obe, how confident are you that you know what you personally mean when you say or think something? Would you say that you are only 99% certain that you mean what you think that you mean when you think it?
If you define a word, such as “clapmoros”, how sure are you that the definition that you gave the word is the “right” definition? When you use that word, how certain are you that you mean what you chose the word to mean? Only 99% or 100%?
James, it’s like the difference between reference, where i assume the meaning is 100% certain, and usage which is established within context and the most probable inter-subjective or ‘objectove’ meaning. These can be reconciled within the most probable limits of expression. Referentiality seems to give assurance of meaning almost as absolute as within it’s own self referential definition, it’s a self defined identity, or close to it. The same cannot be said of the usage as the most probable meaning.
So if you think “square”, you aren’t really certain that you mean square?
For all practical purposes yes. However there is no perfect square, only the idea of it. I know that. Almost perfect, yes, and almost perfect to the requirements of the design, of whatever use it is meant to function as. It cannot be perfectly calibrated.
I wasn’t talking about what it is or would be if real. Don’t you know what your own intention was with the thought? You just mentioned a “perfect square”. Don’t you know for certain what you meant by “perfect square” when you said it?
I thought i did, but my thought about what a perfect square is not the same as my thought of what a constructed perfect square could be. The construction of the concept of the perfect square, is mainly through an internal visualization, of what a
perfect square loks like, but here i am presented with
a proble, I sumply cannot visualize a perfect square, as hard as i try.
On the other hand, i can think of the idea of the
perfect square, as a totally constructed concept,
apart from trying to visualize it, and i know what that’s supposed to mean. However if i tried to construct the real from the idea , again, there may be
a divergence from perfection of upwards to
99.9999999999----) from absolute perfection. Why quibble over .00000000000000000000001 divergence?
Here is a hypothetical James.- What if in some other
world far far in the future, (or, in the past–if time
can then travel backwards,-supposedly) some exotic travel device would be invented where the near perfect calibration requirement woud call for that
degree of accuracy, for any mishap to be avoided.
The straight line is not really straight. The horizon
looks almost perfectly straight, but it is very far from
it. There are no cosmologically absolute straight entities, therefore, straight is a limited notion of minimal curviture. herefore, there cannot be
absolutely perfect squares since a square is
constructed from straight lines which are not straight.
You May retort that absolute straight lines are
defined as the shortest connection of any two points.
But that is a virtual relation, and i can think of that too, but it begs the question of whether ‘reality’ or ‘real’ connections can be manufactured from that idea. Therefore there really are no real connections,
only arbitrarily drawn ones corresponding to the virtual ideal ones. The ideal is a construction of the mind,everything else is an approximation.
obe, you are entirely missing the point.
You consider a square, then you begin questioning the reality of that thought. I am not talking about that at all. I am merely asking if you understood your own first thought, whether that thought was valid in any sense or not. Whether a good thought or not, DID YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR OWN THOUGHT before you began questioning it?
How could you even question it if you didn’t comprehend the thought in the first place?
I see where this is coming from, but not entirely
sure where it is leading. The comprehension of a
thought, the validity of it, and sense of the thought are related to whether it is valid thought or not has to first be com-pre-handed,(constructed) from the
sensing of it’s rightness/wrongness.
That calls for a judgement, on basis of that sense.
But what sense is that? An acceptance of the sense,
of forming the con-cept, out of the different sensations into a unified object of awareness.
I become aware of the inherent possibility of forming
the square, out of the manifold idea of the square
and with it’s substantive, or material content. I unify these seemingly divergent or different things into the thought ‘square’
This union is a mix of the visualization , the
sensation, with the evolving construct of the concept.
From this point a comprehension of this new construct is held as signified, and the next step is to
validate this signification, by corresponding it with the
intent to relate it to the objects, which may be presumed to be included within that content.
So if i were to be able to simply say, yes it is a valid
thought on basis which omits the cognitive steps
necessary to validate whether my thought was either good or bad, and the judgement is made primaraly on basis Your suggestion, then a reduction occurs,
not unlike the one with which Descartes was
struggling with, -i think, therefore-. The therefore, here is a presumptive judgement on the validity of the relationship, it is a pre-emptive assumtion, not
necessarily validating the logical nexus between the
form and the content of the thought.
