Those who guessed immediately that this likely refers to Raducanu may
simultaneously be demonstrating how our adult grasp of meaning is always by
plucking from an array of background knowledge, an instant rolodexing from a
vast repertoire of accumulated possibilities. It's quite a feat that we
perform, most often without conscious effort, almost as automatically as how
our eye opens to give an instant image while the complex process behind this
remains hidden from view.
Of course, I have to spoil it all now and mention in this context two perhaps
related philosophical ideas or approaches - Wittgenstein's idea of a
'perspicacious overview' as central to grasping meaning correctly from a
philosophical viewpoint (we need to make sure we are not getting the meaning
wrong by plucking out the wrong things, so we need to ensure we've taken all
the relevant things into account when deciding meaning); and Popper's view of
the mind as embroiled in World 3, so that World 2 often draws on its available
World 3 background knowledge when making sense of things. At this point in the
past JLS might pop up to defend an atomistic view of how we grasp language,
though this surely is as implausible as the view that the eye produces an image
by taking atoms of light as constituting pixels.
Best,
D
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