These are not universal truths...

There is what we call “objective reality.” Reality and truth have been confounded for centuries. See Hegel on this matter. I know there are people here who think this does not matter. I know they think I’m just playing language games. I also know that there are a lot of people here who can’t think their way out of a paper bag, because they believe that technique is not required for philosophy.

You can have all the feeling in the world for music, but if you don’t know how to make a C major chord, please don’t pick up a guitar.

So you’re admitting there are indeed universal truths like the need of oxygen then? :sunglasses:

If so, how do you establish what is universal truth and what isn’t?

I am admitting no such thing.

I am contrasting reality and truth.

“Objective reality” is in most senses redundant. But it’s useful when we are describing reality “outside” ourselves. Of course, we are in any case inside each other’s reality. In the end, there is what we call reality. Except we differ on what exactly that is.

As I have stated, “truth” does not sensibly apply to oxygen, but only to statements.

Nice try.

I don’t think you are playing language games. I think that you are misunderstanding the intent of the language.

I admit understanding objective truth [universal truth] in a social context is a lot harder objectively than measuring gravity or oxygen but I would also argue that it still is objectively possible. Certainly concerning social contexts there is much up to debate because not all human beings think alike, it is that differentiation of human thoughts or minds that makes articulating objective truth within the social context extremely difficult.

“Language game” is not unlike most things. You can define it and/or encompass it in an assessment such as this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy

But there is still the part where you bring this down out of the technical clouds and take them out into the world in order to discuss them more substantively given a particular context.

In other words, how is the language actually used to describe a specific set of circumstances? How is it used to judge the descriptions of others? How is it determined which words make the most rational sense in regard to these descriptions and judgments?

Here the technical components can become more or less complex. And the gap between what we think the words mean and what others think they mean instead gets more or less convoluted given the extent to which the language needs to bridge the gap between the either/or and the is/ought world.

But eventually we will need an actual “situation” if we wish to address these conflicts more substantially.

you don’t really have this problem while playing language games in non-philosophical contexts, though. these problems only occur when philosophical language becomes essentialistic and looks behind the use-meaning of a word for some kind of definition that stands in a superfluous relationship to the sense we gather from its use-meaning. here’s an example of what i mean:

in that last paragraph you’re seeing what is meant by the position ‘anti-essentialist’, which allows for different kinds of meaning to be given/found in a variety of language games in which one of these words is used. now check this out; if you found a kantian epistemologist arguing with a humean epistemologist (these two would disagree about the nature of knowledge in many respects), you’d still retain the implicit understanding of the word ‘knowledge’ in its use-meaning despite what either of them said about it philosophically.

you could ask; what are the consequences of being wrong, for both the kantian and the humean, regarding their theory of knowledge. and of course the answer would be; various statements would conflict with other statements in their supporting arguments. but that’s it. still nothing of consequences is observed here. but, what would the consequences of being wrong be like for someone who thought they had knowledge of the right answers, and was wrong? they’d fail the test. or being wrong about the knowledge of how long it would take to get to the airport. they’d miss the plane.

in the former language game, the efficacy of ‘being true or not’ is of no consequence other than perhaps being in violation, or not, of previously accepted rules for the language game being played. you might find a conflict of premises occur between the kantian and the humean - a priori synthetic reasoning is impossible for the humean, and not for the kantian - and insofar as the two agree on the definitions provided in the supporting arguments, they are playing a real language game in which statements can be true or false. but these revolve around abstract and/or essentialistic conceptions of the word in question - ‘knowledge’ - and produce no actual consequences in being incorrect or not.

another problem that becomes increasingly complex in the typical philosophical language game is that for every premise, the number of incidental other meanings that can result becomes incredibly large.

now replace the sentence ‘moses did not exist’ with the sentence ‘experience is subjective’. now this doesn’t mean anything until philosophers get a’hold of it… and watch what happens. that sentence can mean ‘the qualia of experience cannot exist for anyone but the first-person,’ to which the other philosopher replies ‘but if everyone experiences qualia, the fact that qualia is experienced universally makes a certain characteristic of experience objective.’ so which one of these dudes is right?

