Kaz1983 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 2:24 pm
brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 11:39 am
Why do words mean what they mean? How do you ground them?
Words are grounded in our desire to understand the world. Take these statements;
Close, but not quite.
Words mean what they mean because of the teleology of language -- the root of "ought" in any discussion is those
prescriptive meanings.
The purpose is principally communication, and although understanding arguably plays a crucial role in that (a word that doesn't make sense can not communicate things) it's not always understanding of the *world* -- understanding of a shared fiction can be just as important to people (e.g. religion) and communication of ideas can occur in those domains too. Things do not have to be true, real, or grounded in the physical to be understood and communicated in the sense to which they are relevant to language, the essential limitations would only be something like the laws of thought (without which understanding really isn't possible no matter how much some people may pretend it is).
If you have a problem with is-ought, the moment you use language you have already presupposed a broad category of oughts as to what words ought to mean. And once we determine what morality
ought to mean, we can talk about what it is.
Kaz1983 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 2:24 pm“I need to clean my bedroom”
It's an incomplete thought. "In order to X I need to Y" is the correct hypothetical norm.
Stop expressing incomplete thoughts and the world will make much more sense. I feel like I've explained this to you before, or am I having déjà vu?
Given the definition of morality (which can be objectively established/narrowed down through the teleology of language) we can objectively assert claims like "If you want to act morally in X situation you ought to do Y". Again, a hypothetical norm, but not at all at odds with minimal realism.
Robust realism can be argued for too on some basis (harder questions), but that's beyond the scope here that morality makes sense and you're just being too intellectually lazy to grasp it, like a child complaining in algebra that "math doesn't make sense". Both your original post here and your reply to me make it clear you've made no real effort to deal with the hard questions.
Classic Dunning Kruger. You're acting here like Teo claiming that thermodynamics proves bombs are impossible when instead he should be saying "Obviously bombs exist and scientists are not morons incapable of spotting such a contradiction, so what am
I misunderstanding about thermodynamics?"
Sometimes it's
you. You need to consider the fact that you are so deeply incorrect about all of your preconceptions that you personally may not be able to understand any of this without starting with some serious unlearning.
And Red is correct that the little fit about me not replying fast enough wasn't impressive. I've had this tab open and had not gotten to it yet, educating a hostile student who thinks he's teacher isn't always priority number one. I'm happy to explain this stuff, but you need to do your part and work on understanding it instead of trying to lecture when you have no idea what you're talking about. It's like you walked into calculus, didn't understand derivatives, and you decided the problem was that the professor needed
you to teach him addition.
