It looks to me that the dog knows when the cat is angry sans a common language. — unenlightened

Since when does epistemology happen outside of language? I think the most you can say is that the dog has beliefs. Knowledge involves justification, who is the dog justifying his belief to? Himself? This reply is to unenlightened too.

I think a belief can be justified without anyone actually justifying it. A cat is justified in believing there is a mouse in the mousehole by its sense of smell, it does not require a syllogism as well.

I think a belief can be justified without anyone actually justifying it. A cat is justified in believing there is a mouse in the mousehole by its sense of smell, it does not require a syllogism as well. — unenlightened

I believe what you're doing is imposing our linguistic understanding onto the cat or dog. The only way we know, for example, that an animal has a belief is because of it's actions. Note, however, this is only done from a linguistic perspective.

Knowledge along with the necessary ingredient of justification is only done with propositions, i.e., in a linguistic setting. Beliefs can take place apart from a linguistic setting, and this is seen by the actions of the one having the belief. So a belief can be pre-linguistic, but knowledge or justification is something that happens after one learns a language. It's necessarily linguistic. I would say the cat believes there is a mouse in the hole because he smelled it, not that the cat is justified. And of course it doesn't require a syllogism, that would be linguistic. These beliefs are simple and basic, there is no need for justification.

Knowledge along with the necessary ingredient of justification is only done with propositions, i.e., in a linguistic setting. Beliefs can take place apart from a linguistic setting, and this is seen by the actions of the one having the belief. — Sam26

I know my wife and my dog knows my wife. I know which cupboard the dog-food is in, and so does the dog, and with the exact same justification, that that's where we always keep it. I can tell you about it, but my dog can only gesture. I believe you exaggerate the importance of language, and thereby underestimate the perspicacity of non-speakers (along with about every philosopher ever).

I did say earlier that there is a correct use of the word soul — Sam26

Where did you say this?

One of the reasons it's incorrect is that there is no way to demonstrate that it's incorrect or not. That's also part of the reason the beetle example is also senseless, because there is no way for us to establish a correct or incorrect use of the word beetle. — Sam26

I don't get it. You're saying that it is incorrect because it is neither correct or incorrect?

Think of it in terms of how we learn to use the word pain, we learn based on the rules of use that happen socially, but these rules are rules that have a correction built into them (like mathematics), and it's observable. I can observe if you call someone's joyful acts, painful, that that is incorrect. Let's say that there were no outward signs of pain, would you think it had sense? Would you think it had sense if we attached a definition to it? — Sam26

We already have a word "pain" with particular uses/meanings in our language. If there were no outward signs of pain (as we normally use that word), then we could still use the word in some other way(s) by attaching a different meaning to it.

Furthermore, we learn to use the word 'soul' based on the rules of use that happen socially, and these rules are rules that have a correction built into them (like mathematics), and it [the use of the word] is observable.

so it's not that an individual can't create meaning via their own private sensations, even though that's true, it's that no person or persons can do it. — Sam26

"It's not that an individual can't do it, it's that no individual can do it"? What?

Ask yourself, what would it mean to be incorrect in this particular use of the word soul, it's a kind of self-sealing use of the word. — Sam26

"I soul my car." That is an incorrect use of the word.

Please understand that I originally only took issue with your claim that the use of the word 'soul' by Christians is incorrect on every occasion, tout court. But that's just plain wrong. And now you appear to be vacillating on whether their use is incorrect, or neither correct nor incorrect.

There's not much more I can say, we just disagree.

You appear to consider the use of the word 'soul' as equivalent to Wittgenstein's 'beetle' because one person doesn't know what the next person has in their box (in either case). Is that a fair description of your position?

However, this completely misses the point of Wittgenstein's example. The point is not that it is problematic for us to lack knowledge of what other people have in their box, or in their personal experiences. Rather, Wittgenstein's point is that this lack of knowledge (of what is in another's box) is irrelevant to the use of the word. The thing in the box "cancels out, whatever it is."

This is why I find your specific criticism of the word 'soul' and its lack of sense and/or observable behaviours to be misguided. Christians use the word and make sense of it, so what more needs to be said?

