[Wittrs] Re: My Chinese Encyclopedia: The Red Chicken Footnote
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:58:58 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "College Dropout John O'Connor" <wittrsamr@...>
wrote:
>
<snip>
> SWM wrote:
> Well of course, in one sense. But that isn't the sense that we need when
> talking about how brains and their activities relate to our subjective lives
> (the mental realm of our "private" worlds). Note that, in at least one sense,
> it makes no sense at all to say "the world makes minds." After all, the world
> makes everything except, of course, that when we're speaking of making things
> we don't really ever think in terms of the world as a whole as doing the
> making since making takes place IN the world and is ascribed to certain kinds
> of agential entities that are also thought of as IN the world.
>
> I write:
> To what goal do we 'need' to speak of one sense and not another? As for the
> world making minds, I was not intending to make a causal claim, but that the
> world coincides with reality- there is not excuse for talking of the world
> abstracted from reality (and thereby producing the concept of mind). It
> appears you may have understood this, too.
>
If we're interested in building intelligence in machines or in augmenting or
repairing damaged brains, it makes sense to speak of the agency of brains and
how it works. This is all part of reality, i.e., robots and computers and brain
damage all occur in the real world and all require such technologies to operate.
On the other hand, if we want to speak about something else, e.g., that nature
of the world, what it means to any individual to be alive in the world, to
relate to the world, then perhaps it pays to think in terms of the world as the
maker of everything within it. It all depends, I suppose, on what we're after
at the time of the relevant discussion.
As to whether there is a "concept of mind" I would say there certainly is even
if we have a tendency to get it wrong or not to clearly understand what is
meant by the various usages of the term in discussions like these. We needn't
imagine a floating soul-like entity attached to an organism or inserted in it
or springing into being within it in order to recognize the value of speaking
of "minds".
> > SWM wrote:
> > Not if this is about research into how brains make minds. Scientists will,
> > rather, say this is what it takes to understand things (say geometry or
> > language or difficult concepts or any notions at all), e.g., the brain does
> > this and this and this, thus THIS is what understanding is. And so forth.
> >
> > I write:
> > It is as if you are looking for the power of revelation.
>
> You wrote:
> No the underpinnings of understanding, of recognizing and referencing
> semantic content.
>
> I write:
> Well, take calculus, for example. I learned it by doing the mathematics over
> and over (granted, my terminology is likely way wrong as I haven't been
> taking those classes for years). There are some things that don't years of
> practice to learn, however. Consider the M. Night Shalamalamawhatever movie
> titled SIGNS. Some people think it is a movie about aliens, and others... a
> blessing. The latter do not come to that realization from years of studying
> the film. Either way, "To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life"-
> LW
>
Movies are a form of art I suppose and art does things to us through the
experiences they provide. I actually found Shamalyan's film about the boy who
sees ghosts with Bruce Willis quite moving, even if I think it's utterly
impossible (or at least highly unlikely given my own experience of the world).
<snip>
> >
>
> > I write:
> > Wittgenstein revolutionized the notion of tautology. That is the calculus.
> > 5.101 is a picture of logic of our language, and obviously religious
> > language is not scientific. It is nonsense, and I think it is apparent
> > that a metaphysical assertion has the form of a
> > tautology, at least in this instance.
>
> You wrote:
> Hmmm, I don't see that. Perhaps you mean to stipulate that it, too, is a
> tautology in the sense that it has the same level of content as a tautology.
> I would not, however, call it that. I think level of content is not the key.
> That is, we can have different kinds of nonsense where some would be
> tautologous and others would not be. Better to focus on the idea of nonsense
> here rather than the idea of a tautology which has a technical sense in logic
> and other areas of analytical philosophy than that of ordinary language
> and/or Wittgenstein.
