The Absurdity of 'Thinking in Language'

the author's site ^ | 1972 | Dallas Willard

[unspun]

The Absurdity of 'Thinking in Language'

This paper has been read to the University of Southern California philosophy group and the Boston 1972 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, as well as to the Houston meeting of the Southwestern Philosophical Society. Appeared in The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, IV(1973), pp. 125-132. Numbers in "<>" refer to this journal.

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Among the principal assumptions of major portions of philosophy in recent decades have been: (1) That philosophy somehow consists of (some sort of) logic, and (2) that logic is a study of and theory about (some sort of) language. There, of course, follows from these a third assumption: (3) That philosophy is a study of and theory about (some sort of) language--though this implication should not be taken as representing any phase of the historical development of recent philosophizing. Instead of listing these three points as assumptions, it would probably be more correct to regard them as categories or complexes of assumptions; or perhaps, more vaguely still, as 'tendencies' or proclivities of recent philosophical thinking. But precision of these points need not be put in issue here, as this paper does not seek any large-scale resolution of the problem area in question. The aim here is to examine only one proposition which plays a role in the clearly existent tendencies referred to: Namely, the proposition that we think in or with language. I hope to show, first, that we do not always think in or with language; and then, second, that the very conception of thinking in or with language involves an absurdity. What implications this has for broader philosophical assumptions or tendencies will not be dealt with here, though the implications in question seem to me to be extremely important ones. That human beings think in language is explicitly stated in such diverse places as ordinary newspapers, the more sophisticated popular magazines and journals, and serious discourse in the humanities and the social sciences, as well as in the technical writings of philosophers. To prove this broad range of consensus would be idle; but, in order to have the philosophical context clearly before us, we may give a few brief quotations. <126>       (1) Man, like every living creature, thinks unceasingly, but does not know it: the thinking which becomes conscious of itself is only the smallest part thereof. And, we may say, the worst part:--for this conscious thinking alone is done in words, that is to say, in the symbols for communication, by means of which the origin of consciousness is revealed. (Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, sub-sec. # 354)      (2) Let no one be contemptuous of symbols! A good deal depends upon a practical selection of them. Furthermore, their value is not diminished by the fact that after much practice, we no longer really need to call forth a symbol, we do not need to speak out loud in order to think. The fact remains that we think in words or, when not in words, then in mathematical or other symbols. (Frege, Mind, Vol. 73, p. 156)      (3) It is misleading then to talk of thinking as of a 'mental activity'. We may say that thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs. This activity is performed by the hand, when we think by writing; by the mouth and larynx, when we think by speaking; and if we think by imagining signs or pictures, I can give you no agent that thinks. If then you say that in such cases the mind thinks, I would only draw your attention to the fact that you are using a metaphor, that here the mind is an agent in a different sense from that in which the hand can be said to be an agent in writing. (Wittgenstein, Blue Book, pp. 6-7)      (4) ... The woof and warp of all thought and all research is symbols, and the life of thought and science is the life inherent in symbols; so that it is wrong to say that a good language is important to good thought, merely; for it is of the essence of it. (C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, II, p. 129)      (5) Words only matter because words are what we think with. (H. H. Price, Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. XIX, p. 7)      (6) Theorizing is an activity which most people can and normally do conduct in silence. They articulate in sentences the theories that they construct, but they do not most of the time speak these sentences out loud. They say them to themselves.... Much of our ordinary thinking is conducted in internal monologue or silent soliloquy, usually accompanied by an internal cinematograph-show of visual imagery.... This trick of talking to oneself in silence is acquired neither quickly nor without effort.... (Ryle, Concept of Mind, p. 27. See also pp. 282-83 and 296-97) <127>      (7)This helps to elucidate the well-known difficulty of thinking without words. Certain kinds of thinking are pieces of