And again, just to preempt any further misunderstanding of what I have been saying; I am not claiming that science or math do not also involve the more indeterminate kind of poetic knowing). — Janus

The crux is perhaps that I regard metaphor/analogy to be the cutting edge of creation. The essence of math is that creation. The rest comes after, like ash from a flame. I have provided examples and suggested books that inform my view along with personal experience.

At this point, I think we should probably drop this particular issue. I'd rather talk about those Feuerbach quotes (for instance.)

It seems that there may be a bit of indirect perception bubbling forth... that is to conflate physiological sensory perception and thought/belief by virtue of talking about perception as if it is informed by language.
— creativesoul

Is there a strict boundary? I'm not so sure there is. — macrosoft

I think there is. I also think that that is not something that we decide. Rather, it is something that we discover to be the case as a result of getting thought/belief right to begin with. It's a consequential bit of knowledge stemming from an adequate understanding of what thought/belief is.

Here's something to consider regarding perception that is informed by language...

Language less creatures have physiological sensory perception. They have no language. If perception is informed by language, then either there is more than one 'kind' or language-less creatures are incapable of perception. The latter is obviously false. So, we're faced to bear the burden of the former...

What do all examples of perception have in common such that we're not equivocating when we use the term to describe our perceptions as well as language-less creatures' perceptions?

I would argue that to use the term "perception" as a means to talk about highly complex linguistically informed thought/belief is prima facie evidence of not getting thought/belief right to begin with.

Given semantic holism as I understand, none of our supposed-to-be explicit categories cut very sharply...

What does the many facets of the attribution of meaning(semantic holism) have to do with whether or not we can get things that exist in their entirety prior to our awareness of them right or wrong?

There's been much talk in this thread about pre-conceptual existence(Umwelt???), as though it is an unthinking 'kind' and/or 'mode' of existence. Someone earlier even said as much... 'unthinking'...

I think that that notion stems from conflating thinking about thought/belief with thought/belief. The latter does not always require the former. The former always requires the latter.

What about pre-conceptual thought/belief?

There is also the dictionary problem. One word is defined in terms of others. And these others are still defined in terms of others. All a dictionary can do is aid someone who is already partially 'inside' a language. Correct usage is tested against how people treat us in response. There is no obvious connection to pure meaning. I do not in the least doubt the consciousness of meaning, but I think it is more of a flow with feedback and projection. The meaning is like electrons running through a string of words as their wire. Individual words just stared at do have some meaning. Or we can quickly fish for some by coming up with typical uses. But every serious thinking is immensely complex in the way that meaning rushes through it with memory and expectation. The very complexity involved in our background linguistic know-how outstrips the complexity of the thoughts so delivered. Explicit systems are sad little shadows of that which makes them possible in terms of sophistication.

I speculate that our phonetic alphabet and the spaces between words are misleading. Our dominant visual sense (which takes static objects as its ideal object) encourages us to 'visualize' thinking and meaning, despite their more plausible connection to the temporality of music/hearing.

Another motive that holds atomic meaning fast (as a default semi-automatic approach to be dismantled) is the common project of making a knock-down argument --often for the projection of authority. We need atomic meaning, as stable as possible, to do 'math' with words and build explicit metaphysical/epistemological systems. So our fear of groundlessness (or of just relying on the inexplicit ground we started with) also encourages an ignorance of a semantic holism that might otherwise be obvious. — macrosoft

Again, here I think that I agree wholeheartedly that the attribution of meaning is largely mischaracterized and misunderstood by many of not most philosophers. I think you said earlier that all of them have something to add(to our understanding?) but none of them got it right.

Fascinating. Does time get into the picture here? — macrosoft

Time develops. And its character is thermodynamic. So time is not a background dimension but a measure of a sum of changes.

In the beginning, there is no organised passage of time because there is no accumulating register of changes. Nothing is being fixed in the cosmic memory. There is just a yawning vagueness, a sea of fluctuation that is neither coming or going. It is neither a timeless eternity or some kind of eternal present as it is less than either of those contrasting possibilities.

If this sounds poetic, well of course. But it is also what physics rather predicts. If you wind the world we know back to the first Planck scale instant of the Big Bang, then you arrive at a limit state that is so hot and dense that it dissolves into a quantum foam of blackholes and wormholes. Spacetime is so heavy it collapses at every point into pure gravity fluctuations. Time curls into tiny balls along with space so that the fluctuations are temporal wormholes. Causality breaks down as endings can't be distinguished from beginnings.