>
> I write:
> Well, we do have an easy split in the notion of contradiction and tautology;
> and yes, should we have a need to add more than T&F to our logical symbolism,
> we could have a solid combination of that 'letter' that stands next to T&F
> (but I see no need for that). If you would prefer me to say 'nonsense'
> rather than 'tautology or contradiction', I would be willing. It makes no
> difference to me. Such statements are not expressive, however- at least
> according to Wittgenstein. They could mean almost anything.
>
If they could mean almost anything then we can (and often do) use them
expressively. One example you gave it seemed to me involved emphasizing which
is, in a sense, to express one's high level of confidence in the claim one has
made. "I meant what I said and I said what I meant." That is, take my words on
their own terms. I won't budge, etc.
> > I have heard that Buddha once told two men contradictory claims, namely
> > that God exists and God does not. "Christ died for my sins" is a fair
> > description of the life of Christ and the Christian- ala, a tautology. I
> > could say, "I will see you when I see you" or "it is what it is" or "this
> > sentence is true" or "substance is"... all of the tautological form. "I
> > know nothing" and "The Tao is not the real Tao" etc. have the form of
> > contradiction.
> >
>
> You wrote:
> I think that it is better to concentrate on the differences in these various
> uses rather than try to unify them by squeezing them into any single rubric.
> One of the things about Buddhism (or at least the form with which I'm
> familiar) is that it aims to jam up the thought processes so that we stop
> trying to think things through, to reason, and just approach the world on a
> more basic intuitive level. Take things as they are, you might say, tear away
> the cobwebs of the discursive mind.
>
> I quote:
> "To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life" -LW
Yes, I think it makes sense to recognize language as being a form of life or,
perhaps better, embedded in or expressing a form of life. That is why we would
not understand the talking lion (unless it was Bert Lahr in which case we have
a man in a lion suit and not a lion at all).
> Some things can be said and others (~). But what is the way of life (form of
> life?) of the psychoanalyst/psychologist/etc.? (For some, it is/was Dianetics)
>
?
> > SWM wrote:
> > Yes that is the classical Wittgensteinian (both the later and earlier)
> > view. I am inclined to agree generally speaking though perhaps not
> > exclusively so, i.e., I think he was wrong about religious talk, i.e.,
> > sometimes I think it is open to empirical consideration in which case it is
> > open to scientific discourse.
> >
> > I write:
> > Then you are doing it wrong...
>
> Well perhaps. We always think others are wrong if they are doing something
> differently than we are doing if we are confident in the rightness of how we
> do it. Certainly, I have come to the conclusion that one cannot fully embrace
> a religious picture of the world without embracing the facts it implies. I
> think Wittgenstein missed that, i.e., that maybe he was the one who was doing
> it wrong. But then who knows? I only know what I have experienced, how I have
> seen things when trying to practice religion . . .
>
> I write:
> What you say agree with what I linked, and yet, you seem to think we disagree.
> "The world of the happy is far different than the unhappy"-LW
> (paraphrase, maybe?)
>
There are often deep agreements to be uncovered in superficial disagreements.
Only professional philosophers and those aspiring to be seem to have a hard
time with that notion!
<snip>
> You wrote:
> Logic has one meaning for technical philosophers, another for the average
> person on the street.
>
> I write:
> I thought you liked the remark that nothing was outside of logic.
> "To a truly religious man, nothing is tragic" -LW
>
I don't agree that nothing is outside of logic. I think a lot is. Logic is just
one of the many games we play with language on my view. But then I tend to
construe logic very narrowly.
<snip>
>
> > I write:
> > "Meaning" is a nonsense word.
>
> You wrote:
> I don't agree. It just has various meanings and maybe sometimes it is
> nonsense to ask for a meaning or nonsense to seek a definition of "meaning"
> that goes beyond familiarity with how the term is used in English or its
> variants are used in other languages!
>
> I write:
> Absolutely! But mightn't we use the word 'use' here and not 'meaning'? And
> what of other tricky words, like 'God' and 'Good' and 'Absolute' and
> 'Abstract'. heck, 'Abstract' is often used as both an adjective as well as a
> verb!
