Are there primitive, unanalyzable concepts?
I hold that some concepts are primitive and absolutely simple, and as such cannot be defined without circular reference (to itself). I am curious as to how many people hold a similar view, and how many completely reject such an idea.
I will give the best example I have: being (viz., to be, existence, to exist, etc.). When trying to define or describe being, it is impossible not to use itand I dont mean just in the sense of a linguistic limitation: it is impossible to give a conceptual account without presupposing its meaning in the first place.
All I can say, is that being is to be, to exist, existence, etc.; but this does not afford any real analysis into what to be really is itself but, rather, is just a reiteration, in different words, of the same meaning.
Any definition or description of being is likewise circular (i.e., presupposing of itself); and some are false and circular (e.g., to be, although I cannot give a non-circular definition, is definitely NOT to have a left thumb).
This pecularity indicates, by my lights, that being is a primitive concept and, as such, is absolutely simple, unanalyzable, and (yet) still perfectly valid.
So, do you agree that some concepts are absolutely simple, and thusly unanalyzable and incapable of non-circular definitions, but yet still valid; or do these so-called, alleged, primitive concepts need to be either (1) capable of non-circular definition or (2) thrown out?
I will give the best example I have: being (viz., to be, existence, to exist, etc.). When trying to define or describe being, it is impossible not to use itand I dont mean just in the sense of a linguistic limitation: it is impossible to give a conceptual account without presupposing its meaning in the first place.
All I can say, is that being is to be, to exist, existence, etc.; but this does not afford any real analysis into what to be really is itself but, rather, is just a reiteration, in different words, of the same meaning.
Any definition or description of being is likewise circular (i.e., presupposing of itself); and some are false and circular (e.g., to be, although I cannot give a non-circular definition, is definitely NOT to have a left thumb).
This pecularity indicates, by my lights, that being is a primitive concept and, as such, is absolutely simple, unanalyzable, and (yet) still perfectly valid.
So, do you agree that some concepts are absolutely simple, and thusly unanalyzable and incapable of non-circular definitions, but yet still valid; or do these so-called, alleged, primitive concepts need to be either (1) capable of non-circular definition or (2) thrown out?
Comments (145)
This occurred to me in the "I think therefore I am" conversation.
I think there are atomic ideas for sure.
Are there pure and unanalyzable concepts? Put me in the affirmative/similar view column, re: the categories of transcendental philosophy.
Pure and absolutely simple insofar as they ground every real object, hence every empirical cognition, but have no object of their own.
Speculative metaphysics to be sure, but is that sufficient to disqualify the view?
If an actor says on the stage "To be, or not to be: that is the question.", is it about himself, or Hamlet?
:up:
I believe you are giving more of an ontological account of why it is absolutely simple (viz., the categories of the understanding), which, by my lights, means you accept it is absolutely simple. :up:
:brow:
If the actor is playing the part of Hamlet, then Hamlet. This is not an example of a valid analysis of 'to be': 'to be or not to be?' ungrammatical, old english for "should something exist, or not?".
Do you have others? The one you selected is so very loaded with opinions and varying but valid interpretations, as illustrated below.
Quoting Bob Ross
That peculiarity renders the chosen definition rather empty in my opinion. I shy from such definitions and prefer something more pragmatic such as a relational definition. A exists to B if A in any way has a causal effect on B. Hence the nonexistence of unicorns because no unicorn seems to have a causal effect on humans, despite the legends to the contrary.
I dunno. Can the pure and absolutely simple have an ontological accounting? If the primitive and unanalyzable concept is so, insofar as it has no object belonging to it, from whence could an ontological account arise?
Non-sequitur.
Firstly, I am NOT referring to linguistic definitions: I am referring to conceptual definitions.
Secondly, if you are just noting that all complex concepts will relate to some set of primitive, simple concepts (and that is what you mean by 'they are all circular'), then that's fine. But the definitions of the complex concepts are not themselves circular: they don't refer to themselves in their definitions.
Yes. E.g., 'value', 'true, 'false', etc.
Hence why it is unanalyzable.
Firstly, not all definitions are about causality.
Secondly, I don't see how this would provide non-circular definitions for concepts like 'being'.
Comfort and discomfort probably fit here.
Well, you are claiming that the concepts are a priori, and thusly are concepts which our representative faculties, in-themselves, have for the act of representation; so I would count that as at least sort of ontological. I understand you are not commenting on what exactly those concepts exist in.
My thinking is even more basic than this: I don't even think our faculty of self-reflective reason can define certain concepts, like 'being', without merely pointing to an intuition (in the non-kantian sense of an intellectual seeming).
I can envision a concept which, in principle, could be a priori but isn't simple; because our representative faculties could be acquainted with it, but yet it is a concept which inherits from more fundamental concepts. E.g., the concept of 'two triangles' is the concept of 'two' + 'triangle' and so there is no circularity in its definition and this could be, in principle, a priori (although I am not trying to say it is). You know what I mean?
Im ok with that; word-resistant just means the concept is difficult to represent for the use of expression, and prior to language just means the concepts have no relation to communication.
But they cant be word-impregnable, for in such case we couldnt theorize on their place in a system, assuming there are such things as simple pure conceptions, and there is a system in which they serve a purpose.
That we all accept .mmmm, not so sure about that. Pretty hard to convince Everydayman he uses pure simple primitive unanalyzable conceptions for anything, even harder that he knows what they might be.
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Quoting Bob Ross
I must say reason doesnt define, and Im hesitant regarding reason being self-reflective, mostly cuz I dont know what that means, but thats very different story.
I agree that faculty which does define, understanding, lacks the capacity to define primitive concepts, but must represent them post hoc with words in order to describe their place in a speculative system. Within the natural use of that system, the primitive concepts are just kindasorta there nonetheless**, which makes them hard to swallow for he who needs everything to accord with his senses sans mediation.
(**theyre not, but a different story once again)
Quoting Bob Ross
Many conceptions can be envisioned conforming to that criteria, but I dont see a concept that isnt simple as primitive, and I dont see a concept with which our representational faculties are acquainted as pure.
I dont want to take your thread where you had no intention of it going; it is yours to direct in its progression. I merely agree there are pure, primitive, simple conceptions.
word-resistant isnt a good way to describe it, as that implies that the qualification of conceptual simplicity is linguistic (as opposed to conceptual) and some complex concepts which are word-resistant (e.g., non-spatiality) are thereby simple.
Quoting Bob Ross
I recall that Aristotle considers the different meanings of the verb 'to be' in the Metaphysics. From the SEP essay on same:
[quote=Aristotle's Metaphysics;https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/#RoleSubsStudBeinQuaBein]But being, as Aristotle tells us in ?.2, is said in many ways. That is, the verb to be (einai) has different senses, as do its cognates being (on) and entities (onta). So the universal science of being qua being appears to founder on an equivocation: how can there be a single science of being when the very term being is ambiguous? ....[/quote]
Here you can see the beginnings of what was to become a long history of debate over substance metaphysics, and the meaning of being is central to it.
Quoting Bob Ross
Every philosophy, even everyday language, must include some primitive concepts or else it would collapse into relativism and circularity.
Quoting Mww
Would you include the so-called 'primary intuitions' of time and space? (It might be their very 'primitiveness' that makes them so hard to explain!)
A couple of refs: Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge
The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Problem of Being, Charles Kahn
Yes, I was thinking along these lines. I'm not certain these pre-linguistic concepts are 'word resistant' as such - are they not in a sense foundational for later vocabulary?
