Philosophy Now Forum

ken wrote: Obviously ALL words CAN BE arbitrary individual containers to ALL individual persons, however, just as obvious is, there is a shared meaning for which we are all responsible for. But, we would never know, for sure, if we have that shared meaning right if we never clarify with each other about it, would we?

What's obvious is that you have waded unprepared into an area of debate that you didn't even know existed and you are not coping well. You can't establish your basic foundations. It does not bode well for that perfect theory you are planning to tout as soon as you have discovered the words that will express it elegantly. On this showing we may expect there to be very significant problems that you will be much too grumpy to discuss realistically.

Words can be arbitrary containers that mean whatever any person wants them to mean. OR they can have shared meaning derived from their use by the society of people that uses them. There is no possibility of it being a little from column A and a little from column B just because you want it that way. the two descriptions are strictly incompatible.

If you commit to the former then you can have "intelligence" mean anything you like. But there is no true meaning for any word at all and that includes every single word. Language is impossible and you have no way of telling me different.

If you can bring yourself to accept the latter, then intelligent people are not stupid, stupid people are the ones who do the most foolish things, and intelligence is not equitably distributed to all persons because stupid people have less of it than smart people do. That is how the word works when English speaking people use it in daily conversation. That is, in other words, how the word is used by people who understand its use, and that is what it means for a word to have any meaning at all.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

ken wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

This is utter bullshit.

Yes we all know it is to you. This would be at least the fourth time you have clearly stated that I am WRONG.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:I think your basic problem is hyperbole.

What problem?

I state nearly every thing to be taken very literally. I do this because I can back up nearly every thing I say.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:Ask ANY teacher if his students are all equally able to learn "absolutely anything". You are just talking bollocks.

You really do NOT read the actual words that I write, or, those beliefs that you hold onto so tightly distort your vision so much that you actually do NOT see the actual words that I write. Either way some thing is stopping you from seeing and understanding what it is that I am actually saying and meaning.

Read the words I wrote in the quote you supplied here and read your last sentence. See if you can spot the difference.

The difference is that you have made assertions that you not only contradict yourself, but you also contradict thousands of years of empirical reality.
You are living a fantasy world.

Obviously you could NOT spot the differences. So, you again you make unsubstantiated claims, which when challenged and questioned you NEVER reply to.

Is that the same thousands of years of empirical "reality" that people are still confused about and arguing over?

Maybe I am living in what you call a "fantasy world" but at least all the meanings I use do NOT contradict each and provide the big full and True picture of Life. But you will never know this because you are unable to or unwilling to challenge and question anything I write. All you ever do is claim that I am wrong and cotradict myself yet you NEVER provide anything to back up what you say. You did NOT even provide one definition even after insisting that I do it.

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote: Obviously ALL words CAN BE arbitrary individual containers to ALL individual persons, however, just as obvious is, there is a shared meaning for which we are all responsible for. But, we would never know, for sure, if we have that shared meaning right if we never clarify with each other about it, would we?

What's obvious is that you have waded unprepared into an area of debate that you didn't even know existed and you are not coping well. You can't establish your basic foundations. It does not bode well for that perfect theory you are planning to tout as soon as you have discovered the words that will express it elegantly. On this showing we may expect there to be very significant problems that you will be much too grumpy to discuss realistically.

Why the emotional word?

If anything, what is being written here is only supporting Me more. Why would you assume I can not do something BEFORE you ask. I have already established a basic foundation. Although admittingly like everything else I want to express, neither I am ready to express it and based on evidence here some people are totally unprepared to receive it. Relatively new ideas are not easily received and accepted. That has been already proved many times throughout history.

FlashDangerpants wrote:Words can be arbitrary containers that mean whatever any person wants them to mean. OR they can have shared meaning derived from their use by the society of people that uses them. There is no possibility of it being a little from column A and a little from column B just because you want it that way. the two descriptions are strictly incompatible.

There is NO possibility?

I already explained how both CAN very easily take place together in harmony. For people to come together and clarify what a word/s mean is not a hard thing to do at all. I do understand it is not a common thing that happens but it surely is not an impossible thing that can not happen.

FlashDangerpants wrote:If you commit to the former then you can have "intelligence" mean anything you like. But there is no true meaning for any word at all and that includes every single word. Language is impossible and you have no way of telling me different.

