Language, Scientific Reasoning, Logic, and Sophistry

 Language

• Words are signs or signifiers.
• The relationship between a word and what it signifies is called its meaning.
• Meanings of words are not intrinsic to those words, but are assigned to them by human beings.
• Language, Scientific Reasoning, Logic, and Sophistry single word can have many meanings. When reading or listening to language we determine which particular meaning a word is intended to have by the context in which it is used.
• A dictionary is a compilation of the many ways that words have been used historically.
• A lexicographer is a person who compiles dictionaries based on research into past uses of words.
• Dictionaries are written to conform to usage. However, usage does not necessarily follow dictionaries. For example, Shakespeare coined numerous original words, all of which appear today in the English Dictionary.
• Because words have many meanings, some scholars who wish to avoid being misunderstood take the trouble to specify the particular meaning they have in mind or coin new words called neologisms. A third option is to borrow a word from a foreign language or use an archaic word from one’s own language that is closer to the intended nuanced meaning.

 

As said, meanings are assigned to words. We’ll explain how this works.

Intuition is knowledge we have that we can’t explain. We seem to be born with it. Reference is an inborn intuition. This means people are born with an intuition to look for signs and referents. That is why when you point to an object or action and repeat a word to a toddler, he or she will grasp that you are pointing out an instance of reference and they will learn the word as a signifier of that thing.

Due to this innate understanding and recognition, with or without realising it people quickly learn to divide their world into two categories, signs and their referents. Signs can be combinations of sounds (verbal words) or visual symbols (written words). By looking upon certain signs as representing certain referents, language occurs. The connection between words and their referents occurs only in the act of perceiving them as connected. Obviously, no actual physical connection exists. The connection is psychological. 

Also, in spite of what reductive materialists and functionalists believe, the connection between words and objects is not reducible to mechanical behaviour. Machines only ape understanding and recognition because they are programmed to. By such programming machines can be made to imitate grasping the sense of the words. Actual grasp of meaning only occurs in sentient human beings when they consciously looks upon signs as representing their referents.

Scientific Reasoning

Science is the systematic study of something. Science is not a set of dogmas officiated by an elite. In fact, science evolved originally as part of a rebellion against the tendency of elites to justify beliefs by appealing to authority. In real science, even beliefs that appear to have been proven by repeatable observable experiments can be, and have been, overturned when new experiments were performed upon different assumptions or when a different interpretation of old data has been given.

Reasoning is thinking about a problem with the intention of solving it. In science one tries to go about solving problems in a rational way. Even an irrational person can hold beliefs. One is thinking in a rational way when one not only holds beliefs, but can point to cogent reasons for holding them. In scientific reasoning those reasons are carefully thought-through, where all aspects including objections and unintended consequences are considered. Appeal to observable evidence plays a large part in science. However, genuine scientists keep in mind that what initially seems like evidence for X-theory can also be evidence for Y-theory, and new evidence may dispel an established theory. For this reason, scientists must always remain vigilant in avoiding becoming dogmatic. 

Therefore many scientists distinguish between an operational theory and Truth. Scientists deal in theories. Truth is a religious concept.

Sophistry

For the reasons described above, phrases like “trust the science” and “the science is finished” are meaningless. Science is a process and the science on any given subject is forever ongoing and constantly evolving. “The science” is a euphemism for a dogma. And talk about “scientific consensus” also does not fit into a discussion of scientific reasoning, as science is not democratic. In science truth is not determined by taking a vote. 

Such talk is a form of sophistry. Sophistry is the use of false arguments in order to deceive people or to cause them to behave in a certain way. 

Everyday Thinking vs. Epistemology

In every day life there are many reasons for holding a belief. Prejudice, emotion, a need to conform, to have hope, to boost confidence – these are all reasons people hold beliefs. But these are not considered rational in the technical sense. What makes one reason to hold a belief rational while another not?

Discovering which reasons to hold beliefs are strong and which are weak falls under the rubric of epistemology. Epistemology is the area of study that concerns itself with how we can rightly discern true from false beliefs. It also asks the question of what we can actually know with certainty or even if anything can — and how we know that. 

Epistemology is one of my main areas of interest. What I have learned is that the strongest reason to hold a belief is by using one of the many intuitions we are born with. I am using the word “intuition” in a very specialised sense, and not in its colloquial sense of a mere feeling that something is true. I am speaking of those intuitions that undergird what philosophers call “rules of logical inference.” 

It has long been recognized that there is no way to prove by logic that the logical phrase  is true. The statement is a symbolic representation of a deductive argument form known as modus ponens. To see an example of a statement with this logical form, consider these three sentences taken together, where the last sentence is concluded from the first two:

 

If it is raining, then the streets are wet. 

It is raining. 

Therefore, the streets are wet.

If we assume that the first two sentences are true, then the last must also be true. But how do we know this?

The answer is that we know it by way of an evolved psychological intuition that I refer to in my book Evolution of Perception Re-Explained as consistency.

We are born expecting facts to be consistent, and prepared to reject contradictions. This intuition gives us our innate knowledge of the law of noncontradiction. Without the expectation of consistency as a mark of truth, a person would be incapable of deduction. 

We know that in the above scenario, if the conditions are as they are described in the first two sentences, then the streets will be wet. How do we know this? We know this because anything else would be a contradiction. But how do we know a contradiction has to be wrong? We know it by an evolved intuition that truth involves consistency. That’s why detectives interrogate suspects for so long. They are looking for a contradiction, which indicates to them that a lie has occurred at some point in the narrative.

Conclusion

In this peculiar little paper I have explained how I believe words are connected to their referent and how we we are able to recognize that our logical axioms like modus ponens are true. One might ask why the materialists, who made up the bulk of Western philosophers in the 20th century, were unable to see these simple answers. To give an example of how they blithely walked right past them, the most famous materialist logician of the 20th century was Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951). He tortured over what the connection between words and their referents could be, since for him only an actual physical connection would be consistent with his materialist doctrine. In fact, he was so determined to avoid admitting that we are conscious (as he could not explain consciousness in material terms) that he considered and then instantly abandoned the possibility that we see something as something else, which was the entire premise of my book.

And as for how we know modus ponens is true when it cannot be deduced logically, the same principle follows. They could not admit that we consciously perceive the contents of our thoughts, let alone the possibility that we look upon our thoughts through an evolved intuition.

In the now dying age of materialism, none have been able to figure these ideas out. Hence the materialist age slowly devolved into an age of sophistry, where gaslighting students that they couldn’t actually consciously perceive their own thoughts became acceptable practice. Nothing good could come out of such dishonesty, and hence materialism now fades with the rest of the age of Empire.