...but no, you are choosing one use over another use; that being the effect it has on your friend. — Banno

My example wasn't very good. I see what you're saying. What I'm trying to say is : Yes, I'm using one word for a specific use - for its effect on my friend - but why do i choose this word versus another? I may want to elicit a reaction, but I'm constrained - in seeking to elicit a reaction, I know one word rather than another will work. . Words have histories and some words will hum and vibrate whether you want them to or not. A good writer is attuned to this, just as a good carpenter understands the grains and whorls in the wood. He doesn't impose fully - he has a general idea going forward, and adjusts to what's there. I'm saying meaning is like that. It's partially use, partially not.

Stand-up comedians are hyper-attuned to the valences of words, for example. They don't invent their acts out of scratch - they're attuned to the emotions and vibrancy of the semantic field and navigate it. You know what I mean?

Take a great prose stylist like Cormac McCarthy or Don Delillo or Marilynne Robinson. They're masters - but they're masters using words that preceded them. The only way they can have the effect they have is to recognize the potencies words have in ways other can't, and then to rearrange them in new ways. If they invented out of scratch how would they communicate? It hits because its shared.

We're always meaning by using stuff that already means, no way around that without dipping into dogmatism.

ay, there's the rub:

The meaning is the use. — Banno

Agreed, partially. The linguists if they're out there might say, 'yeah guys, you're talking about pragmatics' and be confused there's any confusion. But just as the baby boomers took for granted post-war prosperity, maybe we take for granted Austin, et al.

The meaning's the use, but then why are some things usable in this way, and not other ways?

Say: I want to mess with my friend: I know If i use this word, it'll have one effect, and if I use another it'll have another effect. I choose what words to use based on how I understand their meaning.

To use, you already have to know what stuff means. (and stuff 'means' on all sorts of levels) So meaning can't simply be use.

Woah. We may have to have a chat about that. Cheers to Herge and Lindsay. :party: — Noble Dust

cheers :party:

I pretty much agree; as I said int he linked thread, "I love you more than words can say" doesn't say how much I love you, it shows it. — Banno

Oh yeah I can get behind that. Sometimes it does show what it purports to say. And then, if we're on the same page, in other contexts, when said cynically, it shows the opposite, as in goneril's use?

Nice Tintin avatar, btw. And I can't help but ask... "Arcturus" wouldn't be a reference to "A Voyage To Arcturus" by David Lindsay, right? — Noble Dust

You got it, still trying to digest that book

Descriptive power, it seems, requires only that a language have words that capture very general aspects of life. For example, with the words, "that", "feeling", "you", "get", "when", "lose", "a", "million", "dollars", you can describe sorrow like so:

Sorrow (description): That feeling you get when you lose a million dollars.

It looks as though description is synonymous with definition. The objective of definitions being to condense information, the description, in one word. It's very much like the concept of radix in math in which you pack quantities in different powers of a given radix. See packing problems. — TheMadFool

I'll admit I'm not sure what you're trying to convey, but how would you apply it to this description? ->

'Toward early morning he woke, sat up quickly and looked about him. It was still dark and the fire had long since died, still dark and quiet with that silence that seems to be of itself listening, an astral quiet where planets collide soundlessly, beyond the auricular dimension altogether. He listened. Above the black ranks of trees the mid-summer sky arched cloudless and coldly starred. He lay back and stared at it and after a while he slept."

I do agree with you and I like your way of putting (saying?) it here. But all I'm pointing out is that we have to acknowledge indescribability in order to realize we share the experience of indescribability. If the most over-quoted phrase on TPF is "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent", my mental response has always been "you're the one who brought it up, Witty..." — Noble Dust

ha, yeah.
Ok, my position, simply put:

Q: Are there things we can't describe in the english language?
A: Yes

In the wilds, outside of philosophical conversation, it doesn't seem to go that way. The sayers and describers tend to want to to say and describe the unsayable and undescribable, even if only as negative theology. In the wilds, I think people show and express it. In my example to Banno, i admit that there are moments where acknowledging indescribability convey it - but I think those moments only work because theyre not sentence like, not proposition like, theyre gesture-like, theyre a moment-like, something happening like. If you talk of truth-value, and stuff, its not a container that will hold a truth-value past that moment

yeah I agree with you. I love my younger brother in ways I can't express either. I like cordelia in king lear. She has found a way to believe in her love as it is and to say nothing. I'd like to learn the etymology of 'saying'. I guess I could do it easily online, and I might in a second. I mean only that the trick of saying you can say the unsayable or describe the undescribable is only pedantically true. When you recognize some things are unsayable or undescribable, you have to give up saying and describing.

Even things that depend on context and situation? What are the barriers then, language structure or dictionary (wires)? I’m halling about describing in such a way that its meaning is unambiguous in the given context and situation. — Cidat

I don't think you could use english to describe what's been lost in a translation in a book that's been translated from another language to english. Well if f you want to get pedantic, I guess you could. Any description of anything is technically a description of that thing, even if its a bad, even horrible description. Butthe point is that there's elements of prose that don't translate, and descriptions of what didn't translate aren't going to capture it.

A bit like "I love you more than words can say"... which says how much I love you; despite saying that I can't say how much I love you. — Banno

I've heard that one a few times but its usually by people who don't mean it and are trying to front. Does it say what it says it says?

so for example there's a version of it in King Lear. Goneril says: 'Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter." Goneril's speech in king lear is meant to be an example of language used by someone pretending to say something they aren't actually saying.

Maybe 'i love you more than words could say' would be true as one gesture among many during a romantic night, where shes touched your shoulder, and youve bought her a drink, and you danced this way, and put your arm that way, and she touched your hair that way, and she said 'i love you more than words could say' this way, and you made a joke that way, and she smiled at you that way. But it wouldnt be true like a sentence exactly.

From what I've seen out there - and its real out there, its not easy out there - suicide isn't a philosophical or moral problem. I know, I know: Camus and sisyphus and all that. Maybe it's better to say that thinking of it in moral or philosophical terms is confusing. People who think of it in those terms don't often tend to commit suicide. Or if they do, they were already going to and they playact philosophizing about it as a way to feel like they have intellectual control over a process that is beyond that. Or like to ennoble it.

Suicide in real life is more like vomiting. It something that happens to a life when theres no other choice, no matter what the suicidal person wants.

Most suicides happen very quickly, most aren't planned in advance. But for those that are planned in advance, the vomit analogy is still right. Instead of a sudden immediate vomit, its that feeling of being sick in bed with that sicky feeling that you know will not go away until you puke. I believe people who plan suicide are like people in bed like that. They know they're going to puke and there's no away around it, but theyre just present enough to make sure there's no mess. Maybe they set a wastebasket next to them, or sit in the bathroom.

I've certainly wept for myself in the way Schopenhauer is talking about, and I think he describes it really well there. But since people don't only weep for themselves, I have the impression that he's describing a particular example of weeping and mistakenly treating it like a description of all weeping in general.

I like your OP a lot.Many people take for granted that forward-determining 'causation' should be credited with exclusive responsibility for the shaping of the world. That doesn't match my experience - and I don't think most people experience the world this way in their every day life either - but its still treated as an implicit article of faith for many philosophers talking about this stuff. You often see philosophers tying themselves in knots, attempting to translate all determination into forward-determining causation. It's like they're operating in an ethos where you can't be credible if you admit any determination but 'causation' (as you define it in the OP.) Interested to see where you go with this. (And I'm curious if you have any ideas about when & why the emphasis on forward-determining causation came about.)