The one that works. — Banno

Sure, and yesterday/tomorrow works well in language, but if I'm asking you as a philosopher as to whether to finish building the time machine in my garage, what would be your advice?

Arguing in this way is setting up a grammar about "existence" that distinguishes it from "real" in order to sort out the conceptual issues. — Banno

Sure, but are you only attempting to show how a linguistic analysis would proceed? I'm not doubting that you can analyze language for any philosophical position. They are stated using language.

What I'm skeptical of is that linguistic analysis will dissolve all the philosophical problems. Has the philosophy of time been successfully dissolved to your knowledge?

Once we've removed all the linguistic construction of the concept of 'time' nothing is left behind. — Pseudonym

That remains to be seen. But surely change is still left behind? Or are you in agreement with Parmenides that change doesn't exist?

Is measurement special in some way? — Banno

*Must. Resist. Mentioning. QM.*

Measurement probably means something exists to be measured.

So mapping out the topology of the word "exists" would be one way to sort through the conceptual issues around time. That's linguistic philosophy. — Banno

Okay, so I think there is no disagreement that we do perceive change, events taking place, that sort of thing. And form this we have a notion of time which we can measure.

So it appears to us that things change, and we can talk of the before, during and after.

The concept is of a thing in spacetime such that we can look and see it isn't there. — Pseudonym

Right, but change is in the horse category of being there, not the unicorn one of not being. Notice that you even use spacetime as the backdrop for seeing what's there.

But this is already a grammatical error because horses and (the proposed) unicorns are both things, objects in spacetime which can either be there or not. — Pseudonym

Unicorns are not things in spacetime. They're fictional.

And what does it mean to feel air around your skin? — Πετροκότσυφας

I assume you know? Maybe we only notice it with a temperature change or air movement. But sure, a fish doesn't feel wet in the way we feel wet, I would assume. I'm not a fish, though.

What does it mean to feel wet? — Πετροκότσυφας

Something like what it means to feel air around your skin, I suppose.

What is someone asking when he asks if the fish is wet in water? — Πετροκότσυφας

Well, a fish can dry out on land, so I guess you mean does a fish feel wet? Because certainly fish are wet in water.

As for what fish feel, notice that we do feel the air around us. I don't know that we have a word for it. Do we feel "aired"? We would certainly feel the lack of it in a vacuum. So I'm sure fish feel the water around them. Would not be very adaptable if they didn't. It's just that being wet is normal for them, like having air around us is normal for land animals.

To say that something exists is no more than to give it a role in our language. — Banno

I'm going to disagree strongly with that. For starters, we say unicorns don't exist, but they do have a role in our language. But we do say horses exist, and they aren't simply a role in language, but are animals who don't need us to talk about them to be.

So although "does time exist?" looks like a profound bit of metaphysics, it is also (only?) a question of language use. — Banno

We do have a perception of change. That's not linguistic. It's why time plays a role in our language. We could invoke Kant here, or a physicist.

The philosopher in us, this tendency to overgeneralise and search for ultimates behind what is given to us, will hopefully die (or at least weaken). And we'll might "see the world aright". — Πετροκότσυφας

But what would this mean? Presumably it doesn't mean seeing the world the way pre-philosophical people saw it, or the average person ignorant of philosophy who takes things as they appear. Although that's a bit harder today with the prevalence of science and various fictional concepts. Everyone knows about the Matrix and time travel, for example, and anyone a little drunk or high can tell you how time doesn't exist or the cells in our bodies could be entire universes, or whatever passes for profundity.

Let's start with the first item:

1. Philosophy of time: presentism, block universes etc.

So, our concept of time developed out of noticing that things change, and some of those changes are periodic, such that we can measure the change by days, seasons, etc. And then we can say that yesterday I went to the market, today I'm plowing the field, and tomorrow I will be marrying my cousin.

Now at some point (in time), somebody must have first wondered about yesterday and tomorrow. Do they exist? What is meant by that? It's easiest to understand by borrowing from science fiction, where a time machine enables travel to the past or future. In earlier times, magic or the gods may have been invoked to explicate the notion.

At some point (again in time), a debate would have developed where one side said yesterday and tomorrow exist in that you could visit them if you had some means to do so. But then the other side said that no, they don't exist. All that exists is the ever changing now. And from this you also get a debate as to whether the "flow of time" we experience is real or an illusion.

Fast forward to modern physics, and we have the implications of General Relativity with time dilation. Which leads some to suggest the 4D block notion of the universe, in which all points in time exist eternally, and the flow of time we experience is an illusion constructed by the mind.

