Human experience is not the sort of thing that can be stepped into and/or out of to begin with, so it makes no sense at all to claim that doing so is needed for anything else at all. — creativesoul
“Only feeling” is the very core of abstract meaning. It is an impressionistic kind of verbiage. Rather than describing feeling as indeterminate, I would say that the word puts into sharper focus what feeling already locates in a general way. Is feeling non-representational? Is music non-representational? Did you know that if you put a group of people in a room and ask them to draw images that are evoked by a piece of instrumental music played to the group, many would draw similar images? That sounds representational to me. Is a Haiku representational in the way that an instruction manual is? Are there not forms of modern poetry that are abstract in the way that abstract art is? Does metaphorical language represent or invent? — Joshs
Is there an external material world?
If by "external" we mean not within the physical bounds of our skin, and by "material" we mean detectable stuff, then all we're asking is whether or not any detectable stuff not within the bounds of our skin exists.
Such questions are the bane of philosophy. — creativesoul
"14th century humans had cells."
That's my answer.
— creativesoul
Good. Now what about the phagocytised or excreted proteins in the cell vacuole. Were they part of what makes up these 14th C cells or not? — Isaac
I've no clear idea whether or not those terms pick out things that existed in their entirety prior to being picked out. If so, then those things were part of what made up 14th Century human cells. If not, then they were not. — creativesoul
If what is being picked out by the name exists in its entirety prior to being picked out then it does not matter one bit if those different uses conflict with one another. My point remains. — creativesoul
What we pick out with "cell" is up to us. — creativesoul
I think what you've written is sophistic nonsense. Saying "thought requires words" means that thinking is impossible without words. — Janus
Saying some thought requires words means that there are some thoughts which are impossible without using words. My claim was the latter, where "complex" substitutes for and specifies the "some". — Janus
Using a word changes us at the same time that it changes something in our environment.
We are in our environment. Word use changes us. How exactly does using the word "tree" as a means to pick out the thing in my front yard change the thing in my front yard?
Perhaps you have an example of a situation when language use changes something in our environment. I mean, I agree with that. At least when I take it at face value. Word use helps to create many different parts of our environment.
Words only exist in their use , and their use reveals new aspects of things.
I'm struggling to see the relevance. — creativesoul
Don’t we need to include the concept of ‘x’ itself as what is involved in naming.?
— Joshs
Possibly, but X here simply stands for something and the spaces between them stand for some boundary. I don't doubt you could make an argument that both concept (an external world matrix, and 'boundaries') are constructed concepts, but I haven't seen the evidence for that. All I've seen indicates that such fundamental concepts are present in very young babies and so seem likely to be hard-wired. — Isaac
. I think the differences between us might be the foundation on which this activity acts. You might have it have nk foundation at all, I believe there are physical and biological building blocks from which these senses are constructed.
We can’t then say the x’s existed prior to our naming of them as a jabberwocky , because the meaning of ‘x’ points to a specific way of causally interacting with aspects of the world.
— Joshs
As I say, I can see how you might theorise that, but the evidence I've seen seems to contradict it. — Isaac
Might hard-wired capacities be better thought of as sources of conditioning among others rather than as irreducible determinants of meaning? — Joshs
isn’t there a danger that the myriad senses of a concept like ‘boundary’ be lost as a result of a pre-emptively reductive understanding of ‘hard-wiring’? — Joshs
Is this way of understanding the innate the result of science or the unintended reliance on a philosophical presupposition guiding the naturalistic stance? — Joshs
My point is merely that the background concept of there being an external world matrix (without specifying the simples), and the idea of there being boundaries (not everything is one homogeneous mass) seem sufficiently innate to me to be premises from which we might find common ground with our fellow humans. O — Isaac
What makes the matrix we interact with ‘external’ to us? — Joshs
isnt that space of reasons in direct and continual contact with a world whose behavior it predicts and anticipates? — Joshs
the world’s ‘externality’ can only challenge a system of conceptions relative not the nature of those conceptions. — Joshs
If we belong causally to nature rather than standing outside of it observing it, must not the physical and biological building blocks be reconstructed from our immersion within that world? — Joshs
I suggest that in order for science to progress, the farther away from its origins it moves via its construction of the world, the better it understands those origins. Making progress in understanding the earliest and simplest building blocks of nature is a process of materially altering the world scientists and the rest of us inhabit, in ways that change the world we interact with profoundly relative to those beginnings. — Joshs
To assume we are attempting to capture non-contingent intrinsic features of that world through our science may be a dream we inherited from theological notions of the world. — Joshs
The fact that science makes assumptions doesn't make those assumptions bad ones to make. I'm sure there are scientists who will deny the assumption-laden nature of the work we do. I'm not one of them. But I do deny the automatic assumption that because we have presuppositions, those presuppositions need exposing/replacing/examining. There mere existence is not evidence any of those things need to happen. — Isaac
Is there an external material world?
