:up:

The distinction resides in the point-of-use (...) and the talking about the point-of-use (...).
— Mww

I don't understand. Can you give me an example. — T Clark

Hard to give an example of a distinction. One must accept the premise that there is no language in pure thought, that pure thought is predicated on mental imagery alone. But the human system cannot express itself in mental imagery, hence the invention of empirical symbolic representations of pure cognitive representations, that is to say, words for conceptions/intuitions, symbols for quantities, other symbols for spatial extensions, and so on.

You must have read a book, being sufficiently engrossed by the words contained in it, that you no longer see the words, but translate them automatically into imagery. You see what the words say. How would that even be possible, if it wasn’t the way the cognitive system works in the first place?

The representation always presupposes that which is represented; words always presuppose that to which they relate.
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naming something is a very brief and concise way of expressing something which is much richer in experience than a single word could convey. — Manuel

Exactly. “Tree” presupposes the plethora of ancillary conceptions that represent that object as a particular thing. And just because we understand the particular thing “sun” without any need of supplemental conceptions such as hydrogen, heat, EMR, doesn’t mean we haven’t already conjoined these all together. This is quite apparent from the fact we know a priori we cannot look directly at the thing called “sun”, which makes explicit there is something about that object not contained in the mere word that represents it. Sometimes, “much richer in experience” is dangerous.

And yes, naming changes things in a sense, absolutely. — Manuel

How so?

Kant seems to think that apples are separate from the rest of everything before they become things. Before they are named. — T Clark

Not before. After. Objects are already things, therefore not by becoming things, but by becoming phenomena. Phenomena precede naming. Apples are separate from the rest of everything else after they are named. “Apple” represents the separation.

Apple is merely a word that represents some real physical object with certain empirical properties; that object, that thing, before it is given to human perception, just is in the world, just whatever it is, just whatever that happens to be. And no more than that can be said about it.

The representation always presupposes that which is represented; words always presuppose that to which they relate. — Mww

I was nodding my head in agreement till you got to this. That's not how I see it. There is a sense in which things do not exist until they are named. Yes, I know. That is not the standard way of looking at existence, but is sometimes a useful way to think about it.

This is quite apparent from the fact we know a priori we cannot look directly at the thing called “sun”, which makes explicit there is something about that object not contained in the mere word that represents it. — Mww

I can't remember anything from when I was a baby, but I'm pretty sure I learned not to look at the sun from experience.

I have a general experience X, it's mine alone. There are only several words I can use to convey my personal experience to another person, I choose the word that most closely resembles X. I use this word to express it to other people. The words I use is the way I can publicly express X, but X is much more complex and nuanced than the word I use.

There's no way to directly share X experience with another person.

That's what I'm trying to get at by saying that naming something changes it.

Apples are separate from the rest of everything else after they are named. “Apple” represents the separation. — Mww

I'm ok with this.

Not before. After. Objects are already things, therefore not by becoming things, but by becoming phenomena. Phenomena precede naming. — Mww

But this has me scratching my head. How can an apple be a thing if it has not been separated from the rest of everything else.

Apple is merely a word that represents some real physical object with certain empirical properties; that object, that thing, before it is given to human perception, just is in the world, just whatever it is, just whatever that happens to be. And no more than that can be said about it. — Mww

How can a thing be a thing or an object before it is separated from everything else? The Tao does not contain or include apples. It's just the Tao, which is the name we use for that which can not be named.

There's no way to directly share X experience with another person. — Manuel

I'm stepping on thin ice, so forgive me if I retract this right away - There are ways of sharing experience other than using names and words. That's what art and music do. Physical and emotional intimacy. Now, stepping out even further on thinner ice - maybe that's what showing someone how to do something does, e.g. teaching someone how to ride a bike.

