Are words immaterial?

[Togo]

Ok, so we speak the same language, and we live in the same world, but there is no possibility of the concept in my head being understood by you. How do we communicate under those conditions? Can you give an example?

There needs to be some sharing of concepts, some common understanding, for any form of communication.
hile exercise is pointless. So every instance of communication involves one person sharing concepts with another person.

then this boils down to what "share a concept" means.

We share concepts in the very loose sense that I want my concepts to be similar to your concepts. And I can agree that if my concept is similar enough (in some sense) then they "shared".

Precisely so. Without that similarity we aren't communicating.

So, if we need similarity, then an account where words are individual entities is missing something. Because it is on the similarities, and only through the similarities, that communication occurs.

If Adam writes in his Book, which is read by Christie, who tells it to Davan, who sends it as an Electric telegraph signal to Felicity, then we have a message being sent from A-F, from Adam to Felicity. But the word's form, as a neural signal, as a series of words, as a telegraph signal, is largely irrelevant. What matters is the meaning being transmitted. And that meaning does not have a consistent form, it is abstraction that is shared by all the participants.

 

[Juma]

then this boils down to what "share a concept" means.

We share concepts in the very loose sense that I want my concepts to be similar to your concepts. And I can agree that if my concept is similar enough (in some sense) then they "shared".

Precisely so. Without that similarity we aren't communicating.

So, if we need similarity, then an account where words are individual entities is missing something. Because it is on the similarities, and only through the similarities, that communication occurs.

If Adam writes in his Book, which is read by Christie, who tells it to Davan, who sends it as an Electric telegraph signal to Felicity, then we have a message being sent from A-F, from Adam to Felicity. But the word's form, as a neural signal, as a series of words, as a telegraph signal, is largely irrelevant. What matters is the meaning being transmitted. And that meaning does not have a consistent form, it is abstraction that is shared by all the participants.

Each member creates its own meaning. We doesnt really share anything. It is better to say that we synchronize. Being of the same species make this easier.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I can use words to describe the word "word": the word "word" is spelt w-o-r-d.
Now, that wasn't so difficult!
EB

Correct!

That brings up the use/mention distinction. To say cats purr is to use the word, "cat," but to say the word, "cat" has three letters in it is to mention the word, "cat".

That's true too. However, when I say "the word "word" is spelt w-o-r-d", I don't need to refer to its meaning, whatever meanings might be. That the word "word" is spelt w-o-r-d is all you need to know to put it in writting. And I know of no instance in which the word "word" has no material form, whether in writting or not. In fact, its material form is essential, even though, as I remarked earlier, we usually like it light rather than heavy. Its material form is essential because words are used to communicate, which necessarily involves ennoying things like transmission, which we only know how to do by using physical transmission, and so using matter or energy. A meaning can stay safely inside our mind, but a word which we could not transmit, materially, between us, wouldn't be a word.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

A third alternative there is: there are no shared concepts.
EB

Then how can I know what you mean?

Your location says Paris, mine says London. Do we know what is meant by these labels or not? If so, they are not just unique sense-experiences, they have some kind of significance or meaning, and it's shared enough to communicate. If it's not shared, how do you get communication?

Sorry, I arrived too late, Juma said it all.

At least that's one explanation. It is an empirical one. The way we think the world works explains how the different concepts each located in the minds of one sentient human being can be "synchronised" through communication. This can be simulated. We do need to share something, though. What we need to share is a common world, a common universe, a common physicality. But that's Ok because that what we believe we have. We don't share concepts, we share facts (if we do at all). Meaning that facts are independent, most of them, of what we think of them. They exist first, we think about them once they exist. Facts are what drive the synchronisation of our multiplicity of concepts. Look at how some people will be proved wrong in the course of history. This can only happen if we have different concepts and we get to synchronise them through interacting with each other, and we get to a workable results not because this concept had always been there for us to share into but because each of our concepts is meant to represent what we personally believe to be a particular fact. Our concepts would stay apart, unsynchronised, if not for our insistence on communicating, despite the bad manners of so many people. So, in the end, some of our concepts do converge, at least enough for us to cooperate successfully. The criterion is not that they should be similar in any way. The criterion is that in their various guises they should nonetheless allow us to cooperate and gain some material advantage. Similarity here is just as bad an idea as sharing. It just needs to work on a practical level.

Of course, this is only an explanation; I can't prove it. But it's Ok because, to go back to your objection of how you can know what I mean, it's Ok because you don't actually know what I mean. Yet, on a practical level, it works. It works because there's just one world for all of us and that's what we need and do share.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Words are immaterial.

Any material evidence?

I would use a calculator to add numbers, and I'd use a screwdriver to pry open a paint can. We should use the appropriate tools. Why look for material evidence for the existence of immaterial objects?

So what is the appropriate tool?

And what evidence, of any kind, do you have?
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

What is shared are the world around us and our capability of language. (Identifying symbols in information streams, grammar etc)

Ok, so we speak the same language, and we live in the same world, but there is no possibility of the concept in my head being understood by you. How do we communicate under those conditions? Can you give an example?

