Ignorant Wisdom: The Heart of Agnosticism

[Ryan_m_b]

The "definitions" of words are not decided by consensus and the majority does not force it's definitions on everyone. Dictionaries merely contain the most popular definitions of terms usually in order of their popularity. People are free to make up whatever definitions they want on the spot and frequently do so.

Again, the function of the word is what matters. If I say "ugabugabuga" and you take that to mean, "I want a beer" and bring me one that is all that matters. It has served a function whether that was my intention to begin with or not.

Popularity is consensus, people use words inappropriately either by accident or to explore new meanings and if others judge it to be useful they repeat it.

Getting back to my point again, belief is binary; you either believe something or you don't. Not knowing if something is true or having a strong or weak belief is neither here nor there with regards to whether or not you have a belief. Atheism/theism characterises whether or not someone has a belief in a deity. Gnosticism/agnosticism characterises whether or not someone has a belief that evidence for a deity exists. They are separate and useful for categorising people. This is useful because religious belief is clearly a big force in society and by defining where we stand on issues we can begin the process of discussing them as need be.

 

[apeiron]

Any decent dictionary will include specific examples of how words are used in different context for this very reason. If you don't understand even the basics of how a dictionary works and how words can be demonstrated using simple gestures or whatever it's no surprise you can't follow what I'm saying.

Words are themselves constraints on our ideas, and so supply "context". That is how they function.

So I could say I'm cool about the idea of god. But cool has playful meaning in modern use so that could be taken to indicate both that I'm cold on the idea, or that I'm comfortable with the idea.

The vagueness of such a statement is why we invent more technical terms like atheism or agnosticism to pin down sharper meaning. The words supply much more definite constraints on the possible interpretation.

Sure, our current general circumstances also act as a constraint on our state of mind. But language as a tool carries context. That is why it is of any use. As you point out, uggabuga could mean anything and so cannot function as an actual word (in linguistic jargon, it might be indexical but it ain't symbolic). And so that is why we become concerned with the precision of a technical vocabulary in particular. Good terminology has the property of being crisply dichotomous. It attempts to enforce the law of the excluded middle and other basics of logic.

 

[wuliheron]

I am not sure what you mean. Can you give an example?

I thought the intellect provides content not context. What is intellectual context? Can you give a reference?

Examples of emotional context include the basic fight-or-flight response. Our bodies respond in specific ways to prepare us to deal with possible dangers and provide the context within which we interpret content such as someone running towards us.

As I said, it is a simplified explanation to view emotions as contextual and intellect as content. Intellectual context refers to something intellectual that provides meaning. That can be, for example, the words preceeding or following something in a sentence. "Bread" can refer to money or food depending on the context or words that preceed or follow it in a sentence. Bread is the content, and the rest of a sentence can provide the context that gives the word meaning.

 

[wuliheron]

Popularity is consensus, people use words inappropriately either by accident or to explore new meanings and if others judge it to be useful they repeat it.

Slavery was popular at one time, but that didn't make the practice appropriate. What is and isn't appropriate isn't the issue here anyway and appeals to authority are not a rational argument.

Getting back to my point again, belief is binary; you either believe something or you don't. Not knowing if something is true or having a strong or weak belief is neither here nor there with regards to whether or not you have a belief. Atheism/theism characterises whether or not someone has a belief in a deity. Gnosticism/agnosticism characterises whether or not someone has a belief that evidence for a deity exists. They are separate and useful for categorising people. This is useful because religious belief is clearly a big force in society and by defining where we stand on issues we can begin the process of discussing them as need be.

Whether agnostic atheist or whatever conveys something is not the issue. The issue is whether it is doublespeak. Calling bombing a tin shack in the third world "servicing the target" conveys information, but it is also doublespeak. Calling a military action a "peace action" conveys information, but it is doublespeak.

 

[wuliheron]

Words are themselves constraints on our ideas, and so supply "context". That is how they function.

So I could say I'm cool about the idea of god. But cool has playful meaning in modern use so that could be taken to indicate both that I'm cold on the idea, or that I'm comfortable with the idea.

The vagueness of such a statement is why we invent more technical terms like atheism or agnosticism to pin down sharper meaning. The words supply much more definite constraints on the possible interpretation.

Sure, our current general circumstances also act as a constraint on our state of mind. But language as a tool carries context. That is why it is of any use. As you point out, uggabuga could mean anything and so cannot function as an actual word (in linguistic jargon, it might be indexical but it ain't symbolic). And so that is why we become concerned with the precision of a technical vocabulary in particular. Good terminology has the property of being crisply dichotomous. It attempts to enforce the law of the excluded middle and other basics of logic.

