On The Deflationary Theory

[Stroopwafel]

Just trying to understand..I am so elementary at this.  But what is the difference between REAL and TRUTH?

 

This is my take on it.

 

Often times we tend to use both terms to mean the same, but in a strict sense, "real", or "reality" is what actually exist, while "truth" is a property applied to our description of our experience of the "real", or "reality", and gives the measure of how accurate it is with reality. That's it.

 

Maybe you've done that already, but I suggest you read up the wikipedia articles on Truth and on Reality. Actually, I'm gonna read them up as well. It's always good to brush up on those concepts. I just hope I won't find out that I ended up giving you an awful answer to your very appropriate question. Good reading!

Edited July 6, 2015 by Stroopwafel

[mfbukowski]

We cannot apply truth/falsity to subjective statements such as "The Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings..." or "Tis Juliette, and she is the sun...." the same way we would to objective statements because saying that they true or false isn't superfluous at all. It is saying something.

Sorry I don't have a clue what this means. How does one determine the truth or falsity of "Juliette is the sun"? Obviously it is false. So what does that add to the meaning of the statement? Nothing. The statement is not designed to be "true" or "false", it is a poetic metaphor.

We say that the sentence "snow is white" is true because it corresponds to reality, and doing so distinguishes this particular proposition from all the others, such as "snow is yellow with green polka dots", etc. So in that sense, how is that superfluous?

 

Again. I am not sure what you are saying at all.  Snow is white.  It is not yellow with green polka dots.  Saying one is true and the other false is so obvious it adds nothing to the original statement.   When you see some polka dot snow, if ever, it will also be obvious that it is polka dot and still will not add anything.

 .

I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that you put objective and subjective statements on the same footing

 

Yep you got it.   If you don't believe that you saying that you have a pain in your toe is a justified belief, wait until you have a pain in your toe and figure out if you are justified in believing you are having a pain in your toe.

 

Do you really doubt that you love your wife?  Do you doubt you are reading this question?  Do you doubt that you are angry when you feel angry?

 

Yes, I am absolutely positive that subjective statements are just as justifiable as objective ones.   When my toe hurts and I say so, I have no doubt that that belief that my toe hurts is just as justified as the belief that water boils at 212 degrees.  I am absolutely certain that I have a good reason to believe both of those propositions- that water boils at 212 degrees and that my toe hurts when it hurts.

 

Do you really have a problem with that?

 

I do not think I am hallucinating while driving the freeway nor do think I am a brain in a vat.  I believe I have good reasons to NOT believe those statements even though my data is subjective.

 

Likewise, when I say "I have a testimony", I do in fact have a testimony.  Yes, I really do believe that the subjective feeling that God has given me certain feelings is completely a justifiable belief.   I am surprised you do not believe such a belief is justified.

 

In the end, I mean, I get it that truth isn't a property of being per se, but "the sun revolves around the earth" is simply an assertion until we can add that it is "true"

 

.You can't mean that.  You mean that you have to add "it is true" to every assertion ???  You can't just say the snow is white or water boils at 212 degrees?

 

I find that troubling.  Of course we do that all the time.  I have never ever walked up to my wife and said "The assertion that 'I love you' is true"

 

I never told my kids "The assertion that it is bed time is true".

 

We then may say that this particular assertion does correspond to objective reality. Yes, it may just be another paradigm shift going from Newton to Einstein, but in this process, we are getting closer and closer to something. Through the application of its mind, human being is un-veiling appearances and acquires surer knowledge about reality.

 

That belief is not justified without checking what we allegedly "know" against "reality".

 

In fact it is itself contradictory, because it presupposes that we already KNOW everything about "reality" so that we can assert that "Yep- now we are closer to reality"!

 

How could you possibly know we are now "closer to reality" without any already knowing what reality IS so that you can judge that our present position is "closer"???

 

What exactly are we closer to , and how can we know that?   Yes we have machines that work better and we can survive on the moon or mars in human-created worlds which we have organized from matter unorganized.

 

Sound just a little familiar?

 

Please tell me you can see the problem with this approach?

[mfbukowski]

This is my take on it.

 

Often times we tend to use both terms to mean the same, but in a strict sense, "real", or "reality" is what actually exist, while "truth" is a property applied to our description of our experience of the "real", or "reality", and gives the measure of how accurate it is with reality. That's it.

 

Maybe you've done that already, but I suggest you read up the wikipedia articles on Truth and on Reality. Actually, I'm gonna read them up as well. It's always good to brush up on those concepts. I just hope I won't find out that I ended up giving you an awful answer to your very appropriate question. Good reading!

"Brush up?"

 

Yeah indeed that is a good idea.  It will save me a lot of 'splainin'.

 

I am a social constructivist.   I believe that humans create reality.

 

That is very convenient because.... wait for it.... God is a Human.   Obviously if God organizes reality, humans must be able to organize reality by defining it out of matter unorganized.

