CiG
Room with a View
How is a comment about something you said broad?ermahgerd
You characterised my comment as nothing but repeating platitudes. A generalization.
If Mort Divine ruled the world
- Thread starter Zephyrus
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You characterised my comment as nothing but repeating platitudes. A generalization.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Dak
mentat
To literally do that would require me to physically attack you, so that's ridiculous. If news reports counts (you'd have to read words of something that didn't use words):
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/01/540669701/10-years-after-bridge-collapse-america-is-still-crumbling
https://www.pothole.info/2018/04/the-cost-of-car-damages-from-potholes/
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/12/14/poor-insulation-could-be-costing-homeowners-hundreds/
http://theconversation.com/the-old-...where-should-infrastructure-spending-go-68290
Etc. Etc.
It's an example, not a hill to die on. Berkeleyites deserve what they get.
Dak
mentat
That good ol slippery slope:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00918369.2019.1613856?journalCode=wjhm20
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00918369.2019.1613856?journalCode=wjhm20
Einherjar86
Active Member
Dak
mentat
Only humans argue with words. The bridge doesn't argue with you when it gives. The pothole doesn't argue with your car's components. The electrical grid doesn't argue with its components. The insulation doesn't argue with the heat or the cold. The riptide doesn't argue with you when it pulls you out. The predatory animal doesn't argue with you when it attacks you. Etc. Etc.
Einherjar86
Active Member
And none of those things are "more important" than any other thing. The only way they become so is through language. The tide isn't more important than language simply because you can't argue your way out of drowning.
Dak
mentat
Drowned you doesn't know that (nor does the water). Repairs you paid for doesn't know that. Buried under bridge you doesn't know that (nor does the debris). Air temp around you doesn't know that. Etc. Etc.
Your intended point is that "importance" is determined by arguing. You can't argue when you are dead. You can't insert yourself into arguments without resources, which could be taken concretely. Importance is determined concretely prior to subjective insertions, because subjective insertions require concrete ability to insert.
CiG
Room with a View
Allow me to grease the slope further; the researcher Allyn Walker is a typical they/them woke Twitterati type. #resist
Einherjar86
Active Member
False. Who could possibly determine said importance? Importance is only ever determined retroactively. Just because subjectivity requires material conditions doesn't mean those conditions are more important than subjectivity itself.
Importance isn't intrinsic to the inanimate material world. Importance comes from the interplay of language and value. The laws of physics aren't intrinsically more important than airliners simply because they inform how air travel works. There is no objective hierarchy of absolute value in the nonhuman world.
Dak
mentat
Are you saying there was no importance computed before language? Do no animals attempt to preserve their own life? Do they not attempt to hunt/mate/eat/care for young/etc.? At this point I want to return to an earlier quote:
Before words, before anything, you need to be alive. This is concrete. No spoken or written statements have been written by the never-born, and people can die before they make written or otherwise recorded arguments. Even if someone lives to makes recorded arguments via language, they need to be heard and accepted/passed on by living persons.
Words just don't walk around in a vacuum wording with words. To believe so is hyper-Christian:
Einherjar86
Active Member
Mere survival doesn't entail the attribution of importance to life. Survival happens on an instinctual level. That's not importance; that's evolutionary behavior.
Importance only arises after language--it means something possesses significance or value. This comes from higher-level thinking. Prior to that, there's no importance intrinsic in the world. There's just behavior.
Computers would beg to differ.
Language is a part of material reality on par with things like concrete, gravity, life itself. Arguing for its diminutive status smacks of some kind of weirdly naive positivism--as though language is a passive medium through which the rest of the world passes. This is a dated position that fell out of fashion a while ago.
As far as your hyper-Christian comment, John was onto something when he said "In the beginning was the Word." Obviously language didn't breathe the universe into being; but it did allow certain beings (humans) to reflect upon the attribution of value and significance. And thence, the lord said "Let there be Importance."
CiG
Room with a View
Okay, zer's Twitter is a goldmine of dodgy retweets and sleazy associations:
For anybody not familiar with Todd Nickerson, he's the so-called "virtuous pedophile" who did the rounds writing articles for leftist and liberal publications, was harassed by vigilantes, and is probably the first and most vocal proponent of the non-offending MAP idea. This woketard retweeted him.
Definitely no attempt to incorporate kid fuckers into the LGBTQ+ though, even though they bragged about getting their MAP research into the Journal of Homosexuality or some shit.
