You are misunderstanding the different ideas of meaning. I have already explained it; the inherent meaning of things consists in us knowing what they are, which includes but is not limited to knowing what they are called. Animals know what the "affordances" in their environment are without needing names. We don't have to consciously or deliberately name things or think about them as being named for this meaning to be there in the objects themselves. — Janus

But I don't buy that there is any inherent meaning. That notion is incorrect.

"Knowing what something is" is another way of talking about a person applying the name they use to things. That's often influenced by what other people call things, but it's still just what individuals call things. It's a conscious process.

Re "affordances" I don't understand the way you're using that term. If you're using it in a "should" sense, the only animals that think about anything that way are animals with mental capacities.

The notion that the names of things are somehow in the things is wacky and very wrong. Names are part of your concept of the thing in question. It's a way that you think about whatever it is.

Were there folk around 3 billion years ago who could talk about their world? — Banno

No. Hence why I specified that as the time frame.

What's Terrapin worried about? — Banno

Just trying to get us to say things that make sense.

That the world is always already interpreted means that there is a world to be interpreted. — Banno

"3 billion years ago, there is a world to be interpreted"

wouldn't normally be saying the same thing as

"3 billion years ago, the world is already interpreted"

"to be" in the above sentence would be future continuous tense.

"already" suggests something that has happened in the past. If you wanted to say it's "all ready to be interpreted" that would be different.

It's not a matter of thinking about it; — Janus

Meaning is a way of thinking about something. So, yes it is. I already explained this above.

Re identifying things--for example, if you're thinking about applying a name to something (which is a way of thinking about it), I do not think about what I name the vast majority of things that I perceive. Again, I can't even imagine how someone could do that. For example, where I'm sitting at the moment, I can see hundreds of things. There's no way I could think about the names of all of that at the same time. Yet I see all of that stuff.

Also, when I do think about things I perceive in ways involving meaning, that's not wrapped up in the perception--well, at least not usually. It's ancillary to it.

You still haven't answered the question: have you ever perceived anything that is meaningless to you ( IE, you didn't know what it is)? — Janus

The vast majority of things that I perceive I do not think about in a way that involves meaning.

If that's what you're asking.

I can't imagine that anyone thinks about things in terms of meaning for most things they perceive.

If you're in the mood to argue, let's do one thing at a time, so we can solve that thing and move on from it.

So it's ok to put bear traps in a park because you can't get consent from the people that will be there later because they don't exist right now and you don't know who they are? — khaled

People who exist are capable of granting or withholding consent, aren't they?

I wasn't speaking about "perceiving meaning" but perceiving meaningful things or perceiving things meaningfully. Have you ever perceived anything meaningless? — Janus

Things have meaning only because and only insofar as people think about them in the associative way I outlined.

So the only way I can make sense of a "meaningful thing" is that either we're talking about perceiving something that we then think about in the pertinent associative ways (though it's not literally the thing we're perceiving that's meaningful, but the way that we think about what we perceive), or we're talking about perceiving the sorts of things that ascribe meaning to things--namely, other people.

That is not a good reason. Because I don’t care how small the chances of being miserable are (although I don’t think they’re that low) it’s still not a good reason to take a risk FOR someone else when they will pay the consequences. — khaled

I think it is a good reason, because the odds are by far in favor of not being miserable. Maybe you don't take good bets, but I do. I think good bets are worthwhile to take.

If you don’t agree then you wouldn’t mind someone stealing your bank account to invest most of your savings in a certain business without your consent — khaled

We're not at all talking about doing something against anyone's consent. Consent requires someone capable of granting or withholding consent.

I have kids. I'm not against having more, although at this point, it requires younger women who are open to mating with an older guy and who don't mind relationships with someone who is married.

Or are you just saying that the two are not the same thing? — Baden

Yeah, socialism in no way implies any particular view of or concern with Marx.

I think he was just highlighting the differences in the "unsure" responses.

The underlying sentiment of most of my professors was that Marx was wrong. — Wallows

Maybe part of it is that under some majors there's a tendency to think of socialism as an endorsement of someone like Marx, whereas philosophy majors don't see it as an endorsement of any particular person's views?

I strongly dislike Marx, by the way. I don't equate him with socialism at all.

Why is it such a common sentiment among philosophy majors? I don't know, but maybe a willingness to endorse positions outside of status quo beliefs has something to do with it.

At any rate, I also endorse socialism, but a very idiosyncratic version of libertarian socialism in my case.

it is wrong to act in a way that WILL risk harming someone in the future (for no good reason) — khaled

A good reason in my opinion is that the balance is on the enjoyment/pleasure side for most people.

there is no true difference between you and everything. — Filipe

I don't know about that. I think a toaster can make toast much better than I can, but the toaster didn't do a very good job when I asked it to write this post for me. I had to do it.