 

Honestly I do not understand how you can be LDS and not believe that God, as an exalted, perfected Human organized worlds without number.   If you believe that God, as a human, did that, you too are a social constructivist.

 

The Godhead is a social trinity and we are all gods in embryo who do what our Father taught us.

 

I believe that understanding this is essential to creating a framework on which to base an LDS way of seeing the worlds.

Edited July 6, 2015 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

This is my take on it.

 

Often times we tend to use both terms to mean the same, but in a strict sense, "real", or "reality" is what actually exist, while "truth" is a property applied to our description of our experience of the "real", or "reality", and gives the measure of how accurate it is with reality. That's it.

 

Maybe you've done that already, but I suggest you read up the wikipedia articles on Truth and on Reality. Actually, I'm gonna read them up as well. It's always good to brush up on those concepts. I just hope I won't find out that I ended up giving you an awful answer to your very appropriate question. Good reading!

While you are brushing up, you might actually want to understand a little more about "Will and Representation" and what good old Schopenhauer thought about subjectivity. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/#4

 

4. The World as Will

It is a perennial philosophical reflection that if one looks deeply enough into oneself, one will discover not only one's own essence, but also the essence of the universe. For as one is a part of the universe as is everything else, the basic energies of the universe flow through oneself, as they flow through everything else. So it is thought that one can come into contact with the nature of the universe if one comes into substantial contact with one's ultimate inner being.

Among the most frequently-identified principles that are introspectively brought forth — and one that was the standard for German Idealist philosophers such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel who were philosophizing within the Cartesian tradition — is the principle of self-consciousness. With the belief that acts of self-consciousness exemplify a self-creative process akin to divine creation, and developing a logic that reflects the structure of self-consciousness, namely, the dialectical logic of position, opposition and reconciliation (sometimes described as the logic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis), the German Idealists maintained that dialectical logic mirrors the structure not only of human productions, both individual and social, but the structure of reality as a whole, conceived of as a thinking substance.

As much as he opposes the traditional German Idealists in their metaphysical elevation of self-consciousness (which he regards as too intellectualistic), Schopenhauer stands within the spirit of this tradition, for he believes that the supreme principle of the universe is likewise apprehensible through introspection, and that we can philosophically understand the world as various manifestations of this general principle. For Schopenhauer, this is not the principle of self-consciousness and rationally-infused will, but is rather what he simply calls “Will” — a mindless, aimless, non-rational urge at the foundation of our instinctual drives, and at the foundational being of everything. Schopenhauer's originality does not reside in his characterization of the world as Will, or as act — for we encounter this position in Fichte's philosophy — but in the conception of Will as being devoid of rationality or intellect.

Having rejected the Kantian position that our sensations are caused by an unknowable object that exists independently of us, Schopenhauer notes importantly that our body — which is just one among the many objects in the world — is given to us in two different ways: we perceive our body as a physical object among other physical objects, subject to the natural laws that govern the movements of all physical objects, and we are aware of our body through our immediate awareness, as we each consciously inhabit our body, intentionally move it, and feel directly our pleasures, pains, and emotional states. We can objectively perceive our hand as an external object, as a surgeon might perceive it during a medical operation, and we can also be subjectively aware of our hand as something we inhabit, as something we willfully move, and of which we can feel its inner muscular workings.

From this observation, Schopenhauer asserts that among all the objects in the universe, there is only one object, relative to each of us — namely, our physical body — that is given in two entirely different ways. It is given as representation (i.e., objectively; externally) and as Will (i.e., subjectively; internally). One of his intriguing conclusions is that when we move our hand, this is not to be comprehended as a motivational act that first happens, and then causes the movement of our hand as an effect. He maintains that the movement of our hand is but a single act — again, like the two sides of a coin — that has a subjective feeling of willing as one of its aspects, and the movement of the hand as the other. More generally, he adds that the action of the body is nothing but the act of Will objectified, that is, translated into perception.

At this point in his argumentation, Schopenhauer has established only that among his many ideas, or representations, only one of them (viz., the [complex] representation of his body) has this special double-aspected quality. When he perceives the moon or a mountain, he does not under ordinary circumstances have any direct access to the metaphysical inside of such objects; they remain as representations that reveal to him only their objective side. Schopenhauer asks, though, how he might understand the world as an integrated whole, or how he might render his entire field of perception more comprehensible, for as things stand, he can directly experience the inside of one of his representations, but of no others. To answer this question, he uses the double-knowledge of his own body as the key to the inner being of every other natural phenomenon: he regards — as if he were trying to make the notion of universal empathy theoretically possible — every object in the world as being metaphysically double-aspected, and as having an inside or inner aspect of its own, just as his consciousness is the inner aspect of his own body. For such reasons, he rejects Descartes's causal interactionism, where thinking substance is said to cause changes in an independent material substance and vice-versa.

What I am asserting is just a later development of phenomenology and pragmatism, positions in which Schopenhaur can be seen as a pioneer. Edited July 6, 2015 by mfbukowski

[tagriffy]

I am always stunned at this kind of question- and let me assure you that this is a common question.

