Intriguing!

My point was only that it is possible to think without symbolic language but in images, and that such thinking is not a "shapeless and indistinct mass". — Janus

I don't think Saussure would deny those kind of images, but I do think it's worth only a footnote in the actual context of his course. He's a linguist battling against the prejudices of his generation and his students. No one can say it all and address every possible objection. If someone is too neurotic, too careful, they become unreadable. The point is to grasp the insight, perhaps indeed presented hyperbolically to cut through the noise, and then refine one's possession of it.

From time to time I think about starting a thread, but keeping it short while ranging over a wide terrain is difficult.

Every new observation and imaginationincreases the complexity of the experience and understanding of the human world. Of course I am not denying that the young are inducted into this human world in part at least by symbolic language. — Janus

Right. And I'm saying that part of that is an expanding vocabulary. I can make more and more distinctions, more and more combinations.

To be clear, I think music and animation are both great and 'meaningful.' So this is not about the worship of conceptuality but only about (actually) the limits of its precision, in the context of a structuralist semantics.

I think non-linguistic thinking is much more than a mere "footnote". Well, if you do decide to start a thread on that I'll be interested.
:up: I don't deny that language enriches experience. Poetry is my first love after all!

I think non-linguistic thinking is much more than a mere "footnote". — Janus

I mean a footnote in the context of Saussure's point within his lectures. He's clearing the ground of certain prejudices, such as the one that the thoughts already exist in some immaterial space and sit there gleaming, graspable by some spiritual eye, and waiting only labels.

There must be something prior to the spoken words themselves that enables coherent utterances; some pre-linguistic image or sense, since the words themselves cannot determine their use.

That's a deep issue. I can at least agree that I can't make sense of a language developing apart on flesh (symbolizing desire, instinct, motive) in a world that is promising and threatening. Giving a damn seems to be fundamental. We need not, as far as I can see, insist on something 'internal,' for its language that gives us this distinction in the first place.

The latest chatbots have basically ingested the entire internet using a structural approach, working strictly with tokens in 'temporal' (linear chain) relationships. I think this feat is parasitic on human embodiment and millions of years of bio-evolution, but it's worth considering how much of us is 'out there' in the mere order of our tokens. The way chatbots learn may mirror or suggest part of how children learn.

We need not, as far as I can see, insist on something 'internal,' for its language that gives us this distinction in the first place. — green flag

For me it seems more plausible that there would be a pre-linguistic bodily-based sense of inner and outer. Of course I cannot demonstrate that with empirical evidence.

Hi. I don't think you are grasping my point. — green flag

I appreciate your persistence with me as I work to understand subtleties of language and meaning you're trying to communicate.

I hope I can claim a measure of legitimacy in my persistence in debating the subtleties based on my always presenting supporting arguments for my counters to your narratives. I think the issue for you is persuading me to understand my arguments are fallacious whereas the issue for me is gradually understanding that: either my arguments are indeed fallacious or, that my arguments, through hardening of tempering by examination, are indeed verifiable.

Definition is a blurry-go-round. — green flag

I don’t argue against this claim. No doubt language has limitations and yet, as you show in your opening line to me, you place a measure of trust and hope in language to successfully communicate. I regard myself as having honored your trust, hope and persistence by always supplying supporting arguments for my obstinacy.

I understand the business of debate to be closely reasoned examination of minute details of intricate cognitive filigree populating sincere and considered belief.

That language is limited is now virtually a banality as no one is seriously considering abandoning language wholesale nor even abandoning linguistic examination of abstruse phenomena physical and mental. If I'm mistaken, then we're wasting our time posting to this website. Attacking from another angle, if anyone took Wittgenstein's apotheosis of silence seriously, philosophy would've ended some time during the twentieth century.

Language, both verbal and mathematical, is undergirded by logic and from its use we see profound differences between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. I cite this difference as evidence that rebuts your claim:

There is nothing that staples this system of references to something outside it. — green flag

The system of signs that can only mean their differences from one another floats rootless above an abyss. — green flag

Whoever publishes narratives making this claim, in so doing, self-refutes said claim. If semiotics is hopelessly self-referential, thus leading inevitably to empty word-games, then why is no one shutting down the global publishing industry? Also, why do you continue reading books, especially the ones making such claims?

saying something like 'being is countable' or 'being is time' is just leaping from stone to stone. — green flag

No. Not

saying something like 'being is countable' or 'being is time' is just leaping from stone to stone. — green flag

That's what the average monkey is still spending a lot of time doing, instead of boarding jet planes to various continents thereafter entering elevators to offices in celestial climes.

