It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting them which give us the key to the understanding of the phenomena of Nature. Experience can of course guide us in our choice of serviceable mathematical concepts; it cannot possibly be the source from which they are derived; experience of course remains the sole criterion of the serviceability of a mathematical construction for physics, but the truly creative principle resides in mathematics. — Einstein, A. (1933). On the Method of Theoretical Physics. Lecture delivered on 10 June 1933 at Oxford University.

Try to define "object". Now try to define "subject". — khaled

I think we need to learn to value the objectivity of a human being, or else we’re left to apply value through a sort of linguistic trickery. — NOS4A2

You must have misunderstood what I was writing about. In no way was I 'denying empathy'. Maybe read through the previous comments in this thread to see what I was getting at. — Wayfarer

...areas of philosophy that are explicitly concerned with understanding the nature of lived experience from a first-person perspective...say that the attempt to account for the nature of experience in third-person terms is radically flawed. — Wayfarer

Reason(n): human faculty which creates and/or develops an argument. — Galuchat

Reason cannot create or develop knowledge statements nor their justification. Reason can only verify them. — alcontali

I know there’s a lot of research on this but I like developing my own thoughts on it from observation and conversation with others and a bit of idle research, i.e. at some point I’d rather go for a swim. — Brett

Let's separate "thought" from "language." Thought can happen without language is my belief, and there's good evidence for that. Thinking is not merely restricted to "sentences in the head." I've had colleagues argue that thinking and language are the same thing; I'm just not convinced of it. — Xtrix

I think language evolution is a crappolo idea, anyway, much like evolution. I believe that the ancient man had access (or since stone age, with stone axes, he had axxess) to the Oxford Dictionary of Standard English Definitions, Synonyms and Antonyms. Therefore they could strive for world hegemony, since they had a lingua franca the English langauge; and the English spleaking world still hasn't given up that idea. — god must be atheist

...the idea that not only did language not evolve gradually as a form of communication, but that language isn't communication at all. — Xtrix

...by decoupling language from communication and making it a wholly cognitive faculty... — StreetlightX

So yes, Chomsky and his adherents are so stupid as to believe humans' capacity for language is a miracle of God, or due to some other magic. — StreetlightX

I'm interested to hear if others, who have specialized in the evolution of language or are well versed in its literature, have considered Chomsky's ideas on this matter. I haven't seen much in this forum so far, although I am new to it. — Xtrix

After reading Chomsky, I now lean much more towards the idea that not only did language not evolve gradually as a form of communication, but that language isn't communication at all. — Xtrix

When it comes to questions of phylogeny, I have always contended that the emergence of life on earth, some 3.5 billion years ago, was tantamount to the advent of semiosis. The life sciences and the sign science thus mutually imply one another. I have also argued that the derivation of language out of any animal communication system is an exercise in total futility, because language did not evolve to subserve humanity's communicative exigencies. It evolved, as we shall see in the next chapter, as an exceedingly sophisticated modelling device, in the sense of von Uexkiill's Umweltlehre, as presented, for example, in 1982 (see also Lotman 1977), surely present - that is, language-as-a-modelling-system, not speech-as-a-communicative-tool - in Homo habilis. — Sebeok, Thomas Albert. 2001. Signs: An Introduction To Semiotics. Canada: University of Toronto Press. p.136.

It seems that for any discipline, art, or profession you engage in, if it's more than just a superficial dabbling, you'll start to form a set of guidelines or rules for yourself before long, whether half-consciously or deliberately. — darwinist

This process [forming a set of guidelines] seems basically unavoidable, but how well it's done varies a lot between people, and within the same person over time. The quality and clarity of the guidelines you follow makes a big difference to how rewarding you find the pursuit in question, and how good the outcomes are, much of the time. — darwinist

I'm actually just plowing through the SEP article you posted. It's kind of like homework so I can understand various angles on the concept of emergence. — frank

And it's a clean form of pleasure: one is drunk on thought and not bourbon. — softwhere

...one of the defining features of adulthood is the diminishment of impulsiveness...leading to... — Enrique

If this is a valid assessment, it suggests that rationality is inextricably bound to physiological structure, and these structures are in some measure constraining. — Enrique

What is the foundation for a strong, healthy, vibrant community? A strong connection between the people. This is something big cities don't have. — Punk Rascal

In any case, I decided to start typing down my ideas to form them into something more cogent and would like get some feedback on the validity of the definitions I have created in order to differentiate the most egregious problem causers. — Diagonal Diogenes

The axiomatic structure (A, Systems of Axioms) of a theory is built psychologically on the experiences (E, Totality of Sense Experiences) of the world of perceptions. Inductive logic cannot lead from the (E) to the (A). The (E) need not be restricted to experimental data, nor to perceptions; rather, the (E) may include the data of Gendanken experiments. Pure reason (i.e., mathematics) connects (A) to theorems (S, Deduced Laws). But pure reason can grasp neither the world of perceptions nor the ultimate physical reality because there is no procedure that can be reduced to the rules of logic to connect the (A) to the (E). — Einstein, A. (7 May 1952). Letter to Maurice Solovine

Less certain, continued Einstein, is the connection between the (S) and the (E). If at least one correspondence cannot be made between the (A) and (S) and the (E), then the scientific theory is only a mathematical exercise. Einstein referred to the demarcation between concepts or axioms and perceptions or data as the 'metaphysical original sin' (1949); and his defense of it was its usefulness. For whereas the problem of the relation between perceptions and mental images or concepts may well be interesting physiologically (e.g., How do neural firings lead to images?) or philosophically (e.g., philosophy of mind or metaphysics), it is of no concern to the working scientist - at least not to Einstein, who also displayed a good nose for philosophical problems. — Miller, Arthur I. 1984. Imagery in Scientific Thought Creating 20th Century Physics. Boston. Birkhauser, pp. 45-46.

Physical reality can be grasped not by pure reason (as Kant has asserted), but by pure thought. — Einstein, A. (1933). On the Method of Theoretical Physics. Lecture delivered on 10 June 1933 at Oxford University.

My faculty of mental conception (imagination) allows me to create events that are not a part of my 'normal' experience. — BrianW

This made me wonder: does the world structure our language or does our language structure the world? — philosophy

If you were familiar with Wittgenstein's bedrock propositions in his notes called On Certainty, you would know that I'm not asking the question that you are answering. This is not a linguistics class, at least not a typical linguistics class. — Sam26

Our language is made up of many kinds of beliefs that can be called foundational or even bedrock, but not all foundational beliefs have the same structural significance...
What is the structure? — Sam26