 

But it just shows how brainwashed we are in thinking about appearances vs reality.  I have been thinking this way now for 45 plus years and this question always still surprises me.

 

Science IS the rigorous categorization of appearances, with man made stories for interpretations.

 

 

I've snipped here to keep the post from being too long, but I will have reference to other things you've said.

 

My question was about the point of doing science and scholarship if appearance (closer to "perception" in my terms, see below) is reality, not the process of doing science and scholarship (so you are right there is no need to belabor paradigm shifts). There isn't any reason to point our telescopes into the sky, to use different senses, to engage different points of view, to make new observations, to rigorously categorize appearances, if appearance is reality.

 

 

Some clarifications are necessary, but I'm not sure how to capture what I'm saying. You said,

 

 

Let's take your position for a moment.  Appearances are NOT reality, appearances are the mirages and statements about reality are the source of "truth"

 

That's not quite my position. It is not appearances that are subject to the standard of what is true and false. It is our perceptions and statements thereof. We see something we think is water but it turns out to be an optical illusion. Or we see something we think is an optical illusion and it turns out to be a substance that causes our cars to skid and fishtail. I think we've managed to conflate things that ought to have been kept discrete. You seem to be using the term "appearances" to be functionally equivalent to "facts." If such is the case, then you are right--appearance is reality.

 

Now on to "reality," as in the base standard for distinguishing true and false and whether correspondence to "reality" adds anything to a statement. The context of a statement does matter (one reason I said to note the quote marks). So pretty much everything I have to say now comes with due caveats, but I think there will be enough to get going on with.

 

Let's start with something you used as an example to Stroopwafel. You say, "My toe hurts." Does it add anything to say "It is true my toe hurts"? Well, yes. Basically, you are saying you are telling the truth; you are not lying. And what makes that statement the truth? The reality of a sensation coming from your toe that is painful. If you are not, in reality, experiencing such a sensation, you are lying--the statement "My toe hurts" is false.

 

Let's move on to "Snow is white." Between you and me, you are quite correct in saying that it is so obviously true that snow is white that adding it is true adds nothing to the statement. Indeed, between you and me, saying "Snow is white" is so obvious that it goes without saying at all. So why would I say it in the first place? Because I am describing snow, most likely to someone who doesn't know what it is. And if I am describing something, I am most certainly representing what I say is true, i.e., I am making a representation that corresponds to reality. Moreover, my listener will also most certainly expect my description will align with reality. If snow is not white, then I am making a false statement; whether I'm lying or simply is a different matter.

 

Science and scholarship is, as you say, the cataloging and categorization of appearances. So we're in reality from the get go. The cataloging part is not so much of a problem, while categorization is. Theories are basically a categorization of the catalog. A theory works insofar as it accounts for the catalog, which keeps on growing. When the categorization no longer accounts for the catalog, new categorizations have to be tried. But reality is always the reference point. Without reality--the catalog--one simply can't do science and scholarship.

 

What does "reality" add to the discussion? Basically, everything.

 

You're right the correspondence theory is used by atheists all the time. That isn't the problem in my view. If the "burning in the bosom" really is just heartburn and not God making something manifest to you, then the actions we're going to take are going to be radically different. So if you have a "burning in the bosom," it wouldn't be such a bad idea to eliminate heartburn as the cause. Their problem is not the correspondence theory, it's that they think too small when it comes to "reality."

Edited July 6, 2015 by tagriffy

[Ahab]

I am sorry- these are circular. You are not addressing the problem- you repeatedly use "true" and "false" without any definition of what that could mean in your statements.

I like you, but if you keep doing this, I cannot respond every time. Sorry bro!

True = in correspondence with reality, either as reality was, or is, or will be

False = not in correspondence with reality, either as it was, or is, or will be

And btw, the best any of us can do to show someone that something corresponds to reality is to either just show them what truly corresponds to reality or give them an explanation to explain how it does. Like how some mathematicians use formulas or how some people use words to correctly explain things to other people.

Not that any of that or this will absolutely convince someone that something is true. Heck, some people won't even truly listen or pay proper attention to what is presented to them.

[mfbukowski]

I've snipped here to keep the post from being too long, but I will have reference to other things you've said.

 

My question was about the point of doing science and scholarship if appearance (closer to "perception" in my terms, see below) is reality, not the process of doing science and scholarship (so you are right there is no need to belabor paradigm shifts). There isn't any reason to point our telescopes into the sky, to use different senses, to engage different points of view, to make new observations, to rigorously categorize appearances, if appearance is reality.

 

 

Some clarifications are necessary, but I'm not sure how to capture what I'm saying. You said,

 

 

That's not quite my position. It is not appearances that are subject to the standard of what is true and false. It is our perceptions and statements thereof. We see something we think is water but it turns out to be an optical illusion. Or we see something we think is an optical illusion and it turns out to be a substance that causes our cars to skid and fishtail. I think we've managed to conflate things that ought to have been kept discrete. You seem to be using the term "appearances" to be functionally equivalent to "facts." If such is the case, then you are right--appearance is reality.

