back to the beginning: the limitations of language

Okay, laborious or not, take a towel from your bathroom and drop it on the floor. More in a heap than flat as a pancake. Describe the shape that results. Ask others to describe it as well. See how close you can come to the shape of the towel. At least make the attempt. Otherwise we’ll just have to take your word for it.

As for this numbingly ponderlous intellectual contraption…

…it can’t possibly be further removed from my own interest in the limitations of language. Back to Mary and Joe and the abortion. The actual abortion itself as a medical procedure can be encompassed in very precise language. Nothing at all like the towel heaped on the floor. The doctors go from step to step explaining specifically what must be done in order to accomplish the procedure successfully. And safely. At least for the pregnant woman.

Which is what you are attempting to do with respect to the morality of abortion. You insist that , “nobody is ‘forcing’ a woman to give birth anymore than we all forced her to have sex in the first place and become impregnated” as though the woman either chooses to give birth at any juncture from the point of conception or, what, be arrested for premeditated murder, tried and then, if convicted, sent to prison? Or, in some states here in America, to death row?

And what if she had not chosen to have sex but was, in fact, forced to. Or was raped. And what if giving birth could result in grave physical harm to herself?

There are countless individual contexts in which hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of variables can be different.

But, what, you’d take it upon yourself to encompass each situation with the precise language needed to describe it? And with the optimal or the only rational ethical prescription the woman is obligated to share?

The Tractatus…is it so intractable?
Carlos Muñoz-Suárez guides us on a trip down the linguistic rabbit hole.

Okay, picture something. Picture whatever facts you can imagine about it. Describe it abstractly. Then if challenged connect the dots between your words and the world that whatever you are picturing contains it. How close do you get to a “structure of the world itself” such that almost no one will challenge you?

Isn’t that basically the bottom line when connecting/communicating the dots between words and worlds? And isn’t that more or less where I draw the line between descriptions in the either/or world and prescriptions/proscriptions in the is ought world.

Now all we need is a context. What can our words describe such that no rational human being is likely to challenge us? And what will our prescriptive and proscriptive words very likely precipitate but all manner of challenges?

The “evaluation” part:

Only it’s one thing for a doctor to picture an abortion as a medical procedure and another thing altogether for that same doctor to picture the exact moment from conception to birth when the unborn becomes an actual human being. Let alone the aggregation of words that pictures for us whether the abortion was either moral or immoral.

As for this, however…

“Wittgenstein doesn’t mean images in your mind, but rather a way of (metaphorically) seeing the world through language.”

…how on earth would our words [pictured or otherwise] go about seeing an abortion through language alone?

Instead, the language is always derived from the brain/mind of a particular individual out in a particular world reacting to this abortion in a particular manner. The part I root in dasein and others root in entirely different things.

The Tractatus…is it so intractable?
Carlos Muñoz-Suárez guides us on a trip down the linguistic rabbit hole.

Things. Objective things interacting with other objective things. So, sure, if you picture them in your mind and attempt to connect the dots between thoughts [propositions], language, and the structure of reality, it can certainly be as close to a mirror image as we are likely to get given “the gap”. In fact you can take a camera and literally snap a picture of what you are trying to convey in a world of words. They don’t remind us that “a picture is worth a thousand words” for nothing.

Instead, my own interest in language revolves more around interacting moral and political prejudices that do not lend themselves to snapshots at all. The pictures exchanged can at times barely resemble each other. Introducing us to the limitations of language in any number of contexts.

This has never seemed reasonable to me. On the other hand, what are the odds that I understand fully what he meant by it? Language may or may not mirror the structure of reality. And, in part, that is because, given any description of any particular context, it may or may not be able to. Even in the either/or world just because your language isn’t an exact reflection of the world around you doesn’t doesn’t make the reality of the world around you go away. It’s always the part where the limitations of your language mirrors one reality while the limitations of another’s language mirrors a very different reality where we might get closer to this: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

Yes, but only regarding those aspects of human interaction where the rules of language can be shown to be applicable to all of us. Language, thought and reality in a more or less perfect alignment…but only because they can be.