And yes, naming changes things in a sense, absolutely.
— Manuel

How so? — Mww

What we do by naming, using words, is tell stories. We are telling stories about the world. One of the things stories do is apply human values to the world. Forgive me now while I vastly oversimplify. We talk about apples because apples are important as sources of food. We name snakes because they are dangerous. We separate green out of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation because sometimes in the world things which reflect light in that range of wavelengths are important to us. We didn't name other wavelengths because they didn't influence our lives, or we didn't know they did. Now we talk about radio waves because somewhere along the line, they became important.

Names, words, say "Pay attention here. This is important."

No, you're right. We do all those things too.

We hope that the art we do can come close to conveying our experience.

There is a sense in which things do not exist until they are named. — T Clark

I understand that. A pressure wave is not a sound until after it has passed the auditory apparatus, true enough. Still, the thing, as pressure wave, must exist and affect the sense mode perceiving it in a certain manner, in order to be determinable as a sound.
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How can an apple be a thing if it has not been separated from the rest of everything else. — T Clark

An apple is an apple because it has been separated from everything else. The thing, before it became named as an apple, is only separated from everything else because it is of a separate space and time than everything else, but no less a thing for that. The thing only became an apple because we said it did. Could have been given any name not already used to represent another thing.

The thing just is; the name is merely stands for how that thing is be known.
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Tao, which is the name we use for that which can not be named. — T Clark

So...a name for the unnameable. I see no benefit in that kind of logic. But I have no familiarity with Tao and such, so there is that.........
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What we do by naming, using words, is telling stories. — T Clark

Perhaps, but far and away too close to empirical anthropology, and very far from epistemological metaphysics. I have very little interest in the former, and great interest in the latter. I want to know how the method by which naming occurs, not so much the post hoc employment of it. The former makes necessary I understand myself, which I control, but the latter only makes possible another understands me, which I cannot.

Anyway.....good talk.

It's like a raccoon-dog. Before checking; tell me if it's real.

There's no way to directly share X experience with another person. — Manuel

True, but that doesn’t explain any changes in the thing.

The words I use is the way I can publicly express X, but X is much more complex and nuanced than the word I use. — Manuel

Just because you’ve described a thing with certain words, and the thing is more than the description, doesn’t signify a change in the thing. It is merely an incomplete description of it.

Take your experience of a Jack Russell terrier. Use the words four, legged, furry, floppy, ears, bright, eyes.....and all I might know from that is “dog”. Add in “greater than 50% white, black lips and nose, ears never below the eyes, less than 15lbs, less than 13” high”......you’ve changed what I understand of your experience, but the thing of your experience remains as it ever was.

Right? Did I miss something?

Essentially yes. As you give more detailed analysis, I get a better picture of the dog you saw.

I'd say that in describing it as being over half white, black lips and so on, those are names you give that approximate your experience. The experience for you is private. It's a first person phenomenon.

When you attempt to describe it, you're shifting to a third person description. The change occurs in the shift of perspective. The object in experience will remain the same to you, but in the description, no matter how detailed it is, I cannot enter your body and see the dog with your eyes and conceive it with your mind.

I'll make my own description in my own mental image, likely different form yours. Perhaps the black I imagine is lighter than yours, or I have a kind of terrier in mind that is bigger than yours, etc.

So yes, no change in the "object itself", so to speak, but the object as you describe to me changes from what you actually experience.

So yes, no change in the "object itself", so to speak, — Manuel

Cool. That was my only contention.

the object as you describe to me changes from what you actually experience. — Manuel

Quite so. And necessarily. What I describe is a representation of the thing of my experience. You do not perceive my experience but only a description of the representation of the object of my experience. For you, then, you have nothing other than your representation of my representation. In effect, the object of description changes, but the object of description is not the thing of experience.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that our naming of things brings our world of things into existence, and I don't think Kant would either. — Janus


“....If the question regarded an object of sense merely, it would be impossible for me to confound the conception with the existence of a thing. For the conception merely enables me to cogitate an object as according with the general conditions of experience; while the existence of the object permits me to cogitate it as contained in the sphere of actual experience....”

