Francois Tremblay

Oh ok, I must have misinterpreted. You seemed to be hostile to the notion of empirical evidence. Sorry if this was my mistake.

NialScorva

A foo by any other name is still as baz.

Is there a truth value to that statement?

Draygomb

You're telling me that Helen had no concept of food before someone taught her what it was called?

Yes those who have senses go insane when they are removed, but do we know that they wouldn't ever reconstruct some sense of order? Some insane people have developed intricately detailed descriptions of their lives on other planets. How did the first democracy develop when all there had been were kings? First comes the idea then comes the name.

Francois Tremblay

I think you are confusing sense data with nomenclature. Other animals do very well without having any explicit names to designate anything. The important is to have at least initial sense data (in our case, knowledge of what a circle and square is, as well as the laws of logic).

Draygomb

Right, animals can have a concept of numbers without language which proves that concepts can exist without being named.

Let's say there was a person named Nonsense (Non for short) who was born without the ability to recieve sensory input. Could he form the concept of existence?

Mageth

Let's say there was a person named Nonsense (Non for short) who was born without the ability to recieve sensory input. Could he form the concept of existence?

My answer to this would be "no." Existence requires some sort of context, a place to start. Without sensory input, no consciousness would develop.

rcs

Intersting string, but also it is a topic that most philos cannot agree on. So, in an effort to muddle it up even further, I will throw in my two cents.

The problem in this discussion is how our intelligence and language is organized. These abilities developed in situations requiring a much lower level of proof. For example, should I run from that tiger or not; can I eat the fruit in that tree; or, more importantly is that girl going to mate with me .

The intelligence and language needed to escape, or in one case make use of these situations is not based on a subtle understanding of what is real and what is not. It is based on what you need to survive, and that if you do not make a quick decision about what is real you will die - or in the case of the last one, not proliferate (which for evolutionary purposes is just as bad).

Now, how do you apply these developmental processes to understand what is metaphysically real and what is not? My position is simple - you don't and just applly the scientific method and get on with life..

That is, is the proposed "real fact" subect to verification. On a practical level this means nothing more then knowing that every time you go to the beach at Pismo California you see an ocean; therefore, there is an Ocean next to Pismo.

On a subtler level this means, for example, proving that George Washington was real by gathering information from mutiple sources, and finding they all agree that he lived. As a result you come to the conclusion that it is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very likely that he existed.

The other option is to get caught up in all sort of arguments about how you might be dreaming about the Ocean in Pismo, or about how can you know that George Washing really existed if you never saw him. But the fact is, our method of understanding is all we have, and since it certianly seems usefull enough for modern science it is certianly useful enough to say we know something.

That's it. (Was it worth two cents? )

P.S. I disavow all syntax and spelling errors here in. So no comments please - besides how do you really know they are misspelled?

Francois Tremblay

Of course concepts can exist without being named. That has nothing to do with it.

NialScorva

No, I'm stating that Helen could make no claims about truth or falsehood without a linguistic framework with which to make them. The even her descriptions after the fact are only possible because she has a language to describe them in. This isn't as a pedantic detail as it seems, every truth claim we make relies on a language to make it.

It does no such thing, it shows that empirical sensation and perception of multiplicity can exist. For an animal to make a truth claim, such as "there are four apples", it has to have a symbology to do this, such as american sign language.

You seem to be arguing that internal impressions qualify as truth statements. As you mention with insanity, their impressions are trivially true to them. When you dream, your impressions at that moment are true. There is no way to distinguish between actual experience and delusion without a means to externalize and confirm these truths. Without such a means, you must accept *every* experience as true, and different people can contain completely different experiences of truth. You've made "truth" practically meaningless.

In addition, you must assume that internal states are accessible to others. Have you ever had a disagreement such as whether a particular color was turquoise or blue-green? Two people's perceptions do vary, and they notice different things. Consider cultural differences. Black is somber and represents death in most western colors. Other cultures use white to represent the same thing. Black doesn't inspire the same impressions to people in different cultures. The 'truth' of the color black is completely different for those two people. How do you know that an impression for me is the same as an impression for you when there is no direct way to compare them?

What I'm arguing is that we externalize those impressions as the only means of determining whether each person's truth corresponds to someone else's. As such, the internal impression may or may not be true, but the only meaningful way to determine it is via language. This makes the truth of the concept contigent upon it's linguistic truth.

I'd say not, but that's just my opinion.

Go reread the article on Helen Keller. She had all of those impressions, the warmth, the wetness, the shape of her doll, but she had no way to connect them:
She only realized that the new doll was the same "concept" as her old dolls when she had a label she could apply to them all. You claimed earlier:
Is a doll by any other name still a doll? By her own story, Helen Keller did not know this until she actually had the name.

Draygomb

NialScorva

You're correct in the context of communicating truth through language. If we were telepathic then we could just transfer thoughts/concepts without the need for language. Heat is just as hot whether you have a name for it or not.