I cannot simply argue for a pro-forma validation,
apart from the intended content of it.
Post modern philosophy points this out by
differentiating this type of logic from the one
Descartes used. The original intent of thought, in particular, or even gnerally has lost many of the needed structural sequential steps along the way, by
substituting the broken fragments of the model as
basis for filling the gaps. The best neo-idealism in the world is only a synthetic re-construction of the intent for any conceptual assemblage.
I may be missing the boat here, James, nevertheless, when
trying to validate a thought, it’s simply not a propositional declaration of the principle of identity,
'i think=i think, because then the Descartian doubt comes in, -yes, but who is doing the thinking, maybe
an evil genius, intent to deceive me. Who is the one
thinking?
Pro forma, anyone excluding, or including ‘I’ can be doing the thinking, since way back then, logic included everyone in general contexts. So in essence, if i were to judge my own thought, it may be others who are doing the judging, of, whether my thoughts can be validated by the ‘I’ or me. This is why i find Your suggestion, James, regressive.
Forgive me, again, if the the intent of Your suggestion was again misconstrued.
No. You can’t do that until you know the meaning of the thought. How can you assess something if you don’t know what it is?
In particular to the idea at hand, a ‘square’ has no intrinsic meaning, and i am sorry we used that example to fuether an otherwise valid progression of thoughts on Your part. What does square mean? Ostensibly, it really is meaningless, it is simply an assemblage of four hypothetically straight lines. If we were to hold that a square is beyond the pro forma, than the literal use of the square as containing space within it, would loose sense. A square’s content is nothing but the space within the frame, the literal frame of reference. This is a presumptive supposition, before meaning.
If language and meaning rest on a mathematical model, which it’s self is based on the logical form of it,then the regress comes into play. A regress, incidentally works, andis useful, before it’s usefullness expired.
You still aren’t getting it. 
When YOU think “square”, even if it is totally meaningless to everyone else, YOU still know what you meant when you thought it. And that goes for anything else you think.
Of course You may think You may know what a square means, but the point is, it doesen’t mean anything itis a pure re-presentation.
The thought has validity, it is a thought. The other side of this sequence of thinking, is, there are no possible thought, which are not about thought of some thing. Again it is a thought about thought. It is similar to Gertruede Stein’s comment - a rose is a rose is a rose. a square is a square, a thought is a thought. In this sense, anything thought, has intrinsic meaning. My point is that validation is not about thought in it’s self, but ‘thought about’ as a construct modeled beyond it’s self, as a universal desription.
Positivism is a very powerfuland sensible way to desribe thought, but it falls between it’s self, and
sensibility. This is why the regress could be very successfully defended against.
James: on this subtlety goes down whole schools of thought, vis, Yousaid ‘I know what i thought, when thinking of the square’ however here You are inferring an ironclad cuase, in fact the right phrase would be, :‘I may have known what i thought…’
The contingency knocks the necessity of intended use right out of the water, and this is not arguable.
I amy never know the meaning of square, who is capable to assert, i even wanted to have the square thought come into my mind in some bizarre fashion.
Now you don’t have to be irrational to assert this, but i would settle for Your argument on a contingent basis, but never as a necessary truism. Just because a thought happens to entertain a mind, is no proof to validate something.
Another take, one guy asks another parapsychlogist, 'what am i thinking of, the other guy retorts, ‘nothing’. ‘I knew it’ , his friend spits out. After a few moments, momentarily taken aback he goes ‘Well then why did You ask it.’?
Geezzz… you just can’t stop jumping ahead, can you.
If a thought enters your mind, was it in your mind? Yes or no?
If you see a color and call it “red”, was it the color that you called “red”? Yes or no?
If you define a word to mean something to you, is that what you defined it to mean to you? Yes or no?
James, You remind my advisor befpre beong dropped out of law, the excuse, well son, You are just spending too many hours working against school guidelines. No amount of begging, explaining i just gotmarried and kids coming wil defer his determned attitude. Yes or no? Sure, things could be in mind mind, the color red, unreasonable thoughts, but that does not mean i am thinking about them, and even if i am, that i want to undrstand them even if could. It does have to do with intent, intent to make sense out of thoughts which may or may not mean anything.
