It’s not a debate in Christiology about whether we should abandon interpreting the texts literally. — Bob Ross

Christian fundamentalism with its empahsis on literalism began in the 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism

The idea that there is universal agreeement among the billions of Christians as to what the text means is obvioulsy not true.

If this is true, it has no bearing on whether or not the OT portrays God in a manner that contradicts His nature; and, by extension, whether or not one would be justified in rejecting the Christian faith on those grounds.

I understand your point though: people tend to behave relative to the norms of their day. That is true of everyone. — Bob Ross

This sentence makes a different point, which I had not considered. You are trying to make a correspondence argument, asking if God is accurately portrayed in the Bible. I had not considered that. I was considering the Bible as a work that had certain usages, none of which are consistent with the way the Bible is literally written, as in, no one dashes the heads of babies on rocks.

But to the extent you know what God really is like and to the extent you don't see that as written in the Bible, then I'll defer.

Of course, I don't judge you. If I had your genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences, I would do as you do. — Truth Seeker

Totally get it. And that's why you just said what you said, not necessarily because you mean it, but just because you had to say it. If you tell me that you really do mean it, I'll not know if you do, but just know that you had to say it, and even if I accept you mean it, I'll know at some level that I accepted it becasue I had to. But of course all this will only happen if it had to, just like the pool ball is going to go where ever it has to now that the cue ball has been struck. It's just a matter of bouncing around now. Or maybe not. Maybe that's the analogy I had to say and I only really think it means what I said because I have to.

What do you guys think? — Bob Ross

That your analysis of the text doesn't reflect the practice of those who rely upon it.

You can certainly say the text says X and X is immoral, but it's a different matter to say that the text says X and therefore those who rely upon the text are immoral unless those who so rely apply the text as you've interpreted it.

This is the argument that appears here every few months if not more often. A literalist interpretation is used to show the horrors and uselessness of the text, and then it is pointed out that not everyone accepts these literal interpretations and not everyone who relies on the Bible relies solely on the Bible for all direction. Some think that makes sense, but others keep resisting. There are two plain issues: (1) the Bible says what it literally says, and (2) the various religious interpret their texts and practice their religions as they do. You may believe there is no way to make those two compatible. Others disagree. Regardless though, exceedingly few religions do (2) as (1) says.

Those who practice according to the Old Testamant, those who practice according to the New Testament, and those who rely upon no text at all for some reason pretty much lives their lives the same morally. That is something worth considering.

The murderer did not freely choose to become a murderer.
The healer did not freely choose to become a healer. — Truth Seeker

I did not choose to demand accountability for action. I did not choose to demand compliance to morality and law.
I did not choose to condemn evil and promote the good.

So please dear friend, do not judge me and please show me compassion when I hire more police officers, build more jails, and empower more prosecutors and judges to assure safety to the citizens.

Not only do I ignore your plea for universal compassion, but it inspires in me a greater sense of urgency to judge right from wrong because I see how far we have fallen.

Show me your compassion and let me do as I must, and so with each murderer I imprison, cheer for me, knowing you're allowing me to live out my nature.

So instead of waiting for the long haul what you call "the organic way," deliberate steps are taken in school curricula, in the racial inclusiveness and gender alternatives in mass media, and so on. I see this as simply an inevitable part of a society's self conscious evolution: the more reflective we become, the more we see need for change, and in politics especially, this is all about language. — Astrophel

The distinction is between discriptive language and prescriptive, where we consider it pedantic to require, for example, that no sentence end in a preposition. We also consider it inappropriate to condemn forms of speech that don't comport to standardizations, as in holding African American or Appalachian American dialects in lower regard because of their variations. The liberal tradition applied in those situations demands descriptive language methods for language evolution.

But then you want to suggest that prescriptive language rules apply for ethical and sociological purposes when it comes to the application of ethical propositions you agree with. That is, to demand Victorian era preposition rules isn't worth maintaining because it no longer meets any sociological goal, but to demand pronoun use meet certain sociological criteria is perfectly acceptable because it does meet sociological goals.