And zer's oldest Tweet is either satire or they were "redpilled" before going full woke.
One of the next Tweets was an anti-Israel one lmao.
Dak
mentat
You're arguing importance is language not behavior based. Ok, I'm fine with that as per Wittgenstein. I'm simply pointing out that behavior is concrete and precedes language. So importance is irrelevant. I'm celebrating behavior. Figure my usage of importance as = behavior that precedes language.
This whole section contradicts the previous quote and agrees with my analysis in general. Behavior precedes analysis, and behavior is or can be disembodied. Again, one cannot argue with the life-eradicating crushing mass, whatever form that takes, and that form can be pre-gestation.
Einherjar86
Active Member
But you're still relying on importance.
Language changes behavior and thought. Yes, there was non-linguistic behavior prior to language; but after language's emergence, behavior and cognition aren't the same. This doesn't change that humans need oxygen to breathe, but it does change our ability to conceptualize oxygen's importance. And that influences future behavior (e.g. constructing space- and scuba suits, engineering atmospheres on airplanes, etc.). Pre-linguistic behavior isn't more important than linguistic behavior simply because it came first.
I don't understand at all how behavior can be disembodied. Behavior is always embodied. Furthermore, speaking and writing are behaviors, acts.
CiG
Room with a View
HamburgerBoy
Active Member
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"[His name is] Jonathan Yaniv, he made Elmo impersonations towards me when I was just 15." is pretty hilarious out of context though.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Yes, I understand, but it's a flawed method of causal reasoning. Just because something comes first doesn't mean it's better, or more important, etc. It doesn't even mean it's necessary, in fact. Dak suggested that without life there's no language--but I pointed out that computers use language, and they're not alive according to most definitions.
Just because things happened the way they did doesn't mean they had to happen that way, or that another combination of contingent events couldn't give rise to similar circumstances. This is a familiar critique of causal reasoning in philosophy going back to Hume. The privileging of origins, or of more original states, awards a higher value to earlier moments in time simply because they came first. There's no necessity there. It might be the case that our evolutionary past gave rise to the bodies/minds we now enjoy, but that doesn't mean it's impossible that similar (or the same) forms would have arisen from drastically different evolutionary conditions. On a related note, the exact same evolutionary conditions of one million years ago wouldn't necessarily give rise to the same socio-linguistic circumstances we experience today, if we were able to replay the tape (so to speak).
But aside from that, this whole argument about whether language is as important (or necessary...?) as concrete, or other material objects (a finicky definition, as language is material, whether spoken or written) is a red herring, and I always feel a bit silly when I engage in the debate. Even if life can go on existing without language, making the leap to life being more important than language is simply a non sequitur. Bear in mind, I'm not even trying to say that language is more important than life, or concrete, or anything else. In fact, my argument is that it's preposterous to make such arguments since you need language in order to conceptualize things like "life," "language," and "concrete." It makes no sense to think of importance outside of linguistic (or at the very least, higher-level representational) cognition. So from there we move from importance to chronology: "well, life existed prior to language, so without life there's no language." To that, I repeat myself:
a) It's not necessarily true that without life there's no language.
b) Without language (or some other, comparable expressive/cognitive mode) we couldn't even begin to comprehend what it would mean for life to come first, or exist without language.
Dak
mentat
Edit: When I said disembodied behaviors I didn't mean non-material. I was referring to more base substrates than the full human body, animals, etc.
It's an aside but yes, there is computer language. Humans created the computer and the computer language. You don't have the computer to speak the language or the language itself without many prerequisites.
It's a specious move to say that "because things might have been some other way, how they actually are doesn't matter." It's very Rawlsian. It's true that theoretically there's no necessity, but not actually.
It's also not necessarily true that there's no flying spaghetti monster. As far as Point B, I just don't see why you find this to be such an amazing argument. It's like arguing the territory only matters because we have a map. That's quite the perversion of "the map is not the territory."
It's an aside but yes, there is computer language. Humans created the computer and the computer language. You don't have the computer to speak the language or the language itself without many prerequisites.
It's a specious move to say that "because things might have been some other way, how they actually are doesn't matter." It's very Rawlsian. It's true that theoretically there's no necessity, but not actually.
It's also not necessarily true that there's no flying spaghetti monster. As far as Point B, I just don't see why you find this to be such an amazing argument. It's like arguing the territory only matters because we have a map. That's quite the perversion of "the map is not the territory."
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