There needs to be some sharing of concepts, some common understanding, for any form of communication.

We only need to share the same world. (Oops, Juma already said it!)

It's not God-did-it, it's the world-did-it!
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

And why would I need to share the concepts I have in my mind?

To communicate them to others.

The statement 'And why would I need to share the concepts I have in my mind' is intended to convey some kind of meaning. The meaning is something akin to what you were trying to convey at the time of writing. The meaning I pick up won't be exactly the same, but it has to be enough for me to get some idea of your meaning, or the while exercise is pointless. So every instance of communication involves one person sharing concepts with another person.

It is enough that I should believe that concepts are shared and that from time to time the communication process does deliver the kind of synchronisation Juma is talking about. I try to convey my meaning because it's in my nature to do so. It is not necessary at all that I should know that we end up sharing the same concept. The result is broadly the same, just a bit messier if you accept my explanation. The result is not a concept shared but sentient organisms acting as if they shared the same concept and benefiting from this not because there is a concept out there being shared but because their synchronised acting is somehow agreeable to the facts on the ground. I think that's good enough as an explanation for why it does work, if it does.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

We can exchange words to try and convey what we means and we expect other people to understand the concepts we explain. Maybe it works, maybe it does not. But according to this view we don't need to assume that somewhere not our minds are concepts pretty much living a life of their own somewhat like celestial bodies and tornadoes do.

Not like expressions of physical forces, no, but they do need to be independent of the mind that created them. We can still discuss Newtonian mechanics, even though Newton is dead. If there is an idea that was in his head, that is now (in some related form) in mine, then it must have been moved, or transmitted or shared in some way.

Facts and our mental representations of facts, painstakingly synchronised in due course, are enough for this purpose. Facts are independent of our minds, mainly. The facts since Newton haven't much changed that our private but synchronised concepts could not make us act in some mutually beneficial way.
To have still the impression that we share concepts, all we need is that we should be able to share facts and also words, which are themselves facts, i.e. we can read Newton's writings. We use loose representations of facts and these need to be good enough for our mutual business to thrive, and we allow ourselves to believe there is some perfect models, which wouldn't be of the facts we perceive, if we do, but of something like the essence of facts, and we call these concepts. Maybe there is something a bit like those but not quite like those.
EB

 

[Perspicuo]

Words are immaterial. Actions alone are true.







(This is the only case where I agree that "words are immaterial". You need the heart of a poet to get to the meaning.)

Yet I'm not sure many poets would want to agree that words are immaterial!

I guess they would argue that words are not immaterial because they are immaterial.
EB

They don't argue, they're poets!

 

[Perspicuo]

Being an integral part and being interactive are not one and the same

So it can be a part and not interact with any other part. Fascinating. Please explain how they are integral parts of society and yet not interact with it.

Or the other thing conversely.

 

[Under the Rose]

My grandfather taught that we should choose our words wisely, for a word, once articulated, (no matter the medium) cannot be called back. Once it has been made manifest, the good or the harm that may come of it is set in motion. Apologies can be offered and accepted, yet the injury will always leave a psychological scar and possibly remain a trigger.

Words are incredibly powerful.

It is interesting and useful to deliberate on what their exact 'form' may best be described as.

 

[fast]

My grandfather taught that we should choose our words wisely, for a word, once articulated, (no matter the medium) cannot be called back. Once it has been made manifest, the good or the harm that may come of it is set in motion. Apologies can be offered and accepted, yet the injury will always leave a psychological scar and possibly remain a trigger.

Words are incredibly powerful.

It is interesting and useful to deliberate on what their exact 'form' may best be described as.

quasi-abstract

They are neither concrete or abstract. They are time bound but not space bound. There once was a time when there were no words, so they are temporal, but the unwritten word is not literally somehow lodged in our minds. The lexical meaning of a word is a function of collective usage. Usage, the use of a word, is no more something that has material existence than is an unwritten word itself. Sure, there is no usage of a word without the material existence of electrochemical processes in our brain, but we ought not imbue material existence on that which is (and I think obviously) immaterial all because there is high propensity to deny the existence of something without a physical manifestation of something. Consider the number 3, not the numeral, not the idea, not the concept. It's not as mystical as some would think it suggests. It's an oddity of language that underlies why abstract objects shouldn't be viewed with skepticism, as the implications for them are far different than purportedly existing concrete objects.

 

[ryan]

I am not sure how to answer this one.
I am puzzled, maybe somebody else here has an idea on how to answer this in the negative..
Are words immaterial?
I'd say words are recorded in the brain and are nothing more than electro-chemical processes.

We need to define what words are, and then we can discuss their nature. If words can be defined as something that exists in books, then they are not limited to a process in the brain.

 

[fast]

I am not sure how to answer this one.
I am puzzled, maybe somebody else here has an idea on how to answer this in the negative..
Are words immaterial?
I'd say words are recorded in the brain and are nothing more than electro-chemical processes.

We need to define what words are, and then we can discuss their nature. If words can be defined as something that exists in books, then they are not limited to a process in the brain.

