Bump.

one can perform immoral actions and feel happy about it — kindred

"To know the good is to do the good"?

does that mean that infinity itself is infinitely infinite infinitely (etc.) ? — an-salad

George Cantor

nvm

There is no particular reason I can think of that an ethical "natural law" would require a deity to be its efficient cause. We do not doubt that the law of gravity can be "promulgated" in our discourse by those who are interested to learn about it. Likewise what reason do we have to think that moral imperatives need a deity in order for them to be promulgated in our discourse?

Both the law of gravity and the laws of morality presuppose that in order for us to know them there must be some kind of correspondence between the order of being and the order of our knowledge. Why the one but not the other?

It's not over yet. Biden came back. Bernie could come back too.

Indeed that is the argument, I think, Wittgenstein is making - that there is indeed no such thing as a private language.

For a philosophy of humor you would first need a philosophy of humorlousness:

For many, especially the young, discovering a new meaning in the midst of the fallen world is thrilling. And social-justice ideology does everything a religion should. It offers an account of the whole: that human life and society and any kind of truth must be seen entirely as a function of social power structures, in which various groups have spent all of human existence oppressing other groups. And it provides a set of practices to resist and reverse this interlocking web of oppression — from regulating the workplace and policing the classroom to checking your own sin and even seeking to control language itself. I think of non-PC gaffes as the equivalent of old swear words. Like the puritans who were agape when someone said “goddamn,” the new faithful are scandalized when someone says something “problematic.” Another commonality of the zealot then and now: humorlessness.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/andrew-sullivan-americas-new-religions.html?utm_source=tw

If i am having an occurrence of a perception of a red object, I am certain that the perception is of red.

Almighty Wiki puts this well:

Wittgenstein explains this unintelligibility with a series of analogies. For example, in section 265 he observes the pointlessness of a dictionary that exists only in the imagination. Since the idea of a dictionary is to justify the translation of one word by another, and thus constitute the reference of justification for such a translation, all this is lost the moment we talk of a dictionary in the imagination; for “justification consists in appealing to something independent". Hence, to appeal to a private ostensive definition as the standard of correct use of a term would be "as if someone were to buy several copies of the morning paper to assure himself that what it said was true."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language_argument

In other words, the question "what kind of rule can I use to determine whether or not my use of my private language is proper?" can only be answered by reference to rules which originate from the sphere of public language. Not only is the language I am attempting to use private, and therefore incommunicable, but the rules for its use are likewise private, therefore in principle unknowable to anyone other than those persons who can articulate those rules in a public language - in which case they are not private language rules any more, but public language rules.

I've been re-reading those section of PI and trying to further clarify. The argument seems to be like this:

If I was on a desert island, utilizing "s", whenever I saw something amusing, the reason I would not be able to say whether or not I was utilizing that private language properly is that in order to determine its proper use, I would have to utilize rules which I can only ever learn from a public language.

This is about as far as i can stretch.

Isn't that how all language works anyway? Words and meanings change through time, but not just for private objects - for public objects too.

That same way I would check the meaning of any public language terms. If i am on a desert island and I write "tree" whenever I see a tree, then I have the same problems with coherence and verification of meaning that I would have with the term "s".

Yay the five year old has disproved Wittgenstein.

As long as I used the term in a coherent manner, I would have to say I am using it "correctly", according to my own rules.

For example, if I am on a desert island, and write the symbol "s", every time I find something funny, I have established a rule for myself as between "s" and funny things.

Seems perfectly intelligible to me. Intelligible enough that when I write "s" when I encounter something that isn't funny, I have enough grounds to tell myself that I've made an error.

But why should that mean that a private language is also unintelligible to me, its user?

I take umbrage at the suggestion that I am as intelligent as a five year old. Five year olds are much smarter than I am.

If you want my question to be more specific then what i really want to know is how and why a private language is not only unintelligible to others, but also unintelligible to myself. I am fairly convinced at this point that that is what Wittgenstein's argument was heading to, and i do not know how he got there.

In the section of Philosophical investigations pertaining to the private language argument.

TY Banno yes I read the Stanford entry and unfortunately it did not cure my confusion.

Unfortunately I seem to have a simplistic and childish brain - unless someone explains something to me in fairly basic terms I get lost easily.

So if I understand correctly, this "relativism" with respect to language means not only that noone can understand my private language but also that I myself cannot really be said to understand it, because there is no meaningful rule to use it properly. That - I think - is the subtle point I am stuck on. Why should we say this? If I have a private language which is meaningful to me, why should it be deemed to be an irrational method of describing my own states to myself?

Do you think we are approaching a kind of technology singularity, like Kurzweil says?

Why is it apparently never enough simply to say that I cannot doubt the occurrence of certain experiences? We can build our knowledge up from our own experiences.

Ty. But no takers, huh. Maybe noone understands it.

The problem with all this is that "same/different" does not necessarily include "affirm/negate". in other words, when we say something is the same as something else, we do not necessarily also mean that the thing "affirms" something else.

Since this is so it is not necessarily true to say that affirmation "negates" negation. it doesn't affirm or negate anything, it is just not the same as it.

TY all

My experience is good and coherent enough for me. I'll roll the dice based on that.

I can directly point to my experience of it. My experience of it exists.

TY!

There are many categories of indeterminacy. One of them is epistemological the other is physical.

a fantasy — A Seagull

I am here, I am now, I have the appearance of certain things occurring.

What does he mean when he says that verificationism is "anti-realism"?

I like it!

Is the Devil neither able nor willing? Then why call him "Devil"? — IvoryBlackBishop

In traditional Christianity as i understand it, the Devil is not omnipotent. He is a powerful fallen angel, but is not all-powerful. So the final prong of this anti-anrgument of the problem of good fails.

fed by the rain. It is the same with beliefs — A Seagull

What are the axioms of belief which are free from doubt?

What if it is one of the very few things that do actually matter?

Lol.

Then affirmation negates its sameness as negation, which is impossible.

It is easy to be cynical. I tend to be more cynical about people's capabilities. I don't think people are clever enough to be part of a conscious oligarchy.

Why can't foundationalism apply at least to phenomenological occurrences such as "I am currently looking at a computer screen"?

there isn't any belief i can justify — Monist

What reason do you have to doubt all axioms?