Memory vs Imagination and Language games

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Hume says on his Treatise:
“We find by experience, that when any impression bas been present with the mind, it again makes its appearance there as an idea; and this it may do after two different ways: either when in its new appearance it retains a considerable degree of its first vivacity, and is somewhat intermediate betwixt an impression and an idea: or when it entirely loses that vivacity, and is a perfect idea. The faculty, by which we repeat our impressions in the first manner, is called the MEMORY, and the other the IMAGINATION. 'Tis evident at first sight, that the ideas of the memory are much more lively and strong than those of the imagination, and that the former faculty paints its objects in more distinct colours, than any which are employ’d by the latter. When we remember any past event, the idea of it flows in upon the mind in a forcible manner; whereas in the imagination the perception is faint and languid, and cannot without difficulty be preserv’d by the mind steddy and uniform for any considerable time.”

Is it not usually quite the opposite? This to me seems inevitable since:

“neither the lively nor faint ideas can make their appearance in the mind, unless their correspondent impressions have gone before to prepare the way for them, yet the imagination is not restrain’d to the same order and form with the original impressions; while the memory is in a manner ty’d down in that respect, without any power of variation.”

In that sense, the imagination becomes it’s own impression. The memory is created while our imagination is the creator. Ideas that have as origin the person’s lively imagination are more forceful that any memory. i can imagine streets made of gold, a complex idea, not seen but created, imagined, through a combination of impressions, such as gold and streets. In this form, the original impressions of streets and gold are dropped in lieu of the ideal forms used in the imagination.
This image is more forceful and perfect than any memory could be. That is because each impression, regardless of it’s potency, when obtained from nature, will be made incomplete (and even it’s collection garthers a portion rather than the whole) in recollection by memory. Instead, the imagination takes perfect ideas and creates secondary ideas that are more forcefully recalled. the original composition is mentally constructed, so when the image is refelected upon, a perfect composite will be easier to recall than an imperfect impression.
But one more thing should be said. It is not two distinct systems at work here and memory mingles with the imagination at some instances, as an impression becomes suitable for an idea.
Suppose for example that I am looking at a particular shade of blue. Hume already has allowed that these impressions are not exact equals, but that they differ in intensity and degree, not in kind. True, when I look at red, I hardly am led to think of blue. But “blue”, being admitted to be diverse in degrees, is made correspondent to our idea of “blue”, through the use of our imagination which allows for the connection of simple (though of varied degrees) impression to a simple (based on an inexact impression) idea.
Thus, no blue is exactly like another and even our original impression comes under questioning, but to save our day, the imagination gives unity to all these degrees and renders “blue” meaningful by allowing these gaps in our impression to be imagined.

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the fudging of individual unique experiences into uniformity is a logical error, nothing more… so if you mean imagining is more “powerful” because the “world” in which we participate is subject to this imagination and not reasoning, I’d certainly agree.

the “scientific” world will have a fit, but they are nothing but figments of imagination anyway…

-Imp

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Hello Imp; long time, no debate:

O- Ideas that have as origin the person’s lively imagination are more forceful that any memory.

— clairify what you mean by “more forceful”… memories of actually sensed (as far as actual can be assertained) events hold a quality of actually existing whereas the imagination is a pure mental event and not sensed…
O- More forceful= clearer in the mind of the person having the idea.
The point is not from where comes the idea, but the force of the idea. that is the clarity.
That which is not sensed and is created by the imagination is more distinct and clear than that which come from a memory when reflected upon. This is how philosophies are born.
From this perspective, it seems clear (pardon the pun) that our imagined ideas, have a greater vitality, than the ideas that we have collected from sensations.
i am not saying that these are true, or better, or revelators of a greater truth or plane of existence, but that memories are quite feeble things that often require the help of the imagination, so that the potency hiearchy Hume imagines is so clear to him because he has imagined it not because he has experience it.
Hume adds: “there are not any two impressions which are perfectly inseparable.”
This proposition precludes the possibility of any “empirical” proposition. Memory cannot help him in his investigation as each collection (impression) cannot be proven equal to another. He cannot then say, from experience that every simple impression is attended with a corresponding idea. Each time I see “blue”, for example, the impression changes in degree, in quality, while the idea remains the same. The idea is made correspondent to the variety of impressions by the imagination which completes and unites the differences of each possible impression.
Hume goes on and says: “Where-ever the imagination perceives a difference among ideas, it can easily produce a separation.”
Every division he makes about our impressions, be it simple and complex, sensation and reflection, he makes from the use of his imagination. They become distinct, clear-cut, and separated by the power of his imagination and not so much his observation which is limited in scope and accuracy, while his imagination does not suffer these limitations.

