[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism? (nominalism, yet again)

  • From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 09:38:08 -0700

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 9:17 AM, jrstern<jrstern@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <kirby.urner@...> wrote:
>>
>> > When Mr. Namespace doesn't grok nominalism, at all,
>> > we're not communicating.
>>
>> I only met you recently and hadn't assessed to what degree you'd
>> hung the nominalist albatross around your own neck (stinky dead
>> bird of a belief system). I'd like to free you of that investment
>> if you're willing. It's unbecoming of any philosopher who admires
>> Wittgenstein, but then you've more often than not posed as one of
>> his detractors on this list.
>
> You seem to have things exactly backwards about nominalism,
> your criticisms of it are exactly backwards from the usual
> *criticisms* of nominalism as too skeptical, too contingent,
> and you seem to prefer to reinvent it as best you can under
> your own headings. We have some shared interests, but you don't
> seem interested in using existing work, ideas, or vocabulary to
> pursue them.
>

All that is to my credit I'd say.  It's a dirty gutter in philosophy,
not worth the time of day, so why should I care about it?  On the
other hand, Wittgenstein and I are both on record as dismissing it.
Wittgenstein does a lot of heavy lifting to dislodge it, like
leveraging a big bolder and tipping it over a cliff.  Bye bye stupid
old metaphysics.  Hello new world.

> Just trying to save you some time, but perhaps you enjoy
> taking the scenic route on your journey.
>

I'm not headed into a thicket of nominalists all talking to each other
in some shared shoptalk.

"Skeptic" is like a moral category i.e. someone is "a cold engineer
type" versus a "fuzzy wuzzy romantic type" or some stupid dichotomy
like that (hey, don't blame me for these stereotypes, we didn't start
the fire, to quote Billy Joel on the matter).

> I hardly think a study of Wittgenstein implies one agrees with
> 100% of what he said, since Wittgenstein himself (like most
> who work on a topic for many years) doesn't agree 100% with himself,
> either.

You and I seem to already agree that he was *not* a nominalist, even
by your own definition of what that is (I recall you being hung up on
"definitions" as critical -- and I like them too, when I can get them,
but know how to read meaning from context as well).  So that's
progress.

What it looks like to me is:

Not nominalist:  Kirby, Ludwig
Nominalist:  Josh

You also seem to pay a huge penalty in focusing on words so much,
whereas language is clear much more than just words, as is so clearly
shown in the pages of the PI.  I'd say to be "word focused" is like
"colder" in that game where one kid directs another to a secret hiding
place by saying "colder" "warmer" "hot" and things like that, creating
a temperature field around a terrain -- not a game nominalists should
play as it might upset their fragile belief systems.

> Have a good time with it, Kirby. I'll continue to read your
> messages and translate them as best I can into more normative
> uses of the English language, and learn what I can thereby.
>
> Josh

Oh, so your one of them "norms" eh?  Thought police for the crown,
making sure "correct English" is spoken.

That's not really a fall back anymore, though for 113 years you could
sorta get away with it.

Normative English and the law of the sea Josh.  I hope you weather the
storms nevertheless, even if you think in BASIC.

Kirby

>
>

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