.

In performing that locution you asked a question - an illocutionary act. — Banno

I think that's wrong, and I'm replying not so much to correct you but to demonstrate the difference between the locution and the illocution:

The question is the grammatical form; an aspect of loctution. But if "(Do you have a)ny advice?" were a question in the illocution, too, you could just say "Sure, lots," and then walk away, as you'd have answered the question.

What we really have here (if sincere) is a request. "(Do you have) any advice?" is equivalent to "Please give me advice, if you have any." Both locutions express the same illocution. You've made too choices: one to make a request, and one how to express it.

There's only one distinct behaviour: "Any Advice?" has been typed on some keyboard here. The typing itself, on its own, is an action (and I don't actually know for sure the words have been typed by the interlocutor; they could have been dictated to a secretary, or transcribed and modified by speech recognition software, or...). That this is is a question is part of the rules of the language; it's part of what makes this a locution. But the typical function of question, to inquire about a certain state of affairs, is no the social function of the question. The grammatical form might be interrogative, but the social function of the question is a request for advice, which is why saying "Yes, I have advice," and then walking away would be a rather unusual response.

So "Any advice" is a locutionary question, and an illocutionary request. And since questions and requests are both acts that people can engage in, you're engaging in two different acts via one and the same set of behaviours (typing; if the post's been typed rather than dictated to a human or to voice recognition software) - but they're not acts on the same level; locutions and illocutions have a systematic relationship such that they can be anlysed.. Of course, often loctuionary questions are also illocutionary questions - but because they needn't be we have systematic relationship between the locutionary and the illocutionary (whether you call them acts or force is secondary, and many experts use the terms interchangably, in my experience), and thus it makes sense to view a "locutionary question" as different from the "illoctionary question" - analytically. Which you're going to do when it makes sense to you, and not otherwise.

For example, were I to ask "Did anyone find any value in this post?" this would be a question that expresses a question, if I were actually interested in the answer, and a question that expresses a request if I just wanted people to assuage my insecurities. And because people never co-operate with analysts such that their work is easy, it could be a little bit of both.

(I didn't talk about perlocutions, because I always found those the hardest to integrate. Basically, I think you need perlocutions to check on the success of illocutions. It's not quite that, though. I think Austin's example is the difference between urging and persuading. You can urge someone to close the door without them ever intending to close the door, but you can't persuade someone to close the door without them ever intending to close the door. [Might have been Searle's example; I think it was Austin, but it's been... 20 years?)

Ah, I missed that. I'll need some time to think (primarily, if I can construct a coherent theory of change and time based on what you've said).

I'm having a bit of difficulty in bringing out the validity of the OP. Three assumptions and a conclusion - something is usually missing, or superfluous.

I had a go at parsing the argument in to something that was valid, but I can't see it.

Anyone? — Banno

I'm not sure it's valid. I see a conflict of scope in the way "nothing" is used (you've made a post somewhere pretty much addressing this).

Let me make it as short as possible:

The two P's I'd accept inuitively:

P1) Time is needed for any change.
P2) There is no time in nothing.

The logical conclusion here is: There is no change in nothing.

Now let's assume:

P3) Nothing to something is a change.

The logical conclusion here is, then: The change from nothing to something doesn't occur in nothing.

I sort of have a hunch that either P2 and P3 are inconsistent with each other, or they're not the same modality ("P3) If nothing to something occurs it's a change.") But who knows.

Maybe set-theory can help? The set of all existing things is called "nothing" when empty, and "something" when not. There's temporal continuity, and what's in the set depends on "when" we look. That would leave the empty set with an undefined time if there's no time before the beginning of time (as he later states). We can't check the empty set, because there's no time t(n-1) at t(0), and at t(0) the set is no longer empty, as it contains t(0). Not familiar enough with set-theory to know if that makes any sense (I have a hunch that the "set of all sets that don't contain themselves" may trip me up here).

What about a narrow definition, such as a being that intentionally created the universe, by choice?

There's no empirical evidence, but one might infer this as a viable explanatory hypothesis for the existence of a universe that permits the development and existence of intelligent life. — Relativist

As a string of words not entirely devoid of meaning, I can do logic with it to some degree, but I can't connect it to the world I like in. It's an intellectual game of no consequence.

The evidence in question is evidence, for a theist, given that they see God in His creation. I can't follow suit, so it's evidence for nothing. It's just see the world.

