Should I just give up on this whole project? Now that the boring low-hanging phil 101 fruit is done with, right as we’re finally start to do some more substantial stuff...

No. It's really interesting.

For example, Moore's paradox. I agree with the general direction of your solution. When I say 'It's raining' then I'm performing a speech act, perhaps more than one. One of the speech acts I'm performing is (usually) to express my belief that it's raining. And when I say 'I don't believe it's raining' I'm performing the act of expressing my belief that it's not raining. Now, the proposition that it's raining is wholly logically consistent with the proposition that I don't believe it's raining. But my expression of a belief that it's raining runs counter to my expression of a contradictory belief. Your example of angrily shouting 'I'm not angry' is very similar.

"Jus' sayin'..." Someone who says they are "jus' sayin'" is very rarely jus' saying something. They are usually disavowing a speech act, for example, making an insinuation or accusation, trying to provoke or similar.

PFHorrest, I swore to never touch meaning and language.

The moment people start putting quotes around single expressions I leave the topic.

The moment people omit to put single quotes around expressions while they ought to, I leave the topic.

Here, I don't mean using quote marks to quote. I mean when people use quote marks to denote that the meaning they convey is not the actual meaning of the words in quotes.

Two examples for you:

"For instance, I can use, quote, idioms, unquote, without using idioms, but when one ponders about it for a minute, the whole language consists of nothing but idioms, when you look at it. Symbolic languages, only."

"When the so-called "smart" phones become really smart, they will outsmart the smartest smartie on earth. And that smarts."

Different reason why I avoid talking about the meaning of meaning:

Due to the language conveying meaning, you can't convey super-meaning over the already conveyed meaning. That is simply silly. You can read between the lines, above the lines, below the lines, or not the lines at all, but you can't analyze the analysis of the lines.

In other words: Talking about the philosophy of language using language is similar to, to quote my friend Paul Spenser, "unzipping your pants using nothing but your penis." Language is perfect to convey meaning and information, but it ought not to be used to convey meaning and information about what the meaning and information is of meaning and information.

Should I just give up on this whole project? Now that the boring low-hanging phil 101 fruit is done with, right as we’re finally start to do some more substantial stuff... — Pfhorrest

I don't know, maybe your assumption that the low-hanging phil 101 fruit is done with is wrong.

I didn't take time to read the wall of text in your link, but you seem to think that using words only entails making sounds and scribbles. If that were the case, then what separates any sounds or scribble from words?

Any theory of language that doesn't take into account the fact that words are seen and heard (we use our senses to be aware of language use just as we use our senses to be aware of everything else in the environment), and that language-use requires that these scribbles and sounds be seen and heard, not just made, for language to occur.

The first and perhaps most obvious of these distinctions is that of statements versus questions. This distinction is about the direction that thoughts are being communicated between people. Roughly put, by statements I mean utterances that "push" a thought from the speaker to the listener, and by questions I mean utterances that "pull" a thought from the listener to the speaker. — Pfhorrest

"Push" and "pull" are inappropriate terms to use when describing utterances and questions. It makes it sound like thoughts are moved from one person to another. "Copy" is a more apt term that describes what it going on.

Think of scanning a hard copy of a document and then emailing it to your friend who then prints it out and now has their own hard copy. Not only do you still have the original thought, but you translated your original into a different type of media (paper and ink to electronic) and then your friend receives the electronic form and translates it back to paper and ink. We do the same thing when using language. Our thought is translated into another medium (paper and ink or sound waves) that are then received and translated back into the thought that those scribbles or sounds invoke in the reader/listener.

Thanks for that feedback! I'm glad you mostly agree.

That is an interesting point of view that I haven't heard before. A kind of quietism about philosophy of language. I don't agree with it, although I see the difficulties and pitfalls you warn of, but I think that we can work around them to a large extent.

I don't know, maybe your assumption that the low-hanging phil 101 fruit is done with is wrong. — Harry Hindu

I'm referring to the six preceding threads in this series, where I discussed really basic broad general principles without focusing on a specific sub-topic of philosophy.

