Who has the power to have the final say in what words mean or refer to? — Andrew4Handel

In my view, we as a community do this. We always inherit cultural software from previous generations (down to the meanings of the words we use), and then we modify this heritage (adapting to life today ) and finally pass it on.

Can you give examples? — Andrew4Handel

Sure. A law is something set down on the ground in a certain place, a marker. The original metaphor is mostly forgotten, though we still talk of laying down the law.


https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=law


Old English lagu (plural laga, combining form lah-) "ordinance, rule prescribed by authority, regulation; district governed by the same laws;" also sometimes "right, legal privilege," from Old Norse *lagu "law," collective plural of lag "layer, measure, stroke," literally "something laid down, that which is fixed or set."

I don't think you can replace self-referential talk. — Andrew4Handel

He was saying that we do use such talk, that 'I' has a use in our language.

The word "self" (like "god") exists and we use – "talk about" – it meaningfully and incessantly (re: Meinong's Jungle, Witty's language games, etc). — 180 Proof

In my view, we as a community do this. We always inherit cultural software from previous generations (down to the meanings of the words we use), and then we modify this heritage (adapting to life today ) and finally pass it on. — plaque flag

So how does someone have the final say on what we mean by "self" or "free will"

I personally think the extension of a word can be related to somebody's' personal web of experience and words can combine to make new meanings for the individual.

I don't know whether you or anyone else is saying that words are deterministic and meanings inflexible.

I personally think the extension of a word can be related to somebody's' personal web of experience and words can combine to make new meanings for the individual. — Andrew4Handel

I suspect that is how new poetry / philosophy is born. Someone feels differently, 'abuses' language, uses a tool the 'wrong' way --- but it feels good / right also to others and catches on.

I don't know whether you or anyone else is saying that words are deterministic and meanings inflexible. — Andrew4Handel

Concepts / semantic rules are like hot metal that can be bent. We can all push on the norms, but only by mostly obeying them. If you talk totally crazy stuff, no one can understand you. No one will be persuaded to do things a little differently from now on.

I feel like you have to be the arbiter of what you mean because how else can you decide what to say and know what you mean and want to convey?

You intend to convey some kind of meaning but who is to blame when meaning fails to be transmitted?

If I understand what I mean that could be enough. To create shared mean we then seek to influence others in an almost physical act of persuasion even coercion.

I am going to try and get my view of the self across and may try various means to so determined to transmit my meaning and so on.

I feel like you have to be the arbiter of what you mean because how else can you decide what to say and know what you mean and want to convey? — Andrew4Handel

If only life were like that !

It's true that you can often provide elaboration. But you can't use slurs or cry fire or decide that words mean whatever you want them to mean. You can twist things a little bit if you are careful and charismatic.

You intend to convey some kind of meaning but who is to blame when meaning fails to be transmitted? — Andrew4Handel

The metaphor of words 'containing' or 'transmitting' meaningstuff is popular but maybe misleading. The typical picture is that we know what we mean in some intimate way. That may be assuming too much. We find out who we are as we listen to what we say.

It's true that you can often provide elaboration. But you can't use slurs or cry fire or decide that words mean whatever you want them to mean. You can twist things a little bit if you are careful and charismatic. — plaque flag

I think what someone means to say is contextual and will derive meaning from their intentions as well.

There are thousands of words which means in combination a vast amount of possible sentences can be created. So it seems very easy to create a unique but meaningful sentence.

And because we can combine words in numerous ways I cannot see why we cannot create new ideas and mental images.

So it seems very easy to create a unique but meaningful sentence. — Andrew4Handel

:up:

Yes. The point is that the building blocks of such sentences are relatively stable.

I think what someone means to say is contextual and will derive meaning from their intentions as well. — Andrew4Handel

Strictly spreaking, I wouldn't include intentions inasmuch as they are hidden. Context and gesture and everything manifest would count though, in my opinion.

It's not a big deal, but I like to focus on meaning as between people.

Strictly speaking, I wouldn't include intentions inasmuch as they are hidden. Context and gesture and everything manifest would count though, in my opinion.

It's not a big deal, but I like to focus on meaning as between people. — plaque flag

There is no reason not to include people's intentions and private mental states in a speech act.

When I am talking about myself I am talking about my experiences not just attempting to clarify whether we are using publically arbitrated meanings.

