Does the liguistic copula have more than a gestural meaning?

You will find my argument developed extensively if you investigate my eight years of posts, but as a naive realist you are unlikely to understand it. Suffice to say that if your "knowledge" of ontology is anything like your "knowledge" of linguistics the chances of such understanding do not look promising.

Schools of subjectivism, objectivism and relativism existed at various times in the 20th century, and the postmodernists and body philosophers tried to reframe all these questions in terms of bodies taking some specific action in an environment. This relied to a great degree on insights derived from scientific research into animals taking instinctive action in natural and artificial settings — as studied by biology, ecology, and cognitive science.
The processes by which bodies related to environments became of great concern, and the idea of being itself became difficult to really define. What did people mean when they said "A is B", "A must be B", "A was B"...? Some linguists advocated dropping the verb "to be" from the English language, leaving "E Prime", supposedly less prone to bad abstractions. Others, mostly philosophers, tried to dig into the word and its usage. Heidegger distinguished human being as existence from the being of things in the world. Heidegger proposes that our way of being human and the way the world is for us are cast historically through a fundamental ontological questioning. These fundamental ontological categories provide the basis for communication in an age: a horizon of unspoken and seemingly unquestionable background meanings, such as human beings understood unquestioningly as subjects and other entities understood unquestioningly as objects. Because these basic ontological meanings both generate and are regenerated in everyday interactions, the locus of our way of being in an historical epoch is the communicative event of language in use. For Heidegger, however, communication in the first place is not among human beings, but language itself shapes up in response to questioning (the inexhaustible meaning of) being. Even the focus of traditional ontology on the 'whatness' or 'quidditas' of beings in their substantial, standing presence can be shifted to pose the question of the 'whoness' of human being itself.

If you think that the relationship between the terms "existence", "observation" and "time" is a simple matter, then you have not thought about it sufficiently for me to converse with you.

If you think that the relationship between the terms "existence", "observation" and "time" is a simple matter, then you have not thought about it sufficiently for me to converse with you.

kennethamy wrote:

fresco wrote:

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And yet all of these (is's) are categorized as states of being which is what a copula infers, which is what the thread is about.

Precisely ! And "states of being" are never independent of "states of the observer"

That is false. There need be no observer for the Moon to exist. We know that because we know that the Moon existed for many millions of years before any observer existed. If you do not believe that is true, then you can look it up.

Come on Ken, we are talking about language, in order for someone to say something descriptive there is necessarily an observer, even if s/he is simply observing her own imagination. You can't tell me a hard nosed materialist like yourself thinks that something can be said without an observer?

The processes by which bodies related to environments became of great concern, and the idea of being itself became difficult to really define. What did people mean when they said "A is B", "A must be B", "A was B"...? Some linguists advocated dropping the verb "to be" from the English language, leaving "E Prime", supposedly less prone to bad abstractions. Others, mostly philosophers, tried to dig into the word and its usage.

All linguistic activity or "languaging" takes place "in the praxis of living: we human beings find ourselves as living systems immersed in it". Languaging, for Maturana, does not mean conveying news or any kind of "information", but refers to a social activity that arises from a coordination of actions that have been tuned by mutual adaptation. Without such coordination of acting there would be no possibility of describing and, consequently, no way for the distinctions made by an actor to become conscious. To become aware of distinctions, is called observing.

... an observer has no operational basis to make any statement or claim about objects, entities or relations as if they existed independently of what he or she does.

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

Do you understand this ?

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The processes by which bodies related to environments became of great concern, and the idea of being itself became difficult to really define. What did people mean when they said "A is B", "A must be B", "A was B"...? Some linguists advocated dropping the verb "to be" from the English language, leaving "E Prime", supposedly less prone to bad abstractions. Others, mostly philosophers, tried to dig into the word and its usage.

or this ?

Quote:

All linguistic activity or "languaging" takes place "in the praxis of living: we human beings find ourselves as living systems immersed in it". Languaging, for Maturana, does not mean conveying news or any kind of "information", but refers to a social activity that arises from a coordination of actions that have been tuned by mutual adaptation. Without such coordination of acting there would be no possibility of describing and, consequently, no way for the distinctions made by an actor to become conscious. To become aware of distinctions, is called observing.

... an observer has no operational basis to make any statement or claim about objects, entities or relations as if they existed independently of what he or she does.

(Von Glasersfeld citing Maturana)

or this ?

Quote:

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

(Heisenberg)

Silence speaks volumes !

Answer the question: Do you understand any of those quotations ?

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What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

(Heisenberg)

Thank you for your honesty. But alas you don't understand Heisenberg either.

