If mentalese is computational, it is thereby algorithmic. Do you agree? — Banno

I was thinking about the idea of an innate universal language that Chalmers and Chomsky talked about. The idea was that all languages have been analyzed and a linguistic core extracted. This core would have to be innate, so fundamentally like whales and birds. A human would be born with the potential to communicate, and that potential would be triggered into development by social interaction. The brain is transformed by that development, but in the shadows, the core (developed by millions of years of species/environment interaction, or however) remains and can be detected.

This leaves the issue of how an internal dialog works open-ended. It's definitely not that a child decides to adopt certain rules. It's more that the child lives out the rules, keying in to points where the internal structure is matching the external circumstances. Maybe the core language truly is just the motor cortex flexing without the signals going all the way out to the muscles of speech.

Am I way off track?

Abstractions aren't real for you, frank? — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, why not?

Wittgenstein’s private-language argument shows that such a system cannot constitute meaning. — Banno

I think this is based on the assumption that meaning is rule based. Kripke demonstrates that the private language argument itself gives us reason to doubt that it is.

I think I'm realist, that's why I have difficult making "possible worlds" (worlds which are not real), consistent with "the actual world" (a world which is real). — Metaphysician Undercover

Real? They're both abstract objects. :lol:

As Fitch showed, antirealists know everything that is to be known. There are no true statements outside of what an antirealist knows. Unless they reject classical logic. — Banno

:up:

Can you clarify this? What is a true statement that's beyond our knowledge? It doesn't make any sense to me. — Metaphysician Undercover

It makes sense to realists. Apparently you aren't one.

The actual world is an abstract object like any other possible world. A realist says the actual world contains true statements that are beyond our knowledge.

So it appears to rely on private language from the get go. — Banno

It's just the motor cortex running. Some of it gets picked up by the comprehension center. Wittgenstein never wrote anything that requires us to think of the mind as a void. There's all kinds of stuff happening.

As I said to Ludwig V in the prior post, we can make the actual world one of the possible worlds, but this contradicts realism. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think it does. Take a moment to read through the first two paragraphs of the SEP article on possible worlds:

Anne is working at her desk. While she is directly aware only of her immediate situation — her being seated in front of her computer, the music playing in the background, the sound of her husband's voice on the phone in the next room, and so on — she is quite certain that this situation is only part of a series of increasingly more inclusive, albeit less immediate, situations: the situation in her house as a whole, the one in her neighborhood, the city she lives in, the state, the North American continent, the Earth, the solar system, the galaxy, and so on. On the face of it, anyway, it seems quite reasonable to believe that this series has a limit, that is, that there is a maximally inclusive situation encompassing all others: things, as a whole or, more succinctly, the actual world.

Most of us also believe that things, as a whole, needn't have been just as they are. Rather, things might have been different in countless ways, both trivial and profound. History, from the very beginning, could have unfolded quite other than it did in fact: the matter constituting a distant star might never have organized well enough to give light; species that survived might just as well have died off; battles won might have been lost; children born might never have been conceived and children never conceived might otherwise have been born. In any case, no matter how things had gone they would still have been part of a single, maximally inclusive, all-encompassing situation, a single world. Intuitively, then, the actual world is only one among many possible worlds. — SEP

Point me to one place where you showed error in my reasoning please. — Metaphysician Undercover

However solid your reasoning may be, you just have to accept the usage of whatever possible world semanticist you're reviewing. They generally say that actuality is a brand of possibility, the intuition being that all events of the actual world are logically possible.

The sentence "trans men are men" isn't ambiguous, just as the sentences "bats are flying mammals" and "bats are used in baseball" are not ambiguous. — Michael

Out of context, those sentences have no particular meaning.

You seem really out of touch to me.

....in fact, far more young voters say the US cannot be trusted at all (39% of 18-29 year-olds) compared to China (26%)... — Crikey Daily

That's as it should be.

