A trial of the soul is a concept used by Kierkegaard. Precisely, K talks about 'Anfaestgalse' a Danish word which there is a big debate on what really means. I have the Spanish version, and it is translated as 'anxiety', but I found some English papers and the authors translated it as 'trial of the soul'. Approaching the main topic of this thread, I wonder if, after behaving badly or unethically, there would be a trial about my soul. I mean, is there a cause and effect? It is obvious that in the tangible or real world there are a lot of consequences. People stop trusting me and I lack confidence and I suffer from anxiety. But I want to dive deeper into this matter. Afterwards, is there a possibility that our spirit will experience a trial because of our actions? By the way, I am not referring to karma. — javi2541997

I've tried to look up what Kierkegaard said on the topic, but... it's impenetrable answers to impenetrable questions. I really need to go back a few steps if I'm even to hope to know what he's talking about. What I read felt like gibberish, I'm sorry to say. I'm not sure I have the time and inclination to dive that deep, though. (Note: I'm not saying that Kierkegaard is gibberish; I'm saying my current understanding of Kierkegaard is gibberish.)

Also: google doesn't know "anfaestgalse". My mothertongue's German, and the word doesn't sound very Germanic either. Some sort of typo? Anxiety, according to one source I found, would have been "angest", which makes sense as it's cognate with English (and German) "angst". I didn't find any reference to "trial of the soul" (after very superficial googling, mind you), but I did find "spiritual trial", which may or may not be an alternate translation; I didn't find the Danish word, though.

In any case, I'm unsure how much solving the language puzzle would help me; no idea how similar Danish and German are, and how much my intuition might mislead me.

Because sins, bad actions, unethical behaviour, lying, etc, Have to affect someone or something. Don't you think? I believe those affect the vitality of the spirit. — javi2541997

Well, yes, lying affects relationships. But I feel like I can analyse or think about this without any reference to the soul.

Say you're freshly in love, and the person you're in love with cooks a dish for you that you hate (it's no the cooking but the main ingredient). You can't bring yourself to admit this and successfully pretend that it's delicisious. The lie will set expectations for the further relationship. Now you may have to eat food you hate or admit to lying in addition to telling the uncomfortable truth. The more often you repeat the lie, the more involved this becomes. And there's a good chance that the truth will come out in a rather unpleasant situation; like when you're fighting one time. I can imagine that a situation like can feel in a way that could be described as a "taint in a soul" or something like that, but for me this would just be a short cut for something more complex - but all there is is actions, expectations, relationships and things like this. I can't go from there to a trial of the "soul". There's nothing coherent enough so that it can be tried. Or tainted. There's just the flow of my daily conduct and its outward connections into social situations, sometimes good, sometimes bad, often neither, always a muddle. I live, I sometimes fret about it, and then I live no more. That's about the whole of it for me.

No! I don't think so. There is nothing here which causes me infliction. It is completely otherwise. I think it is good to open myself to others in this thread. — javi2541997

I didn't mean only right here in this thread. More like: at this point in your life, you're worrying a lot about this topic, and from a non-spiritual perspective such as mine this looks like the extent of what spiritual trial might be. Judge, jury and defendant in one person, only the defendant isn't much interested in defense.

It's this soul stuff I don't properly understand, though, so I'm likely wrong. So:

Hmm... Didn't you ever feel anxiety for not acting accordingly to values and ethics? — javi2541997

To the extent that I have a conscience, sure. But there's no blight on my soul, nor a soul to begin with, in my world view. The worst anxieties I experience are for the future: when all the choices realistically open to me seem equally bad. After the fact, it's usually more a kind of shame. I sort of imagine that's the origin of Japanese seuppuku: cutting yourself open from the soft tissue in the belly upwards: that's where I start to feel the shame in extreme cases. (Though knowing Japanese culture it's probably more a show of determination - cutting yourself there hurts a lot.) Anxiety is more chest-centred for me.

Indeed. Why does this happen? Well, because when a person (like me) is used to acting in a mask constantly, it is not that difficult to keep acting in the same way. OK. I say sorry to the ones I lied to. But how do I know I will not lie again? This is where the problem arises. I don't want to cause that bad behaviour as part of my 'nature'. At the moment, the only solution to this issue is redeeming myself. To start, finally assuming that acting badly has its consequences and there will be a trial to my spirit after all. — javi2541997

It's about what you do from now on out, then, right? Or do I misunderstand?

This does sound plausible: forgiving yourself too easily can lead to letting yourself go, which in turn makes all that self-examination seem more like a sort of gambit, or self-pity. You do need the motivation to better yourself, and forgiving yourself too easily can get in the way of this. There's no such problem when it comes to others (or, on second thought, there may be: forgive them too easily and you enable their bad habits maybe?)

Not sure I understood you correctly, here. I'm not sure what difference a "soul" makes. I never had much use for the concept of "sin", for example. Shintoist kegare seems more useful: less judgemental, but also a bit of... too afraid of the world maybe?

For me it's all just a muddle of what I think I should do (which I often don't know), what I think my most selfish aspects want to do (which I often don't quite know either), and what I think I'm mostly likely to do (which is the easiest to predict), and how I think about all of that (not too well, since I tend towards pessimism - luckily my pessimism is tempered by my cynicism). I just sort of muddle through all that on day by day basis until one day I'm gone.

.

Will there be a trial of the soul after all? — javi2541997

Aren't you inflicting one upon yourself right now?

A question that occurred to me: Given the same act, do you find it easier to forgive it in others than in yourself?

For context: I'm neither spiritual nor religious, so I probably can't fully understand what you're going through.

TE=thought experiment. — AmadeusD

Ah, thanks. I could have figured that out, but didn't.

I think that's true, yes. There memories would differ in "cogito"-type ways that ensure knowledge of which they are. — AmadeusD

Actually, I think I made some assumptions when I said this, so it's not necessarily true. For example, if the "original" were duped into thinking it was just going to be a transportation, then the person popping out on Mars would think he's the original, and the person walking out of the transporter would think the transportation failed. What really matters, I think is this:

There's a difference in bodily continuity between the person not "transported" and the person on Mars, and that difference is susceptible to ordinal description: one body is more continuous than the other.

That is not the case under the Star Trek model. Even non-duplicative transporter usage creates a copy of a body that's been destroyed. So is the person who steps into the transporter the same person that steps out of the transporter, even though the body that stepped into the transporter has been taken apart and re-assembled?

And if the answer to that is "yes," then what changes when you assemble a copy more than once?

Personally, I think: not much. (And I think the answer is "yes", not because of any philosophical position, but because that's how I think people treat each other in Star Trek stories.)

This is not the case in the TE. The branch line case results in the original and one duplicate; not two duplicates. Perhaps that’s the issue — AmadeusD

Ah, yeah, I was talking Star Trek transporter as per the OP. I missed the two-line post about Parfit. I've never heard of that case, and am unfamiliar of the specifics. I'm not sure I'd change my mind, but I might. What's "TE"?

So after reading up on Parfit's branchline scenario, that's definitely a case with an original and a copy, based on physical continuity. Consider the difference to the Star Trek transporter technology with the following example:

I kill a person, then duplicate myself. Then two identical people show up at the police station, saying "One of us killed X."

Under the Parfit model, the guilty party would be the one who walked out of the scanner; and it would be a matter of proving who that was. At the very least the original and copy would know who is who.

Under the Star Trek teleporter model, there's nothing meaningful to distinguish the resulting individuals, since the original (who committed the killing) got taken apart, and both versions were assembled using the same information. There'd be no practical way to tell them apart, so any ruling (if you hold only one responsible) would have to be of a theoretical nature. Not even the people themselves would have a clue.

So, yes, I'd say there's at least a theoretical difference here; but the simple existence of such a duplication technology might have effects that need to be dealt with one way or another.

For example, consider a religious fanatic who thinks he must kill unbelievers but since killing is a crime, he must also atone for it. He could use this technology to first kill someone, then duplicate himself, then turn himself in, expecting his duplicate to do the same (which he probably will if it is possible, since he is an identical copy of the original).

If comparable cases are relatively rare, this could probably be accommodated somehow under existing legal models. But if it becomes a common pattern, we might be looking at a new legal concept. A new type of legal person (defined as a natural person and all its copies)? A reframing of responsibility? And so on.

