Language enables, and language is social -- but not institutional. Not even as a status-function derived from we-intentions. — Moliere

That certain noises or marks count as utterances, while others do not, shows that language is institutional.

Far as Searle's account is from Marx, they do agree in that the social is not reducible to the mental. In Searle's analysis we-intent is not reducible to I-intent.

And I think he is correct here.

What is a prediction for you? Is it the relation between an S and a P? — Joshs

You are asking what is the "...is..." in S is P?

It isn't anything; certainly not a relation.

Let's not reify syntax.

What is a prediction for you? Is it the relation between an S and a P?
— Joshs

You are asking what is the "...is..." in S is P?

It isn't anything; certainly not a relation.

Let's not reify syntax. — Banno

It has to be something. It carries a meaning, and the meaning changes with the structure of the logical relation.
Logic doesn’t consist of S’s and P’s basking in solipsism. It tells us how to bind or separate them. Actually, in my question concerning the nature of a predication, I’m more interested in the S and the P than in the copula , which , btw, I suggest gives us the structure of ‘use’.
I recognize that the forms of logic that you are most interested in represent innovations over older forms of logic in which the copula has no connection to use but instead simply connects independent symbols. In modern pragmatic logics, from my understanding, the objects that S and P stand for are always themselves the effects of use relations. Thus, no object senses escape the structure of public use.

It seems, though, that , even given that the ‘S’ in a predication is never independent of a use-context , these logics must be able to keep the sense of the ‘S’ stable. That is , its use points to a category that can be symbolized. A use belongs to a use category , and this is what the symbols in a logic stand for. I think this where interpersonal of the later Wittgenstein split off from each other. Those Wittgensteinians who endorse the value of formal logic see him as making symbolizable use categories irreducible ( Hacker and Baker) , while others argue that uses aren’t symbolizable categories but contingent, situational contexts.

It has to be something. — Joshs

Why?

It carries a meaning, — Joshs

It has a use? What does it do? It doesn't even occur in certain other languages, where the concatenation of a predicate and a noun will suffice. It does Fa in standard logical parlance.

It tells us how to bind or separate them. — Joshs

"...how to..."? It's a set of instructions?

That is , its use points to a category that can be symbolized. — Joshs

Better, use is creating a category.

Bradley’s regress lurks here.

It doesn't even occur in certain other languages, where the concatenation of a predicate and a noun will suffice — Banno

Interesting

It has a use? What does it do? It doesn't even occur in certain other languages, where the concatenation of a predicate and a noun will suffice. It does Fa in standard logical parlance.
It tells us how to bind or separate them.
— Joshs
"...how to..."? It's a set of instructions? — Banno

‘Snow is white’: In this case , the ‘is’ tells us that white is a dependent attribute of snow. ‘Snow is snow’: In this case, the ‘is’ tells us that snow is identical to itself. ‘Snow’ is whiter than rain’: In this case the ‘is’ tells us that two independent objects are being compared. Of course, the ‘is’ isn’t doing this all by itself. The sentence that it occurs in defines its sense. And this must be true for the sense of the S and the P also. And I take it your point is that the ‘use’ of all of these components of a propositional statement involves not just the role of each symbol in the context of the sentence , but the use of the sentence in the context of public communication.

Better, use is creating a category — Banno

Now we’re getting somewhere. This is what I was trying to get at. So if the components of a syllogism get their sense from their role in the sentence, and the sentence gets its sense from its use by a community, is this community use the creation of the category that defines the sense of a particular syllogism? And if so, do we do things with categories other than create them?
Are there instances or aspects of the actual engagement with a syllogism that don’t involve the fresh creation of a category? And if we are not always creating a category when we converse , how should we describe what we are doing with the category as we employ it in a syllogism? Tell me more about the difference between the creation and the employment of a category.

"Snow is white" is just a noun and a predicate... f(a). The "is" does nothing. "Snow is whiter than rain" is an order predicate, still be parsed as f(a,b); again the "is" has no semantic purpose. The "is" only has a semantic content in the second example - "...is equal to..." or "...is the same as...". "Snow is snow" hides the deep structure "snow is equal to snow" f(a,a); usually standardised as "a=a".

So you've used the predicating "is" in two cases and the equals is in the other. They are not the same.

And again, if the predicating "is" had any semantic power, you would also have to deal with Bradley’s regress.

That certain noises or marks count as utterances, while others do not, shows that language is institutional. — Banno

I'm not sure.