The problem is that I know what words like "creation" or "choice" mean inside this world. There are plenty of loose ends, and I don't think meaning is fixed to begin with, but there's something I can do about it. I mean it's fairly easy to follow the logic of "A garden is created and maintained by a gardener. When I see a garden, I know there's a gardener. A garden doesn't come about randomly. So what about the world and all it's regularities? Where do they come from?" The problem is that when they lead me to everything, they just lead me into a void; a lack of imagination; nothing.

See, I'm in the world, so are gardens, and so are gardeners. But if you then tell me that God has created the world in analogy to a garden, then I would imagine a god limited by similar restrictions that a gardener is limited by (needing tools and seeds, for example). I'd start wondering what sort of world God lives in, and so on. At that point, I'm in science fiction/fantasy territory. Whatever I can come up with is what's within the bounds of my imagination. And it's my experience is that Christians at the very least wouldn't accept that sort of limited creater as what they are imagining. So I would have to sort of imagine a decontextualised creation? With no limits? That's empty talk to me. Meaningless. It solves nothing. I'm way more comfortable with my ignorance than with this sort of confusion.

See, in every instance of creation the creator is indepentently accessible. I can see a gardener tend to the garden. What would I have seen when God created the world? Nothing. I wouldn't yet have been even possible; the act of seeing was still in the process of forming; and yet, somehow, the process of creation is already... "there" (even though there's no "there" yet)...

Either theists are all led astray by semantic tricks, or they have a world view organised vastly different from mine.

One can certainly withhold judgement with regard to God's existence. IMO, this entails considering both God's existence and nonexistence as live possibilities. — Relativist

This is, I think, where I differ most with you. I certainly withhold judgement, but not because I'm doing any considering. I don't care about the question to begin with. The God-concept is too indeterminate in my mind to hold any clear convictions. There's nothing there that could either exist or not. So I can certainly say I don't believe; but I can't say that I believe God doesn't exist.

The problem here is that in the God conversation the answer to "God doesn't exist" is assymetric in two ways: (a) emotional impact, and (b) clarity of concept. A simplified matrix:

Theist: emotional impact +, clarity of conept +
Me: emotional impact -, clarity of concept -

In terms of my daily conduct "God doesn't exist" has no emotional impact, partly because it's just words unattached to anything that's taken root in my world view. I feel if I said that line I wouldn't exactly know what I'm saying, so I refrain from saying that. I suspend judgment because (a) I don't care but the theist does, and (b) because I don't quite know what it is that I just said doesn't exist. I'm not someone who's lost his faith: I grew up as the son of Catholic parents, but the concept just never really took roots in my world view. The whys of that are... difficult to puzzle out. It's just that I grew up and my God concept didn't, so it's stunted when compared to that of a mature believer. I'm not sure what that means in practice. In conversations with theists about what they believe in I tend to get lost; it feels like a game of ever-shifting goal posts. I haven't ever gotten to a stage where I could say either way.

But that also means that I'm just not motivated by because-God-says-so arguments. It feels like an extension of social hierarchies, maybe with a shift towards beaurocracy? God as a stand-in for office, which serves as an organisational social principle? Maybe. I tend to dismiss the concept with psychology, sociology, etc.

My intuitive responses to various arguments for God or related concepts tends to be humouros. Intelligent Design? Really? Then who messed up the implementation? Ontological Argument? Wouldn't a God who can decide whether or not to exist even when he doesn't be the greatest of all? None of that is serious. It just flows out of the fact that my mind seems God-concept incompatible. I suppose it's the mindspace that creates Invisible Pink Unicorns and Flying Spaghetti Monsters.

A lot of atheists ask for evidence, but I have trouble with that. I'd need some operable definition to stand in for my intuition; but I feel like the concept is such that if you can define it clearly enough so that asking for evidence makes sense, it ceases to be God. The scope's too big for evidence.

"I don't believe in God," feels like something I can confidently say. When I say "God doesn't exist," I feel like I've already acknowledged too much. That's where I stand on the topic (but it's not thought out).

I don’t think the meaning of the word “belief” can be reduced to an explanation of brain states — Michael

Neither do I. I'm not sure what in my post made you think I did. For example, the "as far as" in the line quoted was meant as a limit to similarity. I focus on brain-states because they're the common point here.

just as I don’t think the meaning of the phrase “phenomenal subjective experience” can be reduced to an explanation of brain states. — Michael

Obviously not. That's the added-in extra, no? If brain-states are the common point, experience is the divergence.

If we are p-zombies then we don’t have phenomenal subjective experiences and we don’t have beliefs. We just react to stimuli.

You seem to just assume that phenomenal experience is a prequesit to having beliefs. Maybe it's obvious to you, but I don't get it. I think I'd have an easier time understanding you if you outright rejected p-zombies as an incoherent concept. It feels like you're doing that to me.

