So you are arguing that we can extract the meaning of a word concept that is independent of all feelings that may accompany our experience of that word. — Joshs
Technically, I’m arguing from a point where words are irrelevant. To feel and to think is not to speak. To speak is to convey, or report, feeling and thinking. That said, I can dissect your comment this way:
1.).....I experience a word you say when I hear it: cyclotron;
.........Assuming no distinguishing mannerisms, no uncharacteristic inflection or intentional mispronunciation, I immediately assign no feeling to that word, and I immediately have no understanding of any feeling you may or may not have, not conjoined with the saying of the word;
.........I immediately intuit an object. I intuit a certain object if I already know what the word I heard represents, or I do not intuit a certain object, but merely a something of which I have no experience;
.........I have now extracted the meaning of the word iff I already know the object to which it relates, or, I have not extracted the meaning of the word if I don’t. All and either without the invocation of any feeling whatsoever.
2.) .....I experience a word you say when I hear it: HALLELOO-YAHHH!!!!!
..........Given a distinguishing mannerism, I immediately understand you have invoked a feeling antecedent to the saying of it, but I have no understanding of what that feeling is from the mere experience of the word;
..........I do not intuit an object for this word, insofar as there are no objects known to me that I represent to myself with that word;
..........I do not extract any meaning of the word, because it doesn’t relate to the intuition of an object, but I do understand it represents some feeling in general of yours not given in me by the word itself.
All rather moot, in that I seldom experience a single word, but if I do, that’s how it works in me.
3.)....I experience words you say when I hear it contained in a sentence: Cyclotrons are found in the root wad of aspen trees;
........I immediately intuit a plurality of objects all in relation to each other, either I know one, another, several, all or none;
........If I know all the objects, I immediately intuit a necessary contradiction, insofar as my knowledge of these objects never has conjoined them to each other; if I only know any single one of the objects I immediately intuit a possible contradiction. If I know none of the objects I intuit nothing but a manifold of objects with no cognizable relation to each other at all, even with a full experience of the sentence I heard you say;
.........I now may or may not have extracted a meaning for the words representing my intuition of a group of objects represented by the words I heard in the sentence, but only to the degree by which they conform to my knowledge of each of them
AND my understanding of the possible relations between them.
If I ever invoke a feeling of any kind with respect to these examples, it is only and always a non-fallacious
post hoc ergo proper hoc sequential possibility. There is no innate necessity for invoking feelings onto that which I may or may not understand or of which I may or may not have knowledge.
So.....the argument follows that because it is sometimes evident that people do assign feelings to words, even if under some specific technicality they can’t, then people usually assign feelings to words and are merely not aware they are doing it. Of course, this major premise only holds water if there is a specific technical authority that affirms it with stronger conclusions then the negation.
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If you are claiming that this pragmatic mattering and relevance is the province of feeling, and feeling can be separated from cognition, then you would seem to be disagreeing with Wittgenstein about the separability of mattering-use from the intrinsic meaning of word concepts — Joshs
It should be clear I do not claim the mattering and relevance of words is the province of feeling. It is the province of rationality, cognition, understanding, under the umbrella of reason.
Wittgenstein says that we only ever actually experience a word in its contextual use. — Joshs
I don’t think so. To “only ever actually experience a word” is to treat it as a mere object, by which we first perceive it, then subject the word to the cognitive process, resulting in the experience of it. Shown above are two examples of the experience of a word that doesn’t even have a contextual use. Better to say understanding of a word is in its contextual use, at least in juxtaposition to experience of it, insofar as experience of a word as mere object doesn’t necessarily tell us anything. Hence.....dictionaries.
99% of the time people understand each other simply because they use words the same way, which makes explicit they have assigned words common to them, to conceptions common to them, which presupposes understandings common to them. From then on, it is experience alone, the end game of reason itself, that tells one guy, when he hears another guy say, “I saw a boat”, that he probably, but not necessarily, means he perceived one and not that he might take a tool to it in order to cut it up. Experience tells the same guy when he hears another guy say, “I saw a log” that he either perceived a log, or, he is actually going to cut it up. In each of these cases, the experience of the word “saw” in its respective statement is exactly the same, which makes explicit use and/or context in conjunction with experience is insufficient for non-contradictory mutual understanding. It cannot be otherwise, for the context from which the word is spoken is not included in the word is it is received by the listener.
At the end of the day,
is correct, in that few people care about this stuff. Language has become so prevalent in this smaller-world, technologically advanced human community, in its structure, meaning and use, that the source of it has become neglected.