This was one of the only philosophy classes I couldn’t go to while baked. That, my friends, was the manifestation of futility.
Resistance to Emma is futile.
Here she is with her life partner:
’
Semantics must be assimilated into the speech act collective.
It seems that that is what Hume was trying to do - get beyond basic assumptions. I agree with you here though.
I don’t think it is either. Unless your goal is an objective definition of a concept.
With the apple bit, I was just trying to show that resembalence was a concept, not a property.
It seems like impressions come from the sentence itself, not of the structure of the sentence. We then take our semantic and logical concepts and proccess the impression.
By UC, do you mean an omission of the obvious?
‘Sentence’ is akin to to a null set here, for me at least. I will explain why: You can’t have an impression of just a ‘sentence’, your impression is derived from what variables are put in to enable the set to exist. This is the just of semantics and logic for many philosophers, but indeed there are different ways to look at it, as you indicated.
It should be pointed out, though, that the people who look at it different ways still often employ the usage of semantics and logic, instead of dismissing them as sensory experience without further regard like you seem to be doing. They are somewhat important in a discussion like this.
So here, you are saying that you want to invert the paradigm I’ve described above, by placing all of the ‘details’ solely within the language center portion of the (meta)physical brain. This is a slippery slope, and the onice is on you to show why you’ve come to that conclusion, which we don’t see here.
No, sorry.
Gobbo- I may be misunderstanding you here, but…
To me, ‘Sentence’ is akin to structured words used to convey an idea.
When I said -
I think you got what I was saying, but to clarify, I meant that the impression can only be of the actual words (written or spoken), and not of the intended meaning.
By variables, I think you mean semantic and structural inputs. I agree that this is what the impression is derived from, because this is what a sentence consists of. I think, again, that the impression cannot be anything beyond an impression through our empirical faculties (raw sight and sound impressions for sentences).
I am not disregarding the usage of semantics and logic at all. All I am saying is that we cannot actually understand the intended meaning of a sentence without first experiencing it with our senses in its raw form. Only then, if we possess the required concepts, are we able to ‘understand’ the sentence.
Otter (I was watching about them today) - Sees a billboard that says “Drink Jack Daniels”. Is impressed with the image of the words on the billboard. The otter does not have the required concepts to understand the intended meaning. End of story.
(Side question - Do you think concepts are restricted to language users?)
Person - Sees a billboard that says “Drink Jack Daniels”. Is impressed with the image of the words on the billboard. The person has the required concepts to then understand the intended meaning. He has the concept of the verb “drink”, the concept of “Jack Daniels” and can procede to put the concepts together and understand the intended meaning. Hey, he may even go pick up a fifth.
I don’t think that this person is impressed with the concept of “Drink Jack Daniels” from observation, just like the otter is not. He must use reason to decipher the sense datum. The semantics and logical form are not contained within the sentence itself. The material sentence was constructed by a person with concepts of “Drink” and “Jack Daniels” and of a verb-noun relationship. He reasonably structured the sentence so that other people with the same concepts could understand the intended meaning through the interpretation of the sense datum.
Where else could the details be? Certainly not within the sentence, or the variables contained in the sentence. I don’t understand how this is a slippery slope. I’ve come to this conclusion because, to me, it seems like the only plausible explaination by which we can understand the intended meaning of sentences.
As far as the UC goes, I can’t think of anything else that it could be aside from omission of things that would be obvious in the instance, like time or place or something.
“It is 2 degrees!”
If my friend woke me up and told me this, I would know what he means. He means “(In this location, at this time) It is 2 degrees (Farenheit) (outside).”
Would not all the paranthetical things be unarticulated constituents? I can’t think of any examples in which there are unarticulated constituents that are not in reference to specific instance. I could determine a truth value for the statement by going outside and checking the temperature. If my friend was trying to e-mail me this information, and accidentally sent it to a rogue e-mail address, that person would be unable to determine a truth value because he has no idea of the time or location or of units of measurement implied. Maybe you can help me understand this idea a bit better? These are the only sorts of examples I can think of.
B
yeah, Imp. As I think I have stated elsewhere, I have no beef with the basic idea of deconstruction. My problem with it is that about all that can be usefully said about it will fit inside your average fortune cookie. And Russell covered all of that before Derrida was born.
