the language of postmodernism

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iambiguous
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

The Limits of Language?
Ronin Winter
On the other hand [unlike other animal communication], humans are able to convey a variety of purposes and are able to symbolise elements of the world with words and language. This symbolism is brought upon by signs; Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist, believed that language consisted of a signifier (symbol) and a signified (concept).

Thus the word “tree” symbolises the actual object in reality that is the tree, and in this symbol there consists the signifier: how the word is phrased or spoken which is different across various languages and the actual concept (signified) which represents the idea of a tree is.
On the other hand, in regard to trees, an actual object out in the world we live in, there is a ton of objective information that we can fall back on pertaining to whatever language we choose and however the language we do choose is explored...semiotically?

Signifiers can generally come to the very same conclusions about whatever trees are being signified.

That is, until the discussion configures into a debate between the tree huggers and the lumber industry. What then is of significance? One side side deconstructing the other side based on which language deemed to be the most appropriate?
In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein put forth a treatise on the exploration of the limits of language and thought. In this he developed his picture theory of language which stated that language paints a picture of reality. Propositions then represent reality in a certain way and this can either be true or false; for example the proposition that “there is a dog in the garden” is true if in fact there actually is a dog in the garden and is false if it is not the case.
First trees. Now dogs.

How about this: Jim holds dog-fighting contests in his back yard out near the garden next to the oak tree where the dogs, trained to be savage beasts, battle viciously to the death. A "picture theory of language" here.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
Skepdick
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Skepdick »

iambiguous wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 2:49 am ... A "picture theory of language" here.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
The picture-theory of language is necessarily insufficient in a world which unfolds like a movie
Belinda
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

Skepdick wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:35 am
iambiguous wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 2:49 am ... A "picture theory of language" here.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
The picture-theory of language is necessarily insufficient in a world which unfolds like a movie
By "unfolds" do you mean language does not record meanings but makes meanings?
Skepdick
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Skepdick »

Belinda wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 10:51 am
Skepdick wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:35 am
iambiguous wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 2:49 am ... A "picture theory of language" here.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
The picture-theory of language is necessarily insufficient in a world which unfolds like a movie
By "unfolds" do you mean language does not record meanings but makes meanings?
I am merely saying that if language only captures pictures of reality, but not movies - then it's leaving much unsaid.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a movie is worth even more.
Belinda
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

Skepdick wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 11:59 am
Belinda wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 10:51 am
Skepdick wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:35 am
The picture-theory of language is necessarily insufficient in a world which unfolds like a movie
By "unfolds" do you mean language does not record meanings but makes meanings?
I am merely saying that if language only captures pictures of reality, but not movies - then it's leaving much unsaid.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a movie is worth even more.
Are you comparing still shots with moving pictures?

If so, language has much in common with the crystallising effect of the still shot. The still shot is less like reality than the movie because the still shot does not show a causal narrative as most movies do. However, let's remember that a movie narrative is selective of what causal connections the writer, director, and actor intend to purvey.
Skepdick
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Skepdick »

Belinda wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 12:37 pm Are you comparing still shots with moving pictures?

If so, language has much in common with the crystallising effect of the still shot. The still shot is less like reality than the movie because the still shot does not show a causal narrative as most movies do. However, let's remember that a movie narrative is selective of what causal connections the writer, director, and actor intend to purvey.
Just as much as one can be selective with the causal chains, one can also be selective with their still frames.

The human mind will fill in the blanks given the propper suggestion.

In both cases language can be used to deceive, or inform; so my point is strictly pragmatic. Speaking in movies communicates more information than speaking in pictures.
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iambiguous
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Skepdick wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:35 am
iambiguous wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 2:49 am ... A "picture theory of language" here.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
The picture-theory of language is necessarily insufficient in a world which unfolds like a movie
I'll promise not to ask you to explain what that means if you'll promise not to tell me.

Deal?
Skepdick
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Skepdick »

iambiguous wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 5:27 pm
Skepdick wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:35 am
iambiguous wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 2:49 am ... A "picture theory of language" here.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
The picture-theory of language is necessarily insufficient in a world which unfolds like a movie
I'll promise not to ask you to explain what that means if you'll promise not to tell me.

Deal?
I promise not to explain it. For it requires no explanation.
Belinda
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

Skepdick wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 12:39 pm
Belinda wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 12:37 pm Are you comparing still shots with moving pictures?

