[lit-ideas] Re: Language, Justice and Social Practices (long)

  • From: Walter Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:21:19 -0230 (NDT)

Really, Phil. It's as if one can't say anything around here anymore
without thinking it through properly. I think you're quite right on all
counts below. The moral of the story: mustn't over-generalize the scope of
a true claim. (But can your daughter make a chess move with a pawn
without possessing the concept of a pawn? :-) Of course, everything else
I have said in this thread is correct, albeit still open to criticism.

Cheers, Walter

On Wed, 28 Sep 2005, Phil Enns wrote:

> Walter Okshevsky wrote:
>
> "I would venture to say that, no, one cannot experience pain without a
> concept of pain. The same sensory and/or emotional feelings might be
> differently named depending upon whether they were wanted or unwanted by the
> individual undergoing those feelings."
>
> My youngest daughter, ten months old, is learning to walk.  She had a
> particularly nasty fall the other day, hitting her face on the edge of our
> couch.  I am at a loss to understand how her crying depended on her having a
> concept of pain.  I am convinced she doesn't have a thought, much less a
> concept, in that cute little head of hers.  She is just an adorable bundle
> of immediate and unreflective expressions.  She certainly has different
> kinds of cries, but it seems simpler to attribute these differences to her
> expressing different feelings, for example of hunger or tiredness.  Why add
> a need for concepts of 'hunger' or 'tiredness' into the account?
>
> Or perhaps I am mis-reading Walter.  Perhaps Walter's point is that it need
> not be the individual who has the concept of pain but that there is in the
> linguistic environment various concepts of pain.  This makes sense.  My
> daughter hasn't a thought but my wife and I do have concepts of
> hunger-as-pain and tiredness-as-pain so that there will be times that we
> can't be sure whether she is crying because she is hungry or tired.  On this
> reading, one can identify in someone else a particular feeling even though
> that person may not have that concept available to them.
>
>
> Walter concludes:
>
> "By the way, am I the guilty party who started this commotion?"
>
> Yes.  Shame on you.
>
>
> Sincerely,
> except for that last bit,
>
> Phil Enns
> Toronto, ON
>
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