h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello all,
Out of nowhere I came and settled in with deceptive claims of belonging. I once heard a language a test for language being a sign system in which you can lie and tell jokes. I think lies help us to an understanding of language more accurate than the difficult-to-shake-off faith language communicates the ideas in our head to listeners. Lies are intended to generate beliefs and thoughts in the listener that do not accord with those in the speakers' consciousness. It is no window or opening onto the mind, and it's no clean channel of communication.

Edward seems to me a little too quick in answering his imperative.
>>Let's remember where languiage comes from. It's a product of brain function. And what does it do? It expresses ideas.

I think there is something essentially, intransigently non-mental, extra-conscious, material about language. I could maybe accept thinking of language as a 'product of brain function' so long as we understand an other factor was part of its genesis and remains part of its constitution. I think Derrida stress upon writing brings the physical aspect of linguistic expression to the fore, doubting the pseudo-transcendence people may feel is involved with airy, invisible speech.

He wrote somewhere (I forget the reference at the mo) about the presumption the creation of a spoken language temporally preceded the first evidence of written language. This near instinctive attitude he questioned, examining it as part of the structure of values priveleging the concepts of consciousness and presence tied to speaking over writing and its associations of absent consciousness and the greater possibilities of misreading. I think it was a paper by Claude Levi-Strauss which discussed Saharan nomads, and their long oral traditions which they'd never committed to writing. As had been mentioned in the paper these nomads had taken the same routes through the desert as their ancestors had for centuries previously. Their repeated steps had inscribed their movements onto the landscape. Can we not understand these tracks as writing? Haven't generations read and rewritten a certain relation to the landscape; understood and communicated a wide range of information in these man-made marks?

The vibrations our breathing and throats make in the air surely have a comprable association with language. Surely early speakers did not figure out words then speak them, but vocalised noises and growing awareness of their potential would have evolved over a considerable period together. This may seem a trivial point, but I think the fundamental role of material from the very beginnings of language and still necessary to its productions is very important. Matter has its own qualities, which we can craft to create the tools and ornaments we desire, working as much as possible with the matter's inherent nature, but always having to deal with a certain resistance to our brain's ideal conceptions.


This materiality of language is necessary to enable the repeating of marks, letters, words which is the basis of language. But this repeatability also prevents any piece of language, of speech or writing, completely equating with mental activity. Because every word in this sentence, or any sentence, only makes sense because the reader recognises them from many previous repetitions. Of course each one of us have been exposed to a unique portion of English, and our unique life experiences mean we'll have developed unique understandings of each word; eg. 'dog' means something different to my South African friend who grew up experiencing Alsatian guard dogs terrorizing pedestrians just outside high wire fences, from me who is used to dogs cruelly restricted to urban backyards for pets. This doesn't even bring into consideration the manifestly social function language always plays.

Whether you're upper-caste Indian, an Aboriginal mother-in-law, the Japanes emperor, Danish or American, the words available to you and which you choose will say things about your social position and your relation to it. You can not simply express an idea. You will always create a concept which is coloured by the symptoms and signs of your social position you can't help, inextricably involved in all your discourse. I try to use the big words I can remember from uni to give credibility to my arguments, use of web jargon indicates the writers familiarity with the internet, Hirohito used on radio linguistic forms at the extreme of indicating the speaker's position to the exclusion of its content.


So I think language does more than express ideas, and it is not simply the product of brain function.
>>So...I think we have to distinguish very, very carefully between language and ideas. With the former, we have a finite (if extensible) vocabulary and framework which we can use to express an infinite (?) range of ideas.
I disagree with Edward when he states plainly that what language does is express ideas. Hence I disagree we should distinguish language from ideas, because the ideas we are able to formulate are intimately connected with the language we have acquired to think with. I'd also disagree language is a finite vocabulary and framework. I think indeed it is the very incapacity of language to express adequately our brains' work and our experiences that constantly drives its illimitable development.

Perhaps the gung ho recumbent man recognises how indebted my ideas are to Derrida, the only man deserving of the title contemporary thinker, which is especially sad since he recently died. He almost always wrote through/against the writing of others, realising to think for ourselves involves thinking out of the structures bestowed on us. I accept my lack of originality with a sense of hope and faith he gives me that language does provide ways out of itself.



anax

Whoa! *struggles through the backlog*

>> I think there is something essentially, intransigently non-mental, extra-conscious, material about language.

