RIP Z :roll: — jgill

Darn. Saw the banning only after my last post. Seems like play time might be over for me. Oh well.

Perhaps in lieu of putting words in my mouth and inserting your foot in yours, you can ask for clarification and/or additional support for claims made. — Zettel

OK then, maybe I've read too much into what you're saying. I'll give it another go. From the OP:

Are metaphysical doctrines such as aesthetics and ethics really "branches" of philosophy, or are they just thinly disguised poetry? The propositions issuing from metaphysics and philosophy seem logically and epistemologically distinct.

Philosophy means "love of wisdom". Wisdom requires knowledge, not belief, opinion, sentiment or personal view, else how does (read: "can") one 'know' who or what is wise? — Zettel

So, "philosophy means 'love of wisdom'" and "wisdom requires knowledge". OK, though this does not then imply that philosophy is "love of knowledge" per se.

If I understand the OP well enough, it contends that "love of wisdom" which aspires to gain knowledge of what values are (such as ethical and aesthetic values) and why they are as they are should not be properly considered philosophy.

So far you've specified that this is so because ethics and aesthetics (both of which consist of values, or worths) are not empirically verifiable and so cannot consist of knowledge (regarding "what is" rather than "what is to you")

But this again seems self-refuting to me: "love", emotive though it is, holds a value, a worth, otherwise it becomes a meaningless term; so your very affirmation of what proper philosophy (i.e., "love of wisdom") is will be grounded on that which you claim to be the "thinly disguised poetry" of metaphysics, rather than on empirically verifiable knowns. Thereby (given the dichotomy you're presented) by your own standards making the enterprise of demarcating proper philosophy - i.e., proper love of wisdom - itself metaphysical, i.e. thinly disguised poetry.

On the other hand, if you can somehow demonstrate love to be an empirically verifiable known regarding "what is", then you'd likewise demonstrate a value/worth to be an empirically verifiable known - thereby making axiology (which again encompasses the study of ethical and aesthetic value) a worthwhile philosophical study by the OP's standards.

This is not to say you are not entitled to your feelings; it is to say that your feelings do not describe "what is", only "what is to you". Big difference. — Zettel

by knowledge I mean awareness of "what is". "What is" is that which is empirically verified. — Zettel

An argument: the proposition that axiology (i.e. the philosophical study of value)—which can thereby include the study of ethical and aesthetic values—ought not be properly considered a subset of philosophy on grounds that axiology does not address “what is” (which is empirically verifiable) but “what is to you” (which is not empirically verifiable) is, in short, self-refuting; this because the very affirmation’s truth value (if any) is contingent on standards of value (such as in relation to what is good, right, correct, or proper and their converse in respect to philosophy) that cannot be empirically verifiable via observations and, thereby, which hold no truth value in relation to “what is”.

Intending to simplify the just expressed: you’re using your own empirically unverifiable system of values to make the philosophical assertion that the study of values and has no philosophically worth on grounds of not being empirically verifiable—thereby entailing your own assertion to have no philosophical worth.

As others have mentioned, metaphysics tends to concern itself with first principles, which I’ll contend include first principles in relation to value. These, then, address issues such as why it is that you yourself value empirically verifiable philosophy and disvalue empirically unverifiable philosophy in the first place.

Anyway, is your example irony? I don't think so. — T Clark

Hmm, the definition provided can be an instance of feigned ignorance intended to confound or provoke. Its intended meaning could be that the search for a definitive definition of “irony” might be a wild-goose chase. A playing the bimbo deal.

Else, one can take the face value intent of the definition at its word, in which case it could not quality as irony.

There’s a lot here and I’m sure there’s a lot more to say, but I’ve always found definitions of “irony” unsatisfying. — T Clark

I’m surprised that no one has so far stated this obvious definition: “Irony” means “having the quality of iron”. For example, “The Iron Age was very irony”.

Yes, this to me can be an ironic comment - without being sarcastic, satirical, or hypocritical. Knee-slapper though it may be.

Sarcasm makes use of mockery whereas irony does not. All satires I know of make use of irony whereas not all ironies are satirical. The hypocrite engages in a form of doublethink in which they hold or act on two contrary views as though both were true or correct, whereas the ironist knows full well of the intended mismatch.

My own take is that the best cases of rhetorical and dramatic irony can be likened to an intelligent blond playing the bimbo, this so as to get their way with minimal resistance from those who presume the blond to be unintelligent or unimportant, hence from others who thereby remain ignorant of what’s in fact occurring: Those in the know - be it the rhetorician, the dramatist, or even fate for some folk, this in addition to the onlooking audience, if any - get that what’s at hand is a concealed means of actualizing an end toward which those not in the know are being led without their immediate awareness.

Socratic irony might well be a misnomer - in that Socrates deemed himself wiser than his opponent in not thinking to know that which he did not know, and there’s no definitive reason to presume Socrates insincere in so affirming. If so, Socrates never feigned ignorance to begin with.

