[Wittrs] Wittgenstein and "Brain Scripts"
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:28:41 -0700 (PDT)
(reply to Josh)
I think if we asked ourselves what grammar is in a Wittgensteinian universe, we
would come to the conclusion that it consists of two basic things: anthropology
and cognition. The key idea here is that the rules for language are culturally
administered, and those rules are such that they afford new rules to be
generated via the cognitive capacities inherent in the form of life. The
language game is dynamic. What starts as a given paradoxically allows for
contributions to be made to it. And so there are the rules inherited from
anthropology (social learning), and there are those new contributions added by
virtue of what the brain can do with language in the form of life.
If one were to ask a simple question: how is it that the anthropology of
language works with the cognition of it for purposes of having a theoretical
account of its use? The answer is "brain script." There are surface level
"marks and noises" that we learn to associate with the calling of a certain
number of deeper cognitive operations or maneuvers. These deeper maneuvers can
be captured in a computer syntax, much like the structure of assertions can be
notated with symbolic logic, or the structure of the marks and noises can be
notated with sentence diagramming.
One is never to ask what a word means. One only asks what is the brain doing
with it?
Imagine 3 people arguing over whether the Pope is a "bachelor." Each is stung
in the language game, because they do not realize that each is processing
"bacheor" to do something different in cognition. One might be using
an associative memory function (doesn't look like one), another might be using
it as a formalism (unmarried + male), still another might be using it for
functional purposes (eligibility to date). What is key for Wittgenstein, is
that language is what language does. That is a central, bedrock notion. And in
this particular linguistic traffic accident, 3 brains are doing 3 different
things with the same "mark or noise." They're running three separate cognitive
operations.
If we have a meaningful system of notation that could account on wide scale for
the way such operations work, we could be more attentive to the script
procedure being used rather the surface level mark or noise. What grammar
is, conceptually, are the elements that form or make up the script as a
processing language. (The particular commands and so forth).
Here is what I want to say: grammar is the processing language the brain
learns to make sense of ordinary language. There is a sub-surface system of
processing that is going on.
Wittgenstein:
"It seems that there are CERTAIN DEFINITE mental processes bound up with the
working of language, processes through which alone language can function. I
mean that processes of understanding and meaning. The signs of our language
seem dead without these mental processes: and it might seem that the only
function of the signs is to induce such processes, and that these are the
things we ought really to be interested in. [BB, p. 3] (See also, PI, sect.
358). [note: allcaps used in place of italics –sw]
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
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