Is "is" a valid term?

[Kyriakos]

Reading a bit in the Protagorian antipathy-fest that the dialogue of Socrates with Theaetetos is, there is a very notable sub-plot there about whether the term "is", or "be", "being" etc, are worthy of being used or not. Socrates claims that thinkers like Protagoras, Heraklitos and Empedocles argue that nothing ever 'is', cause everything is in movement, and more importantly "everything appears not as one event, but the connection of two events, the object and the observation of it".

In simpler terms this is about the object (be it material or mental, but differences exist between the two in the dialectic anyway) not just not being 'really' what it is picked up as by human sense or thought (which is an Eleatic/Parmenidian idea), but about the object not even 'being' anything in the first place, ie 'reality' independent of the observer being a fallacy/ non-existent in the first place (Protagorian position).

Again the terms split up according to context. An example:
If one sees a piece of paper on the table, he can say "there is a piece of paper on the table". From the limited/practical context of communicating something we see being there this is correct. But "is" can also connote, more theoretically, that something actually is existing non-relatively to anything else, ie an observer, or other parameters of the sensory or mental or sensory-mental system it is viewed in.

In brief i had noted that one general juxtaposition one can make between the views of Parmenides, Plato and Protagoras, would be that:

-For Parmenides there is indeed something, ie there is a reality, but that reality is entirely outside the realm humans can sense or think of
-For Plato there is a reality, and it is *almost* entirely outside the human realm, but some shadow of it can be traced with difficulty in some barrier of logical thought
-For Protagoras there is no reality other than the one for humans, ie the humans are the only meter we can have for what exists or not. This generally signifies that any ambiguity in the phenomena or words we use is to be attributed to unknown substrata of the human mind itself, and that even if the study of that would produce result we still would not be nearing an external reality, but just sink deeper in the human mind.

----

So, with all that in your human mind, is there an is?

 

[warpus]

Can you frame your question without using the word "is" ? If you can't, then that seems to suggest to me that "is" exists as a concept - otherwise you would not need to refer to it in your question twice.

 

[Zelig]

Yes, it is.

 

[Borachio]

.. as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc,
"That that is is"; ... for, what is 'that' but 'that,' and 'is' but 'is'?

Feste

 

[Hygro]

I get the idea. It's some I like about Dutch. Instead of using "is", Dutch employs more precise verbs. "The book is on the table" becomes "the book sits/lies/stands/rests/etc on the table."

But sometimes you gotta say something just is.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I get the idea. It's some I like about Dutch. Instead of using "is", Dutch employs more precise verbs. "The book is on the table" becomes "the book sits/lies/stands/rests/etc on the table."

But sometimes you gotta say something just is.

OK I get it

"This person has a gender, which we call male." - instead of - "He is male."

Sounds like a great drinking game. Let's do that in this thread!

Kyriakos, you should edit the OP to make that a "rule" of the thread. All posts cannot contain the forbidden term.

 

[Kyriakos]

Can you frame your question without using the word "is" ? If you can't, then that seems to suggest to me that "is" exists as a concept - otherwise you would not need to refer to it in your question twice.

That it exists as a concept is known already (i mean, we just used it some times in this very thread ). The question is if "is" is a very problematic impression of some state which 'in reality' is not set, but a flow. Ie the pen is on the table, is a correct view in ordinary talk, practically needed as well. It does not say anything in regards to whether what we see on the table as a pen is actually something there regardless of our human point of view. Would a sentient cloud-like imobile alien actually have to sense at all that pen, the table, or anything in any qualities isomorphic to our own? Maybe to the alien there is no movement, nor time, nor mass, nor a bounded area to call a room, etc.



In other words:
It is not dead that which can eternal lie,
and with strange aeons even death may die

[manic laughter]

 

[Gori the Grey]

Heidegger spun a 400 page philosophical treatise out of this question.

It takes a smarter man than I am to understand what he concluded.

Believe me, I've tried.

 

[BvBPL]

Parties interested in this question should look to Alfred Korzybski's general semantics.

General semantics denies that knowledge of an interior essence can be known by people. This because the human knowledge of a think is limited both by the limits of human knowledge and by the language schema of the human mind.

GS advises against the use of "to be" as a means of either identity or prediction. Nothing "is" any particular thing because any one thing is always so much more than its "is" definition. Use of that "is" definition limits the speaker and his or her listeners by establishing a dichotomous relationship in the identification of the object (it is or is not) rather than allowing for a wider description of the object.

The solution is to deny identifying things as being this or that and instead identifying them by their relationship with others.

D. David Bourland later expanded upon Korzybski's GS work by developing E-Prime, an English (off shoot? Variation? Dialectic?) that removes the verb "to be."

taH Pagh taHbe'

 

[Angst]

Being can easily be moving or changing. Phenomenologically, being-in-the-world is a riverlike experience of flourishing inputs over time, just because the state isn't stale doesn't mean it's impossible.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Well if I've understood this correctly, there is.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Being can easily be moving or changing. Phenomenologically, being-in-the-world is a riverlike experience of flourishing inputs over time, just because the state isn't stale doesn't mean it's impossible.

So you do understand Heidegger, eh?

(Anyway, this sounds like a precis of what I couldn't make head nor tail of at the time.)

(And it makes him seem understandable.)

(Maybe I should give him another crack.)