....and that should be sufficient to validate for your thinking.
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I think our world of things is already precognitively implicit — Janus


Couldn’t be otherwise, could it, really? Yours goes to show the temporality of the human cognitive system, often ignored.

“....For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears—which would be absurd....”
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I think language makes things determinate for us in highly abstract ways. — Janus


I might offer that reason makes things determinate; language makes determined things mutually understood.

Again.....thanks for the invite. I’ll show myself out. I mean....really. Where’s the good cognac, anyway? — Mww

:up: My only quibble: is reason (beyond the most basic concrete animal kinds) possible without language?

As to good cognac I can offer you only the representation of it that my reference to it may evoke.

We're in full agreement then. :cool:

There's no way to directly share X experience with another person. — Manuel

There are ways of sharing experience other than using names and words. — T Clark

There's no way to directly share X experience with another person.
— Manuel

True, but that doesn’t explain any changes in the thing. — Mww

eyes.....and all I might know from that is “dog”. Add in “greater than 50% white, black lips and nose, ears never below the eyes, less than 15lbs, less than 13” high”......you’ve changed what I understand of your experience, but the thing of your experience remains as it ever was. — Mww

Because you cannot describe the cognac exhaustively, using words, you cannot share the experience of the cognac?

Worst host ever. Keeps the cognac to himself because Kant convinced him that we can't share the experience.

Anyway I generally prefer armagnac. Purely therapeutic, of course.

You're equivocating on "share".

Explain the equivocation.


(Cheers to whichever Mod did the adulting here.)

Let's look at the "senses" of share at work here. We open the armagnac and share it - we might talk about sharing the experience of drinking.

Then things get philosophical and someone says something like that we only know what the armagnac tastes like to each of us; we can't share what it tastes like in itself... and the little man appears, because the taste of armagnac-in-itself is as nonsensical as the little man who wasn't there.

And then someone adds that the taste-of-armagnac-to-Banno might be different to the taste-of-armagnac-to-them, that we cannot share this either... so now we have three nonsense entities, the taste-of-armagnac-in-itself, the taste-of-armagnac-to-Banno, and the taste-of-armagnac-to-someone-else...

And so we start referring not just to the unknown, but to empty place-holders. Philosophers behave as if there were such things, but others will share the taste, maybe discussing the hint of caramel or toffee.

The philosopher hasn't noticed that they are not referring to any thing.

We open the armagnac and share it - we might talk about sharing the experience of drinking.

Then things get philosophical and someone says something like that we only know what the armagnac tastes like to each of us; we can't share what it tastes like in itself... and the little man appears, because the taste of armagnac-in-itself is as nonsensical as the little man who wasn't there. — Banno

I don’t think the Wittgensteinian approach completely resolved the problem because the idea of an intersubjective locus of meaning makes no sense without subjectivities that interact. We can say that we only know what the armagnac tastes like to each of us without assuming that there is such a thing as the armagnac-in-itself, just as there is no such thing as a self in itself or a self for itself or a ‘what it is like’ in itself.

Wittgenstein was right to argue that the sense of anything is only produced in interaction , but this interaction is not the same thing as a pure ‘sharing’ in which the sense of an experience is a outlet ‘we’ phenomenon. There can be no pure ‘we’ sharing of any sense because then this shared ‘we’ becomes a thing in itself.

Here's where this discussion generally leads, Aidan. To a division between those who think there is something more to be said and those who think it can only be shown.

the idea of an intersubjective locus of meaning makes no sense without subjectivities that interact. — Joshs

This is a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein, relying on meaning rather than use, while giving primacy to the subjective. You would maintain some variation of a private language, disguised as "subjectivities". Go ahead, but then you can say nothing interesting about them.

But we've had this discussion previously, I think. Back here:

I'm fishing for "what it is" that is inexpressible. Or rather, pointing out that there is a prima facie contradiction in saying that there is something that cannot be expressed. If there is something then one ought be able to individuate it; to name it; hence, "S". But I think the argument shows that there are problems with naming "S".