This is to say we either admit that prescriptive linguistics is proper and we stop condemning it as a practice wholesale, or we just say the purpose of language is political and proper speak should be the goal of those who can bring about such change. If that is the position you take, then you can't complain when the left or the right attempts to use schools and media to engage in culture wars, or even to condemn certain forms of speech not mainstream, but you just accept that as the proper course of events. That is, you position would be that language ought be designated by decree and not by use as long as that decree advances whatever the writer of the decree desires.

Had this kind of patience prevailed in the sixties, the civil rights movement would never have happened. — Astrophel

We're talking about linguistics, not about the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was obviously much needed change. That I balk at a particular language use theory your advancing doesn't suggest I think the end of discrimination was not warranted. I'd also say that the law changed as the result of social evolution, not through some sudden decree, and it did require great patience. That law was passed 100 years after the Civil War.

"Impose ontological change that does not comport"...you sound like Heidegger, putting the "correspondence theories of truth" aside. True, Heidegger had a historical view of the self and one's culture and language, and this view suggests nationalistic pride and a fear of cultural debasement. — Astrophel

No, the reference was specific to Davidson, requiring truth as an anchor to meaning in language, as opposed to Wittgenstein.

Anyway, I think you are siding here with Heidegger, and Jordan Peterson (who read Heidegger), and others who fear change. — Astrophel

That's not at all what I'm getting at. It has nothing to do with fear of change. It has to do with how we use language. You're using it here as a tool for social change, which could I suppose be the language game you're wanting to play, but it's not one I'd subscribe to. But on the other account, I take the approach that meaning has to be tied to some degree to reality, which isn't a particularly conservative or liberal view and it's one I'm attributing to Davidson. It's just a view taken to make sense out of how we speak.

I don't think anyone is explicitly policing language, but implicitly, yes. We all are policing ourselves. Are we not already policed by language? Prior to the neologism "policial correctness," was their not an established body of rules, subtle and connotative, social mores, etc., that came down hard upon you if you stepped out of line? Never referred to this as being "policed" then; indeed, "language police" is itself a neologism conceived by the right in an attempt to, as you say, "demand compliance among the unwilling." There is something to be annoyed with. — Astrophel

As I've noted above, the policing of language from a pedantic point of view has existed for a long time, but certainly not from the beginnings of language. If you're blurring the distinction between the policing of prepositions at the end of sentences and policing for social change, then you're buying into my objection above, which is that we can't priortize a descriptive linguistic theory over prescriptive ones just when it suit our purposes. This is the controversial part of my post by the way, not the other stuff.

That about cats and dogs: I think you are talking about something like, say, the calling of firemen, fire fighters, because we want to be inclusive of women in the profession. And then, sending dainty women out to actually fight fires, and is absurd. Hmmm. Not so dainty, the ones wanting to do this. — Astrophel

No, that's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if you call a cat a dog it doesn't undergo ontological change. It just changes the name. For that reason, you don't start treating the cat like a dog just because it has now assumed that name.

This is rather the attempt on the right to pretend these are major issues, so they can talk about them for hours in derogatory ways on talks shows. — Astrophel

This comment is an aside, trying to turn this conversation into what you think are bad faith dealings on the right. Whether it's true or not is irrelevant to this discussion.

Of course, it IS the left that creates these new conversations, because the left thinks, and generates analytical terminology, and it is the right (putting aside the issue of the binary nature of talk about left and right for now) that is forced to respond, albeit negatively and derisively, and in doing so, encourage their entrenchment. — Astrophel

The problem with forced linguistic change for political aims is at least two-fold: (1) it violates the typical organic way language evolves through use and instead prescribes what words are to mean, and (2) it ignores equivocation fallacies and tries to impose ontolological change that does not comport with correspondence theories of truth.

The first is simply annoying because it creates language police and demands compliance among the unwilling. The second presents absurd results. It's one thing to demand that cats be called dogs because "cat" might be now thought of as a derogatory term, but an entirely other matter to then suggest that the cats you now call dogs might be used to guard your home because we now call them dogs and that's what we all know dogs do.

