[Wittrs] Re: Wittgenstein and "Brain Scripts"
- From: "jrstern" <jrstern@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:03:33 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
>
> (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.
May well be true.
I hope Wittgenstein would not mind, if someone looks further into
just what that cognition might consist of.
> One is never to ask what a word means. One only asks what is the brain doing
> with it?
That seems excessively facile.
I ask (rhetorically) again, because I consider it an especially
good response, does Wittgenstein require we discard all dictionaries?
Can one not survey that anthropological process, record the most
common usages, and present them for convenient reuse? In the
absences of such reuse, could language even work? Of course not.
Wittgenstein argues for freedom, but even the freest man may choose
what many of his fellows choose, and indeed, may find that following
his neighbor, if not the crowd, a common practice.
Much less, Google would not work, except for just such practices.
> 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.
Yes, ...
> 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).
Is this not a rather good channeling of Frege?
> 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.
But surely you run the risk of regression, saying the brain "learns"
a language in order to process another language.
Now, I have no argument with that, as long as you do end the
regress. As Chomsky does, rather by fiat, but even so. And Fodor
certainly talks about a "language of thought", and isn't that what
you are describing? Do you allow yourself such, when Wittgenstein
rather said we should not?
I suppose I could take several deep breaths and try to imagine the
rationalization that makes the brain script different from
what Wittgenstein forbids, that makes it a "grammar" which is OK,
and not a "language" which must be eschewed.
Because me, and Fodor, and Chomsky, and Dennett, and anyone else
involved in any computational theories of mind, are on the same road
here, or a very nearby parallel road, or somesuch. And if that puts
us at odds with something Wittgenstein said, so it goes. We (that
is, I) do so still preserving what I take to be the preponderance of
good works that Wittgenstein did both directly and then, via Turing,
indirectly.
Josh
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