[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 07:02:09 -0700
On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 8:28 AM, swmaerske<SWMirsky@xxxxxxx> wrote:
<< snip >>
>> We all have our interpretations of Wittgenstein of course. In my view,
>> his project was to blow name->object modeling of "how it works" out
>> of the water, in public as well as private space.
>
> I'm not sure I get what you mean by this (and probably never quite did).
> Perhaps if you could explicate it a bit more?
>
What I think is incorrect is to take our habits of thought around the
question "why language works so well" and accept them at face value.
The first challenge (we might imagine a skeptic's stance) is to think
about public simple objects, not atomic simple like in TLP, by
everyday simple like broom and slab.
How do these objects, the myriad slabs and brooms in this world, come
to be meant? Is to mean something to do something specific with one's
brain?
Wittgenstein wants to show us a technique for investigating the above
questions without recourse to brain science or much of anything beyond
recalled experiences and situations (special cases), with attention to
usage patterns i.e. an ability to discuss the nuances of these
occasions (episodes, scenarios).
That's a low bar to entry, provided you have some imagination and
powers of recall (you have both). On the other hand, the habits of
mind he's fighting are deeply ingrained. Philosophy becomes more open
yet remains difficult.
>> It's only by seeing how
>> it doesn't work in public,
>
> Of course I would argue that our language does "work in public" although we
> have to be attentive to the various nuances of use even there.
My "it" in the above paragraph (>>) refers not to our language, but to
our name->object modeling thereof. I'm suggesting that what I call
nominalism, a doctrine focused on names on the one hand, objects on
the other, language on the one hand, the world on the other, the map
on the one hand, the territory on the other, is a dualism to be
overcome more than a foundation for higher level.
As a foundation, nominalism doesn't work. His 'Philosophical
Investigations' is an attempt to show us a different way of
appreciating what's going on.
>
>> that you get comfortable with it "not working"
>> in private (of course it works, it was just never trying to do what the
>> nominalists imagined it was trying to do i.e. pointing).
>>
Refer to my above comment: of course language works, it's our habits
of thought around how it accomplishes this work that are bogus a lot
of the time.
>
> Well it seems to me that "pointing" is another term with multiple meanings.
> (Indeed, why should it be excluded?) Sometimes we literally mean by
> "pointing" that we direct a finger or some other long indicative device (a
> stick?) at an object to call another's attention to it by singling it out
> and sometimes we mean describing something in order to bring others'
> attention to bear on it.
>
Yes, "pointing" is a versatile tool, means many things.
> It's arguable, of course, that the latter is a derivative or secondary sense
> but this latter sense has a meaning for us, too. In this second sense it is
> appropriate to speak of pointing as referencing and to turn this on the
> phenomena of our mental lives as well, even if we cannot physically point to
> such phenomena as we could, at least in principle (though not always in
> fact), in the first sense when the word is applied to physically observable
> things.
>
These are the very mental temptations that the PI will help you
resist. Don't accept these ideas of referents and referencing at face
value. There's more going on than meets the casual or facile eye
(think of card tricks, sleights of hand).
We need to unlearn a kind of taking for granted, and that's hard to do
because what we take for granted is precisely that which we have most
difficulty perceiving. Bringing a background into the foreground is a
kind of gestalt switch.
>> Recall that I've changed the meaning of nominalist in my namespace,
>> to mean those with the naive view supposedly expressed by St. Augustine
>> in the opening passage of the PI, but then he gets away with just making
>> his be about the pointing game i.e. we do have one (several), and Python
>> is a great example. St. Augustine's defenders have made it clear that
>> this was not some NeoPlatonic doctrine applied consistently throughout
>> his writings i.e. name->object modeling is not intrinsic to his theology.
>>
>> Where pain is located is subject to gestalt switches as you know. Seeing
>> a man apparently empathetic, must be watching you closely, and then
>> realizing that's you, in a mirror, is an example of a kind of switch it's
>> easier to produce than to describe sometimes.
>
> Yes, I always liked your emphasis on aspect shifting. I believe that very
> accurately captures some of what Wittgenstein had in mind.
>
> SWM
>
More of an investigation into pointing, the many ways we do it, versus
what's "stretching the meaning" of that word, might be productive.
I'll stick that in my inbox for future followup. Before closing I'll
make the point that "what is the point?" is sometimes used in place of
"what is the meaning?" Obviously these two ("meaning" and "pointing")
are tightly woven together, in terms of their operative roles in our
theater (microcosm).
Kirby
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