I will give the best example I have: being (viz., ‘to be’, ‘existence’, ‘to exist’, etc.). When trying to define or describe being, it is impossible not to use it—and I don’t mean just in the sense of a linguistic limitation: it is impossible to give a conceptual account without presupposing its meaning in the first place. — Bob Ross

This occurred to me in the "I think therefore I am" conversation.

I think there are atomic ideas for sure.

I am curious as to how many people hold a similar view — Bob Ross

Are there pure and unanalyzable concepts? Put me in the affirmative/similar view column, re: the categories of transcendental philosophy.

“Pure and absolutely simple” insofar as they ground every real object, hence every empirical cognition, but have no object of their own.

Speculative metaphysics to be sure, but is that sufficient to disqualify the view?

All I can say, is that ‘being’ is ‘to be’, ‘to exist’, ‘existence’, etc.; but this does not afford any real analysis into what ‘to be’ really is itself but, rather, is just a reiteration, in different words, of the same meaning. — Bob Ross

If an actor says on the stage "To be, or not to be: that is the question.", is it about himself, or Hamlet?

:up:

I believe you are giving more of an ontological account of why it is absolutely simple (viz., the categories of the understanding), which, by my lights, means you accept it is absolutely simple. :up:

:brow:

If the actor is playing the part of Hamlet, then Hamlet. This is not an example of a valid analysis of 'to be': 'to be or not to be?' ungrammatical, old english for "should something exist, or not?".

First of all, all definitions are essentially circular, as evidence by somebody not being able to immediately glean a language simply by by being handed a dictionary. But with some ideas, the circularity of the definition becomes very short, such as in your example.

Do you have others? The one you selected is so very loaded with opinions and varying but valid interpretations, as illustrated below.

This pecularity indicates, by my lights, that ‘being’ is a primitive concept and, as such, is absolutely simple, unanalyzable, and (yet) still perfectly valid. — Bob Ross

That peculiarity renders the chosen definition rather empty in my opinion. I shy from such definitions and prefer something more pragmatic such as a relational definition. A exists to B if A in any way has a causal effect on B. Hence the nonexistence of unicorns because no unicorn seems to have a causal effect on humans, despite the legends to the contrary.

I believe you are giving more of an ontological account of why it is absolutely simple — Bob Ross

I dunno. Can the pure and absolutely simple have an ontological accounting? If the primitive and unanalyzable concept is so, insofar as it has no object belonging to it, from whence could an ontological account arise?

First of all, all definitions are essentially circular, as evidence by somebody not being able to immediately glean a language simply by by being handed a dictionary

Non-sequitur.

But with some ideas, the circularity of the definition becomes very short, such as in your example.

Firstly, I am NOT referring to linguistic definitions: I am referring to conceptual definitions.

Secondly, if you are just noting that all complex concepts will relate to some set of primitive, simple concepts (and that is what you mean by 'they are all circular'), then that's fine. But the definitions of the complex concepts are not themselves circular: they don't refer to themselves in their definitions.

Do you have others?

Yes. E.g., 'value', 'true, 'false', etc.

That peculiarity renders the chosen definition rather empty in my opinion.

Hence why it is unanalyzable.

I shy from such definitions and prefer something more pragmatic such as a relational definition. A exists to B if A in any way has a causal effect on B. Hence the nonexistence of unicorns because no unicorn seems to have a causal effect on humans, despite the legends to the contrary.

Firstly, not all definitions are about causality.

Secondly, I don't see how this would provide non-circular definitions for concepts like 'being'.

All words are reductive, but concepts don't need to be. I think Bob is trying to ascertain the word-resistant concepts we all accept prior to language.
Comfort and discomfort probably fit here.

Well, you are claiming that the concepts are a priori, and thusly are concepts which our representative faculties, in-themselves, have for the act of representation; so I would count that as at least sort of ontological. I understand you are not commenting on what exactly those concepts exist in.

My thinking is even more basic than this: I don't even think our faculty of self-reflective reason can define certain concepts, like 'being', without merely pointing to an intuition (in the non-kantian sense of an intellectual seeming).

I can envision a concept which, in principle, could be a priori but isn't simple; because our representative faculties could be acquainted with it, but yet it is a concept which inherits from more fundamental concepts. E.g., the concept of 'two triangles' is the concept of 'two' + 'triangle' and so there is no circularity in its definition and this could be, in principle, a priori (although I am not trying to say it is). You know what I mean?

