Which naturally leads to something like hanaH's view that all of these uses and possible uses, even the ones we can't imagine now, have something in common: they are solutions to a coordination problem faced by living creatures like us. — Srap Tasmaner

That doesn't lead anywhere though. Because what am I supposed to make of what you or Witt say if your or his words have no referent at all? — Olivier5

What happens to those handshakes, salutes and stop signs as we move from contextual situation to situation? — Joshs

The sense of meaning of handshakes , salutes and stops signs can be understood in an infinity of ways, depending on the way we are using these terms in the context of our dealings with others. — Joshs

Language does not exist external to its use by us in the world“ — Joshs

Witt is playing in the dark and probably at the wrong game. All words are "sensation words" when you think of it. They all code for an idea of a thing, for a type of things, i.e. for a concept, not directly for a thing. The word "apple" codes for the idea of apple. — Olivier5

But why did you take that promise or threat seriously (assuming you did)? — baker

And how personally was that promise or threat made? To you, by your name, or just in your "general direction"? — baker

Joe stares off into the distance. Is he feeling guilty? How can you tell? — frank

A philosophy can have effects. In other words, imagining or postulating a philosophy (or a law) as an existing referent can be justified. — Olivier5

The law exists alright, even if it cannot be seen or put in a portrait. — Olivier5

Why should we gossip about our feelings? I'm not that interested in the feelings of others nor do I wish to state mine exorbitantly. — GraveItty

One can endlessly debate about the wonders and achievements of science but it's just one view amongst others. — GraveItty

Irrelevant red herring. Computers too have "bodies". — TheMadFool

We're merely manipulating the symbol "consciousness" according to English grammar and the rules of inference (logic) - very much like a computer. In a certain sense then we've regressed...from semantics (our crown jewel) to syntax (mindless computing). — TheMadFool

Plus the signs of guilt or shame are often not in the things you do, but what you don't do. — frank

It also failed because of reasons linked to economy of means: there are too many concepts to allocate one specific sign to each of them. — Olivier5

I don't see how it does. If you go and see a doctor about your pain in the neck, he will inspect your neck and maybe find something objectively wrong with it. — Olivier5

So the highest god is written down as an eye floating over a throne. — Olivier5

(Why do you think religious/spiritual people tend to affiliate themselves with right-wing political options?) — baker

My approach to religion/spirituality was all about finding The Truth, the How Things Really Are (and at first, my quest was conceptualized as trying to answer the question "Which religion is the right one?"). I was sure that once I'd figure out what The Truth is, everything else would fall into place. — baker

The world is more open and bleeding than it used to be. We try to improve things every day, but it seems to get worse every day. — GraveItty

translated as nous (preserved in vernacular English as uncommon common sense, 'she has nous, that one'.) It is nous which 'sees what truly is', and it is that which is associated with the immortal aspect of the being. — Wayfarer

Just as computers, not even AI, we, with respect to private experiences, are simply manipulating symbols. — TheMadFool

As for words further reducing to "integers and floats", even with humans they reduce to something similar - action potentials in neurons and their synapses. — TheMadFool

Your word "enlightened" sometimes says way too much. It can conjure all kinds of attributes (especially in the insecure or jealous mind) that simply are not possessed by one who has come to know something that cannot be articulated. — James Riley

When one enlightened subject meets the other, there is really no need to engage because there is nothing to say, even if it could be articulated. — James Riley

Computers allegedly can't comprehend i.e. they're semantically-challenged but that's in the sign-referent sense. If meaning is use, computers and AI do understand words; they are, after all, using words. — TheMadFool

I’m not trying to talk about beetles in boxes, I’m trying to show that a reading of Wittgenstein that consists of behavioral linkages between arbitrary signs relies on a beetle in box picture. — Joshs

The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.

The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature.

