I have been reading this thread because it seems to be heavily used. I don’t join in because I don’t find it to be very serious; however, arkain101 has been pressuring me for comments. With regard to that I have found your responses to him to be quite in line with my impressions. You seem to be a very logical and thoughtful person. For that reason, I was moved to respond to your current post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jedaisoul
Concepts are human constructs and, by definition, are meaningful.
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You should remember that the are actually guaranteed to be meaningful only to the human who has dreamed them up. When someone tries to explain a concept they have in mind, they are required to communicate through earlier concepts already presumed to be understood. When the listener decides that he understands the new concept, that decision is based on the assumption that the earlier concepts were correctly understood. You should keep in mind the fact that these are all assumptions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jedaisoul
They are also shared. It is by associating words with the underlying concepts that we communicate.
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Yes, and it is an assumption that these associations are correct. All we can actually say is that there is an apparent
isomorphism between what we are thinking and what the other party is thinking. We cannot “know" this isomorphism is correct because our ideas are always based upon assumptions which could very well be in error.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jedaisoul
Therefore, concepts are, by definition, knowable. Also it is true, in a sense, WHY they are knowable, because we construct them to be so. So, there is an a priori reason why (using Schopenhauer's terminology) we can say "Of everything that is, it can be found why it is".
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Only in our own minds!
Other than that, I have no serious complaints with your position (arkain101, please take most of what jedaisoul says as essentially isomorphic to my position
). I just thought that you might be able to comprehend the dilemma I have just laid out. To date, Anssi seems to be the only person, other than myself, to really include that concept in his world view.
This is one of the reasons I put so much emphasis on mathematics. Mathematics is perhaps the only language within which we can be pretty well be confident of the existence of a real isomorphism between what is in your head and what is in my head. All other languages are pretty well confusing on the fundamental level.
Have fun -- Dick