So we have a timeless jostle. Then the symmetry of that breaks. We don't know how exactly, but we know that it does and that the symmetry breaking has to take the one available Standard Model pattern. A history can begin in which there is a before (the time when the scale factor was smaller and hotter) and an after (the time when the scale factor will be larger and colder - all the way to the complementary limit defined by the entropic cosmic heat death).

So time has a thermal direction. Or thermo-spatial direction if you include both the cooling and the spreading. And change can be measured against that directional backdrop. Where you are right now has a number, a clock, as it is simply the general average cosmic energy density - the temperature of the cosmic background radiation (CMB).

At the Heat Death, time runs all the way down to the point where change ends. You still have a faint rustle of quantum fluctuations - the black body photons emitted by the cosmic event horizons - however the temperature of that is as close to absolute zero as physically possible. There is no longer any possibility of a meaningful change, either locally or globally.

An inexplicit ground is a direct threat to the project of the perfect system, which would like to be its own explicit ground. Uncomfortably, the operating system is quietly functioning, out of reach for the most part, big and soft (hence 'macrosoft'.) — macrosoft

This is most agreeable...

An inexplicit ground... I've been wondering for quite some time now how it is that so many people think/believe that well-grounded thought/belief requires the thinking/believing creature to be able to provide those grounds...

That's absurd given the evolution of thought/belief.

It is to conflate what being well-grounded takes with being able to talk about one's own thought/belief takes. Again, another consequence of neglecting the distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief.

I am down with chance being fundamental. Is there chance without time? — macrosoft

I missed this. Chance would also evolve in character as part of the growth of Cosmic regularity.

So in the beginning, chance has some really wild and violent form. The initial conditions - a Peircean firstness or vagueness, today's quantum foam - are rather absolute chance in being fluctuations without limits. No constraints yet act. And so that defies our ordinary notions of chance where constraints exist to make the randomness comprehensible.

If we talk about chance in the usual sense, we mean put 9 red balls and 1 black ball in a bag. What are the odds of pulling a black ball out? We are talking of an atomistic system in which there are already a set of comparable components confined to the same shared spacetime. That comes way later in the cosmic tale. In the beginning, there is neither vacuum nor particles as yet. The distinction doesn't even apply as there are no gaps between things, and not things for there to be gaps. It's a vanilla bath of radiation hosting every possible particle fluctuation mode.

But as the Big Bang cools~expands, you get things condensing out and getting lumpy. Mass and energy decouple. Chance now appears on the stage in a more definite way as there are particles weaving independent histories. It means something that one hits another, or instead misses. There are events that fix the past as a memory. A pattern of accidents can accumulate to shape what can happen as a further concrete step of the story.

Someone just took out the black ball. The chances of taking out a second have just dropped to zero forever now. Chance has taken on its familiar constrained complexion.

So chance may be fundamental. But also it evolves to arrive at its presently understood character. A Peircean metaphysics really pulls out the rug from under what we think we know. However it is the metaphysics making the best sense of modern cosmology.

There's been a bit of back and forth between participants regarding whether or not metaphor ought be valued and how/why and/or in what way... A bit of loose comparison between the analytic and continental views(pertaining to methodological approach with particular attention to how it pertains to "meaning")...

I find that when one knows what they're talking about they can speak clearly about it. Speaking clearly requires consistent language use. One dominant trend in philosophy proper was to clearly define one's terms. That trend is indispensable. It is absolutely necessary for reading comprehension... intelligibility???

Problems arise when we (mis)conceive of that which exists in it's entirety prior to our awareness of it's existence. Non-linguistic thought/belief is one such thing.

Now, here the critic may argue that the terms "thought" and "belief" are invented and/or created by us, and thus as a result there is no way for us to have gotten them wrong for what those terms mean is determined solely by virtue of how they're used by us.

That is irrelevant to the point being made. Allow me to invoke a far less controversial thing to talk about: This is Mt. Everest. We can say things about it's elemental constitution that are wrong. We can think/believe that it is existentially dependent upon things that it is not. We can think/believe that it is not existentially dependent upon things that it is. The reason for that is obvious. It exists in it's entirety prior to our naming it.

I would further argue that thought/belief is no different in that respect.

That is not to say that all thought/belief exists in it's entirety prior to our usage of "thought" and "belief"...

Rather, it is to say that some does. All thought/belief have the same set of basic elemental constituents.

The critics point applies here when we consider what method of approach could lead us to such knowledge. We have to start at the conventional notions, all the ways we use the terms "thought" and "belief". We have to discover, determine, and/or otherwise clearly establish that they share the same set of basic elemental constituents. Then we have to consider this set of basic elemental constituents in a different light.