Hmmm. Maybe I had it wrong. Perhaps it's a sound.

 

[ryan]

We need to define what words are, and then we can discuss their nature. If words can be defined as something that exists in books, then they are not limited to a process in the brain.

Hmmm. Maybe I had it wrong. Perhaps it's a sound.

So then what is in a book?

 

[Speakpigeon]

My grandfather taught that we should choose our words wisely, for a word, once articulated, (no matter the medium) cannot be called back. Once it has been made manifest, the good or the harm that may come of it is set in motion. Apologies can be offered and accepted, yet the injury will always leave a psychological scar and possibly remain a trigger.

Words are incredibly powerful.

It is interesting and useful to deliberate on what their exact 'form' may best be described as.

Like everything that's not immediately known to us as pain and colours are, words should be taken as unknowns until it's been proven otherwise. Still, we can have explanations like we do for so many things like quasars and murders. One simple explanation for what words are is that a word is a thing we use to try and communicate our meanings. Thus a word may be the word "cat" spelt c-a-t on a piece of paper or the word "cat" pronounced kæt when discussing one's cat with one's interested neighbour, or any word "cat" conveyed using any of the various physical media we use. These are the words that we would all agree exist.

As to form, it seems clear that it depends on each use. Lately, I've been trying to read the birth certificate of a possible ancestor of mine born circa 1770. The whole thing is barely legible. The form of the words on the page comes from having been written by a priest using a quill and possibly slightly inebriated or otherwise sleepy, hungry, angry etc. They are hardly spelt any obvious way yet they are actual words. So the form has to be whatever is agreeable to us as sentient beings, having specific perception organs and living on a particular planet. In other words (ha-ha), form is just what works for the purpose we assign to them, which also conveniently explain the bewildering variety of media we use.

That's also to say that the notion of the word "cat", as opposed to a word "cat", is a fiction, though a convenient one. So there is no form of the word "cat". Instead, each particular word "cat" has the form that happens to be convenient to us in the context.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Consider the number 3, not the numeral, not the idea, not the concept. It's not as mystical as some would think it suggests. It's an oddity of language that underlies why abstract objects shouldn't be viewed with skepticism, as the implications for them are far different than purportedly existing concrete objects.

Numbers are very unlike words though they share the characteristic of being physical.
EB

 

[Under the Rose]

We use various mediums to manifest words in a form that is perceptible to our senses, yet at the point of origin, words are just a concept. To regress even further, what form is the concept of words and where do concepts originate?

 

[Perspicuo]

We use various mediums to manifest words in a form that is perceptible to our senses, yet at the point of origin, words are just a concept. To regress even further, what form is the concept of words and where do concepts originate?

I would suggest getting acquainted with semiotics and set theory.

First, 'word' is itself a concept. We distinguish words as meaningful parts of longer strings of uttered language. But not the only one. You could pick instead a noun phrase, a verb phrase or an adpositional phrase; or perhaps a sentence; or perhaps a smaller element, such as an affix or a stem.

In any case, these are sonic or printed stimuli, from the point of view of their biological function. From another functional point of view they can be conceptualized as responses. In fact they are both, since no phrase, word or affix has existed that was not created by another human being. For the sake of relevance, I believe the discussion is focused on the stimular aspect of words, so let's start there.

As stimuli, due to repetition, they enter into the behavioral repertoire and are utilized by the human nervous system in an associative manner: semantic shifts and tropes (metaphor, metonymy, alliteration, simile, etc.), emotional effects (elicitation of instinctual reactions, such as lust, hunger and other forms of excitment) and cognitive biases (generalization, overgeneralization, evocation of Darwinian behavioral templates as they express themselves in the cognitive area).

These are all physical events, and they are a short summary of the vicissitudes of verbal events (including "words") which explain to a large (if not complete) degree the phenomenon of human meaning in the verbal context, which is what people usually refer to when talking about the supposed immateriality of words and/or concepts. In short and to conclude, the proposition of the immateriality of words is unnecessary, not to mention the problems this would create, fundamentally the problem of explaining the interaction of physical and non-physical entities and--to start off with-- having to give evidential foundation to the existence of non-physical entities.


(Whew! Sometimes TFT is like a second job! BTW that reminds me of my first job... now where did I leave that?)

 

[Under the Rose]

We use various mediums to manifest words in a form that is perceptible to our senses, yet at the point of origin, words are just a concept. To regress even further, what form is the concept of words and where do concepts originate?

In short and to conclude, the proposition of the immateriality of words is unnecessary, not to mention the problems this would create, fundamentally the problem of explaining the interaction of physical and non-physical entities and--to start off with-- having to give evidential foundation to the existence of non-physical entities.

Let's just cut to the chase, shall we?

Your final sentence summarizes what this topic is all about...discussing whether or not words are immaterial. In your opinion, this proposition is unnecessary and would be problematical to provide evidence for 'non-physical entities', yet science has designed means of measuring all manner of things which were not even concepts centuries ago and which we cannot observe directly, only the effects thereof.

I respectfully recognize your opinion and look forward also to the perspectives of others.