Syn., Really good ideas! O.G., so glad to see you out of the gestapo of ideas at ILO! Please free Dan. 
If ideas are epigenetic expressions of human, physical experience, wasn’t Hume right on the mark?
Thanks. I manage to find the light sometimes
I’ll work on responding to this thread.
Faust, would you mind fitting it inside a fortune cookie for me? 
I don’t know what the word epigenetic means, but…
I think that ideas are more than that. Ideas, to me, are invidual interpretations of human physical experience (using individual concepts) as well as thought experience. Just because we need physical experience for ideas to exist does nor mean that all ideas can be broken down into this experience or impression. If they were, though, then I would agree that Hume would be right on the mark.
thestranger,
Epigenetics is simply the phenomenon of DNA meeting environment and producing a complementation that characterizes the existing organism. In this complementation may be found the origins of the impressions Hume says are the bases of ideas.
In the epigenetic condition innate drives and dispositions get their first taste of the world outside the organism via the senses.
thestranger - Language is subject to interpretation. Lucky Number - 14
faust- Appriciated. Doesn’t sound like too bad a fortune to me.
lerrellus- So…
Genetic disposition toward anger within the DNA. DNA experiences environment and produces anger in the organism? Would this be an epigenetic phenomenon?
I don’t think anger is a genetic disposition. It is an effect of fear, which may be an emotional interpretation of a survival necessity. Drives and dispositions come first. Emotions are secondary as prompts for action. Rational consideration of options come third. One cannot decribe what is primary as what is tertiary., e.g., rational ideas. Anger is not primary.
Approximately 35,000 years ago people in southern France and northern Spain were drawing pictures of animals on cave walls. All these years later, almost anyone can look at the drawings and recognize which animals were depicted. There is no anachronism in this recognition, no argument about anthropomorphic interpretations of what is beyond the human body or mind. Apparently, sense perception provides information that is consistent throughout millennia.
That impression preceeds idea is only putting the horse back in front of the cart after much philosophical reversal and is being scientifically substantiated as we speak.
I agree, Ierrellus - which is why I think that epistemology is a waste of time. We’re never going to get better evidence than we already have. And, in practise, epistemology is rarely about the evidence, anyway.
Even Hume, who trusted his senses as much as any man ever has, argued from a lack of evidence, and not from the evidence we do have.
I think that that is what I was trying to say, more or less. Seems like that is the only way it could be. I didn’t know that this was actually disputed. As I was writing before, I was thinking to myself, “I can’t believe people seriously argue that this isn’t the case.”
Faust,
I’m currently reading a critique of Hume’s ideas. I don’t think I’ll find anything there that adds or detracts from your opinion.
the stranger,
I think all philosophies based on Platonic/Pauline idealism do just that. Derrida does not stoop to any discussion of causes of reason.
Further–
To confine reason to language is to ignore vast areas of preverbal communication which appear to employ reason and what could be considered a consistent philosophy. Case in point–a million years ago “homo habilus” was shaping rocks for specific purposes. Even if these ancestors of ours had no language, they could communicate, by action, how a rock could be shaped to serve as a tool or weapon.
I’d like to think some form of language existed back then, perhaps a language consisting of making and interpreting emotionalized tones. My cat and most preverbal human infants I meet see in such tones my intent. What seems to characterize human intelligence as “different” from other forms of intelligence is the extent to which we can see an object as having practical (for us) properties if the object is altered in some way. One does not need language in order to see that. Even if prehistoric humans were deaf and dumb, they could observe how some animals were saved from drowning in the river by clinging to a chunk of wood; they could then fashion their own personal floatation chunk; and all the mimicking neighbors would have to have one–all without a word being said.
Some other “animals” reason and communicate in this fashion. Humans just do it better, which puts us well on our way to becoming the creators and destroyers of worlds.
Faust,
Descartes’ “mathematical certainty” does not remove doubts about what can be known in any other arenas of rational thought. It proves only that questions posed in a confined system of thought may be answered within that specific context. That’s why Foucault considers Descartes’ reasoning to be exclusionary* IMHO, Russell tried to side with Descartes, but could never persuade one that mathematical certainty has any application outside of mathematics.
- “Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of Reason”, Boyne, 1990.