Perhaps I've misunderstood you, but I am not seeing a difference, in principle, between contending that words are not the things they reference, and saying that schemes are not the world they represent. — Janus

Uluru is a rock; while "Uluru" is a word - I'm sure we agree so far.

But there are those who would claim that to understand the sentence "Uluru is a rock" we have first to differentiate between Uluru-as-schema and Uluru-in-itself, and then to point out that we can never actually talk about Uluru-in-itself. Or some variation of this story.

I commend On the very idea of a conceptual scheme, Donald Davidson.

You don't agree that there is a valid logical distinction between what Uluru is, and has been, for human experience and thought and what it is in itself? In other words, isn't there more to Uluru than we can tell? I mean, for a start, what it is to non-human percipients? Uluru is not any conceptual schema of it, surely?

...there is a valid logical distinction between what Uluru is, and has been, for human experience and thought and what it is in itself? In other words, isn't there more to Uluru than we can tell? — Janus

I'm not convinced that "there is a valid logical distinction between what Uluru is, and has been, for human experience and thought and what it is in itself" is another way of saying "there is more to Uluru than we can tell".

There is more to Uluru than can be told - I can show you that.

And the notion of an Uluru-in-itself is a philosophical construct of the most misleading sort.

I agree that the idea of an Uluru-in-itself is misleading if it is taken to be a different entity than the Uluru that appears to us. But Uluru-as-entity is a formal notion in any case. No one perceives Uluru-as-entity. Each perception of Uluru involves aspects of Uluru, the light, environmental conditions, and the senses of the percipient. It is only for the sake of the intelligibility of experience that we refer to entities as 'the same' from one experience to the next, from one moment to the next. Entities are events, be-ings, becomings, more verb than noun; really never the same from one instant to the next.

So, Uluru is not exhausted by, or identical with, any idea or schema.

I don't think I disagree with anything here... so far as I understand it.

I don't think that Uluru-as-entity is at all defensible, since it relies on a distinction between Uluru and Uluru-as-entity...

It's Uluru all the way down...

Uluru isn't what Ib]I[/b] say it is; it is what we say it is. — Banno

Same general semiotic principle. Language embeds the notion of the self that speaks with meaning. So cultures do form vocabularies to serve their pragmatic interests. And we become socially constructed as selves by participating correctly in that language game.

You could check out GH Mead of symbolic interactionism fame here. He applied Peirce to early sociology. Or Lev Vygotsky for the Russian version.

You seem to have built your view as a series of deductions from inside your self, or something like that; — Banno

I haven't built anything. It just pragmatist philosophy and social psychology as far as I'm concerned.

So it is a position built from scientific observation of human society, human development and human psycholinguistics. So induction not deduction.

but Wittgenstein is suggesting that one stop and look first, at what happens when language is used. — Banno

Strewth. How revolutionary. You mean like social psychology? Like symbolic interactionism or social constructionism?

The self doing the speaking is as much a social construct as the language that self is using. — Banno

Did you say that or are you quoting me there? Honestly, I can't tell.

Removing the Self from where Descartes had placed it in the middle of philosophy is one of the net things about Philosophical Investigations. — Banno

Well we've already been though how Ramsey whispered the secrets of pragmatism in Wittgenstein's lughole.

As I say, Peirce was fixing Kant who was fixing Descartes. Wittgenstein is pretty irrelevant.

There's this really nice old paper of how Kant's cognitivism was fixed by Peirce's semiotics - http://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1905&context=luc_theses

From what you have said it would seem that the speaker can decide in one way or the other if the stone is part of Uluru or not. But that's not what I would say. It's not the speaker who makes such decisions, but the community being addressed. And what is being asked is not about the ontology of Uluru so much as the way we use parts of that sacred rock. — Banno

The speaker could take a view. The community could take a view. All that matters so far as a pragmatic view of truth goes is that each party would be forming some general theory about "sacred Uluru" and would see the stone in evidential terms. Either the stone will be ruled by identity-justified constraints, or the party in question would feel a justified indifference.

So the threshold might be determined by something physical - like the size or the degree of attachment. Or the criteria could be anything. The person wanting to souvenir the stone might be a tribal magic man or a state authorised geologist with a permit in his pocket. All that matters is that there is a theory that covers the issue and there is a way to "tell the truth of the matter" as some act of measurement. Some attribute of the stone has to become a sign of whether it is imbued with this quality of sacredness or not.