I'm not sure what other examples you have in mind, but isn't "being/to be," (and I wouldn't say existence too) special?
Without giving a complex analysis--because I can't; I'm just stepping lightly on an intuition--all other concepts, are signifiers, representations which can be traced to other signifiers, either backward to eventually a long lost source in reality, or forward to other ways of signifying the same (really, similar) thing(s). But being is what is, it cannot be represented, but remains necessarily present.
And so to know any other concept or representation is exactly a playing with signifiers. But to "know" be-ing--not even just human being--but what it is to be (a thing,) requires being (it)
Or am I missing your point entirely?
My preferred example is 'the principle of noncontradiction' (PNC).
[quote=Bob Ross]non-circular definitions[/quote]
Quoting noAxioms
:up:
In general,no,but I gave an alternate definition that is very much about causality. It solves the circularity problem. It is analyzable,and it works for how most people use the word, even if the typical person would reach for the circular definition you reference.
I didn't define 'exists' in terms of 'being'. I used something far less circular. 'Being' is just a synonym, and can be defined similarly if you choose.
I'm not saying it's the correct definition. It's just one that I find far more useful, and avoids a lot of the problems that arise with the more circular definition.
Right because only being is outside of the game. Every other concept, including, in my humble opinion, value, true, and false, has references in other signifiers, allowing for levels of analysis. These are the things we think we know. All of them nothing but webs of signifiers. Open to discourse because they are discourse.
Being cannot be defined by signifiers. It cannot be discussed. It can only be "known" by being.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think Bob picked up on this above.
Given I am responding to you, rather than the conceptual OP, Happy to banter on it. Im unsure how something which can't be "worded" could be foundational for other language, than that which refers to itself.
Comfort, for instance, is linguistically, the opposite of discomfort (or, restated, opp. of contentedness). It is conceptually reducible. But where's the language for that? I posit that the actual status of comfort, or discomfort, are not amendable to being 'worded'. But we have words which refer to our speaking about them (the phenomenal 'them', rather than the expression of the feelings involved).
Re-reading that, I am unsure it makes entire sense, or adequately captures what I'm thinking. Cest la v'ie lol.
Quoting Bob Ross
To exist is to be the subject of a predicate.
I don't think this definition uses "exist" in a circular fashion. Instead it claims that to exist is to be ascribed, assigned, given, a predicate. If this is red, then there exists something that is red.
This is a sin against Quine, and perhaps against Kripke since there are things with proper names. But it might suggest that the situation is a bit more complex.
A good rule of thumb might be that what counts as simple depends on what one is doing, and so change form one case to another.
It makes sense and I have no great answer given that my view is that language begins as sounds we use to try to 'give voice' to the prelinguistic and to codify feelings. Once we get any deeper than this we are in a land of baroque Derridean self-reflexivity. I think.
I.E. the paradoxes that resulted from Zeno's paradoxes was, perhaps, in trying to make one primitive (rest) explain and define what it means to move. This continues to the modern era with unchanging instantaneous spatio-temporal slices.
Perhaps this fascination with hopping into primitives and fundamental concepts, unanalyzable ones, is a reaction to paradoxical situations as is the case above. It might also make us short sighted in that while motion is contrary to rest it seems that even as primitives or undefined they are required to be present in our thinking. Motion is nonsense without rest but can't be fully reduced to it nor can rest be made sense of via purely by virtue of the concept of motion. However, it is also nonsense to perhaps demand that all rest is therefore illusory in a radical Heraclitan-like twist on the old Parmenidean tradition.
Is there a philosophical perspective on language/meaning/truth/metaphysics that acknowledges this weak inter-definability and balance of dependence/independence of our core concepts?
No, I hadn't heard of him, although looked up his Wikipedia entry now you've mentioned him. But in some ways, what you're point to is the way dialectic was conceived in the classical tradition isn't it? You mention Heraclitus and Parmenides - wasn't Plato very much engaged in the dialectic between those two apparent contraries? All very deep and difficult questions.
To ask this you already have to have the answer.
What is a word.
So you cant ask what a word is without knowing what a word is, without using words usefully.
The word word is itself.
Quoting Bob Ross
What you are pointing at is even so for linguistics. Some concepts are of the immediate; some things are immediately self-defining, and so need not be saddled by the struggles of definition.
Being or becoming
Non-contradiction
The word this or the thing named this
The word word.
The present (here and/or now - present - which all may be other failures to define becoming or being).
Each defines itself, so nothing else is useful to define it (so can be said as cannot be defined.)
Define - how best to define define without circularity?
Quoting Wayfarer I don't remember much from such a dialectic or the details therein. I'll have to go back and review this.
Some of these concepts are analyzable however, though still circular, as they come in pairs. The part and the whole, the cold and the hot, the light and the dark.
Speaking of cold and hot, those are, except for those with hereditary sensory neuropathy, primitive concepts that are linked to experiences given to us by our human bodies. Can we analyze raw subjective experiences? I don't think so. Yet we don't throw them out.
Quoting Bob Ross
To be could be defined as that which is necessary for any subject to undertake an action. Though that would come from our already existent concept of what it means for something to be.
I would, yes. While they may be pure primitive intuitions with respect to their use, they are pure primitive conceptions as regards their origin.
It is the most famous and quoted phrase in English language.
Quoting Bob Ross
What would be your valid analysis of "To be or not to be"? Why is it ungrammatical? What do you suggest for grammatically correct sentence for it?
:up:
I do consider the concept of space and time, in a phenomenal sense, to be primitive.
In terms of numbers, I am not sure that they are all primitive---perhaps they are. We can represent the number 2, for example, as the conjunction of the concepts of number, repetition, and the number 1. It is definitely word-resistant to explain, but conceptually I don't think it is circular. "2 = 1 1"
I don't think so. For example, try to define what 'true', as a concept and signifier, NOT 'truth', refers to without begging the question. I don't see how it can be done, and I don't see how it reduces to being.
I don't think the concept of PNC is primitive: it is the idea that a proposition cannot be both true and false. However, and what I think you are getting at is that, PNC cannot be proven without circular reference. I am uncertain if that makes it a primitive concept or not, since it technically can be defined in terms of other concepts.
I guess I didn't understand your definition of 'being': can you give it again?
How do you define 'true' (and NOT 'truth')?
I think your are very close to my meaning, it is just a bit linguistic instead of conceptual--is all. :up:
This doesnt refer to being at all.
If to exist is to be the subject of a predicate, then Unicorns exist because Unicorns are red. This obviously doesnt work.
You arent capturing what it means to be or to exist itself in your definition. Likewise, it is circular, as indicated with the underlines.
I reject it.
Under what conditions do you believe a concept presupposed in an act of speech? Can you distinguish presupposing a concept from using a concept? Or needing to learn a concept before deploying it? These aren't rhetorical questions.
I'd call a concept X presupposed by another concept Y iff any judgement or act which articulated or used Y could not be understood without understanding X. An example, try to imagine riding a bike ( Y ) without understanding what a bike is ( X ).
I'd call a concept fundamental if it is presupposed by types of judgement or acts. Like truth for my claim that it's windy outside.
