[lit-ideas] Re: Erin's Course Dilemma
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 18:42:17 -0800
> Andreas Ramos wrote:
>
> "There are plenty of things for which there are no linguistic
> expressions, yet they exist."
Phil replies:
> I agree. What makes you think I don't? Remember, my original claim was
> about things like thoughts, meaning, ideas.
When you first said:
> For there to be Teemu's coffee mug, there must be linguistic expression.
I read that as "In order for the coffee mug to exist, there must first be
linguistic
expression."
That means that linguistic expression is a prior condition so that a coffee mug
can then
exist.
I reject that. There can be no linguistic expression at all and yet something
can still
exist.
These kind of wrong statements about language are examples of "coffee mug
philosophy".
Everyday objects such as coffee mugs and whatever else happens to be on a
desktop are deeply
embedded in social relations and practices. It's impossible to think of a
coffee mug that is
isolated from society. This makes it very difficult to have any meaningful
discussion about
a coffee mug's existence apart from language, culture, expectations, and so on.
The Huygens spacecraft that landed on Titan a few days ago could see all sorts
of things,
but something that definitely could not be there would be a coffee mug, because
Titan has no
human society that has offices, meetings, Starbucks, and coffee.
Go out and collect a teaspoon of pond scum. Put that under a microscope and
look. You'll see
thousands of squirming things for which you have no name, because you had no
idea that it
even existed. Some of you may think, but of course I know about parameciums and
so on. Yes,
a few, but there's tens of thousands of the little buggers. Microscopic life
exists without
any social context because we're not even aware of it. (Okay, yes, there are
indeed
microbiologists who have best friends which are monocellular, but whatever.)
There are many things that have no names. In fact, the number of things that
have no names
is far greater than the number of things with names. Point a telescope anywhere
at the night
sky and you'll see hundreds of galaxies, each with billions and billions of
stars, none of
which have names, and none will ever have names.
But we don't have to go to the microscopic or the astronomical to find examples
of unnamed
things. Much, if not most, of our personal lives is spent in nameless
existence. That's one
of the pleasures of reading Proust and such writers; they pluck things out the
dark pond of
our lives and give names to them, so that we recognize them and can talk about
them.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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