[Wittrs] Re: [C] Re: Re: Re: Proper Names --Wittgenstein, Russell, Kripke

  • From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 18:44:56 -0800

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 5:26 PM, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> (Kirby)

> 4. He was a President who broke laws, lied in office and was impeached in a 
> scandal. He's was Tricky Dick. Note that this is acting as a title. It's 
> trying to say something similar to "Messy Marvin" or Dennis the Menace. Or 
> Bloody Mary. Honest Abe. Alexander the Great. In a way, it's trying to say 
> The Crooked President. And note what happens here. As actual circumstances in 
> the culture create the same four things -- 1. scandal 2. impeachment 3. lies 
> 4. president -- in the form of a Democrat, now the name-title and the bearer 
> can separate: "Clinton is the Richard Nixon for the Democrats."
>

This #4 is what I'd most associate with "spinning" i.e. even after
we've secured a name -> referent link beyond all doubt, i.e. we all
agree there was this guy Richard Nixon and he performed in such and
such a role, then there's still all this language / behavior /
computation that keeps the meaning of "Richard Nixon" in flux.

If I think of properly named people as "stars in my sky" then I also
think how my relationship to those stars is maybe not fixed, nor are
their relationships to one another.  It's not a static picture.  We
continue to recompute with these  "tokens" (names).

The meaning of a proper name (its use) is two fold, one might say:
(a) to designate, to fix (to locate, to pick out) but then also (b) to
weave into a tapestry of signifiers that may well be subject to change
(perpetual revision) over time.

In creating this meme "Clinton is the Richard Nixon for the Democrats"
I think you're perturbing the meaning of both Nixon and Clinton.  If
this meme bounces around on a Wittgenstein list, doesn't go much
further, then that's a different physics compared to this meme
becoming popular and recycled in many contexts.  Perhaps you ran
across this meme elsewhere already.

Many Democrats would no doubt rally to Clinton's defense and say his
"crimes" in no way amounted to a hill of beans compared to Nixon's,
and it was all about vindictive Republicans trying to show us who's
boss.  The computation goes on, the threads continue.  If you use that
metaphor of "place in history", then I suppose what I'm saying is
"place in history" is what keeps shifting.

My understanding of Kripke, having read some of his essays, is that
he's investing in some "possible worlds" shoptalk and wants to
establish some kind of name->referent bond that's unbreakable
regardless of what world we're in.  Am I even in the ballpark in
casting his thinking that way?  In some ways I'm agreeing, that we're
able to make the bond across worlds.  But then I'd go on to say "what
world we're in" is actually an ongoing negotiation.

Linking to Wittgenstein again, I'd say both "judgment day" and the
"waxing and waning" of the world are apropos memes from TLP times.

We're acknowledging the aesthetic component of meaning again, which in
a positivist logic is an oxymoron.

Ethical truths are not empirical truths of natural science, and so are
not truths at all in a picture theory of meaning, a
representationalist "truth by correspondence" model of language (a
model no longer promulgated in the PI).

What I go back to in my own thinking is the concept of a "word meaning
trajectory" which I visualize as a kind of spiral through space, maybe
like a charged particle in a cloud chamber.

Then you have these "fields of meaning" (words like "charged" and
"polarized" come to mind) that impart changes to a word, to its
trajectory in semantic space.

A "field of meaning" is like a debating field (if you're lucky), a
discourse.  If you're unlucky, it's more a killing field, in how some
debaters get silenced.

To take another example, in a recent blog post I was pointing out that
a man who had made the cover of TIME magazine in on Jan 10 1964, as
some kind of genius, was later rebranded a "nutjob" by TIME magazine
in 2007, also a "walking unorthodoxy".

Without giving the bearer or the name, one might already conclude that
we're perhaps dealing with a polarized field, i.e. whoever this person
is, there's some controversy as to how to contextualize him against
the backdrop of world history (what TIME aims to do, as a magazine of
many stories).

It would be trivial to supply the name and the bearer, and so give the
meaning of the name in that sense.  But in the sense of "spin" or "the
meaning X", I'd say we don't get to the end of that, even when we're
sure we're both talking about the same person, individual or event.

Another example, of an event:  scholars to this day debate the
significance of the atom bombing of two Japanese cities.  We may
consider both bombings an event and assign a proper name.

Freeman Dyson was in Portland recently giving a lecture.  His reading
of the scholarship suggests these bombings were not pivotal in
prompting a Japanese surrender.  That's to weigh in, and thereby to
contribute to an ongoing computation regarding the meaning of a proper
named event.  Dyson was also arguing that atomic weapons need to be
eliminated forthwith, because they have no real military benefits.

Was Nixon a war criminal.  At the height of the Vietnam War, you had
Quakers picketing their own meetings because the Religious Society was
not branding him as such (Nixon's family was Quaker, you might
recall).  I tell a little more of this story in a recent blog post,
thereby altering the computation once again:

http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2010/02/notes-from-lunch.html
(paragraphs 3 & 4)

We use the word Holocaust as a proper name as well, and use it to
cover a whole set of events and developments relating to Germany and
WW2.

Many horrific events around the same time, e.g. the fire bombing of
Dresden, the V2 rocket attacks on London, are distinct from the
Holocaust, i.e. it doesn't cover everything terrible that was
happening, for example it does not cover the atom bombing of Japanese
cities.

So just getting the referent correct, understanding the scope, in
terms of what events are meant, is already a challenge.  I'd say
"pointing" is somewhat out of the question, as no one thing or place
is going to suffice.  We fall back on description.  We recreate a
vista.  Unfolding the meaning takes time.

Now some people deny the Holocaust occurred, and so you have a name ->
event disconnect for these people, as they believe this event is
mostly fictitious, a fabrication.  Other nutjobs disbelieve that
humans ever went to the moon.

But setting all that aside, and assuming agreement on referents,
there's still ongoing investigation into significance.

"Meaning" (as a concept) is not just about referents, even in the case
of proper names.

I guess that's what I'm trying to say here:  the language game of
proper names is about seeking and/or assigning referents, as you say,
and then it's also about computing significance, even once the
referents have been secured.

Is this something Kripke talks about?  Perhaps the "possible worlds"
shoptalk is another way of talking about "computer significance" i.e.
in terms of "possible worlds" we're perpetually reconsidering which
world *this* one might be (an ethical project -- warning:  waxing and
waning will occur, as judgment happens).

Kirby
=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

Other related posts:

  • » [Wittrs] Re: [C] Re: Re: Re: Proper Names --Wittgenstein, Russell, Kripke - kirby urner
  1. Home
  2. wittrsamr
  3. Archive
  4. 02-2010