Part of the problem is people’s hesitancy to exercise interpretive license - the meaning of a statement should never be judged solely on the words used to express that statement - the meaning of all statements is contextual, if not necessarily subjective. We need to learn to read beyond symbols in order to really communicate effectively.
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very true. people shouldn’t flip out over definitions when they should be clearing up the miscommunication.
I have no access to your experiences, but I have full access to my own, and this is enough for me to posit that my own experiences indeed exist and that they are meaningful to me.
This is a useless point. The point I was making has nothing to do with the utility of positing the meanings of words apprehend by different people in making verifiable predictions. Absolutely, the warm smile I get from my wife when I say “I love you” can’t be used to verify whether or not she got my meaning accurately, but so what? This actually proves my point.
It is nowhere near the same thing. But even if it were - again - so what? We don’t know - with absolute certainty - whether other people have minds or not. For all I know, I’m talking to a zombie right now, or maybe I’m dreaming, or maybe all of ILP is a big internet program and I’m the only human member. It doesn’t follow from this, however, that I must believe in such absurdities, so it doesn’t follow that I’m a solopsist - an other-minds agnostic, perhaps, but not a solopsist. In actual fact, I do believe in other people’s minds, but this, I admit, is partly based on faith. In any case, it has virtually nothing to do with the point I originally intended to make about the meaning of words and effective communication.
“Semantics is the weakest way to win an argument.” - my professsor
I believe this through and through. He described the idea of philosophy giving exact meanings to thing as a fruitless pursuit BECAUSE of the subjective nature of language. When u attempt to establish a solidified definition of a word you are forced to create a whole doctrine around defining a word. Then one can simply reject your whole doctrine and thus negating your purposeful doctrine. The best example is that of Plato. Plato did not simply say “Justice is…” rather he created The Republic to flesh out examples of what he percieved justice to be.
Xun, I would have thought u were all about subjectivity of words. Prajna comes to mind; where we shine the light searching the shadow runs away. Those analytic guys must be getting to you.
Perhaps if we did establish a superficial agreeance over a word maybe we can get others to accept/comprehend our statements. But, that is only at a superficial level.
A closely and honestly examined reality obfuscates itself. Furthermore, thought is a largely anarchic realm - that’s what enables progress and clarity. You have to accept the dangers as par for the course (plus, they make it exciting).
However, if you want certainty, you’ll need to stop thinking altogether.
what would it mean if i were to muse that the question of ‘what is love?’ was not valid because there was no one answer. is a question still a question if it doesn’t have an answer? is this appropriate?
You’ll note that you still haven’t listed what those implications would entail. Let’s say you are right for a second: what does that mean? Is it any different from me being right? If not, why add the extra step?
Precisely, you have no way of knowing. You are positing an unknown and then asserting that it is unknowable. Terribly circular logic, and it doesn’t build to anything either. I get that deductive arguments are constructed from tautologies (a problem with deductive reasoning) but after they’ve created said tautologies, they go on and use them.
Again, you are positing an unknowable. And this unknowable doesn’t have any effect on anything. So I’m not sure what you are going on about.
You’ll have to justify why they are nowhere near the same thing, they seem pretty identical to me. Your agnosticism about other minds would seem to confirm that they are indeed the same thing, since you are agnostic about communication seems parallel to your agnosticism about other minds. For a different take on the same problem, check out the Brain-in-a-vat argument
Satori,
You kidding? Rectification of names is one of the cornerstones of Confucian thought. Plus Mencius’ reasoning that all men are similar, and before you go off on the Mencian anti-language view, I’d comment that it is rooted in human similarity.
You’re arguing that the words we use can’t have any difference in meaning - otherwise communication breaks down. My examples, or rather the logic of my examples, shows how this is not necessarily the case. The example of ‘love’ isn’t even an extreme/absurd example. You don’t even have to posit a realm of pure mind/meaning/qualia. To me, ‘love’ might signify a pattern of behavior (buying roses, kissing and hugging, saying ‘I love you’) whereas to my spouse ‘love’ might signify a neuro-chemical state of the brain. It doesn’t mean that if I say ‘I love you’, my attempt to communicate my feelings will have been in vain.
