Philosophy is meta-thought

It's so simple I almost came in my pants when I had this revelation. If anyone ever asks you to define philosophy, just say "philosophy is the meta of thought". This is the clearest, simplest and most apt definition of philosophy there could ever be.

No, philosophy is the meta of language. Language is the meta of thought.

>>2
Language is the dried corpse of thought. Meta of language is linguistics.

Philosophy, on the other hand, is completely independent of language (do you believe the Japanese don't know their Kant from Schopenhauer?). Philosophy analyzes why what is being thought is being thought, and tries to guess what will be thought next. So the end result is a bunch of hogwash and gobsmack, but it would be wrong to think it is defined by a particular language. Philosophers are useless blabberers in all languages.

>>3
Its funny because youre wrong about everything.

Language is the prison of thought. One's thoughts cannot escape the bounds of language. That which you have no words for cannot be thought about. Philosophy is the apologist. It knows thought is cruelly imprisoned by language but it claims that it does not matter. That anything beyond language is worthless, so you should welcome the prison and see it not as a prison but as a whole world.

>>1
Philosophy is the science of principles (i.e. fundamental notions) and the sum total of all scientific knowledge which is uncovered by various methods... the object of metaphysics is the unification of the physical and mental worlds.

>>3
http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/whorf.scienceandlinguistics.pdf

Natural logic contains two fallacies: First, it does not see that the phenomena of a language are to its own speakers largely of a background character and so are outside the critical consciousness and control of the speaker who is expounding natural logic. Hence, when anyone, as a natural logician, is talking about reason, logic, and the laws of correct thinking, he is apt to be simply marching in step with purely grammatical facts that have somewhat of a background character in his own language or family of languages but are by no means universal in all languages and in no sense a common substratum of reason. Second, natural logic confuses agreement about subject matter, attained through use of language, with knowledge of the linguistic process by which agreement is attained: i.e., with the province of the despised (and to its notion superfluous) grammarian. Two fluent speakers, of English let us say, quickly reach a point of assent about the subject matter of their speech; they agree about what their language refers to. One of them, A, can give directions that will be carried out by the other, B, to A’s complete satisfaction. Because they thus understand each other so perfectly, A and B, as natural logicians, suppose they must of course know how it is all done. They think, e.g., that it is simply a matter of choosing words to express thoughts. If you ask A to explain how he got B’s agreement so readily, he will simply repeat to you, with more or less elaboration or abbreviation, what he said to B. He has no notion of the process involved. The amazingly complex system of linguistic patterns and classifications, which A and B must have in common before they can adjust to each other at all, is all background to A and B.

...Formulation of ideas is not an independent process, strictly rational in the old sense, but is part of a particular grammar, and differs, from slightly to greatly, between different grammars. We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds — and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way — an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, BUT ITS TERMS ARE ABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees.

Let us consider a few examples. In English we divide most of our words into two classes, which have different grammatical and logical properties. Class 1 we call nouns, e.g., ‘house, man’; class 2, verbs, e.g., ‘hit, run.’ Many words of one class can act secondarily as of the other class, e.g., ‘a hit, a run,’ or ‘to man (the boat),’ but, on the primary level, the division between the classes is absolute. Our language thus gives us a bipolar division of nature. But nature herself is not thus polarized. If it be said that ‘strike, turn, run,’ are verbs because they denote temporary or short-lasting events, i.e., actions, why then is ‘fist’ a noun? It also is a temporary event. Why are ‘lightning, spark, wave, eddy, pulsation, flame, storm, phase, cycle, spasm, noise, emotion’ nouns? They are temporary events. If ‘man’ and ‘house’ are nouns because they are long lasting and stable events, i.e., things, what then are ‘keep, adhere, extend, project, continue, persist, grow, dwell,’ and so on doing among the verbs? If it be objected that ‘possess, adhere’ are verbs because they are stable relationships rather than stable percepts, why then should ‘equilibrium, pressure, current, peace, group, nation, society, tribe, sister,’ or any kinship term be among the nouns? It will be found that an “event” to us means “what our language classes as a verb” or something analogized therefrom. And it will be found that it is not possible to define ‘event, thing, object, relationship,’ and so on, from nature, but that to define them always involves a circuitous return to the grammatical categories of the definer’s language.
In the Hopi language, ‘lightning, wave, flame, meteor, puff of smoke, pulsation’ are verbs — events of necessarily brief duration cannot be anything but verbs. ‘Cloud’ and ‘storm’ are at about the lower limit of duration for nouns. Hopi, you see, actually has a classification of events (or linguistic isolates) by duration type, something strange to our modes of thought. On the other hand, in Nootka, a language of Vancouver Island, all words seem to us to be verbs, but really there are no classes 1 and 2; we have, as it were, a monistic view of nature that gives us only one class of word for all kinds of events. ‘A house occurs’ or ‘it houses’ is the way of saying ‘house,’ exactly like ‘a flame occurs’ or ‘it burns.’ These terms seem to us like verbs because they are inflected for durational and temporal nuances, so that the suffixes of the word for house event make it mean long- lasting house, temporary house, future house, house that used to be, what started out to be a house, and so on.

