Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Terrapin Station]

1. In order to communicate information via language, speaker and hearer must attach the same denotative meanings to the words employed.

So, to start, this is false. (And I had just explained, in a post addressed to you, why this is false.)

[GE Morton]

LOL. Experience is NOTHING BUT mental phenomena.

Obviously this is what you're positing. What I said is that there's no cogent basis for it. Simply making the claim as you're doing above isn't a basis for it.

A cogent basis? The basis is that the (relevant) meaning of "experience" is that which you perceive:

"Experience (noun) ---

"1a: direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge

"4a: the conscious events that make up an individual life"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/experience

Have you invented some meaning of your own for that word? You're not confusing what is experienced with the experience itself, are you, as you confuse knowing or learning a meaning with the meaning itself?

[GE Morton]

1. In order to communicate information via language, speaker and hearer must attach the same denotative meanings to the words employed.

So, to start, this is false. (And I had just explained, in a post addressed to you, why this is false.)

A non-explanation that leaves the question unanswered, as pointed out in the last response.

BTW, I'm still curious about how you resolve the dilemma mentioned earlier: Do concepts not exist, or are they "chunks of stuff"? If the latter, what does the concept of "justice" weigh?

[Terrapin Station]

A cogent basis? The basis is that the (relevant) meaning of "experience" is that which you perceive:

Aside from the buffoonery of arguing by dictionary definitions as trump cards, the issue isn't whether experience is mental; it's whether we only experience mentality.

Just like the issue wouldn't be whether photography only obtains via cameras; it would be whether we only photograph cameras.

[Terrapin Station]

A non-explanation that leaves the question unanswered, as pointed out in the last response.

Explanation?

The first premise is false. So there's a problem with the argument.

BTW, I'm still curious about how you resolve the dilemma mentioned earlier: Do concepts not exist, or are they "chunks of stuff"? If the latter, what does the concept of "justice" weigh?

Maybe slow down and read. Hence a reason to keep things short. Not everything physical is weighable. You can't way a cold front, for example. But surely you'd not argue that cold fronts are not physical due to this. As I've written over and over and over and over and over and over the physical consists of matter and its dynamic relations to other matter. It obviously doesn't consist only of matter where there are no processes, no structures, etc.

I wish I could engage in philosophical talk with others where 99% of it isn't simply folks playing (and hopefully not just being) stupid and/or playing who can be the biggest Aspie.

[Terrapin Station]

Oops way=weigh above.

[GE Morton]

Agreed. GEM, for example, just asserts that, if they help us explain things, non-physical things exist - which is complete nonsense.

But, as physicalists, we deny the existence of non-physical things. And supposed abstract things are non-physical things. And what we call - by a grammatical misattribution - an abstract noun is (we delude ourselves) the name of an abtract thing: meaning, truth, knowledge, justice, beauty, identity, being - and so on.

This is simply a disagreement as to the uses of the word "exist." It should be clear that if you restrict it to physical things (things with mass and which occupy specific volumes of space-time), then you must deny that meanings, truth, knowledge, justice, not to mention numbers, gravitational fields, laws, etc., exist. That excludes you from discussions regarding most everyday experience. The word "dog" has no meaning, no one knows anything (because knowledge doesn't exist), injustice is never done, and the balance in your bank account is unknowable (because numbers don't exist).

But perhaps the most embarrassing consequence of your thesis is that it cannot be true --- because truth doesn't exist.

[GE Morton]

A cogent basis? The basis is that the (relevant) meaning of "experience" is that which you perceive:

Aside from the buffoonery of arguing by dictionary definitions as trump cards, the issue isn't whether experience is mental; it's whether we only experience mentality.

Ah. So you are confusing what is experienced with the experience itself. We experience many things, and give names to each of those things. But all of those experiences are phenomena occurring in some human mind.

[GE Morton]

The first premise is false. So there's a problem with the argument.

Well, if its false, then you need to explain (as pointed out previously) how Alfie manages to immediately find his car keys after Annabelle says, "The keys are on the kitchen counter." (Annabelle has transmitted information to Alfie).

You can't way a cold front, for example. But surely you'd not argue that cold fronts are not physical due to this.

Of course you can. Give me the extent of the cold front and, since I know the molecular weights of the gases involved and their density at their current temperature and pressure, I can calculate the weight quite precisely.

[Peter Holmes]

Agreed. GEM, for example, just asserts that, if they help us explain things, non-physical things exist - which is complete nonsense.

But, as physicalists, we deny the existence of non-physical things. And supposed abstract things are non-physical things. And what we call - by a grammatical misattribution - an abstract noun is (we delude ourselves) the name of an abtract thing: meaning, truth, knowledge, justice, beauty, identity, being - and so on.

This is simply a disagreement as to the uses of the word "exist." It should be clear that if you restrict it to physical things (things with mass and which occupy specific volumes of space-time), then you must deny that meanings, truth, knowledge, justice, not to mention numbers, gravitational fields, laws, etc., exist. That excludes you from discussions regarding most everyday experience. The word "dog" has no meaning, no one knows anything (because knowledge doesn't exist), injustice is never done, and the balance in your bank account is unknowable (because numbers don't exist).

