[lit-ideas] Re: Language, Justice and Social Practices (long)

  • From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 15:48:23 -0400

Walter Okshevsky wrote:

"I would think that without some name, we would not be able to mark the
conceptual differentiations necessary for the identification and
understanding of any single concept."

Eric Yost replies, describing the concept of a pawn in chess and then
concludes:

"...one could still learn this concept of 'pawn' without having the name
'pawn'."


The marked names in the above quote from Eric mean different things so I
am not entirely clear as to the point Eric is making.  Certainly there
is no reason why the letters p,a,w,n combined in that order to form a
name need be the name of the concept identified with the name 'pawn'.
In fact, it seems perfectly reasonable to think that the piece in chess
with the name 'pawn' might have different names in different languages.
It seems to me, and here I don't want to presume on Walter's own
response, that Walter has something different in mind.

Imagine that in some primitive culture, a culture colonized by civilized
people who play chess, the game of chess comes to be identified with
being civilized.  All children are taught chess and the moves of chess
come to be identified with higher culture.  (This would be roughly
similar to the role of the lottery in Borges' "The Lottery in Babylon".)
When one captures a piece with a pawn, one gains social standing
according to the piece captured and the one who loses a piece to a pawn,
loses accordingly.  Here the concept of the pawn has a meaning more
expansive than given by Eric and yet it still makes sense to talk about
these people moving the pawn in a game of chess.

If the above example makes sense, then it is not clear what Eric could
mean by 'learning the concept of "pawn"' without the name "pawn".  In
order to fix what is the 'concept of "pawn"', one would have to know
what people mean by the word "pawn" because there could be no way of
knowing whether one is using the word as the colonizers do or as the
colonized.  Put differently, Eric assumes a sufficient description of
the concept of 'pawn' but it isn't at all clear that there can be such a
description because there is no way of determining which use of the word
is sufficient.  The name 'pawn', or its equivalent, is not simply a flag
for a concept but rather a necessary part of understanding the concept.

I don't see how one can reconcile a nominalist position, no matter how
qualified one wants to make it, with the above state of affairs.  I
certainly don't see how one can hold to nominalism if one is in large
agreement with Wittgenstein.


Sincerely,

Phil Enns
Toronto, ON

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