I didn't take time to read the wall of text in your link, but you seem to think that using words only entails making sounds and scribbles. If that were the case, then what separates any sounds or scribble from words?

Any theory of language that doesn't take into account the fact that words are seen and heard (we use our senses to be aware of language use just as we use our senses to be aware of everything else in the environment), and that language-use requires that these scribbles and sounds be seen and heard, not just made, for language to occur. — Harry Hindu

If you didn't read the essay, then I don't know where you get any impression of what I seem to think from, especially that I don't take that into account.

"Push" and "pull" are inappropriate terms to use when describing utterances and questions. It makes it sound like thoughts are moved from one person to another. "Copy" is a more apt term that describes what it going on.

Think of scanning a hard copy of a document and then emailing it to your friend who then prints it out and now has their own hard copy. Not only do you still have the original thought, but you translated your original into a different type of media (paper and ink to electronic) and then your friend receives the electronic form and translates it back to paper and ink. We do the same thing when using language. Our thought is translated into another medium (paper and ink or sound waves) that are then received and translated back into the thought that those scribbles or sounds invoke in the reader/listener. — Harry Hindu

Oh, so you did read it after all.

Anyway, I don't disagree with any of that. The "push" and "pull" are about who is initiating the copying. We actually use those same terms specifically with regards to digital media (or at least we did for a while, the fad about "push media" seems to have died down a lot): "pull media" is the usual kind of internet content where a user goes out and requests something from the source of the media, who then sends it to the user. "Push media" in contrast is media where the initiation happens on the sender's end, more like traditional television, as compared to video-on-demand which is more like usual internet content. Modern things like YouTube seem to blend that a bit, where the user goes out and pulls one thing, but then a bunch of other things get pushed at them too.

simple spelling or grammar errors, — Pfhorrest

Humeaniam and abstration. :wink:

Does that buy me a brief whinge about speech act theory?

my philosophy of language hinges on how "merely" describing something is itself still doing something by speaking — describing is an action

Hooray, so would mine. But,

- and that speech can do many other things besides just describe,

boo, if "just" means "merely" after all. As is apparently the case in a lot of speech act theory. E.g.,

I hold that the meaning of all speech can be found by paying attention to what it is that someone is trying to do by uttering that speech.

Thing is, I fear that you will roll your eyes if I hold that what that thing is, that someone is trying to do, could be anything so naive as a matter of describing something, pointing a word or picture at it. It must (according to the widespread dogma) be something else entirely that we need to notice.

What will upset me even more, actually, is casual acceptance that, of course, such naive language games are perfectly playable, but that (such being the dogma) they are uninteresting, because unrepresentative, parochial.

I think the allegedly simple and uninteresting question of which words and pictures are being pointed at which objects, and how they thereby carve up their domains, is complex and difficult enough to explain all the allegedly different species of speech act. For example, I don't see the distinction between description and prescription as fundamental.

Whinge over.

Thanks for the typo catches.

I’m not sure I follow the rest of your post, but I’m not meaning at all to demean descriptive speech-acts, or to say that one cannot merely describe without also doing something that else. I mean only to place description as one of several kinds of equally important and complex kinds of speech-acts. Describing is an important thing to do, and one can describe without also doing anything else. But one can also do other important things besides describe, and do them without also describing in the process.

I knew there was another: "without impressing that opinion on anymore".

Thanks again!

So, for example,

the limited domain of specifically descriptive statements:

I don't think this domain is nearly so limited as you think it is. Ethical discourse seems to me to be about deciding how to describe and (thereby) classify human behaviours, e.g. deciding whether "wrong" denotes this behaviour or that. Aesthetic discourse is about deciding how to describe and classify artworks and sensory qualities. The standards of verification or stipulation guiding such decisions in those two broad areas of discourse may differ in kind from each other and from the parallel standards operating in scientific discourse, but that wouldn't indicate that the discourses differ in whether they are fundamentally descriptive.

