[lit-ideas] Re: Language of thought
- From: "Donal McEvoy" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "donalmcevoyuk" for DMARC)
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2017 09:48:31 +0000 (UTC)
From: Torgeir <phatic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Lit Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, 19 March 2017, 3:50
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Language of thought
In the current month McEvoy has submitted 17 posts, Palma 31. Is the
language of the list more thoughtful at present than it was, say, in the
days of Henninge, Lye or Geary?>
This is a whole other can of worms to language/thought/metalanguage: it's like
its beamed in from another conversation, in a way that - dare I say it - seems
not very thoughtful. (Btw, I don't recall "Lye".)
The question is rather if there is a difference that matters to these
gentlemen between the distinction
proposed by Heidegger and their much cherished difference between
language and metalanguage.>
This is unsatisfactory on several counts. Here's two: (1) what is "the
distinction proposed by H" (we are not told, and it is unclear to me what it
is) (2) how does this distinction relate to the distinction between language
and metalanguage (again left unexplained).
Can there be a metalanguage of thought?
I think not.>
Is this meant to be some kind of argument?
Second question - is it some kind of argument? I think not.
My brief contribution to the lang/thought/meta-lang issue is this: a
metalanguage may be the same natural language as the object language, and is
"meta-" in the sense that it is language used for discussing language. It is
'language about language'. Can there be thoughts about thoughts? We might think
so. Are these 'meta-thoughts'? In a sense, perhaps analogous to the meta-
object-language distinction: we might say they are 'meta-thoughts' about
'object thoughts'. They are still thoughts though (or so we might think) - just
as the meta-language is still language and may even be the same natural
language as the object language.
Do we need to refer to 'thought about thoughts' as 'meta-thought'? Here we
might go back to the purpose or function of meta/object language distinction.
This was to bring logical clarity to an area where many suspected there were
paradoxes and other problems - 'language about language' becomes unparadoxical
and logically unproblematic provided we observe a meta/object language
distinction.
Is 'thought about thought' potentially paradoxical in the same way as 'language
about language'? If not, do we need a meta- distinction? If so, do we need a
meta- distinction?
Having asked these questions we come to another: even if 'thought about
thought' requires a 'meta-thought/object thought' distinction how does this
relate to whether the meta-thought presupposes or involves a 'metalanguage'?
Perhaps all these thoughts show we are much less thoughtful than Henninge (who,
in my grasp of his position, was a Wittgensteinian; but who had, in my
guesstimate, misread the way Wittgenstein is anti-metaphysical by mistaking W's
hostility to the nonsense created by metaphysical talk for hostility to there
being any metaphysical dimension to reality; a problem with some
Wittgensteinians is that, when pressed, they are almost pathologically unable
to be explicit about what interpretation of W they are defending).
DThoughtless as everL
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