posted 08-27-2001 11:37 PM               

But seriously, folks. Philosophy in many instances resembles linguistics, in ways that I can't really comprehend why there might be a similarity, but there you are. Maybe it's just me and some of my academic training relating to a discipline that itself serves as a good grounds for learning about other disciplines.

Take the notion of cause-and-effect and rational justification. We know that a rock will fall when we throw it out the window because the past hundred rocks we threw out the window (while our dinners were getting cold and our social life was continuing its serious decline) have fallen to the ground. There's nothing inherent in the quality of the rock that says it will fall and hit the ground -- just our assumptions that what has happened will continue to happen.

It's strange, because that lack of reliance on what the rock appears to be, of the inherent qualities of the rock itself, are common in language as well. Why do we call a rock a rock? Certainly not because of anything specific about the rock that makes the word "rock" spontaneously form in our brains. We call it a rock because we've always called it a rock. There's nothing about a rock that makes us want to call it a rock; it could just as easily be called a fork or a tourniquet or Mamie Eisenhower. Similarly, there's nothing about a rock that makes us believe it will be affected by gravity, other than the fact that it always has been.

posted 08-29-2001 12:22 AM               

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Originally posted by Kevin Ott:

Philosophy in many instances resembles linguistics, in ways that I can't really comprehend why there might be a similarity, but there you are. Maybe it's just me and some of my academic training relating to a discipline that itself serves as a good grounds for learning about other disciplines.

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Maybe a little of both. Philosophy spends a lot of time on the questions of 'reference' and 'predication' -- how do we determine what things in the world a word 'correctly' applies to, and how do we determine what characteristics we can 'correctly' ascribe to an object? (This is one of those Gordian Knot-type questions that I tend to leave to the side of the playing field, but I'll get into that later.)

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There's nothing inherent in the quality of the rock that says it will fall and hit the ground -- just our assumptions that what has happened will continue to happen.

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posted 08-31-2001 06:38 PM               

I was reading your piece, Dave, and thinking of Galileo. He was the kind of guy who Hume would have liked. Just because everyone said over and over and over again that the Earth was the center of the universe just wasn't enough for the guy. The question is, are there things yet still to be discovered and "proved" today. I think that there are/must be, I unfortunately don't know what they might be.

posted 09-04-2001 07:41 AM               

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Originally posted by slgorman:

I was reading your piece, Dave, and thinking of Galileo. He was the kind of guy who Hume would have liked. Just because everyone said over and over and over again that the Earth was the center of the universe just wasn't enough for the guy. The question is, are there things yet still to be discovered and "proved" today. I think that there are/must be, I unfortunately don't know what they might be.

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I admit, I tend to think that we'll eventually get around to rediscovering/reproving a whole lot of what we take for granted today; I get a chuckle from the thought of our 22nd century descendants looking back on us and saying, "They believed in atoms? Did they really have no understanding of galaxionuclonic theory?"

posted 09-06-2002 03:03 AM               

It's late and I skimmed, so don't put me on the Machine if I'm off base. Don't you think language is a sense in the same way that hearing, smelling, and tasting are senses? Suppose you grant me that for a second. Ok thanks. Now, why isn't there very much debate about whether we are REALLY seeing anything at all? Or smelling anything? I think most people, and most philosophers take it for granted that our senses are fairly accurate. And our language is fairly accurate. So why is there this big hangup over language? I guess I'm a pragmatist.

Here's a neat webpage that doesn't really apply: http://www.stanford.edu/~rrorty/pragmatistview.htm

posted 09-09-2002 12:06 AM               

I'm not sure I see where you're coming from saying that language is a sense -- can you explain that one a little bit?

posted 10-18-2002 04:29 PM               

It's quite possible that I have it all screwed up. I'll try to do better in the future.

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Originally posted by Dave Thomer:
Hey David, welcome aboard!

I'm not sure I see where you're coming from saying that language is a sense -- can you explain that one a little bit?

(And you might be surprised at how many philosophers DO doubt that we're really seeing anything, but that's a subject for another time.)

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posted 10-23-2002 09:47 PM               

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Originally posted by Dave Thomer:
I don’t think language and perceiving are quite the same thing. Take my six-month-old daughter. At first, she was just being bombarded with raw data, with no way to focus on any of it or understand how one thing connected to another – all she was doing was sensing. As she’s grown, she’s learned to filter that data. If I bring her into the kitchen and start making her a bottle, she will keep her eyes fixed on that bottle until it’s ready and she starts eating – that particular collection of sensory impulses now means something to her, and she can separate it from all the other stuff in the background. That’s perceiving. Now, eventually she’ll be able to associate the sense data that she recognizes as a bottle with the symbols that make up the word ‘bottle.’ When she can do that, then she’ll be using language.

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Fair enough, but language functions in some sort of sensory/perceptive role. For instance, in my room I have a print of Van Gogh's Starry Night. I have a white telephone and my walls are painted white. That gives you some idea of the way my room looks. You might even be able to perfectly picture my print, yet you have no direct sensory data to accompany that sensation/perception.

I'm not trying to start any trouble! I'm just feeling my way around in these intellectual areas. You might even be able to recommend something for me to read.

I do think what you say about your daughter and the bottle is very important. It is interesting that she has the undifferentiated sense data, and I agree with that point. What fascinates me is how people and animals can be trained to become aware of things. I had a stump-grinder in college (I know that's weird), but occasionally I would get some help from my fellow students. Whereas they never noticed stumps previously, in two weeks, they were highly sensitized and aware of stumps in their environment.
I have read that Eskimos have a whole bunch of different words for snow. Does this mean they are aware of something that I am not?

Anyway, too many bad unsupported ideas for now. Please don't feel obligated to make any sort of formal reply! I usually yak like this when I meet new people. Just throw out ideas and see where the interest is.

But maybe one more thing. If whales sense/perceive their environment with sonar, and this same sonar is a type of language that allows them to communicate what they perceive to other whales, what's the real difference than if the whales were sounding the environment themselves?

You shouldn't answer this unless you just want to. It's obviously flawed and needs some work, I was just looking for a place to put it.

posted 11-05-2002 07:41 PM               

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Fair enough, but language functions in some sort of sensory/perceptive role. For instance, in my room I have a print of Van Gogh's Starry Night. I have a white telephone and my walls are painted white. That gives you some idea of the way my room looks. You might even be able to perfectly picture my print, yet you have no direct sensory data to accompany that sensation/perception.

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But that only works if I have had a previous sensory perception of Starry Night or the color white and I’ve learned to make the connection between the perception and the symbol. Language builds on perception, but it isn’t perception itself. When you smell cookies baking, and you start to imagine the taste of the cookies, it’s the same kind of association, but smelling isn’t tasting and vice versa.

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I have read that Eskimos have a whole bunch of different words for snow. Does this mean they are aware of something that I am not?

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I’m not gonna say they do automatically, but I do think they have the opportunity to cultivate such an awareness. But you don’t need the different terms for that – you can just pay real close attention to snow.

posted 02-20-2003 01:35 AM               

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Originally posted by dprince:
I'm working on Hegel.

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