Then what norms are we paying attention to here?

Explain. — StreetlightX

So Un says construction is about things that are actively built as opposed to things that just sort of passively appeared due to erosion or continental collision. You appeared to be asking why the word should be used that way. Isn't it your position that the only normativity of interest here is the intentions of the speaker?

That there is no absolute, unchanging manner in which 'construction' ought to be understood is the exact reason that it cannot do to appeal to 'common meaning' - or indeed, any meaning that is not explicitly articulated according to the terms specific to it's employment. — StreetlightX

Then your role would be to simply discern the intention of the speaker. You wouldn't be asking for justification of use.

BTW.. you are headed toward private language territory here.

There are few things more entirely worthless than relying on 'how words are commonly used' in order to aim at conceptual specificity. — StreetlightX

Was the OP aiming at conceptual specificity? To just meditate on the meaning of construction? If so, then I agree with you. Common use would close doors, not open them. We would need to look at things like etymology. We could bring some Lacan into it and start looking at words that are phonetically similar to construction, or how it shows up in dreams. Rational investigation? Maybe.

That 'construction' is commonly used in relation to, well, what is it? - life, humans, or intention? - tells us nothing about construction and everything about the socio-linguistic quirks of a particular community in a particular period of time. And in this case not even a community - so far two people have used three different distinctions in this thread alone. — StreetlightX

You're getting really absolutist about this. You're seeing construction as an unchanging entity. Though humans come and go like waves on the shore, this construction abides. Let us examine it as far as our human minds will allow...

Maybe you're right.

The only possible response that a Descartes might have to the objection that he's using the word 'cogito' in a way not commonly mandated would be 'who gives a flying fuck?'. — StreetlightX

Descartes wasn't using "cogito" in an unusual way. And he was most certainly using it, not dissecting it.

Yep, that's how all discussions take place. With explanation. 'Common meaning' is merely petrified jargon. — StreetlightX

It's not intended to explain anything. Evocation of common use is meant to shift the burden. If there's another way the word should be taken, let the one who's going beyond common use explain himself.

It's incredible that one has to justify the ground zero of rational discussion - the giving and asking for reasons - with these ridiculous convolutions. — StreetlightX

:-|

Only that, if we want to employ it in order to illuminate 'constructions' - in that very narrow context - then we should specify how it does. — StreetlightX

It's sufficient to answer that with "That's how the word is commonly used." There can't be any argument that people aren't using words correctly. Common sense doesn't usually carry any burdens.

If you want to stipulate a special definition, you can invite people to accept it. You'd probably want to build an attractive (or at least intriguing) thesis around that jargon. So it would start something like: "I posit that mountains are constructions." You wait for the audience to register their surprise and then you go to about explaining how that could be.

On the one hand, there is overwhelming evidence that institutions are less trusted now than they were several generations ago. A chunk of that is down to Vietnam. But then there's the stuff Chris Hayes writes about in Twilight of the Elites. (Essential reading!)

That doesn't mean people no longer believe in truth, but they're no longer sure where to find it. — Srap Tasmaner

Right. My understanding is that Watergate was also a factor in the development of suspicion. I'll look out for Twilight of the Elites.. sounds good.

And you can pile onto this the saturation of our culture with media, the loss of distinction between fiction and non-fiction in a gazillion ways, and I think, yeah, there's a real problem here. — Srap Tasmaner

There's an interesting generational factor here. In my generation (X), facades, whether it was the Leave it to Beaver family or James Bond, who sported nice suits and sipped martinis while basically standing as an image of the Cold War, were recast as grotesque images. The grunge naval gazing was meant to suggest that our generation was turning away from those lies to something more real within us.

I continue to struggle to get the newer generation's aesthetic. I find it exhausting. It's like they create hollow spaces and fill them with all sorts of images from the past and the result is a much more refined and complex version. The recent Star Trek reboot movies are typical. They've taken the characters and the setting and rewritten it. There's a depth to it that the original didn't have. That depth is coming from the age of the more simplistic and raw original.

I have to wonder how that complex aesthetic plays out with their approach to politics and the media.

Spot on this entire thread — Erik

I also agree with a lot of what he says. If we could just persuade him to drop the belligerence over trivial stuff...

A quick glance at the historical records shows that truth and the role that it plays in everything ever thought/believed, spoken, and/or written has been largely misunderstood and/or de-valued. — creativesoul

That's a lot of confused people. Are you sure you're not the tuba player complaining that the band is going the wrong way?

I think you really believe there is some widespread breakdown in comprehension of the concept of truth.

Strange. I don't see that. Trump was a demagogue, taking advantage of a democracy the way his kind have been known to do for thousands of years.

But I think you'll agree that difficulty ascertaining the truth is a separate issue from failing to value truth.

I've never encountered a person who didn't seem to understand the concept of truth.

As I mentioned, the reason his lies are effective is that people expect honesty. There is no collective misunderstanding.

Are you American btw?

I agree that Trump is unusually dishonest. For instance, he would exaggerate the number of floors in his buildings. It's called lying.