within the parameters of the philosophical language game, so many tacit understandings are available without any one of them yielding real consequences if they were wrong, that there is nothing against which to test a thesis. on the other hand, ‘moses did not exist’, while being able to mean many things, can be tested in each case. any possible context in which that statement can make sense will reach a terminus… while the making of the sense in the statement ‘experience is subjective’ cannot do so. by the virtue of its essentialistic nature, understanding it would involve an infinite regress of ‘deferral of meaning’, as derrida put it, in an effort to reach a single feature of the meaning that requires no further defining.

and this is only a problem for philosophers who take language out of its use-meaning environment and put it into a game where the rules govern an activity of abstraction… rather than an activity in which a tacit and implicit understanding proceeds directly from a use context.

we’d never need to know if kant or hume were right when we consider whether or not ‘bob knows it will rain’ is true or not. we observe the essence of that ‘knowing’ not in a series of metaphysical statements, but in a series of behaviors that make sense of it; bob doesn’t plan a game of golf, brings the car into the garage, and turns off the water sprinklers, etc.

"but if everyone experiences qualia, the fact that qualia is experienced universally makes a certain characteristic of experience objective.’ so which one of these dudes is right? "

Ah, yes, I see it. The polis cosmos.

My point though is that this point in turn must be taken out into the world and explored more substantively in particular contexts.

Language games in regard to what actual set of circumstances? For example, some insist that the Republicans are playing language games with respect to Trump’s attempt tp bribe the Ukrainian government into investigating Hunter Biden in order to dig up [or manufacture] dirt on what he presumed to be his likely Democratic opponent in 2020.

“Nothing really happened”. “Everybody does it”. “They got their money”. Here the language can either be wrapped around the precision of the law or obfuscated in a cynical attempt to sustain the political power of Trump. In sync [more or less] with sustaining the economic interests of those in power. Interests as perceived and understood by many in the Republican Party in a more or less ideological manner. And, in turn, for some, to use this power to sustain a set of value judgments that champion particular narratives and political agendas regarding any number of “social issues” or “value-voter issues”.

What then would the serious philosophers among us, touting their highly technical definitions, make of all this? What can be established as in fact true? What can be established as in fact a violation of the law? What can be established as in fact immoral behavior?

You know my take on it. That arguments and assessments here revolve largely around the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein confronting conflicting goods out in a particular world embedded in a particular political economy.

There is no necessarily right or wrong way in which to broach, assess, describe or judge Trump’s behavior here. That can only be a subjective/subjunctive “existential contraption” in which any particular individual embracing [here and now] any particular moral and political prejudices perceives his or her own “self” here as more or less “fractured and fragmented”.

All I can do then is to entertain the arguments of others able to convince themselves that they are not fractured and fragmented at all. That, instead, in regard to the impeachment and removal from office of Trump or in regard to any other set of conflicting goods, they have convinced themselves that the “real me” is in sync objectively with “the right thing to do”.

I merely go further than most by noting those who reject conflicting goods altogether. The narcissists and the sociopaths who presume that in a No God world there are no necessarily good or inherently bad behaviors. There is only what “here and now” is perceived to be in their own best interests. They rationalize any and all means in pursuit of “what’s in it for me?”

Iambiguous,

I’m going to explain very succinctly why you are notorious (bad popular) on these boards…

You are a bible thumping troll, even if you don’t intend to be, you have deep psychological issues here. Most posters on this board are atheists, and they’re smart… so you have to find a very sophisticated way of being a God troll here, and that’s exactly what you’ve done.

You think objectivity is impossible without God.

Einstein made a theory of special relativity, which we now consider a fact, “It is objectively true in X context”

He spent the rest of his life working on general relativity (true in all contexts) and failed. He never proved it was impossible, he simple failed.

Now, a guy like you comes along and states a million times… “What can we prove in a no God world?”

We’ve proven quite a bit actually! Your protestations are the equivalent of stating “Because Einstein never proved general relativity, special relativity is just a subjective opinion, not really proven.”

This is the thing: You repeatedly assert that in a NO GOD WORLD, unless we have all the answers (are God), that nothing is true.

I can assure you that if you knew EVERYTHING!!! You’d be the most bored dude who ever lived, and so would God…

Your choice here would be to make yourself ignorant about some stuff by the way you set how the cosmos works or kill yourself (because you were so bored).

It never occurs to you that indeterminacy needs to exist for God to exist, and then you go along prattling about all this stuff about how we need to know EVERYTHING in order to know SOMETHING!! sigh

Freewill requires indeterminacy on some level, which is ignorance on some level. This does not mean that we can conclude that morality doesn’t exist however. To be perfectly honest, the evil succeed more on earth than the good, even in feeling happier. What do people generally do when someone states morality is not objective? They gravitate towards evil. They get tired of being shat upon.