You appear to consider the use of the word 'soul' as equivalent to Wittgenstein's 'beetle' because one person doesn't know what the next person has in their box (in either case). Is that a fair description of your position? — Luke

I'm going to try to word this a bit differently to see if it helps to make my position clear.

I am saying that we don't know what's in each other's boxes, but it's more than that, the only access we have to the inner experience, is the outward behavior (pain for e.g.). Other than that there is no access to be had. So again it's not only that we don't have access.

So the boxes equate to our inner experiences, which none of us has access to except that there is an outward cry, as in the case of pain. Note that Wittgenstein says, "But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these peoples language?--If so it would not be a name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something." This compares nicely to what I'm trying to say, because the meaning of the word soul that I'm critiquing, is that use that is pointing to the inner thing. Remember this particular incorrect use has a referent, the thing that lives on after we die. I'm saying there is no referent, because it's similar to the beetle example. However, in this incorrect use, they're saying the meaning of the word soul has a referent, but what is it? It's like asking what your beetle is, it may be something, but it may be nothing.

We never should point to the inner thing in terms of meaning or sense. Why? Because there is no outward expression of it. Obviously there are words that have referents, not all, but many words are learned in just this way. But we never should be pointing to something internal to give meaning or sense to a word. This is not to deny the inner thing, but only to say that a word doesn't get its sense in this way (at least in terms of inner experiences). But again, this is exactly what they believe gives meaning or sense to soul. And if it's not the inner referent that they're pointing to, then what is it? Again, even the definition points to the inner thing.

I like this. I think it highlights that all of the things which we build or do with language have piggybacked on other things bodies do. I think this is somewhat related to the Heideggerian distinction @Arne referenced earlier between sense and intelligibility.

Intelligibility, when referenced on PF, is often expressed as our capacity to 'read off of the world', this is a pretty good characterisation when dealing with humans. So much of what we do with intelligibility has found a voice in our use of language, permitting us externalised memories like customs and traditions, and allowing our habits to shape those externalised memories. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that codification - a transposition of intelligibility into norms of meaning like word use- provides a full account of intelligibility as such. Something must be an understandable part of the world; a patterned being, process or event; in order for us to transpose it into sense and treat it as a goal or guiding direction of use. With more philosophical reference, this is the phenomenological point that intelligibility is a condition for the possibility of sense.

It could be doubted here whether performatives like wedding vows fit into this framework, but intelligibility doesn't care so much for its substrate. A social tradition serves just as well as a throbbing temple in terms of a pattern which can be transposed into language; expression is not the only use of language and performatives attain their sense upon the customs (a form of social pattern) which they inhabit. Again, like in my response to @Sam26, this is intimately related to how types and tokens relate to sense. EG, particular wedding vows attain their sense as wedding vows, wedding vows as a social process attain their sense as commitments of relationship durability and fidelity. The take home message here is that regardless of how language is characterised, sense makes sense upon the background of intelligibility.

I'm feeling particularly self indulgent today, so I want to take that point further. Intelligibility's status as a condition for the possibility of sense doesn't do much to describe its character. It provides the logical structure of the relation between sense and intelligibility but not a functional one. Since intelligibility must be something that humans do, it is always at work, the logical structure of this does not suffice for a positive account of intelligibility. What does a positive account of intelligibility look like, what does it do?

And this is where @unenlightened's nice comic fits in. Intelligibility is a structured relationship between one set of patterns and another. It is a pattern made of correlated patterns in which each correlate has a conformable function. This idea can be projected onto the above account of sense.

We have norms of linguistic acts. EG, there are patterns of word use which becomes associated with the particulars of their use; a fuzzy cluster of relevance for the meaning of each word, a fuzzy syntax with which they are expressed interpretably. Speaking simply, these are patterns of language which we use and whose use is equivalent to language. But what are they for? What tethers the generality and constraints of customs and norms to the proclivities and dispositions which are the driving motivations of language (use)? Something which is intelligible but unexpressed or unperformed, for now. In other words, another pattern. Be it of feeling or sensation for the subject, of a theme blossoming in a painting, or the regularities of natural processes expressed in equations; we live in the liminal space between the customs at work the particularities at play. With every utterance we give voice to the difference between conformability and mismatch; which then serves as another pattern for its own mechanism, yielding the fungibility of meaning as use and the dynamical character of linguistic norms.

