Why do so many people mistake language for reality?

I Ratant said:
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Who's gonna do the work?
Nattering on and on and on about how something should be done, without having a clue as to how or even if it could be done leaves us in those caves, fondling rocks.
It wasn't no philosopher that built those big things outside Cairo.
Or found out that bread could be sliced.
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No, you see, this is 'reiteration'. What I was asking for was 'explanation'.
 
Twiler said:
No, you see, this is 'reiteration'. What I was asking for was 'explanation'.
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I fail here.
We engineers will see a situation, and can come up with a fix.
Getting across a stream.. chop a tree.
Not contemplate the meaning of the stream and did god place it there as a limit to our wanderings.
 
I Ratant said:
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I fail here.
We engineers will see a situation, and can come up with a fix.
Getting across a stream.. chop a tree.
Not contemplate the meaning of the stream and did god place it there as a limit to our wanderings.
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The philosophical answer about how to cross a stream is "with the least effort."
The engineers answer is "how do you want to cross the stream?".

Talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill :rolleyes:
 
I Ratant said:
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I fail here.
We engineers will see a situation, and can come up with a fix.
Getting across a stream.. chop a tree.
Not contemplate the meaning of the stream and did god place it there as a limit to our wanderings.
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Yes, you're trolling.
 
I Ratant said:
Philosophies can lead to activities..
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And jokes can lead to bar brawls, e.g., if you go tell some offensive gay jokes in a gay bar, but that doesn't make the two equivalent. The fact is, the people killed by the likes of Stalin or Mao, really didn't die for philosophy.

I Ratant said:
Promoting philosophies which aren't thought through, as few of them are, disregarding human nature, can lead to beneficial applications of an idea, like democracy and capitalism, and free enterprise, which promote generally peaceful activities, although normal human greed can direct the societies to excess, or like communism, the ablest rise to absolute control, absolutely.
Gulags for the dissident.
The theme of any philosophy can't be separated from its consequences when applied.
Hefner's "Playboy philosophy"," have fun, don't hurt anyone" is just the Golden Rule.
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Maybe, but you wouldn't blame philosophy for wanking to playboy magazines.

I Ratant said:
"From each, etc" sounds nice, but can't work.
Humans can't do that.
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Just as well that that's not philosophy, eh? :p There is no knowledge or understanding to be gained from there. It's at best economics and at worst a slogan. It's as much philosophy as "let's go to the other pub tonight" is, as both are just proposing a course of action. Which is to say, not much of a philosophy. You won't find many university courses about that, any more than you'd find about "let's go get plastered tonight."

I Ratant said:
The closest it's come to being possible might be in the Jamestown Va colony, infested with gentlemen gold seekers, who expected their status to
exempt from contributing, while using the resources of the colony.
Capt John Smith of Pocohantas fame ruled..."If you don't work, you don't eat."
Nothing about status or privilege, just contribute.
Long before Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
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Right, but you're still talking about economics. There was no effort to understand nature, language, logic or whatever there. They just thought something would work, and actually it had problems. We can still learn something from there, but ultimately that wasn't much of a philosophical exercise.
 
I Ratant said:
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I fail here.
We engineers will see a situation, and can come up with a fix.
Getting across a stream.. chop a tree.
Not contemplate the meaning of the stream and did god place it there as a limit to our wanderings.
Click to expand...

As an engineer, I actually feel insulted by that. For a start, I should certainly hope that any engineer will try to understand the problem before rushing to be seen doing any stupidity whatsoever, but doing something. And trying to understand the problem and how it all works IS really what philosophy is all about. If you ended up looking upstream and wondering if you couldn't just knock down a rock and divert the river, congrats, that's philosophy.
 
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HansMustermann said:
As an engineer, I actually feel insulted by that. For a start, I should certainly hope that any engineer will try to understand the problem before rushing to be seen doing any stupidity whatsoever, but doing something. And trying to understand the problem and how it all works IS really what philosophy is all about. If you ended up looking upstream and wondering if you couldn't just knock down a rock and divert the river, congrats, that's philosophy.
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No, that's engineering.
Looking for a good, if not best answer.
A felled tree may or may not work.
Debating the wetness or the reason for the existence of the creek won't get anyone across it.
 
I Ratant said:
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No, that's engineering.
Looking for a good, if not best answer.
A felled tree may or may not work.
Debating the wetness or the reason for the existence of the creek won't get anyone across it.
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ah the backpedal strawman argument ...
 
Cut the tree, walk across the creek.
Cut the tree, float across the creek.
Toss the rock, step across the creek.
Toss the rock, but remember to let go.
There's many ways to cross the creek.
One way may not be the best, nor even optimum tomorrow, if the creek rises.
Pulling up the pants legs and wading works too.
Carrying someone else across on your back with your pants legs up has been found possible.
Killling someone and dropping them in the creek can work.
There's more ways to cross a creek than sitting in a paddle-less canoe, Horatio.
 
angrysoba said:
So, you're trolling?
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You may believe so, but quite honestly I do not. I think he is making/remaking the point of the OP which was early on highly approved by me: Philosophy is essentially nothing but word games.

A few good things (certain aspects of real mathmatics - even with the games around never hitting arrows and never reaching the tape races - and science observation followed by analysis of that observation) came from philosophy BUT philosophy was not a necessary component for those. It merely was convenient at the time those more clever than philosophers started applying philosophical games to the real world.