If you can bring yourself to accept the latter, then intelligent people are not stupid, stupid people are the ones who do the most foolish things, and intelligence is not equitably distributed to all persons because stupid people have less of it than smart people do. That is how the word works when English speaking people use it in daily conversation. That is, in other words, how the word is used by people who understand its use, and that is what it means for a word to have any meaning at all.

And, how intelligence or lack of it is being used in this thread is absolutely very obvious to some of us now. The only definition that you have provide to us is that intelligence is the same as intellect. That surely has made things a lot clearer for the readers now.

Also your ability to judge who is an intelligent person and who is a stupid person is very arbitrary, am I right? If so, then who or what are you basing your judgemental views on? What is the basis for you defining an intelligent person from a unintelligent person?

That dilema also applies for when a person judges others on being a good person or a bad person. The Truth IS there is NO good person nor bad person, just like there is NO intelligent person nor stupid person. ALL human beings at times do good and bad things, just like ALL human beings at times can be intelligent and be stupid. We ALL at times have been stupid and intelligent and have done stupid, wrong and bad things, as well as intelligent, right and good things. Obviously we each do these to varying degrees.

You can discuss with others with the perception and the assumption and expectation that there is oly one shared meaning of which you and they will understand, to some degree all of what is being talked about, and that degree of understanding is what you will arbitrarily decide of course. So, you are free to choose to do that if you like. I am certainly not going to tell you what to do, but Me on the other hand, prefer to ask and be ask clarifying questions, especially during philosophical discussions. I do not understand why this would even become such an issue.

ken wrote: If anything, what is being written here is only supporting Me more. Why would you assume I can not do something BEFORE you ask. I have already established a basic foundation. Although admittingly like everything else I want to express, neither I am ready to express it and based on evidence here some people are totally unprepared to receive it. Relatively new ideas are not easily received and accepted. That has been already proved many times throughout history.

You are mistaken on a grand scale. That Berkeley guy you never heard of... his idealism was in part a response to a problem that this other guy called Descartes couldn't answer regarding how an immaterial brain could causally interact with a physical brain. Your own dualism is not going to have the answer to that problem either, and it will be subject to a problem of solipsism as these things always are, plus all the other perfectly usual problems for that perfectly recognisable theory. I know lots about that, Hobbes knows more than I do. You're not peddling relatively new ideas, you are warming over a centuries cold corpse with no idea what you are in for.

I want you to understand this, I was gently prodding your theory to wake you up to some entry problems you are having difficulty getting. If you proceed with your arrogant claim that you have the grand mystical answer to all questions, we and probably several others are going to destroy it. That is because it is old and it is shit and we were very well versed in its terrible flaws before you thought of it.

ken wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote:Words can be arbitrary containers that mean whatever any person wants them to mean. OR they can have shared meaning derived from their use by the society of people that uses them. There is no possibility of it being a little from column A and a little from column B just because you want it that way. the two descriptions are strictly incompatible.

There is NO possibility?

Quite obviously not. How can you be having a problem understanding such a basic claim? If words have meaning because they are used in a certain way - if that use is literally what their meaning is. That is one description of how words have meanings. I suggest that it is a true description.

IF words get their meaning some other way, then they don't get them THAT WAY. So it isn't a true description of how words get meanings. So if words are arbitrary containers that can have different meanings to different people, then the above description MUST BE FALSE.

To say that they are incompatible is to say that any particular description of how meaning is acquired cannot be true and false at the same time.

So NO, there is NO possibility.

ken wrote:I already explained how both CAN very easily take place together in harmony. For people to come together and clarify what a word/s mean is not a hard thing to do at all. I do understand it is not a common thing that happens but it surely is not an impossible thing that can not happen.

Think about what it means for people to agree on what some word means... it means that they agree to use it in the agreed way. And that in turn means they agree to UNDERSTAND it in the same way. That is what makes a contended word actually come to mean what was agreed.

ken wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote:If you commit to the former then you can have "intelligence" mean anything you like. But there is no true meaning for any word at all and that includes every single word. Language is impossible and you have no way of telling me different.

If you can bring yourself to accept the latter, then intelligent people are not stupid, stupid people are the ones who do the most foolish things, and intelligence is not equitably distributed to all persons because stupid people have less of it than smart people do. That is how the word works when English speaking people use it in daily conversation. That is, in other words, how the word is used by people who understand its use, and that is what it means for a word to have any meaning at all.

