[lit-ideas] ordnance
- From: palma <palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 10:40:01 +0200
the idiocy of the wittgensteinian ( it was not wittgenstein's own) is that
once one "knows" that ordinary greek has 'atom' as the thing s.t. it is not
tomable (cuttbale) then one "knows" that when Fermi cut the atoms he said
something false and/or meaningless.
the problem was dealt with by Burge while dealing with "influenza" and the
flu, the two have radically different reference if the question is asked to
a virologist or to the child with the flu.
what is interesting is that nothing follows, since everyone relies on
specific deference mechanism. to this day nobody knows what hermeneutics
is, hence they ask the pope, ti this day very few people know what an
Eigenvalue is and they ask the physics department, to this day nobody knows
what inflation is and they ask teh econ dept, and so forth.
one of the cutest ideas of this branch of philosophy is in its taking
authority by asking the person on the bus etc.
On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 8:47 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I would once again invoke the analogy of doctors and the medical language.
> While medical terms such 'arthritis' may be used by non-doctors, such uses
> are derived by hear-say from medical uses. We don't tell doctors to
> investigate how 'ordinary people' use the word arthritis to find out what
> it means, but instead we refer the 'ordinary people' to professionals to
> obtain a better understanding of what it means from them, when needed. (For
> example, if they suspect that they have arthritis.) Some such might well be
> the case with philosophical terms.
>
> Another thing is, medical terms change their meaning within 'the language
> game' as new discoveries are made, and so other words in the language may
> change their meanings as new ideas are introduced. The word 'rights'
> scarcely had the same meaning in the Middle Ages that it has now. There are
> possibilities besides relying entirely on established usage and 'talking
> nonsense'.
>
> O.K.
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 8:22 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> >It's when you engage in some higher order discourse that you can
>> meaningful use terms in Greek or Latin like 'ousia' and 'essentia' --
>> they don't
>> correspond to a first-oder proposition with variables for individual,
>> and
>> predicates which are 'observational' in nature. But one could play a bit
>> with
>> this.>
>>
>> What is the authority for all these claims? What theory of language
>> validates them? And how?
>>
>> The first claim is surely obviously mistaken: in ordinary language the
>> term "essence" may be used without "some higher order discourse" e.g. "Time
>> is of the essence" or "His pen portrait captured the essence of the man."
>>
>> Philosophers need to stop telling us what language means, according to
>> them and their stipulations, and actually look at what it means - that is
>> one essential element of the later Wittgenstein's approach.
>>
>> Dnl
>> Ldn
>> Btw, just a reminder that no one came close (except in their own
>> imagination) to providing an explanation of the naming-relation that
>> provides us with an account where we can determine in a stateable way
>> that a word is being used as a name (and not otherwise).
>>
>>
>> On Monday, 16 June 2014, 16:24, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <
>> dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>
>> There is something circular about McEvoy's comments -- it's best to
>> there
>> being something square about them.
>>
>> The idea is, as O. K. pointed out, that there are philosophical
>> dictions,
>> and non-philosoophical ones.
>>
>> "Essentia" seems to be a philosophical one. Cfr. English 'essence' as in
>> 'essence of vanilla'.
>>
>> The circularity may amount to this, since McEvoy was talking about fly
>> in
>> fly bottles. A few dictions are recognisably philosophical in origin --
>> 'essence' may be one of them -- as opposed to 'being', that O. K. also
>> quotes
>> --.
>>
>> If someone feels the need (as Aristotle did) to use 'essence' or
>> 'category', then (even when I don't favour the use of 'then' in
>> 'conditionals') he
>> or she IS a philosopher.
>>
>> "Essentia" (and "Essence") and "Ousia" are feminine nouns, originally,
>> and
>> seem to have been conceived to express some philosophical generalisations
>> -- and yes, Witters thought that one bad thing about philosophers
>> (implicating, he wasn't one?) was that they craved for them!
>>
>> In a message dated 6/16/2014 3:15:03 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
>> donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
>> 'essence' are scarcely meaningful in every-day modern English.>
>> 2. The essence of any good relationship is trust.
>> 4. To complete the recipe add some essence of vanilla.
>> 8. In essence, the idea that philosophers have access to privileged
>> meanings, denied to ordinary users of language, is based on a mistake or
>> set of
>> mistakes about the character of language.
>>
>> I think O. K's point was that 'ousia' and 'essentia' were Greco-Roman
>> terms -- and I would add feminine nouns of some abstract nature. Since
>> we were
>> discussing first- and second-order statements (re: 'meta-legal'), I
>> would
>> think that the GREEK and ROMAN uses of 'ousia' and 'essentia' made a
>> (however tacit) reference to some higher order.
>>
>> It's when you engage in some higher order discourse that you can
>> meaningful use terms in Greek or Latin like 'ousia' and 'essentia' --
>> they don't
>> correspond to a first-oder proposition with variables for individual,
>> and
>> predicates which are 'observational' in nature. But one could play a bit
>> with
>> this.
>>
>> "The essence of a any good relationship is trust".
>>
>> If 'essentia' was the strict translation of 'ousia', the above may be
>> re-stated as a proposition to the effect that, for any "John" (or
>> Smith), or,
>> 'Smith and Jones', if Smith does not trust Jones and Jones does not
>> trust
>> Smith, they are NOT related.
>>
>> "To complete the recipe add some essence of vanilla".
>>
>> Of course I would not say that this is a different 'sense' (Do not
>> multiply senses beyond necessity). But this may be retranslated in
>> chemical terms.
>> Of course 'essence of vanilla' may be totally artificial, and no vanilla
>> involved, but at the chemical level, there must be some equation between
>> what you add to the recipe and the chemical composition of 'real'
>> vanilla.
>>
>> "In essence, the idea that philosophers own meanings is mistaken."
>>
>> This seems to have the form,
>>
>> "In essence, p."
>>
>> It seems to be merely emphatic towards the truth of _p_, without which
>> _p_
>> would cease to exist (and then the ultimate allusion to Greek 'ousia'
>> and
>> Latin 'essentia'.
>>
>> The Greeks thought the elements were four, and the Romans,
>> mistranslating
>> this and thinking they had come across a further element, spoke of
>> 'quintessence', the fifth element. While this has a very literal
>> meaning, it can be
>> used metaphorically, and I submit that 'In essence' may thus relate to
>> "quintessence". Then we may consider the adverbial quality of 'in
>> essence':
>> 'essentially', or 'Philosophers are quintessentially mistaken in
>> thinking
>> they own meaning" -- but Davidson made a few mistakes there -- oddly
>> thinking
>> he owned the meaning of adverbs!
>>
>> Oddly, Humpty Dumpty did own the meaning of them all -- even _verbs_
>> (*).
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Speranza
>>
>>
>> "'They've a temper, some of them — particularly verbs: they're the
>> proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however,
>> I can
>> manage the whole lot of them!"
>>
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>
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