I think Bob is trying to ascertain the word-resistant concepts we all accept prior to language. — AmadeusD

I’m ok with that; word-resistant just means the concept is difficult to represent for the use of expression, and prior to language just means the concepts have no relation to communication.

But they can’t be word-impregnable, for in such case we couldn’t theorize on their place in a system, assuming there are such things as simple pure conceptions, and there is a system in which they serve a purpose.

That we all accept….mmmm, not so sure about that. Pretty hard to convince Everydayman he uses pure simple primitive unanalyzable conceptions for anything, even harder that he knows what they might be.
————-

I don't even think our faculty of self-reflective reason can define certain concepts — Bob Ross

I must say reason doesn’t define, and I’m hesitant regarding reason being “self-reflective”, mostly cuz I don’t know what that means, but that’s very different story.

I agree that faculty which does define, understanding, lacks the capacity to define primitive concepts, but must represent them post hoc with words in order to describe their place in a speculative system. Within the natural use of that system, the primitive concepts are just kindasorta there nonetheless**, which makes them hard to swallow for he who needs everything to accord with his senses sans mediation.
(**they’re not, but a different story once again)
—————

I can envision a concept which, in principle, could be a priori but isn't simple; because our representative faculties could be acquainted with it. — Bob Ross

Many conceptions can be envisioned conforming to that criteria, but I don’t see a concept that isn’t simple as primitive, and I don’t see a concept with which our representational faculties are acquainted as pure.

I don’t want to take your thread where you had no intention of it going; it is yours to direct in its progression. I merely agree there are pure, primitive, simple conceptions.

I’m ok with that; word-resistant just means the concept is difficult to represent for the use of expression, and prior to language just means the concepts have no relation to communication.

“word-resistant” isn’t a good way to describe it, as that implies that the qualification of conceptual simplicity is linguistic (as opposed to conceptual) and some complex concepts which are word-resistant (e.g., non-spatiality) are thereby simple.

Frege refers to real numbers as 'primitive concepts' i.e. cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, another concept. I wonder if basic concepts in logic are similar, such as the law of the excluded middle. We call upon such principles to explain higher-level or contingent facts.

This pecularity indicates, by my lights, that ‘being’ is a primitive concept and, as such, is absolutely simple, unanalyzable, and (yet) still perfectly valid. — Bob Ross

I recall that Aristotle considers the different meanings of the verb 'to be' in the Metaphysics. From the SEP essay on same:

But ‘being’, as Aristotle tells us in Γ.2, is “said in many ways”. That is, the verb ‘to be’ (einai) has different senses, as do its cognates ‘being’ (on) and ‘entities’ (onta). So the universal science of being qua being appears to founder on an equivocation: how can there be a single science of being when the very term ‘being’ is ambiguous? .... — Aristotle's Metaphysics

Here you can see the beginnings of what was to become a long history of debate over substance metaphysics, and the meaning of being is central to it.

do these so-called, alleged, primitive concepts need to be either (1) capable of non-circular definition or (2) thrown out? — Bob Ross

Every philosophy, even everyday language, must include some primitive concepts or else it would collapse into relativism and circularity.

Are there pure and unanalyzable concepts? Put me in the affirmative/similar view column, re: the categories of transcendental philosophy. — Mww

Would you include the so-called 'primary intuitions' of time and space? (It might be their very 'primitiveness' that makes them so hard to explain!)

A couple of refs: Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge

The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Problem of Being, Charles Kahn

All words are reductive, but concepts don't need to be. I think Bob is trying to ascertain the word-resistant concepts we all accept prior to language.
Comfort and discomfort probably fit here. — AmadeusD

Yes, I was thinking along these lines. I'm not certain these pre-linguistic concepts are 'word resistant' as such - are they not in a sense foundational for later vocabulary?

this does not afford any real analysis into what ‘to be’ really is itself but, rather, is just a reiteration, in different words, of the same meaning. — Bob Ross

I'm not sure what other examples you have in mind, but isn't "being/to be," (and I wouldn't say existence too) special?