Smoke weed every DAY

>>5

That which you have no words for cannot be thought about

Our thoughts are dependent on reality level we can conceive of - direct expirience can't be put to words but can be remembered. States of Reality vs Concept Concreteness: The real is more defined because it is closer to our frame of reference - the concrete physical world.

>>8
I disagree, language is mostly effectively for circumstances which are directly happening, because they are simple things to describe. Language is unable to cope with the fluidity and ambiguity of history and memory. Take dreams for example. Experiencing life as it happens is fairly easy, but dreaming shows what a mess the brain makes of past events, and that sometimes it is barely capable of distinguishing between memory and experience. That's why language is best used for events which are spontaneously happening.

>>9
That you can't describe dreams doesn't mean they are in fact something that is lacking concepts similar to our frame of reference. Like an abstraction chain, we can create pretty deep hierarchies of concepts where some really surreal stuff can be more defined objectively. The personal expirience of our mind in the physical world doesn't control our dream mind: it can sense or imagine novel, new or contradictory ideas without reference to reality - essentially constructing a concept.
Words don't have to be concrete references.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/abstract.htm

>>10
Yes but imagine if you were in a country where no one could dream, but still spoke english. How would you go into explaining what that is to them?

>>11
I'd just go about imagining those sweet dubs you got there champ

>>10

Words don't have to be concrete references

But they can only reference concepts that can exist in language. Language isn't just words, it is an entire framework for perceiving reality. It isn't like language is one way of approaching thought, thought grows from language. So all thinking is a play on words and nothing more. That's why all religious societies put such a premium on shutting up the inner voice and never communicating experiences. Once you start framing things with language, they become just another drab product of language.

Lisp is the meta of programming.

philosophy doesn't even exist bro

>>13

thought grows from language

A medium sized dog stares at you.

Words are just signs that only have meaning insofar as their existence and correlation to others in a network of signs and historical meaning, which is why you cannot ground language in logic.

>>16
Go ahead and think a thought without relying on language, it is not possible. It is not possible to conceive of something without language. This is very simple and obvious stuff.

>>17
No, words are the only sign and they create the framework that allows a sign to signify in the first place. That is why that dude had to put "this is not a pipe" on his painting of a pipe. That is why you cannot remember what the world looked like before you learned to talk (and, no, the false memories of that time that language implanted do not count).

>>18
? It is not possible to conceive of something without language
What is music, math, art, video?

>>19

What is music, math, art, video?

They are words. For example, a piece of music can arise a feeling in you but you cannot approach the feeling, conceive of it, without resorting to language and reference points within that. Math doesn't help you conceive of indescribable phenomena, it simply helps you follow a process to arrive at a conclusion. Why people push back against the idea that language provides the framework for reality is beyond me; are you really that oblivious?

you cannot approach the feeling, conceive of it, without resorting to language

A medium sized dog stares at you.