He’s pointing out that the concept of purpose entails an agent with the purpose.
We don’t explicitly stating context for words all the time. But for words like purpose, people haven’t just dropped context, they don’t even understand the context, and think that their projections have singular meaning, and argue with other bozos suffering under the same confusion about a different singular meaning.
Meanwhile, when two people who understand the full context of the concept have dropped context, they may miscommunicate at first, but have no problem clarifying their commnication—they just identify the full context in which they’re speaking. “I mean Joe’s purpose for his life.” “Oh, I thought you were talking about my purpose for my life. Nevermind.”
As for the guy talking about “Ultimate Purpose”, the OP points out that the concept of purpose entails a agent with that purpose. If by your own statement “it’s not anybody’s purpose”, then you’re not really talking about a purpose at all, and are just confused. The OP can show them the way out of their confusion, but there’s not guarantee they’ll take the way. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think.
I’d claim that there is a distinct concept of “purpose” that people use that doesn’t entail an agent with that purpose. It may be a pretty unhelpful concept, but it’s one that people use. It may also have arisen as a result of people mixing up the more sound concept of purpose.
I think you’re underestimating people who worry about “ultimate purpose”. You say they “don’t even understand the context”, as opposed to people who “understand the full context of the concept”. I’m not sure whether you’re just being a linguistic prescriptivist here, but if there are a whole bunch of people using a word in a different way to the way it’s normally used, then I’m inclined to think that the best way to understand that is that they mean something different than that, not that they’re idiots who don’t understand the word properly.
Nobody is calling anyone an idiot here, brilliant people can be confused too.
I think it’s a feature of the brain to confuse new language with the originally intended concepts. We wouldn’t have most of philosophy without this feature.
I don’t think so.
He’s pointing out that the concept of purpose entails an agent with the purpose.
We don’t explicitly stating context for words all the time. But for words like purpose, people haven’t just dropped context, they don’t even understand the context, and think that their projections have singular meaning, and argue with other bozos suffering under the same confusion about a different singular meaning.
Meanwhile, when two people who understand the full context of the concept have dropped context, they may miscommunicate at first, but have no problem clarifying their commnication—they just identify the full context in which they’re speaking. “I mean Joe’s purpose for his life.” “Oh, I thought you were talking about my purpose for my life. Nevermind.”
As for the guy talking about “Ultimate Purpose”, the OP points out that the concept of purpose entails a agent with that purpose. If by your own statement “it’s not anybody’s purpose”, then you’re not really talking about a purpose at all, and are just confused. The OP can show them the way out of their confusion, but there’s not guarantee they’ll take the way. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think.
I’d claim that there is a distinct concept of “purpose” that people use that doesn’t entail an agent with that purpose. It may be a pretty unhelpful concept, but it’s one that people use. It may also have arisen as a result of people mixing up the more sound concept of purpose.
I think you’re underestimating people who worry about “ultimate purpose”. You say they “don’t even understand the context”, as opposed to people who “understand the full context of the concept”. I’m not sure whether you’re just being a linguistic prescriptivist here, but if there are a whole bunch of people using a word in a different way to the way it’s normally used, then I’m inclined to think that the best way to understand that is that they mean something different than that, not that they’re idiots who don’t understand the word properly.
Nobody is calling anyone an idiot here, brilliant people can be confused too.
I think it’s a feature of the brain to confuse new language with the originally intended concepts. We wouldn’t have most of philosophy without this feature.