The Tractatus…is it so intractable?
Carlos Muñoz-Suárez guides us on a trip down the linguistic rabbit hole.

Yes, if you are a natural scientist. And if, instead, you are a social scientist? Or a political scientist? Or a psychologist? Or an ethicist?

Here of course what makes things particularly [and sometimes profoundly] problematic is that in regard to social interactions, political interactions, human psychology, moral contexts etc., there are actual facts that can be established as applicable to all rational people. Instead, it’s in how we interpret the interaction of these facts given conflicting value judgments regarding how some insist they ought to be interpreted that brings on the especially murky or incongruous or contentious pictures of reality.

Then what, Mr. Epistemologist?

But you can guess the proposition that will be explored here:

Right, as long as the proposition revolves around a cat, a chair, and whether or not it can be determined at any particular point in time that this cat is on this chair.

But what if it’s a proposition from one of these countries: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_meat

A proposition that revolves around killing cats, cooking them and eating them? You take the cat from the chair and butcher it for dinner. How about all of the conflicting reactions to that “picture of reality?”

_
“Wittgenstein’s later works, notably the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations, criticised many of his earlier ideas in the Tractatus.”

I think that fact ^^^ makes the publication worthy of a read… and also the fact that it’s only 75 pages long.

The home of true philosophy Biggums style. :evilfun:

:banana-angel: :banana-blonde: :banana-dreads: :banana-explosion: :banana-fingers: :banana-gotpics: :banana-gotpics: :banana-guitar: :banana-jumprope: :banana-linedance: :banana-ninja: :banana-parachute: :banana-rainbow: :banana-rock: :banana-skier: :banana-stoner: :banana-tux: :banana-wrench:

The Tractatus…is it so intractable?
Carlos Muñoz-Suárez guides us on a trip down the linguistic rabbit hole.

Starting with, perhaps, “Regularity Theory” or “Value Ontology” or “RM/AO”?

The rigors of “definitional logic” producing one or another “world of words”. Worlds that have almost no relevance whatsoever to the lives that we actually live from day to day.

Indeed, whatever any particular language includes and excludes can make all the difference in the world when it comes to actually communicating what we think we know about ourselves in the world around us. It’s just that this communication can get considerably more problematic when we switch over from the either/or world to the is/ought world.

Note a context yourself and we can explore it.

What then is there to do but, in regard to a particular context, make distinctions between communication derived from “a universe of logical rules that define true and false propositions” and communication derived more from language as it is used everyday. Noting where logic is able to make some propositions either true or false while other propositions become increasingly more entangled in the subjective/subjunctive nature of “ordinary language”.

The Tractatus…is it so intractable?
Carlos Muñoz-Suárez guides us on a trip down the linguistic rabbit hole.

What is the “mystical” but the at times ineffable gap between what we want to convey through language and the limitations of language in conveying any number of things we encounter from day to day…just in going about the task of living our lives.

In particular when confronting the subjunctive frame of mind. We feel or intuit any number of things that we never seem able to pin down with the sort of precision that language almost never fails us in regard to the interactions between actual things in the either/or world. Communicate to another the day you spent with your son or daughter. The things you did together. You went to the zoo and had a picnic in the park. Words and worlds pretty much in sync. Others understand completely what you are telling them. Then your child conveys to you that he or she is gay. Try here to pin down your reaction [good or bad] such that all others will understand it and completely agree with you.

Where is the precision needed to resolve conflicting moral narratives?

Where is the precision needed to close the gap in our reaction to things like this:

Indeed, what makes them very difficult issues is that we seem to lack the language that can make the complexities go away. It gets all tangled up instead in the existential elements that flow around the ofttimes convoluted relationship between genes and memes, nature and nurture, historical and cultural contexts.

I have my own existential preoccupations of course. Chief among them exploring the gap between the fractured and fragmented “I” in the is/ought world and the limitations of logic in examining the structure of reality.

This part:

Sound familiar, Mr. Objectivist?

The Tractatus
“The world is all that is the case”
José Zalabardo investigates which problem Wittgenstein is trying to solve.

