Philosophy Now Forum

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Jun 24, 2025 8:42 pm I am not trying to represent anything.

So your posts do not represent your thoughts? They represent nothing at all? Am I to take from this that your posts are meaningless and that I should ignore them from now on?

Magnus Anderson wrote: ↑Tue Jun 24, 2025 9:50 pm So your posts do not represent your thoughts?

No. "my posts" have no agency to represent me.

represent
/ˌrɛprɪˈzɛnt/
verb
1.
be entitled or appointed to act or speak for (someone), especially in an official capacity.

Magnus Anderson wrote: ↑Tue Jun 24, 2025 9:50 pm They represent nothing at all?

They don't represent. Nothing OR something.

Magnus Anderson wrote: ↑Tue Jun 24, 2025 9:50 pm Am I to take from this that your posts are meaningless and that I should ignore them from now on?

What does representation have to do with meaning?

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Tue Jun 24, 2025 9:14 pm To the OP, I can't believe that such a dumb question can be asked, unless it was done 'ironically'.

How would you formulate the question unironically?

Skepdick wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:03 am No. "my posts" have no agency to represent me.

You must be saying that taking things too literally is a hobby of yours.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:03 am They don't represent. Nothing OR something.

If they don't represent something, they necessarily represent nothing.

There is no third option.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:03 am What does representation have to do with meaning?

The meaning of your posts is what they represent.

So if they represent nothing, they are meaningless.

There is no third option.

Magnus Anderson wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:30 am

Skepdick wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:03 am No. "my posts" have no agency to represent me.

You must be saying that taking things too literally is a hobby of yours.

I am saying that given the ordinary use of that word.

I can't imagine you know how to use the word "literally" any more than you know how to use the word "represent".

Magnus Anderson wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:30 am

Skepdick wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:03 am They don't represent. Nothing OR something.

If they don't represent something, they necessarily represent nothing.

There is no third option.

I gave you the third option. They neither represent something nor nothing. Because they don't represent.

Grasping for framing again, are you?

Magnus Anderson wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:30 am The meaning of your posts is what they represent.

I reject that framing.

Magnus Anderson wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:30 am So if they represent nothing, they are meaningless.

I agree. To you they are meaningless.

That doesn't mean they are meaningless.

Magnus Anderson wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:30 am There is no third option.

I agree. To you there isn't.

But there is a third option.

Have you tried abandoning representationalism? You might just stumble upon meaning.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Jun 24, 2025 8:42 pm

Magnus Anderson wrote: ↑Tue Jun 24, 2025 6:33 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Jun 24, 2025 7:02 am I reject representationalism in all of its forms.

Exactly. And that's your problem.

It really isn't a problem for me. I am not trying to represent anything.

On the other hand you are (apparently) representing a "problem". Whatever that is...

Skepdick, I thought your job was computer programmer(sort of thing). Doesn't one use symbols for that?
The elementary maths of which I am capable represents ideas with symbols, as does formal logic represent ideas with symbols. Indeed in everyday life one happens upon hundreds of representations of something else.

Your name, 'Skepdick', represents your internet persona here. I recommend you abandon the word 'representationalism' and say what you think in simple language the fewer syllables the better.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 9:48 am Skepdick, I thought your job was computer programmer(sort of thing). Doesn't one use symbols for that?

We use symbols. We also use non-symbols.

The is rich conceptual distinction to be drawn between the symbolic and the non-symbolic.

The symbolic stuff is variable names, function names, operators, keywords. In that context symbols DO "representing".

The non-symbolic stuff is the raw data being processed, the underlying machine operations, the concrete computational processes. Those are not representations. They are the raw materials we manipulate.

Whether they do; or don't represent anything is simply not a question of concern. The symbolic layer exists for humans - and then the physics just DOES stuff - electrons moving, transistors switching, energy following the path of least resistance.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 9:53 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 9:48 am Skepdick, I thought your job was computer programmer(sort of thing). Doesn't one use symbols for that?

