Philosophy Now Forum

in math, the sign = means equal...
= is a representation.... = is equal...
we use it as a shorthand.... we use
representation all the time... the universal representation of
an animal.. a cat for example... all cats today, yesterday
and forever more... that is what we say "cat" that word
represents all cats.. it is a universal.. a representation..

in fact, the mathematical statement 1 + 1 = 2 is a
representational statement.. as is almost all use
of language today.... I love you... is a representational statement..
like the mythical "table" I presented the other day... for we use
the word "love" to represent an emotion, a feeling we have...
but as with the word "table" and there being no connection between
the word ''table" and an actual table, there is no connection between
the word ''love" and the actual emotion that we experience...

if we were to remove the representational aspect of language,
I wonder if we would even have speech? The use of the representational
dominates in our language today.. for example, for the left,
we use IQ45 to represent evil or incompetence or fascism...
whereas the right might use Hillary or Biden to represent
the exact same representation of evil, incompetence or fascism...

what is left unsaid, what exact criteria we use to make such
a judgement... IQ45 is evil because...... or Biden is evil because...

but that is the "beauty" of representational language... it doesn't
have to be exact or even close use of language.... I can use
representational language, or as we might say, everyday language
and we can be pretty inaccurate in our language... all liberals
are evil.... from a language standpoint, that statement can
pretty much mean anything... what is evil? Monday, dogs,
mornings, liberals, newspapers, sea food, the internet?
An argument can be made that all these things and more,
is an outright evil....with representational language being
as imprecise as it is, I can make the argument that evil is found
in puppy dogs, the sunset, Jesus, the Mona Lisa.. in fact, with
representational language, I can make anything in the world evil...
as long as I don't explain what I mean, exactly..... if I leave
representational language unexplained, I can justify anything in
any way....

so, we have language that is representational.. a word stands for
something physical and in many cases, a word like love that
stands for an emotion/feeling..

so let us change the terminology a bit..
using language as we do, to have words represent something else..
we use the "Goldilocks" myth to explain something about the world
or the Greeks used "Oedipus" as a myth to describe something real...
it stands for something else... so we can think about myths,
as representational language, as one means to describe the world and our place
in it... I suspect that we humans have had myths since the first day of being
human... or perhaps even sooner...

so, much of, if not all of our language is representational, myth making,
what does that mean for us?

Kropotkin

Ok, let's try this again...

in thinking about representational thinking, we have to understand
that words stand for something else...

that in English, a table is a stand in or represent an actual physical table..
but the truth is that there is no connection between the two words,
the word "table" and the actual physical table... we connect them
from habit, usage, bias and education.. take the German word
"Tisch" unless someone tells us or by reading about it, we cannot understand
what the word "Tisch" means...it takes experience of some sort for us to
make sense of the word "Tisch" ....I cannot "a priori" with just theoretical
or before the experience, explains to what "Tisch" means.

and this point leads us to a couple of points... one, that
because words are representational, stand for something else,
we can easily make mistakes in using representational words..

Take the word "Queen" depending on context, the word ''Queen"
can mean "Queen Elizabeth" or it can mean a "flamboyant homosexual"
again, depending on context... it is very possibly to make this mistake,
of confusing the two words... and that is one of the problems of
representational words.. it is easy to make mistakes...

it depends on how "educated" we are... how much experience we have with
representational words...as all language is representational, it means we
are always making mistakes of some sort, sometimes big, sometimes small....
the sentence, "I am getting to second base with her" unless someone actually
tells us what this means, a person will have no idea what this sentence means...
now one might argue that the above statement is a "colloquialism''
but I ask, what is the difference between a ''colloquialism'' and ''representational''
language? Both require experience to sort them out as to what they mean...
and they stand for something else...

we have the German word ''Tisch"... if you don't know German, can you discover
what the word "Tisch" means by an "a priori" method? can we learn what
the word "Tisch" means before having an example.. by a theoretical method?
by just thinking about it? I doubt it... you might be able to guess, but that is
just a guess.. nothing more.. and by guessing, you will be as often wrong as you
are being right...no, to learn what ''Tisch" means, you need to hear about it or
read about it or by some other method of experience..

language is discovered by experience, not by any sort of theoretical
method... we hear language. in fact, we learn language by our senses,
hearing, sight, touching, smelling, tasting.. not by reading because
we learn language before we learn to read...reading will certainly
expand our language skills, but we cannot speak ''language'' by
just reading...language skills come from experience, from hearing,
seeing, touching..... etc.....

we must experience a table before we can understand what the word "table" means...
and this is true of all language.. we must experience it before we can make
sense of it...before we can "know" it...

ok, more after the break...

Kropotkin

The following is from a random page of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason"

"I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time. All
determination of time presupposes something permanent in perception.
This permanent cannot, however be something in me, since it is only through
this permanent in time can itself be determined. Thus, perception of this permanent
is possible only through a thing outside of me and not through mere representation
of a thing outside of me;..... etc.... etc...''

I must admit, I am still waiting for the English translation.....

The fact of the matter that this gobbldygook is typical of philosophy in our modern times...
if words are representation of a real thing, what real thing does this tripe is supposed to
be? And to be clear, I had to search the book, the First Critique, of something that
made sense... instead of being totally unintelligible....

but these words, bring us to a point... that philosophy often sounds like
a couple of representations past what normal people might write or say...
you get a representation of a representation of something that is real...

now one might say, but Kropotkin, if you only understood what the writer,
in this case Kant, was saying, you wouldn't have a problem with it... but that is
the point, it takes years of reading and classes to make any sense of Kant...
it is so specialized that it takes years to properly understand it...I am not sure
that brings any credit of any kind to philosophy, to be so esoteric that only a few
can make sense of someone like Kant...

the esoteric nature of philosophy has in fact made it so cryptic or abstruse,
that philosophy no longer speaks to the average person....

it is no longer even a representation of a representation.. it has gone beyond
that, to being unreadable....try a page of Richard Rorty or perhaps
Adorno... or Wittgenstein... you need a degree to make sense of any of these
writers... (now I can hear it from the peanut gallery.. I understood it, Kropotkin,
you must be dumb to be incapable of understanding Rorty or Wittgenstein?
but the fact is, that few around here actually do understand Wittgenstein..
for example, he called himself an "Ethical writer"... and his so called
"Language games" were in fact, ethical theories... he says so himself..
(in a letter written to his publisher around 1920 and around this time,
he was thinking of becoming a priest.. and recall that Heidegger was himself
a Catholic writer and he was known as such) the writings of this century
are evidence that the major concern of philosophy since Nietzsche has been
ethical concerns... and how few around here actually understand this?

our engagement with representations actually prevents us from seeing the
forest, due to our focus on the trees.. we are unable to
widen our viewpoint enough to include aspects of philosophy outside of
seeking mere representations....

what does this represent? that is our modern concern.. and it is the wrong focus..
we must open our eyes to see the forest and not just the tree's....

Kropotkin