Kant makes a powerful argument that being-ness is empty in its function as a predicate.

Here's my argument against claiming futility in manipulating conceptually being-ness vis-a-vis sets:

$∅\Rightarrow∞$ because $∅\Rightarrow ((n^n))$

P.S. Do you have a refutation of my claim: being-ness is an insuperable medium. It's the lynchpin of my application of sets. Its refutation might be the kill shot.

you place a measure of trust and hope in language to successfully communicate. — ucarr

To be clear, I am not saying that communication is impossible. That would be self-cancelling. I am saying that a certain tempting conception of how this communication is possible is wrong.
I embrace the hermeneutic circle. Our terms of interdependent, but that doesn't mean we can't clarify (within limits) their connections.

If semiotics is hopelessly self-referential, thus leading inevitably to empty word-games, then why is no one shutting down the global publishing industry? — ucarr

There is of course some kind of relationship between sign systems and the world. But let us consider the man who explains what 'being' means by pointing randomly. Can you point at the meaning of justice or rationality ? Does the existence of these iterable tokens guarantee some referent ?

How does language refer ?

I appreciate your persistence with me as I work to understand subtleties of language and meaning you're trying to communicate. — ucarr

Same here.

In case it's helpful, I don't personally think philosophy is very much like math. I agree with Lakoff and others that humans think and therefore live in metaphors. I view understanding this or that philosopher in terms of an endless coming-into-focus.

all interpretation, even of the past, is necessarily ‘prejudgmental’ in the sense that it is always oriented to present concerns and interests, and it is those present concerns and interests that allow us to enter into the dialogue with the matter at issue...

The prejudicial character of understanding means that, whenever we understand, we are necessarily involved in a dialogue that encompasses both our own self-understanding and our understanding of the matter at issue ... In the dialogue of understanding our prejudices come to the fore, both inasmuch as they play a crucial role in opening up what is to be understood, and inasmuch as they themselves become evident in that process. As our prejudices thereby become apparent to us, so they can also become the focus of questioning in their own turn.

To me the beauty of this is that we only really get to know ourselves by trying to know others. Our prejudices are invisible to us for the most part. It's only when we catch them leading us astray that we can grab and question them.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gadamer/#PosPre

How does language refer ? — green flag

This question invokes the realm of Aristotle's {Intelligibility $\leftrightarrow$Agent Intellect}. I've been dialoging with dfPolis in his conversation: The Hard Problem of Consciousness and the Standard Abstraction

Here's where we are presently in our dialogue:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/790900

The duet of intelligibility-meets-comprehending-sentience suggests to me something intriguing along the lines of entanglement, with language playing a central role in the mix. You touch on this in the following:

To me the beauty of this is that we only really get to know ourselves by trying to know others. — green flag

Firstly, do you embrace or refute Descartes' ghost-in-the-machine substance duality, with its bifurcation of mind/body? Language signification is deeply embedded within this interweave, I believe.

I'm not ready to make comprehensive declarations just now, however, language-as-mind-games-hovering-over-an-abyss sounds to me like thinking rooted in Descartes' substance duality.

Firstly, do you embrace or refute Descartes' ghost-in-the-machine substance duality, with its bifurcation of mind/body? Language signification is deeply embedded within this interweave, I believe.

I'm not ready to make comprehensive declarations just now, however, language-as-mind-games-hovering-over-an-abyss sounds to me like thinking rooted in Descartes' substance duality. — ucarr

No, I reject Cartesianism. Wishes and neutrons and commitments and toothaches are all in the same lifeworld, on the same 'plane.' There is not really an 'inner' and 'outer.' These spatial metaphors are useful here and there but tend to be taken as absolutes, as the given itself and what hides outside or behind it somehow.

I presented the structuralist insight crudely because too much qualification might have obscured the main point. For the most part, signs depend for their meaning on (their relationships with) other signs which depend for their meaning on still others signs. If I define 'justice' or 'beauty,' I have to drag in other undefined words, and so on. All of these words are defined in terms of one another. And definition is artificial in the first place. It's a creative attempt to sketch the common roles of words in actual conversation. As I see it, it is not like math where definitions essentially create their objects. Formal systems are so nice because we escape from our own complexity when we play with them.

