New! What are language games? And what is confusion and how is it easily induced with language?

fullofnull

Hello!

I am a CS major who is working as a software engineer but as a side-gig I really love studying history, philosophy, and other areas of science that I wasn't paying much attention to for the past few years. I see philosophy as a true science where we can gain 'true' knowledge. I'm not sure I could define the aforementioned quite well, myself.

I am interested in a couple things and I thought this forum could help in starting my journey into where I want to go. I will always give my thanks but I want to thank you all for reading my post and giving me the time to be in your thoughts.

I have an attention disorder that lets my mind easily transition from subject to subject in thought when I'm thinking about something, whether it's an idea or object of objective existence. It's hard to explain but, in short, my mind can get confused in the middle of thinking of a productive statement (which I define as something that adds to the conversation in value to both peoples/peoples involved in an obvious manner.) I've always been fascinated with how plastic a mind can be, especially mine. The idea of confusion as I understand it is a simple one although I cannot find anything much on how to initiate confusion in different ways, or to initiate it easily. I'm not a very creative person and I have trouble coming up with my own ideas on things unless I get a tiny bit of inspiration from other places.

Social games and language are amazing. I want to gain a grounded understanding in how we create and develop the systems we do to keep ourselves busy and to keep ourselves distracted from death. I find the idea of the Jester fascinating as Alan Watts describes it. This YouTube video which is a compilation about the Jester/The Game is here: Alan Watts - How to Play The Game.

I suppose what I would like to ask is: Is there any sources I could gain a fundamental knowledge on human psychology behavior/language and how that specific behavior relates (in a poetic or correlating way) to what we do as we all try to approach our goals, whatever those are? I guess I'm shooting several thought bullets; I am thinking of several kinds of things at once but I'm sure someone can relate to something I'm talking about in one regard or another.

Oh, and happy holidays to everyone as well! :)♥

If any paradoxes or ideas involving logic and how it relates to language are awesome too. Those help me a lot in understanding a subject/idea. :)

Please forgive me if I'm not sticking to one thing or if I'm not paying attention to something more important in terms of the discussion. Hopefully I've given enough specific information to let you know what has my brain vibrating. The reason I am posting in the Philosophy forum is because I'm also going to be interested on how the social games/language games/confusion tactics relate to how we as the human species incorporate those kinds of things into moving forward philosophically/ethically. I haven't seen much literature on confusion/mind games/etc so I think gaining an understanding of it would not only help me with my interest but also maybe start a collaboration on collecting knowledge on the subject, if it's worth the effort to do so in this focus.

Thanks so much for reading and I will check back on this within 24-48 hours. Hopefully I can post more and get more involved in discussions. Although primarily for the first part I'll probably just be a question asker haha :)

-Null

View Answer

jgill

I see philosophy as a true science where we can gain 'true' knowledge. I'm not sure I could define the aforementioned quite well, myself. — fullofnull

As a math guy I might question "true science" , but I am not a philosopher so am biased. The only language games in which I indulge are crossword puzzles and they are not really games I suppose.

. . . the systems we do to keep ourselves busy and to keep ourselves distracted from death. — fullofnull

I hope this is tongue in cheek.

I think you will do fine on this forum, providing you stay away from the Axiom of Infinity.

Pfhorrest

I hope this is tongue in cheek. — John Gill

Unfortunately I see a high probability that it is not. Existential dread seems a much realer and more widespread thing than I thought for most of my life thus far, having only begun to suffer from it myself just over a year ago.

Unless your hope is that this poor person is not sincerely trying to merely distract himself from death rather than bravely staring it in the face. I think that that attitude (the one that sees honor in masochistically obsessing over death) the main cause of existential problems. Worrying about things you can’t do anything about is pointless and so in a sense irrational—impractical at least—and if distractions help break someone out of that loop then they’re a useful tool.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard language games described as such a distraction, though.

leo

↪fullofnull

Welcome and happy holidays to you too :)

I would say confusion can arise in many ways, both in communication with other people and within one’s own mind.

Regarding communication there is the problem of other minds, we don’t have direct access to what other people experience, to what they see and feel and think, we aren’t them, so we attempt to infer what they experience from how we see them behave, and from the symbols they have written or the sounds that they emit, which we interpret as words.

