But why in the world would realism require verfication-transcendent conditions? — StreetlightX

Fitch proved it, remember? At least, if you want to preserve non-omniscience. Kek!

The suggestion that learning language primarily consists in paring down possibilities rather than acquiring new capacities is so profoundly ignorant I don't think it deserves comment.

Yes but Dummett et. al. are wrong. What 'some' say is irrelavent here so long as the argument goes unaddressed. Which it has. The point is to show that rejecting the 'realist' POV does not entail a retreat into anti-realism, and that indeed, the whole anti/realism debate is a badly posed one to begin with. Falling back into doxa does not an argument make.

Oh look, another entirely substanceless post. How very unexpected.

The point is to show that rejecting the 'realist' POV does not entail a retreat into anti-realism — StreetlightX

Of course it does. Anti-realism is, by definition, a rejection of realism. If you reject the realist notion that truth is verification-transcendent then you are anti-realist.

What 'some' say is irrelavent here so long as the argument goes unaddressed.

Of course it's not. You're addressing the classical problems, and one of the most prominent classical problems is regarding the correspondence notion of truth and the account of reference where words "stand in" for other (often non-experiential, non-conceptual, non-linguistic) things. The people who call themselves realists do so because they are in favour of such accounts. And to reject these realist accounts is to be anti-realist.

It seems to me that you want to reject the substance of traditional realist theories and yet retain the realist label. Why?

Yes but Dummett et. al. are wrong.

About what? That realism argues in favour of verification-transcendent truth or that anti-realism rejects this? You can make a case for the former but certainly not the latter as he coined the term. If you make a (successful) case for the former then we run into the confusing situation where those realist theories which reject verification-transcendent truths are also anti-realist theories.

The other option of course is that both positions are devoid of sense and that one reject the terms of the debate altogether. But one would have to address an actual argument in order to do so I suppose.

The argument is:

Premise 1. To be anti-realist is to reject verification-transcendent truths
Premise 2. Your position rejects verification-transcendent truths
Conclusion. Therefore, your position is anti-realist

A realist may reject verification transcendent truths without rejecting verification transcendent actualities and verification transcendent speculations or inferences.

You seem to be mistaking form for content. Truths are predicated of propositions. Which is to say that by definition, one needs language in order to have truths. That's about all I'm saying. I'm not talking about this or that truth but the very structure of truth as such. That you are unable to see this - and that you think anti/realism turns upon the rejection or not of a tautology is incredibly strange. Its as if I were to say: in order for words to make sense one must have words. To which you'd reply: Ha! You're an antirealist about sense. It's incredibly bizzare.

In any case, if you have nohing to add other than bicker over labels as insubstantial as these, I might have to end our conversation here I think.

Which is to say that by definition, one needs language in order to have truths. — StreetlightX

Sure, but the question is then on what else is needed. Is language -- and the empirical contexts in which it's used -- sufficient? Or is something which transcends empirical (or conceptual) verification required? The realist argues for the latter and the anti-realist argues for the former. Your account seems to argue for the former, hence why I characterize it as anti-realist. The meaning and truth of "the chair exists" is not to be understood or explained in terms of correspondence to some mind-independent state of affairs but in terms of linguistic conventions and observable behaviours and conceptual significance. It all sounds anti-realist to me.

But if language is just another thing in the world, the question is more or less senseless. The very question 'what else' seems to want to parse language and world neatly apart from each other, language in one box, world in another. Then, beginning from the box called language, you want to ask: what else is there needed for truth? How do I get out of the language box and into the world box? Supposedly the anti-realist says you can't get out, and the realist says you can. But if such a division is nothing but an arbitrary convenience, the question is philosophically meaningless. There's simply nothing at stake in it ("You're both idiots, you've both been outside the whole time and the 'problem' of getting from one box to the other is a false one"). Which is why time and time again I've said the anti/realist debate is more or less a triviality, a badly posed banality not worth getting hung up on.

