Epistemic fallacy: "False Word Realism"

[Anton Rogachevski]

The fallacy of thinking that if there's a word for it, then it must exist somewhere as category, object or as phenomenon. It plays somewhat with confirmation bias. 

If you think it's insignificant, just imagine for a second a word like "god". How many people actually falsely and blindly believe there must be an entity somewhere since all the religions are shouting this word. All Words are ape noises pointing nowhere.

Edited May 30 by Anton Rogachevski

[UnbornTao]

Hello there, we meet again. 

[Anton Rogachevski]

On 5/30/2025 at 10:24 AM, UnbornTao said:

Hello there, we meet again. 

Haha yeah.  You had a counter argument why don't you post it here too. 

I think that the fact that language has many synonyms gets us to imagine that each of these words have a correlated phenomenon. 

If we look at it from the perspective of a mind arbitrarily dissecting and labeling different parts of experience as different "objects", it's obvious that a mereological nihilism is quite evident. Meaning there are no actual bounds and separations in pure experience, except those we imagine into "existence".

Edited May 31 by Anton Rogachevski

[zurew]

2 hours ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

it's obvious that a mereological nihilism is quite evident

That seems to be about a different issue.

The problem you originally outlined is that some of those words dont refer to anything in the real world, mereological nihilism (as I understand it) wouldn't say for example that a chair doesn't exist, it would just say that chair is an arrangement of mereological simples - so the word "chair" would refer to something in the word (to an arrangement of the smallest parts).

If you think mereological simples are quarks, then it would refer to a bunch of quarks, if you think its something different then it would refer to something different.

 

But in the case of for example a unicorn, thats different, because in that case it isn't indexed to anything in the world (not even to an arrangement of mereological simples) - so this would be an issue separate from mereology.

 

Btw I don't disagree with your overall point, Im just making a distinction.

Edited May 30 by zurew

[Anton Rogachevski]

@zurew

So for me "simples" are experience - in that sense words always point to some experience. I can see how that might be confusing, and that's because I ground my epistemology in a "solipsistic phenomenological humble unknowing". (The look from inside the cave of Plato, where there can't be actual access to the outside. I have talked about it extensively in my posts about the nature of experience and about deconstructing reality in my blog.)

I was trying to say that this fallacy exposes something deeper about the nature of experience and the most basic foundation of epistemology:

That if mereological nihilism is granted, then the arbitrary nature of labeling is exposed, and so that means that there aren't any objects at all anywhere. So all words are pointing to imaginary bounds.

3 hours ago, zurew said:

so the word "chair" would refer to something in the world

Can't you see that it actually means there is actually no such object as a "chair" anywhere except as an idea? So what we are doing is pointing anywhere and making ape noises and pretend like there are things there. The stuff of which the "chair" is made of is also another idea, and so on. Phenomenologically speaking (which means not actually but from our perspective as an experiencer looking at pure experience) the basic substance of the chair is pure experience or "God" as Leo would put it. 

We can put it another way. All words are pointing at one thing: Experience. Phenomenologically speaking only experience exists. (More on that in my post about experience.)

Edited May 30 by Anton Rogachevski

[zurew]

37 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

So all words are pointing to imaginary bounds.

Sure , reality is an undifferentiated whole - but  under your system the idea of a chair that I imagine in my mind would have as much existence as the the phenomenological instanstiation of a chair (that I can actually sit on)?

 

Because then it just seems that by "existence" you mean something different than how it is typcially used (mereological nihilism aside).

Edited May 30 by zurew

[Anton Rogachevski]

@zurew

I do not assume that I know or can ever know anything about "existence" it's a completely deconstructed notion for me. I can on the other hand see that there is experience which I may access, and that's my field of study. 

[zurew]

9 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

@zurew

I do not assume that I know or can ever know anything about "existence" it's a completely deconstructed notion for me. I can on the other hand see that there is experience which I may access, and that's my field of study

I might be making a mistake there, I should have used the term "real" - maybe by real you mean something different than by the term "exist".

 

I am doing a poor job at trying to express what I am getting at - You are trying to say that reality is fundamentally experience, but I was wondering whether thoughts in your head would be categorized as experience or you would just say that they dont exist. This is why I brought the example with chairs - checking whether the idea of a chair that you can't sit on would be categorized as experience just the same way as a chair that you can sit on. Because the phenomenology between the two seems to be very different.

[Anton Rogachevski]

@zurew

"What is ultimately Real? or What actually Exists?" What an amazing question. I really don't know at all, and I'm deeply fascinated by it.

Reality or Existence are interchangeable aren't they? I am not talking about the reality of the physical plane at all here, I say that we can't actually access it, but through ideas and beliefs about it. (And it's probabilistically alright and useful for sanity). So, yes I do believe in the physical realm and I'm not an idealist.

Experience does seem to exist as pure experience and is real in that sense for us. In that sense Maths can exist as an experience of numbers and equations. Love exists for us. So all the most important things exist for us as experience, and it does seem to correspond with physical stuff so it's very practical too.

