So, there is something mysterious about meaning after all? — Shawn

At some level I think there is. As a second job I have worked as a journalist. I tired hard to write pellucid prose. My meaning seemed clear. But no... that is naive. People interpret 'the meaning' in different ways. What might be intended as a progressive idea might be interpreted as a conservative one depending on how the reader relates to or understands your concepts. I hold a view that people have visceral, emotional reactions to words and concepts that transcend the usage of a word.

Religion was used to justify slavery and absolve slaveholders. Read the Bible. "Thou Shalt Not Enslave Others" is not one of "God's commandments". No prophet has ever preached "Free all slaves!" or "Slave masters are damned to Hell!" — 180 Proof

Amen, Brother! Isn't it staggering that the Bible wants to micromanage human behaviour to the point where you can't eat shellfish or wear mixed fabrics, but owning another human being? No problem.

One more thing- where does deciding what the Bible means, stop? Do Baptists believe in demons and angels and how much is Satan a part of the religion? How about slavery? Does the Bible justify slavery or make slavery taboo? What are the boundaries of deciding truth for oneself? — Athena

As I understand it, Baptists leave interpretations and matters of faith to each individual church, so they vary wildly. In America they tend to be blunted literalists in many places.

I was taught that the Bible is a man-made compilation of allegories containing both good and bad ideas. We were taught there's no satan, slavery is wrong, women are equal and that Christianity could be abused like any idea. It looked towards progressive politics rather than an ossified text for guidelines about culture and society.

Let me give you some flavour of the kids of things we were taught from my favourite (now dead) American Episcopalian bishop, John Shelby Spong.

“God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.”
― John Shelby Spong

“To read the gospels properly, I now believe, requires a knowledge of Jewish culture, Jewish symbols, Jewish icons and the tradition of Jewish storytelling. It requires an understanding of what the Jews called “midrash.” Only those people who were completely unaware of these things could ever have come to think that the gospels were meant to be read literally.”
― John Shelby Spong, Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy: A Journey into a New Christianity Through the Doorway of Matthew's Gospel

Personally I was never able to believe in god/s, even as a child. I've never had a sensus divinitatis and the idea of theism was never coherent to me. I only got interested in the arguments used to prove or disprove god because the apologists thought reason could be aggressively mustered in their defence.

A notable quote.

I think I'm out of my depth here, so I digress. But, I would like to mention that history or what you put down as 'time' is of more importance rather than culture, no? — Shawn

We're all out of our depth. :wink: I'm arguing that time amounts to culture and history. Think how US political culture was understood in 1935 and how it is understood today. That kind of thing. Think of the difference in tone and understanding between the movie Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and the US TV version of House of Cards (2013). It's like different countries. Both films about faults with Washington, but the world of the first looks like a utopia compared to the latter.

So to ask whether meaning persists over time is to ask whether particular usages persist over time: do people use the term the same way. — busycuttingcrap

A useful nuance.

I think the 'disingenuous caricatures of atheism' is as useful to the polemical mystifiers as the tediously proffered notion that atheism inevitably leads to Hitler and or Godless Communism

No, that's good and thanks. I'm trying to find my way around here with no formal background in the subject.

I guess it is a post-modern position with an anti-foundational basis.

Yep. I wish this was better understood by theists and sci-fi mystics who seem to think atheism is some kind of immutable worldview.

Yes, I included history - which I put down as time.

As I said, we understand things through our place in time and culture. And texts are created in a place in time and culture. In other words there is a fuzzy area or gap. That's my view. What do you think is an alternative take on the text itself as intended and as understood by an audience?

Although I thought his ideas about transgender people were ham-handed, naive, and ungenerous, they didn't seem to me they violated any of our guidelines. — T Clark

My heart sinks when I read those sorts of OP's and there is an existing conversation much like it here already somewhere festering with overly familiar bigotries.

Dolphins. Are pods cultural? — Banno

iPods are...

What is your philosophical response to this take on propositional logic?

Wittgenstein tried to show how we end up in confusion by trying to pretend that ‘S is P’ makes any sense outside of a specific context of wider motivated engagement with others. This wider relevance is not peripheral to , or separable from, S is P, but inextricable to its very sense. It is what, on any occasion, we are really on about when we say ‘snow is white’. What the logical proposition does is equivalent to the way an empirical statement of fact in a natural science seems to make our affective involvement with the meaning that is being presented either non-existent, or utterly inconsequential to and separable from the apprehension of the facts. — Joshs

I think I need these ideas restated in plain language.

Sure, but there is no point at which contact entirely breaks... No culture is incommensurable with our world... — Banno

That's probably true and I wasn't arguing for that.

And hence inversely, if some mooted culture were so different that it had nothing in common with our culture, we would have no basis to say that it counted as a culture... — Banno

That's definitely a strong statement. I don't know if it is accurate but its sounds right.