This is not primarily a philosophical problem; it's not about truth. It's about how to efficiently get things done, and how to accommodate the new social-psychological configuration of the public, all of which is hard to predict.

And since I think our ideas are based on our experiences, I think such technology might have rather radical effect on what ideas we can even think about.

I've re-read your post, and I now think our differences might be this:

A transporter accident results in:

You: an original and a copy

Me: Two copies of the original (which is destroyed).

Thus, I think during normal operation a transporter creates a copy of a body, and the beam contains the information for re-assembly. The information can be used multiple times.

As for souls; I don't find the concept useful, so I don't worry about that.

There was only P1 before the splitting even - regardless of Classic or Branchline version. — AmadeusD

This is where I think we're talking past each other.

First, this is not how I used P1 and P2. Before the duplication event there was one person P. After the duplication event, there were two people P1 and P2. P1 and P2 exist simultaneously as separate existances. P exists only in a past where neither P1 nor P2 existed.

How do you connect P1 and P2 to P? Who's responsible for acts that P did? Nobody? P1? P2? Both?

Second, I don't know what you mean by branchline vs. Classic version. For me, there's a branching point in the personal history of P, such that at some point History(P) split into Histoy(P1) and History(P2). This is a novel situation. There is no Classic version I can see.

I'll re-read your post later. Maybe I'll get it some time.

If there's something meaningful that remains between teh two, fire it at me — AmadeusD

They share a history. This is something no legal system is equipped to handle.

If I do something, I'm liable for it, no? I'm not legal expert.

Person P(t1) did deed D(t1), therfore Person P(t2) is responsible for D(t1). That works for many things: marriage, debt, murder... Legal responsibility assumes that the Person who did the thing at t1 is responsible for it at t2.

Now, if we have a branching point, what we get is

P(t1) --Duplication event--> P1(t2) and P2(t2). There is no P1(t1)/P2(t1). There's only P(t1).

So what's your intuition here? Mine is that P1(t2) and P2(t2) are P at t1. That's where biographical continuity leads for both of them. It would then, maybe, follow that they both are responsible for D(t1), because there is no distinction between P1 and P2 at t1. That can lead to absurdities, though, like in the situation of debt collection.

Obviously, the problem disappears for all deeds that occur at t2 or later. The branching point creates a situation where two people are identical with one person before a certain event. This is a fundamental change. We need to adapt to this: legally, morally, economically, pscho-socially...

For example: Is it more economic to train 1000 employees, or to train 10 and then duplicate the best one 1000 times? And if the latter is more efficient on paper, what about a working environment where you only work with versions of yourself (not twins, but people who know everything about you that you know, too, before the branching point).

I don't think any of our current intuitions can prepare us for this type of technology. We need to go through a period of chaos and see which way it settles.

As for specific points:

These relate to whether you're a legal positivist or not. Yes? — AmadeusD

What any one person believes is besides the point. How likely is it that all relevant personage agrees? And what about effects and implications of their decisions that they didn't anticipate?

As I said, they are not the same person on ANY conception except Immaterial Soul — AmadeusD

As per the above, they are not the same person now. They were the same person before the splitting event, which is when the certificate was issued. Legally, I see three possibilities:

a) The certificate is invalid for both (because neither P1 nor P2 are uniquely continuous with P)
b) The certificate is valid for both (because both P1 and P2 are continuous with P)
c) The certificate is valid for one of them, and invalid for the other (no idea how to argue for this; my least favourite)

On top of that, a/b/c might apply differently in different contexts. For example, in the case of marriage, I could see annulling the marriage with a possibity of remarriage with one of them as a plausible solution. In the case of ownership of property, though, joint ownership might be a better solution.

Of course:

NB: probably worth realizing that in a world that this machine exists, the Law knows about it and has anticipated these problems. — AmadeusD

Yes: if the tech's been around for a while. I'm talking about the transition period. You're not going to predict all the problems that'll arise from the introduction of such a fundamental novelty.

For example: when I wrote about joint ownership above, I wondered how that would look like. Pre-arrangements would be likely, if the duplication is voluntary (and not an accident or forced). But what would that pre-arrangement entail? My immediate intuition went to "contract", but that wouldn't work, since the potentially disagreeing parties are at that time still one person. A type of "will"? I will let this to P1 and this to P2?

Obviously, after the first few generations this is all going to be the new normal. But for the people who have to figure out how to deal with non-unique personal continuity as a novelty, these are going to be... interesting times.

No issue for them either. — AmadeusD

As a hobby SF writer (in the past), I disagree. In fact, there are issues to figure out that more pressing than body-soul dualism. For example, here: Could the spouse be tried for bigamy? Multiple spouses suggests yes. Only one marriage certificate suggests no.

Wait, only one marriage certificate? Two individuals sharing the same certificate? After all, both of them have the same history, so that one certificate is valid for them both.

So what about... oh, I don't know... debt? You borrow a dollar on Monday, get duplicated on Tuesday, and now what? Do I get two dollars on Wednsday? After all, no matter who pays me, the other didn't pay me and still owes me a dollar.

If it's a freak accident, people will figure things out, but in the Star Trek case... it's a transporter malfunction. You know what that suggests to anyone even remotely familiar with the history of invention? That's right: human duplication technology. You can *try* to make it illegal, I suppose, but... black markets and rich guys with silly philosophies... (In the Star Trek Universe, the prime suspect would be Ferenghi, no?)

Now you have a social problem. While we talk about body-soul dualism, several legislators die of aneurisms while trying to solve very real problems. So here's the question: solve those legal problems and see whether your approach tells you something about your instinctive attitude towards the problem at issue. Maybe?

Her book on it is How God becomes Real. It's worth reading the jacket copy as it actually is quite close to what you've suggested here. — Wayfarer

That's an interesting book. "How God Becomes Real," sounds like a great title to describe what I'm interested in, too. Thanks for that.

I would agree, but wouldn't this intimate that there are two separate acts taking place, that don't necessarily require each other for pertinence? For example, If i am yelling across a crowd at someone to elicit some action (come to me, go get X, leave this place etc.. ) but they cannot hear me, only one side of the exchange actually obtains, yet my speech act seems to cover off all its requirements to be an act of Speech. — AmadeusD

Your speech act doesn't cover all of its requirements under speech act theory. There are two possibilities I see here:

You yell across the crowd at someone. They're unaware of you, and since they don't hear you, they remain unaware. The perlocutionary force as intended by the illocution fizzles out. No effect at all. The speech act remains incomplete.

You yell acroos the crowd at someone. They're aware of you, but can't hear you. Maybe they yell back, "what?" (and you can't hear them either, but you're able to guess based on visual cues). In that case the perlocutionary force doesn't bring you the expected effect, which makes the illocution unsuccessful.

In both cases, what's complete is the utterance.

Note that I have no idea if actual adherents of Speech Act theory would agree to my interpretation here. But an act in an actual situation can be re-defined, like when you accidentally insult someone and apologise. By the time you apologise you acknowledge that your speech act was an insult (or you're going through the motions); you didn't intend to make an insult. Conversly, you might intend an insult but your interlocutor doesn't notice. Double down on the insult, or try to hide you intended one?

Typical speech acts are ideals and might be useful in analysing real-life situation.

So:

In the converse, I often times "hear" my wife say something specific, that she hasn't said. My brain has filled in based on some previously noted house-bound noises, that my wife was talking, and in fact calculated what she's likely to be saying. OFten, it transpires she was about it - but in fact hasn't - made a speech act - yet my side of the exchange obtains regardless. — AmadeusD

So, yes, here you have a speech act you can describe in detail according to the theory, but once you find out that your wife hasn't spoken, all that description does is tell you which specific speech act didn't take place.

If you're going to use Speech Act Theory to analyse empirical situations, you'll need a theory how ideal-type speech acts relate to real speech acts. (Above statements imply some sort of theory, but I haven't quite worked it out - I just supply a potential analysis.)

A speech act has actually three components; a speaker, a hearer, and a set of rules that both of them expect the other to know. Those rules have no existence independent of the speaker/hearer, and needn't be the same for the speaker and hearer. They just have to be compatible to a high-enough degree to let situations in which speech acts occurs unravel to the satisfaction of either participant.

