If you are into "mind-trip" movies, I would add Being John Malkovich and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — SophistiCat

Seen 'em. I do love Eternal Sunshine. Will definitely see more Tarkovsky. Thanks!

No, the U is arbitrary, and usually means all that stuff I see, and all the rest that is implied by it. The far side of the moon exists despite the lack of its direct accessibility to any of my five senses. — noAxioms

Hey look! You did it. You could define U as "all the stuff I see, and all the rest that is implied by it." Would love be a member of U? Would our universe? (Don't assume U="our universe.") Would stuff implied by the MW interpretation? Would the set U be a member of itself? (Sometimes that's okay.)

I know you want to skip ahead. Your real question is, "If existence means being part of our universe, what does it mean for our universe--or some other one--to exist?" Slow down. Look carefully at the words you're using, at how you're using them, and think through it.

Ontological existence seems to be distinguished from nonexistence as being a member of some set. So my car exists if it is a member of things that are in this universe — noAxioms

So you want set and set membership to be the starting point, and to define existence in terms of those. Something exists if it is a member of some special set U.

How do we define U? Here's where you start to have trouble, because so far you've only defined U as "the set of all things that are members of U." That's not going to help much. Obviously, you can't define U as "the set of all things that exist," because then you do have circularity.

So what's the next move? How could you define U in a way that does some work?

I was mainly expecting indifference, misinterpretation, maybe a little ridicule. ;)

Compositionality and the context principle are two of the absolutely central concepts of philosophy of language, but I for one have been having difficulty seeing how they fit together. Dummett has trouble explaining how they fit together. If it already made sense to you, that's cool.

Just finally watched Interstellar because of this post. WOW!

srsly?

Maybe we can pick this up again another time.

Got it. Not what I was thinking then.

It depends on your prior assumptions. Nothing qualifies as evidence simpliciter – but if you look at the priors, there's no evidence for them either, and so on.

All ordinary experience is perfectly compatible with everything being 'supernatural.' There's literally no reason to believe one or the other. — The Great Whatever

Or any of the "infinite number of other hypotheses," it seems.

I'd like to understand this better. Am I right in thinking you're really talking about the relationship between theory and evidence in general, and not just this particular case?

So Theory N has one set of assumptions, and they determine what counts as evidence for Theory N; but Theory S has a different set of assumptions that determines what counts as evidence for Theory S. Since -- by definition -- there's no evidence for the assumptions of either, you can choose whichever assumptions you like, and in that sense all ordinary experience is compatible with either Theory S or Theory N. You cannot possibly have a reason for choosing, say, the assumptions of Theory N, because assumptions -- again, by definition -- are just what we don't have reasons for.

Do I have all that right?

Greatest jump cut in film history.

So, Trump is not merely the person or the card, it is also the idea of tripping someone up -- assuming you interpreted my intent correctly.

Curious.

Words can refer to things that are not in their dictionary definitions ("Trump" just did that), depending on the context. — Mariner

Surely not.

Even if we assume that

by asking @Harry Hindu what you mean by "Trump," you intended to trip him up,

that's not at all the same as

the word "Trump" in this context referred to the idea of tripping someone up.

Tripping him up was what you intended to achieve by what you said; it's not the meaning of what you said.

This sounds fantastic and I will bump it up in the watching queue. Thanks!

Maybe Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven.

Shawshank Redemption — Agustino

Good call. There's a lot going on there.

Meaning is not derived at all from context? Not even a little bit?

Let's test this theory.

Trump.

What do I mean by that word? — Mariner

Are you just talking about disambiguation? If we're talking about bridge, it'll mean one thing; if about politics another, and so on? Wouldn't you still need to rely on the speaker following Grice's "Be relevant" maxim? And then we're back to intention. Wouldn't it be reasonable to say we look to context for clues to the speaker's intention? (And assume they're following the maxims, etc.)

All that is a long way from saying that the meanings of words are *derived* from either context or speaker's intention. It's important to remember that compositionality is a thing. We use the words we do to form novel assertions (questions, commands, etc.) because of the meanings those words have.

Don't diss the clams, man.

Do you see them as liberative or oppressive?
— Srap Tasmaner

I find this very dichotomy oppressive. The scientific method is neither good nor bad. It's just a tool. It can produce good results in the hands of responsible people and bad results in the hands of irresponsible people. — Thorongil

You're right of course.

OTOH, speaking broadly (and uncomfortably) in a history-of-ideas way, there was a narrative in the period, say, between the second world war and the rise of post-structuralism and friends, that saw modernity as the problem, that painted National Socialism as "rationality run amok" or something. I don't find that view persuasive.

It's hard. My first post in this thread was dismissive, and I feel bad about that.