 

Now on to "reality," as in the base standard for distinguishing true and false and whether correspondence to "reality" adds anything to a statement. The context of a statement does matter (one reason I said to note the quote marks). So pretty much everything I have to say now comes with due caveats, but I think there will be enough to get going on with.

 

Let's start with something you used as an example to Stroopwafel. You say, "My toe hurts." Does it add anything to say "It is true my toe hurts"? Well, yes. Basically, you are saying you are telling the truth; you are not lying. And what makes that statement the truth? The reality of a sensation coming from your toe that is painful. If you are not, in reality, experiencing such a sensation, you are lying--the statement "My toe hurts" is false.

 

Let's move on to "Snow is white." Between you and me, you are quite correct in saying that it is so obviously true that snow is white that adding it is true adds nothing to the statement. Indeed, between you and me, saying "Snow is white" is so obvious that it goes without saying at all. So why would I say it in the first place? Because I am describing snow, most likely to someone who doesn't know what it is. And if I am describing something, I am most certainly representing what I say is true, i.e., I am making a representation that corresponds to reality. Moreover, my listener will also most certainly expect my description will align with reality. If snow is not white, then I am making a false statement; whether I'm lying or simply is a different matter.

 

Science and scholarship is, as you say, the cataloging and categorization of appearances. So we're in reality from the get go. The cataloging part is not so much of a problem, while categorization is. Theories are basically a categorization of the catalog. A theory works insofar as it accounts for the catalog, which keeps on growing. When the categorization no longer accounts for the catalog, new categorizations have to be tried. But reality is always the reference point. Without reality--the catalog--one simply can't do science and scholarship.

 

What does "reality" add to the discussion? Basically, everything.

 

You're right the correspondence theory is used by atheists all the time. That isn't the problem in my view. If the "burning in the bosom" really is just heartburn and not God making something manifest to you, then the actions we're going to take are going to be radically different. So if you have a "burning in the bosom," it wouldn't be such a bad idea to eliminate heartburn as the cause. Their problem is not the correspondence theory, it's that they think too small when it comes to "reality."

I think this is a wonderful discussion because in fact it follows the progression of this idea historically in the history of philosophy

It's like we have ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny mixed with Yogi Berra and deja vu all over again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory

 

In effect we are interpersonally repeating the history of how this idea evolved.

 

We have now arrived at how Wittgenstein and Rorty spoke about the problem- and it is now clear in our discussion that the problem between us is "semantic"- we are discussing language itself and how these ideas are expressed.

 

Before all this we were talking about "reality" and "appearances" when in fact the underlying issue is language itself.   Suppose we now pop the discussion "out" to being a discussion about language and not the words themselves, because that is the problem we are having.  This is where "ordinary language philosophy" comes from.

 

This is a wonderful essay by Rorty on precisely this issue: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/rorty.htm

 

When reading Rorty it is important to know that though he was technically an atheist, he was highly sympathetic to Mormonism- indeed his agnostic wife was raised LDS. 

 

When he disparages "God" remember he is disparaging a "god" in which we do not believe- he is speaking of the old image of a transcendent Platonic god who is anything but "human"

 

He constantly reaffirms that he could believe in a human god who is a "friend" of humanity.  Obviously that is the God we worship.

 

Suppose we talk more about "linguistic interpretations of our sensations" instead of talking about "reality"?

 

Think about it.  That is all we have really to discuss because those words define "discussion".   All we have been saying is "THIS is THAT" - ("reality is/ is not  appearance")

 

Really we have been talking about words all along and clearly the words themselves have gotten in the way.  From the essay:

 

 

This Davidsonian way of looking at language lets us avoid hypostatising Language in the way in which the Cartesian epistemological tradition, and particularly the idealist tradition which built upon Kant, hypostatised Thought. For it lets us see language not as a tertium quid between Subject and Object, nor as a medium in which we try to form pictures of reality, but as part of the behaviour of human beings. On this view, the activity of uttering sentences is one of the things people do in order to cope with their environment. The Deweyan notion of language as tool rather than picture is right as far as it goes. But we must be careful not to phrase this analogy so as to suggest that one can separate the tool, Language, from its users and inquire as to its “adequacy” to achieve our purposes. The latter suggestion presupposes that there is some way of breaking out of language in order to compare it with something else. But there is no way to think about either the world or our purposes except by using our language. One can use language to criticise and enlarge itself, as one can exercise one’s body to develop and strengthen and enlarge it, but one cannot see language-as-a-whole in relation to something else to which it applies, or for which it is a means to an end. The arts and the sciences, and philosophy as their self-reflection and integration, constitute such a process. of enlargement and strengthening. But Philosophy, the attempt to say “how language relates to the world” by saying what makes certain sentences true, or certain actions or attitudes good or rational, is, on this view, impossible.