Good terminology does both as needed because what works, works. If I find saying ugabugabuga gets the job done that is all that matters and there can be no arguing it is not good terminology. It is the function it serves that, demonstrably, determines how we define it as good or bad in the first place.

 

[lavinia]

Examples of emotional context include the basic fight-or-flight response. Our bodies respond in specific ways to prepare us to deal with possible dangers and provide the context within which we interpret content such as someone running towards us.

.

This does not seem to be emotional but autonomic.

To think that the flight response has anything to do with insight into mathematical truth would take some pretty strong explanation for me to buy it.

 

[apeiron]

Good terminology does both as needed because what works, works. If I find saying ugabugabuga gets the job done that is all that matters and there can be no arguing it is not good terminology. It is the function it serves that, demonstrably, determines how we define it as good or bad in the first place.

But you said...

If I say "ugabugabuga" and you take that to mean, "I want a beer" and bring me one that is all that matters. It has served a function whether that was my intention to begin with or not.

How does a word "serve a function" if it is just a noise with no accepted interpretation, and as a result there is no connection between your intention in making the noise and the fact there is some random(?), misinterpreted(?), response?

Nothing here is making any sense. All through this thread you have at times seem to be insisting that people stick to ordinary dictionary definitions (no more precise jargon allowed) and at other times objecting to the very use of such definitions. Every post seems to adopt some new contradictory position.

Whether agnostic atheist or whatever conveys something is not the issue. The issue is whether it is doublespeak.

How is it doublespeak when it is in fact a more precise definition of a position? All it actually is is doubly constrained. It takes a position on two separate questions - can we ultimately know anything, and do we have a particular belief in a deity?

Doublespeak would be something more like trying to pass off ignorance as wisdom. Ignorance, in usual parlance, is a general term for the unknown. But the kind of ignorance that the Socrates quote was highlighting was a far more constrained sort - the known unknown.

To deliberately play on an ambiguity - confusing the references to unknown unknowns with known unknowns - is more like a case of doublespeak. And the right step in any philosophical discussion would be to define your terms in a way that constrains this ambiguity. In your own thinking as much as anyone else that you might want to communicate with.

 

[wuliheron]

This does not seem to be emotional but autonomic.

To think that the flight response has anything to do with insight into mathematical truth would take some pretty strong explanation for me to buy it.

This thread isn't about "mathematical truth", whatever that means, so it's irrelevant.

 

[wuliheron]

But you said...

How does a word "serve a function" if it is just a noise with no accepted interpretation, and as a result there is no connection between your intention in making the noise and the fact there is some random(?), misinterpreted(?), response?

Whether you say something serves a function isn't the issue which is does it demonstrably serve a function. I say ugabugabuga and you get me a beer. I say it again and you get me another one. As far as you are concerned ugabugabuga serves the function of telling you I want another beer and it doesn't matter what I think. Perhaps English isn't even your native language and you think ugabugabuga is an English word. Whatever, it demonstrably serves a function.

Nothing here is making any sense. All through this thread you have at times seem to be insisting that people stick to ordinary dictionary definitions (no more precise jargon allowed) and at other times objecting to the very use of such definitions. Every post seems to adopt some new contradictory position.

How is it doublespeak when it is in fact a more precise definition of a position? All it actually is is doubly constrained. It takes a position on two separate questions - can we ultimately know anything, and do we have a particular belief in a deity?

Doublespeak would be something more like trying to pass off ignorance as wisdom. Ignorance, in usual parlance, is a general term for the unknown. But the kind of ignorance that the Socrates quote was highlighting was a far more constrained sort - the known unknown.

To deliberately play on an ambiguity - confusing the references to unknown unknowns with known unknowns - is more like a case of doublespeak. And the right step in any philosophical discussion would be to define your terms in a way that constrains this ambiguity. In your own thinking as much as anyone else that you might want to communicate with.

Doublespeak is language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Wikipedia

Whether doublespeak is more "discriptive" is not the issue. I've already been over all this and if you can't keep up please quote some of my previous answers and tell me exactly what you don't understand. Otherwise I will be forced to just keep cutting and pasting my responses.

 

[apeiron]

This does not seem to be emotional but autonomic.

To think that the flight response has anything to do with insight into mathematical truth would take some pretty strong explanation for me to buy it.