From this we have one potential source of confusion: mistaking a word for another one (if the person writes or utter one word and we read/hear another word instead).

A second potential source of confusion is that since we don’t know for sure what others see/feel/think, we can’t be sure that different people assign the same experiences (the same meaning) to the same word. Plenty of misunderstandings are evidence of that, different people assign different meanings to the same word. Using the same dictionary definition doesn’t always help, since the definition of a word is made of other words and we don’t know in the first place whether other people assign the same meaning to these words...

Within our own mind confusion can arise in that we don’t have perfect memory, sometimes we think about something and forget what it was a few moments later, with only a faint memory remaining that we were onto something but we can’t precisely discern it anymore. Then some time later it may come back, or not.

Another source of confusion can be attempting to solve a problem and not finding the solution. Sometimes the problem is ill-formulated and we don’t realize it and so we attempt to pursue something that cannot be found. Or the problem has a solution but because we don’t see/understand everything we have a hard time finding it.

Being tired can lead to confusion, eating or not eating some things can lead to confusion, having false beliefs can lead to confusion, ...

From all these examples, I would say more generally that confusion arises from the fact that we don’t see everything. We don’t have perfect memory. Our senses show us a limited picture of the world, of others, of ourselves. We have a limited ability of processing information which can make us get lost in complexity. There are ways to get better at all that though. Memory can be improved, our senses can be enhanced (with the help of tools but also through training), and through thinking/observation/experiment we realize that what seems to be incredibly complex or random can often be explained on the basis of simple principles, so it is possible to untangle the apparent complexity and see things more clearly.

iolo

Isn't death only a problem for those who accept the heavy promptings of language to believe intermittent and shifting consciousness 'is' 'an individual'?

Athena

I have an attention disorder that lets my mind easily transition from subject to subject in thought when I'm thinking about something, whether it's an idea or object of objective existence. It's hard to explain but, in short, my mind can get confused in the middle of thinking of a productive statement (which I define as something that adds to the conversation in value to both peoples/peoples involved in an obvious manner.) I've always been fascinated with how plastic a mind can be, especially mine. The idea of confusion as I understand it is a simple one although I cannot find anything much on how to initiate confusion in different ways, or to initiate it easily. I'm not a very creative person and I have trouble coming up with my own ideas on things unless I get a tiny bit of inspiration from other places. — fullofnull

I am surprised you said you are not creative. Perhaps that is because you think you have an attention disorder, instead of thinking of this as a positive, in which case you should be very creative. :lol: We might say nature has an attention disorder because all new things are new combinations of what is.

You might enjoy learning Latin and Greek because our thinking begins in the past, and much of it was lost to us when Rome fell, however, the Renaissance was the resurrection of that consciousness and kick-started the scientific thinking of what we call the modern age.

You can get a feel of this by knowing the word "concept" is a relatively modern word, unknown to Christian Europe before there was literacy in Greek and Latin. Imagine talking about what we think without the word "concept". Everything we know of thinking today would not be possible without the vocabulary invented to talk about thinking. The word "concept' originated in 1550.

concept (n.)
"a general notion, the immediate object of a thought," 1550s, from Medieval Latin conceptum "draft, abstract," in classical Latin "(a thing) conceived," from concep-, past-participle stem of concipere "to take in and hold; become pregnant," from con-, here probably an intensive prefix (see con-), + combining form of capere "to take," from PIE root *kap- "to grasp." In some 16c. cases a refashioning of conceit (perhaps to avoid negative connotations that had begun to cling to that word).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/concept

I have to wonder if the negative connotations had something to do with the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit of knowledge and fear of Satan's lies in a society that was rapidly changing and therefore fearful because of literacy in Latin spreading and changing what, and how, people think. :lol: I suppose my difficulty with staying on topic could be called an attention disorder but I see it as an ability to see what others don't see. More of a big picture view than a narrow view.