A non-linguistic example would be buying and selling. If you sell something, that implies that someone else bought something. It's a feature of the buying-selling transaction. Selling can't complete without buying also completing, and buying can't commence unless selling also commences. Speech acts aren't always like this, but they often are:

"Telling someone about something," isn't complete unless the hearer receives the information, for example. (The relevant technical term, I believe, is Felicity Conditions: the conditions a speech act needs to meet to be completed.)

I still can't see how you got there. Sorry. — Tom Storm

It's partly because I misread you. For some reason, I thought you suggested "confidence" instead of "faith", when you just had a question because someone else suggested it. This is the paragraph I misread:

My question came about because of the use of the word 'confidence', which I had laid out in a different context earlier, as an alternative to faith. — Tom Storm

I don't know how or why. It's clear enough on a re-read.

My focus is primarily on the reality (or not) of the entity (gods), not upon the reasonable confidence. — Tom Storm

This, though, is a very real difference between us. My focus is on understanding what people do (in their heads) when they "believe in God". It's not easy when the concept is not native to your world view. Many of my intuitions will work against me.

Whether or not God exists is a topic that, I think, mostly comes up when theists and atheists cross paths. But the existence of God is usually something of a background assumption for theists, when it comes to having faith in God. Their "relationship with God" is the focus. If you focus on the background assumptions, you might miss the core.

Which is why, when I read the opening post, about "types of faith", I had no intuition at all. What's the concept we're supposed to subdivide here? Like you, I tend not to use faith outside of the context of religion.

I don't see how these relate since we can demonstrate the existence of parents and interact with them and easily assess whether they can be trusted or not. Lots of children don't trust their parents because experience has taught them not to. We can't gauge trust in the same way for any gods I am aware of. We can't even demonstrate if they are real. How are they the same? — Tom Storm

They're not the same. I've said (or implied) multiple times that I see the relationship between "faith in person" and "faith in God" as metaphoric (or figurative in some other way), meaning that the cognitive/emotional behaviour will be the same in some, but different in others. I don't have the details.

I would focus less on the putting of faith and more on the reality of the physical experience. When I cross a street I am interacting with physical processes which I can demonstrate to be true and which is more or less identically shared with others. I only cross at lights (if at all possible) and I practice vigilance, looking to see if the road is clear. I believe I can have reasonable confidence that empiricism and the fact that I seem to inhabit a physical reality will allow for a safe crossing. — Tom Storm

That's not something I disagree with, but again my focus is different. I think most social behaviour is habitual, but open to modification to adapt to situations. Questions of confidence tend to be relevant in exceptional situations only.

If I cross at a traffic light and zebra crossing, I mostly do so out habit. Questions of confidence seem to come into it when I'm, say, in a hurry: it's late at night, the traffic light's not green yet, but the traffic lights for the cars in both directions are already red, so I'm fairly confident in starting to walk a little early. That's a show of confidence a step above the usual habit; it's a recurring situation so it's also prone to habit, but at the very least I need to gauge if it's the sort of situation that allows for the less common habitual sequence.

Atheists and theists have very different thought habits when it comes to God, which is why - when they clash - both of them tend to be in fringe situations. That complicates mutual understanding, but it's hard to get around this.

Based on all this I might summarise my position as the following? Faith in God is a habit transfer from faith in people to something that that habit transfer creates in the first place: faith in God is a modified faith in people that creates its own target: faith constitutes God as that which is necessary for the tranferred habit to stick. Of course, I don't expect theists to agree, and thus this isn't a good theory if my goal is understanding. So what am I to do?

Perhaps faith as opposed to confidence a person is more likely to put something at stake to represent the sentiment?

Like a person sky diving and trusting their god and religious beliefs with protect them. They literally put their life at risk. I suppose thrill is the main reason for sky diving so maybe an example more along the lines of joining the military is better.

Meanwhile confidence that isn't faith is making conclusion about the odds, but without really risking anything to make a point? — TiredThinker

Like @Tom Storm, I'm someone who doesn't usually use the word faith, unless it's a religious context, and even then usually only when a believer brings it up first. Tom Storm said the following:

To use 'faith' to describe plane flight or crossing the road is a rhetorical tool used by apologists who like to equivocate on language to help them smuggle in their ideas. — Tom Storm

I relate to this. There's a bit of a difference with me, since I usually don't have to deal with apologetics. Austria, where I live, is a fairly secular country, so the you-have-faith-too line is something I've only ever encountered on the internet. It's not a thing around here.

But the point is this:

Atheist: I don't believe in God, that's all.
Theist: But you have faith, too. For example, everytime you [insert examples, say the ones from Tom Storm's post].

And, my intuitive response to this is pretty similar to Storm's: that's just not faith. But other than him, I don't see "confidence" as an alternative. I'll have to backtrack a bit at this point:

When I read your opening post, my immediate question was: what is faith to you in the first place? I can't talk about types of faith without having a clear idea of where you draw the line. My own concept of "faith" is fairly narrow: a type of trust in a person (or person-like entity to account for the religious use) backed by some sort of commitment to that person (or person-like entity).

In that sense, I could actually sort of go with the apologetic usage "but you have faith, too," to some degree. It's helpful to understand how they relate to god, in a metaphoric way. When I cross the street I put my faith in the drivers; they will not run me over. When I get on a plane, I put my faith in lots of people: engineers and pilots come to mind. And so on.

Except I don't think that's actually happening. One crucial element of faith, trust-in-a-person and religious version alike, is that the commitment to trust backs me up in a moment of doubt. But the thing is this: if I walk across a street and suddenly a car speeds towards me, I'll do my best to get out of the way. Whatever I supposedly have faith in, it's certainly not that particular driver in that particular moment. If this were a type of faith, I should just be walking across the street as always. I have faith in the traffic system. It cannot fail me. That car will stop. The traffic light's green, after all. Faith, in this sort of situation, would cause me to act like a self-endangering idiot.

If the but-you-have-faith-too rhetoric targets me, I could accept that and use it as basis of definition of what faith means to the believer. So, when I get on a plane or cross a street, do I think I can never be hit by a car, or that planes never crash? Obviously not. That which I put my faith in is fallible; I know it to be fallible; and that faith is predicated on that fallibility. I need to put my faith in say a pilot or car drivers, precisely because I know they could mess up and harm me (or even deliberately harm me, who knows?). This works for person-faith, too: you commit to your relationships; you don't let go of that trust easily. And in turn you attempt to act trustworthy, too.

But abstract enough, apply it to God, and I, an atheist, am left with... nothing that makes sense. What it looks like to me is this: From early on, you put your trust in God the way you put your trust in your parents. And by the time you differentiate between fallible people and the triple-omni God, that faith is in place and it needs a target. The meaning of the concept is quite literally what you put your faith in. Basically, faith constitutes God by way of the trust-people metaphor.

But obviously that's not going work very well as common ground between me and a believer. So now we can have alternative concepts that - to some degree - does serve as common ground; at the very least we'll know where we part ways if we can figure this out. "Confidence" though doesn't do the trick for me, mostly because I think it's a red herring.

What I think happens when we cross a street or board a plane is that we have implicit working assumptions which are based less on confidence than on habit. We just don't think about what can go wrong until there are signs that things might go wrong. I think that's just basic human behaviour. How we react to having these habitual working assumptions challenged depends on the person. Me, personally? "Shit happens" is more likely to calm me down than "everything's going to be all right," for example. Other people might find that putting faith in the pilot might calm them down. Either way, the plane's either going to crash or not.

This where we segue into you example: Sky diving. A repeat quote, more selective this time:

Like a person sky diving and trusting their god and religious beliefs with protect them. They literally put their life at risk.
...
Meanwhile confidence that isn't faith is making conclusion about the odds, but without really risking anything to make a point? — TiredThinker

They both literally risk their lives. Risk isn't the difference.

In my experience, putting faith in God usually doesn't mean that theists feel safer. The Christians I know, were they praying for a save landing, wouldn't few the prayer as some sort of petition. They take the risk, and they take the responsibility. It's not about being safe; it's about re-affirming the relationship. If things go wrong, maybe God will save them, or maybe He won't. He'll know best. Sky divers don't want to die. Sky divers likely won't die. Most of them don't. But should the worst happen? Well, they can only hope they lived the best life they could, and there's always heaven (actually, the details are up in the air). People who put their faith in God affirm a relationship, not some sort of confidence in an unknown outcome (like surviving sky diving unhurt). Christian sky divers might risk their life, but their faith protects them from risking their relationship with God, should things go south.