Just looking at linguistic institutions, it seems to me that all linguistic institutions do the opposite of making certain marks count as utterances. They categorize what happened to work before, but it wasn't the institution that made the utterance, but the other way around. Language pre-dates institutions, after all.

We don't know why certain noises or marks count as utterances.

Far as Searle's account is from Marx, they do agree in that the social is not reducible to the mental. In Searle's analysis we-intent is not reducible to I-intent.

And I think he is correct here.

I agree that I-intent does not reduce to we-intent, but I'm not sure I'm following how Searle escapes the charge of reducing the social to the mental. We-intentions are mental, yeah? And status-functions arise out of we-intentions. So maybe not reducible, but still arises out of -- unless I'm completely misunderstanding.

↪Joshs "Snow is white" is just a noun and a predicate... f(a). The "is" does nothing. — Banno

If it is in a sentence, it plays a semantic role in that sentence, albeit one that can vary widely in importance depending on the context. Components of a sentence are like notes in a song. Every note has a meaning in the context of the piece. There are no notes which ‘do nothing’. I say ‘ All snow is white’. You say, ‘No, it IS NOT!’ I say , yes, all snow IS white.’ Or I say ‘this snow was white’. You correct me by saying, ‘No, this snow IS white’. It seems to me the ‘is’ carries the central semantic message via the emphasis in these sentences, but via slightly different senses of meaning. Hebrew doesnt use the word ‘is’, because other elements of a sentence take over the function of identifying tense, personal pronoun, etc. But this doesn’t mean that there is no semantic effect of this difference in grammatical structure between English and Hebrew, or between English and any other language. These differences are among the reasons that there cannot be a perfect translation from one language to another.

No response to the rest of my post?

If it is in a sentence, it plays a semantic role in that sentence — Joshs

Perhaps in English its role is to distinguish Snow White from that snow is white.

Again, there are languages in which it doesn't occur; it is not needed in first order logic; and supposing that it is a relation leads immediately to Bradley's regress...

That is, you are suggesting that "fa" is an incomplete analysis of predication, that we must represent as well the relation between f and a... and that the "is" is needed to explicate something in addition to "fa". So instead of analysing the first-order predicate as "fa" you say we must write "a is f". But now you have two more relations, that between "a" and "is f" and that between "a is" and "f"... and off you go.

So we can stop at "fa", which works, or chase Bradley down the rabbit hole. Say "Hello" to Alice.

No response to the rest of my post? — Joshs

Nope.

...but it wasn't the institution that made the utterance, but the other way around. — Moliere

Hmmm. I read Searle as claiming that the difference between a grunt and an utterance is exactly that the utterance makes use of an institution... it counts as a warning or an admonition or some such. It has a normative role.

Seems a slightly different application of "institution" to Marx.

I'm not sure I'm following how Searle escapes the charge of reducing the social to the mental. — Moliere

Well, I'm not sure what "mental" entails. Do we agree that social intent is not private? "mental" stuff tends to be regarded as private. I would like to avoid seeing, say, buying a pizza as a mental activity.

Just looking at linguistic institutions, it seems to me that all linguistic institutions do the opposite of making certain marks count as utterances. They categorize what happened to work before, but it wasn't the institution that made the utterance, but the other way around. Language pre-dates institutions, after all. — Moliere

Language itself is an institution (at least in sociology). I'm not sure I remember how Marx used the word, but I doubt modern Marxist sociologist would find the idea that language is an institution surprising. There are many different theories, but as a rule of thumb, sociology considers any suriving regular social behaviour an institution. When you speak of linguistic institutions above do you mean stuff like dictionaries, linguistics, crossword puzzles...? Or the organisations that make them?

Yeah, the utterance makes the institution: without the utterance, no language. But, generally, people draw on their expectations of the institution to make those utterances. Chicken-egg situation, at that point.

Again, there are languages in which it doesn't occur; it is not needed in first order logic; and supposing that it is a relation leads immediately to Bradley's regress. That is, you are suggesting that "fa" is an incomplete analysis of predication, that we must represent as well the relation between f and a. — Banno

I didn’t mean to suggest that the ‘is’ is necessary in order
for predication to do its job. My point was that whenever the ‘is’ makes its appearance in a sentence it does so for a reason. It does something. Rather than calling it a relation, I would say that it modifies the sentence in some way. It acts as a verb, or perhaps an adverb, but then modern philology recognized that the roots on which languages are based act more as verbs than as nouns. The ‘S’ is already a doing, a performance, even before it is linked to a ‘P’, which is a further performance.

