But understanding is not interpreting. Understanding is going out to splash in the puddles. — Banno

If a lion could speak, we could not understand him

SO that's not quite the same as "If a lion could speak, we could not translate him"

You don't really believe that something has to be interpretable by the rules of first order predicate logic to qualify as language do you? — Metaphysician Undercover

Why not?

That's the question.

Why not? — Banno

Because not all language use follows the rules of first order predicate logic.

For example?

And now it gets interesting. You are saying that there are some sentences of English for which there is no interpretation in FOPL. That's an all - and - some, and hence neither provable nor falsifiable: given some sentence in English, that we do not have an adequate interpretation does not imply that there isn't one; Yet being able to interpret any given English sentence in FOPL does not imply that we can interpret every sentence.

What we can do - and this was Davidson's program - is to see how far the proposal can go. What sentences can we satisfactorily interpret?

For our purposes here, Street left the notions of syntax and grammar flapping around in the OP. TO get our teeth into them, we need to hold them down...

To be sure, I'm not suggesting we try to interpret all English sentences in FOPL, but that we take FOPL as a root example of a language.

...not all language use follows the rules of first order predicate logic. — Metaphysician Undercover

Further, not all language use need be translated into FOPL, so long as part of it is.

For example? — Banno

Try "Let's go".

Yet being able to interpret any given English sentence in FOPL does not imply that we can interpret every sentence.

What we can do - and this was Davidson's program - is to see how far the proposal can go. What sentences can we satisfactorily interpret? — Banno

Clearly, if there are some sentences which cannot be satisfactorily interpreted, then one cannot claim the capacity to interpret any sentence.

Further, not all language use need be translated into FOPL, so long as part of it is. — Banno

I don't think that's true. Your claim is that in order to be called "a language" it must be interpretable by FOPL. But I think that language is defined by a capacity for communication. So if some parts of a language may carry our communication with utterances that cannot be satisfactorily interpreted by FOPL, then we can conceive of "a language" which cannot be interpreted by FOPL. That language might be less extensive and more restrictive in the sense of what it can say.

Do you believe that the more restrictions there are within a language, the less restricted the users are with respect to what they can say?

Try "Let's go". — Metaphysician Undercover

It would've been more fun if you had used "it's raining".

if there are some sentences which cannot be satisfactorily interpreted, then one cannot claim the capacity to interpret any sentence. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not claiming that I am now able to interpret every sentence in FOPL.

I don't think that's true. Your claim is that in order to be called "a language" it must be interpretable by FOPL. But I think that language is defined by a capacity for communication. So if some parts of a language may carry our communication with utterances that cannot be satisfactorily interpreted by FOPL, then we can conceive of "a language" which cannot be interpreted by FOPL. That language might be less extensive and more restrictive in the sense of what it can say. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is just fumbling between communication and language. You might as well define language as a capacity to use language.

The sort of buggering around that FOPL might help us avoid.

Put another way, you might try to translate "language" as "a capacity for communication", but if you do not understand what communication is, you have not made any progress.

Again, Meta, I don't see your style of analysis as making any progress.

"Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is" (§372). — StreetlightX

...because grammar sets out how we can use the words for that object; and the use of those words sets up how we think about the object.

You agree with this?

Yeah.

"Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of word." — StreetlightX

He treated all words as nouns; to be defined by pointing.

Do you agree with this?

Cool. Just checking background.

@StreetlightX

Cutting to the chase, won't any language worthy of the title include the basic structure of FOPL?

One last consideration: to the degree that human languages mostly share the same 'core' set of grammatical categorisations (with a few significant variations here and there) can be to a large extent put down to our shared physiognomy: the fact that we are (mostly) upright, forward-facing, symmetrical and motile beings. Moreover, we occupy a certain and shared scale of space and time (not shared by a mountain, say, who, if could speak, we would definitely not understand), with similar sets of 'epistemic concerns'. — StreetlightX

...and FOPL.

Put another way, you might try to translate "language" as "a capacity for communication", but if you do not understand what communication is, you have not made any progress. — Banno

Actually, that's exactly how understanding progresses, We proceed from particular instances of the individual, through the specific to the more general. So we encounter people, like you and I, we specify them as human, then we proceed to define human as animal, and animal as living, etc... By developing an understanding of the defining terms, we proceed toward a better understanding of the original particulars.

So we might define language as a form of communication. "Communication", as the defining term is the more general, such that not necessarily all forms of communication are language. We could analyze "communication" further to see if it is defined by a more general term, or we could look at the specifics of communication to see what separates language from other forms of communication.