— the fudging of individual unique experiences into uniformity is a logical error, nothing more…
O- But without this “logical error”, Hume would say:“But if this impossibility of explaining ultimate principles should be esteemed a defect in the science of man, I will venture to affirm, that 'tie a defect common to it with all the sciences, and all the arts, in which we can employ ourselves, whether they be such as are cultivated in the schools of the philosophers, or practised in the shops of the meanest artizans.”
So, in essensse, Hume just gave us our choice: It is a logical error, but one that comes with life itself. To live is to err…

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indeed, to live is to err…

-Imp

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I side with imagination as well.

Then again I’m a pothead…

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what intrigues me is how anyone can seperate memory and imagination in the first place.

how does one imagine without memory??

perhaps i’m not getting the gist here, maybe!!

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Hello again Imp.

— and therein lies the rub… the most vivid imagining becomes reality?
O- The most vivid imagining becomes idea, so that the contents of our ideas, at least those ideas that are clear to us, are clear because of our imagination and not from “reality” or our experience of “reality”.
The contents of these clear ideas are the fancies of the imagination.
I love the fact, as I am reading Hume’s Treatise, that as he tries to explain the association of ideas he mentions “our imagination runs”, or “the imagination must”. His Treatise is not the result of his experience. each of his principles is imagined. And now we too find that what he is studying of “Human Nature” is human imagination. He’s not a biologist, but a self-declared moral-philosopher, thus his realm is not the world as is but the world as we think it ought to be.

— this contradicts himself… for there are no two impressions that are necessarily logically connected. empirical event a at t1 is never the same as empirical event b at t2 and with each moment, new events, new measures of time, new observer…
O- Agreed, but Hume is going all along with a “I imagine people imagine…” type of investigation. He’s admitted this already in his introduction and the challenge really is: Can any philosophy be born from pure experience? Can any endeavour, that deals with the attaintment of the “good life” be free from metaphysics? And, should we intentionally shy away from all metaphysics of is there an acceptable level?
In all these questions Hume hints at a moderate doubt and a practical use of metaphysics as answers.

— nor does he want to claim that. memories are gone, never to occur again. he does not dwell in memories because for him, the present is all there is. the memory becomes that which is imagined the instant it is no longer an impression
O- He makes a distinction between memory and imagination so I do not see how both are equal to him. Memories are what remain when the sensation is gone, but he defines imagination separate from memory, as “perfect idea”. I agree with you, and thus my post, that there is not evident identity in either that yet excludes the other. For one, there is not perfect idea. what we imagine, such as the PW, carries along the memory of purple and whatever you believe is called “wombat” (for all I know, you call cats this, but you don’t even know what is a cat–all you know, possibly, is wombats). The conjunction is imagined, but the ideas used to create that idea come not purely from within our imagination but from some imperfect impression. same with memory. My memories of yesterday are imagined expansions of my imagined self. The wives club might attest that their men often suffer from selective hearing. we could say that it is selective memory. But what the memory includes or edits in large part is assisted by the imagination.
But you are right on the button. when I recollect a detail, like the clarity of the sky, something I must have experience but which leaft me no forceful impression, i rely (unconsciously, it would seem) on my imagination, which creates for me that gap in my imperfect collection of sensations. And then, the mood in which I find myself today, will change the quality, again, of the memory. A memory that once brought one joy, in another mood brings pain. So tied are our memories to our passion and fancy, to our imaging, that they bend and change and are created again and again.
what then is the difference between memory and imagination? Seems to me that the difference, proposed by Hume, has more sense, more clarity in his imagination than in experience.