That concept of presupposition yields a puzzle. How would someone learn any derivative concept of any fundamental concept? Imagine for a moment that "bike" was fundamental, then no one could learn to speak about riding a bike until they understood what a bike is. That sits at odds with how omnipresent fundamental concepts may be construed to be - being, the meaning of "is", experience, quality, quantity, truth and so on. How could you come to understand what a bike is without understanding what "is" means? The same analysis would hold for any practice which involved an object - any activity. But we live in a world where plenty of people know how to ride bikes, so they must understand riding bikes, so must understand what a bike is.
So it seems we live in a world where either people understand none of what we do, or fundamental concepts are rarely if ever employed for understanding anything.
Which would mean either that fundamental concepts are not used in the understanding or judgement of almost anything, or that understanding and judgement can be done without understanding presupposed concepts in the sense I outlined. Note "can" there won't apply to every act, just some acts.
Conversely, we live in a world in which people understand how to ride bikes and pick up trash, but not what existence means. So it would seem to me that fundamental concepts require everyday concepts to be in place before fundamental concepts themselves are understood.
However, I don't mean to construe thinking about fundamental concepts as useless. When people change how they think and act about something fundamental, it can have widespread effects. For example, whether people consider agents worthy of moral consideration defined by the presence of a soul, or indeed whether they need be human at all.
Fundamental concepts thus play a regulative role inferentially and analytically upon that which they impact. Even if their understanding is not presupposed in the articulation or judgement of what they inferentially and analytically constrain.
Thus, I view fundamental concepts as central strands in our collective web of thoughts and judgements. You can't make the web without having them there, but the web needs to be made at the same time as them. They are fundamental in terms of the scope of change their modification can bring, but not presupposed for understanding everything their change would impact.
There is a valid distinction between conceptual vs. linguistic circularity: the former is circularity in the underlying idea, and the latter is circularity in the given language.
E.g., the analysis of "Non-spatiality" is not conceptually circular, but is linguistically circular. What exists non-spatially, exists beyond, sans, without, etc. space; which is linguistically circular. However, conceptually, it is perfectly valid to ask what is "beyond" space.
Some of your examples aren't even circular. E.g., a "word" is a string of symbols which signifier a particular underlying meaning in the given language.
I don't think concepts are culturally relative. The words we use to describe them are, and the ones we expound may be a reflection of cultural interests, but they aren't relative to cultures themselves.
So 'that thing exists' = 'that thing is necessary for any subject to undertake an action'? This doesn't address what it means 'to exist' at all.
All you have noted is that being underlies everything else; which is true, but not a valid definition of what it means to exist.
"To be or not to be" means "should something exist, or should it not?"
Primitive, yes, but .in a phenomenal sense? What is meant by a phenomenal sense?
Space and time are merely irreducible forms of sensuous intuition, so Im wondering in what manner could they have a phenomenal sense, when they are not themselves phenomena but merely represent that by which phenomena are given their extension and temporal form in compliance with a sensation.
Quoting Bob Ross
The example below, from another post, helps to illustrate how seamlessly "true" couples with other concepts. Not so with "be".
"When someone says "I know that the distance to my local grocery store is 10 miles", they do not mean that they are absolutely certain nor that it is absolutely true that <...>; rather, they mean that they are (1) have a belief that , (2) are justified in, (3) and have high enough credence levels to claim that it is true that <...>."
Look, I realize that was possibly cheeky. The problem is, we have entered a region of the cave, immediately adjacent to the opening, where it is all too obvious we are just playing with shadows.
On circularity, consider the way this philosopher addresses the problem of defining what art is:
[i]But how are we to be certain that we are indeed basing such an examination on art
works if we do not know beforehand what art is? And the nature of art can no more be
arrived at by a derivation from higher concepts than by a collection of characteristics
of actual art works. [b]For such a derivation, too, already has in view the characteristics
that must suffice to establish that what we take in advance to be an art work is one in
fact[/b]. But selecting works from among given objects, and deriving concepts from principles, are equally impossible here, and where these procedures are practiced they are a
self-deception. Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift nor a defect.
[b]To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of
thought[/b], assuming that thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a
circle like the step from art to work,[b]but every separate step that we attempt circles in
this circle.[/b][/i]
All concepts are like this, circular, that is, empirical, apriori, it doesn't matter, because when the matter as to a concept's ontology is raised, there is this dynamic that looks to the concept, and looks back at what the concept is "about" and tries characterize the relation. But this never yields something definitive. It continues on, for all concepts are ontologically indeterminate. They are works always in progress, so to speak. Try finding something definitive is like looking for Moses' stone tablets.
I hold a similar view. I imagine concepts derived from the fact of ones embodied state are quite primitive and foundational. Concepts such as inside or outside, forward and backward, through or over or under, all seem inextricably linked to ones form as a being insofar as it moves through space and time.
I think this is a good point. Every object can be defined with its relations to all other objects. We can arbitrarily take some objects as "primitive" and define other objects with relations to these "primitive" ones. However, some objects are more frequent than others, like some words are more frequent than others in a language extract. It is useful to focus on these more frequent ones, and perhaps take them as primitive (as a basis for defining others), because it makes understanding reality easier; these are the regularities or commonalities in reality, known as fundamental (most general) concepts, or fundamental (smallest) particles, or laws of nature. It is easier to define movements of planets of the solar system with their relations to the Sun than to the Earth.
I didn't say othewise.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, it is necessary for a thing to exist for it to undertake an action. The hypernym of all verbs therefore.
Quoting Bob Ross
I would have to ask what you mean by "valid definition". As I noted, this definition of the concept seems to come after the fact that we already grasp it, instead of the usual «defining a concept before we can grasp it». It may give some grounding to what it means to be, other than a word without good definition.
If you try to decompose the experience into what causes it though, you end up losing elements. No amount of talk of neurons or light waves, B-minimal properties, etc., no matter how informative, seems to avoid losing something.
Right, there are some pretty good arguments out of the Thomist camp that all properties of things have to involve how they relate to other things or parts of themselves. For example, John of St. Thomas points out that even substance is constituted of how it relates to other substances. I think a parallel might be drawn here to information theory as well. Describing anything meaningfully requires some sort of difference. I think some good metaphysical inferences can be drawn from what is minimally necessary to describe anything.
Which makes it kind of funny that arelational knowledge of "things-in-themselves" became a sort of gold standard of knowledge in some areas of philosophy.
But then what does it mean for something to simple? That it relates to all things in just one way? I am not sure what fits that bill. That it cannot be decomposed into constituent parts without losing something? A lot of things seem to be primitive in that way.
Maybe that's because such descriptions are incomplete and even if they were complete they might be infinitely long or they might involve objects or relations that are difficult to imagine. At least neurons and light waves are 3-dimensional spatial objects so we can form some simplified picture of them, but consciousness also seems extended in time, so we might need to imagine qualia as spatiotemporal, hence 4-dimensional objects, which I don't know if anybody can. And if Gulio Tononi is right, then qualia are objects with many more dimensions in some abstract space of possible causal relations.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Trivially, all relations between any two objects can be said to be similarity relations which specify which properties the two objects have in common and which properties they don't. Thus any object (as a bundle of all its properties) is, in principle, completely defined by its (similarity) relations to all other objects.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Mereologically it means that it has no parts, or set-theoretically it is an empty set. But in another sense, I would say that every object, no matter whether it has parts or not, is something simple, unstructured, a monadic quality, a whole. A whole may have relations to other objects that are its parts, but it is not identical to any of its parts, it is something else than any of its parts, something in addition to its parts, which has part-whole relations to its parts.
I didnt understand this question: can you re-phrase it?