I understand your comparison between 'beetle' and 'soul', but, unlike the word 'beetle', the word 'soul' is the name of a thing in our language and actually does have a place in the language-game, whether you think it should or not. As a result, calling this extant use "incorrect" or "neither correct nor incorrect" is inappropriate. It may have incorrect uses (when used incorrectly), but the overall usage of the word is not incorrect as a result of whatever similarities it might appear to have with Wittgenstein's 'beetle'.

As an aside, I think that you might be defining 'soul' a little too strictly to accommodate your beetle analogy, by eliminating any observable behaviour. Google offers several synonyms for 'soul' including 'inner self' and 'inner being', but another is also 'personality', which we know has an outward expression. You said that 'soulful' has a different meaning to the one you intend, but I think your meaning can also be found in describing certain people as 'kind souls' or 'beautiful souls'; descriptions which depend on outward behaviours. Your use of 'soul' also appears restricted only to a post mortem state of the body, whereas the word can equally be used to refer to living bodies, which also fits with your earlier historical definition as that which animates the body.

Chiming in to agree with Luke here. The point of the beetle-box story is not that, if only the beetle really was in the box, that the word would make sense. It is that the bettle's being in the box is entirely irrelevant from the very beginning. The use of the word 'soul' is perhaps an exemplary case of the beetle-in-a-box: the fact that there are no such thing as 'souls' has no bearing on the fact that one can make perfect sense of the word 'soul'.

It's interesting that the various interpretations of what I'm saying, doesn't quite fit what I'm saying. Fdrake is probably the closest to my view, although there are some subtle differences in terms of his overall picture of language, and other differences I'm sure. Some of it has to do with what parts of language we're emphasizing. I've tried to explain my ideas as clearly as I could, but maybe I've fallen short. That said, I do enjoy the conversation.

I quite like imagining the beetle being there though. A shadow cast by language equivalent to its agreed upon shape. A spilling of ink with each stroke of the pen. A useful metaphor of meaning/intention/mental state as a composite which we often use something like in real life ('what did you mean by this', 'when you said that, what did you intend?'). It's very close to working like this when two people are earnestly disagreeing like in the thread. People try to triangulate on intended meaning. Similarly in a relationship conflict, understanding intentions is often a good way of addressing it.

While you can read PI 199-201 as the culmination of an argument about mental states not having expressible patterns, a general skepticism about meaning and a whole host of other things, I take it to be mostly suggesting to pay serious attention to what you're doing so that you don't end up framing things in a stupid way. With reference to the 'queer process', the only thing which made it objectionable is that looking at the conditions of possibility with respect to an inappropriate framing device; looking for underlying features of language games with much different structures. Every standpoint holds all else equal on its contours.

Stupid framing is probably more often achieved on here than in the literature; endless threads of silly questions with horrible framing because the framing is treated as transparent. Of course the use is present in 'some sense' and isn't equivalent to a deliberate interpretation. Ironically enough different dogmatically held Wittgensteinian positions are probably symptomatic here.

There being a way of following a rule 'which is not an interpretation' connotes the resistance people feel with language - gesturing towards hereditary and transforming uses followed again by us (while 'spilling ink' as above) - while simultaneously using it adaptively for our situated desires. This exposes that language is always (already) public as much as it enables the interpretation of language as a series indifferent to particular senses or followed rules; both of which are grists to its mill.

In contrast to (my version of) Sam I like to stress the opacity of language, how it resists our uses through heredity, and how the undercurrents (box rattling = beetle) make us navigate it. Probably because this is how I see it as relating to philosophical methodology.

Mental content and opinion expression is a reasonable approximation to philosophical discourse. When what someone wants to do or express with their language (their opinion) and how they use what's available to do that (how they make the point). But it frames things badly when trying to use this rough and ready approximation to do philosophy of language, linguistics or philosophical methodology/metaphilosophy.