Well, I think the discussion about culture and society can addressed more precisely by invocating the significance of history to language. In how large a degree does language and historicism apply — Shawn

I'm not getting that fancy in my argument. I simply figure that when, for instance, Gibbon wrote The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire it was considered history. Now it is consider literature. For history of this period we now go elsewhere. Meanings and significance change as culture changes. You can see that simply by watching a very old sitcom. What was funny in 1958 may no longer be amusing and may even be rebarbative and cloying as tastes and contexts alter.

That's a very lucid and reassuring response.

Isn't it true that meaning persists over time and everything else that happens in the meantime is separate and distinct from what language itself has to convey? — Shawn

Isn't that assuming that you can separate language from the culture and world from which it comes? Words change usage over time. Symbols come and go. Cultures change. The words may be the same for 1000 years, but we are not. Isn't it the case that the meaning of texts can depend upon prevailing ideologies and perspectives? The language itself may be static but the culture around it is not and since culture and language act together in producing meaning, meanings are modified over time.

Interesting to me is the way this matches up with divisions between religion and science. The latter has always left the intractable dimensions of our existence to religion; and gladly, because it had no clue as to how to deal with it. But now, religion's institutions are failing, and I see it as philosophy's mission to step up. — Constance

This seems to be an important for you. How would it look if it could be done? It's difficult for people to see past Biblical literalism or scientism or naïve realism for the most part, just how would such nuanced philosophical thinking enter people's lives?

By the way, I question whether religion ever satisfactorily provided solace or explanatory power. Religion was a compulsory, even totalitarian backdrop to human life for centuries and made many people unhappy. It was feared and obeyed, and although it dealt with tragedy and loss and meaning - the ostensibly ineffable - it generally did so in the most brutish of ways (obey God's will; have faith, etc) and seemed to make demands rather than provide consolation or integration.

I find the complexity and implications of this material takes some time to sink in.

What the logical proposition does is equivalent to the way an empirical statement of fact in a natural science seems to make our affective involvement with the meaning that is being presented either non-existent, or utterly inconsequential to and separable from the apprehension of the facts. — Joshs

Constance has had a go at restating this idea below. Better than I could do, but I want to understand it better.

If I understand this, empirical science, and the naturalism usually associated with it, abstracts from "the wider relevance" in order to make sense of things. S is P is, if you will, the tip of an iceberg, and the "iceberg" is not something that can be made subject to the reductive, deflationary powers of logical placement, the "categories" of a totality (Levinas lifts this term from Heidegger, I am reading, and Levinas seems a bit aligned with your statement here) that in part determine meaning. — Constance

If philosophy involves this level of complexity - how can the average person be involved?

Exactly. And many Christians are of this view. I grew up in the Baptist tradition and we were taught that Genesis was a myth used to explain our world to a pre-scientific age. No one would have dreamed of taking this or Noah's ark story literally. That's for fundamentalists - a particular expression of religion that seems to take comfort in literalism.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely respect the hell out of Kant, and recognize his influence/significance in the history of philosophy (and cosmology/astronomy, surprisingly!)... but I definitely don't enjoy reading much of his writing (the CPR in particular is especially impenetrable- — busycuttingcrap

An exceptional thinker. I heard Bryan Magee talking about this - he said Kant wrote abysmally and was a great chore to read. He suggests a reason - Kant is one of those rare people who did his best work in old age (post 60 years) He didn't know how much time he had left and he had so much to say. So he wrote hurriedly. And yet I have read passages by Kant about noumena that are elegant and vivid. Perhaps he could have been a great prose stylist if he'd started at 30. :wink:

I was talking about my personal life. Yes, CBT is useful.

I think I may be more of an Epicurean, but Stoicism is massively popular these days - podcasts, books, YouTube, TikTok. It has significantly influenced a number of approaches to psychology and interpersonal counselling (RET later CBT) from the 1950's and on.

Nice and thanks.

The world is always recognizable and intelligible to me at some level due to the intricate weave between past experience and novelty. But it has a relative stability that has the characteristic of recognizable consonances and dissonances within a flow of changing sense. This flow of morphing sense underlies and overflows the constipated formalisms of propositional logic. Those formalisms buy us the presumption of persisting self-identity, but only by depriving us of the ability to discern the underlying interconnectedness of experience — Joshs

That's very pretty writing. Again something to sit with and mull over.

Surely that's a feature not of language, no? — Shawn

You mean a feature of time and change?

I think he is saying that we are kidding ourselves if we think stable meaning is possible and that logic is ultimately not connected to anything foundational. But what do I know?

Hardly so obscure. If the dialogs of Plato are still readable today in English language, then meaning persists over time irrespective of what you seem to be advocating some kind of coherentist theory of meaning. — Shawn

I wonder if he is also referencing a Derridarian critique of logocentrism and the metaphysics of presence? I have doubts that the precise meaning of Plato today is the same as it was then. But something does seem to survive, right?

Thanks for clarifying your perspective on this one. There is an entire and very complex world contained in your response. Perhaps this is just because it is not the world I normally inhabit. All world views rest on complex presuppositions and taken for granted 'facts'. I do find this fascinating material and, because I have a limited philosophy background, this stuff is elusive and shadowy.

