Re: [Wittrs] Wittgenstein, thought and words
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 15:47:49 -0700
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 12:22 PM, iro3isdx <xznwrjnk-evca@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <wittrs@...> wrote:
>
>
>> responding to message 7385
>
>
>> KU:
>> We don't need a dog to be "thinking in words" that it intends to
>> go outside. The dog is at the door, tail wagging, the very essence
>> (if there were such) of "expectant behavior". The dog expects the
>> door to open and we say the dog intends to exit by that door. Reading
>> the situation, the meaning is obvious. The dog intends to go out.
>
> I have never been convinced that thinking is something done in words.
> It has always seemed to me that thinking is done on ideas, and the
> words sometimes come along for a free ride.
>
We often say "thinks" as a synonym for "supposes" as in "he thinks
that's a real chair" -- as the fake bar chair collapses (like a movie
prop, design to smash over someone's head).
Of course he wasn't taking a seat thinking, in words or in any way at
all: "Hey, I bet this is a real chair I'm sitting in".
No, he was taken by surprised. He did not *expect* the chair to be
fake, he *supposed* it was real as evidenced by his sitting in it,
i.e. he *thought* it was real.
> Of course, if I am doing strictly formal logic, then I need to do that
> in terms of the words. But I rarely need to do strictly formal logic.
>
When I teach Python (as I did today at University of Portland), I
might say something like "imagine what you think the output will be,
then press Enter and see what you get. To the extent what you expect
is what you get, you are thinking more and more like Python."
I could say "Python's designers" as computer languages don't actually "think".
The literary crowd says "Python thinks" is a "metaphoric" use of the
word, but I think the concept of "metaphor" really gets in the way.
Rather "thinks" is a tool and we use it in various loosely connected
ways inside of "name spaces" (or namespaces), akin to "contexts".
It's not "metaphoric" to say "the dog thinks he's about to go outside"
nor to say "the dog supposes". If someone says "you can't impute a
mental process on a dog based on your own experience -- it's
superstitious to suppose a dog might 'think' or 'suppose'.
My response to that is: I am not imputing a mental process when I say
"he thought it was a real chair", nor am I indulging in superstitious
beliefs or projections when I say "the dog thinks the door is about to
open". Rather, I am picking up a tool called "thinks" and deploying
it, using it, in a way people around me understand. I am conveying
meaning. What I'm saying about the dog is evident. There's no
hypothesis about neuroscience nor any finding in brain chemistry
that's pending, before we agree whether I'm actually speaking the
truth or not. There's no question posed for neuroscience here.
Now if it turns out to be a fake dog, a robot, uncannily faithful, I
might recant and so "oh, it's not a dog at all, so my statement was
incorrect".
However that does not mean I was having this mental process earlier,
wherein I thought or represented or communicated to myself that I
thought the dog in front of me, waiting to go out, was a real dog, and
not a robot. It never entered my mind that this dog might be fake.
> When I am thinking about geometry, I am often thinking about motions.
> While there are words coming along for a free ride, you would not be
> able to make much sense of them. They would statements such as "if I
> do this to that" which only have meaning in the context of my thoughts.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>
We go on to say things like "London thinks the Iranian imams are lying
through their teeth in saying they're not building an A-bomb, but then
London is projecting, since the English speakers are world famous for
forked tongue speech."
The English speakers say it's "metaphoric" that "London thinks" but I
depart from that English template (shibboleth) and say instead that we
have "namespaces" wherein world capitals (such as London) are endowed
with the attributes of having thoughts.
That's just another way to use the tool, no more "metaphoric" than any other.
"Portland thinks the imams are likely telling the truth whereas plans
to pre-emptively attack with no real excuse is evidence of pure
hypocrisy in action." **
Newspaper: Portland Allies with Tehran against London
That's how newspapers talk. No big deal. Old hat readlly.
Kirby
** Portland, Oregon (a territory, also claimed as a state by various
sitting officials in DC)
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