We use symbols. We also use non-symbols.

The is rich conceptual distinction to be drawn between the symbolic and the non-symbolic.

The symbolic stuff is variable names, function names, operators, keywords. In that context symbols DO "representing".

The non-symbolic stuff is the raw data being processed, the underlying machine operations, the concrete computational processes. Those are not representations. They are the raw materials we manipulate.

Whether they do; or don't represent anything is simply not a question of concern. The symbolic layer exists for humans - and then the physics just DOES stuff - electrons moving, transistors switching, energy following the path of least resistance.

Thanks for the info. If the symbolic layer exists for humans then how can you disdain representations?

E.G.Even my dog accepts signs that nice things are about to happen. Signs are representations: the squeaking noise the lid of the treat tin makes represents a treat but is not the treat itself. If I were to use the noise as treat substitute too often the dog's training wouldn't work any longer.

E.G.
Signals are also representations. Signals work partly because people generally accept representations.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:03 am Thanks for the info. If the symbolic layer exists for humans then how can you disdain representations?

Because they are interfaces. Intermediaries to the real stuff.

The real stuff can be represented in infinitely many ways.
How you represent something is an engineering choice - it's constrained by what you are trying to do with it.

If you have no such constraints there's no such thing as acceptable or unacceptable representation. Anything goes really.

I can represent anything and everything with the word "jiggleworm".
Lick. Spit. Label.

But what about the intricacies of geopolitics and human affairs?

Yeah yeah... that's just a small and insignificant part; a tiny wrinkle in the vastness of jiggleworm.

Unconstrained language is meaningless language. That's why mathematics is meaningless.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:05 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:03 am Thanks for the info. If the symbolic layer exists for humans then how can you disdain representations?

Because they are interfaces. Intermediaries to the real stuff.

The real stuff can be represented in infinitely many ways.
How you represent something is an engineering choice - it's constrained by what you are trying to do with it.

If you have no such constraints there's no such thing as acceptable or unacceptable representation. Anything goes really.

I can represent anything and everything with the word "jiggleworm".
Lick. Spit. Label.

But what about the intricacies of geopolitics and human affairs?

Yeah yeah... that's just a small and insignificant part; a tiny wrinkle in the vastness of jiggleworm.

Unconstrained language is meaningless language. That's why mathematics is meaningless.

It's a fair answer. The problem with not using representations is the real thing is not transportable as it is too big like a river, too dangerous like a sabre tooth tiger, too time- consuming like the idea of multiplication of numbers. We need to think in representations because to do otherwise simply doesn't work. In this is paragraph I am using the word 'representations' to stand for what is not
the -thing -itself.

But I think the problem as you describe it is that representations are arbitrary. It's true representations are arbitrary. For instance if a work of art is too avant garde for general consumption it won't be accepted as a serious work by most people, This happened to some of Picasso's paintings when they first appeared. Now for instance the trope of two eyes on the same profile appears on popular humorous cartoons. Poets too are often avant garde while some are regarded as insane.

I guess what you omit is that ordinary human language is social. Language evolves by way of interpersonal representations of social reality. We think in terms of representations sometimes linguistic representations and sometimes pictorial representations. For instance there are very intelligent people who simply cannot do diagrams or maps and who need to think in narratives of words and sentences .I've actually met three such persons.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:03 am

Skepdick wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 9:53 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 9:48 am Skepdick, I thought your job was computer programmer(sort of thing). Doesn't one use symbols for that?

We use symbols. We also use non-symbols.

The is rich conceptual distinction to be drawn between the symbolic and the non-symbolic.

The symbolic stuff is variable names, function names, operators, keywords. In that context symbols DO "representing".

The non-symbolic stuff is the raw data being processed, the underlying machine operations, the concrete computational processes. Those are not representations. They are the raw materials we manipulate.

