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

  • From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 18:11:08 -0700

> Congratulations, you've invented semiotics.
>

Funny you should mention, was just writing about Glenn Baker, majored
in that learning film making, now a TV producer.  Here's link to one
of his projects:

http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/bangladesh-easy-like-water/

Also my review of his TV documentary 'Stand Up':

http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2008/05/sunny-day.html

I was actually a philo guy at Princeton, envy people with better
editing skills and equipment.

> I'll ask again, does this mean that the linguistic turn is over?
>

For most, it has yet to begin.  Nietzsche was way ahead of his time,
had nothing to do with Nazis if you've done your homework around
Kaufmann.  Wittgenstein will likely splash big in like 3008?  boom
boom pow!

> Actually, rereading Shanker#2 at lunch, he seems to suggest
> it might be, for the latter LW. Pity, if true.
>
> p 63, opening of Chapter 3:
>
> "The 'linguistic turn' is well and truly over in philosophy;
> we have now entered the phase of the 'cognitive turn'."
>

Is he like a Ken Wilbur or something, knows everything type?

>> > Augustine's example is of someone learning an association
>> > between word and thing, a simple relationship.
>>
>> What's so simple about it?
>
> Because in the Augustine/ostensive example,
> what is learned at any one time is *a* simple.
>

More philosophical cant if you ask me, the kind of stuff Wittgenstein
helps us distance ourselves from.  If you wanna talk about "simples",
join a book club (e.g. Vienna circle) reading TLP for the nth time.
Philosophical Grammar, which I just bought, has a lot of good math in
it too, took that into Nissan Nation this morning, along with company
car.

Photostream:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/3882626860/

Speaking of Vienna Circle, Gregor is offering me a tour of
Wittgenstein's building if I ever get to a Pycon over there:

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/08/revectoring.html
http://www.spiluttini.com/nextroom.php?id=1681
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2009-August/009488.html


>> You've got this word 'dog' embedded in
>> open source (public) language games (partially overlapping), with
>> some perhaps involving breeding and showing, plus you've got this
>> specific canine wandering the house, with the right to use 'dog'
>> locally, with specific application to this particular beast.
>
> Which is where the Augustine/ostensive falls down.
> Chomsky and Fodor make the similar point differently,
> that words - a language of thought - language itself -
> does have to cover all these things, and that is *not*
> simple.
>

Right, not simple, my earlier point about nominalism crashing and
burning, as you say above.

>> And yet, despite this local application, the global word
>> 'dog' is entirely innocent of your particular mutt, or any
>> particular mutt. Plus the word 'dog' is replicated in all
>> different languages, yet maps differently "in the brain"
>> (in the culture). Is "dog" in Arabic the
>> "same meaning"? I'd hesitate to say yes.
>
> The string "dog" even in English will be different for
> you and me. Quine (and others) say for these reasons, we
> never *really* communicate at all.

People who say we never *really* communicate at all are on my "dweeb
suspect" list.  They should only speak for themselves and shut up
about people like me.

>
> LW, I suppose, takes another tack, that we do communicate,
> but at his most skeptical, he does not want to see words
> acting like words at all. In that, he would be rejecting

This completely begs the question of how words act.  That's what he
wants us to *investigate*.  "Don't pretend you already know how words
mean, you can stand it for 10 minutes at least" might be a kind of
Wittgensteinian admonition (we could make a list!).

> even nominalism, but that's what I said, he is virtually
> rejecting language wholesale at that point. I suggest he
> goes too far, if and when he does that.
>

No, he's keeping language 100% as it is, intact, smoothly functioning,
whirring merrily.  He's throwing "nominalism" to the sharks as a dead
dog of a belief system -- they could use the protein, so why not?

>> It's not irrelevant to the meaning of 'dog' that many
>> children's books feature "dog world" wherein people are
>> all dogs, like in 'Cars' (the movie) we're all cars.
>> But if you're a nominalist you'll probably miss all
>> of this,
>
> Not at all.
>

Well, you might not be like most nominalists.  Many if not all
nominalists I've ever met are close to being literalists i.e.
unimaginative, no stomach for metaphor, both feet on the ground types,
squares, nincompoops, dweebs.

