Re descriptions, sure.

It also dismantles a criticism about any description that the description doesn't convey an experience of the thing it's describing, doesn't resemble the thing it's describing qualitatively. Those criticisms suggest that some descriptions can do such things, but no description can. — Terrapin Station

Those statements that I made about attempts to describe experiences weren't intended to compare them to other descriptions. and weren't intended to imply anything regarding the matter of whether there are other kinds of descriptions that can do such things. It's enough to say that it isn't possible to convey to someone else what an experience

But, of course "Describe that triangle in regards to the lengths of its sides in centimeters, to 3 significant figures", and "Describe what the smell of mint is like.", have different orders of difficulty.



Michael Ossipoff





Michael Ossipoff

I was saying something about descriptions period--that's why I didn't qualify it further than just saying "descriptions.". NO description is like what it's describing. No description conveys an experience of what it's describing, conveys its qualities, etc. Descriptions are just sets of words, after all, and what they're describing isn't a set of words, or at least isn't the same set of words.

"Are the mind and body are separate substances or elements of the same substance (dualism or materialism)? What is your reasoning for either?"

I'm a bit old-fashioned and religious, which as I have come to realize, is not a good combination in philosophy. Anyway, I believe the ways of the mind and body are not always aligned (much of this view is borrowed from spiritual teachings). Since the mind is abstract compared to the body, it gets less attention. We use it frequently but we don't apply the same maintenance as with the body because while we have been clear for a very long time what it means to have a healthy functioning body, it is only recently that we have began paying attention to what it means to have a healthy functioning mind.
I don't know the source of the duality but I see it in day-to-day relations.

I was saying something about descriptions period. NO description is like what it's describing. No description conveys an experience of what it's describing, conveys its qualities, etc. — Terrapin Station

Quite so. No disagreement there.

And that's largely why I stopped trying to use describability to distinguish the many separate logically-interdependent things from Reality as a whole, and substituted better wordings for the distinction that I meant to express.

Michael Ossipoff

I was having difficulty understanding your words, so I offered rewordings that demonstrated my understanding of them, for you to confirm or correct. Sadly, you just repeated the terms I found difficult, so neither of us gained anything. — Pattern-chaser

An objection would have to be more specific. I'd be glad to answer a specific objection.

Maybe it's about the fact that saying that a proposition of an implication is true, saying that the proposition is a fact, saying that there is that implication, and saying that the proposed implication's antecedent and consequent are rewordings of eachother are all really, themselves, different ways of saying same thing--and so, instead of saying what it means to prove something, I've just said it in different ways.

But maybe we shouldn't expect complete non-circular definitions. As i often point out, no finite dictionary can non-circularly define any of its words.

Alright, I give up. What would you say it means to prove something?

Michael Ossipoff