John Page

Gotta go, but please could you provide your definition of "concept" if you consider it deferrent to the sources I've provided. The above response tells me nothing about whether you consider mental constructs evidence of language, simple concepts, complex concepts and so on.

Cheers, John

John Page

Just saw this as I posted, gave me a chuckle to think of a computer necessarily having (to have) the metaphysical assumption that there's a great big world out there before it embarks upon a culinary exercise.

Maybe this is a non-language metaphorical knee-jerk reaction on my part!

Scenario: Man had no concept of cooking. Had fire, had dead (raw) creatures. Man noticed dead meat near fire changed color and made him feel good when he ate it. Concept of cooking now exists in this man's mind. Now the man invents the language to describe his discovery/invention. Until this language is intersubjectively meaningful it remains his private language. Concept preceeds language.

Cheers, John

Luiseach

Hmmm. Yes. Memory comes into it, doesn't it?

Agreed.

I wonder how this hardwired logic works...

Thanks for the response!

Luiseach

Ah yes...I'll have a look-see at those links. Thanks, John...

Gurdur

Let's look at your argumentive example:

Who built the computer ? The builder obviously made metaphysical decisions on the part of the computer.

Oh !
You want to change tune, and claim we're all just computers ?
Pychological determinism ?
*mad giggling*
What I like about the determinists is how they are so grimly determined to prove their cases here, with the aid of heavily emotional rhetoric. One feels almost sorry for them.

Oh !
You don't wish to invoke the "Computer in a room", you don't want to mention Turing, you want to say that we're beings with learnt free will built up on a basis of unconsciously inherited neuro hardwiring selected for by evolution.
Leastaways, you'ld be onto a good thing if you did say that.
Doesn't remove the metaphysical quandary, but at least it's cogent and coherent.
OH !
You wish to claim something else entirely different ?
I am all ears.

Naw, simply Fallacy Of Underestimating The Gurdur.

Are you aware of the term "Just So" stories in evolutionary psychology ?
If not, I suggest you familiarise yourself with it.

Any way of forming testable, exclusive hypotheses from your scenario ?
If not, it's a dead duck, cooked or uncooked.

Luiseach

lolol!

Sorry, but that really made me laugh! Christ I love irony.



***wanders off to read about neurotransmitters and logic***

John Page

Doesn't matter. Did anyone make metaphysical decisions in building us? Are you claiming metaphysic preceeds everything (you closet creationist, you ). Anyway, please answer the question - does the computer have to make any metaphysical assumptions?
What caused you to giggle, Gurdur? Whimsy? Genetic disposition? Hardware error?
Lassaiz Faire metaphysics from Gurdur. Why does he think that? He doesn't know? Wonderful, now, what's for dinner?
The "don't wish" and "don't want" and "want" are pure conjecture on your part.
Wow! You actually said something with content. Anyway, I was trying not to stray away from the OP and your metaphysical quandary of how to explain a) what metaphysics is that it must preceed logic (although it would seem an understanding of logic is required in order to develop a formal system of logic ) b) what language really is. What is different, my dear Gurdur, between a formal logic and a formal language?
I'm sure your mother would have been proud.
I have been very familiar with the "Just so" stories since nursery days, in fact, it shouldn't surprise me that the "Just so" stories preceed language.
It was goose, actually. A wild one that had been chased. Let's get back to the issue, though. Are you still claiming that cooking requires metaphysics? I still say naming (using language) is a posteriori to the moment of mental discovery of a new concept.

Cheers, John

John Page

John: BTW I think legal language is so convoluted because we can have ideas that are difficult to describe precisely - pointing to the idea being separate from the language.
We are testicular today, aren't we? Your metaphoric use of the Anglo Saxon invective just goes to show that we can ideas in mind that are difficult to describe precisely.
How about the deterministic causal chain of reality -> perception -> concept formation -> cognition -> verbalization? To me, its only when we get to the higher levels of abstraction that language operates.
Simpler than what? I would say that ideas involve multiple concepts on the path toward cognition (in the above chain example).
Fuzzy is better? I think the words you're searching for are "The process of categorization results in concepts (of or about the things we perceive) and these are an essential precursor to conscious cognition and language."
Go ask the pigeons. Go ask the chimps.

Cheers, John

Luiseach

It's not just legal language that is 'convoluted'...philosophical, literary, business, political languages share this trait. (I've worked in the legal profession, and now in the literary, and I see many similarities in the jargon used by both...). I don't agree that the convolutions of language derive from the assumption that ideas are somehow separate from the words used to express the idea. Rather, convolution is a characteristic of language itself.

This caught my eye. If there are different levels of experience, as you suggest here with the chain of command in understanding, then on which level do we decide what is and isn't 'true'? Or is it that each level contains its own criteria for 'truth'? On the higher level of abstraction - where language happens - is this where the truth we're talking about is formulated? Or is it, as you suggested to me before, going on on the lowest level - subatomic, chemical, genetic (the hardwired language concepts encoded in our brains somwhere)?

Luiseach

Ah, I love the smell of irony in the morning.