And, how intelligence or lack of it is being used in this thread is absolutely very obvious to some of us now. The only definition that you have provide to us is that intelligence is the same as intellect. That surely has made things a lot clearer for the readers now.

Firstly, you missed the important part of that. I wrote about "resorting" to a dictionary for a reason, it would not be compatible with my previously expressed points if I though of dictionaries as the source of a word's meaning.

I definitely have pointed out in this thread that intelligence is linked to application and use of skills. I did so long before that quote from me which is inside the quote from you above these words. So I am not impressed by this comment you have made, you seem to be determinedly sabotaging yourself here.

But we have several other differences that are relevant here. You whole model of separating intelligence from mind and "open mind" and knowledge is going to be a disaster for you.

So as I am tiring of trying to explain to you, intelligent and stupid are words, which like all other words, have a meaning that derives from what thoughts they are used to express and what the other practitioners of that language understand by those utterances. Intelligence describes a very broad set of applied knowledge, too broad for it to be sensible to think of intelligence as some discrete singular object.

ken wrote:Also your ability to judge who is an intelligent person and who is a stupid person is very arbitrary, am I right? If so, then who or what are you basing your judgemental views on? What is the basis for you defining an intelligent person from a unintelligent person?

Setting yourself up like that is not smart.

Hobbes made a very simple point on page one of this thread. I'm not sure you ever understood it, but if so you required multiple extremely simple explanations to get even that. It wouldn't be consistent for me to assume on that limited data that you are stupid. But you are 0 for 1 thus far. However, none of that is actually important...

I have not presented, nor will I, nor could (in my view) anybody else present a workable theory of how to objectively measure intelligence. My only claim in this instance is that the word is useful in sentences such as "not understanding Hobbes' perfectly simple argument is a mark of relatively low intelligence". As I am not arguing that intelligence is a singular thing, I don't need to measure it, or prove it, I just have to show that there is way in which we use the word, which is a way that we would be expected to understand the word, that is nothing like the way you are using it.

Stop being a lazy obstinate bastard and use a different word. You are allowed to set the definitions for those to be whatever you want. If it catches on (without general usage just changing the terms of its use and robbing you of your meaning), good for you. Otherwise it wasn't meant to be.

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote: If anything, what is being written here is only supporting Me more. Why would you assume I can not do something BEFORE you ask. I have already established a basic foundation. Although admittingly like everything else I want to express, neither I am ready to express it and based on evidence here some people are totally unprepared to receive it. Relatively new ideas are not easily received and accepted. That has been already proved many times throughout history.

You are mistaken on a grand scale. That Berkeley guy you never heard of... his idealism was in part a response to a problem that this other guy called Descartes couldn't answer regarding how an immaterial brain could causally interact with a physical brain. Your own dualism is not going to have the answer to that problem either, and it will be subject to a problem of solipsism as these things always are, plus all the other perfectly usual problems for that perfectly recognisable theory. I know lots about that, Hobbes knows more than I do. You're not peddling relatively new ideas, you are warming over a centuries cold corpse with no idea what you are in for.

Did I use the 'relatively' word in relation to 'new ideas'.

There could not be an immaterial brain, could there?

What "immaterial" thing/s that may or may not causally interact with a physical brain may not have yet been answered to you. But that in no way means it has not yet been answered by some one else.

I do NOT have My own dualism. I do NOT have any 'ism'.

"That" problem, i think, can very easily be answered and solved.

The "problem" of solipsism has already been answered and solved, just like all the other, so called, "perfectly usual problems" in Life have been. Once you know-HOW to answer and solve ALL problems then they can are very simply, easily and quickly answered and solved.

If it is a perfectly recognizable "theory" to your or others, then if the truth be known it was NOT to me. I am just learning how to express how I obtained My perspective of things. If that just happens to match up with centuries old ideas and also just happens to answer how to solve and answer those "problems", then so be it. It certainly was not what i set out to do in the beginning.

The beauty of this IS I KNOW EXACTLY what I am doing, and "in for". And, I am LOVING and ENJOYING every minute of it.

By the way did I mention if I just happen to accidentally provide the way that shows others how they can solve and answer these centuries old "problems" very quickly, easily and simply by and for themselves, then I think you will find that it is actually a 'relatively brand NEW idea' that I am "peddling". The way for others to solve ALL problems, which is the only thing I want am "peddling", if it works, would have to be a really NEW IDEA would it not? But I guess we will ALL have to just wait and see what happens.