No. I never claimed to know anything. I’m only demonstrating, through hypothetical scernarios, certain possibilities (namely, that two people might having different understandings of the same word yet without compromising communication). We’ll never know for certain, and this is a hurdle that blocks even your claim (namely, that we all understand words the same way).
See my point above.
I can doubt that ‘love’ means the same to you as it does to me without doubting you have a mind. In fact, I have to believe you have a mind in order to believe ‘love’ means something different to you.
They are both subject to doubt for the same reasons, but this doesn’t make them the same philosophy.
To take that into account you are going on the bases that it IS rooted in human similarity. I don’t. Societal similarity at times sure. But human no. The tired argument of the Inuits having 9 words for snow certainly doesn’t account for our 2 or 3 uses of the word. That society deemed the relative importance of snow while others do not.
One could easily argue that since societies differ greatly, then the people that encompass the society are not similar. This “manness” is something that discredits our Being IMO.
By and by I always saw Confucian beliefs as a strong socio-political power but not so great on life experience. But, I will have to read more into it I suppose to really move my view.
I have heard of the BIV argument before, it brings up many great points. I feel that logic is a useful tool, in fact a greatly designed tool. But, it demotes the human experience. If the world was really attuned to a system of logic things would be far too neat and easy. In my current readings regarding phenomenology, I have ascertained (for myself at least) that chasing this realm of logic gives us nothing beyond a pipe dream. A fairy tale to comfort and compartmentalize the maelstrom of Being.
A bit of a tangent but I do like the BIV argument. Very similar to Buddhist thought.
Kris, we would dissect an amoeba but maybe I would have to discover said “amoebae” first? But, seriously amoebas are interesting, there is one in the NW found in a lake that eats peoples brains!~
Adastra, surely the question is relevant. We can assuredly discuss the content of love we may even come to an agreement upon it, but what does not have an Absolute answer is something always up for debate.
Do check out the Brain-in-a-vat argument. A lot of what you are writing is addressed there. I feel, anyway. Read it and tell me what you think.
Satori,
People share around 99% of their genetic material with each other. There simply isn’t that much room for variety at the end of the day. Likewise, human experience is incredibly similar across the board. We can read “The Tale of Genji”, “The Odyssey”, “Gilgamesh”, and so on and empathize with the characters in those stories because we are all so similar. Mencius gave the example that even if a sandal maker doesn’t know the size of his patron’s feet, he won’t make the sandal shaped like a basket!
It may just be “different strokes for different folks”. The lines between Confucianism, Daoism, and (Chinese) Buddhism have really become more about emphasis as opposed to actuality.
I can agree with a lot of what you are saying. Though might I offer one small nitpick? When you say we are chasing the realm of logic that suggests to me that logic exists outside of humanity, that it is somewhere out there and we just can’t reach it. I’m not sure that is the case. I think logic is something that people made. It is an excellent tool for figuring out the truth, but to use a Buddhist metaphor, I think a lot of people think the finger is the moon.
The characters are similar in their plights, and their actions but if we examine them closely we can see glaring societal differences and intentions. It has been a long time since I read any of those so I will go with Genji and Odyssey. The Greek characters are fearful before their god’s and have ramifications of their actions forcing their situation. While Genji does everything of his own accord. He sees the world as his not as that of the God’s and reaps his own downtrodden love affairs. Japanese society created it’s gods around their society, while Grecian society was created around their god’s (at least around the time this was written). So, why is this? Both have similiar land limitations, both are living near sea (one can even discuss the vast differences of societies living near bodies of water and those not), yet the one story is Pantheistic driven while the other humanistic. One (Genji) experiences that which he created while Oddysseus is laid privy to the Gods.
The example is good for Mencius, but is it not important to know if the patron will be running alot, standing alot, club-footed, walking over rocks, climbing trees, or simply just wearing them for decoration? Certainly we are all shaped alike but our Beings vary greatly.
I agree with you; but that is no excuse for my ignorance
How dare you nitpick! I see where my statement is misleading. What I meant to say is that Humans use logic to rationalize the world which cannot be rationalized. Much of humanity strives to systematize experience but usually to no avail. I am currently in school for Philosophy and this Analytic logic driven work is driving me mad. So, I guess I am just lashing out.