It is the impossible attempt to step outside our skins – the traditions, linguistic and other, within which we do our thinking and self-criticism – and compare ourselves with something absolute. This Platonic urge to escape from the finitude of one’s time and place, the “merely conventional” and contingent aspects of one’s life, is responsible for the original Platonic distinction between two kinds of true sentence. By attacking this latter distinction, the holistic “pragmaticising” strain in analytic philosophy has helped us see how the metaphysical urge – common to fuzzy Whiteheadians and razor-sharp “scientific realists” – works. It has helped us be sceptical about the idea that some particular science (say physics) or some particular literary genre (say Romantic poetry, or transcendental philosophy) gives us that species of true sentence which is not just a true sentence, but rather a piece of Truth itself. Such sentences may be very useful indeed, but there is not going to be a Philosophical explanation of this utility. That explanation, like the original justification of the assertion of the sentence, will be a parochial matter – a comparison of the sentence with alternative sentences formulated in the same or in other vocabularies. But such comparisons are the business of, for example, the physicist or the poet, or perhaps of the philosopher – not of the Philosopher, the outside expert on the utility, or function, or metaphysical status of Language or of Thought.

The Wittgenstein-Sellars-Quine-Davidson attack on distinctions between classes of sentences is the special contribution of analytic philosophy to the anti-Platonist insistence on the ubiquity of language. This insistence characterises both pragmatism and recent “Continental” philosophising. Here are some examples:

Man makes the word, and the word means nothing which the man has not made it mean, and that only to some other man. But since man can think only by means of words or other external symbols, these might turn around and say: You mean nothing which we have not taught you, and then only so far as you address some word as the interpretant of your thought... ... . the word or sign which man uses is the man himself Thus my language is the sum-total of myself; for the man is the thought. (Peirce)

Peirce goes very far in the direction that I have called the de-construction of the transcendental signified, which, at one time or another, would place a reassuring end to the reference from sign to sign. (Derrida)

... psychological nominalism, according to which all awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc., in short all awareness of abstract entities – indeed, all awareness even of particulars – is a linguistic affair. (Sellars)

It is only in language that one can mean something by something. (Wittgenstein)

Human experience is essentially linguistic. (Gadamer)

... man is in the process of perishing as the being of language continues to shine ever brighter upon our horizon. (Foucault)

Speaking about language turns language almost inevitably into an object ... and then its reality vanishes. (Heidegger)

This chorus should not, however, lead us to think that something new and exciting has recently been discovered about Language – e.g., that it is more prevalent than had previously been thought. The authors cited are making only negative points. They are saying that attempts to get back behind language to something which “grounds” it, or which it “expresses,” or to which it might hope to be “adequate,” have not, worked. The ubiquity of language is a matter of language moving into the vacancies left by the failure of all the various candidates for the position of “natural starting-points” of thought, starting-points which are prior to and independent of the way some culture speaks or spoke. (Candidates for such starting-points include clear and distinct ideas, sense-data, categories of the pure understanding, structures of prelinguistic consciousness, and the like.) Peirce and Sellars and Wittgenstein are saying that the regress – of interpretation cannot be cut off by the sort of “intuition” which Cartesian epistemology took for granted. Gadamer and Derrida are saying that our culture has been dominated by the notion of a “transcendental signified” which, by cutting off this regress, would bring us out from contingency and convention and into the Truth. Foucault is saying that we are gradually losing our grip on the “metaphysical comfort” which that Philosophical tradition provided – its picture of Man as having a “double” (the soul, the Noumenal Self) who uses Reality’s own language rather than merely the vocabulary of a time and a place. Finally, Heidegger is cautioning that if we try to make Language into a new topic of Philosophical inquiry we shall simply recreate the hopeless old Philosophical puzzles which we used to raise about Being or Thought.

 

Yes this is long and yes the terminology might be hard for folks not familiar with thinking this way

 

But part of this exercise for me is telling those who do not understand the real issues here that there ARE real issues here which have a history and have been considered extremely important by philosophers.

 

This is not Bukowski telling his "matrix stories again".  

 

And think about this. 

 

If anyone lives in a socially constructed world created by language and a particular way of thinking about things, Mormons do.   I think that is pretty inescapable.

[Mormonmaniac]

"It's like we have ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny mixed with Yogi Berra and deja vu all over again."

I don't think anyone can interpret this sentence.

I am more convinced now that no one can make any sense of this entire dialogue on this thread.

[Calm]

And if you are convinced of that then more than likely you won't be able to.

[mfbukowski]

It was kind of a filter.

[mfbukowski]

"It's like we have ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny mixed with Yogi Berra and deja vu all over again."

I don't think anyone can interpret this sentence.

I am more convinced now that no one can make any sense of this entire dialogue on this thread.

"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is a famous phrase which says that the development of a baby in the womb repeats evolutionary stages.  At one point, the embryo has gills like a fish and then develops other characteristics of higher animals etc as it develops.

