[Wittrs] Re: Analyzing Wittgenstein's 'Mental Processing' Quotes

  • From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:39:51 -0700

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:18 AM, brendan downs
<downs_brendan@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> This question here my be a non senseical question, even though there might or 
> might no be family resemblences with concepts such as mind, thought, 
> thinking, ideas and brain.

Until computers (the machine ones) came along, the lay folk weren't so
desperate to hook in with OS talk (i.e. to map their metaphors about
thinking to aspects of operating systems, the software that controls
the hardware we use to think with (computer as amplifier, as
prosthetic device)).

> those it make sense in the sense of games to be talking of brains in these 
> arguments. Wittgenstein's objections to applying words outside the contexts 
> in which they have an established meaning mirror Kant's objections to the 
> non-empirical use of empirical reason.

He doesn't object to this happening, he notes it.  Then he notes how
words come with baggage, a loose tie-in to Minsky's "suitcase word"
idea.  So you'll be talking along happily and then some philosopher
(zealot) comes along and screws it all up with some monkey wrench
metaphor pregnant with misleading analogies.  The work gets diverted
into some holding pattern, maybe never comes up for air again, until
someone more like Wittgenstein comes along and helps unknot the
situation, repair the damage.

> Where as "brain" has empirical content and makes sense if you agree 
> brain/mind are identical.

I would never agree to this by the way.  I have the equivalent of a
Swiss bank account worth of money invested in keeping "mind" and
"brain" separate at all costs, as my whole philosophy would be
destroyed in a heartbeat should these ever collide and fuse.

Thanks to great defense systems, I feel little threat from other
namespaces however.  I'm happy to see people confuse these two terms,
as long as they don't advertise as (phony) American Transcendentalists
marketing the same metaphysics I do (all on the web, published with
pictures, index, started out in hardcopy (Macmillan) by someone with a
double digit number of PhDs -- talk about feeling secure!)).

> Neurologically speaking the brain/mind is composed of electrical and chemical 
> process but to talk about brain-mind is to take the concepts out of context, 
> "In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that when concepts grounded in 
> experience are applied outside of the range of possible experience, the 
> result is contradictions and confusion"

I've introduced Kant as a good example of a linguistic turn
application.  He suggests we can't help but see in "three dimensions"
(this was before the "4D = 3D + Time" meme of early 1900s), yet
there's a competing namespace that would say "3" is not the best
number, that whole "height width and depth" demo we take for granted,
and from which derives our notion of "linear independence" based on
"norms" or "90 degree angles", being a silly carnival trick, a
sideshow bob kinda deal -- so many suckers!

> Before early biology did we have the concept "brain" even though we had a 
> brain. And since biology we
have a concept that refers and belongs to the category science, where
as the concept "mind" may refer to
the usage of a concept in the category of philosophy. if you don't
subcribe to the brain is identical to the
mind then we have a cross categorial confusion.
>
> Brendan

I've also done plenty of work on the term "mindset" as distinct from
"mind".  A mindset depends on lots of archival recordings, public
records, public buildings, billboards, television.  No single brain
gets all the credit and no single brain is deemed powerful enough to
contain a whole mindset all at once.  Brains sift through them or,
more aptly, ride the rails of the various mindsets (think of roller
coasters).  It takes real time and physics to survey a mindset
semi-completely.  Wittgenstein was good at it, surfed a lot of
mindsets in his day.  Most academics settle into one and repose there,
not challenging themselves to escape any fly bottles (too old for
that, a young person's game).

Kirby

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