Can we sensibly say that non-linguistic thought/belief consist of them as well? If not, then we surely have no good reason to call both sets of thought/belief by the same name.

Again, here I think that I agree wholeheartedly that the attribution of meaning is largely mischaracterized and misunderstood by many of not most philosophers. I think you said earlier that all of them have something to add(to our understanding?) but none of them got it right. — creativesoul

It's nice that someone else sees where I'm coming from on this issue. Yes, I think explicit accounts tend to emphasize some aspect in a useful way. But the explicit accounts get entangled, hence the endless arguments between those who assume an explicit account is possible.

I'm suggesting something like a pre-human 'bottom' of our mind/language. Some things are just so automatic that we live rather than see them. With difficultly we can get a vague sense of them, by looking at certain problems in attempts at explicit accounts.

Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc.---they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc.,etc.

Does a child believe that milk exists?

Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical things comes very late or very early? — Wittgenstein

Time curls into tiny balls along with space so that the fluctuations are temporal wormholes. — apokrisis

For me there is a tension between what I call physics time and meaning time. Meaning time is the time of intelligibility, the time it takes to read this sentence. My question is whether spatialized time can really replace meaning time. This is theme in Heidegger, the idea that clock time (radicalized in physics) is derivative of a more fundamental time (ultimately being or existence itself, with the thrown-open space of interpretation or embedded signs as 'time.')

Clearly we have and use physics time. The relationship seems complicated.

Again, here I think that I agree wholeheartedly that the attribution of meaning is largely mischaracterized and misunderstood by many of not most philosophers. I think you said earlier that all of them have something to add(to our understanding?) but none of them got it right.
— creativesoul

It's nice that someone else sees where I'm coming from on this issue. Yes, I think explicit accounts tend to emphasize some aspect in a useful way. But the explicit accounts get entangled, hence the endless arguments between those who assume an explicit account is possible. — macrosoft

I would say that no such entanglement is inevitable. It's not fait accompli. I would also point out that it quite simply does not follow from the fact that different schools in philosophy proper hold quite different - seemingly incommensurate - explicit accounts of meaning that the possibility of arriving at an explicit account that gets it right is somehow not possible...

Our agreement is strong when it comes to the fact that we've not quite gotten it right yet...

Seems we diverge from that point.

I find that when one knows what they're talking about they can speak clearly about it. Speaking clearly requires consistent language use. One dominant trend in philosophy proper was to clearly define one's terms. That trend is indispensable. It is absolutely necessary for reading comprehension. — creativesoul

This is of course a good idea, but one must already be in a language to begin with. Similarly I think one has to feel one's way into another personality. While there's no truly private language. I also think the perfectly public language is an abstraction. A second concern is that even if we could define our terms perfectly, such a concern overlooks the way words join together. Can I define every relation between every word? The assumption might be that definition takes care of this, but I'm not so sure. If I can use words differently in the first place, why can I not understand their combination differently?

I would say that no such entanglement is inevitable. It's not fait accompli. I would also point out that it quite simply does not follow from the fact that different schools in philosophy proper hold quite different - seemingly incommensurate - explicit accounts of meaning that there is no such account possible... — creativesoul

I think our main point of misunderstanding is that maybe I'm more on the semantic holist side. I think explicit accounts need to use the same word in a different context, hence the problem. Each account builds up its own mini-language.

There are events that fix the past as a memory. A pattern of accidents can accumulate to shape what can happen as a further concrete step of the story. — apokrisis

I like this. It's to some degree a random walk and in other ways dialectical necessity.

We have to discover, determine, and/or otherwise clearly establish that they share the same set of basic elemental constituents. Then we have to consider this set of basic elemental constituents in a different light. — creativesoul

For me these would be part of that knowledge touched on in On Certainty.

I really want to say that a language-game is only possible if one trusts something (I did not say 'can trust something').

It is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable). It is there---like our life. — Wittgenstein

Meaning time is the time of intelligibility, the time it takes to read this sentence. — macrosoft

Physics would have its own version in the holographic and lightcone structure of the Universe. It takes time to arrive at a state of coherence across a spatial interval. If the sun dematerialised right now, it would take about eight minutes to discover that its light and gravity had gone.

So there is a baked in causal issue that defines cogency. If something happens way over there, it takes a time for it to have any effect over here. It takes time to observe a change or read that difference.

Physics would have its own version in the holographic and lightcone structure of the Universe. It takes time to arrive at a state of coherence across a spatial interval. If the sun dematerialised right now, it would take about eight minutes to discover that its light and gravity had gone.