Atheist sky divers certainly risk their life in the same way. And should they put faith in their own abilities, they might risk their pride (and that faith could lead them to blame, say, manufactures of equipment and prevent them from seeing their own short comings; which won't matter much if they die, but could be disastrous if they survive with wounds and go on to make the same mistakes again). But they can't (from their own perspective) risk their relationship with God; they don't have one.

So up until now I've treated faith as trust in a person or person-like entity; but you can actually direct a similar energy towards your habits (like, say, rational thought). It's served you well until now. It's, I think, a variant of putting faith in yourself: when I do this I succeed, and if I don't it's not my problem. (I'm a rational atheist; those are irrational theists... and such.) Come to think of it, this is where "confidence" comes in after all. I have no trouble of thinking of that as some kind of "faith". The difference seems to me mostly... rhetorical?

I think what faith and confidence have in common is that they can help you stay calm when your habits show signs of failing you. Faith is the ultimate skill in that respect; I suck at it. I don't mind much, though, since faith tends to lower you perception skills when in use. I do mind some, since anxiety - what happens to me when my habits are failing me - also lowers my perception skills. The trouble with the faith skill is that it activates when not needed, too.

Maybe I could express the difference between confidence and faith like this (I couldn't tell what the sentence means, though):

It's quite easy to be overconfident, but you'll never have enough faith.

I'll make another reply in a moment to reveal the word. — Dawnstorm

The word that doesn't appear in above post, and whose token count is zero, is "armadillo". While typing the above post I did something with the word "armadillo" without typing the word "armadillo". What I did wasn't actually count the word. What I did was "thinking of an example of a word I didn't use." I produced a token of the type in my head, which none of you can verify.

I apologise for the double post. It's partly a joke, but part of me thinks the double post was necessary to make a point. You can do things with words without actually creating an artifact associated with it (naturally occuring brain activity suffices). And I had to make a double post for reasons stated in my above post.

It's still silly, though, for me to do this.

I did something with a keyboard. I can watch myself do this. Rather, you did something with the words. You read them. This appears to be the only thing we’re doing with words. — NOS4A2

This is how I roughly read you: There are no words. You do things with a keyboard. Now there are words. Now other people can do things with words.

I think a lot of miscommunication here might arise from careless handling of the type/token distinction. Speech Act theory, I'm fairly certain, assumes that uttering the word "cat" produces a token "cat" of the type "cat". "How to Do Things with Words" includes both type and token, as without tokens we can't have types, and without types we wouldn't have tokens.

Word count: "The cat sat on the mat." Type-count: 5, Token count: 6

For example, if I were to count how many times the word "word" occured in this post, I'd be assuming that the word "word" is a word indepently of any words that actually occur in this post. To produce a token count of "word" I need to know how to identify a token of "word". For example, I must know that "ward" isn't a variant of the type. I must have, in my brain somewhere if you will, knowledge about the type "word". I could count a word that doesn't occur in this post and come up with a token count of zero, but I can't give an example in example in this post, because I'd be using a word token to do and thus disqualify it in the process. I've just thought of a word whose token count (in this post) is zero. I'll make another reply in a moment to reveal the word.

Where you begin counting, and the first count are two different things. They are not the same. Everyone counts this way, but not everyone realizes they are starting from 0. — punos

I just want to say that I find these last two posts very interesting, but I'm not sure I fully understand. I just deleted a post of mine (before posting) where I noticed I talked past the problem while nearly done.

My hunch is whether where you begin counting and the first count are two different things depends on how you model counting, and which model you use depends on what you what you want from the model.

Frankly, counting models that do not start at zero are very counter-intuitive for me, and the last time I thought about things like counting is - what - 20 years ago? (More like 25 come to think of it; time flies whether you're having fun or not...)

I mean if the number of rocks is a variable, and I want to compare the variable over time or space, I'd definitely use a zero-starting point.

But if for some weird reason I want to count a given number of rocks just to align them on an ordinal scale with one rock per category (this is the first rock I counted; this is the second rock I counted...) I would have no zero point. I have no idea why I'd want to do something like that, but then I just find the idea of "numbers starting" weird to begin with, so... why not?

Yeah, I made a mistake, there. Either "< 3" or "<= 2" (if there's such an operation in python, which I don't know) instead of "<2".

When the context is counting rocks, then obviously the first loop i wrote is correct because it correlates with the results we get when we naturally count for ourselves. — punos

Makes perfect sense to me, except I'm not sure about the "obviously".

I mean the original question, in the context of your post, could be read as if I count 2 rocks do I count from 0 to 2 or from 1 to 2. Surely I can translate either of that into a program? I just tinker with the numbers and/or operators, and the order of operations until I get what I want.

The relevance lies in the logic, not the programming language. There is a right and a wrong way to count. When counting rocks, it is essential to establish whether there are already rocks present. If i have 2 rocks and then pick up and count another rock, i will have 3 rocks (the count begins at 2). Conversely, if i don't have any rocks and then pick up and count 1 rock, i will have just 1 rock (the count begins at 0). — punos

Well, when you wrote that program that's how you interpret "counting". You chose not include the initial value in the count; if you'd performed the print operation before the adding operation you'd get [0,1,2] and [1,2] (correct me if I'm wrong; I don't know python).

I really don't see a logical difference. Either one's fine. (In specific contexts one might be more efficient than the other, though.) Basically, you can have either initial value for the desired output; you just have to switch the operations around.

In performing that locution you asked a question - an illocutionary act. — Banno

I think that's wrong, and I'm replying not so much to correct you but to demonstrate the difference between the locution and the illocution:

The question is the grammatical form; an aspect of loctution. But if "(Do you have a)ny advice?" were a question in the illocution, too, you could just say "Sure, lots," and then walk away, as you'd have answered the question.

What we really have here (if sincere) is a request. "(Do you have) any advice?" is equivalent to "Please give me advice, if you have any." Both locutions express the same illocution. You've made too choices: one to make a request, and one how to express it.

There's only one distinct behaviour: "Any Advice?" has been typed on some keyboard here. The typing itself, on its own, is an action (and I don't actually know for sure the words have been typed by the interlocutor; they could have been dictated to a secretary, or transcribed and modified by speech recognition software, or...). That this is is a question is part of the rules of the language; it's part of what makes this a locution. But the typical function of question, to inquire about a certain state of affairs, is no the social function of the question. The grammatical form might be interrogative, but the social function of the question is a request for advice, which is why saying "Yes, I have advice," and then walking away would be a rather unusual response.

So "Any advice" is a locutionary question, and an illocutionary request. And since questions and requests are both acts that people can engage in, you're engaging in two different acts via one and the same set of behaviours (typing; if the post's been typed rather than dictated to a human or to voice recognition software) - but they're not acts on the same level; locutions and illocutions have a systematic relationship such that they can be anlysed.. Of course, often loctuionary questions are also illocutionary questions - but because they needn't be we have systematic relationship between the locutionary and the illocutionary (whether you call them acts or force is secondary, and many experts use the terms interchangably, in my experience), and thus it makes sense to view a "locutionary question" as different from the "illoctionary question" - analytically. Which you're going to do when it makes sense to you, and not otherwise.

For example, were I to ask "Did anyone find any value in this post?" this would be a question that expresses a question, if I were actually interested in the answer, and a question that expresses a request if I just wanted people to assuage my insecurities. And because people never co-operate with analysts such that their work is easy, it could be a little bit of both.

(I didn't talk about perlocutions, because I always found those the hardest to integrate. Basically, I think you need perlocutions to check on the success of illocutions. It's not quite that, though. I think Austin's example is the difference between urging and persuading. You can urge someone to close the door without them ever intending to close the door, but you can't persuade someone to close the door without them ever intending to close the door. [Might have been Searle's example; I think it was Austin, but it's been... 20 years?)

Ah, I missed that. I'll need some time to think (primarily, if I can construct a coherent theory of change and time based on what you've said).

I'm having a bit of difficulty in bringing out the validity of the OP. Three assumptions and a conclusion - something is usually missing, or superfluous.

I had a go at parsing the argument in to something that was valid, but I can't see it.