As if minimizing the number of downtrodden while increasing the amount of Americans with plenty of spendable income somehow does not result in tremendous stability? — creativesoul

That's an interesting question, and history answers that it definitely does not produce stability. When the general population is fat and happy, the labor market becomes costly and inflexible. If 1970s labor unions in the US and the UK would have had the ability to stop grandstanding and work with employers, it would have been harder for neoliberals like Reagan and Thatcher to take control. The neoliberal solution was to bring labor to its knees and make them beholden for every crumb. That produced stability.

[quote="Christoffer;1027780" Most ironically, conservatives sometimes are just the progressives in youth becoming so attached to the principles they fought for that they become conservatives around it, arguing their, in their era, progressive ideas, were universal truths.[/quote]

This is true.

A healthy society is, I think leaning more towards progressive thinking, because it is a realization that "truth" requires dedication to figuring it out. Conservative ideas of preservation of certain rules and principles usually comes from an ignorance of how reality works, not seeing that society change all the time and it changes with new knowledge and discovery about the human condition. — Christoffer

I'd like to define a healthy society empirically. Is it flexible enough to survive crises? Or does it shatter against the rocks, leaving the population to suffer in turmoil? There are times when a progressive outlook, one ready to embrace change, is optimal because old strategies have been tried and failed. But when thing are stable, conservatives seek to protect hard-earned wisdom, so they really should prevail during those times.

So Kant in talking about metaphysics discusses issues that are "metaphysical" in the ancient sense but also "epistemological" in our sense. — Manuel

Good to know. :up:

I think you misunderstood my post.

I think we're on the same page. A reason to reject the empiricist view that I learn about space and time from experience is that I can't imagine such a process. It isn't possible that I looked at a chair and observed that it has spatial and temporal extension. I can't imagine a chair that doesn't possess those properties. The concepts are fused.

On the other hand, time and space have no meaning in a void. There has to be at least two objects moving relative to one another to have space and time. So again, the experience of observing an object and knowledge of space and time happen simultaneously.

Cool. Bookmarked.

Kant proposed in Transcendental Idealism that a priori knowledge is that knowledge derived from our sensibilities that is necessary to make sense of these very same sensibilities.” — RussellA

I disagree with this. Maybe we could read through the Transcendental Aesthetic together and come to agreement. Who's up for that?

This is something hard to fathom — ssu

I live in an insignificant little state and it's population is twice that of Finland. Could I see half my state become socialist? Sure, especially if it didn't have to defend itself.

So is it really that conservatives are willing to let nature take care of social problems? Everybody is for themselves? — ssu

In general, yes. Sometimes conservatives live in a politically moderate climate. They make adjustments.

If you are a right-wing libertarian and believe in free market, rights of the individual and limited government making the best society possible, why wouldn't that also be compassionate? — ssu

Because it leaves a chunk of the population with no safety net.

Government, the state and legislation are there tools to address social problems and inequality for the progressives. — ssu

Conservatives are usually willing to let nature take care of social problems. They think that when we interfere with nature (due to an overload of compassion), we inevitably undermine a process that leads to social health and well-being. This process happens to be brutal, but conservatives are ok with that. This is because compassion isn't their driving value.

They are political positions, wouldn't the driving force be political change? — DingoJones

Conservatives of any generation tend to be suspicious of change. If they embrace it, they probably do so because they see the change as a return to a traditional state.

Progressives feel comfortable stepping into the unknown. That comfort level is bolstered by moral conviction tied to a sense of righting old wrongs. The downtrodden are always in their sights, whereas the conservative says the downtrodden will always be with us and stability is the highest good.

Also, compassion can be a driving force but be tempered by practicality, they aren’t mutually exclusive. — DingoJones

I didn't say they were mutually exclusive, but note the next time you're looking at progressives, how interested they are in matters of practicality. This isn't a good time in history to observe conservatives in the US because they're in the shadows of a populist who has taken over their party.

Is the implication that non- progressivism is not compassionate? That is to say, unless compassion is exclusive to progressivism then I dont see how you can usw it as the basis for progressivism the way you are. — DingoJones

No, but the driving force of conservatism isn't compassion. It's practicality.

uh... ok.

So if "woman" is used to pick out someone who adopts the relevant social conventions, then a trans woman is a woman. And this even if we also choose to maintain that they are male. — Banno

True.