I think making mental states to be something that can be arbitrated about by the group is setting up for failure or exclusion of the phenomena.

I don't mean to sound to sound dramatic but I will never let anyone tell me what my self is or dictate how I assess my mental states.

I think we should investigate mental states in a public forum but not with a goal to diminish the phenomena by seeking public approval on what is acceptable as phenomena.

I am saying this general now to this thread topic and my thread on the privacy of subjective states. I don't believe mental states can be publically arbitrated meaningfully. It would seem to lead to denying one's own reality and being subservient to the mob.

I think you are misunderstanding me (pretty much completely) and taking a fairly technical and dry discussion way too personally.

I'm not offended, but maybe we should drop it for now.

I am saying this general now to this thread topic and my thread on the privacy of subjective states. I don't believe mental states can be publically arbitrated meaningfully. It would seem to lead to denying one's own reality and being subservient to the mob. — Andrew4Handel

I'm guessing that some features of human cognition are innate, but triggered by socialization. Humans are different from other large apes in that we spend a lot of time looking directly into one another's eyes. I'm thinking this may be the beginnings of a sense of self:

Who am I?
I'm part of this group, and I'm this individual.

I agree that trying to have selfhood be some sort of linguistic appendage doesn't make much sense.

In regard to the relationship between language and the organic beings we are, the range of developmental psychology is worth considering. There is Behaviorism at one end of the scale where the experience of self is an epiphenomenon of other processes while the other end is like Jung who sees the evolution of instincts being incorporated into the architecture of symbols.

The range brings forward the question of what can be accepted as a given on the mater.

Yes. How do you picture it?

Who am I?
I'm part of this group, and I'm this individual. — frank

I think there is something profound happening behind the self.

It positions us in a unique body/brain and space and time. I am a 46 year old mixed race gay, autistic male from Bristol UK who grew up in a religious cult etc. (I could write an autobiography to illustrate the diversity of my experiences and life events.)

Nobody else is me or has been me. I have this unique subjective standpoint and I can only have this unique subjective standpoint. I can't be anyone else or experience anyone else's mental states.

But How do I come to be me and aware of being this person over the billions of other human living or dead?

It is a mystery but I think this is the only correct approach to exploring the self perspective not describing as a sense of self or a brain state or a concept.

I reside in my self space with this identity which is my only access and filter to a reality and I am fighting for my values. I am not just a number or another chunk of matter. I am sentient. I am not another tree in the forest. I can think about consciousness and infinity.

It is why I value other people because I believe they probably are in a similar position.

I think we can only fight for things, for reality by asserting the truth of our identity not by trying to fit in with some kind of groupthink accepted paradigm.

I am attracted to Vygotsky's model of the self as coming about from structures that are not given in personal experience but make it possible. We have to treat the self as an object but that does not mean the quality is preconfigured by the restriction. Vygotsky says that reports from persons do not produce sufficient information. That view is sharply different from making it different than what it seems to be.

.

I think we can only fight for things, for reality by asserting the truth of our identity not by trying to fit in with some kind of groupthink accepted paradigm. — Andrew4Handel

I see what you're saying, but maybe the dynamism we find in selfhood comes from multiple oppositions.

Consider if you woke up in an emergency room with no memory of who you are. Someone could show you your ID and you could read your name and address, but it wouldn't mean anything to you. You could meet your girlfriend, but you don't know her, so she's a stranger.

Your identity is bound up in your history, but even without that, you can think about infinity. You would still know you are someone. You just don't know who. The structure of selfhood is there, but nothing is filled in. Maybe you were born with this blueprint?

The fight for your values pits you against Das Man. A person can live their whole life and never find the will to face that. It's dangerous to do that. You lose the protection afforded those who conform. If you do it and survive, the world around you becomes beloved. It's self love.

I think I started rambling there.

I am attracted to Vygotsky's model of the self as coming about from structures that are not given in personal experience but make it possible. — Paine

Like a blueprint?

Consider if you woke up in an emergency room with no memory of who you are. — frank

I think memory loss is relevant to this issue.

On the one hand we all seem to lose most of our memories. So that we live for thousands of days but could not probably recall the most of what happened.