Without giving a complex analysis--because I can't; I'm just stepping lightly on an intuition--all other concepts, are signifiers, representations which can be traced to other signifiers, either backward to eventually a long lost source in reality, or forward to other ways of signifying the same (really, similar) thing(s). But being is what is, it cannot be represented, but remains necessarily present.

And so to know any other concept or representation is exactly a playing with signifiers. But to "know" be-ing--not even just human being--but what it is to be (a thing,) requires being (it)

Or am I missing your point entirely?

I hold that some concepts are primitive and absolutely simple [ ... ] the best example I have: being (viz., ‘to be’, ‘existence’, ‘to exist’, etc.) — Bob Ross

My preferred example is 'the principle of noncontradiction' (PNC).

non-circular definitions — Bob Ross

all definitions are essentially circular — noAxioms

:up:

Firstly, I am NOT referring to linguistic definitions: I am referring to conceptual definitions. — Bob Ross

OK, I accept that,and retract the bit about the dictionary.

Firstly, not all definitions are about causality.

In general,no,but I gave an alternate definition that is very much about causality. It solves the circularity problem. It is analyzable,and it works for how most people use the word, even if the typical person would reach for the circular definition you reference.

Secondly, I don't see how this would provide non-circular definitions for concepts like 'being'.

I didn't define 'exists' in terms of 'being'. I used something far less circular. 'Being' is just a synonym, and can be defined similarly if you choose.

I'm not saying it's the correct definition. It's just one that I find far more useful, and avoids a lot of the problems that arise with the more circular definition.

But the definitions of the complex concepts are not themselves circular: they don't refer to themselves in their definitions. — Bob Ross

Right because only being is outside of the game. Every other concept, including, in my humble opinion, value, true, and false, has references in other signifiers, allowing for levels of analysis. These are the things we think we know. All of them nothing but webs of signifiers. Open to discourse because they are discourse.

Being cannot be defined by signifiers. It cannot be discussed. It can only be "known" by being.

Fair enough. It conveyed to me what you're trying to get across. Defer to you if it doesn't work given its your thread and ideas.

I'm not certain these pre-linguistic concepts are 'word resistant' as such - are they not in a sense foundational for later vocabulary? — Tom Storm

I think Bob picked up on this above.

Given I am responding to you, rather than the conceptual OP, Happy to banter on it. Im unsure how something which can't be "worded" could be foundational for other language, than that which refers to itself.
Comfort, for instance, is linguistically, the opposite of discomfort (or, restated, opp. of contentedness). It is conceptually reducible. But where's the language for that? I posit that the actual status of comfort, or discomfort, are not amendable to being 'worded'. But we have words which refer to our speaking about them (the phenomenal 'them', rather than the expression of the feelings involved).

Re-reading that, I am unsure it makes entire sense, or adequately captures what I'm thinking. Cest la v'ie lol.

I will give the best example I have: being (viz., ‘to be’, ‘existence’, ‘to exist’, etc.). When trying to define or describe being, it is impossible not to use it—and I don’t mean just in the sense of a linguistic limitation: it is impossible to give a conceptual account without presupposing its meaning in the first place. — Bob Ross

To exist is to be the subject of a predicate.

I don't think this definition uses "exist" in a circular fashion. Instead it claims that to exist is to be ascribed, assigned, given, a predicate. If this is red, then there exists something that is red.

This is a sin against Quine, and perhaps against Kripke since there are things with proper names. But it might suggest that the situation is a bit more complex.

A good rule of thumb might be that what counts as simple depends on what one is doing, and so change form one case to another.

Re-reading that, I am unsure it makes entire sense, or adequately captures what I'm thinking. Cest la v'ie lol. — AmadeusD

It makes sense and I have no great answer given that my view is that language begins as sounds we use to try to 'give voice' to the prelinguistic and to codify feelings. Once we get any deeper than this we are in a land of baroque Derridean self-reflexivity. I think.

Would you include the so-called 'primary intuitions' of time and space? (It might be their very 'primitiveness' that makes them so hard to explain!) — Wayfarer

Have you heard of Milik Capek? He is a writer and philosopher who has taken odds with spatialized approaches to the language of change/time present in much of Mainstream or Classical physics. In the spirit somewhat of Bergson and Whitehead. His own solution, as was the two approaches of the prior philosophers listed, was to refuse outright to give a definition of change/time as analyzable fully into something else. Yielding a primitive sense of temporal change/becoming that was fundamental to their philosophies.

