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?
I’ll take this over to “our” thread. 
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?
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha
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.”
youtube video: youtu.be/J3fhKRJNNTA
youtu.be/py-PJQKzQIw
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.
Do Languages Exist?
And how does language work anyway? Antony Tomlinson weighs the arguments.
I’m the first to admit I have neither the technical background nor an intelligence sophisticated enough to follow this sort of epistemological conflict. Instead, all I can do is to ask those convinced that they do possess the requisite background and intelligence to note how their own conclusions might play out in a child that is learning how to use language given a context that involves moral and political indoctrination on the part of the adults in his or her life…adults intent on sustaining their own value judgments through their children. When do the rules of grammar begin to butt heads with attempts to communicate perspectives in regard to conflicting goods?
Naturally, however, that’s not where the author goes. Language skills in the is/ought world confronts us with a frame of mind that, however skilled one is with grammar, doesn’t make the communication [at times] any less profoundly problematic.
Instead, he makes a comparison to…riding a bicycle.
Again, if we lived in a world where the use of language revolved solely around learning how to interact with others…interactions such that there was always only a right way and a wrong way to do things, then whoever is right about how we acquire language skills, it wouldn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that, one way or another, we acquire them.
My point however is that even if it is finally determined definitively who is right here, it wouldn’t make the limitations of language skills any less problematic in the is/ought world.
Unless of course I’m wrong. And someone is able to demonstrate that in regard to moral and political and spiritual and esthetic values, there is the “social science” equivalent of the “most rational” use of language.
Do Languages Exist?
And how does language work anyway? Antony Tomlinson weighs the arguments.
For me the mystery that is far, far more intriguing is the one that separates language skills that are entirely calculable in regard to the either/or world [however inexact the grammar may be] and the endless conflicts that still beset us in regard to language skills used to convey things thought to be either good or evil [however exact the grammar may be].
It is one thing for a child to be corrected by an adult if the child notes something that is in fact incorrect…and another thing altogether for this child to be corrected for not mimicking the parents own moral and political values.
The child may see Mary, an obese woman, and tell Mom that she is pregnant. Mom corrects him if in fact Mary is not pregnant. But if the child comes to reject Mom’s views about Jane committing a sin by having an abortion, where is the correct grammatical usage that resolves this?
Okay, but where in the brain are the factors that would allow us to assess whether Chomsky’s own views on abortion are either more or less innate or learned?
Entirely innate of course if human autonomy itself is entirely innate. Here though Chomsky take’s another leap:
“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.”
But if human autonomy is somehow a manifestation of mindless matter evolving biologically into matter able to invent a language used to communicate in a grammatically sound manner the way things are for all of us, where does that leave us in regard to our reactions [morally and politically] toward these truths that precipitate conflicting goods.
Do Languages Exist?
And how does language work anyway? Antony Tomlinson weighs the arguments.
Ultimately, the mystery embedded in human language will always go back to 1] the extent to which we possess some measure of autonomy in grappling with it and 2] if we do possess a measure of free will, an understaning of the “human condition” going back to an understanding of Existence itself.
And, of course, the extent to which the language that the evolution of biological life on Earth has bestowed upon the human species is grappled with further given the distinction that I make between the either/or and the is/ought worlds.
All of the “technical” narratives here must sooner or later come around to that. In other words, in however human language is understood re Chomsky and others, why are there always considerably more limitations imposed on human communication when Chomsky shifts the discussion to capitalism or imperialism?
Now a new point of view: Donald Davidson
Malapropisms anyone?
“malapropism: the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often with unintentionally amusing effect, as in, for example, “dance a flamingo ” (instead of flamenco ).”
Okay, Jane says “I’m getting an abortion”. Jim says, “if you do you’ll burn in Hell.”
What then of malapropisms and the use of conventions and contextual clues and idiolects in regard to pinning down the most precise communication?
After all, we do use the same language to discuss the weather as we do the morality of abortion. Here in America it is generally English. Yet with the morality of abortion the communication breakdowns are considerably more frequent…and consequential.
The Private Language Argument
Richard Floyd explains a notorious example of Wittgenstein’s public thought.
We have this argument off and on here too. Someone will post a point or an opinion about something on one or another thread and then another who touts him or herself as considerably more skilled in grappling with philosophy as a disciplined set of skills, will insist that the point or the opinion is not actually a true argument.
This thing:
“In logic and philosophy, an argument is a series of statements (in a natural language), called the premises intended to determine the degree of truth of another statement, the conclusion”
Technically as it were.
Whereas I am far more interested on focusing in on whether the point or the opinion or the actual argument is able to be demonstrated as true objectively for all rational people. Even if technically it is not a true argument.
We say something about ourselves out in the world with others. Others either agree with what we say or they disagree. Okay, given a particular context with conflicting points of view, are we or are we not able to establish the optimal or the only rational point, opinion and/or argument that there is?
That is basically my point in regard to the use of language to communicate our viewpoints regarding “morality here and now/immortality there and then”. My main interest in philosophy: “how ought one to live?”
Exactly? Jane makes a few points about something she believes is true about the rights of animals. Is it more important to explore the extent to which her assessment is a reasonable or a virtuous frame of mind, or to establish whether it is expressed as a true argument. How many discussions about animal rights are technically sufficient enough to be qualified as genuine philosophy? Does that matter when the discussions revolve mainly around conflicting goods?
Maybe? Depends on the context? Though my point is that in regard to discussions revolving around conflicting goods such as animal rights, neither “private language” nor technically correct philosophical arguments are going to be sufficient enough to establish a definitive conclusion about the rights of animals.
On the other hand, I am no more able to establish this. Yes, there may well be be a more or less sufficiently rigorous argument that does establish the natural/political rights of animals “out there” in the world somewhere. But all I can note is that I am not myself “here and now” privy to it.
