Of course, with you, one can never be entirely certain how much is tongue in cheek and how much isn’t.
But, in regard to any particular cat behaving in any particular way, we can always at least make the attempt to note where the objective epistemological truth ends and the subjective ethical opinion begins.
Still, even this part…
“Is the word ‘cat’ meaningful because of what it refers to – namely, those furry, meowing fleabags many of us have as pets?”
…is problematic because some pet cats are anything but furry. Sphynx cats for example. And to be a pet cat is not necessarily to have fleas.
But what of those who eats cats? Small, furry ones. Take that to PETA and see how fast they turn it into an ethical question.
Rules, Language & Reality
George Wrisley considers how some of Wittgenstein’s later ideas on language relate to reality.
That’s not the “normative” that matters most to me, of course.
That would be this one:
“…establishing, relating to, or deriving from a standard or norm, especially of behavior.”
And, in particular, when the focus is narrowed all the more:
“Normative ethics is the study of ethical behaviour, and is the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates the questions that arise regarding how one ought to act, in a moral sense.”
What of “linguistic meaning” there? Not “the window was dog”, but “John threw the dog through the window for his own amusement”.
In regard to the normative relationship between “rules, language and reality”, what can be or cannot not construed as either reasonable or ethical in regard to the treatment of other animals by human beings?
My own speculation here is that some will steer clear of Wittgenstein’s “later writings” because it is much easier to examine his earlier writings up in the academic clouds that swirl around technical philosophy. Words defining and defending other words such that the actual use of those words with respect to human social, political and economic interactions can be put off [indefinitely] until these technical issues are resolved once and for all.
Apparently no one is allowed to use a word – to decide “what we do with it, when and where we say what we say” using it – until it can be entirely pinned down logically and epistemologically how one must define it before using it.
Rules, Language & Reality
George Wrisley considers how some of Wittgenstein’s later ideas on language relate to reality.
On the other hand the analogy breaks down in that the king as a piece on the chess board really is constrained by rules of the game which are applicable to everyone. You can’t just decide that the king can be moved like the knight or the bishop or the rook. Whereas if we were discussing a king on the throne of one or another nation, there are still the facts we can garner about him in which all agree. Here, in the either/or world, the rules of language are in turn applicable to all. But, again, once the discussion shifts to our reaction to a monarchy itself, we can all use the same language but come to very different interpretations of how we should react to conflicting political assessments of monarchism.
But that’s not where the author goes. He sticks with chess.
But: how are the rules of grammar the same or different in either the either/or or the is/ought world? When in one world or the other can following the rules lead either to consensus or conflict? When and where and why does communication seem to break down time and again more in the latter? Sure, if the assessment here revolves solely around the language we use in describing or discussing a chess match, grammar can be wholly in sync with a game played strictly be the rules of chess. But once the discussion shifts to a context in which it’s about kings and noblemen and peasants and serfs?
Where here are the words chosen to describe and discuss feudalism such that all can agree on whether words like, say, freedom and justice and honesty and integrity and good and bad and true and false are in sync with the political lay of the land back then. What of grammar then? When does someone “misspeak” when the discussion shifts to evaluating feudalism as a good or a bad social, political and economic system?
Rules, Language & Reality
George Wrisley considers how some of Wittgenstein’s later ideas on language relate to reality.
Still, the closer we are to the either/or world, the closer the words we use are to that which is able to be demonstrated as in fact true for all of us. To ask whether 4 meters is heavy will make more sense if we are talking about a particular substance we are unfamiliar with and someone asks us to carry 4 meters of it from here to there. Whereas in differentiating believing from thinking things can become more problematic. We use thinking to form beliefs. And we believe many things without “in the moment” thinking about them. But again what becomes crucial is the thinking that we do use in coming to believe something. Why? Because someone else might employ thinking in regard to the same set of circumstances but believe something different. In particular when that something shifts from the either/or to the is ought world.
