[lit-ideas] Re: Must the Word be Literate?
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:27:19 -0700
Donal writes
As Wittgenstein once put it [Investigations §336], 'A French politician
once wrote that it was a peculiarity of the French language that in it
words occur in the order in which one thinks them.'
Robert Paul does not say but surely Wittgenstein is offering this thought as
one that cannot be taken seriously? If so, would Wittgenstein have asked
Walter whether his post was some kind of joke (as I might have asked myself
except I'm been injuncted not to say or do anything for a month that might
allude to Bob Dylan).
First of all, I posted it because of its similarity with Walter's post
about an English speaker's saying pretty much the same thing about
English. Of course both claims are silly. (I thought this would be
apparent.)
I should confess though that the Wittgenstein quote from §336 is merely
a parenthetical remark at the end of that section:
'This case is similar to the one* in which someone imagines that one
could not think a sentence with the remarkable word order of German or
Latin just as it stands. One first has to think it, and then one
arranges the words in that queer order. (A French politician once wrote
that it was a peculiarity of the French language that in it words occur
in the order in which one thinks them.)'
*In §335 he's been talking about the phenomenon of finding the
expression of a thought.
Again Robert Paul does not say but does he offer this idea of a "mental
language" that precedes and is independent of any "natural language" as an
idea not to be taken seriously?
True. This was a historical lagniappe.
I seem to remember that Occam (?) believed there was a mental language
out of which thoughts had to be translated before they could be
expressed in a natural language such as Latin.
The idea of such a "mental language" might be open to the kind of objection
that can be raised against "innate ideas": but just as we can rehabilitate
the notion of "innateness" if we separate it from the idea of "ideas" and
speak instead of "innate knowledge" in the form for example of "dispositions
to react", so we might rehabilitate the notion of 'mental activity prior to
linguistic expression' if we separate it from the idea of a "mental language"
and speak instead of conscious or unconscious mental states that precede
their expression in language.
One can speak of 'conscious or unconscious mental states' here, but
unless they are 'articulated' (the state such that...) or described (the
mental impression of redness) I see no real advantage in simply
'speaking of' them. There's a distinction between expressing a thought
(which might of course be done through gestures or facial expressions)
and mere babbling. Yet when one tries to say what thought one is
expressing the 'thought' seems inevitably to take on a linguistic shape.
Just a thought.
Just a thought here, too.
Robert Paul
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