intelligent talking to oneself. Consider the way in which I 'thinkingly' wrote the last sentence. I can no more do the 'thinking' part without the talking (or writing) part than a man can do the being graceful part of walking apart from the walking (or some equivalent activity). (J.J.C. Smart, Philosophy and Scientific Realism, p. 89) These quotations will suffice to establish the context within which philosophers speak of thinking in language (or with language). Many other quotations could be added from the literature.1 It is not assumed here that the persons quoted all occupy the same position with reference to the relationship between thought and language. Yet it would be interesting to see what any of these thinkers, or others who suppose that human beings think in language, could save of their position from the critique which follows. Uneasiness about the conception of thinking in or with language has been expressed by a number of writers, but only over limited aspects of it.2 Here we shall consider arguments which purport to call the conception into question entirely and in principle. First, consider a reason for rejecting the view that we always think in language. It consists in the fact that thinking often occurs without the production, manipulation, or perception of sense-perceptible signs, without which there is no use of language. Such occurrences often provoke offers of 'A penny for your thoughts.' Thinking: Whatever we may decide to call them, and however it is that we are conscious of them, there are intentional states of persons, more or less fixed or fleeting, which do not require for their obtaining that what they are about or of be perceived by, or be impinging causally upon, the person involved. In order to think of3 Henry the Eighth, <128> of the first auto one owned, of the Pythagorean theorem, or of the Mississippi River, it is not required that they should disturb my nervous system. Such states (t-states) of persons are often called 'thoughts', especially in contrast with 'perceptions', and being in such a state is one of the things more commonly called 'thinking'. One no more needs to be going through a change of such states in order to be thinking, than he needs to be changing his bodily position in order to be sitting or lying or sleeping. Rarely if ever--as is alleged in the case of mystic contemplation--are these t-states unchanging. Usually they flow, at varying rates, intermingled with person states of many sorts, governed by such transitional structures as inference, goal orientation, objective structures given in perception or in other ways, and elemental association of 'ideas', among others. In what follows, we shall use 'thinking' to cover both the single t-state and the flow of such states, without regard to how intermingled with other person states. Language: Sense perceptible signs or symbols are an essential constituent of language. It is always false to say that language is present or in use where no signs are present or in use. And, whatever else a sign may be, it is something which is apprehendable via its sensible qualities. That is, it is something which can be either seen, heard, felt, tasted or smelled. Moreover, the use of language requires some level of actual sensuous apprehension of the signs which are in use on the occasion. (Confusion or distortion of this sensuous feedback can render a subject incapable of writing or speaking; and, of course, without perception of the sign-sequences emitted, one cannot understand the person emitting language.) Now cases can be produced almost at will where thinking occurs without language being present or in use. This, of course, is something which everyone--including the proponent of thinking-in-language--very well knows. It is these cases which, together with the assumption that we always think in language, create what in (7) was called "the well-known difficulty of thinking without words." If, as in (3), "thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs," then when there are no signs--and when, consequently, the means by which we produce, manipulate, or perceive signs are not functioning--we do have a difficulty. In fact, a difficulty so severe that it amounts to a proof that thinking is not essentially the activity of operating with signs, and that often we think entirely without language. One cannot operate with signs where there are no signs. <129>  As the above quotations indicate, the most common move made to save 'thinking in language' at this point is the shift to 'silent soliloquy,' as in (6), or to 'pieces of intelligent talking to oneself,' as in (7). These are latter-day shades of John Watson's 'sub-vocal language.' Of course one can talk to oneself or write to onself. But talking and writing to oneself require the production and perception of sensuous signs just as much as talking and writing to another. The realization of this is what drives the thinking-in-language advocate to silent soliloquy or to nonvocal speaking--the written counterpart of which would be invisible writing. That is, they are driven to flat absurdities. A silent soliloquy--that is, silent speaking--is precisely on a par with a silent trumpet solo, for example, or silent thunder. A poet may say:        Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard             Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;        Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,             Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone;...                (Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn) But there are in fact no unhearable melodies, no ears other than the "sensual," no ditties of no tone. What those who speak of silent discourse have in mind is, no doubt, the fact that interlaced with our thinking of or about things is a great deal of imaging of linguistic entities. (This is especially true of academics or intellectuals in general, because of their great concern with expression of thought. Probably an adequate phenomenology of thinking would exhibit great contrast between them and other classes of persons precisely at the relation between thinking and degree of activity in imaging linguistic entities and events.) But imaging a word is not using a word, any more than imaging a horse is using a horse. Moreover, imaging a word, phrase, or sentence is not producing or perceiving a word, phrase, or sentence any more than imaging a horse is producing or perceiving--or otherwise 'having'--a horse. To image a linguistic sequence is not to have it in a special sort of place--the mind--nor is it to have a special sort of linguistic sequence. To image is to exemplify a certain sort of thinking or intentional state, and a sort which does have interesting relationships with other kinds of thinking. But there is no reason at all to suppose that all kinds of thinking necessarily involve or are accompanied by this kind of thinking (imaging) directed upon language segments. And if there were, it still would not follow that all thinking requires language, since this kind of thinking about language segments is not itself language at all. Nor does it require any <130> language present in order for it to come to pass, since intentional inexistence applies to mental events when language segments are the objects, as well as when sticks and stones and animals are. Having considered a reason for rejecting the proposition that human beings always think in language, let us now consider whether they ever do. In fact, the difficulty is not, as Smart (above) and others have thought, in seeing how one can think without language, but in seeing how one would think with it. Thinking with or in language must consist in doing something with symbols, and so necessarily involves doing something to them--e.g., producing, altering, or perceiving them. If we would do something with the knife (e.g., cut the bread), we must do something to the knife, (e.g., clasp it in our hands). But, as we have seen, thinking occurs where nothing at all is being done to or with signs, there not being any signs in these cases. The power or act of having or changing t-states--that is, the power or act of thinking--is, then, not a power or act of having or altering linguistic symbols. (It is not, in fact, a power of doing anything with or in anything at all. The profound difference in kinds of powers and acts involved here is what Wittgenstein calls attention to in the last sentence of (3) above.) Thought is, of course, practical, in that it exercises an influence upon, or makes some difference in, the world of sense particulars. But it alone is not capable of acting with the sorts of particulars used in linguistic behavior as its immediate instruments. It is just this incapacity which makes it impossible for the advocates of thinking-in-language to give any account of the mechanisms or the 'how' by which the words in which we, allegedly, think are produced, manipulated, and gotten rid of--though they must be produced (or stored and hauled out), manipulated, and, in some sense, gotten rid of, if we are to think with and in them as our tools or instruments. Merely to ask the question of how, in detail, this is done in the course of thinking reveals, I believe, the absurdity of 'thinking in language'. Mere thinking can do nothing to signs which might be used in a language, and hence it can do nothing with such signs, or in the act of modifying the conditions of such signs. It is absurd to suppose that one can do x with y without in some way bringing about a change in the condition, state, relations, or properties of y. It is this and only this that I put by saying that it is absurd to suppose that one can do something with y while doing nothing to y. If it is replied that, of course, the mind or thought does not do these things, but that when we write, speak, hear, see, and otherwise relate to actual words in the actual employment of language, we then are thinking, with bodily parts managing the symbols involved, then it <131> must be pointed out that, while we may indeed also be thinking in such cases, we are not simply