To be fair, emotion is not a terribly useful technical term. It does stem from an attempt to frame a crisp dichotomy (between the rational and irrational, between reason/intellect and instinct/passion, etc) but it ends up a false dichotomy because instinctive responses usually are reasonable and rational when considered within an evolutionary context.

And what Damasio and others argue (Damasio being a populariser rather than an originator) is that even our "dry intellect" is highly reliant on instinctive orienting responses, of which the fight/flight response is one of the key ones.

You can see this in the "aha" reaction we have to any sudden significant insight - mathematical or otherwise. This is just what it feels like when we have an abrupt readjustment in our autonomic state. We get a jolt of adrenaline, our pulse quickens, our pupils dilate. Our attention gets fixed in a direction, our body aroused in anticipation of action.

Stick electrodes on your scalp and you can record a P300 EEG wave (positive-going trend at 300 milliseconds post stimulus) that correlates with the autonomic machinery kicking in.

The nervous system is itself built on bivalent logic. You have a sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system - a broadly excitatory network vs a matching inhibitory one - so as to fine-tune the state of the mind/body during any particular moment.

Fight or flight responses are thus an even higher level of autonomic bistability founded on top of this bistable machinery. So at a lower level there is the simpler choice whether to freeze or act. Then at the higher level, action becomes a choice between fighting and fleeing.

 

[apeiron]

Whether you say something serves a function isn't the issue which is does it demonstrably serve a function. I say ugabugabuga and you get me a beer. I say it again and you get me another one. As far as you are concerned ugabugabuga serves the function of telling you I want another beer and it doesn't matter what I think.

This seems a very non-standard view of a functional approach to language. Perhaps you can provide a source that shows it is not?

Functional theories stress the use of language as a tool. So what the tool-user intends is of course of fundamental importance here. The agent is in a purposeful relationship with the recipient - or there is no proper sense in which the speech is "functional".

Of course it in fact matters to you what response you get from uttering "ugabugabuga". If the hearer came and smacked you in the face every time you said it, what would you do?

Even if you "knew" it really means, or you intended it to mean, "don't smack me in the face", you would probably alter your speech so as to achieve the actual hoped-for functional relationship between an utterance and its consequence.

 

[wuliheron]

This seems a very non-standard view of a functional approach to language. Perhaps you can provide a source that shows it is not?

Functional theories stress the use of language as a tool. So what the tool-user intends is of course of fundamental importance here. The agent is in a purposeful relationship with the recipient - or there is no proper sense in which the speech is "functional".

Of course it in fact matters to you what response you get from uttering "ugabugabuga". If the hearer came and smacked you in the face every time you said it, what would you do?

Even if you "knew" it really means, or you intended it to mean, "don't smack me in the face", you would probably alter your speech so as to achieve the actual hoped-for functional relationship between an utterance and its consequence.

I refer you to the http://contextualpsychology.org/ website. A classic functionalist argument is that a martian might see the color red as blue, but never know humans don't see the same color. As long as the word "red" serves a practical function it doesn't matter what either of them think. It works, they keep using it, and the objective meaning of the word can be determined by observing the functions it serves.

 

[apeiron]

I refer you to the http://contextualpsychology.org/ website. A classic functionalist argument is that a martian might see the color red as blue, but never know humans don't see the same color. As long as the word "red" serves a practical function it doesn't matter what either of them think. It works, they keep using it, and the objective meaning of the word can be determined by observing the functions it serves.

Relational Frame Theory is still about an agent's communicative intent even if it highlights the work that recipients are also willing to do to extract that intent.

You appear to be taking the extreme position that if: "As far as you are concerned ugabugabuga serves the function of telling you I want another beer and it doesn't matter what I think."

But where does RFT state that what "you think" is in fact not part of the communicative relationship? If language is a tool, there is by definition a user of the tool. And one with active purpose.

As for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and its use of RFT, again it is obvious that ACT relies on the fact that there is an agent attempting to use a tool. What "you think" is central. And in noticing the language you are using to control yourself (the words that constrain your thoughts), you can step back to see this relationship in fact exists.

So nowhere am I finding support for what you seem to be saying (though pinning down what you are saying also does not seem possible).

 

[wuliheron]

Relational Frame Theory is still about an agent's communicative intent even if it highlights the work that recipients are also willing to do to extract that intent.

You appear to be taking the extreme position that if: "As far as you are concerned ugabugabuga serves the function of telling you I want another beer and it doesn't matter what I think."

