(reply to Josh) I would say that your understanding of what I asserted is facile. Asking what a brain is doing with language is superior to a dictionary, because it is directly concerned with the central matter. Dictionaries are only for those with a foreign-language problem. They are only for those who cannot assemble a brain script for want of not knowing its trigger (the mark or noise). If you already know how the word "bachelor" plays in the language game, it would do no good to look it up and say "oh, that's the wrong definition sir." In fact, that is precisely the most irrelevant behavior. And besides, what dictionary are you talking about? The one that includes urban slang or catches idiom? Or the one that speaks the Queen's English? Dictionaries are really only like newspapers for the language game. Only spectators read the news; players don't have to, Furthermore, one could imagine one day a dictionary of scripts being authored so that whenever language was used -- in law or wherever -- its offeror could bind its utterance to an entry in a processing lexicography rather than a word-use lexicography (dictionary). That is, imagine the following conversation between Alpha and Beta regarding the world "motion." (You can use "physical" too or a host of other words). Alpha: The desk is still Beta: No it is not; its particles are in motion Alpha: What word do you have for when the desk moves? Beta: its a different kind of motion. You will note that no issue exists here. Beta means motion as a lexicographical idea and Alpha means it as a categorical one. When something is lexicographical, everything is the case, and your brain is only doing inventory (motion-type A; motion-type B, etc.). When your brain is making categories, it's distinguishing things that are ostensibly the case. I think this is called associational reasoning (I forget). So you have one brain hearing the word "motion" and deploying an inventory sort of processing script while another deploys an ostensible-association task. In a manner of speaking, they talk past themselves. (Note that in the scenario, Alpha isn't saying that particles are not moving. He's not asserting a scientific theory) Imagine a dictionary of brain script showing in a universal syntax how brains processes expressions. What would be described are common patters or modalities of thought described with the same sort of conventions one uses to describe (program) how computers "think." In fact, we would have to create a universal script that does this analysis for us. If it were translated and understood, it might even be thought of as a universal language, sort of in the way that mathematics is (or symbolic logic could be thought to be). If you don't like "brain script," call it the book of common syntactical processing. Now this last notion here might indeed be far afoul of Wittgenstein. But water does go where it must. (P.S. -- I don't actually believe this very last idea; I just sort of wonder about it. On the one hand, It seems to get around the wrong idea that surface level language should be perfect (rigid) to improve clarification, as Moore and other analytics thought. Rather, let the surface level stuff be what it is, and let's work on notations for what can be said to be the processing of sense "underneath" it. On the other hand, this might be very foolish. But maybe what could happen is something more reasonable: students take a course in brain scripts in college, just as they do symbolic logic. And they do it solely for the training in seeing confusions in language and how cognitive operations differ. This alone would encourage them to listen with their minds rather than their ears when they hear something, just as symbolic logic or geometry improves the way children reason). Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq. Assistant Professor Wright State University Redesigned Website: http://seanwilson.org SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860 Twitter: http://twitter.com/seanwilsonorg Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/seanwilsonorg New Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html ----- Original Message ---- From: jrstern <jrstern@xxxxxxxxx> To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 9:03:33 PM Subject: [Wittrs] Re: Wittgenstein and "Brain Scripts" > One is never to ask what a word means. One only asks what is the brain doing > with it? That seems excessively facile. I ask (rhetorically) again, because I consider it an especially good response, does Wittgenstein require we discard all dictionaries? WEB VIEW: http://tinyurl.com/ku7ga4 TODAY: http://alturl.com/whcf 3 DAYS: http://alturl.com/d9vz 1 WEEK: http://alturl.com/yeza GOOGLE: http://groups.google.com/group/Wittrs YAHOO: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wittrs/ FREELIST: //www.freelists.org/archive/wittrs/09-2009