Ever and always however we need to know if a grammatically correct language also relates to us information that is in fact true. If asked where Jane is, one can note that “Jane go get an abortion”. This is not grammatically correct. Instead, “Jane has gone to get an abortion”. But suppose someone is asked where Jim is and they say “Jim has gone to get an abortion”. Grammatically correct but biologically impossible. If, in fact, Jim is a male of the species. And then when the discussion shifts to the morality of abortion is it possible even using grammatically correct language to encompass what is true here?
Rules, Language & Reality
George Wrisley considers how some of Wittgenstein’s later ideas on language relate to reality.
And how could it not make sense but to make a clear distinction between a situation in which language descriptions revolve around accurate or inaccurate depictions of the behaviors that we chose and accurate or inaccurate assessments of our reactions to those behaviors that revolve instead around moral judgments? Words, phrases, gestures and facial expressions are either in sync with what can in fact be demonstrated to be true for all rational men and women or they can’t. The communication here might be at odds but the facts do exist to at least allow for an accurate assessment in the end.
Okay, so how much more “open-ended” is someone here willing to be in exploring the shift from the rules of grammar to language games when the discussion shifts in turn to a set of circumstances in which both can be explored. But explored only after yanking the words down out of the clouds of intellectual contraptions like the one above.
That’s my point as well. It’s not so much what language can tell us about human interactions in a world teeming with conflicting goods, but what, apparently, it cannot tell us. Here the games we play with words actually used out in particular worlds, however correct the grammar might me, resolve nothing. Other than by way of a consensus reached regarding what the words themselves are said to mean. At least not without that elusive “transcending font” that mere mortals can go to on one or another rendition of Judgment Day.
Rules, Language & Reality
George Wrisley considers how some of Wittgenstein’s later ideas on language relate to reality.
Okay, in any given society then what words are used to describe, to assess and then to judge human interactions such that we can explore more specifically what it means to believe that “language use is normatively constrained by the rules of grammar.”
Let’s focus in on the right ways and the wrong ways to use words/language such that we all agree on what is grammatically correct and then take these objective rules and examine the “rules of behavior” as this pertains to rewarding or punishing particular behaviors that are in fact encompassed in a grammatically correct manner.
Or, again, am I missing something “technical” here regarding that the author is communicating?
Then we pick one or another combination of 1] might makes right, 2] right makes might or 3] democracy and the rule of law. After encountering all of the “admonitions, requests for clarification and corrections” from others regarding what they actually mean. And there have always been an unending advance of historical and cultural permutations regarding the parameters of any particular “public”.
No matter how private any language might be the words are either in sync with accurate descriptions of the physical world around us or they’re not. It’s like the scenes from the movie Dogtooth – youtu.be/kuyFxZ5OHIM – where the parents raise their children to live in their own private world. They give them the wrong names for objects but as long as they connect the sound of the word to the actual object, they communicate as well as do those who use the right words.
As for grammar being arbitrary and language autonomous, let’s take that out into the world of actual human interactions and focus in on a specific situation.
And then the part where what Wittgenstein means by grammar meets the part that revolves around what he figured logic was.
“There are hundreds of grammar rules but the basics refer to sentence structure and parts of speech, including nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions.”[/b]
And Merriam-Webster defines it thusly:
1a: the study of the classes of words, their inflections, and their functions and relations in the sentence
b: a study of what is to be preferred and what avoided in inflection and syntax
2a: the characteristic system of inflections and syntax of a language
b: a system of rules that defines the grammatical structure of a language
3a: a grammar textbook
b: speech or writing evaluated according to its conformity to grammatical rules
appalled at the bad grammar of college students
4: the principles or rules of an art, science, or technique
a grammar of the theater
also : a set of such principles or rules
Now, for me, what we need then are words in sentences that actually state or describe something. How might someone encompass the words as either reasonable or unreasonable? And then comparing what is encompassed in “the rules of logic” with what Wittgenstein calls the “rules of grammar.”
