Kantian

The world of man is a house of language- not the universe’s fount. There is no source of absolute transcendent truth beyond our psychological needs and your bad attempt at humor. The word indescribable is the binary opposite of the signified of “describable.” What does that mean, you may ask?

A synchronical view of language presents a structure or a system of elements located in relation to each other. The play of elements and relation in structural linguistic produces meaning. Saussure says meaning is produced in the formation of signs as two sided entities, and it is also produced in a play of differences. The sign has two aspect- a signifier and a signified. The signifier is something of sensory perception- a spoken word is heard, a written word is seen. The signified is the concept or meaning associated with the sensory perception. A sign needs both- something we sense- the sound of the word, and something we think in meaning. Yet the relation between the sensory data and the meaning is chance – the sound/spelling of the word has little to do with the signified/meaning of the word. However, signifiers and signified are created in a system of difference- saussure famously pronounces that the structure of language is purely differential: “Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed BEFORE the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system.” That means the meaning of a word no longer depends on the relation of signifier/signified but on difference. The meaning of every word is deferred.

Wrong as usual. The word indescribable is already part of language, given that its reference depends on the positive assertion of its binary opposite, which remains wholly within the framework of language. You need to get a clue about Frege and Saussure before thinking up of infantile attempts like these to try and get my goat!

So much for the impotent logic of ontologicians.
~Transcendentalist~
__________________
Reason has often led us into transcendent metaphysics that "overstep the limits of all experience, [and] no object adequate to the transcendental ideal can ever be found within experience."

Gurdur

Weeeellllllllll; I'm not sure I recognise any brotherhood between myself (and I'm a naturalist) and the other people you term naturalists.......

Isn't there more room for more factions ?

Quite idle; I'm not trying to prove anything, I'm not on a crusade, and you're not one of those I would go on a crusade against, were I on one.

I see.
Thanks, I'll keep your views in mind. Seriously.

Ah.
Now there you're asking a wee bit too much, since you wouldn't be happy with the ill-organized mass of competing theories and papers that linguistics is today.

There are sophisticated models of (universal) human grammar, but I'm none too sure they would either appeal to you or be very helpful in this particular context --- and as yet they're all rather unproven.
Still, if you're that masochistic, let me know and I'll do my humble best.
Ah, understood.

Let's agree to disagree.

hmm, again a bit I disagree with --- but it's hardly worthwhile getting het up about it, since it's one of those questions that will work itself out over time, IMHO.

You should try PD.
I just got told that it was "fallacious" and useless for me to bring actual facts into the discussion.

Nope on two counts; my questions here were simply wanting to know, and while I'm quite attractive (so I have been told by many), I do not fancy myself at all in any way, but actively seek to be more witty, entertaining and downright sexy --- as well as training my mind.

Clutch

Kantian,

Like Gurdur, I wonder about the basis for your judgement about Dennett's "scientism".

This is partly because I wonder about scientism tout court. I am taking the term to mean (as it usually seems to) something like, "the inappropriate extension of scientific methods to a domain not apt to be so treated." But this leaves me wondering just what argument the scientism-accuser is in possession of, to demonstrate a priori that scientific methods really aren't apt to illuminate the domain of discourse. After all, the history of science is one of unpredictability and counterintuitive insights. Your very namesake provides one of the shining historical examples of pronouncing too hastily on what science could never show -- namely, that space could be non-Euclidean. You never know what might come down the pike, in the way of conceptual and empirical revolutions. So charges of scientism, pronouncing in advance on the inappropriateness of scientific methods in a domain, strike me as having the potential to "block the path of inquiry", as Peirce enjoined us not to do.

That's a very brief expression of my general scepticism about the charge of scientism. But I'd appreciate even your specific reason for applying the term to Dennett. If I understood your reply to Gurdur, it was just that Dennett "has been accused of vulgar reductionism or revisionism"; your subsequent remarks bore not on scientism, but simply on the question of whether Dennett is correct. Whatever it is that "revisionism" is supposed to mean in this context, your reply seems another way of saying, "Well, I heard somewhere that Dennett is scientistic."

If you have something else in mind, though, I'd be interested to hear it. Thanks.

John Page

Of course, one can use a combination of words to clarify or make complex their meaning but ultimately the signified is what the words refer to, reality. What you have overlooked is that all words are adjectives - they only describe something and mean nothing in themselves.
Answer the question, Kanty, do you consider the word 'indescribable' meaningless (irrespective of whether you categorize it as the binary opposite of anything) or meaningful. If meaningful, to what does the word 'indescribable' refer and if meaningless how is it part of language?
....and, therefore, doesn't exist beyond being an imagination of man. The point here is that the "transcendental ideal" does not need to exist within experience - not everyone's "Third Man" a la Parmenides is the same. One man's fish is another man's poisson as I always like to say. (I'm sure Jaques would enjoy this little jeux de mots).

