One use is in teaching someone about right and wrong and how to treat other animals. I don't have to use the command when teaching — Sam26

I don't think you're catching my little argument. :blush:

as part of an inference. — Banno

From what reasoning did you infer that it's wrong to kick puppies?

Meaning is use. Of what use is asserting that "It's wrong to kick puppies" other than to say, "Don't kick puppies.". Tractatus.

So you are saying that it is not true that we ought not kick puppies? — Banno

No, I'm saying that commands aren't truth apt.

it is true that one ought not kick puppies; — Banno

This is the same as asserting that one ought not kick puppies. Asserting that is just another way to phrase the command, "Don't kick puppies."

And commands are not truth apt.

"Don't kick puppies for fun" is true — Banno

Commands aren't truth apt.

If someone disagrees with you about doctrine, we do not just have a disagreement. The other is a heretic and any means to change their tune are justified. If someone does not accept Christ, say, the difference is not just a difference, but justifies any means to convert them. Do I have to recount examples?
I'm not saying there are not non-religious examples of the same behaviour. Any radical conviction (faith) can be the basis violence and cruelty. — Ludwig V

Oh. But in the ancient world people usually respected foreign gods. If you visited a foreign town, you would first go pay respect to their gods and then go about your business.

Religious intolerance (the idea of false gods) came later. It's not so much about knowing divine will as believing that there is only one true divinity, which might be related to psychological integration.

There is a place for doubt as well as faith. — Banno

Can I quote you on that?

The conviction that one knows the will of God is the most dangerous religious belief of them all. — Ludwig V

Dangerous?

So you don't have faith in anything? Even in the human race?

Anyway, for Kierkegaard, faith is about accepting the world as it is, and accepting oneself in spite of being an asshole. The stories where God shows up as an asshole are pertinent. I like the fact that the Hebrew divinity has a dark side. There's less of a problem of evil, which Christianity has always struggled with.

If you're convinced that you're all good, how will you notice the signs that you're starting to turn into a Nazi due to bitterness or whatever. It's better to know that you're capable of becoming a monster so you can take steps to change course. You have to start with accepting that you have that dark side. Kierkegaard was right.

Nothing in that proposal implied self-sufficiency; quite the opposite. Interdependence leads to trust and a better quality of life.

But that is hard to explain to 'Mercans. — Banno

I think you're overlooking that ideals are pictures of what we want to be rather than what we are. It's the sheep-like culture that idealizes individuality. It's the independent minded people who prize self sacrifice for the community. To understand culture, look for the oppositions and contradictions.

We should "sacrifice what may be in your personal interest for... ...what preserves the social order"?

Fascism it is, then. — Banno

Isn't this Chinese morality?

The story of Noah is a garbled version of an episode out of the epic of Gilgamesh.

I saw quite a bit int he story, on which I have been expounding. — Banno

It was worthwhile then?

Or are these comments just designed to mitigate the discomfort of taking the story literally? — Banno

Kierkegaard saw something profound in it. You see nothing. If I see nothing in Guernica, does that say something about the painting? Or about me?

I was recently told by an 80 year old that it gets better every year. :grimace:

The law always tells you what to do. That's what a law is, what it does. — Fire Ologist

My point was that Hammurabi was both king and head of the national religion. He was seen as transmitting laws that originated with a Babylonian divinity. The very idea of law comes from religion.

Therefore Banno's comment that religion tells you what to do while science doesn't is just kind of naive about our religious heritage. Religion was pervasive social technology.

And as climate change sets in and civilization struggles to cope with the volatility, our ability to communicate who we are to the people who live 5000 years from now will probably come down to this ancient capability wrapped up in what we call religion.

Again, science does not tell us what to do. — Banno

The law tells you what to do. Our law is a descendant of religious law. All the stuff we have separated out was fused back then.

So what... — Banno

Did you think all the suffering and struggle was just the lead up to this glorious moment in the history of science? Guess which ancient religion, preserved in Christianity, that you got that idea from.

The science we have now is far beyond anything they considered. — Banno

So?