Athena

Isn't death only a problem for those who accept the heavy promptings of language to believe intermittent and shifting consciousness 'is' 'an individual'? — iolo

Good grief, I associate death with loss. I suffered the loss of my mother when she died, and I don't even want to think of the loss of a son or daughter or one of their children. I am sure my life is of no value to people in this forum, but I think it has an important value to those I am close to. Growing up without a mother or father can be very painful. Losing a sibling can throw the whole family into grief and radically change the trajectory of one's life. Death is about being human and our relationships, and that is a little more just our individuality.

iolo

Good grief, I associate death with loss. I suffered the loss of my mother when she died, and I don't even want to think of the loss of a son or daughter or one of their children. I am sure my life is of no value to people in this forum, but I think it has an important value to those I am close to. Growing up without a mother or father can be very painful. Losing a sibling can throw the whole family into grief and radically change the trajectory of one's life. Death is about being human and our relationships, and that is a little more just our individuality. — Athena

All true to experience ... BUT it all depends on certain assumptions based on language I think. What is this individuality based on except the noise 'I'? Once accepted, the concept suggests all sorts of pain.

Athena

All true to experience ... BUT it all depends on certain assumptions based on language I think. What is this individuality based on except the noise 'I'? Once accepted, the concept suggests all sorts of pain. — iolo

Are you speaking from the teachings of Buddha? Happiness is conditional on security and learning to be happy. After doing workshops on healthy living, it has been obvious being happy does not come naturally but is learned. Like I had to experience many people to conclude I was not the only one who had to learn how to be happy, and it is not just my family that needs to learn who to be happy. In general, humans struggle to be happy because they don't know how to be happy unless that came from their family.

What is really important other than a reality that meets the conditions of happiness, is our internal language, our self-talk. Our self-talk depends on our personal experience and also our culture and position in society. That is, if we are born into wealth, we are treated very differently than if we are born into poverty. And education promotes culture. We are now in cultural crisis because education is no longer focused the social goals. Hum, how do I say? Our humanness is about our relationships, not just our ego or individuality.

If you can watch the movie "Passengers" for a perspective on the importance of living with humans and not just robots. Or the British TV series Humans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sm23e0a5_w

Athena

Unless your hope is that this poor person is not sincerely trying to merely distract himself from death rather than bravely staring it in the face. — Pfhorrest

Oh, I thought you were going to say, "rather than bravely engaging in life". I think contemplation of death occurs, and reoccurs, at different periods of our lives, but it seems for most of my life I have been too busy resolving the challenges of life to give much time to thinking about death. Long ago my contemplation of death lead to learning everything I can before I die, just in case we live after death, or in another dimension, we remain conscious.

My biggest fear was meeting the important people of history at that big dining table in the sky. It would be so :yikes: embarrassing to be dining with them and totally ignorant of what they know.

Pfhorrest

Oh, I thought you were going to say, "rather than bravely engaging in life". — Athena

That is the correct attitude to take, but if one finds oneself fixated on death and unable to just live like that, distracting oneself to break the fixation and get on with living is wiser than what some people portray as bravely staring death in the face. I understand that when thus fixated trying not to be feels like cowardice, but when not thus fixated such fixation looks like foolishness. Pitiable, for those who remember what it’s like to be so foolish themselves, but foolishness nevertheless.

iolo

Athena - I was talking about the way death is made into a big deal. I suppose my notions are loosely based on the Buddhism I learned when I was fourteen, doubtless very limited, but fundamentally I think that if we believe in these imaginarily consistent 'selves' suggested by grammar we shall always be in some sort of emotional muddle.

Harry Hindu

Songs and poems are examples of language games, or a play on words - meant to be vague so that it can generate arbitrary interpretations. In this sense, poems and songs are like rorschach tests.

Normal language use is not a game. It is a means of transmitting information from one mind to another.

Many people confuse the two. This is how they get offended by words because they interpreted the words differently than what was intended. If what words mean are how they are used, then the user is the one that imbued meaning in their words, not the listener or reader. The listener or reader should be interpreting the speaker or writer's intent, not their own, to get at the meaning of the words. So when someone says, "Happy Holidays", their intent isn't to be offensive to Christians.

Mike Radford

This set of posts is getting in bit like a herd of cats - perhaps the opening comment, as rich and engaging as it was did not really offer anything like a particular question. There are some confusions on the nature of language games. Every use of language is necessarily part of a language game. It involves rules, agreements between players and some kind of shared objective or purpose. Even if one is speaking to oneself, the activity is conducted as if it was an internal dialogue, as it one were speaking to somebody else.