The key here is that there is a habit of interpretance in play. There is a belief. And then the world is understood in terms of the belief. The belief knows what kind of signs or acts of measurement fall within its scope.

The stone is stony enough, or sacred enough, or whatever enough, to count as such. Or not, as the case may be.

The radical psychological claim is then that all experience is like this. Semiosis doesn't just apply to language use, it applies to the basic neurobiology of experience, and even of course to biology in general.

But then I don't have a clear idea of what this "cut" is - apparently between me and it, as if an individual could have a private language. — Banno

You could look it up. Just google Pattee and epistemic cut. Or von Neuman and self reproducing automata. Or Rosen and modelling relation. Or....

You get the picture. Stop being such a lazy sod and make an effort. You might finally learn something. Imagine poor fated Ramsey whispering in your lughole too.

I know this is misrepresenting you, Apo, — Banno

Well why not pull your finger out and do your research.

How will you reply? What attitude will you adopt? — Banno

Always the psychodrama, Banno. You want to play the game of "pretend to respect me and I'll pretend to respect you." And worried you won't get that, you try to play the authority figure. You set yourself up as the judge of whether someone's behaviour conforms to some proper standard.

Well bollocks to that as you know. If you want respect, make an argument that works. Stop pretending that you are somehow in control of how this goes.

Always the psychodrama, Banno. You want to play the game of "pretend to respect me and I'll pretend to respect you." And worried you won't get that, you try to play the authority figure. You set yourself up as the judge of whether someone's behaviour conforms to some proper standard. — apokrisis

Yes, I was trying to show you some respect. I should know better, but am a slow learner.

Wouldn't it be sad, if @apokrisis have a decent point to make, but could not explain it. He's far too clever for me.

The question is as to whether any of you have successfully completed the philosophy bit before you all commence on dissecting brains. Good instinct can be just as important as evidence, for in philosophy there always exists the counter argument. I have shifted my position on this forum not with so called evidence but with time and sleep.

Here we go. Now the self-pitying soliloquy for the imagined onlooker.

You forget I've seen every play in your book many times now. So just get on with your reply. Stop pretending to worry - while turning your head and throwing mournful looks to the cheap seats - about what attitude I will adopt.

So what do your replies say about you, Apo?

You always have to make it personal Banno. Just stick to responding to the arguments and you'll be fine.

Indeed.

Well? :)

Respect, genuine respect can be difficult to conjure up in this environment where nobody wholly exists, just words on a page. Respect has to take on board an element of person, thus respect would come more naturally should persons be revealed alongside merely intellects. The onlookers are not imagined tell him,, many are following this thread, and shall do into the future. Yes, that does perhaps sound a little like a line plucked from a play. It is wishful thinking to imagine that one person can know another on this basis of no more than around perhaps thirty or forty percent of full in person communication, and when not even on the topic of each other.

I had a physio do some work on my back today. She was asking for descriptions of pain here and there, and how deep, what sort - quite precise. And she appeared to use this information to fathom where to push and prod, because my spine is now much straighter and less painful.

So those pains were not private. — Banno

But don't you think that those pains were private prior to you describing them to the physio? And, that it was your capacity to refer to these private things, when they were private, which enabled you to make them public?

I think that the way in which we make public, those things which are private, is an important aspect of epistemology. This is how beliefs are justified. If you deny that things like beliefs are ever private, you ignore the reality of deception, and the need for justification.

Yep. The difference is that a private language is one that cannot be made public even in principle.

The difference is that a private language is one that cannot be made public even in principle. — Banno

Absolutism is always the wrong move. Relativism is the way to go.

If you stick to relativism, then you can actually have limits that behave as limits - absolute in being the "place" that reality can approach with arbitrary closeness, but never actually arrive.

So all language use exists in the space between the limits of the absolutely private and the absolutely public.

Some kinds of experience - like the smell of a rose - seem ineffably private. Yet wine and coffee tasting professionals have a vast vocabulary by which they can analyse what they experience and share it in reasonably reliable fashion with a community.

Indeed, making the "umwelt" point about semiotics again, once you can think of hints of cat piss or whatever, then you become equipped with the language that allows you to look for these particular analytic signs. Your raw experience becomes linguistically structured so that you experience the wine as a collection of particular references. You can measure how close the wine gets to some ideal in terms of a type.