Of course language is just another thing in the world. Who says it isn't? It certainly isn't some fiction that we've imagined. Simply saying that language is a real thing that really happens doesn't somehow dissolve the debate between the realist and the anti-realist or show that they're banal positions. The only "boxing" is between the parts of the world that are language, e.g. the sentence "there is a chair in the next room" and that parts of the world that are not, e.g. the chair in the next room. It seems like a reasonable distinction simply on semantic grounds before we even get to ontology.

But that involves more than a semantic distinction. It's a distinction between different states of the world. In pointing out states of language are not what language talks about, one is drawing a distinction between two different things in the world. One is is talking about two different forms of ontology, not merely a difference in what words mean.

But what the OP tries to show - among other things - is precisely how such a distinction can be misleading. Insofar as language is just one manner of expressing sense, which itself is a production of ecological differentials which can include gesture, movement, intonation, atmosphere and so on - there are no a priori limits than can be drawn with respect to what implicates the sensible. To express sense is to draw on all these differentials, to work with or through this assemblage of elements. Sense is an achievement, a product of action wherein what does and does not contribute to it's making ('making sense', in the most literal terms) cannot be specified in advance.

The mereological language you use - parts and wholes - simply betrays the fact that your attempt to acknowledge that language is part of the world is merely lip service. You still treat language as if it were a realm unto it's own, ignoring the trans-linguistic implications of sense and the way in which sense is the outcome of a process whose elements cannot be neatly partitioned into 'language' and 'everything else'. To isolate language and ask of it the sorts of questions you want to ask is to fracture sense and deal instead with a dead fragment rather than a living process of sense. It's posing malformed questions motivated by artificial problems.

Don't aggress me!

Johnston continues, "In other words, early childhood language acquisition isn’t so much a matter of building up [a language]; it’s more a matter of tearing down and eliminating (or, more accurately, attempting to eliminate) the nonsensical meanderings and ramblings of [infantile babbling], of the cognitive games [of enjoyment that] plays with the vocal apparatus." — StreetlightX

I think this is wrong, as a matter of fact, or at least radically incomplete. The babbling stage is imitative and thus eliminative, and I vaguely remember some studies that find that in the process certain distinctions are lost in favour of refining others, such that important sounds in one language cannot be distinguished if one has not heard them at the early stage.

Nevertheless, there is a magical realisation that I seem to see, that babble is not just babble, but means something. The first word moment is easily missed amongst the babble that sounds vaguely appropriate, but I think it is a step-change. There is an awakening to significance that is mutual - to in some rather interesting way 'another world'.

If it is not another world, then perhaps after all we are just babbling to each other.

We're all still in the babbling stage in a certain sense. We've just learned to internalize our babble into what we call internal monologue. Children have to gradually socialize themselves into doing that, and as they do so they internalize culture, consciousness, self identity and all the things we normally associate with being a person. Interesting thread anyhow @StreetlightX. I'll try to post more on it later.

I don't see how saying that parts of the world fall within the domain of language and that parts of the world fall within the domain of not-language is any more problematic than saying that parts of the world fall within the domain of games and that parts of the world fall within the domain of not-games. And I don't see how the former is merely "lip service" just as I don't see how the latter would be "lip service". Furthermore, that you have even said "Insofar as language is just one manner of expressing sense..." shows that even you recognise that there are things that aren't language (e.g. the other manners of expressing sense), and presumably you also accept that not everything in the world is a manner of expressing sense. So I really don't understand your objection.

I didn't say that one can't make an ontological distinction. I said that one can make a semantic distinction before we even bring up ontology. I was addressing @StreetlightX's objection to the separation of language and other parts of the world. The point is that I don't need to say that language is one "realm" and that reality is another. I just need to say that the word "chair" is not a chair. This is true simply by definition. I write the former and I sit on the latter.

I write the former and I sit on the latter. — Michael

It makes me wonder if there are others who suppose it might be the there way around?

Meow!

GREG

The very discintion you are drawing there is one between two things in the world. You write on the former and sit on the latter in the world. In saying the word "chair" is not a chair, you are making, in the terms we are using, an ontological distinction: pointing out the difference between two states of existence.

You cannot bring-up a "semantic" distinction before this ontological one because talk about existence required to describe the distinction between the state of existence of the language "chair" and the state of the chair. If you only bring-up a "semantic" discintion, one which is only relevant to the "realm of language," you fail to talk about the difference of the two states of the world.