Tying meaning to use is Wittgensteinian and tying it to truth Davidsonian, which means this position can't just be waved off as conservative reactionism just because it offers a result that isn't liberally conforming..

@Baden

This essay amounts to a critique of a consumerist culture that is driven by technology and rooted in capitalism. The proximate goal is not to suggest alternative political systems but to offer conceptual tools to help protect free subjectivity as a creative and self-creating force through presenting in a brief introductory way a theory concerning its cultural situatedness. — Moliere

Isn't this the Frankfurt school response, meaning we should impose ways to disrupt the capitalist takeover of technology for its malevolent purposes as opposed to traditional Marxists who would advocate removal of technology from private ownership and placing it back into the hands of the citizens?

Meaning is use [11] because use manifests this intelligibility, expressing in communicative acts the relation between an individual's neurological patternings of understandings of a concept and the social patternings of brains that share understandings of the concept. The behavioral expressions of this web of interwoven patterns, this web of webbed nodes, simultaneously express and define meaning because they represent social instantiations of this web and—in successful communication—reinforce its structure in accordance with those instantiations. This interdependence makes language both stable and mutable. Stable in that webs of linguistic meaning are self-reinforcing through communicative acts, but mutable in that the boundaries of what is considered successful communication are not absolutely fixed but depend on social and human contexts that are changeable. So, we cannot fully pin down or exhaust the meaning of a word, for example, through a dictionary defnition; there is always an excess to meaning that can expand or redirect itself. The fact that words change meaning over time, sometimes very quickly, is testament to this. — Moliere

This feels like you're trying to ulitmately ground meaning not just in use but in some internal meaning within the speaker, which would I'd submit goes beyond classic Wittgensteinian thought. You're treading in the silent area and starting to sound social sciencey.

The latter, toxic, mode of action of social life seems more and more apparent in contemporary technologically driven cultures occurring through, for example:

1. The bureaucratization of cognition (the capturing of cognitive capacity for uncreative calculative labour limited to reproducing systemic functionality)
2. (Negative) exteriorization / algorithmic outsourcing (the general stultifying of mental development through the replacement of cognitive tasks by algorithmic processes)
3. Semantic flattening (the dulling and standardization of language use towards reflexive repetition of codes of systemic reproduction)
4. Behavioural conditioning (the limiting of imaginative capacity and creative potential by the channeling of behaviour into operationally defined grooves)

When these processes dominate society, we fall into what Stiegler refers to as a “proletarianization” of mind, a general mindset unaware and / or unwilling to potentialize itself except as a function of the system in which it partakes, a society of individuals who cannot see themselves beyond how society sees them and define themselves limitedly as such [9]. Part of addressing that problem, of course, is promoting knowledge of the problem as a means to stimulate thought and action, and in a society that seems to be becoming ever more reflexive, encouraging reflection seems crucial. Of course, the weapon of the theorist in this effort is the theory itself, an idea through which we will now take a detour. — Moliere

You point here to an absolute free will that submits to control, perhaps as the result of over-whelming influence or even laziness, but your theory requires a spirit that ultimately can resist if it wants. I say this to point out you're referencing what appears to be an inpenetrable soul, set aside to do battle if it wants (again an all powerful Will) and a clear assessment that virtue lies in its resistence, perhaps it's its highest purpose, to remain true to itself.

A theory as EKM then is an epistemic protective that aims to catalyze active reflection against passive reflexivity. — Moliere

Your EKM sounds like time set aside to comtemplate your higher purpose, reserved for study of those things that most enhance your humanity, removed from the mechanistic daily activities that define the better part of our lives. Hopefully to annoy you, I'll point out you've just arrived at a rule that sounds like we should set aside a special day and keep it holy.

The freedom to say “no” to economic imperatives is concomitantly marginalized along with anyone who dares exercise it. Further, while the full spectrum of human agency seems to offer the mutative and creative perturbations in societies that may allow for advance, there is no ironclad reason to think technocapitalism cannot as previously mentioned, evolve towards an increasingly limited form of freedom and, by extension, subjectivity. — Moliere

But there's every reason to think it cannot limit freedom because you've posited in your theory an absolute ability to say "no" that lurks within us. If it weren't there, your post would be just a prophecy of doom, but you offer a solution (the EKM), which means your position is optimistic, stating that humanity has the means to prevail at every turn. It's just a matter of calling attention to the ability to say "no."