 

Yogi Berra was a baseball player famous for his poor grammar mixed with brilliant insights on the human condition.  Deja vu is the experience that "we have been through this all before".  So Yogi was essentially making a joke in saying "we have experienced this before, all over again".  The repetition of the phrase echoes the idea that it has happened before, so it is operating on three levels of saying the same thing- the words "deja vu", the words "all over again" and indeed the link between the two shows another repetition.

 

The point I was making was that the discussion itself was repeating the history of philosophy, starting with the question of what "reality" is and then progressing to realizing that the very question itself was a linguistic one- and indeed philosophy has ended in linguistic discussion.  Philosophy is over.  All people talk about in philosophy departments is how we talk about philosophy, not philosophy itself.

 

So I was drawing a parallel between the development of an embryo repeating the development of the species with what was happening in the discussion- we were repeating the history of philosophical discussion right here in this thread.

 

But it is becoming clear that this is not a discussion for most on the board, but a few who are interested in these things.

 

You know, kind of like a discussion of gay marriage.  

 

Participation is not required.

[mfbukowski]

These are quotes of other philosophers who have made the point far better than I can.  The quotes come from the article above I quoted in post 32.

 

This really boils down the issue to where we perhaps should have started, and might be an easier topic for discussion, after removing all the mumbo jumbo and cutting to the chase:
 

 

Man makes the word, and the word means nothing which the man has not made it mean, and that only to some other man. But since man can think only by means of words or other external symbols, these might turn around and say: You mean nothing which we have not taught you, and then only so far as you address some word as the interpretant of your thought... ... . the word or sign which man uses is the man himself Thus my language is the sum-total of myself; for the man is the thought. (Peirce)

Peirce goes very far in the direction that I have called the de-construction of the transcendental signified, which, at one time or another, would place a reassuring end to the reference from sign to sign. (Derrida)

... psychological nominalism, according to which all awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc., in short all awareness of abstract entities – indeed, all awareness even of particulars – is a linguistic affair. (Sellars)

It is only in language that one can mean something by something. (Wittgenstein)

Human experience is essentially linguistic. (Gadamer)

... man is in the process of perishing as the being of language continues to shine ever brighter upon our horizon. (Foucault)

Speaking about language turns language almost inevitably into an object ... and then its reality vanishes. (Heidegger)

 

I have emphasized the most important quote, I think which shows that we cannot escape language.  We just cannot.  Every discussion obviously takes place in language.

 

There is no way we can discuss "reality" without a humanized way of thinking- language- intruding as it were on the discussion of an alleged "reality" outside of language.

 

It just can't be done.  Any possible reply will be in language.  If anything is an "Immutable truth" it is that we cannot discuss "truth" at all without using words.

 

And the point is that that itself limits the discussion.

 

Words get in the way.  We speak of "perception" and "reality" and "appearances" and "interpretations", but when I speak about anything, THINGS do not come out of my mouth. ABSTRACT MANMADE SYMBOLS COME OUT OF MY MOUTH.

 

Words are not "reality".  Words are not "things".  Perhaps words are "ideas" or "concepts", but any way you look at it, language is manmade.

 

There is an irreparable divide between words and things, so much so that it really doesn't even make sense to talk about "things" but WHAT WE CALL THEM.

 

Even the idea that there is a "correspondence" CONFIRMS that words are not things!!   Even on the correspondence theory, words "correspond" to reality.

 

How do they "correspond"????   Are they pictures?  No.  What the heck are they??  Can you explain how they allegedly "correspond"?  They are sounds uttered by a human mouth.  They are abstract squiggles on a page.

 

They are not chairs and tables, cars and trees.  They are not ham sandwiches, you cannot build a house out of words.

 

All you can do with them is communicate with other humans who know what language is and knows how to use it.

 

No one else in the history of thought has been able to do that, so good luck.

 

There has never been a way around it and there still isn't.

 

And why would we as LDS fight an idea which helps us see why the "church is true"???   This is a total mystery to me.

 

Our faith is based on a spiritual society of human exalted beings who organize reality by the Word.   All things that are organized are organized by the Word.

 

And we fight that????   We want the Word to merely "correspond" to some Platonic pagan ideal???   We want to take the creation away from the WORD?

 

What the heck is wrong with us?????

[Ahab]

These are quotes of other philosophers who have made the point far better than I can. The quotes come from the article above I quoted in post 32.

This really boils down the issue to where we perhaps should have started, and might be an easier topic for discussion, after removing all the mumbo jumbo and cutting to the chase:

I have emphasized the most important quote, I think which shows that we cannot escape language. We just cannot. Every discussion obviously takes place in language.

There is no way we can discuss "reality" without a humanized way of thinking- language- intruding as it were on the discussion of an alleged "reality" outside of language.

It just can't be done. Any possible reply will be in language. If anything is an "Immutable truth" it is that we cannot discuss "truth" at all without using words.

