Maybe. I think you can interact with trees and triangles without concepts though. I don't agree with the object - perception - concept - mind model except as a subset of what we do. — csalisbury
You can interact with something without knowing what it is. You have a vague sense of it, or sometimes not even that. — csalisbury
The moment where we identify a tree as a tree is already a kind of distance. — csalisbury
You know what a chair is and can describe it thus because its meaning is grounded in a community of users without which your description would carry no weight. That is the relevant individual vs group distinction here and the one which renders Terrapin's argument absurd. — Baden
With respect to 'correctness', that's also a poorly posed notion. Concepts are neither correct nor incorrect, but rather useful or not useful, felicitious or infelicitious. A horseshoe is neither correct nor incorrect, and it's simply bad grammar to consider it so, the kind of thing one corrects in grade school. They are however, more or less suited to their purpose, a better or worse response to the problem and constaints around keeping a horse's hoof from wearing out. — StreetlightX
I agree that most of everything Terrapin says is absurd, but I think there's a confusion between understanding chair as a nominatum (the thing named) and chair as nominans (the name 'chair'). Qua nominans, yes, to understand what a 'chair' is requires a community of users who use the word in that way, etc etc. Qua nominatum, you need a great deal more than that, including all the stuff I mentioned regarding the grammar of chair (used for sitting, moveable, etc). I only insist that we can't treat the two nomen separately, and its only at the 'shallow' level of the nominans that one can argue about individuals vs groups and so on. — StreetlightX
I don't agree with the object - perception - concept - mind model except as a subset of what we do. — csalisbury
For example, the correct meaning of the word "chair" is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs". Hardly disputable. — Magnus Anderson
Terrapin for instance has, in the past, vocalized a problem he has that people seem frustrated by his way of holding a conversation in a way he personally finds baffling — csalisbury
the absence of responsibility for the effects of one's words, — csalisbury
In other words, it's one thing to study the word "tree" and another to study physical objects that can be represented by the word "tree". — Magnus Anderson
I'd take issue with your claim that you've given "the correct meaning". It's 'a' meaning but not the only one in current use.
New usages may even emerge in the future. These new usages, in my view, wouldn't be incorrect. — ChrisH
Nowadays, when people use the word "chair" what they mean is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs". In the future, the definition might change, but when I say that this is the correct definition of the word, what I mean is that this is how people use the word nowadays. — Magnus Anderson
I think you're mistaken.
Any good dictionary (essentially a record of existing usages) will give at least 6 different meanings. — ChrisH
I'd take issue with your claim that you've given "the correct meaning". It's 'a' meaning but not the only one in current use. — ChrisH
That's true. Maybe I can correct myself by saying that's one of several correct meanings of the word? — Magnus Anderson
<---doesn't for a second believe that anyone here is actually using "correct" to simply descriptively refer to what's conventional, with no hint of a prescriptive connotation to it. — Terrapin Station
So what? There's nothing wrong with that. — S
The correct answer to the question "Is 2 + 2 = 4?" is "Yes". — Magnus Anderson
The correct answer to the question "Is 2 + 2 = 4?" is "Yes". What's prescriptive about that? — Magnus Anderson
"2 + 2 = 4" simply means that the symbol "2 + 2" is equivalent to the symbol "4". It's a statement about language. So yes, it has to do with conventions. — Magnus Anderson
"This is the meaning you should go by if you want us to have a meaningful conversation about chairs without you being a pain in the arse by making up your own meaning" — S
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