My general thought is that yours is an accurate concern from both the right and the left, and you offer a defense to this overwhelming impact of negative cultural influences (which you identify generally as "capitalism") which is to remember you are a human being with choice with a much higher purpose than submission to the will of the financially ambitious. But I think it goes well beyond captialism. It's most values you see displayed on TikTok. Our defense is to remember our higher calling. You identify that from the left as revealed through the humanities. The right is essentially saying the same thing just different words.

This is the way I look at being non-binary in anything. It is a defiance of categorical conformity, of the authority of a simple designation that attempts to reduce complexity to thoughtless complicity. — Astrophel

Someone who self-identifies as non-binary is strongly left with regard to whatever trait he's describing. That is the connotation of that word. If you simply mean you're politically independent or unaffiliated, then using those terms will eliminate the confusion you're creating by borrowing a term from gender orientation and sexual preference discussions that is used almost exclusively by those to the far left.

I like it because it alerts us to the openness of thinking. — Astrophel

One who sincerely identifies as politically non-binary doesn't alert me to any uncertainty as to his social views, as if that person bounces between trans rights advocacy and opposition to gay marriage. "Non-binary" expresses a worldview, which included within it is the self perception that one is more open to a multitude of political views than their opponents, which you have expressed. I'd submit though your position is probably better described as being more open to challenges to the status quo, but that necessarily limits the sorts of views you would be open to. It's not a difference in open mindedness. It's a difference in values, particularly as to how you might weigh the value of promoting merit versus pluralistic participation.

Teleology implies that an event took place because it was intended. — T Clark

I'd agree with that.

It’s pretty clear that human actions often have goals and purposes. By my reading, the OP raises a broader question of teleology as it applies to the universe as a whole and even to logic. — T Clark

Positing a final goal isn't less logical than positing a first cause. All events follow the first cause, yet we can't have a first cause without a preceding one, so we're left with an infinite regress. Teleologically, we say every event is for a purpose, yet you can't have a final event that lacks purpose either.

Or you can make each finite and posit a first cause (big bang) and a last goal (the ultimate purpose). The former is chosen by those with scientific bias. The latter, religious bias.

My response to the OP only suggested that probability theory can be applied to make predictions based upon what we know of prior causes as well as the competence of the planner.

The OP references "attracted to" language to explain teleos, but that's scientific talk, denying a designer, comparing teleos to magnetic pull. The OP is just a restatement of scientific secularism.

There’s no need — and no real basis — to speak of purpose or final causes. We cannot say things like "event B happened due to it being attracted towards state C", since state C isn't even guaranteed. — tom111

If I assemble architects, framers, plumbers, carpenters, landscapers, etc to build me a house, can we not say the teleos of the enterprise is to erect a house, even though the probability of the house coming to be is uncertain?

I’m not bothered by the politics, I’m bothered by the misuse of language. — T Clark

By bothered, that probably means you grumble, but not more than that.

I think its uncontroversial that political views appear on a spectrum and that most people's views vary over their lifetime and are not even fully consistent.

"Non-binary" is applied to gender to challenge traditional views of a rigid man/woman distinction and to place it on a varying spectrum, like politics.

Since no one ever applied the term binary to politics traditionally, applying it to politics creates no controversy. It either is meant humorously or it is meant to identify oneself as liberal.

A flip side approach to this would challenge an uncontroversial binary distinction and that would signal you were conservative. As in, "I'm non-binary when it comes to tossing a coin. I choose heads-ish."

Consider the phrase, "I am politically nonbinary.". Do you discern the speaker's intent differently if they are liberal or conservative? — David Hubbs

The term "non-binary" is borrowed from gender orientation discussions, which creates a liberal connotation, meaning anyone who claims to be non-binary politically is likely actually liberal or sarcastically conservative.