Each time I see “blue”, for example, the impression changes in degree, in quality, while the idea remains the same.

— and here we disagree. your idea of blue is now “old idea of blue” + “new instance of blue”… meaning always changes ala derrida
O- Let the games begin.
This “old idea + new instance” of blue is imagined. there is no old idea, just as there is no old self. Both the idea and the self are “eternalize” by our language. Blue needs no update. Blue is either blue or not blue. If for example I was looking at something that was blue and because of the sun, it’s hue changed until it was better defined as green, I would not unite the old idea of blue with this new instance, but the new instance is correspondent, or made correspondent by the imagination, to a hue of green and not of blue, because, in fact, the “old” idea of blue precludes of from recognizing it any longer as such.
“The more things change, the more they are the same…”

— essentially yes. but not of possible impressions, of experienced impressions only. you can not know or feel the pain of childbirth until you have a baby. descriptions are never good enough.
O- This is not about knowing but about imagining. Besides, as most women have told me, not all childbirths are the same and neither are the pains the cause, so that even between women a true sympathy does not exist. Certainly they can talk as if, but this talk is not empirical but metaphysical.

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meaning is metaphysical yes…

-Imp

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Let’s not forget that for Derrida there is no present (or presence) that can be put into language, the present is always already deconstructed. Just thought that I’d drop that into the mix - of course Hume is concerned with (as noted) whether pure experience offers us anything (philosophically) whereas Derrida is like Wittgenstein, concerned with philosophical problems as problems of the limits of language. Vive le playground!

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Hello again (and again and again…) Imp.

— not a moral philosopher, he had a distain for morals… he was an empiricist making judgments on that which was beyond his empirical experience (the structure of the mind)
O- Maybe in other parts of his life this was clearly the case, but in the Treatise, which is the one i am now reading, he says:“The examination of our sensations belongs more to anatomists and natural philosophers than to moral; and therefore shall not at present be enter’d upon.”
Ernest Mossner, the editor of the Penguin edition which I am reading, believes that Hume was reacting to Newton’s challenge-- “If natural philosophy in all it’s parts by pursuing the inductive method, shall at lenght be perfected, the bounds of moral philosophy will also be enlarged.”-- much like Kant himself was to react to Hume later.
Perhaps Hume’s interest was to discredit and show the foolishness of this pursuit, but then why Book 3?
Imp, here you are looking at a work on ethics.

— more sense? but that is precicely the problem. imagination never was sensed, memory was sensed. and clairity remains elusive…
O- objective clarity remains elusive, not the subjective one…

This “old idea + new instance” of blue is imagined. there is no old idea, just as there is no old self. Both the idea and the self are “eternalize” by our language.

— but not for hume. while it may be true that the “old” no longer exists persay, it is still referenced through a habitual nature. language is distinct from habit.
O- How is that? Seems to me that language is about habit and repetition more than anything else. Suppose we change your nickname, or how we refer to using language; will you immediately respond to your new nickname? Or will it be instilled in your self by the habit others using it and the expectation that creates in you to hear it?

Blue needs no update. Blue is either blue or not blue.

— right, but blue can now be (and is) more than what blue was becasue of the new instance
O- Blue is more blue? Blue is a quality, Imp, not a quantity. Blue is operational with the original impression given. If a child is taught that (what to the rest of us passes) “red” objects are to be called “blue”, it will not matter that the child experiences blue all around him after that. Further experience does not update that idea first taught.
This is even more evident in those colors that are at the rim of another. Pink looks awfully like Fuschia. My wife can tell the difference while i cannot until she tells me of it. What she updates is my language, not my impression.

O- This is not about knowing but about imagining.