FlashDangerpants wrote:I want you to understand this, I was gently prodding your theory to wake you up to some entry problems you are having difficulty getting. If you proceed with your arrogant claim that you have the grand mystical answer to all questions, we and probably several others are going to destroy it. That is because it is old and it is shit and we were very well versed in its terrible flaws before you thought of it.

Great! I am not sure if you are aware or not but I love being challenged, questioned for clarity, and criticized for the wrong way I write and express. If what I want to express is wrong, then that is great. If it is pointed out to Me, then the only thing that happens is I become wiser. So the more others try to destroy this the more I learn, and the more I learn the more I become wiser, so the better I can then express better.

I am a bit uncertain, however, how do you already know the flaws, in My writings, before you actually see and read it all in its whole context?

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote:Words can be arbitrary containers that mean whatever any person wants them to mean. OR they can have shared meaning derived from their use by the society of people that uses them. There is no possibility of it being a little from column A and a little from column B just because you want it that way. the two descriptions are strictly incompatible.

There is NO possibility?

Quite obviously not. How can you be having a problem understanding such a basic claim? If words have meaning because they are used in a certain way - if that use is literally what their meaning is. That is one description of how words have meanings. I suggest that it is a true description.

IF words get their meaning some other way, then they don't get them THAT WAY. So it isn't a true description of how words get meanings. So if words are arbitrary containers that can have different meanings to different people, then the above description MUST BE FALSE.

To say that they are incompatible is to say that any particular description of how meaning is acquired cannot be true and false at the same time.

So NO, there is NO possibility.

Okay that is great to know your view on this.

If I say to you, "I want to 'argue' this out with you", what IS the meaning of 'argue' here?

What is YOUR meaning of that word and of that sentence?

What is MY meaning of that word and of that sentence?

What is the SHARED meaning of that word and of that sentence? Is it the same or not for both of us, and for others also? How would you ever know?

I KNOW what I meant when I wrote it, obviously because I wrote, but how would you EVER KNOW what I actually, (really and truly), meant by that word and that sentence?

Is just basing our assumed 'shared meaning' really going to work?

If not, then what do you think would be the best, (simplest, easiest, and quickest) way to to uncover and unravel this dilemma that we both now have? I, for One, certainly do not know for sure if you understood My meaning in the way that I would have liked you to.

Have you ever noticed when people are talking about and discussing dead philosopher's/writer's works, they are always putting their own 'interpretation' of what was ASSUMED to be meant by the philosopher/writer. Or, when people are discussing a philosophical issue they each are always putting their own 'interpretation' into the discussion. There is NO actual 'shared meaning' anywhere. There is ONLY an ASSUMED meaning being placed in there, by each and all involved, which is based upon and confounded by their each and own 'interpretation' of a word and its meaning. Assumptions and interpretations are ALL based on previous experiences. All previous experiences are based upon subjectivity and thus form only a subjective perspective to which all interpretations and assumptions can then and are based upon and come from. There is and will be NO clear cut objective perspective to which a shared meaning could actually be based upon, that is until clarification with each and every other subjective person has happened first.

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote:I already explained how both CAN very easily take place together in harmony. For people to come together and clarify what a word/s mean is not a hard thing to do at all. I do understand it is not a common thing that happens but it surely is not an impossible thing that can not happen.

Think about what it means for people to agree on what some word means... it means that they agree to use it in the agreed way. And that in turn means they agree to UNDERSTAND it in the same way. That is what makes a contended word actually come to mean what was agreed.

Obviously. And, what is wrong with doing that?

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote:If you commit to the former then you can have "intelligence" mean anything you like. But there is no true meaning for any word at all and that includes every single word. Language is impossible and you have no way of telling me different.

If you can bring yourself to accept the latter, then intelligent people are not stupid, stupid people are the ones who do the most foolish things, and intelligence is not equitably distributed to all persons because stupid people have less of it than smart people do. That is how the word works when English speaking people use it in daily conversation. That is, in other words, how the word is used by people who understand its use, and that is what it means for a word to have any meaning at all.

And, how intelligence or lack of it is being used in this thread is absolutely very obvious to some of us now. The only definition that you have provide to us is that intelligence is the same as intellect. That surely has made things a lot clearer for the readers now.