To use a concept, is to deploy it; and to presuppose a concept is to use a concept in a manner whereof one does not explicate its meaning (but, rather, uses it implicitly in their analysis).
I am not following how this relates to the OP.
I agree that one needs to learn a concept, or idea, at least notionally, before deploying it.
Oh, I think I understand where your are heading; so let me clarify: by claiming being, or any absolutely simple concept, is unanalyzable and primitive, I DO NOT mean to convey that we cannot come to know what they are. I mean that we cant come to know them through conceptual analysis: they remain forever notions, which are acquired via pure intuitions (about reality).
We all know exactly what to be is, yet we cant explicate it without circularity.
You are presupposing that space and time are only (presumably synthetic) a priori. I accept that the space and time which are our forms of experience are a priori, but not that space and time do not exist beyond that in reality.
By 'phenomenal' sense, I mean space and time as it pertains to our experience (of reality) and not reality itself; to be contrasted with 'cosmic' space and time.
I don't see a definition of 'true' anywhere in your response, and am a little confused. What's your definition?
You don't think concepts are determinate? How is the concept of a circle not determinate?
:up:
Concepts are more universal than words, because words refer to the concepts. I think that, despite whatever limitations we may have in our language, there are concepts which are absolutely simple.
To discuss which words are absolutely simple, is to just critique a particular language; and, although that can certainly be done, it is not really what the OP is about.
I am not merely claiming that 'being' cannot be defined linguistically non-circularly: I mean the very concept is absolutely simple. No matter what conceptual analysis we give, it won't produce anything meaningful about 'being'.
But you haven't defined what it means to exist: you have just noted that only existent things can undertake action. This doesn't define being at all.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yeah, it does talk to being. It does it by clarifying the confused notion of "exists" or "is". It's a result of the development of formal logic after Russell and Frege. Three clear sense of "is" were identified, the "is" of equality, "=", "superman =Clark Kent"; the "is" of predication, f(a), "that tree is green"; the "is" of existential quantification ?(x)f(x), "there is something that is green".
Quoting Bob Ross
Actually, what is happening is that you are not recognising that there are at least three differing senses of "to be". It doesn't follow from "the unicorn has four legs" that there are unicorns.
Quoting Bob Ross
Look again.
Because in order to establish determinacy of the kind you suggest requires there to be an agreement between the circle and the language that is "speaking" the features of the circle and its features. Note that there certainly IS determinacy in the general way we use this term in many contexts. But for philosophy, we require an account that brings inquiry to a level of presuppositions, that is, even though the a quantitative amount is designated by a number, say, and a number is a determinate concept (the radius of a circle, perhaps) this designation presupposes the language that is used to speak the determinacy. One has to establish the determinacy of this in order to achieve the, as you put it, primitive and unanalyzable concept of the circle or modus ponens, or anything else you can think of.
But language is presupposed in an analysis of the nature of language, as is logic. You see the problem. This finds it strongest expression in Derrida.
Yes, that is what I am trying to say. What is the definition of existence? It seems, as your post brings up, it can only be defined circularly, which is no definition. We can have an idea of what it is to be, but we can't say exactly what is its essence. But there is one thing we know about it: it is counterfactual to any action or state of a subject. Defining a concept by its consequence might be better than not defining it at all.
Thats fine. Until the Enlightenment space and time were considered by the majority of thinkers as constituents of reality, and never as a priori conditions for experience.
If you dont accept that space and time dont exist in reality, wouldnt you want to offer at least an idea on how it might be that they do? Is it even possible to grant to space and time coexistent intuitional a priori and cosmic a posteriori conceptual schemes?
But Hamlet doesn't exist. Hence "Exist" on its own, is vague and obscure. It is said to indicate things that doesn't exist as if it exists. When a claim is made "X exists", it must be supplied with more information on where, how and when. Without the info, it is a meaningless utterance such as "I think therefore I am."
What does a brick mean on its own lying on the ground apart from being a brick? Nothing. Many bricks must be piled with the cement mix into a shape to form a barbecue, a wall, workshop or a house to be meaningful for its manifestation.
Likewise what does "being" or "exist" mean on its own in a grammatically incomplete utterance? Nothing apart from being an object of inference, intuition or poetry, which must be thrown out in philosophical discussions as nonsense.
Apologies. You answered my question already.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'd very much like to see an example of this. I'm not saying I don't understand or have any idea of what you mean, I'd just like to see where you're coming from with this distinction between deploying a concept and explicating its meaning. I can imagine a world in which deploying a concept is an instance of explicating a meaning, regardless of whether a definition is offered.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think I see what you mean. Though I think you're relying on a strict distinction between regular acts of speech and the analysis of concepts. I can certainly see that there is a distinction between them. What we're doing right now is a very analytical use of language. But you do pick up and refine concepts just by listening and chatting.
Existence seems to be a property of entities that exist and as a property it can be defined by its instances, that is, by entities that exist. What is more primitive: a property or its instances? I would say neither; instances cannot exist without a property and a property cannot exist without instances.
Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, I am unsure as to what mistake I may be doingall I do is hit the reply button and it adds a reply link at the top of my response.
In terms of your response, I only have one problem with it: you are analyzing is in the english language when you refer to being and not the concept of being.
I have no problem with you analysis that is is deployed in various different ways, and that some of them do not even make any sort of existential claimall of that is completely correct. However, is is linguistic, not conceptual. I am asking what it means to exist, not how we use the term is (or similar words).
This is important, because your definition of being is really the valid definition of the usage of is; and not the definition of being in the sense of the concept of to be.
An easy example, is your existential quantification sense of is:
Existential quantification presupposes, and does not answer itself, what it means to exist. It is a way to quantify existence (in a way). E.g., by claiming there is something that is green in the sense that there exists something green, presupposes the concept of what it means to existso it cant itself being a proper analysis of to be. See what I mean?
Apart from that, I totally agree (:
I think we know exactly what being is: I just don't think we can properly explicate it. Knowledge isn't just the sphere if explicable information.
Yes, subjects are negativity; insofar as they negate what exists. But this seems like you are agreeing now with me that you cannot define being.
I think physics demonstrates quite sufficiently that space and time are valid 'entities' in our calculations, and not in the sense that they are merely our modes of intuition, but I would be interested to hear how you would interpret it (since you obviously disagree).
I don't think that space and time are proper substances, because I don't think literal extension and temporality exist in reality (beyond our modes of intuition): but I do think, at a minimum, the things in themselves must be related to each other with the concepts of space and time---it just seems like physics goes out the window otherwise at this point.
???
You just tried to prove 'being' is vague because 'to be or not to be' doesn't refer to Hamlet's existence: why would Hamlet not existing have anything to do with it?
Concepts have their own meaning despite how they relate to concepts. The concept of the number 3 is obviously distinct from the number 2, and they don't rely on how they relate to each other to be defined.
I think using a concept is more generic than presupposing it: both are using it, the former is just what it means to use generally, and the latter is to leave it unexplicated.
You are absolutely right that one can learn a concept through merely interacting with it or observing other people discuss about it, without its exact definition being clarified. I just dont see how this negates my position, I guess.
If we want to be really technical, then I would say that we first, in our early years, learn notions; then we (tend to) refine them in our young adulthood into ideas; then we (tend to) refine them more in our older years into concepts. I just mean to convey that we sort of grasp the idea behind a thing slowly (usually) through experience (whether that be of other people conversing or interacting with something pertaining to the idea); and I sometimes convey this by noting a sort of linear progression of clarity behind an idea with notion ? idea ? concept. It isnt a super clean schema, but you get the point.