I also think his paragraphication is an appropriate response - though I admit proper paragraphs do make reading simpler.:)
 
Last year about this time I purchased a copy of "tpm" "the philosopher's magazine", published in Old Blighty. Issue 51, 4th quarter 2010.
An interview/review of Peter Hacker's work is prominent therein.
His concept of philosophy "regards philosophical problems as confusions in language other than deep mysteries encountered in the world".
Comments on Nagel's phrase in "What It's Like To Be A Bat"...."an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism-something it is like for the organism".
W, T and F!
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An interesting take on the organization of Plato's dialogues..."Plato's dialogues have an elegant musical form beneath their surface narratives".
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And Hobbes is raked over the coals ..."Hobbes central thesis is a bad one.."
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:)
 
I Ratant said:
Last year about this time I purchased a copy of "tpm" "the philosopher's magazine", published in Old Blighty. Issue 51, 4th quarter 2010.
An interview/review of Peter Hacker's work is prominent therein.
His concept of philosophy "regards philosophical problems as confusions in language other than deep mysteries encountered in the world".
Comments on Nagel's phrase in "What It's Like To Be A Bat"...."an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism-something it is like for the organism".
W, T and F!
.
An interesting take on the organization of Plato's dialogues..."Plato's dialogues have an elegant musical form beneath their surface narratives".
.
And Hobbes is raked over the coals ..."Hobbes central thesis is a bad one.."
.
:)
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I don't know Peter Hacker.

Nagel's phrase seems quite sensible. What is your problem with it?

My guess is that the musical quiality of Plato's dialogues either wasn't the point of the article or else it was simply a diversion from philosophy.

What is your opinion of Hobbes' central thesis?
 
I Ratant said:
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No, that's engineering.
Looking for a good, if not best answer.
A felled tree may or may not work.
Debating the wetness or the reason for the existence of the creek won't get anyone across it.
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But arguing why water flows downhill might. Really, that's what philosophy is about. Granted, nowadays it might be more in the corner of why the brain works that way or why language works that way, but ultimately same idea.

I mean, really, engineering is just applied science, and science is just natural philosophy.

EDIT: And frankly, I see practical-type engineers hardly doing a better job of it. E.g., AI is just getting out of a stupid decades-long slump caused basically by idiots postulating stuff like that an AI must compress better than arithmetic compression because the brain sure stores a lot of data, or similarly retarded stuff, while fully ignoring what actual studies tell us about how the brain works. No, seriously, there still is an "AI" prize for compression. It's that frikken sad. We have decades of idiots halting progress by postulating, basically, that they must cut down a tree to make a bridge, without first measuring whether the river is too wide for the trees available. Maybe stopping and thinking at a more fundamental level about how it works than "woo, I have a theorem about something else, therefore everything must revolve around it" really couldn't have been any worse. Just saying.
 
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Language = Reality ?

Hi Joe,

Here is the way I see it…..

you said...

“ but it did lead me to a serious train of thought because the "I can't describe it linguistically, ergo it doesn't exist" argument is used a lot as a seriously philosophical argument.”


"I can't describe it linguistically, ergo it doesn't exist"

This is a philosophical point of view because it deals with what some person feels exists.

It is an ontological point of view, which also implicitly restricts that person’s epistemological point of view of what they feel can be known.

It is derived from the basic fundamental assumption, that there is an objective external world.

And yes, it is taken as a serious philosophical argument.


Hope this helps.

Chunol
 
I Ratant said:
Last year about this time I purchased a copy of "tpm" "the philosopher's magazine", published in Old Blighty. Issue 51, 4th quarter 2010.
An interview/review of Peter Hacker's work is prominent therein.
His concept of philosophy "regards philosophical problems as confusions in language other than deep mysteries encountered in the world".
Comments on Nagel's phrase in "What It's Like To Be A Bat"...."an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism-something it is like for the organism".
W, T and F!
.
An interesting take on the organization of Plato's dialogues..."Plato's dialogues have an elegant musical form beneath their surface narratives".
.
And Hobbes is raked over the coals ..."Hobbes central thesis is a bad one.."
.
:)
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And?
 
Twiler said:
And?
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Get the book.
Subscriptions:
UK +44(0) 1442 879097
North America 1 800 444 2419
I probably have the only copy sold in Palmdale's Barnes & Noble that year.
We scholars of the mind seldom get the longish shrifts we thirst for.
 
I Ratant said:
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Get the book.
Subscriptions:
UK +44(0) 1442 879097
North America 1 800 444 2419
I probably have the only copy sold in Palmdale's Barnes & Noble that year.
We scholars of the mind seldom get the longish shrifts we thirst for.
Click to expand...

No, I meant, what does that imply? Why did you bring it up?
 
Because even philosophers can see the problems with philosophy.
That is, some of them.
And discuss them without getting all riled up and snitty and knickers-twisted when contrarion views are posted.
After all, the subject is merely words, which need words to discuss any problems.
We're stuck with only words, as philosophies themselves are toothless without someone taking an idea and trying (usually fruitlessly) to make it work, without reality rounding off the sharp edges to make the idea even remotely possible.
"tpm" does that in a "lively and friendly" atmosphere.
Hacker again...
"...scientists... can show you libraries full of well-established facts and well-confirmed theories....a philosopher cannot produce a handbook of well-established and well-confirmed philosophical truths, there's nothing to show."
 
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