Still no argument; just another bad analogy. — Janus

It was a good analogy. :starstruck:

Note that I never offered the thesis 'meaning cannot be divorced from use.' I'm not saying it's a bad thesis.

I'm saying a certain theory of meaning doesn't make sense (at least I think there is a strong case against it.)

what can be meant by perception if there are no brains? — plaque flag

Picture a tranquil mountain meadow. Butterflies flit back and forth amongst the buttercups and daisies, and off in the distance, a snow-capped mountain peak provides a picturesque backdrop. The melodious clunk of the cow-bells, the chirping of crickets, and the calling of birds provide the soundtrack to the vista, with not a human to be seen.

Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving it from every possible point within it and around it. Furthermore, imagine seeing it from every possible scale: as if you were seeing it as a mite on a blade of grass, in every location, and then also, as a creature of various sizes, up to a creature the size of the mountain peak, and from every possible vantage point.

Then subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come.

Having done that, describe the same scene.

“Impossible!” you object. “How can I imagine any such thing?! It is really nothing at all, it is an impossibility, a jumble of stimuli, if anything — this is what you are asking me to imagine! It is completely unintelligible.”

Wait. What's the topic? — Fooloso4

Well, given some of the other posts here...

Funny you mention being in a slump. I've a couple of really nice Gretsch guitars, a resonator and a G5420T, which I mostly fingerpick; not all that well. I procured a rather beautiful black Epiphone Les Paul a few months back, with the explicit aim of making myself more fasterer and competenter in using a pick. I wasn't happy with the results, and so haven't played much for a month or so. I can't blame the equipment - All the gear and no idea.

Kit amps. Good? maybe if I spend more money...

Now, where were we...

you haven't even offered any argument for why you think meaning cannot be divorced from use, but just repeated claims that it's wrong, whatever that might mean. — Janus


I believe I have offered various arguments, and I constantly allude to philosophers who are famous for making just that kind of case. — plaque flag

Allusions to famous philosopher's arguments in lieu of laying them out in your own words (which I haven't seen but if there are such layings-out, then all you have to do is point out where they are) doesn't cut it for me; it reads like an appeal to authority.

It was a good analogy. — plaque flag

Neither it nor the flat earth analogy are good in my view. The first can be empirically tested and the second is a matter of mathematical logic. Neither mathematical logic nor empirical testability are applicable in the case of the idea that meaning can be divorced from use.

Note that I never offered the thesis 'meaning cannot be divorced from use.' I'm not saying it's a bad thesis. — plaque flag

OK, that's a turnaround. Banno said this: "That is, one cannot divorce the meaning from the use" and you responded with "Right".

You've met @Janus.

Might put on some popcorn...

Allusions to famous philosopher's arguments in lieu of laying them out in your own words (which I haven't seen but if there are such layings-out, then all you have to do is point out where they are) doesn't cut it for me; it reads like an appeal to authority. — Janus

I agree, which is why I'm glad I don't tend to do that.

Oh yes we go way back actually. I will try to dance a merry jig.

I agree, which is why I'm glad I don't tend to do that. I'm a torrent of phine frases friend. — plaque flag

Your word-craft is not in question, but if you want to make claims fine phrases don't make the cut, you need fine arguments. However, if you don't want to claim that meaning cannot be divorced from use then it's all good...

Oh yes we go way back actually. I will try to dance a merry jig. — plaque flag

That's okay provided it's not virtual jig-a-jig. :wink:

.

Neither mathematical logic nor empirical testability are applicable in the case of the idea that meaning can be divorced from use. — Janus

I agree, but that's what made them analogies ( 'a similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar'). I agree with Lakoff that we are metaphorical creatures. Also : math is understood metaphorically, even if proofs are theoretically computercheckable.

I agree with Lakoff that we are metaphorical creatures. Math is understood metaphorically, even if proofs are theoretically computercheckable. — plaque flag

I agree that we are metaphorical creatures and that is precisely why I would say meaning can indeed be divorced from use.

Numbers as metaphors for objects?