Validation, after presuming i make sense not only of disputable data of sense, may offer me an opportnity to evaluate the content, the frame of reference, within which, i may find pros and cons into believeing that whatever i am presently thinking of, corresponds to my intent toward some object(ive) with which i may have been pre-occupied with. Other than that, content , just because it’s framed with some sort of reference or relevance, iwould not define as meaningful. It may just be, that i am under the influence of some drugs, and there may not exist a diffrential interpretation, between visual and and aditory signals, for me to organize into sme coherent and meanigful content. It would be too much of a presumption for me, under those circumstances, to try to understand my own conception of what these means, not to mention the demand of others’s like understanding.
I beg You not to misunderstand where i am coming from, or trying, at any rate, i will still settle for contingency, without either of us to throw in the towel.
FINALLY, I AM BY NO MEANS A SORE LOOSER, AND CAN TAKE A DEFEAT WITH RELATIVE GRACE. (Without taking it personally, and extending such an event into the all too common phrase, “It is the system”)
I apologise, but i need to take my computer to have it fixed, i can no longer edit errors, not wanting You To getthe impression that i may be sloppy, or uncaring of appearances.
Obe, I am not concerned with anyone winning or losing anything. I am trying to establish a very first beginning step to a process, and you keep wanting to rush out into the middle. It is like I say,
“Are you certain that you are in your car?”
And then you respond with;
“But my car might not be in good shape. Perhaps its low on gas or oil. Maybe a relay got stuck or the battery is dead. Perhaps there is intermittent wiring. Perhaps I left a window open and the rain got in. Perhaps a light was burned out and I didn’t notice … yadah yadah yadah …”
A thought cannot be in a mind without at least that part of the mind knowing it, because a thought “being in the mind” and “knowing of it” are the same thing (in this case). It might be a really screwed up, highly conflated thought, and in your case, I am getting the impression that would be a high probability, but the thought is either there or it isn’t. If the thought is in the mind, with absolute certainty the mind (that portion of it) knows the thought, no matter how messed up the thought might be, else the thought isn’t really in the mind.
You can’t start evaluating a thought until you first acknowledge its existence as a thought and then recognize exactly what it is that you are trying to evaluate concerning it. If you are not certain what the thought was, you certainly can’t have any calculation concerning the probability of it being a good or bad thought.
Whether it be in the mind, or thought as known, or unknown, is a differentiation of ideas brought into play, that i myself pointed out, You simply dismissed it as an either or situation, if it was in the mind, it must be known. This may be in certain conflated situations, whch either You or i may have made, but usually the person who makes the distinctions, is the one that tries to get away from the analytic of logical binary type thinking.
And this is where the consfusin arises: In most limited situations, where the usage is based on very normative, accepted usage, there is no difference of interpretation: what you think is what what You know.
I am not talking about knowing as in “understanding” or “knowing to be true”. I am talking about the existence of a thought in a mind AS knowledge of THAT thought.
And now I have to ask, do you believe that “A is A”?
However, where limits are pushed beyond the limits imposed by conventiom, there may be difference between what is in one’s mind, and what has one got to know of it, besides the word it’s self, which may be meaningless, as far as that goes. That is not an idea, for an idea is a working construct within the mind, one of which cogniscance can be held to be an effective way of expressing it. Here in this case, and You Yourself admitted there are ‘special cases’ there is no correspondence beteen the concept as an idea and the pre conceptual sensation of it. So the word may be apprehended singularly, or the object ofreference pointed to, by someone other who signals to the correspondence, but it is an extrinsic knowledge useless, fo the person who entertains it. Useless knowledge s exactly what it is, and having no real grasp on it, awareness of it on that level, cannot be equivicated to kowledge of it, it’s meaning, or what it is.
Therfore in special situations You are right, and i agree with You with that special situation, but it is the general logical formulation which defines the basis of specific use. As it is, the contention of a logical basis fails on the very level of conflation, the reverse of which is the differentiation, it’s exact opposite. I think we are both right and wrong at the same time, but our starting point is on Your part modeled on constructing general from specific usage, whereas mine seeks to deconstruct general usage into specifics. (In cases where knowlege of ideas looks and sounds unlimited, but it isn’t because the meaning of the concept is in question. In that sense, it is vacuous, and is an unknown content.