Athena

I just realized this thread spins of pervious threads about language games. Here is a quote form a link about language games.

"Wittgenstein was intent on bringing out how ‘the “speaking” of language is part of an activity, or form of life’."

When we are teenagers effectively who we are (a dependent child) dies to become a yet unknown adult, sort of like the worm metamorphs into a butterfly. How are we to understand this without contemplating the meaning of life and death? Tempting fate may seem foolish but our knowledge of life comes through experience. Words do not have meaning without experience. To get close to death may stimulate our will to live?

To respond to the question "And what is confusion and how is it easily induced with language?" Without language can there be confusion? Without language what can we know? I think without language we can be aware of our feelings. We can judge how safe it is to take the fruit when sitting too near the alpha male or judge how safe it is to take other chances with our life. But confusion? No, I don't think we can be confused without language.

fullofnull

I want to thank you everyone for the replies! I am currently reading them and will reply to each when I can. This is amazing thank you so much for reading :)

fullofnull

↪Pfhorrest

What I meant simply (and I phrased it poorly) was that all of us are going to die at some point and whatever we do while living in most parts is to avoid death by surviving or to entertain ourselves to avoid existential problems whether they come in the short or long term. I might be fallacious in how I describe the condition of the world. While I don't hold this view completely seriously (I really am open to changing my mind all of the time, I believe) it makes a bit of sense to me as a simple 3rd eye view of what's going on. What you mentioned about breaking out of the loop is a useful way I would say of why the things I called "distractions" are important and I am not devaluing those things at all. I am simplifying them (probably poorly) to a class of things we do/obtain/achieve/etc.

I have been training with someone in CBT and it has helped me get out of existential loops and anxiety episodes that pop up once in a while. I have passions and I find beauty in something almost every day. To be clear I'm not trying to convince you; just trying to shed more light on what I meant and some connection to my life in regards to what you mentioned with the existential loops.

Hopefully I stayed on topic or added something here! Thank you for the reply :)

fullofnull

↪leo

Thank you for the reply!

I love the separate examples you gave. I wanted to comment on them:

From this we have one potential source of confusion: mistaking a word for another one (if the person writes or utter one word and we read/hear another word instead). — leo

Within our own mind confusion can arise in that we don’t have perfect memory, sometimes we think about something and forget what it was a few moments later, with only a faint memory remaining that we were onto something but we can’t precisely discern it anymore. Then some time later it may come back, or not. — leo

This reminds me of when you take two different meanings of a word and use the word appropriately utilizing both definitions of the word, and sticking to one sometimes to throw one off. This happens in comedy; someone will use a word in a joke, and the punchline will include the word but using it to describe an unrelated subject (maybe new) so they can surprise the listener(s). I explained that badly but from what I am understanding this is like that. It seems there is a lot of technique specifically in misdirection or deception. I'm starting to think of the idea that "it's not what you said, it's how you said it" kind of thing is really how one specifically puzzles another in any given timeframe for whatever purpose.

George Carlin had this interesting take on how his writing and comedy had been affected by how one switches from comedy to poetry to politics in spoken word. George Carlin on transforming from a jester to a philosopher poet He frames one who uses different (domains of value?) to switch implied intention/seriousness to create ambiguity which could lead to confusion for some. In the video he focuses mostly on how jokes can also have important comments about political or social affairs depending on the interpretation. The interpreted intent of the author obviously also plays into the interpretation of the joke.

Another source of confusion can be attempting to solve a problem and not finding the solution. Sometimes the problem is ill-formulated and we don’t realize it and so we attempt to pursue something that cannot be found. Or the problem has a solution but because we don’t see/understand everything we have a hard time finding it. — leo

I thought this was interesting. I am wondering if I can find any examples to incomplete problems that are seemingly complete enough to solve. By complete I mean problems given their original parameters to start the solving can complete the operation for the solution. I also am curious to know if there is examples of leading one towards a goal that they see as another goal? I suppose a lot of psychological literature about trust and deception would be appropriate for this kind of question. I was interested in the story of Charles Manson purely for the psychological part of it because I find it interesting how even a close group of people can be tormented and tricked into identities they didn't ask for. This connects a lot with me; I sometimes have moments where I am 'afraid' that someone will come and judge me or try to stop me from whatever I'm doing. I don't see this as any outside conditioning although I for whatever reason think that others think I'm odd or too weird even though I have no rational reason to believe so. It's just one of those things that my brain does sometimes and learning about things like confusion and mind games helps me learn how to plan for the next time I'm having a rough time. But I also love learning about this and I'm sorry I possibly digressed; again thank you so much and I love the examples you gave! I didn't spend a lot of time on this reply so if my ideas are unrelated, disconnected, or non-valuable please let me know. Cheers!