The issue is phrased as if there were a limit on language such that there is something that language cannot set out. I'm saying that instead, there is a misguided notion that there is a something were there is none; that what is described is not a limit on language but an illusion. — Banno

Returning to the OP

Kants thing in itself, direct notions of eternity, nothingness, etc, at first thought, seem to represent thing which are unknowable. They purport to represent things outside of human cognition. But, surely, all there is is human cognition? In such an instance, there is no unknowable, in the way it is commonly assumed, instead, the unknowable is always knowable. — Aidan buk

I think your intuition here is good.

You talk in terms of cognition. In the middle of last century there was a move to rephrase issues of cognition in terms of language - the linguistic turn in philosophy. The philosophers of then - Wittgenstein, Austin, and others - would have rephrased your point by saying that notions of eternity, nothingness, etc, seem to represent something unstatable - they purport to represent things outside of language. But, surely, all there is, is what can be said - the limits of our language are the limits of our world.

One cannot sensibly talk about those things of which nothing can be said. The "thing in itself" is an invocation of this edge of the world, the end of the map; in previous discussions with @Mww we met at this edge and agreed that "here be dragons"; there are plenty of folk who think that they need not stop at this edge, blithely pursuing the snark.

The interesting thing is that what cannot be said is of the highest import. Instead of being said it is expressed in art, and found in what folk actually do, as opposed to what the might say.

Let's look at the "senses" of share at work here. We open the armagnac and share it - we might talk about sharing the experience of drinking. — Banno

The exception being Cilantro; for some people it tastes like soap. It oddly correlates with whether or not an individual can smell stink bugs. I want to say they identified a genetic marker. So, when the same interactions do produce non-trivial little men it is noted.

The exception being Cilantro; for some people it tastes like soap. — Cheshire

...thanks for sharing...?

Yes, we can even talk about it when we don't share similarities in taste. Odd, then, that some folk say we can't share.

:smirk:

is reason (beyond the most basic concrete animal kinds) possible without language? — Janus

I think it must be so. If not, what’s the point in the old adage “think before you speak”. Besides, while thinking is a necessary human condition, language is merely a contingent human invention.

As to good cognac I can offer you only the representation of it — Janus

HA!!! Exactly what I tell the missus when the sauce didn’t turn out quite right.

I think I understand what you mean - in a sense you are saying there is no mind independent object, and all this thinking about it never leaves mind. I agree, and believe idealism would agree with you. — Pop

Would mind independent objects be what Kant called "Thing-in-Itself"? Kant seems think they exist, but outside of the reason's boundary. They cannot be known, but are postulated?

Would mind independent objects be what Kant called "Thing-in-Itself"? Kant seems think they exist, but outside of the reason's boundary. They cannot be known, but are postulated? — Corvus

On the right track. Question: does the number 7 exist? if so, where?

'The thing in itself' is otherwise designated as 'the noumenal'. From the wiki entry 'In philosophy, noumenon is a posited object or event that exists independently of human sense or perception. The term 'noumenon' is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term phenomenon, which refers to any object of the senses.'

But the interesting thing is, the Greek word nooúmenon is the neuter middle-passive present participle of νοεῖν noeîn "to think, to mean", which in turn originates from the word νοῦς noûs, "perception, understanding, mind."

So, the 'thing in itself' is at once independent of sense or perception, but at the same time, 'an object of nous', so only able to be grasped by intellect.

So there's something profound about this distinction, going back to the origins of philosophy with Parmenides. The 'objects of sense' cannot be known, because they don't truly exist - they don't have an inherent reality. Whereas the objects of reason are inherently real, immediate, not mediated by sense, and also not composed of parts, neither coming nor going. But they also don't exist.

I think that in reality, whatever is experienced has some elements of both. The task of philosophy is to discern them.

Great post :fire: :fire: :up: