I doubt whether your first sentence is sincere. You have no idea? Despite what I already said? You have no idea what it means to say that gibberish doesn't make sense in English? — S

I have no idea what you were saying in that particular post.

Things make sense or not to individuals.

Depends what you mean. Not in my sense, no. I know what I mean, and I can guess what you'll mean because you're predictable. You'll probably set aside what I mean and go by your own subjectivist interpretation. — S

No idea what you're saying here.

What is "your sense of making sense" that isn't to a particular person?

That makes sense per the rules of the language. In English, "The don't why up on the change please you can", doesn't make sense. — S

So making sense isn't to anyone in particular?

That's a false analogy — S

That's a false accusation of a false analogy.

Then how did you receive my meaning loud and clear, as evidenced by your reply? — S

I didn't. I assigned meaning to it. I said something that was correlated to the meaning I assigned. You assigned meaning to that. We both did this in a way that made sense to us, that was consistent to us, etc.

The above is what (mutual) understanding is. Understanding doesn't involve literally sharing meanings.

Having meaning in the language is having a rule in the language that makes sense. — S

Makes sense to whom? Rocks?

You're making the mistake of overthinking what's simple and evidently true — S

People say that objective/factual morality is simple and evidently true. Do you agree?

That's funny, because I just did express meaning to you. — S

No, it's funny that you're insisting this, because you didn't. I assign meaning to things like text strings. It's not somehow, mysteriously-in-some-manner-where-you-can't-possibly-pinpoint-the-properties delivered to me via lightwaves. It's a way that I think about it. Communication involves us both assigning meanings in a manner that makes sense to us.

That's what it means. You don't know what "boat" means? — S

Sure I do, and I can't tell you, because meaning is a mental activity. There's not a way to make a mental activity into lightwaves, etc.

The text is meaningful because it has meaning in the language. — S

What is "having meaning in the language"--text strings?

I've given you what understanding is functionally already. We had already talked about this.

You're taking metaphorical ways of speaking to be literal. It's a form of projection. Projecting mental activities into the (extramental) world, as if the (extramental) world itself is doing the activities in question.

It's the same exact mistake that people make when they take moral or aesthetic utterances to be objective.

Predictable. Yes, it's the definition. That's how I express the meaning to you. How else could I possibly do that? — S

You can't literally "express meaning to me." You can say and do things that I assign meaning to.

The meaning is what it means. What it means is a small vessel for travelling over water, propelled by oars, sails, or an engine. — S

That's not what it means. There is no meaning in a text string qua a text string. We have to think about it in a particular manner in order for it to have meaning.

The meaning of "boat" is a small vessel for travelling over water, propelled by oars, — S

Nope, that's the definition. The meaning is different.

Again, the definition is simply the text strings (which is what you've presented) or sound "string" etc. There's no meaning in that. The meaning occurs in you thinking about the text strings.

Text can't literally express anything. It's just ink marks or whatever. That's the whole point of noting that objectively, it's just ink marks. There's nothing else to it.

And there's also what a word means: which is objective. — S

The meaning is the subjective stuff. Thinking about things associatively, the picturing and conceptions we perform, etc.

Okay, so in my language, it's a rule, and in your language it's just the result of an analysis, even though we're talking about the same thing. The two languages translate. — S

There's, for example, a term--"cat," say, and a definition, "a small domesticated carnivorous mammal with soft fur, a short snout, and retractable claws . . . "

Objectively, that's a set of ink marks on paper, or activated pixels on a screen (however it works, exactly, re computers), or sounds someone uttered, etc. It's handy to have a term that cleaves the difference between this and the mental activity we engage in to make an association between "cat" (the ink marks or sounds) and "a small domesticated carnivorous mammal" (other ink marks, sounds, etc.), as well as the mental activity of picturing and conceiving and so on.

So I don't know that we're talking about the same thing. There are different phenomena to pick out.

If we take the assumption that God is good, then whence came evil? — wax

Good and evil are assessments that people make about behavior. They're not something that exists independently of people making assessments. And not everyone makes the same assessments about the sake things.

Okay, so in your language game, you call them something different. Those are your rules. — S

It's not a rule, just the result of analysis.

That really can bother me at times and without empathy, I don't know if I'd care as much. — Judaka

If you care at all, you're employing empathy.

This is eleven pages (and note that it's a pdf), so it's not short, but it does a better job than I could do:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.informationphilosopher.com/books/scandal/Dennett.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwizgpmXhtLgAhXsUt8KHWAYChYQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw1r1kYNkO3806RmdNo-sIod

Very weird. What's a language without rules? I don't even think that that's possible. There are rules everywhere you look. Rules that this word means that, rules that this combination of letters is that word, rules about punctuation, etc., etc. — S

I want to just do a small bit at a time, especially because some of this I already addressed. Even this little bit is a few different topics.

"Rules that this word means that"--again, this isn't meaning, it's definition. They're different. Definitions aren't rules. They're reports of common usage in some population.

Likewise, spelling, grammar, etc. present conventions. Conventions are different than rules.

If you're asking whether someone is going to choose something they're not aware of then no (and I noted that we don't experience that phenomenon in the latter part of the post). That doesn't mean that the other choices aren't possible. It's not impossible to know that pumpernickel is available, it's not predetermined that you don't know it's available, it's not impossible to choose it if you know about it, etc.

Is pumpernickel a kind of choice, or a kind of bread? — Harry Hindu

What? It would be possible to choose pumpernickel if it's available, if one were to know about it, and if the choice ("choice" really) of some other type of bread isn't predetermined. You were asking me about possibility.

Wouldn't your lack of knowledge be a pre-determined factor for your decision? — Harry Hindu

No, as it's not predetermined.

Look it up at SEP. Definition of morality. — creativesoul

It's not as if I'm going to agree that morality is conventionally thought of as rules of conduct just because the SEP article says that if it does. What determines how something is conventionally thought of is how each individual thinks about it. However most individuals who think about x think about x (at least in population p) determines how it is conventionally thought of (at least in population p).

What the SEP entry author thinks isn't sufficient to establish how most individuals think about x.

If you would like to have me go over another conception of morality, say yours?... — creativesoul

That was in the post you quoted. Maybe we should avoid longer posts until we can get anything running smoothly?

It is often the case that when someone says "X ought happen", they are making a prediction — creativesoul

What you're describing there is "if x is correct, then y should obtain"--what in the world does your example have to do with morality?

All thought/belief(my referent) consists of the same basic set of necessary elemental constituents. Necessity is determined by existential dependency. Thought/belief cannot be properly accounted for and/or reported upon by a single variable. A single variable cannot properly account for a plurality of things. — creativesoul

The variable was simply a way of saying "refers to whatever it refers to for you" but giving that a symbol, so that we could differentiate it from another "refers to whatever it refers to for you"

This would've made sense but what about the choices you made before engaging reason. The pre-reason choices sometimes don't match the post-reason ones do they? If all our preferences were determined from before we wouldn't be able to change our minds. People regulalry do after some reflection don't they? — TheMadFool

Just to be clear, I'm on the "there is ontological freedom/there is free will" side of this issue. I'm criticizing compatibilism a la Dennett, as I believe that he doesn't even really deal with the issue. He says, "Okay, I'm just going to call this 'freedom' instead," while ignoring the traditional issue, but the traditional issue is still present in the underlying assumptions being made. That was the gist of my comment that you had quoted.

And yeah, people do change their minds often.

It could be a unique alphabet, or non-alphabetic script (a la Chinese) if written. It wouldn't necessarily have to be written.

What even is a language if not basically a set of language rules about symbols or sounds or whatever — S

Languages are tools utilizing symbols (often but not necessarily sounds or marks) to represent objects, concepts, etc. They tend to change, to evolve over time. When they're public, conventions develop, but various conventions occur at the same time, and the conventions can be skirted very easily without any significant detriment to the usefulness of the tool.