And the point is that that itself limits the discussion.

Words get in the way. We speak of "perception" and "reality" and "appearances" and "interpretations", but when I speak about anything, THINGS do not come out of my mouth. ABSTRACT MANMADE SYMBOLS COME OUT OF MY MOUTH.

Words are not "reality". Words are not "things". Perhaps words are "ideas" or "concepts", but any way you look at it, language is manmade.

There is an irreparable divide between words and things, so much so that it really doesn't even make sense to talk about "things" but WHAT WE CALL THEM.

Even the idea that there is a "correspondence" CONFIRMS that words are not things!! Even on the correspondence theory, words "correspond" to reality.

How do they "correspond"???? Are they pictures? No. What the heck are they?? Can you explain how they allegedly "correspond"? They are sounds uttered by a human mouth. They are abstract squiggles on a page.

They are not chairs and tables, cars and trees. They are not ham sandwiches, you cannot build a house out of words.

All you can do with them is communicate with other humans who know what language is and knows how to use it.

No one else in the history of thought has been able to do that, so good luck.

There has never been a way around it and there still isn't.

And why would we as LDS fight an idea which helps us see why the "church is true"??? This is a total mystery to me.

Our faith is based on a spiritual society of human exalted beings who organize reality by the Word. All things that are organized are organized by the Word.

And we fight that???? We want the Word to merely "correspond" to some Platonic pagan ideal??? We want to take the creation away from the WORD?

What the heck is wrong with us?????

Words are symbols. Fine.

Words correspond to thoughts. Fine.

Words can be used to share thoughts about what reality is or was or will be and by communicating with each other we can help each other to know what there really is in reality.

No need to get bent out of shape, folks, even when some people don't correctly understand or convey to someone else what is really true in reality.

Ans with words I have already conveyed what truth is and how we can know it.

[mfbukowski]

Words can be used to share thoughts about what reality is or was or will be and by communicating with each other we can help each other to know what there really is in reality.

 

How?  How do you express reality without words? 

[Stroopwafel]

There is much that was said, and much to be said, but unfortunately I have little time in the moment. I'll try to come back a bit later with something, although I'm not sure a detailed response would really add much to what was written so far.

 

I'll just say for now that tagriffy captured my sentiment very well in his latest post, and that I'm not convinced by the it's-all-an-issue-of-language argument. Anyways, more on that later I guess.

[Calm]

Words are symbols. Fine.

Words correspond to thoughts. Fine.

Words can be used to share thoughts about what reality is or was or will be and by communicating with each other we can help each other to know what there really is in reality.

No need to get bent out of shape, folks, even when some people don't correctly understand or convey to someone else what is really true in reality.

Ans with words I have already conveyed what truth is and how we can know it.

The problem is that words will never convey what the speaker is thinking completely because even if we use the same words, no one has the same precise understanding of meaning and connotation.

Maybe I need to post that Asimov quote about language again...

The meaning of words for us, what they symbolize is based on our past experiences with those words...not only the definitions that we were taught, but everything else colors the symbol such that it becomes associated in our minds with multiple things. Since no one has identical experiences no one will think of the word in the same way; few even learn 'basic definitions' the same way...even the students who are in the same class aren't all paying attention in the same way and thus are hearing and viewing and feeling differently. Our minds do not store the meaning of words like a dictionary (and many dictionaries vary too).

Edited July 6, 2015 by calmoriah

[Calm]

Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to represent certain mental nuances, he developed a method of communication - but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling.

Down- down- the results can be followed; and all the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy, until Hari Seldon, and very few men thereafter, could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located-so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation - there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man.

Feet, for tens of thousands of years, had clogged and shuffled in the mud - and held down the minds which, for an equal time, had been fit for the companionship of the stars.

Grimly, Man had instinctively sought to circumvent the prison bars of ordinary speech. Semantics, symbolic logic, psychoanalysis - they had all been devices whereby speech could either be refined or by-passed.

http://interconnected.org/home/more/2012/03/seldonsplan.html

Edited July 6, 2015 by calmoriah

[Ahab]

How? How do you express reality without words?

I was saying that reality can be conveyed using words, but to answer your question: by actually showing something in reality.

Like if I were to eat an apple and develop a big grin on my face. Can you now tell me what I would be expressing in reality. Even if you wouldn't see me eat the apple or be able to tell me what I was doing I would still be expressing something in reality.

I think I'll go get myself a big Milky Way bar now instead.

[Ahab]

The problem is that words will never convey what the speaker is thinking completely because even if we use the same words, no one has the same precise understanding of meaning and connotation.

Maybe I need to post that Asimov quote about language again...

The meaning of words for us, what they symbolize is based on our past experiences with those words...not only the definitions that we were taught, but everything else colors the symbol such that it becomes associated in our minds with multiple things. Since no one has identical experiences no one will think of the word in the same way; few even learn 'basic definitions' the same way...even the students who are in the same class aren't all paying attention in the same way and thus are hearing and viewing and feeling differently. Our minds do not store the meaning of words like a dictionary (and many dictionaries vary too).