You'll notice I've ignored the rest of your meaningless waffle - I'm off to Chicago for a couple of days and hope you can up with something a little more meaningful by then.

Cheers, John

Clutch

Not to jump into the middle of a bunfight well under way, but what's the big deal about "indescribable"?

Kantian surely got this right. I know what "describable" means; I know what "not" means; what's left to know about the meaning of "indescribable"?

One might as well worry whether the word "non-linguistic" is linguistic.

Or (very possible) am I missing something?

Keith Russell

Kantian:

I disagree, as well, with your opinion of philosophy.

How are scientists to 'do science', if the philosophers cannot agree about what constitutes science?

(And, if the scientists shouldn't worry about the philosophers' discussion, then why should the philosophers bother in the first place?)

Keith.

John Page

I don't have a problem with the meaning of 'indescribable' but that meaning would seem inconsistent with the pseudo-linguistic philosophy put forward by Kantian.

He has to be able to explain how the self contained system he vaunts (language) contains a description that only makes sense when refering to something outside the system of language.

Cheers, John

Kantian

Sure, but they are keeping their cards close to the vest.
It would have been tons of fun anyway. Constant vigil in crusading against 99 percent and august spies can’t do much for credibility, correct?
After I finish off Julian Jaynes and Rene Girard’s books, I’ll take a careful peek at Dennett’s work on consciousness and hopefully elicit a better, more comprehensive response.
I think I have to anyway, if I am to go anywhere in my studies – which means, extra-philosophical sources would greatly improve the breadth and quality of work I will churn out.

FWIW, I absolutely despise that comment. Nevertheless, do you agree that the philosophy of science is empty without the history of science, and the history of science is blind without the philosophy of science? (paraphrasing Kant )
Possibly, but unlikely- given what used to be considered as philosophy is now broken off into zillions of specialized fields. Now that there are no philosophers today, I think the profession of philosophy in universities is nothing more than a collection of scholars of the history of philosophy. (nudge, nudge, wink wink)
Ouch! Well, we could switch places and see who does have it worse.
I’d be happy to share with you my opinion after I have read it. A friend of mine told me his opinions of Dennett and Churchland, and said that he preferred Churchland’s account over Dennett’s modular theory.

~Transcendentalist~
__________________
Reason has often led us into transcendent metaphysics that "overstep the limits of all experience, [and] no object adequate to the transcendental ideal can ever be found within experience."

Kantian

That goes for me too. On what basis do I mouth off about books I haven’t read? On what basis do you take my judgments for, as well?

Scientism is much more radical than the mere application of the scientific method, whatever that is. Scientism is the mournful specter of the failed enterprise of logical positivism, which is the claim that the only meaningful claims are scientific. The problem is that this is not a scientific claim, and if it is true, it is not meaningful. Therefore, scientism is fundamentally either false or meaningless.

Yes, but this is irrelevant to whether Daniel Dennett is a naturalist – which is a nice word for someone who practices “scientism.” The history of science, as anarchical it seems, has nothing to do with whether Dennett preached the virtues of scientism in his books.

Among other things, the possibility of non-euclidean mathematics is enough to doubt Kant’s synthetic a priori judgments, but not sufficient grounds to ignore the ramifications of his conceptual programme.

Note to the lurkers: the word “empirical.”

Indulge me, how the hell does the charge of scientism block the path of inquiry? If the adoption of a metaphysical worldview dictates certain results, then it stands to reason that an alternate conceptual scheme would produce different ones. If a person espouses that the only path of inquiry is science, isn’t he doing the very thing old Charles warned against?

Then you are not being skeptical enough.

Yes, had you read the thread, you would not bother at being redundant.

Sure. Does a detailed cognitive model of consciousness, specifically the ‘framework of the capacity of a subject to verbally report a mental state’ provide an adequate explanation of phenomenological consciousness?

~Transcendentalist~
__________________
Reason has often led us into transcendent metaphysics that "overstep the limits of all experience, [and] no object adequate to the transcendental ideal can ever be found within experience."

Kantian

Educate thyself.
:banghead: With ig'nant remarks such as these, why should i bother? The reference is to something meaningful, which is already a fact of language. A working understanding of the philosophy of language and linguistics might help you overcome your complete and utter incompetent attempts at shoe-horning me into your onto-illogic.

~Transcendentalist~