The "abyss" represents a nothingness where we've been taught to expect a foundation. If there is a foundation that makes sense, it's probably a set of nonlinguistic coping skills.

The duet of intelligibility-meets-comprehending-sentience suggests to me something intriguing along the lines of entanglement, with language playing a central role in the mix. — ucarr

That sounds (maybe) like the space of reasons.

That's what the average monkey is still spending a lot of time doing, instead of boarding jet planes to various continents thereafter entering elevators to offices in celestial climes. — ucarr

To me it's not bad or wrong to leap from stone to stone. The point for me is to grasp something about the nature of meaning. I won't say it's only structural, but this aspect seems especially important to me when it comes to making sense of abstract terms like 'being' and 'justice.' Are we to think that being and justice are already out there in perfect determinateness before we ourselves have got a better and better handle of these terms ? Is 'being' a label ? Or is the lifeworld in its deepest character inseparable from we who live in it symbolically ? Physics works with a 'deworlded,' desiccated, methodically reduced 'skeleton' of the lifeworld. This is justified practically, but it can cause confusion philosophically. To explain electrons, one must explain scientific norms. To explain scientific norms, one must explain electrons. I mean that an exhaustive explanation of one will lead to that of the other. An exhaustive understanding of either term will include that of the other. One nexus.

P.S. Do you have a refutation of my claim: being-ness is an insuperable medium. It's the lynchpin of my application of sets. Its refutation might be the kill shot. — ucarr

I can't be sure what you mean, but I was once tempted to say that there is only presence. But in the context (Derrida), I was missing the point. It can still be asserted that there is only presence, but this is launched from a framework in which the statement is a tautology. It's strangely easy to mistake a tautology for a hypothesis in philosophy, probably because of the ambiguity that's not so easily reduced.

Without recognition there would be no continuity of experience. Without memory there could be no recognition. The condition known as "anterograde amnesia" attests to this.So memory is necessary, if not sufficient it seems; which leaves me wondering what are the other factors you have in mind. The world itself, with its similarities and differences? — Janus

Memory is an interesting phenomenon. I was referring to something that could be called an objective memory or external memory. This consists in various indications or traces that has been left in the "outer" world. Through these indications we can try to re-member, so to speak, various structural wholes and "adapt" ourselves into them. It can happen that we recognize ourselves in these already existing signs and their structures!

...definition is artificial in the first place. It's a creative attempt to sketch the common roles of words in actual conversation. As I see it, it is not like math where definitions essentially create their objects. Formal systems are so nice because we escape from our own complexity when we play with them. — green flag

Do you think that when we drive over a bridge spanning a body of water, say, The Golden Gate Bridge, we're trusting an application of math language that is an attempt to define numbers within empirical experience?

Sidebar - Your capsule surveys of current thinking on various topics are proving very helpful to me. They're providing ways forward for me in my reading and subsequent reflection. This work by you on my behalf is a very valuable service and I'm now thanking you for it. More power to you in your interactions with others.

Memory is an interesting phenomenon. I was referring to something that could be called an objective memory or external memory. This consists in various indications or traces that has been left in the "outer" world. Through these indications we can try to re-member, so to speak, various structural wholes and "adapt" ourselves into them. It can happen that we recognize ourselves in these already existing signs and their structures! — waarala

Are you referring to significant places or objects that may evoke strong associations and potent meanings due to their having being integral to important life events, or something else?

Do you think that when we drive over a bridge spanning a body of water, say, The Golden Gate Bridge, we're trusting an application of math language that is an attempt to define numbers within empirical experience? — ucarr

I'm not quite clear on what you mean here. Hopefully this is related. I claim that pure math (the proving of theorems) is not the practical or 'genuine' foundation of applied math (of technology). We trust what works like monkeys. Psychologically we do as 'one' does, conform to the current engineering standards. The civil war in the philosophy of mathematics (intuitionism versus formalism versus logicism versus and so on) is not, to my knowledge, on the curriculum for engineers. Yet real numbers are eerie upon close examination. Mainstream math says that the set of computable numbers has a measure of zero. This means that practically all real numbers do not even have finite 'names.' Keep in mind that familiar transcendental numbers like $\pi$ do have a finite 'name' in the sense of a program of finite length that computes and therefore compresses them. But most real numbers contain a countable infinity of bits of information (can't remember if one is technically allowed to say infinite, but it's informally the case, if I remember correctly.) To be sure, our computers use floating point numbers, but algorithms are justified in textbooks using real analysis (a science of elusive, theoretical entities). The big point here is that real analysis is a beautiful, hairy mess, but the world is mostly unaware of all this. We drive over that bridge because 'everyone' drives over that bridge and we didn't just see a disaster on the news.

