philosopher19 wrote: ↑June 24th, 2021, 5:41 am
But two things are clear to me:
1) Meanings/semantics should be treated as the meanings that they are.
2) Any given belief, statement, or theory that is contradictory, is certainly wrong.
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I think if x is meaningful, then that is because the nature of existence is such that it renders x meaningful. If y is
contradictory, then that is because the nature of existence is such that it renders y
contradictory.
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In any of the above, would you describe me as creating semantics? Or would you describe me as drawing your attention to semantics that have always existed and will always exist (as long as existence exists)? Did the semantic of
triangle ever mean anything other than
triangle? Did the semantic of
hybrid between a lion and a unicorn ever mean anything other than
hybrid between a lion and a unicorn? We can switch what word we attach to which semantic. We can also shift our focus from one semantic, to another. We can also come to understand more about a given semantic (I did not always know that the angels in a perfect triangle add up to 180 degrees). But we cannot create semantics. Nor did they mean something different in the past.
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We cannot meaningfully/semantically alter the semantic of triangle to another semantic. We can meaningfully/rationally increase in our understanding of that semantic, and we can meaningfully change the word/label for it. It is certain that we cannot alter any semantic.
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Triangle is a semantic. We are meaningfully aware of it, whilst insentient rocks are not aware of it. We are not the sustainers of semantics. Existence is the sustainer. All we do, is access semantics. We do not create, rather,
we combine that which we have access to, to either form something that is rational (a non-absurd story, belief, theory, or statement), or irrational (the concept of round-square, or an irrational theory or statement or story). Existence (or the nature of existence/being) determines whether that which we have formed is rational or irrational. Not us. I
know (not know in the absolute or a priori sense, but in the empirically assumed sense) that you know a round-square is absurd. Not because my nature or your nature makes it so, but rather because the nature of existence makes it so. If you call/label
this formation creation, then ok. But to me, creation is a more absolute act than
the formation described in this paragraph.
With all that has been said, do you acknowledge 1 and 2 from the beginning of this post?
Thanks for your reply philosopher19. Another long delay in responding on my part – it takes me time to sort through my ideas and put them into semi-coherent words.
I’m afraid I’m still not understanding your argument. We seem to be talking past each other rather than making progress toward a mutual understanding and I don’t want to belabor the points unnecessarily, so I’ll share some thoughts and if that doesn’t help then I’ll leave it at that. Ultimately though we may be saying the same thing but just coming at it from different angles.
I guess the main sticking point for me is this idea of semantics being something that we cannot create or alter. I just don’t see it this way - as I see it, semantics aren’t separable from communication. Meanings aren't 'what they are' - meanings are
that from our experience which we wish to share. We can’t communicate about the ‘nature of existence’ because we don’t know that – we only know the nature of our own experiences. And when we choose to communicate something about our experience, we’re not communicating our entire experience, but rather choosing what elements of that experience that we want the other to know, and for a specific purpose that we value. You've said that in communicating we ‘draw attention to’ a semantic, but I would say rather we
use semantics to draw attention to things – facts, objects, ideas, relationships, events, etc. – within our experiences that we value and want to be understood. In other words, semantics are determined not just by existence, by the act of valuing – the act of selecting out certain elements of that experience that we see as important or necessary for another individual to understand or become aware of. And a consequence of this is that semantics are entangled with the definitions we make and the ways we use our languages.
Maybe some examples might help illustrate. I think that one of the most elemental semantics is that of simply pointing at something – it’s a tool of communication that almost universally understood among humans. But it’s very general – it can encompass a lot of different objects or ideas depending on the circumstance. The words we’ve assigned to this semantic allow us to be more specific in communicating – so for example we have the words ‘this’ and ‘that’ which both approximate pointing but divide up our meaning into those things closer to the speaker and those things away from the speaker (in Spanish they’ve even created 3 semantics to capture this – one for objects near me, one for objects near you, and one for objects not near either of us). We do this by assigning definitions - to define is to set limits or boundaries, literally ‘to make finite’ – and definitions allow us to create categories of semantics which in turn allow us to be more specific in communication. So here, by assigning definitions to words, we have created the semantic that distinguishes between the objects that are near me from those that are farther. And while we don’t create the elemental components of semantics – we don’t create the objects or their properties that we’re referring to – we do create the semantics, i.e. the
ways that we decide to distinguish one object from another in order to communicate that distinction to another person.
So the nature of a semantic will depend a lot on context – in the case of pointing on what objects are in that frame of reference (e.g. ‘this ball’ may be meaningful if there is a ball here in front of us, but meaningless if there is not). Similarly, a semantic like ‘triangle’ is a way we communicate to distinguish one shape from another – it’s a classification of shapes. If I have a square block and a triangular block in the next room, I can communicate to you which one I want you to get for me or to think about because we’ve created a semantic to distinguish 3-sided objects from 4-sided objects - we’ve defined shapes into these categories based on the number of sides. The primal, if you will, meaning of triangle doesn’t encompass any idea of a perfect triangle with perfectly straight sides or angles, but is simple a way to allow us to communicate this distinction between shapes. Additional definitions can be added to refine this – to create sub-categories in order to be able make further and more specific distinctions.
In your example above, your sfgsfgabc (or a round square or a married bachelor) is meaningless not because of the nature of existence, but simply because the two semantic categories we're using are mutually exclusive – the definitions themselves do not allow for for it because the criteria for the use of that name is specific and allows us to classify all 3- and 4-sided objects into one or the other semantic category – it’s an either/or, because the number of sides a sided-shape has is a discrete count. So if I asked you to get me the block that is both triangle and square, you would not understand what I’m asking for. But in a different type of example, if I had classified my blocks into red ones and blue ones, and I tell you to get one that is ‘both red and blue’, this could in fact be meaningful – e.g. it might be what we call ‘purple’, or ‘striped’– because categories of color are not mutually exclusive since they exist on a spectrum. In other words, semantic contradictions are intrinsic in the way the words/categories are defined, not in the nature of the objects themselves.
So you’ve said in your example that “head is both completely triangular and completely square at the same time” is meaningless because of the nature of existence, but I disagree – I see it as meaningless because of the particular nature of the semantic which we have chosen to classify the shape of the object only allows the object to be classified as one or the other and not both. And I certainly don’t agree that the phrase is ‘certainly meaningless to all’ – it may well in fact be meaningful to the speaker. Consider for example a person who had never seen a purple object, and so would not have this word in their vocabulary. So we might tell them that the object is ‘both completely blue and completely red at the same time’ and they would likely say that this is meaningless unless we could find a way to show them the object we’re talking about and resolve this for them.
Contradictions and inconsistencies in language are commonplace because of the imprecision in definitions, or because definitions are not shared or understood exactly the same way between speakers, not because people necessarily are holding semantically inconsistent beliefs or are being nonsensical or misrepresenting what is being communicated. When we see or hear something that we understand to be meaningless or contradictory, it’s more often a failure of our communication tools to accurately transmit meaning. The approach to contradictions shouldn’t be to dismiss them as meaningless or assume wrong belief, it should be to further communicate in order seek clarification and resolve the contradictions in order to create mutual understanding.
So in short, I don't agree with 1 or 2, for the reasons I've given here, and hope they're understandable. There’s more to say here obviously but this is getting long so I’ll stop here. If you’d like to continue getting into this more, just let me know. I think your more recent posts on this thread also have some interesting ideas for discussion and I may respond to those separately, though I realize they’re starting to get a little off topic.