thinking. The total event here, to which language certainly is essential, is not thinking. Correct use of language can even occur, as has been pointed out by Wittgenstein, without the occurrence of any peculiarly relevant t-states. On the other hand, thinking does occur without the use of hands, mouth, ears, eyes, fingers in any appropriately relevant manner. Hence, what can only occur by the use of these is not the same as thinking, though it may somehow involve or influence thinking. Smart remarks in (7) that, when he thinkingly wrote the sentence, "Certain kinds of thinking are pieces of intelligent talking to oneself," he could "no more do the 'thinking' part without the talking (or writing) part than a man can do the being graceful part of walking apart from the walking." This may be true of thinkingly writing the sentence (whatever that means). But it does not follow that one cannot think that certain kinds of thinking are pieces of intelligent talking to oneself without the use of language, though Smart clearly thinks that it does. Of course one cannot thinkingly write without writing. But that is nothing to the point of whether or not we can and do think with or without words. Also, the comparison to graceful walking is not apt. We do, as above shown, sometimes think without words or symbols, while no cases of grace without behavior are known. Now it is very certainly true that some processes clearly involving thinking as described above depend for their occurrence upon linguistic behavior and the sensible signs which it involves, for example, the processes of learning algebra or the history of the Basques, or learning how to counsel emotionally upset persons. But it is to be noted that these are not themselves processes of thinking, but rather are extremely complex processes involving all kinds of events and entities other than language and other than thinking--e.g., feelings, perceptions, buildings, other persons, days and nights, books, and so on. None of these processes is a process of thinking; and for that reason alone it is invalid to infer from them that thinking is linguistic behavior, or that one thinks with language. What is essential to things or events of a certain sort must be shown essential to them taken by themselves, not in combination with many other things. With reference to the involved processes in question, it might be more appropriate (though it would still be wrong) to say--as some have said in recent years--that we live in or with language. Nevertheless, it is certain that some kind of dependence relation--probably similar to feedback mechanisms--exists between linguistic processes and their sensuous signs, on the one hand, and certain sequences of t-states on the other. What, exactly, this relation <132> of dependence is continues to be veiled by, among other things, a priori assumptions about what thinking and language must be and do. One such assumption is that which holds thinking essentially to be an operation with signs or symbols, or doing something with--or in--linguistic processes or entities. The view that we (necessarily) think without language is, today, regarded as so outlandish as not to merit serious consideration. But this is not due to a lack of arguments to support it. My object here has been to focus upon certain arguments purporting to show the absurdity of thinking in language. The main points in these arguments are: Thinking does occur without any accompanying language whatsoever, and thus shows itself not to be a power or act of managing linguistic signs, once it is clear what such a sign is. Thinking, as distinct from behavioral processes involving it, can do nothing to signs or symbols, and hence can do nothing with them. NOTES See for example, Ramsey's Foundations of Mathematics, p. 138, and Kneale's remarks in Feigl and Sellars, Readings in Philosophical Analysis, p. 42. Return to text. See S. Morris Engel, "Thought and Language," Dialogue, Vol. 3, 1964, 160-170; Jerome Shaffer, "Recent Work on the Mind-Body Problem," American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. II, 1965, esp. p. 83; R. Kirk, "Rationality Without Language," Mind, 1967, pp. 369-368; G. Ryle, "A Puzzling Element in the Notion of Thinking," in Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action, P. F. Strawson, ed., (Oxford: 1968), pp. 7-23. Interesting remarks on the issues here are also found in Bruce Aune's Knowledge, Mind and Nature, chap. VIII and H. H. Price's Thinking and Experience, Chap. X.  See also Wm. James, "Thought Before Language; A Deaf Mute's Recollections," Mind, Vol. I, 1892; and see Wittgenstein's comments on this in Philosophical Investigations, No. 342. Return to text. I use only think here, for simplicity; but think that and other structures of such intentional states (and sequences thereof) might also be mentioned. Specifically, I would also wish to hold that instances of thinking that, in the sense of inferring or puzzling something out, occur in the absence of appropriate linguistic entities or activities. Return to text.