— but your imagination of childbirth is not as good as your mother’s experienced memory of giving birth to you…
O- How do you know? You can imagine what you have just said but you cannot know unless you are Cleo. perhaps she felt no pain, in which case, we would imagine her childbirth just fine. But we agree, that in this make believe world, if I wanted to investigate child birth pain, I would not ask the father’s but the mother’s. That said, we are left at the mercy of their memory, feelings, sensitivity, vocabulary and imagination…

— and this is also why blue is old blue+new blue… no two experiences of it are the same…
O- But it is the original blue that certifies or invalidates the new impression. the new impression is either blue/not blue by how we remember that old blue. “Original”, of course, is chimera, for it is gone through the years. There is an idea that has taken the place of the original, that remains clear and by which the new blue is judged as blue or not. Objectively, the new blue can be more like blue than the original impression or the idea that developed from that, but subjectively, I might judge it as purple. Again, the idea rules over the impression, as once the impression had ruled over the idea.

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Hello Tom

— Hume is concerned with (as noted) whether pure experience offers us anything (philosophically) whereas Derrida is like Wittgenstein, concerned with philosophical problems as problems of the limits of language. Vive le playground!
O- I don’t know if a clear distinction exist between the one and the other, between what can be said and what could be possibly experienced.

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nothing exists without its opposite…

-Imp

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Imp: yep
O- yipes!

O- Maybe in other parts of his life this was clearly the case, but in the Treatise, which is the one i am now reading, he says:“The examination of our sensations belongs more to anatomists and natural philosophers than to moral; and therefore shall not at present be enter’d upon.”

— and shall not be enter’d upon
O- Because this belongs “more to” the realm of biologists and natural philosophers “than to moral” (philosophers), i.e. Hume, therefore Hume follows his own advice and stays clear of the realm of Newton.

— yes, but hume holds much like kant in the prolegomena that metaphysics has no foundation in anything and is pure speculation and worthless…
O- On the contrary. He is, for one, not a metaphysical sceptic. He is a critic of such pyrrhic scepticism and a defender of metaphysics, in the sense that he considers no inquiry independent of a bit of “metaphysics”. in his introduction he remarks:"From hence in my opinion arises that common prejudice against metaphysical reasonings of all kinds, even amongst those, who profess themselves scholars, and have a just value for every other part of literature. By metaphysical reasonings, they do not understand those on any particular branch of science, but every kind of argument, which is any way abstruse, and requires some attention to be comprehended. We have so often lost our labour in such researches, that we commonly reject them without hesitation, and resolve, if we must for ever be a prey to errors and delusions, that they shall at least be natural and entertaining. And indeed nothing but the most determined scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. (itallics of course are mine…

— language is arbitrary.
O- Not really. It has many, many rules that dominate it’s use, so that when I communicate, the message might be arbitrary, but the delivery of the message is not.

---- but that is exactly what the meaning of blue is… a quantity of meanings added to new meaning in constant flux…
O- I understand you now and you are right in this.

— and that is why language itself is arbitrary. the experience and the name for it are seperate.
O- But Imp, while i agree with you that languages are subject to the whims of culture, I would not agree with the thought that language is entirely arbitrary. Meanings change…over time. They are filled with temporary meanings, not fixed, but also not in constant play. “Table” last I checked, still means the same thing it meant this morning. This pseudo-permanence must be there in order that:
a) we can even be taught a language.
b) that after it is learned, we can understand the very updates it encounters.
Meaning is not just some nilly-willy chaos. Not permanent, no, but not as variant as to warrant the description of “in-flux”.

This is even more evident in those colors that are at the rim of another. Pink looks awfully like Fuschia. My wife can tell the difference while i cannot until she tells me of it. What she updates is my language, not my impression.

— exactly. your language (meaning) changes because of the new experience.
O- What new experience? I cannot tell the difference. when I see a pink sweater she sees a fuschia (same sweater)one. That does not mean that when she explains to me that it is fuschia, though it looks pink, that now i have divided my impression. I did not change the meaning of old-pink in light of the new experience of fuschia. I have simply learned another name to call something that is colored (subjectively) pink.
Now, let me just say that i can understand that my language can change with new experiences, but not without guidance and permanence of habit.
I might find a new shade of blue, in say, a car. There it is parked between lighter, more common shades which i already know as “blue”.
–Which one do you like sir?