From my frame of mind, what ultimately counts is the extent to which one is able to demonstrate that what they mean by the words is wholly in alignment with what is in fact true given what is able to be known and shown about what the words are said to state or describe. That is more important to me than if they get the tenses wrong or misplace a semicolon or choose the wrong prefix or suffix.
Yes, but, again, this is a discussion of grammar in a world of words. We invented language in order to communicate “our needs, desires, and, in some sense, the way we perceive basic facts concerning our environment and how we are situated in it”. The words placed in a particular order only need to be understood. They only need to to confirmed as rational…a demonstrable communication about the world around us and inside us. Grammar as it is understood in the dictionary above can be butchered. But if the point is understandable and indicates something that is in fact true it would seem to be considerably less “arbitrary”.
So, I am not able to understand the point that Wittgenstein is making given the point that I’d like to believe that I am making about language in either the either/or or the is/ought world.
Rules, Language & Reality
George Wrisley considers how some of Wittgenstein’s later ideas on language relate to reality.
I honestly wish someone could explain to me what he means by grammar here. And, as well, the rules of grammar. Grammar it would seem is comprised of words put in a specific order in order to convey to others some particular aspect of some particular object. There are things that the words, even if “botched” in the manner in which I understand the rules of grammar, can communicate to others such that the words convey facts about the object that all reasonable men and women would be obligated to concur regarding. Where is grammar arbitrary here? We can determine what a hammer is because we invented it…and the words used to communicate things about it that “for all practical purposes” becomes a part of the world around us that involves hammers.
Unlikely? It seems ridiculous. Unless of course one tries to imagine the “shape of the world” in a world where there is no language because there are no creatures around able to invent it. If the human species is the only language using creatures in the entire universe and tomorrow the Really Big One strikes the planet wiping out all human life what of the “shape of the world” then? But what role does Wittgenstein’s grammar play in that?
Instead, the assessment stays up in the clouds:
Is there anyone here willing to examine this as it pertains to their “social, political and economic interactions” with others given the life they live from day to day?
It seems to suggest the possibility of solipsism to me. Carving up what things in what situation given what understanding of the world? After all, if we are are just at the end of biological evolution here on planet earth then we know that creatures have existed “prior to the use of language”. Language is merely a component of the human species allowing us to interact in ways that no other creature on earth is able even to fathom. On our computers using the internet for example
Rules, Language & Reality
George Wrisley considers how some of Wittgenstein’s later ideas on language relate to reality.
Conclusion
Can you believe this? Unless of course the whole point is the suggest the futility of such an endeavor. Still, in regard to language and all that might be understood to be grammar in regard to it, the words we invented to communicate things and relationships in the either/or world seem to be a reality that the “arbitrariness of grammar” hasn’t stopped us from creating, say, personal computers, smart phone and zillion other technologies and “consumer goods” that most of us now just take for granted. Oftentimes without the least bit understanding of how or why they work.
Again, unless, in regard even to that, I am not able to grasp Wittgenstein’s point at all. And if that is the case, by all means, let someone here who does understand it explain its importance in regard to our “for all practical purposes” either/or world communication.
As for communication in the is/ought world…that’s another frame of mind altogether. With or with grammar being arbitrary.
Me too. Only I still make what I construe to be that important distinction between grammar embedded in language used to convey meaning in the either/or world and grammar used to convey meaning in the is/ought world. Same with inflection and syntax. Words are able to pin down what things are [objectively] in the either/or world because they were invented precisely in order to name what they are. As Ayn Rand would put it. But what can we name as true objectively when the words are used to convey value judgments?
But, for me, language does mirror reality objectively in regard to such words as, “John copulated sexually with Jane and Jane is now pregnant.”
How, in a Wittgensteinian sense, is this language not “mirroring reality”? And how does language mirror or not mirror reality when the words become, “Jane had an abortion, this is immoral and she deserves to be punished”.