[Consort]

Knowing reality is knowing what is true and what isn't...

I tend the think that reality doesn't have true or false or right or wrong. Those are human judgements.

Reason is not anything but reason. It's a wonderful privilege, but not to be exaggerated.

We use reason to determine what is right and wrong. Maybe it needs to be exaggerated a little more.

[Consort]

It seems that concepts are individual and collective interpretions of reality colored by our likes and dislikes, prejudices, convictions, preconceived judgements, etc...a filtered view of reality.

[Kudsman]

Can you tell me what this fruit is?A nectarine.

[Hank Kerchief]

Will this do for an outline of this epistemology?

sentience -> sensation -> amoeba
perception -> percepts -> marmosets
conception -> concepts -> republicans

It is a good outline of how different levels of awareness are generally understood to be distributed. It would certainly not do as an outline of epistemology, however, and I must make a couple of observations:

What an amoeba's awareness is, of course, is purely conjectural, but that fact it responds as a living organism, and not just an inanimate entity, indicates some kind of "awareness."

There is no consciousness of "sensations" themselves. It is not philosophy, but science that supposes the nervous system provides "sensory data" to the brain, but there is no direct consciousness of such data. There is only perceptual consciousness, that is, we are only conscious of "percepts," such as patches of color, the perception of pain, sounds, etc. (The so called, "five senses," are actually a misnomer. We should probably call them the five essential percepts, or something like that.)

Finally, "conception," is not another level of consciousness, as though there were a hierarchy of consciousness. There is only perception. The distinction between that kind of consciousness we call perceptual (marmosets) and the conceptual (humans) is that human conscious, except for the immediate involuntary consciousness by which we perceive existence, is voluntary. That is what is meant by volition. The perceptual consciousness of all other creatures is completely involuntary.

May I assume that these are inclusive downward? ie, that republicans have sensations?

No. As I explained, there is only perceptual consciousness.

May I assume that organic beings all operate on sensation/precepts/concepts in order to make decisions that might aid in the fight to survive,

No. Only human beings make choices. As I explained to D-fendr, "The nature of all other organims provides an automatic pattern of behavior appropriate to the requirements of their nature that guarantees, within the environment and conditions required, the survival of the organism. This automatic pattern of behavior is called instinct." The percepts of all other creatures simply provides the information necessary for their instinctive programs to be carried out.

...by making choices that might as easily be arrived at using the precepts of formal logic?

Again, no. Except within very narrow parameters, if you change an animals environment, it cannot make ajdustment to its behavior that will allow it to survive. It will perish.

It is the conceptual level of consciousness, that is, the reational/volitional mind, that enables human beings to not only change their behavior, but even to change their environment, to achieve whatever is required for them to enjoy their lives.

Just to try to be clear about this last question...may I, or may I not assume, that reactions to sensations are capable of providing survival behavior outside the reach of such formal precept-rich environments as grammar, symbolism, or logic?

I believe I have answered this.

Your questions are concept rich and I hope the paucity of detail in my answers is not failing to answer them completely.

Hank

[Kudsman]

Wow. Goodday to you. I return from a little self imposed respite to find this gem of a thread. I've caught up to post #100 so far. If I may intrude, the only input I have so far is this.

I am. I think. As a result of my thinking, I either act or attempt to communicate my thought by use of a learned language. Sometimes that communication happens instantaneously (influenced by instinct or a learned/conditioned feeling). At other times it happens after more in depth language thinking.

A question that I have deals with multi-linguistic people. Being familiar (although not completely fluent) with another language I have at times thought of something and applied a foreign word to that thought. Do people that think in different languages think more than single language folks? Kind of a je ne sais quoi? If you know what I mean. Thanks for the thread. It really makes me THINK. ;-)

[Hank Kerchief]

A man can know many things about many things, but he cannot know everything about anything.

The only thing that matters or has any importance whatsoever is what we can know.

What you cannot know, cannot matter.

(This can be very easily proved to anyone who needs to have it proved.)

Hank

[thinktwice]

I tend the think that reality doesn't have true or false or right or wrong. Those are human judgements.

While checking your dictionary for conceptual meanings. look at the following concepts ... this way.

Reality is that which exists.
Reason is the standard (man's tool) for knowing reality.
Truth is the recognition of reality.
Knowledge is a treasure chest collection of "truth" held within an individual's mind.

And then ...

Make Reality the foundation for your metaphysics.
Make Reason the driving force for your epistemology.
Seek Truth, and accumulate truths as knowledge.
Trust first in ethics ... your own mind.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post! Indeed, I meant mechanical occurrences in living things (blood flow, sight, hearing, etc.) IMHO, instincts can be driven by emotions (hunger, fear, etc.) which I personally cannot separate from subconscious thought.

