So what is it you can't say, show or do? — Banno

Read what I wrote, with underlining:

What is meant by pre-predicative is very simple: There is in the world, that which is not language. Just this. You can say language is joined at the hip with perceived objects, and I think this is right; however, it is clear as a bell that, say, a spear to the kidney is not a language experience. I know the pain, and afterward I can tell you about it, and this telling will be an illustration of the way experiences are inherently understood in language. But this possession of the language counterpart of the speared kidney does not preclude the understanding of the pain "as pain", rather than pain as accounting, describing, explanation. Knowledge may be propositional, and if the world really were "just the facts" as is found in Wittgenstein's grand book in his Lecture on Ethics, then the matter would end here. But we all know that the most salient feature of pain is the pain itself, "prior" propositional assignment.

And "pain' is just a term, granted. But in the language that announces it, there is the mysterious and impossible "more" and "other".

So for you being in pain is not something one does or can show.

I can't make sense of that.

I can't make sense of that. — Banno

What do you suppose Witt had in mind when he said this?:

It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental

It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental — Constance

Exactly that ethics is in the doing.

After Davidson in On the very idea..., any completely incommensurable worldview could not be recognised as a world view. — Banno

Davidson thinks he is dismissing the very notion of a conceptual scheme, when in fact he is only dismissing the Quinean model and its underlying Kantian scheme-content dualism( Davidson’s third dogma of empiricism) , which involves the identification of conceptual schemes with sentential languages and the thesis of redistribution of truth-values across different conceptual schemes. Two schemes/languages differ when some substantial sentences of one language are not held to be true in the other in a systematic manner.

Conceptual relativism does not involve “confrontations between two conceptual schemes with different distributions of truth-values over their assertions, but rather confrontations between two languages with different distributions of truth-value status over their sentences due to incompat­ible metaphysical presuppositions. They do not lie in the sphere of disagreement or conflict of the sort arising when one theory holds something to be true that the other holds to be false. The difference lies in the fact that one side has nothing to say about what is claimed by the other side. It is not that they say the same thing differently, but rather that they say totally different things. The key contrast here is between saying something (asserting or denying) and saying nothing.”(On Davidson’s Refutation of Conceptual Schemes and Conceptual Relativism)

If every new use of a word is an original creation, language would be neither usable nor learnable. It would be mere babble, a different word each time.

Rather, as Davidson suggests in derangement of epitaphs, novel use is built on convention. — Banno

There is a way of continuing to be the same differently. Novelty built on convention doesn’t have to mean that the convention is ‘extant’ and then utilized to build the novel use, or , put differently, that a word belongs to a ‘type of use’, as Hacker and Baker argue. It can mean that what the convention ‘was’ is just as much determined by how it is used freshly as the novel speech is governed by the past convention which it employs. That way we don’t end up talking as though words ‘refer to’ types of use or conventions or are accountable to an independently specifiable rule or norm.

Exactly that ethics is in the doing. — Banno

You have have just missed the proverbial barn door, I think intentionally. Your issue is not with me. It is with Witt.

We forget there's an ineffable surface to everything, and that we're always on the surface, which ultimately best describes itself.

We forget there's an ineffable surface to everything, and that we're always on the surface, which ultimately best describes itself. — neonspectraltoast

Can you explain what you mean - an example of this perhaps?

Everything is an example of this. There is a surface that defines itself perfectly accurately, yet doesn't explain itself.

We get lost in each other's minds. But a chair is not best defined by the word "chair" for instance. A chair is really just an abstract extant "thing."

Would anyone disagree that all things define themselves better than humans ever could?

Would anyone disagree that all things define themselves better than humans ever could? — neonspectraltoast

It's often argued that the definition game is circular but I don't know if what you say is accurate. Things are not always recognizable or understandable. Do things 'define' themselves or is it rather the case that definitions may be unnecessary if you have the thing before you?

The difference lies in the fact that one side has nothing to say about what is claimed by the other side. — Joshs

So plumbing is incommensurable with origami. They say, as you say, totally different things. Sure, I've used the same argument, taking it from Mary Midgley.

That way we don’t end up talking as though words ‘refer to’ types of use or conventions or are accountable to an independently specifiable rule or norm. — Joshs

Again, yep.

So plumbing is incommensurable with origami. They say, as you say, totally different things. Sure, I've used the same argument, taking it from Mary Midgley. — Banno

Can you give a reference for this please? Really want to read the paper.