It's Srap's cartoon - he's tricked you with a quote from me above it. I always like this fella as a thoughtless trickster:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phasmatodeamedia/File:LeafInsect.jpg

I'm never sure how best to talk about it. We can see the trick, performed by the blind watchmaker, and it seems to me that where there is a trick, there is a (mis)communication. So do I have to talk about a 'visual language' whereby these lookie-likeies speak unknowing, unthinking and involuntary? Then I could translate the insect as saying 'I'm a leaf', and the scaredy-cat of the cartoon as saying 'I'm big and fierce'. We do speak of 'body-language', and these things do have uses.

Or shall I say that the insect is deceptively intelligible as leaf, (just as I am deceptively intelligible as a philosopher)? Make a rule for me, someone.

Anyway, the matter of the beetle arises out of trickery, I'm sure of that. One only needs an 'internal' world if it is something different from the 'external'. The cat looks fierce because it is scared, and so there are the two worlds. If we all wore our hearts on our sleeves, the idea of an inner world of beetles would never arise.

Sorry @Srap Tasmaner!

Pfft. I was only using Gary Larson to support (!) to @unenlightened's point.

((Need clones! Would love to be here in this thread more, but I'm still trying to deal with Sleeping Beauty,
and I've promised to participate in the Tractatus thread, which is now starting. Oh, and I have a job.))

if all interpretations fit what you were saying, the discussion would be over.:smile:

if all interpretations fit what you were saying, the discussion would be over.:smile: — Arne

Very true, and the fact that there is disagreement is very important to working through these ideas, and it's very important to not being bored. :nerd:

I believe you exaggerate the importance of language, — unenlightened

I agree. And that is true of most of us. Language is the articulation of an interpretation of an understanding rooted in the intelligibility of the world. You and your cat share the same understanding of what is in that cupboard.

Very true, and the fact that there is disagreement is very important to working through these ideas, and it's very important to not being bored. :nerd: — Sam26

:smile:

Ah. Nice. It's always good to see that modern science is conducting experiments which support the position I hold.

I'm lucky here too, I guess. I mean just stumbled upon this thread. For whatever reason my notifications do not always work as they should. Thanks for calling my attention to it, even if your attempt was thwarted...

We all think in the form that our sensory impressions take. — Harry Hindu

You keep expressing yourself absolutely, as though your assertions have been proven correct by someone. This one hasn't, although it could well be accurate. We don't know. It might help (you) if you confine yourself to absolute statements when they're about known and proven facts. :wink:

@caldwell

Yes, communication would have been a better choice but even that doesn't suffice because it's an internal process, the translating of thoughts into language.

My introspection reveals that the idea comes before the linguistic expression of the idea, i suppose a 'sudden realisation' may be a good example

We've all heard people say or said ourselves "Oh i can't find the words", but obviously the idea is there.

Ironically, i'm finding this hard to put into words ;+}

I think the best word i can use for a pre-thought is an impulse, or an idea. Sometimes we get the solution to a problem in a sudden, wordless rush and then we formalise it with language.

People that practice a language that's non-native for them for a long time say things like 'I found myself starting to think in French, rather than doing the translation in my head first'.

I may email Mr Chomsky again and point him to this discussion.

I may email Mr Chomsky again and point him to this discussion. — Gary McKinnon

Noam reads your emails? :wink: :gasp: :chin:

Yes and he replies, that's how this discussion was started. I was very surprised the first tim ethat he answered but then, how many peopel do you know that emailed him? I don't know anyone that did so emails to him may not be so numerous as you might expect.

He replied, screenshot attached, he just said "thanks, interesting" (im a bit of a fanboy, he is a clear thinker, he cuts through a lot of political shit).

I'm a bit drunk but i can't find an attachment button, needs an external URL. Anyway noone needs a pic, just email the man with an interesting question, he's like a beautiful woman, he doesn't get chatted up much because his potential suitors are too much in awe ;+}

What is the medium of thought for someone born deaf-blind?

The question is interesting, but is it that sort of question that we (humans) cannot answer, except via unverifiable speculation? I rather think it might be. In which case, perhaps even to attempt an answer is a bit pointless? I'm not sure, and look forward to seeing any answers more informative/useful than my own....

I'm not even sure what the 'medium of thought' is for *me*! ;)