[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "swmaerske" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:37:56 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <kirby.urner@...> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 8:28 AM, swmaerske<SWMirsky@...> 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?
>
Well of course not! Talk of brains and what they do is not talk about what
objects like brooms and slabs and such. They do (or are used for) different
things. Understanding meaning never involves understanding the brain or what it
does though understanding what it is to grasp some meaning will, in certain
contexts, involve asking about how brains work!
> 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).
>
Yes, but so what? No one suggested anything to the contrary.
> 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.
>
Arguing against misusing our words or thinking in ways that are somehow
extracted from how we actually talk aren't part of studying brains though it is
certainly possible that those talking about brains will, indeed, fall into
confusions of this type.
> >> 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.
This is what I am not sure of. Obviously, within the game of language
(languaging as Sean calls it) we do sometimes assign names to objects.
Referencing and tagging (naming) are part of using a language (or at least our
kind of language).
> 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.
>
If you mean to argue against a concept of language that presumes it is built on
a single paradigm only, that of naming objects, I agree. It is only one aspect
of language and what we do with words.
> 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.
>
I'm not sure if your concept of "nominalism" is what our resident nominalist,
Josh, means. But we'll have to let him weigh in on that.
> >
> >> 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).
>
I view language as a complex system of verbal and, sometimes other, behaviours.
Referencing is only one of these nor is it necessarily only done in one way. We
can reference by naming, by describing, by pointing, by alluding, by citing,
etc.
> 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
>
Yes.
SWM
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