Propositional statements aim to stay a step ahead of ineffability by capturing anything sayable within a formal logic of use. But the very formality of the logic, with its presuppositions of extant, persisting symbolic meanings ,neutral , external connectors (is , iff) and activities of shuffling and coordination achieves its triumph over ineffability at the expense of meaninglessness. — Joshs

Wow.. This is probably confronting for those of us who think that some stable meaning can be arrived at using language. I hadn't considered the 'transformative' power held by words like 'is' and 'as'.

But again, is this all there is to life? existence? It still feels pointless, in the end, in the grand scheme of things. — niki wonoto

Some people just feel life is pointless. I'm not sure reasoning makes much difference, it's a disposition.

The fact that things end doesn't matter to me. I don't enjoy my car any less even knowing that in 10-15 years it will probably be scrap. I don't enjoy a great meal any less knowing it will be eaten and gone. I don't enjoy a favorite movie any less knowing it will be over in 90 minutes. I don't enjoy my friendships any less knowing that in a few decades my friends will be dead. I see no necessary relationship between impermanence and pointlessness. It sounds like a hang up derived from organized religion, that only 'everlasting life' matters. My disposition might even go in the opposite direction. If we were immortal and subject to eternity, that would feel pointless to me.

Right. If something is the case.

Isn't this like the correspondence theory of truth? More suited to matters which can be resolved empirically?

It definitely seems that many creative people aren't happy. — Jack Cummins

Many people aren't happy. Is there good evidence, other than popular mythology, that creatives are more miserable or messed up than the rest of us? This does not comport with my experience.

There is also the question as to what extent is pornography creative? Here, it could be argued that pornography reduces bodies to being sex objects for display. — Jack Cummins

I think anything can be creative, from sculpture to murder. If creativity is a mix of skilful and inspired problem solving, then absolutely anything can be executed with creativity (if you'll forgive that word).

That's just avoiding the question. — Agent Smith

I think he's pointing to the obviousness of when something is the case. If we can't determine whether a cup has a handle, then we can't determine anything, right?

But the everyday is really weird. I mean, really weird. There's something rather than nothing. We have internal experiences. — Bylaw

They don't strike me as weird as they reflect lived experience. But I understand philosophers may find them weird.

People get big puffy less mobile and expressive lips from surgery and most people do not treat this as odd. Time seems to speed up as we age — Bylaw

Yes, this is odd.

If you really pay attention to realism, it's weird. — Bylaw

No question. I would not say realism is 'true' (I dislike this word) but I would say we are mostly compelled to live as though it were real.

After enlightenment, carry water, chop firewood — Moliere

Mine is after philosophy, park the car, shop for groceries, let the cat in...

This has been an interesting but labrythine thread.

Do you have a definition of ineffable - or do you think you can steel man one?

Are you comfortable with - 'too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.'

It sounds like an emotional state.

I think there is contextual ineffability. For instance, I can say nothing about string theory. Others can. I don't accept that the ineffable is a kind of transcendent category, just a context dependent one. Am I being silly?

But that doesn't apply to me. — Andrew4Handel

As I said 'most' not all.

Personally, I've never been overly hung up on reasoning. I base most of my choices on what feels right and don't overthink or ruminate. I like not having a plan and am content to play ball with all my inherited and encultured values, strengths and flaws.

I don't have a desire to gun down children but the Nazis did. Atrocities happen because someone humans wanted to do them. — Andrew4Handel

Sure and you'll note that Nazi's were obsessed with morality and purity and thought they were doing good. Much of their thinking inherited from the Christian anti-Semitism of Martin Luther.

As a moral nihilist (currently not permanently, hopefully) I think saying that Genocide or slavery is wrong is meaningless. — Andrew4Handel

But I think it is likely you would not feel comfortable or want to gun down children even if you were allowed. We're a social species, we have empathy, we are part of a culture of agreements and values and options which intellectual positions don't readily override.

That makes philosophy seem a bit like a game where people hold positions for fun or out of curiosity. — Andrew4Handel

I think people often hold views on subjects that make little difference to how they life. And no, I am not saying that beliefs don't have an affect. Most nihilists I've known have mortgages, send their kids to good schools, tend to their garden and are fond of food. Just saying....

I must have the wrong map, then. — Joshs

Maybe. But at least you have a map. All I got was a pare of flip flops. :razz:

Do you consider any philosophical position extreme and with disturbing or bizarre consequence? — Andrew4Handel

Not really because no matter what the position people seem to hold, as soon as they leave the keyboard or the class room, they mostly enter the quotidian world of realism, cause and effect, common sense, and ordinary moral agreements.

Thanks for restating the issue. It's still very confusing. I'm none the wiser but I think what you feel is that it is an equivocation fallacy with possibly a category mistake thrown in.

the error of assigning to something a quality or action which can only properly be assigned to things of another category, for example treating abstract concepts as though they had a physical location.

I'm confused then. What is it you mean? Can you briefly summarize the issue (where the person goes wrong or equivocates) in different words to make it clearer?