[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism? (nominalism, yet again)

  • From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 13:46:18 -0700

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 9:27 AM, jrstern<jrstern@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<< snip >>

> (only entry in index of PI is 383:
>
> "We are not analysing a phenomenon (e.g. thought) but a concept (e.g. that
> of thinking), and therefore the use of a word. So it may look as if what we
> were doing were Nominalism. Nominalists make the mistake of interpreting all
> words as *names*, and so of not really describing their use, but only, so to
> speak, giving a paper draft on such a description."
>

This seems quite clear and consistent with his opening critique of the
St. Augustine passage.

Nominalists want their logic to neatly cleave around a Language versus
Not-Language divide and have the Language side consist of "names" of
the Not-Language side.  Whereas this habit of thought is well catered
to by some language games, some brands of Logic (e.g. Python), it's
simply going to lead to problems down the road, if clung to as a model
of ordinary (everyday) language.  I don't see a need for Hacker's
clarification as the above stands on its own.

> I'd say that Wittgenstein's putative point above about nominalism
> is that he wants the meaning to inhere not in words at all, but
> in "uses". But, really, what can we make of that - that the
> linguistic turn is over and wrong? I want to stay with words,
> and the lightest touch one can use to do that, is nominalism.
>

That seems a bit of a straw man is it conflates his thinking to a
thesis he never explicitly advances.  He wants us to investigate words
a functioning components in intricate language games, yes, but to say
meaning doesn't "inhere in words" is too vague to be worth saying no?
What does it mean?  Of course words have meaning.

<< hacker stuff snipped >>

> The point being not that there are not words for other things
> like red and pretty, but that there is a priority to how those
> words gain meaning.
>

Unclear.

> --
>
> But that's OK, I'm used to seeing everyone in town use "nominalism"
> as a scare word and straw man. I'm not going to chase it around,
> much.
>

My meaning seems rather consistent with Wittgenstein's above, glad you
dug that out for us.

Kirby

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