Do Languages Exist?
And how does language work anyway? Antony Tomlinson weighs the arguments.
That’s one frame of mind. But my own frame of mind tends to focus in more on the limitations of language. What can’t language communicate? Either wholly or in part. And what happens when those who insist that the language they use does communicate everything are confronted with those who agree. But turn out to be communicating opposites conclusions. Or what of those like me who suggest that in regard to moral and political and aesthetic value judgments both sides [many sides] can communicate reasonably given opposite initial assumptions begetting opposite conclusions?
Here, of course, the political dimension becomes of the utmost importance. After all, when conflicts occur in communication, someone or something [government by and large] must intervene and enforce actual rules of behavior that punish this or reward that.
Ah, language…technically. As in in what can we know epistemologically about language itself. What can be expressed rationally and logically and objectively and essentially about it. Words and worlds. How close to or far away from each other are they.
Then it only comes down to the extent that those on either side of this dispute use “real life” human behaviors in “real life” contexts to explore these points more substantively,
Imagine Noam Chomsky communicating to us his take on a conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in regard to the 2016 presidential election in America. To what extent are “convenient fictions” being exchanged here?
Language and reality. Well, maybe we don’t actually need a context after all.
Do Languages Exist?
And how does language work anyway? Antony Tomlinson weighs the arguments.
Yeah, you know what’s coming…
Clearly, there seems to be a distinction between that which language is able to communicate objectively in regard to interactions relating to things like physics, biology, chemistry, geology, meteorology etc., and the communication breakdowns that often unfold when, for example, the discussions revolving around the biology of human sexuality and pregnancy gives way to discussions regarding the morality of abortion when the biological truths result in an unwanted pregnancy.
Should we then accede to the conclusions of those like Chomsky here. As though experts in linguistics are better able to communicate their points of view in with respect to conflicting goods.
For one thing, we would have to focus in on particular English speaking men and women exchanging the language in different contexts around the globe. How do we pin down communication that can be ascribed to and described as embodying “common sense”. Once we moved past the biological imperatives embedded in the vocal chords and brains and zeroed in more on the aspects of human relationships that most intrigue me.
This this sort of speculation…
…can be exchanged by those intrigued by these relationships. But sooner or latter any technical consensus about the English language will either be brought to bear on the components of my own philosophy here or they will ever and always stay up in the clouds preferred by, say, the “analytic” sort.
How can you prove that these aren’t all just poetic psychologisms?
Any time you are ready we can take it to another thread, and discuss the contexts within which your criticisms of texts or your ideas regarding communism or the objectivness of the reality of genes, memes, their combination, and how they rule our lives can be discerned and shown to apply to every human being always regardless of subjective experience.
Do Languages Exist?
And how does language work anyway? Antony Tomlinson weighs the arguments.
Yet another example of how the understanding of language turns on particular technical assessments – standards – of usage. Correct or incorrect according to specific rules that revolve around the proper usage of “phonemes, morphemes, lexemes, syntax, and context.” Along with “grammar, semantics, and pragmatics”.
Whereas I am far more interested in exploring what it is specifically that Bob “don’t know nothing” about. To what extent is he able to communicate facts about this context such that at least we both know what he is talking about. Such that all reasonable men and women would be able to grasp the same thing in the same way.
Whereas when communication breakdowns occur over value judgments, all parties in the dispute can be entirely correct insofar as the components of language are concerned. Everyone agrees with the facts being articulated relating to a situation in which Mary poured a gallon of red paint of Jane’s mink stole.
But what about the communication that revolves instead around whether this behavior is justified? Whether, in regard to whatever language you chose, it is the right thing to do. Now, here, the language of the law can be clear enough. It is either legal or illegal to do this in any particular jurisdiction. Most likely, illegal. But that’s language able to be unambiguous. Only when legal language becomes entangled in conflicting goods are the components of my own moral philosophy deemed applicable.