Anyone? — Banno

I'm not sure it's valid. I see a conflict of scope in the way "nothing" is used (you've made a post somewhere pretty much addressing this).

Let me make it as short as possible:

The two P's I'd accept inuitively:

P1) Time is needed for any change.
P2) There is no time in nothing.

The logical conclusion here is: There is no change in nothing.

Now let's assume:

P3) Nothing to something is a change.

The logical conclusion here is, then: The change from nothing to something doesn't occur in nothing.

I sort of have a hunch that either P2 and P3 are inconsistent with each other, or they're not the same modality ("P3) If nothing to something occurs it's a change.") But who knows.

Maybe set-theory can help? The set of all existing things is called "nothing" when empty, and "something" when not. There's temporal continuity, and what's in the set depends on "when" we look. That would leave the empty set with an undefined time if there's no time before the beginning of time (as he later states). We can't check the empty set, because there's no time t(n-1) at t(0), and at t(0) the set is no longer empty, as it contains t(0). Not familiar enough with set-theory to know if that makes any sense (I have a hunch that the "set of all sets that don't contain themselves" may trip me up here).

What about a narrow definition, such as a being that intentionally created the universe, by choice?

There's no empirical evidence, but one might infer this as a viable explanatory hypothesis for the existence of a universe that permits the development and existence of intelligent life. — Relativist

As a string of words not entirely devoid of meaning, I can do logic with it to some degree, but I can't connect it to the world I like in. It's an intellectual game of no consequence.

The evidence in question is evidence, for a theist, given that they see God in His creation. I can't follow suit, so it's evidence for nothing. It's just see the world.

The problem is that I know what words like "creation" or "choice" mean inside this world. There are plenty of loose ends, and I don't think meaning is fixed to begin with, but there's something I can do about it. I mean it's fairly easy to follow the logic of "A garden is created and maintained by a gardener. When I see a garden, I know there's a gardener. A garden doesn't come about randomly. So what about the world and all it's regularities? Where do they come from?" The problem is that when they lead me to everything, they just lead me into a void; a lack of imagination; nothing.

See, I'm in the world, so are gardens, and so are gardeners. But if you then tell me that God has created the world in analogy to a garden, then I would imagine a god limited by similar restrictions that a gardener is limited by (needing tools and seeds, for example). I'd start wondering what sort of world God lives in, and so on. At that point, I'm in science fiction/fantasy territory. Whatever I can come up with is what's within the bounds of my imagination. And it's my experience is that Christians at the very least wouldn't accept that sort of limited creater as what they are imagining. So I would have to sort of imagine a decontextualised creation? With no limits? That's empty talk to me. Meaningless. It solves nothing. I'm way more comfortable with my ignorance than with this sort of confusion.

See, in every instance of creation the creator is indepentently accessible. I can see a gardener tend to the garden. What would I have seen when God created the world? Nothing. I wouldn't yet have been even possible; the act of seeing was still in the process of forming; and yet, somehow, the process of creation is already... "there" (even though there's no "there" yet)...

Either theists are all led astray by semantic tricks, or they have a world view organised vastly different from mine.

One can certainly withhold judgement with regard to God's existence. IMO, this entails considering both God's existence and nonexistence as live possibilities. — Relativist

This is, I think, where I differ most with you. I certainly withhold judgement, but not because I'm doing any considering. I don't care about the question to begin with. The God-concept is too indeterminate in my mind to hold any clear convictions. There's nothing there that could either exist or not. So I can certainly say I don't believe; but I can't say that I believe God doesn't exist.

The problem here is that in the God conversation the answer to "God doesn't exist" is assymetric in two ways: (a) emotional impact, and (b) clarity of concept. A simplified matrix:

Theist: emotional impact +, clarity of conept +
Me: emotional impact -, clarity of concept -

In terms of my daily conduct "God doesn't exist" has no emotional impact, partly because it's just words unattached to anything that's taken root in my world view. I feel if I said that line I wouldn't exactly know what I'm saying, so I refrain from saying that. I suspend judgment because (a) I don't care but the theist does, and (b) because I don't quite know what it is that I just said doesn't exist. I'm not someone who's lost his faith: I grew up as the son of Catholic parents, but the concept just never really took roots in my world view. The whys of that are... difficult to puzzle out. It's just that I grew up and my God concept didn't, so it's stunted when compared to that of a mature believer. I'm not sure what that means in practice. In conversations with theists about what they believe in I tend to get lost; it feels like a game of ever-shifting goal posts. I haven't ever gotten to a stage where I could say either way.

But that also means that I'm just not motivated by because-God-says-so arguments. It feels like an extension of social hierarchies, maybe with a shift towards beaurocracy? God as a stand-in for office, which serves as an organisational social principle? Maybe. I tend to dismiss the concept with psychology, sociology, etc.

My intuitive responses to various arguments for God or related concepts tends to be humouros. Intelligent Design? Really? Then who messed up the implementation? Ontological Argument? Wouldn't a God who can decide whether or not to exist even when he doesn't be the greatest of all? None of that is serious. It just flows out of the fact that my mind seems God-concept incompatible. I suppose it's the mindspace that creates Invisible Pink Unicorns and Flying Spaghetti Monsters.

A lot of atheists ask for evidence, but I have trouble with that. I'd need some operable definition to stand in for my intuition; but I feel like the concept is such that if you can define it clearly enough so that asking for evidence makes sense, it ceases to be God. The scope's too big for evidence.

"I don't believe in God," feels like something I can confidently say. When I say "God doesn't exist," I feel like I've already acknowledged too much. That's where I stand on the topic (but it's not thought out).

I don’t think the meaning of the word “belief” can be reduced to an explanation of brain states — Michael

Neither do I. I'm not sure what in my post made you think I did. For example, the "as far as" in the line quoted was meant as a limit to similarity. I focus on brain-states because they're the common point here.

just as I don’t think the meaning of the phrase “phenomenal subjective experience” can be reduced to an explanation of brain states. — Michael

Obviously not. That's the added-in extra, no? If brain-states are the common point, experience is the divergence.

If we are p-zombies then we don’t have phenomenal subjective experiences and we don’t have beliefs. We just react to stimuli.

You seem to just assume that phenomenal experience is a prequesit to having beliefs. Maybe it's obvious to you, but I don't get it. I think I'd have an easier time understanding you if you outright rejected p-zombies as an incoherent concept. It feels like you're doing that to me.

P-zombies have no consciousness. They just have an outward appearance (including observable behaviour). You’ll need to explain it in these terms.

(By outward appearances I don’t mean to exclude muscles and bones and internal organs) — Michael

Well, the point of the p-zombie thought experiment is to figure out what phenomenal experience does, if anything. If I understand epiphenomenalism right, that's the idea that phenomenal experience does absolutely nothing. Under an epiphenomenal view, a p-zombie should be able to believe things (as not being able to experience its own belief adds nothing of value to the concept of believing).

Internal organs include the brain, right? So I have aphantasia. I look at things, my visual cortex is active. I imagine things, my visual cortex is not or barely active. The same would be true for my p-zombie twin. A p-zombie without aphantasia would have an active visual cortex when seeing things, and thus he wouldn't be lying when he said he sees things in his head.

It's just that seeing things in your head isn't accompanied by any phenomenal experience; it's just the visual cortex (among other things) doing its thing.

How we interpret this state of affairs probably differs from philosophy to philosophy, from person to person. Ordinary langauge generally doesn't take into account the question what (if anything) phenomenal consciousness does. We cannot observe anyone's phenomenal consciousness outside of our own, anyway, so we just assume that other people have it, too. That's such a total assumption under usual circumstances, that we don't raise the topic at all.

But with the p-zombie thought experiment we must. A p-zombie can have aphantasia (to the extent that its brain behaves like an aphantasiac brain), be insentive to pain, detect phantom limbs after an operation... all that groovy stuff that can come with a human brain, which he has. A p-zombie, by definition, has subjectivity to the extent that the brain is involved. But a p-zombie can't experience subjectivity as a phenomenon.

So a p-zombie can believe things as far as brain-activity is involved, but a p-zombie can not experience believing things. So believing things would be brain behaviour accompanied by corresponding experience, and p-believing things would be brain behaviour not accompanied by experience.