Still, I kind of like the definition first offered in this post. Has a far more definitive ring to it by contrast to the ambiguous dictionary definitions so far here discussed. :smile:

There's a difference between a list that could never, in principle, be completed. and one which is potentially finite, but large enough that we could never find the time to complete it, ... — Janus

Either way, wouldn’t the full list be never completed, hence never expressed, hence remain inexpressible?

:razz:

... But there's always more to be expressed in relation to much ado about nothing, no doubt.

... Ever wonder if the frog thinks that everything worthy of expression can be expressed in croaks, this in principle if not in practice? Hmm, a humorous way of trying to draw attention to the possibility that a hundred thousand years from now they might be conveying information in manners that human words as we know them can't, thereby allowing for the public conceptualization of ideas we humans cannot conceive of.

But back to: if you think some things are inexpressible in words then prove it expressing in words that which you deem to so be inexpressible in words. :joke:

My view is that no animal, humans included, forms connections between word-sounds and certain neural networks. — javra


This seems to be directly contradicted by the evidence. Am I misunderstanding your claim, or are you just saying that evidence from cognitive science is all wrong? — Isaac

You’ve misunderstood. I’m saying that first-person awareness - such as of word-sounds - can be said to supervene upon neural networks but that this does not imply that neural networks are equivalent to first-person awareness. This just as a table is not equivalent to the molecules upon which it supervenes. And this irrespective of whether the supervenience that occurs in mental processes is strong or weak.

A word-sound only occurs relative to awareness. Otherwise, the issue would be about a certain type of vibration in air waves affecting some sensory receptors tied into certain neural networks. I'm saying that aspects of awareness do not form connections to neural networks, that this conceptualization holds a maybe subtle but very drastic category error, for all aspects of awareness supervene on neural networks.

Instead, I find it correct to conceptualize the issue in the following manner: certain neural networks form connections to other neural networks - while, concurrently, certain aspects of awareness which supervene on the first grouping of neural networks will form connections to other aspects of awareness that supervene on the second grouping of neural networks.

All this in the context of first-person awareness associating words to concepts.

But it seems clear we hold very different models in relation to minds. Since its not something that will be easily resolved, I'll try to step out of the overall conversation.

In short, unless one has his head up in faith land (I don't differentiate between theists and atheists in this), all one knows will be acknowledged fallible. Correct till evidenced otherwise. Akin to how the empirical sciences go about business.

If one says that good is to be associated with correct, then wouldn't wrong be associated with false? — ToothyMaw

I'd rephrase it: correct (what is right) is good; incorrect (what is wrong) is bad. Don't know, but am thinking this might make significant differences to your question.

And if that is so, then how does falsifying things tie into your assertion that we consider correct answers to be good regardless of their actual correctness? You could have a claim that is believed to be true that may actually be false, and then the values "wrong" and "good" are assigned to the same answer, even if it is unbeknownst to the people reaching the answer. That is, if you believe that perceived correctness actually makes something good. — ToothyMaw

I'm working with the presumption, if one can call it that, that everyone is fallible. If one wants to assume some infallible proclamation of truth, correct proposition, etc., then this departs from my own point of view. I do place a strong emphasis on verification and falsification of all beliefs. This though might end up heading toward epistemology. A different topic than that of this thread.

I don't see how your statement about an apple being added to an apple constitutes any serious account of the fact that people often times recognize that they are wrong, and do not just assume that anything they have determined to be correct (whether or not it is actually correct) is good. — ToothyMaw

You wanted things simple, so I expressed a simple example. That adults take the example for granted does not imply that so do young enough children first learning their maths.

But what value does a false thing have if not wrong if good is assumed if a thing is correct? — ToothyMaw

Could you clarify this question?

Yes, I think people pursue correct answers and acknowledge when they don't find them. — ToothyMaw

As do I, as I believe I previously expressed via "verification and falsification".

And no one just equates "good" and "correct". That would be like saying that 2 + 2 = 4 could be a moral principle because it is correct. — ToothyMaw

The good, goodness, expands far beyond morality. "That was a good movie / book" isn't about morality. But it yet addresses that which is good. Same with correctness in non-ethical judgments.

Point being, despite all the relative issues involved with correctness, it as thing to be striven for is not relative to the whim of cultures or individuals but, rather, is a universal to all individuals and cultures regardless of whims. Hoping that makes sense.

So, we blindly pursue correct answers because they are considered "good", and we may not reach correct answers but still call them correct, and also inevitably go with our account of what is correct because we deem it correct (and, thus, "good").

That doesn't seem circular to you? — ToothyMaw

Not necessarily. We perpetually verify and, where possible, falsify: one apple and one apple indeed equate to two apples and not one.

All the same, do you find that appraisal discordant to the way thing are in the world?

I wasn't speaking ill of such a project. — ToothyMaw

We likely then have different sentiments toward Frankenstein's monster. Ok, then.

If we do what Javra says and try to form some sort of Frankenstein's monster of psychology, ethics, and neuroscience, we could come the closest to having some sort of objective moral project short of throwing our lot in with God. — ToothyMaw

Ha. Is this fear before rationality? If converging psychology, ethics, and neuroscience is off-putting to you, then by all means proceed otherwise. Good luck to you.

