Of course, we can have a metalanguage for a specific language as Tarski has
shown - even a sort of English purified of truth attributes, some ambiguous
pronouns etc. can serve as a sort of metalanguage for ordinary English. But
thinking in a metalanguage is still thinking, so it does not constitute 'a
metalanguage of thinking', as far as I can see.
On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Donal McEvoy <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
------------------------------
*From:* Torgeir <phatic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*To:* Lit Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Sent:* Sunday, 19 March 2017, 3:50
*Subject:* [lit-ideas] Re: Language of thought
In the current month McEvoy has submitted 17 posts, Palma 31. Is thelanguage of the list more thoughtful at present than it was, say, in the
days of Henninge, Lye or Geary?>
This is a whole other can of worms to language/thought/metalanguage: it's
like its beamed in from another conversation, in a way that - dare I say it
- seems not very thoughtful. (Btw, I don't recall "Lye".)
The question is rather if there is adifference that matters to these gentlemen between the distinction
proposed by Heidegger and their much cherished difference between
language and metalanguage.>
This is unsatisfactory on several counts. Here's two: (1) what is "the
distinction proposed by H" (we are not told, and it is unclear to me what
it is) (2) how does this distinction relate to the distinction between
language and metalanguage (again left unexplained).
Can there be a metalanguage of thought?I think not.>
Is this meant to be some kind of argument?
Second question - is it some kind of argument? I think not.
My brief contribution to the lang/thought/meta-lang issue is this: a
metalanguage may be the same natural language as the object language, and
is "meta-" in the sense that it is language used for discussing language.
It is 'language about language'. Can there be thoughts about thoughts? We
might think so. Are these 'meta-thoughts'? In a sense, perhaps analogous to
the meta- object-language distinction: we might say they are
'meta-thoughts' about 'object thoughts'. They are still thoughts though (or
so we might think) - just as the meta-language is still language and may
even be the same natural language as the object language.
Do we need to refer to 'thought about thoughts' as 'meta-thought'? Here we
might go back to the purpose or function of meta/object language
distinction. This was to bring logical clarity to an area where many
suspected there were paradoxes and other problems - 'language about
language' becomes unparadoxical and logically unproblematic provided we
observe a meta/object language distinction.
Is 'thought about thought' potentially paradoxical in the same way as
'language about language'? If not, do we need a meta- distinction? If so,
do we need a meta- distinction?
Having asked these questions we come to another: even if 'thought about
thought' requires a 'meta-thought/object thought' distinction how does this
relate to whether the meta-thought presupposes or involves a
'metalanguage'?
Perhaps all these thoughts show we are much less thoughtful than Henninge
(who, in my grasp of his position, was a Wittgensteinian; but who had, in
my guesstimate, misread the way Wittgenstein is anti-metaphysical by
mistaking W's hostility to the nonsense created by metaphysical talk for
hostility to there being any metaphysical dimension to reality; a problem
with some Wittgensteinians is that, when pressed, they are almost
pathologically unable to be explicit about what interpretation of W they
are defending).
D
Thoughtless as ever
L
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