>
I think most words are tricky though, admittedly, some have more easy to use
applications than others. "Abstract" may also be a noun as in "here is the
abstract of the document you asked for". Once we see that, in a great many
cases, meaning is just the use we put the word to, then there's no reason to
avoid using the term "meaning" in those cases.
> > I mean what I say and say what I mean (a tautology).
>
> You wrote:
> A statement we might make in order to be emphatic, hence a purposive remark.
>
> I write:
> Purposeful? Of course any word can be argued to have a purpose. I might say
> "How beautiful!" at a sunset. Of course, this doesn't describe the sunset
> anymore than "I say what I mean and mean what I say" makes another
> proposition clear.
>
Well it might describe the sunset in the sense that it references your
experience of it and, after all, any time we see a sunset and set out to
describe it all we have to tell about is our experience of it. Of course
"beautiful" is a term without immediate content. It applies to our reactions to
certain kinds of stimuli under certain conditions and so it doesn't denote the
external part of the experience, the things we are seeing so much as the
internal part, what happens to us on seeing them. And yet it cannot be fully
accounted for by describing any particular physical or emotional sensations in
us either. "She was so beautiful she set my heart to fluttering." We don't
thereby get a picture of whether she is tall or short, buxom or lissome, blonde
or brunette, bald or with hair, light or dark skinned, Asian, European, African
or Polynesian looking, etc. Nor does a description of the physical sensation of
a fluttering heart (even if only meant metaphorically) suffice. Yet we
understand the reference of "beauty" at some level.
What do we take it to be? In the past philosophers have looked for universal
standards as the referent but Wittgenstein steered us from that, too. Does
"beautiful" then just refer to our dispositional responses, that when we cite
beauty we are reacting to it in a certain way? That can't be either? What then?
Isn't it the case that every entity may have its own sense of what is
beautiful, what sets its heart to fluttering? But not every instance of beauty
prompts that reaction either, and not every entity will react in the same way
and yet they may share a notion of beauty.
Must not beauty be objective to some degree? And yet, if objective, still it
must remain firmly subjective, as well. As with the idea of good or goodness. I
am inclined to see these as language problems with the proviso that they are
solved by sharing meanings and further noting that the way we share meanings is
by sharing vast and complex networks of associated ideas which may not match,
idea for idea, but which works to give us the shared meaning by operating at
the more macro level of the network, by including enough notions in common
either in terms of individual mental pictures or associations or both.
Thus we can share an idea of what we mean by "beauty" without sharing the same
individual experiences or even having the same specific pictures in mind. This
is how we understand things, get things, recognize semantics, on my view.
> > Without a point? "It is what it is" ... etc. "The slithey and the
> > plithey and not so cuembicle as the aspiragot" (feel free to quote your
> > favorite in my stead) does not evoke any different reaction that the other
> > two- namely, me being rather speechless. One can surely not agree or
> > disagree with such statements.
>
> You write:
> As I've said, I think there are many types of nonsense and it is a mistake to
> think that, because there is this one word "nonsense", there must be a common
> thread of meaning in every application of the term.
>
> I write:
> I don't say that; I say tautology and contradiction are equally senseless-
> but obviously not the same. They are opposites. Do I even need to say how
> the opposite of senseless is senseless? Cantor says there are many
> infinities, but what has that done to describe infinity?
>
No argument from me!
> Furthermore:
> If I say the sky is either blue or not blue, you might very well respond
> "yes, this is true". I am saying that such a response is silly. The same
> goes with a+b=c.
>
The sky may also be chartreuse or gray or purple, etc. 'Red sky at morning,
sailor take warning!'
> You write:
> My point is that it is at least an open question whether the nonsense of a
> trivial truism is relevant in the given argument. So we cannot just dismiss
> such claims because they ARE trivial. There is a role for the trivial in
> philosophy, too. And I think it's clear that Wittgenstein recognized that.