It was about correctness, not truth. Though I grant the two can overlap.

In simplistic terms, when one appraises if 1 + 1 = 2 is correct, one's judgment will be fully relative to that concerned in one's appraisal (differing from, say, if it is correct that 236 - 45 = 6) but in all such cases the notion of correctness remains constant irrespective of that addressed. We furthermore universally deem correct answers good - so that we all seek correct answers to questions, irrespective of what we may deem to be the correct answer in concrete terms (e.g., if we deem it the correct answer that 1 +1 = 1 we will then abide by that answer on account of deeming it correct).

I'm not here arguing that they are; I'm only suggesting that it is possible for ethical judgments to hold the same roundabout property. Always relative to context and it's particulars. Yet always holding a universal and constant good that is universally pursued irrespective of concrete particulars and our biased judgments.

John Dewey had a rebuttal to this notion, as explained by Putnam. Just substitute ‘avoidance of suffering’ for ‘pleasure’.

If “agreeableness is precisely the agreeableness or congruence of some objective condition with some impulse, habit, or tendency of the agent,"

then

"of course, pure pleasure is a myth. Any pleasure is qualitatively unique, being precisely the harmony of one set of conditions with its appropriate activity. The pleasure of eating is one thing; the pleasure of hearing music, another; the pleasure of an amiable act, another; the pleasure of drunkenness or of anger is still another." — Joshs

This to me gets into the issue of universals. One could also stipulate that since each and every apple is unique no such thing as the concept of apple can be real or have any import in what we do. This being a different issue to me.

Besides, my principle claim was the following only:

Of course, all this is contingent on there being a) a universal, foundational, (one could add, metaphysically real) drive to all conscious beings in everything we do and b) some means of satisfying it in principle. Yet, if (a) and (b), one could then well make sense of objective ethics and morality – in so far as there being an objective good to pursue by which all actions can be judged as either better or worse. — javra

A lack of disagreement doesn't mean that something is objectively true, merely that everyone agrees on it. — ToothyMaw

I wasn't addressing lack of disagreement. I was addressing the possibility of an objectively true psychological reality that universally applies to all psyches. If it were to be somehow discovered, all would have it, true. But it's objective truth wouldn't be a product of agreements.

Yes, one could make moral claims that would be correct, but these claims would still be relative. — ToothyMaw

Would this analogy help?: In parallel, all analytical judgments of correctness will always be relative to those particulars address, yet the notion of correctness remains constant.

I dunno….just seemed to smack of anthropomorphism. — Mww

You've cut the first quoted sentence short. I find the sentence important in it's entirety, including the part about "the culturally-relative, abstract, connotations which redness can imply". To me words facilitate the ability to form abstractions from abstractions from abstractions ... ultimately abstracted from experienced particulars. We may make use of the former while lesser animals don't, but I take it both experience the particulars. To be more blatant about things, while some mammals can visually associate the redness of inflamed genitalia with a readiness for reproduction, they will not be able to associate redness to, for one example, what the red circle in the Japanese flag symbolizes (the sun; power, peace, strength) - which is a culture-relative, abstract connotation that red can invoke.

Lesser predators are not aware of red or blood, for those are conceptions that belong to language using intellects. Lesser predators are aware of that which triggers their instincts, — Mww

This, though, denies the well documented reality that lesser animals can and do learn - including by forming associations. But I grant, my bias is not to deny lesser mammals the presence of any and all intellect, despite their lack of language and far less able cognitive faculties.

But alas…..we’re freakin’ married to our own words, and don’t employ a sufficient work-around when trying to show them impossible to use. — Mww

I get that, it's a little like a vicious circle. It's why I'm now leaning into ethology (animal behavior) in this discussion.

Thanks for the comments.

Jonathan Haidt argues that our moral values are the product of inborn evolutionary adaptations. He lists the following 5 innate moral foundations:

Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation

These intuitions are the tail that wags the dog of the reasoned propositions that you are counting on to give us objectively true moral axioms. — Joshs

To introduce some Buddhist-like thought, which of any can occur independently of a qualitative metric consisting of conscious being’s suffering?

I’m so far concluding that none can, in so far as all possibilities are either favored to not favored in relation to the appraised conscious suffering that would be incurred or avoided were the possibility enacted or pursued.

If so, then it could be concluded that it is an objective truth that all conscious beings seek optimal freedom from conscious suffering - this despite complexities such as weighing short-term suffering against long-term suffering.

If objectively true that we all seek optimal freedom from suffering - what in western thought could be termed the search for optimal eudemonia - then that means which in fact best liberates us from suffering will be the objectively true goal relative to all conscious beings, irrespective of (or else, in manners independent of) one’s beliefs on the matter.

Since this objectively true goal would in principle satisfy that which all yearn for, it would then be an objective good - a good that so remains independently of individuals’ subjective fancies.

Since this good would be objectively real to one and all, a proposition regarding it could then be conformant to its reality and, thereby, true.

Were this goal to be objectively real, then it would be that reality which “just is” via which what ought to be can be judged. Thereby potentially resolving the is/ought problem.