My point was that whenever the ‘is’ makes its appearance in a sentence it does so for a reason. — Joshs

As I explained, it's to stop "Snow White" from being confused with "snow is white".

You might have caught my subtle hint that you seem to be running up against Bradley's regress. I gather you don't agree.

Yep.

I read Searle as claiming that the difference between a grunt and an utterance is exactly that the utterance makes use of an institution... it counts as a warning or an admonition or some such. It has a normative role. — Banno

~~

Hmmm. I read Searle as claiming that the difference between a grunt and an utterance is exactly that the utterance makes use of an institution... it counts as a warning or an admonition or some such. It has a normative role. — Banno

So far so good on this phrasing. I went through the thread on Searle you linked so I'm sort of responding to all the ideas that were in it at once.

If "institution" is just what counts as according to any group then I'm picking on Searle's account of institution more than I am the notion that language is enacted by a group which counts certain marks as meanings. Separately I also doubt that counting-as must be rule-bound (and, further, I wouldn't say that makes language ineffable, regardless of the status of its rule-boundedness). To that end I was trying to use Marx's notion of alienation as a contrast to Searle's notion of institution as status-functions which arise from we-intentions to show how his notion of we-intentions wouldn't be able to handle alienation, which should count as an institution by this rule of thumb:

There are many different theories, but as a rule of thumb, sociology considers any suriving regular social behaviour an institution. — Dawnstorm

So if language is an institution which arises from we-intentions of a group counting marks as meaningful then it seems to me alienation isn't really possible.

That is, there are different positions within a group, and how counting-as works.

Well, I'm not sure what "mental" entails. Do we agree that social intent is not private? "mental" stuff tends to be regarded as private. I would like to avoid seeing, say, buying a pizza as a mental activity. — Banno

Social intent is not private. And if we're talking the private language argument, mental is not private either.

"buying a pizza" is a social activity. I bet, however we count mental, the mental will be involved in some sense, but not in the sense of the ineffable or anything.

Much of my thoughts on the ineffable is how I think people prefer to think of the social in mental terms, and then claim that it is somehow private (and, therefore, cannot be criticized). So there's some of my interest in these distinctions.

Language itself is an institution (at least in sociology). I'm not sure I remember how Marx used the word, but I doubt modern Marxist sociologist would find the idea that language is an institution surprising. There are many different theories, but as a rule of thumb, sociology considers any suriving regular social behaviour an institution. When you speak of linguistic institutions above do you mean stuff like dictionaries, linguistics, crossword puzzles...? Or the organisations that make them? — Dawnstorm

I think some of what I replied to @Banno makes this clearer. I'm on board with language being an institution in this very broad rule of thumb you put here. I'm quibbling with Searle's notion, which relates to language because that's how it's situated in the thread.

Yeah, the utterance makes the institution: without the utterance, no language. But, generally, people draw on their expectations of the institution to make those utterances. Chicken-egg situation, at that point. — Dawnstorm

Yeah. But there is no "the" institution, at that point, right? The groups are so many...

My point was that whenever the ‘is’ makes its appearance in a sentence it does so for a reason.
— Joshs
As I explained, it's to stop "Snow White" from being confused with "snow is white". — Banno

I don’t think you mean to say that this is the only function of the word ‘is’, because it can do many things in a sentence. I assume you’re trying to tell me what is NOT a necessary function of the ‘is’ , namely , telling us that two other terms are related in some way.

You might have caught my subtle hint that you seem to be running up against Bradley's regress. I gather you don't agree. — Banno

All components of language are doings, changes, transformations. They relate a prior sense with a new sense by modifying the old sense. The simplest way to convey this is with a sentence that consists of a single word or gesture. All higher structures of language build on this by elaboration and enrichment. Since a single word in itself already can convey a relation in the sense of a doing, I don’t think Bradley’s regress has any relevance to my argument. From my perspective, every addition to the relation conveyed by a one-word sentence would have to be considered a new and different relation rather than a regressive defining of the original relation. The ‘is’, when it is employed , contributes a new kind of transforming relation ( a doing) on top of that constituted by a pair of terms , rather than originally creating the relation between those terms.

I don’t think you mean to say that this is the only function of the word ‘is’ — Joshs

Quite the opposite; the uses of "is" are many and diverse.