This work by you on my behalf is a very valuable service and I'm now thanking you for it. More power to you in your interactions with others. — ucarr

That's very kind! Thank you for taking the time to be so kind. And it's nice to hear that my writing is doing what I want it to, which is spread/inspire beautiful ideas.

Are you referring to significant places or objects that may evoke strong associations and potent meanings due to their having being integral to important life events, or something else? — Janus

I am rather referring to something that is "learnable", to something that we can possibly identify with or make our "own". This means that we in a sense remember it when we become conscious of it. These can be existing historical structures e.g. "discourses" or practices and possibly even their intelligible, apriori structures.

For me the essence of Heidegger is thinking of historicity and what it entails. It's as if he purified and amplified and liberated a Hegelian insight about our 'software.' Lately I'm reading Emerson this passage seems Heideggarian in its historicity.

A man's genius, the quality that differences him from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences, the selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, determines for him the character of the universe. A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him, wherever he goes.
He takes only his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him. He is like one of those booms which are set out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, persons, which dwell in his memory without his being able to say why, remain, because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet unapprehended. They are symbols of value to him, as they can interpret parts of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the conventional images of books and other minds. What attracts my attention shall have it, as I will go to the man who knocks at my door, whilst a thousand persons, as worthy, go by it, to
whom I give no regard.
...
No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near to his eyes is the object. A chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser, — the secrets he would not utter to a chemist for an estate. God screens us evermore from premature ideas. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream. — Emerson

https://emersoncentral.com/ebook/Spiritual-Laws.pdf

To squeeze the Heidegger out of this, we need to imagine the man as the personification of his generation. A generation's genius hardens into anyone's idle-talk with the arrival of the next. A man is a method. If there is no object apart from this subject (if this division is confusion), the being itself is significant ('conceptual','linguistic') and historical (sedimented with interpretedness.)

The second passage seemingly describes grasping or uncovering a phenomenon. The difficulty of interpretation is emphasized. I can pour the correct words in your ear, and you in mine, with no result. For we are not just our generation but also, of course, individuals. We run local snowflake-unique modifications of the tribal software.

If I read you right you seem to be referring to internalized ideas.

I'm listening to Heidegger in Ruins. It's interesting to learn that he's become something of a hero among far-right groups in Europe.

There are many reasons one should be careful in "assigning" anything by Heidegger with his horrid political views and questionable ethics foremost among them.

That being said, Being and Time should be read by all serious students of philosophy and is worthy of being course subject matter.

I'm listening to Heidegger in Ruins. It's interesting to learn that he's become something of a hero among far-right groups in Europe — Ciceronianus

Nietzsche has played that role for decades. Apart from the political aspect, the question is, is there any evidence
that such readings get the philosophy right?

It is good that the case against Heidegger has been made persuasively, but his Nazi sympathies and antisemitism have been known for a long time. It is, however, now more difficult for his apologists to separate the man from his philosophy. — Fooloso4

I agree. Heidegger was not a good person for many reasons with his Nazism foremost among them. It is sad that anyone wastes time trying to apologize for him.

When it comes to Heidegger, I prefer to spend my time understanding the ontological structure articulated in Being and Time. Fascinating stuff.

Apart from the political aspect, the question is, is there any evidence
that such readings get the philosophy right? — Joshs

Well, one must read or listen. It seems that the author believes that to be the case. Thus far, the focus has been on Heidi's weird obsession with Volk, Blut und Boden, which seems a peculiarity of German Romanticism, and his belief in the superiority of Germans and the inferior status of everyone else, but especially Jews. Those views are, from what I can gather, more pronounced in the Black Notebooks and his efforts at licking Hitler's boots while Rector at Freiburg, and in letters to various and sundry, but we shall see. The author thinks that Heidi himself believed such scribblings to be part of his oeuvre, and that his previously published work was "sanitized" in some cases by fans.