Of course, all this is contingent on there being a) a universal, foundational, (one could add, metaphysically real) drive to all conscious beings in everything we do and b) some means of satisfying it in principle. Yet, if (a) and (b), one could then well make sense of objective ethics and morality – in so far as there being an objective good to pursue by which all actions can be judged as either better or worse.

Never mind; too overly-analytical of me. — Mww

I'm curious, especially if you find fault with what I've stated, but if you insist on my never minding, alright.

I'm still not following how you've jumped to 'awareness'. Why does the dog need to be 'aware' of bones and biscuits in order for the category {stuff that's nice to eat} to form a semantic memory. — Isaac

Aren't all variations of memory (e.g. short term memory and long term memory) the storage (however imperfect it may be) of what occurs in the present awareness of the organism? If not entertaining philosophical zombie scenarios, this is the only possibility I can currently think of. I for example don't find that we as humans can recall memories of events which we were never consciously aware of in some former present time. (EDIT: false memories excluded - but this exception only seems to evidence the point made in terms of true memories.)

As to category formation, at the very least all species of will animals will make active use of categories if they are to survive - e.g., those of predator and/or of prey - in manners devoid of word use. This will include solitary animals, such as is typically the case for felines. Which to me evidences that categories can and do form in the absence of word use. (In truth, I also uphold that some category awareness will be inborn in certain animals, becoming only fine-tuned via experience ... a duckling's indifference to a goose's silhouette overhead and fearing that of a hawk's comes to mind as one researched example (though not devoid of controversy) of such ingrained recognition of categories ... but this would greatly complicate the current issue.)

It seems to me all that's required would be some connections between the word-sound 'treat' and the neural networks associated with nice food. — Isaac

My view is that no animal, humans included, forms connections between word-sounds and certain neural networks. Here I find a confounding of two different levels that concurrently occur in the same system. The animal would instead hold conscious awareness of the word-sound "treat" and would consciously associate it to, in my view, a category it is also in some way consciously aware of - most likely intuitively. And all of these activities that take place within the conscious awareness of the organism are then concurrently also manifesting in the workings of organism's neural networks.

I'm saying that without language we do not have experiences of 'red', not that we don't have experience tout court. — Isaac

I can agree that without language we would likely hold no awareness of the culturally-relative, abstract, connotations which redness can imply. That of passion - be it anger or love - for example.

But it seems to me that all lesser-animal predators will be aware of red, for it is the color of blood, which prey evidences when injured or eaten. For a lesser-animal predator to not have an experience of red would be greatly detrimental to its survival - such that experience of this color is favored by evolution in at the very least predators (irrespective of how qualitatively different their experiences of redness might be in comparison to typical human awareness of the color). I mention this because, of course, lesser animals do not make use of language (when understood as word use) to have experiences of red.

My clarification wasn’t clear, apparently. — Mww

My bad. Should of added a smiley face or something. My post was tongue-in-cheek. No, I'm in agreement with you. :up:

... still maintaining that experience is not contingent on narrative. :wink:

Perfect sense. Brain system does its narratives of mental events, none of which is the mental event of “experience”, yet one of its mental events is the “conscious subject”, and that mental event is that which makes sense of mental event “experience”. — Mww

I’m not getting it. How does the brain make use of words to bring into being mental events, such as those of word recognition and usage?

I could get the affirmation that CNS cells, exemplified by neurons, communicate with each other. This affirmation presumes that neurons are of themselves living agents capable of giving and receiving information, replete with their own individual positive and negative valance … their own unicellular kind of autopoietic experience - such that they strengthen their synaptic connections when the information-conveyance is to their liking, and such that lack of beneficial information-conveyance results in synaptic decay. But even when so conceptualized, where is there word usage in the constitutional activities of brain systems?

I don't follow how you're making the jump from the particulars constituting concepts to 'experiences'. Why must the particulars be experiences?

Say there's concept a dog has which makes it more likely to, say, fetch its lead when it hears the word "walk", and say this concept is constituted of several linked concepts, I don't see why any of those linked concepts need be an experience. — Isaac

For me “walk” is too ambiguous, since it’s something that can be learned via classical or operant conditioning. Haven’t checked but I presume pigeons could be taught to properly respond to this word by walking when so hearing - or else by fetching a leash, etc. The concept of “treat”, as first mentioned, seems to me far more apt for discussion. A typical treat can be a bone, a small serving of human food, a biscuit, or even a carrot if the dog so likes to eat. For the dog to understand the concept of treat it would need to abstract from a limited set of particulars such as those aforementioned to a generalized notion such as, here guestimating, “that which is given to me and make me greatly pleased”.