If you mean language is tied into context, and the mechanics of producing language, yes. I fail to see from the facts that we have throats to speak with, and places to speak in, that there is any thing essentially transcendent about language. Extra-conscious? Do you mean implicit, unstated, perhaps unrecognised? Yes. Strictly extra conscious? very doubtful.

>> Can we not understand these tracks as writing?

Nope. These tracks may be a representation. That doesn't make them writing. If you want to call things like those writing, ok. But language & representation are different, in that the second affords the first, but not the other way round. It is indeed highly probable that our skills at generating representations came before our language-speech skills (cave art?), but those representations don't equate to writing - they are artifacts of cognition. Grunts & screeches may be the origins of language - in which case they are clearly representations for the purpose of communication. I am a proponent of the idea that embodiment is necessary for our brand of cognition, but saying everything is writing is a bit far, methinks. That would be like saying that all communication is language, which for an abstract theory is fine (look what Claude Shannon did to the word 'information'), but doesn't help distinguish things about marks made in straight lines on paper in specific styles of combination and the sounds we seem to make when we see those marks from things about the way a basketball team synchronises itself.

>> You can not simply express an idea. You will always create a concept which is coloured by the symptoms and signs of your social position you can't help, inextricably involved in all your discourse

And this statement is intended to support your statement that language is extra conscious? Then you're conflating the way we think and cognize with the way we speak. Context is a necessary part of cognition - which is why reductionist methods of AI won't quite be as effective as non-reductionist approaches or the real thing, because they leave out the context. Speech, i would argue, is both an artifact & enabler of cognition. As such, it must always involve context dependent bits - however, that does not mean that it, in itself, has anything non-mental about it.

>> working as much as possible with the matter's inherent nature, but always having to deal with a certain resistance to our brain's ideal conceptions

Ideal? Or simplistic, incomplete conceptions about the nature of matter?

>> I try to use the big words I can remember from uni to give credibility to my arguments

Why would you do that?

~ db

Recumbentman:

>> we accept the necessary fiction that we share language -- it exists not so much *in* as *between* us -- and that we intend, and are able, to understand and agree with each other.

Exactly. The curious part is how the same phenomenon may be seen to operate at a philosophical level (intersubjectivity) and at a social-cognitive level (as a sociological study of london underground line control room operators showed). In the second case, line control room operators working in tandem would co-ordinate their activities under the assumption that the other person was aware of their situation, and interpreted each others actions as being oriented towards that.

~ db

Courious----Writings are physical and can be seen on paper or on the wall.

This reply actually ends at the penultimate paragraph.

Writings is a means of communications and if communicating it is representative of a language. If it does not communicate then it is what? gibberish?

Language is like writing in that it is a means of communication and can be in many forms, signed, etched in rock(a type of writing), spoken using the throat, tongue, and lips, unspoken facial distortions, or even whistling. Right this moment one of my boxers is telling me she wants to go out. All she is doing is staring at me but it is the stare of, "I want to go out." If I ignore her long enough then she will go to Phase II and give me little sounds. Something close to a whimper. And if I ignore that long enough she will start to dance or prance and whimper and stare. Are not any and all of these communications. Therefore are they not a language. Or at the least lingua franca? If it is the latter then assuredly the first as well.

Muy other boxer just jumps up putting her paws on my legs and looks me in the eye(s) with her right eye. Means the same as above. Only thing I don't understand is why she uses the eye that is clouded over rather than the good eye.

A mother whose son is a good friend to and with my oldest son for reasons I have forgotten speaks with her hands. She doesn't need to speak with her hands as she does not have a speech problem. But her method of speaking is a punning way. For example if in talking to a non-hearing person and the subject of sunflowers were to come up she would sign the word as son flour. I thought professors were weird but in this case it is the professor's wife. The thing is she could sign sunflower but prefers to sign son flour and the conversation still goes on.

Sorry, The first sentence either lacks the marks which make it say the thing I want it to say or I totally didn't write the words in a form to say what I meant. What I meant is the mother who has a son who is a good friend to my son is a lady who talks with her hands but I do not remember why she talks with her hands.