>
> I write:
> The relevance of truisms (tautologies?) is not contained in any logical
> argument. No more is the relevance of religion contained within a scientific
> explanation. Etc.
>
I wasn't arguing the case for either.
> > You wrote:
> > Not sure about this quote. Whose is it? Yours? Why should we speak
> > religiously exclusively when speaking of mental phenomena? I see no reason
> > to think that would be required.
> >
> > I write:
> > That was not what I was trying to enunciate, but that all such metaphorical
> > talk is patently senseless (or nonsense or whatnot).
>
> You wrote:
> I don't think that's true nor do I think Wittgenstein held that, or at least
> not in a way that asserted that whatever is senseless is patently senseless
> and therefore without use!
>
> I write:
> Then I have misrepresented myself. "What can be said at all can be said
> clearly" -LW
>
I'm not sure that is always right. It did seem so to the Tractarian
Wittgenstein and certainly he aimed for clarity in his later work. But his
aphoristic style and musings are famously opaque to many. And he knew it
because he spent endless hours re-writing his ideas and held so much back from
publication because of this in his lifetime!
> > I think W's Lecture on Philosophy, and it conclusion on Freud (I have the
> > right Lecture in mind, I hope) illustrates this. So does the Beetle in the
> > box. There is no use in making a science about the beetle, even if the
> > beetle is really important in life.
> >
>
> You write:
> When there is no access to something I would agree. But we do have access to
> subjective experience. Each of us has it and presumes it is shared by others
> like ourselves. Moreover, we can talk about it, observe behavior that we
> ascribe to it, etc. So there is enough access for science to be involved.
>
> I write:
> There are a gazillion religions on this planet, and you think the label
> 'scientific' will finally put to rest the infinite variety in subjective
> experience, or better yet, define the undefinable metaphysical subject?
>
I don't know about gazillions but there are quite a few. I think that when
religion involves assertions about things in the world then it is a mistake to
decide that the religion doesn't really mean those assertions even if many
times we act as though it doesn't, ignore contrary evidence, etc.
<snip>
> > I write:
> > How is talk of God any different than talk of minds (and all such entities
> > or essences)?
>
> You write:
> We have direct experience of minds which is indubitable but while some may
> claim to have direct experience of God or gods, on examination that is
> generally seen to be inexpressible and/or explainable in other terms. I know
> where my feelings are, right here with me. I have them. Where is God, on the
> other hand, except as some abstraction, some concept I talk about and can,
> depending on how I define the concept, associate with all sorts of things
> including with the totality of everything?
>
> I edit:
> Where ARE MINDS, on the other hand, except as some abstraction, some concept
> I talk about and can, depending on how I define the concept, associate with
> all sorts of things including with the totality of everything?
>
That we cannot find the specific thing we call the mind doesn't mean it isn't
there. Where is the institution we call a university? Is it the physical
buildings? The people working there? A particular campus? A certain set of
relations with other institutions? A certain historical narrative?
Where is the play Shakespeare wrote called "Hamlet"? Is it in any given
reprint? Any stage performance of it? Indeed, where is this fellow Hamlet
himself?
Not everything that we grant is real is a physical entity with physical
attributes (those primary and secondary properties Walter reminded me about).
Why think mind is any more of an abstraction than Hamlet or the play of that
name or the university in which it is sometimes taught and sometimes performed?
<snip>
> > The red bird lives on!
> >
> > Nonsense and such,
> > College Dropout John O'Connor
> > --
> > He lived a wonderful life.
> > ==========================================
> Yes, the red chicken. I wish I understood that reference a little better but
> maybe that is not the point, right?
>
> SWM
>
<snip>
> [/quote]
>
> I thought I was trying to get you to tell me what the red chicken reference
> was! Maybe Sean knows.
>
> Nonsense ans such,
> JXO
>
It was probably someone else who put that out here. I had thought it was you
but I guess not.
SWM
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