Currently reading:

Naming and Necessity, by Kripke - Feels like I should get through this.
The Magician of Lublin, by Isaac Bashevis Singer - Half way through it. Still trying to find out how the piece of shit main character Yasha is going to be given some redeeming quality.
Wittgenstein on Forms of Life, By Anna Boncopagni - it's one of the Cambridge "Elements" books where it concisely address a topic five people care about.
The Brothers Karamazov - I think I'll post this everytime because I'll never get through it. The problem is I can't remember what I last read with all the names and stuff. Maybe I'll just enjoy a Wiki read of it.

Made me want to climb a mountain ... sadly, I still haven't :( More fool me! — I like sushi

Find a metaphorical mountain to climb. You're less likely to die.

Agreed, along with "Moby Dick", "Red Badge of Courage",that Atticus/Gregory Peck yarn by what's her name..Harper's Crossing? , "My Brother Jack", and Xavier Herbert's "Poor fellow,My Country..or whatever it was called": just to deter the impression of national bias.
Basically, most of the high school "books/author you should read". Blatant brainwashing...as it was called way back then. — kazan

I liked Moby Dick and to Kill a Mocking Bird.

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

I just thought Great Gatsby was greatly over-rated. My favorite hotel though is the Jekyll Island Club, which captures that Great Gatsby wealth thing. I'm going there this weekend to celebrate the independence of my great nation from the oppressive Brits. For hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

I really enjoyed that one. What did you think? — I like sushi

Yeah, definitely a classic.

I wish I could claim this came from recollection, but I found this, from The Sentiment of Rationality, which I haven't read, but got a couple cool quotes from:

“The mind asks for a universe that suits it, and must believe in such a universe or despair.”

And also:

“The deepest need of our nature is not to be rational, but to believe that life is worth living.”

The unapologetic idea that belief arises from needs and wants is such a profoundly different worldview than a scientific one that pretends objectivity. "Pretend" is my bias in that sentence.

A choice in that analysis would be an IF-THEN, ELSE IF-THEN, OR ELSE statement. That is basically the structure of a choice. Freedom comes in degrees that corresponds to the amount of information one has at a given moment. — Harry Hindu

So, within your brain is the if/then directive. If you the glove does not fit, you must acquit. The glove does not fit, so you acquit. Explain how that was a choice. You had to acquit. You lacked the ability to do otherwise.

I'm not saying I'm transcending determinism. I'm using determinism to my advantage to make a choice that determines an outcome that is advantageous to me. — Harry Hindu

This just doesn't make sense. It's like saying a computer program takes advantage of its algorithem to choose an outcome. The computer does whatever it's programmed to do. Choice isn't in the picture in that analysis. You will do whatever is advantageous to do if that is what you are determined to do, and not if not.

Having more and different experiences than another means you have more freedom in making an informed decision that maximizes your benefit than another. — Harry Hindu

That doesn't make you freer. It just means you have more data driving your results. The role that data plays though remains determined if determinism is the case.

If you changed the determinants i.e. genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences, then I would have chosen differently. For example, if the shopkeeper pointed a gun at my head and said that I must buy the chocolate-flavoured ice-cream or else he will shoot me in the head. This change in the variables would change my choice of which flavour of ice-cream I would buy. — Truth Seeker

You changed my question. My question was given State X (which includes whatever the exact set of determinants are in the world at that time), could you have chosen otherwise? You stood there looking at the ice cream flavors and you chose strawberry. Could you have chosen chocolate?

Therefore, I choose the strawberry flavoured ice-cream. — Truth Seeker

Could you have chosen otherwise?

One of the four factors is experiences. Aren't my experiences my own and not someone else's? Am I not the decider of which experiences I have? If I chose to listen to only one side of an issue, did not I not choose to constrain myself? Another was genes. Aren't we all genetically unique? — Harry Hindu

How does uniqueness and ownership correlate to free will? Does the fact that something has an experience and a unique body entail freedom? I don't see how that works.

