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[Peter Holmes]

GEM

Thanks for this explanation of your position, which does clarify where and why we disagree. But I need more time to digest it.

Just briefly, though, I think this is paradigmatic: 'For us, language and reality are inextricably intertwined.' It's that very intertwining - that mistaking what we say about things for the way things are - the description for the described - that accounts for metaphysical delusions, the myth of propositions, correspondence theories of truth, and truth-maker/truth-bearer lucubrations down the rabbit hole.

[Peter Holmes]

GEM

Just another quickie. (Isn't it frustrating that we can't edit here? Other forums allow it. Apologies for hurried typos.)

I think the cogito is up there with the most catastrophically wrong philosophical doctrines. So your reference to Descartes could also explain where and why we disagree. 'I think therefore I am' doesn't follow at all.

[Peter Holmes]

I asked for evidence for the existence of abstract things. Your answer is that a thing we've given a name is real if it has descriptive or explanatory utility - which isn't evidence of any kind. Your use of quote marks for the word real in this context is puzzling. I wonder what the difference is between real things and 'real' things.

He seems to often resort to "this normal way that we talk about things is good enough/it's all I need to mention to quell any challenge about it" tactic. Which, given that he seems to lean towards the consensus theory of truth, isn't surprising, but it's a really lame approach to doing philosophy.

Re abstracts, I don't know if it was clear to you before that my take on them is that abstraction is a particular sort of way that we think about things, where we gloss over differences in a number of particulars to create a conceptual category that can arch over the particulars in question and conceptually lump them all together as "the same thing." (This can also be done with respect to thinking itself--for example, the way that we think about relations, which results in concepts of logic and mathematics.) As such, on my view, abstraction amounts to particular, concrete events in our brains. (So in this sense, I fall into the "conceptualist" camp of nominalism--universals are concepts we devise via the process of abstraction, where those concepts are particular, concrete brain events.)

Thanks - that's helpful. As you know, I think talk of concepts and conceptual categories fools us into thinking we've grasped something beneath or behind our linguistic practices - so that the referent of a common noun, such as dog must be something somewhere. Ah, it's a concept - and where are concepts? - ah, in the mind. So minds must be things of some kind that contain things of some kind. And so on.

We're bewidered and dazzled by the devices of our language. And we want a foundation, to guarantee that the names we use are, somehow, 'correct', and that our descriptions are true. So where's that foundation? Ah, it's either in reality or in our minds.

There's no foundation, for what we say, beneath our linguistic practices. They constitute everything we say about everything.

[Belindi]

Peter Holmes wrote:

There's no foundation, for what we say, beneath our linguistic practices. They constitute everything we say about everything.

The foundation beneath language is social. Language is social behaviour. Social behaviour evolved by natural selection and it preserves the genes and the individual gene carriers.

Environments are part and parcel of staying alive, and learned and/or instinctive behaviours tend towards harmonising with environments.

Humans may buck the trend as described by inventing ideologies that don't harmonise with environments. Language is thereby prostituted in aid of malfunctioning human purposes. However language remains social behaviour.

[Peter Holmes]

Peter Holmes wrote:

There's no foundation, for what we say, beneath our linguistic practices. They constitute everything we say about everything.

The foundation beneath language is social. Language is social behaviour. Social behaviour evolved by natural selection and it preserves the genes and the individual gene carriers.

Environments are part and parcel of staying alive, and learned and/or instinctive behaviours tend towards harmonising with environments.

Humans may buck the trend as described by inventing ideologies that don't harmonise with environments. Language is thereby prostituted in aid of malfunctioning human purposes. However language remains social behaviour.

I agree with much of this. But I said 'There's no foundation, for what we say, beneath our linguistic practices. Those practices are social, of course. But when we talk about them - and about language itself - we have no choice but to use language, following our linguistic practices. It's our inescapable predicament.

[Belindi]

Peter Holmes wrote:

we have no choice but to use language, following our linguistic practices. It's our inescapable predicament.

I guess when you say "language" in the context of objectivity you refer to symbolic codes but not to the signs and signals that we and other animals use? My dog gets a lot of information from smells which are not symbols but are unwitting signs or deliberate signals.