So if she says she is planting son flour seeds, does that mean she is speaking gibberish and therefore not a language? I'm sorry but I don't know the "or" part of the previous questioned sentence. I almost said questionable but then the meaning would have been confusing because obviously it is a sentence.

And if two people look at one and another and agree without saying a word because the scene they both observed some how meant the same to both is there language involved or not?

What I do not understand is why written language can not have one word for one meaning but has to rely on inflections. I can understand the need of inflections if the language has only four words but Enlish has several hundred times more than four. e.g., you do not need to be absent to absent from the vote. I read a book I want you to read. I will have two to go too. And why do you colour the picture while I just color it? Okay that has nothing to do with the rest of the paragraph, but I thought, Oh what the heck, I will throw that in also.

<>
Then you are combinding into one the way we think and and are becoming aware or know something with the way we speak. Either way I did not understand. Could you simplify that sentence before I try to strain the brain on the next part.

Well that is all I have at the moment. I throw this paragraph in so that the second line of the beginning of this post will be an accurate statement. There is no meaning to this the final paragraph. If however you do fine meaning then I am totally lost as to what it is and how it got in here in the first place. Or for that matter the last place.

Thank you.

>>I think there is something essentially, intransigently non-mental, extra-conscious, material about language.

Poppycock! So where does it come from? Your liver? Your toes? The pixies?

And that too. Thanks Ed.

As I seem to be under some sort of attack I feel compelled, however briefly, to chirp back in. First, my use of "extra-conscious" was meant to suggest 'outside', 'other than' along the lines of extra terrestrial. So I wasn't really meaning implicit, or context specific, though I think I am in agreement with db, as I was trying to make the point language only ever exists in an embodied form, while there does seem to be a common dellusion it exists in some etherial, immaterial form, as untouchable as thoughts.

I'm not sure I understand the difference between 'cognize' and think, but I am suggesting language is a necessary condition of thought. And as such is always embodied. This is why I brought in the idea of language's materiality causing some resistance to our brain's ideal conceptions - that is would-be ideals, our deluded tendency to regard our language as tool for dealing with and comprehending ideals - be they 'good', 'justice', or 'dog'. We share a faith our words refer to some transcendent idea separate from each speaker, where our words are always spoken and understood in the context of a limited set of associations peculiar to each.

hope that clears it all up - trying to keep the big words down,


anax

>> Then you are combinding (sic?) into one the way we think and and are becoming aware or know something with the way we speak. Either way I did not understand. Could you simplify that sentence before I try to strain the brain on the next part.

Cognition depends on context. Speech/language uses representations, which are embodied and connected to a context. Thus, language by itself may not be context-dependent, or beyond the speaker/writer - those aspects of it that seem to be so are likely due to cognitive factors.

>> Writings is a means of communications... stare. Are not any and all of these communications. Therefore are they not a language. Or at the least lingua franca? If it is the latter then assuredly the first as well

everything that is communicative is a language? does that mean every form of communication has a syntactic structure, consists of shared vocabulary of symbols, uses various configurations of symbols to transfer information about (potentially hypothetical) situations? If I hit someone because I am frustrated with them, or make love because I am deeply involved with them, it is language? It is communication, certainly, but is it language? How useful is such a definition?

Also, a closer look at this statement reveals that it is of the form: "A is a means of B... Are not all these X, B? Therefore are they not A? If X is B, then it is assuredly A as well"... I was not aware that "is a means of" means "is identical with"

btw:

lan·guage: n.

1.
1.1 Communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols.
1.2 Such a system including its rules for combining its components, such as words.
1.3 Such a system as used by a nation, people, or other distinct community; often contrasted with dialect.
2.
2.1 A system of signs, symbols, gestures, or rules used in communicating: the language of algebra.
2.2 Computer Science. A system of symbols and rules used for communication with or between computers.
3. Body language; kinesics.
4. The special vocabulary and usages of a scientific, professional, or other group: “his total mastery of screen languagecamera placement, editingand his handling of actors” (Jack Kroll).
5. A characteristic style of speech or writing: Shakespearean language.
6. A particular manner of expression: profane language; persuasive language.
7. The manner or means of communication between living creatures other than humans: the language of dolphins.
8. Verbal communication as a subject of study.
9. The wording of a legal document or statute as distinct from the spirit.