[tpaine]

"If the reader believes that reality consists only of the natural, he will get a totally different upshot than a reader who believes that reality consists of the thoughts themselves, the symbols, etc."
-alamo-girl-



The view that symbols exist apart from individual consciousness is revisionistic nonsense, according to experts.

[unspun]

bb: Concepts aren't pure mirrors, limpidly imaging reality without distortion.

HK: Here is the misconception about what a concept is, no doubt the lingering influence of Plato. Concepts are not mirrors at all, pure or impure. They are not "miniature" pictures, or symbolic representations of anything. I repeat, they are only identifications of real things. (By the way, those real things are not only physical or material entities, they are also events, relationships, and qualities, and aspects of consciousness, and elements of language, such as verbs and prepositions. Certainly you wouldn't use the analogy of a mirror for the concept of a gerund.

Now I haven't read just a whole lot of various people's philosophies, but from what I'm able to pick up on, there is a difference between an absolute (or "universal," may be easier on the ears of some) and... well someting that ain't.  In each case, it continutes to ring true that we can know many things about many things, but not everything about anything.  Therefore, human concepts (including all the relationships of a particular) are skewed at best.  Human concepts, i.e., {whatever a human knows about a particular including all its relationships} are also distorted and compared to a holistic identity, impure when regarded as if they are holistically known.

bb: If we regard reality as the test of the true, then one of the pair is "true" (i.e., the "referrent in the world") and the other, an approximation of truth (i.e., the "concept").

HK: That is certainly untrue. Since a concept only identifies a "referrent" in the real world, if there is such a referrant, it is absolutely true, else it is merely a fiction. (Be careful here. Most concepts are not particular concepts, that is, most do not have a single referrant. Most concepts are for classes or categories of referrants.)

If we have the above green ;-` (and blue) sense of "under standing" the truth, as opposed to asserting we may know all of it about any particular and it's full set of relationships with all else, then we see that we maintain concepts of the truth but not perfect concepts, even if that which we regard is perfect in any way it may be regarded as perfect.  In other words, the Reality is greater than regard.  We learn from what is actual, but we cannot teach it anything any more than we can know it in all ways in all its relationships.

bb: To then use the approximation to test the true seems like getting the problem backward.

HK: I have no idea what you would use then. If you want to use reality as the test of truth (which we must) we must have some way of identifying things in reality, and concepts are the only way we have of doing that.

These green things being the actuality of it for us, we have the blue truth of it (even in faulty vessels).  We must identify things as best we can, subjective to the truth, therefore understanding what we may, in our knowledge.  We do this as best we can by "tuning our pianos to the first piano," instead of tuning it to our own sense of what we  hear from all pianos (the "first piano" being Reality) to borrow from the aforementioned Tozer quote.  Or in other words, we march to the beat of the drum major (Reality, however we perceive it with all that we are) instead of only what we each of us reason out as our best beat, however near or distant the drummer.

Or in other words, while we may perceive in concepts for what they are in our ability to hold and apply them, we neither know all of what either reality or concepts are for, nor mainain anything but a finite view of them (not seeing them from all angles at once).  Because of this, when we refer, we always best refer to the Real as directly as possible, as we conceptualize (and as we do whatever else we do).  In so doing, we are not really testing Reality, we are testing ourselves by it (through the use of all our faculties, certainly including those which operate our conceptual aspects.  That is under-standing.  Said elsewhere, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom."

Our conceptual selves are not magic.  Our conceptual selves are not authoritative.  Our conceptual selves draw from what is real and do not give to it.  Our conceptual selves are only "sane" when they are subordinated to Reality.  It is Reality that is very literaly our master. (And the greatest Reality being the intentional source of reality and its true regarder, this Reality is our Master.)  Cenceptualization is not our Master and it should not be our singular presssssiousssss.

(Our intentionality, or volition, is what does something about it all, including the internal processes that are of concept, but not only this lesser extractive regard of great reality a very fine kind of regard, which we use in managing our own lives, but one of numerous ways we regard reality.)

Maybe enough of this for me for now.

[unspun]

What you cannot know, cannot matter.

