Why would our language/logic correspond to the world? — schopenhauer1

Isn't that oddly passive? A bit like puzzling over how the Philips Head driver just happens to fit a Philips head screw. We use language so that we can talk about the world. If it didn't work, we would use a different language.

"The cat is on the mat" and 1) the idea of a cat on a mat, and/or 2) the fact of an actual cat on a mat, it's still puzzling, from a certain angle, why we can rely on language to make reliable connections of this sort. — J

But why should it be so puzzling with theories of evolutionary adaptation/exaptation? That is to say, clearly our species has a linguistic capacity. Academics like Steven Pinker (The Language Instinct) and Terrence Deacon (The Symbolic Species) even think that language is THE defining human feature. It seems to me, evolutionary development holds the key to why our species is able to parse the world out in discrete objects, and arrange them together using various verbs/prepositions, describing them with adjectives, and the like. I wrote this a long time ago, but I think it applies here.. This might be my most articulate and developed explanation for this set of phenomena revolving around human capacity for language, and language's subsequent ability to recognize natural patterns (what I now am calling "correlation-distillation"). Let me know what you think:

there are language/mathematical/logical communities that DO special things. For example, the conventional math-languages used in the sciences and engineering DO solve problems of a much more complex nature than the problems that other language games solve. It creates predictive models for which other language games do not have the ability to predict. How can this language game be so useful compared with others, in mining complexity in natural phenomena and in secondarily creating synthetic technologies from those original mined complexities?

And here we can say there is perhaps a realism to the complexities of these special language-games. Perhaps a realism that is above and beyond mere forms of life only. Contingency would imply caprice- that the efficacy would work as well as any other convention.

Perhaps these complexities, or what I call "patterns", are part of a bigger picture of explanation. Language-games may be true (pace Wittgenstein), but some language-games are based in a realism of necessary pattern-recognition that is necessary by way of evolutionary necessity. Animals that do not recognize patterns, would not survive. Thus there is a realism underlying the conventionalism or nominalism of Wittgenstein's project.

However, I was trying to map his picture of human reality with other metaphysical and epistemological conceptions- namely realism, contingency, and necessity. One can construe Witt's metaphysics of these language-games to be be in purely nominalist or conventionalist terms. However, there may be some inherent, universal aspects to them which can characterize them to be necessary. It is necessary that humans inference, for example. It can be argued that general inferencing (this story/this phenomena/this observation is a specific or general case of X... This general case of X can be applied to specific cases of Y) may be a necessary human capability, dictated by evolutionary forces. In other words, in theory, any mode of survival is possible, in reality, evolution only allows certain modes of survival to actually continue. One such mode of survival, is inferencing. Since humans have no other recourse in terms of built-in instincts beyond very basic reflexes- our general processing minds, must recognize the very patterns of nature (through inferencing, and ratcheted with trial-and-error problem-solving, and cultural accumulated knowledge) which other animals exploit via instinctual models and lower-order learning behaviors/problem-solving skills.

.....

He is moving from primitive inferencing- something that is universal and even tribal cultures utilize, to Logic (capital "L") as conventionalized by Greek/Western contingent historical circumstances. Inferencing + cultural contingencies of the Greek city-states + further contingencies of history led to our current conventions of logic. So it is a mix of taking an already universal trait and then exposing it to the contingencies of civilizations that mined it thoroughly and saw use for it.

However, that's not all. ONCE these contingently ratchted inferencing techniques were applied to natural phenomena, we found not only that the conventions worked internally in its own language-game, but that it did something more than mere usefulness to human survival/language-game-following. It actually mapped out predictions and concepts in the world that worked. New techniques now harnessed natural forces and patterns to technological use, far beyond what came before. Math-based empirical knowledge "found" something "about the world" that was cashed out in technology and accurate predictive models. This is then something else- not just conventionalized language games. This particular language-game did something different than other language games.