  • The dark blue one.
    – You mean the “cobalt blue” sir?
    …
    Then I go to a different dealer, see the same color in a different car which i also like and ask the price of the cobalt blue car.
    – You mean the Ocean blue one sir?

Now, do I know the color of the car? i only know the part that was habitually used: “blue”. But unless the “cobalt” or “ocean” qualifiers become uniform in their use, they will have no meaning.

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they need no “uniformity”… all that is required is for you as the arbitrary user of language to interpret and use them as such…

-Imp

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“Salve” Imp:

O- Because this belongs “more to” the realm of biologists and natural philosophers “than to moral” (philosophers), i.e. Hume, therefore Hume follows his own advice and stays clear of the realm of Newton.

— I am not clear in undersatnding what you are trying to assert about hume. are you isolating text?
O- I have said all along that the work in mind is his Treatise. Maybe he changed his mind later, like Wittgenstein or Augustine, but the “Hume” addressed, since neither of us believes in the mono-self that is the same time after time, I take the liberty to discuss Hume in isolation. This is the “Hume of the Treatise”.

— I should have clairified that statement, metaphysically based morals are without base for metaphysics are without base. “rejected without hesitation”
O- I think that any moral system is by necessity, as any “ought” on metaphysics. At some point you must go from the evident towards what is unseen and you must complete the circle in order to answer the coming and defiant “WHY?”
I believe that Hume recognized that even his ability to present a proposition was dependent on a bit of metaphysics. As you yourself remarked: “he was an empiricist making judgments on that which was beyond his empirical experience (the structure of the mind)”
If he needs metaphysics in this area, how much more so in the arena of morals?..

— of course it is arbitrary. you choose which words to use.
O- So now I decide to call what everyone else calls “tree” a “dog”? I believe that it is evident that language is something done in company.

— you choose which text. it could have been expressed in a picture or a song or anything… that choice makes it arbitrary.
O- Not really imp. My audience determines my medium for delivering my message. Drawing? Not if my audience is blind. Song? Not if my audience is deaf. besides that only could prove that the form used to convey meaning is arbitrary. You might as well point that we don’t share a completely universal language. But that in no way proves that there is a private language.

— and that is why language itself is arbitrary. the experience and the name for it are seperate.
O- But Imp, while i agree with you that languages are subject to the whims of culture, I would not agree with the thought that language is entirely arbitrary. Meanings change…over time. They are filled with temporary meanings, not fixed, but also not in constant play. “Table” last I checked, still means the same thing it meant this morning.
watch this:

— oh no… do you know what happens now? your idea of the meaning of table just changed to include basic Imp multiplication… “table” does not mean the same thing as it meant this morning (nor the same thing as 10 minutes ago…)
O- So what is the difference in the meaning between “multiplication table” when you wrote and “now” that you read my post? You have not added anything nor taken anything to the meaning of a multiplication table. The meaning is so strong that what I learned 30 years agon you still believe in our day and hour.
You’are going to have to present yourself as insane if I am going to believe that meanings change completely in each and every 10 min…

— and even you call it pseudo permanence.
O- “Provisional”

— [/b]as I said, your language changes[/b]
O- Oh I see…

— they need no “uniformity”… all that is required is for you as the arbitrary user of language to interpret and use them as such…
O- No. With my wife, language was adquired because of her habit, that led to the repetitions necessary to make it my habit. language is a thing we do with another. With cobalt and ocean applying to an “equal” impression, I am left with no real quality other than “blue”.
If my wife called what i consider still “pink”, Fuschia continuously then I may learn another name for the color Pink, not a new color, not a new impression diverse from all other “pink impressions”. Now, if she call her fuschia, my pink, also “red” at times, then I would take my wife as being color-blind. I love her still, but either she is insane, mixing colors which to the observer seem constant, or she is optically deficient, mixing colors because her subjective impression is of an uncertain quality in opposition to the general observer (either me or our doctor).