Suggesting language is of some other "realm" is, indeed, not required. It is a grievous error in fact; a position which commits one to ignore the significant of language in the world.

You are, however, insisting on making this distinction of language as another realm. At every turn you are trying to insist that the distinction of the world you are describing (i.e about existing states, talking about something with ontological significance) is merely semantic, as if your description was in some realm outside existence (ontology) and had nothing to do with it, as if what you are saying wasn't talking about the world. Just about every single discussion we've had on this topic has you proclaiming your language doesn't need to be about the world (i.e. only semantic), even though it is both of the world and is actually talking about it (and so, by definition, is about "ontology" ).

StreetlightX's point is you have already assumed language ("Hey, its only semantic. Distinction in the world is unnecessary" ) is of a separate realm and so you are completely missing the worldly nature of language.

The point is distinction in the world (i.e. "of ontology") is necessary. Not in the sense of a "foundation," as if language needed something outside itself to ground its meaning, but rather as a feature of language itself. Language which draws distinction between things in the world, such as instance of language and what those talk about, is saying something about what exists. One cannot have language which is only of the "semantic" realm. Such different realms are not only unnecessary, but are impossible by the nature of language itself. Language was of the world from it emergence and is always contained within this sole realm.

I don't see how saying that parts of the world fall within the domain of language and that parts of the world fall within the domain of not-language is any more problematic than saying that parts of the world fall within the domain of games and that parts of the world fall within the domain of not-games. And I don't see how the former is merely "lip service" just as I don't see how the latter would be "lip service". — Michael

This is the very discintion, between the "realm" of the world and the "realm" of language, which you are supposedly proclaiming is unnecessary. Here you insist must be made.

Parts of language don't fall into the domain of the world. It all does. Any use of language is a state of the world. Parts of the world don't sit outside the domain of the language either. We may use language to talk about any part of the world.

You're missing the parameter which would make significant such a distinction (between language and what is not language): sense. It's no use, or rather, philosophically meaningless to try and demarcate between what is and is not language with relating a third term by which such a distinction would at all be significant. Otherwise the distinction is simply nominal. And insofar as sense freely skips across such pseudo-distinctions with ease, philosophical questions which arbitrarily and artificially institute such a distinction to argue for some fake problem like realism and anti-realism are philosophically meaningless.

Cavacava raised a similar point which I addressed in my reply to him on the first page.

Cavacava raised a similar point which I addressed in my reply to him on the first page. — StreetlightX

Again, the point is language as we know it is developmentally continuous, rooted in a world of which it is one element among a vast assemblage of things, movements, bodies, institutions and so on. One can't treat language as a reified world-unto-itself without ignoring the very conditions by which language can be what it is. — StreetlightX

Yes, we disagree; it is discontinuous, as awakening is discontinuous with dreaming. It is precisely the initiation into a shared world, an awakening from the private world.

In the video in the autism thread, the section marked 'translation' is no translation. It declares that there is meaning and then refuses to share it. Well perhaps there is another awakening which I have not had, but then there is another world to which I have no access.

If one spends time with folks whose language one does not speak, one becomes very sensitive to emotional tone, to the relationships expressed by looks and gestures. One sees intimacies that the speakers have forgotten they are expressing and do not consciously read in each other. And this happens because one is ejected from the world of linguistic meaning back into the bar-bar world of the barbarians.

Parts of language don't fall into the domain of the world. It all does. Any use of language is a state of the world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I didn't say that (only) parts of language fall within the domain of the world. I said that (only) parts of the world fall within the domain of language. Not every "state of the world" is language-use.

Parts of the world don't sit outside the domain of the language either. We may use language to talk about any part of the world.

When I say that parts of the world don't fall within the domain of language I am saying that there are things in the world which aren't words or gestures or other examples of language-use. When I talk about a chair I am not talking about language.