But it does nothing in "a is f"; here's the proof: fa.

I don’t think Bradley’s regress has any relevance to my argument. — Joshs

That is, you are suggesting that "fa" is an incomplete analysis of predication, that we must represent as well the relation between f and a... and that the "is" is needed to explicate something in addition to "fa". So instead of analysing the first-order predicate as "fa" you say we must write "a is f". But now you have two more relations, that between "a" and "is f" and that between "a is" and "f"... and off you go. — Banno

If this does not address your argument, then again I've not been able to follow what you have been claiming.

I don;t have any strong opinion here. I suppose that if alienation is not compatible with the broader notion of institutions, we could re-think alienation. But it's not clear to me that this is needed.

, you are suggesting that "fa" is an incomplete analysis of predication, that we must represent as well the relation between f and a... and that the "is" is needed to explicate something in addition to "fa". — Banno

My argument, drawing from Husserl, is that fa is not an analysis of predication so much as a naive restatement of the idealization that predication represents, and that there is a ‘pre-predicative’ stratum of cognition that predication and all its symbols are built on top of. Trying to use these symbols, like fa, to describe this pre-predicative stratum is putting the cart before the horse.
This pre-predicative level of cognition has been misunderstood as a psychological realm, as if one were using neuroscience to explain the basis of the recognition of symbols , identities and propositions. But a neuroscientific approach that is founded on mathematical methods which in turn are founded on propositional logic is also putting the cart before the horse.

Regarding the treatment of the ‘is’ as an ‘added’ relation between S and P, let’s go back to Bradley. According to Wiki,

“Bradley seems to conclude that the regress should lead us to abandon the idea that relations are "independently real". One way to take this suggestion is as recommending that in the case of a respecting b, we are dealing with a state of affairs that has only two constituents: a and b. It does not, in addition, involve a third item…”

Not sure if you agree with this, but assuming you do, help me understand in what way there are only two constituents in the case of ‘Snow is white’. Certainly we can remove the ‘is’ and end up with the two symbols fa.
But when I hear the words snow is white, how am I able to understand what this means? Let’s begin with the first word of the syllogism. Snow in this context doesn’t refer to the memory of a particular instance of my encounter with snow , it refers to any and all possible instances, that is, snow in general. Would you say, then, that what I am understanding here is the general category of snow? And what about the predicate ‘white’? Am I not treating this word in the context of the syllogism as the general category of the color white? And how am I supposed to understand what this genera category of white is doing in the same syllogism with the general category of snow?
Of all the ways I can think about snow, only one way directs me toward a property or attribute of it, something that describes only own aspect of what snow is, in addition to its being wet, crystalline, sparkly, and so on.
So if, according to Bradley the only constituents of ‘snow is white’ are the two general categories ‘snow’ and ‘white’, what do we call our being directed toward an attribute of snow? If this is not a relation, and not a constituent, do we say that it simply belongs equally and inseparably to the two constituents? This could work if the meaning of ‘snow’ and ‘ white’ have been modified such that , in their participation in the syllogism , they no longer have separable identities apart from their role in the syllogism. Is this what you would say? Because if one can still tease out from the predication a general category of meaning called ‘snow’ and one called ‘white’ then one clearly has a third category, or at least sense, here in the form of ‘is a part of’. Then in order to understand the syllogism as a whole , one must go back and forth between ‘snow’ , ‘white’, and ‘is a part of’. I believe the first option rather than the second. How about you?

All that seems overly complicated. Putting it more directly, seem to me that "snow is white" is about two things, snow and white; but you insist that it is about three things: snow, white and being.

This and the other... good threads Banno.

<raised beer mug>

I don;t have any strong opinion here. I suppose that if alienation is not compatible with the broader notion of institutions, we could re-think alienation. But it's not clear to me that this is needed. — Banno

Cool.

I was saying alienation couldn't be represented in Searle's language of institutions but... more specific to the thread on Searle you pointed out I'm realizing, and therefore absolutely necessary to cover in figuring out ineffabillity ;)

The broader notion I agree with, here:

as a rule of thumb, sociology considers any suriving regular social behaviour an institution. — Dawnstorm

and here:

the difference between a grunt and an utterance is exactly that the utterance makes use of an institution... it counts as a warning or an admonition or some such. It has a normative role. — Banno

I think I was getting stuck on the nitty gritty within the Searle thread.

Heh, even in seeking disagreement... :D

Though one thing that occurs to me that might still be an object of disagreement is group size.