If by "external" we mean not within the physical bounds of our skin, and by "material" we mean detectable stuff, then all we're asking is whether or not any detectable stuff not within the bounds of our skin exists.
Such questions are the bane of philosophy.
— creativesoul
Here's my version. At some point in the philosophical tradition (Locke or Kant or implicitly in Democritus even), it made sense to think of human experience as f(X)f(X) where XX is reality in the nude or raw or completely apart from us and ff is the universal structure or mediation of human cognition. The important bits of this insane but charming theory are that XX is impossible to access directly and that f(X)f(X) is private experience (plausible initially because we each have our own sense organs and brain, according to our sense organs anyway, which are in that sense their own product ? And the brain is the dream of the brain is the dream of the brain ? But we must carry on...). — Pie
What we pick out with "cell" is up to us.
— creativesoul
Right. That's the point Janus and I have been trying to communicate.
What 'experience' picks out depends on how one uses the word. Could be internal, external, or both.
Just like the word 'cell' could pick out all the phagocytised proteins in the cell vacuole, some or them, of none of them. It all depends how we use the word. — Isaac
...the name refers to a concept... — Metaphysician Undercover
A "cell" as commonly defined can be either a complete living organism, or a part of a living organism. How is it, that in some cases an entire living organism is "picked out" as a cell, and in other cases, a part of a living organism is picked out, and called by the same name.
One is an entire living organism, the other is not, yet they are both said to be the same independent thing, a cell.
Obviously, the term "cell"... ...is used to pick out two completely different types of things, one being a whole living organism, the other being a part of a living organism.
To deny that they did, because the term had not been coined, is to confuse our language use with what is being picked out. — creativesoul
Are you familiar with the later Wittgenstein? He argues that words do not refer to already existing objects. Strictly speaking , they do not refer at all. They enact relationships by altering prior relationships. If I see a tree, I am not passively observing hat appears to me, I am deconstructing it. And what I am deconstructing is not an object , it is a way of relating to something,- me that way of relating never repeats itself identically from
context to context. When I use a word in front of someone else, their response establishes a fresh sense of meaning of that word. ‘Tree’ has an infinity of senses that depend exquisitely on the context of a shared situation. In a situation of usage of the word ‘tree’ I am not creating a new physical object , I am enacting a new pattern of relationship with it. No object simply exists for us as what it is outside of changing contextual relationships of sense. — Joshs
Words mean whatever a community takes them to mean, that's the gist. — Pie
As I see it, this is a language trap. That it is impossible for one to step out of subjective experience is not an empirical hypothesis. It's just a lesson in metaphysical English, an articulation of how concepts tend to be used together by a particular, eccentric community (us), often mistaken for facts about immaterial entities like consciousness and knowledge and sensations. — Pie
If I see a tree, I am not passively observing hat appears to me, I am deconstructing it. And what I am deconstructing is not an object , — Joshs
...it is a way of relating to something,- me that way of relating never repeats itself identically from context to context.
When I use a word in front of someone else, their response establishes a fresh sense of meaning of that word. ‘Tree’ has an infinity of senses that depend exquisitely on the context of a shared situation. In a situation of usage of the word ‘tree’ I am not creating a new physical object , I am enacting a new pattern of relationship with it.
No object simply exists for us as what it is outside of changing contextual relationships of sense.
When a community uses words in certain ways, it can be detrimental to the community knowledge base. It can lead to big problems. — creativesoul
philosophy must be done within the limits of our concepts and language, — Hello Human
Human experience is not the sort of thing that can be stepped into and/or out of to begin with — creativesoul
so it makes no sense at all to claim that doing so is needed for anything else at all. — creativesoul
Understanding how language creation and/or acquisition happens leaves no room at all for serious well founded doubt regarding whether or not an external world exists. — creativesoul
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