In terms of giving an example, I would envision that one could grasp the idea of a triangle without ever knowing any precise sort of definition, by merely experiencing triangles and what not, and using the idea of triangle, conceptually (in a less refined conceptual sense), such as to separate shapes into their own groups or what not, would be an example of presupposing the concept. Theres not explication of what it actually means, but, rather, just an implicit, assumed, understanding of it.
To use a concept in an explicated sense, would be have some sort of sufficiently robust concept of what it is, which is explicated sufficiently. Such as a triangle is a three sided shape, whereof the sides connect at three points, each line is straight, the angles add up to 180 degrees, etc.. Of course, the level of precision and robustness will vary: an expert in the given field that the concept relates to will probably have a more robust analysis than a layman (which gives most likely a basic definition).
Thats fair, and I agree. I just dont think one can explicate what primitive concepts are, albeit understood by pretty much everyone.
being is the best example, but also space, time, true, value, and false are good ones. They are very intuitional, and inexplicable (and some more than others).
What definition does Plato give that isn't circular?
Teaching children primitive concepts are the easiest to convey, ironically, because they strongly intuition. E.g., conveying what space is super easy to a child and much easier than explaining the concept an combustion engine. Complex concepts require more experience and knowledge, than their primitive siblings.
I would say the property is less fundamental than the concept it refers to; because it presupposes it.
The interesting thing with 'being', is that it isn't really a property: that opens up the discussion to absurd ideas, like beings which themselves contain being in their essence and other beings which do not (e.g., Spinoza's view).
So with respect to your example about being, I personally have a somewhat sophisticated (at least more sophisticated than "being" is "to be") understanding of it, which does rely on some circularity, but also incorporates elements of other concepts, such that a network can start to be realized. In my view, existence means "to stand in relation" to other things in an ontological sense (this is ontic structural realism). So if we're looking at the "network model" of the world, to say something exists means it is a node (or perhaps bridge between nodes) in that world. With some additional understanding, this implies a few things about existence that informs us of its nature: 1) There can be no world of just one node (one thing, because it doesn't stand in relation to anything else), 2) Something that exists in one world need not exist in another world; i.e., existence is relative, or 3) there is some barrier between that which exists actually and that which exists conceptually (concepts, like a physical unicorn, may fail to exist actually, in which case we may be said to be non-existent, although the concept exists in some sense).
Also, you also pose truth/falsehood as potential fundamental concept, but related to this definition of being, that may be explainable too: recall (1) that nothing can exist by itself, so there must at least be, say, two things that stand in relation. The most primitive relation of this nature can only be that of "something", and "not that something": this I believe, without additional structure giving weight to the meaning of "true" and "false", is the relationship that truth/falsehood describes. It's also akin to the idea of being and non-being, and harkens back to the Greek beliefs about opposites.
Don't mean to pontificate about my own beliefs, but with regards to your topic, I would say I think ultimately, not just some, but all concepts experience some level of circularity, but with some being more closely entwined, such as that of being and non-being, which is essentially self-referential, but can still be analyzed in the context of other concepts, and is not arbitrary. So I guess I disagree that they are unanalyzable, but also disagree that they must be non-circular. I thus conclude the answer is D, none of the above :grin:
That smells like contradiction.
Quoting Bob Ross
Not that you cannot, you can, but perhaps not properly, as in like you define other concepts.
:roll:
Quoting Bob Ross
It was not a proof. It was an example, so that you could understand the points better.
What is the difference between property and concept? Isn't it the same general/universal entity?
Quoting Bob Ross
Why would "being" not be a property? "Being", or "existence", seems to be something general/universal that is instantiated in all existing entities, including in itself. Why would some entities have being in their essence and others not?
Again the point was the atomic concepts don't tell you much just by themselves apart from being objects of conjectures, confusion, intuition or poetry. They need to be supplied with clear and concrete data in complete and grammatically correct sentences to give you solid meaningful information or ideas about the world.
Hence my suggestion was to throw out the atomic concepts contained in incomplete sentence as meaningless expressions, which was one of your options for conclusion of the OP.
Cool. Thats what I understood by your space and time in a cosmic sense.
Quoting Bob Ross
True enough, insofar as physics is nothing more than human intelligence at work in the specific domain where the physicist investigates the conditions by which things relate to himself or to each other. If the fundamental relation between things is the where and/or the when of one with respect to the other, space and time are necessary conditions or in your terms I suppose, valid entities ..in calculating that relation.
Quoting Bob Ross
I would argue that they are in that very sense, insofar as the physicist still has to intuit the things** to which his calculations are applicable. He knows a priori one thing is in a different space and a different time than another thing, which would be the most certain when the other thing is himself; his calculations merely determine how much space and time are between one and the other. He also knows a priori one thing can be of two times in one space but never two spaces at one time. None of such a priori intuition is possible without the conceptions to which any and all things must relate, from which follows necessarily that space and time, as those conceptions are represented, and that by which the physicist intuits the relation of things as determinable, must reside in the physicist himself.
(**the theoretical physicist, when concerned only with possible things, still must treat them as if their reality is given, iff he subjects them to the same natural law as he subjects the real things of his experience)
Anyway .for whatever thats worth.
You are confusing what it means to exist, with the relationship existent things have with each other: you are expounding an ontology in the sense of the structure of what exists and NOT in the sense of the structure of 'being' itself.
'beingness' is a property, 'being' is a concept: the former is 'to have "being"'. Properties are attributes a 'thing' can have or possess; a concept is an idea of something that could be possessed.
The property of redness is 'to be red'; and so it presupposes a concept of 'red' in its definition. If one doesn't understand the concept which the property refers to (e.g., 'red'), then one can only understand that the property expounds a concept that is possessable, but not anything more than that.
So you think that the concept 'triangle' doesn't make any sense in itself?
It seems like you are taking a scientific anti-realism approach; whereas I think that what we scientifically know, is a rough estimation of what is really there in-itself.
The peculiarity with space and time, is that positing them scientifically doesn't itself lend support to there being space nor time per se; but that we have to posit them in a way incongruent with our modes of intuition does.
Without taking an anti-realist position, I don't see how you can explain the observable phenomena of 'time dilation', for example, by appeal to "phenomenal", a priori, time.
Of course it does, but nothing more than it is a triangle with the standard definition. But if you say, something like "I think therefore I triangle", then it would be a poetry. Or if you said out of the blue "Triangle", then one would wonder what you were trying to say or express.
That would just be ungrammatical. I am unsure, then, what contention you are making with the OP: I am not claiming that ungrammatical sentences make sense.
It is ungrammatical but also incomplete. If it is incomplete, then listener will add their inference into the sentence trying to make a meaning out of it. The point is that, the axiomatic concepts don't have more meaning than the dictionary meanings on their own. To make meaningful use of them, you must use them in grammatically and contextually correct sentence.
Another point from the OP is that, if "be" is correct to say it means "exist". You could confirm on this. If you say "I am a member.", can it mean, "I exist a member."? It is nonsense.
"Be" is a linking verb. It needs something after it in the form of noun or adjective to make the sentence correct. "I am happy." "I am a member." "She is at the pub."
"I am" or "She is" itself doesn't sound clear or complete, unless it was used to replicate the previous sentence in the meaning, and the objects are inferred or omitted. For example, "Are you happy?" "Yes I am.", or "Is she in the pub now?" "Yes she is."