My own conclusions from this is that the inferencing pattern-seeking we employ as a species, to survive more-or-less tribally and at the least communally, by way of contingency, hit upon real metaphysical patterns of nature. Thus my statement in another thread that while other animals follow patterns of nature, humans primarily recognize patterns of nature in order to survive.

Isn't that oddly passive? A bit like puzzling over how the Philips Head driver just happens to fit a Philips head screw. We use language so that we can talk about the world. If it didn't work, we would use a different language. — Banno

Yes I fully agree. Please see my full reply (which includes more-or-less my birdseyeview of language and its efficacy) in the post to J above:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/939555

Actually, I agree with that too. If there's any perplexity here, it has to do with the role language plays in constructing our experience of the world. Is it clear that the screw precedes the screwdriver? Most of the time, I'd say yes, but the interesting philosophical questions crop up when language creation seems to bleed over into concept creation, which in turn may influence our take on what "the world" is. But you guys know all this, it's Phil 101. I'll spend some time on your longer post, Schop.

I'll spend some time on your longer post, Schop. — J

:up:

This all makes sense. The separation of realism from conventionalism and nominalism is important, I agree. (Sider speaks about it terms of a “privileged structure” of the world.) The angle I referred to, from which perplexities can arise, involves bringing in truth as a parameter. How do we move from “evolutionarily helpful/necessary” through “pattern recognition” to truth?

A simple example would be the pattern of day and night. It was certainly important for the human species’ survival to be able to recognize this repeating pattern, and to be able to make predictions about when and how darkness would fall, for how long, etc. But when language enters the picture, we get a series of explanations that all involve the sun doing things like rising and falling. While this is accurate pattern recognition, it happens to be untrue. So . . . what is it that allows language to move beyond mere phenomena, and strive for a truth that is observer-independent?

I don’t think this is some kind of knockdown argument against evolutionary explanations, but is meant to indicate how they need expansion.

But when language enters the picture, we get a series of explanations that all involve the sun doing things like rising and falling. While this is accurate pattern recognition, it happens to be untrue. So . . . what is it that allows language to move beyond mere phenomena, and strive for a truth that is observer-independent? — J

I think I did set out a historical framework for how this developed though:

He is moving from primitive inferencing- something that is universal and even tribal cultures utilize, to Logic (capital "L") as conventionalized by Greek/Western contingent historical circumstances. Inferencing + cultural contingencies of the Greek city-states + further contingencies of history led to our current conventions of logic. So it is a mix of taking an already universal trait and then exposing it to the contingencies of civilizations that mined it thoroughly and saw use for it.

However, that's not all. ONCE these contingently ratchted inferencing techniques were applied to natural phenomena, we found not only that the conventions worked internally in its own language-game, but that it did something more than mere usefulness to human survival/language-game-following. It actually mapped out predictions and concepts in the world that worked. New techniques now harnessed natural forces and patterns to technological use, far beyond what came before. Math-based empirical knowledge "found" something "about the world" that was cashed out in technology and accurate predictive models. This is then something else- not just conventionalized language games. This particular language-game did something different than other language games.

That is to say, you cannot discount how the capacities of language led to both "formalized logic" and "empirical pattern-recognition" through contingencies of historical development that took place (for example, the culture of ancient Greece, the conditions of Renaissance Italy, etc.). I think WITHOUT historical contingencies, indeed, we MIGHT NOT be talking about the formal logic/math/scientific systems we are doing now. In other words, our current concepts and uses of logic/science WAS NOT a necessary/foregone conclusion. The capacity was nascent in the human by necessity of evolutionary demand, but it was an EXAPTATION that we hit upon these more formal versions of what we could do primitively as hunter-gatherers.

However, I do allude to the fact that the pattern-recognition itself, which we can call "nascent/primitive/en potential" in the early human, might have some connection to the fact that it could not go any other way. The universe has perhaps a certain set of patterns that cannot be be helped to have lifeforms that in turn recognize them. Imagine a spiral with a line running from the end of the spiral throughout the whole spiral system (humans are created from the patterns but can recognize the patterns, but this wouldn't be disconnected).