In presuming you’re not asking me why a dog must hold a first-person awareness rather than being a philosophical zombie of sorts (it does after all share enough CNS commonalities to our own to warrant making the issue moot, or so I'm thinking):

A dog can develop the concept of treat and associate it to the word "treat" only by a kind of inductive inference from a limited set of particulars of which it is aware of - this to the generalized notion as concept - by holding first-person awareness (to not further confound the issue by using the term “conscious awareness”) of things such as biscuits and bones. I presume we can both grant that, in typical cases, the dog has no word associations for each of these particulars it is aware of (e.g., so as to differentiate the word “biscuit” from the word “bone”). If so, then the dog uses unnarrated first person awareness of particular tokens to develop an unnarrated first person awareness of a type … Which it can then, however imperfectly, associate in semantic import to the English word “treat”.

None of this being possible if the dog were devoid of experiences pertaining to some particular treats.

What I'm suggesting is that all experience is post hoc. Everything we'd call an experience is made up after the mental events which that experience is attempting to explain. — Isaac

Roger that, as can for example be measured in milliseconds between raw sensory data from sensory organs and the after-the-fact result of the experience. But this can get knees-deep in murky issues: such as how it is that we come to hold first-person awareness of neurons and what they do in the first place if not via the experiences of first-person awareness. Besides, that experiences of a red apple, for example, are post hoc to the raw sensory data our sensory organs register does not of itself diminish the reality of us having immediate experiences of the red apple in our first person awareness.

For my part, though, I was here only questioning the appraisal that experiences need to be contingent on narration in order to manifest.

So the fundamental issue here is not really the use of words. It is for humans, but maybe less so for dogs. It's about what kind of cognitive activity constitutes an 'experience' as opposed to simply some neurons firing.

I think the evidence is pretty strong now that there's no one-to-one relationship between neural events and our 'experience', so we must explain that epistemic cut somehow. — Isaac

Yes, this is a big and very loaded fundamental question. Don't intend to get into it on this thread. But so it's said, I again very much doubt that humans require words in other to experience.

I don't know anything about canine psychology, but if it works anything like human psychology, the association of a word (or any noise at all) with an expectation is mediated primarily by the hippocampus and just works by associating previous responses with a kind of 'mock up' of that response repeated (but not carried out). So if a human says "pass me the book", my motor circuits will be fired for all the muscle movements required to pass the book, by that expression, before I actually decide to pass the book. The last action on my part is sort of 'releasing the flood gates' of the potential to act that has already built up. Or in object recognition, it might be firing all the clusters related to some action on that object (naming it, using it, emotional response to it), connected, via the hippocampus, to the output of the various auditory cortices (depending on if it were a word or another sound type).

'Experience', as in the thing we later report as our conscious experience of the event, is constructed later out of those firings (plus a whole load of random firing which are happening all the time, and a load of extraneous firings to do with unrelated environmental variables). The task of the experience narrative is (partly) to sift out all that extraneous junk so that the memory of the event is clearer - next time's firing set is nice and neat, useful and clean of noise. It doesn't really play a role in the actual word-object linking in real time. — Isaac

Cats also have a hippocampus, but tmk show no evidence of being able to associate words to concepts. So the presence of a hippocampus in a brain does not of itself provide a satisfactory explanation for why the average dog comes to associate certain terms with certain concepts. I say this with no quibble over the hippocampus’s importance to cognition - such as in word recognition, when a word's usage has become habitual, in at least humans.

At pith, though, was whether or not language - and hence narration - is requisite for concept formation. Expressed differently: Do concepts occur first followed by word association? Or are words, and thereby narration, required for concept formation?

Here's my underlying reason for the question:

If concepts can occur prior to word recognition - since concepts are abstractions abstracted from a plurality of particulars - the implications are that experiences can then take place prior to, or else in the complete absence of, narration. This conclusion would be entailed by the process of forming concepts from particular, narration-devoid experiences.

But if words are required for concept formation, I so far fail to see an adequate explanation of how dogs - which are by nature languageless - form concepts to begin with. To this could be added the question of why dogs can and cats can’t - since both, for example, have a hippocampus and are constantly exposed to words while around humans.

To emphasize: At base in the aforementioned question regarding concept formation is whether experience can occur in the absence of narration - this in lesser animals which are by nature languageless and, as would then seem to follow, in humans as well.

In the first, the narrative is from the perspective of recounting, which necessarily presupposes a system has done its job, — Mww

I could see that, granting that it’s as metaphorically narrational as a bee’s dance is linguistic - both having nothing to do with word usage.

There are also some who claim to find freedom in the bottle. Not good for one's liver, I hear. — Banno

Eh, for my part, yours is a trite retort, especially seeing the lack of coherent rebuttals to the arguments I’ve provided. FYI, there’re other kinds of freedoms associated with to bottles that are nowhere near as common, like the far harder to express and obtain sense of profound freedom pointed to in Jim Croce’s song Time in a Bottle. And yes, unlike booze, it’s not something that can be easily, if at all, effed.

But it’s your thread; express ad nauseum what you will about your lowly flies.

but watch out, Banno might interpret what you've said in such a way as to make it seem that you are stuck in a bottle that he has freed himself from. :wink: — Janus

It would be pretty fly of him if he could so demonstrate. :wink:

Freedom … it can be such a cockeyed concept. Some seek freedom from reality; others freedom from prohibitions not to be a tyrant; but I do believe that the typical philosopher - including those anti-philosophy philosophers amongst us - seek freedom from falsehoods … very much enjoying the bottle of truth-filled reality in which we would like to perpetually dwell.