In other words, using "to be" "be" as same meaning to "to exist" "exist" seems debatable if it is correct in syntax and logic.
I suppose, depending on how logically consistent one wishes to be, but generally I agree with that, which should relieve me of scientific anti-realism. What we scientifically know, then, just indicates a particular method; that which is known about being what it may.
Quoting Bob Ross
All time dilation shows is the relation between sets of conditions with respect to each other. Nothing particularly amazing about it, insofar as time dilation only manifests to that which is outside both relative sets of conditions, so if a guy is contained in one or the other of those, there is no time dilation for him at all, but he intuits relations in time for himself a priori nonetheless.
But regarding your concern, maybe it is that appeal to phenomenal intuitions of time isnt really necessary to explain the scientific experimental result. Or to explain even the mathematical justification before the scientific experimental result. Maybe it is sufficient to presuppose the intuition within the domain of empirical science, and only appeal to it within the domain of metaphysics, the interest of which being the possibility of knowledge itself.
I think I see what you mean. Though it strikes me as very difficult to be able to say which concepts are presupposed by which understandings. Could you take the statement "the cat is on the mat" and spell out all of its presupposed concepts, and the underlying fundamental concepts which are implicit in those presuppositions?
Quoting Bob Ross
I've not been too explicit in spelling out how I disagree with you. I think we do disagree, but I don't know exactly where. I think we're getting close though.
I think I get the point. The prospect of cleanliness strikes me as an illusion though? I don't believe concepts have a linear progression of articulation like that, especially in discrete stages of clarity. That seems to me to make a concept very fixed while its articulation and understanding highly varies. I don't doubt that people can "aim their understandings" at a common concept while wrestling with it, even explicitly.
A good example of this is Eulerian polygon in Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations. People offered many definitions of Eulerian polygons over the years. But people came up with "counterexamples" to those - things which obviously were not Eulerian polygons -intensionally- but were Eulerian polyhedron -extensionally- in terms of the definition.
That history illustrates two things, in my view, that definition is in some sense derivative of communally negotiated understanding -even of intensionally fixed analysands like the concept of the Eulerian polyhedron -, and that communal articulation changes such conceptions.
Out in the wild, away from concepts which can be relatively well explicated in a formal language, things are both much fuzzier analytically and much more concrete pragmatically+semantically, I believe. Understanding what a chair is must include the act of sitting upon it, not just the words "something you can sit on" - which includes the floor and rocks. And there are no speech acts which are behaviourally equivalent to the act of sitting, since that's not what words do, they don't sit down.
Because the majority of the concepts we enjoy in our lives are more analytically fuzzy, their "full" explication, something maximally clear, cashes out in a pragmatic - perhaps even phenomenological - understanding rather than explicating word strings. Even if that pragmatic understanding must be accompanied by the appropriate words. eg "I sit down in my chair", and I am sitting, I illustrate this by sitting down.
That strikes me as most concepts must, thus, be fundamental. If they are constituted by being unable to be explicated. Since I cannot explicate sitting down with words alone. And if such explication is broadened to speech acts, then I can sit down while saying "this is sitting down", and explication becomes part of the fuzzy world of communally negotiated - social - understandings. In which clarity turns out to be grasping pragmatics and context.
Well, that's the point at issue. If you know how to use the word "being", and related words such as "exist", "is", and so on - what more is there to the meaning of "the concept of being"?
I'll contend that the notion of "concept" is an hypostatisation of word use. After all, if the concept gives the meaning of some word, and the meaning of a word is its use in a language, then the concept is pretty much just the way a word is used.
The common alternative is to consider concepts to be pieces of mental furniture, the "stuff" we have sitting around in our minds. This picture is fraught with inconsistencies. How, for example, can the concept of "existence" in your mind be the same as that in my mind? In the same way that the armchair in your lounge room is the same as that in my lounge room? But you could come and see my lounge chair - you can't inspect my concept of exists.. all you have access to us the way I use it...
And so on, with all the machinations of the private language argument thrown on top of the notion of simples.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think that there are a number of ways of using these words, and that we can sort them out much more clearly than the mysterious use of "being" fond in so much ontology. Parsing talk of existence forced logicians to confront these distinctions, and to come up with the clarificationI described in the previous post - at least three differing uses of "is".
The grain of truth in what you are suggesting might be seen in etymology, where to "ex sistere" is to "stand forth". To exist is to be differentiated from the stuff around you - a notion not so far from "to exist is to be the subject of a predicate", and so different to the stuff that is not subject to that predicate.
And all this is by way of showing that we can have a reasonably clear analysis of existence, and that in such circumstances "existence" is not a simple.
Anyway, this is an offer of a different way to see the issue. Take it or leave it.
Again, you are confusing language with concepts. The dictionary doesn't define concepts, it defines words (in a particular language).
But "time dilation" doesn't refer to a condition in the temporal form of our experience: it refers to conditions of how time works independently of our forms of experience. The temporal sequencing of events changes depending on one's inertial frame, and this doesn't seem like it is something that is merely an a priori condition of our experience. Doesn't that suggest there is a cosmic time?
How? I don't see it.
I can certainly make my best attempt, although I do (already) concede that it will be highly improbable that I will be able to explicate recursively all of them.
The concepts that come to mind to me, in terms of first-order concepts in play, are:
- Cat
- Mat
- Predication
- The concept of horizontally on top of: not sure if there is a word in english for this.
Of course, there are sub-concepts at play that I cant take the time to expound. The most fundamental would probably be:
- Spatiality
- Being
- Identity
- Temporality
Perhaps more, as well.
Does that help?
Agreed. However, I still think the elaboration is necessary for the demonstration of the (general) evolution of ideas.
Are you saying that concepts get their meaning from social interaction? This may be the source of our disagreement, as I think words are very much like you described, but not concepts.
We can call a triangle whatever we want linguistically, and conceptually our understanding of a triangle is limited or has evolved through social interaction, but the concept of triangle is left unaffected by our understanding of it. I do NOT mean to say that there is an abstract object of triangle, or anything like that, but I do think that there is a distinction between the concept itself and our understanding of it; whereas, if I am understanding you correctly, there is only the concept insofar as we (society or what not) understand it. Am I understanding correctly?
Thats fair. I dont see anything wrong with that.
Where I think it gets even more interesting, is with primitive concepts. It doesnt seem like there is an analogous action you can take, to sitting down, to implicitly demonstrate the concept of being. You know what I mean? Likewise with space, time, true, false, value, etc.
I dont think so, or perhaps you are referring to something else by fundamental (such as ~unable to be completely explicated). I still think you would agree that there is a sufficient, albeit not complete, definition one can give of a chair (or sitting down, etc.); I think this cannot even be done for primitive concepts.
I split concepts into two general categories: simple (i.e., primitive) and complex (i.e., non-primitive). The former cannot be broken down into any concepts which it relates to, and the latter can be.
For example, the concept of a cat is complex; because it comprised off other concepts (e.g., organism, number, (the number) four, leg, color, texture, teeth, etc.): once one understands, whether that be implicitly or explicitly, the concepts, and their relations, that comprise the concept of a cat, the concept itself is understood. This is not the case with simple concepts.