True that words aren't always 100% successful in conveying all of our thoughts to others but still they are pretty good tools for the job and most often do get at least most of our thoughts across to others. And we have other tools besides the words that we use to not only get our own thoughts across to others but to also express something in reality.

Like body language, and what we actually do to not only express/convey but to also create reality.

I'm a glass half full kind of guy and I'd rather hear more about how well we CAN use language and other things to express reality correctly.

[mfbukowski]

I was saying that reality can be conveyed using words, but to answer your question: by actually showing something in reality.

Like if I were to eat an apple and develop a big grin on my face. Can you now tell me what I would be expressing in reality. Even if you wouldn't see me eat the apple or be able to tell me what I was doing I would still be expressing something in reality.

I think I'll go get myself a big Milky Way bar now instead.

Actually that's a great point.  Nonverbal communication is incredibly important.  Virtually all animals communicate in that way, and arguably some animals like dolphins and birds and whales etc also use "verbal" communication in a sense.

 

Interestingly, the brain center which birds use for their various calls and communications is the same center we use for speech.

 

Unfortunately grins don't teach the gospel, unless you are Francis of Assisi who said "Preach the gospel at all times, if necessary use words".  For absolutely sure, you can't teach the Trinity without words.

 

But I think that even a 4 year old can understand what a family is- without words.   And if you know what your family is, arguably you understand our Godhead just by intuition.

 

Even dogs know who is in the pack and who is not, and who the leader is.

 

I think we need a little more of that and quite a bit fewer words.   That's why I mentioned "common sense" earlier.  The gospel is not complicated- we are the ones who make it so by worrying about whether or not we can say "I know the church is true".   THAT is where everything goes haywire.

 

That is nothing but worrying about words, and is pretty useless as far as I am concerned.

[mfbukowski]

I'm a glass half full kind of guy and I'd rather hear more about how well we CAN use language and other things to express reality correctly.

Simple.

 

Teach by example!   Forget the philosophy and LIVE it instead!

 

I can spout this stuff all day, but the real challenge is LIVING the gospel

Edited July 6, 2015 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

The problem is that words will never convey what the speaker is thinking completely because even if we use the same words, no one has the same precise understanding of meaning and connotation.

Maybe I need to post that Asimov quote about language again...

The meaning of words for us, what they symbolize is based on our past experiences with those words...not only the definitions that we were taught, but everything else colors the symbol such that it becomes associated in our minds with multiple things. Since no one has identical experiences no one will think of the word in the same way; few even learn 'basic definitions' the same way...even the students who are in the same class aren't all paying attention in the same way and thus are hearing and viewing and feeling differently. Our minds do not store the meaning of words like a dictionary (and many dictionaries vary too).

It has been shown that what we see in a picture is culturally determined.

 

Pictures showing people in a landscape have been shown to Americans and Japanese- the same pictures.  When asked to describe the picture, the Japanese tended to describe the landscape and the Americans described what the people were doing, and ignored the landscape.

People who were raised in circular huts see shapes entirely different than we do.   I have noticed watching newborns that they tend to concentrate on looking at the corners of rooms.

 

Babies are programmed to act as scanners, looking at corners of things and then up, down and across an object. They look for edges, which they see as a difference in light intensity and, from this, they work out what they are looking at. She will be able to focus and see your face. She can see out of the corner of her eye. She will start staring intently at interesting objects as though she'd like to be able to grab them.

http://www.mumsnet.com/devcal/six-weeks

Babies raised in houses without corners see things entirely differently.

[Calm]

"True that words aren't always 100% successful in conveying all of our thoughts to others but still they are pretty good tools for the job and most often do get at least most of our thoughts across to others"

How can you determine that without an outside measure? It may be just chance that it appears to be agreement.

Edited July 6, 2015 by calmoriah

[Ahab]

Simple.

Teach by example! Forget the philosophy and LIVE it instead!

I can spout this stuff all day, but the real challenge is LIVING the gospel

Sharing information/intelligence while using words is also a part of living the gospel. A very valuable part. So let's also talk about that and do that while teaching others how to do that too. Going straight to our primary source of information/intelligence while sharing what our Father shares with us, personally.

Words aren't bad, necessarily, even though they don't convey all of our thoughts 100%.

[Ahab]

"True that words aren't always 100% successful in conveying all of our thoughts to others but still they are pretty good tools for the job and most often do get at least most of our thoughts across to others"

How can you determine that without an outside measure? It may be just chance that it appears to be agreement.

Surely you have learned something from me, as I have from you, and as most all of us learn something from each other. And I mean by using our words. You can see them just as well as I can even though by their use we still don't agree 100%. Books. Magazines. Internet texts. Words are all around us and if they didn't do us any good at all we would have stopped using them a long long time ago in a galaxy that is now far away.