Anyway, there is no experience so private that we can't create a language that shares it. Indeed, the very idea that there could be a "private language" is already saying that is so.

And likewise, there is no language so public that we can be sure every member of a linguistic community will experience the words the same way.

If you say "cat", then I could have some very different mental image spring to mind. Yours might be a brindle tom. Mine might be a white persian.

So the private vs public dichotomy speaks to two opposed ideal limits. And the reality is then all that takes place within the bounds of these limits. All speech acts are relatively private or relatively public to the degree that either the speech acts translates freely or awkwardly.

Translation can never be ruled out even if achieving commensurability in points of view is always going to be a work in progress.

So the private vs public dichotomy speaks to two opposed ideal limits. — apokrisis

Well, I would not say it like that, but yes, I agree.

The difference is that a private language is one that cannot be made public even in principle. — Banno

Well, I would not say it like that, but yes, I agree. — Banno

So you now disagree with yourself?

As usual, you chose to be gnomic in your response, leaving others to guess at what you could really mean.

The only time you get more fulsome in your replies is when you complain about my "bad attitude". You can see why I might regard that as hypocritical given that I find your "terseness" rude and unhelpful. It doesn't fit the usual definition of a discussion - a free give and take of ideas - does it?

I get it, I think, but it does n`t really amount to anything worth the effort of thinking about, does it? "Speaks to two opposed" or should it be "speaks of two opposed", I get "of" but not "to" I do n`t even get the point of deliberately perplexing everything, to be honest, to me it seems like a waste of effort. It does n`t follow that with perplexity one gets any closer to the truth. I do n`t recognize this distinction between private and public,, that there are opposed limits, this is an individual matter, and the limits depend on the circumstances of private, and of public. One cannot determine beyond that.

So you now disagree with yourself? — apokrisis

What?

A private language would be one that cannot be made public, even in principle; and there can be no such thing.

Where is the contradiction? Why be so obtuse and fractious?

A private language would be one that cannot be shared with anyone even to begin with.

Foolish me. I expected that for once you might be trying to engage. We are so quickly back into time-wasting attempts to extract any clarity.

So when you said you agreed with this statement - "So the private vs public dichotomy speaks to two opposed ideal limits." - what did you mean by saying you agreed?

I said your absolutism was unwarranted. Language could be only relatively private or relatively public. So it is all a matter of degree.

Now you say you agree with that and yet disagree with that. And then you have the gaul (sic) to complain about my testy response.

If your sole intent is to waste my time, let me know.

A private language would be one that cannot be shared with anyone even to begin with. — celebritydiscodave

But you could share it with yourself?

A private language would be one that cannot be shared with anyone even to begin with. — celebritydiscodave

Private language speaks to the notion that I have private thoughts in my head that I translate into English and put "out there", that you read and then translate into your private language. Rejecting a private language amounts to rejecting this model, and hence accepting that language is intrinsically a public enterprise.

Musing a bit, that is part of the problem I have with @apokrisis's epistemic "cut"; the cut could not be a private thing.

What would sharing it with yourself look like?

Yep. The difference is that a private language is one that cannot be made public even in principle. — Banno

So you do agree that there is private mental furnishing though, private things which will remain private unless made public? Whether there are any private things which cannot be made public even in principle, I do not see as really relevant. What is relevant is that there is private mental furnishing which will remain private if not made public.

Private language speaks to the notion that I have private thoughts in my head that I translate into English and put "out there", that you read and then translate into your private language. Rejecting a private language amounts to rejecting this model, and hence accepting that language is intrinsically a public enterprise. — Banno

Do you recognize that each person has one's own peculiarities, and idiosyncracies, which make one's own interpretation of any statement particular to that individual? If it is impossible for me to communicate to you, exactly, and precisely what I mean, how is that not an indication of private language? In other words, if the public part is always missing something from ideal completion, and perfection in translation, then isn't this the part which is private (cannot even in principle be made public)?

It might be private, but how can it be a language, especially if the private aspect is what is not, or what is unable to be, communicated (per your depiction above)?

private mental furnishing — Metaphysician Undercover

I would avoid such talk. Too close to reification; too much.

If your sole intent is to waste my time, let me know. — apokrisis

The time wasting is apparently mutual. IF it is all a matter of degree, then there can be no absolutely private language...

I think we agree, but you do not realise it. Odd.