I don't think that addresses my concern. Why should being be interpreted as experience ? In this world, the answer is pretty clear. We see other people and animals and take into consideration what they might do. If my dog sees a possum on our walk at night, she'll chase after it.

But in a world without sociality and embodiment, it's not clear how the concept of a subject versus an object would appear. Note also that you thought experiment as such assumes this world in which we live with our shared language.

The point of that paragraph is to illustrate the sense in which time and space - or duration and location - are provided by the observer and have no fixed or absolute reality outside that. As the whole argument is about whether or in what way the world is mind-independent, this is a central point. Here I’m arguing in favour of something like Hoffman’s cognitive realism despite my many reservations about some aspects of his overall view.

I agree that we are metaphorical creatures and that is precisely why I would say meaning can indeed be divorced from use. — Janus

I'm not arguing that meaning cannot be divorced from use. Or for it. I'm saying that the meanings of words aren't 'anchored' in or founded upon immaterial private experience. I'm saying (roughly) that meaning is established 'between' cooperative and competitive animals. Surely a language is marked on our brain in some sense (I should know more about this). We have evolved the hardware for just this kind of tribal software.

For instance, a stop sign does not mean something immaterial or private. It does not refer to some immaterial Form of stopping. We could never check or enforce something like that. Would it even make sense to say so ?

-- Stop signs refer to a private immaterial notion.

--OK. But how do I know if I have labelled the correct immaterial notion 'stop' ?

--You'll know it if you tend to put your foot on the brake when you come to the sign.

Perhaps the training gives rise to the 'illusion' of 'platonism.'

The point of that paragraph is to illustrate the sense in which time and space - or duration and location - are provided by the observer and have no fixed or absolute reality outside that. — Wayfarer

Where is the observer ? Does it have a body ?

Numbers as metaphors for objects? — Janus

It's not that so much as the same pattern being reused in new contexts. For the natural numbers, I highly recommend a structuralist approach. We could use entirely different symbols and it wouldn't matter, as long as we had something isomorphic. Numbers are roles.

Imagine an alien version of Chess with everything renamed, but all the movements and rules were otherwise the same. It's the 'same' game.

Where is the observer ? Does it have a body ? — plaque flag

By 'observer' I'm referring to humans. 'Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer' ~ Charles Pinter

What the observer brings to experience is a perspective, a point of view, only within which any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful. Realism forgets the subject and seeks only explanations and fundamental causes which are inherent in the objective domain. But that is impossible, as the very source of that order is the mind of the observer (that's more or less straight out of Schopenhauer).

One presumes that meaning divorced from use is... useless?


The Principle of Relativity doesn't say that accounts can be true from everywhere. It says that accounts can be true from anywhere. A good account can be put into the third person.

So sure, there's an observer, but that observe does not have to be oneself.

Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving it from every possible point within it and around it. Furthermore, imagine seeing it from every possible scale: as if you were seeing it as a mite on a blade of grass, in every location, and then also, as a creature of various sizes, up to a creature the size of the mountain peak, and from every possible vantage point. — Wayfarer

Instead, imagine that you are giving an account from any possible point within it and around it. Furthermore, imagine giving an account from any possible scale: as if you were giving it as a mite on a blade of grass, in every location, and then, as a creature of various sizes, up to a creature the size of the mountain peak, and from any possible vantage point.

If you can give an account like that, you will have done good science.

I'm not arguing that meaning cannot be divorced from use. Or for it. I'm saying that the meanings of words aren't 'anchored' in or founded upon immaterial private experience. I'm saying (roughly) that meaning is established 'between' cooperative and competitive animals. Surely a language is marked on our brain in some sense. We have evolved the hardware for just this kind of tribal software. — plaque flag

Right, I'd say the meanings of words are not "anchored" in anything other than the fact that individuals associate them (as sounds or marks) with items they have experienced. It is arbitrary, the sound or mark can take other forms; obviously so. since there are many languages.

This association, I would say, is established by habit, which means by the usages one has grown familiar with. But a word can be made to mean anything that a logic of association, itself established by experience and by perceptual correspondences in a sense similar to Magick theory, allows.

If you can give an account like that — Banno

any point of view is not no point of view.