[Middle English, from Old French langage, from langue, tongue, language, from Latin lingua. See dgh- in Indo-European Roots.]

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

I believe we are discussing definitions 1.1-1.3, 2.1-2.2. If I am mistaken, please let me know. Thus, when I say 'communication' I mean the construction of shared states (of organism, cognitive states, whatever). When I mean 'language' I mean the structured form of communication using discrete tokens with constructed rules.

>> What I do not understand is why written language can not have one word for one meaning but has to rely on inflections

You mean you do not understand why *English* cannot have one word for one meaning. *shrug*. Not all languages are like that.

>> I throw this paragraph in so that the second line of the beginning of this post will be an accurate statement. There is no meaning to this the final paragraph. If however you do fine meaning then I am totally lost as to what it is and how it got in here in the first place. Or for that matter the last place.

Whether you would have included this para or not does not make a difference to the meaning/truth of the second one. So, at the very least, it is a fallacy. However, it seems you are trying to communicate that very fact by making it explicit. It also seems that you know that. Which, if true, would make this para doubly fallacious. Is that meaning enough? What is your point?

>> common dellusion it exists in some etherial, immaterial form, as untouchable as thoughts

How can you be in agreement with me? I'm saying that thoughts are embodied as well...

>> our deluded tendency to regard our language as tool for dealing with and comprehending ideals

Wanting to comprehend ideals is part of human nature. Ideals make us happy - they are less complex than the world is. They can be standardised, replicated, repeated, and manipulated in finite ways. Ideals are certain, while the world is not. How is any of this specific to language?

>> We share a faith our words refer to some transcendent idea separate from each speaker

Yes, but it is a useful faith, isn't it? This also backs up what I'm saying - faith in language is a consequence of faith in intersubjective things. So, language *is* a tool for dealing with and comprehending ideals

Okay, I am thinking I have a better understanding. Not sure, but maybe. I will need to digest and maybel later re-read..

My point? That Dancingbuddha was the point; that there was no point to the last paragraph other than to make the second line found in the begining a correct statement, thereby allowing me to use for no particular reason one of my three favorite words. I do not know if other people have favorite words or not, although some do say certain words alot which may give the impression it is a favorite word, but I do have three.

The first won me a spelldown in the sixth grade.

The second because some one wrote a letter to my department explaining why he didn't owe the bill we sent him and use the (now favorite) word in the second sentence to let us know in the next to last pargraph the explanation of why he did not owe us.

The last word simply because I found it an interesting way to describe life as a neverending uphill struggle and now have more respect for the man and his rock.

my bad, i read 'penultimate' as 'ultimate' - i forgot english had words that mean 'next to last'

<>

We have those in New Zealand as well...

<>

Exactly what we call biscuits here!

>>I think there is something essentially, intransigently non-mental, extra-conscious, material about language.

I agree with Ed the Bo about this (that it is poppycock). I challenge the assumption that "material" means "non-mental, extra-conscious". The assumption that matter is "outside" and the mental is "inside" is crude and simply wrong. It is a picture of the world that requires two kinds of reality, solid stuff and mental stuff. The picture brings on the dualist problem, namely how can such opposed kinds of stuff interact at all?

This fallacy was spotted by Berkeley A3390554 who pointed out that we cannot say (or think) anything about any supposed "matter" or "substance" that is essentially, intransigently outside the mind.

The idea that thought is entirely bounded by language is hard to escape, but there is some movement there, as Steven Pinker reports in "The Blank Slate". MoFoLo's boxers do communicate eloquently, and whether you call their messages language or not doesn't really matter. Treating speech as a (shrewd) act of faith covers this instance too.

Why should writing have primacy? Someone has been living too long in books. If all the world were paper . . .