If so, language has much in common with the crystallising effect of the still shot. The still shot is less like reality than the movie because the still shot does not show a causal narrative as most movies do. However, let's remember that a movie narrative is selective of what causal connections the writer, director, and actor intend to purvey.
Just as much as one can be selective with the causal chains, one can also be selective with their still frames.

The human mind will fill in the blanks given the propper suggestion.

In both cases language can be used to deceive, or inform; so my point is strictly pragmatic. Speaking in movies communicates more information than speaking in pictures.
I agree. However language, being sequentially performative , can't transmit a Gestalt information. An expert speaker describing and explaining a map or a graph can't transmit all the relationships without a feat of memory on the part of the receiver. But the map or the graph can.
Walker
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Walker »

Skepdick wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 11:59 am
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a movie is worth even more.
However, memories are not moving narratives. They're more like frozen snapshots that persist: a smile, a glance, a fragrance, a place, a moment.

Those snapshots, daytime memories, are usually good so that folks can keep functioning and not melt down into a puddle. Much as pain gets forgotten, bad memories get minimized under a sweet glaze of nostalgia in order to keep moving about and functioning.

Uncontrollable, choiceless nightmares are more like movies because unlike the waking snapshot-memories, the next scene of the moving dream must be discovered rather than chosen, or remembered.
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iambiguous
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

The Limits of Language?
Ronin Winter
"A picture agrees with reality or fails to agree; it is correct or incorrect, true or false. In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare it with reality.” Ludwig Wittgenstein
Okay, here are some pictures: https://www.google.com/search?source=un ... =615&dpr=1

Pictures that depict the war in Ukraine. So, reality -- the truth -- from the perspective of Vladimir Putin or from the perspective of Volodymyr Zelenskyy?

Your assessment of what the pictures are telling us about this conflict or mine? Or the perspective of others regarding the reality -- the truth -- there?

Or how about pictures of this guy: https://www.google.com/search?source=un ... =615&dpr=1

Your reaction/reality/truth or mine?
Language is built on propositions. Reality contains facts. Propositions symbolise these facts and if they contain no truth or falsity, then they are meaningless. Wittgenstein believed that nothing correct can be said in philosophy. Philosophical propositions do not picture or coincide with reality.
What proposition containing what facts about the war in Ukraine or about Trump and MAGA?

And how exactly are philosophers not correct regarding the language they use in distinguishing truth and falsity in the either/or world?

Yeah, if propositions are defined as "a statement or assertion that expresses a judgment or opinion" then I agree that the tools of philosophy seem to confront limitations in a No God world. But to then propose further that "whereof one cannot speak [objectively], thereof one must be silent" is completely out of sync with the reality of human interactions. Only in isolating oneself completely from others is that relevant.

Instead, moral nihilists of my ilk propose that the "best of all possible worlds" revolves around "moderation, negotiation and compromise" in a political economy that revolves as much as possible around "democracy and the rule of law."

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
Skepdick
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Skepdick »

iambiguous wrote: Tue Nov 22, 2022 2:35 am Instead, moral nihilists of my ilk propose that the "best of all possible worlds" revolves around "moderation, negotiation and compromise" in a political economy that revolves as much as possible around "democracy and the rule of law."
I don't understand what a moral nihilist would negotiate for; or compromise about.

If you don't value anything then you have nothing to fight for and nothing to lose.
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iambiguous
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

The Limits of Language?
Ronin Winter
[Language is built on propositions]. This is especially true in ethics, a statement such as ‘Thou shall not kill’ is a statement entirely out of the confines of language, this is the limit of language it is simply incapable of delineating whether this statement is true or false. Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences it does not grapple with facts of reality, rather Wittgenstein believed that the role of Philosophy is the logical clarification of thought.
On the other hand, "for all practical purposes" what does this mean given the fact that in most communities the killing of others is a fact of life. And the language we use in reacting to that fact -- to the killings themselves -- must accommodate countless sets of circumstances. So the question becomes who decides what the limits of language are in connecting the dots between words and worlds.

Logic then.

Logic and capital punishment. Logic and assisted suicide. Logic and euthanasia. Logic and abortion. Logic and self-defense. Of course here the language employed by science is no less problematic.

That's why I created a language of my own. One that revolves around differentiating the use of language and logic in the either/or world and in the is/ought world. In one, being altogether and in the other fractured and fragmented.
“Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.” Ludwig Wittgenstein
Then back to how this in and of itself is but another "general description intellectual contraption". The sharp boundaries and clarity revolving around how we define the meaning of these words...logically?