You seem to think that it's being interpretable by FOPL which separates language from other forms ofcommunication. I disagree, I would think more along the lines of what SX proposes, that it is just having a grammatical structure in general which might be what distinguishes language from other forms of communication.

FOLP can go Flop itself. A bunch of analytic philosophical tripe.

He treated all words as nouns; to be defined by pointing.

Do you agree with this? — Banno

Yes to this though.

FOPL can go Flop itself. A bunch of analytic philosophical tripe. — StreetlightX

So you don't like first order logic because of who wrote it?

I don't like it because it's abstract nonsense that misses literally everything interesting about language.

Anyway, sorry I'm being short, I mean to reply substantially a bit later, just busy atm.

Actually, that's exactly how understanding progresses, We proceed from particular instances of the individual, through the specific to the more general. — Metaphysician Undercover

language is defined by a capacity for communication. — Metaphysician Undercover

So do you think, when you define language as a capacity to communicate, that you are proceeding from a particular to the more general? Language is a type of communication?

If the genus is the capacity for communication, what is the differentia?

What is grammar?

...except the grammar.

What is grammar?

I guess the formality of first order logic frightens folk.

Scares the willies out of me.

"I don't like it because it's abstract nonsense that misses literally everything interesting about language."

Hear, Hear to that!

It's the mummification of language, it deals with language as a dead artifact, made for priests and morticians of language.

Grammar deals with declensions, telicity, deixis, genitives, tenses - a whole word of interest removed from the calcified bullshit that is FOPL. There no need to be scared of shadows.

If the genus is the capacity for communication, what is the differentia? — Banno

That's what I was asking. If we may communicate by means other than language, then what distinguishes language from other forms of communication? I don't agree that it's the ability to be interpreted by FOLP, but perhaps it's grammar in general. Or maybe grammar itself is a specific type of a more general category, a more basic form of consent to rules of behaviour which is better apt for defining language.

What if I were to say that the simplest grammar should include negation, conjunction, names for things and names for groups of things?

Eh, I'm not turning this into a debate on FOLP. It's uninteresting and not worth the time. Academic snake-oil and astrology peddled by philosophical charlatans.

: "To the degree that human languages mostly share the same 'core' set of grammatical categorisations (with a few significant variations here and there) can be to a large extent put down to our shared physiognomy."

Unless of course those core categories are the reflection of universal perceptual processing constraints and organizational functions. But in order to show that, it would be necessary to closely study perceptual processing in a phenomenological manner(in the Husserlian sense).
One would have to uncover the way in which perception necessarily groups and divides based on relative novelty and redundancy, for instance. If you take your eyes off this page you're reading right now and glance at some pattern in your visual environment, see if you can notice the following;
Attempt to stare at a repeating pattern of lines or dots somewhere in the room. Even if you try to continue to look at this pattern in terms of an indefinite repeating of itself, after noticing the first 5 or 10 elements or so within it, your perceptual faculties will turn your attention to thematizing the multiplicity as a 'this'. Rather than noticing the individual elements of the pattern , the pattern is now seen as a whole, as a form in relation to new content.

The perceptual system abhors redundancy. What identically repeats itself eventually vanishes from awareness as the system looks for new meaning. independent visual features become thematized as attributes(adjectives) of single object(or subject) which we then relate to a new contextual predicate that forms in some relation(verb) to it. Perception craves novelty, but novelty that can be assimilated into the regularity of pattern. We encounter anomalies all the time in perception, but these are unconsciously normalized by our processing system.
The argument I'm making is that the features I've hastily sketched form the universal basis of both a perceptual and linguistic grammar. Far from a looking at a visual scene in a willy nilly manner, we automatically break up and group the changing features of our experienced world into a sequential structure of coherent chunks in relation. Visual and auditory subjects and predicates, , nouns and verbs, if you will.

Note that it is irrelevant whether we are talking about ordinary perceptual experience or any kind of art form with its associated conventions and rules( or lack therof). The same underlying constraints and organizing mechanisms apply. Regardless of how far removed from a rule-bound representationalism a work of art may be, the perceptual system will still parse the underlying visual features via a primordial subject predicate grammar before determining what kind of meaning or coherence it has at a higher level of abstraction.

Art begins as language because all perceptual experience is by necessity organized via grammar, due to the structural constraints imposed on experience as perception automatically parses, groups and differentiates the variatiing flow of sensory input into subject and predicate-like , sentence and paragraph-like chunks.

So the discussion continues to spin, the gears disengaged.

Ah, well. Your thread. I tried.