Greetings all,
Seeing the array of misunderstandings weaving through this thread, reminds me of other failures of communication I encounter daily
and the reaction they cause. People seem to feel and express some surprise with their disappointment the linguistic effort do not fulfil the intention partially involved in its making. These disappointments and surprises, which I feel sure are far more frequent than any of us realise, are indicative of the delusion, which I feel is quite ingrained in our language, that our primary understanding of language is
>>1.
1.1 Communication of thoughts and feelings...
which ~db helpfully glosses
>>Thus, when I say 'communication' I mean the construction of shared states (of organism, cognitive states, whatever). When I mean 'language' I mean the structured form of communication using discrete tokens with constructed rules.
Those comporatively few times we are conscious of misunderstandings indicate unexpected failues to induce a shared cognitive state in the audience. But do we ever share cognitive states? Can we ever use mere words in a special order that will create thoughts and feelings in someone else that match our own? I believe that even supposed successful linguistic communication involve the reader/listener developing only functional approximations of ideas intended, and certainly not necessarily shared, by the writer/speaker.

Saussure drew up a diagram of two heads with lines going from the brain of one through its mouth across the distance between them, through the ear and into the brain of the other. This is the simple model of communication still generally operating now I believe. It suggests an ideal of access to and expression of one's consciousness that can never
be realized because of what is mentioned next in the cited definition of language, that it is communication
>>...through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols

Because there is no essential or necessary link between the material dimension of language, its sounds or material marks, and meanings, and because each speaker has learned over their life unique associations between the two, linguistic communication never involves the sharing of the same ideas.

~db picked me up when I spoke of language being thought of with a
>> common delusion it exists in some etherial, immaterial form, as untouchable as thoughts

How can you be in agreement with me? I'm saying that thoughts are embodied as well...

I do agree that thoughts are always embodied. I'd been careless in my phrasing by which I'd only meant to suggest people commonly attribute qualities of thought, which while embodied I don't really think can be touched, to language. Indeed I think it is the very specificity of both, their locality, their being somewhere in particular on the earth, is why there cannot be that perfect communication of thoughts and feelings which would involve mutual access to an ideal realm.

After stressing the importance of context, I was surprised by ~db's seeming contradiction in promoting idealism
>>Wanting to comprehend ideals is part of human nature. Ideals make us happy - they are less complex than the world is. They can be standardised, replicated, repeated, and manipulated in finite ways. Ideals are certain, while the world is not. How is any of this specific to language?

>>>> We share a faith our words refer to some transcendent idea separate from each speaker

>>Yes, but it is a useful faith, isn't it? This also backs up what I'm saying - faith in language is a consequence of faith in intersubjective things. So, language *is* a tool for dealing with and comprehending ideals
While agreeing with the apparent tendency of human's to comprehend ideals, I'd first question the use of that overused ideal 'human nature'. I think it's one of the most dangerous ideals around, exploited by thinkers and politicians promoting their view of society and their vision for its future. I don't believe there is 'human nature', a set of attributes and attitudes inherent and unalterable in everyone. I've heard it used by free-marketeers, saying human nature is greedy and their system best organizes them; where I recall moments of great collective effort where people happily put the good of society over self-interest.

I also disagree that 'ideals are certain, while the world is not', suggesting this contrast is only generated a positive attitude to ideals, from which the infinite variety and complexity and non-ideal reality of the world seems lacking. George Bush may be motivated by an ideal of 'freedom', which he strives to have
>>standardised, replicated, repeated, and manipulated in finite ways
but I'm yet to be swayed his ideal is more 'certain' than the array of conflicting ideas in conflict in contemporary discourse.

I think language has everything to do with this idealising impulse, and indeed that it's language that enables and promotes and is itself evidence of idealising.
>> ~db ...Speech, i would argue, is both an artifact & enabler of cognition. As such, it must always involve context dependent bits - however, that does not mean that it, in itself, has anything non-mental about it.
I started reading this and was glad to be in agreement, especially liking the idea that speech is an artifact, like a material archaeological find, of thinking which it had played a part in making possible. This suggested to me the embodiment of both, as discussed above. I enjoyed and agreed with the continuing assertion that it must always 'involve context dependent bits', especially liking the materiality suggested by 'bits'. But then I was disappointed or suffered another miscommunication with the line that
>>that does not mean that it, in itself, has anything non-mental about it.
Perhaps ~db was using 'context' to refer to some immaterial situation, but with the previous stress on embodiment I didn't think so. It is the necessity and involvement of context on any reading, on any generation of meaning, that I, and I thought ~db, agreed. We only encounter texts of any sort in a context, and that context plays a part in the significance we make of it. The make-up of the reader's brain is a vital part of the situation of reading. There is no etherial, transcendent heaven where texts can go and mean what they really mean. Meanings are made on this infinitely complex and varying world.

anax

ps. In no way am I trying to suggest we grant primacy to writing over speaking. I was trying to show that the primacy generally given the spoken involves a whole hierarchical network of forces that has consequences on the values and possibilities of what we can think.