You are, however, insisting on making this distinction of language as another realm. At every turn you are trying to insist that the distinction of the world you are describing (i.e about existing states, talking about something with ontological significance) is merely semantic, as if your description was in some realm outside existence (ontology) and had nothing to do with it, as if what you are saying wasn't talking about the world. Just about every single discussion we've had on this topic has you proclaiming your language doesn't need to be about the world (i.e. only semantic), even though it is both of the world and is actually talking about it (and so, by definition, is about "ontology" ).

I haven't said anything like this. What I've said is that one can distinguish between language and its subject matter without invoking metaphysics. The word "chair" and the chair are defined as different things. In making this distinction I'm not treating language and the world as belonging to separate ontological realms. Both the word "chair" and the chair are real things in the real world.

About what? That realism argues in favour of verification-transcendent truth or that anti-realism rejects this? You can make a case for the former but certainly not the latter as he coined the term. If you make a (successful) case for the former then we run into the confusing situation where those realist theories which reject verification-transcendent truths are also anti-realist theories. — Michael

You ignored my previous objection, so I will try again.

A realist could reject verification-transcendent truth (in the sense of acknowledging that we cannot understand what it means to say that a statement about something which could not be verified (even in principle) could be true, without necessarily rejecting verification-transcendent actuality.

Having said this, though, even in regard to verification-transcendent truth, I think we all believe there are such. If I say to you "Remember that online debate we had about realism/anti-realism last Friday, but of which there is now no record since Philosophy Forums crashed and all the posts were lost, and you say "No, we never had any debate last Friday", don't you believe that it is simply either true of false that we had such a debate, even though it can never be verified (i.e. even though it is a verification-transcendent truth/falsity we are dealing with)?

I didn't say that (only) parts of language fall within the domain of the world. I said that (only) parts of the world fall within the domain of language. Not every "state of the world" is language-use.

When I say that parts of the world don't fall within the domain of language I am saying that there are things in the world which aren't words or gestures or other examples of language-use. When I talk about a chair I am not talking about language. — Michael

The problem is this is misleading. It creates the sense of separation between your language and the world which isn't there. When you talk about a chair, you are still speaking language and as such the world (the chair) is in the domain of language.

No doubt there are things which aren't language use, but this instance of speech is not one of them. When you talk about a chair, you are speaking language and what you are talking about (in this case a chair) falls within the domain of language (things spoken about in language).

I haven't said anything like this. What I've said is that one can distinguish between language and its subject matter without invoking metaphysics. The word "chair" and the chair are defined as different things. In making this distinction I'm not treating language and the world as belonging to separate ontological realms. Both the word "chair" and the chair are real things in the real world. — Michael

Indeed, but the relevant question here is what constitutes the discintion between two existing states. A metaphysical argument is not need to make the distinction, but that doesn't mean the distinction has nothing to with existence. In pointing out the distinction, you are identifying to different states of the world. You are pointing to a rock (language) and a tree (chair) and saying: "There is an existing rock (language). There is an existing tree (chair)."

One cannot distinguish between the two states without invoking a description of what exists. The distinction, what you are talking about, is about the world rather than just language. It is not merely "semantic." And talking only in semantics (e.g. "chair" does not mean "language speaking about chair" ) will never draw this distinction between things in the world, for it only talks about what language can logically mean (i.e. semantics is metaphysics ). We might not need metaphysics to draw the distinction between two states of existence, but that doesn't mean we are only making a semantic discintion.

In splitting the discintion in terms of "semantics" and "metaphysics" you have created to realms which aren't relevant to it. The discintion in question is pointing out states of the world. It is neither semantic nor metaphysical. It doesn't even make sense to ask the question: "Do we need to argue semantics or metaphysics to draw this distinction?" The discintion, what the language is talking about, is of the world. You are ignoring this so long as you envision the distinction as a question of using semantics or metaphysics.

The language or "chair" and the chair aren't merely defined as different things (semantics), they exist as different things.

The former (semantic) discintion only identifies that the meaning of language about a chair and a chair are different. It doesn't actually point out the difference between two states of existence. It fails to point out the difference between the presence of someone speaking about a chair and the presence of the chair they are speaking about. It doesn't talk about any state of existence at all.