Wouldn't they still be meaningful in the sense that these languages would consist in rules about meaning? — S

Well, first, I don't believe that languages consist of "rules about meaning" period. I don't know what a "rule about meaning" would even be. I don't believe it's possible to actually speak meanings, by the way --remember that meanings are different than definitions in my view. ("In a language, it would be the case that this word means such-and-such"--that's not a meaning, it's a definition. Also, definitions aren't rules. They're reports--journalism, basically, about conventional usage.)

But even aside from that, I wouldn't say that languages are about rules, period. There are conventions in languages, but those conventions aren't rules in the same sense sense of rules of a game, or laws, or rules that some business might have for its employees or patrons ( "no shirt, no shoes, no business") or anything like that. (Even though some folks prone to persnickettiness would like to treat the traditional conventions that they prefer as if they're rules.)

At any rate, on my view, x only has meaning insofar as S assigns meaning to x.

What I'm asking in what you're quoting is basically this (exaggerated for a moment to make this clearer): why isn't L (consisting of words/expressions x, y, z, grammar G, etc.) a language at time T1 if at T2, S doesn't understand anything about L? In other words, why does L need to be a language at T2, T3, T4 ad infinitum in order for L to be a language at T1? And if L is a language at T1, and it's a private language at T1, then a private language is possible. It would be irrelevant whether any L exists in perpetuity (or at least for the lifetime of the previous users of L, or whatever temporal claim someone would be trying to sneak in).

I actually asked with respect to not understanding particular words at T2 rather than the language wholesale (hence the above being an exaggeration), but that was the idea. The assumed "It needs to be the same over time" requirement is untenable--since no language is, and all of the skepticism points about memory etc. apply just as much to public language. Plus the temporal sameness requirement would have to be made explicit, anyway.

If not pre-determined, then are the only choices that are possible are the ones we are aware of? — Harry Hindu

No, of course not.

Say that it's not predetermined that Joe chooses rye bread instead of whole wheat when he orders his sandwich. Well, pumpernickel could be available, too, but Joe might not be aware of this--he didn't look at the menu very carefully, maybe he's never even heard of pumpernickel, etc.

If choices are predetermined, however, then presumably choices you're not aware of are never the predetermined choices, since no one seems to have the experience of choosing pumpernickel when they've never heard of it before or when they weren't aware that it was available.

Sure. But was she moral responsible? The family of the casualty thought so. — Banno

I'd have to know more details, but at best it should have been a manslaughter case. The moral issue there is simply that the person should have taken more care than they took.

Of course the family of the victim is going to want the person strung up even if it were completely an accident where manslaughter shouldn't apply.

Will that thinking be done in their native language? If not, then how else? — Janus

It could simply be relational and not in terms of any other text or phoneme strings.

Becoming involves choosing one's own standards — Banno

Context? Becoming (what/in what context?) involves choosing one's own standards?

For your account, start simple. I have already said that the individual that wishes to produce a completely independent private language could draw or even visualize the objects that the common nouns of the new language are to refer to, but how would they specify what pronouns or articles, for instance, are to refer to? — Janus

Why couldn't they simply think about what every symbol of their devising is going to refer to?

I wonder: What would the phenomenal difference be between being free to pick one thing and discarding another and being predetermined to pick one thing and discard another?

It seems that in both cases one is aware of multiple options but chooses only one while discarding the others. What determines whether or not the choice was predetermined or not? What does it mean for a choice to be predetermined? — Harry Hindu

Phenomenally, there may be no difference. Hence, the issue is whether what it seems like is what it really is. What it means for a choice to be predetermined is that only one option was ever possible, even if appearances suggest otherwise. If it's not predetermined, at least two choices were possible (again, even if appearances suggest otherwise).

So, a cinematographic duration is?

Do you believe that one person could create a complex alternate private language without using the public language they already speak? — Janus

We'd have to define "complex," but I don't see why someone couldn't do this.

Private language arguments would need to specify and define "complex" languages if what they're saying is limited to that.