Come on, we all know that’s not true. It’s just that we all know this in such a way that using the tools of philosophy there does not seem to be a way to pin down whether in fact it is all actually true. Of the is/ought world in particular, but even of the either/or world if we go far enough out on the metaphysical limb.

Nope, sans an omniscient God, we are all on our own in commanding the language to “get” others to understand what we say here. Let alone agree with us.

I just aim that at what I construe to be the most important philosophical question of them all: “How ought one to live?”

Now all we need is a context, right? There are clearly philosophical assessments relating to logic and epistemology which are not likely to be dissolved anytime soon. Right answers and solutions that no matter how hard you engage in the enterprise above won’t even put a dent in them insofar as, say, human communication is concern. John either is or is not a bachelor no matter which ladder is kicked out from under you.

Unless of course I am not “getting” the point here. Maybe it’s all entangled in how those who embrace the analytical school of philosophy go about thinking these things through differently from those who embrace the continental school.

Thus the need for a context.

The Tractatus
“The world is all that is the case”
José Zalabardo investigates which problem Wittgenstein is trying to solve.

And, as with Kant’s theoretical conjectures revolving around the categorical imperative, Plato’s theoretical conjectures regarding “the forms” are entirely dependent on the existence of one or another rendition of the transcending God.

For instance…

Theoretically in other words. An “ontology” that is basically Plato thinking it up in his head and then in regard to actual squabbles over which particular chair, table, cathedral, painting, person, etc., is more beautiful or the most beautiful who else but God is there to give us the “final answer”?

At best it can be argued that biologically, genetically we are hard wired to see certain forms or features as more pleasing to us than others.

But philosophical Forms with a capital F? Or Ethics with a capital E?

In any event, expect it to all unfold up in the clouds:

Unless, you count tables.

Or, unless you double think.

and for dome that is a categorical necessity of survival.

We’ll need a context of course. One in which, in examining the limitations of language, it’s not theoretical conjectures pertaining to tables or other either/or world entities, but existential examinations in regard to the considerably more stark limitations of language pertaining to conflicting goods.

You pick it this time. :wink:

Note to Alan:

Don’t make me foe you!!!

I don’t feel you would do that, but I am under some time limit here, spending only another couple of days here. Incidentally, I still sorely need to edit the horrible death narrative (Yours) cause my dire eyed’ limitations.
Until then, please bear with me.

I mean grin & bear it.

Las Vegas and philosophy. The two just come together naturally.

So, when you have the time, back to this:

Note to Mr. Vegas:

What are the odds he’ll through for me this time?

The odds are in congruence with the existentially defined foundations with Buddhism.I wont even mention Taoism because in my opinion that could not cover the existential basis between how it relates to the question of Being

I can think of no better way to experience this seemingly enigmatic living AMD loved through comcept, the relating the limits of language to the evolution of thought as it kind of comes through the ranks of relationships.

When the ultimate deconstruction of specific expressions reach the levels that compete with no thought, as the doubly bound anthisesis reach rock bottom, the one can gain insight of LangE development as basically motor generally termed and less subtly and more or less relative to each other, regresding. as momotilazition of relating looses it’s plasticity . as Peacegirl puts it, and this identifyable substance of these relations become more spaced out and uncertain

That Buddhism points out the value of not bound or identified attachments, the value in realizing these structural disadsociatiins within differing aspects or conditions of value, is exactly what is resisted by fear; and deferred until the time when we can no longer be conscious of them, and reach the stage of existential states we consider a passing on.

However, if we become conscious immimently, here and now of the value of non attachment, then psychologically we may not let the elements of synctactical disassociation alarm us by any form of de-onjectification, therefore the value if that will also be appreciated.
What preceded the coming of the WORD as it is raised to the level of Being-able to examine and experience It’s self\Self?

The fear of the unknown of that limit disperses with the realization that there is always a critical point where breakthroughs occur over the supposed temporal passage of time, and looking back through various levels of deconstruction -the very long passage of objective construction which appears but only an extremely short series of deconstructed processes increasing an imminent level of getting the sense if getting closer to the idea/sense of the Imminent Domain

This domain becomes very close as it’s leveling off of iy’d own apprehension transcend or appears to change at an ever increasing rate of relating , and finally the state is reached where the classic question of the basic question : to be, or not to be becames axiomatic and enigmatically a double think , a question that appears as a confirmation of thought mirroring existential realities of the limits dissolving it’self in the sea if Being, which is a Thing reflecting the question we are trying to firm if the unconscious.

