Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology

1. THE PROBLEM OF ABSTRACT ENTITIES

Empiricism, by nature, tends to rely on immediate perceptions of object to the exclusion of theoretical systems purporting to make sense of them; they also really like names. In scientific knowledge, this is hard to avoid. Maths are often treated a bit more circumspectively as if fully devoid of interpretation’s function. As if this were irrelevant, I s’pose. Physics, a different case because the numerical symbols correspond to observable thinigs like monkeys and cannonballs (physicists, unless very brilliant, don’t usually deal with “monkeyness” or ‘cannonballery’). Then there’s this Tarski crap we’re all aware of… If one were to claim that expressions relate non-problematically to real, world objects and ideas of them, you’d better be as sleepless as Wittgenstein, subversive like Derrida and one hell of a writer to Plato.

2. LINGUISTIC FRAMEWORKS [this looks harder than thought]

The introduction (or recognition?) of new types of entities in any particular language requires innovative ways of presenting them: In language. If we call this fact a framework for making new statements, it follows there are questions answerable from within this theoretical system (questions of existence) and ones which relate to system as it operates; the former require novelty in expression, the other can not be directly observed but must be logically derived or intuitively experienced, “depending on whether the framework is a logical or a factual one.” Imagine Newton with a Walkman.

Reality is therefore an external question, in part, of an objectifyingly reified world according to “the forms of expression in the framework in question.” Language obviously based on tacit assumptions nonetheless questionable through expression, but the reality it is taken to represent is neither theory nor supposition. Theory plays a part in the acceptance or recognition of these things in terms of modality, therefore ‘this fact makes it advisable to accept the thing language.’ [I'm sorry, but does "[t]he system of members” not sound like a gang-screw video about a cloistered research think-tank?] New expressions in a system take their place within modifying the existing order.

Internal questions, therefore, are subject to external ones but are deducible according to analysis of the rules for their expression [which are abstracted, in natural languages, through a process of empiricity].

The actual nature of a number’s form in existence, however, is internally derived but always with reference to “a clear cognitive interpretation” when expressed in words; basically, one has a decision to make in describing even how numbers reflect a mirrorling reality.

The system of propositions. (I’ll forego the inappropriate…)

(a) Billy Corgan exists to live in Chicago.

(forget how many people wish this weren’t true); Defining something that is not in terms of identity, but nonetheless metaphorical (or at least relational) in terms of validity indicated, or merely conditional as a function of its existence: “With the help of the new variables, general sentences may be formed, e.g.,”

(b) “For every Godlike Rockstar, either lives in Chicago or not.”

(c) “There is a Smashing Pumpkin such that being there is not necessary and living elsewhere is not necessary.”

(d) “There is a lead-songer/writer Such that P is/n’t a proposition.”

(e) (p)roposition: ‘to exist’ is necessary for living; therefore, “live in Chicago” is, for B.C., a categorical imperative 

for the non-specialist’s review: [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative ]
 

“It is important to notice that the system of rules for the linguistic expressions of the propositional framework (of which only a few rules have here been briefly indicated) is sufficient for the introduction of the framework.”…

3. WHAT DOES ACCEPTANCE OF A KIND OF ENTITIES MEAN?

New stuff could, comes into being. When it does, it is obviously of certain types. If you aren’t aware of it, your non-acceptance has failed to observe the modification to the rules of language-as-reality this new state of entities has made. And they always presuppose a framework for understanding. Some are even of a class which is subject to change—these get screwy. Lucky for you, they can often be made determinate in a given situation by means of internal questions, i.e. those which are wholly consistent within themselves and don’t require a big stack of books and legal pad.

“From the internal questions we must clearly distinguish external questions…” like the existence of a theoretical system versus the possibility of never knowing it in full. If you think one must fully understand the latter in terms of the former before allowing a new category of understanding to be accepted as a linguistic mode of its expression, Carnap and I both think you need to take a pill and recall “the introduction of the new ways of speaking does not need any theoretical justification because it does not imply any assertion of reality.” Even if it refers to the acceptance of new entities as their language form. “An alleged statement of the reality of the system of entities is a pseudo-statement without cognitive content.” Practically, it is a question of trust in acceptance which corresponds not to dichotomies of veracity; you can call it anything you want, but that does not put its being within the realm of doubt as verifiable.—even if your motivation is “sufficiently rich”

This is important for people who either loathe or love that’s Derrida: You can except the implications of a system in language without adherence to ideological constructs regarding the nature of its object. Like, you can read Plato without being a Platonist, write on Wittgenstein without knowing the whole philosophy of mathematics; and if you’ve a good point, that means even geeks with Greek who don’t read deep or Philosophy of Languagers aren’t automatically able to discount you just because of who they study or are (but of course knowing those things makes you better able to refute their claims).

4. ABSTRACT ENTITIES IN SEMANTICS

Whether or not legitimacy is attached to abstraction, some titles refer to actual events and are not merely analytic as the definition of a term may be. It’s the difference between ‘Chicago’ and “Chicago having been founded”, Ceasar’s death and The Mortality of C. IVLIVS CAESAR: There is a certain way in which ‘the Good’ is not of the same reality level as “this good meal”—though both inhabit the same world. Namely, (y)ours.

5. CONCLUSION

It’s not about abstract objects, because those are in some ways outside of objective comprehension; it is a question “of abstract linguistic forms” in representing things more factually real (hence open to interpretation, since doubtable) and also further purely abstract (such as numbers) which are true according to how their definition is used: But that doesn’t mean either their existence or semantic context is debatable. No one with sense cuts abstraction out as if this will guarantee all conclusions as ‘really there,’ for there is a degree decreed by successive failures in arriving at practicality by which simple assertions of “that’s just the way it is = Reality” are impossible to bear out in truth because the process of deriving belief in that requires inevitable recourse to abstract linguistic forms representing world real ideas, which—in any world you’d want to live in—can never be universally agreed upon; though if you want anyone to talk with you better get to working on making some negotiated assertions as a foundation for informing these.

“Let us grant to those who work in any special field of investigation the freedom to use any form of expression which seems useful to them; the work in the field will sooner or later lead to the elimination of those forms which have no useful function. [Let's make sure we know what we're saying and in doubting here because awful & hard (hendiadys) is to control what people say, think?]“

http://www.ditext.com/carnap/carnap.html