Thats my attempt at explaining the issue. Someone else can give a more precise explanation with the actual philosophers who put the issue on the table. We know that as far back as Heraclitus and Parmenides, there were related disputes as to whether time was an illusion or everything was change.

For this discussion, can we dissolve the issue, or leave it up to physics by engaging in linguistic analysis?

That's well put. Let's go with it.

So if we us fdrake's list, the question is whether all of those topics will cease to be philosophical once the right conceptual topology has been grammatically sorted out.

eah, strong and slightly ironic. After all, I'm here, doing philosophy by saying we shouldn't bother with philosophy.

I can't help myself... — Banno

It seems like you haven't quite cured the itch yet. Maybe rub some more analysis on it.

But I suppose on your view philosophy could be seen as a necessary endeavor to clarify and dissolve or handoff certain kinds of questions humans have been tempted to ask the past 2500 years, at least.

Yes, it might well be. — Banno

You realize that's a really, really strong claim, right? It's certainly worth discussing.

Language seems foundational in some sense to philosophy — Sam26

My knee jerk reaction against Banno's claim is that it sounds like getting clear on how language is misused to create philosophical problems will either dissolve all those problems, or clear them up in preparation for some other domain like science to take over.

Which would mean that philosophy is a mistake.

Could there be teams of several people that take turns replying? Like three people strongly for and three strongly against or something?

Im wondering how much we can agree on within the scope of philosophy of language. — Sam26

Preliminary: what is meant by "philosophy of language" and how would it be understood to cover all of philosophy?

I'm not prepared for a formal debate. It's just that those debates seemed to be well structured, and this sort of topic has the chance of being all over the place, since it attempts to cover the entire reach of philosophy.

Also, I wonder what the best way to proceed would be. In the old forum, there were official debates. Not that it needs to that exact format. What would we hope to accomplish?

You, and those who agree with you, would explain and attempt to show how the philosophy of language encompasses all of philosophy.

Those of us who disagree would attempt to show that it doesn't. Assuming "philosophy of language" is defined in a definitive matter that means something more than just philosophy. IOW, that philosophy is actually the philosophy of language for any domain being discussed that falls under philosophy.

How to proceed? — Banno

I guess leave it up to Sam.

Philosophy of Language is, in the end, the whole of philosophy. — Banno

No, just no. That's wrong.

For example, some philosophers have come up with a sense/meaning of knowledge that doesn't fit within the ordinary use of the word. Thus, they use the word completely out of it's home. — Sam26

Does this apply to ancient or medieval philosophical problems in addition to more modern ones? Because various philosophical problems have been expressed in Greek, Latin, Hindi, Chinese, English, French, German, Arabic, etc.

On an abuse-of-language view, different languages would probably present different forms of abuse. Or so we might expect.

We might also wonder if there's something about ancient Greek that gave rise to ancient metaphysics and epistemology.

Maybe my emphasis on Wittgenstein is overblown. If you think that, then explain why, but don't do it if you don't understand Wittgenstein. — Sam26

Isn't the emphasis on language pretty much the entire analytical enterprise of the past century? The idea that if we can get clear on language, then many philosophical problems can be adequately addressed, and philosophy can be turned into a respectable pursuit, similar to science.

If so, a question arises as to how successful that emphasis has been.

Sounds like a rehash of the ancient skeptical position in modern garb.

Ya, it would be interesting to divide the problems up into various kinds. — Sam26

Would also be interesting to see what sort of agreement/disagreement we got on the classification of different problems.

And you're sure what an 'essence' is? Have you read no debates on the meaning of 'subjective? — Pseudonym

Essence was just my word for the nature of subjectivity. It's not a word typically used in the debate.

So tell me how linguistic analysis can help if nobody agrees on the meaning of the terms?

Philosophy of time: presentism, block universes etc. — fdrake

Agreed, and this could be resolved by physics at some point.

Metaphysics of science: emergence, character of natural law — fdrake

Right, and this is regarding the nature of the world, not language.

Political philosophy: the vast majority of issues in it. — fdrake

Yep, obviously political differences can't simply be resolved by analyzing political language. There are issues people disagree on, and some of them are ideological in nature. Some of them relate to a kind of philosophical outlook on how society should function.

Logic: foundations of mathematics — fdrake

Certainly outside ordinary language analysis.

Ethics: real world ethical issues — fdrake

Yes, ethics relates to how we should live. That's not a matter for linguistics.

Is that just wishful thinking, or do you have some reason to think this? If you could provide an example of some philosophical terms whose meaning you think is widely agreed on (with a rough idea of what that agreed meaning is), that might help. — Pseudonym

I updated my post to include qualia, with the ongoing dispute between Chalmers and Dennett as a specific example.