Note the phrase "our method of questioning" implies the " facts" are species specific or even culture specific. You and I may agree as "Westerners" about how we use the concept "the moon" such that we might play out some historical documentary of "its history" in our mind's eye, but the event of that visualisation is always contextually triggered for a particular purpose, Such visualizations need to be contrasted with that of ,say, an aborigine tribesman who believes say "that he and the moon are "being dreamed" by some spirit entity". And there are other cultures whose concept of "time" is spectacularly different from our everyday one insofar as in their language there are only two tenses "the now" and "the not now" !
From this we might be moved reconsider our own conditioning and note the Einsteinian point that "time is a psychological construction". We may even conclude that without the psychology of "an observer", concepts of "persistence", "before" and "after" would have no meaning.

Profile of kennethamy

This member has been banned. (Jun 15, 2009 - 5:26 AM by Postmodern Beatnik. Reason: returning banned user)

by Dunamis » Sat Aug 06, 2005 8:22 pm

Kennethamy,

"What has that to do with the question of whether if we have to discuss whether something is obvious, it is obvious."

Because in philosophy, we investigate the "background of what [we] already believe", so to dismiss some ideas as obvious, that is obviously false or obviously true, is to operate unreflectively from the very background we are supposedly investigating.

Now, rather than talking about me and my deficiencies, please talk about my argument. That is what philosophers do.

Well, I can't understand why you don't understand what "the dawn seems red" means while you are able to understand what "the dog is brown" means? But if you'll allow it, perhaps we can use your incomprehension to further the conversation: What is the difference between these two statements that makes one the object of understanding and one the cause of confusion? They seem to be similarly structured sentences. I do not think that "seems" carries any exotic "philosophese" overtones that "is" lacks. "Red" and "brown" both name colors. "The dog" and "the dawn" also both serve nominal roles. What do you perceive the difference to be? I'm not saying there isn't a difference, but what is it from your perspective? If both statements operate in similar ways, why is only one accessible to you, what blocks your access to the other sentence?

Does the statement, "the dog seems brown," mean anything to you? It seems similar to me to "the dog is brown", although the copulae have slightly different connotations. Would you say that the "seems" dog-sentence has a logical structure that you could diagram in a similar way to the "is" statement? What if I suggested that the term "seems" classified dog as a brown thing, so in this way the the end result is much like the "is" statement. However, it's manner of operating and getting to that end result is different. "Seems" does so by classifying both terms under "appearances", with dog being placed in the subcategory of subjects and brown in the subcategory of adjectives. The use of "seem" is conditional, and refers only to a particular case in which this adjective applies to this subject, although it need not apply. The implication of necessity has been removed. Does this mean anything to you? If not, how would you correct my mistake? Since both "is" and "seem" seem to be used in similar ways, does this make them semantically interchangeable? Or could the substitution of one for the other mean something different despite their similar use?

Taking "transformational grammar" for example, the sentence
"The dog is brown" could be interpreted as one "surface" realization of the deep structure "the dog is a brown object". Another surface realization of that deep structure might be the phrase "the brown dog".

But that is merely one angle on the above arguments. We could also explore the field of comparative linguists where the English verb to be maps to different verbs in Spanish (aproximately)ser to be in a particular state, and estar to be actively doing something. It follows that the two OP sentences about "weather" could be associated with these different verbs.

The third point I would make, and for me the most significant one is that as soon as we engage in contrastive analysis we are taking utterances out of their original context. In other words "grammatical analysis" is an artificial academic pursuit rather than a "natural one". As Chomsky pointed out. children pick up " the grammar of their native language" without active instruction, and even the latter tends to be about exceptions to rules.
There is even an argument (by Wexler) that it is impossible to adequately teach a second language to a foreigner without "cultural immersion"...but then of course the argument moves to one about "communicative adequacy",

Two people are leaning against the outside of a building together, drops of water begin to fall from the dark clouds above. One turns to the other and says, "This weather is certainly wet." And the other person responds, "It's sure getting there."

Two people are leaning against the outside of a building together, drops of water begin to fall from the dark clouds above.
Person 1 says, "It's raining."
Person 2 responds, "It is raining."

Two people are leaning against the outside of a building together, drops of water begin to fall from the dark clouds above.
Person 1: bends elbow at the waist and turns palm upwards. Inclines head and arches an eyebrow.
Person 2: Shrugs.

Two people are leaning against the outside of a building together, drops of water begin to fall from the dark clouds above.
Dolph Ludgren: It's bad out there.
Arnold Swartzenegger: Oh it will be. Come with me if you want to live.