There, waxed poetic a bit in turn. :smile:

I don't think anyone 'doesn't have experiences'. I said earlier that experiences are post hoc constructions, they're narratives we use to make what just happened in our brain more predictable (understandable in more colloquial terms). We weave together disparate, and often completely contradictory processes into one coherent narrative after the mental events themselves have already taken place [...] — Isaac

With the understanding that a concept is an abstraction abstracted from particulars:

In terms of languageless creatures and language, dogs, for one example, can on average understand 89 unique words and phrases - with a demonstrated extreme of being able to recognize about 1000 - and with at least some such words understood on average referencing concepts, e.g., “treat”. So, a preliminary question: Do human words for concepts bring into being the dog’s very ability to cognize that concept which the word references? Or do dogs hold cognizance of non-linguistic (hence non-narrative) concepts which they can then associate with human words?

As per the quote above, you seem to lean toward affirming “yes” to the first and “no” to the second. Then:

Without an organism’s innate ability to cognize non-linguistically expressed (hence, non-narrative) concepts - such as the concept of treat - how do words that reference concepts, such as “treat”, become associated with anything any concept whatsoever?

Edited the crossed-out word for better comprehension.

Makes sense, in different contexts in regard to saying 'yes' or 'no' to the use of loaded words. — Janus

Was in a rush with my last post; sorry about that. I had something more fundamental in mind.

Loaded words may indeed be more easily changed in a language, but I’m sustaining that no language or part thereof is absolute. Therefore, any word or phrase can in principle change by being either endorsed for use in a language or else by being proscribed, this by any individual or cohort of these. Every time we make use of a word, we endorse its usage in the language community we partake of. Or, as phrases it (and in disagreement with his appraisal), we say yea to a word’s use every time we make use of it.

So I’m here arguing that we all partake in the construction, preservation, and alteration of the language we communally share - this via the choices we make (be they conscious or subconscious) in terms of which words we as individuals use.

Both the endorsement and proscription of particular words will be contingent on the interests of individuals: words which individuals find favorable to themselves in terms of functionality, aesthetic appeal, or (as in my previous examples) their ethics will be endorsed for use in language. “Meme” comes to mind as a word that via these means of endorsement has gained mainstream presence in at least the current English language, and this in a very short span of time. On the other hand, whatever words individuals - such as via their changing culture - no longer find favorable to themselves (functionally, aesthetically, ethically, or for any other reason) will degrade in the language until no longer present.

Hence, I'm maintaining that since no language is absolute or else set in stone, all languages thereby evolve via the endorsement or proscription of word use by individuals.

As to use of the term “red”: Two thousand years ago “red” didn’t exist as word to express the given color (neither did English for that matter). And two thousand years from now, there could well be a different term to address the same color in some neo-English language. But when it comes to our concrete experiences - unlike at least some abstracted notions which words express - words will change over time while their referents will remain the same. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, sort of thing.

Can you determine whether or not it is in one's "pragmatic favour"? — Janus

If you're speaking in general, it's contingent on a lot of factors. Choosing not to ever say "red" would hence likely not be in my pragmatic interests. Choosing to not say "ineffable" on the other hand ...

Here's something more palpable, with the strong caveat that no undertones are in any way intended: People nowadays commonly enough express "fuck you" to others when upset with the other. Seeing how "fuck you" implies "may you be raped", one could then in theory make a concerted effort to cease saying this term to others (given that one detests rape for any reason and in any context). Maybe replacing it with "to hell with you" or, if this is too spiritualistic sounding to one's ears, maybe via the coinage of some new terminology. One person can so decide / determine. Were others to then follow suit, maybe such as due to admiration or else finding it pragmatic in their own lives, it would then be a sub-cultural use of language that distances itself from the current norm. Where the vast majority of people to in due course so choose to use alternatives to "fuck you/him/them/etc.", then this use of "fuck you" will in effect then have become a thing of the past.

Again, no undertones intended.

Same can be said with replacing "pimping" (directly implying being a pimp with whores) with something like "stoked" (which need not refer to drugs) or, else, some newly coined terminology.

It costs me nothing to willfully choose not to say "may someone be raped" or else "this is pimp-like behavior and thereby good". Here, it would be in my pragmatic favor - given my ethical values - to not use the terms "fuck you/him/them/etc." and "pimping". Whereas I find no personal interest whatsoever in not using the term "red" - it improves my ability to communicate without in any way compromising my ethical nor aesthetic values - though its up to me to not use the term in practice.

Aesthetics are a big part of language - "Bank of Billy" rather than "Billy's Bank" - but this is a whole other issue all together.

It's not a mathematical type of determination, but it in such roundabout ways I find that it can be more or less decidable / determinable, yes.

Decidable? — Janus

Meaning?

Without turning crimson, as I previously said, you can nay it any time. Languages after all evolve via such yey and nay of peoples all the time. Whether it's at all in one's pragmatic favor to do so is a different matter.