That Unconsciousness may be likened to a social conscious efgirtd to build a consensual understanding, a liberation from the inceptive recognition of it’s feared source, a Cave. which

A Cave, in the Western tradition of the genesis of self counsciousness

The myth of Sysiphus illustrates the vast domain that preoccupies imagination with that view which tries to understand, without the emerging limitations which hinder the conscious birth of the concept of the self from the evolutionary cognitive sense of binding imaged to thought, by unbinding the substantial organization of pre-lingual understanding.

Buddhism it’s self starts this binding -unbinding process that George Orwell realized in double think. as Buddhism sets the stage where the very totally deconstructed self can be understood as an absolute imminance, a pre conscious state that follows a double course all through both individual and culturally defined-determined way of understanding.

Th r culturally defined formative developing ‘soul’ becomes the way that leads one way to religiously transcended way of realizing reality, and science begins a different path.Aristoteles and Plato exemplify this, and the Platonic course exemplified the earliest recorded parting of the imminent of transcendental progression in Western classical times.
What relationship dies Buddhist notions with the Western modes if development?
One precedes the other to be sure , based on the Western model’s temporal invention from Greco Roman and Egyptian sources, but with the necessary thought if some interralation between the East and the West which had some level of correspondence in a relative, non spatial/temporal way that happens in an esoteric realm of non conscious manner.

The early Egyptian language is composed of both of signs and signals of phonetic and abstracted relating mechanisms and do represent later focus on magic and it’s association with the evolution of certain kinds of beliefs like for instance the coming to be of Magi, who came to witness the Birth of the Redeemer.

These by now images, coincide with the deconstruction of the objective world as theu reimmerse themself willingly into the sea of the subconscious.

Ironically, the more science tries to get nearer to the Source, the more disassociation occurs with the ‘retro-projection’ of images unto the concept of the esoteric self, and the modern sense of angst replaces the quiet serenity befire quantum dispersion of understanding happens.

That is why we push the thought if that dispersion to the usual receding horizon of Being, nit willing to dace a more General Mode of Relating, that has already come up the ranks ( of conscious-ness)with a specially related organization.

What happens, is that as Jesus tries to explain in parables, way ahead in time, realizing what amounts to energy bound spaces of the self ars always the mirror through which the corpus seed it’s self in a mirror of partly his own devise, projects the fear if deconstruction that language’s
disassociation always delimits, concurrently as a shadow sub-stance
The Corpus Christi is a projected quasi magical system as how the two can be unified.
That will for all time be the simplest, quickest way to be in a substantial reality that Orwell knows but because of the limitations that the IS-OUGHT sorld, must go along with the reduced, one dimensional, albeit digitalized under standing.
death.now.will release or approach the limit of feared states if perfection of absolute dispersion, that such states are being intuited but very advanced computers
But most will prefer Big Brother.

This in particular is a gem!

And though, in my view, it has absolutely nothing to note substantively about the limitations of language, it tells us something about the use of language for those who may or may not have a “condition”.

Note to others:

Admittedly, I stopped reading here. So, it’s possible that what follows and the stuff he noted on his next thread, actually are a coherent examination of how he connects the dots between the limitations of language and thinking double.

Given a particular context.

It’s a judgment call. Do I waste even more of my precious time here reading further or do I ask for volunteers to take on that task for me.

Do what you can please.

Exactly. That ‘condition’ is aptly called double talk, where communication fails, because it is dropped to contextual agreement.

Some call it the democratic dispensation of recognizing the difference between entangled situations and one where even next door neighbors fail to take minimum steps necessary to communicate

But philosophy nowedays is so broadly defined that most people fail to see any connection.

Or we may both be wrong

Note to others:

Was I wrong not to read this? :sunglasses:

I am another and I say yes you were.

But it’s ok even if other others think you were right.