How is a symbol more than the marks, sounds, gestures, of which it is made? — NOS4A2

Well, unlike the mark on a page, which can be found meaningful for its own sake (e.g. beautiful, surprising etc) its usability for symbolization gives it additional or more meaning. The former might be located in the properties of the mark that arise relative to an observer (biology?).

Words are not symbols. Words are container of meanings. — Corvus

There are many kinds of symbols, you know, verbal (words) and non-verbal (pictures, gestures). They refer to things in various ways, but their primary function is identification. I don't know of a good reason to exclude words from symbols. Do you?

are words more than their symbols? — NOS4A2

No, words are symbols, which is more than the marks, sounds, gestures etc. of which they're made.

This year I've been listening a lot to the young great guitarist Pedro Martins Here's a video of his version of a famous tune by Ravel

Pictorial or gestural languages are better than verbal languages for some of the signs we encounter in public places such as traffic.

Some languages seem to be better for constructing long words:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_words

The audience members are allowed freedom to explore their own imaginations not being constrained by the words of language, but the freedom is kind of illusionary as it only occurs within the boundaries already created by the activities which, which are a product of the author's mind in the first place. — Metaphysician Undercover

I get that the author's activities and pauses can evoke a kind of freedom for us to imagine unwritten meanings. But what do you mean when you say that words constrain imaginations? I think that a true description of an imagination is constrained by what one imagines.

Words increase mutual understanding whereas in the case of silence, unspoken expectations or suggestions the relation is not so mutual, as in manipulation.

So the silent language opens up a huge realm of possibilities to the author, by allowing the author an entrance into the minds of the readers by finding a way to employ those minds for the development of meaning, rather than relying solely on one's own mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

We are pattern seeking creatures, and normally strive to make the most charitable interpretations of what there is to interpret, also when there is nothing to interpret but silence. But when less is said, our interpretations become more susceptible to whatever the context suggests. In this sense the meanings are not developed by the readers' minds but a context such as a romantic or modern tradition in which meanings are assumed to be hidden all over and in our minds.

You might want to add the possibility that ideas and fictions are descriptions. Descriptions are actual material objects. Some descriptions denote other material objects, other descriptions denote nothing yet possess recognizable features that exemplify such and such ideas or fictions. How else could we identify different ideas or genres of fiction? There are different kinds of explanations of what a fiction is. Goodman's theory of symbols is where I began. There are others.

..language has causality. I would like and appreciate it if you could elaborate on this. — javi2541997

The causality and the division of labor that I refer to are used in arguments for semantic externalism.

In the case of Fosse's speech one might want to say something about the nature of metaphors as he describes (metaphorically) his experience of writing as if sitting in a place inside himself. He refers to the poet Hauge who (metaphorically) compares being a writer to being a child building leaf huts in the forest where the writer sits feeling safe. Talk of places and meanings inside the mind is fairly common in the arts, especially in the romantic and modern traditions.

The metaphorical meaning of a word is causally constrained by some property that its literal meaning has. For example, the inside of a literal hut is detached from its outside, and that's a property it shares with the metaphorical hut in the mind of a writer. Arguably there is no hut inside Fosse's head, yet it is a useful way for him to describe how he experiences writing.

Writers withdraw from busy social activities in order to think, observe, and write, and one's use of language might then, perhaps, acquire a "silent" or "listening" quality. To find out whether there is such a quality, or whether the description is meaningful is not obvious to me, but it seems to be a meaningful description for Fosse as he titled his speech 'A Silent Language'.

With my plot and my characters, only I exist, but this self-awareness seems to need some connection with the rest, and this is why Fosse speaks about sharing culture. — javi2541997

I agree, and would like to add that the nature of our languages is such that it connects its users with what the words or its uses refer to. Language is based on shared labor, causal constrains and such, not whether an individual user happens to be alone.

I don't know to what extent it is a social activity. — javi2541997

To the extent that one can experience social life by writing about it. A writer constructs, discovers, reconstructs and in some sense participates with the characters that he or she writes about. Also when writing about oneself.

I'd say writing is a social activity that one can practice privately. In this sense it can benefit the introverted or socially isolated. It can also benefit the readers and our society to understand what it's like to be introverted or socially isolated. More on social activity and mental health: Social activity can be good for mental health.

Do you think this is a better way to confront suicide and fear? I mean, thanks to the act of writing by yourself? — javi2541997

For the same or similar reason many people are drawing, painting, dancing, exercising, playing music, socializing etc. Some need professional help. I suppose Fosse discovered that writing is for him.