But we seem to keep a core skeleton of memories that gives us our identity.
Some theorists think everything we experience is stored in the brain but not retrieved. An example here might be the thousands of words in our vocabulary that we can retrieve from without having at the forefront of our mind.

I would not say identity is self though. To me self is the individual subjective perspective. I have not had drastic memory loss that causes me to forget people I am close to or any other profound memory problems and I would have to speak to someone in that situation to work out what is constituting their identity.

We could call certain things self identity like memories and preferences. But I feel that self is literally who we are. Us as a distinct entity and having a consciousness attached to this body. So even in cases of profound memory loss other people can identify the unique individual.

I think as I may have said earlier we require individual conscious perspectives even to have the notion of individual things because they may just be concepts in a person's head as we divide up the world into perceived individual things.

It is a complex, difficult topic though where we could end up each referring to different phenomena and concepts.

That is a good question. I think Jung would say yes, the pattern is there. Vygotsky is more circumspect. A pattern is underway. We do not know what it means.

The structure of selfhood is there, but nothing is filled in. Maybe you were born with this blueprint? — frank

It seems every individual distinct thing like each snowflake has a unique identity but most of them do not appear to have a self or a conscious perspective.

I think that no amount of difference or complexity in brain structure seems to explain or lead to a personal perspective, a conscious portal, the consciousness through which we receive information and are now communicating.

So in a facile way we can identify differences that we could call a person's identity but these don't differentiate between our listing of traits and someone's felt experience.

What would make some differences constitute a self as opposed to other differences that are just inanimate physical differences?

So how does someone have the final say on what we mean by "self" or "free will" — Andrew4Handel

The self is a sense; I think we are imbued with a sense of self, as are animals. It is a sense of continuity and grows to become an idea of unity and identity. We impute continuity, unity and identity to phenomena just as do to ourselves. "The tree itself,,,"

Years ago when I first started thinking about this only thing I found reflecting my thoughts was "Why am I me" by Scott Bidstrup who seems to have died now. He was an engineer among other things.

https://web.archive.org/web/20020402181037/http://www.bidstrup.com/why.htm

"In a strictly material sense, it may be true that the matter that makes up me could have made up a tree, or a lizard or a rock or anything else. But what we're talking about here is consciousness; in particular, the consciousness which is unique to me, and not shared by anyone else. The matter that makes up my body has little relevance to the fact of my consciousness. It doesn't do one bit about explaining why I am me in terms of my consciousness. It just explains the fact of the carrier of my consciousness, my physical body. The body should not be confused with the consciousness. It's like confusing a program running on a computer with the computer itself."


"The personal distinction, which I experience as a personal consciousness, is quite independent of the matter that makes up my physical body, as when, for example, if a chunk of me is removed in surgery, I do not continue to experience what is happening to the removed chunk; it simply becomes a part of the world I experience and is no longer "me."

If that chunk includes living cells that are cloned into another complete, living, breathing, human being, that human being still isn't me, even though it had its beginnings in my body. "

He then goes on to like Julian Barbour's theory relating to multiverses saying roughly that each moment of our self is a trajectory through another multiverse. I am not convinced by that idea but it does make the point about the uniqueness of the personal perspective.

I found a great source that seems relevant here. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229403462.pdf
*********************
Further the process of acculturation that we undergo is a process of orientating us to the norms of our life-world; acculturation is a process of internalising values and meanings. This is something that happens socially. It requires others; it is an intersubjective process. The normative life of our community helps to form us, but we are not so embedded in that form of life that we cannot register tensions and inconsistencies within its norms. In so far as we can do this we can help in the process of reforming our
norms. In so far as we see certain norms as good, or correct, we acquiesce in their goodness or correctness, they pass over into customary life. Yet, this does not mean that we cannot assess certain norms negatively; as pejorative, or ineffectual and so on. In so far as we can negatively assess our own normative life we can challenge the norms by which we live; but whether our challenge to such norms is effective, whether it is sufficient to bring about normative revision, is not up to us but is rather up to the community in which we live.

If our challenge is effective then we help to reorientate our community on that value. If our challenge is not successful than the norm holds firm and we are seen as perverse for challenging it. We are both the authors of and authored by our norms. An influential feature of Hegelian thought is that it breaks down
the distinction between norm and nature. They become two sides of one coin. The normative is second nature; arising out of, but not reducible to, first nature. Culture is natural; it has the natural as its precondition. But the normative transcends the natural because the normative cannot be reduced to a description of states of affairs. Thus, as Pinkard points out, the mature Hegel tells us, in the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, 'For us, spirit has nature as its presupposition, and it is thereby its truth and its antecedent.'