Of course, for all practical purposes, when human beings interact, “the only form of language” that really counts is that which results in a set of circumstances that some prefer over others. And in regard to conflicting goods linguists are no closer than the “natural scientists” in being able to actually establish arguments from which to derive particular rules of behavior in one or another community, state or nation.
Here my own existential assessment seems more reasonable.
I brought this here from another thread because it illustrates some of the difficulty I have with what I call “serious philosophy” language.
In other words, the manner in which, regarding the things that most interest me philosophically, the words used in any particular argument are never brought down to the parts pf our lived lives where we might use them “everyday” in regard to the things that we actually do.
I merely focus in on the things that we actually do which result in conflicts with others over moral and political and spiritual value judgments.
Do Languages Exist?
And how does language work anyway? Antony Tomlinson weighs the arguments.
Of course this is a view of language that bears little relevance to the points I raise. All sorts of arguments can be communicated back and forth regarding driving on the left vs. driving on the right. But as “conflicting goods” go, this is hardly a pressing matter for most of us.
But “public language” revolving around “social conventions” of this sort is not likely to stir up much controversy. It’s rooted more in the way things just happened to unfold in any particular nation once the automobile was invented.
Same here. This is language rooted firmly in the either/or world. English and French word sounds merely denote how over the centuries different communities invented different words to express the same thing. It is raining so you take along your umbrella. Or in France your parapluie.
And on and on and on these “technical” discussions can be sustained. Using words to explain why we use these words and not those words in regard to ‘“public language” revolving around “social conventions”’
Considerably less in the way of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy here.
I’m hesitant to ask this and I’m sure somewhere in your long tenure you have answered it but can you give a short explanation what your obsession with “conflicting goods” is about?
Do Languages Exist?
And how does language work anyway? Antony Tomlinson weighs the arguments.
No, the “public language view” gives most only what they want to believe about their own language skills in dispensing moral and political opinions claimed to be objective truths. Authoritarians in particular.
We’ll still need a context, a conflicting good, a sense of identity, the role played by political power when sorting out our own language skills.
Chomsky has his own assessment of how human beings acquire a particular language. And he also has his own assessment of, among other things, capitalism and imperialism. So, how are the two understood together. What words are available to him in one sphere that may not be applicable in the other?
More “technical” stuff. Pinning down precisely where biology ends and everything else begins. But, with Chomsky’s political enemies, it’s not his grammar that infuriates them. Whether derived from public conventions or idiolectal origins, the language he uses to critique the language that reactionaries use in defense of capitalism, would seem to be inherently problematic. At least given the manner in which I understand language used to convey value judgments.
And what exactly are the limitations of “natural science” here?
Do Languages Exist?
And how does language work anyway? Antony Tomlinson weighs the arguments.
On the other hand, how far is this “biological imperative” approach to language skills from a wholly determined universe?
If the laws of matter are capable of creating a brain able to master complex language skills that enable young children to create “completely original sentences” innately, why not take it further and argue that the sentences themselves are only what they could ever have been.
Obviously, somewhere along the line, these old and new sentences become anchored to a moral and political agenda derived in turn from either right wing or left wing indoctrinations.
Chomsky argues that…
“We just can’t abandon believing it (free will); it’s our most immediate phenomenologically obvious impression, but we can’t explain it. […] If it’s something we know to be true and we don’t have any explanation for it, well, too bad for any explanatory possibilities.”
Here he basically embraces my own frame of mind: that we simply do not know if we have free will but [compelled or not] we have to live our lives as though we do possess at least some measure of it. But noting this doesn’t make discussions of it any less surreal. Any less [ultimately] imponderable. Language is merely subsumed in that like all the rest of it.
Clearly different “publics” – historically, culturally, circumstantially – concoct different languages. Languages that can be communicated with considerably more clarity and coherence in the either/or world than in the is/ought world.
Whether that is nature’s plan or, up to a point, our own.