On the contrary, it is the notion of ‘body’ and materiality’ as causal conditioning agents that presupposes an occult interior. — Joshs

Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

I guess the question I have is. are you aware of this split amount Wittgenstein interpreters, can you articulate what it consists of , and which camp do you prefer? — Joshs

If you read Wittgenstein through Ryle , that may explain our disagreement. — Joshs

A living being - whether a human being or an animal being - could not have any relation to another being as such without this alterity in time, without, that is, memory, anticipation, this strange sense (I hesitate to call it knowledge) that every now, every instant is radically other and nevertheless in the same form of the now. — Joshs

For Intended meaning to be present to itself it must come back to itself , and in doing so, it already means something other than what it intended. — Joshs

Ryle suggests that ‘John knows French’ is a warrant which gives us the right to infer that John understands what he reads in Le Monde or that he is communicating successfully when telephoning in French. Immediately on specifying what we are entitled to do with the inference ticket ‘John knows French’, Ryle admits that the examples of what would satisfy the sentence are too precise, for

[w]e should not withdraw our statement that he knows French on finding that he did not respond pertinently when asleep, absentminded, drunk, or in a panic; or on finding that he did not correctly translate highly technical treatises. We expect no more than that he will ordinarily cope pretty well with the majority of ordinary French-using and French-following tasks. ‘Knows French’ is a vague expression and, for most purposes, none the less useful for being vague. (1949a, 119)

But do not these group habits and conventions themselves originate as person, context and perspective based? — Joshs

Not the solipsism of a closed system but a continuous exposure to and being affected by an outside. — Joshs

And as soon as we repeat a meaning we subject it to contextual alteration, which destroys the purity of its intended sense. — Joshs

What about the idea that my talking and thinking and sensing to myself is already a form of sociality that submits my sensations and thoughts to contextual
alteration? — Joshs

Platonism believed that we're a fusion of soul and body. A lot of people will say it's 'bronze age mythology'. But my view is that all of those ancient texts are symnbolically or allegorically conveying truths about the human condition, as you go on to acknowledge. — Wayfarer

How many times my mum said that! "So it goes". That's just the way it is. And we can do nothing about it. — GraveItty

I believed that through meditation, a state of insight would spontaneously arise which would melt away all my negative tendencies and weaknesses. — Wayfarer

Early on, I did have a real conversion experience, which I interpreted in a Buddhist framework (mainly through this book.) I formally took refuge in 2007. But in the long run I found are some hindrances that are very hard to overcome. This sense culminated in late 2017 when I gave some talks at a couple of Buddhist centres. I'm quite well-versed in the subject and can talk intelligibly about it. But I felt like a phony, speaking from the position of being dharma teacher. When I was describing the paramitas (Mahāyāna virtues) I realised how conspicuously lacking I was in them. And I went to a Buddhist youth organisation conference around that time, and sadly realised that I thought a lot of well-intentioned Buddhists were also phony. — Wayfarer

And so stop signs and toothaches do not "get their 'meaning' " in the same way, much less necessarily "from what happens outside us". — Antony Nickles

Also certain greetings famously have no reference, like "Helo". — Olivier5

Coming back to picturing words... That's how writing was invented originally. — Olivier5

No, those are just the torments of Tantalus. All those "goodies" might indeed seem like they are at your fingertips -- but when you reach for them, you can never reach them, or they disappear altogether. — baker

if I say "abracadabra" a flower will bloom or a rabbit will vanish or or a person will get sick. It is therefore a use of words beyond reference as well, — Olivier5

Only here I'm trying to show that the point is not to replace the internal referent with an external one, as if the problem was just the assumption of an internal thing, and not that the grammar of sensations is entirely different even than public behavior. — Antony Nickles

Yes, but to say we "don't just happen to usually use the words that way" is to simply flip to the other side of the same (generalized) coin, instead of seeing that sensations have their own logic that is entirely different, rather than simply the negation of the internal referent. — Antony Nickles

But I live in this world. And have to make the best of it. I think it's a pity though that so much culture and nature is gone. Though material culture has never been richer. — GraveItty

Never been a Hobbes fan. From that period, I'm more with the Cambridge Platonists, not that I'm overly familiar with them. — Wayfarer