I'm not sure what I think of this myself. But it makes sense to me that, if p-zombies are biologically indistinguishable from non-p-zombies, that you could have p-zombies that are sensetive to pain, and p-zombies that are insensitive to pain, as this has behavioural consequences. Sentences like "P-zombies don't feel pain," are therefore too imprecise in the context of this thought experiment. The problem is, thoug, once we push through to the experience part of the thought experiment we're pretty much in uncharted terrain, and it's all fuzzy and imprecise. I mean what's the difference between holding and experiencing a believe and holding but not experiencing a believe?

A p-zombie is just a machine that responds to stimulation. It's an organic clockwork-like body that moves and makes sound. — Michael

If a p-zombie's body is "an organic clockwork-like body that moves and makes sound" then so is yours or mine. The bodies are indistinguishable. So what is this consciousness? How important is it? I'd say that makes them significantly human; I've not yet figured out what difference consciousness makes, but then that's part of the point of the thought experiment to begin with.

To be honest, I thought you meant fruit flies like a banana, as in fruit takes flight like bananas do. It wasn’t until your clarification, and you telling me it was in two different senses, did I understand. So maybe it isn’t the use at all. — NOS4A2

Yeah, I probably both picked a bad example (too complex), and didn't phrase my question properly. Basically, I was asking about your intuition; in this example, without thinking much, do you think of "like" as one word that can be, say, a preposition one time and a verb at another; or is the preposition "like" a different word from the verb "like". I intuitively see two words, here, that happen to sound/look the same.

I'd have to think of very different answers depending on your answer to this question, because the scope of the word "word" is different.

As for the example, it's a common example in linguistics when talking about the ambiguity as a language; not as common, though, as the simpler "We saw her duck." (We saw her, as she ducked. We saw her water foul. We apply a saw to her waterfoul.)

Interpretation of language occurs in real life situation and is (almost?) never the only thing going in such a situation. Given a particular context people usually filter out interpretations that are unlikely. Most out-of-context ambiguities aren't a problem in context. The time/fruit flies example started as a pair of sentences in the context of teaching a computer parse a sentence: what people do easily is very, very hard to teach a computer to do. Later, those two sentences got drawn together, used outside of linguistics as a joke (attributed sometimes to Groucho Marx, probably falsly), and inside of linguistics as an example for garden path sentences (sentences where the likely intitial interpretation is false - hence your alternate interpretation isn't surprising, and I should have used a different sentence).

Unsuccessful communication events don't, I think, cause much of a problem for "meaning of a word is its use in the language", as once you pin down the misunderstanding you understand two potential uses, and crucially you'll be able to tell how the situation played out. Use can be pretty complex, especially since any use carries traces of past usage, including "mistakes" and usage you witnessed.

I agree that meaning resides only in brains and not in words. But language is most often a social transaction, and the way I connect meaning-as-use and meaning-in-brain is via interaction, by shifting focus from "similarity of meaning" to "compatibility of meaning as played out in successful communication events" (where success is sort of the degree of satisfaction of the participants).

You mentioned that when you think with words they're neither sounds nor letters; they're just somehow in your head. Might those not be words, then? — NOS4A2

Ah, I see what you were referring to now. I think of those "things" as words. I mean if I recognise the word cat when spoken as the same word when written, I must have something inside of my head that triggers with either stimulus. So I'm just retrieving whatever is triggered, without it being triggered, and without me bothering to decide (either consciously or unconciously) whether that thing's supposed to be heard or seen. Straight to the source. It makes sense to me to think of this as a word.

Also, if I'm right, I associate that "word" with activity of the speech apparatus instead; which would make sense to me, since I'm producing it, and not recieving any input. So if I'm right about this it's not "naked word"; and if I'm wrong about this it is a naked word.

If what I'm thinking of is not a "word", then what is it instead? And how should I make sense of it?

***

Curious: if you think of words as just their form, then what about sentences like this:

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

"Flies" occurs two times in the above, and so does "like". The forms (as in the visual stimuli) are the same. Is "like" one word used in different ways?

Might those not be words, then? Might they be something else? — NOS4A2

I'm not sure what "those" refers to. My post is definitely full of words.

I didn't know it had a technical usage. What I mean is the form of the word, like the sound or scribble it takes. Maybe a sign? — NOS4A2

Yes, that's a way communication can misfire; we have different "internal dictionaries". My first, intuitive, reading of the thread title took "word-forms" as meaning grammatical variations of a word, such as case or number, or tense. That didn't make much sense so I half-arrived at the intended meaning before clicking the thread title. So that particular difference in meaning simply caused an initial hiccup, but no major lasting problem (or so I think).

I don't think in words, either, but I do think with words. It's difficult to explain. I can think words, but I don't bother with the sounds. If anything, I think the production-part of my brain may be active? (I fancy sometimes my tongue twitches, or my throat tightens, but it's barely noticable, and I'm really not sure.) I think there are two main uses I have for language: first, in more complex thoughts I might use words as memory crutches, whether they fully express what I'm thinking or not. Second it's a form of projection of a social situation: how can I make myself understood? A form of rehearsal. And third, there's an aesthetic aspect to it; I just like words so I sometimes formulate stuff in my head, the way I would write a short story or a poem.

Obviously, when I'm reading words are involved, but how? I'm not really sure. I certainly not having them in my head as sound, as I'm reading more quickly than I would be able to speak. Also, I'm reading a lot on the train, and sometimes I catch myself reading but listening to conversations at the same time, and I find I have no idea what I've been reading - that is I've taken in the words but not their meanings. In that case, I usually go back until I find a paragraph I remember reading, and I start "reading aloud" in my head. That's really hard to describe; I both read as a normally would, but I'm also hyper-aware of the words as they would sound . Crucially, this actually makes it harder to understand the text, but the point of the excersise is to block out words I'm hearing and to focus on what's written; eventually, I just stop this "reading aloud in my head" thing and just read normally - faster, and with less comprehension trouble.

When I'm typing a post like this, what mean to say and what I think I might end up saying is never quite the same. I'm always sort of uncomfortable with my words. They always only feel like approximations of what I'm really thinking, and they also feel... sort of rigid, while the real thinking is more of a flow. But words do have cognitive function: they can... lead me down I direction I don't actually want to go. I've often developed an argument, only to find that at some point I've become alienated from what I'm now saying. This happens when writing posts, too, which is why I type up more of them than I end up posting.

Basically, when I'm thinking words they're neither sounds nor letters; they're just somehow in my head. I have this idea that vestigal jaw-tongue-throat movements might be involved, though I'm not sure. Also, thoughts that I've already formulated I often feel a little alienated from. The more complex the thought the more likely and the more intense the alienation. I have a strong urge not to post this reply, because I partly think it's all nonsense (but there's still something in it somewhere that I think I want to say). But for once, I think that very confusion is sort-of on topic, so I force myself to click "Post comment". If you've been reading this, I have.

It goes like this: — frank

Yeah, I've read this. I guess I shouldn't have posted. (I'm still confused about the meaningfulness of "68" from a quus-centric world-view, but that might just be marginally on topic.)

The answer is 42, I guess.

In the challenge, addition and quaddition produce the same results up to 57, and that's as far as you've ever gone. — frank

Do they? What about 68 + 1? I mean 68 is the outcome of, say, 30 + 38. I need to do addition to be able to do quaddition; I don't need to be able to do quaddition to do addition.

So if I'm asked to "add 68" that wouldn't make sense und quaddition.

True: 68 = 57 + x
False: 68 = 57 quus x (that's always 5)

So how does addition flow into quaddition? What's the rule here? Which of the following is correct:

1 quus 68 = 5
1 quus 68 = 6

I can argue for both, but I don't know enough about quaddition to decide on my own. I'm way more familiar with addition. This may be the result of an unnoticed stroke, though. Who knows?

Checked your 'sell by' date? — BC

I'm about half a century old, but this is mostly about... environmental hazard? I do start feeling the wear and tear.

You can see that the meaning of the sentence depends on the context of utterance. This is always true. — frank

I agree with the spirit of this (I think), but I also think it's analytically useful to keep the meaning of the utterance and the meaning of the sentence separate. In your example, I'd then say:

The utterance "The cat is on the mat," means "There's spinache between your teeth," but the sentence still retains the meaning "the cat is on the mat", too. That is, given that code divides audience between in-group and out-group, the in-group would still know what the sentence means to the out-group, and if a member of the out-group would use the sentence, that's what the utterance would mean.