Well phenomena can be true in different ways. The one you’re talking about is the correspondence of the object with the concept, like when we say “That is a red delicious apple” - we have a generic concept of what a red delicious apple is, and the object to which we are referring conforms to that concept, which makes it a true statement. This, as you point out, is an objective truth in the sense that the object meets all the (broadly agreed upon) conceptual requirements of red deliciousness (including perhaps the fact that it tastes like cardboard ), and it’s also a subjective truth in the sense that it’s descriptive of the speaker’s experience - s/he sees an object and has decided that the best way to connote it is as a “red-delicious apple”. Someone else, however, might look at the object and say, “That’s just the paperweight i’ve been looking for!” - and if it meets all their conceptual criteria for paperweight-ness, then that statement is also true objectively. Yet the OP refers to the “subjectivity of language”, and the choice of which language to use in describing the object (“paperweight” or “apple”?) is a subjective one, because the conceptual activity of the speaker determines the appropriateness of their expression of the experience. No the object itself does not change, but the language we use to indicate it can still mean objectively different things while remaining both objectively true and subjectively relative in simultaneity.
In that sense, i think the subjtvy/objtvy dichotomy really ceases to be useful. It’s really the contextuality that’s most significant in determining meaning and truth.
The thing is, I’m not convinced that such differences are really significant. Look at the stories you listed. Are these the same kind of story? Are they trying to communicate the same message? I’d argue that they do not. For example, in treating them as equivalent you’ve come to the conclusion that the Japanese were relatively secular/humanistic whereas the Greeks were less secular/humanistic. Given that humanism had its origins in Greece, that is a rather tall order! Likewise, a quick look at the history of Japan would strongly suggest that Japan has been anything but secular. Heavily Buddhist, with various sects and tension between the sects, coupled with Shinto and other traditions. If you compared something like The Odyssey and Jimmu Tenno, I think you’d find that those similar stories begin to have many more similar elements. Though the Aeneid is probably the better comparison there . . . but you get my point (get it?).
As for the feet, sure there exists variation amongst feet. But they are by degree and not kind. I can also compose a wide variety of sentences and, in a language with as rich a history as English, even use a variety of synonyms. I don’t see how the existence of variety argues against what I’ve been saying.
Solve two birds with one stone:
UPF,
Now you are getting into the observable/unobservable distinction and how it applies to language. I’d say Van Norden’s objections to the lexical fallacy illustrate the flaw of making such a clear distinction. You can say people bring value into the discussion, but does the value associated with a “tennis ball” make it distinct from the yellow fuzzy ball the caveman sees?
I think to some the ability to empathize with them depends on a societal and individualistic aspect. As Genji, I would not understand how one can go through so many women. As Odysseus I would not be able to take and think through the ideas. Perhaps they are glaring differences between what each society deemed “great” at the time.
In ways they are the same story, in others they are not. My point was the experience was varied by the writer’s society and individuality. Showing man’s difference.
Originated in Greece but it’s literature was scarcely humanistic with the gods playing large roles.
Religions like Shinto and Buddhism were never quite strong outside of the Ruling members (in effect of life; Shinto being the purpose behind the Emperor0). Often it was more might makes right. The fearfully superstitious in Japan were the only ones who obeyed the religions tenets (outside of Monks)
I was certainly not denying the lines along the stories or the quests the heroes encounter but rather the experience behind it all. The societal and personal differences are the key.
You all would dissect an amoebae just to call it an amoebae. ](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/uploads/default/original/2X/7/7c349bf1053f368a5729d053e1e91215f22ce66c.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
But, seriously amoebas are interesting, there is one in the NW found in a lake that eats peoples brains!~
), and it’s also a subjective truth in the sense that it’s descriptive of the speaker’s experience - s/he sees an object and has decided that the best way to connote it is as a “red-delicious apple”. Someone else, however, might look at the object and say, “That’s just the paperweight i’ve been looking for!” - and if it meets all their conceptual criteria for paperweight-ness, then that statement is also true objectively. Yet the OP refers to the “subjectivity of language”, and the choice of which