When you say you have the ability to listen and decide one way or the other, that suggests a libertarian free will. It's not that I disagree with that, but describe how you were able to transcend determinism and make that choice independently.

To be determined does not rule out being more or less self-determining and self-governing. To say that freedom requires that our actions are undetermined is equally problematic, since what is wholly determined by nothing prior is necessarily spontaneous and random, which is hardly "liberty." — Count Timothy von Icarus

He itemized four governing factors that determined behavior (Genes, early environments, early nutrients, and early experiences). Which of these is the "self" that "more or less" governs? And why do we add the new concept of "self" as a holistic entity when we already know the 4 factors that govern decision making.

There's obviously not an answer to the free will question. It's one of the perennial philosophical issues. At the end of the analysis, I think we must define free will as both incoherent and necessary. Incoherent in that it makes no sense that something can self-generate from nothing, yet the agent can be judged for what was generated. It also doesn't matter, as you've noted, whether the event was determined or not determined

It's necessary though because without it, we cannot pretend to offer reasons for our decisions, but must admit we did as we were regardless determined.

My solution is to accept the self as the governing agent, but I don't attach elements to it. It's mystical. Maybe a terrible solution, but no more terrible than the alternatives.

You have a choice, but it is not a free choice. It is a determined and constrained choice. — Truth Seeker

Henry Ford built the Model T and said you can choose whatever color you want as long as it's black. Is that what you mean by choice that is not free?

I do understand that free choice doesn't mean I get to choose to do anything, like I realize I can't choose to fly. But it would seem necessary that if you wish to call something choice that there must be at least one other option. It's like if you take your dog on a walk on a leash. He can choose to walk next to you or he can get dragged down the road. I suppose that's sort of a choice within contraints, but that seems different than what you suggest where you say the choice is "determined."

Genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences don't merely influence our choices. They determine our choices, and they constrain our choices. — Truth Seeker

What do you think of this model? Do you think it is accurate? Please explain your reasoning. — Truth Seeker

This is hard determinism. That being the case, what I think of this model is whatever I have to think of this model. If I agree, my reason must be that I agree based upon my "genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences" because that's what you asserted is the cause of everything.

I might offer you a long winded explanation for why I agree or disagree, and it might seem logical to you, or it might not, and it might be the very reason I think I agree with you, but, at the end of the analysis, we must assert that whatever I believe I must. I have no choice in the matter as you've indicated.

It's too sycophantic is my problem with it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have found this as well, but I've also found that you can ask it not to be, and you can present your ideas as if they are being submitted by your opponent. You can even ask for a brutal attack of your positions, which can be pretty entertaining in its own right. Depending upon the version of AI you're using, it might be remembering your every post, and so you might want to ask it to brutally tell you what your limitations are, you can do that as well.

In any event, we're just at the beginning of the AI revolution and I see the limitations we're pointing out as temporary, and they'll be altered over time in order to satisfy whatever the demand is. If what we actually want is brutal honesty, that will be coming.

Patience is not infinite. — Banno

No, but it is nevertheless a virtue. I fear your OP could be read not just as a suggestion that sometimes direct communication with a poster is helpful for clearing up issues, particularly if the matter is so esoteric that it might not be of interest or ability to others, but as a suggestion that one is better served if they remove themselves from the common man so they can discuss their thoughts among their elite equals. I can understand the impulse, particularly if you've grown impatient with challenges you feel not valid, but I also believe it is through challenging ideas (even those they may not fully grasp) that many learn, and if you remove yourself from the fray you deprive others that opportunity.

I say this to you in particular because it is obvious to those observing that you have engaged in rigorous study of contemporary analytic philosophy and your contributions have elevated those discussions. Personally, I can say I'd know far less of those areas without your posts because those topics would not have appeared on my radar given my leanings.

My point here isn't, of course, directed only at you, because there are a good many who have their own areas of expertise and many who might have none but might have occassional moments of accidental brilliance. It's really directed at anyone who is considering your OP and thinking of moving their thoughts to a PM consisting only of their hand selected peers. My preference would be to keep most discussions within the general assembly hall and not in private drawing room. But, as I've said, everyone has the right to post publicly, privately, or not at all.