Science describes how things are, it doesn't tell you what to do about how things are. — Banno

Most of the global religions were the science of a former age, along with medicine, engineering, politics and history. We're just sporting around on the shoulders of those giants.

That's kind of what's happening with human speech. The part that generates speech is different from that part that listens and interprets, so you can understand a language you can't speak, or more rarely, speak bits of a language you can't understand .

I'm not even sure most people would be able to tell that's based on a dog. — flannel jesus

But that's what an AI did with a picture of a dog, so it has the potential to see almost anything in a set of lights and darks. What would it do if you ask it what it sees?

I'd like to know if it can identify something out of an abstract image because it can draw something we prompt.

For instance, this is based on a photo of a dog

That's cool. I get the most artistic results from giving the program a sentence that makes no sense along with a model image that's abstract.

But it occupied my mind through a boring conference, so there's that. — Hanover

I draw cartoons of the speakers going "blah blah blah."

I'm happy to leave it here. — Ludwig V

:up:

Maybe even think of it this way: you know how to do plus or quus in the way you know how to ride a bike, not in the way you know that Sydney is in Australia. — Banno

Might just leave it here. :smile:

And yet we enact rules. — Banno

There's no fact regarding which rules. It's a mind bender for sure. It took me a good while to digest the implications.

Sure, if what you mean is that the rule cannot be stated. But that is irrelevant, since the rule can be enacted. — Banno

There's no fact regarding which rules you've been enacting.

Yet, there are things we can point to and say "See, this is the rule I've been following". — Ludwig V

I doubt it

If Kripke were correct, you would not know how to count, — Banno

This shows a misunderstanding of Kripke's point. There's no denying that we do things with words, and that we do on occasion follow rules. There's just no fact regarding what rules you've been following up till now. If you think you know the rules you've been following, you need to take a closer look at the PLA.

What gives meaning to rules is human agreement in the context of human life. Think of how the fact that we agree on how to use words is enough to make them words. (This fact is, perhaps, not a fact of the matter, but it is a fact nonetheless.) What often gets left out of this is that we sometimes find that we don't agree on how to apply our rules; so we have to make a decision about how to go on. — Ludwig V

There's just nothing you can point to and say, "See, this is the rule I've been following for the use of this phrase."

If we’re talking about Wittgenstein on rule-following here, then there is no intelligible meaning without rules, criteria, forms of life. — Joshs

The Private Language argument indicates that there's no way for you to know what rules you've been following up till now. Check out Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language by Saul Kripke.

Or better, there's no fact of the matter about what rules you've been following.

This is a fascinating story involving the transcription of Babylonian abacus results.
— frank
I was fascinated by this, but I couldn't find anything specifically on it, — Ludwig V

Check out Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Siefe. It's pretty good.

If the rules of a language game make rational numbers intelligible, then isnt it a new set of rules that make irrationals intelligible? — Joshs

It's a fiction that meaning arises from rule-following. There's no fact of the matter regarding what rules you've followed up til now.

One third of 1 is 0.33333...........continuing to infinity.

If we altered our numbering system, such that we replaced 1 by 3, then one third of 3 is 1. This avoids any problem of infinity. — RussellA

I don't understand how we could replace 1 by 3. That doesn't make any sense. But with the new numbering system, 1/3 would be 1/5.

How did we get real numbers from rational number — T Clark

They were first discovered by the Pythagoreans. They were horrified by them though. They aggressively suppressed the knowledge of irrational numbers per legend. If it was an invention, it was not a welcome one. How do we explain that?

How did we get zero? — T Clark

This is a fascinating story involving the transcription of Babylonian abacus results.

This thread puts on display the way people try to escape from wonder. They assume a conclusion when they don't actually know any facts that support it. Psychic protection strategy?

It is my understanding that all mathematics is based on counting, but there are many, many instances where it has gone beyond it. — T Clark

How did that happen? If it's based on counting, how did it give rise to things that can't be counted?

Yep. It's an extension of "the world is al that is the case". — Banno

That's just blatant idealism.