[lit-ideas] Re: What is information?
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 21:16:29 -0700
I wrote:
'One might believe, with Frege, that a concept without sharp boundaries
isn't a
concept at all, and with a precocious Jamesian infant that the actual world
will continue to be a vast, buzzing, blooming confusion. Words are words and
not some other thing and the relation between word and world is something else
entirely.'
John replied:
Yes, but then, like Frege, you would find yourself at the end of the
day with nothing to talk about except mathematics. Can we name even
one major topic of human discourse--love, law, art, religion,
philosophy, science....whatever....for which a nonarbitrary concept is
possible given Frege's strictures?
I wasn't endorsing this view (it's clearly one of the views Wittgenstein calls
into question in the Investigations); I was saying that someone might believe
it and yet believe that 'the world' (where those 'immutable' facts John
referred to earlier are said to be) could not be relied on to provide stable
examples of things with essential properties. (I think the great Buddhist
logicians from the 7th century CE on would have agreed.) In this way I was
trying to show that, contrary to what I took John to be saying, one did not
have to think that linguistic essentialism and 'ontological' essentialism were
two sides of the same coin, and that one could seriously address one without
addressing the other if that were the reason given for having to address them
both (if one were serious). Simply: one could believe in linguistic
essentialism without believing in ontological essentialism. And
conversely? I'm
not sure.
Note, please, that I have no problem with constructing definitions for
hypothetical or practical purposes, only with those who think that
scholastic logic-chopping is learning something about the Jamesian
infant's world.
I have no idea what prompted this remark or to whom it's addressed. Out of
politeness I'll assume it's addressed to someone who would rather remain
nameless.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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