[Wittrs] Re: Wittgenstein's meaning is use.
- From: CJ <castalia@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:35:16 -0400
On Sep 29, 2009, at 7:47 AM, Nasha Waights Hickman wrote:
Reply to CJ:
Just a quickie before I disappear again for a few hours.(by a
quickie I usually mean a tome, not so hot on being concise).
First of all thanks for the comments on thought, I need to think
about all that stuff more, but have no time and my brain will soon
be petrified.
Nasha,
I appreciate you response, especially your reactions to my introducing
the notion of "natural selection" as a means of understanding what
Wittgenstein is "getting at". But, alas, I won't be dealing with
that issue this brief note. Oh well, at least for two very general
points. (Whoops. I started writing with the intention of making this
extremely brief, but I'll only get to my brief comments on "thought"
at the end of this bit of business on "natural selection"
So, as to a preliminary to Natural Selection
First, that we must understand each writer as a mere mortal embedded
in a framework of surrounding humanity and ideas and Wittgenstein
certainly came of age and then struggled with his ideas at a time when
evolutionary theory was going through its stages, first of being the
"next big thing" and then itself struggling establish itself on
firmer footing and so he was undoubtedly surrounded by those
currents. Indeed, I love to know what he would made of the discovery
of the genetic code and the actual and organic "grammar" by means of
which the pairing of nucleotides proceeds to yield all of our life.
Ironically, the first glimmerings of that wisdom in regard to the
ultimate grammar, and the best model for any "grammatical" ruminations
on our part, occurred at the time his Investigations was being pieced
together...and it would not at all be surprising if he were privy to
some of the "speculation' at that time.
Second, "natural selection" is a "way of speaking' and not at all a
manner of occurrence in any spatio-temporal framework, or a force or a
process or any such locatable sequence of "events" that those lazy
speakers that W sets up as straw men in the Investigations would have
us join them in speaking about. It is a "way of speaking" which
allows the speaker to productively speak and to make constructive
sense of what is observed by somehow tying in the the present with the
past. It has nothing at all to do with mechanistic "determination"
which I believe is on your mind. But it was rather the first step in
an elegant intellectual maneuver (see Dennett on "Darwin's Dangerous
Idea") by means of which we could speak constructively and usefully of
the observations of natural life without succumbing to notions of
either arbitrarily imposed "intelligent design" or arbitrarily and
even more capriciously imposed mere chance.
As a way of speaking, natural selection is a wonderful device, no
thing but a way of speaking, and not at all proclaiming, when it is
invoked, that anything is determined (in your sense of the word) It
allows for an infinite possibilities to have occurred, and understands
that even that infinity of possibilities is, in turn, embedded in a
higher order of infinity of even further possibilities (which might
not have likely occurred) and that those yet further infinity of
possibilities are in turn embedded in a yet a further higher order of
infinity of logical possibility (which may indeed be practically
impossible possibilities). So speaking of natural selection leaves us
with understanding that there is no simplistic, old-fashioned,
mechanistic determinism of outcome here, but an infinite number of
scenarios and possible outcomes could have occurred consistent with
it. Simply an infinity buried within a higher ordinary infinity and
so on. So it does narrow things down a bit.
If you are interested in this notion, just consider what or whether
any terms invoked in the eminently less successful "ways of speaking"
invoked by those attempting to productively speak about psychological
matters as opposed to biological matter, are anything like this notion
and whether, when they are employed, the speakers are at all aware of
that fact that the notions have no referents whatsoever in any spatio-
temporal domain, especially that convenient fiction known as
"reality". If we study how the notion of "natural selection" is used,
me have, I believe, the firmest clue as to how several of the key
notions of psychology ought to properly be used.
As to "thought" (where my brief comments in this email were going to
be directed) Just ask yourself where does that "way of speaking"
lead. Where has it led us. Whenever have you ever read anything
productive dependent on that peculiar 17th century way of speaking.
Just consider the "uselessness" of the discussions by those who insist
on invoking that notion in their "ways of speaking". In psychology,
it has led nowhere and the hardcore of those who wish to stick with
that notion are now forced to camouflage their speaking, politically
correctly, by employing the notion of 'cognition". If you look within
psychology at the work of Piaget, you'll find a thorough disregard of
the lazy dependence on the use of "thought" as part of a way of
speaking productively about anything...and the need to introduce new
"ways of speaking" and a new vocabulary, that Piaget, in fact,
intended to be based on biology, which was his original area of
training and education.
And anywhere else other than in everyday life, i.e., in philosophical
discussion it has proven completely useless and empty to engage in its
use, unless one wishes to recreate and reincarnate the unproductive
debates and dissipation of energy in fruitless argument of two
millennia that have depended on a clinging to the use of that useless
concept.
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