[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 16:36:22 -0700

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 3:46 PM, jrstern<jrstern@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <kirby.urner@...> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
> A language versus non-language divide ... maybe, depends. I wonder
> if you can expand on this. See if you can maneuver between throwing
> away language - and the linguistic turn - and throwing away this
> "divide". I'll tell you how nominalism does it.
>

What I've done is deliberately blur the "word versus thing"
distinction in pointing to words like the H O L L Y W O O D sign over
LA, to the fact of words as physical phenomena.  Then we move to the
textual significance of things, such as highway cones (orange), other
traffic signs, pieces on game boards, diagrams for NFL-style football
maneuvers.

The upshot is you get the medeival "book of nature" where signifier
and signified blend into the one image, without that sense of
something being in front of something else i.e. symbols occluding what
they signify or vice versa.  In Wittgenstein, the end result is
transparent.  It's not an occult philosophy for this reason, although
I would call it esoteric.

> Augustine's example is of someone learning an association between
> word and thing, a simple relationship. The point of nominalism is

What's so simple about it?  You've got this word 'dog' embedded in
open source (public) language games (partially overlapping), with some
perhaps involving breeding and showing, plus you've got this specific
canine wandering the house, with the right to use 'dog' locally, with
specific application to this particular beast.

And yet, despite this local application, the global word 'dog' is
entirely innocent of your particular mutt, or any particular mutt.
Plus the word 'dog' is replicated in all different languages, yet maps
differently "in the brain" (in the culture).  Is "dog" in Arabic the
"same meaning"?  I'd hesitate to say yes.

It's not irrelevant to the meaning of 'dog' that many children's books
feature "dog world" wherein people are all dogs, like in 'Cars' (the
movie) we're all cars.  But if you're a nominalist you'll probably
miss all of this, per my earlier quote about 'the rose' from the
American Transcendentalist bookself.  Here's a link:

//www.freelists.org/post/wittrs/Mind-vs-Brain-Hawkins-Wittgenstein-Transcendentalism-etc-Urner-long

"""
As Korzybski, the founder of general semantics, pointed out, the
consequence of its single-tagging is that the rose becomes reflexively
considered by man only as a red, white, or pink device for paying
tribute to a beautiful girl, a thoughtful hostess, or last night's
deceased acquaintance. The tagging of the complex biological process
under the single title rose tends to detour human curiosity from
further differentiation of its integral organic operations as well as
from consideration of its interecological functionings aboard our
planet.
"""

> to make minimal (usually zero) commitment to the thing, which in
> turn shows even the minimal commitment to the word. Augustine is

This seems esoteric jargon to me.  What about "commitment" again?  Are
you inventing a new meaning for that word?  I have nothing against
you're doing so but would need to see more of the tapestry of meaning
you've weaved.

> about as far from nominalism as one can get. The nominalist looks
> at a linguistic expression as - a linguistic expression, not as
> having inherent or direct meaning. Perhaps as having meaning to
> the speaker, and/or the hearer, but already we start to drift away
> from what nominalism is about.
>

I look to Wittgenstein for what nominalism means, not sure you're as
clear about it as he is but we'll see.  Thanks for coming up with that
quote, reminds me why I call Wittgenstein an operationalist, not,
repeat not, a nominalist.  You proposed instrumentalist which I also
like.

> Let me ask you this - in Python, or any other language, what is it
> that gives any variable meaning?
>

A variable is certainly has no *contents* in Python.  One of the
gestalt switches you need to make is to stop thinking of variables as
empty boxes in memory stuffed with things called values.  On the
contrary, a variable in Python is quite literally a name, is referred
to as a name.  Then it connects, like via a string to a helium-filled
balloon, to an object.  One name takes you to one object.  On the
other hand, an object may have many names, so it's many-to-one
(names-to-objects).

Kirby

> Josh

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