[Wittrs] Re: Wittgenstein's meaning is use.
- From: Nasha Waights Hickman <baghira24@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:20:16 -0400
reply to CJ:
I like and am intrigued by much of what you say here. My apologies for
misreading things on the question of determination, and thanks for the
clarification.
I will look into Dennett's stuff -- his name keeps cropping up.
I'll need to reread more carefully,and have a ponder!
Only one thing jumps out and jars with me again at the outset though:
This business about useless words and concepts, and our need to drop them from
currency. I really don't think a revision of our language is in order.
Undoubtedly we should cease talking nonsense in philosophy, psychology and so
on, but I don't think that one removes the temptation to talk nonsense by
removing words. One stops people talking nonsense by showing that it IS
nonsense, and that is done by showing that they are not employing their terms
meaningfully -- in a way that accords with how those terms are used. They will
be crossing language games, or trying to get a concept that has application in
one domain to do work in a context where it has none, and so on.
"Thought" clearly has a use in every day life, I don't really see that it is
redundant or harmful or corresponds to a pseudo-concept, indeed I think we'd be
rather stuck without it. (I say to you "consider this thought: bla bla bla"
what is wrong with that?).
If psychologists and philosophers have been talking elaborate nonsense for
millennia because they wanted to assume that "thought" had a spacio-temporally
located referent, then that is their affair. That is not how the word is used
ordinarily -meanigfully- and it is only by careful consideration of how the
word IS used that we come to realise that what these scientists and
philosophers were talking was nonsense.
I most certainly hope that reality is not a convenient fiction!!
--Again the fact that many anthropologists and sociologists achieve notoriety
by throwing around rubbish about 'realities' , 'social realities', 'social
universes' 'engendered realities' and such like is unfortunate, but 'reality'
is a perfectly decent and respectable term with a good and established use.
I will have a more careful think on the rest, and see that I can reply with
something more constructive!!
N.
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