His lies aren't a result of an inability to properly identify a truthbearer. He lies to make himself seem bigger and stronger. It's sort of like a human version of a peacock fanning out its tail.

The reason he gets away with it is that nobody expects a builder to lie about the number of stories in a building. It's the expectation of honesty that allows him to get some mileage out of his lies.

So he's not a manifestation of some collective truth malfunction.

I think a lot of folks here have turned this into an analysis of the President of the United States. The OP explained he didn't mean to focus on that, but rather on this "post-truth" world some are experiencing.

If I falsified documentation on my job, I would be in danger of losing my job and my license (permanently). Honesty is taken very seriously where I work. On a larger scale honesty is important because hospital fraud will likely result in withdrawal of Medicare funding. No hospital in America can survive without Medicare.

So how is it where you live? Is there tolerance of fraud?

How about Finland? Is honesty important in the Finnish society?

How radical is the alterity? — Wosret

I think it's as you said: seeing the same frame. With the average statement, there aren't too many different interpretations (somewhere around 5 in some cases). Couldn't rule out a case where there are two different interpretations in play, but it never comes to light for either party. I just don't know of any cases of that. Seems like I'd know about if it happened very often.

I guess I misunderstood from the beginning then. I don't see the change you've spoke of. Maybe it's more prevalent where you are?

So we make limited connections with each other? I wonder if there is a way to look through other people's eyes.

Plus you get to disappear behind the camera and it's all a documentary and you're just the narrator. "I'm just reading from the encyclopedia here."

likewise people start to live out the ideas they internalized. I witnessed it for 12 years in an integrated school system. Females also internalize stuff. Culture becomes reality.

I just want to say something in earnest here. My impression is that you don't actually believe Trump was elected because Americans, suffering from a pomo fascination with the word discourse, failed to properly assess him.

From the OP onward I've been sniffing bullshit. Didn't you just want to poke at Landru? That's what Trump does. Speech is a tool for expressing aggression.

Why shouldn't I see this thread as a curious case of hypocrisy? I'm not poking at you btw. I'm asking.

Cool :)

"truth is primarily a property of judgement not of propositions" - Is this true? — Modern Conviviality

"Either A or B is true." Why would we say that A and B are necessarily judgments? Does the author say?

Sanctions won't work even if China would allow that. Clinton probably wouldn't be in this situation, but if she was, she would have no problem doing the sane thing...talk to them.

Lol. What did I tell you?

I think we just start with observations. A baby feels something, but can't distinguish that feeling from any other until words come along. That's hunger, that's itching, etc.

In the same way, a society, under stress, can exert influence on what that feeling of disappointment or frustration is rightly directed to.. it's black people, it's Jews, it's Socrates... kill them and we'll be fine. Now we're looking at society like a large organism. Individuals are themselves given shape by language.

How far one is willing to let this insight grow (until it consumes its own ground?) is a matter of temperament I think. If one is strongly Anglo-philosophical, no mystical shenanigans will be allowed. If one is Hegelian at baseline... oh yea... the whole thing can disappear back to becoming.

His viewpoint is pretty vile.

Copenhagen says the stuff has no location. Cups have location.

We agree on the underlying ambiguity, so were good.

It's what I assumed you are based on your last comment. Could be direct realist I guess.

Ann and Beth aren't in the void. It's just the object.

So what are you..indirect realist?

Ideas impose order on the realm of sensation. What you claim about the nature of ideas reflects your ontological commitments.

But there's nothing inside an elevator that tells you If you're actually accelerating or under the influence of gravity. It's not what we were talking about, but it's cool.

I wasn't summing up SP. I was explaining the circumstances in which the denial of absolute space impacts truth aptness.

What did you conclude re that? That memories are physical patterns that are somehow preserved after a subject's death?

what's interesting is the underlying ambiguity. No need to crowd the void.

Special Relativity actually concludes the exact opposite. What is happening is the same for both Ann and Beth. Ann will see the object moving to the right, and also be able to calculate that Beth will see it moving to the left. Beth will see it moving to the left, and be able to calculate that Ann sees it moving to the right. — Banno

SP says that for an object in a void there is no true statement about its motion. Period.

Some say language sets out what's there, and so what's real. We wouldn't call that fabrication.

Thinking along the lines of Nietzsche's joyful affirmation of life in its entirety, and willing the eternal recurrence of the same, all the while railing against particular features of the present (as having originated in things that happened long ago) and projecting new possibilities into the future. That tension has, and probably always will, be a feature of human existence until we're all dead. — Erik

I get that. Not to tangle the issue too much, but to some extent Trump was elected because of his power to evoke nostalgia. So it's interesting that a criticism of him might be that he represents a disease that contemporary philosophy can't address... as if maybe the old guard would have had better intellectual weapons. Do you think they would have? Is it worthy of nostalgia?

Progress may be it. The concept of progress is said to be an innovation of the fertile crescent region circa 1000 BC. Prior to that time seemed more cyclical because the cycle didn't change much. If a city was lost to the desert all memory of it was lost as well.

It's a side effect of knowledge of history. Nice myth anyway.