Qualia is understood to be the essence of subjective experience. This isn't a matter of dispute. It's what the term means. Whether qualia exist, and if so, how they can be accounted for, is open for dispute. The term itself isn't in dispute.

to understand 'the philosophy of language' is to have to understand a great deal more than language. — StreetlightX

Such as culture, sociology, cognition, politics, even biology, depending on the nature of the problem.

If you can describe a philosophical problem and then define each word you just used in a way that will gain even a substantial minority of agreement then I'd be prepared to concede this. Thus far, I've not found such a thing to be possible — Pseudonym

That sounds like no amount of linguistic analysis will fix the problem since people won't agree on what the terms mean.

But I don't think this is actually the case for every problem in professional philosophy, just discussion forums where the rules of engagement are a lot more lax, and people can play loose and fast with terms to try and win the argument.

If you look at the debate over qualia, the different sides mostly agree on terms, they just don't agree on the issue as to whether qualia present a hard problem. And thus it's not a linguistic issue.

The dispute between Dennett and Chalmers, for example, is not a matter of language, since they both understand each other and use the same terms. They're not having a semantic dispute over how to use the word consciousness or qualia, rather they're having a substantive dispute.

The question is, which or what philosophical problems are we talking about. — Sam26

Would be interesting to try and divide them up:

1. Philosophical problems dissolved.

2. Clarified.

3. Potential to be clarified or dissolved.

4. Resistant.

Or what have you. Of course the problem here is people won't necessarily agree on what constitutes dissolving or clarifying a problem, and which ones are resistant. Even coming up with a framework for classification will be controversial.

That reminds me of David Chalmers book on scrutability where he attempts to give a framework for metaphysics given whatever basic premises one wants to start off with.

One of the reasons I've spent so much time studying philosophy of language, is, obviously, that language is the medium in which philosophical discourse takes place. It seems to follow, that having a good understanding of the way language works, in terms of concepts and meaning, is crucial to having a clear understanding of not only philosophy, but other subjects as well. — Sam26

Sure, but I'm skeptical that analyzing language is some sort of cure for philosophical problems in general. That may be the case in some instances, but I'm of the opinion that the majority of philosophical problems are not primarily linguistic in nature.

By example, consider health problems. We use language to discuss health, but health issues are biological and social, and not primarily a matter of language usage (although it can be sometimes in certain situations).

But there can be nothing objective about this, this basic act of telling a story (true story, or not). This is the realm of narrative, not objectivity. — hypericin

That's just going too far. There's nothing subjective about a Typhoon hitting Japan. Of course there is a selection process on what constitutes events worth reporting. And that's what tends to attract viewers. Disasters, conflicts, controversies and scandals are always good bets, because most people who pay attention to general news want to hear that stuff.

Whereas, in consequence of nominalism, which was in many respects the precursor to empiricism, this distinguishing characteristic of the ‘faculty of reason’ is generally no longer recognised, with considerable consequences for modern philosophy of mind and especially theory of meaning. — Wayfarer

Where does science fit in this? Science is empirically-based, but theory is equally important. Science seeks to tie related observations together into an explanatory whole. Physics highlights how importation rationalism and imagination are in a addition to doing experiments.

Event experimental setup requires a good deal of creativity and reason.

I don't agree with the notion that news reporting should not strive for objectivity. You ditch that, and then you get propaganda like Fox News in it's place.

Humans can't be objective in the ideal sense, but they can certainly strive for it, which is much better than intentionally trying to persuade the public about a certain ideological outlook.

The difference between imperfect reporting and propaganda is huge and important. Also, there is a very real difference between fake news and real news, even if real news doesn't capture all the facts perfectly.

Rationality always works within a delimited field. Death is outside that. Its beyond rationality/irrationality. — csalisbury

It's after finitude, for sure.

There are people who believe there is a "language of thought." I reject the notion because it leads to an infinite regress. — Dfpolis

Do you reject that there are neural mechanisms behind word formation in the brain that have something to do with understanding word meaning?

If you think that ideas are merely words we speak internally, then you are more likely to be a nominalist. — Dfpolis

Words typically express concepts. Names would be an exception, as they're often arbitrary labels. Does anyone disagree that many words are conceptual? I have a sneaking suspicion about the meaning-is-use people here, but even with that concept of meaning, there is still a cognitive component to understanding the use, which explains why humans are capable of language.

Perhaps there is a nominalist on the forum that would like to provide a stronger defense of his/her position. — Dfpolis

Oh, there's a few. Whether this topic interests them is another matter.