> Nominalism leaves open all such things. There is no
> single definition for a word, which is what you keep
> saying it suggests, missing the many. What you miss

I don't care about definitions that much.  I am aware that the
dictionary is a relatively recent invention and that many
sophisticated and serviceable languages have gotten along without
dictionary compilations of definitions, do so to this day.  Let's just
say that I'm wholly unimpressed by any philosophy of language that
feels anchored to "definitions" for anything.

That being said, I like dictionaries plenty, think they're great
metaphorically, great as data structures.  I could go on and on about
how much I like dictionaries.  It's nominalism that I think is poopka.

> is that nominalism as a principle, does its best to
> reject even the first definition, except as contingent
> to a PARTICULAR use. Any generality a word has as
> to type or property is made up of all such particulars
> as there may be.

I'm glad I don't follow this literature.  Python is very nominalist in
design, but in a way that does work, serves a purpose.  Taking this
design and applying it to human language too literally and
simplistically is like a root of all evil, has ensnared philosophers
for centuries, slowing our evolution to a crawl.  Then Wittgenstein
came along and cut the gordian knot, and nominalism no longer has
power, praise Allah.

>
>> """
>> As Korzybski, the founder of general semantics,
>> pointed out, the consequence of its single-tagging is
>> that the rose becomes reflexively considered by man
>> only as a red, white, or pink device for paying
>> tribute to a beautiful girl, a thoughtful hostess,
>> or last night's deceased acquaintance. The tagging
>> of the complex biological process
>> under the single title rose tends to detour human
>> curiosity from further differentiation of its integral
>> organic operations as well as
>> from consideration of its interecological functionings
>> aboard our planet.
>> """
>
> Well, Korzybski, y'know, "the map is not the territory"
> is quite memorable, but then it gets just a little twee.
> And frankly, these days, I'm more interesting in just
> how it is anybody makes the pragmatically useful assumption
> that the map might be something like the territory,
> after all. We all want to reject identifying the
> monolithic, monist, real world with any of what us agents
> and language users know or say - but of course, that is
> too skeptical. LW was discarded by the New Romantics
> circa 1960-1970 for excessive skepticism. That may be
> a misreading, but at least in places, perhaps it's justified.
>

I've never been a Korzybski disciple though I've certainly plowed
through some of his texts.

Not that I am not the author of the above verbiage, was cut and
pasting from a web site somewhere.

>> > to make minimal (usually zero) commitment to the thing,
>> > which in turn shows even the minimal commitment to the
>> > word. Augustine is
>>
>> This seems esoteric jargon to me.
>> What about "commitment" again? Are
>> you inventing a new meaning for that word?
>
> I'm not making this stuff up.

Someone else is then, maybe you wanna cite a source, but if it's into
some dreary thicket of nominalists all talking to one another, then
maybe I'd find it too claustrophobic in there, the wrong kind of dog
in the wrong kind of dog pack.

>
> The broad movement in modern philosophy is away from
> ontology and ontological "commitments" towards epistemology,
> or language, or both. It's such a broad term I do not even
> find an entry for it in my Penguin dictionary, but it's
> a very common usage.
>

Hmmm, something for gender studies maybe.  If these are mostly males
talking, and "ontological commitments" are their new bugaboo...  hey,
do they still have monasteries out there?  Anyway, just irrelevant
stream of consciousness (I hear fidgeting in the peanut gallery).

> How about this:
> http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=%22ontological+commitment%22
>

My difficulty is in relating all this weighty stuff to the fragile
(brittle) doctrine of "nominalism".  How do you get to (or from) a
discussion of ontological commitment from a silly model of language
that never held water?