Ever hear of people gathered around a casket and one says, "Poor man... he never knew what hit him."

But thank God for his grace, you can know what matters and even what matters most, even if you choose to ignore.

And knowing, as bb has well pointed out, is about a relationship that runs deeper and is more essential (as Dallas Willard poined out) than strict rational conceptualization.

[unspun]

And, yes, I've read from what you have written about it.

[Hank Kerchief]

Now I haven't read just a whole lot ...

This is apparently true. You didn't even read what I wrote, evidently. I cannot believe your reading comprehension would be so poor that you would completely misunderstand what I wrote.

If you had read it, you would know everything you said had absolutely nothing to do with concepts as I defined them.

Oh well. It really doesn't matter, not to me, but it is going to matter to you.

Hank

[tortoise]

In mathematics, the method used to extend one's understanding of a finite truth into an infinite, universal truth is called "Proof by induction."

Yes, but induction is problematic in the real world because a great many real world problems do not trivially reduce to an algebraic function or similar that people will readily accept as axiomatic. It works in mathematics because there is generally universal acceptance of the axioms and their derivatives. In the real world the selection of the axioms themselves are major points of contention.

This is the reason most useful reasoning mechanisms in the real world don't really require the implicit assertion of additional axioms and definitions beyond the underlying mathematics e.g. first order logic and Bayes theorem. It is hard do induction when the assertion being proved is not grounded in rock-solid axioms.

[unspun]

Sorry, I'll make this clearer after the fact:

(Our intentionality, or volition, is what does something about it all, including the internal processes that are of concept, but not only this lesser extractive regard of great reality. Intentional reason with concepts is a very fine kind of regard, which we use in managing our own lives, but one of numerous ways we regard reality.)

[unspun]

If you had read it, you would know everything you said had absolutely nothing to do with concepts as I defined them.

Rather, it was expressly not about the concepts as you defined.

[donh]

.May I assume that these are inclusive downward? ie, that republicans have sensations?

No. As I explained, there is only perceptual consciousness.

Humans do not have sensations? Is there a technical material correspondence for this claim? Does the fact that amoeba's lack nervous systems cause this rift? That's what I believe you've just suggested.

Again, no. Except within very narrow parameters, if you change an animals environment, it cannot make ajdustment to its behavior that will allow it to survive. It will perish.

Don't birds change their environments rather radically when survival becomes chancy in one location?

All ducks migrate for the winter by "instinct", yet some ducks hang around my pond all year round. Are you sure you have not merely detected a scalar difference in complexity of neuron entanglement, rather then some fundamental difference in constructive reasoning?

I believe I have answered this.

If I have understood you, you have answered this in the negative, which seems a rather ambitious claim to me. You really aver that humans have no useful perceptions/conceptions/preceptions which fall outside the useful perview of logic, grammar, or other discreteizing mechanism humans use to abstractly classify and manipulate what they see around them? Or have I overstated your case?

[donh]

. It is hard do induction when the assertion being proved is not grounded in rock-solid axioms.

It's not hard to do--it's all to easy to do. It's just really, really hard on us, from time to time, when we entirely trust the results.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your posts!

Hank: Here is the misconception about what a concept is, no doubt the lingering influence of Plato. Concepts are not mirrors at all, pure or impure. They are not "miniature" pictures, or symbolic representations of anything. I repeat, they are only identifications of real things.

tpaine: The view that symbols exist apart from individual consciousness is revisionistic nonsense, according to experts.

Not everyone would agree with you, tpaine. I don't.

For instance, in my view, much of mathematics and geometry is discovered not invented because the symbol is objectively "real."

The Mandelbrot Set was discovered not invented; ditto for Schwarzschild geometry, Euclidean geometry and General and Special Relativity - and pi for that matter.

This was the famous argument of Kurt Gödel and Albert Einstein and continues to this day between Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking. To say the issue has been settled would be over-reaching in my view.

In quantum field theory, what else is there but symbolization?

[thinktwice]

In the real world the selection of the axioms themselves are major points of contention.

Focusing on reality works, nothing else makes sense.