I don't believe such a thing would be possible, but as I said, there would be no point arguing over it, since the possibility or impossibility of such a thing cannot be definitively demonstrated. — Janus

Yeah, demonstrating it via a specification of a private language that other people are going to understand (at least on the conventional assumptions) isn't going to work, but demonstrating or verifying something is different than whether there can be that thing--unless we've all turned into party-line logical positivists all of a sudden (which would be a bad idea in my opinion).

On my account of language, though, arguably language is private period--or at least important aspects of it are.

Isn't it sufficient to observe (heh) that we have no criterion to judge the objectivity of an experience? — Echarmion

I don't even really understand the idea of that. Why would you need a criterion to judge the objectivity of an experience? That sounds like we're starting from an assumption of idealism.

That question does not allow us to differentiate between results of a free will and results of e.g. an algorithm. — Echarmion

It's a will phenomenon--we're talking about a conscious phenomenon, and it's free because we're not forced to go with one thing or the other.

It's a decision because we're picking one of two or more options.

That would be my criteria for a good Explanation. — SteveKlinko

What would your criteria have to do with whether, say, clorophyll or dark matter or "the rule of thirds" in visual art or photons or anything else is(/are) explained or not?

Your criteria for explanations need to be a set of GENERAL criteria that serves as a plausible demarcation tool for ALL explanations.

It's also why creative people feel they are freer to create when there are restrictions, why many big blockbuster movies feel soulless and smaller movies with restricted budgets more creative. — Christoffer

You were going to well until that part. :razz: (I'm a fan of most blockbusters, and not so much of a fan of the typical Criterion Collection sort of fare)

Nevertheless, we can analyze, in terms of rationality, our preferences and then pick from them what is reasonable and discard what isn't. The fact that we can do that points to free will of some kind doesn't it? — TheMadFool

Doesn't that require ontological freedom in the first place? If there's no ontological freedom, you can't actually pick one thing and discard another. You're predetermined to pick one thing and discard another. Then it would just be a matter of whether the predetermination happens to coincide with "what you think you want," so that you don't notice that you really don't have any choice.

That's a problem with the Dennettian approach to free will in general.

A schedule is like an authority that you invent. You (unintentionally) form its rule over you and when you are (unintentionally) ruled under it you feel that sense of tranquility with not having the pressure of freedom. — Christoffer

I'm getting off topic, but I just want to chime in that there are other reasons for (doing things by) schedules and lists, including it aiding in maximizing variety (while it can also avoid too much arbitrariness at the same time), helping one remember things to aid in time management/efficiency, etc. It's more like a tool in those situations than an authority.

My personal opinion is that Judaka should be spoken to about being generally rude, — NKBJ

He was rude to me, but I couldn't care less. I just ignore that and keep plugging away on trying to get him to think, critically, in ways he hasn't thought before; I keep getting him to try to put a bit more effort into actually doing philosophy.

I wish everyone could do that instead of being offended or triggered or whatever. If someone insults you it's irrelevant. Either you think their judgments are off-base/misconceived--in which case, why would you be offended/triggered just because someone else is ignorant and needs to learn something?--you should be trying to help them instead, or you think their judgments are on-target, in which case you shouldn't be upset with someone saying something that you think is true.

I'm not so sure we can as that could be seen as an silent acceptance. — xyz-zyx

I'm talking about whether it's "physically possible" to ignore someone. You're talking about how others might interpret that. How others interpret it is their problem, not mine, especially if they're ignorant enough to interpret a lack of a comment as acceptance.

Re the other stuff, I'm a free speech absolutist. I'm not in favor of banning or censoring any expression whatsoever, including incitement, slander, libel, hate speech, holocaust denial, etc. etc.

And there are established/academic philosophy professors who have endorsed antinatalism, as I'm sure schopenhauer has relayed already (since I see he responded after your post). I just don't personally agree with antinatalism, and I don't care for what I consider "agenda posting" (or "agenda calling" when we're talking about talk shows, for example) . . . but I don't want anyone banned.