Why did you choose the highly individual name: Terrapin Station ? What does it mean to you ? — Amity

It's a Grateful Dead song/album. Here's the title track:



The Dead are one of my favorite musical artists. My avatar is also from Grateful Dead album artwork. It's from the Europe 72 box set.

Your dynamic body is under your control, unless something dramatic happens to you.
And then it might become another 'you'. With a different personality, exhibiting different behaviour. — Amity

Dynamic means that it's changing/it doesn't stay the same. You're constantly changing, your personality is always in process of changing a bit, etc.

The question of 'Who is the real you ?' becomes of practical and emotional relevance to you and family who will exclaim 'But that's not Terrapin Station !' or whatever your real name is. — Amity

That's about other persons' concepts, and specifically, it's about what they'd consider the "essential" features for them to christen something by a particular name.

If you think about it, everything we do in our lives has as ultimate purpose to bring us personal happiness. — Patulia

That's simply one of those things where you're basically saying that you can make whatever moves would be necessary to interpret anything that way if you want to interpret it that way.

You boiled it down to brain function. — Amity

Body, actually, of which brain is a very prominent part, since that's the part where mentality obtains, and people usually focus on mental aspects when it comes to personal identity.

How would what it's like to be me/what it "means" to be me (whatever loose sense of "meaning" you're using there) not amount to my dynamic body?

Well if the 'real you' is about dynamic brain function, then why would it not be under your control? — Amity

For example, I didn't exist prior to the development of my body to make my body the way it is, did I?

a pretty pared back bundle — Amity

I don't know what that phrase amounts to, but all the stuff I said in my reply, not just part of it paraphrased.

In an autobiography, obviously I'm going to focus on actions, events, experiences, etc. It wouldn't be a philosophy text about personal identity.

So, who are you ? Real or otherwise ? — Amity

A complex of different dynamic bodily parts and functions, where for "personal identity," the focus is on a complex of different dynamic brain functions that amount to mentality--thoughts/ideas, desires, concepts, memories, senses of self, etc.

There is no Real you because your personality is simply a compilation of your tastes with your experiences and both of those things are beyond any type of reasonable control. — Filipe

My "real me" isn't something that I believe is ultimately under my control, and it's not something that I take to be simply a compilation of my tastes and experiences.

So if you want to argue that there is no "real me," you're going to need something better than that.

We can't interpret the world we see around us in order to understand what happened in the past?

There's a bit of a flick in the words you use. The world is always already interpreted became there is no uninterpreted nature to the world.

I'm not sure that works. — Banno

Basically what he's asking you, although I don't know on what grounds as he's not a realist, is how the world was interpreted when the "timeline" is turned back to 3 billion years ago, for example.

Meaning is of many kinds. Have you ever perceived anything utterly meaningless? — Janus

Yes. It's not possible to perceive meaning on my view. Meaning is something mental that we do. Namely, it's the mental process of associative thinking, of thinking about something so that it implies, refers to, connotes, denotes, suggests or "pushes" or "leans towards", etc. other things. It's not possible to perceive this. Even when you observe things like others literally pointing at something, or you read dictionary definitions, you need to think about those things in those associative ways. This is why the paper that a definition is written on, for example, can't do meaning. You can't perceive thinking about something in those associative ways. In fact, you can't literally perceive others thinking period. We rather abductively conclude that others are thnking.

Perception is always already meaningful; it is not a matter of "assigning anything". You remain unable to think outside the dualistic box, it seems. — Janus

What would you say that meaning is if you view perception as always meaningful?

I think the problem is even deeper. To not give a shit about what other people do (to you) requires not giving a shit about everything. A person might knock the ice cream out of your hand on the sidewalk. You can't care that you are not eating ice cream. Extend this to the full range of desires, and not getting them. This is stopping a desire. Then you have the giving you unpleasant experiences. Pouring water on you in winter. Taking your car so you have to walk. Extend this to all unpleasant experiences. To maintain not giving a fuck you can no longer dislike unpleasant experiences and prefer ones you want. You can no longer prefer, desire, want to avoid. You would be, basically, a motivationless creature. All states and experiences would be the same to you. Civilization, even continued existence, would collapse. Why work? Live? Eat? make? kiss? Homo sapiens ends on a shrug. — Coben

Exactly.

Try something like Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, edited by Curd, Cover and Peacock. You might want to see if you can get it from a library, though. As something primarily used as a textbook, it's not cheap to buy, although it's actually not priced bad compared to typical textbook prices.

