[Wittrs] Re: Wittgenstein and "Brain Scripts"
- From: "seanwilsonorg" <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:48:07 -0000
(reply to Stuart)
On the issue of what "scripts" are, let me say this.
One must take great care not to misunderstand me. I'm not making any scientific
claim. I'm not saying, e.g., "the brain is a processor." No philosopher in this
century should ever say such a thing, and surely no "political scientist"
should in any century.
Here's what is being said. How we think can be better NOTATED and described by
borrowing from the way humans have taught machines to "think" (execute tasks).
The script that I invent is a AIDE. It is no different in this respect than the
aids of diagramming a sentence or using symbolic logic -- except that it is
more useful. It's more useful because it shows not the logic or structure of
assertion, but the cognition of it. That's the key.
So one has to learn the script I invent as one would, e.g., HTML, JavaScript,
etc., to understand what the computer screen is doing when on the internet. The
method of the book is to present language confusions and resolve them with
reference to processing scripts. (To show the cognition AS SCRIPT). They are
"resolved" when the script captures the fact that each brain is doing something
cognitively different -- and that the only way to get them to see this is to
get them to run the same scripts. When this happens, what seems like
philosophical problems disappear. Only informational problems, if any, remain.
Here's the basic idea: we've spent 50-plus years teaching machines to do things
we do. The mistake lies in trying to worry oneself over whether we can make
ourselves in robotic form. The better idea is to take what we have invented in
this respect -- the languages that make computers "think" (execute tasks) --
and use those same sort of syntactical structures (components) to describe how
WE are thinking. But only for ILLUSTRATIVE purposes. Only as a aide to
understanding the language game. We might say, such and such an expression
produces a cognitive operation describable with these sorts of commands, while
this other operation is describable with these sorts. So long as we have a
script language that accounts for sense across all sorts of similar contexts --
a large territory of expression -- we have an illustrative way of accounting
for traffic accidents like "If Moses didn't save the Israelites, would he still
be Moses?" Answer: DEPENDS UPON THE BRAIN SCRIPT BEING USED (hello!)
Translation: there is no issue here!!! (Philosophy professor: either become
Wittgensteinien or go home).
There might be an interesting scientific implication here, however. And that is
this: inasmuch as we can describe the workings and confusions of thought as a
kind of brain script, maybe this means that brains are, in fact, significantly
like the sorts of machines we are beginning to build now? I don't ever get into
this. I'm not a scientist; I'm a Wittgensteinian. I don't care how the
journalism comes out. As my other hero Brett Favre says, "It is what it is."
I'll read the newspapers like the rest.
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