You don't actually sit on chairs you imagine it phenomenologically speaking. There's no one to sit, and there's nothing to sit on. There's no such thing as "sitting" too. There is a belief of a "person sitting on a chair" and all the supporting notions, while the undefined and unknowable physical realm is doing its thing. The brain has to do that to keep us sane and functional.

Edited May 30 by Anton Rogachevski

[UnbornTao]

On 5/30/2025 at 8:53 AM, Anton Rogachevski said:

Haha yeah.  You had a counter argument why don't you post it here too. 

I think that the fact that language has many synonyms gets us to imagine that each of those words have a correlated phenomenon. 

If we look at it from the perspective of a mind arbitrarily dissecting and labeling different parts of experience as different "objects", it's obvious that a mereological nihilism is quite evident. Meaning there are no actual bounds and separations in pure experience, except those we imagine into "existence".

Seems like we'd need to look into the function of language and distinction, quite advanced stuff. I could contribute a few questions to get the ball rolling, the main one being- what is language?

On 5/28/2025 at 4:28 PM, Anton Rogachevski said:

If you think it's insignificant, just imagine for a second a word like "god". How many people actually falsely and blindly believe there must be an entity somewhere since all the religions are shouting this word. All Words are ape noises pointing nowhere.

It still points to a notion, albeit an abstract one, that occurs in your perceptive experience. Contrast that word with "watermelon" or "Santa Claus" and different associations arise. Why is that?

I might say more but need some time to think about it.

[Anton Rogachevski]

1 hour ago, UnbornTao said:

what is language

It's most basic building blocks are evidently at first completely meaningless noises and symbols, means visual data, and audio data, or even sometimes sense data. (braille)

The linguistic model of the brain is taking all these symbols and constructing a meaning registry system by almost arbitrarily attaching meaning to each combination of noises, and eventually it can even play with logic and abstraction and reach very complicated ideas. 

By arbitrary I mean that sometimes the boundaries are not as clear as we think. For example: Where does the "neck" begin and end exactly? We can try to define that, but that definition is also a choice and not a given inherent truth.

1 hour ago, UnbornTao said:

It still points to a notion

So it still doesn't point anywhere concrete. The notion may be false, like a conspiracy theory.

Edited May 31 by Anton Rogachevski

[UnbornTao]

On 31/5/2025 at 3:19 PM, Anton Rogachevski said:

It's most basic building blocks are evidently at first completely meaningless noises and symbols, means visual data, and audio data, or even sometimes sense data. (braille)

The linguistic model of the brain is taking all these symbols and constructing a meaning registry system by almost arbitrarily attaching meaning to each combination of noises, and eventually it can even play with logic and abstraction and reach very complicated ideas. 

By arbitrary I mean that sometimes the boundaries are not as clear as we think. For example: Where does the "neck" begin and end exactly? We can try to define that, but that definition is also a choice and not a given inherent truth.

What would an experience of having no language be like? That's quite the contemplation. It's a fascinating question - and not a simplistic one at all.

Without the context of language, there couldn't even be symbol, or the possibility that noise represents something other than the sound itself.

Quote

So it still doesn't point anywhere concrete. The notion may be false, like a conspiracy theory.

It points - that's the point. Whether it references a fact or a truth is secondary. If we're aware of something, then we've already made a distinction in our experience. Terms like "paradox," "gravity," or "unicorn" all point to something we're aware of, even if abstract or unreal - something comes to mind in relation to the word. It might be something objective, abstract, invented, false - whatever - but it is a distinction, even if the term is "nothing."

Language is supposed to represent something through something that isn't the medium itself. You read sandía and, if you don't speak Spanish, you have no idea what it represents, but you know that something is being communicated. Even though the term is unknown, the context of language is still operative. Not sure what specific point I'm trying to get across here.

I'll need to keep investigating this - these are just provisional thoughts.

So, what must be created for a sound, a bodily movement, or a squiggle to represent something it's not?

Edited June 1 by UnbornTao

[Anton Rogachevski]

2 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

What would an experience of having no language be like?

We couldn't really say  But all the animals know for sure. 

I guess It might be some kind of simplistic pure sensual data and instinctive reactions to stimuli. No complex crystalized experience structures, no abstractions.

2 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

It points - that's the point.

You are onto something here. I guess pointing and referring might be the first idea a creature has and on this basis it builds a symbolic language. 

2 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

It might be something objective, abstract, invented, false - whatever - but it is a distinction, even if the term is "nothing."

This shows the arbitrary nature of this process really well. We imagine there might be something and come up with an animal noise to signify it. But other creatures think that we actually know the thing we keep talking about, and so they use their imagination to fill in the gaps. 

It's quite interesting to think how is it possible that almost all of humanity can label their emotions and we seem to understand what they mean by "love" or "happiness". I'm amazed that it's even possible!