The concept of being cannot be broken down into any smaller conceptual composition; and so it is impossible to convey (implicitly or explicitly) it by appeal to other concepts (and their relations to each other)(like the concept of a cat): only by pure intuition do we grasp what it is, and it is an absolutely simple building block of all other concepts. I cannot perform an action that demonstrates the concept of being, nor explicate it in words (without circularly referencing it). I cannot add anything new to any analytical work on the ontology of Being; because it is absolutely simple.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think what you are noting is that the fact that we cannot explicate (fully) a concept, it does not follow that it is (1) circular nor (2) primitive; and I actually agree with that. I just think that trying to explicate (sufficiently) a primitive concept demonstrates quite conclusively that it is really suchabsolutely simple. Try to ask someone to define being, and, if they grasp what is being asked, they will appeal to it in its own definition.
Bob
You are misunderstanding concepts as if they are some separate entity from language. Concepts, words, ideas and notions are part of language. Their meanings can only be understood fully in the use of language in some context.
I suppose one could be justified in claiming something like, .There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy , while at the same time, the guy next to him could retort with, ehhhh, so what if there are.
Even if there is such a thing as cosmic time, isnt that just another conception given from the same intelligence from which all others arise? Why should cosmic time that manifests in certain objective or empirical relations, negate the subjective intuitional form of time in general, which is the condition of every relation?
Gotta admit to the fascinating science, though, all things considered.
The problem I have is that concepts are more fundamental than language, and it is a mistake to reduce the former to the latter.
For example, we cannot properly express how a non-spatial entity relates to space in english; but this is just a linguistic limitation. I can only say "a non-spatial entity would exist 'beyond' what is in space", but the concept of a non-spatial entity's relation to space as 'beyond' it is perfectly sensible albeit linguistically nonsensical.
Likewise, if you're position is true, then that which cannot be currently express with all (or perhaps a given) language cannot be a valid concept (since what we linguistically express, for you, is the concept); but this is clearly not true. There are languages which don't have any words which express things which other languages do. The concept of a triangle is still such even if we have no language capable of conveying it.
Conceptual analysis is surely restrained, to some extent, by language (as you are correct that we convey concepts with language) but they are not thereby themselves reducible to language. As we expand language, we are capable of explicating more concepts--and that is there relation to each other.
But see this argument for logical nihilism:
and
Quoting Banno
I'll go with logical pluralism. Logic itself depends on what one is doing. It's the grammatical structure we choose for the purpose at hand. It cannot therefore provide the "simple" you desire.
Quoting Bob Ross
Then may I commend again Philosophical Investigations, §48? We choose what is to count as a simple in the diagram, be it colour, or shape, or letter, or position; and each can in turn be defined in terms of the other. Here Wittgenstein is undoing the enterprise of the Tractatus, which is very much the same enterprise you suggest in your other thread, constructing the world from logical atoms.
Quoting Bob Ross
It seems to me that you do here what you claim to be unable to do - to express how a non-spatial entity relates to space in english.
Quoting Bob Ross
Which is to say nothing more than that there are triangles even if there are no folk around to talk about them - that is, to accept realism.
Quoting Bob Ross
Sure. Concepts can be shown, by our acts, as well as said. Indeed saying is just another act. The point being that concepts are not fundamental to mind, actions are. Concepts are just a way of explaining acts.
A child understands "3" by taking three lollies, by holding up three fingers, by taking one toy from four, and so on; not by having a something in her mind. Further, using the word "three" is tertiary to these other acts.
Yeah, it is better I am not clumped with Banno in a thread. From his comment, it is obvious Banno seems to be still in huff or under some sort of psychological trauma from my comments on his Logic in the past. All I said was I didn't agree with him.
Anyway I will make my point short. I can see your point in your last post. But let me say this to you to make the counterfactual point to your point. If you didn't explain your point on the non-spatial objects concepts as clearly as you did, in the grammatical form of standard language, I wouldn't have a clue what you were trying to mean.
A non-spatial entity that exists 'beyond' what is in space cannot be captured by human perception anyway. It can only be described and expressed in logically coherent statements. Concepts get formed via the descriptions using the language. It is a part of language. As you say, some languages don't have certain concepts, but it is not because language in general is unable to form the concepts. It is because no speakers of the language have not tried to form the concepts yet in the language.
A completely general logical principle sounds like confused jargon for absolute logical principle; or it refers to a principle being general, which doesnt lend support to the claim.
Principles in logic, as far I know, are absolute. When can you validly disregard the law of non-contradiction, for example?
I dont completely disagree with this: I am not denying that we may use different logical theories for different purposes; however, they are built off of classical logic.
The only classical logic axiom one may be able to get away with, is not using the law of excluded middle.
Ternary logic, for example, is just a built-up, more-complex version of binary logic. These logical theories are not separate from each other, but share at their core the fundamental (classical) logic.
So you think being is a simple concept because you choose it to be?
If that is the case, then it should be easy for you to demonstrate this: choose something else (or multiple concepts) to be simple, and comprise being from it.
Lol, I thought you were both expressing the same thing; but, apparently, I missed something important.
I thought you were going to say that (; and thereby confuse the ungrammatical expression of the concept with the concept itself.
Which cant be the case if the concept of a triangle is just the inter-subjectively agreed upon word triangle. There must be an underlying concept of a triangle at play here.
:up:
You missed the point: my linguistic expression of 'beyond' space is incoherent. 'Beyond' refers to something in space.
Your keep parroting "You missed the point." in most messages you write wouldn't help you on understanding.
"Beyond" can mean other things too depending on the context. For example, "It is beyond me." - it does't mean something in space.
If your reader didn't understand what you wrote, then it is likely that your writing was not grammatically correct or it was out of context.
I'll just point out there are some nice, accessible lectures on youtube from the philosopher Banno cites, Gillian Russell. Highly recommend taking a look!
Definition is a matter of linguistic practice, which is different from the actual contents of our mind. How much some definitions reflect contents of our mind is what makes a definition accurate or inaccurate. Perhaps we cannot accurately define being, as it is as basic or more than any other concept we have I was thinking of making a thread on this topic , but we can give a functional definition of it, which is what I presented.
I have explained it multiple times, and am unsure what else to say. Concepts are not words.
it is beyond me refers to something which is spatially separate from yourself; so, no, this is not an example of a different meaning of beyond that is aspatial.
I didnt understand this part: what do you mean?
Thank you! I will take a look.
Notwithstanding my critique of your "functional" definition, I wholly agree with your description: :up:
I think I just figured out what we are seemingly in disagreement about, and that, upon clarification, we are not really in any disagreement at all.
My OP, I see now, is a bit ambiguous: I did not make any distinction between the meaning of a concept and its definition. I don't think that simple concepts are themselves circular and unknowable in meaning but, rather, what I was referring to by 'definable' is the explication of meaning.
I think, and correct me if I am wrong, you read the OP and thought that I was referring to 'meaning' by 'definition'; and therefrom arises the disagreement. Am I on the right track?
Well, it's from Gillian Russell, so I'll take it as legit. But I went too quickly, and lost you. Russell's approach is to highlight cases where what are generally considered logical laws fail - I gave a few examples, more can be seen in the linked literature on Logical Nihilism. These cases serve to verify the second premise, that there are no general laws, and hence logical monism. We are left with deciding that there are no laws of logic, or that they do not apply with complete generality.
Hence, the laws of logic fashion discrete, related languages within logic.
Quoting Bob Ross
The Law of non-contradiction, ? ¬(? ? ¬?), need not be true in a Klein logic, I believe. This would add a line to the truth table where if ? is neither T or F, so is ¬(? ? ¬?). Non-contradiction applies only to those logics which are biconditional, and hence not to all logics.