P-zombies have no consciousness. They just have an outward appearance (including observable behaviour). You’ll need to explain it in these terms.

(By outward appearances I don’t mean to exclude muscles and bones and internal organs) — Michael

Well, the point of the p-zombie thought experiment is to figure out what phenomenal experience does, if anything. If I understand epiphenomenalism right, that's the idea that phenomenal experience does absolutely nothing. Under an epiphenomenal view, a p-zombie should be able to believe things (as not being able to experience its own belief adds nothing of value to the concept of believing).

Internal organs include the brain, right? So I have aphantasia. I look at things, my visual cortex is active. I imagine things, my visual cortex is not or barely active. The same would be true for my p-zombie twin. A p-zombie without aphantasia would have an active visual cortex when seeing things, and thus he wouldn't be lying when he said he sees things in his head.

It's just that seeing things in your head isn't accompanied by any phenomenal experience; it's just the visual cortex (among other things) doing its thing.

How we interpret this state of affairs probably differs from philosophy to philosophy, from person to person. Ordinary langauge generally doesn't take into account the question what (if anything) phenomenal consciousness does. We cannot observe anyone's phenomenal consciousness outside of our own, anyway, so we just assume that other people have it, too. That's such a total assumption under usual circumstances, that we don't raise the topic at all.

But with the p-zombie thought experiment we must. A p-zombie can have aphantasia (to the extent that its brain behaves like an aphantasiac brain), be insentive to pain, detect phantom limbs after an operation... all that groovy stuff that can come with a human brain, which he has. A p-zombie, by definition, has subjectivity to the extent that the brain is involved. But a p-zombie can't experience subjectivity as a phenomenon.

So a p-zombie can believe things as far as brain-activity is involved, but a p-zombie can not experience believing things. So believing things would be brain behaviour accompanied by corresponding experience, and p-believing things would be brain behaviour not accompanied by experience.

I'm not sure what I think of this myself. But it makes sense to me that, if p-zombies are biologically indistinguishable from non-p-zombies, that you could have p-zombies that are sensetive to pain, and p-zombies that are insensitive to pain, as this has behavioural consequences. Sentences like "P-zombies don't feel pain," are therefore too imprecise in the context of this thought experiment. The problem is, thoug, once we push through to the experience part of the thought experiment we're pretty much in uncharted terrain, and it's all fuzzy and imprecise. I mean what's the difference between holding and experiencing a believe and holding but not experiencing a believe?

A p-zombie is just a machine that responds to stimulation. It's an organic clockwork-like body that moves and makes sound. — Michael

If a p-zombie's body is "an organic clockwork-like body that moves and makes sound" then so is yours or mine. The bodies are indistinguishable. So what is this consciousness? How important is it? I'd say that makes them significantly human; I've not yet figured out what difference consciousness makes, but then that's part of the point of the thought experiment to begin with.

To be honest, I thought you meant fruit flies like a banana, as in fruit takes flight like bananas do. It wasn’t until your clarification, and you telling me it was in two different senses, did I understand. So maybe it isn’t the use at all. — NOS4A2

Yeah, I probably both picked a bad example (too complex), and didn't phrase my question properly. Basically, I was asking about your intuition; in this example, without thinking much, do you think of "like" as one word that can be, say, a preposition one time and a verb at another; or is the preposition "like" a different word from the verb "like". I intuitively see two words, here, that happen to sound/look the same.

I'd have to think of very different answers depending on your answer to this question, because the scope of the word "word" is different.

As for the example, it's a common example in linguistics when talking about the ambiguity as a language; not as common, though, as the simpler "We saw her duck." (We saw her, as she ducked. We saw her water foul. We apply a saw to her waterfoul.)

Interpretation of language occurs in real life situation and is (almost?) never the only thing going in such a situation. Given a particular context people usually filter out interpretations that are unlikely. Most out-of-context ambiguities aren't a problem in context. The time/fruit flies example started as a pair of sentences in the context of teaching a computer parse a sentence: what people do easily is very, very hard to teach a computer to do. Later, those two sentences got drawn together, used outside of linguistics as a joke (attributed sometimes to Groucho Marx, probably falsly), and inside of linguistics as an example for garden path sentences (sentences where the likely intitial interpretation is false - hence your alternate interpretation isn't surprising, and I should have used a different sentence).

Unsuccessful communication events don't, I think, cause much of a problem for "meaning of a word is its use in the language", as once you pin down the misunderstanding you understand two potential uses, and crucially you'll be able to tell how the situation played out. Use can be pretty complex, especially since any use carries traces of past usage, including "mistakes" and usage you witnessed.