So there is a baked in causal issue that defines cogency. If something happens way over there, it takes a time for it to have any effect over here. It takes time to observe a change or read that difference. — apokrisis

Right. But I'm suggesting a strange thing, that physics time is (at least for human cognition) derivative from a more basic experience of time. Heidegger used 'time' as a metaphor for what he meant at one point, but I think what is aimed at is something like existence itself, understood not as a static being but as the space in which beings appear. For human cognition, this space is structured by care, so that we act now in terms of a projected future.

It's to some degree a random walk and in other ways dialectical necessity. — macrosoft

Statistics always expresses patterns. And really, there are only two statistical patterns ruling nature. Either Gaussian - the single-scale bell curve kind - or fractal, the log/log scalefree kind that is in fact more primal because it has one fewer linear constraints.

A random walk expresses fractal intermittency. It resembles nature - a nature understood in dissipative process terms - far more accurately.

Statistics always expresses patterns. And really, there are only two statistical patterns ruling nature. Either Gaussian - the single-scale bell curve kind - or fractal, the log/log scalefree kind that is in fact more primal because it has one fewer linear constraints.

A random walk expresses fractal intermittency. It resembles nature - a nature understood in dissipative process terms - far more accurately. — apokrisis

That accords with what I non-expertly know. Those are indeed mighty patterns.

I think our main point of misunderstanding is that maybe I'm more on the semantic holist side. I think explicit accounts need to use the same word in a different context, hence the problem. Each account builds up its own mini-language — macrosoft

Using the same word in a different context is to show all the different ways the term is used. An account of the accounts.

What good is that if this account of the accounts is incapable of showing what they all have in common that makes them what they are... an example of how meaning is attributed?

I would think that having this capability is the only standard to strive for. Otherwise, we're just entrenched in the same ole endless debates...

I'm suggesting something like a pre-human 'bottom' of our mind/language. Some things are just so automatic that we live rather than see them. With difficultly we can get a vague sense of them, by looking at certain problems in attempts at explicit accounts. — macrosoft

Yes. Where else is there to look?

I would strongly argue that all mind/language requires thought/belief, but not all thought/belief requires mind/language(unless one equates mind with thought/belief, and I wouldn't object).

This is of course a good idea, but one must already be in a language to begin with. Similarly I think one has to feel one's way into another personality. While there's no truly private language. I also think the perfectly public language is an abstraction. A second concern is that even if we could define our terms perfectly, such a concern overlooks the way words join together. Can I define every relation between every word? The assumption might be that definition takes care of this, but I'm not so sure. If I can use words differently in the first place, why can I not understand their combination differently? — macrosoft

Not sure if this line of consideration is helpful, although there is much to agree with.



"Hammer" is name. Hammering is an experience. We need not know the name to have the experience. Hammering with a hammer is existentially dependent upon language, for one cannot be hammering with a hammer without a hammer and hammers are existentially dependent upon language, although hammering with something other than a hammer is not.

We have to discover, determine, and/or otherwise clearly establish that they share the same set of basic elemental constituents. Then we have to consider this set of basic elemental constituents in a different light.
— creativesoul

For me these would be part of that knowledge touched on in On Certainty. — macrosoft

Witt would never agree that all meaning has the same basic elemental constituency, would he???

His bit about the fact that there is no commonality that makes all games what they are aside from the fact that we call them that seems to denounce the very idea. Although he was arguing against "essence" I think.

I would strongly argue that all mind/language requires thought/belief, but not all thought/belief requires mind/language(unless one equates mind with thought/belief, and I wouldn't object). — creativesoul

I think we agree on this point. What surprises me is that you think we can capture this animal pre-thinking in an explicit account. I think it's too pre-lingual to drag into the light. I have the sense that the operating system we use to do so is just staggeringly complex and yet incredibly smooth and elusive. We look through it like clean glass or as a fish through water. An explicit account is like an old floppy disk trying to store a download of the internet. To be fair, our minds are great at getting basic, crucial patterns. So our major accounts presumably all get a basic thing right. I'm still working this idea out, to be sure.

I want to say that the quest is like trying to put walking into words. I believe we discussed the phenomenon of 'true for us.' People debate theories of truth in the light of this 'blind' assumption that something like true-for-us is already there. Keeping with my convention, I'll call this truth.

But I'm suggesting a strange thing, that physics time is (at least for human cognition) derivative from a more basic experience of time. — macrosoft

But how do we experience time? I mean I understand the neuroscience of it. But I'm not getting how you think we experience it in any pre-theoretical sense. How do you think an animal "experiences time"?