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in dreaming the hippocampus seems to be involved in reprocessing short term (literal) memories into long term (abstract, semantically patterned) memories, hence a shift from qualities to symbols, from experience to meaning. the amygdala, which plays a key role in emotion, modulates the hippocampal mediation of this process. experiences accompanied by strong emotion, esp fear, can be stored in long term memory verbatim, like a snapshot, with very little interpretation. it is these fear induced memories that are sometimes relived ad nauseam post trauma as flashbacks. the adaptive value of this system is obvious.

recall of long term memory reactivates the neural correlates of the original experience, including emotional content. this reactivation can accompany conscious semantic indexing of declarative memories, or it can occur spontaneously, as in dreams & flashbacks. it’s striking how this biology illuminates freud’s theory of latent & manifest content.

i think yr disagreement w/ hume is based on a conception of ‘imagination’ as fantastical, which is closer to dreaming. dream content features genuine experience, if a little jumbled. if you think of imagination as conscious & guided, more in the sense of visualization, i think you get closer to hume’s idea.

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but you agreed with me again…

the language means things directly from its arbitrary use…

constant pink becoming fuschia but your understanding was the point.

-Imp

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Hola de nuevo. Ciao, come va? Tutto a posto?

“Salve” Imp:

— I have no wound, but thanks nonetheless I think…
O- And there I thought language was entirely arbitrary…Oh you meant only the delivery method, whether it is visual, sign language or a foreign language that is arbitrary…but what is the use in using a drawing if my audience is blind, or Italian when my audience knows only english…? It makes no sense, and it makes no sense to say that language, which is about communicating, is arbitrary. It is admitted that when trying to convey my thoughts, in some circumstances, I will have multiple choices for delivering these thoughts, but that is due to the virtuosity of the person with whom I am trying to communicate. My wife knows three languages, so if in mid-sentence i insert a word in a different language, I still communicate with her my thoughts. Were I to try the same with my supervisor quien sabe, quizas tambien con tigo I would lose him in translation.

— gotcha… but I think that if hume were arguing he would say, much like nietzsche, that one cannot isolate a segment of his work for exclusive understanding, but rather he must be understood as a whole - if he were alive now, he’d be in flux. but the fact is that what he wrote can no longer be revised and extended by him, it stands as an immutable entireity… so he is remembered most completely by including the whole of it… but this is seldom done, even by experts so the hair splitting ends… (that sounds funny…) we’ll chop him up better than leatherface…
O- I would reply to both that the end of the book is like the lid of a casket. It sets the boundary. They may think in terms of a lifetime, but we know that the self is in flux throughout a lifetime (and even within a single book which takes months and even years to create). If Nietzsche or Hume wanted to be considered as a whole, then they should have written only one book. Now, if they wrote more books on the subject i am at the liberty, without doing injustice to them, to address them by works, which is what I know. People often make these qualifications, such as “early” Augustine or “early” Wittgenstein.
I do know, from reading the editor’s intro, that Hume abandoned many of the views he held earlier in this work, but at this time of his life, in this work (without comment on any other works) Hume considered himself a moral philosopher. You do not write a book on morals and then cry foul when the label is applied to you.
“Moral philosopher” is the veredict!

— and that’s why he rejected morals without hesitation.
O- No. Those he critiques did. Let me quote this again, because you did not get the message earlier: "From hence in my opinion arises that common prejudice
O- does that mean that he himself alings himself with those that are prejudiced? No. A prejudice is unbecoming of a philosopher…

Hume:"…against metaphysical reasonings of all kinds, even amongst those, who profess themselves scholars, and have a just value for every other part of literature. By metaphysical reasonings, they do not understand those on any particular branch of science,
O- Those he critiques fancy that science is pure and free from this dementia called meta-physics…but Hume knows better than that and does not shy away from admitting, as a prudent man he is, some metaphysics— as long as they are ademitted up-front…

Hume:"… but every kind of argument, which is any way abstruse,
O- Like morality.