[Peter Holmes]

Peter Holmes wrote:

we have no choice but to use language, following our linguistic practices. It's our inescapable predicament.

I guess when you say "language" in the context of objectivity you refer to symbolic codes but not to the signs and signals that we and other animals use? My dog gets a lot of information from smells which are not symbols but are unwitting signs or deliberate signals.

Fair point. I think there's an unbroken continuity between the communication that many species use - by no means only the higher primates - and human language, which evolved in the way you describe.

How that relates to what we call symbolic codes and objectivity is interesting. I'm inclined to think the change to symbolic codes didn't represent an absolute break - but I haven't thought that through, and I don't know about academic research in that area. Are you au the faits?

[Belindi]

Peter Holmes wrote:

I'm inclined to think the change to symbolic codes didn't represent an absolute break - but I haven't thought that through, and I don't know about academic research in that area. Are you au the faits?

I too am inclined to think so.My own studies in linguistics were about forty years ago and I have not revised anything. I think Chomsky was investigating the symbolising 'instinct' if such it is. He having already studied the grammar 'instinct'. BTW these are my own words and interpretation so don't take them as gospel truth.

[Peter Holmes]

Peter Holmes wrote:

I'm inclined to think the change to symbolic codes didn't represent an absolute break - but I haven't thought that through, and I don't know about academic research in that area. Are you au the faits?

I too am inclined to think so.My own studies in linguistics were about forty years ago and I have not revised anything. I think Chomsky was investigating the symbolising 'instinct' if such it is. He having already studied the grammar 'instinct'. BTW these are my own words and interpretation so don't take them as gospel truth.

Thanks. My knowledge stopped with Chomsky - and I never really understood the deep grammar idea anyway, or worked out why I didn't like it. No doubt things have moved on. So much to learn, and so little time.

[Belindi]

Chomsky is possibly the best to study for psycholinguistics but not for sociolinguistics.

Insofar as what makes morality objective is a matter of what the human psyche is then psycholinguistics is the academic area of choice.

[Peter Holmes]

Chomsky is possibly the best to study for psycholinguistics but not for sociolinguistics.

Insofar as what makes morality objective is a matter of what the human psyche is then psycholinguistics is the academic area of choice.

Thanks for that - more for the in-tray!

As you know, I think morality can't be objective, and that no 'is' entails an 'ought'. So facts about the human psyche - even if it exists and whatever it is - can't make moral assertions factual. Forms of that delusion go way back to at least Aristotle.

[Terrapin Station]

No. Only evidence for the existence of certain classes of things is sensory phenomena (which is what I think you mean by "phenomenal occurrences").

As always, a pet peeve is when people parse the world as if it "revolves around us." "Phenomenal occurrences" isn't necessarily referring to us.

Different sorts of evidence are germane to other classes of things. For example, a valid proof is evidence that a that a largest prime does not exist;

Mathematics is just a way of thinking about (quantificational) relations. Mathematical objects do not exist period.

your ability to state what you ate for breakfast is evidence that memory exists; that a mother sacrifices herself to save her child is evidence that love exists; that some new way of doing something proves superior to previous methods is evidence that ideas exist; that you hand me the salt shaker in response to my request, "Please pass the salt," is evidence that meanings (for words) exist and that we both know what they are for those words. I.e., we don't confirm the existence of love, ideas, meanings, mathematical entities, by looking at them or touching them.

Mental events or processes are phenomenal occurrences, too. Memory, love, ideas, value assessments (including an assessment that something is superior), meanings, are all mental events/processes.

Also, behavior is never the same as mental events or processes. Behavior--which is a phenomenal occurrence--is often taken as evidence of particular mental events or processes, but behavior is never the SAME as those mental events or processes. ("Behavior" here referring to publicly observable phenomena by other humans). It's just like this text appearing on your screen is evidence of the software running your computer, but it's not identical to the software running your computer (and neither would be the software "code"-as-text--that by itself can't run the computer. What runs the computer is electrical processes on the circuit board, etc.)