This supposes that the we and the French participate in the same Form of Life...

Are you confident in that? :wink:

Even less so with ChatGPT, since it participates in a form of life in the way of a block or an apple. — Banno

So a rabbi and an anthropologist walk into a bar, and Ludwig asks "why are you here?" They each say "it's the right time to be here. " And they don't communicate because their forms of life vary, despite the syntactically correct response, yet the question and answer were entirely different to each.

The question then is where is this form of life? You say, I don't care where it is, I just need to know that it is. I see it in the way the anthropologist looks at and speaks of evolution and the way the rabbi prays and reads his Talmud.

But my response is it absolutely matters where it is because unlike meaning of language being use, form of life is not in behavior. It is assumed from behavior, but not caused by behavior, meaning a rabbi who mimics an anthropologist to avoid persecution remains a rabbi.

Form of life is inherent in the being. ChatGPT given time will be spoken from the perfect robot, whose behavior will perfectly mimic the human's. I contend it will not use langauge. It is a lion.

A thought experiment: would a community of AI generators that speak publicly create langauge because they all have the same form of life?

Would their language be just as much language as the one we speak?

As to the moderation question, one can of course post in the forum or the PM. I, for one, would obviously prefer a public conversation. That is, after all, the purpose of a place like this.

As an ideal, I try to consider ourselves not just as learners, but as teachers, which might mean sometimes patience with those who are missing the point. This is to say I'd prefer an open chess tournament, with grandmasters and novices alike.

I’m not saying there aren’t any new ideas in philosophy, but philosophers generally seem very reluctant to drift away from the concepts they’ve read about. They seem hesitant to create new ideas altogether because such ideas likely wouldn’t meet the academic standards. — Skalidris

Academic philosopy is such an esoteric field that I'd suspect there have been new ideas that have emerged that are considered major shifts within the discipline (of which there are many subcategories) that they generally go unnoticed by those of us not affected. I think if you were to choose a particular area of philosophy and do a deep dive into it and looked for the major contributors, you would find a significant amount of creativity.

I'd just be interested in where your assessment comes from. Do you work in a philosophy department and find the profession has stalled out and there is a resistence to change? I would defer to personal information you might have, which I would think, if the case, that would speak to political issues at play, which just means you have a dysfunctional system. I can believe that, but I otherwise woudn't think the best and brightest have run out of new ideas.

The Gavagai thought experiment is of a linguist attempting an interpretation of a language. The point is that the linguist doesn't need to decide the referent of "Gavagai" in order to participate in the form of life consisting partially of the hunt and the feast.

We don't need determinate meaning to get on with the language games nor with the forms of life. — Banno

But this doesn't address the meta element of the form of life, which is critical to holding the system together. The Wittgensteinian enterprise is to dispense with the relevance of the metaphysical as the foundation of meaning, but if it creeps back in, then it has failed.

To address the form of life in your Gavagai example would require a linguist who is attempting to interpret the language not of a foreign people but of a lion. The lion represents the being with a differing form of life, who, per Wittgenstein's clear statement, we would not understand. The Gavagai example is no different from French to English to German. That is, all those folks share a form of life. We're looking for those who don't.

Consider AI. You can speak back and forth with AI, with full understanding, but I submit you are not playing a language game with ChatGPT. It is a lion. It lacks your form of life. What this means is that there is a metaphysical anchor to meaning. It is use by something like you. What is like you isn't decipherable by simply looking at the person, the lion, or the dolphin. It is something inherent within that being that processes like or not like you. If not, you are left with a convincing parrot, lion, AI program, or Searle's Chinese speakers as playing language games, which they are not.

So my problem here is that if we're going to say that we're taking as a hinge belief the uniformity of thought processes among various people, why not just make it a hinge belief that we truly have the same beetle metaphysically. If we're going to reduce this down to an object of foundation/hinge/faith, why choose one method over the other?