 

[Kyriakos]

Being can easily be moving or changing. Phenomenologically, being-in-the-world is a riverlike experience of flourishing inputs over time, just because the state isn't stale doesn't mean it's impossible.

There are issues, though, regarding whether such a flowing 'being' is still something set insofar as it "being" is concerned (ie if it actually is or is not, or if it is always inherently not here nor there). Eg an argument presented by Socrates (not really having to be his own view, btw) is that "if i am X, for example larger in mass than you, but in the future i am smaller in mass - just due to the other person growing up, etc- then am i something due to there being a quality, or am i something in a flow, tied to any variables or other sets of the same quality?". Cause while it can be seen as relative in any particular case, that may connote any such quality as indistinct in the first place, and 'unreal'.

In general the 'all is flowing', or 'there is no one state, but a dynamic between two or more', Heraklitan views, is quite antithetical to the Parmenidian theory of some reality where qualities actually are set and eternal, but which reality is by definition not to be sensed by humans in the first place.

So the question is (at least in the ancient setting it emerges from) one about there being some external 'reality', or just nothing other than our own human 'reality' which still is bounded by things we cannot ever include or present there. Also tied to the old One vs Many debate, cause if All is One then even humans are 'in reality' in the One, but distinct due to their sense/thinking from the One's reality, etc.

I am more on the Protagorian side of things. Heraklitos is ambiguous enough to potentially include both views, though, and he is always a very impressive figure in philosophy

 

[Borachio]

Heidegger. Pfft! Outdated and supplanted.

Being_and_Nothingness

Spoiler :

Nope. I haven't read either. I very much doubt I'd understand them. A man's got to know his limitations, after all.

 

[Kyriakos]

Heidegger. Pfft! Outdated and supplanted.

Being_and_Nothingness

Spoiler :

Nope. I haven't read either. I very much doubt I'd understand them. A man's got to know his limitations, after all.

Well, it is two huge volumes, and (as Camus also noted, and i quoted before on this ) "written in the most boring way/language a man could use". So i haven't read them either. Besides, he has a bad rep due to his other main love (Hitler)

 

[warpus]

It does not say anything in regards to whether what we see on the table as a pen is actually something there regardless of our human point of view. Would a sentient cloud-like imobile alien actually have to sense at all that pen, the table, or anything in any qualities isomorphic to our own? Maybe to the alien there is no movement, nor time, nor mass, nor a bounded area to call a room, etc.

Yeah, maybe. But we say "That is a pen" because to us it looks like a pen. And it most certainly is, and exists, from our point of view. So we say so.

 

[Borachio]

Under what conditions would you say "That is a pen", though?

You surely don't go around pointing at things and telling the world in general what they are.

Or perhaps you're Adam, and that's your full time job: the naming of things?

"That is a tree. That is a woman. That is a snake".

I can see someone has to do the job, but once it's done, that's pretty much it.

Ah, but are you involved in the education of small children?

I think all this takes for granted, and underestimates, the unsung power of the finger. The ultimate non-verbal communicator.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yeah, maybe. But we say "That is a pen" because to us it looks like a pen. And it most certainly is, and exists, from our point of view. So we say so.

Yes, but in philosophical terms this turns the object (eg the pen) into an "appearance", or a "phenomenon". Phenomenon literally means just that, an appearance of something (ie not what something "is" but what it is picked up as by an observer).
So in that sense there isn't something set there, but the set term is part of the human system WHILE it connotes a full affirmation of something being something. If the system is problematic then the affirmation prolongues the problems there, i suppose. Yet it is not a fault of the term, but of the overall system (human thought being not a 'reality' of anything it picks up, but a translation of that).

Under what conditions would you say "That is a pen", though?

You surely don't go around pointing at things and telling the world in general what they are.

Or perhaps you're Adam, and that's your full time job: the naming of things?

Or you are a toddler learning to speak for the first time, so you have to actually tie your mental senses to words, and aren't already caught into a web of terms creating another plane in the phenomenon of sensing things in a way which alters a 'reality' they have if such a thing exists.

 

[warpus]

Well yes, the pen is just a collection of atoms and such and technically doesn't have a boundary beyond which there is no pennness and inside of which is pure pennness.

But the words we use to describe the world are just descriptors - we are not philosophers, we don't use day to day language to make statements on existentialism or whatever.

When I say: "That is a pen", I'm just saying that I see something that most people would agree is a pen. It is a pen to me, it is a pen to Bob, and it is a pen to most other people. So I say it, because I know that people will understand me.

It's just language, it's not meant to be a 100% exact method of communication. We're not robots.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well yes, the pen is just a collection of atoms and such and technically doesn't have a boundary beyond which there is no pennness and inside of which is pure pennness.

But the words we use to describe the world are just descriptors - we are not philosophers, we don't use day to day language to make statements on existentialism or whatever.

When I say: "That is a pen", I'm just saying that I see something that most people would agree is a pen. It is a pen to me, it is a pen to Bob, and it is a pen to most other people. So I say it, because I know that people will understand me.

It's just language, it's not meant to be a 100% exact method of communication. We're not robots.

Is that crafty work though?

Spoiler :

Link to video.

Imagine if geometry was also as loosely communicated, and person X could see pi as 3,1 or 3 etc. Of course in common language use we cannot be practically that more exact, but the issue is one of logic, tied to more organised systems and examinations