Firstly, you missed the important part of that. I wrote about "resorting" to a dictionary for a reason, it would not be compatible with my previously expressed points if I though of dictionaries as the source of a word's meaning.

So, if a dictionary is not a useful source for finding a word's meaning, then what are you saying?

Do you really believe that the source of a word's meaning is held within the assumptions and guess work we all have in each other's meaning of a word/s? Is that why you refer to it as 'shared meaning'? We all take a part in of the sharing in and of the assuming and the guessing in and of what each other meaning they have placed on and in a word?

All I have done is just suggest let us take out the assumptions and the guess work and just clarify with each other. Not much else nor more than that.

FlashDangerpants wrote:I definitely have pointed out in this thread that intelligence is linked to application and use of skills. I did so long before that quote from me which is inside the quote from you above these words. So I am not impressed by this comment you have made, you seem to be determinedly sabotaging yourself here.

If I am seemingly determinedly sabotaging my own self here, then why are you not impressed? Would that not help your case?

What I have noticed with most people in philosophy forums/discussions the only thing they love more than to destroy the others points and views is to watch and see the other sabotaging their own selves. Sitting back and watching the other person doing their work for them has a pleasing and self-satisfying feeling to it.

By the way you did already and definitely point out that, to you, intelligence is linked to application and use of skills, but can and will you now point out also HOW that exactly works?

FlashDangerpants wrote:But we have several other differences that are relevant here. You whole model of separating intelligence from mind and "open mind" and knowledge is going to be a disaster for you.

But I am NOT at all separating intelligence from Mind. I am not sure why you would think that.

Also, how can you be so sure that what I am wanting to do and write is going to be a "disaster" for Me? Have you heard ALL of what I want to say and express?

FlashDangerpants wrote:So as I am tiring of trying to explain to you, intelligent and stupid are words, which like all other words, have a meaning that derives from what thoughts they are used to express and what the other practitioners of that language understand by those utterances. Intelligence describes a very broad set of applied knowledge, too broad for it to be sensible to think of intelligence as some discrete singular object.

To you maybe, but NOT to Me.

But then I am the One saying I know HOW to solve all these so called "problems" that others have, so that may be the difference here between us.

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote:Also your ability to judge who is an intelligent person and who is a stupid person is very arbitrary, am I right? If so, then who or what are you basing your judgemental views on? What is the basis for you defining an intelligent person from a unintelligent person?

Setting yourself up like that is not smart.

Hobbes made a very simple point on page one of this thread. I'm not sure you ever understood it, but if so you required multiple extremely simple explanations to get even that. It wouldn't be consistent for me to assume on that limited data that you are stupid. But you are 0 for 1 thus far. However, none of that is actually important...

I may have taken a bit of time to get the EXACT point you two were making in that argument. But I also noticed that after I showed how that same argument was invalid and/or unsound, that that was never actually recognized and/or acknowledged either. But also of no real importance either.

FlashDangerpants wrote:I have not presented, nor will I, nor could (in my view) anybody else present a workable theory of how to objectively measure intelligence.

I have already presented how to objectively measure absolutely everything, including intelligence. Maybe it was not yet recognized or got lost in the reading, but I could, and will if wanted, show with multiple extremely simple explanations to get this understood, if that is what is required.

FlashDangerpants wrote:My only claim in this instance is that the word is useful in sentences such as "not understanding Hobbes' perfectly simple argument is a mark of relatively low intelligence". As I am not arguing that intelligence is a singular thing, I don't need to measure it, or prove it, I just have to show that there is way in which we use the word, which is a way that we would be expected to understand the word, that is nothing like the way you are using it.

And that way that you and others use it has not exactly helped in sorting out the centuries old "philosophical problems" so far.

FlashDangerpants wrote:Stop being a lazy obstinate bastard and use a different word. You are allowed to set the definitions for those to be whatever you want. If it catches on (without general usage just changing the terms of its use and robbing you of your meaning), good for you. Otherwise it wasn't meant to be.

But the definition I used has already caught on. It came out of a dictionary.

ken wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote: ...Relatively new ideas are not easily received and accepted...

...You're not peddling relatively new ideas....

Did I use the 'relatively' word in relation to 'new ideas'.

Are you taking the piss?