Not sure how one goes about answering this question. My intuition that words are rather clumsy building blocks we use to feel our way around. — Tom Storm

I could be on board with your metaphor of "clumsy building blocks". As to the question itself, please go for it if you find any faults; I'll rephrase it for easier criticism: The "is everything linguistically expressible" issue boils down to "can reality itself be in principle made equivalent to words".

I don't remember agreeing (but I did follow orders) - I remember being told what the names of colors were and getting them wrong. I still do, as I am color blind. — Tom Storm

For many, “mommy” and daddy” are the first words we willfully consent to using - though, granted, we might not have memories of it. Color words come later- and whether or not we use these terms correctly is not pertinent to the issue I was addressing. At issue here, if you’d want to get in it philosophically, is this: how does one first come to use any term if not via agreement with those who so use these terms? (This regardless of whether the agreement is obtained via coercion from others or via one’s own willful inclinations.)

I have to say parsing the notion of color as a pathway to understand the merits of the term ineffable is bloody dull. — Tom Storm

I can get that, but you speak as though you’re forced to partake.

Thirteen pages in and I am no closer to understanding what ineffable means other than the literal definition and associated, shall we say, poetic uses. — Tom Storm

For my part, I don’t see what all the hubbub is all about. If meaning is use, then the word means whatever its use intends it to mean. Haven’t heard of “ineffable” being spoken of by people, except in certain academic and philosophical circles. But if one wants to say that, for example, “my joy is indescribable” or else “beyond words” well, when it gets the point across it has meaning to both the speaker and the listener. Case closed as far as I’m concerned.

Is it not the case that some people believe there are quasi mystical matters that are beyond words while others think that everything can be understood or, at least, turned into words? It's hardly a surprising bifurcation. — Tom Storm

As to this issue, I’d phrase it in more blunt terms: does one find that reality is - or else can in principle be made - equivalent to words?

If so, then everything that is can be expressible via words. If not, then some things of which we can be aware of will not be accurately expressible via words.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I so far don't see it.

Besides, there’s a lot more to meaning and its conveyance than words: I can verbally tell you anything about my state of being but if my body posture and mannerisms express otherwise, what will you make out of my words? And as to non-verbal communication, think of the Mona Lisa smile: other than by pointing fingers at it, literally or via words (as in, “the Mona Lisa smile”), I so far don’t know of anyone that has managed to accurately convey it linguistically (other than via poetry, maybe).

intersubjective agreement — Tom Storm


Rude.

So when did you agree to red? — Banno

The first time one makes use of the word as it’s expressed to oneself by others, one agrees, or willfully consents, to its use.

One can also disagree to use the word “red” at any time; instead making use of “crimson”, “scarlet”, “vermilion”, “amaranth”, and so forth.

... or even coin a new term for a unique shade or red, and this irrespective of whether others would then agree to make use of it so as to make the term an aspect of the shared language.

Back to the issue of blindness and color awareness:

Given that many sighted-people have no clue as to what these terms concretely specify even if able to use them in grammatically correct sentences, how does one find that a blind person could know the difference between, for example, Alizarin Crimson and Crimson Lake when devoid of any visual experience … and, for that matter, be able to know the differences in these colors that different paint manufacturers produce?

This could easily start to approximate the Chinese Room problem, wherein one could make fluid use of words to specify that, “this manufacture’s carmine has a yellower tint than that manufacture’s” without any awareness of what one is expressing in relation to colors.

ps. All this being in no way contradictory to blind people being able to use color-words to express abstract sentiments (e.g., I'm feeling blue) or abstract states of affair (e.g., it's not a black and white issue) - but not concrete experiences of colors. They can know that in certain cultural contexts white represents good and black bad - and can further know that in other contexts no such representation is to be validly made (such as in addressing people's skin color) - without having any awareness of, for example, the concrete differences between Ivory and Floral White, or else Onyx and Ebony. Whereas sighted people can learn of these differences by being presented with direct experiences of these shades.

I flip the switch on the trolley, knowing that people will die (though more will be saved). Is this morally different from pushing a man over a bridge and killing him deliberately in order that more lives will be saved? — Cuthbert

No, it's not morally different. No more than would be pulling the trigger of a gun - flipping its switch, so to speak - so as to accomplish the same result via the same means. One could even address the pushing of red buttons so as to launch nukes with the same overall intent.

Whimsy aside, though we all like to believe people are all of equal value when we intellectualize, in our everyday lives we judge very differently - and maybe, at least at times, this for good reasons. Making things other than a simple numbers game. For instance, most would consider it ethically wrong to cause the death of one Einstein or one Gandhi so as to save a thousand Hitlers (neo-Nazis excluded). In many versions of the trolley problem (such as the one where a person is pushed off of a bridge), what can be known beforehand - all else being equal - is that one would sacrifice an innocent bystander to rescue a plurality of people that give no heed to the sounds of an approaching train while standing on train tracks. Here is a question of relative value, including that of merit, rather than one of strict numbers.