The stakes are really high here… do you fight the tough good fight, or the easy evil path? This is what defines a person.

You have thus far defined yourself on the easy path.

On the other hand, has it ever been established [philosophically or otherwise] what it means to actually be of sound mind in discussing things of this sort?

Do you, perchance, have any doubts about your own?

oh yeah no, i’m not saying the language game theory is like some kind of final solution to any number of problems that might arise in ordinary discourse. W’s not advancing the theory for that purpose. he’s only saying that a great majority of philosophical problems are not real concepts that we come along as philosophers and claim we can solve with our language and intellectual tools. he means that those concept-problems are caused by language in the first place, and that usually there is nothing there to be solved. the purpose of philosophy - for these ordinary language philosophers, anyway - is to analyze philosophical language… not to humor it and pretend it’s dealing with real problems. what we’ve got to do, biggs, is bring back their language from vacation so that it can do real work. bring it ‘down from the clouds’, as it were. and it looks like it’s just you and me, kiddo, so we gotta stay on em if we’re to make any progress here at ILP.

Thats good philosophy.
Its hard to get at in conventional terms.

Does Werklempter have any “terms”.

Iambiguous,

It’s really simple why you’re the fool. You use language and truth to argue that language is separate from truth. You chose the wrong side.

:laughing:

Or, sure, possibly: :banana-dance:

Honestly, can philosophy get any more serious? Here this sort of exchange is the context!!!

The idea that man is made in god’s image, and can only do what god has decreed for him to do, is an old religion.
An expression of a need for absolution, seeking justification in the divine.

If all is determined then there’s nobody to blame but that which determines it.
Universal salvation achieved.
Jesus dies upon the cross to take upon himself the sins of mankind.
The majority have accepted the offer, even if they would not admit it openly.

There are words. And then there is the world that words were invented to circumnavigate, to describe, to assess, to [in any number of contexts] judge.

One way or another, we can only do our best to connect the dots between them. Language was not invented [re the biological evolution of life on Earth] in order to culminate in philosophy. It was invented first and foremost to sustain human interaction from day to day “for all practical purposes”.

In that respect [from my frame of mind], it all comes closer to the speculatioins of folks like Marx than to folks like Hegel.

Definitions can revolve around actual things and relationships [in the either/or world] we are able to demonstrate as “in fact” true. And the overwhelming preponderance of the words we use from day to day accomplish precisely that.

It is only with respect to the words we use to judge the behaviors of others as either “moral” or “immoral”, “good” or “bad”, that the dictionary definitions become increasingly more problematic when words acquire a use value and an exchange value out in the world of conflicting goods. Given a particular context.

Or when words are used to discuss and to debate the relationship between our day to day interactions and the really, really Big Questions:

  • why is there something rather than nothing?
  • why this something and not something else?
  • how do we to explain the relationship between universal reality and quantum reality?
  • do we have free will?
  • does God exist?
  • what happens after we die?
  • etcetera…

Or, rather, here and now, so it seems to me.

But, come on, I remind myself, what are the odds that, in the context of “all there is”, the infinitesimally tiny speck of existence that is “I” can ever possibly presume that his “story” is the one and only true explanation?

Whenever someone ends or begins a sentence with ‘from my frame of mind’ or ‘the way I misconstrue dasein’ then we can be certain, within a relative doubt, that he si saying that what he things is a standard we must all abide by.
It raises subjectivity as the presumed standard for everything that follows.

It seems clear that this individual will only, accept one answer:
All are equally wrong, and so we must gather together and make compromises, finding some middle ground in our shared error to live with.
It’s a way of excusing idiocy…one’s own.

Okay, let’s take your own “general description” assessment here out into the world and explore your point given a particular context.

What becomes the most rational standard by which to measure truth [universal or otherwise] in regard to a set of circumstances in which what is said to be true about particular human behaviors comes into dispute.

Let’s pin down “idiocy”…existentially.

You choose the context.

From what I know, to measure something,value or judge it…you must have an objective in mind.
Nothing is innately or intrinsically good/ or bad, valuable or worthless…but only in relation to an objective.

What is your objective?
Universal equality, peace on earth…an end to strife?