The cat sat on themat, abloodygain
This is an amicusbrief,
-
What has the following got to do with me?, says David?
-
Something, ('van' would say.)
Sometime in the early50s, before I was born, Willand van Orman Quine, known to
us friendsas 'van', launched a brutal attack on Noam Chomsky, in an article
onlinguistic meaning. The target of this brutal attack was not immediately
obvious,in particular because at the time Noam Chomsky was a nobody who
hadpublished nothing. Me, being not born 'at the time', I didn't get toread
Quine's article 'linguistic meaning' until Chomsky was well wellout at sea with
a barbed wire paddle. Initially I didn't get to theQuinean/Chomskyan dispute
through linguistics, and it was only afterreading 'the linguistic meaning'
article that I came to learn thatChomsky and Quine engaged in a long long war
about 'language'. Andmany many prestige linguists imagine that Quine lost that
war. ButQuine did not give in. My informed guess is that he was not in
aposition where he could not 'give in', because that would entailsacrificing
fundamental principles more important than 'language'.You write, David.
You can see this ethic oflearning from each other and getting on with it
continually inHalliday’s interviews. Somewhere he criticises some
linguists’quasi-scientific notion of ‘falsifying’ with counter-examples,
Butyou may not have the import of the Halliday comments correct. Mygood guess
is that Michael was attempting to apply in some way theDuhem/Quine thesis. In
fact the Duhem/Quine thesis does allow that acounter-example falsifies a
theory. The big problem resides in that acounter-example in principle falsifies
a whole theory, which will becomposed of a large set of stated and unstated
assumptions, and it isnot necessarily the 'that which one has put in question',
which isthe source of the contradiction. The problem is that
ifa, b, c, d, e, Rolf's third leg, the moon landing, x and z theny,
and
not y,
westill don't know whether the problem is a, b, or the moon landing.You can
check that this is correct with Tarski or Hutch.
Youquote Jay,
Theories are complex ways oftalking about phenomena that are constantly
modified to be moreuseful, but which are never proven and almost never
disproven,either. They are used when they seem useful, modified again and
againuntil they have become in effect new theories, and sometimes aresimply
allowed to fall into disuse because they answer questions noone wants to ask
anymore, or because a new theory seems more usefulor more interesting.
Ina general relaxed kind of way, I would say that Jay is not wrong, butI very
much doubt he would want to be engaged in an intellectualpursuit founded on
whether or not some smaller or larger pythonesquecommunity happens to want to
ask some questions until they don't. Iwould not want to suggest that Jay is
some kinky, although perhaps'dedicated', follower of fashion. And, I would very
much doubt thathe would want to suggest that its open slather, a free for all,
thatits back to the sixties, or that quantum mechanics can be put back inits
place by whacky backy, or that the mcgillicuddy serious party wasever the way
ahead for New Zealand politics.
Twodays ago someone I know extremely well said,
snug bug rug,
andall was well understood and that was the end of the matter, with, Isuggest,
that being the end of the matter being the/a consequence.Once, Mick O'Donnell,
that fictional figure sometimes to be found onthe Clapham omnibus, wrote to me,
tfKG!@.&*5ff (privatecorrespondence)
andmuch to his fictional chagrin, I understood exactly what he wastalking about.
Andyet, when presented with 'the cat sat on the mat', I have no ideawhat you
are talking about, because you are talking about nothing.There is no cat, and
no mat, and no sanity claws, and sitting is notsomething which can be done on a
non-existent cat or mat. As was oncesaid by Lyndon Baines Johnson, it's all
Sinn and no Bedeutung. And Iam going to tell Quine this, the next time we meet,
and perhaps alsoeven that there may be no Sinn, which would be concerning, as
we arebooked to meet in the other place. Father John Hill has assured
me,wrongly or rightly, that there is no Sinn without Bedeutung.
Whichare examples of language,
snug bug rug,
tfKG!@.&*5ff
thecat sat on the mat
?and, if 'the cat sat on the mat' were not to be an example, in whatway could
it be a counter-example?
Yours,
Kieran, are you on the computer again, I've told you what will happen.
On Wednesday, 14 February 2024 at 02:27:41 GMT, David Rose
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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Hi Lexie
I’m not sure it matters. The point is that linguistics sits in the humanities
and has inherited its habits, especially philosophy’s notions of truth and
falsehood. SFL’s approach to observing and theorising is closer to how science
works.
The rest of Jay’s advice to science teachers is very much in this vein and well
worth reading. He and Michael were certainly influenced by Bateson. The link
below downloads a pdf of his book.
If people can’t access the lovely book of interviews Language Turned Back on
Himself, I’ve attached an extract from 1977 that addresses some of these issues.
David
From:asflanet-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <asflanet-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of
eldon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <eldon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wednesday, 14 February 2024 at 12:54 pm
To: asflanet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <asflanet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [asflanet] Re: Criticism in SFL
the warrant here being that linguistics is a science?
anyway, here's another quote on the same topic as that of lemke's:
1 . SCIENCE NEVER PROVES ANYTHING
Science sometimes improves hypotheses and sometimes disproves
them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs except
in the realms of totally abstract tautology. We can sometimes say that
if such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then
such and such must follow absolutely. But the truth about what can be
perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else
again.
Let us say that truth would mean a precise correspondence between our
description and what we describe or between our total network of
abstractions and deductions and some total understanding of the outside
world. Truth in this sense is not obtainable. And even if we ignore the
barriers of coding, the circumstance that our description will be in
words or figures or pictures but that what we describe is going to be in
flesh and blood and action-even disregarding that hurdle of translation,
we shall never be able to claim final knowledge of anything whatsoever.
Gregory Bateson (1979: 27) Mind and Nature. A necessary Unity. New York:
Dutton
On 2024-02-13 16:37, David Rose wrote:
An interesting feature of SFL, in contrast to some other linguistic--
schools, is an absence of published criticism of each other’s work.
You can see this ethic of learning from each other and getting on with
it continually in Halliday’s interviews. Somewhere he criticises
some linguists’ quasi-scientific notion of ‘falsifying’ with
counter-examples, but I can’t find it now. Instead, here’s Jay
Lemke on theories and observations...
Theories are complex ways of talking about phenomena that are
constantly modified to be more useful, but which are never proven and
almost never disproven, either. They are used when they seem useful,
modified again and again until they have become in effect new
theories, and sometimes are simply allowed to fall into disuse because
they answer questions no one wants to ask anymore, or because a new
theory seems more useful or more interesting.
Observations are always descriptions in the language of some theory.
The observer decides what to look for on the basis of a theory,
decides how to look for it, again using the theory, and decides when
he has found it, again using criteria of theory...
Sometimes a theory is added to or modified in the course of trying to
give a better description of some observation, and if others find the
modification useful, it will continue to be used and become a part of
the theory.
Lemke, J. L. (1990). _Talking science: Language, learning, and
values_. Ablex
https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/Fs_WCOMKzVTNVEwjZHEQCkA?domain=files.eric.ed.gov
Martin, J. R. (Ed.). (2013). _Interviews with MAK Halliday: Language
Turned Back on Himself_. Bloomsbury.