>> I look to Wittgenstein for what nominalism means, not sure
>> you're as clear about it as he is but we'll see. Thanks for
>> coming up with that quote, reminds me why I call Wittgenstein
>> an operationalist, not, repeat not, a nominalist. You proposed
>> instrumentalist which I also like.
>
> Oh, did I say that for LW - or for me?
>

I thought you were quoting him?

> He certainly rejects nominalism in the cite above, but
> I'm not sure that's a good thing. He certainly recognizes
> that some will find his skepticism, if that's what it is,
> suggesting nominalism, that is what I'd like to point
> out here.
>

I buy your "certainly rejects nominalism" as a sign of agreement.
Whether that's a good thing or not I'm not sure I care about.  And
yes, he's wise to distance himself from nominalism explicitly as
nominalists have no right to seize the limelight anytime "the skeptic"
appears on stage.

One can play the skeptic and *not* be a nominalist.  Like you could be
an operationalist, and then, after looking over a language game
proposal (like a proposal for a new board game, like Monopoly or one
of those) you go "nah, that'll never work!"  So you're a skeptic then.

> (but, and please envision me pounding the table here,
> nominalism is NOT about skepticism, not about asserting
> skepticism, but about assuming a skepticism so strong that
> the world turns around, the question becoming how do we
> know ANYTHING, rather than how do we know EVERYTHING!
> bang bang bang, glower)
>

Right, thank you.  But remember I don't care about nominalism that
much, what it is, what it isn't.  It's crap, nuff said.

> (but perhaps that is not skeptical enough for LW at PI383,
> and if not, well, like I said, not sure that's a good thing
> for him to do, in fact quite the opposite, I'd say we share
> a motivation, but he fails to make good on it when he goes
> too far)
>

Sounds like an involved soap opera I'll never catch up on, like 'Lost'
(got behind, no one pays me enough to watch TV shows like that, or
assigns it as homework in work/study programs -- that'd imply having a
real university administration, snicker).

>> > Let me ask you this - in Python, or any other language, what is it
>> > that gives any variable meaning?
>> >
>>
>> A variable is certainly has no *contents* in Python.
>
> ??

Now you're sounding like SWM.  You want links, sources, what?

A variable is a name, like alsdfjaipofdsg, which then *points* (links,
binds to) an object.  You then "talk to" said object using what's
called "dot notation" which any PhD needs to know about, no matter
what field (because of the Ph -- this is Logic).

>> One of the
>> gestalt switches you need to make is to stop thinking of
>> variables as empty boxes in memory stuffed with things called
>> values. On the contrary, a variable in Python is quite literally
>> a name,
>
> !!!

&&&

fun game here....

>
>>is referred
>> to as a name. Then it connects, like via a string to a
>> helium-filled balloon, to an object.
>
> Swell. Nominalism, pretty much pure.
>

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, and then mock the idea that this well
designed clockworks should become a model for human and/or natural
language.

>>One name takes you to one
>> object.
>
> At at time.
>

Yes, you can rebind a name to another object.  names are serially
monogamous, although there's nothing to keep you from pointing to a
stable of horses, versus one horse i.e. an object may be a data
structure consisting of pointers to other objects yet.  This is what
8th graders learn in our pilot schools (e.g. Winterhaven -- pilot
complete in that case).

>>On the other hand, an object may have many names, so
>> it's many-to-one (names-to-objects).
>
> Many to many, over time.
>

I'm not sure what point you're making.  When an object has no names
(fans), it gets garbage collected.  When a name rebinds to a different
object, that results in a decrement on one object, an increment on the
other.  The programmer is able to get objects to introspect about how
many names they have, or maybe it's the garbage collector that knows
that -- I'd have to crack the manual (geeks are encouraged to keep
their brains online).

> But, which variable to I go to, to get what the program
> knows about X?
>
> (this is not a trick question)
>
> Josh

Remember what Djikstra said about BASIC:  if you've ever learned it,
you're likely never going to learn to program thanks to the brain
damage you'll have experienced (paraphrase).  As long as we keep
giving examples in Python and not BASIC, I think we'll be moving in a
positive direction here.

Kirby

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