Hume:"… and requires some attention to be comprehended. We have so often lost our labour in such researches, that we commonly reject them without hesitation, and resolve, if we must for ever be a prey to errors and delusions, that they shall at least be natural and entertaining. And indeed nothing but the most determined scepticism,
O- Pyrrhorian scepticism, which he disdains.

Hume:"… along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics.
O- Only lazyness can justify such dislike for metaphysics. But you accuse Hume of just this? And you fear that it is I who does injustice to the man? Because according to you, he throws out metaphysics without hesitation!

— and at the point at which one goes from the evident to the unseen to ask the defiant why, one commits the exact same inductive error that scientists commit
O- The point Hume tries to make is that it is not just the scientist, or the moralist, but any pursuit of so-called "knowledge that does that. it is, so to speak, inevitable. Every system, as Webber showed, regardless of it’s logical symetry, rest hopelessly on an assumption, an induction, unreason… add as you like…

— when they go from the seen: this water boils at 100 degrees centigrade, to the unseen that water will boil at 100 degrees centigrade. same inductive error and same irrational leap of faith and hume was very aware of this…
O- As well as of his very own inductions and systematic dependance on metaphysics. Every proposition he makes is an induction…
My point here Imp, is not to say that Hume is right or wrong, but that he does not, and more importantly, cannot, throw out “without hesitation” metaphysics…else, he must burn every page of his work that contains a proposition.

O- So now I decide to call what everyone else calls “tree” a “dog”? I believe that it is evident that language is something done in company.

— and if you call the tree a dog often enough, those who speak with you might come to understand that what you mean when you say dog is actually a tree and the arbitrary nature of language and meaning is demonstrated.
O- No Imp. Because if it requires any effort on the part of others then it is not just by my whim, caprise, will or fiat that the language obtains meaning, but with the receptability others have in the game. You have demonstrated nothing, but induct that if I say “salve” (or dog) long enough you might come to understand, understand , the meaning of it!!! Please…
We might understand the context and imply, induct, the meaning, but that is because we share a culture in which we salute one another at the beginning of a post. I might, arbitrarly, choose to insult you instead and you say:“thank you”; How is there a communication of thoughts? a language?

O- Not really imp. My audience determines my medium for delivering my message. Drawing? Not if my audience is blind. Song? Not if my audience is deaf. besides that only could prove that the form used to convey meaning is arbitrary. You might as well point that we don’t share a completely universal language. But that in no way proves that there is a private language.

— and that’s what the objection was about. the form in which the message is delivered is arbitrary.
O- That objection has yet to be proved. I said: besides that only could prove that the form used to convey meaning is arbitrary. Not that you have me agreeing with you that this is so, because you have not answered my two hypothetical cases.

— but your idea of table is not the same as it was.
O- It still is. You used a “multiplication table”. The qualifier corresponds to a scpecific memory. when you used “multiplication table” you did not and could not refer to my idea of “table”, nor did you need to go beyond that. The qualifier “multiplication” already made the definition “present”, without the need to add formulas after that.
I admit to you that “table” has more than one possible meaning, but whichever sense is used, it is used along a context. If i am asking you to help me move the table at my home, you would hardly think that I meant a “table of contents” in a book or something similar. It is not unreasonable, you might add, but you would be suspect in your ability to understand, in my book. Why should i not think of such a person as a moron?
I admit to you also, that “table” is not a pure idea. That is, that the idea of table is NOT changed forever, because it will be forgotten and resurrected again and it will not resemble perfectly the idea we had just now. But, my point, is that each time I want to describe the object at my home, i do not need to create a new sign for it every ten minutes. The table might be a little more worn and my idea of “table” itself just barely equal to the instance before, but the changes, though admitted, are of degree, not of kind. My object at home (table) did not become a fish and my signifier did not change enough to mean testicles.
The signified and signifier retained a certain familiarity that brings them again and again together, not eternally, but at least provisionally, as long as english remains what it is. Other words can be used to describe the same object but these are synonyms and thus have a similar or equal meaning. If I use “desk”, I have not taken or added from the object.

