other domains of language — Posty McPostface

what are the various domains of language?...

I'm not quite sure what you mean, but at this point the thread has probably gone down the drain.

That's good. We do not have a term for being surrounded and saturated in air.

Almost relevant :

https://theconversation.com/answering-the-question-that-won-me-the-ig-nobel-prize-are-cats-liquid-86589

If cats are a form of liquid, then when a cat sits on you, you are wet.

I wasn’t expecting a serious reply. Maybe I should have been more serious myself, and likely should have first replied directly to Baden. To go back to what Baden’s reply to me was:

To soak something is to immerse it in water or to make it extremely wet. The fish is literally soaking in water when it is in the water. — Baden

I get what Baden is here saying; that “immersion in water”, or “being made extremely wet”, signifies that something is soaked--that something is soaking wet. Yet, by what Baden expresses verbatim, this entails that the thing addressed was immersed in the given liquid from a former state of not being so immersed, and was made wet--this in comparison to a state of non-wetness prior to being so made wet.

So, being serious about the matter: that a natural, living fish in some lake or ocean (etc.), which was birthed there and died there without any alteration to its context of water, was "soaking wet" to me strongly implies that at some point it was not. But this conclusion would be erroneous. It always was in the same state of being surrounded by water.

Were such a fish, however, to be taken out of its natural context, say by fishing, and then immersed into some other liquid, because this this other liquid would be a novel and impermanent context, the fish would then be “immersed” or “made wet” with this novel liquid. So, the fish now could be said to be soaking wet in the liquid because it was so made to be from a former state of not being so. E.g.:

“All fish are soaking wet in water”, doesn’t sound right to me (though I grant that English is my second language, I've never quite heard this term outside of this philosophy form, and I'm guessing the same applies for most).

“That living fish over there is soaking wet in ketchup”, though a bit sadistic, does to me seem cogent as a statement.

… but this is not an overall argument I have big stakes in.

But even if we were to accept this "novel" definitional constraint, the fish prior to being birthed was not immersed in sea water but in some internal fluid of its parent. (And obviously this idea holds whether we consider the fish egg to be the fish or a (sub)container of it).

(Accepting it would anyway have the odd result of allowing a caught and thrown-back fish to be called "wet" in opposition to its uncaptured comrades. Too inegalitarian for me.)

I feel as though language has failed us here, just not sure how. — Posty McPostface

Or maybe we have failed language, just by asking the question.

Yea, I see your point. And then it would be hatched into the wetness. Still, wouldn’t it as embryo still be wet given the fluid it’s surrounded by? (Same with the sperm and egg prior to the embryo being developed.)



... but I'm OK with either way, to be honest

Excuse the spelling edits btw. Must be my fish fingers.

got plenty of those myself

Spoilsport. Go on back to the Shoutbox. See how you like it there. :p

3.03 Thought can never be of anything illogical, since, if it were, we should have to think illogically.

Wittgenstein, TLP

Yeah, so a fish being wet is a tautology.

It's only when we treat it as if something that has meaningful content, that nonsense arises, no?

Wasn't this Jamal's point? — Πετροκότσυφας

I'm not sure.

If it is our usage of language that produces senselessness, it is us that have failed language. — Πετροκότσυφας

How can one fail language? I don't understand that concept. Hence proposition 7 in the TLP?

What is it? — Πετροκότσυφας

Isomorphic? Redundant? I don't entirely know.

Is it reasonable to pull the rug upon which we stand?

Regarding isomorphism, I don't really have a grasp on what that is. It would be as if to say that language is an attempt at describing reality, yet at the same time stating that it really doesn't, and saying that it doesn't is senseless (or nonsensical). So, there you have it, a paradox, no?

It's the same thing with language games and family resemblances. I can see that they are similar; but, trying to say that they are is nonsensical. Again, a sort of paradox.

Not getting your drift. Enlighten me, as I seem unenlightened on the matter.

Πετροκότσυφας got the gist of my comment, and it's a standard interpretation of Wittgenstein.

For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday. — Wittgenstein, PI 38

That's pretty much what I meant. To ask "is a fish wet in water" is to use language without a proper appreciation or understanding of language, i.e., without a sensitivity to context, and so on.

EDIT: By the way, I'm not sure if I want to entirely endorse the strong interpretation of this view, namely that all philosophical problems are mere linguistic confusions.

Yes, so a wet fish is a senseless proposition, almost a trite tautological truism, and thinking it has meaning is nonsense. Is that right?

Pretty much, I reckon.

More than half of any organism's weight is water.

On the other hand, if I was soaked by rain and I said I was as wet as a fish, you would know what I meant. It's not nonsense. The primary problem then--the way that language has gone on holiday--might be to look for a definitive answer, which is to give in to the pull of the thought of wetness.

If a fish is in water, is it wet, or can we only call it wet when taken out of water? — Posty McPostface

I suspect there's something fishy going on here.

If we go down that path, we are going to be immersed in quantum mechanics. — Banno

I don't know about you, but I'm supersaturated with QM.

Nicely put.