And clear and distinct thoughts when you defended, say, the trucker protest in Canada, or clear and distinct thoughts when you defended the government?

My clear and distinct thoughts on this thread -- https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.p ... &start=475 -- or gib's clear and distinct thoughts?

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
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iambiguous
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

The Limits of Language?
Ronin Winter
By looking at the use of language in deeper level, one is able to discern that language is a set of propositions about reality. Language is essentially a model of reality, and all models are wrong; as models are abstractions and simplifications of reality. The true limit of language then is that one is never able to obtain absolute truth through the use of language.
And yet we all know that in regard to countless contexts in our actual lived lives, language does reflect reality with a precision that if not the "absolute truth" will do into it finally shows up.

Language:

"Spoken words are produced when air expelled from the lungs passes through a series of structures within the chest and throat and passes out through the mouth. The structures involved in that process are as follows: air that leaves the lungs travels up the trachea (windpipe) into the larynx. (The larynx is a longish tube that joins the trachea to the lower part of the mouth.) Two sections of the larynx consist of two thick, muscular folds of tissue known as the vocal cords.

"When a person wishes to say a word, muscles in the vocal cords tighten up. Air that passes through the tightened vocal cords begins to vibrate, producing a sound. The nature of that sound depends on factors such as how much air is pushed through the vocal cords and how tightly the vocal cords are stretched."


True for all of us except those who are afflicted with medical conditions that prevent them from speaking.

And the limits of language in the either/or world revolves mostly around the extent to which someone actually does know what they are talking about. But the crucial point is that there is in fact an objective reality that can be conveyed with language.
Despite this, one still needs to approximate closer and closer to the truth through probabilistic truth. The representations of language are inherently wrong but it is very useful, it enables humans to convey propositions of the world and gain a deeper understanding and interaction with reality. This ability enables us to gain insight into the nature of consciousness and the human condition, an experience that is uniquely human.
I must be missing something here. Probabilistic truth? Joe Biden wanted to be president. Joe Biden campaigned to be president. Joe Biden won the election and became president. Joe Biden, the president, now occupies the Oval Office. That's probably true?

No, instead, where language here becomes problematic is when it shifts from what some insist are these actual historical facts to another set of alleged facts altogether. The ones coming out of the mouths of those who insist that the democratic process was corrupted by the Democrats and that in fact Donald Trump really won the election.

And here, in the absence of an omniscient God, mere mortals do the best they can in trying to accumulate a set of facts that comes closest to the objective truth. But it's generally understood by both sides that there is an objective truth. Biden either did win fair and square or he cheated.

And then language becomes especially problematic [given my own moral philosophy] when it is used to judge the social, political and economic policies of Joe Biden as either more or less rational and virtuous.

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=175006
Iwannaplato
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Iwannaplato »

Skepdick wrote: Tue Nov 22, 2022 6:11 am
iambiguous wrote: Tue Nov 22, 2022 2:35 am Instead, moral nihilists of my ilk propose that the "best of all possible worlds" revolves around "moderation, negotiation and compromise" in a political economy that revolves as much as possible around "democracy and the rule of law."
I don't understand what a moral nihilist would negotiate for; or compromise about.

If you don't value anything then you have nothing to fight for and nothing to lose.
This exchange manages to quickly sum up two strange positions. The moral nihilist is presenting 'the best...' rather than....'what he or she wants'. It is presented as objective.
And this elicits a response where a critic of moral anti-realism seems to think that if you don't believe your values are objective then you can't have values. That you wouldn't value anything.
I can certainly sympathize with this response, given the absurdity of the moral nihilists hypocrisy, in this case, but since the point is universalized, it is just as confused.

The only possible excuse for the use of 'best' is that it is in quotes. But then so are negotiation, moderation and compromise. Which means the sentence has no meaning at all. Why not keep those out of quotation marks? Though I suppose a lot of people misuse quotes. Perhaps the first quotation marks around 'the best.....' were meant to say (not objectively) and the second use were just, well, a flawed use.

Then the moral nihilist in the exchange might be making sense while writing poorly. But given it would be so easy to say....

I wish we focused more on compromise, etc., than....might makes right or whatever he or she thinks the other approaches are.
And, of course, one can mix approaches, they are not mutually exclusive.
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