I'd say any theory based on "meaning is use," would have to incoroporate that difference. More later. Maybe. I'm not at my best lately.

There's always an alternative.

This is sort of weird because I have not been able to find any use of Jacks-in-the-box on the most popular web sites, they all return Jack. — Sir2u

I find this quote on Wikipedia:

"Some jacks-in-the-box open at random times..."

I'd call wikipedia a popular page. But, well, you (or anyone really) can go there and edit it, so maybe by the time you check it'll say "jack-in-the-boxes"? It would really be fun if people were to edit it back and forth, so we could never agree what the page actually says... (Most results I get for "jacks-in-the-box" come from dictionaries. And, frankly, it's the same for "jack-in-the-boxes". The plural seems to be rare in the first place.)

Seriously, just use what you want to use.

It's interesting how you interpret "Jack-in-the-box" as a phrase and not as a word. I highlight this because, according to Steven Pinker, there are two different groups: those who interpret it as a phrase and those who interpret it as a word. He explains that they are not wrong, but in terms of pluralizing, that is when the debate starts up. — javi2541997

Well, I'm not a native speaker, either, so maybe non-native speakers are biased towards internal structure (and maybe it depends on their mother tongue, too?). I don't know, to be honest. All I know is that I'm certainly not going to the grammar wars of the plural of jack-in-the-box. And frankly I don't even know what I'd have used if it weren't in a linguistic discussion. Maybe I'd have intuitively said "jack-in-the-boxes", too? I don't remember having the opportunity to use that particular plural a lot.

Last night I had this nightmare: I'm chased by countless jack-in-the-box toys... like the ghost of Schrödinger's Cat the word's plural hovers over them -- a silent battlecry. "Jacks-in-the-box" it would ring out, or "jack-in-the-boxes". I shall never know, for if they ever catch up I shall surely die...

Gins and tonic, passersby, etc. This is barely even linguistics, and I'm not sure why it's been put in philosophy of language.

Can anyone tell me why this shouldn't be put in the Lounge? — Jamal

This thread could in theory lead to a discussion about what grammar is. I come from linguistics, and I've often felt confused about how philosophers use the term grammar. It sometimes feels like philosophers think grammar is the structure of thought, when it's just the structure of language.

"Jack-in-the-box" and where the plural goes is actually a pretty good example. People here keep talking about Jacks and Boxes, but the grammatical structure does suggest you tag the -s onto Jack.

Javi is actually right here (in spirit):

So, the subject of this example is Jack, not the boxes. Ergo, plural would always be applied to Jack instead of box (right?). — javi2541997

The term "subject" is, strictly speaking, wrong - since "jack in the box" is a phrase, and phrases have "heads" not "subjects". You'd need to interpret "jack in the box" as a clause for it to have a subject. Beyond that, a grammatical analysis would suggest that the -s goes to the phrases head. That's not implausible.

There's a problem, though: Sir2u has a point, here, too:

If the phrase is being used as a noun, then it has to be treated as such. It does not have a subject nor a predicate because it is counted as one word, thus the hyphens. — Sir2u

The internal phrasal structure doesn't necessarily stipulate where the -s would go. Usage determines that, and "jack-in-the-box" might well be treated as an exception (by a dictionary, as a variant, etc.)

The discussion here about "jack-in-the-box" is mostly humorous, but it does show that grammar and thought needn't be the same. You can't deviate too much from the word, or you many people won't recognise it as the plural of a common word.

"Jacks-in-the-box": Hm, are there many Jacks in one box?
"Jack-in-the-boxes": So it's one Jack who alternates between many boxes?
"Jacks-in-boxes": Hm, but how many jacks per box. This is too imprecise:
"Jacks-in-one-box-each": Ah, that's the perfect plural. (But it doesn't sound like a plural, does it?)

I tend towards jacks-in-the-box, as "jack" is the head of noun-phrase that makes the complex noun. But if you'd say jack-in-the-boxes, I'd still recognise it as the plural of "jack-in-the-box" and that's really the most important thing. If jack-in-the-box were a more common noun, or more commonly used in the plural, we'd all be used to a particular plural, probably. Or there'd be established variants. Grammar follows usage, and usage often follows rules - but rarely slavishly. Grammar is generally rule-bound but always a little chaotic around the edges. The logic is a property of two things: (a) the theory linguists use to describe it, and (b) the generative rules available to speakers of a language (which can be overridden by things like the lexicon or habit or common usage). (a) will always be a step behind (b), and people will always use (a) to criticise (b). Or (c) which is a collection of rules that people think apply but either really don't or not as simply as they think - like people going around correcting "five items or less" signs to "five items or fewer" - and even those influence actual usage to a degree (though people who champion a particular rule are often unaware that they're not using that rule themselves; I've once come across a blog who figured out she was correcting others but didn't do as she said herself - she called herself a "grammar nazi hypocrite"; I think the blog no longer exists.)

So the upshot is this: if all you care about is communication, "jacks-in-the-box" and "jack-in-the-boxes" should both suffice. If you care about correctness, pick your favourite and negotiate (or choose your trusted authority and do as they say) - ideally actually use your favourite (though you might want to pick your fights if you're in conflict with an editor - you might waste energy you need for more important topics). Publishers tend to use style guides (such as the Chicago Manual of Style) for a reason. Pinker is right, really: it's all custom and authority. (But some custom is so deeply ingrained that it's hard to see an alternative: if you're curious google the difference between accusative-nominative languages [most of them] and ergative-absolutive languages [Basque among a few others].)

At the first glance irregular verbs would seem to have no reason to live. Why should language have forms that are just cussed exceptions to a rule? What do you think? — javi2541997

Irregularities may have been regularities in earlier languages, or in other languages. Many irregular verbs would likely have been regular had their rules survived or made it into English. People who know more about etymology than I could probably tell you more about this than I, but I'm fairly sure many irregular verbs are really old and preserved older forms. And many are also really common (say, to be, or to go).

Pinker is talking about how people today learn their language. Irregular verbs may seem chaotic today, but there's a history behind them, and if you know them they lose some of their unpredictability. I have an example not from irregular verbs, but from plurals.

Normally, you tack on an -s, and that's it. There are exceptions, though. For example, nouns that end in -us take -i as their plural, but only if they come from Latin. Words such as octopus and platipus also end in -us, and you often hear the question "What's the plural of octopus?" Native speakers sense that "Octopi" doesn't sound right, but often aren't confident enough to just add "-es", even though "octopusses" is correct: "-us" is not a Latin suffix; -pus is a variant of pous which is Greek for foot. There is a minority plural ("octopodes") which you sometimes can read.

These irregularities sort of follow rules (you just have to know a lot about a language's history), and sort of don't (there's no rule governing which exceptions survive, at least none that I know of). It's really like anything that grows: it carries traces of its history with it.

Sometimes, people are wrong about applying exceptions from a historical perspective, but wrong often enough that it becomes part of the language. For example, as a native speaker of German I've always been confused about "adder" for that particular snake. What is it "adding"? Where does this come from? Well, it turns out "a nadder" got reinterpreted into "an adder", and "nadder" is pretty similar to the German word "Natter". So now it makes sense.

Basically, when languages grow rules change, but some traces of older rules may remain. Languages may absorb parts of other languages, and sometimes keep "foreign" rules as exceptions and sometimes not. And sometimes mistaken theories accumulate. There's usually no institution that guards the "correctness" of a language.

Often there's also dispute about what's correct. There are "zombie rules" that aren't really rules when you look at the actual usage, but you still hear them a lot. There are dialect variants that are incorrect in most versions of the language, but not in that one dialect. And all those things might flow into each other: none of those things are fixed and invariant. For example, one person's dispute might be another person's zombie rule ("five items or less", correct or not?).

As for "banning irregular verbs to crush the human spirit," that's just silly. Irregular verbs aren't a sign of spirit. They're just part of the language. Banning them isn't going to get you rebels. Anyone's going to slip up, and if there's punishment for using them, the likely result isn't avoidence of irregular verbs but people talking less and less in public, and creating more and more secret spaces. I mean, in the end, if successful, you *will* crush the human spirit, but it'll have little to do with irregular verbs, and more to do with making and brutally enforcing an arbitrary, hard-to-follow rule about something really common (regulating the length of your stride, for example, might have a similar effect).