Of course it's not. You're addressing the classical problems, and one of the most prominent classical problems is regarding the correspondence notion of truth and the account of reference where words "stand in" for other (often non-experiential, non-conceptual, non-linguistic) things — Michael

This is an encapsulation of the separation between language and the world you are still holding. The point is this “classical” problem has never been an issue. It only arose because people ignore what language does and what the world is.

Words have never “stood” in for things in the world. They have only ever talked about them. “Correspondence/coherence” between words and the world has only ever meant that someone words are speaking about something which exists. It has never been about replacing states of existence. Just talking about them.

Things are only non-linguistic, non-experiential and non-conceptual in the sense that they are different states of existence to experiences, language and concepts we have about them.

A rock, for example, is non-linguistic, non-experiential and non-conceptual in that the object is not the existence of our language, concept or experience of the rock(i.e. the difference between an existing object and language about the object).

The rock, however, still falls in the domain of the language, concepts and experience. We may talk about it, think about it and experience it. In terms of language, concepts and experience, the object of the rock is significant. Just because things aren’t language, doesn’t mean they have no significance in language. The resolution of the realist/anti-realist debate comes in rejecting the separation between language and the world, while at the same time regaining the differences between language and the things the talk about. The “classical problem” is cut-off before it even begins

(and this is also the reason for direct realism: the unexperienced rock exists as it would be experienced, for it has its significance in experience, concepts and language, even as it is distinct from those states of experience of the rock- which is why it is an unknown rock).

A realist could reject verification-transcendent truth (in the sense of acknowledging that we cannot understand what it means to say that a statement about something which could not be verified (even in principle) could be true, without necessarily rejecting verification-transcendent actuality. — John

And what about the truth of "there exists a verification-transcendent actuality"? Presumably to be consistent one would have to say that this statement is made true by something which transcends verification? Hence a verification-transcendent truth.

If one were to instead say that the statement is made true by something which doesn't transcend verification – if it's (wholly) made true by experience and linguistic conventions and conceptual models – then the existence of this verification-transcendent actuality doesn't really satisfy metaphysical realism.

Having said this, though, even in regard to verification-transcendent truth, I think we all believe there are such. If I say to you "Remember that online debate we had about realism/anti-realism last Friday, but of which there is now no record since Philosophy Forums crashed and all the posts were lost, and you say "No, we never had any debate last Friday", don't you believe that it is simply either true of false that we had such a debate, even though it can never be verified (i.e. even though it is a verification-transcendent truth/falsity we are dealing with)?

I'd either say that it's true or say that it's false. But this is just to engage with the language-game I've learnt to use. When asked a question I consider the things I've seen (or am seeing) and the things I've been told and respond with the most appropriate answer. Nothing about this requires accepting the realist's verification-transcendent truth.

Interestingly I've found an account of Dummett's position which seems remarkably similar to @StreetlightX's:

His, I assume, strongest argument, the manifestation argument, begins
with the quite plausible claim that a theory of meaning is a theory of
understanding. After all, to understand a linguistic item is to grasp its
meaning. Obviously, the theory must explain in what the understanding of
the language consists. Understanding a sentence, Dummett contends, is not
an inner mental state, but a practical ability, an ability to manifest a certain
sort of behavior, If one understands a sentence, one must be able to man-
ifest that understanding. For our grasp of the meaning of a sentence con-
sists in our ability to make correct uses of it. The public communicability of
language requires that meanings are accessible to speakers of the language.

So far, so good. Then, however, Dummett goes on to identify the practical
ability to make use of a statement with the recognitional capacity to verify or
falsify that statement. To understand a statement one must be able to
recognize certain situations as verifying the assertion of the statement. This
identification, requiring as it does an association between individual sen-
tences and particular recognizable wordly conditions which justify them,
seems to me to be the crux of the argument. Here Dummett‘s epistemologi-
cal and, since he ties meaning to evidence and verification, semantic anti-
holism become evident. On this basis, he tries to establish that statements
can only have verification conditions because a statement that had objective
recognition-transcendent truth conditions could not be understood. Our
knowledge of the recognition-transcendent truth conditions of statements
can never be manifested in our exercise of the practical abilities which constitute
our understanding of those statements. Thus, knowledge of the meaning of
such “effectively undecidable" statements does not consist in knowledge of
their realist truth conditions. Rather, an understanding of a sentence can
only consist in knowledge of what counts as evidence for its truth.” — Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language, Dirk Greimann and Geo Siegwart