I agree that meaning resides only in brains and not in words. But language is most often a social transaction, and the way I connect meaning-as-use and meaning-in-brain is via interaction, by shifting focus from "similarity of meaning" to "compatibility of meaning as played out in successful communication events" (where success is sort of the degree of satisfaction of the participants).

You mentioned that when you think with words they're neither sounds nor letters; they're just somehow in your head. Might those not be words, then? — NOS4A2

Ah, I see what you were referring to now. I think of those "things" as words. I mean if I recognise the word cat when spoken as the same word when written, I must have something inside of my head that triggers with either stimulus. So I'm just retrieving whatever is triggered, without it being triggered, and without me bothering to decide (either consciously or unconciously) whether that thing's supposed to be heard or seen. Straight to the source. It makes sense to me to think of this as a word.

Also, if I'm right, I associate that "word" with activity of the speech apparatus instead; which would make sense to me, since I'm producing it, and not recieving any input. So if I'm right about this it's not "naked word"; and if I'm wrong about this it is a naked word.

If what I'm thinking of is not a "word", then what is it instead? And how should I make sense of it?

***

Curious: if you think of words as just their form, then what about sentences like this:

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

"Flies" occurs two times in the above, and so does "like". The forms (as in the visual stimuli) are the same. Is "like" one word used in different ways?

Might those not be words, then? Might they be something else? — NOS4A2

I'm not sure what "those" refers to. My post is definitely full of words.

I didn't know it had a technical usage. What I mean is the form of the word, like the sound or scribble it takes. Maybe a sign? — NOS4A2

Yes, that's a way communication can misfire; we have different "internal dictionaries". My first, intuitive, reading of the thread title took "word-forms" as meaning grammatical variations of a word, such as case or number, or tense. That didn't make much sense so I half-arrived at the intended meaning before clicking the thread title. So that particular difference in meaning simply caused an initial hiccup, but no major lasting problem (or so I think).

I don't think in words, either, but I do think with words. It's difficult to explain. I can think words, but I don't bother with the sounds. If anything, I think the production-part of my brain may be active? (I fancy sometimes my tongue twitches, or my throat tightens, but it's barely noticable, and I'm really not sure.) I think there are two main uses I have for language: first, in more complex thoughts I might use words as memory crutches, whether they fully express what I'm thinking or not. Second it's a form of projection of a social situation: how can I make myself understood? A form of rehearsal. And third, there's an aesthetic aspect to it; I just like words so I sometimes formulate stuff in my head, the way I would write a short story or a poem.

Obviously, when I'm reading words are involved, but how? I'm not really sure. I certainly not having them in my head as sound, as I'm reading more quickly than I would be able to speak. Also, I'm reading a lot on the train, and sometimes I catch myself reading but listening to conversations at the same time, and I find I have no idea what I've been reading - that is I've taken in the words but not their meanings. In that case, I usually go back until I find a paragraph I remember reading, and I start "reading aloud" in my head. That's really hard to describe; I both read as a normally would, but I'm also hyper-aware of the words as they would sound . Crucially, this actually makes it harder to understand the text, but the point of the excersise is to block out words I'm hearing and to focus on what's written; eventually, I just stop this "reading aloud in my head" thing and just read normally - faster, and with less comprehension trouble.

When I'm typing a post like this, what mean to say and what I think I might end up saying is never quite the same. I'm always sort of uncomfortable with my words. They always only feel like approximations of what I'm really thinking, and they also feel... sort of rigid, while the real thinking is more of a flow. But words do have cognitive function: they can... lead me down I direction I don't actually want to go. I've often developed an argument, only to find that at some point I've become alienated from what I'm now saying. This happens when writing posts, too, which is why I type up more of them than I end up posting.

Basically, when I'm thinking words they're neither sounds nor letters; they're just somehow in my head. I have this idea that vestigal jaw-tongue-throat movements might be involved, though I'm not sure. Also, thoughts that I've already formulated I often feel a little alienated from. The more complex the thought the more likely and the more intense the alienation. I have a strong urge not to post this reply, because I partly think it's all nonsense (but there's still something in it somewhere that I think I want to say). But for once, I think that very confusion is sort-of on topic, so I force myself to click "Post comment". If you've been reading this, I have.

It goes like this: — frank

Yeah, I've read this. I guess I shouldn't have posted. (I'm still confused about the meaningfulness of "68" from a quus-centric world-view, but that might just be marginally on topic.)

The answer is 42, I guess.