I think I get what you're saying. What I was alluding to was something a little different: that we encounter number on account of pattern, difference, similarity and repetition, all of which are inherent in perception.

That's right. The idea that science give a view from everywhere is wrong. The scientific view is from anywhere.

any point of view is not no point of view. — Wayfarer

The view from everywhere is not the same as the view from nowhere, but is the view from nowhere in particular. The view from everywhere is achievable in principle, but not in practice because it would involve infinitely many views. Another limitation on us sentient beings is that we may not have the perceptual apparatus, or be able to simulate it, to see the world as a fly does.

If there were a God that inhabits all creatures and all things and can see what they see, and could even see things from the POV of any and all fundamental particles, then It could achieve a view from everywhere but even such a god could not have a view from nowhere as opposed to the synthesis of views from everywhere, which would be from nowhere in particular.

What the observer brings to experience is a perspective, a point of view, only within which any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful. — Wayfarer

This is why I like to talk about our 'lifeworld' or 'original' world. There's a scientific image which exists within this lifeworld and only makes sense in terms of this lifeworld. Do we agree this far ?

What the observer brings to experience is a perspective, a point of view, only within which any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful. Realism forgets the subject and seeks only explanations and fundamental causes which are inherent in the objective domain. But that is impossible, as the very source of that order is the mind of the observer (that's more or less straight out of Schopenhauer). — Wayfarer

And like all idealism his philosophy is saturated with what he is trying to ground through subjectivity: the objective world, language, and society. When philosophers talk about the “I”, they presuppose the “we”, because they do not mean a single empirical subject but the universal form of subjectivity, an idea that assumes its instantiation in a plurality of individuals, i.e., society. When you say “the observer”, who are you talking about? I think you’re talking not only about yourself but about lots of other actual people. Or rather, you secretly or unknowingly abstract away from lots of other actual subjects to the pure form of subjectivity.

That is to say, idealism is parasitic on the real. Both idealists and realists begin with the objective world, that which is not encompassed by the mind, but idealists don’t realize it.

You say “only within which [a point of view] any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful”, and I can equally say that only within a community of speakers is any such statement meaningful, and further, only within such a community does your observer even exist.

This is why I like to talk about our 'lifeworld' — plaque flag

And who is well-known for having introduced the concept of 'lebenswelt' into the philosophical lexicon? (Oh, and yes.)

When philosophers talk about the “I”, they presuppose the “we”, because they do not mean a single empirical subject but the universal form of subjectivity, an idea that assumes its instantiation in a plurality of individuals, i.e., society. — Jamal

That's more or less straightforward Hegelianism, isn't it?

That is to say, idealism is parasitic on the real. — Jamal

You mean, parasitic on the reality that exists in the absence of any observers, right?

When philosophers talk about the “I”, they presuppose the “we”, because they do not mean a single empirical subject but the universal form of subjectivity — Jamal

:up:

That's more or less straightforward Hegelianism, isn't it? — Wayfarer

Not that I know of. I haven’t read Hegel. How so?

You mean, the reality that exists in the absence of any observers, right? — Wayfarer

I mean the reality that the observers are part of and that is bigger than them.

Actually that’s a lie, I’ve read his Philosophy of History.

The “universal form of subjectivity” is Kantian.

And who is well-known for having introduced the concept of 'lebenswelt' into the philosophical lexicon? — Wayfarer

I love Husserl, and I've been reading The Husserl Dictionary lately, and I'm impressed by all the terms he forged. As far as I can tell, he never stopped evolving and changing as a philosopher. As you may know, Derrida was a Husserl specialist, and of course Heidegger was the bad son.

In whatever way we may be conscious of the world as universal horizon, as coherent universe of existing objects, we, each "I-the-man" and all of us together, belong to the world as living with one another in the world; and the world is our world, valid for our consciousness as existing precisely through this 'living together.' We, as living in wakeful world-consciousness, are constantly active on the basis of our passive having of the world... Obviously this is true not only for me, the individual ego; rather we, in living together, have the world pre-given in this together, belong, the world as world for all, pre-given with this ontic meaning... The we-subjectivity... [is] constantly functioning.