No duh boy, this is an adult conversation. — Philosophim

I know what it's like to be disappointed that no one read my OP, but you're going overboard. Take a breath and chill out.

don't. It's relevant. And it's now a part of the discussion. — Banno

:up:

No, I want you to do better. You're a long term forum goer and I expect a post that addresses the logic of the OP and discussion, not an emotional appeal that does not address the topic. — Philosophim

I think the answer to the OP has been made. Language use is determined by a community. Look at how people use the words.

The trans woman in the video says "Cis women know things I will never know."

I learn from this to refer to people who were female at birth "cis women ."

So it looks like we have different types of women, trans and cis.

:smile:

This does not belong on these forums. — Philosophim

Do you want me to delete it?

That is an amazing answer. Thank you.

Hey now. It worked for me, and I’m richer, smarter and immeasurably better looking. — Mww

Top tier evidence. Thank you.

This is a really good speech by a trans woman. Early on, she says she's been asked if she feels 100% like a woman. She answers that she feels 100% like a transgender woman. I found myself so grateful for the nod to an attitude that I can understand, that I was inclined to honor everything about this person, their decisions, their story. Her story.

But ol’ Johnny was pretty smart, so Kant might have enabled him to see the transcendental light. — Mww

I doubt it. :razz:

The most prominent relation Kant had with Locke’s philosophy, as far as I know, is the notion of innate knowledge, which Kant rejected. — Mww

Locke rejected innate knowledge. Kant accepts that we have knowledge a priori. My question was: how would Kant defend a priori knowledge to Locke?

As far as empirical realism is concerned, Kant maintains that for Locke’s version, and Hume’s as well, space and time must be properties of things, whereas…as we all know…Kant restricts space and time to our own internal faculty of intuition. For an infinitely divisible yet immaterial thing to be a property, is absurd, for Kant. — Mww

Hume was accepting Newton's version of things. The success of Newtonian physics would have been a basis for Hume's acceptance. I think Kant's whole project may have been more phenomenological than we sometimes imagine. So transcendental thinking is just there. We experience it. We can't follow it down to its roots, so we just leave that issue to the side. So there wouldn't have been a clear inner/outer distinction. Kant was a phenomenologist. That's my theory.

Hardly from god. Kant’s motto, circa 1784: sapere aude.

From the nature of human intelligence.

Speculative metaphysics means you gotta stop somewhere in formulating tenets supporting your theory. Infinite regress on one hand, inevitable contradiction on the other, in going too far. — Mww

I don't think sapere aude conflicts with identifying logic as God. Most rationalists did see God as foundational and indispensable, and accepting apriori knowledge is a rationalist attitude. Locke wouldn't have accepted it. So how would Kant have answered Locke's view? I'm curious. :smile:

How did Enlightenment thinkers explain apriori knowledge? Like from God?

I guess you're right.

Both concepts thought transcendentally. — Mww

What is transcendental thinking?

No. He is clearly not referring to any presentable object outside of him. A stationary object involves the intuition of time & space, it is a presentable object. — Sirius

I agree. By stationary, I meant a stationary vantage point from which to watch a person passing through time, so a spot outside of time.

Please read Kant for who he is, not who you want him to be. If you like phenomenology, fine, but don't project it onto Kant unnecessarily. — Sirius

I'm just point out that any argument that starts with an examination of experience is phenomenology. I think I misunderstood what you were trying to do with Kant's argument. I thought you were presenting it as a proof of an external world. I don't think it works for that. As Hume said, you can't prove the existence of something with an entirely apriori argument.

But the US warned Chavez about the 2002 coup. Isn't that support?

All of which is almost to observe that the rules of language are all of them post hoc; inferred after the fact — Banno

:up:

I do not think that, for whatever it's worth — AmadeusD

It's happened though. What they used to do was loan money to developing nations and when they couldn't pay it back, the US would go in and re-organize their economies. The result was increased economic stratification. It was basically neoliberalism. What's odd is that the US backed Chavez and he was a socialist. The US claimed it was opposed to unconstitutional transitions of power, but that is utter BS. Chavez must have been easier to deal with than his opponent.