Geary was wondering about the essence of language (he had been reading
Heidegger) and McEvoy, pouring fun, claimed:
i. The essence of language is that it is linguistic.
This begs the question, what does the linguisticness of language consists
of?
Kripke said that a property P for x is essential if, x, deprived of that
property P, would fail to exist. X would destroy itself. He uses the square
of modality for that:
ii. □ (Language is linguistic)
McEvoy confesses he is pouring fun, in that (ii) is circular: it defines
'language' in terms of 'linguistic', which can only satisfy Heidegger (cfr.
'da-silliness').
Sir John Lyons said that 'language' has to be distinguished from what bees
do as they dance. For a bee cannot lie. While a user of language can. This
'prevarication' Lyons thinks helps to define an alleged property that
language may have.
O. T. O. H., usually the right one, in "A nice derangement of epitaphs"
(malaprop for "A nice arrangement of epithets"), Davidson, in Philosophical
Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends (P. G. R. I. C. E. for
short) claims that to think that language HAS an essence is _misguided_, but
then he was from Massachusetts.
Cheers,
Speranza
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