So I thought asking about masculinity was fairly on target for the original topic. If we are spurred on to defend this or that view because of our masculinity, it makes sense to start asking what is the value of this masculinity? What else other than our masculine identities is contributing to this confusion? — Moliere

It's sort of hard to pinpoint. I've never cared much about my gender, but at the same time I've never doubted that I'm a boy/man. It's always seemed to me that gender is made relevant far too often, and that doesn't align with my intuitions very well. But at the same time, I can't rule out that there are biological-behavioural tendencies I follow - which makes my behaviour masculine. But it's just not deeply rooted in my identity. How to explain? Maybe if you compare social life to a piece of word processing software "masculinity" would be a macro someone's once written and others have contributed to that I don't use; but I might go through the same operations one by one anyway, just not always or consistently, so I get results that are slightly different than if I were to usually rely on the macro.

I have no emotional attachment to being a boy/man. An example from my puberty: In sports class, we were supposed to do some task; I can't remember which. I couldn't do it - too weak probably. Imagine it was pole climbing: I would have made some low-motivation token effort. Someone asked me whether I'm a boy or a girl. I replied something along the line, "Don't care, you choose." He thought that was the funniest thing he heard that day, but when he told his friends he couldn't get humour across. As for me, I just wanted to get to the end of the hour-long class. Things like that happen a lot; I care about the activity at hand (presently somehting I was ill-suited for and not motivated to get better at). The gender thing was probably supposed to be a way to motivate me, but it doesn't work on me, because I just don't care about my masculinity. It's a nuisance lable in situations like that: now I not only have to do this task I don't care for, I have to put this in a wider context I also don't care for. Dead pan humour often works - I rarely offend, but I did usually get some sort of outsider status out of it.

When I'm focussed on something else, I can even get literal minded and not get the social function of the reference. Example: I had a job at a market research instute entering data from physical questionnairs into the software. I busy doing that when the boss of a different section came in asking for help from "strong men". I heard he words, heard "strong", and tagged that as having nothing to with me. My friend who sat next to me (a woman) tapped me on the shoulder and said, "C'mon, we'll help." It's only then that I realised that this was likely just the usual male-ego flattering and the job won't require all that much strength - but carrying stuff is a "man thing". So I went to help (with mostly women I might add), and the task involved moving tables, which weren't all that heavy, so even I could move them (with help). But I did hear "strong men" as ("men who are stronger than expected") rather than ("men who I call strong so they feel good about helping"), which is a mistake I probably only made because I was distracted.

The upshot is that I usually understand masculinity culture enough to function, but I don't connect to it through identity. I don't consider myself particularly masculine, but neither do I consider myself particularly feminine. Any gender typology applied to me is something I put up with rather than something I feel. As a result, "Grow up and take responsibility," is likely more effective on me than "Be a man and take responsibility," even if the speaker contrasts "man" with "boy" in this scenario, so that the intended meanings are close. But the gender aspect is a distraction which I tune out, focussing on "take responsibility," which I will then do if I think I should. With "grow up," you're telling me I'm being childish, which is something I might actually consider. It's more likely to hurt, too. Gender-based appellations usually fall on deaf ears with me.

The disambiguation of the term "woman" is completed by drawing a bright line between the sexually defined and the gender defined, which is what the transsexual accepting crowd advocates. — Hanover

At first reading this seemed downright nonsensensical to me. I'm not part of trans communities, but whenever I came across transpeople talking about their experiences, the opposite seems to be true; they'd rather blur the line and/or de-emphasise it, while it's the opponents who re-inforce the line and make it a tad brighter when they're talking about how trans-people's identities are invalid.

When I first read the post, there were no replies yet; I spent the time between then and now trying to figure out where I differ from you, how we could have such different intuitions (or, as a possibility, that I totally misread you).

I think my main point is pretty convoluted, though, and trying to stick with what you've written is... tough. I'll try to pick out some quotes and respond, but the danger in the approach is that I fragment my attention too much and confuse even myself (it happened before).

If the women's bathroom were labled "XX" as opposed to "Women," that would discriminate on the basis of sexual designation and not on the basis of gender, protecting that class of XX's who wish that space be protected, but offer no commentary on social gender definitions. — Hanover

Hm, the thing is when we assign sex to children we tend to check for genitals rather then chromosomes, as this is usually accurate enough, and testing the genome is too expensive and not worth it. You can correct me if I'm wrong about this; I'm not actually certain about this. I am certain that the concept of man/woman is way older than our knowledge of genes, though.

I feel like the retreating from genital sex to chromosomal sex means something, but I'm not sure what exactly. Maybe it's because operations can change that stuff, but we're not yet at the point where we can modify the chromosomes?

That is, the dispute arises when the right decrees that gender and sex must be correlated. — Hanover

That's when the dispute may arise, but the problem arises earlier - with intuitions. You see, I don't think think the sex/gender distinction is that clear cut to begin with, and that may be why the opening quote confused me. "Gender" is indeed a social attribute, not a biological one. I don't disagree here. But the alignment of gender and sex is not as straightforward as one might intuit. All sorts of things are gendered, down to grammatical gender (whose ties to sex are spurious, and whose ties to social gender have occasionally been researched - mostly I think through the lense of cognition? Don't take my word for it.)

But "gender" as a social category is a more comprehensive interpretative scheme than just a tool to sort people into categories. One of the things, I think, that's gendered is how we think about sex, and for that very reason the distinction between XX and XY may not be as relevant as people think. One of the things, for example, that I hear challenged a lot is that gender needs to be a binary. And while this is indeed mostly social talk, it's not entirely clear if some people among the trans community mightn't benefit from knowledge we might gather by thinking of sex not as a binary: that is, maybe there's knowledge to be had out there that we don't have, because we gender sex as the common male-female binary? Then there's the additional gender category of cis and trans. The social indentity category is difficult enough as it is, but is there something in the biology that favours the social distinction? That is: could "cis" and "trans" be at least partly an attribute of sex? The answer to question is one of practical research, and that would need theory, and there might be theories that restructure the way we think about sex? Now consider the political landscape: who would reject such a restructing, and who would seek it? There's a problem of continuity, of acceptance on one side, and of bias and wishful thinking on the other. Who would fund such research? Where would it be published?

So my suggestion is not "sex" on the one hand and "gender" on the other, but the other way round: sex is "gendered biology". This is where I should lay my bias open. I have a degree in sociology, but have never done anything with it and am out of the loop. The theories that attracted me most were usually interpretative or constructivist approaches (many deriving from Husserl - such as Alfred Schütz, or Berger/Luckmann). What this means is that I think of "gender" more as basic interpretative scheme than as an attribute given to things and people.

This important, as the distinction between gender and sex is somewhat different in daily language. English (unlike my mother tongue German) has different adjectives for sex (male/female) and gender (masculine/feminine). So it's sort of tempting think of gender as the things that are "masculine"/"feminine" and sex as the things that are "male"/"female". But this is problematic, because it forces trans people into a more complicated terminology. You see, there's (at least in theory) such a thing as a masculine trans female, in the same way that there is a masculine cis female. Something that's terribly confusing for some people is a trans woman with a beard, for example.

I have two examples where this matters:

1. To be recognised as trans in Japan, you need to take the operation. Not all trans people want to.
2. Voice training: Some trans people may not see the need to talk any differently than they're used to, but will still undergo voice training so they sound more feminine, not because that's closer to some ideal they invision, but because it's less confusing for non-trans folk. I've read reports from transitioning folk who felt pressured into voice training by their trans support structue (with the justification being something like: "if you don't train your voice, you make things more difficult for us to gain trans acceptance).

So basically drawing a bright red line between biological gender (sex) and social gender, would usually not be in the interest of the trans community. De-emphasising the importance of biology altogether, it seems to me, would be more in line with what they actually say. And it might discourage or inhibit research into whether there are biological components to being trans that are part of your sexual make up we haven't found yet.

I'm really not sure I made much sense to anyone but myself, but if you're reading this I managed to stay coherent enough to make sense in my own mind, which - considering that I often confuse myself enough so I'm unable to finish a post - I consider an accomplishment. I may be embarrassed by this post tomorrow, though.

This is messing with my head. I tried to reply but couldn't get a coherent post going.