But where does RFT state that what "you think" is in fact not part of the communicative relationship? If language is a tool, there is by definition a user of the tool. And one with active purpose.

As for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and its use of RFT, again it is obvious that ACT relies on the fact that there is an agent attempting to use a tool. What "you think" is central. And in noticing the language you are using to control yourself (the words that constrain your thoughts), you can step back to see this relationship in fact exists.

So nowhere am I finding support for what you seem to be saying (though pinning down what you are saying also does not seem possible).

ACT and Relational Frame theory are not the issue, the issue is functionalism which is the underlying philosophy. If you don't understand the distinction between psychology and philosophy I suggest reading up on the subject.

 

[apeiron]

ACT and Relational Frame theory are not the issue, the issue is functionalism which is the underlying philosophy. If you don't understand the distinction between psychology and philosophy I suggest reading up on the subject.

Well maybe you will supply references that are about the specific points you hope to communicate then. At the moment, you just keep shifting the focus on what it is you seem to be claiming.

Give us some support for your interpretation of functionalism as not in fact being about a purposeful relationship between a doer and a done-to. You can't just invent some definition by which functionalism talks about only one half of a functional relationship.

 

[wuliheron]

Well maybe you will supply references that are about the specific points you hope to communicate then. At the moment, you just keep shifting the focus on what it is you seem to be claiming.

Give us some support for your interpretation of functionalism as not in fact being about a purposeful relationship between a doer and a done-to. You can't just invent some definition by which functionalism talks about only one half of a functional relationship.

http://www.mind.ilstu.edu/curriculum/modOverview.php?modGUI=44

That's the best website I could find in a pinch that puts the topic in small words anyone can understand. Functionalism, Relational Frame Theory, and Contextualism in general all emphasise studying the context as the way to determine the objective meaning of anything. Thus contextual psychology has become the first to span the behavioral and cognitive sciences in a self-consistent and nontrivial manner which is why I posted their website.

Ask a classical behavorist about what they think someone means by ugabugabuga and they'll tell you it isn't part of their job. They study the behavior and not what goes on in your head. Functionalists do not concern themselves with just what goes on in your mind, but the behavior it results in and whether it agrees with whatever goes on in your head is irrelavent to studying it's function. It is a theory of the mind that is founded on the physical world.

 

[apeiron]

http://www.mind.ilstu.edu/curriculum/modOverview.php?modGUI=44

That's the best website I could find in a pinch that puts the topic in small words anyone can understand.

Now I know you are just being sarcastic. Or then again, maybe you do not appreciate the way you have just jumped from theories of language back to theories of mind again.

Please supply a reference that relates to a functionalist theory of speech that resembles in any way the case you have been making. Even if it uses big words.

 

[wuliheron]

Functional theories of grammar are those approaches to the study of language, that see the functions of language and its elements to be the key to understanding linguistic processes and structures. Functional theories of language propose that since language is fundamentally a tool, it is reasonable to assume that its structures are best analyzed and understood with reference to the functions they carry out. Functional theories of grammar differ from formal theories of grammar, in that the latter seeks to define the different elements of language and describe the way they relate to each other as systems of formal rules or operations, whereas the former defines the functions performed by language and then relates these functions to the linguistic elements that carry them out. This means that functional theories of grammar tend to pay attention to the way language is actually used in communicative context, and not just to the formal relations between linguistic elements. Wikipedia

Need smaller words?

 

[harrylin]

[..] Please supply a reference that relates to a functionalist theory of speech that resembles in any way the case you have been making. Even if it uses big words.

[..] Wikipedia

Need smaller words?

Probably need more serious reference as basis for discussion:

"There are three options for starting a thread:
1) When starting a new topic, you must reference a published philosopher or researcher who has worked on the topic. [..]
OR
2) If you do not have a reference, you may state your question in the form of "This is the topic I am investigating. Can you recommend resources?" [..]
OR
3) Requests for help with standard definitions and terminology are perfectly acceptable."
- https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=459350

 

[Evo]

Probably need more serious reference as basis for discussion:

"There are three options for starting a thread:
1) When starting a new topic, you must reference a published philosopher or researcher who has worked on the topic. [..]
OR
2) If you do not have a reference, you may state your question in the form of "This is the topic I am investigating. Can you recommend resources?" [..]
OR
3) Requests for help with standard definitions and terminology are perfectly acceptable."
- https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=459350

With this, the thread is closed.