— insane as in what? not rational? LOL… logic itself is flawed… but if you admit that you yourself change with every moment then why not admit that which is mentally generated by the you in flux changes as well?
O- Because, Imp, to me “flux” indicates a “constant” change. That seems hardly correct. Suppose that your self changes every day, or every second, completely. How could you even imagine your self or anything for that matter? Let me tell you what I believe:
The self is imperfect to begin with. We do not apprehend reality or ourselves perfectly at each second. Nor do we address our life in it’s entirety by the use of our self. But we select certain guide post to tell our tale that remain provisionally consistent.
When you go home from work, or as i do, I follow the road absent-mindly, not paying attention that the cars are different, the sky is different, that a thousand others things are different that i even recall, and not even realizing that a billion others I did not notice before have too. But I know my next left. I know enough sign posts to get me home regardless of how much else I miss in the process. My left is always there, at least has been, allowing me to say that I know my way home. Could that left change to a right? Yes. But then it will be a right. What does not happen is that the left constantly chages to a right and back to a left, so that, in this continuous flux, I could not say that I know my way home. I would have to toss up a coin and hope that God guides me.
Same, or similar with the self. It is not that you are always the same as before and will stay the same after, but that, however you choose to tell your story, your way home, you have sign posts along the way that guide your narrative. If you were born in February, then you tell it again and again. perhaps your first love was Lorna, when you told the story between 15 and 16 years of age, and then it became Maria when you were 30-35, because you updated your definition of love somewhere along the line etc. But your story is still told with some consistency. You update it and yourself, but that does not mean that you change between Lorna and Maria as first loves minute by minute. Otherwise, you don’t have a self, there is no “I” imagined and this is strange.
Note: Don’t need you to tell me that the self is a logical error. I am talking of how we live and how we imagine our selfs.

— the language means things directly from its arbitrary use…constant pink becoming fuschia but your understanding was the point.
O- damn it imp! Sometimes I feel that I waste effort with you. I did not agree with you. Two situations:
The wife and her fuschia fixation
The car dealers with their arbitrary interpretation of color
The former case has two subjects that come to cooperate (out of love i admit her understanding and allow for what I knew as pink to become “pink/fuschia”, in communication with my wife and none other. It could have been that I convinced he instead that the fuschia she thought of was better called “pink” and then she and i would have call it that. But “pink” and “fuschia” are not terms that we came up with. “Pink” is a color used in the english language, so that when I use it or try to get my wife to use it, it is not out of whim, but by the necessity of the language english as i have learned-- I learned it not in isolation but along other english speaking persons.
The second case posits a situation on which a habit is not possible as no agreement is reached. Habit is formed by repetition. If there is no repetition and the terms vary from “ocean” to “cobalt” to “electric”, I would never be able to apply a name to the color. i admit, again making consessions to your ideas and reality, that i could see the diversity as refering to synonyms, different ways to call the same color, but that is only three names. Suppose a true flux existed and there were millions (indeed an infinite number) of names used, how then could I reach any conclusion??
Language is not arbitrary because it requires efforts on my part to understand the names used. Suppose that the name was actually arbitrary, how could i then expect that my order of the ocean blue model will stick? How could I dare to order the model, if I could not be sure that the sign was equal to me the dealer placing the order, the manufactirer fulfilling the order etc? I can convey my thoughts arbitrarly and ask for either the “blue” car, or el carro azul , but if my audience knows only english, how could i expect my thought to be communicated? How can i be arbitrary, when I am trying to communicate?

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you could have simply pointed to a picture of the blue car and grunted. the dealer would have asked “the blue car?” and if you grunted approvingly and recieved the blue car for which you grunted you would have communication.

-Imp

20

how so

meaning??