But how do we experience time? I mean I understand the neuroscience of it. But I'm not getting how you think we experience it in any pre-theoretical sense. How do you think an animal "experiences time"? — apokrisis

I don't know about (other) animals. But we can also call it reading time. It doesn't have to be so linguistic, but that was how I began to think about it. It's the way, right now, just look, that (with memory) meaning like an electric current through a sentence flows, bidirectionally. We can measure our reading with a clock, but why is the meaning time inside clock time and not the other way around? What is it to look at the clock and say Now? 'The sun is up. Now is time to drive the cattle out.' Clock time is everyone's time. Clock time separates the me-self and the we-self. Clocks allow for a public event to weld narratives and actions together.

This is not to deny 'objective time,' of course, but to point out a phenomenon. Dasein is the 'there' is the space-time through which this meaning drags and rushes. Interpretation happens in this space, hence hermeneutical ontology/phenomenology.

A second concern is that even if we could define our terms perfectly, such a concern overlooks the way words join together. Can I define every relation between every word? The assumption might be that definition takes care of this, but I'm not so sure. If I can use words differently in the first place, why can I not understand their combination differently? — macrosoft

Strong agreement here as well...

I would strongly argue that all mind/language requires thought/belief, but not all thought/belief requires mind/language(unless one equates mind with thought/belief, and I wouldn't object).
— creativesoul

I think we agree on this point. What surprises me is that you think we can capture this animal pre-thinking in an explicit account. I think it's too pre-lingual to drag into the light. I have the sense that the operating system we use to do so is just staggering complex and yet incredibly smooth and elusive. We look through it like clean glass or as a fish through water.

I want to say that the quest is like trying to put walking into words. I believe we discussed the phenomenon of 'true for us.' People debate theories of truth in the light of this 'blind' assumption that something like true-for-us is already there. — macrosoft

Yeah, I kinda got the feeling that you had such a position...

What does being pre-lingual have to do with our knowledge of it, or rather the capability and/or possibility of us to acquire knowledge of that which is pre-lingual?

Mt. Everest is pre-lingual.

What rule and/or law is there that stops us from acquiring knowledge of pre-lingual thought/belief?

Witt would never agree that all meaning has the same basic elemental constituency, would he??? — creativesoul

I don't know, but it sure seems like he is doing a version of my knowledge (or really his) in his OC. At some points if not in others.

What does being pre-lingual have to do with our knowledge of it, or rather the capability and/or possibility of us to acquire knowledge of that which is pre-lingual? — creativesoul

I think we can get some knowledge of it, but we are talking about the most complicated object in the known universe. Or rather it is talking about itself.

Mt. Everest is pre-lingual. — creativesoul

Agree. But we don't know everything about that. Knowledge about Everest involves knowledge about everything else, including dark matter and our own perception and cognition.

Yeah, I kinda got the feeling that you had such a position... — creativesoul

Indeed. Though I'm still trying to find the words for it. I'd say think of a conversation with a lover or a friend. Think of those two faces communicating and the complex play of meaning, the flexibility. There's no real line between thought and action, but only between paradigmatic 'bright' thoughts and paradigmatic unsubtle actions. Is voice tone separable? Yes, we can do without faces even, but that is a learned skill. Even as I type to you I have the sense of a person who shares a world with me who listens as I type-speak in my mind.

Or I like to think of my cat in her living complexity. I can analyze this or that sub-system, but her living complexity is something else. I am not saying to stop looking for better accounts. I don't think we can help it. We just naturally synthesize accounts. And even we are part of this with our meta-accounts.

I think we can get some knowledge of it, but we are talking about the most complicated object in the known universe. Or rather it is talking about itself. — macrosoft

So, we agree that we can get some knowledge of pre-lingual thought/belief. That's good. Is there any good reason to hold that we cannot acquire knowledge of what all thought/belief consist in/of?

That certainly does not require omniscience.

Strong agreement here as well... — creativesoul

I'm glad you agree about the relations between words just becoming a second issue after defining the 'atoms.' I don't know if you'd agree to this: an entire form of life as the 'unit' of meaning. Of course we can stare at individual words, but I think this is like the parts of a dead cat --no longer really the cat we want.

So, we agree that we can get some knowledge of pre-lingual thought/belief. That's good. Is there any good reason to hold that we cannot acquire knowledge of what all thought/belief consist in/of?

That certainly does not require omniscience. — creativesoul

What comes to my mind is 'nothing is hidden.' We already live and experience these phenomena. Beyond that we can articulate them better with superior formal indications. IMV, we are always already in the water we usually see right through. But I am working from a first-person perspective (brain stuff is another issue entirely).