I.E. the paradoxes that resulted from Zeno's paradoxes was, perhaps, in trying to make one primitive (rest) explain and define what it means to move. This continues to the modern era with unchanging instantaneous spatio-temporal slices.

Perhaps this fascination with hopping into primitives and fundamental concepts, unanalyzable ones, is a reaction to paradoxical situations as is the case above. It might also make us short sighted in that while motion is contrary to rest it seems that even as primitives or undefined they are required to be present in our thinking. Motion is nonsense without rest but can't be fully reduced to it nor can rest be made sense of via purely by virtue of the concept of motion. However, it is also nonsense to perhaps demand that all rest is therefore illusory in a radical Heraclitan-like twist on the old Parmenidean tradition.

Is there a philosophical perspective on language/meaning/truth/metaphysics that acknowledges this weak inter-definability and balance of dependence/independence of our core concepts?

Is there a philosophical perspective on language/meaning/truth/metaphysics that acknowledges this weak inter-definability and balance of dependence/independence of our core concepts? — substantivalism

No, I hadn't heard of him, although looked up his Wikipedia entry now you've mentioned him. But in some ways, what you're point to is the way dialectic was conceived in the classical tradition isn't it? You mention Heraclitus and Parmenides - wasn't Plato very much engaged in the dialectic between those two apparent contraries? All very deep and difficult questions.

Would you draw a connection between the notion of these 'unanalyzable concepts' and ineffable truths relating to states of higher consciousness?

What is a word?

To ask this you already have to have the answer.

‘What’ is a word.

So you can’t ask what a word is without knowing what a word is, without using words usefully.

The word ‘word’ is itself.

some concepts are primitive and absolutely simple, and as such cannot be defined without circular reference (to itself). — Bob Ross

What you are pointing at is even so for linguistics. Some concepts are of the immediate; some things are immediately self-defining, and so need not be saddled by the struggles of definition.

Being or becoming
Non-contradiction
The word ‘this’ or the thing named ‘this’
The word ‘word’.
The present (here and/or now - present - which all may be other failures to define becoming or being).

Each defines itself, so nothing else is useful to define it (so can be said as ‘cannot be defined’.)

Define - how best to define ‘define’ without circularity?

You could, but I don’t think that’s what the op is interested in. (In fact on further reflection it’s pretty hard to work out what it is asking.)

I generally see the OP as an opportunity to make things interesting. I’m particularly interested in the ineffable at the moment.

No, I hadn't heard of him, although looked up his Wikipedia entry now you've mentioned him. — Wayfarer

He has a cheap E-book on Barnes & Nobles which outlines much of his thinking which is heavily influenced by Whitehead as well as Bergson among others. Its a peculiar set of interpretations of quantum mechanics as well as Classical physics that sort of seems to leave open the door to organicism or non-mechanistic views of nature. At least he seems to do so by attempting to diagnose what I would call mechanistic views of nature and then developing language that goes against it.

But in some ways, what you're point to is the way dialectic was conceived in the classical tradition isn't it? You mention Heraclitus and Parmenides - wasn't Plato very much engaged in the dialectic between those two apparent contraries? All very deep and difficult questions. — Wayfarer

I don't remember much from such a dialectic or the details therein. I'll have to go back and review this.

Perhaps some words reflect the innate primitive concepts we have as a human mind. If those concepts are discovered to be culturally universal, we could investigate why it is that they are primitive to us as humans. Beyond the matter of coincidence (being the configuration of our brains), it could be that some ideas/thoughts are necessary operations of the mind for it to work as a human mind; whereas a mind without the ideas of "part" or "being" would not be something we call a (human) mind.

Some of these concepts are analyzable however, though still circular, as they come in pairs. The part and the whole, the cold and the hot, the light and the dark.

Speaking of cold and hot, those are, except for those with hereditary sensory neuropathy, primitive concepts that are linked to experiences given to us by our human bodies. Can we analyze raw subjective experiences? I don't think so. Yet we don't throw them out.

(1) capable of non-circular definition — Bob Ross

To be could be defined as that which is necessary for any subject to undertake an action. Though that would come from our already existent concept of what it means for something to be.