>> I don't believe there is 'human nature', a set of attributes and attitudes inherent and unalterable in everyone.

Nothing is unalterable, but omitting that word, the above is a huge and (I suggest) unrealistic claim.

That is what Pinker's "Blank Slate" is all about: that there *is* such a thing as 'human nature' which guides us very powerfully. It shows itself equally in all sorts of societies. We are at liberty to decline its urgings (as Pinker has, for instance, in choosing not to have children) but we will certainly feel them, and in highly predictable ways.

>> But do we ever share cognitive states? Can we ever use mere words in a special order that will create thoughts and feelings in someone else that match our own? I believe that even supposed successful linguistic communication involve the reader/listener developing only functional approximations of ideas intended, and certainly not necessarily shared, by the writer/speaker

When I say 'shared states', I don't mean my electrons are at the same positions, with the same velocities, spins and other properties as yours. I mean that a subset of me shares states with a subset of you - that subset could be morphological, mental, biological, physical, whatever. In so far as you and me are separate entities, we can never share anything exactly. So, when I say "Run, tiger!" you don't start making an ice cream. "Run, tiger!" does not tell you at what speed to run, and in what direction, but it's good enough for its purpose - to alert you. That's the point of communication (note, not language) - to establish shared states *well enough*.

If that doesn't convince you - take a peek at information theory, and the problem of distinguishing the figure from the ground in a message de novo, without any standards or pre-existing agreement as to that figure & ground are defined as.

>> While agreeing with the apparent tendency of human's to comprehend ideals, I'd first question the use of that overused ideal 'human nature'

Doctors claim that all humans have things called 'hearts' in them that pump that red stuff around. I don't believe that, my blood certainly doesn't flow the same way as yours...

An ideal, btw, is a nothing but a form (as in plato) that is not ambiguous. Ideals are exact - a line, a type of behaviour, aesthetics, whatever. The point is precisely that ideals don't change, they can be relied upon to always be the same. That is what I meant by saying that ideals are 'certain'. Naturally, some that is certain is less rich than the world, because the world is uncertain.

>> We only encounter texts of any sort in a context, and that context plays a part in the significance we make of it.

Yes, because we exhibit a specific type of cognition, which is context-dependent. What I am saying is speech exhibits context dependency because cognitive processes do...

db

I am doing my best to understand your various positions ~db and give my reasons for criticisms of what seem paradoxes, but feel you unfortunately are keener to disagree than understand our differences:
>>When I say 'shared states', I don't mean my electrons are at the same positions, with the same velocities, spins and other properties as yours.
I'm baffled as to how you could so misunderstand my argument. Only on the most superficial reading of part of my remarks read out of context could I be understood as suggesting anything like what you imputed to me. My ignored argument was that
>>Because there is no essential or necessary link between the material dimension of language, its sounds or material marks, and meanings, and because each speaker has learned over their life unique associations between the two, linguistic communication never involves the sharing of the same ideas.
The interesting thing is ~db seems to be arguing on my behalf when he writes:
>>So, when I say "Run, tiger!" you don't start making an ice cream. "Run, tiger!" does not tell you at what speed to run, and in what direction, but it's good enough for its purpose - to alert you. That's the point of communication (note, not language) - to establish shared states *well enough*.
As I had said
>>Can we ever use mere words in a special order that will create thoughts and feelings in someone else that match our own? I believe that even supposed successful linguistic communication involve the reader/listener developing only functional approximations of ideas intended, and certainly not necessarily shared, by the writer/speaker.

This idea ~db raises of language being a tool, a functional implement for effecting the behaviour of others (an idea that can be very useful for analysing the work of language in society but which is grossly inadequate approaching non-functional uses of language like drama and poetry) is less concerned whether a text generates a mental state comprable to the authors, but whether the text causes particular reactions in the reader/hearer. It doesn't matter in this view of language if your tiger is very different from my tiger so long as I know I've got to scram when you tell me one's about.