I think in some ways it's mainly a difference in attitude toward logic and science. Do you see them as liberative or oppressive? There's a touching passage in Tarski's little Introduction to Logic that I'll quote in full here:

I shall be very happy if this book contributes to the wider diffusion of logical knowledge. The course of historical events has assembled in this country the most eminent representatives of contemporary logic, and has thus created here especially favorable conditions for the development of logical thought. These favorable conditions can, of course, be easily overbalanced by other and more powerful factors. It is obvious that the future of logic, as well as of all theoretical science, depends essentially upon normalizing the political and social relations of mankind, and thus upon a factor which is beyond the control of professional scholars. I have no illusions that the development of logical thought, in particular, will have a very essential effect upon the process of the normalization of human relationships; but I do believe that the wider diffusion of the knowledge of logic may contribute positively to the acceleration of this process. For, on the one hand, by making the meaning of concepts precise and uniform in its own field and by stressing the necessity of such a precision and uniformization in any other domain, logic leads to the possibility of better understanding between those who have the will to do so. And, on the other hand, by perfecting and sharpening the tools of thought, it makes men more critical--and thus makes less likely their being misled by all the pseudo-reasonings to which they are in various parts of the world incessantly exposed today.

That's Tarski writing from Harvard in 1940, having fled Poland before the German invasion.

Some of us still cling to the hope and the heritage of the Enlightenment. And for us, clarity is itself a value.

Gattaca
— Srap Tasmaner

I love this one so much. — StreetlightX

Nice to meet another fan!

This thread's a little weird because we're mostly talking about sf or fantasy, and Gattaca's the movie I always reach for as coming closest on film to what sf is on paper. (People always used to say the original Solaris, but it's been many years since I saw that & I haven't seen the remake.)

I guess it's okay for something like philosophy to show up in movies mostly as these "what is reality?" sorts of puzzles. Gotta start somewhere.

There are ethical dilemmas in lots of movies; does that make them "philosophical"? I think Peter Weir's Witness might be. I feel stuck between wondering what could possibly count as philosophy and what could possibly not!

You are clearly right that they needn't be related. (Goodman's a pretty extreme constructivist and not at all obfuscated.)

On the other hand, it seems to me that the first characteristic underwrites the second. There are things we're careful about on the more scientific/analytic side of things that don't often seem valued on the other side:

• whether a result has actually been established (to the relevant standard)
• whether we are correctly interpreting or applying said result
• whether we are accurately representing another's views
• whether the views we put forward are consistent so far as we can determine their consequences

I find almost all these, as it were, "canons of accountability" ignored in the kind of writing I think you have in mind. Thus

• scientific jargon is misused
• scientific results are misinterpreted and misapplied
• the works of others exist mainly as forests to be poached--fair representation of said author's views is not even one of the goals
• within your own work, all you need do is suggest something, as an aside, as an analogy, and then within a few pages you can rely on it as established fact (y'know, as established as anything else) and start building on it

Argumentation is almost completely replaced by rhetoric. (God I sound like such an old fogey!)

Another side-effect is the need to move fast. Without the expectation of actually establishing anything, there's no need to take your time. In fact, it's easier to carry your readers along and keep them from noticing the shortcuts if you move quickly.

Other thought-experiment/phildickian stuff: Donnie Darko
Chris Nolan's other movies (The Prestige, Memento)

Gattaca

(The Truman Show was also written by the writer-director of Gattaca.)
I guess Waking Life

I actually liked Youth Without Youth, but I'm not sure many did.

Stranger Than Fiction

Those are some with obviously philosophical content. I'm not quite sure what to say about the philosophical content of Magnolia, but it is an extraordinary, overwhelming masterpiece. (The Master is also interesting, also by P. T. Anderson.)

Besides Blade Runner, almost anything adapted from Phil Dick--he's kinda the gateway drug. (The Truman Show might as well be a Phil Dick adaptation. Minority Report. etc.)

Is there a discussion among other people in the methodology of philosophy? — kris22

Oh my yes!

The question of how "best" or "properly" to do philosophy is part of philosophy, and always one of the most widely discussed issues. There are different "camps," to put it broadly, but even people within the same camp disagree vehemently on methodology.

An American philosopher named Wilfrid Sellars said this:

The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.

Welcome to philosophy. We hope you enjoy your stay.

As best I understand your last post, you're claiming there's something it's always pointless or meaningless or incoherent to talk about, that our language doesn't even allow us to talk about, and then you tell me what that is we can't actually talk about.

I still don't know what the OP's purpose was in asking the question he asked, because he hasn't told us. It might be, on closer inspection, incoherent. But I think it was prima facie meaningful.

I happen to find it interesting that language can reach beyond the actual, beyond the non-actual, and even encompass the impossible. No doubt this outsize capacity leads us astray, but I like to think we could learn something about how language works if we really understood that.

The OP said that by "everything" he meant the universe. — Mongrel

Yeah, except he started by asking about "potential entities that could and could not happen, exist in our world or not exist, and are abstract, fictitious, or imaginary," so "everything."

"Everything can be talked about."
— Srap Tasmaner
Interesting. So language and the world are co-extensive? — Banno

"No triangle has four sides."