LOL. What do you think "something mobile living in the forest" is, other than an explanation for your sensory experience provided by our common conceptual scheme? Every concrete entity you name, and exalt as paradigms of "reality," are constructs invented to explain, to render coherent, an otherwise chaotic kaleidoscope of sensory impressions. (Highly useful constructs, but constructs nonetheless).

It's hilarious that you wrote this right after I said, "A normal lame objection to comments like I just made is to point out that I'm describing the phenomenal occurrence in conceptual terms, etc." But there you went ahead with it anyway.

It's not a matter of typing or articulating. You can make no sense of sensory impressions without a conceptual scheme.

That's not at all the case. A large percentage of my perceptual awareness has nothing at all to do with assigning concepts to anything.

Maybe your mind works very differently than mine does, though.

[Belindi]

Peter Holmes wrote:

As you know, I think morality can't be objective, and that no 'is' entails an 'ought'. So facts about the human psyche - even if it exists and whatever it is - can't make moral assertions factual. Forms of that delusion go way back to at least Aristotle.

There is a great need for morality to be objective and so I will not give up the notion that is can entail ought.

In the end, is entails ought is like theism as it's based on faith in pre-existing order. Gods vary in their personalities and personhood, but orderedness and cause of itself is basic to all creator gods. Nature is ordered is more probable than nature is random.

Obviously humans are terribly disordered . Humans are not subject to natural selection any more as our behaviour is controlled by artificial cultures which take on inertias peculiar to themselves. Think of the religious fighting and grief in India at present as an example of unnatural behaviour. The natural reasoning man is a moral man.

[Terrapin Station]

There is a great need for morality to be objective and so I will not give up the notion that is can entail ought.

What do you see as that great need? It seems to me like it would be better to realize what morality really is and to deal with that sensibly.

[GE Morton]

As always, a pet peeve is when people parse the world as if it "revolves around us." "Phenomenal occurrences" isn't necessarily referring to us.

Oh? Then to what is it referring? Among philosophers of mind since Descartes and Kant, "phenomena" generally denotes the subjective experience of sentient creatures.

Mathematics is just a way of thinking about (quantificational) relations. Mathematical objects do not exist period.

Wow. Prime numbers do not exist? The square root of two does not exist? Those claims would have a chorus of mathematicians chuckling at how silly metaphysicians can be.

. . . your ability to state what you ate for breakfast is evidence that memory exists; that a mother sacrifices herself to save her child is evidence that love exists; that some new way of doing something proves superior to previous methods is evidence that ideas exist; that you hand me the salt shaker in response to my request, "Please pass the salt," is evidence that meanings (for words) exist and that we both know what they are for those words. I.e., we don't confirm the existence of love, ideas, meanings, mathematical entities, by looking at them or touching them.

Mental events or processes are phenomenal occurrences, too. Memory, love, ideas, value assessments (including an assessment that something is superior), meanings, are all mental events/processes.

I agree. And they exist. Right?

Also, behavior is never the same as mental events or processes. Behavior--which is a phenomenal occurrence--is often taken as evidence of particular mental events or processes, but behavior is never the SAME as those mental events or processes.

Again, we agree. Though using "phenomenal occurrence" that way, in this context, is eccentric.

LOL. What do you think "something mobile living in the forest" is, other than an explanation for your sensory experience provided by our common conceptual scheme? Every concrete entity you name, and exalt as paradigms of "reality," are constructs invented to explain, to render coherent, an otherwise chaotic kaleidoscope of sensory impressions. (Highly useful constructs, but constructs nonetheless).

It's hilarious that you wrote this right after I said, "A normal lame objection to comments like I just made is to point out that I'm describing the phenomenal occurrence in conceptual terms, etc." But there you went ahead with it anyway.

Well, is it false? But you're not merely describing it in conceptual terms. You can't even think about it, much less understand it, except in those conceptual terms.

That's not at all the case. A large percentage of my perceptual awareness has nothing at all to do with assigning concepts to anything.

If you're speaking of "raw percepts," then that is true, of course (by definition). But if you are social human fluent in some language you will sort and organize those percepts per the conceptual scheme you've learned, whether you want to or not.