But such a functional model of language use is different from the usual one, as defined in the dictionary and which we at least in part were working with previously, which is modeled on one brain communicating ideas through language to the brain of the other. In this model it does matter that my tiger is different to yours. This is the delusion I refered to, that anyone is able to create in the mind of their audience certain intended ideas by communicating with them in language. Only in a vague sense, can reading or hearing someone's text create >>shared states<<. Maybe the states are *well enough* to get things done, but "shared" suggests two or more parties having some involvement with the same one thing. This is the ideal intrinsic to the common understanding of language, that the word "tiger" refers to some (platonic) ideal transcendent from any but available to all users of English.

>>An ideal, btw, is a nothing but a form (as in plato) that is not ambiguous. Ideals are exact - a line, a type of behaviour, aesthetics, whatever. The point is precisely that ideals don't change, they can be relied upon to always be the same. That is what I meant by saying that ideals are 'certain'. Naturally, some that is certain is less rich than the world, because the world is uncertain.
So what of Bush's ideal 'freedom'? He certainly claims it can be relied upon to stay the same and that it's an unambiguous good for humanity. He uses it to justify his imperial conquests. But I'm not as certain about it as many are, indeed there appears to be large portions of the world who aren't convinced about it and the ideals of 'justice', 'democracy', 'free trade' etc he bundles together. I'm suggesting that all these ideals are not separate from the complex world as you suggest, but very much of the world, conceived and promoted from historical and geographic contexts by specific individuals with very worldly intentions. While disagreeing with his understanding of these ideals, I do not share in a belief of other ideals which motivates fundamentalist terrorists. I am not offering alternative ideals, or alternative definitions of old ideals, but encouraging scepticism in the belief of transcendent ideals and suggesting there lies much danger in believing in the inherent rightness of ideals.

Finally I want to turn to a response to my comments on human nature:
>>Doctors claim that all humans have things called 'hearts' in them that pump that red stuff around. I don't believe that, my blood certainly doesn't flow the same way as yours...
I'm not certain but I presume this is mocking my scepticism of the concept of 'human nature' by suggesting it is just like having an organ. I'd have zero problem with usage of 'human nature' if it was referring to objective attributes of human's physical existence. Recumbent man comments on this issue:
>> there *is* such a thing as 'human nature' which guides us very powerfully. It shows itself equally in all sorts of societies. We are at liberty to decline its urgings (as Pinker has, for instance, in choosing not to have children) but we will certainly feel them, and in highly predictable ways.
I don't know Pinker's work but question the argument linked to it. For the notion to make sense, human nature must refer to a set of instincts, motivations, drives or whatever you call them, that is the same for all people in all societies over time. It must be understood to be independent for the particularities of inculturation. I recall seeing a documentary and was interested to read up further on the immense effort made by almost the entire population of China, when chairman Mao asked the population for steal to help the economy of the nation. The footage brought to life the text I read about the huge enthusiasm the mass of Chinese people set about the task, contributing their woks, all their ornaments , zealously seeking our morsels of the sought after steel. The whole enterprise turned out to be misguided, but proves vividly how the egotistical values of the west are not part of 'human nature' but just as inculturated as the social consciousness of the chinese were then. It is this type of drive and motivation that is usually referred to by those making arguments from human nature. More strictly biological issues like women's desire to have babies, I'm less concerned about, but even there, do we not all know of women who do not want babies. I've never heard a suggestion of something that is part of human nature that I find convincing, and I usually have doubts about why they're making such claims for the same reason I have doubts about Bush claiming he knows the ideals the world needs him enforce..

Every body just like every word is created, exists and makes meaning in the wonderful peculiarly individual contexts of the world uniquely.

anax

Communication is negotiation. Errors are continuous optimization.

Ideals are definitions. Ideals are incomplete definitions.

Human nature is the set of behaviours we can exhibit.

We are material creatures.

We have form.

Some of that form has structure.

We are not completely different from one another.

We can use that structure to predict what we will do.

All predictions are uncertain.

I rest my case.

*thinks hard*

*realises he's probably derailing the thread*

*offers anax to take this debate to a personal space*

Don't worry. I do ramble on far too much. Sorry if I've done more inappropriate nubbieness but I'll shut up for now.

Thanks for the debate.

anax