Whether they do; or don't represent anything is simply not a question of concern. The symbolic layer exists for humans - and then the physics just DOES stuff - electrons moving, transistors switching, energy following the path of least resistance.

Thanks for the info. If the symbolic layer exists for humans then how can you disdain representations?

E.G.Even my dog accepts signs that nice things are about to happen. Signs are representations: the squeaking noise the lid of the treat tin makes represents a treat but is not the treat itself. If I were to use the noise as treat substitute too often the dog's training wouldn't work any longer.

E.G.
Signals are also representations. Signals work partly because people generally accept representations.

And where does raw data come from? What sources? Does any of it represent money?

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:23 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:03 am

Skepdick wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 9:53 am
We use symbols. We also use non-symbols.

The is rich conceptual distinction to be drawn between the symbolic and the non-symbolic.

The symbolic stuff is variable names, function names, operators, keywords. In that context symbols DO "representing".

The non-symbolic stuff is the raw data being processed, the underlying machine operations, the concrete computational processes. Those are not representations. They are the raw materials we manipulate.

Whether they do; or don't represent anything is simply not a question of concern. The symbolic layer exists for humans - and then the physics just DOES stuff - electrons moving, transistors switching, energy following the path of least resistance.

Thanks for the info. If the symbolic layer exists for humans then how can you disdain representations?

E.G.Even my dog accepts signs that nice things are about to happen. Signs are representations: the squeaking noise the lid of the treat tin makes represents a treat but is not the treat itself. If I were to use the noise as treat substitute too often the dog's training wouldn't work any longer.

E.G.
Signals are also representations. Signals work partly because people generally accept representations.

And where does raw data come from? What sources? Does any of it represent money?

Yes.

"I promise to pay the bearer £100 . John Smith, Bank of England."

Money is a huge system of representation, from Wall Street to sixpenny coins.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 11:03 am

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:23 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:03 am
Thanks for the info. If the symbolic layer exists for humans then how can you disdain representations?

E.G.Even my dog accepts signs that nice things are about to happen. Signs are representations: the squeaking noise the lid of the treat tin makes represents a treat but is not the treat itself. If I were to use the noise as treat substitute too often the dog's training wouldn't work any longer.

E.G.
Signals are also representations. Signals work partly because people generally accept representations.

And where does raw data come from? What sources? Does any of it represent money?

Yes.

"I promise to pay the bearer £100 . John Smith, Bank of England."

Money is a huge system of representation, from Wall Street to sixpenny coins.

And much else of the raw data for the internet represents porn and hate speech. I've worked in vast data centres where I could see serial arrays of servers literally pulsing with terabyte flows of money down the pipeline. The data is inseparable from its metadata unless one is focussed on a single circuit gate in a semiconductor I suppose. Look at anything close enough and it loses meaning.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:22 am I guess what you omit is that ordinary human language is social. Language evolves by way of interpersonal representations of social reality. We think in terms of representations sometimes linguistic representations and sometimes pictorial representations. For instance there are very intelligent people who simply cannot do diagrams or maps and who need to think in narratives of words and sentences .I've actually met three such persons.

Well, of course - that is the missing part. The history of the representation - its process of construction.

And two different communities evolving two different histories and landing on the same term doesn't mean the terms function as identical representations.

Words and sentences are narratives. What makes somebody a good narrator is guessing how the audience will resonate to their language.
Given some (minimal) shared awareness of history and culture.

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:23 am And where does raw data come from?

From arbitrary measurements. Constraints imposed on your raw senses.

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:23 am What sources?

Any of your senses.

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 10:23 am Does any of it represent money?

I can't even parse the question.

It does - if you want it to.
It doesn't if you don't want it to.

Whatever your arbitrary qualification/criteria for identifying "money"

Does a historical bank note from a no-longer-existing country represent money?

The question is unanswerable because representation is not a property of the data, but a function of its interpretation.
What represents a token of appreciation? Anything gifted to you as such gesture.