Quoting Bob Ross
It does not follow that there are logical laws that apply in all cases. Indeed, one of the games played in doing logic is to see what happens when a supposed law is denied. Nothing need be held constant throughout the whole enterprise - just as no individual thread need run the whole length of a rope.
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
The trouble here is that "being" is not one thing, but a group of things. I tried to explain that by setting out the various logical parsings of "is".
Treating several notions as if they are one is a sure way to extend a discussion indefinitely.
Cheers.
Quoting Bob Ross
Note my bolding: not just.
Alpha, Beta and Gamma Triangulum form a triangle in the night sky. If one adopts a realist approach, that triangle will still be there when unobserved. Such an approach can be understood as supposing a binary logic - that the triangle is either there or it is not: "There is a triangle" is true, or it is false. An antirealist approach might be understood as adopting Klein Logic, such that "There is a triangle" is true when observed, and neither true nor false when unobserved.
On a realist account there are triangles even when folk are not around to see them.
What this shows is that "Triangle" is both a way of using words and a way of talking about how things are. And because "Triangle" is about how things are, "Triangle" goes on even when there are not folk to talk about it.
That's probably not as clear as I'd like it to be. That is, language games are not just about words, but about the stuff around us. That's what is "at play" here, not mental furniture.
I think that's on the right track. Thank you for the help.
Quoting Bob Ross
I believe I also think of explication differently. As in, someone might learn what "is" means - and thus gain an understanding of what it means to be - through standard use of the word, and I'd count that as an explication of "is" and an explication of what it means to be. Though neither of those explications is an attempt to be as exhaustive or wide ranging as offering a definition might be.
I suppose when I read "explication", from you, I was reading it like expression. As in, "the cat is on the mat" and "there is a cup on that table" are both expressions/explications of "is", even though both senses of "is" are different but related in both. If instead you meant explication as a type of speech act, like offering a definition, or illustrating use, I think I was going off kilter.
I would also disagree with the latter use of explication with regard to fundamental concepts, but for a different reason.
Thanks again! I appreciate the continued thought on the matter.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/ for example
But you can see its challenges in the very article, so maybe it is not "validly".
From your post, it appears that you might not be a native speaker of English language actually. When you said "It is beyond me", it sounds like "It is behind me in space." literally, but it actually means, you are "unable to understand". "Beyond imagination" would mean "unable to imagine". It has nothing to do with physical space in this context.
"Beyond" would only indicate physical space, if you were talking about a placement of a physical object in your sentence.
See my point? Even a simple word, "beyond" has different meanings depending on the context, and how you use it.
You have to provide an argument yourself instead of lazily linking a long article: I am not going to take the time to debate a Dialetheist's perspective from stanford. I reject the view, is all I will say for now until you provide your own view on it.
That a word is spatially referent, DOES NOT mean that it refers to something in phenomenal or cosmic space. "Beyond" refers to a thing and another thing, the former of which is outside, at some distance, of the other.
When I say "imagine a red ball and another blue ball, and the blue ball is beyond the red ball by 3 meters north": "beyond" here is still spatially referent, even though neither the red nor blue ball exist.
"It is beyond me", "that is above my pay grade", "that went over my head", etc. are spatially referent idioms that mean that they didn't understand something: the idiom conveys it through spatial representation (e.g., "beyond", "above", "over", etc.). Without the concept of space, none of these idioms make any sense; so they are not separate senses of the words.
That is all fair. I can see concepts which are primitive (in the sense I mean it) being explicable in the sense of being capable of physical or gestural expression; I was referring to a grasping of the concept via verbalization or explicated thinking (if that makes sense). I don't think we are in disagreement afterall.
It absolutely does. You are literally saying that "it", whatever that is, cannot be placed within the sphere of "the imagination". You absolutely cannot make any sense of that without the concept of space, because you need to be able to conceptually mark out an area of space which represents "the imagination" to denote that something is outside of it.
Perhaps we disagree on something so fundamental that neither of us can see it!
I think I probably agree with you. I think consciousness might be one of these - it gets defined by synonyms which suggests it may be unanalysable. Do you think there is a difference between a word and a concept?
No, an idea/concept is non-spatial--even if they are derived from processes of the brain. We are not analyzing the phenomenology or ontology of concepts but, rather, their meaning: the concept of space, which is non-spatial, is the idea of space itself.
The idiom "it is beyond me" cannot be made sense of, conceptually, without the idea of space. Think about it: to conceptualize it, one must represent to themselves, whether that be implicitly or explicitly, a 'something' which is outside of what is marked as 'themselves'. It is 'beyond' me, because it is cannot be placed within me...it is separate, which is another spatially-loaded term, from me. It is beyond me, in the sense that I do not understand it...it extends past my understanding. Although my understanding doesn't exist in space, I can represent something being outside of it by using space conceptually...hence 'it is beyond me'. These are all ideas expressing something which is not actually in space by means of using the idea of space.
It is easy enough to understand this, when one tries to describe "it is beyond me" without using spatially-loaded terms like "beyond": they can't. It loses meaning.
:kiss:
Yes, a word is a set of symbols which signifies a concept; and a concept is an idea.
Quoting Bob Ross
I cannot imagine anyone relating the idea of space with the word or concept "beyond". It is just an idiom of the linguistic expression which we use habitually to mean over the boundary of something. The something can be physical or mental depending on the context.
The idea of space is not required to say something is "beyond me", as one can simply understand that string of words to mean "I don't understand at all", which doesn't seem to require space. To understand the metaphor that this expression comes from, which is to interpret it literally then relate it to the new (figurate) context you are applying it to, that is when you need the idea of space.
Agreed, but beyond me still qualifies as a certain relation. If there are but two fundamental relational representations, and for relations in which space is not required, all that remains, is time.
A context-driven conceptual dichotomy, nonetheless.
Certainly not space, but I rather think any philosophical framework mandates time as a fundamental prerequisite for its methodology. Or, maybe I just wouldnt entertain the possibility that there are those that do not.
You just unknowingly contradicted yourself. "Over the boundary" is the idea that there are two things in space (at least conceptually) and one is beyond the "boundary" of the other.
That's fine and fair. An idiom, through repetition, can be ascertained by what it conveys and not the origin of how it came about to mean it. However, this does not negate that "it is beyond me", if understood properly in how it was developed as a phrase, has spatial references.
Also, "I don't understand it" also references space...just not as directly. There is no "I" without "other" in space, for example. The sentence still wouldn't make sense without the concept of space, but I get and agree with your point.
I don't see how that makes sense. You use the condition "in space" to prove that "I don't understand" implies space. I also don't see how "I" implies "other" in any situation.
There was no contradiction in "boundary", apart from your misunderstanding on it. "Boundary" can be physical as well as mental. Again your inability in understanding the concept stems from your lack of understanding the context in linguistic expression.
"I" references "self", which makes no sense if there isn't "not self". You cannot identify what is you and what is not, if there isn't anything besides you. It can't be done. Distinctions can only be made with space and time.
:roll:
My point was crystal clear.
So what is your ultimate defeater for solipsism?
The universe still makes sense even if there isn't "not-universe".
I agree with you and just want to add something about the "it" in 'I don't understand it': it must be something separate from I, and separation is incoherent without reference to either space or time, as others have noted.
Quoting Corvus
And very clearly wrong.