[Wittrs] Re: Wittgenstein, Language, Thought and Mind

  • From: CJ <castalia@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:06:53 -0400


On Sep 29, 2009, at 2:22 PM, Sean Wilson wrote:

What Wittgenstein wants us to do....or not?
You know I think we all have to be in agreement that Wittgenstein does not want to interfere with the way the proverbial man in the street speaks to his fellow citizens. Of course, there are those in our society nowadays who, in the name of political correctness wish to change everything we say and how it is used and hence what it means. But that may be a question for another time.
Wittgenstein's aim, we are surely also agree, is not to show the ordinary person the way out the fly bottle but to show the philosopher the way out of that bottle. And my assertions all have to do solely with those who, in the name of some philosophical passion or other, invoke the vocabulary of inner and outer and yes, of the root of all evil (in my jaded view ) the notion of 'experience" which goes unexamined as the tacit suppositiional support of most inner/outer nonsense. Long live the man in the street and may he be free to say what he feels in whatever terms he feels appropriate and may he or she dream accordingly, as well.
There is a problem, however. Unfortunately, there is a third class of " ways of speakiing"..not the ordinary man using ordinary language and not the confused high-brow intellectual philosophe, but that of the scientist. What we have, since the twentieth century is a burgeoning industry of so-called "scientists" in the social science area. I happen to be familiar with the psychologists. In many cases,the areas of animal behavior and ethology and even evolution theory are also science areas where we lose track of precisely who or what the source of the 'way of speaking' is presumed to be: ordinary language or scientist.
What happens is that there is a loose and undisciplined use of these various ways of speaking until they become accepted as scientifically current or fashionable and then they settle down, usually decades later, sometimes as much as 50 years, into the population at large which, unthinkingly and unknowingly and woefully behind the scientific literature, innocently incorporates and swallows whole these empty and nonsensical cliches of science (often bad science which has since been superceded) into their ordinary language and finds itself wandering off down a path of woeful speaking where the very future of civilization is jeopardized.
So, if we wish to pretend we're on a street corner chatting amiably about other things and happen to use the inner/outer dichotomy, or wallow in the toxic dump of the nonsense of the 'experience/behavior" in our idle ordinary chat, then that is fine by me. But when we insert that way of speaking into discussion which smacks of or "sounds of" scientific discussion then we are paving the way not to a freeing of the ordinary man and his ordinary language but to foolish and dangerous bad science which, in the end, threatens that freedom and that very ordinary language which we ought to defend when it is truly being used in an "ordinary sense". 

Thanks for your comments, Sean.
There is more in your comments that I'd like to address, Sean, but this 'political" matter of the "usurpation of actual ordinary language by way of the infiltration of the license of ordinary speaking into bad science which then works its way down to derail and dehumanize ordinary language" seemed like a good place to start.

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