Israel hans't banned people from leaving (except rich people on boats) because people are excited to stay. That's the biggest win Iran is achieving in terms of security metrics. Less Israeli population, less power, less skills, less threat in the future. And this economic cost of missiles blowing up infrastructure, laboratories, ports, disrupting normal life, removing the "sense of Western style safety", is in addition to the economic costs Israel had already incurred due to operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, along with boycotts due to those actions. — boethius

But for their proxies in Gaza being annihilated, their nuclear facilities being devastated, their being under attack by the strongest military force on the planet, their enemy being a 3,000 year old civilization that is relentless, and that they agreed to a cease fire, Iran's got them just where they want them.

Hence my reference to the Gavagai example. We don;t have to assume that Gavagai means "un-detached rabbit part" in order to participate in the hunt and the feast. — Banno

But how do you link this to form of life? Differing languages don't exclude similar life forms. The French and the English can have differing forms of life.

If social interaction dictated form of life, then a loyal dog that returns with prey shares a form of life.

Form of life is feeling like a deus ex machina.

Could dolphins have a form of life so different to our own that we could not understand it? — Banno

Yes.

If so, how would we recognise it as a 'form of life"? — Banno

We couldn't. We'd assume it, but it could be a robot. You and I could be differing forms of life. It's assumed many humans don't share forms of life. You also could be a bot.

We assume we are similar forms of life. It's a hinge belief. This is a metaphysical assumption. It's the Cartesian solution. God would not so deceive us.

My point is I'd rather not play the Wittgenstein game and just assume my beetle is yours. Metaphysically the same.

This strikes me as backdooring the beetle back in. The lion's language is meaningless not because it's gibberish, but it's because he doesn't share our form of life. This means it's not langauge misuse that identifies his seperate life form, but it's his thought processes brought about by some metaphysical difference in the lion.

If we're going to rely upon metaphysical similarity to create meaningful language, why not leave it at the beetle?

My first reaction is that of course there need be nothing in common between the various language games. — Banno

If there are variable language games, are there also variable human forms of life that play those games, or is there but one?

If there are many, then we cannot know who shares our form, and so we cannot know that we are playing a language game at all. My conversation with a parrot isn't public use.

If you say there is only one human form of life, then that belief must itself be a hinge, because we cannot derive it from language use (which presupposes it), and we cannot claim to know it empirically without violating Wittgenstein’s broader rejection of a metaphysical correspondence theory.

On Quality" - Robert Pirsig (published posthumously)

Good as a short introduction to Pirsig's thought. — Baden

I've got to think it pales in comparison to Motorcycle Maintenance just from me not having heard of it.

More or less that the skeptical position isn't inferior to the non-skeptics in terms of philosophical excellence. Both are valuable. Also there's a sense in which this delineation is quite soft, so even stating a preference for one over the other is a difficulty. As we see earlier Janus disagreed with my classifying Hume as a nit-picker, and @Hanover disagreed upon that. So far it seems to me that the idea is still quite hazy. — Moliere

I don't fully accept that theism/atheism = believer/skeptic. That's the whole faith debate all over again. The scientific worldview does not permit skepticism of the worldview, namely of a belief in science. The theistic worldview does not permit skepticism of that worldview, namely of a belief in God. The point being that we're all believers and non-believers alike, and most of us question the certainty of our conclusions, but not of our methods. That is to say, there are plenty of "I don't really know" responses from theists and it's not like there aren't plenty of "It's just a plain fact" responses from scientists.

Theists don't walk around claiming full knowledge of everything without question any more or less than scientists. It's not as if scientists truly truly question everything.

Do dolphins have a language that is so different to ours that we cannot recognise it as such? Good question. I do not know the answer.

But you are not a dolphin. — Banno

I think there's much to discuss about "form of life." Maybe the topic for another thread one day, but it seems central yet not well explained (at least for me).

And when you are not looking up to the heavens, when you get hungry or cold, and look instead to what is going on around you now, then we may find agreement, and maybe work together to build a fire and cook some food. — Banno

Philosophy generally is what you only do on a full stomach, a luxury reserved for the few.

Kosher, I presume? — Banno

Glatt.