To me, I'd be inclined to say two people who use a joke twice, or who have noticed whose "spot" it is on the bus, have created an institution, by our understandings provided. It may not be a long lasting or massively significant one, but I'd say it fits.

And I think the Searle thread got me thinking.... there's no way that fits. Plus the part I already mentioned about trying to distinguish the mental from the social in a particular way.

↪Joshs

All that seems overly complicated. Putting it more directly, seem to me that "snow is white" is about two things, snow and white; but you insist that it is about three things: snow, white and being — Banno

It is about intentionality, that is , aboutness, which is an act of doing. To intend is to be about something in a certain way, and there cannot be a sense of meaning without aboutness. To think the word ‘snow’ is to think about snow in some manner of givenness ( recollection, imagination, perception). One cannot intend more than one meaning at a time , so the syllogism should be seen as a temporal succession, a movement from one aboutness to another which progressively constructs a higher level concept. One can also think of an act of aboutness as a shift of attention.

Let’s put this in visual terms. I am told to imagine that snow is white. My attention is initially directed , even before I process the meaning of the word ‘snow’ , toward the context of the request, which could be seeing the syllogism as part of a discussion in the philosophy forum. From that attentive context, my attention is now directed toward the image of snow, an image which belongs in my mind to this larger context of an example within a philosophy discussion. From this image of snow my attention is then directed to the word ‘is’ ( if that happens to be part of the syllogism’s construction). Before I hear the word ‘white’ , the word ‘is’ initially directs my attention( primes me) in an open-ended way to prepare for some new event of understanding involving snow( many possibilities are prepared for at once, such as snow is nice , snow is snow, snow is falling, snow is colder than fire).

Hearing the word ‘white’ after the ‘is’ directs my attention in a focused way onto one of these many possibilities, not simply white as a free standing category, but white in its role as a modifier of snow. More specifically, the ‘white’ here modifies the meaning of ‘snow’ by representing a component or dependent part of snow , as something which is contained by or included within snow. This is a spatial aspect of snow , like saying that something is to the left of , on top of , underneath, alongside , outside of or encircling snow. Notice that the word ‘is’ is not necessary to convey these spatial meanings. The important point is that these directional concepts are real. People with damage to spatial areas of the cortex cannot comprehend the meaning of certain kinds of spatial relationships between objects.

In order to understand spatial positioning or containment relationships ( P is a part of S) , one must hold the substrate ( snow) in memory all the while manipulating the contained item (white) , such that one can then experience both the containing ( snow) and the contained ( white) ina single experience. This requires more memory effort than such patients are capable of. The substrate is lost sight of when they move on to the attribute, so it is never seen in its role as attribute, but only as a free-floating concept. The concept ‘inside of ‘ simply doesn’t exist for them.
If you present ‘snow is white’ to someone with this kind of injury, they’ll respond ‘Fine, I know what snow is , and I know what white is , and I even understand that you are claiming some kind of connection between the two, but I don’t understand what kind of connection this is supposed to be.’ On the other hand , they may have no trouble parsing ‘snow is pretty’ , a non-spatial relationship.

My point isnt that one needs a healthy psychological system in order to understand syllogisms , it is that relational elements of syllogisms are real concepts that involve cognitive achievements. There is no more danger of a regress with these sorts of ‘connector’ concepts than there is with the nouns that populate logical propositions.

Assuming one doesn’t have these neurological abnormalities, my attention to the belongingness of white to snow changes my initial understanding of snow, when it was the only word of the syllogism I was exposed to, from a general idea of snow to ‘this snow that is white’.

In sum, the final result of the temporal succession of attentional , and intentional, shifts that marks my moving through the words of the proposition is not three components( ‘snow’ , ‘white’ and ‘a dependent part of’) or two components( snow and white), but only one component, ‘the white snow’, which has embedded within its meaning all of the attentional shifts of sense that mark the history of its construction in the very short period of time it takes to read or hear the syllogism.

This has got to be
a record for a thread
about
what cannot be said.

A Guinness World Record?

Well done, ! :starstruck:

I think it's sort of like taking the limit. The more you talk about it the closer you approach the ineffable. At 2k posts we'll be certain to at least glimpse an asymptote.

Well done.. — jgill

Why, thank you. The thread has gone far beyond even my expectations.

I suspect it has more to do with obdurance.

Only way to find out is at 800 more posts.

I am a strict phenomenologist. (at least I like to joke that way)