So, our perception of things is always an interpretation, we perceive an always already interpreted world, in other words, and all our judgements are judgements of and about an interpreted world. — Janus

Are you also saying that because of language a la Banno (who was agreeing with Wittgenstein, wasn't he?) or are you saying it for some other reason? (I couldn't say why Heidegger thinks it, by the way.)

The language comment is extremely confused in my view. If there's another reason you're saying this, though, what's the reason, and what would be the support of it?

It seems a bit odd to me to use the word "interpretation" in a sense that isn't connected to meaning, but I can't imagine that you have a view that perception can't obtain without assigning meaning to what's perceived.

Yes, and don't we then follow on by using that description as a tool of understanding? — Pattern-chaser

Sure, you could say that descriptions are "tools for understanding" --although maybe more often they're tools for misunderstanding, especially because there are so many wrong descriptions, but a description of what ethics is isn't itself ethics.

I like (broad-sense) fantasy fiction for stories. For my tastes, philosophy sucks if I want a story. :razz:

Ah--I just realized that I misread the first post. I thought you were saying that they removed neurons from the brains and that's what they were experimenting on. I just realized that you're saying they experimented on intact brains. I agree that there's far more probability in that situation of some sort of mental activity.

I think they were being overly optimistic that consciousness would likely occur simply by stimulating some neurons in a very different environment.

I suppose the acceptance of being fallible is acknowledged as a moral principle . — David Jones

This seems like a strange opening claim to me. The acceptance of fallibility might help make someone not come across as an arrogant asshole, but is that really a moral issue? It seems more like a character or "personability" issue to me. I wouldn't say that someone who comes across as an arrogant asshole is committing moral transgressions in that. At best it might be an etiquette issue, but moral issues are more significant than etiquette in my opinion.

I don't really look at ethics as a "tool" (or set of tools), by the way. I look at it as phenomena to be described. In general, I approach philosophy in a descriptivist manner. I'm not fond of normative focuses, especially as I don't believe that normatives can be true or false, and I don't believe that norms should be followed just because they're norms. My interest is in correctly identifying and describing what is, in a non-judgmental manner (re value judgments).

If we were to imagine all possible topics of discussion as a lake, this strikes me as a thrown rock arbitrarily skipping across the surface for a moment. In other words, it seems to be superficially skitting all over the place.

Maybe pick just one topic, make just one claim about it, then try supporting that claim in a focused, relatively succinct way that has a logical flow to it?

Make it your aim to say something simple that almost everyone reading would have to agree with. That turns out to be quite difficult in a philosophical context, but it's a good way to approach writing philosophy.

So, for example, your opening statement, "We don't know what we're doing," is something I don't at all agree with. So we might choose that as your one claim that you try to support in a focused, relatively succinct manner with a logical flow to it. You want your support to consist of relatively simple statements that you believe almost everyone will agree with, and then those statements ideally will imply your conclusion, "We don't know what we're doing." Your aim would be to get someone like me, who doesn't prima facie accept "We don't know what we're doing," to be compelled to accept it instead, due to your simple, straightforward logical support of it.

You wouldn't have to pick that particular claim to focus on; it's just an example.

I wouldn't say I adhere to any "school"--as the number of claims that someone else makes increase, the chances that I disagree with some of their claims contingently increases, too, but there are certainly labels that fit me. And in that case it's simply that I believe that the view in question is correct; that it gets right something about what the world is really like.

And so even if you see a rock, another brain might see something else at that location, and then why say that the rock you see exists independently of you and of other brains if other brains might not even see it? — leo

When someone else doesn't see it, which is relatively rare, we'll be able to diagnose what's going on with them in terms of perceptual and cognitive problems. This isn't hypothetical, by the way.

Just as in the other thread I have no idea what point you are trying to make here. — Janus

For once--well, twice really--we agree.

know you understand you are employing a genetic fallacy here — Mark Dennis

I'm not arguing that he's wrong because of these facts. It would only be the genetic fallacy if I were doing that. Why he's taking the track he's taking is what I'm seeking to explain instead. It's a bit of armchair psychology.

Dreams are based on waking experiences and thoughts. So it would be odd if you didn't parse others as being independent of you in dreams.

This is obvious even simply in daydreaming or imagining. Say, for example, that you want to ask your boss for a raise. You try to imagine how that might go. When you do that, you're not thinking of your boss as simply being your own mind. You're trying to imagine how they might react based on your past experience with them.

Fiction authors make a profession out of this. Characters are their own imagination, but they have to imagine them as independent people. And you know you're doing a good job of that when it feels like the "characters are taking over and writing themselves."