Then, however, Dummett goes on to identify the practical ability to make use of a statement with the recognitional capacity to verify or falsify that statement. — Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language, Dirk Greimann and Geo Siegwart

Doesn't sound right to me. What is the recognitional capacity to verify or falsify "hello!". Or "I christen this ship 'Jane'"? This is the problem of course - even Dummett, the supposed arch-anti-realist about truth still assesses truth according to realist criteria (does truth have recognition-transcendent conditions or not?). The whole point of course, is to show the irrelevance of those criteria, to change the very terms of the debate. Sara Ellenbogen for example, in her excellent reconstruction of Wittgenstein's account of truth, writes of how Dummett's arguments "presuppose a commitment to a realist conception of truth. [His] belief... rests upon an assumption that the only thing that could make a given statement true is its correspondence with some segment of reality in virtue of which it is true.... it is only because Dummett assumes that the claim “p is true” amounts to the claim that there is something in virtue of which it is true that he is led to his antirealist conclusion, namely, that we treat certain statements as being true or false for which we can give no content to what our grasp of their truth conditions consists in."

Ellenbogen's solution - which is in fact a reading of Wittgenstein's own conception of truth - instead notes that we simply have the option of giving up on the realist's conception of truth altogether - something Dummett, for all his supposed 'anti-realism', is quite incapable of doing. And it precisely to this degree that "both sides of the realist/antirealist debate [are] part of the same metaphysical tradition. Antirealists follow Wittgenstein in rejecting the idea of transcendent truth, yet they remain very much implicitly committed to the realist view of truth that lies behind it. Therefore, in rejecting realism, they merely replace it with another view based on the same metaphysical assumption."

What is required is instead a different account of truth, one that rejects both sides of the anti/realist ledger in order to affirm that "to grasp a concept [like truth] is to have a practical mastery of the inferences it is involved in. It is to be aware of its role in justifying some further attitudes and in ruling out others.... For example, to learn the use of the word “red” is to learn to treat “This is red” as incompatible with “This is green,” as following from “This is scarlet,” and as entailing “This is colored.”" So too with truth - "the truth conditions of our statements are determined by... our conventional rules for predicating “is true” of them... once we conceive of learning the uses of “is true” as a matter of learning a certain practical mastery, the meaning we take our sentences to have is necessarily consistent with the use to which we put them. For we learn what it means to say [for example] that a past-tense statement p is true when we learn the [practical] criterion for judging its truth, that is, when we learn how to use the statement “p is true.” (Sara Ellenbogen, Wittgenstein's Account of Truth).

In other words, we learn to predicate truth of propositions in the same way learn to predicate color of things. By learning in what circumstances it is normally considered appropriate to make such predications. We learn to use language in a certain way, according to the circumstances which would allow ourselves to achieve what we set out to do with it (e.g. to testify in a trial ["It's true, he did it!"], hurt someone ["it's true that you're an asshole"], express affection ["I love you, it's true"] and so on). Truth is just a certain manner of using language. Like any other word. Anti/realism no more applies to it than the use of the word "apples", "pathbreaking" or "green". Truth is a word like any other.

Presumably that part specifically refers to those statements which are said to be truth-apt. Greetings like "hello" and performances like "I christen this ship" are different to descriptions like "there is a chair in the next room" (in the grammatical sense).

Perhaps a better way to look at it is to understand the phrase "the recognitional capacity to verify or falsify that statement" as "the recognitional capacity to determine the correctness of using that statement." This then applies to greetings and christenings (there are times and places where such things are the wrong thing to say). And it's here where the distinction between realist and anti-realist is made; the anti-realist argues that the correctness of using statements is determined by the things we see and the things we say and the things we think whereas the realist argues that the correctness of using (some) statements (e.g. "there is a chair in the next room") is determined by something else (something verification-transcendent).