But adjust the trolley problem's parameters and the ethical issues drastically change: e.g., five captive people tied down to train tracks by some assailant vs. one bystander. It's still a question of value - is the value of the five captives more than that of the one bystander? - and here it seems far more appropriate to deem "yes". This despite there yet being a lot of unknowns in terms of who these people are. But we live with risks in the choices we make all the time.

Btw, while a different thread might indeed be appropriate for this topic, as jgill says, I'm not prepared to start one.

Banno sort of beat me to the punch a little, but I’m going to join in for a second anyway.

It’s to be acknowledged that words for colors have meaning to blind people: expressions such as, “I’m seeing red”, “I’m blue”, or “it’s not all black and white” can be readily meaningful. Likewise can other associations between colors and properties be made: green is generally a cold color; yellow warm; purple is beyond the light spectrum and can signify some form of spirituality (these are examples taken from personal experience interacting with one or two people blind from birth). I never asked, but it’s also at least possible that people blind from birth could hold some form of color scheme that could be seen by them with the mind’s eye.

That said, what a concrete red apple perceptually looks like will not be a shared experience. And its particularities will not be expressible.

More interesting to me, I’ve read of blind people being very pleased at touching the surface of heavily impastoed paintings of the ocean’s waves and crests. It helped them get a tactile sense of what the ocean looks like. They held descriptive understandings of this, but, obviously, had no visual experience of it. And the tactile feel of the painting helped them form an image - however accurate or inaccurate it may have been - in their mind’s eye.

As to expressability, my take away is that much of the meaning of color words can be cognized via language by those who can't see - but not the direct experience of perceptual color. This anymore than we know what a color blind person experiences when looking at the world day in and day out, or else what a fully blind person experiences via heightened sensitivity to tactile feelings and sounds, and the mental mappings resultant from this.

Hmm. Isn't unprincipled lust more... interesting? — Banno

Nah. Too anarchistic.

don't understand that. What are "principles"? — Banno


Principles are ineffable. — Tom Storm

… until they aren’t.

Hence: Nietzsche’s principle of will to power, Freud’s principle of will to pleasure (in fairness, together with his reality principle), Frankl’s principle of will to meaning, and the one which I find most important, Enigma’s principles of lust.

It might take a whole lot of reasoning to make me change my mind on this stance:

So virtue ethics might well be seen to involve personal development that does not have a social implication. Virtue has a broader scope than morality.

So in moving past cutting himself, your castaway becomes more virtuous but not more moral. — Banno

That's a very nice way of expressing my current view on the matter.

An interesting approach. — Banno

Well ... thanks.



:up: Especially in relation to your insightful analysis of truth and lies.

This has support when we consider that sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to feel a certain way about a certain thing, e.g., doesn’t make sense to cry over beautiful music. — Mww

:grin: Am reminded of "tears of joy" ... could happen ... but your point is well taken.

Doesn’t the unknown in practice still require an explanatory principle? I should think that if it is the case that knowledge is only possible in conjunction with principles, the criteria for the unknowable must be either the negation of those, the validity of its own, or the absence of any. But principles at any rate. — Mww

I’m unclear as to how to best interpret this. But in addressing principles, what comes to my mind are epistemological principles. To address a relatively concrete example that we could all relate to: The future is uncertain.

Because we know this via experience-laden inference, we can thereby express that the future is “uncertain”. That we know the future to be uncertain then implies that we know - hold JTB - that much of the future is unknown to us - i.e., that we don’t hold JTB regarding some of what will be - usually, and in general, this in correlation to how distant a future we’re addressing. Of course, we have our best inferences of the immediate future, that tomorrow will most likely resemble today to a significant extent, etc., but in terms of what we clearly know the be unknown aspects of the future:

We can speculate as to possible alternatives of what might be, and these will be know to us as such, and thereby expressible by us. Example: a year from now it might rain or not rain at the location I’m currently at. That said, while it may be true that some might presume to know and thereby express what the case will be, for those who know they don’t know what will be what will be is quite technically inexpressible.

This is a relatively challenging example because alternative expressions can be used: the future might be X, or is likely to be X. Still, if we hold JTB that we do not hold JTB regarding what the future will be in a certain respect, then, for those who so hold a known unknown, this aspect of the future will be ineffable.

This roundabout line of reasoning to my mind will then apply to any inferred known unknown.

When it comes to experience, it gets far trickier to express, but there is - and some here might be very appalled by this - a certain form of meta-cognizance regarding what one is consciously experiencing: a non-inferential knowing that one knows. The clearest simple example of this that currently comes to mind is in our tip-of-the-tongue experiences. Here, we know the word’s meaning we want to express and likewise know that we, at least momentarily, don’t know the phenomenal word itself. Furthermore, maybe most poignantly, we non-inferentially know that we have knowledge-by-acquaintance of the phenomenal word although we can’t for the life of us recall what it might be.

Then, in a similar, but far more complex, way, we could non-inferentially know that we don’t know how to articulate that emotive state of being we are knowledgeable of via direct experience (via a kind of knowledge by acquaintance).

Don’t know if this helps any. But that’s my best take so far.