[lit-ideas] Re: Conversation Without Implicature
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 13:01:22 -0500
JL: "As Occam (with his theory of 'sermo interioris') realised, it is
impossible
to think that when I _think_ "God", I am using the word "ambiguously". No
such thing as an ambiguous thought."
Well, I'm happy for Occam, but in fact I've never had a thought that was not
ambiguous. Worse still, I'm not sure I've ever had a thought. I've had
conglomerations of neuronal excitations -- but I'm not sure you would call
that thought. I'm not sure what a thought is. My brain keeps my body
somewhat in step with itself -- but that's mostly feed-back loops as I
understand it. Is that "thinking". It's mental activity certainly. So,
does that mean that my brain doesn't need me to do its thing? I needs a
body, yes, like a tree. A tree thinks, doesn't it? It "knows" where the
light is strongest. It "knows where water is. It knows to seek out
nutrients. It knows when to choke off the leaf-thing it does and go into
hibernation. Trees might not have a centrally located think-thing, but they
think, if thinking is "knowing the immediate environment and acting on it.
l doubt that trees get very philosophical in their thinking, but who am I to
say? I don't speak arborish. The only language I know is a dialect of
American English known as Mikegearyish. I used to think that thought was
word-working. A bit like whittling. Slowly removing the ambiguities until
there was no doubt what this was all about. Here! See here! The very
image of rationality. Now I tend to believe that all that word-work is
nothing more than teenage diary keeping -- the O so serious noting of the
hapless happenings to the Organism-That-Is-Me and bemoaning my outcast
state. Why that organism would keep a diary, I don't know. In fact, I
don't know anything. To me everything is ambiguous, even the word "is".
But you go, guy. Unambiguate away.
Mike Geary
maybe in Memphis
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 9:39 AM, <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> In a message dated 6/23/2011 4:21:03 A.M., lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> writes:
> Did I say that? I hope not. What I said or meant to say is that all
> language is potentially ambiguous. No text can be written in such a way
> as to
> avoid the possibility of misunderstanding.
>
>
> ----
>
> On the other hand, if I am right, a maxim such as:
>
> "Avoid ambiguity!"
>
> which Grice lists as comprising the 'cooperative principle' seems otiose
> when it comes to language as self-expression.
>
> As Occam (with his theory of 'sermo interioris') realised, it is impossible
> to think that when I _think_ "God", I am using the word "ambiguously". No
> such thing as an ambiguous thought.
>
> Grice realised this much when he noted, as late as 1987:
>
> "We need to take into account a distinction between
> solitary and concerted enterprises. It take it as being
> obvious that insofar as the presence of implicature rests
> on the character of one or another kind of conversational
> enterprise, it will rest on the character of concerted
> rather than solitary talk production. Genuine monologues
> are free from speaker's implication" (Way of Words, p. 369).
>
> ---- and mutatis mutandis, a fortiori, ambiguity and misunderstanding
> (_contra_ Helm). ("Contra Helm" sounds rude, but I don't mean it that way;
> "Pace
> Helm" sounds ambiguous).
>
> -----
>
> And so on.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
> ---- Ref. Bouveresse/Parrett, "Meaning and understanding".
>
>
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