[Wittrs] On Sense and Grammar

Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx> · Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:09:37 -0700 (PDT)

Han:

It's common to misunderstand the point I make about sense and 
grammar. Individuals don't have grammars like they have, say, personal items 
(cards, toys). And they don't have a right to what they want them to be. 
Accordingly, the position I present isn't willy-nilly. It isn't, "Each person 
gets to state whatever position they want." 

Grammar is the way groups of ideas work for a langauage community (what the 
ideas do). In poor thinking, grammar can be "knotted;" it can be simplistic or 
unrefined.  We dismiss people's grammars all the time when they are not 
helpful. (See Wittgenstein's reaction to Moore in On Certainty). The job of 
anyone who receives a proposition from another is to: (a) catch the sense and 
grammar of the person, and not simply superimpose another; and (b) see whether 
the same is "knotted" or problematic in some way. 

Let's say one day a scientist has a discussion with his grandmother. The 
grandmother says, "the desk is still." The scientists says, "Wrong, the 
particles are moving." This would seem like a genuine dispute, but it is not. 
The lay sense of "motion" works perfectly fine for grandmother's point. She 
isn't "incorrect." And so, we have two sense of "motion" -- two grammars? -- 
that talk past one another. 

So it is with "thinking." If you were to say "my toaster thinks," I would need 
to know what you mean before I could even engage you. You might be: (a) crazy; 
(b) artistic; (c) referring to the fact that you just bought something in the 
store called a "smart machine" (an expression that has already entered our 
lexicon). So, until I am plugged into your grammar and sense, I have no basis 
for saying anything about it.  

I don't know if this is at all helpful. But all I wanted to do was clear up any 
misunderstanding that I hold views that say "anything goes." To the contrary, 
my views are not like that at all.

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.

[spoiler]Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://tinyurl.com/3eatnrx
Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs 
[/spoiler]

[Wittrs] On Sense and Grammar

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