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote: ...You're not peddling relatively new ideas....

Did I use the 'relatively' word in relation to 'new ideas'.

Are you taking the piss?

Obviously the supposedly "shared meaning" is not coming across all that well.

How could we rectify this?

ken wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote:
Did I use the 'relatively' word in relation to 'new ideas'.

Are you taking the piss?

Obviously the supposedly "shared meaning" is not coming across all that well.

How could we rectify this?

I can see that even FlashDangerpants' patience and calm reflection on your musings is braking down.

It can be rectified in two ways.
1) you will have to listen to reason.
2) you will have to change your POV.
3) You might have to have a primer in basic logic.
4) You will have to recognise simple empirical truths that are irrefutable.

ken wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote:
Did I use the 'relatively' word in relation to 'new ideas'.

Are you taking the piss?

Obviously the supposedly "shared meaning" is not coming across all that well.

How could we rectify this?

You could stop taking the piss. When you use the word 'relatively' as an adjective to describe 'new ideas' that is a direct syntactical relationship. It isn't a question of the meaning of words, it is a simple fact about the structure of language.

Hobbes is right again, you have worn out my patience.

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote: Are you taking the piss?

Obviously the supposedly "shared meaning" is not coming across all that well.

How could we rectify this?

You could stop taking the piss. When you use the word 'relatively' as an adjective to describe 'new ideas' that is a direct syntactical relationship. It isn't a question of the meaning of words, it is a simple fact about the structure of language.

Hobbes is right again, you have worn out my patience.

I have to congratulate you for your patience which is greater than mine. Suffering fools gladly is not one of my skill sets.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

ken wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote: Are you taking the piss?

Obviously the supposedly "shared meaning" is not coming across all that well.

How could we rectify this?

I can see that even FlashDangerpants' patience and calm reflection on your musings is braking down.

It can be rectified in two ways.
1) you will have to listen to reason.
2) you will have to change your POV.
3) You might have to have a primer in basic logic.
4) You will have to recognise simple empirical truths that are irrefutable.

1) Nothing much reasonable was provided to Me, and certainly none from you.
2) I could change, but why should I? No other reasonable point has been provided.
3) Maybe that might help Me? But I have already shown how your "logical" argument actually was not that logical at all.
4) lol

Or, we could have used everyday commonsense clarification. That is one way that would have certainly rectified the misunderstanding that took place.

Obviously the supposed "shared meaning" that we all supposedly have has been lost on some, by the next post and still remains lost and misunderstood.

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote: Are you taking the piss?

Obviously the supposedly "shared meaning" is not coming across all that well.

How could we rectify this?

You could stop taking the piss. When you use the word 'relatively' as an adjective to describe 'new ideas' that is a direct syntactical relationship. It isn't a question of the meaning of words, it is a simple fact about the structure of language.

Hobbes is right again, you have worn out my patience.

What is a simple fact about the structure of language? If there is something wrong with the structure, then just point it out. What is so complicated about that? Just saying, "Are you taking the piss?" does not provide any 'shared meaning' at all.

If it is not a question of meaning, then obviously we do not know what you mean by "Are you taking the piss?"

Your reasoning of, "Language works because we are able to trust as a rule that other people understand more or less what we do by the words we use" does not actually work, all the time. Or, most of the time, I find. Even hobbes here thought 'shared meaning' was what you were alluding to, as well, with your "Are you taking the piss," remark. He did not make any comment about 'structure of language'.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

FlashDangerpants wrote:

ken wrote:
Obviously the supposedly "shared meaning" is not coming across all that well.

How could we rectify this?

You could stop taking the piss. When you use the word 'relatively' as an adjective to describe 'new ideas' that is a direct syntactical relationship. It isn't a question of the meaning of words, it is a simple fact about the structure of language.

Hobbes is right again, you have worn out my patience.

I have to congratulate you for your patience which is greater than mine. Suffering fools gladly is not one of my skill sets.

Another of your skill sets is;
NEVER providing definitions for words you use.
NEVER pointing to any previous examples of things you allege that you have supposedly written previously.
NOT acknowledging nor delving deeper into your illogical, unsound, or invalid arguments.

The EVIDENCE is in your writings.

Eventually ken will realise that he is having a conversation with himself.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:Eventually ken will realise that he is having a conversation with himself.

It's hard to tell. Almost as if he's speaking a private language.