Edited June 1 by Anton Rogachevski

[Oppositionless]

Reality is infinite so everything you can imagine exists.

[Reciprocality]

On 30/05/2025 at 0:17 PM, Anton Rogachevski said:

 

Can't you see that it actually means there is actually no such object as a "chair" anywhere except as an idea?

@Anton Rogachevski What if the given object is itself a chair because 1. our way of conceiving it as a chair taps into the only possible way it can be spontaneously seen, and that this process happens prior to our capacity to have perspectives and see it in different ways, and 2. it exists only in so far as it is seen by agents with the capacity that identifies it as a chair? 

What if the Witgensteinian "family resemblant" criterions that are satisfied by particular "chairs" are precisely such criterions that via their extreme generality and/or ineffability will be subject-invariant but not subject-independent, that some subject is necessary for the chair to both exist and to be a chair in itself but that each unique subject is expandable or accidental for this contingency?

[Anton Rogachevski]

@Reciprocality

Presumably our experience feed is modeled online seamlessly immediately every moment by past experiences so yes it's very hard to not see a "chair" when looking at one. In that sense our brain is very much like a deep learning algorithm that just recognizes things.

Edited June 3 by Anton Rogachevski

[Anton Rogachevski]

11 hours ago, Oppositionless said:

Reality is infinite so everything you can imagine exists.

Do you have access to reality? How do you know that? I think that only the mind's imagination can be infinite, and that has nothing to do with actual physical space.

Edited June 3 by Anton Rogachevski

[kavaris]

Language and its subsequent ideas it invokes are the necessary comforts, like, they are the things we need to really not fall farther into a world of avant garde paintings, its like, at the center is language and the familiars (emotions are vectors that point us in some color of the language spectrum) and then outside is progressively scarier things, that which have to be reasoned about, and worked through—sortve finding where those unfamiliar points land. As to just be floating out in the forever is to be staggered between, "what am i", and "how do i get home", and "does this end?" type of things, and that is most logical things (a bit of a contradiction to it). Like, i think that we think we took the most logical and sound route, going by the defined terms and popular vote, but theres a perspective switch that observes it all again, and feels like we are farther from the roads that would have been the most logical; the most sound conclusion. Like, we are assuming that the things implied underneath the logical sum now are in fact how they are defined, but not considering they are that by popular vote, and not by individual-basisi's. At the same time, it is sometimes the most well structured things that find theirselves into the popular vote, at the forefront of our thoughts to begin w/, and its not till all the unstructured bits are gathered that they amalgamate and override the other, taking time for it to be corrected if it was ever incorrect or unaligned.

Edited June 3 by kavaris

[Anton Rogachevski]

@kavaris

I'm sorry but I'm not quite getting what you are trying to say.

[UnbornTao]

On 6/1/2025 at 5:55 PM, Anton Rogachevski said:

We couldn't really say  But all the animals know for sure. 

I guess It might be some kind of simplistic pure sensual data and instinctive reactions to stimuli. No complex crystalized experience structures, no abstractions.

We had to invent language at some point - both as a species and as individuals - so why couldn't we also experience what it's like to be without it? It'd be a temporary exercise, after all. We probably couldn't talk or think about it, though. Again, it's just a question to contemplate - eliminate the context of language and see what that's like.

Quote

You are onto something here. I guess pointing and referring might be the first idea a creature has and on this basis it builds a symbolic language. 

Perhaps. We now live within language and so take its existence for granted. And yet, this very act requires a significant leap in our cognition. It seems quite basic or primordial, but I'm not sure whether it is the first idea a creature has. "Language" as a context would need to have been invented first before such an idea could be conceived.

Without language, a movement is just a movement. Sound is just sound. You move your hand that way, yet language isn't found in that act. So "where" is it? 

什麼是語言？

jiuhg rr- x,es`+`´gv214z<. efdt vt7h

Quote

This shows the arbitrary nature of this process really well. We imagine there might be something and come up with an animal noise to signify it. But other creatures think that we actually know the thing we keep talking about, and so they use their imagination to fill in the gaps. 

I think what you're exploring here is the nature of difference, rather than language. Anyway, language aims to represent something with something else - sound, gesture, scribble - that is not that thing. I'd say that the nature of that thing may actually be secondary to this process. As long as it represents a distinct experience, then language has done its job in this regard. So I'm repeating myself here.

Not sure what other creatures do with our use of language.

Quote

It's quite interesting to think how is it possible that almost all of humanity can label their emotions and we seem to understand what they mean by "love" or "happiness". I'm amazed that it's even possible!

Yes, we often conflate labeling something - and being familiar with the label - with a personal understanding of that thing. Take emotions, for example: once we learn to name them, we start treating them as if they're fixed, objective phenomena. And yet, each individual doesn't make the exact same distinctions. It might be the case that what people experienced as emotions centuries ago was not quite the same as what we experience and call emotions today.

Edited June 3 by UnbornTao