The fact that ethical and aesthetic statements can be treated naturally enough as descriptive, when construed with an appropriate (and natural enough) choice of domain and descriptor, as when we see that (or debate whether) the word "wrong" applies to a certain kind of killing, indicates that your distinction between descriptive and prescriptive may be a relatively shallow one, based on a passing linguistic tradition.

More fundamentally, all human discourses are cultures of word-pointing and picture-pointing (and sound-pointing and colour-pointing). Some of them (especially the political and social) excel in the positing and sorting of domains of mental entities and processes: ideas, expressions, intentions, desires, feelings etc. That doesn't necessarily make such entities and processes appropriate as the basis for analysis of the discourses.

Ok, I've ended up admitting that your analysis is far too mentalist for my taste. But regardless of that, I'd be interested in how you feel (or think) about my proposed literal and descriptive construals of ethical questions.

Ethical discourse seems to me to be about deciding how to describe and (thereby) classify human behaviours, e.g. deciding whether "wrong" denotes this behaviour or that. — bongo fury

What exactly is being described of an action when one decides that "wrong" is an applicable word to it, though? Whatever answer you may give to that, e.g. "causes pain in someone", one can still ask whether or not "is [causing pain, etc] wrong?" and it's not like asking "are bachelors unmarried?"; the answer (yes or no) is not a tautological or contradictory matter of definition, it's an open question. This is precisely the Open-Question Argument.

What exactly is being described of an action when one decides that "wrong" is an applicable word to it, though? — Pfhorrest

Nothing exactly. Why would you expect that a word's applying to an object in a language deserved some exact explanation or justification or definition?

“exactly” is ideomatic here, the point is that “wrong” doesn’t bring to mind any specific descriptive indication, but rather a more general imperative prescriptive force.

“exactly” is idiomatic here, the point is that “wrong” doesn’t bring to mind any specific descriptive indication, but rather a more general imperative prescriptive force. — Pfhorrest

To be fair, "wrong" brings to mind countless specific descriptive indications: examples of actions or behaviours that are indicated, described, denoted, labelled, pointed at, by the word.

Sure, those are cases to be proscribed, and alternatives prescribed. Right and wrong are roughly co-extensive with prescribable and proscribable, respectively. That doesn't stop an ethical choice from being one of correct description: finding appropriate descriptive application (pointing) of the ethical words.

I do see that in "specific descriptive indication" you are looking rather for guiding associations, connotations, precedents. That won't be a problem if you really don't mean "exactly", and they don't have to amount to a definition. "Causes pain to someone" is indeed a helpful guide in correct usage of "wrong", even though causing pain to someone isn't always wrong. Actions correctly described as the one are often correctly described as the other, and the association, even though not exact, so that Moore is right to find his question open, enables usage of each to guide the other. So a specific indication in this sense isn't lacking either.

I'm having a ridiculously shitty day so I'm just gonna be curt here. I feel like there's something you're really missing somehow. If "wrong" was just a descriptive word, then questions to the effect of "why shouldn't I do things that are wrong?" would make sense. (That's different from "why is this wrong?" You might want an explanation of what is wrong about something, but once you've accepted that it is wrong, you've accepted that it's a thing to avoid). There might be some descriptive content associated by people with normative words like "wrong", examples of things they think are wrong, but the core take-away message of any equivalent of "that's wrong" is "don't do that". If you were translating a word from some alien language and the word seemed to indicate some descriptive properties of things, even things we would normally think of as wrong, but the word didn't carry that imperative, prescriptive, "don't do that" force, then "wrong" would be an inappropriate English translation of that word.

I'm having a ridiculously shitty day so I'm just gonna be curt here. I feel like there's something you're really missing somehow. — Pfhorrest

Forgive me. (Describe me as forgivable!) I was impatient to debate the content.

No need to apologize. My shitty day was not because of you, it just left me without the mental capacity to respond to you appropriately.

No worries.