But perhaps the most embarrassing consequence of your thesis is that it cannot be true --- because truth doesn't exist.

So, as a Platonist, you imagine that abstract nouns are the names of things of some kind that exist somehow, somewhere. But, of course, like all Platonists, you can't show that those abstract things exist, or where they exist, or in what way they exist.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can happily use signs to mean things, make true assertions about things we know, count things, behave justly, appreciate beauty, and so on, untroubled by the delusion that abstract things exist.

[Terrapin Station]

Aside from the buffoonery of arguing by dictionary definitions as trump cards, the issue isn't whether experience is mental; it's whether we only experience mentality.

Ah. So you are confusing what is experienced with the experience itself. We experience many things, and give names to each of those things. But all of those experiences are phenomena occurring in some human mind.
[/quote]

Experience qua experience is something mental, obviously, but what's experienced isn't something mental.

Photography qua photography is something that a camera does, but what's photographed isn't a camera.

No one would say that perception isn't perception. But perception isn't OF something mental, what you perceive, what you're aware of isn't something mental.

[Terrapin Station]

Well, if its false, then you need to explain (as pointed out previously) how Alfie manages to immediately find his car keys after Annabelle says, "The keys are on the kitchen counter." (Annabelle has transmitted information to Alfie).

Alfie assigns meaning to the sounds Annabelle makes, where that's done based on how he's assigned meaning to those sounds in the past, in a manner that (hopefully) results in coherent, consistent experiences, including further observable behavior from Annabelle a la utterances, etc.

Annabelle assigns meanings to the sounds she makes, too.

It doesn't at all matter if they assign the "same" meanings to the same sounds. All they'll care about is the practicality of the situation behaviorally, the coherence of it.

Of course you can. Give me the extent of the cold front and, since I know the molecular weights of the gases involved and their density at their current temperature and pressure, I can calculate the weight quite precisely.

No, it's a process, not just the weights of the particles involved. You don't have a cold front if you don't have particular processes. Again, the properties of the vast majority of phenomena supervene on matter AND its processual structural relations. It makes no sense to say that you're going to weigh a process.

[Terrapin Station]

It should be clear that if you restrict it to physical things (things with mass and which occupy specific volumes of space-time),

So once again, "physical" doesn't exclude structures and processes.

then you must deny that meanings, truth, knowledge, justice, not to mention numbers, gravitational fields, laws, etc., exist.

This is of course nonsense unless you're (a) using "exist" to only denote that those things obtain extramentally, and (b) you're also excluding the extramental phenomena that the abstract concepts are in response to, and that reflect the concepts (in behavior based on them for example), and you're only focusing on the concepts.

[GE Morton]

Experience qua experience is something mental, obviously, but what's experienced isn't something mental.

That's what I said. Some of the things we experience are not mental things, because we we define them to be. We hypothesize that they exist independently from us. But the only data we have to support that hypothesis is the percept, which is a mental phenomenon. We hypothesize those external things to explain that experience.

Photography qua photography is something that a camera does, but what's photographed isn't a camera.

That analogy doesn't work. With a photograph we can directly perceive both the photo and the thing photographed. But not so with percepts. The percept itself is all we have. Instead of a photograph, consider instead a painting, of, say, a landscape. It may be "realistic," and accurately represent some actual landscape; it may be impressionistic, and represent some actual landscape only surrealistically, or it may be fanciful, and portray only some imagined landscape. If we can't leave the gallery, we'll never know.

[Belindi]

Concepts with accompanying physical(material) attributes may be measured with scales, rulers, pint pots , how much two oxen can plough in a day, the cost in money of sending a ship to the moon, and so forth. Some concepts , such as justice, are measured only by people's behaviour and intentions.

A concept is a supposed abstract thing. It doesn't have measurable physical attributes. Do you have an example of such a concept? And can you explain what it could mean to 'measure' the supposed concept of justice by people's behaviour and intentions? (Sorry, but I think this is wandering in a metaphorical wilderness.)

To repeat: what and where is a concept? It's not supposed to be either a word or a physical thing that we name by means of a word.

We call the latter 'abstract' because we abstract them from people's behaviour and intentions.And that's another example of elucidation by way of substituting a verb for a noun.

So you think a so-called abstract concept is a thing of some kind 'abstracted' from people's behaviour and intentions. I have no idea what those words mean - what sort of process this is. Can you explain it in terms that don't involve explaining how we use a word such as 'justice'?

I've never seen a rational, plausible explanation. So I think it's hand-waving blather designed to give ourselves the impression that we've explained something - where in fact all we've done is invented a mystery to explain a mystery of our own invention.

A dog chasing its tail needs to re-think the premise.

A concept is mental and has physical correlates.

Some concepts are fantastical and have attributes cobbled together without making much sense, e.g. ghosts, or talking trees.

Some concepts such as the concept of goodness, or of beauty, or of justice,or of evil are attributed to behaviours held to be good, or beautiful, or just, or evil.