Pfhorrest

↪fullofnull

I figured that’s what you meant, my response was directed more at John than you.

fullofnull

↪Athena

I suppose my difficulty with staying on topic could be called an attention disorder but I see it as an ability to see what others don't see. More of a big picture view than a narrow view. — Athena

Oooo I like that! ^_^. I probably hold the world record for thinking most subjects in a second or something; no big deal. Thinking of it as a tool rather than an impediment on my journey to fulfillment actually is something I haven't thought much about. You gave me some nice perspective on that.

You might enjoy learning Latin and Greek because our thinking begins in the past, and much of it was lost to us when Rome fell, however, the Renaissance was the resurrection of that consciousness and kick-started the scientific thinking of what we call the modern age. — Athena

I am starting to read Plato from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and I'm enjoying it so far :). I want to read more about Aristotle, Socrates, and more. I know a bit of Marx, Hegel, Kant, and a few others but I have only read surface level content from all of them. If you have great resources that you like I would love them but only if you would like to send them. I would appreciate anything. Thank you again!

Wayfarer

↪fullofnull

Apropos your original question, there's a movement or discipline or something called 'general semantics' which was popular during the 60's, and actually Alan Watts mentions it a few times.

And see if you can find this film

Probably the archetype behind that film was EST. I did something similar in my twenties.

Athena

I am starting to read Plato from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and I'm enjoying it so far :). I want to read more about Aristotle, Socrates, and more. I know a bit of Marx, Hegel, Kant, and a few others but I have only read surface level content from all of them. If you have great resources that you like I would love them but only if you would like to send them. I would appreciate anything. Thank you again! — fullofnull

If you are interested in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, know that Plato wrote the lessons of Socrates and taught Aristotle. Know that everything Socrates said was influenced by Sparta winning the war with Athens and controlling Athens, and that Aristotle favored Spartan control and authority and the Roman Christianity Church picked that authoritarianism. The more you study this stuff the more exciting it will be as it reveals what lies hidden in the western civilization subconscious. And know for everything we might admire about Sparta, in the end, it was self-destructive because they could not reproduce enough to keep Sparta strong.

This might be the best use of your time and money...

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If you go that site look for the course titled "Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition".

I am glad you realized a more constructive way to think of your "disorder". Your "disorder" can be a gift but perhaps one difficult to live with because it means seeing things differently from others, so the gift comes with a challenge of getting others to see things differently. Others may think your thoughts are way out in left field or disorganized as right brian thinking is very creative and reorganizes thoughts in new ways. Developing good communication skills and your own confidence can bridge those problems and reveal your gift.

Athena

Probably the archetype behind that film was EST. I did something similar in my twenties. — Wayfarer

I did EST and I chose to break contact with those people.

Athena

Another source of confusion can be attempting to solve a problem and not finding the solution. Sometimes the problem is ill-formulated and we don’t realize it and so we attempt to pursue something that cannot be found. Or the problem has a solution but because we don’t see/understand everything we have a hard time finding it.
— leo — fullofnull

Boy oh boy, is that true! I do workshops on healthy living designed by Standard, and they are so academic they don't relate well to the real human beings that participate in the workshops. It is the facilitator's job to humanize the information so it resonates with them and also give them some skills for thinking more logically, Such as a method of decision making. This is not just about language but also how we organize our thoughts.

I have been a domestic woman most of my life, and thinking domestically is very different from thinking academically, and if someone is in a subculture such as a street gang, the thinking will not be domestic nor academic. While the average Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Republican, Democrat will each have a different frame of mind for understanding the world. When the frame of mind is different, there will be a huge communication problem because so much of our communication depends on others sharing the information we have.

New! What are language games? And what is confusion and how is it easily induced with language?

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