Is there reason to believe that philosophy has become irrelevant?

Philosophy is similar to art regarding relevance and how it changes through history.

The antique roman architect Vitruvius writes that the education of an architect takes a long time because it is necessary to know so many different things. Beside engineering and drawing he mentions music, medicine, economy, history, theory etc.

In modern times when the production of many buildings is highly industrialised there are many architects who hardly know how to construct buildings, because they don't have to. Yet the quality of buildings and places remains a relevant subject, and the relevance of architecture is reinvented like the relevance of other forms of art.

Painting, for example, was relevant when skilled artists could depict what is visible. After the invention of photography modern painters found less reason to depict what is visible. Instead they symbolised things that are not visible, such as psychological phenomena, abstract thought, spiritual experiences etc. Hence reinventing the relevance of painting.

Likewise, as philosophers specialised into separate fields of science the remaining relevance of philosophy was saved by thinkers like Hume and Kant. Hume writing about psychology and Kant about an abstract thing in itself. Later as such philosophy seemed to collapse by its own weight philosophy is reinvented by logicians, ordinary language philosophers and so on.

While scientists study and produce representations of the world philosophers study and sometimes clarify the representations.

Who knows what's next?

What characterizes the mindset associated with honesty?


A kind of disinterested pleasure that arises when one acts according to the known facts, regardless of special interests, biases, desires, preferences and so on.

Speech or gestures associated with honesty are sometimes used dishonestly, and, conversely, suspected for being sanctimonious or political. Cynics are quick to ridicule anyone in public who appears to be honest.

I suppose the honest mindset has little interest in how it appears, or whether it is associated with honesty.

Pretending to be stupid is a variety of stupidity that is sometimes passed for intelligence. Also when one is truly stupid one can pretend to be an intelligent who is merely pretending to be stupid.

Goodman started project Zero
https://pz.harvard.edu/who-we-are/about

Perhaps our interest in the world is not in recovering pre-existing features from it but in enacting a world in felicitous ways. Only such an enacted world can speak back to us in our own language. — Joshs

I'd say our interest in pre-existing features arises from our curiosity regardless of whether it is felicitous or serves other interests. However, we have reasons to be curious.

For example, we discover relations between language and the world that are asymmetric. Words can denote any feature, whereas features exemplify words that already denote them. New or discovered features can and are often defined ostensively, regardless of verbal languages.

I suppose we can know that there was a big bang, and that its possibility requires something rather than nothing
(or an instable kind of "nothing" a la Krauss & Co). Penrose's idea of cyclic eons seems interesting but I suppose it is too soon to pass it for knowledge.

Some monkeys happened to have the enzymes required for breaking down the alcohol in rotten fruit. So they had more fruit to eat than others who could not eat rotten fruit. The mind altering effect might not have been that significant in those days (millions of years ago?)

You might want to look up compatibilism. It is basically determinism with the insight that there are many causal chains, and those that enable us to identify objects and states of affairs are not necessarily determined by others. For example, seeing the presence of two cold beers provides you with an opportunity to pick one, both, or none of them. Being thirsty or an alcoholic etc. may increase the probability to pick at least one, but you are still free to veto the desire. Even if you'd hate beer you are free to try it despite it. Imagine if we were total slaves to only one causal chain, we'd never go against a desire, never try new tastes and so on. We'd never start living in the first place. Free will is a necessary feature of living organisms.

Would that be better — Question

No, because dreams are neither sufficient evidence nor arguments for the truth of 'idealism'.

We could, of course, discuss the nature of dreams, whether they have anything to do with the nature of reality and so on...

The audience has a somewhat easier job. — Thinker

Listening to the Portsmouth Sinfonia is not so easy ;-)

A proof is the sufficient evidence or argument for the truth of a proposition. Dreams are neither.

I'm talking about 'logical' type reasoning for believing in 'God', if such a means even exists. — dclements

The reasoning should be valid and sound, i.e. 'logical' type reasoning is not enough, the premises must also be true.

Sweden? Doesn't get involved in wars. . . . — T Clark

:-} Sweden is one of the largest arms manufacturers and exporters in the world per capita. We also like to condemn the military acts of others and market ourselves as morally superior experts on peace and stability.

What makes something beautiful? — River

I'm not sure whether beauty is made. It seems fairly clear, however, that beauty is found under various or varying conditions. Sometimes regularly, such as when there is symmetry, but regular beauty can fade away, as in becoming redundant. If there ever was a 'what' that made someone or something beautiful yesterday it might not succeed today nor in the future. But beauty can always be found, and re-discovered.