It's a recurring theme in her writing, but try Philosophical Plumbing.

Thanks!

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11175/philosophical-plumbing-mary-midgley/p1

Interesting point about conflict/mismatch as a commensuration relation. Would love to see it worked out in more detail. Think it's a similar discussion to the one @Joshs highlighted here:

Davidson thinks he is dismissing the very notion of a conceptual scheme, when in fact he is only dismissing the Quinean model and its underlying Kantian scheme-content dualism( Davidson’s third dogma of empiricism) , which involves the identification of conceptual schemes with sentential languages and the thesis of redistribution of truth-values across different conceptual schemes. Two schemes/languages differ when some substantial sentences of one language are not held to be true in the other in a systematic manner.

Conceptual relativism does not involve “confrontations between two conceptual schemes with different distributions of truth-values over their assertions, but rather confrontations between two languages with different distributions of truth-value status over their sentences due to incompat­ible metaphysical presuppositions. They do not lie in the sphere of disagreement or conflict of the sort arising when one theory holds something to be true that the other holds to be false. The difference lies in the fact that one side has nothing to say about what is claimed by the other side. It is not that they say the same thing differently, but rather that they say totally different things. The key contrast here is between saying something (asserting or denying) and saying nothing.”(On Davidson’s Refutation of Conceptual Schemes and Conceptual Relativism) — Joshs

I'm too much of a libra to pick a side though. Have thoughts but I couldn't back them up well.

I think having the discussion about the pre-predicative I highlighted, in an exploratory fashion, would. — fdrake

If the aim is at what all predication is existentially dependent on, there is much room for growth in all the right directions within this discussion.

I do not think it makes the right kind of sense to invoke things like getting stabbed with a spear as something that counts as being pre-predicative. It's also not the right kind of sense to invoke some feelings someone has just prior to speaking about them, or one's sitting in silence. That's the wrong kind of privacy, ineffability, and pre-predicative things to be taking into consideration. The notion of "pre-predicative" that makes the most sense to discuss involves what predication itself is existentially dependent upon.

Language less experience is pre-predicative. It is ineffable one the one hand(the language less creature cannot express it via language), but if we - as language users - get meaningful experience(meaningful thought/belief) right... we can talk about what is otherwise ineffable to the believing creature in much the same way that we can talk in great detail about another's false belief despite their inability to do the same while holding it.

The distinction between what pre-predicative belief/experience consists of and what our report of that consists of needs to be drawn and maintained. Some linguistic frameworks are incapable of doing so.

Interesting point about conflict/mismatch as a commensuration relation. — fdrake

I'm not sure where to go with that.

There are certainly issues here. On the one side I've got Davidson's argument in On the Very Idea... and on the other Midgley's not so well articulated distinction between intentional conversations and extensional conversations... not between intensional and extensional; I borrow willy-nilly from both, throwing in a bit of Searle's social intentionality an Davidson's anominalism of the mental, and while it all takes on a sort of sense, It's certainly not tight.

But talk of conceptual relativism strikes me as fence-sitting and unhelpful, and talk of the pre=predicative strikes me asn nonsense.

Sometimes fence-sitting is helpful, though.

Not always. And I think there's definitely the temptation to become Buridan's ass in the wrong circumstances.

Only sometimes. So, if that applies to conceptual relativism at least, then it can be useful. (say, if your nethers are at risk in hopping one way or the other)

There are certainly issues here. On the one side I've got Davidson's argument in On the Very Idea... and on the other Midgley's not so well articulated distinction between intentional conversations and extensional conversations... not between intensional and extensional; I borrow willy-nilly from both, throwing in a bit of Searle's social intentionality an Davidson's animalism of the mental, and while it all takes on a sort of sense, It's certainly not tight. — Banno

Can you give me more references for these please?

Hmm.
Just the usual stuff.
Davidson, on the very idea of a conceptual scheme, A nice derangement of epitaphs and The Anomalism of the Mental
Midgley, various, but perhaps in What is philosophy for? and The Myths we live by
Searle, various, but The Construction of Social Reality

How long is a thread about what cannot be said? — Banno

@jgill, just over 1300 posts, apparently.

And you just HAD to pull this out of retirement, didn't you?

:roll:

It was on its way to the grave, but noooooo . . . :groan:

:kiss:

[ ... ] And therfore, mes amies, we must eat in silence — Ashok Kumar