Does "everything" include potential entities that could and could not happen, exist in our world or not exist, and are abstract, fictitious, or imaginary?
Do we include "everything" in addition to material things, non-material things, spiritual things, etc.? — wax1232

First off, the question has a slightly peculiar ring to our ears. wax1232 didn't ask "What is there?" although that's how many readers took his question, not entirely without reason. (Even Quine said the answer to "What is there?" is "Everything!" but then spent decades telling us what was not included in "everything.")

So in what circumstances would you ask "What does 'everything' include?" rather than "What is there?"

"Everything" is a quantifier. As Willow pointed out, it's most often most useful to use it in a restricted sense, with some domain specified or at least implied by context. It is always so used in mathematics for instance.

Philosophy, however, is not mathematics, and we seem to retain a use for absolute (unrestricted) quantifiers. For one thing, if "what there is" is precisely what is at issue, it can be tricky to use a restricted quantifier without begging the question.

I suspect the OP was presented, or thought up on his own, one of those maddening arguments that makes use of absolute quantifiers, and wants to figure out if it really makes sense. (I'm thinking of arguments that include premises like "Everything has a cause," "Everything must come from something," that sort of thing.)

This is not foolish. The question of how to interpret absolute quantifiers is quite serious.

Is there actually any use for unrestricted quantifiers? I think I can give you at least one, probably one of the first philosophers learn: "We can talk about anything." (Or if you prefer, "Everything can be talked about.") We learn this early, because we learn to tell people that just because you can talk about something, that doesn't mean it's real. (This has considerable appeal to undergraduates and positivists.) I would say that here we have an absolute, unrestricted quantifier, that we need it to make such a statement at all, and that it works just fine. (Hence my earlier answer to the OP of "yes.")

Are they chanting "Bann-o! Bann-o! Bann-o!" in that clip? That can't be right.

Sorry, my English is bad. — wax1232

Your English is just fine, btw. (Your command of my language is certainly better than my command of whatever your native language is.)

I'm curious to know what you think of the answers you've gotten so far.

What were you thinking about that led you to ask the question?

I didn't say it would be fun for you.

this ought to be fun

Yes.

Not only not trying to build a theory, but believed building a theory was wrong-headed and doomed to failure. (We're talking about "later" here.) There's some space left for therapeutic philosophy, but it makes you wonder what his attitude toward science must be, and I don't know much about that.

To clarify: I think the answer to your original question is actually "no": LW's talk of language-games is not part of a language-game. In fact, I don't think he attached any particular importance to the really general remarks people try to cobble into a theory (language-games, forms of life, etc.). Those are just hints, analogies, pictures, all obiter dicta. The important bit -- to him -- is showing case-by-case what philosophers have ignored, overlooked, misused, perverted, misunderstood about the words they use.

The funny thing is, I can't offhand remember LW making any comments that suggest he thought of philosophizing itself as a language-game. Anybody think of one?

We get the opposite here & there-- there's the bit about how philosophers take words out of the language-game where they have their usual home, I think there's one about an engine spinning without being connected to anything, the bit about language on holiday. When he talks of philosophy and language-games in the same breath it's usually to suggest philosophers have been breaking the rules.

People do somehow come away with the impression that he says all language use is part of some language-game, but does he?

Early to late, there's that concern with being misled by the surface forms of language, and thus philosophers (who else?) can end up doing something we might as well call "misusing" language. It seems like a whole different deal from language-games. Almost a perversion of the idea of a language-game.

(I'll say this too: I think at some point he stopped being puzzled by how language works--of course it works!--and saw the real puzzle as how it could possibly go wrong. I'm not sure he really figures that out...I could be way off though.)

I'm probably forgetting something--maybe someone else can chime in.

Truth is one of the rules of some of the games. It's the main rule of "Confession", and an important rule of "Philosophy", "History", and even "Biography". It's not a rule of "Story-telling" or "Poetry". Thus one does not ask if the ring of power was really destroyed in Mt Doom, or in what way my love is like a red red rose.

My understanding is that to talk of different language games is simply to say that we do different things with words, and the rules vary according to what we are doing. — unenlightened

I don't think it should be quite this easy. Your second paragraph is obviously true, but I don't think it buys us what you say in the first paragraph. Easy to imagine a rule that says you must "tell the truth," but can there even be a rule that what you say must be true? I think you still need an account of truth, or an argument for why you don't need one, and I don't think the bare concept of "language-games" gets you there without more work.

I think the consensus of the folks I've talked to in this thread is that the concept of language games is not as distinct from propositional meaning as I had thought it was. In fact, I can't really tell the difference. The examples given in this thread to try to point to the meaning of "language games" actually involved all the conceptual apparatus involved in deriving a proposition. — Mongrel

One simplistic approach is to take the concept of language-games as the natural successor to Frege's context principle. If that sounds like the sort of thing that would interest you, then you should read the Investigations someday when you've got the time.

I do believe language is sometimes rule-based and game-like, but I just don't see that becoming a general rule. — Mongrel

We want truth to show up here somewhere, right?