But, if there is continuity between the natural and the normative, then this implies that for Hegel the
distinction between the normative and the natural is a normative one, a product of human culture, and being a normative distinction, it is one that we are not compelled to make, one that we can revise.
...
If we understand Geist correctly then we will understand that all human institutions, written and unwritten, all laws, all customs, all duties, all systems of meaning, all language is normative. Now if
Geist is just a way of referring to the normative then it seems as if, to borrow from Pippin, we have left nature behind and are entering a world of pure thought. For on Pippin’s reading the
Hegelian trajectory is away from nature and towards Spirit or Geist. But the very locution 'away from "nature" and "towards" "Spirit," Geist…' seems to indicate that there is something nonnatural about Spirit. It seems to suggest that Spirit ‘transcends’ nature and such transcendence of nature seems to imply a break with nature. Of course, as is well known, Hegel sees Geist as a sublation or Aufhebung of nature. But the term sublation implies that what is sublated, nature, is preserved within that which
sublates it, Geist. The term sublation never implies a breach. Thus Geist develops out of nature, whilst preserving nature, and does not leave it behind. Geist is a modification of nature.

It just explains the fact of the carrier of my consciousness, my physical body. The body should not be confused with the consciousness. It's like confusing a program running on a computer with the computer itself." — Andrew4Handel

I don't find thinking from computer analogies at all convincing. Why can we not say I am the body and the (living) body is conscious?

I am conscious of my body. But I can lose substantial parts of my body and remain fully conscious.

You can lose one hemisphere of your brain and remain conscious.

The notion of a neural correlate is to find one part of the brain essential for consciousness or self.

But at the same time no aspect of the physical body exhibits the properties of mental states. (Although the whole body seems to be subject of a mental state).

I just think it is the wrong paradigm. I don't think we are going to find anything unique about bodies to explain our consciousness and self identity.

All I'm saying is that the body is conscious. You can lose parts of the body and it will be conscious. Lose an indispensable part of the brain and the body will no longer be conscious.

All of this we know from common knowledge derived from the experiences of others or perhaps your own experience if you are somehow involved in medicine or witnessed the demise of an unfortunate family member or whatever.

It doesn't follow that we can therefore exhaustively explain how it is that the body is conscious. That would be like explaining how it is that fundamental particle or energy fields can produce a world of incredible complexity and diversity of life.

Can you think of any other lines of investigation down which we might proceed to find such explanations?

But the very locution 'away from "nature" and "towards" "Spirit," Geist…' seems to indicate that there is something nonnatural about Spirit. It seems to suggest that Spirit ‘transcends’ nature and such transcendence of nature seems to imply a break with nature. Of course, as is well known, Hegel sees Geist as a sublation or Aufhebung of nature. But the term sublation implies that what is sublated, nature, is preserved within that which
sublates it, Geist. The term sublation never implies a breach. Thus Geist develops out of nature, whilst preserving nature, and does not leave it behind. Geist is a modification of nature. — plaque flag

That still affirms Geist as part of our world, it just recalls that it's a partial truth like everything else. Thanks for the source, btw. Pretty cool.

Think about what we mean by "voluntary" or "volition." How do you know a creature is moving by its own volition? Because it doesn't sway in the breeze. Because it gets up and moves to the bird feeder in a way a rock never will. In other words, volition is fundamentally identified by the way that it's counter to nature.

Normativity is also something we wouldn't expect to see in the natural world, isn't it?

All I'm saying is that the body is conscious. You can lose parts of the body and it will be conscious. Lose an indispensable part of the brain and the body will no longer be conscious.

All of this we know from common knowledge derived from the experiences of others or perhaps your own experience if you are somehow involved in medicine or witnessed the demise of an unfortunate family member or whatever. — Janus

If you didn't know how a computer works, you might likewise assume that the software is somehow part of the hardware. "If the behavior of the computer doesn't reduce to the hardware, then what is it? A ghost in the machine?"

No, it's not a ghost in the machine. It's freakin' software.