The Private Language Argument
Richard Floyd explains a notorious example of Wittgenstein’s public thought.
On the other hand, what would be the point of it? That would depend on the individual or individuals involved. They would do this because, well, for whatever reason they found it useful or necessary or beneficial. But: it would only become controversial if, in pursuing this, it began to have an adverse impact on others who were not privy to their own private meaning of words.
The same thing with all the rest of us who come to act out [through our behaviors] our own “private language”. In the sense that how we come to understand the meaning of words existentially is derived from our own individual experiences. But it only becomes a problem in contexts in which one’s own private meaning is not in sync with others in situations in which we have to concur on the meaning in order to avoid conflict.
This may be different from Wittgenstein’s own understanding of it, but my point is still basically, “so what”?
Private, individual understandings of any particular language only generate, say, ominous news headlines when they come to revolve by and large around moral and political and religious exchanges that fail to overlap.
Only in regard to this a private language is understood by me to be more in sync with dasein and conflicting goods.
Iambiguous says:
“Only in regard to this a private language is understood by me to be more in sync with dasein and conflicting goods.”
That is a prerogitive that appears as intentionally variable, as does the bedfellows: determinancy and absolute freedom: im afraid to this antimony we are condemned
This may well be the most unintelligible thing that you have ever posted!
Unless of course I’m wrong.
I know. Let’s discuss what you think you mean by it given, oh, I don’t know, a particular context?
Ok. Particular context.
First of all, what is particular about any context which can differentiate it from another?
In today’s thought, that is based on phenomenally. distinguished similarity, and what are the features of any context which set it apart from another, OR, conversely, can form durable objective syntax which hold meaning other then cliches and the kind?
And if the two kinds are balanced in an either/or propositional value judgement , how does this judgement fare to extend it’s syntax and value?
Is the sound of the word “water” coming from my mouth the same as the liquid flowing in a river, no, so there are limitations.
More and more, I’m becoming convinced language and mental talk is only to serve the concept of the other, that others exist. Whether they do exist is another debate, but language is the start of that illusion.
If I was the only person to ever exist, I wonder if language would ever develop.
Language is a set of names.
Experience is everything.
Names come later and can only exist through experience.
Perhaps most of the limitations of language come from the obvious poor usage of language . . .
What is experience without some sort of mental representation of what has happened? The entirety of language is in fact not just a set of names. It is also true to say that any mental representation is formed after any event has taken place - experience is a mental representation - catch my drift?
The Private Language Argument
Richard Floyd explains a notorious example of Wittgenstein’s public thought.
First, of course, we have to agree on the meaning of “sensations”:
“Sensations are often ascribed particular properties: of being conscious and inner, of being more immediate than perception, and of being atomic. In epistemology sensations have been taken as infallible foundations of knowledge, in psychology as elementary constituents of perceptual experience.” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Got that?
Then, assuming that we can all agree on the appropriate definition, there’s the part where we connect that to any particular sensation that we experience in regard to a particular word that we either hear or use given a particular set of circumstances.
That part of course is nowhere to be seen in this article. Let alone how a distinction might be made between the language that we share begetting sensations that can be communicated back and forth intelligibly and a “private language” begetting private sensations that cannot.
On the other hand, I may well be misunderstanding the point he is making here. Still, aside from the purely personal reasons that someone might feel motivates them to create and then to sustain a “private language”, this choice either will or will not spill over into their interactions with others. And that either will or will not cause conflicts.
And it is focusing in on social, political and economic conflicts in the is/ought world that is the main interest of me. What then of a “private language”?
The Private Language Argument
Richard Floyd explains a notorious example of Wittgenstein’s public thought.
Yep. That’s basically my own reaction to a private definition and a private meaning for words used in a private language. Sure, if, for whatever personal reason, you choose to do this, either keep it to yourself or attempt to communicate it to others who accept your own subjective codes.
Only if and when this communication has practical implications for those not able to decode the exchange would it become more problematic.
My point instead is that in regard to communication that revolves around conflicting goods, a kind of “private language” can lead to all manner of dire consequences. Your definition and your meaning of freedom and justice revolve around women being able to abort their unborn babies/clumps of cells, while for others they revolve around the unborn being brought into this world.
This behaviorism?
“…the theory that human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning, without appeal to thoughts or feelings, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns…”
Of course here language would seem to revolve around an amoral approach to human interactions. Being in a position of power to mold and manipulate – condition – human behaviors to serve your own wants and needs. Or the wants and the needs of “society”. In that sense what you defend or attack can be seen as largely beside the point.
And language becomes “private” more in terms of “one of us” vs. “one of them”.
Question of the Month
How Does Language Work?
The following answers to the question of linguistic meaning each win a random book.
Clearly then the starting point in regard to any discussions of human language are the biological imperatives necessary to create the sounds we call words. It’s like trying to imagine the “human condition” had there not been the mutations that led to opposable thumbs. Some things are [on a fundamental level] our genes all the way down. At least to begin with.
So, sans any particular birth defects, we all come into the world with the capacity to make those sounds that become words that are able to communicate the sort of information and knowledge that accounts for the existence of human history.
What’s left then, after accepting this, is focusing in on all the reasons why, if this is the case, there are in the historical record so many instances of our “failure to communicate”. Precipitating any number of conflicts up to and including world wars.
Again, if you keep all of this philosophical “analysis” anchored to the either/or world – cats and lions – you can manage to communicate with a minimal amount of dysfunction. After all, these points will certainly seem reasonable to most of us. But if the discussion shifts to contexts that members of, say, Peta are more inclined to pursue – how ought human beings treat other animals? – you can whisper or shout your points all day long and the communication can continue to break down.
Why?
That’s my own interest in language here.