[Wittrs] Re: On Languge Being "Open Ended"

  • From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:04:36 -0000

Since you elected to include reference to my off-list e-mailed comment on the 
issue of language being open-ended with regard to the implication of the idea 
of rule-following for understanding usages, I suppose there's no reason I 
shouldn't post some of what I said on-line in a more public way so here, at 
least, are the relevant portions:

"You know, I actually think Glen has a point, Sean. . . . he is right, on my 
view, re: the fact that you can't have an anything goes scenario in language. 
Yes, language is flexible and there are many games we 'play' within it and part 
of what Wittgenstein wanted to say was that that is how these things work. But 
he did also point out that terms can be misused and that that causes problems 
and misuse occurs when we break the rules of the pertinent game. To some extent 
language is open-ended and we are constantly evolving new games to go with the 
old but there must be places where words fall into the wrong pool of uses if we 
are to be able to communicate with one another (there must be right and wrong 
ways to say things). I think you are sometimes too facile in dealing with this 
distinction.

"I also think Glen's right about your use of 'brain scripts' and 'languaging'. 
Yes language is behavioral as Wittgenstein pointed out but there's a reason 
'languaging' sounds odd to us, a reason it is not part of ordinary language, 
not a verb. I don't think much gets added by attempting to turn it into one -- 
or to refocus behavioral observations on whatever it is brains do (which we 
don't know and, even if we did in a scientific way, would not be part of the 
observational criteria toward which our ordinary linguistic usages are 
directed).

". . . I think I know where you are coming from, that you are pointing out that 
language is a complex of practices, is highly flexible and is never fixed in 
any finite fashion. But the way you put some of this is easily misread, lending 
fuel to Glen's fire."



My point, in the above, was to suggest that perhaps Sean overstates his case at 
times though I do agree that language rules are not hard and fast and that we 
err when we try to treat them that way. I'm just not sure as going as far as to 
say it's all a matter of fences and if we take them down we take them down. 
Some fences can't be taken down without violating sense. You can't make 
distinctions without fences in cases like this, even if where we place them is 
somewhat aribtrary, contingently dependent on a shared consensus within a 
community of language users.

SWM

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