In a message dated 7/8/2009 6:20:05 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
karltrogge@xxxxxxxx writes:
I apologize to the list for my careless wording and ESPECIALLY to JL
Speranza for my cranky response --Karl Trogge
Kiel, Germany
He's back! I'm so happy! So what's her surname, Khol?
I actually thought another unwanted implicature was that someone was
planning to 'blind' and 'deafen' any noisy neighbour.
P. Stone is right: 'nanny' is not a Navajan concept.
Geary is wrong that words are arbitrary. Surely I cannot think of another
word for 'mom' other than 'mom. There is no language where 'mother'
doesn't
start with 'm' -- cfr. 'mam-ary gland'.
Omar: what's 'water' in your native tongue? (I know in Russian -- Walter's
mother tongue -- it's -vodka-).
---
P. Stone minimises my 'derision and mockery' in the rather elaborated
words
of Mr. Trogge.
----
Grice calls this: the devil of scienticism (scientism).
As Putnam notes, "H20" is a reduction definition of 'water'. It's a
scientific reduction definition. As in Eddington's famous "Two tables" --
which
one is real: the almost empty one, or the real one?
----
He said words to the effect that _things_ in the word can be taxonomised
according the following criterion:
colloquially: 'water', 'ice', 'vapour'.
things
non-colloquially: 'H20'.
Surely that's naive, so I took the liberty to express the dichotomy in
philosophical terms, what Grice calls 'trouser-words':
Ice is, _really_, water.
P. A. Stone may have said it only 5 times, but for philosophers once is
enough. Unless you say "ice is not really water" you have not cancelled
your
claim.
Now, Grice notes: 'water' and 'ice' belong to the SAME level. What he
calls
'stone-age metaphysics'. (cfr. Eskimo words for 'snow', i.e. frozen water,
or congelaed aquatic, 'agua congelada, hielo, in Spanish).
So, it's totally arbitrary to suppose that the direction goes in one way:
ice is really water
rather than, rather, in the other:
water is really ice
Geary's expertise in air-conditioning I had higher hopes in. He mentions
pressure and temperature:
Objections to 'pressure'. If a piano falls on me, the pressure is high,
but
surely I am still a living being, if I survive. -- there's no CHEMICAL
change involved, only physical.
-----
The temperature argument is equally minimisable:
According to Gurry's taxonomy of things the criterion is
when the temperature too high: 'vapour'
things when the temperature 'cosi-cosa': 'water'
when the temperature very low: ice.
Surely the freezing of water and the steaming of water is a physical
process (not chemical) that every schoolboy is familiar with.
(INTERLUDE TO R. Paul: Of course I would be irated if some person
violently
blinded or deafen someone. The worst thing is I thought K. Trogge was
attempting that on Helen Kohl)
----
For Aristotle, only CHEMICAL processes count for 'trans-substantiation' --
and I, like Grice, don't follow him there --. For Grice and I it's only
METAPHYSICAL trans-substantiation that counts .
So, to taxonomise things according to the temperature we feel more 'comfy'
with sounds offensive to my ear.
------
Now, Grice uses the "Martian" example in "Some remarks about the senses"
Putnam takes that from Grice.
Grice writes, googlebooks, "Putnam (of all people)"
"I was criticised for being too formal (by Putnam, of all people)"
----
Putnam wanting to sound witty, concocted the 'twater'. -- which recently
has been reworded as 'schwater' and 'schmwater'.
'tw*t' is a very LOW slang, for the OED. Browing was confused about it,
and
makes it rhyme with 'what' in "Pippa Passes". The meaning, Browning
thought, was 'a nun's attire', or part whereof.
The urban dictionary online defines 'twater' (i.e. Putnam's _word_) as
'slang for v*ginal j*ices'. So, I propose -- since Eric Yost is
patronising
the English Language
twater: term introduced into philosophical discourse
in English -- but found to be untranslatable to
other languages -- by Hilary Putnam. See 'water'.
---- Etc.
J. L. Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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