(1)I see a beautiful person and become attracted to them.
(2)I see a beautiful architectural structure and praise its form.
(3)I see a beautiful sky and revel in its hues and clouds.
(4)I see a beautiful flower and am entranced by its colors and shape. — River

Their beauty is not made by your experiences, you find their beauty by experiencing them. The reason that you see, become attracted to, or entranced by someone or something is their beauty.

Probably one of the first punk bands.

The dictionary defines “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” — Banno

As in war...

"All warfare is based on deception." Sun Tzu (544 - 496 BC).
"In war, truth is the first casualty." Aeschylus (525 - 456 BC).

..to engineer our own feelings and emotions... — AXF

There is little to be happy about when the happiness is engineered. There is more to happiness than what constitutes the emotion.

Regarding Hume I think it would have been more apposite if you had written "limits within which there is nothing more to expect". — John

Well, to be clear, my post was actually not regarding Hume but andrewk's idea that Hume's identification of the limits of reason thereby opened the door to mysticism. Perhaps there is a different sense in which Hume opened a door to mysticism, but from identifying a limit it does not follow a border nor a door to something beyond reason, i.e. mysticism.

that while being essentially analytic in approach, he identifies limits of reason and thereby opens the door to mysticism — andrewk

Limits are not necessarily borders to something else, but simply limits beyond which there is nothing more to expect.

Since there is no acceptable definition of what makes something scientific, calling something "pseudoscientific" is meaningless. — darthbarracuda

Nosense. In disputed cases it might be dubious or meaningless to call them scientific or pseudoscientific before it has been settled. .

Pseudoscientific means to appear or claim to be scientific without satisfying the conditions for being scientific. For example, reproducable tests.

How is science challenged by the selective idea that it would be a term for marketing? Has anyone other than ideologues taken it seriously? (e.g. religious, new-age, or others whose claims and authority is threatened by knowledge).

Science is the name of possible knowledge, and when the knowledge is very selective or very general it tends to be useless or misleading, whereas relevant knowledge tends to be useful or right or necessary even.

Knowledge of metaphysics, say, Kant's categories, might be an example of knowledge about something so general that it becomes useless or misleading in case one would attempt to shoehorn all beliefs and statements as coherent parts of it. It occurs to me that a lot of philosophy becomes useless or misleading because of such or similar attempts to understand too much or too little.

a ''paradox''. On one hand ignorance and the accompanying stupidity is a sure source of happiness and on the other hand knowledge and wisdom are also sources of happiness. — TheMadFool

I think the first premise is false, ignorance is not a source but a lack of something, and you don't get something from nothing. The bliss in ignorance arises from a sense of continuity and peace, for instance, which hypothetically can be undermined by knowledge about threats or injustices.

The second premise is dubious, because not all knowledge is a source of happiness.

So, there is no paradox.

An ideology that is held to be above question can justify the most barbarous acts. — Srap Tasmaner

Are true ideas ideologies? Do we have visual experiences of ideologies or objects? I'd say some ideas are not based on other ideas but brute facts. For example, that there is something. Some ideas are plausibly held above question.

Boghossian takes on philosophically far more interesting relativists than the postmodernists. Nelson Goodman, for instance.

Frankfurt invertigates the nature of bullshit, and does not even mention the word postmodernism, but he brings up, I think, a very interesting phenomenon where the relativist, in the assumed absence of truth, considers him/herself more sincere than those who belive in truth. Here's a description of it written by a reviewer of his book:

when a person rejects the notion of being true to the facts and turns instead to an ideal of being true to their own substantial and determinate nature, then according to Frankfurt this sincerity is bullshit. — Petter Naessan

You might like Paul, that book is very well written. He also wrote an article about the original Sokal hoax in the 1990s which is available online here: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/boghossian/papers/bog_tls.html

If you're interested in a detailed examination of relativist claims and examples of refutations, then I'd recommend Paul Boghossian's book: Fear of Knowledge; against relativism and constructivism (2006).

https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Knowledge-Against-Relativism-Constructivism/dp/0199230412


A perhaps more common kind of relativism is related to bullshit, which has been studied by Harry Frankfurt: On Bullshit (2005).

https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Harry-G-Frankfurt/dp/0691122946/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0691122946&pd_rd_r=TC7F1S6JA9ZZHVWZ3M0K&pd_rd_w=UCu2R&pd_rd_wg=lYeSY&psc=1&refRID=TC7F1S6JA9ZZHVWZ3M0K