[ continuing a discussion thread at the M4W Coda ]
Andrius, the response of philosophy to the problematic nature of words, the so-called Linguistic Turn, was not to turn on words as irrelevant because there’s a deeper wordless womb language we can reference instead, when establishing agreement around cognitive frameworks (which themselves involve words and diagrams as we have seen).
I say this because my questioning of your working hypothesis is in alignment with philosophy since Wittgenstein i.e. I’m not really going out on a limb or stating an unheard of view, in suggesting introspection and so-called mental states are not the principal foundation for usage patterns even around such “psychological” words as “understand”, “think”, “pain”.
These are public language games that require the warp and weft of everyday situations and behaviors to remain anchored (intelligible).
I believe the cogsci people would benefit from reading LW’s Philosophical Investigations (about investigating the meanings of key philosophical words) because I also think how a lot of cogsci people think about the brain (e.g. that “understanding” must be at bottom a singular identifiable mental process and therefore neural process) is superstitious.
You are, on the other hand, trafficking in what is by definition a low bus numbers philosophy because you’re resting your claims on privileged access to a preverbal language that we’re all supposed to recognize as best articulated by yourself, an argument from authority, “I’m on another level” (e.g. Aristotle's -- your example as I recall) and quasi-universally derided as poor logic. For the record I’m not impressed nor intimidated by these prima donna outbursts.
From my point of view, you got off the philosophy bus (you did take some classes right?) too early, thereby missing some critical puzzle pieces, and struck out on your own, always risky. I wish you well in your endeavors, and hope the gaping holes in your education (from my angle) don’t hamper you too much. You’re presumably finding the ammo you need in that smattering of math topics you favor (I've got mine).
Parting ways is appropriate at this time, as WW has little to offer me regarding world events and geopolitics, which I’ve made clear are my foci these days. Your Wiki page on Putin looked promising, but as is, unchanging, isn't relevant, for reasons I’ve specified in more detail elsewhere.
Daniel per my meeting notes, I’m happy with how Knowledge Engineering is going and given I’m out of town, on a farm, working with the farmer’s schedule, I should free myself of Zoom obligations in the interim. We’ll have more meetups down the road I’m sure, maybe in a different Coda.
